The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume I Part 87

(1369) ,,b Solomon Dayrolles, Esq. There are many letters addressed to him in Lord Chesterfield's Miscellaneous Correspondence.-D.

528 Letter 235 To Sir Horace Mann Arlington Street, June 5, 1747.

Don't be more frightened at hearing the Parliament is to be dissolved in a fortnight, than you are obliged to be as a good minister. Since this Parliament has not brought over the Pretender, I trust the death of it will not. You will want to know the reason of this sudden step: several are given, as the impossibility of making either peace or war, till they are secure of a new majority; but I believe the true motive is to disappoint the Prince, who was not ready with his elections.

In general, people seem to like the measure, except the Speaker, who is very pompous about it, and speaks const.i.tutional paragraphs. There are rumours of changes to attend its exit. People imagine Lord Chesterfield(1370) is to quit, but I know no other grounds for this belief, than that they conclude the Duke of Newcastle must be jealous of him by this time. Lord Sandwich is looked upon as his successor, Whenever it shall happen. He is now here, to look after his Huntingdons.h.i.+re boroughs. We talk nothing but elections-however, it is better than talking them for a year together. Mine for Callington (for I would not come in for Lynn, which I have left to Prince Pigwiggin(1371)) is so easy, that I shall have no trouble, not even the dignity of being carried in triumph, like the lost sheep, on a porter's shoulders but may retire to a little new farm that I have taken just out of Twickenham. The house is so small, that I can send it you in a letter to look at: the prospect is as delightful as possible, commanding the river, the town, and Richmond Park; and being situated on a hill descends to the Thames through two or three little meadows, where I have some Turkish sheep and two cows, all studied in their colours for becoming the view. This little rural bijou was Mrs.

Chenevix's, the toy-woman 'a la mode, who in every dry season is to furnish me with the best rain-water from Paris, and now and then with some Dresden-china cows, who are to figure like wooden cla.s.sics in a library: so I shall grow as much a shepherd as any swain in the Astrea.

Admiral Anson(1372) is made a baron, and Admiral Warren(1373) Knight of the Bath-so is Niccolini to be-when the King dies.(1374) His Majesty and his son were last night at the masquerade at Ranelagh, where there was so little company, that I was afraid they would be forced to walk about together.

I have been desired to write to you for two scagliola tables; will you get them? I will thank you, an pay you too.

You will hardly believe that I intend to send you this for a letter, but I do. Mr. Chute said he would write to you to-day, so mine goes as page to his. Adieu!

(1370) He was now secretary of state, which office he did not resign till Feb. 1748.-D.

(1371) Eldest son of Horatio, brother of Sir Robert Walpole.

(1372) George Anson, created Lord Anson of Soberton. He is well known for his voyages round the world, as well as for his naval successes. He was long first lord of the admiralty; but did not distinguish himself as a statesman. He died suddenly, while walking in his garden at Moor Park in Hertfords.h.i.+re, June 6th, 1762.-D.

(1373) Sir Peter Warren was the second in command in the victory off Cape Finisterre.-D.

(1374) The Abb'e Niccolini was in much favour with the Prince of Wales.-D.

530 Letter 236 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Twickenham, June 8, 1747.

You perceive by my date that I am got into a new camp, and have left my tub at Windsor. It is a little plaything-house that I got out of Mrs. Chenevix's shop, and is the prettiest bauble you ever saw. It is set in enamelled meadows, with filigree hedges:

"A small Euphrates through the piece is roll'd, And little finches wave their wings in gold"

Two delightful roads, that you would call dusty, supply me continually with coaches and chaises; barges as solemn as barons of the exchequer move under my window; Richmond Hill and Ham Walks bound my prospect; but, thank G.o.d! the Thames is between me and the d.u.c.h.ess of Queensberry. Dowagers (-As plenty as flounders inhabit all around, and Pope's ghost is just now skimming under my window by a most poetical moonlight. I have about land enough to keep such a farm as Noah's, when he set up in the ark with a pair of each kind; but my cottage is rather cleaner than I believe his was after they had been cooped up together forty days. The Chenevixes had tricked it out for themselves: up two pair of stairs is what they call Mr. Chenevix's library, furnished with three maps, one shelf, a bust of Sir Isaac Newton, and a lame telescope without any gla.s.ses. Lord John Sackville predeceased me here, and inst.i.tuted certain games called cricketalia, which have been celebrated this very evening in honour of him in a neighbouring meadow.

You will think I have removed my philosophy from Windsor with my tea-things. .h.i.ther; for I am writing to you in all this tranquillity, while a Parliament is bursting about my ears.

You know it is going to be dissolved: I am told, you are taken care of, though I don't know where, nor whether any body that chooses you will quarrel with me because he does choose you, as that little bug the Marquis of Rockingham did; one of the calamities of my life which I have bore as abominably well as I do most about which I don't care. They say the Prince has taken up two hundred thousand pounds, to carry elections which he won't carry:--he had much better have saved it to buy the Parliament after it is chosen. A new set of peers are in embryo, to add more dignity to the silence of the House of Lords.

I make no remarks on your campaign,(1375) because, as you say, you do nothing at all; which, though very proper nutriment for a thinking head, does not do quite so well to write upon. If any one of you can but contrive to be shot upon your post, it is all we desire, shall look upon it as a great curiosity, and will take care to set up a monument to the person so slain; as we are doing by vote to Captain Cornwall, who was killed at the beginning Of the action in the Mediterranean four years ago.(1376) In the present dearth of glory, he is canonized; though, poor man! he had been tried twice the year before for cowardice.(1377)

I could tell you much election news, none else; though not being thoroughly attentive to so important a subject, as to be sure one ought to be, I might now and then mistake, and give you a candidate for Durham in place of one for Southampton, or name the returning-officer instead of the candidate. In general, I believe, it is much as usual-those sold in detail that afterwards will be sold in the representation--the ministers bribing Jacobites to choose friends of their own- -the name of well-wishers to the present establishment, and patriots outbidding ministers that they may make the better market of their own patriotism:-in short, all England, under some flame or other, is just now to be bought and sold; though, whenever we become posterity and forefathers, we shall be in high repute for wisdom and virtue. My great-great-grandchildren will figure me with a white beard down to my girdle; and Mr. Pitt's will believe him unspotted enough to have walked over nine hundred hot ploughshares, without hurting the sole of his foot. How merry my ghost will be, and shake its ears to hear itself quoted as a person of consummate prudence! Adieu, dear Harry! Yours ever.

(1375) Mr Conway was in Flanders with the Duke of c.u.mberland.

(1376) The House of Commons, on the 28th of May, had agreed to erect a monument in Westminster Abbey to the memory of Captain Cornwall, of the Marlborough; who was slain while bravely defending his s.h.i.+p. The monument, designed and executed bye Taylor, was completed in 1755. --E.

(1377) And honourably acquitted on both occasions.-E.

531 Letter 237 To sir Horace Mann.

Arlington Street, June 26, 1747.

You can have no idea of the emptiness of London, and of the tumult every where else. To-day many elections begin. The sums of money disbursed within this month would give any body a very faint idea of the poverty of this undone country! I think the expense and contest is greater now we are said to be all of a mind, than when parties ran highest. Indeed, I ascribe part of the solitude in town to privilege being at an end; though many of us can afford to bribe so high, it is not so easy to pay debts. Here am I, as Lord Cornbury(1378) says, sitting for a borough, while every body else stands for one.

He diverted me extremely the other day with the application of a story to the King's speech. It says, the reason for dissolving the Parliament is its being so near dissolution:(1379) Lord Cornbury said it put him in mind of a gaoler in Oxfords.h.i.+re who was remarkably humane to his prisoners; one day he said to one of them, "My good friend, you know you are to be hanged on Friday se'nnight; I want extremely to go to London; would you be so kind as to be hanged next Friday?"

Pigwiggin is come over, more Pigwiggin than ever! He entertained me with the horrid ugly figures that he saw at the Prince of Orange's court; think of his saying ugly figures!

He is to be chosen for Lynn,-whither I would not go, because I must have gone; I go to Callington again, whither I don't go.

My brother chooses Lord luxborough(1380) for Castlerising.

Would you know the connexion? This Lord keeps Mrs. Horton the player; we keep Miss Norsa the player: Rich the harlequin is an intimate of all; and to cement the harlequinity, somebody's brother (excuse me if I am not perfect in such genealogy) is to marry the Jewess's sister. This coup de th'eatre procured Knight his Irish coronet, and has now stuffed him into Castlerising, about which my brother has quarrelled with me, for not looking upon it, as, what he called, a family-borough.

Excuse this ridiculous detail; it serves to introduce the account of the new peers, for Sir Jacob Bouverie, a considerable Jacobite, who is made Viscount Folkestone, bought his ermine at twelve thousand pound a-yard of the d.u.c.h.ess of Kendal(1381) d'aujourd'hui. Sir Harry Liddel is Baron Ravensworth, and Duncombe Baron Feversham; Archer and Rolle have only changed their Mr.s.h.i.+ps for Lords.h.i.+ps. Lord Middles.e.x has lost one of his Lords.h.i.+ps, that of the Treasury; is succeeded by the second Grenville, and he by Ellis,(1382) at the admiralty. Lord Ashburnham had made a magnificent summer suit to wait, but Lord Cowper at last does not resign the bedchamber. I intend to laugh over this disgrazia with the Chuteheds, when they return triumphant from Hamps.h.i.+re, where Whitehed has no enemy. A-propos to enemies! I believe the battle in Flanders is compromised, for one never hears of it.

The d.u.c.h.ess of Queensberry(1383) has at last been at court, a point she has been intriguing these two years. n.o.body gave in to it. At last she s.n.a.t.c.hed at the opportunity of her son being obliged to the King for a regiment in the Dutch service, and would not let him go to thank, till they sent for her too.

Niccolini, who is next to her in absurdity and importance, is gone electioneering with Doddington.

I expect Pucci every day to finish my trouble with Riccardi; I shall take any ring, though he has taken care I shall not take another tolerable one. If you will pay him, which I fancy will be the shortest way to prevent any fripponnerie, I will put the money into your brother's hands.

My eagle(1384) is arrived-my eagle tout court, for I hear nothing of the pedestal: the bird itself was sent home in a store-s.h.i.+p; I was happy that they did not reserve the statue, and send its footstool. It is a glorious fowl! I admire it, and every body admires it as much as it deserves. There never was so much spirit and fire preserved, with so much labour and finis.h.i.+ng. It stands fronting the Vespasian: there are no two such morsels in England!

Have you a mind for an example of English bizarrerie? there is a Fleming here, who carves exquisitely in ivory, one Verskovis; he has done much for me, and where I have recommended him; but he is starving, and returning to Rome, to carve for-the English, for whom, when he was there before, he could not work fast enough.(1385)

I know nothing, nor ever heard of the Mills's and Davisons; and know less than nothing Of whether they are employed from hence. There is n.o.body in town of whom to inquire; if there were, they would ask me for what borough these men were to stand, and wonder that I could name people from any other motive. Adieu!

(1378) Henry Hyde, only son of the last Earl of Clarendon. He died before his father.

(1379) King's words are, "As this Parliament would necessarily determine in a short time, I have judged it expedient speedily to call a new one."-E.

(1380) Robert Knight, eldest son of the famous cas.h.i.+er of the South Sea Company. (Created Lord Luxborough in Ireland 1746, and Earl of Catherlough in 1763. He died in 1772.-D.)

(1381) Lady Yarmouth, the mistress of George II.-D.

(1382) Right Honourable Welbore Ellis.-D.

(1383) She had quarrelled with the court, in consequence of the refusal to permit Gray's sequel to the Beggar's Opera, called "Polly," to be acted.-D.

(1384) The eagle found in the gardens of Boccapadugli within the precincts of Caracalla's baths, at Rome, in the year 1742; one of the finest pieces of Greek sculpture in the world. See Walpole's Works, vol. ii. p. 463, and Gray's Ode on the Progress of Poesy.-E.

(1385) Verskovis is also mentioned by Walpole in his Anecdotes of Painting. he had a son, who to the art of carving in ivory, added painting, but died young, in 1749, before his father.

The latter did not survive above a year.-E.

533 Letter 238 To George Montagu, Esq.

Arlington Street, July 2, 1747.

Dear George, Though we have no great reason to triumph, as we have certainly been defeated,(1386) yet the French have as certainly bought their victory dear: indeed, what would be very dear to us, is not so much to them. However, their least loss is twelve thousand men; as our least loss is five thousand. The truth of the whole is, that the Duke was determined to fight at all events, which the French, who determined not to fight but at great odds, took advantage of.

His Royal Highness's valour has shone extremely, but at the expense of his judgment. Harry Conway, whom nature always designed for a hero of romance, and who is d'eplac'e in ordinary life, did wonders; but was overpowered and flung down, when one French hussar held him by the hair, while another was going to stab him: at that instant, an English sergeant with a soldier came up, and killed the latter; but was instantly killed himself; the soldier attacked the other, and Mr. Conway escaped; but was afterwards taken prisoner; is since released on parole, and may come home to console his fair widow,,(1387) whose brother, Harry Campbell, is certainly killed, to the great concern of all widows who want consolation. The French have lost the Prince of Monaco, the Comte de Bavi'ere, natural brother to the last Emperor, and many officers of great rank. The French King saw the whole through a spying-gla.s.s, from Hampstead Hill, environed with twenty thousand men.' Our Guards did shamefully, and many officers. The King had a line from Huske in Zealand on the Friday night, to tell him we were defeated; of his son not a word - judge of his anxiety till three o'clock on Sat.u.r.day!