Must burn, and excommunicated wit;
And at one stake, we shall behold expire
My Anna Bullen, and the Spanish Fryar.'[64]
After this the epilogue digresses into a comparison of the Duke of Cumberland with King William. Virgil, Juvenal, Addison, Dryden, and Pope, upon one of whose lines on Cibber Walpole bases his reference to the Lord Chamberlain, are all laid under contribution in this performance. It 'succeeded to flatter me,' he tells Mann a few days later,—a Gallicism from which we must infer an enthusiastic reception.
Walpole's personal and domestic history does not present much interest at this period. His sister Mary (Catherine Shorter's daughter), who had married the third Earl of Cholmondeley, had died long before her mother. In February, 1746, his half-sister, Lady Mary, his playmate at comet in the Houghton days, married Mr. Churchill,—'a foolish match,' in Horace's opinion, to which he will have nothing to say. With his second brother, Sir Edward Walpole, he seems to have had but little intercourse, and that scarcely of a fraternal character. In 1857, Cunningham published for the first time a very angry letter from Edward to his junior, in which the latter was bitterly reproached for his interference in disposing of the family borough of Castle Rising, and (incidentally) for his assumption of superiority, mental and otherwise. To this communication Walpole prepared a most caustic and categorical answer, which, however, he never sent. For his nieces, Edward Walpole's natural daughters, of whom it will be more convenient to speak later, Horace seems always to have felt a sincere regard. But although his brother had tastes which must have been akin to his own, for Edward Walpole was in his way an art patron (Roubillac the sculptor, for instance, was much indebted to him) and a respectable musician, no real cordiality ever existed between them. 'There is nothing in the world'—he tells Montagu in May, 1745—'the Baron of Englefield has such an aversion for as for his brother.'[65]
For his eldest brother's wife, the Lady Walpole who had formed one of the learned trio at Florence, he entertained no kind of respect, and his letters are full of flouts at her Ladyship's manners and morality. Indeed, between préciosité and 'Platonic love,' her life does not appear to have been a particularly worshipful one, and her long sojourn under Italian skies had not improved her. At present she was Lady Orford, her husband, who is seldom mentioned, and from whom she had been living apart, having succeeded to the title at his father's death. From Walpole's letters to Mann, it seems that in April, 1745, she was, much to the dismay of her relatives, already preening her wings for England. In September, she has arrived, and Walpole is maliciously delighted at the cold welcome she obtains from the Court and from society in general, with the exception of her old colleague, Lady Pomfret, and that in one sense congenial spirit, Lady Townshend. Later on, a definite separation from her husband appears to have been agreed upon, which Walpole fondly hopes may have the effect of bringing about her departure for Italy. 'The Ladies O[rford] and T[ownshend]'—he says—'have exhausted scandal both in their persons and conversations.' However much this may be exaggerated (and Walpole never spares his antipathies), the last we hear of Lady Orford is certainly on his side, for she has retired from town to a villa near Richmond with a lover for whom she has postponed that southward flight which her family so ardently desired. This fortunate Endymion, the Hon. Sewallis Shirley, son of Robert, first Earl Ferrers, had already been one of the most favoured lovers of the notorious 'lady of quality' whose memoirs were afterwards foisted into Peregrine Pickle. To Lady Vane now succeeded Lady Orford, as eminent for wealth—says sarcastic Lady Mary Wortley Montagu—as her predecessor had been for beauty, and equal in her 'heroic contempt for shame.' This new connection was destined to endure. It was in September, 1746, that Walpole chronicled his sister-in-law's latest frailty, and in May, 1751, only a few weeks after her husband's death,[66] she married Shirley at the Rev. Alexander Keith's convenient little chapel in May Fair.'
In 1744, died Alexander Pope, to be followed a year later by the great Dean of St. Patrick's. Neither of these events leaves any lasting mark in Walpole's correspondence,—indeed of Swift's death there is no mention at all. A nearer bereavement was the premature loss of West, which had taken place two years before, closing sorrowfully with faint accomplishment a life of promise. Vale, et vive paulisper cum vivis,—he had written a few days earlier to Gray,—his friend to the last. With Gray, Walpole's friendship, as will be seen presently, had been resumed. His own literary essays still lie chiefly in the domain of squib and jeu d'esprit. In April, 1746, over the appropriate signature of 'Descartes,' he printed in No. II. of The Museum a 'Scheme for Raising a Large Sum of Money for the Use of the Government, by laying a tax on Message-Cards and Notes,' and in No. V. a pretended Advertisement and Table of Contents for a History of Good Breeding, from the Creation of the World, by the Author of the Whole Duty of Man. The wit of this is a little laboured, and scarcely goes beyond the announcement that 'The Eight last Volumes, which relate to Germany, may be had separate;' nor does that of the other exceed a mild reflection of Fielding's manner in some of his minor pieces. Among other things, we gather that it was the custom of the fine ladies of the day to send open messages on blank playing-cards; and it is stated as a fact or a fancy that 'after the fatal day of Fontenoy,' persons of quality 'all wrote their notes on Indian paper, which, being red, when inscribed with Japan ink made a melancholy military kind of elegy on the brave youths who occasioned the fashion, and were often the honourable subject of the epistle.' The only remaining effort of any importance at this time is the little poem of The Beauties, somewhat recalling Gay's Prologue to the Shepherd's Week, and written in July, 1746, to Eckardt the painter. Here is a specimen:—
In smiling Capel's bounteous look
Rich autumn's goddess is mistook.
With poppies and with spiky corn,