“Madame du Deffand has been so ill, that the day she was seized I thought she would not live till night. Her Herculean weakness, which could not resist strawberries and cream after supper, has surmounted all the ups and downs which followed her excess; but her impatience to go everywhere and to do everything has been attended with a kind of relapse, and another kind of giddiness; so that I am not quite easy about her, as they allow her to take no nourishment to recruit, and she will die of inanition, if she does not live upon it. She cannot lift her head from the pillow without étourdissemens; and yet her spirits gallop faster than anybody’s, and so do her repartees. She has a great supper to-night for the Duc de Choiseul, and was in such a passion yesterday with her cook about it, and that put Tonton71 into such a rage, that nos dames de Saint Joseph thought the devil or the philosophers were flying away with their convent! As I have scarce quitted her, I can have had nothing to tell you. If she gets well, as I trust, I shall set out on the 12th; but I cannot leave her in any danger—though I shall run many myself, if I stay longer. I have kept such bad hours with this malade, that I have had alarms of gout; and bad weather, worse inns, and a voyage in winter, will ill suit me.…
“I must repose a great while after all this living in company; nay, intend to go very little into the world again, as I do not admire the French way of burning one’s candle to the very snuff in public.”
At the end of 1775, Sir Horace Mann’s elder brother died, the family estate came to the Ambassador, and Walpole flattered himself “that a regular correspondence of thirty-four years will cease, and that I shall see him again before we meet in the Elysian fields.” He was disappointed. In February, 1776, he writes to his old friend: “You have chilled me so thoroughly by the coldness of your answer, and by the dislike you express to England, that I shall certainly press you no more to come. I thought at least it would have cost you a struggle.” Again, a little later: “Pray be assured, I acquiesce in all you say on your own return, though grieved at your resolution, and more so at the necessity you find in adhering to it. It is not my disposition to prefer my own pleasure to the welfare of my friends. Your return might have opened a warm channel of affection which above thirty years could not freeze; but I am sure you know my steadiness too well to suspect me of cooling to you, because we are both grown too old to meet again. I wished that meeting as a luxury beyond what old age often tastes; but I am too well prepared for parting with everything to be ill-humouredly chagrined because one vision fails.” In July, 1776, we find the following, also addressed to Mann:
“I did flatter myself with being diverted at your surprise from so general an alteration of persons, objects, manners, as you would have found; but there is an end of all that pleasing vision! I remember when my father went out of place, and was to return visits, which Ministers are excused from doing, he could not guess where he was, finding himself in so many new streets and squares. This was thirty years ago. They have been building ever since, and one would think they had imported two or three capitals. London could put Florence into its fob-pocket; but as they build so slightly, if they did not rebuild, it would be just the reverse of Rome, a vast circumference of city surrounding an area of ruins. As its present progress is chiefly north, and Southwark marches south, the metropolis promises to be as broad as long. Rows of houses shoot out every way like a polypus; and, so great is the rage of building everywhere, that, if I stay here a fortnight, without going to town, I look about to see if no new house is built since I went last. America and France must tell us how long this exuberance of opulence is to last! The East Indies, I believe, will not contribute to it much longer. Babylon and Memphis and Rome, probably, stared at their own downfall. Empires did not use to philosophise, nor thought much but of themselves. Such revolutions are better known now, and we ought to expect them—I do not say we do. This little island will be ridiculously proud some ages hence of its former brave days, and swear its capital was once as big again as Paris, or—what is to be the name of the city that will then give laws to Europe?—perhaps New York or Philadelphia.”
At the close of 1776, Walpole had another severe illness. It is first mentioned in a letter to Lady Ossory:
“It is not from being made Archbishop of York, that I write by a secretary [Kirgate], Madam; but because my right hand has lost its cunning. It has had the gout ever since Friday night, and I am overjoyed with it, for there is no appearance of its going any farther. I came to town on Sunday in a panic, concluding I should be bedrid for three months, but I went out last night, and think I shall be able in a few days to play upon the guitar if I could play upon it at all.…
“I have seen the picture of ‘St. George,’ and approve the Duke of Bedford’s head, and the exact likeness of Miss Vernon,72 but the attitude is mean and foolish, and expresses silly wonderment. But of all, delicious is a picture of a little girl of the Duke of Buccleuch, who is overlaid with a long cloak, bonnet, and muff, in the midst of the snow, and is perishing blue and red with cold, but looks so smiling, and so good-humoured, that one longs to catch her up in one’s arms and kiss her till she squalls.
“My hand has not a word more to say.”
Sir Joshua Reynolds. Pinx. A. Dawson. Ph. Sc. J. Raphael Smith. Sc.
Lady Caroline Montagu.
The attack proved obstinate, and we have again complaints of the English climate, mixed with lamentations over the change in English manners. Thus in February, 1777, he writes:
“Everything is changed; as always must happen when one grows old, and is prejudiced to one’s old ways. I do not like dining at nearly six, nor beginning the evening at ten at night. If one does not conform, one must live alone; and that is more disagreeable and more difficult in town than in the country, where old useless people ought to live. Unfortunately, the country does not agree with me; and I am sure it is not fancy; for my violent partiality to Strawberry Hill cannot be imposed upon. I am persuaded that it is the dampness of this climate that gives me so much gout; and London, from the number of fires and inhabitants, must be the driest spot in the nation.”
The following, written to Lord Nuneham in July, is in a gayer tone:
“Now I have taken this liberty, my dear Lord, I must take a little more; you know my old admiration and envy are your garden. I do not grudge Pomona or Sir James Cockburn their hot-houses, nor intend to ruin myself by raising sugar and water in tanner’s bark and peach skins. The Flora Nunehamica is the height of my ambition, and if your Linnæus should have any disciple that would condescend to look after my little flower-garden, it would be the delight of my eyes and nose, provided the cataracts of heaven are ever shut again! Not one proviso do I make, but that the pupil be not a Scot. We had peace and warm weather before the inundation of that northern people, and therefore I beg to have no Attila for my gardener.
“Apropos, don’t your Lordship think that another set of legislators, the Maccaronis and Maccaronesses, are very wise? People abuse them for turning days, nights, hours and seasons topsy-turvy; but surely it was upon mature reflection. We had a set of customs and ideas borrowed from the continent that by no means suited our climate. Reformers bring back things to their natural course. Notwithstanding what I said in spite in the paragraph above, we are in truth but Greenlanders, and ought to conform to our climate. We should lay in store of provisions and candles and masquerades and coloured lamps for ten months in the year, and shut out our twilight and enjoy ourselves. In September and October, we may venture out of our ark, and make our hay, and gather in our corn, and go to horse-races, and kill pheasants and partridges for stock for our winter’s supper. I sailed in a skiff and pair this morning to Lady Cecilia Johnston, and found her, like a good housewife, sitting over her fire, with her cats and dogs and birds and children. She brought out a dram to warm me and my servants, and we were very merry and comfortable. As Lady Nuneham has neither so many two-footed or four-footed cares upon her hands, I hope her hands have been better employed.
“I wish I could peep over her shoulder one of these wet mornings!”
CHAPTER VII
The American War.—Irish Discontent.—Want of Money.—The Houghton Pictures Sold.—Removal to Berkeley Square.—Ill-health.—A Painting by Zoffani.—The Rage for News.—The Duke of Gloucester.—Wilkes.—Fashions, Old and New.—Mackerel News.—Pretty Stories.—Madame de Sévigné’s Cabinet.—Picture of his Waldegrave Nieces.—The Gordon Riots.—Death of Madame du Deffand.—The Blue Stockings.
Humourist as he was, and too often swayed by prejudice, no man had a sounder judgment than Walpole when he gave his reason fair play. In his estimate of public events, he sometimes displayed unusual sagacity. Though his dislike of Lord Chatham led him to disparage the efforts of the old man eloquent to avert the American War—efforts which filled Franklin with admiration—he yet foresaw quite as clearly as Chatham the disastrous results of that contest. The celebrated speeches which fell dead on the ear of Parliament had no more effect upon Walpole; but Walpole did not need to be moved by them, for he was convinced already. “This interlude,” he writes to Conway, who was then in Paris, “would be entertaining, if the scene was not so totally gloomy. The Cabinet have determined on civil war.… There is food for meditation! Will the French you converse with be civil and keep their countenances? Pray remember it is not decent to be dancing at Paris, when there is a civil war in your own country. You would be like the country squire, who passed by with his hounds as the battle of Edgehill began.” The letter in which these words occur is dated January 22, 1775. Three weeks later, the writer adds: “The war with our Colonies, which is now declared, is a proof how much influence jargon has on human actions. A war on our own trade is popular!73 Both Houses are as eager for it as they were for conquering the Indies—which acquits them a little of rapine, when they are as glad of what will impoverish them as of what they fancied was to enrich them.” His sympathy, as well as his judgment, was on the side of the Colonies. On September 7th, 1775, he writes to Mann: “You will not be surprised that I am what I always was, a zealot for liberty in every part of the globe, and consequently that I most heartily wish success to the Americans. They have hitherto not made one blunder; and the Administration have made a thousand, besides the two capital ones, of first provoking, and then of uniting the Colonies. The latter seem to have as good heads as hearts, as we want both.” And on the 11th: “The Parliament is to meet on the 20th of next month, and vote twenty-six thousand seamen! What a paragraph of blood is there! With what torrents must liberty be preserved in America! In England what can save it?… What prospect of comfort has a true Englishman? Why, that Philip II. miscarried against the boors of Holland, and that Louis XIV. could not replace James II. on the throne!” And when Fortune declared herself on the side of the Colonists, Horace, unmoved by the reverses of his country, steadily preserved the same tone. “We have been horribly the aggressors,” he wrote at the end of 1777, “and I must rejoice that the Americans are to be free, as they had a right to be, and as I am sure they have shown they deserve to be.” But the calamities and disgraces of the time weighed heavily on his spirits. His correspondence throughout 1777 and the two following years is full of the American War. He recurs to the subject again and again, and harps upon it continually. It does not fall within our plan to quote his criticisms and reflections on the conduct of Lord North and his opponents. They are generally as acute and sensible as they are always vigorous and lively. The chief mistake one remarks in them is, that they assume the victory of America to mean the ruin of England’s Empire. The writer saw British troops everywhere defeated, retreating, laying down their arms; France allying herself with the rebellious Colonies, and threatening England with invasion; Spain joining in the hostile league; and Ireland showing fresh signs of disaffection: what wonder if he was tempted to predict that we should “moulder piecemeal into our insignificant islandhood?” In May, 1779, he writes: “Our oppressive partiality to two or three manufacturing towns in England has revolted the Irish, and they have entered into combinations against purchasing English goods in terms more offensive than the first associations of the Colonies. In short, we have for four or five years displayed no alacrity or address, but in provoking our friends and furnishing weapons of annoyance to our enemies; and the unhappy facility with which the Parliament has subscribed to all these oversights has deceived the Government into security, and encouraged it to pull almost the whole fabric on its own head. We can escape but by concessions and disgrace; and when we attain peace, the terms will prove that Parliamentary majorities have voted away the wisdom, glory, and power of the nation.”
Before the date of this extract, the pressure of the war had made itself felt in English society. In the preceding summer, Horace had written to Mason, then engaged on his poem of “The English Garden”:
“Distress is already felt; one hears of nothing but of the want of money; one sees it every hour. I sit in my Blue window, and miss nine in ten of the carriages that used to pass before it. Houses sell for nothing, which, two years ago, nabobs would have given lacs of diamonds for. Sir Gerard Vanneck’s house and beautiful terrace on the Thames, with forty acres of ground, and valued by his father at twenty thousand pounds, was bought in last week at six thousand. Richmond is deserted; an hundred and twenty coaches used to be counted at the church-door—there are now twenty. I know nobody that grows rich but Margaret. This Halcyon season has brought her more customers than ever, and were anything to happen to her, I have thoughts, like greater folk, of being my own minister, and showing my house myself. I don’t wonder your Garden has grown in such a summer, and I am glad it has, that our taste in gardening may be immortal in verse, for I doubt it has seen its best days! Your poem may transplant it to America, whither our best works will be carried now, as our worst used to be. Do not you feel satisfied in knowing you shall be a classic in a free and rising empire? Swell all your ideas, give a loose to all your poetry; your lines will be repeated on the banks of the Orinoko; and which is another comfort, Ossian’s ‘Dirges’ will never be known there. Poor Strawberry must sink in fæce Romuli; that melancholy thought silences me.”
Besides being vexed at the state of public affairs, Walpole suffered much about this time from the gout, and from family troubles. His nephew, Lord Orford, having recovered from a second attack of insanity, resolved on selling the pictures at Houghton. In February, 1779, Horace writes to Lady Ossory: “The pictures at Houghton, I hear, and I fear, are sold: what can I say? I do not like even to think on it. It is the most signal mortification to my idolatry for my father’s memory, that it could receive. It is stripping the temple of his glory and of his affection. A madman excited by rascals has burnt his Ephesus. I must never cast a thought towards Norfolk more; nor will hear my nephew’s name if I can avoid it. Him I can only pity; though it is strange he should recover any degree of sense, and never any of feeling!” The transaction was not, in fact, at that moment concluded. In the course of the same year, however, the whole gallery was sold to the Empress of Russia for a little more than forty thousand pounds. Walpole did not think the bargain a bad one, though he would rather, he said, the pictures were sold to the Crown of England than to that of Russia, where they would be burnt in a wooden palace on the first insurrection, while in England they would still be Sir Robert Walpole’s Collection. “But,” he added, “my grief is that they are not to remain at Houghton, where he placed them and wished them to remain.”
While grieving over his father’s pictures, Horace found himself involved in a Chancery suit. The lease of his town house in Arlington Street running out about this time, he had bought a larger house in Berkeley Square. Difficulties, however, hindered the completion of the purchase, and the affair went into Chancery. Fortunately, under Walpole’s management, the suit became a friendly one. “I have persisted in complimenting and flattering my parties, till by dint of complaisance and respect I have brought them to pique themselves on equal attentions; so that, instead of a lawsuit, it has more the air of a treaty between two little German princes who are mimicking their betters only to display their titular dignities. His Serene Highness, Colonel Bishopp, is the most obsequious and devoted servant of my Serenity the Landgrave of Strawberry.” The judge was equally agreeable. “Yesterday I received notice from my attorney that the Master of the Rolls has, with epigrammatic despatch, heard my cause, and pronounced a decree in my favour. Surely, the whip of the new driver, Lord Thurlow, has pervaded all the hard wheels of the law, and set them galloping. I must go to town on Monday, and get my money ready for payment,—not from impatience to enter on my premises, but though the French declare they are coming to burn London, bank-bills are still more combustible than houses, and should my banker’s shop be reduced to ashes, I might have a mansion to pay for, and nothing to pay with. If both were consumed, at least I should not be in debt.” The purchase-money paid, and possession taken, the next step was to remove to Berkeley Square. In October, 1779, he writes to Lady Ossory, whose sister-in-law,74 the newly-married Countess of Shelburne, was just established in the same square:
“My constitution, which set out under happy stars, seems to keep pace with the change of constellations, and fail like the various members of the empire. I am now confined with the rheumatism in my left arm, and find no benefit from our woollen manufacture, which I flattered myself would always be a resource. On Monday I shall remove to Shelburne Square, and watch impatiently the opening of the Countess’s windows; though with all her and her Earl’s goodness to me, I doubt I shall profit little of either. I do not love to be laughed at or pitied, and dread exposing myself to numbers of strange servants and young people, who wonder what Methuselah does out of his coffin. Lady Blandford is gone; her antediluvian dowagers dispersed; amongst whom I was still reckoned a lively young creature. Wisdom I left forty years ago to Welbore Ellis, and must not pretend to rival him now, when he is grown so rich by the semblance of it. Since I cannot then act old age with dignity, I must keep myself out of the way, and weep for England in a corner.”
The Lady Blandford mentioned in this passage was a widow who had lived within a few miles of Horace, at Sheen, and had recently died. During her illness, Walpole, in writing to Lady Ossory, had dwelt on the Roman fortitude with which the sick lady supported her sufferings, and on the devotion shown to her by her friend, Miss Stapylton. He added in his usual strain: “Miss Stapylton has £30,000, and Lady Blandford nothing. I wish we had some of these exalted characters in breeches! These two women shine like the last sparkles in a piece of burnt paper, which the children call the parson and clerk. Alas! the rest of our old ladies are otherwise employed; they are at the head of fleets and armies.” Walpole at this moment was altogether out of heart. “I see myself a poor invalid, threatened with a painful and irksome conclusion, and mortified at seeing the decay of my country more rapid than my own.” But he could still keep up a tone of gaiety. In November he wrote to Mann:
“I went this morning to Zoffani’s to see his picture or portrait of the ‘Tribune at Florence;’ and, though my letter will not put on its boots these three days, I must write while the subject is fresh in my head. The first thing I looked for, was you—and I could not find you. At last I said, ‘Pray, who is that Knight of the Bath?’—‘Sir Horace Mann.’—‘Impossible!’ said I. My dear Sir, how you have left me in the lurch!—you are grown fat, jolly, young; while I am become the skeleton of Methuselah.…
“Well! but are you really so portly a personage as Zoffani has represented you? I envy you. Everybody can grow younger and plump, but I. My brother, Sir Edward Walpole, is as sleek as an infant, and, though seventy-three, is still quite beautiful. He has a charming colour, and not a wrinkle. I told him, when Lord Orford75 was in danger, that he might think what he would, but I would carry him into the Court of Chancery, and put it to the consciences of the judges, which of us two was the elder by eleven years?”
And two days later we have the following amusing letter to Lady Ossory:
“Berkeley Square, Nov. 14, 1779.
“I must be equitable; I must do the world justice; there are really some hopes of its amendment; I have not heard one lie these four days; but then, indeed, I have heard nothing. Well, then, why do you write? Stay, Madam; my letter is not got on horseback yet; nor shall it mount till it has something to carry. It is my duty, as your gazetteer, to furnish you with news, true or false, and you would certainly dismiss me if I did not, at least, tell you something that was impossible. The whole nation is content with hearing anything new, let it be ever so bad. Tell the first man you meet that Ireland has revolted; away he runs, and tells everybody he meets,—everybody tells everybody, and the next morning they ask for more news. Well, Jamaica is taken; oh, Jamaica is taken. Next day, what news? Why, Paul Jones is landed in Rutlandshire, and has carried off the Duchess of Devonshire, and a squadron is fitting out to prevent it; and I am to have a pension for having given the earliest intelligence; and there is to be a new farce called The Rutlandshire Invasion, and the King and Queen will come to town to see it, and the Prince of Wales will not, because he is not old enough to understand pantomimes.76
“Well, Madam; having despatched the nation and its serious affairs, one may chat over private matters. I have seen Lord Macartney, and do affirm that he is shrunk, and has a soupçon of black that was not wont to reside in his complexion.…
“Mr. Beauclerk has built a library in Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, that reaches half-way to Highgate. Everybody goes to see it; it has put the Museum’s nose quite out of joint.
“Now I return to politics. Sir Ralph Payne and Dr. Johnson are answering General Burgoyne, and they say the words are to be so long that the reply must be printed in a pamphlet as long as an atlas, but in an Elzevir type, or the first sentence would fill twenty pages in octavo. You may depend upon the truth of it, for Mr. Cumberland told it in confidence to one with whom he is not at all acquainted, who told it to one whom I never saw; so you see, Madam, there is no questioning the authority.
“I will not answer so positively for what I am going to tell you, as I had it only from the person himself. The Duke of Gloucester was at Bath with the Margrave of Anspach. Lord Nugent came up and would talk to the Duke, and then asked if he might take the liberty of inviting his Royal Highness to dinner? I think you will admire the quickness and propriety of the answer:—the Duke replied, ‘My Lord, I make no acquaintance but in London,’ where you know, Madam, he only has levees. The Irishman continued to talk to him even after that rebuff. He certainly hoped to have been very artful—to have made court there, and yet not have offended anywhere else77 by not going in town, which would have been a gross affront to the Duke, had he accepted the invitation.
“I was at Blackheath t’other morning, where I was grieved. There are eleven Vander Werffs that cost an immense sum: half of them are spoiled since Sir Gregory Page’s death by servants neglecting to shut out the sun. There is another room hung with the history of Cupid and Psyche, in twelve small pictures by Luca Giordano, that are sweet. There is, too, a glorious Claude, some fine Teniers, a noble Rubens and Snyders, two beautiful Philippo Lauras, and a few more,—and several very bad. The house is magnificent, but wounded me; it was built on the model of Houghton, except that three rooms are thrown into a gallery.
“Now I have tapped the chapter of pictures, you must go and see Zoffani’s ‘Tribune at Florence,’ which is an astonishing piece of work, with a vast deal of merit.
“There too you will see a delightful piece of Wilkes looking—no, squinting tenderly at his daughter. It is a caricature of the Devil acknowledging Miss Sin in Milton. I do not know why, but they are under a palm-tree, which has not grown in a free country for some centuries.
“15th.
“With all my pretences, there is no more veracity in me than in a Scotch runner for the Ministry. Here must I send away my letter without a word in it worth a straw. All the good news I know is, that a winter is come in that will send armies and navies to bed, and one may stir out in November without fear of being tanned. I am heartily glad that we shall keep Jamaica and the East Indies another year, that one may have time to lay in a stock of tea and sugar for the rest of one’s days. I think only of the necessaries of life, and do not care a rush for gold and diamonds, and the pleasure of stealing logwood. The friends of Government, who have thought of nothing but of reducing us to our islandhood, and bringing us back to the simplicity of ancient times, when we were the frugal, temperate, virtuous old English, ask how we did before tea and sugar were known. Better, no doubt; but as I did not happen to be born two or three hundred years ago, I cannot recollect precisely whether diluted acorns, and barley bread spread with honey, made a very luxurious breakfast.
“I was last night at Lady Lucan’s to hear the Misses Bingham sing Jomelli’s ‘Miserere,’ set for two voices. There were only the Duchess of Bedford, Lady Bute … and half a dozen Irish.… The Duchess told me, that a habit-maker returned from Ampthill is gone stark in love with Lady Ossory, on fitting her with the new dress—I think they call it a Levite—and says he never saw so glorious a figure. I know that; and so you would be in a hop-sack, Madam—but where is the grace in a man’s nightgown bound round with a belt?
“Good-night, Lady! I hope I shall have something to tell you in my next, that my letter may be shorter.
“Codicil to my to-day’s:—viz. Nov. 15, 1779.
“I enclosed the above to Lord Ossory, because it was not worth sixpence, and had sent it to the post, and then went to Bedford House, where, lo! enters Lady Shelburne, looking as fresh and ripe as Pomona. N.B. Her windows were not open yesterday, and to-day there was such a mist, ermined with snow, that I could not see. I find it was not a habit-maker that was smitten with your Ladyship as a pig in a poke, but somebody else; but as her Grace’s mouth has lost one tooth, and my ear, I suspect, another, I have not found out who the unfortunate man is.
“Next enters your Ladyship’s letter. I have seen my dignity of Minister to Spain78—many a fair castle have I erected in that country, but truly never resided there.… This is long enough for a codicil, in which one has nothing more to give.”
In the same lively mood, he writes about the same time to Mason:
“Berkeley Square, Nov. I don’t know what day.
“If you can be content with anything but news as fresh as mackerel, I will tell you as pretty a story as a gentleman can hear in a winter’s day, though it has not a grain of novelty in it but to those who never heard it, which was my case till yesterday.
“When that philosophic tyrant the Czarina (who murdered two emperors for the good of their people, to the edification of Voltaire, Diderot, and D’Alembert) proposed to give a code of laws that should serve all her subjects as much or as little as she pleased, she ordered her various states to send deputies who should specify their respective wants. Amongst the rest came a representative of the Samoieds; he waited on the marshal of the diet of legislation, who was Archbishop of Novgorod. ‘I am come,’ said the savage, ‘but I do not know for what.’ ‘My clement mistress,’ said his Grace, ‘means to give a body of laws to all her dominions.’—‘Whatever laws the Empress shall give us,’ said the Samoied, ‘we shall obey, but we want no laws.’—‘How,’ said the Prelate, ‘not want laws! why, you are men like the rest of the world, and must have the same passions, and consequently must murder, cheat, steal, rob, plunder,’ &c., &c., &c.
“‘It is true,’ said the savage, ‘we have now and then a bad person among us, but he is sufficiently punished by being shut out of all society.’
“If you love nature in its naturalibus, you will like this tale. I think one might make a pretty ‘Spectator’ by inverting the hint: I would propose a general jail delivery, not only from all prisons, but madhouses, as not sufficiently ample for a quarter of the patients and candidates; and to save trouble, and yet make as impartial distinction, to confine the virtuous and the few that are in their senses. But I am digressing, and have not yet told you the story I intended; at least, only the first part.
“One day Count Orlow, the Czarina’s accomplice in more ways than one, exhibited himself to the Samoied in the robes of the order, and refulgent with diamonds. The savage surveyed him attentively, but silently. ‘May I ask,’ said the favourite, ‘what it is you admire?’—‘Nothing,’ replied the Tartar: ‘I was thinking how ridiculous you are.’—‘Ridiculous,’ cried Orlow, angrily; ‘and pray in what?’—‘Why, you shave your beard to look young, and powder your hair to look old!’
“Well! as you like my stories, I will tell you a third, but it is prodigiously old, yet it is the only new trait that I have found in that ocean Bibliothèque des Romans, which I had almost abandoned; for I am out of patience with novels and sermons, that have nothing new, when the authors may say what they will without contradiction.
“My history is a romance of the Amours of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of our Henry the Second. She is in love with somebody who is in love with somebody else. She puts both in prison. The Count falls dangerously ill, and sends for the Queen’s Physician. Eleanor hears it, calls for the Physician, and gives him a bowl, which she orders him to prescribe to the Count. The Doctor hesitates, doubts, begs to know the ingredients.—‘Come,’ says her Majesty, ‘your suspicions are just—it is poison; but remember, it is a crime I want from you, not a lecture; go and obey my orders; my Captain of the guard and two soldiers shall accompany you, and see that you execute my command, and give no hint of my secret; go, I will have no reply:’ the Physician submits, finds the prisoner in bed, his mistress sitting by. The Doctor feels his pulse, produces the bowl, sighs, and says, ‘My dear friend, I cannot cure your disorder, but I have a remedy here for myself,’ and swallows the poison.
“Is not this entirely new? it would be a fine coup de théâtre, and yet would not do for a tragedy, for the Physician would become the hero of the piece, would efface the lovers; and yet the rest of the play could not be made to turn on him.
“As all this will serve for a letter at any time, I will keep the rest of my paper for something that will not bear postponing.
“20th.
“Come, my letter shall go, though with only one new paragraph. Lord Weymouth has resigned, as well as Lord Gower. I believe that little faction flattered themselves that their separation would blow up Lord North, and yet I am persuaded that sheer cowardice has most share in Weymouth’s part. There is such universal dissatisfaction, that when the crack is begun, the whole edifice perhaps may tumble, but where is the architect that can repair a single story? The nation stayed till everything was desperate, before it would allow that a single tile was blown off.”
At the close of the year, he is cheered by the sight of a precious relic: