THE
WITS AND BEAUX OF SOCIETY
BY
GRACE AND PHILIP WHARTON
EDITED
BY
JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY, M. P.
_And the original illustrations by_
H. K. BROWNE AND JAMES GODWIN
TWO VOLS.--VOL. II.
1890
CONTENTS VOL. II.
HORACE WALPOLE.
The Commoners of England.--Horace's Regret for the Death of his Mother.--
Little Horace in Arlington Street.--Introduced to George I.--
Characteristic Anecdote of George I.--Walpole's Education.--Schoolboy
Days.-- Boyish Friendships.--Companionship of Gray.--A Dreary Doom.--
Walpole's Description of Youthful Delights.--Anecdote of Pope and
Frederic of Wales.--The Pomfrets.--Sir Thomas Robinson's Ball.--An
Admirable Scene.--Political Squibs.--Sir Robert's Retirement from
Office.--The Splendid Mansion of Houghton.--Sir Robert's Love of
Gardening.--What we owe to the 'Grandes Tours.'--George Vertue.--Men of
One Idea.--The Noble Picture-gallery at Houghton.--The 'Market Pieces.'--
Sir Robert's Death.--The Granville Faction.--A very good Quarrel.--
Twickenham.-- Strawberry Hill.--The Recluse of Strawberry.--Portraits of
the Digby Family.--Sacrilege.--Mrs. Darner's Models.--The Long Gallery at
Strawberry.-- The Chapel.--'A Dirty Little Thing.'--The Society around
Strawberry Hill.--Anne Seymour Conway.--A Man who never Doubted.--Lady
Sophia Fermer's Marriage.--Horace in Favour.--Anecdote of Sir William
Stanhope.--A Paper House.--Walpole's Habits.--Why did he not Marry?--
'Dowagers as Plenty as Flounders.'--Catherine Hyde, Duchess of
Queensberry.--Anecdote of Lady Granville.--Kitty Clive.--Death of Horatio
Walpole.--George, third Earl of Orford.--A Visit to Houghton.--Family
Misfortunes.--Poor Chatterton.--Walpole's Concern with Chatterton.--
Walpole in Paris.--Anecdote of Madame Geoffrin.--'Who's that Mr.
Walpole?'-- The Miss Berrys.--Horace's two 'Straw Berries.'--Tapping a
New Reign.--The Sign of the Gothic Castle.--Growing Old with Dignity.--
Succession to an Earldom.--Walpole's Last Hours.--Let us not be
Ungrateful.
GEORGE SELWYN.
A Love of Horrors.--Anecdotes of Selwyn's Mother.--Selwyn's College
Days.--Orator Henley.--Selwyn's Blasphemous Freak.--The Profession of a
Wit.--The Thirst for Hazard.--Reynolds's Conversation-Piece.--Selwyn's
Eccentricities and Witticisms.--A most Important Communication.--An
Amateur Headsman.--The Eloquence of Indifference.--Catching a
Housebreaker.--The Family of the Selwyns.--The Man of the People.--
Selwyn's Parliamentary Career.--True Wit.--Some of Selwyn's Witty
Sayings.--The Sovereignty of the People.--On two kinds of Wit.--Selwyn's
Home for Children.--Mie-Mie, the Little Italian.--Selwyn's Little
Companion taken from him.--His Later Days and Death.
RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN.
Sheridan a Dunce.--Boyish Dreams of Literary Fame.--Sheridan in Love.--A
Nest of Nightingales.--The 'Maid of Bath.'--Captivated by Genius.--
Sheridan's Elopement with 'Cecilia.'--His Duel with Captain Matthews.--
Standards of Ridicule.--Painful Family Estrangements.--Enters Drury
Lane.--Success of the Famous 'School for Scandal.'--Opinions of Sheridan
and his Influence.--The Literary Club.--Anecdote of Garrick's
Admittance.--Origin of the 'Rejected Addresses.'--New Flights.--Political
Ambition.--The Gaming Mania.--Almacks'.--Brookes'.--Black-balled.--Two
Versions of the Election Trick.--St. Stephen's Won.--Vocal Difficulties.--
Leads a Double Life.--Pitt's Vulgar Attack.--Sheridan's Happy Retort--
Grattan's Quip.--Sheridan's Sallies.--The Trial of Warren Hastings.--
Wonderful Effect of Sheridan's Eloquence.--The Supreme Effort.--The
Star Culminates.--Native Taste for Swindling.--A Shrewd but Graceless
Oxonian.--Duns Outwitted.--The Lawyer Jockeyed.--Adventures with
Bailiffs.--Sheridan's Powers of Persuasion.--House of Commons Greek.--
Curious Mimicry.--The Royal Boon Company.--Street Frolics at Night.--
An Old Tale.--'All's well that ends well.'--The Fray in St. Giles'.--
Unopened Letters.--An Odd Incident.--Reckless Extravagance,--Sporting
Ambition.--Like Father like Son.--A Severe and Witty Rebuke.--
Intemperance.--Convivial Excesses of a Past Day.--Worth wins at last.--
Bitter Pangs.--The Scythe of Death.--Sheridan's Second Wife.--Debts of
Honour.--Drury Lane Burnt.--The Owner's Serenity.--Misfortunes never come
Singly.--The Whitbread Quarrel.--Ruined.--Undone and almost Forsaken.--
The Dead Man Arrested.--The Stories fixed on Sheridan.--Extempore Wit and
Inveterate Talkers.
BEAU BRUMMELL.
Two popular Sciences.--'Buck Brummell' at Eton.--Investing his Capital.--
Young Cornet Brummell.--The Beau's Studio.--The Toilet.--'Creasing
Down.'--Devotion to Dress.--A Great Gentleman.--Anecdotes of Brummell.--
'Don't forget, Brum: Goose at Four'--Offers of Intimacy resented.--
Never in love.--Brummell out Hunting.--Anecdote of Sheridan and
Brummell.--The Beau's Poetical Efforts.--The Value of a Crooked
Sixpence.--The Breach with the Prince of Wales.--'Who's your Fat
Friend?'--The Climax is reached.--The Black-mail of Calais.--George the
Greater and George the Less.--An Extraordinary Step.--Down the Hill of
Life.--A Miserable Old Age.--In the Hospice Du Bon Sauveur.--O Young Men
of this Age, be warned!
THEODORE EDWARD HOOK.
The Greatest of Modern Wits.--What Coleridge said of Hook.--Hook's
Family.--Redeeming Points.--Versatility.--Varieties of Hoaxing.--The
Black-wafered Horse.--The Berners Street Hoax.--Success of the Scheme.--
The Strop of Hunger.--Kitchen Examinations.--The Wrong House.--Angling
for an Invitation.--The Hackney-coach Device.--The Plots of Hook and
Mathews.--Hook's Talents as an Improvisatore.--The Gift becomes his
Bane.--Hook's Novels.--College Fun.--Baiting a Proctor.--The Punning
Faculty.--Official Life Opens.--Troublesome Pleasantry.--Charge of
Embezzlement.--Misfortune.--Doubly Disgraced.--No Effort to remove the
Stain.--Attacks on the Queen.--An Incongruous Mixture.--Specimen of
the Ramsbottom Letters.--Hook's Scurrility.---Fortune and Popularity.--
The End.
SYDNEY SMITH.
The 'Wise Wit.'--Oddities of the Father.--Verse-making at Winchester.--
Curate Life on Salisbury Plain.--Old Edinburgh.--Its Social and
Architectural Features.--Making Love Metaphysically.--The Old Scottish
Supper.--The Men of Mark passing away.--The Band of Young Spirits.--
Brougham's Early Tenacity.--Fitting up Conversations.--'Old School'
Ceremonies.--The Speculative Society.--A Brilliant Set.--Sydney's Opinion
of his Friends.--Holland House.--Preacher at the 'Foundling.'--Sydney's
'Grammar of Life.'--The Picture Mania.--A Living Comes at Last.--The
Wit's Ministry.--The Parsonage House at Foston-le-Clay.--Country Quiet.--
The Universal Scratcher.--Country Life and Country Prejudice.--The
Genial Magistrate.--Glimpse of Edinburgh Society.--Mrs. Grant of Laggan.--
A Pension Difficulty.--Jeffrey and Cockburn.--Craigcrook.--Sydney
Smith's Cheerfulness.--His Rheumatic Armour.--No Bishopric.--Becomes
Canon of St. Paul's.--Anecdotes of Lord Dudley.--A Sharp Reproof.--
Sydney's Classification of Society.--Last Strokes of Humour.
GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON, LORD MELCOMBE.
A Dinner-giving lordly Poet.--A Misfortune for a Man of Society.--
Brandenburgh House.--'The Diversions of the Morning.'--Johnson's Opinion
of Foote.--Churchill and 'The Rosciad.'--Personal Ridicule in its Proper
Light.--Wild Specimen of the Poet.--Walpole on Dodington's 'Diary.'--
The best Commentary on a Man's Life.--Leicester House.--Grace Boyle.--
Elegant Modes of passing Time.--A sad Day.--What does Dodington come
here for?--The Veteran Wit, Beau, and Politician.--'Defend us from our
Executors and Editors.'
SUBJECTS OF THE ILLUSTRATIONS
Volume II.
"WHO'S YOUR FAT FRIEND?"
STRAWBERRY HILL FROM THE THAMES
SELWYN ACKNOWLEDGES "THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE"
THE FAMOUS "LITERARY CLUB"
A TREASURE FOR A LADY--SHERIDAN AND THE LAWYER
THEODORE HOOK'S ENGINEERING FROLIC
SYDNEY SMITH'S WITTY ANSWER TO THE OLD PARISH CLERK
HORACE WALPOLE.
The Commoners of England.--Horace's Regret for the Death of his Mother.--
'Little Horace' in Arlington Street.--Introduced to George I.--
Characteristic Anecdote of George I.--Walpole's Education.--Schoolboy
Days.--Boyish Friendships.--Companionship of Gray.--A Dreary Doom.--
Walpole's Description of Youthful Delights.--Anecdote of Pope and
Frederic of Wales.--The Pomfrets.--Sir Thomas Robinson's Ball.--An
Admirable Scene.--Political Squibs.--Sir Robert's Retirement from
Office.--The Splendid Mansion of Houghton.--Sir Robert's Love of
Gardening.--What we owe to the 'Grandes Tours.'--George Vertue.--Men of
One Idea.--The Noble Picture-gallery at Houghton.--The 'Market Pieces.'--
Sir Robert's Death.--The Granville Faction.--A very good Quarrel.--
Twickenham.--Strawberry Hill.--The Recluse of Strawberry.--Portraits of
the Digby Family.--Sacrilege.--Mrs. Darner's Models.--The Long Gallery at
Strawberry.--The Chapel.--'A Dirty Little Thing.'--The Society around
Strawberry Hill.--Anne Seymour Conway.--A Man who never Doubted.--Lady
Sophia Fermor's Marriage.--Horace in Favour.--Anecdote of Sir William
Stanhope.--A Paper House.--Walpole's Habits.--Why did he not Marry?--
'Dowagers as Plenty as Flounders.'--Catherine Hyde, Duchess of
Queensberry.--Anecdote of Lady Granville.--Kitty Clive.--Death of Horatio
Walpole.--George, third Earl of Orford.--A Visit to Houghton.--Family
Misfortunes.--Poor Chatterton.--Walpole's Concern with Chatterton.--
Walpole in Paris.--Anecdote of Madame Geoffrin.--'Who's that Mr.
Walpole?'--The Miss Berrys.--Horace's two 'Straw Berries.'--Tapping a New
Reign.--The Sign of the Gothic Castle.--Growing Old with Dignity.--
Succession to an Earldom.--Walpole's Last Hours.--Let us not be
Ungrateful.
Had this elegant writer, remarks the compiler of 'Walpoliana,' composed
memoirs of his own life, an example authorized by eminent names, ancient
and modern, every other pen must have been dropped in despair, so true
was it that 'he united the good sense of Fontenelle with the Attic salt
and graces of Count Anthony Hamilton.'
But 'Horace' was a man of great literary modesty, and always undervalued
his own efforts. His life was one of little incident: it is his
character, his mind, the society around him, the period in which he
shone, that give the charm to his correspondence, and the interest to
his biography.
Besides, he had the weakness common to several other fine gentlemen who
have combined letters and _haut ton_, of being ashamed of the literary
character. The vulgarity of the court, its indifference to all that was
not party writing, whether polemical or political, cast a shade over
authors in his time.
Never was there, beneath all his assumed Whig principles, a more
profound aristocrat than Horace Walpole. He was, by birth, one of those
well-descended English gentlemen who have often scorned the title of
noble, and who have repudiated the notion of merging their own ancient
names in modern titles. The commoners of England hold a proud
pre-eminence. When some low-born man entreated James I. to make him a
gentleman, the well-known answer was, 'Na, na, I canna! I could mak thee
a lord, but none but God Almighty can mak a gentleman.'
Sir Robert Walpole, afterwards minister to George II., and eventually
Lord Orford, belonged to an ancient family in Norfolk; he was a third
son, and was originally destined for the Church, but the death of his
elder brethren having left him heir to the family estate, in 1698, he
succeeded to a property which ought to have yielded him £2,000 a year,
but which was crippled with various encumbrances. In order to relieve
himself of these, Sir Robert married Catherine Shorter, the
granddaughter of Sir John Shorter, who had been illegally and
arbitrarily appointed Lord Mayor of London by James II.
Horace was her youngest child, and was born in Arlington Street, on the
24th of September, 1717, O.S. Six years afterwards he was inoculated for
the small-pox, a precaution which he records as worthy of remark, since
the operation had then only recently been introduced by Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu from Turkey.
He is silent, however, naturally enough, as to one important point--his
real parentage. The character of his mother was by no means such as to
disprove an assertion which gained general belief: this was, that Horace
was the offspring, not of Sir Robert Walpole, but of Carr, Lord Hervey,
the eldest son of the Earl of Bristol, and the elder brother of Lord
Hervey, whose 'Memoirs of the Court of George II.' are so generally
known.
Carr, Lord Hervey, was witty, eccentric, and sarcastic: and from him
Horace Walpole is said to have inherited his wit, his eccentricity, his
love of literature, and his profound contempt for all mankind, excepting
only a few members of a cherished and exclusive _clique_.
In the Notes of his life which Horace Walpole left for the use of his
executor, Robert Berry, Esq., and of his daughter, Miss Berry, he makes
this brief mention of Lady Walpole:--'My mother died in 1737.' He was
then twenty years of age.
But beneath this seemingly slight recurrence to his mother, a regret
which never left him through life was buried. Like Cowper, he mourned,
as the profoundest of all sorrows, the loss of that life-long friend.
'My mother, when I learn'd that thou wast dead,
Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed?
Hovered thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son?
Wretch even then, life's journey just begun.'
Although Horace in many points bore a strong resemblance to Sir Robert
Walpole, he rarely if ever received from that jovial, heartless, able
man, any proof of affection. An outcast from his father's heart, the
whole force of the boy's love centred in his mother; yet in after-life
no one reverenced Sir Robert Walpole so much as his supposed son. To be
adverse to the minister was to be adverse to the unloved son who
cherished his memory. What 'my father' thought, did, and said, was law;
what his foes dared to express was heresy. Horace had the family mania
strong upon him; the world was made for Walpoles, whose views were never
to be controverted, nor whose faith impugned. Yet Horace must have
witnessed, perhaps with out comprehending it, much disunion at home.
Lady Walpole. beautiful and accomplished, could not succeed in riveting
her husband to his conjugal duties. Gross licentiousness was the order
of the day, and Sir Robert was among the most licentious; he left his
lovely wife to the perilous attentions of all the young courtiers who
fancied that by courting the Premier's wife they could secure Walpole's
good offices. Sir Robert, according to Pope, was one of those who--
'Never made a friend in private life,
And was, besides, a tyrant to his wife.
At all events, if not a tyrant, he was indifferent to those
circumstances which reflected upon him, and were injurious to her. He
was conscious that he had no right to complain of any infidelity on her
part, and he left her to be surrounded by men whom he knew to be
profligates of the most dangerous pretensions to wit and elegance.
It was possibly not unfrequently that Horace, his mother's pet, gleaned
in the drawing-rooms of Arlington Street his first notions of that
_persiflage_ which was the fashion of the day. We. can fancy him a
precocious, old-fashioned little boy, at his mother's apron-string,
whilst Carr, Lord Hervey, was paying his devoirs; we see him gazing with
wondering eyes at Pulteney, Earl of Bath, with his blue ribbon across
his laced coat; whilst compassionating friends observing the pale-faced
boy in that hot-house atmosphere, in which both mind and body were like
forced plants, prophesied that 'little Horace' could not possibly live
to be a man.
He survived, however, two sisters, who died in childhood, and became
dearer and dearer to his fond mother.
In his old age, Horace delighted in recalling anecdotes of his infancy;
in these his mother's partiality largely figured. Brought up among
courtiers and ministers, his childish talk was all of kings and princes;
and he was a gossip both by inclination and habit. His greatest desire
in life was to see the king--George I., and his nurses and attendants
augmented his wish by their exalted descriptions of the grandeur which
he effected, in after-life, to despise. He entreated his mother to take
him to St. James's. When relating the incidents of the scene in which he
was first introduced to a court, Horace Walpole speaks of the 'infinite
good-nature of his father, who never thwarted any of his children,' and
'suffered him,' he says, 'to be too much indulged.'
Some difficulties attended the fruition of the forward boy's wish. The
Duchess of Kendal was jealous of Sir Robert Walpole's influence with the
king: her aim was to bring Lord Bolingbroke into power. The childish
fancy was, nevertheless, gratified: and under his mother's care he was
conducted to the apartments of the Duchess of Kendal in St. James's.
'A favour so unusual to be asked by a boy of ten years old,' he
afterwards wrote in his 'Reminiscences,' 'was still too slight to be
refused to the wife of the first minister and her darling child.'
However, as it was not to be a precedent, the interview was to be
private, and at night.
It was ten o'clock in the evening when Lady Walpole, leading her son,
was admitted into the apartments of Melusina de Schulenberg, Countess of
Walsingham, who passed under the name of the Duchess of Kendal's niece,
but who was, in fact, her daughter, by George I. The polluted rooms in
which Lady Walsingham lived were afterwards occupied by the two
mistresses of George II.--the Countess of Suffolk, and Madame de
Walmoden, Countess of Yarmouth.
With Lady Walsingham, Lady Walpole and her little son waited until,
notice having been given that the king had come down to supper, he was
led into the presence of 'that good sort of man,' as he calls George I.
That monarch was pleased to permit the young courtier to kneel down and
kiss his hand. A few words were spoken by the august personage, and
Horace was led back into the adjoining room.
But the vision of that 'good sort of man' was present to him when, in
old age, he wrote down his recollections for his beloved Miss Berry. By
the side of a tall, lean, ill-favoured old German lady--the Duchess of
Kendal--stood a pale, short, elderly man, with a dark tie-wig, in a
plain coat and waistcoat: these and his breeches were all of
snuff-coloured cloth, and his stockings of the same colour. By the blue
riband alone could the young subject of this 'good sort of man' discern
that he was in the presence of majesty. Little interest could be
elicited in this brief interview, yet Horace thought it his painful
duty, being also the son of a prime minister, to shed tears when, with
the other scholars of Eton College, he walked in the procession to the
proclamation of George II. And no doubt he was one of _very_ few
personages in England whose eyes Were moistened for that event.
Nevertheless, there was something of _bonhommie_ in the character of
George I. that one misses in his successor. His love of punch, and his
habit of becoming a little tipsy over his private dinners with Sir
Robert Walpole, were English as well as German traits, and were regarded
almost as condescensions; and then he had a kind of slow wit, that was
turned upon the venial officials whose perquisites were at their
disgraceful height in his time.
'A strange country this,' said the monarch, in his most clamorous
German: 'one day, after I came to St. James's, I looked out of the
window, and saw a park, with walks, laurels, &c.; these they told me
were mine. The next day Lord Chetwynd, the ranger of _my_ park, sends me
a brace of carp out of my canal; I was told, thereupon, that I must give
five guineas to Lord Chetwynd's porter for bringing me my _own_ fish,
out of my _own_ canal, in my _own_ park!' In spite of some agreeable
qualities, George I. was, however, anything but a 'good sort of man.' It
is difficult how to rank the two first Georges; both were detestable as
men, and scarcely tolerable as monarchs. The foreign deeds of George I.
were stained with the supposed murder of Count Konigsmark: the English
career of George II. was one of the coarsest profligacy. Their example
was infamous.
His father's only sister having become the second wife of Charles Lord
Townshend, Horace was educated with his cousins; and the tutor selected
was Edward Weston, the son of Stephen, Bishop of Exeter; this preceptor
was afterwards engaged in a controversy with Dr. Warburton, concerning
the 'Naturalization of the Jews.' By that learned, haughty disputant, he
is termed 'a gazetteer by profession--by inclination a Methodist.' Such
was the man who guided the dawning intellect of Horace Walpole. Under
his care he remained until he went, in 1727, to Eton. But Walpole's was
not merely a scholastic education: he was destined for the law--and, on
going up to Cambridge, was obliged to attend lectures on civil law. He
went from Eton to King's College--where he was, however, more disposed
to what are termed accomplishments than to deep reading. At Cambridge he
even studied Italian; at home he learned to dance and fence; and took
lessons in drawing from Bernard Lens, drawing-master to the Duke of
Cumberland and his sisters. It is not to be wondered at that he left
Cambridge without taking a degree.
But fortune was lying, as it were, in wait for him; and various
sinecures had been reserved for the Minister's youngest son: first, he
became Inspector of the Imports and Exports in the Customs; but soon
resigned that post to be Usher of the Exchequer. 'And as soon,' he
writes, 'as I became of age I took possession of two other little patent
places in the Exchequer, called Comptroller of the Pipe, and Clerk of
the Estreats. They had been held for me by Mr. Fane.'
Such was the mode in which the younger sons were then provided for by a
minister; nor has the unworthy system died out in our time, although
greatly modified.
Horace was growing up meantime, not an awkward, but a somewhat
insignificant youth, with a short, slender figure: which always retained
a boyish appearance when seen from behind. His face was common-place,
except when his really expressive eyes sparkled with intelligence, or
melted into the sweetest expression of kindness. But his laugh was
forced and uncouth: and even in his smile there was a hard, sarcastic
expression that made one regret that he smiled.
He was now in possession of an income of £1,700 annually, and he looked
naturally to the Continent, to which all young members of the
aristocracy repaired, after the completion of their collegiate life.
He had been popular at Eton: he was also, it is said, both beloved and
valued at Cambridge. In reference to his Etonian days he says, in one of
his letters, 'I can't say I am sorry I was never quite a schoolboy: an
expedition against bargemen, or a match at cricket, may be very pretty
things to recollect; but, thank my stars, I can remember things that are
very near as pretty. The beginning of my Roman history was spent in the
asylum, or conversing in Egeria's hallowed grove; not in thumping and
pummelling King Amulius's herdsmen.[1]
[1: Life by Warburton, p 70.]
'I remember,' he adds, 'when I was at Eton, and Mr. Bland had set me on
an extraordinary task, I used sometimes to pique myself upon not getting
it, because it was not immediately my school business. What! learn more
than I was absolutely forced to learn! I felt the weight of learning
that; for I was a blockhead, _and pushed above my parts_.'[2]
[2: Life of Warburton, p. 63.]
Popular amongst his schoolfellows, Horace formed friendships at Eton
which mainly influenced his after-life. Richard West, the son of West,
Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and the grandson, on his mother's side, of
Bishop Burnet; together with a youth named Assheton--formed, with the
poet Gray, and Horace himself, what the young wit termed the 'Quadruple
Alliance.' Then there was the 'triumvirate,' George Montagu, Charles
Montagu, and Horace: next came George Selwyn and Hanbury Williams;
lastly, a retired, studious youth, a sort of foil to all these gay,
brilliant young wits--a certain William Cole, a lover of old books, and
of quaint prints. And in all these boyish friendships, some of which
were carried from Eton to Cambridge, may be traced the foundation of the
Horace Walpole, of Strawberry Hill and of Berkeley Square. To Gray he
owed his ambition to be learned, if possible--poetical, if nature had
not forbidden; to the Montagus, his dash and spirit; to Sir Hanbury
Williams, his turn for _jeux d'esprit_, as a part of the completion of a
fine gentleman's education; to George Selwyn, his appreciation of what
was then considered wit--but which we moderns are not worthy to
appreciate. Lord Hertford and Henry Conway, Walpole's cousins, were also
his schoolfellows; and for them he evinced throughout his long life a
warm regard. William Pitt, Lord Chatham--chiefly remembered at Eton for
having been flogged for being out of bounds--was a contemporary, though
not an intimate, of Horace Walpole's at Eton.
His regard for Gray did him infinite credit: yet never were two men more
dissimilar as they advanced in life. Gray had no aristocratic birth to
boast; and Horace dearly loved birth, refinement, position, all that
comprises the cherished term 'aristocracy.' Thomas Gray, more
illustrious for the little his fastidious judgment permitted him to give
to the then critical world, than many have been in their productions of
volumes, was born in Cornhill--his father being a worthy citizen. He was
just one year older than Walpole, but an age his senior in gravity,
precision, and in a stiff resolution to maintain his independence. He
made one fatal step, fatal to his friendship for Horace, when he
forfeited--by allowing Horace to take him and pay his expenses during a
long continental tour--his independence. Gray had many points which made
him vulnerable to Walpole's shafts of ridicule; and Horace had a host of
faults which excited the stern condemnation of Gray. The author of the
'Elegy'--which Johnson has pronounced to be the noblest ode in our
language--was one of the most learned men of his time, 'and was equally
acquainted with the elegant and profound paths of science, and that not
superficially, but thoroughly; knowing in every branch of history, both
natural and civil, as having read all the original historians of
England, France, and Italy; a great antiquarian, who made criticisms,
metaphysics, morals, and politics a principal part of his plan of
study--who was uncommonly fond of voyages and travels of all sorts--and
who had a fine taste in painting, prints, architecture, and gardening'
What a companion for a young man of taste and sympathy! but the friends
were far too clever long to agree. Gray was haughty, impatient,
intolerant of the peculiarities of others, according to the author of
'Walpoliana:' doubtless he detected the vanity, the actual selfishness,
the want of earnest feeling in Horace, which had all been kept down at
school, where boys are far more unsparing Mentors than their betters. In
vain did they travel _en prince_, and all at Walpole's expense; in vain
did they visit courts, and receive affability from princes: in vain did
he of Cornhill participate for a brief period in the attentions lavished
on the son of a British Prime Minister: they quarrelled--and we almost
reverence Gray for that result, more especially when we find the author
of 'Walpoliana' expressing his conviction that 'had it not been for this
idle indulgence of his hasty temper, Mr. Gray would immediately on his
return home have received, as usual, a pension or office from Sir Robert
Walpole.' We are inclined to feel contempt for the anonymous writer of
that amusing little book.
After a companionship of four years, Gray, nevertheless, returned to
London. He had been educated with the expectation of being a barrister;
but finding that funds were wanting to pursue a legal education, he gave
up a set of chambers in the Temple, which he had occupied previous to
his travels, and retired to Cambridge.
Henceforth what a singular contrast did the lives of these once fond
friends present! In the small, quaint rooms of Peter-House,[3] Gray
consumed a dreary celibacy, consoled by the Muse alone, who--if other
damsels found no charms in his somewhat piggish, wooden countenance, or
in his manners, replete, it is said, with an unpleasant consciousness of
superiority--never deserted him. His college existence, varied only by
his being appointed Professor of Modern History, was, for a brief space,
exchanged for an existence almost as studious in London. Between the
years 1759 and 1762, he took lodgings, we find, in Southampton Row--a
pleasant locality then, opening to the fields--in order to be near the
British Museum, at that time just opened to the public. Here his intense
studies were, it may be presumed, relieved by the lighter task of
perusing the Harleian Manuscripts; and here he formed the acquaintance
of Mason, a dull, affected poet, whose celebrity is greater as the
friend and biographer of Gray, than even as the author of those verses
on the death of Lady Coventry, in which there are, nevertheless, some
beautiful lines. Gray died in college--a doom that, next to ending one's
days in a jail or a convent, seems the dreariest. He died of the gout: a
suitable, and, in that region and in those three-bottle days, almost an
inevitable disease; but there is no record of his having been
intemperate.
[3: Gray migrated to Pembroke in 1756.]
Whilst Gray was poring over dusty manuscripts, Horace was beginning that
career of prosperity which was commenced by the keenest enjoyment of
existence. He has left us, in his Letters, some brilliant passages,
indicative of the delights of his boyhood and youth. Like him, we linger
over a period still fresh, still hopeful, still generous in impulse--
still strong in faith in the world's worth--before we hasten on to
portray the man of the world, heartless, not wholly, perhaps, but wont
to check all feeling till it was well-nigh quenched; little minded;
bitter, if not spiteful; with many acquaintances and scarce one
friend--the Horace Walpole of Berkeley Square and Strawberry Hill.
'Youthful passages of life are,' he says, 'the chippings of Pitt's
diamond, set into little heart-rings with mottoes; the stone itself more
worth, the filings more gentle and agreeable. Alexander, at the head of
the world, never tasted the true pleasure that boys of his age have
enjoyed at the head of a school. Little intrigues, little schemes and
policies engage their thoughts; and at the same time that they are
laying the foundation for their middle age of life, the mimic republic
they live in, furnishes materials of conversation for their latter age;
and old men cannot be said to be children a second time with greater
truth from any one cause, than their living over again their childhood
in imagination.'
Again: 'Dear George, were not the playing-fields at Eton food for all
manner of flights? No old maid's gown, though it had been tormented into
all the fashions from King James to King George, ever underwent so many
transformations as these poor plains have in my idea. At first I was
contented with tending a visionary flock, and sighing some pastoral name
to the echo of the cascade under the bridge ... As I got further into
Virgil and Clelia, I found myself transported from Arcadia to the garden
of Italy; and saw Windsor Castle in no other view than the _Capitoli
immobile saxum_.'
Horace Walpole's humble friend Assheton was another of those Etonians
who were plodding on to independence, whilst he, set forward by fortune
and interest, was accomplishing reputation. Assheton was the son of a
worthy man, who presided over the Grammar School at Lancaster, upon a
stipend of £32 a year. Assheton's mother had brought to her husband a
small estate. This was sold to educate the 'boys:' they were both clever
and deserving. One became the fellow of Trinity College; the other, the
friend of Horace, rose into notice as the tutor of the young Earl of
Plymouth; then became a D.D., and a fashionable preacher in London; was
elected preacher at Lincoln's Inn; attacked the Methodists; and died, at
fifty-three, at variance with Horace--this Assheton, whom once he had
loved so much.
Horace, on the other hand, after having seen during his travels all that
was most exclusive, attractive, and lofty, both in art and nature, came
home without bringing, he declares, 'one word of French or Italian for
common use.' He professed, indeed, to prefer England to all other
countries. A country tour in England delighted him: the populousness,
the ease in the people also, charmed him. 'Canterbury was a paradise to
Modena, Reggio, or Parma.' He had, before he returned, perceived that
nowhere except in England was there the distinction of 'middling
people;' he now found that nowhere but in England were middling houses.
'How snug they are!' exclaims this scion of the exclusives. Then he runs
on into an anecdote about Pope and Frederick, Prince of Wales. 'Mr.
Pope, said the prince, 'you don't love princes.' 'Sir, I beg your
pardon.' 'Well, you don't love kings, then.' 'Sir, I own I like the lion
better before his claws are grown.' The 'Horace Walpole' began now to
creep out: never was he really at home except in a court atmosphere.
Still he assumed, even at twenty-four, to be the boy.
'You won't find me,' he writes to Harry Conway, 'much altered, I
believe; at least, outwardly. I am not grown a bit shorter or fatter,
but am just the same long, lean creature as usual. Then I talk no French
but to my footman; nor Italian, but to myself. What inward alterations
may have happened to me you will discover best; for you know 'tis said,
one never knows that one's self. I will answer, that that part of it
that belongs to you has not suffered the least change--I took care of
that. For _virtu_, I have a little to entertain you--it is my sole
pleasure. I am neither young enough nor old enough to be in love.'
Nevertheless, it peeps out soon after that the 'Pomfrets' are coming
back. Horace had known them in Italy. The Earl and Countess and their
daughters were just then the very pink of fashion; and even the leaders
of all that was exclusive in the court. Half in ridicule, half in
earnest, are the remarks which, throughout all the career of Horace,
incessantly occur. 'I am neither young enough nor old enough to be in
love,' he says; yet that he was in love with one of the lovely Fermors
is traditionary still in the family--and that tradition pointed at Lady
Juliana, the youngest, afterwards married to Mr. Penn. The Earl of
Pomfret had been master of the horse to Queen Caroline: Lady Pomfret,
lady of the bed-chamber. 'My Earl,' as the-countess styled him, was
apparently a supine subject to her ladyship's strong will and
wrong-headed ability--which she, perhaps, inherited from her
grandfather, Judge Jeffreys; she being the daughter and heiress of that
rash young Lord Jeffreys, who, in a spirit of braggadocia, stopped the
funeral of Dryden on its way to Westminster, promising a more splendid
procession than the poor, humble cortege--a boast which he never
fulfilled. Lady Sophia Fermor, the eldest daughter, who afterwards
became the wife of Lord Carteret, resembled, in beauty, the famed
Mistress Arabella Fermor, the heroine of the 'Rape of the Lock.' Horace
Walpole admired Lady Sophia--whom he christened Juno--intensely.
Scarcely a letter drips from his pen--as a modern novelist used to
express it[4]--without some touch of the Pomfrets. Thus to Sir Horace
Mann, then a diplomatist at Florence:--
[4: The accomplished novelist, Mrs. Gore, famous for her facility, used
to say that a three-volume novel just 'dripped from her pen.']
'Lady Pomfret I saw last night. Lady Sophia has been ill with a cold;
her head is to be dressed French, and her body English, for which I am
sorry, her figure is so fine in a robe. She is full as sorry as I am.'
Again, at a ball at Sir Thomas Robinson's, where four-and-twenty couples
danced country-dances, in two sets, twelve and twelve, 'there was Lady
Sophia, handsomer than ever, but a little out of humour at the scarcity
of minuets; however, as usual, dancing more than anybody, and, as usual
too, she took out what men she liked, or thought the best
dancers.'...'We danced; for I country-danced till four, then had tea and
coffee, and came home.' Poor Horace! Lady Sophia was not for a younger
son, however gay, talented, or rich he might be.
His pique and resentment towards her mother, who had higher views for
her beautiful daughter, begin at this period to show themselves, and
never died away.
Lady Townshend was the wit who used to gratify Horace with tales of her
whom he hated--Henrietta-Louisa, Countess of Pomfret.
'Lady Townshend told me an admirable history: it is of _our friend_ Lady
Pomfret. Somebody that belonged to the Prince of Wales said, they were
going to _court_; it was objected that they ought to say to Carlton
House; that the only _court_ is where the king resides. Lady P., with
her paltry air of significant learning and absurdity, said, "Oh, Lord!
Is there no _court_ in England but the king's? Sure, there are many
more! There is the _Court_ of Chancery, the _Court_ of Exchequer, the
_Court_ of King's Bench, &c." Don't you love her? Lord Lincoln does her
daughter--Lady Sophia Fermor. He is come over, and met me and her the
other night; he turned pale, spoke to her several times in the evening,
but not long, and sighed to me at going away. He came over all alone;
and not only his Uncle Duke (the Duke of Newcastle) but even Majesty is
fallen in love with him. He talked to the king at his levee, without
being spoken to. That was always thought high treason; but I don't know
how the gruff gentleman liked it. And then he had been told that Lord
Lincoln designed to have made the campaign, if we had gone to war; in
short, he says Lord Lincoln is the handsomest man in England.'
Horace was not, therefore, the only victim to a mother's ambition: there
is something touching in the interest he from time to time evinces in
poor Lord Lincoln's hopeless love. On another occasion, a second ball of
Sir Thomas Robinson's, Lord Lincoln, out of prudence, dances with Lady
Caroline Fitzroy, Mr. Conway taking Lady Sophia Fermor. 'The two couple
were just admirably mismatched, as everybody soon perceived, by the
attentions of each man to the woman he did not dance with, and the
emulation of either lady; it was an admirable scene.'
All, however, was not country dancing: the young man, 'too old and too
young to be in love,' was to make his way as a wit. He did so, in the
approved way in that day of irreligion, in a political squib. On July
14th, 1742, he writes in his Notes, 'I wrote the "_Lessons for the
Day_;" the "Lessons for the day" being the first and second chapters of
the "Book of Preferment,"' Horace was proud of this _brochure_, for he
says it got about surreptitiously, and was 'the original of many things
of that sort.' Various _jeux d'esprit_ of a similar sort followed. A
'Sermon on Painting,' which was preached before Sir Robert Walpole, in
the gallery at Houghton, by his chaplain; 'Patapan, or the Little White
Dog,' imitated from La Fontaine. No. 38 of the 'Old England Journal,'
intended to ridicule Lord Bath; and then, in a magazine, was printed his
'Scheme for a Tax on Message Cards and Notes.' Next the 'Beauties,'
which was also handed about, and got into print. So that without the
vulgarity of publishing, the reputation of the dandy writer was soon
noised about. His religious tenets may or may not have been sound; but
at all events the tone of his mind assumed at this time a very different
character to that reverent strain in which, when a youth at college, he
had apostrophized those who bowed their heads beneath the vaulted roof
of King's College, in his eulogium in the character of Henry VI.
'Ascend the temple, join the vocal choir,
Let harmony your raptured souls inspire.
Hark how the tuneful, solemn organs blow,
Awfully strong, elaborately slow;
Now to you empyrean seats above
Raise meditation on the wings of love.
Now falling, sinking, dying to the moan
Once warbled sad by Jesse's contrite son;
Breathe in each note a conscience through the sense,
And call forth tears from soft-eyed Penitence.'
In the midst of all his gaieties, his successes, and perhaps his hopes,
a cloud hovered over the destinies of his father. The opposition, Horace
saw, in 1741, wished to ruin his father 'by ruining his constitution.'
They wished to continue their debates on Saturdays, Sir Robert's only
day of rest, when he used to rush to Richmond New Park, there to amuse
himself with a favourite pack of beagles. Notwithstanding the minister's
indifference to this his youngest son, Horace felt bitterly what he
considered a persecution against one of the most corrupt of modern
statesmen.
'Trust me, if we fall, all the grandeur, all the envied grandeur of our
house, will not cost me a sigh: it has given me no pleasure while we
have it, and will give me no pain when I part with it. My liberty, my
ease, and choice of my own friends and company, will sufficiently
counterbalance the crowds of Downing Street. I am so sick of it all,
that if we are victorious or not, I propose leaving England in the
spring.
The struggle was not destined to last long. Sir Robert was forced to
give up the contest and be shelved with a peerage. In 1742, he was
created Earl of Orford, and resigned. The wonder is that, with a mortal
internal disease to contend with, he should have faced his foes so long.
Verses ascribed to Lord Hervey ended, as did all the squibs of the day,
with a fling at that 'rogue Walpole.'
'For though you have made that rogue Walpole retire,
You are out of the frying-pan into the fire:
But since to the Protestant line I'm a friend,
I tremble to think how these changes may end.'
Horace, notwithstanding an affected indifference, felt his father's
downfall poignantly. He went, indeed, to court, in spite of a cold,
taken in an unaired house; for the prime minister now quitted Downing
Street for Arlington Street. The court was crowded, he found, with old
ladies, the wives of patriots who had not been there for 'these twenty
years,' and who appeared in the accoutrements that were in vogue in
Queen Anne's time. 'Then', he writes, 'the joy and awkward jollity of
them is inexpressible! They titter, and, wherever you meet them, are
always looking at their watches an hour before the time. I met several
on the birthday (for I did not arrive time enough to make clothes), and
they were dressed in all the colours of the rainbow. They seem to have
said to themselves, twenty years ago, "Well, if ever I do go to court
again, I will have a pink and silver, or a blue and silver;" and they
keep their resolutions.'
Another characteristic anecdote betrays his ill-suppressed vexation:--
'I laughed at myself prodigiously the other day for a piece of absence.
I was writing, on the king's birthday, and being disturbed with the mob
in the street, I rang for the porter and with an air of grandeur, as if
I was still at Downing Street, cried, "Pray send away those marrow-bones
and cleavers."
The poor fellow, with the most mortified air in the world, replied,
"Sir, they are not at _our_ door, but over the way, at my Lord
Carteret's."--"Oh!" said I, "then let them alone; may be, he does not
dislike the noise!" I pity the poor porter, who sees all his old
customers going over the way too.'
The retirement of Sir Robert from office had an important effect on the
tastes and future life of his son Horace. The minister had been
occupying his later years in pulling down his old ancestral house at
Houghton, and in building an enormous mansion, which has since his time
been, in its turn, partially demolished. When Harley, Earl of Orford,
was known to be erecting a great house for himself, Sir Robert had
remarked that a minister who did so committed a great imprudence. When
Houghton was begun, Sir Hynde Aston reminded Sir Robert of this speech.
'You ought to have recalled it to me before,' was the reply; 'for before
I began building, it might have been of use to me.'
This famous memorial of Walpolean greatness, this splendid folly,
constructed, it is generally supposed, on public money, was inhabited by
Sir Robert only ten days in summer, and twenty days in winter; in the
autumn, during the shooting season, two months. It became almost an
eyesore to the quiet gentry, who viewed the palace with a feeling of
their own inferiority. People as good as the Walpoles lived in their
gable-ended, moderate-sized mansions; and who was Sir Robert, to set
them at so immense a distance?
To the vulgar comprehension of the Premier, Houghton, gigantic in its
proportions, had its purposes. He there assembled his supporters; there,
for a short time, he entertained his constituents and coadjutors with a
magnificent, jovial hospitality, of which he, with his gay spirits, his
humourous, indelicate jokes, and his unbounded good-nature, was the very
soul. Free conversation, hard-drinking, were the features of every day's
feast. Pope thus describes him:--
'Seen him, I have, but in his happier hour,
Of social pleasure, ill exchanged for power;
Seen him uncumbered with the venal tribe,
Smile without art, and win without a bribe.'
Amid the coarse taste one gentle refinement existed: this was the love
of gardening, both in its smaller compass and it its nobler sense of
landscape gardening. 'This place,' Sir Robert, in 1743, wrote to General
Churchill, from Houghton, 'affords no news, no subject of entertainment
or amusement; for fine men of wit and pleasure about town understand
neither the language and taste, nor the pleasure of the inanimate world.
My flatterers here are all mutes: the oaks, the beeches, the chestnuts,
seem to contend which best shall please the lord of the manor. They
cannot deceive; they will not lie. I in sincerity admire them, and have
as many beauties about me as fill up all my hours of dangling, and no
disgrace attending me, from sixty-seven years of age. Within doors we
come a little nearer to real life, and admire, upon the almost speaking
canvas, all the airs and graces the proudest ladies can boast.'
In these pursuits Horace cordially shared. Through his agency, Horace
Mann, still in the diplomatic service, at Florence, selected and
purchased works of art, which were sent either to Arlington Street, or
to form the famous Houghton Collection, to which Horace so often refers
in that delightful work, his 'Anecdotes of Painting.'
Amongst the embellishments of Houghton, the gardens were the most
expensive.
'Sir Robert has pleased himself,' Pulteney, Earl of Bath, wrote, 'with
erecting palaces and extending parks, planting gardens in places to
which the very earth was to be transported in carriages, and embracing
cascades and fountains whose water was only to be obtained by aqueducts
and machines, and imitating the extravagance of Oriental monarchs, at
the expense of a free people whom he has at once impoverished and
betrayed.'
The ex-minister went to a great expense in the cultivation of plants,
bought Uvedale's 'Hortus Siccus;' and received from Bradley, the
Professor of Botany at Cambridge, the tribute of a dedication, in which
it was said that 'Sir Robert had purchased one of the finest collections
of plants in the kingdom.'