'At twelve his [Walpole's] light bodied chariot was at the door, with his English coachman and his Swiss valet [Philip Colomb].... In a few minutes he left Lord Radnor's villa to the right, rolled over the grotto of Pope, saw on his left Whitton, rich with recollections of Kneller and Argyll, passed Gumley House, one of the country seats of his father's opponent and his own friend, Pulteney, Earl of Bath, and Kendal House,[153] the retreat of the mistress of George I., Ermengard de Schulenburg, Duchess of Kendal. At Sion, the princely seat of the Percys, the Seymours, and the Smithsons, he turned into the Hounslow Road, left Sion on his right, and Osterly, not unlike Houghton, on his left, and rolled through Brentford,—
"Brentford, the Bishopric of Parson Horne,"[154]
then, as now, infamous for its dirty streets, and famous for its white-legged chickens.[155] Quitting Brentford, he approached the woods that concealed the stately mansion of Gunnersbury, built by Inigo Jones and Webb, and then inhabited by the Princess Amelia, the last surviving child of King George II.[156] Here he was often a visitor, and seldom returned without being a winner at silver loo. At the Pack Horse[157] on Turnham Green he would, when the roads were heavy, draw up for a brief bait. Starting anew, he would pass a few red brick houses on both sides, then the suburban villas of men well to do in the Strand and Charing Cross. At Hammersmith, he would leave the church[158] on his right, call on Mr. Fox at Holland House, look at Campden House, with recollections of Sir Baptist Hickes,[159] and not without an ill-suppressed wish to transfer some little part of it to his beloved Strawberry. He was now at Kensington Church, then, as it still is, an ungraceful structure,[160] but rife with associations which he would at times relate to the friend he had with him. On his left he would leave the gates of Kensington Palace, rich with reminiscences connected with his father and the first Hanoverian kings of this country. On his right he would quit the red brick house in which the Duchess of Portsmouth lived,[161] and after a drive of half a mile (skirting a heavy brick wall), reach Kingston House,[162] replete with stories of Elizabeth Chudleigh, the bigamist maid of honour, and Duchess-Countess of Kingston and Bristol. At Knightsbridge (even then the haunt of highwaymen less gallant than Maclean) he passed on his left the little chapel[163] in which his father was married. At Hyde Park Corner he saw the Hercules Pillars ale-house of Fielding and Tom Jones,[164] and at one door from Park Lane would occasionally call on old "Q" for the sake of Selwyn, who was often there.[165] The trees which now grace Piccadilly were in the Green Park in Walpole's day; they can recollect Walpole, and that is something. On his left, the sight of Coventry House[166] would remind him of the Gunnings, and he would tell his friend the story of the "beauties;" with which (short story-teller as he was) he had not completed when the chariot turned into Arlington Street on the right, or down Berkeley Street into Berkeley Square, on the left.'[167] In these last lines Mr. Cunningham anticipates our story, for in 1774, Walpole had not yet taken up his residence in Berkeley Square.
CHAPTER IX.
Occupations and Correspondence.—Literary Work.—Jephson and the Stage.—Nature will Prevail.—Issues from the Strawberry Press.—Fourth Volume of the Anecdotes of Painting.—The Beauclerk Tower and Lady Di.—George, third Earl of Orford.—Sale of the Houghton Pictures.—Moves to Berkeley Square.—Last Visit to Madame du Deffand.—Her Death.—Themes for Letters.—Death of Sir Horace Mann.—Pinkerton, Madame de Genlis, Miss Burney, Hannah More.—Mary and Agnes Berry.—Their Residence at Twickenham.—Becomes fourth Earl of Orford.—Epitaphium vivi Auctoris.—The Berrys again.—Death of Marshal Conway.—Last Letter to Lady Ossory.—Dies at Berkeley Square, 2 March, 1797.—His Fortune and Will.—The Fate of Strawberry.
After the completion of Strawberry Hill and the printing of the Catalogue, Walpole's life grows comparatively barren of events. There are still four volumes of his Correspondence, but they take upon them imperceptibly the nature of nouvelles à la main, and are less fruitful in personal traits. Between his books and his prints, his time passes agreeably, 'but will not do to relate.' Indeed, from this period until his death, in 1797, the most notable occurrences in his history are his friendship with the Miss Berry's in 1787-8, and his belated accession to he Earldom of Orford. Both at Strawberry and Arlington Street, his increasing years and his persistent malady condemn him more and more to seclusion and retirement. He is most at Strawberry, despite its dampness, for in the country he holds 'old, useless people ought to live.' 'If you were not to be in London,' he tells Lady Ossory in April, 1774, 'the spring advances so charmingly, I think I should scarce go thither. One is frightened with the inundation of breakfasts and balls that are coming on. Every one is engaged to everybody for the next three weeks, and if one must hunt for a needle, I had rather look for it in a bottle of hay in the country than in a crowd.' 'By age and situation,' he writes from Strawberry in September, 'at this time of the year I live with nothing but old women. They do very well for me, who have little choice left, and who rather prefer common nonsense to wise nonsense,—the only difference I know between old women and old men. I am out of all politics, and never think of elections, which I think I should hate even if I loved politics,—just as, if I loved tapestry I do not think I could talk over the manufacture of worsteds. Books I have almost done with too,—at least, read only such as nobody else would read. In short, my way of life is too insipid to entertain anybody but myself; and though I am always employed, I must own I think I have given up every thing in the world, only to be busy about the most arrant trifles.' His London life was not greatly different. 'How should I see or know anything?' he says a year later, apologizing for his dearth of news. 'I seldom stir out of my house [at Arlington Street] before seven in the evening, see very few persons, and go to fewer places, make no new acquaintance, and have seen most of my old wear out. Loo at Princess Amelie's, loo at Lady Hertford's, are the capital events of my history, and a Sunday alone, at Strawberry, my chief entertainment. All this is far from gay; but as it neither gives me ennui, nor lowers my spirits, it is not uncomfortable, and I prefer it to being déplacé in younger company.' Such is his account of his life in 1774-5, when he is nearing sixty, and it probably represents it with sufficient accuracy. But a trifling incident easily stirs him into unwonted vivacity. While he is protesting that he has nothing to say, his letters grow under his pen, and, almost as a necessary consequence of his leisure, they become more frequent and more copious. In the edition of Cunningham, up to September, 1774, they number fourteen hundred and fifty. Speaking roughly, this represents a period of nearly forty years. During the two-and-twenty years that remained to him, he managed to swell them by what was, proportionately, a far greater number. The last letter given by Cunningham is marked 2665; and this enumeration does not include a good many letters and fragments of letters belonging to this later period, which were published in 1865 in Miss Berry's Journals and Correspondence. Nevertheless, as stated above, they more and more assume what he somewhere calls 'their proper character of newspapers.'
During the remainder of his life, they were his chief occupation, and his gout was seldom so severe but that he could make shift to scribble a line to his favourite correspondents, calling in his printer Kirgate as secretary in cases of extremity.[168] Of literature generally he professed to have taken final leave. 'I no longer care about fame,' he tells Mason in 1774; 'I have done being an author.' Nevertheless, the Short Notes piously chronicle the production of more than one trifle, which are reprinted in his Works. When, in the above year, Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son were published, Walpole began a parody of that famous performance in a Series of Letters from a Mother to a Daughter, with the general title of the New Whole Duty of Woman. He grew tired of the idea too soon to enable us to judge what his success might have been with a subject which, in his hands, should have been diverting as a satire; for, although he was a warm admirer of Chesterfield's parts, as he had shown in his character of him in the Royal and Noble Authors, he was thoroughly alive to the assailable side of what he styles his 'impertinent institutes of education.'[169] Another work of this year was a reply to some remarks by Mr. Masters in the Archæologia upon the old subject of the Historic Doubts, which calls for no further notice. But early in 1775 he was persuaded into writing an epilogue for the Braganza of Captain Robert Jephson, a maiden tragedy of the Venice Preserved order, which was produced at Drury Lane in February of that year, with considerable success. In a correspondence which ensued with the author, Walpole delivered himself of his views on tragedy for the benefit of Mr. Jephson, who acted upon them, but not (as his Mentor thought) with conspicuous success, in his next attempt, the Law of Lombardy. Jephson's third play, however, the Count of Narbonne, which was well received in 1781, had a natural claim upon Walpole's good opinion, since it was based upon the Castle of Otranto.[170] Besides the above letters on tragedy, Walpole wrote, 'in 1775 and 1776,' a rather longer paper on comedy, which is printed with them in the second volume of his works (pp. 315-22). He held, as he says, 'a good comedy the chef-d'œuvre of human genius;' and it is manifest that his keenest sympathies were on the side of comic art. His remarks upon Congreve are full of just appreciation. Yet, although he mentions the School for Scandal (which, by the way, shows that he must have written rather later than the dates given above), he makes no reference to the most recent development, in She Stoops to Conquer, of the school of humour and character, and he seems rather to pose as the advocate of that genteel or sentimental comedy which Foote and Goldsmith and Sheridan had striven to drive from the English stage. When his prejudices are aroused, he is seldom a safe guide, and in addition to his personal contempt for Goldsmith,[171] that writer had irritated him by his reference to the Albemarle Street Club, to which many of his friends belonged. It was an additional offence that the 'Miss Biddy [originally Miss Rachael] Buckskin' of the comedy was said to stand for Miss Rachael Lloyd, long housekeeper at Kensington Palace, and a member of the club well known both to himself and to Madame du Deffand.[172]
In the second of the letters to Mr. Jephson, Walpole refers to his own efforts at comedy, and implies that he had made attempts in this direction even before the tragedy of The Mysterious Mother. He had certainly the wit, and much of the gift of direct expression, which comedy requires. But nothing of these earlier essays appears to have survived, and the only dramatic effort included among his Works (his tragedy excepted) is the little piece entitled Nature will Prevail, which, with its fairy machinery, has something of the character of such earlier productions of Mr. W. S. Gilbert as the Palace of Truth. This he wrote in 1773, and, according to the Short Notes, sent it anonymously to the elder Colman, then manager of Covent Garden. Colman (he says) was much pleased with it, but regarding it as too short for a farce, wished to have it enlarged. This, however, its author thought too much trouble 'for so slight and extempore a performance.' Five years after, it was produced at the little theatre in the Haymarket, and, being admirably acted,—says the Biographia Dramatica,—met with considerable applause. But it is obviously one of those works to which the verdict of Goldsmith's critic, that it would have been better if the author had taken more pains, may judiciously be applied. It is more like a sketch for a farce than a farce itself; and it is not finished enough for a proverbe. Yet the dialogue is in parts so good that one almost regrets the inability of the author to nerve himself for an enterprise de longue haleine.