The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume II Part 38

(597) General Hawley, who behaved with great cruelty and brutality in the Scotch rebellion, which did not however Prevent his being beaten by the rebels,-D.

(598) The story of this unfortunate young lady is told by Goldsmith, in his amusing Life of Beau Nash, introduced into the new and @greatly enlarged edition of his "Miscellaneous Works," published by Mr. Murray, in 1837, in four volumes octavo. See vol. iii. p. 294. According to the poet, the lines which were written on one of the panes of the window, were these:-

"O Death! thou pleasing end of human wo!

Thou cure for life! thou greatest good below!

Still may'st thou fly the coward and the slave, And thy soft slumbers only bless the brave."-E.

(599) The King had a mind to marry the Prince of Wales to a Princess of Brunswick.

270 Letter 145 To Sir Horace Mann.

Arlington Street, August 28, 1755.

My last letter to you could not be got out of England, before I might have added a melancholy supplement. Accounts of a total defeat of Braddock, and his forces are arrived from America; the purport is, that the General having arrived within a few miles of Fort du Quesne, (I hope you are perfect in your American geography?) sent an advanced party, under Lord Gage's brother: they were fired upon, invisibly, as they entered a wood; Braddock heard guns, and sent another party to support the former; but the first fell back in confusion on the second, and the second on the main body. The whole was in disorder, and it is said, the General himself', though exceedingly brave, did not retain all the sang froid that was necessary. The common soldiers in general, fled; the officers stood heroically and were ma.s.sacred: our Indians were not surprised, and behaved gallantly. The General had five horses shot under him, no bad symptoms of his spirit, and at last was brought off by two Americans, no English daring, though Captain Orme,(600) his aid-de-camp, who is wounded too, and has made some noise here by an affair of gallantry, offered Sixty guineas to have him conveyed away. We have lost twenty-six officers, besides many wounded, and ten pieces of artillery. Braddock lived four days, in great torment.(601) What makes the rout more shameful is, that instead of a great pursuit, and a barbarous ma.s.sacre by the Indians, which is always to be feared in these rencontres, not a black or white soul followed our troops, but we had leisure two days afterwards to fetch off our dead. In short, our American laurels are strangely blighted! We intended to be in great alarms for Carolina and Virginia, but the small number of our enemies had reduced this affair to a panic. We pretend to be comforted on the French deserting Fort St. John, and on the hopes we have from two other expeditions which are on foot in that part of the world-but it is a great drawback on English heroism I pity you who represent the very flower of British courage ingrafted on a Brunswick stock!

I have already given you some account of Braddock; I may complete the poor man's history in a few more words: he once had a duel with Colonel Gumley, Lady Bath's(602) brother, who had been his great friend: as they were going to engage, Gumley, who had good humour and wit, (Braddock had the latter,) said "Braddock, you are a poor dog! here take my purse; if you kill me you will be forced to run away, and then you will not have a s.h.i.+lling to support you." Braddock refused the purse, insisted on' the duel, was disarmed, and would not even ask his life. However, with all his brutality, he has lately been Governor of Gibraltar, where he made himself adored, and where scarce any Governor was endured before.

Adieu! Pray don't let any detachment from Pannoni's(603) be sent against us--we should run away!

(600) He married the sister of George Lord Townshend, without the consent of her family.

(601) Walpole, in his Memoires, says, that "he dictated an encomium on his officers, and expired."-D.

(602) Elizabeth Gumley, wife of William Pulteny, Earl of Bath.

(603) Pannoni's coffeehouse of the Florentine n.o.bility, not famous for their courage of late.

271 Letter 146 To Richard Bentley, Esq.

Arlington Street, August 28, 1755.

Our piratic laurels, with which the French have so much reproached us, have been exceedingly pruned! Braddock is defeated and killed, by a handful of Indians and by the baseness of his own troops, who sacrificed him and his gallant officers. Indeed, there is some suspicion that cowardice was not the motive, but resentment at having been draughted from Irish regiments. Were such a desertion universal, could one but [email protected]'@ Could one blame men who should refuse to be knocked on the head for sixpence a day, and for the advantage and dignity of a few ambitious? But in this case one pities the brave young @officers, who cannot so easily disfranchise themselves from the prejudices of glory! Our disappointment is greater than our loss; six-and-twenty officers are killed, who, I suppose, have not left a vast many fatherless and widowless, as an old woman told me to-day with great tribulation. The ministry have a much more serious affair on their hands-Lord Lincoln and Lord Anson have had a dreadful quarrel! Coquus teterrima belli causa! When Lord Mountford shot himself, Lord Lincoln said, "Well, I am very sorry for poor Mountford! but it is the part of a wise man to make the best of every misfortune-I shall now have the best cook in England." This was uttered before Lord Anson. Joras,(604)-- who is a man of extreme punctilio, as cooks and officers ought to be, would not be hired till he knew whether this Lord Mountford would retain him. When it was decided that he would not, Lord Lincoln proposed to hire Joras. Anson had already engaged him. Such a breach of friends.h.i.+p was soon followed by an expostulation (there was jealousy of the Duke of Newcastle's favour already under the coals): in short the nephew earl called the favourite earl such gross names, that it was well they were ministers! otherwise, as Mincing says, "I vow, I believe they must have fit." The public, that is half-a-dozen toad-eaters, have great hopes that the present unfavourable posture of affairs in America will tend to cement this breach, and that we shall all unite hand and heart against the common enemy.

I returned the night before last from my peregrination. It is very unlucky for me that no crown of martyrdom is entailed on zeal for antiquities; I should be a rubric martyr of the first cla.s.s. After visiting the new salt-water baths at Harwich, (which, next to horse-racing, grows the most fas.h.i.+onable resource for people who want to get out of town, and who love the country and retirement!) I went to see Orford castle, and Lord Hertford's at Sudborn. The one is a ruin, and the other ought to be so. Returning in a one-horse chair over a wild vast heath, I went out of the road to see the remains of b.u.t.tley Abbey; which however I could not see; for, as the keys of Orford castle were at Sudborn, so the keys of b.u.t.tley were at Orford! By this time it was night; we lost our way, were in excessive rain for above two hours, and only found our way to be overturned into the mire the next morning going into Ipswich. Since that I went to see an old house built by Secretary Naunton.(605) His descendant, who is a strange retired creature, was unwilling to let us see it; but we did, and little in it worth seeing. The house never was fine, and is now out of repair; has a bed with ivory pillars and loose rings, presented to the secretary by some German prince or German artist; and a small gallery of indifferent portraits, among which there are scarce any worth notice but of the Earl of Northumberland, Anna Bullen's lover, and of Sir Antony Wingfield, who having his hand tucked into his girdle, the housekeeper told us, had had his fingers cut off by Harry VIII. But Harry VIII. was not a man pour s'arr'eter 'a ces minuties la!

While we waited for leave to see the house, I strolled into the churchyard, and was struck with a little door open into the chancel, through the arch of which I discovered cross-legged knights and painted tombs! In short, there are no less than eight considerable monuments, very perfect, of Wingfields, Nauntons, and a Sir John Boynet and his wife, as old as Richard the Second's time. But what charmed me still more, were two figures of Secretary Naunton's father and mother in the window in painted gla.s.s, near two feet high, and by far the finest painting on gla.s.s I ever saw. His figure, in a puffed doublet, breeches and bonnet, and cloak of scarlet and yellow, is absolutely perfect: her shoulder is damaged.

This church, which is scarce bigger than a large chapel, is very ruinous, though containing such treasures! Besides these, there are bra.s.ses on the pavement, with a succession of all the wonderful head-dresses which our plain virtuous grandmothers invented to tempt our rude and simple ancestors.- -I don't know what our n.o.bles might be, but I am sure that Milliners three or four hundred years ago must have been more accomplished in the arts, as Prynne calls them, of crisping, curling, frizzling, and frouncing, than all the tirewomen of Babylon, modern Paris, or modern Pall-Mall. Dame Winifred Boynet, whom I mentioned above, is accoutered with the coiffure called piked horns, which, if there were any signs in Lothbury and Eastcheap, must have brushed them about strangely, as their ladys.h.i.+ps rode behind their gentlemen ushers! Adieu!

(604) The name of the cook in question.

(605) Sir Robert Naunton, master of the court of wards. He wrote Anecdotes of Queen Elizabeth and her favourites.

273 Letter 147 To The Rev. Henry Etough.(606) Woolterton, Sept. 10, 1755.

Dear Etough, I cannot forbear any longer to acknowledge the many favours from you lately; your last was the 8th of this month. His Majesty's speedy arrival among his British subjects is very desirable and necessary, whatever may be the chief motive for his making haste. As to Spain, I have from the beginning told my friends, when they asked, both in town and country, that I was at all apprehensive that Spain would join with France against us; for this plain reason, because it could not possibly be the interest of the Spaniards to do it for should the views of the French take place in making a line of forts from the Mississippi to Canada, and of being masters of the whole of that extent of country, Peru and Mexico, and Florida, would be in more danger from them than the British settlements in America.

Mr. Fowle has made me a visit for a few days, and communicated to me your two pieces relating to my brother and Lord Bolingbroke, and I think you do great justice to them both in their very different and opposite characters; but you will give me leave to add with respect to Lord Orford, there are several mistakes and misinformations, of which I am persuaded I could convince you by conversation, but my observations are not proper for a letter. Of this more fully when I see you, but when that will be I can't yet tell. I am ever most affectionately yours, etc.

(606) The Rev. Henry Etough, of Pembroke-hall, Cambridge. He received his education among the Dissenters, and Archbishop Secker and Dr. 'Birch were among his schoolfellows. Through the interest of Sir Robert Walpole, he was presented to the rectory of Therfield, in Hertfords.h.i.+re; where he died, in his seventieth year, in August 1757.-E.

273 Letter 148 To Richard Bentley, Esq.

Strawberry Hill, September 18, 1755.

My dear sir, After an expectation of six weeks, I have received a letter from you, dated August 23d. Indeed I did not impute any neglect to you; I knew it arose from the war; but Mr. S. * * *

* tells me the packets will now be more regular.--Mr. S * * *

tells me!--What, has he been in town, or at Strawberry?--No; but I have been at Southampton: I was at the Vine; and on the arrival of a few fine days, the first we have had this summer, after a deluge, Mr. Chute persuaded me to take a jaunt to Winchester and Netley Abbey, with the latter of which he is very justly enchanted. I was disappointed in Winchester: it is a paltry town, and small: King Charles the Second's house is the worst thing I ever saw of Sir Christopher Wren, a mixture of a town-hall and an hospital; not to mention the bad choice of the situation in such a country; it is all ups that should be downs. I talk to you as supposing that you never have been at Winchester, though I suspect you have, for the entrance of the cathedral is the very idea of that of Mabland.

I like the smugness of the cathedral, and the profusion of the most beautiful Gothic tombs. That of Cardinal Beaufort is in a style more free and of more taste than any thing I have seen of the kind. His figure confirms me in my opinion that I have struck out the true history of the picture that I bought of Robinson; and which I take for the marriage of Henry VI.

Besides the monuments of the Saxon Kings, of Lucius, William Rufus, his brother, etc. there are those of six such great or considerable men as Beaufort, William of Wickham, him of Wainfleet, the Bishops Fox and Gardiner, and my Lord Treasurer Portland.--How much power and ambition under half-a-dozen stones! I own, I grow to look on tombs as lasting mansions, instead of observing them for curious pieces of architecture!- -Going into Southampton, I pa.s.sed Bevismount, where my Lord Peterborough

"Hung his trophies o'er his garden gate;"(607)

but General Mordaunt was there, and we could not see it. We walked long by moonlight on the terrace along the beach- -Guess, if we talked of and wished for you! The town is crowded; sea-baths are established there too. But how shall I describe Netley to you? I can only by telling YOU, that it is the spot in the world for which Mr. Chute and I wish. The ruins are vast, and retain fragments of beautiful fretted roofs pendent in the air, With all variety of Gothic patterns of windows wrapped round and round with ivy-many trees are sprouted up amongst the walls, and Only want to be increased with cypresses! A hill rises above the abbey encircled with wood: the fort, in which we would build a tower for habitation, remains with two small platforms. This little castle is buried from the abbey in a wood, in the very centre, on the edge of the hill: on each side breaks in the view of the Southampton sea, deep blue, glistering with silver and vessels; on one side terminated by Southampton, on the other by Calshot castle; and the Isle of Wight rising above the opposite hills. In short, they are not the ruins of Netley, but of Paradise.--OH! the purple abbots, what a spot had they chosen to slumber in! The scene is so beautifully tranquil, that they seem only to have retired into the world.(608)

I know nothing of the war, but that we catch little French s.h.i.+ps like crawfish. They have taken one of ours with Governor Lyttelton(609) going to South Carolina. He is a very worthy young man, but so stiffened with Sir George's old fustian, that I am persuaded he is at this minute in the citadel of Nantes comparing himself to Regulus.

Gray has lately been here. He has begun an Ode,(610) which if he finishes equally, will, I think, inspirit all your drawing again. It is founded on an old tradition of Edward 1. putting to death the Welsh bards. Nothing but you, or Salvator Rosa, and Nicolo Poussin, can paint up to the expressive horror and dignity of it. Don't think I mean to flatter you; all I would say is, that now the two latter are dead, you must of necessity be Gray's painter. In order to keep your talent alive, I shall next week send you flake white, brushes, oil, and the enclosed directions from Mr. Muntz, who is still at the Vine, and whom, for want of you, we labour hard to form.

I shall put up in the parcel two or three prints of my eagle, which, as you never would draw it, is very moderately performed; and yet the drawing was much better than the engraving. I shall send you too a trifling snuff-box, only as a sample of the new manufacture at Battersea, which is done with copper-plates. Mr. Chute is at the Vine, where I cannot say any works go on in proportion to my impatience. I have left him an inventionary of all I want to have done there; but I believe it may be bound up with the century of projects of that foolish Marquis of Worcester, who printed a catalogue of t.i.tles of things which he gave no directions to execute, nor I believe could.(611) Adieu!

(607) "Our Gen'rals now, retired to their estate, Hang their old trophies o'er the garden gate."

Pope, in this couplet, is said to have alluded to the entrance of Lord Peterborough's lawn at Bevismount.-E.

(608) Gray, who visited Netley Abbey in the preceding month, calls it "a most beautiful ruin in as beautiful a situation."-E.

(609) william Henry, brother of Sir George, afterwards Lord Lyttelton. The man-of-war in which he was proceeding to South Carolina was captured by the French squadron under Count Guay, and sent into Nantes, but was shortly afterwards restored.-E.

(610) "The Bard" was commenced this year, but was for some time left unfinished; but the accident of seeing a blind Harper (Mr. Parry) perform on a Welsh harp, again put his Ode in motion, and brought it at last to a conclusion, See Works, vol. i. p. x.x.xiii.-E.

(611) Vol. i. letter 259 to H. S. Conway, Aug. 29, 1748.

275 Letter 149 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Strawberry Hill, Sept. 23, 1755.

Dear harry, Never make me excuses for a letter that tells me so many agreeable things -as your last; that you are got well to Dublin;(612) that you are all well, and that you have accommodated all your politics to your satisfaction--and I may be allowed to say, greatly to your credit 'What could you tell me that would please me so much When I have indulged a little my joy for your success and honour, it is natural to consider the circ.u.mstances you have told me; and you will easily excuse me if I am not quite as much satisfied with the conduct of your late antagonists, as I with yours. You have tranquillized a nation, have repaired your master's honour, and secured the peace of your administration;-but what shall one say to the Speaker, Mr. Malone and the others? Don't they confess that they have gone the greatest lengths, and risked the safety of their country on a mere personal pique? If they did not contend for profit, like our patriots (and you don't tell me that they have made any lucrative stipulations), yet it is plain that their ambition had been wounded, and that they resented their power being crossed. But I, Who am Whig to the backbone, indeed in the strictest sense of the word, feel hurt in a tenderer point, and which you,. who are a minister, must not allow me: I am offended at their agreeing to an address that avows such deference for prerogative, and that is to protest so deeply against having to attack it.

However rebel this may sound at your court, my Gothic spirit is hurt; I do not love such loyal expressions from a Parliament. I do not so much consider myself writing to Dublin castle, as from Strawberry castle, where you know how I love to enjoy my liberty. I give myself the airs, in my nutsh.e.l.l, of an old baron, and am tempted almost to say with an old Earl of Norfolk, who was a very free speaker at least, if he was not an excellent poet,

"When I am in my castle of Bungey, Situate upon the river Waveney, I ne care for the King of c.o.c.kney."

I have been roving about Hamps.h.i.+re, have been at Winchester and Southampton and twenty places, and have been but one day in London --consequently know as little news as if I had been shut up in Bungey castle. Rumours there are of great bickerings and uneasiness; but I don't believe there will be any bloodshed of places, except Legge's, which n.o.body seems willing to take-I mean as a sinecure. His Majesty of c.o.c.kney is returned exceedingly well, but grown a little out of humour at finding that we are not so much pleased with all the Russians and Hessians that he has hired to recover the Ohio.

We are an ungrateful people! Make a great many compliments for me to my Lady Ailesbury; I own I am in pain about Missy.

As my lady is a little coquette herself, and loves crowds and admiration, and a court life, it will be very difficult for her to keep a strict eye upon Missy. The Irish are very forward and bold:--I say no more but it would hurt you both extremely to have her marry herself idly and I think my Lord Chancellor has not extended his matrimonial foresight to Ireland. However, I have much confidence in Mrs. Elizabeth Jones:(613) I am sure, when they were here, she would never let Missy whisper with a boy that was old enough to speak.

Adieu! As the winter advances, and plots thicken, I will write you letters that shall have a little more in them than this.