The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume I Part 93

If I happen to be less punctual in my correspondence than I intend to be, you must conclude I am writing my book, which being designed for a panegyric, will cost me a great deal of trouble. The dedication, with your leave, shall be addressed to your son that is coming, or, with my Lady Ailesbury's leave, to your ninth son, who Will be unborn nearer to the time I 'am writing of; always provided that she does not bring three at once, like my Lady Berkeley.

Well! I have here set you the example of' writing nonsense when one has nothing to say, and shall take it ill if you don't keep up the correspondence on the same foot. Adieu!

(1461) General Honeywood, governor of Portsmouth.

(1462) Pineda was a Spanish Jesuit, and a professor of theology. He died in 1637, after writing voluminous commentaries upon several books of the Holy Scriptures, besides an universal history of the church.

(1463) Walpole, in his "Royal and n.o.ble Authors," designates the Marquis as a "fantastic protector and fanatic," and describes the " Century of Inventions" as "an amazing piece of folly;" and Hume, who does not even know the t.i.tle of the book, boldly p.r.o.nounces it "a ridiculous compound of lies, chimeras, and impossibilities." In [email protected], however, an edition of this curious and very amusing little work was published], with historical and explanatory notes, by Mr. C. F.

Partington; who clearly proves, that the Marquis was the person, either in this or any Other country, who gave the first idea of the steam engine.-E.

563 Letter 260 To George Montagu, Esq.

Strawberry Hill, Sat.u.r.day night, Sept, 3, 1748.

All my sins to Mrs. Talbot you are to expiate; I am here quite alone, and want nothing but your fetching to go to her. I have been in town for a day, just to see Lord Bury who is come over with the Duke; they return next Thursday. The Duke is fatter, and it is now not denied that he has entirely lost the sight of one eye. This did not surprise me so much as a bon mot of his. Gumley, who you know is grown Methodist, came to tell him, that as he was on duty, a tree in Hyde Park, near the powder magazine, had been set on fire; the Duke replied, he hoped it was not by the new light. This nonsensical new light is extremely in fas.h.i.+on, and I shall not be surprised if we see a revival of all the folly and cant of the last age.

Whitfield preaches continually at my Lady Huntingdon's,(1464) at Chelsea; my Lord Chesterfield, my Lord Bath, my Lady Townshend, my Lady Thanet, and others, have been to hear him.(1465) What will you lay that, next winter, he is not run after, instead of Garrick?

I am just come from the play at Richmond, where I found the d.u.c.h.ess of Argyle and Lady Betty Campbell, and their court.

We had a new actress, a Miss Clough; an extremely fine tall figure, and very handsome: she spoke very justly, and with spirit. Garrick is to produce her next winter; and a Miss Charlotte Ramsey, a poetess and deplorable actress. Garrick, Barry, and some more of the players, were there to see these new comedians; it is to be their seminary.

Since I came home I have been disturbed with a strange, foolish woman, that lives at the great corner house yonder; she is an attorney's wife, and much given to the bottle. By the time she- has finished that and daylight, she grows afraid of thieves, and makes the servants fire minute guns out of the garret windows. I remember persuading Mrs. Kerwood that there was a great smell of thieves, and this drunken dame seems literally to smell it. The divine Asheton, whom I suppose you will have seen when you receive this, will give you an account of the astonishment we were in last night at hearing guns; I began to think that the Duke had brought some of his defeats from Flanders.

I am going to tell you a long story, but you will please to remember that I don't intend to tell it well; therefore, if you discover any beauties in the relation where I never intended them, don't conclude, as you did in your last, that I know they are there. If I had not a great command of my pen, and could not force it to write whatever nonsense I had heard last, you would be enough to pervert all one's letters, and put one upon keeping up one's character; but as I write merely to satisfy you, I shall take no care but not to write well: I hate letters that are called good letters.

You must know then,-but did you not know a young fellow that was called Handsome Tracy? he was walking in the Park with some of his acquaintance, and overtook three girls; one was very pretty: they followed them; but the girls ran away, and the company grew tired of pursuing them, all but Tracy. (There are now three more guns gone off; she must be very drunk.) He followed to Whitehall gate, where he gave a porter a crown to dog them: the porter hunted them-he the porter. The girls ran all round Westminster, and back to the Haymarket, where the porter came up with them. He told the pretty one she must go with him, and kept her talking till Tracy arrived, quite out of breath, and exceedingly in love. He insisted on knowing where she lived, which she refused to tell him; and after much disputing , went to the house of one of her companions, and Tracy with them. He there made her discover her family, a b.u.t.terwoman in Craven Street, and engaged her to meet him the next morning in the Park; but before night he wrote her four love-letters, and in the last offered two hundred pounds a-year to her, and a hundred a-year to Signora la Madre.

Griselda made a confidence to a staymaker's wife, who told her that the swain was certainly in love enough to marry her, if she could determine to be virtuous and refuse his offers.

"Ay," says she, "but if I should, and should lose him by it."

However, the measures of the cabinet council were decided for virtue: and when she met Tracy the next morning in the park, she was convoyed by her sister and brother-in-law, and stuck close to the letter of her reputation. She would do nothing she would go nowhere. At last, as an instance of prodigious compliance, she told him, that if he would accept such a dinner as a b.u.t.terwoman's daughter could give him, he should be welcome. Away they walked to Craven Street: the mother borrowed some silver to buy a leg of mutton, and they kept the eager lover drinking till twelve at night, when a chosen committee waited on the faithful pair to the minister of May-fair. The doctor was in bed, and swore he would not get up to marry the King, but that he had a brother over the way who perhaps would, and who did. The mother borrowed a pair of sheets, and they consummated at her house; and the next day they went to their own palace. In two or three days the scene grew gloomy; and the husband coming home one night, swore he could bear it no longer. "Bear! bear what?"--"Why, to be teased by all my acquaintance for marrying a b.u.t.terwoman's daughter. I am determined to go to France, and will leave you a handsome allowance."--"Leave me! why you don't fancy you shall leave me? I will go with you."--"What, you love me then?"--"No matter whether I love you or not, but you shan't go without me." And they are gone! If you know any body that proposes marrying and travelling, I think they cannot do it in a more commodious method.

I agree with you most absolutely in your opinion about Gray; he is the worst company in the world. From a melancholy turn.

living reclusely, and from a little too much dignity, he never converses easily all his words are measured and chosen, and formed into sentences his writings are admirable; he himself is not agreeable.'(1466)

There are still two months to London; if you could discover your own mind for any three or four days of that s.p.a.ce, I will either go with you to the Tigers or be glad to see you here; but I positively will ask you neither one nor t'other any more. I have raised seven-and-twenty bantams from the patriarchs you sent me. Adieu!

(1464) Daughter of Was.h.i.+ngton, Earl Ferrers.

(1465) Lord Bolingbroke, in a letter to the Earl of Marchmont of the 1st of November, says, "I hope you heard from me by myself, as well of me by Mr.

Whitfield. This apostolical person preached some time ago at Lady Huntingdon's, and I should have been curious to hear him.

Nothing kept me from going, but an imagination that there was to be a select auditory. That saint, our friend Chesterfield, was there; and I hear from him an extreme good account of the sermon." Marchmont Papers, vol. ii. p. 377.-E.

(1466) Dr. Beattie says, in a letter to Sir W. Forbes, "Gray's letters very much resemble what his conversation was: he had none of the airs of either a scholar or a poet; and though on those and all other subjects he spoke to me with the utmost freedom, and without any reserve, he was in general company much more silent than one could have wished."-E.

565 Letter 261 To Sir Horace Mann.

Strawberry Hill, Sept. 18, 1748.

I have two letters of yours to account for, and nothing to plead but my old insolvency. Oh! yes, I have to scold you, which you find is an inexhaustible fund with me. You sent me your d'em'el'e(1467) with the whole city of Florence, and charged me to keep it secret-and the first person I saw was my Lord Hobart, who was full of the account he had received from you. You might as well have told a woman an improper secret, and expected to have it kept! but you may be very easy, for unless it reaches my Lady Pomfret or my Lady Orford, I dare say it will never get back to Florence; and for those two ladies, I don't think it likely that they should hear it, for the first is in a manner retired from the world, and the world is retired from the second. Now I have vented my anger, I am seriously sorry for you, to be exposed to the impertinence of those silly Florentine women: they deserve a worse term than silly, since they pretend to any characters. How could you act with so much temper? If they had treated me in this manner, I should have avowed ten times more than they pretended you had done; but you are an absolute minister!

I am much obliged to Prince Beauvau for remembering me, and should be extremely pleased to show him all manner of attentions here: you know I profess great attachment to that family for their civilities to me. But how gracious the Princess has been to you! I am quite jealous of her dining with you: I remember what a rout there was to get her for half of half a quarter of an hour to your a.s.sembly.

The Bishop of London is dead; having luckily for his family, as it proves, refused the archbishopric.*1468) We owe him the justice to say, that though he had broke with my father, he always expressed himself most handsomely about him, and without any resentment or ingrat.i.tude.

Your brothers are coming to dine with me; your brother Gal. is extremely a favourite with me: I took to him for his resemblance to you, but am grown to love him upon his own fund.

The peace is still in a cloud: according to custom, we have hurried on our complaisance before our new friends were at all ready with theirs. There was a great Regency(1469) kept in town, to take off the prohibition of commerce with Spain: when they were met, somebody asked if Spain was ready to take off theirs? "Oh, Lord! we never thought of that!" They sent for Wall,(1470) and asked him if his court would take the same step with us? He said, "he believed they might, but he had no orders about it." However, we proceeded, and hitherto are bit.

Adieu! by the first opportunity I shelf send you the two books of Houghton, for yourself and Dr. Cocchi. My Lord Orford is much mended: my uncle has no prospect of ever removing from his couch.

(1467) A Madame Ubaldini having raised a scandalous story of two persons whom she saw together in Mr. Mann's garden at one of his a.s.semblies, and a scurrilous sonnet having been made upon the occasion, the Florentine ladies for some time pretended that it would hurt their characters to come any more to his a.s.sembly.

(1468) Dr. Edmund Gibson had been very intimate with Sir Robert Walpole, and was designed by him for archbishop after the death of Wake; but setting himself at the head of the clergy against the Quaker bill, he broke with Sir Robert and lost the archbishop.r.i.c.k which was given to Potter; but on his death, the succeeding ministry offered it to Dr. Gibson. [The Doctor declined it, on account of his advanced age and increasing infirmities. He died on the 6th of February, 1748.)

(1469) This means a meeting of the persons composing the Regency during the King's absence in Hanover.-D.

(1470) General Wall, the Spanish amba.s.sador.

566 Letter 262 To George Montagu, Esq.

Strawberry Hill, Sept. 25, 1748.

I shall write you a very short letter, for I don't know what business we have to be corresponding when we might be together. I really wish to see you, for you know I am convinced of what you say to me. It is few people I ask to come hither, and if possible, still fewer that I wish to see here. The disinterestedness of your friends.h.i.+p for me has always appeared, and is the only sort that for the future I will ever accept, and consequently I never expect any more friends. As to trying to make any by obligations, I have had such woful success, that, for fear of thinking still worse than I do of the world, I will never try more. But you are abominable to reproach me with not letting you go to Houghton: have not I offered a thousand times to carry you there? I mean, since it was my brother's: I did not expect to prevail with you before; for you are so unaccountable, that you not only will never do a dirty thing, but you won't even venture the appearance of it. I have often applied to you in my own mind a very pretty pa.s.sage that I remember in a letter of Chillingworth; "you would not do that for preferment that you would not do but for preferment." You oblige me much in what you say about my nephews, and make me happy in the character you have heard of Lord Malpas;(1471) I am extremely inclined to believe he deserves it. I am as sorry to hear what a companion lord Walpole has got: there has been a good deal of noise about him, but I had laughed at it, having traced the worst reports to his gracious mother, who is now sacrificing the character of her son to her aversion for her husband. If we lived under the Jewish dispensation, how I should tremble at my brother's leaving no children by her, and its coming to my turn to raise him up issue!

Since I gave you the account of the d.u.c.h.ess of Ireland's piked horns among the tombs of the Veres, I have found a long account in Bayle of the friar, who, as I remember to have read somewhere, preached so vehemently against that fas.h.i.+on: it was called Hennin, and the monk's name was Thomas Conecte. He was afterwards burnt at Rome for censuring the lives of the clergy. As our histories say that Anne of Bohemia introduced the fas.h.i.+on here, it is probable that the French learnt it from us, and were either long before they caught it, Or long in retaining the mode; for the Duke of Ireland died in 1389, and Connect was burnt at Rome in 1434. There were, indeed, several years between his preaching down Hennins and his death, but probably not near five-and-forty years, and half that term was a long duration for so outrageous a fas.h.i.+on.

But I have found a still more entertaining fas.h.i.+on in another place in Bayle which was, the women wearing looking-gla.s.ses upon their bellies': I don't conceive for what use. Adieu!

don't write any more, but come.

(1471) Eldest son of George, third Earl of Cholmondoley, and grandson of Sir Robert Walpole.

567 Letter 263 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Strawberry Hill, Oct. 6, 1748.

Dear harry, I am sorry our wishes clash so much. Besides that I have no natural inclination for the Parliament, it will particularly disturb me now in the middle of all my planting; for which reason I have never inquired when it will meet, and cannot help you to guess--but I should think not hastily-for I believe the peace, at least the evacuations, are not in so prosperous a way as to be ready to make any figure in the King's speech. But I speak from a distance; it may all be very toward: our ministers enjoy the consciousness of their wisdom, as the good do of their virtue, and take no pains to make it s.h.i.+ne before men. In the mean time, we have several collateral emoluments from the pacification: all our milliners, tailors, tavern keepers, and young gentlemen are tiding to France for our improvement in luxury; and as I foresee we shall be told on their return that we have lived in a total state of blindness for these six years. and gone absolutely retrograde to all true taste in every particular, I have already begun to practise walking on my head, and doing every thing the wrong way. Then Charles Frederick has turned all his virt'u into fireworks, and, by his influence at the ordnance, has prepared such a spectacle for the proclamation of the peace as is to surpa.s.s all its predecessors of bouncing memory. It is to open with a concert of fifteen hundred hands, and conclude with so many hundred thousand crackers all set to music, that all the men killed in the war are to be wakened with the crash, as if it was the day of judgment, and fall a dancing, like the troops in the Rehearsal. I wish you could see him making squibs of his papillotes, and bronzed over with a patina of gunpowder, and talking himself still hoa.r.s.er on the superiority that his firework will have over the Roman naumachia.

I am going to dinner with Lady Sophia Thomas(1472) at Hampton Court, where I was to meet the Cardigans; but I this minute receive a message that the d.u.c.h.ess of Montagu(1473) is extremely ill, which I am much concerned for on Lady Cardigan's(1474) account, whom I grow every day more in love with; you may imagine, not her person, which is far from improved lately; but, since I have been here, I have lived much with them, and, as George Montagu says, in all my practice I never met a better understanding, nor more really estimable qualities: such a dignity in her way of thinking; so little idea of any thing mean or ridiculous, and such proper contempt for both! Adieu! I must go dress for dinner, and you perceive that I wish I had, but have nothing to tell you.

(1472) Daughter of the first Earl of Albemarle, and wife of General Thomas.-E.

(1473) She was mother to Lady Cardigan, and daughter to the great Duke of Marlborough.

(1474) Lady Mary Montagu, third daughter of John, Duke of Montagu, and wife of George Brudenell, Earl of Cardigan, afterwards created Duke of Montagu.