Concerning the second performance above referred to, The Mysterious Mother, most of Walpole's biographers are content to abide in generalities. That the proprietor of Gothic Strawberry should have produced The Castle of Otranto has a certain congruity; but one scarcely expects to find the same person indulging in a blank-verse tragedy sombre enough to have taxed the powers of Ford or Webster. It is a curious example of literary reaction, and his own words respecting it are doubtful-voiced. To Montagu and to Madame du Deffand he writes apologetically. 'Il ne vous plairoit pas assurément,' he informs the lady; 'il n'y a pas de beaux sentiments. Il n'y a que des passions sans envelope, des crimes, des repentis, et des horreurs;'[119] and he lays his finger on one of its gravest defects when he goes on to say that its interest languishes from the first act to the last. Yet he seems, too, to have thought of its being played, for he tells Montagu a month later that though he is not yet intoxicated enough with it to think it would do for the stage, yet he wishes to see it acted,—a wish which must have been a real one, since he says further that he has written an epilogue for Mrs. Clive to speak in character. The postscript which is affixed to the printed piece contradicts the above utterances considerably, or, at all events, shows that fuller consideration has materially revised them. He admits that The Mysterious Mother would not be proper to appear upon the boards. 'The subject is so horrid that I thought it would shock rather than give satisfaction to an audience. Still, I found it so truly tragic in the two essential springs of terror and pity that I could not resist the impulse of adapting it to the scene, though it should never be practicable to produce it there.' After his criticism to Madame du Deffand upon the plot, it is curious to find him later on claiming that 'every scene tends to bring on the catastrophe, and [that] the story is never interrupted or diverted from its course.' Notwithstanding its imaginative power, it is impossible to deny that the author's words as to the repulsiveness of the subject are just. But it is needless to linger longer upon a dramatic work which had such grave defects as to render its being acted impossible, and concerning the literary merit of which there will always be different opinions. Byron spoke of it as 'a tragedy of the highest order,'—a judgment which has been traversed by Macaulay and Scott; Miss Burney shuddered at its very name; while Lady Di. Beauclerk illustrated it enthusiastically with a series of seven designs in 'sut-water,'[120] for which the enraptured author erected a special gallery.[121] Meanwhile, we may quote, from the close of the above postscript, a passage where Walpole is at his best. It is a rapid and characteristic aperçu of tragedy in England:
'The excellence of our dramatic writers is by no means equal in number to the great men we have produced in other walks. Theatric genius lay dormant after Shakespeare; waked with some bold and glorious, but irregular and often ridiculous, flights in Dryden; revived in Otway; maintained a placid, pleasing kind of dignity in Rowe, and even shone in his Jane Shore. It trod in sublime and classic fetters in Cato, but void of nature, or the power of affecting the passions. In Southerne it seemed a genuine ray of nature and Shakespeare; but, falling on an age still more Hottentot, was stifled in those gross and barbarous productions, tragi-comedies. It turned to tuneful nonsense in the Mourning Bride; grew stark mad in Lee, whose cloak, a little the worse for wear, fell on Young, yet in both was still a poet's cloak. It recovered its senses in Hughes and Fenton, who were afraid it should relapse, and accordingly kept it down with a timid but amiable hand; and then it languished. We have not mounted again above the two last.'[122]
The Castle of Otranto and the Historic Doubts were not printed by Mr. Robinson's latest successor, Mr. Kirgate. But the Strawberry Press had by this time resumed its functions, for The Mysterious Mother, of which 50 copies were struck off in 1768, was issued from it. Another book which it produced in the same year was Cornélie, a youthful tragedy by Madame du Deffand's friend, President Hénault. Walpole's sole reason for giving it the permanence of his type appears to have been gratitude to the venerable author, then fast hastening to the grave, for his kindness to himself in Paris. To Paris three-fourths of the impression went. More important reprints were Grammont's Memoirs, a small quarto, and a series of Letters of Edward VI.; both printed in 1772. The list for this period is completed by the loose sheets of Hoyland's Poems, 1769, and the well-known, but now rare, Description of the Villa of Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill, 1774, 100 copies of which were printed, six being on large paper. To an account of this patchwork edifice, the ensuing chapter will be chiefly devoted. The present may fitly be concluded with a brief statement of that always-debated passage in Walpole's life, his relations with the ill-starred Chatterton.
Towards the close of 1768, and early in 1769, Chatterton, fretting in Mr. Lambert's office at Bristol, and casting about eagerly for possible clues to a literary life, had offered some specimens of the pseudo-Rowley to James Dodsley of Pall-Mall, but apparently without success. His next appeal was made to Walpole, and mainly as the author of the Anecdotes of Painting in England. What documents he actually submitted to him, is not perfectly clear; but they manifestly included further fabrications of monkish verse, and hinted at, or referred to, a sequence of native artists in oil, hitherto wholly undreamed of by the distinguished virtuoso he addressed. The packet was handed to Walpole at Arlington Street by Mr. Bathoe, his bookseller (notable as the keeper of one of the first circulating libraries in London); and, incredible to say, Walpole was instantly 'drawn.' He despatched without delay to his unknown Bristol correspondent such a courteous note as he might have addressed to Zouch or Ducarel, expressing interest, curiosity, and a desire for further particulars. Chatterton as promptly rejoined, forwarding more extracts from the Rowley poems. But he also, from Walpole's recollection of his letter, in part unbosomed himself, making revelation of his position as a widow's son and lawyer's apprentice, who had 'a taste and turn for more elegant studies,' which inclinations, he suggested, his illustrious correspondent might enable him to gratify. Upon this, perhaps not unnaturally, Walpole's suspicions were aroused, the more so that Mason and Gray, to whom he showed the papers, declared them to be forgeries. He made, nevertheless, some private inquiry from an aristocratic relative at Bath as to Chatterton's antecedents, and found that, although his description of himself was accurate, no account of his character was forthcoming. He accordingly—he tells us—wrote him a letter 'with as much kindness and tenderness as if he had been his guardian,' recommending him to stick to his profession, and adding, by way of postscript, that judges, to whom the manuscripts had been submitted, were by no means thoroughly convinced of their antiquity. Two letters from Chatterton followed,—one (the first) dejected and seemingly acquiescent; the other, a week later, curtly demanding the restoration of his papers, the genuineness of which he re-affirmed. These communications Walpole, by his own account, either neglected to notice, or overlooked.[123] After an interval of some weeks arrived a final missive, the tone of which he regarded as 'singularly impertinent.' Snapping up both poems and letters in a pet, he scribbled a hasty reply, but, upon reconsideration, enclosed them to their writer without comment, and thought no more of him or them. It was not until about a year and a half afterwards that Goldsmith told him, at the first Royal Academy dinner, that Chatterton had come to London and destroyed himself,—an announcement which seems to have filled him with unaffected pity. 'Several persons of honour and veracity,' he says, 'were present when I first heard of his death, and will attest my surprise and concern.'[124]
The apologists of the gifted and precocious Bristol boy, reading the above occurrences by the light of his deplorable end, have attributed to Walpole a more material part in his misfortunes than can justly be ascribed to him; and the first editor of Chatterton's Miscellanies did not scruple to emphasize the current gossip, which represented Walpole as 'the primary cause of his [Chatterton's] dismal catastrophe,'[125]—an aspersion which drew from the Abbot of Strawberry the lengthy letter on the subject which was afterwards reprinted in his Works.[126] So long a vindication, if needed then, is scarcely needed now. Walpole, it is obvious, acted very much as he might have been expected to act. He had been imposed upon, and he was as much annoyed with himself as with the impostor. But he was not harsh enough to speak his mind frankly, nor benevolent enough to act the part of that rather rare personage, the ideal philanthropist. If he had behaved less like an ordinary man of the world; if he had obtained Chatterton's confidence, instead of lecturing him; if he had aided and counselled and protected him,—Walpole would have been different, and things might have been otherwise. As they were, upon the principle that 'two of a trade can ne'er agree,' it is difficult to conceive of any abiding alliance between the author of the fabricated Tragedy of Ælla and the author of the fabricated Castle of Otranto.
CHAPTER VIII.
Old Friends and New.—Walpole's Nieces.—Mrs. Damer.—Progress of Strawberry Hill.—Festivities and Later Improvements.—A Description, etc., 1774.—The House and Approaches.—Great Parlour, Waiting Room, China Room, and Yellow Bedchamber.—Breakfast Room.—Green Closet and Blue Bedchamber.—Armoury and Library.—Red Bedchamber, Holbein Chamber, and Star Chamber.—Gallery.—Round Drawing Room and Tribune.—Great North Bedchamber.—Great Cloister and Chapel.—Walpole on Strawberry.—Its Dampness.—A Drive from Twickenham to Piccadilly.