Horace Walpole and his World

“February 2, 17-71113 [1789].

“I am sorry, in the sense of that word before it meant, like a Hebrew word, glad or sorry, that I am engaged this evening; and I am at your command on Tuesday, as it is always my inclination to be. It is a misfortune that words are become so much the current coin of society, that, like King William’s shillings, they have no impression left; they are so smooth, that they mark no more to whom they first belonged than to whom they do belong, and are not worth even the twelvepence into which they may be changed: but if they mean too little, they may seem to mean too much too, especially when an old man (who is often synonymous for a miser) parts with them. I am afraid of protesting how much I delight in your society, lest I should seem to affect being gallant; but if two negatives make an affirmative, why may not two ridicules compose one piece of sense? and therefore, as I am in love with you both, I trust it is a proof of the good sense of your devoted H. Walpole.”

A few months later we have the following letter to Miss More:

“Strawberry Hill, June 23, 1789.

“Madam Hannah,

“You are an errant reprobate, and grow wickeder and wickeder every day. You deserve to be treated like a nègre; and your favourite Sunday, to which you are so partial, that you treat the other poor six days of the week as if they had no souls to be saved, should, if I could have my will, ‘shine no Sabbath-day for you.’ Now, don’t simper, and look as innocent as if virtue would not melt in your mouth. Can you deny the following charges?—I lent you the ‘Botanic Garden,’ and you returned it without writing a syllable, or saying where you were, or whither you was going; I suppose for fear I should know how to direct to you. Why, if I did send a letter after you, could not you keep it three months without an answer, as you did last year?

“In the next place, you and your nine accomplices, who, by the way, are too good in keeping you company, have clubbed the prettiest Poem imaginable,114 and communicated it to Mrs. Boscawen, with injunctions not to give a copy of it; I suppose because you are ashamed of having written a panegyric. Whenever you do compose a satire, you are ready enough to publish it; at least, whenever you do, you will din one to death with it. But now, mind your perverseness: that very pretty novel poem, and I must own it is charming, have you gone and spoiled, flying in the faces of your best friends the Muses, and keeping no measures with them. I’ll be shot if they dictated two of the best lines with two syllables too much in each—nay, you have weakened one of them,

“‘Ev’n Gardiner’s mind’

is far more expressive than steadfast Gardiner’s; and, as Mrs. Boscawen says, whoever knows anything of Gardiner, could not want that superfluous epithet; and whoever does not, would not be the wiser for your foolish insertion—Mrs. Boscawen did not call it foolish, but I do. The second line, as Mesdemoiselles the Muses handed it to you, Miss, was,

“‘Have all be free and saved—’

not, ‘All be free and all be saved:’ the second all be is a most unnecessary tautology. The poem was perfect and faultless, if you could have let it alone. I wonder how your mischievous flippancy could help maiming that most new and beautiful expression, ‘sponge of sins;’ I should not have been surprised, as you love verses too full of feet, if you had changed it to ‘that scrubbing-brush of sins.’

“Well! I will say no more now: but if you do not order me a copy of ‘Bonner’s Ghost’ incontinently, never dare to look my printing-house in the face again. Or come, I’ll tell you what; I will forgive all your enormities if you will let me print your poem. I like to filch a little immortality out of others, and the Strawberry press could never have a better opportunity. I will not haggle for the public; I will be content with printing only two hundred copies, of which you shall have half and I half. It shall cost you nothing but a yes. I only propose this in case you do not mean to print it yourself. Tell me sincerely which you like. But as to not printing it at all, charming and unexceptionable as it is, you cannot be so preposterous.

“I by no means have a thought of detracting from your own share in your own poem; but, as I do suspect that it caught some inspiration from your perusal of ‘The Botanic Garden,’ so I hope you will discover that my style is much improved by having lately studied ‘Bruce’s Travels.’ There I dipped, and not in St. Giles’s Pound, where one would think this author had been educated. Adieu! Your friend, or mortal foe, as you behave on the present occasion.”

Before the date of the last, the Misses Berry had set out on a summer excursion. The following is in answer to a letter from the elder:

“Strawberry Hill, June 30, 1789.

“Were there any such thing as sympathy at the distance of two hundred miles, you would have been in a mightier panic than I was; for, on Saturday se’nnight, going to open the glass case in the Tribune, my foot caught in the carpet, and I fell with my whole weight (si weight y a) against the corner of the marble altar on my side, and bruised the muscles so badly, that for two days I could not move without screaming. I am convinced I should have broken a rib, but that I fell on the cavity whence two of my ribs were removed that are gone to Yorkshire. I am much better both of my bruise and of my lameness, and shall be ready to dance at my own wedding when my wives return. And now to answer your letter.

“If you grow tired of the ‘Arabian Nights,’ you have no more taste than Bishop Atterbury, who huffed Pope for sending him them (or the ‘Persian Tales’), and fancied he liked Virgil better, who had no more imagination than Dr. Akenside. Read ‘Sinbad the Sailor’s Voyages,’ and you will be sick of Æneas’s. What woful invention were the nasty poultry that spoiled his dinner, and ships on fire turned into Nereids! A barn metamorphosed into a cascade in a pantomime is full as sublime an effort of genius. I do not know whether the ‘Arabian Nights’ are of Oriental origin or not: I should think not, because I never saw any other Oriental composition that was not bombast without genius, and figurative without nature; like an Indian screen, where you see little men on the foreground, and larger men hunting tigers above in the air, which they take for perspective. I do not think the Sultaness’s narratives very natural or very probable, but there is a wildness in them that captivates. However, if you could wade through two octavos115 of Dame Piozzi’s though’s and so’s and I trow’s, and cannot listen to seven volumes of Scheherezade’s narrations, I will sue for a divorce in foro Parnassi, and Boccalini shall be my proctor. The cause will be a counterpart to the sentence of the Lacedæmonian, who was condemned for breach of the peace, by saying in three words what he might have said in two.

“So, you was not quite satisfied, though you ought to have been transported, with King’s College Chapel, because it has no aisles, like every common cathedral. I suppose you would object to a bird of paradise, because it has no legs, but shoots to heaven in a trail, and does not rest on earth. Criticism and comparison spoil many tastes. You should admire all bold and unique essays that resemble nothing else; the ‘Botanic Garden,’ the ‘Arabian Nights,’ and King’s Chapel are above all rules: and how preferable is what no one can imitate, to all that is imitated even from the best models! Your partiality to the pageantry of popery I do approve, and I doubt whether the world would not be a loser (in its visionary enjoyments) by the extinction of that religion, as it was by the decay of chivalry and the proscription of the heathen deities. Reason has no invention; and as plain sense will never be the legislator of human affairs, it is fortunate when taste happens to be regent.”

During the absence of his young favourites, he amuses himself with visiting his neighbours, and grumbling at his “customers,” as he called the strangers who came to view his villa and grounds:

“Richmond is in the first request this summer. Mrs. Bouverie is settled there with a large court. The Sheridans are there, too, and the Bunburys. I have been once with the first; with the others I am not acquainted. I go once or twice a week to George Selwyn late in the evening, when he comes in from walking:—about as often to Mrs. Ellis here, and to Lady Cecilia Johnston at Hampton; but all together cannot contribute to an entertaining letter, and it is odd to say that, though my house is all the morning full of company, nobody lives so much alone. I have already this season had between seventy and fourscore companies to see my house; and half my time passes in writing tickets or excuses. I wish I could think as an old sexton did at King’s College. One of the fellows told him he must get a great deal of money by showing it: ‘Oh, no! master,’ replied he; ‘everybody has seen it now.’ My companies, it seems, are more prolific, and every set begets one or two more.”

About the same date, he writes to Mary and Agnes:

“Strawberry Hill, Thursday evening, Aug. 27, 1789.

“I jumped for joy; that is, my heart did, which is all the remains of me that is in statu jumpante, at the receipt of your letter this morning, which tells me you approve of the house at Teddington. How kind you was to answer so incontinently! I believe you borrowed the best steed from the races. I have sent to the landlord to come to me to-morrow: but I could not resist beginning my letter to-night, as I am at home alone, with a little pain in my left wrist; but the right one has no brotherly feeling for it, and would not be put off so. You ask how you have deserved such attentions? Why, by deserving them; by every kind of merit, and by that superlative one to me, your submitting to throw away so much time on a forlorn antique; you two, who, without specifying particulars, (and you must at least be conscious that you are not two frights) might expect any fortune and distinctions, and do delight all companies. On which side lies the wonder? Ask me no more such questions, or I will cram you with reasons.…

“Friday.

“Well! I have seen him, and nobody was ever so accommodating! He is as courteous as a candidate for a county. You may stay in his house till Christmas if you please, and shall pay but twenty pounds; and if more furniture is wanting, it shall be supplied.”

“Don’t bring me a pair of scissors from Sheffield. I am determined nothing shall cut our loves, though I should live out the rest of Methusalem’s term, as you kindly wish, and as I can believe, though you are my wives; for I am persuaded my Agnes wishes so too.—Don’t you?”

The French Revolution was now in full progress: the Bastile had been stormed and demolished; anarchy reigned in Paris; châteaux in the provinces were being plundered and burnt by the peasants; refugees, in terrified crowds, were pouring over to England. Some of the exiles presently found their way into Walpole’s neighbourhood. “Madame de Boufflers,” he tells Lady Ossory, “and the Comtesse Emilie, her daughter-in-law, I hear, are come to London; and Woronzow, the Russian Minister, who has a house at Richmond, is to lend it to her for the winter, as her fortune has received some considerable blow in the present commotions.” Besides these foreigners, other important personages had come or were coming into the district. The Duke of Clarence had a house in the middle of Richmond “with nothing but a green short apron to the river, a situation only fit for an old gentlewoman who has put out her knee-pans and loves cards. The Prince of Wales has taken a somewhat better place at Roehampton, and enters upon it at Christmas.” “My Straw-Berries,” he adds, “are not yet returned, but I expect them next week, and have found a house for them at Teddington very near me.” A little later, he writes, “My neighbour, the Duke of Clarence, is so popular, that if Richmond were a borough, and he had not attained his title, but still retained his idea of standing candidate, he would certainly be elected there. He pays his bills regularly himself, locks up his doors at night, that his servants may not stay out late, and never drinks but a few glasses of wine. Though the value of crowns is mightily fallen of late at market, it looks as if his Royal Highness thought they were still worth waiting for; nay, it is said that he tells his brothers that he shall be king before either—that is fair at least.”116

In July, 1790, Walpole is alarmed by the intelligence that the Berrys have arranged to make a long visit to Italy. He writes to Miss Berry, then at the sea with her sister:

“I feel all the kindness of your determination of coming to Twickenham in August, and shall certainly say no more against it, though I am certain that I shall count every day that passes; and when they are passed, they will leave a melancholy impression on Strawberry, that I had rather have affixed to London. The two last summers were infinitely the pleasantest I ever passed here, for I never before had an agreeable neighbourhood. Still I loved the place, and had no comparisons to draw. Now, the neighbourhood will remain, and will appear ten times worse; with the aggravation of remembering two months that may have some transient roses, but, I am sure, lasting thorns. You tell me I do not write with my usual spirits: at least I will suppress, as much as I can, the want of them, though I am a bad dissembler.”

The months pass, and we have the following farewell letter:

“Sunday, Oct. 10, 1790. The day of your departure.

“Is it possible to write to my beloved friends, and refrain from speaking of my grief for losing you; though it is but the continuation of what I have felt ever since I was stunned by your intention of going abroad this autumn? Still I will not tire you with it often. In happy days I smiled, and called you my dear wives: now I can only think on you as darling children of whom I am bereaved! As such I have loved and do love you; and, charming as you both are, I have had no occasion to remind myself that I am past seventy-three. Your hearts, your understandings, your virtues, and the cruel injustice of your fate,117 have interested me in everything that concerns you; and so far from having occasion to blush for any unbecoming weakness, I am proud of my affection for you, and very proud of your condescending to pass so many hours with a very old man, when everybody admires you, and the most insensible allow that your good sense and information (I speak of both) have formed you to converse with the most intelligent of our sex as well as your own; and neither can tax you with airs of pretension or affectation. Your simplicity and natural ease set off all your other merits—all these graces are lost to me, alas! when I have no time to lose.

“Sensible as I am to my loss, it will occupy but part of my thoughts, till I know you safely landed, and arrived safely at Turin. Not till you are there, and I learn so, will my anxiety subside and settle into steady, selfish sorrow. I looked at every weathercock as I came along the road to-day, and was happy to see everyone point north-east. May they do so to-morrow!

“I found here the frame for Wolsey,118 and to-morrow morning Kirgate119 will place him in it; and then I shall begin pulling the little parlour to pieces, that it may be hung anew to receive him. I have also obeyed Miss Agnes, though with regret; for, on trying it, I found her Arcadia would fit the place of the picture she condemned, which shall therefore be hung in its room; though the latter should give way to nothing else, nor shall be laid aside, but shall hang where I shall see it almost as often. I long to hear that its dear paintress is well; I thought her not at all so last night. You will tell me the truth, though she in her own case, and in that alone, allows herself mental reservation.

“Forgive me for writing nothing to-night but about you two and myself. Of what can I have thought else? I have not spoken to a single person but my own servants since we parted last night. I found a message here from Miss Howe120 to invite me for this evening. Do you think I have not preferred staying at home to write to you, as this must go to London to-morrow morning by the coach to be ready for Tuesday’s post? My future letters shall talk of other things, whenever I know anything worth repeating; or perhaps any trifle, for I am determined to forbid myself lamentations that would weary you; and the frequency of my letters will prove there is no forgetfulness. If I live to see you again, you will then judge whether I am changed; but a friendship so rational and so pure as mine is, and so equal for both, is not likely to have any of the fickleness of youth, when it has none of its other ingredients. It was a sweet consolation to the short time that I may have left, to fall into such a society; no wonder then that I am unhappy at that consolation being abridged. I pique myself on no philosophy, but what a long use and knowledge of the world had given me—the philosophy of indifference to most persons and events. I do pique myself on not being ridiculous at this very late period of my life; but when there is not a grain of passion in my affection for you two, and when you both have the good sense not to be displeased at my telling you so, (though I hope you would have despised me for the contrary,) I am not ashamed to say that your loss is heavy to me; and that I am only reconciled to it by hoping that a winter in Italy, and the journeys and sea air, will be very beneficial to two constitutions so delicate as yours. Adieu! my dearest friends. It would be tautology to subscribe a name to a letter, every line of which would suit no other man in the world but the writer.”

CHAPTER X

Walpole’s love of English Scenery.—Richmond Hill.—Burke on the French Revolution.—The Berrys at Florence.—Death of George Selwyn.—London Solitude.—Repairs at Cliveden.—Burke and Fox.—The Countess of Albany.—Journal of a Day.—Mrs. Hobart’s Party.—Ancient Trade with India.—Lady Hamilton.—A Boat Race.—Return of the Berrys.—Horace succeeds to the Peerage.—Epitaphium Vivi Auctoris.—His Wives.—Mary Berry.—Closing Years.—Love of Moving Objects.—Visit from Queen Charlotte.—Death of Conway.—Final Illness of Horace.—His Last Letter.

It cannot, we fear, be said with truth that Walpole had much eye for the greater beauties of nature. When he recalls the travels of his youth, it is on the Gallery at Florence and the Fair of Reggio that his memory dwells, rather than on his ride to the Grande Chartreuse or his visit to Naples. But of the modest charms of English scenery he had a real and thorough enjoyment. The enthusiasm expressed in his Essay on “Modern Gardening” has a more genuine ring about it than is often found in his writings. In reading it, one does not doubt that his praises of “the rich blue prospects of Kent, the Thames-watered views in Berkshire, and the magnificent scale of nature in Yorkshire,” were something more than compliments to friends who happened to have seats in those districts. Yet there was one spot which he admired more than even these captivating scenes. At the bottom of his heart, he was persuaded that no stream in the world could compare with his own reaches of the Thames, nor any mountain or hill with Richmond Hill. And what he believed in his heart, he was not always slow to proclaim with mouth and pen. Thus in describing the effects of a tempest, he writes: “The greatest ruin is at my nephew Dysart’s at Ham, where five-and-thirty of the old elms are blown down. I think it is no loss, as I hope now one shall see the river from the house. He never would cut a twig to see the most beautiful scene upon earth.” Again, after visiting Oatlands, then recently purchased by the Duke of York, Horace says: “I am returned to my own Thames with delight, and envy none of the princes of the earth.” He sneers bitterly at Mr. Gilpin, who “despised the richness, verdure, amenity of Richmond Hill, when he had seen rocks and lakes in the north; for size and distance of place add wonderfully to loveliness.” And when he is trying to coax his Straw-Berries home from Florence, he tells them there is not an acre on the banks of the Thames that should vail the bonnet to Boboli. With the exception of an occasional visit paid during the absence of these ladies to Conway at Henley, the six last summers and autumns of Walpole’s life seem to have been spent almost uninterruptedly at Twickenham. Some little time after Mrs. Clive’s death, Cliveden, or Little Strawberry Hill, was let for a short time to Sir Robert Goodere; but it seems that, before his young friends left England, Horace had determined, on their return, to give Miss Berry and her sister this house for their lives, that he might have them constantly near him. The design succeeded. Mary and Agnes became attached to the place; it continued to be their country residence for many years; and when, after surviving their aged admirer for more than half a century, they died, both unmarried, within a few months of each other, they were buried in one grave in Petersham churchyard, opposite Twickenham, “amidst scenes,” as their epitaph records, “which in life they had frequented and loved.”

After despatching the farewell letter given at the end of our last chapter, Walpole lingered at Strawberry Hill, consoling himself with the society of Richmond, and with Burke’s “Reflections on the Revolution in France.” The shock of that earthquake had already made him half a Tory, and he welcomed the great orator’s declamation with delight. “His pamphlet,” he tells Miss Berry, “came out this day se’nnight, and is far superior to what was expected, even by his warmest admirers. I have read it twice, and though of three hundred and fifty pages, I wish I could repeat every page by heart. It is sublime, profound, and gay. The wit and satire are equally brilliant; and the whole is wise, though in some points he goes too far; yet in general there is far less want of judgment than could be expected from him. If it could be translated, which, from the wit and metaphors and allusions, is almost impossible, I should think it would be a classic book in all countries, except in present France. To their tribunes it speak daggers; though, unlike them, it uses none. Seven thousand copies have been taken off by the booksellers already, and a new edition is preparing. I hope you will see it soon.” In a subsequent letter to both his favourites, dated Strawberry Hill, Nov. 27, 1790, he says: “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.” Two days later, having heard of the arrival of the Berrys at Florence, he writes to Agnes:

“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 sçais bien; mais, par exemple, en allant d’alentour, n’y auroit-il pas moyen d’y arriver par terre?’…

“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 Queensberry, 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 principal courtiers from Cornbury. Queensberry has taken to that palace at last, and has frequently company and music there in an evening. I intend to go.”

He was detained in the country longer than he had intended by an attack of gout; on his return to town he announces his recovery to Lady Ossory.