HORACE WALPOLE (1717-1797)
[AND W. M. THACKERAY]
As much has been already said of Horace Walpole's letters, but practically nothing of his other works except his novel and his play, something more may be added here to show that he was not merely a "trifler." His private press at "Strawberry" was mainly a means of amusement to him, like a billiard-room or a tennis-court. But it provided some useful books – such as editions of Anthony Hamilton's Memoirs of Grammont, of Lord Herbert of Cherbury's Life and of part of Gray's Poems. He had neither historic knowledge nor historic sense enough to deal satisfactorily with such a subject as Historic Doubts on Richard III., though the subject itself was quite worth dealing with. But his Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors, his Anecdotes of Painting in England, and his Catalogue of Engravers are not without value; and he could usefully handle the history of his own time, with proper corrections for his prejudices, etc. He was weakest of all as a literary critic: and his dealings with Chatterton were most unfortunate, though the mischief done was not intentional, and might not have been serious in any other case. These things have been said with a definite purpose – that of showing that Horace's interests, if seldom deep, were unusually wide. Now though width of interest is not, as Cowper's case shows, indispensable to goodness of letter-writing, it is a very great qualification for it, as giving to the result variety, colour, and "bite." At the same time, unless one had space on a very different scale from any possible here, it would be impossible to illustrate this "extensive curiosity" as they called it then: and Horace ought to be shown here in his most native element as a chronicler of "society." I have thought it worth while to subjoin for comparison Thackeray's wonderful pastiche in The Virginians, which is almost better Horace than Horace himself.112
22. To the Countess of Ossory
Arlington Street,April 31. 1773
It is most true, madam, that I did purpose to regale myself with a visit to Ampthill; but this winter, which has trod hard upon last week's summer, blunted my intention for a while, though revivable in finer weather. Oh! but I had another reason for changing my mind; you are leaving Ampthill, and I do not mean only to write my name in your park-keeper's book. Yes, in spite of your ladyship's low spirited mood, you are coming from Ampthill, and you are to be at Strawberry Hill to-morrow se'nnight. You may not be in the secret, but Lord Ossory and I have settled it, and you are to be pawned to me while he is at Newmarket. He told me you certainly would if I asked it, and as they used to say in ancient writ, I do beg it upon the knees of my heart. Nay, it is unavoidable; for though a lady's word may be ever so crackable, you cannot have the conscience to break your husband's word, so I depend upon it. I have asked Mr. Craufurd to meet you, but begged he would refuse me, that I might be sure of his coming. Mrs Meynel has taken another year's lease of her house, so you probably, madam, will not be tired of me for the livelong day for the whole time you shall honour my mansion. Your face will be well and your fever gone a week before to-morrow se'nnight, and you will look as well as ever you did in your life, that is, as you have done lately, which is better than ever you did before. You must not, in truth, expect that I your shepherd should be quite so fit to figure in a fan mount. Besides the gout for six months, which makes some flaws in the bloom of elderly Arcadians, I have been so far from keeping sheep for the last ten days, that I have kept nothing but bad hours; and have been such a rake that I put myself in mind of a poor old cripple that I saw formerly at Hogarth's auction: he bid for the Rake's Progress, saying, "I will buy my own progress," though he looked as if he had no more title to it than I have, but by limping and sitting up. In short, I have been at four balls since yesterday se'nnight, though I had the prudence not to stay supper at Lord Stanley's. That festival was very expensive, for it is the fashion now to make romances rather than balls. In the hall was a band of French horns and clarionets in laced uniforms and feathers. The dome of the staircase was beautifully illuminated with coloured glass lanthorns; in the ante-room was a bevy of vestals in white habits, making tea; in the next, a drapery of sarcenet, that with a very funereal air crossed the chimney, and depended in vast festoons over the sconces. The third chamber's doors were heightened with candles in gilt vases, and the ballroom was formed into an oval with benches above each other, not unlike pews, and covered with red serge, above which were arbours of flowers, red and green pilasters, more sarcenet, and Lord March's glasses, which he had lent, as an upholsterer asked Lord Stanley 300l. for the loan of some. He had burst open the side of the wall to build an orchestra, with a pendant mirror to reflect the dancers, à la Guisnes; and the musicians were in scarlet robes, like the candle-snuffers who represent the senates of Venice at Drury Lane. There were two more chambers at which I never arrived for the crowd. The seasons, danced by himself, the younger Storer, the Duc de Lauzun and another, the youngest Miss Stanley, Miss Poole, the youngest Wrottesley and another Miss, who is likewise anonymous in my memory, were in errant shepherdly dresses without invention, and Storer and Miss Wrottesley in banians with furs, for winter, cock and hen. In six rooms below were magnificent suppers. I was not quite so sober last night at Mons. de Guisnes', where the evening began with a ball of children, from eighteen to four years old. They danced amazingly well, yet disappointed me, so many of them were ugly; but Dr. Delawarr's two eldest daughters and the Ancaster infanta performed a pas de trois as well as Mlle. Heinel, and the two eldest were pretty; yet I promise you, madam, the next age will be a thousand degrees below the present in beauty. The most interesting part was to observe the anxiety of the mothers while their children danced or supped; they supped at ten in three rooms. I should not omit telling you that the Vernons, especially the eldest, were not the homeliest part of the show. The former quadrilles then came again upon the stage, and Harry Conway the younger was so astonished at the agility of Mrs. Hobart's bulk, that he said he was sure she must be hollow. The tables were again spread in five rooms, and at past two in the morning we went to supper. To excuse we, I must plead that both the late and present chancellor, and the solemn Lord Lyttleton, my predecessors by some years, stayed as late as I did – and in good sooth the watchman went four as my chairman knocked at my door.
Such is the result of good resolutions! I determined during my illness to have my colt's tooth drawn, and lo! I have cut four new in a week. Well! at least I am as grave as a judge, looked as rosy as Lord Lyttleton, and much soberer than my Lord Chancellor. To shew some marks of grace, I shall give up the opera, (indeed it is very bad) and go and retake my doctor's degrees among the dowagers at Lady Blandford's; and intending to have no more diversions than I have news to tell your ladyship, I think you shall not hear from me again till we meet, as I shall think it, in heaven.
23. (Thackeray imitating). To the Hon. H. S. Conway
Arlington Street, Friday night.
I have come away, child, for a day or two from my devotions to our Lady of Strawberry. Have I not been on my knees to her these three weeks, and aren't the poor old joints full of rheumatism? A fit took me that I would pay London a visit, that I would go to Vauxhall and Ranelagh. Quoi! May I not have my rattle as well as other elderly babies? Suppose, after being so long virtuous, I take a fancy to cakes and ale, shall your reverence say nay to me? George Selwyn and Tony Storer and your humble servant took boat at Westminster t'other night. Was it Tuesday? – no, Tuesday I was with their Graces of Norfolk, who are just from Tunbridge – it was Wednesday. How should I know?
Wasn't I dead drunk with a whole pint of lemonade I took at White's?
The Norfolk folk had been entertaining me on Tuesday with the account of a young savage Iroquois, Choctaw, or Virginian, who has lately been making a little noise in our quarter of the globe. He is an offshoot of that disreputable family of Esmond-Castlewood, of whom all the men are gamblers and spendthrifts, and all the women – well, I shan't say the word, lest Lady Ailesbury should be looking over your shoulder. Both the late lords, my father told me, were in his pay, and the last one, a beau of Queen Anne's reign, from a viscount advanced to be an earl through the merits and intercession of his notorious old sister Bernstein, late Tusher, nee Esmond – a great beauty, too, of her day, a favourite of the old Pretender. She sold his secrets to my papa, who paid her for them; and being nowise particular in her love for the Stuarts, came over to the august Hanoverian house at present reigning over us. "Will Horace Walpole's tongue never stop scandal?" says your wife over your shoulder. I kiss your ladyship's hand. I am dumb. The Bernstein is a model of virtue. She had no good reasons for marrying her father's chaplain. Many of the nobility omit the marriage altogether. She wasn't ashamed of being Mrs. Tusher, and didn't take a German Baroncino for a second husband, whom nobody out of Hanover ever saw. The Yarmouth bears no malice. Esther and Vashti are very good friends, and have been cheating each other at Tunbridge at cards all the summer.
"And what has all this to do with the Iroquois?" says your ladyship. The Iroquois has been at Tunbridge, too – not cheating, perhaps, but winning vastly. They say he has bled Lord March of thousands – Lord March, by whom so much blood hath been shed, that he has quarrelled with everybody, fought with everybody, rode over everybody, been fallen in love with by everybody's wife except Mr. Conway's, and not excepting her present Majesty, the Countess of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Queen of Walmoden and Yarmouth, whom heaven preserve to us.
You know an offensive little creature de par le monde, one Jack Morris, who skips in and out of all the houses of London. When we were at Vauxhall, Mr. Jack gave us a nod under the shoulder of a pretty young fellow enough, on whose arm he was leaning, and who appeared hugely delighted with the enchantments of the garden. Lord, how he stared at the fireworks! Gods, how he huzzayed at the singing of a horrible painted wench who shrieked the ears off my head! A twopenny string of glass beads and a strip of tawdry cloth are treasures in Iroquois-land, and our savage valued them accordingly.
A buzz went about the place that this was the fortunate youth. He won three hundred at White's last night very genteelly from Rockingham and my precious nephew, and here he was bellowing and huzzaying over the music so as to do you good to hear. I do not love a puppet-show, but I love to treat children to one, Miss Conway! I present your ladyship my compliments, and hope we shall go and see the dolls together.
When the singing-woman came down from her throne, Jack Morris must introduce my Virginian to her. I saw him blush up to the eyes, and make her, upon my word, a very fine bow, such as I had no idea was practised in wigwams. "There is a certain jenny squaw about her, and that's why the savage likes her," George said – a joke certainly not as brilliant as a firework. After which it seemed to me that the savage and the savagess retired together.
Having had a great deal too much to eat and drink three hours before, my partners must have chicken and rack-punch at Vauxhall, where George fell asleep straightway, and for my sins I must tell Tony Storer what I knew about this Virginian's amiable family, especially some of the Bernstein's antecedents and the history of another elderly beauty of the family, a certain Lady Maria, who was au mieux with the late Prince of Wales. What did I say? I protest not half of what I knew, and of course not a tenth part of what I was going to tell, for who should start out upon us but my savage, this time quite red in the face; and in his war paint. The wretch had been drinking fire-water in the next box!
He cocked his hat, clapped his hand to his sword, asked which of the gentlemen was it that was maligning his family? so that I was obliged to entreat him not to make such a noise, lest he should wake my friend Mr. George Selwyn. And I added, "I assure you, sir, I had no idea that you were near me, and I most sincerely apologize for giving you pain."
The Huron took his hand off his tomahawk at this pacific rejoinder, made a bow not ungraciously, said he could not, of course, ask more than an apology from a gentleman of my age (Merci, Monsieur!) and, hearing the name of Mr. Selwyn, made another bow to George, and said he had a letter to him from Lord March, which he had had the ill-fortune to mislay. George has put him up for the club, it appears, in conjunction with March, and no doubt these three lambs will fleece each other. Meanwhile, my pacified savage sat down with us, and buried the hatchet in another bowl of punch, for which these gentlemen must call. Heaven help us! 'Tis eleven o'clock, and here comes Bedson with my gruel!
H. W.
TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT (1721-1771)
Smollett's reputation has been of course always mainly, indeed almost wholly, that of a novelist, though his miscellaneous work is of no small merit. But that he wrote his best novel in letters and that perhaps it is one of the best so written, has been mentioned. His Travels are also of the letter-kind – especially of the ill-tempered-letter-kind. Of his actual correspondence we have not much. But the following has always seemed to the present writer an admirable and agreeably characteristic example. Smollett's outwardly surly but inwardly kindly temper, and his command of phrase ("great Cham of literature" has, as we say now, "stuck") both appear in it: and the matter is interesting. We have, so far as I remember, no record of any interview between Johnson and Smollett, though they must have met. They were both Tories, and Johnson wrote in the Critical Review which Smollett edited. But Johnson's gibes at Scotland are not likely to have conciliated Smollett: and there was just that combination of likeness and difference between the two men which (especially as the one was as typically English as the other was Scotch) generates incompatibility. How victoriously Wilkes got over Johnson's personal dislike to him all readers of Boswell know: and it is one of the most amusing passages in the book. On this occasion, too, he did what was asked of him. "Frank" had not been pressed, but had joined for some reason of his own. However, he accepted his discharge and returned to his master, staying till that master's death.
24. To John Wilkes, Esq.
Chelsea, 16th March, 1759.
Dear Sir
I am again your petitioner, in behalf of that great Cham of literature, Samuel Johnson. His black servant, whose name is Francis Barber, has been pressed on board the Stag frigate, Captain Angel, and our lexicographer is in great distress. He says the boy is a sickly lad, of a delicate frame, and particularly subject to a malady in his throat, which renders him very unfit for His Majesty's service. You know what matter of animosity the said Johnson has against you: and I dare say you desire no other opportunity of resenting it, than that of laying him under an obligation. He was humble enough to desire my assistance on this occasion, though he and I were never cater-cousins; and I gave him to understand that I would make application to my friend Mr. Wilkes, who, perhaps, by his interest with Dr. Hay and Mr. Elliot, might be able to procure the discharge of his lacquey. It would be superfluous to say more on this subject, which I leave to your own consideration; but I cannot let slip this opportunity of declaring that I am, with the most inviolable esteem and attachment, dear Sir, your affectionate, obliged, humble servant,
T. Smollett.
WILLIAM COWPER (1731-1800)
It was necessary to say a good deal about Cowper's letters in the Introduction, but it would hardly do to stint him of some further comment. It will be a most unfortunate evidence of degradation in English literary taste if he ever loses the position there assigned to him, and practically acknowledged by all the best judges for the last century. For there is certainly no other epistoler who has displayed such consummate (if also such unconscious) art in making the most out of the least. Of course people who must have noise, and bustle, and "importance" of matter, and so forth, may be dissatisfied. But their dissatisfaction convicts not Cowper but themselves: and the conviction is not for want of Art, but for want of appreciation of Art. Now this last is one of the most terrible faults to be found in any human creature. Not everybody can be an artist: but everybody who is not deficient to this or that extent in sense – to use that word in its widest and best interpretation, for understanding and feeling both – can enjoy an artist's work. Nor is there any more important function of the often misused word "education" than "bringing out" this sense when it is dormant, and training and developing it when it is brought out. And few things are more useful for exercise in this way than the under-current of artistry in Cowper's "chit-chat." His letters are so familiar that it is vain to aim at any great originality in selecting them. The following strikes me as an excellent example. What more trite than references to increased expense of postage (rather notably topical just now though!) and remarks on a greenhouse? And what less trite – except to tritical tastes and intellects – than this letter?
25. To the Rev. John Newton
Sept. 18. 1784.
My dear Friend,
Following your good example, I lay before me a sheet of my largest paper. It was this moment fair and unblemished but I have begun to blot it, and having begun, am not likely to cease till I have spoiled it. I have sent you many a sheet that in my judgment of it has been very unworthy of your acceptance, but my conscience was in some measure satisfied by reflecting, that if it were good for nothing, at the same time it cost you nothing, except the trouble of reading it. But the case is altered now. You must pay a solid price for frothy matter, and though I do not absolutely pick your pocket, yet you lose your money, and, as the saying is, are never the wiser; a saying literally fulfilled to the reader of my epistles.
My greenhouse is never so pleasant as when we are just upon the point of being turned out of it. The gentleness of the autumnal suns, and the calmness of this latter season, make it a much more agreeable retreat than we ever find it in summer; when, the winds being generally brisk, we cannot cool it by admitting a sufficient quantity of air, without being at the same time incommoded by it. But now I sit with all the windows and the door wide open, and am regaled with the scent of every flower in a garden as full of flowers as I have known how to make it. We keep no bees, but if I lived in a hive I should hardly hear more of their music. All the bees in the neighbourhood resort to a bed of mignonette, opposite to the window, and pay me for the honey they get out of it by a hum, which, though rather monotonous, is as agreeable to my ear as the whistling of my linnets. All the sounds that nature utters are delightful, – at least in this country. I should not perhaps find the roaring of lions in Africa, or of bears in Russia, very pleasing; but I know no beast in England whose voice I do not account musical, save and except always the braying of an ass. The notes of all our birds and fowls please me, without one exception. I should not indeed think of keeping a goose in a cage, that I might hang him up in the parlour for the sake of his melody, but a goose upon a common, or in a farmyard, is no bad performer; and as to insects, if the black beetle, and beetles indeed of all hues, will keep out of my way, I have no objection to any of the rest; on the contrary, in whatever key they sing, from the gnat's fine treble to the bass of the humble bee, I admire them all. Seriously however it strikes me as a very observable instance of providential kindness to man, that such an exact accord has been contrived between his ear, and the sounds with which, at least in a rural situation, it is almost every moment visited. All the world is sensible of the uncomfortable effect that certain sounds have upon the nerves, and consequently upon the spirits: – and if a sinful world had been filled with such as would have curdled the blood, and have made the sense of hearing a perpetual inconvenience, I do not know that we should have had a right to complain. But now the fields, the woods, the gardens have each their concert, and the ear of man is for ever regaled by creatures who seem only to please themselves. Even the ears that are deaf to the Gospel, are continually entertained, though without knowing it, by sounds for which they are solely indebted to its author. There is somewhere in infinite space a world that does not roll within the precincts of mercy, and as it is reasonable, and even scriptural, to suppose that there is music in Heaven, in those dismal regions perhaps the reverse of it is found; tones so dismal, as to make woe itself more insupportable, and to acuminate113 even despair. But my paper admonishes me in good time to draw the reins, and to check the descent of my fancy into deeps, with which she is but too familiar.
Our best love attends you both, with yours,
Sum ut semper, tui studiossimus,W. C.