Books: The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2

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Dr. Middleton is dead--not killed by Mr. Ashton--but of a decay
that came Upon him at once. The Bishop of London(162) will
perhaps make a jubilee(163) for his death, and then We shall
draw off some Of your crowds of travellers. Tacitus
Gordon(164) died the same day; he married the widow of
Trenchard(165) (with whom he wrote Cato's letters,) at the same
time that Dr. Middleton married her companion. The Bishop of
Durham (Chandler),(166) another great writer of controversy, is
dead too, immensely rich; he is succeeded by Butler(167) of
Bristol, a metaphysic author, much patronized by the late
Queen; she never could make my father read his book, and -which
she Certainly did not understand herself: he told her his
religion was fixed, and that he did not want to change Or
improve it. A report is come of the death of the King of
Portugal, and of the young Pretender; but that I don't believe.

I have been in town for a day or two, and heard no conversation
but about M'Lean, a fashionable highwayman, who is just taken,
and who robbed me among others; as Lord Eglinton, Sir Thomas
Robinson, Of Vienna, Mrs. Talbot, etc. He took an odd booty
from the Scotch Earl, a blunderbuss, which lies very formidably
upon the justice's table. He was taken by selling a laced
waistcoat to a pawnbroker, who happened to carry it to the very
man who had just sold the lace. His history is very Particular,
for he confesses every thing, and is so little of a hero that
he cries and begs, and I believe, if Lord Eglinton had been in
any luck, might have been robbed of his own blunderbuss. His
father was an Irish Dean; his brother is a Calvinist minister
in great esteem at the Hague. He himself was a grocer, but
losing a wife that he loved extremely about two years ago, and
by whom he has one little girl, he quitted his business with
two hundred pounds in his pocket, which he soon spent, and then
took to the road with only one companion, Plunket, a journeyman
apothecary, my other friend, whom he has impeached, but who is
not taken. M'Lean had a lodging in St. James's Street, over
against White's, and another at Chelsea; Plunket one in Jermyn
Street; and their faces are as known about St. James's as any
gentleman's who lives in that quarter, and who perhaps goes upon
the road too. M'Lean had a quarrel at Putney bowling-green two
months ago with an officer, whom he challenged for disputing his
rank; but the captain declined, till M'Lean should produce a
certificate of his nobility, which he has just received. If he
had escaped a month longer, he might have heard of Mr. Chute's
genealogic expertness, and come hither to the college of Arms for
a certificate. There was a wardrobe of clothes, three-and-twenty
purses, and the celebrated blunderbuss found at his lodgings,
besides a famous kept mistress. As I conclude he will suffer,
and wish him no ill, I don't care to have his idea, and am
almost single in not having been to see him. Lord Mountford,
at the head of half White's, went the first day - his aunt was
crying over him: as soon as they were withdrawn, she said to
him, knowing they were of White's, "My dear, what did the lords
say to you? have you ever been concerned with any of
them?"-Was not that admirable? what a favourable idea people
must have of White's!--and what if White's should not deserve a
much better! But the chief personages who have been to comfort
and weep over this fallen hero are Lady Caroline Petersham and
Miss Ashe: I call them Polly and Lucy, and asked them if he did
not sing

Thus I stand like the Turk with his doxies around."(168)

Another celebrated Polly has been arrested for thirty pounds,
even old Cuzzoni.(169) The Prince Of Wales bailed her--who
will do as much for him?

I am much obliged to you for your intended civilities to my
liking Madame Capello; but as I never liked any thing of her,
but her prettiness, for she is an idiot, I beg you will
dispense with them on my account: I should even be against your
renewing your garden assemblies. you would be too good to
pardon the impertinence of the Florentines, and would very
likely expose yourself to more: besides, the absurdities which
English travelling boys are capable of, and likely to act or
conceive, always gave me apprehensions of your meeting with
disagreeable scenes-and then there is another animal still more
absurd than Florentine men or English boys, and that is,
travelling governors, who are mischievous into the bargain, and
whose pride is always hurt because they are sure of its never
being indulged: they will not learn the world, because they are
sent to teach it, and as they come forth more ignorant of it
than their pupils, take care to return with more prejudices,
and as much care to instil all theirs into their pupils. Don't
assemble them!

Since I began my letter, the King of Portugal's death is
contradicted: for the future, I will be as circumspect as one
of your Tuscan residents was, who being here in Oliver's time,
wrote to his court, "Some say the Protector is dead; others that
he is not: for my part, I believe neither one nor t'other."

Will u send me some excellent melon seeds? I have a neighbour
who shines in fruit, and have promised to get him some:
Zatte`e, I think he says, is a particular sort. I don't know
the best season for sending them, but you do, and will oblige
me by some of the best sorts.

I suppose you know all that execrable history that occasioned
an insurrection lately at Paris, where they were taking up
young children to try to people one of their colonies, in which
grown persons could never live. You have seen too, to be sure,
in the papers the bustle that has been all this winter about
purloining some of our manufacturers to Spain. I was told
to-day that the informations, if they had had rope given them,
would have reached to General Wall.(170) Can you wonder? Why
should Spain prefer a native of England(171) to her own
subjects, but because he could and would do us more hurt than a
Spaniard could? a grandee is a more harmless animal by far
than an Irish Papist. We stifled this evidence: we are in
their power; We forgot at the last peace to renew the most
material treaty! Adieu! You would not forget a material
treaty.

(162) Thomas Sherlock, translated from the see of Salisbury in
1748. He died in 1761.-D.

(163) This alludes to the supposed want of orthodoxy shown by
Dr. Middleton in some of his theological writings.-D.

(164) Thomas Gordon, the translator of Sallust and Tacitus; and
also a political writer of his day of considerable notoriety.
His death happening at the same time as that of Dr. Middleton,
Lord Bolingbroke said to Dr. Heberden, "then there is the best
writer in England gone, and the worst."-E.

(165) John Trenchard, son of Sir John Trenchard, secretary of
state to King William the Third, was born in 1669. He wrote
various political pamphlets of a democratic cast. In 1720 he
published, in conjunction with Thomas Gordon, @ a series of
political letters, under the signature of "Cato." They
appeared at first in the " London Journal," and afterwards in
the "British Journal," two newspapers of the day. They
obtained great celebrity, as well from the merit of their
composition, as from -the boldness of the principles they
advocated. These consisted in an uncompromising hostility to
the Government and to the Church. Trenchard was member of
parliament for Taunton, and died in 1723.-D.

(166) Edward Chandler, a learned prelate, and author of various
polemical works. He had been raised to the see of Durham in
1730, as it was then said, by simoniacal means.-D.

(167) Joseph Butler, the learned and able author of "The
Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution
and Cause of Nature." This is the "Book," here alluded to, of
which Queen Caroline was so fond that she made the fortune of
its author. Bishop Butler died much regretted in 1752.-D.

(168) The last song in The Beggar's Opera.

(169) A celebrated Italian singer.-D.

(170) The Spanish ambassador to the court of
London.-E.

(171) General Richard Wall was of Irish parents, but I believe
not born in these dominions. [He came to England in 1747, on a
secret mission from Ferdinand, and continued as ambassador at
the British court till 1754, when he was recalled, to fill the
high office of minister for foreign affairs.]

76 Letter 28
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, Sept. 1, 1750.

Here, my dear child, I have two letters of yours to answer. I
will go answer them; and then, if I have any thing to tell you,
I will. I accept very thankfully all the civilities you showed
to Madame Capello on my account, but don't accept her on my
account: I don't know who has told you that I liked her, but
you may believe me, I never did. For the Damers,(172)they have
lived much in the same world that I do. He is moderately
sensible, immoderately proud, self-sufficient, and whimsical.
She is very sensible, has even humour, if the excessive reserve
and silence that she draws from both father and mother -would
let her, I may almost say, ever show it. You say, "What people
do we send you!" I reply, "What people we do not send you!"
Those that travel are reasonable, compared with those who can
never prevail on themselves to stir beyond the atmosphere of
their own whims. I am convinced that the Opinions I give you
about several people must appear very misanthropic; but yet,
you see, are generally forced to own at last that I did not speak
from prejudice - but I won't triumph, since you own that I was in
the right about the Barrets. I was a little peevish with 'you
in your last, when I came to the paragraph where you begin to
say "I have made use of all the Interest I have with Mr.
Pelham."(173) I concluded you was proceeding to say, "to
procure your arrears;" instead of that, it was to make him
serve Mr. Milbank--will you never have done obliging people?
do begin to think of being obliged. I dare say Mr. Milbank is
a very pretty sort of man, very sensible of your attentions,
and who will never forget them-till he is past the Giogo.(174)
You recommend him to me: to show you that I have not naturally
an inclination to hate people, I am determined not to be
acquainted with him, that I may not hate him for forgetting
you. Mr. Pelham will be a little surprised at not finding his
sister(175) at Hanover. That was all a pretence of his wise
relations here, who grew uneasy that he was happy in a way that
they had not laid out for him: Mrs. Temple is in Sussex. They
looked upon the pleasure of an amour of choice as a transient
affair; so, to Make his satisfaction permanent, they propose to
marry him, and to a girl(176) he scarce ever saw!

I suppose you have heard all the exorbitant demands of the
heralds for your pedigree! I have seen one this morning,
infinitely richer and better done, which will not cost more; it
is for my Lady Pomfret. You would be entertained with all her
imagination in it. She and my lord both descend from Edward
the First, by his two Queens. The pedigree is painted in a
book: instead of a vulgar genealogical tree, she has devised a
pine-apple plant, sprouting out of a basket, on which is King
Edward's head; on the other leaves are all the intermediate
arms; the fruit is sliced open, and discovers the busts of the
Earl and Countess, from whence issue their issue! I have had
the old Vere pedigree lately In my hands, which derives that
house from Lucius Verus; but I am now grown to bear no descent
but my Lord Chesterfield's, who has placed among the portraits
of his ancestors two old heads, inscribed Adam de Stanhope and
Eve de Stanhope; the ridicule is admirable. Old Peter Leneve,
the herald, who thought ridicule consisted in not being of an
old family, made this epitaph, and it was a good one, for young
Craggs, whose father had been a footman, "Here lies the last
who died before the first of his family!" Pray mind,
how I string old stories together to-day. This old
Craggs,(177) who was angry with Arthur More, who had worn a 78
livery too, and who was getting into a coach with him, turned
about and said, "Why, Arthur, I am always going to get up
behind; are not you!" I told this story the other day to
George Selwyn, whose passion is to see coffins and corpses, and
executions: he replied, "that Arthur More had had his coffin
chained to that of his mistress."--"Lord!" said I, "how do you
know!"--"Why, I saw them the other day in a vault at St.
Giles's." He was walking this week in Westminster Abbey with
Lord Abergavenny, and met the man who shows the tombs, "Oh!
your servant, Mr. Selwyn; I expected to have seen you here the
other day, when the old Duke of Richmond's body was taken up."
Shall I tell you another story of George Selwyn before I tap
the chapter of Richmond, which you see opens here very apropos?
With this strange and dismal turn, he has infinite fun and
humour in him. He went lately on a party of pleasure to see
places with Lord Abergavenny and a pretty Mrs. Frere, who love
one another a little. At Cornbury there are portraits of all
the royalists and regicides, and illustrious headless.(178)
Mrs. Frere ran about, looked at nothing, let him look at
nothing, screamed about Indian paper, and hurried over all the
rest. George grew peevish, called her back, told her it was
monstrous. when he had come so far with her, to let him see
nothing; "And you are a fool, you don't know what you missed in
the other room."--"Why, what?"--"Why, my Lord Holland'S(179)
picture."--"Well! what is my Lord Holland to me?"--"Why, do you
know," said he, ,that my Lord Holland's body lies in the same
vault in Kensington church with my Lord Abergavenny's mother?"
Lord! she 'was so obliged, and thanked him a thousand times.

The Duke of Richmond is dead, vastly lamented: the Duchess is
left in great circumstances. Lord Albemarle, Lord Lincoln, the
Duke of Marlborough, Duke of Leeds, and the Duke of Rutland,
are talked of for master of the horse. The first is likeliest
to succeed; the Pelhams wish most to have the last: you know he
is Lady Catherine's brother, and at present attached to the
Prince. His son Lord Granby's match, which is at last to be
finished to-morrow, has been a mighty topic of conversation
lately. The bride is one of the great heiresses of old proud
Somerset. Lord Winchilsea, who is her uncle, and who has married
the other sister very loosely to his own
relation, Lord Guernsey, has tied up Lord Granby so rigorously
that the Duke of Rutland has endeavoured to break the match.
She has four thousand pounds a year: he is said to have the
same in present, but not to touch hers. He is in debt ten
thousand pounds. She was to give him ten, which now Lord
Winchilsea refuses. Upon the strength of her fortune, Lord
Granby proposed to treat her with presents of twelve thousand
pounds; but desired her to buy them. She, who never saw nor
knew the value of ten shillings while her father lived, and has
had no time to learn it, bespoke away so roundly, that for one
article of the plate she ordered ten sauceboats: besides this,
she and her sister have squandered seven thousand pounds apiece
in all kind of baubles and frippery; so her four thousand
pounds a-year is to be set apart for two years to pay her
debts. Don't you like this English management? two of the
greatest fortunes meeting and setting out with poverty and
want! Sir Thomas Bootle, the Prince's chancellor, who is one
of the guardians, wanted to have her tradesmen's bills taxed;
but in the mean time he has wanted to marry her Duchess-mother:
his love-letter has been copied and dispersed every where. To
give you a sufficient instance of his absurdity, the first time
he went with the Prince of Wales to Cliefden, he made a
nightgown, cap, and slippers of gold brocade, in which he came
down to breakfast the next morning.

My friend M'Lean is still the fashion: have not I reason to
call him my friend? He says, if the pistol had shot me, he had
another for himself. Can I do less than say I will be hanged
if he is? They have made a print, a very dull one, of what I
think I said to Lady Caroline Petersham about him,

,Thus I stand like the Turk with his doxies around!"

You have seen in the papers a Hanoverian duel, but may be you
don't know that it was an affair of jealousy. Swiegel, the
slain, was here two years ago, and paid his court so
Assiduously to the Countess(180) that it was intimated to him
to return; and the summer we went thither afterwards, he was
advised to stay at his villa. Since that, he has grown more
discreet and a favourite. Freychappel came hither lately, was
proclaimed a beauty by the monarch, and to return the
compliment, made a tender of all his charms where Swiegel had.
the latter recollected his own passion Jostled Freychappel,
fought, and was killed. I am glad he never heard what poor
Gibberne was intended for.

They have put in the papers a good story made on White's: a
man dropped down dead at the door, was carried in: the club
immediately made bets whether he was dead or not, and when they
were going to bleed him, the wagerers for his death interposed,
and said it would affect the fairness of the bet.

Mr. Whithed has been so unlucky as to have a large part of his
seat,(181) which he had just repaired, burnt down: it is a
great disappointment to me, too, who was going thither
Gothicizing. I want an act of parliament to make
master-builders liable to pay for any damage occasioned by fire
before their workmen have quitted it. Adieu! This I call a
very gossiping letter; I wish you don't call it worse.

(172) Joseph Damer, afterwards created Lord Milton in Ireland,
married Lady Caroline Sackville, daughter of Lionel, Duke of
Dorset.

(173) Thomas Pelham, of Stanmer; a young gentleman who
travelled with Mr. Milbank.

(174) The highest part of the Apennine between Florence and
Bologna.

(175) Mrs. Temple, widow of Lord Palmerston's son: she was
afterwards married to Lord Abergavenny.

(176) Frances, second daughter of Henry Pelham, chancellor of
the exchequer. Mr. Thomas Pelham married Miss Frankland.

(177) The two Craggs, father and son, were successively members
of the administration during the reign of George the First, in
the post of secretary of state. The father died in 1718, and
the son in 1720; and Pope consecrated a beautiful epitaph to
the memory of the latter. They are both supposed to have been
deeply implicated in the iniquities of the South Sea bubble.-D.

(178) This was the celebrated collection of portraits,
principally by Vandyck, which Lord Dartmouth, in his notes on
Burnet, distinctly accuses the Lord Chancellor Clarendon of
having obtained by rapacious and corrupt means; that is, as
bribes from the "old rebels," who had plundered them from the
houses of the royalists, and who, at the Restoration, found it
necessary to make fair weather with the ruling powers. The
extensive and miscellaneous nature of the collection (now
divided between Bothwell Castle, in Scotland, and The Grove, in
Hertfordshire) very strongly confirms this accusation. An
additional confirmation is to be found in a letter of Walpole,
addressed to Richard Bentley, Esq. and dated Sept. 1753, in
which he says, "At Burford I saw the house of Mr. Lenthal, the
descendant of the Speaker. The front is good; and a chapel,
connected by two or three arches, which let the garden appear
through, has a pretty effect; but the inside of the mansion is
bad, and ill-furnished. Except a famous picture of Sir Thomas
More's family, the portraits are rubbish, though celebrated. I
am told that the Speaker, who really had a fine collection,
made his peace by presenting them to Cornbury, where they were
well known, till the Duke of Marlborough bought that seat."-D.

(179) Henry Rich, Earl of Holland, the favourite of Queen
Henrietta Maria.-D.

180) Lady Yarmouth.

(181) Southwick, in Hampshire.

80 Letter 29
To George Montagu, Esq.
Strawberry Hill, Sept. 10, 1750.

You must not pretend to be concerned at having missed one here,
when I had repeatedly begged you, to let me know what day you
would call; and even after you had learnt that I was to come
the next day, you paraded by my house with all your matrimonial
streamers flying, without even saluting the future castle. To
punish this slight, I shall accept your offer of a visit on the
return of your progress; I shall be here, and Mrs. leneve will
not.

I feel for the poor Handasyde.(182) If I wanted examples for
to deter one from making all the world happy, from obliging,
from being always in good-humour and spirits, she should be my
memento. You find long wise faces every day, that tell you
riches cannot make one happy. No, can't they? What pleasantry
is that poor woman fallen from! and what a joyous feel must
Vanneck(183) have expired in, Who could call and think the two
Schutzes his friends, and leave five hundred pounds apiece to
their friendship-. nay, riches made him so happy, that, in the
overflowing of his satisfaction, he has bequeathed a hundred
pounds apiece to eighteen fellows, whom he calls his good
friends, that favoured him with their company on Fridays. He
took it mighty kind that Captain James de Normandie, and twenty
such names, that came out of the Minories, would constrain
themselves to live upon him once a week.

I should like to visit the castles and groves of your old Welsh
ancestors with you: by the draughts I have seen, I have always
imagined that Wales preserved the greatest remains of ancient
days, and have often wished to visit Picton Castle, the seat of
my Philipps-progenitors.

Make my best compliments to your sisters, and with their leave
make haste to this side of the world; you will be extremely
welcome hither as soon and for as long as you like; I can
promise you nothing very agreeable, but that I will try to get
our favourite Mr. Bentley to meet you. Adieu!

(182) The widow of Brigadier-General Handasyde.-E.

(183) The legacies bequeathed by Gerard Vanneck amounted
altogether to more than a hundred thousand pounds. The residue
of his property he left to his brother, Joshua Vanneck,
ancestor of Lord Huntingfield.-E.

81 Letter 30
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, September 20, 1750.

I only write you a line to answer some of your questions, and
to tell you that I can't answer others.

I have inquired much about Dr. Mead, but can't tell you any
thing determinately: his family positively deny the foundation
of the reports, but every body does 'not believe their
evidence. Your brother is positive that there is much of truth
in his being undone, and even that there will be a sale of his
collection(184) when the town comes to town. I wish for Dr.
Cocchi's sake it be false. I have given your brother
Middleton's last piece to send you. Another fellow of
Eton(185) has popped out a sermon against the Doctor since his
death, with a note to one of the pages, that is the true
sublime of ecclesiastic absurdity. He is speaking against the
custom of dividing the Bible into chapters and verses, and says
it often encumbers the sense. This note, though long, I must
transcribe, for it would wrong the author to paraphrase his
nonsense:--"It is to be wished, therefore, I think, that a fair
edition were set forth of the original Scriptures, for the use
of learned men in their closets, in which there should be no
notice, either in text or margin, of chapter, or verse, or
paragraph, or any such arbitrary distinctions, (now mind,) and
I might go so far as to say even any pointing or stops. It
could not but be matter of much satisfaction, and much use, to
have it in our power to recur occasionally to such an edition,
where the understanding might have full range, free from any
external influence from the eye, and the continual danger of
being either confined or misguided by it." Well, Dr. Cocchi,
do English divines yield to the Romish for refinements in
absurdity! did one ever hear of a better way (if making sense
of any writing than by reading it without stops! Most of the
parsons that read the first and second lessons practise Mr.
Cooke's method of making them intelligible, for they seldom
observe any stops. George Selwyn proposes to send the man his
own sermon, and desire him to scratch out the stops, in order
to help it to some sense.

For the questions in Florentine politics, and who are to be
your governors, I am totally ignorant, you must ask Sir Charles
Williams; he is the present ruling star of our negotiations.
His letters are as much admired as ever his verses were. He
has met the ministers of the two angry empresses, and pacified
Russian savageness and Austrian haughtiness. He is to teach
the monarch of Prussia to fetch and carry, .@;, unless they
happen to treat in iambics, or begin to settle the limits of'
Parnassus instead of' those of Silesia. As he is so good a
pacifier, I don't know but we may want his assistance at home
before the end of the winter: