The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume III Part 5

When am I likely to see you? The delightful rain is come--we look and smell charmingly. Adieu!

Letter 24 To Sir Horace Mann.

Strawberry Hill, May 7, 1760. (page 57)

What will your Italians say to a peer of England, an earl of one of the best of families, tried for murdering his servant, with the utmost dignity and solemnity, and then hanged at the common place of execution for highwaymen, and afterwards anatomized?

This must seem a little odd to them, especially as they have not lately had a Sixtus Quinttis. I have hitherto spoken of Lord Ferrers to you as a mad beast, a mad a.s.sa.s.sin, a low wretch, about whom I had no curiosity. If I now am going to give you a minute account of him, don't think me so far part of an English mob, as to fall in love with a criminal merely because I have had the pleasure of his execution. I certainly did not see it, nor should have been struck with more intrepidity--I never adored heroes, whether in a cart or a triumphal car--but there has been Such wonderful coolness and sense in all this man's last behaviour, that it has made me quite inquisitive about him --not at all pity him. I only reflect, what I have often thought, how little connexion there is between any man's sense and his sensibility--so much so, that instead of Lord Ferrers having any ascendant over his pa.s.sions, I am disposed to think, that his drunkenness, which was supposed to heighten his ferocity, has rather been a lucky circ.u.mstance-what might not a creature of such capacity, and who stuck at nothing, have done, if his abilities had not been drowned in brandy? I will go back a little into his history. His misfortunes, as he called them, were dated from his marriage, though he has been guilty of horrid excesses unconnected with Matrimony, and is even believed to have killed a groom -,,,he died a year after receiving a cruel beating from him. His wife, a very pretty woman, was sister of Sir William Meredith,(55) had no fortune, and he says, trepanned him into marriage, having met him drunk at an a.s.sembly in the country, and kept him so till the ceremony was over. As he always kept himself so afterwards, one need not impute it to her. In every other respect, and one scarce knows how to blame her for wis.h.i.+ng to be a countess, her behaviour was unexceptionable.(56) He had a mistress before and two or three children, and her he took again after the separation from his wife. He was fond of both and used both ill: his wife so ill, always carrying pistols to bed, and threatening to kill her before morning, beating her, and jealous without provocation, that she got separated from him by act of Parliament, which appointed receivers of his estate in order to secure her allowance. This he could not bear. However, he named his steward for one, but afterwards finding out that this Johnson had paid her fifty pounds without his knowledge, and suspecting him of being in the confederacy against him, he determined, when he failed of opportunities of murdering his wife, to kill the steward, which he effected as you have heard.

The shocking circ.u.mstances attending the murder, I did not tell you-indeed, while he was alive, I scarce liked to speak my opinion even to you; for though I felt nothing for him, I thought it wrong to propagate any notions that might interfere with mercy, if he could be then thought deserving it--and not knowing into what hands my letter might pa.s.s before it reached yours, I chose to be silent, though n.o.body could conceive greater horror than I did for him at his trial. Having shot the steward at three in the afternoon, he persecuted him till one in the morning, threatening again to murder him, attempting to tear off his bandages, and terrifying him till in that misery he was glad to obtain leave to be removed to his own house; and when the earl heard the poor creature was dead, he said he gloried in having killed him. You cannot conceive the shock this evidence gave the court-many of the lords were standing to look at him-at once they turned from him with detestation. I had heard that on the former affair in the House of Lords, he had behaved with great shrewdness--no such thing appeared at his trial. It is now pretended, that his being forced by his family against his inclination to plead madness, prevented his exerting his parts- -but he has not acted in any thing as if his family had influence over him--consequently his reverting to much good sense leaves the whole inexplicable. The very night he received sentence, he played at picquet with the warders and would play for money, and would have continued to play every evening, but they refuse.

Lord Cornwallis, governor of the Tower, shortened his allowance of wine after his conviction, agreeably to the late strict acts on murder. This he much disliked, and at last pressed his brother the clergyman to intercede that at least he might have more porter; for, said he, what I have is not a draught. His brother represented against it, but at last consenting (and he did obtain it)--then said the earl, "Now is as good a time as any to take leave of you--adieu!" A minute journal of his whole behaviour has been kept, to see if there was any madness in it.

Dr. Munro since the trial has made -,in affidavit of his lunacy.

The Was.h.i.+ngtons were certainly a very frantic race, and I have no doubt of madness in him, but not of a pardonable sort. Two pet.i.tions from his mother and all his family were presented to the King, who said, as the House of Lords had unanimously found him guilty, he would not interfere. Last week my lord keeper very good-naturedly got out of a gouty bed to present another: the King would not hear him. "Sir," said the keeper, "I don't come to pet.i.tion for mercy or respite; but that the four thousand pounds which Lord Ferrers has in India bonds may be permitted to go according to his disposition of it to his mistress' children, and the family of the murdered man." "With all my heart," said the King, "I have no objection; but I will have no message carried to him from me." However, this grace was notified to him and gave him great satisfaction: but unfortunately it now appears to be law, that it is forfeited to the sheriff of the county where the fact was committed; though when my Lord Hardwicke was told that he had disposed of it, he said, to be sure he may before conviction.

Dr. Pearce, Bishop of Rochester,(57) offered his service to him: he thanked the Bishop, but said, as his own brother was a clergyman, he chose to have him. Yet he had another relation who has been much more busy about his repentance. I don't know whether you have ever heard that one of the singular characters here is a Countess of Huntingdon,(58) aunt of Lord Ferrers. She is the Saint Theresa of the Methodists. Judge how violent bigotry must be in such mad blood! The Earl, by no means disposed to be a convert, let her visit him, and often sent for her, as it was more company; but he grew sick of her, and complained that she was enough to provoke any body. She made her suffragan, Whitfield, pray for and preach about him, and that impertinent fellow told his enthusiasts in his sermon, that my Lord's heart was stone. The earl wanted much to see his mistress: my Lord Cornwallis, as simple an old woman as my Lady Huntingdon herself, consulted her whether he should permit it.

"Oh! by no means; it would be letting him die in adultery!" In one thing she was more sensible. He resolved not to take leave of his children, four girls, but on the scaffold, and then to read to them a paper he had drawn up, very bitter on the family of Meredith, and on the House of Lords for -the first transaction. This my Lady Huntingdon persuaded him to drop, and he took leave of his children the day before. He wrote two letters in the preceding week to Lord Cornwallis on some of these requests - they were cool and rational, and concluded with desiring him not to mind the absurd requests of his (Lord Ferrers's) family in his behalf. On the last morning he dressed himself in his wedding clothes, and said, he thought this, at least, as good an occasion of putting them on as that for which they were first made. He wore them to Tyburn. This marked the strong impression on his mind. His mother wrote to his wife in a weak angry Style, telling her to intercede for him as her duty, and to swear to his madness. But this was not so easy; in all her cause before the lords, she had persisted that he was not mad.

Sir William Meredith, and even Lady Huntingdon had prophesied that his courage would fail him at last, and had so much foundation, that it is certain Lord Ferrers had often been beat:- -but the Methodists were to get no honour by him. His courage rose where it was most likely to fail,-an unlucky circ.u.mstance to prophets, especially when they have had the prudence to have all kind of probability on their side. Even an awful procession of above two hours, with that mixture of pageantry, shame, and ignominy, nay, and of delay, could not dismount his resolution.

He set out from the Tower at nine, amidst crowds, thousands.

First went a string of constables; then one of the sheriffs, in his chariot and six, the horses dressed with ribands; next Lord Ferrers, in his own landau and six, his coachman crying all the way; guards at each side; the other sheriffs chariot followed empty, with a mourning coach-and-six, a hea.r.s.e, and the Horse Guards. Observe, that the empty chariot was that of the other sheriff, who was in the coach with the prisoner, and who was Vaillant, the French bookseller in the Strand. How will you decipher all these strange circ.u.mstances to Florentines? A bookseller in robes and in mourning, sitting as a magistrate by the side of the Earl; and in the evening, every -body going to Vaillant's shop to hear the particulars. I wrote to him '. as he serves me, for the account: but he intends to print it, and I will send it you with some other things, and the trial. Lord Ferrers at first talked on indifferent matters, and observing the prodigious confluence of people, (the blind was drawn up on his side,) he said,--"But they never saw a lord hanged, and perhaps will never see another;" One of the dragoons was thrown by his horse's leg entangling in the hind wheel: Lord Ferrers expressed much concern, and said, "I hope there will be no death to-day but mine," and was pleased when Vaillant told him the man was not hurt. Vaillant made excuses to him on his office. "On the contrary," said the Earl, "I am much obliged to you. I feared the disagreeableness of the duty might make you depute your under-sheriff. As you are so good as to execute it yourself, I am persuaded the dreadful apparatus will be conducted with more expedition." The chaplain of the Tower, who sat backwards, then thought it his turn to speak, and began to talk on religion; but Lord Ferrers received it impatiently. However, the chaplain persevered, and said, he wished to bring his lords.h.i.+p to some confession or acknowledgment of contrition for a crime so repugnant to the laws of G.o.d and man, and wished him to endeavour to do whatever could be done in so short a time. The Earl replied, "He had done every thing he proposed to do with regard to G.o.d and man; and as to discourses on religion, you and I, Sir," said he to the clergyman, "shall probably not agree on that subject. The pa.s.sage is very short: you will not have time to convince me, nor I to refute you; it cannot be ended before we arrive." The clergyman still insisted, and urged, that. at least, the world would expect some satisfaction. Lord Ferrers replied, with some impatience, "Sir, what have I to do with the world? I am going to pay a forfeit life, which my country has thought proper to take from me--what do I care now what the world thinks of me? But, Sir, since you do desire some confession, I will confess one thing to you; I do believe there is a G.o.d. As to modes of wors.h.i.+p, we had better not talk on them. I always thought Lord Bolingbroke in the wrong, to publish his notions on religion: I will not fall into the same error." The chaplain, seeing sensibly that it was in vain to make any more attempts, contented himself with representing to him, that it would be expected from one of his calling, and that even decency required, that some prayer should be used on the scaffold, and asked his leave, at least to repeat the Lord's Prayer there. Lord Ferrers replied, "I always thought it a good prayer; you may use it if you please."

While these discourses were pa.s.sing, the procession was stopped by the crowd. The Earl said he was dry, and wished for some wine and water. The Sheriff said, he was sorry to be obliged to refuse him. By late regulations they were enjoined not to let prisoners drink from the place of imprisonment to that of execution, as great indecencies had been formerly committed by the lower species of criminals getting drunk; "And though," said he, "my Lord, I might think myself excusable in overlooking this order out of regard to a person of your lords.h.i.+p's rank, yet there is another reason which, I am sure, will weigh with you;-your Lords.h.i.+p is sensible of the greatness of the crowd; we must draw up to some tavern; the confluence would be so great, that it would delay the expedition which your Lords.h.i.+p seems so much to desire." He replied, he was satisfied, adding, "Then I must be content with this," and took some pigtail tobacco out of his pocket. As they went on, a letter was thrown into his coach; it was from his mistress, to tell him, it was impossible, from the crowd, for her to get up to the spot where he had appointed her to meet and take leave of him, but that she was in a hackney-coach of such a number. He begged Vaillant to order his officers to try to get the hackney-coach up to his, "My Lord,"

said Vaillant, you have behaved so well hitherto, that I think it is pity to venture unmanning yourself." He was struck, and was satisfied without seeing her. As they drew nigh, he said, "I perceive we are almost arrived; it is time to do what little more I have to do;" and then taking out his watch, gave it to Vaillant, desiring him to accept it as a mark of his grat.i.tude for his kind behaviour, adding, "It is scarce worth Your acceptance; but I have nothing else; it is a stop-watch, and a pretty accurate one." He gave five guineas to the chaplain, and took out as much for the executioner. Then giving Vaillant a pocket-book, he begged him to deliver it to Mrs. Clifford his mistress, with what it contained, and with his most tender regards, saying, "The key of it is to the watch, but I am persuaded you are too much a gentleman to open it." He destined the remainder of the money in his purse to the same person, and with the same tender regards.

When they came to Tyburn, his coach was detained some minutes by the conflux of people; but as soon as the door was opened, he stepped out readily and mounted the scaffold: it was hung with black, by the undertaker, and at the expense of his family.

Under the gallows was a new invented stage, to be struck from under him. He showed no kind of fear or discomposure, only just looking at the gallows with a slight motion of dissatisfaction.

He said little, kneeled for a moment to the prayer, said, "Lord have mercy upon me, and forgive me my errors," and immediately mounted the upper stage. He had come pinioned with a black sash, and was unwilling to have his hands tied, or his face covered, but was persuaded to both. When the rope was put round his neck, he turned pale, but recovered his countenance instantly, and was but seven minutes from leaving the coach, to the signal given for striking the stage. As the machine was new, they were not ready at it: his toes touched it, and he suffered a little, having had time, by their bungling, to raise his cap; but the executioner pulled it down again, and they pulled his legs, so that he was soon out of pain, and quite dead in four minutes. He desired not to be stripped and exposed, and Vaillant promised him, though his clothes must be taken off, that his s.h.i.+rt should not. This decency ended with him: the sheriffs fell to eating and drinking on the scaffold, ran and helped up one of their friends to drink with them, as he was still hanging, which he did for above an hour, and then was conveyed back with the same pomp to Surgeons'

Hall, to be dissected. The executioners fought for the rope, and the one who lost it cried. The mob tore off the black cloth as relics; but the universal crowd behaved with great decency and admiration, as they well might; for sure no exit was ever made with more sensible resolution and with less ostentation.

If I have tired you by this long narrative, you feel differently from me. The man, the manners of the country, the justice of so great and curious a nation, all to me seem striking, and must, I believe, do more so to you, who have been absent long enough to read of your own country as history.

I have run into so much paper, that I am ashamed at going on, but having a bit left, I must say a few more words. The other prisoner, from whom the mob had promised themselves more entertainment, is gone into the country, having been forbid the court, with some barbarous additions to the sentence, as you Will see in the papers. It was notified, too, to the second court,(59) who have had the prudence to countenance him no longer. The third prisoner, and second madman, Lord Charles Hay, is luckily dead, and has saved much trouble.

Have you seen the works of the philosopher of Sans Souci, or rather of the man who is no philosopher, and who had more Souci than any man now in Europe? How contemptible they are! Miserable poetry; not a new thought, nor an old one newly expressed.(60) I say nothing of the folly of publis.h.i.+ng his aversion to the English, at the very time they are ruining themselves for him; nor of the greater folly of his irreligion. The epistle to Keith is puerile and shocking. He is not so sensible as Lord Ferrers, who did not think such sentiments ought to be published. His Majesty could not resist the vanity of showing how disengaged he can be even at this time.

I am going to give a letter for you to Strange, the engraver, who is going to visit Italy. He is a very first-rate artist, and by far our best. Pray countenance him, though you will not approve his politics.(61) I believe Albano(62)) is his Loretto.

I shall finish this vast volume with a very good story, though not so authentic as my sheriff's. It is said that General Clive's father has been with Mr. Pitt, to notify, that if the government will send his son four hundred thousand pounds, and a certain number of s.h.i.+ps, the heaven-born general knows of a part of India, where such treasures are buried, that he will engage, to send over enough. to pay the national debt. "Oh!" said the minister, "that is too much; fifty millions would be sufficient."

Clive insisted on the hundred millions,--Pitt, that half would do as well. "Lord, Sir!" said the old man, "consider, if your administration lasts, the national debt will soon be two hundred millions." Good night for a twelvemonth!

(55) Sir William Meredith, Bart. of Hanbury, in Ches.h.i.+re. The t.i.tle is now extinct.-D.

(56) She afterwards married Lord Frederick Campbell, brother of the Duke of Argyle, and was an excellent woman. (She was unfortunately burned to death at Lord Frederick's seat, Combe Bank, in Kent.-D.)

(57) Zachariah Pearce, translated from the see of Bangor in 1756.

He was an excellent man, and later in life, in the year 1768, finding himself growing infirm, he presented to the world the rare instance of disinterestedness, of wis.h.i.+ng to relinquish all his pieces of preferment. These consisted of the deanery of Westminster and bishopric of Rochester. The deanery he gave up, but was not allowed to do so by the bishopric, which was said, as a peerage, to be inalienable.-D.

(58) Lady Selina s.h.i.+rley, daughter of an Earl of Ferrers.

(Selina s.h.i.+rley, second daughter and coheiress of Was.h.i.+ngton Earl Ferrers, and widow of Theophilus Hastings, ninth Earl of Huntingdon. She was the peculiar patroness of enthusiasts of all sorts in religion.-D.)

(59) The Prince of Wales's.

(60) "The town are reading the King of Prussia's poetry, and I have done like the town; they do not seem so sick of it as I am.

It is all the sc.u.m of Voltaire and Bolingbroke, the crambe recocta of our worst freethinkers tossed up in German-French rhyme." Gray, vol. iii. p. 241.

(61) Strange was a confirmed Jacobite.

(62) The residence of the Pretender.

Letter 25 To Sir David Dalrymple.(63) Arlington Street, May 15, 1760. (page 63)

Sir, I am extremely sensible of your obliging kindness in sending me for Mr. Gray the account of Erse poetry, even at a time when you were so much out of order. That indisposition I hope is entirely removed, and your health perfectly reestablished. Mr. Gray is very thankful for the information.(64)

I have lately bought, intending it for Dr. Robertson, a Spanish MS. called "Annals del Emperador Carlos V. Autor, Francisco Lopez de Gornara." As I am utterly ignorant of the Spanish tongue, I do not know whether there is the least merit in my purchase. It is not very long; if you will tell me how to convey it, I will send it to him.

We have nothing new but some Dialogues of the Dead by Lord Lyttelton. I cannot say they are very lively or striking. The best I think, relates to your country, and is written with a very good design: an intention of removing all prejudices and disUnion between the two parts of our island. I cannot tell you how the book is liked in general, for it appears but this moment.

You have seen, to be sure, the King of Prussia's Poems. If he intended to raise the glory of his military capacity by depressing his literary talents, he could not, I think,. have succeeded better. One would think a man had been accustomed to nothing but the magnificence of vast armies, and to the tumult of drums and trumpets. who is incapable of seeing that G.o.d is as great in the most minute parts of creation as in the most enormous. His Majesty does not seem to admire a mite, unless it is magnified by a Brobdignag microscope! While he is struggling with the force of three empires, he fancies that it adds to his glory to be unbent enough to contend for laurels with the triflers of a French Parna.s.sus! Adieu! Sir.

(63) Now first collected.

(64) The following is Gray's description of these poems, in a letter to Wharton.--"I am gone mad about them. They are said to be translations (literal and in prose) from the Erse tongue, done by one Macpherson, a young clergyman in the Highlands. He means to publish a collection he has of these specimens of antiquity; but what plagues me is, I cannot come at any certainty on that head. I was so struck, so extasi'e, with their infinite beauty, that I writ into Scotland to make a thousand inquiries. The letters I have in return are ill-wrote, ill-reasoned, unsatisfactory, calculated (one would imagine) to deceive one, and yet not cunning enough to do it cleverly: in short, the whole external evidence would make one believe these fragments (for so he calls them, though nothing can be more entire) counterfeit; but the internal is so strong on the other side, that I am resolved to believe them genuine, spite of the devil and the kirk. It is impossible to convince me, that they were invented by the same man that writes me these letters. On the other hand, it is almost as hard to suppose, if they are original, that he should be able to translate them so admirably. In short, this man is the very demon of poetry, or he has lighted on a treasure hid for ages." In another letter, be says,--"As to their authenticity, I have many enquiries, and have lately procured a letter from Mr. David Hume, the historian, which is more satisfactory than any thing I have yet met with on that subject.

He says, 'Certain it is, that these poems are in every body's mouth in the Highlands, have been handed down from father to son, and are of an age beyond all memory and tradition.'" Works vol.

iii. pp. 249, 257.-E.

Letter 26 To Sir Horace Mann.

Strawberry Hill, May 24, 1760. (page 64)

Well! at last Sisson's machine sets out-but, my dear Sir, how you still talk of him! You seem to think him as grave and learned as a professor of Bologna--why, he is an errant, low, indigent mechanic, and however Dr. Perelli found him out, is a shuffling knave, and I fear, no fitter to execute his orders than to write the letter you expect. Then there was my ignorance and your brother James's ignorance to be thrown into the account. For the drawing, Sisson says Dr. Perelli has the description of it already; however, I have insisted on his making a reference to that description in a scrawl we have with much ado extorted from him. I pray to Sir Isaac Newton that the machine may answer: It costs, the stars know what! The whole charge comes to upwards of threescore pounds! He had received twenty pounds, and yet was so necessitous, that on our hesitating, he wrote me a most impertinent letter for his money. I dreaded at first undertaking a commission for which I was so unqualified, and though I have done all I could, I fear you and your friend will be but ill satisfied.

Along with the machine I have sent you some new books; Lord George's trial, Lord Ferrers's, and the account of him; a fas.h.i.+onable thing called Tristram Shandy, and my Lord Lyttelton's new Dialogues of the Dead, or rather Dead Dialogues; and something less valuable still than any of these, but which I flatter myself you will not despise; it is my own print, done from a picture that is reckoned very like--you must allow for the difference that twenty years since you saw me have made. That wonderful creature Lord Ferrers, of whom I told you so much in my last, and with whom I am not going to plague you much more, made one of his keepers read Hamlet to him the night before his death after he was in bed-paid all his bills in the morning, as if leaving an inn, and half an hour before the sheriffs fetched him, corrected some verses he had written in the Tower in imitation of the Duke of Buckingham's epitaph, dublus sed ron improbus vin.(65) What a n.o.ble author have I here to add to my Catalogue!

For the other n.o.ble author, Lord Lyttelton, you will find his work paltry enough; the style, a mixture of bombast, poetry, and vulcarisms. Nothing new in the composition, except making people talk out of character is so. Then he loves changing sides so much, that he makes Lord Falkland and Hampden cross over and figure in like people in a country dance; not to mention their guardian angels, who deserve to be hanged for murder. He is angry too at Swift, Lucian, and Rabelais, as if they had laughed at him of all men living, and he seems to wish that one would read the last's Dissertation 1 on Hippocrates instead of his History of Pantagruel. But I blame him most, when he was satirizing too free writers, for praising the King of Prussia's poetry, to which any thing of Bayle is harmless. I like best the Dialogue between the Duke of argyll and the Earl of Angus, and the character of his own first wife under that of Penelope. I need not tell you that Pericles is Mr. Pitt.

I have had much conversation with your brother James, and intend to have more with your eldest, about your nephew. He is a sweet boy, and has all the goodness of dear Gal. and dear you in his countenance. They have sent him to Cambridge under that interested hog the Bishop of Chester,(66) and propose to keep him there three years. Their apprehension seems to be of his growing a fine gentleman. I could not help saying, "Why, is he not to be one?" My wish is to have him with you--what an opportunity of his learning the world and business under such a tutor and such a parent! but they think he will dress and run into diversions. I tried to convince them that of all spots upon earth dress is least necessary at Florence, and where one can least divert oneself. I am answered with the necessity of Latin and mathematics-the one soon forgot, the other never got to any purpose. I cannot bear his losing the advantage of being brought up by you, with all the advantages of such a situation, and where he May learn in perfection living languages, never attained after twenty. I am so earnest on this, for I doat on him for dear Gal.'s sake, that I will insist to rudeness on his remaining at Cambridge but two years; and before that time you shall write to second My motions.

The Parliament is up, and news are gone out of town: I expect none but what we receive from Germany. As to the Pretender, his life or death makes no impression here when a real King is so soon forgot, how should an imaginary one be remembered? Besides, since Jacobites have found the way to St. James's, it is grown so much the fas.h.i.+on to wors.h.i.+p Kings, that people don't send their adorations so far as Rome. He at Kensington is likely long to outlast his old rival. The spring is far from warm, yet he wears a silk coat and has left off fires.

Thank you for the entertaining history of the Pope and the Genoese. I am flounced again into building--a round tower, gallery, cloister, and chapel, all starting up--if I am forced to run away by ruining myself, I will come to Florence, steal your nephew, and bring him with me. Adieu!

(65) The following verses are said to have been found in Lord Ferrers's apartment in the Tower:

"In doubt I lived, in doubt I die, Yet stand Prepared the vast abyss to try.

And undismay'd expect eternity!"-E.

(66) Dr. Edmund Keene, brother of Sir Benjamin, and afterwards Bishop of Ely.