23 Letter 4 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, May 17, 1749.
We have not yet done diverting ourselves: the night before last the Duke of Richmond gave a firework; a codicil to the peace. He bought the rockets and wheels that remained in the pavilion which miscarried, and took the pretence of the Duke of Modena being here to give a charming entertainment. The garden(30) lies with a slope down to the Thames, on which were lighters, from whence were thrown up, after a concert of water-music, a great number of rockets. Then from boats on every side were discharged water-rockets and fires of that kind; and then the wheels Which were ranged along the rails of the terrace were played off; and the whole concluded with the illumination of a pavilion on the top of the slope, of two pyramids on each side, and of the whole length of the balustrade to the water. You can't conceive a prettier sight; the garden filled with every body of fashion, the Duke, the Duke of Modena, and the two black Princes. The King and Princess Emily were in their barge under the terrace; the river was covered with boats, and the shores and adjacent houses with crowds. The Duke of Modena played afterwards at brag, and there was a fine supper for him and the foreigners, of whom there are numbers here; it is grown as much the fashion to travel hither as to France or Italy. Last week there was a vast assembly and music at Bedford-house for this Modenese; and to-day he is set out to receive his doctor's degree at the two Universities. His appearance is rather better than it used to be, for, instead of wearing his wig down to his nose to hide the humour in his face, he has taken to paint his forehead white, which, however, with the large quantity of red that he always wears on the rest of his face, makes him ridiculous enough. I cannot say his manner is more polished; Princess Emily asked him if he did not find the Duke much fatter than when he was here before? He replied, "En verit`e il n'est pas si effroiable qu'on m'avoit dit." She commended his diamonds; he said, "Les v`otres sont bien petits." As I had been graciously received at his court, I went into his box the first night at the Opera: the first thing he did was to fall asleep; but as I did not choose to sit waiting his reveil in the face of the whole theatre, I waked him, and would discourse him: but here I was very unlucky, for of the only two persons I could recollect at his court to inquire after, one has been dead these four years, and the other, he could not remember any such man. However, Sabbatini, his secretary of state, flattered me extremely: told me he found me beaucoup mieux, and that I was grown very fat-I fear, I fear it was flattery! Eight years don't improve one,-and for my corpulence, if I am grown fat, what must I have been in my Modenese days!
I told you we were to have another jubilee masquerade: there was one by the King's command for Miss Chudleigh, tire maid of honour, with whom our gracious monarch has a mind to believe himself in love,—so much in love, that at one of the booths he gave her a fairing for her watch, which cost him five-and-thirty guineas,—actually disbursed out of his privy purse, and not charged on the civil list. Whatever you may think of it, this is a more magnificent present than the cabinet which the late King of Poland sent to the fair Countess Konismark, replete with all kinds of baubles and ornaments, and ten thousand ducats in one of the drawers. I hope some future Hollinshed or Stowe will acquaint posterity "that five-and-thirty guineas were an immense sum in those days!"
You are going to see one of our court-beauties in Italy, my Lady Rochford:(31) they are setting Out on their embassy to Turin. She is large, but very handsome, with great delicacy and address. All the Royals have been in love with her; but the Duke was so in all the forms, till she was a little too much pleased with her conquest of his brother-in-law the Prince of Hesse. You will not find much in the correspondence of her husband: his person is good, and he will figure well enough as an ambassador; better as a husband where cicisb`es don't expect to be molested. The Duke is not likely to be so happy with his new passion, Mrs. Pitt,(32) who, besides being in love with her husband, whom you remember (,lady Mary Wortley's George Pitt), is going to Italy with him, I think you will find her one of the most glorious beauties you ever saw. You are to have another pair of our beauties, the Princess Borghese's, Mr Greville(33) and his wife, who was the pretty Fanny M'Cartney.
Now I am talking scandal to you, and court-scandal, I must tell you that Lord Conway's sister, Miss Jenny, is dead suddenly with eating lemonade at the last subscription masquerade.,(34) It is not quite unlucky for her: she had outlived the Prince's love and her own face, and nothing remained but her love and her person, which was exceedingly bad.
The graver part of the world, who have not been given up to rockets and masquing, are amused with a book of Lord Bolinbroke's, just published, but written long ago. It is composed of three letters, the first to Lord Cornbury on the Spirit of Patriotism; and two others to Mr. lyttelton, (but with neither of their names,) on the Idea of a patriot King, and the State of Parties on the late King's accession. Mr. Lyttelton had sent him word, that he begged nothing might be inscribed to him that was to reflect on Lord Orford, for that he was now leagued with all Lord Orford's friends: a message as abandoned as the book itself: but indeed there is no describing the impudence with which that set of people unsay what they have been saying all their lives,-I beg their pardons, I mean the honesty with which they recant! Pitt told me coolly, that he had read this book formerly, when he admired Lord Bolinbroke more than he does now. The book by no means answered my expectation: the style, which is his fort, is very fine: the deduction and impossibility of drawing a consequence from what he is saying, as bad and obscure as in his famous Dissertation on Parties: Von must know the man, to guess his meaning. Not to mention the absurdity and impracticability of this kind of system, there is a long speculative dissertation on the origin of government, and even that greatly stolen from other writers, and that all on a sudden dropped, while he hurries into his own times, and then preaches (he of all men!) on the duty of preserving decency! The last treatise would not impose upon an historian of five years old: he tells Mr. Lyttelton, that he may take it from him, that there was no settled scheme at the end of the Queen's reign to introduce the Pretender; and he gives this excellent reason: because, if there had been, he must have known it; and another reason as ridiculous, that no traces of such a scheme have since come to light. What, no traces in all cases of himself, Atterbury, the Duke of Ormond, Sir William Windham, and others! and is it not known that the moment the queen was expired, Atterbury proposed to go in his lawn sleeves and proclaim the Pretender at Charing-cross, but Bolinbroke's heart failing him, Atterbury swore, "There was the best cause in Europe lost for want of spirit!" He imputes Jacobitism singly to Lord Oxford, whom he exceedingly abuses; and who, so far from being suspected, was thought to have fallen into disgrace with that faction for refusing to concur with them. On my father he is much less severe than I expected; and in general, so obliquely, that hereafter he will not be perceived to aim at him, though at this time one knows so much what was at his heart, that it directs one to his meaning.
But there is a preface to this famous book, which makes much more noise than the work itself. It seems, Lord Bolinbroke had originally trusted Pope with the copy, to have half-a-dozen printed for particular friends. Pope, who loved money infinitely beyond any friend, got fifteen hundred Copies(35) printed privately, intending to outlive Bolingbroke and make great advantage of them; and not only did this, but altered the copy at his Pleasure, and even made different alterations in different copies. Where Lord Bolingbroke had strongly flattered their common friend lyttelton, Pope suppressed the panegyric: where, in compliment to Pope, he had softened the satire on Pope's great friend, Lord Oxford, Pope reinstated the abuse. The first part of this transaction is recorded in the preface; the two latter facts are reported by Lord Chesterfield and Lyttelton, the latter of whom went to Bolingbroke to ask how he had forfeited his good opinion. In short, it is comfortable to us people of moderate virtue to hear these demigods, and patriots, and philosophers, inform the world of each other's villanies.(36) What seems to make Lord Bolinbroke most angry, and I suppose does, is Pope's having presumed to correct his work. As to his printing so many copies, it certainly was a compliment, and the more profit (which however could not be immense) he expected to make, the greater opinion he must have conceived of the merit of the work: if one had a mind to defend Pope, should not one ask,(37) if any body ever blamed Virgil's executors for not burning the AEneid, as he ordered them? Warburton, I fear, does design to defend Pope: and my uncle Horace to answer the book; his style, which is the worst in the world, must be curious, in opposition to the other. But here comes full as bad a part of the story as any: Lord Bolinbroke, to buy himself out of the abuse in the Duke of Marlborough's life, or to buy himself into the supervisal of it, gave those letters to Mallet, who is writing this life for a legacy in the old Duchess's will, (and which, with much humour, she gave, desiring it might not be written in verse,) and Mallet sold them to the bookseller for a hundred and fifty pounds. Mallet had many obligations to Pope, no disobligations to him, and was one of his grossest flatterers; witness the sonnet on his supposed death, printed in the notes to the Dunciad. I was this morning told an anecdote from the Dorset family that is no bad collateral evidence of the Jacobitism Of the Queen'S four last years. They wanted to get Dover Castle into their hands, and sent down Prior to the present Duke of Dorset, who loved him, and probably was his brother,(38) to persuade him to give it up. He sent Prior back with great an(-,er, and in three weeks was turned out of the government himself but it is idle to produce proofs; as idle as to deny the scheme.
I have just been with your brother Gal. who has been laid up these two days with the gout in his ankle; an absolute professed gout in all the forms, and with much pain. Mr. Chute is out of town; when he returns, I shall set him upon your brother to reduce him to abstinence and health. Adieu!
(30 At Whitehall.
(31) Daughter of Edward Young' Esq. and wife of William, Earl of Rochford. She had been maid of honour to the Princess of Wales.