Letters of Horace Walpole. 23 Mar 1752. Arlington Street. To Horace Mann 1st Baronet (age 45).

Mr. Conway (age 31) has been arrived this fortnight, or a week sooner than we expected him: but my [her future sister-in-law] Lady Ailesbury (age 31) forgives it! He is full of your praises, so you have not sowed your goodness in unthankful ground. By a letter I have just received from you he finds you have missed some from him with Commissions; but he will tell you about them himself I find him much leaner, and great cracks in his beauty. Your picture is arrived, which he says is extremely like you. Mr. Chute (age 51) cannot bear it; says it wants your countenance and goodness; that it looks bonny and Irish. I am between both, and should know it; to be sure, there is none of your wet-brown-paperness in it, but it has a look with which I have known you come out of your little room, when Richcourt has raised your ministerial French, and you have writ to England about it till you were half fuddled. Au reste, it is gloriously coloured-will Astley promise to continue to do as well? or has he, like all other English painters, only laboured this to get reputation, and then intends to daub away to get money?

The year has not kept the promise of tranquillity that it made you at Christmas; there has been another parliamentary bustle. The Duke of Argyll (age 69)²⁹⁹ has drawn the ministry into accommodating him with a notable job, under the notion of buying for the King from the mortgagees the forfeited estates in Scotland, which are to be colonized and civilized. It passed with some inconsiderable hitches through the Commons; but in the Lords last week the Duke of Bedford (age 41) took it up warmly, and spoke like another Pitt.³⁰⁰ He attacked the Duke of Argyll (age 69) on favouring Jacobites, and produced some flagrant instances, which the Scotch Duke neither answered nor endeavoured to excuse, but made a strange, hurt, mysterious, contemptuous, incoherent speech, neither in defence of the bill nor in reply to the Duke of Bedford, but to my Lord Bath (age 68), who had fallen upon the ministry for assuming a dispensing power, in suffering Scotland to pay no taxes for the last five years. This speech, which formerly would have made the House of Commons take up arms, was strangely flat and unanimated, for want of his old chorus. Twelve lords divided against eighty that were for the bill. The Duke, who was present, would not vote; none of his people had attended the bill in the other House, and General Mordaunt (age 55) (by his orders, as it is imagined) spoke against it. This concludes the session: the King goes to Hanover on Tuesday, he has been scattering ribands of all colours, blue ones [Note. Reference to being created a Knight of the Garter] on Prince Edward (age 12), the young Stadtholder, and the Earls of Lincoln (age 31), Winchilsea (age 62), and Cardigan (age 39);³⁰¹ a green one [Note. Reference to being created a Knight of the Order of the Thistle] on Lord Dumfries;³⁰² a red [Note. Order of the Bath] on Lord Onslow (age 39).³⁰³

The world is still mad about the Gunnings; the Duchess of Hamilton (age 18) was presented on Friday; the crowd was so great, that even the noble mob in the drawing-room clambered upon chairs and tables to look at her. There are mobs at their doors to see them get into their chairs; and people go early to get places at the theatres when it is known they will be there. Dr. Sacheverel never made more noise than these two beauties [Note. Elizabeth Gunning Duchess Hamilton and Argyll (age 18) and [her sister] Maria Gunning Countess Coventry (age 19)].

There are two wretched women that just now are as much talked of, a Miss Jefferies¹ and a Miss Blandy (age 32)²; the one condemned for murdering her uncle, the other her father. Both their stories have horrid circumstances; the first, having been debauched by her uncle; the other had so tender a parent, that his whole concern while he was expiring, and knew her for his murderess, was to save her life. It is shocking to think what a shambles this country is grown! Seventeen were executed this morning, after having murdered the turnkey on Friday night, and almost forced open Newgate. One is forced to travel, even at noon, as if one was going to battle.

Mr. Chute (age 51) is as much yours as ever, except in the article of pen and ink. Your brother transacts all he can for the Lucchi, as he has much more weight there³⁰⁴ than Mr. Chute. Adieu!

Note 299. Archibald Campbell (age 69), Duke of argyll, formerly Earl of Isla.

Note 300. For Lord Hardwicke's notes of this speech, see Parl. Hist. vol. xiv. P. 1235.-E.

Note 301. George Brudenell, fourth Earl of cardigan (age 39), created Duke of Montagu in 1776; died in 1790.-D.

Note 302. William Crichton Dalrymple (age 53), fourth Earl [Note. Mistake. He was 5th Earl] of Dumfries in Scotland, in right of his mother. He also became, in 1760, fourth Earl of stair, and died in 1768.-D.

Note 303. George, third Lord Onslow (age 39); died in 1776.-D.

Note 304. With the late Mr. Whithed's brothers, who scrupled paying a small legacy and annuity to his mistress and child.

Note 1. Elizabeth Jeffries was to have received her uncle's estate but as a consequence of her bad behaviour he stated he would change his will. She, with accomplices, murdered her uncle. She was executed at a temporary gibbet at the Sixth Milestone Epping Forest on 28 Mar 1572.

Note 2. Mary Blandy (age 32) who was found guilty of poisoning her father and executed on 06 Apr 1752.

Letters of Horace Walpole. 13 May 1752. Arlington Street. To Horace Mann 1st Baronet (age 45).

By this time you know my way, how much my letters grow out of season, as it grows summer. I believe it is six weeks since I wrote to you last; but there is not only the usual deadness of summer to account for my silence; England itself is no longer England. News, madness, parties, whims, and twenty other causes, that used to produce perpetual events are at an end; Florence itself is not more inactive. Politics, "Like arts and sciences are travelled west."

They are cot into Ireland, where there is as much bustle to carry a question in the House of Commons, as ever it was here in any year forty-one. Not that there is any opposition to the King's measures; out of three hundred members, there has never yet been a division of above twenty-eight against the government: they are much the most zealous subjects the king has. The Duke of Dorset (age 64) has had the art to make them distinguish between loyalty and aversion to the Lord Lieutenant.

I last night received yours of May 5th; but I cannot deliver your expressions to Mr. Conway (age 31), for he and [her future sister-in-law] Lady Ailesbury (age 31) are gone to his regiment in Ireland for four months, which is a little rigorous, not only after an exile in Minorca, but more especially unpleasant now as they have just bought one of the most charming places in England, Park-place, which belonged to Lady Archibald Hamilton (age 48), and then to the Prince. You have seen enough of Mr. Conway (age 31) to judge how patiently he submits to his duty. Their little girl (age 3) is left with me.

The Gunnings [[her sister] Maria Gunning Countess Coventry (age 19) and Elizabeth Gunning Duchess Hamilton and Argyll (age 18)]are gone to their several castles, and one hears no more of them, except that such crowds flock to see the Duchess Hamilton (age 18) pass, that seven hundred people sat up all night in and about an inn in Yorkshire to see her get into her postchaise next morning.

I saw lately at Mr. Barret's a print of Valombrosa, which I should be glad to have, if you please; though I don't think it gives much idea of the beauty of the place: but you know what a passion there is for it in England, as Milton has mentioned it.

Miss Blandy (deceased) died with a coolness of courage that is astonishing, and denying the fact³¹⁰, which has made a kind of party in her favour as if a woman who would not stick at parricide, would scruple a lie!

We have made a law for immediate execution on conviction of murder: it will appear extraordinary to me if it has any effect;³¹¹ for I can't help believing that the terrible part of death must be the preparation for it.

Note 310. Miss Blandy (deceased) was executed at Oxford, on the 6th of April, "I am perfectly innocent," she exclaimed, "of any intention to destroy or even hurt my dear father; so help me God in these my last moments!"-E.

Note 311. Smollett, on the contrary, was of opinion that the expedient had been productive of very good effects.-E.

Letters of Horace Walpole. 23 Jun 1752. Arlington Street. To The Hon H S Conway (age 31).

By a letter that I received from my [her future sister-in-law] Lady Ailesbury (age 31) two days ago, I flatter myself I shall not have occasion to write to you any more; yet I shall certainly see you with less pleasure than ever, as our meeting is to be attended with a resignation of my little charge (age 3).³¹⁶ She is vastly well, and I think you will find her grown fat. I am husband enough to mind her beauty no longer, and perhaps you will say husband enough too, in pretending that my love is converted into friendship; but I shall tell you some stories at Park-place of her understanding that will please you, I trust, as much as they have done me.

My Lady Ailesbury (age 31) says I must send her news, and the whole history of Mr. Seymour (age 22) and Lady Di. Egerton (age 21), and their quarrel, and all that is said on both sides. I can easily tell her all that is said on one side, Mr. Seymour's, who says, the only answer he has ever been able to get from the Duchess or Mr. Lyttelton was, that Di. has her caprices. The reasons she gives, and gave him, were, the badness of his temper and imperiousness of his letters; that he scolded her for the overfondness of her epistles, and was even so unsentimental as to talk of desiring to make her happy, instead of being made so by her. He is gone abroad, in despair, and with an additional circumstance, which would be very uncomfortable to any thing but a true lover; his father refuses to resettle the estate on him, the entail of which was cut off by mutual consent, to make way for the settlements on the marriage.

The Speaker told me t'other day, that he had received a letter from Lord Hyde, which confirms what Mr. Churchill writes me, the distress and poverty of France and the greatness of their divisions. Yet the King's expenses are incredible; Madame de Pompadour (age 30) is continually busied in finding out new journeys and diversions to keep him from falling into the hands of the clergy. The last party of pleasure she made for him, was a stag-hunting; the stag was a man in a skin and horns, worried by twelve men dressed like bloodhounds! I have read of Basilowitz, a Czar of Muscovy, who improved on such a hunt, and had a man in a bearskin worried by real dogs; a more kingly entertainment!

I shall make out a sad Journal of other news; yet I will be like any gazette, and scrape together all the births, deaths, and marriages in the parish. Lady Hartington (age 32) and Lady Rachel Walpole (age 25) are brought to bed of sons; Lord Burlington (age 58) and Lord Gower (age 57) have had new attacks of palsies: Lord Falkland (age 45) is to marry the Southwark Lady Suffolk;³¹⁷ and Mr. Watson (age 23), Miss Grace Pelham (age 17). [her sister] Lady Coventry (age 19) has miscarried of one or two children, and is going on with one or two more, and is gone to France to-day. Lady Townshend (age 44) and Lady Caroline Petersham (age 30) have had their anniversary quarrel, and the Duchess of Devonshire (age 53) has had her secular assembly, which she keeps once in fifty years: she was more delightfully vulgar at it than you can imagine; complained of the wet night, and how the men would dirty the rooms with their shoes; called out at supper to the Duke (age 53), "Good God! my lord, don't cut the ham, nobody will eat any!" and relating her private menage to Mr. Obnir, she said, "When there's only my lord and I, besides a pudding we have always a dish of Yeast!" I am ashamed to send you such nonsense, or to tell you how the good women at Hampton Court are scandalized at Princess Emily's (age 41) coming to chapel last Sunday in riding-clothes with a dog under her arm; but I am bid to send news: what can we do -,it such a dead time of year? I must conclude, as my Lady Gower did very well t'other day in a letter into the country, "Since the two Misses³¹⁸ were hanged, and the two Misses³¹⁹ were married, there is nothing at all talked of." Adieu! My best compliments and my wife's to your two ladies.

Note 315. Now first published.

Note 316. Their daughter, Ann Seymour Conway (age 3).

Note 317. Sarah, Duchess-dowager of Suffolk, daughter of Thomas Unwen, Esq. of Southwark.-E.

Note 318. Miss Blandy and Miss Jefferies.

Note 319. The Gunnings. [Maria Gunning Countess Coventry (age 19) and Elizabeth Gunning Duchess Hamilton and Argyll (age 18)]

Letters of Horace Walpole. 27 Jul 1752. Our beauties are travelling Paris-ward: Lady Caroline Petersham (age 30) and [her sister] Lady Coventry (age 19) are just gone thither. It will scarce be possible for the latter to make as much noise there as she and her sister (age 18) have in England. It is literally true that a shoemaker in Worcester got two guineas and a half by showing a shoo that he was making for the Countess, at a penny a piece. I can't say her genius is equal to her beauty: she every day says some new sproposito [Note. blunder]. She has taken a turn of vast fondness for her lord (age 30): Lord Downe (age 25) met them at Calais, and offered her a tent-bed, for fear of bugs in the inns. "Oh!" said she, "I had rather be bit to death, than lie one night from my dear Cov.!" I can conceive my Lady Caroline (age 30) making a good deal of noise even at Paris; her beauty is set off by a genius for the extraordinary, and for strokes that will make a figure in any country. Mr. Churchill (age 38) and my sister (age 14) [Note. Half-sister] are just arrived from France; you know my passion for the writing of the younger Crebillon (age 45)³²⁴ you shall hear how I have been mortified by the discovery of the greatest meanness in him; and you will judge how much one must be humbled to have one's favourite author convicted of mere mercenariness! I had desired Lady Mary to lay out thirty guineas for me with Liotard (age 49), and wished, if I could, to have the portraits of Crebillon (age 45) and Marivaux (age 64)³²⁵ for my cabinet. Mr. Churchill wrote me word that Liotard's³²⁶ price was sixteen guineas; that Marivaux (age 64) was intimate with him, and would certainly sit, and that he believed he could get Crebillon (age 45) to sit too. The latter, who is retired into the provinces with an English wife (age 40)³²⁷, was just then at Paris for a month: Mr. Churchill went to him, told him that a gentleman in England, who was making a collection of portraits of famous people, would be happy to have his, etc. Crebillon was humble, "unworthy," obliged; and sat: the picture was just finished, when, behold! he sent Mr. Churchill word, that he expected to have a copy of the picture given him-neither more nor less than asking sixteen guineas for sitting! Mr. Churchill answered that he could not tell what he should do, were it his own case, but that this was a limited commission, and he could not possibly lay out double; and was now so near his return, that he could not have time to write to England and receive an answer. Crebillon said, then he would keep the picture himself-it was excessively like. I am still sentimental enough to flatter myself, that a man who could beg sixteen gineas will not give them, and so I may still have the picture.

Note 324. Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crebillon (age 45), son of the tragic poet of that name, and author of many licentious novels, which are now but little read. He was born in 1707, and died in 1777.-D. ["The taste for his writings," says the Edinburgh Reviewers, "passed away very rapidly and completely in France; and long before his death, the author of the Sopha, and Les Egaremens du Coeur et de l'Esprit, had the mortification to be utterly forgotten by the public." Vol. xxi. p. 284.]

Note 325. Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux (age 64), the author of numerous plays and novels, some of which possess considerable merit. The peculiar affectation of his style occasioned the invention of the word marivaudage, to express the way of writing of him and his imitators. He was born in 1688, and died in 1763.-D.

Note 326. Walpole, in his Anecdotes of Painting, states Liotard (age 49) to have been an admirable miniature and enamel painter. At Rome he was taken notice of by the Earl of Sandwich, and by Lord Besborough, then Lord Duncannon. See Museum Florentinum, vol. x.; where the name of the last mentioned nobleman is spelled Milord D'un Canon.-E.

Note 327. She was a Miss Strafford (age 40). The perusal of Crebillon's (age 45) works inspired her with such a passion for the author, that she ran away from her friends, went to Paris, married him, and nursed and attended him with exemplary tenderness and affection to his dying day. In reference to this marriage, Lord Byron, in his Observations on Bowles's Strictures upon Pope, makes the following remark:-"For my own part, I am of the opinion of Pausanias, that success in love depends upon fortune. Grimm has an observation of the same kind, on the different destinies of the younger Crebillon and Rousseau. The former writes a licentious novel, and a young English girl of some fortune runs away, and crosses the sea to marry him; while Rousseau, the most tender and passionate of lovers, is obliged to espouse his chambermaid."-E.