In 1774, when, according to its title-page, the Description of Strawberry Hill was printed, Walpole was a man of fifty-seven. During the period covered by the last chapter, many changes had taken place in his circle of friends. Mann and George Montagu (until, in October, 1770, his correspondence with the latter mysteriously ceased) were still the most frequent recipients of his letters, and next to these, Conway, and Cole the antiquary. But three of his former correspondents, his deaf neighbour at Marble Hill, Lady Suffolk,[127] Lady Hervey (Pope's and Chesterfield's Molly Lepel, to whom he had written much from Paris), and Gray, were dead. On the other hand, he had opened what promised to be a lengthy series of letters with Gray's friend and biographer, the Rev. William Mason, Rector of Aston, in Yorkshire; with Madame du Deffand; and with the divorced Duchess of Grafton, who in 1769 had married his Paris friend, John Fitzpatrick, second Earl of Upper Ossory. There were changes, too, among his own relatives. By this time his eldest brother's widow, Lady Orford, had lost her second husband, Sewallis Shirley, and was again living, not very reputably, on the Continent. Her son George, who since 1751 had been third Earl of Orford, and was still unmarried, was eminently unsatisfactory. He was shamelessly selfish, and by way of complicating the family embarrassments, had taken to the turf. Ultimately he had periodical attacks of insanity, during which time it fell to Walpole's fate to look after his affairs. With Sir Edward Walpole, his second brother, he seems never to have been on terms of real cordiality; but he made no secret of his pride in his beautiful nieces, Edward Walpole's natural daughters, whose charms and amiability had victoriously triumphed over every prejudice which could have been entertained against their birth. Laura, who was the eldest, had married a brother of the Earl of Albemarle, subsequently created Bishop of Exeter; Charlotte, the third, became Lady Huntingtower, and afterwards Countess of Dysart; while Maria, the belle of the trio, was more fortunate still. After burying her first husband, Lord Waldegrave, she had succeeded in fascinating H. R. H. William Henry, Duke of Gloucester, the King's own brother, and so contributing to bring about the Royal Marriage Act of 1772. They were married in 1766; but the fact was not formally announced to His Majesty until September, 1772.[128] Another marriage which must have given Walpole almost as much pleasure was that of General Conway's daughter to Mr. Damer, Lord Milton's eldest son, which took place in 1767. After the unhappy death of her husband, who shot himself in a tavern ten years later, Mrs. Damer developed considerable talents as a sculptor, and during the last years of Walpole's life was a frequent exhibitor at the Royal Academy. Non me Praxiteles finxit, at Anna Damer, wrote her admiring relative under one of her works, a wounded eagle in terra-cotta;[129] and in the fourth volume of the Anecdotes of Painting, he likens 'her shock dog, large as life,' to such masterpieces of antique art as the Tuscan boar and the Barberini goat.

It is time, however, to return to the story of Strawberry itself, as interrupted in Chapter V. In the introduction to Walpole's Description of 1774, a considerable interval occurs between the building of the Refectory and Library in 1753-4, and the subsequent erection of the Gallery, Round Tower, Great Cloister, and Cabinet, or Tribune, which, already in contemplation in 1759, were, according to the same authority, erected in 1760 and 1761. But here, as before, the date must rather be that of the commencement than the completion of these additions. In May, 1763, he tells Cole that the Gallery is fast advancing, and in July it is almost 'in the critical minute of consummation.' In August, 'all the earth is begging to come to see it.' A month afterwards, he is 'keeping an inn; the sign, "The Gothic Castle."' His whole time is passed in giving tickets of admission to the Gallery, and hiding himself when it is on view. 'Take my advice,' he tells Montagu, 'never build a charming house for yourself between London and Hampton-court; everybody will live in it but you.' A year later he is giving a great fÊte to the French and Spanish Ambassadors, March, Selwyn, Lady Waldegrave, and other distinguished guests, which finishes in the new room. 'During dinner there were French horns and clarionets in the cloister,' and after coffee the guests were treated 'with a syllabub milked under the cows that were brought to the brow of the terrace. Thence they went to the Printing-house, and saw a new fashionable French song printed. They drank tea in the Gallery, and at eight went away to Vauxhall.'

This last entertainment, the munificence of which, he says, the treasury of the Abbey will feel, took place in June, 1764; and it is not until four years later that we get tidings of any fresh improvements. In September, 1768, he tells Cole that he is going on with the Round Tower, or Chamber, at the end of the Gallery, which, in another letter, he says 'has stood still these five years,' and he is, besides, 'playing with the little garden on the other side of the road' which had come into his hands by Francklin's death. In May of the following year he gives another magnificent festino at Strawberry, which will almost mortgage it, but the Round Tower still progresses. In October, 1770, he is building again, in the intervals of gout; this time it is the Great Bedchamber,—a 'sort of room which he seems likely to inhabit much time together.' Next year the whole piecemeal structure is rapidly verging to completion. 'The Round Tower is finished, and magnificent; and the State Bedchamber proceeds fast.' In June he is writing to Mann from the delicious bow window of the former, with Vasari's Bianca Capello (Mann's present) over against him, and the setting sun behind, 'throwing its golden rays all round.' Further on, he is building a tiny brick chapel in the garden, mainly for the purpose of receiving 'two valuable pieces of antiquity,'—one being a painted window from Bexhill of Henry III. and his Queen, given him by Lord Ashburnham; the other Cavalini's Tomb of Capoccio from the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore at Rome, which had been sent to him by Sir William (then Mr.) Hamilton, the English Minister at Naples. In August, 1772, the Great Bedchamber is finished, the house is complete, and he has 'at last exhausted all his hoards and collections.' Nothing remains but to compile the Description and Catalogue, concerning which he had written to Cole as far back as 1768, and which, as already stated, he ultimately printed in 1774.

As time went on, his fresh acquisitions obliged him to add several Appendices to this issue; and the copy before us, although dated 1774, has supplements which bring the record down to 1786. A fresh edition, in royal quarto, with twenty-seven plates, was printed in 1784;[130] and this, or an expansion of it, reappears in vol. ii. of his Works. With these later issues we have little to do; but with the aid of that of 1774, may essay to give some brief account of the long, straggling, many-pinnacled building, with its round tower at the end, the east and south fronts of which are figured in the black-looking vignette upon the title-page. The entrance was on the north side, from the Teddington and Twickenham road, here shaded by lofty trees; and once within the embattled boundary wall, covered by this time with ivy, the first thing that struck the spectator was a small oratory inclosed by iron rails, with saint, altar, niches, and holy-water basins designed en suite by Mr. Chute. On the right hand—its gaily-coloured patches of flower-bed glimmering through a screen of iron work copied from the tomb of Roger Niger, Bishop of London, in old St. Paul's—was the diminutive Abbot's, or Prior's, Garden, which extended in front of the offices to the right of the principal entrance.[131] This was along a little cloister to the left, beyond the oratory. The chief decoration of this cloister was a marble bas-relief, inscribed 'Dia Helionora,' being, in fact, a portrait of that Leonora D'EstÉ who turned the head of Tasso. At the end was the door, which opened into 'a small gloomy hall' united with the staircase, the balustrades of which, designed by [209]
[210]Bentley, were decorated with antelopes, the Walpole supporters. In the well of the staircase was a Gothic lantern of japanned tin, also due to Bentley's fertile invention. If, instead of climbing the stairs, you turned out of the hall into a little passage on your left, you found yourself in the Refectory, or Great Parlour, where were accumulated the family portraits. Here, over the chimney-piece, was the 'conversation,' by Sir Joshua Reynolds, representing the triumvirate of Selwyn, Williams, and Lord Edgcumbe, already referred to at p. 138; here also were Sir Robert Walpole and his two wives, Catherine Shorter and Maria Skerret; Robert Walpole the second, and his wife in a white riding-habit; Horace himself by Richardson; Dorothy Walpole, his aunt, who became Lady Townshend;[132] his sister, Lady Maria Churchill; and a number of others. In the Waiting Room, into which the Refectory opened, was a stone head of John Dryden, whom Catherine Shorter claimed as great-uncle; next to this again was the China Closet, neatly lined with blue and white Dutch tiles, and having its ceiling painted by MÜntz, after a villa at Frascati, with convolvuluses on poles. In the China Room, among great stores of SÈvres and Chelsea, and oriental china, perhaps the greatest curiosity was a couple of Saxon tankards, exactly alike in form and size, which had been presented to Sir Robert Walpole at different times by the mistresses of the first two Georges, the Duchess of Kendal and the Countess of Yarmouth. To the left of the China Closet, with a bow window looking to the south, was the Little Parlour, which was hung with stone-coloured 'gothic paper' in imitation of mosaic, and decorated with the 'wooden prints' already referred to, the chiaroscuros of Jackson;[133] and at the side of this came the Yellow Bedchamber, known later, from its numerous feminine portraits, as the Beauty Room. The other spaces on the ground floor were occupied, towards the Prior's Garden, by the kitchen, cellars, and servants' hall, and, at the back, by the Great Cloister, which went under the Gallery.

Returning to the staircase, where, in later years, hung Bunbury's original drawing[134] for his well-known caricature of 'Richmond Hill,' you entered the Breakfast Room on the first floor, the window of which looked towards the Thames. It was pleasantly furnished with blue paper, and blue and white linen, and contained many miniatures and portraits, notable among which were Carmontel's picture of Madame du Deffand and the Duchess de Choiseul;[135] a print of Madame du Deffand's room and cats, given by the President HÉnault; and a view painted by Raguenet for Walpole in 1766 of the HÔtel de Carnavalet, the former residence of Madame de SÉvignÉ.[136]

The Breakfast Room opened into the Green Closet, over the door of which was a picture by Samuel Scott of Pope's house at Twickenham, showing the wings added after the poet's death by Sir William Stanhope. On the same side of the room hung Hogarth's portrait of Sarah Malcolm the murderess, painted at Newgate a day or two before her execution in Fleet Street.[137] Here also was 'Mr. Thomas Gray; etched from his shade [silhouette]; by Mr. W. Mason.' There were many other portraits in this room, besides some water colours on ivory by Horace himself. In a line with the Green Closet, and looking east, was the Library; and at the back of it, the Blue Bedchamber, the toilette of which was worked by Mrs. Clive, who, since her retirement from the stage in 1769, had lived wholly at Twickenham. The chief pictures in this room were Eckardt's portraits of Gray in a Vandyke dress and of Walpole himself in similar attire.[138] There were also by the same artist pictures of Walpole's father and mother, and of General Conway and his wife, Lady Ailesbury.

Facing the Blue Bedchamber was the Armoury, a vestibule of three Gothic arches, in the left-hand corner of which was the door opening into the Library, a room twenty-eight feet by nineteen feet six, lighted by a large window looking to the east, and by two smaller rose-windows at the sides. The books, arranged in Gothic arches of pierced work, went all round it. The chimney-piece was imitated from the tomb of John of Eltham in Westminster Abbey, and the stone work from another tomb at Canterbury. Over the chimney-piece was a picture (which is engraved in the Anecdotes of Painting) representing the marriage of Henry VI. Walpole and Bentley had designed the ceiling,—a gorgeous heraldic medley surrounding a central Walpole shield. Above the bookcases were pictures. One of the greatest treasures of the room was a clock given by Henry VIII. to Anne Boleyn. Of the books it is impossible to speak in detail. Noticeable [215]
[216]among them, however, was a Thuanus in fourteen volumes, a very extensive set of Hogarth's prints, and all the original drawings for the Ædes WalpolianÆ. Vertue, Hollar, and Faithorne were also largely represented. Among special copies, were the identical Iliad and Odyssey from which Pope made his translations of Homer,[139] a volume containing Bentley's original designs for Gray's Poems, and a black morocco pocket-book of sketches by Jacques Callot. In a rosewood case in this room was also a fine collection of coins, which included the rare silver medal struck by Gregory XIII. on the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.

Concerning the Red Bedchamber, the Star Chamber, and the Holbein Chamber, which intervened between the rest of the first floor and the latest additions, there is little to say. In the Red Bedchamber, the most memorable things (after the chintz bed on which Lord Orford died) were some pencil sketches of Pope and his parents by Cooper and the elder Richardson. In the Holbein Chamber, so called from a number of copies on oil-paper by Vertue from the drawings of Holbein in Queen Catherine's Closet at Kensington, were two of those 'curiosities' which represent the Don Saltero, or Madame Tussaud, side of Strawberry, viz., a tortoise-shell comb studded with silver hearts and roses which was said to have belonged to Mary, Queen of Scots, and (later) the red hat of Cardinal Wolsey. The pedigree of the hat, it must, however, be admitted, was unimpeachable. It had been found in the great wardrobe by Bishop Burnet when Clerk of the Closet. From him it passed to his son the Judge (author of that curious squib on Harley known as the History of Robert Powel the Puppet-Show-Man), and thence to the Countess Dowager of Albemarle, who gave it to Walpole. A carpet in this room was worked by Mrs. Clive, who seems to have been a most industrious decorator of her friend's mansion museum.[140] The Star Chamber was but an ante-room powdered with gold stars in mosaic, the chief glory of which was a stone bust of Henry VII. by Torregiano.

With these three rooms, the first floor of Strawberry, as it existed previous to the erection of the additions mentioned in the beginning of this chapter,—namely, the Gallery, the Round Tower, the Tribune, and the Great North Bedchamber,—came to an end. But it was in these newer parts of the house that some of its rarest objects of art were assembled. The Gallery, which was entered from a gloomy little passage in front of the Holbein Chamber, was a really spacious room, fifty-six feet by thirteen, and lighted from the south by five high windows. Between these were tables laden with busts, bronzes, and urns; on the opposite side, fronting the windows, were recesses, finished with gold network over looking-glass, between which stood couch-seats, covered, like the rest of the room, with crimson Norwich damask. The ceiling was copied from one of the side aisles of Henry VII.'s Chapel; the great door at the western end, which led into the Round Tower, was taken from the north door of St. Albans. A long carpet, made at Moorfields, traversed the room from end to end. In one of the recesses—that to the left of the chimney-piece, which was designed by Mr. Chute and Mr. Thomas Pitt of Boconnoc,—stood one of the finest surviving pieces of Greek sculpture, the Boccapadugli eagle, found in the precinct of the Baths of Caracalla,—a chef-d'oeuvre from which Gray is said to have borrowed the 'ruffled plumes, and flagging wing' of the Progress of Poesy; to the right was a noble bust in basalt of Vespasian, which had been purchased from the Ottoboni collection. Of the pictures it is impossible to speak at large; but two of the most notable were Sir George Villiers, the father of the Duke of Buckingham, and Mabuse's Marriage of Henry VII. and Elizabeth of York. Of Walpole's own relatives, there were portraits by Ramsay of his nieces, Mrs. Keppel (the Bishop's wife) and Lady Dysart, and of the Duchess of Gloucester (then Lady Waldegrave) by Reynolds. There were also portraits of Henry Fox, Lord Holland, of George Montagu, of Lord Waldegrave, and of Horace's uncle, Lord Walpole of Wolterton.[141]

Issuing through the great door of the Gallery, and passing on the left a glazed closet containing a quantity of china which had once belonged to Walpole's mother, a couple of steps brought you into the pleasant Drawing Room in the Round Tower, the bow window of which, already mentioned, looked to the south-west. Like the Gallery, this room was hung with Norwich damask. Its chief glory was the picture of Bianca Capello, of which Walpole had written to Mann. To the left of this room, at the back of the Gallery, and consequently in the front of the house, was the Cabinet, or Tribune, a curious square chamber with semicircular recesses, in two of which, to the north and west, were stained windows. In the roof, which was modelled on the chapter house at York, was a star of yellow glass throwing a soft golden glow over all the room. Here Walpole had amassed his choicest treasures, miniatures by Oliver and Cooper, enamels by Petitot and Zincke,[142] bronzes from Italy, ivory bas-reliefs, seal-rings and reliquaries, caskets and cameos and filigree work. Here, with Madame du Deffand's letter inside it,[143] was the 'round white snuff-box' with Madame de SÉvignÉ's portrait; here, carven with masks and flies and grasshoppers, was Cellini's silver bell from the Leonati Collection, at Parma, a masterpiece against which he had exchanged all his collection of Roman coins with the Marquis of Rockingham. A bronze bust of Caligula with silver eyes; a missal with reputed miniatures by Raphael; a dagger of Henry VIII.,[144] and a mourning ring given at the burial of Charles I.,—were among the other show objects of the Tribune, the riches of which occupy more space in their owner's Catalogue than any other part of his collections.

With the Great North Bedchamber, which adjoined the Tribune, and filled the remaining space at the back of the Gallery, the account of Strawberry Hill, as it existed in 1774, comes to an end; for the Green Chamber in the Round Tower over the Drawing Room, and 'Mr. Walpole's Bedchamber, two pair of stairs' (which contained the Warrant for beheading King Charles I., inscribed 'Major Charta,' so often referred to by Walpole's biographers),[145] may be dismissed without further notice. The Beauclerk Closet, a later addition, will be described in its proper place. Over the chimney-piece in the Great North Bedchamber was a large picture of Henry VIII. and his children, a recent purchase, afterwards remanded to the staircase to make room for a portrait of Catherine of Braganza, sent from Portugal previous to her marriage with Charles II. Fronting the bed was a head of Niobe, by Guido, which in its turn subsequently made way for la belle Jennings.[146] Among the pictures on the north or window side of the room was the original sketch by Hogarth of the Beggar's Opera, which Walpole had purchased at the sale of Rich, the fortunate manager who produced Gay's masterpiece at Lincoln's Inn Fields. It was exhibited at Manchester in 1857, being then the property of Mr. Willett, who had bought it at the Strawberry Hill sale of 1842. Another curious oil painting in this room was the Rehearsal of an Opera by the Riccis, which included caricature portraits of Nicolini (of Spectator celebrity), of the famous Mrs. Catherine Tofts, and of Margherita de l'Epine. In a nook by the window there was a glazed china closet, with a number of minor curiosities, among which were conspicuous the speculum of cannel coal with which Dr. Dee was in the habit of gulling his votaries,[147] and an agate puncheon with Gray's arms which his executors had presented to Walpole.

A few external objects claim a word. In the Great Cloister under the Gallery was the blue and white china tub in which had taken place that tragedy of the 'pensive Selima' referred to at p. 135 as having prompted the muse of Gray.[148] The Chapel in the Garden has already been sufficiently described.[149] In the Flower Garden across the road was a cottage which Walpole had erected upon the site of the building once occupied by Francklin the printer, and which he used as a place of refuge when the tide of sight-seers became overpowering. It included a Tea Room, containing a fair collection of china, and hung with green paper and engravings, and a little white and green Library, of which the principal ornament was a half-length portrait of Milton.[150] A portrait of Lady Hervey, by Allan Ramsay, was afterwards added to its decorations.[151]

Many objects of interest, as must be obvious, have remained undescribed in the foregoing account, and those who seek for further information concerning what its owner called his 'paper fabric and assemblage of curious trifles' must consult either the Catalogue of 1774 itself, or that later and definitive version of it which is reprinted in Volume II. of the Works (pp. 393-516). The intention in the main has here been to lay stress upon those articles which bear most directly upon Walpole's biography. It will also be observed that, during the prolonged progress of the house towards completion, his experience and his views considerably enlarged, and the pettiness and artificiality of his first improvements disappeared. The house never lost, and never could lose, its invertebrate character; but the Gallery, the Round Tower, and the North Bedchamber were certainly conceived in a more serious and even spacious spirit of Gothicism than any of the early additions. That it must, still, have been confined and needlessly gloomy, may be allowed; but as a set-off to some of those accounts which insist so pertinaciously upon its 'paltriness,' its 'architectural solecisms,' and its lack of beauty and sublimity, it is only fair to recall a few sentences from the preface which its owner prefixed to the Description of 1784. It was designed, he says of the Catalogue, to exhibit 'specimens of Gothic architecture, as collected from standards in cathedrals and chapel-tombs,' and to show 'how they may be applied to chimney-pieces, ceilings, windows, balustrades, loggias, etc.' Elsewhere he characterizes the building itself as candidly as any of its critics. He admits its diminutive scale and its unsubstantial character (he calls it himself, as we have seen, a 'paper fabric'), and he confesses to the incongruities arising from an antique design and modern decorations. 'In truth,' he concludes, 'I did not mean to make my house so Gothic as to exclude convenience, and modern refinements in luxury.... It was built to please my own taste, and in some degree to realize my own visions. I have specified what it contains; could I describe the gay but tranquil scene where it stands, and add the beauty of the landscape to the romantic cast of the mansion, it would raise more pleasing sensations than a dry list of curiosities can excite,—at least the prospect would recall the good humour of those who might be disposed to condemn the fantastic fabric, and to think it a very proper habitation of, as it was the scene that inspired, the author of the Castle of Otranto.'[152] As one of his censors has remarked, this tone disarms criticism; and it is needless to accumulate proofs of peculiarities which are not denied by the person most concerned.

In spite of its charming situation, Strawberry Hill was emphatically a summer residence; and there is more than one account in Walpole's letters of the sudden floods which, when Thames flowed with a fuller tide than now, occasionally surprised the inhabitants of the pleasant-looking villas along its banks. It was decidedly damp, and its gouty owner had sometimes to quit it precipitately for Arlington Street, where, he says, 'after an hour,' he revives, 'like a member of parliament's wife.' His best editor, Mr. Peter Cunningham, whose knowledge as an antiquary was unrivalled,—for was he not the author of the Handbook of London?—has amused himself, in an odd corner of one of his prefaces, by retracing the route taken in these townward flights. The extract is so packed with suggestive memories that no excuse is needed for reproducing it (with a few now necessary notes) as the tail-piece of the present chapter.

'At twelve his [Walpole's] light bodied chariot was at the door, with his English coachman and his Swiss valet [Philip Colomb].... In a few minutes he left Lord Radnor's villa to the right, rolled over the grotto of Pope, saw on his left Whitton, rich with recollections of Kneller and Argyll, passed Gumley House, one of the country seats of his father's opponent and his own friend, Pulteney, Earl of Bath, and Kendal House,[153] the retreat of the mistress of George I., Ermengard de Schulenburg, Duchess of Kendal. At Sion, the princely seat of the Percys, the Seymours, and the Smithsons, he turned into the Hounslow Road, left Sion on his right, and Osterly, not unlike Houghton, on his left, and rolled through Brentford,—

"Brentford, the Bishopric of Parson Horne,"[154]

then, as now, infamous for its dirty streets, and famous for its white-legged chickens.[155] Quitting Brentford, he approached the woods that concealed the stately mansion of Gunnersbury, built by Inigo Jones and Webb, and then inhabited by the Princess Amelia, the last surviving child of King George II.[156] Here he was often a visitor, and seldom returned without being a winner at silver loo. At the Pack Horse[157] on Turnham Green he would, when the roads were heavy, draw up for a brief bait. Starting anew, he would pass a few red brick houses on both sides, then the suburban villas of men well to do in the Strand and Charing Cross. At Hammersmith, he would leave the church[158] on his right, call on Mr. Fox at Holland House, look at Campden House, with recollections of Sir Baptist Hickes,[159] and not without an ill-suppressed wish to transfer some little part of it to his beloved Strawberry. He was now at Kensington Church, then, as it still is, an ungraceful structure,[160] but rife with associations which he would at times relate to the friend he had with him. On his left he would leave the gates of Kensington Palace, rich with reminiscences connected with his father and the first Hanoverian kings of this country. On his right he would quit the red brick house in which the Duchess of Portsmouth lived,[161] and after a drive of half a mile (skirting a heavy brick wall), reach Kingston House,[162] replete with stories of Elizabeth Chudleigh, the bigamist maid of honour, and Duchess-Countess of Kingston and Bristol. At Knightsbridge (even then the haunt of highwaymen less gallant than Maclean) he passed on his left the little chapel[163] in which his father was married. At Hyde Park Corner he saw the Hercules Pillars ale-house of Fielding and Tom Jones,[164] and at one door from Park Lane would occasionally call on old "Q" for the sake of Selwyn, who was often there.[165] The trees which now grace Piccadilly were in the Green Park in Walpole's day; they can recollect Walpole, and that is something. On his left, the sight of Coventry House[166] would remind him of the Gunnings, and he would tell his friend the story of the "beauties;" with which (short story-teller as he was) he had not completed when the chariot turned into Arlington Street on the right, or down Berkeley Street into Berkeley Square, on the left.'[167] In these last lines Mr. Cunningham anticipates our story, for in 1774, Walpole had not yet taken up his residence in Berkeley Square.