Your letter certainly stopped to drink somewhere by the way, I suppose with the hearty hostess at the Windmill; for, though written on Wednesday, it arrived here but this morning: it could not have travelled more deliberately in the Speaker's body-coach. I am concerned, because, your fishmonger not being arrived, I fear you have stayed for my answer. The fish(498) are apprised that they are to ride over to Park-place, and are ready booted and spurred; and the moment their pad arrives, they shall set forth. I would accompany them on a pillion if I were not waiting for Lady Mary,(499) who has desired to bring a poor sick girl here for a few days to try the air. You know how courteous a knight I am to distressed virgins of five years old, and that my castle-gates are always open to them. You will, I am sure, accept this excuse for some days: and as soon as ever my hospitality is completed, I will be ready to obey your summons, though you should send a water-pot for me. I am in no fear of not finding you in perfect verdure; for the sun, I believe, is gone a great way off to some races or other, where his horses are to run for the King's plate: we have not heard of him in this neighbourhood. Adieu!
(497) Gold fish.
(499) Lady Mary Churchill.
215 Letter 108 To Sir Richard Bentley, Esq. Strawberry Hill, July 9, 1754.
I only write a letter for company to the enclosed one. Mr. Chute is returned from the Vine, and gives you a thousand thanks for your letter; and if ever he writes, I don't doubt but it will be to you. Gray and he come hither to-morrow, and I am promised Montagu and the Colonel(500) in about a fortnight—How naturally my pen adds, but when does Mr. Bentley come! I am sure Mr. Wicks wants to ask me the same question every day—"Speak to it, Horatio!" Sir Charles Williams brought his eldest daughter hither last week: she is one of your real admirers, and, without its being proposed to her, went on the bowling-green, and drew a perspective view of the castle from the angle, in a manner to deserve the thanks of the Committee.(501) She is to be married to my Lord Essex in a Week,(502) and I begged she would make you overseer of the works at Cashiobury. Sir Charles told me, that on the Duke of Bedford's wanting a Chinese house at Woburn, he said, "Why don't your grace speak to mr. Walpole? He has the prettiest plan in the world for one." —"Oh," replied the Duke, "but then it would be too dear!" I hope this was a very great economy, or I am sure ours would be very great extravagance: only think of a plan for little Strawberry giving the alarm to thirty thousand pounds a year! My dear sir, it is time to retrench! Pray send me 'a slice of granite(503) no bigger than a Naples biscuit.
The monument to my mother is at last erected; it puts me in mind of the manner of interring the Kings of France: when the reigning one dies, the last before him is buried. Will you believe that I have not yet seen the tomb? None of my acquaintance were in town, and I literally had not courage to venture alone among the Westminster-boys at the Abbey: they are as formidable to me as the ship-carpenters at Portsmouth. I think I have showed you the inscription, and therefore I don't send it yet].
I was reading t'other day the Life of Colonel Codrington,(504) who founded the library at All Souls - he left a large estate for the propagation of the Gospel, and ordered that three hundred negroes should constantly be constantly employed upon it. Did one ever hear a more truly Christian charity, than keeping a perpetuity of three hundred slaves to look after the Gospel's estate? How could one intend a religious legacy, and miss the disposition of that estate for delivering three hundred negroes from the most shocking slavery imaginable? Must devotion be twisted into the unfeeling interests of trade? I must revenge myself for the horror this fact has given me, and tell you a story of Gideon.(505) He breeds his children Christians: he had a mind to know what proficience his son had made in his new religion; "So," says he, "I began, and asked him, who made him; He said 'God.' I then asked him, who redeemed him? He replied very readily, 'Christ.' Well, then I was at the end of my interrogatories, and did not know what other question to put to him. I said, Who—who—I did not know what to say; at last I said, Who gave you that hat? 'The Holy Ghost,' said the boy." Did you ever hear a better catechism? The great cry against Nugent at Bristol was for having voted for the Jew-bill: one old woman said, "What, must we be represented by a Jew and an Irishman?" He replied with great quickness, "My good dame, if you will step aside with me into a corner, I will show you that I am not a Jew, and that I am an Irishman."
The Princess(506) has breakfasted at the long Sir Thomas Robinson's at Whitehall; my Lady Townshend will never forgive it. The second dowager of Somerset(507) is gone to know whether all her letters from the living to the dead have been received. Before I bid you good-night, I must tell you of an admirable curiosity: I was looking over one of our antiquarian volumes, and in the description of Leeds is an account of Mr. Thoresby's famous museum there-what do you think is one of the rarities?—a knife taken from one of the Mohocks! Whether tradition is infallible or not, as you say, I think so authentic a relic will make their history indisputable. Castles, Chinese houses, tombs, negroes, Jews, Irishmen, princesses, and Mohocks—what a farrago do I send you! I trust that a letter from England to Jersey has an imposing air, and that you don't presume to laugh at any thing that comes from your mother island. Adieu!
(500) Charles Montagu.
(501) Mr. Walpole, in these letters, calls the Strawberry committee, those of his friends who had assisted in the plans and Gothic ornaments of Strawberry Hill.