The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford
Chapter 102 : WHO IS THIS?Her face has beauty, we must all confess, But beauty on the brink of uglin

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!--It'S Caroline.

Do but think of my beginning a third sheet! but as the Parliament is rising, and I shall probably not write you a tolerably long letter again these eight months, I will lay in a stock of merit with you to last me so long Mr. Chute has set me too upon making epigrams; but as I have not his art, mine is almost a copy of verses: the story he told me, and is literally true, of an old Lady Bingley.(134)

Celia now had completed some thirty campaigns, And for new generations was hammering chains; When whetting those terrible weapons, her eyes, To Jennny, her handmaid, in anger she cries, "Careless creature! did mortal e'er see such a gla.s.s!

Who that saw me in this, could e'er guess what I was!

Much you mind what I say! pray how oft have I bid you Provide me a new one? how oft have I chid you?"

"Lord, Madam!" cried Jane, "you're so hard to be pleased I am sure every gla.s.sman in town I have teased: I have hunted each shop from Pall-mall to Cheapside: Both Miss Carpenter's(135) man and Miss Banks's(136) I've tried."

"Don't tell me of those girls!-all I know, to my cost, Is, the looking-gla.s.s art must be certainly lost!

One used to have mirrors so smooth and so bright, They did one's eyes justice, they heighten'd one's white, And fresh roses diffused o'er ones bloom--but, alas!

In the gla.s.ses made now, one detests one's own face; They pucker one's cheeks up and furrow one's brow, And one's skin looks as yellow as that of Miss(137) Howe!"(138)

After an epigram that seems to have found out the longitude, I shall tell you but one more, and that wondrous short. It is said to be made by a cow. YOU Must not wonder; we tell as many strange stories as Baker and Livy:

"A warm winter, a dry spring, A hot summer, a new King."

Though the sting is very epigrammatic, the whole of the dist.i.tch has more of the truth than becomes prophecy; that is, it is false, for the spring is wet and cold.

There is come from France a Madame Bocage, who has translated Milton. my Lord Chesterfield prefers the copy to the original; but that is not uncommon for him to do, who is the patron of bad authors and bad actors. She has written a play too, which was d.a.m.ned, and worthy my lord's approbation.' You would be more diverted with a Mrs. Holman, whose pa.s.sion is keeping an a.s.sembly, and inviting literally every body to it. She goes to the drawing-room to watch for sneezes; whips out a curtsey, and then sends next morning to know how your cold does, and to desire your company next Thursday.

Mr. Whithed has taken my Lord Pembroke's house at Whitehall; a glorious situation, but as madly built as my Lord himself was.

He has bought some delightful pictures too, of Claude, Gaspar, and good masters, to the amount of four hundred pounds.

Good night! I have nothing more to tell you, but that I have lately seen a Sir William Boothby, who saw you about a year ago, and adores you, as all the English you receive ought to do. He is much in my favour.

(120) Thomas Sherlock, Master of the Temple; first, Bishop of Salisbury, and afterwards of London.

(121) " 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."'-E.

(122) lord Vere of Haworth, in Middles.e.x.-D.

(123( Lord Conway was made Earl of Hertford.-D.

(124) Sir John Rawdon was created in this year Baron Rawdon, and in 1761 Earl of Moira, in Ireland. Sir John Vesey was created Lord Knapton; and his son was made Viscount de Vesey in Ireland, in 1766.-D.

(125) She was a Frenchwoman, of considerable fortune and accomplishments, the widow of the Marquis de Villette, and niece to Madame de Maintenon. She died on the 15th of March.

>From the following pa.s.sage in a letter written by Bolingbroke to Lord Marchmont a few days before her death, it is difficult to believe that he "acted grief" upon this occasion:--"You are very good to take my share in that affliction which has lain upon me so long, and which still continues, with the fear of being increased by a catastrophe I am little able to bear.

Resignation is a princ.i.p.al duty in my system of religion: reason shows that it ought to be willing if not cheerful; but there are pa.s.sions and habitudes in human nature which reason cannot entirely subdue. I should be ashamed not to feel them in the present case."-E.

(126) Lady Frances Arundell was the daughter of John Manners, second Duke of Rutland, and was married to the Hon. Richard Arundell, second son of John, Lord Arundell of Trerice, and a lord of the treasury. Lady Frances was sister of Lady Catherine Pelham, the wife of the minister.-D.

(127) John Monckton, first Viscount Galway in Ireland. The Lady Galway mentioned here was his second wife, Jane, daughter of henry Westenra, Esq., of Dublin. His first wife, who died in 1730, was Lady Elizabeth Manners, the sister of Lady Catherine Pelham and Lady Frances Arundell.-D.

(128) " Incredible numbers of people left their houses, and walked in the fields or lay in boats all night: many persons of fas.h.i.+on in the neighbouring villages sat in their coaches till daybreak; others went to a greater distance, so that the roads were never more thronged." Gentleman's Magazine.-E.

(129) Francis Scott, eldest son of the Duke of Buccleugh.

(130) To Hanover.

(131) Mr. Chute.

(132) Sir Dudley Ryder.

(133) Sir Edward Seymour, when he became Duke of Somerset, did not inherit the t.i.tle of Beauchamp.-D.

(134) Lady Elizabeth Finch, eldest daughter of Heneage, Earl of Aylesford, and widow of Robert Benson, Lord Bingley.

(135) Countess of Egremont.

(136) Miss Margaret Banks, a celebrated beauty.

(137) Charlotte, sister of Lord Howe, and wife of Mr.

Fettiplace.

(138) These lines are published in Walpole's Works.-D.

(139) Madame du Boccage published a poem in imitation of Milton, and another founded on Gesner's Death of Abel. She also translated Pope's Temple of Fame; but her princ.i.p.al work was ,La Columbiade." It was at the house of this lady, at Paris, in 1775, that Johnson was annoyed at her footman's taking the sugar in his fingers and throwing it into his coffee. "I was going," says the Doctor, "to put it aside, but hearing it was made on purpose for me, I e'en tasted Tom's fingers." She died in 1802.-E.

65 Letter 23 To George Montagu, Esq.

Arlington Street, May 15, 1750.

The High-bailiff, after commending himself and his own impartiality for an hour this morning, not unlike your cousin Pelham, has declared Lord Trentham. The mob declare they will pull his house down to show their impartiality. The Princess has luckily produced another boy; so Sir George Vandeput may be recompensed with being G.o.dfather. I stand to-morrow, not for a member, but for G.o.dfather to my sister's girl, with Mrs. Selwyn and old Dunch: were ever three such dowagers? when shall three such meet again? If the babe has not a most sentimentally yellow complexion after such sureties, I will burn my books, and never answer for another skin.

You have heard, I suppose, that Nugent must answer a little more seriously for Lady Lymington's child. Why, she was as ugly as Mrs. Nugent, had had more children, and was not so young. The pleasure of wronging a woman, who had bought him so dear, could be the only temptation.

Adieu! I have told you all I know, and as much is scandal, very possibly more than is true. I go to Strawberry on Sat.u.r.day, and so shall not know even scandal.

66 Letter 24 To Sir Horace Mann.

Arlington Street, May 19, 1750.

I did not doubt but you would be diverted with the detail of absurdities that were committed after the earthquake: I could have filled more paper with such relations, If I had not feared tiring you. We have swarmed with sermons, essays, relations, poems, and exhortations On that subject. One Stukely, a parson, has accounted for it, and I think prettily, by electricity--but that is the fas.h.i.+onable cause, and every thing is resolved into electrical appearances, as formerly every thing was accounted for by Descartes's vortices, and Sir Isaac's gravitation. But they all take care, after accounting for the earthquake systematically, to a.s.sure you that still it was nothing less than a judgment. Dr. Barton, the rector of St. Andrews, was the only sensible, or at least honest divine, upon the occasion. When some women would have had him to pray to them in his parish church against the intended shock, he excused himself on having a great cold. "And besides," said he, "you may go to St. James's church; the Bishop of Oxford is to preach there all night about earthquakes." Turner, a great china-man, at the corner of Dext street, had a jar cracked by the shock: he originally asked ten guineas for the pair; he now asks twenty, "because it is the only jar in Europe that has been cracked by an earthquake." But I have quite done with this topic. The Princess of Wales is lowering the price of princes, as the earthquake has raised old china; she has produced a fifth boy. In a few years we shall have Dukes of York and Lancaster popping out of bagnios and taverns as frequently as Duke Hamilton.(140) George Selwyn said a good thing the other day on another cheap dignity: he was asked who was playing at tennis, He replied, "n.o.body but three markers and a Regent."

your friend Lord Sandwich. While we are undervaluing all princ.i.p.alities and powers, you are making a rout with them, for which I shall scold you. We had been diverted with the pompous accounts of the reception of the Margrave of Baden Dourlach at Rome; and now you tell me he has been put upon the same foot at Florence! I never heard his name when he was here, but on his being mob'd as he was going to Wanstead, and the people's calling him the Prince of Bad-door-lock. He was still less noticed than he of Modena.

Lord Bath is as well received at Paris as a German Margrave in Italy. Every body goes to Paris: Lord Mountford was introduced to the King, who only said brutally enough, "Ma foi! il est bien nourri!" Lord Albemarle keeps an immense table there, with sixteen people in his kitchen; his aide-de-camps invite every body, but he seldom graces the banquet himself, living retired out of the town with his old Columbine.(141) What an extraordinary man! with no fortune at all, and with slight parts, he has seventeen thousand a year from the government, which he squanders away, though he has great debts, and four or five numerous broods of children of one sort or other!

The famous Westminster election is at last determined, and Lord Trentham returned: the mob were outrageous, and pelted Colonel Waldegrave, whom they took for Mr. Leveson, from Covent-garden to the Park, and knocked down Mr. Offley, who was with him.

Lord Harrington(142) was scarce better treated when he went on board a s.h.i.+p from Dublin. There are great commotions there about one Lucas, an apothecary, and favourite of the mob. The Lord Lieutenant bought off a Sir Richard c.o.x, a patriot, by a place in the revenue, though with great opposition from that silly mock-virtuoso, Billy Bristow, and that sillier Frederick Frankland, two oafs, whom you have seen in Italy, and who are commissioners there. Here are great disputes in the Regency, where Lord Harrington finds there is not spirit enough to discard these puppet-show heroes!

We have got a second volume of Bower'S(143) History of the Popes, but it is tiresome and pert, and running into a warmth and partiality that he had much avoided in his first volume.

He has taken such pains to disprove the Pope's supremacy being acknowledged pretty early, that he has convinced me it was acknowledged. Not that you and I care whether it were or not.

He is much admired here; but I am not good Christian enough to rejoice over him, because turned Protestant; nor honour his confessors.h.i.+p, when he ran away with the materials that were trusted to him to write for the papacy, and makes use of them to write against it. You know how impartial I am; I can love him for being shocked at a system of cruelty supporting nonsense; I can be pleased with the truths he tells; I can and do admire his style, and his genius in recovering a language that he forgot by six years old, so well as to excel in writing it, and yet I wish that all this had happened without any breach of trust!