་ His establishment of his wives' in his immediate vicinity was not, however, accomplished without difficulty. For a moment some ill-natured newspaper gossip, which attributed the attachment of the Berry family to interested motives, so justly aroused the indignation of the elder sister that the whole arrangement threatened to collapse. But the slight estrangement thus caused soon passed away; and at the close of 1791, they took up their abode in Mrs. Clive's old house, now doubly honoured. On the 5th of the December in the same year, after a fresh fit of frenzy, Walpole's nephew died, and he became fourth Earl of Orford. The new dignity was by no means a welcome one, and scarcely compensated for the cares which it entailed. A small estate, loaded with debt, and of which I do not understand the management, and am too old to learn; a source of law suits amongst my near relations, though not affecting me; endless conversations with lawyers, and packets of letters to read every day and answer, all this weight of new business is too much for the rag of life that yet hangs about me, and was preceded by three weeks of anxiety about my unfortunate nephew, and a daily correspondence with physicians and maddoctors, falling upon me when I had been out of order ever since July.'1 For the other empty metamorphosis,' he writes to Hannah More, that has happened to the outward man, you do me justice in concluding that it can do nothing but tease me; it is being called names in one's old age. I had rather be my Lord Mayor, for then I should keep the nickname but a year; and mine I may retain a little longer, not that at seventy-five I reckon on becoming my Lord Methusalem.' For some time he could scarcely bring himself to use his new signature, and occasionally varied it by describing himself as The uncle of the late Earl of Orford.' In 1792, he delivered himself, after the fashion of Cowley, of the following Epitaphium vivi Auctoris: 'An estate and an earldom at seventy-four! Had I sought them or wished them, 't would add one That of making a countess when almost four-score. In the plain simple style I have lived in, to die : The last line seems like another of the many echoes of Goldsmith's Retaliation. As for the 1 Walpole to Pinkerton, 26 Dec., 1791. |