The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume IV Part 66

The Marquisate(711) is just where it was--to be and not to be.

The d.u.c.h.ess of Argyll is said to be worse. Della Crusca(712) has published a poem, called "The Laurel of Liberty," which, like the Enrag'es, has confounded and overturned all ideas. There are gossamery tears and silky oceans--the first time, to be sure, that any body ever cried cobwebs, or that the sea was made of paduasoy.(713) There is, besides, a violent tirade against a considerable personage, who, it is supposed, the author was jealous of, as too much favoured a few years ago by a certain Countess. You may guess why I am not more explicit: for the same reason I beg YOU not to mention it at all; it would be exceedingly improper. As the Parliament will meet in a fortnight, and the town be plumper, my letters may grow more amusing; though, unless the weather grows worse, I shall not contribute my leanness to its embonpoint. Adieu!

(711) Meaning the reported marriage of Miss Gunning to the Marquis of Blandford.-B.

(712) Robert Merry, Esq. who, at this time, wrote in the newspapers under this signature, and thereby became the object of the caustic satire of the author of the Baviad and Maviad--

"Lo, Della Crusca in his closet pent, He toils to give the crude conception vent Abortive thoughts, that right and wrong confound, Truth sacrific'd to letters, sense to sound; False glare, incongruous images combine, And noise and nonsense chatter through the line."-E.

(713) Besides the above, Mr. Gifford instances, from the same poem, "moody monarchs, radiant rivers, cooling cataracts, lazy Loires, gay Garonnes, glossy gla.s.s, mingling murder, dauntless day, lettered lightnings, delicious dilatings, sinking sorrows, real reasoning, meliorating mercies, dewy vapours damp that sweep the silent swamps, etc. etc."-E.

Letter 360 To The Miss Berrys.

Strawberry Hill, Thursday, Nov. 18, 1790. (page 461)

On Tuesday morning, after my letter was gone to the post, I received yours of the 2d (as I have all the rest) from Turin, and it gave me very little of the joy I had so much meditated to receive from a letter thence. And why did not it?-because I had got one on Sat.u.r.day, which antic.i.p.ated and augmented all the satisfaction I had allotted for Turin. You will find my Tuesday's letter, if ever you receive it, intoxicated with Chamberry; for which, and all your kind punctuality, I give you a million of thanks. But how cruel to find that you found none of my letters at Turin! There ought to have been two at least, of October the 16th and 19th. I have since directed one thither of the 25th; but alas! from ignorance, there was par Paris on none of them; and the Lord knows at how many little German courts they may have been baiting! I shall put par Paris on this; but beg you will tell me, as soon as you can, which route is the shortest and the safest; that is, by which you are most likely to receive them. You do me justice in concluding there has been no negligence of mine in the case; indeed, I have been ashamed of the multiplicity of my letters, when I had scarce any thing to tell you but my own anxiety to hear of your being quietly settled at Florence, out of the reach of all commotions. And how could I but dread your being molested by some accident, in the present state of France! and how could your healths mend in bad inns, and till you can repose somewhere? Repose you will have at Florence, but I shall fear the winter for you there: I suffered more by cold there, than by any place in my life; and never came home at night without a pain in my breast, which I never felt elsewhere, yet then I was very young and in perfect health. If either of you suffer there in any shape, I hope you will retire to Pisa.

My inquietude, that presented so many alarms to me before you set out, has, I find, and am grieved for it, not been quite in the Wrong. Some inconveniences I am persuaded you have sunk: yet the difficulty of landing at Dieppe, and the ransack of your poor harmless trunks at Bourgoin, and the wretched lodgings with which you were forced to take up at Turin, count deeply with me: and I had much rather have lost all credit as a prophet, since I could not prevent your journey. May it answer for your healths! I doubt it will not in any other respect, as you have already found by the voiturins. In point of pleasure, is it possible to divest myself so radically of all self-love as to wish you may find Italy as agreeable as you di formerly? In all other lights, I do most fervently hope there will he no drawbacks on your plan.

Should you be disappointed in any way, you know what a warm heart is open to receive you back; and so will your own Cliveden(714) be too.

I am glad you met the Bishop of Arras,(715) and am much pleased that he remembers me. I saw him very frequently at my dear old friend's,.(716) and liked him the best of all Frenchmen I ever knew. He is extremely sensible, easy, lively, and void of prejudices. Should he fall in your way again, I beg you will tell him how sincere a regard I have for him. He lived in the strictest union with his brother, the Archbishop of Tours, whom I was much less acquainted with, nor know if he be living.

I have heard nothing since my Tuesday's letter. As I still hope its predecessors will reach you, I will not repeat the trifling sc.r.a.ps of news I have sent you in them. In fact, this is only a trial whether par Paris is a better pa.s.sport than a direction without it; but I am grievously sorry to find difficulty of correspondence superadded to the vexation of losing you. Writing to you was grown my chief occupation. I wish. Europe and its broils were in the East Indies, if they embarra.s.s us quiet folks, who have nothing to do with their squabbles. The d.u.c.h.ess of Gloucester, who called on me yesterday, charged me to give her compliments to you both. Miss Foldson(717) has not yet sent me your pictures: I was in town on Monday, and sent to reproach her with having twice broken her promise; her mother told my servant that Miss was at Windsor, drawing the Queen and Princesses. That is not the work of a Moment. I am glad all the Princes are not on the spot.

I think of continuing here till the weather grows very bad; which it has not been at all yet, though not equal to what I am rejoiced you have found. I have no Somerset or Audley-street to receive me: Mrs. Damer is gone too. The Conways remain at Park-place till after Christmas; It is entirely out of fas.h.i.+on for women to grow old and stay at home in an evening. They invite you, indeed, now and then, but do not expect to see you till near midnight; which is rather too late to begin the day, unless one was born but twenty years ago. I do not condemn any fas.h.i.+ons, which the young ought to set, for the old certainly ought not; but an oak that has been going on in its old way for an hundred years, cannot shoot into a May-pole in three years, because it is the mode to plant Lombardy poplars.

What I should have suffered, if your letters, like mine, had wandered through Germany! I, you was sure, had written, and was in no danger. Dr. Price, who had whetted his ancient talons last year to no purpose, has had them all drawn by Burke, and the Revolution Club is as much exploded as the c.o.c.k-lane Ghost; but you, in order to pa.s.s a quiet winter in Italy, would pa.s.s through a fiery furnace. Fortunately, you have not been singed, and the letter from Chamberry has composed all my panics, but has by no means convinced me that I was not perfectly in the right to endeavour to keep you at home. One does not put one's hand in the fire to burn off a hangnail; and, though health is delightful, neither of you were out of order enough to make a rash experiment. I Would not be so absurd as to revert to old arguments, that happily proved no prophecies, if my great anxiety about you did not wish, in time, to persuade you to return through Switzerland and Flanders, if the latter is pacified and France is not; of which I see no likelihood.

Pray forgive me, if parts of my letters are sometimes tiresome; but can I appear only always cheerful when you two are absent, and have another long journey to make, ay, and the sea to cross again? My fears cannot go to sleep like a paroli at faro till there is a new deal, in which even then I should not be sure of winning. If I see you again, I will think I have gained another milleleva, as I literally once did; with this exception, that I was vehemently against risking a doit at the game of travelling.

Adieu!

(714) Little Strawberry Hill, which he had then thus named.

(715) M. de Conzies. This amiable prelate declined, in 1801, the Parisian archiepiscopacy, proffered him by Buonaparte, and died in London, in December 1804, in the arms of Monsieur, afterwards Charles the Tenth.-E.

(716) Madame du Deffand.

)717 Afterwards Mrs. Mee.

Letter 361 To The Miss Berrys.

Strawberry Hill, Friday night, Nov. 27, 1790. (page 463)

I am waiting for a letter from Florence, not with perfect patience, though I could barely have one, even if you did arrive, as you intended, on the 12th; but twenty temptations might have occurred to detain you in that land of eye and ear sight; my chief eagerness is to learn that you have received at least some of my letters. I wish too to know, though I cannot yet, whether you would have me direct Par Paris, or as I did before. In this state of uncertainty I did not prepare this to depart this morning; nor, though the Parliament met yesterday, have I a syllable of news for you, as there will be no debate till all the members have been sworn, which takes two or three days.

Moreover, I am still here: the weather, though very rainy, is quite warm; and I have much more agreeable society at Richmond, with small companies and better hours, than in town, and shall have till after Christmas, unless great cold drives me thither.

Lady Di, Selwyn, the Penns, the Onslows, Douglases, Mackinsys, Keenes, Lady Mount-Edgc.u.mbe, all stay, and Some of them meet every evening. The Boufflers too are constantly invited, and the Comtesse Emilie sometimes carries her harp, on which they say she plays better than Orpheus; but as I never heard him on earth, nor chez Proserpine, I do not pretend to decide. Lord Fitzwilliam(718) has been here too; but was in the utmost danger of being lost on Sat.u.r.day night, in a violent storm between Calais and Dover, as the captain confessed to him when they were landed. Do you think I did not ache at the recollection of a certain Tuesday when you were sailing to Dieppe?

(718) Richard, seventh and last Viscount Fitzwilliam, the munificent benefactor to the University of Cambridge. He died in 1816.-E.

Letter 362 To Miss Agnes Berry.

Strawberry Hill, Sunday, Nov. 29, 1790. (page 464)

Though I write to both at once, and reckon your letters to come equally from both, yet I delight in seeing your hand with a pen as well as with a pencil, and you express yourself as well with the one as with the other. Your part in that which I have been so happy as to receive this moment, has singularly obliged me, by your having saved me the terror of knowing you had a torrent to cross after heavy rain. No cat is so afraid of water for herself, as I am grown to be for you. That panic, which will last for many months, adds to my fervent desire of your returning early in the autumn, that you may have neither fresh water nor the "silky" ocean to cross in winter. Precious as our insular situation is, I am ready to wish with the Frenchman, that you could somehow or other get to it by land,-- Oui, c'est une isle toujours, je le sais bien; mais, par exemple, en allant d'alentour, n'y auroit-il pas moyen d'y arriver par terre?"

Correggio never pleased me in proportion to his fame; his grace touches upon grimace; the mouth of the beautiful Angel at Parma curls up almost into a half-moon. Still I prefer Corregio to the lourd want of grace in Guereino, who is to me a German edition of Guido. I am sorry the bookseller would not let you have an Otranto. Edwards told me, above two months ago, that he every day expected the whole impression; and he has never mentioned it waiting for my corrections. I will make Kirgate write to him, for I have told you that I am still here. We have had much rain, but no flood; and yesterday and to-day have exhibited Florentine skies.

>From town I know nothing; but that on Friday, after the King's speech, Earl Stanhope made a most frantic speech on the National a.s.sembly and against Calonne's book, which he wanted to have taken up for high treason.(719) He was every minute interrupted by loud bursts of laughter; which was all the answer he received or deserved. His suffragan Price has published a short, sneaking equivocal answer to Burke, in which he pretends his triumph over the King of France alluded to July, not to October, though his sermon was preached in November. Gredat--but not Judaeus Apella, as Mr. Burke so wittily says of the a.s.signats.(720) Mr.

Grenville, the secretary of state, is made a peer, they say to a.s.sist the Chancellor in the House of Lords: yet the papers pretend the Chancellor is out of humour, and will resign the first may be true, the latter probably not.(721)

Richmond, my metropolis, flourishes exceedingly. The Duke of Clarence arrived at his palace there last night, between eleven and twelve, as I came from Lady Douglas. His eldest brother and Mrs. Fitzherbert dine there to-day with the Duke Of Queensbury, as his grace, who called here this morning, told me, on the very spot where lived Charles the First, and where are the portraits of his princ.i.p.al courtiers from Cornbury. Queensbury has taken to that palace at last, and has frequently company and music there in an evening. I intend to go.

I suppose none of my Florentine acquaintance are still upon earth. The handsomest woman there, of my days, was a Madame Grifoni, my fair Geraldine: she would now be a Methusalemess, and much more like a frightful picture I have of her by a one-eyed German painter. I lived then with Sir Horace Mann, in Casa Mannetti in Via de' Santi Apostoli, by the Ponte di Trinit'a.

Pray, wors.h.i.+p the works of Masaccio, if any remain; though I think the best have been burnt in a church. Raphael himself borrowed from him. Fra Bartolomeo, too, is one of my standards for great ideas; and Benvenuto Cellini's Perseus a rival of the antique, though Mrs. Damer will not allow it. Over against the Perseus is a beautiful small front of a house, with only three windows, designed by Raphael; and another, I think, near the Porta San Gallo, and I believe called Casa Panciatici or Pandolfini.

(719) in the report of Lord Stanbope's speech, as it is given in the Parliamentary History, there is no expression of a wish that M. Calonne should be ,taken up for high treason." What the n.o.ble Earl said was, that the a.s.sertion that a civil war would meet with the support of all the crowned heads in Europe was a scandalous libel on the King of England, and might endanger the lives of many natives of Scotland and Ireland then residing in France.-E.

(720) "The a.s.sembly made in their speeches a sort of swaggering declaration, something, I rather think, above legislative competence; that is, that there is no difference in value between metallic money and their a.s.signats. This was a good, stout proof article of faith, p.r.o.nounced under an anathema, by the venerable fathers of this philosophic synod. Gredat who will certainly not

Judaeus Apella."-E.

(721) In Mr. Wilberforce's Diary for this year there appears the following entry:-"Nov- 22. Dined with Mr. Pitt. He told me of Grenville's peerage and the true reasons--distrust of Lord Thurlow. Saw Thurlow's answer to the news. Gave Pitt a serious word or two." See Life, vol. i. p. 284.-E.

Letter 363 To The Miss Berrys.

Strawberry Hill, Dec. 20, 1790; very late at night. (page 465)

The French packet that was said to be lost on Tuesday last, and which did hang out signals of distress, was saved, but did not bring any letters; but three Flemish mails that were due are arrived, and did bring letters, and, to my inexpressible joy, two from you of the 22d and 29th of the last month, telling Me that you have received as far as No. 4 and 5 of mine. Thank all the stars in Hersch.e.l.l's telescope, or beyond its reach, that our correspondence is out of the reach of France and all its ravages!

Thank you a million of times for all your details about yourselves When even the apprehension of any danger disquiets me so much, judge whether I do not interest myself in every particular of your pleasures and amus.e.m.e.nts! Florence was my delight, as it is yours but, I don't know how, I wish you did not like it quite so much and, after the gallery. how will any silver-penny of a gallery look? Indeed, for your Boboli, which I thought horrible even fifty years ago, before shepherds had seen the star of taste in the west, and glad tidings were proclaimed to their flocks, I do think there is not an acre on the banks of the Thames that should vail the bonnet to it.

Of Mr. Burke's book, if I have not yet told you my opinion, I do now: that it is one of the finest compositions in print. There is reason, logic, wit, truth. eloquence, and enthusiasm in the brightest colours. That it has given a mortal stab to sedition, I believe and hope; because the fury of the Brabanters,-whom, however, as having been aggrieved, I pitied and distinguish totally from the savage Gauls, -and the unmitigated and execrable injustices of the latter, have made almost any state preferable to such anarchy and desolation, that increases every day.

Admiring thus, as I do, I am very far from subscribing to the extent of almost all Mr. Burke's principles. The work, I have no doubt, will hereafter be applied to support very high doctrines; and to you I will say, that I think it an Apocrypha, that, in many a council of Bishops, will be added to the Old Testament.

Still, such an Almanzor was wanting at this crisis; and his foes show how deeply they are wounded, by their abusive pamphlets.

Their Amazonian allies, headed by Kate Macaulay(722) and the virago Barbauld, whom Mr. Burke calls our poissardes, spit their rage at eighteenpence a head, and will return to Fleet-ditch, more fortunate in being forgotten than their predecessors, immortalized in the Dunciad. I must now bid you good-night; and night it is, to the tune of morning. Adieu, all three!

(722) A pamphlet, ent.i.tled "Observations on the Reflections of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke on the Revolution in France; in a Letter to Earl Stanhope," was attributed to Mrs. Macaulay.-E.

Letter 364 To Miss Berry.

Berkeley Square, Sat.u.r.day, Jan. 22, 1791. (page 466)

I have been most unwillingly forced to send you such bad accounts of myself by my two last letters; but, as I could not conceal all, it was best to tell you the whole truth. Though I do not know that there was any real danger, I could not be so blind to my own age and weakness as not to think that, with so much gout an fever, the conclusion might very probably be fatal: and therefore it was better you should be prepared for what might happen. The danger appears to be entirely over: there seems to be no more gout to come. I have no fever, have a very good appet.i.te, and sleep well. Mr.

Watson,(723) who is all tenderness and attention, is persuaded to-day that I shall recover the use of my left hand ; of which I despaired much more than of the right, as having been seized three weeks earlier. Emaciated and altered I am incredibly, as you would find were you ever to see me again. But this illness has dispelled all visions ; and, as I have little prospect of pa.s.sing another happy autumn, I Must wean myself from whatever would embitter my remaining time by disappointments.