The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume III Part 27

Hervey's(248) safe return; and now he is safe, I trust you enjoy his glory: for this is a wicked age; you are one of those un-Lacedaemonian mothers, that are not content unless your children come off with all their limbs. A Spartan countess would not have had the confidence of my Lady Albemarle to appear in the drawing-room without at least one of her sons being knocked on the head.(249) However, pray, Madam, make my compliments to her; one must conform to the times, and congratulate people for being happy, if they like it. I know one matron, however, with whom I may condole; who, I dare swear, is miserable that she has not one of her acquaintance in affliction, and to whose door she might drive with all her sympathizing greyhounds to inquire after her, and then to Hawkins's, and then to Graham's, and then cry over a ball of rags that she is picking, and be sorry for poor Mrs.

Such-a-one, who has lost an only son!

When your ladys.h.i.+p has hung up all your trophies, I will come and make you a visit. There is another ingredient I hope not quite disagreeable that Mr. Hervey has brought with him, un-Lacedaemonian too, but admitted among the other vices of our system. If besides glory and riches they have brought us peace, I will make a bonfire myself, though it should be in the mayoralty of that virtuous citizen Mr. Beckford. Adieu, Madam!

(248) General William Hervey, youngest son of Lady Hervey; who had just returned from the Havannah.

(249) Lady Anne Lenox, Countess of Albemarle, had three sons present at the taking of the Havannah. The eldest, Lord Albemarle, commanded the land forces; the second, afterwards Lord Keppel, was then captain of a man of war; and the third was colonel of a regiment.

Letter 139 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Arlington Street, Oct. 4, 1762. (page 196)

I am concerned to hear you have been so much out of order, but should rejoice your sole command(250) disappointed you, if this late cannonading business(251) did not destroy all my little prospects. Can one believe the French negotiators are sincere, when their marshals are so false? What vexes me more is to hear you seriously tell your brother that you are always unlucky, and lose all opportunities of fighting. How can you be such a child?

You cannot, like a German, love fighting for its own sake. No: you think of the mob of London, who, if you had taken Peru, would forget you the first lord mayor's day, or for the first hyena that comes to town. How can one build on virtue and on fame too?

When do they ever go together? In my pa.s.sion, I could almost wish you were as worthless and as great as the King of Prussia! If conscience is a punishment, is not it a reward too? Go to that silent tribunal, and be satisfied with its sentence.

I have nothing new to tell you. The Havannah is more likely to break off the peace than to advance it.(252) We are not in a humour to give up the world; anza, are much more disposed to conquer the rest of it. We shall have some commanding here, I believe, if we sign the peace. Mr. Pitt, from the bosom of his retreat, has made Beckford mayor. The Duke of Newcastle, if not taken in again, will probably end his life as he began it-at the head of a mob. Personalities and abuse, public and private, increase to the most outrageous degree, and yet the town is at the emptiest. You may guess what will be the case in a month. I do not see at all into the storm: I do not mean that there will not be a great majority to vote any thing; but there are times when even majorities cannot do all they are ready to do. Lord Bute has certainly great luck, which is something in politics, whatever it is in logic: but whether peace or war, I would not give him much for the place he will have this day twelvemonth.

Adieu! The watchman goes past one in the morning; and as I have nothing better than reflections and conjectures to send YOU, I may as well go to bed.

(250) During Lord Granby's absence from the army in Flanders, the command in chief had devolved on Mr. Conway.

(251) The affair of Bucker-Muhl.

(252) On this subject, Sir Joseph Yorke, in a letter to Mr.

Mich.e.l.l of the 9th of October, Observes, "All the world is struck with the n.o.ble capture of the Havannah, which fell into our hands on the Prince of Wales's birthday, as a just punishment upon the Spaniards for their unjust quarrel with us, and for the supposed difficulties they have raised in the negotiation for peace. By what I hear from Paris, my old acquaintance Grimaldi is the cause of the delay in signing the preliminaries, insisting upon points neither France nor England would ever consent to grant, such as the liberty of fis.h.i.+ng at Newfoundland; a point we should not dare to yield, as Mr. Pitt told them, though they were masters of the Tower of London. What effect the taking of the Havannah will have is uncertain; for the Spaniards have nothing to give us in return."-E.

Letter 140 To George Montagu, Esq.

Strawberry Hill, Oct 14, 1762. (page 197)

You will not make your fortune in the admiralty at least; your King's cousin is to cross over and figure in with George Grenville; the latter takes the admiralty, Lord Halifax the seals--still, I believe, reserving Ireland for pocket-money; at least no new viceroy is named. mr. Fox undertakes the House of Commons--and the peace--and the war--for if we have the first, we may be pretty sure of the second.(253)

you see Lord Bute totters; reduced to s.h.i.+ft hands so often, it does not look like much stability. The campaign at Westminster will be warm. When Mr. Pitt can have such a mouthful as Lord Bute, Mr. Fox, and the peace, I do not think three thousand pounds a year will stop it. Well, I shall go into my old corner under the window, and laugh I had rather sit by my fire here; but if there are to be bull-feasts, one would go and see them, when one has a convenient box for nothing, and is very indifferent about the cavalier combatants. Adieu!

(253) In a letter to Mr. Pitt, of this day's date, Mr. Nuthall gives the ex-minister the following account of these changes:- -"Mr. Fox kissed hands yesterday, as one of the cabinet; Lord Halifax, as secretary of state, and Mr. George Grenville, as first lord of the admiralty. Mr. Fox's present state of health, it was given out, would not permit him to take the seals.

Charles Townshend was early yesterday morning sent for by Lord Bute, who opened to him this new system, and offered him the secretarys.h.i.+p of the plantations and board of trade, which he not only refused, but refused all connexion and intercourse whatever with the new counsellor, and spoke out freely. He was afterwards three times in with the King, to whom be was more explicit, and said things that did not a little alarm." Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 181.-E.

Letter 141 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Strawberry Hill, Oct. 29, 1762. (page 198)

You take my philosophy very kindly, as it was meant; but I suppose you smile a little in your sleeve to hear me turn moralist. Yet why should not I? Must every absurd young man prove a foolish old one? Not that I intend, when the latter term is quite arrived, to profess preaching; nor should, I believe, have talked so gravely to you, if your situation had not made me grave. Till the campaign is ended, I shall be in no humour to smile. For the war, when it will be over, I have no idea. The peace is a jack o' lanthorn that dances before one's eyes, is never approached, and at best seems ready to lead some follies into a woful quagmire.

As your brother was in town, and I had my intelligence from him, I concluded you would have the same, and therefore did not tell you of this last resolution, which has brought Mr. Fox again upon the scene. I have been in town but once since; yet learned enough to confirm the opinion I had conceived, that the building totters, and that this last b.u.t.tress will but push on its fall.

Besides the clamorous opposition already encamped, the world talks of another, composed of names not so often found in a mutiny. What think you of the great Duke,(254) and the little Duke,(255) and the old Duke,(256) and the Derbys.h.i.+re Duke,(257) banded together against the favourite?(258) If so, it proves the Court, as the late Lord G * * * wrote to the mayor of Litchfield, will have a majority in every thing but numbers. However, my letter is a week old before I write it: things may have changed since last Tuesday. Then the prospect was des plus gloomy.

Portugal at the eve of being conquered--Spain preferring a diadem to the mural crown of the Havannah--a squadron taking horse for Naples, to see whether King Carlos has any more private bowels than public, whether he is a better father than brother. If what I heard yesterday be true, that the Parliament is to be put off till the 24th, it does not look as if they were ready in the green-room, and despised catcalls.

You bid me send you the flower of brimstone, the best things published in this season of outrage. I should not have waited for orders, if I had met with the least tolerable morsel. But this opposition ran stark mad at once, cursed, swore, called names, and has not been one minute cool enough to have a grain of wit. Their prints are gross, their papers scurrilous: indeed the authors abuse one another more than any body else. I have not seen a single ballad or epigram. They are as seriously dull as if the controversy was religious. I do not take in a paper of either side; and being very indifferent, the only way of being impartial, they shall not make me pay till they make me laugh. I am here quite' alone, and shall stay a fortnight longer, unless the Parliament prorogued lengthens my holidays. I do not pretend to be so indifferent, to have so little curiosity, as not to go and see the Duke of Newcastle frightened for his country--the only thing that never yet gave him a panic. Then I am still such a schoolboy, that though I could guess half their orations, and know all their meaning, I must go and hear Caesar and Pompey scold in the Temple of Concord. As this age is to make such a figure hereafter, how the Gronoviuses and Warburtons would despise a senator that deserted the forum when the masters of the world harangued! For, as this age is to be historic, so of course it will be a standard of virtue too; and we, like our wicked predecessors the Romans, shall be quoted, till our very ghosts blush, as models of patriotism and magnanimity. What lectures will be read to poor children on this era! Europe taught to tremble, the great King humbled, the treasures of Peru diverted into the Thames, Asia subdued by the gigantic Clive! for in that age men were near seven feet high; France suing for peace at the gates of Buckingham-house, the steady wisdom of the Duke of Bedford drawing a circle round the Gallic monarch, and forbidding him to pa.s.s it till he had signed the cession of America; Pitt more eloquent than Demosthenes, and trampling on proffered pensions like-I don't know who; Lord Temple sacrificing a brother to the love of his country; Wilkes as spotless as Sall.u.s.t, and the Flamen Churchill(259) knocking down the foes of Britain with statues of the G.o.ds!-Oh! I am out of breath with eloquence and prophecy, and truth and lies; my narrow chest was not formed to hold inspiration! I must return to piddling with my painters: those lofty subjects are too much for me. Good night!

P. S. I forgot to tell -you that Gideon, who is dead worth more than the whole land of canaan, has left the reversion of all his milk and honey, after his son and daughter and their children, to the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re, without insisting on his taking the name, or even being circ.u.mcised. Lord Albemarle is expected home in December. My nephew Keppel(260) is Bishop of Exeter, not of the Havannah, as you may imagine, for his mitre was promised the day before the news came.

(254) Of c.u.mberland.

(255) Of Bedford.

(256) Of Newcastle.

(257) Of Devons.h.i.+re.

(258) The Earl of Bute.

(259) Charles Churchill the poet.

(260) Frederick Keppel, youngest brother of George Earl of Albemarle, who commanded at taking the Havannah, had married Laura, eldest daughter of Sir Edward Walpole.

Letter 142 To The Right Hon. Lady Hervey.

Strawberry Hill, Oct. 31, 1762. (page 200)

Madam, It is too late, I fear, to attempt acknowledging the honour Madame de Chabot,(261) does me; and yet, if she is not gone, I would fain not appear ungrateful. I do not know where she lives, or I would not take the liberty again of making your ladys.h.i.+p my penny-post. If she is gone, you will throw my note into the fire.

Pray, Madam, blow your nose with a piece of flannel-not that I believe it will do you the least good--but, as all wise folks think it becomes them to recommend nursing and flannelling the gout, imitate them; and I don't know any other way of lapping it up, when it appears in the person of a running cold. I will make it a visit on Tuesday next, and shall hope to find it tolerably vented.

P. S. You must tell me all the news when I arrive, for I know nothing of what is pa.s.sing. I have only seen in the papers, that the c.o.c.k and hen doves(262) that went to Paris not having been able to make peace, there is a third dove(263) just flown thither to help them.

(261) Lady Mary Chabot, daughter of the Earl of Stafford.

(262) The Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Bedford.

(263) Mr. Hans Stanley.

letter 143 To George Montagu, Esq.

Arlington Street, Thursday, Nov. 4, 1762. (page 200)

The events of these last eight days will make you stare. This day se'nnight the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re came to town, was flatly refused an audience, and gave up his key. Yesterday Lord Rockingham resigned, and your cousin Manchester was named to the bedchamber. The King then in council called for the book, and dashed out the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re's name. If you like spirit, en Voila! Do you know I am sorry for all this? You will not suspect me of tenderness for his grace of Devons.h.i.+re, nor, recollecting how the whole house of Cavendish treated me on my breach with my uncle, will any affronts, that happen to them, call forth my tears. But I think the act too violent and too serious, and dipped in a deeper dye than I like in politics.

Squabbles, and speeches, and virtue, and prost.i.tution, amuse one sometimes; less and less indeed every day; but measures, from which you must advance and cannot retreat, is a game too deep; one neither knows who may be involved, nor where may be the end.

It is not pleasant. Adieu!

Letter 144 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Strawberry Hill, Nov. 13, 1762. (page 201)