Books: The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1

H >> Horace Walpole >> The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67

To Mrs. Howard, Swift's ingratitude was base. She,
indubitably, had not only exerted all her interest to second his
and his faction's interests, but loved Queen Caroline and the
minister as little as they did; yet, when Swift died, he left
behind him a Character of Mrs. Howard by no means
flattering, which was published in his posthumous works.

On its appearance, Mrs. Howard (become Lady Suffolk) said to me,
in her calm, dispassionate manner, "All I can say is, that it is
very different from one that he drew of me, and sent to me, many
years ago, and which I have, written by his own
hand."(102

Lord Chesterfield, rather more ingenuous-as his character of her,
but under a feigned name, was printed in his life, though in a
paper of which he was not known to be the author-was not more
consistent. Eudosia, described in the weekly journal called
Common Sense, for September 10, 1737, was meant for Lady Suffolk:
yet was it no fault of hers that he was
proscribed at court; nor did she perhaps ever know, as he
never did till the year before his death, when I acquainted him
with it by his friend Sir John Irwin, why he had been put into
the Queen's Index expurgatorius.(102) The queen had an obscure
window at St. James's that looked into a dark passage, lighted
only by a single lamp at night, which looked upon Mrs. Howard's
apartment. Lord Chesterfield, one Twelfth-night at court, had
won so large a sum of money, that he thought it imprudent to
carry it home in the dark, and deposited it with the mistress.
Thence the queen inferred great intimacy, and thenceforwards Lord
Chesterfield could obtain no favour from court- and finding
himself desperate, went into opposition. My father himself long
afterwards told me the story, and had become the principal object
of the peer's satiric wit, though he had not been the mover of
his disgrace. The weight of that anger fell more disgracefully
on the king, as I shall mention in the next chapter.

I will here interrupt the detail of what I have heard of the
commencement of that reign, and farther anecdotes of the queen
and the mistress, till I have related the second very
memorable transaction of that era; and which would come in
awkwardly, if postponed till I have despatched many subsequent
particulars.

(99) Sir Spencer Compton, afterwards Earl of Wilmington, was so
far from resenting Sir Robert's superior talents, that he
remained steadfastly -,attached to him; and when the famous
motion for removing Sir Robert was made in both Houses, Lord
Wilmington, though confined to his bed, and with his head
blistered, rose and went to the House of Lords, to vote
against a measure that avowed its own injustice, by being
grounded only on popular clamour.

(100) It was the town residence of the Sidneys, Earls of
Leicester, of whom it was hired, as it was afterwards by
Frederick, Prince of Wales, on a similar quarrel with his
father. He added to it Savile House, belonging to Sir George
Savile, for his children.

(101) Mr. Croker, in his biographical notice of Lady Suffolk,
prefixed to the edition of her Letters, thus satisfactorily
confutes this anecdote: "On this it is to be observed, that
George the Second was proclaimed on the 14th of June 1727, that
Swift returned to Ireland in the September of the same year, and
that the first creation of peers in that reign did not take place
till the 28th of May 1728. Is it credible, that Mrs. Howard
should have made such a request of the new King, and suffered so
decided a refusal ten or eleven months before any peers were
made? But, again, upon this first
creation of peers Mrs. Howard's brother is the second name. Is
it probable that, with so great an object for her own
family in view, she risked a solicitation for Lord Bathurst? But
that which seems most convincing, is Swift's own
correspondence. In a letter to Mrs. of the 9th of July 1727, in
which, rallying her on the solicitation to which the new King
would be exposed, he says, - 'for my part, you may be secure,
that I will never venture to recommend even a mouse to Mrs.
Cole's cat, or a shoe-cleaner to your meanest domestic.'" Vol. i.
p. xxv-E.

(102) "This," says her biographer, "is a complete mistake, to
give it no harsher name. The Character which Swift left
behind, and which was published in his posthumous works, is the
very same which Lady Suffolk had in her possession. If it be not
flattering, it is to Swift's honour that he 'did not condescend
to flatter her in the days of her highest favour; and the
accusation of having written another less favourable, is wholly
false." Ibid. vol. i. p. xxxviii.-E.

(103) "It certainly would have been extraordinary," observes Mr.
Croker, "that Lord Chesterfield, in 1137, when he was on terms of
the most familiar friendship with Lady Suffolk,
should have published a deprecatory character of her, and in
revenge too, for being disgraced at court-Lady Suffolk being at
the same time in disgrace also. But, unluckily for
Walpole's conjecture, the character of Eudosia (a female
savant, as the name imports,) has not the slightest
resemblance to Lady Suffolk, and contains no allusion to
courts or courtiers." Ibid. vol. ii. p. xxxiii-E.

CHAPTER VI.

Destruction of George the First's will.

At the first council held by the new sovereign, Dr. Wake,
Archbishop of Canterbury, produced the will of the late King, and
delivered it to the successor, expecting it would be
opened and read in council. On the contrary, his Majesty put it
into his pocket, and stalked out of the room without
uttering a word on the subject. The poor prelate was
thunderstruck, and had not the presence of mind or the courage to
demand the testament's being opened, or at least to have it
registered. No man present chose to be more hardy than the
person to whom the deposit had been trusted-perhaps none of them
immediately conceived the possible violation of so solemn an act
so notoriously existent; still, as the King never
mentioned the will more, whispers only by degrees informed the
public that the will was burnt; at least that its injunctions
were never fulfilled.

What the contents were was never ascertained. Report said, that
forty thousand pounds had been bequeathed to the Duchess of
Kendal; and more vague rumours spoke of a large legacy to the
Queen of Prussia, daughter of the late King. Of that
bequest demands were afterwards said to have been frequently and
roughly made by her son the great King of Prussia, between whom
and his uncle subsisted much inveteracy.

The legacy to the ]Duchess was some time after on the brink of
coming to open and legal discussion. Lord Chesterfield
marrying her niece and heiress, the Countess of Walsingham, and
resenting his own proscription at court, was believed to have
instituted, or at least to have threatened, a suit for recovery
of the legacy to the Duchess, to which he was then become
entitled; and it was as confidently believed that he was quieted
by the payment of twenty thousand pounds.

But if the Archbishop had too timidly betrayed the trust
reposed in him from weakness and want of spirit, there were two
other men who had no such plea of imbecility, and who, being
independent, and above being awed, basely sacrificed their honour
and their integrity for positive sordid gain. George the First
had deposited duplicates of his will with two sovereign German
princes: I will not specify them, because at this distance of
time I do not, perfectly recollect their
titles; but I was actually, some years ago, shown a copy of a
letter from one of our ambassadors abroad to-a secretary of state
at that period, in which the ambassador said, one of the princes
in question would accept the proffered subsidy, and had
delivered, or would deliver, the duplicate of the King's will.
The other trustee, was no doubt, as little
conscientious and as corrupt. It is pity the late King of
Prussia did not learn their infamous treachery.

Discoursing once with Lady Suffolk on that suppressed
testament, she made the only plausible shadow of an excuse that
could be made for George the Second. She told me that George the
First had burnt two wills made in favour of his son. They were,
probably, the wills of the Duke and Duchess of Zell; or one of
them might be that of his mother, the
Princess Sophia. The crime of the first George could only
palliate, not justify, the criminality of the second; for the
second did -not punish the maturity, but the innocent. But bad
precedents are always dangerous, and too likely to be
copied. (104)

(104) On the subject of the royal will, Walpole, in his
Memoires, vol. ii. p. 458, relates the following
anecdote:-"The morning after the death of George the Second, Lord
Waldegrave showed the Duke of Cumberland an extraordinary piece:
it was endorsed, 'very private paper,' and was a letter from the
Duke of Newcastle to the first Earl of Waldegrave; in which his
Grace informed the Earl, then our ambassador in
France, that he had received by the messenger the copy of the
will and codicil of George the First; that he had delivered it to
his Majesty, who put it into the fire without opening it: 'So,'
adds the Duke, 'we do not know whether it confirms the other or
not;' and he proceeds to say, 'Despatch a messenger to the Duke
Of Wolfenbuttle with the treaty, in which he is granted all he
desired; and we expect, by return of the
messenger, the original will from him.' George the First had
left two wills; one in the hands of Dr. Wake, Archbishop of
Canterbury, the other with the Duke of Wolfenbuttle. He had been
in the right to take these precautions: he himself had burned his
wife's testament, and her and her father's, the duke of Zell;
both of whom had made George the Second their heir--a paliative
of the latter's obliquity, if justice would allow of any
violation." From the following passage in
Boswell's Life of Johnson, the Doctor appears to have given
credence to the story of the will:--"tom Davies instanced
Charles the Second; Johnson taking fire at an attack upon that
prince, exclaimed, "charles the Second was licentious in his
practice, but he always had a reverence for what was good;
Charles the Second was not such a man as George the Second; he
did not destroy his father's will' he did not betray those over
whom he ruled' he did not let the French fleet pass
ours.' He roared with prodigious violence against George the
Second. When he ceased, Moody interjected, in an Irish tone, and
a comic look, 'Ah! poor George the Second!'" See vol. v. p. 284,
ed. 1835.-E.

CHAPTER VII.

History of Mrs. Howard, afterwards Countess of Suffolk-Miss
Bellenden-Her Marriage with Colonel John Campbell, afterwards
fourth Duke of Argyle-Anecdotes of Queen Caroline-her last
Illness and Death-Anecdote of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough-Last
Years of George the Second-Mrs. Clayton, afterwards Lady
Sundon-Lady Diana Spencer-Frederick, Prince of Wales-Sudden
Removal of the Prince and Princess from Hampton Court to St.
James's -Birth of a Princess-Rupture with the King-Anecdotes of
Lady Yarmouth.

I will now resume the story of Lady Suffolk whose history, though
she had none of that influence on the transactions of the cabinet
that was expected, will still probably be more entertaining to
two young ladies than a magisterial detail of political events,
the traces of which at least may be found in journals and brief
chronicles of the times. The interior of courts, and the lesser
features of history, are precisely those with which we are least
acquainted,-I mean of the age preceding our own. Such anecdotes
are forgotten in the multiplicity of those that ensue, or reside
only in the memory of idle old persons, or have not yet emerged
into publicity from the portefeuilles of such garrulous
Brant`omes as myself. Trifling I will not call myself; for,
while I have such charming disciples as you two to inform; and
though acute or plodding politicians, for whom they are not
meant, may condemn these pages; which is preferable, the labour
of an historian who toils for fame and for applause from he knows
not whom; or my careless commission to paper of perhaps
insignificant passages that I remember, but penned for the
amusement of a pair of such sensible and cultivated minds as I
never met at so early an age, and whose fine eyes I do know will
read me With candour, and allow me that mite of fame to which I
aspire, their approbation of my endeavours to divert their
evenings in the country? O Guicciardin! is posthumous renown so
valuable as the satisfaction of reading these court-tales to the
lovely Berrys?

Henrietta Hobart was daughter of Sir Henry, and sister of Sir
John Hobart, Knight of the Bath on the revival of the order, and
afterwards by her interest made a baron; and since created Earl
of Buckinghamshire.

She was first married to Mr. Howard, the younger brother of more
than one Earl of Suffolk; to which title he at last succeeded
himself, and left a son by her, who was the last earl of that
branch. She had but the slender fortune of an ancient baronet's
daughter; and Mr. Howard's circumstances were the reverse of
opulent. It was the close of Queen Anne's reign: the young
couple saw no step more prudent than to resort to Hanover, and
endeavour to ingratiate themselves with the future sovereigns of
England. Still so narrow was their fortune, that Mr. Howard
finding it expedient to give a dinner to the Hanoverian
ministers, Mrs. Howard is said to have sacrificed her beautiful
head of hair to pay for the expense. It must be recollected,
that at that period were in fashion those enormous full-bottomed
wigs, which often cost twenty and thirty guineas. Mrs. Howard
was extremely acceptable to the intelligent Princess Sophia; but
did not at that time make farther impression on the Electoral
Prince, than, on his father's succession to the crown, to be
appointed one of the bedchamber-women to the new Princess of
Wales.

The elder Whig politicians became ministers to the King. The
most promising of the young lords and gentleman of that party,
and the prettiest and liveliest of the young ladies, formed the
new court of the Prince and Princess of Wales. The apartment of
the bedchamber-woman in waiting became the fashionable evening
rendez-vous of the most distinguished wits and beauties. Lord
Chesterfield, then Lord Stanhope, Lord Scarborough, Carr Lord
Hervey, elder brother of the more known John Lord Hervey, and
reckoned to have superior parts, General (at that time only
Colonel) Charles Churchill, and others not necessary to rehearse,
were constant attendants: Miss Lepelle, afterwards Lady Hervey,
my mother, Lady Walpole, Mrs. Selwyn, mother of the famous
George, and herself of much vivacity and pretty, Mrs. Howard, and
above all for universal admiration, Miss Bellenden, one of the
maids of honour. Her face and person were charming; lively she
was almost to `etourderie; (105) and so agreeable she was, that I
never heard her mentioned afterwards by one of her contemporaries
who did not prefer her as the most perfect creature they ever
knew. The Prince frequented the waiting-room, and soon felt a
stronger inclination for her than he ever entertained but for his
Princess. Miss Bellenden by no means felt a reciprocal passion.
The Prince's gallantry was by no means delicate; and his avarice
disgusted her. One evening sitting by her, he took out his purse
and counted his money. He repeated the numeration: the giddy
Bellenden lost her patience, and cried out, "Sir, I cannot bear
it! if you count your money any more, I will go out of the room."
The chink of the gold did not tempt her more than the person of
his Royal Highness. In fact, her heart was engaged; and so the
Prince, finding his love fruitless, suspected. He was even so
generous as to promise her, that if she would discover the object
of her Choice, and would engage not to marry without his privity,
he would consent to the match, and would be kind to her husband.
She gave him the promise he exacted, but without acknowledging
the person; and then, lest his Highness should throw any obstacle
in the way, married, without his knowledge, Colonel Campbell, one
of the grooms of his bedchamber, and who long afterwards
succeeded to the title of Argyle at the death of Duke Archibald.
(106) The Prince never forgave the breach of her word; and
whenever she went to the drawing-room, as from her husband's
situation she was sometimes obliged to do, though trembling at
what she knew she was to undergo, the Prince always stepped up to
her, and whispered some very harsh reproach in her ear. Mrs.
Howard was the intimate friend of Miss Bellenden; had been the
confidante of the Prince's passion; and, on Mrs. Campbell's
eclipse, succeeded to her friend's post of favourite, but not to
her resistance.

>From the steady decorum of Mrs. Howard, I should conclude that
she would have preferred the advantages of her situation to the
ostentatious `eclat of it: but many obstacles stood in the way of
total concealment; nor do I suppose that love had any share in
the sacrifice she made of her virtue. She had felt poverty, and
was far from disliking power. Mr. Howard was probably as little
agreeable to her as he proved worthless. The King, though very
amorous, was certainly more attracted by a silly idea he had
entertained of gallantry being becoming, than by a love of
variety; and he added the more egregious folly of fancying that
inconstancy proved he was not governed; but so awkwardly did he
manage that artifice, that it but demonstrated more clearly the
influence of the Queen. With such a disposition, secrecy would
by no means have answered his Majesty's views; yet the publicity
of the intrigue was especially owing to Mr. Howard, who, far from
ceding his wife quietly, went one night into the quadrangle of
St. James's, and vociferously demanded her to be restored to him
before the guards and other audience. Being thrust out, he sent
a letter to her by the Archbishop of Canterbury, reclaiming her,
and the Archbishop by his instructions consigned the summons to
the Queen, who had the malicious pleasure of delivering the
letter to her rival. (107)

Such intemperate proceedings by no means invited the new mistress
to leave the asylum of St. James's. She was safe while under the
royal roof: even after the rupture between the King and Prince
(for the affair commenced in the reign of the first George), and
though the Prince, on quitting St. James's, resided in a private
house, it was too serious an enterprise to attempt to take his
wife by force out of the palace of the Prince of Wales. The case
was altered, when, on the arrival of summer, their Royal
Highnesses were to remove to Richmond. Being only woman of the
bedchamber, etiquette did not allow Mrs. Howard the entr`ee of
the coach with the Princess. She apprehended that Mr. Howard
might seize her on the road. To baffle such an attempt, her
friends, John, Duke of Argyle, and his brother, the Earl of
Islay, called for her in the coach of one of them by eight
o'clock in the morning of the day, at noon of which the Prince
and Princess were to remove, and lodged her safely in their house
at Richmond. During the summer a negotiation was commenced with
the obstreperous husband, and he sold his own noisy honour and
the possession of his wife for a pension of twelve hundred
a-year. (108)

These now little-known anecdotes of Mr. Howard's behaviour I
received between twenty and thirty years afterwards, from the
mouth of Lady Suffolk herself. She had left the court about the
year 1735, and passed her summers at her villa of Marble Hill, at
Twickenham, living very retired both there and in London. I
purchased Strawberry Hill in 1747; and being much acquainted with
the houses of Dorset, Vere, and others of Lady Suffolk's
intimates, was become known to her; though she and my father had
been at the head of two such hostile factions at court. Becoming
neighbours, and both, after her second husband's death, living
single and alone, our acquaintance turned to intimacy. She was
extremely deaf, (109) and consequently had more satisfaction in
narrating than in listening; her memory both of remote and of the
most recent facts was correct beyond belief. I, like you, was
indulgent to, and fond of old anecdotes. Each of us knew
different Parts of many court stories, and each was eager to
learn what either could relate more; and thus, by comparing
notes, we sometimes could make out discoveries of a third
circumstance, (110) before unknown to both. Those evenings, and
I had many of them in autumnal nights, were extremely agreeable;
and if this chain of minutiae proves so to you, you owe perhaps
to those conversations the fidelity of my memory, which those
repetitions recalled and stamped so lastingly.

In this narrative will it be unwelcome to you, if I subjoin a
faithful portrait of the heroine of this part? lady Suffolk was
of a just height, well made, extremely fair, with the finest
light brown hair; was remarkably genteel, and always well dressed
with taste and simplicity. Those were her personal charms, for
her face was regular and agreeable rather than beautiful and
those charms she retained with little diminution to her death at
the age of seventy-nine. (111) Her mental qualifications were by
no means shining; her eyes and countenance showed her character,
which was grave and mild. Her strict love of truth and her
accurate memory were always in unison, and made her too
circumstantial on trifles. She was discreet without being
reserved; and having no bad qualities, and being constant to her
connexions, she preserved uncommon respect to the end of her
life; and from the propriety and decency of her behaviour was
always treated as if her virtue had never been questioned; her
friends even affecting to suppose, that her connexion with the
King had been confined to pure friendship. Unfortunately, his
Majesty's passions were too indelicate to have been confined to
Platonic love for a woman who was deaf, (112)-sentiments he had
expressed in a letter to the Queen, who, however jealous of Lady
Suffolk, had latterly dreaded the King's contracting a new
attachment to a younger rival, and had prevented Lady Suffolk
from leaving the court as early as she had wished to do. "I
don't know," said his Majesty, "why you will not let me part with
an old deaf woman, of whom I am weary."

Her credit had always been extremely limited by the Queen's
superior influence, and by the devotion of the minister to her
Majesty. Except a barony, a red riband, and a good place for her
brother, Lady Suffolk could succeed but in very subordinate
recommendations. Her own acquisitions were so moderate, that,
besides Marble Hill, which cost the King ten or twelve thousand
pounds, her complaisance had not been too dearly purchased. She
left the court with an income so little to be envied, that,
though an economist and not expensive, by the lapse of some
annuities on lives not so prolonged as her own she found herself
straitened; and, besides Marble Hill, did not at most leave
twenty thousand pounds to her family. On quitting court, she
married Mr. George Berkeley, and outlived him. (113)

No established mistress of a sovereign ever enjoyed less of the
brilliancy of the situation than Lady Suffolk. Watched and
thwarted by the Queen, disclaimed by the minister, she owed to
the dignity of her own behaviour, and to the contradiction of
their enemies, the chief respect that was paid to her, and which
but ill compensated for the slavery of her attendance, and the
mortifications she endured. She was elegant; her lover the
reverse, and most unentertaining, and void of confidence in her.
His motions too were measured by etiquette and the clock. He
visited her every evening at nine; but with such dull
punctuality, that he frequently walked about his chamber for ten
minutes with his watch in his hand, if the stated minute was not
arrived.

But from the Queen she tasted yet more positive vexations. Till
she became Countess of Suffolk, she constantly dressed the
Queen's bead, who delighted in subjecting her to such servile
offices, though always apologizing to her good Howard. Often her
Majesty had more complete triumph. It happened more than once,
that the King, coming into the room while the Queen was dressing,
has snatched off the handkerchief, and, turning rudely to Mrs.
Howard, has cried, "Because you have an ugly neck yourself, you
hide the Queen's."

It is certain that the King always preferred the Queen's person
to that of any other woman; nor ever described his idea of
beauty, but he drew the picture of his wife.

Queen Caroline is said to have been very handsome at her
marriage, soon after which she had the small-pox; but was little
marked by it, and retained a most pleasing countenance. It was
full of majesty or mildness as she pleased, and her penetrating
eyes expressed whatever she had a mind they should. Her voice
too was captivating, and her hands beautifully small, plump, and
graceful. Her understanding was uncommonly strong; and so was
her resolution. From their earliest connexion she had determined
to govern the King, and deserved to do so; for her submission to
his will was unbounded, her sense much superior, and his honour
and interest always took place of her own: so that her love of
power that was predominant, was dearly bought, and rarely ill
employed. She was ambitious too of fame; but, shackled by her
devotion to the King, she seldom could pursue that object. She
wished to be a patroness of learned men but George had no respect
for them or their works; and her Majesty's own taste was not very
exquisite, nor did he allow her time to cultivate any studies.
Her Generosity would have displayed itself, for she valued money
but as the instrument of her good purposes: but he stinted her
alike in almost all her passions; and though she wished for
nothing more than to be liberal, she bore the imputation of his
avarice, as she did of others of his faults. Often, when she had
made prudent and proper promises of preferment, and could not
persuade the King to comply, she suffered the breach of word to
fall on her, rather than reflect on him. Though his affection
and confidence in her were implicit, he lived in dread of being
supposed to be governed by her; and that silly parade was
extended even to the most private moments of business with my
father. Whenever he entered, the Queen rose, courtesied, and
retired or offered to retire. Sometimes the King condescended to
bid her stay-on both occasions she and Sir Robert. had previously
settled the business to be discussed. Sometimes the King would
quash the proposal in question, and yield after retalking it over
with her-but then he boasted to Sir Robert that he himself had
better considered it.