The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume III Part 9

(95) Afterwards d.u.c.h.ess of Portland.

(96) Anciently the seat of the Vernons. Sir George Vernon, in Queen Elizabeth's time, was styled King of the Peak," and the property came into the Manners family by his daughter marrying Thomas, son of the first Earl of Rutland.-E.

(97) She was daughter of John Hardwicke, of Hardwicke in Derbys.h.i.+re. Her first husband was Robert Barley, Esq. who settled his large estate on her and hers. She married, secondly, Sir William Cavendish; her third husband was Sir William St. Lo; and her fourth was George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, whose daughter, Lady Grace, married her son by Sir William Cavendish.

(98) Evelyn, who visited Newstead in 1654, says of it:--"It is situated much like Fontainbleau, in France, capable of being made a n.o.ble seat, accommodated as it is with brave woods and streams; it has yet remaining the front of a glorious abbey church." Lord Byron thus beautifully describes the family seat, in the thirteenth canto of Don Juan:

"An old, old monastery once, and now Still older mansion-of a rich and rare Mix'd Gothic, much as artists all allow Few specimens yet left us can compare.

"Before the mansion lay a lucid lake, Broad as transparent, deep, and freshly fed By a river, which its soften'd way did take In currents through the calmer water spread Around: the wildfowl nestled in the brake And sedges, brooding in their liquid bed: The woods sloped downwards to its brink, and stood With their green faces fix'd upon the flood."-E.

(99) A mighty window, hollow in the centre, Shorn of its gla.s.s of thousand colourings, Through which the deepen'd glories once could enter, Streaming from off the sun like seraph's wings, Now yawns all desolate."-E.

(100) "----The cloisters still were stable, The cells, too, and refectory, I ween: An exquisite small chapel had been able Still unimpaired to decorate the scene The rest had been reform'd, replaced, or sunk, And spoke more of the baron than the monk."-E.

(101) The seat of Earl Spencer.-E.

Letter 43 To The Earl Of Strafford.

Strawberry Hill, Sept. 4, 1760. (87)

My dear lord, You ordered me to tell you how I liked Hardwicke. To say the truth, not exceedingly. The bank of oaks over the ponds is fine, and the vast lawn behind the house: I saw nothing else that is superior to the common run of parks. For the house, it did not please me at all; there is no grace, no ornament, no Gothic in it. I was glad to see the style of furniture of that age; and my imagination helped me to like the apartment of the Queen of Scots. Had it been the chateau of a d.u.c.h.ess of Brunswick, on which they had exhausted the revenues of some centuries, I don't think I should have admired it at all. In short, Hardwicke disappointed me as much as Chatsworth surpa.s.sed my expectation.

There is a richness and vivacity of prospect in the latter; in the former, nothing but triste grandeur.

Newstead delighted me. There is grace and Gothic indeed--good chambers and a comfortable house. The monks formerly were the only sensible people that had really good mansions.(102) I saw Althorpe too, and liked it very well: the pictures are fine. In the gallery I found myself quite at home; and surprised the housekeeper by my familiarity with the portraits.

I hope you have read Prince Ferdinand's thanksgiving, where he has made out a victory by the excess of his praises. I supped at Mr. Conway's t'other night with Miss West'(103) and we diverted ourselves with the encomiums on her Colonel Johnston. Lady Ailesbury told her, that to be sure next winter she would burn nothing but laurel-f.a.ggots. Don't you like Prince Ferdinand's being so tired with thanking, that at last he is forced to turn G.o.d over to be thanked by the officers?

In London there is a more cruel campaign than that waged by the Russians: the streets are a very picture of the murder of the innocents--one drives over nothing but poor dead dogs!(104) The dear, good-natured, honest, sensible creatures! Christ! how can anybody hurt them? n.o.body could but those Cherokees the English, who desire no better than to be halloo'd to blood:--one day Admiral Byng, the next Lord George Sackville, and to-day the poor dogs!

I cannot help telling your lords.h.i.+p how I was diverted the night I returned hither. I was sitting with Mrs. Clive, her sister and brother, in the bench near the road at the end of her long walk.

We heard a violent scolding; and looking out, saw a pretty woman standing by a high chaise, in which was a young fellow, and a coachman riding by. The damsel had lost her hat, her cap, her cloak, her temper, and her senses; and was more drunk and more angry than you can conceive. Whatever the young man had or had not done to her. she would not ride in the chaise with him, but stood cursing and swearing in the most outrageous style: and when she had vented all the oaths she could think of, she at last wished perfidion might seize him. You may imagine how we laughed. The fair intoxicate turned round, and cried "I am laughed at!--Who is it!--What, Mrs. Clive? Kitty Clive?--No: Kitty Clive would never behave so!" I wish you could have seen My neighbour's confusion. She certainly did not grow paler than ordinary. I laugh now while I repeat it to you.

I have told Mr. Bentley the great honour you have done him, my lord. He is happy the Temple succeeds to please you.

(102) "----It lies perhaps a little low, Because the monks preferred a hill behind To shelter their devotion from the wind."

Byron.-E.

(103) Lady Henrietta-Cecilia, eldest daughter of John, afterwards Lord de la Warr. In 1763, she was married to General James West.-E.

(104) In the summer of this year the dread of mad dogs' raged like an epidemic: the periodical publications of the time being filled with little else of domestic interest than the squabbles of the dog-lovers and dog-haters. The Common Council of London, at a meeting on the @6th August, issued an order for killing all dogs found in the street., or highways after the 27th, and offered a reward of two s.h.i.+llings for every dog that should be killed and buried in the skin. In Goldsmith's Citizen of the World there is an amusing paper in which he ridicules the fear of mad dogs as one of those epidemic terrors to which our countrymen are occasionally p.r.o.ne.-E.

Letter 44 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Strawberry Hill, September 19, 1760. (page 88)

thank you for your notice, though I should certainly have contrived to see you without it. Your brother promised he would come and dine here one day with you and Lord Beauchamp. I go to Navestock on Monday, for two or three days; but that Will not exhaust your waiting.(105) I shall be in town on Sunday; but- as that is a court-day, I will not--so don't propose it--dine with you at Kensington; but I will be with my Lady Hertford about six, where your brother and you will find me if you please. I cannot come to Kensington in the evening, for I have but one pair of horses in the world, and they will have to carry me to town in the morning.

I wonder the King expects a battle; when Prince Ferdinand can do as well without fighting, why should he fight? Can't he make the hereditary Prince gallop into a mob of Frenchmen, and get a scratch on the nose; and Johnson straddle across a river and come back with six heads of hussars in his fob, and then can't he thank all the world, and a.s.sure them he shall never forget the victory they have not gained? These thanks are sent over: the Gazette swears that this no-success was chiefly owing to General Mostyn; and the Chronicle protests, that it was achieved by my Lord Granby's losing his hat, which he never wears; and then his lords.h.i.+p sends over for three hundred thousand pints of porter to drink his own health; and then Mr. Pitt determines to carry on the war for another year; and then the Duke of Newcastle hopes that we shall be beat, that he may lay the blame on Mr. Pitt, and that then he shall be minister for thirty years longer; and then we shall be the greatest nation in the universe. Amen! My dear Harry, you see how easy it is to be a hero. If you had but taken impudence and Oatlands in your way to Rochfort, it would not have signified whether you had taken Rochfort or not. Adieu! I don't know who Lady Ailesbury's Mr. Alexander is. If she curls like a vine with any Mr. Alexander but you, I hope my Lady Coventry will recover and be your Roxana.

(105) Mr. Conway, as groom of the bedchamber to the King, was then in waiting at Kensington.

Letter 45 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Strawberry Hill. (page 89)

You are good for nothing; you have no engagement, you have no principles; and all this I am not afraid to tell you,. as you have left your sword behind you. If you take it ill, I have given my nephew, who brings your sword, a letter of attorney to fight you for me; I shall certainly not see you: my Lady Waldegrave goes to town on Friday, but I remain here. You lose Lady Anne Connolly and her forty daughters, who all dine here to-day upon a few loaves and three small fishes. I should have been glad if you would have breakfasted here on Friday on your way; but as I lie in bed rather longer than the lark, I fear our hours would not suit one another. Adieu!

Letter 46 To George Montagu, Esq.

Strawberry Hill, October 2, 1760. (page 90)

I announce my Lady Huntingtower(106) to you. I hope you will approve the match a little more than I Suppose my Lord Dysart will, as he does not yet know, though they have been married these two hours, that, at ten o'clock this morning, his son espoused my niece Charlotte at St. James's church. The moment my Lord Dysart is dead, I will carry you to see the Ham-house; it is pleasant to call cousins with a charming prospect over against one. Now you want to know the detail: there was none.

It is not the style of Our Court to have long negotiations; we don't fatigue the town with exhibiting the betrothed for six months together in public places. Vidit, venit, vicit;--the young lord has liked her some time; on Sat.u.r.day se'nnight He came to my brother, and made his demand. The princess did not know him by sight, and did not dislike him when she did; she consented. and they were married this morning. My Lord Dysart is such a - that n.o.body will pity him; he has kept his son till six-and-twenty, and would never make the least settlement on him; "Sure," said the young man, "if he will do nothing for me, I may please myself; he cannot hinder me of ten thousand pounds a-year, and sixty thousand that are in the funds, all entailed on me"--a reversion one does not wonder the bride did not refuse, as there is present possession too of a very handsome person; the only thing his father has ever given him. His grandfather, Lord Granville, has always told him to choose a gentlewoman, and please himself; yet I should think the ladies Townshend and Cooper would cackle a little.

I wish you could have come here this October for more reasons than one. The Teddingtonian history is grown wofully bad.

Mark Antony, though no boy, persists in losing the world two or three times over for every gipsy that be takes for a Cleopatra.

I have laughed, been scolded, represented, begged, and at last spoken very roundly--all with equal success; at present we do not meet. I must convince him of ill usage, before I can make good usage of any service. All I have done is forgot, because I will not be enamoured of Hannah Cleopatra too. You shall know the whole history when I see you; you may trust me for still being kind to him; but that he must not as yet suspect; they are bent on going to London, that she may visit and be visited, while he puts on his red velvet and ermine, and goes about begging in robes.

Poor Mr. Chute has had another very severe fit of the gout; I left him in bed, but by not hearing he is worse, trust on Sat.u.r.day to find him mended. Adieu!

(106) Charlotte, third daughter of Sir Edward Walpole, and sister to Lady Waldegrave, and to Mrs. Keppel.

Letter 47 To Sir Horace Mann.

Arlington Street, Oct. 5, 1760. Page 91)

I am afraid you will turn me off from being your gazetteer. Do you know that I came to town to-day by accident, and was here four hours before I heard that Montreal was taken? The express came early this morning. I am so posthumous in my intelligence, that you must not expect any intelligence from me--but the same post that brings you this, will convey the extraordinary gazette, which of late is become the register of the Temple of Fame. All I know is, that the bonfires and squibs are drinking General Amherst's(107) health.

Within these two days Fame and the Gazette have laid another egg; I wish they may hatch it themselves! but it is one of that unlucky hue which has so often been addled; in short, behold another secret expedition. It was notified on Friday, and departs in a fortnight. Lord Albemarle, it is believed, will command it. One is sure at least that it cannot be to America, for we have taken it all. The conquest of Montreal may perhaps serve in full of all accounts, as I suspect a little that this new plan was designed to amuse the City of London at the beginning of the session, who would not like to have wasted so many millions on this campaign, without any destruction of friend or foe.(108) Now, a secret expedition may at least furnish a court-martial, and the citizens love persecution even better than their money. A general or in admiral to be mobbed either by their applause or their hisses, is all they desire.-Poor Lord Albemarle!

The charming Countess(109) is dead at last; and as if the whole history of both sisters was to be extraordinary, the d.u.c.h.ess of Hamilton is in a consumption too, and going abroad directly.

Perhaps you may see the remains of these prodigies, you will see but little remains; her features were never so beautiful as Lady Coventry's, and she has long been changed, though not yet I think above six-and-twenty. The other was but twenty-seven.

As all the great ladies are mortal this year, my family is forced to recruit the peerage. My brother's last daughter is married; and, as Biddy Tipkin(110) says, though their story is too short for a romance, it will make a very pretty novel--nay, it is almost brief enough for a play, and very near comes within one of the unities, the s.p.a.ce of four-and-twenty hours. There is in the world, particularly in my world, for he lives directly over against me across the water, a strange brute called Earl of Dysart.(111) Don't be frightened, it is not he. His son, Lord Huntingtower, to whom he gives but four hundred pounds a year, is a comely young gentleman of twenty-six, who has often had thoughts of trying whether his father would not like grandchildren better than his own children, as sometimes people have more grand-tenderness than paternal. All the answer he could ever get was, that the Earl could not afford, as he has five younger children, to make any settlement, but he offered, as a proof of his inability and kindness, to lend his son a large sum of money at low interest. This indigent usurer has thirteen thousand pounds a year, and sixty thousand pounds in the funds.

The money and ten of the thirteen thousand in land are entailed on Lord Huntingtower. The young lord, it seems, has been in love with Charlotte for some months, but thought so little of inflaming her, that yesterday fortnight she did not know him by sight. On that day he came and proposed himself to my brother, who with much surprise heard his story, but excused himself from giving an answer. He said, he would never force the inclinations of his children; he did not believe his daughter had any engagement or attachment, but she might have: he would send for her and know her mind. She was at her sister Waldegrave's, to whom, on receiving the notification, she said very sensibly, "if I was but nineteen, I would refuse pointblank; I do not like to be married in a week to a man I never saw. But I am two-and-twenty; some people say I am handsome, some say I am not; I believe the truth is, I am likely to be at large and to go off soon-it is dangerous to refuse so great a match." Take notice of the married in a week; the love that was so many months in ripening, could not stay above a week. She came and saw this impetuous lover, and I believe was glad she had not refused pointblank-for they were married last Thursday. I tremble a little for the poor girl; not to mention the oddness of the father, and twenty disagreeable things that may be in the young man, who has been kept and lived entirely out of the world; @ takes her fortune, ten thousand pounds, and cannot settle another s.h.i.+lling upon her till his father dies, and then promises Only a thousand a year. Would one venture one's happiness and one's whole fortune for the chance of being Lady [email protected] Lord Huntingtower dies before his father, she will not have sixpence.

Sure my brother has risked too much!

Stosch, who is settled at Salisbury, has writ to me to recommend him to somebody or other as a travelling governor or companion.

I would if I knew any body: but who travels now? He says you have notified his intention to me-so far from it, I have not heard from you this age: I never was SO long without a letter- -but you don't take Montreals and Canadas every now and then.

You repose like the warriors in Germany-at least I hope so--I trust no ill health has occasioned your silence. Adieu!