Patent Places under Government.--Starts with Gray on the Grand Tour,
March, 1739.--From Dover to Paris.--Life at Paris.--Versailles.--The
Convent of the Chartreux.--Life at Rheims.--A _Fête Galante_.--The
Grande Chartreuse.--Starts for Italy.--The tragedy of Tory.--Turin;
Genoa.--Academical Exercises at Bologna.--Life at Florence.--Rome;
Naples; Herculaneum.--The Pen of Radicofani.--English at
Florence.--Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.--Preparing for Home.--Quarrel
with Gray.--Walpole's Apologia; his Illness, and Return to England.
That, in those piping days of patronage, when even very young ladies
of quality drew pay as cornets of horse, the son of the Prime Minister
of England should be left unprovided for, was not to be expected.
While he was still resident at Cambridge, lucrative sinecures came to
Horace Walpole. Soon after his mother's death, his father appointed him
Inspector of Imports and Exports in the Custom House,--a post which he
resigned in January, 1738, on succeeding Colonel William Townshend as
Usher of the Exchequer. When, later in the year, he came of age (17
September), he 'took possession of two other little patent-places
in the Exchequer, called Comptroller of the Pipe, and Clerk of the
Estreats,' which had been held for him by a substitute. In 1782, when
he still filled them, the two last-mentioned offices produced together
about £300 per annum, while the Ushership of the Exchequer, at the
date of his obtaining it, was reckoned to be worth £900 a year. 'From
that time [he says] I lived on my own income, and travelled at my own
expense; nor did I during my father's life receive from him but £250
at different times,--which I say not in derogation of his extreme
tenderness and goodness to me, but to show that I was content with what
he had given to me, and that from the age of twenty I was no charge to
my family.'[22]
[22] _Account of my Conduct_, etc., _Works_, 1798, ii. 363-70.
He continued at King's College for some time after he had attained
his majority, only quitting it formally in March, 1739, not without
regretful memories of which his future correspondence was to bear
the traces. If he had neglected mathematics, and only moderately
courted the classics, he had learnt something of the polite arts and
of modern Continental letters,--studies which would naturally lead
his inclination in the direction of the inevitable 'Grand Tour.' Two
years earlier he had very unwillingly declined an invitation from
George Montagu and Lord Conway to join them in a visit to Italy.
Since that date his desire for foreign travel, fostered no doubt by
long conversations with Gray, had grown stronger, and he resolved
to see 'the palms and temples of the south' after the orthodox
eighteenth-century fashion. To think of Gray in this connection was but
natural, and he accordingly invited his friend (who had now quitted
Cambridge, and was vegetating rather disconsolately in his father's
house on Cornhill) to be his travelling companion. Walpole was to act
as paymaster; but Gray was to be independent. Furthermore, Walpole
made a will under which, if he died abroad, Gray was to be his sole
legatee. Dispositions so advantageous and considerate scarcely admitted
of refusal, even if Gray had been backward, which he was not. The
two friends accordingly set out for Paris. Walpole makes the date of
departure 10 March, 1739; Gray says they left Dover at twelve on the
29th.
The first records of the journey come from Amiens in a letter written
by Gray to his mother. After a rough passage across the Straits, they
reached Calais at five. Next day they started for Boulogne in the then
new-fangled invention, a post-chaise,--a vehicle which Gray describes
'as of much greater use than beauty, resembling an ill-shaped chariot,
only with the door opening before instead of [at] the side.' Of
Boulogne they see little, and of Montreuil (where later Sterne engaged
La Fleur) Gray's only record, besides the indifferent fare, is that
'Madame the hostess made her appearance in long lappets of bone lace,
and a sack of linsey-woolsey.' From Montreuil they go by Abbeville to
Amiens, where they visit the cathedral, and the chapels of the Jesuits
and Ursuline Nuns. But the best part of this first letter is the little
picture with which it (or rather as much of it as Mason published)
concludes. 'The country we have passed through hitherto has been flat,
open, but agreeably diversified with villages, fields well cultivated,
and little rivers. On every hillock is a windmill, a crucifix, or
a Virgin Mary dressed in flowers and a sarcenet robe; one sees not
many people or carriages on the road; now and then indeed you meet a
strolling friar, a countryman with his great muff, or a woman riding
astride on a little ass, with short petticoats, and a great head-dress
of blue wool.'[23]
[23] Gray's _Works_, by Gosse, 1884, ii. 18-19.
The foregoing letter is dated the 1st April, and it speaks of reaching
Paris on the 3rd. But it was only on the evening of Saturday the
9th that they rolled into the French capital, 'driving through the
streets a long while before they knew where they were.' Walpole had
wisely resolved not to hurry, and they had besides broken down at
Luzarches, and lingered at St. Denis over the curiosities of the abbey,
particularly a vase of oriental onyx carved with Bacchus and the
nymphs, of which they had dreamed ever since. At Paris, they found a
warm welcome among the English residents,--notably from Mason's patron,
Lord Holdernesse, and Walpole's cousins, the Conways. They seem to
have plunged at once into the pleasures of the place,--pleasures in
which, according to Walpole, cards and eating played far too absorbing
a part. At Lord Holdernesse's they met at supper the famous author of
_Manon Lescaut_, M. l'Abbé Antoine-François Prévost d'Exilles, who
had just put forth the final volume of his tedious and scandalous
_Histoire de M. Cléveland, fils naturel de Cromwel_. They went to the
spectacle of _Pandore_ at the Salle des Machines of the Tuileries;
and they went to the opera, where they saw the successful _Ballet de
la Paix_,--a curious hotchpot, from Gray's description, of cracked
voices and incongruous mythology. With the Comédie Française they were
better pleased, although Walpole, strange to say, unlike Goldsmith
ten years later, was not able to commend the performance of Molière's
_L'Avare_. They saw Mademoiselle Gaussin (as yet unrivalled by the
unrisen Mademoiselle Clairon) in La Noue's tragedy of _Mahomet Second_,
then recently produced, with Dufresne in the leading male part; and
they also saw the prince of _petits-maîtres_, Grandval, acting with
Dufresne's sister, Mademoiselle Jeanne-Françoise Quinault (an actress
'somewhat in Mrs. Clive's way,' says Gray), in the _Philosophe marié_
of Nericault Destouches,--a charming comedy already transferred to the
English stage in the version by John Kelly of _The Universal Spectator_.
Theatres, however, are not the only amusements which the two travellers
chronicle to the home-keeping West. A great part of their time is
spent in seeing churches and palaces full of pictures. Then there
is the inevitable visit to Versailles, which, in sum, they concur
in condemning. 'The great front,' says Walpole, 'is a lumber of
littleness, composed of black brick, stuck full of bad old busts, and
fringed with gold rails.' Gray (he says) likes it; but Gray is scarcely
more complimentary,--at all events is quite as hard upon the _façade_,
using almost the same phrases of depreciation. It is 'a huge heap of
littleness,' in hue 'black, dirty red, and yellow; the first proceeding
from stone changed by age; the second, from a mixture of brick; and
the last, from a profusion of tarnished gilding. You cannot see a more
disagreeable _tout ensemble_; and, to finish the matter, it is all
stuck over in many places with small busts of a tawny hue between every
two windows.' The garden, however, pleases him better; nothing could be
vaster and more magnificent than the _coup d'œil_, with its fountains
and statues and grand canal. But the 'general taste of the place' is
petty and artificial. 'All is forced, all is constrained about you;
statues and vases sowed everywhere without distinction; sugar-loaves
and minced pies of yew; scrawl work of box, and little squirting _jets
d'eau_, besides a great sameness in the walks,--cannot help striking
one at first sight; not to mention the silliest of labyrinths, and all
Æsop's fables in water.'[24] 'The garden is littered with statues and
fountains, each of which has its tutelary deity. In particular, the
elementary god of fire solaces himself in one. In another, Enceladus,
in lieu of a mountain, is overwhelmed with many waters. There are
avenues of water-pots, who disport themselves much in squirting up
cascadelins. In short, 'tis a garden for a great child.'[25] The day
following, being Whitsunday, they witness a grand ceremonial,--the
installation of nine Knights of the Saint Esprit: 'high mass celebrated
with music, great crowd, much incense, King, Queen, Dauphin, Mesdames,
Cardinals, and Court; Knights arrayed by His Majesty; reverences before
the altar, not bows, but curtsies; stiff hams; much tittering among the
ladies; trumpets, kettle-drums, and fifes.'[26]
[24] _Gray to West_, 22 May, 1739.
[25] _Walpole to West_, no date, 1739.
[26] _Gray to West_, 22 May, 1739.
It is Gray who thus summarises the show. But we must go to Walpole
for the account of another expedition, the visit to the Convent of
the Chartreux, the uncouth horror of which, with its gloomy chapel
and narrow cloisters, seems to have fascinated the Gothic soul of the
future author of the _Castle of Otranto_. Here, in one of the cells,
they make the acquaintance of a fresh initiate into the order,--the
account of whose environment suggests retirement rather than solitude.
'He was extremely civil, and called himself Dom Victor. We have
promised to visit him often. Their habit is all white: but besides this
he was infinitely clean in his person; and his apartment and garden,
which he keeps and cultivates without any assistance, was neat to a
degree. He has four little rooms, furnished in the prettiest manner,
and hung with good prints. One of them is a library, and another a
gallery. He has several canary-birds disposed in a pretty manner in
breeding-cages. In his garden was a bed of good tulips in bloom,
flowers and fruit-trees, and all neatly kept. They are permitted at
certain hours to talk to strangers, but never to one another, or to
go out of their convent.' In the same institution they saw Le Sueur's
history (in pictures) of St. Bruno, the founder of the Chartreux.
Walpole had not yet studied Raphael at Rome, but these pictures, he
considered, excelled everything he had seen in England and Paris.[27]
[27] _Walpole to West_, no date, 1739.
'From thence [Paris],' say Walpole's _Short Notes_, 'we went with
my cousin, Henry Conway, to Rheims, in Champagne, [and] staid there
three months.' One of their chief objects was to improve themselves
in French. 'You must not wonder,' he tells West, 'if all my letters
resemble dictionaries, with French on one side, and English on t'other;
I deal in nothing else at present, and talk a couple of words of each
language alternately from morning till night.'[28] But he does not
seem to have yet developed his later passion for letter-writing, and
the 'account of our situation and proceedings' is still delegated to
Gray, some of whose despatches at this time are not preserved. There
is, however, one from Rheims to Gray's mother which gives a vivid idea
of the ancient French Cathedral city, slumbering in its vast vine-clad
plain, with its picturesque old houses and lonely streets, its long
walks under the ramparts, and its monotonous frog-haunted moat. They
have no want of society, for Henry Conway procured them introductions
everywhere; but the Rhemois are more constrained, less familiar, less
hospitable, than the Parisians. Quadrille is the almost invariable
amusement, interrupted by one entertainment (for the Rhemois as a rule
give neither dinners nor suppers); to wit, a five o'clock _goûter_,
which is 'a service of wine, fruits, cream, sweetmeats, crawfish, and
cheese,' after which they sit down to cards again. Occasionally,
however, the demon of impromptu flutters these 'set, gray lives,' and
(like Dr. Johnson) even Rheims must 'have a frisk.' 'For instance,'
says Gray, 'the other evening we happened to be got together in a
company of eighteen people, men and women of the best fashion here, at
a garden in the town, to walk; when one of the ladies bethought herself
of asking, Why should we not sup here? Immediately the cloth was laid
by the side of a fountain under the trees, and a very elegant supper
served up; after which another said, Come, let us sing; and directly
began herself. From singing we insensibly fell to dancing, and singing
in a round; when somebody mentioned the violins, and immediately a
company of them was ordered. Minuets were begun in the open air, and
then came country dances, which held till four o'clock next morning;
at which hour the gayest lady there proposed that such as were weary
should get into their coaches, and the rest of them should dance before
them with the music in the van; and in this manner we paraded through
all the principal streets of the city, and waked everybody in it.'
Walpole, adds Gray, would have made this entertainment chronic. But
'the women did not come into it,' and shrank back decorously 'to their
dull cards, and usual formalities.'[29]
[28] _Walpole to West_, 18 June, 1739.
[29] Gray's _Works_, by Gosse, 1884, ii. 30.
At Rheims the travellers lingered on in the hope of being joined by
Selwyn and George Montagu. In September they left Rheims for Dijon,
the superior attractions of which town made them rather regret their
comparative rustication of the last three months. From Dijon they
passed southward to Lyons, whence Gray sent to West (then drinking the
Tunbridge waters) a daintily elaborated conceit touching the junction
of the Rhone and the Saône. While at Lyons they made an excursion to
Geneva to escort Henry Conway, who had up to this time been their
companion, on his way to that place. They took a roundabout route in
order to visit the Convent of the Grande Chartreuse, and on the 28th
Walpole writes to West from 'a Hamlet among the mountains of Savoy
[Echelles].' He is to undergo many transmigrations, he says, before
he ends his letter. 'Yesterday I was a shepherd of Dauphiné; to-day
an Alpine savage; to-morrow a Carthusian monk; and Friday a Swiss
Calvinist.' When he next takes up his pen, he has passed through his
third stage, and visited the Chartreuse. With the convent itself
neither Gray nor his companions seem to have been much impressed,
probably because their expectations had been indefinite. For the
approach and the situation they had only enthusiasm. Gray is the
accredited landscape-painter of the party, but here even Walpole breaks
out: 'The road, West, the road! winding round a prodigious mountain,
and surrounded with others, all shagged with hanging woods, obscured
with pines, or lost in clouds! Below, a torrent breaking through
cliffs, and tumbling through fragments of rocks! Sheets of cascades
forcing their silver speed down channelled precipices, and hastening
into the roughened river at the bottom! Now and then an old foot
bridge, with a broken rail, a leaning cross, a cottage, or the ruin
of an hermitage! This sounds too bombast and too romantic to one that
has not seen it, too cold for one that has. If I could send you my
letter post between two lovely tempests that echoed each other's wrath,
you might have some idea of this noble roaring scene, as you were
reading it. Almost on the summit, upon a fine verdure, but without any
prospect, stands the Chartreuse.'[30]
[30] _Walpole to West_, Sept. 28-2 Oct., 1739.
The foregoing passage is dated Aix-in-Savoy, 30 September. Two days
later, passing by Annecy, they came to Geneva. Here they stayed a week
to see Conway settled, and made a 'solitary journey' back to Lyons,
but by a different road, through the spurs of the Jura and across
the plains of La Bresse. At Lyons they found letters awaiting them
from Sir Robert Walpole, desiring his son to go to Italy,--a proposal
with which Gray, only too glad to exchange the over-commercial city
of Lyons for 'the place in the world that best deserves seeing,' was
highly delighted. Accordingly, we speedily find them duly equipped
with 'beaver bonnets, beaver gloves, beaver stockings, muffs, and
bear-skins' _en route_ for the Alps. At the foot of Mont Cenis their
chaise was taken to pieces and loaded on mules, and they themselves
were transferred to low matted legless chairs carried on poles,--a
not unperilous mode of progression, when, as in this case, quarrels
took place among the bearers. But the tragedy of the journey happened
before they had quitted the chaise. Walpole had a fat little black
spaniel of King Charles's breed, named Tory, and he had let the little
creature out of the carriage for the air. While it was waddling along
contentedly at the horses' heads, a gaunt wolf rushed out of a fir
wood, and exit poor Tory before any one had time to snap a pistol.
In later years, Gray would perhaps have celebrated this mishap as
elegantly as he sang the death of his friend's favourite cat; but
in these pre-poetic days he restricts himself to calling it an 'odd
accident enough.'[31]
[31] Tory, however, was not _illachrymabilis_. He found his _vates
sacer_ in one Edward Burnaby Greene, once of Bennet College; and in
referring to this, thirty-five years later, Walpole explains how
Tory got his name. 'His godmother was the widow of Alderman Parsons
[Humphrey Parsons, of Goldsmith's 'black champagne'], who gave him at
Paris to Lord Conway, and he to me' (_Walpole to Cole_, 10 Dec., 1775).
'After eight days' journey through Greenland,'--as Gray puts it to
West,--they reached Turin, where among other English they found
Pope's friend, Joseph Spence, Professor of Poetry at Oxford. Beyond
Walpole's going to Court, and their visiting an extraordinary play
called _La Rappresentazione dell' Anima Dannata_ (for the benefit of
an Hospital), a full and particular account of which is contained in
one of Spence's letters to his mother,[32] nothing remarkable seems
to have happened to them in the Piedmontese capital. From Turin they
went on to Genoa,--'the happy country where huge lemons grow' (as Gray
quotes, not textually, from Waller),--whose blue sea and vine-trellises
they quit reluctantly for Bologna, by way of Tortona, Piacenza, Parma
(where they inspect the Correggios in the Duomo), Reggio, and Modena.
At Bologna, in the absence of introductions, picture-seeing is their
main occupation. 'Except pictures and statues,' writes Walpole, 'we are
not very fond of sights.... Now and then we drop in at a procession,
or a high mass, hear the music, enjoy a strange attire, and hate the
foul monkhood. Last week was the feast of the Immaculate Conception.
On the eve we went to the Franciscans' church to hear the academical
exercises. There were moult and moult clergy, about two dozen dames,
that treated one another with _illustrissima_ and brown kisses, the
vice-legate, the gonfalonier, and some senate. The vice-legate ... is
a young personable person of about twenty, and had on a mighty pretty
cardinal-kind of habit; 'twou'd make a delightful masquerade dress.
We asked his name: Spinola. What, a nephew of the cardinal-legate?
_Signor, no; ma credo che gli sia qualche cosa._ He sat on the
right hand with the gonfalonier in two purple fauteuils. Opposite
was a throne of crimson damask, with the device of the Academy, the
Gelati;[33] and trimmings of gold. Here sat at a table, in black, the
head of the Academy, between the orator and the first poet. At two
semicircular tables on either hand sat three poets and three; silent
among many candles. The chief made a little introduction, the orator a
long Italian vile harangue. Then the chief, the poet, the poets,--who
were a Franciscan, an Olivetan, an old abbé, and three lay,--read their
compositions; and to-day they are pasted up in all parts of the town.
As we came out of the church, we found all the convent and neighbouring
houses lighted all over with lanthorns of red and yellow paper, and two
bonfires.'[34]
[32] Spence's _Anecdotes_, by Singer, 2d ed., 1858, pp. 305-8.
[33] Jarchius has taken the trouble to give us a list of those clubs,
or academies [i. e., _the academies of Italy_], which amount to five
hundred and fifty, each distinguished by somewhat whimsical in the
name. The academicians of Bologna, for instance, are divided into the
Abbandonati, the Ausiosi, Ociosi, Arcadi, Confusi, Dubbiosi, etc. There
are few of these who have not published their Transactions, and scarce
a member who is not looked upon as the most famous man in the world, at
home.--GOLDSMITH, in _The Bee_, No. vi., for 10 November, 1759.
[34] _Walpole to West_, no date, 1739.
In the Christmas of 1739, the friends crossed the Apennines, and
entered Florence. If they had wanted introductions at Bologna, there
was no lack of them in Tuscany, and they were to find one friend who
afterwards figured largely in Walpole's correspondence. This was Mr.
(afterwards Sir Horace) Mann, British Minister Plenipotentiary at the
Court of Florence. 'He is the best and most obliging person in the
world,' says Gray, and his house, with a brief interval, was their
residence for fifteen months. Their letters from Florence are less
interesting than those from which quotations have already been made,
while their amusements seem to have been more independent of each other
than before. Gray occupied himself in the galleries taking the notes of
pictures and statuary afterwards published by Mitford, and in forming
a collection of MS. music; Walpole, on the other hand, had slightly
cooled in his eagerness for the antique, which now 'pleases him
calmly.' 'I recollect'--he says--'the joy I used to propose if I could
but see the Great Duke's gallery; I walk into it now with as little
emotion as I should into St. Paul's. The statues are a congregation of
good sort of people that I have a great deal of unruffled regard for.'
The fact was, no doubt, that society had now superior attractions.
As the son of the English Prime Minister, and with Mann, who was a
relation,[35] at his elbow, all doors were open to him. A correct
record of his time would probably show an unvaried succession of
suppers, balls, and masquerades. In the carnival week, when he snatches
'a little unmasqued moment' to write to West, he says he has done
nothing lately 'but slip out of his domino into bed, and out of bed
into his domino. The end of the Carnival is frantic, bacchanalian; all
the morn one makes parties in masque to the shops and coffee-houses,
and all the evening to the operas and balls.' If Gray was of these
junketings, his letters do not betray it. He was probably engaged in
writing uncomplimentary notes on the Venus de' Medici, or transcribing
a score of Pergolesi.
[35] Dr. Doran ('_Mann_' and _Manners at the Court of Florence_, 1876,
i. 2) describes this connection as 'a distant cousinship.'
The first interruption to these diversions came in March, when they
quitted Florence for Rome in order to witness the coronation of the
successor of Clement XII., who had died in the preceding month. On
their road from Siena they were passed by a shrill-voiced figure in a
red cloak, with a white handkerchief on its head, which they took for
a fat old woman, but which afterwards turned out to be Farinelli's
rival, Senesino. Rome disappointed them,--especially in its inhabitants
and general desolation. 'I am very glad,' writes Walpole, 'that I see
it while it yet exists;' and he goes on to prophesy that before a
great number of years it will cease to exist. 'I am persuaded,' he
says again, 'that in an hundred years Rome will not be worth seeing;
'tis less so now than one would believe. All the public pictures are
decayed or decaying; the few ruins cannot last long; and the statues
and private collections must be sold, from the great poverty of the
families.' Perhaps this last consideration, coupled with the depressing
character of Roman hospitality ('Roman conversations are dreadful
things!' he tells Conway), revived his virtuoso tastes. 'I am far gone
in medals, lamps, idols, prints, etc., and all the small commodities
to the purchase of which I can attain; I would buy the Coliseum if I
could.' Meanwhile as the cardinals are quarrelling, the coronation is
still deferred; and they visit Naples, whence they explore Herculaneum,
then but recently exposed and identified. But neither Gray nor Walpole
waxes very eloquent upon this theme,--probably because at this time the
excavations were only partial, while Pompeii was, of course, as yet
under ground. Walpole's next letter is written from Radicofani,--'a
vile little town at the foot of an old citadel,' which again is at
'the top of a black barren mountain;' the whole reminding the writer
of 'Hamilton's Bawn' in Swift's verses. In this place, although the
traditional residence of one of the Three Kings of Cologne, there is
but one pen, the property of the Governor, who when Walpole borrows
it, sends it to him under 'conduct of a sergeant and two Swiss,' with
special injunctions as to its restoration,--a precaution which in
Walpole's view renders it worthy to be ranked with the other precious
relics of the poor Capuchins of the place, concerning which he
presently makes rather unkindly fun. A few days later they were once
more in the Casa Ambrosio, Mann's pleasant house at Florence, with
the river running so close to them that they could fish out of the
windows. 'I have a terreno [ground-floor] all to myself,' says Walpole,
'with an open gallery on the Arno, where I am now writing to you [_i.
e._, Conway]. Over against me is the famous Gallery; and, on either
hand, two fair bridges. Is not this charming and cool?' Add to which,
on the bridges aforesaid, in the serene Italian air, one may linger
all night in a dressing-gown, eating iced fruits to the notes of a
guitar. But (what was even better than music and moonlight) there is
the society that was the writer's 'fitting environment.' Lady Pomfret,
with her daughters, Lady Charlotte, afterwards governess to the
children of George III., and the beauty Lady Sophia, held a 'charming
conversation' once a week; while the Princess Craon de Beauvau has 'a
constant pharaoh and supper every night, where one is quite at one's
ease.' Another lady-resident, scarcely so congenial to Walpole, was
his sister-in-law, the wife of his eldest brother, Robert, who, with
Lady Pomfret, made certain (in Walpole's eyes) wholly preposterous
pretentions to the yet uninvented status of blue-stocking. To Lady
Walpole and Lady Pomfret was speedily added another 'she-meteor' in the
person of the celebrated Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.
When Lady Mary arrived in Florence in the summer of 1740, she
was a woman of more than fifty, and was just entering upon that
unexplained exile from her country and husband which was prolonged for
two-and-twenty years. Her brilliant abilities were unimpaired; but it
is probable that the personal eccentricities which had exposed her to
the satire of Pope, had not decreased with years. That these would
be extenuated under Walpole's malicious pen was not to be expected;
still less, perhaps, that they would be treated justly. Although,
as already intimated, he was not aware of the scandal respecting
himself which her descendants were to revive, he had ample ground for
antipathy. Her husband was the bitter foe of Sir Robert Walpole; and
she herself had been the firm friend and protectress of his mother's
rival and successor, Miss Skerret.[36] Accordingly, even before her
advent, he makes merry over the anticipated issue of this portentous
'triple alliance' of mysticism and nonsense, and later he writes to
Conway: 'Did I tell you Lady Mary Wortley is here? She laughs at my
Lady Walpole, scolds my Lady Pomfret, and is laughed at by the whole
town. Her dress, her avarice, and her impudence must amaze any one
that never heard her name. She wears a foul mob, that does not cover
her greasy black locks, that hang loose, never combed or curled; an
old mazarine blue wrapper, that gaps open and discovers a canvas
petticoat.... In three words, I will give you her picture as we drew it
in the _Sortes Virgilianæ_,--_Insanam vatem aspicies_. I give you my
honour we did not choose it; but Gray, Mr. Coke, Sir Francis Dashwood,
and I, with several others, drew it fairly amongst a thousand for
different people.'[37] In justice to Lady Mary it is only fair to say
that she seems to have been quite unconscious that she was an object of
ridicule, and was perfectly satisfied with her reception at Florence.
'Lord and Lady Pomfret'--she tells Mr. Wortley--'take pains to make
the place agreeable to me, and I have been visited by the greatest
part of the people of quality.'[38] But although Walpole's portrait is
obviously malicious (some of its details are suppressed in the above
quotation), it is plain that even unprejudiced spectators could not
deny her peculiarities. 'Lady Mary,' said Spence, 'is one of the most
shining characters in the world, but shines like a comet; she is all
irregularity, and always wandering; the most wise, the most imprudent;
loveliest, most disagreeable; best-natured, cruellest woman in the
world: "all things by turns, but nothing long."'[39]
[36] Shortly after Lady Walpole's death, Sir Robert Walpole married his
mistress, Maria Skerret, who died 4 June, 1738, leaving a daughter,
Horace Walpole's half-sister, subsequently Lady Mary Churchill.
[37] _Walpole to Conway_, 25 September, 1740.
[38] _Letters_, etc., of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, ii. 325.
[39] _Spence's Anecdotes_, by Singer, 2nd edn., 1858, p. xxiii.
By this time the new pope, Benedict XIV., had been elected. But
although the friends were within four days journey of Rome, the fear
of heat and malaria forced them to forego the spectacle of the
coronation. They continued to reside with Mann at Florence until May
in the following year. Upon Gray the 'violent delights' of the Tuscan
capital had already begun to pall. It is, he says, 'an excellent place
to employ all one's animal sensations in, but utterly contrary to
one's rational powers.' Walpole, on the other hand, is in his element.
'I am so well within and without,' he says in the same letter which
sketches Lady Mary, 'that you would scarce know me: I am younger than
ever, think of nothing but diverting myself, and live in a round of
pleasures. We have operas, concerts, and balls, mornings and evenings.
I dare not tell you all of one's idlenesses; you would look so grave
and senatorial at hearing that one rises at eleven in the morning,
goes to the opera at nine at night, to supper at one, and to bed at
three! But literally here the evenings and nights are so charming and
so warm, one can't avoid 'em.' In a later letter he says he has lost
all curiosity, and 'except the towns in the straight road to Great
Britain, shall scarce see a jot more of a foreign land.' Indeed,
save a sally concerning the humours of 'Moll Worthless' (Lady Mary)
and Lady Walpole, and the record of the purchase of a few pictures,
medals, and busts,--one of the last of which, a Vespasian in basalt,
was subsequently among the glories of the Twickenham Gallery,--his
remaining letters from Florence contain little of interest. Early in
1741, the homeward journey was mapped out. They were to go to Bologna
to hear the Viscontina sing, they were to visit the Fair at Reggio, and
so by Venice homewards.
But whether the Viscontina was in voice or not, there is, as far as
our travellers are concerned, absence of evidence. No further letter
of Gray from Florence has been preserved, nor is there any mention
of him in Walpole's next despatch to West from Reggio. At that place
a misunderstanding seems to have arisen, and they parted, Gray going
forward to Venice with two other travelling companions, Mr. John Chute
and Mr. Whitehed. In the rather barren record of Walpole's story, this
misunderstanding naturally assumes an exaggerated importance. But it
was really a very trifling and a very intelligible affair. They had
been too long together; and the first fascination of travel, which
formed at the outset so close a bond, had gradually faded with time. As
this alteration took place, their natural dispositions began to assert
themselves, and Walpole's normal love of pleasure and Gray's retired
studiousness became more and more apparent. It is probable too, that,
in all the Florentine gaieties, Gray, who was not a great man's son,
fell a little into the background. At all events, the separation was
imminent, and it needed but a nothing--the alleged opening by Walpole
of a letter of Gray[40]--to to bring it about. Whatever the proximate
cause, both were silent on the subject, although, years after the
quarrel had been made up, and Gray was dead, Walpole took the entire
blame upon himself. When Mason was preparing Gray's _Memoirs_ in 1773,
he authorized him to insert a note by which, in general terms, he
admitted himself to have been in fault, assigning as his reason for not
being more explicit, that while he was living it would not be pleasant
to read his private affairs discussed in magazines and newspapers. But
to Mason personally he was at the same time thoroughly candid, as well
as considerate to his departed friend: 'I am conscious,' he says, 'that
in the beginning of the differences between Gray and me, the fault was
mine. I was too young, too fond of my own diversions, nay, I do not
doubt, too much intoxicated by indulgence, vanity, and the insolence of
my situation, as a Prime Minister's son, not to have been inattentive
and insensible to the feelings of one I thought below me; of one, I
blush to say it, that I knew was obliged to me; of one whom presumption
and folly perhaps made me deem not my superior _then_ in parts, though
I have since felt my infinite inferiority to him. I treated him
insolently: he loved me, and I did not think he did. I reproached him
with the difference between us when he acted from conviction of knowing
he was my superior; I often disregarded his wishes of seeing places,
which I would not quit other amusements to visit, though I offered to
send him to them without me. Forgive me, if I say that his temper was
not conciliating. At the same time that I will confess to you that he
acted a more friendly part, had I had the sense to take advantage of
it; he freely told me of my faults. I declared I did not desire to hear
them, nor would correct them. You will not wonder that with the dignity
of his spirit, and the obstinate carelessness of mine, the breach must
have grown wider till we became incompatible.'[41]
[40] This rests upon the authority of a shadowy Mr. Roberts of the
Pell-office, who told it to Isaac Reed in 1799, more than half a
century after the event. The subject is discussed at some length, but
of necessity inconclusively, by Mr. D. C. Tovey in his interesting
_Gray and his Friends_, 1890. Mr. Tovey thinks that Ashton was
obscurely connected with the quarrel.
[41] _Walpole to Mason_, 2 March, 1773. The letters to Mason were first
printed in 1851 by Mitford. But Pinkerton, in the _Walpoliana_, i.
95, had reported much the same thing. 'The quarrel between Gray and
me [Walpole] arose from his being too serious a companion. I had just
broke loose from the restraints of the university, with as much money
as I could spend, and I was willing to indulge myself. Gray was for
antiquities, etc., while I was for perpetual balls and plays. The fault
was mine.'
'Sir, you have said more than was necessary' was Johnson's reply to a
peace-making speech from Topham Beauclerk. It is needless to comment
further upon this incident, except to add that Walpole's generous words
show that the disagreement was rather the outcome of a sequence of
long-strained circumstances than the result of momentary petulance. For
a time reconciliation was deferred, but eventually it was effected by
a lady, and the intimacy thus renewed continued for the remainder of
Gray's life.
Shortly after Gray's departure in May, Walpole fell ill of a quinsy.
He did not, at first, recognise the gravity of his ailment, and
doctored himself. By a fortunate chance, Joseph Spence, then travelling
as governor to the Earl of Lincoln, was in the neighbourhood, and,
responding to a message from Walpole, 'found him scarce able to
speak.' Spence immediately sent for medical aid, and summoned from
Florence one Antonio Cocchi, a physician and author of some eminence.
Under Cocchi's advice, Walpole speedily showed signs of improvement,
though, in his own words in the _Short Notes_, he 'was given over
for five hours, escaping with great difficulty.' The sequel may be
told from the same source. 'I went to Venice with Henry Clinton, Earl
of Lincoln, and Mr. Joseph Spence, Professor of Poetry, and after a
month's stay there, returned with them by sea from Genoa, landing
at Antibes; and by the way of Toulon, Marseilles, Aix, and through
Languedoc to Montpellier, Toulouse, and Orléans, arrived at Paris,
where I left the Earl and Mr. Spence, and landed at Dover, September
12th, 1741, O. S., having been chosen Member of Parliament for
Kellington [Callington], in Cornwall, at the preceding General Election
[of June], which Parliament put a period to my father's administration,
which had continued above twenty years.'