Horace Walpole and his World

During the rest of Walpole’s life, three-fourths of each year were spent by him in constant association with the Berrys either at Twickenham or in London. The months which they employed in visits to other friends or to watering-places, he passed for the most part at Strawberry Hill, sending forth constant letters to Yorkshire, Cheltenham, Broadstairs, or where-ever else his wives might be staying. He laughs at his own assiduity. “I put myself in mind of a scene in one of Lord Lansdowne’s plays, where two ladies being on the stage, and one going off, the other says, ‘Heaven, she is gone! Well, I must go and write to her.’ This was just my case yesterday.” The postman at Cheltenham complained of being broken down by the continual arrival of letters from Twickenham. At other times, Walpole’s pen was now comparatively idle. When in town, he beguiled the hours as best he could with the customers who still resorted to his coffee-house to discuss the news of the day. But he generally preferred his villa till quite the end of autumn. “What could I do with myself in London?” he asks Miss Berry. “All my playthings are here, and I have no playfellows left there! Reading composes little of my pastime either in town or country. A catalogue of books and prints, or a dull history of a county, amuse me sufficiently; for now I cannot open a French book, as it would keep alive ideas that I want to banish from my thoughts.” At Strawberry, accordingly, he remained, trifling with his endless store of medals and engravings, and watching from his windows the traffic up and down the Thames. He has expressed his fondness for moving objects in a passage dated in December, 1793:

“I am glad Lord and Lady Warwick are pleased with their new villa [at Isleworth]: it is a great favourite with me. In my brother’s time [Sir Edward W.’s] I used to sit with delight in the bow-window in the great room, for besides the lovely scene of Richmond, with the river, park, and barges, there is an incessant ferry for foot passengers between Richmond and Isleworth, just under the Terrace; and on Sundays Lord Shrewsbury pays for all the Catholics that come to his chapel from the former to the latter, and Mrs. Keppel has counted an hundred in one day, at a penny each. I have a passion for seeing passengers, provided they do pass; and though I have the river, the road, and two foot-paths before my Blue Room at Strawberry, I used to think my own house dull whenever I came from my brother’s. Such a partiality have I for moving objects, that in advertisements of country-houses I have thought it a recommendation when there was a N.B. of three stage-coaches pass by the door every day. On the contrary, I have an aversion to a park, and especially for a walled park, in which the capital event is the coming of the cows to water. A park-wall with ivy on it and fern near it, and a back parlour in London in summer, with a dead creeper and a couple of sooty sparrows, are my strongest ideas of melancholy solitude. A pleasing melancholy is a very august personage, but not at all good company.”

This love of life and society clung to him till the end. Notwithstanding his crippled condition, he entertained the Duchess of York at Strawberry Hill in the autumn of 1793, and received a visit from Queen Charlotte there as late as the summer of 1795. He was probably honest in disclaiming all vanity at being the poorest Earl in England. When pressed by Lady Ossory to take his seat in the House of Peers, he replied: “I know that having determined never to take that unwelcome seat, I should only make myself ridiculous by fancying it could signify a straw whether I take it or not. If I have anything of character, it must dangle on my being consistent. I quitted and abjured Parliament near twenty years ago: I never repented, and I will not contradict myself now.” If, however, there was any occasion on which his earldom gave him pleasure, it was undoubtedly when the Seneschal of Strawberry Castle was to do homage to Royal guests. Referring to Macaulay’s taunt that Walpole had the soul of a gentleman usher, Miss Berry remarks that the critic only repeated what Lord Orford often said of himself, that from his knowledge of old ceremonials and etiquettes he was sure that in a former state of existence he must have been a gentleman usher about the time of Elizabeth. Walpole sends Conway a brief account of the Queen’s visit:

“Strawberry Hill, July 2, 1795.

“As you are, or have been, in town, your daughter [Mrs. Damer] will have told you in what a bustle I am, preparing, not to visit, but to receive an invasion of royalties to-morrow; and cannot even escape them, like Admiral Cornwallis, though seeming to make a semblance; for I am to wear a sword, and have appointed two aides-de-camp, my nephews, George and Horace Churchill. If I fall, as ten to one but I do, to be sure it will be a superb tumble, at the feet of a Queen and eight daughters of Kings: for, besides the six Princesses, I am to have the Duchess of York and the Princess of Orange! Woe is me, at seventy-eight, and with scarce a hand and foot to my back! Adieu!

“Yours, etc.,“A Poor Old Remnant.”“July 7, 1795.

“I am not dead of fatigue with my Royal visitors, as I expected to be, though I was on my poor lame feet three whole hours. Your daughter, who kindly assisted me in doing the honours, will tell you the particulars, and how prosperously I succeeded. The Queen was uncommonly condescending and gracious, and deigned to drink my health when I presented her with the last glass, and to thank me for all my attentions. Indeed, my memory de la vieille cour was but once in default. As I had been assured that her Majesty would be attended by her Chamberlain, yet was not, I had no glove ready when I received her at the step of her coach; yet she honoured me with her hand to lead her upstairs; nor did I recollect my omission when I led her down again. Still, though gloveless, I did not squeeze the royal hand, as Vice-Chamberlain Smith did to Queen Mary.”135

Conway died suddenly two days after the date of the last letter. He had received the truncheon of a Field-Marshall less than two years before. Like his old friend Horace, he attained the last distinction of his life when he was too old to enjoy it. Horace lingered on twenty months longer in constantly increasing debility. In the latter part of December, 1796, he was seen to be sinking, and his friends prevailed on him to remove from Strawberry Hill to Berkeley Square, to be nearer assistance in case of any sudden seizure. The account of his last days is thus given by Miss Berry: “When not immediately suffering from pain, his mind was tranquil and cheerful. He was still capable of being amused, and of taking some part in conversation; but during the last weeks of his life, when fever was superadded to his other ills, his mind became subject to the cruel hallucination of supposing himself neglected and abandoned by the only persons to whom his memory clung, and whom he always desired to see. In vain they recalled to his recollection how recently they had left him, and how short had been their absence; it satisfied him for the moment, but the same idea recurred as soon as he had lost sight of them. At last nature, sinking under the exhaustion of weakness, obliterated all ideas but those of mere existence, which ended without a struggle on the 2nd of March, 1797.”

Horace Walpole’s last letter was addressed, as was fitting, to Lady Ossory, then almost the sole survivor of his early friends:

“Jan. 15, 1797.

“My dear Madam,—

“You distress me infinitely by showing my idle notes, which I cannot conceive can amuse anybody. My old-fashioned breeding impels me every now and then to reply to the letters you honour me with writing, but in truth very unwillingly, for I seldom can have anything particular to say; I scarce go out of my own house, and then only to two or three private places, where I see nobody that really knows anything, and what I learn comes from newspapers, that collect intelligence from coffee-houses; consequently what I neither believe nor report. At home I see only a few charitable elders, except about four-score nephews and nieces of various ages, who are each brought to me about once a year, to stare at me as the Methusaleh of the family, and they can only speak of their own contemporaries, which interest me no more than if they talked of their dolls, or bats and balls. Must not the result of all this, Madam, make me a very entertaining correspondent? And can such letters be worth showing? or can I have any spirit when so old, and reduced to dictate?

“Oh! my good Madam, dispense with me from such a task, and think how it must add to it to apprehend such letters being shown. Pray send me no more such laurels, which I desire no more than their leaves when decked with a scrap of tinsel, and stuck on twelfth-cakes that lie on the shop-boards of pastrycooks at Christmas. I shall be quite content with a sprig of rosemary thrown after me, when the parson of the parish commits my dust to dust. Till then, pray, Madam, accept the resignation of your

“Ancient Servant,“Orford.”

Besides numerous portraits of Horace Walpole, we have two pen-and-ink sketches of him, one by Miss Hawkins, the other by Pinkerton. The lady describes136 him as she knew him before 1772: “His figure was not merely tall, but more properly long and slender to excess; his complexion, and particularly his hands, of a most unhealthy paleness. His eyes were remarkably bright and penetrating, very dark and lively; his voice was not strong, but his tones were extremely pleasant.… I do not remember his common gait; he always entered a room in that style of affected delicacy which fashion had then made almost natural: chapeau bas between his hands, as if he wished to compress it, or under his arm; knees bent, and feet on tiptoe, as if afraid of a wet floor. His dress in visiting was most usually, in summer, when I most saw him, a lavender suit, the waistcoat embroidered with a little silver, or of white silk worked in the tambour; partridge silk stockings, and gold buckles; ruffles and frill, generally lace. I remember, when a child, thinking him very much under-dressed, if at any time, except in mourning, he wore hemmed cambric. In summer no powder, but his wig combed straight, and showing his very smooth, pale forehead, and queued behind; in winter, powder.”

Miss Hawkins, who was recording in her old age the impressions of her girlhood, is clearly mistaken as to the height of Walpole’s figure. Pinkerton paints him as he was at a later period, and adds several details of his domestic habits. We give the main part of the antiquary’s description,137 and generally in his own words: The person of Horace Walpole was short and slender, but compact and neatly formed. When viewed from behind, he had somewhat of a boyish appearance, owing partly to the simplicity of his dress. His laugh was forced and uncouth, and his smile not the most pleasing. His walk was enfeebled by the gout, which not only affected his feet, but attacked his hands to such a degree that his fingers were always swelled and deformed, and discharged large chalk-stones once or twice a year. When at Strawberry Hill, he generally rose about nine o’clock, and appeared in the breakfast-room, his favourite Blue Room overlooking the Thames. His approach was proclaimed, and attended, by a favourite little dog, the legacy of the Marquise du Deffand; and which ease and attention had rendered so fat that it could hardly move. The dog had a liberal share of his breakfast; and as soon as the meal was over, Walpole would mix a large basinful of bread and milk, and throw it out of the window for the squirrels, who presently came down from the high trees to enjoy their allowance. Dinner was served in the small parlour, or large dining-room, as it happened; in winter, generally the former. His valet supported him downstairs; and he ate most moderately of chicken, pheasant, or any light food. Pastry he disliked, as difficult of digestion, though he would taste a morsel of venison pie. Never but once that he drank two glasses of white wine,138 did Pinkerton see him taste any liquor, except ice-water. A pail of ice was placed under the table, in which stood a decanter of water, from which he supplied himself with his favourite beverage. If his guests liked even a moderate quantity of wine, they must have called for it during dinner, for almost instantly after he rang the bell to order coffee upstairs. Thither he would pass about five o’clock; and generally resuming his place on the sofa, would sit till two o’clock in the morning, in miscellaneous chit-chat, full of singular anecdotes, strokes of wit, and acute observations, occasionally sending for books or curiosities, or passing to the library, as any reference happened to arise in conversation. After his coffee he tasted nothing; but the snuff-box of tabac d’étrennes, from Fribourg’s, was not forgotten, and was replenished from a canister lodged in an ancient marble urn of great thickness, which stood in the window-seat, and served to secure its moisture and rich flavour. Such was a private rainy day of Horace Walpole. The forenoon quickly passed in roaming through the numerous apartments of the house, in which, after twenty visits, still something new would occur; and he was indeed constantly adding fresh acquisitions. Sometimes a walk in the grounds would intervene, on which occasions he would go out in his slippers through a thick dew; and he never wore a hat.139 He said that, on his first visit to Paris, he was ashamed of his effeminacy, when he saw every little meagre Frenchman, whom even he could have thrown down with a breath, walking without a hat, which he could not do without a certainty of that disease which the Germans say is endemical in England, and is termed by the nation le catch-cold. The first trial cost him a slight fever, but he got over it, and never caught cold afterwards: draughts of air, damp rooms, windows open at his back, all situations were alike to him in this respect. He would even show some little offence at any solicitude expressed by his guests on such an occasion; and would say, with a half smile of seeming crossness, “My back is the same with my face, and my neck is like my nose.”

THE END

1

“The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, edited by Peter Cunningham.”

2

A second edition was published in 1866.

3

E.g., in Jesse’s “Memoirs of George III.”

4

Or in 1732, if the dates of some letters published in Notes and Queries, 4th Series, vol. iii., p. 2, can be trusted. But as the second of these letters, the date of which is given as Sep. 18, 1732, refers to the death of Walpole’s mother, and as we know, from his own statement, that Lady Walpole died Aug. 20, 1737, there seems to be an error.

5

The story that Horace was of Hervey blood was first published in some Introductory Anecdotes prefixed to the later editions of the works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. These anecdotes were contributed by Lady Louisa Stuart, daughter of Lord Bute, the Prime Minister, and grand-daughter of Lady Mary. Her statement about Walpole, though generally accepted, has perhaps received more credit than it deserves, but se non è vero, è ben trovato. The similarity, both in matter and composition, between the memoirs of Lord Hervey and those of Horace Walpole is certainly remarkable.

6

Born in July, 1719. He was second son of the first Lord Conway by his third wife, Charlotte Shorter, sister of Lady Walpole. He was Secretary in Ireland during the vice-royalty of William, fourth Duke of Devonshire; then Groom of the Bedchamber to George II. and to George III.; became Secretary of State in 1765; Lieutenant-General of the Ordnance in 1770; Commander-in-Chief in 1782; and was created a Field-Marshal in 1793. He married the Dowager Countess of Aylesbury, by whom he had an only child, Mrs. Damer, the sculptor, to whom Walpole left Strawberry Hill.

7

One of his papers in The World contains an account of an escape which he had, in 1749, of being shot by highwaymen in Hyde Park. His face was grazed by a ball from the pistol of one of his assailants, which went off accidentally before aim had been taken. An allusion to this adventure will be found in one of our extracts.

8

Letter to John Pinkerton, Dec. 26, 1791.

9

“I have been called a Republican; I never was quite that.”—Walpole to Lady Ossory, July 7, 1782.

10

Letter to Mann, July 10, 1782.

11

Letter to Lady Ossory, July 7, 1782.

12

Miss Berry.

13

Letter to Sir Horace Mann.

14

Letter to Sir Horace Mann, July 1, 1762.

15

Son of Brigadier-General Edward Montagu, and nephew to the second Earl of Halifax. He was member of Parliament for Northampton, usher of the Black Rod in Ireland during the lieutenancy of the Earl of Halifax, ranger of Salsey Forest, and private secretary to Lord North when Chancellor of the Exchequer.

16

Had Chatterton appealed simply to Walpole’s charity, he would not have been rejected. This was the opinion of those who knew Horace best. But, apart from the imposture sought to be palmed on him, Walpole did not profess to be a patron of literature or the arts. An artist has pencils, he would say, and an author has pens, and the public must reward them as it sees fit.

17

Thus described by Walpole in his account of the pictures at Houghton: “The Virgin and Child, a most beautiful, bright, and capital picture, by Dominichino: bought out of the Zambeccari Palace at Bologna by Horace Walpole, junior.”

18

The Princess of Campoflorido.

19

Lord Orford’s successor as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

20

When he [Kilmarnock] beheld the fatal scaffold covered with black cloth; the executioner, with his axe and his assistants; the saw-dust, which was soon to be drenched with his blood; the coffin, prepared to receive the limbs which were yet warm with life; above all, the immense display of human countenances which surrounded the scaffold like a sea, all eyes being bent on the sad object of the preparation,—his natural feelings broke forth in a whisper to the friend on whose arm he leaned, “Home, this is terrible!” No sign of indecent timidity, however, affected his behaviour.—Sir Walter Scott’s Tales of my Grandfather.

21

Afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. Walpole had a strong and unreasonable prejudice against him.

22

Thomas Sherlock, Master of the Temple; first, Bishop of Salisbury, and afterwards of London.—Walpole.

23

She was daughter of the Duke of Grafton.

24

His gait was so singular, that he was called Peter Shamble.

25

Mrs. Lloyd of Spring Gardens, to whom the Earl of Haddington was married this year.

26

An Irish adventurer, whose fine person had induced the Dowager Duchess of Manchester to marry him. He was afterwards created Earl of Beaulieu. O’Brien, it seems, was even taller than Hussey.

27

Walpole had given this Chinese name to a pond of gold-fish at Strawberry Hill.

28

It was written by Mrs. Halket of Wardlaw. Mr. Lockhart states, that on the blank leaf of his copy of Allan Ramsay’s “Evergreen,” Sir Walter Scott has written, “Hardyknute was the first poem that I ever learnt, the last that I shall forget.”

29

The “Siege of Aquileia,” a tragedy, by John Home, produced at Drury Lane, 21st February, 1760.

30

The living of Coxwold, in Yorkshire.

31

“My flatterers here are all mutes. The oaks, the beeches, the chestnuts, seem to contend which best shall please the Lord of the Manor. They cannot deceive, they will not lie.”—Sir Robert Walpole to General Churchill, Houghton, June 24th, 1743.

32

“Queen Charlotte had always been if not ugly, at least ordinary, but in her later years her want of personal charms became of course less observable, and it used to be said that she was grown better looking. I one day said something to this effect to Colonel Disbrowe, her Chamberlain. ‘Yes,’ replied he, ‘I do think that the bloom of her ugliness is going off.’”—Croker.

33

“The recluse life led here at Richmond, which is carried to such an excess of privacy and economy, that the Queen’s friseur waits on them at dinner, and that four pounds only of beef are allowed for their soup, disgusts all sorts of people.”—Walpole to Lord Hertford, Sep. 9, 1764.

34

Walpole was thinking of an anecdote he had told in a previous letter. “The old Maréchale de Villars gave a vast dinner [at Paris] to the Duchess of Bedford. In the middle of the dessert, Madame de Villars called out, ‘Oh dear! they have forgot! yet I bespoke them, and I am sure they are ready; you English love hot rolls—bring the rolls.’ There arrived a huge dish of hot rolls, and a sauce-boat of melted butter.”

35

“The Duc de Nivernois [the French ambassador] called here the other day in his way from Hampton Court; but, as the most sensible French never have eyes to see anything, unless they see it every day and see it in fashion, I cannot say he flattered me much, or was much struck with Strawberry. When I carried him into the Cabinet, which I have told you is formed upon the idea of a Catholic chapel, he pulled off his hat, but perceiving his error, he said, ‘Ce n’est pas une chapelle pourtant,’ and seemed a little displeased.”—Walpole to Mann, April 30, 1763.

36

“Esher’s peaceful groveWhere Kent and Nature vie for Pelham’s love.”—Pope.“Esher’s groves,Where, in the sweetest solitude, embracedBy the soft windings of the silent Mole,From courts and senates Pelham finds repose.”—Thomson.

37

Mrs. Anne Pitt, sister of Lord Chatham.

38

Miss Chudleigh.

39

Afterwards Dukes of Gloucester and Cumberland.

40

The old Bedlam stood in Moorfields.

41

The substance of this petition, and the grave answer which the King was advised to give to such a ludicrous appeal, are preserved in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1765, p. 95; where also we learn that Mr. Walpole’s idea of the Carpenters’ petition was put in practice, and his Majesty was humbly entreated to wear a wooden leg himself, and to enjoin all his servants to do the same. It may, therefore, be presumed that this jeu d’esprit was from the pen of Mr. Walpole.

42

“Their women are the first in the world in everything but beauty; sensible, agreeable, and infinitely informed. The philosophes, except Buffon, are solemn, arrogant, dictatorial coxcombs—I need not say superlatively disagreeable.”—Walpole to Mann.

43

He alludes to his Roman Eagle at Strawberry Hill.

44

The installation of the Duke of Grafton as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. Gray wrote the Ode for the occasion.

45

The proceedings of the House of Commons against Wilkes had just produced a Ministerial crisis.

46

Maria Walpole, Countess Dowager of Waldegrave, who had now secretly married William Henry, Duke of Gloucester.

47

Sons of Francis, Earl of Hertford, Mr. Walpole’s cousin-german.

48

Mr. Walpole’s nephews.