"As beams of warm imagination play, The memory's faint traces melt away. See Prose Works, vol. xix. p. 201.-E.

(109) Pope alludes to this personal defect in his lines "On a certain Lady at court:"

"I know a thing that's most uncommon; (Envy be silent, and attend!) I know a reasonable woman, handsome and witty, yet a friend. Not warp'd by passion, awed by rumour; Not grave through pride, or gay through folly— An equal mixture of good humour And sensible, soft melancholy. 'Has she no faults then,' (Envy says,) 'Sir?' 'Yes, she has one, I must aver; When all the world conspires to praise her— The woman's deaf, and does not hear.'"-E.

(110) The same thing has happened to me by books. A passage lately read has recalled some other formerly perused; and both together have opened to me, or cleared up some third fact, which neither separately would have expounded.

(111) Lady Suffolk died in July, 1767.-E.

(112) Lady Suffolk was early affected with deafness. Cheselden, the surgeon, then in favour at court, persuaded her that he had hopes of being able to cure deafness by some operation on the drum of the ear, and offered to try the experiment on a condemned convict then in Newgate, who was deaf. If the man could be pardoned, he would try it; and, if he succeeded, would practise the same cure on her ladyship. She obtained the man's pardon, who was cousin to Cheselden, who had feigned that pretended discovery to save his relation-and no more was heard of the experiment. The man saved his ear too-but Cheselden was disgraced at court.

(113) Lady Suffolk formally retired from court in 1734, and in the following year married the Honourable George Berkeley, youngest son of the second Earl of Berkeley. He was Master of St. Catherine's, in the Tower, and had served in two parliaments as member for Dover. He died in 1746.-E.

(114) While the Queen dressed, prayers used to be read in the outward room, where hung a naked Venus. Mrs. Selwyn, bedchamber-woman in waiting, was one day ordered to bid the chaplain, Dr. Maddox, afterwards Bishop of Worcester, begin the service. He said archly, "And a very proper altar-piece is here, Madam!" Queen Anne had the same custom; and once ordering the door to be shut while she shifted, the chaplain stopped. The Queen sent to ask why he did not proceed. He replied, "he would not whistle the word of God through the keyhole."

(115) Mrs. Clayton, wife of Robert Clayton, Esq. of the Treasury, bedchamber-woman to the Queen. This lady, who had the art to procure her husband to be created Lord Sundon, possessed over her royal mistress an influence of which even Sir Robert Walpole was jealous.-E.

(116) That woman, who had risen to greatness and independent wealth by the weakness of another Queen, forgot, like Duc d'Epernon, her own unmerited exultation, and affected to brave successive courts, though sprung from the dregs of one. When the Prince of Orange came over to marry the Princess Royal, Anne, a boarded gallery with a penthouse roof was erected for the procession from the windows of the great drawing-room at St. James's cross the garden to the Lutheran chapel in the friary. The Prince being indisposed, and going to Bath, the marriage was deferred for some weeks, and the boarded gallery remained, darkening the windows of Marlborough House. The Duchess cried, "I wonder when my neighbour George will take away his orange-chest!"—which it did resemble. She did not want that sort of wit,* which ill-temper, long knowledge of the world, and insolence can sharpen-and envying the favour which she no longer possessed, Sir R. Walpole was often the object of her satire. Yet her great friend, Lord Godolphin, the treasurer, had enjoined her to preserve very different sentiments. The Duchess and my father and mother were standing by the Earl's bed at St. Albans as he was dying. Taking Sir Robert by the hand, Lord Godolphin turned to the Duchess, and said, "Madam, should 'you ever desert this young man, and there should be a possibility of returning from the grave, I shall certainly appear to you." Her grace did not believe in spirits.

* Baron Gleicken, minister from Denmark to France, being at Paris soon after the King his master had been there, and a French lady being so ill-bred as to begin censuring the King to him, saying, "Ah! Monsieur, c'est une t'ete!"-"Couronn'ee," replied he instantly, stopping her by so gentle a hint.

(117) Amelia Sophia, wife of the Baron de Walmoden, Created Countess of Yarmouth in 1739.

(118) For an interesting account of the death of George the Second, on the 24th of October, 1760, and also of his funeral in Westminster Abbey, see Walpole's letters to Mr. Montagu on the 25th of that month, and of the 13th of November.-E.



CHAPTER VIII.

George the Second's Daughters-Anne, Princess of Orange-Princess Amelia-Princess Caroline-Lord Hervey-Duke of Cumberland.

I am tempted to drain my memory of all its rubbish, and will set down a few more of my recollections, but with less method than I have used in the foregoing pages.

I have said little or nothing of the King's two unmarried daughters. Though they lived in the palace with him, he never admitted them to any share in his politics; and if any of the ministers paid them the compliment of seeming attachment, it was more for the air than for the reality. The Princess Royal, Anne, married in Holland, was of a most imperious and ambitious nature; and on her mother's death, hoping to succeed to her credit, came to Holland on pretence of ill health; but the King, aware of her plan, Was so offended that he sent her to Bath as soon as she arrived, and as peremptorily back to Holland-I think, without suffering her to pass two nights in London.

Princess Amelia, as well disposed to meddle, was confined to receiving court from the Duke of Newcastle, who affected to be in love with her; and from the Duke of Grafton, in whose connexion with her there was more reality.

Princess Caroline, one of the most excellent of women, was devoted to the Queen, who, as well as the King, had such confidence in her veracity, that on any disagreement among their children, they said, "Stay, send for Caroline, and then we shall know the truth."

The memorable Lord Hervey had dedicated himself to the Queen, and certainly towards her death had gained great ascendance with her. She had made him privy-seal; and as he took care to keep as well with Sir Robert Walpole, no man stood in a more prosperous light.

But Lord Hervey, who handled all the weapons of a court, (119) had also made a deep impression on the heart of the virtuous Princess Caroline; and as there was a mortal antipathy between the Duke of Grafton and Lord Hervey, the court was often on the point of being disturbed by the enmity of the favourites of the two Princesses. The death of the Queen deeply affected her daughter Caroline; and the change of the ministry four years after, dislodged Lord Hervey whom for the Queen's sake the King would have saved, and who very ungratefully satirized the King in a ballad, as if he had sacrificed him voluntarily. Disappointment, rage, and a distempered constitution carried Lord Hervey off, and overwhelmed his Princess - she never appeared in public after the Queen's death; and, being dreadfully afflicted with the rheumatism, never stirred out of her apartment, and rejoiced at her own dissolution some years before her father.

Her sister Amelia leagued herself with the Bedford faction during the latter part of her father's life. When he died, she established herself respectably; but enjoying no favour with her nephew, and hating the Princess-dowager, she made a plea of her deafness, and soon totally abstained from St. James's.

The Duke of Cumberland, never, or very rarely, interfered in politics. Power he would have liked, but never seemed to court it. His passion would have been to command the army, and he would, I doubt, have been too ready to aggrandize the crown by it: but successive disgusts weaned his mind from all pursuits, and the grandeur of his sense, (120) and philosophy made him indifferent to a world that had disappointed all his views. The unpopularity which the Scotch and Jacobites spread against him for his merit in suppressing the rebellion, his brother's jealousy, and the contempt he himself felt for the Prince, his own ill success in his battles abroad, and his father's treacherous sacrifice of him on the convention of Closterseven, the dereliction of his two political friends, Lord Holland and Lord Sandwich, and the rebuffing spite of the Princess-dowager; all those mortifications centring on a constitution evidently tending to dissolution, made him totally neglect himself, and ready to shake off being, as an encumbrance not worth the attention of a superior understanding.

>From the time the Duke first appeared on the stage of the public, all his father's ministers had been blind to his Royal Highness's capacity, or were afraid of it. Lord Granville, too giddy himself to sound a young Prince, had treated him arrogantly when the King and the Earl had projected a match for him with the Princess of Denmark. The Duke, accustomed by the Queen and his governor, Mr. Poyntz, to venerate the wisdom of Sir Robert Walpole, then on his death-bed, sent Mr. Poyntz, the day but one before Sir Robert expired, to consult him how to avoid the match. Sir Robert advised his Royal Highness to stipulate for an ample settlement. The Duke took the sage counsel, and heard no more of his intended bride.

The low ambition of Lord Hardwicke, the childish passion for power of the Duke of Newcastle, and the peevish jealousy of Mr. Pelham, combined on the death of the Prince of Wales, to exclude the Duke of Cumberland from the regency (in case of minority,) and to make them flatter themselves that they should gain the favour of the Princess-dowager by cheating her with the semblance of power. The Duke resented the slight, but scorned to make any claim. The Princess never forgave the insidious homage; and, in concurrence with Lord Bute, totally estranged the affection of the young King from his uncle, nor allowed him a shadow of influence.

(119) He had broken with Frederick, Prince of Wales, on having shared the favours of his mistress, Miss Vane, one of the Queen's maids of honour. When she fell in labour at St. James's, and was delivered of a son, which she ascribed to the Prince, Lord Hervey and Lord Harrington each told Sir Robert Walpole that he believed himself father of the child.

(120) the Duke, in his very childhood, gave a mark of his sense and firmness. He had displeased the Queen, an(f she sent him up to his chamber. When he appeared again, he was sullen. "William," said the Queen, "what have you been doing?"— "Reading."—"Reading what?"—"The Bible."—"And what did you read there?"—"About Jesus and Mary.=—"And what about them?"—"Why, that Jesus said to Mary, Woman! what hast thou to do with me?"



CHAPTER IX.

Anecdotes of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough-and of Catherine Duchess of Buckingham.

I have done with royal personages: shall I add a codicil on some remarkable characters that I remember? As I am writing for young ladies, I have chiefly dwelt on heroines of your own sex; they, too, shall compose my last chapter: enter the Duchesses of Marlborough and Buckingham.

Those two women were considerable personages in their day. The first, her own beauty, the superior talents of her husband in war, and the caprice of a feeble princess, raised to the highest pitch of power; and the prodigious wealth bequeathed to her by her lord, and accumulated in concert with her, gave her weight in a free country. The other, proud of royal, though illegitimate birth, was, from the vanity of that birth, so zealously attached to her expelled brother, the Pretender, that she never ceased labouring to effect his restoration; and, as the opposition to the House of Brunswick was composed partly of principled Jacobites-of Tories, who either knew not what their own principles were, or dissembled them to themselves, and of Whigs, who, from hatred of the minister, both acted in concert with the Jacobites and rejoiced in their assistance-two women of such wealth, rank, and enmity to the court, were sure of great attention from all the discontented.

The beauty of the Duchess of Marlborough had always been of the scornful and imperious kind, and her features and air announced nothing that her temper did not confirm; both together, her beauty and temper, enslaved her heroic lord. One of her principal charms was a prodigious abundance of fine fair hair. One day at her toilet, in anger to him, she cut off those commanding tresses, and flung them in his face. Nor did her insolence stop there, nor stop till it had totally estranged and worn out the patience of the poor Queen, her mistress. The Duchess was often seen to give her Majesty her fan and gloves, and turn away her own head, as if the Queen had offensive smells.

Incapable of due respect to superiors, it was no wonder she treated her children and inferiors with supercilious contempt. Her eldest daughter (121) and she were long at variance, and never reconciled. When the young Duchess exposed herself by placing a monument and silly epitaph, of her own composition and bad spelling, to Congreve, in Westminster Abbey, her mother, quoting the words, said, "I know not what pleasure she might have in his company, but I am sure it was no honour."(122) With her youngest daughter, the Duchess of Montagu, old Sarah agreed as ill. "I wonder," said the Duke of Marlborough to them, "that you cannot agree, you are so alike!" Of her granddaughter, the Duchess of Manchester, daughter of the Duchess of Montagu, she affected to be fond. One day she said to her, "Duchess of Manchester, you are a good creature, and I love you mightily-but you have a mother!"-"And she has a mother!" answered the Duchess of Manchester, who was all spirit, justice, and honour, and could not suppress sudden truth.

One of old Marlborough's capital mortifications sprang from a granddaughter. The most beautiful of her four charming daughters, Lady Sunderland,(123) left two sons,(124) the second Duke of Marlborough, and John Spencer, who became her heir, and Anne Lady Bateman, and Lady Diana Spencer, whom I have mentioned, and who became Duchess of Bedford. The Duke and his brother, to humour their grandmother, were in opposition, though the eldest she never loved. He had good sense, infinite generosity, and not more economy than was to be expected from a young man of warm passions and such vast expectations. He was modest and diffident too, but could not digest total dependence on a capricious and avaricious grandmother. HIS sister, Lady Bateman, had the intriguing spirit of her father and grandfather, Earls of Sunderland. She was connected with Henry Fox, the first Lord Holland, and both had great influence over the Duke of Marlborough. What an object would it be to Fox to convert to the court so great a subject as the Duke! Nor was it much less important to his sister to give him a wife, who, with no reasons for expectation of such shining fortune, should owe the obligation to her. Lady Bateman struck the first stroke, and persuaded her brother to marry a handsome young lady, who, unluckily, was daughter of Lord Trevor, who had been a bitter enemy to his grandfather, the victorious Duke. The grandam's rage exceeded all bounds. Having a portrait of Lady Bateman, she blackened the face, and wrote on it, "Now her outside is as black as her inside." The duke she turned out of the little lodge in Windsor Park; and then pretending that the new Duchess and her female cousins (eight Trevors) had stripped the house and gardens, she had a puppet-show made with waxen figures, representing the Trevors tearing up the shrubs, and the Duchess carrying off the chicken-coop under her arm.

Her fury did but increase when Mr. Fox prevailed on the Duke to go over to the court. With her coarse intemperate humour, she said, "that was the Fox that had stolen her goose." Repeated injuries at last drove the Duke to go to law with her. Fearing that even no lawyer would come up to the Billingsgate with which she was animated herself, she appeared in the court of justice, and with some wit and infinite abuse, treated the laughing public with the spectacle of a woman who had held the reigns of empire, metamorphosed into the widow Black-acre. Her grandson, in his suit, demanded a sword set with diamonds, given to his grandsire by the Emperor. "I retained it," said the beldam, " lest he should pick out the diamonds and pawn them."

I will repeat but one more instance of her insolent asperity, which produced an admirable reply of the famous Lady Mary -Wortley Montague. Lady Sundon had received a pair of diamond ear-rings as a bribe for procuring a considerable post in Queen Caroline's family for a certain peer; and, decked with those jewels, paid a visit to the old Duchess; who, as soon as she was gone, said, "What an impudent creature, to come hither with her bribe in her ear!" "Madam," replied Lady Mary Wortley, who was present, "how should people know where wine' is sold, unless a bush is hung out?"

The Duchess of Buckingham was as much elated by owing her birth to James II.(125) as the Marlborough was by the favour of his daughter. Lady Dorchester,(126) the mother of the former, endeavoured to curb that pride, and, one should have thought, took an effectual method, though one few mothers would have practised. "You need not be so vain," said the old profligate, "for you are not the King's daughter, but Colonel Graham's." Graham was a fashionable man of those days and noted for dry humour. His legitimate daughter, the Countess of Berkshire, was extremely like to the Duchess of Buckingham: "Well! well!" said Graham, "Kings are all powerful, and one must not complain; but certainly the same man begot those two women." To discredit the wit of both parents, the Duchess never ceased labouring to restore the House of Stuart, and to mark her filial devotion to it. Frequent were her journeys to the Continent for that purpose. She always stopped at Paris, visited the church where lay the unburied body of James, and wept over it. A poor Benedictine of the convent, observing her filial piety, took notice to her grace that the velvet pall that covered the coffin was become threadbare-and so it remained.

Finding all her efforts fruitless, and perhaps aware that her plots were not undiscovered by Sir Robert Walpole, who was remarkable for his intelligence, she made an artful double, and resolved to try what might be done through him himself. I forget how she contracted an acquaintance with him: I do remember that more than once he received letters from the Pretender himself, which probably were transmitted through her. Sir Robert always carried them to George II. who endorsed and returned them. That negotiation not succeeding. the Duchess made a more home push. Learning his extreme fondness for his daughter, (afterwards Lady Mary Churchill,) she sent for Sir Robert, and asked him if he recollected what had not been thought too great a reward to Lord Clarendon for restoring the royal family? He affected not to understand her. "Was not he allowed," urged the zealous Duchess, "to match his daughter to the Duke of York?" Sir Robert smiled, and left her.

Sir Robert being forced from court, the Duchess thought the moment (127) favourable, and took a new journey to Rome; but conscious of the danger she might run of discovery, she made over her estate to the famous Mr. Pulteney (afterwards Earl of Bath), and left the deed in his custody. What was her astonishment, when on her return she redemanded the instrument!-It was mislaid-he could not find it-he never could find it! The Duchess grew clamorous. At last his friend Lord Mansfield told him plainly,- he could never show his face unless he satisfied the Duchess. Lord Bath did then sign a release to her of her estate. The transaction was recorded in print by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, in a pamphlet that had great vogue, called a Congratulatory Letter, with many other anecdotes of the same personage, and was not less acute than Sir Charles's Odes on the same here. The Duchess dying not long after Sir Robert's entrance into the House of Lords, Lord Oxford, one of her executors, told him there, that the Duchess had struck Lord Bath out of her will, and made him, Sir Robert, one of her trustees in his room. "Then," said Sir Robert, laughing, @ I see, my lord, that I have got Lord Bath's place before he has got mine." Sir Robert had artfully prevented the last. Before he quitted the King, he persuaded his Majesty to insist, as a preliminary to the change, that Mr. Pulteney should go into the House of Peers, his great credit lying in the other house; and I remember my father's action when he returned from court and told me what he had done-,, I have turned the key of the closet on him,"-making that motion with his hand. Pulteney had jumped at the proffered earldom, but saw his error when too late; and was so enraged at his own oversight, that, when he went to take the oaths in the House of Lords, he dashed his patent on the floor, and vowed he would never take it up-but he had kissed the King's hand for it, and it was too late to recede.

But though Madam of Buckingham could not effect a coronation to her will, she indulged her pompous mind with such puppet-shows as were appropriate to her rank. She had made a funeral for her husband as splendid as that of the great Marlborough: she renewed that pageant for her only son, a weak lad, who died under age; and for herself; and prepared and decorated -waxen dolls of him and of herself to be exhibited in glass-cases in Westminster Abbey. It was for the procession at her son's burial that she wrote to old Sarah of Marlborough to borrow the triumphal car that had transported the corpse of the Duke. "It carried my Lord Marlborough," replied the other, and shall never be used for any body else." "I have consulted the undertaker," replied the Buckingham, and he tells me I may have a finer for twenty pounds."

One of the last acts of Buckingham's life was marrying a grandson she had to a daughter of Lord Hervey. That intriguing man, sore, as I have said, at his disgrace, cast his eyes every where to revenge or exalt himself. Professions or recantations of any principles cost him nothing: at least the consecrated day which was appointed for his first interview with the Duchess made it presumed, that to obtain her wealth, with her grandson for his daughter, he must have sworn fealty to the House of Stuart. It was on the martyrdom of her grandfather: she received him in the great drawing-room of Buckingham House, seated in a chair of state, in deep mourning, attended by her women in like weeds, in memory of the royal martyr.

It will be a proper close to the history of those curious ladies to mention the anecdote of Pope relative to them. Having drawn his famous character of Atossa, he communicated it to each Duchess, pretending it was levelled at the other. The Buckingham believed him: the Marlborough had more sense, and knew herself, and gave him a thousand pounds to suppress it;-and yet he left the copy behind him!(128)

Bishop Burnet, from absence of mind, had drawn as strong a picture of herself to the Duchess of Marlborough, as Pope did under covert of another lady. Dining with the Duchess after the Duke's disgrace, Burnet was comparing him to Belisarius: "But how," said she, "could so great a general be so abandoned?" "Oh! Madam," said the Bishop, "do not you know what a brimstone of a wife he had'!"

Perhaps you know this anecdote, and perhaps several others that I have been relating. No matter; they will go under the article of my dotage-and very properly-I began with tales of my nursery, and prove that I have been writing in my second childhood.

H. W. January 13th, 1789.

(121) The Lady Henrietta, married to Lord Godolphin, who, by act of Parliament, succeeded as Duchess of Marlborough. She died in 1738, childless; and the issue of her next sister, Lady Sunderland, succeeded to the duchy of Marlborough.-E.

(122) "For reasons," says Dr. Johnson, "either not known, or not mentioned, Congreve bequeathed a legacy of about ten thousand pounds to the Duchess; the accumulation of attentive parsimony, which, though to her superfluous and useless, might have given great assistance to the ancient family from which he descended, at that time, by the imprudence of his relation, reduced to difficulties and distress."-E.

(123) Lady Sunderland was a great politician; and having, like her mother, a most beautiful head of hair, used, while combing it at her toilet, to receive men whose votes or interests she wished to influence.

(124) She had an elder son, who died young, while only Earl of Sunderland. He had parts, and all the ambition of his parents and of his family (which his younger brother had not); but George II. had conceived such an aversion to his father, that he would not employ him. The young Earl at last asked Sir Robert Walpole for an ensigncy in the Guards. The minister, astonished at so humble a request from a man of such consequence, expressed his surprise. "I ask it," said the young lord, "to ascertain whether it is determined that I shall never have any thing." He died soon after at Paris.

(125) By Catherine Sedley, created by her royal lover Countess of Dorchester for life.-E.

(126) Lady Dorchester is well known for her wit, and for saying that she wondered for what James chose his mistresses: "We are none of us handsome," said she; "and if we have wit, he has not enough to find it out." But I do not know whether it is as public, that her style was gross and shameless. Meeting the Duchess of Portsmouth and Lady Orkney, the favourite of King William, at the drawing-room of George the First, "God!" said she, "who would have thought that we three whores should have met here?" Having, after the King's abdication, married Sir David Collyer, by whom she had two sons, she said to them, " If any body should call you sons of a whore, you must bear it; for you are so: but if they call you bastards, fight till you die; for you are an honest man's sons." Susan, Lady Bellasis, another of King James's mistresses, had wit too, and no beauty. Mrs. Godfrey had neither. Grammont has recorded why she was chosen.

(127) I am not quite certain that, writing by memory at the distance of fifty years, I place that journey exactly at the right period, nor whether it did not take place before Sir Robert's fall. Nothing material depends on the precise period.

(128) The story is thus told by Dr. Warton:-" These lines were shown to her grace, as if they were intended for the portrait of the Duchess of Buckingham; but she soon stopped the person who was reading them to her, as the Duchess of Portland informed me, and called out aloud, "I cannot be so imposed upon; I see plainly enough for whom they are designed;" and abused Pope most plentifully on the subject: though she was afterwards reconciled to him, and courted him, and gave him a thousand pounds to suppress this portrait, which he a accepted, it is said, by the persuasion of Mrs. M. Blount; and, after the Duchess's death, it was printed in a folio sheet, 1746, and afterwards inserted in his Moral Essays. This is the greatest blemish on our poet's moral character."-E.



The following extracts from Letters of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, were copied by me from the original letters addressed to the Earl of Stair, left by him to Sir David Dalrymple, his near relative, and lent to me by Sir David's brother, Mr. Alexander Dalrymple, long employed as Geographer in the service of the East India company. They formed part of a large volume of ms. letters, chiefly from the same person.

The Duchess of Marlborough's virulence, her prejudices, her style of writing, are already well known, and every line of these extracts will only serve to confirm the same opinion of all three. But it will, probably, be thought curious thus to be able to compare the notes of the opposite political parties, and their different account of the same trifling facts, magnified by the prejudices of both into affairs of importance.

January, 1840



EXTRACTS FROM THE LETTERS OF SARAH, DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH, TO THE EARL OF STAIR, ILLUSTRATIVE OF "THE REMINISCENCES." (NOW FIRST PUBLISHED.)

(See Reminiscences, p. 97.)

London, Feb. 24th, 1738. . . . . As to Norfolk House, (129) I have heard there is a great deal of company, and that the Princess of Wales, tho' so very young, behaves so as to please every body; and I think her conversation is much more proper and decent for a drawing-room than the wise queen Caroline's was, who never was half an hour without saying something shocking to some body or other, even when she intended to oblige, and generally very improper discourse for a public room.

[See p. 98. Reminiscences, Chapter Vii]

London, December 24th, 1737. My Lord, I received the favour of yours of the 17th December yesterday. I have nothing material to say to you since my last. His Majesty saw the Queen's women servants first, which was a very mournful sight, for they all cried extremely; and his Majesty was so affected that he began to speak, but went out of the room to recover himself. And yesterday he saw the foreign ministers and his horses, which I remember Dean Swift gives a great character of; and was very sorry to leave them for the conversation of his countrymen in England.; and I think he was much in the right.

[See P. 98. Reminiscences, Chapter Vii)

Marlborough House, Nov. 15, 1737. It is not many days since I wrote to your lordship by post, but one can't be sure those letters are sent. However, I have a mind to give you an account of what, perhaps, you may not have so particularly from any other hand. This day, se'nnight the Queen was taken extremely ill; the physicians were sent for, and from the account that was given, they treated her as if she had the gout in her stomach: but, upon a thorough investigation of the matter, a surgeon desired that she would put her hand where the pain was that she complained of, which she did; and the surgeon, following her hand with his, found it was a very large rupture, which had been long Concealed. Upon this, immediately they cut it, and some little part of the gut, which was discoloured. Few of the knowing people have had any hopes for many days; for they still apprehend a mortification, and she can't escape it unless the physicians can make something pass thro' her, which they have not yet been able to do in so many days. The King and the Royal Family have taken leave of her more than once; and his Majesty has given her leave to make her will, which she has done; but I fancy it will be in such a manner that few, if any, will know what her money amounts to. Sir Robert Walpole was in Norfolk, and came to -London but last night. I can't but think he must be extremely uneasy at this misfortune; for I have a notion that many of his troops will slacken very much, if not quite leave him, when they see he has lost his sure support. But there is so much folly, and mean corruption, etc.

London, December 1st, 1737. . . . . As to what has passed in the Queen's illness, and since her death, one can't depend on much one hears; and they are things that it is no great matter whether they are true or false. But one thing was odd: whether out of folly, or any thing else, I can't say, but the Duke of Newcastle did not send Sir Robert Walpole news of her illness, nor of her danger, as soon as he might have done; and after he came to town, which was but a few days before she died, and when she could no more live than she can now come out of her coffin, the physicians, and all that attended her, were ordered to say she was better, and that they had some hopes. What the use of that was I cannot conceive. And the occasion of her death is still pretended to be a secret: yet it is known that she had a rupture, and had it for many years; that she had imposthumes that broke, and that some of the guts were mortified. This is another mystery which I don't comprehend; for what does it signify what one dies of, except the pain it gives more than common dissolutions? etc.



[See p. 100. Reminiscences, Chapter Vii)

I AM Of the opinion, from woful experience, that, from flattery and want of understanding, most princes are alike; and, therefore, it is to no purpose to argue against their passions, but to defend ourselves, at all events, against them.



[See P. 100. Reminiscences, Chapter VII]

Wimbledon, 17th Aug. 1737. There has been a very extraordinary quarrel at court, which, I believe, nobody will give you so exact an account of as myself. The 31st of last month the Princess fell in labour. The King and Queen both knew that she was to lie in -,it St. James's, where every thing was prepared. It was her first child, and so little a way to London, that she thought it less hazard to go immediately away from Hampton Court to London, where she had all the assistance that could be, and every thing prepared, than to stay at Hampton Court, where she had nothing, and might be forced to make use of a country midwife. There was not a minute's time to be lost in debating this matter, nor in ceremonials; the Princess begging earnestly of the Prince to carry her to St. James's, in such a hurry that gentlemen went behind the coach like footmen. They got to St. James's safe, and she was brought to bed in one hour after. Her Majesty followed them as soon as she could, but did not come till it was all over. However, she expressed a great deal of anger to the Prince for having carried her away, tho' she and the child were very well. I should have thought it had been most natural for a grandmother to have said she had been mightily frightened, but was glad it was so well over. The Prince said all the respectful and dutiful things imaginable to her and the King, desiring her Majesty to support the reasons which made him go away as he did without acquainting his Majesty with it: and, I believe, all human creatures will allow that this was natural, for a man not to debate a thing of this kind, nor to lose a minute's time in ceremony, which was very useless, considering that it is a great while since the King has spoke to him, or taken the least notice of him. The Prince told her Majesty he intended to go that morning to pay his duty to the King, but she advised him not. This was Monday morning, and she said Wednesday was time enough; and, indeed, in that I think her Majesty was in the right. the Prince submitted to her counsel, and only writ a most submissive and respectful letter to his Majesty, giving his reasons for what he had done. And this conversation ended, that he hoped his Majesty would do him the honour to be godfather to his daughter, and that he would be pleased to name who the godmothers should be; and that he left all the directions of the christening to his Majesty's pleasure. The queen answered that it would be thought the asking the King to be godfather was too great a liberty, and advised him not to do it. When the Prince led the Queen to her coach, which she would not have had him done, there was a great concourse of people; and, notwithstanding all that had passed before, she expressed so much kindness that she hugged and kissed him with great passion. the King, after this, sent a message in writing, by my Lord Essex, in the following words:-that his Majesty looked upon what the Prince had done, in carrying the Princess to London in such a manner, as a deliberate indignity offered to himself and to the Queen, and resented it in the highest degree, and forbid him the Court. I must own I cleared Sir Robert in my own mind of this counsel, thinking he was not in town: but it has proved otherwise, for he was in town; and the message is drawn up in such a manner that nobody doubts of its being done by sir Robert. All the sycophants and agents of the court spread millions of falsities on this occasion; and all the language there was, that this was so great a crime that even those who went with the Prince ought to be proscribed. How this will end nobody yet knows; at least I am sure I don't; but I know there was a council today held at Hampton court. I have not heard yet of any christening being directed, but for that I am in no manner of pain: for, if it be never christened, I think 'tis in a better state than a great many devout people that I know. Some talk as if they designed to take the child away from the Princess, to be under the care of her Majesty, who professes vast kindness to the Princess; and all the anger is at the Prince. Among common subjects I think the law is, that nobody that has any interest in an estate is to have any thing to do with the person who is heir to it. What prejudice this sucking child can do to the crown I don't see; but, to be sure, her Majesty will be very careful of it. What I apprehend most. is, that the crown will be lost long before this little Princess can possibly enjoy it; and, if what I have heard to-day be true, I think the scheme of France is going to open; for I was told there was an ambassador to come from France whose goods had been landed in England, and that they have been sent back. But I won't answer for the truth of that, as I will upon every thing else in this letter.



[See p. 100. Reminiscences, Chapter VII]

June 20th, 1738. My Lord, I write to you this post, to give you an account of what I believe nobody else will so particularly, that Madame Walmond (130) was presented in the drawing-room to his Majesty on Thursday. As she arrived some days before, there can be no doubt that it was not the first meeting, tho' the manner of her reception had the appearance of it; for his Majesty went up to her and kissed her on both sides, which is an honour, I believe, never any lady had from a king in public. And when his Majesty went away, Lord Harrington presented the great men in the ministry and the foreign ministers in the drawing-room; the former of which performed their part with the utmost respect and submission. This is, likewise, quite new; for, though all kings have had mistresses, they were attended at their own lodgings, and not in so public a manner. I conclude they performed that ceremony too; but they could not lose the first opportunity of paying their respects, though ever so improperly.

These great men were, the Duke of Newcastle, Sir Robert Walpole, my Lord Wilmington, my Lord Harrington, and Mr. Pelham. My Lord Hervey had not the honour to be on the foot of a minister. . . .

I have nothing more to say, but that this Madame Walmond is at present in a mighty mean dirty lodging in St. James's Street. Her husband came with her, but he is going away; and that house that was Mr. Seymour's, in Hyde Park, which opens into the King's garden, is fitting up for her; -and the Duchess of Kendal's lodgings are making ready for her at St. James's. There is nothing more known at present as to the settlement, but that directions are given for one upon the establishment of Ireland. perhaps that mayn't exceed the Duchess of Kendal's, which was three thousand pounds a-year. But 'tis easy for the first minister to increase that as she pleases.



[See p. 101.]

London, December 3rd, 1737. I saw one yesterday that dined with my Lord Fanny, (131) who, as soon as he had dined, was sent for to come up to his Majesty, and there is all the appearance that can be of great favour to his lordship. I mentioned him in my last, and I will now give you an account of some things concerning his character, that I believe you don't know. What I am going to say I am sure is as true as if I had been a transactor in it myself. And I will begin the relation with Mr. Lepelle, my Lord Fanny's wife's father, having made her a cornet in his regiment as soon as she was born, which is no more wrong to the design of an army than if she had been a son: and she was paid many years after she was a maid of honour. She was extreme forward and pert; and my Lord Sunderland got her a pension of the late King, it being too ridiculous to continue her any longer an officer in the army. And into the bargain, she was to be a spy; but what she could tell to deserve a pension, I cannot comprehend. However, King George the First used to talk to her very much; and this encouraged my Lord Fanny and her to undertake a very extraordinary project: and she went to the drawing-room every night, and publicly attacked his Majesty in a most vehement manner, insomuch that it was the diversion of all the town; which alarmed the Duchess of Kendal, and the ministry that governed her, to that degree, lest the King should be put in the opposers' hands, that they determined to buy my Lady H- off; and they gave her 4000 pounds to desist, which she did, and my Lord Fanny bought a good house with it, and furnished it very well.

[See p. 106. Reminiscences, Chapter IX]

London, March 19th, 1738. My Lord, I have received the favour of yours of the 11th by the post, but not that which you mention by another hand. And since you can like such sort of accounts as I am able to give you, I will continue to do it. I think it is very plain now that Sir Robert don't think it worth his while to make any proposals where it was once suspected he would. And his wedding was celebrated as if he had been King of France, and the apartments furnished in the richest manner: crowds of people of the first quality being presented to the bride, who is the daughter of a clerk that sung the psalms in a church where Dr. Sacheverell was. After the struggle among the court ladies who should have the honour of presenting her, which the Duchess of Newcastle obtained, it was thought more proper to have her presented by one of her own family; otherwise it would look as if she had no alliances: and therefore that ceremony was performed by Horace Walpole's wife, who was daughter to my tailor, Lumbar. I read in a print lately, that an old gentleman, very rich, had married a maiden lady with two fatherless children but the printer did not then know the gentleman's name.



March 27th, 1738. 'I think I did not tell you that the Duke of Dorset waited on my Lady Walpole to congratulate her marriage, with the same ceremony as if it had been one of the Royal Family, with his white staff, which has not been used these many years, but when they attend the Crown. But such a wretch as he is I hardly know; and his wife, whose passion is only money, assists him in his odious affair with Lady Betty Jermyn, who has a great deal to dispose of; who, notwithstanding the great pride of the Berkeley family, married an innkeeper's son. But indeed there was some reason for that; for she was ugly, without a portion, and in her youth had an unlucky accident with one of her father's servants; and by that match she got money to entertain herself all manner of ways. I tell you these things, which did not happen in your time of knowledge, which is a melancholy picture of what the world is come to; for this strange woman has had a great influence over many.

Feb. 24th. 1738. Monday next is fixed for presenting Mrs. Skerrit at court: and there has been great solicitation from the court ladies who should do it, in which the Duchess of Newcastle has succeeded, and all the apartment is made ready for Sir Robert's lady, at his house at the Cockpit. (132) I never saw her in my life, but at auctions; but I remember I liked her as to behaviour very well, and I believe she has a great deal of sense: and I am not one of the number that wonder so much at this match; for the King of France married Madame de Maintenon, and many men have done the same thing. But as to the public, I do believe never was any man so great a villain as Sir Robert.

Wednesday, Feb. 16th, 1741. .....Some changes are made as to employments; but very few are brought in but such as will be easily governed, and brought to act so as to keep their places. I have inquired often about your lordship, who I have not yet heard named in this alteration. And I have been told that Lords Chesterfield and Gower are to have nothing in the government, which I think a very ill sign of what is intended; because that can be for no reason but because you are all such men as are incapable of ever being prevailed on by any arts to act any thing contrary to honour and the true interests of our country.

(129) Where the Prince and Princess of Wales then resided.

(130 Welmoden.

(131 John, Lord Hervey, so called by Pope.

(132) Where the Prince and Princess of Wales then resided.



Correspondence of Horace walpole Earl of Orford



121 Letter 1 To Richard West, Esq. (133) King's College, Nov 9, 1735,

Dear West, You expect a long letter from me, and have said in verse all that I intended to have said in far inferior prose. I intended filling three or four sides with exclamations against a University life; but you have showed me how strongly they may be expressed in three or four lines. I can't build without straw; nor have I the ingenuity of the spider, to spin fine lines out of dirt: a master of a college would make but a miserable figure as a hero of a poem, and Cambridge sophs are too low to introduce into a letter that aims not at punning:

Haud equidem invideo vati, quem pulpita pascunt.

But why mayn't we hold a classical correspondence? I can never forget the many agreeable hours we have passed in reading Horace and Virgil; and I think they are topics will never grow stale. Let us extend the Roman empire, and cultivate two barbarous towns o'er -run with rusticity and Mathematics. The creatures are so used to a circle, that they Plod on in the same eternal round, with their whole view confined to a punctum, cujus nulla est pars: "Their time a moment, and a point their space."

Orabunt causas melius, coelique meatus Describent radio, et surgentia sidera dicent Tu coluisse novem Musas, Romane, memento; Hae tibi crunt artes. . . .

We have not the least poetry stirring here; for I can't call verses on the 5th of November and 30th of January by that name, more than four lines on a chapter in the New Testament is an epigram. Tydeus (134) rose and set at Eton: he is only known here to be a scholar of King's. Orosmades and Almanzor are just the same; that is, I am almost the only person they are acquainted with, and consequently the only person acquainted with their excellencies. Plato improves every day; so does my friendship with him. These three divide my whole time, though I believe you will guess there is no quadruple alliance; (135) that was a happiness which I only enjoyed when you was at Eton. A short account of the Eton people at Oxford would much oblige, my dear West, your faithful friend, H. WALPOLE.

(133) Richard West was the only son of the Right Honourable Richard West, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, by Elizabeth, daughter of the celebrated Dr. Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury. When this correspondence commences, Mr. West was nineteen years old, and Mr. Walpole one year younger. [West died on the 1st of January, 1742, at the premature age of twenty-six. He had a great genius for poetry. His correspondence with Gray, and several of his poems, are included in the collection of letters published by Mr. Mason. West's father published an able discourse of treasons and bills of attainder, and a tract on the manner of creating peers. He also wrote several essays in "The Freethinker;" and was the reputed author of a tragedy called "Hecuba;" which was performed at Drury Lane theatre in 1726.]

(134) Tydeus, Orosmades, Almanzor, and Plato, were names which had been given by them to some of their Eton schoolfellows.

(135) Thus as boys they had called the intimacy formed at Eton between Walpole, Gray, West, and Ashton.



1736

122 Letter 2 To George Montagu, Esq. (136) King's College, May 2, 1736.

Dear Sir, Unless I were to be married myself, I should despair ever being able to describe a wedding so well as you have done: had I known your talent before, I would have desired an epithalamium. I believe the princess (137) will have more beauties bestowed on her by the occasional poets, than even a painter would afford her. They will cook up a new Pandora, and in the bottom of the box enclose Hope, that all they have said is true. A great many, out of excess of good breeding, having heard it was rude to talk Latin before women, propose complimenting her in English; which she will be much the better for. I doubt most of them instead of fearing their compositions should not be understood, should fear they should: they write they don't know what, to be read by they don't know who. You have made me a very unreasonable request, which I will answer with another as extraordinary: you desire I would burn your letters; I desire you would keep mine. I know but of one way of making what I send you useful, which is, by sending you a blank sheet: sure you would not grudge three-pence for a half-penny sheet, when you give as much for one not worth a farthing. You drew this last paragraph on you by your exordium, as you call it, and conclusion. I hope, for the future, our correspondence will run a little more glibly, with dear George, and dear Harry; not as formally as if we were playing a game at chess in Spain and Portugal; and Don Horatio was to have the honour Of specifying to Don Georgio, by an epistle, whether he would move. In one point I would have our correspondence like a game at chess; it should last all our lives-but I hear you cry check; adieu! Dear George, yours ever.

(136) George Montagu was the son of Brigadier-General Edward Montagu, and nephew to the Earl of Halifax. He was member of parliament for Northampton, usher of the black rod in Ireland during the lieutenancy of the Earl of Halifax, ranger of Salsey Forest, and private secretary to Lord North when chancellor of the exchequer. [And of him "it is now only remembered," says the "Quarterly Review," vol. xix. p. 131, "that he was a gentleman-like body of the vieille cour, and that he was usually attended by his brother John, (the Little John of Walpole's correspondence,) who was a midshipman at the age of sixty, and found his chief occupation in carrying about his brother's snuff-box."]

(137) Augusta, Princess of Saxe-Gotha, married, in April, 1736, to Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales.



123 Letter 3 To George Montagu, Esq. King's College, May 6, 1736.

Dear George, I agree with you entirely in the pleasure you take in talking over old stories, but can't say but I meet every day with new circumstances, which will be still more pleasure to me to recollect. I think at our age 'tis excess of joy, to think, while we are running over past happinesses, that it is still in our power to enjoy as great. Narrations of the greatest actions of other people are tedious in comparison of the serious trifles that every man can call to mind of himself while he was learning those histories. Youthful passages of life are the chippings of Pitt's diamond, set into little heart-rings with mottos; the stone itself more worth, the filings more gentle and agreeable. Alexander, at the head of the world, never tasted the true pleasure that boys of his own age have enjoyed at the head of a school. Little intrigues, little schemes, and policies engage their thoughts; and, at the same time that they are laying the foundation for their middle age of life, the mimic republic they live in furnishes materials of conversation for their latter age; and old men cannot be said to be children a second time with greater truth from any one cause, than their living over again their childhood in imagination. To reflect on the season when first they felt the titillation of love, the budding passions, and the first dear object of their wishes! how unexperienced they gave credit to all the tales of romantic loves! Dear George, were not the playing fields at Eton food for all manner of flights? No old maid's gown, though it had been tormented into all the fashions from King James to King George, ever underwent so many transformations as those poor plains have in my idea. At first I was contented with tending a visionary flock, and sighing some pastoral name to the echo of the cascade under the bridge. How happy should I have been to have had a kingdom only for the pleasure of being driven from it, and living disguised in an humble vale! As I got further into Virgil and Clelia, I found myself transported from Arcadia to the garden of Italy; and saw Windsor Castle in no other view than the Capitoli immobile saxum. I wish a committee of the House of Commons may ever seem to be the senate; or a bill appear half so agreeable as a billet-doux. You see how deep you have carried me into old stories; I write of them with pleasure, but shall talk of them with more to you. I can't say I am sorry I was never quite a schoolboy: an expedition against bargemen, or a match at cricket, may be very pretty things to recollect; but, thank my stars, I can remember things very near as pretty. The beginning of my Roman history was spent in the asylum, or conversing in Egeria's hallowed grove; not in thumping and pommelling king Amulius's herdsmen. I was sometimes troubled with a rough creature or two from the plough; one, that one should have thought, had worked with his head, as well as his hands, they were both so callous. One of the most agreeable circumstances I can recollect is the Triumvirate, composed of yourself, Charles,(138) and Your sincere friend.

(138) Colonel Charles Montagu, afterwards Lieutenant-General, and Knight of the Bath, and brother of George Montagu. He married Elizabeth Villiers, Viscountess Grandison, daughter of the Earl of Grandison.



124 Letter 4 To George Montagu, Esq. King's College, May 20, 1736.

Dear George: You will excuse my not having written to you, when you hear I have been a jaunt to Oxford. As you have seen it, I shall only say I think it one of the most agreeable places I ever set my eyes on. In our way thither we stopped at the Duke of Kent's, (139) at Wrest. (140) On the great staircase is a picture of the duchess; (141) I said it was very like; oh, dear sir! said Mrs. Housekeeper, it's too handsome for my lady duchess; her grace's chin is much longer than that.

In the garden are monuments in memory of Lord Harold (142) Lady Glenorchy, (143) the late duchess,(144) and the present duke. At Lord Clarendon's (145) at Cornbury,(146) is a prodigious quantity of Vandykes; but I had not time to take down any of their dresses. By the way, you gave me no account of the last masquerade. Coming back, we saw Easton Neston,(147) a seat of Lord Pomfret, where in an old greenhouse is a wonderful fine statue of Tully, haranguing a numerous assembly of decayed emperors, vestal virgins with new noses, Colossuses, Venuses, headless carcases, and carcaseless heads, pieces of tombs, and hieroglyphics.(148) I saw Althorp(149) the same day, where are a vast many pictures-some mighty good; a gallery with the Windsor beauties, and Lady Bridgewater(150) who is full as handsome as any of them; a bouncing head of, I believe, Cleopatra, called there the Duchess of Mazarine. The park is enchanting. I forgot to tell you I was at Blenheim, where I saw nothing but a cross housekeeper, and an impertinent porter, except a few pictures, a quarry of stone that looked at a distance like a great house, and about this quarry, quantities of inscriptions in honour of the Duke of Marlborough, and I think of her grace too.

Adieu! dear George, Yours ever.

The verses are not published.

(139) Henry de Grey, Duke, Marquis, and Earl of Kent, son of Anthony Earl of Kent, and Mary, daughter of Lord Lucas. [The duke, who had been so created in 1710, having lost all his sons during his lifetime, obtained a new patent in 1740, creating him Marquis Grey, with remainder to his grand-daughter Jemima Campbell, daughter of his eldest daughter, Lady amabel Grey, by her husband John, third Earl of Breadalbane. On the death of the duke, in June 1740, the marquisate of Grey and barony of Lucas, together with the Wrest House and all the vast estates of the duke, devolved upon his grand-daughter, Lady Jemima Campbell, then Lady Jemima Royston, she having married Philip Viscount Royston, eldest son of the Earl of Hardwicke, by whom she had two daughters, Amabel married in July 1772, to Lord Polwarth, only son of the Earl of Marchmont, created a peer of Great Britain by the title of Baron Hume of Berwick, and who died in 1781 without issue: her ladyship was advanced to the dignity of Countess de Grey by letters patent, in 1816, with remainder of that earldom to her sister Mary Jemima, wife of Thomas second Lord Grantham, and that lady's male issue. Lady Grantham died in 1830; and upon the death of the countess, in 1833, she was succeeded under the patent by her nephew Lord Grantham, the present Earl de Grey.]

(140) Wrest House in Bedfordshire. [It is remarkable that, from the death of the Duke of Kent, Wrest House has never remained a second generation in the same family, but has descended successively through females to the families of Yorke Earl of Hardwicke, Hume Earl of Marchmont, and is now vested in that of Robinson Lord Grantham, the great-great-grandson of the duke.)

(141) Lady Sophia Bentinck, second wife of the Duke of Kent, and daughter to William Earl of Portland.

(142) Anthony Earl of Harold, eldest son of the Duke of Kent. [Married to Lady Mary Grafton, daughter of the Earl of Thanet. He died without issue, in 1723, in consequence of an ear of barley sticking in his throat. His widow, who survived many years, afterwards married John first Earl Gower.]

(143) Amabella, eldest daughter of the Duke of Kent, married to John Campbell, Lord Viscount Glenorchy, son of Lord Breadalbane.

(144) Jemima, eldest daughter of Lord Crewe, and first wife of the Duke of Kent.

(145) Henry Earl of Clarendon and Rochester, son of Laurence Earl of Rochester.

(146) In the county of Oxford.

(147) Easton Neston, the ancient family seat of the Fermor family, had been rebuilt by Sir William Fermor who was elevated to the peerage by the title of Baron Lempster of Lempster, or Leominster, county of Hereford; and whose only son Thomas, second baron, was advanced to the earldom of Pomfret in 1721.-E.

(148) Part of the invaluable collection of the great Earl of Arundel. They had been formerly purchased by John Lord Jefferies, Baron of Wem; and in 1755 were presented by his daughter, the Countess-dowager of Pomfret, to the University of Oxford.-E.

(149) The seat of Charles, fifth Earl of Sunderland; who, upon the demise of his aunt Henrietta, eldest daughter of John Duke of Marlborough, succeeded to the honours of his illustrious grandfather. Althorp is now the seat of Earl Spencer. An account of the mansion, its pictures, etc. was published by Dr. Dibdin, in 1822, under the title of "Edes Althorpianae," as a supplement to his "Bibliotheca Spenceriana."-E.

(150) Elizabeth, third daughter of the great Duke of Marlborough, and wife of Scroop, Earl and afterwards first Duke of Bridgewater. She died, however, previous to her husband's advancement to the dukedom.-E.



126 Letter 5 To George Montagu, Esq. King's College, May 30, 1736.

Dear George, You show me in the prettiest manner how much you like Petronius Arbiter; I have heard you commend him, but I am more pleased with your tacit approbation of writing like him, prose interspersed with verse: I shall send you soon in return some poetry interspersed with prose; I mean the Cambridge congratulation with the notes, as you desired. I have transcribed the greatest part of what was tolerable at the coffee-houses; but by most of what you will find, you will hardly think I have left any thing worse behind. There is lately come out a new piece, called A Dialogue between Philemon and Hydaspes on false religion, by one Mr. Coventry,(151) A.M., and fellow, formerly fellow-commoner, of Magdalen. He is a young man, but 'tis really a pretty thing. If you cannot get it in town, I will send it with the verses. He accounts for superstition in a new manner, and I think a Just One; attributing it to disappointments in love. He don't resolve it all into that bottom; ascribes it almost wholly as the source of female enthusiasm; and I dare say there's ne'er a girl from the age of fourteen to four-and-twenty, but will subscribe to his principles, and own, if the dear man were dead that she loves, she would settle all her affection on heaven, whither he was gone.

Who would not be an Artemisia, and raise the stately mausoleum to her lord; then weep and watch incessant over it like the Ephesian matron!

I have heard of one lady, who had not quite so great a veneration for her husband's tomb, but preferred lying alone in one, to lying on his left hand; perhaps she had an aversion to the German custom of left-handed wives. I met yesterday with a pretty little dialogue on the subject of constancy tis between a traveller and a dove

LE PASSANT. Que fais tu dans ce bois, plaintive Tourturelle?

LA ToURTURELLE. Je g'emis, j'ai perdu ma compagne fidelle.

LE PASSANT. Ne crains tu pas que l'oiseleur Ne te fasse mourir comme elle?

La Tourturelle. Si ce n'est lui, ce sera ma douleur.

'Twould have been a little more apposite, if she had grieved for her lover. I have ventured to turn it into that view, lengthened it, and spoiled it, as you shall see.

P.-Plaintive turtle, cease your moan; Hence away; In this dreary wood alone Why d'ye stay?



T.-These tears, alas! you see flow For my mate! P.-Dread you not from net or bow His sad fate?

T.-If, ah! if they neither kill, Sorrow will.

You will excuse this gentle nothing, I mean mine, when I tell you, I translated it out of pure good-nature for the use of a disconsolate wood-pigeon in our grove, that was made a widow by the barbarity of a gun. She coos and calls me so movingly, 'twould touch your heart to hear her. I protest to you it grieves me to pity her. She is so allicholy as any thing. I'll warrant you now she's as sorry as one of us would be. Well, good man, he's gone, and he died like a lamb. She's an unfortunate woman, but she must have patience; tis what we must all come to, and so as I was saying, Dear George, good bye t'ye, Yours sincerely.

P. S. I don't know yet when I shall leave Cambridge.

(151) Mr. Henry Coventry was the son of Henry Coventry, Esq. who had a good estate in Cambridgeshire. He was born in 1710, and died in 1752. He wrote four additional Dialogues. The five were republished shortly after his death, by his cousin, the Rev. Francis Coventry. The following is transcribed from the MSS. of the Rev. W. Cole:-

"When Henry Coventry first came to the University, he was of a religious turn of mind, as was Mr. Horace Walpole; even so much so as to go with Ashton, his then great friend, to pray with the prisoners in the Castle. Afterwards, both Mr. Coventry and Mr. Walpole took to the infidel side of the question."-E.



127 Letter 6 To Richard West, Esq. King's College, Aug. 17, 1736.

Dear West, Gray is at Burnham,(152) and, what is surprising, has not been at Eton. Could you live so near it without seeing it? That dear scene of our quadruple-alliance would furnish me with the most agreeable recollections. 'Tis the head of our genealogical table, that is since sprouted out into the two branches of Oxford and Cambridge. You seem to be the eldest son, by having got a whole inheritance to yourself; while the manor of Granta is to be divided between your three younger brothers, Thomas of Lancashire, [153] Thomas of London [154] and Horace. We don't wish you dead to enjoy your seat, but your seat dead to enjoy you. I hope you are a mere elder brother, and live upon what your father left you, and in the way you 'were brought up in, poetry: but we are supposed to betake ourselves to some trade, as logic, philosophy, or mathematics. If I should prove a mere younger brother, and not turn to any Profession, would you receive me, and supply me out of your stock, where you have such plenty? I have been so used to the delicate food of Parnassus, that I can never condescend to apply to the grosser studies of Alma Mater. Sober cloth of syllogism colour suits me ill; or, what's worse, I hate clothes that one must prove to be of no colour at all. If the Muses coelique vias et sidera monstrent, and qua vi maria alta lumescant. why accipiant: but 'tis thrashing, to study philosophy in the abstruse authors. I am not against cultivating these studies, as they are certainly useful; but then they quite neglect all polite literature, all knowledge of this world. Indeed, such people have not much occasion for this latter; for they shut themselves up from it, and study till they know less than any one. Great mathematicians have been of great use; but the generality of them are quite unconversible: they frequent the stars, sub pedibusque vident nubes, but they can't see through them. I tell you what I see; that by living amongst them, I write of nothing else: my letters are all parallelograms, two sides equal to two sides; and every paragraph an axiom, that tells you nothing but what every mortal almost knows. By the way, your letters come under this description; for they contain nothing but what almost every mortal knows too, that knows you-that is, they are extremely agreeable, which they know you are capable of making them:-no one is better acquainted with it than Your sincere friend.

(152) in Buckinghamshire, where his uncle resided.

(153) Thomas Ashton. He was afterwards fellow of Eton College, rector of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate-street, and preacher to the Society of Lincoln's-inn. It was to him that Mr. Walpole addressed the poetical epistle from Florence, first published in Dodsley's collection of poems.

(154) Thomas Gray, the poet.

1737

128 Letter 7 To George Montagu Esq. King's College, March 20, 1737.

Dear George, The first paragraph in my letter must be in answer to the last in yours; though I should be glad to make you the return you ask, by waiting on you myself. 'Tis not in my power, from more circumstances than One, which are needless to tell you, to accompany you and Lord Conway(155) to Italy: you add to the pleasure it would give me, by asking it so kindly. You I am infinitely obliged to, as I was capable, my dear George, of making you forget for a minute that you don't propose stirring from the dear place you are now in. Poppies indeed are the chief flowers in love nosegays, but they seldom bend towards the lady; at least not till the other flowers have been gathered. Prince Volscius's boots were made of love-leather, and honour-leather; instead of honour, some people's are made of friendship; but since you have been so good to me as to draw on this, I can almost believe you are equipped for travelling farther than Rheims. 'Tis no little inducement to make me wish myself in France, that I hear gallantry is not left off there; that you may be polite and not be thought awkward for it. You know the pretty men of the age in England use the women with no more deference than they do their coach- horses, and have not half the regard for them that they have for themselves. The little freedoms you tell me you use take off from formality, by avoiding which ridiculous extreme we are dwindled into the other barbarous one, rusticity. If you had been at Paris, I should have inquired about the new Spanish ambassadress, who, by the accounts we have thence, at her first audience of the queen, sat down with her at a distance that suited respect and conversation. Adieu, dear George, Yours most heartily.

(156) Francis Seymour Conway, son of Francis Seymour, Lord Conway, and Charlotte, daughter of John Shorter, Esq. [Sister to Lady Walpole, the mother of Horace, and with her co-heiress of John Shorter, Esq. lord-mayor of London in 1688, who died during his mayoralty, from a fall off his horse, under Newgate, as he was going to proclaim Bartholomew Fair. Lady Walpole died in the August of the year in which the present letter was written, and Sir Robert soon afterwards married @Miss Skerrit. Walpole's well-known fondness for his mother is alluded to by Gray, in a letter to West, dated 22d August, 1737:-" But while I write to you, I hear the bad news of lady Walpole's death, on Saturday night last. Forgive me if the thought of what my poor Horace must feel on that account obliges me to have done."]



129 Letter 8 To George Montagu, Esq. Christopher Inn, Eton.

The Christopher. Lord! how great I used to think anybody just landed at the Christopher! But here are no boys for me to send for-here I am, like Noah, just returned into his old world again, with all sorts of queer feels about me. By the way, the clock strikes the old cracked sound-I recollect so much, and remember so little-and want to play about-and am so afraid of my playfellows-and am ready to shirk Ashton and can't help making fun of myself-and envy a dame over the way, that has just locked in her boarders, and is going to sit down in a little hot parlour to a very bad supper, so comfortably! and I could be so jolly a dog if I did not fat, which, by the way, is the first time the word was ever applicable to me. In short, I should be out of all bounds if I was to tell you half I feel, how young again I am one minute, and how old the next. But do come and feel with me, when you will-to-morrow-adieu! If I don't compose myself a little more before Sunday morning, when Ashton is to preach, I shall certainly be in a bill for laughing at church; but how to belt it, to see him in the pulpit, when the last time I saw him here, was standing up funking at a conduit to be catechised. Good night; yours.



1739

130 Letter 9 To Richard West, Esq. Paris, April 21, N. S. 1739. (157)

Dear West, You figure us in a set of pleasures, which, believe me, we do not find; cards and eating are so universal, that they absorb all variation of pleasures. The operas, indeed, are much frequented three times a week; but to me they would be a greater penance than eating maigre: their music resembles a gooseberry tart as much as it does harmony. We have not yet been at the Italian playhouse; scarce any one goes there. Their best amusement, and which in some parts, beats ours, is the comedy three or four of the actors excel any we have: but then to this nobody goes, if it is not one of the fashionable nights; and then they go, be the play good or bad-except on Moli'ere's nights, whose pieces they are quite weary of. Gray and I have been at the Avare to-night; I cannot at all commend their performance of it. Last night I was in the Place de Louis le Grand (a regular octagon, uniform, and the houses handsome, though not so large as Golden Square), to see what they reckoned one of the finest burials that ever was in France. It was the Duke de Tresmes, governor of Paris and marshal of France. It began on foot from his palace to his parish-church, and from thence in coaches to the opposite end of Paris, to b interred in the church of the Celestins, where is his family-vault. About a week ago we happened to see the grave digging, as we went to see the church, which is old and small., but fuller of fine ancient monuments than any, except St. Denis, which we saw on the road, and excels Westminster; for the windows are all ' painted in mosaic, and the tombs as fresh and well preserved as if they were of yesterday. In the Celestins' church is a votive column to Francis II., which says, that it is one assurance of his being immortalised, to have had the martyr Mary Stuart for his wife. After this long digression, I return to the burial, which was a most vile thing. A long procession of flambeaux and friars; no plumes, trophies, banners, led horses, scutcheons, or open chariots; nothing but friars, white, black, and grey, with all their trumpery. This goodly ceremony began at nine at night, and did not finish till three this morning; for, each church they passed, they stopped for a hymn and holy water. By the bye, some of these choice monks, who watched the body while it lay in state, fell asleep one night, and let the tapers catch fire of the rich velvet mantle lined with ermine and powdered with gold flower-de-luces, which melted the lead coffin, and burnt off the feet of the deceased before it awakened them. The French love show; but there is a meanness runs through it all. At the house where I stood to see this procession, the room was hung with crimson damask and gold, and the windows were mended in ten or a dozen places with paper. At dinner they give you three courses; but a third of the dishes is patched up with sallads, butter, puff-paste, or some such miscarriage of a dish. None, but Germans, wear fine clothes; but their coaches are tawdry enough for the wedding of Cupid and Psyche. You would-laugh extremely at their signs: some live at the Y grec, some at Venus's toilette, and some at the sucking cat. YOU would not easily guess their notions of honour: I'll tell you one: it is very dishonourable for any gentleman not to be 'in @he army, or in the king's service as they call it, and it is no dishonour to keep public gaming-houses: there are at least an hundred and fifty people of the first quality in Paris who live by it. You may go into their houses at all hours of the night, And find hazard, pharaoh, etc. The men who keep the hazard tables at the duke de Gesvres' pay him twelve guineas each night for the privilege. Even the princesses of the blood are dirty enough to have shares in the banks kept at their houses. We have seen two or three of them; but they are not young, nor remarkable but for wearing their red of a deeper dye than other women, though all use it extravagantly.

The weather is still so bad, that we have not made any excursions to see Versailles and the environs, not even walked in the Tuileries; but we have seen almost every thing else that is worth seeing in Paris, though that is very considerable. They beat us vastly in buildings, both in number and magnificence. The tombs of Richelieu and Mazarin at the Sorbonne and the College de Quatre Nations are wonderfully fine, especially the former. We have seen very little of the people themselves, who are not inclined to be propitious to strangers, especially if they do not play and speak the language readily. There are many English here: Lord Holderness, Conway(158) and Clinton, (159) and Lord George Bentinck; (160) Mr. Brand,(161) Offley, Frederic, Frampton, Bonfoy, etc. Sir John Cotton's son and a Mr. Vernon of Cambridge passed through Paris last week. We shall stay here about a fortnight longer, and then go to Rheims with Mr. Conway for two or three months. When you have nothing else to do, we shall be glad to hear from you; and any news. If we did not remember there was such a place as England, we should know nothing of it: the French never mention it, unless it happens to be in one of their proverbs! Adieu! Yours ever.

To-morrow we go to the Cid. They have no farces but petites pieces like our "Devil to Pay."

(157) Mr. Walpole left Cambridge towards the end of the year 1738, and in March, 1739, began his travels by going to Paris, accompanied by Mr. Gray.

(158) Francis, second Lord Conway, in 1750, created Viscount Beauchamp and Earl of Hertford, and in 1793, Earl of Yarmouth and Marquis of Hertford. He was the elder brother of General Conway, and grandfather of the present Marquis.

(159) Hugh Fortescue, in whose favour the abeyance into which the barony of Clinton had fallen on the death of Edward, thirteenth Baron Clinton, was terminated by writ of summons, in 1721. He was created, in 1746, Lord Fortescue and Earl of Clinton; and died unmarried, in 1751.-E.

(160) Son of Henry, second Earl and first Duke of Portland; he died in 1759.-E.

(161) Mr. Brand of the Hoo, in Hertfordshire, who afterwards married Lady Caroline Pierrepoint, daughter of the Duke of Kingston by his second wife, and half-sister of Lady Mary Wortley.-E.



132 Letter 10 To Richard West, Esq. >From Paris, 1739.

Dear West, I should think myself to blame not to try to divert you, when you tell me I can. From the air of your letter you seem to want amusement, that is, you want spirits. I would recommend to you certain little employments that I know of, and that belong to you, but that I imagine bodily exercise is more suitable to your complaint. If you would promise me to read them in the Temple garden, I would send you a little packet of plays and pamphlets that we have made up, and intend to dispatch to 'Dick's' the first opportunity.-Stand by, clear the way, make room for the pompous appearance of Versailles le Grand!—But no: it fell so short of my idea of it, mine, that I have resigned to Gray the office of writing its panegyric.(162) He likes it. They say I am to like it better next Sunday; when the sun is to shine., the king is to be fine, the water-works are to play, and the new knights of the Holy Ghost are to be installed! Ever since Wednesday, the day we were there, we have done nothing but dispute about it. They say, we did not see it to advantage, that we ran through the apartments, saw the garden en passant, and slubbered over Trianon. I say, we saw nothing. However, we had time to see that the great front is a lumber of littleness, composed of black brick, stuck full of bad old busts, and fringed with gold rails. The rooms are all small, except the great gallery, which is noble, but totally wainscoted with looking-glass. The garden is littered with statues and fountains, each of which has its tutelary deity. In particular, the elementary god of fire solaces himself in one. In another, Enceladus, in lieu of a mountain, is overwhelmed with many waters. There are avenues of water-pots, who disport themselves much in squirting up cascadelins. In short, 'tis a garden for a great child. Such was Louis Quatorze, who is here seen in his proper colours, where he commanded in person, unassisted by his armies and his generals, left to the pursuit of his own puerile ideas of glory.

We saw last week a place of another kind, and which has more the air of what it would be, than anything I have yet met with: it was the convent of the Chartreux. All the conveniences, or rather (if there was such a word) all the adaptments are assembled here, that melancholy, meditation, selfish devotion, and despair would require. But yet 'tis pleasing. Soften the terms, and mellow the uncouth horror that reigns here, but a little, and 'tis a charming solitude. It stands on a large space of ground, is old and irregular. The chapel is gloomy: behind it, through some dark passages, you pass into a large obscure hall, which looks like a combination-chamber for some hellish council. The large cloister surrounds their buryingground. The cloisters are very narrow and very long, and let into the cells, which are built like little huts detached from each other. We were carried into one, where lived a middle-aged man not long initiated into the order. He was extremely civil, and called himself Dom Victor. We have promised to visit him often. Their habit is all white: but besides this he was infinitely clean in his person; and his apartment and garden, which he keeps and cultivates without any assistance, was neat to a degree. He has four little rooms, furnished in the prettiest manner, and hung with good prints. One of them is a library, and another a gallery. He has several canary-birds disposed in a pretty manner in breeding-cages. in his garden was a bed of good tulips in bloom, flowers and fruit-trees, and all neatly kept. They are permitted at certain hours to talk to strangers, but never to one another, or to go out of their convent. But what we chiefly went to see was the small cloister, with the history of St. Bruno their founder, painted by Le Sceur. It consists of twenty-two pictures, the figures a good deal less than life. But sure they are amazing! I don't know what Raphael may be in Rome, but these pictures excel all I have seen in Paris and England. The figure of the dead man who spoke at his burial, contains all the strongest and horridest ideas of ghastliness, hypocrisy discovered, and the height of damnation, pain and cursing. A Benedictine monk, who was there at the same time, said to me of this picture C'est une fable, mais on la croyoit autrefois. Another, who showed me relics in one of their churches, expressed as much ridicule for them. The pictures I have been speaking of are ill preserved, and some of the finest heads defaced, which was done at first by a rival of Le Soeur's. Adieu! dear West, take care of your health; and some time or other we will talk over all these things with more pleasure than I have had in seeing them.

Yours ever.

(162) For Gray's description of Versailles, which he styles " a huge heap of littleness," see his letter to West of the 22nd of May, 1739. (Works, by Mitford, vol. ii. P. 46).edited by the Rev. John Mitford.-E.



134 Letter 11 To Richard West, Esq. Rheims, (163) June 18, 1739, N. S.

Dear West, How I am to fill up this letter is not easy to divine. I have consented that Gray shall give an account of our situation and proceedings; (164) and have left myself at the mercy of my own' invention—a most terrible resource, and which I shall avoid applying to if I can possibly help it. I had prepared the ingredients for a description of a ball, and was just ready to serve it up to you, but he has plucked it from me. However, I was resolved to give you an account of a particular song and dance in it, and was determined to write the words and Sing the tune just as I folded up my letter: but as it would, ten to one, be opened before it gets to you, I am forced to lay aside this thought, though an admirable one. Well, but now I have put it into your head, I suppose you won't rest without it. For that individual one, believe me 'tis nothing without the tune and the dance; but to stay your stomach, I -will send you one of their vaudevilles or Ballads, (165) which they sing at the comedy after their petites pi'eces.

You must not wonder if all my letters resemble dictionaries, with French on one side and English on t'other; I deal in nothing else at present, and talk a couple of words of each language alternately, from morning till night. This has put my mouth a little out of tune at present but I am trying to recover the use of it by reading the newspapers aloud at breakfast, and by shewing the title-pages of all my English books. Besides this, I have paraphrased half of the first act of your new GustavUS (166) which was sent us to Paris: a most dainty performance, and just what you say of it. Good night, I am sure you must be tired: if you are not, I am. yours ever.

(163) Mr. Walpole, with his cousin Henry Seymour Conway and Mr. Gray, resided three months at Rheims, principally to acquire the French language.

(164) Gray's letter to West has not been preserved; but one addressed to his mother, on the 21 st of June, containing an account of Rheims and the society, is printed in his Works, vol. ii. p. 50.-E.

(165) This ballad does not appear.

(166) The tragedy of "Gustavus Vasa," by Henry Brooke, author of "The Fool of Quality." It was rehearsed at Drury Lane; but, as it was supposed to satirize Sir Robert Walpole, it was prohibited to be acted. This, however, did Brooke no injury, as he was encouraged to publish the play by subscription.-E.



134 Letter 12 To Richard West, Esq. Rheims, July 20, 1739.

Gray says, Indeed you ought to write to West.-Lord, child, so I would, if I knew what to write about. If I were in London and he at Rheims, I would send him volumes about peace and war, Spaniards, camps, and conventions; but d'ye think he cares sixpence to know who is gone to Compiegne, and when they come back, or who won and lost four livres at quadrille last night at Mr. Cockbert's?—No, but you may tell him what you have heard of Compiegne; that they have balls twice a week after the play, and that the Count d'Eu gave the king a most flaring entertainment in the camp, where the Polygone was represented in flowering shrubs. Dear West, these are the things I must tell you; I don't know how to make 'em look significant, unless you will be a Rhemois for a little moment.(167) I wonder you can stay out of the city so long, when we are going to have all manner of diversions. The comedians return hither from Compiegne in eight days, for example; and in a very little of time one attends the regiment of the king, three battalions and an hundred of officers; all men of a certain fashion, very amiable, and who know their world. Our women grow more gay, more lively, from day to day, in expecting them; Mademoiselle la Reine is brewing a wash of a finer dye, and brushing up her eyes for their arrival. La Barone already counts upon fifteen of them: and Madame Lelu, finding her linen robe conceals too many beauties, has bespoke one of gauze.

I won't plague you any longer with people you don't know, I mean French ones; for you must absolutely hear of an Englishman that lately appeared at Rheims. About two days ago, about four o'clock in the afternoon, and about an hour after dinner,-from all which you may conclude we dine at two o'clock,-as we were picking our teeth round a littered table and in a crumby room, Gray in an undress, Mr. Conway in a morning gray coat, and I in a trim white night-gown and slippers, very much out of order, with a very little cold, a message discomposed us all of a sudden, with a service to Mr. Walpole from Mr. More, and that, if he pleased, he would wait on him. We scuttled upstairs in great confusion, but with no other damage than the flinging down two or three glasses and the dropping a slipper by the way. Having ordered the room to be cleaned out, and sent a very civil response to Mr. More, we began to consider who Mr. More should be. Is it Mr. More of Paris! No. Oh, 'tis Mr. More, my Lady Teynham's husband? No, it can't be he. A Mr. More, then, that lives in the Halifax family? No. In short, after thinking of ten thousand more Mr. Mores, we concluded it could never be a one of 'em. By this time Mr. More arrives; but such a Mr. More! a young gentleman out of the wilds of Ireland, who has never been in England, but has got all the ordinary language of that kingdom; has been two years at Paris, where he dined at an ordinary with the refugee Irish, and learnt fortification-,, which he does not understand at all, and which yet is the only thing he knows. In short, he is a young swain of very uncouth phrase, inarticulate speech, and no ideas. This hopeful child is riding post into Lorrain, or any where else, he is not certain; for if there is a war he shall go home again: for we must give the Spaniards another drubbing, you know; and if the Dutch do but join us, we shall blow up all the ports in Europe; for our ships are our bastions, and our ravelines, and our hornworks; and there's a devilish wide ditch for 'em to pass, which they can't fill up with things-Here Mr. Conway helped him to fascines. By this time I imagine you have laughed at him as much, and were as tired of him as we were; but he's gone. This is the day that Gray and I intended for the first of a southern circuit; but as Mr. Selwyn and George Montagu design us a visit here, we have put off our journey for some weeks. When we get a little farther, I hope our memories will brighten: at present they are but dull, dull as Your humble servant ever.

P. S. I thank you ten thousand times for your last letter: when I have as much wit and as much poetry in me, I'll send you as good an one. Good night, child!

(167) The three following paragraphs are a literal translation of French expressions to the same imports.



136 Letter 13 To Richard West, Esq. >From a Hamlet among the Mountains of Savoy, Sept. 28, 1739, N. S.

Precipices, mountains, torrents, wolves, rumblings, Salvator Rosa-the pomp of our park and the meekness of our palace! Here we are, the lonely lords of glorious, desolate prospects. I have kept a sort of resolution which I made, of not writing to you as long as I staid in France: I am now a quarter of an hour out of it, and write to you. Mind, 'tis three months since we heard from you. I begin this letter -among the clouds; where I shall finish, my neighbour Heaven probably knows: 'tis an odd wish in a mortal letter, to hope not to finish it on this side the atmosphere. You will have a billet tumble to you from the stars hen you least think of it; and that I should write it too! Lord, how potent that sounds! But I am to undergo many transmigrations before I come to "yours ever." Yesterday I was a shepherd of Dauphin'e; to-day an Alpine savage; to-morrow a Carthusian monk; and Friday a Swiss Calvinist. I have one quality which I find remains with me in all worlds and in all aethers; I brought it with me from your world, and am admired for it in this-'tis my esteem for you: this is a common thought among you, and you will laugh at it, but it is new here: as new to remember one's friends in the world one has left, as for you to remember those you have lost.