CHAPTER X.
Macaulay on Walpole.—Effect of the Edinburgh Essay.—Macaulay and Mary Berry.—Portraits of Walpole.—Miss Hawkins's Description.—Pinkerton's Rainy Day at Strawberry.—Walpole's Character as a Man; as a Virtuoso; as a Politician; as an Author and Letter-writer.
When, in October, 1833, Lord (then Mr.) Macaulay completed for the Edinburgh his review of Lord Dover's edition of Walpole's letters to Sir Horace Mann, he had apparently performed to his entire satisfaction the operation known, in the workmanlike vocabulary of the time, as 'dusting the jacket' of his unfortunate reviewee. 'I was up at four this morning to put the last touch to it,' he tells his sister Hannah. 'I often differ with the majority about other people's writings, and still oftener about my own; and therefore I may very likely be mistaken; but I think that this article will be a hit.... Nothing ever cost me more pains than the first half; I never wrote anything so flowingly as the latter half; and I like the latter half the best. [The latter half, it should be stated, was a rapid and very brilliant sketch of Sir Robert Walpole; the earlier, which involved so much labour, was the portrait of Sir Robert's youngest son.] I have laid it on Walpole [i. e., Horace Walpole] so unsparingly,' he goes on to say, 'that I shall not be surprised if Miss Berry should cut me.... Neither am I sure that Lord and Lady Holland will be well pleased.'[193]
His later letters show him to have been a true prophet. Macvey Napier, then the editor of the 'Blue and Yellow,' was enthusiastic, praising the article 'in terms absolutely extravagant.' 'He says that it is the best that I ever wrote,' the critic tells his favourite correspondent,—a statement which at this date must be qualified by the fact that he penned some of his most famous essays subsequent to its appearance. On the other hand, Miss Berry resented the review so much that Sir Stratford Canning advised its author not to go near her. But apparently her anger was soon dispelled, for the same letter which makes this announcement relates that she was already appeased. Lady Holland, too, was 'in a rage,' though with what part of the article does not transpire, while her good-natured husband told Macaulay privately that he quite agreed with him, but that they had better not discuss the subject. Lady Holland's irritation was probably prompted by her intimacy with the Waldegrave family, to whom the letters edited by Lord Dover belonged, and for whose benefit they were published. But, as Macaulay said justly, his article was surely not calculated to injure the sale of the book. Her imperious ladyship's displeasure, however, like that of Miss Berry, was of brief duration. Macaulay was too necessary to her réunions to be long exiled from her little court.
Among those who occupy themselves in such enquiries, it has been matter for speculation what particular grudge Macaulay could have cherished against Horace Walpole when, to use his own expression, he laid it on him 'so unsparingly.' To this his correspondence affords no clue. Mr. Cunningham holds that he did it 'to revenge the dislike which Walpole bore to the Bedford faction, the followers of Fox and the Shelburne school.' It is possible, as another authority has suggested, that 'in the Whig circles of Macaulay's time, there existed a traditional grudge against Horace Walpole,' owing to obscure political causes connected with his influence over his friend Conway. But these reasons do not seem relevant enough to make Macaulay's famous onslaught a mere vendetta. It is more reasonable to suppose that between his avowed delight in Walpole as a letter-writer, and his robust contempt for him as an individual, he found a subject to his hand, which admitted of all the brilliant antithesis and sparkle of epigram which he lavished upon it. Walpole's trivialities and eccentricities, his whims and affectations, are seized with remorseless skill, and presented with all the rhetorical advantages with which the writer so well knew how to invest them. As regards his literary estimate, the truth of the picture can scarcely be gainsaid; but the personal character, as Walpole's surviving friends felt, is certainly too much en noir. Miss Berry, indeed, in her 'Advertisement' to vol. vi. of Wright's edition of the Letters, raised a gentle cry of expostulation against the entire representation. She laid stress upon the fact that Macaulay had not known Walpole in the flesh (a disqualification to which too much weight may easily be assigned); she dwelt upon the warmth of Walpole's attachments; she contested the charge of affectation; and, in short, made such a gallant attempt at a defence as her loyalty to her old friend enabled her to offer. Yet, if Macaulay had never known Walpole at all, she herself, it might be urged, had only known him in his old age. Upon the whole, 'with due allowance for a spice of critical pepper on one hand, and a handful of friendly rosemary on the other,' as Croker says, both characters are 'substantially true.' Under Macaulay's brush Walpole is depicted as he appeared to that critic's masculine and (for the nonce) unsympathetic spirit; in Miss Berry's picture, the likeness is touched with a pencil at once grateful, affectionate, and indulgent. The biographer of to-day, who is neither endeavouring to portray Walpole in his most favourable aspect, nor preoccupied (as Cunningham supposed the great Whig essayist to have been) with what would be thought of his work 'at Woburn, at Kensington, and in Berkeley Square,' may safely borrow details from the delineation of either artist.
Of portraits of Walpole (not in words) there is no lack. Besides that belonging to Mrs. Bedford, described at p. [11], there is the enamel by Zincke painted in 1745, which is reproduced at p. 71 of vol. i. of Cunningham's edition of the letters. There is another portrait of him by Nathaniel Hone, R.A., in the National Portrait Gallery. A more characteristic presentment than any of these is the little drawing by Müntz which shows his patron sitting in the Library at Strawberry, with the Thames and a passing barge seen through the open window. But his most interesting portraits are two which exhibit him in manhood and old age. One is the half-length by J. G. Eckardt which once hung in its black-and-gold frame in the Blue Bedchamber, near the companion pictures of Gray and Bentley.[194] Like these, it was 'from Vandyck,' that is to say, it was in a costume copied from that painter, and depicts the sitter in a laced collar and ruffles, leaning upon a copy of the Ædes Walpolianæ, with a view of part of the Gothic castle in the distance. The canvas bears at the back the date of 1754, so that it represents him at the age of seven-and-thirty. The shaven face is rather lean than thin, the forehead high, the brown hair brushed back and slightly curled. The eyes are dark, bright, and intelligent, and the small mouth wears a slight smile. The other, a drawing made for Samuel Lysons by Sir Thomas Lawrence, is that of a much older man, having been executed in 1796. The eyelids droop wearily, the thin lips have a pinched, mechanical urbanity, and the features are worn by years and ill-health. It was reproduced by T. Evans as a frontispiece for vol. i. of his works. There are other portraits by Reynolds, 1757 (which McArdell and Reading engraved), by Rosalba, Falconet, and Dance;[195] but it is sufficient to have indicated those mentioned above.
Of the Walpole of later years there are more descriptions than one, and among these, that given by Miss Hawkins, the daughter of the pompous author of the History of Music, is, if the most familiar, also the most graphic. Sir John Hawkins was Walpole's neighbour at Twickenham House, and the History is said to have been undertaken at Walpole's instance. Miss Hawkins's description is of Walpole as she recalled him before 1772. 'His figure,' she says, ' ... was not merely tall, but more properly long and slender to excess; his complexion, and particularly his hands, of a most unhealthy paleness.... His eyes were remarkably bright and penetrating, very dark and lively; his voice was not strong, but his tones were extremely pleasant, and, if I may so say, highly gentlemanly. I do not remember his common gait;[196] he always entered a room in that style of affected delicacy, which fashion had then made almost natural,—chapeau bras between his hands as if he wished to compress it, or under his arm, knees bent, and feet on tip-toe, as if afraid of a wet floor. His dress in visiting was most usually, in summer when I most saw him, a lavender suit, the waistcoat embroidered with a little silver, or of white silk worked in the tambour, partridge silk stockings, and gold buckles, ruffles and frill generally lace. I remember when a child, thinking him very much under-dressed if at any time, except in mourning, he wore hemmed cambric. In summer no powder, but his wig combed straight, and showing his very smooth pale forehead, and queued behind; in winter powder.'[197]
Pinkerton, who knew Walpole from 1784 until his death, and whose disappointment of a legacy is supposed, in places, to have mingled a more than justifiable amount of gall with his ink, has nevertheless left a number of interesting particulars respecting his habits and personal characteristics. They are too long to quote entire, but are, at the same time, too picturesque to be greatly compressed. He contradicts Miss Hawkins in one respect, for he says Walpole was 'short and slender,' but 'compact and neatly formed,'—an account which is confirmed by Müntz's full-length. 'When viewed from behind, he had somewhat of a boyish appearance, owing to the form of his person, and the simplicity of his dress.' None of his pictures, says Pinkerton, 'express the placid goodness of his eyes,[198] which would often sparkle with sudden rays of wit, or dart forth flashes of the most keen and intuitive intelligence. His laugh was forced and uncouth, and even his smile not the most pleasing.'