128 Letter 7 To George Montagu Esq. King's College, March 20, 1737.
Dear George, The first paragraph in my letter must be in answer to the last in yours; though I should be glad to make you the return you ask, by waiting on you myself. 'Tis not in my power, from more circumstances than One, which are needless to tell you, to accompany you and Lord Conway(155) to Italy: you add to the pleasure it would give me, by asking it so kindly. You I am infinitely obliged to, as I was capable, my dear George, of making you forget for a minute that you don't propose stirring from the dear place you are now in. Poppies indeed are the chief flowers in love nosegays, but they seldom bend towards the lady; at least not till the other flowers have been gathered. Prince Volscius's boots were made of love-leather, and honour-leather; instead of honour, some people's are made of friendship; but since you have been so good to me as to draw on this, I can almost believe you are equipped for travelling farther than Rheims. 'Tis no little inducement to make me wish myself in France, that I hear gallantry is not left off there; that you may be polite and not be thought awkward for it. You know the pretty men of the age in England use the women with no more deference than they do their coach- horses, and have not half the regard for them that they have for themselves. The little freedoms you tell me you use take off from formality, by avoiding which ridiculous extreme we are dwindled into the other barbarous one, rusticity. If you had been at Paris, I should have inquired about the new Spanish ambassadress, who, by the accounts we have thence, at her first audience of the queen, sat down with her at a distance that suited respect and conversation. Adieu, dear George, Yours most heartily.
(156) Francis Seymour Conway, son of Francis Seymour, Lord Conway, and Charlotte, daughter of John Shorter, Esq. [Sister to Lady Walpole, the mother of Horace, and with her co-heiress of John Shorter, Esq. lord-mayor of London in 1688, who died during his mayoralty, from a fall off his horse, under Newgate, as he was going to proclaim Bartholomew Fair. Lady Walpole died in the August of the year in which the present letter was written, and Sir Robert soon afterwards married @Miss Skerrit. Walpole's well-known fondness for his mother is alluded to by Gray, in a letter to West, dated 22d August, 1737:-" But while I write to you, I hear the bad news of lady Walpole's death, on Saturday night last. Forgive me if the thought of what my poor Horace must feel on that account obliges me to have done.">[
129 Letter 8 To George Montagu, Esq. Christopher Inn, Eton.
The Christopher. Lord! how great I used to think anybody just landed at the Christopher! But here are no boys for me to send for-here I am, like Noah, just returned into his old world again, with all sorts of queer feels about me. By the way, the clock strikes the old cracked sound-I recollect so much, and remember so little-and want to play about-and am so afraid of my playfellows-and am ready to shirk Ashton and can't help making fun of myself-and envy a dame over the way, that has just locked in her boarders, and is going to sit down in a little hot parlour to a very bad supper, so comfortably! and I could be so jolly a dog if I did not fat, which, by the way, is the first time the word was ever applicable to me. In short, I should be out of all bounds if I was to tell you half I feel, how young again I am one minute, and how old the next. But do come and feel with me, when you will-to-morrow-adieu! If I don't compose myself a little more before Sunday morning, when Ashton is to preach, I shall certainly be in a bill for laughing at church; but how to belt it, to see him in the pulpit, when the last time I saw him here, was standing up funking at a conduit to be catechised. Good night; yours.
1739
130 Letter 9
To Richard West, Esq.
Paris, April 21, N. S. 1739. (157)
Dear West, You figure us in a set of pleasures, which, believe me, we do not find; cards and eating are so universal, that they absorb all variation of pleasures. The operas, indeed, are much frequented three times a week; but to me they would be a greater penance than eating maigre: their music resembles a gooseberry tart as much as it does harmony. We have not yet been at the Italian playhouse; scarce any one goes there. Their best amusement, and which in some parts, beats ours, is the comedy three or four of the actors excel any we have: but then to this nobody goes, if it is not one of the fashionable nights; and then they go, be the play good or bad-except on Moli`ere's nights, whose pieces they are quite weary of. Gray and I have been at the Avare to-night; I cannot at all commend their performance of it. Last night I was in the Place de Louis le Grand (a regular octagon, uniform, and the houses handsome, though not so large as Golden Square), to see what they reckoned one of the finest burials that ever was in France. It was the Duke de Tresmes, governor of Paris and marshal of France. It began on foot from his palace to his parish-church, and from thence in coaches to the opposite end of Paris, to b interred in the church of the Celestins, where is his family-vault. About a week ago we happened to see the grave digging, as we went to see the church, which is old and small., but fuller of fine ancient monuments than any, except St. Denis, which we saw on the road, and excels Westminster; for the windows are all ' painted in mosaic, and the tombs as fresh and well preserved as if they were of yesterday. In the Celestins' church is a votive column to Francis II., which says, that it is one assurance of his being immortalised, to have had the martyr Mary Stuart for his wife. After this long digression, I return to the burial, which was a most vile thing. A long procession of flambeaux and friars; no plumes, trophies, banners, led horses, scutcheons, or open chariots; nothing but friars, white, black, and grey, with all their trumpery. This goodly ceremony began at nine at night, and did not finish till three this morning; for, each church they passed, they stopped for a hymn and holy water. By the bye, some of these choice monks, who watched the body while it lay in state, fell asleep one night, and let the tapers catch fire of the rich velvet mantle lined with ermine and powdered with gold flower-de-luces, which melted the lead coffin, and burnt off the feet of the deceased before it awakened them. The French love show; but there is a meanness runs through it all. At the house where I stood to see this procession, the room was hung with crimson damask and gold, and the windows were mended in ten or a dozen places with paper. At dinner they give you three courses; but a third of the dishes is patched up with sallads, butter, puff-paste, or some such miscarriage of a dish. None, but Germans, wear fine clothes; but their coaches are tawdry enough for the wedding of Cupid and Psyche. You would-laugh extremely at their signs: some live at the Y grec, some at Venus's toilette, and some at the sucking cat. YOU would not easily guess their notions of honour: I'll tell you one: it is very dishonourable for any gentleman not to be 'in @he army, or in the king's service as they call it, and it is no dishonour to keep public gaming-houses: there are at least an hundred and fifty people of the first quality in Paris who live by it. You may go into their houses at all hours of the night, And find hazard, pharaoh, etc. The men who keep the hazard tables at the duke de Gesvres' pay him twelve guineas each night for the privilege. Even the princesses of the blood are dirty enough to have shares in the banks kept at their houses. We have seen two or three of them; but they are not young, nor remarkable but for wearing their red of a deeper dye than other women, though all use it extravagantly.
The weather is still so bad, that we have not made any excursions to see Versailles and the environs, not even walked in the Tuileries; but we have seen almost every thing else that is worth seeing in Paris, though that is very considerable. They beat us vastly in buildings, both in number and magnificence. The tombs of Richelieu and Mazarin at the Sorbonne and the College de Quatre Nations are wonderfully fine, especially the former. We have seen very little of the people themselves, who are not inclined to be propitious to strangers, especially if they do not play and speak the language readily. There are many English here: Lord Holderness, Conway(158) and Clinton, (159) and Lord George Bentinck; (160) Mr. Brand,(161) Offley, Frederic, Frampton, Bonfoy, etc. Sir John Cotton's son and a Mr. Vernon of Cambridge passed through Paris last week. We shall stay here about a fortnight longer, and then go to Rheims with Mr. Conway for two or three months. When you have nothing else to do, we shall be glad to hear from you; and any news. If we did not remember there was such a place as England, we should know nothing of it: the French never mention it, unless it happens to be in one of their proverbs! Adieu! Yours ever.
To-morrow we go to the Cid. They have no farces but petites pieces like our "Devil to Pay."