STRAWBERRY HILL, _April_ 30, 1763.
The papers have told you all the formal changes; the real one consists
solely in Lord Bute being out of office, for, having recovered his
fright, he is still as much Minister as ever, and consequently does not
find his unpopularity decrease. On the contrary, I think his situation
more dangerous than ever: he has done enough to terrify his friends,
and encourage his enemies, and has acquired no new strength; rather has
lost strength, by the disappearance of Mr. Fox from the scene. His
deputies, too, will not long care to stand all the risk for him, when
they perceive, as they must already, that they have neither credit nor
confidence. Indeed the new administration is a general joke, and will
scarce want a violent death to put an end to it. Lord Bute is very
blamable for embarking the King so deep in measures that may have so
serious a termination. The longer the Court can stand its ground, the
more firmly will the opposition be united, and the more inflamed. I have
ever thought this would be a turbulent reign, and nothing has happened
to make me alter my opinion.
Mr. Fox's exit has been very unpleasant. He would not venture to accept
the Treasury, which Lord Bute would have bequeathed to him; and could
not obtain an earldom, for which he thought he had stipulated; but some
of the negotiators asserting that he had engaged to resign the
Paymaster's place, which he vehemently denies, he has been forced to
take up with a barony, and has broken with his associates--I do not say
friends, for with the chief of _them_[1] he had quarrelled when he
embarked in the new system. He meets with little pity, and yet has found
as much ingratitude as he had had power of doing service.
[Footnote 1: "_The chief of them._" Walpole himself explains in a note
that he means the Dukes of Cumberland and Devonshire.]
I am glad you are going to have a great duke; it will amuse you, and a
new Court will make Florence lively, the only beauty it wants. You
divert me with my friend the Duke of Modena's conscientious match: if
the Duchess had outlived him, she would not have been so scrupulous.
But, for Hymen's sake, who is that Madame Simonetti? I trust, not that
old painted, gaming, debauched Countess from Milan, whom I saw at the
fair of Reggio!
I surprise myself with being able to write two pages of pure English; I
do nothing but deal in broken French. The two nations are crossing over
and figuring-in. We have had a Count d'Usson and his wife these six
weeks; and last Saturday arrived a Madame de Boufflers, _sçavante,
galante_, a great friend of the Prince of Conti, and a passionate
admirer _de nous autres Anglois_. I am forced to live much with _tout
ça_, as they are perpetually at my Lady Hervey's; and as my Lord
Hertford goes ambassador to Paris, where I shall certainly make him a
visit next year--don't you think I shall be computing how far it is to
Florence? There is coming, too, a Marquis de Fleury,[1] who is to be
consigned to me, as a political relation, _vû l'amitié entre le Cardinal
son oncle et feu monsieur mon père_. However, as my cousin Fleury is not
above six-and-twenty, I had much rather be excused from such a
commission as showing the Tombs and the Lions, and the King and Queen,
and my Lord Bute, and the Waxwork, to a boy. All this breaks in upon my
plan of withdrawing by little and little from the world, for I hate to
tire it with an old lean face, and which promises to be an old lean face
for thirty years longer, for I am as well again as ever. The Duc de
Nivernois called here the other day in his way from Hampton Court; but,
as the most sensible French never have eyes to see anything, unless they
see it every day and see it in fashion, I cannot say he flattered me
much, or was much struck with Strawberry. When I carried him into the
Cabinet, which I have told you is formed upon the idea of a Catholic
chapel, he pulled off his hat, but perceiving his error, he said, "_Ce
n'est pas une chapelle pourtant_," and seemed a little displeased.
[Footnote 1: Cardinal Fleury, Prime Minister of France from 1727 to
1742. Pope celebrated his love of peace--
Peace is my dear delight, not Fleury's more;
and by his resolute maintenance of peace during the first seven years of
his administration he had so revived the resources and restored the
power of his country, that when the question of going to war with France
was discussed in the Council of Vienna the veteran Prince Eugene warned
the Ministers that his wise and prudent administration had been so
beneficial to his country that the Empire was no longer a match for it.]
My poor niece [Lady Waldegrave] does not forget her Lord, though by this
time I suppose the world has. She has taken a house here, at Twickenham,
to be near me. Madame de Boufflers has heard so much of her beauty, that
she told me she should be glad to peep through a grate anywhere to get a
glimpse of her,--but at present it would not answer. I never saw so
great an alteration in so short a period; but she is too young not to
recover her beauty, only dimmed by grief that must be temporary. Adieu!
my dear Sir.
_Monday, May 2nd_, ARLINGTON STREET.
The plot thickens: Mr. Wilkes is sent to the Tower for the last _North
Briton_;[1] a paper whose fame must have reached you. It said Lord Bute
had made the King utter a gross falsehood in his last speech. This hero
is as bad a fellow as ever hero was, abominable in private life, dull in
Parliament, but, they say, very entertaining in a room, and certainly no
bad writer, besides having had the honour of contributing a great deal
to Lord Bute's fall. Wilkes fought Lord Talbot in the autumn, whom he
had abused; and lately in Calais, when the Prince de Croy, the Governor,
asked how far the liberty of the press extended in England, replied, I
cannot tell, but I am trying to know. I don't believe this will be the
only paragraph I shall send you on this affair.
[Footnote 1: The celebrated No. 45 which attacked the speech with which
the King had opened Parliament; asserting that it was the speech not of
the King, but of the Ministers; and that as such he had a right to
criticise it, and to denounce its panegyric of the late speech as
founded on falsehood.]
_A PARTY AT "STRABERRI"--WORK OF HIS PRINTING PRESS--EPIGRAMS--A GARDEN
PARTY AT ESHER._