STRAWBERRY HILL, _June_ 12, 1753.
I could not rest any longer with the thought of your having no idea of a
place of which you hear so much, and therefore desired Mr. Bentley to
draw you as much idea of it as the post would be persuaded to carry from
Twickenham to Florence. The enclosed enchanted little landscape, then,
is Strawberry Hill; and I will try to explain so much of it to you as
will help to let you know whereabouts we are when we are talking to you;
for it is uncomfortable in so intimate a correspondence as ours not to
be exactly master of every spot where one another is writing, or
reading, or sauntering. This view of the castle is what I have just
finished, and is the only side that will be at all regular. Directly
before it is an open grove, through which you see a field, which is
bounded by a serpentine wood of all kind of trees, and flowering shrubs,
and flowers. The lawn before the house is situated on the top of a small
hill, from whence to the left you see the town and church of Twickenham
encircling a turn of the river, that looks exactly like a seaport in
miniature. The opposite shore is a most delicious meadow, bounded by
Richmond Hill, which loses itself in the noble woods of the park to the
end of the prospect on the right, where is another turn of the river,
and the suburbs of Kingston as luckily placed as Twickenham is on the
left: and a natural terrace on the brow of my hill, with meadows of my
own down to the river, commands both extremities. Is not this a
tolerable prospect? You must figure that all this is perpetually
enlivened by a navigation of boats and barges, and by a road below my
terrace, with coaches, post-chaises, waggons, and horsemen constantly in
motion, and the fields speckled with cows, horses, and sheep. Now you
shall walk into the house. The bow-window below leads into a little
parlour hung with a stone-colour Gothic paper and Jackson's Venetian
prints, which I could never endure while they pretended, infamous as
they are, to be after Titian, &c., but when I gave them this air of
barbarous bas-reliefs, they succeeded to a miracle: it is impossible at
first sight not to conclude that they contain the history of Attila or
Tottila, done about the very aera. From hence, under two gloomy arches,
you come to the hall and staircase, which it is impossible to describe
to you, as it is the most particular and chief beauty of the castle.
Imagine the walls covered with (I call it paper, but it is really paper
painted in perspective to represent) Gothic fretwork: the lightest
Gothic balustrade to the staircase, adorned with antelopes (our
supporters) bearing shields; lean windows fattened with rich saints in
painted glass, and a vestibule open with three arches on the
landing-place, and niches full of trophies of old coats of mail, Indian
shields made of rhinoceros's hides, broadswords, quivers, longbows,
arrows, and spears--all _supposed_ to be taken by Sir Terry Robsart in
the holy wars. But as none of this regards the enclosed drawing, I will
pass to that. The room on the ground-floor nearest to you is a
bedchamber, hung with yellow paper and prints, framed in a new manner,
invented by Lord Cardigan; that is, with black and white borders
printed. Over this is Mr. Chute's bedchamber, hung with red in the same
manner. The bow-window room one pair of stairs is not yet finished; but
in the tower beyond it is the charming closet where I am now writing to
you. It is hung with green paper and water-colour pictures; has two
windows; the one in the drawing looks to the garden, the other to the
beautiful prospect; and the top of each glutted with the richest painted
glass of the arms of England, crimson roses, and twenty other pieces of
green, purple, and historic bits. I must tell you, by the way, that the
castle, when finished, will have two-and-thirty windows enriched with
painted glass. In this closet, which is Mr. Chute's college of Arms, are
two presses with books of heraldry and antiquities, Madame Sévigné's
Letters, and any French books that relate to her and her acquaintance.
Out of this closet is the room where we always live, hung with a blue
and white paper in stripes adorned with festoons, and a thousand plump
chairs, couches, and luxurious settees covered with linen of the same
pattern, and with a bow-window commanding the prospect, and gloomed
with limes that shade half each window, already darkened with painted
glass in chiaroscuro, set in deep blue glass. Under this room is a cool
little hall, where we generally dine, hung with paper to imitate Dutch
tiles.
I have described so much, that you will begin to think that all the
accounts I used to give you of the diminutiveness of our habitation were
fabulous; but it is really incredible how small most of the rooms are.
The only two good chambers I shall have are not yet built: they will be
an eating-room and a library, each twenty by thirty, and the latter
fifteen feet high. For the rest of the house I could send it you in this
letter as easily as the drawing, only that I should have nowhere to live
till the return of the post. The Chinese summer-house, which you may
distinguish in the distant landscape, belongs to my Lord Radnor. We
pique ourselves upon nothing but simplicity, and have no carvings,
gildings, paintings, inlayings, or tawdry businesses.
You will not be sorry, I believe, by this time to have done with
Strawberry Hill, and to hear a little news. The end of a very dreaming
session has been extremely enlivened by an accidental bill which has
opened great quarrels, and those not unlikely to be attended with
interesting circumstances. A bill to prevent clandestine marriages,[1]
so drawn by the Judges as to clog all matrimony in general, was
inadvertently espoused by the Chancellor; and having been strongly
attacked in the House of Commons by Nugent, the Speaker, Mr. Fox, and
others, the last went very great lengths of severity on the whole body
of the law, and on its chieftain in particular, which, however, at the
last reading, he softened and explained off extremely. This did not
appease: but on the return of the bill to the House of Lords, where our
amendments were to be read, the Chancellor in the most personal terms
harangued against Fox, and concluded with saying that "he despised his
scurrility as much as his adulation and recantation." As Christian
charity is not one of the oaths taken by privy-counsellors, and as it is
not the most eminent virtue in either of the champions, this quarrel is
not likely to be soon reconciled. There are natures whose disposition it
is to patch up political breaches, but whether they will succeed, or try
to succeed in healing this, can I tell you?
[Footnote 1: These clandestine marriages were often called "Fleet
marriages." Lord Stanhope, describing this Act, states that "there was
ever ready a band of degraded and outcast clergymen, prisoners for debt
or for crime, who hovered about the verge of the Fleet prison soliciting
customers, and plying, like porters, for employment.... One of these
wretches, named Keith, had gained a kind of pre-eminence in infamy. On
being told there was a scheme on foot to stop his lucrative traffic, he
declared, with many oaths, he would still be revenged of the Bishops,
that he would buy a piece of ground and outbury them!" ("History of
England," c. 31).]
The match for Lord Granville, which I announced to you, is not
concluded: the flames are cooled in that quarter as well as in others.
I begin a new sheet to you, which does not match with the other, for I
have no more of the same paper here. Dr. Cameron is executed, and died
with the greatest firmness. His parting with his wife the night before
was heroic and tender: he let her stay till the last moment, when being
aware that the gates of the Tower would be locked, he told her so; she
fell at his feet in agonies: he said, "Madam, this was not what you
promised me," and embracing her, forced her to retire: then with the
same coolness looked at the window till her coach was out of sight,
after which he turned about and wept. His only concern seemed to be at
the ignominy of Tyburn: he was not disturbed at the dresser for his
body, or at the fire to burn his bowels.[1] The crowd was so great, that
a friend who attended him could not get away, but was forced to stay and
behold the execution; but what will you say to the minister or priest
that accompanied him? The wretch, after taking leave, went into a
landau, where, not content with seeing the Doctor hanged, he let down
the top of the landau for the better convenience of seeing him
embowelled! I cannot tell you positively that what I hinted of this
Cameron being commissioned from Prussia was true, but so it is believed.
Adieu! my dear child; I think this is a very tolerable letter for
summer!
[Footnote 1: "The populace," says Smollett, "though not very subject to
tender emotions, were moved to compassion, and even to tears, by his
behaviour at the place of execution; and many sincere well-wishers of
the present establishment thought that the sacrifice of this victim, at
such a juncture, could not redound either to its honour or security."]
[Illustration: GEORGE MONTAGU.]
_NO NEWS FROM FRANCE BUT WHAT IS SMUGGLED--THE KING'S DELIGHT AT THE
VOTE FOR THE HANOVER TROOPS--BON MOT OF LORD DENBIGH._