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"My Dear Old Blind Woman"

The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole's Correspondence. The Walpole-Du Deffand Correspondence. Edited by W. S. Lewis and Warren H. Smith. Six Volumes. (Yale University Press: Oxford University Press. £52 12s.) NONE of Horace Walpole's correspondents is better known, on both sides of the Channel, than Madame Du Deffand ; no corre-

spondence more celebrated and extensive than theirs has ever been exchanged between an Englishman and a Frenchwoman. It has often been described, often quoted by historians and bio- graphers, and many attempts have been made to define the emotional relationship of its authors—the spirited, middle-aged dilettante and the blind septuagenarian of the Rue Saint- Dominique. In its surviving form, settled some thirty years ago by Mrs. Paget Toynbee and finally established by the present editors of the magisterial Yale edition, it is regrettably, if signifi- cantly, one-sided. Out of an estimated total of nearly 1,700 letters, less than 950 have survived, and of these 840 are Mme. Du Deffand's. In a sense, therefore, the latest volumes of the Yale edition stand outside the canon of Walpole's correspondence. Yet, quite apart from the intrinsic interest of Mme. Du Deffand's letters—they are the greatest possible treat for the lover of

mondanites and the Almanach de Gotha—one can deduce from them a great deal about Horace Walpole. It was in order to conceal this from his contemporaries and, indeed, from posterity

that he gave instructions for his side of the correspondence to be withheld as possible evidence against him. Mr. W. S. Lewis, who has spent years and much of his fortune tracking down every- thing Walpole wrote, feels safe in assuming that these letters no longer exist, and that the three he has been able to add to the canon are the last that are likely to turn up.

If Walpole had taken the longer view he would have done better to preserve them, for they would almost certainly mitigate

the disagreeable impression of his character that emerges from Mine. Du Deffand's letters alone and they might, indeed,

rehabilitate him in the eyes of those who, for want of other evidence but her complaints of his conduct, have not unjustly supposed him to have trifled with her affections for worldly ends. Even with Walpole's case imperfectly stated, however, there can be no doubt that the relationship must have been uneasy and trying for both parties. Much, as I have said, has been written about its nature, and it is an additional interest for the reader of this, as of any other correspondence, to draw his own conclusions about it. In the space of a short review I can only suggest that the complexity of Walpole's association with his "dear, old, blind woman" is not to be unravelled by the clue provided by the magic word "mother-surrogate." It is a clue but not a solution.

Not enough attention has been paid, I think, to the fact that Walpole was an English man and Mme. Du Deffand a French woman and that the emotions of a Frenchwoman vis-a-vis the opposite sex often continue to be as strong and as exigent in old age as they were in youth—a condition that an Englishman is unlikely to meet with among his own countrywomen who, sexually, are timid, repressed and, because they have never played a dominant role in society, subservient. It is perhaps easier to understand what Walpole let himself in for, if one tries to imagine an Englishwoman writing the kind of letters he received from Mme. Du Deffand. The frequent thunderstorms, without which,

as Mr. Lewis wittily observes, "the stream of their corre- spondence would have soon dried up" must have been a serious embarrassment to Walpole's enjoyment of the enormous social privileges he obtained in French society through her influence ; but to be able to appreciate his embarrassment, even if one cannot wholly condone his attempts to avert it—to lack the courage of one's emotions is always a despicable condition—is to give him the benefit of a doubt that has generally been denied to him in

this particular case, even by his most faithful admirers.

The nature and diversity of the privileges her friendship brought him are implicit in her letters, and are briefly and badly catalogued in the " journals " of his visits to Paris, which are printed for the first time in the Yale edition. They contain little more than

lists of names and records of endless rounds of visits to shops and galleries by day and of dinners and receptions by night. Hardly

worth reading for their own sake, they provide, in conjunction with the letters themselves, an invaluable commentary on the

serried company of dukes, duchesses, princelings, marshals of France, bishops and society philosophes on whom Walpole danced attendance during his annual visits to Paris. The same may bc said of the brief diary of social engagements kept by Mme. Du Deffand in the last year of her life which, with an inventory of her worldly possessions, is also printed here for the first time Useful as these documents are as a kind of "register of the ancien regime," it is impossible not to feel, as one skims through them, how fascinating they might have been if either Walpole or his old woman had troubled to add to the few anecdotes and fragments of gossip they contain. Such as they are—curt, pointed and usually scurrilous—they evoke, with an extraordinary sense of reality, the atmosphere and the " climate " of the great salons, as Hollywood has so often tried to picture them, in their palmiest days. No one, however, need regret searching through these catalogues of names if he discovers the Duchesse de Nivernais' comment on the Princesse de Talmond's bracelet, Mme. Du Deffand's scandalous remarks about Mme. de la Ferte and the Duchesse de Maine, or the story of Voltaire and M. Adam.

The fifth and sixth volumes of the Yale edition contain much unpublished material, relevant to the correspondence, which the editor-in-chief has drawn from the rich and abundant resources of his own private collection of Walpoliana. The greater part of it was originally that portion of Mme. Du Deffand's literary remains, bequeathed to Walpole, which came into the market and was purchased by Mr. Lewis after the portion containing her letters had passed into the hands of the Bodleian. It is a miscellaneous lot, comprising letters, verses, "characters "- among them Walpole's of Mine. Du Deffand—documents relating to Mme. Du Deffand's financial status and her legal separation, as well as the journals already mentioned. In addition, it is worth noting that the editors have been allowed to use for the first time the journals of Lady Mary Coke—a most important contemporary commentary that contributes much to an already well-annotated text. A word of very special praise must go to the Mrs. Moseley who has compiled an index of 342 pages (some 700 columns of small type); this, I believe, is the most lucid and comprehensive index I have ever used, and it will prove invaluable to students of the eighteenth century.

The quality of the editing of these six volumes is beyond praise. Every conceivable care appears to have been taken to leave no stone unturned that might cover some minute piece of informa- tion; to achieve the highest possible degree of textual accuracy; and to guide and assist the reader. Scholarship is deeply in Mr. Lewis's debt, for it is his intelligent patronage, wisely distributed among his coadjutors, that has enabled this edition to go forward. "11 serait bien a souhaiter," remarked the President Henault in his portrait of Mme. Du Deffand, "que ce qu'elle a icrit ne flit pas perdu." He could hardly have hoped that his wish would one day be so fully and so generously granted.

JOHN HAYWARD.