least have
treated it with gentleness and respect. The total impression of him
which these letters produce is very damaging. It is true that he was in
a difficult position; and it is also true that, since only the merest
fragments of his side of the correspondence have been preserved, our
knowledge of the precise details of his conduct is incomplete;
nevertheless, it is clear that, on the whole, throughout the long and
painful episode, the principal motive which actuated him was an
inexcusable egoism. He was obsessed by a fear of ridicule. He knew that
letters were regularly opened at the French Post Office, and he lived in
terror lest some spiteful story of his absurd relationship with a blind
old woman of seventy should be concocted and set afloat among his
friends, or his enemies, in England, which would make him the
laughing-stock of society for the rest of his days. He was no less
terrified by the intensity of the sentiment of which he had become the
object. Thoroughly superficial and thoroughly selfish, immersed in his
London life of dilettantism and gossip, the weekly letters from France
with their burden of a desperate affection appalled him and bored him by
turns. He did not know what to do; and his perplexity was increased by
the fact that he really liked Madame du Deffand--so far as he could like
anyone--and also by the fact that his vanity was highly flattered by her
letters. Many courses were open to him, but the one he took was probably
the most cruel that he could have taken: he insisted with an absolute
rigidity on their correspondence being conducted in the tone of the most
ordinary friendship--on those terms alone, he said, would he consent to
continue it. And of course such terms were impossible to Madame du
Deffand. She accepted them--what else could she do?--but every line she
wrote was a denial of them. Then, periodically, there was an explosion.
Walpole stormed, threatened, declared he would write no more; and on her
side there were abject apologies, and solemn promises of amendment.
Naturally, it was all in vain. A few months later he would be attacked
by a fit of the gout, her solicitude would be too exaggerated, and the
same fury was repeated, and the same submission. One wonders what the
charm could have been that held that proud old spirit in such a
miserable captivity. Was it his very coldness that subdued her? If he
had cared for her a little more, perhaps she would have cared for him a
goo