(516) Only son of Charles third Duke of Queensberry, who was shot by the accidental discharge of his pistol on his journey from Scotland to London, in company with his parents and newly- married wife, a daughter of the Earl of Hopetoun. Lady Mary Wortley thus alludes to this calamity in a letter to her daughter:—"The Duchess of Queensberry's misfortune would move compassion in the hardest heart; yet, all circumstances coolly considered, I think the young lady deserves most to be pitied, being left in the terrible situation of a young and, I suppose, rich widowhood; which is walking blindfold upon stilts amidst precipices, though perhaps as little sensible of her danger, as a child of a quarter old would be in the paws of a monkey leaping on the tiles of a house."-E.
221 Letter 113 To Richard Bentley, Esq. Strawberry Hill, Nov. 3, 1754.
I have finished all my parties, and am drawing towards a conclusion here: the Parliament meets in ten days: the House, I hear, will be extremely full—curiosity drawing as many to town as party used to do. The minister(517) in the house of Lords is a new sight in these days.
Mr. Chute and I have been at Mr. Barret's(518) at Belhouse; I never saw a place for which one did not wish, so totally void of faults. What he has done is in Gothic, and very true, though not up to the perfection of the committee. The hall is pretty; the great dining room hung with good family pictures; among which is his ancestor, the Lord Dacre who was hanged.(519) I remember when Mr. Barret was first initiated in the College of Arms by the present Dean of Exeter(520) at Cambridge, he was overjoyed at the first ancestor he put up, who was one of the murderers of Thomas Becket. The chimney-pieces, except one little miscarriage into total Ionic (he could not resist statuary and Siena marble), are all of a good King James the First Gothic. I saw the heronry so fatal to Po Yang, and told him that I was persuaded they were descended from Becket's assassin, and I hoped from my Lord Dacre too. He carried us to see the famous plantations and buildings of the last Lord Petre. They are the Brobdignag of the bad taste. The Unfinished house is execrable, massive, and split through and through: it stands on the brow of a hill, rather to seek for a prospect than to see one, and turns its back upon an outrageous avenue which is closed with a screen of tall trees, because he would not be at the expense of beautifying the black front Of his house. The clumps are gigantic, and very ill placed.
George Montagu and the Colonel have at last been here, and have screamed with approbation through the whole Cu-gamut. Indeed, the library is delightful. They went to the Vine, and approved as much. Do you think we wished for you? I carried down incense and mass-books, and we had most Catholic enjoyment Of the chapel. In the evenings, indeed, we did touch a card a little to please George—so much, that truly I have scarce an idea left that is not spotted with clubs, hearts, spades, and diamonds. There is a vote of the Strawberry committee for great embellishments to the chapel, of which it will not be long before you hear something. It will not be longer than the spring, I trust, before you see something of it. In the mean time, to rest your impatience, I have enclosed a scratch of mine which you are to draw out better, and try if you can give yourself a perfect idea of the place. All I can say is, that my sketch is at least more intelligible than Gray's was of Stoke, from which you made so like a picture.
Thank you much for the box of Guernsey lilies, which I have received. I have been packing up a few seeds, which have little merit but the merit they will have with you, that they come from the Vine and Strawberry. My chief employ in this part of the world, except surveying my library which has scarce any thing but the painting to finish, is planting at Mrs. Clive's, whither I remove all my superabundancies. I have lately planted the green lane, that leads from her garden to the common: "Well," said she, "when it is done, what shall we call it?"-" Why," said I, " what would you call it but Drury Lane?" I mentioned desiring some samples of your Swiss's(521 abilities: Mr. Chute and I even propose, if he should be tolerable, and would continue reasonable, to tempt him over hither, and make him work upon your designs-upon which, you know, it is not easy to make you work. If he improves upon your hands, do you think we shall purchase the fee-simple of him for so many years, as Mr. Smith did of Canaletti?(522) We will sell to the English. Can he paint perspectives, and cathedral-aisles, and holy glooms? I am sure you could make him paint delightful insides of the chapel at the Vine, and of the library here. I never come up the stairs without reflecting how different it is from its primitive state, when my Lady Townshend all the way she came up the stairs, cried out, "Lord God! Jesus! what a house! It is just such a house as a parson's, where the children lie at the feet of the bed!" I cant say that to-day it puts me much in mind of another speech of my lady's, "That it would be a very pleasant place, if Mrs. Clive's face did not rise upon it and make it so hot!" The sun and Mrs. Clive seem gone for the winter.
The West Indian war has thrown me into a new study: I read nothing but American voyages, and histories of plantations and settlements. Among all the Indian nations, I have contracted a particular intimacy with the Ontaouanoucs, a people with whom I beg you will be acquainted: they pique themselves upon speaking the purest dialect. How one should delight in the grammar and dictionary of their Crusca! My only fear is, that if any of them are taken prisoners, General Braddock is not a kind of man to have proper attentions to so polite a people; I am even apprehensive that he would damn them, and order them to be scalped, in the very worst plantation-accent. I don't know whether you know that none of the people of that immense continent have any labials: they tell you que c'est ridicule to shut the lips in order to speak. Indeed, I was as barbarous as any polite nation in the world, in supposing that there was nothing worth knowing among these charming savages. They are in particular great orators, with this little variation from British eloquence, that at the end of every important paragraph they make a present; whereas we expect to receive one. They begin all their answers with recapitulating what has been said to them; and their method for this is, the respondent gives a little stick to each of the bystanders, who is, for his share, to remember such a paragraph of the speech that is to be answered. You will wonder that I should have given the preference to the Ontaouanoucs, when there is a much more extraordinary nation to the north of Canada, who have but one leg, and p— from behind their ear; but I own I had rather converse for any time with people who speak like Mr. Pitt, than with a nation of jugglers, who are only fit to go about the country, under the direction of Taafe and Montagu.(523) Their existence I do not doubt; they are recorded by P`ere Charlevoix, in his much admired history of New France, in which there are such outrageous legends of miracles for the propagation of the Gospel, that his fables in natural history seem strict veracity.
Adieu! You write to me as seldom as if you were in an island where the Duke of Newcastle was sole minister, parties at an end, and where every thing had done happening. Yours ever.
P. S. I have just seen in the advertisements that there are
arrived two new volumes of Madame de S`evign`e's Letters.
Adieu, my American studies!—adieu, even my favourite
Ontaouanoucs!
(517) The Duke of Newcastle.