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

P. S. I don't know yet when I shall leave Cambridge.

(151) Mr. Henry Coventry was the son of Henry Coventry, Esq. who
had a good estate in Cambridgeshire. He was born in 1710, and
died in 1752. He wrote four additional Dialogues. The five were
republished shortly after his death, by his cousin, the Rev.
Francis Coventry. The following is transcribed from the MSS. of
the Rev. W. Cole:-

"When Henry Coventry first came to the University, he was of a
religious turn of mind, as was Mr. Horace Walpole; even so much
so as to go with Ashton, his then great friend, to pray with the
prisoners in the Castle. Afterwards, both Mr.
Coventry and Mr. Walpole took to the infidel side of the
question."-E.

127 Letter 6
To Richard West, Esq.
King's College, Aug. 17, 1736.

Dear West,
Gray is at Burnham,(152) and, what is surprising, has not been at
Eton. Could you live so near it without seeing it?
That dear scene of our quadruple-alliance would furnish me with
the most agreeable recollections. 'Tis the head
of our genealogical table, that is since sprouted out
into the two branches of Oxford and Cambridge. You seem to be
the eldest son, by having got a whole inheritance to yourself;
while the manor of Granta is to be divided between your three
younger brothers, Thomas of Lancashire, [153] Thomas of
London [154] and Horace. We don't wish you dead to enjoy your
seat, but your seat dead to enjoy you. I hope you are a mere
elder brother, and live upon what your father left you, and in
the way you 'were brought up in, poetry: but we are supposed to
betake ourselves to some trade, as logic, philosophy, or
mathematics. If I should prove a mere younger brother, and not
turn to any Profession, would you receive me, and supply me out
of your stock, where you have such plenty? I have been so used to
the delicate food of Parnassus, that I can never condescend to
apply to the grosser studies of Alma Mater. Sober cloth of
syllogism colour suits me ill; or, what's worse, I hate clothes
that one must prove to be of no colour at all. If the Muses
coelique vias et sidera monstrent, and qua vi maria alta
lumescant. why accipiant: but 'tis thrashing, to study
philosophy in the abstruse authors. I am not against cultivating
these studies, as they are certainly useful; but then they quite
neglect all polite literature, all knowledge of this world.
Indeed, such people have not much occasion for this latter; for
they shut themselves up from it, and study till they know less
than any one. Great mathematicians have been of great use;
but the generality of them are quite unconversible: they
frequent the stars, sub pedibusque vident nubes, but they can't
see through them. I tell you what I see; that by living
amongst them, I write of nothing else: my letters are
all parallelograms, two sides equal to two sides; and every
paragraph an axiom, that tells you nothing but what every mortal
almost knows. By the way, your letters come under this
description; for they contain nothing but what almost every
mortal knows too, that knows you-that is, they are
extremely agreeable, which they know you are capable of
making them:-no one is better acquainted with it than
Your sincere friend.

(152) in Buckinghamshire, where his uncle resided.

(153) Thomas Ashton. He was afterwards fellow of Eton College,
rector of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate-street, and preacher to the
Society of Lincoln's-inn. It was to him that Mr. Walpole
addressed the poetical epistle from Florence, first published in
Dodsley's collection of poems.

(154) Thomas Gray, the poet.

1737

128 Letter 7
To George Montagu Esq.
King's College, March 20, 1737.

Dear George,
The first paragraph in my letter must be in answer to the last in
yours; though I should be glad to make you the return you ask, by
waiting on you myself. 'Tis not in my power, from more
circumstances than One, which are needless to tell you, to
accompany you and Lord Conway(155) to Italy: you add to the
pleasure it would give me, by asking it so kindly. You I am
infinitely obliged to, as I was capable, my dear George, of
making you forget for a minute that you don't propose stirring
from the dear place you are now in. Poppies indeed are the chief
flowers in love nosegays, but they seldom bend towards the lady;
at least not till the other flowers have been
gathered. Prince Volscius's boots were made of love-leather, and
honour-leather; instead of honour, some people's are made of
friendship; but since you have been so good to me as to draw on
this, I can almost believe you are equipped for
travelling farther than Rheims. 'Tis no little inducement to
make me wish myself in France, that I hear gallantry is not left
off there; that you may be polite and not be thought
awkward for it. You know the pretty men of the age in England
use the women with no more deference than they do their coach-
horses, and have not half the regard for them that they have for
themselves. The little freedoms you tell me you use take off
from formality, by avoiding which ridiculous extreme we are
dwindled into the other barbarous one, rusticity. If you had
been at Paris, I should have inquired about the new
Spanish ambassadress, who, by the accounts we have thence, at her
first audience of the queen, sat down with her at a
distance that suited respect and conversation. Adieu, dear
George,
Yours most heartily.

(156) Francis Seymour Conway, son of Francis Seymour, Lord
Conway, and Charlotte, daughter of John Shorter, Esq. [Sister to
Lady Walpole, the mother of Horace, and with her co-heiress of
John Shorter, Esq. lord-mayor of London in 1688, who died during
his mayoralty, from a fall off his horse, under
Newgate, as he was going to proclaim Bartholomew Fair. Lady
Walpole died in the August of the year in which the present
letter was written, and Sir Robert soon afterwards married @Miss
Skerrit. Walpole's well-known fondness for his mother is alluded
to by Gray, in a letter to West, dated 22d August, 1737:-" But
while I write to you, I hear the bad news of lady Walpole's
death, on Saturday night last. Forgive me if the thought of what
my poor Horace must feel on that account
obliges me to have done."]

129 Letter 8
To George Montagu, Esq.
Christopher Inn, Eton.

The Christopher. Lord! how great I used to think anybody just
landed at the Christopher! But here are no boys for me to send
for-here I am, like Noah, just returned into
his old world again, with all sorts of queer feels about me. By
the way, the clock strikes the old cracked sound-I recollect so
much, and remember so little-and want to play about-and am so
afraid of my playfellows-and am ready to shirk Ashton and can't
help making fun of myself-and envy a dame over the way, that has
just locked in her boarders, and is going to sit down in a little
hot parlour to a very bad supper, so comfortably! and I could be
so jolly a dog if I did not fat, which, by the way, is the first
time the word was ever applicable to me. In short, I should be
out of all bounds if I was to tell you half I feel, how young
again I am
one minute, and how old the next. But do come and feel
with me, when you will-to-morrow-adieu! If I don't compose myself
a little more before Sunday morning, when Ashton
is to preach, I shall certainly be in a bill for
laughing at church; but how to belt it, to see him
in the pulpit, when the last time I saw him here, was standing up
funking at a conduit to be catechised. Good night; yours.

1739

130 Letter 9
To Richard West, Esq.
Paris, April 21, N. S. 1739. (157)

Dear West,
You figure us in a set of pleasures, which, believe me, we do not
find; cards and eating are so universal, that they absorb all
variation of pleasures. The operas, indeed, are much frequented
three times a week; but to me they would be a greater penance
than eating maigre: their music resembles a gooseberry tart as
much as it does harmony. We have not yet been at the Italian
playhouse; scarce any one goes there. Their best amusement, and
which in some parts, beats ours, is the comedy three or four of
the actors excel any we have: but then to this nobody goes, if it
is not one of the fashionable nights; and then they go, be the
play good or bad-except on
Moli`ere's nights, whose pieces they are quite weary of. Gray
and I have been at the Avare to-night; I cannot at all commend
their performance of it. Last night I was in the Place de Louis
le Grand (a regular octagon, uniform, and the houses handsome,
though not so large as Golden Square), to see what they reckoned
one of the finest burials that ever was in France. It was the
Duke de Tresmes, governor of Paris and marshal of France. It
began on foot from his palace to his parish-church, and from
thence in coaches to the opposite end of Paris, to b interred in
the church of the Celestins, where is his family-vault. About a
week ago we happened to see the grave digging, as we went to see
the church, which is old and small., but fuller of fine ancient
monuments than any, except St. Denis, which we saw
on the road, and excels Westminster; for the windows are all '
painted in mosaic, and the tombs as fresh and well preserved as
if they were of yesterday. In the Celestins' church
is a votive column to Francis II., which says, that it is one
assurance of his being immortalised, to have had the martyr Mary
Stuart for his wife. After this long digression, I return to the
burial, which was a most vile thing. A long procession of
flambeaux and friars; no plumes, trophies, banners,
led horses, scutcheons, or open chariots; nothing but friars,
white, black, and grey, with all their trumpery. This goodly
ceremony began at nine at night, and did not finish till three
this morning; for, each church they passed, they stopped
for a hymn and holy water. By the bye, some of these choice
monks, who watched the body while it lay in state, fell asleep
one night, and let the tapers catch fire of the rich velvet
mantle lined with ermine and powdered with gold
flower-de-luces, which melted the lead coffin, and burnt off the
feet of the deceased before it awakened them. The French love
show; but there is a meanness runs through it all. At the house
where I stood to see this procession, the room was hung with
crimson damask and gold, and the windows were mended in ten or a
dozen places with paper. At dinner they give you three courses;
but a third of the dishes is patched up with sallads, butter,
puff-paste, or some such miscarriage of a dish. None, but
Germans, wear fine clothes; but their coaches are tawdry enough
for the wedding of Cupid and Psyche. You would-laugh extremely at
their signs: some live at
the Y grec, some at Venus's toilette, and some at the sucking
cat. YOU would not easily guess their notions of honour: I'll
tell you one: it is very dishonourable for any gentleman not to
be 'in @he army, or in the king's service as they
call it, and it is no dishonour to keep public gaming-houses:
there are at least an hundred and fifty people of the first
quality in Paris who live by it. You may go into their houses at
all hours of the night, And find hazard, pharaoh, etc. The men
who keep the hazard tables at the duke de Gesvres' pay him twelve
guineas each night for the privilege. Even the princesses of the
blood are dirty enough to have shares in the banks kept at their
houses. We have seen two or three of them; but they are not
young, nor remarkable but for wearing their red of a deeper dye
than other women, though all use it extravagantly.

The weather is still so bad, that we have not made any
excursions to see Versailles and the environs, not even walked in
the Tuileries; but we have seen almost every thing else that is
worth seeing in Paris, though that is very
considerable. They beat us vastly in buildings, both in number
and magnificence. The tombs of Richelieu and Mazarin at the
Sorbonne and the College de Quatre Nations are wonderfully fine,
especially the former. We have seen very little of the people
themselves, who are not inclined to be propitious to strangers,
especially if they do not play and speak the language readily.
There are many English here: Lord Holderness, Conway(158) and
Clinton, (159) and Lord George Bentinck; (160) Mr. Brand,(161)
Offley, Frederic, Frampton, Bonfoy, etc. Sir John
Cotton's son and a Mr. Vernon of Cambridge passed through Paris
last week. We shall stay here about a fortnight longer,
and then go to Rheims with Mr. Conway for two or three months.
When you have nothing else to do, we shall be glad to hear from
you; and any news. If we did not remember there was such a place
as England, we should know nothing of it: the French never
mention it, unless it happens to be in one of their proverbs!
Adieu! Yours ever.

To-morrow we go to the Cid. They have no farces but petites
pieces like our "Devil to Pay."

(157) Mr. Walpole left Cambridge towards the end of the year
1738, and in March, 1739, began his travels by going to Paris,
accompanied by Mr. Gray.

(158) Francis, second Lord Conway, in 1750, created Viscount
Beauchamp and Earl of Hertford, and in 1793, Earl of Yarmouth and
Marquis of Hertford. He was the elder brother of General Conway,
and grandfather of the present Marquis.

(159) Hugh Fortescue, in whose favour the abeyance into
which the barony of Clinton had fallen on the death of
Edward, thirteenth Baron Clinton, was terminated by writ of
summons, in 1721. He was created, in 1746, Lord Fortescue and
Earl
of Clinton; and died unmarried, in 1751.-E.

(160) Son of Henry, second Earl and first Duke of Portland; he
died in 1759.-E.

(161) Mr. Brand of the Hoo, in Hertfordshire, who afterwards
married Lady Caroline Pierrepoint, daughter of the Duke of
Kingston by his second wife,
and half-sister of Lady Mary Wortley.-E.

132 Letter 10
To Richard West, Esq.
>From Paris, 1739.

Dear West,
I should think myself to blame not to try to divert you, when you
tell me I can. From the air of your letter you seem to want
amusement, that is, you want spirits. I
would recommend to you certain little employments that I know of,
and that belong to you, but that I imagine bodily exercise is
more suitable to your complaint. If you would promise me to read
them in the Temple garden, I would send you a little packet of
plays and pamphlets that we have made up, and intend to dispatch
to 'Dick's' the first opportunity.-Stand by, clear the way, make
room for the pompous appearance of Versailles le Grand!--But no:
it fell so short of my idea of it, mine, that I have resigned to
Gray the office of writing its panegyric.(162) He likes it.
They say I am to like it better next Sunday; when the sun is to
shine., the king is to be fine, the water-works are to play, and
the new knights of the Holy Ghost are to be
installed! Ever since Wednesday, the day we were there, we have
done nothing but dispute about it. They say, we did not see it
to advantage, that we ran through the apartments, saw the garden
en passant, and slubbered over Trianon. I say, we saw nothing.
However, we had time to see that the great front is a lumber of
littleness, composed of black brick, stuck full of bad old busts,
and fringed with gold rails. The rooms
are all small, except the great gallery, which is noble,
but totally wainscoted with looking-glass. The garden is
littered with statues and fountains, each of which has its
tutelary deity. In particular, the elementary god of fire
solaces himself in one. In another, Enceladus, in lieu of a
mountain, is overwhelmed with many waters. There are avenues of
water-pots, who disport themselves much in squirting up
cascadelins. In short, 'tis a garden for a great child. Such
was Louis Quatorze, who is here seen in his proper colours, where he commanded in person, unassisted by his armies
and his generals, left to the pursuit of his own puerile ideas of
glory.

We saw last week a place of another kind, and which has more the
air of what it would be, than anything I have yet met with: it
was the convent of the Chartreux. All the conveniences, or
rather (if there was such a word) all the adaptments are
assembled here, that melancholy, meditation, selfish devotion,
and despair would require. But yet 'tis pleasing. Soften the
terms, and mellow the uncouth horror that reigns here, but a
little, and 'tis a charming solitude. It stands on a large space
of ground, is old and irregular. The chapel is gloomy: behind
it, through some dark passages, you pass into a large obscure
hall, which looks like a combination-chamber for some hellish
council. The large cloister surrounds their buryingground. The
cloisters are very narrow and very long, and let into the cells,
which are built like little huts detached from each other. We
were carried into one, where lived a middle-aged man not long
initiated into the order. He was extremely civil, and called
himself Dom Victor. We have promised to visit him often. Their
habit is all white: but besides this he was infinitely clean in
his person; and his apartment and garden, which he keeps and
cultivates without any assistance, was neat to a degree. He has
four little rooms, furnished in the prettiest manner, and hung
with good prints. One of them is a library, and another a
gallery. He has several canary-birds disposed in a pretty manner
in breeding-cages. in his garden was a bed of good tulips in
bloom, flowers and
fruit-trees, and all neatly kept. They are permitted at certain
hours to talk to strangers, but never to one another, or to go
out of their convent. But what we chiefly went to see was the
small cloister, with the history of St. Bruno their founder,
painted by Le Sceur. It consists of twenty-two pictures, the
figures a good deal less than life. But sure they are amazing! I
don't know what Raphael may be in Rome, but these pictures excel
all I have seen in Paris and England. The figure of the dead man
who spoke at his burial, contains all the strongest and horridest
ideas of ghastliness, hypocrisy discovered, and the height of
damnation, pain and cursing. A Benedictine monk, who was there
at the same time, said to me of this picture C'est une fable,
mais on la croyoit autrefois. Another, who
showed me relics in one of their churches, expressed as much
ridicule for them. The pictures I have been speaking of
are ill preserved, and some of the finest heads defaced,
which was done at first by a rival of Le Soeur's. Adieu! dear
West, take care of your health; and some time or other we will
talk over all these things with more pleasure than I have had in
seeing them.

Yours ever.

(162) For Gray's description of Versailles, which he
styles " a huge heap of littleness," see his letter to West of
the 22nd of May, 1739. (Works, by Mitford, vol. ii.
P. 46).edited by the Rev. John Mitford.-E.

134 Letter 11
To Richard West, Esq.
Rheims, (163) June 18, 1739, N. S.

Dear West,
How I am to fill up this letter is not easy to divine. I have
consented that Gray shall give an account of our situation and
proceedings; (164) and have left myself at the mercy of my own'
invention--a most terrible resource, and which I shall avoid
applying to if I can possibly help it. I had prepared the
ingredients for a description of a ball, and was just ready to
serve it up to you, but he has plucked it from me. However, I
was resolved to give you an account of a particular song and
dance in it, and was determined to write the words and Sing the
tune just as I folded up my letter: but as it would, ten to one,
be opened before it gets to you, I am forced to lay aside this
thought, though an admirable one. Well, but now I have put it
into your head, I suppose you won't rest without it. For that
individual one, believe me 'tis nothing without the tune and the
dance; but to stay your
stomach, I -will send you one of their vaudevilles or Ballads,
(165) which they sing at the comedy after their
petites pi`eces.

You must not wonder if all my letters resemble dictionaries, with
French on one side and English on t'other; I deal in nothing else
at present, and talk a couple of words of each language
alternately, from morning till night. This has put my mouth a
little out of tune at present but I am trying to recover the use
of it by reading the newspapers aloud at breakfast, and by
shewing the title-pages of all my English books. Besides this, I
have paraphrased half of the first act of your new GustavUS (166)
which was sent us to Paris: a most dainty performance, and just
what you say of it. Good night, I am sure you must be tired: if
you are not, I am. yours ever.

(163) Mr. Walpole, with his cousin Henry Seymour Conway and Mr.
Gray, resided three months at Rheims, principally to
acquire the French language.

(164) Gray's letter to West has not been preserved; but one
addressed to his mother, on the 21 st of June, containing an
account of Rheims and the society, is printed in his Works, vol.
ii. p. 50.-E.

(165) This ballad does not appear.

(166) The tragedy of "Gustavus Vasa," by Henry Brooke, author of
"The Fool of Quality." It was rehearsed at Drury Lane; but, as
it was supposed to satirize Sir Robert Walpole, it was prohibited
to be acted. This, however, did Brooke no injury, as he was
encouraged to publish the play by subscription.-E.

134 Letter 12
To Richard West, Esq.
Rheims, July 20, 1739.

Gray says, Indeed you ought to write to West.-Lord, child, so I
would, if I knew what to write about. If I were in London and he
at Rheims, I would send him volumes about peace and war,
Spaniards, camps, and conventions; but d'ye think he
cares sixpence to know who is gone to Compiegne, and when they
come back, or who won and lost four livres at quadrille last
night at Mr. Cockbert's?--No, but you may tell him what you have
heard of Compiegne; that they have balls twice a week after the
play, and that the Count d'Eu gave the king a most flaring
entertainment in the camp, where the Polygone was
represented in flowering shrubs. Dear West, these are the things
I must tell you; I don't know how to make 'em look
significant, unless you will be a Rhemois for a little
moment.(167) I wonder you can stay out of the city so long, when
we are going to have all manner of diversions. The comedians
return hither from Compiegne in eight days, for example; and in a
very little of time one attends the regiment of the king, three
battalions and an hundred of officers; all men of a
certain fashion, very amiable, and who know their world. Our
women grow more gay, more lively, from day to day, in
expecting them; Mademoiselle la Reine is brewing a wash of a
finer dye, and brushing up her eyes for their arrival. La Barone
already counts upon fifteen of them: and Madame Lelu, finding her
linen robe conceals too many beauties, has bespoke one of gauze.

I won't plague you any longer with people you don't know, I mean
French ones; for you must absolutely hear of an
Englishman that lately appeared at Rheims. About two days ago,
about four o'clock in the afternoon, and about an hour after
dinner,-from all which you may conclude we dine at two
o'clock,-as we were picking our teeth round a littered table and
in a crumby room, Gray in an undress, Mr. Conway in a
morning gray coat, and I in a trim white night-gown and
slippers, very much out of order, with a very little cold, a
message discomposed us all of a sudden, with a service to Mr.
Walpole from Mr. More, and that, if he pleased, he would wait on
him. We scuttled upstairs in great confusion, but with no other
damage than the flinging down two or three glasses and the
dropping a slipper by the way. Having ordered the room to be
cleaned out, and sent a very civil response to Mr. More, we began
to consider who Mr. More should be. Is it Mr. More of Paris!
No. Oh, 'tis Mr. More, my Lady Teynham's husband? No, it can't
be he. A Mr. More, then, that lives in the
Halifax family? No. In short, after thinking of ten thousand
more Mr. Mores, we concluded it could never be a one of 'em. By
this time Mr. More arrives; but such a Mr. More! a young
gentleman out of the wilds of Ireland, who has never been in
England, but has got all the ordinary language of that
kingdom; has been two years at Paris, where he dined at an
ordinary with the refugee Irish, and learnt fortification-,,
which he does not understand at all, and which yet is the only
thing he knows. In short, he is a young swain of very uncouth
phrase, inarticulate speech, and no ideas. This hopeful child is
riding post into Lorrain, or any where else, he is not
certain; for if there is a war he shall go home again: for we
must give the Spaniards another drubbing, you know; and if the
Dutch do but join us, we shall blow up all the ports in
Europe; for our ships are our bastions, and our ravelines, and
our hornworks; and there's a devilish wide ditch for 'em to pass,
which they can't fill up with things-Here Mr. Conway helped him
to fascines. By this time I imagine you have
laughed at him as much, and were as tired of him as we were; but
he's gone. This is the day that Gray and I intended for the
first of a southern circuit; but as Mr. Selwyn and George Montagu
design us a visit here, we have put off our journey for some
weeks. When we get a little farther, I hope our
memories will brighten: at present they are but dull, dull as
Your humble servant ever.