Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

by express from different parts of England to play matches on Richmond-green; of his keeping aide-de camps to ride to all parts to lay bets for him at horse-races, and of twenty other peculiarities; but I fancy you are tired: in short, you, who know me, will comprehend all best when I tell you that I live in such a scene of folly as makes me even think myself a creature of common sense.

CLXII.

Horace Walpole rarely lost a favourable opportunity of addressing any celebrated personage. This is one of many congratulatory epistles to the elder Pitt received at the end of 1759-the year of Minden, Quiberon Bay, and Quebec; 'a year the most auspicious this country ever knew,' wrote Lord Bute.

The Hon. Horace Walpole to William Pitt.

November 19, 1759.

Sir,-On my coming to town I did myself the honour of waiting on you and Lady Hester Pitt; and though I think myself extremely distinguished by your obliging note, I should be sorry for having given you the trouble of writing it, if it did not lend me a very pardonable opportunity of saying what I much wished to express, but thought myself too private a person and of too little consequence to take the liberty to say. In short, Sir, I was eager to congratulate you on the lustre you have thrown on this country; I wished to thank you for the security you have fixed to me of enjoying the happiness I do enjoy. You have placed England in a situation in which it never saw itself,—a task the more difficult, as you had not to improve, but recover.

In a trifling book, written two or three years ago,1 I said (speaking of the name in the world the most venerable to me) 'sixteen unfortunate and inglorious years since his removal have already written his eulogium.' It is but justice to you, Sir, to add, that that period ended when your administration began. Sir, do not take this for flattery: there is nothing in your power to give that I would accept; nay, there is nothing I could envy, but what I believe you would scarce offer me, your glory. This may seem very vain and insolent; but consider, Sir, what a monarch is a man who wants nothing; consider how he looks down on one

1 The catalogue of Royal and noble authors.

who is only the most illustrious man in Britain. But, Sir, freedoms apart; insignificant as I am, probably it must be some satisfaction to a great mind like your's, to receive incense when you are sure there is no flattery blended with it. And what must any Englishman be that could give you a moment's satisfaction, and would hesitate?

Adieu, Sir. I am unambitious, I am uninterested—but I am vain. You have by your notice, uncanvassed, unexpected, and at the period when you certainly could have the least temptation to stoop down to me, flattered me in the most agreeable manner. If there could arrive the moment when you could be nobody, and I any body, you cannot imagine how grateful I would be. In the mean time, permit me to be, as I have been ever since I had the honour of knowing you, Sir,

Your most obedient, humble servant,
HORACE WALPOLE.

CLXIII.

The sublime and the ridiculous at the funeral of George II.

The Hon. Horace Walpole to George Montagu.

Arlington Street: November 13, 1760.

Even the honeymoon of a new reign don't produce events every day. There is nothing but the common saying of addresses and kissing hands. The chief difficulty is settled; Lord Gower yields the mastership of the horse to Lord Huntingdon, and removes to the great wardrobe, from whence Sir Thomas Robinson was to have gone into Ellis' place, but he is saved. The city, however, have a mind to be out of humour; a paper has been fixed on the Royal Exchange, with these words, 'No petticoat government, no Scotch minister, no Lord George Sackville'; two hints totally unfounded, and the other scarce true. No petticoat ever governed less, it is left at Leicester House: Lord George's breeches are as little concerned; and, except Lady Susan Stuart and Sir Harry Erskine, nothing has yet been done for any Scots. For the King himself, he seems all good nature, and wishing to satisfy everybody; all his speeches are obliging.

I saw him again yesterday, and was surprised to find the leveeroom had lost so entirely the air of the lion's den. This sovereign

don't stand in one spot, with his eyes fixed royally on the ground, and dropping bits of German news; he walks about, and speaks to everybody. I saw him afterwards on the throne where he is graceful and genteel, sits with dignity and reads his answers to addresses well; it was the Cambridge address, carried by the Duke of Newcastle in his doctor's gown, and looking like the Médecin malgré lui. He had been vehemently solicitous for attendance for fear my Lord Westmoreland, who vouchsafes himself to bring the address from Oxford, should outnumber him. Lord Litchfield and several other Jacobites have kissed hands; George Selwyn says,' They go to St. James,' because now there are so many Stuarts there.'

Do you know, I had the curiosity to go to the burying t'other night; I had never seen a royal funeral; nay, I walked as a rag of quality, which I found would be, and so it was, the easiest way of seeing it. It is absolutely a noble sight. The Prince's chamber, hung with purple, and a quantity of silver lamps, the coffin under a canopy of purple velvet, and six vast chandeliers of silver on high stands, had a very good effect. The ambassador from Tripoli and his son were carried to see that chamber.

The procession, through a line of foot guards, every seventh man bearing a torch, the horse-guards lining the outside, their officers with drawn sabres and crape sashes on horseback, the drums muffled, the fifes, bells tolling, and minute guns,-all this was very solemn. But the charm was the entrance of the abbey, where we were received by the dean and chapter in rich robes, the choir and almsmen bearing torches; the whole abbey so illuminated, that one saw it to greater advantage than by day; the tombs, long aisles, and fretted roof, all appearing distinctly, and with the happiest chiaro scuro. There wanted nothing but incense, and little chapels here and there, with priests saying mass for the repose of the defunct; yet one could not complain of its not being Catholic enough. I had been in dread of being coupled with some boy of ten years old; but the heralds were not very accurate, and I walked with George Grenville, taller and older, to keep me in countenance. When we came to the Chapel of Henry the Seventh, all solemnity and decorum ceased; no order was observed, people sat or stood where they could or would; the Yeomen of the Guard were crying out for help, oppressed by the immense

weight of the coffin; the bishop read sadly and blundered in the prayers; the fine chapter, Man that is born of a woman, was chanted, not read; and the anthem, besides being immeasurably tedious, would have served as well for a nuptial. The real serious part was the figure of the Duke of Cumberland, heightened by a thousand melancholy circumstances. He had a dark brown adonis, and a cloak of black cloth, with a train of five yards.

Attending the funeral of a father could not be pleasant: his leg extremely bad, yet forced to stand upon it near two hours; his face bloated and distorted with his late paralytic stroke, which has affected, too, one of his eyes; and placed over the mouth of the vault into which, in all probability, he must himself so soon descend; think how unpleasant a situation! He bore it all with a firm and unaffected countenance. This grave scene was fully contrasted by the burlesque Duke of Newcastle. He fell into a fit of crying the moment he came into the chapel, and flung himself back in a stall, the archbishop hovering over him with a smelling-bottle; but in two minutes his curiosity got the better of his hypocrisy, and he ran about the chapel with his glass to spy who was or was not there, spying with one hand, and mopping his eyes with the other. Then returned the fear of catching cold; and the Duke of Cumberland, who was sinking with heat, felt himself weighed down, and turning round, found it was the Duke of Newcastle standing upon his train, to avoid the chill of the marble. It was very theatric to look down into the vault, where the coffin was, attended by mourners with lights. Clavering, the groom of the bed-chamber, refused to sit up with the body, and was dismissed by the King's order.

I have nothing more to tell you, but a trifle, a very trifle. The King of Prussia has totally defeated Marshal Daun.' This which would have been prodigious news a month ago, is nothing to-day; it only takes its turn among the questions, 'Who is to be groom of the bed-chamber? What is Sir T. Robinson to have?' I have been to Leicester fields to-day; the crowd was immoderate; I don't believe it will continue so. Good night.

The Austrian General Daun, the ablest of the antagonists of Frederick II., was defeated at Torgau. This was the bloodiest battle fought during the Seven Years' War.

CLXIV.

The conversation between Horace Walpole and Hogarth, so graphically described in this letter, took place very many years after the great painter had practically abandoned portraitpainting, and indeed some time after he had completed those works by which he will ever be famous. But he was aiming at a different and a higher standard of excellence in his art, and it is clear that Walpole coincided in Sir Joshua Reynolds' opinion that 'Hogarth was not blessed with the knowledge of his own deficiency, or of the bounds which were set to the extent of his own powers.'

The Hon. Horace Walpole to George Montagu.

Arlington Street: May 5, 1761. We have lost a young genius, Sir William Williams; an express from Belleisle, arrived this morning, brings nothing but his death. He was shot very unnecessarily, riding too near a battery; in sum he is a sacrifice to his own rashness and to ours. For what are we taking Belleisle? I rejoiced at the little loss we had on landing; for the glory, I leave it to the common council. I am very willing to leave London to them too, and to pass half the week at Strawberry, where my two passions, lilacs and nightingales are in full bloom. I spent Sunday as if it were Apollo's birthday; Gray and Mason were with me, and we listened to the nightingales till one o'clock in the morning. Gray has translated two noble incantations from the Lord knows who, a Danish Gray, who lived the Lord knows when. They are to be enchased in a history of English bards which Mason and he are writing; but of which the former has not written a word yet, and of which the latter, if he rides Pegasus at his usual footpace will finish the first two pages two years hence.

But the true frantic Estus resides at present with Mr. Hogarth; I went t'other morning to see a portrait he is painting of Mr. Fox. Hogarth told me he had promised, if Mr. Fox would sit as he liked, to make as good a picture as Vandyke or Rubens could. I was silent-- Why now,' said he, 'you think this very vain, but why should not one speak truth?' This truth was uttered in the face of his own Sigismonda. . . She has her father's picture in a bracelet on her arm, and her fingers are bloody with

[ocr errors]
« AnteriorContinuar »