Volume I Part 19 (1/2)
[Footnote 1: In a note to this letter, subsequently added by Walpole, he reduces this statement to seventeen, saying: ”It was true that Lady Mary did leave seventeen volumes of her works and memories. She gave her letters from Constantinople to Mr. Sowden, minister of the English Church at Rotterdam, who published them; and, the day before she died, she gave him those seventeen volumes, with injunctions to publish them too; but in two days the man had a crown living from Lord Bute, and Lady Bute had the seventeen volumes.”]
There is a lad, a waiter at St. James's coffee-house, of thirteen years old, who says he does not wonder we beat the French, for he himself could thrash Monsieur de Nivernois. This duke is so thin and small, that when minister at Berlin, at a time that France was not in favour there, the King of Prussia said, if his eyes were a little older, he should want a gla.s.s to see the emba.s.sador. I do not admire this bon-mot.
Voltaire is continuing his ”Universal History”; he showed the Duke of Grafton a chapter, to which the t.i.tle is, _Les Anglois vainqueurs dans les Quatres Parties du Monde_. There have been minutes in the course of our correspondence when you and I did not expect to see this chapter. It is bigger by a quarter than our predecessors the Romans had any pretensions to, and larger than I hope our descendants will see written of them, for conquest, unless by necessity, as ours has been, is an odious glory; witness my hand
H. WALPOLE.
P.S.--I recollect that my last letter was a little melancholy; this, to be sure, has a grain or two of national vanity; why, I must own I am a miserable philosopher; the weather of the hour does affect me. I cannot here, at a distance from the world and unconcerned in it, help feeling a little satisfaction when my country is successful; yet, tasting its honours and elated with them, I heartily, seriously wish they had their _quietus_. What is the fame of men compared to their happiness? Who gives a nation peace, gives tranquillity to all. How many must be wretched, before one can be renowned! A hero bets the lives and fortunes of thousands, whom he has no right to game with: but alas! Caesars have little regard to their fish and counters!
_RESIGNATION OF LORD BUTE--FRENCH VISITORS--WALPOLE AND NO. 45._
TO SIR HORACE MANN.
STRAWBERRY HILL, _April_ 30, 1763.
The papers have told you all the formal changes; the real one consists solely in Lord Bute being out of office, for, having recovered his fright, he is still as much Minister as ever, and consequently does not find his unpopularity decrease. On the contrary, I think his situation more dangerous than ever: he has done enough to terrify his friends, and encourage his enemies, and has acquired no new strength; rather has lost strength, by the disappearance of Mr. Fox from the scene. His deputies, too, will not long care to stand all the risk for him, when they perceive, as they must already, that they have neither credit nor confidence. Indeed the new administration is a general joke, and will scarce want a violent death to put an end to it. Lord Bute is very blamable for embarking the King so deep in measures that may have so serious a termination. The longer the Court can stand its ground, the more firmly will the opposition be united, and the more inflamed. I have ever thought this would be a turbulent reign, and nothing has happened to make me alter my opinion.
Mr. Fox's exit has been very unpleasant. He would not venture to accept the Treasury, which Lord Bute would have bequeathed to him; and could not obtain an earldom, for which he thought he had stipulated; but some of the negotiators a.s.serting that he had engaged to resign the Paymaster's place, which he vehemently denies, he has been forced to take up with a barony, and has broken with his a.s.sociates--I do not say friends, for with the chief of _them_[1] he had quarrelled when he embarked in the new system. He meets with little pity, and yet has found as much ingrat.i.tude as he had had power of doing service.
[Footnote 1: ”_The chief of them._” Walpole himself explains in a note that he means the Dukes of c.u.mberland and Devons.h.i.+re.]
I am glad you are going to have a great duke; it will amuse you, and a new Court will make Florence lively, the only beauty it wants. You divert me with my friend the Duke of Modena's conscientious match: if the d.u.c.h.ess had outlived him, she would not have been so scrupulous.
But, for Hymen's sake, who is that Madame Simonetti? I trust, not that old painted, gaming, debauched Countess from Milan, whom I saw at the fair of Reggio!
I surprise myself with being able to write two pages of pure English; I do nothing but deal in broken French. The two nations are crossing over and figuring-in. We have had a Count d'Usson and his wife these six weeks; and last Sat.u.r.day arrived a Madame de Boufflers, _scavante, galante_, a great friend of the Prince of Conti, and a pa.s.sionate admirer _de nous autres Anglois_. I am forced to live much with _tout ca_, as they are perpetually at my Lady Hervey's; and as my Lord Hertford goes amba.s.sador to Paris, where I shall certainly make him a visit next year--don't you think I shall be computing how far it is to Florence? There is coming, too, a Marquis de Fleury,[1] who is to be consigned to me, as a political relation, _vu l'amitie entre le Cardinal son oncle et feu monsieur mon pere_. However, as my cousin Fleury is not above six-and-twenty, I had much rather be excused from such a commission as showing the Tombs and the Lions, and the King and Queen, and my Lord Bute, and the Waxwork, to a boy. All this breaks in upon my plan of withdrawing by little and little from the world, for I hate to tire it with an old lean face, and which promises to be an old lean face for thirty years longer, for I am as well again as ever. The Duc de Nivernois called here the other day in his way from Hampton Court; but, as the most sensible French never have eyes to see anything, unless they see it every day and see it in fas.h.i.+on, I cannot say he flattered me much, or was much struck with Strawberry. When I carried him into the Cabinet, which I have told you is formed upon the idea of a Catholic chapel, he pulled off his hat, but perceiving his error, he said, ”_Ce n'est pas une chapelle pourtant_,” and seemed a little displeased.
[Footnote 1: Cardinal Fleury, Prime Minister of France from 1727 to 1742. Pope celebrated his love of peace--
Peace is my dear delight, not Fleury's more;
and by his resolute maintenance of peace during the first seven years of his administration he had so revived the resources and restored the power of his country, that when the question of going to war with France was discussed in the Council of Vienna the veteran Prince Eugene warned the Ministers that his wise and prudent administration had been so beneficial to his country that the Empire was no longer a match for it.]
My poor niece [Lady Waldegrave] does not forget her Lord, though by this time I suppose the world has. She has taken a house here, at Twickenham, to be near me. Madame de Boufflers has heard so much of her beauty, that she told me she should be glad to peep through a grate anywhere to get a glimpse of her,--but at present it would not answer. I never saw so great an alteration in so short a period; but she is too young not to recover her beauty, only dimmed by grief that must be temporary. Adieu!
my dear Sir.
_Monday, May 2nd_, ARLINGTON STREET.
The plot thickens: Mr. Wilkes is sent to the Tower for the last _North Briton_;[1] a paper whose fame must have reached you. It said Lord Bute had made the King utter a gross falsehood in his last speech. This hero is as bad a fellow as ever hero was, abominable in private life, dull in Parliament, but, they say, very entertaining in a room, and certainly no bad writer, besides having had the honour of contributing a great deal to Lord Bute's fall. Wilkes fought Lord Talbot in the autumn, whom he had abused; and lately in Calais, when the Prince de Croy, the Governor, asked how far the liberty of the press extended in England, replied, I cannot tell, but I am trying to know. I don't believe this will be the only paragraph I shall send you on this affair.
[Footnote 1: The celebrated No. 45 which attacked the speech with which the King had opened Parliament; a.s.serting that it was the speech not of the King, but of the Ministers; and that as such he had a right to criticise it, and to denounce its panegyric of the late speech as founded on falsehood.]
_A PARTY AT ”STRABERRI”--WORK OF HIS PRINTING PRESS--EPIGRAMS--A GARDEN PARTY AT ESHER._
TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.
STRAWBERRY HILL, _May_ 17, 1763.
”On vient de nous donner une tres jolie fete au chateau de Straberri: tout etoit tap.i.s.se de narcisses, de tulipes, et de lilacs; des cors de cha.s.se, des clarionettes; des pet.i.ts vers galants faits par des fees, et qui se trouvoient sous la presse; des fruits a la glace, du the, du caffe, des biscuits, et force hot-rolls.”--This is not the beginning of a letter to you, but of one that I might suppose sets out to-night for Paris, or rather, which I do not suppose will set out thither; for though the narrative is circ.u.mstantially true, I don't believe the actors were pleased enough with the scene, to give so favourable an account of it.
The French do not come hither to see. _a l'Anglaise_ happened to be the word in fas.h.i.+on; and half a dozen of the most fas.h.i.+onable people have been the dupes of it. I take for granted that their next mode will be _a l'Iroquaise_, that they may be under no obligation of realising their pretensions. Madame de Boufflers[1] I think will die a martyr to a taste, which she fancied she had, and finds she has not. Never having stirred ten miles from Paris, and having only rolled in an easy coach from one hotel to another on a gliding pavement, she is already worn out with being hurried from morning till night from one sight to another.