Horace Walpole and His World: Select Passages from His Letters

Name: Horace Walpole and His World: Select Passages from His Letters
Author: Walpole, Horace

Walpole, Horace

Walpole, Horace, 1717-1797 -- Correspondence

“Offended at you, Madam! I have crossed myself forty times
    since I read the impious words, never to be pronounced by
    human lips,--nay, and to utter them, when I am seemingly to
    blame!--yet, believe me, my silence is not owing to negligence,
    or to that most wicked of all sins, inconstancy. I have thought
    on you waking or sleeping, whenever I have thought at all,
    from the moment I saw you last; and if there was an echo in
    the neighbourhood besides Mr. Cambridge, I should have made
    it repeat your Ladyship’s name, till the parish should have
    presented it for a nuisance. I have begun twenty letters, but
    the naked truth is, I found I had absolutely nothing to say.
    You yourself owned, Madam, that I am grown quite lifeless, and
    it is very true. I am none of your Glastonbury thorns that
    blow at Christmas. I am a remnant of the last age, and have
    nothing to do with the present. I am an exile from the sunbeams
    of drawing-rooms; I have quitted the gay scenes of Parliament
    and the Antiquarian Society; I am not of Almack’s; I don’t
    understand horse-races; I never go to reviews; what can I have
    to talk of? I go to no _fêtes champêtres_, what can I have to
    think of? I know nothing but about myself, and about myself
    I know nothing. I have scarce been in town since I saw you,
    have scarce seen anybody here, and don’t remember a tittle but
    having scolded my gardener twice, which, indeed, would be as
    important an article as any in Montaigne’s Travels, which I
    have been reading, and if I was tired of his Essays, what must
    one be of these! What signifies what a man thought, who never
    thought of anything but himself; and what signifies what a man
    did, who never did anything?”

In August, hearing that Lady Ossory had again been disappointed of a
son, he tells her: “I don’t design to acknowledge Anne III.; I shall
call her _Madame de Trop_, as they named one of the late King of
France’s daughters. A _dauphin_! a _dauphin_! I will repeat it as often
as the _Graces_.” A month later he is informed that _Madame de Trop_
has received the name of Gertrude:

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Opening the text

Horace Walpole and His World: Select Passages from His LettersWalpole, Horace

General

Horace Walpole and His World: Select Passages from His Letters

Walpole, Horace

Walpole, Horace, 1717-1797 -- Correspondence

“Offended at you, Madam! I have crossed myself forty times
    since I read the impious words, never to be pronounced by
    human lips,--nay, and to utter them, when I am seemingly to
    blame!--yet, believe me, my silence is not owing to negligence,
    or to that most wicked of all sins, inconstancy. I have thought
    on you waking or sleeping, whenever I have thought at all,
    from the moment I saw you last; and if there was an echo in
    the neighbourhood besides Mr. Cambridge, I should have made
    it repeat your Ladyship’s name, till the parish should have
    presented it for a nuisance. I have begun twenty letters, but
    the naked truth is, I found I had absolutely nothing to say.
    You yourself owned, Madam, that I am grown quite lifeless, and
    it is very true. I am none of your Glastonbury thorns that
    blow at Christmas. I am a remnant of the last age, and have
    nothing to do with the present. I am an exile from the sunbeams
    of drawing-rooms; I have quitted the gay scenes of Parliament
    and the Antiquarian Society; I am not of Almack’s; I don’t
    understand horse-races; I never go to reviews; what can I have
    to talk of? I go to no _fêtes champêtres_, what can I have to
    think of? I know nothing but about myself, and about myself
    I know nothing. I have scarce been in town since I saw you,
    have scarce seen anybody here, and don’t remember a tittle but
    having scolded my gardener twice, which, indeed, would be as
    important an article as any in Montaigne’s Travels, which I
    have been reading, and if I was tired of his Essays, what must
    one be of these! What signifies what a man thought, who never
    thought of anything but himself; and what signifies what a man
    did, who never did anything?”

In August, hearing that Lady Ossory had again been disappointed of a
son, he tells her: “I don’t design to acknowledge Anne III.; I shall
call her _Madame de Trop_, as they named one of the late King of
France’s daughters. A _dauphin_! a _dauphin_! I will repeat it as often
as the _Graces_.” A month later he is informed that _Madame de Trop_
has received the name of Gertrude:

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Horace Walpole and His World: Select Passages from His Letters

Horace Walpole and His World: Select Passages from His Letters

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