Books: The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2

H >> Horace Walpole >> The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61

One hears here of writings that have appeared in print on the
quarrel of the Pretender and his second son; I could like to
see any such thing. Here is a bold epigram, which the
Jacobites give about:

"In royal veins how blood resembling runs!
Like any George, James quarrels with his sons.
Faith! I believe, could he his crown resume,
He'd hanker for his herenhausen, Rome."

The second is a good line; but the thought in the last is too
obscurely expressed; and yet I don't believe that it was
designed for precaution.

I went yesterday with your brother to see Astley's(351)
pictures: mind, I confess myself a little prejudiced, for he
has drawn the whole Pigwigginhood. but he has got too much
into the style of the four thousand English painters about
town, and is so intolerable as to work for money, not for fame:
in short, he is not such a Rubens as in your head--but I fear,
as I said, that I am prejudiced. Did I ever tell you of a
picture at Woolterton of the whole family which I call the
progress of riches? there is Pigwiggin in a laced coat and
waistcoat; the second son has only the waistcoat trimmed; the
third is in a plain suit, and the little boy is naked. I saw a
much more like picture of my uncle last night at Drury Lane in
the farce; there is a tailor who is exactly my uncle in person,
and my aunt in family. Good night! I wish you joy of being
dis-Richcourted; you need be in no apprehensions of his
Countess; she returns to England in the spring! Adieu!

P.S. You shall see that I am honest, for though the beginning
of my letter is dated Oct. 28th, the conclusion ought to be
from Nov. 11th.

(349) The infamous Duke de Pronsac.-D.

(350) Charles de Bourbon, Count de Charolois, next brother to
the Duke de Bourbon, who succeeded the Regent Duke of Orleans
as prime minister of France. the Count de Charolois was a man
of infamous character, and committed more than one murder.
when Louis the Fifteenth pardoned him for one of these
atrocities, he said to him, "I tell you fairly, that I will
also pardon any man who murders you."-D.

(351) John Astley, an English portrait painter of some merit,
born at Wem, in Shropshire. He married a lady of large
fortune, relinquished his profession, and died in 1787.-D.

150 Letter 67
To The Hon. H. S. Conway.(352)
Strawberry Hill, November 8th, 1752.

Dear Harry,
After divers mistakes and neglects of my own servants and Mr.
Fox's, the Chinese pair have at last set sail for Park-place: I
don't call them boar and sow, because of their being fit for
his altar: I believe, when you see them, you will think it is
Zicchi Micchi himself, the Chinese god of good eating and
drinking, and his wife. They were to have been with you last
week, but the chairmen who were to drive them to the water side
got drunk, and said, that the creatures were so wild and
unruly, that they ran away and would not be managed. Do but
think of their running! It puts me in mind of Mrs. Nugent's
talking of just jumping out of a coach! I might with as much
propriety talk of' having all my clothes let out. My coachman
is vastly struck with the goodly paunch of the boar, and says,
it would fetch three pounds in his country; but he does not
consider, that he is a boar with the true brown edge,(353) and
has been fed with the old original wheatsheaf: I hope you will
value him more highly: I dare say Mr. cutler or Margas,(354)
would at least ask twenty guineas for him, and swear that Mrs.
Dunch gave thirty for the fellow.

As you must of course write me a letter of thanks for my brawn,
I beg you will take that opportunity Of telling me very
particularly how my Lady Aylesbury does, and if she is quite
recovered, as I much hope? How does my sweet little wife do @
Are your dragons all finished? Have the Coopers seen Miss
Blandy's ghost, or have they made Mr. Cranston poison a dozen
or two more private gentlewomen? Do you plant without rain as I
do, in order to have your trees die, that you may have the
pleasure of planting them over again with rain? Have you any
Mrs. Clive(355) that pulls down barns that intercept your
prospect; or have you any Lord Radnor(356) that plants trees to
intercept his own prospect, that he may cut them down again to
make an alteration? There! there are as many questions as if I
were your schoolmaster or your godmother! Good night!

(352) Now first printed.

(353) He means such as are painted on old china with the brown
edge, and representations of wheatsheafs.-E.

(354) Fashionable china-shops.-E.

(355) Then living at Little Strawberry Hill.-E.

(356) The last Lord Radnor of the family of Robarts, then
living at Twickenham, very near Strawberry Hill.-E.

150 Letter 68
To George Montagu, Esq.
White's, December 3, 1752.

I shall be much obliged to you for the passion-flower,
notwithstanding it comes out of a garden of Eden, from which
Eve, my sister-in-law, long ago gathered passion-fruit. I thank
you too for the offer of your Roman correspondences, but you know
I have done with virt`u, and deal only with the Goths and
Vandals.

You ask a very improper person, why my Lord Harcourt(357)
resigned. My lord Coventry says it is the present great
arcanum of government, and you know I am quite out of the
circle of secrets. The town says, that it was finding Stone is
a Jacobite; and it says, too, that the Whigs are very uneasy.
My Lord Egremont says the Whigs can't be in danger, for then my
Lord Hartington would not be gone a-hunting. Every body is as
inpatient as you can be, to know the real cause, but I don't
find that either Lord or Bishop is disposed to let the world
into the true secret. It is pretty certain that one Mr.
Cresset has abused both of them without ceremony, and that the
Solicitor-general told the Bishop in plain terms that my Lord
Harcourt was a cipher, and was put in to be a cipher: an
employment that, considering it is a sinecure, seems to hang
unusually long upon their hands. They have so lately
quarrelled with poor Lord Holderness for playing at
blindman's-buff at Tunbridge, that it will be difficult to give
him another place only because he is fit to play at
blind-man's-buff; and yet it is much believed that he will be
the governor, and your cousin his successor. I am as improper
to tell you why the governor of Nova Scotia is to be at the
head of the Independents. I have long thought him one of the
greatest dependents, and I assure you I have seen nothing since
his return, to make me change my opinion. He is too busy in
the bedchamber to remember me.

Mr. Fox said nothing about your brother; if the offer was
ill-designed from one quarter, I think you may make the refusal
of it have its weight in another.

It would be odd to conclude a letter from White's without a
bon-mot of George Selwyn's; he came in here t'other night, and
saw James Jefferies playing at piquet with Sir Everard
Falkener, "Oh!" says he, "now he is robbing the mail." Good
night! when do you come back?

(357) On the death of the Prince of Wales in 1751, his eldest
son, Prince George, was committed to the care of the Earl of
Harcourt as governor.

151 Letter 69
To Sir Horace Mann.
Strawberry Hill, Dec. 11, 1752, N. S.

I don't know whether I may not begin a new chapter of
revolutions: if one may trust prognosticators, the foundations
of a revolution in earnest are laying. However, as I am only a
simple correspondent, and no almanack-maker, I shall be content
with telling you facts, and not conjectures, at least if I do
tell you conjectures they shall not be my own. Did not I give
you a hint in the summer of some storms gathering in the
tutorhood? They have broke out; indeed there wanted nothing to
the explosion but the King's arrival, for the instant he came, it
was pretty plain that he was prepared for the grievances he was
to hear--not very impartially it seems, for he would not speak to
Lord Harcourt. In about three days he did, and saw him
afterwards alone in his closet. What the conversation was, I
can't tell you: one should think not very explicit, for in a day
or two afterwards it was thought proper to send the Archbishop
and Chancellor to hear his lordship's complaints; but on
receiving a message that they would wait on him by the King's
orders, he prevented the visit by going directly to the
Chancellor; and on hearing their commission, Lord Harcourt, after
very civil speeches of regard to their persons, said, he must
desire to be excused, for what he had to say was of a nature that
made it improper to be said to any body but the King. You may
easily imagine that this is interpreted to allude to a higher
person than the mean people who have offended Lord Harcourt and
the Bishop of Norwich. Great pains were taken to detach the
former from the latter; "dear Harcourt, we love you, we wish to
make you easy; but the Bishop must go." I don't tell you these
were the Duke of Newcastle's words; but if I did, would they be
unlike him? Lord Harcourt fired, and replied with spirit,
"What! do you think to do me a favour by offering me to stay!
know, it is I that will not act with such fellows as Stone and
Cresset, and Scott: if they are kept, I will quit, and if the
Bishop is dismissed, I will quit too." After a few days, he
had his audience and resigned. It is said, that he frequently
repeated, "Stone is a Jacobite," and that the other person who
made up the t`ete-`a-t`ete cried, "Pray, my lord! pray, my
lord!"--and would not hear upon that subject. The next day the
Archbishop went to the King, and begged to know whether the
Bishop of Norwich might have leave to bring his own
resignation, or whether his Majesty would receive it from him,
the Archbishop, The latter was chosen, and the Bishop' was
refused an audience.

You will now naturally ask me what the quarrel was: and that is
the most difficult point to tell you; for though the world
expects to see some narrative, nothing has yet appeared, nor I
believe will, though both sides have threatened. The Princess
says, the Bishop taught the boys nothing; he says, he never was
suffered to teach them any thing. The first occasion of
uneasiness was the Bishop's finding the Prince of Wales reading
the Revolutions of England, written by P`ere d'Orl`eans to
vindicate James II. and approved by that Prince. Stone at
first peremptorily denied that he had seen that book these
thirty years, and offered to rest his whole justification upon
the truth or falsehood of this story. However, it is now
confessed that the Prince was reading that book, but it is
qualified with Prince Edward's borrowing it of Lady Augusta.
Scott, the under-preceptor, put in by Lord Bolingbroke, and of no
very orthodox odour, was another complaint. Cresset, the link of
the connexion, has dealt in no very civil epithets, for besides
calling Lord Harcourt a groom, he qualified the Bishop with
bastard and atheist,' particularly to one of the Princess's
chaplains, who, begged to be excused from hearing such language
against a prelate of the church, and not prevailing, has drawn
up a narrative, sent it to the Bishop, and offered to swear to
it. For Lord Harcourt, besides being treated with considerable
contempt by the Princess, he is not uninformed of the light in
which he was intended to stand, by an amazing piece of
imprudence of the last, but not the most inconsiderable
performer in this drama, the Solicitor-general, Murray--pray,
what part has his brother, Lord Dunbar, acted in the late
squabbles in the Pretender's family? Murray, early in the
quarrel, went officiously to the Bishop, and told him Mr. Stone
ought to have more consideration in the family: the Bishop was
surprised, and got rid of the topic as well as he could. The
visit and opinion were repeated: the Bishop said, he believed
Mr. Stone had all the regard shown him that was due; that lord
Harcourt, who was the chief person, was generally present.
Murray interrupted him, "Pho! Lord Harcourt! he is a cipher,
and must be a cipher, and was put in to be a cipher." Do you
think after this declaration, that the employment will be very
agreeable? Every body but Lord Harcourt understood it before;
but at least the cipher -ism was not notified in form. Lord
Lincoln, the intimate friend of that lord, was so friendly to
turn his back upon him as he came out of the closet--and yet Lord
Harcourt and the Bishop have not at all lessened their characters
by any part of their behaviour in this transaction. What will
astonish you, is the universal aversion that has broke out
against Stone: and what heightens the disgusts, is, the intention
there has been of making Dr. Johnson, the new Bishop of
Gloucester, preceptor. He was master of Westminster School, of
Stone's and Murray's year, and is certainly of their
principles--to be sure, that is, Whig--but the Whigs don't seem
to think so. As yet no successors are named; the Duke of
Leeds,(359) Lord Cardigan, Lord Waldegrave, Lord Hertford, Lord
Bathurst, and Lord Ashburnham,(360) are talked of for governor.
The two first are said to have refused; the third dreads it; the
next I hope will not have it; the Princess is inclined to the
fifth, and the last I believe eagerly wishes for it. Within this
day or two another is named, which leads me to tell you another
interlude in our politics. This is poor Lord Holderness --to
make room in the secretary's office for Lord Halifax. Holderness
has been in disgrace from the first minute of the King's return:
besides not being spoken to, he is made to wait at the
closet-door with the bag in his hand, while the Duke of Newcastle
is within; though the constant etiquette has been for both
secretaries of state to go in together, or to go in immediately,
if one came after the other. I knew of this disgrace; but not
being quite so able a politician as Lord Lincoln, at least having
an inclination to great men in misfortune, I went the other
morning to visit the afflicted. I found him alone: he said, "You
are very good to visit any body in my situation." This lamentable
tone had like to have made me laugh; however I kept my
countenance, and asked him what he meant? he said, "Have not you
heard how the world abuses me only for playing at blindman's-buff
in a private room at Tunbridge?" Oh! this was too much! I
laughed out. I do assure you, this account of his misfortunes
was not given particularly to me: nay, to some he goes so far as
to say, "Let them go to the office, and look over my letters and
see if I am behindhand!" To be sure, when he has done his book,
it is very hard he may not play! My dear Sir, I don't know what
apologies a P`ere d'Orl`eans must make for our present history!
it is too ridiculous!

The preceptor is as much in suspense as the governor. The
Whigs clamour so much against Johnson, that they are regarded,-
-at least for a time. Keene,(361) Bishop of Chester, and
brother of your brother minister, has been talked of. He is a
man that will not prejudice his fortune by any ill-placed
scruples. My father gave him a living of seven hundred pounds
a year to marry one of his natural daughters; he took the
living; and my father dying soon after, he dispensed with
himself from taking the wife, but was so generous as to give
her very near one year's income of the living. He then was the
Duke of Newcastle's- tool at Cambridge, which university be has
half turned Jacobite, by cramming down new ordinances to carry
measures of that Duke; and being rewarded with the bishopric,
he was at dinner at the Bishop of Lincoln's when he received
the nomination. He immediately rose from the table, took his
host into another room, and begged he would propose him to a
certain great fortune, to whom he never spoke, but for whom he
now thought himself a proper match.(362) Don't you think he
would make a very proper preceptor? Among other candidates,
they talk of Dr. hales, the old philosopher, a poor good
primitive creature, whom I call the Santon Barsisa; do you
remember the hermit in the Persian tales, who after living in
the odour of sanctity for above ninety years, was tempted to be
naughty with the King's daughter, who had been sent to his cell
for a cure? Santon Hales but two years ago accepted the post of
clerk of the closet to the Princess, after literally leading the
life of a studious anchorite till past seventy. If he does
accept the preceptorship, I don't doubt but by the time the
present clamours are appeased, the wick of his old life will be
snuffed out, and they will put Johnson in his socket. Good
night! I shall carry this letter to town to-morrow, and perhaps
keep it back a few days, till I am able to send you this history
complete.

Arlington Street, Dec. 17th.

Well! at last we shall have a governor: after meeting with
divers refusals, they have forced lord Waldegrave(364) to take
it; and he kisses hands to-morrow. He has all the time declared
that nothing but the King's earnest desire should make him
accept it-and so they made the King earnestly desire it! Dr.
Thomas, the Bishop of Peterborough, I believe, is to be the
tutor--I know nothing of him: he had lain by for many years,
after having read prayers to the present King when he lived at
Leicester House, which his Majesty remembered, and two years
ago popped him into a bishopric.

There is an odd sort of manifesto arrived from Prussia, which
does not make us in better humour at St. James's. It stops the
payment of the interest on the Silesian loan, till satisfaction
is made some Prussian captures during the war. The omnipotence
of the present ministry does not reach to Berlin! Adieu! All
the world are gone to their several Christmases, as I should
do, if I could have got my workmen out of Strawberry Hill; but
they don't work at all by the scale of my impatience.

(358) The Bishop of Norwich, who was a prelate of profound
learning, and conscientiously zealous for the mental
improvement of his pupil, disgusted the young Prince by his dry
and pedantic manners, and offended the Princess, his mother, by
persevering in the discipline which he deemed necessary to
remedy the gross neglect of her son's education." Coxe's
Pelham, vol. ii. p. 236.-E.

(359) Thomas Osborne, fourth Duke of Leeds. He died in
1789.-D.

(360) John, second Earl of Ashburnham. He died at a great age,
April 8th, 1812.-D.

(361) Dr. Edmund Keene, Bishop of Chester, was, for some reason
which is not known, the constant subject of Gray's witty and
splenetic effusions. One of the chief amusements discovered by
the poet, pour passer le temps in a postchaise, was making
extempore epigrams upon the Bishop, and then laughing at them
immoderately. The following, which is the commencement of one
of them, may serve as a specimen:

"Here lies Edmund Keene, the Bishop of Chester,
Who ate a fat goose and could not digest her."

(362) In the May of this year, Dr. Keene married the only
daughter of Lancelot Andrews, Esq. of Edmonton, formerly an
eminent linendraper in Cheapside, a lady of considerable
fortune.-E.

(363) Dr. Stephen Hales, author of "Vegetable Statics," and
"Vegetable Essays." This eminent natural philosopher and
vegetable physiologist was offered a canonry of Windsor, but
contented himself with the living of Teddington, which he held
with that of Farringdon. He died in 1761, at the age of
eighty-four.

(364) Walpole, in his Memoires, gives the following account of
Lord Waldegrave's appointment: " The Earl accepted it at the
earnest request of the King, and after repeated assurances of
the submission and tractability of Stone. The Earl was averse
to it. He was a man of pleasure, understood the court, was
firm in the King's favour, easy in his circumstances, and at
once undesirous of rising, and afraid to fall. He said to a
friend, "If I dared, I would make this excuse to the King-
-'Sir, I am too young to govern. and too old to be governed:'
but he was forced to submit. A man of stricter honour and of
more reasonable sense could not have been selected for the
employment." Vol. i. p. 255.-E.

155 Letter 70
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, Feb. 14, 1753.

I have been going to write to you every post for these three
weeks, and could not bring myself to begin a letter with "I
have nothing to tell YOU." But it grows past a joke; we will
not drop our correspondence because there is no war, no
Politics, no parties, no madness, and no scandal. In the
memory of England there never was so inanimate an age: it is
more fashionable to go to church than to either House of
Parliament. Even the era of the Gunnings is over: both sisters
have lain in, and have scarce made one paragraph in the
newspapers, though their names were grown so renowned, that in
Ireland the beggarwomen bless you with,-,, "the luck of the
Gunnings attend you!"

You will scarce guess how I employ my time; chiefly at present
in the guardianship of embryos and cockleshells. Sir hans
Sloane is dead, and has made me one of the trustees to his
museum, which is to be offered for twenty thousand pounds to
the king, the Parliament, the Royal Academies of Petersburnh,
Berlin, Paris, and Madrid.(365) He valued it at fourscore
thousand; and so would any body who loves hippopotamuses,
sharks with one ear, and spiders as big as geese! It is a
rent-charge, to keep the foetuses in spirits! You may believe
that those who think money the most valuable of all
curiosities, will not be purchasers. The King has excused
himself, saying he did not believe that there were twenty
thousand pounds in the treasury. We are a charming, wise set,
all philosophers, botanists, antiquarians, and mathematicians;
and adjourned our first meeting because Lord Macclesfield, our
chairman, was engaged to a party for finding out the longitude.
One of our number is a Moravian who signs himself Henry XXVIII,
Count de Reus. The Moravians have settled a colony at Chelsea,
in Sir Hans's neighbourhood, and I believe he intended to beg
Count Henry XXVIIIth's skeleton for his museum.

I am almost ashamed to be thanking you but now for a most
entertaining letter of two sheets, dated December 22, but I
seriously had nothing to form an answer. It is but three
mornings ago that your brother was at breakfast with me, and
scolded me, "Why, you tell me nothing!"--"No," says I "if I had
any thing to say, I should write to your brother." I give you
my word, that the first new book that takes, the first murder,
the first revolution, you shall have, with all the
circumstances. In the mean time, do be assured that there
never was so dull a place as London, or so insipid an
inhabitant of it, as, yours, etc.

(365) Ames, in a letter written on the 22d of March to Mr. T.
Martin, says, "I cannot forbear to give you some relation of
Sir Hans Sloane's curiosities. The Parliament has been pleased
to accept them on the condition of Sir Hans's codicil; that is,
that they should be kept together in one place in or near
London, and should be exhibited freely for a public use. The
King, or they, by the will, were to have the first error. The
19th instant being appointed for a committee of the whole
House, after several speeches, the Speaker himself moved the
whole House into a general regard to have them joined with the
King's and Cotton Libraries, together with those of one Major
Edwards, who had left seven thousand pounds to build a library,
besides his own books; and to purchase the Harleian
manuscripts, build a house for their reception," etc. An act
was shortly after passed, empowering the Crown to raise a
sufficient sum by lottery to purchase the Sloane collection and
Harleian manuscripts, together with Montagu House. Such was
the commencement of the British Museum.-E.

157 Letter 71
To Mr. Gray.
Arlington Street, Feb. 20, 1753.

I am very sorry that the haste I made to deliver you from your
uneasiness the first moment after I received your letter,
should have made me express myself in a manner to have the
quite contrary effect from what I intended. You well know how
rapidly and carelessly I always write my letters: the note you
mention was written in a still greater hurry than ordinary, and
merely to put you out of pain. I had not seen Dodsley,
consequently could only tell you that I did not doubt but he
would have no objection to satisfy you, as you was willing to
prevent his being a loser by the plate.(366) Now, from this
declaration, how is it possible for you to have for one momentput
such a construction upon my words, as would have been a
downright stupid brutality, unprovoked? It is impossible for
me to recollect my very expression, but I am confident that I
have repeated the whole substance.

How the bookseller would be less a loser by being at more
expense, I can easily explain to you. He feared the price of
half a guinea would seem too high to most purchasers. If by
the expense of ten guineas more he could make the book appear
so much more rich and showy as to induce people to think it
cheap, the profits from selling many more copies would amply
recompense him for his additional disbursement.