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Horace Walpole’s Fairy Tale
Roughly 150 years before the Oxford English Dictionary acknowledged that “fairy” can signify “nonheterosexual,” Horace Walpole (1717–1797) wrote the rollicking story “A Fairy Tale,” in which the eponymous fairy is the bisexual and flamboyantly gender-ambivalent Baron John Hervey. The tale is important because it represents the satirical, adult British fairy tradition that grew up in answer to the more widely published French fairy-tale tradition and because it provides scholars with a fresh frame of reference for investigating queer “fairy” language in eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century texts.
Editor’s Introduction
Drawing on his urbane reputation as an accomplished author, art historian, antiquarian, Whig politician, and court socialite, Horace Walpole (1717–1797) famously complained that “this world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.”1 In fact, both parts of Walpole’s sentiment could be used to define the ethos of eighteenth-century satire: high literary polish thinly glossed over raw human emotion. “A Fairy Tale” (1743) is at once witty, charming, bitter, angry, comical, envious, scolding, self-mocking, wistful, and wry. Amusing for its sheer panache, Walpole’s slender tale also represents a significant literary moment of profound interest to fairytale scholars because, as a fairy tale that is both highly personal and highly political, Walpole’s text exemplifies the British equivalent of the more famous courtly fairy tales being produced in France. Moreover, the tale is of striking importance to gender and queer theorists because the eponymous “fairy” in this tale is based on an openly bisexual character, one whose unique gender performance is a focal point of the story.
The French fairy tales published between the late seventeenth and mid-eighteenth century are as well-known for their loose grounding in the oral tradition as for their political subtexts, and Walpole’s work draws on both elements.2 However, his tale is also indebted to British fairy literature in the tradition of Spenser’s Faerie Queen and Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, which borrows a medley of characters from Greco-Roman myth and the British oral tradition while radically changing the plots and formal structures of those traditional tales; such texts are only fairy tales in the sense that they feature “things which really exist not … of this nature are Fairies, Pigmies, and the extraordinary effects of Magick” (Dryden, “Apology,” 15–16).3
Walpole’s plot is drawn entirely from the real-life wedding of his dear friend Constantine Phipps (1722–1775) to the Honorable Lepelle Hervey (1723–1780), [End Page 167] daughter of the famous court socialite (and infamous bisexual) Baron John Hervey (1696–1743); Walpole uses the hyperbolic trappings of the fairy tale primarily to exaggerate the actions and personalities of the characters involved. For example, Constantine Phipps becomes the heroic “Prince Phippis,” and his grandmother the Duchess of Buckingham is transmuted into the tyrannous “Buckinda: Queen of the Ducks.” However, in every context where Walpole could choose to embellish the fairytale aspects of the plot or foreground the political bite of his work, he invariably sacrifices the fairy tale’s coherence for a wicked satirical aside. Walpole carefully explains the political context of his tale in a series of notes, all of which clarify the fact that Prince Phippis’s fairy-tale romance is truly a forced political alliance calculated to gain support for the Jacobite cause.4 The fact that the marriage was concocted by Lady Catherine Darnley, the Duchess of Buckingham (who appears as “a Large Old Lady of a Frowning Aspect with the Head of a Medusa”) and Baron John Hervey (who enters the plot as a delicate fairy, who “would have been vastly Pretty if it’s cherry-lips had ‘nclos’d any Teeth”), only highlights Walpole’s sly use of fairy-tale caricatures to amplify his political point.
Yet although the ostensible hero of the text is Prince Phippis and although the principal asides are focused on key Jacobite figures, by far the most expansive character description is reserved for the titular character, “a Dainty little Figure … whom [Phippis] takes for a Fairy.” The Fairy is unique in Walpole’s text because its name is undisguised: “the Being screwing up its Shoulders, and stretching out a long bony little finger, said; ‘What a Terrible Creature!—I am not a woman; I am My Lord Hervey’! (That was the Name the Fairy apurn’d).” Walpole’s emphatic characterization suggests that Hervey was already a fantastical figure, one who did not require a mask to exist in a fairy-tale setting. In fact, Hervey had already attained an almost mythical status as an open bisexual who existed outside traditional gender conventions, and Walpole himself had popularized the sentiment that people can be categorized into “three sexes: men, women, and Herveys.”5 The historian Lucy Moore notes that Walpole had a “morbid fascination” with Hervey, who perhaps served as a symbol of Walpole’s “own unspoken homosexual desires” (288).
In this tale the fairy’s physical description as “most delicately Fair and Light, only not quite so limber in its motions as one generally figures Ariel Beings” is particularly telling because it could be equally applied to both Walpole and Hervey: “Both men were slight and witty, and feminine, and walked with characteristic mincing steps” (Moore, 288). Raymond Bentman also notes that Walpole was associated with a group of lifetime bachelors, men who demonstrated in their writing “considerable interest in sexuality when it related to men, telling each other sexual anecdotes and jokes that centered on male bodies” (277); in this context, the facade of fairy-tale hyperbole allows Walpole to dwell on the details of Hervey’s body with a linguistic fervor that is entirely appropriate only because of the conceptual remove provided by the tale’s location in the fantastical kingdom of the Ducks.6 [End Page 168]
It is even more important that Walpole characterizes “the fairy Hervey” as an ambivalently gendered fairy whose “Whimsical Attire made Him doubt of it’s sex; or rather doubt, if it were of any sex” because his rather pointed description can help scholars recontextualize the historical definition of “fairy” as “nonheterosexual.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “fairy” is first associated with “homosexuality” in 1896, and although the OED citation implies that the term was [End Page 169] already in wide circulation by that time, Walpole’s tale gifts scholars with an unexpectedly helpful back date.7 The precedent represented by “A Fairy Tale” historically contextualizes the famously queer British fairy narratives from the mid-nineteenth century, including Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” (1859) and A. A. Procter’s “Into the Woods” (1861); however, in doing so, it also invites scholars to more confidently reread Romantic fairy narratives as possible queer narratives.
In short, this apparently whimsical tale is doubly useful because it deftly weaves together influences from the French and British fairy-rich literature of the previous century and because it breaks ground for a new pattern of queer “fairy” writing in the century following its publication. Moreover, it does so with Walpole’s characteristic humor and aplomb.
Note on the holograph: Walpole kept a number of journals, which included scraps of tales and poetry as well as notes for more complete works. This writing journal featured full text on the right-hand pages with additional notes or emendations on the facing page. “A Fairy Tale” was never formally published and is reproduced here in a word-for-word transcription that preserves Walpole’s original grammar and orthography. However, Walpole’s side notes have been reproduced as a separate set of endnotes and are supplemented with additional clarifying notes (given in brackets).
A Fairy Tale.1 1743
There is nothing casts greater Lustre on the Dawn of a Heroe’s Life, than being brought up obscurely. The Founder of the Roman Empire was educated by a simple sheperd, & the great Cyrus was suckled by a wolf.2 In our Days WE have seen the mighty Theodore3 vault from behind a counter into a Throne—& if other Kings, his contemporaries make less figure in the Lists of Fame, It must not be ascribed so much to the want of merit in Them, as to their Want of a mean Education.
It was such a Reflection as This, that determin’d the wise Buckinda Queen of the Island of Ducks,4 to commit the care of her Darling grandson Prince Phippis, to some Low, obscure, mean Person; that not being dazled with too near a view of the Crown He was born to, nor smit too early with the Charms & Wit of the Conversation of Persons of his own Rank, He might accustom Himself to bear with the Dullness & Vulgarness of the poorest of his subjects. For This End She cast Her Eye on a College Tutor of Oxind; & to Him she entrusted this precious Pledge. So Fond was she of the Child, that she never once would see Him, till the Hour appointed by the Fates for Her resigning the Reins of Empire into his Hand. Some affirm, that She even pretended He was younger than in Reality He was, & that she spun out his minority long beyond the usual season. [End Page 170]
At last She complied with the importunate Clamours of the Ducks her subjects, who were impatient to see the object of their Hopes; & determin’d to call the young Prince from his Solitude.
He was wandering one evening along the Banks of the Isis,5 Some say Thinking,—but that is Immaterial to the History; only so far I assure my Reader, He was musing on no mistress; for however carefully the Greatness of his Birth had been concealed from Him; They could not veil those gilmmerings of Divinity, which tell a young Prince from within Him what He is—and This Ray or Royal Presage had preserv’d Phippis from bestowing his Heart on a subject unworthy of it.
Perhaps he was Fishing—It was a Diversion [that] had been follow’d by the Greatest Heroes in their Retirement: His Great Grandfather6 Himself, when drove from his Throne by his ungratefull Subjects, passed many of his Solitary Hours in bobbing for Gudgeons, & except at governing a Kingdom, there was no science at which He was so Expert.7
On a Sudden the Prince saw the Stream divide, & from beneath the waves there arose a magnificent open carr, compos’d of a single cockle-shell, and drawn by Four Milk-White Ducks.8 In it sat an Elderly Nymph, who with an Inviting Air beckon’d Him to step into the Vehicle. Phippis, who was more diverted than charm’d with the Novelty of the Spectacle, was by no means induced to make a voyage with this Naiad. He had read or had heard of Goddesses falling in Love with Mortals; but whatever credit He might give to that Part of the Story which was to be authenticated by his own charms, He had no mind to believe it with regard to the Amphitrita9 before Him. He did not love Swimming, & had no Sort of Inclination to retire from the World, and live upon Love & Fish. The Nymph seeing He hesitated, told Him in a harsh Tone that He was expected by the Great Buckinda, Sovreign of the Isle of Ducks, and that she did not use to be disobey’d. Phippis, who had never heard of either the Island or the Queen, was still in some Doubt, but the Comfort of finding that the Beauty before Him was not the Object to whose Embraces He was destin’d, He took Courage and stepp’d into the vessel, which immediately sunk beneath the Waves, & flew with such incredible rapidity, that He was not in the least Wet.
In about the tenth part of a moment, the Barque had gone Twenty Leagues; and then the Ducks flew it up again above the waters, and Phippis found Himself on the Surface of a magnificent canal,10 on each side of which were shady Walks of tall Trees, and Ranges of Stately Palaces. On these Shores were Crowds of Ducks, dressed in the most fantastic Habits.11 Here you might see Two or Three of Them in white gowns, over which were [carge?]12 black Mantles, & black Hats on their Heads, which entirely concealed the Forms of their Persons.—These were Beauties. By their sides you might see a Drake [End Page 171] strutting with a Pair of Buckskin Breeches, a black Stock, His Hair in Papillotes, a Dirty Shirt, a Dogskin Wastecoat,13 & a blew Frock. In another Ally you might see two Fat Drakes, waddling cropsick, in Black-gowns, & inquiring of one Another how soon They thought a certain Old Goose14 woud die, to whose Coop They Both aspir’d. Phippis was highly amus’d with these Personages—in particular He admir’d the Drake in Blew: He thought He never saw so genteel a waddle. These were other Kind of People than those He had lived amongst! In the mean time the vessel approached The End of the Canal, when He discover’d a magnificent Palace,15 build of Mother of Pearl, & adorn’d with grottoes compos’d of the most beautiful Duck-Feathers. On each side the courtyard were drawn up two Rows of Eagles and Vultures, the Queen’s Body-Guards. The Nymph his companion, who had never utter’d a single syllable to Him since his entering the Boat, now gave Him her Hand and led Him up to the Castle-Gate, where He was received by a Muscovy-Drake, that was Master of the Ceremonies to Her Majesty. As He entered the Court, the Crowds of Ducks that had gather’d round Him, sent up a Shout and utter’d several times, Quaak! Quaak! Phippis! quaak, quaak! Which signified, long live Prince Phippis, the true Heir of the Kingdom of Ducks!
He enter’d first a magnificent Salon, on the Sides of which was described in Feathers all the Duck History, But the Ceiling which was most exquisitely-painted, represented Her Majesty’s16 Father born up to Heaven by Two geese in Lawn-Sleeves, but who flew so heavily, that They scarce seem’d to raise Him above the Earth. Round the Freize was painted a gallery, over which was represented leaning carelessly, the Duck,17 Her Majesty’s late Consort, between Two of the Greatest Wits of the Island.
In this Salon He saw Nobody. His conductor led Him thro a long Range of Apartments, richly furnished to a cabinet. Here He expected to find the Queen: No such Thing.—There was not a Soul. His conductor made Him a Bow and retir’d out of Respect.
Phippis was amaz’d at the oddness of this Reception; but still awaited a Summons from Her Majesty—Night came, but no Summons. At last His conductor reappear’d & made Him a Sign to follow. He carried Him into a large Hall, where was provided a Great Supper, to which his Master of the Ceremonies invited Him, and waited behind his chair. Phippis, whose Journey and the Water had got Him a Stomach, eat heartily, and did not seem to want company. When He had pretty well done, He took courage and began to ask the Drake several Questions, to which the Old Gentleman was very inclined to answer, for he talk’d to Him for half an hour, and seem’d to be explaining copiously all the Particulars of this inchanted Place: but poor Phippis who did not understand the Duck-Language, could only distinguish the word Quaak, under a multiplicity of various Accents. The Drake’s Loquacity, and the little [End Page 172] Information He got out of Him, quite wearied Phippis. The Drake, who was a Person of great Penetration and Sagacity, discover’d the Prince’s Disposition to sleep, from seeing Him often drop his eyelids and nod; and immediately took up two Wax-Lights, and walked before Him to a rich Bedchamber when the Prince was undress’d by Two of the species, who wished Him good night, and left Him to his Repose.
Phippis, who was all Amaze and Curiosity, did not however fail to sleep well—but the next morning He rose with the sun & Impatiently, and without waiting for, or calling his Two Aquatic Valet de Chambres, He drest Himself and wandered over divers Apartments, all Magnificent. Still Nobody appear’d. Tired with his Fruitless Search, He retir’d to his Cabinet, and flinging himself on a Couch of the Softest Duckling-Down, He began reading in the Gentleman’s Recreation, or Angler’s Pocket-Companion—when on a sudden, the Doors flew Open, and in tript a Dainty little Figure. This Personage, whom He takes for a Fairy (and He was not wrong in his conjecture) was most delicately Fair and Light, only not quite so limber in it’s motions as one generally figures Ariel Beings. It would have been vastly Pretty if it’s cherry-lips had ‘nclos’d any Teeth18—but It wanted them Entirely. Phippis on Reflection thought, an He had never seen any Supernatural Beings, that their not having occasion for Food, made it unnecessary for Them to have Teeth—It was Natural enough for Him to think so.
A Whimsical Attire made Him doubt of it’s sex; or rather doubt, if it were of any sex—That too might be unnecessary to Fairies; yet He had always heard They were of the Feminine gender—This determin’d Him to treat it upon that foot; and accordingly He began to address it with—Bright Goddess—when the Being screwing up its Shoulders, and stretching out a long bony little finger, said; “What a Terrible Creature!—I am not a woman; I am My Lord Hervey”!19 (That was the Name the Fairy apurn’d) The Prince stared and gaped!—The Being continued; “I am sent by the Great Buckinda, to know if you will marry my Daughter?”—Here to the great Disgrace of all Romance and History, the Prince burst out laughing—It put the fairy into new Convulsions—However with an admirable command of its Passions, it repeated the Question. Phippis, who fell from Amaze to Laughter, and from Laughter to Amaze, and who can not comprehend the Meaning of this vision, however determin’d not to vex the fair Thing before Him, but with a Readiness of wit peculiar to Himself, He enter’d into the fairy’s Tone, and put the Conversation upon a Foot as if He believ’d it had a Daughter. “But let it not displease your Etherial Herveyship, pursued He, I have never seen your Daughter”—“Lord! how Squab that is! cried the Fairy: “Must I carry the Queen That Answer?—“aye, replied the Prince, I know no other.”20 The Phantom vanish’d. [End Page 173]
Phippis was loosing Him in conjectures about what might be the meaning of what He had seen and heard, when He receiv’d a new summons to wait on the Queen.
He found21 seated under a canopy a Large Old Lady of a Frowning Aspect with the Head of a Medusa, and a wildness in her Eyes, which out of Respect to the Course of Enchantments in which He found Himself Engaged, He was willing to Construe into Looks of Terrible Divinity—He prostrates Himself at the Foot of the Throne, not so much out of Regard as Fear—a Hoarse Voice bids Him rise—when mollifying her drakes,22 & smiling ghastly, Her Majesty pronounc’d these awfull sounds:
“Prince, I am the Fairy Buckinda. Thou art my grandson. (He bow’d for Her Gracious Acknowledgement of Him) “Wilt Thou marry My Lord Hervey’s Daughter? pointing to the Being on Her right Hand who had before appear’d to Him. Phippis who began to feel the Spirit of the Ducks his Ancestors kindle in his Breast, answer’d boldly—“May it please your majesty, I never saw Her.” “No, Sir, replied the Queen, with a Sharp & angry Tone, “but you have seen this Palace, and This Kingdom of Ducks—If you will marry Her, it shall all be yours—If not you shall be transported back to the obscurity from whence I have just drawn you—I give you the Tenth Part of a moment to consider of It—The Princess in Question had but half the Time I am so Gracious as to Allow you.”
The Prince’s Determination, the Arrival of the Princess, & their nuptials, will be related at Large in the second volume of this work; particularly how Lucky it was that the Princess was form’d like the Rest of the Illustrious Line of Hervey, with great Facility of consummation, there being but the Tenth Part of a Moment (a whimsical computation of Time) allow’d in the Isle of Ducks for that operation.23
Finis.
Jacquilyn Weeks is a visiting assistant professor at Indiana University/Purdue University, Indianapolis. She is completing a monograph titled The Whole Enchanted String: Fairy Tales and the History of British Poetics and strongly suspects that a frolic of fairies have taken up residence at the bottom of her garden.
Notes to the Editor’s Introduction
1. Politically Horace Walpole is perhaps best known as the son of Robert Walpole, the first prime minister of Great Britain; however, Horace Walpole served in his own right as an articulate and influential member of Parliament from 1741 to 1768. As a novelist, he was best known for The Castle of Otranto (1764).
2. It is clear that Walpole was conversant in these tales; in a letter to Horace Mann, dated October 1743, Walpole playfully refers to Madame d’Aulnoy’s “The White Cat” and makes passing reference to the enchanted carpets from Antoine Galland’s translation of The Thousand Nights and a Night. However, there is little or no evidence that Walpole was directly influenced by the British oral fairy-tale tradition. In fact, even after fairy tales cohered into a definite British canon in the [End Page 174] nineteenth century, only a tiny minority of those canonical tales (principally “Jack and the Beanstalk” and “Babes in the Woods”) grew out of the British oral tradition. Most of the rest were borrowed from France, Germany, Hans Christian Andersen, or The Thousand Nights and a Night.
3. John Dryden (1631–1700) defined this pattern of writing while engaged in a long-standing quarrel with the philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1697). Hobbes had argued that literature should be grounded in reality because “as the truth is the bound of Historicall, so the Resemblance of truth is the utmost limit of Poeticall Liberty” (d’Avenant and Hobbes, 135–36); Dryden responded by arguing that “true taste of poetry” is defined by interest in “that fairy kind of writing which depends only upon the force of imagination” (Dryden, Critical Prose Works, 214). This initial debate about fairies in literature spiraled into a much broader debate about aesthetics, imagination, reason, and the canon of British literature that would last throughout the whole of the Enlightenment, entangling such prominent writers, critics, and philosophers as John Locke (1632–1704), Joseph Addison (1672–1719), Voltaire (1694–1778), David Garrick (1717–1779), Elizabeth Montagu (1720–1800), and Thomas Warton (1728–1790). Although few of these writers had a specific investment in fairy tales, as such, fairies became a central focal point of this debate because they functioned as a symbol of that which is purely imaginative.
4. Several original, adult, political fairy tales were produced in England during this period (albeit far less organized and coherently published than the French equivalent). Like Walpole’s tale, they often took the form of personal addresses written for intimate friends and tended to feature fairy characters without drawing heavily on traditional fairy-tale plots or motifs. Alexander Pope’s “Rape of the Lock” (1712) is probably the most famous example of this pattern of writing, but there were others. For example, Jane Holt’s A Fairy Tale Inscrib’d to the Honourable Mrs. W—(1717) borrows the cast of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream to relate a story about a woman at odds with her inconsiderate and demanding husband.
5. Walpole paraphrased this line from a joke made by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. For a complete etymology of the phrase, see Dubro (89).
6. Near the end of Walpole’s life, he wrote a letter to the Countess of Ossory vowing that he would never write his complete memoirs because he would “be forming a chronique scandaleuse, and not a very delicate one, were I to answer to all the queries which relate to a principal performer, Lord Hervey” (“To the Countess of Ossory,” 472). But although an aging Walpole refused to commit Hervey’s biography to paper, the thin veil of fairy-tale language seems to have freed a younger Walpole to air his perplexity (and possible envy) regarding Hervey’s unapologetic lifestyle.
7. The OED’s first recognized use of the term “fairy” as slang for “homosexual” is attributed to a citation from the American Journal of Psychology that records detailed descriptions of the (illicit and sometimes illegal) gatherings of transvestite men across Europe who self-identified as “fairies.” Walpole, however, seems to use the term less decisively. In a letter to Horace Mann dated October 1743, Walpole casually refers to Lord Hervey as “the fairy Hervey” (“To Horace Mann,” 390), but the same letter also describes Theodor Neuhoff as “a certain fairy monarch” (390) and there is no evidence that Neuhoff was anything but [End Page 175] promiscuously heterosexual. “Fairy” in the latter case seems to describe Neuhoff’s romanticized adventures, and Walpole’s more generalized use of the term may signify an extraordinary person rather than a necessarily queer one.
Walpole’s Notes to “A Fairy Tale”
1. This is founded on a true story. The Duchess of Buckingham, natural Daughter to James 2nd, by her first Husband the Earl of Anglesea, had one Daughter, married to the Son of Sir Constantine Phipps. This Lady Left Two Sons, whom their grandmother the Duchess bred up & sent to Oxford, without ever seeing Them. The Famous Lord Hervey a little before his own & the Duchess’s Death, struck up a match between his Eldest Daughter and the Eldest Phipps, whom her grace intended for her Heir, having before lost her only son the young Duke of Buckingham. She sent for Mr. Phipps from Oxford, kept Him a Day & half in Buckingham-House without seeing Him, & then at once presented Him his new Bride, to whom He was married the next Day. [“Buckinda” in this story is Lady Catherine Darnley, the illegitimate daughter of James II by Catherine Sedley. The hero of Walpole’s tale is Lady Darnley’s eldest grandson, Constantine Phipps. Lady Darnley made the young Constantine Phipps her heir, on condition that he secure a political alliance by immediately marring Lepelle Hervey, the eldest daughter of Baron John Hervey. The wedding took place on February 26, 1743. Lady Darnley died in March, and Lord Hervey died in August, so this story must have been written late in 1743, at least eight months after the wedding.]
2. [According to classical mythology, the Persian ruler Cyrus the Great was suckled by a dog, and Romulus (who was similarly suckled by a wolf and then fed by a woodpecker) was raised by a shepherd before discovering his royal ancestry and founding Rome. Fairies and classical Greco-Roman mythology were deeply intertwined in sixteenth- to eighteenth-century British literary imagery (cf., e.g., Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream).]
3. The Baron de Neuhoffe, who lived by his Industry, & sundry Metamorphoses, was at last chose by the Corsicans for their King, when They threw off the Genoese Joke. [This passage refers to Theodor Stephan Freiherr von Neuhoff, a friend of Walpole’s who led a Corsican rebellion against the Genoese in 1729. The campaign was successful, and Neuhoff was crowned King Theodore I, but he was later defeated by the Genoese and left Corsica in 1736. In 1749, Neuhoff came to England, but he eventually fell into debt, declared himself bankrupt, and signed the kingdom of Corsica over to his various creditors. In his final years Neuhoff subsisted on the charity of Walpole and other friends, and after Neuhoff’s death in 1756, Walpole penned the following epitaph, which is inscribed on Neuhoff’s tombstone: “The grave, great teacher, to a level brings / Heroes and beggars, galley slaves and kings. / But Theodore this moral learned ere dead: / Fate poured its lessons on his living head, / Bestowed a kingdom, but denied him bread.”]
4. Buckingham House, situated near the Duck-Island in St. James’s Parks. [Buckingham House was purchased as a private residence for Queen Charlotte in 1761 and renamed Buckingham Palace.] [End Page 176]
5. [Oxford is located on the River Thames, but Walpole chose to rename the river Isis, after the goddess of nature and magic.]
6. King James the Second. [King James II of England and Ireland and VII of Scotland was deposed by William and Mary of Orange in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. He was the last of the Stuart monarchs, and the last Roman Catholic king of England, Scotland, and Ireland. A series of Jacobite risings attempted to return the Stuarts to the throne between 1688 and 1746, so “Buckinda’s” relation to the Stuarts would still have been a matter of active political controversy.]
7. [A gudgeon is both a small species of freshwater bait fish and a slang term meaning “gullible fool.”]
8. [This seems to be a parody of the birth of Venus.]
9. [According to Greek myth, Amphitrite was the wife of Poseidon and a sea goddess in her own right.]
10. The Canal in St. James’s Park.
11. This describes the modern walking dresses of Ladies & Gentlemen.
12. [“Carge” may be a variant spelling of “serge,” which was a relatively inexpensive twill, often made with wool and silk, and substituted for more expensive pure silk cloth.]
13. The young gentlemen from their wearing these wastecoats & a certain savageness in their manners, got the name of The Natives.
14. The Arch-Bishop. [In 1743 the Archbishop of Canterbury was John Potter, who was both a Whig and an advocate for the High Church position. Potter was caricatured by Alexander Pope in the 1743 version of The Dunciad as “the plunging Prelate” with “ponderous Grace” (2: 323).]
15. Buckingham-House.
16. King James the Second.
17. In the Hall of Buckingham House, the Duke is drawn in this Position between Virgil and Prior. [John Sheffield, the first Duke of Buckingham and Normandy was a Tory politician who served as Lord Privy Seal and Lord President of the Council during the late Stuart period. Matthew Prior was an English diplomat, satirist, and poet; as a leading Tory, he had been impeached by Robert Walpole’s Whig government in 1715.]
18. Lord Hervey fought Mr. Pultney about a Pamphlet in which he had laugh’d at his Lordship’s dropping a Tooth in the Drawing Room. [Lord William Pulteney was made the first Earl of Bath in 1742, which explains why Walpole might have habitually (or contemptuously) referred to him as “Mr.” rather than “Lord.”]
19. John Lord Hervey, Eldest Son to the Earl of Bristol, was vice-chamberlain to King George 2d. & afterward Lord Privy-Seal. Often mention’d in Pope’s works by the Names of Paris, Sporus, Lord Fanny &e.. He died before his Father in August 1743. [Here Walpole briefly references both Hervey’s open bisexuality and a vicious literary war between Alexander Pope and Lord Hervey, who publicly denounced each other in verse. The name Sporus is Pope’s reference to De Vita Caesarum by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, which scathingly describes the sexual excesses of Emperor Nero: “He castrated the boy Sporus and actually tried to make a woman of him; and he married him with all the usual ceremonies, including a dowry and a bridal veil, took him to his home attended by a great throng, and treated him as his wife. … This Sporus, decked out with the [End Page 177] finery of the empresses and riding in a litter, he took with him to the courts and marts of Greece, and later at Rome through the Street of the Images, fondly kissing him from time to time” (28: 131–33). Lord Hervey responded in a collaborative poem composed with Lady Montagu, suggesting that Pope’s “wretched little carcass” remained “unkick’d” and “unslain” only because Pope’s “fretful” verses are so weak that “you strike unwounding, we unhurt can laugh” (Montagu, 496).]
20. [Although the historical Phipps did not see his bride until their wedding day, Walpole’s exaggeration of Prince Phippis’s desire to see the bride may be an unkind reflection of Lepelle Hervey’s appearance. In a letter to Horace Mann, dated January 7, 1742, Walpole wrote, “I forgot to tell you all our beauties: there was miss Hervey, my Lord’s daughter, a fine black girl, but as masculine as her father should be” (157).]
21. The first Time Lord Hervey was introduced to the Duchess of Buckingham, was on the 26th of January, & He found her sitting in State, Herself and Her women standing round Her in Close Mourning for the Martyrdom of Her grandfather Charles the First. Her Mother Lady Dorchester used to tell Her that she need not be so Proud, for she was not really King James’s Daughter, but old Col. Graham’s. He used to say upon being told of the Resemblance of his Daughter the Countess of Berkshire to the Duchess of Buckingham—well, well, kings may go where they please, their servants must not complain; but to be sure the man got both these women. [Charles I was executed on January 30, 1649, so Lady Darnley’s mourning would have been in anticipation of the anniversary of the king’s death. “Col. Graham” is Colonel James Graham, whose daughter Catherine Graham became the Countess of Berkshire and Suffolk after she married her first cousin Lord Henry Howard.]
22. Her Grace generally wore Tresses, & a Kind of Robes. At Home, wither she often went to see Her Brother the Pretender, she had all the Honours done to a King’s Sister, & would never go to Versailles because They would not give Her the same There. She labour’d extremely to engage Sir Robert Walpole to bring about the Restoration of Her Brother, & offer’d from the Example of Ld. Clarendon to marry Her nephew the Titular Duke of York to his Daughter Maria. [“The Pretender” is James Frances Edward Stuart, who was Prince of Wales until his father King James II was deposed. “Ld. Clarendon” is Henry Hyde, the fourth Earl of Clarendon, who both oversaw his son’s Jacobite activities and helped arrange his son’s marriage to Lady Frances Lee, whose mother was an illegitimate daughter of King Charles II by his mistress Barbara Villiers. “The Titular Duke of York” is Prince Charles Stuart, “Bonnie Prince Charlie.” Robert Walpole’s “Daughter Maria” was Horace Walpole’s half-sister, the daughter of Robert Walpole’s longtime mistress, Maria Skerritt. She was made legitimate after the death of Robert Walpole’s first wife in 1737 and his subsequent marriage to Skerritt in 1738.]
23. [Since any slight on the marital activities of the “Princess” would seem to reflect poorly on Walpole’s friend, this passage (and the unfulfilled promise of a sequel) suggests that Walpole was more invested in disparaging Lord Hervey than in consoling Constantine Phipps.] [End Page 178]
