osos, as you are the most generous of all friends! Well! the worse I think of myself, the better I think of you, and that is some compensation for the contempt I have for myself; and I will be content to serve as a foil to you. Adieu ! This is the last letter which Horace Walpole addressed to Sir Horace Mann. The illness of the latter now became serious, but he lingered on in great suffering until the 16th of November. His last moments were cheered by the kind attentions of his nephew, who immediately repaired to Florence, on learning of his uncle's illness. According to his wishes, the remains of Sir Horace Mann were brought to England, and deposited in the family vault at Linton in Kent.-ED. TO GEORGE SELWYN. Paris, December 2nd, 1765. DEAR GEORGE, In return for your kind line by Mr. Beauclerk I send you a whole letter, but I was in your debt before, for making over Madame Du Deffand to me, who is delicious; that is, as often as I can get her fifty years back; but she is as eager about what happens every day as I am about the last century. I sup there twice a week, and bear all her dull company for the sake of the Regent.* I might go to her much oftener, but my curiosity to see every body and every thing is insatiable, especially having lost so much time by my confinement. I have been very ill a long time, and mending much longer, for every two days undo the ground I get. The fogs and damps, which, with your leave, are greater and more frequent than in England, kill me. However, it is the country in the world to be sick and grow old in. The first step towards being in fashion is to lose an eye or a tooth. Young people I conclude there are, but where they exist I don't guess not that I complain; it is charming to totter into vogue. If I could but run about all the morning, I should be content to limp into good company in the evening. They humour me and fondle me so, and are so good-natured, and make me keep my armed chair, and rise for nobody, and hand out nobody, and don't stare at one's being a skeleton, that I grow to like them exceedingly, and to be pleased with living here, which was far from the case at first: but then there was no soul in Paris but philosophers, whom I wished in heaven, * Madame du Deffand had been the Mistress of the famous Regent-Duke of Orleans.-ED. though they do not wish themselves so. They are so overbearing and so underbred! Your old flame, the Queen, was exceedingly kind to me at my presentation. She has been ever since at Fontainbleau, watching her son, whose death is expected every day, though it is as much the fashion not to own it, as if he was of the immortal House of Brunswick. Madame Geoffrint is extremely what I had figured her, only with less wit and more sense than I expected. The Duchess d'Aiguillon is delightful, frank, and jolly, and handsome and goodhumoured, with dignity too. There is another set in which I live much, and to my taste, but very different from all I have named, Madame de Rochfort, and the set at the Luxembourg. My newest acquaintance is Monsieur de Maurepas, with whom I am much taken, though his countenance and person are so like the late Lord Hardwicke. From the little I have seen of him, we have reason, I believe, to thank Madame de Pompadour for his disgrace. At the Marquis de Brancas' I dined with the Duc de Brissac, in his red stockings in short, I think my winter will be very well amused, whether Mr. Garrick and Mr. Pitt act or not. Pray tell Lord Holland, that I have sent him the few new things that I thought would entertain him for a moment, though none of them have much merit. I would have written to him, had I any thing to tell him; which you perceive by what I have said, I had not. The affair of the Parliament of Brétagne, and the intended trial of the famous Mons. de Charolais by commission, against which the Parliament of Paris strongly inveighs, is the great subject in agitation; but I know little of the matter, and was too sick of our own Parliaments to interest myself about these. The Hôtel de Carnavalet§ sends its blessings to you. I never pass it without saying an Ave *The Dauphin Louis died at Fontainbleau, after a long illness, on the 20th of this month, at the age of thirty-six. Walpole writes to Gray the poet on the 25th January, 1766," Madame Geoffrin, of whom you have heard much, is an extraordinary woman, with more common sense than I almost ever met with. Great quickness in discovering characters, penetration in going to the bottom of them, and a pencil that never fails in a likeness-seldom a favourable one. She exacts and preserves, in spite of her birth and their nonsensical prejudices about nobility, great court and attention. This she acquires by a thousand little arts and offices of friendship, and by a freedom and severity which seem to be her sole end of drawing a concourse to her; for she insists on scolding those she inveigles to her. She has little taste and less knowledge, but protects artisans and authors, and courts a few people to have the credit of serving her dependents." Gibbon also writes to his father on the 24th of February, 1763,"Lady Hervey's recommendation to Madame Geoffrin was a most excellent one: her house is a very good one; regular dinners there every Wednesday, and the best company in Paris, in men of letters and people of fashion." Lady Hervey, (the celebrated Mary Lepel) was the means of introducing both Gibbon and Walpole to Madame Geoffrin.-ED. Maurepas had been Minister of Marine, and is now known to have been disgraced by means of Madame de Pompadour. On the death of Louis the Fifteenth he was summoned to assist in forming the new Administration.-ED. The residence of Madame de Sevigné in Paris.. Maria de Rabutin Chantal, gratia plena! The Abbé de Malherbe has given orders that I should see Livery whenever I please. Pray tell me which convent was that of nos Sœurs de Sainte Marie, where our friend used to go on the evening that Madame de Grignan set out for Provence? My best compliments to Mr. Williams: has Lord Rockingham done any thing for him yet? or has the Duke of Newcastle his old power of dispensing with promises? I sent my Lady Townshend, as long ago as by Lady Hertford, two silver knives which she desired, but cannot hear by any way that she received them. I could ask twenty other questions; but some I had better not ask, and the rest I should not care whether they were answered or not. We have swarms of English; but most of them know not Joseph, and Joseph does not desire to know them. I live with none of them but Crawford and Lord Ossory, the latter of whom I am extremely sorry is returning to England. I recommend him to Mr. Williams as one of the properest and most amiable young men I ever knew. I beg your pardon, my dear sir, for this idle letter; yet don't let it lie in your work-basket. When you have a quarter of an hour awake,t and to spare, I wish you would bestow it on me. There are no such things as bons-mots here to send you, and I cannot hope that you will send me your own. Next to them, I should like Charles Townshend's, but I dont desire Betty's. I forgot to tell you that I sometimes go to Baron d'Olbach's; but I have left off his dinners, as there was no bearing the authors, and philosophers, and savants, of which he has a pigeon house full. They soon turned my head with a new system of antediluvian deluges, which they have invented to prove the eternity of matter. The Baron is persuaded that Pall Mall is paved with lava or deluge stones. In short, nonsense for nonsense, I like the Jesuits better than the philosophers. Were ever two men so like in their persons, or so unlike in their dispositions, as Dr. Gem and Brand? Almost the first time I ever saw Gem, he said to me, "Sir, I am serious, I am of a very serious turn!" Yes, truly! Say a great deal for me to Lord March, and to the Rena's dogs touffe ébourifée. The old Presidents would send his compliments to you, if he remembered you or any thing else. * Madame de Sevigné. It is almost needless to say that Madame de Grignan was the daughter to whom her charming letters are addressed. Livery, situated in the Fôret de Bondi, about three leagues from Paris, was frequently the residence of Madame de Sevigné, and the place from whence several of her letters were addressed.-ED. Selwyn was in the habit of dozing in company.-Ed. The mistress of a fruit-shop in St. James's Street, a lounging-place of the men of fashion of the day.-ED. Charles John Francis, better known as the President Henault, was the author of several dramatic works, but was principally famous for his excellent dinners, and When we three meet again at Strawberry, I think I shall be able at least to divert Mr. Williams; but till then you must keep my counsel. Madame du Deffand says I have le fou mocqueur, and I have not hurt myself a little by laughing at whisk and Richardson,* though I have steered clear of the chapter of Mr. Hume ;† the only Trinity now in fashion here. A propos, I see by the papers that the Bishop of London is suppressing mass-houses. When he was Bishop of Peterborough and Parson of Twickenham, he suffered one under his nose. Did the Duchess of Norfolk get him translated to London? I should conclude so; and that this was the first opportunity he had of being ungrateful. Adieu! my dear sir, yours most sincerely, HORACE WALPOLE. TO GEORGE SELWYN. Arlington Street, October 16, 1767. THANK you; I am as well as any body can be that has been drowned from above and below, that was sick to death for eight hours, with the additional mortification of finding myself not invulnerable. In short, I had every affliction from my passage, except in not catching cold; so that on that side I am still first-cousin to Hercules. I find London as empty as possible, and politics quite asleep, his work, the "Abrégé Chronologique de l'Histoire de France." Voltaire addresses him, Henault, fameux par vos soupers, Henault was the intimate friend of Madame du Deffand, and his table was the resort of all the men of wit and talent of the French capital. He died in 1770. -ED. "High as Richardson's reputation stood in his own country, it was even more exalted in those of France and Germany, whose imaginations are more easily excited, and their passions more easily moved, by tales of fictitious distress, than are the cold-blooded English. Foreigners of distinction have been known to visit Hampstead, and to inquire for the Flask Walk, distinguished as a scene in Clarissa's History, just as travellers visit the rocks of Meillerie to view the localities of Rousseau's tale of passion. Diderot vied with Rousseau in heaping incense upon the shrine of the English author. The former compares him to Homer, and predicts for his memory the same honours which are rendered to the father of epic poetry; and the last, besides his well-known burst of eloquent panegyric, records his opinion in a letter to D'Alembert: On n'a jamais fait encore, en quelque langue que ce soit, de roman égal à Clarisse, ni même approchant.'" Sir Walter Scott, Prose Works, vol. iii. p. 48.—ED. Hume, as Secretary of the Embassy under the Earl of Hertford, and afterwards as Chargé d'Affaires at Paris, had rendered himself personally no less popu lar in France than Richardson had done by his sentimentalities.-En. In his passage from France. Walpole quitted Paris for England on the 6th of this month.-ED. mean, in town. In the counties they are all mad about elections. The Duke of Portland, they say, carried thirty thousand pounds to Carlisle, and it is all gone already. Lord Clive is going before his money, and not likely to live three months. Lady Bolingbroke has declared she will come into waiting on Sunday se'nnight; but as the Queen is likely to be brought to bed before that time, this may only be a bravado. The report is, that she intends to acknowledge all my Lord can desire. * I found Lord Holland most remarkably mended in his health. Lady Holland has set out to-day, and he follows her to-morrow. I beg you will tell the Marquise de Broglie, (whom you will see at the President's,) that Lord Holland carries her a box of pimpernel seed, and will leave it at Mons. Panchaud's, whither she must send for it. I hope you will be so good as not to forget this; nor another little commission, which is, to ask Madame Geoffrin where Mons. Guibert, the King's carver, lives, and then to send him a guinea, for a drawing he made for me, which I will deduct from the lottery tickets which I have bought for you, at twelve pounds seventeen and sixpence a-piece. The numbers are, 17574, on which I have written your name and Mad. de Bentheim's, and 26442, on which I have written Wiart's. I have twice called on my Lady Townshend, but missed her; I am now going to her by appointment. Pray tell Lord Carlisle that I delivered his letters and parcels. Say a great deal for me to Madame du Deffand and Lord March, who I need not say are what I left best at Paris. Do not stay for more hurricanes and bad weather, but come away the first fine day. Adieu ! Yours ever, A Monsieur, Monsieur Selwyn, à l'Hôtel de Duc de York, Rue Jacob, Fauxbourg St. Germain, à Paris. H. W. TO GEORGE SELWYN. Strawberry Hill, Sept. 9, 1771. WHO would ever have thought that Raton and Rosettet would be talked of for one another? But neither innocence nor age are secure! People say that there never is a smoke without some fire: here is a striking proof to the contrary. Only think of the poor dear souls having a comic opera made upon their loves.* Rosette is so shocked that she insists upon Raton's posting to Paris and breaking The Queen was brought to bed of the late Duke of Kent, father of her present Majesty, on the 2d of November.-ED. The names of two dogs belonging to George Selwyn and Horace Walpole. - ED. |