Books: The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2

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Tunbridge, Friday.

We are returned hither, where we have established our
head-quarters. On our way, we had an opportunity of surveying
that formidable mountain, Silver Hill, which we had floundered
down in the dark: it commands a whole horizon of the richest
blue prospect you ever saw. I take it to be the ]Individual
spot to which the Duke of Newcastle carries the smugglers, and,
showing them Sussex and Kent, says, "All this will I give you,
if you will fall down and worship me." Indeed one of them, who
exceeded the tempter's warrant, hangs in chains on the very
spot where they finished the life of that wretched customhouse
officer whom they were two days in murdering.

This morning we have been to Penshurst-but, oh! how
fallen!(341) The park seems to have never answered its
character: at present it is forlorn; and instead of
Sacharissa's(342) cipher carved on the beeches, I should sooner
have expected to have found the milkwoman's score. Over the
gate is an inscription, purporting the manor to have been a
boon from Edward VI. to Sir William Sydney. The apartments are
the grandest I have seen in any of these old palaces, but
furnished in tawdry modern taste. There are loads of
portraits; but most of them seem christened by chance, like
children at a foundling hospital. There is a portrait of
Languet,(343) the friend of Sir Philip Sydney; and divers of
himself and all his great kindred; particularly his
sister-in-law, with a vast lute, and Sacharissa, charmingly
handsome, But there are really four very great curiosities, I
believe as old portraits as any extant in England: they are,
Fitzallen, Archbishop of Canterbury, Humphry Stafford, the
first Duke of Buckingham; T. Wentworth, and John Foxle; all
four with the dates of their commissions as constables of
Queenborough Castle, from whence I suppose they were brought.
The last is actually receiving his investiture from Edward the
Third, and Wentworth is in the dress of Richard the Third's
time. They are really not very ill done.(344) There are six
more, only heads; and we have found since we came home that
Penshurst belonged for a time to that Duke of Buckingham.
There are some good tombs in the church, and a very Vandal one.
called Sir Stephen of Penchester. When we had seen Penshurst,
we borrowed saddles, and, bestriding the horses of our
postchaise, set out for Hever,(345) to visit a tomb of Sir
Thomas Bullen, Earl of Wiltshire, partly with a view to talk of
it in Anna Bullen's walk at Strawberry Hill. But the measure
of our woes was not full, we could not find our way.. and were
forced to return; and again lost ourselves in coming from
Penshurst, having been directed to what they call a better road
than the execrable one we had gone.

Since dinner we have been to Lord Westmorland's which is so
perfect in a Palladian taste, that I must own it has recovered
me a little from Gothic. It is better situated than I had
expected from the bad reputation it bears, and some prospect,
though it is in a moat, and mightily besprinkled with small
ponds. The design, you know, is taken from the Villa del Capra
by Vicenza, but on a larger scale: yet, though it has cost an
hundred thousand pounds, it is still only a fine villa: the
finishing of in and outside has been exceedingly Expensive. A
wood that runs up a hill behind the house is broke like an
Albano landscape, with an octagon temple and a triumphal arch;
But then there are some dismal clipt hedges, and a pyramid,
which by a most unnatural copulation is at once a grotto and a
greenhouse. Does it not put you in mind of the proposal for
your drawing a garden-seat, Chinese on one side and Gothic on
the other? The chimneys, which are collected to a centre, spoil
the dome of the house, and the hall is a dark well. The
gallery is eighty-two feet long, hung with green velvet and
pictures, among which is a fine Rembrandt and a pretty La Hire.
The ceilings are painted, and there is a fine bed of silk and
gold tapestry. The attic is good, and the wings extremely
pretty, with porticoes formed on the style of the house. The
Earl has built a new church, with a steeple which seems designed
for the latitude, of Cheapside, and is so tall that the poor
church curtsies under it, like Mary Rich(346) in a vast
high-crown hat: it has a round portico, like St. Clement's, with
vast Doric pillars supporting a thin shelf. The inside is the
most abominable piece of tawdriness that ever was seen, stuffed
with pillars painted in imitation of verd antique, as all the
sides are like Sienna marble: but the greatest absurdity is a
Doric frieze, between the triglyphs of which is the Jehovah, the
I. H. S. and the Dove. There is a little chapel with Nevil
tombs, particularly of the first Fane, Earl of Westmorland, and
of the founder of the old church, and the heart of a knight who
was killed in the wars. On the Fane tomb is a pedigree of brass
in relief, and a genealogy of virtues to answer it. There is an
entire window of painted-glass arms, chiefly modern, in the
chapel, and another over the high altar. The hospitality of the
house was truly Gothic; for they made our postilion drunk, and he
overturned us close to a water and the bank did but just save us
from being in the middle of it. Pray, whenever you travel in
Kentish roads, take care of keeping your driver sober.

Rochester, Sunday.

We have finished our progress sadly! Yesterday after twenty
mishaps we got to Sissinghurst to dinner. There is a park in
ruins, and a house in ten times greater ruins, built by Sir
John Balier, chancellor of the exchequer to Queen Mary. You go
through an arch of the stables to the house, the court of which
is perfect and very beautiful. The Duke of Bedford has a house
at Cheneys, in Buckinghamshire, which seems to have been very
like it, but is more ruined. This has a good apartment, and a
fine gallery, a hundred and twenty feet by eighteen, which
takes up one side: the wainscot is pretty and entire: the
ceiling vaulted, and painted in a light genteel grotesque. The
whole is built for show: for the back of the house is nothing
but lath and plaster. From thence we Went to Bocton-Malherbe,
where are remains of a house of the Wottons, and their tombs in
the church; but the roads were so exceedingly bad that it was
dark before we got thither, and still darker before we got to
Maidstone: from thence we passed this morning to Leeds
Castle.(347) Never was such disappointment! There are small
remains: the moat is the only handsome object, and is quite a
lake, supplied by a cascade which tumbles through a bit of a
romantic grove. The Fairfaxes have fitted up a pert, bad
apartment in the fore-part of the castle, and have left the only
tolerable rooms for offices. They had a gleam of Gothic in their
eyes, but it soon passed off into some modern windows, and some
that never were ancient. The only thing that at all recompensed
the fatigues we have undergone was the picture of the Duchess of
Buckingham,(348) la Ragotte, who is mentioned in Grammont--I say
us, for I trust that Mr. Chute is as true a bigot to Grammont as
I am. Adieu? I hope you will be as weary
with reading our history as we have been in travelling it.
Yours ever.

(329) Only son of Dr. Richard Bentley, the celebrated Divine
and classical scholar. He was educated at Trinity College,
under his father. Cumberland, who was his nephew, describes
him as a man of various and considerable accomplishments;
possessing a fine genius, great wit, and a brilliant
imagination; "but there was," he adds, "a certain eccentricity
and want of prudence in his character, that involved him in
distresses, and reduced him to situations uncongenial with his
feelings, and unpropitious to the cultivation and encouragement
of his talents."-E.

(330) Evelyn ' in his Diary for July 25, 1673, says, "In my way
I visited my Lord of Dorset's house at Knowle, near Sevenoaks,
a greate old-fashion'd house."-E.

331) Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, while a student in the
Temple, wrote his tragedy of Gordobuc, which was played before
Queen Elizabeth, at Whitehall, in 1561. He was created Earl of
Dorset by James the First, in 1604.-E.

(332) Charles Sackville, sixth Earl of Dorset. On the day
previous to the naval engagement with the Dutch, in 1665, he is
said to have composed his celebrated song, "to all you Ladies
now on Land."-E.

(333) On the contrary, he married the Lady Frances, daughter of
the Earl of Middlesex, who survived him.-E.

(334) Lionel Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex, married two wives:
the first was the daughter of a London citizen; the second, the
daughter of James Brett, Esq. and half-sister of Mary Beaumont,
created Countess of Buckingham. To this last alliance, Lord
Middlesex owed his extraordinary advancement.-E.

(335) "May 29, 1652. We went to see the house of my Lord
Clanrickard, at Summer Hill, near Tunbridge; now given to that
villain Bradshaw, who condemned the King. 'Tis situated on an
eminent hill, with a park, but has nothing else extraordinary."
Evelyn, vol. ii. p. 58.-E.

(336) lady Margaret Macarthy, daughter and heiress of the
Marquis of Clanricarde, wife of Charles, Lord Muskerry.-E.

(337) Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Sir George Hamilton, fourth
son of the first Earl of Abercorn, and niece of to the first
Duke of Ormond, celebrated in the "M`emoires de Grammont"
(written by her brother, Count Anthony Hamilton,) for her
beauty and accomplishments. She married Philip, Count de
Grammont, by whom she had two daughters; the eldest married
Henry Howard, created Earl of Stafford, and the youngest took
the veil.-E.

(338) the ancient inheritance of Lord Dacre of the South.-E.

(339) Chaloner Chute, Esq, of the Vine, married Catherine,
daughter of Richard, Lord Dacre.-E.

(340) At the date of this letter Mr. Pelham was prime minister.

(341) Evelyn, who visited Penshurst exactly a century before
Walpole, gives the Following brief notice of the place:-"July
9, 1652. We went to see Penshurst, the Earl of Leicester's,
famous once for its gardens and excellent fruit, and for the
noble conversation which Was wont to meet there, celebrated by
that illustrious person Sir Philip Sidney, who there composed
divers of his pieces. It stands in a park, is finely watered,
and was now full of company, on the marriage of my old
fellow-collegiate, Mr. Robert Smith, who marries Lady Dorothy
Sidney, widow of the Earl of Sunderland."-E.

(342) Lady Dorothy Sidney, daughter of Philip, Earl of
Leicester; of whom Waller was the unsuccessful suitor, and to
whom he addressed those elegant effusions of poetical
gallantry, in which she is celebrated under the name of
Sacharissa. Walpole here alludes to the lines written at
Penshurst-

"Go, boy, and carve this passion on the bark
Of yonder tree, which stands the sacred mark
Of noble Sydney's birth; when such benign,
Such more than mortal-making stars did shine,
That there they cannot but for ever prove
The monument and pledge of humble love;
His humble love, whose hope shall ne'er rise higher,
Than for a pardon that he dares admire."-E.

(343) Hubert Tanguet, who quitted the service of the Elector of
Saxony on account of his religion, and attached himself to the
Prince of Orange. He died in 1581.-E.

(344) In Harris's History of Kent, he gives from Philpot a list
of the constables of Queenborough Castle, p. 376; the last but
one of whom, Sir Edward Hobby, is said to have collected all
their portraits, of which number most probably were these ten.

(345) Hever Castle was built in the reign of Edward III., by
William de Hevre, and subsequently became the property of the
Boleyn family. In this castle Henry VIII. passed the time of
his courtship to the unfortunate Anne Boleyn; whose father, Sir
Thomas Boleyn, was Created Earl of wiltshire and Ormond, 1529
and 1538.-E.

(346)Daughter of Sir Robert Rich, and elder sister of Elizabeth
Rich, Lady Lyttelton.

(347) A very ancient and magnificent structure, built
throughout of stone, at different periods, formerly belonging
to the family of Crovequer. In the fifteenth of Edward II.
Sir Thomas de Colepeper, who was castellan of the castle, was
hanged on the drawbridge for having refused admittance to
Isabel, the Queen-consort, in her progress in performing a
pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas `a Becket at Canterbury.
The manor and castle were forfeited to the crown by his
attainder, but restored to his son, sir Thomas Colepeper. By
his Diary of May 8, 1666, it appears to have been hired by
Evelyn for a prison. "Here," he says, "I flowed the dry moat,
made a new drawbridge, brought spring-water into the court of
the castle to an old fountain, and took order for the
repairs."-E.

(348) Mary, Duchess of Buckingham, only daughter of Thomas,
Lord Fairfax.-E.

145 Letter 65
To George Montagu, Esq.
Strawberry Hill, Aug. 28, 1752.

Will you never have done jigging at Northampton with that old
harlotry Major Compton? Peggy Trevor told me, she had sent you
a mandate to go thither. Shall I tell you how I found Peggy,
that is, not Peggy, but her sister Muscovy? I went, found a
bandage upon the knocker, an old woman and child in the hall,
and a black boy at the door. Lord! thinks I, this can't be
Mrs. Boscawen's. However, Pompey let me up; above were fires
blazing, and a good old gentlewoman, whose occupation easily
spoke itself to be midwifery. "Dear Madam, I fancy I should not
have come up."--"Las-a-day! Sir, no, I believe not; but I'll
stop and ask." Immediately out came old Falmouth,(348) looking
like an ancient fairy, who had just been tittering a
malediction over a new-born prince, and told me, forsooth, that
Madame Muscovy was but just brought to bed, which Peggy Trevor
soon came and confirmed. I told them I would write you my
adventure. I have not thanked you for your travels, and the
violent curiosity you have given me to see Welbeck. Mr. Chute
and I have been a progress too; but it was in a land you know
full well, the county of Kent. I will only tell you that we
broke our necks twenty times to your health, and had a distant
glimpse of Hawkhurst from that Sierra Morena, Silver Hill. I
have since been with Mr. Conway at Park-place, where I saw the
individual Mr. Cooper, a banker, and lord of the manor of
Henley, who had those two extraordinary forfeitures from the
executions of the Misses Blandy and Jefferies, two fields from
the former, and a malthouse from the latter. I had scarce
credited the story, and was pleased to hear it confirmed by the
very person; though it was not quite so remarkable as it was
reported, for both forfeitures were in the same manor.

Mr. Conway has brought Lady Ailesbury from Minorca, but
originally from Africa, a Jeribo. To be sure you know what
that is; if you don't, I will tell you, and then I believe you
will scarce know any better. It is a composition of a
squirrel, a hare, a rat, and a monkey, which altogether looks
very like a bird. In short, it is about the size of the first,
with much Such a head, except that the tip of the nose seems
shaved off, and the remains are like a human hare-lip; the ears
and its timidity are like a real hare. It has two short little
feet before like a rat, but which it never uses for walking, I
believe never but to hold its food. The tail is naked like a
monkey's, with a tuft of hair at the end; striped black and white
in rings. The two hind legs are as long as a Granville's, with
feet more like a bird than any other animal, and upon these it
hops so immensely fast and upright that at a distance you would
take it for a large thrush. It lies in cotton, is brisk at
night, eats wheat, and never drinks; it would, but drinking is
fatal to them. Such is a Jeribo!

Have you heard the particulars of the Speaker's quarrel with a
young officer, who went to him, on his landlord refusing to
give his servant the second best bed in the inn? He is a young
man of eighteen hundred a year, and passionately fond of the
army. The Speaker produced the Mutiny-bill to him. "Oh Sir,"
said the lad, "but there is another act of parliament which
perhaps you don't know of." The "person of dignity," as the
newspapers call him, then was so ingenious as to harangue on
the dangers of a standing army. The boy broke out, "Don't tell
me of your privileges: what would have become of you and your
privileges in the year forty-five, if it had not been for the
army--and pray, why do you fancy I would betray my country? I
have as much to lose as you have!" In short, this abominable
young hector treated the Speaker's oracular decisions with a
familiarity that quite shocks me to think of!

The Poemata-Grayo-Bentleiana, or Gray's Odes, better
illustrated than ever odes were by a Bentley, are in great
forwardness, and I trust will appear this Winter. I shall tell
you One little anecdote about the authors and conclude. Gray
is in love to distraction with a figure of Melancholy, which Mr
Bentley has drawn for one of the Odes, and told him he must
have something of his pencil: Mr. Bentley desired him to choose
a subject. He chose Theodore and Honoria!--don't mention this,
for we are shocked. It is loving melancholy till it is not
strong enough, and he grows to dram with Horror. Good night!
my compliments to Miss Montagu; did you receive my recipes?

(348) Charlotte, daughter and co-heiress of Colonel Godfrey,
married in 1700 to Lord Falmouth.-E.

146 Letter 66
To Sir Horace Mann.
Strawberry Hill, Oct. 28, N. S. 1752.

I must certainly make you a visit, for I have nothing to say to
you. Perhaps you will think this an odd reason; but as I
cannot let our intimacy drop, and no event happens here for
fuel to the correspondence, if we must be silent, it shall be
like a matrimonial silence, t`ete-`a-t`ete. Don't look upon
this paragraph as a thing in the air, though I dare to say you
will, upon my repeating that I have any thoughts of a trip to
Florence: indeed I have never quite given up that intention and
if I can possibly settle my affairs at all to my mind, I
shall certainly execute my scheme towards the conclusion of
this Parliament, that is, about next spring twelvemonth: I
cannot bear elections: and still less, the hash of them over
again in a first session. What vivacity such a reverberation
may give to the blood of England, I don't know; at present it
all stagnates. I am sometimes almost tempted to go and amuse
myself at Paris with the bull Unigenius. Our beauties are
returned, and have done no execution. The French would not
conceive that Lady Caroline Petersham ever had been handsome,
nor that my Lady Coventry has much pretence to be so now.
Indeed all the travelled English allow that there is a Madame
de Broune handsomer, and a finer figure. Poor Lady Coventry
was under piteous disadvantages; for besides being very silly,
ignorant of the world, breeding, speaking no French, and
suffered to wear neither red nor powder, she had that perpetual
drawback upon her beauty her lord, who is sillier in a wise
way, as ignorant, ill bred, and speaking very little French
himself-just enough to show how ill-bred he is. The Duke de
Luxemburg told him he had called upon my Lady Coventry's coach;
my lord replied, "Vous avez fort bien fait." He is jealous,
prude, and scrupulous; at a dinner at Sir John Bland's, before
sixteen persons, he coursed his wife round the table, on
suspecting she had stolen on a little red, seized her, scrubbed
it off by force with a napkin, and then told her, that since
she had deceived him and broke her promise, he would carry her
back directly to England. They were pressed to stay for the
great fete at St. Cloud; he excused himself,
"because it would make him miss a music-meeting at Worcester;"
and she excused herself from the fireworks at Madame
Pompadour's, "because it was her dancing-master's hour." I
will tell you but one more anecdote, and I think You cannot be
imperfect in your ideas of them. The Mar`echale de lowendahl
was pleased with an English fan Lady Coventry had, who very
civilly gave it her: my lord made her write for it again next
morning, because he had given it her before marriage, and her
parting with it would make an irreparable breach," and send an
old one in the room of it! She complains to every body she
meets, "How odd it is that my lord should use her so ill, when
she knows he has so great a regard that he would die for her,
and when he was so good as to marry her without a shilling!"
Her sister's history is not unentertaining: Duke Hamilton is
the abstract of Scotch pride: he and the Duchess at their own
house walk in to dinner before their company, sit together at
the upper end of their own table, eat off the same plate, and
drink to nobody beneath the rank of Earl-would not one wonder
how they could get any body either above or below that rank to
dine with them at all? I don't know whether you will not think
all these very trifling histories; but for myself, I love any
thing that marks a character SO Strongly.

I told you how the younger Cr`ebillon had served me, and how
angry I am; yet I must tell you a very good reply of his. His
father one day in a passion with him, said, "Il y a deux choses
que je voudrois n'avoir jamais fait, mon Catilina et vous!" He
answered, "Consolez vous, mon p`ere, car on pr`etend que vous
n'avez fait ni l'un ni l'autre." Don't think me infected with
France, if I tell you more French stories; but I know no
English ones, and we every day grow nearer to the state of a
French province, and talk from the capital. The old
Cr`ebillon, who admires us as much as we do them. has long had
by him a tragedy called Oliver Cromwell, and had thoughts of
dedicating it to the Parliament of England: he little thinks
how distant a cousin the present Parliament is to the
Parliament he wots of. The Duke of Richelieu's son,(349) who
certainly must not pretend to declare off, like Cr`ebillon's,
(he is a boy of ten years old,) was reproached for not minding
his Latin: he replied, "Eh! mon p`ere n'a jamais s`cu le Latin,
et il a eu les plus jolies femmes de France!" My sister was
exceedingly shocked with their indecorums: the night She
arrived at Paris, asking for the Lord knows what utensil, the
footman of the house came and "showed it her himself, and every
thing that is related to it. Then, the footmen who brought
messages to her, came into her bedchamber in person; for they
don't deliver them to your servants, in the English way. She
amused me with twenty other new fashions, which I should be
ashamed to set down, if a letter was at all upon a higher or
wiser foot than a newspaper. Such is their having a knotting
bag made of the same stuff with every gown; their footmen
carrying their lady's own goblet whenever they dine; the King
carrying his own bread in his pocket to dinner, the etiquette
of the queen and the Mesdames not speaking to one another cross
him at table, and twenty other such nothings; but I find myself
Gossiping and will have done, with only two little anecdotes
that please me. Madame Pompadour's husband has not been
permitted to keep an opera-girl, because it would too
frequently occasion the reflection of his not having his wife--
is not that delightful decorum? and in that country! The other
was a most sensible trait of the King. The Count
Charolois(350) shot a President's dogs, who lives near him: the
President immediately posted to Versailles to complain: the
King promised him justice; and then sent to the Count to desire
he would give him two good dogs. The Prince picked out his two
best: the king sent them to the President, with this motto on
their collars, 'J'appartiens au Roi!' "There," said the king,
"I believe he won't shoot them now!"

Since I began my letter, I looked over my dates, and was hurt
to find that three months are gone and over since I wrote last.
I was going to begin a new apology, when your letter of Oct.
20th came in, curtsying and making apologies itself. I was
charmed to find you to blame, and had a mind to grow haughty
and scold you-but I won't. My dear child, we will not drop one
another at last; for though we arc English, we are not both in
England, and need not quarrel we don't know why. We will write
whenever we have any thing to say; and when we have not,--Why, we
will be going to write. I had heard nothing of the Riccardi
deaths: I still like to hear news of any of my old friends. Your
brother tells me that you defend my Lord Northumberland's idea
for his gallery, so I will not abuse it so much as I intended,
though I must say that I am so fired with copies of the pictures
he has chosen, that I would scarce hang up the originals--and
then, copies by any thing now living!--and at that price!--indeed
price is no article, or rather price is a reason for my Lord
Northumberland's liking any thing. They are building at
Northumberland-house, at Sion, at Stansted, at Alnwick, and
Warkworth Castles! they live by the etiquette of the old
peerage, have Swiss porters, the Countess has her pipers--in
short, they will very soon have no estate.