The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford
Chapter 25 : The d.u.c.h.ess of Buckingham, (375) who is more mad with pride than any merchant'

The d.u.c.h.ess of Buckingham, (375) who is more mad with pride than any merchant's wife in Bedlam, came the other night to the opera en princesse, literally in robes, red velvet and ermine. I must tell you a story of her: last week she sent for Cori,(376) to pay him for her opera-ticket; he was not at home, but went in an hour afterwards. She said, "Did he treat her like a tradeswoman? She would teach him to respect women of her birth; said he was in league with Mr. Sheffield (377) to abuse her, and bade him come the next morning at nine." He came, and she made him wait till eight at night, only sending him an omlet and a bottle of wine, "as it was Friday, and he a Catholic, she supposed he did not eat meat." At last she received him in all the form of a princess giving audience to an amba.s.sador. "Now," she said, "she had punished him."

In this age we have some who pretend to impartiality: you will scarce guess how Lord Brook (378) shows his: he gives one vote on one side, one on the other, and the third time does not vote at all, and so on, regularly.

My sister is ,up to the elbows in joy and flowers that she has received from you this morning and begs I will thank you for her.

You know, or have heard of, Mrs. Nugent, Newsham's mother; she went the other morning to Lord Chesterfield to beg "he would encourage Mr. Nugent (379) to speak in the house; for that really he was so bashful, she was afraid his abilities would be lost on the world." I don't know who has encouraged him; but so it is, that this modest Irish converted Catholic does talk a prodigious deal of nonsense in behalf of English liberty.

Lord Gage (380) is another; no man would trust him in a wager, unless he stakes, and yet he is trusted by a whole borough with their privileges and liberties! He told Mr. Winnington the other day, that he would bring his son into parliament, that he would not influence him, but leave him entirely to himself. "D-n it,"

said Winnington, "so you have all his lifetime."

Your brother says you accuse him of not writing to you, and that his reasons are, he has not time, and next, that I tell you all that can be said. So I do, I think: tell me when I begin to tire you, or if I am too circ.u.mstantial; but I don't believe you will think so, for I remember how we used to want such a correspondent when I was with you.

I have spoke about the young man who is well content to live with you as a servant out of livery. I am to settle the affair finally with his father on Monday, and then he shall set out as soon as possible. I will send the things for Prince Craon etc. by him. I will write to Madame Grifoni the moment I hear she is returned from the country.

The Princess Hesse (381) is brought to bed of a son. We are going into mourning for the Queen of Sweden;(382) she had always been apprehensive of the small-pox, which has been very fatal in her family.

You have heard, I suppose, of the new revolution (383) in Muscovy. The letters from Holland to-day say, that they have put to death the young Czar and his mother, and his father too: which, if true,(384) is going very far, for he was of a sovereign house in another country, no subject of Russia, and after the death of his wife and son, could have no pretence or interest to raise more commotions there.

We have got a new opera, not so good as the former; and we have got the famous Bettina to dance, but she is a most indifferent performer. The house is excessively full every Sat.u.r.day, never on Tuesday: here, you know, we make every thing a fas.h.i.+on.

I am happy that my fears for Tuscany vanish every letter. There!

there is a letter of twelve sides! I am forced to page it, it is SO long, and I have not time to read it over and look for the mistakes.

Yours, ever.

(363) Antonio Cocchi, a learned physician and author, at Florence; a particular friend of Mr. Mann. [The following favourable character of Dr. Cocchi is contained in a letter from the Earl of Cork to Mr. Duncombe, dated Florence, November 29, 1754. "Mr Mann's fortunate in the friends.h.i.+p, skill, and care of his physician, Dr. Cocchi. He is a man of most extensive learning; understands, reads, and speaks all the European languages; studious, polite, modest, humane, and instructive. He is always to be admired and beloved by all who know him. Could I live with these two gentlemen only, and converse with few or none others, I should scarce desire to return to England for many years."]

(364) Samuel Sandys, a republican, raised on the fall of Sir R.'W. to be chancellor of the exchequer, then degraded to a peer and cofferer, and soon afterwards laid aside. [In 1743, he was raised to the peerage by the t.i.tle of Lord Sandys, Baron of Omberley in the county of Worcester, and died in 1770. Dr. Nash, in his history of that county, states him to have been "a very useful, diligent senator-a warm, steady friend-a good neighbor, and a most hospitable country gentleman and provincial magistrate."]

(365) William Murray, brother of Lord- Stormont, and of Lord Dunbar, the Pretender's first minister. He is known by his eloquence and the friends.h.i.+p of Mr. Pope. He was soon afterwards promoted to be solicitor-general. (Afterwards the celebrated chief-justice of the King's Bench, and Earl of Man's'field.-D.)

(366) Sir Richard Lloyd, advanced in 1754 to be solicitor-general, in the room of Mr. Murray, appointed attorney-general. [And in 1759, appointed one of the Barons of the exchequer.]

(367) Arthur St. Leger, Lord Doneraile, died in 1750, being lord of the bedchamber to the Prince of Wales.

(368) Lord Sundon and Sir Charles Wager had been the Court candidates for Westminster at the late election against Admiral Vernon and Charles Edwin, Esq.-D.

(369) A great London merchant, and one of the members for the City. His reputation for integrity and ability gave him much weight in the House of Commons.-D. (Lord Chatham, when mr. Pitt, frequently calls him the Great Commoner. In 1749, he became father of the City; when, much against his will, the merchants erected a statue of him in the Royal Exchange. He died in 1764.]

(370) Paul Whitehead, an infamous but not despicable poet. [See ante, p. 190, Letter 42.]

(371) Thomas Lord Viscount Gage had been a Roman Catholic, and was master of the household to the Prince. [Lord Gage, in 1721, was elected for the borough of Tewksbury; which he represented till within a few months of his death, in 1754. He was a zealous politician, and distinguished himself, in 1732, by detecting the fraudulent sale of the Derwent.w.a.ter estates.]

(372) John Perceval, second Earl of Egmont, in Ireland, created, in 176@, Lord Lovel and Rolland in the peerage of Great Britain. He became, in 1747, a lord of the bedchamber to Frederick Prince of Wales, and in the early part of the reign of George III. held successively the offices of postmaster-general and first lord of the admiralty. He was a man of some ability and a frequent and fluent speaker, and was the author of a celebrated party pamphlet of' the day, ent.i.tled "Faction Detected." His excessive love of ancestry led him, in Conjunction with his father, and a.s.sisted by Anderson, the genealogist, to print two thick octavo volumes respecting his family, ent.i.tled "History of the House of Ivery;" a most remarkable monument of human vanity.-D.

[Boswell was not of this opinion. "Some have affected to laugh," he says, "at the History of the House of Ivery: it would be well if many others would transmit their pedigrees to posterity, with the same accuracy and generous zeal with which the n.o.ble lord who compiled that work has honoured and perpetuated his ancestry. Family histories, like the imagines majorum of the ancients, excite to virtue." See "Life of Johnson," vol viii. p. 188.]

(373) Swallowfield, in Berks.h.i.+re, the seat of John Dodd, Esq.

(374) A scheme for obtaining a larger allowance for the Prince of Wales.

(375) Catherine, d.u.c.h.ess Dowager of Buckingham, natural daughter of King James II. (Supposed to be really the daughter of Colonel Graham, a man of Gallantry of the time, and a lover of her mother, Lady Dorchester.-D.) [This remarkable woman was extravagantly proud of her descent from James the Second, and affected to be the head of the Jacobite party in England. She maintained a kind of royal state, and affected great devotion to the memory of her father and grandfather. On the death of her son, the second Duke of Buckingham of the Sheffield family (whose funeral was celebrated in a most extraordinary manner), she applied to the old d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough, who was as high spirited as herself, for the loan of the richly-ornamented hea.r.s.e which had conveyed the great duke to his grave. "Tell her," said Sarah, "it carried the Duke of Marlborough, and shall never carry any one else." "My upholsterer," rejoined Catherine of Buckingham in a fury, "tells me I can have a finer for twenty pounds."-" This last stroke," says the editor of the Suffolk Correspondence, "

was aimed at the parsimony of their Graces of Marlborough, which was supposed to have been visible even in the funeral; but the sarcasm was as unjust as the original request of borrowing the hea.r.s.e was mean and unfeeling."-E.]

(376) Angelo Maria Cori, prompter to the Opera.

(377) Mr. Sheffield, natural son of the late Duke of Buckingham, with whom she was at law.

(378) Francis, Baron, and afterwards created Earl Brooke.

(379) Robert Nugent, a poet, a patriot, an author, a lord of the treasury, (and finally an Irish peer by the t.i.tles of Lord Clare and Earl Nugent. He seems to have pa.s.sed his long life in seeking lucrative places and courting rich widows, in both of which pursuits be was eminently successful.-D.) [He married the sister and heiress of Secretary Craggs, and his only daughter married the first Marquis of Buckingham. A volume of his ,Odes and Epistles" were published anonymously in 1733. He died in 1788.)

(380) Lord Gage was one of those persons to whom the privileges of parliament were of extreme consequence, as their own liberties were inseparable from them.

(381) Mary, fourth daughter of King George II.

(382) Ulrica, Queen of Sweden, sister of Charles XII.

(383) This relates to the revolution by which the young Czar John was deposed, and the Princess Elizabeth raised to the throne.

(384) This was not true. The Princess Anne of Mecklenburgh died in prison at Riga, a few years afterwards. Her son, the young Czar, and her husband, Prince Antony of Brunswick Wolfenb.u.t.tle, were confined for many years.

206 Letter 49 To Sir Horace Mann.

London, Dec. 29, 1741.

I write to YOU two days before the post goes out, because to-morrow I am to go out of town; but I would answer your letter by way of Holland, to tell you how much you have obliged both Sir Robert and me about the Dominichini;(385) and to beg you to thank Mr. Chute and Mr. Whithed-but I cannot leave it to you.

"My dear Mr. Chute, was ever any thing so kind! I crossed the Giogo (386) with Mr. c.o.ke,(387) but it was in August, and I thought it then the greatest compliment that ever was paid to mortal; and I went with him too! but you to go only for a picture, and in the month of December: What can I say to you? You do more to oblige your friend, than I can find terms to thank you for. If I was to tell-it here, it would be believed as little as the rape of poor Tory (388) by a wolf. I can only say that I know the Giogo, its snows and its inns, and consequently know the extent of the obligation that I have to you and Mr. Whithed."

Now I return to you, my dear child: I am really so much obliged to you and to them, that I know not what to say. I read Pennee's letter to Sir. R., who was much pleased with his discretion; he will be quite a favourite of mine. And now we are longing for the picture; you know, of old, my impatience.

Your young secretary-servant is looking out for a s.h.i.+p, and will set out in the first that goes: I envy him.

The Court has been trying but can get n.o.body to stand for Westminster. You know Mr. Doddington has lost himself extremely by his new turn, after so often changing sides: he is grown very fat and lethargic; my brother Ned says, "he is grown of less consequence, but more weight."(389)

One hears of nothing but follies said by the Opposition, who grow mad on having the least prospect. Lady Carteret,(390) who, you know, did not want any new fuel to her absurdity, says, "they talk every day of making her lord first minister, but he is not so easily persuaded as they think for." Good night.

Yours, ever.

(385) A celebrated picture of a Madonna and Child by Dominichino, in the palace Zembeccari, at Bologna, now in the collection of the Earl of Orford, at Houghton, in Norfolk.

(Since sent to Russia with the rest of the collection.-D.)

(386) The Giogo is the highest part of the Apennine between Florence and Bologna.

(387) Son of Lord Lovel, since Earl of Leicester. [In 1744, Lord Lovel was created Viscount c.o.ke of Holkham and Earl of Leicester.

His only son Edward died before him, in 1753, without issue; having married Lady Mary, one of the co-heirs of John Duke of Argyle and Greenwich.]

(388) A black spaniel of Mr. Walpole's was seized by a wolf on the Alps, as it was running at the head of the chaise-horses, at noonday. [See ante, p. 139 letter 14.]