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
“Even the honeymoon of a new reign don’t produce events every
day. There is nothing but the common saying of addresses and
kissing hands. The chief difficulty is settled; Lord Gower
yields the Mastership of the Horse to Lord Huntingdon, and
removes to the Great Wardrobe, from whence Sir Thomas Robinson
was to have gone into Ellis’s place, but he is saved. The City,
however, have a mind to be out of humour; a paper has been
fixed on the Royal Exchange, with these words, ‘No petticoat
Government, no Scotch Minister, no Lord George Sackville;’
two hints totally unfounded, and the other scarce true. No
petticoat ever governed less, it is left at Leicester-house;
Lord George’s breeches are as little concerned; and, except
Lady Susan Stuart and Sir Harry Erskine, nothing has yet
been done for any Scots. For the King himself, he seems all
good-nature, and wishing to satisfy everybody; all his speeches
are obliging. I saw him again yesterday, and was surprised to
find the levee-room had lost so entirely the air of the lion’s
den. This Sovereign don’t stand in one spot, with his eyes
fixed royally on the ground, and dropping bits of German news;
he walks about, and speaks to everybody. I saw him afterwards
on the throne, where he is graceful and genteel, sits with
dignity, and reads his answers to addresses well; it was the
Cambridge address, carried by the Duke of Newcastle in his
Doctor’s gown, and looking like the _Médecin malgré lui_. He
had been vehemently solicitous for attendance, for fear my Lord
Westmoreland, who vouchsafes himself to bring the address from
Oxford, should outnumber him. Lord Lichfield and several other
Jacobites have kissed hands; George Selwyn says, ‘They go to St
James’s, because now there are so many _Stuarts_ there.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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