THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. ART. I.—1. A Description of the Villa of Mr. Horace Walpole, BOTH of the historic houses, Holland House and Hatfield, which have been recently commemorated in our pages, were great and noble from the foundation, and can boast a farascending and richly-associated past. Holland House recalls a succession of statesmen and orators, interspersed and relieved by poets, historians and essayists, prominent among whom rises the honoured shade of Addison pacing up and down the library, in the act of composition, with a bottle of port at each end. Hatfield is redolent of royal reminiscences, and we can fancy the Virgin Queen seated under the traditional oak, with the grave Cecil in respectful attendance by her side. Strawberry Hill cannot bear a momentary comparison with either in antiquity, original splendour, or illustration. Its historic, artistic, and literary interest is the creation of one man. It stole obscurely into existence as a cottage under the name of 'Chopped Straw Hall,' having been built by a retired coachman (Lord Bradford's), who was supposed to have acquired the necessary funds by feeding his noble master's horses with a cheap substitute for oats. At a subsequent stage it had just so much connection with the drama as could be derived from being tenanted by Colley Cibber when he wrote The Refusal,' and just so much of the odour of sanctity or divinity as could be conferred by the residence of Talbot, Bishop of Durham, who rented it for eight years. It could boast of two noble occupants, the Marquis of Carnarvon and Lord John Sackville, prior to Walpole, but his Vol. 142.-No. 284. immediate Y immediate predecessor was Mrs. Chenevix, the celebrated toywoman. The manner in which he came into possession is specified in his 'Short Notes of My Life': 'In May, 1747, I took a small house near Twickenham for seven years. I afterwards (1748) bought it by Act of Parliament, it belonging to minors; and have made great additions and improvements to it. In one of the deeds I found it was called Strawberry Hill.' He hastens to announce his new possession in his most characteristic style to his friends. To Mr. (afterwards Sir Horace) Mann, June 5, 1747, he writes: 6 The house is so small, that I can send it you in letter to look at the prospect is as delightful as possible, commanding the river, the town, and Richmond Park; and being situated on a hill descends to the Thames through two or three little meadows, where I have some Turkish sheep and two cows, all studied in their colours for becoming the view. This little rural bijou was Mrs. Chenevix's, the toy-woman à la mode, who in every dry season is to furnish me with the best rain-water from Paris, and now and then with some Dresdenchina cows, who are to figure like wooden classics in a library: so I shall grow as much a shepherd as any swain in the Astræa.' To the Hon. H. Seymour Conway. 'Twickenham, June 8, 1747. 'You perceive by my date that I am got into a new camp, and have left my tub at Windsor. It is a little play-thing-house that I got out of Mrs. Chenevix's shop, and it is the prettiest bauble you It is set in enamelled meadows, with filigree hedges: ever saw. '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 prospect; 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. I have about land enough to keep such a farm as Noah's when he set up in the ark with a pair of each kind; but my cottage is rather cleaner than I believe his was after they had been cooped up together forty days. The Chenevixes had tricked it out for themselves up two pair of stairs is what they call Mr. Chenevix's library, furnished with three maps, one shelf, a bust of Sir Isaac Newton, and a lame telescope without any glasses. Lord John Sackville predecessed me here, and instituted certain games called cricketalia, which have been celebrated this very evening in honour of him in a neighbouring meadow.' Limited Limited as was the accommodation, he seems to have been perfectly satisfied with it at starting: indeed, more than satisfied for in the May of the following year he advises his friend, George Montagu, to come there after his own place, Roel, in Gloucestershire, which you would not be able to bear after my paradise;' and June 7, 1748, he writes to Mann :— 'I am now returning to my villa, where I have been making some alterations: you shall hear from me from Strawberry Hill, which I have found out in my lease is the old name of my house: so pray never call it Twickenham again. I like to be there better than I have liked being anywhere since I came to England.' These alterations were confined to the garden and the grounds. The bare notion of converting the cottage into a castle had not yet occurred to him; and it may be as well to show, by a short sketch of his early years, what manner of man he was when he planned the quaint, fanciful so-called Gothic structure, which, with its decorations and embellishments, was henceforth to form the main object of his life and largely co-operate in the establishment of his fame. Horace (christened Horatio) Walpole, the third son of Sir Robert Walpole and Catherine (née) Shorter, was born in Arlington Street on October 15, 1717. His mother was a beautiful woman, fond of admiration: scandal had been already busy with her name, and common rumour assigned the honour of his paternity to Carr, Lord Hervey, the elder brother of Pope's Sporus. Sir Robert was not remarkable for delicacy of sentiment or speech, and we see no reason to discredit a traditional story (told by Lord Wharncliffe) of his remarking, after Horace had given decided proofs of ability at school, that, whether the lad had or had not the right to the name he went by, he was likely to do it honour.* He was educated until his tenth year with his cousins, the four younger sons of Lord Townshend, under Mr. Weston, a son of the Bishop of Exeter. On April 26th, 1727, he went to Eton, where Mr. Bland, son of the Master, and afterwards Provost, was his tutor. Whilst still at Eton, May, 1731, he was entered at Lincoln's Inn, being intended for the law; but (he says) he never went there, not caring for the profession. In his 'Reminiscences,' after mentioning that he was extremely weak and delicate, and extravagantly indulged by his mother on that account, he states that a longing to see the King suddenly took possession of him : 6 This childish caprice was so strong that my mother solicited the 'Letters and Miscellaneous Works of Lady Wortley Montague,' vol. i. p. 33. + Short Notes of my Life.' Eliot Warburton, quoting no authority, says he went to Eton in 1726.- Memoirs of Horace Walpole,' vol. i. p. 61. Y 2 Duchess Duchess of Kendal to obtain for me the honour of kissing his Majesty's hand before he set out for Hanover. A favour so unusual to be asked for a boy of ten years old, was still too slight to be refused to the wife of the First Minister for her darling child; yet not being proper to be made a precedent, it was settled to be in private, and at night. Accordingly, the night but one before the King began his last journey, my mother carried me at ten at night to the apartment of the Countess of Walsingham on the ground-floor towards the garden at St. James's. Notice being given that the King was come down to supper, Lady Walsingham took me alone into the Duchess's anteroom, where we found alone the King and her. I knelt down, and kissed his hand. He said a few words to me, and my conductress led me back to my mother.' We have here the courtier in embryo, the germ of that fondness for Courts and Court ceremonials which clung to him through life. His genius for forming friendships was another of the distinctive qualities which were developed in boyhood. The famous partie quarrée which met at Strawberry Hill was anticipated by the quadruple alliance' at Eton, consisting of Gray, West, Ashton, and himself. Like the three Mousquetaires of Dumas, they were known to each other by nicknames: Tydeus, Orosmanes, Almanzor, and Plato. Contemporaneous with these four, and very nearly on a par with them in his early affections, were George Montagu, Seymour Conway, George Selwyn, and Sir Charles Hanbury Williams. In fact, the enduring friendships he formed with so many of his schoolfellows are a conclusive answer to the charges of selfishness and insensibility that have been heaped upon him. It was a favourable report of the Eton master that drew from Sir Robert the remark already quoted on his proficiency; but there are more decisive proofs of his having made good use of his time-of his having, at all events, acquired a taste for classical reading, one of the most enviable attainments which a public school can confer. Writing to West, at Oxford, from King's College, Cambridge, in December, 1735, a few months after leaving Eton, and referring to the paucity of topics of interest in the University, he says: 'But why may not we hold a classical correspondence? I can never forget the agreeable hours we have passed in reading "Horace" and “ Virgil,” and I think they are topics which never grow stale. Let us extend the Roman empire, and cultivate two barbarous towns (Oxford and Cambridge) o'errun with rusticity and mathematics. The creatures are so used to a circle, that they plod on in the same eternal round, with their whole view confined to a punctum cujus nulla est pars.' 'That ever you should pitch upon me for a mechanic or geo · metric commission'-is the commencement of a letter to Mann in 1759-'I will tell you, an early anecdote in my own life, and you shall judge.' It is that when he first went to Cambridge he studied mathematics under the blind Professor Sanderson, who at the end of a fortnight's attendance said to him, Young man, it is cheating you to take your money; believe me, you never can learn these things-you have no capacity for them.' He was ready (he owns) to cry with mortification, and determined to confound the Professor. Conceiving that he had talents for anything in the world, he engaged a private tutor, who came to him once a day for a year. The result was, that he learnt just enough to confirm his distaste. He got on no better with logic: 'I have been so used to the delicate food of Parnassus, that I can never condescend to apply to the grosser studies of Alma Mater. Sober cloth of syllogism suits me ill; or what's worse, I hate clothes that one must prove to be of no colour at all. . . . Great mathematicians have been of great use, but the generality of them are quite unconversable. I tell you what I see, that, by living amongst them, I write of nothing else; my letters are all parallelograms, two sides equal to one side, and every paragraph an axiom that tells you nothing but what every mortal almost knows.' His dislike to the studies of the University did not prevent him from cherishing the recollection of his residence at King's College : "Though I forget Alma Mater,' he writes in 1780, 'I have not forgot my Almæ Nutrices, wet or dry, I mean Eton and King's. I have laid aside for them, and left them in my will, as complete a set as I could of all I have printed.' He sustained an irreparable loss in the second year of his residence by the death of his mother—an event rendered the more poignant by the second marriage of his father, with Maria Skerrett. This lady had borne a daughter to the Premier prior to wedlock, and her reputation fully justified the sarcasm that he took her to wife because he had tried all other ways of robbing the public and exhausted them. I continued at Cambridge,' we read in the Short Notes,' though with long intervals, till towards the end of 1738, and did not leave it in form till 1739, in which year, March 10th, I set out on my travels with my friend, Mr. Thomas Gray, and went to Paris.' From Paris they went with his cousin, Conway, to Rheims, where they stayed three months to learn French :—. 'You must not wonder' (he writes from Rheims to West) if all my letters resemble dictionaries with French on one side and English on t'other. |