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.
Humourist as he was, and too often swayed by prejudice, no man had a
sounder judgment than Walpole when he gave his reason fair play. In his
estimate of public events, he sometimes displayed unusual sagacity.
Though his dislike of Lord Chatham led him to disparage the efforts of
the old man eloquent to avert the American War--efforts which filled
Franklin with admiration--he yet foresaw quite as clearly as Chatham
the disastrous results of that contest. The celebrated speeches which
fell dead on the ear of Parliament had no more effect upon Walpole;
but Walpole did not need to be moved by them, for he was convinced
already. “This interlude,” he writes to Conway, who was then in Paris,
“would be entertaining, if the scene was not so totally gloomy. The
Cabinet have determined on civil war.… There is food for meditation!
Will the French you converse with be civil and keep their countenances?
Pray remember it is not decent to be dancing at Paris, when there is a
civil war in your own country. You would be like the country squire,
who passed by with his hounds as the battle of Edgehill began.” The
letter in which these words occur is dated January 22, 1775. Three
weeks later, the writer adds: “The war with our Colonies, which is now
declared, is a proof how much influence jargon has on human actions.
A war on our own trade is _popular_![73] Both Houses are as eager
for it as they were for conquering the Indies--which acquits them a
little of rapine, when they are as glad of what will impoverish them
as of what they fancied was to enrich them.” His sympathy, as well
as his judgment, was on the side of the Colonies. On September 7th,
1775, he writes to Mann: “You will not be surprised that I am what
I always was, a zealot for liberty in every part of the globe, and
consequently that I most heartily wish success to the Americans. They
have hitherto not made _one_ blunder; and the Administration have made
a thousand, besides the two capital ones, of first provoking, and
then of uniting the Colonies. The latter seem to have as good heads
as hearts, as we want both.” And on the 11th: “The Parliament is to
meet on the 20th of next month, and vote twenty-six thousand seamen!
What a paragraph of blood is there! With what torrents must liberty be
preserved in America! In England what can save it?… What prospect of
comfort has a true Englishman? Why, that Philip II. miscarried against
the boors of Holland, and that Louis XIV. could not replace James II.
on the throne!” And when Fortune declared herself on the side of the
Colonists, Horace, unmoved by the reverses of his country, steadily
preserved the same tone. “We have been horribly the aggressors,” he
wrote at the end of 1777, “and I must rejoice that the Americans are to
be free, as they had a right to be, and as I am sure they have shown
they deserve to be.” But the calamities and disgraces of the time
weighed heavily on his spirits. His correspondence throughout 1777 and
the two following years is full of the American War. He recurs to the
subject again and again, and harps upon it continually. It does not
fall within our plan to quote his criticisms and reflections on the
conduct of Lord North and his opponents. They are generally as acute
and sensible as they are always vigorous and lively. The chief mistake
one remarks in them is, that they assume the victory of America to mean
the ruin of England’s Empire. The writer saw British troops everywhere
defeated, retreating, laying down their arms; France allying herself
with the rebellious Colonies, and threatening England with invasion;
Spain joining in the hostile league; and Ireland showing fresh signs of
disaffection: what wonder if he was tempted to predict that we should
“moulder piecemeal into our insignificant islandhood?” In May, 1779,
he writes: “Our oppressive partiality to two or three manufacturing
towns in England has revolted the Irish, and they have entered into
combinations against purchasing English goods in terms more offensive
than the first associations of the Colonies. In short, we have for four
or five years displayed no alacrity or address, but in provoking our
friends and furnishing weapons of annoyance to our enemies; and the
unhappy facility with which the Parliament has subscribed to all these
oversights has deceived the Government into security, and encouraged
it to pull almost the whole fabric on its own head. We can escape but
by concessions and disgrace; and when we attain peace, the terms will
prove that Parliamentary majorities have voted away the wisdom, glory,
and power of the nation.”
Before the date of this extract, the pressure of the war had made
itself felt in English society. In the preceding summer, Horace had
written to Mason, then engaged on his poem of “The English Garden”:
“Distress is already felt; one hears of nothing but of the
want of money; one sees it every hour. I sit in my Blue
window, and miss nine in ten of the carriages that used to
pass before it. Houses sell for nothing, which, two years
ago, nabobs would have given lacs of diamonds for. Sir Gerard
Vanneck’s house and beautiful terrace on the Thames, with forty
acres of ground, and valued by his father at twenty thousand
pounds, was bought in last week at six thousand. Richmond is
deserted; an hundred and twenty coaches used to be counted
at the church-door--there are now twenty. I know nobody that
grows rich but Margaret. This Halcyon season has brought her
more customers than ever, and were anything to happen to her,
I have thoughts, like greater folk, of being my own minister,
and showing my house myself. I don’t wonder _your Garden_ has
grown in such a summer, and I am glad it has, that our taste
in gardening may be immortal in verse, for I doubt it has seen
its best days! Your poem may transplant it to America, whither
our best works will be carried now, as our worst used to be. Do
not you feel satisfied in knowing you shall be a classic in a
free and rising empire? Swell all your ideas, give a loose to
all your poetry; your lines will be repeated on the banks of
the Orinoko; and which is another comfort, Ossian’s ‘Dirges’
will never be known there. Poor Strawberry must sink _in fæce
Romuli_; that melancholy thought silences me.”
Besides being vexed at the state of public affairs, Walpole suffered
much about this time from the gout, and from family troubles. His
nephew, Lord Orford, having recovered from a second attack of insanity,
resolved on selling the pictures at Houghton. In February, 1779, Horace
writes to Lady Ossory: “The pictures at Houghton, I hear, and I fear,
are sold: what can I say? I do not like even to think on it. It is the
most signal mortification to my idolatry for my father’s memory, that
it could receive. It is stripping the temple of his glory and of his
affection. A madman excited by rascals has burnt his Ephesus. I must
never cast a thought towards Norfolk more; nor will hear my nephew’s
name if I can avoid it. Him I can only pity; though it is strange he
should recover any degree of sense, and never any of feeling!” The
transaction was not, in fact, at that moment concluded. In the course
of the same year, however, the whole gallery was sold to the Empress
of Russia for a little more than forty thousand pounds. Walpole did
not think the bargain a bad one, though he would rather, he said, the
pictures were sold to the Crown of England than to that of Russia,
where they would be burnt in a wooden palace on the first insurrection,
while in England they would still be Sir Robert Walpole’s Collection.
“But,” he added, “my grief is that they are not to remain at Houghton,
where he placed them and wished them to remain.”
While grieving over his father’s pictures, Horace found himself
involved in a Chancery suit. The lease of his town house in Arlington
Street running out about this time, he had bought a larger house
in Berkeley Square. Difficulties, however, hindered the completion
of the purchase, and the affair went into Chancery. Fortunately,
under Walpole’s management, the suit became a friendly one. “I have
persisted in complimenting and flattering my parties, till by dint of
complaisance and respect I have brought them to pique themselves on
equal attentions; so that, instead of a lawsuit, it has more the air
of a treaty between two little German princes who are mimicking their
betters only to display their titular dignities. His Serene Highness,
Colonel Bishopp, is the most obsequious and devoted servant of my
Serenity the Landgrave of Strawberry.” The judge was equally agreeable.
“Yesterday I received notice from my attorney that the Master of the
Rolls has, with epigrammatic despatch, heard my cause, and pronounced a
decree in my favour. Surely, the whip of the new driver, Lord Thurlow,
has pervaded all the hard wheels of the law, and set them galloping.
I must go to town on Monday, and get my money ready for payment,--not
from impatience to enter on my premises, but though the French declare
they are coming to burn London, bank-bills are still more combustible
than houses, and should my banker’s shop be reduced to ashes, I might
have a mansion to pay for, and nothing to pay with. If both were
consumed, at least I should not be in debt.” The purchase-money paid,
and possession taken, the next step was to remove to Berkeley Square.
In October, 1779, he writes to Lady Ossory, whose sister-in-law,[74]
the newly-married Countess of Shelburne, was just established in the
same square:
“My constitution, which set out under happy stars, seems to
keep pace with the change of constellations, and fail like
the various members of the empire. I am now confined with
the rheumatism in my left arm, and find no benefit from our
woollen manufacture, which I flattered myself would always be
a resource. On Monday I shall remove to Shelburne Square,
and watch impatiently the opening of the Countess’s windows;
though with all her and her Earl’s goodness to me, I doubt I
shall profit little of either. I do not love to be laughed at
or pitied, and dread exposing myself to numbers of strange
servants and young people, who wonder what Methuselah does
out of his coffin. Lady Blandford is gone; her antediluvian
dowagers dispersed; amongst whom I was still reckoned a lively
young creature. Wisdom I left forty years ago to Welbore Ellis,
and must not pretend to rival him now, when he is grown so
rich by the semblance of it. Since I cannot then act old age
with dignity, I must keep myself out of the way, and weep for
England in a corner.”
The Lady Blandford mentioned in this passage was a widow who had lived
within a few miles of Horace, at Sheen, and had recently died. During
her illness, Walpole, in writing to Lady Ossory, had dwelt on the Roman
fortitude with which the sick lady supported her sufferings, and on the
devotion shown to her by her friend, Miss Stapylton. He added in his
usual strain: “Miss Stapylton has £30,000, and Lady Blandford nothing.
I wish we had some of these exalted characters in breeches! These two
women shine like the last sparkles in a piece of burnt paper, which the
children call the parson and clerk. Alas! the rest of our old ladies
are otherwise employed; they are at the head of fleets and armies.”
Walpole at this moment was altogether out of heart. “I see myself a
poor invalid, threatened with a painful and irksome conclusion, and
mortified at seeing the decay of my country more rapid than my own.”
But he could still keep up a tone of gaiety. In November he wrote to
Mann:
“I went this morning to Zoffani’s to see his picture or
portrait of the ‘Tribune at Florence;’ and, though my letter
will not put on its boots these three days, I must write
while the subject is fresh in my head. The first thing I
looked for, was _you_--and I could not find you. At last I
said, ‘Pray, who is _that_ Knight of the Bath?’--‘Sir Horace
Mann.’--‘Impossible!’ said I. My dear Sir, how you have left
me in the lurch!--you are grown fat, jolly, young; while I am
become the skeleton of Methuselah.…
“Well! but are you really so portly a personage as Zoffani has
represented you? I envy you. Everybody can grow younger and
plump, but I. My brother, Sir Edward Walpole, is as sleek as an
infant, and, though seventy-three, is still quite beautiful. He
has a charming colour, and not a wrinkle. I told him, when Lord
Orford[75] was in danger, that he might think what he would,
but I would carry him into the Court of Chancery, and put it to
the consciences of the judges, which of us two was the elder by
eleven years?”
And two days later we have the following amusing letter to Lady Ossory:
“Berkeley Square, Nov. 14, 1779.
“I must be equitable; I must do the world justice; there are
really some hopes of its amendment; I have not heard one
lie these four days; but then, indeed, I have heard nothing.
Well, then, why do you write? Stay, Madam; my letter is not
got on horseback yet; nor shall it mount till it has something
to carry. It is my duty, as your gazetteer, to furnish you
with news, true or false, and you would certainly dismiss
me if I did not, at least, tell you something that was
impossible. The whole nation is content with hearing anything
new, let it be ever so bad. Tell the first man you meet that
Ireland has revolted; away he runs, and tells everybody he
meets,--everybody tells everybody, and the next morning they
ask for more news. Well, Jamaica is taken; oh, Jamaica is
taken. Next day, what news? Why, Paul Jones is landed in
Rutlandshire, and has carried off the Duchess of Devonshire,
and a squadron is fitting out to prevent it; and I am to have a
pension for having given the earliest intelligence; and there
is to be a new farce called _The Rutlandshire Invasion_, and
the King and Queen will come to town to see it, and the Prince
of Wales will not, because he is not old enough to understand
pantomimes.[76]
“Well, Madam; having despatched the nation and its serious
affairs, one may chat over private matters. I have seen Lord
Macartney, and do affirm that he is shrunk, and has a _soupçon_
of black that was not wont to reside in his complexion.…
“Mr. Beauclerk has built a library in Great Russell Street,
Bloomsbury, that reaches half-way to Highgate. Everybody goes
to see it; it has put the Museum’s nose quite out of joint.
“Now I return to politics. Sir Ralph Payne and Dr. Johnson are
answering General Burgoyne, and they say the words are to be so
long that the reply must be printed in a pamphlet as long as an
atlas, but in an Elzevir type, or the first sentence would fill
twenty pages in octavo. You may depend upon the truth of it,
for Mr. Cumberland told it in confidence to one with whom he is
not at all acquainted, who told it to one whom I never saw; so
you see, Madam, there is no questioning the authority.
“I will not answer so positively for what I am going to tell
you, as I had it only from the person himself. The Duke of
Gloucester was at Bath with the Margrave of Anspach. Lord
Nugent came up and would talk to the Duke, and then asked if
he might take the liberty of inviting his Royal Highness to
dinner? I think you will admire the quickness and propriety of
the answer:--the Duke replied, ‘My Lord, I make no acquaintance
but in London,’ where you know, Madam, he only has levees. The
Irishman continued to talk to him even after that rebuff. He
certainly hoped to have been very artful--to have made court
there, and yet not have offended anywhere else[77] by not going
in town, which would have been a gross affront to the Duke, had
he accepted the invitation.
“I was at Blackheath t’other morning, where I was grieved.
There are eleven Vander Werffs that cost an immense sum: half
of them are spoiled since Sir Gregory Page’s death by servants
neglecting to shut out the sun. There is another room hung
with the history of Cupid and Psyche, in twelve small pictures
by Luca Giordano, that are sweet. There is, too, a glorious
Claude, some fine Teniers, a noble Rubens and Snyders, two
beautiful Philippo Lauras, and a few more,--and several very
bad. The house is magnificent, but wounded me; it was built on
the model of Houghton, except that three rooms are thrown into
a gallery.
“Now I have tapped the chapter of pictures, you must go and see
Zoffani’s ‘Tribune at Florence,’ which is an astonishing piece
of work, with a vast deal of merit.
“There too you will see a delightful piece of Wilkes
looking--no, squinting tenderly at his daughter. It is a
caricature of the Devil acknowledging Miss Sin in Milton. I do
not know why, but they are under a palm-tree, which has not
grown in a free country for some centuries.
“15th.
“With all my pretences, there is no more veracity in me than
in a Scotch runner for the Ministry. Here must I send away my
letter without a word in it worth a straw. All the good news
I know is, that a winter is come in that will send armies and
navies to bed, and one may stir out in November without fear
of being tanned. I am heartily glad that we shall keep Jamaica
and the East Indies another year, that one may have time to
lay in a stock of tea and sugar for the rest of one’s days. I
think only of the necessaries of life, and do not care a rush
for gold and diamonds, and the pleasure of stealing logwood.
The friends of Government, who have thought of nothing but
of reducing us to our islandhood, and bringing us back to
the simplicity of ancient times, when we were the frugal,
temperate, virtuous old English, ask how we did before tea and
sugar were known. Better, no doubt; but as I did not happen
to be born two or three hundred years ago, I cannot recollect
precisely whether diluted acorns, and barley bread spread with
honey, made a very luxurious breakfast.
“I was last night at Lady Lucan’s to hear the Misses Bingham
sing Jomelli’s ‘Miserere,’ set for two voices. There were only
the Duchess of Bedford, Lady Bute … and half a dozen Irish.…
The Duchess told me, that a habit-maker returned from Ampthill
is gone stark in love with Lady Ossory, on fitting her with the
new dress--I think they call it a Levite--and says he never
saw so glorious a figure. I know that; and so you would be in
a hop-sack, Madam--but where is the grace in a man’s nightgown
bound round with a belt?
“Good-night, Lady! I hope I shall have something to tell you in
my next, that my letter may be shorter.
“Codicil to my to-day’s:--viz. Nov. 15, 1779.
“I enclosed the above to Lord Ossory, because it was not
worth sixpence, and had sent it to the post, and then went
to Bedford House, where, lo! enters Lady Shelburne, looking
as fresh and ripe as Pomona. N.B. Her windows were not open
yesterday, and to-day there was such a mist, ermined with snow,
that I could not see. I find it was not a habit-maker that was
smitten with your Ladyship as a pig in a poke, but somebody
else; but as her Grace’s mouth has lost one tooth, and my ear,
I suspect, another, I have not found out who the unfortunate
man is.
“Next enters your Ladyship’s letter. I have seen my dignity
of Minister to Spain[78]--many a fair castle have I erected
in that country, but truly never resided there.… This is long
enough for a codicil, in which one has nothing more to give.”
In the same lively mood, he writes about the same time to Mason:
“Berkeley Square, Nov. I don’t know what day.
“If you can be content with anything but news as fresh as
mackerel, I will tell you as pretty a story as a gentleman can
hear in a winter’s day, though it has not a grain of novelty
in it but to those who never heard it, which was my case till
yesterday.
“When that philosophic tyrant the Czarina (who murdered two
emperors for the good of their people, to the edification of
Voltaire, Diderot, and D’Alembert) proposed to give a code of
laws that should serve all her subjects as much or as little as
she pleased, she ordered her various states to send deputies
who should specify their respective wants. Amongst the rest
came a representative of the Samoieds; he waited on the marshal
of the diet of legislation, who was Archbishop of Novgorod.
‘I am come,’ said the savage, ‘but I do not know for what.’
‘My clement mistress,’ said his Grace, ‘means to give a body
of laws to all her dominions.’--‘Whatever laws the Empress
shall give us,’ said the Samoied, ‘we shall obey, but we want
no laws.’--‘How,’ said the Prelate, ‘not want laws! why, you
are men like the rest of the world, and must have the same
passions, and consequently must murder, cheat, steal, rob,
plunder,’ &c., &c., &c.
“‘It is true,’ said the savage, ‘we have now and then a bad
person among us, but he is sufficiently punished by being shut
out of all society.’
“If you love nature in its _naturalibus_, you will like this
tale. I think one might make a pretty ‘Spectator’ by inverting
the hint: I would propose a general jail delivery, not only
from all prisons, but madhouses, as not sufficiently ample for
a quarter of the patients and candidates; and to save trouble,
and yet make as impartial distinction, to confine the virtuous
and the few that are in their senses. But I am digressing, and
have not yet told you the story I intended; at least, only the
first part.
“One day Count Orlow, the Czarina’s accomplice in more ways
than one, exhibited himself to the Samoied in the robes of the
order, and refulgent with diamonds. The savage surveyed him
attentively, but silently. ‘May I ask,’ said the favourite,
‘what it is you admire?’--‘Nothing,’ replied the Tartar: ‘I was
thinking how ridiculous you are.’--‘Ridiculous,’ cried Orlow,
angrily; ‘and pray in what?’--‘Why, you shave your beard to
look young, and powder your hair to look old!’
“Well! as you like my stories, I will tell you a third, but
it is prodigiously old, yet it is the only new trait that I
have found in that ocean _Bibliothèque des Romans_, which I
had almost abandoned; for I am out of patience with novels and
sermons, that have nothing new, when the authors may say what
they will without contradiction.
“My history is a romance of the Amours of Eleanor of Aquitaine,
Queen of our Henry the Second. She is in love with somebody
who is in love with somebody else. She puts both in prison.
The Count falls dangerously ill, and sends for the Queen’s
Physician. Eleanor hears it, calls for the Physician, and
gives him a bowl, which she orders him to prescribe to
the Count. The Doctor hesitates, doubts, begs to know the
ingredients.--‘Come,’ says her Majesty, ‘your suspicions are
just--it is poison; but remember, it is a crime I want from
you, not a lecture; go and obey my orders; my Captain of the
guard and two soldiers shall accompany you, and see that you
execute my command, and give no hint of my secret; go, I will
have no reply:’ the Physician submits, finds the prisoner in
bed, his mistress sitting by. The Doctor feels his pulse,
produces the bowl, sighs, and says, ‘My dear friend, I cannot
cure your disorder, but I have a remedy here for myself,’ and
swallows the poison.
“Is not this entirely new? it would be a fine _coup de
théâtre_, and yet would not do for a tragedy, for the Physician
would become the hero of the piece, would efface the lovers;
and yet the rest of the play could not be made to turn on him.
“As all this will serve for a letter at any time, I will
keep the rest of my paper for something that will not bear
postponing.
“20th.
“Come, my letter shall go, though with only one new paragraph.
Lord Weymouth has resigned, as well as Lord Gower. I believe
that little faction flattered themselves that their separation
would blow up Lord North, and yet I am persuaded that sheer
cowardice has most share in Weymouth’s part. There is such
universal dissatisfaction, that when the crack is begun, the
whole edifice perhaps may tumble, but where is the architect
that can repair a single story? The nation stayed till
everything was desperate, before it would allow that a single
tile was blown off.”
At the close of the year, he is cheered by the sight of a precious
relic:
“You are to know, Madam, that I have in my custody the
individual ebony cabinet in which Madame de Sévigné kept her
pens and paper for writing her matchless letters. It was
preserved near Grignan by an old man who mended her pens, and
whose descendant gave it last year to Mr. Selwyn, as truly
worthy of such a sacred relic. It wears, indeed, all the
outward and visible signs of such venerable preciousness, for
it is clumsy, cumbersome, and shattered, and inspires no more
idea of her spirit and _légèreté_, than the mouldy thigh-bone
of a saint does of the unction of his sermons. I have full
powers to have it repaired and decorated as shall seem good in
my own eyes, though I had rather be authorised to inclose and
conceal it in a shrine of gold and jewels.”
[Illustration: _Sir Joshua Reynolds. Pinx._ _A. Dawson. Ph. Sc._
_Valentine Green. Sc._
_The Three Ladies Waldegrave._]
Towards the end of May, 1780, he writes: “Sir Joshua has begun a
charming picture of my three fair nieces, the Waldegraves, and very
like. They are embroidering and winding silk; I rather wished to have
them drawn like the Graces, adorning a bust of the Duchess as the Magna
Mater; but my ideas are not adopted.” We hear no more of this picture
for some time. Attention was almost immediately engrossed by the Gordon
riots. Walpole writes to Lady Ossory:
“Berkeley Square, June 3, 1780.
“I know that a governor or gazetteer ought not to desert their
posts, if a town is besieged, or a town is full of news; and
therefore, Madam, I resume my office. I smile to-day--but I
trembled last night; for an hour or more I never felt more
anxiety. I knew the bravest of my friends were barricaded into
the House of Commons, and every avenue to it impossible. Till
I heard the Horse and Foot Guards were gone to their rescue,
I expected nothing but some dire misfortune; and the first
thing I heard this morning was that part of the town had had
a fortunate escape from being burnt after ten last night. You
must not expect order, Madam; I must recollect circumstances as
they occur; and the best idea I can give your Ladyship of the
tumult will be to relate it as I heard it.
“I had come to town in the morning on a private occasion, and
found it so much as I left it, that though I saw a few blue
cockades here and there, I only took them for new recruits.
Nobody came in; between seven and eight I saw a hack and
another coach arrive at Lord Shelburne’s, and thence concluded
that Lord George Gordon’s trumpet had brayed to no purpose. At
eight I went to Gloucester House; the Duchess told me, there
had been a riot, and that Lord Mansfield’s glasses had been
broken, and a bishop’s, but that most of the populace were
dispersed. About nine his Royal Highness and Colonel Heywood
arrived; and then we heard a much more alarming account. The
concourse had been incredible, and had by no means obeyed the
injunctions of their apostle, or rather had interpreted the
spirit instead of the letter. The Duke had reached the House
with the utmost difficulty, and found it sunk from the temple
of dignity to an asylum of lamentable objects. There were the
Lords Hillsborough, Stormont, Townshend, without their bags,
and with their hair dishevelled about their ears, and Lord
Willoughby without his periwig, and Lord Mansfield, whose
glasses had been broken, quivering on the woolsack like an
aspen. Lord Ashburnham had been torn out of his chariot, the
Bishop of Lincoln ill-treated, the Duke of Northumberland had
lost his watch in the holy hurly-burly, and Mr. Mackenzie his
snuff-box and spectacles. Alarm came that the mob had thrown
down Lord Boston, and were trampling him to death; which they
almost did. They had diswigged Lord Bathurst on his answering
them stoutly, and told him he was the pope, and an old woman;
thus splitting Pope Joan into two. Lord Hillsborough, on being
taxed with negligence, affirmed that the Cabinet had the day
before empowered Lord North to take precautions; but two
Justices that were called denied having received any orders.
Colonel Heywood, a very stout man, and luckily a very cool one,
told me he had thrice been collared as he went by the Duke’s
order to inquire what was doing in the other House; but though
he was not suffered to pass, he reasoned the mob into releasing
him,--yet, he said, he never saw so serious an appearance and
such determined countenances.
“About eight the Lords adjourned, and were suffered to go
home; though the rioters declared that if the other House did
not repeal the Bill,[79] there would at night be terrible
mischief. Mr. Burke’s name had been given out as the object of
resentment. General Conway I knew would be intrepid and not
give way; nor did he, but inspired the other House with his
own resolution. Lord George Gordon was running backwards and
forwards, from the windows of the Speaker’s Chamber denouncing
all that spoke against him to the mob in the lobby. Mr. Conway
tasked him severely both in the House and aside, and Colonel
Murray told him he was a disgrace to his family. Still the
members were besieged and locked up for four hours, nor could
divide, as the lobby was crammed. Mr. Conway and Lord Frederick
Cavendish, with whom I supped afterwards, told me there was a
moment when they thought they must have opened the doors and
fought their way out sword in hand. Lord North was very firm,
and at last they got the Guards and cleared the pass.
“Blue banners had been waved from tops of houses at Whitehall
as signals to the people, while the coaches passed, whom they
should applaud or abuse. Sir George Savile’s and Charles
Turner’s coaches were demolished. Ellis, whom they took for a
Popish gentleman, they carried prisoner to the Guildhall in
Westminster, and he escaped by a ladder out of a window. Lord
Mahon harangued the people from the balcony of a coffee-house,
and begged them to retire.”
In a letter to Mann he continues the story:
“This tumult, which was over between nine and ten at night,
had scarce ceased before it broke out in two other quarters.
Old Haslang’s[80] chapel was broken open and plundered; and,
as he is a Prince of Smugglers as well as Bavarian Minister,
great quantities of run tea and contraband goods were found in
his house. This one cannot lament; and still less, as the old
wretch has for these forty years usurped a hired house, and,
though the proprietor for many years has offered to remit his
arrears of rent, he will neither quit the house nor pay for it.
“Monsieur Cordon, the Sardinian Minister, suffered still more.
The mob forced his chapel, stole two silver lamps, demolished
everything else, threw the benches into the street, set them on
fire, carried the brands into the chapel, and set fire to that;
and, when the engines came, would not suffer them to play, till
the Guards arrived, and saved the house and probably all that
part of the town. Poor Madame Cordon was confined by illness.
My cousin, Thomas Walpole, who lives in Lincoln’s Inn Fields,
went to her rescue, and dragged her, for she could scarce stand
with terror and weakness, to his own house.”
Of the events of Black Wednesday, Horace was an eye-witness. His
letters to his Countess form a sort of journal:
“Wednesday, five o’clock, June 7, 1780.
“I am heartily glad I am come to town, though never was a
less delicious place; but there was no bearing to remain
philosophically in the country, and hear the thousand rumours
of every hour, and not know whether one’s friends and relations
were not destroyed. Yesterday Newgate was burnt, and other
houses, and Lord Sandwich near massacred. At Hyde Park Corner,
I saw Guards at the Lord President’s door, and in Piccadilly,
met George Selwyn and the Signorina,[81] whom I wondered he
ventured there. He came into my chaise in a fury, and told me
Lord Mansfield’s house is in ashes, and that five thousand men
were marched to Caen Wood--it is true, and that one thousand
of the Guards are gone after them. A camp of ten thousand is
forming in Hyde Park as fast as possible, and the Berkshire
militia is just arrived. Wedderburn and Lord Stormont are
threatened, and I do not know who. The Duchess of Beaufort sent
an hour ago to tell me Lord Ashburnham had just advertised her
that he is threatened, and was sending away his poor bedridden
Countess and children; and the Duchess begged to know what I
proposed to do. I immediately went to her, and quieted her, and
assured her we are as safe as we can be anywhere, and as little
obnoxious; but if she was alarmed, I advised her to remove to
Notting Hill, where Lady Mary Coke is absent. The Duchess said
the mob were now in Saville Row; we sent thither, and so they
are, round Colonel Woodford’s, who gave the Guards orders to
fire at Lord Mansfield’s, where six at least of the rioters
were killed.
“The mob are now armed, having seized the stores in the
Artillery Ground.
“If anything can surprise your Ladyship, it will be what I am
going to tell you. Lord George Gordon went to Buckingham House
this morning, and asked an audience of the King. Can you be
more surprised still?--He was refused.
“I must finish, for I am going about the town to learn, and
see, and hear. Caen Wood is saved; a regiment on march met the
rioters.
“It will probably be a black night: I am decking myself with
blue ribbons, like a May-day garland. Horsemen are riding by
with muskets. I am sorry I did not bring the armour of Francis
I. to town, as I am to guard a Duchess Dowager and an heiress.
Will it not be romantically generous if I yield the latter to
my nephew?
“From my garrison in Berkeley Square.
“Wednesday night, past two in the morning, June 7, 1780.
“As it is impossible to go to bed (for Lady Betty Compton
has hoped I would not this very minute, which, next to her
asking the contrary, is the thing not to be refused), I cannot
be better employed than in proving how much I think of your
Ladyship at the most horrible moment I ever saw. You shall
judge.
“I was at Gloucester House between nine and ten. The servants
announced a great fire; the Duchess, her daughters, and I went
to the top of the house, and beheld not only one but two vast
fires, which we took for the King’s Bench and Lambeth; but the
latter was the New Prison, and the former at least was burning
at midnight. Colonel Heywood came in and acquainted his Royal
Highness that nine houses in Great Queen Street had been
gutted, and the furniture burnt; and he had _seen_ a great
Catholic distiller’s at Holborn Bridge broken open and all the
casks staved; and since, the house had been set on fire.
“At ten I went to Lord Hertford’s, and found him and his sons
charging muskets. Lord Rockingham has two hundred soldiers in
his house, and is determined to defend it. Thence I went to
General Conway’s, and in a moment a servant came in and said
there was a great fire just by. We went to the street-door and
thought it was St. Martin’s Lane in flames, but it is either
the Fleet Prison or the distiller’s. I forgot that in the court
of Gloucester House I met Colonel Jennings, who told me there
had been an engagement at the Royal Exchange to defend the
Bank, and that the Guards had shot sixty of the mob; I have
since heard seventy, for I forgot to tell your Ladyship that at
a _great_ council, held this evening at the Queen’s House, at
which Lord Rockingham and the Duke of Portland were present,
military execution was ordered, for, in truth, the Justices
dare not act.
“After supper I returned to Lady Hertford, finding Charing
Cross, and the Haymarket, and Piccadilly, illuminated from
fear, though all this end of the town is hitherto perfectly
quiet, lines being drawn across the Strand and Holborn, to
prevent the mob coming westward. Henry and William Conway
arrived, and had seen the populace break open the toll-houses
on Blackfriars Bridge, and carry off bushels of halfpence,
which fell about the streets, and then they set fire to the
toll-houses. General Conway’s porter had seen five distinct
conflagrations.
“Lady Hertford’s cook came in, white as this paper. _He is a
German Protestant._ He said his house had been attacked, his
furniture burnt; that he had saved one child, and left another
with his wife, whom he could not get out; and that not above
ten or twelve persons had assaulted his house. I could not
credit this, at least was sure it was an episode that had no
connection with the general insurrection, and was at most some
pique of his neighbours. I sent my own footman to the spot in
Woodstock Street; he brought me word there had been eight or
ten apprentices who made the riot, that two Life Guardsmen had
arrived and secured four of the enemies. It seems the cook had
refused to illuminate like the rest of the street. To-morrow
I suppose his Majesty King George Gordon will order their
release; they will be inflated with having been confessors, and
turn heroes.
“On coming home I visited the Duchess Dowager and my fair ward;
and am heartily tired with so many expeditions, for which I
little imagined I had youth enough left.
“We expect three or four more regiments to-morrow, besides some
troops of horse and militia already arrived. We are menaced
with counter-squadrons from the country. There will, I fear,
be much blood spilt before peace is restored. The Gordon has
already surpassed Masaniello, who I do not remember set his own
capital on fire. Yet I assure your ladyship there is no panic.
Lady Aylesbury has been at the play in the Haymarket, and the
Duke and my four nieces at Ranelagh, this evening. For my part,
I think the _common_ diversions of these last four-and-twenty
hours are sufficient to content any moderate appetite; and as
it is now three in the morning, I shall wish you good night,
and try to get a little sleep myself, if Lord George Macbeth
has not murdered it all. I own I shall not soon forget the
sight I saw from the top of Gloucester House.
“Thursday morning, after breakfast.
“I do not know whether to call the horrors of the night greater
or less than I thought. My printer, who has been out all
night, and on the spots of action, says, not above a dozen
were killed at the Royal Exchange, some few elsewhere; at the
King’s Bench, he does not know how many; but in other respects
the calamities are dreadful. He saw many houses set on fire,
women and children screaming, running out of doors with what
they could save, and knocking one another down with their loads
in the confusion. Barnard’s Inn is burnt, and some houses,
mistaken for Catholic. Kirgate[82] says most of the rioters
are apprentices, and plunder and drink have been their chief
objects, and both women and men are still lying dead drunk
about the streets: brandy is preferable to enthusiasm. I trust
many more troops will arrive to-day. What families ruined! What
wretched wives and mothers! What public disgrace!--ay! and
where, and when, and how will all this confusion end! and what
shall we be when it is concluded? I remember the Excise and the
Gin Act, and the rebels at Derby, and Wilkes’s interlude, and
the French at Plymouth; or I should have a very bad memory; but
I never till last night saw London and Southwark in flames!
“After dinner.
“It is a moment, Madam, when to be surprised is not surprising.
But what will you say to the House of Commons meeting by twelve
o’clock to-day, and adjourning, ere fifty members were arrived,
to Monday se’nnight! So adieu all government but the sword!
“Will your Ladyship give me credit when I heap contradictions
on absurdities--will you believe such confusion and calamities,
and yet think there is no consternation? Well, only hear. My
niece, Mrs. Keppel, with her three daughters, drove since noon
over Westminster Bridge, through St. George’s Fields, where the
King’s Bench is smoking, over London Bridge, passed the Bank,
and came the whole length of the City! They have been here, and
say the people _look_ very unquiet; but can one imagine that
they would be smiling? Old Lady Albemarle, who followed me in a
few minutes from Gloucester House, was robbed at Mrs. Keppel’s
door in Pall Mall, between ten and eleven, by a horseman.
Sparrow, one of the delivered convicts, who was to have been
hanged this morning, is said to have been shot yesterday as he
was spiriting up the rioters. Kirgate has just heard in the
Park, that the Protestant Association disavow the seditious,
and will take up arms against them. If we are saved, it will be
so as by fire.
“I shall return to my own castle to-morrow: I had not above
four hours’ sleep last night, and must get some rest. General
Conway is enraged at the adjournment, and will go away too.
Many coaches and chaises did leave London yesterday. My
intelligence will not be so good nor so immediate; but you will
not want correspondents. Disturbances are threatened again for
to-night; and some probably will happen, but there are more
troops, and less alacrity in the outlaws.
“Berkeley Square, June 9, at noon, 1780.
“All has been quiet to-night, as far as we know in this region;
but not without blood being spilt yesterday. The rioters
attacked the Horse Guards about six in Fleet Street, and, not
giving them time to load, were repelled by the bayonet. Twenty
fell, thirty-five were wounded and sent to the hospital, where
two died directly. Three of the Guards were wounded, and a
young officer named Marjoribank. Mr. Conway’s footman told me
he was on a message at Lord Amherst’s when the Guards returned,
and that their bayonets were steeped in blood.
“I heard, too, at my neighbour Duchess’s, whither I went at
one in the morning, that the Protestant Associators, disguised
with blue cockades as friends, had fallen on the rioters in
St. George’s Fields, and killed many. I do not warrant the
truth, but I did hear often in the evening that there had
been slaughter in the Borough, where a great public-house
had been destroyed, and a house at Redriffe, and another at
Islington. Zeal has entirely thrown off the mask, and owned its
name--plunder. Its offspring have extorted money from several
houses with threats of firing them as Catholic. Apprentices and
Irish chairmen, and all kinds of outlaws, have been the most
active. Some hundreds are actually dead about the streets, with
the spirits they plundered at the distiller’s; the low women
knelt and sucked them as they ran from the staved casks.
“It was reported last night that the primate, George Gordon,
is fled to Scotland: for aught I know he may not be so far off
as Grosvenor Place. All is rumour and exaggeration; and yet
it would be difficult to exaggerate the horrors of Wednesday
night; a town taken by storm could alone exceed them.
“I am going to Strawberry this instant, exhausted with fatigue,
for I have certainly been on my feet longer these last
eight-and-forty hours than in forty days before.…
“Adieu! Madam; allow my pen a few holidays, unless the storm
recommences.”
On hearing that Lord George Gordon had been arrested, he writes again:
“Strawberry Hill, Saturday night, late.
“Was not I cruelly out of luck, Madam, to have been fishing in
troubled waters for two days for your Ladyship’s entertainment,
and to have come away very few hours before the great pike was
hooked? Well, to drop metaphor, here are Garth’s lines reversed,
‘Thus little villains oft submit to fate,
That great ones may enjoy the world in state.’
Four convicts on the eve of execution are let loose from
Newgate, and Lord George Gordon is sent to the Tower. If he
is hanged, the old couplet will recover its credit, for Mr.
Wedderburn is Chief Justice.
“I flatter myself I shall receive a line from your Ladyship
to-morrow morning: I am impatient to hear what you think of
_black Wednesday_. I know how much you must have been shocked,
but I long to read your own expressions; when you answer, then
one is conversing. My sensations are very different from what
they were. While in the thick of the conflagration, I was all
indignation and a thousand passions. Last night, when sitting
silently alone, horror rose as I cooled; and grief succeeded,
and then all kinds of gloomy presages. For some time people
have said, where will all this end? I as often replied, where
will it begin? It is now begun, with a dreadful overture; and
I tremble to think what the chorus may be! The sword reigns
at present, and saved the capital! What is to depose the
sword?--Is it not to be feared, on the other hand, that other
swords may be lifted up?--What probability that everything will
subside quietly into the natural channel?--Nay, how narrow will
that channel be, whenever the prospect is cleared by peace?
What a dismal fragment of an empire! yet would that moment were
come when we are to take a survey of our ruins! That moment
I probably shall not see. When I rose this morning, I found
the exertions I had made with such puny powers, had been far
beyond what I could bear; I was too sick to go on with dressing
myself. This evening I have been abroad, and you shall hear
no more of it. I have been with Lady Di, at Richmond, where
I found Lady Pembroke, Miss Herbert, and Mr. Brudenell. Lord
Herbert is arrived. They told me the melancholy position of
Lady Westmorland. She is sister of Lord George Gordon, and
wife of Colonel Woodford, who is forced to conceal himself,
having been the first officer who gave orders to the soldiers
to fire, on the attack of Lord Mansfield’s house. How many
still more deplorable calamities from the tragedy of this week
that one shall never hear of! I will change my style, and, like
an epilogue after a moving piece, divert you with a _bon-mot_
of George Selwyn. He came to me yesterday morning from Lady
Townshend, who, terrified by the fires of the preceding night,
talked the language of the Court, instead of Opposition. He
said she put him in mind of removed tradesmen, who hang out a
board with, ‘Burnt out from over the way.’ Good-night, Madam,
till I receive your letter.
“Monday morning, the 12th.
“Disappointed! disappointed! not a line from your Ladyship;
I will not send away this till I hear from you. Last night,
at Hampton Court, I heard of two Popish chapels demolished
at Bath, and one at Bristol. My coachman has just been in
Twickenham, and says half Bath is burnt; I trust this is but
the natural progress of lies, that increase like a chairman’s
legs by walking. Mercy on us! we seem to be plunging into
the horrors of France, in the reigns of Charles VI. and
VII.!--yet, as extremes meet, there is at this moment amazing
insensibility. Within these four days I have received five
applications for tickets to see my house! One from a set of
company who fled from town to avoid the tumults and fires. I
suppose Æneas lost Creüsa by her stopping at Sadlers’ Wells.
“13th.
“The letter I have this moment received is so kind, Madam,
that it effaces all disappointment. Indeed, my impatience made
me forget that no post comes in here on Mondays. To-day’s
letters from town mention no disturbance at Bristol or anywhere
else. Every day gained is considerable, at least will be so
when there has been time for the history of last week to have
spread, and intelligence from the distant counties to be
returned. All I have heard to-day is of some alteration to be
made to the Riot Act, that Lord George cannot be tried this
month, and that the King will go to the House on Monday. I will
now answer what is necessary in your Ladyship’s and take my
leave, for, as you observe, the post arrives late, and I have
other letters that I must answer. Mr. Williams interrupted me,
and has added a curious anecdote,--and a horrible one, to my
collection of the late events. One project of the diabolical
incendiaries was to let loose the lions in the Tower, and the
lunatics in Bedlam. The latter might be from a fellow-feeling
in Lord George, but cannibals do not invite wild beasts to
their banquets. The Princess Daskiou will certainly communicate
the thought to her mistress and accomplice, the Legislatress of
Russia.
“P.S. I like an ironic sentence in yesterday’s _London
Courant_, which says, all our grievances are _red-dressed_.”
To complete the misfortunes of these years, Walpole lost his “blind old
woman” in the autumn of 1780. Under date October 9th, he writes from
Strawberry Hill to Mann:
“I have heard from Paris of the death of my dear old friend
Madame du Deffand, whom I went so often thither to see. It
was not quite unexpected, and was softened by her great age,
eighty-four, which forbad distant hopes; and, by what I dreaded
more than her death, her increasing deafness, which, had it
become, like her blindness, total, would have been living after
death. Her memory only _began_ to impair; her amazing sense and
quickness, not at all. I have written to her once a week for
these last fifteen years, as correspondence and conversation
could be her only pleasures. You see that I am the most
faithful letter-writer in the world--and, alas! never see those
I am so constant to! One is forbidden common-place reflections
on these misfortunes, because they _are_ common-place; but is
not that, because they are natural? But your never having known
that dear old woman is a better reason for not making you the
butt of my concern.”
Three weeks later we have the following from London to Lady Ossory:
“As I have been returned above a fortnight, I should have
written had I had a syllable to tell you; but what could I tell
you from that melancholy and very small circle at Twickenham
Park, almost the only place I do go to in the country,
partly out of charity, and partly as I have scarce any other
society left which I prefer to it; for, without entering
on too melancholy a detail, recollect, Madam, that I have
outlived most of those to whom I was habituated, Lady Hervey,
Lady Suffolk, Lady Blandford--my dear old friend [Madame du
Deffand], I should probably never have seen again--yet that
is a deeper loss, indeed! She has left me all her MSS.--a
compact between us--in one word I had, at her earnest request,
consented to accept them, on condition she should leave me
nothing else. She had, indeed, intended to leave me her little
all, but I declared I would never set foot in Paris again
(this was ten years ago) if she did not engage to retract that
destination. To satisfy her, I at last agreed to accept her
papers, and one thin gold box with the portrait of her dog. I
have written to beg her dog itself, which is so cross, that I
am sure nobody else would treat it well; and I have ordered
her own servant, who read all letters to her, to pick out all
the letters of living persons, and restore them to the several
writers without my seeing them.”
Walpole’s liking for accomplished French women like Madame du Deffand
was equalled by his dislike of the English “Blue-stockings.” At the
beginning of 1781, he seems to have been a good deal in company with
the latter, and we have some amusing passages: “I met Mrs. Montagu
t’other night at a visit. She said she had been alone the whole
preceding day, _quite hermetically sealed_--I was very glad she was
uncorked, or I might have missed that piece of learned nonsense.… I was
much diverted with your setting Mrs. Montagu on her head, which indeed
she does herself without the help of Hermes. She is one of my principal
entertainments at Mrs. Vesey’s, who collects all the graduates and
candidates for fame, where they vie with one another, till they are as
unintelligible as the good folks at Babel.”
“Mr. Gilpin[83] talks of my researches, which makes me smile; I
know, as Gray would have said, how little I have _researched_,
and what slender pretensions are mine to so pompous a term.
Apropos to Gray, Johnson’s ‘Life,’ or rather criticism on his
Odes, is come out; a most wretched, dull, tasteless, _verbal_
criticism--yet, timid too. But he makes amends, he admires
Thomson and Akenside, and Sir Richard Blackmore, and has
reprinted Dennis’s ‘Criticism on Cato,’ to save time, and swell
his pay. In short, as usual, he has proved that he has no more
ear than taste. Mrs. Montagu and all her Mænades intend to tear
him limb from limb for despising their moppet Lord Lyttelton.”
* * * * *
“I saw Dr. Johnson last night at Lady Lucan’s, who had
assembled a _blue-stocking_ meeting in imitation of Mrs.
Vesey’s Babels. It was so blue, it was quite Mazarine-blue.
Mrs. Montagu kept aloof from Johnson, like the West from the
East. There were Soame Jenyns, _Persian_ Jones, Mr. Sherlocke,
the new court with Mr. Courtenay, besides the out-pensioners of
Parnassus. Mr. Wraxall[84] was not, I wonder why, and so will
he, for he is popping into every spot where he can make himself
talked of, by talking of himself; but I hear he will come to an
untimely beginning in the House of Commons.”