The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume IV Part 70

Letter 374 To The Miss Berrys.

Berkeley Square, Sunday, March 27, 1791. (page 486)

Though I begin my despatch to-day, I think I shall change my post-days, as I hinted from Tuesdays to Fridays; not only as more commodious for learning news for you, but as I do not receive your letters generally but on Mondays, I have less time to answer. I have an additional reason for delay this week. Mr.

Pitt has notified that he is to deliver a message from the King to-morrow, to the House of Commons on the situation of Europe; and should there be a long debate, I may not gather the particulars till Tuesday morning, and if my levee lasts late, shall not have time to write to you. Oh! now are you all impatience to hear that message: I am sorry to say that I fear it will be a warlike one. The Autocratrix swears, d-n her eyes! she will hack her way to Constantinople through the blood of one hundred thousand more Turks, and that we are very impertinent for sending her a card with a sprig of olive. On the other hand, Prussia bounces and buffs and claims our promise of helping him to make peace by helping him to make war; and so, in the most charitable and pacific way in the world, we are, they say, to send twenty s.h.i.+ps to the Baltic, and half as many to the Black Sea,-this little Britain, commonly called Great Britain, is to dictate to Petersburg and Bengal and cover Constantinople under those wings that reach from the North Pole to the farthest East!

I am mighty sorry for it, and hope we shall not prove a jackdaw that pretends to dress himself in the plumes of imperial eagles!

If we bounce abroad, we are more forgiving at home: a gentleman who lives at the east end of St. James's Park has been sent for by a lady who has a large house at the west end,(759) and they have kissed and are friends; which he notified by toasting her health in a b.u.mper at a club the other day. I know no circ.u.mstances, but am glad of it; I love peace, public or private: not so the chieftains of the contending theatres of harmony. Taylor, in wondrous respectful terms and full of affliction, has printed in the newspapers an advertis.e.m.e.nt, declaring that the Marquis's honour the Lord Chamberlain(760) did in one season, and that an unprofitable one, send orders (you know, that is tickets of admission without paying) into the Opera-house, to the loss of the managers of four hundred pounds- -servants, it is supposed, and Hertfords.h.i.+re voters eke: and moreover, that it has been sworn in Chancery that his lords.h.i.+p, not as lord chamberlain, has stipulated with Gallini and O'Reilly that he, his heirs and a.s.signs, should preserve the power of giving those detrimental orders in perpetuity. The immunity is a little new: former chamberlains, it seems even durante officio, have not exercised the privilege--if they had it.

One word more of the Gunnings. Captain Bowen informed the auth.o.r.ess, by the channel of the papers, that he shall prosecute her for the libel. She answered, by the same conveyance, that she is extremely glad of it. But there is a difficulty-unless the prosecution is criminal, it is thought that Madam being femme couverte, the charge must be brought against her husband; and, to be sure, it would be droll that the General should be attached for not hindering his wife from writing a libel, that is more virulent against him himself than any body! Another little circ.u.mstance has come out: till the other day he did not know that he had claimed descent from Charlemagne in the newspapers; which, therefore, is referred to the same manufacture as the other forgeries. The General said, "It is true I am well born; but I know no such family in Ireland as the Charlemagnes."

Lord Ossory has just been here, and told me that Gunnilda has written to Lord Blandford, in her own name and hand, begging his pardon (for promising herself marriage in his name), but imputing the first thought to his grandmother, whom she probably inspired to think of it. This letter the d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough carried to the d.u.c.h.ess of Bedford, to open her eyes on her proteg'ee, but with not much success; for what signify eyes, when the rest of the head is gone? She only said, "You may be easy, for both mother and daughter, are gone to France"--no doubt, on finding her grace's money not so forthcoming as her countenance, and terrified by Captain Bowen's prosecution and there, I hope, will terminate that strange story; for in France there is not a marquis left to marry her. One has heard Of nothing else these seven months; and it requires some ingenuity to keep up the attention of such a capital as London for above half a year together. I supped on Thursday at Mrs. Buller's with the conways and Mount-Edgc.u.mbes; and the next night at Lady Ailesbury's with the same company, and Lady Augusta Clavering.(761) You know, on the famous night at your house when Gunnilda pretended that her father had received Lord Blandford's appointment of the wedding-day, we suspected, when they were gone, that we had seen doubts in Lady Augusta's face, and I desired her uncle, Lord Frederick, to ask her if we had guessed right; but she protests she had then no suspicion.

I have determined to send this away on Tuesday, whether I know the details of the temple of Ja.n.u.s to-morrow in time or not, that you may give yourself airs of importance, if the Turin ministers pretend to tell you news of your own country that you do not know. You may say, your charg'e des affaires sent you word of the King's message; and you may be mysterious about the rest; for mystery in the diplomatic dictionary is construed as knowledge, though, like a Hebrew word, it means the reverse too.

Sunday night.

I have been at White p.u.s.s.y's(762) this evening. She asked much after you. I did not think her lord looked as if he would drive Prince Potemkin out of Bulgaria; but we trust that a new Frederick of Prussia and a new William Pitt will. Could they lay Catherine in the Black Sea, as ghosts used to be laid in the Red, the world would be obliged to them.

(759) The Queen and the Prince of Wales.

(760) The Marquis of Salisbury.

(761) Eldest daughter of John Duke of Argyle.

(762) Elizabeth Cary, wife of Lord Amherst, at this time commander-in-chief.

Letter 375 To Miss Berry.

Strawberry Hill, Sunday night, April 3, 1791. (page 488)

Oh! what a shocking accident! Oh! how I detest your going abroad more than I have done yet in my crossest mood! You escaped the storm on the 10th of October, that gave me such an alarm; you pa.s.sed unhurt through the cannibals of France and their republic of larrons and poissardes, who terrified me sufficiently; but I never expected that you would dash yourself to pieces at Pisa!(763) You say I love truth, and that you have told me the exact truth: but how can fear believe!

How I hate a party of pleasure! It never turns out well: fools fall out, and sensible People fall down! Still I thank you a million of' times for writing yourself. If Miss Agnes had written for you, I confess I should have been ten times more alarmed than I am; and yet I am alarmed enough.

Not to torment you more with my fears, when I hope you are almost recovered, I will answer the rest of your letter. General O'Hara I have unluckily not met yet. He is so dispersed, and I am so confined in my resorts and so seldom dine from home, that I have not seen him, even at General Conway's. When I do, can you imagine that we shall not talk of you two--yes; and your accident, I am. sure, will be the chief topic. As our fleets are to dethrone Catherine Petruchia, O'Hara will probably not be sent to Siberia. Apropos to Catherine and Petruchio. I supped with their representatives, Kemble and Mrs. Siddons, t'other night at Miss Farren's: the Hothams(764) were there too, and Mrs.

Anderson,(765) who treated the players with acting as many characters as ever they did, particularly Gunnilda and Lady Clackmannan.(766) Mrs. Siddons is leaner, but looks well: she has played Jane Sh.o.r.e and Desdemona, and is to play in the Gamester; all the parts she will act this year. Kemble, they say, shone in Oth.e.l.lo.

Mrs. Damer has been received at Elvas with all military honours, and a banquet, by order of Mello, formerly amba.s.sador here. It was handsome in him, but must have distressed her, who is so void of ostentation and love of show. Miss Boyle,(767) who no more than Miss Pulteney,(768) has let herself be snapped up by lovers of her fortune, is going to Italy for a year with Lord and Lady Malden.(769)

Berkeley Square, Monday after dinner.

Mirabeau is dead;(770) ay, miraculously; for it was of a putrid fever (that began in his heart). Dr. Price is dying also.(771) That Mr. Berry, with so much good nature and good sense should be staggered, I do not wonder. n.o.body is more devoted to liberty than I am. It is therefore that I abhor the National a.s.sembly, whose outrageous violence has given, I fear, a lasting wound to the cause; for anarchy is despotism in the hands of thousands. A lion attacks but when hungry or provoked; but who can live in a desert full of hyennas?--n.o.body but Mr. Bruce; and we have only his word for it. Here is started up another corsair; one Paine, from America, who has published an answer to Mr. Burke.(7722) His doctrines go to the extremity of levelling and his style is so coa.r.s.e, that you would think he meant to degrade the language as much as the government: here is one of his delicate paragraphs:--"We do not want a king, or lords of the bedchamber, or lords of the kitchen," etc. This rhetoric, I suppose, was calculated for our poissardes.

(763) Miss Berry had fallen down a bank in the neighbourhood of Pisa, and received a severe cut on the nose.

(764) Sir Charles Hotham Thompson, married to Lady Dorothy Hobart, sister of John second Earl of Buckinghams.h.i.+re.

(765) A daughter of Lady Cecilia Johnstone's, married to a brother of Charles Anderson Pelham, Lord Garborough.

(766) A nickname, which had been given by the writer to a lady of the society.

(767)Afterwards married to Lord Henry Fitzgerald.

(768) Afterwards married to Sir James Murray.

(769) Lord Malden, afterwards Earl of Ess.e.x, was a first cousin of Miss Boyle. This journey did not take place.

(770) Mirabeau died on the 2d of April, at the age of forty-two, a victim to his own debaucheries. His friend, M. Dupont, says of him, that, "trusting to the strength of his const.i.tution he gave himself up, without restraint, to every kind of pleasure." Madame de Stael states, that he suffered cruelly in the last days of his life, and when no longer able to speak, wrote to his physician for a dose OF opium, in the words of Hamlet, "to die--to sleep!"

His obsequies were celebrated with great pomp, and his body placed in the Pantheon, by the side of that of Descartes. In two short years his ashes were removed, by order of the Convention, and scattered abroad by the populace; who, at the same time, burned his bust in the Place de Gr'eve.-E.

(771) Dr. Price died on the 19th of April.-E.

(772) This was the first part of the " Rights of Man," in answer to the celebrated "Reflections." At the commencement of the year Paine had published in Paris, under the borrowed name of Achille Duchatellet, a tract recommending the abolition of royalty.-E.

Letter 376 To Miss Berry.

Berkeley Square, Friday night, April 15, 1791. (page 490)

My preface will be short; for I have nothing to tell, and a great deal that I am waiting patiently to hear; all which, however, may be couched in these two phrases,-,, I am quite recovered of my fall, and my nose will not be the worse for it"--for with all my pretences, I cannot help having that nose a little upon my spirits; though if it were flat, I should love it as much as ever, for the sake of the head and heart that belong to it. I have seen O'Hara, with his face as ruddy and black, and his teeth as white as ever; and as fond of you two, and as grieved for your fall, as any body--but I. He has got a better regiment.

Strawberry Hill, Sunday night, past eleven.

You chose your time ill for going abroad this year: England never saw such a spring since it was fifteen years old. The warmth, blossoms, and verdure are unparalleled. I am just come from Richmond, having first called on Lady Di. who is designing and painting pictures for prints to Dryden's Fables.(773) Oh! she has done two most beautiful; one of Emily walking in the garden, and Palamon seeing her from the tower: the other, a n.o.ble, free composition of Theseus parting the rivals, when fighting in the wood. They are not, as you will imagine, at all like the pictures in the Shakspeare Gallery: no; they are -worthy of Dryden.

I can tell you nothing at all certain with our war with Russia.

If one believes the weather-gla.s.s of the stocks, it will be peace; they had fallen to 71, and are risen again, and soberly, to 79. Fawkener" clerk of the council, sets out to-day or to-morrow for Berlin; probably, I hope, with an excuse. In the present case, I had much rather our ministers were bullies than heroes: no mortal likes the war. The court-majority lost thirteen of its former number at the beginning of the week, which put the Opposition into spirits; but, put pursuing their motions on Friday, twelve of the thirteen were recovered.(774) Lord Onslow told me just now, at Madame de BOufflers's, that Lady Salisbury was brought to bed of a son and heir(775) last night, two hours after she came from the Opera; and that Madame du Barry dined yesterday with the Prince of Wales, at the Duke of Queensberry's, at Richmond. Thus you have all my news, such as it is ; and I flatter myself no English at Pisa or Florence can boast of better intelligence than you--but for you, should I care about Madame du Barry or my Lady Salisbury, or which of them lies in or lies out?

Berkeley Square, Monday, April 18.

Oh! what a dear letter have I found, and from both at once; and with such a delightful bulletin! I should not be pleased with the idleness of the pencil, were it not owing to the chapter of health, which I prefer to every thing. You order me to be particular about my own health: I have nothing to say about it, but that it is as good as before my last fit. Can I expect or desire more at my age? My ambition is to pa.s.s a summer, with you two established at Cliveden. I shall not reject more if they come; but one must not be presumptuous at seventy-three; and though my eyes, ears, teeth, motion, have still lasted to make life comfortable, I do not know that I should be enchanted if surviving any of them ; and, having no desire to become a philosopher, I had rather be naturally cheerful than affectedly so: for patience I take to be only a resolution of holding one's tongue, and not complaining of what one feels-for does one feel or think the less for not owning it?

Though London increases every day, and Mr. Hersch.e.l.l has just discovered a new square or circus somewhere by the New Road in .the Via Lactea, where the cows used to be fed, I believe you will think the town cannot hold all its inhabitants; so prodigiously the population is augmented. I have twice been going to stop my coach in Piccadilly, (and the same has happened to Lady Ailesbury,) thinking there was a mob; and it was only nymphs and swains sauntering or trudging. T'other morning, i. e.

at two o'clock, I went to see Mrs. Garrick and Miss Hannah More at the Adelphi, and was stopped five times before I reached Northumberland-house; for the tides of coaches, chariots, curricles, phaetons, etc. are endless. Indeed, the town is so extended, that the breed of chairs is almost lost ; for Hercules and Atlas could not carry any body from one end of this enormous capital to the other. How magnified would be the error of the young woman at St. Helena, who, some said years ago, to a captain of an Indiaman, "I suppose London is very empty, when the India s.h.i.+ps come out." Don't make Me excuses, then, for short letters; nor trouble yourself a moment to lengthen them.

YOU Compare little towns to quiet times, which do not feed history ; and most justly. If the vagaries of' London can be comprised once a week in three or four pages of small quarto paper, and not always that, how should little Pisa furnish an equal export? When Pisa *was at war with the rival republic of Milan, Machiavel was put to it to describe a battle, the slaughter in which amounted to one man slain; and he was trampled to death, by being thrown down and battered in his husk of complete armour; as I remember reading above fifty years ago at Florence.

Eleven at night.

Oh! mercy! I am just come from Mrs. Buller's, having left a very pleasant set at Lady Herries'(776)--and for such a collection Eight or ten women and girls, not one of whom I knew by sight: a German Count., as stiff and upright as the inflexible Dowager of Beaufort: a fat Dean and his wife, he speaking Cornish, and of having dined to-day at Lambeth; four young officers, friends of the boy Buller,(777) who played with one of them at tric-trac, while the others made with the Misses a still more noisy commerce; and not a creature but Mrs. Cholmondeley, who went away immediately, and her son, who was speechless with the headache, that I was the least acquainted with: and, to add to my sufferings, the Count would talk to me of les beaux arts, of which he knows no more than an oyster. At last, came in Mrs.

Blair, whom I knew as little; but she asked so kindly after you two, and was so anxious about your fall and return, that I grew quite fond of her, and beg you would love her for my sake, as I do for yours. Good night!

I have this moment received a card from the d.u.c.h.ess-Dowager of Ancaster, to summon me for to-morrow at three o'clock--I suppose to sign Lord Cholmondeley's marriage-articles with her daughter.(778) The wedding is to be this day sevennight. Save me, my old stars, from wedding-dinners! But I trust they are not of this age. I should sooner expect Hymen to jump out of a curricle, and walk into the d.u.c.h.ess's dressing-room in boots and a dirty s.h.i.+rt.

(773) A splendid edition of the Fables of Dryden, ornamented with engravings, from the elegant and fascinating pencil of Lady Diana Beauclerc, was published in folio in 1797.-E.

(774) On the 12th of April, a series of resolutions, moved by Mr.

Grey, the object of which was to p.r.o.nounce the armament against Russia inexpedient and unnecessary, were, after a warm debate, negatived by 252 against 17?- A similar motion, made on the fifteenth, by Mr. Baker was rejected by a majority of 254 to 162.-E.