Books: The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2

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(315) Now first published.

(316) Their daughter, Ann Seymour Conway.

(317) Sarah, Duchess-dowager of Suffolk, daughter of Thomas
Unwen, Esq. of Southwark.-E.

(318) Miss Blandy and Miss Jefferies.

(319) The Gunnings.

133 Letter 62
To George Montagu, Esq.
Strawberry Hill, July 20, 1752.

You have threatened me with a messenger from the secretary's
office to seize my papers; who would ever have taken you for a
prophet? If Goody Compton
,(320) your colleague, had taken upon her to foretell, there
was enough of the witch and prophetess in her person and
mysteriousness to have made a superstitious person believe she
might be a cousin of Nostradamus, and heiress of some of her
visions; but how came you by second sight? Which of the Cues
matched in the Highlands? In short, not to keep you in
suspense, for I believe you are so far inspired as to be
ignorant how your prophecy was to be accomplished, as we were
sitting at dinner t'other day, word was brought that one of the
King's messengers was at the door. Every drop of ink in my pen
ran cold; Algernon Sidney danced before my eyes, and methought
I heard my Lord Chief-Justice Lee, in a voice as dreadful as
Jefferies', mumble out, Scribere est agere. How comfortable it
was to find that Mr. Amyand, who was at table, had ordered this
appanage of his dignity to attend him here for orders!
However, I have buried the Memoires under the oak in my garden,
where they are to be found a thousand years hence, and taken
perhaps for a Runic history in rhyme. I have part of another
valuable MS. to dispose of, which I shall beg leave to commit
to your care, and desire it may be concealed behind the wainscot
in Mr. Bentley's Gothic house, whenever you build it. As the
great person is living to whom it belonged, it would be highly
dangerous to make it public; as soon as she is in disgrace, I
don't know whether it Will not be a good way of making court to
her successor, to communicate it to the world, as I propose
doing, under the following title: "The Treasury of Art and
Nature, or a Collection of inestimable Receipts, stolen out of
the Cabinet of Madame de Pompadour, and now first published for
the use of his fair Countrywomen, by a true born Englishman and
philomystic." * * * * * * * * * * * * *

So the pretty Miss Bishop,(321) instead of being my niece, is
to be Mrs. Bob Brudenel. What foolish birds are turtles when
they have scarce a hole to roost in! Adieu!

(320) The Hun. George Compton. son of Lord Northampton, Mr.
Montagu's colleague for Northampton.-E.

(321) Daughter of Sir Cecil Bishop.

134 Letter 63
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, July 27, 1752.

What will you say to me after a silence of two months? I should
be ashamed, if I were answerable for the whole world, who will
do nothing worth repeating. Newspapers have horse-races, and
can invent casualties, but I can't have the confidence to stuff
a letter with either. The only casualty that is of dignity
enough to send you, is a great fire at Lincoln's Inn, which is
likely to afford new work for the lawyers, in consequence of
the number of deeds and writings it has consumed. The Duke of
Kingston has lost many of his: he is unlucky with fires:
Thoresby, his seat, was burnt a few years ago, and in it a
whole room of valuable letters and manuscripts. There has been
a Very considerable loss of that kind at this fire: Mr. Yorke,
the Chancellor's son, had a great collection of Lord Somers's
papers, many relating to the assassination plot; and by which,
I am told, it appeared that the Duke of Marlborough was deep in
the schemes of St. Germain's.

There are great civil wars in the neighbourhood of Strawberry
Hill: Princess Emily, who succeeded my brother in the
rangership of Richmond Park, has imitated her brother William's
unpopularity, and disobliged the whole country, by refusal of
tickets and liberties, that had always been allowed. They are
at law with her, and have printed in the Evening Post a strong
Memorial, which she had refused to receive-.(322) The High
Sheriff of Surrey, to whom she had denied a ticket, but on
better thought had sent one, refused it, and said he had taken
his part. Lord Brooke(323) who had applied for one, was told
he could not have one-and to add to the affront@, it was
signified. that the Princess had refused one to my Lord
Chancellor--your old nobility don't understand such comparisons!
But the most remarkable event happened to her about three weeks
ago. One Mr. Bird, a rich gentleman near the park, was applied
to by the late Queen for a piece of ground that lay convenient
for a walk she was making: he replied, it was not proper for him
to pretend to make a Queen a present; but if she would do what
she pleased with the ground, he would be content with the
acknowledgment of a key and two bucks a-year. This was
religiously observed till the era of her Royal Highness's
reign; the bucks were denied, and he himself once shut out, on
pretence it was fence-month (the breeding-time, when tickets
used to be excluded, keys never.) The Princess soon after was
going through his grounds to town; she found a padlock on his
gate; she ordered it to be broke open: Mr. Shaw, her deputy,
begged a respite, till he could go for the key. He found Mr.
Bird at home--"Lord, Sir! here is a strange mistake; the
Princess is at the gate, and it is padlocked!" "Mistake! no
mistake at all - I made the road: the ground is my own
property: her Royal Highness has thought fit to break the
agreement which her Royal Mother made with me: nobody goes
through my grounds but those I choose should. Translate this
to your Florentinese; try if you can make them conceive how
pleasant it is to treat blood royal thus!

There are dissensions of more consequence in the same
neighbourhood. The tutorhood at Kew is split into factions:
the Bishop of Norwich and Lord Harcourt openly at war with
Stone and Scott, who are supported by Cresset, and countenanced
by the Princess and Murray--so my Lord Bolinbroke dead, will
govern, which he never could living! It is believed that the
Bishop will be banished into the rich bishopric of Durham,
which is just vacant-how pleasant to be punished, after
teaching the boys a year, with as much as he could have got if
he had taught them twenty! Will they ever expect a peaceable
prelate, if untractableness is thus punished?

Your painter Astley is arrived: I have missed seeing him by
being constantly at Strawberry Hill, but I intend to serve him
to the utmost of my power, as you will easily believe, since he
has your recommendation.

Our beauties are travelling Paris-ward: Lady Caroline Petersham
and Lady Coventry are just gone thither. It will scarce be
possible for the latter to make as much noise there as she and
her sister have in England. It is literally true that a
shoemaker it Worcester got two guineas and a half by showing a
shoo that he was making for the Countess, at a penny a piece.
I can't say her genius is equal to her beauty: she every day
says some new sproposito. She has taken a turn of vast
fondness for her lord: Lord Downe met them at Calais, and
offered her a tent-bed, for fear of bugs in the inns. "Oh!"
said she, "I had rather be bit to death, than lie one night
from my dear Cov.!" I can conceive my Lady Caroline making a
good deal of noise even at Paris; her beauty is set off by a
genius for the extraordinary, and for strokes that will make a
figure in any country. Mr. Churchill and my sister are just
arrived from France; you know my passion for the writing of the
younger Cr`ebillon:(324) you
shall hear how I have been mortified by the discovery of the
greatest meanness in him; and you will judge how much one must
be humbled to have one's favourite author convicted of mere
mercenariness! I had desired lady Mary to lay out thirty
guineas for ne with Liotard, and wished, if I could, to have
the portraits of Cr`ebillon and Marivaux(325) for my cabinet.
Mr. Churchill wrote me word that Liotard's(326) price was
sixteen guineas; that Marivaux was intimate with him, and would
certainly sit, and that he believed he could get Cr`ebillon to
sit too. The latter, who is retired into the provinces with an
English wife,(327) was just then at Paris for a month: Mr.
Churchill went to him, told him that a gentleman in England,
who was making a collection of portraits of famous people,
would be happy to have his, etc. Cr`ebillon was humble,
"unworthy," obliged; and sat: the picture was just finished,
when, behold! he sent Mr. Churchill word, that he expected to
have a copy of the picture given him-neither more nor less than
asking sixteen guineas for sitting! Mr. Churchill answered
that he could not tell what he should do, were it his own case,
but that this was a limited commission, and he could not
possibly lay out double; and was now so near his return, that
he could not have time to write to England and receive an
answer. Cr`ebillon said, then he would keep the picture
himself-it was excessively like. I am still sentimental enough
to flatter myself, that a man who could beg sixteen gineas will
not give them, and so I may still have the picture.

I am going to trouble you with a commission, my dear Sir, that
will not subject me to any such humiliations. You may have
heard that I am always piddling about ornaments and
improvements for Strawberry Hill-I am now doing a great deal to
the house--stay, I don't want Genoa damask!(328) What I shall
trouble you to buy is for the garden: there is a small recess,
for which I should be glad to have an antique Roman sepulchral
altar, of the kind of the pedestal to my eagle; but as it will
stand out of doors, I should not desire to have it a fine one: a
moderate one, I imagine, might be picked up easily at Rome at a
moderate price: if you could order any body to buy such an one, I
should be much obliged to you.

We have had an article in our papers that the Empress-queen had
desired the King of France to let her have Mesdames de Craon
and de la Calmette, ladies of great piety and birth, to form an
academy for the young Archduchesses-is there any truth in this?
is the Princess to triumph thus at last over Richcourt? I
should be glad. What a comical genealogy in education! the
mistress and mother of twenty children to Duke Leopold, being
the pious tutoress to his grand-daughters! How the old Duchess
of Lorrain will shiver in her coffin at the thoughts of it? Who
is la Calmette? Adieu! my dear child! You see my spirit of
justice: when I have not writ to you for two months, I punish
you with a reparation of six pages!--had not I better write one
line every fortnight?

(322) The memorial will be found in the Gentleman's Magazine
for this year. In December the park was opened by the King's
order.-E.

(323) Francis Greville, Earl Brooke.

(324) Claude Prosper Jolyot de Cr`ebillon, son of the tragic
poet of that name, and author of many licentious novels, which
are now but little read. He was born in 1707, and died in
1777.-D. ["The taste for his writings," says the Edinburgh
Reviewers, " passed away very rapidly and completely in France;
and long before his death, the author of the Sopha, and Les
Egaremens du Coeur et de l'Esprit, had the mortification to be
utterly forgotten by the public." Vol. xxi. p. 284.]

(325) Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux, the author of
numerous plays and novels, some of which possess considerable
merit. The peculiar affectation of his style occasioned the
invention of the word marivaudage, to express the way of
writing of him and his imitators. He was born in 1688, and
died in 1763.-D.

(326) Walpole, in his Anecdotes of Painting, states Liotard to
have been an admirable miniature and enamel painter. At Rome
he was taken notice of by the Earl of Sandwich, and by Lord
Besborough, then Lord Duncannon. See Museum Florentinum, vol.
x.; where the name of the last mentioned nobleman is spelled
Milord D'un Canon.-E.

(327) She was a Miss Strafford. The perusal of Cr`ebillon's
works inspired her with such a passion for the author, that she
ran away from her friends, went to Paris, married him, and
nursed and attended him with exemplary tenderness and affection
to his dying day. In reference to this marriage, Lord Byron,
in his Observations on Bowles's Strictures upon Pope, makes the
following remark:--"For my own part, I am of the opinion of
Pausanias, that success in love depends upon fortune. Grimm
has an observation of the same kind, on the different destinies
of the younger Cr`ebillon and Rousseau. The former writes a
licentious novel, and a young English girl of some fortune runs
away, and crosses the sea to marry him; while Rousseau, the
most tender and passionate of lovers, is obliged to espouse his
chambermaid."-E.

(328) Lord Cholmondoley borrowed great sums of money of various
people, under the pretence of a quantity of Genoa damask being
arrived for him, and that his banker was out of town, and he
must pay for it immediately. Four persons comparing notes,
produced four letters from him in a coffeehouse, in the very
same words.

137 Letter 64
To Richard Bentley, Esq.(329)
Battel, Wednesday, August 5, 1752.

here we are, my dear Sir, in the middle of our pilgrimage; and
lest we should never return from this holy land of abbeys and
Gothic castles, I begin a letter to you. that I hope some
charitable monk, when he has buried our bones, will deliver to
you. We have had piteous distresses, but then we have seen
glorious sights! You shall hear of each in their order.

Monday, Wind S. E.--at least that was our direction--While they
were changing our horses at Bromley, we went to see the Bishop
of Rochester's palace; not for the sake of any thing there was
to be seen, but because there was a chimney, in which had stood
a flower-pot, in which was put the counterfeit plot against
Bishop Sprat. 'Tis a paltry parsonage, with nothing of
antiquity but two panes of glass, purloined from Islip's chapel
in Westminster Abbey, with that abbot's rebus, an eye and a
slip of a tree. In the garden there is a clear little pond,
teeming with gold fish. The Bishop is more prolific than I am.

>From Sevenoaks we went to Knowle. The park is sweet, with much
old beech, and an immense sycamore before the great gate,
that makes me more in love than ever with sycamores. The house
is not near so extensive as I expected:(330) the outward court
has a beautiful decent simplicity that charms one. The
apartments are many, but not large. The furniture throughout,
ancient magnificence; loads of portraits, not good nor curious;
ebony cabinets, embossed silver in vases, dishes, etc.
embroidered beds, stiff chairs, and sweet bags lying on velvet
tables, richly worked in silk and gold. There are two
galleries, one very small; an old hall, and a spacious great
drawing-room. There is never a good staircase. The first
little room you enter has sundry portraits of the times; but
they seem to have been bespoke by the yard, and drawn all by
the same painter; One should be happy if they were authentic;
for among them there is Dudley, Duke of Northumberland,
Gardiner of Winchester, the Earl of Surry, the poet, when a
boy, and a Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, but I don't know which.
The only fine picture is of Lord Goring and Endymion Porter by
Vandyke. There is a good head of the Queen of Bohemia, a
whole-length of Duc d'Espernon, and another good head of the
Clifford, Countess of Dorset, who wrote that admirable haughty
letter to Secretary Williamson, when he recommended a person to
her for member for Appleby: "I have been bullied by an usurper,
I have been neglected by a court, but I won't be dictated to by
a subject: your man shan't stand. Ann Dorset, Pembroke and
Montgomery." In the chapel is a piece of ancient tapestry:
Saint Luke in his first profession is holding an urinal. Below
stairs is a chamber of poets and players, which is proper
enough in that house; for the first Earl wrote a play,(331) and
the last Earl was a poet,(332) and I think married a
player(333) Major Mohun and Betterton are curious among the
latter, Cartwright and Flatman among the former. The arcade is
newly enclosed, painted in fresco, and with modern glass of all
the family matches. In the gallery is a whole-length of the
unfortunate Earl of Surry, with his device, a broken column,
and the motto Sat superest. My father had one of them, but
larger, and with more emblems, which the Duke of Norfolk bought
at my brother's sale. There is one good head of henry VIII.,
and divers of Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex, the citizen who
came to be lord treasurer, and was very near coming to be
hanged.(334) His Countess, a bouncing kind of lady-mayoress,
looks pure awkward amongst so much good company. A visto cut
through the wood has a delightful effect from the front: but
there are some trumpery fragments of gardens that spoil the view
from the state apartments.

We lay that night at Tunbridge town, and were surprised with
the ruins of the old castle. The gateway is perfect, and the
enclosure formed into a vineyard by a Mr. Hooker, to whom it
belongs, and the walls spread with fruit, and the mount on
which the keep stood, planted in the same way. The prospect is
charming, and a breach in the wall opens below to a pretty
Gothic bridge of three arches over the Medway. We honoured the
man for his taste-not but that we wished the committee at
Strawberry Hill were to sit upon it, and stick cypresses among
the hollows.--But, alas! he sometimes makes eighteen sour
hogsheads, and is going to disrobe 'the ivy-mantled tower,'
because it harbours birds!

Now begins our chapter of woes. The inn was full of farmers
and tobacco; and the next morning, when we were bound for
Penshurst, the only man in the town who had two horses would
not let us have them, because the roads, as he said, were so
bad. We were forced to send to the wells for others, which did
not arrive till half the day was spent-we all the while up to
the head and ears in a market of sheep and oxen. A mile from
the town we climbed up a hill to see Summer Hill,(335) the
residence of Grammont's Princess of Babylon.(336) There is now
scarce a road to it: the Paladins of those times were too
valorous to fear breaking their necks; and I much apprehend
that la Monsery and the fair Mademoiselle Hamilton,(337) must
have mounted their palfreys and rode behind their
gentlemen-ushers upon pillions to the Wells. The house is
little better than a farm, but has been an excellent one, and
is entire, though out of repair. I have drawn the front of it
to show you, which you are to draw over again to show me. It
stands high, commands a vast landscape beautifully wooded, and
has quantities of large old trees to shelter itself, some of
which might be well spared to open views.

>From Summer Hill we went to Lamberhurst to dine; near which,
that is, at the distance of three miles, up and down
impracticable hills, in a most retired vale, such as Pope
describes in the last Dunciad,

"Where slumber abbots, purple as their vines,"

We found the ruins of Bayham Abbey, which the Barrets and
Hardings bid us visit. There are small but pretty remains, and
a neat little Gothic house built near them by their nephew
Pratt. They have found a tomb of an abbot, with a crosier, at
length on the stone.

Here our woes increase. The roads row bad beyond all badness,
the night dark beyond all darkness, our guide frightened beyond
all frightfulness. However, without being at all killed, we
got UP, or down,--I forget which, it was so dark,--a famous
precipice called Silver Hill, and about ten at night arrived at
a wretched village called Rotherbridge. We had still six miles
hither, but determined to stop, as it would be a pity to break
our necks before we had seen all we intended. But alas! there
was only one bed to be had: all the rest were inhabited by
smugglers, whom the people of the house called mountebanks; and
with one of whom the lady of the den told Mr. Chute he might
lie. We did not at all take to this society, but, armed with
links and ]anthems, set out again upon this impracticable
journey. At two o'clock in the morning we got hither to a
still worse inn, and that crammed with excise officers, one of
whom had just shot a smuggler. However, as we were neutral
powers, we have passed safely through both armies hitherto, and
can give you a little farther history of our wandering through
these mountains, where the young gentlemen are forced to drive
their curricles with a pair of oxen. the only morsel of good
road we have found, was what even the natives had assured us
was totally impracticable: these were eight miles to Hurst
Monceaux.(338) It is seated at the end of a large vale, five
miles in a direct line to the sea, with wings of blue hills
covered with wood, one of which falls down to the in a sweep of
a hundred acres. The building, for the convenience of water to
the moat, sees nothing at all; indeed it is entirely imagined
on a plan of defence, with drawbridges actually in being, round
towers, watch-towers mounted on them, and battlements pierced
for the passage of arrows from long bows. It was built in the
time of Henry VI., and is as perfect as the first day. It does
not seem to have been ever quite finished, or at least that age
was not arrived at the luxury of white-wash; for almost all the
walls, except in the principal chambers, are in their native
brickhood. It is a square building, each side about two
hundred feet in length; a porch and cloister, very like Eton
College; and the -whole is much in the same taste, the kitchen
extremely so, with three vast funnels to the chimneys going up
on the inside. There are two or three little courts for
offices, but no magnificence of apartments. It is scarcely
furnished with a few necessary beds and chairs: one side has
been sashed, and a drawing-room and dining-room and two or
three rooms wainscoted by the Earl of Sussex, who married a
natural daughter of Charles II. Their arms with delightful
carvings by Gibbons-, particularly two pheasants, hang Over the
chimneys. Over the great drawing-room chimney is the first
coat armour of the first Leonard, Lord Dacre, with all his
alliances. Mr. Chute was transported, and called cousin with ten
thousand quarterings.(339) The chapel is small, and mean: the
Virgin and seven long lean saints, ill done, remain in the
windows. There have been four more, but seem to have been
removed for light; and we actually found St. Catherine, and
another gentlewoman with a church in her hand, exiled into the
buttery. There remain two odd cavities, with very small wooden
screens on each side the altar, which seem to have been
confessionals. The outside is a mixture of gray brick and stone,
that has a very venerable appearance. The drawbridges are
romantic to a degree; and there is a dungeon, that gives one a
delightful idea of living in the days of soccage and under such
goodly tenures. They showed us a dismal chamber which they
called Drummer's-hall, and suppose that Mr. Addison's comedy is
descended from it. In the windows of the gallery over the
cloisters, which leads all round to the apartments, is the
device of the Fienneses, a wolf holding a baton with a scroll,
Le roy le veut--an unlucky motto, as I shall tell you
presently, to the last peer of that line. The estate is two
thousand a year, and so compact as to have but seventeen houses
upon it. We walked up a brave old avenue to the church, with
ships sailing on our left hand the whole way. Before the altar
lies a lank brass knight, hight William Fienis, chevalier, who
obiit c.c.c.c.v. that is in 1405. By the altar is a beautiful
tomb, all in our trefoil taste, varied into a thousand little
canopies and patterns, and two knights reposing on their backs.
These were Thomas, Lord Dacre, and his only son Gregory, who
died sans issue. An old grayheaded beadsman of the family
talked to us of a blot in the scutcheon; and we had observed
that the field of the arms was green instead of blue, and the
lions ramping to the right, contrary to order. This and the
man's imperfect narrative let us into the circumstances of the
personage before us; for there is no inscription. He went in a
Chevy-chase style to hunt in a Mr. Pelham's(340) park at
Lawton: the keepers opposed, a fray ensued, a man was killed.
The haurhty baron took the death upon himself, as most secure
of pardon; but however, though there was no chancellor of the
exchequer in the question, he was condemned to be hanged: Le
roy le Vouloist.

Now you arc fully master of Hurst Monceaux, I shall carry you
on to Battel--By the way, we bring you a thousand sketches,
that you may show us what we have seen. Battel Abbey stands at
the end of the town, exactly as Warwick Castle does of Warwick;
but the house of Webster have taken due care that it should not
resemble it in any thing else. A vast building, which they
call the old refectory, but which I believe was the original
church, is now barn, coach-house, etc. The situation is noble,
above the level of abbeys: what does remain of gateways and
towers is beautiful, particularly the flat side of a cloister,
which is now the front of the mansion-house. Miss of the family
has clothed a fragment of a portico with cockle-shells! The
grounds, and what has been a park, lie in a vile condition. In
the church is the tomb of Sir Anthony Browne, master of the horse
for life to Harry VIII.: from whose descendants the estate was
purchased. The head of John Hanimond, the last abbot, is still
perfect in one of the windows. Mr. Chute says, "What charming
things we should have done if Battel Abbey had been to be sold at
Mrs. Chenevix's, as Strawberry was!" Good night!