The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume IV Part 74

Thursday night, late.

Lady Di. has told me an extraordinary fact. Catherine Slay-Czar sent for Mr. Fawkener(816) and desired he will order for her a bust of Charles Fox; and she will place it between Demosthenes and Cicero (pedantry she learnt from her French authors, and which our schoolboys would be above using); for his eloquence has saved two great nations from a war--by his opposition to it, s'entend: so the peace is no doubt made. She could not have addressed her compliment worse than to Mr. Fawkener, sent by Mr.

Pitt, and therefore so addressed; and who of all men does not love Mr. Fox, and Mr. Fox who has no vainglory, will not care a straw for the flattery, and will understand it too. Good night!

(812) The Honourable Septimus West, uncle of the present Earl of Delawarr. He died of consumption in October 1793.

(813) The great dinner at the Crown and Anchor tavern, in celebration of the anniversary of the French revolution.-E.

(814) The flight of the Royal Family of France to, and return from, Varennes.

(815) The marriage of the Duke of York with Frederica Charlotte Ulrica Catherine, eldest daughter of the King of Prussia, was solemnized, first in Prussia, on the 29th of September, and again in England, on the 23d of November, 1791. For Walpole's account of her Royal Highness's visit to Strawberry Hill, see his letter to the Miss Berrys of the 25th of September, 1793.-E.

(816. Mr. Fawkener was the son of Sir Everard Fawkener, He was one of the princ.i.p.al clerks of the privy council, and had been sent on a secret mission to Russia.-E.

Letter 387 To Miss Berry.

Strawberry Hill, August 17, 1791. (page 514)

No letter from Florence this post, though I am wis.h.i.+ng for one every day! The illness of a friend is bad, but is augmented by distance. Your letters say you are quite recovered; but the farther you are from me, the oftener I want to hear that recovery repeated: and any delay in hearing revives my apprehensions of a return of your fever. I am embarra.s.sed, too, about your plan.

It grows near to the time you Proposed beginning your journey. I do not write with any view to hastening that, which I trust will entirely depend on the state of your health and strength; but I am impatient to know your intentions: in short, I feel that, from this time to your arrival, my letters will grow very tiresome. I have heard to-day, that Lord and Lady Sheffield, who went to visit Mr. Gibbon at Lausanne, met with great trouble and impertinence at almost every post in France. in Switzerland there is a furious spirit of democracy, or demonocracy. They made great rejoicings on the recapture of the King of France.

Oh! why did you leave England in such a turbulent era! When will you sit down on the quiet banks of the Thames?

Wednesday night.

Since I began my letter, I have received yours of the 2d, two days later than Usual; and a most comfortable one it is. My belief and my faith are now of the same religion. I do believe you quite recovered. You, in the mean time, are talking of my rheumatism-quite an old story. Not that it is gone, though the pain is. The lameness in my shoulder remains, and I am writing on my lap: but the complaint is put upon the establishment; like old servants, that are of no use, fill up the place of those that could do something, and yet still remain in the house.

I know nothing new, public or private. that is worth telling.

The stocks are transported with the pacification with Russia, and do not care for what it has cost to bully the Empress to no purpose; and say, we can afford it. Nor can Paine and Priestley persuade them that France is much happier than we are, by having ruined itself. The poor French here are in hourly expectation of as rapid a counterrevolution as what happened two years ago.

Have you seen the King of Sweden's letter to his minister, enjoining him to look dismal, and to take care not to be knocked on the head for so doing? It deserves to be framed with M. de Bouill'e's bravado.(817) You say you will write me longer letters when you know I am well. Your recovery has quite the contrary effect on me: I could scarce restrain my pen while I had apprehensions about you; now you are well, the goosequill has not a word to say. One would think it had belonged to a physician.

I shall fill my vacuum with some lines that General Conway has sent me, written by I know not whom, on Mrs. Harte, Sir William Hamilton's pantomime mistress, or wife, who acts all the antique statues in an Indian shawl. I have not seen her yet, so am no judge; but people are mad about her wonderful expression, which I do not conceive; so few antique statues having any expression at all, nor being designed to have it. The Apollo has the symptoms of dignified anger:(818) the Laoc.o.o.n and his sons, and Niobe and her family,(819) are all expression;' and a few more: but what do the Venuses, Floras, Hercules, and a thousand others tell, but the magic art of the sculptor, and their own graces and proportions?

I have been making up some pills of patience, to be taken occasionally, when you have begun your journey, and I do not receive your letters regularly; which may happen when you are .on the road. I recommend you to St. James of Compost-antimony, to whom St. Luke was an ignorant quack. Adieu!

(817) "The Marquis de Bouill'e, in order to draw upon himself the indignation of the a.s.sembly, addressed to it a letter, which might be called mad, but for the generous motive which dictated it. He avowed himself the sole author of the King's journey, though, on the contrary, he had opposed it. He declared, in the name of the Sovereign, that Paris should be responsible for the safety of the Royal Family, and that the slightest injury offered to them should be signally avenged. The a.s.sembly winked at this generous bravado, and threw the whole blame on Bouill'e; who had nothing to fear, for he was already abroad." Thiers, vol. i. p.

197.-E.

(818) "In his eye And nostril beautiful disdain, and might And majesty, flash their full lightnings by, Developing in that one glance the Deity." Byron.-E.

(819) "Go see Laoc.o.o.n's torture dignifying pain-- A father's love and mortal's agony With an immortal's patience blending:--Vain The struggle: vain against the coiling strain And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp, The old man's clench, the long envenom'd chain Rivets the living links,--the enormous asp Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp." Ibid.-E.

Letter 388 To The Miss Berrys.

Berkeley Square, Tuesday, Aug. 23, 1791. (page 516)

I am come to town to meet Mr. Conway and Lady Ailesbury; and, as I have no letter from you yet to answer, I will tell you how agreeably I have pa.s.sed the last three days; though they might have been improved had you shared them, as I wished, and as I sometimes do wish. On Sat.u.r.day evening I was at the Duke of Queensberry's (at Richmond, s'entend) with a small company: and there were Sir William Hamilton and Mrs. Harte; who, on the 3d of next month, previous to their departure, is to be made Madame l'Envoy'ee 'a Naples, the Neapolitan Queen having promised to receive her in that quality. Here she cannot be presented, where only such over-virtuous wives as the d.u.c.h.ess of Kingston and Mrs.

Hastings--who could go with a husband in each hand--are admitted.

Why the Margravine of Ans.p.a.ch, with the same pretensions, was not, I do not understand; perhaps she did not attempt it. But I forgot to retract, and make amende honourable to Mrs. Harte. I had only heard of her att.i.tudes; and those, in dumb show, I have not yet seen. Oh! but she sings admirably; has a very fine, strong voice: is an excellent buffa, and an astonis.h.i.+ng tragedian. She sung Nina in the highest perfection; and there her att.i.tudes were a whole theatre of grace and various expressions.

The next evening I was again at Queensberry-house, where the Comtesse Emilie de Boufflers played on her harp, and the Princesse di Castelcigala, the Neapolitan minister's wife, danced one of her country dances, with castanets, very prettily, with her husband. Madame du Barry was there too, and I had a good deal of frank conversation with her about Monsieur de Choiseul; having been at Paris at the end of his reign and the beginning of hers, and of which I knew so much by my intimacy with the d.u.c.h.esse de Choiseul.

On Monday was the boat-race. I was in the great room at the Castle, with the Duke of Clarence, Lady Di., Lord Robert Spencer,(820) and the House of Bouverie(821) to see the boats start from the bridge to Thistleworth, and back to a tent erected on Lord Dysart's meadow, just before Lady Di.'s windows; whither we went to see them arrive, and where we had breakfast. For the second heat, I sat in my coach on the bridge; and did not stay for the third. The day had been coined on purpose, with my favourite southeast wind. The scene, both up the river and down, was what only Richmond upon earth can exhibit. The crowds on those green velvet meadows and on the sh.o.r.es, the yachts, barges, pleasure and small boats, and the windows and gardens lined with spectators, were so delightful, that when I came home from that vivid show, I thought Strawberry looked as dull and solitary as a hermitage. At night there was a ball at the Castle, and illuminations, with the Duke's cipher, etc. in coloured lamps, as were the houses of his Royal Highness's tradesmen. I went again in the evening to the French ladies on the Green, where there was a bonfire; but, you may believe, not to the ball.

Well! but you, who have had a fever with f'etes, had rather hear the history of the new soi-disante Margravine. She has been in England with her foolish Prince, and not only notified their marriage to the Earl,(822) her brother, who did not receive it propitiously, but his Highness informed his lords.h.i.+p by a letter, that they have an usage , in his country of taking a wife with the left hand; that he had' espoused his lords.h.i.+p's sister in that manner; and intends, as soon as she shall be a widow,(823) to marry her with his right hand also. The Earl replied, that he knew she was married to an English peer, a most respectable man, and can know nothing of her marrying any other man; and so they are gone to Lisbon. Adieu!

(820) Brother to Lady Diana Beauclerc.

(821) The family of the Hon. Edward Bouverie, brother to the Earl of Radnor.

(822) Of Berkeley.

(823) Lady Craven became a widow in the following month, and was married to the Margrave of Ans.p.a.ch in October. See ante, p. 387, letter 305.

Letter 389 To The Miss Berrys.

Strawberry Hill, Sept. 11, 1791. (page 517)

Though I am delighted to know, that of thirteen doleful months but two remain, yet how full of anxiety will they be! You set out in still hot weather, and will taste very cold before you arrive!

Accidents, inns, roads, mountains, and the sea, are all in my map!- but I hope no slopes to be run down, no f'etes for a new Grand Duke. I should dread your meeting armies, if I had much faith in the counter-revolution said to be on the anvil. The French ladies in my vicinage (a, word of the late Lord Chatham's coin) are all hen-a-hoop on the expectation of a grand alliance formed for that purpose, and I believe think they shall be at Paris before you are in England; but I trust one is more certain than the other. That folly and confusion increase in France every hour, I have no doubt, and absurdity and contradictions as rapidly. Their const.i.tution, which they had voted should be immortal and unchangeable,-though they deny that any thing antecedent to themselves ought to have been so,-they are now of opinion must be revised at the commencement of next century; and they are agitating a third const.i.tution, before they have thought of a second, or finished the first! Bravo! In short, Louis Onze could not have laid deeper foundations for despotism than these levellers, who have rendered the name of liberty odious--the surest way of destroying the dear essence!

I have no news for you, but a sudden match patched up for Lord Blandford, with a little more art than was employed by the fair Gunnilda. It is with Lady Susan Stewart, Lord Galloway's daughter, contrived by and at the house of her relation and Lord Blandford's friend, Sir Henry Dashwood ; and it is to be so instantly, that her grace, his mother, will scarce have time to forbid the bans.(824)

We have got a codicil to summer, that is as delightful as, I believe, the seasons in the Fortunate Islands. It is pity it lasts but till seven in the evening, and then one remains with a black chimney for five hours. I wish the sun was not so fas.h.i.+onable as never to come into the country till autumn and the shooting season; as if Niobe's children were not hatched and fledged before the first of September. Apropos, Sir William Hamilton has actually married his Gallery of Statues, and they are set out on their return to Naples. I am sorry I did not see her att.i.tudes, which Lady Di. (a tolerable judge!) prefers to any thing she ever saw: still I do not much care. I have at this moment a commercial treaty with Italy, and hope in two months to be a greater gainer by the exchange; and I shall not be SO generous as Sir William, and exhibit my wives in pantomime to the public. 'Tis well I am to have the originals again; for that wicked swindler, Miss Foldson, has not yet given up their portraits.

The newspapers are obliged to live Upon the diary of the King's motions at Weymouth. Oh! I had forgot. Lord Cornwallis has taken Bangalore by storm, promises Seringapatam, and Tippoo Saib has sued for peace. Diamonds will be as plenty as potatoes, and gold is as common as copper-money in Sweden. I was told last night, that a director of the Bank affirms, that two millions five hundred thousand pounds, in specie, have already been remitted or brought over hither from France since their revolution.

(824) The marriage took place four days after the date of this letter.-E.

Letter 390 To The Miss Berrys.

Strawberry Hill, Friday night late, Sept. 16, 1791. (page 519)

As I am constantly thinking of you two, I am as constantly writing to you, when I have a vacant quarter of an hour.

Yesterday was red-lettered in the almanacks of Strawberry and Cliveden, Supposing you to set out towards them, as you intended; the sun shone all day, and the moon at night, and all nature, for three miles round, looked gay. Indeed, we have had nine or ten days of such warmth and serenity, (here called heat,) as I scarce remember when the year begins to have gray, or rather yellow hairs. All windows have been flung up again and fans ventilated; and it is true that hay-carts have been transporting hayc.o.c.ks, from a second crop, all the morning from Sir Francis Ba.s.set's island opposite to my windows. The setting sun and the long autumnal shades enriched the landscape to a Claude Lorrain.

Guess whether I hoped to see such a scene next year: if I do not, may you! at least, it will make you talk of me! The gorgeous season' and poor partridges. I hear, have emptied London entirely, and yet Drury-lane is removed to the Opera-house. Do you know that Mrs. Jordan is acknowledged to be Mrs. Ford, and Miss Brunton(825) Mrs. Merry, but neither quits the stage? The latter's captain, I think, might quit his poetic profession, without any loss to the public. My gazettes will have kept you so much au courant, that you will be as ready for any conversation at your return, as if you had only been at a watering-place. In short, -a votre intention, and to make my letters as welcome as I can, I listen to and bring home a thousand things, which otherwise I should not know I heard.

Lord Buchan is s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g out a little ephemeral fame from inst.i.tuting a jubilee for Thomson.(826) I fear I shall not make my court to Mr. Berry, by owning I would not give this last week's fine weather for all the four Seasons in blank verse.

There is more nature in L'Allegro and Penseroso, than in all the laboured imitations Of Milton. What is there in Thomson of original?

Berkeley Square, Monday night, 19th.

You have alarmed me exceedingly, by talking of returning through France, against which I thought myself quite secure, or I should not have pressed you to stir, yet. I have been making all the inquiries I could amongst the foreign ministers at Richmond, and I cannot find any belief of' the march of armies towards France.

Nay, the Comte d'Artois is said to be gone to PetersbUrgh; and he must bring back forces in a balloon, if he can be time enough to interrupt your pa.s.sage through Flanders. One thing I must premise, if, which I deprecate, You should set foot in France; I beg you to burn, and not to bring a sc.r.a.p of paper with you.

Mere travelling ladies as young as you, I know have been stopped and rifled, and detained in France to have their papers examined; and one was rudely treated, because the name of a French lady of her acquaintance was mentioned in a private letter to her, though in no political light. Calais is one of the worst places you can pa.s.s; for, as they suspect money being remitted through that town to England, the search and delays there are extremely strict and rigorous. The pleasure of seeing you would be bought infinitely too dear by your meeting with any disturbance; as my impatience for your setting out is already severely punished by the fright you have given me. One charge I can wipe off; but it were the least of my faults. I never thought of your settling at Cliveden in November, if your house in town is free. All my wish was, that you would come for a night to Strawberry, and that the next day I might put you in possession of Cliveden. I did not think of engrossing you from all your friends, who must wish to embrace you at your return.