Horace Walpole and His World: Select Passages from His LettersWalpole, Horace
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Horace Walpole and His World: Select Passages from His Letters
Walpole, Horace
Walpole, Horace, 1717-1797 -- Correspondence
“I told you in my last that Tonton was arrived. I brought him
this morning to take possession of his new villa, but his
inauguration has not been at all pacific. As he has already
found out that he may be as despotic as at St. Joseph’s,
he began with exiling my beautiful little cat; upon which,
however, we shall not quite agree. He then flew at one of my
dogs, who returned it by biting his foot till it bled, but was
severely beaten for it. I immediately rung for Margaret to
dress his foot; but in the midst of my tribulation could not
keep my countenance; for she cried, ‘Poor little thing, he does
not understand my language!’ I hope she will not recollect,
too, that he is a Papist!”
[Illustration: _Sir Joshua Reynolds. Pinx._ _A. Dawson. Ph. Sc._ _S. W.
Reynolds. Sc._
_Sir Joshua Reynolds._]
We have a further anecdote of Charles Fox told a few days later, also
in a letter to Conway:
“I had been to see if Lady Aylesbury was come to town: as
I came up St. James’s Street, I saw a cart and porters at
Charles’s door; coppers and old chests of drawers loading. In
short, his success at faro has awakened his host of creditors;
but unless his bank has swelled to the size of the Bank of
England, it could not have yielded a sop apiece for each.
Epsom, too, had been unpropitious; and one creditor has
actually seized and carried off his goods, which did not seem
worth removing. As I returned full of this scene, whom should
I find sauntering by my own door but Charles? He came up, and
talked to me at the coach-window on the Marriage Bill,[86]
with as much _sang-froid_ as if he knew nothing of what had
happened. I have no admiration for insensibility to one’s own
faults, especially when committed out of vanity. Perhaps the
whole philosophy consisted in the commission. If _you_ could
have been as much to blame, the last thing you would bear well
would be your own reflections. The more marvellous Fox’s parts
are, the more one is provoked at his follies, which comfort so
many rascals and blockheads, and make all that is admirable and
amiable in him only matter of regret to those who like him as I
do.[87]
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