PARIS, _Sept._ 27, 1767.
Since you insist on my writing from hence, I will; I intended to defer
it a few days longer, as I shall set out on my return this day
se'nnight.
Within the five weeks of my being here, there have happened three
deaths, which certainly nobody expected six weeks ago. Yet, though the
persons were all considerable, their loss will make little impression on
the state of any affairs.
Monsieur de Guerchy returned from his embassy with us about a month
before my arrival. He had been out of order some time, and had taken
waters, yet seeing him so often I had perceived no change, till I was
made to remark it, and then I did not think it considerable. On my
arrival, I was shocked at the precipitate alteration. He was emaciated,
yellow, and scarcely able to support himself. A fever came on in ten
days, mortification ensued, and carried him off. It is said that he had
concealed and tampered indiscreetly with an old complaint, acquired
before his marriage. This was his radical death; I doubt, vexation and
disappointment fermented the wound. Instead of the duchy he hoped, his
reception was freezing. He was a frank, gallant gentleman; universally
beloved with us; hated I believe by nobody, and by no means inferior in
understanding to many who affected to despise his abilities.
But our comet is set too! Charles Townshend[1] is dead. All those parts
and fire are extinguished; those volatile salts are evaporated; that
first eloquence of the world is dumb! that duplicity is fixed, that
cowardice terminated heroically. He joked on death as naturally as he
used to do on the living, and not with the affectation of philosophers,
who wind up their works with sayings which they hope to have remembered.
With a robust person he had always a menacing constitution. He had had a
fever the whole summer, recovered as it was thought, relapsed, was
neglected, and it turned to an incurable putrid fever.
[Footnote 1: Mr. Townshend was Chancellor of the Exchequer; and he
might have been added by Lord Macaulay to his list of men whom their
eloquence had caused to be placed in offices for which they were totally
unfit; for he had not only no special knowledge of finance, but he was
one of the most careless and incautious of mankind, even in his oratory.
In that, however, after the retirement of Lord Chatham, he seems to have
had no rival in either house but Mr. Burke. It was to his heedless
resumption of Grenville's plan of taxing our colonies in North America
that our loss of them was owing. In his "Memoirs of the Reign of George
III." Walpole gives the following description of him: "Charles
Townshend, who had studied nothing with accuracy or attention, had parts
that embraced all knowledge with such quickness that he seemed to create
knowledge, instead of searching for it; and, ready as Burke's wit was,
it appeared artificial when set by that of Townshend, which was so
abundant that in him it seemed a loss of time to think. He had but to
speak, and all he said was new, natural, and yet uncommon. If Burke
replied extempore, his very answers that sprang from what had been said
by others were so pointed and artfully arranged that they wore the
appearance of study and preparation; like beautiful translations, they
seemed to want the soul of the original author. Townshend's speeches,
like the 'Satires' of Pope, had a thousand times more sense and meaning
than the majestic blank verse of Pitt; and yet the latter, like Milton,
stalked with a conscious dignity of pre-eminence, and fascinated his
audience with that respect which always attends the pompous but often
hollow idea of the sublime." Burke, too, in one of his speeches on
American affairs, utters a still warmer panegyric on his character and
abilities, while lamenting his policy and its fruits: "I speak of
Charles Townshend, officially the reproducer of this fatal scheme [the
taxation of the colonies], whom I cannot, even now, remember without
some degree of sensibility. In truth, Sir, he was the delight and
ornament of this House, and the charm of every private society which he
honoured with his presence. Perhaps there never arose in this country,
nor in any country, a man of a more pointed and finished wit, and (where
his passions were not concerned) of a more refined, exquisite, and
penetrating judgment. If he had not so great a stock, as some have had
who flourished formerly, of knowledge long treasured up, he knew better
by far than any man I was ever acquainted with how to bring together
within a short time all that was necessary to establish, to illustrate,
and to decorate that side of the question he supported. He stated his
matter skillfully and powerfully. He particularly excelled in a most
luminous explanation and display of his subject. His style of argument
was neither trite nor vulgar, nor subtle and abstruse. He hit the House
between wind and water; and, not being troubled with too anxious a zeal
for any matter in question, he was never more tedious nor more earnest
than the preconceived opinions and present temper of his hearers
required, with whom he was always in perfect unison. He conformed
exactly to the temper of the House; and he seemed to lead because he was
always sure to follow it."]
The Opposition expected that the loss of this essential pin would loosen
the whole frame; but it had been hard, if both his life and death were
to be pernicious to the Administration. He had engaged to betray the
latter to the former, as I knew early, and as Lord Mansfield has since
declared. I therefore could not think the loss of him a misfortune. His
seals were immediately offered to Lord North,[1] who declined them. The
Opposition rejoiced; but they ought to have been better acquainted with
one educated in their own school. Lord North has since accepted the
seals--and the reversion of his father's pension.
[Footnote 1: Lord North succeeded Townshend as Chancellor of the
Exchequer; and, when the Duke of Grafton retired, he became First Lord
of the Treasury also, and continued to hold both offices till the spring
of 1782.]
While that eccentric genius, Charles Townshend, whom no system could
contain, is whirled out of existence, our more artificial meteor, Lord
Chatham, seems to be wheeling back to the sphere of business--at least
his health is declared to be re-established; but he has lost his
adorers, the mob, and I doubt the wise men will not travel after his
light.
You, my dear Sir, will be most concerned for the poor Duke of York,[1]
who has ended his silly, good-humoured, troublesome career, in a piteous
manner. He had come to the camp at Compiègne, without his brother's
approbation, but had been received here not only with every proper mark
of distinction, but with the utmost kindness. He had succeeded, too, was
attentive, civil, obliging, lively, pleased, and very happy in his
replies. Charmed with a Court so lively in comparison of the monastic
scene at home, he had promised to return for Fontainebleau, and then
scampered away as fast as he could ride or drive all round the South of
France, intending to visit a lady at Genoa, with whom he was in love,
whenever he had a minute's time. The Duc de Villars gave him a ball at
his country-house, between Aix and Marseilles; the Duke of York danced
at it all night as hard as if it made part of his road, and then in a
violent sweat, and without changing his linen, got into his postchaise.
At Marseilles the scene changed. He arrived in a fever, and found among
his letters, which he had ordered to meet him there, one from the King
his brother, forbidding him to go to Compiègne, by the advice of the
Hereditary Prince. He was struck with this letter, which he had
ignorantly disobeyed, and by the same ignorance had not answered. He
proceeded, however, on his journey, but grew so ill that his gentlemen
carried him to Monaco, where he arrived on the third, and languished
with great suffering until the seventeenth. He behaved with the most
perfect tranquillity and courage, made a short will, and the day before
he died dictated to Colonel St. John, a letter to the King, in which he
begged his forgiveness for every instance in which he had offended him,
and entreated his favour to his servants. He would have particularly
recommended St. John, but the young man said handsomely, "Sir, if the
letter were written by your Royal Highness yourself, it would be most
kind to me; but I cannot name myself." The Prince of Monaco, who
happened to be on the spot, was unbounded in his attentions to him, both
of care and honours; and visited him every hour till the Duke grew too
weak to see him. Two days before he died the Duke sent for the Prince,
and thanked him. The Prince burst into tears and could not speak, and
retiring, begged the Duke's officers to prevent his being sent for
again, for the shock was too great. They made as magnificent a coffin
and pall for him as the time and place would admit, and in the evening
of the 17th the body was embarked on board an English ship, which
received the corpse with military honours, the cannon of the town
saluting it with the same discharge as is paid to a Marshal of France.
St. John and Morrison embarked with the body, and Colonel Wrottesley
passed through here with the news. The poor lad was in tears the whole
time he stayed....
[Footnote 1: The Duke of York was the King's younger brother.]
You tell me of the French playing at whist;[1] why, I found it
established when I was last here. I told them they were very good to
imitate us in anything, but that they had adopted the two dullest things
we have, Whist and Richardson's Novels.
[Footnote 1: Walpole here speaks of whist as a game of but new
introduction in Paris, though it had been for some time established with
us. And the great authority on that scientific and beautiful game, the
late Mr. James Clay, writing about twenty years ago, fixes "thirty or
more years" before that date as the time when first "we began to hear of
the great Paris players. There was," he says, "a wide difference between
their system and our own," the special distinction being that "the
English player of the old school never thought of winning the game until
he saw that it was saved; the French player never thought of saving the
game until he saw that he could not win it;" and "if forced to take his
choice between these systems carried to their extremes." Mr. Clay
"would, without hesitation, prefer the game of rash attack" (that is,
the French system) "to that of over-cautious defence." And he assigns to
a French player, M. Des Chapelles, "the credit of being the finest
whist-player, beyond any comparison, the world has ever seen."]
So you and the Pope are going to have the Emperor! Times are a little
altered; no Guelphs and Ghibellines[1] now. I do not think the Caesar of
the day will hold his Holiness's stirrup[2] while he mounts his palfrey.
Adieu!
[Footnote 1: "_Guelfs and Ghibellines._" These two names were first
heard in the latter part of the twelfth century, to distinguish the
partisans of the Emperor and the Pope. "The Guelfs or Welfs were the
ancestors of Henry the Proud, who, through his mother, represented the
ancient Dukes of Saxony. The word Ghibelin is derived from Wibelung, a
town in Franconia, from which the emperors of that time are said to nave
sprung. The house of Swabia were considered in Germany as representing
that of Franconia" (Hallam, "Middle Ages," ii. p. 101).]
[Footnote 2: "_His Holiness's stirrup._" This refers to the humiliation
imposed on the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa by Pope Alexander III., as
related by Byron in his note on "Childe Harold," c. iv. st. 12.]
_SOME NEW POEMS OF GRAY--WALPOLE'S "HISTORIC DOUBTS"--BOSWELL'S
"CORSICA."_