Biography of William Wentworth 2nd Earl Strafford 1722-1791

Letters of Horace Walpole. 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), Duc d'Orléans, 1752.

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