Books: The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1

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You say, why won't I go to Lady Mary's?(1458) I say, why
won't you go to the Talbots? Mary is busied about many things,
is dancing the hays between three houses; but I will go with
you for a day or two to the Talbots if you like it. and you
shall come hither to fetch me. I have been to see Mr.
Hamilton's, near Cobham, where he has really made a fine place
out of a most cursed hill. Esher(1459) I have seen again
twice, and prefer it to all villas, even to Southcote's--Kent
is Kentissing there. I have been laughing too at Claremont
house; the gardens are improved since I saw them: do you know
that the pineapples are literally sent to Hanover by couriers!
I am serious. Since the Duke of Newcastle went, and upon the
news of the Duke of Somerset's illness, he has transmitted his
commands through the King, and by him through the Bedford to
the University of Cambridge to forbid their electing any body,
but the most ridiculous person they could elect, his grace of
Newcastle. The Prince hearing this, has written to them, that
having heard his Majesty's commands, he should by no means
oppose them. This is sensible: but how do the two secretaries
answer such a violent act of authority? Nolkojumskoi(1460)
has let down his dignity and his discipline, and invites
continually all officers that are members of parliament.
Doddington's sentence of expulsion is sealed: Lyttelton is to
have his place (the second time he has tripped up his heels);
Lord Barrington is to go to the treasury, and Dick Edgecumbe
into the admiralty.

Rigby is gone from hence to Sir William Stanhope's to the
Aylesbury races, where the Grenvilles and Peggy Banks design
to appear and avow their triumph. Gray has been here a few
days, and is transported with your story of Madame Bentley's
diving, and her white man, and in short with all your stories.
Room for cuckolds--here comes my company--

Aug. 15?.

I had not time to finish my letter last night, for we did not
return from the dismal play, which was in a barn at Kingston,
till twelve o'clock at night. Our dinner passed off very
well; the Clive was very good company; you know how much she
admires Asheton's preaching. She says, she is always vastly
good for two or three days after his sermons;' but by the time
that Thursday comes, all their effect is worn out. I never
saw more proper decent behaviour than Mrs. Pritchard's, and I
assure you even Mr. Treasurer Pritchard was far better than I
expected. Yours ever, Chaucerides.

(1454) The grandmother of the Hon. Horace Walpole was daughter
of sir Erasmus Philips, of Picton Castle in Pembrokeshire.

(1455) Niece of Mrs. Leneve, and first wife of Admiral Hugh
Pigot.-E.

(1456/1457) Two celebrated actresses.

(1458) lady Mary Churchill.

(1459) The favourite seat of the Right Honourable Henry
Pelham, which he embellished under the direction of Kent. It
is pleasingly mentioned by Pope, in his Epilogue to the
Imitations of the Satires of Horace:-

"Pleas'd let me own, in Esher's peaceful grove,
Where Kent and Nature vie for Pelham's love,
The scene, the master, opening to my view,
I sit and dream I see my Craggs anew."-E
.

(1460) A cant name for the Duke of Cumberland.

561 Letter 259
To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
Strawberry Hill, Aug. 29, 1748.

Dear Harry,
Whatever you may think, a campaign at Twickenham furnishes as
little matter for a letter as an abortive one in Flanders. I
can't say indeed that my generals wear black wigs, but they
have long full- bottomed hoods which cover as little
entertainment to the full.

There's General my Lady Castlecomer, and General my Lady
Dowager Ferrers! Why, do you think I can extract more out of
them than you can out of Hawley or Honeywood?(1461) Your old
women dress, go to the Duke's levee, see that the soldiers
cock their hats right, sleep after dinner, and soak with their
led-captains till bed-time, and tell a thousand lies of what
they never did in their youth. Change hats for head-clothes,
the rounds for visits, and led-captains for toad-eaters, and
the life is the very same. In short, these are the people I
live in the midst of, though not with; and it is for want of
more important histories that I have wrote to you seldom; not,
I give you my word, from the least negligence. My present and
sole occupation is planting, in which I have made great
progress, and talk very learnedly with the nurserymen, except
that now and then a lettuce run to seed overturns all my
botany, as I have more than once taken it for a curious
West-Indian flowering shrub. Then the deliberation with which
trees grow, is extremely inconvenient to my natural
impatience. I lament living in so barbarous an age, when we
are come to so little perfection in gardening. I am persuaded
that a hundred and fifty years hence it will be as common to
remove oaks a hundred and fifty years old, as it is now to
transplant tulip-roots. I have even begun a treatise or
panegyric on the great discoveries made by posterity in all
arts and sciences, wherein I shall particularly descant on the
great and cheap convenience of making trout-rivers-One Of the
improvements which Mrs. Kerwood wondered Mr. Hedges would not
make at his country-house, but which was not then quite so
common as it will be. I shall talk of a secret for roasting a
wild-boar and a whole pack of hounds alive, without hurting
them, so that the whole chase may be brought up to table; and
for this secret, the Duke of Newcastle's grandson, if he can
ever get a son, is to give a hundred thousand pounds. Then
the delightfulness of having whole groves of hummingbirds,
tame tigers taught to fetch and carry, pocket spying-glasses
to see all that is doing in China, with a thousand other toys,
which we now look upon as impracticable, and which pert
posterity would laugh in one's face for staring at, while they
are offering rewards for perfecting discoveries, of the
principles of which we have not the least conception! If ever
this book should come forth, I must expect to have all the
learned in arms against me, who measure all knowledge
backward: some of them have discovered symptoms of all arts in
Homer; and Pineda(1462) had so much faith in the
accomplishments of his ancestors, that he believed Adam
understood all sciences but politics. But as these great
champions for our forefathers are dead, and Boileau not alive
to hitch me into a verse with Perrault, I am determined to
admire the learning of posterity, especially being convinced
that half our present knowledge sprung from discovering the
errors of what had formerly been called so. I don't think I
shall ever make any great discoveries myself, and therefore
shall be content to propose them to my descendants, like my
Lord Bacon, who, as Dr. Shaw says very prettily in his preface
to Boyle, , had the art of inventing arts:" or rather like a
Marquis of Worcester, of whom I have seen a little book which
he calls A Century of Inventions where he has set down a
hundred machines to do impossibilities with, and not a single
direction how to make the machines themselves.(1463)

If I happen to be less punctual in my correspondence than I
intend to be, you must conclude I am writing my book, which
being designed for a panegyric, will cost me a great deal of
trouble. The dedication, with your leave, shall be addressed
to your son that is coming, or, with my Lady Ailesbury's
leave, to your ninth son, who Will be unborn nearer to the
time I 'am writing of; always provided that she does not bring
three at once, like my Lady Berkeley.

Well! I have here set you the example of' writing nonsense
when one has nothing to say, and shall take it ill if you
don't keep up the correspondence on the same foot. Adieu!

(1461) General Honeywood, governor of Portsmouth.

(1462) Pineda was a Spanish Jesuit, and a professor of
theology. He died in 1637, after writing voluminous
commentaries upon several books of the Holy Scriptures,
besides an universal history of the church.

(1463) Walpole, in his "Royal and Noble Authors," designates
the Marquis as a "fantastic protector and fanatic," and
describes the " Century of Inventions" as "an amazing piece of
folly;" and Hume, who does not even know the title of the
book, boldly pronounces it "a ridiculous compound of lies,
chimeras, and impossibilities." In 18@5, however, an edition
of this curious and very amusing little work was published],
with historical and explanatory notes, by Mr. C. F.
Partington; who clearly proves, that the Marquis was the
person, either in this or any Other country, who gave the
first idea of the steam engine.-E.

563 Letter 260
To George Montagu, Esq.
Strawberry Hill, Saturday night, Sept, 3, 1748.

All my sins to Mrs. Talbot you are to expiate; I am here quite
alone, and want nothing but your fetching to go to her. I
have been in town for a day, just to see Lord Bury who is come
over with the Duke; they return next Thursday. The Duke is
fatter, and it is now not denied that he has entirely lost the
sight of one eye. This did not surprise me so much as a bon
mot of his. Gumley, who you know is grown Methodist, came to
tell him, that as he was on duty, a tree in Hyde Park, near
the powder magazine, had been set on fire; the Duke replied,
he hoped it was not by the new light. This nonsensical new
light is extremely in fashion, and I shall not be surprised if
we see a revival of all the folly and cant of the last age.
Whitfield preaches continually at my Lady Huntingdon's,(1464)
at Chelsea; my Lord Chesterfield, my Lord Bath, my Lady
Townshend, my Lady Thanet, and others, have been to hear
him.(1465) What will you lay that, next winter, he is not run
after, instead of Garrick?

I am just come from the play at Richmond, where I found the
Duchess of Argyle and Lady Betty Campbell, and their court.
We had a new actress, a Miss Clough; an extremely fine tall
figure, and very handsome: she spoke very justly, and with
spirit. Garrick is to produce her next winter; and a Miss
Charlotte Ramsey, a poetess and deplorable actress. Garrick,
Barry, and some more of the players, were there to see these
new comedians; it is to be their seminary.

Since I came home I have been disturbed with a strange,
foolish woman, that lives at the great corner house yonder;
she is an attorney's wife, and much given to the bottle. By
the time she- has finished that and daylight, she grows afraid
of thieves, and makes the servants fire minute guns out of the
garret windows. I remember persuading Mrs. Kerwood that there
was a great smell of thieves, and this drunken dame seems
literally to smell it. The divine Asheton, whom I suppose you
will have seen when you receive this, will give you an account
of the astonishment we were in last night at hearing guns; I
began to think that the Duke had brought some of his defeats
from Flanders.

I am going to tell you a long story, but you will please to
remember that I don't intend to tell it well; therefore, if
you discover any beauties in the relation where I never
intended them, don't conclude, as you did in your last, that I
know they are there. If I had not a great command of my pen,
and could not force it to write whatever nonsense I had heard
last, you would be enough to pervert all one's letters, and
put one upon keeping up one's character; but as I write merely
to satisfy you, I shall take no care but not to write well: I
hate letters that are called good letters.

You must know then,-but did you not know a young fellow that
was called Handsome Tracy? he was walking in the Park with
some of his acquaintance, and overtook three girls; one was
very pretty: they followed them; but the girls ran away, and
the company grew tired of pursuing them, all but Tracy. (There
are now three more guns gone off; she must be very drunk.) He
followed to Whitehall gate, where he gave a porter a crown to
dog them: the porter hunted them-he the porter. The girls ran
all round Westminster, and back to the Haymarket, where the
porter came up with them. He told the pretty one she must go
with him, and kept her talking till Tracy arrived, quite out
of breath, and exceedingly in love. He insisted on knowing
where she lived, which she refused to tell him; and after much
disputing , went to the house of one of her companions, and
Tracy with them. He there made her discover her family, a
butterwoman in Craven Street, and engaged her to meet him the
next morning in the Park; but before night he wrote her four
love-letters, and in the last offered two hundred pounds
a-year to her, and a hundred a-year to Signora la Madre.
Griselda made a confidence to a staymaker's wife, who told her
that the swain was certainly in love enough to marry her, if
she could determine to be virtuous and refuse his offers.
"Ay," says she, "but if I should, and should lose him by it."
However, the measures of the cabinet council were decided for
virtue: and when she met Tracy the next morning in the park,
she was convoyed by her sister and brother-in-law, and stuck
close to the letter of her reputation. She would do nothing
she would go nowhere. At last, as an instance of prodigious
compliance, she told him, that if he would accept such a
dinner as a butterwoman's daughter could give him, he should
be welcome. Away they walked to Craven Street: the mother
borrowed some silver to buy a leg of mutton, and they kept the
eager lover drinking till twelve at night, when a chosen
committee waited on the faithful pair to the minister of
May-fair. The doctor was in bed, and swore he would not get
up to marry the King, but that he had a brother over the way
who perhaps would, and who did. The mother borrowed a pair of
sheets, and they consummated at her house; and the next day
they went to their own palace. In two or three days the scene
grew gloomy; and the husband coming home one night, swore he
could bear it no longer. "Bear! bear what?"--"Why, to be
teased by all my acquaintance for marrying a butterwoman's
daughter. I am determined to go to France, and will leave you
a handsome allowance."--"Leave me! why you don't fancy you
shall leave me? I will go with you."--"What, you love me
then?"--"No matter whether I love you or not, but you shan't
go without me." And they are gone! If you know any body that
proposes marrying and travelling, I think they cannot do it in
a more commodious method.

I agree with you most absolutely in your opinion about Gray;
he is the worst company in the world. From a melancholy turn.
living reclusely, and from a little too much dignity, he never
converses easily all his words are measured and chosen, and
formed into sentences his writings are admirable; he himself
is not agreeable.'(1466)

There are still two months to London; if you could discover
your own mind for any three or four days of that space, I will
either go with you to the Tigers or be glad to see you here;
but I positively will ask you neither one nor t'other any
more. I have raised seven-and-twenty bantams from the
patriarchs you sent me. Adieu!

(1464) Daughter of Washington, Earl Ferrers.

(1465) Lord Bolingbroke, in a letter to the Earl of Marchmont
of the 1st of November, says,
"I hope you heard from me by myself, as well of me by Mr.
Whitfield. This apostolical person preached some time ago at
Lady Huntingdon's, and I should have been curious to hear him.
Nothing kept me from going, but an imagination that there was
to be a select auditory. That saint, our friend Chesterfield,
was there; and I hear from him an extreme good account of the
sermon." Marchmont Papers, vol. ii. p. 377.-E.

(1466) Dr. Beattie says, in a letter to Sir W. Forbes, "Gray's
letters very much resemble what his conversation was: he had
none of the airs of either a scholar or a poet; and though on
those and all other subjects he spoke to me with the utmost
freedom, and without any reserve, he was in general company
much more silent than one could have wished."-E.

565 Letter 261
To Sir Horace Mann.
Strawberry Hill, Sept. 18, 1748.

I have two letters of yours to account for, and nothing to
plead but my old insolvency. Oh! yes, I have to scold you,
which you find is an inexhaustible fund with me. You sent me
your d`em`el`e(1467) with the whole city of Florence, and
charged me to keep it secret-and the first person I saw was my
Lord Hobart, who was full of the account he had received from
you. You might as well have told a woman an improper secret,
and expected to have it kept! but you may be very easy, for
unless it reaches my Lady Pomfret or my Lady Orford, I dare
say it will never get back to Florence; and for those two
ladies, I don't think it likely that they should hear it, for
the first is in a manner retired from the world, and the world
is retired from the second. Now I have vented my anger, I am
seriously sorry for you, to be exposed to the impertinence of
those silly Florentine women: they deserve a worse term than
silly, since they pretend to any characters. How could you
act with so much temper? If they had treated me in this
manner, I should have avowed ten times more than they
pretended you had done; but you are an absolute minister!

I am much obliged to Prince Beauvau for remembering me, and
should be extremely pleased to show him all manner of
attentions here: you know I profess great attachment to that
family for their civilities to me. But how gracious the
Princess has been to you! I am quite jealous of her dining
with you: I remember what a rout there was to get her for half
of half a quarter of an hour to your assembly.

The Bishop of London is dead; having luckily for his family,
as it proves, refused the archbishopric.*1468) We owe him the
justice to say, that though he had broke with my father, he
always expressed himself most handsomely about him, and
without any resentment or ingratitude.

Your brothers are coming to dine with me; your brother Gal. is
extremely a favourite with me: I took to him for his
resemblance to you, but am grown to love him upon his own
fund.

The peace is still in a cloud: according to custom, we have
hurried on our complaisance before our new friends were at all
ready with theirs. There was a great Regency(1469) kept in
town, to take off the prohibition of commerce with Spain: when
they were met, somebody asked if Spain was ready to take off
theirs? "Oh, Lord! we never thought of that!" They sent for
Wall,(1470) and asked him if his court would take the same
step with us? He said, "he believed they might, but he had no
orders about it." However, we proceeded, and hitherto are
bit.

Adieu! by the first opportunity I shelf send you the two books
of Houghton, for yourself and Dr. Cocchi. My Lord Orford is
much mended: my uncle has no prospect of ever removing from
his couch.

(1467) A Madame Ubaldini having raised a scandalous story of
two persons whom she saw together in Mr. Mann's garden at one
of his assemblies, and a scurrilous sonnet having been made
upon the occasion, the Florentine ladies for some time
pretended that it would hurt their characters to come any more
to his assembly.

(1468) Dr. Edmund Gibson had been very intimate with Sir
Robert Walpole, and was designed by him for archbishop after
the death of Wake; but setting himself at the head of the
clergy against the Quaker bill, he broke with Sir Robert and
lost the archbishoprick which was given to Potter; but on his
death, the succeeding ministry offered it to Dr. Gibson. [The
Doctor declined it, on account of his advanced age and
increasing infirmities. He died on the 6th of February,
1748.)

(1469) This means a meeting of the persons composing the
Regency during the King's absence in Hanover.-D.

(1470) General Wall, the Spanish ambassador.

566 Letter 262
To George Montagu, Esq.
Strawberry Hill, Sept. 25, 1748.

I shall write you a very short letter, for I don't know what
business we have to be corresponding when we might be
together. I really wish to see you, for you know I am
convinced of what you say to me. It is few people I ask to
come hither, and if possible, still fewer that I wish to see
here. The disinterestedness of your friendship for me has
always appeared, and is the only sort that for the future I
will ever accept, and consequently I never expect any more
friends. As to trying to make any by obligations, I have had
such woful success, that, for fear of thinking still worse
than I do of the world, I will never try more. But you are
abominable to reproach me with not letting you go to Houghton:
have not I offered a thousand times to carry you there? I
mean, since it was my brother's: I did not expect to prevail
with you before; for you are so unaccountable, that you not
only will never do a dirty thing, but you won't even venture
the appearance of it. I have often applied to you in my own
mind a very pretty passage that I remember in a letter of
Chillingworth; "you would not do that for preferment that you
would not do but for preferment." You oblige me much in what
you say about my nephews, and make me happy in the character
you have heard of Lord Malpas;(1471) I am extremely inclined
to believe he deserves it. I am as sorry to hear what a
companion lord Walpole has got: there has been a good deal of
noise about him, but I had laughed at it, having traced the
worst reports to his gracious mother, who is now sacrificing
the character of her son to her aversion for her husband. If
we lived under the Jewish dispensation, how I should tremble
at my brother's leaving no children by her, and its coming to
my turn to raise him up issue!

Since I gave you the account of the Duchess of Ireland's piked
horns among the tombs of the Veres, I have found a long
account in Bayle of the friar, who, as I remember to have read
somewhere, preached so vehemently against that fashion: it was
called Hennin, and the monk's name was Thomas Conecte. He was
afterwards burnt at Rome for censuring the lives of the
clergy. As our histories say that Anne of Bohemia introduced
the fashion here, it is probable that the French learnt it
from us, and were either long before they caught it, Or long
in retaining the mode; for the Duke of Ireland died in 1389,
and Connect was burnt at Rome in 1434. There were, indeed,
several years between his preaching down Hennins and his
death, but probably not near five-and-forty years, and half
that term was a long duration for so outrageous a fashion.
But I have found a still more entertaining fashion in another
place in Bayle which was, the women wearing looking-glasses
upon their bellies': I don't conceive for what use. Adieu!
don't write any more, but come.

(1471) Eldest son of George, third Earl of Cholmondoley, and
grandson of Sir Robert Walpole.

567 Letter 263
To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
Strawberry Hill, Oct. 6, 1748.

Dear harry,
I am sorry our wishes clash so much. Besides that I have no
natural inclination for the Parliament, it will particularly
disturb me now in the middle of all my planting; for which
reason I have never inquired when it will meet, and cannot
help you to guess--but I should think not hastily-for I
believe the peace, at least the evacuations, are not in so
prosperous a way as to be ready to make any figure in the
King's speech. But I speak from a distance; it may all be
very toward: our ministers enjoy the consciousness of their
wisdom, as the good do of their virtue, and take no pains to
make it shine before men. In the mean time, we have several
collateral emoluments from the pacification: all our
milliners, tailors, tavern keepers, and young gentlemen are
tiding to France for our improvement in luxury; and as I
foresee we shall be told on their return that we have lived in
a total state of blindness for these six years. and gone
absolutely retrograde to all true taste in every particular, I
have already begun to practise walking on my head, and doing
every thing the wrong way. Then Charles Frederick has turned
all his virt`u into fireworks, and, by his influence at the
ordnance, has prepared such a spectacle for the proclamation
of the peace as is to surpass all its predecessors of bouncing
memory. It is to open with a concert of fifteen hundred
hands, and conclude with so many hundred thousand crackers all
set to music, that all the men killed in the war are to be
wakened with the crash, as if it was the day of judgment, and
fall a dancing, like the troops in the Rehearsal. I wish you
could see him making squibs of his papillotes, and bronzed
over with a patina of gunpowder, and talking himself still
hoarser on the superiority that his firework will have over
the Roman naumachia.

I am going to dinner with Lady Sophia Thomas(1472) at Hampton
Court, where I was to meet the Cardigans; but I this minute
receive a message that the Duchess of Montagu(1473) is
extremely ill, which I am much concerned for on Lady
Cardigan's(1474) account, whom I grow every day more in love
with; you may imagine, not her person, which is far from
improved lately; but, since I have been here, I have lived
much with them, and, as George Montagu says, in all my
practice I never met a better understanding, nor more really
estimable qualities: such a dignity in her way of thinking; so
little idea of any thing mean or ridiculous, and such proper
contempt for both! Adieu! I must go dress for dinner, and you
perceive that I wish I had, but have nothing to tell you.