Stage-gossip and Small-talk.--Ranelagh Gardens.--Fontenoy and
Leicester House.--Echoes of the '45.--Preston Pans.--Culloden.--Trial
of the Rebel Lords.--Deaths of Kilmarnock and Balmerino.--Epilogue
to _Tamerlane_.--Walpole and his Relatives.--Lady Orford.--Literary
Efforts.--The Beauties.--Takes a House at Windsor.
During the period between Walpole's return to England and the death of
Lord Orford, his letters, addressed almost exclusively to Mann, are
largely occupied with the occurrences which accompanied and succeeded
his father's downfall. To Lord Orford's _protégé_ and relative these
particulars were naturally of the first importance, and Walpole's
function of 'General Intelligencer' fell proportionately into the
background. Still, there are occasional references to current events of
a merely social character. After the Secret Committee, he is interested
(probably because his friend Conway was pecuniarily interested) in
the Opera, and the reception by the British public of the Viscontina,
Amorevoli, and the other Italian singers whom he had known abroad.
Of the stage he says comparatively little, dismissing poor Mrs.
Woffington, who had then just made her appearance at Covent Garden, as
'a bad actress,' who, nevertheless, 'has life,'--an opinion in which
he is supported by Conway, who calls her 'an impudent, Irish-faced
girl.' In the acting of Garrick, after whom all the town is (as Gray
writes) 'horn-mad' in May, 1742, he sees nothing wonderful, although
he admits that it is heresy to say so, since that infallible stage
critic, the Duke of Argyll, has declared him superior to Betterton. But
he praises 'a little simple farce' at Drury Lane, _Miss Lucy in Town_,
by Henry Fielding, in which his future friend, Mrs. Clive, and Beard
mimic Amorevoli and the Muscovita. The same letter contains a reference
to another famous stage-queen, now nearing eighty, Anne Bracegirdle,
who should have had the money that Congreve left to Henrietta, Duchess
of Marlborough. 'Tell Mr. Chute [he says] that his friend Bracegirdle
breakfasted with me this morning. As she went out, and wanted her
clogs, she turned to me, and said, "I remember at the playhouse, they
used to call, Mrs. Oldfield's chair! Mrs. Barry's clogs! and Mrs.
Bracegirdle's pattens!"'[53] One pictures a handsome old lady, a
little bent, and leaning on a crutch stick as she delivers this parting
utterance at the door.[54]
[53] _Walpole to Mann_, 26 May, 1742.
[54] According to Pinkerton, another anecdote connects Mrs. Bracegirdle
with the Walpoles. 'Mr. Shorter, my mother's father [he makes Horace
say], was walking down Norfolk Street in the Strand, to his house
there, just before poor Mountfort the player was killed in that street,
by assassins hired by Lord Mohun. This nobleman, lying in wait for
his prey, came up and embraced Mr. Shorter by mistake, saying, 'Dear
Mountfort!' It was fortunate that he was instantly undeceived, for Mr.
Shorter had hardly reached his house before the murder took place'
(_Walpoliana_, ii. 96). Mountfort, it will be remembered, owed his
death to Mrs. Bracegirdle's liking for him.
Among the occurrences of 1742 which find fitting record in the
correspondence, is the opening of that formidable rival to Vauxhall,
Ranelagh Gardens. All through the spring the great Rotunda, with its
encircling tiers of galleries and supper-boxes,--the _coup d'œil_ of
which Johnson thought was the finest thing he had ever seen,--had
been rising slowly at the side of Chelsea Hospital. In April it was
practically completed, and almost ready for visitors. Walpole, of
course, breakfasts there, like the rest of the _beau monde_. 'The
building is not finished [he says], but they get great sums by people
going to see it and breakfasting in the house; there were yesterday
no less than three hundred and eighty persons, at eighteenpence
a-piece. You see how poor we are, when, with a tax of four shillings
in the pound, we are laying out such sums for cakes and ale.'[55] A
week or two later comes the formal inauguration. 'Two nights ago [May
24] Ranelagh-gardens were opened at Chelsea; the Prince, Princess,
Duke, much nobility, and much mob besides, were there. There is a
vast amphitheatre, finely gilt, painted, and illuminated, into which
everybody that loves eating, drinking, staring, or crowding, is
admitted for twelvepence. The building and disposition of the gardens
cost sixteen thousand pounds. Twice a week there are to be Ridottos at
guinea-tickets, for which you are to have a supper and music. I was
there last night [May 25],'--the writer adds,--'but did not find the
joy of it,'[56] and, at present, he prefers Vauxhall, because of the
approach by water, that '_trajet du fleuve fatal_,'--as it is styled
in the _Vauxhall de Londres_ which a French poet dedicated in 1769
to M. de Fontenelle. He seems, however, to have taken Lord Orford to
Ranelagh, and he records in July that they walked with a train at
their heels like two chairmen going to fight,--from which he argues a
return of his father's popularity. Two years later Fashion has declared
itself on the side of the new garden, and Walpole has gone over to
the side of Fashion. 'Every night constantly [he tells Conway] I go
to Ranelagh; which has totally beat Vauxhall. Nobody goes anywhere
else,--everybody goes there. My Lord Chesterfield is so fond of it that
he says he has ordered all his letters to be directed thither. If you
had never seen it, I would make you a most pompous description of it,
and tell you how the floor is all of beaten princes; that you can't set
your foot without treading on a Prince of Wales or Duke of Cumberland.
The company is universal: there is from his Grace of Grafton down to
children out of the Foundling Hospital; from my Lady Townshend to
the kitten; from my Lord Sandys to your humble cousin and sincere
friend.'[57]
[55] _Walpole to Mann_, 22 April, 1742.
[56] _Walpole to Mann_, 26 May, 1742.
[57] _Walpole to Conway_, 29 June, 1744.
After Lord Orford's death, the next landmark in Horace Walpole's life
is his removal to the house at Twickenham, subsequently known as
Strawberry Hill. To a description of this historical mansion the next
chapter will be in part devoted. In the mean time we may linger for a
moment upon the record which these letters contain of the famous '45.
No better opportunity will probably occur of exhibiting Walpole as
the reporter of history in the process of making. Much that he tells
Mann and Montagu is no doubt little more than the skimming of the last
_Gazette_; but he had always access to trustworthy information, and is
seldom a dull reporter, even of newspaper news. Almost the next letter
to that in which he dwells at length upon the loss of his father,
records the disaster of Tournay, or Fontenoy, in which, he tells Mann,
Mr. Conway has highly distinguished himself, magnificently engaging--as
appears from a subsequent communication--no less than two French
Grenadiers at once. His account of the battle is bare enough; but what
apparently interests him most is the patriotic conduct of the Prince of
Wales, who made a _chanson_ on the occasion, after the fashion of the
Regent Orléans:--
'VENEZ, mes chères Déesses,
Venez calmer mon chagrin;
Aidez, mes belles Princesses,
A le noyer dans le vin.
Poussons cette douce Ivresse
Jusqu'au milieu de la nuit,
Et n'écoutons que la tendresse
D'un charmant vis-à-vis.
* * * * *
'Que m'importe que l'Europe
Ait un ou plusieurs tyrans?
Prions seulement Calliope,
Qu'elle inspire nos vers, nos chants.
Laissons Mars et toute la gloire;
Livrons nous tous à l'amour;
Que Bacchus nous donne à boire;
A ces deux fasions [_sic_] la cour.'
The goddesses addressed were Lady Catherine Hanmer, Lady Fauconberg,
and Lady Middlesex, who played Congreve's _Judgment of Paris_ at
Leicester House, with his Royal Highness as Paris, and Prince Lobkowitz
for Mercury. Walpole says of the song that it 'miscarried in nothing
but the language, the thoughts, and the poetry.' Yet he copies the
whole five verses, of which the above are two, for Mann's delectation.
A more logical sequence to Fontenoy than the lyric of Leicester House
is the descent of Charles Edward upon Scotland. In August Walpole
reports to Mann that there is a proclamation out 'for apprehending
the Pretender's son,' who had landed in July; in September he is
marching on Edinburgh. Ten days later the writer is speculating half
ruefully upon the possibilities of being turned out of his comfortable
sinecures in favour of some forlorn Irish peer. 'I shall wonderfully
dislike being a loyal sufferer in a threadbare coat, and shivering
in an ante-chamber at Hanover, or reduced to teach Latin and English
to the young princes at Copenhagen. The Dowager Strafford has already
written cards for my Lady Nithsdale, my Lady Tullibardine, the Duchess
of Perth and Berwick, and twenty more revived peeresses, to invite them
to play at whisk, Monday three months; for your part, you will divert
yourself with their old taffeties, and tarnished slippers, and their
awkwardness, the first day they go to Court in shifts and clean linen.
Will you ever write to me in my garret at Herrenhausen?'[58] Then upon
this come the contradictions of rumour, the 'general supineness,'
the raising of regiments, and the disaster of Preston Pans, with
its inevitable condemnation of Cope. 'I pity poor him, who, with no
shining abilities, and no experience, and no force, was sent to fight
for a crown! He never saw a battle but that of Dettingen, where he
got his red ribbon; Churchill, whose led-captain he was, and my Lord
Harrington, had pushed him up to this misfortune.[59] We have lost all
our artillery, five hundred men taken--and _three_ killed, and several
officers, as you will see in the papers. This defeat has frightened
everybody but those it rejoices, and those it should frighten most; but
my Lord Granville still buoys up the King's spirits, and persuades him
it is nothing.'[60]
[58] _Walpole to Montagu_, 17 Sept., 1745.
[59] Walpole later revised this verdict: 'General Cope was tried
afterwards for his behaviour in this action, and it appeared very
clearly that the Ministry, his inferior officers, and his troops, were
greatly to blame; and that he did all he could, so ill-directed, so
ill-supplied, and so ill-obeyed.'
[60] _Walpole to Mann_, 27 Sept., 1745.
Nothing, indeed, it proved in the issue. But Walpole was wiser in his
immediate apprehensions than King George's advisers, who were not wise.
In his subsequent letters we get scattered glimpses of the miserable
story that ended in Culloden. Towards the end of October he is auguring
hopefully from the protracted neglect of the rebels to act upon their
success. In November they are in England. But the backwardness of
the Jacobites to join them is already evident, and he writes 'in the
greatest confidence of our getting over this ugly business.' Early in
December they have reached Derby, only to be soon gone again, miserably
harassed, and leaving their sick and cannon behind. With the new year
come tidings to Mann that the rebellion is dying down in England,
and that General Hawley has marched northward to put it quite out.
Once more, on the 23rd February, it flares fitfully at Falkirk, and
then fades as suddenly. The battle that Walpole hourly expects, not
without some trepidation, for Conway is one of the Duke of Cumberland's
aides-de-camp, is still deferred, and it is April before the two armies
face each other on Culloden Moor. Then he writes jubilantly to his
Florentine correspondent: 'On the 16th, the Duke, by forced marches,
came up with the rebels a little on this side Inverness,--by the way,
the battle is not christened yet; I only know that neither Preston Pans
nor Falkirk are to be god-fathers. The rebels, who had fled from him
after their victory [of Falkirk], and durst not attack him, when so
much exposed to them at his passage of the Spey, now stood him, they
seven thousand, he ten. They broke through Barril's regiment and killed
Lord Robert Kerr, a handsome young gentleman, who was cut to pieces
with about thirty wounds; but they were soon repulsed, and fled; the
whole engagement not lasting above a quarter of an hour. The young
Pretender escaped, Mr. Conway says, he hears, wounded: he certainly
was in the rear. They have lost above a thousand men in the engagement
and pursuit; and six hundred were already taken; among which latter
are their French Ambassador and Earl Kilmarnock. The Duke of Perth
and Lord Ogilvie are said to be slain.... Except Lord Robert Kerr, we
lost nobody of note: Sir Robert Rich's eldest son has lost his hand,
and about a hundred and thirty private men fell. The defeat is reckoned
total, and the dispersion general; and all their artillery is taken. It
is a brave young Duke! The town is all blazing round me [_i. e._, at
Arlington Street] as I write, with fireworks and illuminations: I have
some inclination to wrap up half-a-dozen sky-rockets, to make you drink
the Duke's health. Mr. Dodington [in Pall Mall], on the first report,
came out with a very pretty illumination,--so pretty that I believe he
had it by him, ready for _any_ occasion.'[61]
[61] _Walpole to Mann_, 25 April, 1746.
Walpole's account of these occurrences is, of course, hearsay,
although, as regards Culloden, he probably derived the details from
Conway, who was present. But in some of the events which ensued, he is
either actually a spectator himself, or fresh from direct communication
with those who have been spectators. One of the most graphic passages
in his entire correspondence is his description of the trial of the
rebel lords, at which he assisted; and another is his narrative of the
executions of Kilmarnock and Balmerino, written down from the relation
of eye-witnesses. It is hardly possible to get much nearer to history.
'I am this moment come from the conclusion of the greatest and most
melancholy scene I ever yet saw! You will easily guess it was the
Trials of the rebel Lords. As it was the most interesting sight, it
was the most solemn and fine: a coronation is a puppet-show, and all
the splendour of it idle; but this sight at once feasted one's eyes
and engaged all one's passions. It began last Monday; three parts of
Westminster-hall were inclosed with galleries, and hung with scarlet;
and the whole ceremony was conducted with the most awful solemnity
and decency, except in the one point of leaving the prisoners at
the bar, amidst the idle curiosity of some crowd, and even with the
witnesses who had sworn against them, while the Lords adjourned to
their own House to consult. No part of the royal family was there,
which was a proper regard to the unhappy men, who were become their
victims.... I had armed myself with all the resolution I could, with
the thought of their crimes and of the danger past, and was assisted
by the sight of the Marquis of Lothian in weepers for his son [Lord
Robert Kerr], who fell at Culloden; but the first appearance of the
prisoners shocked me! their behaviour melted me.' After going on to
speak of Lord Kilmarnock and Lord Cromartie (afterwards reprieved),
he continues: 'For Lord Balmerino, he is the most natural brave old
fellow I ever saw: the highest intrepidity, even to indifference.
At the bar he behaved like a soldier and a man; in the intervals of
form, with carelessness and humour. He pressed extremely to have his
wife, his pretty Peggy [Margaret Chalmers], with him in the Tower,
Lady Cromartie only sees her husband through the grate, not choosing
to be shut up with him, as she thinks she can serve him better by her
intercession without: she is big with child and very handsome: so
are their daughters. When they were to be brought from the Tower in
separate coaches, there was some dispute in which the axe must go: old
Balmerino cried, 'Come, come, put it with me.' At the bar he plays with
his fingers upon the axe, while he talks to the gentleman-gaoler; and
one day somebody coming up to listen, he took the blade and held it
like a fan between their faces. During the trial, a little boy was near
him, but not tall enough to see; he made room for the child, and placed
him near himself.'[62]
[62] _Walpole to Mann_, 1 Aug., 1746.
Balmerino's gallant demeanour evidently fascinated Walpole. In his
next letter he relates how on his way back to the Tower the sturdy
old dragoon had stopped the coach at Charing Cross to buy some
'honey-blobs' (gooseberries); and when afterwards he comes to write his
account of the execution, although he tells the story of Kilmarnock's
death with feeling, the best passage is given to his companion in
misfortune. He describes how, on the fatal 15th August, before he left
the Tower, Balmerino drank a bumper to King James; how he wore his
rebellious regimentals (blue and red) over a flannel waistcoat and
his shroud; how, embracing Lord Kilmarnock, he said, 'My Lord, I wish
I could suffer for both.' Then followed the beheading of Kilmarnock;
and the narrator goes on: 'The scaffold was immediately new-strewed
with sawdust, the block new covered, the executioner new-dressed, and
a new axe brought. Then came old Balmerino, treading with the air of a
general. As soon as he mounted the scaffold, he read the inscription
on his coffin, as he did again afterwards: he then surveyed the
spectators, who were in amazing numbers, even upon masts upon ships in
the river; and pulling out his spectacles, read a treasonable speech,
which he delivered to the Sheriff, and said, the young Pretender was
so sweet a Prince that flesh and blood could not resist following him;
and lying down to try the block, he said, 'If I had a thousand lives,
I would lay them all down here in the same cause.' He said if he had
not taken the sacrament the day before, he would have knocked down
Williamson, the Lieutenant of the Tower, for his ill-usage of him. He
took the axe and felt it, and asked the headsman how many blows he had
given Lord Kilmarnock; and gave him three guineas. Two clergymen, who
attended him, coming up, he said, 'No, gentlemen, I believe you have
already done me all the service you can.' Then he went to the corner
of the scaffold, and called very loud for the warder, to give him his
perriwig, which he took off, and put on a night-cap of Scotch plaid,
and then pulled off his coat and waistcoat and lay down; but being told
he was on the wrong side, vaulted round, and immediately gave the sign
by tossing up his arm, as if he were giving the signal for battle. He
received three blows; but the first certainly took away all sensation.
He was not a quarter of an hour on the scaffold; Lord Kilmarnock above
half a one. Balmerino certainly died with the intrepidity of a hero,
but the insensibility of one too. As he walked from his prison to
execution, seeing every window and top of house filled with spectators,
he cried out, "Look, look, how they are all piled up like rotten
oranges."'[63]
[63] _Walpole to Mann_, 21 August, 1746. Gray, who was at the trial,
also mentions Balmerino, not so enthusiastically. 'He is an old
soldier-like man, of a vulgar manner and aspect, speaks the broadest
Scotch, and shews an intrepidity, that some ascribe to real courage,
and some to brandy' (_Letter to Wharton_, August). 'Old Balmerino,
when he had read his paper to the people, pulled off his spectacles,
spit upon his handkerchief, and wiped them clean for the use of his
posterity; and that is the last page of his history' (_Letter to
Wharton_, 11 Sept., 1746).
In the old print of the execution, the scaffold on Tower Hill is shown
surrounded by a wide square of dragoons, beyond which the crowd--'the
immense display of human countenances which surrounded it like a sea,'
as Scott has it--are visible on every side. No. 14 Tower Hill is said
to have been the house from which the two lords were led to the block,
and a trail of blood along the hall and up the first flight of stairs
was long shown as indicating the route by which the mutilated bodies
were borne to await interment in St. Peter's Chapel. A few months
later Walpole records the execution in the same place of Simon Fraser,
Lord Lovat, the cunning old Jacobite, whose characteristic attitude
and 'pawky' expression live for ever in the admirable sketch which
Hogarth made of him at St. Albans. He died (says Walpole) 'extremely
well, without passion, affectation, buffoonery, or timidity.' But he is
not so distinguished as either Kilmarnock or Balmerino, and, however
Roman his taking-off, the chief memorable thing about it is, that it
was happily the last of these sanguinary scenes in this country. The
only other incident which it is here needful to chronicle in connection
with the 'Forty Five' is Walpole's verses on the Suppression of the
late Rebellion. On the 4th and 5th November, the anniversaries of
King William's birth and landing, it was the custom to play Rowe's
_Tamerlane_, and this year (1746) the epilogue spoken by Mrs. Pritchard
'in the Character of the Comic Muse' was from Walpole's pen. According
to the writer, special terrors had threatened the stage from the advent
of 'Rome's young missionary spark,' the Chevalier, and the Tragic
Muse, raising, 'to eyes well-tutor'd in the trade of grief,' 'a small
and well-lac'd handkerchief,' is represented by her lighter sister as
bewailing the prospect to her 'buskined progeny' after this fashion:--
'Ah! sons, our dawn is over-cast; and all
Theatric glories nodding to their fall.
From foreign realms a bloody chief is come,
Big with the work of slav'ry and of Rome.
A general ruin on his sword he wears,
Fatal alike to audience and to play'rs.
For ah! my sons, what freedom for the stage
When bigotry with sense shall battle wage?
When monkish laureats only wear the bays,
Inquisitors lord chamberlains of plays?
Plays shall be damn'd that 'scap'd the critic's rage,
For priests are still worse tyrants to the stage.
Cato, receiv'd by audiences so gracious,
Shall find ten Cæsars in one St. Ignatius,
And god-like Brutus here shall meet again
His evil genius in a capuchin.
For heresy the fav'rites of the pit
Must burn, and excommunicated wit;
And at one stake, we shall behold expire
My Anna Bullen, and the Spanish Fryar.'[64]
[64] Walpole's _Works_, 1798, i. 25-7.
After this the epilogue digresses into a comparison of the Duke of
Cumberland with King William. Virgil, Juvenal, Addison, Dryden, and
Pope, upon one of whose lines on Cibber Walpole bases his reference
to the Lord Chamberlain, are all laid under contribution in this
performance. It 'succeeded to flatter me,' he tells Mann a few days
later,--a Gallicism from which we must infer an enthusiastic reception.
Walpole's personal and domestic history does not present much interest
at this period. His sister Mary (Catherine Shorter's daughter), who
had married the third Earl of Cholmondeley, had died long before her
mother. In February, 1746, his half-sister, Lady Mary, his playmate at
comet in the Houghton days, married Mr. Churchill,--'a foolish match,'
in Horace's opinion, to which he will have nothing to say. With his
second brother, Sir Edward Walpole, he seems to have had but little
intercourse, and that scarcely of a fraternal character. In 1857,
Cunningham published for the first time a very angry letter from Edward
to his junior, in which the latter was bitterly reproached for his
interference in disposing of the family borough of Castle Rising, and
(incidentally) for his assumption of superiority, mental and otherwise.
To this communication Walpole prepared a most caustic and categorical
answer, which, however, he never sent. For his nieces, Edward Walpole's
natural daughters, of whom it will be more convenient to speak later,
Horace seems always to have felt a sincere regard. But although his
brother had tastes which must have been akin to his own, for Edward
Walpole was in his way an art patron (Roubillac the sculptor, for
instance, was much indebted to him) and a respectable musician, no
real cordiality ever existed between them. 'There is nothing in the
world'--he tells Montagu in May, 1745--'the Baron of Englefield has
such an aversion for as for his brother.'[65]
[65] Englefield, _i. e._ Englefield Green, in Berkshire, on the summit
of Cooper's Hill, near Windsor, where Edward Walpole lived.
For his eldest brother's wife, the Lady Walpole who had formed one
of the learned trio at Florence, he entertained no kind of respect,
and his letters are full of flouts at her Ladyship's manners and
morality. Indeed, between _préciosité_ and 'Platonic love,' her life
does not appear to have been a particularly worshipful one, and her
long sojourn under Italian skies had not improved her. At present
she was Lady Orford, her husband, who is seldom mentioned, and from
whom she had been living apart, having succeeded to the title at his
father's death. From Walpole's letters to Mann, it seems that in April,
1745, she was, much to the dismay of her relatives, already preening
her wings for England. In September, she has arrived, and Walpole is
maliciously delighted at the cold welcome she obtains from the Court
and from society in general, with the exception of her old colleague,
Lady Pomfret, and that in one sense congenial spirit, Lady Townshend.
Later on, a definite separation from her husband appears to have
been agreed upon, which Walpole fondly hopes may have the effect of
bringing about her departure for Italy. 'The Ladies O[rford] and
T[ownshend]'--he says--'have exhausted scandal both in their persons
and conversations.' However much this may be exaggerated (and Walpole
never spares his antipathies), the last we hear of Lady Orford is
certainly on his side, for she has retired from town to a villa near
Richmond with a lover for whom she has postponed that southward flight
which her family so ardently desired. This fortunate Endymion, the Hon.
Sewallis Shirley, son of Robert, first Earl Ferrers, had already been
one of the most favoured lovers of the notorious 'lady of quality'
whose memoirs were afterwards foisted into _Peregrine Pickle_. To Lady
Vane now succeeded Lady Orford, as eminent for wealth--says sarcastic
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu--as her predecessor had been for beauty,
and equal in her 'heroic contempt for shame.' This new connection was
destined to endure. It was in September, 1746, that Walpole chronicled
his sister-in-law's latest frailty, and in May, 1751, only a few
weeks after her husband's death,[66] she married Shirley at the Rev.
Alexander Keith's convenient little chapel in May Fair.'
[66] Robert Walpole, second Earl of Orford, Horace Walpole's eldest
brother, died in March, 1751.
In 1744, died Alexander Pope, to be followed a year later by the great
Dean of St. Patrick's. Neither of these events leaves any lasting
mark in Walpole's correspondence,--indeed of Swift's death there is
no mention at all. A nearer bereavement was the premature loss of
West, which had taken place two years before, closing sorrowfully with
faint accomplishment a life of promise. _Vale, et vive paulisper cum
vivis_,--he had written a few days earlier to Gray,--his friend to the
last. With Gray, Walpole's friendship, as will be seen presently, had
been resumed. His own literary essays still lie chiefly in the domain
of squib and _jeu d'esprit_. In April, 1746, over the appropriate
signature of 'Descartes,' he printed in No. II. of _The Museum_ a
'Scheme for Raising a Large Sum of Money for the Use of the Government,
by laying a tax on Message-Cards and Notes,' and in No. V. a pretended
Advertisement and Table of Contents for a _History of Good Breeding,
from the Creation of the World_, by the Author of the Whole Duty of
Man. The wit of this is a little laboured, and scarcely goes beyond the
announcement that 'The Eight last Volumes, which relate to _Germany_,
may be had separate;' nor does that of the other exceed a mild
reflection of Fielding's manner in some of his minor pieces. Among
other things, we gather that it was the custom of the fine ladies of
the day to send open messages on blank playing-cards; and it is stated
as a fact or a fancy that 'after the fatal day of Fontenoy,' persons
of quality 'all wrote their notes on Indian paper, which, being red,
when inscribed with Japan ink made a melancholy military kind of elegy
on the brave youths who occasioned the fashion, and were often the
honourable subject of the epistle.' The only remaining effort of any
importance at this time is the little poem of _The Beauties_, somewhat
recalling Gay's Prologue to the _Shepherd's Week_, and written in July,
1746, to Eckardt the painter. Here is a specimen:--
In smiling CAPEL'S bounteous look
Rich autumn's goddess is mistook.
With poppies and with spiky corn,
Eckardt, her nut-brown curls adorn;
And by her side, in decent line,
Place charming BERKELEY, Proserpine.
Mild as a summer sea, serene,
In dimpled beauty next be seen
AYLESB'RY, like hoary Neptune's queen.
With her the light-dispensing fair,
Whose beauty gilds the morning air,
And bright as her attendant sun,
The new Aurora, LYTTELTON.
Such Guido's pencil, beauty-tip'd,
And in ethereal colours dip'd,
In measur'd dance to tuneful song
Drew the sweet goddess, as along
Heaven's azure 'neath their light feet spread,
The buxom hours the fairest led.'[67]
[67] Walpole's _Works_ 1798, i. 21-2.
'Charming Berkeley,' here mentioned, afterwards became the third wife
of Goldsmith's friend, Earl Nugent, and the mother of the little girl
who played tricks upon the author of _She Stoops to Conquer_ at her
father's country seat of Gosfield; 'Aylesb'ry, like hoary Neptune's
queen,' married Walpole's friend, Conway, and 'the new Aurora,
Lyttelton,' was that engaging Lucy Fortescue upon whose death in 1747
her husband wrote the monody so pitilessly parodied by Smollett.[68]
Lady Almeria Carpenter, Lady Emily Lenox, Miss Chudleigh (afterwards
the notorious Duchess of Kingston), and many other well-known names,
_quos nunc perscribere longum est_, are also celebrated.
[68] Writing to Walpole in March, 1751, Gray says: 'In the last volume
[of _Peregrine Pickle_] is a character of Mr. Lyttleton [_sic_], under
the name of "Gosling Scrag," and a parody of part of his Monody, under
the notion of a Pastoral on the death of his grandmother' (_Works_ by
Gosse, 1884, ii. 214).
In August, 1746, Walpole announces to Mann that he has taken a pretty
house within the precincts of the castle at Windsor, to which he is
going for the remainder of the summer. In September he has entered
upon residence, for Gray tells Wharton that he sees him 'usually once
a week.' 'All is mighty free, and even friendly more than one could
expect,'--and one of the first things posted off to Conway, is Gray's
_Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College_, which the sender desires
he 'will please to like excessively.' He is drawn from his retreat by
the arrival of a young Florentine friend, the Marquis Rinuncini, to
whom he has to do the London honours. 'I stayed literally an entire
week with him, carried him to see palaces and Richmond gardens and
park, and Chenevix's shop, and talked a great deal to him _alle
conversazioni_.'[69] 'Chenevix's shop' suggests the main subject of the
next chapter,--the purchase and occupation of Strawberry Hill.
[69] _Walpole to Mann_ 15 Sept., 1746.