Volume I Part 10 (1/2)
[Footnote 2: A name given to the Duke of c.u.mberland for his severities to his prisoners after the battle of Culloden.]
The Houses sit, but no business will be done till after the holidays.
Anstruther's affair will go on, but not with much spirit. One wants to see faces about again! d.i.c.k Lyttelton, one of the patriot officers, had collected depositions on oath against the Duke for his behaviour in Scotland, but I suppose he will now throw his papers into Hamlet's grave?
Prince George, who has a most amiable countenance, behaved excessively well on his father's death. When they told him of it, he turned pale, and laid his hand on his breast. Ayscough said, ”I am afraid, Sir, you are not well!”--he replied, ”I feel something here, just as I did when I saw the two workmen fall from the scaffold at Kew.” Prince Edward is a very plain boy, with strange loose eyes, but was much the favourite. He is a sayer of things! Two men were heard lamenting the death in Leicester Fields: one said, ”He has left a great many small children!”--”Ay,” replied the other, ”and what is worse, they belong to our paris.h.!.+” But the most extraordinary reflections on his death were set forth in a sermon at Mayfair chapel. ”He had no great parts (pray mind, this was the parson said so, not I), but he had great virtues; indeed, they degenerated into vices: he was very generous, but I hear his generosity has ruined a great many people: and then his condescension was such, that he kept very bad company.”
Adieu! my dear child; I have tried, you see, to blend so much public history with our private griefs, as may help to interrupt your too great attention to the calamities in the former part of my letter. You will, with the properest good-nature in the world, break the news to the poor girl, whom I pity, though I never saw. Miss Nicoll is, I am told, extremely to be pitied too; but so is everybody that knew Whithed! Bear it yourself as well as you can!
_CHANGES IN THE MINISTRY AND HOUSEHOLD--THE MISS GUNNINGS--EXTRAVAGANCE IN LONDON--LORD HARCOURT, GOVERNOR OF THE PRINCE OF WALES._
TO SIR HORACE MANN.
ARLINGTON STREET, _June_ 18, 1751.
I send my letter as usual from the Secretary's office, but of what Secretary I don't know. Lord Sandwich last week received his dismission, on which the Duke of Bedford resigned the next day, and Lord Trentham with him, both breaking with old Gower, who is entirely in the hands of the Pelhams, and made to declare his quarrel with Lord Sandwich (who gave away his daughter to Colonel Waldegrave) the foundation of detaching himself from the Bedfords. Your friend Lord Fane comforts Lord Sandwich with an annuity of a thousand a-year--scarcely for his handsome behaviour to his sister; Lord Hartington is to be Master of the Horse, and Lord Albemarle Groom of the Stole; Lord Granville[1] is actually Lord President, and, by all outward and visible signs, something more--in short, if he don't overshoot himself, the Pelhams have; the King's favour to him is visible, and so much credited, that all the incense is offered to him. It is believed that Impresario Holdernesse will succeed the Bedford in the foreign seals, and Lord Halifax in those for the plantations. If the former does, you will have ample instructions to negotiate for singers and dancers! Here is an epigram made upon his directors.h.i.+p:
[Footnote 1: Lord Granville, known as Lord Carteret during the lifetime of his mother, was a statesman of the very highest ability, and was regarded with special favour by the King for his power of conversing in German, then a very rare accomplishment.]
That secrecy will now prevail In politics, is certain; Since Holdernesse, who gets the seals, Was bred behind the curtain.
The Admirals Rowley and Boscawen are brought into the Admiralty under Lord Anson, who is advanced to the head of the board. Seamen are tractable fishes! especially it will be Boscawen's case, whose name in Cornish signifies obstinacy, and who brings along with him a good quant.i.ty of resentment to Anson. In short, the whole present system is equally formed for duration!
Since I began my letter, Lord Holdernesse has kissed hands for the seals. It is said that Lord Halifax is to be made easy, by the plantations being put under the Board of Trade. Lord Granville comes into power as boisterously as ever, and dashes at everything. His lieutenants already beat up for volunteers; but he disclaims all connexions with Lord Bath, who, he says, forced him upon the famous ministry of twenty-four hours, and by which he says he paid all his debts to him. This will soon grow a turbulent scene--it is not unpleasant to sit upon the beach and see it; but few people have the curiosity to step out to the sight. You, who knew England in other times, will find it difficult, to conceive what an indifference reigns with regard to ministers and their squabbles. The two Miss Gunnings,[1]
and a late extravagant dinner at White's, are twenty times more the subject of conversation than the two brothers [Newcastle and Pelham] and Lord Granville. These are two Irish girls, of no fortune, who are declared the handsomest women alive. I think their being two so handsome and both such perfect figures is their chief excellence, for singly I have seen much handsomer women than either; however, they can't walk in the park or go to Vauxhall, but such mobs follow them that they are generally driven away. The dinner was a folly of seven young men, who bespoke it to the utmost extent of expense: one article was a tart made of duke cherries from a hot-house; and another, that they tasted but one gla.s.s out of each bottle of champagne. The bill of fare is got into print, and with good people has produced the apprehension of another earthquake. Your friend St. Leger was at the head of these luxurious heroes--he is the hero of all fas.h.i.+on. I never saw more das.h.i.+ng vivacity and absurdity, with some flashes of parts. He had a cause the other day for ducking a sharper, and was going to swear: the judge said to him, ”I see, Sir, you are very ready to take an oath.” ”Yes, my lord,” replied St. Leger, ”my father was a judge.”
[Footnote 1: One of the Miss Gunnings had singular fortune. She was married to two Dukes--the Duke of Hamilton, and, after his death, the Duke of Argyll. She refused a third, the Duke of Bridgewater; and she was the mother of four--two Dukes of Hamilton and two Dukes of Argyll.
Her sister married the Earl of Coventry. In his ”Memoirs of George III.”
Walpole mentions that they were so poor while in Dublin that they could not have been presented to the Lord-Lieutenant if Peg Woffington, the celebrated actress, had not lent them some clothes.]
We have been overwhelmed with lamentable Cambridge and Oxford dirges on the Prince's death: there is but one tolerable copy; it is by a young Lord Stormont, a nephew of Murray, who is much commended. You may imagine what incense is offered to Stone by the people of Christchurch: they have hooked in, too, poor Lord Harcourt, and call him _Harcourt the Wise_! his wisdom has already disgusted the young Prince; ”Sir, pray hold up your head. Sir, for G.o.d's sake, turn out your toes!” Such are Mentor's precepts!
I am glad you receive my letters; as I knew I had been punctual, it mortified me that you should think me remiss. Thank you for the transcript from _Bubb[1] de tristibus_! I will keep your secret, though I am persuaded that a man who had composed such a funeral oration on his master and himself fully intended that its flowers should not bloom and wither in obscurity.
[Footnote 1: Bubb means Mr. Bubb Doddington, afterwards Lord Melcombe, who had written Mr. Mann a letter of most extravagant lamentation on the death of the Prince of Wales. He was member for Winchelsea, and left behind him a diary, which was published some years after his death, and which throws a good deal of light on the political intrigues of the day.]
We have already begun to sell the pictures that had not found place at Houghton: the sale gives no great encouragement to proceed (though I fear it must come to that!); the large pictures were thrown away; the whole-length Vand.y.k.es went for a song! I am mortified now at having printed the catalogue. Gideon the Jew, and Blakiston the independent grocer, have been the chief purchasers of the pictures sold already--there, if you love moralizing!
Adieu! I have no more articles to-day for my literary gazette.
_DESCRIPTION OF STRAWBERRY HILL--BILL TO PREVENT CLANDESTINE MARRIAGES._
TO SIR HORACE MANN.
STRAWBERRY HILL, _June_ 12, 1753.
I could not rest any longer with the thought of your having no idea of a place of which you hear so much, and therefore desired Mr. Bentley to draw you as much idea of it as the post would be persuaded to carry from Twickenham to Florence. The enclosed enchanted little landscape, then, is Strawberry Hill; and I will try to explain so much of it to you as will help to let you know whereabouts we are when we are talking to you; for it is uncomfortable in so intimate a correspondence as ours not to be exactly master of every spot where one another is writing, or reading, or sauntering. This view of the castle is what I have just finished, and is the only side that will be at all regular. Directly before it is an open grove, through which you see a field, which is bounded by a serpentine wood of all kind of trees, and flowering shrubs, and flowers. The lawn before the house is situated on the top of a small hill, from whence to the left you see the town and church of Twickenham encircling a turn of the river, that looks exactly like a seaport in miniature. The opposite sh.o.r.e is a most delicious meadow, bounded by Richmond Hill, which loses itself in the n.o.ble woods of the park to the end of the prospect on the right, where is another turn of the river, and the suburbs of Kingston as luckily placed as Twickenham is on the left: and a natural terrace on the brow of my hill, with meadows of my own down to the river, commands both extremities. Is not this a tolerable prospect? You must figure that all this is perpetually enlivened by a navigation of boats and barges, and by a road below my terrace, with coaches, post-chaises, waggons, and hors.e.m.e.n constantly in motion, and the fields speckled with cows, horses, and sheep. Now you shall walk into the house. The bow-window below leads into a little parlour hung with a stone-colour Gothic paper and Jackson's Venetian prints, which I could never endure while they pretended, infamous as they are, to be after t.i.tian, &c., but when I gave them this air of barbarous bas-reliefs, they succeeded to a miracle: it is impossible at first sight not to conclude that they contain the history of Attila or Tottila, done about the very aera. From hence, under two gloomy arches, you come to the hall and staircase, which it is impossible to describe to you, as it is the most particular and chief beauty of the castle.
Imagine the walls covered with (I call it paper, but it is really paper painted in perspective to represent) Gothic fretwork: the lightest Gothic bal.u.s.trade to the staircase, adorned with antelopes (our supporters) bearing s.h.i.+elds; lean windows fattened with rich saints in painted gla.s.s, and a vestibule open with three arches on the landing-place, and niches full of trophies of old coats of mail, Indian s.h.i.+elds made of rhinoceros's hides, broadswords, quivers, longbows, arrows, and spears--all _supposed_ to be taken by Sir Terry Robsart in the holy wars. But as none of this regards the enclosed drawing, I will pa.s.s to that. The room on the ground-floor nearest to you is a bedchamber, hung with yellow paper and prints, framed in a new manner, invented by Lord Cardigan; that is, with black and white borders printed. Over this is Mr. Chute's bedchamber, hung with red in the same manner. The bow-window room one pair of stairs is not yet finished; but in the tower beyond it is the charming closet where I am now writing to you. It is hung with green paper and water-colour pictures; has two windows; the one in the drawing looks to the garden, the other to the beautiful prospect; and the top of each glutted with the richest painted gla.s.s of the arms of England, crimson roses, and twenty other pieces of green, purple, and historic bits. I must tell you, by the way, that the castle, when finished, will have two-and-thirty windows enriched with painted gla.s.s. In this closet, which is Mr. Chute's college of Arms, are two presses with books of heraldry and antiquities, Madame Sevigne's Letters, and any French books that relate to her and her acquaintance.