In 1774, when, according to its title-page, the Description of Strawberry Hill was printed, Walpole was a man of fifty-seven. During the period covered by the last chapter, many changes had taken place in his circle of friends. Mann and George Montagu (until, in October, 1770, his correspondence with the latter mysteriously ceased) were still the most frequent recipients of his letters, and next to these, Conway, and Cole the antiquary. But three of his former correspondents, his deaf neighbour at Marble Hill, Lady Suffolk,[127] Lady Hervey (Pope's and Chesterfield's Molly Lepel, to whom he had written much from Paris), and Gray, were dead. On the other hand, he had opened what promised to be a lengthy series of letters with Gray's friend and biographer, the Rev. William Mason, Rector of Aston, in Yorkshire; with Madame du Deffand; and with the divorced Duchess of Grafton, who in 1769 had married his Paris friend, John Fitzpatrick, second Earl of Upper Ossory. There were changes, too, among his own relatives. By this time his eldest brother's widow, Lady Orford, had lost her second husband, Sewallis Shirley, and was again living, not very reputably, on the Continent. Her son George, who since 1751 had been third Earl of Orford, and was still unmarried, was eminently unsatisfactory. He was shamelessly selfish, and by way of complicating the family embarrassments, had taken to the turf. Ultimately he had periodical attacks of insanity, during which time it fell to Walpole's fate to look after his affairs. With Sir Edward Walpole, his second brother, he seems never to have been on terms of real cordiality; but he made no secret of his pride in his beautiful nieces, Edward Walpole's natural daughters, whose charms and amiability had victoriously triumphed over every prejudice which could have been entertained against their birth. Laura, who was the eldest, had married a brother of the Earl of Albemarle, subsequently created Bishop of Exeter; Charlotte, the third, became Lady Huntingtower, and afterwards Countess of Dysart; while Maria, the belle of the trio, was more fortunate still. After burying her first husband, Lord Waldegrave, she had succeeded in fascinating H. R. H. William Henry, Duke of Gloucester, the King's own brother, and so contributing to bring about the Royal Marriage Act of 1772. They were married in 1766; but the fact was not formally announced to His Majesty until September, 1772.[128] Another marriage which must have given Walpole almost as much pleasure was that of General Conway's daughter to Mr. Damer, Lord Milton's eldest son, which took place in 1767. After the unhappy death of her husband, who shot himself in a tavern ten years later, Mrs. Damer developed considerable talents as a sculptor, and during the last years of Walpole's life was a frequent exhibitor at the Royal Academy. Non me Praxiteles finxit, at Anna Damer, wrote her admiring relative under one of her works, a wounded eagle in terra-cotta;[129] and in the fourth volume of the Anecdotes of Painting, he likens 'her shock dog, large as life,' to such masterpieces of antique art as the Tuscan boar and the Barberini goat.
It is time, however, to return to the story of Strawberry itself, as interrupted in Chapter V. In the introduction to Walpole's Description of 1774, a considerable interval occurs between the building of the Refectory and Library in 1753-4, and the subsequent erection of the Gallery, Round Tower, Great Cloister, and Cabinet, or Tribune, which, already in contemplation in 1759, were, according to the same authority, erected in 1760 and 1761. But here, as before, the date must rather be that of the commencement than the completion of these additions. In May, 1763, he tells Cole that the Gallery is fast advancing, and in July it is almost 'in the critical minute of consummation.' In August, 'all the earth is begging to come to see it.' A month afterwards, he is 'keeping an inn; the sign, "The Gothic Castle."' His whole time is passed in giving tickets of admission to the Gallery, and hiding himself when it is on view. 'Take my advice,' he tells Montagu, 'never build a charming house for yourself between London and Hampton-court; everybody will live in it but you.' A year later he is giving a great fête to the French and Spanish Ambassadors, March, Selwyn, Lady Waldegrave, and other distinguished guests, which finishes in the new room. 'During dinner there were French horns and clarionets in the cloister,' and after coffee the guests were treated 'with a syllabub milked under the cows that were brought to the brow of the terrace. Thence they went to the Printing-house, and saw a new fashionable French song printed. They drank tea in the Gallery, and at eight went away to Vauxhall.'
This last entertainment, the munificence of which, he says, the treasury of the Abbey will feel, took place in June, 1764; and it is not until four years later that we get tidings of any fresh improvements. In September, 1768, he tells Cole that he is going on with the Round Tower, or Chamber, at the end of the Gallery, which, in another letter, he says 'has stood still these five years,' and he is, besides, 'playing with the little garden on the other side of the road' which had come into his hands by Francklin's death. In May of the following year he gives another magnificent festino at Strawberry, which will almost mortgage it, but the Round Tower still progresses. In October, 1770, he is building again, in the intervals of gout; this time it is the Great Bedchamber,—a 'sort of room which he seems likely to inhabit much time together.' Next year the whole piecemeal structure is rapidly verging to completion. 'The Round Tower is finished, and magnificent; and the State Bedchamber proceeds fast.' In June he is writing to Mann from the delicious bow window of the former, with Vasari's Bianca Capello (Mann's present) over against him, and the setting sun behind, 'throwing its golden rays all round.' Further on, he is building a tiny brick chapel in the garden, mainly for the purpose of receiving 'two valuable pieces of antiquity,'—one being a painted window from Bexhill of Henry III. and his Queen, given him by Lord Ashburnham; the other Cavalini's Tomb of Capoccio from the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore at Rome, which had been sent to him by Sir William (then Mr.) Hamilton, the English Minister at Naples. In August, 1772, the Great Bedchamber is finished, the house is complete, and he has 'at last exhausted all his hoards and collections.' Nothing remains but to compile the Description and Catalogue, concerning which he had written to Cole as far back as 1768, and which, as already stated, he ultimately printed in 1774.
As time went on, his fresh acquisitions obliged him to add several Appendices to this issue; and the copy before us, although dated 1774, has supplements which bring the record down to 1786. A fresh edition, in royal quarto, with twenty-seven plates, was printed in 1784;[130] and this, or an expansion of it, reappears in vol. ii. of his Works. With these later issues we have little to do; but with the aid of that of 1774, may essay to give some brief account of the long, straggling, many-pinnacled building, with its round tower at the end, the east and south fronts of which are figured in the black-looking vignette upon the title-page. The entrance was on the north side, from the Teddington and Twickenham road, here shaded by lofty trees; and once within the embattled boundary wall, covered by this time with ivy, the first thing that struck the spectator was a small oratory inclosed by iron rails, with saint, altar, niches, and holy-water basins designed en suite by Mr. Chute. On the right hand—its gaily-coloured patches of flower-bed glimmering through a screen of iron work copied from the tomb of Roger Niger, Bishop of London, in old St. Paul's—was the diminutive Abbot's, or Prior's, Garden, which extended in front of the offices to the right of the principal entrance.[131] This was along a little cloister to the left, beyond the oratory. The chief decoration of this cloister was a marble bas-relief, inscribed 'Dia Helionora,' being, in fact, a portrait of that Leonora D'Esté who turned the head of Tasso. At the end was the door, which opened into 'a small gloomy hall' united with the staircase, the balustrades of which, designed by Bentley, were decorated with antelopes, the Walpole supporters. In the well of the staircase was a Gothic lantern of japanned tin, also due to Bentley's fertile invention. If, instead of climbing the stairs, you turned out of the hall into a little passage on your left, you found yourself in the Refectory, or Great Parlour, where were accumulated the family portraits. Here, over the chimney-piece, was the 'conversation,' by Sir Joshua Reynolds, representing the triumvirate of Selwyn, Williams, and Lord Edgcumbe, already referred to at p. [138]; here also were Sir Robert Walpole and his two wives, Catherine Shorter and Maria Skerret; Robert Walpole the second, and his wife in a white riding-habit; Horace himself by Richardson; Dorothy Walpole, his aunt, who became Lady Townshend;[132] his sister, Lady Maria Churchill; and a number of others. In the Waiting Room, into which the Refectory opened, was a stone head of John Dryden, whom Catherine Shorter claimed as great-uncle; next to this again was the China Closet, neatly lined with blue and white Dutch tiles, and having its ceiling painted by Müntz, after a villa at Frascati, with convolvuluses on poles. In the China Room, among great stores of Sèvres and Chelsea, and oriental china, perhaps the greatest curiosity was a couple of Saxon tankards, exactly alike in form and size, which had been presented to Sir Robert Walpole at different times by the mistresses of the first two Georges, the Duchess of Kendal and the Countess of Yarmouth. To the left of the China Closet, with a bow window looking to the south, was the Little Parlour, which was hung with stone-coloured 'gothic paper' in imitation of mosaic, and decorated with the 'wooden prints' already referred to, the chiaroscuros of Jackson;[133] and at the side of this came the Yellow Bedchamber, known later, from its numerous feminine portraits, as the Beauty Room. The other spaces on the ground floor were occupied, towards the Prior's Garden, by the kitchen, cellars, and servants' hall, and, at the back, by the Great Cloister, which went under the Gallery.
A Great Parlour or Refectory.
B Waiting Room.
C China Room.
D Little Parlour.
E Yellow Bedchamber.
F Hall.
G Pantry.
H Servants' Hall.
I Passage.
K Great Cloister.
L Wine Cellar.
M Beer Cellar.
N Kitchen.
O Oratory.
Strawberry Hill: Ground Plan—1781.
Returning to the staircase, where, in later years, hung Bunbury's original drawing[134] for his well-known caricature of 'Richmond Hill,' you entered the Breakfast Room on the first floor, the window of which looked towards the Thames. It was pleasantly furnished with blue paper, and blue and white linen, and contained many miniatures and portraits, notable among which were Carmontel's picture of Madame du Deffand and the Duchess de Choiseul;[135] a print of Madame du Deffand's room and cats, given by the President Hénault; and a view painted by Raguenet for Walpole in 1766 of the Hôtel de Carnavalet, the former residence of Madame de Sévigné.[136]
The Breakfast Room opened into the Green Closet, over the door of which was a picture by Samuel Scott of Pope's house at Twickenham, showing the wings added after the poet's death by Sir William Stanhope. On the same side of the room hung Hogarth's portrait of Sarah Malcolm the murderess, painted at Newgate a day or two before her execution in Fleet Street.[137] Here also was 'Mr. Thomas Gray; etched from his shade [silhouette]; by Mr. W. Mason.' There were many other portraits in this room, besides some water colours on ivory by Horace himself. In a line with the Green Closet, and looking east, was the Library; and at the back of it, the Blue Bedchamber, the toilette of which was worked by Mrs. Clive, who, since her retirement from the stage in 1769, had lived wholly at Twickenham. The chief pictures in this room were Eckardt's portraits of Gray in a Vandyke dress and of Walpole himself in similar attire.[138] There were also by the same artist pictures of Walpole's father and mother, and of General Conway and his wife, Lady Ailesbury.
Facing the Blue Bedchamber was the Armoury, a vestibule of three Gothic arches, in the left-hand corner of which was the door opening into the Library, a room twenty-eight feet by nineteen feet six, lighted by a large window looking to the east, and by two smaller rose-windows at the sides. The books, arranged in Gothic arches of pierced work, went all round it. The chimney-piece was imitated from the tomb of John of Eltham in Westminster Abbey, and the stone work from another tomb at Canterbury. Over the chimney-piece was a picture (which is engraved in the Anecdotes of Painting) representing the marriage of Henry VI. Walpole and Bentley had designed the ceiling,—a gorgeous heraldic medley surrounding a central Walpole shield. Above the bookcases were pictures. One of the greatest treasures of the room was a clock given by Henry VIII. to Anne Boleyn. Of the books it is impossible to speak in detail. Noticeable among them, however, was a Thuanus in fourteen volumes, a very extensive set of Hogarth's prints, and all the original drawings for the Ædes Walpolianæ. Vertue, Hollar, and Faithorne were also largely represented. Among special copies, were the identical Iliad and Odyssey from which Pope made his translations of Homer,[139] a volume containing Bentley's original designs for Gray's Poems, and a black morocco pocket-book of sketches by Jacques Callot. In a rosewood case in this room was also a fine collection of coins, which included the rare silver medal struck by Gregory XIII. on the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.