Books: The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2

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The mob, to comfort themselves under these mishaps, and for the
disappointment of a complete victory, that might have been more
compleater, are new grinding their teeth and nails, to tear
Lord George(1062) to pieces the instant he lands. If he finds
more powerful friends than poor Admiral Byng, assure yourself
he has ten thousand times the number of personal enemies; I was
going to say real, but Mr. Byng's were real enough, with no
reason to be personal. I don't talk of the event itself', for
I suppose all Europe knows just as much as we know here. I
suspend my opinion till Lord George speaks himself--but I pity
his father, who has been so unhappy in his sons, who loved this
so much, and who had such fair prospects for him. Lord
George's fall is prodigious; nobody stood higher, nobody has
more ambition or more sense.

You, I suppose, are taking leave of your new King of
Spain,(1064)--what a bloody war is saved by this death, by its
happening in the midst of one that cannot be more bloody! I
detest a correspondence now; it lives like a vampire upon dead
bodies! Adieu! I have nothing to write about.

P. S. I forgot to ask you if you are not shocked with
Bellisle's letter to Contades? The French ought to behave with
more spirit than they do, before they give out such sanguinary
orders--@,iii(I if they did, I should think they would not give
such orders. And did not YOU laugh at the enormous folly of
Bellisle's conclusion? It is so foolish, that I think he might
fairly disavow it. It puts me in mind of a ridiculous passage
in Racine's Bajazet,
----"et s'il faut que je meure,
Mourons, moi, cher Osmin, comme un Visir; et toi
Comme le favori d'un homme tel que moi."

(1060) Prince Ferdinand's victory was the celebrated battle of
Minden, won from the French on the 1st of August; the King of
Prussia's defeat was that of Kunersdorf, lost to the Russians
on the 12th of August.-D.

(1061) Count Bruhl, favourite and prime minister of Augustus
the Third, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony.

(1063) Lord George Sackville, disgraced at the battle of
Minden.

(1064) Charles the Third, King of Naples, who had just become
King of Spain, by the death of his elder brother.-D.

508 Letter 332
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, Sept. 13, 1759.

With your unathletic constitution I think you will have a
greater weight of glory to represent than you can bear. You
will be as `epuis`e as Princess Craon with all the triumphs
over Niagara, Ticonderoga, Crown Point, and such a parcel of
long names. You will ruin yourself in French horns, to exceed
those of Marshal Botta, who has certainly found a pleasant way
of announcing victories. Besides, all the West Indies, which we
have taken by a panic, there is Admiral Boscawen has demolished
the Toulon squadron, and has made you Viceroy of the
Mediterranean. I really believe the French will Come hither
now, for they can be safe nowhere else. If the King of Prussia
should be totally undone in Germany, we can afford to give him
an appanage, as a younger son of England, of some hundred
thousand miles on the Ohio. Sure universal monarchy was never
so put to shame as that of France! What a figure do they make!
they seem to have no ministers, no generals, no soldiers! If
any thing could be more ridiculous than their behaviour in the
field, it would be in the cabinet! Their invasion appears not
to have been designed against us, but against their own people,
who, they fear, will mutiny, and to quiet whom they disperse
expresses, with accounts of the progress of their arms in
England. They actually have established posts to whom the
people are directed to send their letters for their friends in
England. If, therefore, you hear that the French have
established themselves at Exeter or Norwich, don't be alarmed,
nor undeceive the poor women who are writing to their husbands
for English baubles.

We have lost another Princess, Lady Elizabeth.(1065) She died
of an inflammation in her bowels in two days. Her figure was
so very unfortunate, that it would have been difficult for her
to be happy, but her parts and application -were extraordinary.
I saw her act in "Cato" at eight years old, (when she could not
stand alone, but was forced to lean against the side-scene,)
better than any of her brothers and sisters. She had been so
unhealthy, that at that age she had not been taught to read,
but had learned the part of Lucia by hearing the others study
their parts. She went to her father and mother, and begged she
might act. They put her off as gently as they could--she
desired leave to repeat her part, and when she did, it was with
so much sense, that there was no denying her.

I receive yours of August 25. To all your alarms for the King
of Prussia I subscribe. With little Brandenburgh he could not
exhaust all the forces of Bohemia, Hungary, Austria, Muscovy,
Siberia, Tartary, Sweden, etc. etc. etc.--but not to
politicize too much, I believe the world will come to be fought
for somewhere between the North of Germany and the back of
Canada, between Count Daun and Sir William Johnson.(1066)

You guessed right about the King of Spain; he is dead, and the
Queen Dowager may once more have an opportunity of embroiling
the little of Europe that remains unembroiled.

Thank you, my dear Sir, for the Herculaneum and Caserta that
you are sending me. I wish the watch may arrive safe, to show
you that I am not insensible to all your attentions for me, but
endeavour, at a great distance, to imitate you in the execution
of commissions.

I would keep this letter back for a post, that I might have but
one trouble of sending you Quebec too; but when one has taken
so many places, it is not worth while to wait for one more.

Lord George Sackville, the hero of all conversation, if one can
be so for not being a hero, is arrived. He immediately applied
for a court-martial, but was told it was impossible now, as the
officers necessary are in Germany. This was in writing from
Lord Holderness--but Lord Ligonier in words was more squab--"If
he wanted a court-martial, he might go seek it in Germany." All
that could be taken from him is his regiment, above two
thousand pounds a-year: commander in Germany at ten pounds
a-day, between three and four thousand pounds:
lieutenant-general of the ordnance, one thousand five hundred
pounds: a fort, three hundred pounds. He remains with a patent
place in Ireland, of one thousand two hundred pounds, and about
two thousand pounds a-year of his own and wife's. With his
parts and ambition, it cannot end here; he calls himself
ruined, but when the Parliament meets, he will probably attempt
some sort of revenge.

They attribute, I don't know with what grounds, a sensible kind
of plan to the French; that De la Clue was to have pushed for
Ireland, Thurot for Scotland, and the Brest fleet for England--
but before they lay such great plans, they should take care of
proper persons to execute them.

I cannot help shifting at the great objects of our letters. We
never converse on a less topic than a kingdom. We are a kind
of citizens of the world, and battles and revolutions are the
common incidents of our neighbourhood. But that is and must be
the case of distant correspondences: Kings and Empresses that
we never saw are the only persons we can be acquainted with in
common. We can have no more familiarity than the Daily
Advertiser would have if it wrote to the Florentine Gazette.
Adieu! My compliments to any monarch that lives within five
hundred miles of you.

(1065) Second daughter of Frederick Prince of Wales.

(1066) The American general.

510 Letter 333
To The Earl Of Strafford.
Arlington Street, Sept. 13, 1759.

My dear lord,
You are very good to say you would accept of my letters, though
I should have no particular news to tell you; but at present it
would be treating heroes and conquerors with great
superciliousness, if I made use of your indulgence and said
nothing of them. We have taken more places and ships in a week
than would have set up such pedant nations as Greece and Rome
to all futurity. If we did but call Sir William Johnson
"Gulielmus Johnsonus Niagaricus," and Amherst "Galfridus
Amhersta Ticonderogicus," we should be quoted a thousand years
hence as the patterns of valour, virtue, and disinterestedness;
for posterity always ascribes all manner of modesty and
self-denial to those that take the most pains to perpetuate
their own glory. Then Admiral Boscawen has, in a very Roman
style, made free with the coast of Portugal, and used it to
make a bonfire of the French fleet. When Mr. Pitt was told of
this infraction of a neutral territory, he replied, "It is very
true, but they are burned." In short, we want but a little
more insolence and a worse cause to make us a very classic
nation.

My Lady Townshend, who has not learning enough to copy a
Spartan mother, has lost her youngest son.(1067) I saw her
this morning --her affectation is on t'other side she affects
grief--but not so much for the son she has lost, as for t'other
that she may lose.

Lord George is come, has asked for a court-martial, was put
off; and is turned out of every thing. Waldegrave has his
regiment, for what he did; and Lord Granby the ordnance--for
what he would have done.

Lord Northampton is to be married(1068) to-night in full
Comptonhood. I am indeed happy that Mr. Campbell(1069) is a
general; but how will his father like being the dowager-general
Campbell?

You are very kind, my lord (but that is not new,) in
interesting Yourself about Strawberry Hill. I have just
finished a Holbein-chamber, that I flatter myself you will not
dislike; and I have begun to build a new printing-house, that
the old one may make room for the gallery and round tower.
This noble summer is not yet over us--it seems to have cut a
colt's week-. I never write without talking of it, and should
be glad to know in how many letters this summer has been
mentioned.

I have lately been at Wilton, and was astonished at the heaps
of rubbish. The house is grand, and the place glorious; but I
should shovel three parts of the marbles and pictures into the
river. Adieu, my lord and lady!

(1067) The Hon. Roger Townshend, third son of Viscount
Townshend, killed at Ticonderoga on the 25th of July.-E.

(1068) To Lady Anne Somerset.

(1069) Afterwards Duke of Argyle.

511 Letter 334
To The Hon. H. S. Conway.(1070)
Arlington Street, Sept. 13, 1759.

I intended to send you the brief chronicle of Lord George
Sackville but your brother says he has writ to you this
morning. If you want to know minute particulars, which neither
he nor I should care to detail in a letter, I will tell you
them if you will call for a minute at Strawberry on Sunday or
Monday, as you go to your camp. I ask this boldly, though I
have not been with you; but it was impossible; George Montagu
and his brother returned to Strawberry with me from the Vine,
and I am expecting Mr. Churchill and Lady Mary, who sent me
word they would come to me as soon as I came back, and I think
you will find them with me.

Lady Mary Coke is stripping off all the plumes that she has
been wearing for Niagara, etc., and is composing herself into
religious melancholy against to-morrow night, when she goes to
Princess Elizabeth's burial. I passed this whole morning most
deliciously at my Lady Townshend's. Poor Roger, for whom she
is not concerned, has given her a hint that her hero George may
be mortal too; she scarce spoke, unless to improve on some
bitter thing that Charles said, who was admirable. He made me
all the speeches that Mr. Pitt will certainly make next winter,
in every one of which Charles says, and I believe, he will talk
of this great campaign, "memorable to all posterity with all
its imperfections-a campaign which, though obstructed, cramped,
maimed--but I will say no more."

The campaign in Ireland, I hear, will be very warm; the Primate
is again to be the object; Ponsonby, commander against him.
Lord George's situation will not help the Primate's. Adieu!

(1070) Now first printed.

512 Letter 335
To George Montagu, Esq.
Strawberry Hill, Saturday, October 11, 1759.

I don't desire any such conviction of your being ill as seeing
you nor can you wonder that I wish to persuade myself that what
I should be very sorry for, never happens. Poor Fred.
Montagu's gout seems more serious: I am concerned that he has
so much of a judge in him already.

You are very good in thinking of me about the sofas; but you
know the Holbein chamber is complete, and old matters arc not
flung away upon you yourself Had not you rather have your sofa
than Lord Northampton's running footman? Two hundred years
hence one might be amused with reading of so fantastic a dress,
but they are horrid in one's own time. Mr. Bentley and I go
to-morrow to Chaffont for two or three days. Mr. Chute is at
the Vine already, but, I believe, will be in town this week.

I don't know whether it proceeds from the menaced invasion or
the last comet, but we are all dying of heat. Every body has
put out their fires, and, if it lasts, I suppose will next week
make summer clothes. The mornings are too hot for walking:
last night I heard of strawberries. I impute it to the hot
weather that my head has been turned enough to contend with the
bards of the newspapers. You have seen the French epigram on
Madame Pompadour, and fifty vile translations of it. Here IS
Mine--

O yes! here are flat-bottom boats to be sold,
And soldiers to let-rather hungry than bold:
Here are ministers richly deserving to swing,
And commanders whose recompense should be a string.
O France! still your fate you may lay at Pitt's door;
You were saved by a Maid, and undone by a * * *

People again believe the invasion; and I don't wonder,
considering how great a militia we have, with such a boy as you
mention. I own, before I begin to be afraid, I have a little
curiosity to see the militia tried. I think one shall at least
laugh before one cries. Adieu! what time have you fixed for
looking southwards?

P. S. Your pictures you may have when you please; I think you
had better stay and take them with you, than risk the rubbing
them by the wagon. Mr. M`untz has not been lately in town--
that is, Hannah has drawn no bill on him lately--so he knows
nothing of your snuff-box. This it is to trust to my vivacity,
when it is past Its bloom. Lord! I am a mere antiquarian, a
mere painstaking mortal. Mr. Bentley says, that if all
antiquarians were like me, there would be no such thing as an
antiquarian, for I set down every thing, SO circumstantially
that I leave them nothing to find out.

513 Letter 336
To The Hon. H. S. Conway.(1071)
Strawberry Hill, October 14th, 1759.

If Strawberry Hill was not so barren of events as Chatham, I
would have writ to you again; nay, if it did not produce the
very same events. Your own Light Horse are here, and commit
the only vivacities of the place--two or three of them are in
the cage every day for some mischief or other. Indeed, they
seem to have been taken from school too soon, and, as Rigby
said of some others of these new troops, the moment their
exercise is over, they all go a bird's-nesting. If the French
load their flat-bottom boats with rods instead of muskets, I
fear all our young heroes will run away. The invasion seems
again come into fashion: I wish it would come, that one might
hear no more of it--nay, I wish it for two or three reasons.
If they don't come, we shall still be fatigued with the
militia, who will never go to plough again till they see an
enemy: if there is a peace before the militia runs away, one
shall be robbed every day by a constitutional force. I want
the French too, to have come, that you may be released; but
that will not be soon enough for me, who am going to
Park-place. I came from Chaffont to-day, and I cannot let the
winter appear without making my Lady Ailesbury a visit.
Hitherto my impediments may have looked like excuses, though
they were nothing less. Lady Lyttelton goes on Wednesday: I
propose to follow her on Monday; but I won't announce myself,
that I may not be disappointed, and be a little more welcome by
the surprise; though I should be very ungrateful, if I affected
to think that I wanted that.

I cannot say I have read the second letter on Lord George: but
I have done what will satisfy the booksellers more; I have
bought nine or ten pamphlets: my library shall be au fait about
him, but I have an aversion to paper wars, and I must be a
little more interested than I am about him, before I can attend
to them: my head is to be filled with more sacred trash.

The Speaker was here t'other day, and told me of the intimacy
between his son and you and the militia. He says the lawyers
are examining whether Lord George can be tried or not. I am
sorry Lord Stormont is marriediski;(1072) he will pass his life
under the north pole, and whip over to Scotland by way of
Greenland without coming to London.

I dined t'other day at Sion with the Holdernesses; Lady Mary
Coke was there, and in this great dearth of candidates she
permits Haslang to die for her. They were talking in the
bow-window, when a sudden alarm being given that dinner was on
the table, he expressed great joy and appetite. You can't
imagine how she was offended. Adieu!

(1071) Now first printed.

(1072) Lord Stormont had recently married Henrietta Frederica,
daughter of count Bunau, of Saxony.-E.

514 Letter 337
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, Oct. 16, 1759.

I love to prepare your countenance for every event that may
happen, for an ambassador, who is nothing but an actor, should
be that greatest of actors, a philosopher; and with the leave
of wise men (that is, hypocrites), philosophy I hold to be
little more than presence of mind now undoubtedly preparation
is a prodigious help to presence of mind. In short, you must
not be surprised that we have failed at Quebec, as we certainly
shall. You may say, if you please, in the style of modern
politics that your court never supposed it could be taken; the
attempt was only made to draw off the Russians from the King of
Prussia, and leave him at liberty to attack Daun. Two days ago
came letters from Wolfe, despairing, as much as heroes can
despair The town is well victualled, Amherst is not arrived,
and fifteen thousand men encamped defend it. We have lost many
men by the enemy, and some by our friends-that is, we now call
our nine thousand only seven thousand. How this little army
will get away from a much larger, and in this season in that
country, I don't guess--yes, I do.

You may be making up a little philosophy too against the
invasion, which is again come into fashion, and with a few
trifling incidents in its favour, such as our fleet dispersed
and driven from their coasts by a great storm. Before that,
they were actually embarking, but with so ill a grace that an
entire regiment mutinied, and they say is broke. We now expect
them in Ireland, unless this dispersion of our fleet tempts
them hither. If they do not come in a day or two, I shall give
them over.

You will see in our gazettes that we make a great figure in the
East Indies. In short, Mr. Pitt and this little island appear
of some consequence even in the map of the world. He is a new
sort of Fabius,

----Qui verbis restituit rem.

Have you yet received the -watch? I see your poor Neapolitan
Prince(1073) is at last set aside--I should honour Dr. Serrao's
integrity, if I did not think it was more humane to subscribe
to the poor boy's folly, than hazard his being poisoned by
making it doubtful.

My charming niece is breeding--you see I did not make my lord
Waldegrave an useless present. Adieu! my dear Sir.

(1073) The King's second son, Don Philip, set aside for being
in a state of incurable idiotcy.-E.

514 Letter 338
To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
Strawberry Hill, Oct. 18, 1759.

I intended my visit to Park-place to show my lady Ailesbury
that when I come hither it is not solely on your account, and
yet I will not quarrel with my journey thither if I should find
you there; but seriously I cannot help begging you to think
whether you will go thither or not, just now. My first thought
about you has ever been what was proper for you to do; and
though you are the man in the world that think of that the most
yourself, yet you know I have twenty scruples, which even you
sometimes laugh at. I will tell them to You, and then you will
judge, as you can best. Sir Edward Hawke and his fleet is
dispersed, at least driven back to Plymouth: the French, if one
may believe that they have broken a regiment for mutinying
against embarking, were actually embarked at that instant. The
most sensible people I know, always thought they would postpone
their invasion, if ever they intended it, till our great ships
could not keep the sea, or were eaten up by the scurvy. Their
ports are now free; their situation is desperate: the new
account of our taking Quebec leaves them in the most deplorable
condition; they will be less able than ever to raise money, we
have got ours for next year; and this event
would facilitate it, if we had not: they must try for a
peace, they have nothing to go to market with but
Minorca. In short, if they cannot strike some desperate blow
in this island or Ireland, they are undone: the loss of twenty
thousand men to do us some mischief, would
be cheap. I should even think Madame Pompadour in danger of
being torn to pieces, if they did not make some attempt.
Madame Maintenon, not half so unpopular, mentions in one of her
letters her unwillingness to trust her niece Mademoiselle
Aumale on the road, for fear of some such
accident. You will smile perhaps at all this reasoning and
pedantry; but it tends to this--if desperation should send the
French somewhere, and the wind should force them to your coast,
which I do not suppose their object, and you should be out of
the way, you know what your enemies would say; and strange as
it is, even you have been proved to have enemies.
My dear Sir, think of this! Wolfe, as I am convinced, has
fallen a sacrifice to his rash blame of
you. If I understand any thing in the
world, his letter that came on Sunday said this: "Qu`ebec
is impregnable; it is flinging away the lives of brave men to
attempt it. I am in the situation of Conway at
Rochefort; but having blamed him, I must do what I now see he
was in the right to see was wrong and yet what he would have
done; and as I am commander-, which he was not, I have the
melancholy power of doing what he was prevented doing."(1074)
Poor man! his life has paid the price of his injustice; and as
his death has purchased such benefit to his country, I lament
him, as I am sure you, who have twenty times more courage and
good-nature than I have, do too. In short, I, who never did
any thing right or prudent myself, (not, I am afraid, for want
of knowing what was so,) am content with your being perfect,
and with suggesting any thing to you that may tend to keep you
so;--and (what is not much to the present purpose) if such a
pen as mine can effect it, the world hereafter shall know that
you was so. In short, I have pulled down my Lord Falkland, and
desire you will take care that I may speak the truth when I
erect you in his place; for remember, I love truth even better
than I love you. I always confess my own faults, and I will
not palliate yours. But, laughing apart, if you think there is
no weight in what I say, I shall gladly meet you at Park-place,
whither I shall go on Monday, and stay as long as I can, unless
I hear from you to the contrary. If you should think I have
hinted any thing to you of consequence, would not it be
handsome, if, after receiving leave you should write to my Lord
Llegonier, that though you had been at home but one week in the
whole summer, yet there might be occasion for your presence in
the camp, you should decline the permission he had given you?-
-See what it is to have a wise relation, who preaches a
thousand fine things to you which he would be the last man in
the world to practise himself. Adieu!

(1074) General Wolfe's letter, written four days before his
death, which will be found in the Chatham Correspondence, does
not contain a single sentence which can be tortured into the
construction here given to it. "The extreme heat of the weather
in August," he says, "and a good deal of fatigue, threw me into
a fever; but that the business might go on, I begged the
generals to consider amongst themselves what was fittest to be
done. Their sentiments were unanimous, that (as the easterly
winds begin to blow, and ships can pass the town in the night
with provisions, Artillery, etc.) we "should endeavour, by
conveying a considerable corps into the upper river, to draw
them from their inaccessible situation and bring them to an
action. I agreed to the proposal; and we are now here, with
about three thousand six Hundred men, waiting an opportunity to
attack them, when and wherever they can best be got at. The
weather has been extremely unfavourable for a day or two, so
that we have been inactive. I am so far recovered as to do
business; but my constitution is entirely ruined, without the
consolation of having done any considerable service to the
state, or without any prospect of it." Walpole, however, in
his animated description of the capture of Quebec, in his
Memoires, does ample justice to the character of Wolfe. "His
fall," he says, "was noble indeed. He received a wound in the
head, but covered it from his soldiers with his handkerchief.
A second ball struck him in the belly: that too he dissembled.
A third hitting him on the breast, he sunk under the anguish,
and was carried behind the ranks. Yet, fast as life ebbed out,
his whole anxiety centred on the fortune of the day. He begged
to be borne nearer to the action; but his sight being dimmed by
the approach of death, he entreated to know what they who
supported him saw; he was answered, that the enemy gave ground;
he eagerly repeated the question; heard the enemy was totally
routed; cried, 'I am satisfied!' and expired."-E.