Chapter XI: Part 11

Lord Bath has contributed a paper to the World, but seems to have entirely lost all his wit and genius: it is a plain heavy description of Newmarket, with scarce an effort towards humour.(381) I had conceived the greatest expectations from a production of his, especially in the way of the Spectator; but I M now assured by Franklyn, the old printer of the Craftsman, (who by a comical revolution of things, is a tenant of mine at Twickenham,) that Lord Bath never wrote a Craftsman himself, only gave hints for them--yet great part of his reputation was built on those papers. Next week my Lord chesterfield appears in the World(382)--I expect much less from him than I did from Lord Bath, but it is very certain that his name will make it applauded. Adieu!

P.S. Since I came to town, I hear that my Lord Granville has cut another colt's tooth-in short, they say he is going to be married again; it is to Lady Juliana Collier,(383) a very pretty girl, daughter of Lord Portmore: there are not above two or three and forty years difference in their ages, and not above three bottles difference in @ their drinking in a day, so it is a very suitable match! She will not make so good a Queen as our friend Sophia, but will like better, I suppose, to make a widow. If this should not turn out true,(384) I can't help it.

(375) "Where awful arches make a noonday night, And the dim windows shade a solemn light."-Pope.-E.

(376) Ambassador from the King of Naples.

(377) Viviani, a Florentine nobleman, showing the triumphal arch there to Prince San Severino, assured him, and insisted upon it, that it was begun and finished in twenty-four hours!

(378) The King of Prussia.

(379) This is a strange story, and it is difficult to believe that the King of Prussia was concerned in it. In his Memoires, Walpole gives the following account of the taking of Dr. Cameron:--"About this time was taken in Scotland, Dr. Archibald Cameron, a man excepted by the act of indemnity. Intelligence had been received some time before of his intended journey to Britain, with a commission from Prussia to offer arms to the disaffected Highlanders, at the same time that ships were hiring in the north to transport men. The fairness of Dr. Cameron's character, compared with the severity he met from a government most laudably mild to its enemies, confirmed this report. That Prussia, who opened its inhospitable arms to every British rebel, should have tampered in such a business, was by no means improbable. That King hated his uncle: but could a Protestant potentate dip in designs for restoring a popish government? Of what religion is policy? To what sect is royal revenge bigoted? The Queen-dowager, though sister of our King, was avowedly a Jacobite, by principle so-and it was natural: what Prince, but the single one who profits by the principle, can ever think it allowable to overturn sacred hereditary right? It is the curse of sovereigns that their crimes should be unpunishable."-D.

(380) The King.

(381) No. 17, giving an account of the races and manners at Newmarket.-E.

(382) It forms the 18th number, and is entitled " A Country Gentleman's Tour to Paris with his family."-E.

(383) Lady Juliana Collier, youngest daughter of Charles, second Earl of Portmore, by Juliana hale, Duchess-dowager of Leeds. She married, in 1759, James Dawkins, Esq. of Standlinch, in Wiltshire.-D.

(384) It did not happen.

164 Letter 76 To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Strawberry Hill, May 5, 1753.

Though my letter bears a country date, I am only a passenger here, just come to overlook my workmen, and repose myself upon some shavings, after the fatigues of the season. You know balls and masquerades always abound as the weather be(,Ins to be too hot for them, and this has been quite a spring-tide of diversion. Not that I am so abandoned as to have partaken of all; I neither made the Newmarket campaign under the Duke, nor danced at any ball, nor looked well at any masquerade: I begin to submit to my years, and amuse myself-only just as much as I like. Indeed, when parties and politics are at an end, an Englishman may be allowed not to b always grave and out of humour. His Royal Highness has won as many hearts at Newmarket as he lost in Scotland; he played deep and handsomely; received every body at his table with the greatest good humour, and permitted the familiarities of the place with ease and sense.

There have been balls at the Duchess of Norfolk's, at Holland-house, and Lord Granville's, and a subscription masquerade: the dresses were not very fine, not much invention, nor any very absurd. I find I am telling you extreme trifles; but you desired me to write; and there literally happens nothing of greater moment. If I can fill out a sheet even in this way, I will; for at Sligo(385) perhaps I may appear a journalist of consequence.

There is a Madame de Mezi`eres arrived from Paris, who has said a thousand impertinent things to my Lady Albemarle, on my lord's not letting her come to Paris.(386) I should not repeat this to you, only to introduce George Selwyn's account of this woman who, he says, is mother to the Princess of Montauban, grandmother to Madame de Brionne, sister to General Oglethorpe, and was laundress to the Duchess of Portsmouth.

Sir Charles Williams, never very happy at panegyric, has made a distich on the Queen of Hungary, which I send you for the curiosity, not the merit of it:

"O regina orbis prima et pulcherrima, ridens Es Venus, incedens Juno, Minerva loquens."

It is infinitely admired at Vienna, but Baron Munchausen has received a translation of it into German in six verses, which are still more applauded.

There is another volume published of Lord Bolinbroke's: it contains his famous Letter to Sir William Windham, with an admirable description of the Pretender and hi Court, and a very poor justification of his own treachery to that party; a flimsy unfinished State of the Nation, written at the end of his life, and the commonplace tautology of an old politician, who lives out of the world and writes from newspapers; and a superficial letter to Mr. Pope, as an introduction to his Essays, which are printed, but not yet published.

What shall I say to you more? You see how I am forced to tack paragraphs together, without any connexion or consequence! Shall I tell you one more idle story, and will you just recollect that you once concerned yourself enough about the heroine of it, to excuse my repeating such a piece of tittle-tattle? This heroine is Lady Harrington, the hero is-- not entirely of royal blood; at least I have never heard that Lodomie, the toothdrawer, was in any manner descended from the house of Bourbon. Don't be alarmed: this plebeian operator is not in the catalogue of your successors. How the lady was the aggressor is not known; 'tis only conjectured that French politeness and French interestedness could never have gone such lengths without mighty provocation. The first instance of the toothdrawer's un-gentle behaviour was on hearing it said that Lady Harrington was to have her four girls drawn by Liotard; which was wondered at, as his price is so great--"Oh!" said Lodomie, "chacune paie pour la sienne." Soon after this insult, there was some dispute about payments and toothpowder, and divers messages passed. At last the lady wrote a card, to say she did not understand such impertinent answers being given to her chairman by an arracheur de dents. The angry little gentleman, with as much intrepidity as if he had drawn out all her teeth, tore the card in five slits, and returned it with this astonishing sentence, "I return you your impertinent card, and desire you will pay me what you owe me." All I know more is, that the toothdrawer still lives; and so do many lords and gentlemen, formerly thought the slaves of the offended fair one's will and passions, and among others, to his great shame, your sincere friend.

(385) Mr. Conway was then with his regiment quartered at Sligo in Ireland.

(386) Lord Albemarle was then ambassador at Paris.

165 Letter 77 To George Montagu, Esq. Strawberry Hill, May 22, 1753.

You may very possibly be set out for Greatworth, but what house Greatworth is, or whose, or how you came to have it, is all a profound secret to us: your transitions arc so Pindaric, that, without notes, we do not understand them, especially as neither Mr. Bentley nor I have seen any of the letters, which I suppose you have written to your family in the intervals of your journeyings from Sir Jonathan Cope's(387) to Roel, and from Roel to Greatworth. Mr. Bentley was just ready to send you down a packet of Gothic, and brick and mortar, and arched windows, and taper columns to be erected at Roel--no such matter, you have met with some brave chambers belonging to Sir Jonathan somebody in Northamptonshire, and are unloading your camels and caravan,.;, and pitching your tents among your own tribe. I cannot be quite sorry, for I shall certainly visit you at Greatworth, and it might have been some years before the curtain had drawn up at Roel. We emerge very fast out of shavings, and hammerings, and pastings; the painted glass is full-blown in every window, and the gorgeous saints, that were brought out for one day on the festival of Saint George Montagu, are fixed for ever in the tabernacles they are to inhabit.- The castle is not the only beauty: and to-day we had a glimpse of the sun as he passed by, though I am convinced the summer is over; for these two last years we have been forced to compound for five hot days in the pound.

News there is none to tell you. We had two days in the House of Commons, that had something of the air of Parliament; there has been a Marriage-bill, invented by my Lord Bath, and cooked up by the Chancellor, which was warmly opposed by the Duke of Bedford in the Lords, and with us by Fox and Nugent: the latter made an admirable speech last week against it, and Charles Townshend,(388) another very good one yesterday, when we sat till near ten o'clock, but were beat, we minority, by 165 to 84.

I know nothing else but elopements: I have lost my man Henry, who is run away for debt; and my Lord Bath his only son. who is run away from thirty thousand pounds a-year, which in all probability would have come to him in six months. There had been some great fracas about his marriage; the stories are various on the Why; some say his father told Miss Nichols that his son was a very worthless young man; others, that the Earl could not bring himself to make tolerable settlements; and a third party say, that the Countess has blown up a quarrel in order to have his son in her power, and at her mercy. Whatever the cause was, this ingenious young man, who You know has made my Lady Townshend his everlasting enemy, by repeating her histories of Miss Chudleigh to that Miss, of all counsellors in the world, picked out my Lady Townshend to consult on his domestic grievances: she, with all the good-nature and charity imaginable, immediately advised him to be disinherited. He took her advice, left two dutiful letters for his parents, to notify 'his disobedience, and went off last Friday night to France. The Earl is so angry, that he could almost bring himself to give Mr. Newport, and twenty other people, their estates again. Good night--here is the Goth, Mr. Bentley, wants to say a word to you.

"Dear Sir, Wrote you a supernumerary letter on Saturday, but as I find you have shifted your quarters since I heard from 'YOU, imagine it may not have reached you yet. If you want to know what made me so assiduous, it was to tell you Sir Danvers Osborn has kissed hands for New York, that's all. I am sincerely yours.

"P.S. I wish you Would write to him mentioning me, that's more."

(387) At Brewern, in Oxfordshire.-E.

(388) Second son of the Marquis of Townshend.

167 Letter 78 To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Strawberry Hill, May 24, 1753.

It is well you are married! How would my Lady Ailesbury have liked to be asked in a parish church for three Sundays running? I really believe she would have worn her weeds for ever, rather than have passed through so impudent a ceremony! What do you think? But you will want to know the interpretation of this preamble. Why, there is a new bill, which, under the notion of preventing clandestine marriages, has made such a general rummage and reform in the office of matrimony that every Strephon and Chloe, every dowager and her Hussey, will have as many impediments and formalities to undergo as a treaty of peace. Lord Bath invented this bill,(389) but had drawn it so ill, that the Chancellor was forced to draw a new one, and then grew so fond of his own creature, that he has crammed it down the throats of both Houses-though they gave many a gulp before they could swallow it. The Duke of Bedford attacked it first with great spirit and mastery, but had little support, though the Duke of Newcastle did not vote. The lawyers were all ordered to purse it through our House: but except the poor Attorney-general,(390) "Who is nurse indeed. to all intents and purposes, and did amply gossip over it, not one of them said a word. Nugent shone extremely in opposition to the bill, and, though every now and then on the precipice of absurdity, kept clear of it, with great humour and wit and argument, and was unanswered-yet we were beat. Last Monday it came into the committee: Charles Townshend acted a very good speech with great cleverness, and drew a picture of his own story and his father's tyranny, with at least as much parts as modesty. Mr. Fox mumbled the Chancellor and his lawyers, and pinned the plan of the bill upon a pamphlet he had found of Dr. Gally's,(391) where the doctor, recommending the French scheme of matrimony, says, "It was found that fathers were too apt to forgive." "The Gospel, I thought," said Mr. Fox, "enjoined forgiveness; but pious Dr. Gal] v thinks fathers are too apt to forgive." Mr. Pelham, extremely in his opinion against the bill, and in his inclination too, was forced to rivet it, and, without speaking one word for it, taught the House how to vote for it; and it was carried against the Chairman's leaving the chair by 165 to 84. This Is all the news I know, or at least was all when I came out of town; for I left the tinkering of the bill, and came hither last Tuesday to my workmen. I flatter myself I shall get into tolerable order to receive my Lady Ailesbury and you at your return from Sligo, from whence I have received 'your letter, and where I hope you have had my first. I say nothing of the exile of the Parliament of Paris for I know no more than you will see in the public papers; only, as we are going to choose a new Parliament, we could not do better than choose the exiles: we could scarce choose braver or honester men. I say as little of Mademoiselle Murphy,(392) for I conclude you hear nothing but her health drank in whiskey. Don't all the nailed Irish flatter themselves with preferment, and claim relation with her? Miss Chudleigh says, there is some sense in belonging to a king who turns off an old mistress when he has got a new one.

Arlington Street, May 29.

I am Come to town for a day or two, and find that the Marriage-bill has not only lasted till now-in the committee, but has produced, or at least disclosed, extreme heats. Mr. Fox and Mr. Pelham have had very high words on every clause, and the former has renewed his attacks on the Chancellor under the name of Dr. Gally. Yesterday on the nullity clause they sat till half an hour after three in the morning, having just then had a division On adjournment, which was rejected by the ministry by above 80 to 70. The Speaker, who had spoken well against the clause, was so misrepresented by the Attorney-general, that there was danger of a skimmington between the great wig and the coif, the former having given a flat lie to the latter. Mr. Fox I am told, outdid himself for spirit, and severity on the Chancellor and the lawyers. I say I am told; for I was content with having been beat twice, and did not attend. The heats between the two ministers were far from cooling by the length of the debate. Adieu! You did little expect in these times, and at this season, to have heard such a parliamentary history! The bill is not near finished;(393) Mr. Fox has declared he will dispute every inch of ground. I hope he won't be banished to Pontoise.(394) I shall write to you no more; so pray return. I hear most favourable accounts of my Lady Ailesbury.

(389) The following is Tindal's account of the origin of this bill: "The fatal consequences of clandestine marriages had been long complained of in England, as rendering the succession to all property insecure and doubtful. Every day produced hearings of the most shocking kind in the court of Chancery, and appeals in the House of Lords, concerning the validity of such marriages; and sometimes the innocent offspring were cut off from succession, though their parents had been married bona fide, because of the irregularity of such marriage. On the other hand, both women and men of the most infamous characters had opportunities of ruining the sons and daughters of the greatest families in England, by conveniences of marrying in the Fleet, and other unlicensed places; and marrying was now become as much a trade as any mechanical profession."-E.

(390 Sir Dudley Ryder.

(391) Dr. Henry Gally, one of the King's chaplains in ordinary. Besides the pamphlet here spoken of, which was entitled "Some Considerations upon Clandestine Marriages," he wrote a "Dissertation on Pronouncing the Greek Language," and several other works He died in 1769.-E.

(392) An Irishwoman who was, for a short time, mistress to Louis XV.

(393) "The opposition to the bill was such that few clauses remained unaltered; and Mr. Fox, holding it up in the House, as Antony exposed the murdered body of Caesar, made a kind of a parody of the speech in Shakespeare upon that occasion." Tindal.-E.

(394) The Parliament of Paris having espoused the clause of religious liberty, and apprehended several priests who, by the authority of the Archbishop of Paris and other prelates, had refused the sacraments to those who would not subscribe to the bull Unigunitus, were banished by Louis XV. to Pontoise.

169 Letter 79 To George Montagu, Esq. Strawberry Hill, June 11, 1753.

You will think me very fickle, and that I have but a slight regard to the castle I am building for my ancestors, when you hear that I have been these last eight days in London amid dust and stinks, instead of seringa, roses, battlements, and niches; but you perhaps recollect that I have another Gothic passion, which is for squabbles in the Wittenagemot.(395) I can't say that the contests have run so high in either House as they have sometimes done in former days, but this age has found out a new method of parliamentary altercations. The Commons abuse the Barons, and the Barons return it; in short, Mr. Fox attacked the Chancellor violently on the Marriage-bill; and when it was sent back to the Lords, the Chancellor made the most outrageous invectives on Fox that ever was heard. But what offends still more,--I don't mean offends Fox more,--was the Chancellor describing the chief persons who had opposed his bill in the Commons, and giving reason why he excused them. As the speaker was in the number of the excused, the two maces are ready to come to blows.(396) The town says Mr. Fox is to be dismissed, but I can scarce think it will go so far.

My Lord Cornwallis is made an earl; Lord Bristol's sisters have the rank of Earl's daughters; Damer is Lord Milton in Ireland, and the new Lord Barnard is, I hear, to be Earl of Darlington.

Poor Lady Caroline Brand is dead of a rheumatic fever, and her husband as miserable a man as ever he was a cheerful one: I grieve much for her, and pity him; they were infinitely happy, and lived in the most perfect friendship I ever saw.

You may be assured that I will pay you a visit some time this summer, though not yet, as I cannot leave my workmen, especially as we have a painter who paints the paper on the staircase under Mr. Bentley's direction. The armoury bespeaks the ancient chivalry of the lords of the castle; and I have filled Mr. Bentley's Gothic lanthorn with painted glass, which casts the most venerable gloom on the stairs that ever was seen since the days of Abelard. The lanthorn itself, in which I have stuck a coat of the Veres, is supposed to have come from Castle Henningham. Lord and Lady Vere were here t'other day, and called cousins with it, and would very readily have invited it to Hanworth; but her Portuguese blood has so blackened the true stream that I could not bring myself to offer so fair a gift to their chapel.

I shall only tell you a bon-mot of Keith's, the marriage-broker, and conclude. "G-d d-n the bishops!" said he, (I beg Miss Montagu's pardon,) "so they will hinder my marrying. Well, let 'em; but I'll be revenged! I'll buy two or three acres of ground, and, by G-d! I'll underbury them all!" Adieu!

(395) The name of the Saxon great council, the supposed origin of parliaments.

(396) Among the Hardwicke papers there is a letter from Dr. Birch to the Hon. Philip Yorke, giving an account of the debate in the House of Lords. The following is an extract:-- "My Lord Chancellor expressed his surprise, that the bill should have been styled out of doors an absurd, a cruel, a scandalous, and a wicked one. With regard to his own share in this torrent of abuse, as he was obliged to those who had so honourably defended him, so,' said he, 'I despise the invective, and I despise the retractation; I despise the scurrility, and I reject the adulation.' Mr. Fox was not present, but had soon an account of what had passed; for the same evening, being at Vauxhall with some ladies, he broke from them, and collecting a little circle of young members of parliament and others, told them with great eagerness, that he wished the session had continued a fortnight longer, for then he would have made ample returns to the Lord Chancellor. The Speaker talks of my Lord Chancellor's speech in the style of Mr. Fox, as deserving of the notice of the Commons, if they had not been prorogued."-E.

170 Letter 80 To Sir Horace Mann. Strawberry Hill, June 12, 1753.

I could not rest any longer with the thought of your having no idea of a place of which you hear so much, and therefore desired Mr. Bentley to draw you as much idea of it as the post would be persuaded to carry from Twickenham to Florence. The enclosed enchanted little landscape, then, is Strawberry Hill; and I will try to explain so much of it to you as will help to let you know whereabouts we are when we are talking to you; for it is uncomfortable in so intimate a correspondence as ours not to be exactly master of every spot where one another is writing, or reading, or sauntering. This view of the castle(397) is what I have just finished, and is the only side that will be at all regular. Directly before it is an open grove, through which you see a field, which is bounded by a serpentine wood of all kind of trees, and flowering shrubs, and flowers! The lawn before the house is situated on the top of a small hill, from whence to the left you see the town and church of Twickenham encircling a turn of the river, that looks exactly like a seaport in miniature. The opposite shore is a most delicious meadow, bounded by Richmond Hill, which loses itself in the noble woods of the park to the end of the prospect on the right, where is another turn of the river, and the suburbs of Kingston as luckily placed as Twickenham is on the left; and a natural terrace on the brow of my hill, with meadows of my own down to the river, commands both extremities. Is not this a tolerable prospect? You must figure that all this is perpetually enlivened by a navigation of boats and barges, and by a road below my terrace, with coaches, post-chaises, wagons, and horsemen constantly in motion, and the fields speckled with cows, horses, and sheep. Now you shall walk into the house. The bow-window below leads into a little parlour hung with a stone-colour Gothic paper and Jackson's Venetian prints, which I could never endure while they pretended, infamous as they are, to be after Titian, etc., but when I gave them this air of barbarous basreliefs, they succeeded to a miracle: it is impossible at first sight not to conclude that they contain the history of Attila or Tottila, done about the very aera. From hence, under two gloomy arches, you come to the hall and staircase, which it is impossible to describe to you, as it is the most particular and chief beauty of the castle. Imagine the walls covered with (I call it paper, but it is really paper painted in perspective to represent) Gothic fretwork: the lightest Gothic balustrade to the staircase, adorned with antelopes (our supporters) bearing shields lean windows fattened with rich saints in painted glass, and a vestibule open with three arches on the landing-place, and niches full of trophies of old coats of mail, Indian shields made of rhinoceros's hides, broadswords, quivers, long bows, arrows, and spears--all supposed to be taken by Mr Terry Robsart(398) in the holy wars. But as none of' this regards the enclosed drawing, I will pass to that. The room on the ground-floor nearest to you is a bedchamber, hung with yellow paper and prints, framed in a new manner, invented by Lord Cardigan; that is, with black and white borders printed. Over this is Mr. Chute's bedchamber, hung with red in the same manner. The bow-window room one pair of stairs is not yet finished; but in the tower beyond it is the charming closet where I am now writing to you. It is hung with green paper and water-colour pictures; has two windows; the one in the drawing looks to the garden, the other to the beautiful prospect; and the top of each glutted with the richest painted glass of the arms of England, crimson roses, and twenty other pieces of green, purple, and historic bits. I must tell you, by the way, that the castle, when finished, will have two-and-thirty windows enriched with painted glass. In this closet, which is Mr. Chute's college of arms, are two presses with books of heraldry and antiquities, Madame Sevign`e's Letters, and any French books that relate to her and her acquaintance. Out of this closet is the room where we always live, hung with a blue and white paper in stripes adorned with festoons, and a thousand plump chairs, couches, and luxurious settees covered with linen of the same pattern, and with a bow-window commanding the prospect, and gloomed with limes that shade half each window, already darkened with painted glass in chiaroscuro, set in deep blue glass. Under this room is a cool little hall, where we generally dine, hung with paper to imitate Dutch tiles.

I have described so much, that you will begin to think that all the accounts I used to give you of the diminutiveness of our habitation were fabulous; but it is really incredible how small most of the rooms are. The Only two good chambers I shall have are not yet built; they will be an eating-room and a library, each twenty by thirty, and the latter fifteen feet high. For the rest of the house, I could send it you in this letter as easily as the drawing, only that I should have no where to live till the return of the post. The Chinese summer-house which you may distinguish in the distant landscape, belongs to my Lord Radnor. We pique ourselves upon nothing but simplicity, and have no carvings, gildings, paintings, inlayings, or tawdry businesses.

You will not be sorry, I believe,. by this time to have done with Strawberry Hill, and to hear a little news. The end of a very dreaming session has been extremely enlivened by an accidental bill which has opened great quarrels, and those not unlikely to be attended with interesting circumstances. A bill to prevent clandestine marriages, so drawn by the Judges as to clog all matrimony in general, was inadvertently espoused by the Chancellor; and having been strongly attacked in the House of Commons by Nugent, the Speaker, Mr. Fox, and others, the last went very great lengths of severity on the whole body of the law, and on its chieftain in particular-, which, however, at the last reading, he softened and explained off extremely. This did not ,appease; but on the return of the bill to the House of Lords, where our amendments were to be read, the Chancellor in the most personal terms harangued against Fox, and concluded with saying that "he despised his scurrility as much as his adulation and recantation." As Christian charity is not one of the oaths taken by privy-counsellors, and as it is not the most eminent virtue in either of the champions, this quarrel is not likely to be soon reconciled. There are natures(399) whose disposition it is to patch up political breaches, but whether they will succeed, or try to succeed in healing this, can I tell you?

The match for Lord Granville, which I announced to you, is not concluded: his flames are cooled in that quarter as well as in others.

I begin a new sheet to you, which does not match with the other, for I have no more of the same paper here. Dr. Cameron is executed, and died with the greatest firmness. His parting with his wife the night before was heroic and tender: he let her stay till the last moment, when being aware that the gates of the Tower would be locked, he told her so; she fell at his feet in agonies: he said, "Madam, this was not what you promised me," and embracing her, forced her to retire; then with the same coolness, looked at the window till her coach was out of sight, after which he turned about and wept. His only concern seemed to be at the ignominy of Tyburn: he was not disturbed at the dresser for his body, or at the fire to burn his bowels.(400) The crowd was so great, that a friend who attended him could not get away, but was forced to stay and behold the execution: but what will you say to the minister or priest who accompanied him? The wretch, after taking leave, went into a landau, where, not content with seeing the Doctor hanged, he let down the top of the landau for the better convenience of seeing him embowelled! I cannot tell you positively that what I hinted of this Cameron being commissioned from Prussia was true, but so it is believed. Adieu! my dear child; I think this is a very tolerable letter for summer!

(397) It was a view of the south side towards the northeast.

(398) An ancestor of Sir Robert Walpole, who was knight of the garter.

(399) An allusion to Mr. Pelham.

(400) "The populace," says Smollet, though not very subject to tender emotions, were moved to compassion, and even to tears, by his behaviour at the place of execution; and many sincere well-wishers to the present establishment thought that the sacrifice of this victim, at such a juncture, could not redound either to its honour or security."-E.

173 Letter 81 To George Montagu, Esq. Strawberry Hill, July 17, 1753.

Dear sir, You are so kind, that I am peevish with myself for not being able to fix a positive day for being with you; as near as I can guess, it will be some of the very first days of the next month: I am engaged to go with Lady Ailesbury and Mr. Conway to Stowe, the 28th of this month, if some little business which I have here does not prevent me; and from thence I propose to meet Mr. Chute at Greatworth. If this should at all interfere with your schemes, tell me so; especially, I must beg that you would not so far depend on me as to stay one minute from doing any thing else you like, because it is quite impossible for me to be sure that I can execute just at the time I propose such agreeable projects. Meeting Mrs. Trevor will be a principal part of my pleasure; but the summer shall certainly not pass without my seeing you.

You will, I am sure, be concerned to hear that your favourite, Miss Brown, the pretty Catholic, who lived with Madame d'Acunha, is dead at Paris, by the ignorance of the physician. Tom Harvey, who always obliges the town with a quarrel in a dead season, has published a delightful letter to Sir William Bunbury,(401) full of madness and wit. He had given the Doctor a precedent for a clergyman's fighting a duel, and I furnished him with another story of the same kind, that diverted him extremely. A Dr. Suckling, who married a niece of my father, quarrelled with a country squire, who said, "Doctor, your gown is your protection." "Is it so?" replied the parson; "but, by God! it shall not be yours;" pulled it off, and thrashed him--I was going to say damnably, at least, divinely. Do but think, my Lord Coke and Tom Harvey are both bound to the peace, and are always going to fight together: how comfortable for their sureties!

My Lord Pomfret is dead; George Selwyn says, that my Lord Ashburnham(402) is not more glad to get into the parks than Lord Falkland is to get out of them. You know he was forced to live in a privileged place.

Jack Hill(403) is dead too, and has dropped about a hundred legacies; a thousand pound to the Dowager of Rockingham; as much, with all his plate and china, to her sister Bel. I don't find that my uncle has got so much as a case of knives and forks, he always paid great court, but Mary Magdalen, my aunt, undid all by scolding the man, and her spouse durst not take his part.

Lady Anne Paulett's daughter is eloped with a country clergyman. The Duchess of Argyle Harangues against the Marriage-bill not taking place immediately, and is persuaded that all the girls will go off before next lady-day.

Before I finish, I must describe to you the manner in which I overtook Monsieur le Duc de Mirepoix t'other day, who lives at Lord Dunkeron's house at Turnham-green. It was seven o'clock in the evening of one of the hottest and most dusty days of this summer. He was walking slowly in the beau milieu of Brentford town, without any company, but with a brown lap-dog with long ears, two pointers, two pages, three footmen, and a vis-a-vis following him. By the best accounts I can get, he must have been to survey the ground of the battle of Brentford, which I hear he has much studied, and harangues upon.

Adieu! I enclose a World' to you, which, by a story I shall tell you, I find is called mine. I met Mrs. Clive two nights ago, and told her I had been in the meadows, but would walk no more there, for there was all the world. "Well," says she, "and don't you like the World!(404) I hear it was very clever last Thursday." All I know is, that you will meet with some of your acquaintance there. Good night, with my compliments to Miss Montagu.

(401) The Rev. Sir William Bunbury, father of Sir Charles, and of Henry, the celebrated caricaturist.-E.

(402) Lord Ashburnham succeeded Lord Pomfret as ranger of St. James's and Hyde Parks.

(403) Member for Higham Ferrers.

(404) No. 28, entitled " Old women most proper objects for love." Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in a letter to her daughter, says, "Send me no translations, no periodical papers; though I confess some of The World' entertained me very much, particularly Lord Chesterfield and Horry Walpole; but whenever I met Dodsley, I wished him out of the World with all my heart. The title was a very lucky one, being, as you see, productive of puns world without end; which is all the species of wit some people can either practise or understand."-E.

174 Letter 82 To Sir Horace Mann. Strawberry Hill, July 21, 1753.

Though I have long had a letter of yours unanswered, yet I verily think it would have remained so a little longer, if the pretty altar-tomb which you have sent me had not roused my Gratitude. It arrived here--I mean the tomb, not my gratitude--yesterday, and this morning churchyarded itself in the corner of my wood, where I hope it will remain till some future virtuoso shall dig it up, and publish 'it in " A Collection of Roman Antiquities in Britain. It is the very thing I wanted: how could you, my dear Sir, take such exact measure of my idea? By the way, you have never told me the price; don't neglect it, that I nay pay your brother.

I told you how ill disposed I was to write to you, and you must know without my telling you that the only reason of that could be my not knowing a tittle worth mentioning; nay, not a tittle, worth or not. All England is gone over all England electioneering: the spirit is as great now they are all on one side, as when parties ran the highest. You judge how little I trouble myself about all this; especially when the question is not who shall be in the ministry, only who shall be in the House.

I am almost inclined not to say a word to your last letter, because if I begin to answer it, it must be by scolding you for making SO serious an affair of leaving off snuff; one would think you was to quit a vice, not a trick. Consider, child, you are in Italy, not in England: here you would be very fashionable by having so many nerves, and you might have doctors and waters for every One Of them, from Dr. Mead to Dr. Thompson, and from Bath to the iron pear-tree water. I should sooner have expected to hear that good Dr. Cocchi(405) was in the Inquisition than in prescribing to a snuff-twitter-nerve-fever! You say people tell you that leaving off snuff all at once may be attended with bad consequences--I can't conceive what bad consequences, but to the snuff-shop, who, I conclude by your lamentations, must have sold you tolerable quantities; and I know what effects any diversion of money has upon the tobacco-trade in Tuscany. I forget how much it was that the duty sank at Florence in a fortnight after the erection of the first lottery, by the poor people abridging themselves of snuff to buy tickets; but I think I have said enough, considering I don't intend to scold.

Thank you for your civilities to Mr. Stephens; not at all for those to Mr. Perry,(406) who has availed himself of the partiality which he found you had for me, and passed Upon you for my friend. I never spoke one word to him in my life, but when he went out of his own dressing-room at Penshurst that Mr. Chute and I might see it, and then I said, "Sir, I hope we don't disturb you;" he grunted something, and walked away--la belle amiti`e!--yet, my dear child, I thank you, who receive bad money when it is called My coin. I Wish YOU had liked my Lady Rochford's beauty more: I intended it should return well preserved: I grow old enough to be piqued for the charms of my contemporaries.

Lord Pomfret(407) is dead, not a thousand pound in debt. The Countess has two thousand a-year rent-charge for jointure, five hundred as lady of the bedchamber to the late Queen, and fourteen thousand pounds in money, in her own power, just recovered by a lawsuit-what a fund for follies! The new Earl has about two thousand four hundred pounds a-year in present but deep debts and post-obits. He has not put on mourning, but robes; that is, in the middle of this very hot summer, he has produced himself in a suit of crimson velvet, that he may be sure of not being mistaken for being in weepers. There are rents worth ten thousand pounds left to little Lady Sophia Carteret,(408) and the whole personal estate between the two unmarried daughters;(409) so the seat(410) must be stripped. There are a few fine small pictures, and one(411) very curious One of Henry VII. and his Queen, with Cardinal Morton, and, I think, the Abbot of Westminster. Strawberry casts a Gothic eye upon this, but I fear it will pass our revenues. The statues,(412) which were part of the Arundel collection, are famous, but few good. The Cicero is fine and celebrated: the Marius I think still finer. The rest are Scipios, Cincinnatus's and the Lord knows who, which have lost more of their little value than of their false pretensions by living out of doors; and there is a green-house full of colossal fragments. Adieu! Have you received the description and portrait of my castle?

(405) he was a very free thinker, and suspected by the Inquisition.

(406) He married one of the coheiresses of the Sidneys, Earls of Leicester.

(407) Thomas Fermor, first Earl of Pomfret, so created in 1721. He had ben master of the horse to Queen Caroline, and ranger of St. James's Park-D.

(408) Daughter of John, Earl of Granville, by his second wife, eldest daughter of Thomas Fermor, Earl of Pomfret. (Afterwards married to William Petty, Earl of Shelburne and Marquis of Lansdowne.-D.)

(409) Lady Louisa and Lady Anne; the latter was afterwards married to Mr. Dawson.

(410) Easton Neston, in Northamptonshire.

(411) It is the marriage of Henry VII. and Elizabeth of York. The two other figures are probably St. Thomas and the Bishop of linola, the Pope's nuncio, who pronounced the nuptial benediction. This curious picture was purchased by Lady Pomfret for two hundred pounds. The Earl of Oxford offered her five hundred pounds for it: Mr. Walpole bought it at Lord Pomfret's sale for eighty-four guineas, and it is now at Strawberry Hill.

(412) Lady Pomfret bought the statues, after her lord's death, and presented them to the University of Oxford.

176 Letter 83 To John Chute, Esq. Stowe, Aug. 4, 1753

My dear Sir, You would deserve to be scolded, if you had not lost almost as much pleasure as you have disappointed me of.(413) Whether George Montagu will be so content With your commuting punishments, I don't know: I should think not; he "cried and roared all night"(414) when I delivered your excuse. He is extremely well-housed, after having roamed like a Tartar about the country with his whole personal estate at his heels. . There is an extensive view, which is called pretty: but Northamptonshire is no county to please me. What entertained me was, that he who in London -,vas grown an absolute recluse, is over head and ears in neighbours, and as popular as if he intended to stand for the county, instead of having given up the town. The very first morning after my arrival, as we were getting into the chaise to go to Wroxton, they notified a Sir Harry Danvers, a young squire, booted and spurred, and buckskin-breeche'd. "Will you drink any chocolate?" "No; a little wine and water, if you please."--I suspected nothing but that he had rode till he was dry. "Nicol`o, some wine and water." He desired the water might be warm--I began to stare; Montagu understood the dialect, and ordered a negus. I had great difficulty to keep my countenance, and still more when I saw the baronet finish a very large jug indeed. To be sure, he wondered as much at me e who did not finish a jug; and I could not help reflecting, that living always in the world makes one as unfit for living out of it, as always living out of it does for living in it. Knightley, the knight of the shire, has been entertaining all the parishes round with a turtle-feast, which, so far from succeeding, has almost made him suspected for a Jeu,, as the country parsons have not yet learned to wade into green fat.

The roads are very bad to Greatworth; and such numbers of gates, that if one loved punning one should call it the Gate-house. - The proprietor had a wonderful invention: the chimneys, which are of stone, have niches and benches in them, where the man used to sit and smoke. I had twenty disasters, according to custom; lost my way, and had my French boy almost killed by a fall with his horse: but I have been much pleased. When I was at Park-place I went to see Sir H. Englefield's,(415) which Mr. Churchill and Lady Mary prefer, but I think very undeservedly, to Mr. Southcote's. It is not above a quarter as extensive, and wants the river. There is a pretty view of Reading seen under a rude arch, and the water is well disposed. The buildings are very insignificant, and the house far from good. The town of Henley has been extremely disturbed with an engagement between the ghosts of Miss Blandy and her father, which continued so violent, that some bold persons, to prevent farther blood-shed, broke in, and found it was two jackasses which had got into the kitchen.

I felt strangely tempted to stay at Oxford and survey it at my leisure; but as I was alone, I had not courage. I passed by Sir James Dashwood'S,(416) a vast new house, situated so high that it seems to stand for the county as well as himself. I did look over Lord Jersey's(417) which was built for a hunting-box, and is still little better. But now I am going to tell you how delightful a day I passed at Wroxton. Lord Guildford has made George Montagu so absolutely viceroy over it, that we saw it more agreeable than you can conceive; roamed over the whole house, found every door open, saw not a creature, had an extreme good dinner, wine, fruit, coffee and tea in the library, were served by fairies, tumbled over the books, said one or two talismanic words, and the cascade played, and went home loaded with pine-apples and flowers.--You will take me for Monsieur de CoulangeS,(418) I describe eatables so feelingly; but the manner in which we were served made the whole delicious. The house was built by a Lord Downe in the reign of James the First; and though there is a fine hall and a vast dining-room below, and as large a drawing-room above, it is neither good nor agreeable; one end of the front was never finished, and might have a good apartment. The library is added by this Lord, and is a pleasant chamber. Except loads of portraits, there is no tolerable furniture. A whole-length of the first Earl of Downe is in the Bath-robes, and has a coif under the hat and feather. There is a charming picture of Prince Henry about twelve years old, drawing his sword to kill a stag, with a Lord Harrington; a good portrait of Sir Owen Hopton,(419) 1390; your pious grandmother, my Lady Dacre, which I think like you; some good Cornelius Johnsons; a Lord North, by Riley, good; and an extreme fine portrait by him of the Lord Keeper: I have never seen but few of the hand, but most of them have been equal to Lely and the best of Sir Godfrey. There is too a curious portrait of Sir Thomas Pope, the founder of Trinity College, Oxford, said to be by Holbein. The chapel is new, but in a pretty Gothic taste, with a very long window of painted glass, very tolerable. The frieze is pendent, just in the manner I propose for the eating-room at Strawberry Hill. Except one scene, which is indeed noble, I cannot much commend the without-doors. This scene consists of a beautiful lake entirely shut in with wood: the head falls into a fine cascade, and that into a serpentine river, over which is a little Gothic seat like a round temple, lifted up by a shaggy mount. On an eminence in the park is an obelisk erected to the honour and at the expense of "optimus" and 1, munificentissimus" the late Prince of Wales, "in loci amoenitatem et memoriam advent`us ejus." There are several paltry Chinese buildings and bridges, which have the merit or demerit of being the progenitors of a very numerous race all over the kingdom: at least they were of the very first. In the church is a beautiful tomb of an Earl and Countess of Downe, and the tower is in a good plain Gothic style, ind was once, they tell you, still more beautiful; but Mr. Miller, who designed it, unluckily once in his life happened to think rather of beauty than of the water-tables, and so it fell down the first winter.

On Wednesday morning we went to see a sweet little chapel at Steane, built in 1620 by Sir Thomas Crewe, Speaker in the time of the first James and Charles. Here are remains of the mansion-house, but quite in ruins: the chapel is kept up by my Lord Arran, the last of the race. There are seven or eight monuments. On one is this epitaph, which I thought pretty enough:

"Conjux, casta parens felix, matrona pudica; Sara viro, mundo Martha, Maria Deo."

On another is the most affected inscription I ever saw, written by two brothers on their sister: they say, "This agreeable mortal translated her into immortality such a day:" but I could not help laughing at one quaint expression, to which time has given a droll sense: "She was a constant lover of the best."