CHAPTER IX.
Lady Correspondents.—Madame de Genlis.—Miss Burney and Hannah More.—Deaths of Mrs. Clive and Sir Horace Mann.—Story of Madame de Choiseul.—Richmond.—Queensberry House.—Warren Hastings.—Genteel Comedy.—St. Swithin.—Riverside Conceits.—Lord North.—The Theatre again.—Gibbon’s History.—Sheridan.—Conway’s Comedy.—A Turkish War.—Society Newspapers.—The Misses Berry.—Bonner’s Ghost.—The Arabian Nights.—King’s College Chapel.—Richmond Society.—New Arrivals.—The Berrys visit Italy.—A Farewell Letter.
No one who has looked through Walpole’s published letters can have failed to observe that the great majority of those which belong to the last twelve or thirteen years of the writer’s life are addressed to female correspondents. This is not an accidental circumstance. It is clear that, as his old friends dropped off, Horace supplied their places, in almost every instance, with women. The antiquary Pinkerton succeeds to the antiquary Cole,[100] but Montagu and Mason, Sir Horace Mann[101] and Lord Strafford,[102] had no successors of their own sex. Except when literary topics were on the carpet, Walpole, in his latter days, shrank from engaging in discussion with younger and more vigorous men. In several passages of his correspondence, he acknowledges this feeling of reserve and shyness. But with ladies of every class he was always at home and at ease. Old or young, grave or gay, English or French, they found him their devoted servant, full of nicely adjusted gallantry, never too busy to entertain with gossip and letters, ever ready to assist with advice, and, when occasion required, with the contents of a well-stocked purse. Thus, from the year 1785 onwards, we have him generally in correspondence with ladies, and as often as not, about ladies. During the first part of this period especially, sketches of well-known women meet us, thrown off at frequent intervals by his practised pen. Here is an account of a visit from Madame de Genlis in July, 1785:
“You surprise me, Madam, by saying the newspapers mention my disappointment of seeing Madame de Genlis. How can such arrant trifles spread? It is very true, that as the hill would not go to see Madame de Genlis, she has come to see the hill. Ten days ago Mrs. Cosway sent me a note that Madame desired a ticket for Strawberry Hill. I thought I could not do less than offer her a breakfast, and named yesterday se’nnight. Then came a message that she must go to Oxford and take her Doctor’s degree; and then another, that I should see her yesterday, when she did arrive with Miss Wilkes and Pamela, whom she did not even present to me, and whom she has educated to be very like herself in the face. I told her I could not attribute the honour of her visit but to my late dear friend Madame du Deffand. It rained the whole time, and was dark as midnight, so that she could scarce distinguish a picture; but you will want an account of her, and not of what she saw or could not see. Her person is agreeable, and she seems to have been pretty. Her conversation is natural and reasonable, not précieuse and affected, and searching to be eloquent, as I had expected. I asked her if she had been pleased with Oxford, meaning the buildings, not the wretched oafs that inhabit it. She said she had had little time; that she had wished to learn their plan of education, which, as she said sensibly, she supposed was adapted to our Constitution. I could have told her that it is directly repugnant to our Constitution, and that nothing is taught there but drunkenness and prerogative, or, in their language, Church and King. I asked if it is true that the new edition of Voltaire’s works is prohibited: she replied, severely,—and then condemned those who write against religion and government, which was a little unlucky before her friend Miss Wilkes. She stayed two hours, and returns to France to-day to her duty. I really do not know whether the Duc de Chartres is in England or not. She did lodge in his house in Portland Place; but at Paris, I think, has an hotel where she educates his daughters.”
A little later, he reports: “Dr. Burney and his daughter, Evelina-Cecilia, have passed a day and a half with me.[103] He is lively and agreeable; she half-and-half sense and modesty, which possess her so entirely, that not a cranny is left for affectation or pretension. Oh! Mrs. Montagu, you are not above half as accomplished.” This was an unusual tribute from the fastidious Horace.
Here, too, we must introduce the name of another literary lady, whose acquaintance with our author, begun some time previously, ripened about this date into an occasional exchange of letters. Hannah More,[104] then one of the Vesey coterie in Clarges Street, which, however, she presently quitted, ranked, we conceive, in Walpole’s estimation, about midway between Mrs. Montagu and Miss Burney. Writing to Hannah, not long after her retirement from London, he says: “The last time I saw her,” that is Mrs. Vesey, “Miss Burney passed the evening there, looking quite recovered and well, and so cheerful and agreeable, that the Court seems only to have improved the ease of her manner, instead of stamping more reserve on it, as I feared: but what slight graces it can give, will not compensate to us and the world for the loss of her company and her writings. Not but that some young ladies who can write, can stifle their talent as much as if they were under lock and key in the royal library. I do not see but a cottage is as pernicious to genius as the Queen’s waiting-room.”
Walpole had laughed at the “Blue-stockings,” but he bows graciously to the authors of “Cecilia” and “Percy,” and marks by an altered style of address his sense of the difference between the tone of these ladies and that of the Lady Ossorys and Kitty Clives with whom his youth and middle life had been spent. Poor Kitty’s old age of cards came to an end before the close of 1785, and Cliveden, which she had occupied for more than thirty years, stood for awhile untenanted. Horace lamented the loss of his old friend and neighbour, but she was several years senior to himself, and her death was not unexpected. The pair had lived so much together that probably few letters passed between them: none have been preserved, and the removal of the lady makes no gap in the gentleman’s correspondence. It is otherwise with the next name which was struck from Walpole’s list of old familiar acquaintances. Shortly after losing a friend from whom he was never long parted, he lost the friend whom he never met. No long time had elapsed since Walpole had written to Mann: “Shall we not be very venerable in the annals of friendship? What Orestes and Pylades ever wrote to each other for four-and-forty years without meeting? A correspondence of near half a century is not to be paralleled in the annals of the Post Office.” Again, about the time of Mrs. Clive’s death: “Now I think we are like Castor and Pollux; when one rises, t’other sets; when you can write, I cannot. I have got a very sharp attack of gout in my right hand.… Your being so well is a great comfort to me.” Despite this congratulation, however, the Ambassador was very near to his final setting. He died at Florence on the 16th of November, 1786, after a long illness, during the latter part of which he was apparently not in a condition to receive letters. Walpole’s last letter to him is dated June 22, 1786. It makes the eight hundred and ninth in the collection, as printed, of Walpole’s part of the correspondence between them.
But we must not suppose that Lady Ossory’s gazetteer is all this time forgetful of his Countess. Here is an anecdote which he sends her in the early part of 1786:
“How do you like, Madam, the following story? A young Madame de Choiseul is inloved with by Monsieur de Coigny and Prince Joseph of Monaco. She longed for a parrot that should be a miracle of eloquence: every other shop in Paris sells mackaws, parrots, cockatoos, &c. No wonder one at least of the rivals soon found a Mr. Pitt, and the bird was immediately declared the nymph’s first minister: but as she had two passions as well as two lovers, she was also enamoured of General Jackoo at Astley’s. The unsuccessful candidate offered Astley ingots for his monkey, but Astley demanding a terre for life, the paladin was forced to desist, but fortunately heard of another miracle of parts of the Monomotapan race, who was not in so exalted a sphere of life, being only a marmiton in a kitchen, where he had learnt to pluck fowls with an inimitable dexterity. This dear animal was not invaluable, was bought, and presented to Madame de Choiseul, who immediately made him the secretaire de ses commandemens. Her caresses were distributed equally to the animals, and her thanks to the donors. The first time she went out, the two former were locked up in her bed-chamber. Ah! I dread to tell the sequel. When the lady returned and flew to her chamber, Jackoo the second received her with all the empressement possible—but where was Poll?—found at last under the bed, shivering and cowering—and without a feather, as stark as any Christian. Poll’s presenter concluded that his rival had given the monkey with that very view, challenged him, they fought, and both were wounded; and an heroic adventure it was!”
Mrs. Clive being dead, and another sister-in-loo, Lady Browne, whom he often called his better-half, having left Twickenham, Walpole, when at Strawberry Hill, began to look across the water for society. He was attracted to Richmond by George Selwyn, who was now at times domesticated there with the Duke of Queensberry, the “Old Q” of the caricaturists. In December, 1786, Horace writes:
“I went yesterday to see the Duke of Queensberry’s palace at Richmond, under the conduct of George Selwyn, the concierge. You cannot imagine how noble it looks now all the Cornbury pictures from Amesbury are hung up there. The great hall, the great gallery, the eating-room, and the corridor, are covered with whole and half-lengths of royal family, favourites, ministers, peers, and judges, of the reign of Charles I.—not one an original, I think, at least not one fine, yet altogether they look very respectable; and the house is so handsome, and the views so rich, and the day was so fine, that I could only have been more pleased if (for half an hour) I could have seen the real palace that once stood on that spot, and the persons represented walking about!—A visionary holiday in old age, though it has not the rapture of youth, is a sedate enjoyment that is more sensible because one attends to it and reflects upon it at the time; and as new tumults do not succeed, the taste remains long in one’s memory’s mouth.”
Walpole was late this year in removing to Berkeley Square. The political topic of the London season was the debates in the House of Commons on the charges against Warren Hastings; the social topic, in our author’s circle at any rate, appears to have been some theatrical performances at the Duke of Richmond’s house in Whitehall. Horace seems to have interested himself a good deal more in the latter subject than the former. Lady Ossory having urged him to read a pamphlet in favour of Mr. Hastings, he replies:
“The pamphlet I have read, Madam; but cannot tell you what would have been my opinion of it, because my opinion was influenced before I saw it. A lady-politician ordered me to read it, and to admire it, as the chef-d’œuvre of truth, eloquence, wit, argument, and impartiality; and she assured me that the reasonings in it were unanswerable. I believe she meant the assertions, for I know she uses those words as synonymous. I promised to obey her, as I am sure that ladies understand politics better than I do, and I hold it as a rule of faith—
“That all that they admire is sweet,
And all is sense that they repeat.
“How much ready wit they have! I can give you an instance, Madam, that I heard last night. After the late execution of the eighteen malefactors, a female was hawking an account of them, but called them nineteen. A gentleman said to her, ‘Why do you say nineteen? there were but eighteen hanged.’ She replied, ‘Sir, I did not know you had been reprieved.’”
A week later, he writes again:
“Berkeley Square, Feb. 9, 1787.
“Though I sigh for your Ladyship’s coming to town, I do not know whether I shall not be a loser, for what news don’t you send me? That Lord Salisbury is a poet is nothing to your intelligence that I am going to turn player; nay, perhaps I should, if I were not too young for the company!—You tell me, too, that I snub and sneer; I protest, I thought I was the snubee.…
“For sneering, Heaven help me! I was guiltless. Every day I meet with red-hot politicians in petticoats, and told your Ladyship how I had been schooled by one of them, and how docile I was. If you yourself have any zeal for making converts, I should be very ready to be a proselyte, if I could get anything by it. It is very creditable, honourable, and fashionable; but, alas! I am so insignificant that I fear nobody would buy me; and one should look sillily to put one’s self up to sale and not find a purchaser.
“In short, I doubt I shall never make my fortune by turning courtier or comedian; and therefore I may as well adhere to my old principles, as I have always done, since you yourself, Madam, would not be flattered in a convert that nobody would take off your hands. If you could bring over Mr. Sheridan, he would do something: he talked for five hours and a half on Wednesday, and turned everybody’s head. One heard everybody in the streets raving on the wonders of that speech; for my part, I cannot believe it was so supernatural as they say—do you believe it was, Madam? I will go to my oracle, who told me of the marvels of the pamphlet, which assures us that Mr. Hastings is a prodigy of virtue and abilities; and, as you think so too, how should such a fellow as Sheridan, who has no diamonds to bestow, fascinate all the world?—Yet witchcraft, no doubt, there has been, for when did simple eloquence ever convince a majority? Mr. Pitt and 174 other persons found Mr. Hastings guilty last night,[105] and only sixty-eight remained thinking with the pamphlet and your Ladyship, that he is as white as snow. Well, at least there is a new crime, sorcery, to charge on the Opposition! and, till they are cleared of that charge, I will never say a word in their favour, nor think on politics more, which I would not have mentioned but in answer to your Ladyship’s questions; and therefore I hope we shall drop the subject, and meet soon in Grosvenor Place in a perfect neutrality of good humour.”
His remarks on the Duke’s Theatre are contained in the following letter, written after his early return to Twickenham.
“Strawberry Hill, June 14, 1787.
“Though your Ladyship gave me law (a very proper synonyme for delay), I should have answered your letter incontinently, but I have had what is called a blight in one of my eyes, and for some days was forced to lie fallow, neither reading nor writing a line; which is a little uncomfortable when quite alone. I do begin to creep about my house, but have not recovered my feet enough to compass the whole circuit of my garden. Monday last was pleasant, and Tuesday very warm; but we are relapsed into our east windhood, which has reigned ever since I have been here for this green winter, which, I presume, is the highest title due to this season, which in southern climes is positive summer, a name imported by our travellers, with grapes, peaches, and tuberoses. However, most of my senses have enjoyed themselves—my sight with verdure, my smell by millions of honeysuckles, my hearing by nightingales, and my feeling with good fires: tolerable luxury for an old cavalier in the north of Europe! Semiramis of Russia is not of my taste, or she would not travel half round the arctic circle; unless she means to conquer the Turks, and transfer the seat of her empire to Constantinople, like its founder. The ghost of Irene will be mighty glad to see her there, though a little surprised that the Grand Duke, her son, is still alive. I hear she has carried her grandchildren with her as hostages, or she might be dethroned, and not hear of it for three months.
“I am very far from tired, Madam, of encomiums on the performance at Richmond House, but I, by no means, agree with the criticism on it that you quote, and which, I conclude, was written by some player, from envy. Who should act genteel comedy perfectly, but people of fashion that have sense? Actors and actresses can only guess at the tone of high life, and cannot be inspired with it. Why are there so few genteel comedies, but because most comedies are written by men not of that sphere? Etherege, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Cibber wrote genteel comedy, because they lived in the best company; and Mrs. Oldfield played it so well, because she not only followed, but often set, the fashion. General Burgoyne has written the best modern comedy, for the same reason; and Miss Farren[106] is as excellent as Mrs. Oldfield, because she has lived with the best style of men in England: whereas Mrs. Abington can never go beyond Lady Teazle, which is a second-rate character, and that rank of women are always aping women of fashion, without arriving at the style. Farquhar’s plays talk the language of a marching regiment in country quarters: Wycherley, Dryden, Mrs. Centlivre, etc., wrote as if they had only lived in the ‘Rose Tavern;’[107] but then the Court lived in Drury Lane, too, and Lady Dorchester and Nell Gwyn were equally good company. The Richmond Theatre, I imagine, will take root. I supped with the Duke at Mrs. Damer’s, the night before I left London, and they were talking of improvements on the local, as the French would say.”
A few weeks later, he has dismissed the talk of London, and is occupied with his neighbours on the Thames. The following is a letter to Lord Strafford:
“Strawberry Hill, July 28, 1787.
“Saint Swithin is no friend to correspondence, my dear Lord. There is not only a great sameness in his own proceedings, but he makes everybody else dull—I mean in the country, where one frets at its raining every day and all day. In town he is no more minded than the proclamation against vice and immorality. Still, though he has all the honours of the quarantine, I believed it often rained for forty days long before St. Swithin was born, if ever born he was; and the proverb was coined and put under his patronage, because people observed that it frequently does rain for forty days together at this season. I remember Lady Suffolk telling me, that Lord Dysart’s great meadow at Ham had never been mowed but once in forty years without rain. I said, ‘All that that proved was, that rain was good for hay,’ as I am persuaded the climate of a country and its productions are suited to each other. Nay, rain is good for haymakers too, who get more employment the oftener the hay is made over again. I do not know who is the saint that presides over thunder; but he has made an unusual quantity in this chill summer, and done a great deal of serious mischief, though not a fiftieth part of what Lord George Gordon did seven years ago, and happily he is fled.
“Our little part of the world has been quiet as usual. The Duke of Queensberry has given a sumptuous dinner to the Princesse de Lamballe—et voilà tout. I never saw her, not even in France. I have no particular penchant for sterling princes and princesses, much less for those of French plate.
“The only entertaining thing I can tell your Lordship from our district is, that old Madam French, who lives close by the bridge at Hampton Court, where, between her and the Thames, she has nothing but one grass-plot of the width of her house, has paved that whole plot with black and white marble in diamonds, exactly like the floor of a church; and this curious metamorphosis of a garden into a pavement has cost her three hundred and forty pounds:—a tarpaulin she might have had for some shillings, which would have looked as well, and might easily have been removed. To be sure, this exploit, and Lord Dudley’s obelisk below a hedge, with his canal at right angles with the Thames, and a sham bridge no broader than that of a violin, and parallel to the river, are not preferable to the monsters in clipt yews of our ancestors. On the contrary, Mrs. Walsingham is making her house at Ditton (now baptized Boyle Farm[108]) very orthodox. Her daughter Miss Boyle, who has real genius, has carved three tablets in marble with boys, designed by herself. Those sculptures are for a chimney-piece; and she is painting panels in grotesque for the library, with pilasters of glass in black and gold. Miss Crewe, who has taste too, has decorated a room for her mother’s house at Richmond, which was Lady Margaret Compton’s, in a very pretty manner. How much more amiable the old women of the next age will be, than most of those we remember, who used to tumble at once from gallantry to devout scandal and cards, and revenge on the young of their own sex the desertion of ours! Now they are ingenious, they will not want amusement.”
In the autumn, he pays a visit to Lord North:
“I dined last Monday at Bushy (for you know I have more penchant for Ministers that are out than when they are in) and never saw a more interesting scene. Lord North’s spirits, good humour, wit, sense, drollery, are as perfect as ever—the unremitting attention of Lady North and his children, most touching. Mr. North leads him about, Miss North sits constantly by him, carves meat, watches his every motion, scarce puts a bit into her own lips; and if one cannot help commending her, she colours with modesty and sorrow till the tears gush into her eyes. If ever loss of sight could be compensated, it is by so affectionate a family.”
Not long after this, Walpole repeats a good-humoured jest of the blind old man on receiving a call from his quondam opponent, Colonel Barré, whose sight also was nearly gone. Lord North said: “Colonel Barré, nobody will suspect us of insincerity, if we say that we should always be overjoyed to see each other.”
With the return of winter, the theatre comes up again. There was a stage at Ampthill as well as at Whitehall:
“Berkeley Square, Jan. 15, 1788.
“All joy to your Ladyship on the success of your theatric campaign. I do think the representation of plays as entertaining and ingenious, as choosing king and queen, and the gambols and mummeries of our ancestors at Christmas; or as making one’s neighbours and all their servants drunk, and sending them home ten miles in the dark with the chance of breaking their necks by some comical overturn. I wish I could have been one of the audience; but, alas! I am like the African lamb, and can only feed on the grass and herbs that grow within my reach.
“I can make no returns yet from the theatre at Richmond House; the Duke and Duchess do not come till the birthday, and I have been at no more rehearsals, being satisfied with two of the play. Prologue or epilogue there is to be none, as neither the plays nor the performers, in general, are new. The ‘Jealous Wife’ is to succeed for the exhibition of Mrs. Hobart, who could have no part in ‘The Wonder.’
“My histrionic acquaintance spreads. I supped at Lady Dorothy Hotham’s with Mrs. Siddons, and have visited and been visited by her, and have seen and liked her much, yes, very much, in the passionate scenes of ‘Percy;’ but I do not admire her in cool declamation, and find her voice very hollow and defective. I asked her in which part she would most wish me to see her? She named Portia in the ‘Merchant of Venice;’ but I begged to be excused. With all my enthusiasm for Shakespeare, it is one of his plays that I like the least. The story of the caskets is silly, and, except the character of Shylock, I see nothing beyond the attainment of a mortal: Euripides, or Racine, or Voltaire, might have written all the rest. Moreover, Mrs. Siddons’s warmest devotees do not hold her above a demigoddess in comedy. I have chosen ‘Athenais,’ in which she is to appear soon; her scorn is admirable.…
“Puppet-shows are coming on, the birth-day, the Parliament, and the trial of Hastings and his imp, Elijah. They will fill the town, I suppose.”
Walpole was as severe on professional authors as on professional actors. “Except,” he says, “for such a predominant genius as Shakespeare and Milton, I hold authors cheap enough: what merit is there in pains, and study, and application, compared with the extempore abilities of such men as Mr. Fox, Mr. Sheridan, or Mr. Pitt?” But he made a further exception in favour of Gibbon. The following extract, besides an estimate of Gibbon’s History, contains a reference to the celebrated Begum Speech delivered by Sheridan in Westminster Hall on the trial of Warren Hastings:
“I finished Mr. Gibbon a full fortnight ago, and was extremely pleased. It is a most wonderful mass of information, not only on history, but almost on all the ingredients of history, as war, government, commerce, coin, and what not. If it has a fault, it is in embracing too much, and consequently in not detailing enough, and in striding backwards and forwards from one set of princes to another, and from one subject to another; so that, without much historic knowledge, and without much memory, and much method in one’s memory, it is almost impossible not to be sometimes bewildered: nay, his own impatience to tell what he knows, makes the author, though commonly so explicit, not perfectly clear in his expressions. The last chapter of the fourth volume, I own, made me recoil, and I could scarcely push through it. So far from being Catholic or heretic, I wished Mr. Gibbon had never heard of Monophysites, Nestorians, or any such fools! But the sixth volume made ample amends; Mahomet and the Popes were gentlemen and good company. I abominate fractions of theology and reformation.
“Mr. Sheridan, I hear, did not quite satisfy the passionate expectation that had been raised; but it was impossible he could, when people had worked themselves into an enthusiasm of offering fifty—ay, fifty guineas for a ticket to hear him. Well, we are sunk and deplorable in many points, yet not absolutely gone, when history and eloquence throw out such shoots! I thought I had outlived my country; I am glad not to leave it desperate!”
The next letter contains further references to the Begum Speech. It is addressed to Lord Strafford, and is one of the latest of Walpole’s letters to that nobleman which have been preserved:
“Strawberry Hill, Tuesday night, June 17, 1788.
“I guess, my dear Lord, and only guess, that you are arrived at Wentworth Castle. If you are not, my letter will lose none of its bloom by waiting for you; for I have nothing fresh to tell you, and only write because you enjoined it. I settled in my Liliputian towers but this morning. I wish people would come into the country on May-day, and fix in town the first of November. But as they will not, I have made up my mind; and having so little time left, I prefer London, when my friends and society are in it, to living here alone, or with the weird sisters of Richmond and Hampton. I had additional reason now, for the streets are as green as the fields: we are burnt to the bone, and have not a lock of hay to cover our nakedness: oats are so dear, that I suppose they will soon be eaten at Brooks’s and fashionable tables as a rarity. Though not resident till now, I have flitted backwards and forwards, and last Friday came hither to look for a minute at a ball at Mrs. Walsingham’s at Ditton; which would have been very pretty, for she had stuck coloured lamps in the hair of all her trees and bushes, if the east wind had not danced a reel all the time by the side of the river.
“Mr. Conway’s play,[109] of which your Lordship has seen some account in the papers, has succeeded delightfully, both in representation and applause. The language is most genteel, though translated from verse; and both prologue and epilogue are charming. The former was delivered most justly and admirably by Lord Derby, and the latter with inimitable spirit and grace by Mrs. Damer. Mr. Merry and Mrs. Bruce played excellently too. But General Conway, Mrs. Damer, and everybody else are drowned by Mr. Sheridan, whose renown has engrossed all Fame’s tongues and trumpets. Lord Townshend said he should be sorry were he forced to give a vote directly on Hastings, before he had time to cool; and one of the Peers saying the speech had not made the same impression on him, the Marquis replied, A seal might be finely cut, and yet not be in fault for making a bad impression.
“I have, you see, been forced to send your Lordship what scraps I brought from town. The next four months, I doubt, will reduce me to my old sterility; for I cannot retail French Gazettes, though as a good Englishman bound to hope they will contain a civil war. I care still less about the double imperial campaign, only hoping that the poor dear Turks will heartily beat both Emperor and Empress. If the first Ottomans could be punished, they deserve it, but the present possessors have as good a prescription on their side as any people in Europe. We ourselves are Saxons, Danes, Normans; our neighbours are Franks, not Gauls; who the rest are, Goths, Gepidæ, Heruli, Mr. Gibbon knows; and the Dutch usurped the estates of herrings, turbots, and other marine indigenæ. Still, though I do not wish the hair of a Turk’s beard to be hurt, I do not say that it would not be amusing to have Constantinople taken, merely as a lusty event; for neither could I live to see Athens revive, nor have I much faith in two such bloody-minded vultures, cock and hen, as Catherine and Joseph, conquering for the benefit of humanity; nor does my Christianity admire the propagation of the Gospel by the mouth of cannon. What desolation of peasants and their families by the episodes of forage and quarters! Oh! I wish Catherine and Joseph were brought to Westminster Hall and worried by Sheridan! I hope, too, that the poor Begums are alive to hear of his speech: it will be some comfort, though I doubt nobody thinks of restoring them a quarter of a lac!”
We must now find place for a letter to Miss More:
“Strawberry Hill, July 4, 1788.
“I am soundly rejoiced, my dear Madam, that the present summer is more favourable to me than the last; and that, instead of not answering my letters in three months, you open the campaign first. May not I flatter myself that it is a symptom of your being in better health? I wish, however, you had told me so in positive words, and that all your complaints have left you. Welcome as is your letter, it would have been ten times more welcome bringing me that assurance; for don’t think I forget how ill you was last winter. As letters, you say, now keep their coaches, I hope those from Bristol will call often at my door.[110] I promise you I will never be denied to them.
“No botanist am I; nor wished to learn from you, of all the Muses, that piping has a new signification. I had rather that you handled an oaten pipe than a carnation one; yet setting layers, I own, is preferable to reading newspapers, one of the chronical maladies of this age. Everybody reads them, nay, quotes them, though everybody knows they are stuffed with lies or blunders. How should it be otherwise? If any extraordinary event happens, who but must hear it before it descends through a coffee-house to the runner of a daily paper? They who are always wanting news, are wanting to hear they don’t know what. A lower species, indeed, is that of the scribes you mention, who every night compose a journal for the satisfaction of such illiterati, and feed them with all the vices and misfortunes of every private family; nay, they now call it a duty to publish all those calamities which decency to wretched relations used in compassion to suppress, I mean self-murder in particular. Mr. Hesse’s was detailed at length; and to-day that of Lord Saye and Sele. The pretence is, in terrorem, like the absurd stake and highway of our ancestors; as if there were a precautionary potion for madness, or the stigma of a newspaper were more dreadful than death. Daily journalists, to be sure, are most respectable magistrates! Yes, much like the cobblers that Cromwell made peers.
“I do lament your not going to Mr. Conway’s play: both the author and actors deserved such an auditor as you, and you deserved to hear them. However, I do not pity good people who out of virtue lose or miss any pleasures. Those pastimes fleet as fast as those of the wicked; but, when gone, you saints can sit down and feast on your self-denial, and drink bumpers of satisfaction to the health of your own merit. So truly I don’t pity you.
“You say you hear no news, yet you quote Mr. Topham;[111] therefore why should I tell you that the King is going to Cheltenham? or that the Baccelli lately danced at the Opera at Paris with a blue bandeau on her forehead, inscribed, Honi soit qui mal y pense!
“Well! would we committed nothing but follies! What do we not commit when the abolition of slavery hitches! Adieu!
“Though Cato died, though Tully spoke,
Though Brutus dealt the godlike stroke,
Yet perish’d fated Rome.
“You have written; and I fear that even, if Mr. Sheridan speaks, trade, the modern religion, will predominate. Adieu!”
Our next extract contains an account of an incident which proved more fortunate for the writer than anything that happened to him during the remainder of his life. It is from a letter to Lady Ossory, dated Strawberry Hill, October 11, 1788. Horace writes:
“I am sorry, for the third time of this letter, that I have no new village anecdotes to send your Ladyship, since they divert you for a moment. I have one, but some months old. Lady Charleville, my neighbour, told me three months ago, that, having some company with her, one of them had been to see Strawberry. ‘Pray,’ said another, ‘who is that Mr. Walpole?’ ‘Who!’ cried a third, ‘don’t you know the great epicure, Mr. Walpole?’ ‘Pho!’ said the first, ‘great epicure! you mean the antiquarian.’ There, Madam, surely this anecdote may take its place in the chapter of local fame. If I have picked up no recent anecdotes on our Common, I have made a much more, to me, precious acquisition. It is the acquaintance of two young ladies of the name of Berry, whom I first saw last winter, and who accidentally took a house here with their father for the season. Their story is singular enough to entertain you. The grandfather,[112] a Scot, had a large estate in his own country, £5,000 a year it is said; and a circumstance I shall tell you makes it probable. The oldest son married for love a woman with no fortune. The old man was enraged, and would not see him. His wife died and left these two young ladies. The grandfather wished for an heir male, and pressed the widower to remarry, but could not prevail; the son declaring he would consecrate himself to his daughters and their education. The old man did not break with him again, but, much worse, totally disinherited him, and left all to his second son, who very handsomely gave up £800 a year to his elder brother. Mr. Berry has since carried his daughters for two or three years to France and Italy, and they are returned the best-informed and the most perfect creatures I ever saw at their age. They are exceedingly sensible, entirely natural and unaffected, frank, and, being qualified to talk on any subject, nothing is so easy and agreeable as their conversation, nor more apposite than their answers and observations. The eldest, I discovered by chance, understands Latin and is a perfect Frenchwoman in her language. The younger draws charmingly, and has copied admirably Lady Di’s gipsies, which I lent, though for the first time of her attempting colours. They are of pleasing figures. Mary, the eldest, sweet, with fine dark eyes, that are very lively when she speaks, with a symmetry of face that is the more interesting from being pale; Agnes, the younger, has an agreeable sensible countenance, hardly to be called handsome, but almost. She is less animated than Mary, but seems, out of deference to her sister, to speak seldomer, for they dote on each other, and Mary is always praising her sister’s talents. I must even tell you they dress within the bounds of fashion, though fashionably; but without the excrescences and balconies with which modern hoydens overwhelm and barricade their persons. In short, good sense, information, simplicity, and ease characterise the Berrys; and this is not particularly mine, who am apt to be prejudiced, but the universal voice of all who know them. The first night I met them I would not be acquainted with them, having heard so much in their praise that I concluded they would be all pretension. The second time, in a very small company, I sat next to Mary, and found her an angel both inside and out. Now, I do not know which I like best; except Mary’s face, which is formed for a sentimental novel, but it is ten times fitter for a fifty times better thing, genteel comedy. This delightful family comes to me almost every Sunday evening, as our region is too proclamatory to play at cards on the seventh day. I forgot to tell you that Mr. Berry is a little merry man, with a round face, and you would not suspect him of so much feeling and attachment. I make no excuse for such minute details; for, if your Ladyship insists on hearing the humours of my district, you must for once indulge me with sending you two pearls that I found in my path.”
At the date of the above extract, Mary Berry was in her twenty-sixth year, Agnes Berry in her twenty-fifth. The notice taken by Walpole of these ladies gave them a position in the best London society, which they enjoyed for upwards of sixty years; but this patronage, and any other benefits which he bestowed upon them, were much more than repaid by the grateful attention with which they sacrificed themselves to promote the comfort of his last years. The new acquaintance advanced rapidly. Here is one of the earliest of Walpole’s letters to the sisters which has been published. Like many others of the series, it is addressed to the two jointly.
“February 2, 17-71[113] [1789].
“I am sorry, in the sense of that word before it meant, like a Hebrew word, glad or sorry, that I am engaged this evening; and I am at your command on Tuesday, as it is always my inclination to be. It is a misfortune that words are become so much the current coin of society, that, like King William’s shillings, they have no impression left; they are so smooth, that they mark no more to whom they first belonged than to whom they do belong, and are not worth even the twelvepence into which they may be changed: but if they mean too little, they may seem to mean too much too, especially when an old man (who is often synonymous for a miser) parts with them. I am afraid of protesting how much I delight in your society, lest I should seem to affect being gallant; but if two negatives make an affirmative, why may not two ridicules compose one piece of sense? and therefore, as I am in love with you both, I trust it is a proof of the good sense of your devoted H. Walpole.”
A few months later we have the following letter to Miss More:
“Strawberry Hill, June 23, 1789.
“Madam Hannah,
“You are an errant reprobate, and grow wickeder and wickeder every day. You deserve to be treated like a nègre; and your favourite Sunday, to which you are so partial, that you treat the other poor six days of the week as if they had no souls to be saved, should, if I could have my will, ‘shine no Sabbath-day for you.’ Now, don’t simper, and look as innocent as if virtue would not melt in your mouth. Can you deny the following charges?—I lent you the ‘Botanic Garden,’ and you returned it without writing a syllable, or saying where you were, or whither you was going; I suppose for fear I should know how to direct to you. Why, if I did send a letter after you, could not you keep it three months without an answer, as you did last year?
“In the next place, you and your nine accomplices, who, by the way, are too good in keeping you company, have clubbed the prettiest Poem imaginable,[114] and communicated it to Mrs. Boscawen, with injunctions not to give a copy of it; I suppose because you are ashamed of having written a panegyric. Whenever you do compose a satire, you are ready enough to publish it; at least, whenever you do, you will din one to death with it. But now, mind your perverseness: that very pretty novel poem, and I must own it is charming, have you gone and spoiled, flying in the faces of your best friends the Muses, and keeping no measures with them. I’ll be shot if they dictated two of the best lines with two syllables too much in each—nay, you have weakened one of them,
“‘Ev’n Gardiner’s mind’
is far more expressive than steadfast Gardiner’s; and, as Mrs. Boscawen says, whoever knows anything of Gardiner, could not want that superfluous epithet; and whoever does not, would not be the wiser for your foolish insertion—Mrs. Boscawen did not call it foolish, but I do. The second line, as Mesdemoiselles the Muses handed it to you, Miss, was,
“‘Have all be free and saved—’
not, ‘All be free and all be saved:’ the second all be is a most unnecessary tautology. The poem was perfect and faultless, if you could have let it alone. I wonder how your mischievous flippancy could help maiming that most new and beautiful expression, ‘sponge of sins;’ I should not have been surprised, as you love verses too full of feet, if you had changed it to ‘that scrubbing-brush of sins.’
“Well! I will say no more now: but if you do not order me a copy of ‘Bonner’s Ghost’ incontinently, never dare to look my printing-house in the face again. Or come, I’ll tell you what; I will forgive all your enormities if you will let me print your poem. I like to filch a little immortality out of others, and the Strawberry press could never have a better opportunity. I will not haggle for the public; I will be content with printing only two hundred copies, of which you shall have half and I half. It shall cost you nothing but a yes. I only propose this in case you do not mean to print it yourself. Tell me sincerely which you like. But as to not printing it at all, charming and unexceptionable as it is, you cannot be so preposterous.
“I by no means have a thought of detracting from your own share in your own poem; but, as I do suspect that it caught some inspiration from your perusal of ‘The Botanic Garden,’ so I hope you will discover that my style is much improved by having lately studied ‘Bruce’s Travels.’ There I dipped, and not in St. Giles’s Pound, where one would think this author had been educated. Adieu! Your friend, or mortal foe, as you behave on the present occasion.”
Before the date of the last, the Misses Berry had set out on a summer excursion. The following is in answer to a letter from the elder:
“Strawberry Hill, June 30, 1789.
“Were there any such thing as sympathy at the distance of two hundred miles, you would have been in a mightier panic than I was; for, on Saturday se’nnight, going to open the glass case in the Tribune, my foot caught in the carpet, and I fell with my whole weight (si weight y a) against the corner of the marble altar on my side, and bruised the muscles so badly, that for two days I could not move without screaming. I am convinced I should have broken a rib, but that I fell on the cavity whence two of my ribs were removed that are gone to Yorkshire. I am much better both of my bruise and of my lameness, and shall be ready to dance at my own wedding when my wives return. And now to answer your letter.
“If you grow tired of the ‘Arabian Nights,’ you have no more taste than Bishop Atterbury, who huffed Pope for sending him them (or the ‘Persian Tales’), and fancied he liked Virgil better, who had no more imagination than Dr. Akenside. Read ‘Sinbad the Sailor’s Voyages,’ and you will be sick of Æneas’s. What woful invention were the nasty poultry that spoiled his dinner, and ships on fire turned into Nereids! A barn metamorphosed into a cascade in a pantomime is full as sublime an effort of genius. I do not know whether the ‘Arabian Nights’ are of Oriental origin or not: I should think not, because I never saw any other Oriental composition that was not bombast without genius, and figurative without nature; like an Indian screen, where you see little men on the foreground, and larger men hunting tigers above in the air, which they take for perspective. I do not think the Sultaness’s narratives very natural or very probable, but there is a wildness in them that captivates. However, if you could wade through two octavos[115] of Dame Piozzi’s though’s and so’s and I trow’s, and cannot listen to seven volumes of Scheherezade’s narrations, I will sue for a divorce in foro Parnassi, and Boccalini shall be my proctor. The cause will be a counterpart to the sentence of the Lacedæmonian, who was condemned for breach of the peace, by saying in three words what he might have said in two.
“So, you was not quite satisfied, though you ought to have been transported, with King’s College Chapel, because it has no aisles, like every common cathedral. I suppose you would object to a bird of paradise, because it has no legs, but shoots to heaven in a trail, and does not rest on earth. Criticism and comparison spoil many tastes. You should admire all bold and unique essays that resemble nothing else; the ‘Botanic Garden,’ the ‘Arabian Nights,’ and King’s Chapel are above all rules: and how preferable is what no one can imitate, to all that is imitated even from the best models! Your partiality to the pageantry of popery I do approve, and I doubt whether the world would not be a loser (in its visionary enjoyments) by the extinction of that religion, as it was by the decay of chivalry and the proscription of the heathen deities. Reason has no invention; and as plain sense will never be the legislator of human affairs, it is fortunate when taste happens to be regent.”
During the absence of his young favourites, he amuses himself with visiting his neighbours, and grumbling at his “customers,” as he called the strangers who came to view his villa and grounds:
“Richmond is in the first request this summer. Mrs. Bouverie is settled there with a large court. The Sheridans are there, too, and the Bunburys. I have been once with the first; with the others I am not acquainted. I go once or twice a week to George Selwyn late in the evening, when he comes in from walking:—about as often to Mrs. Ellis here, and to Lady Cecilia Johnston at Hampton; but all together cannot contribute to an entertaining letter, and it is odd to say that, though my house is all the morning full of company, nobody lives so much alone. I have already this season had between seventy and fourscore companies to see my house; and half my time passes in writing tickets or excuses. I wish I could think as an old sexton did at King’s College. One of the fellows told him he must get a great deal of money by showing it: ‘Oh, no! master,’ replied he; ‘everybody has seen it now.’ My companies, it seems, are more prolific, and every set begets one or two more.”
About the same date, he writes to Mary and Agnes:
“Strawberry Hill, Thursday evening, Aug. 27, 1789.
“I jumped for joy; that is, my heart did, which is all the remains of me that is in statu jumpante, at the receipt of your letter this morning, which tells me you approve of the house at Teddington. How kind you was to answer so incontinently! I believe you borrowed the best steed from the races. I have sent to the landlord to come to me to-morrow: but I could not resist beginning my letter to-night, as I am at home alone, with a little pain in my left wrist; but the right one has no brotherly feeling for it, and would not be put off so. You ask how you have deserved such attentions? Why, by deserving them; by every kind of merit, and by that superlative one to me, your submitting to throw away so much time on a forlorn antique; you two, who, without specifying particulars, (and you must at least be conscious that you are not two frights) might expect any fortune and distinctions, and do delight all companies. On which side lies the wonder? Ask me no more such questions, or I will cram you with reasons.…
“Friday.
“Well! I have seen him, and nobody was ever so accommodating! He is as courteous as a candidate for a county. You may stay in his house till Christmas if you please, and shall pay but twenty pounds; and if more furniture is wanting, it shall be supplied.”
“Don’t bring me a pair of scissors from Sheffield. I am determined nothing shall cut our loves, though I should live out the rest of Methusalem’s term, as you kindly wish, and as I can believe, though you are my wives; for I am persuaded my Agnes wishes so too.—Don’t you?”
The French Revolution was now in full progress: the Bastile had been stormed and demolished; anarchy reigned in Paris; châteaux in the provinces were being plundered and burnt by the peasants; refugees, in terrified crowds, were pouring over to England. Some of the exiles presently found their way into Walpole’s neighbourhood. “Madame de Boufflers,” he tells Lady Ossory, “and the Comtesse Emilie, her daughter-in-law, I hear, are come to London; and Woronzow, the Russian Minister, who has a house at Richmond, is to lend it to her for the winter, as her fortune has received some considerable blow in the present commotions.” Besides these foreigners, other important personages had come or were coming into the district. The Duke of Clarence had a house in the middle of Richmond “with nothing but a green short apron to the river, a situation only fit for an old gentlewoman who has put out her knee-pans and loves cards. The Prince of Wales has taken a somewhat better place at Roehampton, and enters upon it at Christmas.” “My Straw-Berries,” he adds, “are not yet returned, but I expect them next week, and have found a house for them at Teddington very near me.” A little later, he writes, “My neighbour, the Duke of Clarence, is so popular, that if Richmond were a borough, and he had not attained his title, but still retained his idea of standing candidate, he would certainly be elected there. He pays his bills regularly himself, locks up his doors at night, that his servants may not stay out late, and never drinks but a few glasses of wine. Though the value of crowns is mightily fallen of late at market, it looks as if his Royal Highness thought they were still worth waiting for; nay, it is said that he tells his brothers that he shall be king before either—that is fair at least.”[116]
In July, 1790, Walpole is alarmed by the intelligence that the Berrys have arranged to make a long visit to Italy. He writes to Miss Berry, then at the sea with her sister:
“I feel all the kindness of your determination of coming to Twickenham in August, and shall certainly say no more against it, though I am certain that I shall count every day that passes; and when they are passed, they will leave a melancholy impression on Strawberry, that I had rather have affixed to London. The two last summers were infinitely the pleasantest I ever passed here, for I never before had an agreeable neighbourhood. Still I loved the place, and had no comparisons to draw. Now, the neighbourhood will remain, and will appear ten times worse; with the aggravation of remembering two months that may have some transient roses, but, I am sure, lasting thorns. You tell me I do not write with my usual spirits: at least I will suppress, as much as I can, the want of them, though I am a bad dissembler.”
The months pass, and we have the following farewell letter:
“Sunday, Oct. 10, 1790. The day of your departure.
“Is it possible to write to my beloved friends, and refrain from speaking of my grief for losing you; though it is but the continuation of what I have felt ever since I was stunned by your intention of going abroad this autumn? Still I will not tire you with it often. In happy days I smiled, and called you my dear wives: now I can only think on you as darling children of whom I am bereaved! As such I have loved and do love you; and, charming as you both are, I have had no occasion to remind myself that I am past seventy-three. Your hearts, your understandings, your virtues, and the cruel injustice of your fate,[117] have interested me in everything that concerns you; and so far from having occasion to blush for any unbecoming weakness, I am proud of my affection for you, and very proud of your condescending to pass so many hours with a very old man, when everybody admires you, and the most insensible allow that your good sense and information (I speak of both) have formed you to converse with the most intelligent of our sex as well as your own; and neither can tax you with airs of pretension or affectation. Your simplicity and natural ease set off all your other merits—all these graces are lost to me, alas! when I have no time to lose.
“Sensible as I am to my loss, it will occupy but part of my thoughts, till I know you safely landed, and arrived safely at Turin. Not till you are there, and I learn so, will my anxiety subside and settle into steady, selfish sorrow. I looked at every weathercock as I came along the road to-day, and was happy to see everyone point north-east. May they do so to-morrow!
“I found here the frame for Wolsey,[118] and to-morrow morning Kirgate[119] will place him in it; and then I shall begin pulling the little parlour to pieces, that it may be hung anew to receive him. I have also obeyed Miss Agnes, though with regret; for, on trying it, I found her Arcadia would fit the place of the picture she condemned, which shall therefore be hung in its room; though the latter should give way to nothing else, nor shall be laid aside, but shall hang where I shall see it almost as often. I long to hear that its dear paintress is well; I thought her not at all so last night. You will tell me the truth, though she in her own case, and in that alone, allows herself mental reservation.
“Forgive me for writing nothing to-night but about you two and myself. Of what can I have thought else? I have not spoken to a single person but my own servants since we parted last night. I found a message here from Miss Howe[120] to invite me for this evening. Do you think I have not preferred staying at home to write to you, as this must go to London to-morrow morning by the coach to be ready for Tuesday’s post? My future letters shall talk of other things, whenever I know anything worth repeating; or perhaps any trifle, for I am determined to forbid myself lamentations that would weary you; and the frequency of my letters will prove there is no forgetfulness. If I live to see you again, you will then judge whether I am changed; but a friendship so rational and so pure as mine is, and so equal for both, is not likely to have any of the fickleness of youth, when it has none of its other ingredients. It was a sweet consolation to the short time that I may have left, to fall into such a society; no wonder then that I am unhappy at that consolation being abridged. I pique myself on no philosophy, but what a long use and knowledge of the world had given me—the philosophy of indifference to most persons and events. I do pique myself on not being ridiculous at this very late period of my life; but when there is not a grain of passion in my affection for you two, and when you both have the good sense not to be displeased at my telling you so, (though I hope you would have despised me for the contrary,) I am not ashamed to say that your loss is heavy to me; and that I am only reconciled to it by hoping that a winter in Italy, and the journeys and sea air, will be very beneficial to two constitutions so delicate as yours. Adieu! my dearest friends. It would be tautology to subscribe a name to a letter, every line of which would suit no other man in the world but the writer.”