Books: The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2

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We have some royal negotiations proceeding in Germany, which
are not likely to give quite so much satisfaction to the
Parliament of next winter, as our French triumphs give to the
City, where nothing is so popular as the Duke of Newcastle.
There is a certain Hessian treaty, said to be eighteen years
long, which is arrived at the Treasury, Legge refused
peremptorily to sign it--you did not expect patriotism from
thence? It will not make him popular: there is not a mob in
England now capable of being the dupe of patriotism; the late
body of that denomination have really so discredited it, that
a minister must go great lengths indeed before the people
would dread him half so much as a patriot! On the contrary, I
believe nothing would make any man so popular, or conciliate
so much affection to his ministry, as to assure the people
that he never had nor ever would pretend to love his country.
Legge has been frowned upon by the Duke of Newcastle ever
since he was made chancellor of the exchequer by him, and
would have been turned out long ago if Sir George Lee would
have accepted the post. I am sorry that just when Tuscany is
at war with Algiers, your countrymen should lie under the
odour of piracy too; it will give Richcourt opportunities of
saying very severe things to you!--Barbarossa our Dey is not
returned yet-we fear he is going to set his grandson(599) up
in a seraglio; and as we have not, among other Mahometan
customs, copied the use of the bowstring for repressing the
luxuriancy of the royal branches, we shall be quite overrun
with young Sultans! Adieu!

(596) The Duke of Cumberland.

(597) General Hawley, who behaved with great cruelty and
brutality in the Scotch rebellion, which did not however
Prevent his being beaten by the rebels,-D.

(598) The story of this unfortunate young lady is told by
Goldsmith, in his amusing Life of Beau Nash, introduced into
the new and @greatly enlarged edition of his "Miscellaneous
Works," published by Mr. Murray, in 1837, in four volumes
octavo. See vol. iii. p. 294. According to the poet, the
lines which were written on one of the panes of the window,
were these:-

"O Death! thou pleasing end of human wo!
Thou cure for life! thou greatest good below!
Still may'st thou fly the coward and the slave,
And thy soft slumbers only bless the brave."-E.

(599) The King had a mind to marry the Prince of Wales to a
Princess of Brunswick.

270 Letter 145
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, August 28, 1755.

My last letter to you could not be got out of England, before
I might have added a melancholy supplement. Accounts of a
total defeat of Braddock, and his forces are arrived from
America; the purport is, that the General having arrived
within a few miles of Fort du Quesne, (I hope you are perfect
in your American geography?) sent an advanced party, under
Lord Gage's brother: they were fired upon, invisibly, as they
entered a wood; Braddock heard guns, and sent another party to
support the former; but the first fell back in confusion on
the second, and the second on the main body. The whole was in
disorder, and it is said, the General himself', though
exceedingly brave, did not retain all the sang froid that was
necessary. The common soldiers in general, fled; the officers
stood heroically and were massacred: our Indians were not
surprised, and behaved gallantly. The General had five horses
shot under him, no bad symptoms of his spirit, and at last was
brought off by two Americans, no English daring, though
Captain Orme,(600) his aid-de-camp, who is wounded too, and
has made some noise here by an affair of gallantry, offered
Sixty guineas to have him conveyed away. We have lost
twenty-six officers, besides many wounded, and ten pieces of
artillery. Braddock lived four days, in great torment.(601)
What makes the rout more shameful is, that instead of a great
pursuit, and a barbarous massacre by the Indians, which is
always to be feared in these rencontres, not a black or white
soul followed our troops, but we had leisure two days
afterwards to fetch off our dead. In short, our American
laurels are strangely blighted! We intended to be in great
alarms for Carolina and Virginia, but the small number of our
enemies had reduced this affair to a panic. We pretend to be
comforted on the French deserting Fort St. John, and on the
hopes we have from two other expeditions which are on foot in
that part of the world-but it is a great drawback on English
heroism I pity you who represent the very flower of British
courage ingrafted on a Brunswick stock!

I have already given you some account of Braddock; I may
complete the poor man's history in a few more words: he once
had a duel with Colonel Gumley, Lady Bath's(602) brother, who
had been his great friend: as they were going to engage,
Gumley, who had good humour and wit, (Braddock had the
latter,) said "Braddock, you are a poor dog! here take my
purse; if you kill me you will be forced to run away, and then
you will not have a shilling to support you." Braddock refused
the purse, insisted on' the duel, was disarmed, and would not
even ask his life. However, with all his brutality, he has
lately been Governor of Gibraltar, where he made himself
adored, and where scarce any Governor was endured before.
Adieu! Pray don't let any detachment from Pannoni's(603) be
sent against us--we should run away!

(600) He married the sister of George Lord Townshend, without
the consent of her family.

(601) Walpole, in his Memoires, says, that "he dictated an
encomium on his officers, and expired."-D.

(602) Elizabeth Gumley, wife of William Pulteny, Earl of Bath.

(603) Pannoni's coffeehouse of the Florentine nobility, not
famous for their courage of late.

271 Letter 146
To Richard Bentley, Esq.
Arlington Street, August 28, 1755.

Our piratic laurels, with which the French have so much
reproached us, have been exceedingly pruned! Braddock is
defeated and killed, by a handful of Indians and by the
baseness of his own troops, who sacrificed him and his gallant
officers. Indeed, there is some suspicion that cowardice was
not the motive, but resentment at having been draughted from
Irish regiments. Were such a desertion universal, could one
but commend@it'@ Could one blame men who should refuse to be
knocked on the head for sixpence a day, and for the advantage
and dignity of a few ambitious? But in this case one pities
the brave young @officers, who cannot so easily disfranchise
themselves from the prejudices of glory! Our disappointment
is greater than our loss; six-and-twenty officers are killed,
who, I suppose, have not left a vast many fatherless and
widowless, as an old woman told me to-day with great
tribulation. The ministry have a much more serious affair on
their hands-Lord Lincoln and Lord Anson have had a dreadful
quarrel! Coquus teterrima belli causa! When Lord Mountford
shot himself, Lord Lincoln said, "Well, I am very sorry for
poor Mountford! but it is the part of a wise man to make the
best of every misfortune-I shall now have the best cook in
England." This was uttered before Lord Anson. Joras,(604)--
who is a man of extreme punctilio, as cooks and officers ought
to be, would not be hired till he knew whether this Lord
Mountford would retain him. When it was decided that he would
not, Lord Lincoln proposed to hire Joras. Anson had already
engaged him. Such a breach of friendship was soon followed by
an expostulation (there was jealousy of the Duke of
Newcastle's favour already under the coals): in short the
nephew earl called the favourite earl such gross names, that
it was well they were ministers! otherwise, as Mincing says,
"I vow, I believe they must have fit." The public, that is
half-a-dozen toad-eaters, have great hopes that the present
unfavourable posture of affairs in America will tend to cement
this breach, and that we shall all unite hand and heart
against the common enemy.

I returned the night before last from my peregrination. It is
very unlucky for me that no crown of martyrdom is entailed on
zeal for antiquities; I should be a rubric martyr of the first
class. After visiting the new salt-water baths at Harwich,
(which, next to horse-racing, grows the most fashionable
resource for people who want to get out of town, and who love
the country and retirement!) I went to see Orford castle, and
Lord Hertford's at Sudborn. The one is a ruin, and the other
ought to be so. Returning in a one-horse chair over a wild
vast heath, I went out of the road to see the remains of
Buttley Abbey; which however I could not see; for, as the keys
of Orford castle were at Sudborn, so the keys of Buttley were
at Orford! By this time it was night; we lost our way, were in
excessive rain for above two hours, and only found our way to
be overturned into the mire the next morning going into
Ipswich. Since that I went to see an old house built by
Secretary Naunton.(605) His descendant, who is a strange
retired creature, was unwilling to let us see it; but we did,
and little in it worth seeing. The house never was fine, and
is now out of repair; has a bed with ivory pillars and loose
rings, presented to the secretary by some German prince or
German artist; and a small gallery of indifferent portraits,
among which there are scarce any worth notice but of the Earl
of Northumberland, Anna Bullen's lover, and of Sir Antony
Wingfield, who having his hand tucked into his girdle, the
housekeeper told us, had had his fingers cut off by Harry
VIII. But Harry VIII. was not a man pour s'arr`eter `a ces
minuties la!

While we waited for leave to see the house, I strolled into
the churchyard, and was struck with a little door open into
the chancel, through the arch of which I discovered
cross-legged knights and painted tombs! In short, there are
no less than eight considerable monuments, very perfect, of
Wingfields, Nauntons, and a Sir John Boynet and his wife, as
old as Richard the Second's time. But what charmed me still
more, were two figures of Secretary Naunton's father and
mother in the window in painted glass, near two feet high, and
by far the finest painting on glass I ever saw. His figure,
in a puffed doublet, breeches and bonnet, and cloak of scarlet
and yellow, is absolutely perfect: her shoulder is damaged.
This church, which is scarce bigger than a large chapel, is
very ruinous, though containing such treasures! Besides
these, there are brasses on the pavement, with a succession of
all the wonderful head-dresses which our plain virtuous
grandmothers invented to tempt our rude and simple ancestors.-
-I don't know what our nobles might be, but I am sure that
Milliners three or four hundred years ago must have been more
accomplished in the arts, as Prynne calls them, of crisping,
curling, frizzling, and frouncing, than all the tirewomen of
Babylon, modern Paris, or modern Pall-Mall. Dame Winifred
Boynet, whom I mentioned above, is accoutered with the
coiffure called piked horns, which, if there were any signs in
Lothbury and Eastcheap, must have brushed them about
strangely, as their ladyships rode behind their gentlemen
ushers! Adieu!

(604) The name of the cook in question.

(605) Sir Robert Naunton, master of the court of wards. He
wrote Anecdotes of Queen Elizabeth and her favourites.

273 Letter 147
To The Rev. Henry Etough.(606)
Woolterton, Sept. 10, 1755.

Dear Etough,
I cannot forbear any longer to acknowledge the many favours
from you lately; your last was the 8th of this month. His
Majesty's speedy arrival among his British subjects is very
desirable and necessary, whatever may be the chief motive for
his making haste. As to Spain, I have from the beginning told
my friends, when they asked, both in town and country, that I
was at all apprehensive that Spain would join with France
against us; for this plain reason, because it could not
possibly be the interest of the Spaniards to do it for should
the views of the French take place in making a line of forts
from the Mississippi to Canada, and of being masters of the
whole of that extent of country, Peru and Mexico, and Florida,
would be in more danger from them than the British settlements
in America.

Mr. Fowle has made me a visit for a few days, and communicated
to me your two pieces relating to my brother and Lord
Bolingbroke, and I think you do great justice to them both in
their very different and opposite characters; but you will
give me leave to add with respect to Lord Orford, there are
several mistakes and misinformations, of which I am persuaded
I could convince you by conversation, but my observations are
not proper for a letter. Of this more fully when I see you,
but when that will be I can't yet tell. I am ever most
affectionately yours, etc.

(606) The Rev. Henry Etough, of Pembroke-hall, Cambridge. He
received his education among the Dissenters, and Archbishop
Secker and Dr. 'Birch were among his schoolfellows. Through
the interest of Sir Robert Walpole, he was presented to the
rectory of Therfield, in Hertfordshire; where he died, in his
seventieth year, in August 1757.-E.

273 Letter 148
To Richard Bentley, Esq.
Strawberry Hill, September 18, 1755.

My dear sir,
After an expectation of six weeks, I have received a letter
from you, dated August 23d. Indeed I did not impute any
neglect to you; I knew it arose from the war; but Mr. S. * * *
* tells me the packets will now be more regular.--Mr. S * * *
tells me!--What, has he been in town, or at Strawberry?--No;
but I have been at Southampton: I was at the Vine; and on the
arrival of a few fine days, the first we have had this summer,
after a deluge, Mr. Chute persuaded me to take a jaunt to
Winchester and Netley Abbey, with the latter of which he is
very justly enchanted. I was disappointed in Winchester: it
is a paltry town, and small: King Charles the Second's house
is the worst thing I ever saw of Sir Christopher Wren, a
mixture of a town-hall and an hospital; not to mention the bad
choice of the situation in such a country; it is all ups that
should be downs. I talk to you as supposing that you never
have been at Winchester, though I suspect you have, for the
entrance of the cathedral is the very idea of that of Mabland.
I like the smugness of the cathedral, and the profusion of the
most beautiful Gothic tombs. That of Cardinal Beaufort is in
a style more free and of more taste than any thing I have seen
of the kind. His figure confirms me in my opinion that I have
struck out the true history of the picture that I bought of
Robinson; and which I take for the marriage of Henry VI.
Besides the monuments of the Saxon Kings, of Lucius, William
Rufus, his brother, etc. there are those of six such great or
considerable men as Beaufort, William of Wickham, him of
Wainfleet, the Bishops Fox and Gardiner, and my Lord Treasurer
Portland.--How much power and ambition under half-a-dozen
stones! I own, I grow to look on tombs as lasting mansions,
instead of observing them for curious pieces of architecture!-
-Going into Southampton, I passed Bevismount, where my Lord
Peterborough

"Hung his trophies o'er his garden gate;"(607)

but General Mordaunt was there, and we could not see it. We
walked long by moonlight on the terrace along the beach-
-Guess, if we talked of and wished for you! The town is
crowded; sea-baths are established there too. But how shall I
describe Netley to you? I can only by telling YOU, that it is
the spot in the world for which Mr. Chute and I wish. The
ruins are vast, and retain fragments of beautiful fretted
roofs pendent in the air, With all variety of Gothic patterns
of windows wrapped round and round with ivy-many trees are
sprouted up amongst the walls, and Only want to be increased
with cypresses! A hill rises above the abbey encircled with
wood: the fort, in which we would build a tower for
habitation, remains with two small platforms. This little
castle is buried from the abbey in a wood, in the very centre,
on the edge of the hill: on each side breaks in the view of
the Southampton sea, deep blue, glistering with silver and
vessels; on one side terminated by Southampton, on the other
by Calshot castle; and the Isle of Wight rising above the
opposite hills. In short, they are not the ruins of Netley,
but of Paradise.--OH! the purple abbots, what a spot had they
chosen to slumber in! The scene is so beautifully tranquil,
that they seem only to have retired into the world.(608)

I know nothing of the war, but that we catch little French
ships like crawfish. They have taken one of ours with
Governor Lyttelton(609) going to South Carolina. He is a very
worthy young man, but so stiffened with Sir George's old
fustian, that I am persuaded he is at this minute in the
citadel of Nantes comparing himself to Regulus.

Gray has lately been here. He has begun an Ode,(610) which if
he finishes equally, will, I think, inspirit all your drawing
again. It is founded on an old tradition of Edward 1. putting
to death the Welsh bards. Nothing but you, or Salvator Rosa,
and Nicolo Poussin, can paint up to the expressive horror and
dignity of it. Don't think I mean to flatter you; all I would
say is, that now the two latter are dead, you must of
necessity be Gray's painter. In order to keep your talent
alive, I shall next week send you flake white, brushes, oil,
and the enclosed directions from Mr. Muntz, who is still at
the Vine, and whom, for want of you, we labour hard to form.
I shall put up in the parcel two or three prints of my eagle,
which, as you never would draw it, is very moderately
performed; and yet the drawing was much better than the
engraving. I shall send you too a trifling snuff-box, only as
a sample of the new manufacture at Battersea, which is done
with copper-plates. Mr. Chute is at the Vine, where I cannot
say any works go on in proportion to my impatience. I have
left him an inventionary of all I want to have done there; but
I believe it may be bound up with the century of projects of
that foolish Marquis of Worcester, who printed a catalogue of
titles of things which he gave no directions to execute, nor I
believe could.(611) Adieu!

(607) "Our Gen'rals now, retired to their estate,
Hang their old trophies o'er the garden gate."
Pope, in this couplet, is said to have alluded to the entrance
of Lord Peterborough's lawn at Bevismount.-E.

(608) Gray, who visited Netley Abbey in the preceding month,
calls it "a most beautiful ruin in as beautiful a
situation."-E.

(609) william Henry, brother of Sir George, afterwards Lord
Lyttelton. The man-of-war in which he was proceeding to South
Carolina was captured by the French squadron under Count Guay,
and sent into Nantes, but was shortly afterwards restored.-E.

(610) "The Bard" was commenced this year, but was for some
time left unfinished; but the accident of seeing a blind
Harper (Mr. Parry) perform on a Welsh harp, again put his Ode
in motion, and brought it at last to a conclusion, See Works,
vol. i. p. xxxiii.-E.

(611) Vol. i. letter 259 to H. S. Conway, Aug. 29, 1748.

275 Letter 149
To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
Strawberry Hill, Sept. 23, 1755.

Dear harry,
Never make me excuses for a letter that tells me so many
agreeable things -as your last; that you are got well to
Dublin;(612) that you are all well, and that you have
accommodated all your politics to your satisfaction--and I may
be allowed to say, greatly to your credit 'What could you tell
me that would please me so much When I have indulged a little
my joy for your success and honour, it is natural to consider
the circumstances you have told me; and you will easily excuse
me if I am not quite as much satisfied with the conduct of
your late antagonists, as I with yours. You have
tranquillized a nation, have repaired your master's honour,
and secured the peace of your administration;-but what shall
one say to the Speaker, Mr. Malone and the others? Don't they
confess that they have gone the greatest lengths, and risked
the safety of their country on a mere personal pique? If they
did not contend for profit, like our patriots (and you don't
tell me that they have made any lucrative stipulations), yet
it is plain that their ambition had been wounded, and that
they resented their power being crossed. But I, Who am Whig
to the backbone, indeed in the strictest sense of the word,
feel hurt in a tenderer point, and which you,. who are a
minister, must not allow me: I am offended at their agreeing
to an address that avows such deference for prerogative, and
that is to protest so deeply against having to attack it.
However rebel this may sound at your court, my Gothic spirit
is hurt; I do not love such loyal expressions from a
Parliament. I do not so much consider myself writing to
Dublin castle, as from Strawberry castle, where you know how I
love to enjoy my liberty. I give myself the airs, in my
nutshell, of an old baron, and am tempted almost to say with
an old Earl of Norfolk, who was a very free speaker at least,
if he was not an excellent poet,

"When I am in my castle of Bungey,
Situate upon the river Waveney,
I ne care for the King of cockney."

I have been roving about Hampshire, have been at Winchester
and Southampton and twenty places, and have been but one day
in London --consequently know as little news as if I had been
shut up in Bungey castle. Rumours there are of great
bickerings and uneasiness; but I don't believe there will be
any bloodshed of places, except Legge's, which nobody seems
willing to take-I mean as a sinecure. His Majesty of Cockney
is returned exceedingly well, but grown a little out of humour
at finding that we are not so much pleased with all the
Russians and Hessians that he has hired to recover the Ohio.
We are an ungrateful people! Make a great many compliments
for me to my Lady Ailesbury; I own I am in pain about Missy.
As my lady is a little coquette herself, and loves crowds and
admiration, and a court life, it will be very difficult for
her to keep a strict eye upon Missy. The Irish are very
forward and bold:--I say no more but it would hurt you both
extremely to have her marry herself idly and I think my Lord
Chancellor has not extended his matrimonial foresight to
Ireland. However, I have much confidence in Mrs. Elizabeth
Jones:(613) I am sure, when they were here, she would never
let Missy whisper with a boy that was old enough to speak.
Adieu! As the winter advances, and plots thicken, I will write
you letters that shall have a little more in them than this.
In the mean time I am going to Bath, not for my health, you
know I never am ill, but for my amusement. I never was there,
and at present there are several of my acquaintance. The
French academy have chosen my Lord Chesterfield, and he has
written them a letter of thanks. that is the finest
composition in the world - indeed, I was told so by those who
have not seen it; but they would have told me so if they had
seen it, whether it was the finest or the worst; suffices it
to be his! Yours ever.

(612) mr. Conway was now secretary of state to the Marquis of
Hartington, lord lieutenant of Ireland.

(613) Miss Conway's nurse.

277 Letter 150
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, Sept. 29, 1755.

It is not that I am perjured for not writing to you oftener,
as I promised; the war is forsworn. We do all we can; we
take, from men-of-war and Domingo-men, down to colliers and
cock-boats, and from California into the very Bay of Calais.
The French have taken but one ship from us, the Blandford, and
that they have restored--but I don't like this drowsy civil
lion; it will put out a talon and give us a cursed scratch
before we are aware. Monsieur de seychelles, who grows into
power, is labouring at their finances and marine: they have
struck off their sous-fermiers, and by a reform in what they
call the King's pleasures, have already saved 1,200,000 pounds
sterling a year. Don't go and imagine that 1,200,000 pounds
was all stink in the gulf of Madame Pompadour, or even in
suppers and hunting; under the word the King's pleasures, they
really comprehended his civil list; and in that light I don't
know why our civil list might not be called another King's
pleasures(614) too, though it is not all entirely squandered.
In short, the single article of coffee for the Mesdames(615)
amounted to 3000 pounds sterling a year--to what must their
rouge have amounted?--but it is high time to tell you of other
wars, than the old story of France and England. You must
know, not in your ministerial capacity, for I suppose that is
directed by such old geographers as Sanson and De Lisle, who
imagined that Herenhausen was a town in Germany, but according
to the latest discoveries, there is such a county in England
as Hanover, which lying very much exposed to the incursions of
the French and Prussians (the latter are certain hussars in
the French army), it has been thought necessary to hire
Russians, and Hessians, and all the troops that lie nearest to
the aforesaid weak part of Great Britain called Hanover, in
order to cover this frontier from any invasion. The
expedience of this measure was obvious; yet many People who
could not get over the prejudice of education, or who having
got over these prejudices have for certain reasons returned to
them, these Ptolemaic geographers Will not be persuaded that
there is any such county in England as Hanover, and not
finding it in their old maps, or having burnt their new ones
in a passion--(Mr. Legge, indeed, tore his at the treasury
board the day that the warrant for the Hessian subsidy came
thither)--they determined that England had no occasion for
these mercenaries. Besides Legge, the Duke of Devonshire, the
Speaker, Sir George Lee, and one MR. William Pitt, a man
formerly remarkable for disputing the new geography, declared
strongly against the system of treaties.(616) Copernicus no
sooner returned from Germany, than the Duke of Newcastle, who
had taken the alarm, frightened him out of his wits. In
short, they found that they should have no Professor to defend
the new system in Parliament. Every body was tried--when
every body had refused, and the Duke of Newcastle was ready to
throw up the cards, he determined to try Fox,(617) who, by the
mediation of Lord Granville, has accepted the seals, is to be
secretary of state, is to have the conduct of the House of
Commons, and is, I think-very soon to be first minister-or
what one has known to happen to some who of very late years
have joined to support a tottering administration, is to be
ruined. Indeed, he seems sensible of the alternative,
professes no cordiality to Duke Trinculo, who is viceroy over
him, but is listing Bedford's, and whoever will list with him,
as fast as he can. One who has been his predecessor in
suffering by such an alliance, my Lord Chesterfield, told him,
"Well, the Duke of Newcastle has turned out every body else,
and now he has turned out himself." Sir Thomas Robinson is to
return to the great wardrobe, with an additional pension on
Ireland of 2000 pounds a year. This is turning a cipher into
figures indeed! Lord Barrington is to be secretary at war.
This change, however, is not to take place till after the
Parliament is met, which is not till the 13th of' next month,
because Mr. Fox is to preside at the Cockpit the night before
the House opens. How Mr. Legge will take his deposition is
not known. He has determined not to resign, but to be turned
out; I should think this would satisfy his scruples, even if
he had made a vow against resigning.