The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume III Part 56

Grenville took it to himself, and a.s.serted that his own life and character were as pure, uniform, and little profligate as your brother's. The silence of the House did not seem to ratify this declaration. Your brother replied with infinite spirit, that he certainly could not have meant Mr. Grenville, for he did not take him for the minister-(I do not believe this was the least mortifying part)--that he spoke of public acts that were in every body's mouth, as the warrants, and the disgrace thrown on the army by dismissions for parliamentary reasons; that for himself he was an open enemy, and detested men who smiled in his face and stabbed him I do not believe he meant this personally, but unfortunately the whole House applied it to Mr. Grenville's grimace); that for his own disgrace, he did not know where to impute it, for every minister had disavowed it. It was to the warrants, he said, he owed what had happened; he had fallen for voting against them, but had he had ten regiments, he would have parted with them all to obey his conscience; that he now could fall no lower, and would speak as he did then, and would not be hindered nor intimidated from speaking the language of Parliament. Grenville answered, that he had never avowed nor disavowed the measure of dismissing Mr. Conway--(he disavowed it to Mr. Harris,)(728) that he himself had been turned out for voting against German connexions; that he had never approved inquiring into the King's prerogative on that head-(I can name a person who can repeat volumes of what he has said on the subject,) and that the King had as much right to dismiss military as civil officers, and then drew a ridiculous parallel betwixt the two, in which he seemed to give himself the rank of a civil lieutenant-general. This warmth was stopped by Augustus Hervey, who spoke to order, and called for the question; but young T.

Townshend confirmed, that the term profligacy was applied by all mankind to the conduct on the warrants. It was not the most agreeable circ.u.mstance to Grenville, that Lord Granby closed the debate, by declaring how much he disapproved the dismission of officers for civil reasons, and the more, as he was persuaded it would not prevent officers from acting according to their consciences; and he spoke of your brother with many encomiums.

Sir W. Meredith then notified his intention of taking up the affair of the warrants on Monday se'nnight. Mr. Pitt was not there, nor Lord Temple in the House of Lords; but the latter is ill. I should have told you that Lord Warkworth(729) and Thomas Pitt(730) moved our addresses; as Lord Townshend and Lord Botetourt did those of the Lords. Lord Townshend said, though it was grown unpopular to praise the King, yet he should, and he was violent against libels; forgetting that the most ill-natured branch of them, caricatures, his own invention, are left off.

n.o.body thought it worth while to answer him, at which he was much offended.

So much for the opening of Parliament, which does not promise serenity. Your brother is likely to make a very great figure: they have given him the warmth he wanted, and may thank Themselves for it. Had Mr. Grenville taken my advice, @e had avoided an opponent that he will find a tough one, and must already repent having drawn upon him.

With regard to yourself, my dear lord, you may be sure I did not intend to ask you any impertinent question. You requested me to tell you whatever I heard said about you; you was talked of for Ireland, and are still; and Lord Holland within this week told me, that you had solicited it warmly. Don't think yourself under any obligation to reply to me on these occasions. It is to comply with your desires that I repeat any thing I hear of you, not to make use of them to draw any explanation from you, to which I have no t.i.tle; nor have I, you know, any troublesome curiosity. I mentioned Ireland with the same indifference that I tell you that the town here has bestowed Lady Anne,(731) first on Lord March, and now on Stephen Fox(732)--tattle not worth your answering.

You have lost another of your Lords Justices, Lord Shannon, of whose death an account came yesterday.

Lady Harrington's porter was executed yesterday, and went to Tyburn with a white c.o.c.kade in his hat, as an emblem of his innocence.

All the rest Of My news I exhausted in my letter to Lady Hertford three days ago. The King's Speech, as I told her it was to do, announced the contract between Princess Caroline(733) and the Prince Royal of Denmark. I don't think the tone the session has taken will expedite my visit to you; however, I shall be able to judge when a few of the great questions are over. The American affairs are expected to occasion much discussion; but as I understand them no more than Hebrew, they will throw no impediment in my way. Adieu! my dear lord; you will probably hear no more politics these ten days. Yours ever, Horace Walpole.

Friday.

The debate on the warrants is put off to the Tuesday; therefore, as it will probably be so long a day, I shall not be able to give you an account of it till this day fortnight.

(726) Gray, in a letter to Dr. Wharton, written in July 1764, in giving an account of an illness, says, "Towards the end of my confinement, during which I lived on nothing, came, the gout in one foot, but so tame you might have stroked it." To this pa.s.sage, the learned editor of the last edition of his works has sub-joined this note:--"I have mentioned several coincidences of thought and expression of this kind in the letters of Gray and Walpole, which I conceived to be a kind of common property; the reader, indeed, will recognise much of that species of humour which distinguishes Gray's correspondence in the letters of Walpole, inferior, I think, in its comic force; sometimes deviating too far from propriety in search of subjects for the display of its talent, and not altogether free from affectation."

Vol. iv. p. 33.-E.

(727) Sir William Draper, K.B. best known by his controversy with Junius. The letter here alluded to was ent.i.tled, "An Answer to the Spanish Arguments for Refusing the Payment of the Ransom Bills."-E.

(728) General Conway's brother-in-law.-E.

(729) Afterwards Duke of Northumberland-E.

(730) Afterwards Lord Camelford.-E.

(731) ant'e, p. 299, letter 196.

(732) Second son of the first Earl of Ilchester-E.

(733) The unhappy Queen of Denmark, who was afterwards divorced and exiled.-E.

Letter 238 To The Earl Of Hertford.

Sunday, Jan. 20, 1765. (page 367)

Do you forgive me, if I write to you two or three days sooner than I said I would. Our important day on the warrants is put off for a week, in compliment to Mr. Pitt's gout--can it resist such attention I shall expect in it a prodigious quant.i.ty of black ribands. You have heard, to be sure, of the great fortune that is bequeathed to him by a Sir William Pynsent, an old man of near ninety, who quitted the world on the peace of Utrecht; and, luckily for Mr. Pitt, lived to be as angry with its pendant, the treaty of Paris. I did not send you the first report, which mounted it to an enormous sum: I think the medium account is two thousand pounds a-year, and thirty thousand pounds in money.

This Sir William Pynsent, whose fame, like an aloe, did not blow till near an hundred, was a singularity. The scandalous chronicle of Somersets.h.i.+re talks terribly of his morals(734) *****. Lady North was nearly related to Lady Pynsent, which encouraged Lord North to flatter himself that Sir William's extreme propensity to him would recommend even his wife's parentage for heirs; but the uncomeliness of Lady North, and a vote my lord gave against the Cider-bill, offended the old gentleman so much, that he burnt his would-be heir in effigy.

How will all these strange histories sound at Paris!

This post, I suppose, will rain letters to my Lady Hertford. on her death and revival. I was dreadfully alarmed at it for a moment; my servant was so absurd as to wake me, and bid me not be frightened--an excellent precaution! Of all moments, that between sleeping and waking is the most subject to terror. I started up, and my first thought was to send for Dr. Hunter; but, in two minutes, I recollected that it was impossible to be true, as your porter had the very day before been with me to tell me a courier was arrived from you, was to return that evening. Your poor son Henry, whom you will doat upon for it, was not tranquillized so soon. He instantly sent away a courier to your brother, who arrived in the middle of the night. Lady Milton,(735) Lady George SackVille,(736) and I, agreed this evening to tell my Lady Hertford, that we ought to have believed the news, and to have imputed it to the gaming rakeh.e.l.ly life my lady leads at Paris, which scandalizes all us prudes, her old friends. In truth, I have not much right to rail at any body to.- living in a hurricane. I found myself with a violent cold on Wednesday, and till then had not once reflected on all the hot and cold climates I have pa.s.sed through the day before: I had been at the Duke of c.u.mberland's levee; then at the Princess Amelia's drawing-room; from thence to a crowded House of Commons; to dinner at your brother's; to the Opera; to Madame Seillern's; to Arthur's; and to supper at Mrs. George Pitt's;--it is scandalous; but, who does less? The Duke looked much better than I expected; is gone to Windsor, and mends daily.

It was Lady Harcourt's(737) death that occasioned the confusion, and our dismay. She died at a Colonel Oughton's; such a small house, that Lord Harcourt has been forced to take their family into his own house. Poor Lady Digby(738) is dead too, of a fever, and was with child. They were extremely happy, and -her own family adored her. My sister has begged me to ask a favour, that will put you to a little trouble, though only for a moment.

It is, if you will be so good to order one of your servants when you have done with the English newspapers, to put them in a cover, and send them to Mr. Churchill, au Chateau de Nubecourt, pr'es de Clermont, en Argone; they cannot get a gazette that does not cost them six livres.

Monday evening.

We have had a sort of a day in the House of Commons. The proposition for accepting the six hundred and seventy thousand pounds for the French prisoners pa.s.sed easily. Then came the Navy: Dowdeswell, in a long and very sensible speech, proposed to reduce the number of sailors to ten thousand. He was answered by--Charles Townshend--oh! yes!--are you surprised? n.o.body here was: no, not even at his a.s.sertion, that he had always applauded the peace, though the whole House and the whole town knew that, on the Preliminaries, he came down prepared to speak against them; but that on Mr. Pitt's retiring, he plucked up courage, and spoke for them. Well, you want to know what place he is to have- -so does he too. I don't want to know what place, but that he has some one; for I am sure he will always do most hurt to the side on which he professes to be; consequently, I wish him with the administration, and I wish so well to both sides, that I would have him more decried, if that be possible, than he is.

Colonel Barr'e spoke against Dowdeswell's proposal, though not setting himself up at auction, like Charles, nor friendly to the ministry, but temperately and sensibly. There was no division.

You know my opinion of Charles Townshend is neither new nor singular. When Charles Yorke left us,(739) I hoped for this event, and my wish then slid into this couplet:

To The Administration.

One Charles, who ne'er was ours, you've got-'tis true: To make the grace complete, take t'other too.

The favours I ask of them, are not difficult to grant. Adieu! my dear lord. Yours ever, H. W.

Tuesday, 4 o'clock.

I had sealed my letter and given it to my sister, who sets out to-morrow, and will put it into the post at Calais; but having received yours by the courier from Spain, I must add a few words.

You may be sure I shall not mention a t.i.ttle of what you say to me. Indeed, if you think it necessary to explain to me, I shall be more cautious Of telling you what I hear. If I had any curiosity, I should have nothing to do but to pretend I had heard some report, and so draw from you what you might not have a mind to mention: I do tell you when I hear any, for your information, but insist on your not replying. The vice-admiral of America is a mere feather; but there is more substance in the notion of the Viceroy's quitting Ireland. Lord Bute and George Grenville are so ill together, that decency is scarce observed between their adherents: and the moment the former has an opportunity or resolution enough, he will remove the latter, and place his son-in-law(740) in the treasury. This goes so far, that Charles Townshend, who is openly dedicated to Grenville, may possibly find himself disappointed, and get no place at last. However, I rejoice that we have got rid of him. It will tear up all connexion between him and your brother, root and branch: a circ.u.mstance you will not be more sorry for than I am. In the mean time, the opposition is so staunch that, I think, after the three questions on Warrants, DismisSion of officers, and the Manilla-money, I shall be at liberty to come to you, when I shall have a great deal to tell you. If Charles Townshend gets a place, Lord George Sackville expects another, by the same channel, interest, and connexion; but if Charles may be disappointed himself, what may a man be who trusts to him?

Adieu!

(734) The original contains an imputation against Sir W. Pynsent, which, if true, would induce us to suspect him of a disordered mind.-C.

(735) Lady Caroline Sackville, daughter of the Duke of Dorset, married, in 1742, to the first Lord Milton.-E.

(736) Diana, second daughter of J. Sambrook, Esq.-E.

(737) Rebecca, daughter of Charles Le Bas, Esq., wife of the first Earl of Harcourt.-E.

(738) Elizabeth Fielding, niece to the fourth Earl of Denbigh, and wife of Henry, first Lord Digby.-E.

(739) It is remarkable enough, that the epigram which Mr. Walpole thus introduces, admits that Charles Yorke had never joined them, and therefore could not be said to have left them.-C.

(740) There is some obscurity here: Lord Warkworth (afterwards Duke of Northumberland), who had lately married Lord Bute's third daughter, was, at this period, a very young man, little known but for his attachment to his profession--the army, and the idea of his being placed at the head of the treasury must have been absurd. His father, Lord Northumberland, indeed, had been spoken of for that office: and, perhaps, Mr. Walpole, in his epigrammatic way, has taken this mode of explaining the motive which might have induced Lord Bute to advance his son-in-law's father.-C.

Letter 239 To The Earl Of Hertford.

Arlington Street, Jan. 27, 1765. (page 370)

The brother of your brother's neighbour, Mr. Freeman, who is going to Paris, and I believe will not be sorry to be introduced to you, gives me an opportunity which I cannot resist, of sending you a private line or two, though I wrote you a long letter, which my sister was to put into the post at Calais two or three days ago.

We had a very remarkable day on Wednesday in the House of Commons--very glorious for us, and very mortifying to the administration, especially to the princ.i.p.al performer, who was severely galled by our troops, and abandoned by his own. The business of the day was the Army, and, as nothing was expected, the House was not full. The very circ.u.mstance of nothing being expected, had encouraged Charles Townshend to soften a little what had pa.s.sed on Monday; he grew profuse of' his whispers and promises to us, and offered your brother to move the question on the Dismission of officers: the debate began; Beckford fell foul on the dismissions, and dropped some words on America. Charles, who had placed himself again under the wing of Grenville, replied on American affairs; but totally forgot your brother. Beckford, in his boisterous Indian style, told Charles, that on a single idea he had poured forth a diarrhoea of words. He could not stand it, and in two minutes fairly stole out of the House. This battery being dismounted, the whole attack fell on Grenville, and would have put you in mind of former days. You never heard any minister worse treated than he was for two hours together, by Tommy Townshend, Sir George Saville, and George Onslow--and what was worse, no soul stepped forth in his defence, but Rigby and Lord Strange, the latter of whom was almost as much abashed as Charles Townshend; conscience flew in his black face, and almost turned it red. T. Townshend was still more bitter on Lord Sandwich, whom he called a profligate fellow--hoped he was present,(741) and added, if he is not, I am ready to call him so to his face in any private company: even Rigby, his accomplice, said not a word in behalf of his brother culprit. You will wonder how all this ended--what would be the most ridiculous conclusion to such a scene'! as you cannot imagine, I will tell you. Lord Harry Paulet(742) telling Grenville, that if Lord Cobham was to rise from the dead, he would, if he could be ashamed of any thing, be ashamed of him; by the way, every body believes he meant the apostrophe stronger than he expressed it: Grenville rose in a rage, like a basket-woman, and told Lord harry that if he chose to use such language, he knew where to find him. Did you ever hear of a prime minister, even soi-disant tel, challenging an opponent, when he could not answer him? Poor Lord Harry, too, was an unfortunate subject to exercise his valour upon! The House interposed; Lord Harry declared he should have expected Grenville to breakfast with him next morning; Grenville explained off and on two or three times, the Scotch laughed, the opposition roared, and the treasury-bench sat as mute as fishes. Thus ended that wise Hudibrastic encounter.

Grenville however, attended by every bad omen, provoked your brother, who had not intended to speak, by saying that some people had a good opinion of the dismissed officers, others had not. Your brother rose, and surpa.s.sed himself: he was very warm, though less so than on the first day; very decent in terms, but most severe in effect; he more than hinted at the threats that had been used to him--said he would not reveal what was improper; yet left no mortal in the dark on that head. He called on the officers to a.s.sert their own freedom and independence. In short, made such a speech as silenced all his adversaries, but has filled the whole town with his praises: I believe, as soon as his speech reaches Hayes, it will contribute extremely to expel the gout, and bring Mr. Pitt to town, lest his presence should be no longer missed. Princess Amelia told Me the next night, that if she had heard nothing of Mr. Conway's speech, she should have known how well he had done by my spirits. I was not sorry she made this reflection, as I knew she would repeat it to Lady (Betty) Waldegrave; and as I was willing that the d.u.c.h.ess of Bedford, who, when your brother was dismissed, asked the d.u.c.h.ess of Grafton if she was not sorry for poor Mr. Conway, who has lost every thing, should recollect that it is they who have cause to lament that dismission, not we.

There was a paragraph in Rigby's speech, and taken up, and adopted by Goody Grenville, which makes much noise, and, I suppose, has not given less offence; they talked of "arbitrary Stuart principles," which are supposed to have been aimed at the Stuart favourite: that breach is wider than ever: not one of Lord Bute's adherents have opened their lips this session. I conclude a few of them will be ordered to speak on Friday; but unless we go on too triumphantly and reconcile them, I think this session will terminate Mr. Grenville's reign, and that of the Bedfords too, unless they make great submissions.

Do you know that Sir W. Pynsent had your brother in his eye! He said to his lawyer, "I know Mr. Pitt is much younger than I but he has very bad health: as you will hear it before me, if he dies first, draw up another will with mr. Conway's name instead of Mr.

Pitt's, and bring it down to me directly." I beg Britannia's pardon, but I fear I could have supported the loss on these grounds.

A very unhappy affair happened last night at the Star and Garter; Lord Byron(743) killed a Mr. Chaworth there in a duel. I know none of the particulars, and never believe the first reports.

My Lady Townshend was arrested two days ago in the street, at the suit of a house painter, who, having brought her a bill double the estimate he had given in, she would not pay it. As this is a breach of Privilege, I should think the man would hear of it.