During the period between Walpole's return to England and the death of Lord Orford, his letters, addressed almost exclusively to Mann, are largely occupied with the occurrences which accompanied and succeeded his father's downfall. To Lord Orford's protÉgÉ and relative these particulars were naturally of the first importance, and Walpole's function of 'General Intelligencer' fell proportionately into the background. Still, there are occasional references to current events of a merely social character. After the Secret Committee, he is interested (probably because his friend Conway was pecuniarily interested) in the Opera, and the reception by the British public of the Viscontina, Amorevoli, and the other Italian singers whom he had known abroad. Of the stage he says comparatively little, dismissing poor Mrs. Woffington, who had then just made her appearance at Covent Garden, as 'a bad actress,' who, nevertheless, 'has life,'—an opinion in which he is supported by Conway, who calls her 'an impudent, Irish-faced girl.' In the acting of Garrick, after whom all the town is (as Gray writes) 'horn-mad' in May, 1742, he sees nothing wonderful, although he admits that it is heresy to say so, since that infallible stage critic, the Duke of Argyll, has declared him superior to Betterton. But he praises 'a little simple farce' at Drury Lane, Miss Lucy in Town, by Henry Fielding, in which his future friend, Mrs. Clive, and Beard mimic Amorevoli and the Muscovita. The same letter contains a reference to another famous stage-queen, now nearing eighty, Anne Bracegirdle, who should have had the money that Congreve left to Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough. 'Tell Mr. Chute [he says] that his friend Bracegirdle breakfasted with me this morning. As she went out, and wanted her clogs, she turned to me, and said, "I remember at the playhouse, they used to call, Mrs. Oldfield's chair! Mrs. Barry's clogs! and Mrs. Bracegirdle's pattens!"'[53] One pictures a handsome old lady, a little bent, and leaning on a crutch stick as she delivers this parting utterance at the door.[54]

Among the occurrences of 1742 which find fitting record in the correspondence, is the opening of that formidable rival to Vauxhall, Ranelagh Gardens. All through the spring the great Rotunda, with its encircling tiers of galleries and supper-boxes,—the coup d'oeil of which Johnson thought was the finest thing he had ever seen,—had been rising slowly at the side of Chelsea Hospital. In April it was practically completed, and almost ready for visitors. Walpole, of course, breakfasts there, like the rest of the beau monde. 'The building is not finished [he says], but they get great sums by people going to see it and breakfasting in the house; there were yesterday no less than three hundred and eighty persons, at eighteenpence a-piece. You see how poor we are, when, with a tax of four shillings in the pound, we are laying out such sums for cakes and ale.'[55] A week or two later comes the formal inauguration. 'Two nights ago [May 24] Ranelagh-gardens were opened at Chelsea; the Prince, Princess, Duke, much nobility, and much mob besides, were there. There is a vast amphitheatre, finely gilt, painted, and illuminated, into which everybody that loves eating, drinking, staring, or crowding, is admitted for twelvepence. The building and disposition of the gardens cost sixteen thousand pounds. Twice a week there are to be Ridottos at guinea-tickets, for which you are to have a supper and music. I was there last night [May 25],'—the writer adds,—'but did not find the joy of it,'[56] and, at present, he prefers Vauxhall, because of the approach by water, that 'trajet du fleuve fatal,'—as it is styled in the Vauxhall de Londres which a French poet dedicated in 1769 to M. de Fontenelle. He seems, however, to have taken Lord Orford to Ranelagh, and he records in July that they walked with a train at their heels like two chairmen going to fight,—from which he argues a return of his father's popularity. Two years later Fashion has declared itself on the side of the new garden, and Walpole has gone over to the side of Fashion. 'Every night constantly [he tells Conway] I go to Ranelagh; which has totally beat Vauxhall. Nobody goes anywhere else,—everybody goes there. My Lord Chesterfield is so fond of it that he says he has ordered all his letters to be directed thither. If you had never seen it, I would make you a most pompous description of it, and tell you how the floor is all of beaten princes; that you can't set your foot without treading on a Prince of Wales or Duke of Cumberland. The company is universal: there is from his Grace of Grafton down to children out of the Foundling Hospital; from my Lady Townshend to the kitten; from my Lord Sandys to your humble cousin and sincere friend.'[57]

After Lord Orford's death, the next landmark in Horace Walpole's life is his removal to the house at Twickenham, subsequently known as Strawberry Hill. To a description of this historical mansion the next chapter will be in part devoted. In the mean time we may linger for a moment upon the record which these letters contain of the famous '45. No better opportunity will probably occur of exhibiting Walpole as the reporter of history in the process of making. Much that he tells Mann and Montagu is no doubt little more than the skimming of the last Gazette; but he had always access to trustworthy information, and is seldom a dull reporter, even of newspaper news. Almost the next letter to that in which he dwells at length upon the loss of his father, records the disaster of Tournay, or Fontenoy, in which, he tells Mann, Mr. Conway has highly distinguished himself, magnificently engaging—as appears from a subsequent communication—no less than two French Grenadiers at once. His account of the battle is bare enough; but what apparently interests him most is the patriotic conduct of the Prince of Wales, who made a chanson on the occasion, after the fashion of the Regent OrlÉans:—

The goddesses addressed were Lady Catherine Hanmer, Lady Fauconberg, and Lady Middlesex, who played Congreve's Judgment of Paris at Leicester House, with his Royal Highness as Paris, and Prince Lobkowitz for Mercury. Walpole says of the song that it 'miscarried in nothing but the language, the thoughts, and the poetry.' Yet he copies the whole five verses, of which the above are two, for Mann's delectation.

A more logical sequence to Fontenoy than the lyric of Leicester House is the descent of Charles Edward upon Scotland. In August Walpole reports to Mann that there is a proclamation out 'for apprehending the Pretender's son,' who had landed in July; in September he is marching on Edinburgh. Ten days later the writer is speculating half ruefully upon the possibilities of being turned out of his comfortable sinecures in favour of some forlorn Irish peer. 'I shall wonderfully dislike being a loyal sufferer in a threadbare coat, and shivering in an ante-chamber at Hanover, or reduced to teach Latin and English to the young princes at Copenhagen. The Dowager Strafford has already written cards for my Lady Nithsdale, my Lady Tullibardine, the Duchess of Perth and Berwick, and twenty more revived peeresses, to invite them to play at whisk, Monday three months; for your part, you will divert yourself with their old taffeties, and tarnished slippers, and their awkwardness, the first day they go to Court in shifts and clean linen. Will you ever write to me in my garret at Herrenhausen?'[58] Then upon this come the contradictions of rumour, the 'general supineness,' the raising of regiments, and the disaster of Preston Pans, with its inevitable condemnation of Cope. 'I pity poor him, who, with no shining abilities, and no experience, and no force, was sent to fight for a crown! He never saw a battle but that of Dettingen, where he got his red ribbon; Churchill, whose led-captain he was, and my Lord Harrington, had pushed him up to this misfortune.[59] We have lost all our artillery, five hundred men taken—and three killed, and several officers, as you will see in the papers. This defeat has frightened everybody but those it rejoices, and those it should frighten most; but my Lord Granville still buoys up the King's spirits, and persuades him it is nothing.'[60]

Nothing, indeed, it proved in the issue. But Walpole was wiser in his immediate apprehensions than King George's advisers, who were not wise. In his subsequent letters we get scattered glimpses of the miserable story that ended in Culloden. Towards the end of October he is auguring hopefully from the protracted neglect of the rebels to act upon their success. In November they are in England. But the backwardness of the Jacobites to join them is already evident, and he writes 'in the greatest confidence of our getting over this ugly business.' Early in December they have reached Derby, only to be soon gone again, miserably harassed, and leaving their sick and cannon behind. With the new year come tidings to Mann that the rebellion is dying down in England, and that General Hawley has marched northward to put it quite out. Once more, on the 23rd February, it flares fitfully at Falkirk, and then fades as suddenly. The battle that Walpole hourly expects, not without some trepidation, for Conway is one of the Duke of Cumberland's aides-de-camp, is still deferred, and it is April before the two armies face each other on Culloden Moor. Then he writes jubilantly to his Florentine correspondent: 'On the 16th, the Duke, by forced marches, came up with the rebels a little on this side Inverness,—by the way, the battle is not christened yet; I only know that neither Preston Pans nor Falkirk are to be god-fathers. The rebels, who had fled from him after their victory [of Falkirk], and durst not attack him, when so much exposed to them at his passage of the Spey, now stood him, they seven thousand, he ten. They broke through Barril's regiment and killed Lord Robert Kerr, a handsome young gentleman, who was cut to pieces with about thirty wounds; but they were soon repulsed, and fled; the whole engagement not lasting above a quarter of an hour. The young Pretender escaped, Mr. Conway says, he hears, wounded: he certainly was in the rear. They have lost above a thousand men in the engagement and pursuit; and six hundred were already taken; among which latter are their French Ambassador and Earl Kilmarnock. The Duke of Perth and Lord Ogilvie are said to be slain.... Except Lord Robert Kerr, we lost nobody of note: Sir Robert Rich's eldest son has lost his hand, and about a hundred and thirty private men fell. The defeat is reckoned total, and the dispersion general; and all their artillery is taken. It is a brave young Duke! The town is all blazing round me [i. e., at Arlington Street] as I write, with fireworks and illuminations: I have some inclination to wrap up half-a-dozen sky-rockets, to make you drink the Duke's health. Mr. Dodington [in Pall Mall], on the first report, came out with a very pretty illumination,—so pretty that I believe he had it by him, ready for any occasion.'[61]

Walpole's account of these occurrences is, of course, hearsay, although, as regards Culloden, he probably derived the details from Conway, who was present. But in some of the events which ensued, he is either actually a spectator himself, or fresh from direct communication with those who have been spectators. One of the most graphic passages in his entire correspondence is his description of the trial of the rebel lords, at which he assisted; and another is his narrative of the executions of Kilmarnock and Balmerino, written down from the relation of eye-witnesses. It is hardly possible to get much nearer to history.

'I am this moment come from the conclusion of the greatest and most melancholy scene I ever yet saw! You will easily guess it was the Trials of the rebel Lords. As it was the most interesting sight, it was the most solemn and fine: a coronation is a puppet-show, and all the splendour of it idle; but this sight at once feasted one's eyes and engaged all one's passions. It began last Monday; three parts of Westminster-hall were inclosed with galleries, and hung with scarlet; and the whole ceremony was conducted with the most awful solemnity and decency, except in the one point of leaving the prisoners at the bar, amidst the idle curiosity of some crowd, and even with the witnesses who had sworn against them, while the Lords adjourned to their own House to consult. No part of the royal family was there, which was a proper regard to the unhappy men, who were become their victims.... I had armed myself with all the resolution I could, with the thought of their crimes and of the danger past, and was assisted by the sight of the Marquis of Lothian in weepers for his son [Lord Robert Kerr], who fell at Culloden; but the first appearance of the prisoners shocked me! their behaviour melted me.' After going on to speak of Lord Kilmarnock and Lord Cromartie (afterwards reprieved), he continues: 'For Lord Balmerino, he is the most natural brave old fellow I ever saw: the highest intrepidity, even to indifference. At the bar he behaved like a soldier and a man; in the intervals of form, with carelessness and humour. He pressed extremely to have his wife, his pretty Peggy [Margaret Chalmers], with him in the Tower, Lady Cromartie only sees her husband through the grate, not choosing to be shut up with him, as she thinks she can serve him better by her intercession without: she is big with child and very handsome: so are their daughters. When they were to be brought from the Tower in separate coaches, there was some dispute in which the axe must go: old Balmerino cried, 'Come, come, put it with me.' At the bar he plays with his fingers upon the axe, while he talks to the gentleman-gaoler; and one day somebody coming up to listen, he took the blade and held it like a fan between their faces. During the trial, a little boy was near him, but not tall enough to see; he made room for the child, and placed him near himself.'[62]

Balmerino's gallant demeanour evidently fascinated Walpole. In his next letter he relates how on his way back to the Tower the sturdy old dragoon had stopped the coach at Charing Cross to buy some 'honey-blobs' (gooseberries); and when afterwards he comes to write his account of the execution, although he tells the story of Kilmarnock's death with feeling, the best passage is given to his companion in misfortune. He describes how, on the fatal 15th August, before he left the Tower, Balmerino drank a bumper to King James; how he wore his rebellious regimentals (blue and red) over a flannel waistcoat and his shroud; how, embracing Lord Kilmarnock, he said, 'My Lord, I wish I could suffer for both.' Then followed the beheading of Kilmarnock; and the narrator goes on: 'The scaffold was immediately new-strewed with sawdust, the block new covered, the executioner new-dressed, and a new axe brought. Then came old Balmerino, treading with the air of a general. As soon as he mounted the scaffold, he read the inscription on his coffin, as he did again afterwards: he then surveyed the spectators, who were in amazing numbers, even upon masts upon ships in the river; and pulling out his spectacles, read a treasonable speech, which he delivered to the Sheriff, and said, the young Pretender was so sweet a Prince that flesh and blood could not resist following him; and lying down to try the block, he said, 'If I had a thousand lives, I would lay them all down here in the same cause.' He said if he had not taken the sacrament the day before, he would have knocked down Williamson, the Lieutenant of the Tower, for his ill-usage of him. He took the axe and felt it, and asked the headsman how many blows he had given Lord Kilmarnock; and gave him three guineas. Two clergymen, who attended him, coming up, he said, 'No, gentlemen, I believe you have already done me all the service you can.' Then he went to the corner of the scaffold, and called very loud for the warder, to give him his perriwig, which he took off, and put on a night-cap of Scotch plaid, and then pulled off his coat and waistcoat and lay down; but being told he was on the wrong side, vaulted round, and immediately gave the sign by tossing up his arm, as if he were giving the signal for battle. He received three blows; but the first certainly took away all sensation. He was not a quarter of an hour on the scaffold; Lord Kilmarnock above half a one. Balmerino certainly died with the intrepidity of a hero, but the insensibility of one too. As he walked from his prison to execution, seeing every window and top of house filled with spectators, he cried out, "Look, look, how they are all piled up like rotten oranges."'[63]

In the old print of the execution, the scaffold on Tower Hill is shown surrounded by a wide square of dragoons, beyond which the crowd—'the immense display of human countenances which surrounded it like a sea,' as Scott has it—are visible on every side. No. 14 Tower Hill is said to have been the house from which the two lords were led to the block, and a trail of blood along the hall and up the first flight of stairs was long shown as indicating the route by which the mutilated bodies were borne to await interment in St. Peter's Chapel. A few months later Walpole records the execution in the same place of Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, the cunning old Jacobite, whose characteristic attitude and 'pawky' expression live for ever in the admirable sketch which Hogarth made of him at St. Albans. He died (says Walpole) 'extremely well, without passion, affectation, buffoonery, or timidity.' But he is not so distinguished as either Kilmarnock or Balmerino, and, however Roman his taking-off, the chief memorable thing about it is, that it was happily the last of these sanguinary scenes in this country. The only other incident which it is here needful to chronicle in connection with the 'Forty Five' is Walpole's verses on the Suppression of the late Rebellion. On the 4th and 5th November, the anniversaries of King William's birth and landing, it was the custom to play Rowe's Tamerlane, and this year (1746) the epilogue spoken by Mrs. Pritchard 'in the Character of the Comic Muse' was from Walpole's pen. According to the writer, special terrors had threatened the stage from the advent of 'Rome's young missionary spark,' the Chevalier, and the Tragic Muse, raising, 'to eyes well-tutor'd in the trade of grief,' 'a small and well-lac'd handkerchief,' is represented by her lighter sister as bewailing the prospect to her 'buskined progeny' after this fashion:—

After this the epilogue digresses into a comparison of the Duke of Cumberland with King William. Virgil, Juvenal, Addison, Dryden, and Pope, upon one of whose lines on Cibber Walpole bases his reference to the Lord Chamberlain, are all laid under contribution in this performance. It 'succeeded to flatter me,' he tells Mann a few days later,—a Gallicism from which we must infer an enthusiastic reception.

Walpole's personal and domestic history does not present much interest at this period. His sister Mary (Catherine Shorter's daughter), who had married the third Earl of Cholmondeley, had died long before her mother. In February, 1746, his half-sister, Lady Mary, his playmate at comet in the Houghton days, married Mr. Churchill,—'a foolish match,' in Horace's opinion, to which he will have nothing to say. With his second brother, Sir Edward Walpole, he seems to have had but little intercourse, and that scarcely of a fraternal character. In 1857, Cunningham published for the first time a very angry letter from Edward to his junior, in which the latter was bitterly reproached for his interference in disposing of the family borough of Castle Rising, and (incidentally) for his assumption of superiority, mental and otherwise. To this communication Walpole prepared a most caustic and categorical answer, which, however, he never sent. For his nieces, Edward Walpole's natural daughters, of whom it will be more convenient to speak later, Horace seems always to have felt a sincere regard. But although his brother had tastes which must have been akin to his own, for Edward Walpole was in his way an art patron (Roubillac the sculptor, for instance, was much indebted to him) and a respectable musician, no real cordiality ever existed between them. 'There is nothing in the world'—he tells Montagu in May, 1745—'the Baron of Englefield has such an aversion for as for his brother.'[65]

For his eldest brother's wife, the Lady Walpole who had formed one of the learned trio at Florence, he entertained no kind of respect, and his letters are full of flouts at her Ladyship's manners and morality. Indeed, between prÉciositÉ and 'Platonic love,' her life does not appear to have been a particularly worshipful one, and her long sojourn under Italian skies had not improved her. At present she was Lady Orford, her husband, who is seldom mentioned, and from whom she had been living apart, having succeeded to the title at his father's death. From Walpole's letters to Mann, it seems that in April, 1745, she was, much to the dismay of her relatives, already preening her wings for England. In September, she has arrived, and Walpole is maliciously delighted at the cold welcome she obtains from the Court and from society in general, with the exception of her old colleague, Lady Pomfret, and that in one sense congenial spirit, Lady Townshend. Later on, a definite separation from her husband appears to have been agreed upon, which Walpole fondly hopes may have the effect of bringing about her departure for Italy. 'The Ladies O[rford] and T[ownshend]'—he says—'have exhausted scandal both in their persons and conversations.' However much this may be exaggerated (and Walpole never spares his antipathies), the last we hear of Lady Orford is certainly on his side, for she has retired from town to a villa near Richmond with a lover for whom she has postponed that southward flight which her family so ardently desired. This fortunate Endymion, the Hon. Sewallis Shirley, son of Robert, first Earl Ferrers, had already been one of the most favoured lovers of the notorious 'lady of quality' whose memoirs were afterwards foisted into Peregrine Pickle. To Lady Vane now succeeded Lady Orford, as eminent for wealth—says sarcastic Lady Mary Wortley Montagu—as her predecessor had been for beauty, and equal in her 'heroic contempt for shame.' This new connection was destined to endure. It was in September, 1746, that Walpole chronicled his sister-in-law's latest frailty, and in May, 1751, only a few weeks after her husband's death,[66] she married Shirley at the Rev. Alexander Keith's convenient little chapel in May Fair.'

In 1744, died Alexander Pope, to be followed a year later by the great Dean of St. Patrick's. Neither of these events leaves any lasting mark in Walpole's correspondence,—indeed of Swift's death there is no mention at all. A nearer bereavement was the premature loss of West, which had taken place two years before, closing sorrowfully with faint accomplishment a life of promise. Vale, et vive paulisper cum vivis,—he had written a few days earlier to Gray,—his friend to the last. With Gray, Walpole's friendship, as will be seen presently, had been resumed. His own literary essays still lie chiefly in the domain of squib and jeu d'esprit. In April, 1746, over the appropriate signature of 'Descartes,' he printed in No. II. of The Museum a 'Scheme for Raising a Large Sum of Money for the Use of the Government, by laying a tax on Message-Cards and Notes,' and in No. V. a pretended Advertisement and Table of Contents for a History of Good Breeding, from the Creation of the World, by the Author of the Whole Duty of Man. The wit of this is a little laboured, and scarcely goes beyond the announcement that 'The Eight last Volumes, which relate to Germany, may be had separate;' nor does that of the other exceed a mild reflection of Fielding's manner in some of his minor pieces. Among other things, we gather that it was the custom of the fine ladies of the day to send open messages on blank playing-cards; and it is stated as a fact or a fancy that 'after the fatal day of Fontenoy,' persons of quality 'all wrote their notes on Indian paper, which, being red, when inscribed with Japan ink made a melancholy military kind of elegy on the brave youths who occasioned the fashion, and were often the honourable subject of the epistle.' The only remaining effort of any importance at this time is the little poem of The Beauties, somewhat recalling Gay's Prologue to the Shepherd's Week, and written in July, 1746, to Eckardt the painter. Here is a specimen:—

'Charming Berkeley,' here mentioned, afterwards became the third wife of Goldsmith's friend, Earl Nugent, and the mother of the little girl who played tricks upon the author of She Stoops to Conquer at her father's country seat of Gosfield; 'Aylesb'ry, like hoary Neptune's queen,' married Walpole's friend, Conway, and 'the new Aurora, Lyttelton,' was that engaging Lucy Fortescue upon whose death in 1747 her husband wrote the monody so pitilessly parodied by Smollett.[68] Lady Almeria Carpenter, Lady Emily Lenox, Miss Chudleigh (afterwards the notorious Duchess of Kingston), and many other well-known names, quos nunc perscribere longum est, are also celebrated.

In August, 1746, Walpole announces to Mann that he has taken a pretty house within the precincts of the castle at Windsor, to which he is going for the remainder of the summer. In September he has entered upon residence, for Gray tells Wharton that he sees him 'usually once a week.' 'All is mighty free, and even friendly more than one could expect,'—and one of the first things posted off to Conway, is Gray's Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, which the sender desires he 'will please to like excessively.' He is drawn from his retreat by the arrival of a young Florentine friend, the Marquis Rinuncini, to whom he has to do the London honours. 'I stayed literally an entire week with him, carried him to see palaces and Richmond gardens and park, and Chenevix's shop, and talked a great deal to him alle conversazioni.'[69] 'Chenevix's shop' suggests the main subject of the next chapter,—the purchase and occupation of Strawberry Hill.