LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER II.

       Table of Contents

      Patent Places under Government.—Starts with Gray on the Grand Tour, March, 1739.—From Dover to Paris.—Life at Paris.—Versailles.—The Convent of the Chartreux.—Life at Rheims.—A Fête Galante.—The Grande Chartreuse.—Starts for Italy.—The tragedy of Tory.—Turin; Genoa.—Academical Exercises at Bologna.—Life at Florence.—Rome; Naples; Herculaneum.—The Pen of Radicofani.—English at Florence.—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.—Preparing for Home.—Quarrel with Gray.—Walpole's Apologia; his Illness, and Return to England.

      That, in those piping days of patronage, when even very young ladies of quality drew pay as cornets of horse, the son of the Prime Minister of England should be left unprovided for, was not to be expected. While he was still resident at Cambridge, lucrative sinecures came to Horace Walpole. Soon after his mother's death, his father appointed him Inspector of Imports and Exports in the Custom House—a post which he resigned in January, 1738, on succeeding Colonel William Townshend as Usher of the Exchequer. When, later in the year, he came of age (17 September), he 'took possession of two other little patent-places in the Exchequer, called Comptroller of the Pipe, and Clerk of the Estreats,' which had been held for him by a substitute. In 1782, when he still filled them, the two last-mentioned offices produced together about £300 per annum, while the Ushership of the Exchequer, at the date of his obtaining it, was reckoned to be worth £900 a year. 'From that time [he says] I lived on my own income, and travelled at my own expense; nor did I during my father's life receive from him but £250 at different times—which I say not in derogation of his extreme tenderness and goodness to me, but to show that I was content with what he had given to me, and that from the age of twenty I was no charge to my family.'[22]

      He continued at King's College for some time after he had attained his majority, only quitting it formally in March, 1739, not without regretful memories of which his future correspondence was to bear the traces. If he had neglected mathematics, and only moderately courted the classics, he had learnt something of the polite arts and of modern Continental letters—studies which would naturally lead his inclination in the direction of the inevitable 'Grand Tour.' Two years earlier he had very unwillingly declined an invitation from George Montagu and Lord Conway to join them in a visit to Italy. Since that date his desire for foreign travel, fostered no doubt by long conversations with Gray, had grown stronger, and he resolved to see 'the palms and temples of the south' after the orthodox eighteenth-century fashion. To think of Gray in this connection was but natural, and he accordingly invited his friend (who had now quitted Cambridge, and was vegetating rather disconsolately in his father's house on Cornhill) to be his travelling companion. Walpole was to act as paymaster; but Gray was to be independent. Furthermore, Walpole made a will under which, if he died abroad, Gray was to be his sole legatee. Dispositions so advantageous and considerate scarcely admitted of refusal, even if Gray had been backward, which he was not. The two friends accordingly set out for Paris. Walpole makes the date of departure 10 March, 1739; Gray says they left Dover at twelve on the 29th.

      The first records of the journey come from Amiens in a letter written by Gray to his mother. After a rough passage across the Straits, they reached Calais at five. Next day they started for Boulogne in the then new-fangled invention, a post-chaise—a vehicle which Gray describes 'as of much greater use than beauty, resembling an ill-shaped chariot, only with the door opening before instead of [at] the side.' Of Boulogne they see little, and of Montreuil (where later Sterne engaged La Fleur) Gray's only record, besides the indifferent fare, is that 'Madame the hostess made her appearance in long lappets of bone lace, and a sack of linsey-woolsey.' From Montreuil they go by Abbeville to Amiens, where they visit the cathedral, and the chapels of the Jesuits and Ursuline Nuns. But the best part of this first letter is the little picture with which it (or rather as much of it as Mason published) concludes. 'The country we have passed through hitherto has been flat, open, but agreeably diversified with villages, fields well cultivated, and little rivers. On every hillock is a windmill, a crucifix, or a Virgin Mary dressed in flowers and a sarcenet robe; one sees not many people or carriages on the road; now and then indeed you meet a strolling friar, a countryman with his great muff, or a woman riding astride on a little ass, with short petticoats, and a great head-dress of blue wool.'[23]

      The foregoing letter is dated the 1st April, and it speaks of reaching Paris on the 3rd. But it was only on the evening of Saturday the 9th that they rolled into the French capital, 'driving through the streets a long while before they knew where they were.' Walpole had wisely resolved not to hurry, and they had besides broken down at Luzarches, and lingered at St. Denis over the curiosities of the abbey, particularly a vase of oriental onyx carved with Bacchus and the nymphs, of which they had dreamed ever since. At Paris, they found a warm welcome among the English residents—notably from Mason's patron, Lord Holdernesse, and Walpole's cousins, the Conways. They seem to have plunged at once into the pleasures of the place—pleasures in which, according to Walpole, cards and eating played far too absorbing a part. At Lord Holdernesse's they met at supper the famous author of Manon Lescaut, M. l'Abbé Antoine-François Prévost d'Exilles, who had just put forth the final volume of his tedious and scandalous Histoire de M. Cléveland, fils naturel de Cromwel. They went to the spectacle of Pandore at the Salle des Machines of the Tuileries; and they went to the opera, where they saw the successful Ballet de la Paix—a curious hotchpot, from Gray's description, of cracked voices and incongruous mythology. With the Comédie Française they were better pleased, although Walpole, strange to say, unlike Goldsmith ten years later, was not able to commend the performance of Molière's L'Avare. They saw Mademoiselle

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