told, and we walk with consciences not unscathed into the Library,
disapproving in secret but flattering vocally. Here the very spirit of
Horace seemed to those who visited Strawberry before its fall to breathe
in every corner. Alas! when we beheld that library, it was half filled
with chests containing the celebrated MSS. of his letters; which were
bought by that enterprising publisher of learned name, Richard Bentley,
and which have since had adequate justice done them by first-rate
editors. There they were: the 'Strawberry Gazette' in full;--one glanced
merely at the yellow paper, and clear, decisive hand, and then turned to
see what objects he, who loved his books so well, collected for his
especial gratification. Mrs. Damer again! how proud he was of her
genius--her beauty, her cousinly love for himself; the wise way in which
she bound up the wounds of her breaking heart when her profligate
husband shot himself, by taking to occupation--perhaps, too, by liking
cousin Horace indifferently well. He put her models forward in every
place. Here was her Osprey Eagle in terra-cotta, a masterly production;
there a _couvre-fire,_ or _cur-few,_ imitated and modelled by her. Then
the marriage of Henry VI. Figures on the wall; near the fire is a screen
of the first tapestry ever made in England, representing a map of Surrey
and Middlesex; a notion of utility combined with ornament, which we see
still exhibited in the Sampler in old-fashioned, middle-class houses;
that poor posthumous, base-born child of the tapestry, almost defunct
itself; and a veritable piece of antiquity.
Still more remarkable in this room was a quaint-faced clock, silver
gilt, given by Henry VIII. to Anne Boleyn; which perchance, after
marking the moments of her festive life, struck unfeelingly the hour of
her doom.
But the company are hurrying into a little ante-room, the ceiling of
which is studded with stars in mosaic; it is therefore called jocularly,
the 'Star Chamber;' and here stands a cast of the famous bust of Henry
VII., by Torregiano, intended for the tomb of that sad-faced,
long-visaged monarch, who always looks as if royalty had disagreed with
him.
Next we enter the Holbein Chamber. Horace hated bishops and archbishops,
and all the hierarchy; yet here again we behold another prelatical
chimneypiece--a frieze taken from the tomb of Archbishop Warham, at
Canterbury. And here, in addition to Holbein's picture of Mary Tudor,
Duchess of Suffolk, and of her third husband Adrian Stokes, are Vertue's
copies of Holbein, drawings of that great master's pictures in
Buckingham House: enough--let us hasten into the Long Gallery. Those who
remember Sir Samuel Merrick and his Gallery at Goodrich Court will have
traced in his curious, somewhat gew gaw collections of armour,
antiquities, faded portraits, and mock horses, much of the taste and
turn of mind that existed in Horace Walpole.
The gallery, which all who recollect the sale at Strawberry Hill must
remember with peculiar interest, sounded well on paper. It was 56 feet
long, 17 high, and 13 wide; yet was neither long enough, high enough,
nor wide enough to inspire the indefinable sentiment by which we
acknowledge vastness. We beheld it the scene of George Robins's
triumphs--crowded to excess. Here strolled Lord John Russell; there,
with heavy tread, walked Daniel O'Connell. Hallam, placid, kindly,
gentle--the prince of book-worms--moved quickly through the rooms,
pausing to raise a glance to the ceiling--copied from one of the side
aisles of Henry VII.'s Chapel--but the fretwork is gilt, and there is
_petitesse_ about the Gothic which disappoints all good judges.
But when Horace conducted his courtly guests into this his mind-vaunted
vaulted gallery, he had sometimes George Selwyn at his side; or
Gray--or, in his old age, 'my niece, the Duchess of Gloucester,' leaned
on his arm. What strange associations, what brilliant company!--the
associations can never be recalled there again; nor the company
reassembled. The gallery, like everything else, has perished under the
pressure of debt. He who was so particular, too, as to the number of
those who were admitted to see his house--he who stipulated that four
persons only should compose a party, and one party alone be shown over
each day--how would he have borne the crisis, could he have foreseen it,
when Robins became, for the time, his successor, and was the temporary
lord of Strawberry; the dusty, ruthless, wondering, depreciating mob of
brokers--the respectable host of publishers--the starving army of
martyrs, the authors--the fine ladies, who saw nothing there comparable
to Howell and James's--the antiquaries, fishing out suspicious
antiquities--the painters, clamorous over Kneller's profile of Mrs.
Barry--the virtuous indignant mothers, as they passed by the portraits
of the Duchess de la Valliere, and of Ninon de l'Enclos, and remarked,
or at all events they _might_ have remarked, that the company on the
floor was scarcely much more respectable than the company on the
walls--the fashionables, who herded together, impelled by caste, that
free-masonry of social life, enter the Beauclerk closet to look over
Lady Di's scenes from the 'Mysterious Mother'--the players and
dramatists, finally, who crowded round Hogarth's sketch of his 'Beggars'
Opera,' with portraits, and gazed on Davison's likeness of Mrs.
Clive:--how could poor Horace have tolerated the sound of their
irreverent remarks, the dust of their shoes, the degradation of their
fancying that they might doubt his spurious-looking antiquities, or
condemn his improper-looking ladies on their canvas? How, indeed, could
he? For those parlours, that library, were peopled in his days with all
those who could enhance his pleasures, or add to their own, by their
presence. When Poverty stole in there, it was irradiated by Genius. When
painters hovered beneath the fretted ceiling of that library, it was to
thank the oracle of the day, not always for large orders, but for
powerful recommendations. When actresses trod the Star Chamber, it was
as modest friends, not as audacious critics on Horace, his house, and
his pictures.
Before we call up the spirits that were familiar at Strawberry--ere we
pass through the garden-gate, the piers of which were copied from the
tomb of Bishop William de Luda, in Ely Cathedral--let us glance at the
chapel, and then a word or two about Walpole's neighbours and anent
Twickenham.
The front of the chapel was copied from Bishop Audley's tomb at
Salisbury. Four panels of wood, taken from the Abbey of St. Edmund's
Bury, displayed the portraits of Cardinal Beaufort, of Humphrey Duke of
Gloucester, and of Archbishop Kemp. So much for the English church.
Next was seen a magnificent shrine in mosaic, from the church of St.
Mary Maggiore, in Rome. This was the work of the noted Peter Cavalini,
who constructed the tomb of Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey.
The shrine had figured over the sepulchre of four martyrs, who rested
between it in 1257: then the principal window in the chapel was brought
from Bexhill in Sussex; and displayed portraits of Henry III. and his
queen.
It was not every day that gay visitors travelled down the dusty roads
from London to visit the recluse at Strawberry: but Horace wanted them
not, for he had neighbours. In his youth he had owned for his playfellow
the ever witty, the precocious, the all-fascinating Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu. 'She was,' he wrote, 'a playfellow of mine when we were
children. She was always a dirty little thing. This habit continued with
her. When at Florence, the Grand Duke gave her apartments in his palace.
One room sufficed for everything; and when she went away, the stench was
so strong that they were obliged to fumigate the chamber with vinegar
for a week.'
Let not the scandal be implicitly credited. Lady Mary, dirty or clean,
resided occasionally, however, at Twickenham. When the admirable Lysons
composed his 'Environs of London,' Horace Walpole was still living--it
was in 1795--to point out to him the house in which his brilliant
acquaintance lived. It was then inhabited by Dr. Morton. The profligate
and clever Duke of Wharton lived also at Twickenham.
Marble Hill was built by George II, for the countess of Suffolk, and
Henry, Earl of Pembroke, was the architect. Of later years, the
beautiful and injured Mrs. Fitzherbert might be seen traversing the
greensward, which was laved by the then pellucid waters of the Thames.
The parish of Twickenham, in fact, was noted for the numerous characters
who have, at various times, lived in it: Robert Boyle, the great
philosopher; James Craggs, Secretary of State; Lord George Germaine;
Lord Bute--are strangely mixed up with the old memories which circle
around Twickenham to say nothing of its being, in after years, the abode
of Louis Philippe, and now, of his accomplished son.
One dark figure in the background of society haunts us also: Lady
Macclesfield, the cruel mother of Savage, polluted Twickenham by her
evil presence.
Let us not dwell on her name, but recall, with somewhat of pride, that
the names of that knot of accomplished, intellectual women, who composed
the neighbourhood of Strawberry, were all English; those who loved to
revel in all its charms of society and intellect were our justly-prized
countrywomen.
Foremost in the bright constellation was Anne Seymour Conway, too soon
married to the Hon. John Darner. She was one of the loveliest, the most
enterprizing, and the most gifted women of her time--thirty-one years
younger than Horace, having been born in 1748. He doubtless liked her
the more that no ridicule could attach to his partiality, which was that
of a father to a daughter, insofar as regarded his young cousin. She
belonged to a family dear to him, being the daughter of Field Marshal
Henry Seymour Conway: then she was beautiful, witty, a courageous
politician, a heroine, fearless of losing caste, by aspiring to be an
artist. She was, in truth, of our own time rather than of that. The
works which she left at Strawberry are scattered; and if still
traceable, are probably in many instances scarcely valued. But in that
lovely spot, hallowed by the remembrance of Mrs. Siddons, who lived
there in some humble capacity--say maid, say companion--in Guy's Cliff
House, near Warwick--noble traces of Anne Damer's genius are extant:
busts of the majestic Sally Siddons; of Nature's aristocrat, John
Kemble; of his brother Charles--arrest many a look, call up many a
thought of Anne Damer and her gifts: her intelligence, her warmth of
heart, her beauty, her associates. Of her powers Horace Walpole had the
highest opinion. 'If they come to Florence,' he wrote, speaking of Mrs.
Damer's going to Italy for the winter, 'the great duke should beg Mrs.
Damer to give him something of her statuary; and it would be a greater
curiosity than anything in his Chamber of Painters. She has executed
several marvels since you saw her; and has lately carved two colossal
heads for the bridge at Henley, which is the most beautiful in the
world, next to the Ponte di Trinità and was principally designed by her
father, General Conway.'
No wonder that he left to this accomplished relative the privilege of
living, after his death, at Strawberry Hill, of which she took
possession in 1797, and where she remained twenty years; giving it up,
in 1828, to Lord Waldegrave.
She was, as we have said, before her time in her appreciation of what
was noble and superior, in preference to that which gives to caste
alone, its supremacy. During her last years she bravely espoused an
unfashionable cause; and disregarding the contempt of the lofty, became
the champion of the injured and unhappy Caroline of Brunswick.
From his retreat at Strawberry, Horace Walpole heard all that befel the
object of his flame, Lady Sophia Fermor. His letters present from time
to time such passages as these; Lady Pomfret, whom he detested, being
always the object of his satire:--
'There is not the least news; but that my Lord Carteret's wedding has
been deferred on Lady Sophia's (Fermor's) falling dangerously ill of a
scarlet fever; but they say it is to be next Saturday. She is to have
£1,600 a year jointure, £400 pin-money, and £2,000 of jewels. Carteret
says he does not intend to marry the mother (Lady Pomfret) and the whole
family. What do you think my Lady intends?'
Lord Carteret, who was the object of Lady Pomfret's successful
generalship, was at this period, 1744, fifty-four years of age, having
been born in 1690. He was the son of George, Lord Carteret, by Grace,
daughter of the first Earl of Bath, of the line of Granville--a title
which became eventually his. The fair Sophia, in marrying him, espoused
a man of no ordinary attributes. In person, Horace Walpole, after the
grave had closed over one whom he probably envied, thus describes him:--
'Commanding beauty, smoothed by cheerful grace,
Sat on each open feature of his face.
Bold was his language, rapid, glowing, strong,
And science flowed spontaneous from his tongue:
A genius seizing systems, slighting rules,
And void of gall, with boundless scorn of fools.'
After having been Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Carteret attended his
royal master in the campaign, during which the Battle of Dettingen was
fought. He now held the reins of government in his own hands as premier.
Lord Chesterfield has described him as possessing quick precision, nice
decision, and unbounded presumption. The Duke of Newcastle used to say
of him that he was a 'man who never doubted.'
In a subsequent letter we find the sacrifice of the young and lovely
Sophia completed. Ambition was the characteristic of her family: and she
went, not unwillingly, to the altar. The whole affair is too amusingly
told to be given in other language than that of Horace:--
'I could tell you a great deal of news,' he writes to Horace Mann, 'but
it would not be what you would expect. It is not of battles, sieges, and
declarations of war; nor of invasions, insurrections and addresses: it
is the god of love, not he of war, who reigns in the newspapers. The
town has made up a list of six-and-thirty weddings, which I shall not
catalogue to you. But the chief entertainment has been the nuptials of
our great Quixote (Carteret) and the fair Sophia. On the point of
matrimony, she fell ill of a scarlet fever, and was given over, while he
had the gout, but heroically sent her word, that if she was well, he
_would_ be well. They corresponded every day, and he used to plague the
cabinet council with reading her letters to them. Last night they were
married; and as all he does must have a particular air in it, they
supped at Lord Pomfret's. At twelve, Lady Granville (his mother) and all
his family went to bed, but the porter: then my lord went home, and
waited for her in the lodge. She came alone, in a hackney chair, met him
in the hall, and was led up the back stairs to bed. What is ridiculously
lucky is, that Lord Lincoln goes into waiting to-day, and will be to
present her!'
The event was succeeded by a great ball at the Duchess of Richmond's, in
honour of the bride, Lady Carteret paying her ladyship the 'highest
honours,' which she received in the 'highest state.' 'I have seen her,'
adds Horace, 'but once, and found her just what I expected, _très grande
dame_, full of herself, and yet not with an air of happiness. She looks
ill, and is grown lean, but is still the finest figure in the world. The
mother (Lady Pomfret) is not so exalted as I expected; I fancy Carteret
has kept his resolution, and does not marry her too.'
Whilst this game was being played out, one of Walpole's most valued
neighbours, Pope, was dying of dropsy, and every evening a gentle
delirium possessed him. Again does Horace return to the theme, ever in
his thoughts--the Carterets: again does he recount their triumphs and
their follies.
'I will not fail'--still to Horace Mann--'to make your compliments to
the Pomfrets and Carterets. I see them seldom but I am in favour; so I
conclude, for my Lady Pomfret told me the other night that I said better
things than anybody. I was with them all at a subscription ball at
Ranelagh last week, which my Lady Carteret thought proper to look upon
as given to her, and thanked the gentlemen, who were not quite so well
pleased at her condescending to take it to herself. I did the honours of
all her dress. "How charming your ladyship's cross is! I am sure the
design was your own!"--"No, indeed; my lord sent it me just as it is."
Then as much to the mother. Do you wonder I say better things than
anybody?'
But these brilliant scenes were soon mournfully ended. Lady Sophia, the
haughty, the idolized, the Juno of that gay circle, was suddenly carried
off by a fever. With real feeling Horace thus tells the tale:--
'Before I talk of any public news, I must tell you what you will be very
sorry for. Lady Granville (Lady Sophia Fermor) is dead. She had a fever
for six weeks before her lying-in, and could never get it off. Last
Saturday they called in another physician, Dr. Oliver. On Monday he
pronounced her out of danger; about seven in the evening, as Lady
Pomfret and Lady Charlotte (Fermor) were sitting by her, the first
notice they had of her immediate danger was her sighing and saying, "I
feel death come very fast upon me!" She repeated the same words
frequently, remained perfectly in her senses and calm, and died about
eleven at night. It is very shocking for anybody so young, so handsome,
so arrived at the height of happiness, to be so quickly snatched away.'
So vanished one of the brightest stars of the court. The same autumn
(1745) was the epoch of a great event; the marching of Charles Edward
into England. Whilst the Duke of Cumberland was preparing to head the
troops to oppose him, the Prince of Wales was inviting a party to
supper, the main feature of which was the citadel of Carlisle in sugar,
the company all besieging it with sugar-plums. It would, indeed, as
Walpole declared, be impossible to relate all the _Caligulisms_ of this
effeminate, absurd prince. But buffoonery and eccentricity were the
order of the day. 'A ridiculous thing happened,' Horace writes, 'when
the princess saw company after her confinement. The new-born babe was
shown in a mighty pretty cradle, designed by Kent, under a canopy in the
great drawing-room. Sir William Stanhope went to look at it. Mrs,
Herbert, the governess, advanced to unmantle it. He said, "In wax, I
suppose?" "Sir?" "In wax, madam?" "The young prince, sir?" "Yes, in wax,
I suppose?" This is his odd humour. When he went to see the duke at his
birth, he said, "Lord, it sees!"'
The recluse of Strawberry was soon consoled by hearing that the rebels
were driven back from Derby, where they had penetrated, and where the
remembrance of the then gay, sanguine, brave young Chevalier long
lingered among the old inhabitants. One of the last traces of his
short-lived possession of the town is gone: very recently, Exeter House,
where he lodged and where he received his adherents, has been pulled
down; the ground on which it stood, with its court and garden--somewhat
in appearace like an old French hotel--being too valuable for the relic
of bygone times to be spared. The panelled chambers, the fine staircase,
certain pictures--one by Wright of Derby, of him--one of Miss
Walkinshaw--have all disappeared.
Of the capture, the trial, the death of his adherents, Horace Walpole
has left the most graphic and therefore touching account that has been
given; whilst he calls a 'rebellion on the defensive' a 'despicable
affair.' Humane, he reverted with horror to the atrocities of General
Hawley, 'the Chief Justice,' as he was designated, who had a 'passion
for frequent and sudden executions.' When this savage commander gained
intelligence of a French spy coming over, he displayed him at once
before the army on a gallows, dangling in his muff and boots. When one
of the surgeons begged for the body of a deserter to dissect, 'Well,'
said the wretch, 'but you must let me have the skeleton to hang up in
the guard-room,' Such was the temper of the times; vice, childishness,
levity at court, brutality in the camp, were the order of the day.
Horace, even Horace, worldly in all, indifferent as to good and bad,
seems to have been heart sick. His brother's matrimonial infidelity
vexed him also sorely. Lady Orford, 'tired,' as he expresses it, of
'sublunary affairs,' was trying to come to an arrangement with her
husband, from whom she had been long separated; the price was to be, he
fancied, £2,000 a year. Meantime, during the convulsive state of
political affairs, he interested himself continually in the improvement
of Strawberry Hill. There was a rival building, Mr. Bateman's Monastery,
at Old Windsor, which is said to have had more uniformity of design than
Strawberry Hill. Horace used indeed to call the house of which he became
so proud a paper house; the walls were at first so slight, and the roof
so insecure in heavy rains. Nevertheless, his days were passed as
peacefully there as the premature infirmities which came upon him would
permit.
From the age of twenty-five his fingers were enlarged and deformed by
chalk-stones, which were discharged twice a year. 'I can chalk up a
score with more rapidity than any man in England,' was his melancholy
jest. He had now adopted as a necessity a strict temperance: he sat up
very late, either writing or conversing, yet always breakfasted at nine
o'clock. After the death of Madame du Deffand, a little fat dog,
scarcely able to move for age and size--her legacy--used to proclaim his
approach by barking. The little favourite was placed beside him on a
sofa; a tea-kettle, stand, and heater were brought in, and he drank two
or three cups of tea out of the finest and most precious china of
Japan--that of a pure white. He breakfasted with an appetite, feeding
from his table the little dog and his pet squirrels.
Dinner at Strawberry Hill was usually served up in the small parlour in
winter, the large dining-room being reserved for large parties. As age
drew on, he was supported down stairs by his valet; and then, says the
compiler of Walpoliana, 'he ate most moderately of chicken, pheasant, or
any light food. Pastry he disliked, as difficult of digestion, though he
would taste a morsel of venison-pie. Never but once, that he drank two
glasses of white wine, did the editor see him taste any liquor, except
ice-water. A pail of ice was placed under the table, in which stood a
decanter of water, from which he supplied himself with his favourite
beverage.'
No wine was drunk after dinner, when the host of Strawberry Hill called
instantly to some one to ring the bell for coffee. It was served
upstairs, and there, adds the same writer, 'he would pass about five
o'clock, and generally resuming his place on the sofa, would sit till
two in the morning, in miscellaneous chit-chat, full of singular
anecdotes, strokes of wit, and acute observations, occasionally sending
for books, or curiosities, or passing to the library, as any reference
happened to arise in conversation. After his coffee, he tasted nothing;
but the snuff-box of _tabac d'etrennes_, from Fribourg's, was not
forgotten, and was replenished from a canister lodged in an ancient
marble urn of great thickness, which stood in the window seat, and
served to secure its moisture and rich flavour.'