Walpole in his Sixty-fourth Year.--The Royal
Academy.--Tonton.--Charles Fox.--William Pitt.--Mrs. Hobart’s
_Sans Souci_.--Improvements at Florence.--Walpole’s Dancing
Feats.--No Feathers at Court.--Highwaymen.--Loss of the _Royal
George_.--Mrs. Siddons.--Peace.--Its Social Consequences.--The
Coalition.--The Rivals.--Political Excitement.--The Westminster
Election.--Political Caricatures.--Conway’s Retirement.--Lady
Harrington.--Balloons.--Illness.--Recovery.
“I never remonstrate against the behests of Dame Prudence, though a
lady I never got acquainted with till near my grand climacteric.”
So wrote Horace soon after passing the mystic period, compounded of
seven and nine, which was once regarded as the topmost round in the
ladder of human life. He would have his correspondents believe that
his attention to the dame’s commands was not very regular at first.
In the spring of 1781, he is able to report to Conway, “My health is
most flourishing for me.” Accordingly, he goes about a good deal, and
enjoys a sort of rejuvenescence. Of course, he visits the Exhibition of
the Royal Academy at Somerset House, where Reynolds’s picture of the
Ladies Waldegrave was shown. “The Exhibition,” he writes to Mason, “is
much inferior to last year’s;[85] nobody shines there but Sir Joshua
and Gainsborough. The head of the former’s Dido is very fine; I do
not admire the rest of the piece. His Lord Richard Cavendish is bold
and stronger than he ever coloured. The picture of my three nieces is
charming. Gainsborough has two pieces with land and sea, so free and
natural that one steps back for fear of being splashed. The back front
of the Academy is handsome, but like the other to the street, the
members are so heavy, that one cannot stand back enough to see it in
any proportion, unless in a barge moored in the middle of the Thames.”
The same day, May 6, he writes to Conway from Strawberry Hill:
“Though it is a bitter north-east, I came hither to-day to look
at my lilacs, though _à la glace_; and to get from pharaoh,
for which there is a rage. I doated on it above thirty years
ago; but it is not decent to sit up all night now with boys and
girls. My nephew, Lord Cholmondeley, the banker _à la mode_,
has been demolished. He and his associate, Sir Willoughby
Aston, went early t’other night to Brooks’s, before Charles Fox
and Fitzpatrick, who keep a bank there, were come; but they
soon arrived, attacked their rivals, broke their bank, and
won above four thousand pounds. ‘There,’ said Fox, ‘so should
all usurpers be served!’ He did still better; for he sent for
his tradesmen, and paid as far as the money would go. In the
mornings he continues his war on Lord North, but cannot break
_that_ bank.…
“I told you in my last that Tonton was arrived. I brought him
this morning to take possession of his new villa, but his
inauguration has not been at all pacific. As he has already
found out that he may be as despotic as at St. Joseph’s,
he began with exiling my beautiful little cat; upon which,
however, we shall not quite agree. He then flew at one of my
dogs, who returned it by biting his foot till it bled, but was
severely beaten for it. I immediately rung for Margaret to
dress his foot; but in the midst of my tribulation could not
keep my countenance; for she cried, ‘Poor little thing, he does
not understand my language!’ I hope she will not recollect,
too, that he is a Papist!”
[Illustration: _Sir Joshua Reynolds. Pinx._ _A. Dawson. Ph. Sc._ _S. W.
Reynolds. Sc._
_Sir Joshua Reynolds._]
We have a further anecdote of Charles Fox told a few days later, also
in a letter to Conway:
“I had been to see if Lady Aylesbury was come to town: as
I came up St. James’s Street, I saw a cart and porters at
Charles’s door; coppers and old chests of drawers loading. In
short, his success at faro has awakened his host of creditors;
but unless his bank has swelled to the size of the Bank of
England, it could not have yielded a sop apiece for each.
Epsom, too, had been unpropitious; and one creditor has
actually seized and carried off his goods, which did not seem
worth removing. As I returned full of this scene, whom should
I find sauntering by my own door but Charles? He came up, and
talked to me at the coach-window on the Marriage Bill,[86]
with as much _sang-froid_ as if he knew nothing of what had
happened. I have no admiration for insensibility to one’s own
faults, especially when committed out of vanity. Perhaps the
whole philosophy consisted in the commission. If _you_ could
have been as much to blame, the last thing you would bear well
would be your own reflections. The more marvellous Fox’s parts
are, the more one is provoked at his follies, which comfort so
many rascals and blockheads, and make all that is admirable and
amiable in him only matter of regret to those who like him as I
do.[87]
“I did intend to settle at Strawberry on Sunday; but must
return on Thursday, for a party made at Marlborough House for
Princess Amelia. I am continually tempted to retire entirely;
and should, if I did not see how very unfit English tempers are
for living quite out of the world. We grow abominably peevish
and severe on others, if we are not constantly rubbed against
and polished by them. I need not name friends and relations of
yours and mine as instances. My prophecy on the short reign
of faro is verified already. The bankers find that all the
calculated advantages of the game do not balance pinchbeck
_parolis_ and debts of honourable women. The bankers, I think,
might have had a previous and more generous reason, the very
bad air of holding a bank:--but this country is as hardened
against the _petite morale_, as against the greater.--What
should I think of the world if I quitted it entirely?”
Again a few days, and we come upon an early mention of the youthful
William Pitt: “The young William Pitt has again displayed paternal
oratory. The other day, on the Commission of Accounts, he answered Lord
North, and tore him limb from limb. If Charles Fox could feel, one
should think such a rival, with an unspotted character, would rouse
him. What if a Pitt and Fox should again be rivals!” Some time later,
Walpole asks Lady Ossory: “Apropos of _bon-mots_, has our lord told
you that George Selwyn calls Mr. Fox and Mr. Pitt ‘the idle and the
industrious apprentices’? If he has not, I am sure you will thank me,
Madam.”
In the summer of 1781, Horace has a touch of rheumatism, but still he
keeps up his juvenile tone. Witness the two following letters to Lady
Ossory:
“Strawberry Hill, July 7, 1781.
“You must be, or will be, tired of my letters, Madam; every one
is a contradiction to the last; there is alternately a layer of
complaints, and a layer of foolish spirits. To-day the wind is
again in the dolorous corner. For these four days I have been
confined with a pain and swelling in my face. The apothecary
says it is owing to the long drought; but as I should not eat
grass were there ever such plenty, and as my cows, though
starving, have no swelled cheeks, I do not believe him. I
humbly attribute my frequent disorders to my longevity, and to
that Proteus the gout, who is not the less himself for being
incog. Excuses I have worn out, and, therefore, will not make
any for not obeying your kind invitation again to Ampthill. I
can only say, I go nowhere, even when Tonton is invited--except
to balls--and yet though I am the last Vestris that has
appeared, Mrs. Hobart did not invite me to her _Sans Souci_
last week, though she had all my other juvenile contemporaries,
Lady Berkeley, Lady Fitzroy, Lady Margaret Compton, and Mrs.
French, etc. Perhaps you do not know that the lady of the
_fête_, having made as many conquests as the King of Prussia,
has borrowed the name of that hero’s villa for her hut on Ham
Common, where she has built two large rooms of timber under a
cabbage. Her field officers, General French, General Compton,
etc., were sweltered in the ball-room, and then frozen at
supper in tents on the grass. She herself, as intrepid as King
Frederic, led the ball, though dying of the toothache, which
she had endeavoured to drown in laudanum; but she has kept her
bed ever since the campaign ended.
“This is all I know in the world, for the war seems to have
taken laudanum too, and to keep its bed.
“I have received a letter to-day from Sir Horace Mann, who
tells me the Great-Duke has been making _wondrous improvements_
at Florence. He has made a passage through the Tribune, and
built a brave new French room of stucco in white and gold,
and placed the Niobe in it; but as everybody is tired of her
telling her old story, she and all the Master and Miss Niobes
are orderly disposed round the chamber, and if anybody asks
who they are, I suppose they answer, Francis Charles Ferdinand
Ignatius Neopomucenus, or Maria Theresa Christina Beatrice,
etc. Well, Madam, have I any cause to sigh that the pictures at
Houghton are transported to the North Pole, if the Tribune at
Florence is demolished by Vandals, and Niobe and her progeny
dance a _cotillon_? O sublunary grandeur, short-lived as a
butterfly! We smile at a clown who graves the initials of his
name, or the shape of his shoe, on the leads of a church, in
hopes of being remembered, and yet he is as much known as king
I don’t know whom, who built the Pyramids to eternise his
memory. Methinks Anacreon was the only sensible philosopher.
If I loved wine, and should look well in a chaplet of roses,
I would crown myself with flowers, and go tipsy to bed every
night _sans souci_.
“July 25, 1781.
“Poor human nature, what a contradiction it is! to-day it is
all rheumatism and morality, and sits with a death’s head
before it: to-morrow it is dancing!--Oh! my Lady, my Lady,
what will you say, when the next thing you hear of me after
my last letter is, that I have danced three country-dances
with a whole set, forty years younger than myself! Shall not
you think I have been chopped to shreds and boiled in Medea’s
kettle? Shall not you expect to see a print of Vestris teaching
me?--and Lord Brudenell dying with envy? You may stare with all
your expressive eyes, yet the fact is true. Danced--I do not
absolutely say, _danced_--but I swam down three dances very
gracefully, with the air that was so much in fashion after
the battle of Oudenarde, and that was still taught when I was
fifteen, and that I remember General Churchill practising
before a glass in a gouty shoe.
“To be sure you die with impatience to know the particulars.
You must know then--for all my revels must out--I not only
went five miles to Lady Aylesford’s ball last Friday, but my
nieces, the Waldegraves, desired me there to let them come to
me for a few days, as they had been disappointed about a visit
they were to make at another place; but that is neither here
nor there. Well, here they are, and last night we went to Lady
Hertford at Ditton. Soon after, Lady North and her daughters
arrived, and besides Lady Elizabeth and Lady Bell Conways,
there were their brothers Hugh and George. All the _jeunesse_
strolled about the garden. We ancients, with the Earl and
Colonel Keene, retired from the dew into the drawing-room. Soon
after, the two youths and seven nymphs came in, and shut the
door of the hall. In a moment, we heard a burst of laughter,
and thought we distinguished something like the scraping of a
fiddle. My curiosity was raised, I opened the door, and found
four couples and a half standing up, and a miserable violin
from the ale-house. ‘Oh,’ said I, ‘Lady Bell shall not want a
partner;’ I threw away my stick, and _me voilà dansant comme un
charme_! At the end of the third dance, Lord North and his son,
in boots, arrived. ‘Come,’ said I, ‘my Lord, you may dance, if
I have’--but it ended in my _resigning my place_ to his son.
“Lady North has invited us for to-morrow, and I shall reserve
the rest of my letter for the second volume of my regeneration;
however, I declare I will not _dance_. I will not make myself
too cheap; I should have the Prince of Wales sending for me
three or four times a week to hops in Eastcheap. As it is, I
feel I shall have some difficulty to return to my old dowagers,
at the Duchess of Montrose’s, and shall be humming the
Hempdressers, when they are scolding me for playing in flush.
“Friday, the 27th.
“I am not only a prophet, but have more command of my passions
than such impetuous gentry as prophets are apt to have. We
found the fiddles as I foretold; and yet I kept my resolution
and did _not_ dance, though the Sirens invited me, and though
it would have shocked the dignity of old Tiffany Ellis, who
would have thought it an indecorum. The two younger Norths and
Sir Ralph Payne supplied my place. I played at cribbage with
the matrons, and we came away at midnight. So if I now and then
do cut a colt’s tooth, I have it drawn immediately. I do not
know a paragraph of news--the nearer the minister, the farther
from politics.
“P.S. My next jubilee dancing shall be with Lady Gertrude.”
Not long after the date of these letters, Mann sends news of further
improvements at Florence. Walpole answers:
“The decree[88] you sent me against high heads diverted me.
It is as necessary here, but would not have such expeditious
effect. The Queen has never admitted feathers at Court; but,
though the nation has grown excellent courtiers, Fashion
remained in opposition, and not a plume less was worn anywhere
else. Some centuries ago, the Clergy preached against monstrous
head-dresses; but Religion had no more power than our Queen. It
is better to leave the Mode to its own vagaries; if she is not
contradicted, she seldom remains long in the same mood. She is
very despotic; but, though her reign is endless, her laws are
repealed as fast as made.”
The frequency of highway robberies only a century ago sounds surprising
to the present generation. Horace recounts to Lady Ossory an adventure
of this kind which befell him and his friend and neighbour, Lady
Browne, in the autumn of this jovial 1781:
“The night I had the honour of writing to your Ladyship last, I
was robbed--and, as if I were a sovereign or a nation, have had
a discussion ever since whether it was not a _neighbour_ who
robbed me--and should it come to the ears of the newspapers, it
might produce as ingenious a controversy amongst our anonymous
wits as any of the noble topics I have been mentioning.
_Voici le fait._ Lady Browne and I were, as usual, going to
the Duchess of Montrose at seven o’clock. The evening was
very dark. In the close lane under her park-pale, and within
twenty yards of the gate, a black figure on horseback pushed
by between the chaise and the hedge on my side. I suspected
it was a highwayman, and so I found did Lady Browne, for she
was speaking and stopped. To divert her fears, I was just
going to say, Is not that the apothecary going to the Duchess?
when I heard a voice cry ‘Stop!’ and the figure came back to
the chaise. I had the presence of mind, before I let down the
glass, to take out my watch and stuff it within my waistcoat
under my arm. He said, ‘Your purses and watches!’ I replied,
‘I have no watch.’ ‘Then your purse!’ I gave it to him; it
had nine guineas. It was so dark that I could not see his
hand, but felt him take it. He then asked for Lady Browne’s
purse, and said, ‘Don’t be frightened; I will not hurt you.’
I said, ‘No; you won’t frighten the lady?’ He replied, ‘No; I
give you my word I will do you no hurt.’ Lady Browne gave him
her purse, and was going to add her watch, but he said, ‘I am
much obliged to you! I wish you good-night!’ pulled off his
hat, and rode away. ‘Well,’ said I, ‘Lady Browne, you will
not be afraid of being robbed another time, for you see there
is nothing in it.’ ‘Oh! but I am,’ said she, ‘and now I am in
terrors lest he should return, for I have given him a purse
with only bad money that I carry on purpose.’ ‘He certainly
will not open it directly,’ said I, ‘and at worst he can only
wait for us at our return; but I will send my servant back for
a horse and a blunderbuss,’ which I did. The next distress was
not to terrify the Duchess, who is so paralytic and nervous. I
therefore made Lady Browne go into the parlour, and desired one
of the Duchess’s servants to get her a glass of water, while I
went into the drawing-room to break it to the Duchess. ‘Well,’
said I, laughing to her and the rest of the company, ‘you won’t
get much from us to-night.’ ‘Why,’ said one of them, ‘have you
been robbed?’ ‘Yes, a little,’ said I. The Duchess trembled;
but it went off. Her groom of the chambers said not a word, but
slipped out, and Lady Margaret and Miss Howe having servants
there on horseback, he gave them pistols and despatched them
different ways. This was exceedingly clever, for he knew the
Duchess would not have suffered it, as lately he had detected
a man who had robbed her garden, and she would not allow him
to take up the fellow. These servants spread the story, and
when my footman arrived on foot, he was stopped in the street
by the ostler of the ‘George,’ who told him the highwayman’s
horse was then in the stable; but this part I must reserve
for the second volume, for I have made this no story so long
and so tedious that your Ladyship will not be able to read
it in a breath; and the second part is so much longer and so
much less, contains so many examinations of witnesses, so many
contradictions in the depositions, which I have taken myself,
and, I must confess, with such abilities and shrewdness that
I have found out nothing at all, that I think to defer the
prosecution of my narrative till all the other inquisitions on
the anvil are liquidated, lest your Ladyship’s head, strong as
it is, should be confounded, and you should imagine that Rodney
or Ferguson was the person who robbed us in Twickenham Lane. I
would not have detailed the story at all, if you were not in a
forest, where it will serve to put you to sleep as well as a
newspaper full of lies; and I am sure there is as much dignity
in it as in the combined fleet, and ours, popping in and out
alternately, like a man and woman in a weather-house.”
A few months later he writes to his Countess:
“Strawberry Hill, Aug. 31, 1782.
“It is very strange indeed, Madam, that you should make me
excuses for writing, or think that I have anything better, or
even more urgent, to do than to read your letters. It is very
true that the Duchess de la Vallière, in a hand which I could
not decypher, has recommended Count Soltikoff and his wife to
me: but, oh! my shame, I have not yet seen them. I did mean to
go to town to-day on purpose, but I have had the gout in my
right eyelid, and it was swelled yesterday as big as a walnut;
being now shrunk to less than a pistachio, I propose in two
or three days to make my appearance. Luckily the Countess was
born in England, the daughter of the former Czernichew, and she
is in such terrors of highwaymen, that I shall be quit for a
breakfast; so it is an ill highwayman that blows nobody good.
In truth, it would be impossible, in this region, to amass a
set of company for dinner to meet them. The Hertfords, Lady
Holdernesse, and Lady Mary Coke did dine here on Thursday, but
were armed as if going to Gibraltar; and Lady Cecilia Johnston
would not venture even from Petersham--for in the town of
Richmond they rob even before dusk--to such perfection are all
the arts brought! Who would have thought that the war with
America would make it impossible to stir from one village to
another? yet so it literally is. The Colonies took off all our
commodities down to highwaymen. Now being forced to mew, and
then turn them out, like pheasants, the roads are stocked with
them, and they are so tame that they even come into houses.
“I have just been reading a most entertaining book, which I
will recommend to you, as you are grown antiquaries: I don’t
know whether it is published yet, for the author sent it to me.
Part was published some time ago in the ‘Archæologia,’ and is
almost the only paper in that mass of rubbish that has a grain
of common sense. It is ‘Mr. E. King on ancient Castles.’ You
will see how comfortably and delectably our potent ancestors
lived, when in the constant state of war to which we are
coming. Earls, barons, and their fair helpmates lived pell-mell
in dark dungeons with their own soldiers, as the poorest
cottagers do now with their pigs. I shall repent decking
Strawberry so much, if I must turn it into a garrison.
“Mr. Vernon was your Ladyship’s informant about the Soltikoffs;
but he gave me more credit for my intended civilities than
I deserved. The French do not conceive, when they address
strangers to us, that we do not at all live in their style.
It is no trouble to them, who have miscellaneous dinners or
suppers, to ask one or two more; nor are they at any expense
in language, as everybody speaks French. In the private way
in which I live, it is troublesome to give a formal dinner to
foreigners, and more so to find company for them in a circle
of dowagers, who would only jabber English scandal out of the
_Morning Post_.…
“Just this moment I hear the shocking loss of the _Royal
George_! Admiral Kempenfelt is a loss indeed; but I confess I
feel more for the hundreds of poor babes who have lost their
parents! If one grows ever so indifferent, some new calamity
calls one back to this deplorable war! If one is willing to
content one’s self, in a soaking autumn, with a match broken,
or with the death of a Prince Duodecimus, a clap of thunder
awakens one, and one hears that Britain herself has lost an arm
or a leg. I have been expecting a deluge, and a famine, and
such casualties as enrich a Sir Richard Baker; but we have all
King David’s options at once! and what was his option before he
was anointed, freebooting too?
“Drowned as we are, the country never was in such beauty; the
herbage and leafage are luxurious. The Thames gives itself
Rhone airs, and almost foams; it is none of your home-brewed
rivers that Mr. Brown makes with a spade and a watering-pot.
Apropos, Mr. Duane,[89] like a good housewife, in the middle
of his grass-plot, has planted a pump and a watering-trough
for his cow, and I suppose on Saturdays dries his towels and
neckcloths on his orange-trees; but I must have done, or the
post will be gone.”
At the end of 1782, Mrs. Siddons was the talk of the town. Prejudiced
as Walpole was apt to be in his judgments of actors, as of authors, his
impressions of this famous actress will be read with interest:
“I have been for two days in town, and seen Mrs. Siddons. She
pleased me beyond my expectation, but not up to the admiration
of the _ton_, two or three of whom were in the same box with
me.… Mr. Crawford asked me if I did not think her the best
actress I ever saw? I said, ‘By no means; we old folks were
apt to be prejudiced in favour of our first impressions.’ She
is a good figure, handsome enough, though neither nose nor chin
according to the Greek standard, beyond which both advance a
good deal. Her hair is either red, or she has no objection to
its being thought so, and had used red powder. Her voice is
clear and good; but I thought she did not vary its modulations
enough, nor ever approach enough to the familiar--but this
may come when more habituated to the awe of the audience of
the capital. Her action is proper, but with little variety;
when without motion, her arms are not genteel. Thus you see
all my objections are very trifling; but what I really wanted,
but did not find, was originality, which announces genius,
and without both which I am never intrinsically pleased. All
Mrs. Siddons did, good sense or good instruction might give.
I dare to say, that were I one-and-twenty, I should have
thought her marvellous; but alas! I remember Mrs. Porter and
the Dumesnil--and remember every accent of the former in the
very same part. Yet this is not entirely prejudice: don’t
I equally recollect the whole progress of Lord Chatham and
Charles Townshend, and does it hinder my thinking Mr. Fox a
prodigy?--Pray don’t send him this paragraph too.”
Again:
“Mrs. Siddons continues to be the mode, and to be modest and
sensible. She declines great dinners, and says her business
and the cares of her family take up her whole time. When Lord
Carlisle carried her the tribute-money from Brooks’s, he said
she was not _maniérée_ enough. ‘I suppose she was grateful,’
said my niece, Lady Maria. Mrs. Siddons was desired to play
‘Medea’ and ‘Lady Macbeth.’--‘No,’ she replied ‘she did not
look on them as female characters.’ She was questioned about
her transactions with Garrick: she said, ‘He did nothing but
put her out; that he told her she moved her right hand when it
should have been her left. In short,’ said she, ‘I found I must
not shade the tip of his nose.’”
The war was now over. Lord North had fallen; his successor, Lord
Rockingham, was dead; and Lord Shelburne, who had grasped the helm in
spite of Fox, had to meet the demands of the victorious Colonists and
their French allies, with the certainty that whatever he arranged would
be distasteful to his countrymen, and bitterly opposed by the partisans
both of his rival and of North. With the first weeks of 1783 came news
of peace. Horace writes about it, in almost the same words, to Mann
and Lady Ossory, his two chief correspondents at this time: “Peace is
arrived. I cannot express how glad I am. I care not a straw what the
terms are, which I believe I know more imperfectly than anybody in
London. I am not apt to love details--my wish was to have peace, and
the next to see America secure of its liberty. Whether it will make
good use of it, is another point. It has an opportunity that never
occurred in the world before, of being able to select the best parts of
every known constitution; but I suppose it will not, as too prejudiced
against royalty to adopt it, even as a corrective of aristocracy and
democracy.” He anticipates that highway robberies will grow more daring
on the disbanding of troops, and that there will be an inundation of
French visitors. In less than six months he was able to boast that both
his prophecies had been fulfilled. In June, he describes how, on a dark
and rainy night, Strawberry Hill was invaded by the French Ambassador
at the head of a large party:
“Of all houses upon earth, mine, from the painted glass and
over-hanging trees, wants the sun the most; besides the Star
Chamber and passage being obscured on purpose to raise the
Gallery. They ran their foreheads against Henry VII., and
took the grated door of the Tribune for the dungeon of the
castle. I mustered all the candlesticks in the house, but
before they could be lighted up, the young ladies, who, by the
way, are extremely natural, agreeable, and civil, were seized
with a panic of highwaymen, and wanted to go. I laughed, and
said, I believed there was no danger, for that I had not been
robbed these two years. However, I was not quite in the right;
they were stopped in Knightsbridge by two footpads, but Lady
Pembroke having lent them a servant besides their own, they
escaped.”
Shortly afterwards he writes to Mann:
“We have swarms of French daily; but they come as if they had
laid wagers that there is no such place as England, and only
wanted to verify its existence, or that they had a mind to
dance a minuet on English ground; for they turn on their heel
the moment after landing. Three came to see this house last
week, and walked through it literally while I wrote eight lines
of a letter; for I heard them go up the stairs, and heard
them go down, exactly in the time I was finishing no longer a
paragraph. It were happy for me had nobody more curiosity than
a Frenchman; who is never struck with anything but what he has
seen every day at Paris. I am tormented all day and every day
by people that come to see my house, and have no enjoyment of
it in summer. It would be even in vain to say that the plague
is here. I remember such a report in London when I was a child,
and my uncle, Lord Townshend, then Secretary of State, was
forced to send guards to keep off the crowd from the house in
which the plague was said to be; they would go and _see_ the
plague!”
Walpole apologises to his diplomatic correspondent for dwelling on
such trifling topics. “The Peace,” he says, “has closed the chapter
of important news, which was all our correspondence lived on.” The
period of dulness and inaction, however, came to an end with the close
of the Parliamentary vacation. The Coalition Government of Fox and
Lord North, which had superseded Lord Shelburne in the spring, was now
fairly brought to the bar of public opinion. Walpole, who had offended
Fox’s adherents by the part he had played in the intrigues[90]
which followed on the death of Lord Rockingham, sought to retrieve
his character by an eager support of the new Administration. He was
loud in his praises of Fox’s masterly eloquence and strong sense.
He now disparages Fox’s chief opponent. “His competitor, Mr. Pitt,”
says Horace, “appears by no means an adequate rival. Just like their
fathers, Mr. Pitt has brilliant language, Mr. Fox solid sense; and such
luminous powers of displaying it clearly, that mere Eloquence is but
a Bristol stone, when set by the diamond Reason.” The country at this
moment was agitated by the debates on Fox’s celebrated India Bill.
This measure was being carried by triumphant majorities through the
Lower House, and, as Walpole thought, the Opposition did not expect
to succeed even in the House of Lords. He goes so far as to add, “Mr.
Pitt’s reputation is much sunk; nor, though he is a much more correct
logician than his father, has he the same firmness and perseverance.
It is no wonder that he was dazzled by his own premature fame; yet
his late checks may be of use to him, and teach him to appreciate his
strength better, or to wait till it is confirmed. Had he listed under
Mr. Fox, who loved and courted him, he would not only have discovered
modesty, but have been more likely to succeed him, than by commencing
his competitor.” This was written on the 5th of December, 1783. Ten
days later the India Bill was defeated in the House of Lords; the King
at once dismissed the Coalition; and before the end of the year Pitt
was installed as head of the Government, a position which he retained
for the rest of Walpole’s life. The struggle which the new Ministry had
to maintain for several weeks against an adverse majority in the House
of Commons is matter of familiar history which needs not here be dwelt
upon.
The intense excitement which these events created throughout the
country is faithfully reflected in Walpole’s correspondence. We find
them producing a rupture between him and his correspondent of many
years’ standing, the poet Mason, which was not healed till shortly
before the deaths of the parties. And in writing to Mann, Walpole
several times refers to the general ferment. Thus he says: “Politics
have engrossed all conversation, and stifled other events, if any
have happened. Indeed our ladies, who used to contribute to enliven
correspondence, are become politicians, and, as Lady Townley says,
‘squeeze a little too much lemon into conversation.’ They have been
called back a little to their own profession--dress, by a magnificent
ball which the Prince of Wales gave two nights ago to near six hundred
persons, to which the Amazons of both parties were invited; and not a
scratch was given or received.” Again, in announcing the dissolution
of Parliament: “All the island will be a scene of riot, and probably
of violence. The parties are not separated in gentle mood: there will,
they say, be contested elections everywhere: consequently vast expense
and animosities.… We have no private news at all. Indeed, politics are
all in all. I question whether any woman will have anything to do with
a man of a different party. Little girls say, ‘Pray, Miss, of which
side are you?’ I heard of one that said, ‘Mama and I cannot get Papa
over to our side!’… To the present drama, Elections, I shall totally
shut my ears. I hated elections forty years ago; and, when I went to
White’s, preferred a conversation on Newmarket to one on elections: for
the language of the former I did not understand, and, consequently,
did not listen to; the other, being uttered in common phrase, made me
attend, whether I would or not. When such subjects are on the tapis,
they make me a very insipid correspondent. One cannot talk of what one
does not care about; and it would be jargon to you, if I did: however,
do not imagine but I allow a sufficient quantity of dulness to my time
of life. I have kept up a correspondence with you with tolerable spirit
for three-and-forty years together, without our once meeting. Can you
wonder that my pen is worn to the stump? You see it does not abandon
you; nor, though conscious of its own decay, endeavour to veil it by
silence. The Archbishop of Gil Blas has long been a lesson to me to
watch over my own ruins; but I do not extend that jealousy of vanity
to commerce with an old friend. You knew me in my days of folly and
riotous spirit; why should I hide my dotage from you, which is not
equally my fault and reproach?”
[Illustration: _Sir Joshua Reynolds. Pinx._ _A. Dawson. Ph. Sc._ _G.
Keating. Sc._
_The Duchess of Devonshire._]
In the middle of the elections, Horace writes once more:
“The scene is wofully changed for the Opposition, though
not half the new Parliament is yet chosen. Though they
still contest a very few counties and some boroughs, they
own themselves totally defeated. They reckoned themselves
sure of two hundred and forty members; they probably will
not have an hundred and fifty; and, amongst them, not some
capital leaders,--perhaps not the Commander-in-Chief, Mr. Fox,
certainly not the late Commander-in-Chief of the Army, General
Conway. In short, between the industry of the Court and the
India Company, and that momentary frenzy that sometimes seizes
a whole nation, as if it were a vast animal, such aversion to
the Coalition and such a detestation of Mr. Fox have seized
the country, that, even where omnipotent gold retains its
influence, the elected pass through an ordeal of the most
virulent abuse. The great Whig families, the Cavendishes,
Rockinghams, Bedfords, have lost all credit in their own
counties; nay, have been tricked out of seats where the whole
property was their own; and in some of those cases a _royal_
finger has too evidently tampered, as well as singularly and
revengefully towards Lord North and Lord Hertford; the latter
of whom, however, is likely to have six of his own sons[91]
in the House of Commons--an extraordinary instance. Such a
proscription, however, must have sown so deep resentment as it
was not wise to provoke; considering that permanent fortune is
a jewel that in no crown is the most to be depended upon!
“When I have told you these certain truths, and when you must
be aware that this torrent of unpopularity broke out in the
capital, will it not sound like a contradiction if I affirm
that Mr. Fox himself is still struggling to be chosen for
Westminster, and maintains so sturdy a fight, that Sir Cecil
Wray, his antagonist, is not yet three hundred ahead of him,
though the Court exerts itself against him in the most violent
manner, by mandates, arts, etc.--nay, sent at once a body
of two hundred and eighty of the Guards to give their votes
as householders, which _is_ legal, but which my father in
the most quiet seasons would not have dared to do! At first,
the contest threatened to be bloody: Lord Hood[92] being the
third candidate, and on the side of the Court, a mob of three
hundred sailors undertook to drive away the opponents; but
the Irish chairmen,[93] being retained by Mr. Fox’s party,
drove them back to their element, and cured the tars of their
ambition of a naval victory. In truth, Mr. Fox has all the
popularity in Westminster; and, indeed, is so amiable and
winning, that, could he have stood in person all over England,
I question whether he would not have carried the Parliament.
The beldams hate him; but most of the pretty women in London
are indefatigable in making interest for him, the Duchess of
Devonshire in particular.[94] I am ashamed to say how coarsely
she has been received by some worse than tars! But me nothing
has shocked so much as what I heard this morning: at Dover they
roasted a poor _fox_ alive by the most diabolic allegory!--a
savage meanness that an Iroquois would not have committed.
Base, cowardly wretches! How much nobler to have hurried to
London and torn Mr. Fox himself piecemeal! I detest a country
inhabited by such stupid barbarians. I will write no more
to-night; I am in a passion!”
A fortnight later he adds:
“Most elections are over; and, if they were not, neither you
nor I care about such details. I have no notion of filling
one’s head with circumstances of which, in six weeks, one is to
discharge it for ever. Indeed, it is well that I live little
in the world, or I should be obliged to provide myself with
that viaticum for common conversation. Our ladies are grown
such vehement politicians, that no other topic is admissible;
nay, I do not know whether _you_ must not learn our politics
for the _conversationi_ at Florence,--at least, if Paris gives
the _ton_ to Italy, as it used to do. There are as warm
parties for Mr. Fox or Mr. Pitt at Versailles and Amsterdam
as in Westminster. At the first, I suppose, they exhale in
epigrams; are expressed at the second by case-knives; at the
last they vent themselves in deluges of satiric prints,[95]
though with no more wit than there is in a case-knife. I was
told last night that our engraved pasquinades for this winter,
at twelvepence or sixpence a-piece, would cost six or seven
pounds.”
In the result, Fox was returned, but Conway lost his seat. Walpole
congratulates the latter on his retirement from public life:
“Berkeley Square, Wednesday, May 5, 1784.
“Your cherries, for aught I know, may, like Mr. Pitt, be half
ripe before others are in blossom; but at Twickenham, I am
sure, I could find dates and pomegranates on the quickset
hedges, as soon as a cherry in swaddling-clothes on my walls.
The very leaves on the horse-chesnuts are little things, that
cry and are afraid of the north wind, and cling to the bough
as if _old poker_ was coming to take them away. For my part,
I have seen nothing like spring but a chimney-sweeper’s
garland; and yet I have been three days in the country--and the
consequence was, that I was glad to come back to town.
“I do not wonder that you feel differently; anything is warmth
and verdure when compared to poring over memorials. In truth,
I think you will be much happier for being out of Parliament.
You could do no good there; you have no views of ambition to
satisfy; and when neither duty nor ambition calls (I do not
condescend to name avarice, which never is to be satisfied,
nor deserves to be reasoned with, nor has any place in your
breast), I cannot conceive what satisfaction an elderly man
can have in listening to the passions or follies of others:
nor is eloquence such a banquet, when one knows that, whoever
the cooks are, whatever the sauces, one has eaten as good
beef or mutton before, and, perhaps, as well dressed. It is
surely time to live for one’s self, when one has not a vast
while to live; and you, I am persuaded, will live the longer
for leading a country life. How much better to be planting,
nay, making experiments on smoke[96] (if not too dear), than
reading applications from officers, a quarter of whom you
could not serve, nor content three quarters! You had not time
for necessary exercise; and, I believe, would have blinded
yourself. In short, if you will live in the air all day, be
totally idle, and not read or write a line by candle-light,
and retrench your suppers, I shall rejoice in your having
nothing to do but that dreadful punishment, pleasing yourself.
Nobody has any claims on you; you have satisfied every point of
honour; you have no cause for being particularly grateful to
the Opposition; and you want no excuse for living for yourself.
Your resolutions on economy are not only prudent, but just;
and, to say the truth, I believe that if you had continued at
the head of the Army, you would have ruined yourself. You have
too much generosity to have curbed yourself, and would have had
too little time to attend to doing so. I know by myself how
pleasant it is to have laid up a little for those I love, for
those that depend on me, and for old servants.…
“You seem to think that I might send you more news. So I might,
if I would talk of elections; but those, you know, I hate, as,
in general, I do all details. How Mr. Fox has recovered such a
majority I do not guess; still less do I comprehend how there
could be so many that had not voted, after the poll had lasted
so long.[97] Indeed, I should be sorry to understand such
mysteries.…
“P.S. The summer is come to town, but I hope gone into the
country too.”
The new Parliament having met, and disclosed a majority of more than
two to one in favour of the Government, Walpole dismisses politics and
returns to lighter topics. He writes to Conway:
“Strawberry Hill, June 30, 1784.
“Instead of coming to you, I am thinking of packing up and
going to town for winter, so desperate is the weather! I found
a great fire at Mrs. Clive’s this evening, and Mr. Raftor
hanging over it like a smoked ham. They tell me my hay will be
all spoiled for want of cutting; but I had rather it should
be destroyed by standing than by being mowed, as the former
will cost me nothing but the crop, and ’tis very dear to make
nothing but a water-souchy of it.
“You know I have lost a niece, and found another nephew: he
makes the fifty-fourth, reckoning both sexes. We are certainly
an affectionate family, for of late we do nothing but marry one
another. Have not YOU felt a little twinge in a remote corner
of your heart on Lady Harrington’s death?[98] She dreaded death
so extremely that I am glad she had not a moment to be sensible
of it. I have a great affection for sudden deaths; they save
one’s self and everybody else a deal of ceremony.
“The Duke and Duchess of Marlborough breakfasted here on
Monday, and seemed much pleased, though it rained the whole
time with an Egyptian darkness. I should have thought there had
been deluges enough to destroy all Egypt’s other plagues: but
the newspapers talk of locusts; I suppose relations of your
beetles, though probably not so fond of green fruit; for the
scene of their campaign is Queen Square, Westminster, where
there certainly has not been an orchard since the reign of
Canute.
“I have, at last, seen an air-balloon; just as I once did see a
tiny review, by passing one accidentally on Hounslow Heath. I
was going last night to Lady Onslow at Richmond, and over Mr.
Cambridge’s field I saw a bundle in the air not bigger than
the moon, and she herself could not have descended with more
composure if she had expected to find Endymion fast asleep. It
seemed to ’light on Richmond Hill; but Mrs. Hobart was going
by, and her _coiffure_ prevented my seeing it alight. The
papers say, that a balloon has been made at Paris representing
the castle of Stockholm, in compliment to the King of Sweden;
but that they are afraid to let it off: so, I suppose, it
will be served up to him in a dessert. No great progress,
surely, is made in these airy navigations, if they are still
afraid of risking the necks of two or three subjects for the
entertainment of a visiting sovereign. There is seldom a _feu
de joie_ for the birth of a Dauphin that does not cost more
lives. I thought royalty and science never haggled about the
value of blood when experiments are in the question.
“I shall wait for summer before I make you a visit. Though I
dare to say that you have converted your smoke-kilns into a
manufactory of balloons, pray do not erect a Strawberry castle
in the air for my reception, if it will cost a pismire a hair
of its head. Good-night! I have ordered my bed to be heated as
hot as an oven, and Tonton and I must go into it.”
The recent invention of balloons was at this time exciting general
interest. “This enormous capital,” says Walpole, “that must have
some occupation, is most innocently amused with those philosophic
playthings, air-balloons. An Italian, one Lunardi, is the first
_airgonaut_ that has mounted into the clouds in this country. He is
said to have bought three or four thousand pounds in the stocks,
by exhibiting his person, his balloon, and his dog and cat, at the
Pantheon for a shilling each visitor. Blanchard, a Frenchman, is his
rival; and I expect that they will soon have an air-fight in the
clouds, like a stork and a kite.”
This year ended for our author with a severe attack of gout. He replies
to inquiries from Lady Ossory:
“Berkeley Square, Dec. 27, 1784.
“I am told that I am in a prodigious fine way; which, being
translated into plain English, means that I have suffered
more sharp pain these two days than in all the moderate fits
together that I have had for these last nine years: however,
Madam, I have one great blessing, there is drowsiness in all
the square hollows of the red-hot bars of the gridiron on
which I lie, so that I scream and fall asleep by turns, like
a babe that is cutting its first teeth. I can add nothing to
this exact account, which I only send in obedience to your
Ladyship’s commands, which I received just now: I did think on
Saturday that the worst was over.”
On his recovery, he writes:
“I am always thanking you, Madam, I think, for kind inquiries
after me; but it is not my fault that I am so often
troublesome! I would it were otherwise!--however, I do not
complain. I have attained another resurrection, and was so
glad of my liberty, that I went out both Saturday and Sunday,
though so snowy a day and so rainy a day never were invented.
Yet I have not ventured to see Mrs. Jordan,[99] nor to skate
in Hyde Park. We had other guess winters in my time!--fine
sunny mornings, with now and then a mild earthquake, just
enough to wake one, and rock one to sleep again comfortably.
My recoveries surprise me more than my fits; but I am quite
persuaded now that I know exactly how I shall end: as I am a
statue of chalk, I shall crumble to powder, and then my inside
will be blown away from my terrace, and hoary-headed Margaret
will tell the people that come to see my house,--
‘One morn we miss’d him on the ’custom’d hill.’
When that is the case, Madam, don’t take the pains of
inquiring more; as I shall leave no _body_ to return to, even
Cagliostro would bring me back to no purpose.”