From the Short Notes we learn further: 'He [my father] left me the house in Arlington-street in which he died, £5000 in money, and £1000 a year from the Collector's place in the Custom-house, and the surplus to be divided between my brother Edward and me.'
CHAPTER IV.
Stage-gossip and Small-talk.—Ranelagh Gardens.—Fontenoy and Leicester House.—Echoes of the '45.—Preston Pans.—Culloden.—Trial of the Rebel Lords.—Deaths of Kilmarnock and Balmerino.—Epilogue to Tamerlane.—Walpole and his Relatives.—Lady Orford.—Literary Efforts.—The Beauties.—Takes a House at Windsor.
During the period between Walpole's return to England and the death of Lord Orford, his letters, addressed almost exclusively to Mann, are largely occupied with the occurrences which accompanied and succeeded his father's downfall. To Lord Orford's protégé and relative these particulars were naturally of the first importance, and Walpole's function of 'General Intelligencer' fell proportionately into the background. Still, there are occasional references to current events of a merely social character. After the Secret Committee, he is interested (probably because his friend Conway was pecuniarily interested) in the Opera, and the reception by the British public of the Viscontina, Amorevoli, and the other Italian singers whom he had known abroad. Of the stage he says comparatively little, dismissing poor Mrs. Woffington, who had then just made her appearance at Covent Garden, as 'a bad actress,' who, nevertheless, 'has life,'—an opinion in which he is supported by Conway, who calls her 'an impudent, Irish-faced girl.' In the acting of Garrick, after whom all the town is (as Gray writes) 'horn-mad' in May, 1742, he sees nothing wonderful, although he admits that it is heresy to say so, since that infallible stage critic, the Duke of Argyll, has declared him superior to Betterton. But he praises 'a little simple farce' at Drury Lane, Miss Lucy in Town, by Henry Fielding, in which his future friend, Mrs. Clive, and Beard mimic Amorevoli and the Muscovita. The same letter contains a reference to another famous stage-queen, now nearing eighty, Anne Bracegirdle, who should have had the money that Congreve left to Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough. 'Tell Mr. Chute [he says] that his friend Bracegirdle breakfasted with me this morning. As she went out, and wanted her clogs, she turned to me, and said, "I remember at the playhouse, they used to call, Mrs. Oldfield's chair! Mrs. Barry's clogs! and Mrs. Bracegirdle's pattens!"'[53] One pictures a handsome old lady, a little bent, and leaning on a crutch stick as she delivers this parting utterance at the door.[54]
Among the occurrences of 1742 which find fitting record in the correspondence, is the opening of that formidable rival to Vauxhall, Ranelagh Gardens. All through the spring the great Rotunda, with its encircling tiers of galleries and supper-boxes,—the coup d'œil of which Johnson thought was the finest thing he had ever seen,—had been rising slowly at the side of Chelsea Hospital. In April it was practically completed, and almost ready for visitors. Walpole, of course, breakfasts there, like the rest of the beau monde. 'The building is not finished [he says], but they get great sums by people going to see it and breakfasting in the house; there were yesterday no less than three hundred and eighty persons, at eighteenpence a-piece. You see how poor we are, when, with a tax of four shillings in the pound, we are laying out such sums for cakes and ale.'[55] A week or two later comes the formal inauguration. 'Two nights ago [May 24] Ranelagh-gardens were opened at Chelsea; the Prince, Princess, Duke, much nobility, and much mob besides, were there. There is a vast amphitheatre, finely gilt, painted, and illuminated, into which everybody that loves eating, drinking, staring, or crowding, is admitted for twelvepence. The building and disposition of the gardens cost sixteen thousand pounds. Twice a week there are to be Ridottos at guinea-tickets, for which you are to have a supper and music. I was there last night [May 25],'—the writer adds,—'but did not find the joy of it,'[56] and, at present, he prefers Vauxhall, because of the approach by water, that 'trajet du fleuve fatal,'—as it is styled in the Vauxhall de Londres which a French poet dedicated in 1769 to M. de Fontenelle. He seems, however, to have taken Lord Orford to Ranelagh, and he records in July that they walked with a train at their heels like two chairmen going to fight,—from which he argues a return of his father's popularity. Two years later Fashion has declared itself on the side of the new garden, and Walpole has gone over to the side of Fashion. 'Every night constantly [he tells Conway] I go to Ranelagh; which has totally beat Vauxhall. Nobody goes anywhere else,—everybody goes there. My Lord Chesterfield is so fond of it that he says he has ordered all his letters to be directed thither. If you had never seen it, I would make you a most pompous description of it, and tell you how the floor is all of beaten princes; that you can't set your foot without treading on a Prince of Wales or Duke of Cumberland. The company is universal: there is from his Grace of Grafton down to children out of the Foundling Hospital; from my Lady Townshend to the kitten; from my Lord Sandys to your humble cousin and sincere friend.'[57]
After Lord Orford's death, the next landmark in Horace Walpole's life is his removal to the house at Twickenham, subsequently known as Strawberry Hill. To a description of this historical mansion the next chapter will be in part devoted. In the mean time we may linger for a moment upon the record which these letters contain of the famous '45. No better opportunity will probably occur of exhibiting Walpole as the reporter of history in the process of making. Much that he tells Mann and Montagu is no doubt little more than the skimming of the last Gazette; but he had always access to trustworthy information, and is seldom a dull reporter, even of newspaper news. Almost the next letter to that in which he dwells at length upon the loss of his father, records the disaster of Tournay, or Fontenoy, in which, he tells Mann, Mr. Conway has highly distinguished himself, magnificently engaging—as appears from a subsequent communication—no less than two French Grenadiers at once. His account of the battle is bare enough; but what apparently interests him most is the patriotic conduct of the Prince of Wales, who made a chanson on the occasion, after the fashion of the Regent Orléans:—
'Venez, mes chères Déesses,
Venez calmer mon chagrin;