John Fox, Jr. - "The Heart Of The Hills"

The Marquis de Nadaillac - "Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples"

Thomas Hardy - "Moments of Vision"

Hamilton Wright Mabie - "Heroes Every Child Should Know"

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Books: The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3

H >> Horace Walpole >> The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3




The Duchess of Choiseul,(937) the only young one of these
heroines, is not very pretty, but has fine eyes, and is a little
model in wax-work, which not being allowed to speak for some time
as incapable, has a hesitation and modesty, the latter of which
the court has not cured, and the former of which is atoned for by
the most interesting sound of voice, and forgotten in the most
elegant turn and propriety of expression. Oh! it is the
gentlest, amiable, civil little creature that ever came out of a
fairy egg! So just in its phrases and thoughts, so attentive and
good-natured! Every body loves it but its husband, who prefers
his own sister the Duchess de Grammont,(938) an Amazonian,
fierce, haughty dame, who loves and hates arbitrarily, and is
detested. Madame de Choiseul, passionately fond of her husband,
was the martyr of this union, but at last submitted with a good
grace; has gained a little credit with him, and is still believed
to idolize him. But I doubt it--she takes too much pains to
profess it.

I cannot finish my list without adding a much more common
character--but more complete in its kind than any of the
foregoing, the Mar`echale de Luxembourg.(939) She has been very
handsome, very abandoned, and very mischievous. Her beauty is
gone, her lovers are gone, and she thinks the devil is coming.
This dejection has softened her into being rather agreeable, for
she has wit and good-breeding; but you would swear, by the
restlessness of her person and the horrors she cannot conceal,
that she had signed the compact, and expected to be called upon
in a week for the performance.

I could add many pictures, but none so remarkable. In those I
send you, there is not a feature bestowed gratis or exaggerated.
For the beauties, of which there are a few considerable, as
Mesdames de Brionne, de Monaco, et d'Egmont, they have not yet
lost their characters, nor got any.

You must not attribute my intimacy with Paris to curiosity alone.
An accident unlocked the doors for me. That passe-partout,
called the fashion, has made them fly open-and what do you think
was that fashion? I myself. Yes, like Queen Elinor in the
ballad, I sunk at Charing-cross, and have risen in the Fauxbourg
St. Germain. A plaisanterie on Rousseau, whose arrival here in
his way to you brought me acquainted with many anecdotes
conformable to the idea I had conceived of him, got about, was
liked much more than it deserved, spread like wildfire, and made
me the subject of conversation. Rousseau's devotees were
offended. Madame de Boufflers, with a tone of sentiment, and the
accents of lamenting humanity, abused me heartily, and then
complained to myself with the utmost softness. I acted
contrition, but had like to have spoiled all, by growing
dreadfully tired of a second lecture from the Prince of Conti,
who took up the ball, and made himself the hero of a history
wherein he had nothing to do. I listened, did not understand
half he said (nor he neither), forgot the rest, said Yes when I
should have said No, yawned when I should have smiled, and was
very penitent when I should have rejoiced at my pardon. Madame
de Boufflers was more distressed, for he owned twenty times more
than I had said: she frowned and made him signs: but she had
wound up his clack, and there was no stopping it. -The moment she
grew angry, the lord of the house grew charmed, and it has been
my fault if I am not at the head of a numerous sect:--but, when I
left a triumphant party in England, I did not come hither to be
at the head of a fashion. However, I have been sent for about
like an African prince or a learned canary-bird, and was, in
particular, carried by force to the Princess of Talmond,(940) the
Queen's cousin, who lives in a charitable apartment in the
Luxembourg, and was sitting on a small bed hung with saints and
Sobieskis, in a corner of one of those vast chambers, by two
blinking tapers. I stumbled over a cat, a footstool, and a
chamber-pot in my journey to her presence. She could not find a
syllable to say to me, and the visit ended with her begging a
lap-dog. Thank the Lord! though this is the first month, it is
the last week, of my reign; and I shall resign my crown with
great satisfaction to a bouillie of chestnuts, which is just
invented and whose annals will be illustrated by so many
indigestions, that Paris will not want any thing else for three
weeks. I will enclose the fatal letter after I have finished
this enormous one; to which I will only add, that nothing has
interrupted my S`evign`e researches but the frost. The Abb`e de
Malherbes has given me full power to ransack I did not tell you,
that by great accident, when I thought on nothing less, I
stumbled on an original picture of the Comte de Grammont, Adieu!
You are generally in London in March: I shall be there by the end
of it.(941)


(928) To the above portrait of Madame du Deffand it may be useful
to subjoin the able development of her character which appeared
in the Quarterly Review for May 1811, in its critique on her
Letters to Walpole:--"This lady seems to have united the
lightness of the French character with the
solidity of the English. She was easy and volatile, yet
judicious and acute; sometimes profound and sometimes
superficial. She had a wit playful, abundant, and well-toned; an
admirable conception of the ridiculous, and great skill in
exposing it; a turn for satire, which she indulged, not always in
the best-natured manner, yet with irresistible effect; powers of
expression varied, appropriate, flowing from the source, and
curious without research; a refined taste for letters, and a
judgment both of men and books in a high degree: enlightened and
accurate. As her parts had been happily thrown together by
nature, they were no less happy in the circumstances which
attended their progress and development. They were refined, not
by a course of solitary study, but by desultory reading, and
chiefly by living intercourse with the brightest geniuses of her
age. Thus trained, they acquired a pliability of movement, which
gave to all their exertions a bewitching air of freedom and
negligence. and made even their last efforts seem only the
exuberances or flowering-off of a mind capable of higher
excellencies, but unambitious to attain them. There was nothing
to alarm or overpower. On whatever topic she touched, trivial or
severe, it was alike en badinant; but in the midst of this
sportiveness, her genius poured itself forth in a thousand
delightful fancies, and scattered new graces and ornaments on
every object within its sphere. In its wanderings from the
trifles of the day to grave questions of morals or philosophy, it
carelessly struck out, and as carelessly abandoned, the most
profound truths; and while it sought only to amuse, suddenly
astonished and electrified by rapid traits of illumination, which
opened the depths of difficult subjects, and roused the
researches of more systematic reasoners. To these qualifications
were added an independence in forming opinions, and a boldness in
avowing them, which wore at least the semblance of honesty; a
perfect knowledge of the world, and that facility of manners,
which in the commerce of society supplies the place of
benevolence."-E.

(929) m. de Pontdeveyle, the younger brother of the Marquis
d'Argental, the friend of Voltaire and of the King of Prussia.
Their mother, Madame do Ferioles, was sister to the celebrated
madame de Tencin and to the Cardinal of the same name. He died
in 1774.-E.

(930) Madame du Deffand, in a letter to Walpole of the 17th of
March 1776, states the Malheurs de l'Amour to be the production
of Madame de Tencin. She describes it as un roman bien `ecrit,
mais qui n'inspire que de la tristesse."-E.

(931) La Mar`ecchale de Mirepoix was the first woman of
consequence who countenanced and appeared in public at Versailles
with Madame du Barri; while, on the other hand, her brother, the
Prince de Beauvau and his wife, gave great offence by refusing to
see her or be of any of her parties. Her person is thus
described by Madame du Deffand:--"Sa figure est charmante, son
teint est `eblouissant; ses traits, sans `etre parfaits, sont Si
bien assortis, que personne n'a l'air plus jeune et n'est plus
jolie."-E.

(932) Le Comte d'Argenson was minister-at-war, and, after
Damien's attempt upon the life of the King of France in 1757, was
disgraced, and exiled to his country-house at Ormes in Poitou.
He was brother to the Marquis d'Argenson, who had been minister
of foreign affairs, and died in 1756. He it was who is said to
have addressed M. Bignon, his nephew, afterwards an academician,
on conferring upon him the appointment of librarian to the King,
"Mon neveu, voil`a une belle occasion pour apprendre `a lire."-E.

(933) The following is the commencement of the song above alluded
to by Walpole:--

"Une petite bourgeoise,
Elev`ee `a la grivoise,
Mesurant tout k sa toise,
Fait de la cour un tandis.
Le Roi, malgr`e son scrupule,
Pour elle froidement br`ule.
Cette flamme ridicule Si
Excite dans tout Paris, ris, ris, ris."

(934) Le Comte de Maurepas, who was married to a sister of the
Duc de la Valli`ere, had been minister of marine, and disgraced,
as Walpole says, at the instigation of the reigning mistress,
Madame de Pompadour. Upon the death of Louis Quinze, he was
immediately summoned to assist in the formation of the ministry
of his successor.-E.

(935 See vol. iii. p. 218, letter 157.-E.

(936) Madame de Rochefort, n`ee Brancas.-E.

(937) La Duchesse de Choiseul, n`ee du Chatel. The husband
appears to have been more attached to her than Walpole supposed;
at least if we may judge from his will, in which he desires to be
buried in the same grave, and expresses his gratification at the
idea of reposing by the side of one whom he had, during his
lifetime, cherished and respected so highly.-E.

(938) La Duchesse de Grammont, sister of the Duke of Choiseul,
does not appear to have deserved the character which Walpole has
here given of her. She was thus described, in 1761, by Mr. Hans
Stanley, in a letter to Mr. Pitt:--"The Duchess is the only
person who has any weight with her brother, the Duc de Choiseul.
She never dissembles her contempt or dislike of any man, in
whatever degree of elevation. It is said she might have supplied
the place of Madame de Pompadour, if she had pleased. She treats
the ceremonies and pageants of courts as things beneath her: she
possesses a most uncommon share of understanding, and has very
high notions of honour and reputation." The crowning act of her
life militates strongly against Walpole's views. When brought
before the Revolutionary tribunal, in April 1794, after having
been seized by order of Robespierre, she astonished her judges by
the grace and dignity of her demeanour; and pleaded, not for her
own life, but eloquently for that of her friend, the Duchesse du
Chatelet: "Que ma mmort soit d`ecid`ee," she said; "cela ne
m'`etonne pas; mais," pointing to her friend, "pour cet ange, en
quoi vous a-t-elle offens`e; elle qui n'a jamais fait tort `a
personne; et dont la vie enti`ere n'offre qu'un tableau de vertu
et de bienfaisance." Both suffered upon the same scaffold. It
was this lady who was selected to be made an example of, from
among many others who slighted Madame du Barri; and for this she
was exiled to the distance of fifteen leagues from Paris, or from
wheresoever the court was assembled.-E.

(939) La Mar`echale Duchesse de Luxembourg, sister to the Duc de
Villeroi, Her first husband was the Duc de Boufflers, by whom she
had a son, the Duc de Boufflers, who died at Genoa of the
small-pox. She afterwards married the Mar`echal Duc de
Luxembourg, at whose country-seat, Montmorency, Jean Jacques
Rousseau was long an inmate.-E.

(940) The Princess of Talmond was born in Poland, and said to be
allied to the Queen, Maria Leczinska, with whom she came to
France, and there married a prince of the house of Bouillon.-E.

(941) Gray, in reference to this letter, writes thus to Dr.
Wharton, on the 5th of March:--"Mr. Walpole writes me now and
then a long and lively letter from Paris, to which place he went
the last summer, with the gout upon him; sometimes in his limbs;
often in his stomach and head. He has got somehow well, (not by
means of the climate, one would think,) goes to all public
places, sees all the best company, and is very much in fashion.
He says he sunk like Queen Eleanor, at Charing-cross, and has
risen again at Paris. He returns again in April; but his health
is certainly in a deplorable state." Works, vol. iv. p. 79.-E.



Letter 293 To The Right Hon. Lady Hervey.
Paris, Feb. 3, 1766. )page 468)

I had the honour of writing to your ladyship on the 4th and 12th
of last month, which I only mention, because the latter went by
the post, which I have found is not always a safe conveyance.

I am sorry to inform you, Madam, that you will not see Madame
Geoffrin this year, as she goes to Poland in May. The King has
invited her, promised her an apartment exactly in her own way,
and that she shall see nobody but whom) she chooses to see. This
will not surprise you, Madam; but what I shall add, will: though
I must beg your ladyship not to mention it even to her, as it is
an absolute secret here, as she does not know that I know it, and
as it was trusted to me by a friend of yours. In short, there
are thoughts of sending her with a public character, or at least
with a commission from hence--a very extraordinary honour, and I
think never bestowed but on the Mar`echale de Gu`ebriant. As the
Dussons have been talked of, and as Madame Geoffrin has enemies,
its being known might make her uneasy that it was known. I
should have told it to no mortal but your ladyship; but I could
not resist giving you such a pleasure. In your answer, Madam, I
need not warn YOU not to specify what I have told you.

My favour here continues ; and favour never displeases. To me,
too, it is a novelty, and I naturally love curiosities. However,
I must be looking towards home, and have perhaps only been
treasuring up regret. At worst I have filled my mind with a new
set of ideas; some resource to a man who was heartily tired of
his old ones. When I tell your ladyship that I play at whisk,
and bear even French music, you will not wonder at any change in
me. Yet I am far from pretending to like every body, or every
thing I see. There are some chapters on which I still fear we
shall not agree; but I will do your ladyship the justice to own,
that you have never said a syllable too much in behalf of the
friends to whom you was so good as to recommend me. Madame
d'Egmont, whom I have mentioned but little, is one of the best
women in the world, and, though not at all striking at first,
_fair)s upon one much. Colonel Gordon, with this letter, brings
you, Madam, some more seeds from her. I have a box of pomatums
for you from Madame de Boufflers, which shall go by the next
conveyance that offers. As he waits for my parcel, I can only
repeat how much I am your ladyship's most obliged and faithful
humble servant.



Letter 294 To George Montagu, Esq.
Paris, Feb. 4, 1766. (page 469)

I write on small paper, that the nothing I have to say may look
like a letter, Paris, that supplies tine with diversions, affords
me no news. England sends me none, on which I care to talk by
the post. All seems in confusion; but I have done with politics!

The marriage of your cousin puts me in mind of the two owls, whom
the Vizier in some Eastern tale told the Sultan were treating on
a match between their children, on whom they were to settle I
don't know how many ruined villages. Trouble not your head about
it. Our ancestors were rogues, and so will our posterity be.

Madame Roland has sent to me, by Lady Jerningham,(942) to beg my
works. She shall certainly have them when I return to England;
but how comes she to forget that you and I are friends? or does
she think that all Englishmen quarrel on party? If she does,
methinks she is a good deal in the right, and it is one of the
reasons why I have bid adieu to politics, that I may not be
expected to love those I hate, and hate those I love. I supped
last night with the Duchess de Choiseul, and saw a magnificent
robe she is to wear to-day for a great wedding between a
Biron(943) and a Boufflers. It is of blue satin, embroidered all
over in mosaic, diamond-wise, with gold: in every diamond is a
silver star edged with gold, and surrounded with spangles in the
same way; it is trimmed with double sables, crossed with frogs
and tassels of gold; her head, neck, breast, and arms, covered
with diamonds. She will be quite the fairy queen, for it is the
prettiest little reasonable amiable Titania you ever saw; but
Oberon does not love it. He prefers a great mortal Hermione his
sister. I long to hear that you are lodged in Arlington-street,
and invested with your green livery; and I love Lord Beaulieu for
his cudom. Adieu!

(942) Mary, eldest daughter, and eventually heiress, of Francis
Plowden, Esq. by Mary eldest daughter of the Hon. John Stafford
Howard, younger son of the unfortunate Lord Stafford, wife of sir
George Jerningham.-E.

(943) The Duc de Lauzun, who upon the death of his uncle, the
Mar`echal de Biron, became Duc de Biron, married the heiress and
only child of the Duc de Boufflers, who died at Genoa. The
marriage proved an unhappy one, and the Duchess twice took refuge
in England at the breaking out of the French revolution; but
having, in 1793, unadvisedly returned to Paris, she perished on
the scaffold in one of the bloody proscriptions of Robespierre.
At the beginning of that revolution, the Duke espoused the
popular cause, and even commanded an army under the orders of the
legislative assembly; but in the storms that succeeded, being
altogether unequal to stem the torrent of popular fury or direct
its course, he fell by the guillotine early in 1794.-E.



Letter 295 To George Montagu, Esq.
Paris, Sunday, Feb. 23. (page 470)

I cannot know that you are in my house, and not say, you are
welcome. Indeed you are, and I am heartily glad you are pleased
there. I have neither matter nor time for more, as I have heard
of an opportunity of sending this away immediately with some
other letters. News do not happen here as in London; the
Parliaments meet, draw up a remonstrance, ask a day for
presenting it, have the day named a week after, and so forth. At
their rate of going on, if Methusalem was first president, he
would not see the end of a single question. As your histories
are somewhat more precipitate, I wait for their coming to some
settlement, and then will return; but, if the old ministers are
to be replaced, Bastille for Bastille, I think I had rather stay
where I am. I am not half so much afraid of any power, as the
French are of Mr. Pitt. Adieu!



Letter 296 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.
Paris, Feb. 28, 1766. (page 470)

Dear sir,
As you cannot, I believe, get a copy of the letter to Rousseau,
and are impatient for it, I send it you: though the brevity of it
will not answer your expectation. It is no answer to any of his
works, and is only a laugh at his affectations. I hear he does
not succeed in England, where his singularities are no curiosity.
Yet he must stay there, or give up all his pretensions. To quit
a country where he may live at ease, and unpersecuted, will be
owning that tranquillity is not what he seeks. If he again seeks
persecution, who will pity him? I should think even bigots would
let him alone out of contempt.

I have executed your commission in a way that I hope will please
you. As you tell me you have a blue cup and saucer, and a red
one, and would have them completed to six, without being all
alike, I have bought one other blue, one other red, and two
sprigged, in the same manner, with colours; so you will have just
three pair, which seems preferable to six odd ones; and which,
indeed, at nineteen livres a-piece, I think I could not have
found.

I shall keep very near the time I proposed returning; though I am
a little tempted to wait for the appearance of' leaves. As I may
never come hither again, I am disposed to see a little of their
villas and gardens, though it will vex me to lose spring and
lilac-tide at Strawberry. The weather has been so bad, and
continues so cold, that I have not yet seen all I intended in
Paris. To-day, I have been to the Plaine de Sablon, by the Bois
de Boulogne, to see a horserace rid in person by the Count
Lauragais and Lord Forbes.(944) All Paris was in motion by nine
o'clock this morning, and the coaches and crowds were innumerable
at so novel a sight. Would you believe it, that there was an
Englishman to whom it was quite as new? That Englishman was I:
though I live within two miles of Hounslow, have been fifty times
in my life at Newmarket, and have passed through it at the time
of the races, I never before saw a complete one. I once went
from Cambridge on purpose; saw the beginning, was tired, and went
away. If there was to be a review in Lapland, perhaps I might
see a review, too; which yet I have never seen. Lauragais was
distanced at the second circuit. What added to the singularity
was, that at the same instant his brother was gone to church to
be married. But, as Lauragais is at variance with his father and
wife, he chose this expedient to show he was not at the wedding.
Adieu!

(944) James, sixteenth Baron, who married, in 1760, Catherine,
only daughter of Sir Robert Innes, Bart. of orton. He was
Deputy-governor of Fort William, and died there in 1804.-E.



Letter 297 To George Montagu, Esq.
Paris, March 3, 1766. (page 471)

I write, because I ought, and because I have promised you I
would, and because I have an opportunity by Monsieur de
Lillebonne, and in spite of a better reason for being silent,
which is, that I have nothing to say. People marry, die, and are
promoted here about whom neither you nor I care a straw. No,
truly, and I am heartily tired of them, as you may believe when I
am preparing to return. There is a man in the next room actually
nailing my boxes; yet it will be the beginning of April before I
am at home. I have not had so much as a cold in all this
Siberian winter, and I will not venture the tempting the gout by
lying in a bad inn, till the weather is warmer. I wish, too, to
see a few leaves out at Versailles, etc. If I stayed till August
I could not see many; for there is not a tree for twenty miles,
that is not hacked and hewed, till it looks like the stumps that
beggars thrust into coaches to excite charity and miscarriages.

I am going this evening in search of Madame Roland; I doubt we
shall both miss each other's lilies and roses: she may have got
some pionies in their room, but mine are replaced with crocuses.

I love Lord Harcourt for his civility, to you; and I would fain
see you situated under the greenwood-tree, even by a compromise.
You may imagine I am pleased with the defeat, hisses, and
mortification of George Grenville, and The more by the
disappointment it has occasioned here. If you have a mind to vex
them thoroughly, you must make Mr. Pitt minister.(945) They have
not forgot him, whatever we have done.

The King has suddenly been here this morning to hold a lit de
justice: I don't yet know the particulars, except that it was
occasioned by some bold remonstrances of the Parliament on the
subject of That of Bretagne. Louis told me when I waked, that
the Duke de Chevreuil, the governor of Paris, was just gone by in
great state. I long to chat with Mr. Chute and you in the blue
room at Strawberry: though I have little to write, I have a great
deal to say. How do you like his new house? has he no gout?
Are your cousins Cortez and Pizarro heartily mortified that they
are not to roast and plunder the Americans? Is Goody Carlisle
Disappointed at not being appointed grand inquisitor? Adieu! I
will not seal this till I have seen or missed Madame Roland.
Yours ever.

P. S. I have been prevented going to madame Roland, and defer
giving an account of her by this letter.

(945) Mr. Gerard Hamilton, in a letter to Mr. Calcraft, of the
7th, says:--"Grenville and the Duke of Bedford's people continue
to oppose, in every stage, the passage of the bill for the repeal
of the Stamp-act. The reports of the day are, that Mr. Pitt will
go into the House of lords, and form an arrangement, which he
will countenance."-E.



Letter 298 To The Right Hon. Lady Hervey.
Paris, March 10, 1766. (page 472)

There are two points, Madam, on which I must write to your
ladyship, though I have been confined these three or four Days
with an inflammation in my eyes. My watchings and revellings
had, I doubt, heated my blood, and prepared it to receive a
stroke of cold, which in truth was amply administered. We were
two-and-twenty at Mar`echale du Luxembourg's, and supped in a
temple rather than in a hall. It is vaulted at top with gods and
goddesses, and paved with marble; but the god of fire was not of
the number. HOWever, as this is neither of my points, I shall
say no more of it.