Volume II. of the _Works_ (pp. 393-516). The intention in the main has

here been to lay stress upon those articles which bear most directly upon Walpole's biography. It will also be observed that, during the prolonged progress of the house towards completion, his experience and his views considerably enlarged, and the pettiness and artificiality of his first improvements disappeared. The house never lost, and never could lose, its invertebrate character; but the Gallery, the Round Tower, and the North Bedchamber were certainly conceived in a more serious and even spacious spirit of Gothicism than any of the early additions. That it must, still, have been confined and needlessly gloomy, may be allowed; but as a set-off to some of those accounts which insist so pertinaciously upon its 'paltriness,' its 'architectural solecisms,' and its lack of beauty and sublimity, it is only fair to recall a few sentences from the preface which its owner prefixed to the _Description_ of 1784. It was designed, he says of the Catalogue, to exhibit 'specimens of Gothic architecture, as collected from standards in cathedrals and chapel-tombs,' and to show 'how they may be applied to chimney-pieces, ceilings, windows, balustrades, loggias, etc.' Elsewhere he characterizes the building itself as candidly as any of its critics. He admits its diminutive scale and its unsubstantial character (he calls it himself, as we have seen, a 'paper fabric'), and he confesses to the incongruities arising from an antique design and modern decorations. 'In truth,' he concludes, 'I did not mean to make my house so Gothic as to exclude convenience, and modern refinements in luxury.... It was built to please my own taste, and in some degree to realize my own visions. I have specified what it contains; could I describe the gay but tranquil scene where it stands, and add the beauty of the landscape to the romantic cast of the mansion, it would raise more pleasing sensations than a dry list of curiosities can excite,--at least the prospect would recall the good humour of those who might be disposed to condemn the fantastic fabric, and to think it a very proper habitation of, as it was the scene that inspired, the author of the _Castle of Otranto_.'[152] As one of his censors has remarked, this tone disarms criticism; and it is needless to accumulate proofs of peculiarities which are not denied by the person most concerned.

[152] _Works_, 1798, ii. 395-98.

In spite of its charming situation, Strawberry Hill was emphatically a summer residence; and there is more than one account in Walpole's letters of the sudden floods which, when Thames flowed with a fuller tide than now, occasionally surprised the inhabitants of the pleasant-looking villas along its banks. It was decidedly damp, and its gouty owner had sometimes to quit it precipitately for Arlington Street, where, he says, 'after an hour,' he revives, 'like a member of parliament's wife.' His best editor, Mr. Peter Cunningham, whose knowledge as an antiquary was unrivalled,--for was he not the author of the _Handbook of London_?--has amused himself, in an odd corner of one of his prefaces, by retracing the route taken in these townward flights. The extract is so packed with suggestive memories that no excuse is needed for reproducing it (with a few now necessary notes) as the tail-piece of the present chapter.

'At twelve his [Walpole's] light bodied chariot was at the door, with his English coachman and his Swiss valet [Philip Colomb].... In a few minutes he left Lord Radnor's villa to the right, rolled over the grotto of Pope, saw on his left Whitton, rich with recollections of Kneller and Argyll, passed Gumley House, one of the country seats of his father's opponent and his own friend, Pulteney, Earl of Bath, and Kendal House,[153] the retreat of the mistress of George I., Ermengard de Schulenburg, Duchess of Kendal. At Sion, the princely seat of the Percys, the Seymours, and the Smithsons, he turned into the Hounslow Road, left Sion on his right, and Osterly, not unlike Houghton, on his left, and rolled through Brentford,--

"Brentford, the Bishopric of Parson Horne,"[154]

then, as now, infamous for its dirty streets, and famous for its white-legged chickens.[155] Quitting Brentford, he approached the woods that concealed the stately mansion of Gunnersbury, built by Inigo Jones and Webb, and then inhabited by the Princess Amelia, the last surviving child of King George II.[156] Here he was often a visitor, and seldom returned without being a winner at silver loo. At the Pack Horse[157] on Turnham Green he would, when the roads were heavy, draw up for a brief bait. Starting anew, he would pass a few red brick houses on both sides, then the suburban villas of men well to do in the Strand and Charing Cross. At Hammersmith, he would leave the church[158] on his right, call on Mr. Fox at Holland House, look at Campden House, with recollections of Sir Baptist Hickes,[159] and not without an ill-suppressed wish to transfer some little part of it to his beloved Strawberry. He was now at Kensington Church, then, as it still is, an ungraceful structure,[160] but rife with associations which he would at times relate to the friend he had with him. On his left he would leave the gates of Kensington Palace, rich with reminiscences connected with his father and the first Hanoverian kings of this country. On his right he would quit the red brick house in which the Duchess of Portsmouth lived,[161] and after a drive of half a mile (skirting a heavy brick wall), reach Kingston House,[162] replete with stories of Elizabeth Chudleigh, the bigamist maid of honour, and Duchess-Countess of Kingston and Bristol. At Knightsbridge (even then the haunt of highwaymen less gallant than Maclean) he passed on his left the little chapel[163] in which his father was married. At Hyde Park Corner he saw the Hercules Pillars ale-house of Fielding and Tom Jones,[164] and at one door from Park Lane would occasionally call on old "Q" for the sake of Selwyn, who was often there.[165] The trees which now grace Piccadilly were in the Green Park in Walpole's day; they can recollect Walpole, and that is something. On his left, the sight of Coventry House[166] would remind him of the Gunnings, and he would tell his friend the story of the "beauties;" with which (short story-teller as he was) he had not completed when the chariot turned into Arlington Street on the right, or down Berkeley Street into Berkeley Square, on the left.'[167] In these last lines Mr. Cunningham anticipates our story, for in 1774, Walpole had not yet taken up his residence in Berkeley Square.

[153] Kendal House now no longer exists.

[154] _An Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers_, _Knight_, 1773.

[155]

'---- _Brandford's_ tedious town, For dirty streets, and white-leg'd chickens known.'

Gay's _Journey to Exeter_.

[156] Gunnersbury House (or Park), a new structure, now belongs to Lord Rothschild.

[157] The Old Pack Horse, somewhat modernized by red-brick additions, still (1892) stands at the corner of Turnham Green. It is mentioned in the _London Gazette_ as far back as 1697. The sign, a common one for posting inns in former days, is on the opposite side of the road.

[158] Hammersmith church was rebuilt in 1882-3.

[159] Sir Baptist Hickes, once a mercer in Cheapside, and afterwards Viscount Campden, erected it _circa_ 1612. At the time to which Mr. Cunningham is supposed to refer, it was a famous ladies' boarding-school, kept by a Mrs. Terry, and patronized by Selwyn and Lady Di. Beauclerk.

[160] The (with all due deference to the writer) quaint and picturesque old church of St. Mary the Virgin, in Kensington High Street, at which Macaulay, in his later days, was a regular attendant, gave way, in 1869, to a larger and more modern edifice by Sir Gilbert Scott, R.A.

[161] Old Kensington House, as it was called, has also been pulled down. One of its inmates, long after the days of 'Madam Carwell,' was Elizabeth Inchbald, the author of _A Simple Story_, who died there in 1821.

[162] Now Lord Listowel's. It stands near the Prince's Gate into Hyde Park.

[163] Restored and remodelled in 1861, and now the Church of the Holy Trinity.

[164] The Hercules Pillars, where Squire Western put up his horses when he came to town, stood just east of Apsley House, 'on the site of what is now the pavement opposite Lord Willoughby's.'

[165] The Duke of Queensberry's house afterwards became 138 and 139 Piccadilly.

[166] This is No. 106,--the present St. James's Club. It was built in 1764 by George, sixth Earl of Coventry, some years after the death of his first wife, the elder Miss Gunning.

[167] _Letters_, by Cunningham, 1857-9, ix. xx.-xxi.