Books: The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2

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Poor Lord Lempster has just killed an officer(298) in a duel,
about a play-debt, and I fear was in the wrong. There is no
end of his misfortunes and wrong-headedness!--Where is Mr.
Conway!--Adieu!

(294) Mr. Mann's father was just dead.

(295) George-William, sixth Earl of Coventry. He died in 1809,
at the age of eighty-seven.-E.

(296) James, fourth Duke of Hamilton. He died in 1758.-D.

(297) On the 14th of February.-E.

(298) Captain Gray of the Guards. The duel was fought, with
swords, in Marylebone Fields. lord Lempster took his trial at
the Old Bailey in April, and was found guilty of manslaughter.-E.

124 Letter 55
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, March 23, 1752.

Mr. Conway has been arrived this fortnight, or a week sooner
than we expected him: but my Lady Ailesbury forgives it! He is
full of your praises, so you have not sowed your goodness in
unthankful ground. By a letter I have just received from you
he finds you have missed some from him with Commissions; but he
will tell you about them himself I find him much leaner, and
great cracks in his beauty. Your picture is arrived, which he
says is extremely like you. Mr. Chute cannot bear it; says it
wants your countenance and goodness; that it looks bonny and
Irish. I am between both, and should know it; to be sure,
there is none of your wet-brown-paperness in it, but it has a
look with which I have known you come out of your little room,
when Richcourt has raised your ministerial French, and
you have writ to England about it till you were half fuddled.
Au reste, it is gloriously coloured--will Astley promise to
continue to do as well? or has he, like all other English
painters, only laboured this to get reputation, and then
intends to daub away to get money?

The year has not kept the promise of tranquillity that it made
you at Christmas; there has been another parliamentary bustle.
The Duke of Argyll(299) has drawn the ministry into
accommodating him with a notable job, under the notion of
buying for the King from the mortgagees the forfeited estates
in Scotland, which are to be colonized and civilized. It
passed with some inconsiderable hitches through the Commons;
but in the Lords last week the Duke of Bedford took it up
warmly, and spoke like another Pitt.(300) He attacked the Duke
of Argyll on favouring Jacobites, and produced some flagrant
instances, which the Scotch Duke neither answered nor
endeavoured to excuse, but made a strange, hurt, mysterious,
contemptuous, incoherent speech, neither in defence of the bill
nor in reply to the Duke of Bedford, but to my Lord Bath, who
had fallen upon the ministry for assuming a dispensing power,
in suffering Scotland to pay no taxes for the last five years.
This speech, which formerly would have made the House of
Commons take up arms, was strangely flat and unanimated, for
want of his old chorus. Twelve lords divided against eighty
that were for the bill. The Duke, who was present, would not
vote; none of his people had attended the bill in the other
House, and General Mordaunt (by his orders, as it is imagined)
spoke against it. This concludes the session: the King goes to
Hanover on Tuesday, he has been scattering ribands of all
colours, blue ones on Prince Edward, the young Stadtholder, and
the Earls of Lincoln, Winchilsea, and Cardigan;(301) a green
one on Lord Dumfries;(302) a red on Lord Onslow.(303)

The world is still mad about the Gunnings; the Duchess of
Hamilton was presented on Friday; the crowd was so great, that
even the noble mob in the drawing-room clambered upon chairs
and tables to look at her. There are mobs at their doors to
see them get into their chairs; and people go early to get
places at the theatres when it is known they will be there.
Dr. Sacheverel never made more noise than these two beauties.

There are two wretched women that just now are as much talked
of, a Miss Jefferies and a Miss Blandy; the one condemned for
murdering her uncle, the other her father. Both their stories
have horrid circumstances; the first, having been debauched by
her uncle; the other had so tender a parent, that his whole
concern while he was expiring, and knew her for his murderess,
was to save her life. It is shocking to think what a shambles
this country is grown! Seventeen were executed this morning,
after having murdered the turnkey on Friday night, and almost
forced open Newgate. One is forced to travel, even at noon, as
if one was going to battle.

Mr. Chute is as much yours as ever, except in the article of
pen and ink. Your brother transacts all he can for the Lucchi,
as he has much more weight there(304) than Mr. Chute. Adieu!

(299) Archibald Campbell, Duke of argyll, formerly Earl of
Isla.

(300) For Lord Hardwicke's notes of this speech, see Parl.
Hist. vol. xiv. P. 1235.-E.

(301) George Brudenell, fourth Earl of cardigan, created Duke
of Montagu in 1776; died in 1790.-D.

(302) William Crichton Dalrymple, fourth Earl of Dumfries in
Scotland, in right of his mother. He also became, in 1760,
fourth Earl of stair, and died in 1768.-D.

(303) George, third Lord Onslow; died in 1776.-D.

(304) With the late Mr. Whithed's brothers, who scrupled paying
a small legacy and annuity to his mistress and child.

126 Letter 56
To The Hon. H. S. Conway.(305)
Arlington Street, May 5, 1752.

I now entirely credit all that my Lord Leicester and his family
have said against Lady Mary Coke and her family; and am
convinced that it is impossible to marry any thing of the blood
of Campbell, without having all her relations in arms to
procure a separation immediately. Pray, what have I done? have
I come home drunk to my wife within these four first days? or
have I sat up gaming all night, and not come home at all to
her, after her lady-mother had been persuaded that I was the
soberest young nobleman in England, and had the greatest
aversion to play'! Have I kept my bride awake all night with
railing at her father, when all the world had allowed him to be
one of the bravest officers in Europe? In short, in short, I
have a mind to take COUNSEL, even of the wisest lawyer now
living in matrimonial cases, my Lord Coke * * * If, like other
Norfolk husbands, I must entertain the town with a formal
parting, at least it shall be in my own way: my wife shall
neither 'run to Italy after lovers and books,(306) nor keep a
dormitory in her dressing-room at Whitehall for Westminster
schoolboys, your Frederick Campbells, and such like. (307) nor
'yet shall she reside at her mother's house, but shall
absolutely set out for Strawberry Hill in two or three days, as
soon as her room can be well aired; for, to give her her due, I
don't think her to blame, but flatter myself she is quite
contented with the easy footing we live upon; separate beds,
dining in her dressing-room when she is out of humour, and a
little toad-eater that I had got for her, and whose pockets and
bosom I have never examined, to see if' she brought any
billets-doux from Tommy Lyttelton or any of her fellows. I
shall follow her myself in less than a fortnight; and if her
family don't give me any more trouble,-why, who knows but at
your return you may find your daughter with qualms and in a
sack? If you should happen to want to know any more
particulars, she is quite well, has walked in the park every
morning, or has the chariot, as she chooses; and, in short, one
would think that I or she were much older than we really are, for
I grow excessively fond of her.(308)

(305) Now first published.

(306) Alluding to the wife of his eldest brother, Lord Walpole,
Margaret Rolle, who had separated Herself from her husband, and
resided in Italy.--E.

(307) Lady Townshend.-E.

(308) All this letter refers to Ann Seymour Conway, then three
years old, who had been left with her nurse at Mr. Walpole's,
during an absence of her father and mother in Ireland.-E.

127 Letter 57
To George Montagu, Esq.
Arlington Street, May 12, 1752.

You deserve no charity, for you never write but to ask it.
When you are tired of yourself and the country, you think over
all London, and consider who will be proper to send you an
account of it. Take notice, I won't be your gazetteer; nor is
my time come for being a dowager, a maker of news, a
day-labourer in scandal. If you care for nobody but for what
they can tell you, you must provide yourself elsewhere. The
town is empty, nothing in it but flabby mackerel, and wooden
gooseberry tarts, and a hazy east wind. My sister is gone to
Paris; I go to Strawberry Hill in three days for the summer, if
summer there will ever be any.

If you want news you must send to Ireland, where there is
almost a civil war, between the Lord Lieutenant and Primate on
one side (observe, I don't tell you what that side is), and the
Speaker on the other, who carries questions by wholesale in the
House of Commons against the Castle; and the teterrima belli
causa is not the common one.

Reams of scandalous verses and ballads are come over, too bad
to send you, if I had them, but I really have not. What is
more provoking for the Duke of Dorset, an address is come over
directly to the King (not as usual through the channel of the
Lord Lieutenant), to assure him of their great loyalty, and
apprehensions of being misrepresented. This is all I know, and
you see, most imperfectly.

I was t'other night to see what is now grown the fashion,
Mother Midnight's Oratory.(309) It appeared the lowest
buffoonery in the world even to me, who am used to my uncle
Horace. There is a bad oration to ridicule, what it is too
like, Orator Henley; all the rest is perverted music: there is
a man who plays so nimbly on the kettle-drum, that he has
reduced that noisy instrument to an object of sight; for, if
you don't see the tricks with his hands, it is no better than
ordinary: another plays on a violin and trumpet together:
another mimics a bagpipe with a German flute, and makes it full
as disagreeable. There is an admired dulcimer, a favourite
salt-box, and a really curious jew's-harp. Two or three men
intend to persuade you that they play on a broomstick, which is
drolly brought in, carefully shrouded in a case, so as to be
mistaken for a bassoon or bass-viol; but they succeed in nothing
but the action. The last fellow imitates * * * * * curtseying to
a French horn. There are twenty medley overtures, and a man who
speaks a prologue and an epilogue, in which he counterfeits all
the actors and singers upon earth: in short, I have long been
convinced, that what I used to imagine the most difficult thing
in the world, mimicry, is the easiest; for one has seen for
these two or three years, at Foote's and the other theatres,
that when they lost one mimic, they called ,Odd man!" and
another came and succeeded just as well.

Adieu! I have told you much more than I intended, and much more
than I could conceive I had to say, except how does Miss
Montagu?

P. S. Did you hear Captain Hotham's bon-mot on Sir Thomas
Robinson's making an assembly from the top of his house to the
bottom? He said, he wondered so many people would go to Sir
Thomas's, as he treated them all de haut en bas.

(309) "Among other diversions and amusements which increase
upon us, the town," says the Gentleman's Magazine for January
1752, "has been lately entertained with a kind of farcical
performance, called 'The Old Woman's Oratory,' conducted by
Mrs. Mary Midnight and her family, intended as a banter on
Henley's Oratory, and a puff for the Old Woman's Magazine."-E.

128 Letter 58
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, May 13, 1752.

By this time you know my way, how much my letters grow out of
season, as it grows summer. I believe it is six weeks since I
wrote to you last; but there is not only the usual deadness of
summer to account for my silence; England itself is no longer
England. News, madness, parties, whims, and twenty other
causes, that used to produce perpetual events are at an end;
Florence itself is not more inactive. Politics,

"Like arts and sciences are travelled west."

They are cot into Ireland, where there is as much bustle to
carry a question in the House of Commons, as ever it was here
in any year forty-one. Not that there is any opposition to the
King's measures; out of three hundred members, there has never
yet been a division of above twenty-eight against the
government: they are much the most zealous subjects the king
has. The Duke of Dorset has had the art to make them
distinguish between loyalty and aversion to the Lord
Lieutenant.

I last night received yours of May 5th; but I cannot deliver
your expressions to Mr. Conway, for he and Lady Ailesbury are
gone to his regiment in Ireland for four months, which is a
little rigorous, not only after an exile in Minorca, but more
especially unpleasant now as they have just bought one of the
most charming 'places in England, Park-place, which belonged to
Lady Archibald Hamilton, and then to the Prince. You have seen
enough of Mr. Conway to judge how patiently he submits to his
duty. Their little girl is left with me.

The Gunnings are gone to their several castles, and one hears
no more of them, except that such crowds flock to see the
Duchess Hamilton pass, that seven hundred people sat up all
night in and about an inn in Yorkshire to see her get into her
postchaise next morning.

I saw lately at Mr. Barret's a print of Valombrosa, which I
should be glad to have, if you please; though I don't think it
gives much idea of the beauty of the place: but you know what a
passion there is for it in England, as Milton has mentioned it.

Miss Blandy died with a coolness of courage that is
astonishing, and denying the fact,(310) which has made a kind
of party in her favour as if a woman who would not stick at
parricide, would scruple a lie!

We have made a law for immediate execution on conviction of
murder: it will appear extraordinary to me if it has any
effect;(311) for I can't help believing that the terrible part
of death must be the preparation for it.

(310) Miss Blandy was executed at Oxford, on the 6th of April,
"I am perfectly innocent," she exclaimed, "of any intention to
destroy or even hurt my dear father; so help me God in these my
last moments!"-E.

(311) Smollett, on the contrary, was of opinion that the
expedient had been productive of very good effects.-E.

129 Letter 59
To George Montagu, Esq.
Strawberry Hill, June 6, 1752.

I have just been in London for two or three days, to fetch an
adventure, and am returned to my hill and castle. I can't say
I lost my labour, as you shall hear. Last Sunday night, being
as wet a night as you shall see in a summer's day, about half
an hour after twelve, I was just come home from White's, and
undressing to step into bed, I heard Harry, who you know lies
forwards, roar out, "Stop thief!" and run down stairs. I ran
after him. Don't be frightened; I have not lost one enamel,
nor bronze, nor have been shot through the head again. A
gentlewoman, who lives at Governor Pitt's,(312) next door but
one to me, and where Mr. Bentley used to live, was going to bed
too, and heard people breaking into Mr. Freeman's house, who,
like some acquaintance of mine in Albemarle-street, goes out of
town, locks up his doors, and leaves the community to watch his
furniture. N. B. It was broken open but two years ago, and all
the chairmen vow they shall steal his house away another time,
before we shall trouble our heads about it. Well, madam called
out "watch;" two men who were centinels, ran away, and Harry's
voice after them. Down came I, and with a posse of chairmen
and watchmen found the third fellow in the area of Mr. Freeman's
house. Mayhap you have seen all this in the papers, little
thinking who commanded the detachment. Harry fetched a
blunderbuss to invite the thief up. One of the chairmen, who
was drunk, cried, "Give me the blunderbuss, I'll shoot him!"
But as the general's head was a little cooler, he prevented
military execution, and took the prisoner without bloodshed,
intending to make his triumphal entry into the metropolis of
Twickenham with his captive tied to the wheels of his
postchaise. I find my style rises so much with the
recollection of my victory, that I don't know how to descend to
tell you that the enemy was a carpenter, and had a leather
apron on. The next step was to share my glory with my friends.
I despatched a courier to White's for George Selwyn, who you
know, loves nothing upon earth so well as a criminal, except
the execution of him. It happened very luckily, that the
drawer, who received my message, has very lately been robbed
himself, and had the wound fresh in his memory. He stalked up
into the club-room, stopped short, and with a hollow trembling
voice said, "Mr. Selwyn! Mr. Walpole's compliments to you, and
he has got a house-breaker for you!" A squadron immediately
came to reinforce me, and having summoned Moreland with the
keys of the fortress, we marched into the house to search for
more of the gang. Colonel Seabright with his sword drawn went
first, and then I, exactly the figure of Robinson Crusoe, with
a candle and lanthorn in my hand, a carbine upon my shoulder,
my hair wet and about my ears, and in a linen night-gown and
slippers. We found the kitchen shutters forced but not
finished; and in the area a tremendous bag of tools, a hammer
large enough for the hand of a Joel, and six chisels! All which
opima spolia, as there was no temple of Jupiter Capitolinus in
the neighbourhood, I was reduced to offer on the altar of Sir
Thomas Clarges.

am now, as I told you, returned to my plough with as much
humility and pride as any of my great predecessors. We lead
quite a rural life, have had a sheep-shearing, a hay-making, a
syllabub under the cow, and a fishing of three gold fish out of
Poyang,(313) for a present to Madam Clive. They breed with me
excessively, and are grown to the size of small perch. Every
thing grows, if tempests would let it; but I have had two of my
largest trees broke to-day with the wind, and another last
week. I am much obliged to you for the flower you offer me,
but by the description it is an Austrian rose, and I have
several now in bloom. Mr. Bentley is with me, finishing the
drawings for Gray's Odes; there are some mandarin-cats fishing
for gold fish, which will delight you; au reste, he is just
where he was: he has heard something about a journey to
Haughton, to the great Cu(314) of Hauculeo, but it don't seem
fixed, unless he hears farther. Did he tell you the Prices and
your aunt Cosby had dined here from Hampton Court? The
mignonette beauty looks mighty well in his grandmother's
jointure. The Memoires of last year are quite finished, but I
shall add some pages of notes, that will not want anecdotes.
Discontents, of the nature of those about Windsor-park, are
spreading about Richmond. Lord Brooke, who has taken the late
Duchess of Rutland's at Petersham, asked for a key; the answer
was, (mind it, for it was tolerably mortifying to an Earl,) "that
the Princess had already refused one to my Lord Chancellor."

By the way, you know that reverend head of the law is
frequently shut up here with my Lady M * * * * h, who is as
rich and as tipsy as Cacafogo in the comedy. What a jumble of
avarice, lewdness, dignity,--and claret!

You will be pleased with a story of Lord Bury, that is come
from Scotland: he is quartered at Inverness: the magistrates
invited him to an entertainment with fire-works, which they
intended to give on the morrow for the Duke's birthday. He
thanked them, assured them he would represent their zeal to his
Royal Highness; but he did not doubt but it would be more
agreeable to him, if they postponed it to the day following,
the anniversary of the battle of Culloden. They stared, said
they could not promise on their own authority, but would go and
consult their body. They returned, told him it was
unprecedented, and could not be complied with. Lord Bury
replied, he was sorry they had not given a negative at once,
for he had mentioned it to his soldiers, who would not bear a
disappointment, and was afraid it would provoke them to some
outrage upon the town. This did;-they celebrated Culloden.
Adieu!

(312) George Morton Pitt, Esq, Member for Pontefract.-E.

(313) Mr. Walpole called his gold-fish pond, Poyang.

(314) The Earl of Halifax.

131 Letter 60
To George Montagu, Esq.
Twickenham, Thursday.

Dear George,
Since you give me leave to speak the truth, I must own it is
not quite agreeable to me to undertake the commission you give
me; nor do I say this to assume any merit in having obeyed you,
but to prepare you against my solicitation miscarrying, for I
cannot flatter myself with having so much interest with Mr. Fox
as you think. However, I have wrote to him as pressingly as I
could, and wish most heartily it may have any effect. Your
brother I imagine will call upon him again; and Mr.' Fox will
naturally tell him whether he can do it or not at my request.

I should have been very glad of your company, if it had been
convenient. You would have found me an absolute country
gentleman: I am in the garden, planting as long as it is light,
and shall not have finished, to be in London, before the middle
of next week.

My compliments to your sisters and to the Colonel; and what so
poor a man as Hamlet is, may do to express his love and
friending to him, God willing, shall not lack. Adieu!

132 Letter 61
The Hon. H. S. Conway.(315)
Strawberry Hill, June 23, 1752.

By a letter that I received from my Lady Ailesbury two days
ago, I flatter myself I shall not have occasion to write to you
any more; yet I shall certainly see you with less pleasure than
ever, as our meeting is to be attended with a resignation of my
little charge.(316) She is vastly well, and I think you will
find her grown fat. I am husband enough to mind her beauty no
longer, and perhaps you will say husband enough too, in
pretending that my love is converted into friendship; but I
shall tell you some stories at Park-place of her understanding
that will please you, I trust, as much as they have done me.

My Lady Ailesbury says I must send her news, and the whole
history of Mr. Seymour and Lady Di. Egerton, and their quarrel,
and all that is said on both sides. I can easily tell her all
that is said on one side, Mr. Seymour's, who says, the only
answer he has ever been able to get from the Duchess or Mr.
Lyttelton was, that Di. has her caprices. The reasons she
gives, and gave him, were, the badness of his temper and
imperiousness of his letters; that he scolded her for the
overfondness of her epistles, and was even so unsentimental as
to talk of desiring to make her happy, instead of being made so
by her. He is gone abroad, in despair, and with an additional
circumstance, which would be very uncomfortable to any thing
but a true lover; his father refuses to resettle the estate on
him, the entail of which was cut off by mutual consent, to make
way for the settlements on the marriage.

The Speaker told me t'other day, that he had received a letter
from Lord Hyde, which confirms what Mr. Churchill writes me,
the distress and poverty of France and the greatness of their
divisions. Yet the King's expenses are incredible; Madame de
Pompadour is continually busied in finding out new journeys and
diversions to keep him from falling into the hands of the
clergy. The last party of pleasure she made for him, was a
stag-hunting; the stag was a man in a skin and horns, worried
by twelve men dressed like bloodhounds! I have read of
Basilowitz, a Czar of Muscovy, who improved on such a hunt, and
had a man in a bearskin worried by real dogs; a more kingly
entertainment!

I shall make out a sad Journal of other news; yet I will be
like any gazette, and scrape together all the births, deaths,
and marriages in the parish. Lady Hartington and Lady Rachel
Walpole are brought to bed of sons; Lord Burlington and Lord
Gower have had new attacks of palsies: Lord Falkland is to
marry the Southwark Lady Suffolk;(317) and Mr. Watson, Miss
Grace Pelham. Lady Coventry has miscarried of one or two
children, and is going on with one or two more, and is gone to
France to-day. Lady Townshend and Lady Caroline Petersham have
had their anniversary quarrel, and the Duchess of Devonshire has
had her secular assembly, which she keeps once in fifty years:
she was more delightfully vulgar at it than you can imagine;
complained of the wet night, and how the men would dirty the
rooms with their shoes; called out at supper to the Duke, "Good
God! my lord, don't cut the ham, nobody will eat any!" and
relating her private m`enage to Mr. Obnir, she said, "When
there's only my lord and I, besides a pudding we have always a
dish of Yeast!" I am ashamed to send you such nonsense, or to
tell you how the good women at Hampton Court are scandalized at
Princess Emily's coming to chapel last Sunday in riding-clothes
with a dog under her arm; but I am bid to send news: what can we
do -,it such a dead time of year? I must conclude, as my Lady
Gower did very well t'other day in a letter into the country,
"Since the two Misses(318) were hanged, and the two Misses(319)
were married, there is nothing at all talked of." Adieu! My best
compliments and my wife's to your two ladies.