Bedford of an immense sum: Pope hints at that affair in this line,
Or when a duke to Jansen punts at White’s.]
The Austrians in Flanders have separated from our troops a little out of humour, because it was impracticable for them to march without any preparatory provision for their reception. They will probably march in two months, if no peace prevents it. Adieu!
_KING THEODORE–HANDEL INTRODUCES ORATORIOS._
TO SIR HORACE MANN.
ARLINGTON STREET, _Feb._ 24, 1743.
I write to you in the greatest hurry in the world, but write I will. Besides, I must wish you joy: you are warriors; nay, conquerors[1]; two things quite novel in this war, for hitherto it has been armies without fighting, and deaths without killing. We talk of this battle as of a comet; “Have you heard of _the_ battle?” it is so strange a thing, that numbers imagine you may go and see it at Charing Cross. Indeed, our officers, who are going to Flanders, don’t quite like it; they are afraid it should grow the fashion to fight, and that a pair of colours should no longer be a sinecure. I am quite unhappy about poor Mr. Chute: besides, it is cruel to find that abstinence is not a drug. If mortification ever ceases to be a medicine, or virtue to be a passport to carnivals in the other world, who will be a self-tormentor any longer–not, my child, that I am one; but, tell me, is he quite recovered?
[Footnote 1: This alludes to an engagement, which took place on the 8th of February, near Bologna, between the Spaniards under M. de Gages, and the Austrians under General Traun, in which the latter were successful.]
I thank you for King Theodore’s declaration,[1] and wish him success with all my soul. I hate the Genoese; they make a commonwealth the most devilish of all tyrannies!
[Footnote 1: With regard to Corsica, of which he had declared himself king. By this declaration, which was dated January 30, Theodore recalled, under pain of confiscation of their estates, all the Corsicans in foreign service, except that of the Queen of Hungary, and the Grand Duke of Tuscany. (See vol. ii. p. 74.)]
We have every now and then motions for disbanding Hessians and Hanoverians,[1] alias mercenaries; but they come to nothing. To-day the party have declared that they have done for this session; so you will hear little more but of fine equipages for Flanders: our troops are actually marched, and the officers begin to follow them–I hope they know whither! You know in the last war in Spain, Lord Peterborough[2] rode galloping about to inquire for his army.
[Footnote 1: The employment of Hessian and Hanoverian troops in this war was not only the subject of frequent complaints in Parliament, but was also the cause of very general dissatisfaction in the country, where it was commonly regarded as one of the numerous instances in which the Ministers sacrificed the interests of England from an unworthy desire to maintain their places by humouring the king’s preference for his native land.]
[Footnote 2: Lord Peterborough is celebrated by Pope as
taming the genius of the arid plain Almost as quickly as he conquered Spain:
not that he did conquer Spain; but by an extraordinary combination of hardihood and skill he took Barcelona, which had defied all previous attacks; and, in the confidence inspired by this important success, he offered Archduke Charles to escort him to Madrid, so that he might be crowned King of Spain in that capital. But the Archduke, under the advice of some of his own countrymen, who were jealous of his influence, rejected the plan.]
But to come to more _real_ contests; Handel has set up an Oratorio against the Operas, and succeeds. He has hired all the goddesses from farces and the singers of _Roast Beef_[1] from between the acts at both theatres, with a man with one note in his voice, and a girl without ever an one; and so they sing, and make brave hallelujahs; and the good company encore the recitative, if it happens to have any cadence like what they call a tune. I was much diverted the other night at the opera; two gentlewomen sat before my sister, and not knowing her, discoursed at their ease. Says one, “Lord! how fine Mr. W. is!” “Yes,” replied the other, with a tone of saying sentences, “some men love to be particularly so, your _petit-maitres_–but they are not always the brightest of their sex.”–Do thank me for this period! I am sure you will enjoy it as much as we did.
[Footnote 1: It was customary at this time for the galleries to call for a ballad called “The Roast Beef of Old England” between the acts, or before or after the play.–WALPOLE.]
I shall be very glad of my things, and approve entirely of your precautions; Sir R. will be quite happy, for there is no telling you how impatient he is for his Dominchin. Adieu!
_BATTLE OF DETTINGEN–DEATH OF LORD WILMINGTON._
TO SIR HORACE MANN.
HOUGHTON, _July_ 4, 1743.
I hear no particular news here, and I don’t pretend to send you the common news; for as I must have it first from London, you will have it from thence sooner in the papers than in my letters. There have been great rejoicings for the victory; which I am convinced is very considerable by the pains the Jacobites take to persuade it is not. My Lord Carteret’s Hanoverian articles have much offended; his express has been burlesqued a thousand ways. By all the letters that arrive, the loss of the French turns out more considerable than by the first accounts: they have dressed up the battle into a victory for themselves–I hope they will always have such! By their not having declared war with us, one should think they intended a peace. It is allowed that our fine horse did us no honour: the victory was gained by the foot. Two of their princes of the blood, the Prince de Dombes, and the Count d’Eu his brother, were wounded, and several of their first nobility. Our prisoners turn out but seventy-two officers, besides the private men; and by the printed catalogue, I don’t think many of great family. Marshal Noailles’ mortal wound is quite vanished, and Duc d’Aremberg’s shrunk to a very slight one. The King’s glory remains in its first bloom.
Lord Wilmington is dead.[1] I believe the civil battle for his post will be tough. Now we shall see what service Lord Carteret’s Hanoverians will do him. You don’t think the crisis unlucky for him, do you? If you wanted a Treasury, should you choose to have been in Arlington Street, or driving by the battle of Dettingen? You may imagine our Court wishes for Mr. Pelham. I don’t know any one who wishes for Lord Bath but himself–I believe that is a pretty substantial wish.
[Footnote 1: Formerly Sir Spencer Compton, and successor of Sir R. Walpole at the Treasury. He was succeeded by Mr. Pelham, a brother of the Duke of Newcastle.]
I have got the Life of King Theodore, but I don’t know how to convey it–I will inquire for some way.
We are quite alone. You never saw anything so unlike as being here five months out of place, to the congresses of a fortnight in place; but you know the “Justum et tenacem propositi virum”[1] can amuse himself without the “Civium ardor!” As I have not so much dignity of character to fill up my time, I could like a little more company. With all this leisure, you may imagine that I might as well be writing an ode or so upon the victory; but as I cannot build upon the Laureate’s[2] place till I know whether Lord Carteret or Mr. Pelham will carry the Treasury, I have bounded my compliments to a slender collection of quotations against I should have any occasion for them. Here are some fine lines from Lord Halifax’s[3] poem on the battle of the Boyne–
The King leads on, the King does all inflame, The King;–and carries millions in the name.
[Footnote 1: A quotation from Horace, Odes iii. 3.]
[Footnote 2: The Poet Laureate was Colley Cibber.]
[Footnote 3: The celebrated Chancellor of the Exchequer, Charles Montagu, was raised to the peerage as Earl of Halifax. In conjunction with Prior, he wrote the “Country and City Mouse,” in ridicule of Dryden’s “Hind and Panther.”]
Then follows a simile about a deluge, which you may imagine; but the next lines are very good:
So on the foe the firm battalions prest, And he, like the tenth wave, drove on the rest. Fierce, gallant, young, he shot through ev’ry place, Urging their flight, and hurrying on the chase, He hung upon their rear, or lighten’d in their face.
The next are a magnificent compliment, and, as far as verse goes, to be sure very applicable.
Stop, stop! brave Prince, allay that generous flame; Enough is given to England and to Fame. Remember, Sir, you in the centre stand; Europe’s divided interests you command, All their designs uniting in your hand. Down from your throne descends the golden chain Which does the fabric of our world sustain, That once dissolved by any fatal stroke, The scheme of all our happiness is broke.
Adieu! my dear Sir; pray for peace!
_FRENCH ACTORS AT CLIFDEN–A NEW ROMAN CATHOLIC MIRACLE–LADY MARY WORTLEY._
TO SIR HORACE MANN.
HOUGHTON, _Sept._ 7, 1743.
My letters are now at their _ne plus ultra_ of nothingness; so you may hope they will grow better again. I shall certainly go to town soon, for my patience is worn out. Yesterday, the weather grew cold; I put on _a new_ waistcoat for its being winter’s birthday–the season I am forced to love; for summer has no charms for me when I pass it in the country.
We are expecting another battle, and a congress at the same time. Ministers seem to be flocking to Aix la Chapelle: and, what will much surprise you, unless you have lived long enough not to be surprised, is, that Lord Bolingbroke has hobbled the same way too–you will suppose, as a minister for France; I tell you, no. My uncle [_old_ Horace], who is here, was yesterday stumping along the gallery with a very political march: my Lord asked him whither he was going. Oh, said I, to Aix la Chapelle.
You ask me about the marrying Princesses. I know not a tittle. Princess Louisa seems to be going, her clothes are bought; but marrying our daughters makes no conversation. For either of the other two, all thoughts seem to be dropped of it. The Senate of Sweden design themselves to choose a wife for their man of Lubeck.
The City, and our supreme governors, the mob, are very angry that there is a troop of French players at Clifden. One of them was lately impertinent to a countryman, who thrashed him. His Royal Highness sent angrily to know the cause. The fellow replied, “he thought to have pleased his Highness in beating one of them, who had tried to kill his father and had wounded his brother.” This was not easy to answer.
I delight in Prince Craon’s exact intelligence! For his satisfaction, I can tell him that numbers, even here, would believe any story full as absurd as that of the King and my Lord Stair; or that very one, if anybody will write it over. Our faith in politics will match any Neapolitan’s in religion. A political missionary will make more converts in a county progress than a Jesuit in the whole empire of China, and will produce more preposterous miracles. Sir Watkin Williams, at the last Welsh races, convinced the whole principality (by reading a letter that affirmed it), that the King was not within two miles of the battle of Dettingen. We are not good at hitting off anti-miracles, the only way of defending one’s own religion. I have read an admirable story of the Duke of Buckingham, who, when James II. sent a priest to him to persuade him to turn Papist, and was plied by him with miracles, told the doctor, that if miracles were proofs of a religion, the Protestant cause was as well supplied as theirs. We have lately had a very extraordinary one near my estate in the country. A very holy man, as you might be, Doctor, was travelling on foot, and was benighted. He came to the cottage of a poor dowager, who had nothing in the house for herself and daughter but a couple of eggs and a slice of bacon. However, as she was a pious widow, she made the good man welcome. In the morning, at taking leave, the saint made her over to God for payment, and prayed that whatever she should do as soon as he was gone she might continue to do all day. This was a very unlimited request, and, unless the saint was a prophet too, might not have been very pleasant retribution. The good woman, who minded her affairs, and was not to be put out of her way, went about her business. She had a piece of coarse cloth to make a couple of shifts for herself and child. She no sooner began to measure it but the yard fell a-measuring, and there was no stopping it. It was sunset before the good woman had time to take breath. She was almost stifled, for she was up to her ears in ten thousand yards of cloth. She could have afforded to have sold Lady Mary Wortley a clean shift, of the usual coarseness she wears, for a groat halfpenny.
I wish you would tell the Princess this story. Madame Riccardi, or the little Countess d’Elbenino, will doat on it. I don’t think it will be out of Pandolfini’s way, if you tell it to the little Albizzi. You see I have not forgot the tone of my Florentine acquaintance. I know I should have translated it to them: you remember what admirable work I used to make of such stories in broken Italian. I have heard old Churchill tell Bussy English puns out of jest-books: particularly a reply about eating hare, which he translated, “j’ai mon ventre plein de poil.” Adieu!
_DEATH OF HIS FATHER–MATTHEWS AND LESTOCK IN THE MEDITERRANEAN–THOMSON’S “TANCRED AND SIGISMUNDA”–AKENSIDE’S ODES–CONUNDRUMS IN FASHION._
TO SIR HORACE MANN.
ARLINGTON STREET, _March_ 29, 1745.
I begged your brother to tell you what it was impossible for me to tell you. You share nearly in our common loss! Don’t expect me to enter at all upon the subject. After the melancholy two months that I have passed, and in my situation, you will not wonder I shun a conversation which could not be bounded by a letter–a letter that would grow into a panegyric, or a piece of moral; improper for me to write upon, and too distressful for us both!–a death is only to be felt, never to be talked over by those it touches!
I had yesterday your letter of three sheets: I began to flatter myself that the storm was blown over, but I tremble to think of the danger you are in! a danger, in which even the protection of the great friend you have lost could have been of no service to you. How ridiculous it seems for me to renew protestations of my friendship for you, at an instant when my father is just dead, and the Spaniards just bursting into Tuscany! How empty a charm would my name have, when all my interest and significance are buried in my father’s grave! All hopes of present peace, the only thing that could save you, seem vanished. We expect every day to hear of the French declaration of war against Holland. The new Elector of Bavaria is French, like his father; and the King of Spain is not dead. I don’t know how to talk to you. I have not even a belief that the Spaniards will spare Tuscany. My dear child, what will become of you? whither will you retire till a peace restores you to your ministry? for upon that distant view alone I repose!
We are every day nearer confusion. The King is in as bad humour as a monarch can be; he wants to go abroad, and is detained by the Mediterranean affair; the inquiry into which was moved by a Major Selwyn, a dirty pensioner, half-turned patriot, by the Court being overstocked with votes. This inquiry takes up the whole time of the House of Commons, but I don’t see what conclusion it can have. My confinement has kept me from being there, except the first day; and all I know of what is yet come out is, as it was stated by a Scotch member the other day, “that there had been one (Matthews)[1] with a bad head, another (Lestock) with a worse heart, and four (the captains of the inactive ships) with na heart at all.” Among the numerous visits of form that I have received, one was from my Lord Sandys: as we two could only converse upon general topics, we fell upon this of the Mediterranean, and I made _him_ allow, “that, to be sure, there is not so bad a court of justice in the world as the House of Commons; and how hard it is upon any man to have his cause tried there!”…
[Footnote 1: Admiral Matthews, an officer of great courage and skill, was Commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean fleet. Lestock, his second in command, was also a skilful officer; but the two were on bad terms, and when, in February, 1744, Matthews attacked the Spanish fleet, Lestock disobeyed his signals, and by his misconduct deprived Matthews of a splendid victory, which was clearly within his grasp. Court-martials were held on the conduct of both officers; but the Admiralty was determined to crush Matthews, as being a member of the House of Commons and belonging to the party of Opposition, and the consequence was that, though Lestock’s misconduct was clearly proved, he was acquitted, and Matthews was sentenced to be cashiered, and declared incapable of any further employment in his Majesty’s service. The whole is perhaps the most disgraceful transaction in the history of the navy or of the country. (See the Editor’s “History of the British Navy,” i. 203-214.)]
The town flocks to a new play of Thomson’s called “Tancred and Sigismunda:” it is very dull; I have read it. I cannot bear modern poetry; these refiners of the purity of the stage, and of the incorrectness of English verse, are most wofully insipid. I had rather have written the most absurd lines in Lee, than “Leonidas” or “The Seasons;” as I had rather be put into the round-house for a wrong-headed quarrel, than sup quietly at eight o’clock with my grandmother. There is another of these tame genius’s, a Mr. Akenside, who writes Odes: in one he has lately published, he says, “Light the tapers, urge the fire.”[1] Had not you rather make gods “jostle in the dark,” than light the candles for fear they should break their heads? One Russel, a mimic, has a puppet-show to ridicule Operas; I hear, very dull, not to mention its being twenty years too late: it consists of three acts, with foolish Italian songs burlesqued in Italian.
[Footnote 1: Walpole’s quotation, however, is incorrect; the poet wrote:
Urge the warm bowl, and ruddy fire.]
There is a very good quarrel on foot between two duchesses: she of Queensberry sent to invite Lady Emily Lenox to a ball: her Grace of Richmond, who is wonderfully cautious since Lady Caroline’s elopement [with Mr. Fox], sent word, “she could not determine.” The other sent again the same night: the same answer. The Queensberry then sent word, that she had made up her company, and desired to be excused from having Lady Emily’s: but at the bottom of the card wrote, “too great a trust.” You know how mad she is, and how capable of such a stroke. There is no declaration of war come out from the other Duchess; but, I believe it will be made a national quarrel of the whole illegitimate royal family.
It is the present fashion to make conundrums: there are books of them printed, and produced at all assemblies: they are full silly enough to be made a fashion. I will tell you the most renowned: “Why is my uncle Horace like two people conversing?–Because he is both teller and auditor.” This was Winnington’s….
I will take the first opportunity to send Dr. Cocchi his translated book; I have not yet seen it myself.
Adieu! my dearest child! I write with a house full of relations, and must conclude. Heaven preserve you and Tuscany.
_BATTLE OF FONTENOY–THE BALLAD OF THE PRINCE OF WALES._
TO SIR HORACE MANN.
ARLINGTON STREET, _May_ 11, 1745.
I stayed till to-day, to be able to give you some account of the battle of Tournay: the outlines you will have heard already. We don’t allow it to be a victory on the French side: but that is, just as a woman is not called _Mrs._ till she is married, though she may have had half-a-dozen natural children. In short, we remained upon the field of battle three hours; I fear, too many of us remain there still! without palliating, it is certainly a heavy stroke. We never lost near so many officers. I pity the Duke [of Cumberland], for it is almost the first battle of consequence that we ever lost. By the letters arrived to-day, we find that Tournay still holds out. There are certainly killed Sir James Campbell, General Ponsonby, Colonel Carpenter, Colonel Douglas, young Ross, Colonel Montagu, Gee, Berkeley, and Kellet. Mr. Vanburgh is since dead. Most of the young men of quality in the Guards are wounded. I have had the vast fortune to have nobody hurt, for whom I was in the least interested. Mr. Conway, in particular, has highly distinguished himself; he and Lord Petersham, who is slightly wounded, are most commended; though none behaved ill but the Dutch horse. There has been but very little consternation here: the King minded it so little, that being set out for Hanover, and blown back into Harwich roads since the news came, he could not be persuaded to return, but sailed yesterday with the fair wind. I believe you will have the _Gazette_ sent to-night; but lest it should not be printed time enough, here is a list of the numbers, as it came over this morning:
British foot 1237 killed.
Ditto horse 90 ditto.
Ditto foot 1968 wounded.
Ditto horse 232 ditto.
Ditto foot 457 missing.
Ditto horse 18 ditto.
Hanoverian foot 432 killed.
Ditto horse 78 ditto.
Ditto foot 950 wounded.
Ditto horse 192 ditto.
Ditto horse and foot 53 missing.
Dutch 625 killed and wounded. Ditto 1019 missing.
So the whole _hors de combat_ is above seven thousand three hundred. The French own the loss of three thousand; I don’t believe many more, for it was a most rash and desperate perseverance on our side. The Duke behaved very bravely and humanely; but this will not have advanced the peace.
However coolly the Duke may have behaved, and coldly his father, at least his brother [the Prince of Wales] has outdone both. He not only went to the play the night the news came, but in two days made a ballad. It is in imitation of the Regent’s style, and has miscarried in nothing but the language, the thoughts, and the poetry. Did not I tell you in my last that he was going to act Paris in Congreve’s “Masque”? The song is addressed to the goddesses.
I.
Venez, mes cheres Deesses,
Venez calmer mon chagrin;
Aidez, mes belles Princesses,
A le noyer dans le vin.
Poussons cette douce Ivresse
Jusqu’au milieu de la nuit,
Et n’ecoutons que la tendresse
D’un charmant vis-a-vis.
II.
Quand le chagrin me devore,
Vite a table je me mets,
Loin des objets que j’abhorre,
Avec joie j’y trouve la paix.
Peu d’amis, restes d’un naufrage
Je rassemble autour de moi,
Et je me ris de l’etalage
Qu’a chez lui toujours un Roi.
III.
Que m’importe, que l’Europe
Ait un, ou plusieurs tyrans?
Prions seulement Calliope,
Qu’elle inspire nos vers, nos chants Laissons Mars et toute la gloire;
Livrons nous tous a l’amour;
Que Bacchus nous donne a boire;
A ces deux faisons la cour.
IV.
Passons ainsi notre vie,
Sans rever a ce qui suit;
Avec ma chere Sylvie
Le tems trop vite me fuit.
Mais si, par un malheur extreme,
Je perdois cet objet charmant,
Oui, cette compagnie meme
Ne me tiendroit un moment.
V.
Me livrant a ma tristesse,
Toujours plein de mon chagrin,
Je n’aurois plus d’allegresse
Pour mettre Bathurst en train:
Ainsi pour vous tenir en joie
Invoquez toujours les Dieux,
Qu’elle vive et qu’elle soit
Avec nous toujours heureuse!
Adieu! I am in great hurry.
_M. DE GRIGNAN–LIVY’S PATAVINITY–THE MARECHAL DE BELLEISLE–WHISTON PROPHECIES THE DESTRUCTION OF THE WORLD–THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE._
TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.
[_August_ 1, 1745.]
Dear George,–I cannot help thinking you laugh at me when you say such very civil things of my letters, and yet, coming from you, I would fain not have it all flattery:
So much the more, as, from a little elf, I’ve had a high opinion of myself,
Though sickly, slender, and not large of limb.
With this modest prepossession, you may be sure I like to have you commend me, whom, after I have done with myself, I admire of all men living. I only beg that you will commend me no more: it is very ruinous; and praise, like other debts, ceases to be due on being paid. One comfort indeed is, that it is as seldom paid as other debts.
I have been very fortunate lately: I have met with an extreme good print of M. de Grignan;[1] I am persuaded, very like; and then it has his _touffe ebourifee_; I don’t, indeed, know what that was, but I am sure it is in the print. None of the critics could ever make out what Livy’s Patavinity is; though they are all confident it is in his writings. I have heard within these few days what, for your sake, I wish I could have told you sooner–that there is in Belleisle’s suite the Abbe Perrin, who published Madame Sevigne’s letters, and who has the originals in his hands. How one should have liked to have known him! The Marshal[2] was privately in London last Friday. He is entertained to-day at Hampton Court by the Duke of Grafton. Don’t you believe it was to settle the binding the scarlet thread in the window, when the French shall come in unto the land to possess it? I don’t at all wonder at any shrewd observations the Marshal has made on our situation. The bringing him here at all–the sending him away now–in short, the whole series of our conduct convinces me, that we shall soon see as silent a change as that in “The Rehearsal,” of King Usher and King Physician. It may well be so, when the disposition of the drama is in the hands of the Duke of Newcastle–those hands that are always groping and sprawling, and fluttering, and hurrying on the rest of his precipitate person. But there is no describing him but as M. Courcelle, a French prisoner, did t’other day: “Je ne scais pas,” dit il, “je ne scaurois m’exprimer, mais il a un certain tatillonage.” If one could conceive a dead body hung in chains, always wanting to be hung somewhere else, one should have a comparative idea of him.
[Footnote 1: M. de Grignan son-in-law to Mme. de Sevigne, the greater part of whose letters are to his wife.]
[Footnote 2: The Marechal de Belleisle and his younger brother, the Comte de Belleisle, were the grandsons of Fouquet, the Finance Minister treated with such cruelty and injustice by Louis XIV. The Parisians nicknamed the two brothers “Imagination” and “Common Sense.” The Marshal was joined with the Marshal de Broglie in the disastrous expedition against Prague in the winter of 1742; when, though they succeeded in taking and occupying the city for a time, they were afterwards forced to evacuate it; and though Belleisle conducted the retreat with great courage and skill, the army, which had numbered fifty thousand men when it crossed the Rhine, scarcely exceeded twelve thousand when it regained the French territory. (See the Editor’s “History of France under the Bourbons,” c. xxv.)]
For my own part, I comfort myself with the humane reflection of the Irishman in the ship that was on fire–I am but a passenger! If I were not so indolent, I think I should rather put in practice the late Duchess of Bolton’s geographical resolution of going to China, when Whiston told her the world would be burnt in three years. Have you any philosophy? Tell me what you think. It is quite the fashion to talk of the French coming here. Nobody sees it in any other light but as a thing to be talked of, not to be precautioned against. Don’t you remember a report of the plague being in the City, and everybody went to the house where it was to see it? You see I laugh about it, for I would not for the world be so unenglished as to do otherwise. I am persuaded that when Count Saxe,[1] with ten thousand men, is within a day’s march of London, people will be hiring windows at Charing-cross and Cheapside to see them pass by. ‘Tis our characteristic to take dangers for sights, and evils for curiosities.
[Footnote 1: The great Marechal Saxe, Commander-in-chief of the French army in Flanders during the war of the Austrian succession.]
Adieu! dear George: I am laying in scraps of Cato against it may be necessary to take leave of one’s correspondents _a la Romaine_, and before the play itself is suppressed by a _lettre de cachet_ to the book-sellers.
P.S.–Lord! ’tis the first of August,[1] 1745, a holiday that is going to be turned out of the almanack!
[Footnote 1: August 1 was the anniversary of the accession of George I.]
_INVASION OF SCOTLAND BY THE YOUNG PRETENDER–FORCES ARE SAID TO BE PREPARING IN FRANCE TO JOIN HIM._
TO SIR HORACE MANN.
ARLINGTON STREET, _Sept._ 6, 1745.
It would have been inexcusable in me, in our present circumstances, and after all I have promised you, not to have written to you for this last month, if I had been in London; but I have been at Mount Edgecumbe, and so constantly upon the road, that I neither received your letters, had time to write, or knew what to write. I came back last night, and found three packets from you, which I have no time to answer, and but just time to read. The confusion I have found, and the danger we are in, prevent my talking of anything else. The young Pretender, at the head of three thousand men, has got a march on General Cope, who is not eighteen hundred strong; and when the last accounts came away, was fifty miles nearer Edinburgh than Cope, and by this time is there. The clans will not rise for the Government: the Dukes of Argyll and Athol are come post to town, not having been able to raise a man. The young Duke of Gordon sent for his uncle, and told him he must arm their clan. “They are in arms.”–“They must march against the rebels.”–“They will wait on the Prince of Wales.” The Duke flew in a passion; his uncle pulled out a pistol, and told him it was in vain to dispute. Lord Loudon, Lord Fortrose, and Lord Panmure have been very zealous, and have raised some men; but I look upon Scotland as gone! I think of what King William said to Duke Hamilton, when he was extolling Scotland: “My Lord, I only wish it was a hundred thousand miles off, and that you was king of it!”
There are two manifestoes published, signed Charles Prince, Regent for his father, King of Scotland, England, France, and Ireland. By one, he promises to preserve everybody in their just rights; and orders all persons who have public monies in their hands to bring it to him; and by the other dissolves the union between England and Scotland. But all this is not the worst! Notice came yesterday, that there are ten thousand men, thirty transports, and ten men-of-war at Dunkirk. Against this force we have–I don’t know what–scarce fears! Three thousand Dutch we hope are by this time landed in Scotland; three more are coming hither. We have sent for ten regiments from Flanders, which may be here in a week, and we have fifteen men-of-war in the Downs. I am grieved to tell you all this; but when it is so, how can I avoid telling you? Your brother is just come in, who says he has written to you–I have not time to expiate.
My Lady O[rford] is arrived; I hear she says, only to endeavour to get a certain allowance. Her mother has sent to offer her the use of her house. She is a poor weak woman. I can say nothing to Marquis Ricardi, nor think of him; only tell him that I will when I have time.
My sister [Lady Maria Walpole] has married herself, that is, declared she will, to young Churchill. It is a foolish match; but I have nothing to do with it. Adieu! my dear Sir; excuse my haste, but you must imagine that one is not much at leisure to write long letters–hope if you can!
_THIS AND THE FOLLOWING LETTERS GIVE A LIVELY ACCOUNT OF THE PROGRESS OF THE REBELLION TILL THE RETREAT FROM DERBY, AFTER WHICH NO PARTICULAR INTEREST ATTACHES TO IT._
TO SIR HORACE MANN.
ARLINGTON STREET, _Sept._ 20, 1745.
One really don’t know what to write to you: the accounts from Scotland vary perpetually, and at best are never very certain. I was just going to tell you that the rebels are in England; but my uncle [_old_ Horace] is this moment come in, and says, that an express came last night with an account of their being at Edinburgh to the number of five thousand. This sounds great, to have walked through a kingdom, and taken possession of the capital! But this capital is an open town; and the castle impregnable, and in our possession. There never was so extraordinary a sort of rebellion! One can’t tell what assurances of support they may have from the Jacobites in England, or from the French; but nothing of either sort has yet appeared–and if there does not, never was so desperate an enterprise. One can hardly believe that the English are more disaffected than the Scotch; and among the latter, no persons of property have joined them: both nations seem to profess a neutrality. Their money is all gone, and they subsist merely by levying contributions. But, sure, banditti can never conquer a kingdom! On the other hand, what cannot any number of men do, who meet no opposition? They have hitherto taken no place but open towns, nor have they any artillery for a siege but one-pounders. Three battalions of Dutch are landed at Gravesend, and are ordered to Lancashire: we expect every moment to hear that the rest are got to Scotland; none of our own are come yet. Lord Granville and his faction persist in persuading the King, that it is an affair of no consequence; and for the Duke of Newcastle, he is glad when the rebels make any progress, in order to confute Lord Granville’s assertions. The best of our situation is, our strength at sea: the Channel is well guarded, and twelve men-of-war more are arrived from Rowley. Vernon, that simple noisy creature, has hit upon a scheme that is of great service; he has laid Folkstone cutters all round the coast, which are continually relieved, and bring constant notice of everything that stirs. I just now hear that the Duke of Bedford declares that he will be amused no longer, but will ask the King’s leave to raise a regiment. The Duke of Montagu has a troop of horse ready, and the Duke of Devonshire is raising men in Derbyshire. The Yorkshiremen, headed by the Archbishop [Herring] and Lord Malton, meet the gentlemen of the county the day after to-morrow, to defend that part of England. Unless we have more ill fortune than is conceivable, or the general supineness continues, it is impossible but we must get over this. You desire me to send you news: I confine myself to tell you nothing but what you may depend upon; and leave you in a fright rather than deceive you. I confess my own apprehensions are not near so strong as they were; and if we get over this, I shall believe that we never can be hurt; for we never can be more exposed to danger. Whatever disaffection there is to the present family, it plainly does not proceed from love to the other.
My Lady O[rford] makes little progress in popularity. Neither the protection of my Lady Pomfret’s prudery, nor of my Lady Townshend’s libertinism, do her any service. The women stare at her, think her ugly, awkward, and disagreeable; and what is worse, the men think so too. For the height of mortification, the King has declared publicly to the Ministry, that he has been told of the great civilities which he was said to show to her at Hanover; that he protests he showed her only the common civilities due to any English lady that comes thither; that he never intended to take any particular notice of her; nor had, nor would let my Lady Yarmouth. In fact, my Lady Yarmouth peremptorily refused to carry her to court here; and when she did go with my Lady Pomfret, the King but just spoke to her. She declares her intention of staying in England, and protests against all lawsuits and violences; and says she only asks articles of separation, and to have her allowance settled by any two arbitrators chosen by my brother and herself. I have met her twice at my Lady Townshend’s, just as I used at Florence. She dresses English and plays at whist. I forgot to tell a _bon-mot_ of Leheup on her first coming over; he was asked if he would not go and see her? He replied, “No, I never visit modest women.” Adieu! my dear child! I flatter myself you will collect hopes from this letter.
_DEFEAT OF COPE._
TO SIR HORACE MANN.
ARLINGTON STREET, _Sept._ 27, 1745.
I can’t doubt but the joy of the Jacobites has reached Florence before this letter. Your two or three Irish priests, I forget their names, will have set out to take possession of abbey lands here. I feel for what you will feel, and for the insulting things that will be said to you upon the battle we lost in Scotland; but all this is nothing to what it prefaces. The express came hither on Tuesday morning, but the Papists knew it on Sunday night. Cope lay in face of the rebels all Friday; he scarce two thousand strong, they vastly superior, though we don’t know their numbers. The military people say that he should have attacked them. However, we are sadly convinced that they are not such raw ragamuffins as they were represented. The rotation that has been established in that country, to give all the Highlanders the benefit of serving in the independent companies, has trained and disciplined them. Macdonald (I suppose, he from Naples), who is reckoned a very experienced able officer, is said to have commanded them, and to be dangerously wounded. One does not hear the Boy’s personal valour cried up; by which I conclude he was not in the action. Our dragoons most shamefully fled without striking a blow, and are with Cope, who escaped in a boat to Berwick. I pity poor him, who with no shining abilities, and no experience, and no force, was sent to fight for a crown! He never saw a battle but that of Dettingen, where he got his red ribbon: Churchill, whose led-captain he was, and my Lord Harrington, had pushed him up to his misfortune. We have lost all our artillery, five hundred men taken–and _three_ killed, and several officers, as you will see in the papers. This defeat has frightened everybody but those it rejoices, and those it should frighten most; but my Lord Granville still buoys up the King’s spirits, and persuades him it is nothing. He uses his Ministers as ill as possible, and discourages everybody that would risk their lives and fortunes with him. Marshal Wade is marching against the rebels; but the King will not let him take above eight thousand men; so that if they come into England, another battle, with no advantage on our side, may determine our fate. Indeed, they don’t seem so unwise as to risk their cause upon so precarious an event; but rather to design to establish themselves in Scotland, till they can be supported from France, and be set up with taking Edinburgh Castle, where there is to the value of a million, and which they would make a stronghold. It is scarcely victualled for a month, and must surely fall into their hands. Our coasts are greatly guarded, and London kept in awe by the arrival of the guards. I don’t believe what I have been told this morning, that more troops are sent for from Flanders, and aid asked of Denmark.
Prince Charles has called a Parliament in Scotland for the 7th of October; ours does not meet till the 17th, so that even in the show of liberty and laws they are beforehand with us. With all this, we hear of no men of quality or fortune having joined him but Lord Elcho, whom you have seen at Florence; and the Duke of Peith, a silly race horsing boy, who is said to be killed in this battle. But I gather no confidence from hence: my father always said, “If you see them come again, they will begin by their lowest people; their chiefs will not appear till the end.” His prophecies verify every day!
The town is still empty; on this point only the English act contrary to their custom, for they don’t throng to see a Parliament, though it is likely to grow a curiosity!…
_GENERAL WADE IS MARCHING TO SCOTLAND–VIOLENT PROCLAMATION OF THE PRETENDER._
TO SIR HORACE MANN.
ARLINGTON STREET, _Oct._ 21, 1745.
I had been almost as long without any of your letters as you had without mine; but yesterday I received one, dated the 5th of this month, N.S.
The rebels have not left their camp near Edinburgh, and, I suppose, will not now, unless to retreat into the Highlands. General Wade was to march yesterday from Doncaster for Scotland. By their not advancing, I conclude that either the Boy and his council could not prevail on the Highlanders to leave their own country, or that they were not strong enough, and still wait for foreign assistance, which, in a new declaration, he intimates that he still expects. One only ship, I believe, a Spanish one, is got to them with arms, and Lord John Drummond and some people of quality on board. We don’t hear that the younger Boy is of the number. Four ships sailed from Corunna; the one that got to Scotland, one taken by a privateer of Bristol, and one lost on the Irish coast; the fourth is not heard of. At Edinburgh and thereabouts they commit the most horrid barbarities. We last night expected as bad here: information was given of an intended insurrection and massacre by the Papists; all the Guards were ordered out, and the Tower shut up at seven. I cannot be surprised at anything, considering the supineness of the Ministry–nobody has yet been taken up!
The Parliament met on Thursday. I don’t think, considering the crisis, that the House was very full. Indeed, many of the Scotch members cannot come if they would. The young Pretender had published a declaration, threatening to confiscate the estates of the Scotch that should come to Parliament, and making it treason for the English. The only points that have been before the House, the address and the suspension of the Habeas Corpus, met with obstructions from the Jacobites. By this we may expect what spirit they will show hereafter. With all this, I am far from thinking that they are so confident and sanguine as their friends at Rome. I blame the Chutes extremely for cockading themselves: why take a part, when they are only travelling? I should certainly retire to Florence on this occasion.
You may imagine how little I like our situation; but I don’t despair. The little use they made, or could make of their victory; their not having marched into England; their miscarriage at the Castle of Edinburgh; the arrival of our forces, and the non-arrival of any French or Spanish, make me conceive great hopes of getting over this ugly business. But it is still an affair wherein the chance of battles, or perhaps of one battle, may decide.
I write you but short letters, considering the circumstances of the time; but I hate to send you paragraphs only to contradict them again: I still less choose to forge events; and, indeed, am glad I have so few to tell you.
My Lady O[rford] has forced herself upon her mother, who receives her very coolly: she talks highly of her demands, and quietly of her methods: the fruitlessness of either will, I hope, soon send her back–I am sorry it must be to you!
You mention Holdisworth:[1] he has had the confidence to come and visit me within these ten days; and (I suppose, from the overflowing of his joy) talked a great deal and quick–with as little sense as when he was more tedious.
[Footnote 1: A nonjuror, who travelled with Mr. George Pitt.–WALPOLE.]
Since I wrote this, I hear the Countess [of Orford] has told her mother, that she thinks her husband the best of our family, and me the worst–nobody so bad, except you! I don’t wonder at my being so ill with her; but what have you done? or is it, that we are worse than anybody, because we know more of her than anybody does? Adieu!
_GALLANT RESISTANCE OF CARLISLE–MR. PITT ATTACKS THE MINISTRY._
TO SIR HORACE MANN.
ARLINGTON STREET, _Nov._ 22, 1745.
For these two days we have been expecting news of a battle. Wade marched last Saturday from Newcastle, and must have got up with the rebels if they stayed for him, though the roads are exceedingly bad and great quantities of snow have fallen. But last night there was some notice of a body of rebels being advanced to Penryth. We were put into great spirits by an heroic letter from the Mayor of Carlisle, who had fired on the rebels and made them retire; he concluded with saying, “And so I think the town of Carlisle has done his Majesty more service than the great city of Edinburgh, or than all Scotland together.” But this hero, who was grown the whole fashion for four-and-twenty hours, had chosen to stop all other letters. The King spoke of him at his _levee_ with great encomiums; Lord Stair said, “Yes, sir, Mr. Patterson has behaved very bravely.” The Duke of Bedford interrupted him; “My lord, his name is not _Paterson_; that is a Scotch name; his name is _Patinson_.” But, alack! the next day the rebels returned, having placed the women and children of the country in waggons in front of their army, and forcing the peasants to fix the scaling-ladders. The great Mr. Pattinson, or Patterson (for now his name may be which one pleases), instantly surrendered the town, and agreed to pay two thousand pounds to save it from pillage. Well! then we were assured that the citadel could hold out seven or eight days; but did not so many hours. On mustering the militia, there were not found above four men in a company; and for two companies, which the ministry, on a report of Lord Albemarle, who said they were to be sent from Wade’s army, thought were there, and did not know were not there, there was nothing but two of invalids. Colonel Durand, the governor, fled, because he would not sign the capitulation, by which the garrison, it is said, has sworn never to bear arms against the house of Stuart. The Colonel sent two expresses, one to Wade, and another to Ligonier at Preston; but the latter was playing at whist with Lord Harrington at Petersham. Such is our diligence and attention! All my hopes are in Wade, who was so sensible of the ignorance of our governors, that he refused to accept the command, till they consented that he should be subject to no kind of orders from hence. The rebels are reckoned up at thirteen thousand; Wade marches with about twelve; but if they come southward, the other army will probably be to fight them; the Duke is to command it, and sets out next week with another brigade of Guards, the Ligonier under him. There are great apprehensions for Chester from the Flintshire-men, who are ready to rise. A quartermaster, first sent to Carlisle, was seized and carried to Wade; he behaved most insolently; and being asked by the general, how many the rebels were, replied, “Enough to beat any army you have in England.” A Mackintosh has been taken, who reduces their formidability, by being sent to raise two clans, and with orders, if they would not rise, at least to give out they had risen, for that three clans would leave the Pretender, unless joined by those two. Five hundred new rebels are arrived at Perth, where our prisoners are kept.
I had this morning a subscription-book brought me for our parish; Lord Granville had refused to subscribe. This is in the style of his friend Lord Bath, who has absented himself whenever any act of authority was to be executed against the rebels.
Five Scotch lords are going to raise regiments _a l’Angloise_! resident in London, while the rebels were in Scotland; they are to receive military emoluments for their neutrality!
The _Fox_ man-of-war of 20 guns is lost off Dunbar. One Beavor, the captain, has done us notable service: the Pretender sent to commend his zeal and activity, and to tell him, that if he would return to his allegiance, he should soon have a flag. Beavor replied, “He never treated with any but principals; that if the Pretender would come on board him, he would talk with him.” I must now tell you of our great Vernon: without once complaining to the Ministry, he has written to Sir John Philipps, a distinguished Jacobite, to complain of want of provisions; yet they do not venture to recall him! Yesterday they had another baiting from Pitt, who is ravenous for the place of Secretary at War: they would give it him; but as a preliminary, he insists on a declaration of our having nothing to do with the continent. He mustered his forces, but did not notify his intention; only at two o’clock Lyttelton said at the Treasury, that there would be business at the House. The motion was, to augment our naval force, which, Pitt said, was the only method of putting an end to the rebellion. Ships built a year hence to suppress an army of Highlanders, now marching through England! My uncle [_old_ Horace] attacked him, and congratulated his country on the wisdom of the modern young men; and said he had a son of two-and-twenty, who, he did not doubt, would come over wiser than any of them. Pitt was provoked, and retorted on his negotiations and _grey-headed_ experience. At those words, my uncle, as if he had been at Bartholomew fair, snatched off his wig, and showed his grey hairs, which made the _august senate_ laugh, and put Pitt out, who, after laughing himself, diverted his venom upon Mr. Pelham. Upon the question, Pitt’s party amounted but to thirty-six: in short, he has nothing left but his words, and his haughtiness, and his Lytteltons, and his Grenvilles. Adieu!
_THE REBEL ARMY HAS RETREATED FROM DERBY–EXPECTATION OF A FRENCH INVASION._
TO SIR HORACE MANN.
ARLINGTON STREET, _Dec._ 9, 1745.
I am glad I did not write to you last post as I intended; I should have sent you an account that would have alarmed you, and the danger would have been over before the letter had crossed the sea. The Duke, from some strange want of intelligence, lay last week for four-and-twenty hours under arms at Stone, in Staffordshire, expecting the rebels every moment, while they were marching in all haste to Derby. The news of this threw the town into great consternation; but his Royal Highness repaired his mistake, and got to Northampton, between the Highlanders and London. They got nine thousand pounds at Derby, and had the books brought to them, and obliged everybody to give them what they had subscribed against them. Then they retreated a few miles, but returned again to Derby, got ten thousand pounds more, plundered the town, and burnt a house of the Countess of Exeter. They are gone again, and go back to Leake, in Staffordshire, but miserably harassed, and, it is said, have left all their cannon behind them, and twenty waggons of sick. The Duke has sent General Hawley with the dragoons to harass them in their retreat, and despatched Mr. Conway to Marshal Wade, to hasten his march upon the back of them. They must either go to North Wales, where they will probably all perish, or to Scotland, with great loss. We dread them no longer. We are threatened with great preparations for a French invasion, but the coast is exceedingly guarded; and for the people, the spirit against the rebels increases every day. Though they have marched thus into the heart of the kingdom, there has not been the least symptom of a rising, nor even in the great towns of which they possessed themselves. They have got no recruits since their first entry into England, excepting one gentleman in Lancashire, one hundred and fifty common men, and two parsons, at Manchester, and a physician from York. But here in London, the aversion to them is amazing: on some thoughts of the King’s going to an encampment at Finchley,[1] the weavers not only offered him a thousand men, but the whole body of the Law formed themselves into a little army, under the command of Lord Chief Justice Willes, and were to have done duty at St. James’s, to guard the royal family in the King’s absence.
[Footnote 1: The troops which were being collected for the Duke of Cumberland, as soon as he should arrive from the Continent, to march with against the Pretender, were in the meantime encamped on Finchley Common near London. The march of the Guards to the camp is the subject of one of Hogarth’s best pictures.]
But the greatest demonstration of loyalty appeared on the prisoners being brought to town from the Soleil prize: the young man is certainly Mr. Radcliffe’s son; but the mob, persuaded of his being the youngest Pretender, could scarcely be restrained from tearing him to pieces all the way on the road, and at his arrival. He said he had heard of English mobs, but could not conceive they were so dreadful, and wished he had been shot at the battle of Dettingen, where he had been engaged. The father, whom they call Lord Derwentwater, said, on entering the Tower, that he had never expected to arrive there alive. For the young man, he must only be treated as a French captive; for the father, it is sufficient to produce him at the Old Bailey, and prove that he is the individual person condemned for the last Rebellion, and so to Tyburn.
We begin to take up people, but it is with as much caution and timidity as women of quality begin to pawn their jewels; we have not ventured upon any great stone yet! The Provost of Edinburgh is in custody of a messenger; and the other day they seized an odd man, who goes by the name of Count St. Germain. He has been here these two years, and will not tell who he is, or whence, but professes that he does not go by his right name. He sings, plays on the violin wonderfully, composes, is mad, and not very sensible. He is called an Italian, a Spaniard, a Pole; a somebody that married a great fortune in Mexico, and ran away with her jewels to Constantinople; a priest, a fiddler, a vast nobleman. The Prince of Wales has had unsatiated curiosity about him, but in vain. However, nothing has been made out against him;[1] he is released; and, what convinces me that he is not a gentleman, stays here, and talks of his being taken up for a spy.
[Footnote 1: In the beginning of the year 1755, on rumours of a great armament at Brest, one Virette, a Swiss, who had been a kind of toad-eater to this St. Germain, was denounced to Lord Holdernesse for a spy; but Mr. Stanley going pretty surlily to his lordship, on his suspecting a friend of his, Virette was declared innocent, and the penitent secretary of state made him the _amende honorable_ of a dinner in form. About the same time, a spy of ours was seized at Brest, but, not happening to be acquainted with Mr. Stanley, was broken upon the wheel.–WALPOLE.]
I think these accounts, upon which you may depend, must raise your spirits, and figure in Mr. Chute’s loyal journal.–But you don’t get my letters: I have sent you eleven since I came to town; how many of these have you received? Adieu!
_BATTLE OF CULLODEN._
TO SIR HORACE MANN.
ARLINGTON STREET, _April_ 25, 1746.
You have bid me for some time to send you good news–well! I think I will. How good would you have it? must it be a total victory over the rebels; with not only the Boy, that is here, killed, but the other, that is not here, too; their whole army put to the sword, besides an infinite number of prisoners; all the Jacobite estates in England confiscated, and all those in Scotland–what would you have done with them?–or could you be content with something much under this? how much will you abate? will you compound for Lord John Drummond, taken by accident? or for three Presbyterian parsons, who have very poor livings, stoutly refusing to pay a large contribution to the rebels? Come, I will deal as well with you as I can, and for once, but not to make a practice of it, will let you have a victory! My friend, Lord Bury, arrived this morning from the Duke, though the news was got here before him; for, with all our victory, it was not thought safe to send him through the heart of Scotland; so he was shipped at Inverness, within an hour after the Duke entered the town, kept beating at sea five days, and then put on shore at North Berwick, from whence he came post in less than three days to London; but with a fever upon him, for which he had been twice blooded but the day before the battle; but he is young, and high in spirits, and I flatter myself will not suffer from this kindness of the Duke: the King has immediately ordered him a thousand pound, and I hear will make him his own aide-de-camp. My dear Mr. Chute, I beg your pardon; I have forgot you have the gout, and consequently not the same patience to wait for the battle, with which I, knowing the particulars, postpone it.
On the 16th, the Duke, by forced marches, came up with the rebels, a little on this side Inverness–by the way, the battle is not christened yet; I only know that neither Prestonpans nor Falkirk are to be godfathers. The rebels, who fled from him after their victory, and durst not attack him, when so much exposed to them at his passage of the Spey, now stood him, they seven thousand, he ten. They broke through Barril’s regiment, and killed Lord Robert Kerr, a handsome young gentleman, who was cut to pieces with above thirty wounds; but they were soon repulsed, and fled; the whole engagement not lasting above a quarter of an hour. The young Pretender escaped; Mr. Conway says, he hears, wounded: he certainly was in the rear. They have lost above a thousand men in the engagement and pursuit; and six hundred were already taken; among which latter are their French ambassador and Earl Kilmarnock. The Duke of Perth and Lord Ogilvie are said to be slain; Lord Elcho was in a salivation, and not there. Except Lord Robert Kerr, we lost nobody of note: Sir Robert Rich’s eldest son has lost his hand, and about a hundred and thirty private men fell. The defeat is reckoned total, and the dispersion general; and all their artillery is taken. It is a brave young Duke! The town is all blazing round me, as I write, with fireworks and illuminations: I have some inclination to wrap up half a dozen sky-rockets, to make you drink the Duke’s health. Mr. Dodington, on the first report, came out with a very pretty illumination; so pretty, that I believe he had it by him, ready for _any_ occasion….
_TRIAL OF THE REBEL LORDS BALMERINO AND KILMARNOCK._
TO SIR HORACE MANN.
ARLINGTON STREET, _Aug._ 1, 1746.
I am this moment come from the conclusion of the greatest and most melancholy scene I ever yet saw! You will easily guess it was the Trials of the rebel Lords. As it was the most interesting sight, it was the most solemn and fine: a coronation is a puppet-show, and all the splendour of it idle; but this sight at once feasted one’s eyes and engaged all one’s passions. It began last Monday; three parts of Westminster Hall were inclosed with galleries, and hung with scarlet; and the whole ceremony was conducted with the most awful solemnity and decency, except in the one point of leaving the prisoners at the bar, amidst the idle curiosity of some crowd, and even with the witnesses who had sworn against them, while the Lords adjourned to their own House to consult. No part of the royal family was there, which was a proper regard to the unhappy men, who were become their victims. One hundred and thirty-nine Lords were present, and made a noble sight on their benches _frequent and full_! The Chancellor [Hardwicke] was Lord High Steward; but though a most comely personage with a fine voice, his behaviour was mean, curiously searching for occasion to bow to the minister [Mr. Pelham] that is no peer, and consequently applying to the other ministers, in a manner, for their orders; and not even ready at the ceremonial. To the prisoners he was peevish; and instead of keeping up to the humane dignity of the law of England, whose character it is to point out favour to the criminal, he crossed them, and almost scolded at any offer they made towards defence. I had armed myself with all the resolution I could, with the thought of their crimes and of the danger past, and was assisted by the sight of the Marquis of Lothian in weepers for his son who fell at Culloden–but the first appearance of the prisoners shocked me! their behaviour melted me! Lord Kilmarnock and Lord Cromartie are both past forty, but look younger. Lord Kilmarnock is tall and slender, with an extreme fine person: his behaviour a most just mixture between dignity and submission; if in anything to be reprehended, a little affected, and his hair too exactly dressed for a man in his situation; but when I say it is not to find fault with him, but to show how little fault there was to be found. Lord Cromartie is an indifferent figure, appeared much dejected, and rather sullen: he dropped a few tears the first day, and swooned as soon as he got back to his cell. For Lord Balmerino, he is the most natural brave old fellow I ever saw: the highest intrepidity, even to indifference. At the bar he behaved like a soldier and a man; at the intervals of form, with carelessness and humour. He pressed extremely to have his wife, his pretty Peggy, with him in the Tower. Lady Cromartie only sees her husband through the grate, not choosing to be shut up with him, as she thinks she can serve him better by her intercession without: she is big with child and very handsome: so are their daughters. When they were to be brought from the Tower in separate coaches, there was some dispute in which the axe must go–old Balmerino cried, “Come, come, put it with me.” At the bar, he plays with his fingers upon the axe, while he talks with the gentleman-gaoler; and one day somebody coming up to listen, he took the blade and held it like a fan between their faces. During the trial, a little boy was near him, but not tall enough to see; he made room for the child and placed him near himself.
When the trial began, the two Earls pleaded guilty; Balmerino not guilty, saying he could prove his not being at the taking of the castle of Carlisle, as was laid in the indictment. Then the King’s counsel opened, and Serjeant Skinner pronounced the most absurd speech imaginable; and mentioned the Duke of Perth, “who,” said he, “I see by the papers is dead.” Then some witnesses were examined, whom afterwards the old hero shook cordially by the hand. The Lords withdrew to their House, and returning, demanded of the judges, whether one point not being proved, though all the rest were, the indictment was false? to which they unanimously answered in the negative. Then the Lord High Steward asked the Peers severally, whether Lord Balmerino was guilty! All said, “guilty upon honour,” and then adjourned, the prisoner having begged pardon for giving them so much trouble. While the Lords were withdrawn, the Solicitor-General Murray (brother of the Pretender’s minister) officiously and insolently went up to Lord Balmerino, and asked him, how he could give the Lords so much trouble, when his solicitor had informed him that his plea could be of no use to him? Balmerino asked the bystanders who this person was? and being told he said, “Oh, Mr. Murray! I am extremely glad to see you; I have been with several of your relations; the good lady, your mother, was of great use to us at Perth.” Are not you charmed with this speech? how just it was! As he went away, he said, “They call me Jacobite; I am no more a Jacobite than any that tried me: but if the Great Mogul had set up his standard, I should have followed it, for I could not starve.” The worst of his case is, that after the battle of Dumblain, having a company in the Duke of Argyll’s regiment, he deserted with it to the rebels, and has since been pardoned. Lord Kilmarnock is a Presbyterian, with four earldoms in him, but so poor since Lord Wilmington’s stopping a pension that my father had given him, that he often wanted a dinner. Lord Cromartie was receiver of the rents of the King’s second son in Scotland, which, it was understood, he should not account for; and by that means had six-hundred a-year from the Government: Lord Elibank, a very prating, impertinent Jacobite, was bound for him in nine thousand pounds, for which the Duke is determined to sue him.
When the Peers were going to vote, Lord Foley withdrew, as too well a wisher; Lord Moray, as nephew of Lord Balmerino–and Lord Stair,–as, I believe, uncle to his great-grandfather. Lord Windsor, very affectedly, said, “I am sorry I must say, _guilty upon my honour_.” Lord Stamford would not answer to the name of _Henry_, having been christened _Harry_–what a great way of thinking on such an occasion! I was diverted too with old Norsa, the father of my brother’s concubine, an old Jew that kept a tavern; my brother [Orford], as Auditor of the Exchequer, has a gallery along one whole side of the court; I said, “I really feel for the prisoners!” old Issachar replied, “Feel for them! pray, if they had succeeded, what would have become of _all us_?” When my Lady Townsend heard her husband vote, she said, “I always knew _my_ Lord was _guilty_, but I never thought he would own it _upon his honour_.” Lord Balmerino said, that one of his reasons for pleading _not guilty_, was that so many ladies might not be disappointed of their show.
On Wednesday they were again brought to Westminster Hall, to receive sentence; and being asked what they had to say, Lord Kilmarnock, with a very fine voice, read a very fine speech, confessing the extent of his crime, but offering his principles as some alleviation, having his eldest son (his second unluckily with him), in the Duke’s army, _fighting for the liberties of his country at Culloden, where his unhappy father was in arms to destroy them_. He insisted much on his tenderness to the English prisoners, which some deny, and say that he was the man who proposed their being put to death, when General Stapleton urged that _he_ was come to fight, but not to butcher; and that if they acted any such barbarity, he would leave them with all his men. He very artfully mentioned Van Hoey’s letter, and said how much he would scorn to owe his life to such intercession.[1] Lord Cromartie spoke much shorter, and so low, that he was not heard but by those who sat very near him; but they prefer his speech to the other. He mentioned his misfortune in having drawn in his eldest son, who is prisoner with him; and concluded with saying, “If no part of this bitter cup must pass from me, not mine, O God, but thy will be done!” If he had pleaded _not guilty_, there was ready to be produced against him a paper signed with his own hand, for putting the English prisoners to death.
[Footnote 1: In a subsequent letter Walpole attributes Lord Kilmarnock’s complicity in the rebellion partly to the influence of his mother, the Countess of Errol, and partly to his extreme poverty. He says: “I don’t know whether I told you that the man at the tennis-court protests that he has known him dine with the man that sells pamphlets at Storey’s Gate; ‘and,’ says he, ‘he would often have been glad if I would have taken him home to dinner.’ He was certainly so poor, that in one of his wife’s intercepted letters she tells him she has plagued their steward for a fortnight for money, and can get but three shillings.” One cannot help remembering, _Ibit eo quo vis qui zonam perdidit_. And afterwards, in relating his execution, he mentions a report that the Duke of Cumberland charging him (certainly on misinformation) with having promoted the adoption of “a resolution taken the day before the battle of Culloden” to put the English prisoners to death, “decided this unhappy man’s fate” by preventing his obtaining a pardon.]
Lord Leicester went up to the Duke of Newcastle, and said, “I never heard so great an orator as Lord Kilmarnock? if I was your grace I would pardon him, and make him _paymaster_.”[1]
[Footnote 1: “_I would make him paymaster._” The paymaster at this time was Mr. Pitt.]
That morning a paper had been sent to the lieutenant of the Tower for the prisoners; he gave it to Lord Cornwallis, the governor, who carried it to the House of Lords. It was a plea for the prisoners, objecting that the late act for regulating the trials of rebels did not take place till after their crime was committed. The Lords very tenderly and rightly sent this plea to them, of which, as you have seen, the two Earls did not make use; but old Balmerino did, and demanded council on it. The High Steward, almost in a passion, told him, that when he had been offered council, he did not accept it. Do but think on the ridicule of sending them the plea, and then denying them council on it! The Duke of Newcastle, who never let slip an opportunity of being absurd, took it up as a ministerial point, in defence of his creature the Chancellor [Hardwicke]; but Lord Granville moved, according to order, to adjourn to debate in the chamber of Parliament, where the Duke of Bedford and many others spoke warmly for their having council; and it was granted. I said _their_, because the plea would have saved them all, and affected nine rebels who had been hanged that very morning; particularly one Morgan, a poetical lawyer. Lord Balmerino asked for Forester and Wilbraham; the latter a very able lawyer in the House of Commons, who, the Chancellor said privately, he was sure would as soon be hanged as plead such a cause. But he came as council to-day (the third day), when Lord Balmerino gave up his plea as invalid, and submitted, without any speech. The High Steward [Hardwicke] then made his, very long and very poor, with only one or two good passages; and then pronounced sentence!
Great intercession is made for the two Earls: Duke Hamilton, who has never been at Court, designs to kiss the King’s hand, and ask Lord Kilmarnock’s life. The King is much inclined to some mercy; but the Duke, who has not so much of Caesar after a victory, as in gaining it, is for the utmost severity. It was lately proposed in the city to present him with the freedom of some company; one of the aldermen said aloud, “Then let it be of the _Butchers_!”[1] The Scotch and his Royal Highness are not at all guarded in their expressions of each other. When he went to Edinburgh, in his pursuit of the rebels, they would not admit his guards, alleging that it was contrary to their privileges; but they rode in, sword in hand; and the Duke, very justly incensed, refused to see any of the magistrates. He came with the utmost expedition to town, in order for Flanders; but found that the Court of Vienna had already sent Prince Charles thither, without the least notification, at which both King and Duke are greatly offended. When the latter waited on his brother, the Prince carried him into a room that hangs over the wall of St. James’s Park, and stood there with his arm about his neck, to charm the gazing mob.
[Footnote 1: “The Duke,” says Sir Walter Scott, “was received with all the honours due to conquest; and all the incorporated bodies of the capital, from the Guild brethren to the Butchers, desired the acceptance of the freedom of their craft, or corporation.” Billy the Butcher was one of his by-names.]
Murray, the Pretender’s secretary, has made ample confessions: the Earl of Traquair, and Mr. Barry, a physician, are apprehended, and more warrants are out; so much for rebels! Your friend, Lord Sandwich, is instantly going ambassador to Holland, to pray the Dutch to build more ships. I have received yours of July 19th, but you see have no more room left, only to say, that I conceive a good idea of my eagle, though the seal is a bad one. Adieu!
P.S.–I have not room to say anything to the Tesi till next post; but, unless she will sing gratis, would advise her to drop this thought.
_THE BATTLE OF RANCOUX._
TO SIR HORACE MANN.
ARLINGTON STREET, _Oct._ 14, 1746.
You will have been alarmed with the news of another battle lost in Flanders, where we have no Kings of Sardinia. We make light of it; do not allow it to be a battle, but call it “the action near Liege.” Then we have whittled down our loss extremely, and will not allow a man more than three hundred and fifty English slain out of the four thousand. The whole of it, as it appears to me, is, that we gave up eight battalions to avoid fighting; as at Newmarket people pay their forfeit when they foresee they should lose the race; though, if the whole army had fought, and we had lost the day, one might have hoped to have come off for eight battalions. Then they tell you that the French had four-and-twenty-pounders, and that they must beat us by the superiority of their cannon; so that to me it is grown a paradox, to war with a nation who have a mathematical certainty of beating you; or else it is still a stranger paradox, why you cannot have as large cannon as the French.[1] This loss was balanced by a pompous account of the triumphs of our invasion of Bretagne; which, in plain terms, I think, is reduced to burning two or three villages and reimbarking: at least, two or three of the transports are returned with this history, and know not what is become of Lestock and the rest of the invasion. The young Pretender is landed in France, with thirty Scotch, but in such a wretched condition that his Highland Highness had no breeches.
[Footnote 1: Marshal Saxe had inspired his army with confidence that a day of battle was sure to be a day of victory, as was shown by the theatrical company which accompanied the camp. After the performance on the evening of October 10th the leading actress announced that there would be no performance on the morrow, because there was to be a battle, but on the 12th the company would have the honour of presenting “The Village Clock.” (See the Editor’s “France under the Bourbons,” iii. 26.)]
I have received yours of the 27th of last month, with the capitulation of Genoa, and the kind conduct of the Austrians to us their allies, so extremely like their behaviour whenever they are fortunate. Pray, by the way, has there been any talk of my cousin, the Commodore, being blameable in letting slip some Spanish ships?–don’t mention it as from me, but there are whispers of court-martial on him. They are all the fashion now; if you miss a post to me, I will have you tried by a court-martial. Cope is come off most gloriously, his courage ascertained, and even his conduct, which everybody had given up, justified. Folkes and Lascelles, two of his generals, are come off too; but not so happily in the opinion of the world. Oglethorpe’s sentence is not yet public, but it is believed not to be favourable. He was always a bully, and is now tried for cowardice. Some little dash of the same sort is likely to mingle with the judgment on _il furibondo_ Matthews; though his party rises again a little, and Lestock’s acquittal begins to pass for a party affair. In short, we are a wretched people, and have seen our best days!
I must have lost a letter, if you really told me of the sale of the Duke of Modena’s pictures, as you think you did; for when Mr. Chute told it me, it struck me as quite new. They are out of town, good souls; and I shall not see them this fortnight; for I am here only for two or three days, to inquire after the battle, in which not one of my friends were. Adieu!
_ON CONWAY’S VERSES–NO SCOTCH_MAN_ IS CAPABLE OF SUCH DELICACY OF THOUGHT, THOUGH A SCOTCHWOMAN MAY BE–AKENSIDE’S, ARMSTRONG’S, AND GLOVER’S POEMS._
TO THE HON. H.S. CONWAY.
WINDSOR, _Oct._ 24, 1746.
Well, Harry, Scotland is the last place on earth I should have thought of for turning anybody poet: but I begin to forgive it half its treasons in favour of your verses, for I suppose you don’t think I am the dupe of the Highland story that you tell me: the only use I shall make of it is to commend the lines to you, as if they really were a Scotchman’s. There is a melancholy harmony in them that is charming, and a delicacy in the thoughts that no Scotchman is capable of, though a _Scotchwoman_ might inspire it.[1] I beg, both for Cynthia’s sake and my own, that you would continue your De Tristibus till I have an opportunity of seeing your muse, and she of rewarding her: _Reprens la musette, berger amoureux_! If Cynthia has ever travelled ten miles in fairy-land, she must be wondrous content with the person and qualifications of her knight, who in future story will be read of thus: Elmedorus was tall and perfectly well made, his face oval, and features regularly handsome, but not effeminate; his complexion sentimentally brown, with not much colour; his teeth fine, and forehead agreeably low, round which his black hair curled naturally and beautifully. His eyes were black too, but had nothing of fierce or insolent; on the contrary, a certain melancholy swimmingness, that described hopeless love rather than a natural amorous languish. His exploits in war, where he always fought by the side of the renowned Paladine William of England, have endeared his memory to all admirers of true chivalry, as the mournful elegies which he poured out among the desert rocks of Caledonia in honour of the peerless lady and his heart’s idol, the incomparable Cynthia, will for ever preserve his name in the flowery annals of poesy.
[Footnote 1: Walpole could not foresee the genius of Burns, that before his own death was to shed such glory on Scotland. His compliment to a Scotchwoman was an allusion to Lady Aylesbury (_nee_ Miss Caroline Campbell), whom Conway married after her husband’s death, which took place a few months after the date of this letter. Lady Aylesbury was no poetess, but his estimate of what might be accomplished by Scotch ladies was afterwards fully borne out by Lady Anne Lindsay, the authoress of “Auld Gray,” and Lady Nairn.]
What a pity it is I was not born in the golden age of Louis the Fourteenth, when it was not only the fashion to write folios, but to read them too! or rather, it is a pity the same fashion don’t subsist now, when one need not be at the trouble of invention, nor of turning the whole Roman history into romance for want of proper heroes. Your campaign in Scotland, rolled out and well be-epitheted, would make a pompous work, and make one’s fortune; at sixpence a number, one should have all the damsels within the liberties for subscribers: whereas now, if one has a mind to be read, one must write metaphysical poems in blank verse, which, though I own to be still easier, have not half the imagination of romances, and are dull without any agreeable absurdity. Only think of the gravity of this wise age, that have exploded “Cleopatra and Pharamond,” and approve “The Pleasures of the Imagination,” “The Art of Preserving Health,” and “Leonidas!” I beg the age’s pardon: it has done approving these poems, and has forgot them.
Adieu! dear Harry. Thank you seriously for the poem. I am going to town for the birthday, and shall return hither till the Parliament meets; I suppose there is no doubt of our meeting then.
Yours ever.
P.S.–Now you are at Stirling, if you should meet with Drummond’s History of the five King Jameses, pray look it over. I have lately read it, and like it much. It is wrote in imitation of Livy; the style masculine, and the whole very sensible; only he ascribes the misfortunes of one reign to the then king’s loving architecture and
In trim gardens taking pleasure.
_HE HAS BOUGHT STRAWBERRY HILL._
TO THE HON. H.S. CONWAY.
TWICKENHAM, _June_ 8, 1747.
You perceive by my date that I am got into a new camp, and have left my tub at Windsor. It is a little plaything-house that I got out of Mrs. Chenevix’s shop, and is the prettiest bauble you ever saw. It is set in enamelled meadows, with filigree hedges:
A small Euphrates through the piece is told, And little finches wave their wings in gold.
Two delightful roads, that you would call dusty, supply me continually with coaches and chaises: barges as solemn as Barons of the Exchequer move under my window; Richmond Hill and Ham walks bound my prospect; but, thank God! the Thames is between me and the Duchess of Queensberry. Dowagers as plenty as flounders inhabit all around, and Pope’s ghost is just now skimming under my window by a most poetical moonlight. I have about land enough to keep such a farm as Noah’s, when he set up in the ark with a pair of each kind; but my cottage is rather cleaner than I believe his was after they had been cooped up together forty days. The Chenevixes had tricked it out for themselves: up two pair of stairs is what they call Mr. Chenevix’s library, furnished with three maps, one shelf, a bust of Sir Isaac Newton, and a lame telescope without any glasses. Lord John Sackville _predecessed_ me here, and instituted certain games called _cricketalia_, which have been celebrated this very evening in honour of him in a neighbouring meadow.
You will think I have removed my philosophy from Windsor with my tea-things hither; for I am writing to you in all this tranquillity, while a Parliament is bursting about my ears. You know it is going to be dissolved: I am told, you are taken care of, though I don’t know where, nor whether anybody that chooses you will quarrel with me because he does choose you, as that little bug the Marquis of Rockingham did; one of the calamities of my life which I have bore as abominably well as I do most about which I don’t care. They say the Prince has taken up two hundred thousand pounds, to carry elections which he won’t carry:–he had much better have saved it to buy the Parliament after it is chosen. A new set of peers are in embryo, to add more dignity to the silence of the House of Lords.
I made no remarks on your campaign, because, as you say, you do nothing at all; which, though very proper nutriment for a thinking head, does not do quite so well to write upon. If any one of you can but contrive to be shot upon your post, it is all we desire, shall look upon it as a great curiosity, and will take care to set up a monument to the person so slain; as we are doing by vote to Captain Cornewall, who was killed at the beginning of the action in the Mediterranean four years ago. In the present dearth of glory, he is canonized; though, poor man! he had been tried twice the year before for cowardice.
I could tell you much election news, none else; though not being thoroughly attentive to so important a subject, as to be sure one ought to be, I might now and then mistake, and give you a candidate for Durham in place of one for Southampton, or name the returning officer instead of the candidate. In general, I believe, it is much as usual–those sold in detail that afterwards will be sold in the representation–the ministers bribing Jacobites to choose friends of their own–the name of well-wishers to the present establishment, and patriots outbidding ministers that they may make the better market of their own patriotism:–in short, all England, under some name or other, is just now to be bought and sold; though, whenever we become posterity and forefathers, we shall be in high repute for wisdom and virtue. My great-great-grandchildren will figure me with a white beard down to my girdle; and Mr. Pitt’s will believe him unspotted enough to have walked over nine hundred hot ploughshares, without hurting the sole of his foot. How merry my ghost will be, and shake its ears to hear itself quoted as a person of consummate prudence! Adieu, dear Harry!
Yours ever.
_HIS MODE OF LIFE–PLANTING–PROPHECIES OF NEW METHODS AND NEW DISCOVERIES IN A FUTURE GENERATION._
TO THE HON. H.S. CONWAY.
STRAWBERRY HILL, _Aug._ 29, 1748.
Dear Harry,–Whatever you may think, a campaign at Twickenham furnishes as little matter for a letter as an abortive one in Flanders. I can’t say indeed that my generals wear black wigs, but they have long full-bottomed hoods which cover as little entertainment to the full.
[Illustration: STRAWBERRY HILL, FROM THE SOUTH EAST.]
There’s General my Lady Castlecomer, and General my Lady Dowager Ferris! Why, do you think I can extract more out of them than you can out of Hawley or Honeywood? Your old women dress, go to the Duke’s levee, see that the soldiers cock their hats right, sleep after dinner, and soak with their led-captains till bed-time, and tell a thousand lies of what they never did in their youth. Change hats for head-clothes, the rounds for visits, and led-captains for toad-eaters, and the life is the very same. In short, these are the people I live in the midst of, though not with; and it is for want of more important histories that I have wrote to you seldom; not, I give you my word, from the least negligence. My present and sole occupation is planting, in which I have made great progress and talked very learnedly with the nurserymen, except that now and then a lettuce run to seed overturns all my botany, as I have more than once taken it for a curious West Indian flowering shrub. Then the deliberation with which trees grow, is extremely inconvenient to my natural impatience. I lament living in so barbarous an age, when we are come to so little perfection in gardening. I am persuaded that a hundred and fifty years hence it will be as common to remove oaks a hundred and fifty years old, as it is now to transplant tulip roots.[1] I have even begun a treatise or panegyric on the great discoveries made by posterity in all arts and sciences, wherein I shall particularly descant on the great and cheap convenience of making trout-rivers–one of the improvements which Mrs. Kerwood wondered Mr. Hedges would not make at his country-house, but which was not then quite so common as it will be. I shall talk of a secret for roasting a wild boar and a whole pack of hounds alive, without hurting them, so that the whole chase may be brought up to table; and for this secret, the Duke of Newcastle’s grandson, if he can ever get a son, is to give a hundred thousand pounds. Then the delightfulness of having whole groves of humming-birds, tame tigers taught to fetch and carry, pocket spying-glasses to see all that is doing in China, with a thousand other toys, which we now look upon as impracticable, and which pert posterity would laugh in one’s face for staring at, while they are offering rewards for perfecting discoveries, of the principles of which we have not the least conception! If ever this book should come forth, I must expect to have all the learned in arms against me, who measure all knowledge backward: some of them have discovered symptoms of all arts in Homer; and Pineda,[2] had so much faith in the accomplishments of his ancestors, that he believed Adam understood all sciences but politics. But as these great champions for our forefathers are dead, and Boileau not alive to hitch me into a verse with Perrault, I am determined to admire the learning of posterity, especially being convinced that half our present knowledge sprung from discovering the errors of what had formerly been called so. I don’t think I shall ever make any great discoveries myself, and therefore shall be content to propose them to my descendants, like my Lord Bacon,[3] who, as Dr. Shaw says very prettily in his preface to Boyle, “had the art of inventing arts:” or rather like a Marquis of Worcester, of whom I have seen a little book which he calls “A Century of Inventions,”[4] where he has set down a hundred machines to do impossibilities with, and not a single direction how to make the machines themselves.
[Footnote 1: It is worth noting that these predictions that “it will be common to remove oaks a hundred and fifty years old” has been verified many years since; at least, if not in the case of oaks, in that of large elms and ashtrees. In 1850 Mr. Paxton offered to a Committee of the House of Commons to undertake to remove the large elm which was standing on the ground proposed for the Crystal Palace of the Exhibition of 1851, and his master, the Duke of Devonshire, has since that time removed many trees of very large size from one part of his grounds to another; and similarly the “making of trout rivers” has been carried out in many places, even in our most distant colonies, by Mr. Buckland’s method of raising the young fish from roe in boxes and distributing them in places where they were needed.]
[Footnote 2: Pineda was a Spanish Jesuit of the seventeenth century, and a voluminous writer.]
[Footnote 3: It is a singular thing that this most eminent man should be so constantly spoken of by a title which he never had. His first title in the peerage was Baron Verulam; his second, on a subsequent promotion, was Viscount St. Albans; yet the error is as old as Dryden, and is defended by Lord Macaulay in a sentence of pre-eminent absurdity: “Posterity has felt that the greatest of English philosophers could derive no accession of dignity from any title which power could bestow, and, in defiance of letters-patent, has obstinately refused to degrade Francis Bacon into Viscount St. Albans.” But, without stopping to discuss the propriety of representing a Britiph peerage, honestly earned, and, in his case as Lord Chancellor, necessarily conferred, as a “degradation,” the mistake made is not that of continuing to call him Francis Bacon, a name by which at one time he was known, but that of calling him “Lord Bacon,” a title by which he was never known for a single moment in his lifetime; while, if a great philosopher was really “degraded” by a peerage, it is hard to see how the degradation would have been lessened by the title being Lord Bacon, which it was not, rather than Viscount St. Albans, which it was.]
[Footnote 4: The “Biographie Universelle” (art. _Newcomen_) says of the Marquis: “Longtemps avant lui [Neucomen] on avait remarque la grande force expansive de la vapeur, et on avait imagine de l’employer comme puissance. On trouve deja cette application proposee et meme executee dans un ouvrage publie en 1663, par le Marquis de Worcester, sous le titre bizarre, ‘A Century of Inventions.'”]
If I happen to be less punctual in my correspondence than I intend to be, you must conclude I am writing my book, which being designed for a panegyric, will cost me a great deal of trouble. The dedication with your leave, shall be addressed to your son that is coming, or, with Lady Ailesbury’s leave, to your ninth son, who will be unborn nearer to the time I am writing of; always provided that she does not bring three at once, like my Lady Berkeley.
Well! I have here set you the example of writing nonsense when one has nothing to say, and shall take it ill if you don’t keep up the correspondence on the same foot. Adieu!
_REJOICINGS FOR THE PEACE–MASQUERADE AT RANELAGH–MEETING OF THE PRINCES PARTY AND THE JACOBITES–PREVALENCE OF DRINKING AND GAMBLING–WHITEFIELD._
TO SIR HORACE MANN.
STRAWBERRY HILL, _May_ 3, 1749.
I am come hither for a few days, to repose myself after a torrent of diversions, and am writing to you in my charming bow-window with a tranquillity and satisfaction which, I fear, I am grown old enough to prefer to the hurry of amusements, in which the whole world has lived for this last week. We have at last celebrated the Peace, and that as much in extremes as we generally do everything, whether we have reason to be glad or sorry, pleased or angry. Last Tuesday it was proclaimed: the King did not go to St. Paul’s, but at night the whole town was illuminated. The next day was what was called “a jubilee-masquerade in the Venetian manner” at Ranelagh: it had nothing Venetian in it, but was by far the best understood and the prettiest spectacle I ever saw: nothing in a fairy tale ever surpassed it. One of the proprietors, who is a German, and belongs to Court, had got my Lady Yarmouth to persuade the King to order it. It began at three o’clock, and, about five, people of fashion began to go. When you entered, you found the whole garden filled with masks and spread with tents, which remained all night _very commodely_. In one quarter, was a May-pole dressed with garlands, and people dancing round it to a tabor and pipe and rustic music, all masqued, as were all the various bands of music that were disposed in different parts of the garden; some like huntsmen with French horns, some like peasants, and a troop of harlequins and scaramouches in the little open temple on the mount. On the canal was a sort of gondola, adorned with flags and streamers, and filled with music, rowing about. All round the outside of the amphitheatre were shops, filled with Dresden china, japan, &c., and all the shopkeepers in mask. The amphitheatre was illuminated; and in the middle was a circular bower, composed of all kinds of firs in tubs, from twenty to thirty feet high: under them orange-trees, with small lamps in each orange, and below them all sorts of the finest auriculas in pots; and festoons of natural flowers hanging from tree to tree. Between the arches too were firs, and smaller ones in the balconies above. There were booths for tea and wine, gaming-tables and dancing, and about two thousand persons. In short, it pleased me more than anything I ever saw. It is to be once more, and probably finer as to dresses, as there has since been a subscription masquerade, and people will go in their rich habits. The next day were the fireworks, which by no means answered the expense, the length of preparation, and the expectation that had been raised; indeed, for a week before, the town was like a country fair, the streets filled from morning to night, scaffolds building wherever you could or could not see, and coaches arriving from every corner of the kingdom. This hurry and lively scene, with the sight of the immense crowd in the Park and on every house, the guards, and the machine itself, which was very beautiful, was all that was worth seeing. The rockets, and whatever was thrown up into the air, succeeded mighty well; but the wheels, and all that was to compose the principal part, were pitiful and ill-conducted, with no changes of coloured fires and shapes: the illumination was mean, and lighted so slowly that scarce anybody had patience to wait the finishing; and then, what contributed to the awkwardness of the whole, was the right pavilion catching fire, and being burnt down in the middle of the show. The King, the Duke, and Princess Emily saw it from the Library, with their courts: the Prince and Princess, with their children, from Lady Middlesex’s; no place being provided for them, nor any invitation given to the library. The Lords and Commons had galleries built for them and the chief citizens along the rails of the Mall: the Lords had four tickets a-piece, and each Commoner, at first, but two, till the Speaker bounced and obtained a third. Very little mischief was done, and but two persons killed: at Paris, there were forty killed and near three hundred wounded, by a dispute between the French and Italians in the management, who, quarrelling for precedence in lighting the fires, both lighted at once and blew up the whole. Our mob was extremely tranquil, and very unlike those I remember in my father’s time, when it was a measure in the Opposition to work up everything to mischief, the Excise and the French players, the Convention and the Gin Act. We are as much now in the opposite extreme, and in general so pleased with the peace, that I could not help being struck with a passage I read lately in Pasquier, an old French author, who says, “that in the time of Francis I. the French used to call their creditors ‘Des Anglois,’ from the facility with which the English gave credit to them in all treaties, though they had broken so many.” On Saturday we had a serenta at the Opera-house, called Peace in Europe, but it was a wretched performance. On Monday there was a subscription masquerade, much fuller than that of last year, but not so agreeable or so various in dresses. The King was well disguised in an old-fashioned English habit, and much pleased with somebody who desired him to hold their cup as they were drinking tea. The Duke had a dress of the same kind, but was so immensely corpulent that he looked like Cacofogo, the drunken captain, in “Rule a Wife and have a Wife.” The Duchess of Richmond was a Lady Mayoress in the time of James I.; and Lord Delawarr, Queen Elizabeth’s porter, from a picture in the guard-chamber at Kensington: they were admirable masks. Lord Rochford, Miss Evelyn, Miss Bishop, Lady Stafford, and Mrs. Pitt, were in vast beauty; particularly the last, who had a red veil, which made her look gloriously handsome. I forgot Lady Kildare. Mr. Conway was the Duke in “Don Quixote,” and the finest figure I ever saw. Miss Chudleigh was Iphigenia, but so naked that you would have taken her for Andromeda; and Lady Betty Smithson [Seymour] had such a pyramid of baubles upon her head, that she was exactly the Princess of Babylon in Grammont.
You will conclude that, after all these diversions, people begin to think of going out of town–no such matter: the Parliament continues sitting, and will till the middle of June; Lord Egmont told us we should sit till Michaelmas. There are many private bills, no public ones of any fame. We were to have had some chastisement for Oxford, where, besides the late riots, the famous Dr. King,[1] the Pretender’s great agent, made a most violent speech at the opening of the Ratcliffe Library. The ministry denounced judgment, but, in their old style, have grown frightened, and dropped it. However, this menace gave occasion to a meeting and union between the Prince’s party and the Jacobites which Lord Egmont has been labouring all the winter. They met at the St. Alban’s tavern, near Pall Mall, last Monday morning, a hundred and twelve Lords and Commoners. The Duke of Beaufort opened the assembly with a panegyric on the stand that had been made this winter against so corrupt an administration, and hoped it would continue, and desired harmony. Lord Egmont seconded this strongly, and begged they would come up to Parliament early next winter. Lord Oxford spoke next; and then Potter with great humour, and to the great abashment of the Jacobites, said he was very glad to see this union, and from thence hoped, that if another attack like the last Rebellion should be made on the Royal Family, they would all stand by them. No reply was made to this. Then Sir Watkyn Williams spoke, Sir Francis Dashwood,[2] and Tom Pitt, and the meeting broke up. I don’t know what this coalition may produce: it will require time with no better heads than compose it at present, though the great Mr. Dodington had carried to the conference the assistance of his. In France a very favourable event has happened for us, the disgrace of Maurepas,[3] one of our bitterest enemies, and the greatest promoter of their marine. Just at the beginning of the war, in a very critical period, he had obtained a very large sum for that service, but which one of the other factions, lest he should gain glory and credit by it, got to be suddenly given away to the King of Prussia.
[Footnote 1: Dr. King was Principal of St. Mary’s Hall, Oxford, and one of the chief supports of the Jacobite party after 1745.]
[Footnote 2: Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1761, through the influence of the Earl of Bute. He was the owner of Medmenham Abbey, on the Thames, and as such, the President of the profligate Club whose doings were made notorious by the proceedings against Wilkes, and who, in compliment to him, called themselves the Franciscans.]
[Footnote 3: The Comte de Maurepas was the grandson of the Chancellor of France, M. de Pontchartrain. When only fourteen years old Louis had made him Secretary of State for the Marine, as a consolation to his grandfather for his dismissal; and he continued in office till the accession of Louis XVI., when he was appointed Prime Minister. He was not a man of any statesmanlike ability; but Lacretelle ascribes to him “les graces d’un esprit aimable et frivole qui avait le don d’amuser un vieillard toujours porte a un elegant badinage” (ii. 53); and in a subsequent letter speaks of him as a man of very lively powers of conversation.]
Sir Charles Williams[1] is appointed envoy to this last King: here is an epigram which he has just sent over on Lord Egmont’s opposition to the Mutiny Bill:
Why has Lord Egmont ‘gainst this bill So much declamatory skill
So tediously exerted?
The reason’s plain: but t’other day He mutinied himself for pay,
And he has twice deserted.
[Footnote 1: Sir Charles Hanbury Williams had represented Monmouth in Parliament, but in 1744 was sent as ambassador to Berlin, and from thence to St. Petersburg. He was more celebrated in the fashionable world as the author of lyrical odes of a lively character.]
I must tell you a _bon-mot_ that was made the other night at the serenata of “Peace in Europe” by Wall,[1] who is much in fashion, and a kind of Gondomar. Grossatesta, the Modenese minister, a very low fellow, with all the jackpuddinghood of an Italian, asked, “Mais qui est ce qui represente mon maitre?” Wall replied, “Mais, mon Dieu! L’abbe, ne scavez vous pas que ce n’est pas un opera boufon?” and here is another _bon-mot_ of my Lady Townshend: we were talking of Methodists; somebody said, “Pray, Madam, is it true that Whitfield[2] has _recanted_?” “No, sir, he has only _canted_.”
[Footnote 1: General Wall was the Spanish ambassador, as Gondomar had been in the reign of James I.]
[Footnote 2: Whitefield, while an undergraduate at Oxford, joined Wesley, who had recently founded a sect which soon became known as the Methodists. But, after a time, Whitefield, who was of a less moderate temper than Wesley, adopted the views known as Calvinistic, and, breaking off from the Wesleyans, established a sect more rigid and less friendly to the Church.]
If you ever think of returning to England, as I hope it will be long first, you must prepare yourself with Methodism. I really believe that by that time it will be necessary: this sect increases as fast as almost ever any religious nonsense did. Lady Fanny Shirley has chosen this way of bestowing the dregs of her beauty; and Mr. Lyttelton is very near making the same sacrifice of the dregs of all those various characters that he has worn. The Methodists love your big sinners, as proper subjects to work upon–and indeed they have a plentiful harvest–I think what you call flagrancy was never more in fashion. Drinking is at the highest wine-mark; and gaming joined with it so violent, that at the last Newmarket meeting, in the rapidity of both, a bank-bill was thrown down, and nobody immediately claiming it, they agreed to give it to a man that was standing by….
_EARTHQUAKE IN LONDON–GENERAL PANIC–MARRIAGE OF CASIMIR, KING OF POLAND._
TO SIR HORACE MANN.
ARLINGTON STREET, _March_ 11, 1750.
Portents and prodigies are grown so frequent, That they have lost their name.
My text is not literally true; but as far as 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 chinaware. 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,[1] 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.
[Footnote 1: In an earlier letter Walpole mentions that Sir I. Newton had foretold a great alteration in the English climate in 1750.]
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 seams: 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. Do you know, I have found a history that has 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 l’Hopital was the daughter of a seamstress; 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. She came to Paris, where the Marechal de l’Hopital 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 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 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!
GENERAL PANIC–SHERLOCK’S PASTORAL LETTER–PREDICTIONS OF MORE EARTHQUAKES–A GENERAL FLIGHT FROM LONDON–EPIGRAMS BY CHUTE AND WALPOLE HIMSELF–FRENCH TRANSLATION OF MILTON.
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: Seeker, 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, 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.[1] Dick Leveson and Mr. Rigby, who had supped and stayed 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!”…
[Footnote 1: “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.'”]
This frantic terror prevails 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 6_d._) 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, and Lord and Lady Galway, 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. 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 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!–’tis Caroline.