Letter 412 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Berkeley Square, Jan. 10, 1794. (page 555)

I certainly sympathize with you on the reversed and gloomy prospect of affairs, too extensive to detail in a letter; nor indeed do I know any thing more than I collect from newspapers and public reports; and those are so overcharged with falsehoods on all sides, that, if one waits for truth to emerge, one finds new subjects to draw one's attention before firm belief can settle its trust on any. That the ma.s.s and result are bad, is certain; and though I have great alacrity in searching for comforts and grounds of new hopes, I am puzzled as much in seeking resources, as in giving present credit. Reasonine is out of the question: all calculation is baffled: nothing happens that Sense Or experience said was probable. I wait to see what will happen, without a guess at what is to be expected. A storm, when the Parliament meets, will no doubt be attempted. How the ministers are prepared to combat it, I don't know, but I hope sufficiently, if it spreads no farther: at least I think they have no cause to fear the new leader who is to make the attack.

I have neither seen Mr. Wilson's book(888) nor his answerers. So far from reading political pamphlets, I hunt for any books, except modern novels, that will not bring France to my mind, or that at least will put it out for a time. But every fresh person one sees, revives the conversation: and excepting a long succession of fogs, n.o.body talks of any thing else; nor of private news do I know a t.i.ttle. Adieu!

(888) It was ent.i.tled "A Letter, Commercial and Political, addressed to the Right Hon. William Pitt-, by Jasper Wilson, jun.

Esq." The real author was Dr. Currie, the friend of Mr.

Wilberforce; who commends it, "as exhibiting originality of thought and force of expression, and solving, finely the phenomena of revolutions." See Life, vol. ii. p. 13.-E.

Letter 413 To Miss Berry.

Thursday evening, April 16, 1794. (page 556)

I am delighted that you have such good weather for your villeggiatura. The sun has not appeared here to-day; yet it has been so warm, that he may not be gone out of town, and only keeps in because it is unfashionable to be seen in London at Easter.

All my evening customers are gone, except Mrs. Damer, and she is at home to-night with the Greatheds and Mrs. Siddons, and a few more; and she had a mind I should go to her, I had a mind too; but think myself still too weak: after confinement for fourteen weeks, it seems formidable to sally forth. I have heard no novelty since you 'went, but of more progress in Martinico; on which it is said there is to be a Gazette, and which, I suppose, gave a small fillip to the stocks this morning: though my Jew, whom I saw again this morning, ascribed the rise to expectation in the City of news of a counter-revolution at Paris;-but a revolution to be, generally proves an addled egg.

The Gazette arrives, and little of Martinico remained unconquered. The account from Sir Charles Gray is one continued panegyric on the conduct of our officers soldiers, and sailors; who do not want to be driven on 'a la Dumaurier, by cannon behind them and on both sides. A good quant.i.ty of artillery and stores is taken too, and only two officers and about seventy men killed.

There is a codicil to the Gazette, with another post taken--the map, I suppose, knows where I do not--but you, who are a geographess, will, or easily find it out.

At my levee before dinner, I had Mrs. Buller, Lady Lucan, Sir Charles Blagden, Mr. c.o.xe, and Mr. Gough. This was a good day; I have not always so welcome a circle. I have run through both volumes of Mrs. Piozzi. Here and there she does not want parts, has some good translations, and stories that are new; particularly an admirable bon-mot of Lord Chesterfield, which I never heard before, but dashed with her cruel vulgarisms: see vol. ii. p. 291. The story, I dare to say, never happened, but was invented by the Earl himself; to introduce his reply. The sun never was the emblem of Louis Quinze, but of Louis Quatorze; In whose time his lordship was not amba.s.sador, nor the Czarina Empress: nor, foolish as some amba.s.sadors are, could two of them propose devices for toasts; as if, like children, they were playing at pictures and mottoes: and what the Signora styles a public toust, the Earl, I conclude, called a great dinner then.

I have picked out a motto for her work in her own words, and written it on the t.i.tle-page: "Simplicity cannot please without eloquence!" Now I think on't, let me ask if you have been as much diverted as you was at first? and have not two such volumes sometimes set you a'yawning? It is comic, that in a treatise on synonymous words, she does not know which are and which are not so. In the chapter on worth, she says, "The worth -even of money fluctuates in our state;" instead of saying in this country. Her very t.i.tle is wrong; as she does not even mention synonymous Scottish words: it ought to be called not British, but English Synonymy.

Mr. Courtenay has published some epistles in rhyme, in which he has honoured me with a dozen lines, and which are really some of the best in the whole set-in ridicule of my writings. One couplet, I suppose, alludes to my Strawberry verses on you and your sister. Les voici--

"Who to love tunes his note, with the fire of old age, And chirps the trim lay in a trim Gothic cage!"

If I were not as careless as I am about literary fame, still, this censure would be harmless indeed; for except the exploded story of Chatterton, of which I washed myself as white as snow, Mr. Courtenay falls on my choice of subjects--as, of Richard the Third and the Mysterious Mother--and not on the execution; though I fear there is enough to blame in the texture of them. But this new piece of criticism, or whatever it is, made me laugh, as I am offered up on the tomb of my poor mad nephew; who is celebrated for one of his last frantic acts, a publication in some monthly magazine, with an absurd hypothesis on "the moon bursting from the earth, and the earth from the sun, somehow or other:" but how, indeed, especially from Mr. Courtenay's paraphrase, I have too much sense to comprehend. However, I am much obliged to him for having taken such pains to distinguish me from my lunatic precursor, that even the European Magazine, when I shall die, will not be able to confound us. Richard the Third would be sorry to have it thought hereafter, that I had ever been under the care of Dr. Munro. Well! good night!

Letter 414 To Miss Hannah More.

April 27, 1794. (page 558)

This is no plot to draw you into committing even a good deed on a Sunday, which I suppose the literality of your conscience would haggle about, as if the day of the week const.i.tutes the sin, and not the nature of the crime. But you may defer your answer till to-night is become to-morrow by the clock having struck one; and then you may do an innocent thing without any guilt, which a quarter of an hour sooner you would think abominable. Nay, as an Irishman would say, you need not even read this note till the canonical hour is past.

In short, my dear Madam), I gave your obliging message to Lady Waldegrave, who will be happy to see you on Tuesday, at one o'clock But as her staircase is very bad, as she is in a lodging, I have proposed that this meeting, for which I have been pimping between two female saints, may be held here in my house, as I had the utmost difficulty last night in climbing her scala santa, and I cannot undertake it again. But if you are so good as to send me a favourable answer to-morrow, I will take care you shall find her here at the time I mentioned, with your true admirer.

Letter 415 To The Miss Berrys.

Strawberry Hill, Sat.u.r.day night, Sept. 27, 1794. (page 558)

I have been in town, as I told you I should, but gleaned nothing worth repeating, or I Would have wrote before I came away. The Churchills left me on Thursday, and were succeeded by the Marshal and Mr. Taylor, who dined and stayed all night. I am now alone, having reserved this evening to answer your long, and Agnes's short letter; but in this single one to both, for I have not matter enough for a separate maintenance.

I went yesterday to Mrs. Damer, and had a glimpse of her new house; literally a glimpse, for I saw but one room on the first floor, where she had lighted a fire, that I might not mount two flights; and as it was eight o'clock, and quite dark, she only opened a door or two, and gave me a cat's-eye view into them.

One blemish I had descried at first; the house has a corner arrival like her father's. Ah, me! who do not love to be led through the public. I did see the new bust of Mrs. Siddons, and a very mistressly performance it is indeed. Mrs. Damer was surprised at my saying I should expect you after you had not talked of returning near so soon. another week; she said. "I do not mention this, as if to gainsay your intention; on the contrary, I hope and beg you will stay as long as either of you thinks she finds the least benefit from it: and after that, too, as long as you both like to stay. I reproached myself so sadly, and do still, for having dragged you from Italy sooner than you intended, and am so grateful for your having had that complaisance, that unless I grow quite superannuated, I think I shall not be so selfish as to combat the inclination of either again. It is natural for me to delight in your company; but I do not even wish for it, if it lays you under any restraint. I have lived a thousand years to little purpose, if I have not learned that half a century more than the age of one's friends is not an agr'ement de plus.

I wish you had seen Canterbury some years ago, before they whitewashed it; for it is so coa.r.s.ely daubed, and thence the gloom is so totally destroyed, and so few tombs remain for so vast a ma.s.s, that I was shocked at the nudity of the whole. If you should go thither again, make the Cicerone show you a pane of gla.s.s in the east window, which does open, and exhibits a most delicious view of the ruins Of St. Anstin's.

Mention of Canterbury furnishes me with a very suitable opportunity for telling you a remarkable story, which I had from Lady Onslow t'other night, and which was related to her by Lord Ashburnham, on whose veracity you may depend. In the hot weather of this last summer, his lordship's very old uncle, the Bishop of Chichester,(889) was waked in his palace at four o'clock in the morning by his bedchamber door being opened, when a female figure, all in white, entered, and sat down near him. The prelate, who protests he was not frightened, said in a tone of authority, but not with the usual triple adjuration, "Who are you?" Not a word of reply; but the personage heaved a profound sigh. The Bishop rang the bell; but the servants were so sound asleep, that n.o.body heard him. He repeated his question: still no answer; but another deep sigh. Then the apparition took some papers out of the ghost of its pocket, and began to read them to itself. At last, when the Bishop had continued to ring, and n.o.body to come, the spectre rose and departed as sedately as it had arrived. When the servants did at length appear, the bishop cried, "Well! what have you seen?" "Seen, my lord!" "Ay, seen; or who, what is the woman that has been here?" "Woman my lord!"

(I believe one of the fellows smiled; though, to do her justice, Lady Onslow did not say so.) In short, when my lord had related his vision, his domestics did humbly apprehend that his lordship had been dreaming; and so did his whole family the next morning, for in this our day even a bishop's household does not believe in ghosts: and yet it is most certain that the good man had been in no dream, and told nothing but what he had seen; for, as the story circulated, and diverted the unG.o.dly at the prelate's expense, it came at last to the ears of a keeper of a mad-house in the diocese, who came and deposed, that a female lunatic under his care had escaped from his custody, and, finding the gate of the palace open, had marched up to my lord's chamber. The deponent further said, that his prisoner was always reading a bundle of papers. I have known stories of ghosts, solemnly authenticated, less credible; and I hope you will believe this, attested by a father of our own church.

Sunday night, 28th, 1794.

I have received another letter from dear Mary, of the 26th; and here is one for sweet Agnes enclosed. By her account of Broadstairs, I thought you at the North Pole; but if you are, the whales must be metamorphosed into gigs and whiskies, or split into them, as heathen G.o.ds would have done, or Rich the harlequin. You talk of Margate, but say nothing of Kingsgate, where Charles Fox's father scattered buildings of all sorts, but in no style of architecture that ever appeared before or has since, and in no connexion with or to any other, and in all directions; and yet the oddity and number made that naked, though fertile soil, smile and look cheerful. Do you remember Gray's bitter lines on him and his vagaries and history?(890)

I wish on your return, if in good weather, you would contrive to visit Mr. Barrett's at Lee; it is but four miles from Canterbury.

You will see a child of Strawberry prettier than the parent, and so executed and so finished! There is a delicious closet, too, so flattering to me: and a prior's library so antique, and that does such honour to Mr. Wyat's taste! Mr. Barrett, I am Most sure, would be happy to show his house to you; and I know, if you tell him that I beg it, he will produce the portrait of Anne of Cleve by Holbein, in the identic ivory box, turned like a Provence rose, as it Was brought over for Henry the Eighth. It will be a great favour, and it must be a fine day; for it lives in cotton and clover, and he justly dreads exposing it to any damp. He has some other good pictures; and the whole place is very pretty, though retired.

The Sunday's paper announces a dismal defeat of Clairfait; and now, if true, I doubt the French will drive the Duke of York into Holland, and then into the sea! Ora pro n.o.bis!

P. S. If this is not a long letter, I do not know what is. The story of the ghost should have arrived on this, which is St.

Goose's-day, or the commemoration of the ign.o.ble army of martyrs, who have suffered in the persecution under that gormandizing archangel St. Michael.

(889) The Right Rev. Sir William Ashburnham, Bart, his lordship died at a very advanced age, in September 1797. He was the father of the bench, and the only bishop not appointed by George the Third.-E.

(890) Ent.i.tled "Impromptu, suggested by a view, in 1766, of the seat and ruins of a deceased n.o.bleman, at Kingsgate, Kent." See Gray's Works, vol. i. p. 161, ed. 1836.-E.

Letter 416 To Miss Berry.

Strawberry Hill, Tuesday, Oct. 7, 1794. (page 561)

Your answer, which I own arrived a day sooner than I flattered myself it would--I wish it could have told me how you pa.s.sed the storm of Sunday night it has not only relieved me from all anxiety on the subject, but has made me exceedingly happy; for though I mistook you for a moment, it has proved to me, that I had judged perfectly right of your excellent and most uncommon understanding. Astonished I was, no doubt, while I conceived that you wished to be placed in a situation so unworthy of your talents and abilities and knowledge, and powers of conversation.(891) I never was of a court myself; but from my birth and the position of my father, could but, for my first twenty years, know much of the nature of the beast; and, from my various connexions since, I have seldom missed farther opportunities of keeping up my acquaintance even with the interior. The world in general is not ignorant of the complexion of most courts; though ambition, interest, and vanity, are always willing to leap over their information, or to fancy they can counteract it: but I have no occasion to probe that delusion, nor to gainsay your random opinion, that a court life may be eligible for women. Yes, for the idle ones you specify, perhaps so;-for respectable women I think much less than even for men. I do not mean with regard to what is called their character; as if there were but one virtue with which women have any concern-I speak of their understanding, and consequential employment of their time.

In a court there must be much idleness, even without dissipation; and amongst the female const.i.tuents, much self-importance ill-founded; some ambition, Jealousy, envy-and thence hatred, insincerity, little intrigues for credit, and--but I am talking as if there were any occasion to dissuade you from what you despise and I have only stated what occasioned my surprise at your thinking of what you never did think at all. Still, while I did suppose that in any pore of your heart there did lurk such a wish, I did give a great gulp and swallowed down all attempts to turn your thoughts aside from it--and why? Yes, and you must be ready to ask me, how such a true friend could give into the hint without such numerous objections to a plan so unsuitable for you!

Oh! for strong reasons too. In the first place, I was sure, that, without my almost century of experience, your good sense must have antic.i.p.ated all my arguments. You often confute my desultory logic on points less important, as I frequently find; but the true cause of my a.s.senting, without suffering a sigh to escape me was, because I was conscious that I could not dissuade you fairly, without a grain or more of self mixing in the argument. I would not trust myself with myself. I would not act again as I did when you was in Italy; and answered you as fast as I could, lest self should relapse. Yet, though it did not last an hour, what a combat it was! What a blow to my dream of happiness, should you be attached to a court! for though you, probably, would not desert Cliveden entirely, how distracted would Your time be!--But I will not enter into the detail of my thoughts; you know how many posts they travel in a moment, when my brain is set at work, and how firmly it believes all it imagines: besides the defalcation of your society, I saw the host of your porphyrogeniti, from top to bottom, bursting on my tranquillity. But enough: I conquered all these dangers, and still another objection rose when I had discovered the only channel I could open to your satisfaction, I had no little repugnance to the emissary I was to employ.(892) Though it is my intention to be equitable to him, I should be extremely sorry to give him a shadow of claim on me; and you know those who might hereafter be glad to conclude, that it was no wonder they should be disappointed, when grat.i.tude on your account had been my motive. But my cares are at an end; and though I have laboured through two painful days, the thorns of which were sharpened, not impeded, by the storm, I am rejoiced at the blunder I made, as it has procured me the kindest, and most heart-dictated, and most heartfelt letter, that ever was written; for which I give you millions of thanks. Forgive my injurious surmise; for you see, that though you can wound my affection, you cannot allay its eagerness to please you, at the expense of my own satisfaction and peace.

Having stated with most precise truth all I thought related to yourself I do resume and repeat all I have said both in this and my former letter, and renew exactly the same offers to my sweet Agnes, if she has the least wish for what I supposed you wished.

Nay, I owe still more to her; for I think she left Italy more unwillingly than you did, and grat.i.tude to either is the only circ.u.mstance that can add to my affection for either. I can swallow my objections to trying my nephew as easily for her as for you; but, having had two days and a half for thinking the whole case over, I have no sort of doubt but the whole establishment must be completely settled by this time; or that, at most, if any, places are not fixed yet, It must be from the strength and variety of contending interests: and, besides, the new Princess will have fewer of each cla.s.s of attendants than a queen; and I shall not be surprised if there should already be a brouillerie between the two courts about some or many of the nominations: and though the interest I thought of trying was the only one I could pitch upon, I do not, on reflection, suppose that a person just favoured has favour enough already to recommend others. Hereafter that may be better: and (" still more feasible method, I think, would be to obtain a promise against a vacancy; which, at this great open moment n.o.body will think of asking, when the present is so uppermost in their minds: and now my head is cool, perhaps I could strike out more channels, should your sister be so inclined. But of that we will talk when we meet.

Thursday.

I have received the second letter that I expected, and it makes me quite happy on all the points that disquieted me; on the court, on the tempest, and I hope on privateers, as you have so little time to stay on Ararat, and the winds that terrify me for you, will, I trust, be as formidable to them. Above, all, I rejoice at your approaching return; on which I would not say a syllable seriously, not only because I would have you please yourselves, but that you may profit as much as possible by change of air. I retract all my mistake; and though, perhaps, I may have floundered on with regard to A., still I have not time to correct or write any part of it over again. Besides, every word was the truth of my heart; and why should not you see what is or was in it? Adieu!

(891) This alludes to a wish he supposed Miss Berry to have had for a nomination in the household of Caroline Princess of Wales, then forming.-M.B.

(892) Lord Cholmondeley, then residing in the Isle of Thanet.

Letter 417To The Miss Berrys.

October 17, 1794. (page 563)

I had not the least doubt of Mr. Barrett's showing you the greatest attention: he is a most worthy man, and has a most sincere friendship for me, and I was sure would mark to any persons that I love. I do not guess what your criticisms on his library will be: I do not think we shall agree in them; for to me it is the most perfect thing I ever saw, and has the most the air it was intended to have--that of an abbot's library, supposing it could have been so exquisitely finished three hundred years ago.

But I am sorry he will not force Mr. Wyat to place the Mabeuse over the chimney; which is the sole defect, as not distinguished enough for the princ.i.p.al feature of the room. My closet is as perfect in its way as the library; and it would be difficult to suspect that it had not been a remnant of the ancient convent, only newly painted and gilt. My cabinet, nay, nor house, convey any conception; every true Goth must perceive that they are more the works of fancy than of imitation.