Country Life.--Ranelagh Gardens.--The Rebel Lords.--The
Earthquake.--A Frolic at Vauxhall.--Capture of a
Housebreaker.--Strawberry Hill.--The Beautiful
Gunnings.--Sterne.
We pass over such of Walpole’s letters as were written before his
return from his travels. They are interesting chiefly as parts of a
correspondence carried on by four young men of talent--Gray, West,
Ashton, and Horace himself--who, having been schoolfellows, had formed
what they called a quadruple alliance; and it must be owned that
Walpole in this correspondence shines less than Gray, who appears to
have been the mentor of the group, and less, too, perhaps than West,
whose early death disappointed great hopes. We omit, besides, all
reference to the letters in which Horace described the great Walpolean
battle, and traced the fortunes of the Broad Bottom Administration.
And, with few exceptions, his accounts of later political events have
also been excluded. The additions which his gossiping chronicles have
made to our knowledge of these matters have been incorporated in most
recent histories of the period; the extracts given in the present
volume are designed, as a rule, to illustrate the history of manners
rather than of politics.
From the moment of his return from the Continent until he lost his
father, Horace lived in the old statesman’s house, dividing his time,
for the most part, between the House of Commons and the amusements of
fashionable society. In the latter sphere, the Honourable Mr. Walpole
soon achieved success. Several years afterwards, he defined himself
as a dancing senator. His first season witnessed the opening of
Ranelagh Gardens, which at once became the resort of the great world.
Grave ministers and privy councillors were to be seen there in the
crowd of beauties and macaronis. Horace relates that he carried Sir
Robert thither just before attending him on his retreat to Houghton.
Constrained by filial duty, the young man revisited the family seat in
each of the two following years, but he went sorely against his will.
With his father’s coarse habits and boisterous manners he had nothing
in common; his feeble constitution was unequal to the sports of the
field, and the drinking that then accompanied them; nor could the
scenery of Norfolk, which he disliked, make him forget the excitements
of Westminster and Chelsea. Yet to these visits to Houghton his readers
owe some entertaining sketches of English country life in the middle of
the eighteenth century. Take, for instance, the following lively letter
addressed to John Chute, whose acquaintance he had made at Florence:
“Houghton, August 20, 1743.
“Indeed, my dear Sir, you certainly did not use to be stupid,
and till you give me more substantial proof that you are so,
I shall not believe it. As for your temperate diet and milk
bringing about such a metamorphosis, I hold it impossible.
I have such lamentable proofs every day before my eyes of
the stupifying qualities of beef, ale, and wine, that I have
contracted a most religious veneration for your spiritual
nouriture. Only imagine that I here every day see men, who
are mountains of roast beef, and only seem just roughly hewn
out into the outlines of human form, like the giant-rock at
Pratolino! I shudder when I see them brandish their knives
in act to carve, and look on them as savages that devour one
another. I should not stare at all more than I do, if yonder
Alderman at the lower end of the table was to stick his fork
into his neighbour’s jolly cheek, and cut a brave slice of
brown and fat. Why, I’ll swear I see no difference between a
country gentleman and a sirloin; whenever the first laughs,
or the latter is cut, there run out just the same streams
of gravy! Indeed, the sirloin does not ask quite so many
questions. I have an Aunt here, a family piece of goods, an old
remnant of inquisitive hospitality and economy, who, to all
intents and purposes, is as beefy as her neighbours. She wore
me so down yesterday with interrogatories, that I dreamt all
night she was at my ear with ‘who’s’ and ‘why’s,’ and ‘when’s’
and ‘where’s,’ till at last in my very sleep I cried out, ‘For
heaven’s sake, Madam, ask me no more questions!’
“Oh! my dear Sir, don’t you find that nine parts in ten of the
world are of no use but to make you wish yourself with that
tenth part? I am so far from growing used to mankind by living
amongst them, that my natural ferocity and wildness does but
every day grow worse. They tire me, they fatigue me; I don’t
know what to do with them; I don’t know what to say to them; I
fling open the windows, and fancy I want air; and when I get
by myself, I undress myself, and seem to have had people in
my pockets, in my plaits, and on my shoulders! I indeed find
this fatigue worse in the country than in town, because one can
avoid it there and has more resources; but it is there too. I
fear ’tis growing old; but I literally seem to have murdered
a man whose name was Ennui, for his ghost is ever before me.
They say there is no English word for _ennui_; I think you may
translate it most literally by what is called ‘entertaining
people,’ and ‘doing the honours:’ that is, you sit an hour with
somebody you don’t know and don’t care for, talk about the wind
and the weather, and ask a thousand foolish questions, which
all begin with, ‘I think you live a good deal in the country,’
or, ‘I think you don’t love this thing or that.’ Oh! ’tis
dreadful!
“I’ll tell you what is delightful--the Dominichin![17] My
dear Sir, if ever there was a Dominichin, if there was ever
an original picture, this is one. I am quite happy; for my
father is as much transported with it as I am. It is hung in
the gallery, where are all his most capital pictures, and he
himself thinks it beats all but the two Guidos. That of the
Doctors and the Octagon--I don’t know if you ever saw them?
What a chain of thought this leads me into! but why should I
not indulge it? I will flatter myself with your some time or
other passing a few days here with me. Why must I never expect
to see anything but Beefs in a gallery which would not yield
even to the Colonna?”
Again the following to Sir Horace Mann:
“Newmarket, Oct. 3, 1743.
“I am writing to you in an inn on the road to London. What a
paradise should I have thought this when I was in the Italian
inns! in a wide barn with four ample windows, which had nothing
more like glass than shutters and iron bars! no tester to the
bed, and the saddles and portmanteaus heaped on me to keep off
the cold. What a paradise did I think the inn at Dover when I
came back! and what magnificence were two-penny prints, salt
cellars, and boxes to hold the knives; but the _summum bonum_
was small-beer and the newspaper.
“‘I bless’d my stars, and call’d it luxury!’
“Who was the Neapolitan ambassadress[18] that could not live at
Paris, because there was no macaroni? Now am I relapsed into
all the dissatisfied repinement of a true English grumbling
voluptuary. I could find in my heart to write a Craftsman
against the Government, because I am not quite so much at my
ease as on my own sofa. I could persuade myself that it is
my Lord Carteret’s fault that I am only sitting in a common
arm-chair, when I would be lolling in a _péché-mortel_. How
dismal, how solitary, how scrub does this town look; and
yet it has actually a street of houses better than Parma or
Modena. Nay, the houses of the people of fashion, who come
hither for the races, are palaces to what houses in London
itself were fifteen years ago. People do begin to live again
now, and I suppose in a term we shall revert to York Houses,
Clarendon Houses, etc. But from that grandeur all the nobility
had contracted themselves to live in coops of a dining-room,
a dark back-room, with one eye in a corner, and a closet.
Think what London would be, if the chief houses were in it,
as in the cities in other countries, and not dispersed like
great rarity-plums in a vast pudding of country. Well, it is a
tolerable place as it is! Were I a physician, I would prescribe
nothing but recipe, CCCLXV drachm. Londin. Would you know why
I like London so much? Why, if the world must consist of so
many fools as it does, I choose to take them in the gross,
and not made into separate pills, as they are prepared in the
country. Besides, there is no being alone but in a metropolis:
the worst place in the world to find solitude is the country:
questions grow there, and that unpleasant Christian commodity,
neighbours. Oh! they are all good Samaritans, and do so pour
balms and nostrums upon one, if one has but the toothache, or
a journey to take, that they break one’s head. A journey to
take--ay! they talk over the miles to you, and tell you, you
will be late in. My Lord Lovel says, _John_ always goes two
hours in the dark in the morning, to avoid being one hour in
the dark in the evening. I was pressed to set out to-day before
seven: I did before nine; and here am I arrived at a quarter
past five, for the rest of the night.
“I am more convinced every day, that there is not only no
knowledge of the world out of a great city, but no decency,
no practicable society--I had almost said not a virtue. I
will only instance in modesty, which all _old Englishmen_ are
persuaded cannot exist within the atmosphere of Middlesex. Lady
Mary has a remarkable taste and knowledge of music, and can
sing--I don’t say, like your sister; but I am sure she would
be ready to die if obliged to sing before three people, or
before one with whom she is not intimate. The other day there
came to see her a Norfolk heiress; the young gentlewoman had
not been three hours in the house, and that for the first time
of her life, before she notified her talent for singing, and
invited herself upstairs, to Lady Mary’s harpsichord; where,
with a voice like thunder, and with as little harmony, she
sang to nine or ten people for an hour. ‘Was ever nymph like
Rossymonde?’--no, _d’honneur_. We told her she had a very
strong voice. ‘Why, Sir! my master says it is nothing to what
it was.’ My dear child, she brags abominably; if it had been a
thousandth degree louder, you must have heard it at Florence.”
Arrived in London, he is again in his element. “You must be informed,”
he writes to Conway, “that every night constantly I go to Ranelagh,
which has totally beat Vauxhall. Nobody goes anywhere else--everybody
goes there. My Lord Chesterfield is so fond of it, that he says he
has ordered all his letters to be directed thither. If you had never
seen it, I would make you a most pompous description of it, and tell
you how the floor is all of beaten princes--that you can’t set your
foot without treading on a Prince of Wales or Duke of Cumberland.
The company is universal: there is from his Grace of Grafton down to
children out of the Foundling Hospital--from my Lady Townshend to the
kitten--from my Lord Sandys[19] to your humble cousin and sincere
friend.”
From scenes like this Conway’s humble cousin was removed, though not
for long, by the last illness and death of Lord Orford. The Rebellion
of 1745, which quickly followed, produced only a momentary stir in
London. But the trials and executions of the rebel Lords, occurring
in the Capital itself, excited longer interest. We give Walpole’s
narrative of the execution of Lords Kilmarnock and Balmerino:
“Just before they came out of the Tower, Lord Balmerino drank
a bumper to King James’s health. As the clock struck ten,
they came forth on foot, Lord Kilmarnock all in black, his
hair unpowdered in a bag, supported by Forster, the great
Presbyterian, and by Mr. Home, a young clergyman, his friend.
Lord Balmerino followed, alone, in a blue coat, turned up with
red, (his rebellious regimentals,) a flannel waistcoat, and his
shroud beneath; their hearses following. They were conducted
to a house near the scaffold: the room forwards had benches
for spectators, in the second Lord Kilmarnock was put, and in
the third backwards Lord Balmerino: all three chambers hung
with black. Here they parted! Balmerino embraced the other,
and said, ‘My lord, I wish I could suffer for both!’ He had
scarce left him, before he desired again to see him, and then
asked him, ‘My Lord Kilmarnock, do you know anything of the
resolution taken in our army, the day before the battle of
Culloden, to put the English prisoners to death?’ He replied,
‘My lord, I was not present; but since I came hither, I have
had all the reason in the world to believe that there was such
order taken; and I hear the Duke has the pocket-book with the
order.’ Balmerino answered, ‘It was a lie raised to excuse
their barbarity to us.’--Take notice, that the Duke’s charging
this on Lord Kilmarnock (certainly on misinformation) decided
this unhappy man’s fate! The most now pretended is, that it
would have come to Lord Kilmarnock’s turn to have given the
word for the slaughter, as lieutenant-general, with the patent
for which he was immediately drawn into the rebellion, after
having been staggered by his wife, her mother, his own poverty,
and the defeat of Cope. He remained an hour and a half in
the house, and shed tears. At last he came to the scaffold,
certainly much terrified, but with a resolution that prevented
his behaving in the least meanly or unlike a gentleman.[20]
He took no notice of the crowd, only to desire that the baize
might be lifted up from the rails, that the mob might see the
spectacle. He stood and prayed some time with Forster, who wept
over him, exhorted and encouraged him. He delivered a long
speech to the Sheriff, and with a noble manliness stuck to
the recantation he had made at his trial; declaring he wished
that all who embarked in the same cause might meet the same
fate. He then took off his bag, coat and waistcoat, with great
composure, and after some trouble put on a napkin-cap, and
then several times tried the block; the executioner, who was
in white, with a white apron, out of tenderness concealing the
axe behind himself. At last the Earl knelt down, with a visible
unwillingness to depart, and after five minutes dropped his
handkerchief, the signal, and his head was cut off at once,
only hanging by a bit of skin, and was received in a scarlet
cloth by four of the undertaker’s men kneeling, who wrapped it
up and put it into the coffin with the body; orders having been
given not to expose the heads, as used to be the custom.
“The scaffold was immediately new-strewed with saw-dust, the
block new-covered, the executioner new-dressed, and a new axe
brought. Then came old Balmerino, treading with the air of
a general. As soon as he mounted the scaffold, he read the
inscription on his coffin, as he did again afterwards: he then
surveyed the spectators, who were in amazing numbers, even upon
masts of ships in the river; and pulling out his spectacles,
read a reasonable speech, which he delivered to the Sheriff,
and said, the young Pretender was so sweet a Prince, that flesh
and blood could not resist following him; and lying down to try
the block, he said, ‘If I had a thousand lives, I would lay
them all down here in the same cause.’ He said, if he had not
taken the sacrament the day before, he would have knocked down
Williamson, the lieutenant of the Tower, for his ill-usage of
him. He took the axe and felt it, and asked the headsman how
many blows he had given Lord Kilmarnock; and gave him three
guineas. Two clergymen, who attended him, coming up, he said,
‘No, gentlemen, I believe you have already done me all the
service you can.’ Then he went to the corner of the scaffold,
and called very loud for the warder, to give him his periwig,
which he took off, and put on a night-cap of Scotch plaid, and
then pulled off his coat and waistcoat and lay down; but being
told he was on the wrong side, vaulted round, and immediately
gave the sign by tossing up his arm, as if he were giving the
signal for battle. He received three blows, but the first
certainly took away all sensation. He was not a quarter of
an hour on the scaffold; Lord Kilmarnock above half a one.
Balmerino certainly died with the intrepidity of a hero, but
with the insensibility of one too. As he walked from his prison
to execution, seeing every window and top of house filled with
spectators, he cried out, ‘Look, look, how they are all piled
up like rotten oranges!’”
Horace was now in the full tide of fashion, not to say dissipation. For
a good many years the opera, plays, balls, routs, and other diversions
public and private occupy as much space in his letters as the war
or the peace, the debates in Parliament, and the intrigues of party
leaders. Mingled with topics of both kinds, we have journeys to visit
great houses in the country, schemes for their improvement, designs for
the Gothic villa at Strawberry Hill, abundance of scandal, and playful
satire on the follies of the day. Here is an amusing account of the
sensation produced by the earthquake which alarmed London in 1750. It
will be seen that the more serious feelings which the event awakened
were as ridiculous in Walpole’s eyes as any part of the panic:
“‘Portents and prodigies are grown so frequent,
That they have lost their name.’
“My text is not literally true; but as far as earthquakes go
towards lowering the price of wonderful commodities, to be sure
we are overstocked. We have had a second, much more violent
than the first; and you must not be surprised if by next post
you hear of a burning mountain sprung up in Smithfield. In the
night between Wednesday and Thursday last, (exactly a month
since the first shock,) the earth had a shivering fit between
one and two; but so slight that, if no more had followed, I
don’t believe it would have been noticed. I had been awake, and
had scarce dozed again--on a sudden I felt my bolster lift up
my head; I thought somebody was getting from under my bed, but
soon found it was a strong earthquake, that lasted near half
a minute, with a violent vibration and great roaring. I rang
my bell; my servant came in, frightened out of his senses: in
an instant we heard all the windows in the neighbourhood flung
up. I got up and found people running into the streets, but saw
no mischief done: there has been some; two old houses flung
down, several chimneys, and much china-ware. The bells rang in
several houses. Admiral Knowles, who has lived long in Jamaica,
and felt seven there, says this was more violent than any of
them: Francesco prefers it to the dreadful one at Leghorn. The
wise say, that if we have not rain soon, we shall certainly
have more. Several people are going out of town, for it has
nowhere reached above ten miles from London: they say, they are
not frightened, but that it is such fine weather, ‘Why, one
can’t help going into the country!’ The only visible effect
it has had, was on the ridotto, at which, being the following
night, there were but four hundred people. A parson, who came
into White’s the morning of earthquake the first, and heard
bets laid on whether it was an earthquake or the blowing up of
powder-mills, went away exceedingly scandalised, and said, ‘I
protest, they are such an impious set of people, that I believe
if the last trumpet was to sound, they would bet puppet-show
against Judgment.’ If we get any nearer still to the torrid
zone, I shall pique myself on sending you a present of cedrati
and orange-flower water: I am already planning a _terreno_ for
Strawberry Hill.…
“You will not wonder so much at our earthquakes as at the
effects they have had. All the women in town have taken them
up upon the foot of _Judgments_; and the clergy, who have had
no windfalls of a long season, have driven horse and foot
into this opinion. There has been a shower of sermons and
exhortations: Secker,[21] the jesuitical Bishop of Oxford,
began the mode. He heard the women were all going out of town
to avoid the next shock; and so, for fear of losing his Easter
offerings, he set himself to advise them to await God’s good
pleasure in fear and trembling. But what is more astonishing,
Sherlock,[22] who has much better sense, and much less of the
Popish confessor, has been running a race with him for the
old ladies, and has written a pastoral letter, of which ten
thousand were sold in two days; and fifty thousand have been
subscribed for, since the two first editions.
“I told you the women talked of going out of town: several
families are literally gone, and many more going to-day and
to-morrow; for what adds to the absurdity is, that the second
shock having happened exactly a month after the former, it
prevails that there will be a third on Thursday next, another
month, which is to swallow up London. I am almost ready to
burn my letter now I have begun it, lest you should think I am
laughing at you: but it is so true, that Arthur of White’s told
me last night, that he should put off the last ridotto, which
was to be on Thursday, because he hears nobody would come to
it. I have advised several who are going to keep their next
earthquake in the country, to take the bark for it, as it is so
periodic. Dick Leveson and Mr. Rigby, who had supped and stayed
late at Bedford House the other night, knocked at several
doors, and in a watchman’s voice cried, ‘Past four o’clock, and
a dreadful earthquake!’ But I have done with this ridiculous
panic: two pages were too much to talk of it.…
“I had not time to finish my letter on Monday. I return to the
earthquake, which I had mistaken; it is to be to-day. This
frantic terror prevails so much, that within these three days
seven hundred and thirty coaches have been counted passing Hyde
Park Corner, with whole parties removing into the country. Here
is a good advertisement which I cut out of the papers to-day:
“‘On Monday next will be published (price 6_d._) A true
and exact List of all the Nobility and Gentry who have
left, or shall leave, this place through fear of another
Earthquake.’
“Several women have made earthquake gowns; that is, warm
gowns to sit out of doors all to-night. These are of the more
courageous. One woman, still more heroic, is come to town on
purpose; she says, all her friends are in London, and she will
not survive them. But what will you think of Lady Catherine
Pelham, Lady Frances Arundel, and Lord and Lady Galway, who go
this evening to an inn ten miles out of town, where they are to
play at brag till five in the morning, and then come back--I
suppose, to look for the bones of their husbands and families
under the rubbish? The prophet of all this (next to the Bishop
of London) is a trooper of Lord Delawar’s, who was yesterday
sent to Bedlam. His _colonel_ sent to the man’s wife, and asked
her if her husband had ever been disordered before. She cried,
‘Oh dear! my lord, he is not mad now; if your _lordship_ would
but get any _sensible_ man to examine him, you would find he is
quite in his right mind.’…
“I did not doubt but you would be diverted with the detail of
absurdities that were committed after the earthquake: I could
have filled more paper with such relations, if I had not feared
tiring you. We have swarmed with sermons, essays, relations,
poems, and exhortations on that subject. One Stukely, a parson,
has accounted for it, and I think prettily, by electricity--but
that is the fashionable cause, and everything is resolved into
electrical appearances, as formerly everything was accounted
for by Descartes’s vortices, and Sir Isaac’s gravitation.
But they all take care, after accounting for the earthquake
systematically, to assure you that still it was nothing less
than a judgment. Dr. Barton, the Rector of St. Andrew’s,
was the only sensible, or at least honest divine, upon the
occasion. When some women would have had him pray to them
in his parish church against the intended shock, he excused
himself on having a great cold. ‘And besides,’ said he, ‘you
may go to St. James’s Church; the Bishop of Oxford is to preach
there all night about earthquakes.’ Turner, a great china-man,
at the corner of next street, had a jar cracked by the shock:
he originally asked ten guineas for the pair: he now asks
twenty, ‘because it is the only jar in Europe that has been
cracked by an earthquake.’”
Not long after the earthquake, we find Walpole engaged in a frolic at
Vauxhall, though in the best company, Lady Caroline Petersham, his
hostess on the occasion, being the dashing wife[23] of Lord Petersham,
eldest son of the Earl of Harrington, who had been Secretary of State.
We insert Walpole’s history of the affair for the reason which he gives
for telling it. It is part of a letter to George Montagu. After a jest
about the habits of Buxton, where his friend’s sister was then drinking
the waters, the writer proceeds:
“As jolly and as abominable a life as she may have been
leading, I defy all her enormities to equal a party of pleasure
that I had t’other night. I shall relate it to you to show you
the manners of the age, which are always as entertaining to a
person fifty miles off as to one born an hundred and fifty
years after the time. I had a card from Lady Caroline Petersham
to go with her to Vauxhall. I went accordingly to her house,
and found her and the little Ashe, or the Pollard Ashe, as they
call her; they had just finished their last layer of red, and
looked as handsome as crimson could make them.… We issued into
the Mall to assemble our company, which was all the town, if
we could get it; for just so many had been summoned, except
Harry Vane, whom we met by chance. We mustered the Duke of
Kingston, whom Lady Caroline says she has been trying for these
seven years; but alas! his beauty is at the fall of the leaf;
Lord March, Mr. Whitehed, a pretty Miss Beauclerc, and a very
foolish Miss Sparre. These two damsels were trusted by their
mothers for the first time of their lives to the matronly care
of Lady Caroline. As we sailed up the Mall with all our colours
flying, Lord Petersham,[24] with his hose and legs twisted to
every point of crossness, strode by us on the outside, and
repassed again on the return. At the end of the Mall she called
to him; he would not answer: she gave a familiar spring, and,
between laugh and confusion, ran up to him, ‘My lord, my lord!
why, you don’t see us!’ We advanced at a little distance,
not a little awkward in expectation how all this would end,
for my lord never stirred his hat, or took the least notice
of anybody: she said, ‘Do you go with us, or are _you going
anywhere else_?’--‘I don’t go with you, I am going _somewhere
else_;’ and away he stalked, as sulky as a ghost that nobody
will speak to first. We got into the best order we could, and
marched to our barge, with a boat of French horns attending,
and little Ashe singing. We paraded some time up the river,
and at last debarked at Vauxhall: there, if we had so pleased,
we might have had the vivacity of our party increased by a
quarrel; for a Mrs. Lloyd,[25] who is supposed to be married to
Lord Haddington, seeing the two girls following Lady Petersham
and Miss Ashe, said aloud, ‘Poor girls, I am sorry to see them
in such bad company!’ Miss Sparre, who desired nothing so much
as the fun of seeing a duel--a thing which, though she is
fifteen, she has never been so lucky as to see,--took due pains
to make Lord March resent this; but he, who is very lively and
agreeable, laughed her out of this charming frolic with a great
deal of humour. Here we picked up Lord Granby.… If all the
adventures don’t conclude as you expect in the beginning of a
paragraph, you must not wonder, for I am not making a history,
but relating one strictly as it happened, and I think with full
entertainment enough to content you. At last, we assembled
in our booth, Lady Caroline in the front, with the vizor of
her hat erect, and looking gloriously jolly and handsome. She
had fetched my brother Orford from the next box, where he was
enjoying himself with his _petite partie_, to help us to mince
chickens. We minced seven chickens into a china dish, which
Lady Caroline stewed over a lamp with three pats of butter
and a flagon of water, stirring, and rattling, and laughing,
and we every minute expecting to have the dish fly about our
ears. She had brought Betty, the fruit-girl, with hampers of
strawberries and cherries from Rogers’s, and made her wait
upon us, and then made her sup by us at a little table. The
conversation was no less lively than the whole transaction.
There was a Mr. O’Brien arrived from Ireland, who would get the
Duchess of Manchester from Mr. Hussey,[26] if she were still at
liberty. I took up the biggest hautboy in the dish, and said
to Lady Caroline, ‘Madam, Miss Ashe desires you would eat this
O’Brien strawberry;’ she replied immediately, ‘I won’t, you
hussey.’ You may imagine the laugh this reply occasioned. After
the tempest was a little calmed, the Pollard said, ‘Now, how
anybody would spoil this story that was to repeat it, and say,
I won’t, you jade!’ In short, the whole air of our party was
sufficient, as you will easily imagine, to take up the whole
attention of the garden; so much so, that from eleven o’clock
till half an hour after one we had the whole concourse round
our booth: at last, they came into the little gardens of each
booth on the sides of ours, till Harry Vane took up a bumper,
and drank their healths, and was proceeding to treat them with
still greater freedom. It was three o’clock before we got home.”
Our next extract displays even better than the last our author’s skill
in telling a story. It also contains some pleasant references to his
life at Strawberry Hill:
“I have just been in London for two or three days, to fetch an
adventure, and am returned to my hill and my castle. I can’t
say I lost my labour, as you shall hear. Last Sunday night,
being as wet a night as you shall see in a summer’s day, about
half an hour after twelve, I was just come home from White’s,
and undressing to step into bed, when I heard Harry, who you
know lies forwards, roar out, ‘Stop thief!’ and run down
stairs. I ran after him. Don’t be frightened; I have not lost
one enamel, nor bronze, nor have been shot through the head
again. A gentlewoman, who lives at Governor Pitt’s, next door
but one to me, and where Mr. Bentley used to live, was going to
bed too, and heard people breaking into Mr. Freeman’s house,
who, like some acquaintance of mine in Albemarle Street, goes
out of town, locks up his doors, and leaves the community to
watch his furniture. N.B. It was broken open but two years
ago, and I and all the chairmen vow they shall steal his house
away another time, before we will trouble our heads about it.
Well, madam called out ‘Watch!’ two men, who were sentinels,
ran away, and Harry’s voice after them. Down came I, and with
a posse of chairmen and watchmen found the third fellow in the
area of Mr. Freeman’s house. Mayhap you have seen all this
in the papers, little thinking who commanded the detachment.
Harry fetched a blunderbuss to invite the thief up. One of the
chairmen, who was drunk, cried, ‘Give me the blunderbuss, I’ll
shoot him!’ But as the general’s head was a little cooler, he
prevented military execution, and took the prisoner, without
bloodshed, intending to make his triumphal entry into the
metropolis of Twickenham with his captive tied to the wheels
of his post-chaise. I find my style rises so much with the
recollection of my victory, that I don’t know how to descend
to tell you that the enemy was a carpenter, and had a leather
apron on. The next step was to share my glory with my friends.
I despatched a courier to White’s for George Selwyn, who, you
know, loves nothing upon earth so well as a criminal, except
the execution of him. It happened very luckily that the drawer,
who received my message, has very lately been robbed himself,
and had the wound fresh in his memory. He stalked up into the
club-room, stopped short, and with a hollow trembling voice
said, ‘Mr. Selwyn! Mr. Walpole’s compliments to you, and he
has got a housebreaker for you!’ A squadron immediately came
to reinforce me, and having summoned Moreland with the keys of
the fortress, we marched into the house to search for more of
the gang. Col. Seabright with his sword drawn went first, and
then I, exactly the figure of Robinson Crusoe, with a candle
and lanthorn in my hand, a carbine upon my shoulder, my hair
wet and about my ears, and in a linen night-gown and slippers.
We found the kitchen shutters forced, but not finished; and
in the area a tremendous bag of tools, a hammer large enough
for the hand of a Jael, and six chisels! All which _opima
spolia_, as there was no temple of Jupiter Capitolinus in
the neighbourhood, I was reduced to offer on the altar of Sir
Thomas Clarges.
“I am now, as I told you, returned to my plough with as much
humility and pride as any of my great predecessors. We lead
quite a rural life, have had a sheep-shearing, a hay-making,
a syllabub under the cow, and a fishing of three gold-fish
out of Poyang,[27] for a present to Madam Clive. They breed
with me excessively, and are grown to the size of small perch.
Everything grows, if tempests would let it; but I have had two
of my largest trees broke to-day with the wind, and another
last week. I am much obliged to you for the flower you offer
me, but by the description it is an Austrian rose, and I have
several now in bloom. Mr. Bentley is with me, finishing the
drawings for Gray’s Odes; there are some mandarin-cats fishing
for gold-fish, which will delight you.…
“You will be pleased with a story of Lord Bury, that is come
from Scotland: he is quartered at Inverness; the magistrates
invited him to an entertainment with fire-works, which they
intended to give on the morrow for the Duke’s birth-day. He
thanked them, assured them he would represent their zeal to
his Royal Highness; but he did not doubt it would be more
agreeable to him, if they postponed it to the day following,
the anniversary of the battle of Culloden. They stared, said
they could not promise on their own authority, but would
go and consult their body. They returned, told him it was
unprecedented, and could not be complied with. Lord Bury
replied, he was sorry they had not given a negative at once,
for he had mentioned it to his soldiers, who would not bear a
disappointment, and was afraid it would provoke them to some
outrage upon the town. This did;--they celebrated Culloden.…”
A few years later Strawberry Hill had attained its greatest celebrity.
In June, 1759, Walpole writes:
“Strawberry Hill is grown a perfect Paphos; it is the land of
beauties. On Wednesday the Duchesses of Hamilton and Richmond,
and Lady Ailesbury dined there; the two latter stayed all
night. There never was so pretty a sight as to see them all
three sitting in the shell; a thousand years hence, when I
begin to grow old, if that can ever be, I shall talk of that
event, and tell young people how much handsomer the women of
my time were than they will be then: I shall say, ‘Women alter
now; I remember Lady Ailesbury looking handsomer than her
daughter, the pretty Duchess of Richmond, as they were sitting
in the shell on my terrace with the Duchess of Hamilton, one
of the famous Gunnings.’ Yesterday t’other more famous Gunning
[Lady Coventry] dined there. She has made a friendship with my
charming niece, to disguise her jealousy of the new Countess’s
beauty: there were they two, their lords, Lord Buckingham, and
Charlotte. You will think that I did not choose men for my
parties so well as women. I don’t include Lord Waldegrave in
this bad election.”
The famous Gunnings referred to in the last passage figure often
in Walpole’s letters. These two ladies were the daughters of Irish
parents, and though of noble blood on the mother’s side, are said to
have been originally so poor that they had thought of being actresses;
and when they were first presented at Dublin Castle, they were supplied
with clothes for the occasion by Mrs. Woffington, the actress. On
their arrival in England, their beauty created such an impression,
that they were followed by crowds in the Park and at Vauxhall. We even
read that Maria, the elder, some years after her marriage, having
been mobbed in the Park, was attended by a guard of soldiers. Maria
married the Earl of Coventry, and died many years before her husband.
Her younger sister, Elizabeth, who was reckoned the less beautiful of
the two, married, first, the Duke of Hamilton, and, secondly, Colonel
John Campbell, afterwards Duke of Argyll, for whom she had refused
the Duke of Bridgewater. The penniless Irish girl, Elizabeth Gunning,
was the mother of two Dukes of Hamilton and two Dukes of Argyll.
Walpole’s niece, of whom he suggests Lady Coventry was jealous, was a
natural daughter of his brother, Sir Edward Walpole, and was then the
bride of the Earl of Waldegrave, after whose death she became Duchess
of Gloucester, by a clandestine marriage with George III.’s younger
brother. By her first husband she had three daughters, the Ladies
Waldegrave, whose portraits, by Reynolds, are included in this volume.
Before we leave that portion of Horace Walpole’s correspondence which
belongs to the reign of George II., we will give one letter of a
character different from those we have previously selected. It is
addressed to Sir David Dalrymple, afterwards Lord Hailes, and deals
entirely with literary subjects. The “Irish poems” referred to in
it are, of course, the first fragments of “Ossian,” then recently
published by Macpherson:
“Strawberry Hill, April 4, 1760.
“As I have very little at present to trouble you with myself, I
should have deferred writing till a better opportunity, if it
were not to satisfy the curiosity of a friend; a friend whom
you, Sir, will be glad to have made curious, as you originally
pointed him out as a likely person to be charmed with the old
Irish poetry you sent me. It is Mr. Gray, who is an enthusiast
about those poems, and begs me to put the following queries to
you; which I will do in his own words, and I may say truly,
_Poeta loquitur_.
“‘I am so charmed with the two specimens of Erse poetry, that I
cannot help giving you the trouble to inquire a little farther
about them, and should wish to see a few lines of the original,
that I may form some slight idea of the language, the measures,
and the rhythm.
“‘Is there anything known of the author or authors, and of what
antiquity are they supposed to be?
“‘Is there any more to be had of equal beauty, or at all
approaching to it?
“‘I have been often told, that the poem called Hardykanute[28]
(which I always admired and still admire) was the work of
somebody that lived a few years ago. This I do not at all
believe, though it has evidently been retouched in places by
some modern hand; but, however, I am authorised by this report
to ask, whether the two poems in question are certainly antique
and genuine. I make this inquiry in quality of an antiquary,
and am not otherwise concerned about it; for if I were sure
that anyone now living in Scotland had written them, to divert
himself and laugh at the credulity of the world, I would
undertake a journey into the Highlands only for the pleasure of
seeing him.’
“You see, Sir, how easily you may make our greatest southern
bard travel northward to visit a brother. The young translator
has nothing to do but to own a forgery, and Mr. Gray is ready
to pack up his lyre, saddle Pegasus, and set out directly. But
seriously, he, Mr. Mason, my Lord Lyttelton, and one or two
more, whose taste the world allows, are in love with your Erse
elegies: I cannot say in general they are so much admired--but
Mr. Gray alone is worth satisfying.
“The ‘Siege of Aquileia,’ of which you ask, pleased less than
Mr. Home’s other plays.[29] In my own opinion, ‘Douglas’ far
exceeds both the others. Mr. Home seems to have a beautiful
talent for painting genuine nature and the manners of his
country. There was so little of nature in the manners of both
Greeks and Romans, that I do not wonder at his success being
less brilliant when he tried those subjects; and, to say the
truth, one is a little weary of them. At present, nothing is
talked of, nothing admired, but what I cannot help calling a
very insipid and tedious performance: it is a kind of novel,
called ‘The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy;’ the great
humour of which consists in the whole narration always going
backwards. I can conceive a man saying that it would be droll
to write a book in that manner, but have no notion of his
persevering in executing it. It makes one smile two or three
times at the beginning, but in recompense makes one yawn for
two hours. The characters are tolerably kept up, but the
humour is for ever attempted and missed. The best thing in it
is a Sermon, oddly coupled with a good deal of indecency, and
both the composition of a clergyman. The man’s head, indeed,
was a little turned before, now topsy-turvy with his success
and fame. Dodsley has given him six hundred and fifty pounds
for the second edition and two more volumes (which I suppose
will reach backwards to his great-great-grandfather); Lord
Fauconberg, a donative[30] of one hundred and sixty pounds a
year; and Bishop Warburton gave him a purse of gold and this
compliment (which happened to be a contradiction), ‘that it
was quite an original composition, and in the true Cervantic
vein:’ the only copy that ever was an original, except in
painting, where they all pretend to be so. Warburton, however,
not content with this, recommended the book to the bench of
bishops, and told them Mr. Sterne, the author, was the English
Rabelais. They had never heard of such a writer. Adieu!”
[Illustration: _Sir Joshua Reynolds. Pinx._ _A. Dawson. Ph. Sc._ _E.
Fisher. Sc._
_Lawrence Sterne._]