The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume I Part 40

(666) Sir Thomas Robinson, minister at Vienna; be was made secretary of state in 1754. (And a peer, by the t.i.tle of Lord Grantham, in 1761.-D.)

(667) John Carmichael, third Earl of Hyndford. He had been sent as envoy to the King of Prussia, during the first war of Silesia. He was afterwards sent amba.s.sador to St. Petersburgh and Vienna, and died in 1767.-D.

(668) The Duke of Bedford had not the Garter till some years after this.

275 Letter 78 To Sir Horace Mann.

You scolded me so much about my little paper, that I dare not venture upon it even now, when I have very little to say to you. The long session is over, and the Secret Committee already forgotten. n.o.body remembers it but poor Paxton, who has lost his place(669) by it. saw him the day after he came out of Newgate: he came to Chelsea:(670) Lord Fitzwilliam was there, and in the height of zeal, took him about the neck and kissed him. Lord Orford had been at Court that morning, and with his usual spirits, said to the new ministers, "So! the parliament is up, and Paxton, Bell, and I have got our liberty!" The King spoke in the kindest manner to him at his levee, but did not call him into the closet, as the new ministry feared he would, and as perhaps, the old ministry expected he would. The day before, when the King went to put an end to the session, Lord Quarendon asked Winnington "whether Bell would be let out time enough to hire a mob to huzza him as he went to the House of Lords."

The few people that are left in town have been much diverted with an adventure that has befallen the new ministers. Last Sunday the Duke of Newcastle gave them a dinner at Claremont, where their servants got so drunk, that when they came to the inn over against the gate of Newpark,(671) the coachman, who was the only remaining fragment of their suite, tumbled off the box, and there they were planted. There were Lord Bath, Lord Carteret, Lord Limerick, and Harry Furnese (672) in the coach: they asked the innkeeper if he could contrive no way to convey them to town. , No," he said, "not unless it was to get Lord Orford's coachman to drive them." They demurred; but Lord Carteret said "Oh, I dare say, Lord Orford will willingly let us have him." So they sent and he drove them home.(673)

Ceretesi had a mind to see this wonderful Lord Orford, of whom he had heard so much; I carried him to dine at Chelsea. You know the earl don't speak a word of any language but English and Latin,(674) and Ceretesi not a word of either; yet he a.s.sured me that he was very happy to have made cosi bella conascenza! He whips out his pocket-book every moment, and writes descriptions in issimo of every thing he sees: the grotto alone took up three pages. What volumes he will publish at his return, in usum Serenissimi Pannom!(675)

There has lately been the most shocking scene of murder imaginable; a parcel of drunken constables took it into their heads to put the laws in execution against disorderly persons, and so took up every woman they met, till they had collected five and six or twenty, all of whom they thrust into St.

Martin's roundhouse, where they kept them all night, with doors and windows closed. The poor creatures, who could not stir or breathe, screamed as long as they had any breath left, begging at least for water: one poor wretch said she was worth eighteen-pence, and would gladly give it for a draught of water, but in vain! So well did they keep them there, that in the morning four were found stifled to death, two died soon after, and a dozen more are in a shocking way. In short, it is horrid to think what the poor creatures suffered: several of them were beggars, who, from having no lodging, were necessarily found in the street, and others honest labouring women. One of the dead was a poor washerwoman, big with child, who was returning home late from was.h.i.+ng. One of the constables is taken, and others absconded; but I question(676) if any of them will suffer death, though the greatest criminals in this town are the officers of justice; there is no tyranny they do not exercise, no villainy of which they do not partake. These same men, the same night, broke into a bagnio in Covent-Garden, and took up Jack Spencer,(677) Mr.

Stewart, and Lord George Graham,(678) and would have thrust them into the round-house with the poor women, if they had not been worth more than eighteen-pence!

I have just now received yours of the 15th of July, with a married letter from both Prince and Princess:(679) but sure nothing ever equalled the setting out of it! She says, "The generosity of your friends.h.i.+p for me, Sir, leaves me nothing to desire of all that is precious in England, China, and the Indies!" Do you know, after such a testimony under the hand of a princess, that I am determined, after the laudable example of the house of Medici, to take the t.i.tle of Horace the Magnificent! I am only afraid it should be a dangerous example for my posterity, who may ruin themselves in emulating the magnificence of their ancestor. It happens comically, for the other day, in removing from Downing-street, Sir Robert found an old account-book of his father, wherein he set down all his, expenses. In three months and ten days that he was in London one winter as member of parliament, he spent-what do you think?-sixty-four pounds seven s.h.i.+llings and five-pence!

There are many articles for Nottingham ale, eighteen-pences for dinners, five s.h.i.+llings to Bob (now Earl of Orford), and one memorandum of six s.h.i.+llings given in exchange to Mr.

Wilkins for his wig-and yet this old man, my grandfather, had two thousand pounds a-year, Norfolk sterling! He little thought that what maintained him for a whole session, would scarce serve one of his younger grandsons to buy j.a.pan and fans for princesses at Florence!

Lord Orford has been at court again to-day: Lord Carteret came up to thank him for his coachman; the Duke of Newcastle standing by. My father said, "My lord, whenever the duke is near overturning you, you have nothing to do but to send to me, and I will save you." The duke said to Lord Carteret, "Do you know, my lord, that the Venison you eat that day came out of Newpark?" Lord Orford laughed, and said, "So, you see I am made to kill the fatted calf for the return of the prodigals!"

The King pa.s.sed by all the new ministry to speak to him, and afterwards only spoke to my Lord Carteret.

Should I answer the letters from the court of Petraria again?

there will be no end of our magnificent correspondence!-but would it not be too haughty to let a princess write last?

Oh, the cats! I can never keep them, and yet It is barbarous to send them all to Lord Islay: he will shut them up and starve them, and then bury them under the stairs with his wife. Adieu!

(669) Solicitor to the treasury. See ante, p. 246.

(670) Sir R. Walpole's house at Chelsea.-D.

(671) Lord Walpole was ranger of Newpark. (Now called Richmond Park.-D.)

(672) One of the band of incapables who obtained power and place on the fall of Walpole. Horace Walpole, in his Memoires, calls him "that old rag of Lord Bath's quota to an administration, the mute Harry Furnese."-D.

(673) This occurrence was celebrated in a ballad which is inserted in C. Hanbury Williams's works, and begins thus.

"As Caleb and Carteret, two birds of a feather, Went down to a feast at Newcastle's together."

Lord Bath is called "Caleb," in consequence of the name of Caleb DAnvers having been used in The Craftsman, of which he was the princ.i.p.al author.-D.

(674) It was very remarkable that Lord Orford could get and keep such an ascendant with King George 1. when they had no way of conversing but very imperfectly in Latin.

(675) The coffee-house at Florence where the n.o.bility meet.

(676) The keeper of the round-house was tried but acquitted of wilful murder. [The keeper, whose name was William Bird, was tried at the Old Bailey in October, and received sentence of death; which was afterwards trans.m.u.ted to transportation.]

(677) The Honourable John Spencer, second son of Charles, third Earl of Sunderland, by Anne his wife, second daughter of the great Duke of Marlborough. He was the favourite grandson of old Sarah, d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough who left him a vast fortune, having disinherited, to the utmost of her power, his eldest brother, Charles, Duke of Marlborough. The condition upon which she made this bequest was that neither he nor his heirs should take any place or pension from any government, except the rangers.h.i.+p of Windsor Park. He was the ancestor of the present Earl Spencer, and died in 1746.- D.

(678) Lord George Graham, youngest son of the Duke of Montrose, and a captain in the navy. He died in 1747.-D.

(679) Prince and Princess Craon.

278 Letter 79 To Sir Horace Mann.

Chelsea, July 29, 1742.

I am quite out of humour; the whole town is melted away; you never saw such a desert. You know what Florence is in the vintage-season, at least I remember what it was: London is just as empty, nothing but half-a-dozen private gentlewomen left, who live upon the scandal that they laid up in the winter. I am going too! this day se'nnight we set out for Houghton, for three months; but I scarce think that I shall allow thirty days apiece to them. Next post I shall not be able to write to you; and when I am there shall scarce find any materials to furnish a letter above every other post. I beg, however, that you will write constantly to me: it will be my only entertainment, for I neither hunt, brew, drink, nor reap. When I return in the winter, I will make amends for this barren season of our correspondence.

I carried Sir Robert the other night to Ranelagh for the first time: my uncle's prudence, or fear, would never let him go before. It was pretty full, and all its fulness flocked round us: we walked with a train at our heels, like two chairmen going to fight; but they were extremely civil, and did not crowd him, or say the least impertinence--I think he grows popular already! The other day he got it asked, whether he should be received if he went to Carleton House?-no, truly!-but yesterday morning Lord Baltimore' came (680) to soften it a little; that his royal highness -did not refuse to see him, but that now the Court was out of town, and he had no drawing-room, he did not see any body.

They have given Mrs. Pultney an admirable name, and one that is likely to stick by her-instead of Lady Bath, they call her the wife of Bath.(681) Don't you figure her squabbling at the gate with St. Peter for a halfpenny.

Cibber has published a little pamphlet against Pope, which has a great deal of spirit, and, from some circ.u.mstances, will notably vex him.(682) I will send it to you by the first opportunity, with a new pamphlet, said to be Doddington's, called "A Comparison of the Old and New Ministry:" it is much liked. I have not forgot your magazines, but will send them and these pamphlets together. Adieu! I am at the end of my tell.

P. S. Lord Edgec.u.mbe is just made lord-lieutenant of Cornwall, at which the Lord of Bath looks sour. He said, yesterday, that the King would give orders for several other considerable alterations; but gave no orders, except for this, which was not asked by that earl.

(680) Lord of the bedchamber to the Prince.

(681) In allusion to the old ballad.

(682) This pamphlet, which was ent.i.tled "A Letter from Mr.

Cibber to Mr. Pope; inquiring into the motives that might induce him, in his satirical works to be so frequently fond of Mr. Cibber's name," so "notably vexed" the great poet, that, in a new edition of the Dunciad, he dethroned Theobald from his eminence as King of the dunces, and enthroned Cibber in his stead.-E.

279 Letter 80 To Sir Horace Mann.

(From Houghton.)

Here are three new ballads,(683) and you must take them as a plump part of a long letter. Consider, I am in the barren land of Norfolk, where news grows as slow as any thing green; and besides, I am in the house of a fallen minister! The first song I fancy is Lord Edgc.u.mbe's; at least he had reason to write it. The second I do not think so good as the real Story that occasioned it. The last is reckoned vastly the best, and is much admired: I cannot say I see all those beauties in it, nor am charmed with the poetry, which is cried up. I don't find that any body knows whose it is.(684) Pultney is very anoyed, especially as he pretends, about his wife, and says, "it is too much to abuse ladies!" You see, their twenty years' satires come back home! He is gone to the Bath in great dudgeon: the day before he went, he went in to the King to ask him to turn out Mr. Hill of the customs, for having opposed him at Heydon. "Sir," said the King, "was it not when you was opposing me? I won't turn him out: I will part with no more of my friends." Lord Wilmington was waiting to receive orders accordingly, but the King gave him none.

We came hither last Sat.u.r.day; as we pa.s.sed through Grosvenor-square, we met Sir Roger Newdigate, (685) with a vast body of Tories, proceeding to his election at Brentford: we might have expected some insult, but only one single fellow hissed. and was not followed. Lord Edgc.u.mbe, Mr. Ellis, and Mr. Hervey, in their way to c.o.ke's,(686) and Lord Chief Justice Wills (on the circuit) are the Only company here yet. My Lord invited n.o.body, but left it to their charity. The other night, as soon as he had gone through showing Mr. Wills the house, Well," said he, "here I am to enjoy 't, and my Lord of Bath may--." I forgot to tell you, in confirmation of what you see in the song of the wife of Bath having shares of places, Sir Robert told me, that when formerly she got a place for her own father, she took the salary and left him only the perquisites!

It is much thought that the King will go abroad, if he can avoid leaving the Prince in his place--. Imagine all this!

I received to-day yours of July 21), and two from Mr. Chute and Madame Pucci,(687) which I will answer very soon: where is she now? I delight in Mr. Villiers's, (688) modesty-in one place you had written it villette's; I fancy on purpose, for it would do for him.

Good night, my dear child! I have written myself threadbare.

I know you will hate my campaign, but what can one do!

(683) As these ballads are to be found in the edition of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams's works, published in 1822, it has been deemed better to omit them here. They are called, "Labour in Vain," "The Old Coachman," and "The Country Girl."-D.