Books: The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2

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(386) Lord Albemarle was then ambassador at Paris.

165 Letter 77
To George Montagu, Esq.
Strawberry Hill, May 22, 1753.

You may very possibly be set out for Greatworth, but what house
Greatworth is, or whose, or how you came to have it, is all a
profound secret to us: your transitions arc so Pindaric, that,
without notes, we do not understand them, especially as neither
Mr. Bentley nor I have seen any of the letters, which I suppose
you have written to your family in the intervals of your
journeyings from Sir Jonathan Cope's(387) to Roel, and from
Roel to Greatworth. Mr. Bentley was just ready to send you
down a packet of Gothic, and brick and mortar, and arched
windows, and taper columns to be erected at Roel--no such
matter, you have met with some brave chambers belonging to Sir
Jonathan somebody in Northamptonshire, and are unloading your
camels and caravan,.;, and pitching your tents among your own
tribe. I cannot be quite sorry, for I shall certainly visit
you at Greatworth, and it might have been some years before the
curtain had drawn up at Roel. We emerge very fast out of
shavings, and hammerings, and pastings; the painted glass is
full-blown in every window, and the gorgeous saints, that were
brought out for one day on the festival of Saint George
Montagu, are fixed for ever in the tabernacles they are to
inhabit.- The castle is not the only beauty: and to-day we had
a glimpse of the sun as he passed by, though I am convinced the
summer is over; for these two last years we have been forced to
compound for five hot days in the pound.

News there is none to tell you. We had two days in the House
of Commons, that had something of the air of Parliament; there
has been a Marriage-bill, invented by my Lord Bath, and cooked
up by the Chancellor, which was warmly opposed by the Duke of
Bedford in the Lords, and with us by Fox and Nugent: the latter
made an admirable speech last week against it, and Charles
Townshend,(388) another very good one yesterday, when we sat
till near ten o'clock, but were beat, we minority, by 165 to
84.

I know nothing else but elopements: I have lost my man Henry,
who is run away for debt; and my Lord Bath his only son. who is
run away from thirty thousand pounds a-year, which in all
probability would have come to him in six months. There had
been some great fracas about his marriage; the stories are
various on the Why; some say his father told Miss Nichols that
his son was a very worthless young man; others, that the Earl
could not bring himself to make tolerable settlements; and a
third party say, that the Countess has blown up a quarrel in
order to have his son in her power, and at her mercy. Whatever
the cause was, this ingenious young man, who You know has made
my Lady Townshend his everlasting enemy, by repeating her
histories of Miss Chudleigh to that Miss, of all counsellors in
the world, picked out my Lady Townshend to consult on his
domestic grievances: she, with all the good-nature and charity
imaginable, immediately advised him to be disinherited. He
took her advice, left two dutiful letters for his parents, to
notify 'his disobedience, and went off last Friday night to
France. The Earl is so angry, that he could almost bring
himself to give Mr. Newport, and twenty other people, their
estates again. Good night--here is the Goth, Mr. Bentley,
wants to say a word to you.

"Dear Sir,
Wrote you a supernumerary letter on Saturday, but as I find you
have shifted your quarters since I heard from 'YOU, imagine it
may not have reached you yet. If you want to know what made me
so assiduous, it was to tell you Sir Danvers Osborn has kissed
hands for New York, that's all. I am sincerely yours.

"P.S. I wish you Would write to him mentioning me, that's
more."

(387) At Brewern, in Oxfordshire.-E.

(388) Second son of the Marquis of Townshend.

167 Letter 78
To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
Strawberry Hill, May 24, 1753.

It is well you are married! How would my Lady Ailesbury have
liked to be asked in a parish church for three Sundays running?
I really believe she would have worn her weeds for ever, rather
than have passed through so impudent a ceremony! What do you
think? But you will want to know the interpretation of this
preamble. Why, there is a new bill, which, under the notion of
preventing clandestine marriages, has made such a general
rummage and reform in the office of matrimony that every
Strephon and Chloe, every dowager and her Hussey, will have as
many impediments and formalities to undergo as a treaty of
peace. Lord Bath invented this bill,(389) but had drawn it so
ill, that the Chancellor was forced to draw a new one, and then
grew so fond of his own creature, that he has crammed it down
the throats of both Houses-though they gave many a gulp before
they could swallow it. The Duke of Bedford attacked it first
with great spirit and mastery, but had little support, though
the Duke of Newcastle did not vote. The lawyers were all
ordered to purse it through our House: but except the poor
Attorney-general,(390) "Who is nurse indeed. to all intents and
purposes, and did amply gossip over it, not one of them said a
word. Nugent shone extremely in opposition to the bill, and,
though every now and then on the precipice of absurdity, kept
clear of it, with great humour and wit and argument, and was
unanswered-yet we were beat. Last Monday it came into the
committee: Charles Townshend acted a very good speech with
great cleverness, and drew a picture of his own story and his
father's tyranny, with at least as much parts as modesty. Mr.
Fox mumbled the Chancellor and his lawyers, and pinned the plan
of the bill upon a pamphlet he had found of Dr. Gally's,(391)
where the doctor, recommending the French scheme of matrimony,
says, "It was found that fathers were too apt to forgive." "The
Gospel, I thought," said Mr. Fox, "enjoined forgiveness; but
pious Dr. Gal] v thinks fathers are too apt to forgive." Mr.
Pelham, extremely in his opinion against the bill, and in his
inclination too, was forced to rivet it, and, without speaking
one word for it, taught the House how to vote for it; and it was
carried against the Chairman's leaving the chair by 165 to 84.
This Is all the news I know, or at least was all when I came out
of town; for I left the tinkering of the bill, and came hither
last Tuesday to my workmen. I flatter myself I shall get into
tolerable order to receive my Lady Ailesbury and you at your
return from Sligo, from whence I have received 'your letter, and
where I hope you have had my first. I say nothing of the exile
of the Parliament of Paris for I know no more than you will see
in the public papers; only, as we are going to choose a new
Parliament, we could not do better than choose the exiles: we
could scarce choose braver or honester men. I say as little of
Mademoiselle Murphy,(392) for I conclude you hear nothing but her
health drank in whiskey. Don't all the nailed Irish flatter
themselves with preferment, and claim relation with her? Miss
Chudleigh says, there is some sense in belonging to a king who
turns off an old mistress when he has got a new one.

Arlington Street, May 29.

I am Come to town for a day or two, and find that the
Marriage-bill has not only lasted till now-in the committee,
but has produced, or at least disclosed, extreme heats. Mr.
Fox and Mr. Pelham have had very high words on every clause,
and the former has renewed his attacks on the Chancellor under
the name of Dr. Gally. Yesterday on the nullity clause they
sat till half an hour after three in the morning, having just
then had a division On adjournment, which was rejected by the
ministry by above 80 to 70. The Speaker, who had spoken well
against the clause, was so misrepresented by the
Attorney-general, that there was danger of a skimmington
between the great wig and the coif, the former having given a
flat lie to the latter. Mr. Fox I am told, outdid himself for
spirit, and severity on the Chancellor and the lawyers. I say
I am told; for I was content with having been beat twice, and
did not attend. The heats between the two ministers were far
from cooling by the length of the debate. Adieu! You did
little expect in these times, and at this season, to have heard
such a parliamentary history! The bill is not near
finished;(393) Mr. Fox has declared he will dispute every inch
of ground. I hope he won't be banished to Pontoise.(394) I
shall write to you no more; so pray return. I hear most
favourable accounts of my Lady Ailesbury.

(389) The following is Tindal's account of the origin of this
bill: "The fatal consequences of clandestine marriages had been
long complained of in England, as rendering the succession to
all property insecure and doubtful. Every day produced
hearings of the most shocking kind in the court of Chancery,
and appeals in the House of Lords, concerning the validity of
such marriages; and sometimes the innocent offspring were cut
off from succession, though their parents had been married bona
fide, because of the irregularity of such marriage. On the
other hand, both women and men of the most infamous characters
had opportunities of ruining the sons and daughters of the
greatest families in England, by conveniences of marrying in
the Fleet, and other unlicensed places; and marrying was now
become as much a trade as any mechanical profession."-E.

(390 Sir Dudley Ryder.

(391) Dr. Henry Gally, one of the King's chaplains in ordinary.
Besides the pamphlet here spoken of, which was entitled "Some
Considerations upon Clandestine Marriages," he wrote a
"Dissertation on Pronouncing the Greek Language," and several
other works He died in 1769.-E.

(392) An Irishwoman who was, for a short time, mistress to
Louis XV.

(393) "The opposition to the bill was such that few clauses
remained unaltered; and Mr. Fox, holding it up in the House, as
Antony exposed the murdered body of Caesar, made a kind of a
parody of the speech in Shakespeare upon that occasion."
Tindal.-E.

(394) The Parliament of Paris having espoused the clause of
religious liberty, and apprehended several priests who, by the
authority of the Archbishop of Paris and other prelates, had
refused the sacraments to those who would not subscribe to the
bull Unigunitus, were banished by Louis XV. to Pontoise.

169 Letter 79
To George Montagu, Esq.
Strawberry Hill, June 11, 1753.

You will think me very fickle, and that I have but a slight
regard to the castle I am building for my ancestors, when you
hear that I have been these last eight days in London amid dust
and stinks, instead of seringa, roses, battlements, and niches;
but you perhaps recollect that I have another Gothic passion,
which is for squabbles in the Wittenagemot.(395) I can't say
that the contests have run so high in either House as they have
sometimes done in former days, but this age has found out a new
method of parliamentary altercations. The Commons abuse the
Barons, and the Barons return it; in short, Mr. Fox attacked
the Chancellor violently on the Marriage-bill; and when it was
sent back to the Lords, the Chancellor made the most outrageous
invectives on Fox that ever was heard. But what offends still
more,--I don't mean offends Fox more,--was the Chancellor
describing the chief persons who had opposed his bill in the
Commons, and giving reason why he excused them. As the speaker
was in the number of the excused, the two maces are ready to
come to blows.(396) The town says Mr. Fox is to be dismissed,
but I can scarce think it will go so far.

My Lord Cornwallis is made an earl; Lord Bristol's sisters have
the rank of Earl's daughters; Damer is Lord Milton in Ireland,
and the new Lord Barnard is, I hear, to be Earl of Darlington.

Poor Lady Caroline Brand is dead of a rheumatic fever, and her
husband as miserable a man as ever he was a cheerful one: I
grieve much for her, and pity him; they were infinitely happy,
and lived in the most perfect friendship I ever saw.

You may be assured that I will pay you a visit some time this
summer, though not yet, as I cannot leave my workmen,
especially as we have a painter who paints the paper on the
staircase under Mr. Bentley's direction. The armoury bespeaks
the ancient chivalry of the lords of the castle; and I have
filled Mr. Bentley's Gothic lanthorn with painted glass, which
casts the most venerable gloom on the stairs that ever was seen
since the days of Abelard. The lanthorn itself, in which I
have stuck a coat of the Veres, is supposed to have come from
Castle Henningham. Lord and Lady Vere were here t'other day, and
called cousins with it, and would very readily have invited it to
Hanworth; but her Portuguese blood has so blackened the true
stream that I could not bring myself to offer so fair a gift to
their chapel.

I shall only tell you a bon-mot of Keith's, the
marriage-broker, and conclude. "G-d d-n the bishops!" said he,
(I beg Miss Montagu's pardon,) "so they will hinder my
marrying. Well, let 'em; but I'll be revenged! I'll buy two
or three acres of ground, and, by G-d! I'll underbury them
all!" Adieu!

(395) The name of the Saxon great council, the supposed origin
of parliaments.

(396) Among the Hardwicke papers there is a letter from Dr.
Birch to the Hon. Philip Yorke, giving an account of the
debate in the House of Lords. The following is an extract:--
"My Lord Chancellor expressed his surprise, that the bill
should have been styled out of doors an absurd, a cruel, a
scandalous, and a wicked one. With regard to his own share in
this torrent of abuse, as he was obliged to those who had so
honourably defended him, so,' said he, 'I despise the
invective, and I despise the retractation; I despise the
scurrility, and I reject the adulation.' Mr. Fox was not
present, but had soon an account of what had passed; for the
same evening, being at Vauxhall with some ladies, he broke from
them, and collecting a little circle of young members of
parliament and others, told them with great eagerness, that he
wished the session had continued a fortnight longer, for then
he would have made ample returns to the Lord Chancellor. The
Speaker talks of my Lord Chancellor's speech in the style of
Mr. Fox, as deserving of the notice of the Commons, if they had
not been prorogued."-E.

170 Letter 80
To Sir Horace Mann.
Strawberry Hill, June 12, 1753.

I could not rest any longer with the thought of your having no
idea of a place of which you hear so much, and therefore
desired Mr. Bentley to draw you as much idea of it as the post
would be persuaded to carry from Twickenham to Florence. The
enclosed enchanted little landscape, then, is Strawberry Hill;
and I will try to explain so much of it to you as will help to
let you know whereabouts we are when we are talking to you; for
it is uncomfortable in so intimate a correspondence as ours not
to be exactly master of every spot where one another is
writing, or reading, or sauntering. This view of the
castle(397) is what I have just finished, and is the only side
that will be at all regular. Directly before it is an open
grove, through which you see a field, which is bounded by a
serpentine wood of all kind of trees, and flowering shrubs, and
flowers! The lawn before the house is situated on the top of a
small hill, from whence to the left you see the town and church
of Twickenham encircling a turn of the river, that looks
exactly like a seaport in miniature. The opposite shore is a
most delicious meadow, bounded by Richmond Hill, which loses
itself in the noble woods of the park to the end of the
prospect on the right, where is another turn of the river, and
the suburbs of Kingston as luckily placed as Twickenham is on
the left; and a natural terrace on the brow of my hill, with
meadows of my own down to the river, commands both extremities.
Is not this a tolerable prospect? You must figure that all this
is perpetually enlivened by a navigation of boats and barges,
and by a road below my terrace, with coaches, post-chaises,
wagons, and horsemen constantly in motion, and the fields
speckled with cows, horses, and sheep. Now you shall walk into
the house. The bow-window below leads into a little parlour
hung with a stone-colour Gothic paper and Jackson's Venetian
prints, which I could never endure while they pretended,
infamous as they are, to be after Titian, etc., but when I gave
them this air of barbarous basreliefs, they succeeded to a
miracle: it is impossible at first sight not to conclude
that they contain the history of Attila or Tottila, done about
the very aera. From hence, under two gloomy arches, you come
to the hall and staircase, which it is impossible to describe
to you, as it is the most particular and chief beauty of the
castle. Imagine the walls covered with (I call it paper, but
it is really paper painted in perspective to represent) Gothic
fretwork: the lightest Gothic balustrade to the staircase,
adorned with antelopes (our supporters) bearing shields lean
windows fattened with rich saints in painted glass, and a
vestibule open with three arches on the landing-place, and
niches full of trophies of old coats of mail, Indian shields
made of rhinoceros's hides, broadswords, quivers, long bows,
arrows, and spears--all supposed to be taken by Mr Terry
Robsart(398) in the holy wars. But as none of' this regards
the enclosed drawing, I will pass to that. The room on the
ground-floor nearest to you is a bedchamber, hung with yellow
paper and prints, framed in a new manner, invented by Lord
Cardigan; that is, with black and white borders printed. Over
this is Mr. Chute's bedchamber, hung with red in the same
manner. The bow-window room one pair of stairs is not yet
finished; but in the tower beyond it is the charming closet
where I am now writing to you. It is hung with green paper and
water-colour pictures; has two windows; the one in the drawing
looks to the garden, the other to the beautiful prospect; and
the top of each glutted with the richest painted glass of the
arms of England, crimson roses, and twenty other pieces of
green, purple, and historic bits. I must tell you, by the way,
that the castle, when finished, will have two-and-thirty
windows enriched with painted glass. In this closet, which is
Mr. Chute's college of arms, are two presses with books of
heraldry and antiquities, Madame Sevign`e's Letters, and any
French books that relate to her and her acquaintance. Out of
this closet is the room where we always live, hung with a blue
and white paper in stripes adorned with festoons, and a
thousand plump chairs, couches, and luxurious settees covered
with linen of the same pattern, and with a bow-window
commanding the prospect, and gloomed with limes that shade half
each window, already darkened with painted glass in
chiaroscuro, set in deep blue glass. Under this room is a cool
little hall, where we generally dine, hung with paper to
imitate Dutch tiles.

I have described so much, that you will begin to think that all
the accounts I used to give you of the diminutiveness of our
habitation were fabulous; but it is really incredible how small
most of the rooms are. The Only two good chambers I shall have
are not yet built; they will be an eating-room and a library,
each twenty by thirty, and the latter fifteen feet high. For
the rest of the house, I could send it you in this letter as
easily as the drawing, only that I should have no where to live
till the return of the post. The Chinese summer-house which
you may distinguish in the distant landscape, belongs to my Lord
Radnor. We pique ourselves upon nothing but simplicity, and have
no carvings, gildings, paintings, inlayings, or tawdry
businesses.

You will not be sorry, I believe,. by this time to have done
with Strawberry Hill, and to hear a little news. The end of a
very dreaming session has been extremely enlivened by an
accidental bill which has opened great quarrels, and those not
unlikely to be attended with interesting circumstances. A bill
to prevent clandestine marriages, so drawn by the Judges as to
clog all matrimony in general, was inadvertently espoused by
the Chancellor; and having been strongly attacked in the House
of Commons by Nugent, the Speaker, Mr. Fox, and others, the
last went very great lengths of severity on the whole body of
the law, and on its chieftain in particular-, which, however,
at the last reading, he softened and explained off extremely.
This did not ,appease; but on the return of the bill to the
House of Lords, where our amendments were to be read, the
Chancellor in the most personal terms harangued against Fox,
and concluded with saying that "he despised his scurrility as
much as his adulation and recantation." As Christian charity
is not one of the oaths taken by privy-counsellors, and as it
is not the most eminent virtue in either of the champions, this
quarrel is not likely to be soon reconciled. There are
natures(399) whose disposition it is to patch up political
breaches, but whether they will succeed, or try to succeed in
healing this, can I tell you?

The match for Lord Granville, which I announced to you, is not
concluded: his flames are cooled in that quarter as well as in
others.

I begin a new sheet to you, which does not match with the
other, for I have no more of the same paper here. Dr. Cameron
is executed, and died with the greatest firmness. His parting
with his wife the night before was heroic and tender: he let
her stay till the last moment, when being aware that the gates
of the Tower would be locked, he told her so; she fell at his
feet in agonies: he said, "Madam, this was not what you
promised me," and embracing her, forced her to retire; then
with the same coolness, looked at the window till her coach was
out of sight, after which he turned about and wept. His only
concern seemed to be at the ignominy of Tyburn: he was not
disturbed at the dresser for his body, or at the fire to burn
his bowels.(400) The crowd was so great, that a friend who
attended him could not get away, but was forced to stay and
behold the execution: but what will you say to the minister or
priest who accompanied him? The wretch, after taking leave,
went into a landau, where, not content with seeing the Doctor
hanged, he let down the top of the landau for the better
convenience of seeing him embowelled! I cannot tell you
positively that what I hinted of this Cameron being commissioned
from Prussia was true, but so it is believed. Adieu! my dear
child; I think this is a very tolerable letter for summer!

(397) It was a view of the south side towards the northeast.

(398) An ancestor of Sir Robert Walpole, who was knight of the
garter.

(399) An allusion to Mr. Pelham.

(400) "The populace," says Smollet, though not very subject to
tender emotions, were moved to compassion, and even to tears,
by his behaviour at the place of execution; and many sincere
well-wishers to the present establishment thought that the
sacrifice of this victim, at such a juncture, could not redound
either to its honour or security."-E.

173 Letter 81
To George Montagu, Esq.
Strawberry Hill, July 17, 1753.

Dear sir,
You are so kind, that I am peevish with myself for not being
able to fix a positive day for being with you; as near as I can
guess, it will be some of the very first days of the next
month: I am engaged to go with Lady Ailesbury and Mr. Conway to
Stowe, the 28th of this month, if some little business which I
have here does not prevent me; and from thence I propose to
meet Mr. Chute at Greatworth. If this should at all interfere
with your schemes, tell me so; especially, I must beg that you
would not so far depend on me as to stay one minute from doing
any thing else you like, because it is quite impossible for me
to be sure that I can execute just at the time I propose such
agreeable projects. Meeting Mrs. Trevor will be a principal
part of my pleasure; but the summer shall certainly not pass
without my seeing you.

You will, I am sure, be concerned to hear that your favourite,
Miss Brown, the pretty Catholic, who lived with Madame
d'Acunha, is dead at Paris, by the ignorance of the physician.
Tom Harvey, who always obliges the town with a quarrel in a
dead season, has published a delightful letter to Sir William
Bunbury,(401) full of madness and wit. He had given the Doctor
a precedent for a clergyman's fighting a duel, and I furnished
him with another story of the same kind, that diverted him
extremely. A Dr. Suckling, who married a niece of my father,
quarrelled with a country squire, who said, "Doctor, your gown
is your protection." "Is it so?" replied the parson; "but, by
God! it shall not be yours;" pulled it off, and thrashed him--I
was going to say damnably, at least, divinely. Do but think,
my Lord Coke and Tom Harvey are both bound to the peace, and
are always going to fight together: how comfortable for their
sureties!

My Lord Pomfret is dead; George Selwyn says, that my Lord
Ashburnham(402) is not more glad to get into the parks than
Lord Falkland is to get out of them. You know he was forced to
live in a privileged place.