The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume IV Part 31

Strype's account, or rather Stow's, of Richard's person is very remarkable--but I have done with endeavouring at truth. Weeds grow more naturally than what one plants. I hear your Cantabrigians are still unshaken Chattertonians. Many men are about falsehood like girls about the first man that makes love to them: a handsomer, a richer, or even a sincerer lover cannot eradicate the first impression--but a sillier swain, or a sillier legend, sometimes gets into the head of a miss or the learned man, and displaces the antecedent folly. Truth's kingdom is not of this world.

I do not know whether our clergy are growing Mahometans or not: they certainly are not what they profess themselves--but as you and I should not agree perhaps in a.s.signing the same defects to them, I will not enter on a subject which I have promised you to drop. All I allude to now is, the shocking murder of Miss Ray(353) by a divine. In my own opinion we are growing more fit for Bedlam, than for Mahomet's paradise. The poor criminal in question, I am persuaded, is mad--and the misfortune is, the law does not know how to define the shades of madness; and thus there -are twenty outpensioners of Bedlam, for the one that is confined. You, dear Sir, have chosen a wiser path to happiness by depending on yourself for amus.e.m.e.nt. Books and past ages draw one into no sc.r.a.pes, and perhaps it is best not to know much of men till they are dead. I wish you health -,You want nothing else. I am, dear Sir, yours most truly.

(353) On the 7th of April, Miss Reay, who had been the mistress of Lord Sandwich for twenty years, by whom she was the mother of many children, was shot, on her leaving Covent-Garden theatre, by the Rev. James Hackman, who had the living of Wiverton, in Norfolk, a young man not half her age, who had imbibed a violent pa.s.sion for her, whom he first met at Lord Sandwich's seat at Hinchinbroke, where he had been frequently invited to dine while commanding a recruiting party at Huntingdon; he being, previously to his entering the church, a lieutenant in the 68th regiment of foot. Having shot Miss Reay, he fired a pistol at himself; but, being only wounded by it, he was tried at the Old Bailey, convicted, and executed.-E.

Letter 166 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Arlington Street, April 20, 1779. (page 219)

Dear Sir, I have received the plates very safely, but hope You nor the Alderman,(354) will take it ill that I return them. They are extremely pretty, and uncommonly well preserved; but I am sure they are not by Rubens, nor I believe after his designs, for I am persuaded they are older than his time. In truth, I have a great many Of the same sort, and do not wish for more. I shall send them back on Thursday by the Fly, and will beg you to inquire after them; and I trust they will arrive as safely as they did to Yours ever.

(354) Alderman John Boydell, an English engraver; distinguished as an encourager of the fine arts. In 1790 he held the office of Lord Mayor of London, and died in 1804.-E.

Letter 167 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

April 23, 1779. (page 220)

I ought not to trouble you so often when you are not well; but that is the very cause of my writing now. You left off abruptly from disorder, and therefore I wish to know it is gone. The plates I hope got home safe. They are pretty, especially the reverses; but the drawing in general is bad.

Pray tell me what you mean by a priced catalogue of the pictures at Houghton. Is it a printed one? if it is, where is it to be had?--odd questions from me, and which I should not wish to have mentioned as coming from me. I have been told to-day that they are actually sold to the Czarina--sic transit! mortifying enough, were not every thing transitory! we must recollect that our griefs and pains are so, as well as our joys and glories; and, by balancing the account, a grain of comfort is to be extracted!

Adieu! I shall be heartily glad to receive a better account of you.

Letter 168 To Mrs. Abington.(355) (1779.] (page 220)

Mr. Walpole cannot express how much he is mortified that he cannot accept of Mrs. Abington's obliging invitation, as he had engaged company to dine with him on Sunday at Strawberry-hill; whom he would put off, if not foreigners who are leaving England.

Mr. Walpole hopes, however, that this accident will not prevent an acquaintance, which his admiration of Mrs. Abington'S genius has made him long desire; and which he hopes to cultivate at Strawberry Bill, when her leisure will give him leave to trouble her with an invitation.

(355) Now first collected.

Letter 169 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Arlington Street, May 21, 1779. (page 221)

As Mr. Ess.e.x has told me that you still continue out of order, I am impatient to hear from yourself how you are. Do send me a line: I hope it will be a satisfactory one. you know that Dr.

Ducarel has published a translation of a History of the Abbey of Bec! There is a pretty print to it: and one very curious circ.u.mstance, at least valuable to us disciples of Alma Mater Etonensis. The ram-hunting was derived from the manor of Wrotham in Norfolk, which formerly belonged to Bec, and being forfeited, together with other alien priories, was bestowed by Henry VI. on our college. I do not repine at reading any book from which I can learn a single fact that I wish to know.

For the lives of the abbots, they were, according to the author, all pinks of piety and holiness but there are few other facts amusing, especially with regard to the customs of those savage times-excepting that the Empress Matilda was buried in a bull's hide, and afterwards had a tomb covered with silver. There is another new book called "Sketches from Nature," in two volumes, by Mr. G. Keate, in which I found one fact too, that, if authentic, is worth knowing. The work is an imitation of Sterne, and has a sort of merit, though nothing that arrives at originality.

For the foundation of the church of Reculver, he quotes a ma.n.u.script said to be written by a Dominican friar of Canterbury, and preserved at Louvain. The story is evidently metamorphosed into a novel. and has very little of an antique air; but it affirms that the monkish author attests the beauty of Richard III. This is very absurd, if invention has nothing to do with the story; and therefore one should suppose it genuine. I have desired Dodsley to ask Mr. Keate, if there truly exists such, a ma.n.u.script: if there does, I own I wish he had printed it rather than his own production; for I am with Mr. Gray, "that any man living may make a book worth reading, if he will but set down with truth what he has seen or heard, no matter whether the book is well written or not." Let those who can write, glean.

Letter 170 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Arlington Street, May 22, 1779. (page 221)

If you hear of us no oftener than we of you, you will be as much behindhand in news as my Lady Lyttelton. We have seen a traveller that saw you in your island,(356) but it sounds like hearing of Ulysses. Well! we must be content.

YOU are not only not dethroned, but owe the safety of your dominions to your own skill in fortification. if we do not hear of your extending your conquests, why, is it not less than all our modern heroes have done, whom prophets have foretold and gazettes celebrated--or who have foretold and celebrated themselves. Pray be content to be cooped up in an island that has no neighbours, when the Howes and Clintons and Dunmores and Burgoynes and Campbells are not yet got beyond the great river-- Inquiry!(357) To-day's papers say, that the little Prince of Orange(358) is to invade you again; but we trust Sir James Wallace has clipped his wings so close, that they will not grow again this season, though he is so ready to fly.

Nothing material has happened since I wrote last-so, as every moment of a civil war is precious, every one has been turned to the interest of diversion. There have been three masquerades, an Installation, and the ball of the knights at the Haymarket this week; not to mention Almack's festino, Lady Spencer's, Ranelagh and Vauxhall, operas and plays. The d.u.c.h.ess of Bolton too saw masks--so many, that the floor gave way, and the company in the dining-room were near falling on the heads of those in the parlour, and exhibiting all that has not yet appeared in Doctors'

Commons. At the knights' ball was such a profusion of strawberries, that people could hardly get into the supper-room.

I could tell you more, but I do not love to exaggerate. Lady Ailesbury told me this morning that Lord Bristol has got a calf with two feet to each leg--I am convinced it is by the d.u.c.h.ess of Kingston, who has got two of every thing where others have but one.(359) Adieu! I am going to sup with Mrs. Abington--and hope Mrs. Clive will not hear of it.

(356) Mr. Conway was now at his government of Jersey.

(357) The parliamentary inquiry which took place in the House of Commons on the conduct of the American war.

(358) The Prince of Na.s.sau, who had commanded the attack upon Jersey, claiming relations.h.i.+p to the great house of Na.s.sau Mr.

Walpole calls him the "little Prince of Orange." Gibbon, in a letter to Mr. Holroyd, of the 7th, says, "You have heard of the Jersey invasion; every body praises Arbuthnot's decided spirit.

Conway went last night to throw himself into the island."-E.

(359) "Do you know, my lord," said the d.u.c.h.ess, then Miss Chudleigh, to Lord Chesterfield, "the world says I have had twins!" "Does it?" said his lords.h.i.+p; "I make a point of believing only one-half of what it says."-E.

Letter 171 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Strawberry Hill, June 2, 1779. (page 222)

I am most sincerely rejoiced, dear Sir, that you find yourself at all better, and trust it is an omen of farther amendment. Mr.

Ess.e.x surprised me by telling me, that you, who keep yourself so warm and so numerously clothed, do yet sometimes, if the sun s.h.i.+nes, sit and write in your garden for hours at a time. It is more than I should readily do, whose habitudes are so very different from yours. Your complaints seem to demand perspiration--but I do not venture to advise. I understand no const.i.tution but my own, and should kill Milo, if I managed him as I treat myself. I sat in a window on Sat.u.r.day, with the east wind blowing on my neck till near two in the morning-and it seems to have done me good, for I am better within these two days than I have been these six months. My spirits have been depressed, and my nerves so aspen, that the smallest noise disturbed me.

To-day I do not feel a complaint; which is something at near sixty-two.

I don't know whether I have not misinformed you, nor am sure it was Dr. Ducarel who translated the account of the Abbey of Bec-- he gave it to Mr. Lort; but I am not certain he ever published it. You was the first that notified to me the fifth volume of the Archaeologia--I am not much more edified than usual; but there are three pretty prints of Reginal Seats. Mr. Pegge's tedious dissertation, which he calls a brief one, about the foolish legend of St. George, is despicable: all his arguments are equally good for proving the existence of the dragon. What diversion might laughers make of the society! Dolly Pentraeth, the old woman of Mousehole, and Mr. Penneck's nurse. p. 81, would have furnished Foote with two personages for a farce. The same grave dissertation on patriarchal customs seems to have as much to do with British antiquities, as the Lapland: witches that sell wind--and pray what business has the Society With Roman inscriptions in Dalmatia! I am most pleased With the account of Nonsuch, imperfect as it is: it appears to have been but a villa, and not considerable for a royal one. You see lilacs were then a novelty. Well, I am glad they publish away. The vanity of figuring in these repositories will make many persons contribute their ma.n.u.scripts, and every now and then something valuable Will come to light, which its own intrinsic merit might not have saved.

I know nothing more of Houghton. I should certainly be glad to have the priced catalogue; and if you will lend me yours, my printer shall transcribe it-but I am in no hurry. I Conceive faint hopes, as the sale is not concluded: however, I take care not to flatter myself.

I think I told you I had purchased, at Mr. Ives's sale, a handsome coat in painted gla.s.s, of Hobart impaling Boleyn--but I can find no such match in my pedigree--yet I have heard that Blickling belonged to Ann Boleyn's father. Pray reconcile all this to me. '

Lord de Ferrers is to dine here on Sat.u.r.day; and I have got to treat him with an account of ancient painting, formerly in the hall of Tammworth Castle; they are mentioned in Warton's Observations on the Fairy Queen, Vol i. p. 43.

Do not put yourself' to pain to answer this--only be a.s.sured I shall be happy to know when you are able to write with ease. You must leave Your cloister, if Your transcribing leaves you.

Believe me, dear Sir, Ever most truly.

Letter 172 To The Rev. Dr. Lort.

Strawberry Hill, June 4, 1779. (page 224)

I am sorry, dear Sir, you could not let me have the pleasure of your company; but, I own, you have partly, not entirely, made me amends by the sight of your curious ma.n.u.script, which I return you, with your other book of inaugurations.

The sight of the ma.n.u.script was particularly welcome to me, because the long visit of Henry VI. and his uncle Gloucester, to St. Edmund's Bury, accounts for those rare altar tablets that I bought at Mr. Ives's sale, on which are incontestably the portraits of Duke Humphrey, Cardinal Beaufort, and the same archbishop that is in my Marriage of Henry VI. I know the house of Lancaster were patrons of St. Edmund's Bury; but so long a visit is demonstration.

The fourth person on my panels is unknown. Over his head is a coat of arms. but may be that of W. Curteys the abbot, or the alderman, as he is in scarlet. His figure and the Duke's are far superior to the other two, and worthy of a good Italian master.

The Cardinal and the Archbishop are in the dry hard manner of the age. I wish you would call and look at them; they are at Mr.

Bonus's in Oxford-road; the two prelates are much damaged. I peremptorily enjoined Bonus to repair only, and not to repaint them; and thus, by putting him out of his way, I have put him so much out of humour too, that he has kept them these two years, and not finished them yet. I design them for the four void s.p.a.ces in my chapel, on the sides of the shrine. The Duke of Gloucester's face is so like, though younger, that it proves I guessed right at his figure in my Marriage. The tablets came out of the abbey of Bury; were procured by old Peter Le Neve, Norroy; and came by his widow's marriage to Tom Martin, at whose sale Mr.

Ives bought them. We have very few princely portraits so ancient, so authentic, and none so well painted as the Duke and fourth person. These were the insides of the doors, which I had split into two, and value them extremely. This account I think will be more satisfactory to you than notes.