Jan. 15, 1797.
My dear Madam,—
You distress me infinitely by showing my idle notes, which I cannot conceive can amuse anybody. My old-fashioned breeding impels me every now and then to reply to the letters you honour me with writing, but in truth very unwillingly, for I seldom can have anything particular to say; I scarce go out of my own house, and then only to two or three very private places, where I see nobody that really knows anything, and what I learn comes from Newspapers, that collect intelligence from coffee-houses, consequently what I neither believe nor report. At home I see only a few charitable elders, except about four-score nephews and nieces of various ages, who are each brought to me about once a-year, to stare at me as the Methusalem of the family, and they can only speak of their own contemporaries, which interest me no more than if they talked of their dolls, or bats and balls. Must not the result of all this, Madam, make me a very entertaining correspondent? And can such letters be worth showing? or can I have any spirit when so old, and reduced to dictate?
Oh! my good Madam, dispense with me from such a task, and think how it must add to it to apprehend such letters being shown. Pray send me no more such laurels, which I desire no more than their leaves when decked with a scrap of tinsel, and stuck on twelfth-cakes that lie on the shop-boards of pastry-cooks at Christmas. I shall be quite content with a sprig of rosemary thrown after me, when the parson of the parish commits my dust to dust. Till then, pray, Madam, accept the resignation of your
Ancient servant,
Orford.
Six weeks after the date of the above letter, he died at his house in Berkeley Square, to which he had been moved at the close of the previous year. During the latter days of his life, he suffered from a cruel lapse of memory, which led him to suppose himself neglected even by those who had but just quitted him. He sank gradually, and expired without pain on the 2nd of March, 1797, being then in his eightieth year. He was buried at the family seat of Houghton.
His fortune, over and above his leases, amounted to ninety-one thousand pounds. To each of the Miss Berrys he left the sum of £4000 for their lives, together with the house and garden of 'Little Strawberry' (Cliveden), the long meadow in front of it, and all the furniture. He also bequeathed to them and to their father his printed works and his manuscripts, with discretionary power to publish. It was understood that the real editorship was to fall on the elder sister, who forthwith devoted herself to her task. The result was the edition, in five quarto volumes, of Lord Orford's Works, which has been so often referred to during the progress of these pages, and which appeared in 1798. It was entirely due to Mary Berry's unremitting care, her father's share being confined to a final paragraph in the preface, in which she is eulogized.[192]
Strawberry Hill passed to Mrs. Damer for life, together with £2000 to keep it in repair. After living in it for some years, she resigned it, in 1811, to the Countess Dowager of Waldegrave, in whom the remainder in fee was vested. It subsequently passed to George, seventh Earl of Waldegrave, who sold its contents in 1842. At his death, in 1846, he left it to his widow, Frances, Countess of Waldegrave, who married the Rt. Hon. Chichester S. Parkinson-Fortescue, later Lord Carlingford. Lady Waldegrave died in 1879; but she had greatly added to and extended the original building, besides restoring many of the objects by which it had been decorated in Walpole's day.