CHAPTER IX.

Anecdotes of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough-and of Catherine

Duchess of Buckingham.

I have done with royal personages: shall I add a codicil on some

remarkable characters that I remember? As I am writing for young

ladies, I have chiefly dwelt on heroines of your own sex; they,

too, shall compose my last chapter: enter the Duchesses of

Marlborough and Buckingham.

Those two women were considerable personages in their day. The

first, her own beauty, the superior talents of her husband in

war, and the caprice of a feeble princess, raised to the highest

pitch of power; and the prodigious wealth bequeathed to her by

her lord, and accumulated in concert with her, gave her weight in

a free country. The other, proud of royal, though illegitimate

birth, was, from the vanity of that birth, so zealously attached

to her expelled brother, the Pretender, that she never ceased

labouring to effect his restoration; and, as the opposition to

the House of Brunswick was composed partly of principled

Jacobites-of Tories, who either knew not what their own

principles were, or dissembled them to themselves, and of Whigs,

who, from hatred of the minister, both acted in concert with the

Jacobites and rejoiced in their assistance-two women of such

wealth, rank, and enmity to the court, were sure of great

attention from all the discontented.

The beauty of the Duchess of Marlborough had always been of the

scornful and imperious kind, and her features and air announced

nothing that her temper did not confirm; both together, her

beauty and temper, enslaved her heroic lord. One of her

principal charms was a prodigious abundance of fine fair hair.

One day at her toilet, in anger to him, she cut off those

commanding tresses, and flung them in his face. Nor did her

insolence stop there, nor stop till it had totally estranged and

worn out the patience of the poor Queen, her mistress. The

Duchess was often seen to give her Majesty her fan and gloves,

and turn away her own head, as if the Queen had offensive smells.

Incapable of due respect to superiors, it was no wonder she

treated her children and inferiors with supercilious contempt.

Her eldest daughter (121) and she were long at variance, and

never reconciled. When the young Duchess exposed herself by

placing a monument and silly epitaph, of her own composition and

bad spelling, to Congreve, in Westminster Abbey, her mother,

quoting the words, said, "I know not what pleasure she might have

in his company, but I am sure it was no honour."(122) With her

youngest daughter, the Duchess of Montagu, old Sarah agreed as

ill. "I wonder," said the Duke of Marlborough to them, "that you

cannot agree, you are so alike!" Of her granddaughter, the

Duchess of Manchester, daughter of the Duchess of Montagu, she

affected to be fond. One day she said to her, "Duchess of

Manchester, you are a good creature, and I love you mightily-but

you have a mother!"-"And she has a mother!" answered the Duchess

of Manchester, who was all spirit, justice, and honour, and could

not suppress sudden truth.

One of old Marlborough's capital mortifications sprang from a

granddaughter. The most beautiful of her four charming

daughters, Lady Sunderland,(123) left two sons,(124) the second

Duke of Marlborough, and John Spencer, who became her heir, and

Anne Lady Bateman, and Lady Diana Spencer, whom I have mentioned,

and who became Duchess of Bedford. The Duke and his brother, to

humour their grandmother, were in opposition, though the eldest

she never loved. He had good sense, infinite generosity, and not

more economy than was to be expected from a young man of warm

passions and such vast expectations. He was modest and diffident

too, but could not digest total dependence on a capricious and

avaricious grandmother. HIS sister, Lady Bateman, had the

intriguing spirit of her father and grandfather, Earls of

Sunderland. She was connected with Henry Fox, the first Lord

Holland, and both had great influence over the Duke of

Marlborough. What an object would it be to Fox to convert to the

court so great a subject as the Duke! Nor was it much less

important to his sister to give him a wife, who, with no reasons

for expectation of such shining fortune, should owe the

obligation to her. Lady Bateman struck the first stroke, and

persuaded her brother to marry a handsome young lady, who,

unluckily, was daughter of Lord Trevor, who had been a bitter

enemy to his grandfather, the victorious Duke. The grandam's

rage exceeded all bounds. Having a portrait of Lady Bateman, she

blackened the face, and wrote on it, "Now her outside is as black

as her inside." The duke she turned out of the little lodge in

Windsor Park; and then pretending that the new Duchess and her

female cousins (eight Trevors) had stripped the house and

gardens, she had a puppet-show made with waxen figures,

representing the Trevors tearing up the shrubs, and the Duchess

carrying off the chicken-coop under her arm.

Her fury did but increase when Mr. Fox prevailed on the Duke to

go over to the court. With her coarse intemperate humour, she

said, "that was the Fox that had stolen her goose." Repeated

injuries at last drove the Duke to go to law with her. Fearing

that even no lawyer would come up to the Billingsgate with which

she was animated herself, she appeared in the court of justice,

and with some wit and infinite abuse, treated the laughing public

with the spectacle of a woman who had held the reigns of empire,

metamorphosed into the widow Black-acre. Her grandson, in his

suit, demanded a sword set with diamonds, given to his grandsire

by the Emperor. "I retained it," said the beldam, " lest he

should pick out the diamonds and pawn them."

I will repeat but one more instance of her insolent asperity,

which produced an admirable reply of the famous Lady Mary

-Wortley Montague. Lady Sundon had received a pair of diamond

ear-rings as a bribe for procuring a considerable post in Queen

Caroline's family for a certain peer; and, decked with those

jewels, paid a visit to the old Duchess; who, as soon as she was

gone, said, "What an impudent creature, to come hither with her

bribe in her ear!" "Madam," replied Lady Mary Wortley, who was

present, "how should people know where wine' is sold, unless a

bush is hung out?"

The Duchess of Buckingham was as much elated by owing her birth

to James II.(125) as the Marlborough was by the favour of his

daughter. Lady Dorchester,(126) the mother of the former,

endeavoured to curb that pride, and, one should have thought,

took an effectual method, though one few mothers would have

practised. "You need not be so vain," said the old profligate,

"for you are not the King's daughter, but Colonel Graham's."

Graham was a fashionable man of those days and noted for dry

humour. His legitimate daughter, the Countess of Berkshire, was

extremely like to the Duchess of Buckingham: "Well! well!" said

Graham, "Kings are all powerful, and one must not complain; but

certainly the same man begot those two women." To discredit the

wit of both parents, the Duchess never ceased labouring to

restore the House of Stuart, and to mark her filial devotion to

it. Frequent were her journeys to the Continent for that

purpose. She always stopped at Paris, visited the church where

lay the unburied body of James, and wept over it. A poor

Benedictine of the convent, observing her filial piety, took

notice to her grace that the velvet pall that covered the coffin

was become threadbare-and so it remained.

Finding all her efforts fruitless, and perhaps aware that her

plots were not undiscovered by Sir Robert Walpole, who was

remarkable for his intelligence, she made an artful double, and

resolved to try what might be done through him himself. I forget

how she contracted an acquaintance with him: I do remember that

more than once he received letters from the Pretender himself,

which probably were transmitted through her. Sir Robert always

carried them to George II. who endorsed and returned them. That

negotiation not succeeding. the Duchess made a more home push.

Learning his extreme fondness for his daughter, (afterwards Lady

Mary Churchill,) she sent for Sir Robert, and asked him if he

recollected what had not been thought too great a reward to Lord

Clarendon for restoring the royal family? He affected not to

understand her. "Was not he allowed," urged the zealous Duchess,

"to match his daughter to the Duke of York?" Sir Robert smiled,

and left her.

Sir Robert being forced from court, the Duchess thought the

moment (127) favourable, and took a new journey to Rome; but

conscious of the danger she might run of discovery, she made over

her estate to the famous Mr. Pulteney (afterwards Earl of Bath),

and left the deed in his custody. What was her astonishment,

when on her return she redemanded the instrument!-It was

mislaid-he could not find it-he never could find it! The Duchess

grew clamorous. At last his friend Lord Mansfield told him

plainly,- he could never show his face unless he satisfied the

Duchess. Lord Bath did then sign a release to her of her estate.

The transaction was recorded in print by Sir Charles Hanbury

Williams, in a pamphlet that had great vogue, called a

Congratulatory Letter, with many other anecdotes of the same

personage, and was not less acute than Sir Charles's Odes on the

same here. The Duchess dying not long after Sir Robert's

entrance into the House of Lords, Lord Oxford, one of her

executors, told him there, that the Duchess had struck Lord Bath

out of her will, and made him, Sir Robert, one of her trustees in

his room. "Then," said Sir Robert, laughing, @ I see, my lord,

that I have got Lord Bath's place before he has got mine." Sir

Robert had artfully prevented the last. Before he quitted the

King, he persuaded his Majesty to insist, as a preliminary to the

change, that Mr. Pulteney should go into the House of Peers, his

great credit lying in the other house; and I remember my father's

action when he returned from court and told me what he had

done-,, I have turned the key of the closet on him,"-making that

motion with his hand. Pulteney had jumped at the proffered

earldom, but saw his error when too late; and was so enraged at

his own oversight, that, when he went to take the oaths in the

House of Lords, he dashed his patent on the floor, and vowed he

would never take it up-but he had kissed the King's hand for it,

and it was too late to recede.

But though Madam of Buckingham could not effect a coronation to

her will, she indulged her pompous mind with such puppet-shows as

were appropriate to her rank. She had made a funeral for her

husband as splendid as that of the great Marlborough: she renewed

that pageant for her only son, a weak lad, who died under age;

and for herself; and prepared and decorated -waxen dolls of him

and of herself to be exhibited in glass-cases in Westminster

Abbey. It was for the

procession at her son's burial that she wrote to old Sarah of

Marlborough to borrow the triumphal car that had transported the

corpse of the Duke. "It carried my Lord Marlborough," replied the

other, and shall never be used for any body else." "I have

consulted the undertaker," replied the Buckingham, and he tells

me I may have a finer for twenty pounds."

One of the last acts of Buckingham's life was marrying a grandson

she had to a daughter of Lord Hervey. That intriguing man, sore,

as I have said, at his disgrace, cast his eyes every where to

revenge or exalt himself. Professions or recantations of any

principles cost him nothing: at least the consecrated day which

was appointed for his first interview with the Duchess made it

presumed, that to obtain her wealth, with her grandson for his

daughter, he must have

sworn fealty to the House of Stuart. It was on the martyrdom of

her grandfather: she received him in the great drawing-room of

Buckingham House, seated in a chair of state, in deep mourning,

attended by her women in like weeds, in memory of the royal

martyr.

It will be a proper close to the history of those curious ladies

to mention the anecdote of Pope relative to them. Having drawn

his famous character of Atossa, he communicated it to each

Duchess, pretending it was levelled at the other. The Buckingham

believed him: the Marlborough had more sense, and knew herself,

and gave him a thousand pounds to suppress it;-and yet he left

the copy behind him!(128)

Bishop Burnet, from absence of mind, had drawn as strong a

picture of herself to the Duchess of Marlborough, as Pope did

under covert of another lady. Dining with the Duchess after the

Duke's disgrace, Burnet was comparing him to Belisarius: "But

how," said she, "could so great a general be so abandoned?" "Oh!

Madam," said the Bishop, "do not you know what a brimstone of a

wife he had'!"

Perhaps you know this anecdote, and perhaps several others that I

have been relating. No matter; they will go under the article of

my dotage-and very properly-I began with tales of my nursery, and

prove that I have been writing in my second childhood.

H. W. January 13th, 1789.

(121) The Lady Henrietta, married to Lord Godolphin, who, by act

of Parliament, succeeded as Duchess of Marlborough. She died in

1738, childless; and the issue of her next sister, Lady

Sunderland, succeeded to the duchy of Marlborough.-E.

(122) "For reasons," says Dr. Johnson, "either not known, or not

mentioned, Congreve bequeathed a legacy of about ten thousand

pounds to the Duchess; the accumulation of attentive parsimony,

which, though to her superfluous and useless, might have given

great assistance to the ancient family from which he descended,

at that time, by the imprudence of his relation, reduced to

difficulties and distress."-E.

(123) Lady Sunderland was a great politician; and having, like

her mother, a most beautiful head of hair, used, while combing it

at her toilet, to receive men whose votes or interests she wished

to influence.

(124) She had an elder son, who died young, while only Earl of

Sunderland. He had parts, and all the ambition of his parents

and of his family (which his younger brother had not); but George

II. had conceived such an aversion to his father, that he would

not employ him. The young Earl at last asked Sir Robert Walpole

for an ensigncy in the Guards. The minister, astonished at so

humble a request from a man of such consequence, expressed his

surprise. "I ask it," said the young lord, "to ascertain whether

it is determined that I shall never have any thing." He died soon

after at Paris.

(125) By Catherine Sedley, created by her royal lover Countess of

Dorchester for life.-E.

(126) Lady Dorchester is well known for her wit, and for saying

that she wondered for what James chose his mistresses: "We are

none of us handsome," said she; "and if we have wit, he has not

enough to find it out." But I do not know whether it is as

public, that her style was gross and shameless. Meeting the

Duchess of Portsmouth and Lady Orkney, the favourite of King

William, at the drawing-room of George the First, "God!" said

she, "who would have thought that we three whores should have met

here?" Having, after the King's abdication, married Sir David

Collyer, by whom she had two sons, she said to them, " If any

body should call you sons of a whore, you must bear it; for you

are so: but if they call you bastards, fight till you die; for

you are an honest man's sons." Susan, Lady Bellasis, another of

King James's mistresses, had wit too, and no beauty. Mrs.

Godfrey had neither. Grammont has recorded why she was chosen.

(127) I am not quite certain that, writing by memory at the

distance of fifty years, I place that journey exactly at the

right period, nor whether it did not take place before Sir

Robert's fall. Nothing material depends on the precise period.

(128) The story is thus told by Dr. Warton:-" These lines were

shown to her grace, as if they were intended for the portrait of

the Duchess of Buckingham; but she soon stopped the person who

was reading them to her, as the Duchess of Portland informed me,

and called out aloud, "I cannot be so imposed upon; I see plainly

enough for whom they are designed;" and abused Pope most

plentifully on the subject: though she was afterwards reconciled

to him, and courted him, and gave him a thousand pounds to

suppress this portrait, which he a accepted, it is said, by the

persuasion of Mrs. M. Blount; and, after the Duchess's death, it

was printed in a folio sheet, 1746, and afterwards inserted in

his Moral Essays. This is the greatest blemish on our poet's

moral character."-E.

The following extracts from Letters of Sarah, Duchess of

Marlborough, were copied by me from the original letters

addressed to the Earl of Stair, left by him to Sir David

Dalrymple, his near relative, and lent to me by Sir David's

brother, Mr. Alexander Dalrymple, long employed as Geographer in

the service of the East India company. They formed part of a

large volume of ms. letters, chiefly from the same person.

The Duchess of Marlborough's virulence, her prejudices, her style

of writing, are already well known, and every line of these

extracts will only serve to confirm the same opinion of all

three. But it will, probably, be thought curious thus to be able

to compare the notes of the opposite political parties, and their

different account of the same trifling facts, magnified by the

prejudices of both into affairs of importance.

January, 1840

EXTRACTS FROM THE LETTERS OF SARAH, DUCHESS OF

MARLBOROUGH,

TO THE EARL OF STAIR,

ILLUSTRATIVE OF "THE REMINISCENCES."

(NOW FIRST PUBLISHED.)

(See Reminiscences, p. 97.)

London, Feb. 24th, 1738.

. . . . As to Norfolk House, (129) I have heard there is a great

deal of company, and that the Princess of Wales, tho' so very

young, behaves so as to please every body; and I think her

conversation is much more proper and decent for a drawing-room

than the wise queen Caroline's was, who never was half an hour

without saying something shocking to some body or other, even

when she intended to oblige, and generally very improper

discourse for a public room.

[See p. 98. Reminiscences, Chapter Vii]

London, December 24th, 1737.

My Lord,

I received the favour of yours of the 17th December yesterday. I

have nothing material to say to you since my last. His Majesty

saw the Queen's women servants first, which was a very mournful

sight, for they all cried extremely; and his Majesty was so

affected that he began to speak, but went out of the room to

recover himself. And yesterday he saw the foreign ministers and

his horses, which I remember Dean Swift gives a great character

of; and was very sorry to leave them for the conversation of his

countrymen in England.; and I think he was much in the right.

[See P. 98. Reminiscences, Chapter Vii)

Marlborough House, Nov. 15, 1737.

It is not many days since I wrote to your lordship by post, but

one can't be sure those letters are sent. However, I have a mind

to give you an account of what, perhaps, you may not have so

particularly from any other hand. This day, se'nnight the Queen

was taken extremely ill; the physicians were sent for, and from

the account that was given, they treated her as if she had the

gout in her stomach: but, upon a thorough investigation of the

matter, a surgeon desired that she would put her hand where the

pain was that she complained of, which she did; and the surgeon,

following her hand with his, found it was a very large rupture,

which had been long Concealed. Upon this, immediately they cut

it, and some little part of the gut, which was discoloured. Few

of the knowing people have had any hopes for many days; for they

still apprehend a mortification, and she can't escape it unless

the physicians can make something pass thro' her, which they have

not yet been able to do in so many days. The King and the Royal

Family have taken leave of her more than once; and his Majesty

has given her leave to make her will, which she has done; but I

fancy it will be in such a manner that few, if any, will know

what her money amounts to. Sir Robert Walpole was in Norfolk,

and came to -London but last night. I can't but think he must be

extremely uneasy at this misfortune; for I have a notion that

many of his troops will slacken very much, if not quite leave

him, when they see he has lost his sure support. But there is so

much folly, and mean corruption, etc.

London, December 1st, 1737.

. . . . As to what has passed in the Queen's illness, and since

her death, one can't depend on much one hears; and they are

things that it is no great matter whether they are true or false.

But one thing was odd: whether out of folly, or any thing else, I

can't say, but the Duke of Newcastle did not send Sir Robert

Walpole news of her illness, nor of her danger, as soon as he

might have done; and after he came to town, which was but a few

days before she died, and when she could no more live than she

can now come out of her coffin, the physicians, and all that

attended her, were ordered to say she was better, and that they

had some hopes. What the use of that was I cannot conceive. And

the occasion of her death is still pretended to be a secret: yet

it is known that she had a rupture, and had it for many years;

that she had imposthumes that broke, and that some of the guts

were mortified. This is another mystery which I don't

comprehend; for what does it signify what one dies of, except the

pain it gives more than common dissolutions? etc.

[See p. 100. Reminiscences, Chapter Vii)

I AM Of the opinion, from woful experience, that, from flattery

and want of understanding, most princes are alike; and,

therefore, it is to no purpose to argue against their passions,

but to defend ourselves, at all events, against them.

[See P. 100. Reminiscences, Chapter VII]

Wimbledon, 17th Aug. 1737.

There has been a very extraordinary quarrel at court, which, I

believe, nobody will give you so exact an account of as myself.

The 31st of last month the Princess fell in labour. The King and

Queen both knew that she was to lie in -,it St. James's, where

every thing was prepared. It was her first child, and so little

a way to London, that she thought it less hazard to go

immediately away from Hampton Court to London, where she had all

the assistance that could be, and every thing prepared, than to

stay at Hampton Court, where she had nothing, and might be forced

to make use of a country midwife. There was not a minute's time

to be lost in debating this matter, nor in ceremonials; the

Princess begging earnestly of the Prince to carry her to St.

James's, in such a hurry that gentlemen went behind the coach

like footmen. They got to St. James's safe, and she was brought

to bed in one hour after. Her Majesty followed them as soon as

she could, but did not come till it was all over. However, she

expressed a great deal of anger to the Prince for having carried

her away, tho' she and the child were very well. I should have

thought it had been most natural for a grandmother to have said

she had been mightily frightened, but was glad it was so well

over. The Prince said all the respectful and dutiful things

imaginable to her and the King, desiring her Majesty to support

the reasons which made him go away as he did without acquainting

his Majesty with it: and, I believe, all human creatures will

allow that this was natural, for a man not to debate a thing of

this kind, nor to lose a minute's time in ceremony, which was

very useless, considering that it is a great while since the King

has spoke to him, or taken the least notice of him. The Prince

told her Majesty he intended to go that morning to pay his duty

to the King, but she advised him not. This was Monday morning,

and she said Wednesday was time enough; and, indeed, in that I

think her Majesty was in the right. the Prince submitted to her

counsel, and only writ a most submissive and respectful letter to

his Majesty, giving his reasons for what he had done. And this

conversation ended, that he hoped his Majesty would do him the

honour to be godfather to his daughter, and that he would be

pleased to name who the godmothers should be; and that he left

all the directions of the christening to his Majesty's pleasure.

The queen answered that it would be thought the asking the King

to be godfather was too great a liberty, and advised him not to

do it. When the Prince led the Queen to her coach, which she

would not have had him done, there was a great concourse of

people; and, notwithstanding all that had passed before, she

expressed so much kindness that she hugged and kissed him with

great passion. the King, after this, sent a message in writing,

by my Lord Essex, in the following words:-that his Majesty looked

upon what the Prince had done, in carrying the Princess to London

in such a manner, as a deliberate indignity offered to himself

and to the Queen, and resented it in the highest degree, and

forbid him the Court. I must own I cleared Sir Robert in my own

mind of this counsel, thinking he was not in town: but it has

proved otherwise, for he was in town; and the message is drawn up

in such a manner that nobody doubts of its being done by sir

Robert. All the sycophants and agents of the court spread

millions of falsities on this occasion; and all the language

there was, that this was so great a crime that even those who

went with the Prince ought to be proscribed. How this will end

nobody yet knows; at least I am sure I don't; but I know there

was a council today held at Hampton court. I have not heard yet

of any christening being directed, but for that I am in no manner

of pain: for, if it be never christened, I think 'tis in a better

state than a great many devout people that I know. Some talk as

if they designed to take the child away from the Princess, to be

under the care of her Majesty, who professes vast kindness to the

Princess; and all the anger is at the Prince. Among common

subjects I think the law is, that nobody that has any interest in

an estate is to have any thing to do with the person who is heir

to it. What prejudice this sucking child can do to the crown I

don't see; but, to be sure, her Majesty will be very careful of

it. What I apprehend most. is, that the crown will be lost long

before this little Princess can possibly enjoy it; and, if what I

have heard to-day be true, I think the scheme of France is going

to open; for I was told there was an ambassador to come from

France whose goods had been landed in England, and that they have

been sent back. But I won't answer for the truth of that, as I

will upon every thing else in this letter.

[See p. 100. Reminiscences, Chapter VII]

June 20th, 1738.

My Lord,

I write to you this post, to give you an account of what I

believe nobody else will so particularly, that Madame Walmond

(130) was presented in the drawing-room to his Majesty on

Thursday. As she arrived some days before, there can be no doubt

that it was not the first meeting, tho' the manner of her

reception had the appearance of it; for his Majesty went up to

her and kissed her on both sides, which is an honour, I believe,

never any lady had from a king in public. And when his Majesty

went away, Lord Harrington presented the great men in the

ministry and the foreign ministers in the drawing-room; the

former of which performed their part with the utmost respect and

submission. This is, likewise, quite new; for, though all kings

have had mistresses, they were attended at their own lodgings,

and not in so public a manner. I conclude they performed that

ceremony too; but they could not lose the first opportunity of

paying their respects, though ever so improperly.

These great men were, the Duke of Newcastle, Sir Robert Walpole,

my Lord Wilmington, my Lord Harrington, and Mr. Pelham. My Lord

Hervey had not the honour to be on the foot of a minister. . .

.

I have nothing more to say, but that this Madame Walmond is at

present in a mighty mean dirty lodging in St. James's Street.

Her husband came with her, but he is going away; and that house

that was Mr. Seymour's, in Hyde Park, which opens into the King's

garden, is fitting up for her; -and the Duchess of Kendal's

lodgings are making ready for her at St. James's. There is

nothing more known at present as to the settlement, but that

directions are given for one upon the establishment of Ireland.

perhaps that mayn't exceed the Duchess of Kendal's, which was

three thousand pounds a-year. But 'tis easy for the first

minister to increase that as she pleases.

[See p. 101.]

London, December 3rd, 1737.

I saw one yesterday that dined with my Lord Fanny, (131) who, as

soon as he had dined, was sent for to come up to his Majesty, and

there is all the appearance that can be of great favour to his

lordship. I mentioned him in my last, and I will now give you an

account of some things concerning his character, that I believe

you don't know. What I am going to say I am sure is as true as

if I had been a transactor in it myself. And I will begin the

relation with Mr. Lepelle, my Lord Fanny's wife's father, having

made her a cornet in his regiment as soon as she was born, which

is no more wrong to the design of an army than if she had been a

son: and she was paid many years after she was a maid of honour.

She was extreme forward and pert; and my Lord Sunderland got her

a pension of the late King, it being too ridiculous to continue

her any longer an officer in the army. And into the bargain, she

was to be a spy; but what she could tell to deserve a pension, I

cannot comprehend. However, King George the First used to talk

to her very much; and this encouraged my Lord Fanny and her to

undertake a very extraordinary project: and she went to the

drawing-room every night, and publicly attacked his Majesty in a

most vehement manner, insomuch that it was the diversion of all

the town; which alarmed the Duchess of Kendal, and the ministry

that governed her, to that degree, lest the King should be put in

the opposers' hands, that they determined to buy my Lady H- off;

and they gave her 4000 pounds to desist, which she did, and my

Lord Fanny bought a good house with it, and furnished it very

well.

[See p. 106. Reminiscences, Chapter IX]

London, March 19th, 1738.

My Lord,

I have received the favour of yours of the 11th by the post, but

not that which you mention by another hand. And since you can

like such sort of accounts as I am able to give you, I will

continue to do it. I think it is very plain now that Sir Robert

don't think it worth his while to make any proposals where it was

once suspected he would. And his wedding was celebrated as if he

had been King of France, and the apartments furnished in the

richest manner: crowds of people of the first quality being

presented to the bride, who is the daughter of a clerk that sung

the psalms in a church where Dr. Sacheverell was. After the

struggle among the court ladies who should have the honour of

presenting her, which the Duchess of Newcastle obtained, it was

thought more proper to have her presented by one of her own

family; otherwise it would look as if she had no alliances: and

therefore that ceremony was performed by Horace Walpole's wife,

who was daughter to my tailor, Lumbar. I read in a print lately,

that an old gentleman, very rich, had married a maiden lady with

two fatherless children but the printer did not then know the

gentleman's name.

March 27th, 1738.

'I think I did not tell you that the Duke of Dorset waited on my

Lady Walpole to congratulate her marriage, with the same ceremony

as if it had been one of the Royal Family, with his white staff,

which has not been used these many years, but when they attend

the Crown. But such a wretch as he is I hardly know; and his

wife, whose passion is only money, assists him in his odious

affair with Lady Betty Jermyn, who has a great deal to dispose

of; who, notwithstanding the great pride of the Berkeley family,

married an innkeeper's son. But indeed there was some reason for

that; for she was ugly, without a portion, and in her youth had

an unlucky accident with one of her father's servants; and by

that match she got money to entertain herself all manner of ways.

I tell you these things, which did not happen in your time of

knowledge, which is a melancholy picture of what the world is

come to; for this strange woman has had a great influence over

many.

Feb. 24th. 1738.

Monday next is fixed for presenting Mrs. Skerrit at court: and

there has been great solicitation from the court ladies who

should do it, in which the Duchess of Newcastle has succeeded,

and all the apartment is made ready for Sir Robert's lady, at his

house at the Cockpit. (132) I never saw her in my life, but at

auctions; but I remember I liked her as to behaviour very well,

and I believe she has a great deal of sense: and I am not one of

the number that wonder so much at this match; for the King of

France married Madame de Maintenon, and many men have done the

same thing. But as to the public, I do believe never was any man

so great a villain as Sir Robert.

Wednesday, Feb. 16th, 1741.

.....Some changes are made as to employments; but very few are

brought in but such as will be easily governed, and brought to

act so as to keep their places. I have inquired often about your

lordship, who I have not yet heard named in this alteration. And

I have been told that Lords Chesterfield and Gower are to have

nothing in the government, which I think a very ill sign of what

is intended; because that can be for no reason but because you

are all such men as are incapable of ever being prevailed on by

any arts to act any thing contrary to honour and the true

interests of our country.

(129) Where the Prince and Princess of Wales then resided.

(130 Welmoden.

(131 John, Lord Hervey, so called by Pope.

(132) Where the Prince and Princess of Wales then resided.

Correspondence of Horace walpole

Earl of Orford

121 Letter 1

To Richard West, Esq. (133)

King's College, Nov 9, 1735,

Dear West,

You expect a long letter from me, and have said in verse all that

I intended to have said in far inferior prose. I intended

filling three or four sides with exclamations against a

University life; but you have showed me how strongly they may be

expressed in three or four lines. I can't build without straw;

nor have I the ingenuity of the spider, to spin fine lines out of

dirt: a master of a college would make but a miserable figure as

a hero of a poem, and Cambridge sophs are too low to introduce

into a letter that aims not at punning:

Haud equidem invideo vati, quem pulpita pascunt.

But why mayn't we hold a classical correspondence? I can

never forget the many agreeable hours we have passed in

reading Horace and Virgil; and I think they are topics

will never grow stale. Let us extend the Roman empire,

and cultivate two barbarous towns o'er -run with rusticity and

Mathematics. The creatures are so used to a circle,

that they Plod on in the same eternal round, with their

whole view confined to a punctum, cujus nulla est pars:

"Their time a moment, and a point their space."

Orabunt causas melius, coelique meatus

Describent radio, et surgentia sidera dicent

Tu coluisse novem Musas, Romane, memento;

Hae tibi crunt artes. . . .

We have not the least poetry stirring here; for I can't

call verses on the 5th of November and 30th of January

by that name, more than four lines on a chapter in the New

Testament is an epigram. Tydeus (134) rose and set at Eton: he

is only known here to be a scholar of King's. Orosmades and

Almanzor are just the same; that is, I am almost the only person

they are acquainted with, and consequently the only person

acquainted with their excellencies. Plato improves every day; so

does my friendship with him. These three

divide my whole time, though I believe you will guess

there is no quadruple alliance; (135) that was a happiness which

I only enjoyed when you was at Eton. A short account of the Eton

people at Oxford would much oblige, my dear West, your faithful

friend,

H. WALPOLE.

(133) Richard West was the only son of the Right Honourable

Richard West, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, by Elizabeth,

daughter of the celebrated Dr. Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury. When

this correspondence commences, Mr. West was nineteen years old,

and Mr. Walpole one year younger. [West died on the 1st of

January, 1742, at the premature age of twenty-six. He had a

great genius for poetry. His correspondence

with Gray, and several of his poems, are included

in the collection of letters published by Mr. Mason.

West's father published an able discourse of treasons and bills

of attainder, and a tract on the manner of creating peers. He

also wrote several essays in "The Freethinker;" and was the

reputed author of a tragedy called "Hecuba;" which was performed

at Drury Lane theatre in 1726.]

(134) Tydeus, Orosmades, Almanzor, and Plato, were names

which had been given by them to some of their Eton

schoolfellows.

(135) Thus as boys they had called the intimacy formed at Eton

between Walpole, Gray, West, and Ashton.

1736

122 Letter 2

To George Montagu, Esq. (136)

King's College, May 2, 1736.

Dear Sir,

Unless I were to be married myself, I should despair ever

being able to describe a wedding so well as you have done: had I

known your talent before, I would have desired an

epithalamium. I believe the princess (137) will have more

beauties bestowed on her by the occasional poets, than even a

painter would afford her. They will cook up a new Pandora, and

in the bottom of the box enclose Hope, that all they have said is

true. A great many, out of excess of good breeding, having heard

it was rude to talk Latin before women, propose complimenting her

in English; which she will be much the

better for. I doubt most of them instead of fearing their

compositions should not be understood, should fear they

should: they write they don't know what, to be read by they don't

know who. You have made me a very unreasonable request, which I

will answer with another as extraordinary: you desire I would

burn your letters; I desire you would keep mine. I know but of

one way of making what I send you useful, which is, by sending

you a blank sheet: sure you would not grudge three-pence for a

half-penny sheet, when you give as much for one not worth a

farthing. You drew this last paragraph on you by your exordium,

as you call it, and conclusion. I hope, for the future, our

correspondence will run a little more glibly, with dear George,

and dear Harry; not as formally as if we were playing a game at

chess in Spain and Portugal; and Don Horatio was to have the

honour Of specifying to Don Georgio, by an epistle, whether he

would move. In one point I would have our correspondence like a

game at chess; it should last all our lives-but I hear you cry

check; adieu! Dear George, yours ever.

(136) George Montagu was the son of Brigadier-General Edward

Montagu, and nephew to the Earl of Halifax. He was member of

parliament for Northampton, usher of the black rod in Ireland

during the lieutenancy of the Earl of Halifax, ranger of

Salsey Forest, and private secretary to Lord North when

chancellor of the exchequer. [And of him "it is now only

remembered," says the "Quarterly Review," vol. xix. p. 131, "that

he was a gentleman-like body of the vieille cour, and that he was

usually attended by his brother John, (the Little John of

Walpole's correspondence,) who was a midshipman at the age of

sixty, and found his chief occupation in carrying about his

brother's snuff-box."]

(137) Augusta, Princess of Saxe-Gotha, married, in April,

1736, to Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales.

123 Letter 3

To George Montagu, Esq.

King's College, May 6, 1736.

Dear George,

I agree with you entirely in the pleasure you take

in talking over old stories, but can't say but I meet

every day with new circumstances, which will be still

more pleasure to me to recollect. I think at our age

'tis excess of joy, to think, while we are running over

past happinesses, that it is still in our power to enjoy

as great. Narrations of the greatest actions of other people are

tedious in comparison of the serious trifles that every man can

call to mind of himself while he was learning

those histories. Youthful passages of life are the chippings of

Pitt's diamond, set into little heart-rings with mottos; the

stone itself more worth, the filings more gentle

and agreeable. Alexander, at the head of the world,

never tasted the true pleasure that boys of his own age

have enjoyed at the head of a school. Little intrigues,

little schemes, and policies engage their thoughts;

and, at the same time that they are laying the foundation for

their middle age of life, the mimic republic they live in

furnishes materials of conversation for their latter age; and old

men cannot be said to be children a second time

with greater truth from any one cause, than their living

over again their childhood in imagination. To reflect

on the season when first they felt the titillation of love, the

budding passions, and the first dear object of their

wishes! how unexperienced they gave credit to all the tales of

romantic loves! Dear George, were not the playing fields at Eton

food for all manner of flights? No old maid's gown, though it

had been tormented into all the fashions from King James to King

George, ever underwent so many transformations as those poor

plains have in my idea. At first I was contented with tending a

visionary flock, and sighing some pastoral name to the echo of

the cascade under the bridge. How happy should I have been to

have had a kingdom only for the pleasure of being driven from it,

and living disguised in an humble vale! As I got further

into Virgil and Clelia, I found myself transported from Arcadia

to the garden of Italy; and saw Windsor Castle in no other view

than the Capitoli immobile saxum. I wish a committee of the

House of Commons may ever seem to be the senate; or a bill appear

half so agreeable as a billet-doux. You see how deep you have

carried me into old stories; I write of them with pleasure, but

shall talk of them with more to you. I can't say I am sorry I

was never quite a schoolboy: an expedition against bargemen, or a

match at cricket, may be very pretty things to recollect; but,

thank my stars, I can remember things very near as pretty. The

beginning of my Roman history was spent in the asylum, or

conversing in Egeria's hallowed grove; not in thumping and

pommelling king Amulius's herdsmen. I was sometimes troubled

with a rough creature or two from the plough; one, that one

should have thought, had worked with his head, as well as his

hands, they were both so callous. One of the most agreeable

circumstances I can recollect is the Triumvirate, composed of

yourself, Charles,(138) and Your sincere friend.

(138) Colonel Charles Montagu, afterwards Lieutenant-General, and

Knight of the Bath, and brother of George Montagu. He married

Elizabeth Villiers, Viscountess Grandison,

daughter of the Earl of Grandison.

124 Letter 4

To George Montagu, Esq.

King's College, May 20, 1736.

Dear George:

You will excuse my not having written to you, when you hear I

have been a jaunt to Oxford. As you have seen it, I shall only

say I think it one of the most agreeable places I ever set my

eyes on. In our way thither we stopped at the Duke of Kent's,

(139) at Wrest. (140) On the great staircase is a picture of the

duchess; (141) I said it was very like; oh, dear sir! said Mrs.

Housekeeper, it's too handsome for my lady duchess; her grace's

chin is much longer than that.

In the garden are monuments in memory of Lord Harold (142) Lady

Glenorchy, (143) the late duchess,(144) and the present duke. At

Lord Clarendon's (145) at Cornbury,(146) is a

prodigious quantity of Vandykes; but I had not time to take down

any of their dresses. By the way, you gave me no account of the

last masquerade. Coming back, we saw Easton Neston,(147) a seat

of Lord Pomfret, where in an old greenhouse is a wonderful fine

statue of Tully, haranguing a numerous assembly of decayed

emperors, vestal virgins with new noses, Colossuses, Venuses,

headless carcases, and carcaseless heads, pieces of tombs, and

hieroglyphics.(148) I saw Althorp(149) the same day, where are a

vast many pictures-some mighty good; a gallery with the Windsor

beauties, and Lady Bridgewater(150) who is full as handsome as

any of them; a bouncing head of, I believe, Cleopatra, called

there the Duchess of Mazarine. The park is enchanting. I forgot

to tell you I was at Blenheim, where I saw nothing but a cross

housekeeper, and an impertinent porter, except a few pictures, a

quarry of stone that looked at a distance like a great house, and

about this quarry, quantities of inscriptions in honour of the

Duke of Marlborough, and I think of her grace too.

Adieu! dear George, Yours ever.

The verses are not published.

(139) Henry de Grey, Duke, Marquis, and Earl of Kent, son of

Anthony Earl of Kent, and Mary, daughter of Lord Lucas. [The

duke, who had been so created in 1710, having lost all his sons

during his lifetime, obtained a new patent in 1740,

creating him Marquis Grey, with remainder to his

grand-daughter Jemima Campbell, daughter of his eldest

daughter, Lady amabel Grey, by her husband John, third Earl of

Breadalbane. On the death of the duke, in June 1740, the

marquisate of Grey and barony of Lucas, together with the

Wrest House and all the vast estates of the duke, devolved upon

his grand-daughter, Lady Jemima Campbell, then Lady

Jemima Royston, she having married Philip Viscount Royston,

eldest son of the Earl of Hardwicke, by whom she had two

daughters, Amabel married in July 1772, to Lord Polwarth, only

son of the Earl of Marchmont, created a peer of Great Britain by

the title of Baron Hume of Berwick, and who died in 1781 without

issue: her ladyship was advanced to the dignity of Countess de

Grey by letters patent, in 1816, with remainder of that earldom

to her sister Mary Jemima, wife of Thomas second Lord Grantham,

and that lady's male issue. Lady Grantham died in 1830; and upon

the death of the countess, in 1833, she was succeeded under the

patent by her nephew Lord Grantham, the present Earl de Grey.]

(140) Wrest House in Bedfordshire. [It is remarkable that, from

the death of the Duke of Kent, Wrest House has never

remained a second generation in the same family, but has

descended successively through females to the families of

Yorke Earl of Hardwicke, Hume Earl of Marchmont, and is now

vested in that of Robinson Lord Grantham, the

great-great-grandson of the duke.)

(141) Lady Sophia Bentinck, second wife of the Duke of Kent, and

daughter to William Earl of Portland.

(142) Anthony Earl of Harold, eldest son of the Duke of Kent.

[Married to Lady Mary Grafton, daughter of the Earl of Thanet.

He died without issue, in 1723, in consequence of an ear of

barley sticking in his throat. His widow, who survived many

years, afterwards married John first Earl Gower.]

(143) Amabella, eldest daughter of the Duke of Kent, married to

John Campbell, Lord Viscount Glenorchy, son of Lord

Breadalbane.

(144) Jemima, eldest daughter of Lord Crewe, and first wife of

the Duke of Kent.

(145) Henry Earl of Clarendon and Rochester, son of Laurence Earl

of Rochester.

(146) In the county of Oxford.

(147) Easton Neston, the ancient family seat of the Fermor

family, had been rebuilt by Sir William Fermor who was

elevated to the peerage by the title of Baron Lempster of

Lempster, or Leominster, county of Hereford; and whose only son

Thomas, second baron, was advanced to the earldom of

Pomfret in 1721.-E.

(148) Part of the invaluable collection of the great Earl of

Arundel. They had been formerly purchased by John Lord

Jefferies, Baron of Wem; and in 1755 were presented by his

daughter, the Countess-dowager of Pomfret, to the University of

Oxford.-E.

(149) The seat of Charles, fifth Earl of Sunderland; who, upon

the demise of his aunt Henrietta, eldest daughter of John Duke of

Marlborough, succeeded to the honours of his illustrious

grandfather. Althorp is now the seat of Earl Spencer. An

account of the mansion, its pictures, etc. was published by Dr.

Dibdin, in 1822, under the title of "Edes Althorpianae," as a

supplement to his "Bibliotheca Spenceriana."-E.

(150) Elizabeth, third daughter of the great Duke of

Marlborough, and wife of Scroop, Earl and afterwards first Duke

of Bridgewater. She died, however, previous to her

husband's advancement to the dukedom.-E.

126 Letter 5

To George Montagu, Esq.

King's College, May 30, 1736.

Dear George,

You show me in the prettiest manner how much you like

Petronius Arbiter; I have heard you commend him, but I am more

pleased with your tacit approbation of writing like him, prose

interspersed with verse: I shall send you soon in return some

poetry interspersed with prose; I mean the Cambridge

congratulation with the notes, as you desired. I have

transcribed the greatest part of what was tolerable at the

coffee-houses; but by most of what you will find, you will hardly

think I have left any thing worse behind. There is lately come

out a new piece, called A Dialogue between

Philemon and Hydaspes on false religion, by one Mr.

Coventry,(151) A.M., and fellow, formerly fellow-commoner, of

Magdalen. He is a young man, but 'tis really a pretty thing. If

you cannot get it in town, I will send it with the verses. He

accounts for superstition in a new manner, and I think a Just

One; attributing it to disappointments in love. He don't

resolve it all into that bottom; ascribes it almost wholly as the

source of female enthusiasm; and I dare say there's ne'er a girl

from the age of fourteen to four-and-twenty, but will subscribe

to his principles, and own, if the dear man were dead that she

loves, she would settle all her affection on heaven, whither he

was gone.

Who would not be an Artemisia, and raise the stately mausoleum to

her lord; then weep and watch incessant over it like the Ephesian

matron!

I have heard of one lady, who had not quite so great a

veneration for her husband's tomb, but preferred lying alone in

one, to lying on his left hand; perhaps she had an aversion to

the German custom of left-handed wives. I met yesterday with a

pretty little dialogue on the subject of constancy tis between a

traveller and a dove

LE PASSANT.

Que fais tu dans ce bois, plaintive Tourturelle?

LA ToURTURELLE.

Je g`emis, j'ai perdu ma compagne fidelle.

LE PASSANT.

Ne crains tu pas que l'oiseleur

Ne te fasse mourir comme elle?

La Tourturelle.

Si ce n'est lui, ce sera ma douleur.

'Twould have been a little more apposite, if she had grieved for

her lover. I have ventured to turn it into that view,

lengthened it, and spoiled it, as you shall see.

P.-Plaintive turtle, cease your moan;

Hence away;

In this dreary wood alone

Why d'ye stay?

T.-These tears, alas! you see flow

For my mate!

P.-Dread you not from net or bow

His sad fate?

T.-If, ah! if they neither kill,

Sorrow will.

You will excuse this gentle nothing, I mean mine, when I tell

you, I translated it out of pure good-nature for the use of a

disconsolate wood-pigeon in our grove, that was made a widow by

the barbarity of a gun. She coos and calls me so movingly,

'twould touch your heart to hear her. I protest to you it

grieves me to pity her. She is so allicholy as any thing. I'll

warrant you now she's as sorry as one of us would be. Well, good

man, he's gone, and he died like a lamb. She's an unfortunate

woman, but she must have patience; tis what we must all come to,

and so as I was saying, Dear George, good bye t'ye,

Yours sincerely.

P. S. I don't know yet when I shall leave Cambridge.

(151) Mr. Henry Coventry was the son of Henry Coventry, Esq. who

had a good estate in Cambridgeshire. He was born in 1710, and

died in 1752. He wrote four additional Dialogues. The five were

republished shortly after his death, by his cousin, the Rev.

Francis Coventry. The following is transcribed from the MSS. of

the Rev. W. Cole:-

"When Henry Coventry first came to the University, he was of a

religious turn of mind, as was Mr. Horace Walpole; even so much

so as to go with Ashton, his then great friend, to pray with the

prisoners in the Castle. Afterwards, both Mr.

Coventry and Mr. Walpole took to the infidel side of the

question."-E.

127 Letter 6

To Richard West, Esq.

King's College, Aug. 17, 1736.

Dear West,

Gray is at Burnham,(152) and, what is surprising, has not been at

Eton. Could you live so near it without seeing it?

That dear scene of our quadruple-alliance would furnish me with

the most agreeable recollections. 'Tis the head

of our genealogical table, that is since sprouted out

into the two branches of Oxford and Cambridge. You seem to be

the eldest son, by having got a whole inheritance to yourself;

while the manor of Granta is to be divided between your three

younger brothers, Thomas of Lancashire, [153] Thomas of

London [154] and Horace. We don't wish you dead to enjoy your

seat, but your seat dead to enjoy you. I hope you are a mere

elder brother, and live upon what your father left you, and in

the way you 'were brought up in, poetry: but we are supposed to

betake ourselves to some trade, as logic, philosophy, or

mathematics. If I should prove a mere younger brother, and not

turn to any Profession, would you receive me, and supply me out

of your stock, where you have such plenty? I have been so used to

the delicate food of Parnassus, that I can never condescend to

apply to the grosser studies of Alma Mater. Sober cloth of

syllogism colour suits me ill; or, what's worse, I hate clothes

that one must prove to be of no colour at all. If the Muses

coelique vias et sidera monstrent, and qua vi maria alta

lumescant. why accipiant: but 'tis thrashing, to study

philosophy in the abstruse authors. I am not against cultivating

these studies, as they are certainly useful; but then they quite

neglect all polite literature, all knowledge of this world.

Indeed, such people have not much occasion for this latter; for

they shut themselves up from it, and study till they know less

than any one. Great mathematicians have been of great use;

but the generality of them are quite unconversible: they

frequent the stars, sub pedibusque vident nubes, but they can't

see through them. I tell you what I see; that by living

amongst them, I write of nothing else: my letters are

all parallelograms, two sides equal to two sides; and every

paragraph an axiom, that tells you nothing but what every mortal

almost knows. By the way, your letters come under this

description; for they contain nothing but what almost every

mortal knows too, that knows you-that is, they are

extremely agreeable, which they know you are capable of

making them:-no one is better acquainted with it than

Your sincere friend.

(152) in Buckinghamshire, where his uncle resided.

(153) Thomas Ashton. He was afterwards fellow of Eton College,

rector of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate-street, and preacher to the

Society of Lincoln's-inn. It was to him that Mr. Walpole

addressed the poetical epistle from Florence, first published in

Dodsley's collection of poems.

(154) Thomas Gray, the poet.

1737

128 Letter 7

To George Montagu Esq.

King's College, March 20, 1737.

Dear George,

The first paragraph in my letter must be in answer to the last in

yours; though I should be glad to make you the return you ask, by

waiting on you myself. 'Tis not in my power, from more

circumstances than One, which are needless to tell you, to

accompany you and Lord Conway(155) to Italy: you add to the

pleasure it would give me, by asking it so kindly. You I am

infinitely obliged to, as I was capable, my dear George, of

making you forget for a minute that you don't propose stirring

from the dear place you are now in. Poppies indeed are the chief

flowers in love nosegays, but they seldom bend towards the lady;

at least not till the other flowers have been

gathered. Prince Volscius's boots were made of love-leather, and

honour-leather; instead of honour, some people's are made of

friendship; but since you have been so good to me as to draw on

this, I can almost believe you are equipped for

travelling farther than Rheims. 'Tis no little inducement to

make me wish myself in France, that I hear gallantry is not left

off there; that you may be polite and not be thought

awkward for it. You know the pretty men of the age in England

use the women with no more deference than they do their coach-

horses, and have not half the regard for them that they have for

themselves. The little freedoms you tell me you use take off

from formality, by avoiding which ridiculous extreme we are

dwindled into the other barbarous one, rusticity. If you had

been at Paris, I should have inquired about the new

Spanish ambassadress, who, by the accounts we have thence, at her

first audience of the queen, sat down with her at a

distance that suited respect and conversation. Adieu, dear

George,

Yours most heartily.

(156) Francis Seymour Conway, son of Francis Seymour, Lord

Conway, and Charlotte, daughter of John Shorter, Esq. [Sister to

Lady Walpole, the mother of Horace, and with her co-heiress of

John Shorter, Esq. lord-mayor of London in 1688, who died during

his mayoralty, from a fall off his horse, under

Newgate, as he was going to proclaim Bartholomew Fair. Lady

Walpole died in the August of the year in which the present

letter was written, and Sir Robert soon afterwards married @Miss

Skerrit. Walpole's well-known fondness for his mother is alluded

to by Gray, in a letter to West, dated 22d August, 1737:-" But

while I write to you, I hear the bad news of lady Walpole's

death, on Saturday night last. Forgive me if the thought of what

my poor Horace must feel on that account

obliges me to have done."]

129 Letter 8

To George Montagu, Esq.

Christopher Inn, Eton.

The Christopher. Lord! how great I used to think anybody just

landed at the Christopher! But here are no boys for me to send

for-here I am, like Noah, just returned into

his old world again, with all sorts of queer feels about me. By

the way, the clock strikes the old cracked sound-I recollect so

much, and remember so little-and want to play about-and am so

afraid of my playfellows-and am ready to shirk Ashton and can't

help making fun of myself-and envy a dame over the way, that has

just locked in her boarders, and is going to sit down in a little

hot parlour to a very bad supper, so comfortably! and I could be

so jolly a dog if I did not fat, which, by the way, is the first

time the word was ever applicable to me. In short, I should be

out of all bounds if I was to tell you half I feel, how young

again I am

one minute, and how old the next. But do come and feel

with me, when you will-to-morrow-adieu! If I don't compose myself

a little more before Sunday morning, when Ashton

is to preach, I shall certainly be in a bill for

laughing at church; but how to belt it, to see him

in the pulpit, when the last time I saw him here, was standing up

funking at a conduit to be catechised. Good night; yours.

1739

130 Letter 9

To Richard West, Esq.

Paris, April 21, N. S. 1739. (157)

Dear West,

You figure us in a set of pleasures, which, believe me, we do not

find; cards and eating are so universal, that they absorb all

variation of pleasures. The operas, indeed, are much frequented

three times a week; but to me they would be a greater penance

than eating maigre: their music resembles a gooseberry tart as

much as it does harmony. We have not yet been at the Italian

playhouse; scarce any one goes there. Their best amusement, and

which in some parts, beats ours, is the comedy three or four of

the actors excel any we have: but then to this nobody goes, if it

is not one of the fashionable nights; and then they go, be the

play good or bad-except on

Moli`ere's nights, whose pieces they are quite weary of. Gray

and I have been at the Avare to-night; I cannot at all commend

their performance of it. Last night I was in the Place de Louis

le Grand (a regular octagon, uniform, and the houses handsome,

though not so large as Golden Square), to see what they reckoned

one of the finest burials that ever was in France. It was the

Duke de Tresmes, governor of Paris and marshal of France. It

began on foot from his palace to his parish-church, and from

thence in coaches to the opposite end of Paris, to b interred in

the church of the Celestins, where is his family-vault. About a

week ago we happened to see the grave digging, as we went to see

the church, which is old and small., but fuller of fine ancient

monuments than any, except St. Denis, which we saw

on the road, and excels Westminster; for the windows are all '

painted in mosaic, and the tombs as fresh and well preserved as

if they were of yesterday. In the Celestins' church

is a votive column to Francis II., which says, that it is one

assurance of his being immortalised, to have had the martyr Mary

Stuart for his wife. After this long digression, I return to the

burial, which was a most vile thing. A long procession of

flambeaux and friars; no plumes, trophies, banners,

led horses, scutcheons, or open chariots; nothing but friars,

white, black, and grey, with all their trumpery. This goodly

ceremony began at nine at night, and did not finish till three

this morning; for, each church they passed, they stopped

for a hymn and holy water. By the bye, some of these choice

monks, who watched the body while it lay in state, fell asleep

one night, and let the tapers catch fire of the rich velvet

mantle lined with ermine and powdered with gold

flower-de-luces, which melted the lead coffin, and burnt off the

feet of the deceased before it awakened them. The French love

show; but there is a meanness runs through it all. At the house

where I stood to see this procession, the room was hung with

crimson damask and gold, and the windows were mended in ten or a

dozen places with paper. At dinner they give you three courses;

but a third of the dishes is patched up with sallads, butter,

puff-paste, or some such miscarriage of a dish. None, but

Germans, wear fine clothes; but their coaches are tawdry enough

for the wedding of Cupid and Psyche. You would-laugh extremely at

their signs: some live at

the Y grec, some at Venus's toilette, and some at the sucking

cat. YOU would not easily guess their notions of honour: I'll

tell you one: it is very dishonourable for any gentleman not to

be 'in @he army, or in the king's service as they

call it, and it is no dishonour to keep public gaming-houses:

there are at least an hundred and fifty people of the first

quality in Paris who live by it. You may go into their houses at

all hours of the night, And find hazard, pharaoh, etc. The men

who keep the hazard tables at the duke de Gesvres' pay him twelve

guineas each night for the privilege. Even the princesses of the

blood are dirty enough to have shares in the banks kept at their

houses. We have seen two or three of them; but they are not

young, nor remarkable but for wearing their red of a deeper dye

than other women, though all use it extravagantly.

The weather is still so bad, that we have not made any

excursions to see Versailles and the environs, not even walked in

the Tuileries; but we have seen almost every thing else that is

worth seeing in Paris, though that is very

considerable. They beat us vastly in buildings, both in number

and magnificence. The tombs of Richelieu and Mazarin at the

Sorbonne and the College de Quatre Nations are wonderfully fine,

especially the former. We have seen very little of the people

themselves, who are not inclined to be propitious to strangers,

especially if they do not play and speak the language readily.

There are many English here: Lord Holderness, Conway(158) and

Clinton, (159) and Lord George Bentinck; (160) Mr. Brand,(161)

Offley, Frederic, Frampton, Bonfoy, etc. Sir John

Cotton's son and a Mr. Vernon of Cambridge passed through Paris

last week. We shall stay here about a fortnight longer,

and then go to Rheims with Mr. Conway for two or three months.

When you have nothing else to do, we shall be glad to hear from

you; and any news. If we did not remember there was such a place

as England, we should know nothing of it: the French never

mention it, unless it happens to be in one of their proverbs!

Adieu! Yours ever.

To-morrow we go to the Cid. They have no farces but petites

pieces like our "Devil to Pay."

(157) Mr. Walpole left Cambridge towards the end of the year

1738, and in March, 1739, began his travels by going to Paris,

accompanied by Mr. Gray.

(158) Francis, second Lord Conway, in 1750, created Viscount

Beauchamp and Earl of Hertford, and in 1793, Earl of Yarmouth and

Marquis of Hertford. He was the elder brother of General Conway,

and grandfather of the present Marquis.

(159) Hugh Fortescue, in whose favour the abeyance into

which the barony of Clinton had fallen on the death of

Edward, thirteenth Baron Clinton, was terminated by writ of

summons, in 1721. He was created, in 1746, Lord Fortescue and

Earl

of Clinton; and died unmarried, in 1751.-E.

(160) Son of Henry, second Earl and first Duke of Portland; he

died in 1759.-E.

(161) Mr. Brand of the Hoo, in Hertfordshire, who afterwards

married Lady Caroline Pierrepoint, daughter of the Duke of

Kingston by his second wife,

and half-sister of Lady Mary Wortley.-E.

132 Letter 10

To Richard West, Esq.

>From Paris, 1739.

Dear West,

I should think myself to blame not to try to divert you, when you

tell me I can. From the air of your letter you seem to want

amusement, that is, you want spirits. I

would recommend to you certain little employments that I know of,

and that belong to you, but that I imagine bodily exercise is

more suitable to your complaint. If you would promise me to read

them in the Temple garden, I would send you a little packet of

plays and pamphlets that we have made up, and intend to dispatch

to 'Dick's' the first opportunity.-Stand by, clear the way, make

room for the pompous appearance of Versailles le Grand!--But no:

it fell so short of my idea of it, mine, that I have resigned to

Gray the office of writing its panegyric.(162) He likes it.

They say I am to like it better next Sunday; when the sun is to

shine., the king is to be fine, the water-works are to play, and

the new knights of the Holy Ghost are to be

installed! Ever since Wednesday, the day we were there, we have

done nothing but dispute about it. They say, we did not see it

to advantage, that we ran through the apartments, saw the garden

en passant, and slubbered over Trianon. I say, we saw nothing.

However, we had time to see that the great front is a lumber of

littleness, composed of black brick, stuck full of bad old busts,

and fringed with gold rails. The rooms

are all small, except the great gallery, which is noble,

but totally wainscoted with looking-glass. The garden is

littered with statues and fountains, each of which has its

tutelary deity. In particular, the elementary god of fire

solaces himself in one. In another, Enceladus, in lieu of a

mountain, is overwhelmed with many waters. There are avenues of

water-pots, who disport themselves much in squirting up

cascadelins. In short, 'tis a garden for a great child. Such

was Louis Quatorze, who is here seen in his proper colours,

where he commanded in person, unassisted by his armies

and his generals, left to the pursuit of his own puerile ideas of

glory.

We saw last week a place of another kind, and which has more the

air of what it would be, than anything I have yet met with: it

was the convent of the Chartreux. All the conveniences, or

rather (if there was such a word) all the adaptments are

assembled here, that melancholy, meditation, selfish devotion,

and despair would require. But yet 'tis pleasing. Soften the

terms, and mellow the uncouth horror that reigns here, but a

little, and 'tis a charming solitude. It stands on a large space

of ground, is old and irregular. The chapel is gloomy: behind

it, through some dark passages, you pass into a large obscure

hall, which looks like a combination-chamber for some hellish

council. The large cloister surrounds their buryingground. The

cloisters are very narrow and very long, and let into the cells,

which are built like little huts detached from each other. We

were carried into one, where lived a middle-aged man not long

initiated into the order. He was extremely civil, and called

himself Dom Victor. We have promised to visit him often. Their

habit is all white: but besides this he was infinitely clean in

his person; and his apartment and garden, which he keeps and

cultivates without any assistance, was neat to a degree. He has

four little rooms, furnished in the prettiest manner, and hung

with good prints. One of them is a library, and another a

gallery. He has several canary-birds disposed in a pretty manner

in breeding-cages. in his garden was a bed of good tulips in

bloom, flowers and

fruit-trees, and all neatly kept. They are permitted at certain

hours to talk to strangers, but never to one another, or to go

out of their convent. But what we chiefly went to see was the

small cloister, with the history of St. Bruno their founder,

painted by Le Sceur. It consists of twenty-two pictures, the

figures a good deal less than life. But sure they are amazing! I

don't know what Raphael may be in Rome, but these pictures excel

all I have seen in Paris and England. The figure of the dead man

who spoke at his burial, contains all the strongest and horridest

ideas of ghastliness, hypocrisy discovered, and the height of

damnation, pain and cursing. A Benedictine monk, who was there

at the same time, said to me of this picture C'est une fable,

mais on la croyoit autrefois. Another, who

showed me relics in one of their churches, expressed as much

ridicule for them. The pictures I have been speaking of

are ill preserved, and some of the finest heads defaced,

which was done at first by a rival of Le Soeur's. Adieu! dear

West, take care of your health; and some time or other we will

talk over all these things with more pleasure than I have had in

seeing them.

Yours ever.

(162) For Gray's description of Versailles, which he

styles " a huge heap of littleness," see his letter to West of

the 22nd of May, 1739. (Works, by Mitford, vol. ii.

P. 46).edited by the Rev. John Mitford.-E.

134 Letter 11

To Richard West, Esq.

Rheims, (163) June 18, 1739, N. S.

Dear West,

How I am to fill up this letter is not easy to divine. I have

consented that Gray shall give an account of our situation and

proceedings; (164) and have left myself at the mercy of my own'

invention--a most terrible resource, and which I shall avoid

applying to if I can possibly help it. I had prepared the

ingredients for a description of a ball, and was just ready to

serve it up to you, but he has plucked it from me. However, I

was resolved to give you an account of a particular song and

dance in it, and was determined to write the words and Sing the

tune just as I folded up my letter: but as it would, ten to one,

be opened before it gets to you, I am forced to lay aside this

thought, though an admirable one. Well, but now I have put it

into your head, I suppose you won't rest without it. For that

individual one, believe me 'tis nothing without the tune and the

dance; but to stay your

stomach, I -will send you one of their vaudevilles or Ballads,

(165) which they sing at the comedy after their

petites pi`eces.

You must not wonder if all my letters resemble dictionaries, with

French on one side and English on t'other; I deal in nothing else

at present, and talk a couple of words of each language

alternately, from morning till night. This has put my mouth a

little out of tune at present but I am trying to recover the use

of it by reading the newspapers aloud at breakfast, and by

shewing the title-pages of all my English books. Besides this, I

have paraphrased half of the first act of your new GustavUS (166)

which was sent us to Paris: a most dainty performance, and just

what you say of it. Good night, I am sure you must be tired: if

you are not, I am. yours ever.

(163) Mr. Walpole, with his cousin Henry Seymour Conway and Mr.

Gray, resided three months at Rheims, principally to

acquire the French language.

(164) Gray's letter to West has not been preserved; but one

addressed to his mother, on the 21 st of June, containing an

account of Rheims and the society, is printed in his Works, vol.

ii. p. 50.-E.

(165) This ballad does not appear.

(166) The tragedy of "Gustavus Vasa," by Henry Brooke, author of

"The Fool of Quality." It was rehearsed at Drury Lane; but, as

it was supposed to satirize Sir Robert Walpole, it was prohibited

to be acted. This, however, did Brooke no injury, as he was

encouraged to publish the play by subscription.-E.

134 Letter 12

To Richard West, Esq.

Rheims, July 20, 1739.

Gray says, Indeed you ought to write to West.-Lord, child, so I

would, if I knew what to write about. If I were in London and he

at Rheims, I would send him volumes about peace and war,

Spaniards, camps, and conventions; but d'ye think he

cares sixpence to know who is gone to Compiegne, and when they

come back, or who won and lost four livres at quadrille last

night at Mr. Cockbert's?--No, but you may tell him what you have

heard of Compiegne; that they have balls twice a week after the

play, and that the Count d'Eu gave the king a most flaring

entertainment in the camp, where the Polygone was

represented in flowering shrubs. Dear West, these are the things

I must tell you; I don't know how to make 'em look

significant, unless you will be a Rhemois for a little

moment.(167) I wonder you can stay out of the city so long, when

we are going to have all manner of diversions. The comedians

return hither from Compiegne in eight days, for example; and in a

very little of time one attends the regiment of the king, three

battalions and an hundred of officers; all men of a

certain fashion, very amiable, and who know their world. Our

women grow more gay, more lively, from day to day, in

expecting them; Mademoiselle la Reine is brewing a wash of a

finer dye, and brushing up her eyes for their arrival. La Barone

already counts upon fifteen of them: and Madame Lelu, finding her

linen robe conceals too many beauties, has bespoke one of gauze.

I won't plague you any longer with people you don't know, I mean

French ones; for you must absolutely hear of an

Englishman that lately appeared at Rheims. About two days ago,

about four o'clock in the afternoon, and about an hour after

dinner,-from all which you may conclude we dine at two

o'clock,-as we were picking our teeth round a littered table and

in a crumby room, Gray in an undress, Mr. Conway in a

morning gray coat, and I in a trim white night-gown and

slippers, very much out of order, with a very little cold, a

message discomposed us all of a sudden, with a service to Mr.

Walpole from Mr. More, and that, if he pleased, he would wait on

him. We scuttled upstairs in great confusion, but with no other

damage than the flinging down two or three glasses and the

dropping a slipper by the way. Having ordered the room to be

cleaned out, and sent a very civil response to Mr. More, we began

to consider who Mr. More should be. Is it Mr. More of Paris!

No. Oh, 'tis Mr. More, my Lady Teynham's husband? No, it can't

be he. A Mr. More, then, that lives in the

Halifax family? No. In short, after thinking of ten thousand

more Mr. Mores, we concluded it could never be a one of 'em. By

this time Mr. More arrives; but such a Mr. More! a young

gentleman out of the wilds of Ireland, who has never been in

England, but has got all the ordinary language of that

kingdom; has been two years at Paris, where he dined at an

ordinary with the refugee Irish, and learnt fortification-,,

which he does not understand at all, and which yet is the only

thing he knows. In short, he is a young swain of very uncouth

phrase, inarticulate speech, and no ideas. This hopeful child is

riding post into Lorrain, or any where else, he is not

certain; for if there is a war he shall go home again: for we

must give the Spaniards another drubbing, you know; and if the

Dutch do but join us, we shall blow up all the ports in

Europe; for our ships are our bastions, and our ravelines, and

our hornworks; and there's a devilish wide ditch for 'em to pass,

which they can't fill up with things-Here Mr. Conway helped him

to fascines. By this time I imagine you have

laughed at him as much, and were as tired of him as we were; but

he's gone. This is the day that Gray and I intended for the

first of a southern circuit; but as Mr. Selwyn and George Montagu

design us a visit here, we have put off our journey for some

weeks. When we get a little farther, I hope our

memories will brighten: at present they are but dull, dull as

Your humble servant ever.

P. S. I thank you ten thousand times for your last letter: when I

have as much wit and as much poetry in me, I'll send you as good

an one. Good night, child!

(167) The three following paragraphs are a literal translation of

French expressions to the same imports.

136 Letter 13

To Richard West, Esq.

>From a Hamlet among the Mountains of Savoy,

Sept. 28, 1739, N. S.

Precipices, mountains, torrents, wolves, rumblings, Salvator

Rosa-the pomp of our park and the meekness of our palace! Here

we are, the lonely lords of glorious, desolate prospects. I have

kept a sort of resolution which I made, of not writing to you as

long as I staid in France: I am now a quarter of an hour out of

it, and write to you. Mind, 'tis three months since we heard

from you. I begin this letter -among the clouds; where I shall

finish, my neighbour Heaven probably knows: 'tis an odd wish in a

mortal letter, to hope not to finish it on this side the

atmosphere. You will have a billet tumble to you from the stars

hen you least think of it; and that I should write it too! Lord,

how potent that sounds! But I am to undergo many

transmigrations before I come to "yours ever." Yesterday I was a

shepherd of Dauphin`e; to-day an Alpine savage; to-morrow a

Carthusian monk; and Friday a Swiss Calvinist. I have one

quality which I find remains with me in all worlds and in all

aethers; I brought it with me from your world, and am admired for

it in this-'tis my esteem for you: this is a common thought among

you, and you will laugh at it, but it is new here: as new to

remember one's friends in the world one has left, as for you to

remember those you have lost.

Aix in Savoy, Sept. 30th.

We are this minute come in here, and here's an awkward abb`e this

minute come in to us. I asked him if he would sit down. Oui,

oui, oui. He has ordered us a radish soup for supper, and has

brought a chess-board to play with Mr. Conway. I have left 'em

in the act, and am set down to write to you. Did you ever see

any thing like the prospect we saw yesterday? I never did. We

rode three leagues to see the Grande Chartreuse; (168)

expected bad roads and the finest convent in the kingdom. We

were disappointed pro and con. The building is large and plain,

and has nothing remarkable but its primitive simplicity; they

entertained us in the neatest manner, with eggs, pickled salmon,

dried fish, conserves, cheese, butter, grapes, and figs, and

pressed us mightily to lie there. We tumbled into the hands of a

lay-brother, who, unluckily having the charge of the meal and

bran, showed us little besides. They desired us to set down our

names in the list of strangers, where, among others, we found two

mottos of our countrymen, for whose stupidity and brutality we

blushed. The first was of Sir j * * * D * * *, who had wrote

down the first stanza of justum et tenacem, altering the last

line to Mente quatit Carthusiana. The second was of one D * *,

Coelum ipsum petimus stultitia; et hic ventri indico bellum. The

Goth!-But the road, West, the road! winding round a prodigious

mountain, and surrounded with others, all shagged with hanging

woods, obscured with pines, or lost in clouds! Below, a torrent

breaking through cliffs, and tumbling through fragments of rocks!

Sheets of @cascades forcing their silver speed down channelled

precipices, and hasting into the roughened river at the bottom!

Now and then an old foot-bridge, with a broken rail, a leaning

cross, a cottage, or the ruin of an hermitage! This sounds too

bombast and too romantic to one that has not seen it, too cold

for one that has. If I could send you my letter post between two

lovely tempests that echoed each other's wrath you might have

some idea of this noble roaring scene, as you were reading it.

Almost on the summit, upon a fine verdure, but without any

prospect, stands the Chartreuse. We staid there two hours, rode

back through this charming picture, wished for a painter, wished

to be poets! Need I tell you we wished for you? Good night!

Geneva, Oct. 2.

By beginning a new date, I should begin a new letter; but I have

seen nothing yet, and the Post is going Out: 'tis a strange

tumbled dab, and dirty too, I am sending you; but what can I do?

There is no possibility of writing such a long history over

again. I find there are many English in the town; Lord Brook,

(169) Lord Mansel, (170) Lord Hervey's eldest son,(171) and a son

of-of Mars and Venus, or of Antony and Cleopatra, or, in short,

of-. This is the boy, in the bow of whose hat Mr. Hedges pinned

a pretty epigram. I don't know if you ever heard it; I'll

suppose you never did, because it will fill up my letter:

"Give but Cupid's dart to me,

Another Cupid I shall be:

No more distinguish'd from the other,

Than Venus would be from my mother."

Scandal says, Hedges thought the two last very like; and it says

too, that she was not his enemy for thinking so.

Adieu! Gray and I return to Lyons in three days. Harry stays

here. Perhaps at our return we may find a letter from you: it

ought to be very full of excuses, for you have been a lazy

creature: I hope you have, for I would not owe your silence to

any other reason.

Yours ever.

(168) It was on revisiting it, when returning to England after

his unfortunate quarrel with Walpole, that Gray inscribed his

beautiful "Alcaic Ode" in the album of the fathers of this

monastery. Gray's account of this grand scene, where "not a

precipice, not a torrent, not a cliff, but is pregnant with

religion and poetry," will be found in his letter to West, dated

Turin, Nov. 16, N. S. 1739. Works, vol. ii. p. 69.-E.

(169) Francis Lord Brooke, advanced to the dignity of Earl Brooke

in 1746.-E.

(170) Thomas Lord Mansell, who died in 1743, without issue. He

was succeeded in the title by his uncles Christopher and Bussy;

and, On the death of the latter in 1744, it became extinct.-E.

(171) George William Hervey, who succeeded his grandfather as

Earl of Bristol in 1751, and died Unmarried in 1775.-E.

138 Letter 14

To Richard West, Esq.

Turin, Nov. 11, 1739, N. S.

So, as the song says, we are in fair Italy! I wonder we are; for

on the very highest precipice of Mount Cenis, the devil of

discord, in the similitude of sour wine, had got amongst our

Alpine savages, and set them a-fighting with Gray and me in the

chairs: they rushed him by me on a crag, where there was scarce

room for a cloven foot. The least slip had tumbled us into such

a fog, and such an eternity, as we should never have found our

way out of again. We were eight days in coming hither from

Lyons; the four last in crossing the Alps. Such uncouth rocks,

and such uncomely inhabitants! My dear West, I hope I shall

never see them again! At the foot of Mount Cenis we were obliged

to quit our chaise, which was taken all to pieces and loaded on

mules; and we were carried in low arm-chairs on poles, swathed in

beaver bonnets, beaver gloves, beaver stockings, muffs, and

bear-skins. When we came to the top, behold the snows fallen!

and such quantities, and conducted by such heavy clouds that hung

glouting, that I thought we could never have waded through them.

The descent is two leagues, but steep and rough as O * * * *

father's face, over which,

you know, the devil walked with hobnails in his shoes. But the

dexterity and nimbleness of the mountaineers are

inconceivable: they run with you down steeps and frozen

precipices, where no man, as men are now, could possibly walk.

We had twelve men and nine mules to carry us, our servants, and

baggage, and were above five hours in this agreeable jaunt The

day before, I had a cruel accident, and so extraordinary an one,

that it seems to touch upon the traveller. I had brought with me

a little black spaniel of King Charles's breed; but the

prettiest, fattest, dearest creature! I had let it out of the

chaise for the air, and it was waddling along close to the head

of the horses, on the top of the highest Alps, by the side of a

wood of firs. There darted out a young wolf, seized poor dear

Tory (172) by the throat, and, before we could possibly prevent

it, sprung up the side of the rock and carried him off. The

postilion jumped off and struck at him with his whip, but in

vain. I saw it and screamed, but in vain; for the road was so

narrow, that the servants that were behind could not get by the

chaise to shoot him. What is the extraordinary part is, that it

was but two o'clock, and broad sunshine. It was shocking to see

anything one loved run away with to so

horrid a death. .... .

Just coming out of Camber, which is a little nasty old hole, I

copied an inscription set up at the end of a great road, which

was practised through an immense solid rock by bursting it

asunder with gunpowder. The Latin is pretty enough, and so I

send it

you:

"Carolus Emanuel II. Sab. dux, Pedem. princeps, Cypri

rex,public`a felicitate part`a, singulorum commodis intentus,

breviorem securioremque viam regiam, natur`a occlusam, Romanis

intentatam, mteris desperatam, dejectis scopulorum repagulus,

aquata montiuminiquitate, quae cervicibus imminebant precipitia

pedibus substernens, aeternis populorum commerciis patefecit.

A.D. 1670."

We passed the Pas de Suze, where is a strong fortress on a rock,

between two very neighbouring mountains; and then, through a fine

avenue of three leagues, we at last discovered Tturin:--

"E l'un k l'altro mostra, ed in tanto oblia

La noia, e'l mal 'delta passata via."'

'Tis really by far one of the prettiest cities I have seen; not

one of your large straggling ones that can afford to have twenty

dirty suburbs, but, clean and compact, very new and very regular.

The king's palace is not of the proudest without, but of the

richest within; painted, gilt, looking-glassed, very costly, but

very tawdry; in short, a very popular palace. We were last night

at the Italian comedy-the devil of a house and the devil of

actors! Besides this, there is a sort of an heroic tragedy,

called "La rapprentatione dell' Anima Damnata."(173) A woman, a

sinner, comes in and makes a solemn prayer to the Trinity: enter

Jesus Christ and the Virgin: he scolds, and exit: she tells the

woman her son is very angry, but she don't know, she will see

what she can do. After the play we were introduced to the

assembly, which they call the conversazione: there were many

people playing at ombre, pharaoh, and a game called taroc, with

cards so high, (174) to the number of seventy-eight. There are

three or four English here Lord Lincoln,(175) with Spence,(176)

your professor of poetry; a Mr. B*** and a Mr. C*** a man that

never utters a syllable. We have tried all stratagems to make

him speak. Yesterday he did at last open his mouth, and said

Bec. all laughed so at the novelty of the thing that he shut it

again, and will never speak more. I think you can't complain now

of my not writing to you. What a volume of trifles! I wrote

just the fellow to it from Geneva; had it you? Farewell! Thine.

(172) This incident is described also by Gray in one of his

letters to his mother. "If the dog," he adds, "had not been

there, and the creature had thought fit to lay hold of one of the

horses, chaise and we, and all, must inevitably have tumbled

above fifty fathoms perpendicularly down the precipice."-E.

(173) This representation is also mentioned by Spence, in a

letter to his mother:-"In spite of the excellence," he says, "of

the actors, the greatest part of the entertainment to me was the

countenances of the people in the pit and boxes. When the devils

were like to carry off the Damned Soul, every body was in the

utmost consternation and when St. John spoke so obligingly to

her, they were ready to cry out for joy. When the Virgin

appeared on the stage, every body looked respectful; and, on

several words spoke by the actors, they pulled off, their hats,

and crossed themselves. What can you think of a people, where

their very farces are religious, and where they are so

religiously received? It was from such a play as this (called

Adam and Eve) that Milton when he was in Italy, is said to have

taken the first hint for his divine poem of "Paradise Lost."

What small beginnings are there sometimes to the greatest

things!-E.

(174) In the manuscript the writing of this word is extraordinary

tall.

(175) Henry ninth Earl of Lincoln, who having, in 1744, married

Catherine, eldest daughter and heiress of the Right Honourable

Henry Pelham, inherited, in 1768, the dukedom of

Newcastle-under-Line at the demise of the countess's uncle,

Thomas Pelham Holles, who, in 1756, had been created Duke of

Newcastle-under-Line, with special remainder to the Earl of

Lincoln.-E.

(176) The Rev. Joseph Spence, the author of one of the best

collections of ana the English language possesses-the well-known

"Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters of Books and Men," of

which the best edition is that edited by Singer.-E.

140 Letter 15

To Richard West, Esq.

>From Bologna, 1739.

I don't know why I told Ashton I would send you an account of

what I saw: don't believe it, I don't intend it. Only think what

a vile employment 'tis, making

catalogues! And then one should have that odious Curl (177) get

at one's letters, and publish them like Whitfield's

Journal, or for a supplement to the Traveller's Pocket

Companion. Dear West, I protest against having seen any thing

but what all the world has seen; nay, I have not seen half that,

not-some of the most common things; not so much as a miracle.

Well, but you don't expect it, do you? Except

pictures. and statues, we are not very fond of sights; don't go

a-staring after crooked towers and conundrum staircases. Don't

you hate, too, a jingling epitaph (178) of one Procul and one

Proculus that is here? Now and then we drop in at a procession,

or a high-mass, hear the music, enjoy a strange attire, and hate

the foul monkhood. Last week, was the feast of the Immaculate

Conception. On the eve we went to the

Franciscans' church to hear the academical exercises. There were

moult and moult clergy, about two dozen dames, that

treated one another with illustrissima and brown kisses, the

vice-legate, the gonfalonier, and some senate. The

vice-legate, whose conception was not quite so immaculate, is a

young personable person, of about twenty, and had on a

mighty pretty cardinal-kind of habit; 'twould make a

delightful masquerade dress. We asked his name: Spinola. What,

a nephew of the cardinal-legate? Signor, no: ma credo che gli

sia qualche cosa. He sat on the right hand with the gonfalonier

in two purple fauteuils. Opposite was a throne of crimson

damask, with the device of the Academy, the Gelati; and trimmings

of gold. Here sat at a table, in black, the head of' the

academy, between the orator and the first poet At two

semicircular tables on either hand sat three poets and three;

silent among many candles. The chief made a little introduction,

the orator a long Italian vile harangue. Then the chief, the

poet, and the poets,-who were a Franciscan, an Olivetan, an old

abb`e, and three lay,-read their

compositions; and to-day they are pasted up in all parts of the

town. As we came out of the church, we found all the

convent and neighbouring houses lighted all over with

lanthorns of red and yellow paper, and two bonfires. But you are

sick of this foolish ceremony; I'll carry you to no more -. I

will only mention, that we found the Dominicans' church here in

mourning for the inquisitor: 'twas all hung with black cloth,

furbelowed and festooned with yellow gauze. We have seen a

furniture here in a much prettier taste; a gallery of Count

Caprara's: in the panels between the windows are pendent trophies

of various arms taken by one of his ancestors from the Turks.

They are whimsical, romantic, and have a pretty effect. I looked

about, but could not perceive the portrait of the lady at whose

feet they were indisputably offered. In coming out of Genoa we

were more lucky; found the very spot where Horatio and Lothario

were to have fought, "west of the town, a mile among the rocks."

My dear West, in return for your epigrams of Prior, I will

transcribe some old verses too, but which I fancy I can show you

in a sort of a new light. They are no newer than Virgil, and

what is more odd, are in the second Georgic. 'Tis, that I have

observed that he not only excels when he is like himself, but

even when he is very like inferior poets: you will say that they

rather excel by being like him: but mind, they are all near one

another:

"Si non ingenter oribus domus alta superbis

Mane sa@atame totis vomit Eedibus uridam:"

And the four next lines; are they not just like Martial? In the

following he is as much Claudian"

"Illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum

Flexit, et infidos agitans discordia fratres;

Aut conjurato descendens Dacus ab Istro."

Then who are these like?

"nec ferrea jura, insanumque forum,

aut populi tabularia vidit.

Sollicitant alii remis freta ceca, ruuntque

In ferrum, penetrant aulas et limina regum.

Hic petit excidiis urbem miseresque Penates,

Ut gemma, bibat, et Sarrano indormiat ostro."

Don't they seem to be Juvenal's?-There are some more, which to me

resemble, Horace; but perhaps I think so from his having some on

a parallel subject. Tell me if I am mistaken; these are they:

"Interea dulces pendent eircum oscula nati:

Casta pudicitiam servat domus-"

inclusively to the end of these:

"Hanc olim veteres vitam colti`ere Sabini

Hanc Remus et frater: sic fortis Etruria crevit,

Scilicet et retum facta est pulcherrima Roma."

If the imagination is whimsical; well at least, 'tis like me to

have imagined it. Adieu, child! We leave Bologna

to-morrow. You know 'tis the third city in Italy for

pictures: knowing that, you know all. We shall be three days

crossing the Apennine to Florence: would it were over!

My dear West, I am yours from St. Peter's to St. Paul's!

(177) Edmund Curll, the well-known bookseller. The letters

between Pope and many of his friends falling into Curll's hands,

they were by him printed and sold. As the volume contained some

letters from noblemen, Pope incited a prosecution against him in

the House of Lords for breach of privilege; but, when the orders

of the House were examined, none of them appeared to have been

infringed: Curll went away triumphant, and Pope was left to seek

some other remedy.-E.

(178) The Epitaph on the outside of the wall of the church of St.

Proculo-

Si procul `a Proculo Proculi campana fuisset, Jam procul `a

Proculo Proculus ipse foret. A.D. 1392.

142 Letter 16

To Richard West, Esq.

Florence, Jan. 24, 1740, N. S.

Dear West,

I don't know what volumes I may send you from Rome; from

Florence I have little inclination to send you any. I see

several things that please me calmly, but `a force d'en avoir vu

I have left off screaming Lord! this! and Lord! that! To speak

sincerely, Calais surprised me more than any thing I have seen

since. I recollect the joy I used to propose if I could but once

see the great duke's gallery; I walk into it now with as little

emotion as I should into St. Paul's. The statues are a

congregation of good sort of people, that I have a great deal of

unruffled regard for. The farther I travel the less I wonder at

any thing: a few days reconcile one to a new spot, or an unseen

custom; and men are

so much the same every where, that one scarce perceives any

change of situation. The same weaknesses, the same passions that

in England plunge men into elections, drinking, whoring, exist

here, and show themselves in the shapes of Jesuits,

Cicisbeos, and Corydon ardebat Alexins. The most remarkable

thing I have observed since I came abroad, is, that there are no

people so obviously mad as the English. The French, the

Italians, have great follies, great faults; but then they are so

national, they cease to be striking. In England, tempers vary so

excessively, that almost every one's faults are

peculiar to himself. I take this diversity to proceed partly

from our climate, partly from our government: the first is

changeable, and makes us queer; the latter permits our

queernesses to operate as they please. If one

could avoid contracting this queerness, it must certainly be the

most entertaining to live in England, where such a variety of

incidents continually amuse. The incidents of a week in London

would furnish all Italy with news for a twelvemonth. The only

two circumstances of moment in the life of an

Italian, that ever give occasion to their being mentioned, are,

being married, and in a year after taking a cicisbeo. Ask the

name, the husband, the wife, or the cicisbeo, of any person, et

voila qui est fini.

Thus, child, 'tis dull dealing here! Methinks your Spanish war is

little more livel By the gravity of the proceedings, one would

think both nations were Spaniard. Adieu! Do you

remember my maxim, that you used to laugh at? Every body does

every thing, and nothing comes on't. I am more convinced of it

now than ever. I don't know whether S***w,'s was not still

better, Well, gad, there is nothing in nothing. You see how I

distil all my speculations and improvements, that they may lie in

a small compass. Do you remember the story of the prince, that,

after travelling three years, brought home nothing but a nut?

They cracked it: in it was wrapped up a piece of silk, painted

with all the kings, queens, kingdoms. and every thing in the

world: after many unfoldings, out stepped a little dog, shook his

ears, and fell to dancing a saraband. There is a fairy tale for

you. If I had any thing as good as your old song, I would send

it too; but I can only thank you for it, and bid you good night.

Yours ever.

P. S. Upon reading my letter, I perceive still plainer the

sameness that reigns here; for I find I have said the same thing

ten times over. I don't care, I have made out a letter, and that

was all my affair.

143 Letter 17

To Richard West, Esq.

Florence, February 27, 1740, N. S.

Well, West, I have found a little unmasqued moment to Write to

you; but for this week past I have been so muffled up in my

domino, that I have not had the command of my elbows. But what

have you been doing all the mornings? Could you not

write then?-No, then I was masqued too; I have done nothing but

slip out of my domino into bed, and out of bed into my domino.

The end of the Carnival is frantic, bacchanalian; all the morn

one makes parties in masque to the shops and

coffee-houses, and all the evening to the operas and balls. Then

I have danced, good gods! how have I danced! The

Italians are fond to a degree of our country dances: Cold and

raw-they only know by the tune; Blowzybella is almost Italian,

and Buttered peas is Pizelli ag buro. There are but three days

more; but the two last are to have balls all the morning at the

fine unfinished palace of the Strozzi; and the Tuesday night a

masquerade after supper: they sup first, to eat gras, and not

encroach upon Ash-Wednesday. What makes masquerading more

agreeable here than in England, is

the great deference that is showed to the disguised. Here they

do not catch at those little dirty opportunities of

saying any ill-natured thing they know of you, do not abuse you

because they may, or talk gross bawdy to a woman of

quality. I found the other day, by a play of Etheridge's, that

we have had a sort of Carnival even since the

Reformation; Ytis in "She would if She could," they talk of going

a-mumming in Shrove-tide.(179)-After talking so much of

diversions, I fear you will attribute

to them the fondness I own I contract for Florence; but it has so

many other charms, that I shall not want excuses for

my taste. The freedom of the Carnival has given me

opportunities to make several acquaintances.; and if I have no

found them refined, learned, polished, like some other cities,

yet they are civil, good-natured, and fond of the English-.

Their little partiality for themselves, opposed to the

violent vanity of the French, makes them very amiable in my eyes.

I can give you a comical instance of their great

prejudice about nobility; it happened yesterday. While we were

at dinner at Mr. Mann'S. (180) word was brought by his secretary,

that a cavalier demanded audience of him upon an affair of

honour. Gray and I flew behind the curtain of the door. An

elderly gentleman, whose attire was not certainly correspondent

to the greatness of his birth, entered, and

informed the British minister, that one Martin. an English

painter, had left a challenge for him at his house, for having

said Martin was no gentleman. He would by no means have spoke of

the duel before the transaction of it, but that his honour, his

blood, his etc. would never permit him to fight with one who was

no cavalier; which was what he came to inquire of his excellency.

We laughed loud laughs, but unheard: his fright or his nobility

had closed his ears. But mark the sequel: the instant he was

gone, my very English curiosity hurried me out of the gate St.

Gallo; 'twas

the place and hour appointed. We had not been driving about

above ten minutes, but out popped a little figure, pale but

cross, with beard unshaved and hair uncombed, a slouched hat, and

a considerable red cloak, in which was wrapped, under his arm,

the fatal sword that was to revenge the highly injured Mr.

Martin, painter and defendant. I darted my head out of the

coach, just ready to say, " Your servant, Mr. Martin," and talk

about the architecture of the triumphal arch that was building

there; but he would not know me, and walked off. We left him to

wait for an hour, to grow very cold and very

valiant the more it grew past the hour of appointment. We were

figuring all the poor creature's huddle of thoughts, and confused

hopes of victory or fame, of his unfinished pictures, or his

situation upon bouncing into the next world. You will think us

strange creatures; but 'twas a pleasant sight, as we knew the

poor painter was safe. I have thought of it since, and am

inclined to believe that nothing but two English could have been

capable of such a jaunt. I remember, 'twas reported in London,

that the plague was at a house in the city, and all the town went

to see it.

I have this instant received your letter. Lord! I am glad I

thought of those parallel passages, since it made you

translate them. 'Tis excessively near the original; and yet, I

don't know, 'tis very easy too.-It snows here a little

to-night, but

it never lies but on the mountains. Adieu! Yours ever.

P.S. What is the history of the theatres this winter?

(179) Sir Charles Etheridge. "She would if She could," was

brought out at the Duke of York's theatre in February, 1668:

Pepys, who was present, calls it "a silly, dull thing; the design

and end being mighty insipid."-E.

(180) Sir Horace Mann, created a baronet in 1755. He was

appointed minister plenipotentiary from England to the court of

Florence in 1740, and continued so until his death, on the 6th

November 1786.-E.

145 Letter 18

To The Hon. Henry Seymour Conway, (181)

Florence, March 6, 1740, N. S.

Harry, my dear, one would tell you what a monster you are, if one

were not sure your conscience tells you so every time you think

of me. At Genoa, in the year of our Lord one

thousand seven hundred and thirty-nine, I received the last

letter from you; by your not writing to me since, I imagine you

propose to make this a leap year. I should have sent many a

scold after you in this long interval, had I known where to have

scolded; but you told me you should leave Geneva

immediately. I have despatched sundry inquiries into England

after you, all fruitless. At last drops in a chance letter to

Lady Sophy Farmor, (182) from a girl at Paris, that tells her for

news, Mr. Henry Conway is here. Is he, indeed? and why was I to

know it only by this scrambling way? Well, I hate you for this

neglect, but I find I love you well enough to tell you so. But,

dear now, don't let one fall into a train of excuses and

reproaches; if the god of indolence is a

mightier deity with you than the god of caring for one, tell me,

and I won't dun you; but will drop your correspondence as

silently as if I owed you money.

If my private consistency was of no weight with you, yet, is a

man nothing who is within three days' journey of a conclave?

Nay, for what you knew, I might have been in Rome. Harry, art

thou so indifferent, as to have a cousin at the election of a

pope (183) without courting him for news? I'll tell you, were I

any where else, and even Dick Hammond were at Rome, I think

verily I should have wrote to him. Popes, cardinals,

adorations, coronations, St. Peter's! oh, what costly sounds!

and don't you write to one yet? I shall set out in about a

fortnight, and pray then think me of consequence.

I have crept on upon time from day to day here; fond of

Florence to a degree: 'tis infinitely the most agreeable of all

the places I have seen since London: that you know one loves,

right or wrong, as one does one's nurse. Our little Arno is not

bloated and swelling like the Thames, but 'tis vastly pretty,

and, I don't know how, being Italian, has

something visionary and poetical in its stream. Then one's

unwilling to leave the gallery, and-but-in short, one's

unwilling to get into a postchaise. I am surfeited with

mountains and inns, as if I had eat them. I have many to pass

before I see England again, and no Tory to entertain me on the

road? Well, this thought makes me dull, and that makes me

finish. Adieu!

Yours ever.

P. S. Direct to me, (for to be sure you will not be so

outrageous as to leave me quite off), recornmand4 i Mons.

Mann, Ministre de sa Majest`e Britannique @ Florence.

(181) Second Son of Francis first Lord Conway. by Charlotte

Shorter, his third wife. He was afterwards secretary in

Ireland during the vice-royalty of William fourth Duke of

Devonshire; groom of the bedchamber to George II. and George

III.; secretary of state in 1765; lieutenant-general of the

ordnance in 1770; commander in chief in 1782; and a field-

marshal in 1793. This correspondence commences when Mr.

Walpole was twenty-three years old, and Mr. Conway two years

younger. They had gone abroad together, with Mr. Gray, in the

year 1739, had spent three months together at Rheims, and

afterwards separated at Geneva.

(182) Daughter of the first Earl of Pomfret, and married,, in

1744, to John second Lord Carteret and first Earl of

Granville.-E.

(183) As successor of Clement XII., who died in the

eighty-eighth year of his age, and the tenth of his

pontificate, on the 6th Feb. 1740. The cardinals being

uncertain whom to choose, Prosper Lamberteri, the learned and

tolerant Archbishop of Ancona, said, with his accustomed

good-humour, "If you want a saint, choose Gotti; if a

politician, Aldrosandi: but if a good man, take me." His

advice was followed, and he ascended the papal throne as

Benedict XIV.-E.

146 Letter 19

To Richard West, Esq.

Siena, March 22, 1740, N. S.

Dear West, Probably now you will hear something of the

Conclave: we have

left Florence, and are got hither on the way to a pope. In three

hours' time we have seen all the good contents of this city: 'tis

old, and very snug, with very few inhabitants. You must not

believe Mr. Addison about the wonderful Gothic nicety of the

dome: the materials are richer, but the workmanship and taste not

near so good as in several I have seen. We saw a college of the

Jesuits, where there are taught to draw above fifty boys: they

are disposed in long chambers in the manner of Eton, but

cleaner.

N. B. We were not bolstered; (184) so we wished you with us. Our

Cicerone, who has less classic knowledge, and more

superstition than a colleger, upon showing

147 us the she-wolf, the arms of Siena, told us that Romolus and

Remus were nursed by a wolf, per la volonta di Dio, si pu`o dire;

and that one might see by the arms, that the same founders built

Rome and Siena. Another dab of Romish superstition, not

unworthy

of Presbyterian divinity, we met with in a book of drawings:

'twas the Virgin standing on a tripod composed of Adam, Eve, and

the Devil, to express her immaculate conception.

You can't imagine how pretty the country is between this and

Florence; millions of little hills planted with trees, and tipped

with villas or convents. We left unseen the great Duke's

villas

and several palaces in Florence, till our return from Rome: the

weather has been so cold, how could one go to them? In Italy

they seem to have found out how hot their climate is, but not how

cold; for there are scarce any chimneys, and most of the

apartments painted in fresco so that one has the additional

horror of freezing with imaginary marble. The men hang little

earthen pans of coals upon their wrists, and the women have

portable stoves under their petticoats to warm their

nakedness,

and carry silver shovels in their pockets, with which their

Cicisbeos stir them-Hush! by them, I mean their stoves. I have

nothing more to tell you; I'll carry my letter to Rome and finish

it there.

R`e di Coffano, March 23, where lived one of the three kings.

The King of Coffano carried presents of myrrh, gold, and

frankincense, I don't know where the devil he found them; for in

all his dominions we have not seen the value of a shrub. We have

the honour of lodging under his roof to-night. lord! such a

place, such an extent of ugliness! A lone inn upon a black

mountain, by the side of an old fortress! no curtains or

windows, only shutters! no testers to the beds! no earthly thing

to eat but some eggs and a few little fishes! This lovely

spot

is now known by the name of Radi-cofani. Coming down a steep

hill with two miserable hackneys, one fell under the chaise; and

while we were disengaging him, a chaise came by with a person in

a red cloak, a white handkerchief on its head, and a black hat:

we thought it a fat old woman; but it spoke in a shrill little

pipe, and proved itself to be Senesini. (185) I forgot to tell

you an inscription I copied from the portal of the dome of Siena:

Annus centenus Roma seraper est jubilenus:

Crimina laxantur si penitet ista dortantur; Sic ordinavit

Bonifacius et roboravit.

Rome, March 26

We are this instant arrived, tired and hungry! O! the charming

city-I believe it is-for I have not seen a syllable yet, only the

Pons Milvius and an obelisk. The Cassian and Flaminian ways were

terrible disappointments; not one Rome tomb left; their very

ruins ruined. The English are numberless. My dear West, I know

at Rome you will not have a grain of pity for one; but indeed

'tis dreadful, dealing with schoolboys just broke loose, or old

fools that are come abroad at forty to see the world, like Sir

Wilful Witwould.

I don't know whether you will receive this, or any other I write;

but though I shall write often, you and Ashton must not wonder if

none come to you; for though I am harmless in my nature, my name

has some mystery in it.(186) Good night! I have no more time or

paper. Ashton, child, I'll write to you next post. Write us no

treasons, be sure!

(184) An Eton phrase.

(185) Francesco Bernardi, better known by the name of

Senesino, a celebrated singer, who, having been engaged for the

opera company formed by Handel in 17@20, remained here as

principal singer until 1726, when the state of his health

compelled him to return to Italy. In 1730 he revisited England,

where he remained until about 1734. He was the contemporary, if

not the rival of Farinelli; and Mr. Hogarth, in his "Memoirs of

the Musical Drama," (i. 431,) tells us, that when Senesino and

Farinelli were in England together, they had not for some time

the opportunity of hearing each other, in consequence of their

engagements at different theatres. At last, however, they were

both engaged to sing on the same stage. Senesino had the part of

a furious tyrant, and Farinelli the part of an unfortunate hero

in chains; but, in the course of the first act, the captive so

softened the heart of the tyrant, that Senesino, forgetting his

stage character, ran to Farinelli, and embraced him in his

own.-E.

(186) He means the name of Walpole at Rome, where the

Pretender and many of his adherents then resided.

148 letter 20

To Richard West, Esq.

Rome, April 16th, 1740, N. S.

I'll tell you, West, because one is amongst new things, you think

one can always write new things. When I first came

abroad, every thing struck me, and I wrote its history: but now I

am grown so used to be surprised, that I don't perceive any

flutter in myself when I meet with any novelties;

curiosity and astonishment wear off, and the next thing is, to

fancy that other people nnow as much of places as One's Self; or,

at least, one does not remember that they do not. It

appears to me as odd to write to you of St.

Peter's, as it would do to you to write of Westminster Abbey.

Besides, as one looks at churches, etc. with a book of travels in

one's hand, and sees every thing particularized there, it would

appear transcribing, to write upon the same subjects. I know you

will hate me for this declaration; I remember how ill I used to

take it when any body served me so that was

travelling. Well, I will tell you something, if you will love

me: You have seen prints of the ruins of the temple of Minerva

Medica; you shall only hear its situation, and then figure what a

villa might be laid out there. 'Tis in the middle of a garden: at

a little distance are two subterraneous grottos, which were the

burial-places of the liberti of Augustus.

There are all the niches and covers of the urns and the

inscriptions remaining; and in one, very considerable remains of

an ancient stucco Ceiling with paintings in grotesque. Some of

the walks would terminate upon the Castellum Aquae Martioe, St.

John Lateran, and St. Maria Maggiore, besides other churches; the

walls of the garden would be two

aqueducts. and the entrance through one of the old gates of Rome.

This glorious spot is neglected, and only serves for a small

vineyard and kitchen-garden.

I am very glad that I see Rome while it yet exists: before a

great number of years are elapsed, I question whether it will be

worth seeing. Between the ignorance and poverty of the present

Romans, every thing is neglected and falling to decay; the villas

are entirely out of repair, and the palaces so ill kept, that

half the pictures are spoiled by damp. At the

villa Ludovisi is a large oracular head of red marble,

colossal, and with vast foramina for the eyes and mouth: the man

that showed the palace said it was un ritratto della

famiglia? The Cardinal Corsini has

so thoroughly pushed on the misery of Rome by impoverishing it,

that there is no money but paper to be seen. He is

reckoned to have amassed three millions of crowns. You may judge

of' the affluence the nobility live in, when I assure you, that

what the chief princes allow for their own eating is a testoon a

day; eighteen pence: there are some extend their expense to five

pauls, or half a crown: Cardinal Albani is called extravagant for

laying out ten pauls for his dinner and supper. You may imagine

they never have any entertainments: so far from it, they never

have any company. The princesses and duchesses particularly lead

the dismallest of lives.

Being the posterity of popes, though of worse families than the

ancient nobility, they expect greater

respect than my ladies the countesses and marquises will pay

them; consequently they consort not, but mope in a vast palace

with two mniserable tapers, and two or three monsignori, whom

they are forced to court and humour, that they may not be

entirely deserted. Sundays they do issue forth in a most

unwieldy coach to the Corso.

In short 'child, after sunset one passes one's time here very

ill; and if I did not wish for you in the mornings, it would be

no compliment to tell you that I do in the evening. Lord! how

many English I could change for you, and yet buy you

wondrous cheap! And, then French and Germans I could fling into

the bargain by dozens. Nations swarm here. You will have a

great fat French cardinal garnished with thirty abb`es roll into

the area of St. Peter's, gape, turn short, and talk of the chapel

of Versailles. I heard one of them say t'other day, he had been

at the Capitale. One asked of course how he liked it-.Oh! il y a

assez de belles choses.

Tell Ashton I have received his letter, and will write next post

but I am in a violent hurry and have no more time; so Gray

finishes this delicately.

NOT so delicate; nor indeed would his conscience suffer him to

write to you, till he received de vos nouvelles, if he had not

the tail of another person's letter to use by way of evasion. I

sha'n't describe, as being in the only place in the world that

deserves it which may seem an odd reason-but they say as how it's

fulsome, and every body does it (and I suppose every body says

the same thing); else I should tell'you a vast deal about the

Coliseum, and the Conclave, and the Capitol, and these matters.

A-propos du Colis`ee, if you don't know what it is, the Prince

Borghese will be very capable of giving you some account of it,

who told an Englishman that asked what it was built for: "They

say 'twas for Christians to fight with tigers in." We are just

come from adoring a great piece of the true cross, St. Longinus's

spear, and St. Veronica's handkerchief; all of which have been

this evening exposed to view in St. Peter's. In the same place,

and on the same occasion last night, Walpole saw a poor

creature naked to the waist discipline himself with a scourge

filled with iron prickles, till he made hii-nself a raw

doublet, that he took for red satin torn, and showing the skin

through. I should tell you, that he fainted away three times at

the sight, and I twice

and a half at the repetition of it. All this is performed by the

light of a vast fiery cross, composed of hundreds of

little crystal latmps, which appears through the great altar

under the grand tribuna, as if hanging by itself in the air. All

the confraternities of the city resort thither in solemn

procession, habited in linen frocks, girt with a cord, and their

heads covered with a cowl all over, that has only two holes

before to see through. Some of these are all black, others

parti-coloured and white: and with these masqueraders that vast

church is filled, who are seen thumping their

breasts, and kissing the pavement with extreme devotion. But

methinks I am describing:-'tis an ill habit; but this, like every

thing else will wear off We have sent you our compliments by a

friend of yours, and correspondent in a corner, who seems a very

agreeable man; one Mr. Williams; I am sorry he staid so little a

while in Rome. I forget Porto-Bello (187) all this while; pray

let us know where it is, and whether you or Ashton had any hand

in the taking of'it. Duty to the admiral. Adieu! Ever yours,

T. GRAY.

(187) Porto-Bello, taken from the Spaniards by Admiral Vernon,

with six ships only, On the 21st Nov. 1740. By the articles of

the capitulation, the town was not to be plundered, nor the

inhabitants molested in the smallest degree; and the governor and

inhabitants expressed themselves in the highest terms, when

speaking of the humanity and generosity with which they had been

treated by the admiral and the officers of the

squadron under his command.-E.

150 Letter 21

To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Rome, April, 23, 1740, N. S.