Part 7

The recluse of Strawberry was soon consoled by hearing that the rebels were driven back from Derby, where they had penetrated, and where the remembrance of the then gay, sanguine, brave young Chevalier long lingered among the old inhabitants. One of the last traces of his short-lived possession of the town is gone: very recently, Exeter House, where he lodged and where he received his adherents, has been pulled down; the ground on which it stood, with its court and garden--somewhat in appearace like an old French hotel--being too valuable for the relic of bygone times to be spared. The panelled chambers, the fine staircase, certain pictures--one by Wright of Derby, of him--one of Miss Walkinshaw--have all disappeared.

Of the capture, the trial, the death of his adherents, Horace Walpole has left the most graphic and therefore touching account that has been given; whilst he calls a 'rebellion on the defensive' a 'despicable affair.' Humane, he reverted with horror to the atrocities of General Hawley, 'the Chief Justice,' as he was designated, who had a 'passion for frequent and sudden executions.' When this savage commander gained intelligence of a French spy coming over, he displayed him at once before the army on a gallows, dangling in his muff and boots. When one of the surgeons begged for the body of a deserter to dissect, 'Well,' said the wretch, 'but you must let me have the skeleton to hang up in the guard-room,' Such was the temper of the times; vice, childishness, levity at court, brutality in the camp, were the order of the day. Horace, even Horace, worldly in all, indifferent as to good and bad, seems to have been heart sick. His brother's matrimonial infidelity vexed him also sorely. Lady Orford, 'tired,' as he expresses it, of 'sublunary affairs,' was trying to come to an arrangement with her husband, from whom she had been long separated; the price was to be, he fancied, £2,000 a year. Meantime, during the convulsive state of political affairs, he interested himself continually in the improvement of Strawberry Hill. There was a rival building, Mr. Bateman's Monastery, at Old Windsor, which is said to have had more uniformity of design than Strawberry Hill. Horace used indeed to call the house of which he became so proud a paper house; the walls were at first so slight, and the roof so insecure in heavy rains. Nevertheless, his days were passed as peacefully there as the premature infirmities which came upon him would permit.

From the age of twenty-five his fingers were enlarged and deformed by chalk-stones, which were discharged twice a year. 'I can chalk up a score with more rapidity than any man in England,' was his melancholy jest. He had now adopted as a necessity a strict temperance: he sat up very late, either writing or conversing, yet always breakfasted at nine o'clock. After the death of Madame du Deffand, a little fat dog, scarcely able to move for age and size--her legacy--used to proclaim his approach by barking. The little favourite was placed beside him on a sofa; a tea-kettle, stand, and heater were brought in, and he drank two or three cups of tea out of the finest and most precious china of Japan--that of a pure white. He breakfasted with an appetite, feeding from his table the little dog and his pet squirrels.

Dinner at Strawberry Hill was usually served up in the small parlour in winter, the large dining-room being reserved for large parties. As age drew on, he was supported down stairs by his valet; and then, says the compiler of Walpoliana, 'he ate most moderately of chicken, pheasant, or any light food. Pastry he disliked, as difficult of digestion, though he would taste a morsel of venison-pie. Never but once, that he drank two glasses of white wine, did the editor see him taste any liquor, except ice-water. A pail of ice was placed under the table, in which stood a decanter of water, from which he supplied himself with his favourite beverage.'

No wine was drunk after dinner, when the host of Strawberry Hill called instantly to some one to ring the bell for coffee. It was served upstairs, and there, adds the same writer, 'he would pass about five o'clock, and generally resuming his place on the sofa, would sit till two in the morning, in miscellaneous chit-chat, full of singular anecdotes, strokes of wit, and acute observations, occasionally sending for books, or curiosities, or passing to the library, as any reference happened to arise in conversation. After his coffee, he tasted nothing; but the snuff-box of tabac d'etrennes, from Fribourg's, was not forgotten, and was replenished from a canister lodged in an ancient marble urn of great thickness, which stood in the window seat, and served to secure its moisture and rich flavour.'

In spite of all his infirmities, Horace Walpole took no care of his health, as far as out-door exercise was concerned. His friends beheld him with horror go out on a dewy day: he would even step out in his slippers. In his own grounds he never wore a hat: he used to say, that on his first visit to Paris he was ashamed of his effeminacy, when he saw every meagre little Frenchman whom he could have knocked down in a breath walking without a hat, which he could not do without a certainty of taking the disease which the Germans say is endemical in England, and which they call to catch cold. The first trial, he used to tell his friends, cost him a fever, but he got over it. Draughts of air, damp rooms, windows open at his back, became matters of indifference to him after once getting through the hardening process. He used even to be vexed at the officious solicitude of friends on this point, and with half a smile would say, 'My back is the same as my face, and my neck is like my nose.' He regarded his favourite iced-water as a preservative to his stomach, which, he said, would last longer than his bones. He did not take into account that the stomach is usually the seat of disease.

One naturally inquires why the amiable recluse never, in his best days, thought of marriage: a difficult question to be answered. In men of that period, a dissolute life, an unhappy connection, too frequently explained the problem. In the case before us no such explanation can be offered. Horace Walpole had many votaries, many friends, several favourites, but no known mistress. The marks of the old bachelor fastened early on him, more especially after he began to be governed by his valet de chambre. The notable personage who ruled over the pliant Horace was a Swiss, named Colomb. This domestic tyrant was despotic; if Horace wanted a tree to be felled, Colomb opposed it, and the master yielded. Servants, in those days, were intrinsically the same as in ours, but they differed in manner. The old familiarity had not gone out, but existed as it still does among the French. Those who recollect Dr. Parr will remember how stern a rule his factotum Sam exercised over him. Sam put down what wine he chose, nay, almost invited the guests; at all events, he had his favourites among them. And in the same way as Sam ruled at Hatton, Colomb was, de facto, the master of Strawberry Hill.

With all its defects, the little 'plaything house' as Horace Walpole called it, must have been a charming house to visit in. First, there was the host. 'His engaging manners,' writes the editor of Walpoliana, 'and gentle, endearing affability to his friends, exceed all praise. Not the smallest hauteur, or consciousness of rank or talent, appeared in his familiar conferences; and he was ever eager to dissipate any constraint that might occur, as imposing a constraint upon himself, and knowing that any such chain enfeebles and almost annihilates the mental powers. Endued with exquisite sensibility, his wit never gave the smallest wound, even to the grossest ignorance of the world, or the most morbid hypochondriac bashfulness.'

He had, in fact, no excuse for being doleful or morbid. How many resources were his! what an even destiny! what prosperous fortunes! What learned luxury he revelled in! he was enabled to 'pick up all the roses of science, and to leave the thorns behind.' To how few of the gifted have the means of gratification been permitted! to how many has hard work been allotted! Then, when genius has been endowed with rank, with wealth, how often it has been degraded by excess! Rochester's passions ran riot in one century: Beckford's gifts were polluted by his vices in another--signal landmarks of each age. But Horace Walpole was prudent, decorous, even respectable: no elevated aspirations, no benevolent views ennobled under the petitesse of his nature. He had neither genius nor romance: he was even devoid of sentiment; but he was social to all, neighbourly to many, and attached to some of his fellow-creatures.

The 'prettiest bauble' possible, as he called Strawberry Hill, 'set in enamelled meadows in filigree hedges,' was surrounded by 'dowagers as plenty as flounders;' such was Walpole's assertion. As he sat in his library, scented by caraway, heliotropes, or pots of tuberose, or orange-trees in flower, certain dames would look in upon him, sometimes malgrê lui, sometimes to his bachelor heart's content.

'Thank God!' he wrote to his cousin Conway, 'the Thames is between me and the Duchess of Queensberry!' Walpole's dislike to his fair neighbour may partly have originated in the circumstance of her birth, and her grace's presuming to plume herself on what he deemed an unimportant distinction. Catherine Hyde, Duchess of Queensberry, was the great-granddaughter of the famous Lord Clarendon, and the great-niece of Anne, Duchess of York. Prior had in her youth celebrated her in the 'Female Phaëton,' as 'Kitty:' in his verse he begs Phaëton to give Kitty the chariot, if but for a day.

In reference to this, Horace Walpole, in the days of his admiration of her grace, had made the following impromptu:--

'On seeing the Duchess of Queensberry walk at the funeral of the Princess Dowager of Wales,--

'To many a Kitty, Love his car Would for a day engage; But Prior's Kitty, ever fair, Obtained it for an age.'

It was Kitty who took Gay under her patronage, who resented the prohibition of the 'Beggar's Opera,' remonstrated with the king and queen, and was thereupon forbidden the court. She carried the poet to her house. She may have been ridiculous, but she had a warm, generous heart. 'I am now,' Gay wrote to Swift in 1729, 'in the Duke of Queensberry's house, and have been so ever since I left Hampstead; where I was carried at a time that it was thought I could not live a day. I must acquaint you (because I know it will please you) that during my sickness I had many of the kindest proofs of friendship, particularly from the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry; who, if I had been their nearest relation and dearest friend, could not have treated me with more constant attendance then, and they continue the same to me now.'

The duchess appears to have been one of those wilful, eccentric, spoiled children, whom the world at once worships and ridicules: next to the Countess of Pomfret, she was Horace Walpole's pet aversion. She was well described as being 'very clever, very whimsical, and just not mad.' Some of Walpole's touches are strongly confirmatory of this description. For instance, her grace gives a ball, orders every one to come at six, to sup at twelve, and go away directly after: opens the ball herself with a minuet. To this ball she sends strange invitations; 'yet,' says Horace, 'except these flights, the only extraordinary thing the duchess did was to do nothing extraordinary, for I do not call it very mad that some pique happening between her and the Duchess of Bedford, the latter had this distich sent to her;--

'Come with a whistle--come with a call: Come with good-will, or come not at all.'

'I do not know whether what I am going to tell you did not border a little upon Moorfields. The gallery where they danced was very cold. Lord Lorn, George Selwyn, and I retired into a little room, and sat comfortably by the fire. The duchess looked in, said nothing, and sent a smith to take the hinges of the door oft. We understood the hint--left the room--and so did the smith the door.'

'I must tell you,' he adds in another letter, 'of an admirable reply of your acquaintance, the Duchess of Queensberry: old Lady Granville, Lord Carteret's mother, whom they call the queen-mother, from taking upon her to do the honours of her son's power, was pressing the duchess to ask her for some place for herself or friends, and assured her that she would procure it, be it what it would. Could she have picked out a fitter person to be gracious to? The duchess made her a most grave curtsey, and said, "Indeed, there was one thing she had set her heart on."--"Dear child, how you oblige me by asking anything! What is it? Tell me."--"Only that you would speak to my Lord Carteret to get me made lady of the bedchamber to the Queen of Hungary."'

The duchess was, therefore, one of the dowagers, 'thick as flounders,' whose proximity was irritating to the fastidious bachelor. There was, however, another Kitty between whom and Horace a tender friendship subsisted: this was Kitty Clive, the famous actress; formerly Kitty Ruftar. Horace had given her a house on his estate, which he called sometimes 'Little Strawberry Hill,' and sometimes 'Cliveden;' and here Mrs. Clive lived with her brother, Mr. Ruftar, until 1785. She formed, for her friend, a sort of outer-home, in which he passed his evenings. Long had he admired her talents. Those were the days of the drama in all its glory: the opera was unfashionable. There were, Horace writes in 1742, on the 26th of May, only two-and-forty people in the Opera House, in the pit and boxes: people were running to see 'Miss Lucy in Town,' at Drury Lane, and to admire Mrs. Clive, in her imitation of the Muscovites; but the greatest crowds assembled to wonder at Garrick, in 'Wine Merchant turned Player;' and great and small alike rushed to Goodman's Fields to see him act all parts, and to laugh at his admirable mimicry. It was perhaps, somewhat in jealousy of the counter attraction, that Horace declared he saw nothing wonderful in the acting of Garrick, though it was then heresy to say so. 'Now I talk of players,' he adds in the same letter, 'tell Mr. Chute that his friend Bracegirdle breakfasted with me this morning.' Horace delighted in such intimacies, and in recalling old times.

Mrs. Abingdon, another charming and clever actress, was also a denizen of Twickenham, which became the most fashionable village near the metropolis. Mrs. Pritchard, likewise, was attracted there; but the proximity of the Countess of Suffolk, who lived at Marble Hill was the delight of a great portion of Horace Walpole's life. Her reminiscences, her anecdotes, her experience, were valuable as well as entertaining to one who was for ever gathering up materials for history, or for biography, or for letters to absent friends.

In his own family he found little to cheer him: but if he hated one or two more especially--and no one could hate more intensely than Horace Walpole--it was his uncle, Lord Wapole, and his cousin, that nobleman's son, whom he christened Pigwiggin; 'my monstrous uncle;' 'that old buffoon, my uncle;' are terms which occur in his letters, and he speaks of the bloody civil wars between 'Horatio Walpole' and 'Horace Walpole.'

Horatio Walpole, the brother of Sir Robert, was created in June, 1756, Baron Walpole of Wolterton, as a recompense for fifty years passed in the public service--an honour which he only survived nine months. He expired in February, 1757. His death removed one subject of bitter dislike from the mind of Horace; but enough remained in the family to excite grief and resentment.

Towards his own two brothers, Robert, Earl of Orford, and Edward Walpole, Horace the younger, as he was styled in contradistinction to his uncle, bore very little affection. His feelings, however, for his nephew George, who succeeded his father as Earl of Orford in 1751, were more creditable to his heart; yet he gives a description of this ill-fated young man in his letters, which shows at once pride and disapprobation. One lingers with regret over the character and the destiny of this fine young nobleman, whose existence was rendered miserable by frequent attacks, at intervals, of insanity.

Never was there a handsomer, a more popular, a more engaging being than George, third Earl of Orford. When he appeared at the head of the Norfolk regiment of militia, of which he was colonel, even the great Lord Chatham broke out into enthusiasm:--'Nothing,' he wrote, 'could make a better appearance than the two Norfolk battalions; Lord Orford, with the front of Mars himself, and really the greatest figure under arms I ever saw, as the theme of every tongue.' His person and air, Horace Walpole declared, had a noble wildness in them: crowds followed the battalions when the king reviewed them in Hyde Park; and among the gay young officers in their scarlet uniforms, faced with black, in their buff waistcoats and gold buttons, none was so conspicuous for martial bearing as Lord Onord, although classed by his uncle 'among the knights of shire who had never in their lives shot anything but woodcocks.'

But there was a peculiarity of character in the young peer which shocked Horace. 'No man,' he says in one of his letters, 'ever felt such a disposition to love another as I did to love him. I flattered myself that he would restore some lustre to our house--at least not let it totally sink; but I am forced to give him up, and all my Walpole views.... He has a good breeding, and attention when he is with you that is even flattering;... he promises, offers everything one can wish; but this is all: the instant he leaves you, all the world are nothing to him; he would not give himself the least trouble in the world to give any one satisfaction; yet this is mere indolence of mind, not of body: his whole pleasure is outrageous exercise.'

'He is,' in another place Horace adds, 'the most selfish man in the world: without being in the least interested, he loves nobody but himself, yet neglects every view of fortune and ambition. Yet,' he concludes, 'it is impossible not to love him when one sees him: impossible to esteem him when one thinks on him.'

The young lord, succeeding to an estate deeply encumbered, both by his father and grandfather, rushed on the turf, and involved himself still more. In vain did Horace the younger endeavour to secure for him the hand of Miss Nicholls, an heiress with £50,000, and, to that end, placed the young lady with Horace the elder (Lord Walpole), at Wolterton. The scheme failed: the crafty old politician thought he might as well benefit his own sons as his nephew, for he had himself claims on the Houghton estate which he expected Miss Nicholl's fortune might help to liquidate.