HORACE WALPOLE AND HIS WORLD
[Illustration: _Sir T. Laurence. Pinx._ _A. Dawson. Ph. Sc._ _W. Evans.
Sc._
_Horace Walpole._]
HORACE WALPOLE
AND HIS WORLD
_SELECT PASSAGES FROM HIS LETTERS_
EDITED BY
L. B. SEELEY, M.A.
_Late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge_
_WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS AFTER_
SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS AND SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE
LONDON
SEELEY, JACKSON, AND HALLIDAY, 54, FLEET STREET
1884
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
Introduction--Birth and
Parentage--Education--Appointments--Travels--Parliamentary
Career--Retirement--Fortune--Strawberry
Hill--Collections--Writings--Printing Press--Accession
to Title--Death--Character--Political Conduct
and Opinions--The Slave Trade--Strikes--Views of
Literature--Friendships--Charities--Chatterton--Letters 1
CHAPTER II.
Country Life--Ranelagh Gardens--The Rebel Lords--The
Earthquake--A Frolic at Vauxhall--Capture of a
Housebreaker--Strawberry Hill--The Beautiful Gunnings--Sterne 33
CHAPTER III.
A new Reign--Funeral of the late King--Houghton
revisited--Election at Lynn--Marriage of George III.--His
Coronation 62
CHAPTER IV.
General Taste for Pleasure--Entertainments at Twickenham
and Esher--Miss Chudleigh’s Ball--Masquerade at Richmond
House--The Gallery at Strawberry Hill--Balls--The Duchess
of Queensberry--Petition of the Periwig-makers--Ladies’
Head-gear--Almack’s--“The Castle of Otranto”--Plans for a
Bower--A late Dinner--Walpole’s Idle Life--Social Usages 78
CHAPTER V.
The Gout--Visits to Paris--Bath--John Wesley--Bad
Weather--English Summers--Quitting Parliament--Madame du
Deffand--Human Vanity--The Banks of the Thames--A Subscription
Masquerade--Extravagance of the Age--The Pantheon--Visiting
Stowe with Princess Amelia--George Montagu--The Countess of
Ossory--Powder-Mills Blown up at Hounslow--Distractions of
Business and Pleasure 99
CHAPTER VI.
Lord Nuneham--Madame de Sévigné--Charles Fox--Mrs. Clive and
Cliveden--Goldsmith and Garrick--Dearth of News--Madame de
Trop--A Bunch of Grapes--General Election--Perils by Land and
Water--Sir Horace Mann--Lord Clive--The History of Manners--A
Traveller from Lima--The Sçavoir Vivre Club--Reflections on
Life--The Pretender’s Happiness--Paris Fashions--Madame du
Deffand ill--Growth of London--Sir Joshua Reynolds--Change in
Manners--Our Climate 124
CHAPTER VII.
The American War--Irish Discontent--Want of Money--The Houghton
Pictures sold--Removal to Berkeley Square--Ill-health--A
Painting by Zoffani--The Rage for News--The Duke of
Gloucester--Wilkes--Fashions, Old and New--Mackerel
News--Pretty Stories--Madame de Sévigné’s Cabinet--Picture of
his Waldegrave Nieces--The Gordon Riots--Death of Madame du
Deffand--The Blue Stockings 151
CHAPTER VIII.
Walpole in his Sixty-fourth Year--The Royal
Academy--Tonton--Charles Fox--William Pitt--Mrs. Hobart’s
_Sans Souci_--Improvements at Florence--Walpole’s Dancing
Feats--No Feathers at Court--Highwaymen--Loss of the _Royal
George_--Mrs. Siddons--Peace--Its Social Consequences--The
Coalition--The Rivals--Political Excitement--The Westminster
Election--Political Caricatures--Conway’s Retirement--Lady
Harrington--Balloons--Illness--Recovery 188
CHAPTER IX.
Lady Correspondents--Madame de Genlis--Miss Burney and
Hannah More--Deaths of Mrs. Clive and Sir Horace Mann--Story
of Madame de Choiseul--Richmond--Queensberry House--Warren
Hastings--Genteel Comedy--St. Swithin--Riverside Conceits--Lord
North--The Theatre again--Gibbon’s History--Sheridan--Conway’s
comedy--A Turkish War--Society Newspapers--The Misses
Berry--Bonner’s Ghost--The Arabian Nights--King’s College
Chapel--Richmond Society--New Arrivals--The Berrys visit
Italy--A Farewell Letter 221
CHAPTER X.
Walpole’s Love of English Scenery--Richmond Hill--Burke on
the French Revolution--The Berrys at Florence--Death of
George Selwyn--London Solitude--Repairs at Cliveden--Burke
and Fox--The Countess of Albany--Journal of a Day--Mrs.
Hobart’s Party--Ancient Trade with India--Lady Hamilton--A
Boat Race--Return of the Berrys--Horace succeeds to
the Peerage--Epitaphium Vivi Auctoris--His Wives--Mary
Berry--Closing Years--Love of Moving Objects--Visit from Queen
Charlotte--Death of Conway--Final Illness of Horace--His last
Letter 262
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
HORACE WALPOLE, _after_ Lawrence _Frontispiece._
LAWRENCE STERNE, _after_ Reynolds 60
THE LADY GERTRUDE FITZPATRICK, _after_ Reynolds 132
THE LADY CAROLINE MONTAGU, _after_ Reynolds 148
THE THREE LADIES WALDEGRAVE, _after_ Reynolds 168
SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, _after_ Reynolds 188
THE DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE, _after_ Reynolds 213
MRS. MONTAGU, _after_ Reynolds 274
HORACE WALPOLE AND HIS WORLD.
CHAPTER I.
Introduction.--Birth and
Parentage.--Education.--Appointments.--Travels.--Parliamentary
Career.--Retirement.--Fortune.--Strawberry
Hill.--Collections.--Writings.--Printing Press.--Accession
to Title.--Death.--Character.--Political Conduct
and Opinions.--The Slave-Trade.--Strikes.--Views of
Literature.--Friendships.--Charities.--Chatterton.--Letters.
We offer to the general reader some specimens of Horace Walpole’s
correspondence. Students of history and students of literature are
familiar with this great mine of facts and fancies, but it is too
extensive to be fully explored by those who have not both ample
leisure and strong inclination for such employment. Yet most persons,
we imagine, would be glad to have some acquaintance with the prince
of English letter-writers. Many years have passed since Walter Scott
pronounced Walpole’s letters to be the best in our language, and since
Lord Byron declared them to be incomparable. The fashion in style
and composition has changed during the interval almost as often as
the fashion in dress: other candidates, too, for fame in the same
department have come forward; but no one, we think, has succeeded in
setting aside the verdict given, in the early part of our century,
by the two most famous writers of their time. Meanwhile, to the
collections of letters by Walpole that were known to Scott and Byron
have been added several others, no way inferior to the first, which
have been published at different periods; besides numerous detached
letters, which have come to light from various quarters. In the years
1857-9, appeared a complete edition of Walpole’s letters in nine
large octavo volumes.[1] The editor of this expressed his confidence
that no additions of moment would afterwards be made to the mass
of correspondence which his industry had brought together. Yet he
proved to be mistaken. In 1865 came out Miss Berry’s Journals and
Correspondence,[2] containing a large quantity of letters and parts
of letters addressed to her and her sister by Walpole, which had not
previously been given to the world, as well as several interesting
letters to other persons, the manuscripts of which had passed into
and remained in Miss Berry’s possession. Other letters, too, have
made their appearance, singly and incidentally, in more recent
publications.[3] The total number of Walpole’s published letters
cannot now fall much short of three thousand; the earliest of these
is dated in November, 1735,[4] the latest in January, 1797. Throughout
the intervening sixty years, the writer, to use his own phrase,
lived always in the big busy world; and whatever there passed before
him, his restless fingers, restless even when stiffened by the gout,
recorded and commented on for the amusement of his correspondents and
the benefit of posterity. The extant results of his diligence display
a full picture of the period, distorted indeed in many places by the
prejudices of the artist, but truthful on the whole, and enlivened
everywhere by touches of genius. From this mass of narratives and
descriptions, anecdotes and good-sayings, criticisms, reflections and
raillery, we shall endeavour to make as representative a selection as
our limits will permit.
It is hardly necessary to say that Horace Walpole entered life as the
son of the foremost Englishman of his time. He was born on the 24th of
September, 1717, O.S., and was the youngest of the six children whom
Sir Robert Walpole’s first wife, Catherine Shorter, brought to her
illustrious husband. This family included two other sons, Robert and
Edward, and two daughters, besides a fourth son, William, who died in
infancy. Horace, whose birth took place eleven years after that of the
fifth child, bore no resemblance, either in body or mind, to the robust
and hearty Sir Robert. He was of slight figure and feeble constitution;
his features lacked the comeliness of the Walpole race; and his
temperament was of that fastidious, self-conscious, impressionable
cast which generally causes a man or boy to be called affected. The
scandalous, noting these things, and comparing the person and character
of Horace Walpole with those of the Herveys, remembered that Sir
Robert and his first wife had been estranged from one another in the
later years of their union, and that the lady had been supposed to be
intimate with Carr Lord Hervey, elder brother of Pope’s Sporus. Horace
himself has mentioned that this Carr was reckoned of superior parts to
the more known John Lord Hervey, but nowhere in our author’s writings
does it appear that the least suspicion of spurious parentage[5]
had entered his thoughts. Everywhere he exults in being sprung from
the great Prime Minister; everywhere he is devoted to the memory of
his mother, to whom he raised a monument in Westminster Abbey, with
an inscription from his own pen celebrating her virtue. And in the
concluding words of this epigraph, he repeated a saying, which he has
elsewhere recorded, of the poet Pope, that Lady Walpole was “untainted
by a Court.”
Walpole tells us that, in the first years of his life, being an
extremely delicate child, he was much indulged both by his mother and
Sir Robert; and as an instance of this, he relates the well-known
story, how his longing to see the King was gratified by his mother
carrying him to St. James’s to kiss the hand of George I. just before
his Majesty began his last journey to Hanover. Shortly after this,
the boy was sent to Eton, from which period we hear no more of Lady
Walpole, though she survived till August, 1737. In 1735, young Horace
proceeded from Eton to King’s College, Cambridge, where he resided,
though with long intervals of absence, until after he came of age. On
quitting the University, he was in possession of a handsome income
arising from the patent place of Usher of the Exchequer, to which he
had recently been appointed, and which was then reckoned worth £900 a
year, and from two other small patent places in the Exchequer, those of
Clerk of the Escheats and Controller of the Pipe, producing together
about £300 a year, which had been held for him during his minority. All
these offices had been procured for him by Sir Robert Walpole, and were
sinecures, or capable of being executed by deputy.
Finding himself thus provided for and at leisure, the fortunate youth
set out on the continental tour which was considered indispensable for
a man of fashion. He travelled, as he tells us, at his own expense;
and being well able to afford the luxury of a companion, he took
with him Thomas Gray the poet, who had been his associate at Eton
and Cambridge. The pair visited together various parts of France and
Italy, making a stay of some duration at several places. After a few
weeks spent in Paris, they settled at Rheims for three months to study
French. They lived here with their former school-mate, Henry Seymour
Conway,[6] Walpole’s maternal cousin; and here appears to have been
cemented the lifelong friendship between Conway and Walpole which forms
perhaps the most honourable feature in the history of the latter. At
Florence, Walpole resided for more than twelve months in the house of
Horace Mann, British Envoy to the Court of Tuscany, with whom he formed
an intimacy, which was maintained, from the time of his leaving Italy
until the death of Mann forty-five years after, by correspondence only,
without the parties ever meeting again. Gray remained with Walpole
at Florence, and accompanied him in visits which he made thence to
Rome, Naples, and other places; but at Reggio a dissension arose
between them, and they parted to return home by different routes.
Walpole subsequently took the blame of this dispute upon himself. “It
arose,” he says, “from Gray being too serious a companion. Gray was for
antiquities, I was for perpetual balls and plays; the fault was mine.”
According to another account, Walpole had opened a letter addressed to
Gray. Whatever was the cause of the breach, it was repaired three years
later, and during the rest of the poet’s life he continued on friendly
terms with his early companion.
Walpole reached England in September, 1741, just before the meeting
of a new Parliament, and at the commencement of the Session took his
seat as member for Callington, in Cornwall, for which place he had
been elected during his absence. Sir Robert’s Government was at that
time in the midst of the difficulties which soon afterwards caused
its downfall. In February, 1742, the defeated Minister resigned, and
was created Earl of Orford. Horace, as was to be expected, took no
prominent part in the struggle. His maiden speech was delivered in
March, 1742, on a motion for an inquiry into the conduct of Sir Robert
Walpole during the last ten years of his administration. The young
orator was received with favour by the House, and obtained a compliment
from the great William Pitt; but the success of his effort, which is
preserved in one of his letters to Mann, must be attributed entirely
to the circumstances under which it was uttered. It does not appear
that he afterwards acquired any reputation in debate. Indeed, he was
generally content to be a listener. That he was a constant attendant
at the House, his correspondence sufficiently proves, but he rarely
took an active part in its proceedings. He has recorded a dispute he
had with Speaker Onslow in his second Parliament. In 1751 he moved
the address to the King at the opening of the Session, and five years
later we find him speaking on a question of employing Swiss troops
in the Colonies. In 1757 he exerted himself with much zeal in favour
of the unfortunate Admiral Byng. This, however, was by argument and
solicitation outside the House. In like manner, some years afterwards,
he made strenuous, though vain, endeavours, at the conferences of his
party, to persuade them not to support the exclusion of the King’s
mother from the Regency which was provided for on the first serious
illness of George III.
These are the chief incidents of Walpole’s public career, although
he remained in the House of Commons for twenty-seven years. At the
General Election of 1754 he was chosen for the family borough of Castle
Rising in Norfolk, but vacated this seat soon afterwards in order to
be a candidate for the town of King’s Lynn, which had for many years
returned his father to Parliament. Horace continued to represent Lynn
until the Dissolution of 1768, when he took leave of his constituents,
and was no longer seen in Westminster Hall. Perhaps the final reason
for his retirement was the failure of his friend Conway to retain a
foremost position in politics. After serving as Secretary of State
and Leader of the House of Commons under three successive Premiers,
Conway, through feebleness of purpose, lost his hold upon office, and
fell for some years into the background. But with disappointment for
his friend, there must have mingled in Walpole’s mind a feeling of
dissatisfaction with himself. Few men acquire much weight in Parliament
who do not at least occasionally take a share in its discussions; and
Horace had more than once found that his influence in the House was by
no means proportioned to his general reputation for ability. He was
therefore quite ready to withdraw when Conway could no longer profit
by his vote. Though at all times a keen politician, and extremely
social in his habits, he was unfitted by nature for the conflicts of
the Parliamentary arena. Desultory skirmishing with the pen was more to
his taste than the close fighting of debate. During more than half his
life, the war of parties was largely carried on by anonymous pamphlets,
and Walpole gave powerful help in this way to his side; afterwards,
when letters and articles in newspapers took the place of pamphlets, he
became an occasional contributor to the public journals.
But Walpole found in art and literature the chief employment of his
serious hours. His reading was extensive, the most solid portion of
it being in the regions of history and archæology. More engrossing
than his love of books was his passion for collecting and imitating
antiquities and curiosities of all kinds. His ample fortune furnished
him with the means of indulging these expensive pursuits. The
emoluments of the Usher of the Exchequer greatly increased during
his tenure of that post: in time of war--and England was often at war
in those days--they were sometimes very large. Walpole admits that
in one year he received as much as £4,200 from this source; and the
Commissioners of Accounts in 1782 thought that the annual value of the
place might fairly be stated at that sum. There was an antique flavour
about these gains which gave Walpole almost as much pleasure as the
money itself. The duties of the Usher were to shut the gates of the
Exchequer, and to provide the Exchequer and Treasury with the paper,
parchment, pens, ink, sand, wax, tape, and other articles of a similar
nature used in those departments. The latter of these duties, which
was said to be as old as the reign of Edward III. at least, formed
the lucrative part of the Usher’s employment, as he was allowed large
profits on the goods he thus purveyed to the Crown. Obviously the
income of such an office, while varying with the financial business
of each year, must have steadily advanced on the whole with the
progress of the nation. Besides this place, and the two other patent
places before mentioned, in all of which he continued until his death,
Walpole enjoyed for many years a principal share in the income of
the Collectorship of the Customs. Sir Robert Walpole held the last
appointment under a patent which entitled him to dispose as he pleased
of the reversion during the lives of his two eldest sons, Robert and
Edward. Accordingly, he appointed that, after his death, £1,000 a year
of the income should be paid to his youngest son Horace during the
subsistence of the patent, and that the remainder should be divided
equally between Horace and Edward. By this arrangement, Horace at the
age of twenty-seven--for his father died in March, 1745--stepped into
another income of about £1,400 a year, which lasted until the death of
his brother Sir Edward Walpole in 1784. In his writings he speaks, with
becoming gratitude, of the places and emoluments bestowed on him by his
father as being a noble provision for a third son. Having thus nobly
provided at the public expense for a child who had not yet shown any
merit or capacity, Sir Robert did not find it needful to do much for
him out of his private property. By his will, he bequeathed Horace only
a sum of £5,000 charged on his Norfolk estate, and a leasehold house in
Arlington Street. The greater part of the legacy remained unpaid for
forty years; the house Horace occupied until the term expired in 1781,
when he bought a residence in Berkeley Square. As Walpole was never
married, it is not surprising that he died worth ninety-one thousand
pounds in the funds, besides other property, including his town house
just mentioned, and his villa at Twickenham with its collection of
pictures and other works of art.
The fantastic little pile of buildings which he raised on the margin
of the Thames engaged his chief attention for many years. He purchased
the site of this in 1748, there being nothing then on the land but a
cottage, and called it Strawberry Hill, a name which he found in one of
the title-deeds. He had taken a lease the year before of the cottage,
with part of the land, from Mrs. Chenevix, a fashionable toy-dealer,
and thus describes his acquisition in a letter to Conway: “It is a
little plaything-house that I got out of Mrs. Chenevix’s shop, and is
the prettiest bauble you ever saw. It is set in enamelled meadows, with
filigree hedges:
‘A small Euphrates through the piece is rolled,
And little finches wave their wings in gold.’
Two delightful roads, that you would call dusty, supply me continually
with coaches and chaises: barges as solemn as Barons of the Exchequer
move under my window; Richmond Hill and Ham walks bound my prospect;
but thank God! the Thames is between me and the Duchess of Queensberry.
Dowagers as plenty as flounders inhabit all around, and Pope’s ghost is
just now skimming under my window by a most poetical moonlight. I have
about land enough to keep such a farm as Noah’s, when he set up in the
Ark with a pair of each kind; but my cottage is rather cleaner than I
believe his was after they had been cooped up together forty days. The
Chenevixes had tricked it out for themselves: up two pair of stairs
is what they call Mr. Chenevix’s library, furnished with three maps,
one shelf, a bust of Sir Isaac Newton, and a lame telescope without
any glasses. Lord John Sackville _predeceased_ me here, and instituted
certain games called _cricketalia_, which have been celebrated this
very evening in honour of him in a neighbouring meadow.”
Having completed his purchase, Walpole proceeded to make improvements.
His antiquarian studies had inspired him with a fondness for Gothic
architecture. But his zeal was not according to much knowledge, nor
guided by a very pure taste. Gradually the little cottage became merged
in a strange nondescript edifice, half castle, half cloister, with all
kinds of grotesque decorations. “The Castle,” so Walpole called it,
“was,” he tells us, “not entirely built from the ground, but formed at
different times, by alterations of, and additions to, the old small
house. The Library and Refectory, or Great Parlour, was entirely
new-built in 1753; the Gallery, Round Tower, Great Cloister, and
Cabinet, in 1760 and 1761; the Great North Bed-chamber in 1770; and the
Beauclerk Tower with the Hexagon Closet in 1776.” In a small cloister,
outside the house, stood the blue and white china bowl, commemorated
by Gray, in which Walpole’s cat was drowned. On the staircase was the
famous armour of Francis I. In the Gallery, among many other treasures,
were placed the Roman eagle and the bust of Vespasian, so often
mentioned in their owner’s correspondence. The buildings were no more
substantial in structure than they were correct in style. Much cheap
ridicule has been poured upon “the Castle,” as “a most trumpery piece
of ginger-bread Gothic,” with “pie-crust battlements,” and “pinnacles
of lath and plaster.” Many of its faults and absurdities must in
justice be referred to the novelty of the attempt to apply a disused
style to the requirements of a modern domestic residence. Walpole
himself was by no means blind to the flimsiness and incongruities of
his creation. He was rather indignant, indeed, when a French visitor
censured it as “non digne de la solidité Anglaise;” but in his own
description of it he calls it “a paper fabric,” and speaks of the house
and its decorations as “a mixture which may be denominated, in some
words of Pope:
‘A Gothic Vatican of Greece and Rome.’”
With the help of Mr. Essex, who assisted him in designing the later
portions, he gradually learned the depth of the architectural ignorance
in which he and the “Committee,” who were his first advisers, had been
involved at the commencement of his work. In short, Strawberry Hill,
child’s baby-house as it was, proved the first step in the renascence
of Gothic art.
As chamber after chamber was added to the Castle, it became Walpole’s
next care to fill them with fresh antiques in furniture, pictures,
bronzes, armour, painted glass, and other like articles. “In his
villa,” says Lord Macaulay, “every apartment is a museum, every piece
of furniture is a curiosity; there is something strange in the form
of the shovel; there is a long story belonging to the bell-rope. We
wander among a profusion of rarities, of trifling intrinsic value,
but so quaint in fashion, or connected with such remarkable names and
events, that they may well detain our attention for a moment. A moment
is enough. Some new relic, some new unique, some new carved work, some
new enamel, is forthcoming in an instant. One cabinet of trinkets is no
sooner closed than another is opened.”
Of Walpole’s writings other than his letters, we do not propose
to offer any detailed account or criticism. His earliest work,
“Ædes Walpolianæ,” was published as early as 1747; it was merely a
description of his father’s pictures at Houghton Hall, the family
seat in Norfolk. Among his next efforts were some papers contributed
in 1753 and following years to a periodical work of the day, called
_The World_.[7] Most persons have read the “Castle of Otranto,” so
warmly applauded by the author of “Ivanhoe.” Most students of art, we
suppose, are acquainted with Walpole’s “Anecdotes of Painting,” and his
“Catalogue of Engravers.” His “Catalogue of Noble and Royal Authors,”
though abounding in agreeable anecdotes, is probably now consulted by
few; and his “Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of Richard III.,”
acute and ingenious as it was, cannot detain anyone who is aware of the
recent researches on the same subject. His “Reminiscences of the Courts
of George I. and George II.,” and his “Memoirs” and “Journals” relating
to the reigns of George II. and George III., are, and must ever remain,
among the most valuable historical documents of the eighteenth century.
The Reminiscences were written for the amusement of the Misses Berry,
and have been extolled with justice as being, both in manner and
matter, the very perfection of anecdote writing. The rest of Walpole’s
works, including his tragedy of “The Mysterious Mother”--the merits
of which, whatever they may be, are cancelled by the atrocity of the
fable--are as nearly as possible forgotten.
Not content with writing and collecting books, Horace in 1757
established a printing press in the grounds of Strawberry Hill.
The first printer employed by him was William Robinson; the last,
Thomas Kirgate, whose name will often be found in the following
extracts. The first work printed at this press was Gray’s “Odes,”
with Bentley’s Illustrations. Its other productions include Walpole’s
own Royal and Noble Authors, Anecdotes of Painting, Engravers, and
Tragedy; his “Description of Strawberry Hill,” and “Fugitive Pieces;”
besides several works by other authors, such as Bentley’s “Lucan,”
Lord Herbert’s Life, a translation of Hentzner’s “Travels,” and Lord
Whitworth’s “Account of Russia;” as well as small collections of verses
by sundry friends. These “Strawberry Hill” editions are now scarce, and
command high prices.
The rest of our author’s career may be summed up in a few words. His
eldest brother had died early, and had been succeeded by an only son,
whose profligacy and occasional fits of insanity caused much trouble.
In December, 1791, when seventy-four years of age, Horace became, by
the death of this nephew, Earl of Orford, which made little addition to
his income, the family estate being heavily incumbered. The inheritance
was far from welcome. In a letter to a friend, he says he does not
understand the management of such an estate, and is too old to learn.
“A source of lawsuits among my near relations, endless conversations
with lawyers, and packets of letters to read every day and answer--all
this weight of new business is too much for the rag of life that yet
hangs about me.”[8] He never took his seat in the House of Lords. He
lived for upwards of five years longer, in the full possession of all
his faculties, though suffering great bodily infirmity from the effects
of gout, to which he was long a martyr. He died at his house, No. 11,
Berkeley Square, on the 2nd of March, 1797, in his eightieth year, and
was buried at the family seat of Houghton. With him the male line of
Sir Robert Walpole and the title of Orford became extinct. The estate
of Houghton descended to the fourth Earl of Cholmondeley, grandson of
Horace Walpole’s younger sister Mary, who married the third earl of
that ilk. Strawberry Hill was at its founder’s absolute disposal, and
he left it, as already mentioned, to Mrs. Damer, Conway’s daughter, but
for life only, with limitations over in strict settlement.
“It is somewhat curious,” says his biographer, “as a proof of the
inconsistency of the human mind, that, having built his Castle with so
little view to durability, Walpole entailed the perishable possession
with a degree of strictness which would have been more fitting for a
baronial estate. And that, too, after having written a fable entitled
‘The Entail,’ in consequence of some one having asked him whether he
did not intend to entail Strawberry Hill, and in ridicule of such a
proceeding.”
Inconsistency, caprice, eccentricity, affectation, are faults which
have been freely charged against the character of Horace Walpole. His
strong prejudices and antipathies, his pride of rank, his propensity
to satire, even his sensitive temperament, made him many enemies, who
not only exaggerated his failings, but succeeded, in some instances at
least, in transmitting their personal resentments to men of the present
century.
As a politician, especially, Walpole has received rather hard measure
from the partisan critics on both sides. A generation back, Whig
Reviewers and Tory Reviewers vied with each other in defaming his
memory. Macaulay and Croker, who seldom agreed in anything, were of one
accord in this. To Croker, of course, Horace was just a place-holder
who furnished a telling example of Whig jobbery. To rake up all the
details of his places in the Exchequer, and his “rider,” or charge,
on the place in the Customs, to compute and exaggerate his gains from
each of these sources, to track him in dark intrigues for extending his
tenure of one appointment and bettering his position in another; all
this was congenial employment for the Rigby of the nineteenth century,
as it would have been for his prototype in the eighteenth. The motive
of Macaulay’s deadly attack is not quite so obvious. Walpole’s politics
were those of his father and of the old Whigs generally. While in
theory inclined to Republicanism--though he was never, as he tells
us, quite a Republican[9]--it was his habit, on practical questions,
to consider what course the great Sir Robert would have taken under
similar circumstances. There seems nothing in all this to excite the
wrath of the most atrabilious Liberal. The truth appears to be that,
in the Whig circles of Macaulay’s time, there existed a traditional
grudge against Horace Walpole. In the “Memorials of Charles James
Fox,” which were arranged by Lord Vassall-Holland, and edited by Lord
John Russell, both the noble commentators speak of Horace in terms of
undisguised bitterness. Nor is the cause very far to seek. In politics,
Conway was under the dominion of Walpole; and Conway, on more than one
critical occasion, disobliged the Rockingham faction, from which the
modern Whigs deduce their origin. “Conway,” says Lord John Russell,
writing of the events of 1766, “had been made Secretary of State by
Lord Rockingham, and ought to have resigned when Lord Rockingham
left office; but Mr. Walpole did not choose that this should be so.”
Sixteen years later, Conway sat again in a Cabinet presided over by
Lord Rockingham, and when that nobleman died, he again refused to
resign. It will be remembered that, on this occasion, the Cavendishes
and Fox quitted their places when the Treasury was given to Lord
Shelburne, instead of their own nominee, the Duke of Portland, whose
only recommendations were that he was Lord of Welbeck, and had married
a daughter of the House of Devonshire.
In 1782, the Duke of Richmond, Conway’s son-in-law, concurred with
Conway in declining to desert the new Premier; and we know that Walpole
stoutly supported, if he did not dictate, the joint resolution of his
two friends. Lord Holland tells us that Fox did not like Walpole at
all, and accounts for this dislike by suggesting that his uncle may
have imbibed some prejudice against Walpole for unkindness shown to the
first Lord Holland. But this seems going needlessly far back for an
explanation. There can be no doubt that Fox looked on Walpole as having
assisted to thwart his design of governing England in the name of the
insignificant Duke of Portland, and detested him accordingly. Nor did
subsequent events tend to soften Fox’s recollection of this passage
in his life, or of the persons concerned in it. Had he overcome his
jealousy of Lord Shelburne, or had he succeeded in compelling his rival
to bow before the “wooden idol”--so Lord John Russell himself calls
Portland--which he had set up, he would probably, in either case, have
avoided the ill-famed coalition with Lord North, which was the main
cause of his long-continued exclusion from power. Walpole had spoken
his mind very plainly on the subject. “It is very entertaining,” he
wrote, “that two or three great families should persuade themselves
that they have an hereditary and exclusive right of giving us a head
without a tongue.”[10] And he told Fox himself: “My Whiggism is not
confined to the Peak of Derbyshire.”[11] We can imagine with what
horror such utterances as these were received by the believers in the
Whig doctrine of divine right. No wonder that Mr. Fox did not like
Walpole. And what Mr. Fox disliked was, of course, anathema to every
true Whig, and especially to an Edinburgh Reviewer of 1833.
What do the complaints of Walpole’s political tergiversation amount
to? It was certainly not a wise act of Horace to hang up in his
bedroom an engraving of the death warrant of Charles I. with the
inscription “Major Charta.” But the Whig essayist, while reproving
Walpole’s strange fancy that, without the instrument in question,
the Great Charter would have become of little importance, might
have recollected that he had himself professed his inability to see
any essential distinction between the execution of the Royal Martyr
and the deposition of his son. Again, there was inconsistency, no
doubt, between Walpole’s admiration of the Long Parliament, and his
detestation of the National Assembly; yet it should be borne in mind
that, in the midst of his disgust at the excesses of the French
Revolution, he protested that he was very far from subscribing to the
whole of Burke’s “Reflections.” Why then should we be told that “he
was frightened into a fanatical royalist, and became one of the most
extravagant alarmists of those wretched times?” We may surely ask on
his behalf the question which Macaulay put when the consistency of his
own master, Sir James Mackintosh, was impugned: “Why is one person to
be singled out from among millions, and arraigned before posterity
as a traitor to his opinions, only because events produced on him the
effect which they produced on a whole generation?”
When the critic tells us that Walpole was a mischief-maker who
“sometimes contrived, without showing himself, to disturb the course of
Ministerial negotiations, and to spread confusion through the political
circles,” we cannot avoid seeing in these words a resentful reference
to the part taken by Conway on the occasions above referred to.
It was not Walpole’s fault that the party conflicts of his time were
mainly about persons. We have seen the importance which Fox attached
to these personal questions. We may safely say that this great man’s
disapproval of Walpole’s conduct did not spring from any difference
on matters of principle. If Horace was an opponent of Parliamentary
Reform, this was an open question among Fox’s most intimate associates.
If he objected to the enfranchisement of the Roman Catholics, most
Whigs of his time did the same. In the dispute with America, as we
shall see, he maintained, from the first, the right of the Colonies
to liberty and independence. Nor did he retract his expressions of
sympathy with the American Republic when the horrors of the French
Revolution made him a supporter of Tory policy in England and on the
Continent. He always lamented as one of the worst effects of the
French excesses that they must necessarily retard the progress and
establishment of civil liberty.[12]
There were questions of social politics on which he was far in
advance of his times. “We have been sitting,” he wrote, on the 25th
of February, 1750, “this fortnight on the African Company. We, the
British Senate, that temple of liberty, and bulwark of Protestant
Christianity, have, this fortnight, been considering methods to make
more effectual that horrid traffic of selling negroes. It has appeared
to us that six-and-forty thousand of these wretches are sold every year
to our plantations alone! It chills one’s blood--I would not have to
say I voted for it for the Continent of America! The destruction of the
miserable inhabitants by the Spaniards was but a momentary misfortune
that followed from the discovery of the New World, compared with the
lasting havoc which it brought upon Africa. We reproach Spain, and yet
do not even pretend the nonsense of butchering these poor creatures for
the good of their souls.”[13] The sentiments thus declared by Walpole
nine years before Wilberforce was born, he steadily adhered to through
life. On this point, at least, no one has ever charged him with any
wavering or inconsistency.
We will mention, before passing on to different topics, one other
matter on which Walpole shows a liberality of feeling quite unusual
at any period of his life. In the summer of 1762, he writes: “I am in
distress about my Gallery and Cabinet: the latter was on the point
of being completed, and is really striking beyond description. Last
Saturday night my workmen took their leave, made their bow, and left
me up to the knees in shavings. In short, the journeymen carpenters,
like the cabinet-makers, have entered into an association not to work
unless their wages are raised; and how can one complain? The poor
fellows, whose all the labour is, see their masters advance their
prices every day, and think it reasonable to touch their share.”[14]
* * * * *
In the domain of literature, Walpole’s opinions were largely influenced
by his social position and personal connexions. He rated the class
of professional writers as much below as they have ever been rated
above their real deserts; and this may perhaps help to explain the
rancour with which he has been pursued by some critics. He could
see nothing wonderful in the art of stringing sentences together.
He met famous authors daily in society, and did not find that they
were wiser or more accomplished than their neighbours. Most of them
showed to little advantage in the drawing-rooms in which he felt his
own life completest. Gray seldom opened his lips; Goldsmith “talked
like poor poll”; Johnson was Ursa Major--a brute with whom Horace
declined to be acquainted; Hume’s powers of mind did not appear in
his broad unmeaning face, nor animate his awkward conversation; even
Gibbon made a bad figure as often as any doubt was hinted as to the
transcendent importance of his luminous or voluminous history. As for
the novelists, neither Fielding nor Richardson ever ascended to the
sublime heights in which Horace dwelt at ease. Stories circulated
there of vulgar orgies amidst which the biographer of Tom Jones
performed his police functions, and of requests made by the author of
“Clarissa” to his female admirers for information as to the manners
of polite life. Walpole shrank from the coarseness of the one, and
smiled at the attempts of the other to describe a sphere which he
had never entered. We are not to suppose, however, that Horace was
as blind to the gradations of literary rank as some would have us
believe. When he told Mann that _The World_ was the work of “our first
writers,” instancing Lord Chesterfield, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams,
and other well-born dilettanti whose names have now sunk into oblivion
or neglect, it is clear that he was speaking with reference to the
matter in hand. It did not occur to him that great historians and poets
would be likely or suitable contributors to a series of light papers
intended for the macaronis of the hour. What he regarded as the chief
qualification of himself and his friends who wrote for this fashionable
journal was their familiarity with the tone of the best society. For
himself, Walpole constantly disclaimed all pretence to learning or
exact knowledge of any kind, and, due allowance made for the vanity of
which undoubtedly he owned an ample share, there seems no reason to
question his sincerity. We conceive, indeed, that his estimate of his
own talents and acquirements was much more accurate than it has usually
been considered. In all that related to literary fame, his vanity
showed itself rather in depreciating the advantages which he had not,
than in exalting those which he possessed. If he did not worship style,
still less was he disposed to bow down before study and research. Hence
the low esteem in which he held authors of all kinds. Some excuses may
be made for his disparaging criticisms. The literati of his day were
certainly eclipsed by the contemporary orators. What writer was left in
prose or verse, on the death of Swift, who could compare with Mansfield
or the first William Pitt? Which of the poets or historians of the next
generation won the applause which was called forth by the speeches of
Fox or Sheridan or the younger Pitt? If Fox and Sheridan could obtain
their greatest triumphs in the midst of gambling and dissipation, and
apparently without pains or application, there was some apology for
slighting the labours of Robertson and the carefully polished verses
of Goldsmith. With the exception of Lord Chatham, whom he strongly
disliked, Walpole generally does justice to the great speakers of his
time, on whichever side in politics they were ranged; if he gives no
credit for genius to the writers of the age, this was partly at least
because their genius was of no striking or signal order. Judgment,
sense, and spirit were Pope’s three marks for distinguishing a great
writer from an inferior one, and these continued to be the criteria
applicable, even in the department of so-called works of imagination,
down to the end of the century.
Walpole, as in duty bound, was a professed worshipper of Shakespeare
and Milton, but we suspect that his worship was not very hearty. It is
clear that Pope was the poet of his choice; and he seems to have known
every line of his favourite by heart. He admired also the exquisite
poetry of Gray, and this admiration was no doubt sincere; but we are
disposed to think that it arose entirely from the early connexion
between Horace and the author, and from the feeling that Gray, in some
sort, belonged to him. Gray was Walpole’s poet, as Conway was his
statesman; and the sense of ownership, which converted his cousinly
regard for Conway into a species of idolatry, turned to enthusiasm for
Gray’s “Odes” the critical estimate which would otherwise, we feel
sure, have ended in a pretty strong aversion.
What Walpole said, rather uncharitably, of Sir Joshua Reynolds, may, we
fear, be applied with more justice to Walpole himself. All his geese
were swans, as the swans of others were geese in his eyes. Conway
was a man of integrity and honour, an excellent soldier, a fluent
speaker, but he was a timid and vacillating politician. That phase of
their weakness which makes the vainglorious pique themselves on having
remarkable friends, is certainly not unamiable, though it is sometimes
fatiguing. We all know the man who congratulates himself on his good
fortune in being the associate of the versatile Dr. A., the high-souled
Mr. B., the original Mr. C., and so on. Had Horace possessed a wife,
he would have wearied all his acquaintance with encomiums on her
beauty, wit, wisdom, and other matchless perfections. Having no wife
to celebrate, he chose to sing the praises of General Conway, and sang
them lustily, and with good courage. This was the more disinterested,
as Conway appears to have been distinctly one of those persons who
allow themselves to be loved. There is no questioning the genuineness
of a devotion which undoubtedly entailed on Walpole great sacrifices.
The time and labour which Horace bestowed in the service of his
friend’s ambition entitle him to full credit for honesty in the offer
which he made to share his fortune with the latter, when, at an early
stage of his career, he was dismissed from his employments for opposing
the Ministry of the day.
This was not the only occasion on which Walpole showed himself capable
of uncommon generosity. He made a similar offer to Madame du Deffand,
when she was threatened with the loss of her pension. That clever
leader of French society was not, like Conway, a connexion of long
standing, but a mere recent acquaintance of Horace, who had no claim
on him beyond the pleasure she had shown in his company, and the pity
which her blind and helpless old age demanded. In the event, the
lady did not require his assistance, but her letters prove that she
had full confidence in his intentions, notwithstanding the harshness
with which he sometimes repressed her expressions of affection. The
same temperament which made him fond of displaying his intimacy with
Conway, caused him to dread the ridicule of being supposed to have
an attachment for the poor old Marquise. Hence arose the occasional
semblance of unkindness, which was contradicted by substantial proofs
of regard, and which must be set down to undue sensitiveness on the
gentleman’s side rather than to want of consideration.
The coldness of heart with which Walpole is reproached has, we think,
been exaggerated. “His affections were bestowed on few; for in early
life they had never been cultivated.” So much is admitted by Miss
Berry, a most favourable witness. But in society generally, Horace
appears to have shown himself friendly and obliging. His aristocratic
pride did not prevent him from mixing freely with persons much his
inferiors in station. Miss Hawkins, daughter of the historian of
music, who for many years lived near him at Twickenham, testifies
to his sociable and liberal temper; and Walpole’s own letters show
that he was at some trouble to assist Sir John Hawkins in collecting
materials for his work. The correspondence between Horace and his
deputies in the Exchequer proves the kindly feeling that subsisted
between him and them; and also reveals the fact that he employed them
from time to time in dispensing charities which he did not wish to
have disclosed. And Miss Berry records that, during his later life,
although no ostentatious contributor to public charities and schemes of
improvement, the friends in whose opinion he could confide had always
more difficulty to repress than to excite his liberality.
His temper, says Sir Walter Scott, was precarious. Walpole, we believe,
would readily have pleaded guilty to this charge. That he felt his
infirmity in this respect his Letters sufficiently show; he assigns
it as the chief reason why he preferred to live alone. Gray was not
the only one of his early friends with whom he quarrelled. He became
estranged at different times from Ashton, another college companion;
from Bentley, whose taste and talent he had employed in decorating his
Castle; from George Montagu,[15] who, next to Conway, was long his most
intimate friend; and from Mason the poet; not to mention other names.
Whatever blame may attach to Walpole for these ruptures, it seems to
be now pretty well agreed that in the matter of Chatterton he was
guiltless. On this subject, we need only quote a few sentences from
Scott. “His memory,” says Sir Walter, “has suffered most on account
of his conduct towards Chatterton, in which we have always thought he
was perfectly defensible. That unhappy son of genius endeavoured to
impose upon Walpole a few stanzas of very inferior merit, as ancient;
and sent him an equally gross and palpable imposture under the shape
of a pretended ‘List of Painters.’ Walpole’s sole crime lies in not
patronizing at once a young man who only appeared before him in the
character of a very inartificial impostor, though he afterwards proved
himself a gigantic one. The fate of Chatterton lies, not at the door
of Walpole, but of the public at large, who two years, we believe,
afterwards were possessed of the splendid proofs of his natural powers,
and any one of whom was as much called upon as Walpole to prevent the
most unhappy catastrophe.”[16]
We turn from Walpole’s life and character to his Letters. We have
already mentioned the friends to whom the earlier portion of these
were chiefly addressed. Other friends to whom he occasionally wrote
were Lord Hertford, Conway’s elder brother, Lord Strafford, Cole, the
antiquary of Cambridge, and John Chute, with whom he had been intimate
at Florence. The names of some later correspondents will appear as we
proceed, of whom such an account as may seem necessary will be given
as they come before us. Of the pains and skill with which the matter
of each letter is adapted to the person for whom it was intended, our
readers will be able to judge for themselves. That the author had
studied letter-writing as an art, is a remark almost too trivial to
be repeated. It is hardly too much to say that he made it his chief
literary business. “Mine,” he said, “is a life of letter-writing.” That
he counted on being remembered by his letters far more than by any
other of his writings, we hold to be as certain as any statement of the
kind can be. He had, we believe, gauged his powers far more correctly
than is commonly supposed, and was satisfied that in this kind of
composition, more than in any other, he had produced something of
permanent value. He had studied closely the letters of Gray and Madame
de Sévigné, and formed his own style from them. The letters of the
latter were his especial delight. He read them over until they became
part of his own mind. Nothing interested him so much as a rumour that
some fresh letters of “Notre Dame des Rochers” had been discovered. It
may be too much to say, as Miss Berry has said, that Walpole has shown
our language to be capable of all the graces and all the charms of the
French of the great writer whom he imitated. But, due allowance made
for the superiority of French idiom and French finesse in a department
where they appear to most advantage, it may safely be affirmed that, if
variety and interest of topics be regarded as well as style, Walpole’s
letters are unrivalled. It was only by degrees that Horace attained to
the perfection of easy engaging writing. His earlier letters betray
signs of considerable labour. It is said that a summary prepared
beforehand of one of his letters to Montagu was found in looking over
some of his correspondence. In later days he wrote with the greatest
facility, even carrying on a conversation the while. But he continued
to the last the habit of putting down on the backs of letters or slips
of paper, a note of facts, of news, of witticisms, or of anything he
wished not to forget for the amusement of his correspondents.