Part 24

ARLINGTON STREET, Sept. 1, 1760.

I was disappointed at your not being at home as I returned from my expedition.

My tour has been extremely agreeable. I set out with winning a good deal at Loo at Ragley; the Duke of Grafton was not so successful, and had some high words with Pam. I went from thence to Offley's at Whichnovre, the individual manor of the flitch of bacon, which has been growing rusty for these thirty years in his hall. I don't wonder; I have no notion that one could keep in good humour with one's wife for a year and a day, unless one was to live on the very spot, which is one of the sweetest scenes I ever saw. It is the brink of a high hill; the Trent wriggles through at the foot; Lichfield and twenty other churches and mansions decorate the view. Mr. Anson has bought an estate [Shugborough] close by, whence my Lord used to cast many a wishful eye, though without the least pretensions even to a bit of lard.

I saw Lichfield Cathedral, which has been rich, but my friend Lord Brooke and his soldiery treated poor St. Chad with so little ceremony, that it is in a most naked condition. In a niche at the very summit they have crowded a statue of Charles the Second, with a special pair of shoe-strings, big enough for a weathercock. As I went to Lord Strafford's I passed through Sheffield, which is one of the foulest towns in England in the most charming situation; there are two-and-twenty thousand inhabitants making knives and scissors: they remit eleven thousand pounds a week to London. One man there has discovered the art of plating copper with silver; I bought a pair of candlesticks for two guineas that are quite pretty. Lord Strafford has erected the little Gothic building, which I got Mr. Bentley to draw; I took the idea from Chichester Cross. It stands on a high bank in the menagerie, between a pond and a vale, totally bowered over with oaks. I went with the Straffords to Chatsworth and stayed there four days; there were Lady Mary Coke, Lord Besborough and his daughters, Lord Thomond, Mr. Boufoy, the Duke, the old Duchess, and two of his brothers. Would you believe that nothing was ever better humoured than the ancient Grace? She stayed every evening till it was dark in the skittle-ground, keeping the score; and one night, that the servants had a ball for Lady Dorothy's birthday, we fetched the fiddler into the drawing-room, and the dowager herself danced with us! I never was more disappointed than at Chatsworth, which, ever since I was born, I have condemned. It is a glorious situation; the vale rich in corn and verdure, vast woods hang down the hills, which are green to the top, and the immense rocks only serve to dignify the prospect. The river runs before the door, and serpentises more than you can conceive in the vale. The Duke is widening it, and will make it the middle of his park; but I don't approve an idea they are going to execute, of a fine bridge with statues under a noble cliff. If they will have a bridge (which by the way will crowd the scene), it should be composed of rude fragments, such as the giant of the Peak would step upon, that he might not be wetshod. The expense of the works now carrying on will amount to forty thousand pounds. A heavy quadrangle of stables is part of the plan, is very cumbrous, and standing higher than the house, is ready to overwhelm it. The principal front of the house is beautiful, and executed with the neatness of wrought plate; the inside is most sumptuous, but did not please me; the heathen gods, goddesses, Christian virtues, and allegoric gentlefolks, are crowded into every room, as if Mrs. Holman had been in heaven and invited everybody she saw. The great apartment is first; painted ceilings, inlaid floors, and unpainted wainscots make every room sombre. The tapestries are fine, but not fine enough, and there are few portraits. The chapel is charming. The great jet d'eau I like, nor would I remove it; whatever is magnificent of the kind in the time it was done, I would retain, else all gardens and houses wear a tiresome resemblance. I except that absurdity of a cascade tumbling down marble steps, which reduces the steps to be of no use at all. I saw Haddon, an abandoned old castle of the Rutlands, in a romantic situation, but which never could have composed a tolerable dwelling. The Duke sent Lord John [Cavendish] with me to Hardwicke, where I was again disappointed; but I will not take relations from others; they either don't see for themselves, or can't see for me. How I had been promised that I should be charmed with Hardwicke, and told that the Devonshires ought to have established there! never was I less charmed in my life. The house is not Gothic, but of that betweenity, that intervened when Gothic declined and Paladian was creeping in--rather, this is totally naked of either. It has vast chambers--aye, vast, such as the nobility of that time delighted in, and did not know how to furnish. The great apartment is exactly what it was when the Queen of Scots was kept there. Her council-chamber, the council-chamber of a poor woman, who had only two secretaries, a gentleman-usher, an apothecary, a confessor, and three maids, is so outrageously spacious, that you would take it for King David's, who thought, contrary to all modern experience, that in the multitude of counsellors there is wisdom. At the upper end is the state, with a long table, covered with a sumptuous cloth, embroidered and embossed with gold,--at least what was gold; so are all the tables. Round the top of the chamber runs a monstrous frieze, ten or twelve feet deep, representing stag-hunting in miserable plastered relief. The next is her dressing-room, hung with patch-work on black velvet; then her state bedchamber. The bed has been rich beyond description, and now hangs in costly golden tatters. The hangings, part of which they say her Majesty worked, are composed of figures as large as life, sewed and embroidered on black velvet, white satin, &c., and represent the virtues that were necessary for her, or that she was forced to have, as Patience and Temperance, &c. The fire-screens are particular; pieces of yellow velvet, fringed with gold, hang on a cross-bar of wood, which is fixed on the top of a single stick, that rises from the foot. The only furniture which has any appearance of taste are the table and cabinets, which are all of oak, richly carved. There is a private chamber within, where she lay, her arms and style over the door; the arras hangs over all the doors; the gallery is sixty yards long, covered with bad tapestry, and wretched pictures of Mary herself, Elizabeth in a gown of sea-monsters, Lord Darnley, James the Fifth and his Queen, curious, and a whole history of Kings of England, not worth sixpence a-piece. There is an original of old Bess of Hardwicke herself, who built the house. Her estates were then reckoned at sixty thousand pounds a-year, and now let for two hundred thousand pounds. Lord John Cavendish told me, that the tradition in the family is, that it had been prophesied to her that she should never die as long as she was building; and that at last she died in a hard frost, when the labourers could not work. There is a fine bank of old oaks in the park over a lake; nothing else pleased me there. However, I was so diverted with this old beldam and her magnificence, that I made this epitaph for her:--

Four times the nuptial bed she warm'd, And every time so well perform'd, That when death spoil'd each husband's billing, He left the widow every shilling. Fond was the dame, but not dejected; Five stately mansions she erected With more than royal pomp, to vary The prison of her captive Mary. When Hardwicke's towers shall bow their head, Nor mass be more in Worksop said; When Bolsover's fair fame shall tend Like Olcotes, to its mouldering end; When Chatsworth tastes no Ca'ndish bounties, Let fame forget this costly countess.

Was levelled when fanatic Brooke The fair cathedral stormed and took, But thanks to Heaven and good St. Chad A guerdon meet the spoiler had (c. vi. 36).

And the poet adds in a note that Lord Brooke himself, "who commanded the assailants, was shot with a musket-ball through the visor of his helmet; and the royalists remarked that he was killed by a shot fired from St. Chad's Cathedral on St. Chad's Day, and received his wound in the very eye with which, he had said, he hoped to see the ruin of all the cathedrals in England."]

As I returned, I saw Newstead and Althorpe: I like both. The former is the very abbey. The great east window of the church remains, and connects with the house; the hall entire, the refectory entire, the cloister untouched, with the ancient cistern of the convent, and their arms on it; a private chapel quite perfect. The park, which is still charming, has not been so much unprofaned; the present Lord has lost large sums, and paid part in old oaks, five thousand pounds of which have been cut near the house. In recompense he has built two baby forts, to pay his country in castles for the damage done to the navy, and planted a handful of Scotch firs, that look like ploughboys dressed in old family liveries for a public day. In the hall is a very good collection of pictures, all animals; the refectory, now the great drawing-room, is full of Byrons; the vaulted roof remaining, but the windows have new dresses making for them by a Venetian tailor. Althorpe has several very fine pictures by the best Italian hands, and a gallery of all one's acquaintance by Vandyke and Lely. I wonder you never saw it; it is but six miles from Northampton. Well, good night; I have writ you such a volume, that you see I am forced to page it. The Duke [of Cumberland] has had a stroke of the palsy, but is quite recovered, except in some letters, which he cannot pronounce; and it is still visible in the contraction of one side of his mouth. My compliments to your family.

It stood embosomed in a happy valley Crowned by high woodlands, where the Druid-oak Stood like Caractacus in act to rally His host, with broad arms, 'gainst the thunderstroke--

nor the streams:

Before the mansion lay a lucid lake Broad as transparent, deep, and freshly fed By a river, which its softened way did take In currents through the calmer waters spread Around--

nor the abbey front:

A glorious remnant of the Gothic pile While yet the church was Rome's, stood half apart In a grand arch, which once screened many an angle.

("Don Juan," xiii. 56-59.)]

GENTLEMAN'S DRESS--INFLUENCE OF LORD BUTE--ODE BY LORD MIDDLESEX--G. SELWYN'S QUOTATION.

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

ARLINGTON STREET, April 16, 1761.

You are a very mule; one offers you a handsome stall and manger in Berkeley Square, and you will not accept it. I have chosen your coat, a claret colour, to suit the complexion of the country you are going to visit; but I have fixed nothing about the lace. Barrett had none of gauze, but what were as broad as the Irish Channel. Your tailor found a very reputable one at another place, but I would not determine rashly; it will be two or three-and-twenty shillings the yard; you might have a very substantial real lace, which would wear like your buffet, for twenty. The second order of gauzes are frippery, none above twelve shillings, and those tarnished, for the species is out of fashion. You will have time to sit in judgment upon these important points; for Hamilton your secretary told me at the Opera two nights ago, that he had taken a house near Bushy, and hoped to be in my neighbourhood for four months.

I was last night at your plump Countess's, who is so shrunk, that she does not seem to be composed of above a dozen hassocs. Lord Guildford rejoiced mightily over your preferment. The Duchess of Argyle was playing there, not knowing that the great Pam was just dead, to wit, her brother-in-law. He was abroad in the morning, was seized with a palpitation after dinner and was dead before the surgeon could arrive. There's the crown of Scotland too fallen upon my Lord Bute's head! Poor Lord Edgecumbe is still alive, and may be so for some days; the physicians, who no longer ago than Friday se'nnight persisted that he had no dropsy, in order to prevent his having Ward, on Monday last proposed that Ward should be called in, and at length they owned they thought the mortification begun. It is not clear it is yet; at times he is in his senses, and entirely so, composed, clear, and rational; talks of his death, and but yesterday, after such a conversation with his brother, asked for a pencil to amuse himself with drawing. What parts, genius, and agreeableness thrown away at a hazard table, and not permitted the chance of being saved by the villainy of physicians!

You will be pleased with the Anacreontic, written by Lord Middlesex upon Sir Harry Bellendine: I have not seen anything so antique for ages; it has all the fire, poetry, and simplicity of Horace.

Ye sons of Bacchus, come and join In solemn dirge, while tapers shine Around the grape-embossed shrine Of honest Harry Bellendine.

Pour the rich juice of Bourdeaux's wine, Mix'd with your falling tears of brine, In full libation o'er the shrine Of honest Harry Bellendine.

Your brows let ivy chaplets twine, While you push round the sparkling wine, And let your table be the shrine Of honest Harry Bellendine.

He died in his vocation, of a high fever, after the celebration of some orgies. Though but six hours in his senses, he gave a proof of his usual good humour, making it his last request to the sister Tuftons to be reconciled; which they are. His pretty villa, in my neighbourhood, I fancy he has left to the new Lord Lorn. I must tell you an admirable bon mot of George Selwyn, though not a new one; when there was a malicious report that the eldest Tufton was to marry Dr. Duncan, Selwyn said, "How often will she repeat that line of Shakspeare,

Wake Duncan with this knocking--would thou couldst!"

I enclose the receipt from your lawyer. Adieu!

CAPTURE OF BELLEISLE--GRAY'S POEMS--HOGARTH'S VANITY.

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.