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

Jack Hill(403) is dead too, and has dropped about a hundred
legacies; a thousand pound to the Dowager of Rockingham; as
much, with all his plate and china, to her sister Bel. I don't
find that my uncle has got so much as a case of knives and forks,
he always paid great court, but Mary Magdalen, my aunt, undid all
by scolding the man, and her spouse durst not take his part.

Lady Anne Paulett's daughter is eloped with a country
clergyman. The Duchess of Argyle Harangues against the
Marriage-bill not taking place immediately, and is persuaded
that all the girls will go off before next lady-day.

Before I finish, I must describe to you the manner in which I
overtook Monsieur le Duc de Mirepoix t'other day, who lives at
Lord Dunkeron's house at Turnham-green. It was seven o'clock
in the evening of one of the hottest and most dusty days of
this summer. He was walking slowly in the beau milieu of
Brentford town, without any company, but with a brown lap-dog
with long ears, two pointers, two pages, three footmen, and a
vis-a-vis following him. By the best accounts I can get, he
must have been to survey the ground of the battle of Brentford,
which I hear he has much studied, and harangues upon.

Adieu! I enclose a World' to you, which, by a story I shall
tell you, I find is called mine. I met Mrs. Clive two nights
ago, and told her I had been in the meadows, but would walk no
more there, for there was all the world. "Well," says she, "and
don't you like the World!(404) I hear it was very clever last
Thursday." All I know is, that you will meet with some of your
acquaintance there. Good night, with my compliments to Miss
Montagu.

(401) The Rev. Sir William Bunbury, father of Sir Charles, and
of Henry, the celebrated caricaturist.-E.

(402) Lord Ashburnham succeeded Lord Pomfret as ranger of St.
James's and Hyde Parks.

(403) Member for Higham Ferrers.

(404) No. 28, entitled " Old women most proper objects for
love." Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in a letter to her daughter,
says, "Send me no translations, no periodical papers; though I
confess some of The World' entertained me very much,
particularly Lord Chesterfield and Horry Walpole; but whenever
I met Dodsley, I wished him out of the World with all my heart.
The title was a very lucky one, being, as you see, productive
of puns world without end; which is all the species of wit some
people can either practise or understand."-E.

174 Letter 82
To Sir Horace Mann.
Strawberry Hill, July 21, 1753.

Though I have long had a letter of yours unanswered, yet I
verily think it would have remained so a little longer, if the
pretty altar-tomb which you have sent me had not roused my
Gratitude. It arrived here--I mean the tomb, not my
gratitude--yesterday, and this morning churchyarded itself in
the corner of my wood, where I hope it will remain till some
future virtuoso shall dig it up, and publish 'it in " A
Collection of Roman Antiquities in Britain. It is the very
thing I wanted: how could you, my dear Sir, take such exact
measure of my idea? By the way, you have never told me the
price; don't neglect it, that I nay pay your brother.

I told you how ill disposed I was to write to you, and you must
know without my telling you that the only reason of that could
be my not knowing a tittle worth mentioning; nay, not a tittle,
worth or not. All England is gone over all England
electioneering: the spirit is as great now they are all on one
side, as when parties ran the highest. You judge how little I
trouble myself about all this; especially when the question is
not who shall be in the ministry, only who shall be in the
House.

I am almost inclined not to say a word to your last letter,
because if I begin to answer it, it must be by scolding you for
making SO serious an affair of leaving off snuff; one would
think you was to quit a vice, not a trick. Consider, child,
you are in Italy, not in England: here you would be very
fashionable by having so many nerves, and you might have
doctors and waters for every One Of them, from Dr. Mead to Dr.
Thompson, and from Bath to the iron pear-tree water. I should
sooner have expected to hear that good Dr. Cocchi(405) was in
the Inquisition than in prescribing to a
snuff-twitter-nerve-fever! You say people tell you that
leaving off snuff all at once may be attended with bad
consequences--I can't conceive what bad consequences, but to
the snuff-shop, who, I conclude by your lamentations, must have
sold you tolerable quantities; and I know what effects any
diversion of money has upon the tobacco-trade in Tuscany. I
forget how much it was that the duty sank at Florence in a
fortnight after the erection of the first lottery, by the poor
people abridging themselves of snuff to buy tickets; but I
think I have said enough, considering I don't intend to scold.

Thank you for your civilities to Mr. Stephens; not at all for
those to Mr. Perry,(406) who has availed himself of the
partiality which he found you had for me, and passed Upon you
for my friend. I never spoke one word to him in my life, but
when he went out of his own dressing-room at Penshurst that Mr.
Chute and I might see it, and then I said, "Sir, I hope we
don't disturb you;" he grunted something, and walked away--la
belle amiti`e!--yet, my dear child, I thank you, who receive
bad money when it is called My coin. I Wish YOU had liked my
Lady Rochford's beauty more: I intended it should return well
preserved: I grow old enough to be piqued for the charms of my
contemporaries.

Lord Pomfret(407) is dead, not a thousand pound in debt. The
Countess has two thousand a-year rent-charge for jointure, five
hundred as lady of the bedchamber to the late Queen, and
fourteen thousand pounds in money, in her own power, just
recovered by a lawsuit-what a fund for follies! The new Earl
has about two thousand four hundred pounds a-year in present
but deep debts and post-obits. He has not put on mourning, but
robes; that is, in the middle of this very hot summer, he has
produced himself in a suit of crimson velvet, that he may be
sure of not being mistaken for being in weepers. There are
rents worth ten thousand pounds left to little Lady Sophia
Carteret,(408) and the whole personal estate between the two
unmarried daughters;(409) so the seat(410) must be stripped.
There are a few fine small pictures, and one(411) very curious
One of Henry VII. and his Queen, with Cardinal Morton, and, I
think, the Abbot of Westminster. Strawberry casts a Gothic eye
upon this, but I fear it will pass our revenues. The
statues,(412) which were part of the Arundel collection, are
famous, but few good. The Cicero is fine and celebrated: the
Marius I think still finer. The rest are Scipios,
Cincinnatus's and the Lord knows who, which have lost more of
their little value than of their false pretensions by living
out of doors; and there is a green-house full of colossal
fragments. Adieu! Have you received the description and
portrait of my castle?

(405) he was a very free thinker, and suspected by the
Inquisition.

(406) He married one of the coheiresses of the Sidneys, Earls
of Leicester.

(407) Thomas Fermor, first Earl of Pomfret, so created in 1721.
He had ben master of the horse to Queen Caroline, and ranger of
St. James's Park-D.

(408) Daughter of John, Earl of Granville, by his second wife,
eldest daughter of Thomas Fermor, Earl of Pomfret. (Afterwards
married to William Petty, Earl of Shelburne and Marquis of
Lansdowne.-D.)

(409) Lady Louisa and Lady Anne; the latter was afterwards
married to Mr. Dawson.

(410) Easton Neston, in Northamptonshire.

(411) It is the marriage of Henry VII. and Elizabeth of York.
The two other figures are probably St. Thomas and the Bishop of
linola, the Pope's nuncio, who pronounced the nuptial
benediction. This curious picture was purchased by Lady
Pomfret for two hundred pounds. The Earl of Oxford offered her
five hundred pounds for it: Mr. Walpole bought it at Lord
Pomfret's sale for eighty-four guineas, and it is now at
Strawberry Hill.

(412) Lady Pomfret bought the statues, after her lord's death,
and presented them to the University of Oxford.

176 Letter 83
To John Chute, Esq.
Stowe, Aug. 4, 1753

My dear Sir,
You would deserve to be scolded, if you had not lost almost as
much pleasure as you have disappointed me of.(413) Whether
George Montagu will be so content With your commuting
punishments, I don't know: I should think not; he "cried and
roared all night"(414) when I delivered your excuse. He is
extremely well-housed, after having roamed like a Tartar about
the country with his whole personal estate at his heels. .
There is an extensive view, which is called pretty: but
Northamptonshire is no county to please me. What entertained
me was, that he who in London -,vas grown an absolute recluse,
is over head and ears in neighbours, and as popular as if he
intended to stand for the county, instead of having given up
the town. The very first morning after my arrival, as we were
getting into the chaise to go to Wroxton, they notified a Sir
Harry Danvers, a young squire, booted and spurred, and
buckskin-breeche'd. "Will you drink any chocolate?" "No; a
little wine and water, if you please."--I suspected nothing but
that he had rode till he was dry. "Nicol`o, some wine and
water." He desired the water might be warm--I began to stare;
Montagu understood the dialect, and ordered a negus. I had
great difficulty to keep my countenance, and still more when I
saw the baronet finish a very large jug indeed. To be sure, he
wondered as much at me e who did not finish a jug; and I could
not help reflecting, that living always in the world makes one
as unfit for living out of it, as always living out of it does
for living in it. Knightley, the knight of the shire, has been
entertaining all the parishes round with a turtle-feast, which,
so far from succeeding, has almost made him suspected for a
Jeu,, as the country parsons have not yet learned to wade into
green fat.

The roads are very bad to Greatworth; and such numbers of
gates, that if one loved punning one should call it the
Gate-house. - The proprietor had a wonderful invention: the
chimneys, which are of stone, have niches and benches in them,
where the man used to sit and smoke. I had twenty disasters,
according to custom; lost my way, and had my French boy almost
killed by a fall with his horse: but I have been much pleased.
When I was at Park-place I went to see Sir H.
Englefield's,(415) which Mr. Churchill and Lady Mary prefer,
but I think very undeservedly, to Mr. Southcote's. It is not
above a quarter as extensive, and wants the river. There is a
pretty view of Reading seen under a rude arch, and the water is
well disposed. The buildings are very insignificant, and the
house far from good. The town of Henley has been extremely
disturbed with an engagement between the ghosts of Miss Blandy
and her father, which continued so violent, that some bold
persons, to prevent farther blood-shed, broke in, and found it
was two jackasses which had got into the kitchen.

I felt strangely tempted to stay at Oxford and survey it at my
leisure; but as I was alone, I had not courage. I passed by
Sir James Dashwood'S,(416) a vast new house, situated so high
that it seems to stand for the county as well as himself. I
did look over Lord Jersey's(417) which was built for a
hunting-box, and is still little better. But now I am going to
tell you how delightful a day I passed at Wroxton. Lord
Guildford has made George Montagu so absolutely viceroy over
it, that we saw it more agreeable than you can conceive; roamed
over the whole house, found every door open, saw not a
creature, had an extreme good dinner, wine, fruit, coffee and
tea in the library, were served by fairies, tumbled over the
books, said one or two talismanic words, and the cascade
played, and went home loaded with pine-apples and flowers.--You
will take me for Monsieur de CoulangeS,(418) I describe
eatables so feelingly; but the manner in which we were served
made the whole delicious. The house was built by a Lord Downe
in the reign of James the First; and though there is a fine
hall and a vast dining-room below, and as large a drawing-room
above, it is neither good nor agreeable; one end of the front
was never finished, and might have a good apartment. The
library is added by this Lord, and is a pleasant chamber.
Except loads of portraits, there is no tolerable furniture. A
whole-length of the first Earl of Downe is in the Bath-robes,
and has a coif under the hat and feather. There is a charming
picture of Prince Henry about twelve years old, drawing his
sword to kill a stag, with a Lord Harrington; a good portrait
of Sir Owen Hopton,(419) 1390; your pious grandmother, my Lady
Dacre, which I think like you; some good Cornelius Johnsons; a
Lord North, by Riley, good; and an extreme fine portrait by him
of the Lord Keeper: I have never seen but few of the hand, but
most of them have been equal to Lely and the best of Sir
Godfrey. There is too a curious portrait of Sir Thomas Pope,
the founder of Trinity College, Oxford, said to be by Holbein.
The chapel is new, but in a pretty Gothic taste, with a very
long window of painted glass, very tolerable. The frieze is
pendent, just in the manner I propose for the eating-room at
Strawberry Hill. Except one scene, which is indeed noble, I
cannot much commend the without-doors. This scene consists of
a beautiful lake entirely shut in with wood: the head falls
into a fine cascade, and that into a serpentine river, over
which is a little Gothic seat like a round temple, lifted up by
a shaggy mount. On an eminence in the park is an obelisk
erected to the honour and at the expense of "optimus" and 1,
munificentissimus" the late Prince of Wales, "in loci
amoenitatem et memoriam advent`us ejus." There are several
paltry Chinese buildings and bridges, which have the merit or
demerit of being the progenitors of a very numerous race all
over the kingdom: at least they were of the very first. In the
church is a beautiful tomb of an Earl and Countess of Downe,
and the tower is in a good plain Gothic style, ind was once,
they tell you, still more beautiful; but Mr. Miller, who
designed it, unluckily once in his life happened to think
rather of beauty than of the water-tables, and so it fell down
the first winter.

On Wednesday morning we went to see a sweet little chapel at
Steane, built in 1620 by Sir Thomas Crewe, Speaker in the time
of the first James and Charles. Here are remains of the
mansion-house, but quite in ruins: the chapel is kept up by my
Lord Arran, the last of the race. There are seven or eight
monuments. On one is this epitaph, which I thought pretty
enough:

"Conjux, casta parens felix, matrona pudica;
Sara viro, mundo Martha, Maria Deo."

On another is the most affected inscription I ever saw, written
by two brothers on their sister: they say, "This agreeable
mortal translated her into immortality such a day:" but I could
not help laughing at one quaint expression, to which time has
given a droll sense: "She was a constant lover of the best."

I have been here these two days, extremely amused and charmed
indeed. Wherever you stand you see an Albano landscape. Half
as many buildings I believe would be too many, but such a
profusion gives inexpressible richness. You may imagine I have
some private reflections entertaining enough, not very
communicable to the company: the Temple of Friendship, in
which, among twenty memorandums of quarrels, is the bust of Mr.
Pitt: Mr. James Grenville is now in the house, whom his uncle
disinherited for his attachment to that very Pylades, Mr. Pitt.
He broke with Mr. Pope, who is deified in the Elysian fields,
before the inscription for his head was finished. That of Sir
John Barnard, which was bespoke by the name of a bust of my
Lord Mayor, was by a mistake of the sculptor done for Alderman
Perry. The statue of the King, and that "honori, laudi,
virtuti divae Carolinae," make one smile, when one sees the
ceiling where Britannia rejects and hides the reign of King * *
* * But I have no patience at building and planting a satire!
Such is the temple of modern virtue in ruins! The Grecian
temple is glorious: this I openly worship: in the heretical
corner of my heart I adore the Gothic building, which by some
unusual inspiration Gibbs had made pure and beautiful and
venerable. The style has a propensity to the Venetian or
mosque Gothic, and the great column near it makes the whole put
one in mind of the Place of St. Mark. The windows are
throughout consecrated with painted glass; most of it from the
priory at Warwick, a present from that foolish Greathead, who
quarrelled with me (because his father was a gardener) for
asking him if Lord Brook had planted much--Apropos to painted
glass. I forgot to tell you of a sweet house which Mr. Montagu
carried me to see, belonging to a Mr. Holman, a Catholic, and
called Warkworth. The situation is pretty, the front charming,
composed of two round and two square towers. The court within
is incomplete on one side; but above stairs is a vast gallery
with four bow-windows and twelve other large ones, all filled
with the arms of the old peers of England, with all their
quarterings entire. You don't deserve, after deserting me,
that I should tempt you to such a sight; but this alone is
worth while to carry you to Greatworth.

Adieu, my dear Sir! I return to Strawberry to-morrow, and
forgive you enough not to deprive myself of the satisfaction of
seeing you there whenever you have nothing else to do.

(413) In not accompanying Mr. Walpole on a visit to Mr. George
Montagu at Greatworth.

(414) A phrase of Mr. Montagu's.

(415) Whiteknights.

(416) At High Wycombe.

(417) Middleton.

(418) The cousin and friend of Madame de S`evign`e, and
frequently mentioned in her letters.-E.

(419) Lieutenant of the Tower. His daughter was the wife of
the first Earl of Downe.-E.

179 Letter 84
To George Montagu, Esq.
Strawberry Hill, Aug. 16, 1753.

Don't you suspect, that I have not only forgot the pleasure I
had at Greatworth and Wroxton,(420) but the commissions you
gave me too? It looks a little ungrateful not to have vented a
word of thanks; but I stayed to write till I could send you the
things, and when I had them, I stayed to send them by Mr.
Chute, who tells you by to-night's post when he will bring
them. The butter-plate is not exactly what You ordered, but I
flatter myself you will like it as well. There are a few
seeds; more shall follow at the end of the autumn. Besides Tom
Harvey's letter, I have sent you maps of Oxfordshire and
Northamptonshire, having felt the want of them when I was with
you. I found the road to Stowe above twelve miles, very bad,
and it took me up two hours and a half: but the formidable idea
I conceived of the breakfast and way of life there by no means
answered. You was a prophet; it was very agreeable. I am
ashamed to tell you that I laughed half an hour yesterday at
the sudden death of your new friend Sir Harry Danvers,(421)
"after a morning's airing," the news call it; I suspect it was
after a negus. I found my garden brown and bare, but these
rains have recovered the green. You may get your pond ready as
soon as you please; the gold fish swarm: Mr. Bentley carried a
dozen to town t'other day in a decanter. You would be
entertained with our fishing; instead of nets, and rods and
lines, and worms, we use nothing but a pail and a basin and a
tea-strainer, which I persuade my neighbours is the Chinese
method. Adieu! My best compliments to Miss Montagu.

P. S. Since writing my letter, I have received your twin
dispatches. I am extremely sensible of the honour my Lord
Guildford does me, and beg you to transmit my gratitude to him:
if he is ever at Wroxton when I visit Greatworth, I shall
certainly wait upon him, and think myself happy in seeing that
charming place again. As soon as I go to town, I shall send
for Moreland, and barbour your wardrobe with great pleasure. I
find I must beg your pardon for laughing in the former part of
my letter about your baronet's death; but his "wine and water a
little warm" had left such a ridiculous effect upon me, that
even his death could not efface it. Good night! Mr. Miller
told me at Stowe, that the chimney-piece (I think from Steane)
was he believed at Banbury, but he did not know exactly. If it
lies in your way to inquire, on so vague a direction, will you?
Mr. Chute may bring me a sketch of it.

(420) The seat of Lord Guilford.

(421) Of Culworth, in Oxfordshire. He died at the age of
twenty-two.-E.

180 Letter 85
To Richard Bentley, Esq.
Arlington Street, September, 1753.

My dear Sir,
I am going to send you another volume of my travels; I don't
know whether I shall not, at last, write a new Camden's
Britannia; but lest you should be afraid of my itinerary, I
will at least promise you that it shall not be quite so dry as
most surveys, which contain nothing but lists of impropriations
and glebes, and carucates, and transcripts out of Domesday, and
tell one nothing that is entertaining, describe no houses nor
parks, mention no curious pictures, but are fully satisfied if
they inform you that they believe that some nameless old tomb
belonged to a knight-templar, or one of the crusado, because he
lies cross-legged. Another promise I will make you is, that my
love of abbeys shall not make me hate the Reformation till that
makes me grow a Jacobite, like the rest of my antiquarian
predecessors; of whom, Dart in particular wrote Billingsgate
against Cromwell and the regicides: and Sir Robert Atkins
concludes his summary of the Stuarts with saying, "that it is
no reason, because they have been so, that this family should
always continue unfortunate."

I have made my visit at Hagley,(422) as I intended. On my way
I dined at Park-place, and lay at Oxford. As I was quite
alone, I did not care to see any thing; but as soon as it was
dark I ventured out, and the moon rose as I was wandering among
the colleges, and gave me a charming venerable Gothic scene,
which was not lessened by the monkish appearance of the old
fellows stealing to their pleasures. Birmingham is large, and
swarms with people and trade, but did not answer my expectation
from any beauty in it: yet, new as it is, I perceived how far I
was got back from the London hegira; for every alehouse is here
written mug-house, a name one has not heard of since the riots
in the late King's time.

As I got into Worcestershire, I opened upon a landscape of
country which I prefer even to Kent, which I had reckoned the
most beautiful county in England: but this, with all the
richness of Kent, is bounded with mountains. Sir George
Lyttelton's house is immeasurably bad and old; one room at the
top of the house, which was reckoned a conceit in those days,
projects a vast way into the air. There are two or three
curious pictures, and some of them extremely agreeable to me
for their relation to Grammont: there is le s`erieux
Lyttelton,(423) but too old for the date of that book;
Mademoiselle Stuart,(424) Lord Brounker, and Lady
Southesk;(425) besides, a portrait of Lord Clifford the
treasurer(426) with his staff, but drawn in armour (though no
soldier) out of flattery to Charles the Second, as he said the
most glorious part of his life was attending the King at the
battle of Worcester. He might have said, that it was as
glorious as any part of his Majesty's life. You might draw,
but I can't describe, the enchanting scenes of the park: it is
a hill of three miles, but broke into all manner of beauty;
such lawns, such wood, rills, cascades, and a thickness of
verdure quite to the summit of the hill, and commanding such a
vale of towns, and meadows, and woods extending quite to the
Black Mountain in Wales, that I quite forgot my favourite
Thames! Indeed, I prefer nothing to Hagley but Mount Edgecombe.
There is extreme taste in the park - the seats are not the
best, but there is not one absurdity. There is a ruined
castle, built by Miller, that would get him his freedom even of
Strawberry: it has the true rust of the barons' wars. Then
there is a scene of a small lake, with cascades falling down
such a Parnassus 1 with a circular temple on the distant
eminence; and there is such a fairy dale, with more cascades
gushing out of rocks! and there- is a hermitage, so exactly
like those in Sadeler's prints, on the brow of a shady
mountain, stealing peeps into the glorious world below; and
there is such a pretty well under a wood, like the Samaritan
woman's in a picture of Nicol`o Poussin! and there is such a
wood without the park, enjoying such a prospect! and there is
such a mountain on t'other side of the park commanding all
prospects, that I wore out my eyes with gazing, my feet with
climbing, and my tongue and my vocabulary with commending! The
best notion I can give you of the satisfaction I showed, was,
that Sir George proposed to carry me to dine with my Lord
Foley; and when I showed reluctance, he said, "Why, I thought
you did not mind any strangers, if you were to see any thing!"
Think of my not minding strangers! I mind them so much, that I
missed seeing Hartlebury Castle, and the Bishop of Worcester's
chapel of painted glass there, because it was his public day
when I passed by his park.-Miller has built a Gothic house in
the village at Hagley for a relation of Sir George: but there
he is not more than Miller; in his castle he is almost Bentley.
There is a genteel tomb in the church to Sir George's first
wife,(427) with a Cupid and a pretty urn in the Roman style.