At length the insanity and recklessness displayed by his nephew—the handsome martial George—induced poor Horace to take affairs in his own hands. His reflections, on his paying a visit to Houghton to look after the property there, are pathetically expressed:—
'Here I am again at Houghton,' he writes in March, 1761, 'and alone; in this spot where (except two hours last month) I have not been in sixteen years. Think what a crowd of reflections!... Here I am probably for the last time of my life: every clock that strikes, tells me I am an hour nearer to yonder church—that church into which I have not yet had courage to enter; where lies that mother on whom I doated, and who doated on me! There are the two rival mistresses of Houghton, neither of whom ever wished to enjoy it. There, too, is he who founded its greatness—to contribute to whose fall Europe was embroiled; there he sleeps in quiet and dignity, while his friend and his foe—rather his false ally and real enemy—Newcastle and Bath, are exhausting the dregs of their pitiful lives in squabbles and pamphlets.
When he looked at the pictures—that famous Houghton collection—the surprise of Horace was excessive. Accustomed to see nothing elsewhere but daubs, he gazed with ecstasy on them. 'The majesty of Italian ideas,' he says, 'almost sinks before the warm nature of Italian colouring! Alas! don't I grow old?'
As he lingered in the gallery, with mingled pride and sadness, a party arrived to see the house—a man and three women in riding-dresses—who 'rode post' through the apartments. 'I could not,' he adds, 'hurry before them fast enough; they were not so long in seeing the whole gallery as I could have been in one room, to examine what I knew by heart. I remember formerly being often diverted with this kind of seers; they come, ask what such a room is called in which Sir Robert lay, write it down, admire a lobster or a cabbage in a Market Piece, dispute whether the last room was green or purple, and then hurry to the inn, for fear the fish should be over-dressed. How different my sensations! not a picture here but recalls a history; not one but I remembered in Downing Street, or Chelsea, where queens and crowds admired them, though seeing them as little as these travellers![5]
After tea he strolled into the garden. They told him it was now called a pleasure-ground. To Horace it was a scene of desolation—a floral Nineveh. 'What a dissonant idea of pleasure!—those groves, those allées, where I have passed so many charming moments, were now stripped up or overgrown—many fond paths I could not unravel, though with an exact clue in my memory. I met two gamekeepers, and a thousand hares! In the days when all my soul was tuned to pleasure and vivacity (and you will think perhaps it is far from being out of tune yet), I hated Houghton and its solitude; yet I loved this garden, as now, with many regrets, I love Houghton—Houghton, I know not what to call it—a monument of grandeur or ruin!'
Although he did not go with the expectation of finding a land flowing with milk and honey, the sight of all this ruin long saddened his thoughts. All was confusion, disorder, debts, mortgages, sales, pillage, villainy, waste, folly, and madness. The nettles and brambles in the park were up to his shoulders; horses had been turned into the garden, and banditti lodged in every cottage.
The perpetuity of livings that came up to the very park-palings had been sold, and the farms let at half their value. Certainly, if Houghton were bought by Sir Robert Walpole with public money, that public was now avenged.
The owner of this ruined property had just stemmed the torrent; but the worst was to come. The pictures were sold, and to Russia they went.
Whilst thus harassed by family misfortunes, other annoyances came. The mournful story of Chatterton's fate was painfully mixed up with the tenour of Horace Walpole's life.
The gifted and unfortunate Thomas Chatterton was born at Bristol in 1752. Even from his birth fate seemed to pursue him, for he was a posthumous son: and if the loss of a father in the highest ranks of life be severely felt, how much more so is it to be deplored in those which are termed the working classes!