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XIV: “The Correspondents”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Rose M. Davis*
Affiliation:
Columbia University

Extract

Horace Walpole was never behind in matters of current gossip; he wrote to the Countess of Upper Ossory on July 7, 1775: Pray, Madam, have you read the Correspondents? I never heard of the book till two days ago. I think one cannot doubt the letters being genuine; but who has been so cruel as to publish them? and yet, except a little weakness, and it is very little to have but a little, there is nothing that can reflect but on the publishers … it appears by the letters that the authors were much afraid of their being seen, though more goodness of heart appears than anything else. Merciful! if all the foolish things one writes in confidence were to be recorded!

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , March 1936 , pp. 207 - 220
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1936

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References

1 Letters, ed. Mrs. Paget Toynbee, ix, 214–215. A MS note on the fly-leaf of the copy of The Correspondents in the Columbia University Library reads: “Said to be by Miss Berry, the friend of Horace Walpole and edited by him.” The person who made this surmise had overlooked the fact that Walpole's acquaintance with Miss Berry did not begin until 1789.

2 Ibid., 217.

3 Ibid., 222.

4 The Correspondents, an Original Novel; in a Series of Letters. (London: Printed for T. Becket, corner of the Adelphi, in the Strand. 1775).

5 The British Museum Catalog records only two editions of 1775, one of 1776, and one of 1784.

6 xlvii, 470.

7 D.N.B., xxxiv, 407. The passage on Mrs. Macaulay appears on p. 114 of The Correspondents. Sir George Otto Trevelyan, in The American Revolution (1903) Part ii, ii, 275) quotes from this passage, ascribing it without question to Lord Lyttelton. See also Notes and Queries, 11th Ser., x (September 19, 1914), 229.

8 Thomas Frost, Life of Thomas Lord Lyttelton (Tinsley Brothers: London, 1876), p. 102. See also Sir Robert Phillimore, Memoirs and Correspondence of George, Lord Lyttelton … (London, James Ridgway … 1845), ii, 773, where the lady's father is given as “Broome Watts.”

9 Chatham Papers, (Public Record Office, London), G. D. 8/43 (letters from Mrs. Alexander Hood to Lady Chatham).

10 E. Monro Purkis, William Shenstone: Poet and Landscape Gardener, (Whitehead Brothers, Ltd.: Wolverhampton, 1931), pp. 134–135.

11 Lyttelton's first wife, the former Lucy Fortescue, died in 1747, and in 1749, he married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Robert Rich, from whom he was separated in 1759.

12 Monthly Review, lii (1775), 430–437. Other reviews, speaking disparagingly of the literary value of the book, may be found in the London Magazine, xliv (1775), 253–254, and in the Critical Review, xxxix (1775), 341.

13 Pp. 171, 175–179.

14 Pp. 6–7.

15 Pp. 3, 11. Lord Lyttelton at this time had passed his sixtieth birthday.

16 Pp. 43–45.

17 W. L. Cross, The Life and Times of Laurence Sterne … (New Haven, 1925), pp. 199–200.

18 Pp. 27–32.

19 Pp. 192–193, 203–204.

20 Pp. 189–190.

21 Lyttelton was included with Hume, Horace Walpole, and others in the list of those whom Rousseau suspected of conspiring against him during his stay in England. “Qu'ai je fait à Lord Littleton que je ne connois même pas?” he writes to Hume on July 10, 1766. See Hume's Letters, edited by J. Y. T. Grieg, (Oxford: Clarendon press, 1932), ii, 64, 396.

22 Pp. 199–202.

23 P. 112.

24 P. 50.

25 P. 75.

26 P. 79.

27 Pp. 81–82.

28 Pp. 97–98.

29 Pp. 93–95.

30 Pp. 104–107; Monthly Review, lii (1775), 431–132.

31 Pp. 108–109.

32 Pp. 125–133.

33 P. 136.

34 lii (1775), 435.

35 Pp. 149–154.

36 Pp. 253–255.

37 See note 10 above.

38 P. 161.

39 Pp. 138–139, 230.

40 Pp. 142–143.

41 Pp. 221–230.

42 P. 247.

43 Pp. 249–251.

44 P. 264.

45 Pp. 17, 19, 76, 226, 245, 259.

46 Leiters of the Late Lord Lyttelton, … ed. William Combe (London: Osborne & Griffin, 1792). See also Thomas Frost, op. cit., pp. 102–105, 108–111.

47 Hagley MSS., iii, 305; Frost, op. cit., pp. 107–108.

48 Hagley MSS., iii, 307.

49 Chatham Correspondence, ed. by the executors of … John, Earl of Chatham (London: John Murray, 1838), iv, 221–222; Frost, op. cit., p. 115.

50 Chatham Papers, G. D. 8/41.

51 Ibid., G. D. 8/41.

52 Ibid., G. D. 8/43.

53 Ibid., G. D. 8/41.

54 Ibid., G. D. 8/43.

55 Ibid., G. D. 8/41.

56 Phillimore, ii, 785–786.

57 Chatham Papers, G. D. 8/41.

58 The Rape of Pomona. An Elegiac Epistle … The Second Edition (London, 1773).

59 London, 1773.—An account of this affair under the title “The Rev. Bruiser” appeared in the London Morning Post for January 22, 1932.

60 The Vauxhall Affray, p. 99.

61 This is the date given in his will, although a letter from the physician who attended him gives the date as August 22 (see Phillimore, op. cit., ii, 788).

62 Lord Lyttelton's will at Somerset House, Stevens 435.

63 Chatham Papers, G. D. 8/43.

64 Rev. Montagu Pennington, Letters from Mrs. Elizabeth Carter to Mrs. Montagu between the years 1755 and 1800 … (London, 1817), ii, 214–215.

65 Chatham Papers, G. D. 8/41.

66 Ibid., G. D. 8/43.

67 Ibid., G. D. 8/42.

68 Reginald Blunt, Mrs. Montagu, Queen of the Blues (London: Constable & Company, Ltd., 1923), i, 280.

69 Phillimore, op. cit., ii, 773n.

70 Catalogue of Engraved British Portraits, (British Museum), iii, 112.

71 This study was pursued while European Fellow, the American Association of University Women, 1931–32.