State of French Society in 1765.--Walpole at Paris.--The Royal Family
and the Bête du Gévaudan.--French Ladies of Quality.--Madame du
Deffand.--A Letter from Madame de Sévigné.--Rousseau and the King of
Prussia.--The Hume-Rousseau Quarrel.--Returns to England, and hears
Wesley at Bath.--Paris again.--Madame du Deffand's Vitality.--Her
Character.--Minor Literary Efforts.--The _Historic Doubts_.--The
_Mysterious Mother_.--Tragedy in England.--Doings of the Strawberry
Press.--Walpole and Chatterton.
When, towards the close of 1765, Walpole made the first of several
visits to Paris, the society of the French capital, and indeed French
society as a whole, was showing signs of that coming _culbute générale_
which was not to be long deferred. The upper classes were shamelessly
immoral, and, from the King downwards, _liaisons_ of the most open
character excited neither censure nor comment. It was the era of
Voltaire and the Encyclopædists; it was the era of Rousseau and the
Sentimentalists; it was also the era of confirmed Anglomania. While
we, on our side, were beginning to copy the _comédies larmoyantes_
of La Chaussée and Diderot, the French in their turn were acting
_Romeo and Juliet_, and raving over Richardson. Richardson's chief
rival in their eyes was Hume, then a _chargé d'affaires_, and, in
spite of his plain face and bad French, the idol of the freethinkers.
He 'is treated here,' writes Walpole, 'with perfect veneration;' and
we learn from other sources that no lady's toilette was complete
without his attendance. 'At the Opera,'--says Lord Charlemont,--'his
broad, unmeaning face was usually seen _entre deux jolis minois_;
the ladies in France gave the _ton_, and the _ton_ was Deism.' Apart
from literature, irreligion, and philosophy, the chief occupation was
cards. 'Whisk and Richardson' is Walpole's later definition of French
society; 'Whisk and disputes,' that of Hume. According to Walpole, a
kind of pedantry and solemnity was the characteristic of conversation,
and 'laughing was as much out of fashion as pantins or bilboquets.
Good folks, they have no time to laugh. There is God and the King to
be pulled down first; and men and women, one and all, are devoutly
employed in the demolition.' How that enterprise eventuated, history
has recorded.
It is needless, however, to rehearse the origins of the French
Revolution, in order to make a background for the visit of an English
gentleman to Paris in 1765. Walpole had been meditating this journey
for two or three years; but the state of his health, among other
things (he suffered much from gout), had from time to time postponed
it. In 1763, he had been going next spring;[102] but when next spring
came he talked of the beginning of 1765. Nevertheless, in March of
that year, Gilly Williams writes to Selwyn: 'Horry Walpole has now
postponed his journey till May,' and then he goes on to speak of the
_Castle of Otranto_ in a way which shows that all the author's friends
were not equally enthusiastic respecting that ingenious romance. 'How
do you think he has employed that leisure which his political frenzy
has allowed of? In writing a novel, ... and such a novel that no
boarding-school miss of thirteen could get through without yawning. It
consists of ghosts and enchantments; pictures walk out of their frames,
and are good company for half an hour together; helmets drop from the
moon, and cover half a family. He says it was a dream, and I fancy
one when he had some feverish disposition in him.'[103] May, however,
had arrived and passed, and the _Castle of Otranto_ was in its second
edition, before Walpole at last set out, on Monday, the 9th September,
1765. After a seven hours' passage, he reached Calais from Dover. Near
Amiens he was refreshed by a sight of one of his favourites, Lady Mary
Coke,[104] 'in pea-green and silver;' at Chantilly he was robbed of
his portmanteau. By the time he reached Paris, on the 13th, he had
already 'fallen in love with twenty things, and in hate with forty.'
The dirt of Paris, the narrowness of the streets, the 'trees clipped to
resemble brooms, and planted on pedestals of chalk,' disgust him. But
he is enraptured with the _treillage_ and fountains, 'and will prove
it at Strawberry.' He detests the French opera, though he loves the
French _opéra-comique_, with its Italian comedy and his passion,--'his
dear favourite harlequin.' Upon the whole, in these first impressions
he is disappointed. Society is duller than he expected, and with
the staple topics of its conversation,--philosophy, literature, and
freethinking,--he is (or says he is) out of sympathy. 'Freethinking
is for one's self, surely not for society.... I dined to-day with
half-a-dozen _savans_, and though all the servants were waiting, the
conversation was much more unrestrained, even on the Old Testament,
than I would suffer at my own table in England if a single footman was
present. For literature, it is very amusing when one has nothing else
to do. I think it rather pedantic in society; tiresome when displayed
professedly; and, besides, in this country one is sure it is only the
fashion of the day.' And then he goes on to say that the reigning
fashion is Richardson and Hume.[105]
[102] It is curious to note in one of his letters at this date a _mot_
which may be compared with the famous 'Good Americans, when they die,
go to Paris.' Walpole is more sardonic. 'Paris,' he says, '... like
the description of the grave, is the way of all flesh' (_Walpole to
Mann_, 30 June, 1763).
[103] _Gilly Williams to Selwyn_, 19 March, 1765.
[104] Lady Mary Coke, to whom the second edition of the Gothic romance
was dedicated, was the youngest daughter of John, Duke of Argyll and
Greenwich. At this date, she was a widow,--Lord Coke having died in
1753. Two volumes of her _Letters and Journals_, with an excellent
introduction by Lady Louisa Stuart, were printed privately at
Edinburgh in 1889 from MSS. in the possession of the Earl of Home. A
third volume, which includes a number of epistles addressed to her
by Walpole, found among the papers of the late Mr. Drummond Moray of
Abercairny, was issued in 1892. Walpole's tone in these documents is
one of fantastic adoration; but the pair ultimately (and inevitably)
quarrelled. There is a well-known mezzotint of Lady Mary by McArdell
after Allan Ramsay, in which she appears in white satin, holding a tall
theorbo. The original painting is at Mount Stuart, and belongs to Lord
Bute.
[105] _Walpole to Montagu_, 22 September, 1765.
One of his earliest experiences was his presentation at Versailles to
the royal family,--a ceremony which luckily involved but one operation
instead of several, as in England, where the Princess Dowager of Wales,
the Duke of Cumberland, and the Princess Amelia had all their different
levees. He gives an account of this to Lady Hervey; but repeats it
on the same day with much greater detail in a letter to Chute. 'You
perceive [he says] that I have been presented. The Queen took great
notice of me [for which reason, in imitation of Madame de Sévigné, he
tells Lady Hervey that she is _le plus grand roi du monde_]; none of
the rest said a syllable. You are let into the King's bedchamber just
as he has put on his shirt; he dresses, and talks good-humouredly to
a few, glares at strangers, goes to mass, to dinner, and a-hunting.
The good old Queen, who is like Lady Primrose in the face, and Queen
Caroline in the immensity of her cap, is at her dressing-table,
attended by two or three old ladies.... Thence you go to the Dauphin,
for all is done in an hour. He scarce stays a minute; indeed, poor
creature, he is a ghost, and cannot possibly last three months. [He
died, in fact, within this time, on the 20th December.] The Dauphiness
is in her bed-chamber, but dressed and standing; looks cross, is
not civil, and has the true Westphalian grace and accents. The four
Mesdames [these were the _Graille_, _Chiffe_, _Coche_, and _Loque_ of
history], who are clumsy, plump old wenches, with a bad likeness to
their father, stand in a bedchamber in a row, with black cloaks and
knotting-bags, looking good-humoured, [and] not knowing what to say....
This ceremony is very short; then you are carried to the Dauphin's
three boys, who, you may be sure, only bow and stare. The Duke of
Berry [afterwards Louis XVI.] looks weak and weak-eyed; the Count de
Provence [Louis XVIII.] is a fine boy; the Count d'Artois [Charles
X.] well enough. The whole concludes with seeing the Dauphin's little
girl dine, who is as round and as fat as a pudding.'[106] Such is
Walpole's account of the royal family of France on exhibition. In the
Queen's ante-chamber he was treated to a sight of the famous _bête du
Gévaudan_, a hugeous wolf, of which a highly sensational representation
had been given in the _St. James's Chronicle_ for June 6-8. It had just
been shot, after a prosperous but nefarious career, and was exhibited
by two chasseurs 'with as much parade as if it was Mr. Pitt.'[107]
[106] _Walpole to Chute_, 3 October, 1765.
[107] Madame de Genlis mentions this fearsome monster in her
_Mémoires_: 'Tout le monde a entendu parler de la hyène de Gévaudan,
qui a fait tant de ravages.' The point of Walpole's allusion to Pitt
is explained in one of his hitherto unpublished letters to Lady Mary
Coke at this date: 'I had the fortune to be treated with the sight
of what, next to Mr. Pitt, has occasioned most alarm in France, the
Beast of the Gévaudan' (_Letters and Journals_, iii. [1892], xvii). In
another letter, to Pitt's sister Ann, maid of honour to Queen Caroline,
he says: 'It is a very large wolf, to be sure, and they say has twelve
teeth more than any of the species, and six less than the Czarina'
(_Fortescue Corr., Hist. MSS. Commission, 13th Rept., App._ iii., 1892,
i. 147).
When he had been at Paris little less than a month, he was laid up with
the gout in both feet. He was visited during his illness by Wilkes,
for whom he expresses no admiration. From another letter it appears
that Sterne and Foote were also staying in the French capital at this
time. In November he is still limping about, and it is evident that
confinement in 'a bedchamber in a _hôtel garni_, ... when the court
is at Fontainebleau,' has not been without its effect upon his views
of things in general. In writing to Gray (who replies with all sorts
of kindly remedies), he says, 'The charms of Paris have not the least
attraction for me, nor would keep me an hour on their own account.
For the city itself, I cannot conceive where my eyes were: it is the
ugliest, beastliest town in the universe. I have not seen a mouthful of
verdure out of it, nor have they anything green but their _treillage_
and window shutters.... Their boasted knowledge of society is reduced
to talking of their suppers, and every malady they have about them, or
know of.' A day or two later his gout and his stick have left him, and
his good humour is coming back. Before the month ends, he is growing
reconciled to his environment; and by January 'France is so agreeable,
and England so much the reverse,'--he tells Lady Hervey,--'that he
does not know when he shall return.' The great ladies, too, Madame
de Brionne, Madame d'Aiguillon, Marshal Richelieu's daughter, Madame
d'Egmont (with whom he could fall in love if it would break anybody's
heart in England), begin to flatter and caress him. His 'last new
passion' is the Duchess de Choiseul, who is so charming that 'you would
take her for the queen of an allegory.' 'One dreads its finishing, as
much as a lover, if she would admit one, would wish it should finish.'
There is also a beautiful Countess de Forcalquier, the 'broken music'
of whose imperfect English stirs him into heroics too Arcadian for the
matter-of-fact meridian of London, where Lady Hervey is cautioned not
to exhibit them to the profane.[108]
[108] Of Mad. de Forcalquier it is related that, entering a theatre
during the performance of Gresset's _Le Méchant_, just as the line
was uttered, '_La faute est aux dieux, qui la firent si belle_,' the
applause was so great as to interrupt the play. The point of this,
in a recent repetition of the anecdote, was a little blunted by the
printer's substitution of '_bête_' for '_belle_.'
In a letter of later date to Gray, he describes some more of these
graceful and witty leaders of fashion, whose '_douceur_' he seems to
have greatly preferred to the pompous and arrogant fatuity of the men.
'They have taken up gravity,'--he says of these latter,--'thinking it
was philosophy and English, and so have acquired nothing in the room of
their natural levity and cheerfulness.' But with the women the case is
different. He knows six or seven 'with very superior understandings;
some of them with wit, or with softness, or very good sense.' His
first portrait is of the famous Madame Geoffrin, to whom he had been
recommended by Lady Hervey, and who had visited him when imprisoned in
his _chambre garni_. He lays stress upon her knowledge of character,
her tact and good sense, and the happy mingling of freedom and severity
by which she preserved her position as 'an epitome of empire,
subsisting by rewards and punishments.' Then there is the Maréchale de
Mirepoix, a courtier and an _intrigante_ of the first order. 'She is
false, artful, and insinuating beyond measure when it is her interest,
but indolent and a coward,' says Walpole, who does not measure his
words even when speaking of a beauty and a Princess of Lorraine.
Others are the _savante_, Madame de Boufflers, who visited England
and Johnson, and whom the writer hits off neatly by saying that you
would think she was always sitting for her picture to her biographer;
a second _savante_, Madame de Rochfort, 'the _decent_ friend' of
Walpole's former guest at Strawberry, the Duc de Nivernais;[109] the
already mentioned Duchess de Choiseul, and Madame la Maréchale de
Luxembourg, whose youth had been stormy, but who was now softening down
into a kind of twilight melancholy which made her rather attractive.
This last, with one exception, completes his list.
[109] Louis-Jules-Barbon Mancini-Mazarini, Duc de Nivernais (1716-98),
who had visited Twickenham three years earlier, when he was Ambassador
to England. He was a man of fine manners, and tastes so literary that
his works fill eight volumes. They include a translation of Walpole's
_Essay on Modern Gardening_ (see appendix at end). In his letters to
Miss Ann Pitt at this date, Walpole speaks of the Duke's clever fables,
by which he is now best remembered. Lord Chesterfield told his son in
1749 that Nivernais was 'one of the prettiest men he had ever known,'
and in 1762 his opinion was unaltered. '_M. de Nivernais est aimé,
respecté, et admiré par tout ce qu' il y a d'honnêtes gens à la cour
et à la ville_,' he writes to Madame de Monconseil. The Duke's end was
worthy of Chesterfield himself, for he spent some of his last hours in
composing valedictory verses to his doctor. (See 'Eighteenth Century
Vignettes,' second series, pp. 107-137.)
The one exception is a figure which henceforth played no inconsiderable
part in Walpole's correspondence,--that of the brilliant and witty
Madame du Deffand. As Marie de Vichy-Chamrond, she had been married at
one-and-twenty to the nobleman whose name she bore, and had followed
the custom of her day by speedily choosing a lover, who had many
successors. For a brief space she had captivated the Regent himself,
and at this date, being nearly seventy and hopelessly blind, was
continuing, from mere force of habit, a 'decent friendship' with the
deaf President Hénault. At first Walpole was not impressed with her,
and speaks of her, disrespectfully, as 'an old blind debauchee of wit.'
A little later, although he still refers to her as the 'old lady of the
house,' he says she is very agreeable. Later still, she has completed
her conquest by telling him he has _le fou mocquer_; and in the letter
to Gray above quoted, it is plain that she has become an object of
absorbing interest to him, not unmingled with a nervous apprehension of
her undisguised partiality for his society. In spite of her affliction
(he says) she 'retains all her vivacity, wit, memory, judgment,
passions, and agreeableness. She goes to Operas, Plays, suppers, and
Versailles; gives suppers twice a week; has every thing new read to
her; makes new songs and epigrams, ay, admirably,[110] and remembers
every one that has been made these fourscore years. She corresponds
with Voltaire, dictates charming letters to him, contradicts him,
is no bigot to him or anybody, and laughs both at the clergy and
the philosophers. In a dispute, into which she easily falls, she is
very warm, and yet scarce ever in the wrong; her judgment on every
subject is as just as possible; on every point of conduct as wrong as
possible: for she is all love and hatred, passionate for her friends
to enthusiasm, still anxious to be loved, I don't mean by lovers,
and a vehement enemy, but openly. As she can have no amusement but
conversation, the least solitude and ennui are insupportable to her,
and put her into the power of several worthless people, who eat her
suppers when they can eat nobody's of higher rank; wink to one another
and laugh at her; hate her because she has forty times more parts, and
venture to hate her because she is not rich.'[111] In another letter,
to Mr. James Crawford of Auchinames (Hume's _Fish_ Crawford), who was
also one of Madame du Deffand's admirers, he says, in repeating some
of the above details, that he is not 'ashamed of interesting himself
exceedingly about her. To say nothing of her extraordinary parts, she
is certainly the most generous, friendly being upon earth.' Upon her
side, Madame du Deffand seems to have been equally attracted by the
strange mixture of independence and effeminacy which went to make up
Walpole's character. Her attachment to him rapidly grew into a kind of
infatuation. He had no sooner quitted Paris, which he did on the 17th
April, than she began to correspond with him; and thenceforward, until
her death in 1780, her letters, dictated to her faithful secretary,
Wiart, continued, except when Walpole was actually visiting her (and
she sometimes wrote to him even then), to reach him regularly. Not long
after his return to England, she made him the victim of a charming
hoax. He had, when in Paris, admired a snuff-box which bore a portrait
of Madame de Sévigné, for whom he professed an extravagant admiration.
Madame du Deffand procured a similar box, had the portrait copied, and
sent it to him with a letter, purporting to come from the dateless
Elysian Fields and 'Notre Dame de Livry' herself, in which he was
enjoined to use his present always, and to bring it often to France and
the Faubourg St. Germain. Walpole was completely taken in, and imagined
that the box had come from Madame de Choiseul; but he should have known
at first that no one living but his blind friend could have written
'that most charming of all letters.' The box itself, the memento of so
much old-world ingenuity, was sold (with the pseudo-Sévigné epistle)
at the Strawberry Hill sale for £28 7_s._ When witty Mrs. Clive heard
of the last addition to Walpole's list of favourites, she delivered
herself of a good-humoured _bon mot_. There was a new resident at
Twickenham,--the first Earl of Shelburne's widow. 'If the new Countess
is but lame,' quoth Clive (referring to the fact that Lady Suffolk
was deaf, and Madame du Deffand blind), 'I shall have no chance of
ever seeing you.' But there is nothing to show that he ever relaxed
in his attentions to the delightful actress, whom he somewhere styles
_dimidium animæ meæ_.[112]
[110] One of her _logogriphes_, or enigmas, is as follows:--
'_Quoique je forme un corps, je ne suis qu'une idée;
Plus ma beauté vieillit, plus elle est décidée:
Il faut, pour me trouver, ignorer d'où je viens:
Je tiens tout de lui, qui reduit tout à rien._'
The answer is _noblesse_. Lord Chesterfield thought it so good that he
sent it to his godson (Letter 166).
[111] _Walpole to Gray_, 25 January, 1766.
[112] He was malicious enough to add, 'a pretty round half.' In middle
life Mrs. Clive, like her Twickenham neighbour, Mrs. Pritchard, grew
excessively stout; and there is a pleasant anecdote that, on one
occasion, when the pair were acting together in Cibber's _Careless
Husband_, the audience were regaled by the spectacle of two leading
actresses, neither of whom could manage to pick up a letter which, by
ill-luck, had been dropped upon the ground.
One of the other illustrious visitors to Paris during Walpole's stay
there was Rousseau. Being no longer safe in his Swiss asylum, where the
curate of Motiers had excited the mob against him, that extraordinary
self-tormentor, clad in his Armenian costume, had arrived in December
at the French capital, and shortly afterwards left for England, under
the safe-conduct of Hume, who had undertaken to procure him a fresh
resting-place. He reached London on the 14th January, 1766. Walpole
had, to use his own phrase, 'a hearty contempt' for the fugitive
sentimentalist and his grievances; and not long before Rousseau's
advent in Paris, taking for his pretext an offer made by the King of
Prussia, he had woven some of the light mockery at Madame Geoffrin's
into a sham letter from Frederick to Jean-Jacques, couched in the true
Walpolean spirit of persiflage. It is difficult to summarize, and may
be reproduced here as its author transcribed it on the 12th January,
for the benefit of Conway:--
LE ROI DE PRUSSE À MONSIEUR ROUSSEAU.
MON CHER JEAN-JACQUES,--Vous avez renoncé à Génève votre patrie; vous
vous êtes fait chasser de la Suisse, pays tant vanté dans vos écrits;
la France vous a décrété. Venez donc chez moi; j'admire vos talens; je
m'amuse de vos rêveries, qui (soit dit en passant) vous occupent trop,
et trop longtems. Il faut à la fin être sage et heureux. Vous avez
fait assez parler de vous par des singularités peu convenables à un
véritable grand homme. Démontrez à vos ennemis que vous pouvez avoir
quelquefois le sens commun: cela les fachera, sans vous faire tort.
Mes états vous offrent une retraite paisible; je vous veux du bien, et
je vous en ferai, si vous le trouvez bon. Mais si vous vous obstiniez
à rejetter mon secours, attendez-vous que je ne le dirai à personne.
Si vous persistez à vous creuser l'esprit pour trouver de nouveaux
malheurs, choisissez les tels que vous voudrez. Je suis roi, je puis
vous en procurer au gré de vos souhaits: et ce qui sûrement ne vous
arrivera pas vis à vis de vos ennemis, je cesserai de vous persécuter
quand vous cesserez de mettre votre gloire à l'être.
Votre bon ami,
FRÉDÉRIC.
This composition, the French of which was touched up by Helvétius,
Hénault, and the Duc de Nivernais, gave extreme satisfaction to all the
anti-Rousseau party.[113] While Hume and his _protégé_ were still in
Paris, Walpole, out of delicacy to Hume, managed to keep the matter a
secret; and he also abstained from making any overtures to Rousseau,
whom, as he truly said, he could scarcely have visited cordially, with
a letter in his pocket written to ridicule him. But Hume had no sooner
departed than Frederick's sham invitation went the round, ultimately
finding its way across the Channel, where it was printed in the _St.
James's Chronicle_. Rousseau, always on the alert to pose as the victim
of plots and conspiracies, was naturally furious, and wrote angrily
from his retreat at Mr. Davenport's in Derbyshire to denounce the
fabrication. The worst of it was, that his morbid nature immediately
suspected the innocent Hume of participating in the trick. 'What
rends and afflicts my heart [is],' he told the _Chronicle_, 'that the
impostor hath his accomplices in England;' and this delusion became
one of the main elements in that 'twice-told tale,'--the quarrel of
Hume and Rousseau. Walpole was called upon to clear Hume from having
any hand in the letter, and several communications, all of which are
printed at length in the fourth volume of his works, followed upon the
same subject. Their discussion would occupy too large a space in this
limited memoir.[114] It is, however, worth noticing that Walpole's
instinct appears to have foreseen the trouble that fell upon Hume.
'I wish,' he wrote to Lady Hervey, in a letter which Hume carried to
England when he accompanied his untunable _protégé_ thither, 'I wish
he may not repent having engaged with Rousseau, who contradicts and
quarrels with all mankind, in order to obtain their admiration.'[115]
He certainly, upon the present occasion, did not belie this
uncomplimentary character.
[113] In a recently printed letter to Miss Ann Pitt, 19 Jan., 1766,
Walpole makes reference to the popularity which this _jeu d'esprit_
procured for him. 'Everybody wou'd have a copy [of course he encloses
one to his correspondent]; the next thing was, everybody wou'd see the
author.... I thought at last I shou'd have a box quilted for me, like
Gulliver, be set upon the dressing-table of a maid of honour, and fed
with bonbons.... If, contrary to all precedent, I shou'd exist in vogue
a week longer, I will send you the first statue that is cast of me in
_bergamotte_ or _biscuite porcelaine_' (_Fortescue Corr., Hist. MSS.
Commision, 13th Rept., App. iii._ [1892], i, 153).
[114] Hume's narrative of the affair may be read in _A Concise and
Genuine Account of the Dispute between Mr. Hume and Mr. Rousseau: with
the Letters that passed between them during their Controversy. As also,
the Letters of the Hon. Mr. Walpole, and Mr. D'Alembert, relative to
this extraordinary Affair. Translated from the French. London. Printed
for T. Becket and P. A. De Hondt, near Surry-street, in the Strand,
MDCCLXVI._
[115] _Walpole to Lady Hervey_, 2 January, 1766. In a letter to
Lady Mary Coke, dated two days later, he says: 'Rousseau set out
this morning for England. As He loves to contradict a whole Nation,
I suppose he will write for the present opposition.... As he is to
live at Fulham, I hope his first quarrel will be with his neighbour
the Bishop of London, who is an excellent subject for his ridicule'
(_Letters and Journals_, iii. 1892, xx).
Before the last stages of the Hume-Rousseau controversy had been
reached, Hume was back again in Paris, and Walpole had returned to
London. Upon the whole, he told Mann, he liked France so well that
he should certainly go there again. In September, 1766, he was once
more attacked with gout, and at the beginning of October went to
Bath, whose Avon (as compared with his favourite Thames) he considers
'paltry enough to be the Seine or Tyber.' Nothing pleases him much at
Bath, although it contained such notabilities as Lord Chatham, Lord
Northington, and Lord Camden; but he goes to hear Wesley, of whom he
writes rather flippantly to Chute. He describes him as 'a lean, elderly
man, fresh-coloured, his hair smoothly combed, but with a _soupçon_
of curl at the ends.' 'Wondrous clean,' he adds, 'but as evidently an
actor as Garrick. He spoke his sermon, but so fast, and with so little
accent, that I am sure he has often uttered it, for it was like a
lesson. There were parts and eloquence in it; but towards the end he
exalted his voice, and acted very ugly enthusiasm; decried learning,
and told stories, like Latimer, of the fool of his college, who said,
'I _thanks_ God for everything.'[116] He returned to Strawberry Hill
in October. In August of the next year he again went to Paris, going
almost straight to Madame du Deffand's, where he finds Mademoiselle
Clairon (who had quitted the stage) invited to declaim Corneille in
his honour, and he sups in a distinguished company. His visit lasted
two months; but his letters for this period contain few interesting
particulars, while those of the lady cease altogether, to be resumed
again on the 9th October, a few hours after his departure. Two years
later he travels once more to Paris and his blind friend, whom he finds
in better health than ever, and with spirits so increased that he tells
her she will go mad with age. 'When they ask her how old she is, she
answers, "_J'ai soixante et mille ans_."' Her septuagenarian activity
might well have wearied a younger man. 'She and I,' he says, 'went
to the Boulevard last night after supper, and drove about there till
two in the morning. We are going to sup in the country this evening,
and are to go to-morrow night at eleven to the puppet-show.' In a
letter to George Montagu, which adds some details to her portrait, he
writes: 'I have heard her dispute with all sorts of people, on all
sorts of subjects, and never knew her in the wrong.[117] She humbles
the learned, sets right their disciples, and finds conversation for
everybody. Affectionate as Madame de Sévigné, she has none of her
prejudices, but a more universal taste; and, with the most delicate
frame, her spirits hurry her through a life of fatigue that would kill
me, if I was to continue here.... I had great difficulty last night
to persuade her, though she was not well, not to sit up till between
two and three for the comet; for which purpose she had appointed an
astronomer to bring his telescopes to the President Hénault's, as
she thought it would amuse me. In short, her goodness to me is so
excessive that I feel unashamed at producing my withered person in a
round of diversions, which I have quitted at home.'[118] One of the
other amusements which she procured for him was the _entrée_ of the
famous convent of St. Cyr, of which he gives an interesting account. He
inspects the pensioners, and the numerous portraits of the foundress,
Madame de Maintenon. In one class-room he hears the young ladies sing
the choruses in _Athalie_; in another sees them dance minuets to the
violin of a nun who is not precisely St. Cecilia. In the third room
they act _proverbes_, or conversations. Finally, he is enabled to
enrich the archives of Strawberry with a piece of paper containing a
few sentences of Madame de Maintenon's handwriting.
[116] _Walpole to Chute_, 10 October, 1766.
[117] Lady Mary Coke testifies to the charm of her conversation: 'In
the evening I made a visit to Madame du Deffan [_sic_]. She talks so
well that I wish'd to write down everything She said, as I thought I
shou'd have liked to have read it afterwards' (_Letters and Journals_,
iii. [1892], 233).
[118] _Walpole to Montagu_, 7 September, 1769.
Walpole's literary productions for this date (in addition to the
letter from the King of Prussia to Rousseau) are scheduled in the
_Short Notes_ with his usual minuteness. In June, 1766, shortly
after his return from Paris, he wrote a squib upon Captain Byron's
description of the Patagonians, entitled, _An Account of the Giants
lately discovered_, which was published on the 25th August. On 18
August he began his _Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third_;
and, in 1767, the detection of a work published at Paris in two volumes
under the title of the _Testament du Chevalier Robert Walpole_, and
'stamped in that mint of forgeries, Holland.' This, which is printed
in the second volume of his works, remained unpublished during his
lifetime, as no English translation of the _Testament_ was ever
made. His next deliverance was a letter, subsequently printed in the
_St. James's Chronicle_ for 28 May, in which he announced to the
Corporation of Lynn, in the person of their Mayor, Mr. Langley, that
he did not intend to offer himself again as the representative in
Parliament of that town. A wish to retire from all public business,
and the declining state of his health, are assigned as the reasons for
his thus breaking his Parliamentary connection, which had now lasted
for five-and-twenty years. Following upon this comes the already
mentioned account of his action in the Hume and Rousseau quarrel, and
a couple of letters on _Political Abuse in Newspapers_. These appeared
in the _Public Advertiser_. But the chief results of his leisure in
1766-8 are to be found in two efforts more ambitious than any of those
above indicated,--the _Historic Doubts on Richard the Third_, and the
tragedy of _The Mysterious Mother_. The _Historic Doubts_ was begun in
the winter of 1767, and published in February, 1768; the tragedy in
December, 1766, and published in March, 1768.
The _Historic Doubts_ was an attempt to vindicate Richard III. from his
traditional character, which Walpole considered had been intentionally
blackened in order to whiten that of Henry VII. '_Vous seriez un
excellent attornei général_,'--wrote Voltaire to him,--'_vous pesez
toutes les probabilités_.' He might have added that they were all
weighed on one side. Gray admits the clearness with which the principal
part of the arguments was made out; but he remained unconvinced,
especially as regards the murder of Henry VI. Other objectors speedily
appeared, who were neither so friendly nor so gentle. _The Critical
Review_ attacked him for not having referred to Guthrie's _History
of England_, which had in some respects anticipated him; and he was
also criticised adversely by the _London Chronicle_. Of these attacks
Walpole spoke and wrote very contemptuously; but he seems to have been
considerably nettled by the conduct of a Swiss named Deyverdun, who,
giving an account of the book in a work called _Mémoires Littéraires
de la Grande Bretagne_ for 1768, declared his preference for the
views which Hume had expressed in certain notes to the said account.
Deyverdun's action appears to have stung Walpole into a supplementary
defence of his theories, in which he dealt with his critics generally.
This he did not print, but set aside to appear as a postscript in his
works. In 1770, however, his arguments were contested by Dr. Milles,
Dean of Exeter, to whom he replied; and later still, another antiquary,
the Rev. Mr. Masters, came forward. The last two assailants were
members of the Society of Antiquaries, from which body Walpole, in
consequence, withdrew. But he practically abandoned his theories in a
final postscript, written in February, 1793, which is to be found in
the second volume of his works.
Concerning the second performance above referred to, _The Mysterious
Mother_, most of Walpole's biographers are content to abide in
generalities. That the proprietor of Gothic Strawberry should have
produced _The Castle of Otranto_ has a certain congruity; but one
scarcely expects to find the same person indulging in a blank-verse
tragedy sombre enough to have taxed the powers of Ford or Webster. It
is a curious example of literary reaction, and his own words respecting
it are doubtful-voiced. To Montagu and to Madame du Deffand he writes
apologetically. '_Il ne vous plairoit pas assurément_,' he informs the
lady; '_il n'y a pas de beaux sentiments. Il n'y a que des passions
sans envelope_, _des crimes_, _des repentis_, _et des horreurs_;'[119]
and he lays his finger on one of its gravest defects when he goes on
to say that its interest languishes from the first act to the last.
Yet he seems, too, to have thought of its being played, for he tells
Montagu a month later that though he is not yet intoxicated enough
with it to think it would do for the stage, yet he wishes to see it
acted,--a wish which must have been a real one, since he says further
that he has written an epilogue for Mrs. Clive to speak in character.
The postscript which is affixed to the printed piece contradicts the
above utterances considerably, or, at all events, shows that fuller
consideration has materially revised them. He admits that _The
Mysterious Mother_ would not be proper to appear upon the boards. 'The
subject is so horrid that I thought it would shock rather than give
satisfaction to an audience. Still, I found it so truly tragic in
the two essential springs of terror and pity that I could not resist
the impulse of adapting it to the scene, though it should never be
practicable to produce it there.' After his criticism to Madame du
Deffand upon the plot, it is curious to find him later on claiming that
'every scene tends to bring on the catastrophe, and [that] the story
is never interrupted or diverted from its course.' Notwithstanding its
imaginative power, it is impossible to deny that the author's words as
to the repulsiveness of the subject are just. But it is needless to
linger longer upon a dramatic work which had such grave defects as to
render its being acted impossible, and concerning the literary merit of
which there will always be different opinions. Byron spoke of it as 'a
tragedy of the highest order,'--a judgment which has been traversed by
Macaulay and Scott; Miss Burney shuddered at its very name; while Lady
Di. Beauclerk illustrated it enthusiastically with a series of seven
designs in 'sut-water,'[120] for which the enraptured author erected
a special gallery.[121] Meanwhile, we may quote, from the close of the
above postscript, a passage where Walpole is at his best. It is a rapid
and characteristic _aperçu_ of tragedy in England:
'The excellence of our dramatic writers is by no means equal in number
to the great men we have produced in other walks. Theatric genius
lay dormant after Shakespeare; waked with some bold and glorious,
but irregular and often ridiculous, flights in Dryden; revived in
Otway; maintained a placid, pleasing kind of dignity in Rowe, and even
shone in his _Jane Shore_. It trod in sublime and classic fetters in
_Cato_, but void of nature, or the power of affecting the passions.
In Southerne it seemed a genuine ray of nature and Shakespeare; but,
falling on an age still more Hottentot, was stifled in those gross and
barbarous productions, tragi-comedies. It turned to tuneful nonsense
in the _Mourning Bride_; grew stark mad in Lee, whose cloak, a little
the worse for wear, fell on Young, yet in both was still a poet's
cloak. It recovered its senses in Hughes and Fenton, who were afraid it
should relapse, and accordingly kept it down with a timid but amiable
hand; and then it languished. We have not mounted again above the two
last.'[122]
[119] _Letters of Madame du Deffand_, 1810, i. 211 n.
[120] _i. e._ Soot-water. There were two landscapes in soot-water by
Mr. Bentley in the Green Closet at Strawberry.
[121] See chapter ix.
[122] _Works_, 1798, i. 129.
The _Castle of Otranto_ and the _Historic Doubts_ were not printed by
Mr. Robinson's latest successor, Mr. Kirgate. But the Strawberry Press
had by this time resumed its functions, for _The Mysterious Mother_, of
which 50 copies were struck off in 1768, was issued from it. Another
book which it produced in the same year was _Cornélie_, a youthful
tragedy by Madame du Deffand's friend, President Hénault. Walpole's
sole reason for giving it the permanence of his type appears to have
been gratitude to the venerable author, then fast hastening to the
grave, for his kindness to himself in Paris. To Paris three-fourths of
the impression went. More important reprints were Grammont's _Memoirs_,
a small quarto, and a series of _Letters of Edward VI._; both printed
in 1772. The list for this period is completed by the loose sheets of
_Hoyland's Poems_, 1769, and the well-known, but now rare, _Description
of the Villa of Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill_, 1774, 100 copies
of which were printed, six being on large paper. To an account of
this patchwork edifice, the ensuing chapter will be chiefly devoted.
The present may fitly be concluded with a brief statement of that
always-debated passage in Walpole's life, his relations with the
ill-starred Chatterton.
Towards the close of 1768, and early in 1769, Chatterton, fretting
in Mr. Lambert's office at Bristol, and casting about eagerly for
possible clues to a literary life, had offered some specimens of the
pseudo-Rowley to James Dodsley of Pall-Mall, but apparently without
success. His next appeal was made to Walpole, and mainly as the
author of the _Anecdotes of Painting in England_. What documents he
actually submitted to him, is not perfectly clear; but they manifestly
included further fabrications of monkish verse, and hinted at, or
referred to, a sequence of native artists in oil, hitherto wholly
undreamed of by the distinguished virtuoso he addressed. The packet was
handed to Walpole at Arlington Street by Mr. Bathoe, his bookseller
(notable as the keeper of one of the first circulating libraries in
London); and, incredible to say, Walpole was instantly 'drawn.' He
despatched without delay to his unknown Bristol correspondent such
a courteous note as he might have addressed to Zouch or Ducarel,
expressing interest, curiosity, and a desire for further particulars.
Chatterton as promptly rejoined, forwarding more extracts from
the Rowley poems. But he also, from Walpole's recollection of his
letter, in part unbosomed himself, making revelation of his position
as a widow's son and lawyer's apprentice, who had 'a taste and turn
for more elegant studies,' which inclinations, he suggested, his
illustrious correspondent might enable him to gratify. Upon this,
perhaps not unnaturally, Walpole's suspicions were aroused, the more
so that Mason and Gray, to whom he showed the papers, declared them
to be forgeries. He made, nevertheless, some private inquiry from an
aristocratic relative at Bath as to Chatterton's antecedents, and found
that, although his description of himself was accurate, no account of
his character was forthcoming. He accordingly--he tells us--wrote him
a letter 'with as much kindness and tenderness as if he had been his
guardian,' recommending him to stick to his profession, and adding,
by way of postscript, that judges, to whom the manuscripts had been
submitted, were by no means thoroughly convinced of their antiquity.
Two letters from Chatterton followed,--one (the first) dejected and
seemingly acquiescent; the other, a week later, curtly demanding the
restoration of his papers, the genuineness of which he re-affirmed.
These communications Walpole, by his own account, either neglected
to notice, or overlooked.[123] After an interval of some weeks
arrived a final missive, the tone of which he regarded as 'singularly
impertinent.' Snapping up both poems and letters in a pet, he scribbled
a hasty reply, but, upon reconsideration, enclosed them to their writer
without comment, and thought no more of him or them. It was not until
about a year and a half afterwards that Goldsmith told him, at the
first Royal Academy dinner, that Chatterton had come to London and
destroyed himself,--an announcement which seems to have filled him
with unaffected pity. 'Several persons of honour and veracity,' he
says, 'were present when I first heard of his death, and will attest my
surprise and concern.'[124]
[123] He says he 'was going to Paris in a day or two.' But his memory
must have deceived him, for Chatterton's last letter is dated July
24th, 1769, and, according to Miss Berry, Walpole's visit to Paris
lasted from the 18th August to the 5th October, 1769; and this is
confirmed by his correspondence.
[124] _Works_, 1798, iv. 219. In the above summary of the story we have
relied by preference on the fairly established facts of the case, which
is full of difficulties. The most plausible version of it, as well as
the most fair to Walpole, is given in Prof. D. Wilson's _Chatterton_,
1869.
The apologists of the gifted and precocious Bristol boy, reading
the above occurrences by the light of his deplorable end, have
attributed to Walpole a more material part in his misfortunes than
can justly be ascribed to him; and the first editor of Chatterton's
_Miscellanies_ did not scruple to emphasize the current gossip, which
represented Walpole as 'the primary cause of his [Chatterton's]
dismal catastrophe,'[125]--an aspersion which drew from the Abbot of
Strawberry the lengthy letter on the subject which was afterwards
reprinted in his _Works_.[126] So long a vindication, if needed then,
is scarcely needed now. Walpole, it is obvious, acted very much as he
might have been expected to act. He had been imposed upon, and he was
as much annoyed with himself as with the impostor. But he was not harsh
enough to speak his mind frankly, nor benevolent enough to act the
part of that rather rare personage, the ideal philanthropist. If he
had behaved less like an ordinary man of the world; if he had obtained
Chatterton's confidence, instead of lecturing him; if he had aided and
counselled and protected him,--Walpole would have been different, and
things might have been otherwise. As they were, upon the principle that
'two of a trade can ne'er agree,' it is difficult to conceive of any
abiding alliance between the author of the fabricated _Tragedy of Ælla_
and the author of the fabricated _Castle of Otranto_.
[125] An example of this is furnished by Miss Seward's
_Correspondence_. 'Do not expect [she writes] that I can learn to
esteem that fastidious and unfeeling being, to whose insensibility we
owe the extinction of the greatest poetic luminary [Chatterton], if we
may judge from the brightness of its dawn, that ever rose in our, or
perhaps in any other, hemisphere' (_Seward to Hardinge_, 21 Nov., 1787).
[126] _Works_, 1798, iv. 205-45. See also Bibliographical Appendix to
this volume.