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

"On Tuesday last died the Lord Mayor, Sir John Shorter: the
occasion of his distemper was his fall under Newgate, which
bruised him a little, and put him into a fever." Letter of
September 6th, 1688.

(23 )birthdate) In Chalmers's Biographical Dictionary it is
stated, that Horace Walpole was born in 1718; and Sir Walter
Scott says he was born in 1716-17, which, according to the New
Style, would mean that he was born in one of the three first
months of the year 1717. Both these statements are, however,
erroneous, as he himself fixes the day of his birth, in a letter
to Mr. Conway, dated October 5th, 1764, where he says "What
signifies what happens when one is seven-and-forty, as I am
to-day? They tell me 'tis my birthday," And again, in a letter
to the same correspondent, dated October 5th, 1777, he says, "I
am three-score to-day."

(24) The exact cause of this quarrel," says Mr. Mitford, in his
Life of Gray, " has been passed over by the delicacy of his
biographer, because Horace Walpole was alive when the Memoirs of
Gray were written. The former, however, charged himself with the
chief blame, and lamented that he had not paid more attention and
deference to Gray's superior judgment and prudence." See Works of
Gray, vol. i. p. 9, Pickering's edition 1836. In the
"Walpolianae" is the following passage:-"The quarrel between Gray
and me arose from his being too serious a companion. I had just
broke loose from the restraints of the University with as much
money as I could spend, and I was willing to indulge myself.
Gray was for antiquities, etc. while I was for perpetual balls
and plays: the fault was mine."-E.

(25) Sir Walter Scott says that Walpole, on one occasion, "
vindicated the memory of his father with great dignity and
eloquence" in the House of Commons; but, as I cannot find any
trace of a speech of this kind made by him after Sir Robert
Walpole's death, I am inclined to think Sir Walter must have made
a mistake as to the time of delivery of the speech mentioned in
the text. [Secker, at that time Bishop of Oxford, says that
Walpole "spoke well against the motion." See post, letter to Sir
Horace Mann, dated March 24, 1742.

(26) Sir Walter Scott is in error when he says that Walpole
retired from the House of Commons in 1758, "at the active age of
forty-one." This event occurred, as is here stated, in March,
1768, and when Walpole was consequently in his fifty-first year.

(27) Letter, dated Arlington Street, March 12th, 1768. It is but
fair to mention, in opposition to the opinion respecting George
Grenville, here delivered by Walpole, that of no less an
authority than Burke, who says, "Mr. Grenville was a first-rate
figure in this country,"

(28) He had also offered to share his fortune with Mr. Conway in
the year 1744 (see letter of July 20th of that year), in order to
enable Mr. Conway to marry a lady he was then in love with. He
ends his very pressing entreaties by saying, "For these reasons,
don't deny me what I have set my Heart on-the making your fortune
easy to you." Nor were these the only instances of generosity to
a friend, which we find in the life of Walpole. In the year
1770, when the Abb`e Terrai was administering the finances of
France, (or, to use the more expressive language of Voltaire,
"Quand Terrai nous mangeait,") his economical reductions
occasioned the loss of a portion of her pension, amounting to
three thousand livres, to Madame du Deffand. Upon this occasion
Walpole wrote thus to his old blind friend, who had presented a
memorial of her case to M. de St. Florentin, a course of
proceeding which Walpole did not approve of:-"Ayez assez
d'amiti`e pour moi pour accepter les trois mille livres de ma
part. Je voudrais que la somme ne me f`ut pas aussi indiferente
qu'elle l'est, mais je vous jure qu'elle ne retranchera rien, pas
m`eme sur mes amusemens. La prendriez vous de la main de la
grandeur, et la refuseriez vous de moi? Vous me connaissez:
faites ce sacrifice `a mon orgueil, qui serait enchants de vous
avoir emp`ech`ee de vous abaisser jusqu'`a la sollicitation.
Votre m`emoire me blesse. Quoi! vous, vous, r`eduite `a
repr`esenter vos malheurs! Accordez moi, je vous conjure, la
grace que je vous demande `a genoux, et jouissez de la
satisfaction de vous dire, J'ai un ami qui ne permettra jamais
que je me jette aux pieds des grands. Ma Petite, j'insiste.
Voyez, si vous aimez mieux me faire le plaisir le plus sensible,
ou de devoir une grace qui, ayant `et`e sollicit`ee, arrive
toujours trop tard pour contanter l'amiti`e. Laissez moi go`uter
la joie la plus pure, de vous avoir mise `a votre aise, et que
cette joie soit un secret profond entre nous deux." See Letters
of the Marquise de Deffand to the Honourable Horace Walpole.-It
was impossible to make a pecuniary offer with more earnestness or
greater delicacy; and Madame du Deffand's not having found it
necessary subsequently to accept it, in no degree diminishes the
merit of the proffered gift.

(29) See letter, dated Monday, five o'clock, Feb. 1761.

(30) See letter, dated April 19th, 1764.

(31) See letter to Sir Horace Mann, Feb. 25, 1750.

(32) Catherine Hyde, the eccentric friend of Pope and Gay. She
was, at this time, living in a small house in Ham Walks.
Walpole, having found her out airing in her Carriage, one day
that he had called on her, there addressed the following lines to
her:--

'To many a Kitty, Love his car
Would for a day engage;
But Prior's Kitty, ever fair,
Retains it for an age."

(33) Letter of June 8th, 1747.

(34) Lee, in Kent.

(35) Letter of June 5th, 1788.

(36) George James Williams, Esq.

(37) In his vers de soci`et`e we perpetually discover a laborious
effort to introduce the lightness of the French badinage into a
masculine and somewhat rough language."-Quart. Rev. vol. xix. p.
122.

(38) Lives of the Novelists, Prose Works, vol. iii. p. 304, ed.
1834.

(39) Chalmer's Biographical Dictionary, article Walpole.

(40) "The Mysterious Mother" was printed in that year: but was
never published till after the death of Walpole.

(41) Lord Byron, Preface to Mtrino Faliero."

(42) Lives of the Novelists, Sir Walter Scott; Prose Works, vol.
iii. p. 313.

(43) Shortly after the appearance of this romance, the following
high encomium was passed upon it by Bishop Warburton:-"We have
been lately entertained with what I will venture to call a
masterpiece in the fable, and a new species likewise. The piece
I mean is laid in Gothic chivalry, where a beautiful imagination,
supported by strength of judgment, has enabled the author to go
beyond his subject, and effect the full purpose of the ancient
tragedy; that is, to purge the passions by pity and terror, in
colouring as great and harmonious as in any of the best dramatic
writers."-E.

(44) Lives of the Novelists; Prose Works, vol. iii. p. 323.

(45) Postscript to "The Mysterious Mother."

(46) Lord Byron.

(47) Social Life in England and France," by Miss Berry.

(48) Lives of the Novelists; Prose Works, vol. iii. p. 301.

(49) "In 1744, the difference between Walpole and Gray was
adjusted by the interference of a lady, who wished well to both
parties. The lapse of three years had probably been sufficient,
in some degree, to soften down, though not entirely obliterate,
the remembrance of supposed injustices on both sides; natural
kindness of temper had resumed their place, and we find their
correspondence again proceeding on friendly and familiar terms."
Mitford's Gray, vol. i. p. xxiii; see also vol. ii. p. 174.-E.

(50) Speech on American Taxation, April 19, 1774.

(51) "Vanity, when it unfortunately gets possession of a wise
man's head, is as keenly sensible of ridicule, as it is
impassible to its shafts when more appropriately lodged with a
fool. Of the sensitiveness arising out of this foible Walpole
seems to have had a great deal, and it certainly dictated those
hard-hearted reproofs that repelled the warm effusions of
friendship with which poor Madame du Deffand (now old and blind)
addressed him, and of which he complained with the utmost
indignation, merely because, if her letters were opened by a
clerk at the post-office, such expressions of kindness might
expose him to the ridicule of which he had such undue terror."
Quart. Rev. Vol. xix. p. 119.-E.

(52) See "Pursuits of Literature," second Dialogue:-

"The Boy, whom once patricians pens adorn'd,
First meanly flatter'd, then as meanly scorn'd."

Which lines are Stated in a note to allude to Walpole. See also,
first Dialogue, where Chatturton is called, "That varlet bright."
The note to which passage is "'I am the veriest varlet that ever
chew'd,' says Falstaff, in Henry IV. Part 1. Act. 2. Mr. Horace
Walpole, now Lord Orford, did not, however, seem to think it
necessary that this varlet Chatterton should chew at all. See
the Starvation Act, dated at Strawberry Hill."

(53) Letter to the Editor of the Miscellanies of Chatterton.
Works, vol. iv.

(54) The Duke of Bedford has a letter of Walpole's with this
signature.

(55) "Epitapilium vivi auctoris."-l 792.

(56) "Social Life in England and France."

REMINISCENCES OF THE COURTS OF GEORGE THE FIRST AND SECOND:
WRITTEN IN 1788,
FOR THE AMUSEMENT OF MISS MARY AND MISS AGNES BERRY.

Il ne faut point d'esprit pour s'occuper des vieux
`ev`enements.-Voltaire.

CHAPTER 1.

Motives to the Undertaking-Precedents-George the First's Reign a
Proem to the History of the Reigning House of Brunswick-The
Reminiscent introduced to that Monarch-His Person and Dress-The
Duchess of Kendal-her Jealousy of Sir Robert Walpole's Credit
with the King-and Intrigues to displace him, and make Bolingbroke
Minister. '

You were both so entertained with the old stories I told you one
evening lately, of what I recollected to have seen and heard from
my childhood of the courts of King George the First, and of his
son the Prince of Wales, afterwards George the Second, and of the
latter's princess, since Queen Caroline; and you expressed such
wishes that I would commit those passages (for they are scarce
worthy of the title even of anecdotes) to writing, that, having
no greater pleasure than to please you both, nor any more
important or laudable occupation, I will begin to satisfy the
repetition of your curiosity. But observe, I promise no more
than to begin; for I not only cannot answer that I shall have
patience to continue, but my memory is still so fresh, or rather
so retentive of trifles which first made impression on it, that
it is very possible my life (turned of seventy-one) may be
exhausted before my stock of remembrances; especially as I am
sensible of the garrulity of old age, and of its eagerness of
relating whatever it recollects, whether of moment or not. Thus,
while I fancy I am complying with you, I may only be indulging
myself, and consequently may wander into many digressions for
which you will not care a straw, and which may intercept the
completion of my design. Patience, therefore young ladies; and
if you coin an old gentleman into narratives, you must expect a
good deal of alloy. I engage for no method, no regularity, no
polish. My narrative will probably resemble siege-pieces, which
are struck of any promiscuous metals; and, though they bear the
impress of some sovereign's name, only serve to quiet the
garrison for the moment, and afterwards are merely hoarded by
collectors and virtuosos, who think their series not complete,
unless they have even the coins of base metal of every reign. As
I date from my nonage, I must have laid up no state secrets.
Most of the facts I am going to tell you though new to you and to
most of the present age, were known perhaps at the time to my
nurse and my tutors. Thus, my stories will have nothing to do
with history.

Luckily, there have appeared within these three months two
publications, that will serve as precedents for whatever I am
going to say: I mean Les Fragments of the Correspondence of the
Duchess of Orleans, (57) and those of the M`emoires of the Duc de
St. Simon. (58) Nothing more d`ecousu than both: they tell you
what they please; or rather, what their editors have pleased to
let them tell. In one respect I shall be less satisfactory.
They knew and were well acquainted, or thought they were, with
their personages. I did not at ten years old, penetrate
characters; and as George 1. died at the period where my
reminiscence begins, and was rather a good sort of man than a
shining king; and as the Duchess of Kendal was no genius, I heard
very little of either when he and her power were no more. In
fact, the reign of George 1. was little more than the proem to
the history of England Under the House of Brunswick. That family
was established here by surmounting a rebellion; to which
settlement perhaps the phrensy of the South Sea scheme
contributed, by diverting the national attention from the game of
faction to the delirium of stockjobbing; and even faction was
split into fractions by the quarrel between the king and the heir
apparent-another interlude, which authorizes me to call the reign
of George 1. a proem to the history of the reigning House of
Brunswick, so successively agitated by parallel feuds.

Commen`cons.

As my first hero was going off the stage before I ought to have
come upon it, it will be necessary to tell you why the said two
personages happened to meet just two nights before they were to
part for ever; a rencounter that barely enables me to give you a
general idea of the former's person and of his mistress's-or, as
has been supposed, his wife's.

As I was the youngest by eleven years of Sir Robert Walpole's
children by his first wife, and was extremely weak and delicate,
as you see me still, though with no constitutional complaint till
I had the gout after forty, and as my two sisters were
consumptive and died of consumptions, the supposed necessary care
of me (and I have overheard persons saying, "That child cannot
possibly live") so engrossed the attention of my mother, that
compassion and tenderness soon became extreme fondness; and as
the infinite good-nature of my father never thwarted any of his
children, he suffered me to be too much indulged, and permitted
her to gratify the first vehement inclination that I ever
expressed, and which, as I have never since felt any enthusiasm
for royal persons, I must suppose that the female attendants in
the family must have put into my head, to long to see the king.
This childish caprice was so strong, that my mother solicited the
Duchess of Kendal to obtain for me the honour of kissing his
Majesty's hand before he set out for Hanover. A favour so unusual
to be asked for a boy of ten years old, was still too slight to
be refused to the wife of the first minister for her darling
child; yet not being proper to be made a precedent, it was
settled to be in private, and at night.

Accordingly, the night but one before the king began his last
journey, my mother carried me at ten at night to the apartment of
the Countess of Walsingham, (59) on the ground floor, towards the
garden at St. James's, which opened into that of her aunt, the
Duchess of Kendal's: apartments occupied by George II. after his
queen's death, and by his successive mistresses, the Countesses
of Suffolk and Yarmouth.

Notice being given that the king was come down to supper, Lady
Walsingham took me alone into the duchess's ante-room, where we
found alone the king and her. I knelt down, and kissed his hand.
He said a few words to me, and my conductress led me back to my
mother (60)

The person of the king is as perfect in my memory as if I saw him
but yesterday. It was that of an elderly man, rather pale, and
exactly like his pictures and coins; Dot tall; of an aspect
rather good than august; with a dark tie-wig, a plain coat,
waistcoat, and breeches of snuff coloured cloth, with stockings
Of the same colour, and a blue riband over all. So entirely was
he my object that I do not believe I once looked at the duchess;
but as I could not avoid seeing her on entering the room, I
remember that just beyond his Majesty stood a very tall, lean,
ill-favoured old lady but I did not retain the least idea of her
features, nor know what the colour of her dress was.

My childish loyalty, and the condescension in gratifying it,
were, I suppose, causes that contributed, very soon afterwards,
to make me shed a flood of tears for that sovereign's death,
when, with the other scholars at Eton college, I walked in
procession to the proclamation of the successor; and which
(though I think they partly felt because I imagined it became the
son of a prime-minister to be more concerned than other boys)
were no doubt imputed by many of the spectators who were
politicians, to fears of my father's most probable fall, but of
which I had not the smallest conception, nor should have met with
any more concern than I did when it really arrived, in the year
1742; by which time I had lost all taste for courts and princes
and power, as was natural to one who never felt an ambitious
thought for himself.

It must not be inferred from her obtaining this grace for me,
that the Duchess of Kendal was a friend to my father; on the
contrary, at that moment she had been labouring to displace him,
and introduce Lord Bolingbroke (61) into the administration; on
which I shall say more hereafter.

It was an instance of Sir Robert's singular fortune, or evidence
of his talents, that he not only preserved his power under two
successive monarchs, but in spite of the efforts of both their
mistresses (62) to remove him. It was perhaps still more
remarkable, and an instance unparalleled, that Sir Robert
governed George the First in Latin, the King not speaking
English, (63) and his minister no German, nor even French. (64)
It was much talked of, that Sir Robert, detecting one of the
Hanoverian ministers in some trick or falsehood before the King'S
face, had the firmness to say to the German, "Mentiris,
impudentissime!" The good-humoured monarch only laughed, as he
often did when Sir Robert complained to him of his Hanoverians
selling places, nor would be persuaded that it was not the
practice of the English court; and which an incident must have
planted in his mind with no favourable impression of English
disinterestedness. "This is a strange country!" said his Majesty;
"the first morning after my arrival at St. James's, I looked out
of the window, and saw a park with walks, a canal, etc. which
they told me were mine. The next day, Lord Chetwynd, the ranger
of my park, sent me a fine brace of carp out of my canal; and I
was told I must give five guineas to Lord Chetwynd's servant for
bringing me my own carp out of my own canal in my own park!"
I have said, that the Duchess of Kendal was no friend of Sir
Robert, and wished to make Lord Bolingbroke minister in his room.
I was too young to know any thing of that reign, nor was
acquainted with the political cabals of the court, which,
however, I might have learnt from my father in the three years
after his retirement; but being too thoughtless at that time, nor
having your laudable curiosity, I neglected to inform myself of
many passages and circumstances, of which I have often since
regretted my faulty ignorance.

By what I can at present recollect, the Duchess seems to have
been jealous of Sir Robert's credit with the King, which he had
acquired, not by paying court, but by his superior abilities in
the House of Commons, and by his knowledge in finance, of which
Lord Sunderland and Craggs had betrayed their ignorance in
countennancing the South Sea scheme; and who, though more
agreeable to the King, had been forced to give way to Walpole, as
the only man capable of repairing that mischief. The Duchess,
too, might be alarmed at his attachment to the Princess of Wales;
from whom, in case of the King's death, her grace could expect no
favour. Of her jealousy I do know the following instance; Queen
Anne had bestowed the rangership of Richmond New Park on her
relations the Hydes for three lives, one of which was expired.
King George, fond of shooting, bought out the term of the last
Earl of Clarendon, and of his son Lord Cornbury, and frequently
shot there; having appointed my eldest brother, Lord Walpole,
ranger nominally, but my father in reality, wished to hunt there
once or twice a week. The park had run to great decay under the
Hydes, nor was there any mansion (65) better than the common
lodges of the keepers. The King ordered a stone lodge designed
by Henry, Earl of Pembroke, to be erected for himself, but merely
as a banqueting-house, (66) with a large eating-room, kitchen,
and necessary offices, where he might dine after his sport. Sir
Robert began another of brick for himself, and the under-ranger,
which by degrees, he much enlarged; usually retiring thither from
business, or rather, as he said himself, to do more business than
he could in town, on Saturdays and Sundays. On that edifice, on
the thatched-house, and other improvements, he laid out fourteen
thousand pounds of his own money. In the meantime, he hired a
small house for himself on the hill without the park; and in that
small tenement the King did him the honour of dining with him
more than once after shooting. His Majesty, fond of private
joviality, (67) was pleased with punch after dinner, and indulged
in it freely. The Duchess, alarmed at the advantage the minister
might make of the openness of the King's heart in those
convivial, unguarded hours, and at a crisis when she was
conscious Sir Robert was apprised of her inimical machinations in
favour of Lord Bolingbroke, enjoined the few Germans who
accompanied the King at those dinners to prevent his Majesty from
drinking too freely. Her spies obeyed too punctually, and
without any address. The King was offended, and silenced the
tools by the coarsest epithets in the German language. He even,
before his departure, ordered Sir Robert to have the stone lodge
finished against his return: no symptom of a falling minister, as
has since been supposed Sir Robert then was, and that Lord
Bolingbroke was to have replaced him, had the King lived to come
back. But my presumption to the contrary is more strongly
corroborated by what had recently passed: the Duchess had
actually prevailed on the King to see Bolingbroke secretly in his
closet. That intriguing Proteus, aware that he might not obtain
an audience long enough to efface former prejudices, and make
sufficient impression on the King against Sir Robert, and in his
own favour, went provided with a memorial, which he left in the
closet. and begged his Majesty to peruse coolly at his leisure.
The King kept the paper, but no longer than till he saw Sir
Robert, to whom he delivered the poisoned remonstrance. If that
communication prognosticated the minister's fall, I am at a loss
to know what a mark of confidence is.

Nor was that discovery the first intimation that Walpole had
received of the measure of Bolingbroke's gratitude. The
minister, against the earnest representations of his family and
Most intimate friends, had consented to the recall of that
incendiary from banishment, (68) excepting only his readmission
into the House of Lords, that every field of annoyance might not
be open to his mischievous turbulence. Bolingbroke, it seems,
deemed an embargo laid on his tongue would warrant his hand to
launch every envenomed shaft against his benefactor, who by
restricting had paid him the compliment of avowing that his
eloquence was not totally inoffensive. Craftsmen, pamphlet,
libels, combinations, were showered on or employed for years
against the prime-minister, without shaking his power or ruffling
his temper; and Bolingbroke had the mortification of finding his
rival had abilities to maintain his influence against the
mistresses of two kings, with whom his antagonist had plotted in
vain to overturn him. (69)

(57) Charlotte Elizabeth, daughter of the Elector of Bavaria. In
1671 she became the second wife (his first being poisoned) of the
brother of Louis XIV. by whom she was the mother of the regent,
Duke of Orleans. She died in 1722. A collection of her letters,
addressed to Prince Ulric of Brunswick, and to the Princess of
Wales, afterwards Queen Caroline, was published at Paris in
1788.-E.

(58) These celebrated M`emoires of the Court of Louis XIV. were
first published, in a mutilated state, in 1788. A complete
edition, in thirteen volumes, appeared in 1791.-E.

(59) Melusina Schulemberg, niece of the Duchess of Kendal,
created Countess of Walsingham and -,afterwards married to the
famous Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield.

(60) The following is the account of this introduction given in
"Walpoliana:"-"I do remember something of George the First. My
father took me to St. James's while I was a very little boy;
after waiting some time in an anteroom, a gentleman came in all
dressed in brown, even his stockings, and with a riband and star.
He took me up in his arms, kissed me, and chatted some time,"-E.