STRAWBERRY HILL, _May_ 3, 1749.
I am come hither for a few days, to repose myself after a torrent of
diversions, and am writing to you in my charming bow-window with a
tranquillity and satisfaction which, I fear, I am grown old enough to
prefer to the hurry of amusements, in which the whole world has lived
for this last week. We have at last celebrated the Peace, and that as
much in extremes as we generally do everything, whether we have reason
to be glad or sorry, pleased or angry. Last Tuesday it was proclaimed:
the King did not go to St. Paul's, but at night the whole town was
illuminated. The next day was what was called "a jubilee-masquerade in
the Venetian manner" at Ranelagh: it had nothing Venetian in it, but was
by far the best understood and the prettiest spectacle I ever saw:
nothing in a fairy tale ever surpassed it. One of the proprietors, who
is a German, and belongs to Court, had got my Lady Yarmouth to persuade
the King to order it. It began at three o'clock, and, about five, people
of fashion began to go. When you entered, you found the whole garden
filled with masks and spread with tents, which remained all night _very
commodely_. In one quarter, was a May-pole dressed with garlands, and
people dancing round it to a tabor and pipe and rustic music, all
masqued, as were all the various bands of music that were disposed in
different parts of the garden; some like huntsmen with French horns,
some like peasants, and a troop of harlequins and scaramouches in the
little open temple on the mount. On the canal was a sort of gondola,
adorned with flags and streamers, and filled with music, rowing about.
All round the outside of the amphitheatre were shops, filled with
Dresden china, japan, &c., and all the shopkeepers in mask. The
amphitheatre was illuminated; and in the middle was a circular bower,
composed of all kinds of firs in tubs, from twenty to thirty feet high:
under them orange-trees, with small lamps in each orange, and below them
all sorts of the finest auriculas in pots; and festoons of natural
flowers hanging from tree to tree. Between the arches too were firs, and
smaller ones in the balconies above. There were booths for tea and wine,
gaming-tables and dancing, and about two thousand persons. In short, it
pleased me more than anything I ever saw. It is to be once more, and
probably finer as to dresses, as there has since been a subscription
masquerade, and people will go in their rich habits. The next day were
the fireworks, which by no means answered the expense, the length of
preparation, and the expectation that had been raised; indeed, for a
week before, the town was like a country fair, the streets filled from
morning to night, scaffolds building wherever you could or could not
see, and coaches arriving from every corner of the kingdom. This hurry
and lively scene, with the sight of the immense crowd in the Park and on
every house, the guards, and the machine itself, which was very
beautiful, was all that was worth seeing. The rockets, and whatever was
thrown up into the air, succeeded mighty well; but the wheels, and all
that was to compose the principal part, were pitiful and ill-conducted,
with no changes of coloured fires and shapes: the illumination was mean,
and lighted so slowly that scarce anybody had patience to wait the
finishing; and then, what contributed to the awkwardness of the whole,
was the right pavilion catching fire, and being burnt down in the middle
of the show. The King, the Duke, and Princess Emily saw it from the
Library, with their courts: the Prince and Princess, with their
children, from Lady Middlesex's; no place being provided for them, nor
any invitation given to the library. The Lords and Commons had galleries
built for them and the chief citizens along the rails of the Mall: the
Lords had four tickets a-piece, and each Commoner, at first, but two,
till the Speaker bounced and obtained a third. Very little mischief was
done, and but two persons killed: at Paris, there were forty killed and
near three hundred wounded, by a dispute between the French and Italians
in the management, who, quarrelling for precedence in lighting the
fires, both lighted at once and blew up the whole. Our mob was extremely
tranquil, and very unlike those I remember in my father's time, when it
was a measure in the Opposition to work up everything to mischief, the
Excise and the French players, the Convention and the Gin Act. We are as
much now in the opposite extreme, and in general so pleased with the
peace, that I could not help being struck with a passage I read lately
in Pasquier, an old French author, who says, "that in the time of
Francis I. the French used to call their creditors 'Des Anglois,' from
the facility with which the English gave credit to them in all treaties,
though they had broken so many." On Saturday we had a serenta at the
Opera-house, called Peace in Europe, but it was a wretched performance.
On Monday there was a subscription masquerade, much fuller than that of
last year, but not so agreeable or so various in dresses. The King was
well disguised in an old-fashioned English habit, and much pleased with
somebody who desired him to hold their cup as they were drinking tea.
The Duke had a dress of the same kind, but was so immensely corpulent
that he looked like Cacofogo, the drunken captain, in "Rule a Wife and
have a Wife." The Duchess of Richmond was a Lady Mayoress in the time of
James I.; and Lord Delawarr, Queen Elizabeth's porter, from a picture in
the guard-chamber at Kensington: they were admirable masks. Lord
Rochford, Miss Evelyn, Miss Bishop, Lady Stafford, and Mrs. Pitt, were
in vast beauty; particularly the last, who had a red veil, which made
her look gloriously handsome. I forgot Lady Kildare. Mr. Conway was the
Duke in "Don Quixote," and the finest figure I ever saw. Miss Chudleigh
was Iphigenia, but so naked that you would have taken her for Andromeda;
and Lady Betty Smithson [Seymour] had such a pyramid of baubles upon her
head, that she was exactly the Princess of Babylon in Grammont.
You will conclude that, after all these diversions, people begin to
think of going out of town--no such matter: the Parliament continues
sitting, and will till the middle of June; Lord Egmont told us we should
sit till Michaelmas. There are many private bills, no public ones of any
fame. We were to have had some chastisement for Oxford, where, besides
the late riots, the famous Dr. King,[1] the Pretender's great agent,
made a most violent speech at the opening of the Ratcliffe Library. The
ministry denounced judgment, but, in their old style, have grown
frightened, and dropped it. However, this menace gave occasion to a
meeting and union between the Prince's party and the Jacobites which
Lord Egmont has been labouring all the winter. They met at the St.
Alban's tavern, near Pall Mall, last Monday morning, a hundred and
twelve Lords and Commoners. The Duke of Beaufort opened the assembly
with a panegyric on the stand that had been made this winter against so
corrupt an administration, and hoped it would continue, and desired
harmony. Lord Egmont seconded this strongly, and begged they would come
up to Parliament early next winter. Lord Oxford spoke next; and then
Potter with great humour, and to the great abashment of the Jacobites,
said he was very glad to see this union, and from thence hoped, that if
another attack like the last Rebellion should be made on the Royal
Family, they would all stand by them. No reply was made to this. Then
Sir Watkyn Williams spoke, Sir Francis Dashwood,[2] and Tom Pitt, and
the meeting broke up. I don't know what this coalition may produce: it
will require time with no better heads than compose it at present,
though the great Mr. Dodington had carried to the conference the
assistance of his. In France a very favourable event has happened for
us, the disgrace of Maurepas,[3] one of our bitterest enemies, and the
greatest promoter of their marine. Just at the beginning of the war, in
a very critical period, he had obtained a very large sum for that
service, but which one of the other factions, lest he should gain glory
and credit by it, got to be suddenly given away to the King of Prussia.
[Footnote 1: Dr. King was Principal of St. Mary's Hall, Oxford, and one
of the chief supports of the Jacobite party after 1745.]
[Footnote 2: Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1761, through the influence
of the Earl of Bute. He was the owner of Medmenham Abbey, on the Thames,
and as such, the President of the profligate Club whose doings were made
notorious by the proceedings against Wilkes, and who, in compliment to
him, called themselves the Franciscans.]
[Footnote 3: The Comte de Maurepas was the grandson of the Chancellor of
France, M. de Pontchartrain. When only fourteen years old Louis had made
him Secretary of State for the Marine, as a consolation to his
grandfather for his dismissal; and he continued in office till the
accession of Louis XVI., when he was appointed Prime Minister. He was
not a man of any statesmanlike ability; but Lacretelle ascribes to him
"les graces d'un esprit aimable et frivole qui avait le don d'amuser un
vieillard toujours porté à un elegant badinage" (ii. 53); and in a
subsequent letter speaks of him as a man of very lively powers of
conversation.]
Sir Charles Williams[1] is appointed envoy to this last King: here is an
epigram which he has just sent over on Lord Egmont's opposition to the
Mutiny Bill:
Why has Lord Egmont 'gainst this bill
So much declamatory skill
So tediously exerted?
The reason's plain: but t'other day
He mutinied himself for pay,
And he has twice deserted.
[Footnote 1: Sir Charles Hanbury Williams had represented Monmouth in
Parliament, but in 1744 was sent as ambassador to Berlin, and from
thence to St. Petersburg. He was more celebrated in the fashionable
world as the author of lyrical odes of a lively character.]
I must tell you a _bon-mot_ that was made the other night at the
serenata of "Peace in Europe" by Wall,[1] who is much in fashion, and a
kind of Gondomar. Grossatesta, the Modenese minister, a very low fellow,
with all the jackpuddinghood of an Italian, asked, "Mais qui est ce qui
représente mon maître?" Wall replied, "Mais, mon Dieu! L'abbé, ne sçavez
vous pas que ce n'est pas un opéra boufon?" and here is another
_bon-mot_ of my Lady Townshend: we were talking of Methodists; somebody
said, "Pray, Madam, is it true that Whitfield[2] has _recanted_?" "No,
sir, he has only _canted_."
[Footnote 1: General Wall was the Spanish ambassador, as Gondomar had
been in the reign of James I.]
[Footnote 2: Whitefield, while an undergraduate at Oxford, joined
Wesley, who had recently founded a sect which soon became known as the
Methodists. But, after a time, Whitefield, who was of a less moderate
temper than Wesley, adopted the views known as Calvinistic, and,
breaking off from the Wesleyans, established a sect more rigid and less
friendly to the Church.]
If you ever think of returning to England, as I hope it will be long
first, you must prepare yourself with Methodism. I really believe that
by that time it will be necessary: this sect increases as fast as almost
ever any religious nonsense did. Lady Fanny Shirley has chosen this way
of bestowing the dregs of her beauty; and Mr. Lyttelton is very near
making the same sacrifice of the dregs of all those various characters
that he has worn. The Methodists love your big sinners, as proper
subjects to work upon--and indeed they have a plentiful harvest--I think
what you call flagrancy was never more in fashion. Drinking is at the
highest wine-mark; and gaming joined with it so violent, that at the
last Newmarket meeting, in the rapidity of both, a bank-bill was thrown
down, and nobody immediately claiming it, they agreed to give it to a
man that was standing by....
_EARTHQUAKE IN LONDON--GENERAL PANIC--MARRIAGE OF CASIMIR, KING OF
POLAND._