There is some appearance of heart, too, in his account of Lady Waldegrave’s sufferings on the death of her husband. She was a beautiful woman; and Walpole seems to have been really kind to her.
‘I had not risen from table, when I received an express from Lady Betty Waldegrave, to tell me that a sudden change had happened; that they had given him James’s powders, but that they feared it was too late; and that he probably would be dead before I could come to my niece, for whose sake she begged I would return immediately. I was indeed too late! Too late for every thing.—Late as it was given, the powder vomited him even in the agonies. Had I had power to direct, he should never have quitted James:—But these are vain regrets!—Vain to recollect how particularly kind he, who was kind to everybody, was to me! I found Lady Waldegrave at my brother’s. She weeps without ceasing; and talks of his virtues and goodness to her in a manner that distracts one. My brother bears this mortification with more courage than I could have expected from his warm passions: but nothing struck me more than to see my rough savage Swiss, Louis, in tears as he opened my chaise.—I have a bitter scene to come. To-morrow morning I carry poor Lady Waldegrave to Strawberry. Her fall is great, from that adoration and attention that he paid her,—from that splendour of fortune, so much of which dies with him,—and from that consideration which rebounded to her from the great deference which the world had for his character. Visions, perhaps. Yet who could expect that they would have passed away even before that fleeting thing, her beauty!’
This lady seems to have been afflicted nearly beyond the hope of consolation. Nevertheless, she married again. It is not a bad sign, we believe, when a widow sets in with a good wet grief: she has the better chance of a fine day. Philosophers assert, indeed, that it is possible for a woman to cry a sorrow clean out:—and we must confess, we have now and then heard of such things.
We must draw to a close now with our quotations—though we wish we had room for more. For the author is exceedingly amusing in his attempt at tracing his descent from Chaucer;—in his remarks on old and young kings,—in his practical and prospective speculations on gout in the feet and stomach,—and in his picture of himself, ‘with sweet peas stuck in his hair!’ We should have liked, too, to extract a bon mot or two of George Selwyn, whose love of puns and executions was equally insatiable; but they stick too fast in the looser texture of his historian, to be disengaged with any moderate labour. The following little passage is very pleasingly written.
‘For what are we taking Belleisle?—I rejoiced at the little loss we had on landing: For the glory, I leave it to the Common Council. I am very willing to leave London to them too, and do pass half the week at Strawberry, where my two passions, lilacs and nightingales, are in full bloom. I spent Sunday as if it were Apollo’s birth-day; Gray and Mason were with me, and we listened to the nightingales till one o’clock in the morning. Gray has translated two noble incantations from the Lord knows who, a Danish Gray, who lived the Lord knows when. They are to be enchased in a history of English Bards, which Mason and he are writing, but of which the former has not written a word yet, and of which the latter, if he rides Pegasus at his usual foot pace, will finish the first page two years hence!’
We cannot understand the Editor’s drift in leaving so many names unprinted. The respect for the living has been carried, we think, to a most awful extent: for names are continually left blank, which would visit their sins, if at all, upon the third or fourth generation. In many instances, too, the allusions are as plain as if the names had been written at full length. At p. 185, for example, we perceive a delicate attention of this sort to the family of Northumberland,—though few readers can be so respectfully uninformed as to be at all perplexed by the suppression. Chevy Chase has not left the Douglas and the Percy in such comfortable security. The mystical passage is as follows.
‘Lady R—— P—— pushed her on the birth-night against a bench. The Dutchess of Grafton asked if it was true that Lady R—— kicked her? “Kick me, Madam! when did you ever hear of a P——y that took a kick?” I can tell you another anecdote of that house, that will not divert you less. Lord March making them a visit this summer at Alnwic Castle, my Lord received him at the gate and said, “I believe, my Lord, this is the first time that ever a Douglas and a P——y met here in friendship.” Think of this from a Smithson to a true Douglas.’
The beauty of the thing too, is, that Smithson (which alone could give offence) is printed with all the letters—while Percy is delicately left in initials and finals.
There are some verses in the book, of which, out of regard to the author’s memory, we shall say nothing. They are very apparently ‘by a person of quality.’ Pope, we think, has written something like them under that signature—which rather takes from their originality.——But we now take our final leave of this lively volume, with our usual protest against the enormous size into which this collection has been distended. Book-sellers now-a-days only study how to construct large paper houses for their little families of letterpress,—and never think of the taxation to which they thus subject their readers. These Letters might have been comfortably accommodated in a comely little octavo, and sold at a reasonable price: Instead of which, they are put forth in a good stiff quarto,—and are, to use old Marall’s phrase, ‘very chargeable.’ We hope soon to see them in a more accessible shape.