On our way we saw Kiveton, an ugly neglected seat of the Duke of Leeds, with noble apartments and several good portraits! I went to Welbeck. It is impossible to describe the bales of Cavendishes, harleys, Holleses, Veres, and Ogles: every chamber is tapestried with them; nay, and with ten thousand other fat morsels; all their histories inscribed; all their arms, crests, devices, sculptured on chimneys of various English marbles in ancient forms (and, to say truth, most of them ugly). Then such a Gothic hall, with pendent fretwork in imitation of the old, and with a chimney-piece extremely like mine in the library. Such water-colour pictures! such historic fragments! In short, such and so much of every thing I like, that my party thought they should never get me away again. There is Prior's portrait, and the column and Varelst's flower on which he wrote; and the authoress Duchess of Newcastle in a theatric habit, which she generally wore, and, consequently,, looking as mad as the present Duchess; and dukes of the same name, looking as foolish as the present Duke; and Lady Mary Wortley, drawn as an authoress, with rather better pretensions; and cabinets and glasses wainscoted with the Greendale oak, which was so large that an old steward wisely cut a way through it to make a triumphal passage for his lord and lady on their wedding, and only killed it! But it is impossible to tell you@ half what there is. The poor woman who is just dead passed her whole widowhood, except in doing ten thousand right and just things, in collecting and monumenting the portraits and relics of all the great families from which she descended, and which centred in her. The Duke and Duchess of Portland are expected there to-morrow, and we saw dozens of cabinets and coffers with the seals not yet taken off What treasures to revel over! The horseman Duke's man`ege is converted into a lofty stable,. and there is still a grove or two of magnificent oaks that have escaped all these great families, though the last Lord Oxford cut down above an hundred thousand pounds' worth. The place has little pretty, distinct from all these reverend circumstances.
(707) Hatfield, the seat of the Earl of Salisbury, was exchanged by King James I. with Robert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury, for Theobald's, in the same county. Evelyn visited Hatfield in March 1643: "I went," he says, "to see my Lord Salisbury's palace at Hatfield, where the most considerable rarity, besides the house," (inferior to few then in England for its architecture,) " was the garden and vineyard, rarely well-watered and planted. They also showed us the picture of Secretary Cecil in mosaic work, very well done by some Italian hand."-E.
(708) built by the great Lord Burleigh, lord treasurer to Queen Elizabeth, who visited him at this place, and where several articles still remain which had belonged to her.-E.
(709) The episcopal palace of the Bishops of Lincoln.-E.
(710) "August 14, 1654.-Passed through Pontefract; the castle, famous for many guests, both of late and ancient times, and the death of that unhappy king murdered in it (Richard II.), was now demolishing by the rebels: it stands on a mount, and makes a goodly show at a distance." Evelyn, vol. ii. p. 88.-E.
(711) Kippax Park.
(712) The chapel upon Wakefield bridge is said to have been built upon the spot where Edmund Earl of Rutland, the youngest son of Richard Duke of York, and brother of Edward IV. and Richard III. was killed by John Lord Clifford, surnamed the Butcher.-E.
(713) The magnificent structure here described by Walpole was burnt down in 1761.-E.
339 Letter 195 To Sir Horace Mann. Strawberry Hill, Sept. 19, 1756.
I promised you an account of your brother as soon as he should return from Bristol, but I deferred it for a week, till I could see him reposed and refreshed, and could judge more fairly. I do think him much mended; I do not say recovered. H e looks with colour again, and has (got a little flesh, and is able to do much more than before he went. My Lord Radnor thinks he has a great appetite; I did not perceive it when he dined with me. His breath is better, though sometimes troublesome, and he brought back a great cough, which, however, is much abated. I think him so much better, that I ventured to talk very freely to him upon his own state; and though I allowed him mended, I told him plainly that I was convinced his case would be irrecoverable, if he did not go abroad. At times he swears he will, if he falls back at all; at others he will not listen to it, but pleads the confusion of his affairs. I wish there is not another more insurmountable cause, the fury, who not only torments him in this world, but is hurrying him into the next. I have not been able to prevail with him to pass one day or two here with me in tranquility. I see his life at stake, I feel for him, for you, for myself'; I am desperate about it, and yet know no remedy! I can only assure you that I will not see it quietly; nor would any thing check me from going the greatest lengths with your sister, whom I think effectually, though perhaps not maliciously, a most wicked being, but that I always find it recoils upon your brother. Alas! what signifies whether she murders him from a bad heart or a bad temper?