Books: The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1

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They say we expect the Report from the Secret Committee next
Tuesday, and then finish. I preface all my news with "they say;"
for I am not at all in the secret, and I had rather that "they
say" should tell you a lie than myself. They have sunk the
affair of Scrope: the Chancellor (625) and Sir John
Rushout spoke in the committee against persecuting him, for he is
secretary to the treasury. I don't think there is so easy a
language as the ministerial in the world-one learns it in a week!
There are few members in town, and most of them no
friends to the committee; so that there is not the least
apprehension of any violence following the Report. I dare say
there is not; for my uncle, who is my political weather-glass,
and whose quicksilver rises and falls with the least variation of
parliamentary weather, is in great spirits, and has spoken three
times in the House within this week; he had not opened his lips
before since the change. Mr. Pultney has his warrant in his
pocket for Earl of Bath, and kisses hands as soon as the
parliament rises. The promotions I mentioned to you are not yet
come to pass; but a
fortnight will settle things wonderfully.

The Italian, (626) who I told you is here, has let me into a
piece of secret history, which you never mentioned: perhaps it is
not true; but he says the mighty mystery of the
Count's (627) elopement from Florence, was occasioned by a letter
from Wachtendonck,(628) which was so impertinent as to talk of
satisfaction for some affront. The great Count very wisely never
answered it-his life, to be sure, is of too great consequence to
be trusted at the end of a rash German's sword! however, the
General wrote again, and hinted at coming himself for an answer.
So it happened that when he arrived, the Count was gone to the
baths of Lucca-those waters
were reckoned better for his health, than steel in the
abstract-How oddly it happened! He Just returned to Florence as
the General was dead! Now was not this heroic lover worth
running after? I wonder, as the Count must have known my
lady's courage and genius for adventures, that he never
thought of putting her in men's clothes, and sending her to
answer the challenge. How pretty it would have been to have
fought for one's lover! and how great the obligation,
when he durst not fight for himself!

I heard the other day, that the Primate of Lorrain was dead of
the smallpox. Will you make my compliments of condolence?
though I dare say they are little afflicted: he -was a 'most
worthless creature, and all his wit and parts, I believe little
comforted them for his brutality and other vices.

The fine Mr. Pit (629) is arrived: I dine with him
to-day at Lord Lincoln's, with the Pomfrets. So now the old
partie quarr`ee is complete again. The earl is not quite
cured,(630) and a partner in sentiments may help to open the
wound again. My Lady Townshend dines with us too. She flung the
broadest Wortley-eye (631) on Mr. Pitt, the other night, in the
park!

Adieu! my dear child; are you quite well? I trust the summer will
perfectly re-establish you.

(625) Mr. Sandys, chancellor of the exchequer.

(626) Ceretesi.

(627) Count Richcourt.

(628) General Wachtendonck, commander of the Queen
of Hungary's troops at Leghorn.

(629) George Pitt, of Strathfieldsea: he had
been in love with Lady Charlotte Fermor, second daughter of Lord
Pomfret, who was afterwards married to William Finch,
vice-chamberlain. (Mr. Pitt was created Lord Rivers in 1776.
In 1761 he was British envoy at Turin in 1770, ambassador
extraordinary to Spain. He died in 1803.-D.)

(630) Of his love for lady Sophia Fermor.-D.

(631) Mr. Pitt was very handsome, and Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu had liked him extremely, when he was in Italy.

267 Letter 74
To Sir Horace Mann.
Downing Street, June 30, 1742.

It is about six o'clock, and I am come from the House, where, at
last, we have had another Report from the
Secret Committee. They have been disputing this week among
themselves, whether this should be final or not. The new
ministry, thanked them! were for finishing; but their arguments
were not so persuasive as dutiful, and we are to have yet
another. This lasted two hours and a half in reading, though
confined to the affair of Burrel and Bristow, the Weymouth
election, and secret-service money. They moved to print it; but
though they had fetched most of their members from Ale and the
country, they were not strong enough to divide. Velters
Cornwall, whom I have mentioned to you, I believe, for odd
humour, said, "ie believed the somethingness of this report would
make amends for the nothingness of the last, and that he was for
printing it, if it was only from believing that the King would
not see it, unless it is printed." Perhaps it may be printed at
the conclusion; at least it will without authority-and so you
will see it.

I received yours of June 24, N. S. with
one from Mr. Chute, this morning, and I will now go answer it and
Your last. You seem still to be uneasy about my letters, and
their being retarded. I have not observed, lately, the same
signs of yours being opened; and for my own, I think it may very
often depend upon the packet-boat and winds.

You ask me if Pultney has lately received any new
disgusts.-How can one answer for a temper so hasty,
so unsettled!-not that I know, unless that he finds, what he has
been twenty years undoing, is not yet undone.

I must interrupt the thread of my answer, to tell you that I hear
news came last night that the States of Holland have voted
forty@seven thousand men for the Assistance of the Queen,(632)
and that it was not doubted but the
States--General would imitate this resolution. This seems to be
the consequence of the King of Prussia's proceedings-but how can
they trust him so easily?

I am amazed that your leghorn ministry are so wavering; they are
very old style, above eleven days out of fashion, if they any
longer fear the French: my only apprehension is, lest
these successes should make Richcourt more impertinent.

You have no notion how I laughed at the man that "takes
nothing but Madeira."(633) I told it to my Lady
Pomfret, concluding it would divert her too; and forgetting that
she repines when she should laugh, and reasons when she should be
diverted. She asked gravely what language that was That Madeira
being subject to an European prince, to be sure they talk some
European dialect!" The grave personage! It was a piece with her
saying, "that Swift would have written better, if he had never
written ludicrously."

I met a friend of yours the other day at an auction, and
though I knew him not the least, yet being your friend,
and so like you (for, do you know, he is excessively,) I had a
great need to speak to him-and did. He says, "he has left off
writing to you, for he never could get an answer." I said, you
had never received 'but one from him in all the time I was with
you, and that I was witness to your having Answered it. He was
with his mother, Lady Abercorn,(634) a most frightful
gentlewoman: Mr. Winnington
says, he one day overheard her and the Duchess of Devonshire
(635) talking of "hideous ugly women!" By the way, I find I have
never told you that it was Lord Paisley;(636) but that you will
have perceived.

Amorevoli is gone to Dresden for the
summer; our directors are in great fear that he will serve them
like Farinelli, and not return for the winter.

I am writing to you in one of the charming rooms towards the
park: it is a delightful evening, and I am willing to enjoy this
sweet corner while I may, for we are soon to quit it. Mrs.
Sandys came yesterday to give us warning; Lord Wilmington has
lent it to them. Sir Robert might have had it for his own at
first, but would only take it as first lord of the
treasury.(637) He goes into a small house of his own in
Arlington Street, opposite to where we formerly lived.
Whither I shall travel is yet uncertain: he is for my
living with him; but then I shall be cooped-and besides, I never
found that people loved one another the less for living asunder.

The drowsy Lord Mayor (638) is dead-so the
newspapers say. I think he is not dead, but sleepeth. Lord
Gower is laid up with the gout: this, they say, is the reason of
his not having the privy seal yet. The town has talked of
nothing lately but a plot: I will tell you the circumstances.
last week the Scotch hero (639) sent his brother (640) two
papers, which he said had been left at his house by an Unknown
hand; that he believed it was by Colonel Cecil, agent for the
Pretender--though how could that be, for he had had no
conversation with Colonel Cecil for these two years! He
desired Lord Islay to lay them before the ministry. One of the
papers seemed a letter, though with no address or
subscription, written in true genuine Stuart characters. It was
to thank Mr. Burnus (D. of A.) for his services, and that he
hoped he would answer the assurances given of him. The other was
to command the Jacobites, and to exhort the patriots to continue
what they had mutually so well begun, and to say how pleased he
was with their having removed mr. Tench. Lord Islay showed these
letters to Lord Orford, and then to the King, and told him he had
showed them to my father. "You did well."-Lord Islay, "Lord
Orford says one is of the Pretender's hand."-King, "He
(641) knows it: whenever any thing of this sort comes to your
hand, carry it to Walpole." This private conversation you must
not repeat. A few days afterwards, the Duke wrote to his
brother, "That upon recollection he thought it right to say, that
he had received those letters from Lord Barrimore"(642) who is as
well known for General to the Chevalier, as Montemar is to the
Queen of Spain-or as the Duke of A. would be to either of them.
Lord Islay asked Sir R. if he was against publishing this story,
which he thought was a justification both of his brother and Sir
R. The latter replied, he could certainly have no objection to
its being public-but pray, will his grace's sending these letters
to the secretaries of state Justify him from the assurances that
had been given of' him?(643) However, the Pretender's being of
opinion that the dismission of Mr. Tench was for his service,
will scarce be an argument to the new ministry for making more
noise about these papers.

I am sorry the boy is so uneasy at being on the foot of a
servant. I will send for his mother, and ask her why she did not
tell him the conditions to which we had agreed; at the same time,
I will tell her that she may send any letters for him to me.
Adieu! my dear child: I am going to write to Mr. Chute,
that is, to-morrow. I never was more diverted than with his
letter.

(632) The Queen of Hungary, Maria Theresa.-D.

(633) The only daughter and heiress of the
Marquis Accianoli at Florence, was married to one of the same
name, who was born at Madeira.
'
(634) Anne Plummer, Countess of Abercorn, wife of
James, the seventh earl. She died in 1756.-E.

(635) Catherine, daughter of John Hoskins, Esq. She was
married to the third Duke of Devonshire in 171@, and died in
1777.-E.

(636) James Hamilton succeeded as eighth Earl of Abercorn, on the
death of his father in 1743. He was created Viscount
Hamilton in England in 1786, and died unmarried in 1789.-D.

(637) This is the house, in Downing Street, which is still the
residence of the first lord of the treasury. George the First
gave it to Baron Bothmar, the Hanoverian minister-, for life. On
his death, George the Second offered to give it to Sir
Robert Walpole; who, however, refused it, and begged of the King
that it might be attached to the office of first lord of the
treasury.-D.

(638) Sir Robert Godschall.

(639) The Duke of Argyll.

(640) Earl of Islay.

(641) Besides intercepted letters, Sir R. Walpole had more than
once received letters from the Pretender, making him the greatest
offers, which Sir R. always carried to the King, and got him to
endorse, when he
returned them to Sir R.

(642) James Barry, fourth Earl of Barrymore, succeeded his
half-brother Lawrence in the family titles in 1699, and died in
1747, at the age of eighty. James, Lord Barrymore, was an
adherent of the Pretender, whereas Lawrence had been so great a
supporter of the revolution, that he was attainted, and his
estates sequestered by James the Second's Irish parliament, in
1689.-D.

(643) The Duke of Argyll, in the latter part of his life, was
often melancholy and disordered in his understanding.
After this transaction, and it is supposed he had gone still
farther, he could with difficulty be brought even to write his
name. The marriage of his eldest daughter with the Earl of
Dalkeith was deferred for some time, because the duke could not
be prevailed upon to sign the writings.

269 Letter 75
To Sir Horace Mann.

On the Death of Richard West, Esq.(644)

While surfeited with life, each hoary knave
Grows, here, immortal, and eludes the grave,
Thy virtues immaturely met their fate,
Cramp'd in the limit of too short a date!

Thy mind, not exercised so oft in vain,
In health was gentle, and composed in pain:
successive trials still refined thy soul,
And plastic Patience perfected the whole.

A friendly aspect, not suborn'd by art;
An eye, which look'd the meaning of thy heart;
A tongue, With simple truth and freedom fraught,
The faithful index of thy honest thought.

Thy pen disdain'd to seek the servile ways
Of partial censure, and more partial praise;
Through every tongue it flowed in nervous ease,
With sense to Polish , and With wit to please.

No lurking venom from thy pencil fell;
Thine was the kindest satire, living well:
The vain, the loose, the base, might blush to see
In what thou wert, what they themselves should be,

Let me not charge on Providence a crime,
Who snatch'd thee, blooming, to a better clime,
To raise those virtues to a higher sphere:
Virtues! which only could have starved thee here;

A Receipt To Make A Lord.
Occasioned by a late report of a promotion.(645)

Take a man, who by nature's a true son of earth,'
By rapine enriched, though a beggar by birth;
In genius the lowest, ill-bred and obscene;
In morals most Wicked, most nasty in mien;
By none ever trusted, yet ever employed;
In blunders quite fertile, in merit quite void;
A scold in the Senate, abroad a buffoon,
The scorn and the jest of all courts but his own:
A slave to that wealth that ne'er made him a friend,
And proud of that cunning that ne'er gain'd an end;
A dupe in each treaty, a Swiss in each vote;
In manners and form, a complete Hottentot.
Such an one could you find, of all men you'd commend him; But be
sure let the curse of each Briton attend him.
thus fully prepared, add the grace of the throne,
The folly of monarchs, and screen of a crown--
Take a prince for his purpose, without ears or eyes,
And a long parchment roll stuff'd brimful of lies:
These mingled together, a fiat shall pass,
and the thing be a Peer, that before was an ass.

The former copy I think you will like: it was written by one Mr.
Ashton (646) on Mr. West, two friends of mine, whom you have
heard me often mention. The other copy was printed in the Common
Sense, I don't know by whom composed: the end of it is very bad,
and there are great falsities in it, but some strokes are
terribly like!

I have not a moment to thank the Grifona, nor to answer yours of
June 17, N. S. which I have this instant read. Yours, in great
haste.

(644) See ante, pp. 121, (Letter 1), 251, (Letter 65).

(645) The report, mentioned in a preceding letter, that Horace
Walpole, brother to Sir Robert, was created a peer.

(646)Thomas Ashton, afterwards fellow of Eton College. [See
ant`e, p. 128, Letter 6, footnote 153.)

271 Letter 76
To Sir Horace Mann.
London, July 7, 1742.

Well! you may bid the Secret Committee good night. The House
adjourns to-day till Tuesday, and on Thursday is to be
prorogued. Yesterday we had a bill
of Pultney's, about returning officers and regulating
elections: the House was thin, and he carried it by 93 to 92.
Mr. Pelham was not there, and Winnington did not vote, for the
gentleman is testy still; when he saw how near he had been to
losing it, he said loud enough to be heard, "I will make the
gentlemen of that side feel me!" and, rising up, he said, "He
was astonished, that a bill so calculated for the freedom of
elections was so near being thrown out; that there was a
report on the table, which showed how necessary such a bill
was, and that though we had not time this year to consider
what was proper to be done in consequence of it, he hoped we
should next,"-with much to the same purpose; but all the
effect this notable speech had, was to
frighten my uncle, and make him give two or three shrugs
extraordinary to his breeches. They now say,(647) that
Pultney will not take out the patent for his earldom, but
remain in the House of Commons in terrorem; however, all his
friends are to have places immediately, or, as the fashion of
expressing it is, they are to go to Court in
the Bath coach!"(648)

Your relation Guise (649) is arrived from Carthagena, madder
than ever. As he was marching up to one of the forts, all his
men deserted him; his lieutenant advised him to
retire; he replied, "He never had turned his back yet, and
would not now," and stood all the fire. When the pelicans
were flying over his head, he cried out, "What would Chloe
(650) give for some of these to make a
pelican pie!" When he is brave enough to perform such actions
as are really almost incredible, what pity it is that he
should for ever persist In saving things that are totally so!

Lord Annandale (651) is at last mad in all the forms: he has
long been an out-pensioner of Bedlam College. Lord and Lady
Talbot,(652) are parted; he gives her three thousand pounds
a-year. Is it not amazing, that in England people will not
find out that they can live separate without parting? The
Duke of Beaufort says, "He pities Lord Talbot to have met with
two such tempers as their two wives!"

Sir Robert Rich (653) is going to Flanders, to try
to make up an affair for his son; who, having quarrelled with
a Captain Vane, as the commanding officer was trying to make
it up at the head of the regiment, Rich came behind Vane, "And
to show you," said he, "that I will not make it up, take
that," and gave him a box on the ear. They were immediately
put in arrest; but the learned in the laws of honour say, they
must fight, for no German officer will serve with Vane, till
he has had satisfaction.

Mr. Harris,(654) who married Lady Walpole's mother, is to be
one of the peace-offerings on the new altar. Bootle is
to be chief-justice; but the Lord Chancellor would not consent
to it, unless Lord Glenorchy,(655) whose daughter is married
to Mr. Yorke, had a place in lieu of the Admiralty, which he
has lost-he is to have Harris's. Lord Edgecumbe's, in
Ireland, they say, is destined to Harry Vane,(656) Pultney's
toad-eater.

Monticelli lives in a manner at our house. I tell my sister
that she is in love with him, and that I am glad it was not
Amorevoli. Monticelli dines frequently with Sir Robert, which
diverts me extremely; you know how low his ideas are of music
and the virtuosi; he calls them all fiddlers.

I have not time now to write more, for I am going to a
masquerade at the Ranelagh amphitheatre: the King is fond of
it, and has pressed people to go; but I don't find that it
will be full. Good night! All love to the Pope for his good
thing.

(647) Sir R. W. to defeat Pultney's ambition persuaded the
++King to insist on his going into the House of Lords: the
day he carried his patent thither, he flung it upon the floor
in a passion, and could scarce be prevailed on to have it
passed. ["I remember," says Horace Walpole, (Reminiscences),
"my father's action and words when he returned from court, and
told me what he had done - 'I have turned the key of the
closet on him!' making that motion with his
hand."]

(648) His title was to be Earl of Bath.

(649) General Guise, a, very brave officer, but apt to
romance; and a great connoisseur in pictures. (He bequested
his collection of pictures, which is a very indifferent one,
to christ church College, Oxford.-D.)

(650) the duke of Newcastle's French cook.

(651) George Johnstone, third Marquis of
Annandale, in Scotland. He was not declared a lunatic till
the year 1748. Upon his death, in
1792, his titles became either extinct or dormant.-D.

(652) Mary, daughter of Adam de Cardonel,
secretary to John the great Duke of Marlborough, married to
William, second Lord Talbot, eldest son of Lord Chancellor
Talbot.-D.

(653) Sir Robert Rich, Bart., of Rose Hall, Suffolk. At his
death, in 1768, he was colonel of the fourth regiment of
dragoons, governor of Chelsea Hospital, and field-marshal of
the forces.-E.

(654) This article did not prove true. Mr. Harris was not
removed, nor Bootle made chief-justice.

(655) John Campbell, Lord Glenorchy, and, on his
father's death, in 1752, third Earl of Breadalbane. His first
wife was Lady Amiable Grey, eldest daughter and coheir of the
Duke of Kent. By her he had an only daughter,
Jemima, who, upon the death of her grandfather, became
Baroness Lucas of Crudwell, and Marchioness de Grey. She
married Philip Yorke, eldest son of the Chancellor
Hardwicke, and eventually himself the second duke of that
title.-D.

(656) Henry Vane, eldest son of Gilbert, second
Lord Barnard, and one of the tribe who came into office upon
the breaking up of Sir Robert Walpole's administration. He
was created Earl of Darlington in 1753, and died in
1758.-D.

273 Letter 77
To Sir Horace Mann.
Downing Street, July 14, 1742.

Sir Robert Brown(657) is displaced from being paymaster of
something, I forget what, for Sir Charles Gilmour, a friend of
Lord Tweedale.(658) Nee Finch (659) is made groom
of the bedchamber, which was vacant; and Will Finch (660) vice
chamberlain, which was not vacant; but they have emptied it of
Lord Sidney Beauclerc.(661) Boone is made commissary-general,
in Hurley's room, and JefFries(662) in Will Stuart's. All
these have been kissing hands to-day, headed by the Earl of
Bath. He went into the King the other day ",it this'long
list, but was told shortly, that unless he would take up his
patent and quit the House of Commons,
nothing should be done-he has consented. I made some of them
very angry; for when they told me who had kissed hands, I
asked, if the Pretender had kissed hands too, for being King? I
forgot to tell you, that Murray is to be solicitor-general,
in Sir John Strange's place, who is made chief justice, or
some such thing.(663)

I don't know who it was that said it, but it was a very good
answer to one who asked why Lord Gower had not kissed hands
sooner--"the Dispensation was not come
from Rome."(664)

I am writing to you up to the ears in packing: Lord Wilmington
has lent this house to Sandys, and he has given us instant
warning; we are moving as fast as possible to Siberia,-Sir
Robert has a house there, within a few mile,, of the Duke of
Courland; in short, child, we are all going to Norfolk,
till we can get a house ready in town: all the furniture is
taken down, and lying about in confusion. I look like St.
John in the Isle of Patmos, writing revelations, and
prophesying "Woe! woe! woe! the kingdom of desolation is at
hand!" -indeed, I have prettier animals about me, than he ever
dreamed of: here is the dear Patapan, and a little Vandyke
cat, with black whiskers -ind boots; you would swear it was of
a very ancient family, in the West of England,
famous for their loyalty.

I told you I was going to the masquerade at Ranelagh gardens,
last week: it was miserable; there were but an hundred men,
six women, and two shepherdesses. The King liked it,--and
that he might not be known, they had dressed him a box with
red damask! Lady Pomfret and her three daughters were there,
all dressed alike, that they might not be known. My Lady
said to Lady Bel Finch,(665) who was dressed like a nun, and
for coolness had cut off the nose of her mask, "Madam, you are
the first nun that ever I saw without a nose!"

As I came home last night, they told me there was a fire in
Downing Street; when I came to Whitehall, I could not get to
the end of the street in my chariot, for the crowd; when I got
out, the first thing I heard was a man enjoying himself:
"Well! if it lasts two hours longer, Sir Robert Walpole's
house will be burnt to the ground!" it was a very comfortable
hearing! but I found the fire was on the opposite side of the
way, and at a good distance. I stood in the crowd an hour to
hear their discourse: one man was relating at how many fires
he had happened to be present, and did not think himself at
all unlucky in passing by, just at this. What diverted me
most, was a servant-maid, who was working, and carrying pails
of water, with the strength of half-a-dozen troopers, and
swearing the mob out of her way-the soft creature's name was
Phillis! When I arrived at our door, I found the house
full of goods, beds, women, and children, and three Scotch
members of parliament, who lodge in the row, and who had sent
in a saddle, a flitch of bacon, and a bottle of ink. There
was no wind, and the house was saved, with the loss of only
its garret, and the furniture.