Part 2

SELWYN ACKNOWLEDGES "THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE"

THE FAMOUS "LITERARY CLUB"

A TREASURE FOR A LADY--SHERIDAN AND THE LAWYER

THEODORE HOOK'S ENGINEERING FROLIC

SYDNEY SMITH'S WITTY ANSWER TO THE OLD PARISH CLERK

HORACE WALPOLE.

The Commoners of England.--Horace's Regret for the Death of his Mother.-- 'Little Horace' in Arlington Street.--Introduced to George I.-- Characteristic Anecdote of George I.--Walpole's Education.--Schoolboy Days.--Boyish Friendships.--Companionship of Gray.--A Dreary Doom.-- Walpole's Description of Youthful Delights.--Anecdote of Pope and Frederic of Wales.--The Pomfrets.--Sir Thomas Robinson's Ball.--An Admirable Scene.--Political Squibs.--Sir Robert's Retirement from Office.--The Splendid Mansion of Houghton.--Sir Robert's Love of Gardening.--What we owe to the 'Grandes Tours.'--George Vertue.--Men of One Idea.--The Noble Picture-gallery at Houghton.--The 'Market Pieces.'-- Sir Robert's Death.--The Granville Faction.--A very good Quarrel.-- Twickenham.--Strawberry Hill.--The Recluse of Strawberry.--Portraits of the Digby Family.--Sacrilege.--Mrs. Darner's Models.--The Long Gallery at Strawberry.--The Chapel.--'A Dirty Little Thing.'--The Society around Strawberry Hill.--Anne Seymour Conway.--A Man who never Doubted.--Lady Sophia Fermor's Marriage.--Horace in Favour.--Anecdote of Sir William Stanhope.--A Paper House.--Walpole's Habits.--Why did he not Marry?-- 'Dowagers as Plenty as Flounders.'--Catherine Hyde, Duchess of Queensberry.--Anecdote of Lady Granville.--Kitty Clive.--Death of Horatio Walpole.--George, third Earl of Orford.--A Visit to Houghton.--Family Misfortunes.--Poor Chatterton.--Walpole's Concern with Chatterton.-- Walpole in Paris.--Anecdote of Madame Geoffrin.--'Who's that Mr. Walpole?'--The Miss Berrys.--Horace's two 'Straw Berries.'--Tapping a New Reign.--The Sign of the Gothic Castle.--Growing Old with Dignity.-- Succession to an Earldom.--Walpole's Last Hours.--Let us not be Ungrateful.

Had this elegant writer, remarks the compiler of 'Walpoliana,' composed memoirs of his own life, an example authorized by eminent names, ancient and modern, every other pen must have been dropped in despair, so true was it that 'he united the good sense of Fontenelle with the Attic salt and graces of Count Anthony Hamilton.'

But 'Horace' was a man of great literary modesty, and always undervalued his own efforts. His life was one of little incident: it is his character, his mind, the society around him, the period in which he shone, that give the charm to his correspondence, and the interest to his biography.

Besides, he had the weakness common to several other fine gentlemen who have combined letters and haut ton, of being ashamed of the literary character. The vulgarity of the court, its indifference to all that was not party writing, whether polemical or political, cast a shade over authors in his time.

Never was there, beneath all his assumed Whig principles, a more profound aristocrat than Horace Walpole. He was, by birth, one of those well-descended English gentlemen who have often scorned the title of noble, and who have repudiated the notion of merging their own ancient names in modern titles. The commoners of England hold a proud pre-eminence. When some low-born man entreated James I. to make him a gentleman, the well-known answer was, 'Na, na, I canna! I could mak thee a lord, but none but God Almighty can mak a gentleman.'

Sir Robert Walpole, afterwards minister to George II., and eventually Lord Orford, belonged to an ancient family in Norfolk; he was a third son, and was originally destined for the Church, but the death of his elder brethren having left him heir to the family estate, in 1698, he succeeded to a property which ought to have yielded him £2,000 a year, but which was crippled with various encumbrances. In order to relieve himself of these, Sir Robert married Catherine Shorter, the granddaughter of Sir John Shorter, who had been illegally and arbitrarily appointed Lord Mayor of London by James II.

Horace was her youngest child, and was born in Arlington Street, on the 24th of September, 1717, O.S. Six years afterwards he was inoculated for the small-pox, a precaution which he records as worthy of remark, since the operation had then only recently been introduced by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu from Turkey.

He is silent, however, naturally enough, as to one important point--his real parentage. The character of his mother was by no means such as to disprove an assertion which gained general belief: this was, that Horace was the offspring, not of Sir Robert Walpole, but of Carr, Lord Hervey, the eldest son of the Earl of Bristol, and the elder brother of Lord Hervey, whose 'Memoirs of the Court of George II.' are so generally known.

Carr, Lord Hervey, was witty, eccentric, and sarcastic: and from him Horace Walpole is said to have inherited his wit, his eccentricity, his love of literature, and his profound contempt for all mankind, excepting only a few members of a cherished and exclusive clique.

In the Notes of his life which Horace Walpole left for the use of his executor, Robert Berry, Esq., and of his daughter, Miss Berry, he makes this brief mention of Lady Walpole:--'My mother died in 1737.' He was then twenty years of age.

But beneath this seemingly slight recurrence to his mother, a regret which never left him through life was buried. Like Cowper, he mourned, as the profoundest of all sorrows, the loss of that life-long friend.

'My mother, when I learn'd that thou wast dead, Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed? Hovered thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son? Wretch even then, life's journey just begun.'

Although Horace in many points bore a strong resemblance to Sir Robert Walpole, he rarely if ever received from that jovial, heartless, able man, any proof of affection. An outcast from his father's heart, the whole force of the boy's love centred in his mother; yet in after-life no one reverenced Sir Robert Walpole so much as his supposed son. To be adverse to the minister was to be adverse to the unloved son who cherished his memory. What 'my father' thought, did, and said, was law; what his foes dared to express was heresy. Horace had the family mania strong upon him; the world was made for Walpoles, whose views were never to be controverted, nor whose faith impugned. Yet Horace must have witnessed, perhaps with out comprehending it, much disunion at home. Lady Walpole. beautiful and accomplished, could not succeed in riveting her husband to his conjugal duties. Gross licentiousness was the order of the day, and Sir Robert was among the most licentious; he left his lovely wife to the perilous attentions of all the young courtiers who fancied that by courting the Premier's wife they could secure Walpole's good offices. Sir Robert, according to Pope, was one of those who--

'Never made a friend in private life, And was, besides, a tyrant to his wife.

At all events, if not a tyrant, he was indifferent to those circumstances which reflected upon him, and were injurious to her. He was conscious that he had no right to complain of any infidelity on her part, and he left her to be surrounded by men whom he knew to be profligates of the most dangerous pretensions to wit and elegance.

It was possibly not unfrequently that Horace, his mother's pet, gleaned in the drawing-rooms of Arlington Street his first notions of that persiflage which was the fashion of the day. We. can fancy him a precocious, old-fashioned little boy, at his mother's apron-string, whilst Carr, Lord Hervey, was paying his devoirs; we see him gazing with wondering eyes at Pulteney, Earl of Bath, with his blue ribbon across his laced coat; whilst compassionating friends observing the pale-faced boy in that hot-house atmosphere, in which both mind and body were like forced plants, prophesied that 'little Horace' could not possibly live to be a man.

He survived, however, two sisters, who died in childhood, and became dearer and dearer to his fond mother.

In his old age, Horace delighted in recalling anecdotes of his infancy; in these his mother's partiality largely figured. Brought up among courtiers and ministers, his childish talk was all of kings and princes; and he was a gossip both by inclination and habit. His greatest desire in life was to see the king--George I., and his nurses and attendants augmented his wish by their exalted descriptions of the grandeur which he effected, in after-life, to despise. He entreated his mother to take him to St. James's. When relating the incidents of the scene in which he was first introduced to a court, Horace Walpole speaks of the 'infinite good-nature of his father, who never thwarted any of his children,' and 'suffered him,' he says, 'to be too much indulged.'

Some difficulties attended the fruition of the forward boy's wish. The Duchess of Kendal was jealous of Sir Robert Walpole's influence with the king: her aim was to bring Lord Bolingbroke into power. The childish fancy was, nevertheless, gratified: and under his mother's care he was conducted to the apartments of the Duchess of Kendal in St. James's.

'A favour so unusual to be asked by a boy of ten years old,' he afterwards wrote in his 'Reminiscences,' 'was still too slight to be refused to the wife of the first minister and her darling child.' However, as it was not to be a precedent, the interview was to be private, and at night.

It was ten o'clock in the evening when Lady Walpole, leading her son, was admitted into the apartments of Melusina de Schulenberg, Countess of Walsingham, who passed under the name of the Duchess of Kendal's niece, but who was, in fact, her daughter, by George I. The polluted rooms in which Lady Walsingham lived were afterwards occupied by the two mistresses of George II.--the Countess of Suffolk, and Madame de Walmoden, Countess of Yarmouth.

With Lady Walsingham, Lady Walpole and her little son waited until, notice having been given that the king had come down to supper, he was led into the presence of 'that good sort of man,' as he calls George I. That monarch was pleased to permit the young courtier to kneel down and kiss his hand. A few words were spoken by the august personage, and Horace was led back into the adjoining room.