CHAPTER VIII.

Old Friends and New.--Walpole's Nieces.--Mrs. Damer.--Progress of Strawberry Hill.--Festivities and Later Improvements.--_A Description_, etc., 1774.--The House and Approaches.--Great Parlour, Waiting Room, China Room, and Yellow Bedchamber.--Breakfast Room.--Green Closet and Blue Bedchamber.--Armoury and Library.--Red Bedchamber, Holbein Chamber, and Star Chamber.--Gallery.--Round Drawing Room and Tribune.--Great North Bedchamber.--Great Cloister and Chapel.--Walpole on Strawberry.--Its Dampness.--A Drive from Twickenham to Piccadilly.

In 1774, when, according to its title-page, the _Description of Strawberry Hill_ was printed, Walpole was a man of fifty-seven. During the period covered by the last chapter, many changes had taken place in his circle of friends. Mann and George Montagu (until, in October, 1770, his correspondence with the latter mysteriously ceased) were still the most frequent recipients of his letters, and next to these, Conway, and Cole the antiquary. But three of his former correspondents, his deaf neighbour at Marble Hill, Lady Suffolk,[127] Lady Hervey (Pope's and Chesterfield's Molly Lepel, to whom he had written much from Paris), and Gray, were dead. On the other hand, he had opened what promised to be a lengthy series of letters with Gray's friend and biographer, the Rev. William Mason, Rector of Aston, in Yorkshire; with Madame du Deffand; and with the divorced Duchess of Grafton, who in 1769 had married his Paris friend, John Fitzpatrick, second Earl of Upper Ossory. There were changes, too, among his own relatives. By this time his eldest brother's widow, Lady Orford, had lost her second husband, Sewallis Shirley, and was again living, not very reputably, on the Continent. Her son George, who since 1751 had been third Earl of Orford, and was still unmarried, was eminently unsatisfactory. He was shamelessly selfish, and by way of complicating the family embarrassments, had taken to the turf. Ultimately he had periodical attacks of insanity, during which time it fell to Walpole's fate to look after his affairs. With Sir Edward Walpole, his second brother, he seems never to have been on terms of real cordiality; but he made no secret of his pride in his beautiful nieces, Edward Walpole's natural daughters, whose charms and amiability had victoriously triumphed over every prejudice which could have been entertained against their birth. Laura, who was the eldest, had married a brother of the Earl of Albemarle, subsequently created Bishop of Exeter; Charlotte, the third, became Lady Huntingtower, and afterwards Countess of Dysart; while Maria, the _belle_ of the trio, was more fortunate still. After burying her first husband, Lord Waldegrave, she had succeeded in fascinating H. R. H. William Henry, Duke of Gloucester, the King's own brother, and so contributing to bring about the Royal Marriage Act of 1772. They were married in 1766; but the fact was not formally announced to His Majesty until September, 1772.[128] Another marriage which must have given Walpole almost as much pleasure was that of General Conway's daughter to Mr. Damer, Lord Milton's eldest son, which took place in 1767. After the unhappy death of her husband, who shot himself in a tavern ten years later, Mrs. Damer developed considerable talents as a sculptor, and during the last years of Walpole's life was a frequent exhibitor at the Royal Academy. _Non me Praxiteles finxit, at Anna Damer_, wrote her admiring relative under one of her works, a wounded eagle in terra-cotta;[129] and in the fourth volume of the _Anecdotes of Painting_, he likens 'her shock dog, large as life,' to such masterpieces of antique art as the Tuscan boar and the Barberini goat.

[127] Henrietta Hobart, Countess Dowager of Suffolk, died in July, 1767. Her portrait by Charles Jervas, with Marble Hill in the background, hung in the Green Bed-chamber in the Round Tower at Strawberry. It once belonged to Pope, who left it to Martha Blount; and it is engraved as the frontispiece of vol. ii. of Cunningham's edition of the _Letters_.

[128] 'The Duke of Gloucester'--wrote Gilly Williams to Selwyn, as far back as December, 1764--'has professed a passion for the Dowager Waldegrave. He is never from her elbow. This flatters Horry Walpole not a little, though he pretends to dislike it.'

[129] The idea was borrowed from an inscription upon a statue at Milan: 'Non me Praxiteles, sed Marcus finxit Agrati!'

It is time, however, to return to the story of Strawberry itself, as interrupted in Chapter V. In the introduction to Walpole's _Description_ of 1774, a considerable interval occurs between the building of the Refectory and Library in 1753-4, and the subsequent erection of the Gallery, Round Tower, Great Cloister, and Cabinet, or Tribune, which, already in contemplation in 1759, were, according to the same authority, erected in 1760 and 1761. But here, as before, the date must rather be that of the commencement than the completion of these additions. In May, 1763, he tells Cole that the Gallery is fast advancing, and in July it is almost 'in the critical minute of consummation.' In August, 'all the earth is begging to come to see it.' A month afterwards, he is 'keeping an inn; the sign, "The Gothic Castle."' His whole time is passed in giving tickets of admission to the Gallery, and hiding himself when it is on view. 'Take my advice,' he tells Montagu, 'never build a charming house for yourself between London and Hampton-court; everybody will live in it but you.' A year later he is giving a great fête to the French and Spanish Ambassadors, March, Selwyn, Lady Waldegrave, and other distinguished guests, which finishes in the new room. 'During dinner there were French horns and clarionets in the cloister,' and after coffee the guests were treated 'with a syllabub milked under the cows that were brought to the brow of the terrace. Thence they went to the Printing-house, and saw a new fashionable French song printed. They drank tea in the Gallery, and at eight went away to Vauxhall.'

This last entertainment, the munificence of which, he says, the treasury of the Abbey will feel, took place in June, 1764; and it is not until four years later that we get tidings of any fresh improvements. In September, 1768, he tells Cole that he is going on with the Round Tower, or Chamber, at the end of the Gallery, which, in another letter, he says 'has stood still these five years,' and he is, besides, '_playing_ with the little garden on the other side of the road' which had come into his hands by Francklin's death. In May of the following year he gives another magnificent _festino_ at Strawberry, which will almost mortgage it, but the Round Tower still progresses. In October, 1770, he is building again, in the intervals of gout; this time it is the Great Bedchamber,--a 'sort of room which he seems likely to inhabit much time together.' Next year the whole piecemeal structure is rapidly verging to completion. 'The Round Tower is finished, and magnificent; and the State Bedchamber proceeds fast.' In June he is writing to Mann from the delicious bow window of the former, with Vasari's Bianca Capello (Mann's present) over against him, and the setting sun behind, 'throwing its golden rays all round.' Further on, he is building a tiny brick chapel in the garden, mainly for the purpose of receiving 'two valuable pieces of antiquity,'--one being a painted window from Bexhill of Henry III. and his Queen, given him by Lord Ashburnham; the other Cavalini's Tomb of Capoccio from the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore at Rome, which had been sent to him by Sir William (then Mr.) Hamilton, the English Minister at Naples. In August, 1772, the Great Bedchamber is finished, the house is complete, and he has 'at last exhausted all his hoards and collections.' Nothing remains but to compile the _Description and Catalogue_, concerning which he had written to Cole as far back as 1768, and which, as already stated, he ultimately printed in 1774.

As time went on, his fresh acquisitions obliged him to add several _Appendices_ to this issue; and the copy before us, although dated 1774, has supplements which bring the record down to 1786. A fresh edition, in royal quarto, with twenty-seven plates, was printed in 1784;[130] and this, or an expansion of it, reappears in vol. ii. of his _Works_. With these later issues we have little to do; but with the aid of that of 1774, may essay to give some brief account of the long, straggling, many-pinnacled building, with its round tower at the end, the east and south fronts of which are figured in the black-looking vignette upon the title-page. The entrance was on the north side, from the Teddington and Twickenham road, here shaded by lofty trees; and once within the embattled boundary wall, covered by this time with ivy, the first thing that struck the spectator was a small oratory inclosed by iron rails, with saint, altar, niches, and holy-water basins designed _en suite_ by Mr. Chute. On the right hand--its gaily-coloured patches of flower-bed glimmering through a screen of iron work copied from the tomb of Roger Niger, Bishop of London, in old St. Paul's--was the diminutive Abbot's, or Prior's, Garden, which extended in front of the offices to the right of the principal entrance.[131] This was along a little cloister to the left, beyond the oratory. The chief decoration of this cloister was a marble _bas-relief_, inscribed 'Dia Helionora,' being, in fact, a portrait of that Leonora D'Esté who turned the head of Tasso. At the end was the door, which opened into 'a small gloomy hall' united with the staircase, the balustrades of which, designed by Bentley, were decorated with antelopes, the Walpole supporters. In the well of the staircase was a Gothic lantern of japanned tin, also due to Bentley's fertile invention. If, instead of climbing the stairs, you turned out of the hall into a little passage on your left, you found yourself in the Refectory, or Great Parlour, where were accumulated the family portraits. Here, over the chimney-piece, was the 'conversation,' by Sir Joshua Reynolds, representing the triumvirate of Selwyn, Williams, and Lord Edgcumbe, already referred to at p. 138; here also were Sir Robert Walpole and his two wives, Catherine Shorter and Maria Skerret; Robert Walpole the second, and his wife in a white riding-habit; Horace himself by Richardson; Dorothy Walpole, his aunt, who became Lady Townshend;[132] his sister, Lady Maria Churchill; and a number of others. In the Waiting Room, into which the Refectory opened, was a stone head of John Dryden, whom Catherine Shorter claimed as great-uncle; next to this again was the China Closet, neatly lined with blue and white Dutch tiles, and having its ceiling painted by Müntz, after a villa at Frascati, with convolvuluses on poles. In the China Room, among great stores of Sèvres and Chelsea, and oriental china, perhaps the greatest curiosity was a couple of Saxon tankards, exactly alike in form and size, which had been presented to Sir Robert Walpole at different times by the mistresses of the first two Georges, the Duchess of Kendal and the Countess of Yarmouth. To the left of the China Closet, with a bow window looking to the south, was the Little Parlour, which was hung with stone-coloured 'gothic paper' in imitation of mosaic, and decorated with the 'wooden prints' already referred to, the chiaroscuros of Jackson;[133] and at the side of this came the Yellow Bedchamber, known later, from its numerous feminine portraits, as the Beauty Room. The other spaces on the ground floor were occupied, towards the Prior's Garden, by the kitchen, cellars, and servants' hall, and, at the back, by the Great Cloister, which went under the Gallery.

[130] From a passage in a letter of 15 Sept., 1787, to Lady Ossory, it appears that this, though printed, was withheld, on account of certain difficulties caused by the over-weening curiosity of Walpole's 'customers' (as he called them), the visitors to Strawberry. According to the sheet of regulations for visiting the house, it was to be seen between the 1st of May and the 1st of October. Children were not admitted; and only one company of four on one day.

[131] 'It is not much larger than an old lady's flower-knot in Bloomsbury,' said Lady Morgan in 1826.

[132] See p. 6.

[133] See p. 117 n.

Returning to the staircase, where, in later years, hung Bunbury's original drawing[134] for his well-known caricature of 'Richmond Hill,' you entered the Breakfast Room on the first floor, the window of which looked towards the Thames. It was pleasantly furnished with blue paper, and blue and white linen, and contained many miniatures and portraits, notable among which were Carmontel's picture of Madame du Deffand and the Duchess de Choiseul;[135] a print of Madame du Deffand's room and cats, given by the President Hénault; and a view painted by Raguenet for Walpole in 1766 of the Hôtel de Carnavalet, the former residence of Madame de Sévigné.[136]

[134] It was exhibited in the Royal Academy of 1781, and was Bunbury's acknowledgment of the praise given him by Walpole in the 'Advertisement' to the fourth volume of the _Anecdotes of Painting_, 1 Oct., 1780. A copy of it was shown at the Exhibition of English Humourists in Art, June, 1889.

[135] In a note to Madame du Deffand's _Letters_, 1810, i. 201, the editor, Miss Berry, thus describes this picture: It was 'a washed drawing of Mad. la Duchesse de Choiseul and Mad. du Deffand, under their assumed characters of grandmother and granddaughter; Mad. de Choiseul giving Mad. du Deffand a doll. The scene the interior of Mad. du Deffand's sitting-room. It was done by M. de Carmontel, an amateur in the art of painting. He was reader to the Prince of Condé, and author of several little Theatrical pieces.' It is engraved as the frontispiece of vol. vii. of Walpole's _Letters_, by Cunningham, 1857-59. Mad. du Deffand's portrait was said to be extremely like; that of the Duchess was not good.

[136] 'It is now the Musée Carnavalet, and contains numberless souvenirs of the Revolution, notably a collection of china plates, bearing various dates, designs, and inscriptions applicable to the Reign of Terror' (_Century_ _Magazine_, Feb., 1890, p. 600). A washed drawing of Madame de Sévigné's country house at Les Rochers, 'done on the spot by Mr. Hinchcliffe, son of the Bishop of Peterborough, in 1786,' was afterwards added to this room.

The Breakfast Room opened into the Green Closet, over the door of which was a picture by Samuel Scott of Pope's house at Twickenham, showing the wings added after the poet's death by Sir William Stanhope. On the same side of the room hung Hogarth's portrait of Sarah Malcolm the murderess, painted at Newgate a day or two before her execution in Fleet Street.[137] Here also was 'Mr. Thomas Gray; etched from his shade [silhouette]; by Mr. W. Mason.' There were many other portraits in this room, besides some water colours on ivory by Horace himself. In a line with the Green Closet, and looking east, was the Library; and at the back of it, the Blue Bedchamber, the toilette of which was worked by Mrs. Clive, who, since her retirement from the stage in 1769, had lived wholly at Twickenham. The chief pictures in this room were Eckardt's portraits of Gray in a Vandyke dress and of Walpole himself in similar attire.[138] There were also by the same artist pictures of Walpole's father and mother, and of General Conway and his wife, Lady Ailesbury.

[137] Both these pictures are in existence. The Scott belongs to Lady Freake, and was exhibited in the Pope Loan Museum of 1888.

[138] Both these are engraved in Cunningham's edition of the _Letters_, the former in vol. iv., p. 465, the latter in vol. ix., p. 529.

Facing the Blue Bedchamber was the Armoury, a vestibule of three Gothic arches, in the left-hand corner of which was the door opening into the Library, a room twenty-eight feet by nineteen feet six, lighted by a large window looking to the east, and by two smaller rose-windows at the sides. The books, arranged in Gothic arches of pierced work, went all round it. The chimney-piece was imitated from the tomb of John of Eltham in Westminster Abbey, and the stone work from another tomb at Canterbury. Over the chimney-piece was a picture (which is engraved in the _Anecdotes of Painting_) representing the marriage of Henry VI. Walpole and Bentley had designed the ceiling,--a gorgeous heraldic medley surrounding a central Walpole shield. Above the bookcases were pictures. One of the greatest treasures of the room was a clock given by Henry VIII. to Anne Boleyn. Of the books it is impossible to speak in detail. Noticeable among them, however, was a Thuanus in fourteen volumes, a very extensive set of Hogarth's prints, and all the original drawings for the _Ædes Walpolianæ_. Vertue, Hollar, and Faithorne were also largely represented. Among special copies, were the identical _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ from which Pope made his translations of Homer,[139] a volume containing Bentley's original designs for Gray's _Poems_, and a black morocco pocket-book of sketches by Jacques Callot. In a rosewood case in this room was also a fine collection of coins, which included the rare silver medal struck by Gregory XIII. on the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.

[139] This was the Amsterdam edition of 1707, in 2 vols. 12mo., inscribed 'E libris, A. Pope, 1714;' and lower down, 'Finished ye translation in Feb. 1719-20, A. Pope.' It also contained a pencil sketch by the poet of Twickenham Church.

Concerning the Red Bedchamber, the Star Chamber, and the Holbein Chamber, which intervened between the rest of the first floor and the latest additions, there is little to say. In the Red Bedchamber, the most memorable things (after the chintz bed on which Lord Orford died) were some pencil sketches of Pope and his parents by Cooper and the elder Richardson. In the Holbein Chamber, so called from a number of copies on oil-paper by Vertue from the drawings of Holbein in Queen Catherine's Closet at Kensington, were two of those 'curiosities' which represent the Don Saltero, or Madame Tussaud, side of Strawberry, viz., a tortoise-shell comb studded with silver hearts and roses which was said to have belonged to Mary, Queen of Scots, and (later) the red hat of Cardinal Wolsey. The pedigree of the hat, it must, however, be admitted, was unimpeachable. It had been found in the great wardrobe by Bishop Burnet when Clerk of the Closet. From him it passed to his son the Judge (author of that curious squib on Harley known as the _History of Robert Powel the Puppet-Show-Man_), and thence to the Countess Dowager of Albemarle, who gave it to Walpole. A carpet in this room was worked by Mrs. Clive, who seems to have been a most industrious decorator of her friend's mansion museum.[140] The Star Chamber was but an ante-room powdered with gold stars in mosaic, the chief glory of which was a stone bust of Henry VII. by Torregiano.

[140] Walpole wrote an epilogue--not a very good one--for Mrs. Clive when she quitted the stage; and in the same year, 1769, the _Town and Country Magazine_ linked their names in its '_Tête-à-Têtes_' as 'Mrs. Heidelberg' (Clive's part in the _Clandestine Marriage_) and 'Baron Otranto' (a name under which Chatterton subsequently satirized Walpole in this identical periodical). See _Memoirs of a Sad Dog_, Pt. 2, July, 1770.

With these three rooms, the first floor of Strawberry, as it existed previous to the erection of the additions mentioned in the beginning of this chapter,--namely, the Gallery, the Round Tower, the Tribune, and the Great North Bedchamber,--came to an end. But it was in these newer parts of the house that some of its rarest objects of art were assembled. The Gallery, which was entered from a gloomy little passage in front of the Holbein Chamber, was a really spacious room, fifty-six feet by thirteen, and lighted from the south by five high windows. Between these were tables laden with busts, bronzes, and urns; on the opposite side, fronting the windows, were recesses, finished with gold network over looking-glass, between which stood couch-seats, covered, like the rest of the room, with crimson Norwich damask. The ceiling was copied from one of the side aisles of Henry VII.'s Chapel; the great door at the western end, which led into the Round Tower, was taken from the north door of St. Albans. A long carpet, made at Moorfields, traversed the room from end to end. In one of the recesses--that to the left of the chimney-piece, which was designed by Mr. Chute and Mr. Thomas Pitt of Boconnoc,--stood one of the finest surviving pieces of Greek sculpture, the Boccapadugli eagle, found in the precinct of the Baths of Caracalla,--a _chef-d'œuvre_ from which Gray is said to have borrowed the 'ruffled plumes, and flagging wing' of the _Progress of Poesy_; to the right was a noble bust in basalt of Vespasian, which had been purchased from the Ottoboni collection. Of the pictures it is impossible to speak at large; but two of the most notable were Sir George Villiers, the father of the Duke of Buckingham, and Mabuse's _Marriage of Henry VII. and Elizabeth of York_. Of Walpole's own relatives, there were portraits by Ramsay of his nieces, Mrs. Keppel (the Bishop's wife) and Lady Dysart, and of the Duchess of Gloucester (then Lady Waldegrave) by Reynolds. There were also portraits of Henry Fox, Lord Holland, of George Montagu, of Lord Waldegrave, and of Horace's uncle, Lord Walpole of Wolterton.[141]

[141] Horatio, brother of Sir Robert Walpole, created Baron Walpole of Wolterton in 1756. He died in 1757. His _Memoirs_ were published by Coxe in 1802.

Issuing through the great door of the Gallery, and passing on the left a glazed closet containing a quantity of china which had once belonged to Walpole's mother, a couple of steps brought you into the pleasant Drawing Room in the Round Tower, the bow window of which, already mentioned, looked to the south-west. Like the Gallery, this room was hung with Norwich damask. Its chief glory was the picture of Bianca Capello, of which Walpole had written to Mann. To the left of this room, at the back of the Gallery, and consequently in the front of the house, was the Cabinet, or Tribune, a curious square chamber with semicircular recesses, in two of which, to the north and west, were stained windows. In the roof, which was modelled on the chapter house at York, was a star of yellow glass throwing a soft golden glow over all the room. Here Walpole had amassed his choicest treasures, miniatures by Oliver and Cooper, enamels by Petitot and Zincke,[142] bronzes from Italy, ivory bas-reliefs, seal-rings and reliquaries, caskets and cameos and filigree work. Here, with Madame du Deffand's letter inside it,[143] was the 'round white snuff-box' with Madame de Sévigné's portrait; here, carven with masks and flies and grasshoppers, was Cellini's silver bell from the Leonati Collection, at Parma, a masterpiece against which he had exchanged all his collection of Roman coins with the Marquis of Rockingham. A bronze bust of Caligula with silver eyes; a missal with reputed miniatures by Raphael; a dagger of Henry VIII.,[144] and a mourning ring given at the burial of Charles I.,--were among the other show objects of the Tribune, the riches of which occupy more space in their owner's Catalogue than any other part of his collections.

[142] 'The chief boast of my collection,' he told Pinkerton, 'is the portraits of eminent and remarkable persons, particularly the miniatures and enamels; which, so far as I can discover, are superior to any other collection whatever. The works I possess of Isaac and Peter Oliver are the best extant; and those I bought in Wales for 300 guineas [_i.e._, the Digby Family, in the Breakfast Room] are as well preserved as when they came from the pencil (_Walpoliana_, ii. 157).

[143] It is printed in both the Catalogues.

[144] At the sale in 1842, King Henry's dagger was purchased for £54 12_s._ by Charles Kean the actor, who also became the fortunate possessor, for £21, of Cardinal Wolsey's hat.

With the Great North Bedchamber, which adjoined the Tribune, and filled the remaining space at the back of the Gallery, the account of Strawberry Hill, as it existed in 1774, comes to an end; for the Green Chamber in the Round Tower over the Drawing Room, and 'Mr. Walpole's Bedchamber, two pair of stairs' (which contained the Warrant for beheading King Charles I., inscribed 'Major Charta,' so often referred to by Walpole's biographers),[145] may be dismissed without further notice. The Beauclerk Closet, a later addition, will be described in its proper place. Over the chimney-piece in the Great North Bedchamber was a large picture of Henry VIII. and his children, a recent purchase, afterwards remanded to the staircase to make room for a portrait of Catherine of Braganza, sent from Portugal previous to her marriage with Charles II. Fronting the bed was a head of Niobe, by Guido, which in its turn subsequently made way for _la belle Jennings_.[146] Among the pictures on the north or window side of the room was the original sketch by Hogarth of the _Beggar's Opera_, which Walpole had purchased at the sale of Rich, the fortunate manager who produced Gay's masterpiece at Lincoln's Inn Fields. It was exhibited at Manchester in 1857, being then the property of Mr. Willett, who had bought it at the Strawberry Hill sale of 1842. Another curious oil painting in this room was the _Rehearsal of an Opera_ by the Riccis, which included caricature portraits of Nicolini (of _Spectator_ celebrity), of the famous Mrs. Catherine Tofts, and of Margherita de l'Epine. In a nook by the window there was a glazed china closet, with a number of minor curiosities, among which were conspicuous the speculum of cannel coal with which Dr. Dee was in the habit of gulling his votaries,[147] and an agate puncheon with Gray's arms which his executors had presented to Walpole.

[145] Here is his own reference to this, in a letter to Montagu of 14 Oct., 1756: 'The only thing I have done that can compose a paragraph, and which I think you are Whig enough to forgive me, is, that on each side of my bed I have hung MAGNA CHARTA, and the Warrant for King Charles's execution, on which I have written Major Charta; as I believe, without the latter, the former by this time would be of very little importance.'

[146] See p. 7 n.

[147] 'Dr Dee's black stone was named in the catalogue of the collection of the Earls of Peterborough, whence it went to Lady Betty Germaine. She gave it to the last Duke of Argyle, and his son, Lord Frederic, to me' (_Walpole to Lady Ossory_, 12 Jan., 1782)

A few external objects claim a word. In the Great Cloister under the Gallery was the blue and white china tub in which had taken place that tragedy of the 'pensive Selima' referred to at p. 135 as having prompted the muse of Gray.[148] The Chapel in the Garden has already been sufficiently described.[149] In the Flower Garden across the road was a cottage which Walpole had erected upon the site of the building once occupied by Francklin the printer, and which he used as a place of refuge when the tide of sight-seers became overpowering. It included a Tea Room, containing a fair collection of china, and hung with green paper and engravings, and a little white and green Library, of which the principal ornament was a half-length portrait of Milton.[150] A portrait of Lady Hervey, by Allan Ramsay, was afterwards added to its decorations.[151]

[148] This was afterwards moved to the Little Cloister at the entrance, where it appears in the later Catalogue. At the sale of 1842 the bowl, with its Gothic pedestal, was purchased by the Earl of Derby for £42.

[149] Not far from the Chapel was 'a large seat in the form of a shell, carved in oak from a design by Mr. Bentley.' It must have been roomy, for in 1759 the Duchesses of Hamilton and Richmond, and Lady Ailesbury (the last two, daughter and mother), occupied it together. 'There never was so pretty a sight as to see them all three sitting in the shell,' says the delighted Abbot of Strawberry. (_Walpole to Montagu_, 2 June.)

[150] In a note to the obituary notice of Walpole in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for March, 1797, p. 260, it is stated that this library was 'formed of all the publications during the reigns of the three Georges, or Mr. W.'s own time.'

[151] This was exhibited at South Kensington in 1867 by Viscount Lifford, and is now (1892) at Austin House, Broadway, Worcester.

Many objects of interest, as must be obvious, have remained undescribed in the foregoing account, and those who seek for further information concerning what its owner called his 'paper fabric and assemblage of curious trifles' must consult either the Catalogue of 1774 itself, or that later and definitive version of it which is reprinted in