Gains of the Grand Tour.--'Epistle to Ashton.'--Resignation of Sir
Robert Walpole, who becomes Earl of Orford.--Collapse of the Secret
Committee.--Life at Houghton.--The Picture Gallery.--'A Sermon on
Painting.'--Lord Orford as Moses.--The 'Ædes Walpolianæ.'--Prior's
'Protogenes and Apelles.'--Minor Literature.--Lord Orford's Decline
and Death; his Panegyric.--Horace Walpole's Means.
Although, during his stay in Italy, Walpole had neglected to accumulate
the store of erudition which his friend Gray had been so industriously
hiving for home consumption, he can scarcely be said to have learned
nothing, especially at an age when much is learned unconsciously. His
epistolary style, which, with its peculiar graces and pseudo-graces,
had been already formed before he left England, had now acquired a
fresh vivacity from his increased familiarity with the French and
Italian languages; and he had carried on, however discursively,
something more than a mere flirtation with antiquities. Dr. Conyers
Middleton, whose once famous _Life of Cicero_ was published early
in 1741, and who was himself an antiquary of distinction, thought
highly of Walpole's attainments in this way,[42] and indeed more than
one passage in a poem written by Walpole to Ashton at this time could
scarcely have been penned by any one not fairly familiar with (for
example) the science of those 'medals' upon which Mr. Joseph Addison
had discoursed so learnedly after his Italian tour:--
'What scanty precepts! studies how confin'd!
Too mean to fill your comprehensive mind;
Unsatisfy'd with knowing when or where
Some Roman bigot rais'd a fane to FEAR;
On what green medal VIRTUE stands express'd,
How CONCORD'S pictur'd, LIBERTY how dress'd;
Or with wise ken judiciously define
When Pius marks the honorary coin
Of CARACALLA, or of ANTONINE.'[43]
[42] Juvenis, non tam generis nobilitate, ac paterni nominis gloriâ,
quam ingenio, doctrinâ, et virtute propriâ illustris. Ille vero
haud citius fere in patriam reversus est, quam de studiis meis, ut
consuerat, familiariter per literas quærens, mihi ultro de copiâ suâ,
quicquid ad argumenti mei rationem, aut libelli ornamentum pertineret,
pro arbitrio meo utendum obtulit.--_Pref. ad Germana quædam Antiq.
Monumenta_, etc., p. 6 (quoted in Mitford's _Corr. of Walpole and
Mason_, 1851, i. x-xi).
[43] Walpole's _Works_, 1798, i. 6.
The poem from which these lines are taken--_An Epistle from Florence.
To Thomas Ashton, Esq., Tutor to the Earl of Plimouth_--extends
to some four hundred lines, and exhibits another side of Walpole's
activity in Italy. 'You have seen'--says Gray to West in July,
1740--'an Epistle to Mr. Ashton, that seems to me full of spirit
and thought, and a good deal of poetic fire.' Writing to him ten
years later, Gray seems still to have retained his first impression.
'Satire'--he says--'will be heard, for all the audience are by nature
her friends; especially when she appears in the spirit of Dryden,
with his strength, and often with his versification, such as you have
caught in those lines on the Royal Unction, on the Papal dominion, and
Convents of both Sexes; on Henry VIII. and Charles II., for these are
to me the shining parts of your Epistle. There are many lines I could
wish corrected, and some blotted out, but beauties enough to atone for
a thousand worse faults than these.'[44] Walpole has never been ranked
among the poets; but Gray's praise, in which Middleton and others
concurred, justifies a further quotation. This is the passage on the
Royal Unction and the Papal Dominion:--
[44] Gray's _Works_, by Gosse, 1884, ii. 221.
'When at the altar a new monarch kneels,
What conjur'd awe upon the people steals!
The chosen He adores the precious oil,
Meekly receives the solemn charm, and while
The priest some blessed nothings mutters o'er,
Sucks in the sacred grease at every pore:
He seems at once to shed his mortal skin,
And feels divinity transfus'd within.
The trembling vulgar dread the royal nod,
And worship God's anointed more than God.
'Such sanction gives the prelate to such kings!
So mischief from those hallow'd fountains springs.
But bend your eye to yonder harass'd plains,
Where king and priest in one united reigns;
See fair Italia mourn her holy state,
And droop oppress'd beneath a papal weight;
Where fat celibacy usurps the soil,
And sacred sloth consumes the peasant's toil:
The holy drones monopolise the sky,
And plunder by a vow of poverty.
The Christian cause their lewd profession taints,
Unlearn'd, unchaste, uncharitable saints.'[45]
[45] Walpole's _Works_, 1798, i. 8-9.
That the refined and fastidious Horace Walpole of later years should
have begun as a passable imitator of Dryden is sufficiently piquant.
But that the son of the great courtier Prime Minister should have
distinguished himself by the vigour of his denunciations of kings and
priests, especially when, as his biographers have not failed to remark,
he was writing to one about to take orders, is more noticeable still.
The poem was reprinted in his works, but he makes no mention of it
in the _Short Notes_, nor of an _Inscription for the Neglected Column
in the Place of St. Mark at Florence_, written at the same time, and
characterized by the same anti-monarchical spirit.
His letters to Mann, his chief correspondent at this date, are
greatly occupied, during the next few months, with the climax of
the catastrophe recorded at the end of the preceding chapter,--the
resignation of Sir Robert Walpole. The first of the long series was
written on his way home in September, 1741, when he had for his
fellow-passengers the Viscontina, Amorevoli, and other Italian singers,
then engaged in invading England. He appears to have at once taken up
his residence with his father in Downing Street. Into the network of
circumstances which had conspired to array against the great peace
Minister the formidable opposition of disaffected Whigs, Jacobites,
Tories, and adherents of the Prince of Wales, it would here be
impossible to enter. But there were already signs that Sir Robert was
nodding to his fall; and that, although the old courage was as high
as ever, the old buoyancy was beginning to flag. Failing health added
its weight to the scale. In October Walpole tells his correspondent
that he had 'been very near sealing his letter with black wax,' for
his father had been in danger of his life, but was recovering, though
he is no longer the Sir Robert that Mann once knew. He who formerly
would snore before they had drawn his curtains, now never slept above
an hour without waking; and 'he who at dinner always forgot that he was
Minister,' now sat silent, with eyes fixed for an hour together. At
the opening of Parliament, however, there was an ostensible majority
of forty for the Court, and Walpole seems to have regarded this as
encouraging. But one of the first motions was for an inquiry into the
state of the nation, and this was followed by a division upon a Cornish
petition which reduced the majority to seven,--a variation which sets
the writer nervously jesting about apartments in the Tower. Seven
days later, the opposition obtained a majority of four; and although
Sir Robert, still sanguine in the remembrance of past successes,
seemed less anxious than his family, matters were growing grave, and
his youngest son was reconciling himself to the coming blow. It came
practically on the 21st January, 1742, when Pulteney moved for a secret
committee, which (in reality) was to be a committee of accusation
against the Prime Minister. Walpole defeated this manœuvre with his
characteristic courage and address, but only by a narrow majority of
three. So inconsiderable a victory upon so crucial a question was
perilously close to a reverse; and when, in the succeeding case of the
disputed Chippenham Election, the Government were defeated by one, he
yielded to the counsels of his advisers, and decided to resign. He was
thereupon raised to the peerage as Earl of Orford, with a pension of
£4,000 a year,[46] while his daughter by his second wife, Miss Skerret,
was created an Earl's daughter in her own right. His fall was mourned
by no one more sincerely than by the master he had served so staunchly
for so long; and when he went to kiss hands at St. James's upon taking
leave, the old king fell upon his neck, embraced him, and broke into
tears.
[46] He gave this up at first, but afterwards, when his affairs became
involved, reclaimed it (Cunningham's _Corr._, i. 126 n.).
The new Earl himself seems to have taken his reverses with his
customary equanimity, and, like the shrewd 'old Parliamentary hand'
that he was, to have at once devoted himself to the difficult task of
breaking the force of the attack which he foresaw would be made upon
himself by those in power. He contrived adroitly to foster dissension
and disunion among the heterogeneous body of his opponents; he secured
that the new Ministry should be mainly composed of his old party, the
Whigs; and he managed to discredit his most formidable adversary,
Pulteney. One of the first results of these precautionary measures was
that a motion by Lord Limerick for a committee to examine into the
conduct of the last twenty years was thrown out by a small majority. A
fortnight later the motion was renewed in a fresh form, the scope of
the examination being limited to the last ten years. Upon this occasion
Horace Walpole made his maiden speech,--a graceful and modest, if not
very forcible, effort on his father's side. In this instance, however,
the Government were successful, and the Committee was appointed. Yet,
despite the efforts to excite the public mind respecting Lord Orford,
the case against him seems to have faded away in the hands of his
accusers. The first report of the Committee, issued in May, contained
nothing to criminate the person against whom the inquiry had been
directly levelled; and despite the strenuous and even shameless efforts
of the Government to obtain evidence inculpating the late Minister, the
Committee were obliged to issue a second report in June, of which,--so
far as the chief object was concerned,--the gross result was nil.
By the middle of July, Walpole was able to tell Mann that the 'long
session was over, and the Secret Committee already forgotten,'--as much
forgotten, he says in a later letter, 'as if it had happened in the
last reign.'
When Sir Robert Walpole had resigned, he had quitted his official
residence in Downing Street (which ever since he first occupied it
in 1735 has been the official residence of the First Lord of the
Treasury), and moved to No. 5, Arlington Street, opposite to, but
smaller than, the No. 17 in which his youngest son had been born,
and upon the site of which William Kent built a larger house for Mr.
Pelham. No. 5 is now distinguished by a tablet erected by the Society
of Arts, proclaiming it to have been the house of the ex-Minister. From
Arlington Street, or from the other home at Chelsea already mentioned,
most of Walpole's letters were dated during the months which succeeded
the crisis. But in August, when the House had risen, he migrated with
the rest of the family to Houghton,--the great mansion in Norfolk
which had now taken the place of the ancient seat of the Walpoles,
where during the summer months his father had been accustomed in his
free-handed manner to keep open house to all the county. Fond of
hospitality, fond of field-sports, fond of gardening, and all out-door
occupations, Lord Orford was at home among the flat expanses and
Norfolk turnips. But the family seat had no such attractions to his
son, fresh from the multi-coloured Continental life, and still bearing
about him, in a certain frailty of physique and enervation of spirit,
the tokens of a sickly childhood. 'Next post'--he says despairingly
to Mann--'I shall not be able to write to you; and when I am there
[at Houghton], shall scarce find materials to furnish a letter above
every other post. I beg, however, that you will write constantly to
me; it will be my only entertainment; for I neither hunt, brew, drink,
nor reap.' 'Consider'--he says again--'I am in the barren land of
Norfolk, where news grows as slow as anything green; and besides, I
am in the house of a fallen minister!' Writing letters (in company
with the little white dog 'Patapan'[47] which he had brought from
Rome as a successor to the defunct Tory), walking, and playing comet
with his sister Lady Mary or any chance visitors to the house, seem
to have been his chief resources. A year later he pays a second visit
to Houghton, and he is still unreconciled to his environment. 'Only
imagine that I here every day see men, who are mountains of roast
beef, and only just seem roughly hewn out into the outlines of human
form, like the giant-rock at Pratolino! I shudder when I see them
brandish their knives in act to carve, and look on them as savages
that devour one another.' Then there are the enforced civilities to
entirely uninteresting people,--the intolerable female relative,
who is curious about her cousins to the fortieth remove. 'I have an
Aunt here, a family piece of goods, an old remnant of inquisitive
hospitality and economy, who, to all intents and purposes, is as beefy
as her neighbours. She wore me so down yesterday with interrogatories
that I dreamt all night she was at my ear with "who's" and "why's,"
and "when's" and "where's," till at last in my very sleep I cried out,
"For heaven's sake, Madam, ask me no more questions."' And then, in his
impatience of bores in general, he goes on to write a little essay upon
that 'growth of English root,' that 'awful yawn, which sleep cannot
abate,' as Byron calls it,--Ennui. 'I am so far from growing used to
mankind [he means 'uncongenial mankind'] by living amongst them, that
my natural ferocity and wildness does but every day grow worse. They
tire me, they fatigue me; I don't know what to do with them; I don't
know what to say to them; I fling open the windows, and fancy I want
air; and when I get by myself, I undress myself, and seem to have had
people in my pockets, in my plaits, and on my shoulders! I indeed find
this fatigue worse in the country than in town, because one can avoid
it there, and has more resources; but it is there too. I fear 'tis
growing old; but I literally seem to have murdered a man whose name was
Ennui, for his ghost is ever before me. They say there is no English
word for _ennui_; I think you may translate it most literally by what
is called "entertaining people" and "doing the honours:" that is, you
sit an hour with somebody you don't know and don't care for, talk about
the wind and the weather, and ask a thousand foolish questions, which
all begin with, "I think you live a good deal in the country," or "I
think you don't love this thing or that." Oh, 'tis dreadful!'[48]
[47] Patapan's portrait was painted by John Wootton, who illustrated
Gay's _Fables_ in 1727 with Kent. It hung in Walpole's bedroom at
Strawberry, and now (1892) belongs to Lord Lifford. In 1743 Walpole
wrote a Fable in imitation of La Fontaine, to which he gave the title
of _Patapan; or, the Little White Dog_. It was never printed.
[48] _Walpole to Chute_, 20 August, 1743. Mr. John Chute was a friend
whom Walpole had made at Florence, and with whom, as already stated
in Chapter II., Gray had travelled when they parted company. Until, by
the death of a brother, he succeeded to the estate called The Vyne,
in Hampshire, he lived principally abroad. His portrait by Müntz,
after Pompeio Battoni, hung over the door in Walpole's bedchamber at
Strawberry Hill. An exhaustive _History of The Vyne_ was published in
1888 by the late Mr. Chaloner W. Chute, at that time its possessor.
But even Houghton, with its endless 'doing the honours,' must have had
its compensations. There was a library, and--what must have had even
stronger attractions for Horace Walpole--that magnificent and almost
unique collection of pictures which under a later member of the family,
the third Earl of Orford, passed to Catherine of Russia. For years Lord
Orford, with unwearied diligence and exceptional opportunities, had
been accumulating these treasures. Mann in Florence, Vertue in England,
and a host of industrious foragers had helped to bring together the
priceless canvases which crowded the rooms of the Minister's house
next the Treasury at Whitehall. And if he was inexperienced as a
critic, he was far too acute a man to be deceived by the shiploads
of 'Holy Families, Madonnas, and other dismal dark subjects, neither
entertaining nor ornamental,' against which the one great native artist
of his time,--the painter of the 'Rake's Progress,' so persistently
inveighed. There was no doubt about the pedigrees of the Wouvermanns
and Teniers, the Guidos and Rubens, the Vandykes and Murillos, which
decorated the rooms at Downing Street and Chelsea and Richmond. From
the few records which remain of prices, it would seem that, in addition
to the merit of authenticity, many of the pictures must have had the
attraction of being 'bargains.' In days when £4,000 or £5,000 is no
extravagant price to be given for an old master, it is instructive
to read that £750 was the largest sum ever given by Lord Orford for
any one picture, and Walpole himself quotes this amount as £630. For
four great Snyders, which Vertue bought for him, he only paid £428,
and for a portrait of Clement IX. by Carlo Maratti no more than £200.
Many of the other pictures in his gallery cost him still less, being
donations--no doubt sometimes in gratitude for favours to come--from
his friends and adherents. The Earl of Pembroke, Lord Waldegrave, the
Duke of Montagu, Lord Tyrawley, were among these. But, upon the whole,
the collection was gathered mainly from galleries like the Zambecari at
Bologna, the Arnaldi Palace at Florence, the Pallavicini at Rome, and
from the stores of noble collectors in England.
In 1743, the majority of these had apparently been concentrated at
Houghton, where there was special accommodation for them. 'My Lord,'
says Horace, groaning over a fresh visit to Norfolk, 'has pressed me
so much that I could not with decency refuse: he is going to furnish
and hang his picture-gallery, and wants me.' But it is impossible to
believe that he really objected to a duty so congenial to his tastes.
In fact, he was really greatly interested in it. His letters contain
frequent references to a new Domenichino, a Virgin and Child, which
Mann is sending from Florence, and he comes up to London to meet this
and other pictures, and is not seriously inconsolable to find that
owing to the quarantine for the plague on the Continent, he is detained
for some days in town. One of the best evidences of his solicitude
in connection with the arrangements of the Houghton collection is,
however, the discourse which he wrote in the summer of 1742, under the
title of a _Sermon on Painting_, and which he himself tells us was
actually preached by the Earl's chaplain in the gallery, and afterwards
repeated at Stanno, his elder brother's house. The text was taken from
Psalm CXV.: 'They have Mouths, but they speak not: Eyes have they, but
they see not: neither is there any Breath in their Nostrils;' and the
writer, illustrating his theme by reference to the pictures around his
audience in the gallery, or dispersed through the building, manages to
eulogize the painter's art with considerable skill. He touches upon the
pernicious effect which the closely realized representation of popish
miracles must have upon the illiterate spectator, and points out how
much more commendable and serviceable is the portraiture of benignity,
piety, and chastity,--how much more instructive the incidents of the
Passion, where every 'touch of the pencil is a lesson of contrition,
each figure an apostle to call you to repentance.' He lays stress, as
Lessing and other writers have done, on the universal language of the
brush, and indicates its abuse when restricted to the reproduction of
inquisitors, visionaries, imaginary hermits, 'consecrated gluttons,'
or 'noted concubines,' after which (as becomes his father's son) he
does not fail to disclose its more fitting vocation, to perpetuate the
likeness of William the Deliverer, and the benign, the honest house of
Hanover. _The Dives and Lazarus_ of Veronese and the _Prodigal Son_ of
Salvator Rosa, both on the walls, are pressed into his service, and the
famous _Usurers_ of Quentin Matsys also prompt their parable. Then,
after adroitly dwelling upon the pictorial honours lavished upon mere
asceticism to the prejudice of real heroes, taking Poussin's picture of
_Moses Striking the Rock_ for his text, he winds into what was probably
the ultimate purpose of his discourse, a neatly veiled panegyric of Sir
Robert Walpole under guise of the great lawgiver of the Israelites,
which may be cited as a favourable sample of this curious oration:
'But it is not necessary to dive into profane history for examples of
unregarded merit; the Scriptures themselves contain instances of the
greatest patriots, who lie neglected, while new-fashioned bigots or
noisy incendiaries are the reigning objects of public veneration. See
the great Moses himself,--the lawgiver, the defender, the preserver of
Israel! Peevish orators are more run after, and artful Jesuits more
popular. Examine but the life of that slighted patriot, how boldly
in his youth he understood the cause of liberty! Unknown, without
interest, he stood against the face of Pharaoh! He saved his countrymen
from the hand of tyranny, and from the dominion of an idolatrous king.
How patiently did he bear for a series of years the clamours and cabals
of a factious people, wandering after strange lusts, and exasperated
by ambitious ringleaders! How oft did he intercede for their pardon,
when injured himself! How tenderly deny them specious favours, which
he knew must turn to their own destruction! See him lead them through
opposition, through plots, through enemies, to the enjoyment of peace,
and to the possession of _a land flowing with milk and honey_. Or with
more surprise see him in the barren desert, where sands and wilds
overspread the dreary scene, where no hopes of moisture, no prospect of
undiscovered springs, could flatter their parching thirst; see how with
a miraculous hand--
'"He struck the rock, and straight the waters flowed."'
Whoever denies his praises to such evidences of merit, or with jealous
look can scowl on such benefits, is like the senseless idol, that _has
a mouth that speaks not, and eyes that cannot see_.'
If, in accordance with some perverse fashion of the day, the foregoing
production had not been disguised as a sermon, and actually preached
with the orthodox accompaniment of bands and doxology, there is no
reason why it should not have been regarded as a harmless and not
unaccomplished essay on Art. But the objectionable spirit of parody
upon the ritual, engendered by the strife between 'high' and 'low'
(Walpole himself wrote some _Lessons for the Day_, 1742, which are to
be found in the works of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams), seems to have
dictated the title of what in other respects is a serious _Spectator_,
and needed no spice of irreverence to render it palatable. The _Sermon_
had, however, one valuable result, namely, that it suggested to its
author the expediency of preparing some record of the pictorial
riches of Houghton upon the model of the famous _Ædes Barberini_ and
_Giustinianæ_. As the dedication of the _Ædes Walpolianæ_ is dated
24 August, 1743, it must have been written before that date; but it
was not actually published until 1747, and then only to give away.
Another enlarged and more accurate edition was issued in 1752, and it
was finally reprinted in the second volume of the _Works_ of 1798, pp.
221-78, where it is followed by the _Sermon on Painting_. Professing
to be more a catalogue of the pictures than a description of them, it
nevertheless gives a good idea of a collection which (as its historian
says) both in its extent and the condition of its treasures excelled
most of the existing collections of Italy. In an 'Introduction,'
the characteristics of the various artists are distinguished with
much discrimination, although it is naturally more sympathetic than
critical. Perhaps one of its happiest pages is the following excursus
upon a poem of Prior: 'I cannot conclude this topic of the ancient
painters without taking notice of an extreme pretty instance of Prior's
taste, and which may make an example on that frequent subject, the
resemblance between poetry and painting, and prove that taste in
the one will influence in the other. Everybody has read his tale of
Protogenes and Apelles. If they have read the story in Pliny they will
recollect that by the latter's account it seemed to have been a trial
between two Dutch performers. The Roman author tells you that when
Apelles was to write his name on a board, to let Protogenes know who
had been to inquire for him, he drew an exactly straight and slender
line. Protogenes returned, and with his pencil and another colour,
divided his competitor's. Apelles, on seeing the ingenious minuteness
of the Rhodian master, took a third colour, and laid on a still finer
and indivisible line. But the English poet, who could distinguish the
emulation of genius from nice experiments about splitting hairs, took
the story into his own hands, and in a less number of trials, and with
bolder execution, comprehended the whole force of painting, and flung
drawing, colouring, and the doctrine of light and shade into the noble
contention of those two absolute masters. In Prior, the first wrote
his name in a perfect design, and
'"----with one judicious stroke
On the plain ground Apelles drew
A circle regularly true."'
Protogenes knew the hand, and showed Apelles that his own knowledge of
colouring was as great as the other's skill in drawing.
'"Upon the happy line he laid
Such obvious light and easy shade
That Paris' apple stood confest,
Or Leda's egg, or Chloe's breast."'[49]
[49] Mr. Vertue the engraver made a very ingenious conjecture on this
story; he supposes that Apelles did not draw a straight line, but the
outline of a human figure, which not being correct, Protogenes drew
a more correct figure within his; but that still not being perfect,
Apelles drew a smaller and exactly proportioned one within both the
former.--_Walpole's note._
Apelles acknowledged his rival's merit, without jealously persisting to
refine on the masterly reply:--
'"Pugnavere pares, succubuere pares"'[50]
[50] Walpole's _Works_, 1798, ii. 229-30. The final quotation is from
Martial.
Among the other efforts of his pen at this time were some squibs
in ridicule of the new Ministry. One was a parody of a scene in
_Macbeth_; the other of a scene in Corneille's _Cinna_. He also wrote a
paper against Lord Bath in the _Old England Journal_.
In the not very perplexed web of Horace Walpole's life, the next
occurrence of importance is his father's death. When, as Sir Robert
Walpole, he had ceased to be Prime Minister, he was sixty-five years
of age; and though his equanimity and wonderful constitution still
seemed to befriend him, he had personally little desire, even if
the ways had been open, to recover his ancient power. 'I believe
nothing could prevail on him to return to the Treasury,' writes his
son to Mann in 1743. 'He says he will keep the 12th of February--the
day he resigned--with his family as long as he lives.' He continued
nevertheless, to assist his old master with his counsel, and more than
one step of importance by which the King startled his new Ministry owed
its origin to a confidential consultation with Lord Orford. When, in
January, 1744, the old question of discontinuing the Hanoverian troops
was revived with more than ordinary insistence, it was through Lord
Orford's timely exertions, and his personal credit with his friends,
that the motion was defeated by an overwhelming majority. On the other
hand, a further attempt to harass him by another Committee of Secret
Inquiry was wholly unsuccessful, and signs were not wanting that his
old prestige had by no means departed. Towards the close of 1744,
however, his son begins to chronicle a definite decline in his health.
He is evidently suffering seriously from stone, and is forbidden to
take the least exercise by the King's serjeant-surgeon, that famous
Mr. Ranby who was the friend of Hogarth and Fielding.[51] In January
of the next year, he is trying a famous specific for his complaint,
Mrs. Stephens's medicine. Six weeks later, he has been alarmingly ill
for about a month; and although reckoned out of absolute danger, is
hardly ever conscious more than four hours out of the four-and-twenty,
from the powerful opiates he takes in order to deaden pain. A month
later, on the 18th March, 1745, he died at Arlington Street, in his
sixty-ninth year. At first his son dares scarcely speak of his loss,
but a fortnight afterwards he writes more fully. After showing that
the state of his circumstances proved how little truth there had been
in the charges of self-enrichment made against him, Walpole goes on
to say: 'It is certain, he is dead very poor: his debts, with his
legacies, which are trifling, amount to fifty thousand pounds. His
estate, a nominal eight thousand a year, much mortgaged. In short, his
fondness for Houghton has endangered him. If he had not so overdone it,
he might have left such an estate to his family as might have secured
the glory of the place for many years: another such debt must expose
it to sale. If he had lived, his unbounded generosity and contempt of
money would have run him into vast difficulties. However irreparable
his personal loss may be to his friends, he certainly died critically
well for himself: he had lived to stand the rudest trials with honour,
to see his character universally cleared, his enemies brought to infamy
for their ignorance or villainy, and the world allowing him to be
the only man in England fit to be what he had been; and he died at a
time when his age and infirmities prevented his again undertaking the
support of a government, which engrossed his whole care, and which
he foresaw was falling into the last confusion. In this I hope his
judgment failed! His fortune attended him to the last, for he died of
the most painful of all distempers, with little or no pain.'[52]
[51] Ranby wrote a _Narrative of the last Illness of the Earl of
Orford_, 1745, which provoked much controversy.
[52] _Walpole to Mann_, 15 April, 1745.
From the _Short Notes_ we learn further: 'He [my father] left me the
house in Arlington-street in which he died, £5000 in money, and £1000 a
year from the Collector's place in the Custom-house, and the surplus to
be divided between my brother Edward and me.'