Arlington Street, Jul 12, 1765.

If you knew with what difficulty and pain I write to you you would allow my dear sir that I have some zeal for your satisfaction I have been extremely ill for these last sixteen days with the gout all over me in head stomach and both feet but as it never budged from the latter it soon attracted all the venom from the upper parts Oh it is a venomous devil I have lain upon a couch for two days but I question whether I shall be so alert to day as I have had a great deal of pain in the night and little sleep Still I must write to you as it is both for your satisfaction and my own and as this is the first moment that I have enjoyed the liberty of the post for these three years We e may say what we will I may launch out and even you need not be discreet when our letters pass through Mr Conway's office He has already himself told you in form that he is your principal and I repeat how glad of it I am for your sake as well as for all others I told him last night that I believed the Duke of York had obtained the promise of a red riband for you and begged that promise at least of the late odious ministers might be fulfilled and that none of our new aspirants might be thrust in before you He readily with kind expressions towards you promised me his interest.

kind expressions towards you promised me his interest Well at last the four tyrants are gone undone by their own insolence and unpitied Their arrogance to the King and proscriptions of every body but their own crew forced his Majesty to try any thing rather than submit to such task masters Mr Pitt who was ready and willing to have assumed the burden was disappointed by the treachery of Lord Temple who has reconciled and leagued himself with his brother George In this distress the Duke of Čumberland has persuaded the Opposition to accept and form a ministry Without Mr Pitt they were unwilling but pressed and encouraged by Mr Pitt and fearing the crown should be reduced to worse shifts rather than again bend to the yoke they have submitted and every thing promises fairer than could be expected The Duke of Bedford, Grenville and the two secretaries are already dismissed and their places filled by Lord Winchelsea Lord Rockingham and Mr Dowdswell as First Commissioners of the Admiralty and Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer the Duke of Grafton and Mr Conway The list of ins and outs will be much more considerable by degrees though not rapidly nor executed with the merciless hand of late years for the present system is composed of men as much more virtuous in that respect as in every other than their predecessors Nobody has resigned yet but those immediately connected with the fallen as Lord Gower Lord Thomond and Lord Weymouth and who would not have been suffered to stay if they had desired it.

The crown of Ireland is offered to Lord Heriford All this sets my family in an illustrious light enough yet it does not dazzle me My wishes and intentions are just the same as they were Moderation privacy and quiet sum up all my future views and having seen my friends landed iny little cock boat shall waft me to Strawberry as soon as I am able to get into it The gout they tell me is to ensure me a length of years and health but as I fear I must now and then renew the patent at the original expense I am not much flattered by so dear an annuity You may judge of my sensations when I tell you I reckon the greatest miracle ever performed was that of bidding the cripple take up his bed and walk I could as soon do the former as the latter .

Since I began to write I hear that this morning have kissed hands Lord Ashburnham (age 40) for the Great Wardrobe in room of Lord Despencer, Lord Besborough and Lord Grantham Postmasters in the places of Lord Hyde and Lord Trevor Lord Villierst as Vicechamberlain instead of old Will Finch who believe has a pension and Lord Scarborough who succeeds Lord Thomond in the Cofferer's office You will say that all this is strongly tinctured with peerage it is true but the House of Commons will have its dole though not yet as folks do not like a re election depending for six months.

The Duke of Bolton (age 47) the other morning nobody knows why or wherefore except that there is a good deal of madness in the blood sat himself down upon the floor in his dressing room and shot him self through the head What is more remarkable is that it is the same house and same chamber in which Lord Scarborough performed the same exploit I do not believe that shooting one's self through the head is catching or that any contagion lies in a wainscot that makes one pull a suicide trigger but very possibly the idea might revert and operate on the brain of a splenetic man I am glad he had not a blue garter but a red one as the more plenty the sooner one gets to Florence.

This is a long epistle in my condition Pray unseal and decypher your lips now the tower has no longer the least air of the Bastille. Halifax, Sandwich (age 46) and General Warrants are sent to the devil though I believe Sandwich (age 46) will contrive to return like Belphegor even though he should be obliged to marry his own wife (age 48) again but he can never get rid of the smell of brimstone Adieu.

To STRAFFORD (age 49), Sunday 25 August 1771

Paris, August 25, 1771.

I HAVE passed my biennial six weeks here, my dear Lord, and am preparing to return as soon as the weather will allow me. It is some comfort to the patriot-virtue, envy, to find this climate worse than our own. There were four very hot days at the end of last month, which you know with us northern people compose a summer: it has rained half this, and for these three days there has been a deluge, a storm, and extreme cold. Yet these folks shiver in silk, and sit with their windows open till suppertime.-Indeed, firing is very dear, and nabobs very scarce. Economy and retrenchment are the words in fashion, and are founded in a little more than caprice. I have heard no instance of luxury but in Mademoiselle Guimard¹, a favourite dancer, who is building a palace:² round the salle a manger there are windows that open upon hothouses, that are to produce flowers all winter.-That is worthy of . There is a finer dancer whom Mr H[obart]³ is to transplant to London; a Mademoiselle Heinel⁴ or Ingle, a Fleming. She is tall, perfectly made, very handsome, and has a set of attitudes copied from the classics. She moves as gracefully slow as Pygmalion's statue⁵ when it was coming to life, and moves her leg round as imperceptibly as if she was dancing in the zodiac.-But she is not Virgo.

They make no more of breaking parliaments here than an English mob does of breaking windows. It is pity people are so ill-sorted. If this king and ours could cross over and figure in, Louis X V would dissolve our Parliament if Polly Jones⁶ did but say a word to him. They have got into such a habit of it here, that you would think a parliament was a polypus: they cut it in two, and by next morning half of it becomes a whole assembly. This has literally been the case at Besancon⁷. Lord and Lady Barrymore⁸, who are in the highest favour at Compiegne⁹, will be able to carry over the receipt¹⁰.

Everybody feels in their own way. My grief is to see the ruinous condition of the palaces and pictures. I was yesterday at the Louvre. Le Brun's¹¹ noble gallery, where the battles of Alexander are, and of which he designed the ceiling, and even the shutters, bolts and locks, is in a worse condition than the old gallery at Somerset House¹². It rains in upon the pictures¹³, though there are stores of much more valuable pieces than those of Le Brun. Heaps of glorious works by Raphael and all the great masters are piled up and equally neglected at Versailles. Their care is not less destructive in private houses. The Duke of Orléans's (age 46)¹⁴ pictures and the Prince of Monaco's's have been cleaned, and varnished so thick that you may see your face in them; and some of them have been transported from board to cloth, bit by bit, and the seams filled up with colour; so that in ten years they will not be worth sixpence. It makes me as peevish as if I was posterity! I hope your Lordship's works will last longer than these of Louis XIV. The glories of his siecle hasten fast to their end, and little will remain but those of his authors.

I am, my dear Lord,

Your most faithful humble servant,

HOR. WALPOLE (age 53)

Note 1. Marie-Madeleine Guimard (1743-1816), m. (1787) Jean-Etienne Despreaux (MAN N vii. 322-3, n. 16).

Note 2. The 'Temple de Terpsychore' in the Rue de la Chausee d'Antin, designed by Ledoux, sold by lottery in 1786 (MAN N vii. 323, n. 18).

Note 3. George Hobart (1731-1804), 3d E. of Buckinghamshire (age 39), 1793. For some of his difficulties in management of the operas, see MAN N vii. 271.

Note 4. Anne-Frederique Heinel (1753-1808), born in Bayreuth; made her debut at Stuttgart, 1767, and at Paris, 1768; in London for the opera season 1771-2, 1772-3, 1774, 1776; m. (1792) Gaetano Appolino Baldassare Vestris, the famous dancer (OSSORY i. 66, n. 15).

Note 5. Galatea.

Note 6. Former mistress of Henry, D. of Cumberland (H. Bleackley, Ladies Fair and Frail, 1925, p. 152).

Note 7. The parliament of Besancon was suppressed, 5 Aug., and then reconstituted (MAN N vii. 320, n. 1). Fourteen of the old members reappeared in the new parliament (Mercure historique, 1771, clxxi. 374).

Note 8. Richard Barry (1745-73), 6th E. of Barrymore (age 26), 1751, m. (1767) Lady Emily Stanhope (1749-80) (age 22).

Note 9. During the summer the Court often removed to Louis XV's chateau at Compiegne, about 45 miles N E of Paris.

Note 10. Perhaps a reference to the financial grants which the officers of the new parliament received. One of the old members was promoted to be first president, with 12,000 livres' salary and 3,000 livres' allowance for lodging (Mercure historique, loc. cit.).

Note 11. Charles Le Brun (1619-90).

Note 12.. The old Somerset House [Map], not yet replaced by Chambers's new structure. 'It was so far neglected as to be permitted to fall to ruin in some of the back parts' (Encyclopedia of London, ed. W . Kent, 1937, p. 587, citing Noorthouck's History of London, 1773). The Royal Academy's schools of design were moved there in 1771 (Kent, loc. cit.). HW's old friend Mrs Grosvenor had been housekeeper there (GRA Y i. 220, n. 17).

Note 13. 24 Aug.: 'Saw the great gallery of Le Brun with battles of Alexander, all the ornaments, ceiling, shutters, and even locks and bolts designed by Le Brun, but so abominably neglected that it rained in' ('Paris Journals,' D U DEFFAN D V. 339)

Note 14. Louis-Philippe de Bourbon (1725-85) (age 46), Duc d'Orléans, 1752.

Note 15. Honore-Camille-Leonor Goyon-de-Matignon de Grimaldi (1720-95), P. of Monaco.

The Early Diaries of Frances Burney May 1775. Mr. Jones, a Welsh harper, a silly young man, was also present. We had a great deal of conversation in parties, before the Concert began. I had the satisfaction to sit next to Mr. Harris (age 62), who is very cheerful and communicative, and his conversation was instructive and agreeable^58.5. Mr. Jones, the harper, began the Concert. He has a fine instrument of Merlin's construction; he plays with great neatness and delicacy; but as expression must have meaning, he does not abound in that commodity. After him, at the request of the Baronness Deiden, Mr. Burney went to the harpsichord. He played with his usual successful velocity and his usual applause. When he had received the compliments of the nobility and gentry, my father begged the Baronness to take his place; but she would not at first hear of it. She said in French, which she almost always speaks, that it was quite out of the question; and that it would be like a figurante's dancing after Heinel^59.1. However, Miss Phipps joined so warmly in my father's request, that she was at length prevailed with. The character she has acquired of being the first of lady harpsichord players, as far as I have heard or can judge, is well merited. She has a great deal of execution and fire, and plays with much meaning. She is, besides, extremely modest and unconscious. She declared she had never been so much frightened before in her life^59.2. When she had played a Lesson of Schobert's, my father asked her for another German composition, which he had heard her play at Lord Mulgrave's. She was going very obligingly to comply, when the Baron Deiden, looking at my sister, said, "Mais après, ma chère." "Eh bien!" cried Miss Phipps, "après Mrs. Burney."

Note 58.5. James Harris, of Salisbury (age 62), was nephew to that Earl of Shaftesbury who wrote "The Characteristics." He was First Lord of the Admiralty in 1762; a Lord of the Treasury afterwards. Dr. Johnson said that he was "a sound, solid scholar," but "a prig, and a bad prig," and "a coxcomb," who "did not understand his own system" in his own book, called "Hermes, an inquiry concerning universal grammar." We here see him in his pleasant, social aspect. Dr. Burney ranks him as a writer on music, in virtue of his three "Treatises on Art, Music, and History," 1774. When Mr. Harris took his seat in the House of Commons, Charles Townsend said to his next neighbour,-" Who is this man?"-" Who? why Harris that wrote one book about Grammar, and another about Virtue."-" What does he come here for? He will find neither Grammar nor Virtue here."

Note 59.1. Horace Walpole to Lord Strafford, August 25, 1771: "There is a finer dancer" (than Mlle. Guimard) "whom Mr. Hobart is to transport to London; a Mlle. Heinel or Ingle, a Fleming. She is tall, perfectly made, very handsome, and has a set of attitudes copied from the classics; she moves as gracefully slow as Pygmalion's statue when it was coming to life." She filled a before-deserted Opera House. The manager, Mr. Hobart, paid her six hundred pounds for the season, and the Maccaroni Club" complimented her with a regale of six hundred more."

Note 59.2. According to Horace Walpole, the Baron and Baroness Deiden were not personce gratis at the Court of St. James; being sent to England after the imprisonment of George III's (age 33) sister, Caroline Matilda, Queen of (age 20) Denmark. They were moved to the Papal Court, where Miss Berry met them a little later.

08 May 1744. London. To Horace Mann 1st Baronet (age 37).

I BEGIN to breathe a little at ease; we have done with the Parliament for this year; it rises on Saturday. We have had but one material day lately, last Thursday. The Opposition had brought in a bill to make it treason to correspond with the young Pretenders¹: the Lords added a clause, after a long debate, to make it forfeiture of estates, as it is for dealing with the father. We sat till one in the morning, and then carried it by 285 to 106. It was the best debate I ever heard. The King goes to Kensington to-morrow, and not abroad. We hear of great quarrels between Marshal Wade and Due d'Aremberg. The French King is at Valenciennes with Monsieur de Noailles, who is now looked upon as First Minister. He is the least dangerous for us of all. It is affirmed that Cardinal Tencin is disgraced, who was the very worst for us. If he is, we shall at least have no invasion this summer. Successors of Ministers seldom take up the schemes of their predecessors, especially such as by failing caused their ruin, which, I believe was Tencin's case at Dunkirk.

For a week we heard of the affair at Villafranca in a worse light than was true: it certainly turns out ill for both sides. Though the French have had such bloody loss, I cannot but think they will carry their point, and force their passage into Italy.

We have no domestic news, but Lord Level's being created Earl of Leicester, on an old promise which my father had obtained for him. Earl Berkeley * is married to Miss Drax, a very pretty maid of honour to the Princess; and the Viscount Fitzwilliam² to Sir Matthew Decker's eldest daughter; but these are people I am sure you don't know.

There is to be a great ball to-morrow at the Duchess of Richmond's for my Lady Carteret: the Prince is to be there. Carteret's court pay her the highest honours, which she receives with the highest state. I have seen her but once, and found her just what I expected, tres grandt dame; full of herself, and yet not with an air of happiness. She looks ill and is grown lean, but is still the finest figure in the world. The mother is not so exalted as I expected; I fancy Carteret has kept his resolution, and does not marry her too.

My Lord does not talk of going out of town yet; I don't propose to be at Houghton till August. Adieu!

Note 1. Augustus fourth Earl Berkeley, Knight of the Thistle. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Henry Drax, Esq. of Charborougb, in Dorsetshire; and died in 1755. - D.

Note 2. Richard sixth Viscount Fitzwilliam in Ireland, married Catheine, daughter and heiress of Sir Matthew Decker, Bart. - D.