Books: The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3

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Dr. Pearce, Bishop of Rochester,(57) offered his service to him:
he thanked the Bishop, but said, as his own brother was a
clergyman, he chose to have him. Yet he had another relation who
has been much more busy about his repentance. I don't know
whether you have ever heard that one of the singular characters
here is a Countess of Huntingdon,(58) aunt of Lord Ferrers. She
is the Saint Theresa of the Methodists. Judge how violent
bigotry must be in such mad blood! The Earl, by no means
disposed to be a convert, let her visit him, and often sent for
her, as it was more company; but he grew sick of her, and
complained that she was enough to provoke any body. She made her
suffragan, Whitfield, pray for and preach about him, and that
impertinent fellow told his enthusiasts in his sermon, that my
Lord's heart was stone. The earl wanted much to see his
mistress: my Lord Cornwallis, as simple an old woman as my Lady
Huntingdon herself, consulted her whether he should permit it.
"Oh! by no means; it would be letting him die in adultery!" In
one thing she was more sensible. He resolved not to take leave
of his children, four girls, but on the scaffold, and then to
read to them a paper he had drawn up, very bitter on the family
of Meredith, and on the House of Lords for -the first
transaction. This my Lady Huntingdon persuaded him to drop, and
he took leave of his children the day before. He wrote two
letters in the preceding week to Lord Cornwallis on some of these
requests - they were cool and rational, and concluded with
desiring him not to mind the absurd requests of his (Lord
Ferrers's) family in his behalf. On the last morning he dressed
himself in his wedding clothes, and said, he thought this, at
least, as good an occasion of putting them on as that for which
they were first made. He wore them to Tyburn. This marked the
strong impression on his mind. His mother wrote to his wife in a
weak angry Style, telling her to intercede for him as her duty,
and to swear to his madness. But this was not so easy; in all
her cause before the lords, she had persisted that he was not
mad.

Sir William Meredith, and even Lady Huntingdon had prophesied
that his courage would fail him at last, and had so much
foundation, that it is certain Lord Ferrers had often been beat:-
-but the Methodists were to get no honour by him. His courage
rose where it was most likely to fail,-an unlucky circumstance to
prophets, especially when they have had the prudence to have all
kind of probability on their side. Even an awful procession of
above two hours, with that mixture of pageantry, shame, and
ignominy, nay, and of delay, could not dismount his resolution.
He set out from the Tower at nine, amidst crowds, thousands.
First went a string of constables; then one of the sheriffs, in
his chariot and six, the horses dressed with ribands; next Lord
Ferrers, in his own landau and six, his coachman crying all the
way; guards at each side; the other sheriffs chariot followed
empty, with a mourning coach-and-six, a hearse, and the Horse
Guards. Observe, that the empty chariot was that of the other
sheriff, who was in the coach with the prisoner, and who was
Vaillant, the French bookseller in the Strand. How will you
decipher all these strange circumstances to Florentines? A
bookseller in robes and in mourning, sitting as a magistrate by
the side of the Earl; and in the evening, every -body going to
Vaillant's shop to hear the particulars. I wrote to him '. as he
serves me, for the account: but he intends to print it, and I
will send it you with some other things, and the trial. Lord
Ferrers at first talked on indifferent matters, and observing the
prodigious confluence of people, (the blind was drawn up on his
side,) he said,--"But they never saw a lord hanged, and perhaps
will never see another;" One of the dragoons was thrown by his
horse's leg entangling in the hind wheel: Lord Ferrers expressed
much concern, and said, "I hope there will be no death to-day but
mine," and was pleased when Vaillant told him the man was not
hurt. Vaillant made excuses to him on his office. "On the
contrary," said the Earl, "I am much obliged to you. I feared
the disagreeableness of the duty might make you depute your
under-sheriff. As you are so good as to execute it yourself, I
am persuaded the dreadful apparatus will be conducted with more
expedition." The chaplain of the Tower, who sat backwards, then
thought it his turn to speak, and began to talk on religion; but
Lord Ferrers received it impatiently. However, the chaplain
persevered, and said, he wished to bring his lordship to some
confession or acknowledgment of contrition for a crime so
repugnant to the laws of God and man, and wished him to endeavour
to do whatever could be done in so short a time. The Earl
replied, "He had done every thing he proposed to do with regard
to God and man; and as to discourses on religion, you and I,
Sir," said he to the clergyman, "shall probably not agree on that
subject. The passage is very short: you will not have time to
convince me, nor I to refute you; it cannot be ended before we
arrive." The clergyman still insisted, and urged, that. at
least, the world would expect some satisfaction. Lord Ferrers
replied, with some impatience, "Sir, what have I to do with the
world? I am going to pay a forfeit life, which my country has
thought proper to take from me--what do I care now what the world
thinks of me? But, Sir, since you do desire some confession, I
will confess one thing to you; I do believe there is a God. As
to modes of worship, we had better not talk on them. I always
thought Lord Bolingbroke in the wrong, to publish his notions on
religion: I will not fall into the same error." The chaplain,
seeing sensibly that it was in vain to make any more attempts,
contented himself with representing to him, that it would be
expected from one of his calling, and that even decency required,
that some prayer should be used on the scaffold, and asked his
leave, at least to repeat the Lord's Prayer there. Lord Ferrers
replied, "I always thought it a good prayer; you may use it if
you please."

While these discourses were passing, the procession was stopped
by the crowd. The Earl said he was dry, and wished for some wine
and water. The Sheriff said, he was sorry to be obliged to
refuse him. By late regulations they were enjoined not to let
prisoners drink from the place of imprisonment to that of
execution, as great indecencies had been formerly committed by
the lower species of criminals getting drunk; "And though," said
he, "my Lord, I might think myself excusable in overlooking this
order out of regard to a person of your lordship's rank, yet
there is another reason which, I am sure, will weigh with
you;-your Lordship is sensible of the greatness of the crowd; we
must draw up to some tavern; the confluence would be so great,
that it would delay the expedition which your Lordship seems so
much to desire." He replied, he was satisfied, adding, "Then I
must be content with this," and took some pigtail tobacco out of
his pocket. As they went on, a letter was thrown into his coach;
it was from his mistress, to tell him, it was impossible, from
the crowd, for her to get up to the spot where he had appointed
her to meet and take leave of him, but that she was in a
hackney-coach of such a number. He begged Vaillant to order his
officers to try to get the hackney-coach up to his, "My Lord,"
said Vaillant, you have behaved so well hitherto, that I think it
is pity to venture unmanning yourself." He was struck, and was
satisfied without seeing her. As they drew nigh, he said, "I
perceive we are almost arrived; it is time to do what little more
I have to do;" and then taking out his watch, gave it to
Vaillant, desiring him to accept it as a mark of his gratitude
for his kind behaviour, adding, "It is scarce worth Your
acceptance; but I have nothing else; it is a stop-watch, and a
pretty accurate one." He gave five guineas to the chaplain, and
took out as much for the executioner. Then giving Vaillant a
pocket-book, he begged him to deliver it to Mrs. Clifford his
mistress, with what it contained, and with his most tender
regards, saying, "The key of it is to the watch, but I am
persuaded you are too much a gentleman to open it." He destined
the remainder of the money in his purse to the same person, and
with the same tender regards.

When they came to Tyburn, his coach was detained some minutes by
the conflux of people; but as soon as the door was opened, he
stepped out readily and mounted the scaffold: it was hung with
black, by the undertaker, and at the expense of his family.
Under the gallows was a new invented stage, to be struck from
under him. He showed no kind of fear or discomposure, only just
looking at the gallows with a slight motion of dissatisfaction.
He said little, kneeled for a moment to the prayer, said, "Lord
have mercy upon me, and forgive me my errors," and immediately
mounted the upper stage. He had come pinioned with a black sash,
and was unwilling to have his hands tied, or his face covered,
but was persuaded to both. When the rope was put round his neck,
he turned pale, but recovered his countenance instantly, and was
but seven minutes from leaving the coach, to the signal given for
striking the stage. As the machine was new, they were not ready
at it: his toes touched it, and he suffered a little, having had
time, by their bungling, to raise his cap; but the executioner
pulled it down again, and they pulled his legs, so that he was
soon out of pain, and quite dead in four minutes. He desired not
to be stripped and exposed, and Vaillant promised him, though his
clothes must be taken off, that his shirt should not. This
decency ended with him: the sheriffs fell to eating and drinking
on the scaffold, ran and helped up one of their friends to drink
with them, as he was still hanging, which he did for above an
hour, and then was conveyed back with the same pomp to Surgeons'
Hall, to be dissected. The executioners fought for the rope, and
the one who lost it cried. The mob tore off the black cloth as
relics; but the universal crowd behaved with great decency and
admiration, as they well might; for sure no exit was ever made
with more sensible resolution and with less ostentation.

If I have tired you by this long narrative, you feel differently
from me. The man, the manners of the country, the justice of so
great and curious a nation, all to me seem striking, and must, I
believe, do more so to you, who have been absent long enough to
read of your own country as history.

I have run into so much paper, that I am ashamed at going on, but
having a bit left, I must say a few more words. The other
prisoner, from whom the mob had promised themselves more
entertainment, is gone into the country, having been forbid the
court, with some barbarous additions to the sentence, as you Will
see in the papers. It was notified, too, to the second
court,(59) who have had the prudence to countenance him no
longer. The third prisoner, and second madman, Lord Charles Hay,
is luckily dead, and has saved much trouble.

Have you seen the works of the philosopher of Sans Souci, or
rather of the man who is no philosopher, and who had more Souci
than any man now in Europe? How contemptible they are! Miserable
poetry; not a new thought, nor an old one newly expressed.(60) I
say nothing of the folly of publishing his aversion to the
English, at the very time they are ruining themselves for him;
nor of the greater folly of his irreligion. The epistle to Keith
is puerile and shocking. He is not so sensible as Lord Ferrers,
who did not think such sentiments ought to be published. His
Majesty could not resist the vanity of showing how disengaged he
can be even at this time.

I am going to give a letter for you to Strange, the engraver, who
is going to visit Italy. He is a very first-rate artist, and by
far our best. Pray countenance him, though you will not approve
his politics.(61) I believe Albano(62)) is his Loretto.

I shall finish this vast volume with a very good story, though
not so authentic as my sheriff's. It is said that General
Clive's father has been with Mr. Pitt, to notify, that if the
government will send his son four hundred thousand pounds, and a
certain number of ships, the heaven-born general knows of a part
of India, where such treasures are buried, that he will engage,
to send over enough. to pay the national debt. "Oh!" said the
minister, "that is too much; fifty millions would be sufficient."
Clive insisted on the hundred millions,--Pitt, that half would do
as well. "Lord, Sir!" said the old man, "consider, if your
administration lasts, the national debt will soon be two hundred
millions." Good night for a twelvemonth!

(55) Sir William Meredith, Bart. of Hanbury, in Cheshire. The
title is now extinct.-D.

(56) She afterwards married Lord Frederick Campbell, brother of
the Duke of Argyle, and was an excellent woman. (She was
unfortunately burned to death at Lord Frederick's seat, Combe
Bank, in Kent.-D.)

(57) Zachariah Pearce, translated from the see of Bangor in 1756.
He was an excellent man, and later in life, in the year 1768,
finding himself growing infirm, he presented to the world the
rare instance of disinterestedness, of wishing to relinquish all
his pieces of preferment. These consisted of the deanery of
Westminster and bishopric of Rochester. The deanery he gave up,
but was not allowed to do so by the bishopric, which was said, as
a peerage, to be inalienable.-D.

(58) Lady Selina Shirley, daughter of an Earl of Ferrers.
(Selina Shirley, second daughter and coheiress of Washington Earl
Ferrers, and widow of Theophilus Hastings, ninth Earl of
Huntingdon. She was the peculiar patroness of enthusiasts of all
sorts in religion.-D.)

(59) The Prince of Wales's.

(60) "The town are reading the King of Prussia's poetry, and I
have done like the town; they do not seem so sick of it as I am.
It is all the scum of Voltaire and Bolingbroke, the crambe
recocta of our worst freethinkers tossed up in German-French
rhyme." Gray, vol. iii. p. 241.

(61) Strange was a confirmed Jacobite.

(62) The residence of the Pretender.

Letter 25 To Sir David Dalrymple.(63)
Arlington Street, May 15, 1760. (page 63)

Sir,
I am extremely sensible of your obliging kindness in sending me
for Mr. Gray the account of Erse poetry, even at a time when you
were so much out of order. That indisposition I hope is entirely
removed, and your health perfectly reestablished. Mr. Gray is
very thankful for the information.(64)

I have lately bought, intending it for Dr. Robertson, a Spanish
MS. called "Annals del Emperador Carlos V. Autor, Francisco Lopez
de Gornara." As I am utterly ignorant of the Spanish tongue, I
do not know whether there is the least merit in my purchase. It
is not very long; if you will tell me how to convey it, I will
send it to him.

We have nothing new but some Dialogues of the Dead by Lord
Lyttelton. I cannot say they are very lively or striking. The
best I think, relates to your country, and is written with a very
good design: an intention of removing all prejudices and disUnion
between the two parts of our island. I cannot tell you how the
book is liked in general, for it appears but this moment.

You have seen, to be sure, the King of Prussia's Poems. If he
intended to raise the glory of his military capacity by
depressing his literary talents, he could not, I think,. have
succeeded better. One would think a man had been accustomed to
nothing but the magnificence of vast armies, and to the tumult of
drums and trumpets. who is incapable of seeing that God is as
great in the most minute parts of creation as in the most
enormous. His Majesty does not seem to admire a mite, unless it
is magnified by a Brobdignag microscope! While he is struggling
with the force of three empires, he fancies that it adds to his
glory to be unbent enough to contend for laurels with the
triflers of a French Parnassus! Adieu! Sir.

(63) Now first collected.

(64) The following is Gray's description of these poems, in a
letter to Wharton.--"I am gone mad about them. They are said to
be translations (literal and in prose) from the Erse tongue, done
by one Macpherson, a young clergyman in the Highlands. He means
to publish a collection he has of these specimens of antiquity;
but what plagues me is, I cannot come at any certainty on that
head. I was so struck, so extasi`e, with their infinite beauty,
that I writ into Scotland to make a thousand inquiries. The
letters I have in return are ill-wrote, ill-reasoned,
unsatisfactory, calculated (one would imagine) to deceive one,
and yet not cunning enough to do it cleverly: in short, the whole
external evidence would make one believe these fragments (for so
he calls them, though nothing can be more entire) counterfeit;
but the internal is so strong on the other side, that I am
resolved to believe them genuine, spite of the devil and the
kirk. It is impossible to convince me, that they were invented
by the same man that writes me these letters. On the other hand,
it is almost as hard to suppose, if they are original, that he
should be able to translate them so admirably. In short, this
man is the very demon of poetry, or he has lighted on a treasure
hid for ages." In another letter, be says,--"As to their
authenticity, I have many enquiries, and have lately procured a
letter from Mr. David Hume, the historian, which is more
satisfactory than any thing I have yet met with on that subject.
He says, 'Certain it is, that these poems are in every body's
mouth in the Highlands, have been handed down from father to son,
and are of an age beyond all memory and tradition.'" Works vol.
iii. pp. 249, 257.-E.

Letter 26 To Sir Horace Mann.
Strawberry Hill, May 24, 1760. (page 64)

Well! at last Sisson's machine sets out-but, my dear Sir, how you
still talk of him! You seem to think him as grave and learned as
a professor of Bologna--why, he is an errant, low, indigent
mechanic, and however Dr. Perelli found him out, is a shuffling
knave, and I fear, no fitter to execute his orders than to write
the letter you expect. Then there was my ignorance and your
brother James's ignorance to be thrown into the account. For the
drawing, Sisson says Dr. Perelli has the description of it
already; however, I have insisted on his making a reference to
that description in a scrawl we have with much ado extorted from
him. I pray to Sir Isaac Newton that the machine may answer: It
costs, the stars know what! The whole charge comes to upwards of
threescore pounds! He had received twenty pounds, and yet was so
necessitous, that on our hesitating, he wrote me a most
impertinent letter for his money. I dreaded at first undertaking
a commission for which I was so unqualified, and though I have
done all I could, I fear you and your friend will be but ill
satisfied.

Along with the machine I have sent you some new books; Lord
George's trial, Lord Ferrers's, and the account of him; a
fashionable thing called Tristram Shandy, and my Lord Lyttelton's
new Dialogues of the Dead, or rather Dead Dialogues; and
something less valuable still than any of these, but which I
flatter myself you will not despise; it is my own print, done
from a picture that is reckoned very like--you must allow for the
difference that twenty years since you saw me have made. That
wonderful creature Lord Ferrers, of whom I told you so much in my
last, and with whom I am not going to plague you much more, made
one of his keepers read Hamlet to him the night before his death
after he was in bed-paid all his bills in the morning, as if
leaving an inn, and half an hour before the sheriffs fetched him,
corrected some verses he had written in the Tower in imitation of
the Duke of Buckingham's epitaph, dublus sed ron improbus
vin.(65) What a noble author have I here to add to my Catalogue!
For the other noble author, Lord Lyttelton, you will find his
work paltry enough; the style, a mixture of bombast, poetry, and
vulcarisms. Nothing new in the composition, except making people
talk out of character is so. Then he loves changing sides so
much, that he makes Lord Falkland and Hampden cross over and
figure in like people in a country dance; not to mention their
guardian angels, who deserve to be hanged for murder. He is
angry too at Swift, Lucian, and Rabelais, as if they had laughed
at him of all men living, and he seems to wish that one would
read the last's Dissertation 1 on Hippocrates instead of his
History of Pantagruel. But I blame him most, when he was
satirizing too free writers, for praising the King of Prussia's
poetry, to which any thing of Bayle is harmless. I like best the
Dialogue between the Duke of argyll and the Earl of Angus, and
the character of his own first wife under that of Penelope. I
need not tell you that Pericles is Mr. Pitt.

I have had much conversation with your brother James, and intend
to have more with your eldest, about your nephew. He is a sweet
boy, and has all the goodness of dear Gal. and dear you in his
countenance. They have sent him to Cambridge under that
interested hog the Bishop of Chester,(66) and propose to keep him
there three years. Their apprehension seems to be of his growing
a fine gentleman. I could not help saying, "Why, is he not to be
one?" My wish is to have him with you--what an opportunity of
his learning the world and business under such a tutor and such a
parent! but they think he will dress and run into diversions. I
tried to convince them that of all spots upon earth dress is
least necessary at Florence, and where one can least divert
oneself. I am answered with the necessity of Latin and
mathematics-the one soon forgot, the other never got to any
purpose. I cannot bear his losing the advantage of being brought
up by you, with all the advantages of such a situation, and where
he May learn in perfection living languages, never attained after
twenty. I am so earnest on this, for I doat on him for dear
Gal.'s sake, that I will insist to rudeness on his remaining at
Cambridge but two years; and before that time you shall write to
second My motions.

The Parliament is up, and news are gone out of town: I expect
none but what we receive from Germany. As to the Pretender, his
life or death makes no impression here when a real King is so
soon forgot, how should an imaginary one be remembered? Besides,
since Jacobites have found the way to St. James's, it is grown so
much the fashion to worship Kings, that people don't send their
adorations so far as Rome. He at Kensington is likely long to
outlast his old rival. The spring is far from warm, yet he wears
a silk coat and has left off fires.

Thank you for the entertaining history of the Pope and the
Genoese. I am flounced again into building--a round tower,
gallery, cloister, and chapel, all starting up--if I am forced to
run away by ruining myself, I will come to Florence, steal your
nephew, and bring him with me. Adieu!

(65) The following verses are said to have been found in Lord
Ferrers's apartment in the Tower:

"In doubt I lived, in doubt I die,
Yet stand Prepared the vast abyss to try.
And undismay'd expect eternity!"-E.

(66) Dr. Edmund Keene, brother of Sir Benjamin, and afterwards
Bishop of Ely.

Letter 27 To The Earl Of Strafford.
Strawberry Hill, June 7, 1760. (page 66)

My dear lord,
When at my time of day one can think a ball worth going to London
for on purpose, you will not wonder that I am childish enough to
write an account of it. I could give a better reason, your
bidding me send you any news; but I scorn a good reason when I am
idle enough to do any thing for a bad one. You had heard, before
you left London, of Miss Chudleigh's intended loyalty on the
Prince's birthday. Poor thing, I fear she has thrown away above
a quarter's salary! It was magnificent and well-understood--no
crowd--and though a sultry night, one was not a moment
incommoded. The court was illuminated on the whole summit of the
wall with a battlement of lamps; smaller ones on every step, and
a figure of lanterns on the outside of the house. The
virgin-mistress began the ball with the Duke of York, who was
dressed in a pale blue watered tabby, which, as I told him, if he
danced much, would soon be tabby all over, like the man's
advertisement,(67) but nobody did dance much. There was a new
Miss Bishop from Sir Cecil's endless hoard of beauty daughters,
who is still prettier than her sisters. The new Spanish embassy
was there--alas! Sir Cecil Bishop has never been in Spain!
Monsieur de Fuentes is a halfpenny print of my Lord Huntingdon.
His wife homely, but seems good-humoured and civil. The son does
not degenerate from such high-born ugliness; the daughter-in-law
was sick, and they say is not ugly, and has as good set of teeth
as one can have, when one has but two and those black. They seem
to have no curiosity, sit where they are placed, and ask no
questions about so strange a country. Indeed, the ambassadress
could see nothing; for Doddington(68) stood before her the whole
time, sweating Spanish at her, of which it was evident, by her
civil nods without answers, she did understand a word. She
speaks bad French, danced a bad minuet, and went away--though
there was a miraculous draught of fishes for their supper, for it
was a fast-day--but being the octave of their f`ete-dieu, they
dared not even fast plentifully. Miss Chudleigh desired the
gamblers would go up into the garrets--"Nay, they are not
garrets-it is only the roof of the house hollowed for upper
servants-but I have no upper servants." Every body ran up: there
is a low gallery with bookcases, and four chambers practised
under the pent of the roof, each hung with the finest Indian
pictures on different colours, and with Chinese chairs of the
same colours. Vases of flowers in each for nosegays, and in one
retired nook a most critical couch!