Walpole arrived in England in September 1741, at which time his correspondence with Sir Horace Mann commences. He had been chosen member for Callington, in the parliament which was elected in June of that year, and arrived in the House of Commons just in time to witness the angry discussions which preceded and accompanied the downfall of his father's administration. He plunged at once into the excitement of political partisanship with all the ardour of youth, and all the zeal which his filial affection for his father inspired. His feelings at this period are best explained by a reference to his letters in the following collection. Public business and attendance upon the House of Commons, apart from the interest attached to peculiar ques tions, he seems never to have liked. He consequently took very little part either in debates or committees. In March 1742, on a motion being made for an inquiry into the conduct of Sir Robert Walpole for the preceding ten years, he delivered his maiden speech; on which he was complimented by no less a judge of oratory than Pitt. This speech he has preserved in his letter to Sir Horace Mann, of March 24th, 1742. He moved the Address in 1751; and in 1756 made a speech on the question of employing Swiss regiments in the colonies. This speech he has also himself preserved in the second volume of his "Memoires." In 1757 he was active in his endeavours to save the unfortunate Admiral Byng. Of his conduct upon this occasion he has left a detailed account in his "Memoires." This concludes all that can be collected of his public life, and at the general election of 1768 he finally retired from parliament. Upon this occasion he writes thus to George Montagu:-" As my senatorial dignity is gone, I shall not put you to the expense of a cover; and I hope the advertisement will not be taxed, as I seal it to the paper. In short, I retain so much iniquity from the last infamous parliament, that, you see, I would still cheat the public. The comfort I feel in sitting peaceably here, instead of being at Lynn, in the high fever of a contested election, which, at best, would end in my being carried about that large town, like a figure of a pope at a bonfire, is very great. I do not think, when that function is over, that I shall repent my resolution. What could I see but sons and grandsons playing over the same knaveries that I have seen their fathers and grandfather's act? Could I hear oratory beyond my Lord Chatham's? Will there ever be parts equal to Charles Townshends? Will George Grenville cease to be the most tiresome of beings!" * Sir Walter Scott says that Walpole, on one occasion, “vindicated the memory of his father with great dignity and eloquence" in the House of Commons; but, as I cannot find any trace of a speech of this kind made by him after Sir Robert Walpole's death, I am inclined to think Sir Walter must have made a mistake as to the time of delivery of the speech mentioned in the text. [Secker, at that time Bishop of Oxford, says that Walpole "spoke well against the motion." See post, letter to Sir Horace Mann, dated March 24, 1742.] b Sir Walter Scott is in error when he says that Walpole retired from the House of Commons in 1758, "at the active age of forty-one." This event occurred, as is here stated, in March, 1768, and when Walpole was consequently in his fifty-first year. © Letter, dated Arlington Street, March 12th, 1768. It is but fair to mention, in opposition to the opinion respecting George Grenville, here delivered by Walpole, that of no VOL. I. 5 From this time Walpole devoted himself more than ever to his literary and antiquarian pursuits; though the interest he still, in society at least, took in politics, is obvious, from the frequent reference to the subject in his letters. In the course of his life, his political opinions appear to have undergone a great change. In his youth, and indeed till his old age, he was not only a strenuous Whig, but, at times, almost a Republican. How strong his opinions were in this sense may be gathered, both from the frequent confessions of his political faith, which occur in his letters, and from his reverence for the deathwarrant of Charles the First, of which he hung up the engraving in his bed-room, and wrote upon it with his own hand the words "Major Charta." The horrors of the French Revolution drove him, in the latter period of his life, into other views of politics; and he seems to have become, in theory at least, a Tory, though he probably would have indignantly repudiated the appellation, had it been applied to him. Even during the earlier part of his career, his politics had varied a good deal (as, indeed, in a long life, whose do not?); but, in his case, the cause of variation was a most amiable one. His devoted attachment to Marshal Conway, which led him, when that distinguished man was turned out of his command of a regiment, and of his place at court, in 1764, to offer, with much earnestness, to divide his fortune with him caused him also to look with a favourable eye upon the government of the day, whenever Mr. Conway was employed, and to follow him implicitly in his votes in the House of Commons. Upon this subject he writes thus to Conway, who had not told him before less an authority than Burke, who says, “Mr. Grenville was a first-rate figure in this country." He had also offered to share his fortune with Mr. Conway in the year 1744 (see letter of July 20th of that year), in order to enable Mr. Conway to marry a lady he was then in love with. He ends his very pressing entreaties by saying, "For these reasons, don't deny me what I have set my heart on-the making your fortune easy to you." Nor were these the only instances of generosity to a friend, which we find in the life of Walpole. In the year 1770, when the Abbé Terrai was administering the finances of France, (or, to use the more expressive language of Voltaire, "Quand Terrai nous mangeoit,") his economical reductions occasioned the loss of a portion of her pension, amounting to three thousand livres, to Madame du Deffand. Upon this occasion Walpole wrote thus to his old blind friend, who had presented a memorial of her case to M. de St. Florentin, a course of proceeding which Walpole did not approve of:-" Ayez assez d'amitié pour moi pour accepter les trois mille livres de ma part. Je voudrois que la somme ne me fùt pas aussi indifferente qu'elle l'est, mais je vous jure qu'elle ne retranchera rien, pas même sur mes amusemens. La prendriez vous de la main de la grandeur, et la refuseriez vous de moi? Vous me connoissez faites ce sacrifice à mon orgueil, qui seroit enchanté de vous avoir empêchée de vous abaisser jusqu'à la sollicitation. Votre mémoire me blesse. Quoi! vous, vous, réduite à représenter vos malheurs! Accordez moi, je vous conjure, la grace que je vous demande à genoux, et jouissez de la satisfaction de vous dire, J'ai un ami qui ne permettra jamais que je me jette aux pieds des grands. Ma Petite, j'insiste. Voyez, si vous aimez mieux me faire le plaisir le plus sensible, ou de devoir une grace qui, ayant été sollicitée, arrive toujours trop tard pour contanter l'amitié. Laissez moi goûter la joie la plus pure, de vous avoir mise à votre aise, et que cette joie soit un secret profond entre nous deux." See Letters of the Marquise du Deffand to the Honourable Horace Walpole.-It was impossible to make a pecuniary offer with more earnestness or greater delicacy; and Madame du Deffand's not having found it necessary subsequently to accept it, in no degree diminishes the merit of the proffered gift. hand of a speech he made on the Qualification Bill, in consequence of which Walpole was absent from the House of Commons upon that occasion:-"I don't suspect you of any reserve to me; I only mention it now for an occasion of telling you, that I don't like to have any body think that I would not do whatever you do. I am of no consequence; but, at least, it would give me some to act invariably with you, and that I shall most certainly be ever ready to do." Upon another occasion he writes again in a similar strain:-"My only reason for writing is, to repeat to you, that whatever you do, I shall act with you. I resent any thing done to you as to myself. My fortunes shall never be separated from yours, except that, some day or other, I hope yours will be great, and I am content with mine." Upon one political point Horace Walpole appears to have entertained from the first the most just views, and even at a time when such were not sanctioned by the general opinion of the nation. From its very commencement, he objected to that disastrous contest the American war, which, commenced in ignorant and presumptuous folly, was prolonged to gratify the wicked obstinacy of individuals, and ended, as Walpole had foretold it would, in the discomfiture of its authors, and the national disgrace and degradation, after a profuse and useless waste of blood and treasure. Nor must his sentiments upon the Slave Trade be forgotten-sentiments which he held, too, in an age when, far different from the present one, the Assiento Treaty, and other horrors of the same kind, were deemed, not only justifiable, but praiseworthy. "We have been sitting," he writes, on the 25th of February 1750, "this fortnight on the African Company. We, the British Senate, that temple of Liberty, and bulwark of Protestant Christianity, have, this fortnight, been considering methods to make more effectual that horrid traffic of selling negroes. It has appeared to us, that six-and-forty thousand of these wretches are sold every year to our plantations alone! It chills one's blood-I would not have to say I voted for it, for the continent of America! The destruction of the miserable inhabitants by the Spaniards was but a momentary misfortune that flowed from the discovery of the New World, compared to this lasting havoc which it brought upon Africa. We reproach Spain, and yet do not even pretend the nonsense of butchering the poor creatures for the good of their souls." One of the most favourite pursuits of Walpole was the building and decoration of his Gothic villa of Strawberry Hill. It is situated at the end of the village of Twickenham, towards Teddington, on a slope, which gives it a fine view of a reach of the Thames and the opposite wooded hill of Richmond Park. He bought it in 1747, of Mrs. Chenevix, the proprietress of a celebrated toy-shop. He thus describes it in a letter of that year to Mr. Conway. "You perceive by my date that I am got into a new camp, and have left my tub at * See letter, dated Monday, five o'clock, Feb. 1761. b See letter, dated April 19th, 1764. • See letter to Sir Horace Mann, Feb. 25, 1750. It is set in ena Windsor. It is a little plaything-house that I got out of Mrs. Chene- "A small Euphrates through the piece is roll'd, Two delightful roads, that you would call dusty, supply me continually with coaches and chaises; barges, as solemn as barons of the exchequer, move under my window; Richmond Hill and Ham Walks bound my prospects; but, thank God! the Thames is between me and the Duchess of Queensberry. Dowagers, as plenty as flounders, inhabit all around; and Pope's ghost is just now skimming under my window by a most poetical moonlight." b He commenced almost immediately adding to the house, and Gothicizing it, assisted by the taste and designs of his friend Mr. Bentley; till, in the end, the cottage of Mrs. Chenevix had increased into the castellated residence we now behold. He also filled it with collections of various sorts-books, prints, pictures, portraits, enamels, and miniatures, antiquities, and curiosities of all kinds. Among these miscellaneous hoards are to be found some fine works of art, and many things most valuable in an historical and antiquarian point of view. For these various expenses he drew upon his annual income, which arose from three patent places conferred on him by his father, of which the designations were, Usher of the Exchequer, Comptroller of the Pipe, and Clerk of the Estreats. As early as the year 1744, these sinecures produced to him, according to his own account, nearly two thousand a-year; and somewhat later, the one place of Usher of Exchequer rose in value to double this sum. This income,with prudent management, sufficed for the gratification of his expensive tastes of building and collecting, to which his long life was devoted. With regard to the merits of Strawberry Hill, as a building, it is perhaps unfair, in the present age, when the principles of Gothic architecture have been so much studied, and so often put in practice, to criticise it too severely. Walpole himself, who, in the earlier part of his life, seems to have had an unbounded admiration for the works of his own hands, appears in later times to have been aware of the faults in style of which he had been guilty; for, in a letter to Mr. Barrett, in 1788, he says, "If Mr. Matthews was really entertained" (with seeing Strawberry Hill), "I am glad. But Mr. Wyatt has made him. too correct a Goth not to have seen all the imperfections and bad a Catherine Hyde, the eccentric friend of Pope and Gay. She was, at this time, living in a small house in Ham Walks. Walpole, having found her out airing in her carriage, one day that he had called on her, there addressed the following lines to her : execution of my attempts; for neither Mr. Bentley nor my workmen had studied the science, and I was always too desultory and impatient to consider that I should please myself more by allowing time, than by hurrying my plans into execution before they were ripe. My house, therefore, is but a sketch for beginners; yours' is finished by a great master; and if Mr. Matthews liked mine, it was en virtuose, who loves the dawnings of an art, or the glimmerings of its restoration." In fact, the building of Strawberry Hill was "the glimmering of the restoration" of Gothic architecture, which had previously, for above a century, been so much neglected that its very principles seemed lost. If we compare the Gothic of Strawberry Hill with that of buildings about the same period, or a little anterior to it, we shall see how vastly superior it is to them, both in its taste and its decorations. If we look at some of the restorations of our churches of the beginning of the eighteenth century, we shall find them a most barbarous mixture of Gothic forms and Grecian and Roman ornaments. Such are the western towers of Westminster Abbey, designed by Wren; the attempts at Gothic, by the same architect, in one or two of his City churches; Gibbs's quadrangle of All Souls' College, Oxford; and the buildings in the same style of Kent, Batty, Langley, &c. To these Strawberry is greatly superior: and it must be observed, that Walpole himself, in his progressive building, went on improving and purifying his taste. Thus the gallery and roundtower at Strawberry Hill, which were among his latest works, are incomparably the best part of the house; and in their interior decorations there is very little to be objected to, and much to be admired. It were to be wished, indeed, that Walpole's haste to finish, to which he alludes in the letter just quoted, and perhaps also, in some degree, economy, had not made him build his castle, which, with all its faults, is a curious relic of a clever and ingenious man, with so little solidity, that it is almost already in a state of decay. Lath and plaster, and wood, appear to have been his favourite materials for construction; which made his friend Williams say of him, towards the end of his life," that he had outlived three sets of his own battlements." It is somewhat curious, as a proof of the inconsistency of the human mind, that, having built his castle with so little view to durability, Walpole entailed the perishable possession with a degree of strictness, which would have been more fitting for a baronial estate. And that, too, after having written a fable entitled "The Entail," in consequence of some one having asked him whether he did not intend to entail Strawberry Hill, and in ridicule of such a proceeding. Whether Horace Walpole conferred a benefit upon the public by setting the fashion of applying the Gothic style of architecture to domestic purposes, may be doubtful; so greatly has the example he gave been abused in practice since. But, at all events, he thus led the professors of architecture to study with accuracy the principles of the art, which has occasioned the restoration and preservation in a * Lee, in Kent. b Letter of June 5th, 1788. George James Williams, Esq. |