ARLINGTON STREET, _March_ 26, 1765.
Three weeks are a great while, my dear lord, for me to have been without
writing to you; but besides that I have passed many days at Strawberry,
to cure my cold (which it has done), there has nothing happened worth
sending across the sea. Politics have dozed, and common events been fast
asleep. Of Guerchy's affair, you probably know more than I do; it is now
forgotten. I told him I had absolute proof of his innocence, for I was
sure, that if he had offered money for assassination, the men who swear
against him would have taken it.
The King has been very seriously ill, and in great danger. I would not
alarm you, as there were hopes when he was at the worst. I doubt he is
not free yet from his complaint, as the humour fallen on his breast
still oppresses him. They talk of his having a levée next week, but he
has not appeared in public, and the bills are passed by commission; but
he rides out. The Royal Family have suffered like us mortals; the Duke
of Gloucester has had a fever, but I believe his chief complaint is of
a youthful kind. Prince Frederick is thought to be in a deep
consumption; and for the Duke of Cumberland, next post will probably
certify you of his death, as he is relapsed, and there are no hopes of
him. He fell into his lethargy again, and when they waked him, he said
he did not know whether he could call himself obliged to them.
I dined two days ago at Monsieur de Guerchy's, with the Count de
Caraman, who brought me your letter. He seems a very agreeable man, and
you may be sure, for your sake, and Madame de Mirepoix's, no civilities
in my power shall be wanting. I have not yet seen Schouvaloff,[1] about
whom one has more curiosity--it is an opportunity of gratifying that
passion which one can so seldom do in personages of his historic nature,
especially remote foreigners. I wish M. de Caraman had brought the
"Siege of Calais," which he tells me is printed, though your account has
a little abated my impatience. They tell us the French comedians are to
act at Calais this summer--is it possible they can be so absurd, or
think us so absurd as to go thither, if we would not go further? I
remember, at Rheims, they believed that English ladies went to Calais to
drink champagne--is this the suite of that belief? I was mightily
pleased with the Duc de Choiseul's answer to the Clairon;[2] but when I
hear of the French admiration of Garrick, it takes off something of my
wonder at the prodigious adoration of him at home. I never could
conceive the marvellous merit of repeating the works of others in one's
own language with propriety, however well delivered. Shakespeare is not
more admired for writing his plays, than Garrick for acting them. I
think him a very good and very various player--but several have pleased
me more, though I allow not in so many parts. Quin[3] in Falstaff, was
as excellent as Garrick[4] in Lear. Old Johnson far more natural in
everything he attempted. Mrs. Porter and your Dumesnil surpassed him in
passionate tragedy; Cibber and O'Brien were what Garrick could never
reach, coxcombs, and men of fashion. Mrs. Clive is at least as perfect
in low comedy--and yet to me, Ranger was the part that suited Garrick
the best of all he ever performed. He was a poor Lothario, a ridiculous
Othello, inferior to Quin in Sir John Brute and Macbeth, and to Cibber
in Bayes, and a woful Lord Hastings and Lord Townley. Indeed, his Bayes
was original, but not the true part: Cibber was the burlesque of a great
poet, as the part was designed, but Garrick made it a Garretteer. The
town did not like him in Hotspur, and yet I don't know whether he did
not succeed in it beyond all the rest. Sir Charles Williams and Lord
Holland thought so too, and they were no bad judges. I am impatient to
see the Clairon, and certainly will, as I have promised, though I have
not fixed my day. But do you know you alarm me! There was a time when I
was a match for Madame de Mirepoix at pharaoh, to any hour of the night,
and I believe did play with her five nights in a week till three and
four in the morning--but till eleven o'clock to-morrow morning--Oh! that
is a little too much, even at loo. Besides, I shall not go to Paris for
pharaoh--if I play all night, how shall I see everything all day?
[Footnote 1: Schouvaloff was notorious as a favourite of the Empress
Catharine.]
[Footnote 2: Mdlle. Clairon had been for some years the most admired
tragic actress in France. In that age actors and actresses in France
were exposed to singular insults. M. Lacroix, in his "France in the
Eighteenth Century," tells us: "They were considered as inferior beings
in the social scale; excommunicated by the Church, and banished from
society, they were compelled to endure all the humiliations and affronts
which the public chose to inflict on them in the theatre; and, if any of
them had the courage to make head against the storm, and to resist the
violence and cruelty of the pit, they were sent to prison, and not
released but on condition of apologising to the tyrants who had so
cruelly insulted them. Many had a sufficient sense of their own dignity
to withdraw themselves from this odious despotism after having been in
prison in Fort l'Evêcque, their ordinary place of confinement, by the
order of the gentlemen of the chamber or the lieutenant of police; and
it was in this way that Mdlle. Clairon bade farewell to the Comédie
Française and gave up acting in 1765, when at the very height of her
talent, and in the middle of her greatest dramatic triumphs." The
incident here alluded to by Walpole was that "a critic named Fréron had
libelled her in a journal to which he contributed; and, as she could not
obtain justice, she applied to the Duc de Choiseul, the Prime Minister.
Even he was unable to put her in the way of obtaining redress, and
sought to pacify her by comparing her position to his own. 'I am,' said
he, 'mademoiselle, like yourself, a public performer; with this
difference in your favour, that you choose what parts you please, and
are sure to be crowned with the applause of the public; for I reckon as
nothing the bad taste of one or two wretched individuals who have the
misfortune of not adoring you. I, on the other hand, am obliged to act
the parts imposed on me by necessity. I am sure to please nobody; I am
satirised, criticised, libelled, hissed; yet I continue to do my best.
Let us both, then, sacrifice our little resentments and enmities to the
public service, and serve our country, each in our own station. Besides,
the Queen has condescended to forgive Fréron, and you may therefore,
without compromising your dignity, imitate Her Majesty's clemency'"
("Mem. de Bachaumont," i. 61). But Mdlle. was not to be pacified, nor to
be persuaded to expose herself to a repetition of insult; but, though
only forty-one, she retired from the stage for ever.]
[Footnote 3: Quin was employed by the Princess of Wales to teach her son
elocution, and when he heard how generally his young sovereign was
praised for the grace and dignity of his delivery of his speech to his
Parliament, he boasted, "Ah, it was I taught the boy to speak."]
[Footnote 4: Garrick was not only a great actor, but also a great
reformer of the stage. He seems to have excelled equally both in tragedy
and comedy, which makes it natural to suppose that in some parts he may
have been excelled by other actors; though he had no equal (and perhaps
never has had) in both lines. He was also himself the author of several
farces of more than average merit.]
Lady Sophia Thomas has received the Baume de vie, for which she gives
you a thousand thanks, and I ten thousand.
We are extremely amused with the wonderful histories of your hyena[1] in
the Gevaudan; but our fox-hunters despise you: it is exactly the
enchanted monster of old romances. If I had known its history a few
months ago, I believe it would have appeared in the "Castle of
Otranto,"--the success of which has, at last, brought me to own it,
though the wildness of it made me terribly afraid; but it was
comfortable to have it please so much, before any mortal suspected the
author: indeed, it met with too much honour far, for at first it was
universally believed to be Mr. Gray's. As all the first impression is
sold, I am hurrying out another, with a new preface, which I will send
you.
[Footnote 1: A wolf of enormous size, and, in some respects, irregular
conformation, which for a long time ravaged the Gevaudan; it was, soon
after the date of this letter, killed, and Mr. Walpole saw it in Paris.]
_RIOTS OF WEAVERS--MINISTERIAL CHANGES--FACTIOUS CONDUCT OF MR. PITT._