July 27, 2025 • 15 mins
Immerse yourself in Georgian England as depicted through the charming and witty letters of Horace Walpole, the 4th Earl of Orford. An active participant and keen observer of social and political life, Walpoles letters offer a vivid snapshot of the era. Virginia Woolf described him as a man who could beautifully capture every gift and foible of his time - his long life reflecting a panorama of houses, friends, wars, snuff boxes, revolutions, and lap dogs, all playing out against the serene blue sky. Join us as we delve into these valuable historical documents, brought to life by Barbara2.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section twenty of Horace Wopole's Letters a selection. This is
a LibriVox recording or LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
Opinion of Pitt and Fox. The stamp act tis a
Horace Man November twenty ninth, seventeen eighty one. The warmth
(00:21):
in the House of Commons is prodigiously rekindled, but Lord
Cornwodis's fatus cost the administration no ground there. The names
of most declar in the opposition are two names to
which those walls have been much accustomed at the same period,
Charles Fox and William Pitt, second son of Lord Chatham.
(00:44):
Eloquence is the only one of our brilliant qualities that
does not seem to have degenerated rapidly. But I shall
leave debates to your nephew, now a near witness. I
could only re echo the newspapers sit not. And another
odd coincidence of events that while the father Lawrence is prisoner,
(01:05):
to Lord cornwallis as constable at a tower the Sun
Lawrence signed the capitulation by which Lord Cornwallas became prisoner.
It is said, too, I don't know if truly that
this capitulation and that of Saratoga were signed on the
same anniversary. These are certainly the speculations of an idle man,
(01:27):
and the more trifling when one considers the moment. But alas,
what would my most grave speculations avail from the hour
that fatal egg the stamp Act was laid. I disliked it,
and all the vipers hatched from it. I now hear
many curs it who fed the Boman with poisonous weeds?
(01:49):
Yet the guilty and the innocent ruined equally. Hitherto I
would not answer for what is to come. Seven years
of miss carriages may sour the sweetest tempers and the
most sweetened Where is the dove with the olive branch?
(02:10):
Long ago I told you that you and I might
not live to see an end of the American War.
It is very near its end. Indeed, now its consequences
are far from a conclusion. In some respects, they are
commencing a new date which will reach far beyond us.
(02:30):
I desire not to pry into that book of futurity.
Could I finish my course in peace? But one must
take the checkered scenes of life as they come. What
signifies whether the elements are serene or turbulent. When a
private old man slips away, what is he and the
(02:52):
world's concerns to do with one another. He may sigh
for his country and babble about it, but he might
as well sit quiet and read or tell old stories.
The past is as important to him as the future.
Fashion and the morals of the people. To Tsaris Man,
(03:14):
Strawberry Hill, September the eight, seventeen eighty two, how should
the morals of the people be purified? When such frantic
dissipation reigns above them? Contagion does not mount but descend.
A new theater is going to be erected merely for
people of fashion, that they may not be confined to
(03:36):
vulgar hours, that is today and night. Fashion is always silly,
for before it can spread far, it must be calculated
for silly people. As examples of sense, wit or ingenuity
could be imitated only by a few. All the discoveries
(03:56):
that I can perceived or been made by the present
age is to prefer riding about the streets rather than
on the roads or on the turf, and being too
late for everything. Thus, though we have more public diversions
than would suffice for two capitals, nobody goes to them
till layer over. This is literally true, Randola. That is,
(04:20):
the music there finishes at half an hour after ten
at night, But the most fashionable set out for it,
though above a mile out of town at eleven or later. Well,
but it's not this censure, being old and cross. We're
not the charming people of my youth, guilty of equivalent absurdities.
(04:44):
Oh yes, but the sensible folks of my youth had
not lost America nor Diptus in wars with half Europe
that cost us fifteen millions a year, Pope. Madame de
Sevigne to John Pickett in a squad June the twenty six,
seventeen eighty five. Madame de Savigner shines both in grief
(05:07):
and gaiety. There is too much of sorrow for her
daughter's absence, yet it is always expressed by new terms,
by new images, and often by wit, whose tenderness has
a melancholy air when she forgets her concern and returns
to her natural disposition gaiety. Every paragraph has novelty, Her illusions,
(05:30):
her applications are the happiest possible. She has the art
of making you acquainted with all her acquaintance and attaches
you even to the spots she inhabited. Her language is correct,
though unstudied, and when her mind is full of any
great event, she interests you with the warmth of a
(05:51):
dramatic writer, not with the chilling impartiality of an historian.
Pray read her accounts of the death of Turenne and
of the arrival of King James in France, and tell
me whether you do not know their persons as if
you had lived at the time. Why he wrote when
(06:12):
young and refrained when old to miss Hannimore's Strawberry Hill
Drive twelve seventeen eighty eight. You said in your last
that you feared you took up time of mine to
the prejudice of the public, implying I imagine that I
might employ it in composing. Waiving both your compliment and
(06:33):
my own vanity, I will speak very seriously to you
on that subject, and with exact truth. My simple writings
have had better fortune than they had any reason to expect,
and I fairly believe in a great degree, because gentlemen
writers who do not write for interest are treated with
some civility if they do not write absolute nonsense. I
(06:57):
think so because I have not unfrequently know much better
works than mine, much more neglected, if the name, fortune,
and situation of the authors were below mine. I wrote
early from youth's spirits and vanity, and from both the
last when the first no longer existed. I now shudder
(07:19):
when I reflect on my own boldness, and with mortification
when I compare my own writings with those of any
great authors. This is so true that I question whether
it will be possible for me to summon up courage
to publish anything I have written, if I could recall
time past, and should yet think as I think at present,
(07:41):
so much for what is over and out of my
power as to writing now, I have totally foresworn the
profession for two solid reasons. One I have already told you,
and it is that I know my own writings are
trifling and of no depth. The other is that light
and futile as they were, I am sensible they are
(08:03):
better than I could compose. Now. I am aware of
the decay of the middling parts I had, and others
may be still more sensible of it. How do I know?
But I am superannuated. Nobody will be so coarse as
to tell me so. But if I published dotage. All
(08:24):
the world would tell me so, And who but runs
that risk? Who was an author over seventy What happened
to the greatest author of this age, and who certainly
retained a considerable portion of his abilities for ten years
after my age? Voltaire, at eighty four, I think, went
(08:46):
to Paris to receive the incense in person of his countrymen,
and to be witnessed of their admiration of a tragedy
he had written at that methusinum age. Incense he did
receive till it choked him. And at the exhibition of
his play he was actually crowned with Laurel in the
box where he sat. But what became of his poor play?
(09:10):
It died as soon as he did, was buried with him,
And no mortal I dare to say, has ever riddle
line of it, since it was so bad. The growth
of London to the miss Berry's Berkley Square during the
eighth seventy ninety one, the Duke of Saint Albans has
(09:31):
cut down all the brave old trees at Hanworth and
consequently reduced his park to what it issued from Hounslow Heath. Nay,
he has hired a meadow next to mine for the
benefit of embarkation. And there lie all the good old
corpses of oaks, ashes and chestnuts directly before your windows,
(09:54):
and blocking up one of my views of the river.
But so impetuous is the rage for building that his
Grace's timber will I trust not annoy us long. There
will soon be one street from London to Brentford. I
am from London to every village ten miles round. Lord
(10:16):
Camden has just let ground at Kentish Town for building
fourteen hundred houses. Lord, I wonder London is I am
certain much fuller than ever I saw it? I have
twice this spring been going to stop my coach in
Piccadilly to inquire what was the matter, thinking there was
a mob? Not at all, it was only passengers. Nor
(10:40):
is there any complaint of depopulation from the country. Bath
shoots into new crescents, circuses and squares every year. Birmingham, Manchester,
Hull and Liverpool would serve any king in Europe for
a capital and would make the Empress of Russia's mouth
water of the war with Catherine sleighs are I hear
(11:02):
not of breath? And thence conjecture, it is dozing into peace.
Royal visitors at Strawberry Hill to the honorable Ages Conway
Strawberry Hill did ide second seventy ninety five. I will
write a word to you. They scares time to write
one to thank you for your great kindness about the
soldier who shall get a substitute. If you can, as
(11:26):
you are or have been in town, your daughter would
have told you in what a bustle. I am preparing
not to resist, but to receive an invasion of royalties
to morrow, and cannot even escape them. Like Admiral Cornwallis,
though seeming to make a semblance for I am to
wear a sword and have appointed two aides de camp,
(11:47):
my nephews, George and Horace Churchill. If I fall as
ten to one, but I do to be sure, it
will be a superb humble at the feet of a
queen and eight daughters of kings. For besides the six princesses,
I am to have the Duchess of York and the
Princess of Orange. Woe is me at seventy eight, and
(12:12):
with scarce a hand and foot to my back. Adieu,
Yours et cetera poor old remnant Warpole's last letter to
Lady Ossiri, almost the only one of his early friends
who survived him. January fifteenth, seventeen ninety seven. My dear Madam,
(12:37):
you distress me infinitely by showing my idle notes which
I cannot conceive can amuse anybody? My old fashioned breeding
impels me renow and then to reply to the letters.
You honor me with writing, but in truth very unwillingly,
for I seldom can have anything particular to say. I
(13:00):
scarce go out of my own house, and then only
to two or three very private places, where I see
nobody that really knows anything, and what I learned comes
from newspapers. They collect intelligence from coffee houses, consequently, what
I neither believe nor report. At home, I see only
a few charitable elders, except about four scorn nephews and
(13:25):
nieces of various ages, who are each brought to me
about once a year to stare at me as the
Methuselah of the family. And they can only speak of
their own contemporaries, which interests me no more than if
they talk to their dolls or bats or balls. Must
(13:45):
not the result of all this, Madam, make me a
very entertaining correspondent, And can such letters be worth showing?
Or can I have any spirit when so old and
reduced to dictate? Oh, my good madam, dispense with me
from such a task, and think how it must add
(14:07):
to it to apprehend such letters being shown. Pray send
me no more such laurels, which I desire no more
than their leaves, when decked with a scrap of tinsel
and stuck on twelfth cakes that lies on shop boards
of pastry cooks at Christmas. I shall be quite content
(14:28):
with a sprig of rosemary throne after me when the
parson of the poish commits my dust to dust till then, pray, Madam,
accept the resignation of your ancient servant orfered the end
(14:50):
end of Section twenty end of Horaceworpole's Letters. A selection
by Horacewarpole
Section twenty of Horace Wopole's Letters a selection. This is
a LibriVox recording or LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
Opinion of Pitt and Fox. The stamp act tis a
Horace Man November twenty ninth, seventeen eighty one. The warmth
(00:21):
in the House of Commons is prodigiously rekindled, but Lord
Cornwodis's fatus cost the administration no ground there. The names
of most declar in the opposition are two names to
which those walls have been much accustomed at the same period,
Charles Fox and William Pitt, second son of Lord Chatham.
(00:44):
Eloquence is the only one of our brilliant qualities that
does not seem to have degenerated rapidly. But I shall
leave debates to your nephew, now a near witness. I
could only re echo the newspapers sit not. And another
odd coincidence of events that while the father Lawrence is prisoner,
(01:05):
to Lord cornwallis as constable at a tower the Sun
Lawrence signed the capitulation by which Lord Cornwallas became prisoner.
It is said, too, I don't know if truly that
this capitulation and that of Saratoga were signed on the
same anniversary. These are certainly the speculations of an idle man,
(01:27):
and the more trifling when one considers the moment. But alas,
what would my most grave speculations avail from the hour
that fatal egg the stamp Act was laid. I disliked it,
and all the vipers hatched from it. I now hear
many curs it who fed the Boman with poisonous weeds?
(01:49):
Yet the guilty and the innocent ruined equally. Hitherto I
would not answer for what is to come. Seven years
of miss carriages may sour the sweetest tempers and the
most sweetened Where is the dove with the olive branch?
(02:10):
Long ago I told you that you and I might
not live to see an end of the American War.
It is very near its end. Indeed, now its consequences
are far from a conclusion. In some respects, they are
commencing a new date which will reach far beyond us.
(02:30):
I desire not to pry into that book of futurity.
Could I finish my course in peace? But one must
take the checkered scenes of life as they come. What
signifies whether the elements are serene or turbulent. When a
private old man slips away, what is he and the
(02:52):
world's concerns to do with one another. He may sigh
for his country and babble about it, but he might
as well sit quiet and read or tell old stories.
The past is as important to him as the future.
Fashion and the morals of the people. To Tsaris Man,
(03:14):
Strawberry Hill, September the eight, seventeen eighty two, how should
the morals of the people be purified? When such frantic
dissipation reigns above them? Contagion does not mount but descend.
A new theater is going to be erected merely for
people of fashion, that they may not be confined to
(03:36):
vulgar hours, that is today and night. Fashion is always silly,
for before it can spread far, it must be calculated
for silly people. As examples of sense, wit or ingenuity
could be imitated only by a few. All the discoveries
(03:56):
that I can perceived or been made by the present
age is to prefer riding about the streets rather than
on the roads or on the turf, and being too
late for everything. Thus, though we have more public diversions
than would suffice for two capitals, nobody goes to them
till layer over. This is literally true, Randola. That is,
(04:20):
the music there finishes at half an hour after ten
at night, But the most fashionable set out for it,
though above a mile out of town at eleven or later. Well,
but it's not this censure, being old and cross. We're
not the charming people of my youth, guilty of equivalent absurdities.
(04:44):
Oh yes, but the sensible folks of my youth had
not lost America nor Diptus in wars with half Europe
that cost us fifteen millions a year, Pope. Madame de
Sevigne to John Pickett in a squad June the twenty six,
seventeen eighty five. Madame de Savigner shines both in grief
(05:07):
and gaiety. There is too much of sorrow for her
daughter's absence, yet it is always expressed by new terms,
by new images, and often by wit, whose tenderness has
a melancholy air when she forgets her concern and returns
to her natural disposition gaiety. Every paragraph has novelty, Her illusions,
(05:30):
her applications are the happiest possible. She has the art
of making you acquainted with all her acquaintance and attaches
you even to the spots she inhabited. Her language is correct,
though unstudied, and when her mind is full of any
great event, she interests you with the warmth of a
(05:51):
dramatic writer, not with the chilling impartiality of an historian.
Pray read her accounts of the death of Turenne and
of the arrival of King James in France, and tell
me whether you do not know their persons as if
you had lived at the time. Why he wrote when
(06:12):
young and refrained when old to miss Hannimore's Strawberry Hill
Drive twelve seventeen eighty eight. You said in your last
that you feared you took up time of mine to
the prejudice of the public, implying I imagine that I
might employ it in composing. Waiving both your compliment and
(06:33):
my own vanity, I will speak very seriously to you
on that subject, and with exact truth. My simple writings
have had better fortune than they had any reason to expect,
and I fairly believe in a great degree, because gentlemen
writers who do not write for interest are treated with
some civility if they do not write absolute nonsense. I
(06:57):
think so because I have not unfrequently know much better
works than mine, much more neglected, if the name, fortune,
and situation of the authors were below mine. I wrote
early from youth's spirits and vanity, and from both the
last when the first no longer existed. I now shudder
(07:19):
when I reflect on my own boldness, and with mortification
when I compare my own writings with those of any
great authors. This is so true that I question whether
it will be possible for me to summon up courage
to publish anything I have written, if I could recall
time past, and should yet think as I think at present,
(07:41):
so much for what is over and out of my
power as to writing now, I have totally foresworn the
profession for two solid reasons. One I have already told you,
and it is that I know my own writings are
trifling and of no depth. The other is that light
and futile as they were, I am sensible they are
(08:03):
better than I could compose. Now. I am aware of
the decay of the middling parts I had, and others
may be still more sensible of it. How do I know?
But I am superannuated. Nobody will be so coarse as
to tell me so. But if I published dotage. All
(08:24):
the world would tell me so, And who but runs
that risk? Who was an author over seventy What happened
to the greatest author of this age, and who certainly
retained a considerable portion of his abilities for ten years
after my age? Voltaire, at eighty four, I think, went
(08:46):
to Paris to receive the incense in person of his countrymen,
and to be witnessed of their admiration of a tragedy
he had written at that methusinum age. Incense he did
receive till it choked him. And at the exhibition of
his play he was actually crowned with Laurel in the
box where he sat. But what became of his poor play?
(09:10):
It died as soon as he did, was buried with him,
And no mortal I dare to say, has ever riddle
line of it, since it was so bad. The growth
of London to the miss Berry's Berkley Square during the
eighth seventy ninety one, the Duke of Saint Albans has
(09:31):
cut down all the brave old trees at Hanworth and
consequently reduced his park to what it issued from Hounslow Heath. Nay,
he has hired a meadow next to mine for the
benefit of embarkation. And there lie all the good old
corpses of oaks, ashes and chestnuts directly before your windows,
(09:54):
and blocking up one of my views of the river.
But so impetuous is the rage for building that his
Grace's timber will I trust not annoy us long. There
will soon be one street from London to Brentford. I
am from London to every village ten miles round. Lord
(10:16):
Camden has just let ground at Kentish Town for building
fourteen hundred houses. Lord, I wonder London is I am
certain much fuller than ever I saw it? I have
twice this spring been going to stop my coach in
Piccadilly to inquire what was the matter, thinking there was
a mob? Not at all, it was only passengers. Nor
(10:40):
is there any complaint of depopulation from the country. Bath
shoots into new crescents, circuses and squares every year. Birmingham, Manchester,
Hull and Liverpool would serve any king in Europe for
a capital and would make the Empress of Russia's mouth
water of the war with Catherine sleighs are I hear
(11:02):
not of breath? And thence conjecture, it is dozing into peace.
Royal visitors at Strawberry Hill to the honorable Ages Conway
Strawberry Hill did ide second seventy ninety five. I will
write a word to you. They scares time to write
one to thank you for your great kindness about the
soldier who shall get a substitute. If you can, as
(11:26):
you are or have been in town, your daughter would
have told you in what a bustle. I am preparing
not to resist, but to receive an invasion of royalties
to morrow, and cannot even escape them. Like Admiral Cornwallis,
though seeming to make a semblance for I am to
wear a sword and have appointed two aides de camp,
(11:47):
my nephews, George and Horace Churchill. If I fall as
ten to one, but I do to be sure, it
will be a superb humble at the feet of a
queen and eight daughters of kings. For besides the six princesses,
I am to have the Duchess of York and the
Princess of Orange. Woe is me at seventy eight, and
(12:12):
with scarce a hand and foot to my back. Adieu,
Yours et cetera poor old remnant Warpole's last letter to
Lady Ossiri, almost the only one of his early friends
who survived him. January fifteenth, seventeen ninety seven. My dear Madam,
(12:37):
you distress me infinitely by showing my idle notes which
I cannot conceive can amuse anybody? My old fashioned breeding
impels me renow and then to reply to the letters.
You honor me with writing, but in truth very unwillingly,
for I seldom can have anything particular to say. I
(13:00):
scarce go out of my own house, and then only
to two or three very private places, where I see
nobody that really knows anything, and what I learned comes
from newspapers. They collect intelligence from coffee houses, consequently, what
I neither believe nor report. At home, I see only
a few charitable elders, except about four scorn nephews and
(13:25):
nieces of various ages, who are each brought to me
about once a year to stare at me as the
Methuselah of the family. And they can only speak of
their own contemporaries, which interests me no more than if
they talk to their dolls or bats or balls. Must
(13:45):
not the result of all this, Madam, make me a
very entertaining correspondent, And can such letters be worth showing?
Or can I have any spirit when so old and
reduced to dictate? Oh, my good madam, dispense with me
from such a task, and think how it must add
(14:07):
to it to apprehend such letters being shown. Pray send
me no more such laurels, which I desire no more
than their leaves, when decked with a scrap of tinsel
and stuck on twelfth cakes that lies on shop boards
of pastry cooks at Christmas. I shall be quite content
(14:28):
with a sprig of rosemary throne after me when the
parson of the poish commits my dust to dust till then, pray, Madam,
accept the resignation of your ancient servant orfered the end
(14:50):
end of Section twenty end of Horaceworpole's Letters. A selection
by Horacewarpole
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