My text is not literally true; but as far -,is earthquakes go towards lowering the price of wonderful commodities, to be sure we are overstocked. We have had a second much more violent than the first; and you must not be surprised if by next post you hear of’ a burning mountain sprung up in Smithfield. In the night between Wednesday and Thursday last, (exactly a month since the first shock,) the earth had a shivering fit between one and two; but so slight that, if no more had followed, I don’t believe it would have been noticed. I had been awake, and had scarce dozed again-on a sudden I felt my bolster lift up my head; I thought somebody was getting from under my bed, but soon found it was a strong earthquake, that lasted near half a minute, with a violent vibration and great roaring. I rang my bell; my servant came in, frightened out of his senses- – in an instant we heard all the windows in the neighbourhood flung up. I got up and found people running into the streets, but saw no mischief done: there has been some; two old houses flung down, several chimneys, and much china-ware. The bells rung in several houses. Admiral Knowles, who has lived long in Jamaica, and felt seven there, says this was more violent than any of them; Francesco prefers it to the dreadful one at Leghorn. The wise say, that if we have not rain soon, we shall certainly have more. Several people are going out of town, for it has nowhere reached above ten miles from London: they say, they are not frightened, but that it is such fine weather, “Lord! one can’t help going into the country!” The only visible effect it has had, was on the Ridotto, at which, being the following night, there were but four hundred people. A parson, who came into White’s the morning of earthquake the first, and heard bets laid on whether it was an earthquake or the blowing up of powder-mills, went away exceedingly scandalized, and said, “I protest, they are such an impious set of people, that I believe if the last trumpet was to sound, they would bet puppet-show against Judgment.” If we get any nearer still to the torrid zone, I shall pique myself on sending you a present of cedrati and orange-flower water: I am already planning a terreno for Strawberry Hill.
The Middlesex election is carried against the court: the Prince, in a green frock, (and I won’t swear, but in a Scotch plaid waistcoat,) sat under the park-wall in his chair, and hallooed the voters on to Brentford. The Jacobites are so transported, that they are opening subscriptions for all boroughs that shall be vacant–this is wise! They will spend their money to carry a few more seats in a Parliament where they will never have the majority, and so have none to carry the general elections. The omen, however, is bad for Westminster; the High-bailiff went to vote for the Opposition.
I now jump to another topic; I find all this letter will be detached scraps; I can’t at all contrive to hide the scams: but I don’t care. I began my letter merely to tell you of the earthquake, and I don’t pique myself upon doing any more than telling you what you would be glad to have told you. I told you too how pleased I was with the triumphs of another old beauty, our friend the Princess.(116) Do you know, I have found a history that has a great resemblance to hers; that is, that will be very like hers, if hers is but like it. I will tell it you in as few words as I can. Madame la Marechale de l’H`opital was the daughter of a sempstress;(117) a young gentleman fell in love with her, and was going to be married to her, but the match was broken off. An old fermier-general, who had retired into the province where this happened, hearing the story, had a curiosity to see the victim; he liked her, married her, died, and left her enough not to care for her inconstant. he came to Paris, where the Marechal de l’H`opital married her for her riches. After the Marechal’s death, Casimir, the abdicated King of Poland, who was retired into France, fell in love with the Marechale, and privately married her. If the event ever happens, I shall certainly travel to Nancy, to hear her talk of ma belle-fille la Reine de France. What pains my lady Pomfret would take to prove(118) that an abdicated King’s wife did not take place of an English countess; and how the Princess herself would grow still fonder of the Pretender(119) for the similitude of his fortune with that of le Roi mon mari! Her daughter, Mirepoix, was frightened the other night, with Mrs. Nugent’s calling out, un voleur! un voleur! The ambassadress had heard so much of robbing, that she did not doubt but dans ce pais cy, they robbed in the middle of an assembly. It turned out to be a thief in the candle! Good night!
(115) Dryden’s All for Love.”
(116) The Princess Craon, who, it had been reported, was to marry Stanislaus Leczinsky, Duke of Loraine and ex-King of Poland, whose daughter Maria Leczinska was married to Louis the Fifteenth, King of France.-D.
(117) “This is the story of a woman named Mary Mignot. She was near marrying a young man of La Gardie, who afterwards entered the Swedish service, and became a field-marshal in that country. Her first husband was, if I mistake not, a Procureur of Grenoble; her second was the Marshal de l’H`opital; and her third is supposed to have been Casimir, the ex-King of Poland, who had retired, after his abdication, to the monastery of St Germain des Pr`es. It does not, however, appear certain whether Casimir actually married her or not.-D.
(118) Lady Pomfret and Princess Craon did not visit at Florence, upon a dispute of precedence.
(119) The Pretender, when in Lorraine, lived in Prince Craon’s house.
60 Letter 22
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, April 2, 1750.
You will not wonder so much at our earthquakes as at the effects they have had. All the women in town have taken them up upon the foot of Judgments; and the clergy, who have had no windfalls of a long season, have driven horse and foot into this opinion. There has been a shower of sermons and exhortations; Secker, the jesuitical Bishop of Oxford, began the mode. He heard the women were all going out of town to avoid the next shock; and so: for fear of losing his Easter offerings, he set himself to advise them to await God’s good pleasure in fear and trembling. But what is more astonishing, Sherlock,(120) who has much better sense, and much less of the Popish confessor has been running a race with him for the old ladies, and has written a pastoral letter, of which ten thousand were sold in two days; and fifty thousand have been subscribed for, since the two first editions.
I told you the women talked of going out of town: several families are literally gone, and many more going to-day and to-morrow; for what adds to the absurdity, is, that the second shock having happened exactly a month after the former, it prevails that there will be a third on Thursday next, another month, which is to swallow up London. I am almost ready to burn my letter now I have begun it, lest you should think I am laughing at you: but it is so true, that Arthur of White’s told me last night, that he should put off the last ridotto, which was to be on Thursday, because he hears nobody would come to it. I have advised several who are going to keep their next earthquake in the country, to take the bark for it, as it is so periodic.(121) Dick Leveson and Mr. Rigby, who had supped and strived late at Bedford House the other night, knocked at several doors, and in a watchman’s voice cried, “Past four o’clock, and a dreadful earthquake!” But I have done with this ridiculous panic: two pages were too much to talk of it.
We have had nothing in Parliament but trade-bills, on one of which the Speaker humbled the arrogance of Sir John Barnard, who had reflected upon the proceedings of the House. It is to break up on Thursday Se’nnight, and the King goes this day fortnight. He has made Lord Vere Beauclerc a baron,(122) at the solicitation of the Pelhams, as this Lord had resigned upon a pique with Lord Sandwich. Lord Anson, who is treading in the same path, and leaving the Bedfords to follow his father-in-law, the Chancellor, is made a privy councillor, with Sir Thomas Robinson and Lord Hyndford. Lord Conway is to be an earl,(123) and Sir John Rawdon(124) (whose follies you remember, and whose boasted loyalty of having been kicked downstairs for not drinking the Pretender’s health, though even that was false, is at last rewarded,) and Sir John Vesey are to be Irish lords; and a Sir William Beauchamp Proctor, and a Mr. Loyd, Knights of the Bath.
I was entertained the other night at the house of much such a creature as Sir John Rawdon, and one whom you remember too, Naylor. he has a wife who keeps the most indecent house of all those that are called decent: every Sunday she has a contraband assembly: I had had a card for Monday a fortnight before. As the day was new, I expected a great assembly, but found scarce six persons. I asked where the company was–I was answered, “Oh! they are not come yet: they will be here presently; they all supped here last night, stayed till morning, and I suppose are not up yet.”
My Lord Bolinbroke has lost his wife. When she was dying, he acted grief; flung himself upon her bed, and asked her if she could forgive him. I never saw her, but have heard her wit and parts excessively commended.(125) Dr. Middleton told me a compliment she made him two years ago, which I thought pretty. She said she was persuaded that he was a very great writer, for she understood his works better than any other English book, and that she had observed that the best writers were always the most intelligible.
Wednesday.
I had not time to finish my letter on Monday. I return to the earthquake, which I had mistaken; it is to be to-day. This frantic terror is so much, that within these three days seven hundred and thirty coaches have been counted passing Hyde Park corner, with whole parties removing into the country. Here is a good advertisement which I cut out of the papers to-day;
“On Monday next will be published (price 6d.) A true and exact List of all the Nobility and Gentry who have left, or shall leave, this place through fear of another Earthquake.”
Several women have made earthquake gowns; that is, warm gowns to sit out of doors all to-night. These are of the more courageous. One woman, still more heroic, is come to town on purpose: she says, all her friends are in London, and she will not survive them. But what will you think of Lady Catherine Pelham, Lady Frances Arundel,(126) and Lord and Lady Galway,(127) who go this evening to an inn ten miles out of town, where they are to play at brag till five in the morning, and then come back-I suppose, to look for the bones of their husbands and families under the rubbish.(128) The prophet of all this (next to the Bishop of London) is a trooper of Lord Delawar’s who was yesterday sent to Bedlam. His colonel sent to the man’s wife, and asked her if her husband had ever been disordered before. She cried, “Oh dear! my lord, he is not mad now; if your lordship would but get any sensible man to examine him, you would find, he is quite in his right mind.”
I shall now tell you something more serious: Lord Dalkeith(129) is dead of the small-pox in three days. It is so dreadfully fatal in his family, that besides several uncles and aunts, his eldest boy died of it last year; and his only brother, who was ill but two days, putrefied so fast that his limbs fell off as they lifted the body into the coffin. Lady Dalkeith is five months gone with child; she was hurrying to him, but was stopped on the road by the physician, who told her that it was a miliary fever. They were remarkably happy.
The King goes on Monday se’nnight;(130) it is looked upon as a great event that the Duke of Newcastle has prevailed on him to speak to Mr. Pitt, who has detached himself from the Bedfords. The Monarch, who had kept up his Hanoverian resentments, though he had made him paymaster, is now beat out of the dignity of his silence: he was to pretend not to know Pitt, and was to be directed to him by the lord in waiting. Pitt’s jealousy is of Lord Sandwich, who knows his own interest and unpopularity so well, that he will prevent any breach, and thereby what you fear, which yet I think you would have no reason to fear. I could not say enough of my anger to your father, but I shall take care to say nothing, as I have not forgot how my zeal for you made me provoke him once before.
Your genealogical affair Is in great train, and will be quite finished in a week or two. Mr. Chute has laboured at it indefatigably: General Guise has been attesting the authenticity of it to-day before a justice of peace. You will find yourself mixed with every drop of blood in England that is worth bottling up-. the Duchess of Norfolk and you grow on the same bough of the tree. I must tell you a very curious anecdote that Strawberry King-at-Arms(131) has discovered by the way, as he was tumbling over the mighty dead in the Heralds’ office. You have heard me speak of the great injustice that the Protector Somerset did to the children of his first wife, in favour of those by his second; so much, that he not only had the dukedom settled on the younger brood, but to deprive the eldest of the title of Lord Beauchamp, which he wore by inheritance, he caused himself to be anew created Viscount Beauchamp. Well, in Vincent’s Baronage, a book of great authority, speaking of the Protector’s wives, are these remarkable words: “Katherina, filia et una Coh. Gul: Fillol de Fillol’s hall in Essex, uxor prima; repudiata, quia Pater ejus post nuptias eam cognovit.” The Speaker has since referred me to our journals, where are some notes of a trial in the reign of James the First, between Edward, the second son of Katherine the dutiful, and the Earl of Hertford, son of Anne Stanhope, which in some measure confirms our MS; for it says, the Earl of Hertford objected, that John, the eldest son of all, was begotten while the Duke was in France. This title, which now comes back at last to Sir Edward Seymour is disputed: my Lord Chancellor has refused him the writ, but referred his case to the Attorney General,(132) the present great Opinion of England, who, they say, is clear for Sir Edward’s succession.(133)
I shall now go and show you Mr. Chute in a different light from heraldry, and in one in which I believe you never saw him. He will shine as usual; but, as a little more severely than his good-nature is accustomed to, I must tell you that he was provoked by the most impertinent usage. It is an epigram on Lady Caroline Petersham, whose present fame, by the way, is coupled with young Harry Vane.
WHO IS THIS?
Her face has beauty, we must all confess, But beauty on the brink of ugliness:
Her mouth’s a rabbit feeding on a rose; With eyes-ten times too good for such a nose! Her blooming cheeks-what paint could ever draw ’em? That Paint, for which no mortal ever saw ’em. Air without shape–of royal race divine– ‘Tis Emily–oh! fie!–It’S Caroline.
Do but think of my beginning a third sheet! but as the Parliament is rising, and I shall probably not write you a tolerably long letter again these eight months, I will lay in a stock of merit with you to last me so long Mr. Chute has set me too upon making epigrams; but as I have not his art, mine is almost a copy of verses: the story he told me, and is literally true, of an old Lady Bingley.(134)
Celia now had completed some thirty campaigns, And for new generations was hammering chains; When whetting those terrible weapons, her eyes, To Jennny, her handmaid, in anger she cries, “Careless creature! did mortal e’er see such a glass! Who that saw me in this, could e’er guess what I was! Much you mind what I say! pray how oft have I bid you Provide me a new one? how oft have I chid you?” “Lord, Madam!” cried Jane, “you’re so hard to be pleased I am sure every glassman in town I have teased: I have hunted each shop from Pall-mall to Cheapside: Both Miss Carpenter’s(135) man and Miss Banks’s(136) I’ve tried.”
“Don’t tell me of those girls!-all I know, to my cost, Is, the looking-glass art must be certainly lost! One used to have mirrors so smooth and so bright, They did one’s eyes justice, they heighten’d one’s white, And fresh roses diffused o’er ones bloom–but, alas! In the glasses made now, one detests one’s own face; They pucker one’s cheeks up and furrow one’s brow, And one’s skin looks as yellow as that of Miss(137) Howe!”(138)
After an epigram that seems to have found out the longitude, I shall tell you but one more, and that wondrous short. It is said to be made by a cow. YOU Must not wonder; we tell as many strange stories as Baker and Livy:
“A warm winter, a dry spring,
A hot summer, a new King.”
Though the sting is very epigrammatic, the whole of the distitch has more of the truth than becomes prophecy; that is, it is false, for the spring is wet and cold.
There is come from France a Madame Bocage, who has translated Milton. my Lord Chesterfield prefers the copy to the original; but that is not uncommon for him to do, who is the patron of bad authors and bad actors. She has written a play too, which was damned, and worthy my lord’s approbation.’ You would be more diverted with a Mrs. Holman, whose passion is keeping an assembly, and inviting literally every body to it. She goes to the drawing-room to watch for sneezes; whips out a curtsey, and then sends next morning to know how your cold does, and to desire your company next Thursday.
Mr. Whithed has taken my Lord Pembroke’s house at Whitehall; a glorious situation, but as madly built as my Lord himself was. He has bought some delightful pictures too, of Claude, Gaspar, and good masters, to the amount of four hundred pounds.
Good night! I have nothing more to tell you, but that I have lately seen a Sir William Boothby, who saw you about a year ago, and adores you, as all the English you receive ought to do. He is much in my favour.
(120) Thomas Sherlock, Master of the Temple; first, Bishop of Salisbury, and afterwards of London.
(121) ” I remember,” says Addison, in the 240th Tatler, “when our whole island was Shaken With an earthquake some years ago, that there was an impudent mountebank, who sold pills, which, as he told the country people, were “very good against an earthquake.”‘-E.
(122) lord Vere of Haworth, in Middlesex.-D.
(123( Lord Conway was made Earl of Hertford.-D.
(124) Sir John Rawdon was created in this year Baron Rawdon, and in 1761 Earl of Moira, in Ireland. Sir John Vesey was created Lord Knapton; and his son was made Viscount de Vesey in Ireland, in 1766.-D.
(125) She was a Frenchwoman, of considerable fortune and accomplishments, the widow of the Marquis de Villette, and niece to Madame de Maintenon. She died on the 15th of March. >From the following passage in a letter written by Bolingbroke to Lord Marchmont a few days before her death, it is difficult to believe that he “acted grief” upon this occasion:–“You are very good to take my share in that affliction which has lain upon me so long, and which still continues, with the fear of being increased by a catastrophe I am little able to bear. Resignation is a principal duty in my system of religion: reason shows that it ought to be willing if not cheerful; but there are passions and habitudes in human nature which reason cannot entirely subdue. I should be ashamed not to feel them in the present case.”-E.
(126) Lady Frances Arundell was the daughter of John Manners, second Duke of Rutland, and was married to the Hon. Richard Arundell, second son of John, Lord Arundell of Trerice, and a lord of the treasury. Lady Frances was sister of Lady Catherine Pelham, the wife of the minister.-D.
(127) John Monckton, first Viscount Galway in Ireland. The Lady Galway mentioned here was his second wife, Jane, daughter of henry Westenra, Esq., of Dublin. His first wife, who died in 1730, was Lady Elizabeth Manners, the sister of Lady Catherine Pelham and Lady Frances Arundell.-D.
(128) ” Incredible numbers of people left their houses, and walked in the fields or lay in boats all night: many persons of fashion in the neighbouring villages sat in their coaches till daybreak; others went to a greater distance, so that the roads were never more thronged.” Gentleman’s Magazine.-E.
(129) Francis Scott, eldest son of the Duke of Buccleugh.
(130) To Hanover.
(131) Mr. Chute.
(132) Sir Dudley Ryder.
(133) Sir Edward Seymour, when he became Duke of Somerset, did not inherit the title of Beauchamp.-D.
(134) Lady Elizabeth Finch, eldest daughter of Heneage, Earl of Aylesford, and widow of Robert Benson, Lord Bingley.
(135) Countess of Egremont.
(136) Miss Margaret Banks, a celebrated beauty.
(137) Charlotte, sister of Lord Howe, and wife of Mr. Fettiplace.
(138) These lines are published in Walpole’s Works.-D.
(139) Madame du Boccage published a poem in imitation of Milton, and another founded on Gesner’s Death of Abel. She also translated Pope’s Temple of Fame; but her principal work was ,La Columbiade.” It was at the house of this lady, at Paris, in 1775, that Johnson was annoyed at her footman’s taking the sugar in his fingers and throwing it into his coffee. “I was going,” says the Doctor, “to put it aside, but hearing it was made on purpose for me, I e’en tasted Tom’s fingers.” She died in 1802.-E.
65 Letter 23
To George Montagu, Esq.
Arlington Street, May 15, 1750.
The High-bailiff, after commending himself and his own impartiality for an hour this morning, not unlike your cousin Pelham, has declared Lord Trentham. The mob declare they will pull his house down to show their impartiality. The Princess has luckily produced another boy; so Sir George Vandeput may be recompensed with being godfather. I stand to-morrow, not for a member, but for godfather to my sister’s girl, with Mrs. Selwyn and old Dunch: were ever three such dowagers? when shall three such meet again? If the babe has not a most sentimentally yellow complexion after such sureties, I will burn my books, and never answer for another skin.
You have heard, I suppose, that Nugent must answer a little more seriously for Lady Lymington’s child. Why, she was as ugly as Mrs. Nugent, had had more children, and was not so young. The pleasure of wronging a woman, who had bought him so dear, could be the only temptation.
Adieu! I have told you all I know, and as much is scandal, very possibly more than is true. I go to Strawberry on Saturday, and so shall not know even scandal.
66 Letter 24
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, May 19, 1750.
I did not doubt but you would be diverted with the detail of absurdities that were committed after the earthquake: I could have filled more paper with such relations, If I had not feared tiring you. We have swarmed with sermons, essays, relations, poems, and exhortations On that subject. One Stukely, a parson, has accounted for it, and I think prettily, by electricity–but that is the fashionable cause, and every thing is resolved into electrical appearances, as formerly every thing was accounted for by Descartes’s vortices, and Sir Isaac’s gravitation. But they all take care, after accounting for the earthquake systematically, to assure you that still it was nothing less than a judgment. Dr. Barton, the rector of St. Andrews, was the only sensible, or at least honest divine, upon the occasion. When some women would have had him to pray to them in his parish church against the intended shock, he excused himself on having a great cold. “And besides,” said he, “you may go to St. James’s church; the Bishop of Oxford is to preach there all night about earthquakes.” Turner, a great china-man, at the corner of Dext street, had a jar cracked by the shock: he originally asked ten guineas for the pair; he now asks twenty, “because it is the only jar in Europe that has been cracked by an earthquake.” But I have quite done with this topic. The Princess of Wales is lowering the price of princes, as the earthquake has raised old china; she has produced a fifth boy. In a few years we shall have Dukes of York and Lancaster popping out of bagnios and taverns as frequently as Duke Hamilton.(140) George Selwyn said a good thing the other day on another cheap dignity: he was asked who was playing at tennis, He replied, “Nobody but three markers and a Regent.” your friend Lord Sandwich. While we are undervaluing all principalities and powers, you are making a rout with them, for which I shall scold you. We had been diverted with the pompous accounts of the reception of the Margrave of Baden Dourlach at Rome; and now you tell me he has been put upon the same foot at Florence! I never heard his name when he was here, but on his being mob’d as he was going to Wanstead, and the people’s calling him the Prince of Bad-door-lock. He was still less noticed than he of Modena.
Lord Bath is as well received at Paris as a German Margrave in Italy. Every body goes to Paris: Lord Mountford was introduced to the King, who only said brutally enough, “Ma foi! il est bien nourri!” Lord Albemarle keeps an immense table there, with sixteen people in his kitchen; his aide-de-camps invite every body, but he seldom graces the banquet himself, living retired out of the town with his old Columbine.(141) What an extraordinary man! with no fortune at all, and with slight parts, he has seventeen thousand a year from the government, which he squanders away, though he has great debts, and four or five numerous broods of children of one sort or other!
The famous Westminster election is at last determined, and Lord Trentham returned: the mob were outrageous, and pelted Colonel Waldegrave, whom they took for Mr. Leveson, from Covent-garden to the Park, and knocked down Mr. Offley, who was with him. Lord Harrington(142) was scarce better treated when he went on board a ship from Dublin. There are great commotions there about one Lucas, an apothecary, and favourite of the mob. The Lord Lieutenant bought off a Sir Richard Cox, a patriot, by a place in the revenue, though with great opposition from that silly mock-virtuoso, Billy
Bristow, and that sillier Frederick Frankland, two oafs, whom you have seen in Italy, and who are commissioners there. Here are great disputes in the Regency, where Lord Harrington finds there is not spirit enough to discard these puppet-show heroes!
We have got a second volume of Bower’S(143) History of the Popes, but it is tiresome and pert, and running into a warmth and partiality that he had much avoided in his first volume. He has taken such pains to disprove the Pope’s supremacy being acknowledged pretty early, that he has convinced me it was acknowledged. Not that you and I care whether it were or not. He is much admired here; but I am not good Christian enough to rejoice over him, because turned Protestant; nor honour his confessorship, when he ran away with the materials that were trusted to him to write for the papacy, and makes use of them to write against it. You know how impartial I am; I can love him for being shocked at a system of cruelty supporting nonsense; I can be pleased with the truths he tells; I can and do admire his style, and his genius in recovering a language that he forgot by six years old, so well as to excel in writing it, and yet I wish that all this had happened without any breach of trust!
Stosch has grievously offended me; but that he will little regard, as I can be of no use to him: he has sold or given his charming intaglio of the Gladiator to Lord Duncannon. I must reprove you a little who sent it; you know how much I pressed you to buy it for me, and how much I offered. I still think it one of the finest rings(144) I ever saw, and am mortified at not having it.
Apropos to Bower; Miss Pelham had heard that he had foretold the return of the earthquake-fit: her father sent for him, to COnVince her that Bower was too sensible; but had the precaution to talk to him first: he replied gravely, that a fire was kindled under the earth, and he could not tell when it would blaze out. You may be sure he was not carried to the girl! Adieu!
(140) Jonas, sixth Duke of Hamilton, the Husband of the beautiful Miss Gunning. he died in 1758.-D.
(141) Mademoiselle Gauchet.
(142) William Stanhope, Earl of Harrington, Lord Lieutenant.
(143) Archibald Bow(@r, a man of disreputable character, who was born in Scotland, of a Roman Catholic family, was educated at Douay and Rome, and became a Jesuit. Having been detected, as it is said, in an intrigue with a nun, he was forced to fly from Perugia, where he resided: and after a series of strange and not very creditable adventures, he arrived in England. Here he declared himself a Protestant; but, after some years, wishing to swindle the English Jesuits out of an annuity, be again returned to their order. Having got all he could from them, he again returned to Protestantism, and wrote his “History of the Popes,” which was his principal literary work.-D. (Gibbon, speaking of Bower, in his Extraits (le mon Journal for 1764, says, ” He is a rogue unmasked, who enjoyed, for twenty years, the favour of the public, because he had quitted a sect to which he still secretly adhered; and because he had been a counsellor of the inquisition in the town of Macerata, where an inquisition never existed.” Bower died in Bond Street, in September, 1766, in his eighty-first year, and was buried in Mary-le-bone churchyard, where there is a monument to his memory.]
(144) It is engraved in Stosch’s book: it is a Gladiator standing, with a vase by him on a table, on an exceedingly fine garnet.
68 Letter 25
To George Montagu, Esq.
Arlington Street, June 23, 1750.
Dear George,
As I am not Vanneck’d(145) I have been in no hurry to thank you for your congratulation, and to assure you that I never knew what solid happiness was till I was married. Your Trevors and Rices dined with me last week at Strawberry Hill, and would have had me answer you upon the matrimonial tone, but I thought I should imitate cheerfulness in that style as ill as if I were really married. I have had another of your friends with me here some time, whom I adore, Mr. Bentley; he has more sense, judgment, and wit, more taste, and more misfortunes, than sure ever met in any man. I have heard that Dr. Bentley, regretting his want of taste for all such learning as his, which is the very want of taste, used to sigh and say, “Tully had his Marcus.” If the sons resembled as much as the fathers did, at least in vanity, I would be the modest agreeable Marquis. Mr. Bentley tells me that you press him much to visit you at Hawkhurst. I advise him, and assure him he will make his fortune under you there; that you are an agent from the board of trade to the smugglers, and wallow in contraband wine, tea, and silk handkerchiefs. I found an old newspaper t’other day, with a list of outlawed smugglers; there were John Price, alias Miss Marjoram, Bob Plunder, Bricklayer Tom, and Robin Cursemother, all of Hawkhurst, in Kent. When Miss Harriet is thoroughly hardened at Buxton, as I hear she is being,, in a public room with the whole Wells, from drinking waters, I conclude she will come to sip nothing but new brandy.
As jolly and as abominable a life as she may have been leading, I defy all her enormities to equal a party of pleasure that I had t’other night. I shall relate it to you to show you the manners of the age, which are always as entertaining to a person fifty miles off, as to one born an hundred and fifty years after the time. I had a card from Lady Caroline Petersham to go with her to Vauxhall. I went accordingly to her house, and found her and the little Ashe,(146) or the Pollard Ashe, as they call her; they had just finished their last layer of red, and looked as handsome as crimson could make them. On the cabinet-door stood a pair of Dresden candlesticks, a present from the virgin hands of Sir John Bland: the branches of each formed a little bower over a cock and hen * * * * We issued into the mall to assemble our company, which was all the town, if we could get it; for just so many had been summoned, except Harry Vane(147) whom we met by chance. We mustered the Duke of Kingston, whom Lady Caroline says she has been trying for these seven years; but alas! his beauty is at the fall of the leaf; Lord March,(148) Mr. Whitehead, a pretty Miss Beauclerc, and a very foolish Miss Sparre. These two damsels were trusted by their mothers for the first time of their lives to the matronly care of Lady Caroline. As we sailed up the mall with all our colours flying, Lord Petersham,(149) with his hose and legs twisted to every point of crossness, strode by us on the outside, and repassed again on the return. At the end of’ the mall she called to him; he would not answer: she gave a familiar spring and, between laugh and confusion, ran up to him, “My lord! my lord! why, you don’t see us!” We advanced at a little distance, not a little awkward in expectation how all this would end, for my lord never stirred his hat, or took the least notice of any body; she said, “Do you go with us, or are you going any where else?”–“I don’t go with you, I am going somewhere else;” and away he stalked. as sulky as a ghost that nobody will speak to first. We got into the best order we could, and marched to our barge, with a boat of French horns attending, and little Ashe singing. We paraded some time up the river, and at last debarked at Vauxhall – there, if we had so pleased, we might have had the vivacity of our party increased by a quarrel; for a Mrs. Loyd,(150)Who is supposed to be married to Lord Haddington, seeing the two girls following Lady Petersham and Miss Ashe, said aloud, “Poor girls, I am sorry to see them in such bad company!” Miss Sparre, who desired nothing so much as the fun of seeing a duel,–a thing which, though she is fifteen, she has never been so lucky to see,–took due pains to make Lord March resent this; but he, who is very lively and agreeable, laughed her out of this charming frolic with a great deal of humour. Here we picked up Lord Granby, arrived very drunk from Jenny’s Whim;(151) where, instead of going to old Strafford’s(152) catacombs to make honourable love, he had dined with Lady Fanny,(153) and left her and eight other women and four other men playing at brag. He would fain have made over his honourable love upon any terms to poor Miss Beauclerc, who is very modest, and did not know at all what to do with his whispers or his hands. He then addressed himself to the Sparre, who was very well disposed to receive both; but the tide of champagne turned, he hiccupped at the reflection of his marriage (of which he is wondrous sick), and only proposed to the girl to shut themselves up and rail at the world for three weeks. If all the adventures don’t conclude as you expect in the beginning of a paragraph, you must not wonder, for I am not making a history, but relating one strictly as it happened, and I think with full entertainment enough to content you. At last, we assembled in our booth, Lady Caroline in the front, with the vizor of her hat erect, and looking gloriously jolly and handsome. She had fetched my brother Orford from the next box, where he was enjoying himself with his petite partie, to help us to mince chickens. We minced seven chickens into a china dish, which Lady Caroline stewed over a lamp with three pats of butter and a flagon of water, stirring and rattling, and laughing, and we every minute expecting to have the dish fly about our ears. She had brought Betty, the fruit-girl, with hampers of strawberries and cherries from Rogers’s, and made her wait upon us, and then made her sup by us at a little table. The conversation was no less lively than the whole transaction. There was a Mr. O’Brien arrived from Ireland, who would get the Duchess of Manchester from Mr. Hussey, if she were still at liberty. I took up the biggest hautboy in the dish, and said to Lady Caroline, “Madam, Miss Ashe desires you would eat this O’Brien strawberry:” she replied immediately, “I won’t, you hussey.” You may imagine the laugh this reply occasioned. After the tempest was a little calmed, the Pollard said, “Now, how any body would spoil this story that was to repeat it, and say, “I won’t, you jade!” In short, the whole air of our party was sufficient, as you will easily imagine, to take up the whole attention of the garden; so much so, that from eleven o’clock till half an hour after one we had the whole concourse round our booth: at last, they came into the little gardens of each booth on the sides of ours, till Harry Vane took up a bumper, and drank their healths, and was proceeding to treat them with still greater freedom. It was three o’clock before we got home. I think I have told you the chief passages. Lord Granby’s temper had been a little ruffled the night before; the Prince had invited him and Dick Lyttelton to Kew, where he won eleven hundred pounds of the latter, and eight of the former, then cut and told them @e would play with them no longer, for he saw they played so idly, that they were capable of “losing more than they would like.” Adieu! I expect in return for this long tale that you will tell me some of your frolics with Robin Cursemother, and some of Miss Marjoram’s bon-mots.
P. S. Dr. Middleton called on me yesterday: he is come to town to consult his physician for a jaundice and swelled legs, symptoms which, the doctor tells him, and which he believes, can be easily cured: I think him visibly broke, and near his end.(154) He lately advised me to marry, on the sense of his own happiness; but if any body had advised him to the contrary, at his time of life,(155) I believe he would not have broke so soon.
(145) Alluding to the projected marriages, which soon after took place, between two of the sons of his uncle Lord Walpole: who each of them married a daughter of Sir Joshua Vanneck.-E.
(146 Miss Ashe was said to have been of very high parentage. She married Mr. Falconer; an officer in the navy.-E.
(147) Eldest son of Lord Barnard, created Earl of Darlington in 1754.-E.
(148) Upon the death of Charles, Duke of Queensbury and Dover, he succeeded, in 1778, to the title of Queensbury, and died unmarried in 1810.-E.
(149) Afterwards Earl of Harrington. His gait was so singular, that he was generally known by the nickname of Peter Shamble.-E.
(150) She was afterwards married to Lord Haddington.-E.
(151) A tavern at the end of the wooden bridge at Chelsea, at that period much frequented by his lordship and other men of rank.-E.
(152) Anne, daughter and Heiress of Sir Henry Johnson, widow of Thomas Lord Raby, created Earl of Strafford in 1711.
(153) Lady Frances Seymour, eldest daughter of Charles, Duke of Somerset (known by the name of the Proud Duke), by his second Duchess, Lady Charlotte Finch. She was married in the following September to the Marquis of Granby.-E.
(154) Warburton, in a letter to Hurd, of the 11th of July, says, “I hear Dr. Middleton has been lately in London, (I suppose, to consult Dr. Heberden about his health,) and is returned in an extreme bad condition. The scribblers against him will say they have killed him; but by what Mr. Yorke told me, his bricklayer will dispute the honour of his death with them.’,-E.
(155) The Doctor had recently taken a third wife, the relict of a Bristol merchant. On making her a matrimonial visit, Bishop Gooch told Mrs. Middleton that ,he was glad she did not dislike the Ancients so much as her husband did.” She replied, “that she hoped his lordship did not reckon her husband among the Ancients yet.” The Bishop answered, “You, Madam, are the best judge of that” Nichols’s literary Anecdotes, Vol. v. p. 422.-E.
71 Letter 26
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, July 25, 1750.
I told YOU my idle season was coming on, and that I should have great intervals between my letters; have not I kept my word? For any thing I have to tell you, I might have kept it a month longer. I came out of Essex last night, and find the town quite depopulated: I leave it to-morrow, and go to Mr. Conway’s(156) in Buckinghamshire, with only giving a transient glance on Strawberry Hill. Don’t imagine I am grown fickle; I thrust all my visits into a heap, and then am quiet for the rest of the season. It is so much the way in England to jaunt about, that one can’t avoid it; but it convinces me that people are more tired of themselves and the country than they care to own.
Has your brother told you that my Lord Chesterfield has bought the Houghton lantern? the famous lantern, that produced so much patriot Wit;(157) and very likely some of his lordship’s? My brother had bought a much handsomer at Lord Cholmondeley’s sale; for, with all the immensity of the celebrated one, it was ugly, and too little for the hall. He would have given it to Lord Chesterfield rather than he should not have had it.
You tell us nothing of your big events, of the quarrel of the Pope and the Venetians, on the Patriarchate of Aquileia. We look upon it as so decisive that I should not wonder if Mr. Lyttelton, or Whitfield the Methodist, were to set out for Venice, to make them a tender of some of our religions.
Is it true too what we hear, that the Emperor has turned the tables on her Caesarean jealousy,(158) and discarded Metastasio the poet, and that the latter is gone mad upon it, instead of hugging himself on coming off so much better than his predecessor in royal love and music, David Rizzio? I believe I told you that one of your sovereigns, and an intimate friend of yours, King Theodore, is in the King’s Bench prison. I have so little to say, that I don’t care if I do tell you the same thing twice. He lived in a privileged place; his creditors seized him by making him believe lord Granville wanted him on business of importance; he bit at it, and concluded they were both to be reinstated at once. I have desired Hogarth to go and steal his picture for me; though I suppose one might easily buy a sitting of him. The King of Portugal (and when I have told you this, I have done with kings) has bought a handsome house here,(159) for the residence of his ministers.
I believe you have often heard me mention a Mr. Ashton,(160) a clergyman, who, in one word, has great preferments, and owes every thing upon earth to me. I have long had reason to complain of his behaviour; in short, my father is dead, and I can make no bishops. He has at last quite thrown off the mask, and in the most direct manner, against my will, has written against my friend Dr. Middleton,(161) taking for his motto these lines,
“Nullius addictus jurare in verba Magistri, Quid verum atque decens curo et rogo, et omnis in hoc sum”.
I have forbid him my house, and wrote this paraphrase upon his picture,
“Nullius addictus munus meminisse Patroni, Quid vacat et qui dat, curo et rogo, et omnis in hoc sum.”
I own it was pleasant to me the other day, on meeting Mr. Tonson, his bookseller, at the Speaker’s, and asking him if he had sold many of Mr. Ashton’s books, to be told, “Very few indeed, Sir!”
I beg you will thank Dr. Cocchi much for his book; I will thank him much more when I have received and read it. His friend, Dr. Mead, is undone; his fine collection is going to be sold: he owes about five-and-twenty thousand Pounds. All the world thought himimmensely rich; but, besides the expense of his collection, he kept a table for which alone he is said to have allowed seventy pounds a-week.
(156) Mr. Conway had hired Latimers, in Buckinghamshire, for three years.
(157) In one pamphlet, the noise of this lantern, was so exaggerated, that the author said, on a journey to Houghton, he was first carried into a glass-room, which he supposed was the porter’s lodge, but proved to be the lantern. [This lantern, which hung from the ceiling of the hall, was for eighteen candles, and of copper gilt. It was the Craftsman which made so much noise about it.]
(158) The Empress Maria Theresa, who was very jealous, and with reason, of her husband, the Emperor Francis.-D.
(159) In South Audley Street. (It continued to be the residence of the Portuguese ambassadors till the year 1831.-D.
(160) Thomas Ashton, fellow of Eton College, and rector of St. Botolph’s, Bishopsgate.
(161) Dr. Conyers Middleton, author of the Life of Cicero. [The Doctor died three days after the date of this letter, in his sixty-seventh year.]
73 Letter 27
To sir Horace Mann.
Strawberry Hill, August 2, 1750.
I had just sent my letter to the ‘@Secretary’s office the other day, when I received yours: it would have prevented my reproving you for not mentioning the quarrel between the Pope and the Venetians; and I should have had time to tell you that Dr. Mead’s bankruptcy is contradicted. I don’t love to send you falsities, so I tell you this is contradicted, though it is by no means clear that he is not undone-he is scarce worth making an article in two letters.
I don’t wonder that Marquis Acciaudi’s villa did not answer to you; by what I saw in Tuscany, and by the prints, their villas are strangely out of taste, and laboured by their unnatural regularity and art to destroy the romanticness of the situations. I wish you could see the villas and seats here! the country wears a new face; every body is improving their places, and as they don’t fortify, their plantations with intrenchments of walls and high hedges, one has the benefit of them even in passing by. The dispersed buildings, I mean temples, bridges, etc. are generally Gothic or Chinese, and give a whimsical air of novelty that is very pleasing. You would like a drawing-room in the latter style that I fancied and have been executing at Mr. Rigby’s, in Essex. it has large and Very fine Indian landscapes, with a black fret round them, and round the whole entablature of the room, and all the ground or hanging is of pink paper. While I was there, we had eight of the hottest days that ever were felt; they say, some degrees beyond the hottest in the East Indies, and that the Thames was more so than the hot well at Bristol. The guards died )n their posts at Versailles: and here a captain Halyburton, brother-in-law of lord Moncton, went mad with the excess
Your brother Gal. will, I suppose, be soon making improvements like the rest of the world: he has bought an estate in Kent, called Bocton Malherbe, famous enough for having belonged to two men who, in my opinion, have very little title to fame, Sir Harry Wotton and my lord Chesterfield. I must have the pleasure of being the first to tell you that your pedigree is finished at last; a most magnificent performance, and that will make a pompous figure in a future great hall at Bocton Malherbe when your great nephews or great-grandchildren shall be Earls, etc. My cousin Lord Conway is made Earl of Hertford, as a branch of the somersets: Sir Edward Seymour gave his approbation handsomely. He has not yet got the dukedom himself, as there is started up a Dr. Seymour who claims it, but will be able to make nothing out.
Dr. Middleton is dead–not killed by Mr. Ashton–but of a decay that came Upon him at once. The Bishop of London(162) will perhaps make a jubilee(163) for his death, and then We shall draw off some Of your crowds of travellers. Tacitus Gordon(164) died the same day; he married the widow of Trenchard(165) (with whom he wrote Cato’s letters,) at the same time that Dr. Middleton married her companion. The Bishop of Durham (Chandler),(166) another great writer of controversy, is dead too, immensely rich; he is succeeded by Butler(167) of Bristol, a metaphysic author, much patronized by the late Queen; she never could make my father read his book, and -which she Certainly did not understand herself: he told her his religion was fixed, and that he did not want to change Or improve it. A report is come of the death of the King of Portugal, and of the young Pretender; but that I don’t believe.
I have been in town for a day or two, and heard no conversation but about M’Lean, a fashionable highwayman, who is just taken, and who robbed me among others; as Lord Eglinton, Sir Thomas Robinson, Of Vienna, Mrs. Talbot, etc. He took an odd booty from the Scotch Earl, a blunderbuss, which lies very formidably upon the justice’s table. He was taken by selling a laced waistcoat to a pawnbroker, who happened to carry it to the very man who had just sold the lace. His history is very Particular, for he confesses every thing, and is so little of a hero that he cries and begs, and I believe, if Lord Eglinton had been in any luck, might have been robbed of his own blunderbuss. His father was an Irish Dean; his brother is a Calvinist minister in great esteem at the Hague. He himself was a grocer, but losing a wife that he loved extremely about two years ago, and by whom he has one little girl, he quitted his business with two hundred pounds in his pocket, which he soon spent, and then took to the road with only one companion, Plunket, a journeyman apothecary, my other friend, whom he has impeached, but who is not taken. M’Lean had a lodging in St. James’s Street, over against White’s, and another at Chelsea; Plunket one in Jermyn Street; and their faces are as known about St. James’s as any gentleman’s who lives in that quarter, and who perhaps goes upon the road too. M’Lean had a quarrel at Putney bowling-green two months ago with an officer, whom he challenged for disputing his rank; but the captain declined, till M’Lean should produce a certificate of his nobility, which he has just received. If he had escaped a month longer, he might have heard of Mr. Chute’s genealogic expertness, and come hither to the college of Arms for a certificate. There was a wardrobe of clothes, three-and-twenty purses, and the celebrated blunderbuss found at his lodgings, besides a famous kept mistress. As I conclude he will suffer, and wish him no ill, I don’t care to have his idea, and am almost single in not having been to see him. Lord Mountford, at the head of half White’s, went the first day – his aunt was crying over him: as soon as they were withdrawn, she said to him, knowing they were of White’s, “My dear, what did the lords say to you? have you ever been concerned with any of them?”-Was not that admirable? what a favourable idea people must have of White’s!–and what if White’s should not deserve a much better! But the chief personages who have been to comfort and weep over this fallen hero are Lady Caroline Petersham and Miss Ashe: I call them Polly and Lucy, and asked them if he did not sing
Thus I stand like the Turk with his doxies around.”(168)
Another celebrated Polly has been arrested for thirty pounds, even old Cuzzoni.(169) The Prince Of Wales bailed her–who will do as much for him?
I am much obliged to you for your intended civilities to my liking Madame Capello; but as I never liked any thing of her, but her prettiness, for she is an idiot, I beg you will dispense with them on my account: I should even be against your renewing your garden assemblies. you would be too good to pardon the impertinence of the Florentines, and would very likely expose yourself to more: besides, the absurdities which English travelling boys are capable of, and likely to act or conceive, always gave me apprehensions of your meeting with disagreeable scenes-and then there is another animal still more absurd than Florentine men or English boys, and that is, travelling governors, who are mischievous into the bargain, and whose pride is always hurt because they are sure of its never being indulged: they will not learn the world, because they are sent to teach it, and as they come forth more ignorant of it than their pupils, take care to return with more prejudices, and as much care to instil all theirs into their pupils. Don’t assemble them!
Since I began my letter, the King of Portugal’s death is contradicted: for the future, I will be as circumspect as one of your Tuscan residents was, who being here in Oliver’s time, wrote to his court, “Some say the Protector is dead; others that he is not: for my part, I believe neither one nor t’other.”
Will u send me some excellent melon seeds? I have a neighbour who shines in fruit, and have promised to get him some: Zatte`e, I think he says, is a particular sort. I don’t know the best season for sending them, but you do, and will oblige me by some of the best sorts.
I suppose you know all that execrable history that occasioned an insurrection lately at Paris, where they were taking up young children to try to people one of their colonies, in which grown persons could never live. You have seen too, to be sure, in the papers the bustle that has been all this winter about purloining some of our manufacturers to Spain. I was told to-day that the informations, if they had had rope given them, would have reached to General Wall.(170) Can you wonder? Why should Spain prefer a native of England(171) to her own subjects, but because he could and would do us more hurt than a Spaniard could? a grandee is a more harmless animal by far than an Irish Papist. We stifled this evidence: we are in their power; We forgot at the last peace to renew the most material treaty! Adieu! You would not forget a material treaty.
(162) Thomas Sherlock, translated from the see of Salisbury in 1748. He died in 1761.-D.
(163) This alludes to the supposed want of orthodoxy shown by Dr. Middleton in some of his theological writings.-D.
(164) Thomas Gordon, the translator of Sallust and Tacitus; and also a political writer of his day of considerable notoriety. His death happening at the same time as that of Dr. Middleton, Lord Bolingbroke said to Dr. Heberden, “then there is the best writer in England gone, and the worst.”-E.
(165) John Trenchard, son of Sir John Trenchard, secretary of state to King William the Third, was born in 1669. He wrote various political pamphlets of a democratic cast. In 1720 he published, in conjunction with Thomas Gordon, @ a series of political letters, under the signature of “Cato.” They appeared at first in the ” London Journal,” and afterwards in the “British Journal,” two newspapers of the day. They obtained great celebrity, as well from the merit of their composition, as from -the boldness of the principles they advocated. These consisted in an uncompromising hostility to the Government and to the Church. Trenchard was member of parliament for Taunton, and died in 1723.-D.
(166) Edward Chandler, a learned prelate, and author of various polemical works. He had been raised to the see of Durham in 1730, as it was then said, by simoniacal means.-D.
(167) Joseph Butler, the learned and able author of “The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Cause of Nature.” This is the “Book,” here alluded to, of which Queen Caroline was so fond that she made the fortune of its author. Bishop Butler died much regretted in 1752.-D.
(168) The last song in The Beggar’s Opera.
(169) A celebrated Italian singer.-D.
(170) The Spanish ambassador to the court of London.-E.
(171) General Richard Wall was of Irish parents, but I believe not born in these dominions. [He came to England in 1747, on a secret mission from Ferdinand, and continued as ambassador at the British court till 1754, when he was recalled, to fill the high office of minister for foreign affairs.]
76 Letter 28
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, Sept. 1, 1750.
Here, my dear child, I have two letters of yours to answer. I will go answer them; and then, if I have any thing to tell you, I will. I accept very thankfully all the civilities you showed to Madame Capello on my account, but don’t accept her on my account: I don’t know who has told you that I liked her, but you may believe me, I never did. For the Damers,(172)they have lived much in the same world that I do. He is moderately sensible, immoderately proud, self-sufficient, and whimsical. She is very sensible, has even humour, if the excessive reserve and silence that she draws from both father and mother -would let her, I may almost say, ever show it. You say, “What people do we send you!” I reply, “What people we do not send you!” Those that travel are reasonable, compared with those who can never prevail on themselves to stir beyond the atmosphere of their own whims. I am convinced that the Opinions I give you about several people must appear very misanthropic; but yet, you see, are generally forced to own at last that I did not speak from prejudice – but I won’t triumph, since you own that I was in the right about the Barrets. I was a little peevish with ‘you in your last, when I came to the paragraph where you begin to say “I have made use of all the Interest I have with Mr. Pelham.”(173) I concluded you was proceeding to say, “to procure your arrears;” instead of that, it was to make him serve Mr. Milbank–will you never have done obliging people? do begin to think of being obliged. I dare say Mr. Milbank is a very pretty sort of man, very sensible of your attentions, and who will never forget them-till he is past the Giogo.(174) You recommend him to me: to show you that I have not naturally an inclination to hate people, I am determined not to be acquainted with him, that I may not hate him for forgetting you. Mr. Pelham will be a little surprised at not finding his sister(175) at Hanover. That was all a pretence of his wise relations here, who grew uneasy that he was happy in a way that they had not laid out for him: Mrs. Temple is in Sussex. They looked upon the pleasure of an amour of choice as a transient affair; so, to Make his satisfaction permanent, they propose to marry him, and to a girl(176) he scarce ever saw!
I suppose you have heard all the exorbitant demands of the heralds for your pedigree! I have seen one this morning, infinitely richer and better done, which will not cost more; it is for my Lady Pomfret. You would be entertained with all her imagination in it. She and my lord both descend from Edward the First, by his two Queens. The pedigree is painted in a book: instead of a vulgar genealogical tree, she has devised a pine-apple plant, sprouting out of a basket, on which is King Edward’s head; on the other leaves are all the intermediate arms; the fruit is sliced open, and discovers the busts of the Earl and Countess, from whence issue their issue! I have had the old Vere pedigree lately In my hands, which derives that house from Lucius Verus; but I am now grown to bear no descent but my Lord Chesterfield’s, who has placed among the portraits of his ancestors two old heads, inscribed Adam de Stanhope and Eve de Stanhope; the ridicule is admirable. Old Peter Leneve, the herald, who thought ridicule consisted in not being of an old family, made this epitaph, and it was a good one, for young Craggs, whose father had been a footman, “Here lies the last who died before the first of his family!” Pray mind, how I string old stories together to-day. This old Craggs,(177) who was angry with Arthur More, who had worn a 78 livery too, and who was getting into a coach with him, turned about and said, “Why, Arthur, I am always going to get up behind; are not you!” I told this story the other day to George Selwyn, whose passion is to see coffins and corpses, and executions: he replied, “that Arthur More had had his coffin chained to that of his mistress.”–“Lord!” said I, “how do you know!”–“Why, I saw them the other day in a vault at St. Giles’s.” He was walking this week in Westminster Abbey with Lord Abergavenny, and met the man who shows the tombs, “Oh! your servant, Mr. Selwyn; I expected to have seen you here the other day, when the old Duke of Richmond’s body was taken up.” Shall I tell you another story of George Selwyn before I tap the chapter of Richmond, which you see opens here very apropos? With this strange and dismal turn, he has infinite fun and humour in him. He went lately on a party of pleasure to see places with Lord Abergavenny and a pretty Mrs. Frere, who love one another a little. At Cornbury there are portraits of all the royalists and regicides, and illustrious headless.(178) Mrs. Frere ran about, looked at nothing, let him look at nothing, screamed about Indian paper, and hurried over all the rest. George grew peevish, called her back, told her it was monstrous. when he had come so far with her, to let him see nothing; “And you are a fool, you don’t know what you missed in the other room.”–“Why, what?”–“Why, my Lord Holland’S(179) picture.”–“Well! what is my Lord Holland to me?”–“Why, do you know,” said he, ,that my Lord Holland’s body lies in the same vault in Kensington church with my Lord Abergavenny’s mother?” Lord! she ‘was so obliged, and thanked him a thousand times.
The Duke of Richmond is dead, vastly lamented: the Duchess is left in great circumstances. Lord Albemarle, Lord Lincoln, the Duke of Marlborough, Duke of Leeds, and the Duke of Rutland, are talked of for master of the horse. The first is likeliest to succeed; the Pelhams wish most to have the last: you know he is Lady Catherine’s brother, and at present attached to the Prince. His son Lord Granby’s match, which is at last to be finished to-morrow, has been a mighty topic of conversation lately. The bride is one of the great heiresses of old proud Somerset. Lord Winchilsea, who is her uncle, and who has married the other sister very loosely to his own relation, Lord Guernsey, has tied up Lord Granby so rigorously that the Duke of Rutland has endeavoured to break the match. She has four thousand pounds a year: he is said to have the same in present, but not to touch hers. He is in debt ten thousand pounds. She was to give him ten, which now Lord Winchilsea refuses. Upon the strength of her fortune, Lord Granby proposed to treat her with presents of twelve thousand pounds; but desired her to buy them. She, who never saw nor knew the value of ten shillings while her father lived, and has had no time to learn it, bespoke away so roundly, that for one article of the plate she ordered ten sauceboats: besides this, she and her sister have squandered seven thousand pounds apiece in all kind of baubles and frippery; so her four thousand pounds a-year is to be set apart for two years to pay her debts. Don’t you like this English management? two of the greatest fortunes meeting and setting out with poverty and want! Sir Thomas Bootle, the Prince’s chancellor, who is one of the guardians, wanted to have her tradesmen’s bills taxed; but in the mean time he has wanted to marry her Duchess-mother: his love-letter has been copied and dispersed every where. To give you a sufficient instance of his absurdity, the first time he went with the Prince of Wales to Cliefden, he made a nightgown, cap, and slippers of gold brocade, in which he came down to breakfast the next morning.
My friend M’Lean is still the fashion: have not I reason to call him my friend? He says, if the pistol had shot me, he had another for himself. Can I do less than say I will be hanged if he is? They have made a print, a very dull one, of what I think I said to Lady Caroline Petersham about him,
,Thus I stand like the Turk with his doxies around!”
You have seen in the papers a Hanoverian duel, but may be you don’t know that it was an affair of jealousy. Swiegel, the slain, was here two years ago, and paid his court so Assiduously to the Countess(180) that it was intimated to him to return; and the summer we went thither afterwards, he was advised to stay at his villa. Since that, he has grown more discreet and a favourite. Freychappel came hither lately, was proclaimed a beauty by the monarch, and to return the compliment, made a tender of all his charms where Swiegel had. the latter recollected his own passion Jostled Freychappel, fought, and was killed. I am glad he never heard what poor Gibberne was intended for.
They have put in the papers a good story made on White’s: a man dropped down dead at the door, was carried in: the club immediately made bets whether he was dead or not, and when they were going to bleed him, the wagerers for his death interposed, and said it would affect the fairness of the bet.
Mr. Whithed has been so unlucky as to have a large part of his seat,(181) which he had just repaired, burnt down: it is a great disappointment to me, too, who was going thither Gothicizing. I want an act of parliament to make master-builders liable to pay for any damage occasioned by fire before their workmen have quitted it. Adieu! This I call a very gossiping letter; I wish you don’t call it worse.
(172) Joseph Damer, afterwards created Lord Milton in Ireland, married Lady Caroline Sackville, daughter of Lionel, Duke of Dorset.
(173) Thomas Pelham, of Stanmer; a young gentleman who travelled with Mr. Milbank.
(174) The highest part of the Apennine between Florence and Bologna.
(175) Mrs. Temple, widow of Lord Palmerston’s son: she was afterwards married to Lord Abergavenny.
(176) Frances, second daughter of Henry Pelham, chancellor of the exchequer. Mr. Thomas Pelham married Miss Frankland.
(177) The two Craggs, father and son, were successively members of the administration during the reign of George the First, in the post of secretary of state. The father died in 1718, and the son in 1720; and Pope consecrated a beautiful epitaph to the memory of the latter. They are both supposed to have been deeply implicated in the iniquities of the South Sea bubble.-D.
(178) This was the celebrated collection of portraits, principally by Vandyck, which Lord Dartmouth, in his notes on Burnet, distinctly accuses the Lord Chancellor Clarendon of having obtained by rapacious and corrupt means; that is, as bribes from the “old rebels,” who had plundered them from the houses of the royalists, and who, at the Restoration, found it necessary to make fair weather with the ruling powers. The extensive and miscellaneous nature of the collection (now divided between Bothwell Castle, in Scotland, and The Grove, in Hertfordshire) very strongly confirms this accusation. An additional confirmation is to be found in a letter of Walpole, addressed to Richard Bentley, Esq. and dated Sept. 1753, in which he says, “At Burford I saw the house of Mr. Lenthal, the descendant of the Speaker. The front is good; and a chapel, connected by two or three arches, which let the garden appear through, has a pretty effect; but the inside of the mansion is bad, and ill-furnished. Except a famous picture of Sir Thomas More’s family, the portraits are rubbish, though celebrated. I am told that the Speaker, who really had a fine collection, made his peace by presenting them to Cornbury, where they were well known, till the Duke of Marlborough bought that seat.”-D.
(179) Henry Rich, Earl of Holland, the favourite of Queen Henrietta Maria.-D.
180) Lady Yarmouth.
(181) Southwick, in Hampshire.
80 Letter 29
To George Montagu, Esq.
Strawberry Hill, Sept. 10, 1750.
You must not pretend to be concerned at having missed one here, when I had repeatedly begged you, to let me know what day you would call; and even after you had learnt that I was to come the next day, you paraded by my house with all your matrimonial streamers flying, without even saluting the future castle. To punish this slight, I shall accept your offer of a visit on the return of your progress; I shall be here, and Mrs. leneve will not.
I feel for the poor Handasyde.(182) If I wanted examples for to deter one from making all the world happy, from obliging, from being always in good-humour and spirits, she should be my memento. You find long wise faces every day, that tell you riches cannot make one happy. No, can’t they? What pleasantry is that poor woman fallen from! and what a joyous feel must Vanneck(183) have expired in, Who could call and think the two Schutzes his friends, and leave five hundred pounds apiece to their friendship-. nay, riches made him so happy, that, in the overflowing of his satisfaction, he has bequeathed a hundred pounds apiece to eighteen fellows, whom he calls his good friends, that favoured him with their company on Fridays. He took it mighty kind that Captain James de Normandie, and twenty such names, that came out of the Minories, would constrain themselves to live upon him once a week.
I should like to visit the castles and groves of your old Welsh ancestors with you: by the draughts I have seen, I have always imagined that Wales preserved the greatest remains of ancient days, and have often wished to visit Picton Castle, the seat of my Philipps-progenitors.
Make my best compliments to your sisters, and with their leave make haste to this side of the world; you will be extremely welcome hither as soon and for as long as you like; I can promise you nothing very agreeable, but that I will try to get our favourite Mr. Bentley to meet you. Adieu!
(182) The widow of Brigadier-General Handasyde.-E.
(183) The legacies bequeathed by Gerard Vanneck amounted altogether to more than a hundred thousand pounds. The residue of his property he left to his brother, Joshua Vanneck, ancestor of Lord Huntingfield.-E.
81 Letter 30
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, September 20, 1750.
I only write you a line to answer some of your questions, and to tell you that I can’t answer others.
I have inquired much about Dr. Mead, but can’t tell you any thing determinately: his family positively deny the foundation of the reports, but every body does ‘not believe their evidence. Your brother is positive that there is much of truth in his being undone, and even that there will be a sale of his collection(184) when the town comes to town. I wish for Dr. Cocchi’s sake it be false. I have given your brother Middleton’s last piece to send you. Another fellow of Eton(185) has popped out a sermon against the Doctor since his death, with a note to one of the pages, that is the true sublime of ecclesiastic absurdity. He is speaking against the custom of dividing the Bible into chapters and verses, and says it often encumbers the sense. This note, though long, I must transcribe, for it would wrong the author to paraphrase his nonsense:–“It is to be wished, therefore, I think, that a fair edition were set forth of the original Scriptures, for the use of learned men in their closets, in which there should be no notice, either in text or margin, of chapter, or verse, or paragraph, or any such arbitrary distinctions, (now mind,) and I might go so far as to say even any pointing or stops. It could not but be matter of much satisfaction, and much use, to have it in our power to recur occasionally to such an edition, where the understanding might have full range, free from any external influence from the eye, and the continual danger of being either confined or misguided by it.” Well, Dr. Cocchi, do English divines yield to the Romish for refinements in absurdity! did one ever hear of a better way (if making sense of any writing than by reading it without stops! Most of the parsons that read the first and second lessons practise Mr. Cooke’s method of making them intelligible, for they seldom observe any stops. George Selwyn proposes to send the man his own sermon, and desire him to scratch out the stops, in order to help it to some sense.
For the questions in Florentine politics, and who are to be your governors, I am totally ignorant, you must ask Sir Charles Williams; he is the present ruling star of our negotiations. His letters are as much admired as ever his verses were. He has met the ministers of the two angry empresses, and pacified Russian savageness and Austrian haughtiness. He is to teach the monarch of Prussia to fetch and carry, .@;, unless they happen to treat in iambics, or begin to settle the limits of’ Parnassus instead of’ those of Silesia. As he is so good a pacifier, I don’t know but we may want his assistance at home before the end of the winter:
“With secretaries, secretaries jar,
And rival bureaus threat approaching war.”
Those that deal in elections look still higher, and snuff a new Parliament; but I don’t believe the King ill, for the Prince is building baby-houses at Kew; and the Bishop of Oxford has laid aside his views on Canterbury, and is come roundly back to St. James’s for the deanery of St. Paul’s.(186) I could not help being diverted the other day with the life of another Bishop of Oxford, one Parker, who, like Secker, set out a Presbyterian, and died King James the Second’s arbitrary master of Maudlin College.(187)
M’Lean is condemned, and will hang. I am honourably mentioned in a Grub-street ballad for not having contributed to his sentence. There are as many prints and pamphlets about him as about the earthquake. His profession grows no joke: I was sitting in my own dining-room on Sunday night, the clock had not struck eleven, when I heard a loud cry of “Stop thief!” a highwayman had attacked a postchaise in Picadilly, within fifty yards of this house: the fellow was pursued, rode over the watchman, almost killed him, and escaped. I expect to be robbed some night in my own garden at Strawberry; I have a pond of gold fish, that to be sure they will steal to burn like old lace; and they may very easily, for the springs are so much sunk with this hot summer that I am forced to water my pond once a week! The season is still so fine, that I yesterday, in Kensington town, saw a horse-chestnut tree in second bloom.
As I am in town, and not within the circle of Pope’s walks, I may tell you a story without fearing he should haunt me with the ghost of a satire. I went the other day to see little Spence,(188) who fondles an old mother in imitation of Pope. The good old woman was mighty civil to me, and, among other chat, said she supposed I had a good neighbour in Mr. Pope. “Lord! Madam, he has been dead these seven years!”–“Ah! ay, Sir, I had forgot.” When the poor old soul dies, how Pope will set his mother’s spectre upon her for daring to be ignorant “if Dennis be alive or dead!”(189)
(184) His collection was not sold till after his death, in the years 1754 and 1755.
(185) William Cooke.
(186) Dr. Secker. In November he was appointed to the said deanery.-E.
(187) There is the following entry in Evelyn’s Diary for March 23, 1687-8: “Dr. Parker, Bishop of Oxford, who so lately published his extraordinary treatise about transubstantiation, and for abrogating the test and penal laws, died. He was esteemed a violent, passionate, haughty man; but yet being pressed to declare for the church of Rome, he utterly refused it. A remarkable end.”-E.
(188) The Rev. Joseph Spence, author of an Essay on Pope’s Odyssey, Polymetus, etc. See vol. i. pp. 27, 65. (He was always strongly attached to his mother. When on his travels, in 1739, he thus wrote to her:–“I am for happiness in my own way, and according to my notions of it, I might as well, and better, have it in living with you, at our cottage in Birchanger, than in any palace. As my affairs stand at present, ’tis likely that we shall have enough to live quite at our ease: when I desire more than that, may I lose what I have!”-E.)
(189) “I was not born for courts or great affairs; I pay my debts, believe, and say my prayers; Can sleep without a poem in my head,
Nor know if Dennis be alive or dead.” Pope, Prologue to Satires.-E.
83 Letter 31
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, Oct. 18, 1750.
I had determined so seriously to write to Dr. Cocchi a letter myself to thank him for his Baths of Pisa, that it was impossible not to break my resolution. It was to be in Italian, because I thought their superlative issimos would most easily express how much I like it, and I had already gathered a tolerable quantity together, of entertaining, charming, useful, agreeable, and had cut and turned them into the best sounding! Tuscan adjectives I could find in my memory or my Crusca: but, alack! when I came to range them, they did not fadge at all; they neither expressed what I would say, nor half what I would say, and so I gave it all up, and am reduced to beg you would say it all for me; and make as many excuses and as many thanks for me as you can, between your receiving this, and your next going to bully Richcourt, or whisper Count Lorenzi. I laughed vastly at your idea of the latter’s hopping into matrimony; and I like as much Stainville’s jumping into Richcourt’s place. If your pedigree, which is on its journey, arrives before his fall, he will not dare to exclude YOU from the libro d’oro– -why, child, you will find yourself as sumptuously descended as
–“All the blood of all the Howards.”
or as the best-bred Arabian mare, that ever neighed beneath Abou-al-eb-saba-bedin-lolo-ab-alnin! But pray now, how does cet homme l`a, as the Princess used to call him, dare to tap the chapter of birth! I thought he had not had a grandfather since the creation, that was not born within these twenty years!-But come, I must tell you news, big news! the treaty of commerce with Spain is arrived signed. Nobody expected it would ever come, which I believe is the reason it is reckoned so good; for autrement one should not make the most favourable conjectures, as they don’t tell us how good it is. In general, they say, the South Sea Company is to have one hundred thousand pounds in lieu of their annual ship; which, if it is not over and above the ninety-five thousand pounds that was allowed to be due to them, it appears to me only as if there were some halfpence remaining when the bill was paid, and the King of Spain had given them to the company to drink his health. What does look well for the treaty is, that stocks rise to highwater mark; and what is to me as clear, is, that the exploded Don Benjamin(190) has repaired what the patriot Lord Sandwich had forgot, or not known to do at Aix-la-Chapelle. I conclude Keene will now come over and enjoy the Sabbath of his toils. He and Sir Charles are the plenipotentiaries in fashion. Pray, brush up your Minyhood and figure too: blow the coals between the Pope and the Venetians, till the Inquisition burns the latter, and they the Inquisition. If you should happen to receive instructions on this head, don’t wait for St. George’s day before you present your memorial to the Senate, as they say Sir Harry Wotton was forced to do for St. James’s, when those aquatic republicans had quarrelled with Paul the Fifth, and James the First thought the best way in the world to broach a schism was by beginning it with a quibble. I have had some Protestant hopes too of a civil war in France, between the King and his clergy: but it is a dull age, and people don’t set about cutting one another’s throats with any spirit! Robbing is the only thing that goes on with any vivacity, though my friend Mr. M’Lean is hanged. The first Sunday after his condemnation, three thousand people went to see him; he fainted away twice with the heat of his cell. You can’t conceive the ridiculous rage there is of going to Newgate; and the prints that are published of the malefactors, and the memoirs of their lives and deaths set forth with as much parade as–as–Marshal Turenne’s–we have no General’s worth making a parallel.
The pasquinade was a very great one.(191) When I was desiring YOU to make speeches for me to Dr. Cocchi, I might as well have drawn a bill upon you too in Mr. Chute’s name: for I am sure he will never write himself. Indeed, at present he is in his brother’s purgatory, and then you will not wonder if he does nothing but pray to get Out of it. I am glad you are getting into a villa: my castle will, I believe, begin to rear its battlements next spring. I have got an immense cargo of painted glass from Flanders: indeed, several of the pieces are Flemish arms; but I call them the achievements of the old Counts of Strawberry. Adieu!
(190) Benjamin Keene, afterwards knight of the bath, ambassador at Madrid, was exceedingly abused by the Opposition in Sir Robert Walpole’s time, under the name of Don Benjamin, for having made the convention in 1739. [Mr. Pelham, in a letter to Mr. Pitt of the 12th of October 1750, announcing the signing of the treaty with Spain, says, “I hope and believe, when you see it and consider the whole, you will be of opinion, that my friend Keene has acted ably, honestly, and bravely; but, poor man! he is so sore with old bruises, that he still feels the smart, and fears another thrashing.” See Chatham Correspondence, vol. i. P. 50.)
(191) It alluded to the quarrel between the Pope and the Venetians. Marforio asked Pasquin, “Perche si triste?”- -“Perche mon avremo pi`u Comedia, Pantalone `e partito.”-D.
84 letter 32
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, Nov. 19, 1750.
I stayed to write to you, till I could tell you that I had seen Mr. Pelham and Mr. Milbank, and could give you some history of a new administration–but I found it was too long to wait for either. I pleaded with your brother as I did with you against visiting your friends, especially when, to encourage me, he told me that you had given them a very advantageous opinion of me. That is the very reason, says I, why I don’t choose to see them: they will be extremely civil to me at first; and then they will be told I have horns and hoofs., and they will shun me, which I should not like. I know how unpopular I am with the people with whom they must necessarily live; and, not desiring to be otherwise, I must either seek your friends where I would most avoid them, or have them very soon grow to avoid me. However, I went and left my name for Mr. Pelham, where your brother told me he lodged, eight days ago; he was to come but that night to his lodgings, and by his telling your brother he believed I had not been, I concluded he would not accept that for a visit; so last Thursday, I left my name for both–to-day is Monday, and I have heard nothing of them–very likely I shall before you receive this–I only mention it to show you that you was in the wrong and I in the right, to think that there would be no empressement for an acquaintance. Indeed, I would not mention it, as you will dislike being disappointed by any odd behaviour of your friends, if it were not to justify myself, and convince you of my attention in complying with whatever you desire of me. The King, I hear, commands Mr. Pelham’s dancing; and he must like Mr. Milbank, as he distinguished himself much in a tournament of bears at Hanover.
For the Ministry, it is all in shatters: the Duke of Newcastle is returned more averse to the Bedfords than ever: he smothered that Duke with embraces at their first meeting, and has never borne to be in the room with him since. I saw the meeting of Octavia and Cleopatra;(192) the Newcastle was all haughtiness and coldness. Mr. Pelham, who foresaw the storm, had prudently prepared himself for the breach by all kind of invectives against the house of Leveson. The ground of all, besides Newcastle’s natural fickleness and jealousy, is, that the Bedford and Sandwich have got the Duke. A crash @as been expected, but people now seem to think that they will rub on a little longer, though all the world seems indifferent whether they will or not. Mankind is so sick of all the late follies and changes, that nobody inquires or cares whether the Duke of Newcastle is prime minister, or whom he will associate with him. The Bedfords have few attachments, and Lord Sandwich is universally hated. The only difficulty is, who shall succeed them; and it is even a question whether some of the old discarded must not cross over and figure in again. I mean, it has even been said, that Lord Granville(193) will once more be brought upon the stage:-if he should, and should push too forward, could they again persuade people to resign with them? The other nominees for the secretaryship are, Pitt, the Vienna Sir Thomas Robinson, and even that formal piece of dulness -,it the Hague, Lord Holderness. The talk of the Chancellor’s being president, in order to make room, by the promotion of the Attorney to the seals, for his second son(194) to be solicitor, as I believe I once mentioned to you, is revived; though he told Mr. Pelham, that if ever he retired, it should be to Wimple.(195) In the mean time, the Master of the Horse, the Groom of the Stole, the Presidentship, (vacant by the nomination of Dorset to Ireland in the room of Lord Harrington, who is certainly to be given up to his master’s dislike,) and the Blues, are still vacant. Indeed, yesterday I heard that Honeywood(196) was to have the latter. Such is the Interregnum of our politics! The Prince’s faction lie still, to wait the event, and the disclosing of the new treaty. Your friend Lord Fane,(197) some time ago had a mind to go to Spain: the Duke of Bedford, who I really believe is an honest man, said very bluntly, “Oh! my lord, nobody can do there but Keene.” Lord North is made governor to Prince George with a thousand a-year, and an earl’s patent in his pocket; but as the passing of the patent is in the pocket of time, it would not sell for much. There is a new preceptor, one Scott,(198) recommended by Lord Bolingbroke. You may add that recommendation to the chapter of our wonderful politics. I have received your letter from Fiesoli Hill; poor Strawberry blushes to have you compare it with such a prospect as yours. I say nothing to the abrupt sentences about Mr. B. I have long seen his humour–and a little of your partiality to his wife.
We are alarmed with the distemper being got among the horses: few have died yet, but a farrier who attended General Ligonier’s dropped down dead in the stable. Adieu!
(192) The DUCHESSES of Newcastle and Bedford.
(193) “So anxious was the Duke of Newcastle to remove his colleague, that he actually proposed either to open a negotiation with Earl Granville for settling a new administration, or to conciliate the Duke of Cumberland, without the interposition of Mr. Pelham, by agreeing to substitute Lord Sandwich in the room of the Duke of Bedford.” Coxe’s Pelham, vol. ii. p. 137.-E.
(194) Charles Yorke.-D.
(195) Wimpole the Chancellor’s seat in Cambridgeshire.
(196) Sir Philip Honeywood, knight of the bath.
(197) Lord Viscount Fane, formerly minister at Florence.
(198) Coxe states, that Mr. Scott was recommended to the Prince of Wales by Lord Bathurst, at the suggestion of Lord Bolingbroke, and that he was favoured by the Princess.-E.
86 Letter 33
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, Dec. 19, 1750.
Well! you may be easy; your friends have been to see me at last, but it has so happened that we have never once met, nor have I even seen their persons. They live at Newcastle-house; and though I give you my word my politics are exceedingly neutral, I happen to be often at the court of Bedford. The Interministerium still subsists; no place is filled up but the Lieutenancy of Ireland; the Duke of Dorset was too impatient to wait. Lord Harrington remains a melancholy sacrifice to the famous general Resignation,(199) which he led up, and of which he is the only victim. Overtures have been made to Lord Chesterfield to be president; but he has declined it; for he says he cannot hear causes, as he is grown deaf. I don’t think the proposal was imprudent, for if they should happen, as they have now and then happened, to want to get rid of him again, they might without consequence; that is, I suppose nobody would follow him out, any more than they did when he resigned voluntarily. For these two days every body has expected to see Lord Granville president, and his friend the Duke of Bolton, colonel of the Blues; two nominations that would not be very agreeable, nor probably calculated to be so to the Duke, who favours the Bedford faction. His old governor Mr. Poyntz(200) is just dead, ruined in his circumstances by a devout brother, whom he trusted, and by a simple wife, who had a devotion of marrying, dozens of her poor cousins at his expense: you know she was the Fair Circassian.(201) Mr. Poyntz was called a very great man, but few knew any thing of his talents, for he was timorous to childishness. The Duke has done greatly for his family, and secured his places for his children, and sends his two sons abroad, allowing them eight hundred pounds a year. The little Marquis of Rockingham has drowned himself in claret; and old Lord Dartmouth is dead of ague.(202) When Lord Bolingbroke’s last work was published, on the State of Parties at the late King’s accession, Lord Dartmouth said, he supposed Lord Bolingbroke believed every body was dead who had lived at that period.
There has been a droll cause in Westminster Hall: a man laid another a wager that he produced a person who should weigh as much again as the Duke. When they had betted, they recollected not knowing how to desire the Duke to step into a scale. They agreed to establish his weight at twenty stone, which, however, is supposed to be two more than he weighs. One Bright was then produced, who is since dead, and who actually weighed forty-two stone and a half.)203) As soon as he was dead, the person who had lost objected that he had been weighed in his clothes, and thought it was impossible to suppose that his clothes could weigh above two stone, they went to law. There were the Duke’s twenty stone bawled over a thousand times,-but the righteous law decided against the man who had won!
Poor Lord Lempster(204) is more Cerberus(205) than ever; (you remember his bon-mot that proved such a blunder;) he has lost twelve thousand pounds at hazard to an ensign of the Guards-but what will you think of the folly of a young Sir Ralph Gore,(206) who took it into his head that he would not be waited on by drawers in brown frocks and blue aprons, and has literally given all the waiters at the King’s Arms rich embroideries and laced clothes! The town is still empty: the parties for the two playhouses are the only parties that retain any spirit. I will tell you one or two bon-mots of Quin the actor. Barry would have had him play the ghost in Hamlet, a part much beneath the dignity of Quin, who would give no other answer but, “I won’t catch cold behind.” I don’t know whether you remember that the ghost is always ridiculously dressed, with a morsel of armour before, and only a black waistcoat and breech behind. The other is an old one, but admirable. When Lord Tweedale was nominal secretary of State for Scotland, Mitchell,(207) his secretary, was supping With Quin, who wanted him to stay another bottle; but he pleaded my lord’s business. “Then,” said Quin, “only stay till I have told you a story. A vessel was becalmed: the master called to one of the cabin-boys at the top of the mast, ‘Jack, what are you doing?’ ‘Nothing, Sir.’ He called to another boy, a little below the first, ‘Will, what are you doing?’ ‘Helping Jack, sir.'” Adieu!
(199) In the year 1746.
)200) Stephen Poyntz, formerly British minister in Sweden, after being tutor to Lord Townshend’s sons.
(201) Anna maria Mordaunt, maid of honour to Queen Caroline. A young gentleman at Oxford wrote the “Fair Circassian” on her, and died for love of her. [The “Fair Circassian,” a dramatic performance which appeared in 1720, Has been generally attributed to the Rev. Dr. Samuel Croxall, author of “Fables of Esop and others, translated into English, with instructive applications,” who died in 1752, at an advanced age.]
(202) William, first Earl of Dartmouth, secretary of state to Queen Anne. He died on the 15th of December, in his seventy-ninth year.-E.
(203) Edward bright died at Malden in Essex, on the 10th of November, at the age of thirty. He was an active man till a year or two before that event; when his corpulency so overpowered his strength, that his life was a burthen to him.-E.
(204) Eldest son of Thomas Fermor, Earl of Pomfret, whom, in 1753, he succeeded in the title.
(205) When he was on his travels, and run much in debt, his parents paid his debts: Some more came out afterwards; he wrote to his mother, that he could only compare himself to Cerberus, who, when one head was cut off, had another spring up in its room.
(206) In 1747, when only a captain, Sir Ralph distinguished himself at the battle Of Laffeldt. In 1764, he was created Baron Gore, and in 1771, Earl of Ross: in 1788, he was appointed commander-in-chief in Ireland, and died in 1802.-E.
(207) Andrew Mitchell, afterwards commissary at Antwerp. [And, for many years, envoy from England to the court of Prussia. In 1765 he was created a knight of the bath, and died at Berlin in 1771. His valuable collection of letters, forming sixty-eight volumes, was purchased in 1810, by the trustees of the British Museum.-E.
88 Letter 34
To Sir Horace Mann.
Strawberry Hill, Dec. 22, 1750.
As I am idling away some Christmas days here, I begin a letter to you, that perhaps will not set out till next year. Any changes in the ministry will certainly be postponed till that date: it is even believed that no alteration will be made till after the session; they will get the money raised -,And the new treaty ratified in Parliament before they break and part. The German ministers arc more alarmed, and seem to apprehend themselves in as tottering a situation as some of the English: not that any secretary of state is jealous of them–their Countess(208) is on the wane. The housekeeper(209) at Windsor, an old monster that Verrio painted for one of the Furies, is dead. The revenue is large, and has been largely solicited. Two days ago, at the drawing-room, the gallant Orondates strode up to Miss Chudleigh, and told her he was glad to have an opportunity of obeying her commands, that he appointed her mother housekeeper at Windsor, and hoped she would not think a kiss too great a reward–against all precedent he kissed her in the circle. He has had a hankering these two years. Her life, which is now of thirty years’ standing, has been a little historic.(210) Why should not experience and a charming face on her side, and near seventy years on his, produce a title?
Madame de Mirepoix is returned: she gives a lamentable account of another old mistress,(211) her mother. She has not seen her since the Princess went to Florence, which she it seems has left with great regret; with greater than her beauty, whose ruins she has not discovered: but with few teeth, few hairs, sore eyes, and wrinkles, goes bare-necked and crowned with jewels! Madame Mirepoix told me a reply of Lord Cornbury, that pleased me extremely. They have revived at Paris old Fontenelle’s opera of Peleus and Thetis: he complained of being dragged upon the stage again for one of his juvenile performances, and said he could not bear to be hissed now: Lord Cornbury immediately replied to him out of the very opera,
“Jupiter en courroux
‘
Ne peut rien contre vous,
Vous `etes immortel.”
Our old laureat has been dying: when he thought himself at the extremity, he wrote this lively, good-natured letter to the Duke of Grafton:-
“”May it please your Grace:
“I know no nearer way of repaying your favours for these last twenty years than by recommending the bearer, Mr. Henry Jones, for the vacant laurel: Lord Chesterfield will tell you more of him. I don’t know the day of my death, but while I live, I shall not cease to be, your Grace’s, etc.
“Colley Cibber.” ‘
I asked my Lord Chesterfield who this Jones(212) is; he told me a better poet would not take the post, and a worse ought not to have it. There are two new bon-mots of his lordship much repeated, better than his ordinary. He says, he would not be president, because he would not be between two fires;(213) and that”the two brothers are like Arbuthnot’s Lindamira and Indamora;(214) the latter was an able, tractable gentlewoman, but her sister was always quarrelling and kicking and as they grew together, there was no parting them.
You will think my letters are absolute jest-and-story books, unless you will be so good as to dignify them with the title of Walpoliana. Under that hope, I will tell you a very odd new story. A citizen had advertised a reward for the discovery of a person who had stolen sixty guineas out of his scrutoire. He received a message from a condemned criminal in Newgate, with the offer of revealing the thief. Being a cautious grave personage, he took two friends along with him. The convict told him that he was the robber; and when he doubted, the fellow began with these circumstances; You came home such a night, and put the money into your bureau: I was Under your bed: you undressed, and then went to the foot of the garret stairs, and cried, ‘Mary, come to bed to me-‘” “Hold, hold,” said the citizen, “I am convinced.” “Nay,” said the fellow, “you shell hear all, for our intrigue saved your life. Mary replied, ‘If any body wants me, they may come up to me:’ you went: I robbed your bureau in the mean time, but should have cut your throat, if you had gone into your bed instead of Mary S.”
The conclusion of my letter will be a more serious story, but very proper for the Walpoliana. I have given you scraps of Ashton’s history. To perfect his ingratitude, he has struck up an intimacy with my second brother, and done his utmost to make a new quarrel between us, on the merit of having broke with me on the affair of Dr. Middleton. I don’t know whether I ever told you that my brother hated Middleton, who was ill with a Dr. Thirlby,(215) a creature of his. He carried this and his jealousy of me so far, that once when Lord Mountford brought Middleton for one night only to Houghton my brother wrote my father a most outrageous letter, telling him that he knew I had fetched Middleton to Houghton to write my father’s life, and how much more capable Thirlby was of this task. Can one help admiring in these instances the dignity of human nature! Poor Mrs. Middleton is alarmed with a scheme that I think she very justly suspects as a plot of the clergy to get at and suppress her husband’s papers. He died in a lawsuit with a builder, who has since got a monition from the Commons for her to produce all the Doctor’s effects and papers. The whole debt is but eight hundred pounds. She offered ten thousand pounds security, and the fellow will not take it. Is there clergy in it, or no? Adieu!
(208) Lady Yarmouth. The new amour did not proceed.
(209) Mrs. Marriot.
(210) She was, though maid of honour, privately married to Augustus, second son of the late Lord Hervey, by whom she had two children; but disagreeing, the match was not owned. She afterwards, still maid of honour, lived very publicly with the Duke of Kingston, and at last married him during Mr. Hervey’s life.
(211) Princess Craon, formerly mistress of Leopold, Duke of Lorraine.
(212) I think he was an Irish bricklayer; he wrote an “Earl of Essex.” [“Having a natural inclination for the Muses,” says his biographer, “he pursued his devotions to them even during the labours of his more mechanical avocations, and composing a line of brick and a line of verse alternately, his wall and poems rose up in growth together.” His tragedy of the “Earl of Essex” came out at Covent Garden in 1753, and met with considerable success. He died in great want, in 1770.-E.]
(213) Meaning President of the Council. The two fires were the Pelham brothers; between whom all private intercourse was at this time suspended.-E.
(214) See the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus in Swift’s Works; Indamora alludes to Mr. Pelham, Lindamira to the Duke of Newcastle.
(215) For a notice of the Doctor, see ant`e.-E.
89 Letter 35
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, Feb. 9, 1751.
You will wonder that I, who am pretty punctual, even when I have little to say, should have been so silent at the beginning