almost worse than oblivion, than oblivion, 6 discredit and neglect. A generation like the present, for whom fiction has unravelled so many intricate combinations, and whose Gothicism and Mediævalism are better instructed than Walpole's, no longer feels its soul harrowed up in the same way as did his hushed and awe-struck readers of the days of the third George. To the critic the book is interesting as the first of a school of romances which had the honour of influencing even the mighty Wizard of the North,' who, no doubt in gratitude, wrote for Ballantyne's Novelist's Library a most appreciative study of the story. But we doubt if that many-plumed and monstrous helmet, which crashes through stone walls and cellars, could now give a single shiver to the most timorous Cambridge don, while we suspect that the majority of modern students would, like the author, leave Matilda and Isabella talking, in the middle of a paragraph, but from a different kind of weariness. Autres temps, autres mœurs, — especially in the matter of Gothic romance. CHAPTER VII. State of French Society in 1765.- Walpole at Paris. The Royal Family and the Bête du Gévaudan. - French Ladies of Quality. Madame du Deffand. A Letter from Madame Paris again. de Sévigné. - Rousseau and the King of Prussia. The WHEN, towards WH the close of 1765. Walpole made the first of several visits to Paris, the society of the French capital, and indeed French society as a whole, was showing signs of that coming culbute générale which was not to be long deferred. The upper classes were shamelessly immoral, and, from the King downwards, liaisons of the most open character excited neither censure nor comment. It was the era of Voltaire and the Encyclopædists; it was the era of Rousseau and the Sentimentalists; it was also the era of confirmed Anglomania. While we, on our side, were beginning to copy the comédies larmoyantes of La Chaussée and Diderot, the French in their turn were acting Romeo and Juliet, and raving over Richardson. Richardson's chief rival in their eyes was Hume, then a chargé d'affaires, and, in spite of his plain face and bad French, the idol of the freethinkers. He is treated here,' writes Walpole, with perfect veneration; and we learn from other sources that no lady's toilette was complete without his attendance. At the Opera,' says Lord Charlemont, his broad, unmeaning face was usually seen entre deux jolis minois; the ladies in France gave the ton, and the ton was Deism.' Apart from literature, irreligion, and philosophy, the chief occupation was cards. 'Whisk and Richardson' is Walpole's later definition of French society; 'Whisk and disputes,' that of Hume. According to Walpole, a kind of pedantry and solemnity was the characteristic of conversation, and laughing was as much out of fashion as pantins or bilboquets. Good folks, they have no time to laugh. There is God and the King to be pulled down first; and men and women, one and all, are devoutly employed in the demolition.' How that enterprise eventuated, history has recorded. It is needless, however, to rehearse the origins of the French Revolution, in order to make a background for the visit of an English gentleman to Paris in 1765. Walpole had been meditating this journey for two or three years; but the state of his health, among other things (he suffered much from gout), had from time to time postponed it. In 1763, he had been going next spring; but when next spring came he talked of the beginning of 1765. Nevertheless, in March of that year, Gilly Williams writes to Selwyn: Horry Walpole has now postponed his journey till May,' and then he goes on to speak of the Castle of Otranto in a way which shows that all the author's friends were not equally enthusiastic respecting that ingenious romance. How do you think he has employed that leisure which his political frenzy has allowed of? In writing a novel, . . . and such a novel that no boarding-school miss of thirteen could get through without yawning. It consists of ghosts and enchantments; pictures walk out of their frames, and are good company for half an hour together; helmets drop from the moon, 1 It is curious to note in one of his letters at this date a mot which may be compared with the famous 'Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris.' Walpole is more sardonic. 'Paris,' he says, '. . . like the description of the grave, is the way of all flesh' (Walpole to Mann, 30 June, 1763). and cover half a family. He says it was a dream, and I fancy one when he had some feverish disposition in him.'1 May, however, had arrived and passed, and the Castle of Otranto was in its second edition, before Walpole at last set out, on Monday, the 9th September, 1765. After a seven hours' passage, he reached Calais from Dover. Near Amiens he was refreshed by a sight of one of his favourites, Lady Mary Coke, in pea-green and silver;' at Chantilly he was robbed of his port 2 1 Gilly Williams to Selwyn, 19 March, 1765. 2 Lady Mary Coke, to whom the second edition of the Gothic romance was dedicated, was the youngest daughter of John, Duke of Argyll and Greenwich. At this date, she was a widow, - Lord Coke having died in 1753. Two volumes of her Letters and Journals, with an excellent introduction by Lady Louisa Stuart, were printed privately at Edinburgh in 1889 from MSS. in the possession of the Earl of Home. A third volume, which includes a number of epistles addressed to her by Walpole, found among the papers of the late Mr. Drummond Moray of Abercairny, was issued in 1892. Walpole's tone in these documents is one of fantastic adoration; but the pair ultimately (and inevitably) quarrelled. There is a wellknown mezzotint of Lady Mary by McArdell after Allan Ramsay, in which she appears in white satin, holding a tall theorbo. The original painting is at Mount Stuart, and belongs to Lord Bute. |