The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume I Part 59

London, May 29, 1744.

Since I wrote I have received two from you of May 6th and 19th. I am extremely sorry you get mine so late. I have desired your brother to complain to Mr. Preverau: I get yours pretty regularly.

I have this morning had a letter from Mr. Conway at the army; he says he hears just then that the French have declared war against the Dutch: they had in effect before by besieging Menin, which siege our army is in full march to raise. They have laid bridges over the Scheldt, and intend to force the French to a battle. The latter are almost double our number, but their desertion is prodigious, and their troops extremely bad. Fourteen thousand more Dutch are ordered, and their six thousand are going from hence with four more of ours; so we seem to have no more apprehensions of an invasion. All thoughts of it are over! no inquiry made into it! The present ministry fear the detection of conspiracies more than the thing itself: that is, they fear every thing that they are to do themselves.

My father has been extremely ill, from a cold he caught last week at New-park. Princess Emily came thither to fish, and he, who is grown quite indolent, and has not been out of a hot room this twelve- month, sat an hour and a half by the water side. He was in great danger one day, and more low-spirited than ever I knew him, though I think that grows upon him with his infirmities. My sister was at his bedside; I came into the room,-he burst into tears and could not speak to me - but he is quite well now; though I cannot say I think he will preserve his life long, as he has laid aside all exercise, which has been of such vast service to him. he talked the other day of shutting himself up in the farthest wing at Houghton; I said, "Dear, my Lord, you will be at a distance from all the family there!" He replied, "So much the better!"

Pope is given over with a dropsy, which is mounted into his head: in an evening he is not in his senses; the other day at Chiswick, he said,- to my Lady Burlington, "Look at our Saviour there! how ill they have crucified him!"(927)

There is a Prince of Ost-Frize(928) dead, which is likely to occasion most unlucky broils: Holland, Prussia, and Denmark have all pretensions to his succession; but Prussia is determined to make his good. If the Dutch don't dispute it, he will be too near a neighbour; if they do, we lose his neutrality, which is now so material.

The town has been in a great bustle about a private match; but which, by the ingenuity of the ministry, has been made politics. Mr. Fox fell in love with Lady Caroline Lennox;(929) asked her, was refused, and stole her. His father(930) was a footman; her great grandfather a king: hinc illae, lachrymae! all the blood royal have been up in arms.

The Duke of Marlborough, who was a friend of the Richmonds, gave her away. If his Majesty's Princess Caroline had been stolen, there could not have been more noise made. The Pelhams, who arc much attached to the Richmonds, but who have tried to make Fox and all that set theirs, wisely entered into the quarrel, and now don't know how to get out of it. They were for hindering Williams,(931) who is Fox's great friend, and at whose house they were married, from having the red riband; but he has got it, with four others, the Viscount Fitzwilliam, Calthorpe, Whitmore, and Harbord. Dashwood, Lady Carteret's quondam lover, has stolen a great fortune, a Miss Bateman; the marriage had been proposed, but the fathers could not agree on the terms.

I am much obliged to you for all your Sardinian and Neapolitan journals. I am impatient for the conquest of Naples, and have no notion of neglecting sure things, which may serve by way of d'edommagement.

I am very sorry I recommended such a troublesome b.o.o.by to you.

Indeed, dear Mr. Chute, I never saw him, but was pressed by Mr. Selwyn, whose brother's friend he is, to give him that letter to you. I now hear that he is a warm Jacobite; I suppose you somehow disobliged him politically.

We are now mad about tar-water, on the publication of a book that I will send you, written by Dr. Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne.(932) The book contains every subject from tar-water to the Trinity; however, all the women read, and understand it no more than they would if it were intelligible. A man came into an apothecary's shop the other day, "Do you sell tar-water?" "Tar-water!" replied the apothecary, "why, I sell nothing else!" Adieu!

(927) Pope died the day after this letter was written; "in the evening," says Spence, "but they did not know the exact time; for his departure was so easy, that it was imperceptible even to the standers by."

(928) The Prince of East Friesland.

(929) Eldest daughter of Charles Duke of Richmond, grandson of King Charles II.

(930) Sir Stephen Fox.

(931) Sir C. Hanbury Williams.

(932) Having cured himself of a nervous colic by the use of tar-water, the bishop this year published a book ent.i.tled "Philosophical Reflections and Enquiries concerning the Virtues of Tar-water.',-E.

372 Letter 139 To Sir Horace Mann.

June 11, 1744.

Perhaps you expect to hear of great triumphs and victories; of General Wade grown into a Duke of Marlborough; or of the King being in Flanders, with the second part of the battle of Dettingen-why, ay: you are bound in conscience, as a good Englishman, to expect all this -but what if all these 10 paeans should be played to the Dunkirk tune? I must prepare you for some such thing; for unless the French are as much their own foes as we are our own, I don't see what should hinder the festival to-day(933) being kept next year a day sooner. But I will draw no consequences; only sketch you out our present situation: and if Cardinal Tencin can miss making his use of it, we may burn our books and live hereafter upon good fortune.

The French King's army is at least ninety thousand strong; has taken Menin already, and Ypres almost. Remains then only Ostend; which you will look in the map and see does not lie in the high road to the conquest of the Austrian Netherlands.

Ostend may be laid under water, and the taking it an affair of time. But there lies all our train of artillery Which cost two hundred thousand pounds; and what becomes of our communication with our army? Why, they may go round by Williamstadt, and be in England just time enough to be some other body's army! It turns out that the whole combined army, English, Dutch, Austrians, and Hanoverians, does not amount to above thirty-six thousand fighting men! and yet forty thousand more French, under the Duc d'Harcourt are coming into Flanders. When their army is already so superior to ours, for what can that reinforcement be intended, but to let them spare a triumph to Dunkirk? Now you will naturally ask me three questions: where is Prince Charles? where are the Dutch?

what force have you to defend England? Prince Charles is hovering about the Rhine to take Lorrain, which they seem not to care whether he does or not, and leaves you to defend the -Netherlands. The Dutch seem indifferent, whether their barrier is in the hands of the Queen or the Emperor and while you are so mad, think it prudent not to be so themselves. For our own force, it is too melancholy to mention: six regiments go away to-morrow to Ostend, with the six thousand Dutch.

Carteret and Botzlaer, the Dutch envoy extraordinary, would have hurried them away without orders; but General Smitsart, their commander, said, he was too old to be hanged. This reply was told to my father yesterday: "Ay," said he, "so I thought I was, but I may live to be mistaken!" When these troops are gone, we shall not have in the whole island above six thousand men, even when the regiments are complete; and half of those pressed and new-listed men. For our sea-force, I wish it may be greater in proportion! Sir Charles Hardy, whose name(934) at least is ill-favoured, is removed, and old Balchen, a firm Whig, put at the head of the fleet. Fifteen s.h.i.+ps are sent for from Matthews; but they may come as opportunely as the army from Williamstadt-in short-but I won't enter into reasonings-the King is not gone. The Dutch have sent word, that they can let us have but six of the twenty s.h.i.+ps we expected. My father is going into Norfolk, quite shocked at living to see how terribly his own conduct is justified. In the city the word is, "Old Sunderland'S(935) game is acting over again." Tell me if you receive this letter: I believe you will scarce give it about in memorials.

Here are arrived two Florentines, not recommended to me, but I have been very civil to them, Marquis Salviati and Conte Delci; the latter remembers to have seen me at Madame Grifoni's. The Venetian amba.s.sador met my father yesterday at my Lady Brown's: you would have laughed to have seen how he stared and @eccellenza'd him. At last they fell into a broken Latin chat, and there was no getting the amba.s.sador away from him.

If you have the least interest in any one Madonna in Florence, pay her well for all the service she can do us. If she can work miracles, now is her time. If she can't, I believe we all shall be forced to adore her. Adieu! Tell Mr. Chute I fear we should not be quite so well received at the conversazzioni, at Madame de Craon's, and the Casino,(936) when we are but refugee heretics. Well, we must hope! Yours I am, and we will bear our wayward fate together.

(933) The 10th of June was the Pretender's birthday, and the 11th the accession of George II.

(934) He was of a Jacobite family.

(935) Lord Sunderland, who betrayed James II.

(936) The Florentine coffee-house.

373 Letter 140 To Sir Horace Mann.

London, June 18, 1744.

I have not any immediate bad news to tell you in consequence of my last. The siege of Ypres does not advance so expeditiously as was expected; a little time gained in sieges goes a great way in a campaign. The Brest squadron is making just as great a figure in our channel as Matthews does before Toulon and Ma.r.s.eilles. I should be glad to be told by some nice computers of national glory, how much the balance is on our side.

Anson(937) is returned with vast fortune, substantial and lucky. He has brought the Acapulca s.h.i.+p into Portsmouth, and its treasure is at least computed at five hundred thousand pounds. He escaped the Brest squadron by a mist. You will have all the particulars in a gazette.

I will not fail to make your compliments to the Pomfrets and Carterets. I see them seldom, but I am in favour; so I conclude, for my Lady Pomfret told me the other night, that I said better things than any body. I was with them all at a subscription-ball at Ranelagh last week, which my Lady Carteret thought proper to look upon as given to her, and thanked the gentlemen, who were not quite so well pleased at her condescending to take it to herself. My lord stayed with her there till four in the morning. They are all fondness -walk together, and stop every five steps to kiss. Madame de Craon is a cypher to her for grandeur. The ball was on an excessively hot night: yet she was dressed in a magnificent brocade, because it was new that morning for the inauguration-day. I did the honours of all her dress:-"How charming your ladys.h.i.+p's cross is! I am sure the design was your own."-"No, indeed; my lord sent it me just as it is."-"How fine your ear-rings are!"-"Oh! but they are very heavy." Then as much to the mother. Do you wonder I say better things than any body?

I send you by a s.h.i.+p going to Leghorn the only new books at all worth reading. The Abuse(938) of Parliaments is by Doddington and Waller, circ.u.mstantially scurrilous. The dedication of the Essay(939) to my father is fine; pray mind the quotation from Milton. There is Dr. Berkeley's mad book on tar-water, which has made every body as mad as himself.

I have lately made a great antique purchase of all Dr.

Middleton's collection which he brought from Italy, and which he is now publis.h.i.+ng. I will send you the book as soon as it comes out. I would not buy the things till the book was half printed, for fear of an 'e Museo Walpoliano.-Those honours are mighty well for such known and learned men as Mr. Smith,(940) the merchant of Venice. My dear Mr. Chute, how we used to enjoy the t.i.tle-page(941) of his understanding! Do you remember how angry he was when showing us a Guido, after pompous roomsfull of Sebastian Riccis, which he had a mind to establish for capital pictures, you told him he had now made amends for all the rubbish he had showed us before?

My father has asked, and with some difficulty got, his pension of four thousand pounds a-year, which the King gave him on his resignation and which he dropped, by the wise fears of my uncle and the Selwyns. He has no reason to be satisfied with the manner of obtaining it now, or with the manner of the man(942) whom he employed to ask it - yet it was not a point that required capacity-merely grat.i.tude. Adieu!

(937) The celebrated circ.u.mnavigator, afterwards a peer, and first lord of the admiralty.-D.

(938) Detection of the Use and Abuse of Parliaments, by Ralph, under the direction of Doddington and Waller.

(939) Essay on Wit, Humour, and Ridicule, by Corbyn Morris.

(940) Mr. Smith, consul at Venice, had a fine library" of which he knew nothing at all but the t.i.tle-pages.

(941) Expression of Mr. Chute.

(942) Mr. Pelham.

375 Letter 141

To The Hon. H. S. Conway.(943) Arlington Street, June 29, 1744.

My dearest Henry, I don't know what made my last letter so long on the road: yours got hither as soon as it could. I don't attribute it to any examination at the post-office. G.o.d forbid I should suspect any branch of the present administration of attempting to know any one kind of thing! I remember when I was at Eton, and Mr. Bland(944) had set me an extraordinary task, I used sometimes to pique myself upon not getting it, because it was not immediately my school business. What! learn more than I was absolutely forced to learn! I felt the weight of learning that; for I was a blockhead, and pushed up above my parts.

Lest you maliciously think I mean any application of this last sentence any where in the world, I shall go and transcribe some lines out of a new poem, that pretends to great impartiality, but is evidently wrote by some secret friend of the ministry. It is called Pope's, but has no good lines but the following. The plan supposes him complaining of being put to death by the blundering discord of his two physicians.

Burton and Thompson; and from thence makes a transition to show that all the present misfortunes of the world flow from a parallel disagreement; for instance, in politics:

"Ask you what cause this conduct can create?