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diff --git a/old/10797-8.txt b/old/10797-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..858b3e9 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/10797-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9552 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The Wits and Beaux of Society, by Grace & Philip Wharton + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Wits and Beaux of Society + Volume 2 + +Author: Grace & Philip Wharton + +Release Date: January 22, 2004 [EBook #10797] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WITS AND BEAUX OF SOCIETY *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Antje Benter, Sandra Brown and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + + + + + +THE + +WITS AND BEAUX OF SOCIETY + + +BY + +GRACE AND PHILIP WHARTON + + +EDITED + +BY + +JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY, M. P. + + +_And the original illustrations by_ + +H. K. BROWNE AND JAMES GODWIN + + +TWO VOLS.--VOL. II. + + +1890 + + + +CONTENTS VOL. II. + + +HORACE WALPOLE. + +The Commoners of England.--Horace's Regret for the Death of his Mother.-- +Little Horace in Arlington Street.--Introduced to George I.-- +Characteristic Anecdote of George I.--Walpole's Education.--Schoolboy +Days.-- Boyish Friendships.--Companionship of Gray.--A Dreary Doom.-- +Walpole's Description of Youthful Delights.--Anecdote of Pope and +Frederic of Wales.--The Pomfrets.--Sir Thomas Robinson's Ball.--An +Admirable Scene.--Political Squibs.--Sir Robert's Retirement from +Office.--The Splendid Mansion of Houghton.--Sir Robert's Love of +Gardening.--What we owe to the 'Grandes Tours.'--George Vertue.--Men of +One Idea.--The Noble Picture-gallery at Houghton.--The 'Market Pieces.'-- +Sir Robert's Death.--The Granville Faction.--A very good Quarrel.-- +Twickenham.-- Strawberry Hill.--The Recluse of Strawberry.--Portraits of +the Digby Family.--Sacrilege.--Mrs. Darner's Models.--The Long Gallery at +Strawberry.-- The Chapel.--'A Dirty Little Thing.'--The Society around +Strawberry Hill.--Anne Seymour Conway.--A Man who never Doubted.--Lady +Sophia Fermer's Marriage.--Horace in Favour.--Anecdote of Sir William +Stanhope.--A Paper House.--Walpole's Habits.--Why did he not Marry?-- +'Dowagers as Plenty as Flounders.'--Catherine Hyde, Duchess of +Queensberry.--Anecdote of Lady Granville.--Kitty Clive.--Death of Horatio +Walpole.--George, third Earl of Orford.--A Visit to Houghton.--Family +Misfortunes.--Poor Chatterton.--Walpole's Concern with Chatterton.-- +Walpole in Paris.--Anecdote of Madame Geoffrin.--'Who's that Mr. +Walpole?'-- The Miss Berrys.--Horace's two 'Straw Berries.'--Tapping a +New Reign.--The Sign of the Gothic Castle.--Growing Old with Dignity.-- +Succession to an Earldom.--Walpole's Last Hours.--Let us not be +Ungrateful. + + +GEORGE SELWYN. + +A Love of Horrors.--Anecdotes of Selwyn's Mother.--Selwyn's College +Days.--Orator Henley.--Selwyn's Blasphemous Freak.--The Profession of a +Wit.--The Thirst for Hazard.--Reynolds's Conversation-Piece.--Selwyn's +Eccentricities and Witticisms.--A most Important Communication.--An +Amateur Headsman.--The Eloquence of Indifference.--Catching a +Housebreaker.--The Family of the Selwyns.--The Man of the People.-- +Selwyn's Parliamentary Career.--True Wit.--Some of Selwyn's Witty +Sayings.--The Sovereignty of the People.--On two kinds of Wit.--Selwyn's +Home for Children.--Mie-Mie, the Little Italian.--Selwyn's Little +Companion taken from him.--His Later Days and Death. + + +RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. + +Sheridan a Dunce.--Boyish Dreams of Literary Fame.--Sheridan in Love.--A +Nest of Nightingales.--The 'Maid of Bath.'--Captivated by Genius.-- +Sheridan's Elopement with 'Cecilia.'--His Duel with Captain Matthews.-- +Standards of Ridicule.--Painful Family Estrangements.--Enters Drury +Lane.--Success of the Famous 'School for Scandal.'--Opinions of Sheridan +and his Influence.--The Literary Club.--Anecdote of Garrick's +Admittance.--Origin of the 'Rejected Addresses.'--New Flights.--Political +Ambition.--The Gaming Mania.--Almacks'.--Brookes'.--Black-balled.--Two +Versions of the Election Trick.--St. Stephen's Won.--Vocal Difficulties.-- +Leads a Double Life.--Pitt's Vulgar Attack.--Sheridan's Happy Retort-- +Grattan's Quip.--Sheridan's Sallies.--The Trial of Warren Hastings.-- +Wonderful Effect of Sheridan's Eloquence.--The Supreme Effort.--The +Star Culminates.--Native Taste for Swindling.--A Shrewd but Graceless +Oxonian.--Duns Outwitted.--The Lawyer Jockeyed.--Adventures with +Bailiffs.--Sheridan's Powers of Persuasion.--House of Commons Greek.-- +Curious Mimicry.--The Royal Boon Company.--Street Frolics at Night.-- +An Old Tale.--'All's well that ends well.'--The Fray in St. Giles'.-- +Unopened Letters.--An Odd Incident.--Reckless Extravagance,--Sporting +Ambition.--Like Father like Son.--A Severe and Witty Rebuke.-- +Intemperance.--Convivial Excesses of a Past Day.--Worth wins at last.-- +Bitter Pangs.--The Scythe of Death.--Sheridan's Second Wife.--Debts of +Honour.--Drury Lane Burnt.--The Owner's Serenity.--Misfortunes never come +Singly.--The Whitbread Quarrel.--Ruined.--Undone and almost Forsaken.-- +The Dead Man Arrested.--The Stories fixed on Sheridan.--Extempore Wit and +Inveterate Talkers. + + +BEAU BRUMMELL. + +Two popular Sciences.--'Buck Brummell' at Eton.--Investing his Capital.-- +Young Cornet Brummell.--The Beau's Studio.--The Toilet.--'Creasing +Down.'--Devotion to Dress.--A Great Gentleman.--Anecdotes of Brummell.-- +'Don't forget, Brum: Goose at Four'--Offers of Intimacy resented.-- +Never in love.--Brummell out Hunting.--Anecdote of Sheridan and +Brummell.--The Beau's Poetical Efforts.--The Value of a Crooked +Sixpence.--The Breach with the Prince of Wales.--'Who's your Fat +Friend?'--The Climax is reached.--The Black-mail of Calais.--George the +Greater and George the Less.--An Extraordinary Step.--Down the Hill of +Life.--A Miserable Old Age.--In the Hospice Du Bon Sauveur.--O Young Men +of this Age, be warned! + + +THEODORE EDWARD HOOK. + +The Greatest of Modern Wits.--What Coleridge said of Hook.--Hook's +Family.--Redeeming Points.--Versatility.--Varieties of Hoaxing.--The +Black-wafered Horse.--The Berners Street Hoax.--Success of the Scheme.-- +The Strop of Hunger.--Kitchen Examinations.--The Wrong House.--Angling +for an Invitation.--The Hackney-coach Device.--The Plots of Hook and +Mathews.--Hook's Talents as an Improvisatore.--The Gift becomes his +Bane.--Hook's Novels.--College Fun.--Baiting a Proctor.--The Punning +Faculty.--Official Life Opens.--Troublesome Pleasantry.--Charge of +Embezzlement.--Misfortune.--Doubly Disgraced.--No Effort to remove the +Stain.--Attacks on the Queen.--An Incongruous Mixture.--Specimen of +the Ramsbottom Letters.--Hook's Scurrility.---Fortune and Popularity.-- +The End. + + +SYDNEY SMITH. + +The 'Wise Wit.'--Oddities of the Father.--Verse-making at Winchester.-- +Curate Life on Salisbury Plain.--Old Edinburgh.--Its Social and +Architectural Features.--Making Love Metaphysically.--The Old Scottish +Supper.--The Men of Mark passing away.--The Band of Young Spirits.-- +Brougham's Early Tenacity.--Fitting up Conversations.--'Old School' +Ceremonies.--The Speculative Society.--A Brilliant Set.--Sydney's Opinion +of his Friends.--Holland House.--Preacher at the 'Foundling.'--Sydney's +'Grammar of Life.'--The Picture Mania.--A Living Comes at Last.--The +Wit's Ministry.--The Parsonage House at Foston-le-Clay.--Country Quiet.-- +The Universal Scratcher.--Country Life and Country Prejudice.--The +Genial Magistrate.--Glimpse of Edinburgh Society.--Mrs. Grant of Laggan.-- +A Pension Difficulty.--Jeffrey and Cockburn.--Craigcrook.--Sydney +Smith's Cheerfulness.--His Rheumatic Armour.--No Bishopric.--Becomes +Canon of St. Paul's.--Anecdotes of Lord Dudley.--A Sharp Reproof.-- +Sydney's Classification of Society.--Last Strokes of Humour. + + +GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON, LORD MELCOMBE. + +A Dinner-giving lordly Poet.--A Misfortune for a Man of Society.-- +Brandenburgh House.--'The Diversions of the Morning.'--Johnson's Opinion +of Foote.--Churchill and 'The Rosciad.'--Personal Ridicule in its Proper +Light.--Wild Specimen of the Poet.--Walpole on Dodington's 'Diary.'-- +The best Commentary on a Man's Life.--Leicester House.--Grace Boyle.-- +Elegant Modes of passing Time.--A sad Day.--What does Dodington come +here for?--The Veteran Wit, Beau, and Politician.--'Defend us from our +Executors and Editors.' + + + +SUBJECTS OF THE ILLUSTRATIONS + + +Volume II. + +"WHO'S YOUR FAT FRIEND?" + +STRAWBERRY HILL FROM THE THAMES + +SELWYN ACKNOWLEDGES "THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE" + +THE FAMOUS "LITERARY CLUB" + +A TREASURE FOR A LADY--SHERIDAN AND THE LAWYER + +THEODORE HOOK'S ENGINEERING FROLIC + +SYDNEY SMITH'S WITTY ANSWER TO THE OLD PARISH CLERK + + + +HORACE WALPOLE. + + +The Commoners of England.--Horace's Regret for the Death of his Mother.-- +'Little Horace' in Arlington Street.--Introduced to George I.-- +Characteristic Anecdote of George I.--Walpole's Education.--Schoolboy +Days.--Boyish Friendships.--Companionship of Gray.--A Dreary Doom.-- +Walpole's Description of Youthful Delights.--Anecdote of Pope and +Frederic of Wales.--The Pomfrets.--Sir Thomas Robinson's Ball.--An +Admirable Scene.--Political Squibs.--Sir Robert's Retirement from +Office.--The Splendid Mansion of Houghton.--Sir Robert's Love of +Gardening.--What we owe to the 'Grandes Tours.'--George Vertue.--Men of +One Idea.--The Noble Picture-gallery at Houghton.--The 'Market Pieces.'-- +Sir Robert's Death.--The Granville Faction.--A very good Quarrel.-- +Twickenham.--Strawberry Hill.--The Recluse of Strawberry.--Portraits of +the Digby Family.--Sacrilege.--Mrs. Darner's Models.--The Long Gallery at +Strawberry.--The Chapel.--'A Dirty Little Thing.'--The Society around +Strawberry Hill.--Anne Seymour Conway.--A Man who never Doubted.--Lady +Sophia Fermor's Marriage.--Horace in Favour.--Anecdote of Sir William +Stanhope.--A Paper House.--Walpole's Habits.--Why did he not Marry?-- +'Dowagers as Plenty as Flounders.'--Catherine Hyde, Duchess of +Queensberry.--Anecdote of Lady Granville.--Kitty Clive.--Death of Horatio +Walpole.--George, third Earl of Orford.--A Visit to Houghton.--Family +Misfortunes.--Poor Chatterton.--Walpole's Concern with Chatterton.-- +Walpole in Paris.--Anecdote of Madame Geoffrin.--'Who's that Mr. +Walpole?'--The Miss Berrys.--Horace's two 'Straw Berries.'--Tapping a New +Reign.--The Sign of the Gothic Castle.--Growing Old with Dignity.-- +Succession to an Earldom.--Walpole's Last Hours.--Let us not be +Ungrateful. + + +Had this elegant writer, remarks the compiler of 'Walpoliana,' composed +memoirs of his own life, an example authorized by eminent names, ancient +and modern, every other pen must have been dropped in despair, so true +was it that 'he united the good sense of Fontenelle with the Attic salt +and graces of Count Anthony Hamilton.' + +But 'Horace' was a man of great literary modesty, and always undervalued +his own efforts. His life was one of little incident: it is his +character, his mind, the society around him, the period in which he +shone, that give the charm to his correspondence, and the interest to +his biography. + +Besides, he had the weakness common to several other fine gentlemen who +have combined letters and _haut ton_, of being ashamed of the literary +character. The vulgarity of the court, its indifference to all that was +not party writing, whether polemical or political, cast a shade over +authors in his time. + +Never was there, beneath all his assumed Whig principles, a more +profound aristocrat than Horace Walpole. He was, by birth, one of those +well-descended English gentlemen who have often scorned the title of +noble, and who have repudiated the notion of merging their own ancient +names in modern titles. The commoners of England hold a proud +pre-eminence. When some low-born man entreated James I. to make him a +gentleman, the well-known answer was, 'Na, na, I canna! I could mak thee +a lord, but none but God Almighty can mak a gentleman.' + +Sir Robert Walpole, afterwards minister to George II., and eventually +Lord Orford, belonged to an ancient family in Norfolk; he was a third +son, and was originally destined for the Church, but the death of his +elder brethren having left him heir to the family estate, in 1698, he +succeeded to a property which ought to have yielded him £2,000 a year, +but which was crippled with various encumbrances. In order to relieve +himself of these, Sir Robert married Catherine Shorter, the +granddaughter of Sir John Shorter, who had been illegally and +arbitrarily appointed Lord Mayor of London by James II. + +Horace was her youngest child, and was born in Arlington Street, on the +24th of September, 1717, O.S. Six years afterwards he was inoculated for +the small-pox, a precaution which he records as worthy of remark, since +the operation had then only recently been introduced by Lady Mary +Wortley Montagu from Turkey. + +He is silent, however, naturally enough, as to one important point--his +real parentage. The character of his mother was by no means such as to +disprove an assertion which gained general belief: this was, that Horace +was the offspring, not of Sir Robert Walpole, but of Carr, Lord Hervey, +the eldest son of the Earl of Bristol, and the elder brother of Lord +Hervey, whose 'Memoirs of the Court of George II.' are so generally +known. + +Carr, Lord Hervey, was witty, eccentric, and sarcastic: and from him +Horace Walpole is said to have inherited his wit, his eccentricity, his +love of literature, and his profound contempt for all mankind, excepting +only a few members of a cherished and exclusive _clique_. + +In the Notes of his life which Horace Walpole left for the use of his +executor, Robert Berry, Esq., and of his daughter, Miss Berry, he makes +this brief mention of Lady Walpole:--'My mother died in 1737.' He was +then twenty years of age. + +But beneath this seemingly slight recurrence to his mother, a regret +which never left him through life was buried. Like Cowper, he mourned, +as the profoundest of all sorrows, the loss of that life-long friend. + + 'My mother, when I learn'd that thou wast dead, + Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed? + Hovered thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son? + Wretch even then, life's journey just begun.' + +Although Horace in many points bore a strong resemblance to Sir Robert +Walpole, he rarely if ever received from that jovial, heartless, able +man, any proof of affection. An outcast from his father's heart, the +whole force of the boy's love centred in his mother; yet in after-life +no one reverenced Sir Robert Walpole so much as his supposed son. To be +adverse to the minister was to be adverse to the unloved son who +cherished his memory. What 'my father' thought, did, and said, was law; +what his foes dared to express was heresy. Horace had the family mania +strong upon him; the world was made for Walpoles, whose views were never +to be controverted, nor whose faith impugned. Yet Horace must have +witnessed, perhaps with out comprehending it, much disunion at home. +Lady Walpole. beautiful and accomplished, could not succeed in riveting +her husband to his conjugal duties. Gross licentiousness was the order +of the day, and Sir Robert was among the most licentious; he left his +lovely wife to the perilous attentions of all the young courtiers who +fancied that by courting the Premier's wife they could secure Walpole's +good offices. Sir Robert, according to Pope, was one of those who-- + + 'Never made a friend in private life, + And was, besides, a tyrant to his wife. + +At all events, if not a tyrant, he was indifferent to those +circumstances which reflected upon him, and were injurious to her. He +was conscious that he had no right to complain of any infidelity on her +part, and he left her to be surrounded by men whom he knew to be +profligates of the most dangerous pretensions to wit and elegance. + +It was possibly not unfrequently that Horace, his mother's pet, gleaned +in the drawing-rooms of Arlington Street his first notions of that +_persiflage_ which was the fashion of the day. We. can fancy him a +precocious, old-fashioned little boy, at his mother's apron-string, +whilst Carr, Lord Hervey, was paying his devoirs; we see him gazing with +wondering eyes at Pulteney, Earl of Bath, with his blue ribbon across +his laced coat; whilst compassionating friends observing the pale-faced +boy in that hot-house atmosphere, in which both mind and body were like +forced plants, prophesied that 'little Horace' could not possibly live +to be a man. + +He survived, however, two sisters, who died in childhood, and became +dearer and dearer to his fond mother. + +In his old age, Horace delighted in recalling anecdotes of his infancy; +in these his mother's partiality largely figured. Brought up among +courtiers and ministers, his childish talk was all of kings and princes; +and he was a gossip both by inclination and habit. His greatest desire +in life was to see the king--George I., and his nurses and attendants +augmented his wish by their exalted descriptions of the grandeur which +he effected, in after-life, to despise. He entreated his mother to take +him to St. James's. When relating the incidents of the scene in which he +was first introduced to a court, Horace Walpole speaks of the 'infinite +good-nature of his father, who never thwarted any of his children,' and +'suffered him,' he says, 'to be too much indulged.' + +Some difficulties attended the fruition of the forward boy's wish. The +Duchess of Kendal was jealous of Sir Robert Walpole's influence with the +king: her aim was to bring Lord Bolingbroke into power. The childish +fancy was, nevertheless, gratified: and under his mother's care he was +conducted to the apartments of the Duchess of Kendal in St. James's. + +'A favour so unusual to be asked by a boy of ten years old,' he +afterwards wrote in his 'Reminiscences,' 'was still too slight to be +refused to the wife of the first minister and her darling child.' +However, as it was not to be a precedent, the interview was to be +private, and at night. + +It was ten o'clock in the evening when Lady Walpole, leading her son, +was admitted into the apartments of Melusina de Schulenberg, Countess of +Walsingham, who passed under the name of the Duchess of Kendal's niece, +but who was, in fact, her daughter, by George I. The polluted rooms in +which Lady Walsingham lived were afterwards occupied by the two +mistresses of George II.--the Countess of Suffolk, and Madame de +Walmoden, Countess of Yarmouth. + +With Lady Walsingham, Lady Walpole and her little son waited until, +notice having been given that the king had come down to supper, he was +led into the presence of 'that good sort of man,' as he calls George I. +That monarch was pleased to permit the young courtier to kneel down and +kiss his hand. A few words were spoken by the august personage, and +Horace was led back into the adjoining room. + +But the vision of that 'good sort of man' was present to him when, in +old age, he wrote down his recollections for his beloved Miss Berry. By +the side of a tall, lean, ill-favoured old German lady--the Duchess of +Kendal--stood a pale, short, elderly man, with a dark tie-wig, in a +plain coat and waistcoat: these and his breeches were all of +snuff-coloured cloth, and his stockings of the same colour. By the blue +riband alone could the young subject of this 'good sort of man' discern +that he was in the presence of majesty. Little interest could be +elicited in this brief interview, yet Horace thought it his painful +duty, being also the son of a prime minister, to shed tears when, with +the other scholars of Eton College, he walked in the procession to the +proclamation of George II. And no doubt he was one of _very_ few +personages in England whose eyes Were moistened for that event. +Nevertheless, there was something of _bonhommie_ in the character of +George I. that one misses in his successor. His love of punch, and his +habit of becoming a little tipsy over his private dinners with Sir +Robert Walpole, were English as well as German traits, and were regarded +almost as condescensions; and then he had a kind of slow wit, that was +turned upon the venial officials whose perquisites were at their +disgraceful height in his time. + +'A strange country this,' said the monarch, in his most clamorous +German: 'one day, after I came to St. James's, I looked out of the +window, and saw a park, with walks, laurels, &c.; these they told me +were mine. The next day Lord Chetwynd, the ranger of _my_ park, sends me +a brace of carp out of my canal; I was told, thereupon, that I must give +five guineas to Lord Chetwynd's porter for bringing me my _own_ fish, +out of my _own_ canal, in my _own_ park!' In spite of some agreeable +qualities, George I. was, however, anything but a 'good sort of man.' It +is difficult how to rank the two first Georges; both were detestable as +men, and scarcely tolerable as monarchs. The foreign deeds of George I. +were stained with the supposed murder of Count Konigsmark: the English +career of George II. was one of the coarsest profligacy. Their example +was infamous. + +His father's only sister having become the second wife of Charles Lord +Townshend, Horace was educated with his cousins; and the tutor selected +was Edward Weston, the son of Stephen, Bishop of Exeter; this preceptor +was afterwards engaged in a controversy with Dr. Warburton, concerning +the 'Naturalization of the Jews.' By that learned, haughty disputant, he +is termed 'a gazetteer by profession--by inclination a Methodist.' Such +was the man who guided the dawning intellect of Horace Walpole. Under +his care he remained until he went, in 1727, to Eton. But Walpole's was +not merely a scholastic education: he was destined for the law--and, on +going up to Cambridge, was obliged to attend lectures on civil law. He +went from Eton to King's College--where he was, however, more disposed +to what are termed accomplishments than to deep reading. At Cambridge he +even studied Italian; at home he learned to dance and fence; and took +lessons in drawing from Bernard Lens, drawing-master to the Duke of +Cumberland and his sisters. It is not to be wondered at that he left +Cambridge without taking a degree. + +But fortune was lying, as it were, in wait for him; and various +sinecures had been reserved for the Minister's youngest son: first, he +became Inspector of the Imports and Exports in the Customs; but soon +resigned that post to be Usher of the Exchequer. 'And as soon,' he +writes, 'as I became of age I took possession of two other little patent +places in the Exchequer, called Comptroller of the Pipe, and Clerk of +the Estreats. They had been held for me by Mr. Fane.' + +Such was the mode in which the younger sons were then provided for by a +minister; nor has the unworthy system died out in our time, although +greatly modified. + +Horace was growing up meantime, not an awkward, but a somewhat +insignificant youth, with a short, slender figure: which always retained +a boyish appearance when seen from behind. His face was common-place, +except when his really expressive eyes sparkled with intelligence, or +melted into the sweetest expression of kindness. But his laugh was +forced and uncouth: and even in his smile there was a hard, sarcastic +expression that made one regret that he smiled. + +He was now in possession of an income of £1,700 annually, and he looked +naturally to the Continent, to which all young members of the +aristocracy repaired, after the completion of their collegiate life. + +He had been popular at Eton: he was also, it is said, both beloved and +valued at Cambridge. In reference to his Etonian days he says, in one of +his letters, 'I can't say I am sorry I was never quite a schoolboy: an +expedition against bargemen, or a match at cricket, may be very pretty +things to recollect; but, thank my stars, I can remember things that are +very near as pretty. The beginning of my Roman history was spent in the +asylum, or conversing in Egeria's hallowed grove; not in thumping and +pummelling King Amulius's herdsmen.[1] + +[1: Life by Warburton, p 70.] + +'I remember,' he adds, 'when I was at Eton, and Mr. Bland had set me on +an extraordinary task, I used sometimes to pique myself upon not getting +it, because it was not immediately my school business. What! learn more +than I was absolutely forced to learn! I felt the weight of learning +that; for I was a blockhead, _and pushed above my parts_.'[2] + +[2: Life of Warburton, p. 63.] + +Popular amongst his schoolfellows, Horace formed friendships at Eton +which mainly influenced his after-life. Richard West, the son of West, +Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and the grandson, on his mother's side, of +Bishop Burnet; together with a youth named Assheton--formed, with the +poet Gray, and Horace himself, what the young wit termed the 'Quadruple +Alliance.' Then there was the 'triumvirate,' George Montagu, Charles +Montagu, and Horace: next came George Selwyn and Hanbury Williams; +lastly, a retired, studious youth, a sort of foil to all these gay, +brilliant young wits--a certain William Cole, a lover of old books, and +of quaint prints. And in all these boyish friendships, some of which +were carried from Eton to Cambridge, may be traced the foundation of the +Horace Walpole, of Strawberry Hill and of Berkeley Square. To Gray he +owed his ambition to be learned, if possible--poetical, if nature had +not forbidden; to the Montagus, his dash and spirit; to Sir Hanbury +Williams, his turn for _jeux d'esprit_, as a part of the completion of a +fine gentleman's education; to George Selwyn, his appreciation of what +was then considered wit--but which we moderns are not worthy to +appreciate. Lord Hertford and Henry Conway, Walpole's cousins, were also +his schoolfellows; and for them he evinced throughout his long life a +warm regard. William Pitt, Lord Chatham--chiefly remembered at Eton for +having been flogged for being out of bounds--was a contemporary, though +not an intimate, of Horace Walpole's at Eton. + +His regard for Gray did him infinite credit: yet never were two men more +dissimilar as they advanced in life. Gray had no aristocratic birth to +boast; and Horace dearly loved birth, refinement, position, all that +comprises the cherished term 'aristocracy.' Thomas Gray, more +illustrious for the little his fastidious judgment permitted him to give +to the then critical world, than many have been in their productions of +volumes, was born in Cornhill--his father being a worthy citizen. He was +just one year older than Walpole, but an age his senior in gravity, +precision, and in a stiff resolution to maintain his independence. He +made one fatal step, fatal to his friendship for Horace, when he +forfeited--by allowing Horace to take him and pay his expenses during a +long continental tour--his independence. Gray had many points which made +him vulnerable to Walpole's shafts of ridicule; and Horace had a host of +faults which excited the stern condemnation of Gray. The author of the +'Elegy'--which Johnson has pronounced to be the noblest ode in our +language--was one of the most learned men of his time, 'and was equally +acquainted with the elegant and profound paths of science, and that not +superficially, but thoroughly; knowing in every branch of history, both +natural and civil, as having read all the original historians of +England, France, and Italy; a great antiquarian, who made criticisms, +metaphysics, morals, and politics a principal part of his plan of +study--who was uncommonly fond of voyages and travels of all sorts--and +who had a fine taste in painting, prints, architecture, and gardening' +What a companion for a young man of taste and sympathy! but the friends +were far too clever long to agree. Gray was haughty, impatient, +intolerant of the peculiarities of others, according to the author of +'Walpoliana:' doubtless he detected the vanity, the actual selfishness, +the want of earnest feeling in Horace, which had all been kept down at +school, where boys are far more unsparing Mentors than their betters. In +vain did they travel _en prince_, and all at Walpole's expense; in vain +did they visit courts, and receive affability from princes: in vain did +he of Cornhill participate for a brief period in the attentions lavished +on the son of a British Prime Minister: they quarrelled--and we almost +reverence Gray for that result, more especially when we find the author +of 'Walpoliana' expressing his conviction that 'had it not been for this +idle indulgence of his hasty temper, Mr. Gray would immediately on his +return home have received, as usual, a pension or office from Sir Robert +Walpole.' We are inclined to feel contempt for the anonymous writer of +that amusing little book. + +After a companionship of four years, Gray, nevertheless, returned to +London. He had been educated with the expectation of being a barrister; +but finding that funds were wanting to pursue a legal education, he gave +up a set of chambers in the Temple, which he had occupied previous to +his travels, and retired to Cambridge. + +Henceforth what a singular contrast did the lives of these once fond +friends present! In the small, quaint rooms of Peter-House,[3] Gray +consumed a dreary celibacy, consoled by the Muse alone, who--if other +damsels found no charms in his somewhat piggish, wooden countenance, or +in his manners, replete, it is said, with an unpleasant consciousness of +superiority--never deserted him. His college existence, varied only by +his being appointed Professor of Modern History, was, for a brief space, +exchanged for an existence almost as studious in London. Between the +years 1759 and 1762, he took lodgings, we find, in Southampton Row--a +pleasant locality then, opening to the fields--in order to be near the +British Museum, at that time just opened to the public. Here his intense +studies were, it may be presumed, relieved by the lighter task of +perusing the Harleian Manuscripts; and here he formed the acquaintance +of Mason, a dull, affected poet, whose celebrity is greater as the +friend and biographer of Gray, than even as the author of those verses +on the death of Lady Coventry, in which there are, nevertheless, some +beautiful lines. Gray died in college--a doom that, next to ending one's +days in a jail or a convent, seems the dreariest. He died of the gout: a +suitable, and, in that region and in those three-bottle days, almost an +inevitable disease; but there is no record of his having been +intemperate. + +[3: Gray migrated to Pembroke in 1756.] + +Whilst Gray was poring over dusty manuscripts, Horace was beginning that +career of prosperity which was commenced by the keenest enjoyment of +existence. He has left us, in his Letters, some brilliant passages, +indicative of the delights of his boyhood and youth. Like him, we linger +over a period still fresh, still hopeful, still generous in impulse-- +still strong in faith in the world's worth--before we hasten on to +portray the man of the world, heartless, not wholly, perhaps, but wont +to check all feeling till it was well-nigh quenched; little minded; +bitter, if not spiteful; with many acquaintances and scarce one +friend--the Horace Walpole of Berkeley Square and Strawberry Hill. + +'Youthful passages of life are,' he says, 'the chippings of Pitt's +diamond, set into little heart-rings with mottoes; the stone itself more +worth, the filings more gentle and agreeable. Alexander, at the head of +the world, never tasted the true pleasure that boys of his age have +enjoyed at the head of a school. Little intrigues, little schemes and +policies engage their thoughts; and at the same time that they are +laying the foundation for their middle age of life, the mimic republic +they live in, furnishes materials of conversation for their latter age; +and old men cannot be said to be children a second time with greater +truth from any one cause, than their living over again their childhood +in imagination.' + +Again: 'Dear George, were not the playing-fields at Eton food for all +manner of flights? No old maid's gown, though it had been tormented into +all the fashions from King James to King George, ever underwent so many +transformations as these poor plains have in my idea. At first I was +contented with tending a visionary flock, and sighing some pastoral name +to the echo of the cascade under the bridge ... As I got further into +Virgil and Clelia, I found myself transported from Arcadia to the garden +of Italy; and saw Windsor Castle in no other view than the _Capitoli +immobile saxum_.' + +Horace Walpole's humble friend Assheton was another of those Etonians +who were plodding on to independence, whilst he, set forward by fortune +and interest, was accomplishing reputation. Assheton was the son of a +worthy man, who presided over the Grammar School at Lancaster, upon a +stipend of £32 a year. Assheton's mother had brought to her husband a +small estate. This was sold to educate the 'boys:' they were both clever +and deserving. One became the fellow of Trinity College; the other, the +friend of Horace, rose into notice as the tutor of the young Earl of +Plymouth; then became a D.D., and a fashionable preacher in London; was +elected preacher at Lincoln's Inn; attacked the Methodists; and died, at +fifty-three, at variance with Horace--this Assheton, whom once he had +loved so much. + +Horace, on the other hand, after having seen during his travels all that +was most exclusive, attractive, and lofty, both in art and nature, came +home without bringing, he declares, 'one word of French or Italian for +common use.' He professed, indeed, to prefer England to all other +countries. A country tour in England delighted him: the populousness, +the ease in the people also, charmed him. 'Canterbury was a paradise to +Modena, Reggio, or Parma.' He had, before he returned, perceived that +nowhere except in England was there the distinction of 'middling +people;' he now found that nowhere but in England were middling houses. +'How snug they are!' exclaims this scion of the exclusives. Then he runs +on into an anecdote about Pope and Frederick, Prince of Wales. 'Mr. +Pope, said the prince, 'you don't love princes.' 'Sir, I beg your +pardon.' 'Well, you don't love kings, then.' 'Sir, I own I like the lion +better before his claws are grown.' The 'Horace Walpole' began now to +creep out: never was he really at home except in a court atmosphere. +Still he assumed, even at twenty-four, to be the boy. + +'You won't find me,' he writes to Harry Conway, 'much altered, I +believe; at least, outwardly. I am not grown a bit shorter or fatter, +but am just the same long, lean creature as usual. Then I talk no French +but to my footman; nor Italian, but to myself. What inward alterations +may have happened to me you will discover best; for you know 'tis said, +one never knows that one's self. I will answer, that that part of it +that belongs to you has not suffered the least change--I took care of +that. For _virtu_, I have a little to entertain you--it is my sole +pleasure. I am neither young enough nor old enough to be in love.' + +Nevertheless, it peeps out soon after that the 'Pomfrets' are coming +back. Horace had known them in Italy. The Earl and Countess and their +daughters were just then the very pink of fashion; and even the leaders +of all that was exclusive in the court. Half in ridicule, half in +earnest, are the remarks which, throughout all the career of Horace, +incessantly occur. 'I am neither young enough nor old enough to be in +love,' he says; yet that he was in love with one of the lovely Fermors +is traditionary still in the family--and that tradition pointed at Lady +Juliana, the youngest, afterwards married to Mr. Penn. The Earl of +Pomfret had been master of the horse to Queen Caroline: Lady Pomfret, +lady of the bed-chamber. 'My Earl,' as the-countess styled him, was +apparently a supine subject to her ladyship's strong will and +wrong-headed ability--which she, perhaps, inherited from her +grandfather, Judge Jeffreys; she being the daughter and heiress of that +rash young Lord Jeffreys, who, in a spirit of braggadocia, stopped the +funeral of Dryden on its way to Westminster, promising a more splendid +procession than the poor, humble cortege--a boast which he never +fulfilled. Lady Sophia Fermor, the eldest daughter, who afterwards +became the wife of Lord Carteret, resembled, in beauty, the famed +Mistress Arabella Fermor, the heroine of the 'Rape of the Lock.' Horace +Walpole admired Lady Sophia--whom he christened Juno--intensely. +Scarcely a letter drips from his pen--as a modern novelist used to +express it[4]--without some touch of the Pomfrets. Thus to Sir Horace +Mann, then a diplomatist at Florence:-- + +[4: The accomplished novelist, Mrs. Gore, famous for her facility, used +to say that a three-volume novel just 'dripped from her pen.'] + +'Lady Pomfret I saw last night. Lady Sophia has been ill with a cold; +her head is to be dressed French, and her body English, for which I am +sorry, her figure is so fine in a robe. She is full as sorry as I am.' + +Again, at a ball at Sir Thomas Robinson's, where four-and-twenty couples +danced country-dances, in two sets, twelve and twelve, 'there was Lady +Sophia, handsomer than ever, but a little out of humour at the scarcity +of minuets; however, as usual, dancing more than anybody, and, as usual +too, she took out what men she liked, or thought the best +dancers.'...'We danced; for I country-danced till four, then had tea and +coffee, and came home.' Poor Horace! Lady Sophia was not for a younger +son, however gay, talented, or rich he might be. + +His pique and resentment towards her mother, who had higher views for +her beautiful daughter, begin at this period to show themselves, and +never died away. + +Lady Townshend was the wit who used to gratify Horace with tales of her +whom he hated--Henrietta-Louisa, Countess of Pomfret. + +'Lady Townshend told me an admirable history: it is of _our friend_ Lady +Pomfret. Somebody that belonged to the Prince of Wales said, they were +going to _court_; it was objected that they ought to say to Carlton +House; that the only _court_ is where the king resides. Lady P., with +her paltry air of significant learning and absurdity, said, "Oh, Lord! +Is there no _court_ in England but the king's? Sure, there are many +more! There is the _Court_ of Chancery, the _Court_ of Exchequer, the +_Court_ of King's Bench, &c." Don't you love her? Lord Lincoln does her +daughter--Lady Sophia Fermor. He is come over, and met me and her the +other night; he turned pale, spoke to her several times in the evening, +but not long, and sighed to me at going away. He came over all alone; +and not only his Uncle Duke (the Duke of Newcastle) but even Majesty is +fallen in love with him. He talked to the king at his levee, without +being spoken to. That was always thought high treason; but I don't know +how the gruff gentleman liked it. And then he had been told that Lord +Lincoln designed to have made the campaign, if we had gone to war; in +short, he says Lord Lincoln is the handsomest man in England.' + +Horace was not, therefore, the only victim to a mother's ambition: there +is something touching in the interest he from time to time evinces in +poor Lord Lincoln's hopeless love. On another occasion, a second ball of +Sir Thomas Robinson's, Lord Lincoln, out of prudence, dances with Lady +Caroline Fitzroy, Mr. Conway taking Lady Sophia Fermor. 'The two couple +were just admirably mismatched, as everybody soon perceived, by the +attentions of each man to the woman he did not dance with, and the +emulation of either lady; it was an admirable scene.' + +All, however, was not country dancing: the young man, 'too old and too +young to be in love,' was to make his way as a wit. He did so, in the +approved way in that day of irreligion, in a political squib. On July +14th, 1742, he writes in his Notes, 'I wrote the "_Lessons for the +Day_;" the "Lessons for the day" being the first and second chapters of +the "Book of Preferment,"' Horace was proud of this _brochure_, for he +says it got about surreptitiously, and was 'the original of many things +of that sort.' Various _jeux d'esprit_ of a similar sort followed. A +'Sermon on Painting,' which was preached before Sir Robert Walpole, in +the gallery at Houghton, by his chaplain; 'Patapan, or the Little White +Dog,' imitated from La Fontaine. No. 38 of the 'Old England Journal,' +intended to ridicule Lord Bath; and then, in a magazine, was printed his +'Scheme for a Tax on Message Cards and Notes.' Next the 'Beauties,' +which was also handed about, and got into print. So that without the +vulgarity of publishing, the reputation of the dandy writer was soon +noised about. His religious tenets may or may not have been sound; but +at all events the tone of his mind assumed at this time a very different +character to that reverent strain in which, when a youth at college, he +had apostrophized those who bowed their heads beneath the vaulted roof +of King's College, in his eulogium in the character of Henry VI. + + 'Ascend the temple, join the vocal choir, + Let harmony your raptured souls inspire. + Hark how the tuneful, solemn organs blow, + Awfully strong, elaborately slow; + Now to you empyrean seats above + Raise meditation on the wings of love. + Now falling, sinking, dying to the moan + Once warbled sad by Jesse's contrite son; + Breathe in each note a conscience through the sense, + And call forth tears from soft-eyed Penitence.' + +In the midst of all his gaieties, his successes, and perhaps his hopes, +a cloud hovered over the destinies of his father. The opposition, Horace +saw, in 1741, wished to ruin his father 'by ruining his constitution.' +They wished to continue their debates on Saturdays, Sir Robert's only +day of rest, when he used to rush to Richmond New Park, there to amuse +himself with a favourite pack of beagles. Notwithstanding the minister's +indifference to this his youngest son, Horace felt bitterly what he +considered a persecution against one of the most corrupt of modern +statesmen. + +'Trust me, if we fall, all the grandeur, all the envied grandeur of our +house, will not cost me a sigh: it has given me no pleasure while we +have it, and will give me no pain when I part with it. My liberty, my +ease, and choice of my own friends and company, will sufficiently +counterbalance the crowds of Downing Street. I am so sick of it all, +that if we are victorious or not, I propose leaving England in the +spring. + +The struggle was not destined to last long. Sir Robert was forced to +give up the contest and be shelved with a peerage. In 1742, he was +created Earl of Orford, and resigned. The wonder is that, with a mortal +internal disease to contend with, he should have faced his foes so long. +Verses ascribed to Lord Hervey ended, as did all the squibs of the day, +with a fling at that 'rogue Walpole.' + + 'For though you have made that rogue Walpole retire, + You are out of the frying-pan into the fire: + But since to the Protestant line I'm a friend, + I tremble to think how these changes may end.' + +Horace, notwithstanding an affected indifference, felt his father's +downfall poignantly. He went, indeed, to court, in spite of a cold, +taken in an unaired house; for the prime minister now quitted Downing +Street for Arlington Street. The court was crowded, he found, with old +ladies, the wives of patriots who had not been there for 'these twenty +years,' and who appeared in the accoutrements that were in vogue in +Queen Anne's time. 'Then', he writes, 'the joy and awkward jollity of +them is inexpressible! They titter, and, wherever you meet them, are +always looking at their watches an hour before the time. I met several +on the birthday (for I did not arrive time enough to make clothes), and +they were dressed in all the colours of the rainbow. They seem to have +said to themselves, twenty years ago, "Well, if ever I do go to court +again, I will have a pink and silver, or a blue and silver;" and they +keep their resolutions.' + +Another characteristic anecdote betrays his ill-suppressed vexation:-- + +'I laughed at myself prodigiously the other day for a piece of absence. +I was writing, on the king's birthday, and being disturbed with the mob +in the street, I rang for the porter and with an air of grandeur, as if +I was still at Downing Street, cried, "Pray send away those marrow-bones +and cleavers." + +The poor fellow, with the most mortified air in the world, replied, +"Sir, they are not at _our_ door, but over the way, at my Lord +Carteret's."--"Oh!" said I, "then let them alone; may be, he does not +dislike the noise!" I pity the poor porter, who sees all his old +customers going over the way too.' + +The retirement of Sir Robert from office had an important effect on the +tastes and future life of his son Horace. The minister had been +occupying his later years in pulling down his old ancestral house at +Houghton, and in building an enormous mansion, which has since his time +been, in its turn, partially demolished. When Harley, Earl of Orford, +was known to be erecting a great house for himself, Sir Robert had +remarked that a minister who did so committed a great imprudence. When +Houghton was begun, Sir Hynde Aston reminded Sir Robert of this speech. +'You ought to have recalled it to me before,' was the reply; 'for before +I began building, it might have been of use to me.' + +This famous memorial of Walpolean greatness, this splendid folly, +constructed, it is generally supposed, on public money, was inhabited by +Sir Robert only ten days in summer, and twenty days in winter; in the +autumn, during the shooting season, two months. It became almost an +eyesore to the quiet gentry, who viewed the palace with a feeling of +their own inferiority. People as good as the Walpoles lived in their +gable-ended, moderate-sized mansions; and who was Sir Robert, to set +them at so immense a distance? + +To the vulgar comprehension of the Premier, Houghton, gigantic in its +proportions, had its purposes. He there assembled his supporters; there, +for a short time, he entertained his constituents and coadjutors with a +magnificent, jovial hospitality, of which he, with his gay spirits, his +humourous, indelicate jokes, and his unbounded good-nature, was the very +soul. Free conversation, hard-drinking, were the features of every day's +feast. Pope thus describes him:-- + + 'Seen him, I have, but in his happier hour, + Of social pleasure, ill exchanged for power; + Seen him uncumbered with the venal tribe, + Smile without art, and win without a bribe.' + +Amid the coarse taste one gentle refinement existed: this was the love +of gardening, both in its smaller compass and it its nobler sense of +landscape gardening. 'This place,' Sir Robert, in 1743, wrote to General +Churchill, from Houghton, 'affords no news, no subject of entertainment +or amusement; for fine men of wit and pleasure about town understand +neither the language and taste, nor the pleasure of the inanimate world. +My flatterers here are all mutes: the oaks, the beeches, the chestnuts, +seem to contend which best shall please the lord of the manor. They +cannot deceive; they will not lie. I in sincerity admire them, and have +as many beauties about me as fill up all my hours of dangling, and no +disgrace attending me, from sixty-seven years of age. Within doors we +come a little nearer to real life, and admire, upon the almost speaking +canvas, all the airs and graces the proudest ladies can boast.' + +In these pursuits Horace cordially shared. Through his agency, Horace +Mann, still in the diplomatic service, at Florence, selected and +purchased works of art, which were sent either to Arlington Street, or +to form the famous Houghton Collection, to which Horace so often refers +in that delightful work, his 'Anecdotes of Painting.' + +Amongst the embellishments of Houghton, the gardens were the most +expensive. + +'Sir Robert has pleased himself,' Pulteney, Earl of Bath, wrote, 'with +erecting palaces and extending parks, planting gardens in places to +which the very earth was to be transported in carriages, and embracing +cascades and fountains whose water was only to be obtained by aqueducts +and machines, and imitating the extravagance of Oriental monarchs, at +the expense of a free people whom he has at once impoverished and +betrayed.' + +The ex-minister went to a great expense in the cultivation of plants, +bought Uvedale's 'Hortus Siccus;' and received from Bradley, the +Professor of Botany at Cambridge, the tribute of a dedication, in which +it was said that 'Sir Robert had purchased one of the finest collections +of plants in the kingdom.' + +What was more to his honour still, was Sir Robert's preservation of St. +James's Park for the people. Fond of outdoor amusements himself, the +Premier heard, with dismay, a proposal on the part of Queen Caroline to +convert that ancient park into a palace garden. 'She asked my father,' +Horace Walpole relates, 'what the alteration might possibly +cost?'--_Only three crowns_' was the civil, witty, candid answer. The +queen was wise enough to take the hint. It is possible she meant to +convert the park into gardens that should be open to the public as at +Berlin, Mannheim, and even the Tuileries. Still it would not have been +ours. + +Horace Walpole owed, perhaps, his love of architecture and his taste for +gardening, partly to the early companionship of Gray, who delighted in +those pursuits. Walpole's estimation of pictures, medals, and statues, +was however the fruit of a long residence abroad. We are apt to rail at +continental nations; yet had it not been for the occasional intercourse +with foreign nations, art would have altogether died out among us. To +the 'Grandes Tours,' performed as a matter of course by our young +nobility in the most impressionable period of their lives we owe most of +our noble private collections. Charles I. and Buckingham, renewed, in +their travels in Spain, the efforts previously made by Lord Arundel and +Lord Pembroke, to embellish their country seats. Then came the +Rebellion; and like a mighty rushing river, made a chasm in which much +perished. Art languished in the reign of the second Charles, excepting +in what related to portrait painting. Evelyn stood almost alone in his +then secluded and lovely retirement at Wotton; apart in his undying +exertions still to arrest the Muses ere they quitted for ever English +shores. Then came the deadly frost of William's icy influence. The reign +of Anne was conspicuous more for letters than for art: architecture, +more especially, was vulgarized under Vanbrugh. George I. had no +conception of anything abstract: taste, erudition, science, art, were +like a dead language to his common sense, his vulgar profligacy, and his +personal predilections. Neither George II. nor his queen had an iota of +taste, either in language, conduct, literature, or art. To be vulgar, +was _haut-ton;_ to be refined, to have pursuits that took one from low +party gossip, or heterodox disquisitions upon party, was esteemed odd: +everything original was cramped; everything imaginative was sneered at; +the enthusiasm that is elevated by religion was unphilosophic; the +poetry that is breathed out from the works of genius was not +comprehended. + +It was at Houghton, under the roof of that monster palace, that Horace +Walpole indulged that tastes for pictures which he had acquired in +Italy. His chief coadjutor, however, as far as the antiquities of +painting are concerned, was George Vertue, the eminent engraver. Vertue +was a man of modest merit, and was educated merely as an engraver; but, +conscious of talent, studied drawing, which he afterwards applied to +engraving. He was patronised both by the vain Godfrey Kneller and by the +intellectual Lord Somers: yet his works have more fidelity than +elegance, and betray in every line the antiquary rather than the genius. +Vertue was known to be a first-rate authority as to the history of a +painter; he was admitted and welcomed into every great country house in +England; he lived in an atmosphere of vertù; every line a dilettante +collector wrote, every word he uttered, was minuted down by him; he +visited every collection of rarities; he copied every paper he could +find relative to art; registers of wills, and registers of parishes, for +births and deaths were his delight; sales his recreation. He was the +'Old Mortality' of pictures in this country. No wonder that his +compilations were barely contained in forty volumes, which he left in +manuscript. Human nature has singular varieties: here was a man who +expended his very existence in gathering up the works of others, and +died without giving to the world one of his own. But Horace Walpole has +done him justice. After Vertue's death he bought his manuscripts from +his widow. In one of his pocket-books was contained the whole history of +this man of one idea: Vertue began his collection in 1713, and worked at +it until his death in 1757, forty-four years. + +He died in the belief that he should one day publish an unique work on +painting and painters: such was the aim of his existence, and his study +must have been even more curious than the wonderfully crammed, small +house at Islington, where William Upcott, the 'Old Mortality' in his +line, who saved from the housemaid's fire-lighting designs the MSS. Of +Evelyn's + +Life and Letters, which he found tossing about in the old gallery at +Wotton, near Dorking, passed his days. Like Upcott, like Palissy, Vertue +lived and died under the influence of one isolated aim, effort, and +hope. + +In these men, the cherished and amiable monomania of gifted minds was +realized. Upcott had every possible autograph from every known hand in +his collection: Palissy succeeded in making glazed china; but Vertue +left his ore to the hands of others to work out into shape, and the man +who moulded his crude materials was Horace Walpole, and Vertue's forty +volumes were shaped into a readable work, as curious and accurate in +facts as it is flippant and prejudiced in style and opinions. + +Walpole's 'Anecdotes of Painting' are the foundation of all our small +amount of knowledge as to what England has done formerly to encourage +art. + +One may fancy the modest, ingenious George Vertue arranging first, and +then making a catalogue of the Houghton Gallery; Horace, a boy still, in +looks,--with a somewhat chubby face, admiring and following: Sir Robert, +in a cocked hat, edged with silver lace, a curled short wig, a loose +coat, also edged with silver lace, and with a half humorous expression +on his vulgar countenance, watching them at intervals, as they paraded +through the hall, a large square space, adorned with bas-reliefs and +busts, and containing a bronze copy of the Laocoon, for which Sir Robert +(or rather we English) paid a thousand pounds; or they might be seen +hopping speedily through the ground-floor apartments where there could +be little to arrest the footsteps of the mediaeval-minded Vertue. Who +but a courtier could give one glance at a portrait of George I., though +by Kneller? Who that _was_ a courtier in that house would pause to look +at the resemblance, also by Kneller, of the short-lived, ill-used +Catherine Shorter, the Premier's first wife--even though he still +endured it in his bed-room? a mute reproach for his neglect and +misconduct. So let us hasten to the yellow dining-room where presently +we may admire the works of Titian, Guido, Vanderwerf, and last, not +least, eleven portraits by Vandyck, of the Wharton family, which Sir +Robert bought at the sale of the spendthrift Duke of Wharton. + +Then let us glance at the saloon, famed for the four large 'Market +Pieces,' as they were called, by Rubens and Snyders: let us lounge into +what were called the Carlo Maratti and the Vandyck rooms; step we also +into the green velvet bed-chamber, the tapestry-room, the worked bed +chamber; then comes another dining-room: in short, we are lost in wonder +at this noble collection, which cost £40,000. + +Many of the pictures were selected and bargained for by Vertue, who, in +Flanders, purchased the Market Pieces referred to, for £428; but did not +secure the 'Fish Market,' and the 'Meat Market,' by the same painter. In +addition to the pictures, the stateliness and beauty of the rooms were +enhanced by rich furniture, carving, gilding, and all the subsidiary +arts which our grandfathers loved to add to high merit in design or +colouring. Besides his purchases, Sir Robert received presents of +pictures from friends, and expectant courtiers; and the gallery at +Houghton contained at last 222 pictures. To our sorrow now, to our +disgrace then, this splendid collection was suffered to go out of the +country: Catherine, empress of Russia, bought it for £40,000, and it +adorns the Hermitage Palace of St. Petersburgh. + +After Sir Robert's retirement from power, the good qualities which he +undoubtedly possessed, seemed to re-appear as soon as the pressure of +party feeling was withdrawn. He was fast declining in health when the +insurrection of 1745 was impending. He had warned the country of its +danger in his last speech, one of the finest ever made in the House of +Lords: after that effort his voice was heard no more. The gallant, +unfortunate Charles Edward was then at Paris, and that scope of old +experience + + ----'which doth attain + To somewhat of prophetic strain,' + +showed the ex-minister of Great Britain that an invasion was at hand. It +was on this occasion that Frederick, Prince of Wales, took Sir Robert, +then Lord Orford, by the hand, and thanked him for his zeal in the cause +of the royal family. Walpole returned to Norfolk, but was summoned again +to London to afford the ministry the benefit of his counsels. Death, +however, closed his prosperous, but laborious life. He suffered agonies +from the stone; large doses of opium kept him in a state of stupor, and +alone gave him ease; but his strength failed, and he was warned to +prepare himself for his decease. He bore the announcement with great +fortitude, and took leave of his children in perfect resignation to his +doom. He died on the 28th of March, 1745. + +Horace Walpole--whatsoever doubts may rest on the fact of his being Lord +Orford's son or not--writes feelingly and naturally upon this event, and +its forerunner, the agonies of disease. He seems, from the following +passages in his letters to Sir Horace Mann, to have devoted himself +incessantly to the patient invalid: on his father having rallied, he +thus expresses himself:-- + +'You have heard from your brother the reason of my not having written to +you so long. I have been out but twice since my father fell into this +illness, which is now near a month, and all that time either continually +in his room, or obliged to see multitudes of people: for it is wonderful +how everybody of all kinds has affected to express their concern for +him! He has been out of danger this week; but I can't say he mended at +all perceptibly till these last three days. His spirits are amazing, and +his constitution more, for Dr. Hulse said honestly from the first, that +if he recovered it would be from his own strength, not from their art. +How much more,' he adds, mournfully, 'he will ever recover, one scarce +dare hope about; for us, he is greatly recovered; for himself--' He then +breaks off. + +A month after we find him thus referring to the parent still throbbing +in mortal agony on the death-bed, with no chance of amendment:-- + +'How dismal a prospect for him, with the possession of the greatest +understanding in the world, not the least impaired, to lie without any +use for it! for to keep him from pains and restlessness, he takes so +much opiate, that he is scarce awake four hours of the four-and-twenty; +but I will say no more of this.' + +On the 29th of March, he again wrote to his friend in the following +terms:-- + +'I begged your brothers to tell you what it is impossible for me to tell +you. You share in our common loss! Don't expect me to enter at all upon +the subject. After the melancholy two months that I have passed, and in +my situation, you will not wonder I shun a conversation which could not +be bounded by a letter, a letter that would grow into a panegyric or a +piece of a moral; improper for me to write upon, and too distressful for +us both! a death is only to be felt, never to be talked upon by those it +touches.' + +Nevertheless, the world soon had Horace Walpole for her own again; +during Lord Orford's last illness, George II. Thought of him, it seems, +even though the 'Granvilles' were the only people tolerated at court. +That famous _clique_ comprised the secretly adored of Horace (Lady +Granville now), Lady Sophia Fermor. + +'The Granville faction,' Horace wrote, before his father's death, 'are +still the constant and only countenanced people at court. Lord +Winchelsea, one of the disgraced, played at court at Twelfth-night, and +won; the king asked him next morning how much he had for his own share. +He replied, "Sir, about a quarter's salary." I liked the spirit, and was +talking to him of it the next night at Lord Granville's. "Why yes," said +he, "I think it showed familiarity at least: tell it your father, I +don't think he will dislike it."' + +The most trifling incidents divided the world of fashion and produced +the bitterest rancour. Indeed, nothing could exceed the frivolity of the +great, except their impertinence. For want of better amusements, it had +become the fashion to make conundrums, and to have printed books full of +them, which were produced at parties. But these were peaceful +diversions. The following anecdote is worthy of the times of George II. +and of Frederick of Wales:-- + +'There is a very good quarrel,' Horace writes, 'on foot, between two +duchesses: she of Queensberry sent to invite Lady Emily Lenox to a ball: +her grace of Richmond, who is wonderfully cautious since Lady Caroline's +elopement (with Mr. Fox), sent word "she could not determine." The other +sent again the same night: the same answer. The Queensberry then sent +word, that she had made up her company, and desired to be excused from +having Lady Emily's; but at the bottom of the card wrote, "Too great +trust." There is no declaration of war come out from the other duchess: +but I believe it will be made a national quarrel of the whole +illegitimate royal family.' + +Her Grace of Queensberry, Prior's 'Kitty, beautiful and young,' lorded +it, with a tyrannical hand, over the court. Her famed loveliness was, it +is true, at this time on the wane. Her portrait delineating her in her +bib and tucker, with her head rolled back underneath a sort of half cap, +half veil, shows how intellectual was the face to which such incense was +paid for years. Her forehead and eyebrows are beautiful: her eyes soft +though lively in expression: her features refined. She was as whimsical +in her attire as in her character. When, however, she chose to appear as +the _grande dame_, no one could cope with her, Mrs. Delany describes her +at the Birth-day,--her dress of white satin, embroidered with vine +leaves, convolvuluses, rose-buds, shaded after nature; but she, says her +friend, 'was _so far_ beyond the master-_piece of art_ that one could +hardly think of her clothes--allowing for her age I never saw so +_beautiful a creature_.' + +Meantime, Houghton was shut up: for its owner died £50,000 in debt, and +the elder brother of Horace, the second Lord Orford, proposed, on +entering it again, after keeping it closed for some time, to enter upon +'new, and then very unknown economy, for which there was great need:' +thus Horace refers to the changes. + +It was in the South Sea scheme that Sir Robert Walpole had realized a +large sum of money, by selling out at the right moment. In doing so he +had gained 1000 per cent. But he left little to his family, and at his +death, Horace received a legacy only of £5,000, and a thousand pounds +yearly, which he was to draw (for doing nothing) from the collector's +place in the Custom House; the surplus to be divided between his brother +Edward and himself: this provision was afterwards enhanced by some money +which came to Horace and his brothers from his uncle Captain Shorter's +property; but Horace was not at this period a rich man, and perhaps his +not marrying was owing to his dislike of fortune-hunting, or to his +dread of refusal. + +Two years after his father's death, he took a small house at Twickenham: +the property cost him nearly £14,000; in the deeds he found that it was +called Strawberry Hill. He soon commenced making considerable additions +to the house--which became a sort of raree-show in the latter part of +the last, and until a late period in this, century. + +Twickenham--so called, according to the antiquary Norden, because the +Thames, as it flows near it, seems from the islands to be divided into +two rivers,--had long been celebrated for its gardens, when Horace +Walpole, the generalissimo of all bachelors, took Strawberry Hill. +'Twicknam is as much as Twynam,' declares Norden, 'a place scytuate +between two rivers.' So fertile a locality could not be neglected by the +monks of old, the great gardeners and tillers of land in ancient days; +and the Manor of Twickenham was consequently given to the monks of +Christ Church, Canterbury, by King Edred, in 491; who piously inserted +his anathema against any person--whatever their rank, sex, or order--who +should infringe the rights of these holy men. 'May their memory,' the +king decreed, with a force worthy of the excommunicator-wholesale, Pius +IX., 'be blotted out of the Book of Life; may their strength continually +waste away, and be there no restorative to repair it!' nevertheless, +there were in the time of Lysons, a hundred and fifty acres of +fruit-gardens at Twickenham: the soil being a sandy loam, raspberries +grew plentifully. Even so early as Queen Elizabeth's days, Bishop +Corbet's father had a nursery garden at Twickenham,--so that King +Edred's curse seems to have fallen as powerlessly as it may be hoped all +subsequent maledictions may do. + +In 1698, one of the Earl of Bradford's coachmen built a small house on a +piece of ground, called in old works, Strawberry-Hill-Shot; lodgings +were here let, and Colley Cibber became one of the occupants of the +place, and here wrote his Comedy called 'Refusal; or the Ladies' +Philosophy.' The spot was so greatly admired that Talbot, Bishop of +Durham, lived eight years in it, and the Marquis of Carnarvon succeeded +him as a tenant: next came Mrs. Chenevix, a famous toy-woman. She was +probably a French woman, for Father Courayer--he who vainly endeavoured +to effect an union between the English and the Gallican churches--lodged +here some time. Horace Walpole bought up Mrs. Chenevix's lease, and +afterwards the fee-simple; and henceforth became the busiest, if not the +happiest, man in a small way in existence. + +[Illustration: STRAWBERRY HILL FROM THE THAMES.] + +We now despise the poor, over-ornate miniature Gothic style of +Strawberry Hill; we do not consider with what infinite pains the +structure was enlarged into its final and well-known form. In the first +place, Horace made a tour to collect models from the chief cathedral +cities in England; but the building required twenty-three years to +complete it. It was begun in 1753, and finished in 1776. Strawberry Hill +had one merit, everything was in keeping: the internal decorations, the +screens, the niches, the chimney-pieces, the book-shelves, were all +Gothic; and most of these were designed by Horace himself; and, indeed, +the description of Strawberry Hill is too closely connected with the +annals of his life to be dissevered from his biography. Here he gathered +up his mental forces to support and amuse himself during a long life, +sometimes darkened by spleen, but rarely by solitude; for Horace, with +much isolation of the heart, was, to the world, a social being. + +What scandal, what trifles, what important events, what littleness of +mind, yet what stretch of intellect were henceforth issued by the +recluse of Strawberry, as he plumed himself on being styled, from that +library of 'Strawberry!' Let us picture to ourselves the place, the +persons--put on, if we can, the sentiments and habits of the retreat; +look through its loopholes, not only on the wide world beyond, but into +the small world within; and face the fine gentleman author in every +period of his varied life. + +'The Strawberry Gazette,' Horace once wrote to a fine and titled lady, +'is very barren of weeds.' Such, however, was rarely the case. Peers, +and still better, peeresses,--politicians, actors, actresses,--the poor +poet who knew not where to dine, the Maecenas who was 'fed with +dedications'--the belle of the season, the demirep of many, the +antiquary, and the dilettanti,--painters, sculptors, engravers, all +brought news to the 'Strawberry Gazette;' and incense, sometimes wrung +from aching hearts, to the fastidious wit who professed to be a judge of +all material and immaterial things--from a burlesque to an Essay on +history or Philosophy--from the construction of Mrs. Chenevix's last new +toy to the mechanism of a clock made in the sixteenth century, was +lavished there. + +Suppose that it is noon-day: Horace is showing a party of guests from +London over Strawberry:--enter we with him, and let us stand in the +great parlour before a portrait by Wright of the Minister to whom all +courts bowed. 'That is my father, Sir Robert, in profile,' and a vulgar +face in profile is always seen at its vulgarest; and the +_nex-retroussé,_ the coarse mouth, the double chin, are most forcibly +exhibited in this limning by Wright; who did not, like Reynolds, or like +Lawrence, cast a _nuance_ of gentility over every subject of his pencil. +Horace--can we not hear him in imagination?--is telling his friends how +Sir Robert used to celebrate the day on which he sent in his +resignation, as a fête; then he would point out to his visitors a +Conversation-piece, one of Reynolds's earliest efforts in small life, +representing the second Earl of Edgecumbe, Selwyn, and Williams---all +wits and beaux, and _habitués_ of Strawberry. Colley Cibber, however, +was put in cold marble in the anteroom; a respect very _Horatian_, for +no man knew better how to rank his friends than the recluse of +Strawberry. He hurries the lingering guests through the little parlour, +the chimneypiece of which was copied from the tomb of Ruthall, Bishop of +Durham, in Westminster Abbey. Yet how he pauses complacently to +enumerate what has been done for him by titled belles: how these dogs, +modelled in terra-cotta, are the production of Anne Darner; a +water-colour drawing by Agnes Berry; a landscape with gipsies by Lady Di +Beauclerk;--all platonically devoted to our Horace; but he dwells long, +and his bright eyes are lighted up as he pauses before a case, looking +as if it contained only a few apparently faded, of no-one-knows-who (or +by whom) miniatures; this is a collection of Peter Oliver's best +works--portraits of the Digby family. + +How sadly, in referring to these invaluable pictures, does one's mind +revert to the day when, before the hammer of Robins had resounded in +these rooms--before his transcendent eloquence had been heard at +Strawberry--Agnes Strickland, followed by all eyes, pondered over that +group of portraits: how, as she slowly withdrew, we of the commonalty +scarce worthy to look, gathered around the spot again, and wondered at +the perfect life, the perfect colouring, proportion, and keeping of +those tiny vestiges of a bygone generation! + +Then Horace--we fear it was not till his prime was past, and a touch of +gout crippled his once active limbs--points to a picture of Rose, the +gardener (well named), presenting Charles II. with a pine-apple. Some +may murmur a doubt whether pine-apples were cultivated in cold Britain +so long since. But Horace enforces the fact; 'the likeness of the king,' +quoth he, 'is too marked, and his features are too well known to doubt +the fact;' and then he tells 'how he had received a present the last +Sunday of fruit--and from whom.' + +They pause next on Sir Peter Lely's portrait of Cowley--next on +Hogarth's Sarah Malcolm, the murderess of her mistress; then--and +doubtless, the spinster ladies are in fault here for the delay,--on Mrs. +Damer's model of two kittens, pets, though, of Horace Walpole's--for he +who loved few human beings was, after the fashion of bachelors, fond of +cats. + +They ascend the staircase: the domestic adornments merge into the +historic. We have Francis I.--not himself, but his armour: the +chimneypiece, too, is a copy from the tomb-works of John, Earl of +Cornwall, in Westminster Abbey; the stonework from that of Thomas, Duke +of Clarence, at Canterbury. + +Stay awhile: we have not done with sacrilege yet; worse things are to be +told, and we walk with consciences not unscathed into the Library, +disapproving in secret but flattering vocally. Here the very spirit of +Horace seemed to those who visited Strawberry before its fall to breathe +in every corner. Alas! when we beheld that library, it was half filled +with chests containing the celebrated MSS. of his letters; which were +bought by that enterprising publisher of learned name, Richard Bentley, +and which have since had adequate justice done them by first-rate +editors. There they were: the 'Strawberry Gazette' in full;--one glanced +merely at the yellow paper, and clear, decisive hand, and then turned to +see what objects he, who loved his books so well, collected for his +especial gratification. Mrs. Damer again! how proud he was of her +genius--her beauty, her cousinly love for himself; the wise way in which +she bound up the wounds of her breaking heart when her profligate +husband shot himself, by taking to occupation--perhaps, too, by liking +cousin Horace indifferently well. He put her models forward in every +place. Here was her Osprey Eagle in terra-cotta, a masterly production; +there a _couvre-fire,_ or _cur-few,_ imitated and modelled by her. Then +the marriage of Henry VI. Figures on the wall; near the fire is a screen +of the first tapestry ever made in England, representing a map of Surrey +and Middlesex; a notion of utility combined with ornament, which we see +still exhibited in the Sampler in old-fashioned, middle-class houses; +that poor posthumous, base-born child of the tapestry, almost defunct +itself; and a veritable piece of antiquity. + +Still more remarkable in this room was a quaint-faced clock, silver +gilt, given by Henry VIII. to Anne Boleyn; which perchance, after +marking the moments of her festive life, struck unfeelingly the hour of +her doom. + +But the company are hurrying into a little ante-room, the ceiling of +which is studded with stars in mosaic; it is therefore called jocularly, +the 'Star Chamber;' and here stands a cast of the famous bust of Henry +VII., by Torregiano, intended for the tomb of that sad-faced, +long-visaged monarch, who always looks as if royalty had disagreed with +him. + +Next we enter the Holbein Chamber. Horace hated bishops and archbishops, +and all the hierarchy; yet here again we behold another prelatical +chimneypiece--a frieze taken from the tomb of Archbishop Warham, at +Canterbury. And here, in addition to Holbein's picture of Mary Tudor, +Duchess of Suffolk, and of her third husband Adrian Stokes, are Vertue's +copies of Holbein, drawings of that great master's pictures in +Buckingham House: enough--let us hasten into the Long Gallery. Those who +remember Sir Samuel Merrick and his Gallery at Goodrich Court will have +traced in his curious, somewhat gew gaw collections of armour, +antiquities, faded portraits, and mock horses, much of the taste and +turn of mind that existed in Horace Walpole. + +The gallery, which all who recollect the sale at Strawberry Hill must +remember with peculiar interest, sounded well on paper. It was 56 feet +long, 17 high, and 13 wide; yet was neither long enough, high enough, +nor wide enough to inspire the indefinable sentiment by which we +acknowledge vastness. We beheld it the scene of George Robins's +triumphs--crowded to excess. Here strolled Lord John Russell; there, +with heavy tread, walked Daniel O'Connell. Hallam, placid, kindly, +gentle--the prince of book-worms--moved quickly through the rooms, +pausing to raise a glance to the ceiling--copied from one of the side +aisles of Henry VII.'s Chapel--but the fretwork is gilt, and there is +_petitesse_ about the Gothic which disappoints all good judges. + +But when Horace conducted his courtly guests into this his mind-vaunted +vaulted gallery, he had sometimes George Selwyn at his side; or +Gray--or, in his old age, 'my niece, the Duchess of Gloucester,' leaned +on his arm. What strange associations, what brilliant company!--the +associations can never be recalled there again; nor the company +reassembled. The gallery, like everything else, has perished under the +pressure of debt. He who was so particular, too, as to the number of +those who were admitted to see his house--he who stipulated that four +persons only should compose a party, and one party alone be shown over +each day--how would he have borne the crisis, could he have foreseen it, +when Robins became, for the time, his successor, and was the temporary +lord of Strawberry; the dusty, ruthless, wondering, depreciating mob of +brokers--the respectable host of publishers--the starving army of +martyrs, the authors--the fine ladies, who saw nothing there comparable +to Howell and James's--the antiquaries, fishing out suspicious +antiquities--the painters, clamorous over Kneller's profile of Mrs. +Barry--the virtuous indignant mothers, as they passed by the portraits +of the Duchess de la Valliere, and of Ninon de l'Enclos, and remarked, +or at all events they _might_ have remarked, that the company on the +floor was scarcely much more respectable than the company on the +walls--the fashionables, who herded together, impelled by caste, that +free-masonry of social life, enter the Beauclerk closet to look over +Lady Di's scenes from the 'Mysterious Mother'--the players and +dramatists, finally, who crowded round Hogarth's sketch of his 'Beggars' +Opera,' with portraits, and gazed on Davison's likeness of Mrs. +Clive:--how could poor Horace have tolerated the sound of their +irreverent remarks, the dust of their shoes, the degradation of their +fancying that they might doubt his spurious-looking antiquities, or +condemn his improper-looking ladies on their canvas? How, indeed, could +he? For those parlours, that library, were peopled in his days with all +those who could enhance his pleasures, or add to their own, by their +presence. When Poverty stole in there, it was irradiated by Genius. When +painters hovered beneath the fretted ceiling of that library, it was to +thank the oracle of the day, not always for large orders, but for +powerful recommendations. When actresses trod the Star Chamber, it was +as modest friends, not as audacious critics on Horace, his house, and +his pictures. + +Before we call up the spirits that were familiar at Strawberry--ere we +pass through the garden-gate, the piers of which were copied from the +tomb of Bishop William de Luda, in Ely Cathedral--let us glance at the +chapel, and then a word or two about Walpole's neighbours and anent +Twickenham. + +The front of the chapel was copied from Bishop Audley's tomb at +Salisbury. Four panels of wood, taken from the Abbey of St. Edmund's +Bury, displayed the portraits of Cardinal Beaufort, of Humphrey Duke of +Gloucester, and of Archbishop Kemp. So much for the English church. + +Next was seen a magnificent shrine in mosaic, from the church of St. +Mary Maggiore, in Rome. This was the work of the noted Peter Cavalini, +who constructed the tomb of Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey. +The shrine had figured over the sepulchre of four martyrs, who rested +between it in 1257: then the principal window in the chapel was brought +from Bexhill in Sussex; and displayed portraits of Henry III. and his +queen. + +It was not every day that gay visitors travelled down the dusty roads +from London to visit the recluse at Strawberry: but Horace wanted them +not, for he had neighbours. In his youth he had owned for his playfellow +the ever witty, the precocious, the all-fascinating Lady Mary Wortley +Montagu. 'She was,' he wrote, 'a playfellow of mine when we were +children. She was always a dirty little thing. This habit continued with +her. When at Florence, the Grand Duke gave her apartments in his palace. +One room sufficed for everything; and when she went away, the stench was +so strong that they were obliged to fumigate the chamber with vinegar +for a week.' + +Let not the scandal be implicitly credited. Lady Mary, dirty or clean, +resided occasionally, however, at Twickenham. When the admirable Lysons +composed his 'Environs of London,' Horace Walpole was still living--it +was in 1795--to point out to him the house in which his brilliant +acquaintance lived. It was then inhabited by Dr. Morton. The profligate +and clever Duke of Wharton lived also at Twickenham. + +Marble Hill was built by George II, for the countess of Suffolk, and +Henry, Earl of Pembroke, was the architect. Of later years, the +beautiful and injured Mrs. Fitzherbert might be seen traversing the +greensward, which was laved by the then pellucid waters of the Thames. +The parish of Twickenham, in fact, was noted for the numerous characters +who have, at various times, lived in it: Robert Boyle, the great +philosopher; James Craggs, Secretary of State; Lord George Germaine; +Lord Bute--are strangely mixed up with the old memories which circle +around Twickenham to say nothing of its being, in after years, the abode +of Louis Philippe, and now, of his accomplished son. + +One dark figure in the background of society haunts us also: Lady +Macclesfield, the cruel mother of Savage, polluted Twickenham by her +evil presence. + +Let us not dwell on her name, but recall, with somewhat of pride, that +the names of that knot of accomplished, intellectual women, who composed +the neighbourhood of Strawberry, were all English; those who loved to +revel in all its charms of society and intellect were our justly-prized +countrywomen. + +Foremost in the bright constellation was Anne Seymour Conway, too soon +married to the Hon. John Darner. She was one of the loveliest, the most +enterprizing, and the most gifted women of her time--thirty-one years +younger than Horace, having been born in 1748. He doubtless liked her +the more that no ridicule could attach to his partiality, which was that +of a father to a daughter, insofar as regarded his young cousin. She +belonged to a family dear to him, being the daughter of Field Marshal +Henry Seymour Conway: then she was beautiful, witty, a courageous +politician, a heroine, fearless of losing caste, by aspiring to be an +artist. She was, in truth, of our own time rather than of that. The +works which she left at Strawberry are scattered; and if still +traceable, are probably in many instances scarcely valued. But in that +lovely spot, hallowed by the remembrance of Mrs. Siddons, who lived +there in some humble capacity--say maid, say companion--in Guy's Cliff +House, near Warwick--noble traces of Anne Damer's genius are extant: +busts of the majestic Sally Siddons; of Nature's aristocrat, John +Kemble; of his brother Charles--arrest many a look, call up many a +thought of Anne Damer and her gifts: her intelligence, her warmth of +heart, her beauty, her associates. Of her powers Horace Walpole had the +highest opinion. 'If they come to Florence,' he wrote, speaking of Mrs. +Damer's going to Italy for the winter, 'the great duke should beg Mrs. +Damer to give him something of her statuary; and it would be a greater +curiosity than anything in his Chamber of Painters. She has executed +several marvels since you saw her; and has lately carved two colossal +heads for the bridge at Henley, which is the most beautiful in the +world, next to the Ponte di Trinità and was principally designed by her +father, General Conway.' + +No wonder that he left to this accomplished relative the privilege of +living, after his death, at Strawberry Hill, of which she took +possession in 1797, and where she remained twenty years; giving it up, +in 1828, to Lord Waldegrave. + +She was, as we have said, before her time in her appreciation of what +was noble and superior, in preference to that which gives to caste +alone, its supremacy. During her last years she bravely espoused an +unfashionable cause; and disregarding the contempt of the lofty, became +the champion of the injured and unhappy Caroline of Brunswick. + +From his retreat at Strawberry, Horace Walpole heard all that befel the +object of his flame, Lady Sophia Fermor. His letters present from time +to time such passages as these; Lady Pomfret, whom he detested, being +always the object of his satire:-- + +'There is not the least news; but that my Lord Carteret's wedding has +been deferred on Lady Sophia's (Fermor's) falling dangerously ill of a +scarlet fever; but they say it is to be next Saturday. She is to have +£1,600 a year jointure, £400 pin-money, and £2,000 of jewels. Carteret +says he does not intend to marry the mother (Lady Pomfret) and the whole +family. What do you think my Lady intends?' + +Lord Carteret, who was the object of Lady Pomfret's successful +generalship, was at this period, 1744, fifty-four years of age, having +been born in 1690. He was the son of George, Lord Carteret, by Grace, +daughter of the first Earl of Bath, of the line of Granville--a title +which became eventually his. The fair Sophia, in marrying him, espoused +a man of no ordinary attributes. In person, Horace Walpole, after the +grave had closed over one whom he probably envied, thus describes him:-- + + 'Commanding beauty, smoothed by cheerful grace, + Sat on each open feature of his face. + Bold was his language, rapid, glowing, strong, + And science flowed spontaneous from his tongue: + A genius seizing systems, slighting rules, + And void of gall, with boundless scorn of fools.' + +After having been Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Carteret attended his +royal master in the campaign, during which the Battle of Dettingen was +fought. He now held the reins of government in his own hands as premier. +Lord Chesterfield has described him as possessing quick precision, nice +decision, and unbounded presumption. The Duke of Newcastle used to say +of him that he was a 'man who never doubted.' + +In a subsequent letter we find the sacrifice of the young and lovely +Sophia completed. Ambition was the characteristic of her family: and she +went, not unwillingly, to the altar. The whole affair is too amusingly +told to be given in other language than that of Horace:-- + +'I could tell you a great deal of news,' he writes to Horace Mann, 'but +it would not be what you would expect. It is not of battles, sieges, and +declarations of war; nor of invasions, insurrections and addresses: it +is the god of love, not he of war, who reigns in the newspapers. The +town has made up a list of six-and-thirty weddings, which I shall not +catalogue to you. But the chief entertainment has been the nuptials of +our great Quixote (Carteret) and the fair Sophia. On the point of +matrimony, she fell ill of a scarlet fever, and was given over, while he +had the gout, but heroically sent her word, that if she was well, he +_would_ be well. They corresponded every day, and he used to plague the +cabinet council with reading her letters to them. Last night they were +married; and as all he does must have a particular air in it, they +supped at Lord Pomfret's. At twelve, Lady Granville (his mother) and all +his family went to bed, but the porter: then my lord went home, and +waited for her in the lodge. She came alone, in a hackney chair, met him +in the hall, and was led up the back stairs to bed. What is ridiculously +lucky is, that Lord Lincoln goes into waiting to-day, and will be to +present her!' + +The event was succeeded by a great ball at the Duchess of Richmond's, in +honour of the bride, Lady Carteret paying her ladyship the 'highest +honours,' which she received in the 'highest state.' 'I have seen her,' +adds Horace, 'but once, and found her just what I expected, _très grande +dame_, full of herself, and yet not with an air of happiness. She looks +ill, and is grown lean, but is still the finest figure in the world. The +mother (Lady Pomfret) is not so exalted as I expected; I fancy Carteret +has kept his resolution, and does not marry her too.' + +Whilst this game was being played out, one of Walpole's most valued +neighbours, Pope, was dying of dropsy, and every evening a gentle +delirium possessed him. Again does Horace return to the theme, ever in +his thoughts--the Carterets: again does he recount their triumphs and +their follies. + +'I will not fail'--still to Horace Mann--'to make your compliments to +the Pomfrets and Carterets. I see them seldom but I am in favour; so I +conclude, for my Lady Pomfret told me the other night that I said better +things than anybody. I was with them all at a subscription ball at +Ranelagh last week, which my Lady Carteret thought proper to look upon +as given to her, and thanked the gentlemen, who were not quite so well +pleased at her condescending to take it to herself. I did the honours of +all her dress. "How charming your ladyship's cross is! I am sure the +design was your own!"--"No, indeed; my lord sent it me just as it is." +Then as much to the mother. Do you wonder I say better things than +anybody?' + +But these brilliant scenes were soon mournfully ended. Lady Sophia, the +haughty, the idolized, the Juno of that gay circle, was suddenly carried +off by a fever. With real feeling Horace thus tells the tale:-- + +'Before I talk of any public news, I must tell you what you will be very +sorry for. Lady Granville (Lady Sophia Fermor) is dead. She had a fever +for six weeks before her lying-in, and could never get it off. Last +Saturday they called in another physician, Dr. Oliver. On Monday he +pronounced her out of danger; about seven in the evening, as Lady +Pomfret and Lady Charlotte (Fermor) were sitting by her, the first +notice they had of her immediate danger was her sighing and saying, "I +feel death come very fast upon me!" She repeated the same words +frequently, remained perfectly in her senses and calm, and died about +eleven at night. It is very shocking for anybody so young, so handsome, +so arrived at the height of happiness, to be so quickly snatched away.' + +So vanished one of the brightest stars of the court. The same autumn +(1745) was the epoch of a great event; the marching of Charles Edward +into England. Whilst the Duke of Cumberland was preparing to head the +troops to oppose him, the Prince of Wales was inviting a party to +supper, the main feature of which was the citadel of Carlisle in sugar, +the company all besieging it with sugar-plums. It would, indeed, as +Walpole declared, be impossible to relate all the _Caligulisms_ of this +effeminate, absurd prince. But buffoonery and eccentricity were the +order of the day. 'A ridiculous thing happened,' Horace writes, 'when +the princess saw company after her confinement. The new-born babe was +shown in a mighty pretty cradle, designed by Kent, under a canopy in the +great drawing-room. Sir William Stanhope went to look at it. Mrs, +Herbert, the governess, advanced to unmantle it. He said, "In wax, I +suppose?" "Sir?" "In wax, madam?" "The young prince, sir?" "Yes, in wax, +I suppose?" This is his odd humour. When he went to see the duke at his +birth, he said, "Lord, it sees!"' + +The recluse of Strawberry was soon consoled by hearing that the rebels +were driven back from Derby, where they had penetrated, and where the +remembrance of the then gay, sanguine, brave young Chevalier long +lingered among the old inhabitants. One of the last traces of his +short-lived possession of the town is gone: very recently, Exeter House, +where he lodged and where he received his adherents, has been pulled +down; the ground on which it stood, with its court and garden--somewhat +in appearace like an old French hotel--being too valuable for the relic +of bygone times to be spared. The panelled chambers, the fine staircase, +certain pictures--one by Wright of Derby, of him--one of Miss +Walkinshaw--have all disappeared. + +Of the capture, the trial, the death of his adherents, Horace Walpole +has left the most graphic and therefore touching account that has been +given; whilst he calls a 'rebellion on the defensive' a 'despicable +affair.' Humane, he reverted with horror to the atrocities of General +Hawley, 'the Chief Justice,' as he was designated, who had a 'passion +for frequent and sudden executions.' When this savage commander gained +intelligence of a French spy coming over, he displayed him at once +before the army on a gallows, dangling in his muff and boots. When one +of the surgeons begged for the body of a deserter to dissect, 'Well,' +said the wretch, 'but you must let me have the skeleton to hang up in +the guard-room,' Such was the temper of the times; vice, childishness, +levity at court, brutality in the camp, were the order of the day. +Horace, even Horace, worldly in all, indifferent as to good and bad, +seems to have been heart sick. His brother's matrimonial infidelity +vexed him also sorely. Lady Orford, 'tired,' as he expresses it, of +'sublunary affairs,' was trying to come to an arrangement with her +husband, from whom she had been long separated; the price was to be, he +fancied, £2,000 a year. Meantime, during the convulsive state of +political affairs, he interested himself continually in the improvement +of Strawberry Hill. There was a rival building, Mr. Bateman's Monastery, +at Old Windsor, which is said to have had more uniformity of design than +Strawberry Hill. Horace used indeed to call the house of which he became +so proud a paper house; the walls were at first so slight, and the roof +so insecure in heavy rains. Nevertheless, his days were passed as +peacefully there as the premature infirmities which came upon him would +permit. + +From the age of twenty-five his fingers were enlarged and deformed by +chalk-stones, which were discharged twice a year. 'I can chalk up a +score with more rapidity than any man in England,' was his melancholy +jest. He had now adopted as a necessity a strict temperance: he sat up +very late, either writing or conversing, yet always breakfasted at nine +o'clock. After the death of Madame du Deffand, a little fat dog, +scarcely able to move for age and size--her legacy--used to proclaim his +approach by barking. The little favourite was placed beside him on a +sofa; a tea-kettle, stand, and heater were brought in, and he drank two +or three cups of tea out of the finest and most precious china of +Japan--that of a pure white. He breakfasted with an appetite, feeding +from his table the little dog and his pet squirrels. + +Dinner at Strawberry Hill was usually served up in the small parlour in +winter, the large dining-room being reserved for large parties. As age +drew on, he was supported down stairs by his valet; and then, says the +compiler of Walpoliana, 'he ate most moderately of chicken, pheasant, or +any light food. Pastry he disliked, as difficult of digestion, though he +would taste a morsel of venison-pie. Never but once, that he drank two +glasses of white wine, did the editor see him taste any liquor, except +ice-water. A pail of ice was placed under the table, in which stood a +decanter of water, from which he supplied himself with his favourite +beverage.' + +No wine was drunk after dinner, when the host of Strawberry Hill called +instantly to some one to ring the bell for coffee. It was served +upstairs, and there, adds the same writer, 'he would pass about five +o'clock, and generally resuming his place on the sofa, would sit till +two in the morning, in miscellaneous chit-chat, full of singular +anecdotes, strokes of wit, and acute observations, occasionally sending +for books, or curiosities, or passing to the library, as any reference +happened to arise in conversation. After his coffee, he tasted nothing; +but the snuff-box of _tabac d'etrennes_, from Fribourg's, was not +forgotten, and was replenished from a canister lodged in an ancient +marble urn of great thickness, which stood in the window seat, and +served to secure its moisture and rich flavour.' + +In spite of all his infirmities, Horace Walpole took no care of his +health, as far as out-door exercise was concerned. His friends beheld +him with horror go out on a dewy day: he would even step out in his +slippers. In his own grounds he never wore a hat: he used to say, that +on his first visit to Paris he was ashamed of his effeminacy, when he +saw every meagre little Frenchman whom he could have knocked down in a +breath walking without a hat, which he could not do without a certainty +of taking the disease which the Germans say is endemical in England, and +which they call _to catch cold_. The first trial, he used to tell his +friends, cost him a fever, but he got over it. Draughts of air, damp +rooms, windows open at his back, became matters of indifference to him +after once getting through the hardening process. He used even to be +vexed at the officious solicitude of friends on this point, and with +half a smile would say, 'My back is the same as my face, and my neck is +like my nose.' He regarded his favourite iced-water as a preservative to +his stomach, which, he said, would last longer than his bones. He did +not take into account that the stomach is usually the seat of disease. + +One naturally inquires why the amiable recluse never, in his best days, +thought of marriage: a difficult question to be answered. In men of that +period, a dissolute life, an unhappy connection, too frequently +explained the problem. In the case before us no such explanation can be +offered. Horace Walpole had many votaries, many friends, several +favourites, but no known mistress. The marks of the old bachelor +fastened early on him, more especially after he began to be governed by +his _valet de chambre_. The notable personage who ruled over the pliant +Horace was a Swiss, named Colomb. This domestic tyrant was despotic; if +Horace wanted a tree to be felled, Colomb opposed it, and the master +yielded. Servants, in those days, were intrinsically the same as in +ours, but they differed in manner. The old familiarity had not gone out, +but existed as it still does among the French. Those who recollect Dr. +Parr will remember how stern a rule his factotum Sam exercised over him. +Sam put down what wine he chose, nay, almost invited the guests; at all +events, he had his favourites among them. And in the same way as Sam +ruled at Hatton, Colomb was, _de facto,_ the master of Strawberry Hill. + +With all its defects, the little 'plaything house' as Horace Walpole +called it, must have been a charming house to visit in. First, there was +the host. 'His engaging manners,' writes the editor of Walpoliana, 'and +gentle, endearing affability to his friends, exceed all praise. Not the +smallest hauteur, or consciousness of rank or talent, appeared in his +familiar conferences; and he was ever eager to dissipate any constraint +that might occur, as imposing a constraint upon himself, and knowing +that any such chain enfeebles and almost annihilates the mental powers. +Endued with exquisite sensibility, his wit never gave the smallest +wound, even to the grossest ignorance of the world, or the most morbid +hypochondriac bashfulness.' + +He had, in fact, no excuse for being doleful or morbid. How many +resources were his! what an even destiny! what prosperous fortunes! What +learned luxury he revelled in! he was enabled to 'pick up all the roses +of science, and to leave the thorns behind.' To how few of the gifted +have the means of gratification been permitted! to how many has hard +work been allotted! Then, when genius has been endowed with rank, with +wealth, how often it has been degraded by excess! Rochester's passions +ran riot in one century: Beckford's gifts were polluted by his vices in +another--signal landmarks of each age. But Horace Walpole was prudent, +decorous, even respectable: no elevated aspirations, no benevolent views +ennobled under the _petitesse_ of his nature. He had neither genius nor +romance: he was even devoid of sentiment; but he was social to all, +neighbourly to many, and attached to some of his fellow-creatures. + +The 'prettiest bauble' possible, as he called Strawberry Hill, 'set in +enamelled meadows in filigree hedges,' was surrounded by 'dowagers as +plenty as flounders;' such was Walpole's assertion. As he sat in his +library, scented by caraway, heliotropes, or pots of tuberose, or +orange-trees in flower, certain dames would look in upon him, sometimes +_malgrê lui_, sometimes to his bachelor heart's content. + +'Thank God!' he wrote to his cousin Conway, 'the Thames is between me +and the Duchess of Queensberry!' Walpole's dislike to his fair neighbour +may partly have originated in the circumstance of her birth, and her +grace's presuming to plume herself on what he deemed an unimportant +distinction. Catherine Hyde, Duchess of Queensberry, was the +great-granddaughter of the famous Lord Clarendon, and the great-niece of +Anne, Duchess of York. Prior had in her youth celebrated her in the +'Female Phaëton,' as 'Kitty:' in his verse he begs Phaëton to give Kitty +the chariot, if but for a day. + +In reference to this, Horace Walpole, in the days of his admiration of +her grace, had made the following impromptu:-- + +'On seeing the Duchess of Queensberry walk at the funeral of the +Princess Dowager of Wales,-- + + 'To many a Kitty, Love his car + Would for a day engage; + But Prior's Kitty, ever fair, + Obtained it for an age.' + +It was Kitty who took Gay under her patronage, who resented the +prohibition of the 'Beggar's Opera,' remonstrated with the king and +queen, and was thereupon forbidden the court. She carried the poet to +her house. She may have been ridiculous, but she had a warm, generous +heart. 'I am now,' Gay wrote to Swift in 1729, 'in the Duke of +Queensberry's house, and have been so ever since I left Hampstead; where +I was carried at a time that it was thought I could not live a day. I +must acquaint you (because I know it will please you) that during my +sickness I had many of the kindest proofs of friendship, particularly +from the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry; who, if I had been their +nearest relation and dearest friend, could not have treated me with more +constant attendance then, and they continue the same to me now.' + +The duchess appears to have been one of those wilful, eccentric, spoiled +children, whom the world at once worships and ridicules: next to the +Countess of Pomfret, she was Horace Walpole's pet aversion. She was well +described as being 'very clever, very whimsical, and just not mad.' Some +of Walpole's touches are strongly confirmatory of this description. For +instance, her grace gives a ball, orders every one to come at six, to +sup at twelve, and go away directly after: opens the ball herself with a +minuet. To this ball she sends strange invitations; 'yet,' says Horace, +'except these flights, the only extraordinary thing the duchess did was +to do nothing extraordinary, for I do not call it very mad that some +pique happening between her and the Duchess of Bedford, the latter had +this distich sent to her;-- + + 'Come with a whistle--come with a call: + Come with good-will, or come not at all.' + +'I do not know whether what I am going to tell you did not border a +little upon Moorfields. The gallery where they danced was very cold. +Lord Lorn, George Selwyn, and I retired into a little room, and sat +comfortably by the fire. The duchess looked in, said nothing, and sent a +smith to take the hinges of the door oft. We understood the hint--left +the room--and so did the smith the door.' + +'I must tell you,' he adds in another letter, 'of an admirable reply of +your acquaintance, the Duchess of Queensberry: old Lady Granville, Lord +Carteret's mother, whom they call _the queen-mother_, from taking upon +her to do the honours of her son's power, was pressing the duchess to +ask her for some place for herself or friends, and assured her that she +would procure it, be it what it would. Could she have picked out a +fitter person to be gracious to? The duchess made her a most grave +curtsey, and said, "Indeed, there was one thing she had set her heart +on."--"Dear child, how you oblige me by asking anything! What is it? +Tell me."--"Only that you would speak to my Lord Carteret to get me made +lady of the bedchamber to the Queen of Hungary."' + +The duchess was, therefore, one of the dowagers, 'thick as flounders,' +whose proximity was irritating to the fastidious bachelor. There was, +however, another Kitty between whom and Horace a tender friendship +subsisted: this was Kitty Clive, the famous actress; formerly Kitty +Ruftar. Horace had given her a house on his estate, which he called +sometimes 'Little Strawberry Hill,' and sometimes 'Cliveden;' and here +Mrs. Clive lived with her brother, Mr. Ruftar, until 1785. She formed, +for her friend, a sort of outer-home, in which he passed his evenings. +Long had he admired her talents. Those were the days of the drama in all +its glory: the opera was unfashionable. There were, Horace writes in +1742, on the 26th of May, only two-and-forty people in the Opera House, +in the pit and boxes: people were running to see 'Miss Lucy in Town,' at +Drury Lane, and to admire Mrs. Clive, in her imitation of the +Muscovites; but the greatest crowds assembled to wonder at Garrick, in +'Wine Merchant turned Player;' and great and small alike rushed to +Goodman's Fields to see him act all parts, and to laugh at his admirable +mimicry. It was perhaps, somewhat in jealousy of the counter attraction, +that Horace declared he saw nothing wonderful in the acting of Garrick, +though it was then heresy to say so. 'Now I talk of players,' he adds in +the same letter, 'tell Mr. Chute that his friend Bracegirdle breakfasted +with me this morning.' Horace delighted in such intimacies, and in +recalling old times. + +Mrs. Abingdon, another charming and clever actress, was also a denizen +of Twickenham, which became the most fashionable village near the +metropolis. Mrs. Pritchard, likewise, was attracted there; but the +proximity of the Countess of Suffolk, who lived at Marble Hill was the +delight of a great portion of Horace Walpole's life. Her reminiscences, +her anecdotes, her experience, were valuable as well as entertaining to +one who was for ever gathering up materials for history, or for +biography, or for letters to absent friends. + +In his own family he found little to cheer him: but if he hated one or +two more especially--and no one could hate more intensely than Horace +Walpole--it was his uncle, Lord Wapole, and his cousin, that nobleman's +son, whom he christened Pigwiggin; 'my monstrous uncle;' 'that old +buffoon, my uncle;' are terms which occur in his letters, and he speaks +of the bloody civil wars between 'Horatio Walpole' and 'Horace Walpole.' + +Horatio Walpole, the brother of Sir Robert, was created in June, 1756, +Baron Walpole of Wolterton, as a recompense for fifty years passed in +the public service--an honour which he only survived nine months. He +expired in February, 1757. His death removed one subject of bitter +dislike from the mind of Horace; but enough remained in the family to +excite grief and resentment. + +Towards his own two brothers, Robert, Earl of Orford, and Edward +Walpole, Horace the younger, as he was styled in contradistinction to +his uncle, bore very little affection. His feelings, however, for his +nephew George, who succeeded his father as Earl of Orford in 1751, were +more creditable to his heart; yet he gives a description of this +ill-fated young man in his letters, which shows at once pride and +disapprobation. One lingers with regret over the character and the +destiny of this fine young nobleman, whose existence was rendered +miserable by frequent attacks, at intervals, of insanity. + +Never was there a handsomer, a more popular, a more engaging being than +George, third Earl of Orford. When he appeared at the head of the +Norfolk regiment of militia, of which he was colonel, even the great +Lord Chatham broke out into enthusiasm:--'Nothing,' he wrote, 'could +make a better appearance than the two Norfolk battalions; Lord Orford, +with the front of Mars himself, and really the greatest figure under +arms I ever saw, as the theme of every tongue.' His person and air, +Horace Walpole declared, had a noble wildness in them: crowds followed +the battalions when the king reviewed them in Hyde Park; and among the +gay young officers in their scarlet uniforms, faced with black, in their +buff waistcoats and gold buttons, none was so conspicuous for martial +bearing as Lord Onord, although classed by his uncle 'among the knights +of shire who had never in their lives shot anything but woodcocks.' + +But there was a peculiarity of character in the young peer which shocked +Horace. 'No man,' he says in one of his letters, 'ever felt such a +disposition to love another as I did to love him. I flattered myself +that he would restore some lustre to our house--at least not let it +totally sink; but I am forced to give him up, and all my Walpole +views.... He has a good breeding, and attention when he is with you that +is even flattering;... he promises, offers everything one can wish; but +this is all: the instant he leaves you, all the world are nothing to +him; he would not give himself the least trouble in the world to give +any one satisfaction; yet this is mere indolence of mind, not of body: +his whole pleasure is outrageous exercise.' + +'He is,' in another place Horace adds, 'the most selfish man in the +world: without being in the least interested, he loves nobody but +himself, yet neglects every view of fortune and ambition. Yet,' he +concludes, 'it is impossible not to love him when one sees him: +impossible to esteem him when one thinks on him.' + +The young lord, succeeding to an estate deeply encumbered, both by his +father and grandfather, rushed on the turf, and involved himself still +more. In vain did Horace the younger endeavour to secure for him the +hand of Miss Nicholls, an heiress with £50,000, and, to that end, placed +the young lady with Horace the elder (Lord Walpole), at Wolterton. The +scheme failed: the crafty old politician thought he might as well +benefit his own sons as his nephew, for he had himself claims on the +Houghton estate which he expected Miss Nicholl's fortune might help to +liquidate. + +At length the insanity and recklessness displayed by his nephew--the +handsome martial George--induced poor Horace to take affairs in his own +hands. His reflections, on his paying a visit to Houghton to look after +the property there, are pathetically expressed:-- + +'Here I am again at Houghton,' he writes in March, 1761, 'and alone; in +this spot where (except two hours last month) I have not been in sixteen +years. Think what a crowd of reflections!... Here I am probably for the +last time of my life: every clock that strikes, tells me I am an hour +nearer to yonder church--that church into which I have not yet had +courage to enter; where lies that mother on whom I doated, and who +doated on me! There are the two rival mistresses of Houghton, neither of +whom ever wished to enjoy it. There, too, is he who founded its +greatness--to contribute to whose fall Europe was embroiled; there he +sleeps in quiet and dignity, while his friend and his foe--rather his +false ally and real enemy--Newcastle and Bath, are exhausting the dregs +of their pitiful lives in squabbles and pamphlets. + +When he looked at the pictures--that famous Houghton collection--the +surprise of Horace was excessive. Accustomed to see nothing elsewhere +but daubs, he gazed with ecstasy on them. 'The majesty of Italian +ideas,' he says, 'almost sinks before the warm nature of Italian +colouring! Alas! don't I grow old?' + +As he lingered in the gallery, with mingled pride and sadness, a party +arrived to see the house--a man and three women in riding-dresses--who +'rode post' through the apartments. 'I could not,' he adds, 'hurry +before them fast enough; they were not so long in seeing the whole +gallery as I could have been in one room, to examine what I knew by +heart. I remember formerly being often diverted with this kind of +_seers_; they come, ask what such a room is called in which Sir Robert +lay, write it down, admire a lobster or a cabbage in a Market Piece, +dispute whether the last room was green or purple, and then hurry to the +inn, for fear the fish should be over-dressed. How different my +sensations! not a picture here but recalls a history; not one but I +remembered in Downing Street, or Chelsea, where queens and crowds +admired them, though seeing them as little as these travellers![5] + +[5: Sir Robert Walpole purchased a house and garden at Chelsea in 1722, +near the college, adjoining Gough House.--Cunningham's 'London.'] + +After tea he strolled into the garden. They told him it was now called a +_pleasure-ground._ To Horace it was a scene of desolation--a floral +Nineveh. 'What a dissonant idea of pleasure!--those groves, those +_allées_, where I have passed so many charming moments, were now +stripped up or overgrown--many fond paths I could not unravel, though +with an exact clue in my memory. I met two gamekeepers, and a thousand +hares! In the days when all my soul was tuned to pleasure and vivacity +(and you will think perhaps it is far from being out of tune yet), I +hated Houghton and its solitude; yet I loved this garden, as now, with +many regrets, I love Houghton--Houghton, I know not what to call it--a +monument of grandeur or ruin!' + +Although he did not go with the expectation of finding a land flowing +with milk and honey, the sight of all this ruin long saddened his +thoughts. All was confusion, disorder, debts, mortgages, sales, pillage, +villainy, waste, folly, and madness. The nettles and brambles in the +park were up to his shoulders; horses had been turned into the garden, +and banditti lodged in every cottage. + +The perpetuity of livings that came up to the very park-palings had been +sold, and the farms let at half their value. Certainly, if Houghton were +bought by Sir Robert Walpole with public money, that public was now +avenged. + +The owner of this ruined property had just stemmed the torrent; but the +worst was to come. The pictures were sold, and to Russia they went. + +Whilst thus harassed by family misfortunes, other annoyances came. The +mournful story of Chatterton's fate was painfully mixed up with the +tenour of Horace Walpole's life. + +The gifted and unfortunate Thomas Chatterton was born at Bristol in +1752. Even from his birth fate seemed to pursue him, for he was a +posthumous son: and if the loss of a father in the highest ranks of life +be severely felt, how much more so is it to be deplored in those which +are termed the working classes! + +The friendless enthusiast was slow in learning to read; but when the +illuminated capitals of an old book were presented to him, he quickly +learned his letters. This fact, and his being taught to read out of a +black-letter Bible, are said to have accounted for his facility in the +imitation of antiquities. Pensive and taciturn, he picked up education +at a charity-school, until apprenticed to a scrivener, when he began +that battle of life which ended to him so fatally. + +Upon very slight accidents did his destiny hinge. In those days women +worked with thread, and used thread-papers. Now paper was, at that time, +dear: dainty matrons liked tasty thread-papers. A pretty set of +thread-papers, with birds or flowers painted on each, was no mean +present for a friend. Chatterton, a quiet child, one day noticed that +his mother's thread-papers were of no ordinary materials. They were made +of parchment, and on this parchment was some of the black-letter +characters by which his childish attention had been fixed to his book. +The fact was, that his uncle was sexton to the ancient church of St. +Mary Redcliffe, at Bristol; and the parchment was the fruit of theft. +Chatterton's father had carried off, from a room in the church, certain +ancient manuscripts, which had been left about; being originally +abstracted from what was called Mr. Canynge's coffin. Mr. Canynge, an +eminent merchant, had rebuilt St. Mary Redcliffe in the reign of Edward +IV.: and the parchments, therefore, were of some antiquity. The +antiquary groans over their loss in vain: Chatterton's father had +covered his books with them; his mother had used up the strips for +thread-papers; and Thomas Chatterton himself contrived to abstract a +considerable portion also, for his own purposes. + +He was ingenious, industrious, a poet by nature, and, wonderful to say, +withal a herald by taste. Upon his nefarious possessions, he founded a +scheme of literary forgeries; purporting to be ancient pieces of poetry +found in Canynge's chest; and described as being the production of +Thomas Canynge and of his friend, one Thomas Rowley, a priest. Money and +books were sent to Chatterton in return for little strips of vellum, +which he passed off as the original itself; and the successful forger +might now be seen in deep thought, walking in the meadows near +Redcliffe; a marked, admired, poetic youth. + +In 1769, Chatterton wrote to Horace Walpole, offering to send him some +accounts of eminent painters who had flourished at Bristol, and at the +same time mentioning the discovery of the poems, and enclosing some +specimens. In a subsequent letter he begged Walpole to aid him in his +wish to be freed from his then servile condition, and to be placed in +one more congenial to his pursuits. + +In his choice of a patron poor Chatterton made a fatal mistake. The +benevolence of Horace was of a general kind, and never descended to +anything obscure or unappreciated. There was a certain hardness in that +nature of his which had so pleasant an aspect. 'An artist,' he once +said, 'has his pencils--an author his pens--and the public must reward +them as it pleases.' Alas! he forgot how long it is before penury, even +ennobled by genius, can make itself seen, heard, approved, repaid: how +vast is the influence of _prestige!_ how generous the hand which is +extended to those in want, even if in error! All that Horace did, +however, was strictly correct: he showed the poems to Gray and Mason, +who pronounced them forgeries; and he wrote a cold and reproving letter +to the starving author: and no one could blame him: Chatterton demanded +back his poems; Walpole was going to Paris, and forgot to return them. +Another letter came: the wounded poet again demanded them, adding that +Walpole would not have dared to use him so had he not been poor. The +poems were returned in a blank cover: and here all Walpole's concern +with Thomas Chatterton ends. All this happened in 1769. In August, 1770, +the remains of the unhappy youth were carried to the burial-ground of +Shoe Lane workhouse, near Holborn. He had swallowed arsenic; had +lingered a day in agonies; and then, at the age of eighteen expired. +Starvation had prompted the act: yet on the day before he had committed +it, he had refused a dinner, of which he was invited by his hostess to +partake, assuring her that he was not hungry. Just or unjust, the world +has never forgiven Horace Walpole for Chatterton's misery. His +indifference has been contrasted with the generosity of Edmund Burke to +Crabbe: a generosity to which we owe 'The Village,' 'The Borough,' and +to which Crabbe owed his peaceful old age, and almost his existence. The +cases were different; but Crabbe had his faults--and Chatterton was +worth saving. It is well for genius that there are souls in the world +more sympathizing, less worldly, and more indulgent, than those of such +men as Horace Walpole. Even the editor of 'Walpoliana' lets judgment go +by default. 'As to artists,' he says, 'he paid them what they earned, +and he commonly employed mean ones, that the reward might be smaller.' + +Let us change the strain: stilled be the mournful note on which we have +rested too long. What have wits and beaux and men of society to do with +poets and beggars? Behold, Horace, when he has written his monitory +letter, packs up for Paris. Let us follow him there, and see him in the +very centre of his pleasures--in the _salon_ of La Marquise du Deffand. + +Horace Walpole had perfected his education, as a fine gentleman, by his +intimacy with Madame Geoffrin, to whom Lady Hervey had introduced him. +She called him _le nouveau Richelieu_; and Horace was sensible of so +great a compliment from a woman at once '_spirituelle_ and _pieuse_'--a +combination rare in France. Nevertheless, she had the national views of +matrimony. 'What have you done, Madame,' said a foreigner to her, 'with +the poor man I used to see here, who never spoke a word?' + +'Ah, _mon Dieu!_ was the reply, 'that was my husband: he is dead.' She +spoke in the same tone as if she had been specifying the last new opera, +or referring to the latest work in vogue: things just passed away. + +The _Marquise du Deffaud_ was a very different personage to Madame +Geoffrin, whose great enemy she was. When Horace Walpole first entered +into the society of the Marquise, she was stone blind, and old; but +retained not only her wit, and her memory, but her passions. Passions, +like artificial flowers, are unbecoming to age: and those of the witty, +atheistical Marquise are almost revolting. Scandal still attached her +name to that of Hénault, of whom Voltaire wrote the epitaph beginning + + 'Henault, fameus par vos soupers + Et votre "chronologie,"' &c. + +Hénault was for many years deaf; and, during the whole of his life, +disagreeable. There was something farcical in the old man's receptions +on his death-bed; whilst, amongst the rest of the company came Madame du +Deffand, a blind old woman of seventy, who, bawling in his ear, aroused +the lethargic man, by inquiring after a former rival of hers, Madame de +Castelmaron--about whom he went on babbling until death stopped his +voice. + +She was seventy years of age when Horace Walpole, at fifty, became her +passion. She was poor and disreputable, and even the high position of +having been mistress to the regent could not save her from being decried +by a large portion of that society which centered round the _bel +esprit_. 'She was,' observes the biographer of Horace Walpole (the +lamented author of the 'Crescent and the Cross,') 'always gay, always +charming--everything but a Christian.' The loss of her eyesight did not +impair the remains of her beauty; her replies, her compliments, were +brilliant; even from one whose best organs of expression were mute. + +A frequent guest at her suppers, Walpole's kindness, real or pretended, +soon made inroads on a heart still susceptible. The ever-green passions +of this venerable sinner threw out fresh shoots; and she became +enamoured of the attentive and admired Englishman. Horace was +susceptible of ridicule: there his somewhat icy heart was easily +touched. Partly in vanity, partly in playfulness, he encouraged the +sentimental-exaggeration of his correspondent; but, becoming afraid of +the world's laughter, ended by reproving her warmth, and by chilling, +under the refrigerating influence of his cautions, all the romance of +the octogenarian. + +In later days, however, after his solicitude--partly soothed by the +return of his letters to Madame du Deffand, partly by her death--had +completely subsided, a happier friendship was permitted to solace his +now increasing infirmities, as well as to enhance his social pleasures. + +It was during the year 1788, when he was living in retirement at +Strawberry, that his auspicious friendship was formed. The only grain of +ambition he had left he declared was to believe himself forgotten; that +was 'the thread that had run through his life;' 'so true,' he adds, +'except the folly of being an author, has been what I said last year to +the Prince' (afterwards George IV.), 'when he asked me "If I was a +Freemason," I replied, "No sir; I never was anything."' + +Lady Charleville told him that some of her friends had been to see +Strawberry. 'Lord!' cried one lady, 'who is that Mr. Walpole?' 'Lord!' +cried a second; 'don't you know the great epicure, Mr. Walpole?' 'Who?' +cried the first,--'great epicure! you mean the antiquarian.' 'Surely,' +adds Horace, 'this anecdote may take its place in the chapter of local +fame.' + +But he reverts to his new acquisition--the acquaintance of the Miss +Berrys, who had accidentally taken a house next to his at Strawberry +Hill. Their story, he adds, was a curious one: their descent Scotch; +their grandfather had an estate of £5,000 a year, but disinherited his +son on account of his marrying a woman with no fortune. She died, and +the grandfather, wishing for an heir-male, pressed the widower to marry +again: he refused; and said he would devote himself to the education of +his two daughters. The second son generously gave up £8oo a year to his +brother, and the two motherless girls were taken to the Continent, +whence they returned the 'best informed and most perfect creatures that +Horace Walpole ever saw at their age.' + +Sensible, natural, frank, their conversation proved most agreeable to a +man who was sated of grand society, and sick of vanity until he had +indulged in vexation of spirit. He discovered by chance only--for there +was no pedantry in these truly well-educated women--that the eldest +understood Latin, and 'was a perfect Frenchwoman in her language. Then +the youngest drew well; and copied one of Lady Di Beauclerk's pictures, +'The Gipsies,' though she had never attempted colours before. Then, as +to looks: Mary, the eldest, had a sweet face, the more interesting from +being pale; with fine dark eyes that were lighted up when she spoke. +Agnes, the younger, was 'hardly to be called handsome, but almost;' with +an agreeable sensible countenance. It is remarkable that women thus +delineated--not beauties, yet not plain--are always the most fascinating +to men. The sisters doted on each other: Mary taking the lead in +society. 'I must even tell you,' Horace wrote to the Countess of Ossory, +'that they dress within the bounds of fashion, but without the +excrescences and balconies with which modern hoydens overwhelm and +barricade their persons.' (One would almost have supposed that Horace +had lived in the days of crinoline.') + +The first night that Horace met the two sisters, he refused to be +introduced to them: having heard so much of them that he concluded they +would be 'all pretension.' The second night that he met them, he sat +next Mary, and found her an 'angel both inside and out.' He did not know +which he liked best; but Mary's face, which was formed for a sentimental +novel, or, still more, for genteel comedy, riveted him, he owned. Mr. +Berry, the father, was a little 'merry man with a round face,' whom no +one would have suspected of sacrificing 'all for love, and the world +well lost.' This delightful family visited him every Sunday evening; the +region of wickenham being too 'proclamatory' for cards to be introduced +on the seventh day, conversation was tried instead; thankful, indeed, +was Horace, for the 'pearls,' as he styled them, thus thrown in his +path. His two 'Strawberries,' as he christened them, were henceforth the +theme of every letter. He had set up a printing-press many years +previously at Strawberry, and on taking the young ladies to see it, he +remembered the gallantry of his former days, and they found these +stanzas in type:-- + + 'To Mary's lips has ancient Rome + Her purest language taught; + And from the modern city home + Agnes its pencil brought. + + 'Rome's ancient Horace sweetly chants + Such maids with lyric fire; + Albion's old Horace sings nor paints, + He only can admire. + + 'Still would his press their fame record, + So amiable the pair is! + But, ah! how vain to think his word + Can add a straw to Berry's.' + +On the following day, Mary, whom he terms the Latin nymph sent the +following lines:-- + + 'Had Rome's famed Horace thus addrest + His Lydia or his Lyce, + He had ne'er so oft complained their breast + To him was cold and icy. + + 'But had they sought their joy to explain, + Or praise their generous bard, + Perhaps, like me, they had tried in vain, + And felt the task too hard.' + +The society of this family gave Horace Walpole the truest, and perhaps +the only relish he ever had of domestic life. But his mind was harassed +towards the close of the eighteenth century, by the insanity not only of +his nephew, but by the great national calamity, that of the king. 'Every +_eighty-eight_ seems,' he remarks, 'to be a favourite period with fate;' +he was 'too ancient,' he said, 'to tap what might almost be called a new +reign;' of which he was not likely to see much. He never pretended to +penetration, but his foresight, 'if he gave it the reign, would not +prognosticate much felicity to the country from the madness of his +father, and the probable regency of the Prince of Wales. His happiest +relations were now not with politics or literature, but with Mrs. Damer +and the Miss Berrys, to whom he wrote:--'I am afraid of protesting how +much I delight in your society, lest I should seem to affect being +gallant; but, if two negatives make an affirmative, why may not two +ridicules compose one piece of sense? and, therefore, as I am in love +with you both, I trust it is a proof of the good sense of your +devoted--H. WALPOLE,' + +He was doomed, in the decline of life, to witness two great national +convulsions: of the insurrection of 1745 he wrote +feelingly--justly--almost pathetically: forty-five years later he was +tired, he said, of railing against French barbarity and folly. +'Legislators! a Senate! To neglect laws, in order to annihilate +coats-of-arms and liveries!' George Selwyn said, that Monsieur the +king's brother was the only man of rank from whom they could not take a +title. His alarm at the idea of his two young friends going to the +Continent was excessive. The flame of revolution had burst forth at +Florence: Flanders was not a safe road; dreadful horrors had been +perpetrated at Avignon. Then he relates a characteristic anecdote of +poor _Marie Antoinette!_ She went with the king to see the manufacture +of glass. As they passed the Halle, the _poissardes_ hurra'd them. 'Upon +my word,' said the queen, 'these folks are civiller when you visit them, +than when they visit you.' + +Walpole's affection for the Miss Berrys cast a glow of happiness over +the fast-ebbing years of his life, 'In happy days,' he wrote to them +when they were abroad, 'I called you my dear wives; now I can only think +of you as darling children, of whom I am bereaved.' He was proud of +their affection; proud of their spending many hours with 'a very old +man,' whilst they were the objects of general admiration. These charming +women survived until our own time: the centre of a circle of the leading +characters in literature, politics, art, rank, and virtue. They are +remembered with true regret. The fulness of their age perfected the +promise of their youth. Samuel Rogers used to say that they had lived in +the reign of Queen Anne, so far back seemed their memories which were so +coupled to the past; but the youth of their minds, their feelings, their +intelligence, remained almost to the last. + +For many years Horace Walpole continued, in spite of incessant attacks +of the gout, to keep almost open house at Strawberry; in short, he said, +he kept an inn--the sign, the Gothic Castle! 'Take my advice,' he wrote +to a friend, 'never build a charming house for yourself between London +and Hampton Court; everybody will live in it but you.' + +The death of Lady Suffolk, in 1767, had been an essential loss to her +partial, and not too rigid neighbours. Two days before the death of +George II. she had gone to Kensington not knowing that there was a +review there. Hemmed in by coaches, she found herself close to George +II. and to Lady Yarmouth. Neither of them knew her--a circumstance which +greatly affected the countess. + +Horace Walpole was now desirous of growing old with dignity. He had no +wish 'to dress up a withered person, nor to drag it about to public +places;' but he was equally averse from 'sitting at home, wrapped up in +flannels,' to receive condolences from people he did not care for--and +attentions from relations who were impatient for his death. Well might a +writer in the 'Quarterly Review' remark that our most useful lessons in +reading Walpole's Letters are not only derived from his sound sense, but +from 'considering this man of the world, full of information and +sparkling with vivacity, stretched on a sick bed, and apprehending all +the tedious languor of helpless decrepitude and deserted solitude.' His +later years had been diversified by correspondence with Hannah More, who +sent him her poem of the _Bas Bleu_, into which she had introduced his +name. In 1786 she visited him at Strawberry Hill. He was then a martyr +to the gout, but with spirits gay as ever: 'I never knew a man suffer +pain with such entire patience,' was Hannah More's remark. His +correspondence with her continued regularly; but that with the charming +sisters was delightfully interrupted by their residence at little +Strawberry Hill--_Cliveden_, as it was also called, where day after day, +night after night, they gleaned stores from that rich fund of anecdote +which went back to the days of George I., touched even on the anterior +epoch of Anne, and came in volumes of amusement down to the very era +when the old man was sitting by his parlour fire, happy with his _wives_ +near him, resigned and cheerful. For his young friends he composed his +'Reminiscences of the Court of England.' + +He still wrote cheerfully of his physical state, in which eyesight was +perfect; hearing little impaired; and though his hands and feet were +crippled, he could use them; and since he neither 'wished to box, to +wrestle, nor to dance a hornpipe,' he was contented. + +His character became softer, his wit less caustic, his heart more +tender, his talk more reverent, as he approached the term of a long, +prosperous life--and knew, practically, the small value of all that he +had once too fondly prized. + +His later years were disturbed by the marriage of his niece Maria +Waldegrave to the Duke of Gloucester: but the severest interruption to +his peace was his own succession to an Earldom. + +In 1791, George, Earl of Orford, expired; leaving an estate encumbered +with debt, and, added to the bequest, a series of lawsuits threatened to +break down all remaining comfort in the mind of the uncle, who had +already suffered so much on the young man's account. + +Horace Walpole disdained the honours which brought him such solid +trouble, with such empty titles, and for some time refused to sign +himself otherwise but 'Uncle to the late Earl of Orford.' He was +certainly not likely to be able to walk in his robes to the House of +Lords, or to grace a levee. However, he thanked God he was free from +pain. 'Since all my fingers are useless,' he wrote to Hannah More, 'and +that I have only six hairs left, I am not very much grieved at not being +able to comb my head!' To Hannah More he wrote in all sincerity, +referring to his elevation to the peerage: 'For the other empty +metamorphosis that has happened to the outward man, you do me justice in +believing that it can do nothing but tease me; it is being called names +in one's old age:' in fact, he reckoned on being styled 'Lord +Methusalem.' He had lived to hear of the cruel deaths of the once gay +and high-born friends whom he had known in Paris, by the guillotine: he +had lived to execrate the monsters who persecuted the grandest heroine +of modern times, Marie Antoinette, to madness; he lived to censure the +infatuation of religious zeal in the Birmingham riots. 'Are not the +devils escaped out of the swine, and overrunning the earth +headlong?'--he asked in one of his letters. + +He had offered his hand, and all the ambitious views which it opened, to +each of the Miss Berrys successively, but they refused to bear his name, +though they still cheered his solitude: and, strange to say, two of the +most admired and beloved women of their time remained single. + +In 1796, the sinking invalid was persuaded to remove to Berkeley Square, +to be within reach of good and prompt advice. He consented unwillingly, +for his 'Gothic Castle' was his favourite abode. He left it with a +presentiment that he should see it no more; but he followed the +proffered advice, and in the spring of the year was established in +Berkeley Square. His mind was still clear. He seems to have cherished to +the last a concern for that literary fame which he affected to despise. +'Literature has,' he said, 'many revolutions; if an author could rise +from the dead, after a hundred years, what would be his surprise at the +adventures of his works! I often say, perhaps my books may be published +in Paternoster Row!' He would indeed have been astonished at the vast +circulation of his Letters, and the popularity which has carried them +into every aristocratic family in England. It is remarkable that among +the middle and lower classes they are far less known, for he was +essentially the chronicler, as well as the wit and beau, of St. James's, +of Windsor, and Richmond. + +At last he declared that he should 'be content with a sprig of rosemary' +thrown on him when the parson of the parish commits his 'dust to dust.' +The end of his now suffering existence was near at hand. Irritability, +one of the unpitied accompaniments of weakness, seemed to compete with +the gathering clouds of mental darkness as the last hour drew on. At +intervals there were flashes of a wit that appeared at that solemn +moment hardly natural, and that must have startled rather than pleased, +the watchful friends around him. He became unjust in his fretfulness, +and those who loved him most could not wish to see him survive the wreck +of his intellect. Fever came on, and he died on the 2nd of March, 1797. + +He had collected his letters from his friends: these epistles were +deposited in two boxes, one marked with an A., the other with a B. The +chest A. was not to be opened until the eldest son of his grandniece, +Lady Laura, should attain the age of twenty-five. The chest was found to +contain memoirs, and bundles of letters ready for publication. + +It was singular, at the sale of the effects at Strawberry Hill, to see +this chest, with the MSS. in the clean _Horatian_ hand, and to reflect +how poignant would have been the anguish of the writer could he have +seen his Gothic Castle given up for fourteen days, to all that could +pain the living, or degrade the dead. + +Peace to his manes, prince of letter-writers; prince companion of beaux; +wit of the highest order! Without thy pen, society in the eighteenth +century would have been to us almost as dead as the _beau monde_ of +Pompeii, or the remains of Etruscan leaders of the ton. Let us not be +ungrateful to our Horace: we owe him more than we could ever have +calculated on before we knew him through his works: prejudiced, he was +not false; cold, he was rarely cruel; egotistical, he was seldom +vain-glorious. Every age should have a Horace Walpole; every country +possess a chronicler so sure, so keen to perceive, so exact to delineate +peculiarities, manners, characters, and events. + + + +GEORGE SELWYN. + + +A Love of Horrors.--Anecdotes of Selwyn's Mother.--Selwyn's College +Days.--Orator Henley.--Selwyn's Blasphemous Freak.--The Profession +of a Wit.--The Thirst for Hazard.--Reynolds's Conversation-Piece.-- +Selwyn's Eccentricities and Witticisms.--A most Important +Communication.--An Amateur Headsman.--The Eloquence of Indifference.-- +Catching a Housebreaker.--The Family of the Selwyns.--The Man of the +People.--Selwyn's Parliamentary Career.--True Wit.---Some of Selwyn's +Witty Sayings.--The Sovereignty of the People.--On two kinds of Wit.-- +Selwyn's Love for Children.--Mie Mie, the Little Italian.--Selwyn's +Little Companion taken from him.--His Later Days and Death. + + +I have heard, at times, of maiden ladies of a certain age who found +pleasure in the affection of 'spotted snakes with double tongue, thorny +hedge-hogs, newts, and in live worms.' I frequently meet ladies who +think conversation lacks interest without the recital of 'melancholy +deaths,' 'fatal diseases,' and 'mournful cases;' _on ne dispute pas les +goûts_, and certainly the taste for the night side of nature seems +immensely prevalent among the lower orders--in whom, perhaps, the +terrible only can rouse from a sullen insensibility. What happy people! +I always think to myself, when I hear of the huge attendance on the last +tragic performance at Newgate; how very little they can see of mournful +and horrible in common life, if they seek it out so eagerly, and relish +it so thoroughly, when they find it! I don't know; for my own part, +_gaudeamus_. I have always thought that the text, 'Blessed are they that +mourn,' referred to the inner private life, not to a perpetual display +of sackcloth and ashes; but I know not. I can understand the +weeping-willow taste among people, who have too little wit or too little +Christianity to be cheerful, but it is a wonder to find the luxury of +gloom united to the keenest perception of the laughable in such a man as +George Selwyn. + +If human beings could be made pets, like Miss Tabitha's snake or toad, +Selwyn would have fondled a hangman. He loved the noble art of +execution, and was a connoisseur of the execution of the art. In +childhood he must have decapitated his rocking-horse, hanged his doll in +a miniature gallows, and burnt his baubles at mimic stakes. The man +whose calm eye was watched for the quiet sparkle that announced--and +only that ever did announce it--the flashing wit within the mind, by a +gay crowd of loungers at Arthur's, might be found next day rummaging +among coffins in a damp vault, glorying in a mummy, confessing and +preparing a live criminal, paying any sum for a relic of a dead one, or +pressing eagerly forward to witness the dying agonies of a condemned +man. + +Yet Walpole and Warner both bore the highest testimony to the goodness +of his heart; and it is impossible to doubt that his nature was as +gentle as a woman's. There have been other instances of even educated +men delighting in scenes of suffering; but in general their characters +have been more or less gross, their heads more or less insensible. The +husband of Madame Récamier went daily to see the guillotine do its vile +work during the reign of Terror; but then he was a man who never wept +over the death of a friend. The man who was devoted to a little child, +whom he adopted and treated with the tenderest care, was very different +from M. Récamier--and that he _had_ a heart there is no doubt. He was an +anomaly, and famous for being so; though, perhaps, his well-known +eccentricity was taken advantage of by his witty friends, and many a +story fathered on Selwyn which has no origin but in the brain of its +narrator. + +George Augustus Selwyn, then, famous for his wit, and notorious for his +love of horrors, was the second son of a country gentleman, of Matson, +in Gloucestershire, Colonel John Selwyn, who had been an aide-de-camp of +Marlborough's, and afterwards a frequenter of the courts of the first +two Georges. He inherited his wit chiefly from his mother, Mary, the +daughter of General Farington or Farringdon, of the county of Kent. +Walpole tells us that she figured among the beauties of the court of the +Prince and Princess of Wales, and was bedchamber-woman to Queen +Caroline. Her character was not spotless, for we hear of an intrigue, +which her own mistress imparted in confidence to the Duchess of Orleans +(the mother of the Regent: they wrote on her tomb _Cy gist l'oisiveté_, +because idleness is the _mother_ of all vice), and which eventually +found its way into the 'Utrecht Gazette.' It was Mrs. Selwyn, too, who +said to George II., that he was the last person she would ever have an +intrigue with, because she was sure he would tell the queen of it: it +was well known that that very virtuous sovereign made his wife the +confidante of his amours, which was even more shameless than young De +Sévigné's taking advice from his mother on his intrigue with Ninon de +l'Enclos. She seems to have been reputed a wit, for Walpole retails her +_mots_ as if they were worth it, but they are not very remarkable: for +instance, when Miss Pelham lost a pair of diamond earrings, which she +had borrowed, and tried to faint when the loss was discovered, some one +called for lavender-drops as a restorative. 'Pooh!' cries Mrs. Selwyn, +'give her diamond-drops.' + +George Augustus was born on the 11th of August, 1719. Walpole says that +he knew him at eight years old, and as the two were at Eton about the +same time, it is presumed that they were contemporaries there. In fact, +a list of the boys there, in 1732, furnished to Eliot Warburton, +contains the names of Walpole, Selwyn, Edgecumbe, and Conway, all in +after-life intimate friends and correspondents. From Eton to Oxford was +the natural course, and George was duly entered at Hertford College. He +did not long grace Alma Mater, for the _grand tour_ had to be made, and +London life to be begun, but he was there long enough to contract the +usual Oxford debts, which his father consented to pay more than once. It +is amusing to find the son getting Dr. Newton to write him a contrite +and respectful letter to the angry parent, to liquidate the 'small +accounts' accumulated in London and Oxford as early as 1740. Three years +later we find him in Paris, leading a gay life, and writing respectful +letters to England for more money. Previously to this, however, he had +obtained, through his father, the sinecure of Clerk of the Irons and +surveyor of the Meltings at the Mint, a comfortable little appointment, +the duties of which were performed by deputy, while its holder contented +himself with honestly acknowledging the salary, and dining once a week, +when in town, with the officers of the Mint, and at the Government's +expense. + +So far the young gentleman went on well enough, but in 1744 he returned +to England, and his rather rampant character showed itself in more than +one disgraceful affair. + +Among the London shows was Orator Henley, a clergyman and clergyman's +son, and a member of St. John's, Cambridge. He had come to London about +this time, and instituted a series of lectures on universal knowledge +and primitive Christianity. He styled himself a Rationalist, a title +then more honourable than it is now; and in grandiloquent language, +'spouted' on religious subjects to an audience admitted at a shilling +a-head. On one occasion he announced a disputation among any two of his +hearers, offering to give an impartial hearing and judgment to both. +Selwyn and the young Lord Carteret were prepared, and stood up, the one +to defend the ignorance, the other the impudence, of Orator Henley +himself; so, at least, it is inferred from a passage in D'Israeli the +Elder. The uproar that ensued can well be imagined. Henley himself made +his escape by a back door. His pulpit, all gilt, has been immortalized +by Pope, as 'Henley's gilt tub;' in which-- + + 'Imbrown'd with native bronze, lo! Henley stands, + Tuning his voice and balancing his hands.' + +The affair gave rise to a correspondence between the Orator and his +young friends; who, doubtless, came off best in the matter. + +This was harmless enough, but George's next freak was not so excusable. +The circumstances of this affair are narrated in a letter from Captain +Nicholson, his friend, to George Selwyn; and may, therefore, be relied +on. It appears that being at a certain club in Oxford, at a wine party +with his friends, George sent to a certain silversmith's for a certain +chalice, intrusted to the shopkeeper from a certain church to be +repaired in a certain manner. This being brought, Master George--then, +be it remembered, not at the delicate and frivolous age of most Oxford +boys, but at the mature one of six-and-twenty--filled it with wine, and +handing it round, used the sacred words, 'Drink this in remembrance of +me.' This was a blasphemous parody of the most sacred rite of the +Church. All Selwyn could say for himself was, that he was drunk when he +did it. The other plea, that he did it in ridicule of the +transubstantiation of the Romish Church, could not stand at all; and was +most weakly put forward. Let Oxford Dons be what they will; let them put +a stop to all religious inquiry, and nearly expel Adam Smith for reading +Hume's 'Essay on Human Nature;' let them be, as many allege, +narrow-minded, hypocritical, and ignorant; we cannot charge them with +wrong-dealing in expelling the originator of such open blasphemy, which +nothing can be found to palliate, and of which its perpetrator did not +appear to repent, rather complaining that the treatment of the Dons was +harsh. The act of expulsion was, of course, considered in the same light +by his numerous acquaintance, many of whom condoled with him on the +occasion. It is true, the Oxford Dons are often charged with injustice +and partiality, and too often the evidence is not sufficiently strong to +excuse their judgments; but in this the evidence was not denied; only a +palliative was put in, which every one can see through. The only +injustice we can discover in this case is, that the head of Hart Hall, +as Hertford College was called, seemed to have been influenced in +pronouncing his sentence of expulsion by certain previous _suspicions_, +having no bearing on the question before him, which had been entertained +by another set of tutors--those of Christchurch--where Selwyn had many +friends, and where, probably enough, he indulged in many collegian's +freaks. This knack of bringing up a mere suspicion, is truly +characteristic of the Oxford Don, and since the same Head of this +House--Dr. Newton--acknowledged that Selwyn was, during his Oxford +career, neither intemperate, dissolute, nor a gamester, it is fair to +give him the advantage of the doubt, that the judgment on the evidence +had been influenced by the consideration of 'suspicions' of former +misdeeds, which had not been proved, perhaps never committed. Knowing +the after-life of the man, we can, however, scarcely doubt that George +had led a fast life at the University, and given cause for mistrust. But +one may ask whether Dons, whose love of drinking, and whose tendency to +jest on the most solemn subjects, are well known even in the present +day, might not have treated Selwyn less harshly for what was done under +the influence of wine? To this we are inclined to reply, that no +punishment is too severe for profanation; and that drunkenness is not an +excuse, but an aggravation. Selwyn threatened to appeal, and took advice +on the matter. This, as usual, was vain. Many an expelled man, more +unjustly treated than Selwyn, has talked of appeal in vain. Appeal to +whom? To what? Appeal against men who never acknowledge themselves +wrong, and who, to maintain that they are right, will listen to evidence +which they can see is contradictory, and which they know to be +worthless! An appeal from an Oxford decision is as hopeless in the +present day as it was in Selwyn's. He wisely left it alone, but less +wisely insisted on reappearing in Oxford, against the advice of all his +friends, whose characters were lost if the ostracised man were seen +among them. + +From this time he entered upon his 'profession,' that of a wit, gambler, +club-lounger, and man about town; for these many characters are all +mixed in the one which is generally called 'a wit.' Let us remember that +he was good-hearted, and not ill-intentioned, though imbued with the +false ideas of his day. He was not a great man, but a great wit. + +The localities in which the trade of wit was plied were, then, the +clubs, and the drawing-rooms of fashionable beauties. The former were in +Selwyn's youth still limited in the number of their members, thirty +constituting a large club; and as the subscribers were all known to one +another, presented an admirable field for display of mental powers in +conversation. In fact, the early clubs were nothing more than +dining-societies, precisely the same in theory as our breakfasting +arrangements at Oxford, which were every whit as exclusive, though not +balloted for. The ballot, however, and the principle of a single black +ball suffering to negative an election were not only, under such +circumstances, excusable, but even necessary for the actual preservation +of peace. Of course, in a succession of dinner-parties, if any two +members were at all opposed to one other, the awkwardness would be +intolerable. In the present day, two men may belong to the same club and +scarcely meet even on the stairs, oftener than once or twice in a +season. + +Gradually, however, in the place of the 'feast of reason and flow of +soul' and wine, instead of the evenings spent in toasting, talking, +emptying bottles and filling heads, as in the case of the old Kit-kat, +men took to the monstrous amusement of examining fate, and on +club-tables the dice rattled far more freely than the glasses, though +these latter were not necessarily abandoned. Then came the thirst for +hazard that brought men early in the day to try their fortune, and thus +made the club-room a lounge. Selwyn was an habitual frequenter of +Brookes.' + +Brookes' was, perhaps, the principal club of the day, though 'White's +Chocolate House' was almost on a par with it. But Selwyn did not confine +his attention solely to this club. It was the fashion to belong to as +many of them as possible, and Wilberforce mentions no less than five to +which he himself belonged: Brookes', Boodle's, White's, Miles and +Evans's in New Palace Yard, and Goosetree's. As their names imply, these +were all, originally, mere coffee-houses, kept by men of the above +names. One or two rooms then sufficed for the requirements of a small +party, and it was not till the members were greatly increased that the +coffee-house rose majestically to the dignity of a bow-window, and was +entirely and exclusively appropriated to the requirements of the club. + +This was especially the case with White's, of which so many of the wits +and talkers of Selwyn's day were members. Who does not know that +bow-window at the top of St. James's Street, where there are sure, about +three or four in the afternoon, to be at least three gentlemen, two old +and one young, standing, to the exclusion of light within, talking and +contemplating the oft-repeated movement outside. White's was established +as early as 1698, and was thus one of the original coffee-houses. It was +then kept by a man named Arthur: here Chesterfield gamed and talked, to +be succeeded by Gilly Williams. Charles Townshend, and George Selwyn. +The old house was burnt down in 1733. It was at White's--or as Hogarth +calls it in his pictorial squib, Black's--that, when a man fell dead at +the door, he was lugged in and bets made as to whether he was dead or +no. The surgeon's operations were opposed, for fear of disturbing the +bets. Here, too, did George Selwyn and Charles Townshend pit their wit +against wit; and here Pelham passed all the time he was not forced to +devote to politics. In short it was, next to Brookes', the club of the +day, and perhaps in some respects had a greater renown than even that +famous club, and its play was as high. + +In Brookes' and White's Selwyn appeared with a twofold fame, that of a +pronouncer of _bon-mots_ and that of a lover of horrors. His wit was of +the quaintest order. He was no inveterate talker, like Sydney Smith; no +clever dissimulator, like Mr. Hook. Calmly, almost sanctimoniously, he +uttered those neat and telling sayings which the next day passed over +England as 'Selwyn's last.' Walpole describes his manner admirably---his +eyes turned up, his mouth set primly, a look almost of melancholy in his +whole face. Reynolds, in his Conversation-piece, celebrated when in the +Strawberry Collection, and representing Selwyn leaning on a chair, Gilly +Williams, crayon in hand, and Dick Edgecumbe by his side, has caught the +pseudo-solemn expression of his face admirably. The ease of the figure, +one hand _empochée_, the other holding a paper of epigrams, or what not, +the huge waistcoat with a dozen buttons and huge flaps, the ruffled +sleeve, the bob-wig, all belong to the outer man; but the calm, quiet, +almost enquiring face, the look half of melancholy, half of reproach, +and, as the Milesian would say, the other half of sleek wisdom; the long +nose, the prim mouth and joined lips, the elevated brow, and beneath it +the quiet contemplative eye, contemplative not of heaven or hell, but of +this world as it had seen it, in its most worldly point of view, yet +twinkling with a flashing thought of incongruity made congruous, are the +indices of the inner man. Most of our wits, it must have been seen, have +had some other interest and occupation in life than that of 'making +wit:' some have been authors, some statesmen, some soldiers, some +wild-rakes, and some players of tricks: Selwyn had no profession but +that of _diseur de bons mots_; for though he sat in the House, ne took +no prominent part in politics; though he gambled extensively, he did not +game for the sake of money only. Thus his life was that merely of a +London bachelor, with few incidents to mark it, and therefore his memoir +must resolve itself more or less into a series of anecdotes of his +eccentricities and list of his witticisms. + +His friend Walpole gives us an immense number of both, not all of a +first-rate nature, nor many interesting in the present day. Selwyn, calm +as he was, brought out his sayings on the spur of the moment, and their +appropriateness to the occasion was one of their greatest +recommendations. A good saying, like a good sermon, depends much on its +delivery, and loses much in print. Nothing less immortal than wit! To +take first, however, the eccentricities of his character, and especially +his love of horrors, we find anecdotes by the dozen retailed of him. It +was so well known, that Lord Holland, when dying, ordered his servant to +be sure to admit Mr. Selwyn if he called to enquire after him, 'for if I +am alive,' said he, 'I shall be glad to see him, and if I am dead, he +will be glad to see me.' The name of Holland leads us to an anecdote +told by Walpole. Selwyn was looking over Cornbury with Lord Abergavenny +and Mrs. Frere, 'who loved one another a little,' and was disgusted with +the frivolity of the woman who could take no interest in anything worth +seeing. 'You don't know what you missed in the other room,' he cried at +last, peevishly. 'Why, what?'--'Why, my Lord Holland's picture.'--'Well, +what is my Lord Holland to me?' 'Don't you know,' whispered the wit +mysteriously, 'that Lord Holland's body lies in the same vault in +Kensington Church with my Lord Abergavenny's mother?' 'Lord! she was so +obliged,' says Walpole, 'and thanked him a thousand times!' + +Selwyn knew the vaults as thoroughly as old Anthony Wood knew the +brasses. The elder Craggs had risen by the favour of Marlborough, whose +footman he had been, and his son was eventually a Secretary of State. +Arthur Moore, the father of James Moore Smyth, of whom Pope wrote-- + + 'Arthur, whose giddy son neglects the laws, + Imputes to me and my damned works the cause' + +had worn a livery too. When Craggs got into a coach with him, he +exclaimed, 'Why, Arthur, I am always getting up behind, are not you?' +Walpole having related this story to Selwyn, the latter told him, as a +most important communication, that Arthur Moore had had his coffin +chained to that of his mistress. 'Lord! how do you know?' asked Horace. +'Why, I saw them the other day in a vault at St. Giles's.' 'Oh! Your +servant, Mr. Selwyn,' cried the man who showed the tombs at Westminster +Abbey, 'I expected to see _you_ here the other day when the old Duke of +Richmond's body was taken up.' + +Criminals were, of course, included in his passion. Walpole affirms that +he had a great share in bringing Lord Dacre's footman, who had murdered +the butler, to confess his crime. In writing the confession, the +ingenious plush coolly stopped and asked how 'murdered' was spelt. But +it mattered little to George whether the criminal were alive or dead, +and he defended his eccentric taste with his usual wit; when rallied by +some women for going to see the Jacobite Lord Lovat's head cut off, he +retorted, sharply--'I made full amends, for I went to see it sewn on +again.' He had indeed done so, and given the company at the undertaker's +a touch of his favourite blasphemy, for when the man of coffins had done +his work and laid the body in its box, Selwyn, imitating the voice of +the Lord Chancellor at the trial, muttered, 'My Lord Lovat, you may +_rise_.' He said a better thing on the trial of a confederate of +Lovat's, that Lord Kilmarnock, with whom the ladies fell so desperately +in love as he stood on his defence. Mrs. Bethel, who was famous for a +_hatchet-face,_ was among the fair spectators: 'What a shame it is,' +quoth the wit, 'to turn her face to the prisoners before they are +condemned!' Terrible, indeed, was that instrument of death to those men, +who had in the heat of battle so gallantly met sword and blunderbuss. +The slow, sure approach of the day of the scaffold was a thousand times +worse than the roar of cannon. Lord Cromarty was pardoned, solely, it +was said, from pity for his poor wife, who was at the time of the trial +far advanced in pregnancy. It was affirmed that the child born had a +distinct mark of an axe on his neck. _Credat Judæus_! Walpole used to +say that Selwyn never thought but _à la tête tranchée_, and that when he +went to have a tooth drawn, he told the dentist he would drop his +handkerchief by way of signal. Certain it is that he did love an +execution, whatever he or his friends may have done to remove the +impression of this extraordinary taste. Some better men than Selwyn have +had the same, and Macaulay accuses Penn of a similar affection. The best +known anecdote of Selwyn's peculiarity relates to the execution of +Damiens, who was torn with red-hot pincers, and finally quartered by +four horses, for the attempt to assassinate Louis XV. On the day fixed, +George mingled with the crowd plainly dressed, and managed to press +forward close to the place of torture. The executioner observing him, +eagerly cried out, '_Faites place pour Monsieur; c'est un Anglais et un +amateur_;' or, as another version goes, he was asked if he was not +himself a _bourreau_.--'_Non, Monsieur,_' he is said to have answered, +'_je n'ai pas cet honneur, je ne suis qu'un amateur._' The story is more +than apocryphal, for Selwyn is not the only person of whom it has been +told; and he was even accused, according to Wraxall, of going to +executions in female costume. George Selwyn must have passed as a +'remarkably fine woman,' in that case. + +It is only justice to him to say that the many stories of his attending +executions were supposed to be inventions of Sir Charles Hanbury +Williams, another wit, and of Chesterfield, another, and a rival. In +confirmation, it is adduced that when the former had been relating some +new account, and an old friend of Selwyn's expressed his surprise that +he had never heard the tale before, the hero of it replied quietly, 'No +wonder at all, for Sir Charles has just invented it, and knows that I +will not by contradiction spoil the pleasure of the company he is so +highly entertaining.' + +Wit has been called 'the eloquence of indifference;' no one seems ever +to have been so indifferent about everything, but his little daughter, +as George Selwyn. He always, however, took up the joke, and when asked +why he had not been to see one Charles Fox, a low criminal, hanged at +Tyburn, answered, quietly, 'I make a point of never going to +_rehearsals_.' + +Selwyn's love for this kind of thing, to believe his most intimate +friend, Horace Walpole, was quite a fact. His friend relates that he +even bargained for the High Sheriff's wand, after it was broken, at the +condemnation of the gallant Lords, but said, 'that he behaved so like an +attorney the first day, and so like a pettifogger the second, that he +would not take it to light his fire with.' + +The State Trials, of course, interested George more than any other in +his eventless life; he dined after the sentence with the celebrated Lady +Townshend, who was so devoted to Lord Kilmarnock-- + + 'Pitied by gentle minds, Kilmarnock died'--Johnson. + +that she is said to have even stayed under his windows, when he was in +prison; but he treated her anxiety with such lightness that the lady +burst into tears, and 'flung up-stairs.' 'George,' writes Walpole to +Montague, 'cooly took Mrs. Dorcas, her woman, and bade her sit down to +finish the bottle.--"And pray," said Dorcas, "do you think my lady will +be prevailed upon to let me go and see the execution? I have a friend +that has promised to take care of me, and I can lie in the Tower the +night before." Could she have talked so pleasantly to Selwyn?' + +His contemporaries certainly believed in his love for Newgatism; for +when Walpole had caught a housebreaker in a neighbour's area, he +immediately despatched a messenger to White's for the philo-criminalist, +who was sure to be playing at the Club any time before daylight. It +happened that the drawer at the 'Chocolate-house' had been himself +lately robbed, and therefore stole to George with fear and trembling, +and muttered mysteriously to him, 'Mr. Walpole's compliments, and he has +got a housebreaker for you.' Of course Selwyn obeyed the summons +readily, and the event concluded, as such events do nine times out of +ten, with a quiet capture, and much ado about nothing. + +The Selwyns were a powerful family in Gloucestershire, owning a great +deal of property in the neighbourhood of Gloucester itself. The old +colonel had represented that city in Parliament for many years. On the +5th of November, 1751, he died. His eldest son had gone a few months +before him. This son had been also at Eton, and was an early friend of +Horace Walpole and General Conway. His death left George sole heir to +the property, and very much he seemed to have needed the heritage. + +The property of the Selwyns lay in the picturesque district of the +Northern Cotswolds. Anybody who has passed a day in the dull city of +Gloucester, which seems to break into anything like life only at an +election, lying dormant in the intervals, has been glad to rush out to +enjoy air and a fine view on Robin Hood's Hill, a favourite walk with +the worthy citizens, though what the jovial archer of merry Sherwood had +to do with it, or whether he was ever in Gloucestershire at all, I +profess I know not. Walpole describes the hill with humorous +exaggeration. 'It is lofty enough for an alp, yet is a mountain of turf +to the very top, has wood scattered all over it, springs that long to be +cascades in many places of it, and from the summit it beats even Sir +George Littleton's views, by having the city of Gloucester at its foot, +and the Severn widening to the horizon.' On the very summit of the next +hill, Chosen-down, is a solitary church, and the legend saith that the +good people who built it did so originally at the foot of the steep +mount, but that the Virgin Mary carried up the stones by night, till the +builder, in despair, was compelled to erect it on the top. Others +attribute the mysterious act to a very different personage, and with +apparently more reason, for the position of the church must keep many an +old sinner from hearing service. + +At Matson, then, on Robin Hood's Hill, the Selwyns lived; Walpole says +that the 'house is small, but neat. King Charles lay here at the seige, +and the Duke of York, with typical fury, hacked and hewed the +window-shutters of his chamber as a memorandum of his being there. And +here is the very flowerpot and counterfeit association for which Bishop +Sprat was taken up, and the Duke of Marlborough sent to the Tower. The +reservoirs on the hill supply the city. The late Mr. Selwyn governed the +borough by them--and I believe by some wine too.' Probably, or at least +by some beer, if the modern electors be not much altered from their +forefathers. + +Besides this important estate, the Selwyns had another at Ludgershall, +and their influence there was so complete, that they might fairly be +said to _give_ one seat to any one they chose. With such double barrels +George Selwyn was, of course, a great gun in the House, but his interest +lay far more in piquet and pleasantry than in politics and patriotism, +and he was never fired off with any but the blank cartridges of his two +votes. His parliamentary career, begun in 1747, lasted more than forty +years, yet was entirely without distinction. He, however, amused both +parties with his wit, and by _snoring in unison_ with Lord North. This +must have been trying to Mr. Speaker Cornwall, who was longing, no +doubt, to snore also, and dared not. He was probably the only Speaker +who presided over so august an assembly as our English Parliament with a +pewter pot of porter at his elbow, sending for more and more to +Bellamy's till his heavy eyes closed of themselves. A modern M.P., +carried back by some fancies to 'the Senate' of those days, might +reasonably doubt whether his guide had not taken him by mistake to some +Coal-hole or Cider-cellar, presided over by some former Baron Nicholson, +and whether the furious eloquence of Messrs. Fox, Pitt, and Burke were +not got up for the amusement of an audience admitted at sixpence a head. + +Selwyn's political jokes were the delight of Bellamy's! He said that Fox +and Pitt reminded him of Hogarth's Idle and Industrious Apprentices. +When asked by some one, as he sauntered out of the house--'Is the House +up?' he replied; 'No, but Burke is.' The length of Burke's elaborate +spoken essays was proverbial, and obtained for him the name of the +'Dinner-bell.' Fox was talking one day at Brookes' of the advantageous +peace he had made with France, and that he had even induced that country +to give up the _gum_ trade to England. 'That, Charles,' quoth Selwyn, +sharply, 'I am not at all surprised at; for having drawn your _teeth_, +they would be d----d fools to quarrel with you about gums.' Fox was +often the object of his good-natured satire. As every one knows, his +boast was to be called 'The Man of the People,' though perhaps he cared +as little for the great unwashed as for the wealth and happiness of the +waiters at his clubs.' Every one knows, too, what a dissolute life he +led for many years. Selwyn's sleepiness was well known. He slept in the +House; he slept, after losing £8oo 'and with as many more before him,' +upon the gaming-table, with the dice-box 'stamped close to his ears;' he +slept, or half-slept, even in conversation, which he seems to have +caught by fits and starts. Thus it was that words he heard suggested +different senses, partly from being only dimly associated with the +subject on the _tapis_. So, when, they were talking around of the war, +and whether it should be a sea war or a Continent war, Selwyn woke up +just enough to say, 'I am for a sea war and a _Continent_ admiral.' + +When Fox had ruined himself, and a subscription for him was talked of, +some one asked how they thought 'he would take it.'--'Take it,' cried +Selwyn, suddenly lighting up, 'why, _quarterly_ to be sure.' + +His parliamentary career was then quite uneventful; but at the +dissolution in 1780, he found that his security at Gloucester was +threatened. He was not Whig enough for that constituency, and had +throughout supported the war with America. He offered himself, of +course, but was rejected with scorn, and forced to fly for a seat to +Ludgershall. Walpole writes to Lady Ossory: 'They' (the Gloucester +people) 'hanged him in effigy, and dressed up a figure of Mie-Mie' (his +adopted daughter), 'and pinned on its breast these words, alluding to +the gallows:--"This is what I told you you would come to!"' From +Gloucester he went to Ludgershall, where he was received by ringing of +bells and bonfires. 'Being driven out of my capital,' said he, 'and +coming into that country of turnips, where I was adored, I seemed to be +arrived in my Hanoverian dominions'--no bad hit at George II. For +Ludgershall he sat for many years, with Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, whose +'Memoirs' are better known than trusted, as colleague. That writer says +of Selwyn, that he was 'thoroughly well versed in our history, and +master of many curious as well as secret anecdotes, relative to the +houses of Stuart and Brunswick.' + +Another _bon-mot_, not in connection with politics, is reported by +Walpole as incomparable.' Lord George Gordon asked him if the +Ludgershall electors would take him (Lord George) for Ludgershall, +adding, 'if you would recommend me, they would choose me, if I came from +the coast of Africa.'--'That is according to what part of the coast you +came from; they would certainly, if you came from the Guinea coast.' +'Now, Madam,' writes his friend, 'is not this true inspiration as well +as true wit? Had any one asked him in which of the four quarters of the +world Guinea is situated, could he have told?' Walpole did not perhaps +know master George thoroughly--he was neither so ignorant nor so +indifferent as he seemed. His manner got him the character of being +both; but he was a still fool that ran deep. + +Though Selwyn did little with his two votes, he made them pay; and in +addition to the post in the Mint, got out of the party he supported +those of Registrar to the Court of Chancery in the Island of Barbadoes, +a sinecure done by deputy, Surveyor of the Crown Lands, and Paymaster to +the Board of Works. The wits of White's added the title of +'Receiver-General of Waif and Stray Jokes.' It is said that his +hostility to Sheridan arose from the latter having lost him the office +in the Works in 1782, when Burke's Bill for reducing the Civil List came +into operation; but this is not at all probable, as his dislike was +shown long before that period. Apropos of the Board of Works, Walpole +gives another anecdote. On one occasion, in 1780, Lord George Gordon had +been the only opponent on a division. Selwyn afterwards took him in his +carriage to White's. 'I have brought,' said he, 'the whole Opposition in +my coach, and I hope one coach will always hold them, if they mean to +take away the Board of Works.' + +Undoubtedly, Selwyn's wit wanted the manner of the man to make it so +popular, for, as we read it, it is often rather mild. To string a list +of them together:--Lady Coventry showed him her new dress all covered +with spangles as large as shillings. 'Bless my soul,' said he, 'you'll +be change for a guinea.' + +Fox, debtor and bankrupt as he was, had taken lodgings with Fitzpatrick +at an oilman's in Piccadilly. Every one pitied the landlord, who would +certainly be ruined. 'Not a bit of it,' quoth George; 'he'll have the +credit of keeping at his house the finest pickles in London.' + +Sometimes there was a good touch of satire on his times. When 'High Life +Below Stairs' was first acted, Selwyn vowed he would go and see it, for +he was sick of low life above stairs; and when a waiter at his Club had +been convicted of felony, 'What a horrid idea,' said he, 'the man will +give of _us_ in Newgate!' + +Dining with Bruce, the Abyssinian traveller, he heard him say, in answer +to a question about musical instruments in the East, 'I believe I saw +one _lyre_ there.'--'Ay,' whispered the wit to his neighbour, 'and +there's one less since he left the country.' Bruce shared the +travellers' reputation of drawing the long-bow to a very considerable +extent. + +Two of Selwyn's best _mots_ were about one of the Foley family, who were +so deeply in debt that they had 'to go to Texas,' or Boulogne, to escape +the money-lenders. 'That,' quoth Selwyn, 'is a _pass-over_ which will +not be much relished by the Jews.' And again, when it was said that they +would be able to cancel their father's old will by a new-found one, he +profanely indulged in a pun far too impious to be repeated in our day, +however it may have been relished in Selwyn's time. + +A picture called 'The Daughter of Pharaoh' in which the Princess Royal +and her attendant ladies figured as the saver of Moses and her +handmaids, was being exhibited in 1782, at a house opposite Brookes', +and was to be the companion-piece to Copley's 'Death of Chatham.' George +said he could recommend a better companion, to wit--the 'Sons of +Pharaoh' at the opposite house. It is scarcely necessary to explain that +pharaoh or faro was the most popular game of hazard then played. + +Walking one day with Lord Pembroke, and being besieged by a troop of +small chimney-climbers, begging--Selwyn, after bearing their importunity +very calmly for some time, suddenly turned round, and with the most +serious face thus addressed them--'I have often heard of the sovereignty +of the people; I suppose your highnesses are in Court mourning,' We can +well imagine the effect of this sedate speech on the astonished +youngsters. + +Pelham's truculency was well known. Walpole and his +friend went to the sale of his plate in 1755. 'Lord,' said the wit, 'how +many toads have been eaten off these plates!' + +[Illustration: SELWYN ACKNOWLEDGES THE "SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE."] + +The jokes were not always very delicate. When, in the middle of the +summer of 1751, Lord North, who had been twice married before, espoused +the widow of the Earl of Rockingham, who was fearfully stout, Selwyn +suggested that she had been kept in ice for three days before the +wedding. So, too, when there was talk of another _embonpoint_ personage +going to America during the war, he remarked that she would make a +capital _breast_-work. + +One of the few epigrams he ever wrote--if not the only one, of which +there is some doubt--was in the same spirit. It is on the discovery of a +pair of shoes in a certain lady's bed-- + + Well may Suspicion shake its head-- + Well may Clorinda's spouse be jealous, + When the dear wanton takes to bed + Her very shoes--because they're fellows. + +Such are a few specimens of George Selwyn's wit; and dozens more are +dispersed though Walpole's Letters. As Eliot Warburton remarks, they do +not give us a very high idea of the humour of the period; but two things +must be taken into consideration before we deprecate their author's +title to the dignity and reputation he enjoyed so abundantly among his +contemporaries; they are not necessarily the _best_ specimens that might +have been given, if more of his _mots_ had been preserved; and their +effect on his listeners depended more on the manner of delivery than on +the matter. That they were improvised and unpremeditated is another +important consideration. It is quite unfair to compare them, as +Warburton does, with the hebdomadal trash of 'Punch,' though perhaps +they would stand the comparison pretty well. It is one thing to force +wit with plenty of time to invent and meditate it--another to have so +much wit within you that you can bring it out on any occasion; one thing +to compose a good fancy for _money_--another to utter it only when it +flashes through the brain. + +But it matters little what we in the present day may think of Selwyn's +wit, for conversation is spoiled by bottling, and should be drawn fresh +when wanted. Selwyn's companions--all men of wit, more or less, affirmed +him to be the most amusing man of his day, and that was all the part he +had to play. No real wit ever hopes to _talk_ for posterity; and written +wit is of a very different character to the more sparkling, if less +solid, creations of a moment. + +We have seen Selwyn in many points of view, not all very creditable to +him; first, expelled from Oxford for blasphemy; next, a professed +gambler and the associate of men who led fashion in those days, it is +true, but then it was very bad fashion; then as a lover of hangmen, a +wit and a lounger. There is reason to believe that Selwyn, though less +openly reprobate than many of his associates, was, in his quiet way, +just as bad as any of them, if we except the Duke of Queensberry, his +intimate friend, or the disgusting 'Franciscans' of Medmenham Abbey, of +whom, though not the founder, nor even a member, he was, in a manner, +the suggester in his blasphemy. + +But Selwyn's real character is only seen in profile in all these +accounts. He had at the bottom of such vice, to which his position, and +the fashion of the day introduced him, a far better heart than any of +his contemporaries, and in some respects a kind of simplicity which was +endearing. He was neither knave nor fool. He was not a voluptuary, like +his friend the duke; nor a continued drunkard, like many other 'fine +gentlemen' with whom he mixed; nor a cheat, though a gambler; nor a +sceptic, like his friend Walpole; nor a blasphemer, like the Medmenham +set, though he had once parodied profanely a sacred rite; nor was he +steeped in debt, as Fox was; nor does he appear to have been a practised +seducer, as too many of his acquaintance were. Not that these negative +qualities are to his praise; but if we look at the age and the society +around him, we must, at least, admit that Selwyn was not one of the +worst of that wicked set. + +But the most pleasing point in the character of the old bachelor--for he +was _too much_ of a wit ever to marry--is his affection for +children--not his own. That is, not avowedly his own, for it was often +suspected that the little ones he took up so fondly bore some +relationship to him, and there can be little doubt that Selwyn, like +everybody else in that evil age, had his intrigues. He did not die in +his sins, and that is almost all we can say for him. He gave up gaming +in time, protesting that it was the bane of four much better +things--health, money, time, and thinking. For the last two, perhaps, he +cared little. Before his death he is said to have been a Christian, +which was a decided rarity in the fashionable set of his day. Walpole +answered, when asked if he was a Freemason, that he never had been +_anything_, and probably most of the men of the time would, if they had +had the honesty, have said the same. They were not atheists professedly, +but they neither believed in nor practised Christianity. + +His love for children has been called one of his eccentricities. It +would be a hard name to give it if he had not been a club-lounger of his +day. I have sufficient faith in human nature to trust that two-thirds of +the men of this country have that most amiable eccentricity. But in +Selwyn it amounted to something more than in the ordinary paterfamilias: +it was almost a passion. He was almost motherly in his celibate +tenderness to the little ones to whom he took a fancy. This affection he +showed to several of the children, sons or daughters, of his friends; +but to two especially, Anne Coventry and Maria Fagniani. + +The former was the daughter of the beautiful Maria Gunning, who became +Countess of Coventry. Nanny, as he called her, was four years old when +her mother died, and from that time he treated her almost as his own +child. + +But Mie-Mie, as the little Italian was called, was far more favoured. +Whoever may have been the child's father, her mother was a rather +beautiful and very immoral woman, the wife of the Marchese Fagniani. She +seems to have desired to make the most for her daughter out of the +extraordinary rivalry of the two English 'gentlemen,' and they were +admirably taken in by her. Whatever the truth may have been, Selwyn's +love for children showed itself more strongly in this case than in any +other; and, oddly enough, it seems to have begun when the little girl +was at an age when children scarcely interest other men than their +fathers--in short, in infancy. Her parents allowed him to have the sole +charge of her at a very early age, when they returned to the Continent; +but in 1777, the marchioness, being then in Brussels, claimed her +daughter back again; though less, it seems, from any great anxiety on +the child's account, than because her husband's parents, in Milan, +objected to their grand-daughter being left in England; and also, not a +little, from fear of the voice of Mrs. Grundy. Selwyn seems to have used +all kinds of arguments to retain the child; and a long correspondence +took place, which the marchesa begins with, 'My very dear friend,' and +many affectionate expressions, and concludes with a haughty 'Sir,' and +her opinion that his conduct was 'devilish.' The affair was, therefore, +clearly a violent quarrel, and Selwyn was obliged at last to give up the +child. He had a carriage fitted up for her expressly for her journey; +made out for her a list of the best hotels on her route; sent his own +confidential man-servant with her, and treasured up among his 'relics' +the childish little notes, in a large scrawling hand, which Mie-Mie sent +him. Still more curious was it to see this complete man of the world, +this gambler for many years, this club-lounger, drinker, associate of +well-dressed blasphemers, of Franciscans of Medmenham Abbey, devoting, +not his money only, but his very time to this mere child, leaving town +in the height of the season for dull Matson, that she might have fresh +air; quitting his hot club-rooms, his nights spent at the piquet-table, +and the rattle of the dice, for the quiet, pleasant terraces of his +country-house, where he would hold the little innocent Mie-Mie by her +tiny hand, as she looked up into his shrivelled dissipated face; +quitting the interchange of wit, the society of the Townshends, the +Walpoles, the Williamses, the Edgecumbes; all the jovial, keen wisdom of +Gilly, and Dick, and Horace, and Charles, as they called one another, +for the meaningless prattle, the merry laughter of this half-English, +half-Italian child, It redeems Selwyn in our eyes, and it may have done +him real good: nay, he must have felt a keen refreshment in this change +from vice to innocence; and we understand the misery he expressed, when +the old bachelor's one little companion and only pure friend was taken +away from him. His love for the child was well known in London society; +and of it did Sheridan's friends take advantage, when they wanted to get +Selwyn out of Brookes', to prevent his black-balling the dramatist. The +anecdote is given in the next memoir. + +In his later days Selwyn still haunted the clubs, hanging about, sleepy, +shrivelled, dilapidated in face and figure, yet still respected and +dreaded by the youngsters, as the 'celebrated Mr. Selwyn.' The wit's +disease--gout--carried him off at last, in 1791, at the age of +seventy-two. + +He left a fortune which was not contemptible: £33,000 of it were to go +to Mie-Mie--by this time a young lady--and as the Duke of Queensberry, +at his death, left her no less than £150,000, Miss was by no means a bad +match for Lord Yarmouth.[6] See what a good thing it is to have three +papas, when two of them are rich! The duke made Lord Yarmouth his +residuary legatee, and between him and his wife divided nearly +half-a-million. + +[6: Afterwards the well-known and dissolute Marquis of Hertford.] + +Let us not forget in closing this sketch of George Selwyn's life, that, +gambler and reprobate as he was, he possessed some good traits, among +which his love of children appears in shining colours. + + + +RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. + +Sheridan a Dunce.--Boyish Dreams of Literary Fame.--Sheridan in Love.--A +Nest of Nightingales.--The 'Maid of Bath.'--Captivated by Genius.-- +Sheridan's Elopement with 'Cecilia.'--His Duel with Captain Matthews.-- +Standards of Ridicule.--Painful Family Estrangements.--Enters Drury Lane. +--Success of the Famous 'School for Scandal.'--Opinions of Sheridan and +his Influence.--The Literary Club.--Anecdote of Garrick's Admittance.-- +Origin of the 'Rejected Addresses.'--New Flights.--Political Ambition.-- +The Gaming Mania.--Almacks'.--Brookes'.--Black-balled.--Two Versions of +the Election Trick.--St. Stephen's Won.--Vocal Difficulties.--Leads a +Double Life.--Pitt's Vulgar Attack.--Sheridan's Happy Retort.--Grattan's +Quip.--Sheridan's Sallies.--The Trial at Warren Hastings.--Wonderful +Effect of Sheridan's Eloquence.--The Supreme Effort.--The Star +Culminates.--Native Taste for Swindling.--A Shrewd but Graceless +Oxonian.--Duns Outwitted.--The Lawyer Jockeyed.--Adventures with +Bailiffs.--Sheridan's Powers of Persuasion.--House of Commons Greek.-- +Curious Mimicry.--The Royal Boon Company.--Street Frolics at Night.--An +Old Tale.--'All's well that ends well.'--The Fray in St. Giles.'-- +Unopened Letters.--An Odd Incident.--Reckless Extravagance.--Sporting +Ambition.--Like Father like Son.--A Severe and Witty Rebuke.-- +Intemperance.--Convivial Excesses of a Past Day.--Worth wins at last.-- +Bitter Pangs.--The Scythe of Death.--Sheridan's Second Wife.--Debts of +Honour.--Drury Lane Burnt.--The Owner's Serenity.--Misfortunes never come +Singly.--The Whitbread Quarrel.--Ruined.--Undone and almost Forsaken.-- +The Dead Man Arrested.--The Stories fixed on Sheridan.--Extempore Wit and +Inveterate Talkers. + + +Poor Sheridan! gambler, spendthrift, debtor, as thou wert, what is it +that shakes from our hand the stone we would fling at thee? Almost, we +must confess it, thy very faults; at least those qualities which seem to +have been thy glory and thy ruin: which brought thee into temptation; to +which, hadst thou been less brilliant, less bountiful, thou hadst never +been drawn. What is it that disarms us when we review thy life, and +wrings from us a tear when we should utter a reproach? Thy punishment; +that bitter, miserable end; that long battling with poverty, debt, +disease, all brought on by thyself; that abandonment in the hour of +need, more bitter than them all; that awakening to the terrible truth of +the hollowness of man and rottenness of the world!--surely this is +enough: surely we may hope that a pardon followed. But now let us view +thee in thy upward flight the genius, the wit, the monarch of mind. + +This great man, this wonderful genius, this eloquent senator, this most +applauded dramatist was--hear it, oh, ye boys! and fling it triumphantly +in the faces of your pedagogues--Sheridan, at your age, was a dunce! +This was the more extraordinary, inasmuch as his father, mother, and +grandfather were all celebrated for their quick mental powers. The last, +in fact, Dr. Sheridan, was a successful and eminent schoolmaster, the +intimate friend of Dean Swift, and an author. He was an Irish man and a +wit, and would seem to have been a Jacobite to boot, for he was deprived +of a chaplaincy he held under Government, for preaching, on King +George's birthday, a sermon having for its text 'Sufficient for the day +is the evil thereof.' + +Sheridan's mother, again--an eccentric, extraordinary woman--wrote +novels and plays; among the latter 'The Discovery,' which Garrick said +was 'one of the best comedies he ever read;' and Sheridan's father, Tom +Sheridan, was famous, in connection with the stage where he was so long +the rival of David Garrick. + +Born of such parents, in September, 1751, Richard Brinsley Sheridan was +sent in due course to Harrow, where that famous old pedant, Dr. Parr, +was at that time one of the masters. The Doctor has himself described +the lazy boy, in whose face he discovered the latent genius, and whom he +attempted to inspire with a love of Greek verbs and Latin verses, by +making him ashamed of his ignorance. But Richard preferred English +verses and no verbs, and the Doctor failed. He did not, even at that +period, cultivate elocution, of which his father was so good a master; +though Dr. Parr remembered one of his sisters, on a visit to Harrow, +reciting, in accordance with her father's teaching, the well-known +lines-- + + '_None_ but the brave, + None but the _brave_, + None _but_ the brave deserve the fair. + +But the real mind of the boy who would not be a scholar showed itself +early enough. He had only just left Harrow, when he began to display his +literary abilities. He had formed at school the intimate acquaintance of +Halhed, afterwards a distinguished Indianist, a man of like tastes with +himself; he had translated with him some of the poems of Theocritus. The +two boys had revelled together in boyish dreams of literary fame--ah, +those boyish dreams! so often our noblest--so seldom realized. So often, +alas! the aspirations to which we can look back as our purest and best, +and which make us bitterly regret that they were but dreams. And now, +when young Halhed went to Oxford, and young Sheridan to join his family +at Bath, they continued these ambitious projects for a time, and laid +out their fancy at full usury over many a work destined never to see the +fingers of the printer's devil. Among these was a farce, or rather +burlesque, which shows immense promise, and which, oddly enough, +resembles in its cast the famous 'Critic,' which followed it later. It +was called 'Jupiter,' and turned chiefly on the story of Ixion-- + + 'Embracing cloud, Ixion like,' + +the lover of Juno, who caught a cold instead of the Queen of Heaven; and +who, according to the classical legend, tortured for ever on a wheel, +was in this production to be condemned for ever to trundle the machine +of a 'needy knife-grinder,' amid a grand musical chorus of 'razors, +scissors, and penknives to grind!' This piece was amusing enough, and +clever enough, though it betrayed repeatedly the youthfulness of its +authors; but less so their next attempt, a weekly periodical, to be +called 'Hernan's Miscellany,' of which Sheridan wrote, or was to write, +pretty nearly the whole. None but the first number was ever completed, +and perhaps we need not regret that no more followed it; but it is +touching to see these two young men, both feeling their powers, +confident in them, and sunning their halcyon's wings in the happy belief +that they were those of the eagle, longing eagerly, earnestly, for the +few poor guineas that they hoped from their work. Halhed, indeed, wrote +diligently, but his colleague was not true to the contract, and though +the hope of gold stimulated him--for he was poor enough--from time to +time to a great effort, he was always 'beginning,' and never completing. + +The only real product of these united labours was a volume of Epistles +in verse from the Greek of a poor writer of late age, Aristaenetus. This +volume, which does little credit to either of its parents, was +positively printed and published in 1770, but the rich harvest of fame +and shillings which they expected from it was never gathered in. Yet the +book excited some little notice. The incognito of its authors induced +some critics to palm it even on such a man as Dr. Johnson; others +praised; others sneered at it. In the young men it raised hopes, only to +dash them; but its failure was not so utter as to put the idea of +literary success entirely out of their heads, nor its success sufficient +to induce them to rush recklessly into print, and thus strangle their +fame in its cradle. Let it fail, was Richard Sheridan's thought; he had +now a far more engrossing ambition. In a word, he was in love. + +Yes, he was in love for a time--only for a time, and not truly. But, be +it remembered, Sheridan's evil days had not commenced. He sowed his wild +oats late in life,--alack for him!--and he never finished sowing them. +His was not the viciousness of nature, but the corruption of success. +'In all time of wealth, good Lord deliver us!' What prayer can wild, +unrestrained, unheeding Genius utter with more fervency? I own Genius is +rarely in love. There is an egotism, almost a selfishness, about it, +that will not stoop to such common worship. Women know it, and often +prefer the blunt, honest, common-place soldier to the wild erratic poet. +Genius, grand as it is, is unsympathetic. It demands higher--the highest +joys. Genius claims to be loved, but to love is too much to ask it. And +yet at this time Sheridan was not a matured Genius. When his development +came, he cast off this very love for which he had fought, manoeuvred, +struggled, and was unfaithful to the very wife whom he had nearly died +to obtain. + +Miss Linley was one of a family who have been called 'a nest of +nightingales.' Young ladies who practise elaborate pieces and sing +simple ballads in the voice of a white mouse, know the name of Linley +well. For ages the Linleys have been the bards of England--composers, +musicians, singers, always popular, always English. Sheridan's love was +one of the most renowned of the family, but the 'Maid of Bath,' as she +was called, was as celebrated for her beauty as for the magnificence of +her voice. When Sheridan first knew her, she was only sixteen years +old--very beautiful, clever, and modest. She was a singer by profession, +living at Bath, as Sheridan, only three years older than herself, also +was, but attending concerts, oratorios, and so forth, in other places, +especially at Oxford. Her adorers were legion; and the Oxford boys +especially--always in love as they are--were among them. Halhed was +among these last, and in the innocence of his heart confided his passion +to his friend Dick Sheridan. At sixteen the young beauty began her +conquests. A rich old Wiltshire squire, with a fine heart, as golden as +his guineas, offered to or for her, and was readily accepted. But +'Cecilia,' as she was always called, could not sacrifice herself on the +altar of duty, and she privately told him that though she honoured and +esteemed, she could never love him. The old gentleman proved his worth. +Did he storm? did he hold her to her engagement? did he shackle himself +with a young wife, who would only learn to hate him for his persinacity? +Not a bit of it. He acted with a generosity which should be held up as a +model to all old gentlemen who are wild enough, to fall in love with +girls of sixteen. He knew Mr. Linley, who was delighted with the match, +would be furious if it were broken off. He offered to take on himself +all the blame if the breach, and, to satisfy the angry parent, settled +£1,000 on the daughter. The offer was accepted, and the trial for breach +of promise with which the père Linley had threatened Mr. Long, was of +course withheld. Mr. Long afterwards presented Mrs. Sheridan with +£3,000. + +The 'Maid of Bath' was now an heiress as well as a fascinating beauty, +but her face and her voice were the chief enchantments with her ardent +and youthful adorers. The Sheridans had settled in Mead Street, in that +town which is celebrated for its gambling, its scandal, and its +unhealthy situation at the bottom of a natural basin. Well might the +Romans build their baths there: it will take more water than even Bath +supplies to wash out its follies and iniquities. It certainly is strange +how washing and cards go together. One would fancy there were no baths +in Eden, for wherever there are baths, there we find idleness and all +its attendant vices. + +The Linleys were soon intimate with the Sheridans, and the Maid of Bath +added to her adorers both Richard and his elder brother Charles; only, +just as at Harrow every one thought Richard a dunce and he disappointed +them; so at Bath no one thought Richard would fall in love, and he _did_ +disappoint them--none more so than Charles, his brother, and Halhed, his +bosom friend. As for the latter, he was almost mad in his devotion, and +certainly extravagant in his expressions. He described his passion by a +clever, but rather disagreeable simile, which Sheridan, who was a most +disgraceful plagiarist, though he had no need to be so, afterwards +adopted as his own. 'Just as the Egyptian pharmacists,' wrote Halhed, in +a Latin letter, in which he described the power of Miss Linley's voice +over his spirit, 'were wont, in embalming a dead body to draw the brain +out through the ears with a crooked hook, this nightingale has drawn out +through mine ears not my brain only, but my heart also.' + +Then among other of her devotees were Norris, the singer, and Mr. Watts, +a rich gentleman-commoner, who had also met her at Oxford. Surely with +such and other rivals, the chances of the quiet, unpretending, +undemonstrative boy of nineteen were small. But no, Miss Linley was +foolish enough to be captivated by genius, and charmed by such poems as +the quiet boy wrote to her, of which this is, perhaps, one of the +prettiest: + + 'Dry that tear, my gentlest love; + Be hush'd that struggling sigh, + Nor seasons, day, nor fate shall prove + More fix'd, more true than I. + Hush'd be that sigh, be dry that tear; + Cease boding doubt, cease anxious fear: + Dry be that tear. + + 'Ask'st thou how long my love will stay, + When all that's new is past? + How long, ah Delia, can I say + How long my life will last? + Dry be that tear, be hush'd that sigh, + At least I'll love thee till I die: + Hush'd be that sigh. + + 'And does that thought affect thee too, + The thought of Sylvio's death, + That he who only breath'd for you, + Must yield that faithful breath? + Hush'd be that sigh, be dry that tear, + Nor let us lose our Heaven here: + Be dry that tear.' + +The many adorers had not the remotest suspicion of this devotion, and +'gave her' to this, that, or the other eligible personage; but the +villanous conduct of a scoundrel soon brought the matter to a crisis. +The whole story was as romantic as it could be. In a three-volume novel, +critics, always so just and acute in their judgment, would call it +far-fetched, improbable, unnatural; in short, anything but what should +be the plot of the pure 'domestic English story.' Yet, here it is with +almost dramatic effect, the simple tale of what really befel one of our +most celebrated men. + +Yes, to complete the fiction-like aspect of the affair, there was even a +'captain' in the matter--as good a villain as ever shone in short hose +and cut doublet at the 'Strand' or 'Victoria.' Captain Matthews was a +married man, and a very naughty one. He was an intimate friend of the +Linleys, and wanted to push his intimacy too far. In short, 'not to put +too fine a point on it' (too fine a point is precisely what never _is_ +put), he attempted to seduce the pretty, innocent girl, and not dismayed +at one failure, went on again and again. 'Cecilia,' knowing the temper +of Linley père, was afraid to expose him to her father, and with a +course, which we of the present day cannot but think strange, if nothing +more, disclosed the attempts of her persecutor to no other than her own +lover, Richard Brinsley Sheridan. + +Strange want of delicacy, undoubtedly, and yet we can excuse the poor +songstress, with a father who sought only to make money out of her +talents, and no other relations to confide in. But Richard Brinsley, +long her lover, now resolved to be both her protector and her husband. +He persuaded her to fly to France, under cover of entering a convent. He +induced his sister to lend him money out of that provided for the +housekeeping at home, hired a post-chaise, and sent a sedan-chair to her +father's house in the Crescent to convey her to it, and wafted her off +to town. Thence, after a few adroit lies on the part of Sheridan, they +sailed to Dunkirk; and there he persuaded her to become his wife. She +consented, and they were knotted together by an obliging priest +accustomed to these runaway matches from _la perfide Albion_. + +The irate parent, Linley, followed, recaptured his daughter, and brought +Her back to England. Meanwhile, the elopement excited great agitation in +the good city of Bath, and among others, the villain of the story, the +gallant Captain Matthews, posted Richard Brinsley as 'a scoundrel and a +liar,' the then polite method of expressing disgust. Home came Richard +in the wake of Miss Linley, who rejoiced in the unromantic praenomen of +'Betsy,' to her angry parent, and found matters had been running high in +his short absence. A duel with Matthews seems to have been the natural +consequence, and up Richard posted to London to fight it. Matthews +played the craven--Sheridan the impetuous lover. They met, fought, +seized one another's swords, wrestled, fell together, and wounded each +other with the stumps of their rapiers in true Chevy-Chase fashion. +Matthews, who had behaved in a cowardly manner in the first affair, +sought to retrieve his honour by sending a second challenge. Again the +rivals--well represented in 'The Rivals' afterwards produced--met at +Kingsdown. Mr. Matthews drew; Mr. Sheridan advanced on him at first: Mr. +Matthews in turn advanced fast on Mr. Sheridan; upon which he retreated, +till he very suddenly ran in upon Mr. Matthews, laying himself +exceedingly open, and endeavouring to get hold of Mr. Matthews' sword. +Mr. Matthews received him at point, and, I believe, disengaged his sword +from Mr. Sheridan's body, and gave him another wound. The same scene was +now enacted, and a _combat à l'outrance_ took place, ending in mutual +wounds, and fortunately no one dead. + +Poor little Betsy was at Oxford when all this took place. On her return +to Bath she heard something of it, and unconsciously revealed the secret +of her private marriage, claiming the right of a wife to watch over her +wounded husband. Then came the _dénouement_. Old Tom Sheridan rejected +his son. The angry Linley would have rejected his daughter, but for her +honour. Richard was sent off into Essex, and in due time the couple were +legally married in England. So ended a wild, romantic affair, in which +Sheridan took a desperate, but not altogether honourable, part. But the +dramatist got more out of it than a pretty wife. Like all true geniuses, +he employed his own experience in the production of his works, and drew +from the very event of his life some hints or touches to enliven the +characters of his imagination. Surely the bravado and cowardice of +Captain Matthews, who on the first meeting in the Park is described as +finding all kinds of difficulties in the way of their fighting, +objecting now to the ground as unlevel, now to the presence of a +stranger, who turns out to be an officer, and very politely moves off +when requested, who, in short, delays the event as long as possible, +must have supplied the idea of Bob Acres; while the very conversations, +of which we have no record, may have given him some of those hints of +character which made the 'Rivals' so successful. That play--his +first--was written in 1774. It failed on its first appearance, owing to +the bad acting of the part of Sir Lucius O'Trigger, by Mr. Lee; but when +another actor was substituted, the piece was at once successful, and +acted with overflowing houses all over the country. How could it be +otherwise? It may have been exaggerated, far-fetched, unnatural, but +such characters as Sir Anthony Absolute, Sir Lucius, Bob Acres, Lydia +Languish, and most of all Mrs. Malaprop, so admirably conceived, and so +carefully and ingeniously worked out, could not but be admired. They +have become household words; they are even now our standards of +ridicule, and be they natural or not, these last eighty years have +changed the world so little that Malaprops and Acreses may be found in +the range of almost any man's experience, and in every class of society. + +Sheridan and his divine Betsy were now living in their own house, in +that Dull little place, Orchard Street, Portman Square, then an +aristocratic neighbourhood, and he was diligent in the production of +essays, pamphlets, and farces, many of which never saw the light, while +others fell flat, or were not calculated to bring him any fame. What +great authors have not experienced the same disappointments? What men +would ever be great if they allowed such checks to damp their energy, or +were turned back by them from the course in which they feel that their +power lies? + +But his next work, the opera of 'The Duenna,' had a yet more signal +success, and a run of no less than seventy-five nights at Covent Garden, +which put Garrick at Drury Lane to his wit's end to know how to compete +with it. Old Linley himself composed the music for it; and to show how +thus a family could hold the stage, Garrick actually played off the +mother against the son, and revived Mrs. Sheridan's comedy of 'The +Discovery,' to compete with Richard Sheridan's 'Duenna.' + +The first night 'The Rivals' was brought out at Bath came Sheridan's +father, who, as we have seen, had refused to have anything to say to his +son. It is related as an instance of Richard's filial affection, that +during the representation he placed himself behind a side-scene opposite +to the box in which his father and sisters sat, and gazed at them all +the time. When he returned to his house and wife, he burst into tears, +and declared that he felt it too bitter that he alone should have been +forbidden to speak to those on whom he had been gazing all the night. + +During the following year this speculative man, who married on nothing +but his brain, and had no capital, no wealthy friends, in short nothing +whatever, suddenly appears in the most mysterious manner as a +capitalist, and lays down his £10,000 in the coolest and quietest +manner. And for what? For a share in the purchase of Garrick's moiety of +the patent of Drury Lane. The whole property was worth £70,000; Garrick +sold his half for £35,000, of which old Mr. Linley contributed £10,000, +Dr. Ford £15,000, and penniless Sheridan the balance. Where he got the +money nobody knew, and apparently nobody asked. It was paid, and he +entered at once on the business of proprietor of that old house, where +so many a Roscius has strutted and declaimed with more or less fame; so +many a Walking gentleman done his five shillings' worth of polite +comedy, so many a tinsel king degraded the 'legitimate drama,' in the +most illegitimate manner, and whose glories were extinguished with the +reign of Macready, when we were boys, _nous autres_. + +The first piece he contributed to this stage was 'A Trip to +Scarborough,' Which was only a species of 'family edition of Vanbrugh's +play, 'The Relapse;' but in 1777 he reached the acme of his fame, in +'The School for Scandal.' + +But alack and alas for these sensual days, when it is too much trouble +to think, and people go to the play, if they go at all, to feast their +eyes and ears, not their minds; can any sensible person believe that if +'The School for Scandal,' teeming as it does with wit, satire, and +character, finer and truer than in any play produced since the days of +Ben Jonson, Massinger, and Marlowe, were set on the boards of the +Haymarket at this day, as a new piece by an author of no very high +celebrity, it would draw away a single admirer from the flummery in +Oxford Street, the squeaking at Covent Garden, or the broad, exaggerated +farce at the Adelphi or Olympic? No: it may still have its place on the +London stage when well acted, but it owes that to its ancient celebrity, +and it can never compete with the tinsel and tailoring which alone can +make even Shakspeare go down with a modern audience. + +In those days of Garrick, on the other hand, those glorious days of true +histrionic art, high and low were not ashamed to throng Drury Lane and +Covent Garden, and make the appearance of a new play the great event of +the season. Hundreds were turned away from the doors, when 'The School +for Scandal' was acted, and those who were fortunate enough to get in +made the piece the subject of conversation in society for many a night, +passing keen comment on every scene, every line, every word almost, and +using their minds as we now use our eyes. + +This brilliant play, the earliest idea of which was derived from its +author's experience of the gossip of that kettle of scandal and +backbiting, Bath, where, if no other commandment were ever broken, the +constant breach of the ninth would suffice to put it on a level with +certain condemned cities we have somewhere read of, won for Sheridan a +reputation of which he at once felt the value, and made his purchase of +a share in the property of Old Drury for the time being, a successful +speculation. It produced a result which his good heart perhaps valued +even more than the guineas which now flowed in; it induced his father, +who had long been at war with him, to seek a reconciliation, and the +elder Sheridan actually became manager of the theatre of which his son +was part proprietor. + +Old Tom Sheridan had always been a proud man, and when once he was +offended, was hard to bring round again. His quarrel with Johnson was an +instance of this. In 1762 the Doctor, hearing they had given Sheridan a +pension of two hundred a year, exclaimed, 'What have they given _him_ a +pension? then it is time for me to give up mine.' A 'kind friend' took +care to repeat the peevish exclamation, without adding what Johnson had +said immediately afterwards, 'However, I am glad that they have given +Mr. Sheridan a pension, for he is a very good man.' The actor was +disgusted; and though Boswell interfered, declined to be reconciled. On +one occasion he even rushed from a house at which he was to dine, when +he heard that the great Samuel had been invited. The Doctor had little +opinion of Sheridan's declamation. 'Besides, sir,' said he, 'what +influence can Mr. Sheridan have upon the language of this great country +by his narrow exertions. Sir, it is burning a farthing candle at Dover +to show light at Calais.' Still, when Garrick attacked his rival, +Johnson nobly defended him. 'No sir,' he said, 'there is to be sure, in +Sheridan, something to reprehend, and everything to laugh at; but, sir, +he is not a bad man. No, sir, were mankind to be divided into good and +bad, he would stand considerably within the ranks of the good.' + +However, the greatest bully of his age (and the kindest-hearted man) +thought very differently of the son. Richard Brinsley had written a +prologue to Savage's play of 'Sir Thomas Overbury'-- + + 'Ill-fated Savage, at whose birth was giv'n + No parent but the Muse, no friend but Heav'n;' + +and in this had paid an elegant compliment to the great lexicographer, +winding up with these lines:-- + + 'So pleads the tale that gives to future times + The son's misfortunes and the parent's crimes; + There shall his fame, if own'd to-night, survive, + Fix'd _by the hand that bids our language live_-- + +referring at once to Johnson's life of his friend Savage and to his +great Dictionary. It was Savage, every one remembers, with whom Johnson +in his days of starvation was wont to walk the streets all night, +neither of them being able to pay for a lodging, and with whom, walking +one night round and round St. James's Square, he kept up his own and his +companion's spirits by inveighing against the minister and declaring +that they would 'stand by their country.' + +Doubtless the Doctor felt as much pleasure at the meed awarded to his +old companion in misery as at the high compliment to himself. Anyhow he +pronounced that Sheridan 'had written the two best comedies of his age,' +and therefore proposed him as a member of the Literary Club. + +This celebrated gathering of wit and whimsicality, founded by Johnson +himself in conjunction with Sir J. Reynolds, was the Helicon of London +Letters, and the temple which the greatest talker of his age had built +for himself, and in which he took care to be duly worshipped. It met at +the Turk's Head in Gerrard Street, Soho, every Friday; and from seven in +the evening to almost any hour of night was the scene of such talk, +mainly on literature and learning, as has never been heard since in this +country. It consisted at this period of twenty-six members, and there is +scarcely one among them whose name is not known to-day as well as any in +the history of our literature. Besides the high priests, Reynolds and +Johnson, there came Edmund Burke, Fox, Sheridan, and many another of +less note, to represent the senate: Goldsmith, Gibbon, Adam Smith, +Malone, Dr. Burney, Percy, Nugent, Sir William Jones, three Irish +bishops, and a host of others, crowded in from the ranks of learning and +literature. Garrick and George Colman found here an indulgent audience; +and the light portion of the company comprised such men as Topham +Beauclerk, Bennet Langton, Vesey, and a dozen of lords and baronets. In +short, they were picked men, and if their conversation was not always +witty, it was because they had all wit and frightened one another. + +[Illustration: THE FAMOUS LITERARY CLUB.] + +Among them the bullying Doctor rolled in majestic grumpiness; scolded, +dogmatized, contradicted, pished and pshawed; and made himself generally +disagreeable; yet, hail the omen, Intellect! such was the force, such +the fame of his mind, that the more he snorted, the more they adored +him--the more he bullied, the more humbly they knocked under. He was +quite 'His Majesty' at the Turk's Head, and the courtiers waited for his +coming with anxiety, and talked of him till he came in the same manner +as the lacqueys in the anteroom of a crowned monarch. Boswell, who, by +the way, was also a member--of course he was, or how should we have had +the great man's conversations handed down to us?--was sure to keep them +up to the proper mark of adulation if they ever flagged in it, and was +as servile in his admiration in the Doctor's absence as when he was there +to call him a fool for his pains. + +Thus, on one occasion while 'King Johnson' tarried, the courtiers were +discussing his journey to the Hebrides and his coming away 'willing to +believe the second sight.' Some of them smiled at this, but Bozzy was +down on them with more than usual servility. 'He is only _willing_ to +believe,' he exclaimed. '_I do_ believe. The evidence is enough for me, +though not for his great mind. What will not fill a quart bottle will +fill a pint bottle. I am filled with belief.'--'Are you?' said Colman, +slily; 'then cork it up.' + +As a specimen of Johnson's pride in his own club, which always remained +extremely exclusive, we have what he said of Garrick, who, before he was +elected, carelessly told Reynolds he liked the club, and thought 'he +would be of them.' + +'_He'll be of us!_' roared the Doctor indignantly, on hearing of this. +'How does he know we will _permit_ him? The first duke in England has no +right to hold such language!' + +It can easily be imagined that when 'His Majesty' expressed his approval +of Richard Brinsley, then a young man of eight-and-twenty, there was no +one who ventured to blackball him, and so Sheridan was duly elected. + +The fame of 'The School for Scandal' was a substantial one for Richard +Brinsley, and in the following year he extended his speculation by +buying the other moiety of Drury Lane. This theatre, which took its name +from the old Cockpit Theatre in Drury Lane, where Killigrew acted in the +days of Charles II. is famous for the number of times it has been +rebuilt. The first house had been destroyed in 1674; and the one in +which Garrick acted was built by Sir Christopher Wren and opened with a +prologue by Dryden. In 1793 this was rebuilt. In 1809 it was burnt to +the ground; and on its re-opening the Committee advertised a prize for a +prologue, which was supposed to be tried for by all the poets and +poetasters then in England.[7] Sheridan adding afterwards a condition +that he wanted an address without a Phoenix in it. Horace Smith and his +brother seized the opportunity to parody the style of the most +celebrated in their delightful 'Rejected Addresses.' Drury Lane has +always been grand in its prologue, for besides Dryden and Byron, it +could boast of Sam. Johnson, who wrote the address when Garrick opened +the theatre in 1747. No theatre ever had more great names connected with +its history. + +[7: None of the addresses sent in having given satisfaction, Lord Byron +was requested to write one, which he did.] + +It was in 1778, after the purchase of the other moiety of this property, +that Sheridan set on its boards 'The Critic.' Though this was denounced +as itself as complete a plagiarism as any Sir Fretful Plagiary could +make, and though undoubtedly the idea of it was borrowed, its wit, so +truly Sheridanian, and its complete characters, enhanced its author's +fame, in spite of the disappointment of those who expected higher things +from the writer of 'The School for Scandal.' Whether Sheridan would have +gone on improving, had he remained true to the drama, 'The Critic' +leaves us in doubt. But he was a man of higher ambition. Step by step, +unexpectedly, and apparently unprepared, he had taken by storm the +out-works of the citadel he was determined to capture, and he seems to +have cared little to garrison these minor fortresses. He had carried off +from among a dozen suitors a wife of such beauty that Walpole thus +writes of her in 1773:-- + +'I was at the ball last night, and have only been at the opera, where I +was infinitely struck with the Carrara, who is the prettiest creature +upon earth. Mrs. Hartley I find still handsomer, and Miss Linley is to +be the superlative degree. The king admires the last, and ogles her as +much as he dares in so holy a place as an oratorio, and at so devout a +service as Alexander's Feast' + +Yet Sheridan did not prize his lovely wife as he should have done, when +he had once obtained her. Again he had struck boldly into the drama, and +in four years had achieved that fame as a play-writer to which even +Johnson could testify so handsomely. He now quitted this, and with the +same innate power--the same consciousness of success--the same readiness +of genius--took a higher, far more brilliant flight than ever. Yet had +he garrisoned the forts he captured, he would have been a better, +happier, and more prosperous man. Had he been true to the Maid of Bath, +his character would not have degenerated as it did. Had he kept up his +connection with the drama, he would not have lost so largely by his +speculation in Drury Lane. His genius became his temptation, and he +hurried on to triumph and to fall. + +Public praise is a syren which the young sailor through life cannot +resist. Political life is a fine aim, even when its seeker starts +without a shred of real patriotism to conceal his personal ambition. No +young man of any character can think, without a thrill of rapture, on +the glory of having _his_ name--now obscure--written in capitals on the +page of his country's history. A true patriot cares nothing for fame; a +really great man is content to die nameless, if his acts may but survive +him. Sheridan was not really great, and it may be doubted if he had any +sincerity in his political views. But the period favoured the rise of +young men of genius. In former reigns a man could have little hope of +political influence without being first a courtier; but by this time +liberalism had made giant strides. The leaven of revolutionary ideas, +which had leavened the whole lump in France, was still working quietly +and less passionately in this country, and being less repressed, +displayed itself in the last quarter of the eighteenth century in the +form of a strong and brilliant opposition. It was to this that the young +men of ambition attached themselves, rallying under the standard of +Charles James Fox, since it was there only that their talents were +sufficient to recommend them. + +To this party, Sheridan, laughing in his sleeve at the extravagance of +their demands--so that when they clamoured for a 'parliament once a +year, or oftener if need be,' he pronounced himself an +'Oftener-if-need-be' man--was introduced, when his fame as a literary +man had brought him into contact with some of its hangers on. Fox, after +his first interview with him, affirmed that he had always thought Hare +and Charles Townsend the wittiest men he had ever met, but that Sheridan +surpassed them both; and Sheridan was equally pleased with 'the Man of +the People.' + +The first step to this political position was to become a member of a +certain club, where its leaders gambled away their money, and drank away +their minds--to wit, Brookes'. Pretty boys, indeed, were these great +Whig patriots when turned loose in these precincts. The tables were for +stakes of twenty or fifty guineas, but soon ran up to hundreds. What did +it matter to Charles James Fox, to the Man of the People, whether he +lost five, seven, or ten thousand of a night, when the one-half came out +of his father's, the other out of Hebrew, pockets--the sleek, +thick-lipped owners of which thronged his Jerusalem chamber, as he +called his back sitting-room, only too glad to 'oblige' him to any +amount? The rage for gaming at this pandemonium may be understood from a +rule of the club, which it was found necessary to make to interdict it +_in the eating-room_, but to which was added the truly British +exception, which allowed two members of Parliament in those days, or two +'gentlemen' of any kind, to toss up for what they had ordered. + +This charming resort of the dissipated was originally established in +Pall Mall in 1764, and the manager was that same Almack who afterwards +opened a lady's club in the rooms now called Willis's, in King Street, +St. James's; who also owned the famous Thatched House, and whom Gilly +Williams described as having a 'Scotch face, in a bag-wig,' waiting on +the ladies at supper. In 1778 Brookes--a wine-merchant and money-lender, +whom Tickell, in his famous 'Epistle from the Hon. Charles Fox, +partridge-shooting, to the Hon. John Townsend, cruising,' describes in +these lines;-- + + 'And know I've bought the best champagne from Brookes, + From liberal Brookes, whose speculative skill + Is hasty credit, and a distant bill: + Who, nurs'd in clubs, disdains a vulgar trade: + Exults to trust, and blushes to be paid--' + +built and opened the present club-house in St. James's Street, and +thither the members of Almack's migrated. Brookes' speculative skill, +however, did not make him a rich man, and the 'gentlemen' he dealt with +were perhaps too gentlemanly to pay him. He died poor in 1782. Almack's +at first consisted of twenty-seven members, one of whom was C.J. Fox. +Gibbon, the historian, was actually a member of it, and says that in +spite of the rage for play, he found the society there rational and +entertaining. Sir Joshua Reynolds wanted to be a member of it too. 'You +see,' says Topham Beauclerk thereupon, 'what noble ambition will make a +man attempt. That den is not yet opened,' &c. + +Brookes', however, was far more celebrated, and besides Fox, Reynolds, +and Gibbon, there were here to be found Horace Walpole, David Hume, +Burke, Selwyn, and Garrick. It would be curious to discover how much +religion, how much morality, and how much vanity there were among the +set. The first two would require a microscope to examine, the last an +ocean to contain it. But let Tickell describe its inmates:-- + + 'Soon as to Brookes's thence thy footsteps bend + What gratulations thy approach attend! + See Gibbon rap his box--auspicious sign, + That classic compliment and wit combine; + See Beauclerk's cheek a tinge of red surprise, + And friendship give what cruel health denies; + + * * * * * + + Of wit, of taste, of fancy we'll debate, + If Sheridan for once be not too late. + But scarce a thought on politics we'll spare + Unless on Polish politics with Hare. + Good-natured Devon! oft shall there appear + The cool complacence of thy friendly sneer; + Oft shall Fitzpatrick's wit, and Stanhope's ease, + And Burgoyne's manly sense combine to please. + +To show how high gaming ran in this assembly of wits, even so early at +1772, there is a memorandum in the books, stating that Mr. Thynne +retired from the club in disgust, because he had only won £12,000 in two +months. The principal games at this period were quinze and faro. + +Into this eligible club Richard Sheridan, who ten years before had been +agreeing with Halhed on the bliss of making a couple of hundred pounds +by their literary exertions, now essayed to enter as a member; but in +vain. One black-ball sufficed to nullify his election, and that one was +dropped in by George Selwyn, who, with degrading littleness, would not +have the son of an actor among them. Again and again he made the +attempt; again and again Selwyn foiled him; and it was not till 1780 +that he succeeded. The Prince of Wales was then his devoted friend, and +was determined he should be admitted into the club. The elections at +that time took place between eleven at night and one o'clock in the +morning, and the 'greatest gentleman in Europe' took care to be in the +hall when the ballot began. Selwyn came down as usual, bent on triumph. +The prince called him to him. There was nothing for it; Selwyn was +forced to obey. The prince walked him up and down the hall, engaging him +in an apparently most important conversation. George Selwyn answered him +question after question, and made desperate attempts to slip away. The +other George had always something more to say to him. The long finger of +the clock went round, and Selwyn's long white fingers were itching for +the black ball. The prince was only more and more interested, the wit +only more and more abstracted. Never was the young George more lively, +or the other more silent. But it was all in vain. The finger of the +clock went round and round, and at last the members came out noisily +from the balloting-room, and the smiling faces of the prince's friends +showed to the unhappy Selwyn that his enemy had been elected. + +So, at least, runs one story. The other, told by Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, +is perhaps more probable. It appears that the Earl of Besborough was no +less opposed to his election than George Selwyn, and these two +individuals agreed at any cost of comfort to be always at the club at +the time of the ballot to throw in their black balls. On the night of +his success, Lord Besborough was there as usual, and Selwyn was at his +rooms in Cleveland Row, preparing to come to the club. Suddenly a +chairman rushed into Brookes' with an important note for my lord, who, +on tearing it open, found to his horror that it was from his +daughter-in-law, Lady Duncannon, announcing that his house in Cavendish +Square was on fire, and imploring him to come immediately. Feeling +confident that his fellow conspirator would be true to his post, the +earl set off at once. But almost the same moment Selwyn received a +message informing him that his adopted daughter, of whom he was very +fond, was seized with an alarming illness. The ground was cleared; and +by the time the earl returned, having, it is needless to say, found his +house in a perfect state of security, and was joined by Selwyn, whose +daughter had never been better in her life, the actor's son was elected, +and the conspirators found they had been duped. + +But it is far easier in this country to get into that House, where one +has to represent the interests of thousands, and take a share in the +government of a nation, than to be admitted to a club where one has but +to lounge, to gamble, and to eat dinner; and Sheridan was elected for +the town of Stafford with probably little more artifice than the old and +stale one of putting five-pound notes under voters' glasses, or paying +thirty pounds for a home-cured ham. Whether he bribed or not, a petition +was presented against his election, almost as a matter of course in +those days, and his maiden speech was made in defence of the good +burgesses of that quiet little county-town. After making this speech, +which was listened to in silence on account of his reputation as a +dramatic author, but which does not appear to have been very wonderful, +he rushed up to the gallery, and eagerly asked his friend Woodfall what +he thought of it. That candid man shook his head, and told him oratory +was not his forte, Sheridan leaned his head on his hand a moment, and +then exclaimed with vehement emphasis, 'It is in me, however, and, by +Heaven! it shall come out.' + +He spoke prophetically, yet not as the great man who determines to +conquer difficulties, but rather as one who feels conscious of his own +powers, and knows that they must show themselves sooner or later. +Sheridan found himself labouring under the same natural obstacles as +Demosthenes--though in a less degree--a thick and disagreeable tone of +voice; but we do not find in the indolent but gifted Englishman that +admirable perseverance, that conquering zeal, which enabled the Athenian +to turn these very impediments to his own advantage. He did, indeed, +prepare his speeches, and at times had fits of that same diligence which +he had displayed in the preparation of 'The School for Scandal;' but his +indolent, self-indulgent mode of life left him no time for such steady +devotion to oratory as might have made him the finest speaker of his +age, for perhaps his natural abilities were greater than those of Pitt, +Fox, or even Burke, though his education was inferior to that of those +two statesmen. + +From this time Sheridan's life had two phases--that of a politician, and +that of a man of the world. With the former, we have nothing to do in +such a memoir as this, and indeed it is difficult to say whether it was +in oratory, the drama, or wit that he gained the greatest celebrity. +There is, however, some difference between the three capacities. On the +mimic stage, and on the stage of the country, his fame rested on a very +few grand outbursts--some matured, prepared, deliberated--others +spontaneous. He left only three great comedies, and perhaps we may say +only one really grand. In the same way he made only two great speeches, +or perhaps we may say only one. His wit on the other hand--though that +too is said to have been studied--was the constant accompaniment of his +daily life, and Sheridan has not left two or three celebrated bon-mots, +but a hundred. + +But even in his political career his wit, which must then have been +spontaneous, won him almost as much fame as his eloquence, which he +seems to have reserved for great occasions. He was the wit of the House. +Wit, ridicule, satire, quiet, cool, and easy sneers, always made in good +temper, and always therefore the more bitter, were his weapons, and they +struck with unerring accuracy. At that time--nor at that time only--the +'Den of Thieves,' as Cobbett called our senate, was a cockpit as vulgar +and personal as the present Congress of the United States. Party-spirit +meant more than it has ever done since, and scarcely less than it had +meant when the throne itself was the stake for which parties played some +forty years before. There was, in fact a substantial personal centre for +each side. The one party rallied round a respectable but maniac monarch, +whose mental afflictions took the most distressing form, the other round +his gay, handsome, dissolute--nay disgusting--son, at once his rival and +his heir. The spirit of each party was therefore personal, and their +attacks on one another were more personal than anything we can imagine +in the present day in so respectably ridiculous a conclave as the House +of Commons. It was little for one honourable gentleman to give another +honourable gentleman the lie direct before the eyes of the country. The +honourable gentlemen descended--or, as they thought, ascended--to the +most vehement invective, and such was at times the torrent of personal +abuse which parties heaped on one another, while good-natured John Bull +looked on and smiled at his rulers, that, as in the United States of +to-day, a debate was often the prelude to a duel. Pitt and Fox, Tierney, +Adam, Fullarton, Lord George Germain, Lord Shelburne, and Governor +Johnstone, all 'vindicated their honour,' as the phrase went, by 'coffee +and pistols for four.' If Sheridan had not to repeat the Bob Acres scene +with Captain Matthews, it was only because his wonderful good humour +could put up with a great deal that others thought could only be +expiated by a hole in the waistcoat. + +In the administration of the Marquis of Rockingham the dramatist enjoyed +the pleasures of office for less than a year as one of the Under +Secretaries of State in 1782. In the next year we find him making a +happy retort on Pitt, who had somewhat vulgarly alluded to his being a +dramatic author. It was on the American question, perhaps the bitterest +that ever called forth the acrimony of parties in the House. Sheridan, +from boyhood, had been taunted with being the son of an actor. One can +hardly credit this fact, just after Garrick had raised the profession of +an actor to so great an eminence in the social scale. He had been called +'the player boy' at school, and his election at Brookes' had been +opposed on the same grounds. It was evidently his bitterest point, and +Pitt probably knew this when, in replying to a speech of the +ex-dramatist's he said that 'no man admired more than he did the +abilities of that right honourable gentleman, the elegant sallies of his +thought, the gay effusions of his fancy, his _dramatic_ turns, and his +epigrammatic point; and if they were reserved for the _proper stage,_ +they would, no doubt, receive what the hon. gentleman's abilities always +did receive, the plaudits of the audience; and it would be his fortune +_sui plausu gaudere theatri_. But this was not the proper scene for the +exhibition of those elegancies.' This was vulgar in Pitt, and probably +every one felt so. But Sheridan rose, cool and collected, and quietly +replied:-- + +'On the particular sort of personality which the right hon. gentleman +has thought proper to make use of, I need not make any comment. The +propriety, the taste, the gentlemanly point of it, must have been +obvious to the House. But let me assure the right hon. gentleman that I +do now, and will at any time he chooses to repeat this sort of allusion, +meet it with the most sincere good humour. Nay, I will say more: +flattered and encouraged by the right hon. gentleman's panegyric on my +talents, if ever I again engage in the compositions he alludes to, I may +be tempted to an act of presumption--to attempt an improvement on one of +Ben Jonson's best characters, the character of the _Angry Boy_, in the +"Alchemist."' + +The fury of Pitt, contrasted with the coolness of the man he had so +shamefully attacked, made this sally irresistible, and from that time +neither 'the angry boy' himself, nor any of his colleagues, were anxious +to twit Sheridan on his dramatic pursuits. + +Pitt wanted to lay a tax on every horse that started in a race. Lord +Surry, a _turfish_ individual of the day, proposed one of five pounds on +the winner. Sheridan, rising, told his lordship that the next time he +visited Newmarket he would probably be greeted with the line:-- + + 'Jockey of Norfolk, be not so bold--.' + +Lord Rolie, the butt of the Opposition, who had attacked him in the +famous satire, 'The Rolliad,' so popular that it went through twenty-two +editions in twenty-seven years, accused Sheridan of inflammatory +speeches among the operatives of the northern counties on the cotton +question. Sheridan retorted by saying that he believed Lord Rolle must +refer to 'Compositions less prosaic, but more popular' (meaning the +'Rolliad'), and thus successfully turned the laugh against him. + +It was Grattan, I think, who said, 'When I can't talk sense, I talk +metaphor.' Sheridan often talked metaphor, though he sometimes mingled +it with sense. His famous speech about the Begums of Oude is full of it, +but we have one or two instances before that. Thus on the Duke of +Richmond's report about fortifications, he said, turning to the duke, +that 'holding in his hand the report made by the Board of Officers, he +complimented the noble president on his talents as an _engineer_, which +were strongly evinced in planning and constructing that very paper.... +He has made it a contest of posts, and conducted his reasoning not less +on principles of trigonometry than of logic. There are certain +assumptions thrown up, like advanced works, to keep the enemy at a +distance from the principal object of debate; strong provisos protect +and cover the flanks of his assertions, his very queries are his +casemates,' and so on. + +When Lord Mulgrave said, on another occasion, that any man using his +influence to obtain a vote for the crown _ought_ to lose his head, +Sheridan quietly remarked, that he was glad his lordship had said +'_ought_ to lose his head,' not _would_ have lost it, for in that case +the learned gentleman would not have had that evening '_face_ to have +shown among us.' + +Such are a few of his well-remembered replies in the House; but his fame +as an orator rested on the splendid speeches which he made at the +impeachment of Warren Hastings. The first of these was made in the House +on the 7th of February, 1787. The whole story of the corruption, +extortions, and cruelty of the worst of many bad rulers who have been +imposed upon that unhappy nation of Hindostan, and who ignorant how to +_parcere subjectis_, have gone on in their unjust oppression, only +rendering it the more dangerous by weak concessions, is too well known +to need a recapitulation here. The worst feature in the whole of +Hastings' misconduct was, perhaps, his treatment of those unfortunate +ladies whose money he coveted, the Begums of Oude. The Opposition was +determined to make the governor-general's conduct a state question, but +their charges had been received with little attention, till on this day +Sheridan rose to denounce the cruel extortioner. He spoke for five hours +and a half, and surpassed all he had ever said in eloquence. The subject +was one to find sympathy in the hearts of Englishmen, who, though they +beat their own wives, are always indignant at a man who dares to lay a +little finger on those of anybody else. Then, too, the subject was +Oriental: it might even be invested with something of romance and +poetry; the zenanah, sacred in the eyes of the oppressed natives, had +been ruthlessly insulted, under a glaring Indian sun, amid the +luxuriance of Indian foliage, these acts had been committed, &c. &c. It +was a fertile theme for a poet; and how little soever Sheridan cared for +the Begums and their wrongs--and that he did care little appears from +what he afterwards said of Hastings himself--he could evidently make a +telling speech out of the theme, and he did so. Walpole says that he +turned everybody's head. 'One heard everybody in the street raving on +the wonders of that speech; for my part, I cannot believe it was so +supernatural as they say.' He affirms that there must be a witchery in +Mr. Sheridan, who had no diamonds--as Hastings had--to win favour with, +and says that the Opposition may be fairly charged with sorcery. Burke +declared the speech to be 'the most astonishing effort of eloquence, +argument, and wit united, of which there was any record or tradition.' +Fox affirmed that 'all he had ever heard, all he had ever read, when +compared with it, dwindled into nothing, and vanished like vapour before +the sun.' But these were partizans. Even Pitt acknowledged 'that it +surpassed all the eloquence of ancient and modern times, and possessed +everything that genius or art could furnish to agitate and control the +human mind.' One member confessed himself so unhinged by it, that he +moved an adjournment, because he could not, in his then state of mind, +give an unbiassed vote. But the highest testimony was that of Logan, the +defender of Hastings. At the end of the first hour of the speech, he +said to a friend, 'All this is declamatory assertion without proof.' +Another hour's speaking, and he muttered, 'This is a most wonderful +oration!' A third, and he confessed 'Mr. Hastings has acted very +unjustifiably.' At the end of the fourth, he exclaimed, 'Mr. Hastings is +a most atrocious criminal.' And before the speaker had sat down, he +vehemently protested that 'Of all monsters of iniquity, the most +enormous is Warren Hastings.' + +Such in those days was the effect of eloquence; an art which has been +eschewed in the present House of Commons, and which our newspapers +affect to think is much out of place in an assembly met for calm +deliberation. Perhaps they are right; but oh! for the golden words of a +Sheridan, a Fox, even a Pitt and Burke. + +It is said, though not proved, that on this same night of Sheridan's +glory in the House of Commons, his 'School for Scandal' was acted with +'rapturous applause' at Covent Garden, and his 'Duenna' no less +successfully at Drury Lane. What a pitch of glory for the dunce who had +been shamed into learning Greek verbs at Harrow! Surely Dr. Parr must +then have confessed that a man can be great without the classics--nay, +without even a decent English education, for Sheridan knew comparatively +little of history and literature, certainly less than the men against +whom he was pitted or whose powers he emulated. He has been known to say +to his friends, when asked to take part with them on some important +question, 'You know I'm an ignoramus--instruct me and I'll do my best.' +He had even to rub up his arithmetic when he thought he had some chance +of being made Chancellor of the Exchequer; but, perhaps, many a +statesman before and after him has done as much as that. + +No wonder that after such a speech in the House, the celebrated trial +which commenced in the beginning of the following year should have +roused the attention of the whole nation. The proceedings opened in +Westminster Hall, the noblest room in England, on the 13th of February, +1788. The Queen and four of her daughters were seated in the Duke of +Newcastle's box; the Prince of Wales walked in at the head of a hundred +and fifty peers of the realm. The spectacle was imposing enough. But the +trial proceeded slowly for some months, and it was not till the 3rd of +June that Sheridan rose to make his second great speech on this subject. + +The excitement was then at its highest. Two-thirds of the peers with the +peeresses and their daughters were present, and the whole of the vast +hall was crowded to excess. The sun shone in brightly to light up the +gloomy building, and the whole scene was splendid. Such was the +enthusiasm that people paid _fifty guineas_ for a ticket to hear the +first orator of his day, for such he then was. The actor's son felt the +enlivening influence of a full audience. He had been long preparing for +this moment, and he threw into his speech all the theatrical effect of +which he had studied much and inherited more. He spoke for many hours on +the 3rd, 5th, and 6th, and concluded with these words: + +'They (the House of Commons) exhort you by everything that calls +sublimely upon the heart of man, by the majesty of that justice which +this bold man has libelled, by the wide fame of your own tribunal, by +the sacred pledges by which you swear in the solemn hour of decision, +knowing that that decision will then bring you the highest reward that +ever blessed the heart of man, the consciousness of having done the +greatest act of mercy for the world that the earth has ever yet received +from any hand but heaven!--My Lords, I have done.' + +Sheridan's valet was very proud of his master's success, and as he had +been to hear the speech, was asked what part he considered the finest. +Plush replied by putting himself into his master's attitude, and +imitating his voice admirably, solemnly uttering, 'My Lords, I have +done!' He should have added the word 'nothing.' Sheridan's eloquence had +no more effect than the clear proof of Hastings' guilt, and the +impeachment, as usual, was but a troublesome subterfuge, to satisfy the +Opposition and dust the eyeballs of the country. + +Sheridan's great speech was made. The orator has concluded his oration; +fame was complete, and no more was wanted, Adieu, then, blue-books and +parties, and come on the last grand profession of this man of many +talents--that of the wit. That it was a profession there can be no +doubt, for he lived on it, it was all his capital. He paid his bills in +that coin alone: he paid his workmen, his actors, carpenters, builders +with no more sterling metal; with that ready tool he extracted loans +from the very men who came to be paid; that brilliant ornament +maintained his reputation in the senate, and his character in society. +But wit without wisdom--the froth without the fluid--the capital without +the pillar--is but a poor fortune, a wretched substitute for real worth +and honest utility. For a time men forgave to Mr. Sheridan--extravagant +and reckless as he was--what would long before have brought an honester, +better, but less amusing man to a debtor's prison and the contempt of +society; but only for a time was this career possible. + +Sheridan has now reached the pinnacle of his fame, and from this point +we have to trace that decline which ended so awfully. + +Whilst we call him a dishonest man, we must not be supposed to imply +that he was so in heart. It is pleaded for him that he tricked his +creditors 'for the fun of the thing,' like a modern Robin Hood, and like +that forester bold, he was mightily generous with other men's money. +Deception is deception whether in sport or earnest, and Sheridan, no +doubt, made it a very profitable employment. He had always a taste for +the art of duping, and he had begun early in life--soon after leaving +Harrow. He was spending a few days at Bristol, and wanted a pair of new +boots, but could not afford to pay for them. Shortly before he left, he +called on two bootmakers, and ordered of each a pair, promising payment +on delivery. He fixed the morning of his departure for the tradesmen to +send in their goods. When the first arrived he tried on the boots, +complaining that that for the _right_ foot pinched a little, and ordered +Crispin to take it back, stretch it, and bring it again at nine the next +morning. The second arrived soon after, and this time it was the boot +for the _left_ foot which pinched. Same complaint; same order given; +each had taken away only the pinching boot, and left the other behind. +The same afternoon Sheridan left in his new boots for town, and when the +two shoemakers called at nine the next day, each with a boot in his +hand, we can imagine their disgust at finding how neatly they had been +duped. + +Anecdotes of this kind swarm in every account of Richard Sheridan--many +of them, perhaps, quite apocryphal, others exaggerated, or attributed to +this noted trickster, but all tending to show how completely he was +master of this high art. His ways of eluding creditors used to delight +me, I remember, when an Oxford boy, and they are only paralleled by +Oxford stories. One of these may not be generally known, and was worthy +of Sheridan. Every Oxonian knows Hall, the boat-builder at Folly Bridge. +Mrs. Hall was, in my time, proprietress of those dangerous skiffs and +nutshell canoes which we young harebrains delighted to launch on the +Isis. Some youthful Sheridanian had a long account with this elderly and +bashful personage, who had applied in vain for her money, till, coming +one day to his rooms, she announced her intention not to leave till the +money was paid. 'Very well, Mrs. Hall, then you must sit down and make +yourself comfortable while I dress, for I am going out directly.' Mrs. +H. sat down composedly, and with equal composure the youth took off his +coat. Mrs. H. was not abashed, but in another moment the debtor removed +his waistcoat also. Mrs. H. was still immoveable. Sundry other articles +of dress followed, and the good lady began to be nervous. 'Now, Mrs. +Hall, you can stay if you like, but I assure you that I am going to +change _all_ my dress.' Suiting the action to the word, he began to +remove his lower garments, when Mrs. Hall, shocked and furious, rushed +from the room. + +This reminds us of Sheridan's treatment of a female creditor. He had for +some years hired his carriage-horses from Edbrooke in Clarges Street, +and his bill was a heavy one. Mrs. Edbrooke wanted a new bonnet, and +blew up her mate for not insisting on payment. The curtain lecture was +followed next day by a refusal to allow Mr. Sheridan to have the horses +till the account was settled. Mr. Sheridan sent the politest possible +message in reply, begging that Mrs. Edbrooke would allow his coachman to +drive her in his own carriage to his door, and promising that the matter +should be satisfactorily arranged. The good woman was delighted, dressed +in her best, and, bill in hand, entered the M.P.'s chariot. Sheridan +meanwhile had given orders to his servants. Mrs. Edbrooke was shown up +into the back drawing-room, where a slight luncheon, of which she was +begged to partake, was laid out; and she was assured that her debtor +would not keep her waiting long, though for the moment engaged. The +horse-dealer's wife sat down and discussed a wing of chicken and glass +of wine, and in the meantime her victimizer had been watching his +opportunity, slipped down stairs, jumped into the vehicle, and drove +off. Mrs. Edbrooke finished her lunch and waited in vain; ten minutes, +twenty, thirty, passed, and then she rang the bell: 'Very sorry, ma'am, +but Mr. Sheridan went out on important business half an hour ago.' 'And +the carriage?'--'Oh, ma'am, Mr. Sheridan never walks.' + +He procured his wine in the same style. Chalier, the wine-merchant, was +his creditor to a large amount, and had stopped supplies. Sheridan was +to give a grand dinner to the leaders of the Opposition, and had no port +or sherry to offer them. On the morning of the day fixed he sent for +Chalier, and told him he wanted to settle his account. The importer, +much pleased, said he would go home and bring it at once. 'Stay,' cried +the debtor, 'will you dine with me to-day; Lord----, Sir----, and +So-and-so are coming.' Chalier was flattered and readily accepted. +Returning to his office, he told his clerk that he should dine with Mr. +Sheridan, and therefore leave early. At the proper hour he arrived in +full dress, and was no sooner in the house., than his host despatched a +message to the clerk at the office, saying that Mr. Chalier wished him +to send up at once three dozen of Burgundy, two of claret, two of port, +&c., &c. Nothing seemed more natural, and the wine was forwarded, just +in time for the dinner. It was highly praised by the guests, who asked +Sheridan who was his wine-merchant. The host bowed towards Chalier, gave +him a high recommendation, and impressed him with the belief that he was +telling a polite falsehood in order to secure him other customers. +Little did he think that he was drinking his own wine, and that it was +not, and probably never would be, paid for! + +In like manner, when he wanted a particular Burgundy an innkeeper at +Richmond, who declined to supply it till his bill was paid, he sent for +the man, and had no sooner seen him safe in the house than he drove off +to Richmond, saw his wife, told her he had just had a conversation with +mine host, settled everything, and would, to save them trouble, take the +wine with him in his carriage. The condescension overpowered the good +woman, who ordered it at once to be produced, and Sheridan drove home +about the time that her husband was returning to Richmond, weary of +waiting for his absent debtor. But this kind of trickery could not +always succeed without some knowledge of his creditor's character. In +the case of Holloway, the lawyer, Sheridan took advantage of his +well-known vanity of his judgment of horse-flesh. Kelly gives the +anecdote as authentic. He was walking one day with Sheridan, close to +the churchyard of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, when, as ill-luck would +have it, up comes Holloway on horseback, and in a furious rage, +complains that he has called on Mr. Sheridan time and again in Hertford +Street, and can never gain admittance. He proceeds to violent threats, +and slangs his debtor roundly. Sheridan, cool as a whole bed of +cucumbers, takes no notice of these attacks, but quietly exclaims: 'What +a beautiful creature you're riding, Holloway!' The lawyer's weak point +was touched. + +'You were speaking to me the other day about a horse for Mrs. Sheridan; +now this would be a treasure for a lady.' + +'Does he canter well?' asks Sheridan, with a look of business. + +'Like Pegasus himself.' + +'If that's the case, I shouldn't mind, Holloway, stretching a point for +him. Do you mind showing me his paces?' + +'Not at all,' replies the lawyer, only too happy to show off his own: +and touching up the horse, put him to a quiet canter. The moment is not +to be lost; the churchyard gate is at hand; Sheridan slips in, knowing +that his mounted tormentor cannot follow him, and there bursts into a +roar of laughter, which is joined in by Kelly, but not by the returning +Holloway. + +[Illustration: "A TREASURE FOR A LADY"--SHERIDAN AND THE LAWYER.] + +But if he escaped an importunate lawyer once in a way like this, he +Required more ingenuity to get rid of the limbs of the law, when they +came, as they did frequently in his later years. It was the fashionable +thing in bygone novels of the 'Pelham' school, and Even in more recent +comedies, to introduce a well-dressed sheriff's officer at a dinner +party or ball, and take him through a variety of predicaments, ending, +at length, in the revelation of his real character; and probably some +such scene is still enacted from time to time in the houses of the +extravagant: but Sheridan's adventures with bailiffs seem to have +excited more attention. In the midst of his difficulties he never ceased +to entertain his friends, and 'why should he not do so, since he had not +to pay?' 'Pay your bills, sir? what a shameful waste of money!' he once +said. Thus, one day a young friend was met by him and taken back to +dinner, 'quite in a quiet way, just to meet a very old friend of mine, a +man of great talent, and most charming companion.' When they arrived +they found 'the old friend' already installed, and presenting a somewhat +unpolished appearance, which the young man explained to himself by +supposing him to be a genius of somewhat low extraction. His habits at +dinner, the eager look, the free use of his knife, and so forth, were +all accounted for in the same way, but that he was a genius of no slight +distinction was clear from the deep respect and attention with which +Sheridan listened to his slightest remarks, and asked his opinion on +English poetry. Meanwhile Sheridan and the servant between them plied +the genius very liberally with wine: and the former, rising, made him a +complimentary speech on his critical powers, while the young guest, who +had heard nothing from his lips but the commonest platitudes in very bad +English, grew more and more amused. The wine told in time, the 'genius' +sang songs which were more Saxon than delicate, talked loud, clapped his +host on the shoulder, and at last rolled fairly under the table. 'Now,' +said Sheridan, quite calmly to his young friend, 'we will go up stairs: +and, Jack,' (to his servant) 'take that man's hat and give him to the +watch.' He then explained in the same calm tone, that this was a bailiff +of whose company he was growing rather tired, and wanted to be freed. + +But his finest tricks were undoubtedly those by which he turned, +harlequin-like, a creditor into a lender This was done by sheer force of +persuasion, by assuming a lofty indignation, or by putting forth his +claims to mercy with the most touching eloquence over which he would +laugh heartily when his point was gained. He was often compelled to do +this during his theatrical management, when a troublesome creditor might +have interfered with the success of the establishment. He talked over an +upholsterer who came with a writ for £350 till the latter handed him, +instead, a cheque for £200. He once, when the actors struck for arrears +of wages to the amount of £3,000, and his bankers refused flatly to +Kelly to advance another penny, screwed the whole sum out of them in +less than a quarter of an hour by sheer talk. He got a gold watch from +Harris, the manager, with whom he had broken several appointments, by +complaining that as he had no watch he could never tell the time fixed +for their meetings; and, as for putting off pressing creditors, and +turning furious foes into affectionate friends, he was such an adept at +it, that his reputation as a dun-destroyer is quite on a par with his +fame as comedian and orator. + +Hoaxing, a style of amusement fortunately out of fashion how, was almost +a passion with him, and his practical jokes were as merciless as his +satire. He and Tickell, who had married the sister of his wife, used to +play them off on one another like a couple of schoolboys. One evening, +for instance, Sheridan got together all the crockery in the house and +arranged it in a dark passage, leaving a small channel for escape for +himself, and then, having teased Tickell till he rushed after him, +bounded out and picked his way gingerly along the passage. His friend +followed him unwittingly, and at the first step stumbled over a +washhand-basin, and fell forwards with a crash on piles of plates and +dishes, which cut his face and hands in a most cruel manner, Sheridan +all the while laughing immoderately at the end of the passage, secure +from vengeance. + +But his most impudent hoax was that on the Honourable House of Commons +itself. Lord Belgrave had made a very telling speech which he wound up +with a Greek quotation, loudly applauded. Sheridan had no arguments to +meet him with; so rising, he admitted the force of his lordship's +quotation (of which he probably did not understand a word), but added +that had he gone a little farther, and completed the passage, he would +have seen that the context completely altered the sense. He would prove +it to the House, he said, and forthwith rolled forth a grand string of +majestic gibberish so well imitated that the whole assembly cried, +'Hear, hear!' Lord Belgrave rose again, and frankly admitted that the +passage had the meaning ascribed to it by the honourable gentleman, and +that he had overlooked it at the moment. At the end of the evening, Fox, +who prided himself on his classical lore, came up to and said to him, +'Sheridan, how came you to be so ready with that passage? It is +certainly as you say, but I was not aware of it before you quoted it.' +Sheridan was wise enough to keep his own counsel for the time, but must +have felt delightfully tickled at the ignorance of the would-be savants +with whom he was politically associated. Probably Sheridan could not at +any time have quoted a whole passage of Greek on the spur of the moment; +but it is certain that he had not kept up his classics, and at the time +in question must have forgotten the little he ever knew of them. + +This facility of imitating exactly the sound of a language without +introducing a single word of it is not so very rare, but is generally +possessed in greater readiness by those who know no tongue but their +own, and are therefore more struck by the strangeness of a foreign one, +when hearing it. Many of us have heard Italian songs in which there was +not a word of actual Italian sung in London burlesques, and some of us +have laughed at Levassor's capital imitation of English; but perhaps the +cleverest mimic of the kind I ever heard was M. Laffitte, brother of +that famous banker who made his fortune by picking up a pin. This +gentleman could speak nothing but French, but had been brought by his +business into contact with foreigners of every race at Paris, and when +he once began his little trick, it was impossible to believe that he was +not possessed of a gift of tongues. His German and Italian were good +enough, but his English was so splendidly counterfeited, that after +listening to him for a short time, I suddenly heard a roar of laughter +from all present, for I had actually unconsciously _answered him_, +'Yes,' 'No,' 'Exactly so,' and 'I quite agree with you!' + +Undoubtedly much of Sheridan's depravity must be attributed to his +intimacy with a man whom it was a great honour to a youngster then to +know, but who would probably be scouted even from a London club in the +present day--the Prince of Wales. The part of a courtier is always +degrading enough to play; but to be courtier to a prince whose favour +was to be won by proficiency in vice, and audacity in follies, to +truckle to his tastes, to win his smiles by the invention of a new +pleasure and his approbation by the plotting of a new villany, what an +office for the author of 'The School for Scandal,' and the orator +renowned for denouncing the wickednesses of Warren Hastings! What a life +for the young poet who had wooed and won the Maid of Bath--for the man +of strong domestic affections, who wept over his father's sternness, and +loved his son only too well! It was bad enough for such mere worldlings +as Captain Hanger or Beau Brummell, but for a man of higher and purer +feelings, like Sheridan, who, with all his faults, had some poetry in +his soul, such a career was doubly disgraceful. + +It was at the house of the beautiful, lively, and adventurous Duchess of +Devonshire, the partizan of Charles James Fox, who loved him or his +cause--for Fox and Liberalism were often one in ladies' eyes--so well, +that she could give Steele, the butcher, a kiss for his vote, that +Sheridan first met the prince--then a boy in years, but already more +than an adult in vice. No doubt the youth whom Fox, Brummell, Hanger, +Lord Surrey, Sheridan, the tailors and the women, combined to turn at +once into the finest gentleman and greatest blackguard in Europe, was at +that time as fascinating in appearance and manner as any one, prince or +not, could be. He was by far the handsomest of the Hanoverians, and had +the least amount of their sheepish look. He possessed all their taste +and capacity, for gallantry, with apparently none of the German +coarseness which certain other Princes of Wales exhibited in their +amorous address. _His_ coarseness was of a more sensual, but less +imperious kind. He _had_ his redeeming points, which few of his +ancestors had, and his liberal hand and warm heart won him friends, +where his conduct could win him little else than contempt. Sheridan was +introduced to him by Fox, and Mrs. Sheridan by the Duchess of +Devonshire. The prince had that which always takes with Englishmen--a +readiness of conviviality, and a recklessness of character. He was ready +to chat, drink, and bet with Sheridan, or any new comer equally well +recommended, and an introduction to young George was always followed by +an easy recognition. With all this he managed to keep up a certain +amount of royal dignity under the most trying circumstances, but he had +none of that easy grace which made Charles II. beloved by his +associates. When the George had gone too far, he had no resource but to +cut the individual with whom he had hobbed and nobbed, and he was as +ungrateful in his enmities as he was ready with his friendship. Brummell +had taught him to dress, and Sheridan had given him wiser counsels: he +quarrelled with both for trifles, which, if he had had real dignity, +would never have occurred, and if he had had real friendship, would +easily have been overlooked. + +Sheridan's breach with the prince was honourable to him. He could not +wholly approve of the conduct of that personage and his ministers, and +he told him openly that his life was at his service, but his character +was the property of the country. The prince replied that Sheridan 'might +impeach his ministers on the morrow--that would not impair their +friendship;' yet turned on his heel, and was never his friend again. +When, again, the 'delicate investigation' came off, he sent for +Sheridan, and asked his aid. The latter replied, 'Your royal highness +honours me, but I will never take part against a woman, whether she be +right or wrong.' His political courage atones somewhat for the want of +moral courage he displayed in pandering to the prince's vices. + +Many an anecdote is told of Sheridan and 'Wales'--many, indeed, that +cannot be repeated. Their bets were often of the coarsest nature, won by +Sheridan in the coarsest manner. A great intimacy sprang up between the +two reprobates, and Sheridan became one of the satellites of that +dissolute prince. There are few of the stories of their adventures which +can be told in a work like this, but we may give one or two specimens of +the less disgraceful character:-- + +The Prince, Lord Surrey, and Sheridan were in the habit of seeking +nightly adventures of any kind that suggested itself to their lively +minds. A low tavern, still in existence, was the rendezvous of the heir +to the crown and his noble and distinguished associates. This was the +'Salutation,' in Tavistock Court, Covent Garden, a night house for +gardeners and countrymen, and for the sharpers who fleeced both, and was +kept by a certain Mother Butler, who favoured in every way the +adventurous designs of her exalted guests. Here wigs, smock-frocks, and +other disguises were in readiness; and here, at call, was to be found a +ready-made magistrate, whose sole occupation was to deliver the young +Haroun and his companions from the dilemmas which their adventures +naturally brought them into, and which were generally more or less +concerned with the watch. Poor old watch! what happy days, when members +of parliament, noblemen, and future monarchs condescended to break thy +bob-wigged head! and--blush, Z 350, immaculate constable--to toss thee a +guinea to buy plaster with. + +In addition to the other disguise, _aliases_ were of course assumed. The +prince went by the name of Blackstock, Greystock was my Lord Surrey, and +Thinstock Richard Brinsley Sheridan. The treatment of women by the +police is traditional. The 'unfortunate'--unhappy creatures!--are their +pet aversion; and once in their clutches, receive no mercy. The +'Charley' of old was quite as brutal as the modern Hercules of the +glazed hat, and the three adventurers showed an amount of zeal worthy of +a nobler cause, in rescuing the drunken Lais from his grasp. On one +occasion they seem to have hit on a 'deserving case;' a slight skirmish +with the watch ended in a rescue, and the erring creature was taken off +to a house of respectability sufficient to protect her. Here she told +her tale, which, however improbable, turned out to be true. It was a +very old, a very simple one--the common history of many a frail, foolish +girl, cursed with beauty, and the prey of a practised seducer. The main +peculiarity lay in the fact of her respectable birth, and his position, +she being the daughter of a solicitor, he the son of a nobleman. +Marriage was promised, of course, as it has been promised a million +times with the same intent, and for the millionth time was not +performed. The seducer took her from her home, kept her quiet for a +time, and when the novelty was gone, abandoned her. The old story went +on; poverty--a child--a mother's love struggling with a sense of +shame--a visit to her father's house at the last moment, as a forlorn +hope. There she had crawled on her knees to one of those relentless +parents on whose heads lie the utter loss of their children's souls. The +false pride, that spoke of the blot on his name, the disgrace of his +house--when a Saviour's example should have bid him forgive and raise +the penitent in her misery from the dust--whispered him to turn her from +his door. He ordered the footman to put her out. The man, a nobleman in +plush, moved by his young mistress's utter misery, would not obey though +it cost him his place, and the harder-hearted father himself thrust his +starving child into the cold street, into the drizzling rain, and +slammed the door upon her cries of agony. The footman slipped out after +her, and five shillings--a large sum for him--found its way from his +kind hand to hers. Now the common ending might have come; now +starvation, the slow, unwilling, recourse to more shame and deeper vice; +then the forced hilarity, the unreal smile, which in so many of these +poor creatures hides a canker at the heart; the gradual +degradation--lower still and lower--oblivion for a moment sought in the +bottle--a life of sin and death ended in a hospital. The will of +Providence turned the frolic of three voluptuaries to good account; the +prince gave his purse-full, Sheridan his one last guinea for her present +needs: the name of the good-hearted Plush was discovered, and he was +taken into Carlton House, where he soon became known as Roberts, the +prince's confidential servant: and Sheridan bestirred himself to rescue +for ever the poor lady, whose beauty still remained as a temptation. He +procured her a situation, where she studied for the stage, on which she +eventually appeared. 'All's well that ends well:' her secret was kept, +till one admirer came honourably forward. To him it was confided, and he +was noble enough to forgive the one false step of youth. She was well +married, and the boy for whom she had suffered so much fell at +Trafalgar, a lieutenant in the navy. + +To better men such an adventure would have been a solemn warning; such a +tale, told by the ruined one herself, a sermon, every word of which +would have clung to their memories. What effect, if any, it may have had +on Blackstock and his companions must have been very fleeting. + +It is not so very long since the Seven Dials and St. Giles' were haunts +of wickedness and dens of thieves, into which the police scarcely dared +to penetrate. Probably their mysteries would have afforded more +amusement to the artist and the student of character than to the mere +seeker of adventure, but it was still, I remember, in my early days, a +great feat to visit by night one of the noted 'cribs' to which 'the +profession' which fills Newgate was wont to resort. The 'Brown Bear,' in +Broad Street, St. Giles', was one of these pleasant haunts, and thither +the three adventurers determined to go. This style of adventure is out +of date, and no longer amusing. Of course a fight ensued, in which the +prince and his companions showed immense pluck against terrible odds, +and in which, as one reads in the novels of the 'London Journal' or +'Family Herald,' the natural superiority of the well-born of course +displayed itself to great advantage. Surely Bulwer has described such +scenes too graphically in some of his earlier novels to make a minute +description here at all necessary; but the reader who is curious in the +matter may be referred to a work which has recently appeared under the +title of 'Sheridan and his Times,' professing to be written by an +Octogenarian, intimate with the hero. The fray ended with the arrival of +the watch, who rescued Blackstock, Greystock, and Thinstock, and with +Dogberryan stupidity carried them off to a neighbouring lock-up. The +examination which took place was just the occasion for Sheridan's fun to +display itself on, and pretending to turn informer, he succeeded in +bewildering the unfortunate parochial constable, who conducted it, till +the arrival of the magistrate, whose duty was to deliver his friends +from durance vile. The whole scene is well described in the book just +referred to, with, we presume, a certain amount of idealizing; but the +'Octogenarian' had probably heard the story from Sheridan himself, and +the main points must be accepted as correct. The affair ended, as usual, +with a supper at the 'Salutation.' + +We must now follow Sheridan in his gradual downfall. + +One of the causes of this--as far as money was concerned--was his +extreme indolence and utter negligence. He trusted far too much to his +ready wit and rapid genius. Thus when 'Pizarro' was to appear, day after +day went by, and nothing was done. On the night of representation, only +four acts out of five were written, and even these had not been +rehearsed, the principal performers, Siddons, Charles Kemble and +Barrymore, having only just received their parts. Sheridan was up in the +prompter's room actually writing the fifth act while the first was being +performed, and every now and then appeared in the green-room with a +fresh relay of dialogue, and setting all in good humour by his merry +abuse of his own negligence. In spite of this, 'Pizarro' succeeded. He +seldom wrote except at night, and surrounded by a profusion of lights. +Wine was his great stimulant in composition, as it has been to better +and worse authors. 'If the thought is slow to come,' he would say, 'a +glass of good wine encourages it; and when it does come, a glass of good +wine rewards it.' Those glasses of good wine, were, unfortunately, even +more frequent than the good thoughts, many and merry as they were. + +His neglect of letters was a standing joke against him. He never took +the trouble to open any that he did not expect, and often left sealed +many that he was most anxious to read. He once appeared with his begging +face at the Bank, humbly asking an advance of twenty pounds. 'Certainly, +sir; would you like any more?--fifty or a hundred?' said the smiling +clerk. Sheridan was overpowered. He _would_ like a hundred. 'Two or +three?' asked the scribe. Sheridan thought he was joking, but was ready +for two or even three--he was always ready for more. But he could not +conceal his surprise. 'Have you not received our letter?' the clerk +asked, perceiving it. Certainly he had received the epistle, which +informed him that his salary as Receiver-General of Cornwall had been +paid in, but he had never opened it. + +This neglect of letters once brought him into a troublesome lawsuit +about the theatre. It was necessary to pay certain demands, and he had +applied to the Duke of Bedford to be his security. The duke had +consented, and for a whole year his letter of consent remained unopened. +In the meantime Sheridan had believed that the duke had neglected him, +and allowed the demands to be brought into court. + +In the same way he had long before committed himself in the affair with +Captain Matthews. In order to give a public denial of certain reports +circulated in Bath, he had called upon an editor, requesting him to +insert the said reports in his paper in order that he might write him a +letter to refute them. The editor at once complied, the calumny was +printed and published, but Sheridan forgot all about his own refutation, +which was applied for in vain till too late. + +Other causes were his extravagance and intemperance. There was an utter +want of even common moderation in everything he did. Whenever his boyish +spirit suggested any freak, whenever a craving of any kind possessed +him, no matter what the consequences here or hereafter, he rushed +heedlessly into the indulgence of it. Perhaps the enemy had never an +easier subject to deal with. Any sin in which there was a show of +present mirth, or easy pleasure, was as easily taken up by Sheridan as +if he had not a single particle of conscience or religious feeling, and +yet we are not at all prepared to say that he lacked either; he had only +deadened both by excessive indulgence of his fancies. The temptation of +wealth and fame had been too much for the poor and obscure young man who +rose to them so suddenly, and, as so often happens, those very talents +which should have been his glory, were, in fact, his ruin. + +His extravagance was unbounded. At a time when misfortune lay thick upon +him, and bailiffs were hourly expected, he would invite a large party to +a dinner, which a prince might have given, and to which one prince +sometimes sat down. On one occasion, having no plate left from the +pawnbroker's, he had to prevail on 'my uncle' to lend him some for a +banquet he was to give. The spoons and forks were sent, and with them +two of his men, who, dressed in livery, waited, no doubt with the most +vigilant attention, on the party. Such at that period was the host's +reputation, when he could not even be trusted not to pledge another +man's property. At one time his income was reckoned at £15,000 a year, +when the theatre was prosperous. Of this he is said to have spent not +more than £5,000 on his household, while the balance went to pay for his +former follies, debts, and the interest, lawsuits often arising from +mere carelessness and judgments against the theatre! Probably a great +deal of it was betted away, drank away, thrown away in one way or +another. As for betting, he generally lost all the wagers he made: as he +said himself--'I never made a bet upon my own judgment that I did not +lose; and I never won but one, which I had made against my judgment.' +His bets were generally laid in hundreds; and though he did not gamble, +he could of course run through a good deal of money in this way. He +betted on every possible trifle, but chiefly, it would seem, on +political possibilities; the state of the Funds, the result of an +election, or the downfall of a ministry. Horse-races do not seem to have +possessed any interest for him, and, in fact, he scarcely knew one kind +of horse from another. He was never an adept at field-sports, though +very ambitious of being thought a sportsman. Once, when staying in the +country, he went out with a friend's gamekeeper to shoot pheasants, and +after wasting a vast amount of powder and shot upon the air, he was only +rescued from ignominy by the sagacity of his companion, who, going a +little behind him when a bird rose, brought it down so neatly that +Sheridan, believing he had killed it himself, snatched it up, and rushed +bellowing with glee back to the house to show that he _could_ shoot. In +the same way, he tried his hand at fishing in a wretched little stream +behind the Deanery at Winchester, using, however, a net, as easier to +handle than a rod. Some boys, who had watched his want of success a long +time, at last bought a few pennyworth of pickled herrings, and throwing +them on the stream, allowed them to float down towards the eager +disciple of old Izaak. Sheridan saw them coming, rushed in regardless of +his clothes, cast his net and in great triumph secured them. When he had +landed his prize, however, there were the boys bursting with laughter, +and Piscator saw he was their dupe. 'Ah!' cried he, laughing in concert, +as he looked at his dripping clothes, 'this is a pretty _pickle_ +indeed!' + +His extravagance was well known to his friends, as well as to his +creditors. Lord Guildford met him one day. 'Well, Sherry, so you've +taken a new house, I hear.'--'Yes, and you'll see now that everything +will go on like clockwork.'--'Ay,' said my lord, with a knowing leer, +'_tick, tick_.' Even his son Tom used to laugh at him for it. 'Tom, if +you marry that girl, I'll cut you off with a shilling,'--'Then you must +borrow it,' replied the ingenuous youth.[8] Tom sometimes disconcerted +his father with his inherited wit--his only inheritance. He pressed +urgently for money on one, as on many an occasion. 'I have none,' was +the reply, as usual; 'there is a pair of pistols up stairs, a horse in +the enable, the night is dark, and Hounslow Heath at hand.' + +[8: Another version is that Tom replied: 'You don't happen to have it +about you, sir, do you?'] + +'I understand what you mean,' replied young Tom; 'but I tried that last +night, and unluckily stopped your treasurer, Peake, who told me you had +been beforehand with him, and robbed him of every sixpence he had in the +world.' + +So much for the respect of son to father! + +Papa had his revenge on the young wit, when Tom, talking of Parliament, +announced his intention of entering it on an independent basis, ready to +be bought by the highest bidder 'I shall write on my forehead,' said he, +"To let."' + +'And under that, Tom, "Unfurnished,"' rejoined Sherry the elder. The +joke is now stale enough. + +But Sheridan was more truly witty in putting down a young braggart whom +he met at dinner at a country-house. There are still to be found, like +the bones of dead asses in a field newly ploughed, in some parts of the +country, youths, who are so hopelessly behind their age, and indeed +every age, as to look upon authorship as degrading, all knowledge, save +Latin and Greek, as 'a bore,' and all entertainment but hunting, +shooting, fishing, and badger-drawing, as unworthy of a man. In the last +century these young animals, who unite the modesty of the puppy with the +clear-sightedness of the pig, not to mention the progressiveness of +another quadruped, were more numerous than in the present day, and in +consequence more forward in their remarks. It was one of these charming +youths, who was staying in the same house as Sheridan, and who, quite +unprovoked, began at dinner to talk of 'actors and authors, and those +low sort of people, you know.' Sheridan said nought, but patiently bided +his time. The next day there was a large dinner-party, and Sheridan and +the youth happened to sit opposite to one another in the most +conspicuous part of the table. Young Nimrod was kindly obliging his side +of the table with extraordinary leaps of his hunter, the perfect working +of his new double-barrelled Manton, &c., bringing of course number one +in as the hero in each case. In a moment of silence, Sheridan, with an +air of great politeness, addressed his unhappy victim. 'He had not,' he +said, 'been able to catch the whole of the very interesting account he +had heard Mr. ---- relating.' All eyes were turned upon the two. 'Would +Mr. ---- permit him to ask who it was who made the extraordinary leap he +had mentioned?--'I, sir,' replied the youth with some pride. 'Then who +was it killed the wild duck at that distance?'--'I, sir.' 'Was it your +setter who behaved so well?'--'Yes, mine, sir,' replied the youth, +getting rather red over this examination. 'And who caught the huge +salmon so neatly?'--'I, sir.' And so the questioning went on through a +dozen more items, till the young man, weary of answering 'I, sir,' and +growing redder and redder every moment, would gladly have hid his head +under the table-cloth, in spite of his sporting prowess. But Sheridan +had to give him the _coup de grace_. + +'So, sir,' said he, very politely, 'you were the chief _actor_ in every +anecdote, and the _author_ of them all; surely it is impolitic to +despise your own professions.' + +Sheridan's intemperance was as great and as incurable as his +extravagance, and we think his mind, if not his body, lived only on +stimulants. He could neither write nor speak without them One day, +before one of his finest speeches in the House, he was seen to enter a +coffee-house, call for a pint of brandy, and swallow it 'neat,' and +almost at one gulp. His friends occasionally interfered. This drinking, +they told him, would destroy the coat of his stomach. 'Then my stomach +must digest in its waistcoat,' laughed Sheridan. + +Where are the topers of yore? Jovial I will not call them, for every one +knows that + + 'Mirth and laughter.' + +worked up with a corkscrew, are followed by + + 'Headaches and hot coppers the day after.' + +But where are those Anakim of the bottle, who _could_ floor their two of +port and one of Madeira, though the said two and one floored them in +turn? The race, I believe, has died out. Our heads have got weaker, as +our cellars grew emptier. The arrangement was convenient. The daughters +of Eve have nobly undertaken to atone for the naughty conduct of their +primeval mamma, by reclaiming men, and dragging them from the Hades of +the mahogany to that seventh heaven of muffins and English ballads +prepared for them in the drawing-room. + +We are certainly astounded, even to incredulity, when we read of the +deeds of a David or a Samson; but such wonderment can be nothing +compared to that which a generation or two hence will feel, when +sipping, as a great extravagance and unpardonable luxury, two +thimblefuls of 'African Sherry,' the young demirep of the day reads that +three English gentlemen, Sheridan, Richardson, and Ward, sat down one +day to dinner, and before they rose again--if they ever rose, which +seems doubtful--or, at least, were raised, had emptied five bottles of +port, two of Madeira, and one of brandy! Yet this was but one instance +in a thousand; there was nothing extraordinary in it, and it is only +mentioned because the amount drunk is accurately given by the unhappy +owner of the wine, Kelly, the composer, who, unfortunately, or +fortunately, was not present, and did not even imagine that the three +honourable gentlemen were discussing his little store. Yet Sheridan does +not seem to have believed much in his friend's vintages, for he advised +him to alter his brass plate to 'Michael Kelly, Composer of Wine and +Importer of Music.' He made a better joke, when, dining with Lord +Thurlow, he tried in vain to induce him to produce a second bottle of +some extremely choice Constantia from the Cape of Good Hope. 'Ah,' he +muttered to his neighbour, 'pass me that decanter, if you please, for I +must return to Madeira, as I see I cannot _double the Cape_' + +But as long as Richard Brinsley was a leader of political and +fashionable circles, as long as he had a position to keep up, an +ambition to satisfy, a labour to complete, his drinking was, if not +moderate, not extraordinary for his time and his associates. But when a +man's ambition is limited to mere success--when fame and a flash for +himself are all he cares for, and there is no truer, grander motive for +his sustaining the position he has climbed to--when, in short, it is his +own glory, not mankind's good, he has ever striven for--woe, woe, woe +when the hour of success is come! I cannot stop to name and examine +instances, but let me be allowed to refer to that bugbear who is called +up whenever greatness of any kind has to be illustrated--Napoleon the +Great; or let me take any of the lesser Napoleons in lesser grades in +any nation, any age--the men who have had no star but self and +self-glory before them--and let me ask if any one can be named who, if +he has survived the attainment of his ambition, has not gone down the +other side of the hill somewhat faster than he came up it? Then let me +select men whose guiding-star has been the good of their +fellow-creatures, or the glory of God, and watch their peaceful useful +end on that calm summit that they toiled so honestly to reach. The +difference comes home to us. The moral is read only at the end of the +story. Remorse rings it for ever in the ears of the dying--often too +long a-dying--man who has laboured for himself. Peace reads it smilingly +to him whose generous toil for others has brought its own reward. + +Sheridan had climbed with the stride of a giant, laughing at rocks, at +precipices, at slippery watercourses. He had spread the wings of genius +to poise himself withal, and gained one peak after another, while +homelier worth was struggling midway, clutching the bramble and clinging +to the ferns. He had, as Byron said in Sheridan's days of decay, done +the best in all he undertook, written the best comedy, best opera, best +farce; spoken the best parody, and made the best speech. Sheridan, when +those words of the young poet were told him, shed tears. + +Perhaps the bitter thought struck him, that he had _not_ led the best, +but the _worst_ life; that comedy, farce, opera, monody, and oration +were nothing, nothing to a pure conscience and a peaceful old age; that +they could not save him from shame and poverty--from debt, disgrace, +drunkenness--from grasping, but long-cheated creditors, who dragged his +bed from under the feeble, nervous, ruined old man. Poor Sheridan! his +end was too bitter for us to cast one stone more upon him. Let it be +noted that it was in the beginning of his decline, when, having reached +the climax of all his ambition and completed his fame as a dramatist, +orator, and wit, that the hand of Providence mercifully interposed to +rescue this reckless man from his downfall. It smote him with that +common but powerful weapon--death. Those he best loved were torn from +him, one after another, rapidly, and with little warning. The Linleys, +the 'nest of nightingales,' were all delicate as nightingales should be; +and it seemed as if this very time was chosen for their deaths, that the +one erring soul--more precious, remember, than many just lives--might be +called back. Almost within one year he lost his dear sister-in-law, the +wife of his most intimate friend Tickell; Maria Linley, the last of the +family; his own wife, and his little daughter. One grief succeeded +another so rapidly that Sheridan was utterly unnerved, utterly brought +low by them; but it was his wife's death that told most upon him. With +that wife he had always been the lover rather than the husband. She had +married him in the days of his poverty, when her beauty was so +celebrated that she might have wed whom she would. She had risen with +him and shared his later anxieties. Yet she had seen him forget, neglect +her, and seek other society. In spite of his tender affection for her +and for his children, he had never made a _home_ of their home. Vanity +Fair had kept him ever flitting, and it is little to be wondered at that +Mrs. Sheridan was the object of much, though ever respectful +admiration.[9] Yet, in spite of calumny, she died with a fair fame. +Decline had long pressed upon her, yet her last illness was too brief. +In 1792 she was taken away, still in the summer of her days, and with +her last breath uttering her love for the man who had never duly prized +her. His grief was terrible; yet it passed, and wrought no change. He +found solace in his beloved son, and yet more beloved daughter. A few +months--and the little girl followed her mother. Again his grief was +terrible: again passed and wrought no change. Yes, it did work some +change, but not for the better; it drove him to the goblet; and from +that time we may date the confirmation of his habit of drinking. The +solemn warnings had been unheeded: they were to be repeated by a +long-suffering God in a yet more solemn manner, which should touch him +yet more nearly. His beautiful wife had been the one restraint upon his +folly and his lavishness. Now she was gone, they burst out afresh, +wilder than ever. + +[9: Lord Edward Fitzgerald was one of the most devoted of her admirers: +he chose his wife, Pamela, because she resembled Mrs. Sheridan.--See +Moore's Life of Lord Edward.] + +For a while after these afflictions, which were soon completed in the +death of his most intimate friend and boyish companion, Tickell, +Sheridan threw himself again into the commotion of the political world. +But in this we shall not follow him. Three years after the death of his +first wife he married again. He was again fortunate in his choice. +Though now forty-four, he succeeded in winning the heart of a most +estimable and charming young lady with a fortune of £5,000. She must +indeed have loved or admired the widower very much to consent to be the +wife of a man so notoriously irregular, to use a mild term, in his life. +But Sheridan fascinated wherever he went, and young ladies like 'a +little wildness.' His heart was always good, and where he gave it, he +gave it warmly, richly, fully. His second wife was Miss Esther Jane +Ogle, daughter of the Dean of Winchester. She was given to him on +condition of his settling in all £20,000, upon her--a wise proviso with +such a spendthrift--and he had to raise the money, as usual. + +His political career was sufficiently brilliant, though his real fame as +a speaker rests on his great oration at Hastings' trial. In 1806 he +satisfied another point of his ambition, long desired, and was elected +for the city of Westminster, which he had ardently coveted when Fox +represented it. But a dissolution threw him again on the mercy of the +popular party; and again he offered himself for Westminster: but, in +spite of all the efforts made for him, without success. He was returned, +instead, for Ilchester. + +Meanwhile his difficulties increased; extravagance, debt, want of energy +to meet both, brought him speedily into that position when a man accepts +without hesitation the slightest offer of aid. The man who had had an +income of £15,000 a year, and settled £20,000 on his wife, allowed a +poor friend to pay a bill for £5 for him, and clutched eagerly at a £50 +note when displayed to him by another. Extravagance is the father of +meanness, and Sheridan was often mean in the readiness with which he +accepted offers, and the anxiety with which he implored assistance. It +is amusing in the present day to hear a man talk of 'a debt of honour,' +as if all debts did not demand honour to pay them--as if all debts +incurred without hope of repayment were not dishonourable. A story is +told relative to the old-fashioned idea of a 'debt of honour.' A +tradesman, to whom he had given a bill for £200, called on him for the +amount. A heap of gold was lying on the table. 'Don't look that way,' +cried Sheridan, after protesting that he had not a penny in the world, +'that is to pay a debt of honour.' The applicant, with some wit, tore up +the bill he held. 'Now, Mr. Sheridan,' quoth he, 'mine is a debt of +honour too.' It is to be hoped that Sheridan handed him the money. + +The story of Gunter's bill is not so much to his credit, Hanson, an +ironmonger, called upon him and pressed for payment. A bill sent in by +the famous confectioner was lying on the table. A thought struck the +debtor, who had no means of getting rid of his importunate applicant. +'You know Gunter?' he asked. 'One of the safest men in London,' replied +the ironmonger. 'Then will you be satisfied if I give you his _bill_ for +the amount?'--'Certainly.' Thereupon Sheridan handed him the neatly +folded account and rushed from the room, leaving the creditor to +discover the point of Mr. Sheridan's little fun. + +Still Sheridan might have weathered through the storm. Drury Lane was a +mine of wealth to him, and with a little care might have been really +profitable. The lawsuits, the debts, the engagements upon it, all rose +from his negligence and extravagance. But Old Drury was doomed. On the +24th February, 1809, soon after the conclusion of the performances, it +was announced to be in flames. Rather it announced itself. In a few +moments it was blazing--a royal bonfire. Sheridan was in the House of +Commons at the time. The reddened clouds above London threw the glare +back even to the windows of the House. The members rushed from their +seats to see the unwonted light, and in consideration for Sheridan, an +adjournment was moved. But he rose calmly, though sadly, and begged that +no misfortune of his should interrupt the public business. His +independence, he said--witty in the midst of his troubles--had often +been questioned, but was now confirmed, for he had nothing more to +depend upon. He then left the House, and repaired to the scene of +conflagration. + +Not long after, Kelly found him sitting quite composed in 'The Bedford,' +sipping his wine, as if nothing had happened. The musician expressed his +astonishment at Mr. Sheridan's _sang froid_. 'Surely,' replied the wit, +'you'll admit that a man has a right to take his wine by his own +fireside.' But Sheridan was only drowning care, not disregarding it. The +event was really too much for him, though perhaps he did not realize the +extent of its effect at the time. In a word, all he had in the world +went with the theatre. Nothing was left either for him or the principal +shareholders. Yet he bore it all with fortitude, till he heard that the +harpsichord, on which his first wife was wont to play, was gone too. +Then he burst into tears. + +This fire was the opening of the shaft down which the great man sank +rapidly. While his fortunes kept up, his spirits were not completely +exhausted. He drank much, but as an indulgence rather than as a relief. +Now it was by wine alone that he could even raise himself to the common +requirements of conversation. He is described, _before_ dinner, as +depressed, nervous, and dull; _after_ dinner only did the old fire break +out, the old wit blaze up, and Dick Sheridan was Dick Sheridan once +more. He was, in fact, fearfully oppressed by the long-accumulated and +never-to-be-wiped-off debts, for which he was now daily pressed. In +quitting Parliament he resigned his sanctuary, and left himself an easy +prey to the Jews and Gentiles, whom he had so long dodged and deluded +with his ready ingenuity. Drury Lane, as we all know, was rebuilt, and +the birth of the new house heralded with a prologue by Byron, about as +good as the one in 'Rejected Addresses,' the cleverest parodies ever +written, and suggested by this very occasion. The building-committee +having advertised for a prize prologue Samuel Whitbread sent in his own +attempt, in which, as probably in a hundred others, the new theatre was +compared to a Phoenix rising out of the ashes of the old one. Sheridan +said Whitbread's description of a Phoenix was excellent, for it was +quite a _poulterer's description_. + +This same Sam Whitbread was now to figure conspicuously in the life of +Mr. Richard B. Sheridan. The ex-proprietor was found to have an interest +in the theatre to the amount of £150,000--not a trifle to be despised; +but he was now past sixty, and it need excite no astonishment that, even +with all his liabilities, he was unwilling to begin again the cares of +management, or mismanagement which he had endured so many years. He sold +his interest, in which his son Tom was joined, for £60,000. This sum +would have cleared off his debts and left him a balance sufficient to +secure comfort for his old age. But it was out of the question that any +money matters should go right with Dick Sheridan. Of the rights and +wrongs of the quarrel between him and Whitbread, who was the chairman of +the committee for building the new theatre, I do not pretend to form an +opinion. Sheridan was not naturally mean, though he descended to +meanness when hard pressed--what man of his stamp does not? Whitbread +was truly friendly to him for a time. Sheridan was always complaining +that he was sued for debts he did not owe, and kept out of many that +were due to him. Whitbread knew his man well, and if he withheld what +was owing to him, may be excused on the ground of real friendship. All I +know is, that Sheridan and Whitbread quarrelled; that the former did +not, or affirmed that he did not, receive the full amount of his claim +on the property, and that, when what he had received was paid over to +his principal creditors, there was little or nothing left for my lord to +spend in banquets to parliamentary friends and jorums of brandy in small +coffee-houses. + +Because a man is a genius, he is not of necessity an upright, honest, +ill-used, oppressed, and cruelly-entreated man. Genius plays the fool +wittingly, and often enough quite knowingly, with its own interests. It +is its privilege to do so, and no one has a right to complain. But then +Genius ought to hold its tongue, and not make itself out a martyr, when +it has had the dubious glory of defying common-sense. If Genius despises +gold, well and good, but when he has spurned it, he should not whine out +that he is wrongfully kept from it. Poor Sheridan may or may not have +been right in the Whitbread quarrel; he has had his defenders, and I am +not ambitious of being numbered among them; but whatever were now his +troubles were brought on by his own disregard of all that was right and +beautiful in conduct. If he went down to the grave a pauper and a +debtor, he had made his own bed, and in it he was to lie. + +Lie he did, wretchedly, on the most unhappy bed that old age ever lay +in. There is little more of importance to chronicle of his latter days. +The retribution came on slowly but terribly. The career of a ruined man +is not a pleasant topic to dwell upon, and I leave Sheridan's misery for +Mr. J. B. Gough to whine and roar over when he wants a shocking example. +Sheridan might have earned many a crown in that capacity, if +temperance-oratory had been the passion of the day. Debt, disease, +depravity--these words describe enough the downward career of his old +age. To eat, still more to drink, was now the troublesome enigma of the +quondam genius. I say quondam, for all the marks of that genius were now +gone. One after another his choicest properties made their way to 'my +uncle's.' The books went first, as if they could be most easily +dispensed with; the remnants of his plate followed; then his pictures +were sold; and at last even the portrait of his first wife, by Reynolds, +was left in pledge for a 'further remittance.' + +The last humiliation arrived in time, and the associate of a prince, the +eloquent organ of a party, the man who had enjoyed £15,000, a year, was +carried off to a low sponging-house. His pride forsook him in that +dismal and disgusting imprisonment, and he wrote to Whitbread a letter +which his defenders ought not to have published. He had his +friends--stanch ones too--and they aided him. Peter Moore, ironmonger, +and even Canning, lent him money and released him from time to time. For +six years after the burning of the old theatre, he continued to go down +and down. Disease now attacked him fiercely. In the spring of 1816 he +was fast waning towards extinction. His day was past; he had outlived +his fame as a wit and social light; he was forgotten by many, if not by +most, of his old associates. He wrote to Rogers, 'I am absolutely undone +and broken-hearted.' Poor Sheridan! in spite of all thy faults, who is +he whose morality is so stern that he cannot shed one tear over thy +latter days! God forgive us, we are all sinners; and if we weep not for +this man's deficiency, how shall we ask tears when our day comes? Even +as I write, I feel my hand tremble and my eyes moisten over the sad end +of one whom I love, though he died before I was born. 'They are going to +put the carpets out of window,' he wrote to Rogers, 'and break into Mrs. +S.'s room and _take me_. For God's sake let me see you!' See him!--see +one friend who could and would help him in his misery! Oh! happy may +that man count himself who has never wanted that one friend, and felt +the utter helplessness of that want! Poor Sheridan! had he ever asked, +or hoped, or looked for that Friend out of _this_ world it had been +better; for 'the Lord thy God is a jealous God,' and we go on seeking +human friendship and neglecting the divine till it is too late. He found +one hearty friend in his physician, Dr. Bain, when all others had +forsaken him. The spirit of White's and Brookes', the companion of a +prince and a score of noblemen, the enlivener of every 'fashionable' +table, was forgotten by all but this one doctor. Let us read Moore's +description: 'A sheriff's officer at length arrested the dying man _in +his bed_, and was about to carry him off, in his blankets, to a +sponging-house, when Dr. Bain interfered.' Who would live the life of +revelry that Sheridan lived to have such an end? A few days after, on +the 7th of July, 1816, in his sixty-fifth year, he died. Of his last +hours the late Professor Smythe wrote an admirable and most touching +account, a copy of which was circulated in manuscript. The Professor, +hearing of Sheridan's condition, asked to see him, with a view, not only +of alleviating present distress, but of calling the dying man to +repentance. From his hands the unhappy Sheridan received the Holy +Communion; his face, during that solemn rite,--doubly solemn when it is +performed in the chamber of death, 'expressed,' Smythe relates, '_the +deepest awe_' That phrase conveys to the mind impressions not easy to be +defined, not soon to be forgotten. + +Peace! there was not peace even in death, and the creditor pursued him +even into the 'waste wide,'--even to the coffin. He was lying in state, +when a gentleman in the deepest mourning called, it is said, at the +house, and introducing himself as an old and much-attached friend of the +deceased, begged to be allowed to look upon his face. The tears which +rose in his eyes, the tremulousness of his quiet voice, the pallor of +his mournful face, deceived the unsuspecting servant, who accompanied +him to the chamber of death, removed the lid of the coffin, turned down +the shrowd, and revealed features which had once been handsome, but long +since rendered almost hideous by drinking. The stranger gazed with +profound emotion, while he quietly drew from his pocket a bailiff's +wand, and touching the corpse's face with it, suddenly altered his +manner to one of considerable glee, and informed the servant that he had +arrested the corpse in the king's name for a debt of £500. It was the +morning of the funeral, which was to be attended by half the grandees of +England, and in a few minutes the mourners began to arrive. But the +corpse was the bailiff's property, till his claim was paid, and nought +but the money would soften the iron capturer. Canning and Lord Sidmouth +agreed to settle the matter, and over the coffin the debt was paid. + +Poor corpse! was it worth £500--diseased, rotting as it was, and about +to be given for nothing to mother earth? Was it worth the pomp of the +splendid funeral and the grand hypocrisy of grief with which it was +borne to Westminster Abbey? Was not rather the wretched old man, while +he yet struggled on in life, worth this outlay, worth this show of +sympathy? Folly; not folly only--but a lie! What recked the dead of the +four noble pall-bearers--the Duke of Bedford, the Earl of Lauderdale, +Earl Mulgrave, and the Bishop of London? What good was it to him to be +followed by two royal highnesses--the Dukes of York and Sussex--by two +marquises, seven earls, three viscounts, five lords, a Canning, a lord +mayor, and a whole regiment of honourables and right honourables, who +now wore the livery of grief, when they had let him die in debt, in +want, and in misery? Far more, if the dead could feel, must he have been +grateful for the honester tears of those two untitled men, who had +really befriended him to the last hour and never abandoned him, Mr. +Rogers and Dr. Bain. But peace; let him pass with nodding plumes and +well-dyed horses to the great Walhalla, and amid the dust of many a poet +let the poet's dust find rest and honour, secure at last from the hand +of the bailiff. There was but one nook unoccupied in Poet's Corner, and +there they laid him. A simple marble was afforded by another friend +without a title--Peter Moore. + +To a life like Sheridan's it is almost impossible to do justice in so +narrow a space as I have here. He is one of those men who, not to be +made out a whit better or worse than they are, demand a careful +investigation of all their actions, or reported actions--a careful +sifting of all the evidence for or against them, and a careful weeding +of all the anecdotes told of them. This requires a separate biography. +To give a general idea of the man, we must be content to give that which +he inspired in a general acquaintance. Many of his 'mots,' and more of +the stories about him, may have been invented for him, but they would +scarcely have been fixed on Sheridan, if they had not fitted more or +less his character: I have therefore given them. I might have given a +hundred more, but I have let alone those anecdotes which did not seem to +illustrate the character of the man. Many another good story is told of +him, and we must content ourselves with one or two. Take one that is +characteristic of his love of fun. + +Sheridan is accosted by an elderly gentleman, who has forgotten the name +of a street to which he wants to go, and who informs him precisely that +it is an out-of-the-way name. + +'Perhaps, sir, you mean John Street?' says Sherry, all innocence. + +'No, an unusual name.' + +'It can't be Charles Street?' + +Impatience on the part of the old gentleman. + +'King Street?' suggests the cruel wit. + +'I tell you, sir, it is a street with a very odd name!' + +'Bless me, is it Queen Street?' + +Irritation on the part of the old gentleman. + +'It must be Oxford Street?' cries Sheridan as if inspired. + +'Sir, I repeat,' very testily, 'that it is a very odd name. Every one +knows Oxford Street!' + +Sheridan appears to be thinking. + +'An odd name! Oh! ah! just so; Piccadilly, of course?' + +Old gentleman bounces away in disgust. + +'Well, sir,' Sheridan calls after him, 'I envy you your admirable +memory!' + +His wit was said to have been prepared, like his speeches, and he is +even reported to have carried his book of _mots_ in his pocket, as a +young lady of the middle class _might_, but seldom does, carry her book +of etiquette into a party. But some of his wit was no doubt extempore. + +When arrested for non-attendance to a call in the House, soon after the +change of ministry, he exclaimed, 'How hard to be no sooner out of +office than into custody!' + +He was not an inveterate talker, like Macaulay, Sydney Smith, or +Jeffrey: he seems rather to have aimed at a striking effect in all that +he said. When found tripping he had a clever knack of getting out of the +difficulty. In the Hastings speech he complimented Gibbon as a +'luminous' writer; questioned on this, he replied archly, 'I said +_vo_-luminous.' + +I cannot afford to be voluminous on Sheridan, and so I quit him. + + + +BEAU BRUMMELL + + +Two popular Sciences.--'Buck Brummell' at Eton.--Investing his Capital.-- +Young Cornet Brummell.--The Beau's Studio.--The Toilet.--'Creasing +Down.'--Devotion to Dress.--A Great Gentleman.--Anecdotes of Brummell.-- +'Don't forget, Brum: Goose at Four!'--Offers of Intimacy resented.--Never +in love.--Brummell out Hunting.--Anecdote of Sheridan and Brummell.--The +Beau's Poetical Efforts.--The Value of a Crooked Sixpence.--The Breach +with the Prince of Wales.--'Who's your Fat Friend?'--The Climax is +reached.--The Black-mail of Calais.--George the Greater and George the +Less.--An Extraordinary Step.--Down the Hill of Life.--A Miserable Old +Age.--In the Hospice Du Bon Sauveur.--O Young Men of this Age, be warned! + + +It is astonishing to what a number of insignificant things high art has +been applied, and with what success. It is the vice of high civilization +to look for it and reverence it, where a ruder age would only laugh at +its employment. Crime and cookery, especially, have been raised into +sciences of late, and the professors of both received the amount of +honour due to their acquirements. Who would be so naïve as to sneer at +the author of 'The Art of Dining?' or who so ungentlemanly as not to +pity the sorrows of a pious baronet, whose devotion to the noble art of +appropriation was shamefully rewarded with accommodation gratis on board +one of Her Majesty's transport-ships? The disciples of Ude have left us +the literary results of their studies, and one at least, the graceful +Alexis Soyer, is numbered among our public benefactors. We have little +doubt that as the art, vulgarly called 'embezzlement,' becomes more and +more fashionable, as it does every day, we shall have a work on the 'Art +of Appropriation.' It is a pity that Brummell looked down upon +literature: poor literature! it had a hard struggle to recover the +slight, for we are convinced there is not a work more wanted than the +'Art of Dressing,' and 'George the Less' was almost the last professor +of that elaborate science. + +If the maxim, that 'whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well,' +hold good, Beau Brummell must be regarded in the light of a great man. +That dressing is worth doing at all, everybody but a Fiji Islander seems +to admit, for everybody does it. If, then, a man succeeds in dressing +better than anybody else, it follows that he is entitled to the most +universal admiration. + +But there was another object to which this great man condescended to +apply the principles of high art--I mean affectation. How admirably he +succeeded in this his life will show. But can we doubt that he is +entitled to our greatest esteem and heartiest gratitude for the studies +he pursued with unremitting patience in these two useful branches, when +we find that a prince of the blood delighted to honour, and the richest, +noblest, and most distinguished men of half a century ago were proud to +know him? We are writing, then, of no common man, no mere beau, but of +the greatest professor of two of the most popular sciences--Dress and +Affectation. Let us speak with reverence of this wonderful genius. + +George Brummell was 'a self-made man.' That is, all that nature, the +tailors, stags, and padding had not made of him, he made for +himself--his name, his fame, his fortune, and his friends--and all these +were great. The author of 'Self-help' has most unaccountably omitted all +mention of him, and most erroneously, for if there ever was a man who +helped himself, and no one else, it was, 'very sincerely yours, George +Brummell.' + +The founder of the noble house of Brummell, the grandfather of our hero, +was either a treasury porter, or a confectioner, or something else.[10] +At any rate he let lodgings in Bury Street, and whether from the fact +that his wife did not purloin her lodgers' tea and sugar, or from some +other cause, he managed to ingratiate himself with one of them--who +afterwards became Lord Liverpool--so thoroughly, that through his +influence he obtained for his son the post of Private Secretary to Lord +North. Nothing could have been more fortunate, except, perhaps, the +son's next move, which was to take in marriage the daughter of +Richardson, the owner of a well-known lottery-office. Between the +lottery of office and the lottery of love, Brummell _père_ managed to +make a very good fortune. At his death he left as much as £65,000 to be +divided among his three children--Raikes says as much as £30,000 +a-piece--so that the Beau, if not a fool, ought never to have been a +pauper. + +[10: Mr. Jesse says that the Beau's grandfather was a servant of Mr. +Charles Monson, brother to the first Lord Monson.] + +George Bryan Brummell, the second son of this worthy man, honoured by +his birth the 7th of June, 1778. No anecdotes of his childhood are +preserved, except that he once cried because he could not eat any more +damson tart. In later years he would probably have thought damson tart +'very vulgar.' He first turns up at Eton at the age of twelve, and even +there commences his distinguished career, and is known as 'Buck +Brummell.' The boy showed himself decidedly father to the man here. +Master George was not vulgar enough, nor so imprudent, it may be added, +as to fight, row, or play cricket, but he distinguished himself by the +introduction of a gold buckle in the white stock, by never being +flogged, and by his ability in toasting cheese. We do not hear much of +his classical attainments. + +The very gentlemanly youth was in due time passed on to Oriel College, +Oxford. Here he distinguished himself by a studied indifference to +college discipline and an equal dislike to studies. He condescended to +try for the Newdigate Prize poem, but his genius leaned far more to the +turn of a coat-collar than that of a verse, and, unhappily for the +British poets, their ranks were not to be dignified by the addition of +this illustrious man. The Newdigate was given to another; and so, to +punish Oxford, the competitor left it and poetry together, after having +adorned the old quadrangle of Oriel for less than a year. + +He was now a boy of seventeen, and a very fine boy, too. To judge from a +portrait taken in later life, he was not strictly handsome; but he is +described as tall, well built, and of a slight and graceful figure. +Added to this, he had got from Eton and Oxford, if not much learning, +many a well-born friend, and he was toady enough to cultivate those of +better, and to dismiss those of less distinction. He was, through life, +a celebrated 'cutter,' and Brummell's cut was as much admired--by all +but the _cuttee_--as Brummel's coat. Then he had some £25,000 as capital +and how could he best invest it? He consulted no stockbroker on this +weighty point; he did not even buy a shilling book of advice such as we +have seen advertised for those who do not know what to do with their +money. The question was answered in a moment by the young worldling of +sixteen: he would enter a crack regiment and invest his guineas in the +thousand per cents. of fashionable life. + +His namesake, the Regent, was now thirty-two, and had spent those years +of his life in acquiring the honorary title of the 'first gentleman of +Europe' by every act of folly, debauch, dissipation, and degradation +which a prince can conveniently perpetrate. He was the hero of London +society, which adored and backbit him alternately, and he was precisely +the man whom the boy Brummell would worship. The Regent was colonel of a +famous regiment of fops--the 10th Hussars. It was the most expensive, +the most impertinent, the best-dressed, the worst-moralled regiment in +the British army. Its officers, many of them titled, all more or less +distinguished in the trying campaigns of London seasons, were the +intimates of the Prince-Colonel. Brummell aspired to a cornetcy in this +brilliant regiment, and obtained it; nor that alone; he secured, by his +manners, o his dress, or his impudence, the favour and companionship-- +friendship we cannot say--of the prince who commanded it. + +By this step his reputation was made, and it was only necessary to keep +it up. He had an immense fund of good nature, and, as long as his money +lasted, of good spirits, too. Good sayings--that is, witty if not wise-- +are recorded of him, and his friends pronounce him a charming companion. +Introduced, therefore, into the highest circles in England, he could +scarcely fail to succeed. Young Cornet Brummell became a great favourite +with the fair. + +His rise in the regiment was of course rapid: in three years he was at +the head of a troop. The onerous duties of a military life, which +vacillated between Brighton and London, and consisted chiefly in making +oneself agreeable in the mess-room, were too much for our hero. He +neglected parade, or arrived too late: it was such a bore to have to +dress in a hurry. It is said that he knew the troop he commanded only by +the peculiar nose of one of the men, and that when a transfer of men had +once been made, rode up to the wrong troop, and supported his mistake by +pointing to the nose in question. No fault, however, was found with the +Regent's favourite, and Brummell might have risen to any rank if he +could have supported the terrific labour of dressing for parade. Then, +too, there came wars and rumours of wars, and our gallant captain +shuddered at the vulgarity of shedding blood: the supply of +smelling-salts would never have been liberal enough to keep him from +fainting on the battle-field. It is said, too, that the regiment was +ordered to Manchester. Could anything be more gross or more ill-bred? +The idea of figuring before the wives and daughters of cotton-spinners +was too fearful; and from one cause or another our brave young captain +determined to retire, which he did in 1798. + +It was now, therefore, that he commenced the profession of a beau, and +as he is the Prince of Beaux, as his patron was the Beau of Princes, and +as his fame has spread to France and Germany, if only as the inventor of +the trouser; and as there is no man who on getting up in the morning +does not put on his clothes with more or less reflection as to whether +they are the right ones to put on, and as beaux have existed since the +days of the emperor of beaux, Alexander the Macedonian, and will +probably exist to all time, let us rejoice in the high honour of being +permitted to describe how this illustrious genius clothed his poor +flesh, and made the most of what God had given him--a body and legs. + +The private life of Brummell would in itself serve as a book of manners +and habits. The two were his profoundest study; but, alas! his impudence +marred the former, and the latter can scarcely be imitated in the +present day. Still as a great example he is yet invaluable, and must be +described in all detail. + +His morning toilette was a most elaborate affair. Never was Brummell +guilty of _déshabille_. Like a true man of business, he devoted the best +and earliest hours--and many of them too--to his profession, namely-- +dressing. His dressing-room was a studio, in which he daily prepared +that elaborate portrait of George Brummell which was to be exhibited for +a few hours in the club-rooms and drawing-rooms of town, only to be +taken to pieces again, and again made up for the evening. Charles I. +delighted to resort of a morning to the studio of Vandyck, and to watch +his favourite artist's progress. The Regent George was no less devoted +to art, for we are assured by Mr. Raikes that he often visited his +favourite beau in the morning to watch his toilet, and would sometimes +stay so late that he would send his horses away, insisting on Brummell +giving him a quiet dinner, 'which generally ended in a deep potation.' + +There are, no doubt, many fabulous myths floating about concerning this +illustrious man; and his biographer, Captain Jesse, seems anxious to +defend him from the absurd stories of French writers, who asserted that +he employed two glovers to covers his hands, to one of whom were +intrusted the thumbs, to the other the fingers and hand, and three +barbers to dress his hair, while his boots were polished with champagne, +his cravats designed by a celebrated portrait painter, and so forth. +These may be pleasant inventions, but Captain Jesse's own account of his +toilet, even when the Beau was broken, and living in elegant poverty +abroad, is quite absurd enough to render excusable the ingenious +exaggerations of the foreign writer. + +The _batterie de toilette_, we are told, was of silver, and included a +spitting-dish, for its owner said 'he could not spit into clay.' +Napoleon shaved himself, but Brummell was not quite great enough to do +that, just as my Lord So-and-so walks to church on Sunday, while his +neighbour, the Birmingham millionaire, can only arrive there in a +chariot and pair. + +His ablutions took no less than two whole hours! What knowledge might +have been gained, what good done in the time he devoted to rubbing his +lovely person with a hair-glove! Cleanliness was, in fact, Brummell's +religion; perhaps because it is generally set down as 'next to +godliness,' a proximity with which the Beau was quite satisfied, for he +never attempted to pass on to that next stage. Poor fool, he might rub +every particle of moisture off the skin of his body--he might be clean +as a kitten--but he could not and did not purify his mind with all this +friction; and the man who would have fainted to see a black speck upon +his shirt, was not at all shocked at the indecent conversation in which +he and his companions occasionally indulged. + +The body cleansed, the face had next to be brought up as near perfection +as nature would allow. With a small looking-glass in one hand, and +tweezers in the other, he carefully removed the tiniest hairs that he +could discover on his cheeks or chin, enduring the pain like a martyr. + +Then came the shirt, which was in his palmy days changed three times a +day, and then in due course the great business of the cravat. Captain +Jesse's minute account of the process of tying this can surely be relied +on, and presents one of the most ludicrous pictures of folly and vanity +that can be imagined. Had Brummell never lived, and a novelist or +play-writer described the toilet which Captain Jesse affirms to have +been his daily achievement, he would have had the critics about him with +the now common phrase--'This book is a tissue, not only of +improbabilities, but of actual impossibilities.' The collar, then, was +so large, that in its natural condition it rose high above the wearer's +head, and some ingenuity was required to reduce it by delicate folds to +exactly that height which the Beau judged to be correct. Then came the +all-majestic white neck-tie, a foot in breadth. It is not to be supposed +that Brummell had the neck of a swan or a camel--far from it. The worthy +fool had now to undergo, with admirable patience, the mysterious process +known to our papas as 'creasing down.' The head was thrown back, as if +ready for a dentist; the stiff white tie applied to the throat, and +gradually wrinkled into half its actual breadth by the slow downward +movement of the chin. When all was done, we can imagine that comfort was +sacrificed to elegance, as it was then considered, and that the sudden +appearance of Venus herself could not have induced the deluded +individual to turn his head in a hurry. + +It is scarcely profitable to follow this lesser deity into all the +details of his self-adornment. It must suffice to say that he affected +an extreme neatness and simplicity of dress, every item of which was +studied and discussed for many an hour. In the mornings he was still +guilty of hessians and pantaloons, or 'tops' and buckskins, with a blue +coat and buff waistcoat. The costume is not so ancient, but that one may +tumble now and then on a country squire who glories in it and denounces +us juveniles as 'bears' for want of a similar precision. Poor Brummell, +he cordially hated the country squires, and would have wanted rouge for +a week if he could have dreamed that his pet attire would, some fifty +years later, be represented only by one of that class which he was so +anxious to exclude from Watier's. + +But it was in the evening that he displayed his happy invention of the +trouser, or rather its introduction from Germany. This article he wore +very tight to the leg, and buttoned over the ankle, exactly as we see it +in old prints of 'the fashion.' Then came the wig, and on that the hat. +It is a vain and thankless task to defend Brummell from the charge of +being a dandy. If one proof of his devotion to dress were wanted, it +would be the fact that this hat, once stuck jauntily on one side of the +wig, was never removed in the street even to salute a lady--so that, +inasmuch as he sacrificed his manners to his appearance, he may be +fairly set down as a fop. + +The perfect artist could not be expected to be charitable to the less +successful. Dukes and princes consulted him on the make of their coats, +and discussed tailors with him with as much solemnity as divines might +dispute on a mystery of religion. Brummell did not spare them. +'Bedford,' said he, to the duke of that name, fingering a new garment +which his grace had submitted to his inspection, 'do you call this +_thing_ a coat?' Again, meeting a noble acquaintance who wore shoes in +the morning, he stopped and asked him what he had got upon his feet. +'Oh! shoes are they,' quoth he, with a well bred sneer, 'I thought they +were slippers.' He was even ashamed of his own brother, and when the +latter came to town, begged him to keep to the back streets till his new +clothes were sent home. Well might his friend the Regent say, that he +was 'a mere tailor's dummy to hang clothes upon.' + +But in reality Brummell was more. He had some sharpness and some taste. +But the former was all brought out in sneers, and the latter in +snuff-boxes. His whole mind could have been put into one of these. He +had a splendid collection of them, and was famous for the grace with +which he opened the lid of his box with the thumb of the hand that +carried it, while he delicately took his pinch with two fingers of the +other. This and his bow were his chief acquirements, and his reputation +for manners was based on the distinction of his manner. He could not +drive in a public conveyance, but he could be rude to a well-meaning +lady; he never ate vegetables--_one_ pea he confessed to--but he did not +mind borrowing from his friends money which he knew he could never +return. He was a great gentleman, a gentleman of his patron's school--in +short, a well-dressed snob. But one thing is due to Brummell: he made +the assumption of being 'a gentleman' so thoroughly ridiculous that few +men of keen sense care now for the title: at least, not as a +class-distinction. Nor is it to be wondered at; when your tailor's +assistant is a 'gentleman,' and would be mightily disgusted at being +called anything else, you, with your indomitable pride of caste, can +scarcely care for the patent. + +Brummell's claim to the title was based on his walk, his coat, his +cravat, and the grace with which he indulged, as Captain Jesse +delightfully calls it, 'the nasal pastime' of taking snuff, all the rest +was impudence; and many are the anecdotes--most of them familiar as +household words--which are told of his impertinence. The story of Mrs. +Johnson-Thompson is one of those oft-told tales, which, from having +become Joe Millers, have gradually passed out of date and been almost +forgotten. Two rival party-givers rejoiced in the aristocratic names of +Johnson and Thompson. The former lived near Finsbury, the latter near +Grosvenor Square, and Mrs. Thompson was somehow sufficiently fashionable +to expect the Regent himself at her assemblies. Brummell among other +impertinences, was fond of going where he was not invited or wanted. The +two rivals gave a ball on the same evening, and a card was sent to the +Beau by her of Finsbury. He chose to go to the Grosvenor Square house, +in hopes of meeting the Regent, then his foe. Mrs. Thompson was justly +disgusted, and with a vulgarity quite deserved by the intruder, told him +he was not invited. The Beau made a thousand apologies, hummed, hawed, +and drew a card from his pocket. It was the rival's invitation, and was +indignantly denounced. 'Dear me, how very unfortunate,' said the Beau, +'but you know Johnson and Thompson--I mean Thompson and Johnson are so +very much alike. Mrs. Johnson-Thompson, I wish you a very good evening.' + +Perhaps there is no vulgarity greater than that of rallying people on +their surnames, but our exquisite gentleman had not wit enough to invent +one superior to such a puerile amusement. Thus, on one occasion, he woke +up at three in the morning a certain Mr. Snodgrass, and when the worthy +put his head out of the window in alarm, said quietly, 'Pray, sir, is +your name Snodgrass?'--'Yes, sir, it is Snodgrass.' 'Snodgrass-- +Snodgrass--it is a very singular name. Good-bye, Mr. _Snodgrass_.' There +was more wit in his remark to Poodle Byng, a well-known puppy, whom he +met one day driving in the Park with a French dog in his curricle. 'Ah,' +cried the Beau, 'how d'ye do, Byng? a family vehicle, I see.' + +It seems incredulous to modern gentlemen that such a man should have +been tolerated even at a club. Take, for instance, his vulgar treatment +of Lord Mayor Combe, whose name we still see with others over many a +public-house in London, and who was then a most prosperous brewer and +thriving gambler. At Brookes' one evening the Beau and the Brewer were +playing at the same table, 'Come, _Mash-tub_', cried the 'gentleman,' +'what do you set?' Mash-tub unresentingly set a pony, and the Beau won +twelve of him in succession. Pocketing his cash, he made him a bow, and +exclaimed, 'Thank you, Alderman, in future I shall drink no porter but +yours.' But Combe was worthy of his namesake, Shakspere's friend, and +answered very aptly, 'I wish, sir, that every _other_ blackguard in +London would tell me the same.' + +Then again, after ruining a young fool of fortune at the tables, and +being reproached by the youth's father for leading his son astray, he +replied with charming affectation, 'Why, sir, I did all I could for him. +I once gave him my arm all the way from White's to Brookes'!' + +When Brummell really wanted a dinner, while at Calais, he could not give +up his impertinence for the sake of it. Lord Westmoreland called on him, +and, perhaps out of compassion, asked him to dine at _three o'clock_ +with him. 'Your Lordship is very kind,' said the Beau, 'but really I +could not _feed_ at such an hour.' Sooner or later he was glad to _feed_ +with any one who was toady enough to ask him. He was once placed in a +delightfully awkward position from having accepted the invitation of a +charitable but vulgar-looking Britisher at Calais. He was walking with +Lord Sefton, when the individual passed and nodded familiarly. 'Who's +your friend, Brummell?'--'Not mine, he must be bowing to you.' But +presently the man passed again, and this time was cruel enough to +exclaim, 'Don't forget, Brum, don't forget--goose at four!' The poor +Beau must have wished the earth to open under him. He was equally +imprudent in the way in which he treated an old acquaintance who arrived +at the town to which he had retreated, and of whom he was fool enough to +be ashamed. He generally took away their characters summarily, but on +one occasion was frightened almost out of his wits by being called to +account for this conduct. An officer who had lost his nose in an +engagement in the Peninsula, called on him, and in very strong terms +requested to know why the Beau had reported that he was a retired +hatter. His manner alarmed the rascal, who apologized, and protested +that there must be a mistake; he had never said so. The officer retired, +and as he was going, Brummell added: 'Yes, it must be a mistake, for now +I think of it, I never dealt with a hatter without a nose.' + +So much for the good breeding of this friend of George IV. and the Duke +of York. + +His affectation was quite as great as his impudence: and he won the +reputation of fastidiousness--nothing gives more prestige--by dint of +being openly rude. No hospitality or kindness melted him, when he +thought he could gain a march. At one dinner, not liking the champagne, +he called to the servant to give him 'some more of that cider:' at +another, to which he was invited in days when a dinner was a charity to +him, after helping himself to a wing of capon, and trying a morsel of +it, he took it up in his napkin, called to his dog--he was generally +accompanied by a puppy, even to parties, as if one at a time were not +enough--and presenting it to him, said aloud, 'Here, _Atons_, try if you +can get your teeth through that, for I'm d--d if I can!' + +To the last he resented offers of intimacy from those whom he considered +his inferiors, and as there are ladies enough everywhere, he had ample +opportunity for administering rebuke to those who pressed into his +society. On one occasion he was sauntering with a friend at Caen under +the window of a lady who longed for nothing more than to have the great +_arbiter elegantiarum_ at her house. When seeing him beneath, she put +her head out, and called out to him, 'Good evening, Mr. Brummell, won't +you come up and take tea?' The Beau looked up with extreme severity +expressed on his face, and replied, 'Madam, you take medicine--you take +a walk--you take a liberty--but you _drink_ tea,' and walked on, having, +it may be hoped, cured the lady of her admiration. + +In the life of such a man there could not of course be much striking +incident. He lived for 'society,' and the whole of his story consists in +his rise and fall in that narrow world. Though admired and sought after +by the women--so much so that at his death his chief assets were locks +of hair, the only things he could not have turned into money--he never +married. Wedlock might have sobered him, and made him a more sensible, +if not more respectable member of society, but his advances towards +matrimony never brought him to the crisis. He accounted for one +rejection in his usual way. 'What could I do, my dear _fellar_,' he +lisped, 'when I actually saw Lady Mary eat cabbage?' At another time he +is said to have induced some deluded young creature to elope with him +from a ball-room, but managed the affair so ill, that the lovers (?) +were caught in the next street, and the affair came to an end. He wrote +rather ecstatic love-letters to Lady Marys and Miss ----s, gave married +ladies advice on the treatment of their spouses and was tender to +various widows, but though he went on in this way through life, he was +never, it would seem, in love, from the mere fact that he was incapable +of passion. + +Perhaps he was too much of a woman to care much for women. He was +certainly egregiously effeminate. About the only creatures he could love +were poodles. When one of his dogs, from over-feeding, was taken ill, he +sent for two dog-doctors, and consulted very gravely with them on the +remedies to be applied. The canine physicians came to the conclusion +that she must be bled. 'Bled!' said Brummell, in horror; 'I shall leave +the room: inform me when the operation is over.' When the dog died, he +shed tears--probably the only ones he had shed since childhood: and +though at that time receiving money from many an old friend in England, +complained, with touching melancholy, 'that he had lost the only friend +he had!' His grief lasted three whole days, during which he shut himself +up, and would see no one; but we are not told that he ever thus mourned +over any human being. + +His effeminacy was also shown in his dislike to field-sports. His +shooting exploits were confined to the murder of a pair of pet pigeons +perched on a roof, while he confessed, as regards hunting, that it was a +bore to get up so early in the morning only to have one's boots and +leathers splashed by galloping farmers. However, hunting was a fashion, +and Brummell must needs appear to hunt. He therefore kept a stud of +hunters in his better days, near Belvoir, the Duke of Rutland's, where +he was a frequent visitor, and if there was a near meet, would ride out +in pink and tops to see the hounds break cover, follow through a few +gates, and return to the more congenial atmosphere of the drawing-room. +He, however, condescended to bring his taste to bear on the +hunting-dress; and, it is said, introduced white tops instead of the +ancient mahoganies. That he _could_ ride there seems reason to believe, +but it is equally probable that he was afraid to do so. His valour was +certainly composed almost entirely of its 'better part,' and indeed had +so much prudence in it that it may be doubted if there was any of the +original stock left. Once when he had been taking away somebody's +character, the 'friend' of the maligned gentleman entered his apartment, +and very menacingly demanded satisfaction for his principal, unless an +apology were tendered 'in five minutes.' 'Five minutes!' answered the +exquisite, as pale as death, 'five seconds, or sooner if you like.' + +Brummell was no fool, in spite of his follies. He had talents of a +mediocre kind, if he had chosen to make a better use of them. Yet the +general opinion was not in favour of his wisdom. He quite deserved +Sheridan's cool satire for his affectation, if not for his want of mind. + +The Wit and the Beau met one day at Charing Cross, and it can well be +imagined that the latter was rather disgusted at being seen so far east +of St. James's Street, and drawled out to Sheridan,--'Sherry, my dear +boy, don't mention that you saw me in this filthy part of the town, +though, perhaps, I am rather severe, for his Grace of Northumberland +resides somewhere about this spot, if I don't mistake. The fact is, my +dear boy, I have been in the d----d City, to the Bank: I wish they would +remove it to the West End, for re-all-y it is quite a bore to go to such +a place; more particularly as one cannot be seen in one's own equipage +beyond Somerset House,' etc. etc. etc. in the Brummellian style. + +'Nay, my good fellow,' was the answer to this peroration, 'travelling +from the East? impossible!' + +'Why, my dear boy, why?' + +'Because the wise men came from the East,' + +'So, then, sa-ar--you think me a fool?' + +'By no means; I know you to be one,' quoth Sherry, and turned away. It +is due to both the parties to this anecdote to state that it is quite +apocryphal, and rests on the slenderest authority. However, whether fool +or not, Brummell has one certain, though small, claim upon certain small +readers. Were you born in a modern generation, when scraps of poetry +were forbidden in your nursery, and no other pabulum was offered to your +infant stomach, but the rather dull biographies of rather dull, though +very upright men?--if so, I pity you. Old airs of a jaunty jig-like kind +are still haunting the echoes of my brain. Among them is-- + + 'The butterfly was a gentleman, + Which nobody can refute: + He left his lady-love at home, + And roamed in a velvet suit.' + +I remember often to have ruminated over this character of an innocent, +and, I believe, calumniated, insect. He was a gentleman, and the +consequences thereof were twofold: he abandoned the young woman who had +trusted her affections to him, and attired his person in a complete +costume of the best Lyons silk-velvet, _not_ the proctor's velvet, which +Theodore felt with thumb and finger, impudently asking 'how much a +yard?' I secretly resolved to do the same thing as Mr. Butterfly when I +came of age. But the said Mr. Butterfly had a varied and somewhat awful +history, all of which was narrated in various ditties chanted by my +nurse. I could not quite join in her vivid assertion that she _would_ + + '----be a butterfly, + Born in a bower, + Christened in a tea-pot, + And dead in an hour.' + +Aetat four, life is dear, and the idea of that early demise was far from +welcome to me. I privily agreed that I would _not_ be a butterfly. But +there was no end to the history of this very inconstant insect in our +nursery lore. We didn't care a drop of honey for Dr. Watts's 'Busy Bee;' +we infinitely preferred the account--not in the 'Morning Post'--of the +'Butterfly's Ball' and the 'Grasshopper's Feast; and few, perhaps, have +ever given children more pleasures of imagination than William Roscoe, +its author. There were some amongst us, however, who were already being +weaned to a knowledge of life's mysterious changes, and we sought the +third volume of the romance of the flitting gaudy thing in a little poem +called 'The Butterfly's Funeral.' + +Little dreamed we, when in our prettly little song-books we saw the +initial 'B.' at the bottom of these verses, that a real human butterfly +had written them, and that they conveyed a solemn prognostication of a +fate that was _not_ his. Little we dreamed, as we lisped out the verses, +that the 'gentleman who roamed in a' not velvet but 'plum-coloured +suit,' according to Lady Hester Stanhope, was the illustrious George +Brummell, The Beau wrote these trashy little rhymes--pretty in their +way--and, since I was once a child, and learnt them off by heart, I will +not cast a stone at them. Brummell indulged in such trifling poetizing, +but never went further. It is a pity he did not write his memoirs; they +would have added a valuable page to the history of 'Vanity Fair.' + +Brummell's London glory lasted from 1798 to 1816. His chief club was +Watier's. It was a superb assemblage of gamesters and fops--knaves and +fools; and it is difficult to say which, element predominated. For a +time Brummell was monarch there; but his day of reckoning came at last. +Byron and Moore, Sir Henry Mildmay and Mr. Pierrepoint, were among the +members. Play ran high there, and Brummell once won nearly as much as +his squandered patrimony, £26.000. Of course he not only lost it again, +but much more--indeed his whole capital. It was after some heavy loss +that he was walking home through Berkeley Street with Mr. Raikes, when +he saw something glittering in the gutter, picked it up, and found it to +be a crooked sixpence. Like all small-minded men, he had a great fund of +superstition, and he wore the talisman of good luck for some time. For +two years, we are told, after this finding of treasure-trove, success +attended him in play--macao, the very pith of hazard, was the chief game +at Watier's--and he attributed it all to the sixpence. At last he lost +it, and luck turned against him. So goes the story. It is probably much +more easily accountable. Few men played honestly in those days without +losing to the dishonest, and we have no reason to charge the Beau with +mal-practice. However this may be, his losses at play first brought +about his ruin. The Jews were, of course, resorted to; and if Brummell +did not, like Charles Fox, keep a Jerusalem Chamber, it was only because +the sum total of his fortune was pretty well known to the money-lenders. + + 'Then came the change, the check, the fall; + Pain rises up, old pleasures pall. + There is one remedy for all.' + +This remedy was the crossing of the Channel, a crossing kept by beggars, +who levy a heavy toll on those who pass over it. + +The decline of the Beau was rapid, but not without its _éclat_. A breach +with his royal patron led the way. It is presumed that every reader of +these volumes has heard the famous story of 'Wales, ring the bell!' but +not all may know its particulars. + +A deep impenetrable mystery hangs over this story. Perhaps some German +of the twenty-first century--some future Giffard, or who not--will put +his wits to work to solve the riddle. In very sooth _il ne vaut pas la +chandelle_. A quarrel did take place between George the Prince and +George the Less, but of its causes no living mortal is cognizant: we can +only give the received versions. It appears, then, that dining with +H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, Master Brummell asked him to ring the bell. +Considering the intimacy between them, and that the Regent often +sacrificed his dignity to his amusement, there was nothing extraordinary +in this. But it is added that the Prince did ring the bell in +question--unhappy bell to jar so between two such illustrious +friends!--and when the servant came, ordered 'Mr. Brummell's carriage!' +Another version palms off the impertinence on a drunken midshipman, who, +being related to the Comptroller of the Household, had been invited to +dinner by the Regent. Another yet states that Brummell, being asked to +ring the said bell, replied, 'Your Royal Highness is close to it.' No +one knows the truth of the legend, any more than whether Homer was a man +or a myth. It surely does not matter. The friends quarrelled, and +perhaps it was time they should do so, for they had never improved one +another's morals; but it is only fair to the Beau to add that he always +denied the whole affair, and that he himself gave as the cause of the +quarrel his own sarcasms on the Prince's increasing corpulency, and his +resemblance to Mrs. Fitzherbert's porter, 'Big Ben.' Certainly some +praise is due to the Beau for the _sans, froid_ with which he appeared +to treat the matter, though in reality dreadfully cut up about it. He +lounged about, made amusing remarks on his late friend and patron, swore +he would 'cut' him, and in short behaved with his usual _aplomb_. The +'Wales, ring the bell,' was sufficient proof of his impudence, but +'Who's your fat friend?' was really good. + +It is well known, in all probability, that George IV. contemplated with +as much disgust and horror the increasing rotundity of his 'presence' as +ever a maiden lady of a certain age did her first grey hair. Soon after +the bell affair, the royal beau met his former friend in St. James's +Street, and resolved to cut him. This was attacking Brummell with his +own pet weapon, but not with success. Each antagonist was leaning on the +arm of a friend. 'Jack Lee,' who was thus supporting the Beau, was +intimate with the Prince, who, to make the cut the more marked, stopped +and talked to him without taking the slightest notice of Brummell. After +a time both parties moved on, and then came the moment of triumph and +revenge. It was sublime! Turning round half way, so that his words could +not fail to be heard by the retreating Regent, the Beau asked of his +companion in his usual drawl, 'Well, Jack, who's your fat friend?' The +coolness, presumption, and impertinence of the question perhaps made it +the best thing the Beau ever said, and from that time the Prince took +care not to risk another encounter with him.[11] + +[11: Another version, given by Captain Jesse, represents this to have +taken place at a ball given at the Argyle Rooms in July, 1813, by Lord +Alvanley, Sir Henry Miklmav, Mr. Pierrepoint, and Mr. Brummell.] + +Brummell was scotched rather than killed by the Prince's indifference. +He at once resolved to patronise his brother, the Duke of York, and +found in him a truer friend. The duchess, who had a particular fondness +for dogs, of which she is said to have kept no fewer, at one time, than +a hundred, added the puppy Brummell to the list, and treated him with a +kindness in which little condescension was mixed. But neither impudence +nor the blood-royal can keep a man out of debt, especially when he +plays. The Beau got deeper and deeper into the difficulty, and at last +some mysterious quarrel about money with a gentleman who thenceforward +went by the name of Dick the Dandy-killer, obliged him to think of place +and poverty in another land. He looked in vain for aid, and among others +Scrope Davies was written to to lend him 'two hundred,' 'because his +money was all in the three per cents.' Scrope replied laconically-- + + 'MY DEAR GEORGE, + + 'It is very unfortunate, but _my_ money is all in the three per + cents. Yours, + + 'S. DAVIES,' + +It was the last attempt. The Beau went to the opera, as usual, and drove +away from it clear off to Dover, whence the packet took him to safety +and slovenliness in the ancient town of Calais. His few effects were +sold after his departure. Porcelaine, buhl, a drawing or two, +double-barrelled Mantons (probably never used), plenty of old wine, +linen, furniture, and a few well-bound books, were the Beau's assets. +His debts were with half the chief tradesmen of the West End and a large +number of his personal friends. + +The climax is reached: henceforth Master George Bryan Brummell goes +rapidly and gracefully down the hill of life. + +The position of a Calais beggar was by no means a bad one, if the +reduced individual had any claim whatever to distinction. A black-mail +was sedulously levied by the outcasts and exiles of that town on every +Englishman who passed through it; and in those days it was customary to +pass some short time in this entrance of France. The English 'residents' +were always on the look-out, generally crowding round the packet-boat, +and the new arrival was sure to be accosted by some old and attached +friend, who had not seen him for years. Just as Buttons, who is always +breaking the plates and tumblers, has the invariable mode of accounting +for his carelessness, 'they fell apart, sir, in my 'ands!' so these +expatriated Britons had always a tale of confidence misplaced--security +for a bond--bail for a delinquent, or in short any hard case, which +compelled them, much against their wills, to remain 'for a period' on +the shores of France. To such men, whom you had known in seven-guinea +waistcoats at White's and Watier's, and found in seven-shilling coats on +the Calais pier, it was impossible to refuse your five-pound note, and +in time the black-mail of Calais came to be reckoned among the +established expenses of a Continental tour. + +Brummell was a distinguished beggar of this description, and managed so +adroitly that the new arrivals thought themselves obliged by Mr. +Brummell's acceptance of their donations. The man who could not eat +cabbages, drive in a hackney-coach, or wear less than three shirts a +day, was now supported by voluntary contributions, and did not see +anything derogatory to a gentleman in their acceptance. If Brummell had +now turned his talents to account; if he had practised his painting, in +which he was not altogether despicable; or his poetry, in which he had +already had some trifling success: if he had even engaged himself as a +waiter at Quillacq's, or given lessons in the art of deportment, his +fine friends from town might have cut him, but posterity would have +withheld its blame. He was a beggar of the merriest kind. While he wrote +letters to friends in England, asking for remittances, and describing +his wretched condition on a bed of straw and eating bran bread, he had a +good barrel of Dorchester ale in his lodgings, his usual glass of +maraschino, and his bottle of claret after dinner; and though living on +charity, could order new snuff-boxes to add to his collection, and new +knick-knacks to adorn his room. There can be no pity for such a man, and +we have no pity for him, whatever the rest of the world may feel. + +Nothing can be more contemptible than the gradual downfall of the broken +beau. Yet, if it were doubted that his soul ever rose above the collar +of a coat or the brim of a hat, his letters to Mr. Raikes in the time of +his poverty would settle the question. 'I heard of you the other day in +a waistcoat that does you considerable credit, spick-and-span from +Paris, a broad stripe, salmon-colour, and _cramoisé_. Don't let them +laugh you into a relapse--into the Gothic--as that of your former +English simplicity.' He speaks of the army of occupation as 'rascals in +red coats waiting for embarkation.' 'English education,' he says in +another letter, 'may be all very well to instruct the hemming of +handkerchiefs, and the ungainly romps of a country-dance, but nothing +else; and it would be a poor consolation to your declining years to see +your daughters come into the room upon their elbows, and to find their +accomplishments limited to broad native phraseology in conversation, or +thumping the "Woodpecker" upon a discordant spinet.' And he proceeds to +recommend a 'good French formation of manners,' and so forth. + +Nor did he display any of that dignity and self-respect which are +generally supposed to mark the 'gentleman.' When his late friend and +foe, by this time a king, passed through Calais, the Beau, broken in +every sense, had not pride enough to keep out of his way. Many stories +are told of the manner in which he pressed himself into George IV.'s +notice, but the various legends mostly turn upon a certain snuff-box. +According to one quite as reliable as any other, the Prince and the Beau +had in their days of amity intended to exchange snuff-boxes, and George +the Greater had given George the Less an order on his jeweller for a +_tabatière_ with his portrait on the top. On their quarrel this order +was, with very bad taste, rescinded, although Brummell's snuff-box had +already passed into the Prince's hands and had not been returned. It is +said that the Beau employed a friend to remind the king of this +agreement, and ask for his box; to whom the latter said that the story +was all nonsense, and that he supposed 'the poor devil,' meaning his +late intimate friend, wanted £100 and should have it. However, it is +doubtful if the money ever reached the 'poor devil.' The story does not +tell over well, for whatever were the failings and faults of George IV., +he seems to have had a certain amount of good nature, if not absolutely +of good heart, and possessed, at least, sufficient sense of what became +a prince, to prevent his doing so shabby an act, though he may have +defrauded a hundred tradesmen. In these days there _were_ such things as +'debts of honour,' and they were punctiliously attended to. There are, +as we have said, various versions of this story, but all tend to show +that Brummell courted the notice of his late master and patron on his +way through the place of his exile; and it is not remarkable in a man +who borrowed so freely from all his acquaintances, and who was, in fact, +in such a state of dependence on their liberality. + +Brummell made one grand mistake in his career as a Beau: he outlived +himself. For some twenty-four years he survived his flight from England, +to which country he never returned. For a time he was an assiduous +writer of begging-letters and the plague of his friends. At length he +obtained the appointment of consul at the good old Norman town of Caen. +This was almost a sinecure, and the Beau took care to keep it so. But no +one can account for the extraordinary step he took soon after entering +on his consular duties. He wrote to Lord Palmerston, stating that there +were no duties attached to the post, and recommending its abolition. +This act of suicide is partly explained by a supposed desire to be +appointed to some more lively and more lucrative consulate; but in this +the Beau was mistaken. The consulate at Caen was vacated in accordance +with his suggestion, and Brummell was left penniless, in debt, and to +shift for himself. With the aid of an English tradesman, half grocer, +half banker, he managed to get through a period of his poverty, but +could not long subsist in this way, and the punishment of his vanity and +extravagance came at last in his old age. A term of existence in prison +did not cure him, and when he was liberated he again resumed his +primrose gloves, his Eau de Cologne, and his patent _vernis_ for his +boots, though at that time literally supported by his friends with an +allowance of £120 per annum. In the old days of Caen life this would +have been equal to £300 a year in England, and certainly quite enough +for any bachelor; but the Beau was really a fool. For whom, for what +should he dress and polish his boots at such a quiet place as Caen? Yet +he continued to do so, and to run into debt for the polish. When he +confessed to having, 'so help him Heaven,' not four francs in the world, +he was ordering this _vernis de Guiton_, at five francs a bottle, from +Paris, and calling the provider of it a 'scoundrel,' because he ventured +to ask for his money. What foppery, what folly was all this! How truly +worthy of the man who built his fame on the reputation of a coat! +Terrible indeed was the hardship that followed his extravagance; he was +actually compelled to exchange his white for a black cravat. Poor +martyr! after such a trial it is impossible to be hard upon him. So, +too, the man who sent repeated begging-letters to the English grocer, +Armstrong, threw out of window a new dressing-gown because it was not of +the pattern he wished to have. + +Retribution for all this folly came in time. His mind went even before +his health. Though only some sixty years of age, almost the bloom of +some men's life, he lost his memory and his powers of attention, His old +ill-manners became positively bad manners. When feasted and feted, he +could find nothing better to say than 'What a half-starved turkey.' At +last the Beau was reduced to the level of that slovenliness which he had +considered as the next step to perdition. Reduced to one pair of +trousers, he had to remain in bed till they were mended. He grew +indifferent to his personal appearance, the surest sign of decay. +Drivelling, wretched, in debt, an object of contempt to all honest men, +he dragged on a miserable existence. Still with his boots in holes, and +all the honour of beau-dom gone for ever, he clung to the last to his +Eau de Cologne, and some few other luxuries, and went down, a fool and a +fop, to the grave. To indulge his silly tastes he had to part with one +piece of property after another; and at length he was left with little +else than the locks of hair of which he had once boasted. + +I remember a story of a labourer and his dying wife. The poor woman was +breathing her last wishes. 'And, I say, William, you'll see the old sow +don't kill her young uns?'--'Ay, ay, wife, set thee good.' 'And, I say, +William, you'll see Lizzy goes to schule reg'lar?'--'Ay, ay, wife, set +thee good.' 'And, I say, William, you'll see Tommy's breeches is mended +against he goes to schule again?'--'Ay, ay, wife, set thee good.'--'And, +I say, William, you'll see I'm laid proper in the yard?' William grew +impatient. 'Now never thee mind them things, wife, I'll see to 'em all, +you just go on with your dying.' No doubt Brummell's friends heartily +wished that he would go on with his dying, for he had already lived too +long; but he would live on. He is described in his last days as a +miserable, slovenly, half-witted old creature, creeping about to the +houses of a few friends he retained or who were kind enough to notice +him still, jeered at by the _gamins_, and remarkable now, not for the +cleanliness, but the filthiness and raggedness of his attire. + +Poor old fool! one cannot but pity him, when wretched, friendless, and +miserable as he was, we find him, still graceful, in a poor _café_ near +the Place Royale, taking his cup of coffee, and when asked for the +amount of his bill, answering very vaguely, 'Oui, Madame, à la pleine +lune, à la pleine lune.' + +The drivellings of old age are no fit subject for ridicule, yet in the +case of a man who had sneered so freely at his fellow-creatures, they +may afford a useful lesson. One of his fancies was to give imaginary +parties, when his tallow dips were all set alight and his servant +announced with proper decorum, 'The Duchess of Devonshire,' 'Lord +Alvanley, 'Mr. Sheridan,' or whom not. The poor old idiot received the +imaginary visitors with the old bow, and talked to them in the old +strain, till his servant announced their imaginary carriages, and he was +put drivelling to bed. At last the idiocy became mania. He burnt his +books, his relics, his tokens. He ate enormously, and the man who had +looked upon beer as the _ne plus ultra_ of vulgarity, was glad to +imagine it champagne. Let us not follow the poor maniac through his +wanderings. Rather let us throw a veil over all his drivelling +wretchedness, and find him at his last gasp, when coat and collar, hat +and brim, were all forgotten, when the man who had worn three shirts a +day was content to change his linen once a month. What a lesson, what a +warning! If Brummell had come to this pass in England, it is hard to say +how and where he would have died. He was now utterly penniless, and had +no prospect of receiving any remittances. It was determined to remove +him to the Hospice du Bon Sauveur, a _Maison de Charité_, where he would +be well cared for at no expense. The mania of the poor creature took, as +ever, the turn of external preparation. When the landlord of his inn +entered to try and induce him to go, he found him with his wig on his +knee, his shaving apparatus by his side, and the quondam beau deeply +interested in lathering the peruke as a preliminary to shearing it. He +resisted every proposal to move, and was carried down stairs, kicking +and shrieking. Once lodged in the Hospice, he was treated by the soeurs +de charité with the greatest kindness and consideration. An attempt was +made to recall him to a sense of his future peril, that he might at +least die in a more religious mood than he had lived; but in vain. It is +not for us, erring and sinful as we are, to judge any fellow-creature; +but perhaps poor Brummell was the last man to whom religion had a +meaning. His heart was good; his sins were more those of vanity than +those of hate; it may be that they are regarded mercifully where the +fund of mercy is unbounded. God grant that they may be so; or who of us +would escape? None but fiends will triumph over the death of any man in +sin. Men are not fiends; they must and will always feel for their +fellow-men, let them die as they will. No doubt Brummell was a fool--a +fool of the first water, but that he was equally a knave was not so +certain. Let it never be certain to blind man, who cannot read the +heart, that any man is a knave. He died on the 30th of March, 1840, and +so the last of the Beaux passed away. People have claimed, indeed for +D'Orsay, the honour of Brummell's descending mantle, but D'Orsay was not +strictly a beau, for he had other and higher tastes than mere dress. It +has never been advanced that Brummell's heart was bad, in spite of his +many faults. Vanity did all. Vanitas vanitatem. O young men of this age, +be warned by a Beau, and flee his doubtful reputation! Peace then to the +coat-thinker. Peace to all--to the worst. Let us look within and not +judge. It is enough that we are not tried in the same balance. + + + +THEODORE EDWARD HOOK. + + +The Greatest of Modern Wits.---What Coleridge said of Hook.--Hook's +Family.--Redeeming Points.--Versatility.--Varieties of Hoaxing.--The +Black-wafered Horse.--The Berners Street Hoax.--Success of the Scheme.-- +The Strop of Hunger.--Kitchen Examinations.--The Wrong House.--Angling +for an Invitation.--The Hackney-coach Device.--The Plots of Hook and +Mathews.--Hook's Talents as an Improvisatore.--The Gift becomes his +Bane.--Hook's Novels.--College Fun.--Baiting a Proctor.--The Punning +Faculty.--Official Life Opens.--Troublesome Pleasantry.--Charge of +Embezzlement.--Misfortune.--Doubly Disgraced.--No Effort to remove the +Stain.--Attacks on the Queen.--An Incongruous Mixture.--Specimen of the +Ramsbottom Letters.--Hook's Scurrility.--Fortune and Popularity.--The End. + + +If it be difficult to say what wit is, it is well nigh as hard to +pronounce what is not wit. In a sad world, mirth hath its full honour, +let it come in rags or in purple raiment. The age that patronises a +'Punch' every Saturday? and a pantomime every Christmas, has no right to +complain, if it finds itself barren of wits, while a rival age has +brought forth her dozens. Mirth is, no doubt, very good. We would see +more, not less, of it in this unmirthful land. We would fain imagine the +shrunken-cheeked factory-girl singing to herself a happy burthen, as she +shifts the loom,--the burthen of her life, and fain believe that the +voice was innocent as the sky-lark's. But if it be not so--and we know +it is not so--shall we quarrel with any one who tries to give the poor +care-worn, money-singing public a little laughter for a few pence? No, +truly, but it does not follow that the man who raises a titter is, of +necessity, a wit. The next age, perchance, will write a book of 'Wits +and Beaux,' in which Mr. Douglas Jerrold, Mr. Mark Lemon, and so on, +will represent the _wit_ of this passing day; and that future age will +not ask so nicely what wit is, and not look for that last solved of +riddles, its definition. Hook has been, by common consent, placed at the +head of modern wits. When kings were kings, they bullied, beat, and and +brow-beat their jesters. Now and then they treated them to a few years +in the Tower for a little extra impudence. Now that the people are +sovereign, the jester fares better--nay, too well. His books or his +bon-mots are read with zest and grins; he is invited to his Grace's and +implored to my Lord's; he is waited for, watched, pampered like a small +Grand Lama, and, in one sentence, the greater the fool, the more fools +he makes. + +If Theodore Hook had lived in the stirring days of King Henry VIII., he +would have sent Messrs. Patch and Co. sharply to the right-about, and +been presented with the caps and bells after his first comic song. No +doubt he was a jester, a fool in many senses, though he did not, like +Solomon's fool, 'say in his _heart_' very much. He jested away even the +practicals of life, jested himself into disgrace, into prison, into +contempt, into the basest employment--that of a libeller tacked on to a +party. He was a mimic, too, to whom none could send a challenge; an +improvisatore, who beat Italians, Tyroleans, and Styrians hollow, sir, +hollow. And lastly--oh! shame of the shuffle-tongued--he was, too, a +punster. Yes, one who gloried in puns, a maker of pun upon pun, a man +whose whole wit ran into a pun as readily as water rushes into a hollow, +who could not keep out of a pun, let him loathe it or not, and who made +some of the best and some of the worst on record, but still--puns. + +If he was a wit withal, it was _malgré soi_, for fun, not for wit, was +his 'aspiration.' Yet the world calls him a wit, and he has a claim to +his niche. There were, it is true, many a man in his own set who had +more real wit. There were James Smith, Thomas Ingoldsby, Tom Hill, and +others. Out of his set, but of his time, there was Sydney Smith, ten +times more a wit: but Theodore could amuse, Theodore could astonish, +Theodore could be at home anywhere; he had all the impudence, all the +readiness, all the indifference of a jester, and a jester he was. + +Let any one look at his portrait, and he will doubt if this be the +king's jester, painted by Holbein, or Mr. Theodore Hook, painted by +Eddis. The short, thick nose, the long upper lip, the sensual, whimsical +mouth, the twinkling eyes, all belong to the regular maker of fun. Hook +was a certificated jester, with a lenient society to hear and applaud +him, instead of an irritable tyrant to keep him in order: and he filled +his post well. Whether he was more than a jester may well be doubted; +yet Coleridge, when he heard him, said: 'I have before in my time met +with men of admirable promptitude of intellectual power and play of wit, +which, as Stillingfleet says: + + "The rays of wit gild wheresoe'er they strike," + +but I never could have conceived such readiness of mind and resources of +genius to be poured out on the mere subject and impulse of the moment.' +The poet was wrong in one respect. Genius can in no sense be applied to +Hook, though readiness was his chief charm. + +The famous Theodore was born in the same year as Byron, 1788, the one on +the 22nd of January, the other on the 22nd of September; so the poet was +only nine months his senior. Hook, like many other wits, was a second +son. Ladies of sixty or seventy well remember the name of Hook as that +which accompanied their earliest miseries. It was in learning Hook's +exercises, or primers, or whatever they were called, that they first had +their fingers slapped over the piano-forte. The father of Theodore, no +doubt, was the unwitting cause of much unhappiness to many a young lady +in her teens. Hook _père_ was an organist at Norwich. He came up to +town, and was engaged at Marylebone Gardens and at Vauxhall; so that +Theodore had no excuse for being of decidedly plebeian origin, and, Tory +as he was, he was not fool enough to aspire to patricianism. + +Theodore's family was, in real fact, Theodore himself. He made the name +what it is, and raised himself to the position he at one time held. Yet +he had a brother whose claims to celebrity are not altogether ancillary. +James Hook was fifteen years older than Theodore. After leaving +Westminster School he was sent to immortal Skimmery (St. Mary's Hall), +Oxford, which has fostered so many great men--and spoiled them. He was +advanced in the church from one preferment to another, and ultimately +became Dean of Worcester. The character of the reverend gentleman is +pretty well known, but it is unnecessary here to go into it farther. He +is only mentioned as Theodore's brother in this sketch.[12] He was a +dabbler in literature, like his brother, but scarcely to the same extent +a dabbler in wit. + +[12: Dr. James Hook, Dean of Worcester, was father to Dr. Walter +Farquhar Hook, now the excellent Dean of Chichester, late Vicar of +Leeds.] + +The younger son of 'Hook's Exercises' developed early enough a taste for +ingenious lying--so much admired in his predecessor--Sheridan, He +'fancied himself' a genius, and therefore, from school-age, not amenable +to the common laws of ordinary men. Frequenters of the now fashionable +prize-ring--thanks to two brutes who have brought that degraded pastime +into prominent notice--will hear a great deal about a man 'fancying +himself.' It is common slang and heeds little explanation. Hook 'fancied +himself' from an early period, and continued to 'fancy himself,' in +spite of repeated disgraces, till a very mature age. At Harrow, he was +the contemporary, but scarcely the friend, of Lord Byron. No two +characters could have been more unlike. Every one knows, more or less, +what Byron's was; it need only be said that Hook's was the reverse of it +in every respect. Byron felt where Hook laughed. Byron was morbid where +Hook was gay. Byron abjured with disgust the social vices to which he +was introduced; Hook fell in with them. Byron indulged in vice in a +romantic way; Hook in the coarsest. There is some excuse for Byron, much +as he has been blamed. There is little or no excuse for Hook, much as +his faults have been palliated. The fact is that goodness of heart will +soften, in men's minds, any or all misdemeanours. Hook, in spite of many +vulgar witticisms and cruel jokes, seems to have had a really good +heart. + +I have it on the authority of one of Hook's most intimate friends, that +he was capable of any act of kindness, and by way of instance of his +goodness of heart, I am told by the same person that he on one occasion +quitted all his town amusements to solace the spirit of a friend in the +country who was in serious trouble. I, of course, refrain from giving +names: but the same person informs me that much of his time was devoted +in a like manner, to relieving, as far as possible, the anxiety of his +friends, often, indeed, arising from his own carelessness. It is due to +Hook to make this impartial statement before entering on a sketch of his +'Sayings and Doings,' which must necessarily leave the impression that +he was a heartless man. + +Old Hook, the father, soon perceived the value of his son's talents; +and, determined to turn them to account, encouraged his natural +inclination to song-writing. At the age of sixteen Theodore wrote a kind +of comic opera, to which his father supplied the music. This was called +'The Soldier's Return.' It was followed by others, and young Hook, not +yet out of his teens, managed to keep a Drury Lane audience alive, as +well as himself and family. It must be remembered, however, that Liston +and Matthews could make almost any piece amusing. The young author was +introduced behind the scenes through his father's connection with the +theatre, and often played the fool under the stage while others were +playing it for him above it, practical jokes being a passion with him +which he developed thus early. These tricks were not always very +good-natured, which may be said of many of his jokes out of the theatre. + +He soon showed evidence of another talent, that of acting as well as +writing pieces. Assurance was one of the main features of his character, +and to it he owed his success in society; but it is a remarkable fact, +that on his first appearance before an audience he entirely lost all his +nerve, turned pale, and could scarcely utter a syllable. He rapidly +recovered, however, and from this time became a favourite performer in +private theatricals, in which he was supported by Mathews and Mrs. +Mathews, and some amateurs who were almost equal to any professional +actors. His attempts were, of course, chiefly in broad farce and roaring +burlesque, in which his comic face, with its look of mock gravity, and +the twinkle of the eyes, itself excited roars of laughter. Whether he +would have succeeded as well in sober comedy or upon public boards may +well be doubted. Probably he would not have given to the profession that +careful attention and entire devotion that are necessary to bring +forward properly the highest natural talents. It is said that for a long +time he was anxious to take to the stage as, a profession, but, +perhaps--as the event seems to show--unfortunately for him, he was +dissuaded from what his friends must have thought a very rash step, and +in after years he took a violent dislike to the profession. Certainly +the stage could not have offered more temptations than did the society +in which he afterwards mixed; and perhaps under any circumstances Hook, +whose moral education had been neglected, and whose principles were +never very good, would have lived a life more or less vicious, though he +might not have died as he did. + +Hook, however, was not long in coming very prominently before the public +in another capacity. Of all stories told about him, none are more common +or more popular than those which relate to his practical jokes and +hoaxes. Thank heaven, the world no longer sees amusement in the misery +of others, and the fashion of such clever performance is gone out. It is +fair, however, to premise, that while the cleverest of Hook's hoaxes +were of a victimizing character, a large number were just the reverse, +and his admirers affirm, not without some reason, that when he had got a +dinner out of a person whom he did not know, by an ingenious lie, +admirably supported, he fully paid for it in the amusement he afforded +his host and the ringing metal of his wit. As we have all been +boys--except those that were girls--and not all of us very good boys, we +can appreciate that passion for robbery which began with orchards and +passed on to knockers. It is difficult to sober middle-age to imagine +what entertainment there can be in that breach of the eighth +commandment, which is generally regarded as innocent. As Sheridan +swindled in fun, so Hook, as a young man, robbed in fun, as hundreds of +medical students and others have done before and since. Hook, however, +was a proficient in the art, and would have made a successful +'cracksman' had he been born in the Seven Dials. He collected a complete +museum of knockers, bell-pulls, wooden Highlanders, barbers' poles, and +shop signs of all sorts. On one occasion he devoted a whole fortnight to +the abstraction of a golden eagle over a shop window, by means of a +lasso. A fellow dilettante in the art had confidentially informed him of +its whereabouts, adding that he himself despaired of ever obtaining it. +At length Hook invited his friend to dinner, and on the removal of the +cover of what was supposed to be the joint, the work of art appeared +served up and appropriately garnished. Theodore was radiant with +triumph; but the friend, probably thinking that there ought to be honour +among thieves, was highly indignant at being thus surpassed. + +Another achievement of this kind was the robbery of a life-sized +Highlander, who graced the door of some unsuspecting tobacconist. There +was little difficulty in the mere displacement of the figure; the +troublesome part of the business was to get the bare legged Celt home to +the museum, where probably many a Lilliputian of his race was already +awaiting him. A cloak, a hat, and Hook's ready wit effected the +transfer. The first was thrown over him, the second set upon his +bonneted head, and a passing hackney coach hailed by his captor, who +before the unsuspecting driver could descend, had opened the door, +pushed in the prize, and whispered to Jehu, 'My friend--very respectable +man but rather tipsy.' How he managed to get him out again at the end of +the journey we are not told. + +Hook was soon a successful and valuable writer of light pieces for the +stage. But farces do not live, and few of Hook's are now favourites with +a public which is always athirst for something new. The incidents of +most of the pieces--many of them borrowed from the French--excited +laughter by their very improbability; but the wit which enlivened them +was not of a high order, and Hook, though so much more recent than +Sheridan, has disappeared before him. + +But his hoaxes were far more famous than his collection of curiosities, +and quite as much to the purpose; and the imprudence he displayed in +them was only equalled by the quaintness of the humour which suggested +them. Who else would have ever thought, for instance, of covering a +white horse with black wafers, and driving it in a gig along a Welsh +high-road, merely for the satisfaction of being stared at? It was almost +worthy of Barnum. Or who, with less assurance, could have played so +admirably on the credulity of a lady and daughters fresh from the +country as he did, at the trial of Lord Melville? The lady, who stood +next to him, was, naturally, anxious to understand the proceedings, and +betrayed her ignorance at once by a remark which she made to her +daughter about the procession of the Lords into the House. When the +bishops entered in full episcopal costume, she applied to Hook to know +who were 'those gentlemen?' 'Gentlemen,' quoth Hook, with charming +simplicity; 'ladies, I think you mean; at any rate, those are the +dowager peeresses in their own right.' Question followed question as the +procession came on, and Theodore indulged his fancy more and more. At +length the Speaker, in full robes, became the subject of inquiry. 'And +pray, sir, who is that fine looking person?'--'That, ma'am, is Cardinal +Wolsey,' was the calm and audacious reply. This was too much even for +Sussex; and the lady drew herself up in majestic indignation. 'We know +better than that, sir,' she replied: 'Cardinal Wolsey has been dead many +a good year.' Theodore was unmoved. 'No such thing, my dear madam,' he +answered, without the slightest sign of perturbation: 'I know it has +been generally reported so in the country, but without the slightest +foundation; the newspapers, you know, will say anything.' + +But the hoax of hoaxes, the one which filled the papers of the time for +several days, and which, eventually, made its author the very prince of +hoaxsters, if such a term can be admitted, was that of Berners Street. +Never, perhaps, was so much trouble expended, or so much attention +devoted, to so frivolous an object. In Berners Street there lived an +elderly lady, who, for no reason that can be ascertained, had excited +the animosity of the young Theodore Hook, who was then just of age. Six +weeks were spent in preparation, and three persons engaged in the +affair. Letters were sent off in every direction, and Theodore Hook's +autograph, if it could have any value, must have been somewhat low in +the market at that period, from the number of applications which he +wrote. On the day in question he and his accomplices seated themselves +at a window in Berners Street, opposite to that unfortunate Mrs. +Tottenham, of No 54, and there enjoyed the fun. Advertisements, +announcements, letters, circulars, and what not, had been most freely +issued, and were as freely responded to. A score of sweeps, all 'invited +to attend professionally,' opened the ball at a very early hour, and +claimed admittance, in virtue of the notice they had received. The +maid-servant had only just time to assure them that all the chimneys +were clean, and their services were not required, when some dozen of +coal-carts drew up as near as possible to the ill-fated house. New +protestations, new indignation. The grimy and irate coalheavers were +still being discoursed with, when a bevy of neat and polite individuals +arrived from different quarters, bearing each under his arm a splendid +ten-guinea wedding-cake. The maid grew distracted; her mistress was +single, and had no intention of doubling herself; there must be some +mistake; the confectioners were dismissed, in a very different humour to +that with which they had come. But they were scarcely gone when crowds +began to storm the house, all 'on business.' Rival doctors met in +astonishment and disgust, prepared for an _accouchement_; undertakers +stared one another mutely in the face, as they deposited at the door +coffins made to order--elm or oak--so many feet and so many inches; the +clergymen of all the neighbouring parishes, high church or low church, +were ready to minister to the spiritual wants of the unfortunate +moribund, but retired in disgust when they found that some forty +fishmongers had been engaged to purvey 'cod's head and lobsters' for a +person professing to be on the brink of the grave. + +The street now became the scene of fearful distraction. Furious +tradesmen of every kind were ringing the house-bell, and rapping the +knocker for admittance--such, at least, as could press through the crowd +as far as the house. Bootmakers arrived with Hessians and +Wellingtons--'as per order'--or the most delicate of dancing-shoes for +the sober old lady; haberdashers had brought the last new thing in +evening dress, 'quite the fashion,' and 'very chaste:' hat-makers from +Lincoln and Bennett down to the Hebrew vendor in Marylebone Lane, +arrived with their crown-pieces; butchers' boys, on stout little nags, +could not get near enough to deliver the legs of mutton which had been +ordered; the lumbering coal-carts 'still stopped the way.' A crowd--the +easiest curiosity in the world to collect--soon gathered round the +motley mob of butchers, bakers, candlestick-makers, and makers and +sellers of everything else that mortal can want; the mob thronged the +pavement, the carts filled the road, and soon the carriages of the noble +of the land dashed up in all the panoply of state, and a demand was made +to clear the way for the Duke of Gloucester, for the Governor of the +Bank, the Chairman of the East India Company, and last, but, oh! not +least, the grandee whose successor the originator of the plot afterwards +so admirably satirized--the great Lord Mayor himself. The consternation, +disgust, and terror of the elderly female, the delight and chuckling of +Theodore and his accomplices, seated at a window on the opposite side of +the road, 'can be more easily imagined than described;' but what were +the feelings of tradesmen, professional men, gentlemen, noblemen, and +grand officials, who had been summoned from distant spots by artful +lures to No. 54, and there battled with a crowd in vain only to find +that there were hoaxed; people who had thus lost both time and money, +can be neither described nor imagined. It was not the idea of the +hoax--simple enough in itself--which was entitled to the admiration +accorded to ingenuity, but its extent and success, and the clever means +taken by the conspirators to insure the attendance of every one who +ought not to have been there. It was only late at night that the police +succeeded in clearing the street, and the dupes retired, murmuring and +vowing vengeance. Hook, however, gloried in the exploit, which he +thought 'perfect.' + +But the hoaxing dearest to Theodore--for there was something to be +gained by it---was that by which he managed to obtain a dinner when +either too hard-up to pay for one, or in the humour for a little +amusement. No one who has not lived as a bachelor in London and been +reduced---in respect of coin--to the sum of twopence-halfpenny, can tell +how excellent a strop is hunger to sharpen wit upon. We all know that + + 'Mortals with stomachs can't live without dinner;' + +and in Hook's day the substitute of 'heavy teas' was not invented. +Necessity is very soon brought to bed, when a man puts his fingers into +his pockets, finds them untenanted, and remembers that the only friend +who would consent to lend him five shillings is gone out of town; and +the infant, Invention, presently smiles into the nurse's face. But it +was no uncommon thing in those days for gentlemen to invite themselves +where they listed, and stay as long as they liked. It was only necessary +for them to make themselves really agreeable, and deceive their host in +some way or other. Hook's friend, little Tom Hill, of whom it was said +that he knew everybody's affairs far better than they did themselves, +was famous for examining kitchens about the hour of dinner, and quietly +selecting his host according to the odour of the viands. It is of him +that the old 'Joe Miller' is told of the 'haunch of venison.' Invited to +dinner at one house, he _happens_ to glance down into the kitchen of the +next, and seeing a tempting haunch of venison on the spit, throws over +the inviter, and ingratiates himself with his neighbour, who ends by +asking him to stay to dinner. The fare, however, consisted of nothing +more luxurious than an Irish stew, and the disappointed guest was +informed that he had been 'too cunning by half,' inasmuch as the venison +belonged to his original inviter, and had been cooked in the house he +was in by kind permission, because the chimney of the owner's kitchen +smoked. + +The same principle often actuated Theodore; and, indeed, there are few +stories which can be told of this characteristic of the great frolicker, +which have not been told a century of times. + +For instance: two young men are strolling, towards 5 P.M., in the then +fashionable neighbourhood of Soho; the one is Terry, the actor--the +other, Hook, the actor, for surely he deserves the title. They pass a +house, and sniff the viands cooking underground. Hook quietly announces +his intention of dining _there_. He enters, is admitted and announced by +the servant, mingles with the company, and is quite at home before he is +perceived by the host. At last the _dénouement_ came; the dinner-giver +approached the stranger, and with great politeness asked his name. +'Smith' was, of course, the reply, and reverting to mistakes made by +servants in announcing, &c., 'Smith' hurried off into an amusing story, +to put his host in good humour. The conversation that followed is taken +from 'Ingoldsby':-- + +'But, really, my dear sir,' the host put in, 'I think the mistake on the +present occasion does not originate in the source you allude to; I +certainly did not anticipate the honour of Mr. Smith's company to-day.' + +'No, I dare say not. You said _four_ in your note, I know, and it is +now, I see, a quarter past five; but the fact is, I have been detained +in the City, as I was going to explain--' + +'Pray,' said the host, 'whom do you suppose you are addressing?' + +'Whom? why Mr. Thompson, of course, old friend of my father. I have not +the pleasure, indeed, of being personally known to you, but having +received your kind invitation yesterday,' &c. &c. + +'No, sir, my name is not Thompson, but Jones,' in highly indignant +accents. + +'Jones!' was the well-acted answer: 'why, surely, I cannot have--yes I +must--good heaven! I see it all. My _dear_ sir, what an unfortunate +blunder; wrong house--what must you think of such an intrusion? I am +really at a loss for words in which to apologize; you will permit me to +retire at present, and to-morrow--' + +'Pray, don't think of retiring,' rejoined the host, taken with the +appearance and manner of the young man. 'Your friend's table must have +been cleared long ago, if, as you say, four was the hour named, and I am +too happy to be able to offer you a seat at mine.' + +It may be easily conceived that the invitation had not to be very often +repeated, and Hook kept the risible muscles of the company upon the +constant stretch, and paid for the entertainment in the only coin with +which he was well supplied. + +There was more wit, however, in his visit to a retired watchmaker, who +had got from government a premium of £10,000 for the best chronometer. +Hook was very partial to journeys in search of adventure; a gig, a +lively companion, and sixpence for the first turnpike being generally +all that was requisite; ingenuity supplied the rest. It was on one of +these excursions, that Hook and his friend found themselves in the +neighbourhood of Uxbridge, with a horse and a gig, and not a sixpence to +be found in any pocket. Now a horse and gig are property, but of what +use is a valuable of which you cannot dispose or deposit at a +pawnbroker's, while you are prevented proceeding on your way by that +neat white gate with the neat white box of a house at its side? The only +alternative left to the young men was to drive home again, dinnerless, a +distance of twenty miles, with a jaded horse, or to find gratuitous +accommodation for man and beast. In such a case Sheridan would simply +have driven to the first inn, and by persuasion or stratagem contrived +to elude payment, after having drunk the best wine and eaten the best +dinner the house could afford. Hook was really more refined, as well as +bolder in his pillaging. + +The villa of the retired tradesman was perceived, and the gig soon drew +up before the door. The strangers were ushered in to the watchmaker, and +Hook, with great politeness and a serious respectful look, addressed +him. He said that he felt he was taking a great liberty--so he was--but +that he could not pass the door of a man who had done the country so +much service by the invention of what must prove the most useful and +valuable instrument, without expressing to him the gratitude which he, +as a British subject devoted to his country's good, could not but feel +towards the inventor, &c. &c. The flattery was so delicately and so +seriously insinuated, that the worthy citizen could only receive it as +an honest expression of sincere admiration. The Rubicon was passed; a +little lively conversation, artfully made attractive by Hook, followed, +and the watchmaker was more and more gratified. He felt, too, what an +honour it would be to entertain two real gentlemen, and remarking that +they were far from town, brought out at last the longed-for invitation, +which was, of course, declined as out of the question. Thereupon the old +gentleman became pressing: the young strangers were at last prevailed +upon to accept it, and very full justice they did to the larder and +cellar of the successful chronometer-maker. + +There is nothing very original in the act of hoaxing, and Hook's way of +getting a hackney-coach without paying for it, was, perhaps, suggested +by Sheridan's, but was more laughable. Finding himself in the vehicle, +and knowing that there was nothing either in his purse or at home to pay +the fare, he cast about for expedients, and at last remembered the +address of an eminent surgeon in the neighbourhood. He ordered the +coachman to drive to his house and knock violently at the door, which +was no sooner opened than Hook rushed in, terribly agitated, demanded to +see the doctor, to whom in a few incoherent and agitated sentences, he +gave to understand that his wife needed his services, immediately, being +on the point of becoming a mother. + +'I will start directly,' replied the surgeon; 'I will order my carriage +at once.' + +'But, my dear sir, there is not a moment to spare. I have a coach at the +door, jump into that.' + +The surgeon obeyed. The name and address given were those of a +middle-aged spinster of the most rigid virtue. We can imagine her +indignation, and how sharply she rung the bell, when the surgeon had +delicately explained the object of his visit, and how eagerly he took +refuge in the coach. Hook had, of course, walked quietly away in the +meantime, and the Galenite had to pay the demand of Jehu. + +The hoaxing stories of Theodore Hook are numberless. Hoaxing was the +fashion of the day, and a childish fashion too. Charles Mathews, whose +face possessed the flexibility of an acrobat's body, and who could +assume any character or disguise on the shortest notice, was his great +confederate in these plots. The banks of the Thames were their great +resort. At one point there was Mathews talking gibberish in a disguise +intended to represent the Spanish Ambassador, and actually deceiving the +Woolwich authorities by his clever impersonation. At another, there was +Hook landing uninvited with his friends upon the well-known, +sleek-looking lawn of a testy little gentleman, drawing out a note-book +and talking so authoritatively about the survey for a canal, to be +undertaken by Government, that the owner of the lawn becomes frightened, +and in his anxiety attempts to conciliate the mighty self-made official +by the offer of dinner--of course accepted. + +[Illustration: THEODORE HOOK'S ENGINEERING FROLIC.] + +Then the _Arcades ambo_ show off their jesting tricks at Croydon fair, a +most suitable place for them. On one occasion Hook personates a madman, +accusing Mathews, 'his brother,' of keeping him out of his rights and in +his custody. The whole fair collects around them, and begins to +sympathise with Hook, who begs them to aid in his escape from his +'brother.' A sham escape and sham capture take place, and the party +adjourn to the inn, where Mathews, who had been taken by surprise by the +new part suddenly played by his confederate, seized upon a hearse, which +drew up before the inn, on its return from a funeral, persuaded the +company to bind the 'madman,' who was now becoming furious, and who +would have deposited him in the gloomy vehicle, if he had not succeeded +in snapping his fetters, and so escaped. In short, they were two boys, +with the sole difference, that they had sufficient talent and experience +of the world to maintain admirably the parts they assumed. + +But a far more famous and more admirable talent in Theodore than that of +deception was that of improvising. The art of improvising belongs to +Italy and the Tyrol. The wonderful gift of ready verse to express +satire, and ridicule, seems, as a rule, to be confined to the +inhabitants of those two lands. Others are, indeed, scattered over the +world, who possess this gift, but very sparsely. Theodore Hook stands +almost alone in this country as an improviser. Yet to judge of such of +his verses as have been preserved, taken down from memory or what not, +the grand effect of them--and no doubt it _was_ grand--must have been +owing more to his manner and his acting, than to any intrinsic value in +the verses themselves, which are, for the most part, slight, and devoid +of actual wit, though abounding in puns. Sheridan's testimony to the +wonderful powers of the man is, perhaps, more valuable than that of any +one else, for he was a good judge both of verse and of wit. One of +Hook's earliest displays of his talent was at a dinner given by the +Drury Lane actors to Sheridan at the Piazza Coffee House in 1808. Here, +as usual, Hook sat down to the piano, and touching off a few chords, +gave verse after verse on all the events of the entertainment, on each +person present, though he now saw many of them for the first time, and +on anything connected with the matters of interest before them. Sheridan +was delighted, and declared that he could not have believed such a +faculty possible if he had not witnessed its effects: that no +description 'could have convinced him of so peculiar an instance of +genius,' and so forth. + +One of his most extraordinary efforts in this line is related by Mr. +Jerdan. A dinner was given by Mansell Reynolds to Lockhart, Luttrell, +Coleridge, Hook, Tom Hill, and others. The grown-up schoolboys, pretty +far gone in Falernian, of a home-made, and very homely vintage, amused +themselves by breaking the wine-glasses, till Coleridge was set to +demolish the last of them with a fork thrown at it from the side of the +table. Let it not be supposed that any teetotal spirit suggested this +inconoclasm, far from it--the glasses were too small, and the poets, the +wits, the punsters, the jesters, preferred to drink their port out of +tumblers. After dinner Hook gave one of his songs which satirized +successively, and successfully, each person present. He was then +challenged to improvise on any given subject, and by way of one as far +distant from poetry as could be, _cocoa-nut oil_ was fixed upon. +Theodore accepted the challenge; and after a moment's consideration +began his lay with a description of the Mauritius, which he knew so +well, the negroes dancing round the cocoa-nut tree, the process of +extracting the oil, and so forth, all in excellent rhyme and rhythm, if +not actual poetry. Then came the voyage to England, hits at the Italian +warehousemen, and so on, till the oil is brought into the very lamp +before them in that very room, to show them with the light it feeds and +make them able to break wine-glasses and get drunk from tumblers. This +we may be sure Hook himself did, for one, and the rest were probably not +much behind him. + +In late life this gift of Hook's--improvising I mean, not getting +intoxicated--was his highest recommendation in society, and at the same +time his bane. Like Sheridan, he was ruined by his wonderful natural +powers. It can well be imagined that to improvise in the manner in which +Hook did it, and at a moment's notice, required some effort of the +intellect. This effort became greater as circumstances depressed his +spirits more and more and yet with every care upon his mind, he was +expected, wherever he went, to amuse the guests with a display of his +talent. He could not do so without stimulants, and rather than give up +society, fell into habits of drinking, which hastened his death. + +We have thrown together the foregoing anecdotes of Hook, irrespective of +time, in order to show what the man's gifts were, and what his title to +be considered a wit. We must proceed more steadily to a review of his +life. Successful as Hook had proved as a writer for the stage, he +suddenly and without any sufficient cause rushed off into another branch +of literature, that of novel-writing. His first attempt in this kind of +fiction was 'The Man of Sorrow,' published under the _nom de plume_ of +_Alfred Allendale_. This was not, as its name would seem to imply, a +novel of pathetic cast, but the history of a gentleman whose life from +beginning to end is rendered wretched by a succession of mishaps of the +most ludicrous but improbable kind. Indeed Theodore's novels, like his +stage-pieces, are gone out of date in an age so practical that even in +romance it will not allow of the slightest departure from reality. Their +very style was ephemeral, and their interest could not outlast the +generation to amuse which they were penned. This first novel was written +when Hook was one-and-twenty. Soon after he was sent to Oxford, where he +had been entered at St. Mary's Hall, more affectionately known by the +nickname of 'Skimmery.' No selection could have been worse. Skimmery +was, at that day, and, until quite recently, a den of thieves, where +young men of fortune and folly submitted to be pillaged in return for +being allowed perfect licence, as much to eat as they could possibly +swallow, and far more to drink than was at all good for them. It has +required all the enterprise of the present excellent Principal to +convert it into a place of sober study. It was then the most +'gentlemanly' residence in Oxford; for a gentleman in those days meant a +man who did nothing, spent his own or his father's guineas with a +brilliant indifference to consequences, and who applied his mind solely +to the art of frolic. It was the very place where Hook would be +encouraged instead of restrained in his natural propensities, and had he +remained there he would probably have ruined himself and his father long +before he had put on the sleeves. + +At the matriculation itself he gave a specimen of his 'fun.' + +When asked, according to the usual form, 'if he was willing to sign the +Thirty-nine Articles,' he replied, 'Certainly, sir, _forty_ if you +please.' The gravity of the stern Vice-Chancellor was upset, but as no +Oxford Don can ever pardon a joke, however good, Master Theodore was +very nearly being dismissed, had not his brother, by this time a +Prebendary of Winchester, and 'an honour to his college, sir,' +interceded in his favour. + +The night before, he had given a still better specimen of his +effrontery. He had picked up a number of old Harrovians, with whom he +had repaired to a tavern for song, supper, and sociability, and as usual +in such cases, in the lap of Alma Mater, the babes became sufficiently +intoxicated, and not a little uproarious. Drinking in a tavern is +forbidden by Oxonian statutes, and one of the proctors happening to pass +in the street outside, was attracted into the house by the sound of +somewhat unscholastic merriment. The effect can be imagined. All the +youths were in absolute terror, except Theodore, and looked in vain for +some way to escape. The wary and faithful 'bulldogs' guarded the +doorway; the marshal, predecessor of the modern omniscient Brown, +advanced respectfully behind the proctor into the room, and passing a +penetrating glance from one youth to the other, all of whom--except +Theodore again--he knew by sight--for that is the pride and pleasure of +a marshal--mentally registered their names in secret hopes of getting +half-a-crown a-piece to forget them again. + +No mortal is more respectful in his manner of accosting you than an +Oxford proctor, for he may make a mistake, and a mistake may make him +very miserable. When, for instance, a highly respectable lady was the +other day lodged, in spite of protestations, in the 'Procuratorial +Rooms,' and there locked up on suspicion of being somebody very +different, the over-zealous proctor who had ordered her incarceration +was sued for damages for £300, and had to pay them too! Therefore the +gentleman in question most graciously and suavely inquired of Mr. +Theodore Hook-- + +'I beg your pardon, sir, but are you a member of this university?'--the +usual form. + +'No, sir, I am not. Are you?' + +The suavity at once changed to grave dignity. The proctor lifted up the +hem of his garment, which being of broad velvet, with the selvage on it, +was one of the insignia of his office, and sternly said,--'You see this, +sir.' + +'Ah!' said Hook, cool as ever, and quietly feeling the material, which +he examined with apparent interest, 'I see; Manchester velvet: and may I +take the liberty, sir, of inquiring how much you have paid per yard for +the article?' + +A roar of laughter from all present burst forth with such vehemence that +it shot the poor official, red with suppressed anger, into the street +again, and the merrymakers continued their bout till the approach of +midnight, when they were obliged to return to their respective colleges. + +Had Theodore proceeded in this way for several terms, no doubt the +outraged authorities would have added his name to the list of the great +men whom they have expelled from time to time most unprophetically. As +it was, he soon left the groves of Academus, and sought those of Fashion +in town. His matriculation into this new university was much more +auspicious; he was hailed in society as already fit to take a degree of +bachelor of his particular arts, and ere long his improvising, his fun, +his mirth--as yet natural and over-boiling--his wicked punning, and his +tender wickedness, induced the same institution to offer him the grade +of 'Master' of those arts. In after years he rose to be even 'Doctor,' +and many, perhaps, were the minds diseased to which his well-known mirth +ministered. + +It was during this period that some of his talents were displayed in the +manner we have described, though his great fame as an improvisatore was +established more completely in later days. Yet he had already made +himself a name in that species of wit--not a very high one--which found +favour with the society of that period. We allude to imitation, 'taking +off,' and punning. The last contemptible branch of wit-making, now +happily confined to 'Punch,' is as old as variety of language. It is not +possible with simple vocabularies, and accordingly is seldom met with in +purely-derived languages. Yet we have Roman and Greek puns; and English +is peculiarly adapted to this childish exercise, because, being made up +of several languages, it necessarily contains many words which are like +in sound and unlike in meaning. Punning is, in fact, the vice of English +wit, the temptation of English mirth-makers, and, at last, we trust, the +scorn of English good sense. But in Theodore's day it held a high place, +and men who had no real wit about them could twist and turn words and +combinations of words with great ingenuity and much readiness, to the +delight of their listeners. Pun-making was a fashion among the +conversationists of that day, and took the place of better wit. Hook was +a disgraceful punster, and a successful one. He strung puns together by +the score--nothing more easy--in his improvised songs and conversation. +Take an instance from his quiz on the march of intellect:-- + + 'Hackney-coachmen from _Swift_ shall reply, if you feel + Annoyed at being needlessly shaken; + And butchers, of course, be flippant from _Steele_, + And pig-drivers well versed in _Bacon_. + From _Locke_ shall the blacksmiths authority brave, + And gas-men cite _Coke_ at discretion; + Undertakers talk _Gay_ as they go to the _grave_, + And watermen _Rowe_ by profession.' + +I have known a party of naturally stupid people produce a whole century +of puns one after another, on any subject that presented itself, and I +am inclined to think that nothing can, at the same time, be more +nauseous, or more destructive to real wit. Yet Theodore's strength lay +in puns, and when shorn of them, the Philistines might well laugh at his +want of strength. Surely his title to wit does not lie in that +direction. + +However, he amused, and that gratis; and an amusing man makes his way +anywhere if he have only sufficient tact not to abuse his privileges. +Hook grew great in London society for a time, and might have grown +greater if a change had not come. + +He had supported himself, up to 1812, almost entirely by his pen: and +the goose-quill is rarely a staff, though it may sometimes be a +walking-stick. It was clear that he needed--what so many of us need and +cannot get--a certainty. Happy fellow! he might have begged for an +appointment for years in vain, as many another does, but it fell into +his lap, no one knows how, and at four-and-twenty Mr. Theodore Edward +Hook was made treasurer to the Island of Mauritius, with a salary of +£2,000 per annum. This was not to be, and was not, despised. In spite of +climate, mosquitoes, and so forth, Hook took the money and sailed. + +We have no intention of entering minutely upon his conduct in this +office, which has nothing to do with his character as a wit. There are a +thousand and one reasons for believing him guilty of the charges brought +against him, and a thousand and one for supposing him guiltless. Here +was a young man, gay, jovial, given to society entirely, and not at all +to arithmetic, put into a very trying and awkward position--native +clerks who would cheat if they could, English governors who would find +fault if they could, a disturbed treasury, an awkward currency, liars +for witnesses, and undeniable evidence of defalcation. In a word, an +examination was made into the state of the treasury of the island, and a +large deficit found. It remained to trace it home to its original +author. + +Hook had not acquired the best character in the island. Those who know +the official dignity of a small British colony can well understand how +his pleasantries must have shocked those worthy big-wigs who, exalted +from Pump Court, Temple, or Paradise Row, Old Brompton, to places of +honour and high salaries, rode their high horses with twice the +exclusiveness of those 'to the manner born.' For instance, Hook was +once, by a mere chance, obliged to take the chair at an official dinner, +on which occasion the toasts proposed by the chairman were to be +accompanied by a salute from guns without. Hook went through the list, +and seemed to enjoy toast-drinking so much that he was quite sorry to +have come to the end of it, and continued, as if still from the list, to +propose successively the health of each officer present. The gunners +were growing quite weary, but having their orders, dared not complain. +Hook was delighted, and went on to the amazement and amusement of all +who were not tired of the noise, each youthful sub, taken by surprise, +being quite gratified at the honour done him. At last there was no one +left to toast; but the wine had taken effect, and Hook, amid roars of +laughter inside, and roars of savage artillery without, proposed the +health of the waiter who had so ably officiated. This done, he bethought +him of the cook, who was sent for to return thanks; but the artillery +officer had by this time got wind of the affair, and feeling that more +than enough powder had been wasted on the health of gentlemen who were +determined to destroy it by the number of their potations, took on +himself the responsibility of ordering the gunners to stop. + +On another occasion he incurred the displeasure of the governor, General +Hall, by fighting a duel--fortunately as harmless as that of Moore and +Jeffrey-- + + 'When Little's leadless pistol met his eye, + And Bow-street myrmidons stood laughing by,' + +as Byron says. The governor was sensible enough to wish to put down the +'Gothic appeal to arms,' and was therefore the more irate. + +These circumstances must be taken into consideration in Hook's favour in +examining the charge of embezzlement. It must also be stated that the +information of the deficit was sent in a letter to the governor by a man +named Allan, chief clerk in the Treasury, who had, for irregular +conduct, been already threatened with dismissal. Allan had admitted that +he had known of the deficit for fifteen months, and yet he had not, till +he was himself in trouble, thought of making it known to the proper +authorities. Before his examination, which of course followed, could be +concluded, Allan committed suicide. Now, does it not, on the face of it, +seem of the highest probability that this man was the real delinquent, +and that knowing that Hook had all the responsibility, and having taken +fair precautions against his own detection, he had anticipated a +discovery of the affair by a revelation, incriminating the treasurer? +_Quien sabe_;--dead men tell no tales. + +The chest, however, was examined, and the deficit found far greater yet +than had been reported. Hook could not explain, could not understand it +at all; but if not criminal, he had necessarily been careless. He was +arrested, thrown into prison, and by the first vessel despatched to +England to take his trial, his property of every kind having been sold +for the Government. Hook, in utter destitution, might be supposed to +have lost his usual spirits, but he could not resist a joke. At St. +Helena he met an old friend going out to the Cape, who, surprised at +seeing him on his return voyage after a residence of only five years, +said: 'I hope you are not going home for your health.'--'Why,' said +Theodore, 'I am sorry to say they think there is something wrong in the +_chest._ Something wrong in the chest' became henceforward the ordinary +phrase in London society in referring to Hook's scrape. + +Arrived in England, he was set free, the Government here having decided +that he could not be criminally tried; and thus Hook, guilty or not, had +been ruined and disgraced for life for simple carelessness. True, the +custody of a nation's property makes negligence almost criminal; but +that does not excuse the punishment of a man before he is tried. + +He was summoned, however, to the Colonial Audit Board, where he +underwent a trying examination; after which he was declared to be in the +debt of Government: a writ of extent was issued against him; nine months +were passed in that delightful place of residence--a Sponging-house, +which he then exchanged for the 'Rules of the Bench'--the only rules +which have no exception. From these he was at last liberated, in 1825, +on the understanding that he was to repay the money to Government if at +any time he should be in a position to do so. + +His liberation was a tacit acknowledgment of his innocence of the charge +of robbery; his encumberment with a debt caused by another's +delinquencies was, we presume, a signification of his responsibility and +some kind of punishment for his carelessness. Certainly it was hard upon +Hook, that, if innocent, he should not have gone forth without a stain +on his character for honesty; and it was unjust, that, if guilty, he +should not have been punished. The judgment was one of those compromises +with stern justice which are seldom satisfactory to either party. + +The fact was that, guilty or not guilty, Hook had been both incompetent +and inconsiderate. Doubtless he congratulated himself highly on +receiving, at the age of twenty-five, an appointment worth £2,000 a year +in the paradise of the world; but how short-sighted his satisfaction, +since this very appointment left him some ten years later a pauper to +begin life anew with an indelible stain on his character. It was absurd +to give so young a man such a post; but it was absolutely wrong in Hook +not to do his utmost to carry out his duties properly. Nay, he had +trifled with the public money in the same liberal--perhaps a _more_ +liberal--spirit as if it had been his own--made advances and loans here +and there injudiciously, and taken little heed of the consequences. +Probably, at this day, the common opinion acquits Hook of a designed and +complicated fraud; but common opinion never did acquit him of +misconduct, and even by his friends this affair was looked upon with a +suspicion that preferred silence to examination. + +But why take such pains to exonerate Hook from a charge of robbery, when +he was avowedly guilty of as bad a sin, of which the law took no +cognizance, and which society forgave far more easily than it could have +done for robbing the State? Soon after his return from the Mauritius, he +took lodgings in the cheap, but unfashionable neighbourhood of Somers +Town. Here, in the moment of his misfortune, when doubting whether +disgrace, imprisonment, or what not awaited him, he sought solace in the +affection of a young woman, of a class certainly much beneath his, and +of a character unfit to make her a valuable companion to him. Hook had +received little moral training, and had he done so, his impulses were +sufficiently strong to overcome any amount of principle. With this +person--to use the modern slang which seems to convert a glaring sin +into a social misdemeanour--'he formed a connection.' In other words, he +destroyed her virtue. Hateful as such an act is, we must, before we can +condemn a man for it without any recommendation to mercy, consider a +score of circumstances which have rendered the temptation stronger, and +the result almost involuntary. Hook was not a man of high moral +character--very far from it--but we need not therefore suppose that he +sat down coolly and deliberately, like a villain in a novel, to effect +the girl's ruin. But the Rubicon once passed, how difficult is the +retreat! There are but two paths open to a man, who would avoid living a +life of sin: the one, to marry his victim; the other, to break off the +connection before it is too late. The first is, of course, the more +proper course; but there are cases where marriage is impossible. From +the latter a man of any heart must shrink with horror. Yet there _are_ +cases, even, where the one sin will prove the least--where she who has +loved too well may grieve bitterly at parting, yet will be no more open +to temptation than if she had never fallen. Such cases are rare, and it +is not probable that the young person with whom Hook had become +connected would have retrieved the fatal error. She became a mother, and +there was no retreat. It is clear that Hook ought to have married her. +It is evident that he was selfish and wrong not to do so;--yet he shrank +from it, weakly, wickedly, and he was punished for his shrinking. He had +sufficient feeling not to throw his victim over, yet he was content to +live a life of sin, and to keep her in such a life. This is perhaps the +blackest stain on Hook's character. When Fox married, in consequence of +a similar connection, he 'settled down,' retrieved his early errors, and +became a better man, morally, than he had ever been. Hook _ought_ to +have married. It was the cowardly dread of public opinion that deterred +him from doing so, and, in consequence, he was never happy, and felt +that this connection was a perpetual burden to him. + +Wrecked and ruined, Hook had no resource but his literary talents, and +it is to be deplored that he should have prostituted these to serve an +ungentlemanly and dishonourable party in their onslaught upon an +unfortunate woman. Whatever may be now thought of the queen of 'the +greatest gentleman'--or _roue_--of Europe, those who hunted her down +will never be pardoned, and Hook was one of those. We have cried out +against an Austrian general for condemning a Hungarian lady to the lash, +and we have seen, with delight, a mob chase him through the streets of +London and threaten his very life. But we have not only pardoned, but +even praised, our favourite wit for far worse conduct than this. Even if +we allow, which we do not, chat the queen was one half as bad as her +enemies, or rather her husband's parasites, would make her out, we +cannot forgive the men who, shielded by their incognito, and perfectly +free from danger of any kind, set upon a woman with libels, invectives, +ballads, epigrams, and lampoons, which a lady could scarcely read, and +of which a royal lady, and many an English gentlewoman, too, were the +butts. + +The vilest of all the vile papers of that day was the 'John Bull,' now +settled down to a quiet periodical. Perhaps the real John Bull, heavy, +good-natured lumberer as he is, was never worse represented than in this +journal which bore his name, but had little of his kindly spirit. Hook +was its originator, and for a long time its main supporter. Scurrility, +scandal, libel, baseness of all kinds formed the fuel with which it +blazed, and the wit, bitter, unflinching, unsparing, which puffed the +flame up, was its chief recommendation. + +No more disgraceful climax was ever reached by a disgraceful dynasty of +profligates than that which found a King of England--long, as Regent, +the leader of the profligate and degraded--at war with his injured +Queen. None have deserved better the honest gratitude of their country +than those who, like Henry Brougham, defended the oppressed woman in +spite of opposition, obloquy, and ridicule. + +But we need not go deeply into a history so fresh in the minds of all, +as that blot which shows John Bull himself upholding a wretched +dissipated monarch against a wife, who, whatever her faults, was still a +woman, and whatever her spirit--for she had much of it, and showed it +grandly at need--was still a lady. Suffice it to say that 'John Bull' +was the most violent of the periodicals that attacked her, and that +Theodore Hook, no Puritan himself, was the principal writer in that +paper. + +If you can imagine 'Punch' turned Conservative, incorporated in one +paper with the 'Morning Herald,' so that a column of news was printed +side by side with one of a jocular character, and these two together +devoted without principle to the support of a party, the attack of +Whiggism, and an unblushing detraction of the character of one of our +princesses, you can form some idea of what 'John Bull' was in those +days. There is, however, a difference: 'Punch' attacks public +characters, and ridicules public events; 'John Bull' dragged out the +most retired from their privacy, and attacked them with calumnies for +which, often, there was no foundation. Then, again, 'Punch' is not +nearly so bitter as was 'John Bull:' there is not in the 'London +Charivari' a determination to say everything that spite can invent +against any particular set or party; there is a good nature, still, in +master 'Punch.' It was quite the reverse in 'John Bull,' established for +one purpose, and devoted to that. Yet the wit in Theodore's paper does +not rise much higher than that of our modern laughing philosopher. + +Of Hook's contributions the most remarkable was the 'Ramsbottom +Letters,' in which Mrs. Lavinia Dorothea Ramsbottom describes all the +_memory billions_ of her various tours at home and abroad, always, of +course, with more or less allusion to political affairs. The 'fun' of +these letters is very inferior to that of 'Jeames' or of the 'Snob +Papers,' and consists more in Malaprop absurdities and a wide range of +bad puns, than in any real wit displayed in them. Of the style of both, +we take an extract anywhere:-- + +'Oh! Mr. Bull, Room is raley a beautiful place. We entered it by the +Point of Molly, which is just like the Point and Sally at Porchmouth, +only they call Sally there Port, which is not known in Room. The Tiber +is a nice river, it looks yellow, but it does the same there as the +Thames does here. We hired a carry-lettz and a cocky-olly, to take us to +the Church of Salt Peter, which is prodigious big; in the centre of the +pizarro there is a basilisk very high, on the right and left two +handsome foundlings; and the farcy, as Mr. Fulmer called it, is +ornamented with collateral statutes of some of the Apostates.' + +We can quite imagine that Hook wrote many of these letters when excited +by wine. Some are laughable enough, but the majority are so deplorably +stupid, reeking with puns and scurrility, that when the temporary +interest was gone, there was nothing left to attract the reader. It is +scarcely possible to laugh at the Joe-Millerish mistakes, the old world +puns, and the trite stories of Hook 'remains.' Remains! indeed; they had +better have remained where they were. + +Besides prose of this kind, Hook contributed various jingles--there is +no other name for them--arranged to popular tunes, and intended to +become favourites with the country people. These like the prose +effusions, served the purpose of an hour, and have no interest now. +Whether they were ever really popular remains to be proved. Certes, they +are forgotten now, and long since even in the most Conservative corners +of the country. Many of these have the appearance of having been +originally _recitati_, and their amusement must have depended chiefly on +the face and manner of the singer--Hook himself; but in some he +displayed that vice of rhyming which has often made nonsense go down, +and which is tolerable only when introduced in the satire of a 'Don +Juan' or the first-rate mimicry of 'Rejected Addresses.' Hook had a most +wonderful facility in concocting out-of-the-way rhymes, and a few verses +from his song on Clubs will suffice for a good specimen of his talent:-- + + 'If any man loves comfort, and has little cash to buy it, he + Should get into a crowded club--a most select society; + While solitude and mutton-cutlets serve _infelix uxor_, he + May have his club (Like Hercules), and revel there in luxury. + Bow, wow, wow, &c. + + 'Yes, clubs knock houses on the head; e'en Hatchett's can't demolish + them; + Joy grieves to see their magnitude, and Long longs to abolish them. + The inns are out; hotels for single men scarce keep alive on it; + While none but houses that are in the family way thrive on it. + Bow, wow, wow, &c. + + 'There's first the Athenaeum Club, so wise, there's not a man of it, + That has not sense enough for six (in fact, that is the plan of it); + The very waiters answer you with eloquence Socratical; + And always place the knives and forks in order mathematical. + Bow, wow, wow, &c. + + * * * * * + + 'E'en Isis has a house in town, and Cam abandons her city. + The master now hangs out at the Trinity University. + + * * * * * + + 'The Union Club is quite superb; its best apartment daily is, + The lounge of lawyers, doctors, merchants, beaux, _cum multis aliis_. + + * * * * * + + 'The Travellers are in Pall Mall, and smoke cigars so cosily, + And dream they climb the highest Alps, or rove the plains of Moselai. + + * * * * * + + 'These are the stages which all men propose to play their parts upon, + For _clubs_ are what the Londoners have clearly set their _hearts_ + upon. + Bow, wow, wow, tiddy-iddy-iddy-iddy, bow, wow, wow, &c. + +This is one of the harmless ballads of 'Bull.' Some of the political +ones are scarcely fit to print in the present day. We cannot wonder that +ladies of a certain position gave out that they would not receive any +one who took in this paper. It was scurrilous to the last degree, and +Theodore Hook was the soul of it. He preserved his incognito so well, +that in spite of all attempts to unearth him, it was many years before +he could be certainly fixed upon as a writer in its columns. He even +went to the length of writing letters and articles against himself, in +order to disarm suspicion. + +Hook now lived and thrived purely on literature. He published many +novels--gone where the bad novels go, and unread in the present day, +unless in some remote country town, which boasts only a very meagre +circulating library. Improbability took the place of natural painting in +them; punning supplied that of better wit; and personal portraiture was +so freely used, that his most intimate friends--old Mathews, for +instance--did not escape. + +Meanwhile Hook, making a good fortune, returned to his convivial life, +and the enjoyment--if enjoyment it be--of general society. He 'threw out +his bow window' on the strength of his success with 'John Bull,' and +spent much more than he had. He mingled freely in all the London circles +of thirty years ago, whose glory is still fresh in the minds of most of +us, and everywhere his talent as an improvisatore, and his +conversational powers, made him a general favourite. + +Unhappy popularity for Hook! He, who was yet deeply in debt to the +nation--who had an illegitimate family to maintain, who owed in many +quarters more than he could ever hope to pay--was still fool enough to +entertain largely, and receive both nobles and wits in the handsomest +manner. Why did he not live quietly? why not, like Fox, marry the +unhappy woman whom he had made the mother of his children, and content +himself with trimming vines and rearing tulips? Why, forsooth? because +he was Theodore Hook, thoughtless and foolish to the last. The jester of +the people must needs be a fool. Let him take it to his conscience that +he was not as much a knave. + +In his latter years Hook took to the two dissipations most likely to +bring him into misery--play and drink. He was utterly unfitted for the +former, being too gay a spirit to sit down and calculate chances. He +lost considerably, and the more he lost the more he played. Drinking +became almost a necessity with him. He had a reputation to keep up in +society, and had not the moral courage to retire from it altogether. +Writing, improvising, conviviality, play, demanded stimulants. His mind +was overworked in every sense. He had recourse to the only remedy, and +in drinking he found a temporary relief from anxiety, and a short-lived +sustenance. There is no doubt that this man, who had amused London +circles for many years, hastened his end by drinking. + +It is not yet thirty years since Theodore Hook died. He left the world +on August the 24th, 1841, and by this time he remains in the memory of +men only as a wit that was, a punster, a hoaxer, a sorry jester, with an +ample fund of fun, but not as a great man in any way. Allowing +everything for his education--the times he lived in, and the unhappy +error of his early life--we may admit that Hook was not, in character, +the worst of the wits. He died in no odour of sanctity, but he was not a +blasphemer or reviler, like others of this class. He ignored the bond of +matrimony, yet he remained faithful to the woman he had betrayed; he was +undoubtedly careless in the one responsible office with which he was +intrusted, yet he cannot be taxed, taking all in all, with deliberate +peculation. His drinking and playing were bad--very bad. His improper +connection was bad--very bad; but perhaps the worst feature in his +career was his connection with 'John Bull,' and his ready giving in to a +system of low libel. There is no excuse for this but the necessity of +living; but Hook, had he retained any principle, might have made enough +to live upon in a more honest manner. His name does, certainly, not +stand out well among the wits of this country, but after all, since all +were so bad, Hook may be excused as not being the worst of them. +_Requiescat in pace_. + + + +SYDNEY SMITH. + + +The 'Wise Wit.'--Oddities of the Father.--Verse-making at Winchester.-- +Curate Life on Salisbury Plain.--Old Edinburgh.--Its Social and +Architectural Features.--Making Love Metaphysically.--The Old Scottish +Supper.--The Men of Mark passing away---The Band of Young Spirits.-- +Brougham's Early Tenacity.--Fitting up Conversations.--'Old School' +Ceremonies.--The Speculative Society.--A Brilliant Set.--Sydney's Opinion +of his Friends.--Holland House.--Preacher at the 'Foundling.'--Sydney's +'Grammar of Life.'--The Picture Mania.--A Living Comes at Last.--The +wit's Ministry.--The Parsonage House at Foston-le-Clay.--Country Quiet. +The Universal Scratcher.--Country Life and Country Prejudice.--The Genial +Magistrate.--Glimpse of Edinburgh Society.--Mrs. Grant of Laggan. A +Pension Difficulty.--Jeffrey and Cockburn.--Craigcrook.--Sydney Smith's +Cheerfulness.--His Rheumatic Armour.--No Bishopric.--Becomes Canon of St. +Paul's.--Anecdotes of Lord Dudley.--A Sharp Reproof.--Sydney's +Classification of Society.--Last Strokes of Humour. + + +Smith's reputation--to quote from Lord Cockburn's 'Memorial of +Edinburgh'--'here, then, was the same as it has been throughout his +life, that of a wise wit.' A wit he was, but we must deny him the +reputation of being a beau. For that, nature, no less than his holy +office, had disqualified him. Who that ever beheld him in a London +drawing-room, when he went to so many dinners that he used to say he was +a walking patty--who could ever miscall him a beau? How few years have +we numbered since one perceived the large bulky form in canonical +attire--the plain, heavy face, large, long, unredeemed by any +expression, except that of sound hard sense--and thought, 'can this be +the Wit?' How few years is it since Henry Cockburn, hating London, and +coming but rarely to what he called the 'devil's drawing room,' stood +near him, yet apart, for he was the most diffident of men; his wonderful +luminous eyes, his clear, almost youthful, vivid complexion, contrasting +brightly with the gray, pallid, prebendal complexion of Sydney? how +short a time since Francis Jeffery, the smallest of great men, a beau in +his old age, a wit to the last, stood hat in hand to bandy words with +Sydney ere he rushed off to some still gayer scene, some more +fashionable circle: yet they are all gone--gone from sight, living in +memory alone. + +Perhaps it was time: they might have lived, indeed, a few short years +longer; we might have heard their names amongst us; listened to their +voices; gazed upon the deep hazel, ever-sparkling eyes, that constituted +the charm of Cockburn's handsome face, and made all other faces seem +tame and dead: we might have marvelled at the ingenuity, the happy turns +of expression, the polite sarcasm of Jeffrey; we might have revelled in +Sydney Smith's immense natural gift of fun, and listened to the 'wise +wit,' regretting with Lord Cockburn, that so much worldly wisdom seemed +almost inappropriate in one who should have been in some freer sphere +than within the pale of holy orders: we might have done this, but the +picture might have been otherwise. Cockburn, whose intellect rose, and +became almost sublime, as his spirit neared death, might have sunk into +the depression of conscious weakness; Jeffery might have repeated +himself, or turned hypochondriacal; Sydney Smith have grown garrulous: +let us not grieve; they went in their prime of intellect, before one +quality of mind had been touched by the frostbite of age. + +Sydney Smith's life is a chronicle of literary society. He was born in +1771, and he died in 1845. What a succession of great men does that +period comprise! Scott, Jeffrey, Mackintosh, Dugald Stewart, Homer, +Brougham and Cockburn were his familiars--a constellation which has set, +we fear, for ever. Our world presents nothing like it: we must look +back, not around us, for strong minds, cultivated up to the nicest +point. Our age is too diffused, too practical for us to hope to witness +again so grand a spectacle. + +From his progenitors Sydney Smith inherited one of his best gifts, great +animal spirits--the only spirits one wants in this racking life of ours; +and his were transmitted to him by his father. That father, Mr. Robert +Smith, was odd as well as clever. His oddities seem to have been coupled +with folly but that of Sydney was soberized by thought, and swayed by +intense common sense. The father had a mania for buying and altering +places: one need hardly say that he spoiled them. Having done so, he +generally sold them; and _nineteen_ various places were thus the source +of expense to him, and of injury to the pecuniary interests of his +family. + +This strange spendthrift married a Miss Olier, a daughter of a French +emigrant, from Languedoc. Every one may remember the charming attributes +given by Miss Kavanagh, in her delicious tale, 'Nathalie,' to the French +women of the South. This Miss Olier seems to have realized all one's +ideas of the handsome, sweet-tempered, high-minded Southrons of _la +belle France_. To her Sydney Smith traced his native gaiety; her beauty +did not, certainly, pass to him as well as to some of her other +descendants. When Talleyrand was living in England as an emigrant, on +intimate terms with Robert Smith, Sydney's brother, or Bobus, as he was +called by his intimates, the conversation turned one day on hereditary +beauty. Bobus spoke of his mother's personal perfections: _'Ah, mon +ami,'_ cried Talleyrand, _c'était apparemment, monsieur: volre père qui +n'était pas bien.'_ + +This Bobus was the schoolfellow at Eton of Canning and Frere; and with +John Smith and those two youths, wrote the 'Microcosm.' Sydney, on the +other hand, was placed on the Foundation, at Winchester, which was then +a stern place of instruction for a gay, spirited, hungry boy. Courtenay, +his younger brother, went with him, but ran away twice. To owe one's +education to charity was, in those days, to be half starved. Never was +there enough, even of the coarsest food, to satisfy the boys, and the +urchins, fresh from home, were left to fare as they might. 'Neglect, +abuse, and vice were,' Sydney used to say, 'the pervading evils of +Winchester; and the system of teaching, if one may so call it, savoured +of the old monastic narrowness.... I believe, when a boy at school, I +made above ten thousand Latin verses, and no man in his senses would +dream of ever making another in after-life. So much for life and time +wasted.' The verse-inciting process is, nevertheless, remorselessly +carried on during three years more at Oxford and is much oftener the +test of patient stupidity than of aspiring talent, Yet of what +stupendous importance it is in the attainment of scholarships and +prizes; and how zealous, how tenacious, are dons and 'coaches' in +holding to that which far higher classics, the Germans, regard with +contempt! + +Sydney's proficiency promoted him to be captain of the school, and he +left Winchester for New College, Oxford---one of the noblest and most +abused institutions then of that grand university. Having obtained a +scholarship, as a matter of course, and afterwards a fellowship, he +remarked that the usual bumpers of port wine at college were as much the +order of the day among the Fellows as Latin verses among the +undergraduates. We may not, however, picture to ourselves Sydney as +partaking of the festivities of the common room; with more probability +let us imagine him wandering with steady gait, even _after_ Hall--a +thing not even then or now certain in colleges--in those evergreen, +leafy, varied gardens, flanked by that old St. Peter's church on the one +side, and guarded by the high wall, once a fortification, on the other. +He was poor, and therefore safe, for poverty is a guardian angel to an +undergraduate, and work may protect even the Fellow from utter +deterioration. + +He was turned out into the world by his father with his hundred a year +from the Fellowship, and never had a farthing from the old destroyer of +country-seats afterwards. He never owed a sixpence; nay, he paid a debt +of thirty pounds, which Courtenay, who had no _iron_ in his character, +had incurred at Winchester, and had not the courage to avow. The next +step was to choose a profession. The bar would have been Sydney's +choice; but the church was the choice of his father. It is the cheapest +channel by which a man may pass into genteel poverty; 'wit and +independence do not make bishops,' as Lord Cockburn remarks. We do not, +however, regard, as he does, Sydney Smith as 'lost' by being a +churchman. He was happy, and made others happy; he was good, and made +others good. Who can say the same of a successful barrister, or of a +popular orator? His first sphere was in a curacy on Salisbury Plain; one +of his earliest clerical duties was to marry his brother Robert (a +barrister) to Miss Vernon, aunt to Lord Lansdowne. 'All I can tell you +of the marriage,' Sydney wrote to his mother, 'is that he cried, she +cried, I cried.' It was celebrated in the library at Bowood, where +Sydney so often enchanted the captivating circle afterwards by his wit. + +Nothing could be more gloomy than the young pastor's life on Salisbury +Plain: 'the first and poorest pauper of the hamlet,' as he calls a +curate, he was seated down among a few scattered cottages on this vast +flat; visited even by the butcher's cart only once a week from +Salisbury; accosted by few human beings; shunned by all who loved social +life. But the probation was not long; and after being nearly destroyed +by a thunder-storm in one of his rambles, he quitted Salisbury Plain, +after two years, for a more genial scene. + +There was an hospitable squire, a Mr. Beach, living in Smith's parish; +the village of Netherhaven, near Amesbury. Mr. Beach had a son; the +quiet Sundays at the Hall were enlivened by the curate's company at +dinner, and Mr. Beach found his guest both amusing and sensible, and +begged him to become tutor to the young squire. Smith accepted; and went +away with his pupil, intending to visit Germany. The French Revolution +was, however, at its height. Germany was impracticable, and 'we were +driven,' Sydney wrote to his mother, 'by stress of politics, into +Edinburgh.' + +This accident,--this seeming accident,--was the foundation of Sydney +Smith's opportunities; not of his success, for that his own merits +procured, but of the direction to which his efforts were applied. He +would have been eminent, wherever destiny had led him; but he was thus +made to be useful in one especial manner; 'his lines had, indeed, fallen +in pleasant places.' + +Edinburgh, in 1797, was not, it is almost needless to say, the Edinburgh +of 1860. An ancient, picturesque, high-built looking city, with its +wynds and closes, it had far more the characteristics of an old French +_ville de province_ than of a northern capital. The foundation-stone of +the new College was laid in 1789, but the building was not finished +until more than forty years afterwards. The edifice then stood in the +midst of fields and gardens. 'Often.' writes Lord Cockburn, 'did we +stand to admire the blue and yellow crocuses rising through the clean +earth in the first days of spring, in the house of Doctor Monro (the +second), whose house stood in a small field entering from Nicolson +Street, within less than a hundred yards from the college.' + +The New Town was in progress when Sydney Smith and his pupil took refuge +in 'Auld Reekie.' With the rise of every street some fresh innovation in +manners seemed also to begin. Lord Cockburn, wedded as he was to his +beloved Reekie, yet unprejudiced and candid on all points, ascribes the +change in customs to the intercourse with the English, and seems to date +it from the Union. Thus the overflowing of the old town into fresh +spaces, 'implied,' as he remarks, 'a general alteration of our habits.' + +As the dwellers in the Faubourg St. Germain regard their neighbours +across the Seine, in the Faubourg St. Honoré, with disapproving eyes, so +the sojourners in the Canongate and the Cowgate considered that the +inundation of modern population vulgarized their 'prescriptive +gentilities.' Cockburn's description of a Scottish assembly in the olden +time is most interesting. + +'For example, Saint Cecilia's Hall was the only public resort of the +musical; and besides being our most selectly fashionable place of +amusement, was the best and most beautiful concert-room I have ever +seen. And there have I myself seen most of our literary and fashionable +gentlemen, predominating with their side curls and frills, and ruffles, +and silver buckles; and our stately matrons stiffened in hoops, and +gorgeous satin; and our beauties with high-heeled shoes, powdered and +pomatumed hair, and lofty and composite head-dresses. All this was in +the Cowgate; the last retreat now-a-days of destitution and disease. The +building still stands, through raised and changed. When I last saw it, +it seemed to be partly an old-clothesman's shop and partly a brazier's.' +Balls were held in the beautiful rooms of George Square, in spite of the +'New Town piece of presumption,' that is, an attempt to force the +fashionable dancers of the reel into the George Street apartments. + +'And here,' writes Lord Cockburn, looking back to the days when he was +that 'ne'er-do-weel' Harry Cockburn, 'were the last remains of the +ball-room discipline of the preceding age. Martinet dowagers and +venerable beaux acted as masters and mistresses of ceremonies, and made +all the preliminary arrangements. No couple could dance unless each +party was provided with a ticket prescribing the precise place, in the +precise dance. If there was no ticket, the gentleman or the lady was +dealt with as an intruder, and turned out of the dance. If the ticket +had marked upon it---say for a country-dance, the figures, 3, 5; this +meant that the holder was to place himself in the 3rd dance, and 5th +from the top; and if he was anywhere else, he was set right or excluded. +And the partner's ticket must correspond. Woe on the poor girl who with +ticket 2, 7, was found opposite a youth marked 5, 9! It was flirting +without a licence, and looked very ill, and would probably be reported +by the ticket director of that dance to the mother.' + +All this had passed away; and thus the aristocracy of a few individuals +was ended; and society, freed from some of its restraints, flourished in +another and more enlightened way than formerly. + +There were still a sufficient number of peculiarities to gratify one who +had an eye to the ludicrous. Sydney Smith soon discovered that it is a +work of time to impart a humorous idea to a true Scot. 'It requires,' he +used to say, 'a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch +understanding.' 'They are so embued with metaphysics, that they even +make love metaphysically. I overheard a young lady of my acquaintance, +at a dance in Edinburgh, exclaim in a sudden pause of the music, "What +you say, my Lord, is very true of love in the _abstract_, but,--" here +the fiddlers began fiddling furiously, and the rest was lost.' He was, +however, most deeply touched by the noble attribute of that nation which +retains what is so rare--the attribute of being true friends. He did +ample justice to their kindliness of heart. 'If you meet with an +accident,' he said, 'half Edinburgh immediately flocks to your doors to +inquire after your _pure_ hand, or your _pure_ foot.' 'Their temper,' he +observed, 'stands anything but an attack on their climate; even Jeffrey +cannot shake off the illusion that myrtles flourish at Craig Crook.' The +sharp reviewer stuck to his myrtle allusions, and treated Smith's +attempts with as much contempt as if he had been a 'wild visionary, who +had never breathed his caller air,' nor suffered under the rigours of +his climate, nor spent five years in 'discussing metaphysics and +medicine in that garret end of the earth,--that knuckle end of +England--that land of Calvin, oat-cakes, and sulphur,' as Smith termed +Scotland. + +During two years he braved the winters, in which he declared +hackney-coaches were drawn by four horses on account of the snow; where +men were blown flat down on the face by the winds; and where even +'experienced Scotch fowls did not dare to cross the streets, but sidled +along, tails aloft, without venturing to encounter the gale.' He +luxuriated, nevertheless, in the true Scotch supper, than which nothing +more pleasant and more unwholesome has ever been known in Christendom. +Edinburgh is said to have been the only place where people dined twice a +day. The writer of this memoir is old enough to remember the true +Scottish _Attic_ supper before its final 'fading into wine and water,' +as Lord Cockburn describes its decline. 'Suppers,' Cockburn truly says, +'are cheaper than dinners,' and Edinburgh, at that time, was the +cheapest place in Great Britain. Port and sherry were the staple wines: +claret, duty free in Scotland until 1780, was indeed beginning to be a +luxury; it was no longer the ordinary beverage, as it was when as +Mackenzie, the author of the 'Man of Feeling,' described--it used, upon +the arrival of a cargo, to be sent through the town on a cart with a +horse before it, so that every one might have a sample, by carrying a +jug to be filled for sixpence: still even at the end of the eighteenth +century it was in frequent use. Whisky toddy and plotty (red wine mulled +with spices) came into the supper-room in ancient flagons or _stoups_ +after a lengthy repast of broiled chickens, roasted moorfowl, pickled +mussels, flummery, and numerous other good things had been discussed by +a party who ate as if they had not dined that day. 'We will eat,' Lord +Cockburn used to say after a long walk, 'a profligate supper,'--a supper +without regard to discretion, or digestion; and he usually kept his +word. + +In Edinburgh, Sydney Smith formed the intimate acquaintance of Lord +Jeffrey, and that acquaintance ripened into a friendship only closed by +death. The friendship of worthy, sensible men he looked upon as one of +the greatest pleasures in life. + +The 'old suns,' Lord Cockburn tells us, 'were setting when the band of +great thinkers and great writers who afterwards concocted the "Edinburgh +Review," were rising into celebrity.' Principal Robertson, the +historian, had departed this life in 1793, a kindly old man. With +beaming eyes underneath his frizzed and curled wig, and a trumpet tied +with a black ribbon to the button-hole of his coat, for he was deaf, +this most excellent of writers showed how he could be also the most +zealous of diners. Old Adam Ferguson, the historian of Rome, had 'set,' +also: one of the finest specimens of humanity had gone from among his +people in him. Old people, not thirty years ago, delighted to tell you +how 'Adam,' when chaplain to the Black Watch, that glorious 42nd, +refused to retire to his proper place, the rear, during an action, but +persisted in being engaged in front. He was also gone; and Dugald +Stewart filled his vacant place in the professorship of moral +philosophy. Dr. Henry, the historian, was also at rest; after a long +laborious life, and the compilation of a dull, though admirable History +of England, the design of which, in making a chapter on arts, manners, +and literature separate from the narrative, appears to have suggested to +Macaulay his inimitable disquisition on the same topics. Dr. Henry +showed to a friend a pile of books which he had gone through, merely to +satisfy himself and the world as to what description of trousers was +worn by the Saxons. His death was calm as his life. 'Come out to me +directly,' he wrote to his friend, Sir Harry Moncrieff: 'I have got +something to do this week; I have got to die.' + +It was in 1801, that Dugald Stewart began his course of lectures on +political economy. Hitherto all public favour had been on the side of +the Tories, and independence of thought was a sure way to incur +discouragement from the Bench, in the Church, and from every Government +functionary. Lectures on political economy were regarded as innovations; +but they formed a forerunner of that event which had made several +important changes in our literary and political hemisphere: the +commencement of the 'Edinburgh Review.' This undertaking was the work of +men who were separated from the mass of their brother-townsmen by their +politics; their isolation as a class binding them the more closely +together by links never broken, in a brotherhood of hope and ambition, +to which the natural spirits of Sydney Smith, of Cockburn, and of +Jeffrey, gave an irresistible charm. + +Among those who the most early in life ended a career of promise was +Francis Horner. He was the son of a linen-draper in Edinburgh; or, as +the Scotch call it, following the French, a merchant. Homer's best linen +for sheets, and table-cloths, and all the _under garments_ of +housekeeping, are still highly esteemed by the trade. + +'My desire to know Horner,' Sydney Smith states, 'arose from my being +cautioned against him by some excellent and feeble-minded people to whom +I brought letters of introduction, and who represented him as a person +of violent political opinions.' Sydney Smith interpreted this to mean +that Horner was a man who thought for himself; who loved truth better +than he loved Dundas (Lord Melville), then the tyrant of Scotland. 'It +is very curious to consider,' Sydney Smith wrote, in addressing Lady +Holland, in 1817, 'in what manner Horner gained, in so extraordinary a +degree, the affections of such a number of persons of both sexes, all +ages, parties, and ranks in society; for he was not remarkably good +tempered, nor particularly lively and agreeable; and an inflexible +politician on the unpopular side. The causes are, his high character for +probity, honour, and talents; his fine countenance; the benevolent +interest he took in the concerns of all his friends; his simple and +gentlemanlike manners; his untimely death.' 'Grave, studious, +honourable, kind, everything Horner did,' says Lord Cockburn, 'was +marked by thoughtfulness and kindness;' a beautiful character, which was +exhibited but briefly to his contemporaries, but long remembered after +his death. + +Henry Brougham was another of the Edinburgh band of young spirits. He +was educated in the High School under Luke Fraser, the tutor who trained +Walter Scott and Francis Jeffrey. Brougham used to be pointed out 'as +the fellow who had beat the master.' He had dared to differ with Fraser, +a hot pedant, on some piece of Latinity. Fraser, irritated, punished the +rebel, and thought the matter ended. But the next day 'Harry,' as they +called him, appeared, loaded with books, renewed the charge, and forced +Luke to own that he was beaten. 'It was then,' says Lord Cockburn, 'that +I first saw him.' + +After remaining two years in Edinburgh, Sydney Smith went southwards to +marry a former schoolfellow of his sister Maria's--a Miss Pybus, to whom +he had been attached and engaged at a very early period of his life. The +young lady, who was of West Indian descent, had some fortune; but her +husband's only stock, on which to begin housekeeping, consisted of six +silver tea-spoons, worn away with use. One day he rushed into the room +and threw these attenuated articles into her lap--'There, Kate, I give +you all my fortune, you lucky girl!' + +With the small _dôt_, and the thin silver-spoons, the young couple set +up housekeeping in the 'garret end of the earth.' Their first difficulty +was to know how money could be obtained to begin with, for Mrs. Smith's +small fortune was settled on herself by her husband's wish. Two rows of +pearls had been given her by her thoughtful mother. These she converted +into money, and obtained for them £500. Several years afterwards, when +visiting the shop at which she sold them, with Miss Vernon and Miss Fox, +Mrs. Smith saw her pearls, every one of which she knew. She asked what +was the price. '£1,500,' was the reply. + +The sum, however, was all important to the thrifty couple. It distanced +the nightmare of the poor and honest,--debt. £750 was presented by Mr. +Beach, in gratitude for the care of his son, to Smith. It was invested +in the funds, and formed the nucleus of future savings,--'_Ce n'est que +le premier pas qui coûte_' is a trite saying. '_C'est le premier pas qui +gagne_, might be applied to this and similar cases. A little +daughter--Lady Holland, the wife of the celebrated physician, Sir Henry +Holland--was sent to bless the sensible pair. Sydney had wished that she +might be born with one eye, so that he might never lose her; +nevertheless, though she happened to be born with two, he bore her +secretly from the nursery, a few hours after her birth, to show her in +triumph to the future Edinburgh Reviewers. + +The birth of the 'Edinburgh Review' quickly followed that of the young +lady. Jeffrey,--then an almost starving barrister, living in the eighth +or ninth flat of a house in Buccleuch Place,--Brougham, and Sydney Smith +were the triumvirate who propounded the scheme, Smith being the first +mover. He proposed a motto: 'Tenui Musam meditanum avenir:' We cultivate +literature on a little oatmeal; but this being too near the truth, they +took their motto from Publius Syrus; 'of whom,' said Smith, 'none of us +had, I am sure, read a single line.' To this undertaking Sydney Smith +devoted his talents for more than twenty-eight years. + +Meantime, during the brief remainder of his stay in Edinburgh, his +circumstances improved. He had done that which most of the clergy are +obliged to do--taken a pupil. He had now another, the son of Mr. Gordon, +of Ellon; for each of these young men he received £400 a year. He became +to them a father and a friend; he entered into all their amusements. One +of them saying that he could not find conversation at the balls for his +partners, 'Never mind,' cried Sydney Smith, 'I'll fit you up in five +minutes.' Accordingly he wrote down conversations for them amid bursts +of laughter. + +Thus happily did years, which many persons would have termed a season of +adversity, pass away. The chance which brought him to Edinburgh +introduced him to a state of society never likely to be seen again in +Scotland. Lord Cockburn's 'Memorials' afford an insight into manners, +not only as regarded suppers, but on the still momentous point, of +dinners. Three o'clock was the fashionable hour, so late as the +commencement of the present century. That hour, 'not without groans and +predictions,' became four--and four was long and conscientiously adhered +to. 'Inch by inch,' people yielded, and five continued to be the +standard polite hour from 1806 to 1820. 'Six has at length prevailed.' + +The most punctilious ceremony existed. When dinner was announced, a file +of ladies went first in strict order of precedence. 'Mrs. Colonel Such +an One;' 'Mrs. Doctor Such an One,' and so on. Toasts were _de rigueur_: +no glass of wine was to be taken by a guest without comprehending a +lady, or a covey of ladies. 'I was present,' says Lord Cockburn, 'when +the late Duke of Buccleuch took a glass of sherry by himself at the +table of Charles Hope, then Lord Advocate, and this was noticed as a +piece of ducal contempt.' Toasts, and when the ladies had retired, +_rounds_ of toasts, were drunk. 'The prandial nuisance,' Lord Cockburn +wrote, 'was horrible. But it was nothing to what followed.' + +At these repasts, though less at these than at boisterous suppers, a +frequent visitor at the same table with Sydney Smith was the illustrious +Sir James Mackintosh, a man to whose deep-thinking mind the world is +every day rendering justice. The son of a brave officer, Mackintosh was +born on the banks of Loch Ness: his mother, a Miss Fraser, was aunt to +Mrs. Fraser Tytler, wife of Lord Woodhouselee, one of the judges of the +Court of Session and mother of the late historian of that honoured name. + +Mackintosh had been studying at Aberdeen, in the same classes with +Robert Hall, whose conversation, he avowed, had a great influence over +his mind. He arrived in Edinburgh about 1784, uncertain to what +profession to belong; somewhat anxious to be a bookseller, in order to +revel in 'the paradise of books;' he turned his attention, however, to +medicine, and became a Brunonian, that is, a disciple of John Brown, the +founder of a theory which he followed out to the extent in practice. The +main feature of the now defunct system, which set scientific Europe in a +blaze, seems to have been a mad indulgence of the passions; and an +unbridled use of intoxicating liquors. Brown fell a victim to his vices. +Years after he had been laid in his grave, his daughter, Euphemia, being +in great indigence, received real kindness from Sir James and Lady +Mackintosh, the former of whom used to delight in telling the story of +her father's saying to her: 'Effy, bring me the mooderate stimulus of a +hoonderd draps o' laudanum in a glass o' brandy.' + +Mackintosh had not quitted Edinburgh when Sydney Smith reached it. Smith +became a member of the famous Speculative Society. Their acquaintance +was renewed years afterwards in London. Who can ever forget the small, +quiet dinners given by Mackintosh when living out of Parliament, and out +of office in Cadogan Place? Simple but genial were those repasts, +forming a strong contrast to the Edinburgh dinners of yore. He had then +long given up both the theory and practice of the Brunonians, and took +nothing but light French and German wines, and these in moderation. His +tall, somewhat high-shouldered, massive form; his calm brow, mild, +thoughtful; his dignity of manner; his gentleness to all; his vast +knowledge; his wonderful appreciation of excellence; his discrimination +of faults--all combined to form one of the finest specimens ever seen, +even in that illustrious period, of a philosopher and historian. + +Jeffrey and Cockburn were contrasts to one whom they honoured. Jeffrey, +'the greatest of British critics,' was eight years younger than +Mackintosh, having been born in 1773. He was the son of one of the +depute clerks to the Supreme Court, not an elevated position, though one +of great respectability. When Mackintosh and Sydney Smith first knew him +in Edinburgh, he was enduring, with all the impatience of his sensitive +nature, what he called 'a slow, obscure, philosophical starvation' at +the Scotch bar. + +'There are moments,' he wrote, 'when I think I could sell myself to the +ministers or to the devil, in order to get above these necessities.' +Like all men so situated, his depression came in fits. Short, spare, +with regular, yet _not_ aristocratic features;--speaking, brilliant, yet +_not_ pleasing eyes;--a voice consistent with that _mignon_ form;--a +somewhat precise and anxious manner, there was never in Jeffrey that +charm, that _abandon_, which rendered his valued friend, Henry Cockburn, +the most delightful, the most beloved of men, the very idol of his +native city. + +The noble head of Cockburn, bald, almost in youth, with its pliant, +refined features, and its fresh tint upon a cheek always clear, +generally high in colour, was a strong contrast to the rigid _petitesse_ +of Jeffrey's physiognomy; much more so to the large proportions of +Mackintosh; or to the ponderous, plain, and, later in life, swarthy +countenance of Sydney Smith. Lord Webb Seymour, the brother of the late +Duke of Somerset, gentle, modest, intelligent,--Thomas Thomson, the +antiquary,--and Charles and George Bell, the surgeon and the advocate,-- +Murray, afterwards Lord Murray, the generous pleader, who gave up to its +rightful heirs an estate left him by a client,--and Brougham--formed the +staple of that set now long since extinct. + +It was partially broken up by Sydney Smith's coming, in 1803, to London. +He there took a house in Doughty Street, being partial to legal society, +which was chiefly to be found in that neighbourhood. + +Here Sir Samuel Romilly, Mackintosh, Scarlett (Lord Abinger), the +eccentric and unhappy Mr. Ward, afterwards Lord Dudley, 'Conversation' +Sharp, Rogers, and Luttrell, formed the circle in which Sidney +delighted. He was still very poor, and obliged to sell the rest of his +wife's jewels; but his brother Robert allowed him £100 a year, and lent +him, when he subsequently removed into Yorkshire, £500. + +He had now a life of struggling, but those struggles were the lot of his +early friends also; Mackintosh talked of going to India as a lecturer; +Smith recommended Jeffrey to do the same. Happily, both had the courage +and the sense to await for better times at home; yet Smith's opinion of +Mackintosh was, that 'he never saw so theoretical a head which contained +so much practical understanding;' and to Jeffrey he wrote: + +'You want nothing to be a great lawyer, and nothing to be a great +speaker, but a deeper voice--slower and more simple utterance--more +humility of face and neck--and a greater contempt for _esprit_ than men +_who have so much_ in general attain to.' + +The great event of Sydney Smith's first residence in London was his +introduction at Holland House; in that 'gilded room which furnished,' as +he said, 'the best and most agreeable society in the world,' his +happiest hours were passed. John Allen, whom Smith had introduced to +Lord Holland was the peer's librarian and friend. Mackintosh, who Sydney +Smith thought only wanted a few bad qualities to get on in the world, +Rogers, Luttrell, Sheridan, Byron, were among the 'suns' that shone, +where Addison had suffered and studied. + +Between Lord Holland and Sydney Smith the most cordial friendship +existed; and the eccentric and fascinating Lady Holland was his constant +correspondent. Of this able woman, it was said by Talleyrand: '_Elle est +toute assertion; mais quand on demande la preuve c'est là son sécret_' +Of Lord Holland, the keen diplomatist observed: '_Cest la bienveillance +même, mais la bienveillance la plus perturbatrice, qu'on ait jamais +vue._' + +Lord Holland did not commit the error ascribed by Rogers, in his +Recollections, to Marlay, Bishop of Waterford, who when poor, with an +income of only £400 a year, used to give the best dinners possible; but, +when made a bishop, enlarged his table, and lost his fame-had no more +good company--there was an end of his enjoyment: he had lords and ladies +to his table--foolish people--foolish men--and foolish women--and there +was an end of him and us. 'Lord Holland selected his lords and ladies, +not for their rank, but for their peculiar merits or acquirements.' Then +even Lady Holland's oddities were amusing. When she wanted to get rid of +a fop, she used to say: 'I beg your pardon, but I wish you would sit a +little farther off; there is something on your handkerchief which I +don't quite like.' Or when a poor man happened to stand, after the +fashion of the lords of creation, with his back close to the +chimney-piece, she would cry out, 'Have the goodness, sir, to stir the +fire.' + +Lord Holland never asked any one to dinner, ('not even _me_,' says +Rogers, 'whom he had known so long,') without asking Lady Holland. One +day, shortly before his lordship's death, Rogers was coming out from +Holland House when he met him. 'Well, do you return to dinner?' I +answered. 'No, I have not been invited.' The precaution, in fact, was +necessary, for Lord Holland was so good-natured and hospitable that he +would have had a crowd daily at his table had he been left to himself. + +The death of Lord Holland completely broke up the unrivalled dinners, +and the subsequent evenings in the 'gilded chamber.' Lady Holland, to +whom Holland House was left for her life-time, declined to live there. +With Holland House, the mingling of aristocracy with talent; the +blending ranks by force of intellect; the assembling not only of all the +celebrity that Europe could boast, but of all that could enhance private +enjoyment, had ceased. London, the most intelligent of capitals, +possesses not one single great house in which pomp and wealth are made +subsidiary to the true luxury of intellectual conversation. + +On the morning of the day when Lord Holland's last illness began, these +lines were written by him, and found after his death on his +dressing-table:-- + + 'Nephew of Fox, and Friend of Grey, + Sufficient for my fame, + If those who know me best shall say + I tarnished neither name.' + +Of him his best friend, Sydney Smith, left a short but discriminative +character. 'There was never (amongst other things he says) a better +heart, or one more purified from all the bad passions--more abounding in +charity and compassion--or which seemed to be so created as a refuge to +the helpless and oppressed.' + +Meantime Sydney Smith's circumstances were still limited; £50 a year as +evening preacher to the Foundling Hospital was esteemed as a great help +by him. The writer of this memoir remembers an amusing anecdote related +of him at the table of an eminent literary character by a member of Lord +Woodhouselee's family, who had been desirous to obtain for Sydney the +patronage of the godly. To this end she persuaded Robert Grant and +Charles Grant (afterwards Lord Glenelg) to go to the Foundling to hear +him, she hoped to advantage; to her consternation he broke forth into so +familiar a strain, couched in terms so bordering on the jocose,--though +no one had deeper religious convictions than he had,--that the two +saintly brothers listened in disgust. They forgot how South let loose +the powers of his wit and sarcasm; and how the lofty-minded Jeremy +Taylor applied the force of humour to lighten the prolixity of argument. +Sydney Smith became, nevertheless, a most popular preacher; but the man +who prevents people from sleeping once a week in their pews is sure to +be criticised. + +Let us turn to him, however, as a member of society. His circle of +acquaintance was enlarged, not only by his visits to Holland House, but +by his lectures on moral philosophy at the Royal Institution. Sir Robert +Peel, not the most impressionable of men, but one whose cold shake of +the hand is said--as Sydney Smith said of Sir James Mackintosh--'to have +come under the genus _Mortmain_' was a very young man at the time when +Albemarle Street was crowded with carriages from one end of the street +to the other, in consequence of Sydney Smith's lectures; yet he declared +that he had never forgotten the effect given to the speech of Logan, the +Indian chief, by Sydney's voice and manner. + +His lectures produced a sum sufficient for Sydney to furnish a house in +Orchard Street. Doughty Street--raised to celebrity as having been the +residence, not only of Sydney Smith, but of Charles Dickens--was too far +for the _habitué_ of Holland House and the orator of Albemarle Street +long to sojourn there. In Orchard Street, Sydney enjoyed that domestic +comfort which he called 'the grammar of life;' delightful suppers, to +about twenty or thirty persons, who came and went as they pleased. A +great part of the same amusing and gifted set used to meet once a week +also at Sir James Mackintosh's, at a supper, which, though not exactly +Cowper's 'radish and an egg,' was simple, but plentiful--yet most +eagerly sought after. 'There are a few living,' writes Sydney Smith's +daughter, 'who can look back to them, and I have always found them do so +with a sigh of regret.' + +One night, a country cousin of Sydney Smith's was present at a supper. +'Now, Sydney,' whispered the simple girl, 'I know all these are very +remarkable people; do tell me who they are.'--'Oh, yes; there's +Hannibal,' pointing to a grave, dry, stern man, Mr. Whishaw; 'he lost +his leg in the Carthagenian war: there's Socrates,' pointing to +Luttrell: 'that,' he added, turning to Horner, 'is Solon.' + +Another evening, Mackintosh brought a raw Scotch cousin--an ensign in a +Highland regiment--with him. The young man's head could carry no idea of +glory except in regimentals. Suddenly, nudging Sir James, he whispered, +'Is that the great Sir Sydney Smith?'--'Yes, yes,' answered Sir James; +and instantly telling Sydney who he was supposed to be, the grave +evening preacher at the Foundling immediately assumed the character +ascribed to him, and acted the hero of Acre to perfection, fighting his +battles over again--even charging the Turks--whilst the young Scot was +so enchanted by the great Sir Sydney's condescension, that he wanted to +fetch the pipers of his regiment, and pipe to the great Sir Sydney, who +had never enjoyed the agonizing strains of the bagpipe. Upon this the +party broke up, and Sir James carried the Highlander off, lest he should +find out his mistake, and cut his throat from shame and vexation. One +may readily conceive Sydney Smith's enjoying this joke, for his spirits +were those of a boy: his gaiety was irresistible; his ringing laugh, +infectious; but it is difficult for those who knew Mackintosh in his +later years--the quiet, almost pensive invalid to realize in that +remembrance any trace of the Mackintosh of Doughty Street and Orchard +Street days. + +One day Sydney Smith came home with two hackney coaches full of +pictures, which he had picked up at an auction. His daughter thus tells +the story: 'Another day he came home with two hackney-coach loads of +pictures, which he had met with at an auction, having found it +impossible to resist so many yards of brown-looking figures and faded +landscapes going for "absolutely nothing, unheard of sacrifices." "Kate" +hardly knew whether to laugh or cry when she saw these horribly +dingy-looking objects enter her pretty little drawing-room, and looked +at him as if she thought him half mad; and half mad he was, but with +delight at his purchase. He kept walking up and down the room, waving +his arms, putting them in fresh lights, declaring they were exquisite +specimens of art, and if not by the very best masters, merited to be so. +He invited his friends, and displayed his pictures; discovered fresh +beauties for each new comer; and for three or four days, under the magic +influence of his wit and imagination, these gloomy old pictures were a +perpetual source of amusement and fun.' + +At last, finding that he was considered no authority for the fine arts, +off went the pictures to another auction, but all re-christened by +himself, with unheard-of names. 'One, I remember,' says Lady Holland, +'was a beautiful landscape, by Nicholas de Falda, a pupil of Valdezzio, +the only painting by that eminent artist. The pictures sold, I believe, +for rather less than he gave for them under their original names, which +were probably as real as their assumed ones.' + +Sydney Smith had long been styled by his friends the 'Bishop of +Mickleham,' in allusion to his visits to, and influence in, the house of +his friend, Richard Sharp, who had a cottage at that place. A piece of +real preferment was now his. This was the living of Foston-le-Clay, in +Yorkshire, given him by Lord Erskine, then Chancellor. Lady Holland +never rested till she had prevailed on Erskine to give Sydney Smith a +living. Smith, as Rogers relates, went to thank his lordship. 'Oh,' said +Erskine, 'don't thank me, Mr. Smith; I gave you the living because Lady +Holland insisted on my doing so; and if she had desired me to give it to +the devil, _he_ must have had it.' + +Notwithstanding the prediction of the saints, Sydney Smith proved an +excellent parish priest. Even his most admiring friends did not expect +this result. The general impression was, that he was infinitely better +fitted for the bar than for the church. 'Ah! Mr. Smith,' Lord Stowell +used to say to him, 'you would be in a far better situation, and a far +richer man, had you belonged to us.' + +One _jeu d'esprit_ more, and Smith hastened to take possession of his +living, and to enter upon duties of which no one better knew the mighty +importance than he did. + +Among the Mackintosh set was Richard Sharp, to whom we have already +referred, termed, from his great knowledge and ready memory, +'Conversation Sharp.' Many people may think that this did not imply an +agreeable man, and they were, perhaps, right. Sharp was a plain, +ungainly man. One evening, a literary lady, now living, being at Sir +James Mackintosh's, in company with Sharp, Sismondi, and the late Lord +Denman, then a man of middle age. Sir James was not only particularly +partial to Denman, but admired him personally. 'Do you not think Denman +handsome?' he inquired of the lady after the guests were gone. 'No? Then +you must think Mr. Sharp handsome,' he rejoined; meaning that a taste so +perverted as not to admire Denman must be smitten with Sharp. Sharp is +said to have studied all the morning before he went out to dinner, to +get up his wit and anecdote, as an actor does his part. Sydney Smith +having one day received an invitation from him to dine at Fishmongers' +Hall, sent the following reply:-- + + 'Much do I love + The monsters of the deep to eat; + To see the rosy salmon lying, + By smelts encircled, born for frying; + And from the china boat to pour + On flaky cod the flavoured shower. + Thee above all, I much regard, + Flatter than Longman's flattest bard, + Much-honour'd turbot! sore I grieve + Thee and thy dainty friends to leave. + Far from ye all, in snuggest corner, + I go to dine with little Horner; + He who with philosophic eye + Sat brooding o'er his Christmas pie; + Then firm resolved, with either thumb, + Tore forth the crust-enveloped plum; + And mad with youthful dreams of deathless fame, + Proclaimed the deathless glories of his name.' + +One word before we enter on the subject of Sydney Smith's ministry. In +this biography of a great Wit, we touch but lightly upon the graver +features of his character, yet they cannot wholly be passed over. Stanch +in his devotion to the Church of England, he was liberal to others. The +world in the present day is afraid of liberality. Let it not be +forgotten that it has been the fanatic and the intolerant, not the mild +and practical, among us who have gone from the Protestant to the Romish +faith. Sydney Smith, in common with other great men, had no predilection +for dealing damnation round the land. How noble, how true, are +Mackintosh's reflections on religious sects! 'It is impossible, I think, +to look into the interior of any religious sect, without thinking better +of it. I ought, indeed, to confine myself to those of Christian Europe, +but with that limitation it seems to me the remark is true; whether I +look at the Jansenists of Port Royal, or the Quakers in Clarkson, or the +Methodists in these journals. All these sects, which appear dangerous or +ridiculous at a distance, assume a much more amicable character on +nearer inspection. They all inculcate pure virtue, and practise mutual +kindness; and they exert great force of reason in rescuing their +doctrines from the absurd or pernicious consequences which naturally +flow from them. Much of this arises from the general nature of religious +principle--much also from the genius of the Gospel.' + +Nothing could present a greater contrast with the comforts of Orchard +Street than the place on which Sydney Smith's 'lines' had now 'fallen.' +Owing to the non-residence of the clergy, one-third of the parsonage +houses in England had fallen into decay, but that of Foston-le-Clay was +pre-eminently wretched. A hovel represented what was still called the +parsonage-house: it stood on a glebe of three hundred acres of the +stiffest clay in Yorkshire: a brick-floored kitchen, with a room above +it, both in a ruinous condition was the residence which, for a hundred +and fifty years, had never been inhabited by an incumbent. It will not +be a matter of surprise that for some time, until 1808, Sydney Smith, +with the permission of the Archbishop of York, continued to reside in +London, after having appointed a curate at Foston-le-Clay. + +The first visit to his living was by no means promising. Picture to +yourself, my reader, Sydney Smith in a carriage, in his superfine black +coat, driving into the remote village, and parleying with the old parish +clerk, who after some conversation, observed, emphatically, shaking his +stick on the ground, 'Master Smith, it stroikes me that people as comes +froe London is such _fools_.--'I see _you_ are no fool,' was the prompt +answer; and the parson and the clerk parted mutually satisfied. + +The profits, arising from the sale of two volumes of sermons, carried +Sydney Smith, his family, and his furniture, to Foston-le-Clay in the +summer of 1809, and he took up his abode in a pleasant house about two +miles from York, at Heslington. + +[Illustration: SYDNEY SMITH'S WITTY ANSWER TO THE OLD PARISH CLERK.] + +Let us now, for a time, forget the wit, the editor of the 'Edinburgh +Review,' the diner out, the evening preacher at the Foundling, and +glance at the peaceful and useful life of a country clergyman. His +spirits, his wit, all his social qualities, never deserted Sydney Smith, +even in the retreat to which he was destined. Let us see him driving in +his second-hand carriage, his horse, 'Peter the Cruel,' with Mrs. Smith +by his side, summer and winter, from Heslington to Foston-le-Clay. Mrs. +Smith, at first, trembled at the inexperience of her charioteer; but +'she soon,' said Sydney, 'raised my wages, and considered me an +excellent Jehu.' 'Mr. Brown,' said Sydney to one of the tradesmen of +York, through the streets of which he found it difficult to drive, 'your +streets are the narrowest, in Europe,'--'Narrow, sir? there's plenty of +room for two carriages to pass each other, and an inch and a half to +spare!' + +Let us see him in his busy peaceful life, digging an hour or two every +day in his garden to avoid sudden death, by preventing corpulency; then +galloping through a book, and when his family laughed at him for so soon +dismissing a quarto, saying, 'Cross-examine me, then,' and going well +through the ordeal. Hear him, after finishing his morning's writing, +saying to his wife, 'There, Kate, it's done: do look over it; put the +dots to the i's, and cross the t's:' and off he went to his walk, +surrounded by his children, who were his companions and confidants. See +him in the lane, talking to an old woman whom he had taken into his gig +as she was returning from market, and picking up all sorts of knowledge +from her; or administering medicine to the poor, or to his horses and +animals, sometimes committing mistakes next to fatal. One day he +declared he found all his pigs intoxicated, grunting 'God save the King' +about the sty. He nearly poisoned his red cow by an over-dose of +castor-oil; and Peter the Cruel, so called because the groom once said +he had a cruel face, took two boxes of opium pills (boxes and all) in +his mash, without ill consequences. + +See him, too, rushing out after dinner--for he had a horror of long +sittings after that meal--to look at his 'scratcher.' + +He used to say, Lady Holland (his daughter) relates, 'I am all for cheap +luxuries, even for animals; now all animals have a passion for +scratching their backbones; they break down your gates and palings to +effect this. Look! there is my universal scratcher, a sharp-edged pole, +resting on a high and a low post, adapted to every height, from a horse +to a lamb. Even the Edinburgh Reviewer can take his turn: you have no +idea how popular it is; I have not had a gate broken since I put it up; +I have it in all my fields.' + +Then his experiments were numerous. Mutton fat was to be burned instead +of candles; and working-people were brought in and fed with broth, or +with rice, or with porridge, to see which was the most satisfying diet. +Economy was made amusing, benevolence almost absurd, but the humorous +man, the kind man, shone forth in all things. He was one of the first, +if not the first, who introduced allotment-gardens for the poor: he was +one who could truly say at the last, when he had lived sixty-six years, +'I have done but very little harm in the world, and I have brought up my +family.' + +We have taken a glimpse--and a glimpse merely--of the 'wise Wit' in +London, among congenial society, where every intellectual power was +daily called forth in combative force. See him now in the provincial +circles of the remote county of York. 'Did you ever,' he once asked, +'dine out in the country? What misery do human beings inflict on each +other under the name of pleasure!' Then he describes driving in a +broiling sun through a dusty road, to eat a haunch of venison at the +house of a neighbouring parson. Assembled in a small house, 'redolent of +frying,' talked of roads, weather, and turnips; began, that done, to be +hungry. A stripling, caught up for the occasion, calls the master of the +house out of the room, and announces that the cook has mistaken the soup +for dirty water, and has thrown it away. No help for it--agreed; they +must do without it; perhaps as well they should. Dinner announced; they +enter the dining-room: heavens! what a gale! the venison is high! + +Various other adverse incidents occur, and the party return home, +grateful to the post-boys for not being drunk, and thankful to +Providence for not being thrown into a wet ditch. + +In addition to these troubles and risks, there was an enemy at hand to +apprehend--prejudice. The Squire of Heslington--'the last of the +Squires'--regarded Mr. Smith as a Jacobin; and his lady, 'who looked as +if she had walked straight out of the Ark, or had been the wife of +Enoch,' used to turn aside as he passed. When, however, the squire found +'the peace of the village undisturbed, harvests as usual, his dogs +uninjured, he first bowed, then called, and ended by a pitch of +confidence;' actually discovered that Sydney Smith had made a joke; +nearly went into convulsions of laughter, and finished by inviting the +'dangerous fellow,' as he had once thought him, to see his dogs. + +In 1813 Sydney Smith removed, as he thought it his duty to do, to +Foston-le-Clay, and, 'not knowing a turnip from a carrot,' began to farm +three hundred acres, and not having any money, to build a +parsonage-house. + +It was a model parsonage, he thought, the plan being formed by himself +and 'Kate.' Being advised by his neighbours to purchase oxen, he bought +(and christened) four oxen, 'Tug and Lug,' 'Crawl and Haul.' But Tug and +Lug took to fainting, Haul and Crawl to lie down in the mud, so he was +compelled to sell them, and to purchase a team of horses. + +The house plunged him into debt for twenty years; and a man-servant +being too expensive, the 'wise Wit' caught up a country girl, made like +a mile-stone, and christened her 'Bunch,' and Bunch became the best +butler in the county. + +He next set up a carriage, which he christened the 'Immortal,' for it +grew, from being only an ancient green chariot, supposed to have been +the earliest invention of the kind, to be known by all the neighbours; +the village dogs barked at it, the village boys cheered it, and 'we had +no false shame.' + +One could linger over the annals of Sydney Smith's useful, happy life at +Foston-le-Clay, visited there indeed by Mackintosh, and each day +achieving a higher and higher reputation in literature. We see him as a +magistrate, 'no friend to game,' as a country squire in Suffolk solemnly +said of a neighbour, but a friend to man; with a pitying heart, that +forbade him to commit young delinquents to gaol, though he would lecture +them severely, and call out, in bad cases, 'John, bring me out my +_private gallows_,' which brought the poor boys on their knees. We +behold him making visits, and even tours, in the 'Immortal,' and +receiving Lord and Lady Carlisle in their coach and four, which had +stuck in the middle of a ploughed field, there being scarcely any road, +only a lane up to the house. Behold him receiving his poor friend, +Francis Homer, who came to take his last leave of him, and died at Pisa, +in 1817, after earning honours, paid, as Sir James Mackintosh remarked, +to intrinsic claims alone--'a man of obscure birth, who never filled an +office.' See Sydney Smith, in 1816, from the failure of the harvest (he +who was in London 'a walking patty'), sitting down with his family to +repast without bread, thin, unleavened cakes being the substitute. See +his cheerfulness, his submission to many privations: picture him to +ourselves trying to ride, but falling off incessantly; but obliged to +leave off riding 'for the good of his family, and the peace of his +parish' (he had christened his horse, 'Calamity'). See him suddenly +prostrate from that steed in the midst of the streets of York, 'to the +great joy of Dissenters,' he declares: another time flung as if he had +been a shuttlecock, into a neighbouring parish, very glad that it was +not a neighbouring planet, for somehow or other his horse and he had a +'trick of parting company.' 'I used,' he wrote, 'to think a fall from a +horse dangerous, but much experience has convinced me to the contrary. I +have had six falls in two years, and just behaved like the Three per +Cents., when they fell--I got up again, and am not a bit the worse for +it, any more than the stock in question.' + +This country life was varied by many visits. In 1820 he went to visit +Lord Grey, then to Edinburgh, to Jeffrey travelling by the coach, a +gentleman, with whom he had been talking, said, 'There is a very clever +fellow lives near here, Sydney Smith, I believe; a devilish odd +fellow.'--'He may be an odd fellow,' cried Sydney, taking off his hat, +'but here he is, odd as he is, at your service.' + +Sydney Smith found great changes in Edinburgh--changes, however, in many +respects for the better. The society of Edinburgh was then in its +greatest perfection. 'Its brilliancy, Lord Cockburn remarks, 'was owing +to a variety of peculiar circumstances, which only operated during this +period. The principal of these were the survivance of several of the +eminent men of the preceding age, and of curious old habits, which the +modern flood had not yet obliterated; the rise of a powerful community +of young men of ability; the exclusion of the British from the +Continent, which made this place, both for education and for residence, +a favourite resort of strangers; the war, which maintained a constant +excitement of military preparation and of military idleness: the blaze +of that popular literature which made this the second city in the empire +for learning and science; and the extent and the ease with which +literature and society embellished each other, without rivalry, and +without pedantry. + +Among the 'best young' as his lordship styles them, were Lord Webb +Seymour and Francis Horner; whilst those of the 'interesting old' most +noted were Elizabeth Hamilton and Mrs. Grant of Laggan, who had +'unfolded herself,' to borrow Lord Cockburn's words, in the 'Letters +from the Mountains,' 'an interesting treasury of good solitary +thoughts.' Of these two ladies, Lord Cockburn says, 'They were excellent +women, and not _too_ blue. Their sense covered the colour.' It was to +Mrs. Hamilton that Jeffrey said, 'That there was no objection to the +blue stocking, provided the petticoat came low enough to cover it.' +Neither of these ladies possessed personal attractions. Mrs. Hamilton +had the plain face proper to literary women; Mrs. Grant was a tall dark +woman, with much dignity of manner: in spite of her life of misfortune, +she had a great flow of spirits. Beautifully, indeed, does Lord Cockburn +render justice to her character: 'She was always under the influence of +an affectionate and delightful enthusiasm, which, unquenched by time and +sorrow, survived the wreck of many domestic attachments, and shed a glow +over the close of a very protracted life.' + +Both she and Mrs. Hamilton succeeded in drawing to their +_conversazioni_, in small rooms of unpretending style, men of the +highest order, as well as attractive women of intelligence. Society in +Edinburgh took the form of Parisian _soirées_, and although much divided +into parties, was sufficiently general to be varied. It is amusing to +find that Mrs. Grant was at one time one of the supposed 'Authors of +"Waverley,"' until the disclosure of the mystery silenced reports. It +was the popularity of 'Marmion,' that made Scott, as he himself +confesses, nearly lose his footing. Mrs. Grant's observation on him, +after meeting the Great Unknown at some brilliant party, has been +allowed, even by the sarcastic Lockhart, to be 'witty enough.' 'Mr. +Scott always seems to me to be like a glass, through which the rays of +admiration pass without sensibly affecting it; but the bit of paper[13] +that lies beside it will presently be in a blaze--and no wonder.' + +[13: Alluding to Lady Scott.] + +Scott endeavoured to secure Mrs. Grant a pension; merited as he +observes, by her as an authoress, 'but much more,' in his opinion, 'by +the firmness and elasticity of mind with which she had borne a great +succession of domestic calamities.' 'Unhappily,' he adds, 'there was +only about £100 open on the Pension List, and this the minister assigned +in equal portions to Mrs. G---- and a distressed lady, grand-daughter of +a forfeited Scottish nobleman. Mrs. G---- , proud as a Highlandwoman, +vain as a poetess, and absurd as a blue-stocking, has taken this +partition in _malam partem_, and written to Lord Melville about her +merits, and that her friends do not consider her claims as being fairly +canvassed, with something like a demand that her petition be submitted +to the king. This is not the way to make her _plack_ a _bawbee_, and +Lord M---- , a little _miffed_ in turn, sends the whole correspondence +to me to know whether Mrs. G---- will accept the £50 or not + +Now, hating to deal with ladies when they are in an unreasonable humour, +I have got the good-humoured Man of Feeling to find out the lady's mind, +and I take on myself the task of making her peace with Lord M---- . +After all, the poor lady is greatly to be pitied:--her sole remaining +daughter deep and far gone in a decline.' + +The Man of Feeling proved successful, and reported soon afterwards that +the 'dirty pudding' was eaten by the almost destitute authoress. Scott's +tone in the letters which refer to this subject does little credit to +his good taste and delicacy of feeling, which were really attributable +to his character. + +Very few notices occur of any intercourse between Scott and Sydney Smith +in Lockhart's 'Life,' It was not, indeed, until 1827 that Scott could be +sufficiently cooled down from the ferment of politics which had been +going on to meet Jeffrey and Cockburn. When he dined, however, with +Murray, then Lord Advocate, and met Jeffrey, Cockburn, the late Lord +Rutherford, then Mr. Rutherford, and others of 'that file,' he +pronounced the party to be 'very pleasant, capital good cheer, and +excellent wine, much laugh and fun. I do not know,' he writes, 'how it +is, but when I am out with a party of my Opposition friends, the day is +often merrier than when with our own set. It is because they are +cleverer? Jeffery and Harry Cockburn are, to be sure, very extraordinary +men, yet it is not owing to that entirely. I believe both parties meet +with the feeling of something like novelty. We have not worn out our +jests in daily contact. There is also a disposition on such occasions to +be courteous, and of course to be pleased.' + +On his side, Cockburn did ample justice to the 'genius who,' to use his +own words, 'has immortalized Edinburgh and delighted the 'world.' Mrs. +Scott could not, however, recover the smarting inflicted by the +critiques of Jeffrey on her husband's works. Her--'And I hope, Mr. +Jeffrey, Mr. Constable paid you well for your Article' (Jeffrey dining +with her that day), had a depth of simple satire in it that ever, an +Edinburgh Reviewer could hardly exceed. It was, one must add, +impertinent and in bad taste. 'You are very good at cutting up.' + +Sydney Smith found Jeffrey and Cockburn rising barristers. Horner, on +leaving Edinburgh, had left to Jeffrey his bar wig, and the bequest had +been lucky. Jeffrey was settled at Craigcrook, a lovely English-looking +spot, with wooded slopes and green glades, near Edinburgh; and Cockburn +had, since 1811, set up his rural gods at Bonally, near Colinton, just +under the Pentland Hills, and he wrote, 'Unless some avenging angel +shall expel me, I shall never leave that paradise.' And a paradise it +was. Beneath those rough, bare hills, broken here and there by a +trickling burn, like a silver thread on the brown sward, stands a Norman +tower, the addition, by Playfair's skill, to what was once a scarcely +habitable farmhouse. That tower contained Lord Cockburn's fine library, +also his ordinary sitting-rooms. There he read and wrote, and received +such society as will never meet again, there or elsewhere--amongst them +Sydney Smith. Beneath--around the tower--stretches a delicious garden, +composed of terraces, and laurel-hedged walks, and beds of flowers, that +bloomed freely in that sheltered spot. A bowling-green, shaded by one of +the few trees near the house, a sycamore, was the care of many an hour; +for to make the turf velvety, the sods were fetched from the hills +above--from 'yon hills,' as Lord Cockburn would have called them. And +this was for many years one of the rallying points of the best Scottish +society, and, as each autumn came round, of what the host called his +Carnival. Friends were summoned from the north and the south--'death no +apology.' High jinks within doors, excursions without. Every Edinburgh +man reveres the spot, hallowed by the remembrance of Lord Cockburn. +'Every thing except the two burns, he wrote, 'the few old trees, and the +mountains, are my own work. Human nature is incapable of enjoying more +happiness than has been my lot here. I have been too happy, and often +tremble in the anticipation that the cloud must come at last.' And come +it did; but found him not unprepared, although the burden that he had to +bear in after-life was heavy. In their enlarged and philosophic minds, +in their rapid transition from sense to nonsense, there was an affinity +in the characters of Sydney Smith and of Lord Cockburn which was not +carried out in any other point. Smith's conversation was wit--Lord +Cockburn's was eloquence. + +From the festivities of Edinburgh Sydney Smith returned contentedly to +Foston-le-Clay, and to Bunch. Amongst other gifted visitors was Mrs. +Marcet. 'Come here, Bunch,' cries Sydney Smith one day; 'come and repeat +your crimes to Mrs. Marcet.' Then Bunch, grave as a judge, began to +repeat: 'Plate-snatching, gravy-spilling, door-slamming, blue-bottle- +fly-catching, and curtsey-bobbing. 'Blue-bottle-fly-catching,' means +standing with her mouth open, and not attending; and 'curtsey-bobbing' +was curtseying to the centre of the earth. + +One night, in the winter, during a tremendous snowstorm, Bunch rushed +in, exclaiming, 'Lord and Lady Mackincrush is com'd in a coach and +four.' The lord and lady proved to be Sir James and his daughter, who +had arrived to stay with his friends in the remote parsonage of +Foston-le-Clay a few days, and had sent a letter, which arrived the day +afterwards to announce their visit. Their stay began with a blunder; and +when Sir James departed, leaving kind feelings behind him--books, his +hat, his gloves, his papers and other articles of apparel were found +also. 'What a man that would be,' said Sydney Smith, 'had he one +particle of gall, or the least knowledge of the value of red tape!' It +was true that the indolent, desultory character of Mackintosh interfered +perpetually with his progress in the world. He loved far better to lie +on the sofa reading a novel than to attend a Privy Council; the +slightest indisposition was made on his part a plea for avoiding the +most important business. + +Sydney Smith had said that 'when a clever man takes to cultivating +turnips and retiring, it is generally an imposture;' but in him the +retirement was no imposture. His wisdom shone forth daily in small and +great matters. 'Life,' he justly thought, 'was to be fortified by many +friendships,' and he acted up to his principles, and kept up friendships +by letters. Cheerfulness he thought might be cultivated by making the +rooms one lives in as comfortable as possible. His own drawing-room was +papered on this principle, with a yellow flowering pattern; and filled +with 'irregular regularities;' his fires were blown into brightness by +_Shadrachs_, as he called them--tubes furnished with air opening in the +centre of each fire, His library contained his rheumatic armour: for he +tried heat and compression in rheumatism; put his legs into narrow +buckets, which he called his jack-boots; wore round his throat a tin +collar; over each shoulder he had a large tin thing like a shoulder of +mutton; and on his head he displayed a hollow helmet filled with hot +water. In the middle of a field into which his windows looked, was a +skeleton sort of a machine, his Universal Scratcher; with which every +animal from a lamb to a bullock could scratch itself. Then on the Sunday +the Immortal was called into use, to travel in state to a church like a +barn; about fifty people in it; but the most original idea was farming +through the medium of a tremendous speaking-trumpet from his own door, +with its companion, a telescope, to see what his people are about! On +the 24th of January, 1828, the first notable piece of preferment was +conferred on him by Lord Lyndhurst then Chancellor, and of widely +differing political opinions to Sydney Smith. This was a vacant stall in +the cathedral at Bristol, where on the ensuing 5th of November, the new +canon gave the Mayor and Corporation of that Protestant city such a dose +of 'toleration as should last them many a year.' He went to Court on his +appointment, and appeared in shoestrings instead of buckles. 'I found,' +he relates, 'to my surprise, people looking down at my feet: I could not +think what they were at. At first I thought they had discovered the +beauty of my legs; but at last the truth burst on me, by some wag +laughing and thinking I had done it as a good joke. I was, of course, +exceedingly annoyed to have been supposed capable of such a vulgar +unmeaning piece of disrespect, and kept my feet as coyly under my +petticoats as the veriest prude in the country till I should make my +escape.' His circumstances were now improved, and though moralists, he +said, thought property an evil, he declared himself happier every guinea +he gained. He thanked God for his animal spirits, which received, +unhappily, in 1829, a terrible shock from the death of his eldest son, +Douglas, aged twenty-four. This was the great misfortune of his life; +the young man was promising, talented, affectionate. He exchanged +Foston-le-Clay at this time for a living in Somersetshire, of a +beautiful and characteristic name--Combe Florey. + +Combe Florey seems to have been an earthly paradise, seated in one of +those delicious hollows or in Combes, for which that part of the west of +England is celebrated. His withdrawal from the Edinburgh +Review--Mackintosh's death--the marriage of his eldest daughter, Saba, +to Dr. Holland (now Sir Henry Holland)--the termination of Lord Grey's +Administration, which ended Sydney's hopes of being a bishop, were the +leading events of his life for the next few years. + +It appears that Sydney Smith felt to the hour of his death pained that +those by whose side he had fought for fifty years, in their adversity, +the Whig party, should never have offered what he declared he should +have rejected, a bishopric, when they were constantly bestowing such +promotions on persons of mediocre talent and claims. Waiving the point, +whether it is right or wrong to make men bishops because they have been +political partizans, the cause of this alleged injustice may be found in +the tone of the times, which was eminently tinctured with cant. The +Clapham sect were in the ascendancy; and Ministers scarcely dared to +offend so influential a body. Even the gentle Sir James Mackintosh +refers, in his Journal, with disgust to the phraseology of the day:-- + +'They have introduced a new language, in which they never say that A. B. +is good, or virtuous, or even religious; but that he is an "advanced +Christian." Dear Mr. Wilberforce is an "advanced Christian." Mrs. C. has +lost three children without a pang, and is so "advanced a Christian" +that she could see the remaining twenty, "with poor dear Mr. C.," +removed with perfect tranquillity.' + +Such was the disgust expressed towards that school by Mackintosh, whose +last days were described by his daughter as having been passed in +silence and thought, with his Bible before him, breaking that +silence--and portentous silence--to speak of God, and of his Maker's +disposition towards man. + +His mind ceased to be occupied with speculations; politics interested +him no more. His own 'personal relationship to his Creator' was the +subject of his thoughts. Yet Mackintosh was not by any means considered +as an advanced Christian, or even as a Christian at all by the zealots +of his time. + +Sydney Smith's notions of a bishop were certainly by no means carried +out in his own person and character. 'I never remember in my time,' he +said, 'a real bishop: a grave, elderly man, full of Greek, with sound +views of the middle voice and preterpluperfect tense; gentle and kind to +his poor clergy, of powerful and commanding eloquence in Parliament, +never to be put down when the great interests of mankind were concerned, +leaning to the Government when it was right, leaning to the people when +they were right; feeling that if the Spirit of God had called him to +that high office, he was called for no mean purpose, but rather that +seeing clearly, acting boldly, and intending purely, he might confer +lasting benefit upon mankind.' + +In 1831 Lord Grey appointed Sydney Smith a Canon Resilentiary of St. +Paul's; but still the mitre was withheld, although it has since appeared +that Lord Grey had destined him for one of the first vacancies in +England. + +Henceforth his residence at St. Paul's brought him still more +continually into the world, which he delighted by his 'wise wit.' Most +London dinners, he declared, evaporated in whispers to one's next +neighbours. He never, however, spoke to his neighbour, but 'fired' +across the table. One day, however, he broke his rule, on hearing a +lady, who sat next him, say in a sweet low voice, 'No gravy, +sir.'--'Madam!' he cried, 'I have all my life been looking for a person +who disliked gravy, let us swear immortal friendship.' She looked +astonished, but took the oath, and kept it. 'What better foundation for +friendship,' he asks, 'than similarity of tastes?' + +He gave an evening party once a week; when a profusion of wax-lights was +his passion. He loved to see young people decked with natural flowers; +he was, in fact, a blameless and benevolent Epicurean in everything; +great indeed was the change from his former residence at Foston, which +he used to say was twelve miles from a lemon. Charming as his parties at +home must have been, they wanted the _bon-hommie_ and simplicity of +former days, and Of the homely suppers in Orchard Street. Lord Dudley, +Rogers, Moore, 'Young Macaulay,' as he was called for many years, formed +now his society. Lord Dudley was then in the state which afterwards +became insanity, and darkened completely a mind sad and peculiar from +childhood. Bankes, in his 'Journal,' relates an anecdote of him about +this time, when, as he says, 'Dudley's mind was on the wane; but still +his caustic humour would find vent through the cloud which was gradually +over-shadowing his masterly intellect.' He was one day sitting in his +room soliloquizing aloud; his favourite Newfoundland-dog was at his +side, and seemed to engross all ----m's attention. A gentleman was +present who was good-looking and good-natured, but not overburthened +with sense. Lord Dudley at last, patting his dog's head, said, 'Fido +mio, they say dogs have no souls. Humph, and still they say ----' +(naming the gentleman present) 'has a soul!' One day Lord Dudley met Mr. +Allen, Lord Holland's librarian, and asked him to dine with him. Allen +went. When asked to describe his dinner, he said, 'There was no one +there. Lord Dudley talked a little to his servant, and a great deal to +his dog, but said not one word to me.' + +Innumerable are the witticisms related of Sydney Smith, when seated at a +dinner table--having swallowed in life what he called a 'Caspian Sea' of +soup. Talking one day of Sir Charles Lyell's book, the subject of which +was the phenomena which the earth might, at some future period, present +to the geologists. 'Let us imagine,' he said, 'an excavation on the site +of St. Paul's; fancy a lecture by the Owen of his future era on the +thigh-bone of a minor canon, or the tooth of a dean: the form, +qualities, and tastes he would discover from them.' 'It is a great proof +of shyness,' he said, 'to crumble your bread at dinner. Ah! I see,' he +said, turning to a young lady, 'you're afraid of me: you crumble your +bread. I do it when I sit by the Bishop of London, and with both hands +when I sit by the Archbishop.' + +Be gave a capital reproof to a lively young M.P. who was accompanying +him after dinner to one of the solemn evening receptions at Lambeth +Palace during the life of the late Archbishop of Canterbury. The M.P. +had been calling him 'Smith,' though they had never met before that day. +As the carriage stopped at the Palace, Smith turned to him and said, +'Now don't, my good fellow, don't call the Archbishop "Howley."' + +Talking of fancy-balls--'Of course,' he said, 'if I went to one, I +should go as a Dissenter.' Of Macaulay, he said, 'To take him out of +literature and science, and to put him in the House of Commons, is like +taking the chief physician out of London in a pestilence.' + +Nothing amused him so much as the want of perception of a joke. One hot +day a Mrs. Jackson called on him, and spoke of the oppressive state of +the weather. 'Heat! it was dreadful,' said Sydney; 'I found I could do +nothing for it but take off my flesh and sit in my bones.' 'Take off +your flesh and sit in your bones! Oh, Mr. Smith! how could you do that?' +the lady cried. 'Come and see next time, ma'am--nothing more easy.' She +went away, however, convinced that such a proceeding was very +unorthodox. No wonder, with all his various acquirements, it should be +said of him that no 'dull dinners were ever remembered in his company.' + +A happy old age concluded his life, at once brilliant and useful. To the +last he never considered his education as finished. His wit, a friend +said, 'was always fresh, always had the dew on it. He latterly got into +what Lord Jeffrey called the vicious habit of water drinking. Wine, he +said, destroyed his understanding. He even 'forgot the number of the +Muses, and thought it was thirty-nine, of course.' He agreed with Sir +James Mackintosh that he had found the world more good and more foolish +than he had thought when young. He took a cheerful view of all things; +he thanked God for small as well as great things, even for tea. 'I am +glad,' he used to say, 'I was not born before tea.' His domestic +affections were strong, and were heartily reciprocated. + +General society he divided into classes: 'The noodles--very numerous and +well known. The affliction woman--a valuable member of society, +generally an ancient spinster in small circumstances, who packs up her +bag and sets off in cases of illness or death, "to comfort, flatter, +fetch, and carry." The up-takers--people who see, from their fingers' +ends and go through a room touching everything. The clearers--who begin +at a dish and go on tasting and eating till it is finished. The +sheep-walkers--who go on for ever on the beaten track. The +lemon-squeezers of society--who act on you as a wet blanket; see a cloud +in sunshine; the nails of the coffin in the ribbons of a bride; +extinguish all hope; people, whose very look sets your teeth on an edge. +The let-well-aloners, cousin-german to the noodles--yet a variety, and +who are afraid to act, and think it safer to stand still. Then the +washerwomen--very numerous! who always say, "Well, if ever I put on my +best bonnet, 'tis sure to rain," &c. + +'Besides this there is a very large class of people always treading on +your gouty foot, or talking in your deaf ear, or asking you to give them +something with your lame hand,' &c. + +During the autumn of the year 1844, Sydney Smith felt the death-stroke +approaching. 'I am so weak, both in body and mind,' he said, 'that I +believe if the knife were put into my hand, I should not have strength +enough to stick it into a Dissenter.' In October he became seriously +ill. 'Ah! Charles,' he said to General Fox (when he was being kept very +low), 'I wish they would allow me even the wing of a roasted butterfly,' +He dreaded sorrowful faces around him; but confided to his old servant, +Annie Kay--and to her alone--his sense of his danger. + +Almost the last person Sydney Smith saw was his beloved brother Bobus, +who followed him to the grave a fortnight after he had been laid in the +tomb. + +He lingered till the 22nd of February, 1845. His son closed his eyes. +His last act was, bestowing on a poverty-stricken clergyman a living. + +He was buried at Kensal Green, where his eldest son, Douglas, had been +interred. + +It has been justly and beautifully said of Sydney Smith, that +Christianity was not a dogma with him, but a practical and most +beneficent rule of life. + +As a clergyman, he was liberal, practical, staunch; free from the +latitudinarian principles of Hoadley, as from the bigotry of Laud. His +wit was the wit of a virtuous, a decorous man; it had pungency without +venom; humour without indelicacy; and was copious without being +tiresome. + + + +GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON, LORD MELCOMBE. + + +A Dinner-giving lordly Poet.--A Misfortune for a Man of Society.-- +Brandenburgh House.--'The Diversions of the Morning.'--Johnson's Opinion +of Foote--Churchill and 'The Rosciad.'--Personal Ridicule in its Proper +Light.--Wild Specimen of the Poet.--Walpole on Dodington's 'Diary.'--The +best Commentary on a Man's Life.--Leicester House.--Grace Boyle,--Elegant +Modes of passing Time.--A sad Day.--What does Dodington come here for?-- +The Veteran Wit, Beau, and Politician.--'Defend us from our Executors +and Editors.' + + +It would have been well for Lord Melcombe's memory, Horace Walpole +remarks, 'if his fame had been suffered to rest on the tradition of his +wit, and the evidence of his poetry.' And in the present day, that +desirable result has come to pass. We remember Bubb Dodington chiefly as +the courtier whose person, houses, and furniture were replete with +costly ostentation, so as to provoke the satire of Foote, who brought +him on the stage under the name of Sir Thomas Lofty in 'The Patron,' + +We recall him most as '_l'Amphytrion chez qui on dine_;' 'My Lord of +Melcombe,' as Mallet says-- + + 'Whose soups and sauces duly season'd, + Whose wit well tim'd and sense well reason'd, + Give Burgundy a brighter stain, + And add new flavour to Champagne.' + +Who now cares much for the court intrigues which severed Sir Robert +Walpole and Bubb Dodington? Who now reads without disgust the annals of +that famous quarrel between George II. and his son, during which each +party devoutly wished the other dead? Who minds whether the time-serving +Bubb Dodington went over to Lord Bute or not? Who cares whether his +hopes of political preferment were or were not gratified? Bubb Dodington +was, in fact, the dinner-giving lordly poet, to whom even the saintly +Young could write:-- + + 'You give protection,--I a worthless strain. + +Born in 1691, the accomplished courtier answered, till he had attained +the age of twenty-nine, to the not very euphonious name of Bubb. Then a +benevolent uncle with a large estate died, and left him, with his lands, +the more exalted surname of Dodington. He sprang, however, from an +obscure family, who had settled in Dorchester; but that disadvantage, +which, according to Lord Brougham's famous pamphlet, acts so fatally on +a young man's advancement in English public life, was obviated, as most +things are, by a great fortune. + +Mr. Bubb had been educated at Oxford: at the age of twenty-four he was +elected M.P. for Winchelsea; he was soon afterwards named Envoy at the +Court of Spain, but returned home after his accession of wealth to +provincial honours, and became Lord-Lieutenant of Somerset. Nay, poets +began to worship him, and even pronounced him to be well born:-- + + 'Descended from old British sires; + Great Dodington to kings allied; + My patron then, my laurels' pride. + +It would be consolatory to find that it is only Welsted who thus +profaned the Muse by this abject flattery, were it not recorded that +Thomson dedicated to him his 'Summer.' The dedication was prompted by +Lord Binning; and 'Summer' was published in 1727 when Dodington was one +of the Lords of the Treasury, as well as Clerk of the Pells in Ireland, +It seemed, therefore, worth while for Thomson to pen such a passage as +this:--'Your example sir, has recommended poetry with the greatest grace +to the example of those who are engag'd in the most active scenes of +life; and this, though confessedly the least considerable of those +qualities that dignify your character, must be particularly pleasing to +_one_ whose only hope of being introduced to your regard is thro' the +recommendation of an art in which you are a master.' Warton adding this +tribute:-- + + 'To praise a Dodington rash bard! forbear. + What can thy weak and ill-tun'd voice avail, + When on that theme both Young and Thomson fail?' + +Yet even when midway in his career, Dodington, in the famous political +caricature called 'The Motion,' is depicted as 'the Spaniel,' sitting +between the Duke of Argyle's legs, whilst his grace is driving a coach +at full speed to the Treasury, with a sword instead of a whip in his +hand, with Lord Chesterfield as postilion, and Lord Cobham as a footman, +holding on by the straps: even then the servile though pompous character +of this true man of the world was comprehended completely; and Bubb +Dodington's characteristics never changed. + +In his political life, Dodington was so selfish, obsequious, and +versatile as to incur universal opprobrium; he had also another +misfortune for a man of society,--he became fat and lethargic. 'My +brother Ned' Horace Walpole remarks, 'says he is grown of less +consequence, though more weight.' And on another occasion, speaking of a +majority in the House of Lords, he adds, 'I do not count Dodington, who +must now always be in the minority, for no majority will accept him.' + +Whilst, however, during the factious reign of George II., the town was +declared, even by Horace to be wondrous dull; operas unfrequented, plays +not in fashion, and amours old as marriages. Bubb Dodington, with his +wealth and profusion, contrived always to be in vogue as a host, while +he was at a discount as a politician. Politics and literature are the +highroads in England to that much-craved-for distinction, an admittance +into the great world; and Dodington united these passports in his own +person: he was a poetaster, and wrote political pamphlets. The latter +were published and admired: the poems were referred to as 'very pretty +love verses,' by Lord Lyttelton, and were never published--and never +ought to have been published, it is stated. + +His _bon mots_, his sallies, his fortunes and places, and continual +dangling at court, procured Bubo, as Pope styled him, one pre-eminence. +His dinners at Hammersmith were the most _recherchés_ in the metropolis. +Every one remembers Brandenburgh House, when the hapless Caroline of +Brunswick held her court there, and where her brave heart,--burdened +probably with some sins, as well as with endless regrets,--broke at +last. It had been the residence of the beautiful and famous Margravine +of Anspach, whose loveliness in vain tempts us to believe her innocent, +in despite of facts. Before those eras--the presence of the Margravine, +whose infidelities were almost avowed, and the abiding of the queen, +whose errors had, at all events, verged on the very confines of +guilt--the house was owned by Dodington. There he gave dinners; there he +gratified a passion for display, which was puerile; there he indulged in +eccentricities which almost implied insanity; there he concocted his +schemes for court advancement; and there, later in life, he contributed +some of the treasures of his wit to dramatic literature. 'The Wishes,' a +comedy, by Bentley, was supposed to owe much of its point to the +brilliant wit of Dodington[14]. + +[14: See Walpole's 'Royal and Noble Authors'] + +At Brandenburgh House, a nobler presence than that of Dodington still +haunted the groves and alleys, for Prince Rupert had once owned it. When +Dodington bought it, he gave it--in jest, we must presume--the name of +La Trappe; and it was not called Brandenburgh House until the fair and +frail Margravine came to live there. + +Its gardens were long famous; and in the time of Dodington were the +scene of revel. Thomas Bentley, the son of Richard Bentley, the +celebrated critic, had written a play called 'The Wishes;' and during +the summer of 1761 it was acted at Drury Lane, and met with the especial +approbation of George III., who sent the author, through Lord Bute, a +present of two hundred guineas as a tribute to the good sentiments of +the production. + +This piece, which, in spite of its moral tendency, has died out, whilst +plays of less virtuous character have lived, was rehearsed in the +gardens of Brandenburgh House. Bubb Dodington associated much with those +who give fame; but he courted amongst them also those who could revenge +affronts by bitter ridicule. Among the actors and literati who were then +sometimes at Brandenburg House were Foote and Churchill; capital boon +companions, but, as it proved, dangerous foes.' + +Endowed with imagination; with a mind enriched by classical and +historical studies; possessed of a brilliant wit, Bubb Dodington was, +nevertheless, in the sight of some men, ridiculous. Whilst the +rehearsals of 'The Wishes' went on, Foote was noting down all the +peculiarities of the Lord of Brandenburgh House, with a view to bring +them to account in his play of 'The Patron.' Lord Melcombe was an +aristocratic Dombey: stultified by his own self-complacency, he dared to +exhibit his peculiarities before the English Aristophanes. It was an act +of imprudence, for Foote had long before (in 1747) opened the little +theatre of the Haymarket with a sort of monologue play, 'The Diversions +of the Morning,' in which he convulsed his audience with the perfection +of a mimicry never beheld before, and so wonderful, that even the +persons of his models seemed to stand before the amazed spectators. + +These entertainments, in which the contriver was at once the author and +performer, have been admirably revived by Mathews and others; and in +another line, by the lamented Albert Smith. The Westminster justices, +furious and alarmed, opposed the daring performance, on which Foote +changed the name of his piece, and called it 'Mr. Foote giving Tea to +his Friends,' himself still the sole actor, and changing with +Proteus-like celerity from one to the other. Then came his 'Auction of +Pictures,' and Sir Thomas de Veil, one of his enemies, the justices, was +introduced. Orator Henley and Cock the auctioneer figured also; and year +after year the town was enchanted by that which is most gratifying to a +polite audience, the finished exhibition of faults and follies. One +stern voice was raised in reprobation, that of Samuel Johnson: he, at +all events, had a due horror of buffoons; but even he owned himself +vanquished. + +'The first time I was in Foote's company was at Fitzherbert's. Having no +good opinion of the fellow, I was resolved not to be pleased: and it is +very difficult to please a man against his will. I went on eating my +dinner pretty sullenly, affecting not to mind him; but the dog was so +very comical, that I was obliged to lay down my knife and fork, throw +myself back in my chair, and fairly laugh it out. Sir, he was +irresistible.' Consoled by Foote's misfortunes and ultimate complicated +misery for his lessened importance, Bubb Dodington still reigned, +however, in the hearts of some learned votaries. Richard Bentley, the +critic, compared him to Lord Halifax-- + + 'That Halifax, my Lord, as you do yet, + Stood forth the friend of poetry and wit, + Sought silent merit in the secret cell, + And Heav'n, nay even man, repaid him well. + +A more remorseless foe, however, than Foote appeared in the person of +Charles Churchill, the wild and unclerical son of a poor curate of +Westminster. Foote laughed Bubb Dodington down, but Churchill +perpetuated the satire; for Churchill was wholly unscrupulous, and his +faults had been reckless and desperate. Wholly unfit for a clergyman, he +had taken orders, obtained a curacy in Wales at £30 a year--not being +able to subsist, took to keeping a cider-cellar, became a sort of +bankrupt, and quitting Wales, succeeded to the curacy of his father, who +had just died. Still famine haunted his home; Churchill took, therefore, +to teaching young ladies to read and write, and conducted himself in the +boarding-school where his duties lay, with wonderful propriety. He had +married at seventeen; but even that step had not protected his morals: +he fell into abject poverty. Lloyd, father of his friend Robert Lloyd, +then second master of Westminster, made an arrangement with his +creditors. Young Lloyd had published a poem called 'The Actor;' +Churchill, in imitation, now produced 'The Rosciad,' and Bubb Dodington +was one whose ridiculous points were salient in those days of +personality. 'The Rosciad' had a signal success, which completed the +ruin of its author: he became a man of the town, forsook the wife of his +youth, and abandoned the clerical character. There are few sights more +contemptible than that of a clergyman who has cast off his profession, +or whose profession has cast him off. But Churchill's talents for a time +kept him from utter destitution. Bubb Doddington may have been consoled +by finding that he shared the fate of Dr. Johnson, who had spoken +slightingly of Churchill's works, and who shone forth, therefore, in +'The Ghost,' a later poem, as Dr. Pomposo. + +Richard Cumberland, the dramatist, drew a portrait of Lord Melcombe, +which is said to have been taken from the life; but perhaps the most +faithful delineation of Bubb Dodington's character was furnished by +himself in his 'Diary;' in which, as it has been well observed, he +'unveiled the nakedness of his mind, and displayed himself as a courtly +compound of mean compliance and political prostitution.' It may, in +passing, be remarked, that few men figure well in an autobiography; and +that Cumberland himself, proclaimed by Dr. Johnson to be a 'learned, +ingenious, accomplished gentleman,' adding, 'the want of company is an +inconvenience, but Mr. Cumberland is a million:' in spite of this +eulogium, Cumberland has betrayed in his own autobiography unbounded +vanity, worldliness, and an undue estimation of his own perishable fame. +After all, amusing as personalities must always be, neither the humours +of Foote, the vigorous satire of Churchill, nor the careful limning of +Cumberland, whilst they cannot be ranked among talents of the highest +order, imply a sort of social treachery. The delicious little colloquy +between Boswell and Johnson places low personal ridicule in its proper +light. + +Boswell.--'Foote has a great deal of humour.' Johnson.--'Yes, sir.' +Boswell.--'He has a singular talent of exhibiting characters.' +Johnson--'Sir. it is not a talent--it is a vice; it is what others +abstain from. It is not comedy, which exhibits the character of a +species--as that of a miser gathered from many misers--it is farce, +which exhibits individuals.' Boswell.--'Did not he think of exhibiting +you, sir?' Johnson.--'Sir, fear restrained him; he knew I would have +broken his bones. I would have saved him the trouble of cutting off a +leg; I would not have left him a leg to cut off.' + +Few annals exist of the private life of Bubb Dodington, but those few +are discreditable. + +Like most men of his time, and like many men of all times, Dodington was +entangled by an unhappy and perplexing intrigue. + +There was a certain 'black woman,' as Horace Walpole calls a Mrs. +Strawbridge, whom Bubb Dodington admired. This handsome brunette lived +in a corner house of Saville Row, in Piccadilly, where Dodington visited +her. The result of their intimacy was his giving this lady a bond of ten +thousand pounds to be paid if he married any one else. The real object +of his affections was a Mrs. Behan, with whom he lived seventeen years, +and whom, on the death of Mrs. Strawbridge, he eventually married. + +Among Bubb Dodington's admirers and disciples was Paul Whitehead, a wild +specimen of the poet, rake, satirist, dramatist, all in one; and what +was quite in character, a Templar to boot. Paul--so named from being +born on that Saint's day--wrote one or two pieces which brought him an +ephemeral fame, such as the 'State Dunces,' and the 'Epistle to Dr. +Thompson,' 'Manners,' a satire, and the 'Gymnasiad,' a mock heroic poem, +intended to ridicule the passion for boxing, then prevalent. Paul +Whitehead, who died in 1774, was an infamous, but not, in the opinion of +Walpole, a despicable poet, yet Churchill has consigned him to +everlasting infamy as a reprobate, in these lines:-- + + 'May I (can worse disgrace on manhood fall?) + Be born a Whitebread, and baptised a Paul.' + +Paul was not, however, worse than his satirist Churchill; and both of +these wretched men were members of a society long the theme of horror +and disgust, even after its existence had ceased to be remembered, +except by a few old people. This was the 'Hell-fire Club,' held in +appropriate orgies at Medmenham Abbey, Buckinghamshire. The profligate +Sir Francis Dashwood, Wilkes, and Churchill, were amongst its most +prominent members. + +With such associates, and living in a court where nothing but the basest +passions reigned and the lowest arts prevailed, we are inclined to +accord with the descendant of Bubb Dodington, the editor of his 'Diary,' +Henry Penruddocke Wyndham, who declares that all Lord Melcombe's +political conduct was 'wholly directed by the base motives of vanity, +selfishness, and avarice.' Lord Melcombe seems to have been a man of the +world of the very worst _calibre_; sensual, servile, and treacherous; +ready, during the lifetime of his patron, Frederick, Prince of Wales, to +go any lengths against the adverse party of the Pelhams, that Prince's +political foes--eager, after the death of Frederick, to court those +powerful men with fawning servility. + +The famous 'Diary' of Bubb Dodington supplies the information from which +these conclusions have been drawn. Horace Walpole, who knew Dodington +well, describes how he read with avidity the 'Diary,' which was +published in 1784. + +'A nephew of Lord Melcombe's heirs has published that Lord's "Diary." +Indeed it commences in 1749, and I grieve it was not dated twenty years +later. However, it deals in topics that are twenty times more familiar +and fresh to my memory than any passage that has happened within these +six months I wish I could convey it to you. Though drawn by his own +hand, and certainly meant to flatter himself, it is a truer portrait +than any of his hirelings would have given. Never was such a composition +of vanity, versatility, and servility. In short, there is but one +feature wanting in it, his wit, of which in the whole book there are not +three sallies.' + +The editor of this 'Diary' remarks, 'that he will no doubt be considered +a very extraordinary editor; the practice of whom has generally been to +prefer flattery to truth, and partiality to justice.' To understand, not +the flattery which his contemporaries heaped upon Bubb Dodington, but +the opprobrium with which they loaded his memory--to comprehend not his +merits but his demerits--it is necessary to take a brief survey of his +political life from the commencement. He began life, as we have seen, as +a servile adherent of Sir Robert Walpole. A political epistle to the +Minister was the prelude to a temporary alliance only, for in 1737, Bubb +went over to the adverse party of Leicester House, and espoused the +cause of Frederick, Prince of Wales, against his royal father He was +therefore dismissed from the Treasury. When Sir Robert fell, Bubb +expected to rise, but his expectations of preferment were not realized. +He attacked the new Administration forthwith, and succeeded so far in +becoming important that he was made Treasurer of the Navy; a post which +he resigned in 1749, and which he held again in 1755, but which he lost +the next year. On the accession of George III., he was not ashamed to +appear altogether in a new character, as the friend of Lord Bute; he +was, therefore, advanced to the peerage by the title of Baron of +Melcombe Regis, in 1761. The honour was enjoyed for one short year only; +and on the 28th of July, 1762, Bubb Dodington expired. Horace Walpole, +in his 'Royal and Noble Authors,' complains that 'Dodington's "Diary" +was mangled, in compliment, before it was imparted to the public.' We +cannot therefore judge of what the 'Diary' was before, as the editor +avows that every anecdote was cut out, and all the little gossip so +illustrative of character and manners which would have brightened its +dull pages, fell beneath the power of a merciless pair of scissors. Mr. +Penruddocke Wyndham conceives, however, that he was only doing justice +to society in these suppressions. 'It would,' he says, 'be _no_ +entertainment to the reader to be informed who daily dined with his +lordship, or whom he daily met at the table of other people.' + +Posterity thinks differently: a knowledge of a man's associates forms +the best commentary on his life; and there is much reason to rejoice +that all biographers are not like Mr. Penruddocke Wyndham. Bubb +Dodington, more especially, was a man of society: inferior as a literary +man, contemptible as a politician, it was only at the head of his table +that he was agreeable and brilliant. He was, in fact, a man who had no +domestic life; a courtier, like Lord Hervey, but without Lord Hervey's +consistency. He was, in truth, a type of that era in England: vulgar in +aims; dissolute in conduct; ostentatious, vain-glorious--of a low, +ephemeral ambition; but at the same time talented, acute, and lavish to +the lettered. The public is now the patron of the gifted. What writer +cares for individual opinion, except as it tends to sweep up the gross +amount of public blame or censure? What publisher will consent to +undertake a work because some lord or lady recommended it to his notice? +The reviewer is greater in the commonwealth of letters than the man of +rank. + +But in these days it was otherwise; and they who, in the necessities of +the times, did what they could to advance the interest of the _belles +lettres_, deserve not to be forgotten. + +It is with a feeling of sickness that we open the pages of this great +Wit's 'Diary,' and attempt to peruse the sentences in which the most +grasping selfishness is displayed. We follow him to Leicester House, +that ancient tenement--(wherefore pulled down, except to erect on its +former site the narrowest of streets, does not appear): that former home +of the Sydneys had not always been polluted by the dissolute, heartless +_clique_ who composed the court of Frederick, Prince of Wales. Its +chambers had once been traversed by Henry Sydney, by Algernon, his +brother. It was their _home_--their father, Robert Sydney, Earl of +Leicester, having lived there. The lovely Dorothy Sydney, Waller's +Saccharissa, once, in all purity and grace, had danced in that gallery +where the vulgar, brazen Lady Middlesex, and her compliant lord, +afterwards flattered the weakest of princes, Frederick. In old times +Leicester House had stood on Lammas land--land in the spirit of the old +charities, open to the poor after Lammas-tide; and even 'the Right Hon. +the Earl of Leicester'--as an old document hath it--was obliged, if _he_ +chose to turn out his cows or horses on that appropriated land, to pay a +rent for it to the overseers of St. Martin's parish, then really 'in the +fields.' And here this nobleman not only dwelt in all state himself, but +let, or lent his house to persons whose memory seems to hallow even +Leicester Fields. Elizabeth of Bohemia, after what was to her indeed +'life's fitful fever,' died at Leicester House. It became then, +temporarily, the abode of ambassadors. Colbert, in the time of Charles +II., occupied the place; Prince Eugène, in 1712, held his residence +here; and the rough soldier, famous for all absence of tact--brave, +loyal-hearted, and coarse--lingered at Leicester House in hopes of +obstructing the peace between England and France. + +All that was good and great fled for ever from Leicester House at the +instant that George II., when Prince of Wales, was driven by his royal +father from St. James's, and took up his abode in it until the death of +George I. The once honoured home of the Sydneys henceforth becomes +loathsome in a moral sense. Here William, Duke of Cumberland--the hero, +as court flatterers called him--the butcher, as the poor Jacobite +designated him--of Culloden, first saw the light. Peace and +respectability then dignified the old house for ever. Prince Frederick +was its next inmate: here the Princess of Wales, the mother of George +III., had her lying-in, and her royal husband held his public tables; +and at these and in every assembly, as well as in private, one figure is +conspicuous. + +Grace Boyle--for she unworthily bore that great name--was the daughter +and heiress of Richard, Viscount Shannon. She married Lord Middlesex, +bringing him a fortune of thirty thousand pounds. Short, plain, 'very +yellow,' as her contemporaries affirm, with a head full of Greek and +Latin, and devoted to music and painting; it seems strange that +Frederick should have been attracted to one far inferior to his own +princess both in mind and person. But so it was, for in those days every +man liked his neighbour's wife better than his own. Imitating the +forbearance of her royal mother-in-law, the princess tolerated such of +her husband's mistresses as did not interfere in politics: Lady +Middlesex was the 'my good Mrs. Howard,' of Leicester House. She was +made Mistress of the Robes: her favour soon 'grew,' as the shrewd Horace +remarks, 'to be rather more than Platonic.' She lived with the royal +pair constantly, and sat up till five o'clock in the morning at their +suppers; and Lord Middlesex saw and submitted to all that was going on +with the loyalty and patience of a _Georgian_ courtier. Lady Middlesex +was a docile politician, and on that account, retained her position +probably long after she had lost her influence. + +Her name appears constantly in the 'Diary,' out of which everything +amusing has been carefully expunged. + +'Lady Middlesex, Lord Bathurst, Mr. Breton, and I, waited on their Royal +Highnesses to Spitalfields, to see the manufacture of silk.' In the +afternoon off went the same party to Norwood Forest, in private coaches, +to see a 'settlement of gypsies.' Then returning, went to find out +Bettesworth, the conjuror; but not discovering him, went in search of +the little Dutchman. Were disappointed in that; but 'concluded,' relates +Bubb Dodington, 'the peculiarities of this day by supping with Mrs. +Cannon, the princess's _midwife_.' + +All these elegant modes of passing the time were not only for the sake +of Lady Middlesex, but, it was said, of her friend, Mrs. Granville, one +of the Maids of Honour, daughter of the first Lord Lansdown, the poet. +This young lady, Eliza Granville, was scarcely pretty: a far, red-haired +girl. + +All this thoughtless, if not culpable, gallantry was abruptly checked by +the rude hand of death. During the month of March, Frederick was +attacked with illness, having caught cold. Very little apprehension was +expressed at first, but, about eleven days after his first attack, he +expired. Half an hour before his death, he had asked to see some +friends, and had called for coffee and bread and butter: a fit of +coughing came on, and he died instantly from suffocation. An abscess, +which had been forming in his side, had burst; nevertheless, his two +physicians, Wilmot and Lee, 'knew nothing of his distemper.' According +to Lord Melcombe, who thus refers to their blunders, 'They declared, +half an hour before his death, that his pulse was like a man's in +perfect health. They either would not see or did not know the +consequences of the black thrush, which appeared in his mouth, and quite +down in his throat. Their ignorance, or their knowledge of his disorder, +renders them equally inexcusable for not calling in other assistance.' + +The consternation in the prince's household was great, not for his life, +but for the confusion into which politics were thrown by his death. +After his relapse, and until just before his death, the princess never +suffered any English, man or woman, above the degree of valet-de-chambre +to see him; nor did she herself see any one of her household until +absolutely necessary. After the death of his eldest born, George II. +vented his diabolical jealousy upon the cold remains of one thus cut off +in the prime of life. The funeral was ordered to be on the model of that +of Charles II., but private counter-orders were issued to reduce the +ceremonial to the smallest degree of respect that could be paid. + +On the 13th of April, 1751, the body of the prince was entombed in Henry +VII.'s chapel. Except the lords appointed to hold the pall, and attend +the chief mourner, when the attendants were called over in their ranks, +there was not a _single_ English lord, not _one_ bishop, and only one +Irish lord (Lord Limerick), and three sons of peers. Sir John Rushout +and Dodington were the only privy counsellors who followed. It rained +heavily, but no covering was provided for the procession. The service +was performed without organ or anthem. 'Thus,' observes Bubb Dodington, +'ended this sad day.' + +Although the prince left a brother and sisters, the Duke of Somerset +acted as chief mourner. The king hailed the event of the prince's death +as a relief, which was to render happy his remaining days; and Bubb +Dodington hastened, in a few months, to offer to the Pelhams 'his +friendship and attachment.' His attendance at court was resumed, +although George II. could not endure him; and the old Walpolians, +nick-named the Black-tan, were also averse to him. + +Such were Bubb Dodington's _actions_. His expressions, on occasion of +the prince's death, were in a very different tone. + +'We have lost,' he wrote to Sir Horace Mann, 'the delight and ornament +of the age he lived in,--the expectations of the public: in this light I +have lost more than any subject in England; but this is light,--public +advantages confined to myself do not, ought not, to weigh with me. But +we have lost the refuge of private distress--the balm of the afflicted +heart the shelter of the miserable against the fury of private +adversity; the arts, the graces, the anguish, the misfortunes of +society, have lost their patron and their remedy. + +'I have lost my companion--my protector--the friend that loved me, that +condescended to hear, to communicate, to share in all the pleasures and +pains of the human heart: where the social affections and emotions of +the mind only presided without regard to the infinite disproportion of +my rank and condition. This is a wound that cannot, ought not to heal. +If I pretended to fortitude here, I should be infamous--a monster of +ingratitude--and unworthy of all consolation, if I was not +inconsolable.' + +'Thank you,' writes the shrewd Horace Walpole, addressing Sir Horace +Mann, 'for the transcript from _Bulb de Tristibus_. I will keep your +secret, though I am persuaded that a man who had composed such a funeral +oration on his master had himself fully intended that its flowers should +not bloom and wither in obscurity.' + +Well might George II., seeing him go to court say: 'I see Dodington here +sometimes, what does he come for?' + +It was, however, clearly seen what he went for, when, in 1753, two years +after the death of his 'benefactor,' Dodington humbly offered His +Majesty his services in the house, and 'five members,' for the rest of +his life, if His Majesty would give Mr. Pelham leave to employ him for +His Majesty's service. Nevertheless he continued to advise with the +Princess of Wales, and to drop into her house as if it had been a +sister's house--sitting on a stool near the fireside, and listening to +her accounts of her children. + +In the midst of these intrigues for favour on the part of Dodington, Mr. +Pelham died, and was succeeded by his brother, the Duke of Newcastle, +the issue of whose administration is well known. + +In 1760 death again befriended the now veteran wit, beau and politician. +George II. died; and the intimacy which Dodington had always taken care +to preserve between himself and the Princess of Wales, ended +advantageously for him; and he instantly, in spite of all his former +professions to Pelham, joined hand and heart with that minister, from +whom he obtained a peerage. This, as we have seen, was not long enjoyed. +Lord Melcombe, as this able, intriguing man was now styled, died on the +28th of July, 1762; and with him terminated the short-lived distinction +for which he had sacrificed even a decent pretext of principle and +consistency. + +So general has been the contempt felt for his character, that it seems +almost needless to assert that Bubb Dodington was eminently to be +despised. Nothing much more severe can be said of him than the remarks +of Horace Walpole--upon his 'Diary;' in which he observes that Dodington +records little but what is to his own disgrace; as if he thought that +the world would forgive his inconsistencies as readily as he forgave +himself. 'Had he adopted,' Horace well observes, 'the French title +"_Confessions_," it would have seemed to imply some kind of penitence.' + +But vain-glory engrossed him: 'He was determined to raise an altar to +himself, and for want of burnt offerings, lighted the pyre, like a great +author (Rousseau), with his own character.' + +It was said by the same acute observer, both of Lord Hervey and of Bubb +Dodington, that they were the only two persons he ever knew that were +always aiming at wit and never finding it.' And here, it seems, most +that can be testified in praise of a heartless, clever man, must be +summed up. + +Lord Melcombe's property, with the exception of a few legacies, devolved +upon his cousin Thomas Wyndham, of Hammersmith, by whom his Lordship's +papers, letters, and poems, were bequeathed to Henry Penruddocke +Wyndham, with an injunction, that only such as 'might do honour to his +memory should be made public.' + +After this, in addition to the true saying, defend us from our friends +one may exclaim, 'defend us from our executors and editors.' + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wits and Beaux of Society +by Grace & Philip Wharton + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WITS AND BEAUX OF SOCIETY *** + +***** This file should be named 10797-8.txt or 10797-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/7/9/10797/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Antje Benter, Sandra Brown and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Wits and Beaux of Society + Volume 2 + +Author: Grace & Philip Wharton + +Release Date: January 22, 2004 [EBook #10797] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WITS AND BEAUX OF SOCIETY *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Antje Benter, Sandra Brown and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + + +</pre> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h3>THE</h3> +<h1>WITS AND BEAUX OF SOCIETY</h1> +<h3>BY</h3> +<h2>GRACE AND PHILIP WHARTON</h2> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h3>EDITED BY</h3> +<h2>JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY, M. P.</h2> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h3><i>And the original illustrations by</i></h3> +<h2>H. K. BROWNE AND JAMES GODWIN</h2> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h3>TWO VOLS.—VOL. II.<br> +<br> +1890</h3> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<hr> +<h2>List of Illustrations</h2> +<p><a href="#001">"Who's Your Fat Friend?"</a></p> +<p><a href="#030">Strawberry Hill from the Thames.</a></p> +<p><a href="#081">Selwyn Acknowledges the "Sovereignty of The +People."</a></p> +<p><a href="#100">The Famous Literary Club.</a></p> +<p><a href="#119">"A Treasure for a Lady"—Sheridan and the +Lawyer.</a></p> +<p><a href="#184">Theodore Hook's Engineering Frolic.</a></p> +<p><a href="#223">Sydney Smith's Witty Answer to the Old Parish +Clerk.</a></p> +<hr> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h2>CONTENTS VOL. II.</h2> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h3><a href="#Walpole">HORACE WALPOLE.</a></h3> +<blockquote>The Commoners of England.—Horace's Regret for the +Death of his Mother.— Little Horace in Arlington +Street.—Introduced to George I.— Characteristic +Anecdote of George I.—Walpole's Education.—Schoolboy +Days.—Boyish Friendships.—Companionship of +Gray.—A Dreary Doom.— Walpole's Description of Youthful +Delights.—Anecdote of Pope and Frederic of Wales.—The +Pomfrets.—Sir Thomas Robinson's Ball.—An Admirable +Scene.—Political Squibs.—Sir Robert's Retirement from +Office.—The Splendid Mansion of Houghton.—Sir Robert's +Love of Gardening.—What we owe to the 'Grandes +Tours.'—George Vertue.—Men of One Idea.—The Noble +Picture-gallery at Houghton.—The 'Market Pieces.'— Sir +Robert's Death.—The Granville Faction.—A very good +Quarrel.— Twickenham.—Strawberry Hill.—The +Recluse of Strawberry.—Portraits of the Digby +Family.—Sacrilege.—Mrs. Darner's Models.—The Long +Gallery at Strawberry.—The Chapel.—'A Dirty Little +Thing.'—The Society around Strawberry Hill.—Anne +Seymour Conway.—A Man who never Doubted.—Lady Sophia +Fermer's Marriage.—Horace in Favour.—Anecdote of Sir +William Stanhope.—A Paper House.—Walpole's +Habits.—Why did he not Marry?— 'Dowagers as Plenty as +Flounders.'—Catherine Hyde, Duchess of +Queensberry.—Anecdote of Lady Granville.—Kitty +Clive.—Death of Horatio Walpole.—George, third Earl of +Orford.—A Visit to Houghton.—Family +Misfortunes.—Poor Chatterton.—Walpole's Concern with +Chatterton.— Walpole in Paris.—Anecdote of Madame +Geoffrin.—'Who's that Mr. Walpole?'—The Miss +Berrys.—Horace's two 'Straw Berries.'—Tapping a New +Reign.—The Sign of the Gothic Castle.—Growing Old with +Dignity.— Succession to an Earldom.—Walpole's Last +Hours.—Let us not be Ungrateful.</blockquote> +<h3><a href="#Selwyn">GEORGE SELWYN.</a></h3> +<blockquote>A Love of Horrors.—Anecdotes of Selwyn's +Mother.—Selwyn's College Days.—Orator +Henley.—Selwyn's Blasphemous Freak.—The Profession of a +Wit.—The Thirst for Hazard.—Reynolds's +Conversation-Piece.—Selwyn's Eccentricities and +Witticisms.—A most Important Communication.—An Amateur +Headsman.—The Eloquence of Indifference.—Catching a +Housebreaker.—The Family of the Selwyns.—The Man of the +People.— Selwyn's Parliamentary Career.—True +Wit.—Some of Selwyn's Witty Sayings.—The Sovereignty of +the People.—On two kinds of Wit.—Selwyn's Home for +Children.—Mie-Mie, the Little Italian.—Selwyn's Little +Companion taken from him.—His Later Days and +Death.</blockquote> +<h3><a href="#Sheridan">RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN.</a></h3> +<blockquote>Sheridan a Dunce.—Boyish Dreams of Literary +Fame.—Sheridan in Love.—A Nest of +Nightingales.—The 'Maid of Bath.'—Captivated by +Genius.— Sheridan's Elopement with 'Cecilia.'—His Duel +with Captain Matthews.— Standards of Ridicule.—Painful +Family Estrangements.—Enters Drury Lane.—Success of the +Famous 'School for Scandal.'—Opinions of Sheridan and his +Influence.—The Literary Club.—Anecdote of Garrick's +Admittance.—Origin of the 'Rejected Addresses.'—New +Flights.—Political Ambition.—The Gaming +Mania.—Almacks'.—Brookes'.—Black-balled.—Two +Versions of the Election Trick.—St. Stephen's +Won.—Vocal Difficulties.— Leads a Double +Life.—Pitt's Vulgar Attack.—Sheridan's Happy +Retort— Grattan's Quip.—Sheridan's Sallies.—The +Trial of Warren Hastings.— Wonderful Effect of Sheridan's +Eloquence.—The Supreme Effort.—The Star +Culminates.—Native Taste for Swindling.—A Shrewd but +Graceless Oxonian.—Duns Outwitted.—The Lawyer +Jockeyed.—Adventures with Bailiffs.—Sheridan's Powers +of Persuasion.—House of Commons Greek.— Curious +Mimicry.—The Royal Boon Company.—Street Frolics at +Night.— An Old Tale.—'All's well that ends +well.'—The Fray in St. Giles'.— Unopened +Letters.—An Odd Incident.—Reckless +Extravagance,—Sporting Ambition.—Like Father like +Son.—A Severe and Witty Rebuke.— +Intemperance.—Convivial Excesses of a Past Day.—Worth +wins at last.— Bitter Pangs.—The Scythe of +Death.—Sheridan's Second Wife.—Debts of +Honour.—Drury Lane Burnt.—The Owner's +Serenity.—Misfortunes never come Singly.—The Whitbread +Quarrel.—Ruined.—Undone and almost Forsaken.— The +Dead Man Arrested.—The Stories fixed on +Sheridan.—Extempore Wit and Inveterate Talkers.</blockquote> +<h3><a href="#Brummell">BEAU BRUMMELL.</a></h3> +<blockquote>Two popular Sciences.—'Buck Brummell' at +Eton.—Investing his Capital.— Young Cornet +Brummell.—The Beau's Studio.—The +Toilet.—'Creasing Down.'—Devotion to Dress.—A +Great Gentleman.—Anecdotes of Brummell.— 'Don't forget, +Brum: Goose at Four'—Offers of Intimacy resented.— +Never in love.—Brummell out Hunting.—Anecdote of +Sheridan and Brummell.—The Beau's Poetical Efforts.—The +Value of a Crooked Sixpence.—The Breach with the Prince of +Wales.—'Who's your Fat Friend?'—The Climax is +reached.—The Black-mail of Calais.—George the Greater +and George the Less.—An Extraordinary Step.—Down the +Hill of Life.—A Miserable Old Age.—In the Hospice Du +Bon Sauveur.—O Young Men of this Age, be warned!</blockquote> +<h3><a href="#Hook">THEODORE EDWARD HOOK.</a></h3> +<blockquote>The Greatest of Modern Wits.—What Coleridge said +of Hook.—Hook's Family.—Redeeming +Points.—Versatility.—Varieties of Hoaxing.—The +Black-wafered Horse.—The Berners Street Hoax.—Success +of the Scheme.— The Strop of Hunger.—Kitchen +Examinations.—The Wrong House.—Angling for an +Invitation.—The Hackney-coach Device.—The Plots of Hook +and Mathews.—Hook's Talents as an Improvisatore.—The +Gift becomes his Bane.—Hook's Novels.—College +Fun.—Baiting a Proctor.—The Punning +Faculty.—Official Life Opens.—Troublesome +Pleasantry.—Charge of +Embezzlement.—Misfortune.—Doubly Disgraced.—No +Effort to remove the Stain.—Attacks on the Queen.—An +Incongruous Mixture.—Specimen of the Ramsbottom +Letters.—Hook's Scurrility.—-Fortune and +Popularity.— The End.</blockquote> +<h3><a href="#Smith">SYDNEY SMITH.</a></h3> +<blockquote>The 'Wise Wit.'—Oddities of the +Father.—Verse-making at Winchester.— Curate Life on +Salisbury Plain.—Old Edinburgh.—Its Social and +Architectural Features.—Making Love Metaphysically.—The +Old Scottish Supper.—The Men of Mark passing away.—The +Band of Young Spirits.— Brougham's Early +Tenacity.—Fitting up Conversations.—'Old School' +Ceremonies.—The Speculative Society.—A Brilliant +Set.—Sydney's Opinion of his Friends.—Holland +House.—Preacher at the 'Foundling.'—Sydney's 'Grammar +of Life.'—The Picture Mania.—A Living Comes at +Last.—The Wit's Ministry.—The Parsonage House at +Foston-le-Clay.—Country Quiet.— The Universal +Scratcher.—Country Life and Country Prejudice.—The +Genial Magistrate.—Glimpse of Edinburgh Society.—Mrs. +Grant of Laggan.— A Pension Difficulty.—Jeffrey and +Cockburn.—Craigcrook.—Sydney Smith's +Cheerfulness.—His Rheumatic Armour.—No +Bishopric.—Becomes Canon of St. Paul's.—Anecdotes of +Lord Dudley.—A Sharp Reproof.— Sydney's Classification +of Society.—Last Strokes of Humour.</blockquote> +<h3><a href="#Dodington">GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON, LORD +MELCOMBE.</a></h3> +<blockquote>A Dinner-giving lordly Poet.—A Misfortune for a +Man of Society.— Brandenburgh House.—'The Diversions of +the Morning.'—Johnson's Opinion of Foote.—Churchill and +'The Rosciad.'—Personal Ridicule in its Proper +Light.—Wild Specimen of the Poet.—Walpole on +Dodington's 'Diary.'— The best Commentary on a Man's +Life.—Leicester House.—Grace Boyle.— Elegant +Modes of passing Time.—A sad Day.—What does Dodington +come here for?—The Veteran Wit, Beau, and +Politician.—'Defend us from our Executors and +Editors.'</blockquote> +<hr> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h3><a name="Walpole">HORACE WALPOLE.</a></h3> +<blockquote>The Commoners of England.—Horace's Regret for the +Death of his Mother.— 'Little Horace' in Arlington +Street.—Introduced to George I.— Characteristic +Anecdote of George I.—Walpole's Education.—Schoolboy +Days.—Boyish Friendships.—Companionship of +Gray.—A Dreary Doom.— Walpole's Description of Youthful +Delights.—Anecdote of Pope and Frederic of Wales.—The +Pomfrets.—Sir Thomas Robinson's Ball.—An Admirable +Scene.—Political Squibs.—Sir Robert's Retirement from +Office.—The Splendid Mansion of Houghton.—Sir Robert's +Love of Gardening.—What we owe to the 'Grandes +Tours.'—George Vertue.—Men of One Idea.—The Noble +Picture-gallery at Houghton.—The 'Market Pieces.'— Sir +Robert's Death.—The Granville Faction.—A very good +Quarrel.— Twickenham.—Strawberry Hill.—The +Recluse of Strawberry.—Portraits of the Digby +Family.—Sacrilege.—Mrs. Darner's Models.—The Long +Gallery at Strawberry.—The Chapel.—'A Dirty Little +Thing.'—The Society around Strawberry Hill.—Anne +Seymour Conway.—A Man who never Doubted.—Lady Sophia +Fermor's Marriage.—Horace in Favour.—Anecdote of Sir +William Stanhope.—A Paper House.—Walpole's +Habits.—Why did he not Marry?— 'Dowagers as Plenty as +Flounders.'—Catherine Hyde, Duchess of +Queensberry.—Anecdote of Lady Granville.—Kitty +Clive.—Death of Horatio Walpole.—George, third Earl of +Orford.—A Visit to Houghton.—Family +Misfortunes.—Poor Chatterton.—Walpole's Concern with +Chatterton.— Walpole in Paris.—Anecdote of Madame +Geoffrin.—'Who's that Mr. Walpole?'—The Miss +Berrys.—Horace's two 'Straw Berries.'—Tapping a New +Reign.—The Sign of the Gothic Castle.—Growing Old with +Dignity.— Succession to an Earldom.—Walpole's Last +Hours.—Let us not be Ungrateful.</blockquote> +<p>Had this elegant writer, remarks the compiler of 'Walpoliana,' +composed memoirs of his own life, an example authorized by eminent +names, ancient and modern, every other pen must have been dropped +in despair, so true was it that 'he united the good sense of +Fontenelle with the Attic salt and graces of Count Anthony +Hamilton.'</p> +<p>But 'Horace' was a man of great literary modesty, and always +undervalued his own efforts. His life was one of little incident: +it is his character, his mind, the society around him, the period +in which he shone, that give the charm to his correspondence, and +the interest to his biography.</p> +<p>Besides, he had the weakness common to several other fine +gentlemen who have combined letters and <i>haut ton</i>, of being +ashamed of the literary character. The vulgarity of the court, its +indifference to all that was not party writing, whether polemical +or political, cast a shade over authors in his time.</p> +<p>Never was there, beneath all his assumed Whig principles, a more +profound aristocrat than Horace Walpole. He was, by birth, one of +those well-descended English gentlemen who have often scorned the +title of noble, and who have repudiated the notion of merging their +own ancient names in modern titles. The commoners of England hold a +proud pre-eminence. When some low-born man entreated James I. to +make him a gentleman, the well-known answer was, 'Na, na, I canna! +I could mak thee a lord, but none but God Almighty can mak a +gentleman.'</p> +<p>Sir Robert Walpole, afterwards minister to George II., and +eventually Lord Orford, belonged to an ancient family in Norfolk; +he was a third son, and was originally destined for the Church, but +the death of his elder brethren having left him heir to the family +estate, in 1698, he succeeded to a property which ought to have +yielded him £2,000 a year, but which was crippled with +various encumbrances. In order to relieve himself of these, Sir +Robert married Catherine Shorter, the granddaughter of Sir John +Shorter, who had been illegally and arbitrarily appointed Lord +Mayor of London by James II.</p> +<p>Horace was her youngest child, and was born in Arlington Street, +on the 24th of September, 1717, O.S. Six years afterwards he was +inoculated for the small-pox, a precaution which he records as +worthy of remark, since the operation had then only recently been +introduced by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu from Turkey.</p> +<p>He is silent, however, naturally enough, as to one important +point—his real parentage. The character of his mother was by +no means such as to disprove an assertion which gained general +belief: this was, that Horace was the offspring, not of Sir Robert +Walpole, but of Carr, Lord Hervey, the eldest son of the Earl of +Bristol, and the elder brother of Lord Hervey, whose 'Memoirs of +the Court of George II.' are so generally known.</p> +<p>Carr, Lord Hervey, was witty, eccentric, and sarcastic: and from +him Horace Walpole is said to have inherited his wit, his +eccentricity, his love of literature, and his profound contempt for +all mankind, excepting only a few members of a cherished and +exclusive <i>clique</i>.</p> +<p>In the Notes of his life which Horace Walpole left for the use +of his executor, Robert Berry, Esq., and of his daughter, Miss +Berry, he makes this brief mention of Lady Walpole:—'My +mother died in 1737.' He was then twenty years of age.</p> +<p>But beneath this seemingly slight recurrence to his mother, a +regret which never left him through life was buried. Like Cowper, +he mourned, as the profoundest of all sorrows, the loss of that +life-long friend.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'My mother, when I learn'd that thou wast dead,</p> +<p>Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed?</p> +<p>Hovered thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son?</p> +<p>Wretch even then, life's journey just begun.'</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Although Horace in many points bore a strong resemblance to Sir +Robert Walpole, he rarely if ever received from that jovial, +heartless, able man, any proof of affection. An outcast from his +father's heart, the whole force of the boy's love centred in his +mother; yet in after-life no one reverenced Sir Robert Walpole so +much as his supposed son. To be adverse to the minister was to be +adverse to the unloved son who cherished his memory. What 'my +father' thought, did, and said, was law; what his foes dared to +express was heresy. Horace had the family mania strong upon him; +the world was made for Walpoles, whose views were never to be +controverted, nor whose faith impugned. Yet Horace must have +witnessed, perhaps with out comprehending it, much disunion at +home. Lady Walpole. beautiful and accomplished, could not succeed +in riveting her husband to his conjugal duties. Gross +licentiousness was the order of the day, and Sir Robert was among +the most licentious; he left his lovely wife to the perilous +attentions of all the young courtiers who fancied that by courting +the Premier's wife they could secure Walpole's good offices. Sir +Robert, according to Pope, was one of those who—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'Never made a friend in private life,</p> +<p>And was, besides, a tyrant to his wife.</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>At all events, if not a tyrant, he was indifferent to those +circumstances which reflected upon him, and were injurious to her. +He was conscious that he had no right to complain of any infidelity +on her part, and he left her to be surrounded by men whom he knew +to be profligates of the most dangerous pretensions to wit and +elegance.</p> +<p>It was possibly not unfrequently that Horace, his mother's pet, +gleaned in the drawing-rooms of Arlington Street his first notions +of that <i>persiflage</i> which was the fashion of the day. We. can +fancy him a precocious, old-fashioned little boy, at his mother's +apron-string, whilst Carr, Lord Hervey, was paying his devoirs; we +see him gazing with wondering eyes at Pulteney, Earl of Bath, with +his blue ribbon across his laced coat; whilst compassionating +friends observing the pale-faced boy in that hot-house atmosphere, +in which both mind and body were like forced plants, prophesied +that 'little Horace' could not possibly live to be a man.</p> +<p>He survived, however, two sisters, who died in childhood, and +became dearer and dearer to his fond mother.</p> +<p>In his old age, Horace delighted in recalling anecdotes of his +infancy; in these his mother's partiality largely figured. Brought +up among courtiers and ministers, his childish talk was all of +kings and princes; and he was a gossip both by inclination and +habit. His greatest desire in life was to see the king—George +I., and his nurses and attendants augmented his wish by their +exalted descriptions of the grandeur which he effected, in +after-life, to despise. He entreated his mother to take him to St. +James's. When relating the incidents of the scene in which he was +first introduced to a court, Horace Walpole speaks of the 'infinite +good-nature of his father, who never thwarted any of his children,' +and 'suffered him,' he says, 'to be too much indulged.'</p> +<p>Some difficulties attended the fruition of the forward boy's +wish. The Duchess of Kendal was jealous of Sir Robert Walpole's +influence with the king: her aim was to bring Lord Bolingbroke into +power. The childish fancy was, nevertheless, gratified: and under +his mother's care he was conducted to the apartments of the Duchess +of Kendal in St. James's.</p> +<p>'A favour so unusual to be asked by a boy of ten years old,' he +afterwards wrote in his 'Reminiscences,' 'was still too slight to +be refused to the wife of the first minister and her darling +child.' However, as it was not to be a precedent, the interview was +to be private, and at night.</p> +<p>It was ten o'clock in the evening when Lady Walpole, leading her +son, was admitted into the apartments of Melusina de Schulenberg, +Countess of Walsingham, who passed under the name of the Duchess of +Kendal's niece, but who was, in fact, her daughter, by George I. +The polluted rooms in which Lady Walsingham lived were afterwards +occupied by the two mistresses of George II.—the Countess of +Suffolk, and Madame de Walmoden, Countess of Yarmouth.</p> +<p>With Lady Walsingham, Lady Walpole and her little son waited +until, notice having been given that the king had come down to +supper, he was led into the presence of 'that good sort of man,' as +he calls George I. That monarch was pleased to permit the young +courtier to kneel down and kiss his hand. A few words were spoken +by the august personage, and Horace was led back into the adjoining +room.</p> +<p>But the vision of that 'good sort of man' was present to him +when, in old age, he wrote down his recollections for his beloved +Miss Berry. By the side of a tall, lean, ill-favoured old German +lady—the Duchess of Kendal—stood a pale, short, elderly +man, with a dark tie-wig, in a plain coat and waistcoat: these and +his breeches were all of snuff-coloured cloth, and his stockings of +the same colour. By the blue riband alone could the young subject +of this 'good sort of man' discern that he was in the presence of +majesty. Little interest could be elicited in this brief interview, +yet Horace thought it his painful duty, being also the son of a +prime minister, to shed tears when, with the other scholars of Eton +College, he walked in the procession to the proclamation of George +II. And no doubt he was one of <i>very</i> few personages in +England whose eyes Were moistened for that event. Nevertheless, +there was something of <i>bonhommie</i> in the character of George +I. that one misses in his successor. His love of punch, and his +habit of becoming a little tipsy over his private dinners with Sir +Robert Walpole, were English as well as German traits, and were +regarded almost as condescensions; and then he had a kind of slow +wit, that was turned upon the venial officials whose perquisites +were at their disgraceful height in his time.</p> +<p>'A strange country this,' said the monarch, in his most +clamorous German: 'one day, after I came to St. James's, I looked +out of the window, and saw a park, with walks, laurels, &c.; +these they told me were mine. The next day Lord Chetwynd, the +ranger of <i>my</i> park, sends me a brace of carp out of my canal; +I was told, thereupon, that I must give five guineas to Lord +Chetwynd's porter for bringing me my <i>own</i> fish, out of my +<i>own</i> canal, in my <i>own</i> park!' In spite of some +agreeable qualities, George I. was, however, anything but a 'good +sort of man.' It is difficult how to rank the two first Georges; +both were detestable as men, and scarcely tolerable as monarchs. +The foreign deeds of George I. were stained with the supposed +murder of Count Konigsmark: the English career of George II. was +one of the coarsest profligacy. Their example was infamous.</p> +<p>His father's only sister having become the second wife of +Charles Lord Townshend, Horace was educated with his cousins; and +the tutor selected was Edward Weston, the son of Stephen, Bishop of +Exeter; this preceptor was afterwards engaged in a controversy with +Dr. Warburton, concerning the 'Naturalization of the Jews.' By that +learned, haughty disputant, he is termed 'a gazetteer by +profession—by inclination a Methodist.' Such was the man who +guided the dawning intellect of Horace Walpole. Under his care he +remained until he went, in 1727, to Eton. But Walpole's was not +merely a scholastic education: he was destined for the +law—and, on going up to Cambridge, was obliged to attend +lectures on civil law. He went from Eton to King's +College—where he was, however, more disposed to what are +termed accomplishments than to deep reading. At Cambridge he even +studied Italian; at home he learned to dance and fence; and took +lessons in drawing from Bernard Lens, drawing-master to the Duke of +Cumberland and his sisters. It is not to be wondered at that he +left Cambridge without taking a degree.</p> +<p>But fortune was lying, as it were, in wait for him; and various +sinecures had been reserved for the Minister's youngest son: first, +he became Inspector of the Imports and Exports in the Customs; but +soon resigned that post to be Usher of the Exchequer. 'And as +soon,' he writes, 'as I became of age I took possession of two +other little patent places in the Exchequer, called Comptroller of +the Pipe, and Clerk of the Estreats. They had been held for me by +Mr. Fane.'</p> +<p>Such was the mode in which the younger sons were then provided +for by a minister; nor has the unworthy system died out in our +time, although greatly modified.</p> +<p>Horace was growing up meantime, not an awkward, but a somewhat +insignificant youth, with a short, slender figure: which always +retained a boyish appearance when seen from behind. His face was +common-place, except when his really expressive eyes sparkled with +intelligence, or melted into the sweetest expression of kindness. +But his laugh was forced and uncouth: and even in his smile there +was a hard, sarcastic expression that made one regret that he +smiled.</p> +<p>He was now in possession of an income of £1,700 annually, +and he looked naturally to the Continent, to which all young +members of the aristocracy repaired, after the completion of their +collegiate life.</p> +<p>He had been popular at Eton: he was also, it is said, both +beloved and valued at Cambridge. In reference to his Etonian days +he says, in one of his letters, 'I can't say I am sorry I was never +quite a schoolboy: an expedition against bargemen, or a match at +cricket, may be very pretty things to recollect; but, thank my +stars, I can remember things that are very near as pretty. The +beginning of my Roman history was spent in the asylum, or +conversing in Egeria's hallowed grove; not in thumping and +pummelling King Amulius's herdsmen.<a id="footnotetag1" name= +"footnotetag1"></a><a href="#footnote1"><sup>1</sup></a></p> +<p>'I remember,' he adds, 'when I was at Eton, and Mr. Bland had +set me on an extraordinary task, I used sometimes to pique myself +upon not getting it, because it was not immediately my school +business. What! learn more than I was absolutely forced to learn! I +felt the weight of learning that; for I was a blockhead, <i>and +pushed above my parts</i>.'<a id="footnotetag2" name= +"footnotetag2"></a><a href="#footnote2"><sup>2</sup></a></p> +<p>Popular amongst his schoolfellows, Horace formed friendships at +Eton which mainly influenced his after-life. Richard West, the son +of West, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and the grandson, on his +mother's side, of Bishop Burnet; together with a youth named +Assheton—formed, with the poet Gray, and Horace himself, what +the young wit termed the 'Quadruple Alliance.' Then there was the +'triumvirate,' George Montagu, Charles Montagu, and Horace: next +came George Selwyn and Hanbury Williams; lastly, a retired, +studious youth, a sort of foil to all these gay, brilliant young +wits—a certain William Cole, a lover of old books, and of +quaint prints. And in all these boyish friendships, some of which +were carried from Eton to Cambridge, may be traced the foundation +of the Horace Walpole, of Strawberry Hill and of Berkeley Square. +To Gray he owed his ambition to be learned, if +possible—poetical, if nature had not forbidden; to the +Montagus, his dash and spirit; to Sir Hanbury Williams, his turn +for <i>jeux d'esprit</i>, as a part of the completion of a fine +gentleman's education; to George Selwyn, his appreciation of what +was then considered wit—but which we moderns are not worthy +to appreciate. Lord Hertford and Henry Conway, Walpole's cousins, +were also his schoolfellows; and for them he evinced throughout his +long life a warm regard. William Pitt, Lord Chatham—chiefly +remembered at Eton for having been flogged for being out of +bounds—was a contemporary, though not an intimate, of Horace +Walpole's at Eton.</p> +<p>His regard for Gray did him infinite credit: yet never were two +men more dissimilar as they advanced in life. Gray had no +aristocratic birth to boast; and Horace dearly loved birth, +refinement, position, all that comprises the cherished term +'aristocracy.' Thomas Gray, more illustrious for the little his +fastidious judgment permitted him to give to the then critical +world, than many have been in their productions of volumes, was +born in Cornhill—his father being a worthy citizen. He was +just one year older than Walpole, but an age his senior in gravity, +precision, and in a stiff resolution to maintain his independence. +He made one fatal step, fatal to his friendship for Horace, when he +forfeited—by allowing Horace to take him and pay his expenses +during a long continental tour—his independence. Gray had +many points which made him vulnerable to Walpole's shafts of +ridicule; and Horace had a host of faults which excited the stern +condemnation of Gray. The author of the 'Elegy'—which Johnson +has pronounced to be the noblest ode in our language—was one +of the most learned men of his time, 'and was equally acquainted +with the elegant and profound paths of science, and that not +superficially, but thoroughly; knowing in every branch of history, +both natural and civil, as having read all the original historians +of England, France, and Italy; a great antiquarian, who made +criticisms, metaphysics, morals, and politics a principal part of +his plan of study—who was uncommonly fond of voyages and +travels of all sorts—and who had a fine taste in painting, +prints, architecture, and gardening' What a companion for a young +man of taste and sympathy! but the friends were far too clever long +to agree. Gray was haughty, impatient, intolerant of the +peculiarities of others, according to the author of 'Walpoliana:' +doubtless he detected the vanity, the actual selfishness, the want +of earnest feeling in Horace, which had all been kept down at +school, where boys are far more unsparing Mentors than their +betters. In vain did they travel <i>en prince</i>, and all at +Walpole's expense; in vain did they visit courts, and receive +affability from princes: in vain did he of Cornhill participate for +a brief period in the attentions lavished on the son of a British +Prime Minister: they quarrelled—and we almost reverence Gray +for that result, more especially when we find the author of +'Walpoliana' expressing his conviction that 'had it not been for +this idle indulgence of his hasty temper, Mr. Gray would +immediately on his return home have received, as usual, a pension +or office from Sir Robert Walpole.' We are inclined to feel +contempt for the anonymous writer of that amusing little book.</p> +<p>After a companionship of four years, Gray, nevertheless, +returned to London. He had been educated with the expectation of +being a barrister; but finding that funds were wanting to pursue a +legal education, he gave up a set of chambers in the Temple, which +he had occupied previous to his travels, and retired to +Cambridge.</p> +<p>Henceforth what a singular contrast did the lives of these once +fond friends present! In the small, quaint rooms of +Peter-House,<a id="footnotetag3" name="footnotetag3"></a><a href= +"#footnote3"><sup>3</sup></a> Gray consumed a dreary celibacy, +consoled by the Muse alone, who—if other damsels found no +charms in his somewhat piggish, wooden countenance, or in his +manners, replete, it is said, with an unpleasant consciousness of +superiority—never deserted him. His college existence, varied +only by his being appointed Professor of Modern History, was, for a +brief space, exchanged for an existence almost as studious in +London. Between the years 1759 and 1762, he took lodgings, we find, +in Southampton Row—a pleasant locality then, opening to the +fields—in order to be near the British Museum, at that time +just opened to the public. Here his intense studies were, it may be +presumed, relieved by the lighter task of perusing the Harleian +Manuscripts; and here he formed the acquaintance of Mason, a dull, +affected poet, whose celebrity is greater as the friend and +biographer of Gray, than even as the author of those verses on the +death of Lady Coventry, in which there are, nevertheless, some +beautiful lines. Gray died in college—a doom that, next to +ending one's days in a jail or a convent, seems the dreariest. He +died of the gout: a suitable, and, in that region and in those +three-bottle days, almost an inevitable disease; but there is no +record of his having been intemperate.</p> +<p>Whilst Gray was poring over dusty manuscripts, Horace was +beginning that career of prosperity which was commenced by the +keenest enjoyment of existence. He has left us, in his Letters, +some brilliant passages, indicative of the delights of his boyhood +and youth. Like him, we linger over a period still fresh, still +hopeful, still generous in impulse— still strong in faith in +the world's worth—before we hasten on to portray the man of +the world, heartless, not wholly, perhaps, but wont to check all +feeling till it was well-nigh quenched; little minded; bitter, if +not spiteful; with many acquaintances and scarce one +friend—the Horace Walpole of Berkeley Square and Strawberry +Hill.</p> +<p>'Youthful passages of life are,' he says, 'the chippings of +Pitt's diamond, set into little heart-rings with mottoes; the stone +itself more worth, the filings more gentle and agreeable. +Alexander, at the head of the world, never tasted the true pleasure +that boys of his age have enjoyed at the head of a school. Little +intrigues, little schemes and policies engage their thoughts; and +at the same time that they are laying the foundation for their +middle age of life, the mimic republic they live in, furnishes +materials of conversation for their latter age; and old men cannot +be said to be children a second time with greater truth from any +one cause, than their living over again their childhood in +imagination.'</p> +<p>Again: 'Dear George, were not the playing-fields at Eton food +for all manner of flights? No old maid's gown, though it had been +tormented into all the fashions from King James to King George, +ever underwent so many transformations as these poor plains have in +my idea. At first I was contented with tending a visionary flock, +and sighing some pastoral name to the echo of the cascade under the +bridge ... As I got further into Virgil and Clelia, I found myself +transported from Arcadia to the garden of Italy; and saw Windsor +Castle in no other view than the <i>Capitoli immobile +saxum</i>.'</p> +<p>Horace Walpole's humble friend Assheton was another of those +Etonians who were plodding on to independence, whilst he, set +forward by fortune and interest, was accomplishing reputation. +Assheton was the son of a worthy man, who presided over the Grammar +School at Lancaster, upon a stipend of £32 a year. Assheton's +mother had brought to her husband a small estate. This was sold to +educate the 'boys:' they were both clever and deserving. One became +the fellow of Trinity College; the other, the friend of Horace, +rose into notice as the tutor of the young Earl of Plymouth; then +became a D.D., and a fashionable preacher in London; was elected +preacher at Lincoln's Inn; attacked the Methodists; and died, at +fifty-three, at variance with Horace—this Assheton, whom once +he had loved so much.</p> +<p>Horace, on the other hand, after having seen during his travels +all that was most exclusive, attractive, and lofty, both in art and +nature, came home without bringing, he declares, 'one word of +French or Italian for common use.' He professed, indeed, to prefer +England to all other countries. A country tour in England delighted +him: the populousness, the ease in the people also, charmed him. +'Canterbury was a paradise to Modena, Reggio, or Parma.' He had, +before he returned, perceived that nowhere except in England was +there the distinction of 'middling people;' he now found that +nowhere but in England were middling houses. 'How snug they are!' +exclaims this scion of the exclusives. Then he runs on into an +anecdote about Pope and Frederick, Prince of Wales. 'Mr. Pope, said +the prince, 'you don't love princes.' 'Sir, I beg your pardon.' +'Well, you don't love kings, then.' 'Sir, I own I like the lion +better before his claws are grown.' The 'Horace Walpole' began now +to creep out: never was he really at home except in a court +atmosphere. Still he assumed, even at twenty-four, to be the +boy.</p> +<p>'You won't find me,' he writes to Harry Conway, 'much altered, I +believe; at least, outwardly. I am not grown a bit shorter or +fatter, but am just the same long, lean creature as usual. Then I +talk no French but to my footman; nor Italian, but to myself. What +inward alterations may have happened to me you will discover best; +for you know 'tis said, one never knows that one's self. I will +answer, that that part of it that belongs to you has not suffered +the least change—I took care of that. For <i>virtu</i>, I +have a little to entertain you—it is my sole pleasure. I am +neither young enough nor old enough to be in love.'</p> +<p>Nevertheless, it peeps out soon after that the 'Pomfrets' are +coming back. Horace had known them in Italy. The Earl and Countess +and their daughters were just then the very pink of fashion; and +even the leaders of all that was exclusive in the court. Half in +ridicule, half in earnest, are the remarks which, throughout all +the career of Horace, incessantly occur. 'I am neither young enough +nor old enough to be in love,' he says; yet that he was in love +with one of the lovely Fermors is traditionary still in the +family—and that tradition pointed at Lady Juliana, the +youngest, afterwards married to Mr. Penn. The Earl of Pomfret had +been master of the horse to Queen Caroline: Lady Pomfret, lady of +the bed-chamber. 'My Earl,' as the-countess styled him, was +apparently a supine subject to her ladyship's strong will and +wrong-headed ability—which she, perhaps, inherited from her +grandfather, Judge Jeffreys; she being the daughter and heiress of +that rash young Lord Jeffreys, who, in a spirit of braggadocia, +stopped the funeral of Dryden on its way to Westminster, promising +a more splendid procession than the poor, humble cortege—a +boast which he never fulfilled. Lady Sophia Fermor, the eldest +daughter, who afterwards became the wife of Lord Carteret, +resembled, in beauty, the famed Mistress Arabella Fermor, the +heroine of the 'Rape of the Lock.' Horace Walpole admired Lady +Sophia—whom he christened Juno—intensely. Scarcely a +letter drips from his pen—as a modern novelist used to +express it<a id="footnotetag4" name="footnotetag4"></a><a href= +"#footnote4"><sup>4</sup></a>—without some touch of the +Pomfrets. Thus to Sir Horace Mann, then a diplomatist at +Florence:—</p> +<p>'Lady Pomfret I saw last night. Lady Sophia has been ill with a +cold; her head is to be dressed French, and her body English, for +which I am sorry, her figure is so fine in a robe. She is full as +sorry as I am.'</p> +<p>Again, at a ball at Sir Thomas Robinson's, where four-and-twenty +couples danced country-dances, in two sets, twelve and twelve, +'there was Lady Sophia, handsomer than ever, but a little out of +humour at the scarcity of minuets; however, as usual, dancing more +than anybody, and, as usual too, she took out what men she liked, +or thought the best dancers.'...'We danced; for I country-danced +till four, then had tea and coffee, and came home.' Poor Horace! +Lady Sophia was not for a younger son, however gay, talented, or +rich he might be.</p> +<p>His pique and resentment towards her mother, who had higher +views for her beautiful daughter, begin at this period to show +themselves, and never died away.</p> +<p>Lady Townshend was the wit who used to gratify Horace with tales +of her whom he hated—Henrietta-Louisa, Countess of +Pomfret.</p> +<p>'Lady Townshend told me an admirable history: it is of <i>our +friend</i> Lady Pomfret. Somebody that belonged to the Prince of +Wales said, they were going to <i>court</i>; it was objected that +they ought to say to Carlton House; that the only <i>court</i> is +where the king resides. Lady P., with her paltry air of significant +learning and absurdity, said, "Oh, Lord! Is there no <i>court</i> +in England but the king's? Sure, there are many more! There is the +<i>Court</i> of Chancery, the <i>Court</i> of Exchequer, the +<i>Court</i> of King's Bench, &c." Don't you love her? Lord +Lincoln does her daughter—Lady Sophia Fermor. He is come +over, and met me and her the other night; he turned pale, spoke to +her several times in the evening, but not long, and sighed to me at +going away. He came over all alone; and not only his Uncle Duke +(the Duke of Newcastle) but even Majesty is fallen in love with +him. He talked to the king at his levee, without being spoken to. +That was always thought high treason; but I don't know how the +gruff gentleman liked it. And then he had been told that Lord +Lincoln designed to have made the campaign, if we had gone to war; +in short, he says Lord Lincoln is the handsomest man in +England.'</p> +<p>Horace was not, therefore, the only victim to a mother's +ambition: there is something touching in the interest he from time +to time evinces in poor Lord Lincoln's hopeless love. On another +occasion, a second ball of Sir Thomas Robinson's, Lord Lincoln, out +of prudence, dances with Lady Caroline Fitzroy, Mr. Conway taking +Lady Sophia Fermor. 'The two couple were just admirably mismatched, +as everybody soon perceived, by the attentions of each man to the +woman he did not dance with, and the emulation of either lady; it +was an admirable scene.'</p> +<p>All, however, was not country dancing: the young man, 'too old +and too young to be in love,' was to make his way as a wit. He did +so, in the approved way in that day of irreligion, in a political +squib. On July 14th, 1742, he writes in his Notes, 'I wrote the +"<i>Lessons for the Day</i>;" the "Lessons for the day" being the +first and second chapters of the "Book of Preferment,"' Horace was +proud of this <i>brochure</i>, for he says it got about +surreptitiously, and was 'the original of many things of that +sort.' Various <i>jeux d'esprit</i> of a similar sort followed. A +'Sermon on Painting,' which was preached before Sir Robert Walpole, +in the gallery at Houghton, by his chaplain; 'Patapan, or the +Little White Dog,' imitated from La Fontaine. No. 38 of the 'Old +England Journal,' intended to ridicule Lord Bath; and then, in a +magazine, was printed his 'Scheme for a Tax on Message Cards and +Notes.' Next the 'Beauties,' which was also handed about, and got +into print. So that without the vulgarity of publishing, the +reputation of the dandy writer was soon noised about. His religious +tenets may or may not have been sound; but at all events the tone +of his mind assumed at this time a very different character to that +reverent strain in which, when a youth at college, he had +apostrophized those who bowed their heads beneath the vaulted roof +of King's College, in his eulogium in the character of Henry +VI.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'Ascend the temple, join the vocal choir,</p> +<p>Let harmony your raptured souls inspire.</p> +<p>Hark how the tuneful, solemn organs blow,</p> +<p>Awfully strong, elaborately slow;</p> +<p>Now to you empyrean seats above</p> +<p>Raise meditation on the wings of love.</p> +<p>Now falling, sinking, dying to the moan</p> +<p>Once warbled sad by Jesse's contrite son;</p> +<p>Breathe in each note a conscience through the sense,</p> +<p>And call forth tears from soft-eyed Penitence.'</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>In the midst of all his gaieties, his successes, and perhaps his +hopes, a cloud hovered over the destinies of his father. The +opposition, Horace saw, in 1741, wished to ruin his father 'by +ruining his constitution.' They wished to continue their debates on +Saturdays, Sir Robert's only day of rest, when he used to rush to +Richmond New Park, there to amuse himself with a favourite pack of +beagles. Notwithstanding the minister's indifference to this his +youngest son, Horace felt bitterly what he considered a persecution +against one of the most corrupt of modern statesmen.</p> +<p>'Trust me, if we fall, all the grandeur, all the envied grandeur +of our house, will not cost me a sigh: it has given me no pleasure +while we have it, and will give me no pain when I part with it. My +liberty, my ease, and choice of my own friends and company, will +sufficiently counterbalance the crowds of Downing Street. I am so +sick of it all, that if we are victorious or not, I propose leaving +England in the spring.</p> +<p>The struggle was not destined to last long. Sir Robert was +forced to give up the contest and be shelved with a peerage. In +1742, he was created Earl of Orford, and resigned. The wonder is +that, with a mortal internal disease to contend with, he should +have faced his foes so long. Verses ascribed to Lord Hervey ended, +as did all the squibs of the day, with a fling at that 'rogue +Walpole.'</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'For though you have made that rogue Walpole retire,</p> +<p>You are out of the frying-pan into the fire:</p> +<p>But since to the Protestant line I'm a friend,</p> +<p>I tremble to think how these changes may end.'</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Horace, notwithstanding an affected indifference, felt his +father's downfall poignantly. He went, indeed, to court, in spite +of a cold, taken in an unaired house; for the prime minister now +quitted Downing Street for Arlington Street. The court was crowded, +he found, with old ladies, the wives of patriots who had not been +there for 'these twenty years,' and who appeared in the +accoutrements that were in vogue in Queen Anne's time. 'Then', he +writes, 'the joy and awkward jollity of them is inexpressible! They +titter, and, wherever you meet them, are always looking at their +watches an hour before the time. I met several on the birthday (for +I did not arrive time enough to make clothes), and they were +dressed in all the colours of the rainbow. They seem to have said +to themselves, twenty years ago, "Well, if ever I do go to court +again, I will have a pink and silver, or a blue and silver;" and +they keep their resolutions.'</p> +<p>Another characteristic anecdote betrays his ill-suppressed +vexation:—</p> +<p>'I laughed at myself prodigiously the other day for a piece of +absence. I was writing, on the king's birthday, and being disturbed +with the mob in the street, I rang for the porter and with an air +of grandeur, as if I was still at Downing Street, cried, "Pray send +away those marrow-bones and cleavers."</p> +<p>The poor fellow, with the most mortified air in the world, +replied, "Sir, they are not at <i>our</i> door, but over the way, +at my Lord Carteret's."—"Oh!" said I, "then let them alone; +may be, he does not dislike the noise!" I pity the poor porter, who +sees all his old customers going over the way too.'</p> +<p>The retirement of Sir Robert from office had an important effect +on the tastes and future life of his son Horace. The minister had +been occupying his later years in pulling down his old ancestral +house at Houghton, and in building an enormous mansion, which has +since his time been, in its turn, partially demolished. When +Harley, Earl of Orford, was known to be erecting a great house for +himself, Sir Robert had remarked that a minister who did so +committed a great imprudence. When Houghton was begun, Sir Hynde +Aston reminded Sir Robert of this speech. 'You ought to have +recalled it to me before,' was the reply; 'for before I began +building, it might have been of use to me.'</p> +<p>This famous memorial of Walpolean greatness, this splendid +folly, constructed, it is generally supposed, on public money, was +inhabited by Sir Robert only ten days in summer, and twenty days in +winter; in the autumn, during the shooting season, two months. It +became almost an eyesore to the quiet gentry, who viewed the palace +with a feeling of their own inferiority. People as good as the +Walpoles lived in their gable-ended, moderate-sized mansions; and +who was Sir Robert, to set them at so immense a distance?</p> +<p>To the vulgar comprehension of the Premier, Houghton, gigantic +in its proportions, had its purposes. He there assembled his +supporters; there, for a short time, he entertained his +constituents and coadjutors with a magnificent, jovial hospitality, +of which he, with his gay spirits, his humourous, indelicate jokes, +and his unbounded good-nature, was the very soul. Free +conversation, hard-drinking, were the features of every day's +feast. Pope thus describes him:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'Seen him, I have, but in his happier hour,</p> +<p>Of social pleasure, ill exchanged for power;</p> +<p>Seen him uncumbered with the venal tribe,</p> +<p>Smile without art, and win without a bribe.'</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Amid the coarse taste one gentle refinement existed: this was +the love of gardening, both in its smaller compass and it its +nobler sense of landscape gardening. 'This place,' Sir Robert, in +1743, wrote to General Churchill, from Houghton, 'affords no news, +no subject of entertainment or amusement; for fine men of wit and +pleasure about town understand neither the language and taste, nor +the pleasure of the inanimate world. My flatterers here are all +mutes: the oaks, the beeches, the chestnuts, seem to contend which +best shall please the lord of the manor. They cannot deceive; they +will not lie. I in sincerity admire them, and have as many beauties +about me as fill up all my hours of dangling, and no disgrace +attending me, from sixty-seven years of age. Within doors we come a +little nearer to real life, and admire, upon the almost speaking +canvas, all the airs and graces the proudest ladies can boast.'</p> +<p>In these pursuits Horace cordially shared. Through his agency, +Horace Mann, still in the diplomatic service, at Florence, selected +and purchased works of art, which were sent either to Arlington +Street, or to form the famous Houghton Collection, to which Horace +so often refers in that delightful work, his 'Anecdotes of +Painting.'</p> +<p>Amongst the embellishments of Houghton, the gardens were the +most expensive.</p> +<p>'Sir Robert has pleased himself,' Pulteney, Earl of Bath, wrote, +'with erecting palaces and extending parks, planting gardens in +places to which the very earth was to be transported in carriages, +and embracing cascades and fountains whose water was only to be +obtained by aqueducts and machines, and imitating the extravagance +of Oriental monarchs, at the expense of a free people whom he has +at once impoverished and betrayed.'</p> +<p>The ex-minister went to a great expense in the cultivation of +plants, bought Uvedale's 'Hortus Siccus;' and received from +Bradley, the Professor of Botany at Cambridge, the tribute of a +dedication, in which it was said that 'Sir Robert had purchased one +of the finest collections of plants in the kingdom.'</p> +<p>What was more to his honour still, was Sir Robert's preservation +of St. James's Park for the people. Fond of outdoor amusements +himself, the Premier heard, with dismay, a proposal on the part of +Queen Caroline to convert that ancient park into a palace garden. +'She asked my father,' Horace Walpole relates, 'what the alteration +might possibly cost?'—<i>Only three crowns</i>' was the +civil, witty, candid answer. The queen was wise enough to take the +hint. It is possible she meant to convert the park into gardens +that should be open to the public as at Berlin, Mannheim, and even +the Tuileries. Still it would not have been ours.</p> +<p>Horace Walpole owed, perhaps, his love of architecture and his +taste for gardening, partly to the early companionship of Gray, who +delighted in those pursuits. Walpole's estimation of pictures, +medals, and statues, was however the fruit of a long residence +abroad. We are apt to rail at continental nations; yet had it not +been for the occasional intercourse with foreign nations, art would +have altogether died out among us. To the 'Grandes Tours,' +performed as a matter of course by our young nobility in the most +impressionable period of their lives we owe most of our noble +private collections. Charles I. and Buckingham, renewed, in their +travels in Spain, the efforts previously made by Lord Arundel and +Lord Pembroke, to embellish their country seats. Then came the +Rebellion; and like a mighty rushing river, made a chasm in which +much perished. Art languished in the reign of the second Charles, +excepting in what related to portrait painting. Evelyn stood almost +alone in his then secluded and lovely retirement at Wotton; apart +in his undying exertions still to arrest the Muses ere they quitted +for ever English shores. Then came the deadly frost of William's +icy influence. The reign of Anne was conspicuous more for letters +than for art: architecture, more especially, was vulgarized under +Vanbrugh. George I. had no conception of anything abstract: taste, +erudition, science, art, were like a dead language to his common +sense, his vulgar profligacy, and his personal predilections. +Neither George II. nor his queen had an iota of taste, either in +language, conduct, literature, or art. To be vulgar, was +<i>haut-ton;</i> to be refined, to have pursuits that took one from +low party gossip, or heterodox disquisitions upon party, was +esteemed odd: everything original was cramped; everything +imaginative was sneered at; the enthusiasm that is elevated by +religion was unphilosophic; the poetry that is breathed out from +the works of genius was not comprehended.</p> +<p>It was at Houghton, under the roof of that monster palace, that +Horace Walpole indulged that tastes for pictures which he had +acquired in Italy. His chief coadjutor, however, as far as the +antiquities of painting are concerned, was George Vertue, the +eminent engraver. Vertue was a man of modest merit, and was +educated merely as an engraver; but, conscious of talent, studied +drawing, which he afterwards applied to engraving. He was +patronised both by the vain Godfrey Kneller and by the intellectual +Lord Somers: yet his works have more fidelity than elegance, and +betray in every line the antiquary rather than the genius. Vertue +was known to be a first-rate authority as to the history of a +painter; he was admitted and welcomed into every great country +house in England; he lived in an atmosphere of vertù every +line a dilettante collector wrote, every word he uttered, was +minuted down by him; he visited every collection of rarities; he +copied every paper he could find relative to art; registers of +wills, and registers of parishes, for births and deaths were his +delight; sales his recreation. He was the 'Old Mortality' of +pictures in this country. No wonder that his compilations were +barely contained in forty volumes, which he left in manuscript. +Human nature has singular varieties: here was a man who expended +his very existence in gathering up the works of others, and died +without giving to the world one of his own. But Horace Walpole has +done him justice. After Vertue's death he bought his manuscripts +from his widow. In one of his pocket-books was contained the whole +history of this man of one idea: Vertue began his collection in +1713, and worked at it until his death in 1757, forty-four +years.</p> +<p>He died in the belief that he should one day publish an unique +work on painting and painters: such was the aim of his existence, +and his study must have been even more curious than the wonderfully +crammed, small house at Islington, where William Upcott, the 'Old +Mortality' in his line, who saved from the housemaid's +fire-lighting designs the MSS. Of Evelyn's</p> +<p>Life and Letters, which he found tossing about in the old +gallery at Wotton, near Dorking, passed his days. Like Upcott, like +Palissy, Vertue lived and died under the influence of one isolated +aim, effort, and hope.</p> +<p>In these men, the cherished and amiable monomania of gifted +minds was realized. Upcott had every possible autograph from every +known hand in his collection: Palissy succeeded in making glazed +china; but Vertue left his ore to the hands of others to work out +into shape, and the man who moulded his crude materials was Horace +Walpole, and Vertue's forty volumes were shaped into a readable +work, as curious and accurate in facts as it is flippant and +prejudiced in style and opinions.</p> +<p>Walpole's 'Anecdotes of Painting' are the foundation of all our +small amount of knowledge as to what England has done formerly to +encourage art.</p> +<p>One may fancy the modest, ingenious George Vertue arranging +first, and then making a catalogue of the Houghton Gallery; Horace, +a boy still, in looks,—with a somewhat chubby face, admiring +and following: Sir Robert, in a cocked hat, edged with silver lace, +a curled short wig, a loose coat, also edged with silver lace, and +with a half humorous expression on his vulgar countenance, watching +them at intervals, as they paraded through the hall, a large square +space, adorned with bas-reliefs and busts, and containing a bronze +copy of the Laocoon, for which Sir Robert (or rather we English) +paid a thousand pounds; or they might be seen hopping speedily +through the ground-floor apartments where there could be little to +arrest the footsteps of the mediaeval-minded Vertue. Who but a +courtier could give one glance at a portrait of George I., though +by Kneller? Who that <i>was</i> a courtier in that house would +pause to look at the resemblance, also by Kneller, of the +short-lived, ill-used Catherine Shorter, the Premier's first +wife—even though he still endured it in his bed-room? a mute +reproach for his neglect and misconduct. So let us hasten to the +yellow dining-room where presently we may admire the works of +Titian, Guido, Vanderwerf, and last, not least, eleven portraits by +Vandyck, of the Wharton family, which Sir Robert bought at the sale +of the spendthrift Duke of Wharton.</p> +<p>Then let us glance at the saloon, famed for the four large +'Market Pieces,' as they were called, by Rubens and Snyders: let us +lounge into what were called the Carlo Maratti and the Vandyck +rooms; step we also into the green velvet bed-chamber, the +tapestry-room, the worked bed chamber; then comes another +dining-room: in short, we are lost in wonder at this noble +collection, which cost £40,000.</p> +<p>Many of the pictures were selected and bargained for by Vertue, +who, in Flanders, purchased the Market Pieces referred to, for +£428; but did not secure the 'Fish Market,' and the 'Meat +Market,' by the same painter. In addition to the pictures, the +stateliness and beauty of the rooms were enhanced by rich +furniture, carving, gilding, and all the subsidiary arts which our +grandfathers loved to add to high merit in design or colouring. +Besides his purchases, Sir Robert received presents of pictures +from friends, and expectant courtiers; and the gallery at Houghton +contained at last 222 pictures. To our sorrow now, to our disgrace +then, this splendid collection was suffered to go out of the +country: Catherine, empress of Russia, bought it for £40,000, +and it adorns the Hermitage Palace of St. Petersburgh.</p> +<p>After Sir Robert's retirement from power, the good qualities +which he undoubtedly possessed, seemed to re-appear as soon as the +pressure of party feeling was withdrawn. He was fast declining in +health when the insurrection of 1745 was impending. He had warned +the country of its danger in his last speech, one of the finest +ever made in the House of Lords: after that effort his voice was +heard no more. The gallant, unfortunate Charles Edward was then at +Paris, and that scope of old experience</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>——'which doth attain</p> +<p>To somewhat of prophetic strain,'</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>showed the ex-minister of Great Britain that an invasion was at +hand. It was on this occasion that Frederick, Prince of Wales, took +Sir Robert, then Lord Orford, by the hand, and thanked him for his +zeal in the cause of the royal family. Walpole returned to Norfolk, +but was summoned again to London to afford the ministry the benefit +of his counsels. Death, however, closed his prosperous, but +laborious life. He suffered agonies from the stone; large doses of +opium kept him in a state of stupor, and alone gave him ease; but +his strength failed, and he was warned to prepare himself for his +decease. He bore the announcement with great fortitude, and took +leave of his children in perfect resignation to his doom. He died +on the 28th of March, 1745.</p> +<p>Horace Walpole—whatsoever doubts may rest on the fact of +his being Lord Orford's son or not—writes feelingly and +naturally upon this event, and its forerunner, the agonies of +disease. He seems, from the following passages in his letters to +Sir Horace Mann, to have devoted himself incessantly to the patient +invalid: on his father having rallied, he thus expresses +himself:—</p> +<p>'You have heard from your brother the reason of my not having +written to you so long. I have been out but twice since my father +fell into this illness, which is now near a month, and all that +time either continually in his room, or obliged to see multitudes +of people: for it is wonderful how everybody of all kinds has +affected to express their concern for him! He has been out of +danger this week; but I can't say he mended at all perceptibly till +these last three days. His spirits are amazing, and his +constitution more, for Dr. Hulse said honestly from the first, that +if he recovered it would be from his own strength, not from their +art. How much more,' he adds, mournfully, 'he will ever recover, +one scarce dare hope about; for us, he is greatly recovered; for +himself—' He then breaks off.</p> +<p>A month after we find him thus referring to the parent still +throbbing in mortal agony on the death-bed, with no chance of +amendment:—</p> +<p>'How dismal a prospect for him, with the possession of the +greatest understanding in the world, not the least impaired, to lie +without any use for it! for to keep him from pains and +restlessness, he takes so much opiate, that he is scarce awake four +hours of the four-and-twenty; but I will say no more of this.'</p> +<p>On the 29th of March, he again wrote to his friend in the +following terms:—</p> +<p>'I begged your brothers to tell you what it is impossible for me +to tell you. You share in our common loss! Don't expect me to enter +at all upon the subject. After the melancholy two months that I +have passed, and in my situation, you will not wonder I shun a +conversation which could not be bounded by a letter, a letter that +would grow into a panegyric or a piece of a moral; improper for me +to write upon, and too distressful for us both! a death is only to +be felt, never to be talked upon by those it touches.'</p> +<p>Nevertheless, the world soon had Horace Walpole for her own +again; during Lord Orford's last illness, George II. Thought of +him, it seems, even though the 'Granvilles' were the only people +tolerated at court. That famous <i>clique</i> comprised the +secretly adored of Horace (Lady Granville now), Lady Sophia +Fermor.</p> +<p>'The Granville faction,' Horace wrote, before his father's +death, 'are still the constant and only countenanced people at +court. Lord Winchelsea, one of the disgraced, played at court at +Twelfth-night, and won; the king asked him next morning how much he +had for his own share. He replied, "Sir, about a quarter's salary." +I liked the spirit, and was talking to him of it the next night at +Lord Granville's. "Why yes," said he, "I think it showed +familiarity at least: tell it your father, I don't think he will +dislike it."'</p> +<p>The most trifling incidents divided the world of fashion and +produced the bitterest rancour. Indeed, nothing could exceed the +frivolity of the great, except their impertinence. For want of +better amusements, it had become the fashion to make conundrums, +and to have printed books full of them, which were produced at +parties. But these were peaceful diversions. The following anecdote +is worthy of the times of George II. and of Frederick of +Wales:—</p> +<p>'There is a very good quarrel,' Horace writes, 'on foot, between +two duchesses: she of Queensberry sent to invite Lady Emily Lenox +to a ball: her grace of Richmond, who is wonderfully cautious since +Lady Caroline's elopement (with Mr. Fox), sent word "she could not +determine." The other sent again the same night: the same answer. +The Queensberry then sent word, that she had made up her company, +and desired to be excused from having Lady Emily's; but at the +bottom of the card wrote, "Too great trust." There is no +declaration of war come out from the other duchess: but I believe +it will be made a national quarrel of the whole illegitimate royal +family.'</p> +<p>Her Grace of Queensberry, Prior's 'Kitty, beautiful and young,' +lorded it, with a tyrannical hand, over the court. Her famed +loveliness was, it is true, at this time on the wane. Her portrait +delineating her in her bib and tucker, with her head rolled back +underneath a sort of half cap, half veil, shows how intellectual +was the face to which such incense was paid for years. Her forehead +and eyebrows are beautiful: her eyes soft though lively in +expression: her features refined. She was as whimsical in her +attire as in her character. When, however, she chose to appear as +the <i>grande dame</i>, no one could cope with her, Mrs. Delany +describes her at the Birth-day,—her dress of white satin, +embroidered with vine leaves, convolvuluses, rose-buds, shaded +after nature; but she, says her friend, 'was <i>so far</i> beyond +the master-<i>piece of art</i> that one could hardly think of her +clothes—allowing for her age I never saw so <i>beautiful a +creature</i>.'</p> +<p>Meantime, Houghton was shut up: for its owner died £50,000 +in debt, and the elder brother of Horace, the second Lord Orford, +proposed, on entering it again, after keeping it closed for some +time, to enter upon 'new, and then very unknown economy, for which +there was great need:' thus Horace refers to the changes.</p> +<p>It was in the South Sea scheme that Sir Robert Walpole had +realized a large sum of money, by selling out at the right moment. +In doing so he had gained 1000 per cent. But he left little to his +family, and at his death, Horace received a legacy only of +£5,000, and a thousand pounds yearly, which he was to draw +(for doing nothing) from the collector's place in the Custom House; +the surplus to be divided between his brother Edward and himself: +this provision was afterwards enhanced by some money which came to +Horace and his brothers from his uncle Captain Shorter's property; +but Horace was not at this period a rich man, and perhaps his not +marrying was owing to his dislike of fortune-hunting, or to his +dread of refusal.</p> +<p>Two years after his father's death, he took a small house at +Twickenham: the property cost him nearly £14,000; in the +deeds he found that it was called Strawberry Hill. He soon +commenced making considerable additions to the house—which +became a sort of raree-show in the latter part of the last, and +until a late period in this, century.</p> +<p>Twickenham—so called, according to the antiquary Norden, +because the Thames, as it flows near it, seems from the islands to +be divided into two rivers,—had long been celebrated for its +gardens, when Horace Walpole, the generalissimo of all bachelors, +took Strawberry Hill. 'Twicknam is as much as Twynam,' declares +Norden, 'a place scytuate between two rivers.' So fertile a +locality could not be neglected by the monks of old, the great +gardeners and tillers of land in ancient days; and the Manor of +Twickenham was consequently given to the monks of Christ Church, +Canterbury, by King Edred, in 491; who piously inserted his +anathema against any person—whatever their rank, sex, or +order—who should infringe the rights of these holy men. 'May +their memory,' the king decreed, with a force worthy of the +excommunicator-wholesale, Pius IX., 'be blotted out of the Book of +Life; may their strength continually waste away, and be there no +restorative to repair it!' nevertheless, there were in the time of +Lysons, a hundred and fifty acres of fruit-gardens at Twickenham: +the soil being a sandy loam, raspberries grew plentifully. Even so +early as Queen Elizabeth's days, Bishop Corbet's father had a +nursery garden at Twickenham,—so that King Edred's curse +seems to have fallen as powerlessly as it may be hoped all +subsequent maledictions may do.</p> +<p>In 1698, one of the Earl of Bradford's coachmen built a small +house on a piece of ground, called in old works, +Strawberry-Hill-Shot; lodgings were here let, and Colley Cibber +became one of the occupants of the place, and here wrote his Comedy +called 'Refusal; or the Ladies' Philosophy.' The spot was so +greatly admired that Talbot, Bishop of Durham, lived eight years in +it, and the Marquis of Carnarvon succeeded him as a tenant: next +came Mrs. Chenevix, a famous toy-woman. She was probably a French +woman, for Father Courayer—he who vainly endeavoured to +effect an union between the English and the Gallican +churches—lodged here some time. Horace Walpole bought up Mrs. +Chenevix's lease, and afterwards the fee-simple; and henceforth +became the busiest, if not the happiest, man in a small way in +existence.</p> +<p><a name="030"></a></p> +<div class="figcenter"><a href="images/030.png"><img src= +"images/030sm.png" alt="Strawberry Hill from the Thames"></a> +<h4>"STRAWBERRY HILL FROM THE THAMES"</h4> +</div> +<p>We now despise the poor, over-ornate miniature Gothic style of +Strawberry Hill; we do not consider with what infinite pains the +structure was enlarged into its final and well-known form. In the +first place, Horace made a tour to collect models from the chief +cathedral cities in England; but the building required twenty-three +years to complete it. It was begun in 1753, and finished in 1776. +Strawberry Hill had one merit, everything was in keeping: the +internal decorations, the screens, the niches, the chimney-pieces, +the book-shelves, were all Gothic; and most of these were designed +by Horace himself; and, indeed, the description of Strawberry Hill +is too closely connected with the annals of his life to be +dissevered from his biography. Here he gathered up his mental +forces to support and amuse himself during a long life, sometimes +darkened by spleen, but rarely by solitude; for Horace, with much +isolation of the heart, was, to the world, a social being.</p> +<p>What scandal, what trifles, what important events, what +littleness of mind, yet what stretch of intellect were henceforth +issued by the recluse of Strawberry, as he plumed himself on being +styled, from that library of 'Strawberry!' Let us picture to +ourselves the place, the persons—put on, if we can, the +sentiments and habits of the retreat; look through its loopholes, +not only on the wide world beyond, but into the small world within; +and face the fine gentleman author in every period of his varied +life.</p> +<p>'The Strawberry Gazette,' Horace once wrote to a fine and titled +lady, 'is very barren of weeds.' Such, however, was rarely the +case. Peers, and still better, peeresses,—politicians, +actors, actresses,—the poor poet who knew not where to dine, +the Maecenas who was 'fed with dedications'—the belle of the +season, the demirep of many, the antiquary, and the +dilettanti,—painters, sculptors, engravers, all brought news +to the 'Strawberry Gazette;' and incense, sometimes wrung from +aching hearts, to the fastidious wit who professed to be a judge of +all material and immaterial things—from a burlesque to an +Essay on history or Philosophy—from the construction of Mrs. +Chenevix's last new toy to the mechanism of a clock made in the +sixteenth century, was lavished there.</p> +<p>Suppose that it is noon-day: Horace is showing a party of guests +from London over Strawberry:—enter we with him, and let us +stand in the great parlour before a portrait by Wright of the +Minister to whom all courts bowed. 'That is my father, Sir Robert, +in profile,' and a vulgar face in profile is always seen at its +vulgarest; and the <i>nex-retroussé,</i> the coarse mouth, +the double chin, are most forcibly exhibited in this limning by +Wright; who did not, like Reynolds, or like Lawrence, cast a +<i>nuance</i> of gentility over every subject of his pencil. +Horace—can we not hear him in imagination?—is telling +his friends how Sir Robert used to celebrate the day on which he +sent in his resignation, as a fête; then he would point out +to his visitors a Conversation-piece, one of Reynolds's earliest +efforts in small life, representing the second Earl of Edgecumbe, +Selwyn, and Williams—-all wits and beaux, and +<i>habitués</i> of Strawberry. Colley Cibber, however, was +put in cold marble in the anteroom; a respect very <i>Horatian</i>, +for no man knew better how to rank his friends than the recluse of +Strawberry. He hurries the lingering guests through the little +parlour, the chimneypiece of which was copied from the tomb of +Ruthall, Bishop of Durham, in Westminster Abbey. Yet how he pauses +complacently to enumerate what has been done for him by titled +belles: how these dogs, modelled in terra-cotta, are the production +of Anne Darner; a water-colour drawing by Agnes Berry; a landscape +with gipsies by Lady Di Beauclerk;—all platonically devoted +to our Horace; but he dwells long, and his bright eyes are lighted +up as he pauses before a case, looking as if it contained only a +few apparently faded, of no-one-knows-who (or by whom) miniatures; +this is a collection of Peter Oliver's best works—portraits +of the Digby family.</p> +<p>How sadly, in referring to these invaluable pictures, does one's +mind revert to the day when, before the hammer of Robins had +resounded in these rooms—before his transcendent eloquence +had been heard at Strawberry—Agnes Strickland, followed by +all eyes, pondered over that group of portraits: how, as she slowly +withdrew, we of the commonalty scarce worthy to look, gathered +around the spot again, and wondered at the perfect life, the +perfect colouring, proportion, and keeping of those tiny vestiges +of a bygone generation!</p> +<p>Then Horace—we fear it was not till his prime was past, +and a touch of gout crippled his once active limbs—points to +a picture of Rose, the gardener (well named), presenting Charles +II. with a pine-apple. Some may murmur a doubt whether pine-apples +were cultivated in cold Britain so long since. But Horace enforces +the fact; 'the likeness of the king,' quoth he, 'is too marked, and +his features are too well known to doubt the fact;' and then he +tells 'how he had received a present the last Sunday of +fruit—and from whom.'</p> +<p>They pause next on Sir Peter Lely's portrait of +Cowley—next on Hogarth's Sarah Malcolm, the murderess of her +mistress; then—and doubtless, the spinster ladies are in +fault here for the delay,—on Mrs. Damer's model of two +kittens, pets, though, of Horace Walpole's—for he who loved +few human beings was, after the fashion of bachelors, fond of +cats.</p> +<p>They ascend the staircase: the domestic adornments merge into +the historic. We have Francis I.—not himself, but his armour: +the chimneypiece, too, is a copy from the tomb-works of John, Earl +of Cornwall, in Westminster Abbey; the stonework from that of +Thomas, Duke of Clarence, at Canterbury.</p> +<p>Stay awhile: we have not done with sacrilege yet; worse things +are to be told, and we walk with consciences not unscathed into the +Library, disapproving in secret but flattering vocally. Here the +very spirit of Horace seemed to those who visited Strawberry before +its fall to breathe in every corner. Alas! when we beheld that +library, it was half filled with chests containing the celebrated +MSS. of his letters; which were bought by that enterprising +publisher of learned name, Richard Bentley, and which have since +had adequate justice done them by first-rate editors. There they +were: the 'Strawberry Gazette' in full;—one glanced merely at +the yellow paper, and clear, decisive hand, and then turned to see +what objects he, who loved his books so well, collected for his +especial gratification. Mrs. Damer again! how proud he was of her +genius—her beauty, her cousinly love for himself; the wise +way in which she bound up the wounds of her breaking heart when her +profligate husband shot himself, by taking to +occupation—perhaps, too, by liking cousin Horace +indifferently well. He put her models forward in every place. Here +was her Osprey Eagle in terra-cotta, a masterly production; there a +<i>couvre-fire,</i> or <i>cur-few,</i> imitated and modelled by +her. Then the marriage of Henry VI. Figures on the wall; near the +fire is a screen of the first tapestry ever made in England, +representing a map of Surrey and Middlesex; a notion of utility +combined with ornament, which we see still exhibited in the Sampler +in old-fashioned, middle-class houses; that poor posthumous, +base-born child of the tapestry, almost defunct itself; and a +veritable piece of antiquity.</p> +<p>Still more remarkable in this room was a quaint-faced clock, +silver gilt, given by Henry VIII. to Anne Boleyn; which perchance, +after marking the moments of her festive life, struck unfeelingly +the hour of her doom.</p> +<p>But the company are hurrying into a little ante-room, the +ceiling of which is studded with stars in mosaic; it is therefore +called jocularly, the 'Star Chamber;' and here stands a cast of the +famous bust of Henry VII., by Torregiano, intended for the tomb of +that sad-faced, long-visaged monarch, who always looks as if +royalty had disagreed with him.</p> +<p>Next we enter the Holbein Chamber. Horace hated bishops and +archbishops, and all the hierarchy; yet here again we behold +another prelatical chimneypiece—a frieze taken from the tomb +of Archbishop Warham, at Canterbury. And here, in addition to +Holbein's picture of Mary Tudor, Duchess of Suffolk, and of her +third husband Adrian Stokes, are Vertue's copies of Holbein, +drawings of that great master's pictures in Buckingham House: +enough—let us hasten into the Long Gallery. Those who +remember Sir Samuel Merrick and his Gallery at Goodrich Court will +have traced in his curious, somewhat gew gaw collections of armour, +antiquities, faded portraits, and mock horses, much of the taste +and turn of mind that existed in Horace Walpole.</p> +<p>The gallery, which all who recollect the sale at Strawberry Hill +must remember with peculiar interest, sounded well on paper. It was +56 feet long, 17 high, and 13 wide; yet was neither long enough, +high enough, nor wide enough to inspire the indefinable sentiment +by which we acknowledge vastness. We beheld it the scene of George +Robins's triumphs—crowded to excess. Here strolled Lord John +Russell; there, with heavy tread, walked Daniel O'Connell. Hallam, +placid, kindly, gentle—the prince of book-worms—moved +quickly through the rooms, pausing to raise a glance to the +ceiling—copied from one of the side aisles of Henry VII.'s +Chapel—but the fretwork is gilt, and there is +<i>petitesse</i> about the Gothic which disappoints all good +judges.</p> +<p>But when Horace conducted his courtly guests into this his +mind-vaunted vaulted gallery, he had sometimes George Selwyn at his +side; or Gray—or, in his old age, 'my niece, the Duchess of +Gloucester,' leaned on his arm. What strange associations, what +brilliant company!—the associations can never be recalled +there again; nor the company reassembled. The gallery, like +everything else, has perished under the pressure of debt. He who +was so particular, too, as to the number of those who were admitted +to see his house—he who stipulated that four persons only +should compose a party, and one party alone be shown over each +day—how would he have borne the crisis, could he have +foreseen it, when Robins became, for the time, his successor, and +was the temporary lord of Strawberry; the dusty, ruthless, +wondering, depreciating mob of brokers—the respectable host +of publishers—the starving army of martyrs, the +authors—the fine ladies, who saw nothing there comparable to +Howell and James's—the antiquaries, fishing out suspicious +antiquities—the painters, clamorous over Kneller's profile of +Mrs. Barry—the virtuous indignant mothers, as they passed by +the portraits of the Duchess de la Valliere, and of Ninon de +l'Enclos, and remarked, or at all events they <i>might</i> have +remarked, that the company on the floor was scarcely much more +respectable than the company on the walls—the fashionables, +who herded together, impelled by caste, that free-masonry of social +life, enter the Beauclerk closet to look over Lady Di's scenes from +the 'Mysterious Mother'—the players and dramatists, finally, +who crowded round Hogarth's sketch of his 'Beggars' Opera,' with +portraits, and gazed on Davison's likeness of Mrs. Clive:—how +could poor Horace have tolerated the sound of their irreverent +remarks, the dust of their shoes, the degradation of their fancying +that they might doubt his spurious-looking antiquities, or condemn +his improper-looking ladies on their canvas? How, indeed, could he? +For those parlours, that library, were peopled in his days with all +those who could enhance his pleasures, or add to their own, by +their presence. When Poverty stole in there, it was irradiated by +Genius. When painters hovered beneath the fretted ceiling of that +library, it was to thank the oracle of the day, not always for +large orders, but for powerful recommendations. When actresses trod +the Star Chamber, it was as modest friends, not as audacious +critics on Horace, his house, and his pictures.</p> +<p>Before we call up the spirits that were familiar at +Strawberry—ere we pass through the garden-gate, the piers of +which were copied from the tomb of Bishop William de Luda, in Ely +Cathedral—let us glance at the chapel, and then a word or two +about Walpole's neighbours and anent Twickenham.</p> +<p>The front of the chapel was copied from Bishop Audley's tomb at +Salisbury. Four panels of wood, taken from the Abbey of St. +Edmund's Bury, displayed the portraits of Cardinal Beaufort, of +Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, and of Archbishop Kemp. So much for +the English church.</p> +<p>Next was seen a magnificent shrine in mosaic, from the church of +St. Mary Maggiore, in Rome. This was the work of the noted Peter +Cavalini, who constructed the tomb of Edward the Confessor in +Westminster Abbey. The shrine had figured over the sepulchre of +four martyrs, who rested between it in 1257: then the principal +window in the chapel was brought from Bexhill in Sussex; and +displayed portraits of Henry III. and his queen.</p> +<p>It was not every day that gay visitors travelled down the dusty +roads from London to visit the recluse at Strawberry: but Horace +wanted them not, for he had neighbours. In his youth he had owned +for his playfellow the ever witty, the precocious, the +all-fascinating Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. 'She was,' he wrote, 'a +playfellow of mine when we were children. She was always a dirty +little thing. This habit continued with her. When at Florence, the +Grand Duke gave her apartments in his palace. One room sufficed for +everything; and when she went away, the stench was so strong that +they were obliged to fumigate the chamber with vinegar for a +week.'</p> +<p>Let not the scandal be implicitly credited. Lady Mary, dirty or +clean, resided occasionally, however, at Twickenham. When the +admirable Lysons composed his 'Environs of London,' Horace Walpole +was still living—it was in 1795—to point out to him the +house in which his brilliant acquaintance lived. It was then +inhabited by Dr. Morton. The profligate and clever Duke of Wharton +lived also at Twickenham.</p> +<p>Marble Hill was built by George II, for the countess of Suffolk, +and Henry, Earl of Pembroke, was the architect. Of later years, the +beautiful and injured Mrs. Fitzherbert might be seen traversing the +greensward, which was laved by the then pellucid waters of the +Thames. The parish of Twickenham, in fact, was noted for the +numerous characters who have, at various times, lived in it: Robert +Boyle, the great philosopher; James Craggs, Secretary of State; +Lord George Germaine; Lord Bute—are strangely mixed up with +the old memories which circle around Twickenham to say nothing of +its being, in after years, the abode of Louis Philippe, and now, of +his accomplished son.</p> +<p>One dark figure in the background of society haunts us also: +Lady Macclesfield, the cruel mother of Savage, polluted Twickenham +by her evil presence.</p> +<p>Let us not dwell on her name, but recall, with somewhat of +pride, that the names of that knot of accomplished, intellectual +women, who composed the neighbourhood of Strawberry, were all +English; those who loved to revel in all its charms of society and +intellect were our justly-prized countrywomen.</p> +<p>Foremost in the bright constellation was Anne Seymour Conway, +too soon married to the Hon. John Darner. She was one of the +loveliest, the most enterprizing, and the most gifted women of her +time—thirty-one years younger than Horace, having been born +in 1748. He doubtless liked her the more that no ridicule could +attach to his partiality, which was that of a father to a daughter, +insofar as regarded his young cousin. She belonged to a family dear +to him, being the daughter of Field Marshal Henry Seymour Conway: +then she was beautiful, witty, a courageous politician, a heroine, +fearless of losing caste, by aspiring to be an artist. She was, in +truth, of our own time rather than of that. The works which she +left at Strawberry are scattered; and if still traceable, are +probably in many instances scarcely valued. But in that lovely +spot, hallowed by the remembrance of Mrs. Siddons, who lived there +in some humble capacity—say maid, say companion—in +Guy's Cliff House, near Warwick—noble traces of Anne Damer's +genius are extant: busts of the majestic Sally Siddons; of Nature's +aristocrat, John Kemble; of his brother Charles—arrest many a +look, call up many a thought of Anne Damer and her gifts: her +intelligence, her warmth of heart, her beauty, her associates. Of +her powers Horace Walpole had the highest opinion. 'If they come to +Florence,' he wrote, speaking of Mrs. Damer's going to Italy for +the winter, 'the great duke should beg Mrs. Damer to give him +something of her statuary; and it would be a greater curiosity than +anything in his Chamber of Painters. She has executed several +marvels since you saw her; and has lately carved two colossal heads +for the bridge at Henley, which is the most beautiful in the world, +next to the Ponte di Trinità and was principally designed by +her father, General Conway.'</p> +<p>No wonder that he left to this accomplished relative the +privilege of living, after his death, at Strawberry Hill, of which +she took possession in 1797, and where she remained twenty years; +giving it up, in 1828, to Lord Waldegrave.</p> +<p>She was, as we have said, before her time in her appreciation of +what was noble and superior, in preference to that which gives to +caste alone, its supremacy. During her last years she bravely +espoused an unfashionable cause; and disregarding the contempt of +the lofty, became the champion of the injured and unhappy Caroline +of Brunswick.</p> +<p>From his retreat at Strawberry, Horace Walpole heard all that +befel the object of his flame, Lady Sophia Fermor. His letters +present from time to time such passages as these; Lady Pomfret, +whom he detested, being always the object of his satire:—</p> +<p>'There is not the least news; but that my Lord Carteret's +wedding has been deferred on Lady Sophia's (Fermor's) falling +dangerously ill of a scarlet fever; but they say it is to be next +Saturday. She is to have £1,600 a year jointure, £400 +pin-money, and £2,000 of jewels. Carteret says he does not +intend to marry the mother (Lady Pomfret) and the whole family. +What do you think my Lady intends?'</p> +<p>Lord Carteret, who was the object of Lady Pomfret's successful +generalship, was at this period, 1744, fifty-four years of age, +having been born in 1690. He was the son of George, Lord Carteret, +by Grace, daughter of the first Earl of Bath, of the line of +Granville—a title which became eventually his. The fair +Sophia, in marrying him, espoused a man of no ordinary attributes. +In person, Horace Walpole, after the grave had closed over one whom +he probably envied, thus describes him:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'Commanding beauty, smoothed by cheerful grace,</p> +<p>Sat on each open feature of his face.</p> +<p>Bold was his language, rapid, glowing, strong,</p> +<p>And science flowed spontaneous from his tongue:</p> +<p>A genius seizing systems, slighting rules,</p> +<p>And void of gall, with boundless scorn of fools.'</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>After having been Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Carteret attended +his royal master in the campaign, during which the Battle of +Dettingen was fought. He now held the reins of government in his +own hands as premier. Lord Chesterfield has described him as +possessing quick precision, nice decision, and unbounded +presumption. The Duke of Newcastle used to say of him that he was a +'man who never doubted.'</p> +<p>In a subsequent letter we find the sacrifice of the young and +lovely Sophia completed. Ambition was the characteristic of her +family: and she went, not unwillingly, to the altar. The whole +affair is too amusingly told to be given in other language than +that of Horace:—</p> +<p>'I could tell you a great deal of news,' he writes to Horace +Mann, 'but it would not be what you would expect. It is not of +battles, sieges, and declarations of war; nor of invasions, +insurrections and addresses: it is the god of love, not he of war, +who reigns in the newspapers. The town has made up a list of +six-and-thirty weddings, which I shall not catalogue to you. But +the chief entertainment has been the nuptials of our great Quixote +(Carteret) and the fair Sophia. On the point of matrimony, she fell +ill of a scarlet fever, and was given over, while he had the gout, +but heroically sent her word, that if she was well, he <i>would</i> +be well. They corresponded every day, and he used to plague the +cabinet council with reading her letters to them. Last night they +were married; and as all he does must have a particular air in it, +they supped at Lord Pomfret's. At twelve, Lady Granville (his +mother) and all his family went to bed, but the porter: then my +lord went home, and waited for her in the lodge. She came alone, in +a hackney chair, met him in the hall, and was led up the back +stairs to bed. What is ridiculously lucky is, that Lord Lincoln +goes into waiting to-day, and will be to present her!'</p> +<p>The event was succeeded by a great ball at the Duchess of +Richmond's, in honour of the bride, Lady Carteret paying her +ladyship the 'highest honours,' which she received in the 'highest +state.' 'I have seen her,' adds Horace, 'but once, and found her +just what I expected, <i>très grande dame</i>, full of +herself, and yet not with an air of happiness. She looks ill, and +is grown lean, but is still the finest figure in the world. The +mother (Lady Pomfret) is not so exalted as I expected; I fancy +Carteret has kept his resolution, and does not marry her too.'</p> +<p>Whilst this game was being played out, one of Walpole's most +valued neighbours, Pope, was dying of dropsy, and every evening a +gentle delirium possessed him. Again does Horace return to the +theme, ever in his thoughts—the Carterets: again does he +recount their triumphs and their follies.</p> +<p>'I will not fail'—still to Horace Mann—'to make your +compliments to the Pomfrets and Carterets. I see them seldom but I +am in favour; so I conclude, for my Lady Pomfret told me the other +night that I said better things than anybody. I was with them all +at a subscription ball at Ranelagh last week, which my Lady +Carteret thought proper to look upon as given to her, and thanked +the gentlemen, who were not quite so well pleased at her +condescending to take it to herself. I did the honours of all her +dress. "How charming your ladyship's cross is! I am sure the design +was your own!"—"No, indeed; my lord sent it me just as it +is." Then as much to the mother. Do you wonder I say better things +than anybody?'</p> +<p>But these brilliant scenes were soon mournfully ended. Lady +Sophia, the haughty, the idolized, the Juno of that gay circle, was +suddenly carried off by a fever. With real feeling Horace thus +tells the tale:—</p> +<p>'Before I talk of any public news, I must tell you what you will +be very sorry for. Lady Granville (Lady Sophia Fermor) is dead. She +had a fever for six weeks before her lying-in, and could never get +it off. Last Saturday they called in another physician, Dr. Oliver. +On Monday he pronounced her out of danger; about seven in the +evening, as Lady Pomfret and Lady Charlotte (Fermor) were sitting +by her, the first notice they had of her immediate danger was her +sighing and saying, "I feel death come very fast upon me!" She +repeated the same words frequently, remained perfectly in her +senses and calm, and died about eleven at night. It is very +shocking for anybody so young, so handsome, so arrived at the +height of happiness, to be so quickly snatched away.'</p> +<p>So vanished one of the brightest stars of the court. The same +autumn (1745) was the epoch of a great event; the marching of +Charles Edward into England. Whilst the Duke of Cumberland was +preparing to head the troops to oppose him, the Prince of Wales was +inviting a party to supper, the main feature of which was the +citadel of Carlisle in sugar, the company all besieging it with +sugar-plums. It would, indeed, as Walpole declared, be impossible +to relate all the <i>Caligulisms</i> of this effeminate, absurd +prince. But buffoonery and eccentricity were the order of the day. +'A ridiculous thing happened,' Horace writes, 'when the princess +saw company after her confinement. The new-born babe was shown in a +mighty pretty cradle, designed by Kent, under a canopy in the great +drawing-room. Sir William Stanhope went to look at it. Mrs, +Herbert, the governess, advanced to unmantle it. He said, "In wax, +I suppose?" "Sir?" "In wax, madam?" "The young prince, sir?" "Yes, +in wax, I suppose?" This is his odd humour. When he went to see the +duke at his birth, he said, "Lord, it sees!"'</p> +<p>The recluse of Strawberry was soon consoled by hearing that the +rebels were driven back from Derby, where they had penetrated, and +where the remembrance of the then gay, sanguine, brave young +Chevalier long lingered among the old inhabitants. One of the last +traces of his short-lived possession of the town is gone: very +recently, Exeter House, where he lodged and where he received his +adherents, has been pulled down; the ground on which it stood, with +its court and garden—somewhat in appearace like an old French +hotel—being too valuable for the relic of bygone times to be +spared. The panelled chambers, the fine staircase, certain +pictures—one by Wright of Derby, of him—one of Miss +Walkinshaw—have all disappeared.</p> +<p>Of the capture, the trial, the death of his adherents, Horace +Walpole has left the most graphic and therefore touching account +that has been given; whilst he calls a 'rebellion on the defensive' +a 'despicable affair.' Humane, he reverted with horror to the +atrocities of General Hawley, 'the Chief Justice,' as he was +designated, who had a 'passion for frequent and sudden executions.' +When this savage commander gained intelligence of a French spy +coming over, he displayed him at once before the army on a gallows, +dangling in his muff and boots. When one of the surgeons begged for +the body of a deserter to dissect, 'Well,' said the wretch, 'but +you must let me have the skeleton to hang up in the guard-room,' +Such was the temper of the times; vice, childishness, levity at +court, brutality in the camp, were the order of the day. Horace, +even Horace, worldly in all, indifferent as to good and bad, seems +to have been heart sick. His brother's matrimonial infidelity vexed +him also sorely. Lady Orford, 'tired,' as he expresses it, of +'sublunary affairs,' was trying to come to an arrangement with her +husband, from whom she had been long separated; the price was to +be, he fancied, £2,000 a year. Meantime, during the +convulsive state of political affairs, he interested himself +continually in the improvement of Strawberry Hill. There was a +rival building, Mr. Bateman's Monastery, at Old Windsor, which is +said to have had more uniformity of design than Strawberry Hill. +Horace used indeed to call the house of which he became so proud a +paper house; the walls were at first so slight, and the roof so +insecure in heavy rains. Nevertheless, his days were passed as +peacefully there as the premature infirmities which came upon him +would permit.</p> +<p>From the age of twenty-five his fingers were enlarged and +deformed by chalk-stones, which were discharged twice a year. 'I +can chalk up a score with more rapidity than any man in England,' +was his melancholy jest. He had now adopted as a necessity a strict +temperance: he sat up very late, either writing or conversing, yet +always breakfasted at nine o'clock. After the death of Madame du +Deffand, a little fat dog, scarcely able to move for age and +size—her legacy—used to proclaim his approach by +barking. The little favourite was placed beside him on a sofa; a +tea-kettle, stand, and heater were brought in, and he drank two or +three cups of tea out of the finest and most precious china of +Japan—that of a pure white. He breakfasted with an appetite, +feeding from his table the little dog and his pet squirrels.</p> +<p>Dinner at Strawberry Hill was usually served up in the small +parlour in winter, the large dining-room being reserved for large +parties. As age drew on, he was supported down stairs by his valet; +and then, says the compiler of Walpoliana, 'he ate most moderately +of chicken, pheasant, or any light food. Pastry he disliked, as +difficult of digestion, though he would taste a morsel of +venison-pie. Never but once, that he drank two glasses of white +wine, did the editor see him taste any liquor, except ice-water. A +pail of ice was placed under the table, in which stood a decanter +of water, from which he supplied himself with his favourite +beverage.'</p> +<p>No wine was drunk after dinner, when the host of Strawberry Hill +called instantly to some one to ring the bell for coffee. It was +served upstairs, and there, adds the same writer, 'he would pass +about five o'clock, and generally resuming his place on the sofa, +would sit till two in the morning, in miscellaneous chit-chat, full +of singular anecdotes, strokes of wit, and acute observations, +occasionally sending for books, or curiosities, or passing to the +library, as any reference happened to arise in conversation. After +his coffee, he tasted nothing; but the snuff-box of <i>tabac +d'etrennes</i>, from Fribourg's, was not forgotten, and was +replenished from a canister lodged in an ancient marble urn of +great thickness, which stood in the window seat, and served to +secure its moisture and rich flavour.'</p> +<p>In spite of all his infirmities, Horace Walpole took no care of +his health, as far as out-door exercise was concerned. His friends +beheld him with horror go out on a dewy day: he would even step out +in his slippers. In his own grounds he never wore a hat: he used to +say, that on his first visit to Paris he was ashamed of his +effeminacy, when he saw every meagre little Frenchman whom he could +have knocked down in a breath walking without a hat, which he could +not do without a certainty of taking the disease which the Germans +say is endemical in England, and which they call <i>to catch +cold</i>. The first trial, he used to tell his friends, cost him a +fever, but he got over it. Draughts of air, damp rooms, windows +open at his back, became matters of indifference to him after once +getting through the hardening process. He used even to be vexed at +the officious solicitude of friends on this point, and with half a +smile would say, 'My back is the same as my face, and my neck is +like my nose.' He regarded his favourite iced-water as a +preservative to his stomach, which, he said, would last longer than +his bones. He did not take into account that the stomach is usually +the seat of disease.</p> +<p>One naturally inquires why the amiable recluse never, in his +best days, thought of marriage: a difficult question to be +answered. In men of that period, a dissolute life, an unhappy +connection, too frequently explained the problem. In the case +before us no such explanation can be offered. Horace Walpole had +many votaries, many friends, several favourites, but no known +mistress. The marks of the old bachelor fastened early on him, more +especially after he began to be governed by his <i>valet de +chambre</i>. The notable personage who ruled over the pliant Horace +was a Swiss, named Colomb. This domestic tyrant was despotic; if +Horace wanted a tree to be felled, Colomb opposed it, and the +master yielded. Servants, in those days, were intrinsically the +same as in ours, but they differed in manner. The old familiarity +had not gone out, but existed as it still does among the French. +Those who recollect Dr. Parr will remember how stern a rule his +factotum Sam exercised over him. Sam put down what wine he chose, +nay, almost invited the guests; at all events, he had his +favourites among them. And in the same way as Sam ruled at Hatton, +Colomb was, <i>de facto,</i> the master of Strawberry Hill.</p> +<p>With all its defects, the little 'plaything house' as Horace +Walpole called it, must have been a charming house to visit in. +First, there was the host. 'His engaging manners,' writes the +editor of Walpoliana, 'and gentle, endearing affability to his +friends, exceed all praise. Not the smallest hauteur, or +consciousness of rank or talent, appeared in his familiar +conferences; and he was ever eager to dissipate any constraint that +might occur, as imposing a constraint upon himself, and knowing +that any such chain enfeebles and almost annihilates the mental +powers. Endued with exquisite sensibility, his wit never gave the +smallest wound, even to the grossest ignorance of the world, or the +most morbid hypochondriac bashfulness.'</p> +<p>He had, in fact, no excuse for being doleful or morbid. How many +resources were his! what an even destiny! what prosperous fortunes! +What learned luxury he revelled in! he was enabled to 'pick up all +the roses of science, and to leave the thorns behind.' To how few +of the gifted have the means of gratification been permitted! to +how many has hard work been allotted! Then, when genius has been +endowed with rank, with wealth, how often it has been degraded by +excess! Rochester's passions ran riot in one century: Beckford's +gifts were polluted by his vices in another—signal landmarks +of each age. But Horace Walpole was prudent, decorous, even +respectable: no elevated aspirations, no benevolent views ennobled +under the <i>petitesse</i> of his nature. He had neither genius nor +romance: he was even devoid of sentiment; but he was social to all, +neighbourly to many, and attached to some of his +fellow-creatures.</p> +<p>The 'prettiest bauble' possible, as he called Strawberry Hill, +'set in enamelled meadows in filigree hedges,' was surrounded by +'dowagers as plenty as flounders;' such was Walpole's assertion. As +he sat in his library, scented by caraway, heliotropes, or pots of +tuberose, or orange-trees in flower, certain dames would look in +upon him, sometimes <i>malgrê lui</i>, sometimes to his +bachelor heart's content.</p> +<p>'Thank God!' he wrote to his cousin Conway, 'the Thames is +between me and the Duchess of Queensberry!' Walpole's dislike to +his fair neighbour may partly have originated in the circumstance +of her birth, and her grace's presuming to plume herself on what he +deemed an unimportant distinction. Catherine Hyde, Duchess of +Queensberry, was the great-granddaughter of the famous Lord +Clarendon, and the great-niece of Anne, Duchess of York. Prior had +in her youth celebrated her in the 'Female Phaëton,' as +'Kitty:' in his verse he begs Phaëton to give Kitty the +chariot, if but for a day.</p> +<p>In reference to this, Horace Walpole, in the days of his +admiration of her grace, had made the following +impromptu:—</p> +<p>'On seeing the Duchess of Queensberry walk at the funeral of the +Princess Dowager of Wales,—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'To many a Kitty, Love his car</p> +<p>Would for a day engage;</p> +<p>But Prior's Kitty, ever fair,</p> +<p>Obtained it for an age.'</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>It was Kitty who took Gay under her patronage, who resented the +prohibition of the 'Beggar's Opera,' remonstrated with the king and +queen, and was thereupon forbidden the court. She carried the poet +to her house. She may have been ridiculous, but she had a warm, +generous heart. 'I am now,' Gay wrote to Swift in 1729, 'in the +Duke of Queensberry's house, and have been so ever since I left +Hampstead; where I was carried at a time that it was thought I +could not live a day. I must acquaint you (because I know it will +please you) that during my sickness I had many of the kindest +proofs of friendship, particularly from the Duke and Duchess of +Queensberry; who, if I had been their nearest relation and dearest +friend, could not have treated me with more constant attendance +then, and they continue the same to me now.'</p> +<p>The duchess appears to have been one of those wilful, eccentric, +spoiled children, whom the world at once worships and ridicules: +next to the Countess of Pomfret, she was Horace Walpole's pet +aversion. She was well described as being 'very clever, very +whimsical, and just not mad.' Some of Walpole's touches are +strongly confirmatory of this description. For instance, her grace +gives a ball, orders every one to come at six, to sup at twelve, +and go away directly after: opens the ball herself with a minuet. +To this ball she sends strange invitations; 'yet,' says Horace, +'except these flights, the only extraordinary thing the duchess did +was to do nothing extraordinary, for I do not call it very mad that +some pique happening between her and the Duchess of Bedford, the +latter had this distich sent to her;—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'Come with a whistle—come with a call:</p> +<p>Come with good-will, or come not at all.'</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>'I do not know whether what I am going to tell you did not +border a little upon Moorfields. The gallery where they danced was +very cold. Lord Lorn, George Selwyn, and I retired into a little +room, and sat comfortably by the fire. The duchess looked in, said +nothing, and sent a smith to take the hinges of the door oft. We +understood the hint—left the room—and so did the smith +the door.'</p> +<p>'I must tell you,' he adds in another letter, 'of an admirable +reply of your acquaintance, the Duchess of Queensberry: old Lady +Granville, Lord Carteret's mother, whom they call <i>the +queen-mother</i>, from taking upon her to do the honours of her +son's power, was pressing the duchess to ask her for some place for +herself or friends, and assured her that she would procure it, be +it what it would. Could she have picked out a fitter person to be +gracious to? The duchess made her a most grave curtsey, and said, +"Indeed, there was one thing she had set her heart on."—"Dear +child, how you oblige me by asking anything! What is it? Tell +me."—"Only that you would speak to my Lord Carteret to get me +made lady of the bedchamber to the Queen of Hungary."'</p> +<p>The duchess was, therefore, one of the dowagers, 'thick as +flounders,' whose proximity was irritating to the fastidious +bachelor. There was, however, another Kitty between whom and Horace +a tender friendship subsisted: this was Kitty Clive, the famous +actress; formerly Kitty Ruftar. Horace had given her a house on his +estate, which he called sometimes 'Little Strawberry Hill,' and +sometimes 'Cliveden;' and here Mrs. Clive lived with her brother, +Mr. Ruftar, until 1785. She formed, for her friend, a sort of +outer-home, in which he passed his evenings. Long had he admired +her talents. Those were the days of the drama in all its glory: the +opera was unfashionable. There were, Horace writes in 1742, on the +26th of May, only two-and-forty people in the Opera House, in the +pit and boxes: people were running to see 'Miss Lucy in Town,' at +Drury Lane, and to admire Mrs. Clive, in her imitation of the +Muscovites; but the greatest crowds assembled to wonder at Garrick, +in 'Wine Merchant turned Player;' and great and small alike rushed +to Goodman's Fields to see him act all parts, and to laugh at his +admirable mimicry. It was perhaps, somewhat in jealousy of the +counter attraction, that Horace declared he saw nothing wonderful +in the acting of Garrick, though it was then heresy to say so. 'Now +I talk of players,' he adds in the same letter, 'tell Mr. Chute +that his friend Bracegirdle breakfasted with me this morning.' +Horace delighted in such intimacies, and in recalling old +times.</p> +<p>Mrs. Abingdon, another charming and clever actress, was also a +denizen of Twickenham, which became the most fashionable village +near the metropolis. Mrs. Pritchard, likewise, was attracted there; +but the proximity of the Countess of Suffolk, who lived at Marble +Hill was the delight of a great portion of Horace Walpole's life. +Her reminiscences, her anecdotes, her experience, were valuable as +well as entertaining to one who was for ever gathering up materials +for history, or for biography, or for letters to absent +friends.</p> +<p>In his own family he found little to cheer him: but if he hated +one or two more especially—and no one could hate more +intensely than Horace Walpole—it was his uncle, Lord Wapole, +and his cousin, that nobleman's son, whom he christened Pigwiggin; +'my monstrous uncle;' 'that old buffoon, my uncle;' are terms which +occur in his letters, and he speaks of the bloody civil wars +between 'Horatio Walpole' and 'Horace Walpole.'</p> +<p>Horatio Walpole, the brother of Sir Robert, was created in June, +1756, Baron Walpole of Wolterton, as a recompense for fifty years +passed in the public service—an honour which he only survived +nine months. He expired in February, 1757. His death removed one +subject of bitter dislike from the mind of Horace; but enough +remained in the family to excite grief and resentment.</p> +<p>Towards his own two brothers, Robert, Earl of Orford, and Edward +Walpole, Horace the younger, as he was styled in contradistinction +to his uncle, bore very little affection. His feelings, however, +for his nephew George, who succeeded his father as Earl of Orford +in 1751, were more creditable to his heart; yet he gives a +description of this ill-fated young man in his letters, which shows +at once pride and disapprobation. One lingers with regret over the +character and the destiny of this fine young nobleman, whose +existence was rendered miserable by frequent attacks, at intervals, +of insanity.</p> +<p>Never was there a handsomer, a more popular, a more engaging +being than George, third Earl of Orford. When he appeared at the +head of the Norfolk regiment of militia, of which he was colonel, +even the great Lord Chatham broke out into +enthusiasm:—'Nothing,' he wrote, 'could make a better +appearance than the two Norfolk battalions; Lord Orford, with the +front of Mars himself, and really the greatest figure under arms I +ever saw, as the theme of every tongue.' His person and air, Horace +Walpole declared, had a noble wildness in them: crowds followed the +battalions when the king reviewed them in Hyde Park; and among the +gay young officers in their scarlet uniforms, faced with black, in +their buff waistcoats and gold buttons, none was so conspicuous for +martial bearing as Lord Onord, although classed by his uncle 'among +the knights of shire who had never in their lives shot anything but +woodcocks.'</p> +<p>But there was a peculiarity of character in the young peer which +shocked Horace. 'No man,' he says in one of his letters, 'ever felt +such a disposition to love another as I did to love him. I +flattered myself that he would restore some lustre to our +house—at least not let it totally sink; but I am forced to +give him up, and all my Walpole views.... He has a good breeding, +and attention when he is with you that is even flattering;... he +promises, offers everything one can wish; but this is all: the +instant he leaves you, all the world are nothing to him; he would +not give himself the least trouble in the world to give any one +satisfaction; yet this is mere indolence of mind, not of body: his +whole pleasure is outrageous exercise.'</p> +<p>'He is,' in another place Horace adds, 'the most selfish man in +the world: without being in the least interested, he loves nobody +but himself, yet neglects every view of fortune and ambition. Yet,' +he concludes, 'it is impossible not to love him when one sees him: +impossible to esteem him when one thinks on him.'</p> +<p>The young lord, succeeding to an estate deeply encumbered, both +by his father and grandfather, rushed on the turf, and involved +himself still more. In vain did Horace the younger endeavour to +secure for him the hand of Miss Nicholls, an heiress with +£50,000, and, to that end, placed the young lady with Horace +the elder (Lord Walpole), at Wolterton. The scheme failed: the +crafty old politician thought he might as well benefit his own sons +as his nephew, for he had himself claims on the Houghton estate +which he expected Miss Nicholl's fortune might help to +liquidate.</p> +<p>At length the insanity and recklessness displayed by his +nephew—the handsome martial George—induced poor Horace +to take affairs in his own hands. His reflections, on his paying a +visit to Houghton to look after the property there, are +pathetically expressed:—</p> +<p>'Here I am again at Houghton,' he writes in March, 1761, 'and +alone; in this spot where (except two hours last month) I have not +been in sixteen years. Think what a crowd of reflections!... Here I +am probably for the last time of my life: every clock that strikes, +tells me I am an hour nearer to yonder church—that church +into which I have not yet had courage to enter; where lies that +mother on whom I doated, and who doated on me! There are the two +rival mistresses of Houghton, neither of whom ever wished to enjoy +it. There, too, is he who founded its greatness—to contribute +to whose fall Europe was embroiled; there he sleeps in quiet and +dignity, while his friend and his foe—rather his false ally +and real enemy—Newcastle and Bath, are exhausting the dregs +of their pitiful lives in squabbles and pamphlets.</p> +<p>When he looked at the pictures—that famous Houghton +collection—the surprise of Horace was excessive. Accustomed +to see nothing elsewhere but daubs, he gazed with ecstasy on them. +'The majesty of Italian ideas,' he says, 'almost sinks before the +warm nature of Italian colouring! Alas! don't I grow old?'</p> +<p>As he lingered in the gallery, with mingled pride and sadness, a +party arrived to see the house—a man and three women in +riding-dresses—who 'rode post' through the apartments. 'I +could not,' he adds, 'hurry before them fast enough; they were not +so long in seeing the whole gallery as I could have been in one +room, to examine what I knew by heart. I remember formerly being +often diverted with this kind of <i>seers</i>; they come, ask what +such a room is called in which Sir Robert lay, write it down, +admire a lobster or a cabbage in a Market Piece, dispute whether +the last room was green or purple, and then hurry to the inn, for +fear the fish should be over-dressed. How different my sensations! +not a picture here but recalls a history; not one but I remembered +in Downing Street, or Chelsea, where queens and crowds admired +them, though seeing them as little as these travellers!<a id= +"footnotetag5" name="footnotetag5"></a><a href= +"#footnote5"><sup>5</sup></a></p> +<p>After tea he strolled into the garden. They told him it was now +called a <i>pleasure-ground.</i> To Horace it was a scene of +desolation—a floral Nineveh. 'What a dissonant idea of +pleasure!—those groves, those <i>allées</i>, where I +have passed so many charming moments, were now stripped up or +overgrown—many fond paths I could not unravel, though with an +exact clue in my memory. I met two gamekeepers, and a thousand +hares! In the days when all my soul was tuned to pleasure and +vivacity (and you will think perhaps it is far from being out of +tune yet), I hated Houghton and its solitude; yet I loved this +garden, as now, with many regrets, I love Houghton—Houghton, +I know not what to call it—a monument of grandeur or +ruin!'</p> +<p>Although he did not go with the expectation of finding a land +flowing with milk and honey, the sight of all this ruin long +saddened his thoughts. All was confusion, disorder, debts, +mortgages, sales, pillage, villainy, waste, folly, and madness. The +nettles and brambles in the park were up to his shoulders; horses +had been turned into the garden, and banditti lodged in every +cottage.</p> +<p>The perpetuity of livings that came up to the very park-palings +had been sold, and the farms let at half their value. Certainly, if +Houghton were bought by Sir Robert Walpole with public money, that +public was now avenged.</p> +<p>The owner of this ruined property had just stemmed the torrent; +but the worst was to come. The pictures were sold, and to Russia +they went.</p> +<p>Whilst thus harassed by family misfortunes, other annoyances +came. The mournful story of Chatterton's fate was painfully mixed +up with the tenour of Horace Walpole's life.</p> +<p>The gifted and unfortunate Thomas Chatterton was born at Bristol +in 1752. Even from his birth fate seemed to pursue him, for he was +a posthumous son: and if the loss of a father in the highest ranks +of life be severely felt, how much more so is it to be deplored in +those which are termed the working classes!</p> +<p>The friendless enthusiast was slow in learning to read; but when +the illuminated capitals of an old book were presented to him, he +quickly learned his letters. This fact, and his being taught to +read out of a black-letter Bible, are said to have accounted for +his facility in the imitation of antiquities. Pensive and taciturn, +he picked up education at a charity-school, until apprenticed to a +scrivener, when he began that battle of life which ended to him so +fatally.</p> +<p>Upon very slight accidents did his destiny hinge. In those days +women worked with thread, and used thread-papers. Now paper was, at +that time, dear: dainty matrons liked tasty thread-papers. A pretty +set of thread-papers, with birds or flowers painted on each, was no +mean present for a friend. Chatterton, a quiet child, one day +noticed that his mother's thread-papers were of no ordinary +materials. They were made of parchment, and on this parchment was +some of the black-letter characters by which his childish attention +had been fixed to his book. The fact was, that his uncle was sexton +to the ancient church of St. Mary Redcliffe, at Bristol; and the +parchment was the fruit of theft. Chatterton's father had carried +off, from a room in the church, certain ancient manuscripts, which +had been left about; being originally abstracted from what was +called Mr. Canynge's coffin. Mr. Canynge, an eminent merchant, had +rebuilt St. Mary Redcliffe in the reign of Edward IV.: and the +parchments, therefore, were of some antiquity. The antiquary groans +over their loss in vain: Chatterton's father had covered his books +with them; his mother had used up the strips for thread-papers; and +Thomas Chatterton himself contrived to abstract a considerable +portion also, for his own purposes.</p> +<p>He was ingenious, industrious, a poet by nature, and, wonderful +to say, withal a herald by taste. Upon his nefarious possessions, +he founded a scheme of literary forgeries; purporting to be ancient +pieces of poetry found in Canynge's chest; and described as being +the production of Thomas Canynge and of his friend, one Thomas +Rowley, a priest. Money and books were sent to Chatterton in return +for little strips of vellum, which he passed off as the original +itself; and the successful forger might now be seen in deep +thought, walking in the meadows near Redcliffe; a marked, admired, +poetic youth.</p> +<p>In 1769, Chatterton wrote to Horace Walpole, offering to send +him some accounts of eminent painters who had flourished at +Bristol, and at the same time mentioning the discovery of the +poems, and enclosing some specimens. In a subsequent letter he +begged Walpole to aid him in his wish to be freed from his then +servile condition, and to be placed in one more congenial to his +pursuits.</p> +<p>In his choice of a patron poor Chatterton made a fatal mistake. +The benevolence of Horace was of a general kind, and never +descended to anything obscure or unappreciated. There was a certain +hardness in that nature of his which had so pleasant an aspect. 'An +artist,' he once said, 'has his pencils—an author his +pens—and the public must reward them as it pleases.' Alas! he +forgot how long it is before penury, even ennobled by genius, can +make itself seen, heard, approved, repaid: how vast is the +influence of <i>prestige!</i> how generous the hand which is +extended to those in want, even if in error! All that Horace did, +however, was strictly correct: he showed the poems to Gray and +Mason, who pronounced them forgeries; and he wrote a cold and +reproving letter to the starving author: and no one could blame +him: Chatterton demanded back his poems; Walpole was going to +Paris, and forgot to return them. Another letter came: the wounded +poet again demanded them, adding that Walpole would not have dared +to use him so had he not been poor. The poems were returned in a +blank cover: and here all Walpole's concern with Thomas Chatterton +ends. All this happened in 1769. In August, 1770, the remains of +the unhappy youth were carried to the burial-ground of Shoe Lane +workhouse, near Holborn. He had swallowed arsenic; had lingered a +day in agonies; and then, at the age of eighteen expired. +Starvation had prompted the act: yet on the day before he had +committed it, he had refused a dinner, of which he was invited by +his hostess to partake, assuring her that he was not hungry. Just +or unjust, the world has never forgiven Horace Walpole for +Chatterton's misery. His indifference has been contrasted with the +generosity of Edmund Burke to Crabbe: a generosity to which we owe +'The Village,' 'The Borough,' and to which Crabbe owed his peaceful +old age, and almost his existence. The cases were different; but +Crabbe had his faults—and Chatterton was worth saving. It is +well for genius that there are souls in the world more +sympathizing, less worldly, and more indulgent, than those of such +men as Horace Walpole. Even the editor of 'Walpoliana' lets +judgment go by default. 'As to artists,' he says, 'he paid them +what they earned, and he commonly employed mean ones, that the +reward might be smaller.'</p> +<p>Let us change the strain: stilled be the mournful note on which +we have rested too long. What have wits and beaux and men of +society to do with poets and beggars? Behold, Horace, when he has +written his monitory letter, packs up for Paris. Let us follow him +there, and see him in the very centre of his pleasures—in the +<i>salon</i> of La Marquise du Deffand.</p> +<p>Horace Walpole had perfected his education, as a fine gentleman, +by his intimacy with Madame Geoffrin, to whom Lady Hervey had +introduced him. She called him <i>le nouveau Richelieu</i>; and +Horace was sensible of so great a compliment from a woman at once +'<i>spirituelle</i> and <i>pieuse</i>'—a combination rare in +France. Nevertheless, she had the national views of matrimony. +'What have you done, Madame,' said a foreigner to her, 'with the +poor man I used to see here, who never spoke a word?'</p> +<p>'Ah, <i>mon Dieu!</i> was the reply, 'that was my husband: he is +dead.' She spoke in the same tone as if she had been specifying the +last new opera, or referring to the latest work in vogue: things +just passed away.</p> +<p>The <i>Marquise du Deffaud</i> was a very different personage to +Madame Geoffrin, whose great enemy she was. When Horace Walpole +first entered into the society of the Marquise, she was stone +blind, and old; but retained not only her wit, and her memory, but +her passions. Passions, like artificial flowers, are unbecoming to +age: and those of the witty, atheistical Marquise are almost +revolting. Scandal still attached her name to that of +Hénault, of whom Voltaire wrote the epitaph beginning</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'Henault, fameus par vos soupers</p> +<p>Et votre "chronologie,"' &c.</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Hénault was for many years deaf; and, during the whole of +his life, disagreeable. There was something farcical in the old +man's receptions on his death-bed; whilst, amongst the rest of the +company came Madame du Deffand, a blind old woman of seventy, who, +bawling in his ear, aroused the lethargic man, by inquiring after a +former rival of hers, Madame de Castelmaron—about whom he +went on babbling until death stopped his voice.</p> +<p>She was seventy years of age when Horace Walpole, at fifty, +became her passion. She was poor and disreputable, and even the +high position of having been mistress to the regent could not save +her from being decried by a large portion of that society which +centered round the <i>bel esprit</i>. 'She was,' observes the +biographer of Horace Walpole (the lamented author of the 'Crescent +and the Cross,') 'always gay, always charming—everything but +a Christian.' The loss of her eyesight did not impair the remains +of her beauty; her replies, her compliments, were brilliant; even +from one whose best organs of expression were mute.</p> +<p>A frequent guest at her suppers, Walpole's kindness, real or +pretended, soon made inroads on a heart still susceptible. The +ever-green passions of this venerable sinner threw out fresh +shoots; and she became enamoured of the attentive and admired +Englishman. Horace was susceptible of ridicule: there his somewhat +icy heart was easily touched. Partly in vanity, partly in +playfulness, he encouraged the sentimental-exaggeration of his +correspondent; but, becoming afraid of the world's laughter, ended +by reproving her warmth, and by chilling, under the refrigerating +influence of his cautions, all the romance of the octogenarian.</p> +<p>In later days, however, after his solicitude—partly +soothed by the return of his letters to Madame du Deffand, partly +by her death—had completely subsided, a happier friendship +was permitted to solace his now increasing infirmities, as well as +to enhance his social pleasures.</p> +<p>It was during the year 1788, when he was living in retirement at +Strawberry, that his auspicious friendship was formed. The only +grain of ambition he had left he declared was to believe himself +forgotten; that was 'the thread that had run through his life;' 'so +true,' he adds, 'except the folly of being an author, has been what +I said last year to the Prince' (afterwards George IV.), 'when he +asked me "If I was a Freemason," I replied, "No sir; I never was +anything."'</p> +<p>Lady Charleville told him that some of her friends had been to +see Strawberry. 'Lord!' cried one lady, 'who is that Mr. Walpole?' +'Lord!' cried a second; 'don't you know the great epicure, Mr. +Walpole?' 'Who?' cried the first,—'great epicure! you mean +the antiquarian.' 'Surely,' adds Horace, 'this anecdote may take +its place in the chapter of local fame.'</p> +<p>But he reverts to his new acquisition—the acquaintance of +the Miss Berrys, who had accidentally taken a house next to his at +Strawberry Hill. Their story, he adds, was a curious one: their +descent Scotch; their grandfather had an estate of £5,000 a +year, but disinherited his son on account of his marrying a woman +with no fortune. She died, and the grandfather, wishing for an +heir-male, pressed the widower to marry again: he refused; and said +he would devote himself to the education of his two daughters. The +second son generously gave up £8oo a year to his brother, and +the two motherless girls were taken to the Continent, whence they +returned the 'best informed and most perfect creatures that Horace +Walpole ever saw at their age.'</p> +<p>Sensible, natural, frank, their conversation proved most +agreeable to a man who was sated of grand society, and sick of +vanity until he had indulged in vexation of spirit. He discovered +by chance only—for there was no pedantry in these truly +well-educated women—that the eldest understood Latin, and +'was a perfect Frenchwoman in her language. Then the youngest drew +well; and copied one of Lady Di Beauclerk's pictures, 'The +Gipsies,' though she had never attempted colours before. Then, as +to looks: Mary, the eldest, had a sweet face, the more interesting +from being pale; with fine dark eyes that were lighted up when she +spoke. Agnes, the younger, was 'hardly to be called handsome, but +almost;' with an agreeable sensible countenance. It is remarkable +that women thus delineated—not beauties, yet not +plain—are always the most fascinating to men. The sisters +doted on each other: Mary taking the lead in society. 'I must even +tell you,' Horace wrote to the Countess of Ossory, 'that they dress +within the bounds of fashion, but without the excrescences and +balconies with which modern hoydens overwhelm and barricade their +persons.' (One would almost have supposed that Horace had lived in +the days of crinoline.')</p> +<p>The first night that Horace met the two sisters, he refused to +be introduced to them: having heard so much of them that he +concluded they would be 'all pretension.' The second night that he +met them, he sat next Mary, and found her an 'angel both inside and +out.' He did not know which he liked best; but Mary's face, which +was formed for a sentimental novel, or, still more, for genteel +comedy, riveted him, he owned. Mr. Berry, the father, was a little +'merry man with a round face,' whom no one would have suspected of +sacrificing 'all for love, and the world well lost.' This +delightful family visited him every Sunday evening; the region of +wickenham being too 'proclamatory' for cards to be introduced on +the seventh day, conversation was tried instead; thankful, indeed, +was Horace, for the 'pearls,' as he styled them, thus thrown in his +path. His two 'Strawberries,' as he christened them, were +henceforth the theme of every letter. He had set up a +printing-press many years previously at Strawberry, and on taking +the young ladies to see it, he remembered the gallantry of his +former days, and they found these stanzas in type:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'To Mary's lips has ancient Rome</p> +<p class="i2">Her purest language taught;</p> +<p>And from the modern city home</p> +<p class="i2">Agnes its pencil brought.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'Rome's ancient Horace sweetly chants</p> +<p class="i2">Such maids with lyric fire;</p> +<p>Albion's old Horace sings nor paints,</p> +<p class="i2">He only can admire.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'Still would his press their fame record,</p> +<p class="i2">So amiable the pair is!</p> +<p>But, ah! how vain to think his word</p> +<p class="i2">Can add a straw to Berry's.'</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>On the following day, Mary, whom he terms the Latin nymph sent +the following lines:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'Had Rome's famed Horace thus addrest</p> +<p>His Lydia or his Lyce,</p> +<p>He had ne'er so oft complained their breast</p> +<p>To him was cold and icy.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'But had they sought their joy to explain,</p> +<p>Or praise their generous bard,</p> +<p>Perhaps, like me, they had tried in vain,</p> +<p>And felt the task too hard.'</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>The society of this family gave Horace Walpole the truest, and +perhaps the only relish he ever had of domestic life. But his mind +was harassed towards the close of the eighteenth century, by the +insanity not only of his nephew, but by the great national +calamity, that of the king. 'Every <i>eighty-eight</i> seems,' he +remarks, 'to be a favourite period with fate;' he was 'too +ancient,' he said, 'to tap what might almost be called a new +reign;' of which he was not likely to see much. He never pretended +to penetration, but his foresight, 'if he gave it the reign, would +not prognosticate much felicity to the country from the madness of +his father, and the probable regency of the Prince of Wales. His +happiest relations were now not with politics or literature, but +with Mrs. Damer and the Miss Berrys, to whom he wrote:—'I am +afraid of protesting how much I delight in your society, lest I +should seem to affect being gallant; but, if two negatives make an +affirmative, why may not two ridicules compose one piece of sense? +and, therefore, as I am in love with you both, I trust it is a +proof of the good sense of your devoted—H. WALPOLE,'</p> +<p>He was doomed, in the decline of life, to witness two great +national convulsions: of the insurrection of 1745 he wrote +feelingly—justly—almost pathetically: forty-five years +later he was tired, he said, of railing against French barbarity +and folly. 'Legislators! a Senate! To neglect laws, in order to +annihilate coats-of-arms and liveries!' George Selwyn said, that +Monsieur the king's brother was the only man of rank from whom they +could not take a title. His alarm at the idea of his two young +friends going to the Continent was excessive. The flame of +revolution had burst forth at Florence: Flanders was not a safe +road; dreadful horrors had been perpetrated at Avignon. Then he +relates a characteristic anecdote of poor <i>Marie Antoinette!</i> +She went with the king to see the manufacture of glass. As they +passed the Halle, the <i>poissardes</i> hurra'd them. 'Upon my +word,' said the queen, 'these folks are civiller when you visit +them, than when they visit you.'</p> +<p>Walpole's affection for the Miss Berrys cast a glow of happiness +over the fast-ebbing years of his life, 'In happy days,' he wrote +to them when they were abroad, 'I called you my dear wives; now I +can only think of you as darling children, of whom I am bereaved.' +He was proud of their affection; proud of their spending many hours +with 'a very old man,' whilst they were the objects of general +admiration. These charming women survived until our own time: the +centre of a circle of the leading characters in literature, +politics, art, rank, and virtue. They are remembered with true +regret. The fulness of their age perfected the promise of their +youth. Samuel Rogers used to say that they had lived in the reign +of Queen Anne, so far back seemed their memories which were so +coupled to the past; but the youth of their minds, their feelings, +their intelligence, remained almost to the last.</p> +<p>For many years Horace Walpole continued, in spite of incessant +attacks of the gout, to keep almost open house at Strawberry; in +short, he said, he kept an inn—the sign, the Gothic Castle! +'Take my advice,' he wrote to a friend, 'never build a charming +house for yourself between London and Hampton Court; everybody will +live in it but you.'</p> +<p>The death of Lady Suffolk, in 1767, had been an essential loss +to her partial, and not too rigid neighbours. Two days before the +death of George II. she had gone to Kensington not knowing that +there was a review there. Hemmed in by coaches, she found herself +close to George II. and to Lady Yarmouth. Neither of them knew +her—a circumstance which greatly affected the countess.</p> +<p>Horace Walpole was now desirous of growing old with dignity. He +had no wish 'to dress up a withered person, nor to drag it about to +public places;' but he was equally averse from 'sitting at home, +wrapped up in flannels,' to receive condolences from people he did +not care for—and attentions from relations who were impatient +for his death. Well might a writer in the 'Quarterly Review' remark +that our most useful lessons in reading Walpole's Letters are not +only derived from his sound sense, but from 'considering this man +of the world, full of information and sparkling with vivacity, +stretched on a sick bed, and apprehending all the tedious languor +of helpless decrepitude and deserted solitude.' His later years had +been diversified by correspondence with Hannah More, who sent him +her poem of the <i>Bas Bleu</i>, into which she had introduced his +name. In 1786 she visited him at Strawberry Hill. He was then a +martyr to the gout, but with spirits gay as ever: 'I never knew a +man suffer pain with such entire patience,' was Hannah More's +remark. His correspondence with her continued regularly; but that +with the charming sisters was delightfully interrupted by their +residence at little Strawberry Hill—<i>Cliveden</i>, as it +was also called, where day after day, night after night, they +gleaned stores from that rich fund of anecdote which went back to +the days of George I., touched even on the anterior epoch of Anne, +and came in volumes of amusement down to the very era when the old +man was sitting by his parlour fire, happy with his <i>wives</i> +near him, resigned and cheerful. For his young friends he composed +his 'Reminiscences of the Court of England.'</p> +<p>He still wrote cheerfully of his physical state, in which +eyesight was perfect; hearing little impaired; and though his hands +and feet were crippled, he could use them; and since he neither +'wished to box, to wrestle, nor to dance a hornpipe,' he was +contented.</p> +<p>His character became softer, his wit less caustic, his heart +more tender, his talk more reverent, as he approached the term of a +long, prosperous life—and knew, practically, the small value +of all that he had once too fondly prized.</p> +<p>His later years were disturbed by the marriage of his niece +Maria Waldegrave to the Duke of Gloucester: but the severest +interruption to his peace was his own succession to an Earldom.</p> +<p>In 1791, George, Earl of Orford, expired; leaving an estate +encumbered with debt, and, added to the bequest, a series of +lawsuits threatened to break down all remaining comfort in the mind +of the uncle, who had already suffered so much on the young man's +account.</p> +<p>Horace Walpole disdained the honours which brought him such +solid trouble, with such empty titles, and for some time refused to +sign himself otherwise but 'Uncle to the late Earl of Orford.' He +was certainly not likely to be able to walk in his robes to the +House of Lords, or to grace a levee. However, he thanked God he was +free from pain. 'Since all my fingers are useless,' he wrote to +Hannah More, 'and that I have only six hairs left, I am not very +much grieved at not being able to comb my head!' To Hannah More he +wrote in all sincerity, referring to his elevation to the peerage: +'For the other empty metamorphosis that has happened to the outward +man, you do me justice in believing that it can do nothing but +tease me; it is being called names in one's old age:' in fact, he +reckoned on being styled 'Lord Methusalem.' He had lived to hear of +the cruel deaths of the once gay and high-born friends whom he had +known in Paris, by the guillotine: he had lived to execrate the +monsters who persecuted the grandest heroine of modern times, Marie +Antoinette, to madness; he lived to censure the infatuation of +religious zeal in the Birmingham riots. 'Are not the devils escaped +out of the swine, and overrunning the earth headlong?'—he +asked in one of his letters.</p> +<p>He had offered his hand, and all the ambitious views which it +opened, to each of the Miss Berrys successively, but they refused +to bear his name, though they still cheered his solitude: and, +strange to say, two of the most admired and beloved women of their +time remained single.</p> +<p>In 1796, the sinking invalid was persuaded to remove to Berkeley +Square, to be within reach of good and prompt advice. He consented +unwillingly, for his 'Gothic Castle' was his favourite abode. He +left it with a presentiment that he should see it no more; but he +followed the proffered advice, and in the spring of the year was +established in Berkeley Square. His mind was still clear. He seems +to have cherished to the last a concern for that literary fame +which he affected to despise. 'Literature has,' he said, 'many +revolutions; if an author could rise from the dead, after a hundred +years, what would be his surprise at the adventures of his works! I +often say, perhaps my books may be published in Paternoster Row!' +He would indeed have been astonished at the vast circulation of his +Letters, and the popularity which has carried them into every +aristocratic family in England. It is remarkable that among the +middle and lower classes they are far less known, for he was +essentially the chronicler, as well as the wit and beau, of St. +James's, of Windsor, and Richmond.</p> +<p>At last he declared that he should 'be content with a sprig of +rosemary' thrown on him when the parson of the parish commits his +'dust to dust.' The end of his now suffering existence was near at +hand. Irritability, one of the unpitied accompaniments of weakness, +seemed to compete with the gathering clouds of mental darkness as +the last hour drew on. At intervals there were flashes of a wit +that appeared at that solemn moment hardly natural, and that must +have startled rather than pleased, the watchful friends around him. +He became unjust in his fretfulness, and those who loved him most +could not wish to see him survive the wreck of his intellect. Fever +came on, and he died on the 2nd of March, 1797.</p> +<p>He had collected his letters from his friends: these epistles +were deposited in two boxes, one marked with an A., the other with +a B. The chest A. was not to be opened until the eldest son of his +grandniece, Lady Laura, should attain the age of twenty-five. The +chest was found to contain memoirs, and bundles of letters ready +for publication.</p> +<p>It was singular, at the sale of the effects at Strawberry Hill, +to see this chest, with the MSS. in the clean <i>Horatian</i> hand, +and to reflect how poignant would have been the anguish of the +writer could he have seen his Gothic Castle given up for fourteen +days, to all that could pain the living, or degrade the dead.</p> +<p>Peace to his manes, prince of letter-writers; prince companion +of beaux; wit of the highest order! Without thy pen, society in the +eighteenth century would have been to us almost as dead as the +<i>beau monde</i> of Pompeii, or the remains of Etruscan leaders of +the ton. Let us not be ungrateful to our Horace: we owe him more +than we could ever have calculated on before we knew him through +his works: prejudiced, he was not false; cold, he was rarely cruel; +egotistical, he was seldom vain-glorious. Every age should have a +Horace Walpole; every country possess a chronicler so sure, so keen +to perceive, so exact to delineate peculiarities, manners, +characters, and events.</p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h3><a name="Selwyn">GEORGE SELWYN.</a></h3> +<blockquote>A Love of Horrors.—Anecdotes of Selwyn's +Mother.—Selwyn's College Days.—Orator +Henley.—Selwyn's Blasphemous Freak.—The Profession of a +Wit.—The Thirst for Hazard.—Reynolds's +Conversation-Piece.— Selwyn's Eccentricities and +Witticisms.—A most Important Communication.—An Amateur +Headsman.—The Eloquence of Indifference.— Catching a +Housebreaker.—The Family of the Selwyns.—The Man of the +People.—Selwyn's Parliamentary Career.—True +Wit.—-Some of Selwyn's Witty Sayings.—The Sovereignty +of the People.—On two kinds of Wit.— Selwyn's Love for +Children.—Mie Mie, the Little Italian.—Selwyn's Little +Companion taken from him.—His Later Days and +Death.</blockquote> +<p>I have heard, at times, of maiden ladies of a certain age who +found pleasure in the affection of 'spotted snakes with double +tongue, thorny hedge-hogs, newts, and in live worms.' I frequently +meet ladies who think conversation lacks interest without the +recital of 'melancholy deaths,' 'fatal diseases,' and 'mournful +cases;' <i>on ne dispute pas les goûts</i>, and certainly the +taste for the night side of nature seems immensely prevalent among +the lower orders—in whom, perhaps, the terrible only can +rouse from a sullen insensibility. What happy people! I always +think to myself, when I hear of the huge attendance on the last +tragic performance at Newgate; how very little they can see of +mournful and horrible in common life, if they seek it out so +eagerly, and relish it so thoroughly, when they find it! I don't +know; for my own part, <i>gaudeamus</i>. I have always thought that +the text, 'Blessed are they that mourn,' referred to the inner +private life, not to a perpetual display of sackcloth and ashes; +but I know not. I can understand the weeping-willow taste among +people, who have too little wit or too little Christianity to be +cheerful, but it is a wonder to find the luxury of gloom united to +the keenest perception of the laughable in such a man as George +Selwyn.</p> +<p>If human beings could be made pets, like Miss Tabitha's snake or +toad, Selwyn would have fondled a hangman. He loved the noble art +of execution, and was a connoisseur of the execution of the art. In +childhood he must have decapitated his rocking-horse, hanged his +doll in a miniature gallows, and burnt his baubles at mimic stakes. +The man whose calm eye was watched for the quiet sparkle that +announced—and only that ever did announce it—the +flashing wit within the mind, by a gay crowd of loungers at +Arthur's, might be found next day rummaging among coffins in a damp +vault, glorying in a mummy, confessing and preparing a live +criminal, paying any sum for a relic of a dead one, or pressing +eagerly forward to witness the dying agonies of a condemned +man.</p> +<p>Yet Walpole and Warner both bore the highest testimony to the +goodness of his heart; and it is impossible to doubt that his +nature was as gentle as a woman's. There have been other instances +of even educated men delighting in scenes of suffering; but in +general their characters have been more or less gross, their heads +more or less insensible. The husband of Madame Récamier went +daily to see the guillotine do its vile work during the reign of +Terror; but then he was a man who never wept over the death of a +friend. The man who was devoted to a little child, whom he adopted +and treated with the tenderest care, was very different from M. +Récamier—and that he <i>had</i> a heart there is no +doubt. He was an anomaly, and famous for being so; though, perhaps, +his well-known eccentricity was taken advantage of by his witty +friends, and many a story fathered on Selwyn which has no origin +but in the brain of its narrator.</p> +<p>George Augustus Selwyn, then, famous for his wit, and notorious +for his love of horrors, was the second son of a country gentleman, +of Matson, in Gloucestershire, Colonel John Selwyn, who had been an +aide-de-camp of Marlborough's, and afterwards a frequenter of the +courts of the first two Georges. He inherited his wit chiefly from +his mother, Mary, the daughter of General Farington or Farringdon, +of the county of Kent. Walpole tells us that she figured among the +beauties of the court of the Prince and Princess of Wales, and was +bedchamber-woman to Queen Caroline. Her character was not spotless, +for we hear of an intrigue, which her own mistress imparted in +confidence to the Duchess of Orleans (the mother of the Regent: +they wrote on her tomb <i>Cy gist l'oisiveté</i>, because +idleness is the <i>mother</i> of all vice), and which eventually +found its way into the 'Utrecht Gazette.' It was Mrs. Selwyn, too, +who said to George II., that he was the last person she would ever +have an intrigue with, because she was sure he would tell the queen +of it: it was well known that that very virtuous sovereign made his +wife the confidante of his amours, which was even more shameless +than young De Sévigné's taking advice from his mother +on his intrigue with Ninon de l'Enclos. She seems to have been +reputed a wit, for Walpole retails her <i>mots</i> as if they were +worth it, but they are not very remarkable: for instance, when Miss +Pelham lost a pair of diamond earrings, which she had borrowed, and +tried to faint when the loss was discovered, some one called for +lavender-drops as a restorative. 'Pooh!' cries Mrs. Selwyn, 'give +her diamond-drops.'</p> +<p>George Augustus was born on the 11th of August, 1719. Walpole +says that he knew him at eight years old, and as the two were at +Eton about the same time, it is presumed that they were +contemporaries there. In fact, a list of the boys there, in 1732, +furnished to Eliot Warburton, contains the names of Walpole, +Selwyn, Edgecumbe, and Conway, all in after-life intimate friends +and correspondents. From Eton to Oxford was the natural course, and +George was duly entered at Hertford College. He did not long grace +Alma Mater, for the <i>grand tour</i> had to be made, and London +life to be begun, but he was there long enough to contract the +usual Oxford debts, which his father consented to pay more than +once. It is amusing to find the son getting Dr. Newton to write him +a contrite and respectful letter to the angry parent, to liquidate +the 'small accounts' accumulated in London and Oxford as early as +1740. Three years later we find him in Paris, leading a gay life, +and writing respectful letters to England for more money. +Previously to this, however, he had obtained, through his father, +the sinecure of Clerk of the Irons and surveyor of the Meltings at +the Mint, a comfortable little appointment, the duties of which +were performed by deputy, while its holder contented himself with +honestly acknowledging the salary, and dining once a week, when in +town, with the officers of the Mint, and at the Government's +expense.</p> +<p>So far the young gentleman went on well enough, but in 1744 he +returned to England, and his rather rampant character showed itself +in more than one disgraceful affair.</p> +<p>Among the London shows was Orator Henley, a clergyman and +clergyman's son, and a member of St. John's, Cambridge. He had come +to London about this time, and instituted a series of lectures on +universal knowledge and primitive Christianity. He styled himself a +Rationalist, a title then more honourable than it is now; and in +grandiloquent language, 'spouted' on religious subjects to an +audience admitted at a shilling a-head. On one occasion he +announced a disputation among any two of his hearers, offering to +give an impartial hearing and judgment to both. Selwyn and the +young Lord Carteret were prepared, and stood up, the one to defend +the ignorance, the other the impudence, of Orator Henley himself; +so, at least, it is inferred from a passage in D'Israeli the Elder. +The uproar that ensued can well be imagined. Henley himself made +his escape by a back door. His pulpit, all gilt, has been +immortalized by Pope, as 'Henley's gilt tub;' in which—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'Imbrown'd with native bronze, lo! Henley stands,</p> +<p>Tuning his voice and balancing his hands.'</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>The affair gave rise to a correspondence between the Orator and +his young friends; who, doubtless, came off best in the matter.</p> +<p>This was harmless enough, but George's next freak was not so +excusable. The circumstances of this affair are narrated in a +letter from Captain Nicholson, his friend, to George Selwyn; and +may, therefore, be relied on. It appears that being at a certain +club in Oxford, at a wine party with his friends, George sent to a +certain silversmith's for a certain chalice, intrusted to the +shopkeeper from a certain church to be repaired in a certain +manner. This being brought, Master George—then, be it +remembered, not at the delicate and frivolous age of most Oxford +boys, but at the mature one of six-and-twenty—filled it with +wine, and handing it round, used the sacred words, 'Drink this in +remembrance of me.' This was a blasphemous parody of the most +sacred rite of the Church. All Selwyn could say for himself was, +that he was drunk when he did it. The other plea, that he did it in +ridicule of the transubstantiation of the Romish Church, could not +stand at all; and was most weakly put forward. Let Oxford Dons be +what they will; let them put a stop to all religious inquiry, and +nearly expel Adam Smith for reading Hume's 'Essay on Human Nature;' +let them be, as many allege, narrow-minded, hypocritical, and +ignorant; we cannot charge them with wrong-dealing in expelling the +originator of such open blasphemy, which nothing can be found to +palliate, and of which its perpetrator did not appear to repent, +rather complaining that the treatment of the Dons was harsh. The +act of expulsion was, of course, considered in the same light by +his numerous acquaintance, many of whom condoled with him on the +occasion. It is true, the Oxford Dons are often charged with +injustice and partiality, and too often the evidence is not +sufficiently strong to excuse their judgments; but in this the +evidence was not denied; only a palliative was put in, which every +one can see through. The only injustice we can discover in this +case is, that the head of Hart Hall, as Hertford College was +called, seemed to have been influenced in pronouncing his sentence +of expulsion by certain previous <i>suspicions</i>, having no +bearing on the question before him, which had been entertained by +another set of tutors—those of Christchurch—where +Selwyn had many friends, and where, probably enough, he indulged in +many collegian's freaks. This knack of bringing up a mere +suspicion, is truly characteristic of the Oxford Don, and since the +same Head of this House—Dr. Newton—acknowledged that +Selwyn was, during his Oxford career, neither intemperate, +dissolute, nor a gamester, it is fair to give him the advantage of +the doubt, that the judgment on the evidence had been influenced by +the consideration of 'suspicions' of former misdeeds, which had not +been proved, perhaps never committed. Knowing the after-life of the +man, we can, however, scarcely doubt that George had led a fast +life at the University, and given cause for mistrust. But one may +ask whether Dons, whose love of drinking, and whose tendency to +jest on the most solemn subjects, are well known even in the +present day, might not have treated Selwyn less harshly for what +was done under the influence of wine? To this we are inclined to +reply, that no punishment is too severe for profanation; and that +drunkenness is not an excuse, but an aggravation. Selwyn threatened +to appeal, and took advice on the matter. This, as usual, was vain. +Many an expelled man, more unjustly treated than Selwyn, has talked +of appeal in vain. Appeal to whom? To what? Appeal against men who +never acknowledge themselves wrong, and who, to maintain that they +are right, will listen to evidence which they can see is +contradictory, and which they know to be worthless! An appeal from +an Oxford decision is as hopeless in the present day as it was in +Selwyn's. He wisely left it alone, but less wisely insisted on +reappearing in Oxford, against the advice of all his friends, whose +characters were lost if the ostracised man were seen among +them.</p> +<p>From this time he entered upon his 'profession,' that of a wit, +gambler, club-lounger, and man about town; for these many +characters are all mixed in the one which is generally called 'a +wit.' Let us remember that he was good-hearted, and not +ill-intentioned, though imbued with the false ideas of his day. He +was not a great man, but a great wit.</p> +<p>The localities in which the trade of wit was plied were, then, +the clubs, and the drawing-rooms of fashionable beauties. The +former were in Selwyn's youth still limited in the number of their +members, thirty constituting a large club; and as the subscribers +were all known to one another, presented an admirable field for +display of mental powers in conversation. In fact, the early clubs +were nothing more than dining-societies, precisely the same in +theory as our breakfasting arrangements at Oxford, which were every +whit as exclusive, though not balloted for. The ballot, however, +and the principle of a single black ball suffering to negative an +election were not only, under such circumstances, excusable, but +even necessary for the actual preservation of peace. Of course, in +a succession of dinner-parties, if any two members were at all +opposed to one other, the awkwardness would be intolerable. In the +present day, two men may belong to the same club and scarcely meet +even on the stairs, oftener than once or twice in a season.</p> +<p>Gradually, however, in the place of the 'feast of reason and +flow of soul' and wine, instead of the evenings spent in toasting, +talking, emptying bottles and filling heads, as in the case of the +old Kit-kat, men took to the monstrous amusement of examining fate, +and on club-tables the dice rattled far more freely than the +glasses, though these latter were not necessarily abandoned. Then +came the thirst for hazard that brought men early in the day to try +their fortune, and thus made the club-room a lounge. Selwyn was an +habitual frequenter of Brookes.'</p> +<p>Brookes' was, perhaps, the principal club of the day, though +'White's Chocolate House' was almost on a par with it. But Selwyn +did not confine his attention solely to this club. It was the +fashion to belong to as many of them as possible, and Wilberforce +mentions no less than five to which he himself belonged: Brookes', +Boodle's, White's, Miles and Evans's in New Palace Yard, and +Goosetree's. As their names imply, these were all, originally, mere +coffee-houses, kept by men of the above names. One or two rooms +then sufficed for the requirements of a small party, and it was not +till the members were greatly increased that the coffee-house rose +majestically to the dignity of a bow-window, and was entirely and +exclusively appropriated to the requirements of the club.</p> +<p>This was especially the case with White's, of which so many of +the wits and talkers of Selwyn's day were members. Who does not +know that bow-window at the top of St. James's Street, where there +are sure, about three or four in the afternoon, to be at least +three gentlemen, two old and one young, standing, to the exclusion +of light within, talking and contemplating the oft-repeated +movement outside. White's was established as early as 1698, and was +thus one of the original coffee-houses. It was then kept by a man +named Arthur: here Chesterfield gamed and talked, to be succeeded +by Gilly Williams. Charles Townshend, and George Selwyn. The old +house was burnt down in 1733. It was at White's—or as Hogarth +calls it in his pictorial squib, Black's—that, when a man +fell dead at the door, he was lugged in and bets made as to whether +he was dead or no. The surgeon's operations were opposed, for fear +of disturbing the bets. Here, too, did George Selwyn and Charles +Townshend pit their wit against wit; and here Pelham passed all the +time he was not forced to devote to politics. In short it was, next +to Brookes', the club of the day, and perhaps in some respects had +a greater renown than even that famous club, and its play was as +high.</p> +<p>In Brookes' and White's Selwyn appeared with a twofold fame, +that of a pronouncer of <i>bon-mots</i> and that of a lover of +horrors. His wit was of the quaintest order. He was no inveterate +talker, like Sydney Smith; no clever dissimulator, like Mr. Hook. +Calmly, almost sanctimoniously, he uttered those neat and telling +sayings which the next day passed over England as 'Selwyn's last.' +Walpole describes his manner admirably—-his eyes turned up, +his mouth set primly, a look almost of melancholy in his whole +face. Reynolds, in his Conversation-piece, celebrated when in the +Strawberry Collection, and representing Selwyn leaning on a chair, +Gilly Williams, crayon in hand, and Dick Edgecumbe by his side, has +caught the pseudo-solemn expression of his face admirably. The ease +of the figure, one hand <i>empochée</i>, the other holding a +paper of epigrams, or what not, the huge waistcoat with a dozen +buttons and huge flaps, the ruffled sleeve, the bob-wig, all belong +to the outer man; but the calm, quiet, almost enquiring face, the +look half of melancholy, half of reproach, and, as the Milesian +would say, the other half of sleek wisdom; the long nose, the prim +mouth and joined lips, the elevated brow, and beneath it the quiet +contemplative eye, contemplative not of heaven or hell, but of this +world as it had seen it, in its most worldly point of view, yet +twinkling with a flashing thought of incongruity made congruous, +are the indices of the inner man. Most of our wits, it must have +been seen, have had some other interest and occupation in life than +that of 'making wit:' some have been authors, some statesmen, some +soldiers, some wild-rakes, and some players of tricks: Selwyn had +no profession but that of <i>diseur de bons mots</i>; for though he +sat in the House, ne took no prominent part in politics; though he +gambled extensively, he did not game for the sake of money only. +Thus his life was that merely of a London bachelor, with few +incidents to mark it, and therefore his memoir must resolve itself +more or less into a series of anecdotes of his eccentricities and +list of his witticisms.</p> +<p>His friend Walpole gives us an immense number of both, not all +of a first-rate nature, nor many interesting in the present day. +Selwyn, calm as he was, brought out his sayings on the spur of the +moment, and their appropriateness to the occasion was one of their +greatest recommendations. A good saying, like a good sermon, +depends much on its delivery, and loses much in print. Nothing less +immortal than wit! To take first, however, the eccentricities of +his character, and especially his love of horrors, we find +anecdotes by the dozen retailed of him. It was so well known, that +Lord Holland, when dying, ordered his servant to be sure to admit +Mr. Selwyn if he called to enquire after him, 'for if I am alive,' +said he, 'I shall be glad to see him, and if I am dead, he will be +glad to see me.' The name of Holland leads us to an anecdote told +by Walpole. Selwyn was looking over Cornbury with Lord Abergavenny +and Mrs. Frere, 'who loved one another a little,' and was disgusted +with the frivolity of the woman who could take no interest in +anything worth seeing. 'You don't know what you missed in the other +room,' he cried at last, peevishly. 'Why, what?'—'Why, my +Lord Holland's picture.'—'Well, what is my Lord Holland to +me?' 'Don't you know,' whispered the wit mysteriously, 'that Lord +Holland's body lies in the same vault in Kensington Church with my +Lord Abergavenny's mother?' 'Lord! she was so obliged,' says +Walpole, 'and thanked him a thousand times!'</p> +<p>Selwyn knew the vaults as thoroughly as old Anthony Wood knew +the brasses. The elder Craggs had risen by the favour of +Marlborough, whose footman he had been, and his son was eventually +a Secretary of State. Arthur Moore, the father of James Moore +Smyth, of whom Pope wrote—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'Arthur, whose giddy son neglects the laws,</p> +<p>Imputes to me and my damned works the cause'</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>had worn a livery too. When Craggs got into a coach with him, he +exclaimed, 'Why, Arthur, I am always getting up behind, are not +you?' Walpole having related this story to Selwyn, the latter told +him, as a most important communication, that Arthur Moore had had +his coffin chained to that of his mistress. 'Lord! how do you +know?' asked Horace. 'Why, I saw them the other day in a vault at +St. Giles's.' 'Oh! Your servant, Mr. Selwyn,' cried the man who +showed the tombs at Westminster Abbey, 'I expected to see +<i>you</i> here the other day when the old Duke of Richmond's body +was taken up.'</p> +<p>Criminals were, of course, included in his passion. Walpole +affirms that he had a great share in bringing Lord Dacre's footman, +who had murdered the butler, to confess his crime. In writing the +confession, the ingenious plush coolly stopped and asked how +'murdered' was spelt. But it mattered little to George whether the +criminal were alive or dead, and he defended his eccentric taste +with his usual wit; when rallied by some women for going to see the +Jacobite Lord Lovat's head cut off, he retorted, sharply—'I +made full amends, for I went to see it sewn on again.' He had +indeed done so, and given the company at the undertaker's a touch +of his favourite blasphemy, for when the man of coffins had done +his work and laid the body in its box, Selwyn, imitating the voice +of the Lord Chancellor at the trial, muttered, 'My Lord Lovat, you +may <i>rise</i>.' He said a better thing on the trial of a +confederate of Lovat's, that Lord Kilmarnock, with whom the ladies +fell so desperately in love as he stood on his defence. Mrs. +Bethel, who was famous for a <i>hatchet-face,</i> was among the +fair spectators: 'What a shame it is,' quoth the wit, 'to turn her +face to the prisoners before they are condemned!' Terrible, indeed, +was that instrument of death to those men, who had in the heat of +battle so gallantly met sword and blunderbuss. The slow, sure +approach of the day of the scaffold was a thousand times worse than +the roar of cannon. Lord Cromarty was pardoned, solely, it was +said, from pity for his poor wife, who was at the time of the trial +far advanced in pregnancy. It was affirmed that the child born had +a distinct mark of an axe on his neck. <i>Credat Judaeus</i>! +Walpole used to say that Selwyn never thought but <i>à la +tête tranchée</i>, and that when he went to have a +tooth drawn, he told the dentist he would drop his handkerchief by +way of signal. Certain it is that he did love an execution, +whatever he or his friends may have done to remove the impression +of this extraordinary taste. Some better men than Selwyn have had +the same, and Macaulay accuses Penn of a similar affection. The +best known anecdote of Selwyn's peculiarity relates to the +execution of Damiens, who was torn with red-hot pincers, and +finally quartered by four horses, for the attempt to assassinate +Louis XV. On the day fixed, George mingled with the crowd plainly +dressed, and managed to press forward close to the place of +torture. The executioner observing him, eagerly cried out, +'<i>Faites place pour Monsieur; c'est un Anglais et un +amateur</i>;' or, as another version goes, he was asked if he was +not himself a <i>bourreau</i>.—'<i>Non, Monsieur,</i>' he is +said to have answered, '<i>je n'ai pas cet honneur, je ne suis +qu'un amateur.</i>' The story is more than apocryphal, for Selwyn +is not the only person of whom it has been told; and he was even +accused, according to Wraxall, of going to executions in female +costume. George Selwyn must have passed as a 'remarkably fine +woman,' in that case.</p> +<p>It is only justice to him to say that the many stories of his +attending executions were supposed to be inventions of Sir Charles +Hanbury Williams, another wit, and of Chesterfield, another, and a +rival. In confirmation, it is adduced that when the former had been +relating some new account, and an old friend of Selwyn's expressed +his surprise that he had never heard the tale before, the hero of +it replied quietly, 'No wonder at all, for Sir Charles has just +invented it, and knows that I will not by contradiction spoil the +pleasure of the company he is so highly entertaining.'</p> +<p>Wit has been called 'the eloquence of indifference;' no one +seems ever to have been so indifferent about everything, but his +little daughter, as George Selwyn. He always, however, took up the +joke, and when asked why he had not been to see one Charles Fox, a +low criminal, hanged at Tyburn, answered, quietly, 'I make a point +of never going to <i>rehearsals</i>.'</p> +<p>Selwyn's love for this kind of thing, to believe his most +intimate friend, Horace Walpole, was quite a fact. His friend +relates that he even bargained for the High Sheriff's wand, after +it was broken, at the condemnation of the gallant Lords, but said, +'that he behaved so like an attorney the first day, and so like a +pettifogger the second, that he would not take it to light his fire +with.'</p> +<p>The State Trials, of course, interested George more than any +other in his eventless life; he dined after the sentence with the +celebrated Lady Townshend, who was so devoted to Lord +Kilmarnock—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'Pitied by gentle minds, Kilmarnock died'—Johnson.</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>that she is said to have even stayed under his windows, when he +was in prison; but he treated her anxiety with such lightness that +the lady burst into tears, and 'flung up-stairs.' 'George,' writes +Walpole to Montague, 'cooly took Mrs. Dorcas, her woman, and bade +her sit down to finish the bottle.—"And pray," said Dorcas, +"do you think my lady will be prevailed upon to let me go and see +the execution? I have a friend that has promised to take care of +me, and I can lie in the Tower the night before." Could she have +talked so pleasantly to Selwyn?'</p> +<p>His contemporaries certainly believed in his love for Newgatism; +for when Walpole had caught a housebreaker in a neighbour's area, +he immediately despatched a messenger to White's for the +philo-criminalist, who was sure to be playing at the Club any time +before daylight. It happened that the drawer at the +'Chocolate-house' had been himself lately robbed, and therefore +stole to George with fear and trembling, and muttered mysteriously +to him, 'Mr. Walpole's compliments, and he has got a housebreaker +for you.' Of course Selwyn obeyed the summons readily, and the +event concluded, as such events do nine times out of ten, with a +quiet capture, and much ado about nothing.</p> +<p>The Selwyns were a powerful family in Gloucestershire, owning a +great deal of property in the neighbourhood of Gloucester itself. +The old colonel had represented that city in Parliament for many +years. On the 5th of November, 1751, he died. His eldest son had +gone a few months before him. This son had been also at Eton, and +was an early friend of Horace Walpole and General Conway. His death +left George sole heir to the property, and very much he seemed to +have needed the heritage.</p> +<p>The property of the Selwyns lay in the picturesque district of +the Northern Cotswolds. Anybody who has passed a day in the dull +city of Gloucester, which seems to break into anything like life +only at an election, lying dormant in the intervals, has been glad +to rush out to enjoy air and a fine view on Robin Hood's Hill, a +favourite walk with the worthy citizens, though what the jovial +archer of merry Sherwood had to do with it, or whether he was ever +in Gloucestershire at all, I profess I know not. Walpole describes +the hill with humorous exaggeration. 'It is lofty enough for an +alp, yet is a mountain of turf to the very top, has wood scattered +all over it, springs that long to be cascades in many places of it, +and from the summit it beats even Sir George Littleton's views, by +having the city of Gloucester at its foot, and the Severn widening +to the horizon.' On the very summit of the next hill, Chosen-down, +is a solitary church, and the legend saith that the good people who +built it did so originally at the foot of the steep mount, but that +the Virgin Mary carried up the stones by night, till the builder, +in despair, was compelled to erect it on the top. Others attribute +the mysterious act to a very different personage, and with +apparently more reason, for the position of the church must keep +many an old sinner from hearing service.</p> +<p>At Matson, then, on Robin Hood's Hill, the Selwyns lived; +Walpole says that the 'house is small, but neat. King Charles lay +here at the seige, and the Duke of York, with typical fury, hacked +and hewed the window-shutters of his chamber as a memorandum of his +being there. And here is the very flowerpot and counterfeit +association for which Bishop Sprat was taken up, and the Duke of +Marlborough sent to the Tower. The reservoirs on the hill supply +the city. The late Mr. Selwyn governed the borough by +them—and I believe by some wine too.' Probably, or at least +by some beer, if the modern electors be not much altered from their +forefathers.</p> +<p>Besides this important estate, the Selwyns had another at +Ludgershall, and their influence there was so complete, that they +might fairly be said to <i>give</i> one seat to any one they chose. +With such double barrels George Selwyn was, of course, a great gun +in the House, but his interest lay far more in piquet and +pleasantry than in politics and patriotism, and he was never fired +off with any but the blank cartridges of his two votes. His +parliamentary career, begun in 1747, lasted more than forty years, +yet was entirely without distinction. He, however, amused both +parties with his wit, and by <i>snoring in unison</i> with Lord +North. This must have been trying to Mr. Speaker Cornwall, who was +longing, no doubt, to snore also, and dared not. He was probably +the only Speaker who presided over so august an assembly as our +English Parliament with a pewter pot of porter at his elbow, +sending for more and more to Bellamy's till his heavy eyes closed +of themselves. A modern M.P., carried back by some fancies to 'the +Senate' of those days, might reasonably doubt whether his guide had +not taken him by mistake to some Coal-hole or Cider-cellar, +presided over by some former Baron Nicholson, and whether the +furious eloquence of Messrs. Fox, Pitt, and Burke were not got up +for the amusement of an audience admitted at sixpence a head.</p> +<p>Selwyn's political jokes were the delight of Bellamy's! He said +that Fox and Pitt reminded him of Hogarth's Idle and Industrious +Apprentices. When asked by some one, as he sauntered out of the +house—'Is the House up?' he replied; 'No, but Burke is.' The +length of Burke's elaborate spoken essays was proverbial, and +obtained for him the name of the 'Dinner-bell.' Fox was talking one +day at Brookes' of the advantageous peace he had made with France, +and that he had even induced that country to give up the <i>gum</i> +trade to England. 'That, Charles,' quoth Selwyn, sharply, 'I am not +at all surprised at; for having drawn your <i>teeth</i>, they would +be d——d fools to quarrel with you about gums.' Fox was +often the object of his good-natured satire. As every one knows, +his boast was to be called 'The Man of the People,' though perhaps +he cared as little for the great unwashed as for the wealth and +happiness of the waiters at his clubs.' Every one knows, too, what +a dissolute life he led for many years. Selwyn's sleepiness was +well known. He slept in the House; he slept, after losing +£8oo 'and with as many more before him,' upon the +gaming-table, with the dice-box 'stamped close to his ears;' he +slept, or half-slept, even in conversation, which he seems to have +caught by fits and starts. Thus it was that words he heard +suggested different senses, partly from being only dimly associated +with the subject on the <i>tapis</i>. So, when, they were talking +around of the war, and whether it should be a sea war or a +Continent war, Selwyn woke up just enough to say, 'I am for a sea +war and a <i>Continent</i> admiral.'</p> +<p>When Fox had ruined himself, and a subscription for him was +talked of, some one asked how they thought 'he would take +it.'—'Take it,' cried Selwyn, suddenly lighting up, 'why, +<i>quarterly</i> to be sure.'</p> +<p>His parliamentary career was then quite uneventful; but at the +dissolution in 1780, he found that his security at Gloucester was +threatened. He was not Whig enough for that constituency, and had +throughout supported the war with America. He offered himself, of +course, but was rejected with scorn, and forced to fly for a seat +to Ludgershall. Walpole writes to Lady Ossory: 'They' (the +Gloucester people) 'hanged him in effigy, and dressed up a figure +of Mie-Mie' (his adopted daughter), 'and pinned on its breast these +words, alluding to the gallows:—"This is what I told you you +would come to!"' From Gloucester he went to Ludgershall, where he +was received by ringing of bells and bonfires. 'Being driven out of +my capital,' said he, 'and coming into that country of turnips, +where I was adored, I seemed to be arrived in my Hanoverian +dominions'—no bad hit at George II. For Ludgershall he sat +for many years, with Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, whose 'Memoirs' are +better known than trusted, as colleague. That writer says of +Selwyn, that he was 'thoroughly well versed in our history, and +master of many curious as well as secret anecdotes, relative to the +houses of Stuart and Brunswick.'</p> +<p>Another <i>bon-mot</i>, not in connection with politics, is +reported by Walpole as incomparable.' Lord George Gordon asked him +if the Ludgershall electors would take him (Lord George) for +Ludgershall, adding, 'if you would recommend me, they would choose +me, if I came from the coast of Africa.'—'That is according +to what part of the coast you came from; they would certainly, if +you came from the Guinea coast.' 'Now, Madam,' writes his friend, +'is not this true inspiration as well as true wit? Had any one +asked him in which of the four quarters of the world Guinea is +situated, could he have told?' Walpole did not perhaps know master +George thoroughly—he was neither so ignorant nor so +indifferent as he seemed. His manner got him the character of being +both; but he was a still fool that ran deep.</p> +<p>Though Selwyn did little with his two votes, he made them pay; +and in addition to the post in the Mint, got out of the party he +supported those of Registrar to the Court of Chancery in the Island +of Barbadoes, a sinecure done by deputy, Surveyor of the Crown +Lands, and Paymaster to the Board of Works. The wits of White's +added the title of 'Receiver-General of Waif and Stray Jokes.' It +is said that his hostility to Sheridan arose from the latter having +lost him the office in the Works in 1782, when Burke's Bill for +reducing the Civil List came into operation; but this is not at all +probable, as his dislike was shown long before that period. Apropos +of the Board of Works, Walpole gives another anecdote. On one +occasion, in 1780, Lord George Gordon had been the only opponent on +a division. Selwyn afterwards took him in his carriage to White's. +'I have brought,' said he, 'the whole Opposition in my coach, and I +hope one coach will always hold them, if they mean to take away the +Board of Works.'</p> +<p>Undoubtedly, Selwyn's wit wanted the manner of the man to make +it so popular, for, as we read it, it is often rather mild. To +string a list of them together:—Lady Coventry showed him her +new dress all covered with spangles as large as shillings. 'Bless +my soul,' said he, 'you'll be change for a guinea.'</p> +<p>Fox, debtor and bankrupt as he was, had taken lodgings with +Fitzpatrick at an oilman's in Piccadilly. Every one pitied the +landlord, who would certainly be ruined. 'Not a bit of it,' quoth +George; 'he'll have the credit of keeping at his house the finest +pickles in London.'</p> +<p>Sometimes there was a good touch of satire on his times. When +'High Life Below Stairs' was first acted, Selwyn vowed he would go +and see it, for he was sick of low life above stairs; and when a +waiter at his Club had been convicted of felony, 'What a horrid +idea,' said he, 'the man will give of <i>us</i> in Newgate!'</p> +<p>Dining with Bruce, the Abyssinian traveller, he heard him say, +in answer to a question about musical instruments in the East, 'I +believe I saw one <i>lyre</i> there.'—'Ay,' whispered the wit +to his neighbour, 'and there's one less since he left the country.' +Bruce shared the travellers' reputation of drawing the long-bow to +a very considerable extent.</p> +<p>Two of Selwyn's best <i>mots</i> were about one of the Foley +family, who were so deeply in debt that they had 'to go to Texas,' +or Boulogne, to escape the money-lenders. 'That,' quoth Selwyn, 'is +a <i>pass-over</i> which will not be much relished by the Jews.' +And again, when it was said that they would be able to cancel their +father's old will by a new-found one, he profanely indulged in a +pun far too impious to be repeated in our day, however it may have +been relished in Selwyn's time.</p> +<p>A picture called 'The Daughter of Pharaoh' in which the Princess +Royal and her attendant ladies figured as the saver of Moses and +her handmaids, was being exhibited in 1782, at a house opposite +Brookes', and was to be the companion-piece to Copley's 'Death of +Chatham.' George said he could recommend a better companion, to +wit—the 'Sons of Pharaoh' at the opposite house. It is +scarcely necessary to explain that pharaoh or faro was the most +popular game of hazard then played.</p> +<p>Walking one day with Lord Pembroke, and being besieged by a +troop of small chimney-climbers, begging—Selwyn, after +bearing their importunity very calmly for some time, suddenly +turned round, and with the most serious face thus addressed +them—'I have often heard of the sovereignty of the people; I +suppose your highnesses are in Court mourning,' We can well imagine +the effect of this sedate speech on the astonished youngsters.</p> +<p><a name="081"></a></p> +<div class="figcenter"><a href="images/081.png"><img src= +"images/081sm.png" alt= +"'Selwyn Acknowledges the 'Sovereignty of The People.' "></a> +<h4>SELWYN ACKNOWLEDGES "THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE"</h4> +</div> +<p>Pelham's truculency was well known. Walpole and his friend went +to the sale of his plate in 1755. 'Lord,' said the wit, 'how many +toads have been eaten off these plates!'</p> +<p>The jokes were not always very delicate. When, in the middle of +the summer of 1751, Lord North, who had been twice married before, +espoused the widow of the Earl of Rockingham, who was fearfully +stout, Selwyn suggested that she had been kept in ice for three +days before the wedding. So, too, when there was talk of another +<i>embonpoint</i> personage going to America during the war, he +remarked that she would make a capital <i>breast</i>-work.</p> +<p>One of the few epigrams he ever wrote—if not the only one, +of which there is some doubt—was in the same spirit. It is on +the discovery of a pair of shoes in a certain lady's bed—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Well may Suspicion shake its head—</p> +<p>Well may Clorinda's spouse be jealous,</p> +<p>When the dear wanton takes to bed</p> +<p>Her very shoes—because they're fellows.</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Such are a few specimens of George Selwyn's wit; and dozens more +are dispersed though Walpole's Letters. As Eliot Warburton remarks, +they do not give us a very high idea of the humour of the period; +but two things must be taken into consideration before we deprecate +their author's title to the dignity and reputation he enjoyed so +abundantly among his contemporaries; they are not necessarily the +<i>best</i> specimens that might have been given, if more of his +<i>mots</i> had been preserved; and their effect on his listeners +depended more on the manner of delivery than on the matter. That +they were improvised and unpremeditated is another important +consideration. It is quite unfair to compare them, as Warburton +does, with the hebdomadal trash of 'Punch,' though perhaps they +would stand the comparison pretty well. It is one thing to force +wit with plenty of time to invent and meditate it—another to +have so much wit within you that you can bring it out on any +occasion; one thing to compose a good fancy for +<i>money</i>—another to utter it only when it flashes through +the brain.</p> +<p>But it matters little what we in the present day may think of +Selwyn's wit, for conversation is spoiled by bottling, and should +be drawn fresh when wanted. Selwyn's companions—all men of +wit, more or less, affirmed him to be the most amusing man of his +day, and that was all the part he had to play. No real wit ever +hopes to <i>talk</i> for posterity; and written wit is of a very +different character to the more sparkling, if less solid, creations +of a moment.</p> +<p>We have seen Selwyn in many points of view, not all very +creditable to him; first, expelled from Oxford for blasphemy; next, +a professed gambler and the associate of men who led fashion in +those days, it is true, but then it was very bad fashion; then as a +lover of hangmen, a wit and a lounger. There is reason to believe +that Selwyn, though less openly reprobate than many of his +associates, was, in his quiet way, just as bad as any of them, if +we except the Duke of Queensberry, his intimate friend, or the +disgusting 'Franciscans' of Medmenham Abbey, of whom, though not +the founder, nor even a member, he was, in a manner, the suggester +in his blasphemy.</p> +<p>But Selwyn's real character is only seen in profile in all these +accounts. He had at the bottom of such vice, to which his position, +and the fashion of the day introduced him, a far better heart than +any of his contemporaries, and in some respects a kind of +simplicity which was endearing. He was neither knave nor fool. He +was not a voluptuary, like his friend the duke; nor a continued +drunkard, like many other 'fine gentlemen' with whom he mixed; nor +a cheat, though a gambler; nor a sceptic, like his friend Walpole; +nor a blasphemer, like the Medmenham set, though he had once +parodied profanely a sacred rite; nor was he steeped in debt, as +Fox was; nor does he appear to have been a practised seducer, as +too many of his acquaintance were. Not that these negative +qualities are to his praise; but if we look at the age and the +society around him, we must, at least, admit that Selwyn was not +one of the worst of that wicked set.</p> +<p>But the most pleasing point in the character of the old +bachelor—for he was <i>too much</i> of a wit ever to +marry—is his affection for children—not his own. That +is, not avowedly his own, for it was often suspected that the +little ones he took up so fondly bore some relationship to him, and +there can be little doubt that Selwyn, like everybody else in that +evil age, had his intrigues. He did not die in his sins, and that +is almost all we can say for him. He gave up gaming in time, +protesting that it was the bane of four much better +things—health, money, time, and thinking. For the last two, +perhaps, he cared little. Before his death he is said to have been +a Christian, which was a decided rarity in the fashionable set of +his day. Walpole answered, when asked if he was a Freemason, that +he never had been <i>anything</i>, and probably most of the men of +the time would, if they had had the honesty, have said the same. +They were not atheists professedly, but they neither believed in +nor practised Christianity.</p> +<p>His love for children has been called one of his eccentricities. +It would be a hard name to give it if he had not been a +club-lounger of his day. I have sufficient faith in human nature to +trust that two-thirds of the men of this country have that most +amiable eccentricity. But in Selwyn it amounted to something more +than in the ordinary paterfamilias: it was almost a passion. He was +almost motherly in his celibate tenderness to the little ones to +whom he took a fancy. This affection he showed to several of the +children, sons or daughters, of his friends; but to two especially, +Anne Coventry and Maria Fagniani.</p> +<p>The former was the daughter of the beautiful Maria Gunning, who +became Countess of Coventry. Nanny, as he called her, was four +years old when her mother died, and from that time he treated her +almost as his own child.</p> +<p>But Mie-Mie, as the little Italian was called, was far more +favoured. Whoever may have been the child's father, her mother was +a rather beautiful and very immoral woman, the wife of the Marchese +Fagniani. She seems to have desired to make the most for her +daughter out of the extraordinary rivalry of the two English +'gentlemen,' and they were admirably taken in by her. Whatever the +truth may have been, Selwyn's love for children showed itself more +strongly in this case than in any other; and, oddly enough, it +seems to have begun when the little girl was at an age when +children scarcely interest other men than their fathers—in +short, in infancy. Her parents allowed him to have the sole charge +of her at a very early age, when they returned to the Continent; +but in 1777, the marchioness, being then in Brussels, claimed her +daughter back again; though less, it seems, from any great anxiety +on the child's account, than because her husband's parents, in +Milan, objected to their grand-daughter being left in England; and +also, not a little, from fear of the voice of Mrs. Grundy. Selwyn +seems to have used all kinds of arguments to retain the child; and +a long correspondence took place, which the marchesa begins with, +'My very dear friend,' and many affectionate expressions, and +concludes with a haughty 'Sir,' and her opinion that his conduct +was 'devilish.' The affair was, therefore, clearly a violent +quarrel, and Selwyn was obliged at last to give up the child. He +had a carriage fitted up for her expressly for her journey; made +out for her a list of the best hotels on her route; sent his own +confidential man-servant with her, and treasured up among his +'relics' the childish little notes, in a large scrawling hand, +which Mie-Mie sent him. Still more curious was it to see this +complete man of the world, this gambler for many years, this +club-lounger, drinker, associate of well-dressed blasphemers, of +Franciscans of Medmenham Abbey, devoting, not his money only, but +his very time to this mere child, leaving town in the height of the +season for dull Matson, that she might have fresh air; quitting his +hot club-rooms, his nights spent at the piquet-table, and the +rattle of the dice, for the quiet, pleasant terraces of his +country-house, where he would hold the little innocent Mie-Mie by +her tiny hand, as she looked up into his shrivelled dissipated +face; quitting the interchange of wit, the society of the +Townshends, the Walpoles, the Williamses, the Edgecumbes; all the +jovial, keen wisdom of Gilly, and Dick, and Horace, and Charles, as +they called one another, for the meaningless prattle, the merry +laughter of this half-English, half-Italian child, It redeems +Selwyn in our eyes, and it may have done him real good: nay, he +must have felt a keen refreshment in this change from vice to +innocence; and we understand the misery he expressed, when the old +bachelor's one little companion and only pure friend was taken away +from him. His love for the child was well known in London society; +and of it did Sheridan's friends take advantage, when they wanted +to get Selwyn out of Brookes', to prevent his black-balling the +dramatist. The anecdote is given in the next memoir.</p> +<p>In his later days Selwyn still haunted the clubs, hanging about, +sleepy, shrivelled, dilapidated in face and figure, yet still +respected and dreaded by the youngsters, as the 'celebrated Mr. +Selwyn.' The wit's disease—gout—carried him off at +last, in 1791, at the age of seventy-two.</p> +<p>He left a fortune which was not contemptible: £33,000 of +it were to go to Mie-Mie—by this time a young lady—and +as the Duke of Queensberry, at his death, left her no less than +£150,000, Miss was by no means a bad match for Lord +Yarmouth.<a id="footnotetag6" name="footnotetag6"></a><a href= +"#footnote6"><sup>6</sup></a> See what a good thing it is to have +three papas, when two of them are rich! The duke made Lord Yarmouth +his residuary legatee, and between him and his wife divided nearly +half-a-million.</p> +<p>Let us not forget in closing this sketch of George Selwyn's +life, that, gambler and reprobate as he was, he possessed some good +traits, among which his love of children appears in shining +colours.</p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h3><a name="Sheridan">RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN.</a></h3> +<blockquote>Sheridan a Dunce.—Boyish Dreams of Literary +Fame.—Sheridan in Love.—A Nest of +Nightingales.—The 'Maid of Bath.'—Captivated by +Genius.— Sheridan's Elopement with 'Cecilia.'—His Duel +with Captain Matthews.— Standards of Ridicule.—Painful +Family Estrangements.—Enters Drury Lane. —Success of +the Famous 'School for Scandal.'—Opinions of Sheridan and his +Influence.—The Literary Club.—Anecdote of Garrick's +Admittance.— Origin of the 'Rejected Addresses.'—New +Flights.—Political Ambition.— The Gaming +Mania.—Almacks'.—Brookes'.—Black-balled.—Two +Versions of the Election Trick.—St. Stephen's +Won.—Vocal Difficulties.—Leads a Double +Life.—Pitt's Vulgar Attack.—Sheridan's Happy +Retort.—Grattan's Quip.—Sheridan's Sallies.—The +Trial at Warren Hastings.—Wonderful Effect of Sheridan's +Eloquence.—The Supreme Effort.—The Star +Culminates.—Native Taste for Swindling.—A Shrewd but +Graceless Oxonian.—Duns Outwitted.—The Lawyer +Jockeyed.—Adventures with Bailiffs.—Sheridan's Powers +of Persuasion.—House of Commons Greek.— Curious +Mimicry.—The Royal Boon Company.—Street Frolics at +Night.—An Old Tale.—'All's well that ends +well.'—The Fray in St. Giles.'— Unopened +Letters.—An Odd Incident.—Reckless +Extravagance.—Sporting Ambition.—Like Father like +Son.—A Severe and Witty Rebuke.— +Intemperance.—Convivial Excesses of a Past Day.—Worth +wins at last.— Bitter Pangs.—The Scythe of +Death.—Sheridan's Second Wife.—Debts of +Honour.—Drury Lane Burnt.—The Owner's +Serenity.—Misfortunes never come Singly.—The Whitbread +Quarrel.—Ruined.—Undone and almost Forsaken.— The +Dead Man Arrested.—The Stories fixed on +Sheridan.—Extempore Wit and Inveterate Talkers.</blockquote> +<p>Poor Sheridan! gambler, spendthrift, debtor, as thou wert, what +is it that shakes from our hand the stone we would fling at thee? +Almost, we must confess it, thy very faults; at least those +qualities which seem to have been thy glory and thy ruin: which +brought thee into temptation; to which, hadst thou been less +brilliant, less bountiful, thou hadst never been drawn. What is it +that disarms us when we review thy life, and wrings from us a tear +when we should utter a reproach? Thy punishment; that bitter, +miserable end; that long battling with poverty, debt, disease, all +brought on by thyself; that abandonment in the hour of need, more +bitter than them all; that awakening to the terrible truth of the +hollowness of man and rottenness of the world!—surely this is +enough: surely we may hope that a pardon followed. But now let us +view thee in thy upward flight the genius, the wit, the monarch of +mind.</p> +<p>This great man, this wonderful genius, this eloquent senator, +this most applauded dramatist was—hear it, oh, ye boys! and +fling it triumphantly in the faces of your +pedagogues—Sheridan, at your age, was a dunce! This was the +more extraordinary, inasmuch as his father, mother, and grandfather +were all celebrated for their quick mental powers. The last, in +fact, Dr. Sheridan, was a successful and eminent schoolmaster, the +intimate friend of Dean Swift, and an author. He was an Irish man +and a wit, and would seem to have been a Jacobite to boot, for he +was deprived of a chaplaincy he held under Government, for +preaching, on King George's birthday, a sermon having for its text +'Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.'</p> +<p>Sheridan's mother, again—an eccentric, extraordinary +woman—wrote novels and plays; among the latter 'The +Discovery,' which Garrick said was 'one of the best comedies he +ever read;' and Sheridan's father, Tom Sheridan, was famous, in +connection with the stage where he was so long the rival of David +Garrick.</p> +<p>Born of such parents, in September, 1751, Richard Brinsley +Sheridan was sent in due course to Harrow, where that famous old +pedant, Dr. Parr, was at that time one of the masters. The Doctor +has himself described the lazy boy, in whose face he discovered the +latent genius, and whom he attempted to inspire with a love of +Greek verbs and Latin verses, by making him ashamed of his +ignorance. But Richard preferred English verses and no verbs, and +the Doctor failed. He did not, even at that period, cultivate +elocution, of which his father was so good a master; though Dr. +Parr remembered one of his sisters, on a visit to Harrow, reciting, +in accordance with her father's teaching, the well-known +lines—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'<i>None</i> but the brave,</p> +<p>None but the <i>brave</i>,</p> +<p>None <i>but</i> the brave deserve the fair.</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>But the real mind of the boy who would not be a scholar showed +itself early enough. He had only just left Harrow, when he began to +display his literary abilities. He had formed at school the +intimate acquaintance of Halhed, afterwards a distinguished +Indianist, a man of like tastes with himself; he had translated +with him some of the poems of Theocritus. The two boys had revelled +together in boyish dreams of literary fame—ah, those boyish +dreams! so often our noblest—so seldom realized. So often, +alas! the aspirations to which we can look back as our purest and +best, and which make us bitterly regret that they were but dreams. +And now, when young Halhed went to Oxford, and young Sheridan to +join his family at Bath, they continued these ambitious projects +for a time, and laid out their fancy at full usury over many a work +destined never to see the fingers of the printer's devil. Among +these was a farce, or rather burlesque, which shows immense +promise, and which, oddly enough, resembles in its cast the famous +'Critic,' which followed it later. It was called 'Jupiter,' and +turned chiefly on the story of Ixion—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'Embracing cloud, Ixion like,'</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>the lover of Juno, who caught a cold instead of the Queen of +Heaven; and who, according to the classical legend, tortured for +ever on a wheel, was in this production to be condemned for ever to +trundle the machine of a 'needy knife-grinder,' amid a grand +musical chorus of 'razors, scissors, and penknives to grind!' This +piece was amusing enough, and clever enough, though it betrayed +repeatedly the youthfulness of its authors; but less so their next +attempt, a weekly periodical, to be called 'Hernan's Miscellany,' +of which Sheridan wrote, or was to write, pretty nearly the whole. +None but the first number was ever completed, and perhaps we need +not regret that no more followed it; but it is touching to see +these two young men, both feeling their powers, confident in them, +and sunning their halcyon's wings in the happy belief that they +were those of the eagle, longing eagerly, earnestly, for the few +poor guineas that they hoped from their work. Halhed, indeed, wrote +diligently, but his colleague was not true to the contract, and +though the hope of gold stimulated him—for he was poor +enough—from time to time to a great effort, he was always +'beginning,' and never completing.</p> +<p>The only real product of these united labours was a volume of +Epistles in verse from the Greek of a poor writer of late age, +Aristaenetus. This volume, which does little credit to either of +its parents, was positively printed and published in 1770, but the +rich harvest of fame and shillings which they expected from it was +never gathered in. Yet the book excited some little notice. The +incognito of its authors induced some critics to palm it even on +such a man as Dr. Johnson; others praised; others sneered at it. In +the young men it raised hopes, only to dash them; but its failure +was not so utter as to put the idea of literary success entirely +out of their heads, nor its success sufficient to induce them to +rush recklessly into print, and thus strangle their fame in its +cradle. Let it fail, was Richard Sheridan's thought; he had now a +far more engrossing ambition. In a word, he was in love.</p> +<p>Yes, he was in love for a time—only for a time, and not +truly. But, be it remembered, Sheridan's evil days had not +commenced. He sowed his wild oats late in life,—alack for +him!—and he never finished sowing them. His was not the +viciousness of nature, but the corruption of success. 'In all time +of wealth, good Lord deliver us!' What prayer can wild, +unrestrained, unheeding Genius utter with more fervency? I own +Genius is rarely in love. There is an egotism, almost a +selfishness, about it, that will not stoop to such common worship. +Women know it, and often prefer the blunt, honest, common-place +soldier to the wild erratic poet. Genius, grand as it is, is +unsympathetic. It demands higher—the highest joys. Genius +claims to be loved, but to love is too much to ask it. And yet at +this time Sheridan was not a matured Genius. When his development +came, he cast off this very love for which he had fought, +manoeuvred, struggled, and was unfaithful to the very wife whom he +had nearly died to obtain.</p> +<p>Miss Linley was one of a family who have been called 'a nest of +nightingales.' Young ladies who practise elaborate pieces and sing +simple ballads in the voice of a white mouse, know the name of +Linley well. For ages the Linleys have been the bards of +England—composers, musicians, singers, always popular, always +English. Sheridan's love was one of the most renowned of the +family, but the 'Maid of Bath,' as she was called, was as +celebrated for her beauty as for the magnificence of her voice. +When Sheridan first knew her, she was only sixteen years +old—very beautiful, clever, and modest. She was a singer by +profession, living at Bath, as Sheridan, only three years older +than herself, also was, but attending concerts, oratorios, and so +forth, in other places, especially at Oxford. Her adorers were +legion; and the Oxford boys especially—always in love as they +are—were among them. Halhed was among these last, and in the +innocence of his heart confided his passion to his friend Dick +Sheridan. At sixteen the young beauty began her conquests. A rich +old Wiltshire squire, with a fine heart, as golden as his guineas, +offered to or for her, and was readily accepted. But 'Cecilia,' as +she was always called, could not sacrifice herself on the altar of +duty, and she privately told him that though she honoured and +esteemed, she could never love him. The old gentleman proved his +worth. Did he storm? did he hold her to her engagement? did he +shackle himself with a young wife, who would only learn to hate him +for his persinacity? Not a bit of it. He acted with a generosity +which should be held up as a model to all old gentlemen who are +wild enough, to fall in love with girls of sixteen. He knew Mr. +Linley, who was delighted with the match, would be furious if it +were broken off. He offered to take on himself all the blame if the +breach, and, to satisfy the angry parent, settled £1,000 on +the daughter. The offer was accepted, and the trial for breach of +promise with which the père Linley had threatened Mr. Long, +was of course withheld. Mr. Long afterwards presented Mrs. Sheridan +with £3,000.</p> +<p>The 'Maid of Bath' was now an heiress as well as a fascinating +beauty, but her face and her voice were the chief enchantments with +her ardent and youthful adorers. The Sheridans had settled in Mead +Street, in that town which is celebrated for its gambling, its +scandal, and its unhealthy situation at the bottom of a natural +basin. Well might the Romans build their baths there: it will take +more water than even Bath supplies to wash out its follies and +iniquities. It certainly is strange how washing and cards go +together. One would fancy there were no baths in Eden, for wherever +there are baths, there we find idleness and all its attendant +vices.</p> +<p>The Linleys were soon intimate with the Sheridans, and the Maid +of Bath added to her adorers both Richard and his elder brother +Charles; only, just as at Harrow every one thought Richard a dunce +and he disappointed them; so at Bath no one thought Richard would +fall in love, and he <i>did</i> disappoint them—none more so +than Charles, his brother, and Halhed, his bosom friend. As for the +latter, he was almost mad in his devotion, and certainly +extravagant in his expressions. He described his passion by a +clever, but rather disagreeable simile, which Sheridan, who was a +most disgraceful plagiarist, though he had no need to be so, +afterwards adopted as his own. 'Just as the Egyptian pharmacists,' +wrote Halhed, in a Latin letter, in which he described the power of +Miss Linley's voice over his spirit, 'were wont, in embalming a +dead body to draw the brain out through the ears with a crooked +hook, this nightingale has drawn out through mine ears not my brain +only, but my heart also.'</p> +<p>Then among other of her devotees were Norris, the singer, and +Mr. Watts, a rich gentleman-commoner, who had also met her at +Oxford. Surely with such and other rivals, the chances of the +quiet, unpretending, undemonstrative boy of nineteen were small. +But no, Miss Linley was foolish enough to be captivated by genius, +and charmed by such poems as the quiet boy wrote to her, of which +this is, perhaps, one of the prettiest:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'Dry that tear, my gentlest love;</p> +<p class="i2">Be hush'd that struggling sigh,</p> +<p>Nor seasons, day, nor fate shall prove</p> +<p class="i2">More fix'd, more true than I.</p> +<p>Hush'd be that sigh, be dry that tear;</p> +<p>Cease boding doubt, cease anxious fear:</p> +<p class="i2">Dry be that tear.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'Ask'st thou how long my love will stay,</p> +<p class="i2">When all that's new is past?</p> +<p>How long, ah Delia, can I say</p> +<p class="i2">How long my life will last?</p> +<p>Dry be that tear, be hush'd that sigh,</p> +<p>At least I'll love thee till I die:</p> +<p class="i2">Hush'd be that sigh.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'And does that thought affect thee too,</p> +<p class="i2">The thought of Sylvio's death,</p> +<p>That he who only breath'd for you,</p> +<p class="i2">Must yield that faithful breath?</p> +<p>Hush'd be that sigh, be dry that tear,</p> +<p>Nor let us lose our Heaven here:</p> +<p class="i2">Be dry that tear.'</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>The many adorers had not the remotest suspicion of this +devotion, and 'gave her' to this, that, or the other eligible +personage; but the villanous conduct of a scoundrel soon brought +the matter to a crisis. The whole story was as romantic as it could +be. In a three-volume novel, critics, always so just and acute in +their judgment, would call it far-fetched, improbable, unnatural; +in short, anything but what should be the plot of the pure +'domestic English story.' Yet, here it is with almost dramatic +effect, the simple tale of what really befel one of our most +celebrated men.</p> +<p>Yes, to complete the fiction-like aspect of the affair, there +was even a 'captain' in the matter—as good a villain as ever +shone in short hose and cut doublet at the 'Strand' or 'Victoria.' +Captain Matthews was a married man, and a very naughty one. He was +an intimate friend of the Linleys, and wanted to push his intimacy +too far. In short, 'not to put too fine a point on it' (too fine a +point is precisely what never <i>is</i> put), he attempted to +seduce the pretty, innocent girl, and not dismayed at one failure, +went on again and again. 'Cecilia,' knowing the temper of Linley +père, was afraid to expose him to her father, and with a +course, which we of the present day cannot but think strange, if +nothing more, disclosed the attempts of her persecutor to no other +than her own lover, Richard Brinsley Sheridan.</p> +<p>Strange want of delicacy, undoubtedly, and yet we can excuse the +poor songstress, with a father who sought only to make money out of +her talents, and no other relations to confide in. But Richard +Brinsley, long her lover, now resolved to be both her protector and +her husband. He persuaded her to fly to France, under cover of +entering a convent. He induced his sister to lend him money out of +that provided for the housekeeping at home, hired a post-chaise, +and sent a sedan-chair to her father's house in the Crescent to +convey her to it, and wafted her off to town. Thence, after a few +adroit lies on the part of Sheridan, they sailed to Dunkirk; and +there he persuaded her to become his wife. She consented, and they +were knotted together by an obliging priest accustomed to these +runaway matches from <i>la perfide Albion</i>.</p> +<p>The irate parent, Linley, followed, recaptured his daughter, and +brought Her back to England. Meanwhile, the elopement excited great +agitation in the good city of Bath, and among others, the villain +of the story, the gallant Captain Matthews, posted Richard Brinsley +as 'a scoundrel and a liar,' the then polite method of expressing +disgust. Home came Richard in the wake of Miss Linley, who rejoiced +in the unromantic praenomen of 'Betsy,' to her angry parent, and +found matters had been running high in his short absence. A duel +with Matthews seems to have been the natural consequence, and up +Richard posted to London to fight it. Matthews played the +craven—Sheridan the impetuous lover. They met, fought, seized +one another's swords, wrestled, fell together, and wounded each +other with the stumps of their rapiers in true Chevy-Chase fashion. +Matthews, who had behaved in a cowardly manner in the first affair, +sought to retrieve his honour by sending a second challenge. Again +the rivals—well represented in 'The Rivals' afterwards +produced—met at Kingsdown. Mr. Matthews drew; Mr. Sheridan +advanced on him at first: Mr. Matthews in turn advanced fast on Mr. +Sheridan; upon which he retreated, till he very suddenly ran in +upon Mr. Matthews, laying himself exceedingly open, and +endeavouring to get hold of Mr. Matthews' sword. Mr. Matthews +received him at point, and, I believe, disengaged his sword from +Mr. Sheridan's body, and gave him another wound. The same scene was +now enacted, and a <i>combat à l'outrance</i> took place, +ending in mutual wounds, and fortunately no one dead.</p> +<p>Poor little Betsy was at Oxford when all this took place. On her +return to Bath she heard something of it, and unconsciously +revealed the secret of her private marriage, claiming the right of +a wife to watch over her wounded husband. Then came the +<i>dénouement</i>. Old Tom Sheridan rejected his son. The +angry Linley would have rejected his daughter, but for her honour. +Richard was sent off into Essex, and in due time the couple were +legally married in England. So ended a wild, romantic affair, in +which Sheridan took a desperate, but not altogether honourable, +part. But the dramatist got more out of it than a pretty wife. Like +all true geniuses, he employed his own experience in the production +of his works, and drew from the very event of his life some hints +or touches to enliven the characters of his imagination. Surely the +bravado and cowardice of Captain Matthews, who on the first meeting +in the Park is described as finding all kinds of difficulties in +the way of their fighting, objecting now to the ground as unlevel, +now to the presence of a stranger, who turns out to be an officer, +and very politely moves off when requested, who, in short, delays +the event as long as possible, must have supplied the idea of Bob +Acres; while the very conversations, of which we have no record, +may have given him some of those hints of character which made the +'Rivals' so successful. That play—his first—was written +in 1774. It failed on its first appearance, owing to the bad acting +of the part of Sir Lucius O'Trigger, by Mr. Lee; but when another +actor was substituted, the piece was at once successful, and acted +with overflowing houses all over the country. How could it be +otherwise? It may have been exaggerated, far-fetched, unnatural, +but such characters as Sir Anthony Absolute, Sir Lucius, Bob Acres, +Lydia Languish, and most of all Mrs. Malaprop, so admirably +conceived, and so carefully and ingeniously worked out, could not +but be admired. They have become household words; they are even now +our standards of ridicule, and be they natural or not, these last +eighty years have changed the world so little that Malaprops and +Acreses may be found in the range of almost any man's experience, +and in every class of society.</p> +<p>Sheridan and his divine Betsy were now living in their own +house, in that Dull little place, Orchard Street, Portman Square, +then an aristocratic neighbourhood, and he was diligent in the +production of essays, pamphlets, and farces, many of which never +saw the light, while others fell flat, or were not calculated to +bring him any fame. What great authors have not experienced the +same disappointments? What men would ever be great if they allowed +such checks to damp their energy, or were turned back by them from +the course in which they feel that their power lies?</p> +<p>But his next work, the opera of 'The Duenna,' had a yet more +signal success, and a run of no less than seventy-five nights at +Covent Garden, which put Garrick at Drury Lane to his wit's end to +know how to compete with it. Old Linley himself composed the music +for it; and to show how thus a family could hold the stage, Garrick +actually played off the mother against the son, and revived Mrs. +Sheridan's comedy of 'The Discovery,' to compete with Richard +Sheridan's 'Duenna.'</p> +<p>The first night 'The Rivals' was brought out at Bath came +Sheridan's father, who, as we have seen, had refused to have +anything to say to his son. It is related as an instance of +Richard's filial affection, that during the representation he +placed himself behind a side-scene opposite to the box in which his +father and sisters sat, and gazed at them all the time. When he +returned to his house and wife, he burst into tears, and declared +that he felt it too bitter that he alone should have been forbidden +to speak to those on whom he had been gazing all the night.</p> +<p>During the following year this speculative man, who married on +nothing but his brain, and had no capital, no wealthy friends, in +short nothing whatever, suddenly appears in the most mysterious +manner as a capitalist, and lays down his £10,000 in the +coolest and quietest manner. And for what? For a share in the +purchase of Garrick's moiety of the patent of Drury Lane. The whole +property was worth £70,000; Garrick sold his half for +£35,000, of which old Mr. Linley contributed £10,000, +Dr. Ford £15,000, and penniless Sheridan the balance. Where +he got the money nobody knew, and apparently nobody asked. It was +paid, and he entered at once on the business of proprietor of that +old house, where so many a Roscius has strutted and declaimed with +more or less fame; so many a Walking gentleman done his five +shillings' worth of polite comedy, so many a tinsel king degraded +the 'legitimate drama,' in the most illegitimate manner, and whose +glories were extinguished with the reign of Macready, when we were +boys, <i>nous autres</i>.</p> +<p>The first piece he contributed to this stage was 'A Trip to +Scarborough,' Which was only a species of 'family edition of +Vanbrugh's play, 'The Relapse;' but in 1777 he reached the acme of +his fame, in 'The School for Scandal.'</p> +<p>But alack and alas for these sensual days, when it is too much +trouble to think, and people go to the play, if they go at all, to +feast their eyes and ears, not their minds; can any sensible person +believe that if 'The School for Scandal,' teeming as it does with +wit, satire, and character, finer and truer than in any play +produced since the days of Ben Jonson, Massinger, and Marlowe, were +set on the boards of the Haymarket at this day, as a new piece by +an author of no very high celebrity, it would draw away a single +admirer from the flummery in Oxford Street, the squeaking at Covent +Garden, or the broad, exaggerated farce at the Adelphi or Olympic? +No: it may still have its place on the London stage when well +acted, but it owes that to its ancient celebrity, and it can never +compete with the tinsel and tailoring which alone can make even +Shakspeare go down with a modern audience.</p> +<p>In those days of Garrick, on the other hand, those glorious days +of true histrionic art, high and low were not ashamed to throng +Drury Lane and Covent Garden, and make the appearance of a new play +the great event of the season. Hundreds were turned away from the +doors, when 'The School for Scandal' was acted, and those who were +fortunate enough to get in made the piece the subject of +conversation in society for many a night, passing keen comment on +every scene, every line, every word almost, and using their minds +as we now use our eyes.</p> +<p>This brilliant play, the earliest idea of which was derived from +its author's experience of the gossip of that kettle of scandal and +backbiting, Bath, where, if no other commandment were ever broken, +the constant breach of the ninth would suffice to put it on a level +with certain condemned cities we have somewhere read of, won for +Sheridan a reputation of which he at once felt the value, and made +his purchase of a share in the property of Old Drury for the time +being, a successful speculation. It produced a result which his +good heart perhaps valued even more than the guineas which now +flowed in; it induced his father, who had long been at war with +him, to seek a reconciliation, and the elder Sheridan actually +became manager of the theatre of which his son was part +proprietor.</p> +<p>Old Tom Sheridan had always been a proud man, and when once he +was offended, was hard to bring round again. His quarrel with +Johnson was an instance of this. In 1762 the Doctor, hearing they +had given Sheridan a pension of two hundred a year, exclaimed, +'What have they given <i>him</i> a pension? then it is time for me +to give up mine.' A 'kind friend' took care to repeat the peevish +exclamation, without adding what Johnson had said immediately +afterwards, 'However, I am glad that they have given Mr. Sheridan a +pension, for he is a very good man.' The actor was disgusted; and +though Boswell interfered, declined to be reconciled. On one +occasion he even rushed from a house at which he was to dine, when +he heard that the great Samuel had been invited. The Doctor had +little opinion of Sheridan's declamation. 'Besides, sir,' said he, +'what influence can Mr. Sheridan have upon the language of this +great country by his narrow exertions. Sir, it is burning a +farthing candle at Dover to show light at Calais.' Still, when +Garrick attacked his rival, Johnson nobly defended him. 'No sir,' +he said, 'there is to be sure, in Sheridan, something to reprehend, +and everything to laugh at; but, sir, he is not a bad man. No, sir, +were mankind to be divided into good and bad, he would stand +considerably within the ranks of the good.'</p> +<p>However, the greatest bully of his age (and the kindest-hearted +man) thought very differently of the son. Richard Brinsley had +written a prologue to Savage's play of 'Sir Thomas +Overbury'—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'Ill-fated Savage, at whose birth was giv'n</p> +<p>No parent but the Muse, no friend but Heav'n;'</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>and in this had paid an elegant compliment to the great +lexicographer, winding up with these lines:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'So pleads the tale that gives to future times</p> +<p>The son's misfortunes and the parent's crimes;</p> +<p>There shall his fame, if own'd to-night, survive,</p> +<p>Fix'd <i>by the hand that bids our language live</i>—</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>referring at once to Johnson's life of his friend Savage and to +his great Dictionary. It was Savage, every one remembers, with whom +Johnson in his days of starvation was wont to walk the streets all +night, neither of them being able to pay for a lodging, and with +whom, walking one night round and round St. James's Square, he kept +up his own and his companion's spirits by inveighing against the +minister and declaring that they would 'stand by their +country.'</p> +<p>Doubtless the Doctor felt as much pleasure at the meed awarded +to his old companion in misery as at the high compliment to +himself. Anyhow he pronounced that Sheridan 'had written the two +best comedies of his age,' and therefore proposed him as a member +of the Literary Club.</p> +<p>This celebrated gathering of wit and whimsicality, founded by +Johnson himself in conjunction with Sir J. Reynolds, was the +Helicon of London Letters, and the temple which the greatest talker +of his age had built for himself, and in which he took care to be +duly worshipped. It met at the Turk's Head in Gerrard Street, Soho, +every Friday; and from seven in the evening to almost any hour of +night was the scene of such talk, mainly on literature and +learning, as has never been heard since in this country. It +consisted at this period of twenty-six members, and there is +scarcely one among them whose name is not known to-day as well as +any in the history of our literature. Besides the high priests, +Reynolds and Johnson, there came Edmund Burke, Fox, Sheridan, and +many another of less note, to represent the senate: Goldsmith, +Gibbon, Adam Smith, Malone, Dr. Burney, Percy, Nugent, Sir William +Jones, three Irish bishops, and a host of others, crowded in from +the ranks of learning and literature. Garrick and George Colman +found here an indulgent audience; and the light portion of the +company comprised such men as Topham Beauclerk, Bennet Langton, +Vesey, and a dozen of lords and baronets. In short, they were +picked men, and if their conversation was not always witty, it was +because they had all wit and frightened one another.</p> +<p><a name="100"></a></p> +<div class="figcenter"><a href="images/100.png"><img src= +"images/100sm.png" alt="The Famous Literary Club."></a> +<h3>"THE FAMOUS LITERARY CLUB."</h3> +</div> +<p>Among them the bullying Doctor rolled in majestic grumpiness; +scolded, dogmatized, contradicted, pished and pshawed; and made +himself generally disagreeable; yet, hail the omen, Intellect! +such was the force, such the fame of his mind, that the more +he snorted, the more they adored him—the more he +bullied, the more humbly they knocked under. He was quite 'His +Majesty' at the Turk's Head, and the courtiers waited for his +coming with anxiety, and talked of him till he came in the same +manner as the lacqueys in the anteroom of a crowned monarch. +Boswell, who, by the way, was also a member—of course he was, +or how should we have had the great man's conversations handed down +to us?—was sure to keep them up to the proper mark of +adulation if they ever flagged in it, and was as servile in his +admiration in the Doctor's absence as when he was there to call him +a fool for his pains.</p> +<p>Thus, on one occasion while 'King Johnson' tarried, the +courtiers were discussing his journey to the Hebrides and his +coming away 'willing to believe the second sight.' Some of them +smiled at this, but Bozzy was down on them with more than usual +servility. 'He is only <i>willing</i> to believe,' he exclaimed. +'<i>I do</i> believe. The evidence is enough for me, though not for +his great mind. What will not fill a quart bottle will fill a pint +bottle. I am filled with belief.'—'Are you?' said Colman, +slily; 'then cork it up.'</p> +<p>As a specimen of Johnson's pride in his own club, which always +remained extremely exclusive, we have what he said of Garrick, who, +before he was elected, carelessly told Reynolds he liked the club, +and thought 'he would be of them.'</p> +<p>'<i>He'll be of us!</i>' roared the Doctor indignantly, on +hearing of this. 'How does he know we will <i>permit</i> him? The +first duke in England has no right to hold such language!'</p> +<p>It can easily be imagined that when 'His Majesty' expressed his +approval of Richard Brinsley, then a young man of eight-and-twenty, +there was no one who ventured to blackball him, and so Sheridan was +duly elected.</p> +<p>The fame of 'The School for Scandal' was a substantial one for +Richard Brinsley, and in the following year he extended his +speculation by buying the other moiety of Drury Lane. This theatre, +which took its name from the old Cockpit Theatre in Drury Lane, +where Killigrew acted in the days of Charles II. is famous for the +number of times it has been rebuilt. The first house had been +destroyed in 1674; and the one in which Garrick acted was built by +Sir Christopher Wren and opened with a prologue by Dryden. In 1793 +this was rebuilt. In 1809 it was burnt to the ground; and on its +re-opening the Committee advertised a prize for a prologue, which +was supposed to be tried for by all the poets and poetasters then +in England.<a id="footnotetag7" name="footnotetag7"></a><a href= +"#footnote7"><sup>7</sup></a> Sheridan adding afterwards a +condition that he wanted an address without a Phoenix in it. Horace +Smith and his brother seized the opportunity to parody the style of +the most celebrated in their delightful 'Rejected Addresses.' Drury +Lane has always been grand in its prologue, for besides Dryden and +Byron, it could boast of Sam. Johnson, who wrote the address when +Garrick opened the theatre in 1747. No theatre ever had more great +names connected with its history.</p> +<p>It was in 1778, after the purchase of the other moiety of this +property, that Sheridan set on its boards 'The Critic.' Though this +was denounced as itself as complete a plagiarism as any Sir Fretful +Plagiary could make, and though undoubtedly the idea of it was +borrowed, its wit, so truly Sheridanian, and its complete +characters, enhanced its author's fame, in spite of the +disappointment of those who expected higher things from the writer +of 'The School for Scandal.' Whether Sheridan would have gone on +improving, had he remained true to the drama, 'The Critic' leaves +us in doubt. But he was a man of higher ambition. Step by step, +unexpectedly, and apparently unprepared, he had taken by storm the +out-works of the citadel he was determined to capture, and he seems +to have cared little to garrison these minor fortresses. He had +carried off from among a dozen suitors a wife of such beauty that +Walpole thus writes of her in 1773:—</p> +<p>'I was at the ball last night, and have only been at the opera, +where I was infinitely struck with the Carrara, who is the +prettiest creature upon earth. Mrs. Hartley I find still handsomer, +and Miss Linley is to be the superlative degree. The king admires +the last, and ogles her as much as he dares in so holy a place as +an oratorio, and at so devout a service as Alexander's Feast'</p> +<p>Yet Sheridan did not prize his lovely wife as he should have +done, when he had once obtained her. Again he had struck boldly +into the drama, and in four years had achieved that fame as a +play-writer to which even Johnson could testify so handsomely. He +now quitted this, and with the same innate power—the same +consciousness of success—the same readiness of +genius—took a higher, far more brilliant flight than ever. +Yet had he garrisoned the forts he captured, he would have been a +better, happier, and more prosperous man. Had he been true to the +Maid of Bath, his character would not have degenerated as it did. +Had he kept up his connection with the drama, he would not have +lost so largely by his speculation in Drury Lane. His genius became +his temptation, and he hurried on to triumph and to fall.</p> +<p>Public praise is a syren which the young sailor through life +cannot resist. Political life is a fine aim, even when its seeker +starts without a shred of real patriotism to conceal his personal +ambition. No young man of any character can think, without a thrill +of rapture, on the glory of having <i>his</i> name—now +obscure—written in capitals on the page of his country's +history. A true patriot cares nothing for fame; a really great man +is content to die nameless, if his acts may but survive him. +Sheridan was not really great, and it may be doubted if he had any +sincerity in his political views. But the period favoured the rise +of young men of genius. In former reigns a man could have little +hope of political influence without being first a courtier; but by +this time liberalism had made giant strides. The leaven of +revolutionary ideas, which had leavened the whole lump in France, +was still working quietly and less passionately in this country, +and being less repressed, displayed itself in the last quarter of +the eighteenth century in the form of a strong and brilliant +opposition. It was to this that the young men of ambition attached +themselves, rallying under the standard of Charles James Fox, since +it was there only that their talents were sufficient to recommend +them.</p> +<p>To this party, Sheridan, laughing in his sleeve at the +extravagance of their demands—so that when they clamoured for +a 'parliament once a year, or oftener if need be,' he pronounced +himself an 'Oftener-if-need-be' man—was introduced, when his +fame as a literary man had brought him into contact with some of +its hangers on. Fox, after his first interview with him, affirmed +that he had always thought Hare and Charles Townsend the wittiest +men he had ever met, but that Sheridan surpassed them both; and +Sheridan was equally pleased with 'the Man of the People.'</p> +<p>The first step to this political position was to become a member +of a certain club, where its leaders gambled away their money, and +drank away their minds—to wit, Brookes'. Pretty boys, indeed, +were these great Whig patriots when turned loose in these +precincts. The tables were for stakes of twenty or fifty guineas, +but soon ran up to hundreds. What did it matter to Charles James +Fox, to the Man of the People, whether he lost five, seven, or ten +thousand of a night, when the one-half came out of his father's, +the other out of Hebrew, pockets—the sleek, thick-lipped +owners of which thronged his Jerusalem chamber, as he called his +back sitting-room, only too glad to 'oblige' him to any amount? The +rage for gaming at this pandemonium may be understood from a rule +of the club, which it was found necessary to make to interdict it +<i>in the eating-room</i>, but to which was added the truly British +exception, which allowed two members of Parliament in those days, +or two 'gentlemen' of any kind, to toss up for what they had +ordered.</p> +<p>This charming resort of the dissipated was originally +established in Pall Mall in 1764, and the manager was that same +Almack who afterwards opened a lady's club in the rooms now called +Willis's, in King Street, St. James's; who also owned the famous +Thatched House, and whom Gilly Williams described as having a +'Scotch face, in a bag-wig,' waiting on the ladies at supper. In +1778 Brookes—a wine-merchant and money-lender, whom Tickell, +in his famous 'Epistle from the Hon. Charles Fox, +partridge-shooting, to the Hon. John Townsend, cruising,' describes +in these lines;—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'And know I've bought the best champagne from Brookes,</p> +<p>From liberal Brookes, whose speculative skill</p> +<p>Is hasty credit, and a distant bill:</p> +<p>Who, nurs'd in clubs, disdains a vulgar trade:</p> +<p>Exults to trust, and blushes to be paid—'</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>built and opened the present club-house in St. James's Street, +and thither the members of Almack's migrated. Brookes' speculative +skill, however, did not make him a rich man, and the 'gentlemen' he +dealt with were perhaps too gentlemanly to pay him. He died poor in +1782. Almack's at first consisted of twenty-seven members, one of +whom was C.J. Fox. Gibbon, the historian, was actually a member of +it, and says that in spite of the rage for play, he found the +society there rational and entertaining. Sir Joshua Reynolds wanted +to be a member of it too. 'You see,' says Topham Beauclerk +thereupon, 'what noble ambition will make a man attempt. That den +is not yet opened,' &c.</p> +<p>Brookes', however, was far more celebrated, and besides Fox, +Reynolds, and Gibbon, there were here to be found Horace Walpole, +David Hume, Burke, Selwyn, and Garrick. It would be curious to +discover how much religion, how much morality, and how much vanity +there were among the set. The first two would require a microscope +to examine, the last an ocean to contain it. But let Tickell +describe its inmates:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'Soon as to Brookes's thence thy footsteps bend</p> +<p>What gratulations thy approach attend!</p> +<p>See Gibbon rap his box—auspicious sign,</p> +<p>That classic compliment and wit combine;</p> +<p>See Beauclerk's cheek a tinge of red surprise,</p> +<p>And friendship give what cruel health denies;</p> +</div> +<hr class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Of wit, of taste, of fancy we'll debate,</p> +<p>If Sheridan for once be not too late.</p> +<p>But scarce a thought on politics we'll spare</p> +<p>Unless on Polish politics with Hare.</p> +<p>Good-natured Devon! oft shall there appear</p> +<p>The cool complacence of thy friendly sneer;</p> +<p>Oft shall Fitzpatrick's wit, and Stanhope's ease,</p> +<p>And Burgoyne's manly sense combine to please.</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>To show how high gaming ran in this assembly of wits, even so +early at 1772, there is a memorandum in the books, stating that Mr. +Thynne retired from the club in disgust, because he had only won +£12,000 in two months. The principal games at this period +were quinze and faro.</p> +<p>Into this eligible club Richard Sheridan, who ten years before +had been agreeing with Halhed on the bliss of making a couple of +hundred pounds by their literary exertions, now essayed to enter as +a member; but in vain. One black-ball sufficed to nullify his +election, and that one was dropped in by George Selwyn, who, with +degrading littleness, would not have the son of an actor among +them. Again and again he made the attempt; again and again Selwyn +foiled him; and it was not till 1780 that he succeeded. The Prince +of Wales was then his devoted friend, and was determined he should +be admitted into the club. The elections at that time took place +between eleven at night and one o'clock in the morning, and the +'greatest gentleman in Europe' took care to be in the hall when the +ballot began. Selwyn came down as usual, bent on triumph. The +prince called him to him. There was nothing for it; Selwyn was +forced to obey. The prince walked him up and down the hall, +engaging him in an apparently most important conversation. George +Selwyn answered him question after question, and made desperate +attempts to slip away. The other George had always something more +to say to him. The long finger of the clock went round, and +Selwyn's long white fingers were itching for the black ball. The +prince was only more and more interested, the wit only more and +more abstracted. Never was the young George more lively, or the +other more silent. But it was all in vain. The finger of the clock +went round and round, and at last the members came out noisily from +the balloting-room, and the smiling faces of the prince's friends +showed to the unhappy Selwyn that his enemy had been elected.</p> +<p>So, at least, runs one story. The other, told by Sir Nathaniel +Wraxall, is perhaps more probable. It appears that the Earl of +Besborough was no less opposed to his election than George Selwyn, +and these two individuals agreed at any cost of comfort to be +always at the club at the time of the ballot to throw in their +black balls. On the night of his success, Lord Besborough was there +as usual, and Selwyn was at his rooms in Cleveland Row, preparing +to come to the club. Suddenly a chairman rushed into Brookes' with +an important note for my lord, who, on tearing it open, found to +his horror that it was from his daughter-in-law, Lady Duncannon, +announcing that his house in Cavendish Square was on fire, and +imploring him to come immediately. Feeling confident that his +fellow conspirator would be true to his post, the earl set off at +once. But almost the same moment Selwyn received a message +informing him that his adopted daughter, of whom he was very fond, +was seized with an alarming illness. The ground was cleared; and by +the time the earl returned, having, it is needless to say, found +his house in a perfect state of security, and was joined by Selwyn, +whose daughter had never been better in her life, the actor's son +was elected, and the conspirators found they had been duped.</p> +<p>But it is far easier in this country to get into that House, +where one has to represent the interests of thousands, and take a +share in the government of a nation, than to be admitted to a club +where one has but to lounge, to gamble, and to eat dinner; and +Sheridan was elected for the town of Stafford with probably little +more artifice than the old and stale one of putting five-pound +notes under voters' glasses, or paying thirty pounds for a +home-cured ham. Whether he bribed or not, a petition was presented +against his election, almost as a matter of course in those days, +and his maiden speech was made in defence of the good burgesses of +that quiet little county-town. After making this speech, which was +listened to in silence on account of his reputation as a dramatic +author, but which does not appear to have been very wonderful, he +rushed up to the gallery, and eagerly asked his friend Woodfall +what he thought of it. That candid man shook his head, and told him +oratory was not his forte, Sheridan leaned his head on his hand a +moment, and then exclaimed with vehement emphasis, 'It is in me, +however, and, by Heaven! it shall come out.'</p> +<p>He spoke prophetically, yet not as the great man who determines +to conquer difficulties, but rather as one who feels conscious of +his own powers, and knows that they must show themselves sooner or +later. Sheridan found himself labouring under the same natural +obstacles as Demosthenes—though in a less degree—a +thick and disagreeable tone of voice; but we do not find in the +indolent but gifted Englishman that admirable perseverance, that +conquering zeal, which enabled the Athenian to turn these very +impediments to his own advantage. He did, indeed, prepare his +speeches, and at times had fits of that same diligence which he had +displayed in the preparation of 'The School for Scandal;' but his +indolent, self-indulgent mode of life left him no time for such +steady devotion to oratory as might have made him the finest +speaker of his age, for perhaps his natural abilities were greater +than those of Pitt, Fox, or even Burke, though his education was +inferior to that of those two statesmen.</p> +<p>From this time Sheridan's life had two phases—that of a +politician, and that of a man of the world. With the former, we +have nothing to do in such a memoir as this, and indeed it is +difficult to say whether it was in oratory, the drama, or wit that +he gained the greatest celebrity. There is, however, some +difference between the three capacities. On the mimic stage, and on +the stage of the country, his fame rested on a very few grand +outbursts—some matured, prepared, deliberated—others +spontaneous. He left only three great comedies, and perhaps we may +say only one really grand. In the same way he made only two great +speeches, or perhaps we may say only one. His wit on the other +hand—though that too is said to have been studied—was +the constant accompaniment of his daily life, and Sheridan has not +left two or three celebrated bon-mots, but a hundred.</p> +<p>But even in his political career his wit, which must then have +been spontaneous, won him almost as much fame as his eloquence, +which he seems to have reserved for great occasions. He was the wit +of the House. Wit, ridicule, satire, quiet, cool, and easy sneers, +always made in good temper, and always therefore the more bitter, +were his weapons, and they struck with unerring accuracy. At that +time—nor at that time only—the 'Den of Thieves,' as +Cobbett called our senate, was a cockpit as vulgar and personal as +the present Congress of the United States. Party-spirit meant more +than it has ever done since, and scarcely less than it had meant +when the throne itself was the stake for which parties played some +forty years before. There was, in fact a substantial personal +centre for each side. The one party rallied round a respectable but +maniac monarch, whose mental afflictions took the most distressing +form, the other round his gay, handsome, dissolute—nay +disgusting—son, at once his rival and his heir. The spirit of +each party was therefore personal, and their attacks on one another +were more personal than anything we can imagine in the present day +in so respectably ridiculous a conclave as the House of Commons. It +was little for one honourable gentleman to give another honourable +gentleman the lie direct before the eyes of the country. The +honourable gentlemen descended—or, as they thought, +ascended—to the most vehement invective, and such was at +times the torrent of personal abuse which parties heaped on one +another, while good-natured John Bull looked on and smiled at his +rulers, that, as in the United States of to-day, a debate was often +the prelude to a duel. Pitt and Fox, Tierney, Adam, Fullarton, Lord +George Germain, Lord Shelburne, and Governor Johnstone, all +'vindicated their honour,' as the phrase went, by 'coffee and +pistols for four.' If Sheridan had not to repeat the Bob Acres +scene with Captain Matthews, it was only because his wonderful good +humour could put up with a great deal that others thought could +only be expiated by a hole in the waistcoat.</p> +<p>In the administration of the Marquis of Rockingham the dramatist +enjoyed the pleasures of office for less than a year as one of the +Under Secretaries of State in 1782. In the next year we find him +making a happy retort on Pitt, who had somewhat vulgarly alluded to +his being a dramatic author. It was on the American question, +perhaps the bitterest that ever called forth the acrimony of +parties in the House. Sheridan, from boyhood, had been taunted with +being the son of an actor. One can hardly credit this fact, just +after Garrick had raised the profession of an actor to so great an +eminence in the social scale. He had been called 'the player boy' +at school, and his election at Brookes' had been opposed on the +same grounds. It was evidently his bitterest point, and Pitt +probably knew this when, in replying to a speech of the +ex-dramatist's he said that 'no man admired more than he did the +abilities of that right honourable gentleman, the elegant sallies +of his thought, the gay effusions of his fancy, his <i>dramatic</i> +turns, and his epigrammatic point; and if they were reserved for +the <i>proper stage,</i> they would, no doubt, receive what the +hon. gentleman's abilities always did receive, the plaudits of the +audience; and it would be his fortune <i>sui plausu gaudere +theatri</i>. But this was not the proper scene for the exhibition +of those elegancies.' This was vulgar in Pitt, and probably every +one felt so. But Sheridan rose, cool and collected, and quietly +replied:—</p> +<p>'On the particular sort of personality which the right hon. +gentleman has thought proper to make use of, I need not make any +comment. The propriety, the taste, the gentlemanly point of it, +must have been obvious to the House. But let me assure the right +hon. gentleman that I do now, and will at any time he chooses to +repeat this sort of allusion, meet it with the most sincere good +humour. Nay, I will say more: flattered and encouraged by the right +hon. gentleman's panegyric on my talents, if ever I again engage in +the compositions he alludes to, I may be tempted to an act of +presumption—to attempt an improvement on one of Ben Jonson's +best characters, the character of the <i>Angry Boy</i>, in the +"Alchemist."'</p> +<p>The fury of Pitt, contrasted with the coolness of the man he had +so shamefully attacked, made this sally irresistible, and from that +time neither 'the angry boy' himself, nor any of his colleagues, +were anxious to twit Sheridan on his dramatic pursuits.</p> +<p>Pitt wanted to lay a tax on every horse that started in a race. +Lord Surry, a <i>turfish</i> individual of the day, proposed one of +five pounds on the winner. Sheridan, rising, told his lordship that +the next time he visited Newmarket he would probably be greeted +with the line:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'Jockey of Norfolk, be not so bold—.'</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Lord Rolie, the butt of the Opposition, who had attacked him in +the famous satire, 'The Rolliad,' so popular that it went through +twenty-two editions in twenty-seven years, accused Sheridan of +inflammatory speeches among the operatives of the northern counties +on the cotton question. Sheridan retorted by saying that he +believed Lord Rolle must refer to 'Compositions less prosaic, but +more popular' (meaning the 'Rolliad'), and thus successfully turned +the laugh against him.</p> +<p>It was Grattan, I think, who said, 'When I can't talk sense, I +talk metaphor.' Sheridan often talked metaphor, though he sometimes +mingled it with sense. His famous speech about the Begums of Oude +is full of it, but we have one or two instances before that. Thus +on the Duke of Richmond's report about fortifications, he said, +turning to the duke, that 'holding in his hand the report made by +the Board of Officers, he complimented the noble president on his +talents as an <i>engineer</i>, which were strongly evinced in +planning and constructing that very paper.... He has made it a +contest of posts, and conducted his reasoning not less on +principles of trigonometry than of logic. There are certain +assumptions thrown up, like advanced works, to keep the enemy at a +distance from the principal object of debate; strong provisos +protect and cover the flanks of his assertions, his very queries +are his casemates,' and so on.</p> +<p>When Lord Mulgrave said, on another occasion, that any man using +his influence to obtain a vote for the crown <i>ought</i> to lose +his head, Sheridan quietly remarked, that he was glad his lordship +had said '<i>ought</i> to lose his head,' not <i>would</i> have +lost it, for in that case the learned gentleman would not have had +that evening '<i>face</i> to have shown among us.'</p> +<p>Such are a few of his well-remembered replies in the House; but +his fame as an orator rested on the splendid speeches which he made +at the impeachment of Warren Hastings. The first of these was made +in the House on the 7th of February, 1787. The whole story of the +corruption, extortions, and cruelty of the worst of many bad rulers +who have been imposed upon that unhappy nation of Hindostan, and +who ignorant how to <i>parcere subjectis</i>, have gone on in their +unjust oppression, only rendering it the more dangerous by weak +concessions, is too well known to need a recapitulation here. The +worst feature in the whole of Hastings' misconduct was, perhaps, +his treatment of those unfortunate ladies whose money he coveted, +the Begums of Oude. The Opposition was determined to make the +governor-general's conduct a state question, but their charges had +been received with little attention, till on this day Sheridan rose +to denounce the cruel extortioner. He spoke for five hours and a +half, and surpassed all he had ever said in eloquence. The subject +was one to find sympathy in the hearts of Englishmen, who, though +they beat their own wives, are always indignant at a man who dares +to lay a little finger on those of anybody else. Then, too, the +subject was Oriental: it might even be invested with something of +romance and poetry; the zenanah, sacred in the eyes of the +oppressed natives, had been ruthlessly insulted, under a glaring +Indian sun, amid the luxuriance of Indian foliage, these acts had +been committed, &c. &c. It was a fertile theme for a poet; +and how little soever Sheridan cared for the Begums and their +wrongs—and that he did care little appears from what he +afterwards said of Hastings himself—he could evidently make a +telling speech out of the theme, and he did so. Walpole says that +he turned everybody's head. 'One heard everybody in the street +raving on the wonders of that speech; for my part, I cannot believe +it was so supernatural as they say.' He affirms that there must be +a witchery in Mr. Sheridan, who had no diamonds—as Hastings +had—to win favour with, and says that the Opposition may be +fairly charged with sorcery. Burke declared the speech to be 'the +most astonishing effort of eloquence, argument, and wit united, of +which there was any record or tradition.' Fox affirmed that 'all he +had ever heard, all he had ever read, when compared with it, +dwindled into nothing, and vanished like vapour before the sun.' +But these were partizans. Even Pitt acknowledged 'that it surpassed +all the eloquence of ancient and modern times, and possessed +everything that genius or art could furnish to agitate and control +the human mind.' One member confessed himself so unhinged by it, +that he moved an adjournment, because he could not, in his then +state of mind, give an unbiassed vote. But the highest testimony +was that of Logan, the defender of Hastings. At the end of the +first hour of the speech, he said to a friend, 'All this is +declamatory assertion without proof.' Another hour's speaking, and +he muttered, 'This is a most wonderful oration!' A third, and he +confessed 'Mr. Hastings has acted very unjustifiably.' At the end +of the fourth, he exclaimed, 'Mr. Hastings is a most atrocious +criminal.' And before the speaker had sat down, he vehemently +protested that 'Of all monsters of iniquity, the most enormous is +Warren Hastings.'</p> +<p>Such in those days was the effect of eloquence; an art which has +been eschewed in the present House of Commons, and which our +newspapers affect to think is much out of place in an assembly met +for calm deliberation. Perhaps they are right; but oh! for the +golden words of a Sheridan, a Fox, even a Pitt and Burke.</p> +<p>It is said, though not proved, that on this same night of +Sheridan's glory in the House of Commons, his 'School for Scandal' +was acted with 'rapturous applause' at Covent Garden, and his +'Duenna' no less successfully at Drury Lane. What a pitch of glory +for the dunce who had been shamed into learning Greek verbs at +Harrow! Surely Dr. Parr must then have confessed that a man can be +great without the classics—nay, without even a decent English +education, for Sheridan knew comparatively little of history and +literature, certainly less than the men against whom he was pitted +or whose powers he emulated. He has been known to say to his +friends, when asked to take part with them on some important +question, 'You know I'm an ignoramus—instruct me and I'll do +my best.' He had even to rub up his arithmetic when he thought he +had some chance of being made Chancellor of the Exchequer; but, +perhaps, many a statesman before and after him has done as much as +that.</p> +<p>No wonder that after such a speech in the House, the celebrated +trial which commenced in the beginning of the following year should +have roused the attention of the whole nation. The proceedings +opened in Westminster Hall, the noblest room in England, on the +13th of February, 1788. The Queen and four of her daughters were +seated in the Duke of Newcastle's box; the Prince of Wales walked +in at the head of a hundred and fifty peers of the realm. The +spectacle was imposing enough. But the trial proceeded slowly for +some months, and it was not till the 3rd of June that Sheridan rose +to make his second great speech on this subject.</p> +<p>The excitement was then at its highest. Two-thirds of the peers +with the peeresses and their daughters were present, and the whole +of the vast hall was crowded to excess. The sun shone in brightly +to light up the gloomy building, and the whole scene was splendid. +Such was the enthusiasm that people paid <i>fifty guineas</i> for a +ticket to hear the first orator of his day, for such he then was. +The actor's son felt the enlivening influence of a full audience. +He had been long preparing for this moment, and he threw into his +speech all the theatrical effect of which he had studied much and +inherited more. He spoke for many hours on the 3rd, 5th, and 6th, +and concluded with these words:</p> +<p>'They (the House of Commons) exhort you by everything that calls +sublimely upon the heart of man, by the majesty of that justice +which this bold man has libelled, by the wide fame of your own +tribunal, by the sacred pledges by which you swear in the solemn +hour of decision, knowing that that decision will then bring you +the highest reward that ever blessed the heart of man, the +consciousness of having done the greatest act of mercy for the +world that the earth has ever yet received from any hand but +heaven!—My Lords, I have done.'</p> +<p>Sheridan's valet was very proud of his master's success, and as +he had been to hear the speech, was asked what part he considered +the finest. Plush replied by putting himself into his master's +attitude, and imitating his voice admirably, solemnly uttering, 'My +Lords, I have done!' He should have added the word 'nothing.' +Sheridan's eloquence had no more effect than the clear proof of +Hastings' guilt, and the impeachment, as usual, was but a +troublesome subterfuge, to satisfy the Opposition and dust the +eyeballs of the country.</p> +<p>Sheridan's great speech was made. The orator has concluded his +oration; fame was complete, and no more was wanted, Adieu, then, +blue-books and parties, and come on the last grand profession of +this man of many talents—that of the wit. That it was a +profession there can be no doubt, for he lived on it, it was all +his capital. He paid his bills in that coin alone: he paid his +workmen, his actors, carpenters, builders with no more sterling +metal; with that ready tool he extracted loans from the very men +who came to be paid; that brilliant ornament maintained his +reputation in the senate, and his character in society. But wit +without wisdom—the froth without the fluid—the capital +without the pillar—is but a poor fortune, a wretched +substitute for real worth and honest utility. For a time men +forgave to Mr. Sheridan—extravagant and reckless as he +was—what would long before have brought an honester, better, +but less amusing man to a debtor's prison and the contempt of +society; but only for a time was this career possible.</p> +<p>Sheridan has now reached the pinnacle of his fame, and from this +point we have to trace that decline which ended so awfully.</p> +<p>Whilst we call him a dishonest man, we must not be supposed to +imply that he was so in heart. It is pleaded for him that he +tricked his creditors 'for the fun of the thing,' like a modern +Robin Hood, and like that forester bold, he was mightily generous +with other men's money. Deception is deception whether in sport or +earnest, and Sheridan, no doubt, made it a very profitable +employment. He had always a taste for the art of duping, and he had +begun early in life—soon after leaving Harrow. He was +spending a few days at Bristol, and wanted a pair of new boots, but +could not afford to pay for them. Shortly before he left, he called +on two bootmakers, and ordered of each a pair, promising payment on +delivery. He fixed the morning of his departure for the tradesmen +to send in their goods. When the first arrived he tried on the +boots, complaining that that for the <i>right</i> foot pinched a +little, and ordered Crispin to take it back, stretch it, and bring +it again at nine the next morning. The second arrived soon after, +and this time it was the boot for the <i>left</i> foot which +pinched. Same complaint; same order given; each had taken away only +the pinching boot, and left the other behind. The same afternoon +Sheridan left in his new boots for town, and when the two +shoemakers called at nine the next day, each with a boot in his +hand, we can imagine their disgust at finding how neatly they had +been duped.</p> +<p>Anecdotes of this kind swarm in every account of Richard +Sheridan—many of them, perhaps, quite apocryphal, others +exaggerated, or attributed to this noted trickster, but all tending +to show how completely he was master of this high art. His ways of +eluding creditors used to delight me, I remember, when an Oxford +boy, and they are only paralleled by Oxford stories. One of these +may not be generally known, and was worthy of Sheridan. Every +Oxonian knows Hall, the boat-builder at Folly Bridge. Mrs. Hall +was, in my time, proprietress of those dangerous skiffs and +nutshell canoes which we young harebrains delighted to launch on +the Isis. Some youthful Sheridanian had a long account with this +elderly and bashful personage, who had applied in vain for her +money, till, coming one day to his rooms, she announced her +intention not to leave till the money was paid. 'Very well, Mrs. +Hall, then you must sit down and make yourself comfortable while I +dress, for I am going out directly.' Mrs. H. sat down composedly, +and with equal composure the youth took off his coat. Mrs. H. was +not abashed, but in another moment the debtor removed his waistcoat +also. Mrs. H. was still immoveable. Sundry other articles of dress +followed, and the good lady began to be nervous. 'Now, Mrs. Hall, +you can stay if you like, but I assure you that I am going to +change <i>all</i> my dress.' Suiting the action to the word, he +began to remove his lower garments, when Mrs. Hall, shocked and +furious, rushed from the room.</p> +<p>This reminds us of Sheridan's treatment of a female creditor. He +had for some years hired his carriage-horses from Edbrooke in +Clarges Street, and his bill was a heavy one. Mrs. Edbrooke wanted +a new bonnet, and blew up her mate for not insisting on payment. +The curtain lecture was followed next day by a refusal to allow Mr. +Sheridan to have the horses till the account was settled. Mr. +Sheridan sent the politest possible message in reply, begging that +Mrs. Edbrooke would allow his coachman to drive her in his own +carriage to his door, and promising that the matter should be +satisfactorily arranged. The good woman was delighted, dressed in +her best, and, bill in hand, entered the M.P.'s chariot. Sheridan +meanwhile had given orders to his servants. Mrs. Edbrooke was shown +up into the back drawing-room, where a slight luncheon, of which +she was begged to partake, was laid out; and she was assured that +her debtor would not keep her waiting long, though for the moment +engaged. The horse-dealer's wife sat down and discussed a wing of +chicken and glass of wine, and in the meantime her victimizer had +been watching his opportunity, slipped down stairs, jumped into the +vehicle, and drove off. Mrs. Edbrooke finished her lunch and waited +in vain; ten minutes, twenty, thirty, passed, and then she rang the +bell: 'Very sorry, ma'am, but Mr. Sheridan went out on important +business half an hour ago.' 'And the carriage?'—'Oh, ma'am, +Mr. Sheridan never walks.'</p> +<p>He procured his wine in the same style. Chalier, the +wine-merchant, was his creditor to a large amount, and had stopped +supplies. Sheridan was to give a grand dinner to the leaders of the +Opposition, and had no port or sherry to offer them. On the morning +of the day fixed he sent for Chalier, and told him he wanted to +settle his account. The importer, much pleased, said he would go +home and bring it at once. 'Stay,' cried the debtor, 'will you dine +with me to-day; Lord——, Sir——, and +So-and-so are coming.' Chalier was flattered and readily accepted. +Returning to his office, he told his clerk that he should dine with +Mr. Sheridan, and therefore leave early. At the proper hour he +arrived in full dress, and was no sooner in the house., than his +host despatched a message to the clerk at the office, saying that +Mr. Chalier wished him to send up at once three dozen of Burgundy, +two of claret, two of port, &c., &c. Nothing seemed more +natural, and the wine was forwarded, just in time for the dinner. +It was highly praised by the guests, who asked Sheridan who was his +wine-merchant. The host bowed towards Chalier, gave him a high +recommendation, and impressed him with the belief that he was +telling a polite falsehood in order to secure him other customers. +Little did he think that he was drinking his own wine, and that it +was not, and probably never would be, paid for!</p> +<p>In like manner, when he wanted a particular Burgundy an +innkeeper at Richmond, who declined to supply it till his bill was +paid, he sent for the man, and had no sooner seen him safe in the +house than he drove off to Richmond, saw his wife, told her he had +just had a conversation with mine host, settled everything, and +would, to save them trouble, take the wine with him in his +carriage. The condescension overpowered the good woman, who ordered +it at once to be produced, and Sheridan drove home about the time +that her husband was returning to Richmond, weary of waiting for +his absent debtor. But this kind of trickery could not always +succeed without some knowledge of his creditor's character. In the +case of Holloway, the lawyer, Sheridan took advantage of his +well-known vanity of his judgment of horse-flesh. Kelly gives the +anecdote as authentic. He was walking one day with Sheridan, close +to the churchyard of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, when, as ill-luck +would have it, up comes Holloway on horseback, and in a furious +rage, complains that he has called on Mr. Sheridan time and again +in Hertford Street, and can never gain admittance. He proceeds to +violent threats, and slangs his debtor roundly. Sheridan, cool as a +whole bed of cucumbers, takes no notice of these attacks, but +quietly exclaims: 'What a beautiful creature you're riding, +Holloway!' The lawyer's weak point was touched.</p> +<p>'You were speaking to me the other day about a horse for Mrs. +Sheridan; now this would be a treasure for a lady.'</p> +<p>'Does he canter well?' asks Sheridan, with a look of +business.</p> +<p>'Like Pegasus himself.'</p> +<p>'If that's the case, I shouldn't mind, Holloway, stretching a +point for him. Do you mind showing me his paces?'</p> +<p>'Not at all,' replies the lawyer, only too happy to show off his +own: and touching up the horse, put him to a quiet canter. The +moment is not to be lost; the churchyard gate is at hand; Sheridan +slips in, knowing that his mounted tormentor cannot follow him, and +there bursts into a roar of laughter, which is joined in by Kelly, +but not by the returning Holloway.</p> +<p><a name="119"></a></p> +<div class="figcenter"><a href="images/119.png"><img src= +"images/119sm.png" alt= +"'A Treasure for a Lady'—Sheridan and the Lawyer. "></a> +<h4>"A TREASURE FOR A LADY"—SHERIDAN AND THE LAWYER.</h4> +</div> +<p>But if he escaped an importunate lawyer once in a way like this, +he Required more ingenuity to get rid of the limbs of the law, when +they came, as they did frequently in his later years. It was the +fashionable thing in bygone novels of the 'Pelham' school, and Even +in more recent comedies, to introduce a well-dressed sheriff's +officer at a dinner party or ball, and take him through a variety +of predicaments, ending, at length, in the revelation of his real +character; and probably some such scene is still enacted from time +to time in the houses of the extravagant: but Sheridan's adventures +with bailiffs seem to have excited more attention. In the midst of +his difficulties he never ceased to entertain his friends, and 'why +should he not do so, since he had not to pay?' 'Pay your bills, +sir? what a shameful waste of money!' he once said. Thus, one day a +young friend was met by him and taken back to dinner, 'quite in a +quiet way, just to meet a very old friend of mine, a man of great +talent, and most charming companion.' When they arrived they found +'the old friend' already installed, and presenting a somewhat +unpolished appearance, which the young man explained to himself by +supposing him to be a genius of somewhat low extraction. His habits +at dinner, the eager look, the free use of his knife, and so forth, +were all accounted for in the same way, but that he was a genius of +no slight distinction was clear from the deep respect and attention +with which Sheridan listened to his slightest remarks, and asked +his opinion on English poetry. Meanwhile Sheridan and the servant +between them plied the genius very liberally with wine: and the +former, rising, made him a complimentary speech on his critical +powers, while the young guest, who had heard nothing from his lips +but the commonest platitudes in very bad English, grew more and +more amused. The wine told in time, the 'genius' sang songs which +were more Saxon than delicate, talked loud, clapped his host on the +shoulder, and at last rolled fairly under the table. 'Now,' said +Sheridan, quite calmly to his young friend, 'we will go up stairs: +and, Jack,' (to his servant) 'take that man's hat and give him to +the watch.' He then explained in the same calm tone, that this was +a bailiff of whose company he was growing rather tired, and wanted +to be freed.</p> +<p>But his finest tricks were undoubtedly those by which he turned, +harlequin-like, a creditor into a lender This was done by sheer +force of persuasion, by assuming a lofty indignation, or by putting +forth his claims to mercy with the most touching eloquence over +which he would laugh heartily when his point was gained. He was +often compelled to do this during his theatrical management, when a +troublesome creditor might have interfered with the success of the +establishment. He talked over an upholsterer who came with a writ +for £350 till the latter handed him, instead, a cheque for +£200. He once, when the actors struck for arrears of wages to +the amount of £3,000, and his bankers refused flatly to Kelly +to advance another penny, screwed the whole sum out of them in less +than a quarter of an hour by sheer talk. He got a gold watch from +Harris, the manager, with whom he had broken several appointments, +by complaining that as he had no watch he could never tell the time +fixed for their meetings; and, as for putting off pressing +creditors, and turning furious foes into affectionate friends, he +was such an adept at it, that his reputation as a dun-destroyer is +quite on a par with his fame as comedian and orator.</p> +<p>Hoaxing, a style of amusement fortunately out of fashion how, +was almost a passion with him, and his practical jokes were as +merciless as his satire. He and Tickell, who had married the sister +of his wife, used to play them off on one another like a couple of +schoolboys. One evening, for instance, Sheridan got together all +the crockery in the house and arranged it in a dark passage, +leaving a small channel for escape for himself, and then, having +teased Tickell till he rushed after him, bounded out and picked his +way gingerly along the passage. His friend followed him +unwittingly, and at the first step stumbled over a washhand-basin, +and fell forwards with a crash on piles of plates and dishes, which +cut his face and hands in a most cruel manner, Sheridan all the +while laughing immoderately at the end of the passage, secure from +vengeance.</p> +<p>But his most impudent hoax was that on the Honourable House of +Commons itself. Lord Belgrave had made a very telling speech which +he wound up with a Greek quotation, loudly applauded. Sheridan had +no arguments to meet him with; so rising, he admitted the force of +his lordship's quotation (of which he probably did not understand a +word), but added that had he gone a little farther, and completed +the passage, he would have seen that the context completely altered +the sense. He would prove it to the House, he said, and forthwith +rolled forth a grand string of majestic gibberish so well imitated +that the whole assembly cried, 'Hear, hear!' Lord Belgrave rose +again, and frankly admitted that the passage had the meaning +ascribed to it by the honourable gentleman, and that he had +overlooked it at the moment. At the end of the evening, Fox, who +prided himself on his classical lore, came up to and said to him, +'Sheridan, how came you to be so ready with that passage? It is +certainly as you say, but I was not aware of it before you quoted +it.' Sheridan was wise enough to keep his own counsel for the time, +but must have felt delightfully tickled at the ignorance of the +would-be savants with whom he was politically associated. Probably +Sheridan could not at any time have quoted a whole passage of Greek +on the spur of the moment; but it is certain that he had not kept +up his classics, and at the time in question must have forgotten +the little he ever knew of them.</p> +<p>This facility of imitating exactly the sound of a language +without introducing a single word of it is not so very rare, but is +generally possessed in greater readiness by those who know no +tongue but their own, and are therefore more struck by the +strangeness of a foreign one, when hearing it. Many of us have +heard Italian songs in which there was not a word of actual Italian +sung in London burlesques, and some of us have laughed at +Levassor's capital imitation of English; but perhaps the cleverest +mimic of the kind I ever heard was M. Laffitte, brother of that +famous banker who made his fortune by picking up a pin. This +gentleman could speak nothing but French, but had been brought by +his business into contact with foreigners of every race at Paris, +and when he once began his little trick, it was impossible to +believe that he was not possessed of a gift of tongues. His German +and Italian were good enough, but his English was so splendidly +counterfeited, that after listening to him for a short time, I +suddenly heard a roar of laughter from all present, for I had +actually unconsciously <i>answered him</i>, 'Yes,' 'No,' 'Exactly +so,' and 'I quite agree with you!'</p> +<p>Undoubtedly much of Sheridan's depravity must be attributed to +his intimacy with a man whom it was a great honour to a youngster +then to know, but who would probably be scouted even from a London +club in the present day—the Prince of Wales. The part of a +courtier is always degrading enough to play; but to be courtier to +a prince whose favour was to be won by proficiency in vice, and +audacity in follies, to truckle to his tastes, to win his smiles by +the invention of a new pleasure and his approbation by the plotting +of a new villany, what an office for the author of 'The School for +Scandal,' and the orator renowned for denouncing the wickednesses +of Warren Hastings! What a life for the young poet who had wooed +and won the Maid of Bath—for the man of strong domestic +affections, who wept over his father's sternness, and loved his son +only too well! It was bad enough for such mere worldlings as +Captain Hanger or Beau Brummell, but for a man of higher and purer +feelings, like Sheridan, who, with all his faults, had some poetry +in his soul, such a career was doubly disgraceful.</p> +<p>It was at the house of the beautiful, lively, and adventurous +Duchess of Devonshire, the partizan of Charles James Fox, who loved +him or his cause—for Fox and Liberalism were often one in +ladies' eyes—so well, that she could give Steele, the +butcher, a kiss for his vote, that Sheridan first met the +prince—then a boy in years, but already more than an adult in +vice. No doubt the youth whom Fox, Brummell, Hanger, Lord Surrey, +Sheridan, the tailors and the women, combined to turn at once into +the finest gentleman and greatest blackguard in Europe, was at that +time as fascinating in appearance and manner as any one, prince or +not, could be. He was by far the handsomest of the Hanoverians, and +had the least amount of their sheepish look. He possessed all their +taste and capacity, for gallantry, with apparently none of the +German coarseness which certain other Princes of Wales exhibited in +their amorous address. <i>His</i> coarseness was of a more sensual, +but less imperious kind. He <i>had</i> his redeeming points, which +few of his ancestors had, and his liberal hand and warm heart won +him friends, where his conduct could win him little else than +contempt. Sheridan was introduced to him by Fox, and Mrs. Sheridan +by the Duchess of Devonshire. The prince had that which always +takes with Englishmen—a readiness of conviviality, and a +recklessness of character. He was ready to chat, drink, and bet +with Sheridan, or any new comer equally well recommended, and an +introduction to young George was always followed by an easy +recognition. With all this he managed to keep up a certain amount +of royal dignity under the most trying circumstances, but he had +none of that easy grace which made Charles II. beloved by his +associates. When the George had gone too far, he had no resource +but to cut the individual with whom he had hobbed and nobbed, and +he was as ungrateful in his enmities as he was ready with his +friendship. Brummell had taught him to dress, and Sheridan had +given him wiser counsels: he quarrelled with both for trifles, +which, if he had had real dignity, would never have occurred, and +if he had had real friendship, would easily have been +overlooked.</p> +<p>Sheridan's breach with the prince was honourable to him. He +could not wholly approve of the conduct of that personage and his +ministers, and he told him openly that his life was at his service, +but his character was the property of the country. The prince +replied that Sheridan 'might impeach his ministers on the +morrow—that would not impair their friendship;' yet turned on +his heel, and was never his friend again. When, again, the +'delicate investigation' came off, he sent for Sheridan, and asked +his aid. The latter replied, 'Your royal highness honours me, but I +will never take part against a woman, whether she be right or +wrong.' His political courage atones somewhat for the want of moral +courage he displayed in pandering to the prince's vices.</p> +<p>Many an anecdote is told of Sheridan and 'Wales'—many, +indeed, that cannot be repeated. Their bets were often of the +coarsest nature, won by Sheridan in the coarsest manner. A great +intimacy sprang up between the two reprobates, and Sheridan became +one of the satellites of that dissolute prince. There are few of +the stories of their adventures which can be told in a work like +this, but we may give one or two specimens of the less disgraceful +character:—</p> +<p>The Prince, Lord Surrey, and Sheridan were in the habit of +seeking nightly adventures of any kind that suggested itself to +their lively minds. A low tavern, still in existence, was the +rendezvous of the heir to the crown and his noble and distinguished +associates. This was the 'Salutation,' in Tavistock Court, Covent +Garden, a night house for gardeners and countrymen, and for the +sharpers who fleeced both, and was kept by a certain Mother Butler, +who favoured in every way the adventurous designs of her exalted +guests. Here wigs, smock-frocks, and other disguises were in +readiness; and here, at call, was to be found a ready-made +magistrate, whose sole occupation was to deliver the young Haroun +and his companions from the dilemmas which their adventures +naturally brought them into, and which were generally more or less +concerned with the watch. Poor old watch! what happy days, when +members of parliament, noblemen, and future monarchs condescended +to break thy bob-wigged head! and—blush, Z 350, immaculate +constable—to toss thee a guinea to buy plaster with.</p> +<p>In addition to the other disguise, <i>aliases</i> were of course +assumed. The prince went by the name of Blackstock, Greystock was +my Lord Surrey, and Thinstock Richard Brinsley Sheridan. The +treatment of women by the police is traditional. The +'unfortunate'—unhappy creatures!—are their pet +aversion; and once in their clutches, receive no mercy. The +'Charley' of old was quite as brutal as the modern Hercules of the +glazed hat, and the three adventurers showed an amount of zeal +worthy of a nobler cause, in rescuing the drunken Lais from his +grasp. On one occasion they seem to have hit on a 'deserving case;' +a slight skirmish with the watch ended in a rescue, and the erring +creature was taken off to a house of respectability sufficient to +protect her. Here she told her tale, which, however improbable, +turned out to be true. It was a very old, a very simple +one—the common history of many a frail, foolish girl, cursed +with beauty, and the prey of a practised seducer. The main +peculiarity lay in the fact of her respectable birth, and his +position, she being the daughter of a solicitor, he the son of a +nobleman. Marriage was promised, of course, as it has been promised +a million times with the same intent, and for the millionth time +was not performed. The seducer took her from her home, kept her +quiet for a time, and when the novelty was gone, abandoned her. The +old story went on; poverty—a child—a mother's love +struggling with a sense of shame—a visit to her father's +house at the last moment, as a forlorn hope. There she had crawled +on her knees to one of those relentless parents on whose heads lie +the utter loss of their children's souls. The false pride, that +spoke of the blot on his name, the disgrace of his house—when +a Saviour's example should have bid him forgive and raise the +penitent in her misery from the dust—whispered him to turn +her from his door. He ordered the footman to put her out. The man, +a nobleman in plush, moved by his young mistress's utter misery, +would not obey though it cost him his place, and the harder-hearted +father himself thrust his starving child into the cold street, into +the drizzling rain, and slammed the door upon her cries of agony. +The footman slipped out after her, and five shillings—a large +sum for him—found its way from his kind hand to hers. Now the +common ending might have come; now starvation, the slow, unwilling, +recourse to more shame and deeper vice; then the forced hilarity, +the unreal smile, which in so many of these poor creatures hides a +canker at the heart; the gradual degradation—lower still and +lower—oblivion for a moment sought in the bottle—a life +of sin and death ended in a hospital. The will of Providence turned +the frolic of three voluptuaries to good account; the prince gave +his purse-full, Sheridan his one last guinea for her present needs: +the name of the good-hearted Plush was discovered, and he was taken +into Carlton House, where he soon became known as Roberts, the +prince's confidential servant: and Sheridan bestirred himself to +rescue for ever the poor lady, whose beauty still remained as a +temptation. He procured her a situation, where she studied for the +stage, on which she eventually appeared. 'All's well that ends +well:' her secret was kept, till one admirer came honourably +forward. To him it was confided, and he was noble enough to forgive +the one false step of youth. She was well married, and the boy for +whom she had suffered so much fell at Trafalgar, a lieutenant in +the navy.</p> +<p>To better men such an adventure would have been a solemn +warning; such a tale, told by the ruined one herself, a sermon, +every word of which would have clung to their memories. What +effect, if any, it may have had on Blackstock and his companions +must have been very fleeting.</p> +<p>It is not so very long since the Seven Dials and St. Giles' were +haunts of wickedness and dens of thieves, into which the police +scarcely dared to penetrate. Probably their mysteries would have +afforded more amusement to the artist and the student of character +than to the mere seeker of adventure, but it was still, I remember, +in my early days, a great feat to visit by night one of the noted +'cribs' to which 'the profession' which fills Newgate was wont to +resort. The 'Brown Bear,' in Broad Street, St. Giles', was one of +these pleasant haunts, and thither the three adventurers determined +to go. This style of adventure is out of date, and no longer +amusing. Of course a fight ensued, in which the prince and his +companions showed immense pluck against terrible odds, and in +which, as one reads in the novels of the 'London Journal' or +'Family Herald,' the natural superiority of the well-born of course +displayed itself to great advantage. Surely Bulwer has described +such scenes too graphically in some of his earlier novels to make a +minute description here at all necessary; but the reader who is +curious in the matter may be referred to a work which has recently +appeared under the title of 'Sheridan and his Times,' professing to +be written by an Octogenarian, intimate with the hero. The fray +ended with the arrival of the watch, who rescued Blackstock, +Greystock, and Thinstock, and with Dogberryan stupidity carried +them off to a neighbouring lock-up. The examination which took +place was just the occasion for Sheridan's fun to display itself +on, and pretending to turn informer, he succeeded in bewildering +the unfortunate parochial constable, who conducted it, till the +arrival of the magistrate, whose duty was to deliver his friends +from durance vile. The whole scene is well described in the book +just referred to, with, we presume, a certain amount of idealizing; +but the 'Octogenarian' had probably heard the story from Sheridan +himself, and the main points must be accepted as correct. The +affair ended, as usual, with a supper at the 'Salutation.'</p> +<p>We must now follow Sheridan in his gradual downfall.</p> +<p>One of the causes of this—as far as money was +concerned—was his extreme indolence and utter negligence. He +trusted far too much to his ready wit and rapid genius. Thus when +'Pizarro' was to appear, day after day went by, and nothing was +done. On the night of representation, only four acts out of five +were written, and even these had not been rehearsed, the principal +performers, Siddons, Charles Kemble and Barrymore, having only just +received their parts. Sheridan was up in the prompter's room +actually writing the fifth act while the first was being performed, +and every now and then appeared in the green-room with a fresh +relay of dialogue, and setting all in good humour by his merry +abuse of his own negligence. In spite of this, 'Pizarro' succeeded. +He seldom wrote except at night, and surrounded by a profusion of +lights. Wine was his great stimulant in composition, as it has been +to better and worse authors. 'If the thought is slow to come,' he +would say, 'a glass of good wine encourages it; and when it does +come, a glass of good wine rewards it.' Those glasses of good wine, +were, unfortunately, even more frequent than the good thoughts, +many and merry as they were.</p> +<p>His neglect of letters was a standing joke against him. He never +took the trouble to open any that he did not expect, and often left +sealed many that he was most anxious to read. He once appeared with +his begging face at the Bank, humbly asking an advance of twenty +pounds. 'Certainly, sir; would you like any more?—fifty or a +hundred?' said the smiling clerk. Sheridan was overpowered. He +<i>would</i> like a hundred. 'Two or three?' asked the scribe. +Sheridan thought he was joking, but was ready for two or even +three—he was always ready for more. But he could not conceal +his surprise. 'Have you not received our letter?' the clerk asked, +perceiving it. Certainly he had received the epistle, which +informed him that his salary as Receiver-General of Cornwall had +been paid in, but he had never opened it.</p> +<p>This neglect of letters once brought him into a troublesome +lawsuit about the theatre. It was necessary to pay certain demands, +and he had applied to the Duke of Bedford to be his security. The +duke had consented, and for a whole year his letter of consent +remained unopened. In the meantime Sheridan had believed that the +duke had neglected him, and allowed the demands to be brought into +court.</p> +<p>In the same way he had long before committed himself in the +affair with Captain Matthews. In order to give a public denial of +certain reports circulated in Bath, he had called upon an editor, +requesting him to insert the said reports in his paper in order +that he might write him a letter to refute them. The editor at once +complied, the calumny was printed and published, but Sheridan +forgot all about his own refutation, which was applied for in vain +till too late.</p> +<p>Other causes were his extravagance and intemperance. There was +an utter want of even common moderation in everything he did. +Whenever his boyish spirit suggested any freak, whenever a craving +of any kind possessed him, no matter what the consequences here or +hereafter, he rushed heedlessly into the indulgence of it. Perhaps +the enemy had never an easier subject to deal with. Any sin in +which there was a show of present mirth, or easy pleasure, was as +easily taken up by Sheridan as if he had not a single particle of +conscience or religious feeling, and yet we are not at all prepared +to say that he lacked either; he had only deadened both by +excessive indulgence of his fancies. The temptation of wealth and +fame had been too much for the poor and obscure young man who rose +to them so suddenly, and, as so often happens, those very talents +which should have been his glory, were, in fact, his ruin.</p> +<p>His extravagance was unbounded. At a time when misfortune lay +thick upon him, and bailiffs were hourly expected, he would invite +a large party to a dinner, which a prince might have given, and to +which one prince sometimes sat down. On one occasion, having no +plate left from the pawnbroker's, he had to prevail on 'my uncle' +to lend him some for a banquet he was to give. The spoons and forks +were sent, and with them two of his men, who, dressed in livery, +waited, no doubt with the most vigilant attention, on the party. +Such at that period was the host's reputation, when he could not +even be trusted not to pledge another man's property. At one time +his income was reckoned at £15,000 a year, when the theatre +was prosperous. Of this he is said to have spent not more than +£5,000 on his household, while the balance went to pay for +his former follies, debts, and the interest, lawsuits often arising +from mere carelessness and judgments against the theatre! Probably +a great deal of it was betted away, drank away, thrown away in one +way or another. As for betting, he generally lost all the wagers he +made: as he said himself—'I never made a bet upon my own +judgment that I did not lose; and I never won but one, which I had +made against my judgment.' His bets were generally laid in +hundreds; and though he did not gamble, he could of course run +through a good deal of money in this way. He betted on every +possible trifle, but chiefly, it would seem, on political +possibilities; the state of the Funds, the result of an election, +or the downfall of a ministry. Horse-races do not seem to have +possessed any interest for him, and, in fact, he scarcely knew one +kind of horse from another. He was never an adept at field-sports, +though very ambitious of being thought a sportsman. Once, when +staying in the country, he went out with a friend's gamekeeper to +shoot pheasants, and after wasting a vast amount of powder and shot +upon the air, he was only rescued from ignominy by the sagacity of +his companion, who, going a little behind him when a bird rose, +brought it down so neatly that Sheridan, believing he had killed it +himself, snatched it up, and rushed bellowing with glee back to the +house to show that he <i>could</i> shoot. In the same way, he tried +his hand at fishing in a wretched little stream behind the Deanery +at Winchester, using, however, a net, as easier to handle than a +rod. Some boys, who had watched his want of success a long time, at +last bought a few pennyworth of pickled herrings, and throwing them +on the stream, allowed them to float down towards the eager +disciple of old Izaak. Sheridan saw them coming, rushed in +regardless of his clothes, cast his net and in great triumph +secured them. When he had landed his prize, however, there were the +boys bursting with laughter, and Piscator saw he was their dupe. +'Ah!' cried he, laughing in concert, as he looked at his dripping +clothes, 'this is a pretty <i>pickle</i> indeed!'</p> +<p>His extravagance was well known to his friends, as well as to +his creditors. Lord Guildford met him one day. 'Well, Sherry, so +you've taken a new house, I hear.'—'Yes, and you'll see now +that everything will go on like clockwork.'—'Ay,' said my +lord, with a knowing leer, '<i>tick, tick</i>.' Even his son Tom +used to laugh at him for it. 'Tom, if you marry that girl, I'll cut +you off with a shilling,'—'Then you must borrow it,' replied +the ingenuous youth.<a id="footnotetag8" name= +"footnotetag8"></a><a href="#footnote8"><sup>8</sup></a> Tom +sometimes disconcerted his father with his inherited wit—his +only inheritance. He pressed urgently for money on one, as on many +an occasion. 'I have none,' was the reply, as usual; 'there is a +pair of pistols up stairs, a horse in the enable, the night is +dark, and Hounslow Heath at hand.'</p> +<p>'I understand what you mean,' replied young Tom; 'but I tried +that last night, and unluckily stopped your treasurer, Peake, who +told me you had been beforehand with him, and robbed him of every +sixpence he had in the world.'</p> +<p>So much for the respect of son to father!</p> +<p>Papa had his revenge on the young wit, when Tom, talking of +Parliament, announced his intention of entering it on an +independent basis, ready to be bought by the highest bidder 'I +shall write on my forehead,' said he, "To let."'</p> +<p>'And under that, Tom, "Unfurnished,"' rejoined Sherry the elder. +The joke is now stale enough.</p> +<p>But Sheridan was more truly witty in putting down a young +braggart whom he met at dinner at a country-house. There are still +to be found, like the bones of dead asses in a field newly +ploughed, in some parts of the country, youths, who are so +hopelessly behind their age, and indeed every age, as to look upon +authorship as degrading, all knowledge, save Latin and Greek, as 'a +bore,' and all entertainment but hunting, shooting, fishing, and +badger-drawing, as unworthy of a man. In the last century these +young animals, who unite the modesty of the puppy with the +clear-sightedness of the pig, not to mention the progressiveness of +another quadruped, were more numerous than in the present day, and +in consequence more forward in their remarks. It was one of these +charming youths, who was staying in the same house as Sheridan, and +who, quite unprovoked, began at dinner to talk of 'actors and +authors, and those low sort of people, you know.' Sheridan said +nought, but patiently bided his time. The next day there was a +large dinner-party, and Sheridan and the youth happened to sit +opposite to one another in the most conspicuous part of the table. +Young Nimrod was kindly obliging his side of the table with +extraordinary leaps of his hunter, the perfect working of his new +double-barrelled Manton, &c., bringing of course number one in +as the hero in each case. In a moment of silence, Sheridan, with an +air of great politeness, addressed his unhappy victim. 'He had +not,' he said, 'been able to catch the whole of the very +interesting account he had heard Mr. —— relating.' All +eyes were turned upon the two. 'Would Mr. —— permit him +to ask who it was who made the extraordinary leap he had +mentioned?—'I, sir,' replied the youth with some pride. 'Then +who was it killed the wild duck at that distance?'—'I, sir.' +'Was it your setter who behaved so well?'—'Yes, mine, sir,' +replied the youth, getting rather red over this examination. 'And +who caught the huge salmon so neatly?'—'I, sir.' And so the +questioning went on through a dozen more items, till the young man, +weary of answering 'I, sir,' and growing redder and redder every +moment, would gladly have hid his head under the table-cloth, in +spite of his sporting prowess. But Sheridan had to give him the +<i>coup de grace</i>.</p> +<p>'So, sir,' said he, very politely, 'you were the chief +<i>actor</i> in every anecdote, and the <i>author</i> of them all; +surely it is impolitic to despise your own professions.'</p> +<p>Sheridan's intemperance was as great and as incurable as his +extravagance, and we think his mind, if not his body, lived only on +stimulants. He could neither write nor speak without them One day, +before one of his finest speeches in the House, he was seen to +enter a coffee-house, call for a pint of brandy, and swallow it +'neat,' and almost at one gulp. His friends occasionally +interfered. This drinking, they told him, would destroy the coat of +his stomach. 'Then my stomach must digest in its waistcoat,' +laughed Sheridan.</p> +<p>Where are the topers of yore? Jovial I will not call them, for +every one knows that</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'Mirth and laughter.'</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>worked up with a corkscrew, are followed by</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'Headaches and hot coppers the day after.'</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>But where are those Anakim of the bottle, who <i>could</i> floor +their two of port and one of Madeira, though the said two and one +floored them in turn? The race, I believe, has died out. Our heads +have got weaker, as our cellars grew emptier. The arrangement was +convenient. The daughters of Eve have nobly undertaken to atone for +the naughty conduct of their primeval mamma, by reclaiming men, and +dragging them from the Hades of the mahogany to that seventh heaven +of muffins and English ballads prepared for them in the +drawing-room.</p> +<p>We are certainly astounded, even to incredulity, when we read of +the deeds of a David or a Samson; but such wonderment can be +nothing compared to that which a generation or two hence will feel, +when sipping, as a great extravagance and unpardonable luxury, two +thimblefuls of 'African Sherry,' the young demirep of the day reads +that three English gentlemen, Sheridan, Richardson, and Ward, sat +down one day to dinner, and before they rose again—if they +ever rose, which seems doubtful—or, at least, were raised, +had emptied five bottles of port, two of Madeira, and one of +brandy! Yet this was but one instance in a thousand; there was +nothing extraordinary in it, and it is only mentioned because the +amount drunk is accurately given by the unhappy owner of the wine, +Kelly, the composer, who, unfortunately, or fortunately, was not +present, and did not even imagine that the three honourable +gentlemen were discussing his little store. Yet Sheridan does not +seem to have believed much in his friend's vintages, for he advised +him to alter his brass plate to 'Michael Kelly, Composer of Wine +and Importer of Music.' He made a better joke, when, dining with +Lord Thurlow, he tried in vain to induce him to produce a second +bottle of some extremely choice Constantia from the Cape of Good +Hope. 'Ah,' he muttered to his neighbour, 'pass me that decanter, +if you please, for I must return to Madeira, as I see I cannot +<i>double the Cape</i>'</p> +<p>But as long as Richard Brinsley was a leader of political and +fashionable circles, as long as he had a position to keep up, an +ambition to satisfy, a labour to complete, his drinking was, if not +moderate, not extraordinary for his time and his associates. But +when a man's ambition is limited to mere success—when fame +and a flash for himself are all he cares for, and there is no +truer, grander motive for his sustaining the position he has +climbed to—when, in short, it is his own glory, not mankind's +good, he has ever striven for—woe, woe, woe when the hour of +success is come! I cannot stop to name and examine instances, but +let me be allowed to refer to that bugbear who is called up +whenever greatness of any kind has to be illustrated—Napoleon +the Great; or let me take any of the lesser Napoleons in lesser +grades in any nation, any age—the men who have had no star +but self and self-glory before them—and let me ask if any one +can be named who, if he has survived the attainment of his +ambition, has not gone down the other side of the hill somewhat +faster than he came up it? Then let me select men whose +guiding-star has been the good of their fellow-creatures, or the +glory of God, and watch their peaceful useful end on that calm +summit that they toiled so honestly to reach. The difference comes +home to us. The moral is read only at the end of the story. Remorse +rings it for ever in the ears of the dying—often too long +a-dying—man who has laboured for himself. Peace reads it +smilingly to him whose generous toil for others has brought its own +reward.</p> +<p>Sheridan had climbed with the stride of a giant, laughing at +rocks, at precipices, at slippery watercourses. He had spread the +wings of genius to poise himself withal, and gained one peak after +another, while homelier worth was struggling midway, clutching the +bramble and clinging to the ferns. He had, as Byron said in +Sheridan's days of decay, done the best in all he undertook, +written the best comedy, best opera, best farce; spoken the best +parody, and made the best speech. Sheridan, when those words of the +young poet were told him, shed tears.</p> +<p>Perhaps the bitter thought struck him, that he had <i>not</i> +led the best, but the <i>worst</i> life; that comedy, farce, opera, +monody, and oration were nothing, nothing to a pure conscience and +a peaceful old age; that they could not save him from shame and +poverty—from debt, disgrace, drunkenness—from grasping, +but long-cheated creditors, who dragged his bed from under the +feeble, nervous, ruined old man. Poor Sheridan! his end was too +bitter for us to cast one stone more upon him. Let it be noted that +it was in the beginning of his decline, when, having reached the +climax of all his ambition and completed his fame as a dramatist, +orator, and wit, that the hand of Providence mercifully interposed +to rescue this reckless man from his downfall. It smote him with +that common but powerful weapon—death. Those he best loved +were torn from him, one after another, rapidly, and with little +warning. The Linleys, the 'nest of nightingales,' were all delicate +as nightingales should be; and it seemed as if this very time was +chosen for their deaths, that the one erring soul—more +precious, remember, than many just lives—might be called +back. Almost within one year he lost his dear sister-in-law, the +wife of his most intimate friend Tickell; Maria Linley, the last of +the family; his own wife, and his little daughter. One grief +succeeded another so rapidly that Sheridan was utterly unnerved, +utterly brought low by them; but it was his wife's death that told +most upon him. With that wife he had always been the lover rather +than the husband. She had married him in the days of his poverty, +when her beauty was so celebrated that she might have wed whom she +would. She had risen with him and shared his later anxieties. Yet +she had seen him forget, neglect her, and seek other society. In +spite of his tender affection for her and for his children, he had +never made a <i>home</i> of their home. Vanity Fair had kept him +ever flitting, and it is little to be wondered at that Mrs. +Sheridan was the object of much, though ever respectful +admiration.<a id="footnotetag9" name="footnotetag9"></a><a href= +"#footnote9"><sup>9</sup></a> Yet, in spite of calumny, she died +with a fair fame. Decline had long pressed upon her, yet her last +illness was too brief. In 1792 she was taken away, still in the +summer of her days, and with her last breath uttering her love for +the man who had never duly prized her. His grief was terrible; yet +it passed, and wrought no change. He found solace in his beloved +son, and yet more beloved daughter. A few months—and the +little girl followed her mother. Again his grief was terrible: +again passed and wrought no change. Yes, it did work some change, +but not for the better; it drove him to the goblet; and from that +time we may date the confirmation of his habit of drinking. The +solemn warnings had been unheeded: they were to be repeated by a +long-suffering God in a yet more solemn manner, which should touch +him yet more nearly. His beautiful wife had been the one restraint +upon his folly and his lavishness. Now she was gone, they burst out +afresh, wilder than ever.</p> +<p>For a while after these afflictions, which were soon completed +in the death of his most intimate friend and boyish companion, +Tickell, Sheridan threw himself again into the commotion of the +political world. But in this we shall not follow him. Three years +after the death of his first wife he married again. He was again +fortunate in his choice. Though now forty-four, he succeeded in +winning the heart of a most estimable and charming young lady with +a fortune of £5,000. She must indeed have loved or admired +the widower very much to consent to be the wife of a man so +notoriously irregular, to use a mild term, in his life. But +Sheridan fascinated wherever he went, and young ladies like 'a +little wildness.' His heart was always good, and where he gave it, +he gave it warmly, richly, fully. His second wife was Miss Esther +Jane Ogle, daughter of the Dean of Winchester. She was given to him +on condition of his settling in all £20,000, upon her—a +wise proviso with such a spendthrift—and he had to raise the +money, as usual.</p> +<p>His political career was sufficiently brilliant, though his real +fame as a speaker rests on his great oration at Hastings' trial. In +1806 he satisfied another point of his ambition, long desired, and +was elected for the city of Westminster, which he had ardently +coveted when Fox represented it. But a dissolution threw him again +on the mercy of the popular party; and again he offered himself for +Westminster: but, in spite of all the efforts made for him, without +success. He was returned, instead, for Ilchester.</p> +<p>Meanwhile his difficulties increased; extravagance, debt, want +of energy to meet both, brought him speedily into that position +when a man accepts without hesitation the slightest offer of aid. +The man who had had an income of £15,000 a year, and settled +£20,000 on his wife, allowed a poor friend to pay a bill for +£5 for him, and clutched eagerly at a £50 note when +displayed to him by another. Extravagance is the father of +meanness, and Sheridan was often mean in the readiness with which +he accepted offers, and the anxiety with which he implored +assistance. It is amusing in the present day to hear a man talk of +'a debt of honour,' as if all debts did not demand honour to pay +them—as if all debts incurred without hope of repayment were +not dishonourable. A story is told relative to the old-fashioned +idea of a 'debt of honour.' A tradesman, to whom he had given a +bill for £200, called on him for the amount. A heap of gold +was lying on the table. 'Don't look that way,' cried Sheridan, +after protesting that he had not a penny in the world, 'that is to +pay a debt of honour.' The applicant, with some wit, tore up the +bill he held. 'Now, Mr. Sheridan,' quoth he, 'mine is a debt of +honour too.' It is to be hoped that Sheridan handed him the +money.</p> +<p>The story of Gunter's bill is not so much to his credit, Hanson, +an ironmonger, called upon him and pressed for payment. A bill sent +in by the famous confectioner was lying on the table. A thought +struck the debtor, who had no means of getting rid of his +importunate applicant. 'You know Gunter?' he asked. 'One of the +safest men in London,' replied the ironmonger. 'Then will you be +satisfied if I give you his <i>bill</i> for the +amount?'—'Certainly.' Thereupon Sheridan handed him the +neatly folded account and rushed from the room, leaving the +creditor to discover the point of Mr. Sheridan's little fun.</p> +<p>Still Sheridan might have weathered through the storm. Drury +Lane was a mine of wealth to him, and with a little care might have +been really profitable. The lawsuits, the debts, the engagements +upon it, all rose from his negligence and extravagance. But Old +Drury was doomed. On the 24th February, 1809, soon after the +conclusion of the performances, it was announced to be in flames. +Rather it announced itself. In a few moments it was blazing—a +royal bonfire. Sheridan was in the House of Commons at the time. +The reddened clouds above London threw the glare back even to the +windows of the House. The members rushed from their seats to see +the unwonted light, and in consideration for Sheridan, an +adjournment was moved. But he rose calmly, though sadly, and begged +that no misfortune of his should interrupt the public business. His +independence, he said—witty in the midst of his +troubles—had often been questioned, but was now confirmed, +for he had nothing more to depend upon. He then left the House, and +repaired to the scene of conflagration.</p> +<p>Not long after, Kelly found him sitting quite composed in 'The +Bedford,' sipping his wine, as if nothing had happened. The +musician expressed his astonishment at Mr. Sheridan's <i>sang +froid</i>. 'Surely,' replied the wit, 'you'll admit that a man has +a right to take his wine by his own fireside.' But Sheridan was +only drowning care, not disregarding it. The event was really too +much for him, though perhaps he did not realize the extent of its +effect at the time. In a word, all he had in the world went with +the theatre. Nothing was left either for him or the principal +shareholders. Yet he bore it all with fortitude, till he heard that +the harpsichord, on which his first wife was wont to play, was gone +too. Then he burst into tears.</p> +<p>This fire was the opening of the shaft down which the great man +sank rapidly. While his fortunes kept up, his spirits were not +completely exhausted. He drank much, but as an indulgence rather +than as a relief. Now it was by wine alone that he could even raise +himself to the common requirements of conversation. He is +described, <i>before</i> dinner, as depressed, nervous, and dull; +<i>after</i> dinner only did the old fire break out, the old wit +blaze up, and Dick Sheridan was Dick Sheridan once more. He was, in +fact, fearfully oppressed by the long-accumulated and +never-to-be-wiped-off debts, for which he was now daily pressed. In +quitting Parliament he resigned his sanctuary, and left himself an +easy prey to the Jews and Gentiles, whom he had so long dodged and +deluded with his ready ingenuity. Drury Lane, as we all know, was +rebuilt, and the birth of the new house heralded with a prologue by +Byron, about as good as the one in 'Rejected Addresses,' the +cleverest parodies ever written, and suggested by this very +occasion. The building-committee having advertised for a prize +prologue Samuel Whitbread sent in his own attempt, in which, as +probably in a hundred others, the new theatre was compared to a +Phoenix rising out of the ashes of the old one. Sheridan said +Whitbread's description of a Phoenix was excellent, for it was +quite a <i>poulterer's description</i>.</p> +<p>This same Sam Whitbread was now to figure conspicuously in the +life of Mr. Richard B. Sheridan. The ex-proprietor was found to +have an interest in the theatre to the amount of +£150,000—not a trifle to be despised; but he was now +past sixty, and it need excite no astonishment that, even with all +his liabilities, he was unwilling to begin again the cares of +management, or mismanagement which he had endured so many years. He +sold his interest, in which his son Tom was joined, for +£60,000. This sum would have cleared off his debts and left +him a balance sufficient to secure comfort for his old age. But it +was out of the question that any money matters should go right with +Dick Sheridan. Of the rights and wrongs of the quarrel between him +and Whitbread, who was the chairman of the committee for building +the new theatre, I do not pretend to form an opinion. Sheridan was +not naturally mean, though he descended to meanness when hard +pressed—what man of his stamp does not? Whitbread was truly +friendly to him for a time. Sheridan was always complaining that he +was sued for debts he did not owe, and kept out of many that were +due to him. Whitbread knew his man well, and if he withheld what +was owing to him, may be excused on the ground of real friendship. +All I know is, that Sheridan and Whitbread quarrelled; that the +former did not, or affirmed that he did not, receive the full +amount of his claim on the property, and that, when what he had +received was paid over to his principal creditors, there was little +or nothing left for my lord to spend in banquets to parliamentary +friends and jorums of brandy in small coffee-houses.</p> +<p>Because a man is a genius, he is not of necessity an upright, +honest, ill-used, oppressed, and cruelly-entreated man. Genius +plays the fool wittingly, and often enough quite knowingly, with +its own interests. It is its privilege to do so, and no one has a +right to complain. But then Genius ought to hold its tongue, and +not make itself out a martyr, when it has had the dubious glory of +defying common-sense. If Genius despises gold, well and good, but +when he has spurned it, he should not whine out that he is +wrongfully kept from it. Poor Sheridan may or may not have been +right in the Whitbread quarrel; he has had his defenders, and I am +not ambitious of being numbered among them; but whatever were now +his troubles were brought on by his own disregard of all that was +right and beautiful in conduct. If he went down to the grave a +pauper and a debtor, he had made his own bed, and in it he was to +lie.</p> +<p>Lie he did, wretchedly, on the most unhappy bed that old age +ever lay in. There is little more of importance to chronicle of his +latter days. The retribution came on slowly but terribly. The +career of a ruined man is not a pleasant topic to dwell upon, and I +leave Sheridan's misery for Mr. J. B. Gough to whine and roar over +when he wants a shocking example. Sheridan might have earned many a +crown in that capacity, if temperance-oratory had been the passion +of the day. Debt, disease, depravity—these words describe +enough the downward career of his old age. To eat, still more to +drink, was now the troublesome enigma of the quondam genius. I say +quondam, for all the marks of that genius were now gone. One after +another his choicest properties made their way to 'my uncle's.' The +books went first, as if they could be most easily dispensed with; +the remnants of his plate followed; then his pictures were sold; +and at last even the portrait of his first wife, by Reynolds, was +left in pledge for a 'further remittance.'</p> +<p>The last humiliation arrived in time, and the associate of a +prince, the eloquent organ of a party, the man who had enjoyed +£15,000, a year, was carried off to a low sponging-house. His +pride forsook him in that dismal and disgusting imprisonment, and +he wrote to Whitbread a letter which his defenders ought not to +have published. He had his friends—stanch ones too—and +they aided him. Peter Moore, ironmonger, and even Canning, lent him +money and released him from time to time. For six years after the +burning of the old theatre, he continued to go down and down. +Disease now attacked him fiercely. In the spring of 1816 he was +fast waning towards extinction. His day was past; he had outlived +his fame as a wit and social light; he was forgotten by many, if +not by most, of his old associates. He wrote to Rogers, 'I am +absolutely undone and broken-hearted.' Poor Sheridan! in spite of +all thy faults, who is he whose morality is so stern that he cannot +shed one tear over thy latter days! God forgive us, we are all +sinners; and if we weep not for this man's deficiency, how shall we +ask tears when our day comes? Even as I write, I feel my hand +tremble and my eyes moisten over the sad end of one whom I love, +though he died before I was born. 'They are going to put the +carpets out of window,' he wrote to Rogers, 'and break into Mrs. +S.'s room and <i>take me</i>. For God's sake let me see you!' See +him!—see one friend who could and would help him in his +misery! Oh! happy may that man count himself who has never wanted +that one friend, and felt the utter helplessness of that want! Poor +Sheridan! had he ever asked, or hoped, or looked for that Friend +out of <i>this</i> world it had been better; for 'the Lord thy God +is a jealous God,' and we go on seeking human friendship and +neglecting the divine till it is too late. He found one hearty +friend in his physician, Dr. Bain, when all others had forsaken +him. The spirit of White's and Brookes', the companion of a prince +and a score of noblemen, the enlivener of every 'fashionable' +table, was forgotten by all but this one doctor. Let us read +Moore's description: 'A sheriff's officer at length arrested the +dying man <i>in his bed</i>, and was about to carry him off, in his +blankets, to a sponging-house, when Dr. Bain interfered.' Who would +live the life of revelry that Sheridan lived to have such an end? A +few days after, on the 7th of July, 1816, in his sixty-fifth year, +he died. Of his last hours the late Professor Smythe wrote an +admirable and most touching account, a copy of which was circulated +in manuscript. The Professor, hearing of Sheridan's condition, +asked to see him, with a view, not only of alleviating present +distress, but of calling the dying man to repentance. From his +hands the unhappy Sheridan received the Holy Communion; his face, +during that solemn rite,—doubly solemn when it is performed +in the chamber of death, 'expressed,' Smythe relates, '<i>the +deepest awe</i>' That phrase conveys to the mind impressions not +easy to be defined, not soon to be forgotten.</p> +<p>Peace! there was not peace even in death, and the creditor +pursued him even into the 'waste wide,'—even to the coffin. +He was lying in state, when a gentleman in the deepest mourning +called, it is said, at the house, and introducing himself as an old +and much-attached friend of the deceased, begged to be allowed to +look upon his face. The tears which rose in his eyes, the +tremulousness of his quiet voice, the pallor of his mournful face, +deceived the unsuspecting servant, who accompanied him to the +chamber of death, removed the lid of the coffin, turned down the +shrowd, and revealed features which had once been handsome, but +long since rendered almost hideous by drinking. The stranger gazed +with profound emotion, while he quietly drew from his pocket a +bailiff's wand, and touching the corpse's face with it, suddenly +altered his manner to one of considerable glee, and informed the +servant that he had arrested the corpse in the king's name for a +debt of £500. It was the morning of the funeral, which was to +be attended by half the grandees of England, and in a few minutes +the mourners began to arrive. But the corpse was the bailiff's +property, till his claim was paid, and nought but the money would +soften the iron capturer. Canning and Lord Sidmouth agreed to +settle the matter, and over the coffin the debt was paid.</p> +<p>Poor corpse! was it worth £500—diseased, rotting as +it was, and about to be given for nothing to mother earth? Was it +worth the pomp of the splendid funeral and the grand hypocrisy of +grief with which it was borne to Westminster Abbey? Was not rather +the wretched old man, while he yet struggled on in life, worth this +outlay, worth this show of sympathy? Folly; not folly +only—but a lie! What recked the dead of the four noble +pall-bearers—the Duke of Bedford, the Earl of Lauderdale, +Earl Mulgrave, and the Bishop of London? What good was it to him to +be followed by two royal highnesses—the Dukes of York and +Sussex—by two marquises, seven earls, three viscounts, five +lords, a Canning, a lord mayor, and a whole regiment of honourables +and right honourables, who now wore the livery of grief, when they +had let him die in debt, in want, and in misery? Far more, if the +dead could feel, must he have been grateful for the honester tears +of those two untitled men, who had really befriended him to the +last hour and never abandoned him, Mr. Rogers and Dr. Bain. But +peace; let him pass with nodding plumes and well-dyed horses to the +great Walhalla, and amid the dust of many a poet let the poet's +dust find rest and honour, secure at last from the hand of the +bailiff. There was but one nook unoccupied in Poet's Corner, and +there they laid him. A simple marble was afforded by another friend +without a title—Peter Moore.</p> +<p>To a life like Sheridan's it is almost impossible to do justice +in so narrow a space as I have here. He is one of those men who, +not to be made out a whit better or worse than they are, demand a +careful investigation of all their actions, or reported +actions—a careful sifting of all the evidence for or against +them, and a careful weeding of all the anecdotes told of them. This +requires a separate biography. To give a general idea of the man, +we must be content to give that which he inspired in a general +acquaintance. Many of his 'mots,' and more of the stories about +him, may have been invented for him, but they would scarcely have +been fixed on Sheridan, if they had not fitted more or less his +character: I have therefore given them. I might have given a +hundred more, but I have let alone those anecdotes which did not +seem to illustrate the character of the man. Many another good +story is told of him, and we must content ourselves with one or +two. Take one that is characteristic of his love of fun.</p> +<p>Sheridan is accosted by an elderly gentleman, who has forgotten +the name of a street to which he wants to go, and who informs him +precisely that it is an out-of-the-way name.</p> +<p>'Perhaps, sir, you mean John Street?' says Sherry, all +innocence.</p> +<p>'No, an unusual name.'</p> +<p>'It can't be Charles Street?'</p> +<p>Impatience on the part of the old gentleman.</p> +<p>'King Street?' suggests the cruel wit.</p> +<p>'I tell you, sir, it is a street with a very odd name!'</p> +<p>'Bless me, is it Queen Street?'</p> +<p>Irritation on the part of the old gentleman.</p> +<p>'It must be Oxford Street?' cries Sheridan as if inspired.</p> +<p>'Sir, I repeat,' very testily, 'that it is a very odd name. +Every one knows Oxford Street!'</p> +<p>Sheridan appears to be thinking.</p> +<p>'An odd name! Oh! ah! just so; Piccadilly, of course?'</p> +<p>Old gentleman bounces away in disgust.</p> +<p>'Well, sir,' Sheridan calls after him, 'I envy you your +admirable memory!'</p> +<p>His wit was said to have been prepared, like his speeches, and +he is even reported to have carried his book of <i>mots</i> in his +pocket, as a young lady of the middle class <i>might</i>, but +seldom does, carry her book of etiquette into a party. But some of +his wit was no doubt extempore.</p> +<p>When arrested for non-attendance to a call in the House, soon +after the change of ministry, he exclaimed, 'How hard to be no +sooner out of office than into custody!'</p> +<p>He was not an inveterate talker, like Macaulay, Sydney Smith, or +Jeffrey: he seems rather to have aimed at a striking effect in all +that he said. When found tripping he had a clever knack of getting +out of the difficulty. In the Hastings speech he complimented +Gibbon as a 'luminous' writer; questioned on this, he replied +archly, 'I said <i>vo</i>-luminous.'</p> +<p>I cannot afford to be voluminous on Sheridan, and so I quit +him.</p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h3><a name="Brummell">BEAU BRUMMELL</a></h3> +<blockquote>Two popular Sciences.—'Buck Brummell' at +Eton.—Investing his Capital.— Young Cornet +Brummell.—The Beau's Studio.—The +Toilet.—'Creasing Down.'—Devotion to Dress.—A +Great Gentleman.—Anecdotes of Brummell.— 'Don't forget, +Brum: Goose at Four!'—Offers of Intimacy +resented.—Never in love.—Brummell out +Hunting.—Anecdote of Sheridan and Brummell.—The Beau's +Poetical Efforts.—The Value of a Crooked Sixpence.—The +Breach with the Prince of Wales.—'Who's your Fat +Friend?'—The Climax is reached.—The Black-mail of +Calais.—George the Greater and George the Less.—An +Extraordinary Step.—Down the Hill of Life.—A Miserable +Old Age.—In the Hospice Du Bon Sauveur.—O Young Men of +this Age, be warned!</blockquote> +<p>It is astonishing to what a number of insignificant things high +art has been applied, and with what success. It is the vice of high +civilization to look for it and reverence it, where a ruder age +would only laugh at its employment. Crime and cookery, especially, +have been raised into sciences of late, and the professors of both +received the amount of honour due to their acquirements. Who would +be so naïve as to sneer at the author of 'The Art of Dining?' +or who so ungentlemanly as not to pity the sorrows of a pious +baronet, whose devotion to the noble art of appropriation was +shamefully rewarded with accommodation gratis on board one of Her +Majesty's transport-ships? The disciples of Ude have left us the +literary results of their studies, and one at least, the graceful +Alexis Soyer, is numbered among our public benefactors. We have +little doubt that as the art, vulgarly called 'embezzlement,' +becomes more and more fashionable, as it does every day, we shall +have a work on the 'Art of Appropriation.' It is a pity that +Brummell looked down upon literature: poor literature! it had a +hard struggle to recover the slight, for we are convinced there is +not a work more wanted than the 'Art of Dressing,' and 'George the +Less' was almost the last professor of that elaborate science.</p> +<p>If the maxim, that 'whatever is worth doing at all is worth +doing well,' hold good, Beau Brummell must be regarded in the light +of a great man. That dressing is worth doing at all, everybody but +a Fiji Islander seems to admit, for everybody does it. If, then, a +man succeeds in dressing better than anybody else, it follows that +he is entitled to the most universal admiration.</p> +<p>But there was another object to which this great man +condescended to apply the principles of high art—I mean +affectation. How admirably he succeeded in this his life will show. +But can we doubt that he is entitled to our greatest esteem and +heartiest gratitude for the studies he pursued with unremitting +patience in these two useful branches, when we find that a prince +of the blood delighted to honour, and the richest, noblest, and +most distinguished men of half a century ago were proud to know +him? We are writing, then, of no common man, no mere beau, but of +the greatest professor of two of the most popular +sciences—Dress and Affectation. Let us speak with reverence +of this wonderful genius.</p> +<p>George Brummell was 'a self-made man.' That is, all that nature, +the tailors, stags, and padding had not made of him, he made for +himself—his name, his fame, his fortune, and his +friends—and all these were great. The author of 'Self-help' +has most unaccountably omitted all mention of him, and most +erroneously, for if there ever was a man who helped himself, and no +one else, it was, 'very sincerely yours, George Brummell.'</p> +<p>The founder of the noble house of Brummell, the grandfather of +our hero, was either a treasury porter, or a confectioner, or +something else.<a id="footnotetag10" name= +"footnotetag10"></a><a href="#footnote10"><sup>10</sup></a> At any +rate he let lodgings in Bury Street, and whether from the fact that +his wife did not purloin her lodgers' tea and sugar, or from some +other cause, he managed to ingratiate himself with one of +them—who afterwards became Lord Liverpool—so +thoroughly, that through his influence he obtained for his son the +post of Private Secretary to Lord North. Nothing could have been +more fortunate, except, perhaps, the son's next move, which was to +take in marriage the daughter of Richardson, the owner of a +well-known lottery-office. Between the lottery of office and the +lottery of love, Brummell <i>père</i> managed to make a very +good fortune. At his death he left as much as £65,000 to be +divided among his three children—Raikes says as much as +£30,000 a-piece—so that the Beau, if not a fool, ought +never to have been a pauper.</p> +<p>George Bryan Brummell, the second son of this worthy man, +honoured by his birth the 7th of June, 1778. No anecdotes of his +childhood are preserved, except that he once cried because he could +not eat any more damson tart. In later years he would probably have +thought damson tart 'very vulgar.' He first turns up at Eton at the +age of twelve, and even there commences his distinguished career, +and is known as 'Buck Brummell.' The boy showed himself decidedly +father to the man here. Master George was not vulgar enough, nor so +imprudent, it may be added, as to fight, row, or play cricket, but +he distinguished himself by the introduction of a gold buckle in +the white stock, by never being flogged, and by his ability in +toasting cheese. We do not hear much of his classical +attainments.</p> +<p>The very gentlemanly youth was in due time passed on to Oriel +College, Oxford. Here he distinguished himself by a studied +indifference to college discipline and an equal dislike to studies. +He condescended to try for the Newdigate Prize poem, but his genius +leaned far more to the turn of a coat-collar than that of a verse, +and, unhappily for the British poets, their ranks were not to be +dignified by the addition of this illustrious man. The Newdigate +was given to another; and so, to punish Oxford, the competitor left +it and poetry together, after having adorned the old quadrangle of +Oriel for less than a year.</p> +<p>He was now a boy of seventeen, and a very fine boy, too. To +judge from a portrait taken in later life, he was not strictly +handsome; but he is described as tall, well built, and of a slight +and graceful figure. Added to this, he had got from Eton and +Oxford, if not much learning, many a well-born friend, and he was +toady enough to cultivate those of better, and to dismiss those of +less distinction. He was, through life, a celebrated 'cutter,' and +Brummell's cut was as much admired—by all but the +<i>cuttee</i>—as Brummel's coat. Then he had some +£25,000 as capital and how could he best invest it? He +consulted no stockbroker on this weighty point; he did not even buy +a shilling book of advice such as we have seen advertised for those +who do not know what to do with their money. The question was +answered in a moment by the young worldling of sixteen: he would +enter a crack regiment and invest his guineas in the thousand per +cents. of fashionable life.</p> +<p>His namesake, the Regent, was now thirty-two, and had spent +those years of his life in acquiring the honorary title of the +'first gentleman of Europe' by every act of folly, debauch, +dissipation, and degradation which a prince can conveniently +perpetrate. He was the hero of London society, which adored and +backbit him alternately, and he was precisely the man whom the boy +Brummell would worship. The Regent was colonel of a famous regiment +of fops—the 10th Hussars. It was the most expensive, the most +impertinent, the best-dressed, the worst-moralled regiment in the +British army. Its officers, many of them titled, all more or less +distinguished in the trying campaigns of London seasons, were the +intimates of the Prince-Colonel. Brummell aspired to a cornetcy in +this brilliant regiment, and obtained it; nor that alone; he +secured, by his manners, o his dress, or his impudence, the favour +and companionship— friendship we cannot say—of the +prince who commanded it.</p> +<p>By this step his reputation was made, and it was only necessary +to keep it up. He had an immense fund of good nature, and, as long +as his money lasted, of good spirits, too. Good sayings—that +is, witty if not wise— are recorded of him, and his friends +pronounce him a charming companion. Introduced, therefore, into the +highest circles in England, he could scarcely fail to succeed. +Young Cornet Brummell became a great favourite with the fair.</p> +<p>His rise in the regiment was of course rapid: in three years he +was at the head of a troop. The onerous duties of a military life, +which vacillated between Brighton and London, and consisted chiefly +in making oneself agreeable in the mess-room, were too much for our +hero. He neglected parade, or arrived too late: it was such a bore +to have to dress in a hurry. It is said that he knew the troop he +commanded only by the peculiar nose of one of the men, and that +when a transfer of men had once been made, rode up to the wrong +troop, and supported his mistake by pointing to the nose in +question. No fault, however, was found with the Regent's favourite, +and Brummell might have risen to any rank if he could have +supported the terrific labour of dressing for parade. Then, too, +there came wars and rumours of wars, and our gallant captain +shuddered at the vulgarity of shedding blood: the supply of +smelling-salts would never have been liberal enough to keep him +from fainting on the battle-field. It is said, too, that the +regiment was ordered to Manchester. Could anything be more gross or +more ill-bred? The idea of figuring before the wives and daughters +of cotton-spinners was too fearful; and from one cause or another +our brave young captain determined to retire, which he did in +1798.</p> +<p>It was now, therefore, that he commenced the profession of a +beau, and as he is the Prince of Beaux, as his patron was the Beau +of Princes, and as his fame has spread to France and Germany, if +only as the inventor of the trouser; and as there is no man who on +getting up in the morning does not put on his clothes with more or +less reflection as to whether they are the right ones to put on, +and as beaux have existed since the days of the emperor of beaux, +Alexander the Macedonian, and will probably exist to all time, let +us rejoice in the high honour of being permitted to describe how +this illustrious genius clothed his poor flesh, and made the most +of what God had given him—a body and legs.</p> +<p>The private life of Brummell would in itself serve as a book of +manners and habits. The two were his profoundest study; but, alas! +his impudence marred the former, and the latter can scarcely be +imitated in the present day. Still as a great example he is yet +invaluable, and must be described in all detail.</p> +<p>His morning toilette was a most elaborate affair. Never was +Brummell guilty of <i>déshabille</i>. Like a true man of +business, he devoted the best and earliest hours—and many of +them too—to his profession, namely— dressing. His +dressing-room was a studio, in which he daily prepared that +elaborate portrait of George Brummell which was to be exhibited for +a few hours in the club-rooms and drawing-rooms of town, only to be +taken to pieces again, and again made up for the evening. Charles +I. delighted to resort of a morning to the studio of Vandyck, and +to watch his favourite artist's progress. The Regent George was no +less devoted to art, for we are assured by Mr. Raikes that he often +visited his favourite beau in the morning to watch his toilet, and +would sometimes stay so late that he would send his horses away, +insisting on Brummell giving him a quiet dinner, 'which generally +ended in a deep potation.'</p> +<p>There are, no doubt, many fabulous myths floating about +concerning this illustrious man; and his biographer, Captain Jesse, +seems anxious to defend him from the absurd stories of French +writers, who asserted that he employed two glovers to covers his +hands, to one of whom were intrusted the thumbs, to the other the +fingers and hand, and three barbers to dress his hair, while his +boots were polished with champagne, his cravats designed by a +celebrated portrait painter, and so forth. These may be pleasant +inventions, but Captain Jesse's own account of his toilet, even +when the Beau was broken, and living in elegant poverty abroad, is +quite absurd enough to render excusable the ingenious exaggerations +of the foreign writer.</p> +<p>The <i>batterie de toilette</i>, we are told, was of silver, and +included a spitting-dish, for its owner said 'he could not spit +into clay.' Napoleon shaved himself, but Brummell was not quite +great enough to do that, just as my Lord So-and-so walks to church +on Sunday, while his neighbour, the Birmingham millionaire, can +only arrive there in a chariot and pair.</p> +<p>His ablutions took no less than two whole hours! What knowledge +might have been gained, what good done in the time he devoted to +rubbing his lovely person with a hair-glove! Cleanliness was, in +fact, Brummell's religion; perhaps because it is generally set down +as 'next to godliness,' a proximity with which the Beau was quite +satisfied, for he never attempted to pass on to that next stage. +Poor fool, he might rub every particle of moisture off the skin of +his body—he might be clean as a kitten—but he could not +and did not purify his mind with all this friction; and the man who +would have fainted to see a black speck upon his shirt, was not at +all shocked at the indecent conversation in which he and his +companions occasionally indulged.</p> +<p>The body cleansed, the face had next to be brought up as near +perfection as nature would allow. With a small looking-glass in one +hand, and tweezers in the other, he carefully removed the tiniest +hairs that he could discover on his cheeks or chin, enduring the +pain like a martyr.</p> +<p>Then came the shirt, which was in his palmy days changed three +times a day, and then in due course the great business of the +cravat. Captain Jesse's minute account of the process of tying this +can surely be relied on, and presents one of the most ludicrous +pictures of folly and vanity that can be imagined. Had Brummell +never lived, and a novelist or play-writer described the toilet +which Captain Jesse affirms to have been his daily achievement, he +would have had the critics about him with the now common +phrase—'This book is a tissue, not only of improbabilities, +but of actual impossibilities.' The collar, then, was so large, +that in its natural condition it rose high above the wearer's head, +and some ingenuity was required to reduce it by delicate folds to +exactly that height which the Beau judged to be correct. Then came +the all-majestic white neck-tie, a foot in breadth. It is not to be +supposed that Brummell had the neck of a swan or a camel—far +from it. The worthy fool had now to undergo, with admirable +patience, the mysterious process known to our papas as 'creasing +down.' The head was thrown back, as if ready for a dentist; the +stiff white tie applied to the throat, and gradually wrinkled into +half its actual breadth by the slow downward movement of the chin. +When all was done, we can imagine that comfort was sacrificed to +elegance, as it was then considered, and that the sudden appearance +of Venus herself could not have induced the deluded individual to +turn his head in a hurry.</p> +<p>It is scarcely profitable to follow this lesser deity into all +the details of his self-adornment. It must suffice to say that he +affected an extreme neatness and simplicity of dress, every item of +which was studied and discussed for many an hour. In the mornings +he was still guilty of hessians and pantaloons, or 'tops' and +buckskins, with a blue coat and buff waistcoat. The costume is not +so ancient, but that one may tumble now and then on a country +squire who glories in it and denounces us juveniles as 'bears' for +want of a similar precision. Poor Brummell, he cordially hated the +country squires, and would have wanted rouge for a week if he could +have dreamed that his pet attire would, some fifty years later, be +represented only by one of that class which he was so anxious to +exclude from Watier's.</p> +<p>But it was in the evening that he displayed his happy invention +of the trouser, or rather its introduction from Germany. This +article he wore very tight to the leg, and buttoned over the ankle, +exactly as we see it in old prints of 'the fashion.' Then came the +wig, and on that the hat. It is a vain and thankless task to defend +Brummell from the charge of being a dandy. If one proof of his +devotion to dress were wanted, it would be the fact that this hat, +once stuck jauntily on one side of the wig, was never removed in +the street even to salute a lady—so that, inasmuch as he +sacrificed his manners to his appearance, he may be fairly set down +as a fop.</p> +<p>The perfect artist could not be expected to be charitable to the +less successful. Dukes and princes consulted him on the make of +their coats, and discussed tailors with him with as much solemnity +as divines might dispute on a mystery of religion. Brummell did not +spare them. 'Bedford,' said he, to the duke of that name, fingering +a new garment which his grace had submitted to his inspection, 'do +you call this <i>thing</i> a coat?' Again, meeting a noble +acquaintance who wore shoes in the morning, he stopped and asked +him what he had got upon his feet. 'Oh! shoes are they,' quoth he, +with a well bred sneer, 'I thought they were slippers.' He was even +ashamed of his own brother, and when the latter came to town, +begged him to keep to the back streets till his new clothes were +sent home. Well might his friend the Regent say, that he was 'a +mere tailor's dummy to hang clothes upon.'</p> +<p>But in reality Brummell was more. He had some sharpness and some +taste. But the former was all brought out in sneers, and the latter +in snuff-boxes. His whole mind could have been put into one of +these. He had a splendid collection of them, and was famous for the +grace with which he opened the lid of his box with the thumb of the +hand that carried it, while he delicately took his pinch with two +fingers of the other. This and his bow were his chief acquirements, +and his reputation for manners was based on the distinction of his +manner. He could not drive in a public conveyance, but he could be +rude to a well-meaning lady; he never ate +vegetables—<i>one</i> pea he confessed to—but he did +not mind borrowing from his friends money which he knew he could +never return. He was a great gentleman, a gentleman of his patron's +school—in short, a well-dressed snob. But one thing is due to +Brummell: he made the assumption of being 'a gentleman' so +thoroughly ridiculous that few men of keen sense care now for the +title: at least, not as a class-distinction. Nor is it to be +wondered at; when your tailor's assistant is a 'gentleman,' and +would be mightily disgusted at being called anything else, you, +with your indomitable pride of caste, can scarcely care for the +patent.</p> +<p>Brummell's claim to the title was based on his walk, his coat, +his cravat, and the grace with which he indulged, as Captain Jesse +delightfully calls it, 'the nasal pastime' of taking snuff, all the +rest was impudence; and many are the anecdotes—most of them +familiar as household words—which are told of his +impertinence. The story of Mrs. Johnson-Thompson is one of those +oft-told tales, which, from having become Joe Millers, have +gradually passed out of date and been almost forgotten. Two rival +party-givers rejoiced in the aristocratic names of Johnson and +Thompson. The former lived near Finsbury, the latter near Grosvenor +Square, and Mrs. Thompson was somehow sufficiently fashionable to +expect the Regent himself at her assemblies. Brummell among other +impertinences, was fond of going where he was not invited or +wanted. The two rivals gave a ball on the same evening, and a card +was sent to the Beau by her of Finsbury. He chose to go to the +Grosvenor Square house, in hopes of meeting the Regent, then his +foe. Mrs. Thompson was justly disgusted, and with a vulgarity quite +deserved by the intruder, told him he was not invited. The Beau +made a thousand apologies, hummed, hawed, and drew a card from his +pocket. It was the rival's invitation, and was indignantly +denounced. 'Dear me, how very unfortunate,' said the Beau, 'but you +know Johnson and Thompson—I mean Thompson and Johnson are so +very much alike. Mrs. Johnson-Thompson, I wish you a very good +evening.'</p> +<p>Perhaps there is no vulgarity greater than that of rallying +people on their surnames, but our exquisite gentleman had not wit +enough to invent one superior to such a puerile amusement. Thus, on +one occasion, he woke up at three in the morning a certain Mr. +Snodgrass, and when the worthy put his head out of the window in +alarm, said quietly, 'Pray, sir, is your name +Snodgrass?'—'Yes, sir, it is Snodgrass.' 'Snodgrass— +Snodgrass—it is a very singular name. Good-bye, Mr. +<i>Snodgrass</i>.' There was more wit in his remark to Poodle Byng, +a well-known puppy, whom he met one day driving in the Park with a +French dog in his curricle. 'Ah,' cried the Beau, 'how d'ye do, +Byng? a family vehicle, I see.'</p> +<p>It seems incredulous to modern gentlemen that such a man should +have been tolerated even at a club. Take, for instance, his vulgar +treatment of Lord Mayor Combe, whose name we still see with others +over many a public-house in London, and who was then a most +prosperous brewer and thriving gambler. At Brookes' one evening the +Beau and the Brewer were playing at the same table, 'Come, +<i>Mash-tub</i>', cried the 'gentleman,' 'what do you set?' +Mash-tub unresentingly set a pony, and the Beau won twelve of him +in succession. Pocketing his cash, he made him a bow, and +exclaimed, 'Thank you, Alderman, in future I shall drink no porter +but yours.' But Combe was worthy of his namesake, Shakspere's +friend, and answered very aptly, 'I wish, sir, that every +<i>other</i> blackguard in London would tell me the same.'</p> +<p>Then again, after ruining a young fool of fortune at the tables, +and being reproached by the youth's father for leading his son +astray, he replied with charming affectation, 'Why, sir, I did all +I could for him. I once gave him my arm all the way from White's to +Brookes'!'</p> +<p>When Brummell really wanted a dinner, while at Calais, he could +not give up his impertinence for the sake of it. Lord Westmoreland +called on him, and, perhaps out of compassion, asked him to dine at +<i>three o'clock</i> with him. 'Your Lordship is very kind,' said +the Beau, 'but really I could not <i>feed</i> at such an hour.' +Sooner or later he was glad to <i>feed</i> with any one who was +toady enough to ask him. He was once placed in a delightfully +awkward position from having accepted the invitation of a +charitable but vulgar-looking Britisher at Calais. He was walking +with Lord Sefton, when the individual passed and nodded familiarly. +'Who's your friend, Brummell?'—'Not mine, he must be bowing +to you.' But presently the man passed again, and this time was +cruel enough to exclaim, 'Don't forget, Brum, don't +forget—goose at four!' The poor Beau must have wished the +earth to open under him. He was equally imprudent in the way in +which he treated an old acquaintance who arrived at the town to +which he had retreated, and of whom he was fool enough to be +ashamed. He generally took away their characters summarily, but on +one occasion was frightened almost out of his wits by being called +to account for this conduct. An officer who had lost his nose in an +engagement in the Peninsula, called on him, and in very strong +terms requested to know why the Beau had reported that he was a +retired hatter. His manner alarmed the rascal, who apologized, and +protested that there must be a mistake; he had never said so. The +officer retired, and as he was going, Brummell added: 'Yes, it must +be a mistake, for now I think of it, I never dealt with a hatter +without a nose.'</p> +<p>So much for the good breeding of this friend of George IV. and +the Duke of York.</p> +<p>His affectation was quite as great as his impudence: and he won +the reputation of fastidiousness—nothing gives more +prestige—by dint of being openly rude. No hospitality or +kindness melted him, when he thought he could gain a march. At one +dinner, not liking the champagne, he called to the servant to give +him 'some more of that cider:' at another, to which he was invited +in days when a dinner was a charity to him, after helping himself +to a wing of capon, and trying a morsel of it, he took it up in his +napkin, called to his dog—he was generally accompanied by a +puppy, even to parties, as if one at a time were not +enough—and presenting it to him, said aloud, 'Here, +<i>Atons</i>, try if you can get your teeth through that, for I'm +d—d if I can!'</p> +<p>To the last he resented offers of intimacy from those whom he +considered his inferiors, and as there are ladies enough +everywhere, he had ample opportunity for administering rebuke to +those who pressed into his society. On one occasion he was +sauntering with a friend at Caen under the window of a lady who +longed for nothing more than to have the great <i>arbiter +elegantiarum</i> at her house. When seeing him beneath, she put her +head out, and called out to him, 'Good evening, Mr. Brummell, won't +you come up and take tea?' The Beau looked up with extreme severity +expressed on his face, and replied, 'Madam, you take +medicine—you take a walk—you take a liberty—but +you <i>drink</i> tea,' and walked on, having, it may be hoped, +cured the lady of her admiration.</p> +<p>In the life of such a man there could not of course be much +striking incident. He lived for 'society,' and the whole of his +story consists in his rise and fall in that narrow world. Though +admired and sought after by the women—so much so that at his +death his chief assets were locks of hair, the only things he could +not have turned into money—he never married. Wedlock might +have sobered him, and made him a more sensible, if not more +respectable member of society, but his advances towards matrimony +never brought him to the crisis. He accounted for one rejection in +his usual way. 'What could I do, my dear <i>fellar</i>,' he lisped, +'when I actually saw Lady Mary eat cabbage?' At another time he is +said to have induced some deluded young creature to elope with him +from a ball-room, but managed the affair so ill, that the lovers +(?) were caught in the next street, and the affair came to an end. +He wrote rather ecstatic love-letters to Lady Marys and Miss +——s, gave married ladies advice on the treatment of +their spouses and was tender to various widows, but though he went +on in this way through life, he was never, it would seem, in love, +from the mere fact that he was incapable of passion.</p> +<p>Perhaps he was too much of a woman to care much for women. He +was certainly egregiously effeminate. About the only creatures he +could love were poodles. When one of his dogs, from over-feeding, +was taken ill, he sent for two dog-doctors, and consulted very +gravely with them on the remedies to be applied. The canine +physicians came to the conclusion that she must be bled. 'Bled!' +said Brummell, in horror; 'I shall leave the room: inform me when +the operation is over.' When the dog died, he shed +tears—probably the only ones he had shed since childhood: and +though at that time receiving money from many an old friend in +England, complained, with touching melancholy, 'that he had lost +the only friend he had!' His grief lasted three whole days, during +which he shut himself up, and would see no one; but we are not told +that he ever thus mourned over any human being.</p> +<p>His effeminacy was also shown in his dislike to field-sports. +His shooting exploits were confined to the murder of a pair of pet +pigeons perched on a roof, while he confessed, as regards hunting, +that it was a bore to get up so early in the morning only to have +one's boots and leathers splashed by galloping farmers. However, +hunting was a fashion, and Brummell must needs appear to hunt. He +therefore kept a stud of hunters in his better days, near Belvoir, +the Duke of Rutland's, where he was a frequent visitor, and if +there was a near meet, would ride out in pink and tops to see the +hounds break cover, follow through a few gates, and return to the +more congenial atmosphere of the drawing-room. He, however, +condescended to bring his taste to bear on the hunting-dress; and, +it is said, introduced white tops instead of the ancient +mahoganies. That he <i>could</i> ride there seems reason to +believe, but it is equally probable that he was afraid to do so. +His valour was certainly composed almost entirely of its 'better +part,' and indeed had so much prudence in it that it may be doubted +if there was any of the original stock left. Once when he had been +taking away somebody's character, the 'friend' of the maligned +gentleman entered his apartment, and very menacingly demanded +satisfaction for his principal, unless an apology were tendered 'in +five minutes.' 'Five minutes!' answered the exquisite, as pale as +death, 'five seconds, or sooner if you like.'</p> +<p>Brummell was no fool, in spite of his follies. He had talents of +a mediocre kind, if he had chosen to make a better use of them. Yet +the general opinion was not in favour of his wisdom. He quite +deserved Sheridan's cool satire for his affectation, if not for his +want of mind.</p> +<p>The Wit and the Beau met one day at Charing Cross, and it can +well be imagined that the latter was rather disgusted at being seen +so far east of St. James's Street, and drawled out to +Sheridan,—'Sherry, my dear boy, don't mention that you saw me +in this filthy part of the town, though, perhaps, I am rather +severe, for his Grace of Northumberland resides somewhere about +this spot, if I don't mistake. The fact is, my dear boy, I have +been in the d——d City, to the Bank: I wish they would +remove it to the West End, for re-all-y it is quite a bore to go to +such a place; more particularly as one cannot be seen in one's own +equipage beyond Somerset House,' etc. etc. etc. in the Brummellian +style.</p> +<p>'Nay, my good fellow,' was the answer to this peroration, +'travelling from the East? impossible!'</p> +<p>'Why, my dear boy, why?'</p> +<p>'Because the wise men came from the East,'</p> +<p>'So, then, sa-ar—you think me a fool?'</p> +<p>'By no means; I know you to be one,' quoth Sherry, and turned +away. It is due to both the parties to this anecdote to state that +it is quite apocryphal, and rests on the slenderest authority. +However, whether fool or not, Brummell has one certain, though +small, claim upon certain small readers. Were you born in a modern +generation, when scraps of poetry were forbidden in your nursery, +and no other pabulum was offered to your infant stomach, but the +rather dull biographies of rather dull, though very upright +men?—if so, I pity you. Old airs of a jaunty jig-like kind +are still haunting the echoes of my brain. Among them is—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'The butterfly was a gentleman,</p> +<p>Which nobody can refute:</p> +<p>He left his lady-love at home,</p> +<p>And roamed in a velvet suit.'</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>I remember often to have ruminated over this character of an +innocent, and, I believe, calumniated, insect. He was a gentleman, +and the consequences thereof were twofold: he abandoned the young +woman who had trusted her affections to him, and attired his person +in a complete costume of the best Lyons silk-velvet, <i>not</i> the +proctor's velvet, which Theodore felt with thumb and finger, +impudently asking 'how much a yard?' I secretly resolved to do the +same thing as Mr. Butterfly when I came of age. But the said Mr. +Butterfly had a varied and somewhat awful history, all of which was +narrated in various ditties chanted by my nurse. I could not quite +join in her vivid assertion that she <i>would</i></p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'——be a butterfly,</p> +<p class="i2">Born in a bower,</p> +<p>Christened in a tea-pot,</p> +<p class="i2">And dead in an hour.'</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Aetat four, life is dear, and the idea of that early demise was +far from welcome to me. I privily agreed that I would <i>not</i> be +a butterfly. But there was no end to the history of this very +inconstant insect in our nursery lore. We didn't care a drop of +honey for Dr. Watts's 'Busy Bee;' we infinitely preferred the +account—not in the 'Morning Post'—of the 'Butterfly's +Ball' and the 'Grasshopper's Feast; and few, perhaps, have ever +given children more pleasures of imagination than William Roscoe, +its author. There were some amongst us, however, who were already +being weaned to a knowledge of life's mysterious changes, and we +sought the third volume of the romance of the flitting gaudy thing +in a little poem called 'The Butterfly's Funeral.'</p> +<p>Little dreamed we, when in our prettly little song-books we saw +the initial 'B.' at the bottom of these verses, that a real human +butterfly had written them, and that they conveyed a solemn +prognostication of a fate that was <i>not</i> his. Little we +dreamed, as we lisped out the verses, that the 'gentleman who +roamed in a' not velvet but 'plum-coloured suit,' according to Lady +Hester Stanhope, was the illustrious George Brummell, The Beau +wrote these trashy little rhymes—pretty in their +way—and, since I was once a child, and learnt them off by +heart, I will not cast a stone at them. Brummell indulged in such +trifling poetizing, but never went further. It is a pity he did not +write his memoirs; they would have added a valuable page to the +history of 'Vanity Fair.'</p> +<p>Brummell's London glory lasted from 1798 to 1816. His chief club +was Watier's. It was a superb assemblage of gamesters and +fops—knaves and fools; and it is difficult to say which, +element predominated. For a time Brummell was monarch there; but +his day of reckoning came at last. Byron and Moore, Sir Henry +Mildmay and Mr. Pierrepoint, were among the members. Play ran high +there, and Brummell once won nearly as much as his squandered +patrimony, £26.000. Of course he not only lost it again, but +much more—indeed his whole capital. It was after some heavy +loss that he was walking home through Berkeley Street with Mr. +Raikes, when he saw something glittering in the gutter, picked it +up, and found it to be a crooked sixpence. Like all small-minded +men, he had a great fund of superstition, and he wore the talisman +of good luck for some time. For two years, we are told, after this +finding of treasure-trove, success attended him in +play—macao, the very pith of hazard, was the chief game at +Watier's—and he attributed it all to the sixpence. At last he +lost it, and luck turned against him. So goes the story. It is +probably much more easily accountable. Few men played honestly in +those days without losing to the dishonest, and we have no reason +to charge the Beau with mal-practice. However this may be, his +losses at play first brought about his ruin. The Jews were, of +course, resorted to; and if Brummell did not, like Charles Fox, +keep a Jerusalem Chamber, it was only because the sum total of his +fortune was pretty well known to the money-lenders.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'Then came the change, the check, the fall;</p> +<p>Pain rises up, old pleasures pall.</p> +<p>There is one remedy for all.'</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>This remedy was the crossing of the Channel, a crossing kept by +beggars, who levy a heavy toll on those who pass over it.</p> +<p>The decline of the Beau was rapid, but not without its +<i>éclat</i>. A breach with his royal patron led the way. It +is presumed that every reader of these volumes has heard the famous +story of 'Wales, ring the bell!' but not all may know its +particulars.</p> +<p>A deep impenetrable mystery hangs over this story. Perhaps some +German of the twenty-first century—some future Giffard, or +who not—will put his wits to work to solve the riddle. In +very sooth <i>il ne vaut pas la chandelle</i>. A quarrel did take +place between George the Prince and George the Less, but of its +causes no living mortal is cognizant: we can only give the received +versions. It appears, then, that dining with H.R.H. the Prince of +Wales, Master Brummell asked him to ring the bell. Considering the +intimacy between them, and that the Regent often sacrificed his +dignity to his amusement, there was nothing extraordinary in this. +But it is added that the Prince did ring the bell in +question—unhappy bell to jar so between two such illustrious +friends!—and when the servant came, ordered 'Mr. Brummell's +carriage!' Another version palms off the impertinence on a drunken +midshipman, who, being related to the Comptroller of the Household, +had been invited to dinner by the Regent. Another yet states that +Brummell, being asked to ring the said bell, replied, 'Your Royal +Highness is close to it.' No one knows the truth of the legend, any +more than whether Homer was a man or a myth. It surely does not +matter. The friends quarrelled, and perhaps it was time they should +do so, for they had never improved one another's morals; but it is +only fair to the Beau to add that he always denied the whole +affair, and that he himself gave as the cause of the quarrel his +own sarcasms on the Prince's increasing corpulency, and his +resemblance to Mrs. Fitzherbert's porter, 'Big Ben.' Certainly some +praise is due to the Beau for the <i>sans, froid</i> with which he +appeared to treat the matter, though in reality dreadfully cut up +about it. He lounged about, made amusing remarks on his late friend +and patron, swore he would 'cut' him, and in short behaved with his +usual <i>aplomb</i>. The 'Wales, ring the bell,' was sufficient +proof of his impudence, but 'Who's your fat friend?' was really +good.</p> +<p>It is well known, in all probability, that George IV. +contemplated with as much disgust and horror the increasing +rotundity of his 'presence' as ever a maiden lady of a certain age +did her first grey hair. Soon after the bell affair, the royal beau +met his former friend in St. James's Street, and resolved to cut +him. This was attacking Brummell with his own pet weapon, but not +with success. Each antagonist was leaning on the arm of a friend. +'Jack Lee,' who was thus supporting the Beau, was intimate with the +Prince, who, to make the cut the more marked, stopped and talked to +him without taking the slightest notice of Brummell. After a time +both parties moved on, and then came the moment of triumph and +revenge. It was sublime! Turning round half way, so that his words +could not fail to be heard by the retreating Regent, the Beau asked +of his companion in his usual drawl, 'Well, Jack, who's your fat +friend?' The coolness, presumption, and impertinence of the +question perhaps made it the best thing the Beau ever said, and +from that time the Prince took care not to risk another encounter +with him.<a id="footnotetag11" name="footnotetag11"></a><a href= +"#footnote11"><sup>11</sup></a></p> +<p><a name="001"></a></p> +<div class="figcenter"><a href="images/001.png"><img src= +"images/001sm.png" alt= +"'Who's Your Fat Friend?'"></a> +<h4>"WHO'S YOUR FAT FRIEND?"</h4> +</div> +<p>Brummell was scotched rather than killed by the Prince's +indifference. He at once resolved to patronise his brother, the +Duke of York, and found in him a truer friend. The duchess, who had +a particular fondness for dogs, of which she is said to have kept +no fewer, at one time, than a hundred, added the puppy Brummell to +the list, and treated him with a kindness in which little +condescension was mixed. But neither impudence nor the blood-royal +can keep a man out of debt, especially when he plays. The Beau got +deeper and deeper into the difficulty, and at last some mysterious +quarrel about money with a gentleman who thenceforward went by the +name of Dick the Dandy-killer, obliged him to think of place and +poverty in another land. He looked in vain for aid, and among +others Scrope Davies was written to to lend him 'two hundred,' +'because his money was all in the three per cents.' Scrope replied +laconically—</p> +<blockquote>'MY DEAR GEORGE,<br> +'It is very unfortunate, but <i>my</i> money is all in the three +per cents. Yours,<br> +'S. DAVIES,'</blockquote> +<p>It was the last attempt. The Beau went to the opera, as usual, +and drove away from it clear off to Dover, whence the packet took +him to safety and slovenliness in the ancient town of Calais. His +few effects were sold after his departure. Porcelaine, buhl, a +drawing or two, double-barrelled Mantons (probably never used), +plenty of old wine, linen, furniture, and a few well-bound books, +were the Beau's assets. His debts were with half the chief +tradesmen of the West End and a large number of his personal +friends.</p> +<p>The climax is reached: henceforth Master George Bryan Brummell +goes rapidly and gracefully down the hill of life.</p> +<p>The position of a Calais beggar was by no means a bad one, if +the reduced individual had any claim whatever to distinction. A +black-mail was sedulously levied by the outcasts and exiles of that +town on every Englishman who passed through it; and in those days +it was customary to pass some short time in this entrance of +France. The English 'residents' were always on the look-out, +generally crowding round the packet-boat, and the new arrival was +sure to be accosted by some old and attached friend, who had not +seen him for years. Just as Buttons, who is always breaking the +plates and tumblers, has the invariable mode of accounting for his +carelessness, 'they fell apart, sir, in my 'ands!' so these +expatriated Britons had always a tale of confidence +misplaced—security for a bond—bail for a delinquent, or +in short any hard case, which compelled them, much against their +wills, to remain 'for a period' on the shores of France. To such +men, whom you had known in seven-guinea waistcoats at White's and +Watier's, and found in seven-shilling coats on the Calais pier, it +was impossible to refuse your five-pound note, and in time the +black-mail of Calais came to be reckoned among the established +expenses of a Continental tour.</p> +<p>Brummell was a distinguished beggar of this description, and +managed so adroitly that the new arrivals thought themselves +obliged by Mr. Brummell's acceptance of their donations. The man +who could not eat cabbages, drive in a hackney-coach, or wear less +than three shirts a day, was now supported by voluntary +contributions, and did not see anything derogatory to a gentleman +in their acceptance. If Brummell had now turned his talents to +account; if he had practised his painting, in which he was not +altogether despicable; or his poetry, in which he had already had +some trifling success: if he had even engaged himself as a waiter +at Quillacq's, or given lessons in the art of deportment, his fine +friends from town might have cut him, but posterity would have +withheld its blame. He was a beggar of the merriest kind. While he +wrote letters to friends in England, asking for remittances, and +describing his wretched condition on a bed of straw and eating bran +bread, he had a good barrel of Dorchester ale in his lodgings, his +usual glass of maraschino, and his bottle of claret after dinner; +and though living on charity, could order new snuff-boxes to add to +his collection, and new knick-knacks to adorn his room. There can +be no pity for such a man, and we have no pity for him, whatever +the rest of the world may feel.</p> +<p>Nothing can be more contemptible than the gradual downfall of +the broken beau. Yet, if it were doubted that his soul ever rose +above the collar of a coat or the brim of a hat, his letters to Mr. +Raikes in the time of his poverty would settle the question. 'I +heard of you the other day in a waistcoat that does you +considerable credit, spick-and-span from Paris, a broad stripe, +salmon-colour, and <i>cramoisé</i>. Don't let them laugh you +into a relapse—into the Gothic—as that of your former +English simplicity.' He speaks of the army of occupation as +'rascals in red coats waiting for embarkation.' 'English +education,' he says in another letter, 'may be all very well to +instruct the hemming of handkerchiefs, and the ungainly romps of a +country-dance, but nothing else; and it would be a poor consolation +to your declining years to see your daughters come into the room +upon their elbows, and to find their accomplishments limited to +broad native phraseology in conversation, or thumping the +"Woodpecker" upon a discordant spinet.' And he proceeds to +recommend a 'good French formation of manners,' and so forth.</p> +<p>Nor did he display any of that dignity and self-respect which +are generally supposed to mark the 'gentleman.' When his late +friend and foe, by this time a king, passed through Calais, the +Beau, broken in every sense, had not pride enough to keep out of +his way. Many stories are told of the manner in which he pressed +himself into George IV.'s notice, but the various legends mostly +turn upon a certain snuff-box. According to one quite as reliable +as any other, the Prince and the Beau had in their days of amity +intended to exchange snuff-boxes, and George the Greater had given +George the Less an order on his jeweller for a +<i>tabatière</i> with his portrait on the top. On their +quarrel this order was, with very bad taste, rescinded, although +Brummell's snuff-box had already passed into the Prince's hands and +had not been returned. It is said that the Beau employed a friend +to remind the king of this agreement, and ask for his box; to whom +the latter said that the story was all nonsense, and that he +supposed 'the poor devil,' meaning his late intimate friend, wanted +£100 and should have it. However, it is doubtful if the money +ever reached the 'poor devil.' The story does not tell over well, +for whatever were the failings and faults of George IV., he seems +to have had a certain amount of good nature, if not absolutely of +good heart, and possessed, at least, sufficient sense of what +became a prince, to prevent his doing so shabby an act, though he +may have defrauded a hundred tradesmen. In these days there +<i>were</i> such things as 'debts of honour,' and they were +punctiliously attended to. There are, as we have said, various +versions of this story, but all tend to show that Brummell courted +the notice of his late master and patron on his way through the +place of his exile; and it is not remarkable in a man who borrowed +so freely from all his acquaintances, and who was, in fact, in such +a state of dependence on their liberality.</p> +<p>Brummell made one grand mistake in his career as a Beau: he +outlived himself. For some twenty-four years he survived his flight +from England, to which country he never returned. For a time he was +an assiduous writer of begging-letters and the plague of his +friends. At length he obtained the appointment of consul at the +good old Norman town of Caen. This was almost a sinecure, and the +Beau took care to keep it so. But no one can account for the +extraordinary step he took soon after entering on his consular +duties. He wrote to Lord Palmerston, stating that there were no +duties attached to the post, and recommending its abolition. This +act of suicide is partly explained by a supposed desire to be +appointed to some more lively and more lucrative consulate; but in +this the Beau was mistaken. The consulate at Caen was vacated in +accordance with his suggestion, and Brummell was left penniless, in +debt, and to shift for himself. With the aid of an English +tradesman, half grocer, half banker, he managed to get through a +period of his poverty, but could not long subsist in this way, and +the punishment of his vanity and extravagance came at last in his +old age. A term of existence in prison did not cure him, and when +he was liberated he again resumed his primrose gloves, his Eau de +Cologne, and his patent <i>vernis</i> for his boots, though at that +time literally supported by his friends with an allowance of +£120 per annum. In the old days of Caen life this would have +been equal to £300 a year in England, and certainly quite +enough for any bachelor; but the Beau was really a fool. For whom, +for what should he dress and polish his boots at such a quiet place +as Caen? Yet he continued to do so, and to run into debt for the +polish. When he confessed to having, 'so help him Heaven,' not four +francs in the world, he was ordering this <i>vernis de Guiton</i>, +at five francs a bottle, from Paris, and calling the provider of it +a 'scoundrel,' because he ventured to ask for his money. What +foppery, what folly was all this! How truly worthy of the man who +built his fame on the reputation of a coat! Terrible indeed was the +hardship that followed his extravagance; he was actually compelled +to exchange his white for a black cravat. Poor martyr! after such a +trial it is impossible to be hard upon him. So, too, the man who +sent repeated begging-letters to the English grocer, Armstrong, +threw out of window a new dressing-gown because it was not of the +pattern he wished to have.</p> +<p>Retribution for all this folly came in time. His mind went even +before his health. Though only some sixty years of age, almost the +bloom of some men's life, he lost his memory and his powers of +attention, His old ill-manners became positively bad manners. When +feasted and feted, he could find nothing better to say than 'What a +half-starved turkey.' At last the Beau was reduced to the level of +that slovenliness which he had considered as the next step to +perdition. Reduced to one pair of trousers, he had to remain in bed +till they were mended. He grew indifferent to his personal +appearance, the surest sign of decay. Drivelling, wretched, in +debt, an object of contempt to all honest men, he dragged on a +miserable existence. Still with his boots in holes, and all the +honour of beau-dom gone for ever, he clung to the last to his Eau +de Cologne, and some few other luxuries, and went down, a fool and +a fop, to the grave. To indulge his silly tastes he had to part +with one piece of property after another; and at length he was left +with little else than the locks of hair of which he had once +boasted.</p> +<p>I remember a story of a labourer and his dying wife. The poor +woman was breathing her last wishes. 'And, I say, William, you'll +see the old sow don't kill her young uns?'—'Ay, ay, wife, set +thee good.' 'And, I say, William, you'll see Lizzy goes to schule +reg'lar?'—'Ay, ay, wife, set thee good.' 'And, I say, +William, you'll see Tommy's breeches is mended against he goes to +schule again?'—'Ay, ay, wife, set thee good.'—'And, I +say, William, you'll see I'm laid proper in the yard?' William grew +impatient. 'Now never thee mind them things, wife, I'll see to 'em +all, you just go on with your dying.' No doubt Brummell's friends +heartily wished that he would go on with his dying, for he had +already lived too long; but he would live on. He is described in +his last days as a miserable, slovenly, half-witted old creature, +creeping about to the houses of a few friends he retained or who +were kind enough to notice him still, jeered at by the +<i>gamins</i>, and remarkable now, not for the cleanliness, but the +filthiness and raggedness of his attire.</p> +<p>Poor old fool! one cannot but pity him, when wretched, +friendless, and miserable as he was, we find him, still graceful, +in a poor <i>café</i> near the Place Royale, taking his cup +of coffee, and when asked for the amount of his bill, answering +very vaguely, 'Oui, Madame, à la pleine lune, à la +pleine lune.'</p> +<p>The drivellings of old age are no fit subject for ridicule, yet +in the case of a man who had sneered so freely at his +fellow-creatures, they may afford a useful lesson. One of his +fancies was to give imaginary parties, when his tallow dips were +all set alight and his servant announced with proper decorum, 'The +Duchess of Devonshire,' 'Lord Alvanley, 'Mr. Sheridan,' or whom +not. The poor old idiot received the imaginary visitors with the +old bow, and talked to them in the old strain, till his servant +announced their imaginary carriages, and he was put drivelling to +bed. At last the idiocy became mania. He burnt his books, his +relics, his tokens. He ate enormously, and the man who had looked +upon beer as the <i>ne plus ultra</i> of vulgarity, was glad to +imagine it champagne. Let us not follow the poor maniac through his +wanderings. Rather let us throw a veil over all his drivelling +wretchedness, and find him at his last gasp, when coat and collar, +hat and brim, were all forgotten, when the man who had worn three +shirts a day was content to change his linen once a month. What a +lesson, what a warning! If Brummell had come to this pass in +England, it is hard to say how and where he would have died. He was +now utterly penniless, and had no prospect of receiving any +remittances. It was determined to remove him to the Hospice du Bon +Sauveur, a <i>Maison de Charité</i>, where he would be well +cared for at no expense. The mania of the poor creature took, as +ever, the turn of external preparation. When the landlord of his +inn entered to try and induce him to go, he found him with his wig +on his knee, his shaving apparatus by his side, and the quondam +beau deeply interested in lathering the peruke as a preliminary to +shearing it. He resisted every proposal to move, and was carried +down stairs, kicking and shrieking. Once lodged in the Hospice, he +was treated by the soeurs de charité with the greatest +kindness and consideration. An attempt was made to recall him to a +sense of his future peril, that he might at least die in a more +religious mood than he had lived; but in vain. It is not for us, +erring and sinful as we are, to judge any fellow-creature; but +perhaps poor Brummell was the last man to whom religion had a +meaning. His heart was good; his sins were more those of vanity +than those of hate; it may be that they are regarded mercifully +where the fund of mercy is unbounded. God grant that they may be +so; or who of us would escape? None but fiends will triumph over +the death of any man in sin. Men are not fiends; they must and will +always feel for their fellow-men, let them die as they will. No +doubt Brummell was a fool—a fool of the first water, but that +he was equally a knave was not so certain. Let it never be certain +to blind man, who cannot read the heart, that any man is a knave. +He died on the 30th of March, 1840, and so the last of the Beaux +passed away. People have claimed, indeed for D'Orsay, the honour of +Brummell's descending mantle, but D'Orsay was not strictly a beau, +for he had other and higher tastes than mere dress. It has never +been advanced that Brummell's heart was bad, in spite of his many +faults. Vanity did all. Vanitas vanitatem. O young men of this age, +be warned by a Beau, and flee his doubtful reputation! Peace then +to the coat-thinker. Peace to all—to the worst. Let us look +within and not judge. It is enough that we are not tried in the +same balance.</p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h3><a name="Hook">THEODORE EDWARD HOOK.</a></h3> +<blockquote>The Greatest of Modern Wits.—-What Coleridge said +of Hook.—Hook's Family.—Redeeming +Points.—Versatility.—Varieties of Hoaxing.—The +Black-wafered Horse.—The Berners Street Hoax.—Success +of the Scheme.— The Strop of Hunger.—Kitchen +Examinations.—The Wrong House.—Angling for an +Invitation.—The Hackney-coach Device.—The Plots of Hook +and Mathews.—Hook's Talents as an Improvisatore.—The +Gift becomes his Bane.—Hook's Novels.—College +Fun.—Baiting a Proctor.—The Punning +Faculty.—Official Life Opens.—Troublesome +Pleasantry.—Charge of +Embezzlement.—Misfortune.—Doubly Disgraced.—No +Effort to remove the Stain.—Attacks on the Queen.—An +Incongruous Mixture.—Specimen of the Ramsbottom +Letters.—Hook's Scurrility.—Fortune and +Popularity.—The End.</blockquote> +<p>If it be difficult to say what wit is, it is well nigh as hard +to pronounce what is not wit. In a sad world, mirth hath its full +honour, let it come in rags or in purple raiment. The age that +patronises a 'Punch' every Saturday? and a pantomime every +Christmas, has no right to complain, if it finds itself barren of +wits, while a rival age has brought forth her dozens. Mirth is, no +doubt, very good. We would see more, not less, of it in this +unmirthful land. We would fain imagine the shrunken-cheeked +factory-girl singing to herself a happy burthen, as she shifts the +loom,—the burthen of her life, and fain believe that the +voice was innocent as the sky-lark's. But if it be not so—and +we know it is not so—shall we quarrel with any one who tries +to give the poor care-worn, money-singing public a little laughter +for a few pence? No, truly, but it does not follow that the man who +raises a titter is, of necessity, a wit. The next age, perchance, +will write a book of 'Wits and Beaux,' in which Mr. Douglas +Jerrold, Mr. Mark Lemon, and so on, will represent the <i>wit</i> +of this passing day; and that future age will not ask so nicely +what wit is, and not look for that last solved of riddles, its +definition. Hook has been, by common consent, placed at the head of +modern wits. When kings were kings, they bullied, beat, and and +brow-beat their jesters. Now and then they treated them to a few +years in the Tower for a little extra impudence. Now that the +people are sovereign, the jester fares better—nay, too well. +His books or his bon-mots are read with zest and grins; he is +invited to his Grace's and implored to my Lord's; he is waited for, +watched, pampered like a small Grand Lama, and, in one sentence, +the greater the fool, the more fools he makes.</p> +<p>If Theodore Hook had lived in the stirring days of King Henry +VIII., he would have sent Messrs. Patch and Co. sharply to the +right-about, and been presented with the caps and bells after his +first comic song. No doubt he was a jester, a fool in many senses, +though he did not, like Solomon's fool, 'say in his <i>heart</i>' +very much. He jested away even the practicals of life, jested +himself into disgrace, into prison, into contempt, into the basest +employment—that of a libeller tacked on to a party. He was a +mimic, too, to whom none could send a challenge; an improvisatore, +who beat Italians, Tyroleans, and Styrians hollow, sir, hollow. And +lastly—oh! shame of the shuffle-tongued—he was, too, a +punster. Yes, one who gloried in puns, a maker of pun upon pun, a +man whose whole wit ran into a pun as readily as water rushes into +a hollow, who could not keep out of a pun, let him loathe it or +not, and who made some of the best and some of the worst on record, +but still—puns.</p> +<p>If he was a wit withal, it was <i>malgré soi</i>, for +fun, not for wit, was his 'aspiration.' Yet the world calls him a +wit, and he has a claim to his niche. There were, it is true, many +a man in his own set who had more real wit. There were James Smith, +Thomas Ingoldsby, Tom Hill, and others. Out of his set, but of his +time, there was Sydney Smith, ten times more a wit: but Theodore +could amuse, Theodore could astonish, Theodore could be at home +anywhere; he had all the impudence, all the readiness, all the +indifference of a jester, and a jester he was.</p> +<p>Let any one look at his portrait, and he will doubt if this be +the king's jester, painted by Holbein, or Mr. Theodore Hook, +painted by Eddis. The short, thick nose, the long upper lip, the +sensual, whimsical mouth, the twinkling eyes, all belong to the +regular maker of fun. Hook was a certificated jester, with a +lenient society to hear and applaud him, instead of an irritable +tyrant to keep him in order: and he filled his post well. Whether +he was more than a jester may well be doubted; yet Coleridge, when +he heard him, said: 'I have before in my time met with men of +admirable promptitude of intellectual power and play of wit, which, +as Stillingfleet says:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"The rays of wit gild wheresoe'er they strike,"</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>but I never could have conceived such readiness of mind and +resources of genius to be poured out on the mere subject and +impulse of the moment.' The poet was wrong in one respect. Genius +can in no sense be applied to Hook, though readiness was his chief +charm.</p> +<p>The famous Theodore was born in the same year as Byron, 1788, +the one on the 22nd of January, the other on the 22nd of September; +so the poet was only nine months his senior. Hook, like many other +wits, was a second son. Ladies of sixty or seventy well remember +the name of Hook as that which accompanied their earliest miseries. +It was in learning Hook's exercises, or primers, or whatever they +were called, that they first had their fingers slapped over the +piano-forte. The father of Theodore, no doubt, was the unwitting +cause of much unhappiness to many a young lady in her teens. Hook +<i>père</i> was an organist at Norwich. He came up to town, +and was engaged at Marylebone Gardens and at Vauxhall; so that +Theodore had no excuse for being of decidedly plebeian origin, and, +Tory as he was, he was not fool enough to aspire to +patricianism.</p> +<p>Theodore's family was, in real fact, Theodore himself. He made +the name what it is, and raised himself to the position he at one +time held. Yet he had a brother whose claims to celebrity are not +altogether ancillary. James Hook was fifteen years older than +Theodore. After leaving Westminster School he was sent to immortal +Skimmery (St. Mary's Hall), Oxford, which has fostered so many +great men—and spoiled them. He was advanced in the church +from one preferment to another, and ultimately became Dean of +Worcester. The character of the reverend gentleman is pretty well +known, but it is unnecessary here to go into it farther. He is only +mentioned as Theodore's brother in this sketch.<a id= +"footnotetag12" name="footnotetag12"></a><a href= +"#footnote12"><sup>12</sup></a> dabbler in literature, like his +brother, but scarcely to the same extent a dabbler in wit.</p> +<p>The younger son of 'Hook's Exercises' developed early enough a +taste for ingenious lying—so much admired in his +predecessor—Sheridan, He 'fancied himself' a genius, and +therefore, from school-age, not amenable to the common laws of +ordinary men. Frequenters of the now fashionable +prize-ring—thanks to two brutes who have brought that +degraded pastime into prominent notice—will hear a great deal +about a man 'fancying himself.' It is common slang and heeds little +explanation. Hook 'fancied himself' from an early period, and +continued to 'fancy himself,' in spite of repeated disgraces, till +a very mature age. At Harrow, he was the contemporary, but scarcely +the friend, of Lord Byron. No two characters could have been more +unlike. Every one knows, more or less, what Byron's was; it need +only be said that Hook's was the reverse of it in every respect. +Byron felt where Hook laughed. Byron was morbid where Hook was gay. +Byron abjured with disgust the social vices to which he was +introduced; Hook fell in with them. Byron indulged in vice in a +romantic way; Hook in the coarsest. There is some excuse for Byron, +much as he has been blamed. There is little or no excuse for Hook, +much as his faults have been palliated. The fact is that goodness +of heart will soften, in men's minds, any or all misdemeanours. +Hook, in spite of many vulgar witticisms and cruel jokes, seems to +have had a really good heart.</p> +<p>I have it on the authority of one of Hook's most intimate +friends, that he was capable of any act of kindness, and by way of +instance of his goodness of heart, I am told by the same person +that he on one occasion quitted all his town amusements to solace +the spirit of a friend in the country who was in serious trouble. +I, of course, refrain from giving names: but the same person +informs me that much of his time was devoted in a like manner, to +relieving, as far as possible, the anxiety of his friends, often, +indeed, arising from his own carelessness. It is due to Hook to +make this impartial statement before entering on a sketch of his +'Sayings and Doings,' which must necessarily leave the impression +that he was a heartless man.</p> +<p>Old Hook, the father, soon perceived the value of his son's +talents; and, determined to turn them to account, encouraged his +natural inclination to song-writing. At the age of sixteen Theodore +wrote a kind of comic opera, to which his father supplied the +music. This was called 'The Soldier's Return.' It was followed by +others, and young Hook, not yet out of his teens, managed to keep a +Drury Lane audience alive, as well as himself and family. It must +be remembered, however, that Liston and Matthews could make almost +any piece amusing. The young author was introduced behind the +scenes through his father's connection with the theatre, and often +played the fool under the stage while others were playing it for +him above it, practical jokes being a passion with him which he +developed thus early. These tricks were not always very +good-natured, which may be said of many of his jokes out of the +theatre.</p> +<p>He soon showed evidence of another talent, that of acting as +well as writing pieces. Assurance was one of the main features of +his character, and to it he owed his success in society; but it is +a remarkable fact, that on his first appearance before an audience +he entirely lost all his nerve, turned pale, and could scarcely +utter a syllable. He rapidly recovered, however, and from this time +became a favourite performer in private theatricals, in which he +was supported by Mathews and Mrs. Mathews, and some amateurs who +were almost equal to any professional actors. His attempts were, of +course, chiefly in broad farce and roaring burlesque, in which his +comic face, with its look of mock gravity, and the twinkle of the +eyes, itself excited roars of laughter. Whether he would have +succeeded as well in sober comedy or upon public boards may well be +doubted. Probably he would not have given to the profession that +careful attention and entire devotion that are necessary to bring +forward properly the highest natural talents. It is said that for a +long time he was anxious to take to the stage as, a profession, +but, perhaps—as the event seems to show—unfortunately +for him, he was dissuaded from what his friends must have thought a +very rash step, and in after years he took a violent dislike to the +profession. Certainly the stage could not have offered more +temptations than did the society in which he afterwards mixed; and +perhaps under any circumstances Hook, whose moral education had +been neglected, and whose principles were never very good, would +have lived a life more or less vicious, though he might not have +died as he did.</p> +<p>Hook, however, was not long in coming very prominently before +the public in another capacity. Of all stories told about him, none +are more common or more popular than those which relate to his +practical jokes and hoaxes. Thank heaven, the world no longer sees +amusement in the misery of others, and the fashion of such clever +performance is gone out. It is fair, however, to premise, that +while the cleverest of Hook's hoaxes were of a victimizing +character, a large number were just the reverse, and his admirers +affirm, not without some reason, that when he had got a dinner out +of a person whom he did not know, by an ingenious lie, admirably +supported, he fully paid for it in the amusement he afforded his +host and the ringing metal of his wit. As we have all been +boys—except those that were girls—and not all of us +very good boys, we can appreciate that passion for robbery which +began with orchards and passed on to knockers. It is difficult to +sober middle-age to imagine what entertainment there can be in that +breach of the eighth commandment, which is generally regarded as +innocent. As Sheridan swindled in fun, so Hook, as a young man, +robbed in fun, as hundreds of medical students and others have done +before and since. Hook, however, was a proficient in the art, and +would have made a successful 'cracksman' had he been born in the +Seven Dials. He collected a complete museum of knockers, +bell-pulls, wooden Highlanders, barbers' poles, and shop signs of +all sorts. On one occasion he devoted a whole fortnight to the +abstraction of a golden eagle over a shop window, by means of a +lasso. A fellow dilettante in the art had confidentially informed +him of its whereabouts, adding that he himself despaired of ever +obtaining it. At length Hook invited his friend to dinner, and on +the removal of the cover of what was supposed to be the joint, the +work of art appeared served up and appropriately garnished. +Theodore was radiant with triumph; but the friend, probably +thinking that there ought to be honour among thieves, was highly +indignant at being thus surpassed.</p> +<p>Another achievement of this kind was the robbery of a life-sized +Highlander, who graced the door of some unsuspecting tobacconist. +There was little difficulty in the mere displacement of the figure; +the troublesome part of the business was to get the bare legged +Celt home to the museum, where probably many a Lilliputian of his +race was already awaiting him. A cloak, a hat, and Hook's ready wit +effected the transfer. The first was thrown over him, the second +set upon his bonneted head, and a passing hackney coach hailed by +his captor, who before the unsuspecting driver could descend, had +opened the door, pushed in the prize, and whispered to Jehu, 'My +friend—very respectable man but rather tipsy.' How he managed +to get him out again at the end of the journey we are not told.</p> +<p>Hook was soon a successful and valuable writer of light pieces +for the stage. But farces do not live, and few of Hook's are now +favourites with a public which is always athirst for something new. +The incidents of most of the pieces—many of them borrowed +from the French—excited laughter by their very improbability; +but the wit which enlivened them was not of a high order, and Hook, +though so much more recent than Sheridan, has disappeared before +him.</p> +<p>But his hoaxes were far more famous than his collection of +curiosities, and quite as much to the purpose; and the imprudence +he displayed in them was only equalled by the quaintness of the +humour which suggested them. Who else would have ever thought, for +instance, of covering a white horse with black wafers, and driving +it in a gig along a Welsh high-road, merely for the satisfaction of +being stared at? It was almost worthy of Barnum. Or who, with less +assurance, could have played so admirably on the credulity of a +lady and daughters fresh from the country as he did, at the trial +of Lord Melville? The lady, who stood next to him, was, naturally, +anxious to understand the proceedings, and betrayed her ignorance +at once by a remark which she made to her daughter about the +procession of the Lords into the House. When the bishops entered in +full episcopal costume, she applied to Hook to know who were 'those +gentlemen?' 'Gentlemen,' quoth Hook, with charming simplicity; +'ladies, I think you mean; at any rate, those are the dowager +peeresses in their own right.' Question followed question as the +procession came on, and Theodore indulged his fancy more and more. +At length the Speaker, in full robes, became the subject of +inquiry. 'And pray, sir, who is that fine looking +person?'—'That, ma'am, is Cardinal Wolsey,' was the calm and +audacious reply. This was too much even for Sussex; and the lady +drew herself up in majestic indignation. 'We know better than that, +sir,' she replied: 'Cardinal Wolsey has been dead many a good +year.' Theodore was unmoved. 'No such thing, my dear madam,' he +answered, without the slightest sign of perturbation: 'I know it +has been generally reported so in the country, but without the +slightest foundation; the newspapers, you know, will say +anything.'</p> +<p>But the hoax of hoaxes, the one which filled the papers of the +time for several days, and which, eventually, made its author the +very prince of hoaxsters, if such a term can be admitted, was that +of Berners Street. Never, perhaps, was so much trouble expended, or +so much attention devoted, to so frivolous an object. In Berners +Street there lived an elderly lady, who, for no reason that can be +ascertained, had excited the animosity of the young Theodore Hook, +who was then just of age. Six weeks were spent in preparation, and +three persons engaged in the affair. Letters were sent off in every +direction, and Theodore Hook's autograph, if it could have any +value, must have been somewhat low in the market at that period, +from the number of applications which he wrote. On the day in +question he and his accomplices seated themselves at a window in +Berners Street, opposite to that unfortunate Mrs. Tottenham, of No +54, and there enjoyed the fun. Advertisements, announcements, +letters, circulars, and what not, had been most freely issued, and +were as freely responded to. A score of sweeps, all 'invited to +attend professionally,' opened the ball at a very early hour, and +claimed admittance, in virtue of the notice they had received. The +maid-servant had only just time to assure them that all the +chimneys were clean, and their services were not required, when +some dozen of coal-carts drew up as near as possible to the +ill-fated house. New protestations, new indignation. The grimy and +irate coalheavers were still being discoursed with, when a bevy of +neat and polite individuals arrived from different quarters, +bearing each under his arm a splendid ten-guinea wedding-cake. The +maid grew distracted; her mistress was single, and had no intention +of doubling herself; there must be some mistake; the confectioners +were dismissed, in a very different humour to that with which they +had come. But they were scarcely gone when crowds began to storm +the house, all 'on business.' Rival doctors met in astonishment and +disgust, prepared for an <i>accouchement</i>; undertakers stared +one another mutely in the face, as they deposited at the door +coffins made to order—elm or oak—so many feet and so +many inches; the clergymen of all the neighbouring parishes, high +church or low church, were ready to minister to the spiritual wants +of the unfortunate moribund, but retired in disgust when they found +that some forty fishmongers had been engaged to purvey 'cod's head +and lobsters' for a person professing to be on the brink of the +grave.</p> +<p>The street now became the scene of fearful distraction. Furious +tradesmen of every kind were ringing the house-bell, and rapping +the knocker for admittance—such, at least, as could press +through the crowd as far as the house. Bootmakers arrived with +Hessians and Wellingtons—'as per order'—or the most +delicate of dancing-shoes for the sober old lady; haberdashers had +brought the last new thing in evening dress, 'quite the fashion,' +and 'very chaste:' hat-makers from Lincoln and Bennett down to the +Hebrew vendor in Marylebone Lane, arrived with their crown-pieces; +butchers' boys, on stout little nags, could not get near enough to +deliver the legs of mutton which had been ordered; the lumbering +coal-carts 'still stopped the way.' A crowd—the easiest +curiosity in the world to collect—soon gathered round the +motley mob of butchers, bakers, candlestick-makers, and makers and +sellers of everything else that mortal can want; the mob thronged +the pavement, the carts filled the road, and soon the carriages of +the noble of the land dashed up in all the panoply of state, and a +demand was made to clear the way for the Duke of Gloucester, for +the Governor of the Bank, the Chairman of the East India Company, +and last, but, oh! not least, the grandee whose successor the +originator of the plot afterwards so admirably satirized—the +great Lord Mayor himself. The consternation, disgust, and terror of +the elderly female, the delight and chuckling of Theodore and his +accomplices, seated at a window on the opposite side of the road, +'can be more easily imagined than described;' but what were the +feelings of tradesmen, professional men, gentlemen, noblemen, and +grand officials, who had been summoned from distant spots by artful +lures to No. 54, and there battled with a crowd in vain only to +find that there were hoaxed; people who had thus lost both time and +money, can be neither described nor imagined. It was not the idea +of the hoax—simple enough in itself—which was entitled +to the admiration accorded to ingenuity, but its extent and +success, and the clever means taken by the conspirators to insure +the attendance of every one who ought not to have been there. It +was only late at night that the police succeeded in clearing the +street, and the dupes retired, murmuring and vowing vengeance. +Hook, however, gloried in the exploit, which he thought +'perfect.'</p> +<p>But the hoaxing dearest to Theodore—for there was +something to be gained by it—-was that by which he managed to +obtain a dinner when either too hard-up to pay for one, or in the +humour for a little amusement. No one who has not lived as a +bachelor in London and been reduced—-in respect of +coin—to the sum of twopence-halfpenny, can tell how excellent +a strop is hunger to sharpen wit upon. We all know that</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'Mortals with stomachs can't live without dinner;'</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>and in Hook's day the substitute of 'heavy teas' was not +invented. Necessity is very soon brought to bed, when a man puts +his fingers into his pockets, finds them untenanted, and remembers +that the only friend who would consent to lend him five shillings +is gone out of town; and the infant, Invention, presently smiles +into the nurse's face. But it was no uncommon thing in those days +for gentlemen to invite themselves where they listed, and stay as +long as they liked. It was only necessary for them to make +themselves really agreeable, and deceive their host in some way or +other. Hook's friend, little Tom Hill, of whom it was said that he +knew everybody's affairs far better than they did themselves, was +famous for examining kitchens about the hour of dinner, and quietly +selecting his host according to the odour of the viands. It is of +him that the old 'Joe Miller' is told of the 'haunch of venison.' +Invited to dinner at one house, he <i>happens</i> to glance down +into the kitchen of the next, and seeing a tempting haunch of +venison on the spit, throws over the inviter, and ingratiates +himself with his neighbour, who ends by asking him to stay to +dinner. The fare, however, consisted of nothing more luxurious than +an Irish stew, and the disappointed guest was informed that he had +been 'too cunning by half,' inasmuch as the venison belonged to his +original inviter, and had been cooked in the house he was in by +kind permission, because the chimney of the owner's kitchen +smoked.</p> +<p>The same principle often actuated Theodore; and, indeed, there +are few stories which can be told of this characteristic of the +great frolicker, which have not been told a century of times.</p> +<p>For instance: two young men are strolling, towards 5 P.M., in +the then fashionable neighbourhood of Soho; the one is Terry, the +actor—the other, Hook, the actor, for surely he deserves the +title. They pass a house, and sniff the viands cooking underground. +Hook quietly announces his intention of dining <i>there</i>. He +enters, is admitted and announced by the servant, mingles with the +company, and is quite at home before he is perceived by the host. +At last the <i>dénouement</i> came; the dinner-giver +approached the stranger, and with great politeness asked his name. +'Smith' was, of course, the reply, and reverting to mistakes made +by servants in announcing, &c., 'Smith' hurried off into an +amusing story, to put his host in good humour. The conversation +that followed is taken from 'Ingoldsby':—</p> +<p>'But, really, my dear sir,' the host put in, 'I think the +mistake on the present occasion does not originate in the source +you allude to; I certainly did not anticipate the honour of Mr. +Smith's company to-day.'</p> +<p>'No, I dare say not. You said <i>four</i> in your note, I know, +and it is now, I see, a quarter past five; but the fact is, I have +been detained in the City, as I was going to explain—'</p> +<p>'Pray,' said the host, 'whom do you suppose you are +addressing?'</p> +<p>'Whom? why Mr. Thompson, of course, old friend of my father. I +have not the pleasure, indeed, of being personally known to you, +but having received your kind invitation yesterday,' &c. +&c.</p> +<p>'No, sir, my name is not Thompson, but Jones,' in highly +indignant accents.</p> +<p>'Jones!' was the well-acted answer: 'why, surely, I cannot +have—yes I must—good heaven! I see it all. My +<i>dear</i> sir, what an unfortunate blunder; wrong +house—what must you think of such an intrusion? I am really +at a loss for words in which to apologize; you will permit me to +retire at present, and to-morrow—'</p> +<p>'Pray, don't think of retiring,' rejoined the host, taken with +the appearance and manner of the young man. 'Your friend's table +must have been cleared long ago, if, as you say, four was the hour +named, and I am too happy to be able to offer you a seat at +mine.'</p> +<p>It may be easily conceived that the invitation had not to be +very often repeated, and Hook kept the risible muscles of the +company upon the constant stretch, and paid for the entertainment +in the only coin with which he was well supplied.</p> +<p>There was more wit, however, in his visit to a retired +watchmaker, who had got from government a premium of £10,000 +for the best chronometer. Hook was very partial to journeys in +search of adventure; a gig, a lively companion, and sixpence for +the first turnpike being generally all that was requisite; +ingenuity supplied the rest. It was on one of these excursions, +that Hook and his friend found themselves in the neighbourhood of +Uxbridge, with a horse and a gig, and not a sixpence to be found in +any pocket. Now a horse and gig are property, but of what use is a +valuable of which you cannot dispose or deposit at a pawnbroker's, +while you are prevented proceeding on your way by that neat white +gate with the neat white box of a house at its side? The only +alternative left to the young men was to drive home again, +dinnerless, a distance of twenty miles, with a jaded horse, or to +find gratuitous accommodation for man and beast. In such a case +Sheridan would simply have driven to the first inn, and by +persuasion or stratagem contrived to elude payment, after having +drunk the best wine and eaten the best dinner the house could +afford. Hook was really more refined, as well as bolder in his +pillaging.</p> +<p>The villa of the retired tradesman was perceived, and the gig +soon drew up before the door. The strangers were ushered in to the +watchmaker, and Hook, with great politeness and a serious +respectful look, addressed him. He said that he felt he was taking +a great liberty—so he was—but that he could not pass +the door of a man who had done the country so much service by the +invention of what must prove the most useful and valuable +instrument, without expressing to him the gratitude which he, as a +British subject devoted to his country's good, could not but feel +towards the inventor, &c. &c. The flattery was so +delicately and so seriously insinuated, that the worthy citizen +could only receive it as an honest expression of sincere +admiration. The Rubicon was passed; a little lively conversation, +artfully made attractive by Hook, followed, and the watchmaker was +more and more gratified. He felt, too, what an honour it would be +to entertain two real gentlemen, and remarking that they were far +from town, brought out at last the longed-for invitation, which +was, of course, declined as out of the question. Thereupon the old +gentleman became pressing: the young strangers were at last +prevailed upon to accept it, and very full justice they did to the +larder and cellar of the successful chronometer-maker.</p> +<p>There is nothing very original in the act of hoaxing, and Hook's +way of getting a hackney-coach without paying for it, was, perhaps, +suggested by Sheridan's, but was more laughable. Finding himself in +the vehicle, and knowing that there was nothing either in his purse +or at home to pay the fare, he cast about for expedients, and at +last remembered the address of an eminent surgeon in the +neighbourhood. He ordered the coachman to drive to his house and +knock violently at the door, which was no sooner opened than Hook +rushed in, terribly agitated, demanded to see the doctor, to whom +in a few incoherent and agitated sentences, he gave to understand +that his wife needed his services, immediately, being on the point +of becoming a mother.</p> +<p>'I will start directly,' replied the surgeon; 'I will order my +carriage at once.'</p> +<p>'But, my dear sir, there is not a moment to spare. I have a +coach at the door, jump into that.'</p> +<p>The surgeon obeyed. The name and address given were those of a +middle-aged spinster of the most rigid virtue. We can imagine her +indignation, and how sharply she rung the bell, when the surgeon +had delicately explained the object of his visit, and how eagerly +he took refuge in the coach. Hook had, of course, walked quietly +away in the meantime, and the Galenite had to pay the demand of +Jehu.</p> +<p>The hoaxing stories of Theodore Hook are numberless. Hoaxing was +the fashion of the day, and a childish fashion too. Charles +Mathews, whose face possessed the flexibility of an acrobat's body, +and who could assume any character or disguise on the shortest +notice, was his great confederate in these plots. The banks of the +Thames were their great resort. At one point there was Mathews +talking gibberish in a disguise intended to represent the Spanish +Ambassador, and actually deceiving the Woolwich authorities by his +clever impersonation. At another, there was Hook landing uninvited +with his friends upon the well-known, sleek-looking lawn of a testy +little gentleman, drawing out a note-book and talking so +authoritatively about the survey for a canal, to be undertaken by +Government, that the owner of the lawn becomes frightened, and in +his anxiety attempts to conciliate the mighty self-made official by +the offer of dinner—of course accepted.</p> +<p><a name="184"></a></p> +<div class="figcenter"><a href="images/184.png"><img src= +"images/184sm.png" alt="Theodore Hook's Engineering Frolic"></a> +<h4>THEODORE HOOK'S ENGINEERING FROLIC</h4> +</div> +<p>Then the <i>Arcades ambo</i> show off their jesting tricks at +Croydon fair, a most suitable place for them. On one occasion Hook +personates a madman, accusing Mathews, 'his brother,' of keeping +him out of his rights and in his custody. The whole fair collects +around them, and begins to sympathise with Hook, who begs them to +aid in his escape from his 'brother.' A sham escape and sham +capture take place, and the party adjourn to the inn, where +Mathews, who had been taken by surprise by the new part suddenly +played by his confederate, seized upon a hearse, which drew up +before the inn, on its return from a funeral, persuaded the company +to bind the 'madman,' who was now becoming furious, and who would +have deposited him in the gloomy vehicle, if he had not succeeded +in snapping his fetters, and so escaped. In short, they were two +boys, with the sole difference, that they had sufficient talent and +experience of the world to maintain admirably the parts they +assumed.</p> +<p>But a far more famous and more admirable talent in Theodore than +that of deception was that of improvising. The art of improvising +belongs to Italy and the Tyrol. The wonderful gift of ready verse +to express satire, and ridicule, seems, as a rule, to be confined +to the inhabitants of those two lands. Others are, indeed, +scattered over the world, who possess this gift, but very sparsely. +Theodore Hook stands almost alone in this country as an improviser. +Yet to judge of such of his verses as have been preserved, taken +down from memory or what not, the grand effect of them—and no +doubt it <i>was</i> grand—must have been owing more to his +manner and his acting, than to any intrinsic value in the verses +themselves, which are, for the most part, slight, and devoid of +actual wit, though abounding in puns. Sheridan's testimony to the +wonderful powers of the man is, perhaps, more valuable than that of +any one else, for he was a good judge both of verse and of wit. One +of Hook's earliest displays of his talent was at a dinner given by +the Drury Lane actors to Sheridan at the Piazza Coffee House in +1808. Here, as usual, Hook sat down to the piano, and touching off +a few chords, gave verse after verse on all the events of the +entertainment, on each person present, though he now saw many of +them for the first time, and on anything connected with the matters +of interest before them. Sheridan was delighted, and declared that +he could not have believed such a faculty possible if he had not +witnessed its effects: that no description 'could have convinced +him of so peculiar an instance of genius,' and so forth.</p> +<p>One of his most extraordinary efforts in this line is related by +Mr. Jerdan. A dinner was given by Mansell Reynolds to Lockhart, +Luttrell, Coleridge, Hook, Tom Hill, and others. The grown-up +schoolboys, pretty far gone in Falernian, of a home-made, and very +homely vintage, amused themselves by breaking the wine-glasses, +till Coleridge was set to demolish the last of them with a fork +thrown at it from the side of the table. Let it not be supposed +that any teetotal spirit suggested this inconoclasm, far from +it—the glasses were too small, and the poets, the wits, the +punsters, the jesters, preferred to drink their port out of +tumblers. After dinner Hook gave one of his songs which satirized +successively, and successfully, each person present. He was then +challenged to improvise on any given subject, and by way of one as +far distant from poetry as could be, <i>cocoa-nut oil</i> was fixed +upon. Theodore accepted the challenge; and after a moment's +consideration began his lay with a description of the Mauritius, +which he knew so well, the negroes dancing round the cocoa-nut +tree, the process of extracting the oil, and so forth, all in +excellent rhyme and rhythm, if not actual poetry. Then came the +voyage to England, hits at the Italian warehousemen, and so on, +till the oil is brought into the very lamp before them in that very +room, to show them with the light it feeds and make them able to +break wine-glasses and get drunk from tumblers. This we may be sure +Hook himself did, for one, and the rest were probably not much +behind him.</p> +<p>In late life this gift of Hook's—improvising I mean, not +getting intoxicated—was his highest recommendation in +society, and at the same time his bane. Like Sheridan, he was +ruined by his wonderful natural powers. It can well be imagined +that to improvise in the manner in which Hook did it, and at a +moment's notice, required some effort of the intellect. This effort +became greater as circumstances depressed his spirits more and more +and yet with every care upon his mind, he was expected, wherever he +went, to amuse the guests with a display of his talent. He could +not do so without stimulants, and rather than give up society, fell +into habits of drinking, which hastened his death.</p> +<p>We have thrown together the foregoing anecdotes of Hook, +irrespective of time, in order to show what the man's gifts were, +and what his title to be considered a wit. We must proceed more +steadily to a review of his life. Successful as Hook had proved as +a writer for the stage, he suddenly and without any sufficient +cause rushed off into another branch of literature, that of +novel-writing. His first attempt in this kind of fiction was 'The +Man of Sorrow,' published under the <i>nom de plume</i> of +<i>Alfred Allendale</i>. This was not, as its name would seem to +imply, a novel of pathetic cast, but the history of a gentleman +whose life from beginning to end is rendered wretched by a +succession of mishaps of the most ludicrous but improbable kind. +Indeed Theodore's novels, like his stage-pieces, are gone out of +date in an age so practical that even in romance it will not allow +of the slightest departure from reality. Their very style was +ephemeral, and their interest could not outlast the generation to +amuse which they were penned. This first novel was written when +Hook was one-and-twenty. Soon after he was sent to Oxford, where he +had been entered at St. Mary's Hall, more affectionately known by +the nickname of 'Skimmery.' No selection could have been worse. +Skimmery was, at that day, and, until quite recently, a den of +thieves, where young men of fortune and folly submitted to be +pillaged in return for being allowed perfect licence, as much to +eat as they could possibly swallow, and far more to drink than was +at all good for them. It has required all the enterprise of the +present excellent Principal to convert it into a place of sober +study. It was then the most 'gentlemanly' residence in Oxford; for +a gentleman in those days meant a man who did nothing, spent his +own or his father's guineas with a brilliant indifference to +consequences, and who applied his mind solely to the art of frolic. +It was the very place where Hook would be encouraged instead of +restrained in his natural propensities, and had he remained there +he would probably have ruined himself and his father long before he +had put on the sleeves.</p> +<p>At the matriculation itself he gave a specimen of his 'fun.'</p> +<p>When asked, according to the usual form, 'if he was willing to +sign the Thirty-nine Articles,' he replied, 'Certainly, sir, +<i>forty</i> if you please.' The gravity of the stern +Vice-Chancellor was upset, but as no Oxford Don can ever pardon a +joke, however good, Master Theodore was very nearly being +dismissed, had not his brother, by this time a Prebendary of +Winchester, and 'an honour to his college, sir,' interceded in his +favour.</p> +<p>The night before, he had given a still better specimen of his +effrontery. He had picked up a number of old Harrovians, with whom +he had repaired to a tavern for song, supper, and sociability, and +as usual in such cases, in the lap of Alma Mater, the babes became +sufficiently intoxicated, and not a little uproarious. Drinking in +a tavern is forbidden by Oxonian statutes, and one of the proctors +happening to pass in the street outside, was attracted into the +house by the sound of somewhat unscholastic merriment. The effect +can be imagined. All the youths were in absolute terror, except +Theodore, and looked in vain for some way to escape. The wary and +faithful 'bulldogs' guarded the doorway; the marshal, predecessor +of the modern omniscient Brown, advanced respectfully behind the +proctor into the room, and passing a penetrating glance from one +youth to the other, all of whom—except Theodore +again—he knew by sight—for that is the pride and +pleasure of a marshal—mentally registered their names in +secret hopes of getting half-a-crown a-piece to forget them +again.</p> +<p>No mortal is more respectful in his manner of accosting you than +an Oxford proctor, for he may make a mistake, and a mistake may +make him very miserable. When, for instance, a highly respectable +lady was the other day lodged, in spite of protestations, in the +'Procuratorial Rooms,' and there locked up on suspicion of being +somebody very different, the over-zealous proctor who had ordered +her incarceration was sued for damages for £300, and had to +pay them too! Therefore the gentleman in question most graciously +and suavely inquired of Mr. Theodore Hook—</p> +<p>'I beg your pardon, sir, but are you a member of this +university?'—the usual form.</p> +<p>'No, sir, I am not. Are you?'</p> +<p>The suavity at once changed to grave dignity. The proctor lifted +up the hem of his garment, which being of broad velvet, with the +selvage on it, was one of the insignia of his office, and sternly +said,—'You see this, sir.'</p> +<p>'Ah!' said Hook, cool as ever, and quietly feeling the material, +which he examined with apparent interest, 'I see; Manchester +velvet: and may I take the liberty, sir, of inquiring how much you +have paid per yard for the article?'</p> +<p>A roar of laughter from all present burst forth with such +vehemence that it shot the poor official, red with suppressed +anger, into the street again, and the merrymakers continued their +bout till the approach of midnight, when they were obliged to +return to their respective colleges.</p> +<p>Had Theodore proceeded in this way for several terms, no doubt +the outraged authorities would have added his name to the list of +the great men whom they have expelled from time to time most +unprophetically. As it was, he soon left the groves of Academus, +and sought those of Fashion in town. His matriculation into this +new university was much more auspicious; he was hailed in society +as already fit to take a degree of bachelor of his particular arts, +and ere long his improvising, his fun, his mirth—as yet +natural and over-boiling—his wicked punning, and his tender +wickedness, induced the same institution to offer him the grade of +'Master' of those arts. In after years he rose to be even 'Doctor,' +and many, perhaps, were the minds diseased to which his well-known +mirth ministered.</p> +<p>It was during this period that some of his talents were +displayed in the manner we have described, though his great fame as +an improvisatore was established more completely in later days. Yet +he had already made himself a name in that species of wit—not +a very high one—which found favour with the society of that +period. We allude to imitation, 'taking off,' and punning. The last +contemptible branch of wit-making, now happily confined to 'Punch,' +is as old as variety of language. It is not possible with simple +vocabularies, and accordingly is seldom met with in purely-derived +languages. Yet we have Roman and Greek puns; and English is +peculiarly adapted to this childish exercise, because, being made +up of several languages, it necessarily contains many words which +are like in sound and unlike in meaning. Punning is, in fact, the +vice of English wit, the temptation of English mirth-makers, and, +at last, we trust, the scorn of English good sense. But in +Theodore's day it held a high place, and men who had no real wit +about them could twist and turn words and combinations of words +with great ingenuity and much readiness, to the delight of their +listeners. Pun-making was a fashion among the conversationists of +that day, and took the place of better wit. Hook was a disgraceful +punster, and a successful one. He strung puns together by the +score—nothing more easy—in his improvised songs and +conversation. Take an instance from his quiz on the march of +intellect:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'Hackney-coachmen from <i>Swift</i> shall reply, if you feel</p> +<p class="i2">Annoyed at being needlessly shaken;</p> +<p>And butchers, of course, be flippant from <i>Steele</i>,</p> +<p class="i2">And pig-drivers well versed in <i>Bacon</i>.</p> +<p>From <i>Locke</i> shall the blacksmiths authority brave,</p> +<p class="i2">And gas-men cite <i>Coke</i> at discretion;</p> +<p>Undertakers talk <i>Gay</i> as they go to the <i>grave</i>,</p> +<p class="i2">And watermen <i>Rowe</i> by profession.'</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>I have known a party of naturally stupid people produce a whole +century of puns one after another, on any subject that presented +itself, and I am inclined to think that nothing can, at the same +time, be more nauseous, or more destructive to real wit. Yet +Theodore's strength lay in puns, and when shorn of them, the +Philistines might well laugh at his want of strength. Surely his +title to wit does not lie in that direction.</p> +<p>However, he amused, and that gratis; and an amusing man makes +his way anywhere if he have only sufficient tact not to abuse his +privileges. Hook grew great in London society for a time, and might +have grown greater if a change had not come.</p> +<p>He had supported himself, up to 1812, almost entirely by his +pen: and the goose-quill is rarely a staff, though it may sometimes +be a walking-stick. It was clear that he needed—what so many +of us need and cannot get—a certainty. Happy fellow! he might +have begged for an appointment for years in vain, as many another +does, but it fell into his lap, no one knows how, and at +four-and-twenty Mr. Theodore Edward Hook was made treasurer to the +Island of Mauritius, with a salary of £2,000 per annum. This +was not to be, and was not, despised. In spite of climate, +mosquitoes, and so forth, Hook took the money and sailed.</p> +<p>We have no intention of entering minutely upon his conduct in +this office, which has nothing to do with his character as a wit. +There are a thousand and one reasons for believing him guilty of +the charges brought against him, and a thousand and one for +supposing him guiltless. Here was a young man, gay, jovial, given +to society entirely, and not at all to arithmetic, put into a very +trying and awkward position—native clerks who would cheat if +they could, English governors who would find fault if they could, a +disturbed treasury, an awkward currency, liars for witnesses, and +undeniable evidence of defalcation. In a word, an examination was +made into the state of the treasury of the island, and a large +deficit found. It remained to trace it home to its original +author.</p> +<p>Hook had not acquired the best character in the island. Those +who know the official dignity of a small British colony can well +understand how his pleasantries must have shocked those worthy +big-wigs who, exalted from Pump Court, Temple, or Paradise Row, Old +Brompton, to places of honour and high salaries, rode their high +horses with twice the exclusiveness of those 'to the manner born.' +For instance, Hook was once, by a mere chance, obliged to take the +chair at an official dinner, on which occasion the toasts proposed +by the chairman were to be accompanied by a salute from guns +without. Hook went through the list, and seemed to enjoy +toast-drinking so much that he was quite sorry to have come to the +end of it, and continued, as if still from the list, to propose +successively the health of each officer present. The gunners were +growing quite weary, but having their orders, dared not complain. +Hook was delighted, and went on to the amazement and amusement of +all who were not tired of the noise, each youthful sub, taken by +surprise, being quite gratified at the honour done him. At last +there was no one left to toast; but the wine had taken effect, and +Hook, amid roars of laughter inside, and roars of savage artillery +without, proposed the health of the waiter who had so ably +officiated. This done, he bethought him of the cook, who was sent +for to return thanks; but the artillery officer had by this time +got wind of the affair, and feeling that more than enough powder +had been wasted on the health of gentlemen who were determined to +destroy it by the number of their potations, took on himself the +responsibility of ordering the gunners to stop.</p> +<p>On another occasion he incurred the displeasure of the governor, +General Hall, by fighting a duel—fortunately as harmless as +that of Moore and Jeffrey—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'When Little's leadless pistol met his eye,</p> +<p>And Bow-street myrmidons stood laughing by,'</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>as Byron says. The governor was sensible enough to wish to put +down the 'Gothic appeal to arms,' and was therefore the more +irate.</p> +<p>These circumstances must be taken into consideration in Hook's +favour in examining the charge of embezzlement. It must also be +stated that the information of the deficit was sent in a letter to +the governor by a man named Allan, chief clerk in the Treasury, who +had, for irregular conduct, been already threatened with dismissal. +Allan had admitted that he had known of the deficit for fifteen +months, and yet he had not, till he was himself in trouble, thought +of making it known to the proper authorities. Before his +examination, which of course followed, could be concluded, Allan +committed suicide. Now, does it not, on the face of it, seem of the +highest probability that this man was the real delinquent, and that +knowing that Hook had all the responsibility, and having taken fair +precautions against his own detection, he had anticipated a +discovery of the affair by a revelation, incriminating the +treasurer? <i>Quien sabe</i>;—dead men tell no tales.</p> +<p>The chest, however, was examined, and the deficit found far +greater yet than had been reported. Hook could not explain, could +not understand it at all; but if not criminal, he had necessarily +been careless. He was arrested, thrown into prison, and by the +first vessel despatched to England to take his trial, his property +of every kind having been sold for the Government. Hook, in utter +destitution, might be supposed to have lost his usual spirits, but +he could not resist a joke. At St. Helena he met an old friend +going out to the Cape, who, surprised at seeing him on his return +voyage after a residence of only five years, said: 'I hope you are +not going home for your health.'—'Why,' said Theodore, 'I am +sorry to say they think there is something wrong in the +<i>chest.</i> Something wrong in the chest' became henceforward the +ordinary phrase in London society in referring to Hook's +scrape.</p> +<p>Arrived in England, he was set free, the Government here having +decided that he could not be criminally tried; and thus Hook, +guilty or not, had been ruined and disgraced for life for simple +carelessness. True, the custody of a nation's property makes +negligence almost criminal; but that does not excuse the punishment +of a man before he is tried.</p> +<p>He was summoned, however, to the Colonial Audit Board, where he +underwent a trying examination; after which he was declared to be +in the debt of Government: a writ of extent was issued against him; +nine months were passed in that delightful place of +residence—a Sponging-house, which he then exchanged for the +'Rules of the Bench'—the only rules which have no exception. +From these he was at last liberated, in 1825, on the understanding +that he was to repay the money to Government if at any time he +should be in a position to do so.</p> +<p>His liberation was a tacit acknowledgment of his innocence of +the charge of robbery; his encumberment with a debt caused by +another's delinquencies was, we presume, a signification of his +responsibility and some kind of punishment for his carelessness. +Certainly it was hard upon Hook, that, if innocent, he should not +have gone forth without a stain on his character for honesty; and +it was unjust, that, if guilty, he should not have been punished. +The judgment was one of those compromises with stern justice which +are seldom satisfactory to either party.</p> +<p>The fact was that, guilty or not guilty, Hook had been both +incompetent and inconsiderate. Doubtless he congratulated himself +highly on receiving, at the age of twenty-five, an appointment +worth £2,000 a year in the paradise of the world; but how +short-sighted his satisfaction, since this very appointment left +him some ten years later a pauper to begin life anew with an +indelible stain on his character. It was absurd to give so young a +man such a post; but it was absolutely wrong in Hook not to do his +utmost to carry out his duties properly. Nay, he had trifled with +the public money in the same liberal—perhaps a <i>more</i> +liberal—spirit as if it had been his own—made advances +and loans here and there injudiciously, and taken little heed of +the consequences. Probably, at this day, the common opinion acquits +Hook of a designed and complicated fraud; but common opinion never +did acquit him of misconduct, and even by his friends this affair +was looked upon with a suspicion that preferred silence to +examination.</p> +<p>But why take such pains to exonerate Hook from a charge of +robbery, when he was avowedly guilty of as bad a sin, of which the +law took no cognizance, and which society forgave far more easily +than it could have done for robbing the State? Soon after his +return from the Mauritius, he took lodgings in the cheap, but +unfashionable neighbourhood of Somers Town. Here, in the moment of +his misfortune, when doubting whether disgrace, imprisonment, or +what not awaited him, he sought solace in the affection of a young +woman, of a class certainly much beneath his, and of a character +unfit to make her a valuable companion to him. Hook had received +little moral training, and had he done so, his impulses were +sufficiently strong to overcome any amount of principle. With this +person—to use the modern slang which seems to convert a +glaring sin into a social misdemeanour—'he formed a +connection.' In other words, he destroyed her virtue. Hateful as +such an act is, we must, before we can condemn a man for it without +any recommendation to mercy, consider a score of circumstances +which have rendered the temptation stronger, and the result almost +involuntary. Hook was not a man of high moral character—very +far from it—but we need not therefore suppose that he sat +down coolly and deliberately, like a villain in a novel, to effect +the girl's ruin. But the Rubicon once passed, how difficult is the +retreat! There are but two paths open to a man, who would avoid +living a life of sin: the one, to marry his victim; the other, to +break off the connection before it is too late. The first is, of +course, the more proper course; but there are cases where marriage +is impossible. From the latter a man of any heart must shrink with +horror. Yet there <i>are</i> cases, even, where the one sin will +prove the least—where she who has loved too well may grieve +bitterly at parting, yet will be no more open to temptation than if +she had never fallen. Such cases are rare, and it is not probable +that the young person with whom Hook had become connected would +have retrieved the fatal error. She became a mother, and there was +no retreat. It is clear that Hook ought to have married her. It is +evident that he was selfish and wrong not to do so;—yet he +shrank from it, weakly, wickedly, and he was punished for his +shrinking. He had sufficient feeling not to throw his victim over, +yet he was content to live a life of sin, and to keep her in such a +life. This is perhaps the blackest stain on Hook's character. When +Fox married, in consequence of a similar connection, he 'settled +down,' retrieved his early errors, and became a better man, +morally, than he had ever been. Hook <i>ought</i> to have married. +It was the cowardly dread of public opinion that deterred him from +doing so, and, in consequence, he was never happy, and felt that +this connection was a perpetual burden to him.</p> +<p>Wrecked and ruined, Hook had no resource but his literary +talents, and it is to be deplored that he should have prostituted +these to serve an ungentlemanly and dishonourable party in their +onslaught upon an unfortunate woman. Whatever may be now thought of +the queen of 'the greatest gentleman'—or <i>roue</i>—of +Europe, those who hunted her down will never be pardoned, and Hook +was one of those. We have cried out against an Austrian general for +condemning a Hungarian lady to the lash, and we have seen, with +delight, a mob chase him through the streets of London and threaten +his very life. But we have not only pardoned, but even praised, our +favourite wit for far worse conduct than this. Even if we allow, +which we do not, chat the queen was one half as bad as her enemies, +or rather her husband's parasites, would make her out, we cannot +forgive the men who, shielded by their incognito, and perfectly +free from danger of any kind, set upon a woman with libels, +invectives, ballads, epigrams, and lampoons, which a lady could +scarcely read, and of which a royal lady, and many an English +gentlewoman, too, were the butts.</p> +<p>The vilest of all the vile papers of that day was the 'John +Bull,' now settled down to a quiet periodical. Perhaps the real +John Bull, heavy, good-natured lumberer as he is, was never worse +represented than in this journal which bore his name, but had +little of his kindly spirit. Hook was its originator, and for a +long time its main supporter. Scurrility, scandal, libel, baseness +of all kinds formed the fuel with which it blazed, and the wit, +bitter, unflinching, unsparing, which puffed the flame up, was its +chief recommendation.</p> +<p>No more disgraceful climax was ever reached by a disgraceful +dynasty of profligates than that which found a King of +England—long, as Regent, the leader of the profligate and +degraded—at war with his injured Queen. None have deserved +better the honest gratitude of their country than those who, like +Henry Brougham, defended the oppressed woman in spite of +opposition, obloquy, and ridicule.</p> +<p>But we need not go deeply into a history so fresh in the minds +of all, as that blot which shows John Bull himself upholding a +wretched dissipated monarch against a wife, who, whatever her +faults, was still a woman, and whatever her spirit—for she +had much of it, and showed it grandly at need—was still a +lady. Suffice it to say that 'John Bull' was the most violent of +the periodicals that attacked her, and that Theodore Hook, no +Puritan himself, was the principal writer in that paper.</p> +<p>If you can imagine 'Punch' turned Conservative, incorporated in +one paper with the 'Morning Herald,' so that a column of news was +printed side by side with one of a jocular character, and these two +together devoted without principle to the support of a party, the +attack of Whiggism, and an unblushing detraction of the character +of one of our princesses, you can form some idea of what 'John +Bull' was in those days. There is, however, a difference: 'Punch' +attacks public characters, and ridicules public events; 'John Bull' +dragged out the most retired from their privacy, and attacked them +with calumnies for which, often, there was no foundation. Then, +again, 'Punch' is not nearly so bitter as was 'John Bull:' there is +not in the 'London Charivari' a determination to say everything +that spite can invent against any particular set or party; there is +a good nature, still, in master 'Punch.' It was quite the reverse +in 'John Bull,' established for one purpose, and devoted to that. +Yet the wit in Theodore's paper does not rise much higher than that +of our modern laughing philosopher.</p> +<p>Of Hook's contributions the most remarkable was the 'Ramsbottom +Letters,' in which Mrs. Lavinia Dorothea Ramsbottom describes all +the <i>memory billions</i> of her various tours at home and abroad, +always, of course, with more or less allusion to political affairs. +The 'fun' of these letters is very inferior to that of 'Jeames' or +of the 'Snob Papers,' and consists more in Malaprop absurdities and +a wide range of bad puns, than in any real wit displayed in them. +Of the style of both, we take an extract anywhere:—</p> +<p>'Oh! Mr. Bull, Room is raley a beautiful place. We entered it by +the Point of Molly, which is just like the Point and Sally at +Porchmouth, only they call Sally there Port, which is not known in +Room. The Tiber is a nice river, it looks yellow, but it does the +same there as the Thames does here. We hired a carry-lettz and a +cocky-olly, to take us to the Church of Salt Peter, which is +prodigious big; in the centre of the pizarro there is a basilisk +very high, on the right and left two handsome foundlings; and the +farcy, as Mr. Fulmer called it, is ornamented with collateral +statutes of some of the Apostates.'</p> +<p>We can quite imagine that Hook wrote many of these letters when +excited by wine. Some are laughable enough, but the majority are so +deplorably stupid, reeking with puns and scurrility, that when the +temporary interest was gone, there was nothing left to attract the +reader. It is scarcely possible to laugh at the Joe-Millerish +mistakes, the old world puns, and the trite stories of Hook +'remains.' Remains! indeed; they had better have remained where +they were.</p> +<p>Besides prose of this kind, Hook contributed various +jingles—there is no other name for them—arranged to +popular tunes, and intended to become favourites with the country +people. These like the prose effusions, served the purpose of an +hour, and have no interest now. Whether they were ever really +popular remains to be proved. Certes, they are forgotten now, and +long since even in the most Conservative corners of the country. +Many of these have the appearance of having been originally +<i>recitati</i>, and their amusement must have depended chiefly on +the face and manner of the singer—Hook himself; but in some +he displayed that vice of rhyming which has often made nonsense go +down, and which is tolerable only when introduced in the satire of +a 'Don Juan' or the first-rate mimicry of 'Rejected Addresses.' +Hook had a most wonderful facility in concocting out-of-the-way +rhymes, and a few verses from his song on Clubs will suffice for a +good specimen of his talent:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'If any man loves comfort, and has little cash to buy it, he</p> +<p class="i2">Should get into a crowded club—a most select +society;</p> +<p>While solitude and mutton-cutlets serve <i>infelix uxor</i>, +he</p> +<p class="i2">May have his club (Like Hercules), and revel there in +luxury.</p> +<p class="i20">Bow, wow, wow, &c.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'Yes, clubs knock houses on the head; e'en Hatchett's can't +demolish them;</p> +<p class="i2">Joy grieves to see their magnitude, and Long longs to +abolish them.</p> +<p>The inns are out; hotels for single men scarce keep alive on +it;</p> +<p class="i2">While none but houses that are in the family way +thrive on it.</p> +<p class="i20">Bow, wow, wow, &c.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'There's first the Athenaeum Club, so wise, there's not a man of +it,</p> +<p class="i2">That has not sense enough for six (in fact, that is +the plan of it);</p> +<p>The very waiters answer you with eloquence Socratical;</p> +<p class="i2">And always place the knives and forks in order +mathematical.</p> +<p class="i20">Bow, wow, wow, &c.</p> +</div> +</div> +<hr> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'E'en Isis has a house in town, and Cam abandons her city.</p> +<p>The master now hangs out at the Trinity University.</p> +</div> +</div> +<hr> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'The Union Club is quite superb; its best apartment daily +is,</p> +<p>The lounge of lawyers, doctors, merchants, beaux, <i>cum multis +aliis</i>.</p> +</div> +</div> +<hr> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'The Travellers are in Pall Mall, and smoke cigars so +cosily,</p> +<p>And dream they climb the highest Alps, or rove the plains of +Moselai.</p> +</div> +</div> +<hr> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'These are the stages which all men propose to play their parts +upon,</p> +<p class="i2">For <i>clubs</i> are what the Londoners have clearly +set their<i>hearts</i>upon.</p> +<p class="i10">Bow, wow, wow, tiddy-iddy-iddy-iddy, bow, wow, wow, +&c.</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>This is one of the harmless ballads of 'Bull.' Some of the +political ones are scarcely fit to print in the present day. We +cannot wonder that ladies of a certain position gave out that they +would not receive any one who took in this paper. It was scurrilous +to the last degree, and Theodore Hook was the soul of it. He +preserved his incognito so well, that in spite of all attempts to +unearth him, it was many years before he could be certainly fixed +upon as a writer in its columns. He even went to the length of +writing letters and articles against himself, in order to disarm +suspicion.</p> +<p>Hook now lived and thrived purely on literature. He published +many novels—gone where the bad novels go, and unread in the +present day, unless in some remote country town, which boasts only +a very meagre circulating library. Improbability took the place of +natural painting in them; punning supplied that of better wit; and +personal portraiture was so freely used, that his most intimate +friends—old Mathews, for instance—did not escape.</p> +<p>Meanwhile Hook, making a good fortune, returned to his convivial +life, and the enjoyment—if enjoyment it be—of general +society. He 'threw out his bow window' on the strength of his +success with 'John Bull,' and spent much more than he had. He +mingled freely in all the London circles of thirty years ago, whose +glory is still fresh in the minds of most of us, and everywhere his +talent as an improvisatore, and his conversational powers, made him +a general favourite.</p> +<p>Unhappy popularity for Hook! He, who was yet deeply in debt to +the nation—who had an illegitimate family to maintain, who +owed in many quarters more than he could ever hope to pay—was +still fool enough to entertain largely, and receive both nobles and +wits in the handsomest manner. Why did he not live quietly? why +not, like Fox, marry the unhappy woman whom he had made the mother +of his children, and content himself with trimming vines and +rearing tulips? Why, forsooth? because he was Theodore Hook, +thoughtless and foolish to the last. The jester of the people must +needs be a fool. Let him take it to his conscience that he was not +as much a knave.</p> +<p>In his latter years Hook took to the two dissipations most +likely to bring him into misery—play and drink. He was +utterly unfitted for the former, being too gay a spirit to sit down +and calculate chances. He lost considerably, and the more he lost +the more he played. Drinking became almost a necessity with him. He +had a reputation to keep up in society, and had not the moral +courage to retire from it altogether. Writing, improvising, +conviviality, play, demanded stimulants. His mind was overworked in +every sense. He had recourse to the only remedy, and in drinking he +found a temporary relief from anxiety, and a short-lived +sustenance. There is no doubt that this man, who had amused London +circles for many years, hastened his end by drinking.</p> +<p>It is not yet thirty years since Theodore Hook died. He left the +world on August the 24th, 1841, and by this time he remains in the +memory of men only as a wit that was, a punster, a hoaxer, a sorry +jester, with an ample fund of fun, but not as a great man in any +way. Allowing everything for his education—the times he lived +in, and the unhappy error of his early life—we may admit that +Hook was not, in character, the worst of the wits. He died in no +odour of sanctity, but he was not a blasphemer or reviler, like +others of this class. He ignored the bond of matrimony, yet he +remained faithful to the woman he had betrayed; he was undoubtedly +careless in the one responsible office with which he was intrusted, +yet he cannot be taxed, taking all in all, with deliberate +peculation. His drinking and playing were bad—very bad. His +improper connection was bad—very bad; but perhaps the worst +feature in his career was his connection with 'John Bull,' and his +ready giving in to a system of low libel. There is no excuse for +this but the necessity of living; but Hook, had he retained any +principle, might have made enough to live upon in a more honest +manner. His name does, certainly, not stand out well among the wits +of this country, but after all, since all were so bad, Hook may be +excused as not being the worst of them. <i>Requiescat in +pace</i>.</p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h3><a name="Smith">SYDNEY SMITH.</a></h3> +<blockquote>The 'Wise Wit.'—Oddities of the +Father.—Verse-making at Winchester.— Curate Life on +Salisbury Plain.—Old Edinburgh.—Its Social and +Architectural Features.—Making Love Metaphysically.—The +Old Scottish Supper.—The Men of Mark passing away—-The +Band of Young Spirits.— Brougham's Early +Tenacity.—Fitting up Conversations.—'Old School' +Ceremonies.—The Speculative Society.—A Brilliant +Set.—Sydney's Opinion of his Friends.—Holland +House.—Preacher at the 'Foundling.'—Sydney's 'Grammar +of Life.'—The Picture Mania.—A Living Comes at +Last.—The wit's Ministry.—The Parsonage House at +Foston-le-Clay.—Country Quiet. The Universal +Scratcher.—Country Life and Country Prejudice.—The +Genial Magistrate.—Glimpse of Edinburgh Society.—Mrs. +Grant of Laggan. A Pension Difficulty.—Jeffrey and +Cockburn.—Craigcrook.—Sydney Smith's +Cheerfulness.—His Rheumatic Armour.—No +Bishopric.—Becomes Canon of St. Paul's.—Anecdotes of +Lord Dudley.—A Sharp Reproof.—Sydney's Classification +of Society.—Last Strokes of Humour.</blockquote> +<p>Smith's reputation—to quote from Lord Cockburn's 'Memorial +of Edinburgh'—'here, then, was the same as it has been +throughout his life, that of a wise wit.' A wit he was, but we must +deny him the reputation of being a beau. For that, nature, no less +than his holy office, had disqualified him. Who that ever beheld +him in a London drawing-room, when he went to so many dinners that +he used to say he was a walking patty—who could ever miscall +him a beau? How few years have we numbered since one perceived the +large bulky form in canonical attire—the plain, heavy face, +large, long, unredeemed by any expression, except that of sound +hard sense—and thought, 'can this be the Wit?' How few years +is it since Henry Cockburn, hating London, and coming but rarely to +what he called the 'devil's drawing room,' stood near him, yet +apart, for he was the most diffident of men; his wonderful luminous +eyes, his clear, almost youthful, vivid complexion, contrasting +brightly with the gray, pallid, prebendal complexion of Sydney? how +short a time since Francis Jeffery, the smallest of great men, a +beau in his old age, a wit to the last, stood hat in hand to bandy +words with Sydney ere he rushed off to some still gayer scene, some +more fashionable circle: yet they are all gone—gone from +sight, living in memory alone.</p> +<p>Perhaps it was time: they might have lived, indeed, a few short +years longer; we might have heard their names amongst us; listened +to their voices; gazed upon the deep hazel, ever-sparkling eyes, +that constituted the charm of Cockburn's handsome face, and made +all other faces seem tame and dead: we might have marvelled at the +ingenuity, the happy turns of expression, the polite sarcasm of +Jeffrey; we might have revelled in Sydney Smith's immense natural +gift of fun, and listened to the 'wise wit,' regretting with Lord +Cockburn, that so much worldly wisdom seemed almost inappropriate +in one who should have been in some freer sphere than within the +pale of holy orders: we might have done this, but the picture might +have been otherwise. Cockburn, whose intellect rose, and became +almost sublime, as his spirit neared death, might have sunk into +the depression of conscious weakness; Jeffery might have repeated +himself, or turned hypochondriacal; Sydney Smith have grown +garrulous: let us not grieve; they went in their prime of +intellect, before one quality of mind had been touched by the +frostbite of age.</p> +<p>Sydney Smith's life is a chronicle of literary society. He was +born in 1771, and he died in 1845. What a succession of great men +does that period comprise! Scott, Jeffrey, Mackintosh, Dugald +Stewart, Homer, Brougham and Cockburn were his familiars—a +constellation which has set, we fear, for ever. Our world presents +nothing like it: we must look back, not around us, for strong +minds, cultivated up to the nicest point. Our age is too diffused, +too practical for us to hope to witness again so grand a +spectacle.</p> +<p>From his progenitors Sydney Smith inherited one of his best +gifts, great animal spirits—the only spirits one wants in +this racking life of ours; and his were transmitted to him by his +father. That father, Mr. Robert Smith, was odd as well as clever. +His oddities seem to have been coupled with folly but that of +Sydney was soberized by thought, and swayed by intense common +sense. The father had a mania for buying and altering places: one +need hardly say that he spoiled them. Having done so, he generally +sold them; and <i>nineteen</i> various places were thus the source +of expense to him, and of injury to the pecuniary interests of his +family.</p> +<p>This strange spendthrift married a Miss Olier, a daughter of a +French emigrant, from Languedoc. Every one may remember the +charming attributes given by Miss Kavanagh, in her delicious tale, +'Nathalie,' to the French women of the South. This Miss Olier seems +to have realized all one's ideas of the handsome, sweet-tempered, +high-minded Southrons of <i>la belle France</i>. To her Sydney +Smith traced his native gaiety; her beauty did not, certainly, pass +to him as well as to some of her other descendants. When Talleyrand +was living in England as an emigrant, on intimate terms with Robert +Smith, Sydney's brother, or Bobus, as he was called by his +intimates, the conversation turned one day on hereditary beauty. +Bobus spoke of his mother's personal perfections: <i>'Ah, mon +ami,'</i> cried Talleyrand, <i>c'était apparemment, +monsieur: volre père qui n'était pas bien.'</i></p> +<p>This Bobus was the schoolfellow at Eton of Canning and Frere; +and with John Smith and those two youths, wrote the 'Microcosm.' +Sydney, on the other hand, was placed on the Foundation, at +Winchester, which was then a stern place of instruction for a gay, +spirited, hungry boy. Courtenay, his younger brother, went with +him, but ran away twice. To owe one's education to charity was, in +those days, to be half starved. Never was there enough, even of the +coarsest food, to satisfy the boys, and the urchins, fresh from +home, were left to fare as they might. 'Neglect, abuse, and vice +were,' Sydney used to say, 'the pervading evils of Winchester; and +the system of teaching, if one may so call it, savoured of the old +monastic narrowness.... I believe, when a boy at school, I made +above ten thousand Latin verses, and no man in his senses would +dream of ever making another in after-life. So much for life and +time wasted.' The verse-inciting process is, nevertheless, +remorselessly carried on during three years more at Oxford and is +much oftener the test of patient stupidity than of aspiring talent, +Yet of what stupendous importance it is in the attainment of +scholarships and prizes; and how zealous, how tenacious, are dons +and 'coaches' in holding to that which far higher classics, the +Germans, regard with contempt!</p> +<p>Sydney's proficiency promoted him to be captain of the school, +and he left Winchester for New College, Oxford—-one of the +noblest and most abused institutions then of that grand university. +Having obtained a scholarship, as a matter of course, and +afterwards a fellowship, he remarked that the usual bumpers of port +wine at college were as much the order of the day among the Fellows +as Latin verses among the undergraduates. We may not, however, +picture to ourselves Sydney as partaking of the festivities of the +common room; with more probability let us imagine him wandering +with steady gait, even <i>after</i> Hall—a thing not even +then or now certain in colleges—in those evergreen, leafy, +varied gardens, flanked by that old St. Peter's church on the one +side, and guarded by the high wall, once a fortification, on the +other. He was poor, and therefore safe, for poverty is a guardian +angel to an undergraduate, and work may protect even the Fellow +from utter deterioration.</p> +<p>He was turned out into the world by his father with his hundred +a year from the Fellowship, and never had a farthing from the old +destroyer of country-seats afterwards. He never owed a sixpence; +nay, he paid a debt of thirty pounds, which Courtenay, who had no +<i>iron</i> in his character, had incurred at Winchester, and had +not the courage to avow. The next step was to choose a profession. +The bar would have been Sydney's choice; but the church was the +choice of his father. It is the cheapest channel by which a man may +pass into genteel poverty; 'wit and independence do not make +bishops,' as Lord Cockburn remarks. We do not, however, regard, as +he does, Sydney Smith as 'lost' by being a churchman. He was happy, +and made others happy; he was good, and made others good. Who can +say the same of a successful barrister, or of a popular orator? His +first sphere was in a curacy on Salisbury Plain; one of his +earliest clerical duties was to marry his brother Robert (a +barrister) to Miss Vernon, aunt to Lord Lansdowne. 'All I can tell +you of the marriage,' Sydney wrote to his mother, 'is that he +cried, she cried, I cried.' It was celebrated in the library at +Bowood, where Sydney so often enchanted the captivating circle +afterwards by his wit.</p> +<p>Nothing could be more gloomy than the young pastor's life on +Salisbury Plain: 'the first and poorest pauper of the hamlet,' as +he calls a curate, he was seated down among a few scattered +cottages on this vast flat; visited even by the butcher's cart only +once a week from Salisbury; accosted by few human beings; shunned +by all who loved social life. But the probation was not long; and +after being nearly destroyed by a thunder-storm in one of his +rambles, he quitted Salisbury Plain, after two years, for a more +genial scene.</p> +<p>There was an hospitable squire, a Mr. Beach, living in Smith's +parish; the village of Netherhaven, near Amesbury. Mr. Beach had a +son; the quiet Sundays at the Hall were enlivened by the curate's +company at dinner, and Mr. Beach found his guest both amusing and +sensible, and begged him to become tutor to the young squire. Smith +accepted; and went away with his pupil, intending to visit Germany. +The French Revolution was, however, at its height. Germany was +impracticable, and 'we were driven,' Sydney wrote to his mother, +'by stress of politics, into Edinburgh.'</p> +<p>This accident,—this seeming accident,—was the +foundation of Sydney Smith's opportunities; not of his success, for +that his own merits procured, but of the direction to which his +efforts were applied. He would have been eminent, wherever destiny +had led him; but he was thus made to be useful in one especial +manner; 'his lines had, indeed, fallen in pleasant places.'</p> +<p>Edinburgh, in 1797, was not, it is almost needless to say, the +Edinburgh of 1860. An ancient, picturesque, high-built looking +city, with its wynds and closes, it had far more the +characteristics of an old French <i>ville de province</i> than of a +northern capital. The foundation-stone of the new College was laid +in 1789, but the building was not finished until more than forty +years afterwards. The edifice then stood in the midst of fields and +gardens. 'Often.' writes Lord Cockburn, 'did we stand to admire the +blue and yellow crocuses rising through the clean earth in the +first days of spring, in the house of Doctor Monro (the second), +whose house stood in a small field entering from Nicolson Street, +within less than a hundred yards from the college.'</p> +<p>The New Town was in progress when Sydney Smith and his pupil +took refuge in 'Auld Reekie.' With the rise of every street some +fresh innovation in manners seemed also to begin. Lord Cockburn, +wedded as he was to his beloved Reekie, yet unprejudiced and candid +on all points, ascribes the change in customs to the intercourse +with the English, and seems to date it from the Union. Thus the +overflowing of the old town into fresh spaces, 'implied,' as he +remarks, 'a general alteration of our habits.'</p> +<p>As the dwellers in the Faubourg St. Germain regard their +neighbours across the Seine, in the Faubourg St. Honoré, +with disapproving eyes, so the sojourners in the Canongate and the +Cowgate considered that the inundation of modern population +vulgarized their 'prescriptive gentilities.' Cockburn's description +of a Scottish assembly in the olden time is most interesting.</p> +<p>'For example, Saint Cecilia's Hall was the only public resort of +the musical; and besides being our most selectly fashionable place +of amusement, was the best and most beautiful concert-room I have +ever seen. And there have I myself seen most of our literary and +fashionable gentlemen, predominating with their side curls and +frills, and ruffles, and silver buckles; and our stately matrons +stiffened in hoops, and gorgeous satin; and our beauties with +high-heeled shoes, powdered and pomatumed hair, and lofty and +composite head-dresses. All this was in the Cowgate; the last +retreat now-a-days of destitution and disease. The building still +stands, through raised and changed. When I last saw it, it seemed +to be partly an old-clothesman's shop and partly a brazier's.' +Balls were held in the beautiful rooms of George Square, in spite +of the 'New Town piece of presumption,' that is, an attempt to +force the fashionable dancers of the reel into the George Street +apartments.</p> +<p>'And here,' writes Lord Cockburn, looking back to the days when +he was that 'ne'er-do-weel' Harry Cockburn, 'were the last remains +of the ball-room discipline of the preceding age. Martinet dowagers +and venerable beaux acted as masters and mistresses of ceremonies, +and made all the preliminary arrangements. No couple could dance +unless each party was provided with a ticket prescribing the +precise place, in the precise dance. If there was no ticket, the +gentleman or the lady was dealt with as an intruder, and turned out +of the dance. If the ticket had marked upon it—-say for a +country-dance, the figures, 3, 5; this meant that the holder was to +place himself in the 3rd dance, and 5th from the top; and if he was +anywhere else, he was set right or excluded. And the partner's +ticket must correspond. Woe on the poor girl who with ticket 2, 7, +was found opposite a youth marked 5, 9! It was flirting without a +licence, and looked very ill, and would probably be reported by the +ticket director of that dance to the mother.'</p> +<p>All this had passed away; and thus the aristocracy of a few +individuals was ended; and society, freed from some of its +restraints, flourished in another and more enlightened way than +formerly.</p> +<p>There were still a sufficient number of peculiarities to gratify +one who had an eye to the ludicrous. Sydney Smith soon discovered +that it is a work of time to impart a humorous idea to a true Scot. +'It requires,' he used to say, 'a surgical operation to get a joke +well into a Scotch understanding.' 'They are so embued with +metaphysics, that they even make love metaphysically. I overheard a +young lady of my acquaintance, at a dance in Edinburgh, exclaim in +a sudden pause of the music, "What you say, my Lord, is very true +of love in the <i>abstract</i>, but,—" here the fiddlers +began fiddling furiously, and the rest was lost.' He was, however, +most deeply touched by the noble attribute of that nation which +retains what is so rare—the attribute of being true friends. +He did ample justice to their kindliness of heart. 'If you meet +with an accident,' he said, 'half Edinburgh immediately flocks to +your doors to inquire after your <i>pure</i> hand, or your +<i>pure</i> foot.' 'Their temper,' he observed, 'stands anything +but an attack on their climate; even Jeffrey cannot shake off the +illusion that myrtles flourish at Craig Crook.' The sharp reviewer +stuck to his myrtle allusions, and treated Smith's attempts with as +much contempt as if he had been a 'wild visionary, who had never +breathed his caller air,' nor suffered under the rigours of his +climate, nor spent five years in 'discussing metaphysics and +medicine in that garret end of the earth,—that knuckle end of +England—that land of Calvin, oat-cakes, and sulphur,' as +Smith termed Scotland.</p> +<p>During two years he braved the winters, in which he declared +hackney-coaches were drawn by four horses on account of the snow; +where men were blown flat down on the face by the winds; and where +even 'experienced Scotch fowls did not dare to cross the streets, +but sidled along, tails aloft, without venturing to encounter the +gale.' He luxuriated, nevertheless, in the true Scotch supper, than +which nothing more pleasant and more unwholesome has ever been +known in Christendom. Edinburgh is said to have been the only place +where people dined twice a day. The writer of this memoir is old +enough to remember the true Scottish <i>Attic</i> supper before its +final 'fading into wine and water,' as Lord Cockburn describes its +decline. 'Suppers,' Cockburn truly says, 'are cheaper than +dinners,' and Edinburgh, at that time, was the cheapest place in +Great Britain. Port and sherry were the staple wines: claret, duty +free in Scotland until 1780, was indeed beginning to be a luxury; +it was no longer the ordinary beverage, as it was when as +Mackenzie, the author of the 'Man of Feeling,' described—it +used, upon the arrival of a cargo, to be sent through the town on a +cart with a horse before it, so that every one might have a sample, +by carrying a jug to be filled for sixpence: still even at the end +of the eighteenth century it was in frequent use. Whisky toddy and +plotty (red wine mulled with spices) came into the supper-room in +ancient flagons or <i>stoups</i> after a lengthy repast of broiled +chickens, roasted moorfowl, pickled mussels, flummery, and numerous +other good things had been discussed by a party who ate as if they +had not dined that day. 'We will eat,' Lord Cockburn used to say +after a long walk, 'a profligate supper,'—a supper without +regard to discretion, or digestion; and he usually kept his +word.</p> +<p>In Edinburgh, Sydney Smith formed the intimate acquaintance of +Lord Jeffrey, and that acquaintance ripened into a friendship only +closed by death. The friendship of worthy, sensible men he looked +upon as one of the greatest pleasures in life.</p> +<p>The 'old suns,' Lord Cockburn tells us, 'were setting when the +band of great thinkers and great writers who afterwards concocted +the "Edinburgh Review," were rising into celebrity.' Principal +Robertson, the historian, had departed this life in 1793, a kindly +old man. With beaming eyes underneath his frizzed and curled wig, +and a trumpet tied with a black ribbon to the button-hole of his +coat, for he was deaf, this most excellent of writers showed how he +could be also the most zealous of diners. Old Adam Ferguson, the +historian of Rome, had 'set,' also: one of the finest specimens of +humanity had gone from among his people in him. Old people, not +thirty years ago, delighted to tell you how 'Adam,' when chaplain +to the Black Watch, that glorious 42nd, refused to retire to his +proper place, the rear, during an action, but persisted in being +engaged in front. He was also gone; and Dugald Stewart filled his +vacant place in the professorship of moral philosophy. Dr. Henry, +the historian, was also at rest; after a long laborious life, and +the compilation of a dull, though admirable History of England, the +design of which, in making a chapter on arts, manners, and +literature separate from the narrative, appears to have suggested +to Macaulay his inimitable disquisition on the same topics. Dr. +Henry showed to a friend a pile of books which he had gone through, +merely to satisfy himself and the world as to what description of +trousers was worn by the Saxons. His death was calm as his life. +'Come out to me directly,' he wrote to his friend, Sir Harry +Moncrieff: 'I have got something to do this week; I have got to +die.'</p> +<p>It was in 1801, that Dugald Stewart began his course of lectures +on political economy. Hitherto all public favour had been on the +side of the Tories, and independence of thought was a sure way to +incur discouragement from the Bench, in the Church, and from every +Government functionary. Lectures on political economy were regarded +as innovations; but they formed a forerunner of that event which +had made several important changes in our literary and political +hemisphere: the commencement of the 'Edinburgh Review.' This +undertaking was the work of men who were separated from the mass of +their brother-townsmen by their politics; their isolation as a +class binding them the more closely together by links never broken, +in a brotherhood of hope and ambition, to which the natural spirits +of Sydney Smith, of Cockburn, and of Jeffrey, gave an irresistible +charm.</p> +<p>Among those who the most early in life ended a career of promise +was Francis Horner. He was the son of a linen-draper in Edinburgh; +or, as the Scotch call it, following the French, a merchant. +Homer's best linen for sheets, and table-cloths, and all the +<i>under garments</i> of housekeeping, are still highly esteemed by +the trade.</p> +<p>'My desire to know Horner,' Sydney Smith states, 'arose from my +being cautioned against him by some excellent and feeble-minded +people to whom I brought letters of introduction, and who +represented him as a person of violent political opinions.' Sydney +Smith interpreted this to mean that Horner was a man who thought +for himself; who loved truth better than he loved Dundas (Lord +Melville), then the tyrant of Scotland. 'It is very curious to +consider,' Sydney Smith wrote, in addressing Lady Holland, in 1817, +'in what manner Horner gained, in so extraordinary a degree, the +affections of such a number of persons of both sexes, all ages, +parties, and ranks in society; for he was not remarkably good +tempered, nor particularly lively and agreeable; and an inflexible +politician on the unpopular side. The causes are, his high +character for probity, honour, and talents; his fine countenance; +the benevolent interest he took in the concerns of all his friends; +his simple and gentlemanlike manners; his untimely death.' 'Grave, +studious, honourable, kind, everything Horner did,' says Lord +Cockburn, 'was marked by thoughtfulness and kindness;' a beautiful +character, which was exhibited but briefly to his contemporaries, +but long remembered after his death.</p> +<p>Henry Brougham was another of the Edinburgh band of young +spirits. He was educated in the High School under Luke Fraser, the +tutor who trained Walter Scott and Francis Jeffrey. Brougham used +to be pointed out 'as the fellow who had beat the master.' He had +dared to differ with Fraser, a hot pedant, on some piece of +Latinity. Fraser, irritated, punished the rebel, and thought the +matter ended. But the next day 'Harry,' as they called him, +appeared, loaded with books, renewed the charge, and forced Luke to +own that he was beaten. 'It was then,' says Lord Cockburn, 'that I +first saw him.'</p> +<p>After remaining two years in Edinburgh, Sydney Smith went +southwards to marry a former schoolfellow of his sister +Maria's—a Miss Pybus, to whom he had been attached and +engaged at a very early period of his life. The young lady, who was +of West Indian descent, had some fortune; but her husband's only +stock, on which to begin housekeeping, consisted of six silver +tea-spoons, worn away with use. One day he rushed into the room and +threw these attenuated articles into her lap—'There, Kate, I +give you all my fortune, you lucky girl!'</p> +<p>With the small <i>dôt</i>, and the thin silver-spoons, the +young couple set up housekeeping in the 'garret end of the earth.' +Their first difficulty was to know how money could be obtained to +begin with, for Mrs. Smith's small fortune was settled on herself +by her husband's wish. Two rows of pearls had been given her by her +thoughtful mother. These she converted into money, and obtained for +them £500. Several years afterwards, when visiting the shop +at which she sold them, with Miss Vernon and Miss Fox, Mrs. Smith +saw her pearls, every one of which she knew. She asked what was the +price. '£1,500,' was the reply.</p> +<p>The sum, however, was all important to the thrifty couple. It +distanced the nightmare of the poor and honest,—debt. +£750 was presented by Mr. Beach, in gratitude for the care of +his son, to Smith. It was invested in the funds, and formed the +nucleus of future savings,—'<i>Ce n'est que le premier pas +qui coûte</i>' is a trite saying. '<i>C'est le premier pas +qui gagne</i>, might be applied to this and similar cases. A little +daughter—Lady Holland, the wife of the celebrated physician, +Sir Henry Holland—was sent to bless the sensible pair. Sydney +had wished that she might be born with one eye, so that he might +never lose her; nevertheless, though she happened to be born with +two, he bore her secretly from the nursery, a few hours after her +birth, to show her in triumph to the future Edinburgh +Reviewers.</p> +<p>The birth of the 'Edinburgh Review' quickly followed that of the +young lady. Jeffrey,—then an almost starving barrister, +living in the eighth or ninth flat of a house in Buccleuch +Place,—Brougham, and Sydney Smith were the triumvirate who +propounded the scheme, Smith being the first mover. He proposed a +motto: 'Tenui Musam meditanum avenir:' We cultivate literature on a +little oatmeal; but this being too near the truth, they took their +motto from Publius Syrus; 'of whom,' said Smith, 'none of us had, I +am sure, read a single line.' To this undertaking Sydney Smith +devoted his talents for more than twenty-eight years.</p> +<p>Meantime, during the brief remainder of his stay in Edinburgh, +his circumstances improved. He had done that which most of the +clergy are obliged to do—taken a pupil. He had now another, +the son of Mr. Gordon, of Ellon; for each of these young men he +received £400 a year. He became to them a father and a +friend; he entered into all their amusements. One of them saying +that he could not find conversation at the balls for his partners, +'Never mind,' cried Sydney Smith, 'I'll fit you up in five +minutes.' Accordingly he wrote down conversations for them amid +bursts of laughter.</p> +<p>Thus happily did years, which many persons would have termed a +season of adversity, pass away. The chance which brought him to +Edinburgh introduced him to a state of society never likely to be +seen again in Scotland. Lord Cockburn's 'Memorials' afford an +insight into manners, not only as regarded suppers, but on the +still momentous point, of dinners. Three o'clock was the +fashionable hour, so late as the commencement of the present +century. That hour, 'not without groans and predictions,' became +four—and four was long and conscientiously adhered to. 'Inch +by inch,' people yielded, and five continued to be the standard +polite hour from 1806 to 1820. 'Six has at length prevailed.'</p> +<p>The most punctilious ceremony existed. When dinner was +announced, a file of ladies went first in strict order of +precedence. 'Mrs. Colonel Such an One;' 'Mrs. Doctor Such an One,' +and so on. Toasts were <i>de rigueur</i>: no glass of wine was to +be taken by a guest without comprehending a lady, or a covey of +ladies. 'I was present,' says Lord Cockburn, 'when the late Duke of +Buccleuch took a glass of sherry by himself at the table of Charles +Hope, then Lord Advocate, and this was noticed as a piece of ducal +contempt.' Toasts, and when the ladies had retired, <i>rounds</i> +of toasts, were drunk. 'The prandial nuisance,' Lord Cockburn +wrote, 'was horrible. But it was nothing to what followed.'</p> +<p>At these repasts, though less at these than at boisterous +suppers, a frequent visitor at the same table with Sydney Smith was +the illustrious Sir James Mackintosh, a man to whose deep-thinking +mind the world is every day rendering justice. The son of a brave +officer, Mackintosh was born on the banks of Loch Ness: his mother, +a Miss Fraser, was aunt to Mrs. Fraser Tytler, wife of Lord +Woodhouselee, one of the judges of the Court of Session and mother +of the late historian of that honoured name.</p> +<p>Mackintosh had been studying at Aberdeen, in the same classes +with Robert Hall, whose conversation, he avowed, had a great +influence over his mind. He arrived in Edinburgh about 1784, +uncertain to what profession to belong; somewhat anxious to be a +bookseller, in order to revel in 'the paradise of books;' he turned +his attention, however, to medicine, and became a Brunonian, that +is, a disciple of John Brown, the founder of a theory which he +followed out to the extent in practice. The main feature of the now +defunct system, which set scientific Europe in a blaze, seems to +have been a mad indulgence of the passions; and an unbridled use of +intoxicating liquors. Brown fell a victim to his vices. Years after +he had been laid in his grave, his daughter, Euphemia, being in +great indigence, received real kindness from Sir James and Lady +Mackintosh, the former of whom used to delight in telling the story +of her father's saying to her: 'Effy, bring me the mooderate +stimulus of a hoonderd draps o' laudanum in a glass o' brandy.'</p> +<p>Mackintosh had not quitted Edinburgh when Sydney Smith reached +it. Smith became a member of the famous Speculative Society. Their +acquaintance was renewed years afterwards in London. Who can ever +forget the small, quiet dinners given by Mackintosh when living out +of Parliament, and out of office in Cadogan Place? Simple but +genial were those repasts, forming a strong contrast to the +Edinburgh dinners of yore. He had then long given up both the +theory and practice of the Brunonians, and took nothing but light +French and German wines, and these in moderation. His tall, +somewhat high-shouldered, massive form; his calm brow, mild, +thoughtful; his dignity of manner; his gentleness to all; his vast +knowledge; his wonderful appreciation of excellence; his +discrimination of faults—all combined to form one of the +finest specimens ever seen, even in that illustrious period, of a +philosopher and historian.</p> +<p>Jeffrey and Cockburn were contrasts to one whom they honoured. +Jeffrey, 'the greatest of British critics,' was eight years younger +than Mackintosh, having been born in 1773. He was the son of one of +the depute clerks to the Supreme Court, not an elevated position, +though one of great respectability. When Mackintosh and Sydney +Smith first knew him in Edinburgh, he was enduring, with all the +impatience of his sensitive nature, what he called 'a slow, +obscure, philosophical starvation' at the Scotch bar.</p> +<p>'There are moments,' he wrote, 'when I think I could sell myself +to the ministers or to the devil, in order to get above these +necessities.' Like all men so situated, his depression came in +fits. Short, spare, with regular, yet <i>not</i> aristocratic +features;—speaking, brilliant, yet <i>not</i> pleasing +eyes;—a voice consistent with that <i>mignon</i> +form;—a somewhat precise and anxious manner, there was never +in Jeffrey that charm, that <i>abandon</i>, which rendered his +valued friend, Henry Cockburn, the most delightful, the most +beloved of men, the very idol of his native city.</p> +<p>The noble head of Cockburn, bald, almost in youth, with its +pliant, refined features, and its fresh tint upon a cheek always +clear, generally high in colour, was a strong contrast to the rigid +<i>petitesse</i> of Jeffrey's physiognomy; much more so to the +large proportions of Mackintosh; or to the ponderous, plain, and, +later in life, swarthy countenance of Sydney Smith. Lord Webb +Seymour, the brother of the late Duke of Somerset, gentle, modest, +intelligent,—Thomas Thomson, the antiquary,—and Charles +and George Bell, the surgeon and the advocate,— Murray, +afterwards Lord Murray, the generous pleader, who gave up to its +rightful heirs an estate left him by a client,—and +Brougham—formed the staple of that set now long since +extinct.</p> +<p>It was partially broken up by Sydney Smith's coming, in 1803, to +London. He there took a house in Doughty Street, being partial to +legal society, which was chiefly to be found in that +neighbourhood.</p> +<p>Here Sir Samuel Romilly, Mackintosh, Scarlett (Lord Abinger), +the eccentric and unhappy Mr. Ward, afterwards Lord Dudley, +'Conversation' Sharp, Rogers, and Luttrell, formed the circle in +which Sidney delighted. He was still very poor, and obliged to sell +the rest of his wife's jewels; but his brother Robert allowed him +£100 a year, and lent him, when he subsequently removed into +Yorkshire, £500.</p> +<p>He had now a life of struggling, but those struggles were the +lot of his early friends also; Mackintosh talked of going to India +as a lecturer; Smith recommended Jeffrey to do the same. Happily, +both had the courage and the sense to await for better times at +home; yet Smith's opinion of Mackintosh was, that 'he never saw so +theoretical a head which contained so much practical +understanding;' and to Jeffrey he wrote:</p> +<p>'You want nothing to be a great lawyer, and nothing to be a +great speaker, but a deeper voice—slower and more simple +utterance—more humility of face and neck—and a greater +contempt for <i>esprit</i> than men <i>who have so much</i> in +general attain to.'</p> +<p>The great event of Sydney Smith's first residence in London was +his introduction at Holland House; in that 'gilded room which +furnished,' as he said, 'the best and most agreeable society in the +world,' his happiest hours were passed. John Allen, whom Smith had +introduced to Lord Holland was the peer's librarian and friend. +Mackintosh, who Sydney Smith thought only wanted a few bad +qualities to get on in the world, Rogers, Luttrell, Sheridan, +Byron, were among the 'suns' that shone, where Addison had suffered +and studied.</p> +<p>Between Lord Holland and Sydney Smith the most cordial +friendship existed; and the eccentric and fascinating Lady Holland +was his constant correspondent. Of this able woman, it was said by +Talleyrand: '<i>Elle est toute assertion; mais quand on demande la +preuve c'est là son sécret</i>' Of Lord Holland, the +keen diplomatist observed: '<i>Cest la bienveillance même, +mais la bienveillance la plus perturbatrice, qu'on ait jamais +vue.</i>'</p> +<p>Lord Holland did not commit the error ascribed by Rogers, in his +Recollections, to Marlay, Bishop of Waterford, who when poor, with +an income of only £400 a year, used to give the best dinners +possible; but, when made a bishop, enlarged his table, and lost his +fame-had no more good company—there was an end of his +enjoyment: he had lords and ladies to his table—foolish +people—foolish men—and foolish women—and there +was an end of him and us. 'Lord Holland selected his lords and +ladies, not for their rank, but for their peculiar merits or +acquirements.' Then even Lady Holland's oddities were amusing. When +she wanted to get rid of a fop, she used to say: 'I beg your +pardon, but I wish you would sit a little farther off; there is +something on your handkerchief which I don't quite like.' Or when a +poor man happened to stand, after the fashion of the lords of +creation, with his back close to the chimney-piece, she would cry +out, 'Have the goodness, sir, to stir the fire.'</p> +<p>Lord Holland never asked any one to dinner, ('not even +<i>me</i>,' says Rogers, 'whom he had known so long,') without +asking Lady Holland. One day, shortly before his lordship's death, +Rogers was coming out from Holland House when he met him. 'Well, do +you return to dinner?' I answered. 'No, I have not been invited.' +The precaution, in fact, was necessary, for Lord Holland was so +good-natured and hospitable that he would have had a crowd daily at +his table had he been left to himself.</p> +<p>The death of Lord Holland completely broke up the unrivalled +dinners, and the subsequent evenings in the 'gilded chamber.' Lady +Holland, to whom Holland House was left for her life-time, declined +to live there. With Holland House, the mingling of aristocracy with +talent; the blending ranks by force of intellect; the assembling +not only of all the celebrity that Europe could boast, but of all +that could enhance private enjoyment, had ceased. London, the most +intelligent of capitals, possesses not one single great house in +which pomp and wealth are made subsidiary to the true luxury of +intellectual conversation.</p> +<p>On the morning of the day when Lord Holland's last illness +began, these lines were written by him, and found after his death +on his dressing-table:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'Nephew of Fox, and Friend of Grey,</p> +<p class="i2">Sufficient for my fame,</p> +<p>If those who know me best shall say</p> +<p class="i2">I tarnished neither name.'</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Of him his best friend, Sydney Smith, left a short but +discriminative character. 'There was never (amongst other things he +says) a better heart, or one more purified from all the bad +passions—more abounding in charity and compassion—or +which seemed to be so created as a refuge to the helpless and +oppressed.'</p> +<p>Meantime Sydney Smith's circumstances were still limited; +£50 a year as evening preacher to the Foundling Hospital was +esteemed as a great help by him. The writer of this memoir +remembers an amusing anecdote related of him at the table of an +eminent literary character by a member of Lord Woodhouselee's +family, who had been desirous to obtain for Sydney the patronage of +the godly. To this end she persuaded Robert Grant and Charles Grant +(afterwards Lord Glenelg) to go to the Foundling to hear him, she +hoped to advantage; to her consternation he broke forth into so +familiar a strain, couched in terms so bordering on the +jocose,—though no one had deeper religious convictions than +he had,—that the two saintly brothers listened in disgust. +They forgot how South let loose the powers of his wit and sarcasm; +and how the lofty-minded Jeremy Taylor applied the force of humour +to lighten the prolixity of argument. Sydney Smith became, +nevertheless, a most popular preacher; but the man who prevents +people from sleeping once a week in their pews is sure to be +criticised.</p> +<p>Let us turn to him, however, as a member of society. His circle +of acquaintance was enlarged, not only by his visits to Holland +House, but by his lectures on moral philosophy at the Royal +Institution. Sir Robert Peel, not the most impressionable of men, +but one whose cold shake of the hand is said—as Sydney Smith +said of Sir James Mackintosh—'to have come under the genus +<i>Mortmain</i>' was a very young man at the time when Albemarle +Street was crowded with carriages from one end of the street to the +other, in consequence of Sydney Smith's lectures; yet he declared +that he had never forgotten the effect given to the speech of +Logan, the Indian chief, by Sydney's voice and manner.</p> +<p>His lectures produced a sum sufficient for Sydney to furnish a +house in Orchard Street. Doughty Street—raised to celebrity +as having been the residence, not only of Sydney Smith, but of +Charles Dickens—was too far for the <i>habitué</i> of +Holland House and the orator of Albemarle Street long to sojourn +there. In Orchard Street, Sydney enjoyed that domestic comfort +which he called 'the grammar of life;' delightful suppers, to about +twenty or thirty persons, who came and went as they pleased. A +great part of the same amusing and gifted set used to meet once a +week also at Sir James Mackintosh's, at a supper, which, though not +exactly Cowper's 'radish and an egg,' was simple, but +plentiful—yet most eagerly sought after. 'There are a few +living,' writes Sydney Smith's daughter, 'who can look back to +them, and I have always found them do so with a sigh of +regret.'</p> +<p>One night, a country cousin of Sydney Smith's was present at a +supper. 'Now, Sydney,' whispered the simple girl, 'I know all these +are very remarkable people; do tell me who they are.'—'Oh, +yes; there's Hannibal,' pointing to a grave, dry, stern man, Mr. +Whishaw; 'he lost his leg in the Carthagenian war: there's +Socrates,' pointing to Luttrell: 'that,' he added, turning to +Horner, 'is Solon.'</p> +<p>Another evening, Mackintosh brought a raw Scotch cousin—an +ensign in a Highland regiment—with him. The young man's head +could carry no idea of glory except in regimentals. Suddenly, +nudging Sir James, he whispered, 'Is that the great Sir Sydney +Smith?'—'Yes, yes,' answered Sir James; and instantly telling +Sydney who he was supposed to be, the grave evening preacher at the +Foundling immediately assumed the character ascribed to him, and +acted the hero of Acre to perfection, fighting his battles over +again—even charging the Turks—whilst the young Scot was +so enchanted by the great Sir Sydney's condescension, that he +wanted to fetch the pipers of his regiment, and pipe to the great +Sir Sydney, who had never enjoyed the agonizing strains of the +bagpipe. Upon this the party broke up, and Sir James carried the +Highlander off, lest he should find out his mistake, and cut his +throat from shame and vexation. One may readily conceive Sydney +Smith's enjoying this joke, for his spirits were those of a boy: +his gaiety was irresistible; his ringing laugh, infectious; but it +is difficult for those who knew Mackintosh in his later +years—the quiet, almost pensive invalid to realize in that +remembrance any trace of the Mackintosh of Doughty Street and +Orchard Street days.</p> +<p>One day Sydney Smith came home with two hackney coaches full of +pictures, which he had picked up at an auction. His daughter thus +tells the story: 'Another day he came home with two hackney-coach +loads of pictures, which he had met with at an auction, having +found it impossible to resist so many yards of brown-looking +figures and faded landscapes going for "absolutely nothing, unheard +of sacrifices." "Kate" hardly knew whether to laugh or cry when she +saw these horribly dingy-looking objects enter her pretty little +drawing-room, and looked at him as if she thought him half mad; and +half mad he was, but with delight at his purchase. He kept walking +up and down the room, waving his arms, putting them in fresh +lights, declaring they were exquisite specimens of art, and if not +by the very best masters, merited to be so. He invited his friends, +and displayed his pictures; discovered fresh beauties for each new +comer; and for three or four days, under the magic influence of his +wit and imagination, these gloomy old pictures were a perpetual +source of amusement and fun.'</p> +<p>At last, finding that he was considered no authority for the +fine arts, off went the pictures to another auction, but all +re-christened by himself, with unheard-of names. 'One, I remember,' +says Lady Holland, 'was a beautiful landscape, by Nicholas de +Falda, a pupil of Valdezzio, the only painting by that eminent +artist. The pictures sold, I believe, for rather less than he gave +for them under their original names, which were probably as real as +their assumed ones.'</p> +<p>Sydney Smith had long been styled by his friends the 'Bishop of +Mickleham,' in allusion to his visits to, and influence in, the +house of his friend, Richard Sharp, who had a cottage at that +place. A piece of real preferment was now his. This was the living +of Foston-le-Clay, in Yorkshire, given him by Lord Erskine, then +Chancellor. Lady Holland never rested till she had prevailed on +Erskine to give Sydney Smith a living. Smith, as Rogers relates, +went to thank his lordship. 'Oh,' said Erskine, 'don't thank me, +Mr. Smith; I gave you the living because Lady Holland insisted on +my doing so; and if she had desired me to give it to the devil, +<i>he</i> must have had it.'</p> +<p>Notwithstanding the prediction of the saints, Sydney Smith +proved an excellent parish priest. Even his most admiring friends +did not expect this result. The general impression was, that he was +infinitely better fitted for the bar than for the church. 'Ah! Mr. +Smith,' Lord Stowell used to say to him, 'you would be in a far +better situation, and a far richer man, had you belonged to +us.'</p> +<p>One <i>jeu d'esprit</i> more, and Smith hastened to take +possession of his living, and to enter upon duties of which no one +better knew the mighty importance than he did.</p> +<p>Among the Mackintosh set was Richard Sharp, to whom we have +already referred, termed, from his great knowledge and ready +memory, 'Conversation Sharp.' Many people may think that this did +not imply an agreeable man, and they were, perhaps, right. Sharp +was a plain, ungainly man. One evening, a literary lady, now +living, being at Sir James Mackintosh's, in company with Sharp, +Sismondi, and the late Lord Denman, then a man of middle age. Sir +James was not only particularly partial to Denman, but admired him +personally. 'Do you not think Denman handsome?' he inquired of the +lady after the guests were gone. 'No? Then you must think Mr. Sharp +handsome,' he rejoined; meaning that a taste so perverted as not to +admire Denman must be smitten with Sharp. Sharp is said to have +studied all the morning before he went out to dinner, to get up his +wit and anecdote, as an actor does his part. Sydney Smith having +one day received an invitation from him to dine at Fishmongers' +Hall, sent the following reply:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'Much do I love</p> +<p>The monsters of the deep to eat;</p> +<p>To see the rosy salmon lying,</p> +<p>By smelts encircled, born for frying;</p> +<p>And from the china boat to pour</p> +<p>On flaky cod the flavoured shower.</p> +<p>Thee above all, I much regard,</p> +<p>Flatter than Longman's flattest bard,</p> +<p>Much-honour'd turbot! sore I grieve</p> +<p>Thee and thy dainty friends to leave.</p> +<p>Far from ye all, in snuggest corner,</p> +<p>I go to dine with little Horner;</p> +<p>He who with philosophic eye</p> +<p>Sat brooding o'er his Christmas pie;</p> +<p>Then firm resolved, with either thumb,</p> +<p>Tore forth the crust-enveloped plum;</p> +<p>And mad with youthful dreams of deathless fame,</p> +<p>Proclaimed the deathless glories of his name.'</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>One word before we enter on the subject of Sydney Smith's +ministry. In this biography of a great Wit, we touch but lightly +upon the graver features of his character, yet they cannot wholly +be passed over. Stanch in his devotion to the Church of England, he +was liberal to others. The world in the present day is afraid of +liberality. Let it not be forgotten that it has been the fanatic +and the intolerant, not the mild and practical, among us who have +gone from the Protestant to the Romish faith. Sydney Smith, in +common with other great men, had no predilection for dealing +damnation round the land. How noble, how true, are Mackintosh's +reflections on religious sects! 'It is impossible, I think, to look +into the interior of any religious sect, without thinking better of +it. I ought, indeed, to confine myself to those of Christian +Europe, but with that limitation it seems to me the remark is true; +whether I look at the Jansenists of Port Royal, or the Quakers in +Clarkson, or the Methodists in these journals. All these sects, +which appear dangerous or ridiculous at a distance, assume a much +more amicable character on nearer inspection. They all inculcate +pure virtue, and practise mutual kindness; and they exert great +force of reason in rescuing their doctrines from the absurd or +pernicious consequences which naturally flow from them. Much of +this arises from the general nature of religious +principle—much also from the genius of the Gospel.'</p> +<p>Nothing could present a greater contrast with the comforts of +Orchard Street than the place on which Sydney Smith's 'lines' had +now 'fallen.' Owing to the non-residence of the clergy, one-third +of the parsonage houses in England had fallen into decay, but that +of Foston-le-Clay was pre-eminently wretched. A hovel represented +what was still called the parsonage-house: it stood on a glebe of +three hundred acres of the stiffest clay in Yorkshire: a +brick-floored kitchen, with a room above it, both in a ruinous +condition was the residence which, for a hundred and fifty years, +had never been inhabited by an incumbent. It will not be a matter +of surprise that for some time, until 1808, Sydney Smith, with the +permission of the Archbishop of York, continued to reside in +London, after having appointed a curate at Foston-le-Clay.</p> +<p>The first visit to his living was by no means promising. Picture +to yourself, my reader, Sydney Smith in a carriage, in his +superfine black coat, driving into the remote village, and +parleying with the old parish clerk, who after some conversation, +observed, emphatically, shaking his stick on the ground, 'Master +Smith, it stroikes me that people as comes froe London is such +<i>fools</i>.—'I see <i>you</i> are no fool,' was the prompt +answer; and the parson and the clerk parted mutually satisfied.</p> +<p><a name="223"></a></p> +<div class="figcenter"><a href="images/223.png"><img src= +"images/223sm.png" alt= +"Sydney Smith's Witty Answer to the Old Parish Clerk."></a> +<h4>SYDNEY SMITH'S WITTY ANSWER TO THE OLD PARISH CLERK</h4> +</div> +<p>The profits, arising from the sale of two volumes of sermons, +carried Sydney Smith, his family, and his furniture, to +Foston-le-Clay in the summer of 1809, and he took up his abode in a +pleasant house about two miles from York, at Heslington.</p> +<p>Let us now, for a time, forget the wit, the editor of the +'Edinburgh Review,' the diner out, the evening preacher at the +Foundling, and glance at the peaceful and useful life of a country +clergyman. His spirits, his wit, all his social qualities, never +deserted Sydney Smith, even in the retreat to which he was +destined. Let us see him driving in his second-hand carriage, his +horse, 'Peter the Cruel,' with Mrs. Smith by his side, summer and +winter, from Heslington to Foston-le-Clay. Mrs. Smith, at first, +trembled at the inexperience of her charioteer; but 'she soon,' +said Sydney, 'raised my wages, and considered me an excellent +Jehu.' 'Mr. Brown,' said Sydney to one of the tradesmen of York, +through the streets of which he found it difficult to drive, 'your +streets are the narrowest, in Europe,'—'Narrow, sir? there's +plenty of room for two carriages to pass each other, and an inch +and a half to spare!'</p> +<p>Let us see him in his busy peaceful life, digging an hour or two +every day in his garden to avoid sudden death, by preventing +corpulency; then galloping through a book, and when his family +laughed at him for so soon dismissing a quarto, saying, +'Cross-examine me, then,' and going well through the ordeal. Hear +him, after finishing his morning's writing, saying to his wife, +'There, Kate, it's done: do look over it; put the dots to the i's, +and cross the t's:' and off he went to his walk, surrounded by his +children, who were his companions and confidants. See him in the +lane, talking to an old woman whom he had taken into his gig as she +was returning from market, and picking up all sorts of knowledge +from her; or administering medicine to the poor, or to his horses +and animals, sometimes committing mistakes next to fatal. One day +he declared he found all his pigs intoxicated, grunting 'God save +the King' about the sty. He nearly poisoned his red cow by an +over-dose of castor-oil; and Peter the Cruel, so called because the +groom once said he had a cruel face, took two boxes of opium pills +(boxes and all) in his mash, without ill consequences.</p> +<p>See him, too, rushing out after dinner—for he had a horror +of long sittings after that meal—to look at his +'scratcher.'</p> +<p>He used to say, Lady Holland (his daughter) relates, 'I am all +for cheap luxuries, even for animals; now all animals have a +passion for scratching their backbones; they break down your gates +and palings to effect this. Look! there is my universal scratcher, +a sharp-edged pole, resting on a high and a low post, adapted to +every height, from a horse to a lamb. Even the Edinburgh Reviewer +can take his turn: you have no idea how popular it is; I have not +had a gate broken since I put it up; I have it in all my +fields.'</p> +<p>Then his experiments were numerous. Mutton fat was to be burned +instead of candles; and working-people were brought in and fed with +broth, or with rice, or with porridge, to see which was the most +satisfying diet. Economy was made amusing, benevolence almost +absurd, but the humorous man, the kind man, shone forth in all +things. He was one of the first, if not the first, who introduced +allotment-gardens for the poor: he was one who could truly say at +the last, when he had lived sixty-six years, 'I have done but very +little harm in the world, and I have brought up my family.'</p> +<p>We have taken a glimpse—and a glimpse merely—of the +'wise Wit' in London, among congenial society, where every +intellectual power was daily called forth in combative force. See +him now in the provincial circles of the remote county of York. +'Did you ever,' he once asked, 'dine out in the country? What +misery do human beings inflict on each other under the name of +pleasure!' Then he describes driving in a broiling sun through a +dusty road, to eat a haunch of venison at the house of a +neighbouring parson. Assembled in a small house, 'redolent of +frying,' talked of roads, weather, and turnips; began, that done, +to be hungry. A stripling, caught up for the occasion, calls the +master of the house out of the room, and announces that the cook +has mistaken the soup for dirty water, and has thrown it away. No +help for it—agreed; they must do without it; perhaps as well +they should. Dinner announced; they enter the dining-room: heavens! +what a gale! the venison is high!</p> +<p>Various other adverse incidents occur, and the party return +home, grateful to the post-boys for not being drunk, and thankful +to Providence for not being thrown into a wet ditch.</p> +<p>In addition to these troubles and risks, there was an enemy at +hand to apprehend—prejudice. The Squire of +Heslington—'the last of the Squires'—regarded Mr. Smith +as a Jacobin; and his lady, 'who looked as if she had walked +straight out of the Ark, or had been the wife of Enoch,' used to +turn aside as he passed. When, however, the squire found 'the peace +of the village undisturbed, harvests as usual, his dogs uninjured, +he first bowed, then called, and ended by a pitch of confidence;' +actually discovered that Sydney Smith had made a joke; nearly went +into convulsions of laughter, and finished by inviting the +'dangerous fellow,' as he had once thought him, to see his +dogs.</p> +<p>In 1813 Sydney Smith removed, as he thought it his duty to do, +to Foston-le-Clay, and, 'not knowing a turnip from a carrot,' began +to farm three hundred acres, and not having any money, to build a +parsonage-house.</p> +<p>It was a model parsonage, he thought, the plan being formed by +himself and 'Kate.' Being advised by his neighbours to purchase +oxen, he bought (and christened) four oxen, 'Tug and Lug,' 'Crawl +and Haul.' But Tug and Lug took to fainting, Haul and Crawl to lie +down in the mud, so he was compelled to sell them, and to purchase +a team of horses.</p> +<p>The house plunged him into debt for twenty years; and a +man-servant being too expensive, the 'wise Wit' caught up a country +girl, made like a mile-stone, and christened her 'Bunch,' and Bunch +became the best butler in the county.</p> +<p>He next set up a carriage, which he christened the 'Immortal,' +for it grew, from being only an ancient green chariot, supposed to +have been the earliest invention of the kind, to be known by all +the neighbours; the village dogs barked at it, the village boys +cheered it, and 'we had no false shame.'</p> +<p>One could linger over the annals of Sydney Smith's useful, happy +life at Foston-le-Clay, visited there indeed by Mackintosh, and +each day achieving a higher and higher reputation in literature. We +see him as a magistrate, 'no friend to game,' as a country squire +in Suffolk solemnly said of a neighbour, but a friend to man; with +a pitying heart, that forbade him to commit young delinquents to +gaol, though he would lecture them severely, and call out, in bad +cases, 'John, bring me out my <i>private gallows</i>,' which +brought the poor boys on their knees. We behold him making visits, +and even tours, in the 'Immortal,' and receiving Lord and Lady +Carlisle in their coach and four, which had stuck in the middle of +a ploughed field, there being scarcely any road, only a lane up to +the house. Behold him receiving his poor friend, Francis Homer, who +came to take his last leave of him, and died at Pisa, in 1817, +after earning honours, paid, as Sir James Mackintosh remarked, to +intrinsic claims alone—'a man of obscure birth, who never +filled an office.' See Sydney Smith, in 1816, from the failure of +the harvest (he who was in London 'a walking patty'), sitting down +with his family to repast without bread, thin, unleavened cakes +being the substitute. See his cheerfulness, his submission to many +privations: picture him to ourselves trying to ride, but falling +off incessantly; but obliged to leave off riding 'for the good of +his family, and the peace of his parish' (he had christened his +horse, 'Calamity'). See him suddenly prostrate from that steed in +the midst of the streets of York, 'to the great joy of Dissenters,' +he declares: another time flung as if he had been a shuttlecock, +into a neighbouring parish, very glad that it was not a +neighbouring planet, for somehow or other his horse and he had a +'trick of parting company.' 'I used,' he wrote, 'to think a fall +from a horse dangerous, but much experience has convinced me to the +contrary. I have had six falls in two years, and just behaved like +the Three per Cents., when they fell—I got up again, and am +not a bit the worse for it, any more than the stock in +question.'</p> +<p>This country life was varied by many visits. In 1820 he went to +visit Lord Grey, then to Edinburgh, to Jeffrey travelling by the +coach, a gentleman, with whom he had been talking, said, 'There is +a very clever fellow lives near here, Sydney Smith, I believe; a +devilish odd fellow.'—'He may be an odd fellow,' cried +Sydney, taking off his hat, 'but here he is, odd as he is, at your +service.'</p> +<p>Sydney Smith found great changes in Edinburgh—changes, +however, in many respects for the better. The society of Edinburgh +was then in its greatest perfection. 'Its brilliancy, Lord Cockburn +remarks, 'was owing to a variety of peculiar circumstances, which +only operated during this period. The principal of these were the +survivance of several of the eminent men of the preceding age, and +of curious old habits, which the modern flood had not yet +obliterated; the rise of a powerful community of young men of +ability; the exclusion of the British from the Continent, which +made this place, both for education and for residence, a favourite +resort of strangers; the war, which maintained a constant +excitement of military preparation and of military idleness: the +blaze of that popular literature which made this the second city in +the empire for learning and science; and the extent and the ease +with which literature and society embellished each other, without +rivalry, and without pedantry.</p> +<p>Among the 'best young' as his lordship styles them, were Lord +Webb Seymour and Francis Horner; whilst those of the 'interesting +old' most noted were Elizabeth Hamilton and Mrs. Grant of Laggan, +who had 'unfolded herself,' to borrow Lord Cockburn's words, in the +'Letters from the Mountains,' 'an interesting treasury of good +solitary thoughts.' Of these two ladies, Lord Cockburn says, 'They +were excellent women, and not <i>too</i> blue. Their sense covered +the colour.' It was to Mrs. Hamilton that Jeffrey said, 'That there +was no objection to the blue stocking, provided the petticoat came +low enough to cover it.' Neither of these ladies possessed personal +attractions. Mrs. Hamilton had the plain face proper to literary +women; Mrs. Grant was a tall dark woman, with much dignity of +manner: in spite of her life of misfortune, she had a great flow of +spirits. Beautifully, indeed, does Lord Cockburn render justice to +her character: 'She was always under the influence of an +affectionate and delightful enthusiasm, which, unquenched by time +and sorrow, survived the wreck of many domestic attachments, and +shed a glow over the close of a very protracted life.'</p> +<p>Both she and Mrs. Hamilton succeeded in drawing to their +<i>conversazioni</i>, in small rooms of unpretending style, men of +the highest order, as well as attractive women of intelligence. +Society in Edinburgh took the form of Parisian +<i>soirées</i>, and although much divided into parties, was +sufficiently general to be varied. It is amusing to find that Mrs. +Grant was at one time one of the supposed 'Authors of "Waverley,"' +until the disclosure of the mystery silenced reports. It was the +popularity of 'Marmion,' that made Scott, as he himself confesses, +nearly lose his footing. Mrs. Grant's observation on him, after +meeting the Great Unknown at some brilliant party, has been +allowed, even by the sarcastic Lockhart, to be 'witty enough.' 'Mr. +Scott always seems to me to be like a glass, through which the rays +of admiration pass without sensibly affecting it; but the bit of +<a id="footnotetag13" name="footnotetag13"></a><a href= +"#footnote13"><sup>13</sup></a> that lies beside it will presently +be in a blaze—and no wonder.'</p> +<p>Scott endeavoured to secure Mrs. Grant a pension; merited as he +observes, by her as an authoress, 'but much more,' in his opinion, +'by the firmness and elasticity of mind with which she had borne a +great succession of domestic calamities.' 'Unhappily,' he adds, +'there was only about £100 open on the Pension List, and this +the minister assigned in equal portions to Mrs. G—— and +a distressed lady, grand-daughter of a forfeited Scottish nobleman. +Mrs. G—— , proud as a Highlandwoman, vain as a poetess, +and absurd as a blue-stocking, has taken this partition in <i>malam +partem</i>, and written to Lord Melville about her merits, and that +her friends do not consider her claims as being fairly canvassed, +with something like a demand that her petition be submitted to the +king. This is not the way to make her <i>plack</i> a <i>bawbee</i>, +and Lord M—— , a little <i>miffed</i> in turn, sends +the whole correspondence to me to know whether Mrs. G—— +will accept the £50 or not</p> +<p>Now, hating to deal with ladies when they are in an unreasonable +humour, I have got the good-humoured Man of Feeling to find out the +lady's mind, and I take on myself the task of making her peace with +Lord M—— . After all, the poor lady is greatly to be +pitied:—her sole remaining daughter deep and far gone in a +decline.'</p> +<p>The Man of Feeling proved successful, and reported soon +afterwards that the 'dirty pudding' was eaten by the almost +destitute authoress. Scott's tone in the letters which refer to +this subject does little credit to his good taste and delicacy of +feeling, which were really attributable to his character.</p> +<p>Very few notices occur of any intercourse between Scott and +Sydney Smith in Lockhart's 'Life,' It was not, indeed, until 1827 +that Scott could be sufficiently cooled down from the ferment of +politics which had been going on to meet Jeffrey and Cockburn. When +he dined, however, with Murray, then Lord Advocate, and met +Jeffrey, Cockburn, the late Lord Rutherford, then Mr. Rutherford, +and others of 'that file,' he pronounced the party to be 'very +pleasant, capital good cheer, and excellent wine, much laugh and +fun. I do not know,' he writes, 'how it is, but when I am out with +a party of my Opposition friends, the day is often merrier than +when with our own set. It is because they are cleverer? Jeffery and +Harry Cockburn are, to be sure, very extraordinary men, yet it is +not owing to that entirely. I believe both parties meet with the +feeling of something like novelty. We have not worn out our jests +in daily contact. There is also a disposition on such occasions to +be courteous, and of course to be pleased.'</p> +<p>On his side, Cockburn did ample justice to the 'genius who,' to +use his own words, 'has immortalized Edinburgh and delighted the +'world.' Mrs. Scott could not, however, recover the smarting +inflicted by the critiques of Jeffrey on her husband's works. +Her—'And I hope, Mr. Jeffrey, Mr. Constable paid you well for +your Article' (Jeffrey dining with her that day), had a depth of +simple satire in it that ever, an Edinburgh Reviewer could hardly +exceed. It was, one must add, impertinent and in bad taste. 'You +are very good at cutting up.'</p> +<p>Sydney Smith found Jeffrey and Cockburn rising barristers. +Horner, on leaving Edinburgh, had left to Jeffrey his bar wig, and +the bequest had been lucky. Jeffrey was settled at Craigcrook, a +lovely English-looking spot, with wooded slopes and green glades, +near Edinburgh; and Cockburn had, since 1811, set up his rural gods +at Bonally, near Colinton, just under the Pentland Hills, and he +wrote, 'Unless some avenging angel shall expel me, I shall never +leave that paradise.' And a paradise it was. Beneath those rough, +bare hills, broken here and there by a trickling burn, like a +silver thread on the brown sward, stands a Norman tower, the +addition, by Playfair's skill, to what was once a scarcely +habitable farmhouse. That tower contained Lord Cockburn's fine +library, also his ordinary sitting-rooms. There he read and wrote, +and received such society as will never meet again, there or +elsewhere—amongst them Sydney Smith. Beneath—around the +tower—stretches a delicious garden, composed of terraces, and +laurel-hedged walks, and beds of flowers, that bloomed freely in +that sheltered spot. A bowling-green, shaded by one of the few +trees near the house, a sycamore, was the care of many an hour; for +to make the turf velvety, the sods were fetched from the hills +above—from 'yon hills,' as Lord Cockburn would have called +them. And this was for many years one of the rallying points of the +best Scottish society, and, as each autumn came round, of what the +host called his Carnival. Friends were summoned from the north and +the south—'death no apology.' High jinks within doors, +excursions without. Every Edinburgh man reveres the spot, hallowed +by the remembrance of Lord Cockburn. 'Every thing except the two +burns, he wrote, 'the few old trees, and the mountains, are my own +work. Human nature is incapable of enjoying more happiness than has +been my lot here. I have been too happy, and often tremble in the +anticipation that the cloud must come at last.' And come it did; +but found him not unprepared, although the burden that he had to +bear in after-life was heavy. In their enlarged and philosophic +minds, in their rapid transition from sense to nonsense, there was +an affinity in the characters of Sydney Smith and of Lord Cockburn +which was not carried out in any other point. Smith's conversation +was wit—Lord Cockburn's was eloquence.</p> +<p>From the festivities of Edinburgh Sydney Smith returned +contentedly to Foston-le-Clay, and to Bunch. Amongst other gifted +visitors was Mrs. Marcet. 'Come here, Bunch,' cries Sydney Smith +one day; 'come and repeat your crimes to Mrs. Marcet.' Then Bunch, +grave as a judge, began to repeat: 'Plate-snatching, +gravy-spilling, door-slamming, blue-bottle- fly-catching, and +curtsey-bobbing. 'Blue-bottle-fly-catching,' means standing with +her mouth open, and not attending; and 'curtsey-bobbing' was +curtseying to the centre of the earth.</p> +<p>One night, in the winter, during a tremendous snowstorm, Bunch +rushed in, exclaiming, 'Lord and Lady Mackincrush is com'd in a +coach and four.' The lord and lady proved to be Sir James and his +daughter, who had arrived to stay with his friends in the remote +parsonage of Foston-le-Clay a few days, and had sent a letter, +which arrived the day afterwards to announce their visit. Their +stay began with a blunder; and when Sir James departed, leaving +kind feelings behind him—books, his hat, his gloves, his +papers and other articles of apparel were found also. 'What a man +that would be,' said Sydney Smith, 'had he one particle of gall, or +the least knowledge of the value of red tape!' It was true that the +indolent, desultory character of Mackintosh interfered perpetually +with his progress in the world. He loved far better to lie on the +sofa reading a novel than to attend a Privy Council; the slightest +indisposition was made on his part a plea for avoiding the most +important business.</p> +<p>Sydney Smith had said that 'when a clever man takes to +cultivating turnips and retiring, it is generally an imposture;' +but in him the retirement was no imposture. His wisdom shone forth +daily in small and great matters. 'Life,' he justly thought, 'was +to be fortified by many friendships,' and he acted up to his +principles, and kept up friendships by letters. Cheerfulness he +thought might be cultivated by making the rooms one lives in as +comfortable as possible. His own drawing-room was papered on this +principle, with a yellow flowering pattern; and filled with +'irregular regularities;' his fires were blown into brightness by +<i>Shadrachs</i>, as he called them—tubes furnished with air +opening in the centre of each fire, His library contained his +rheumatic armour: for he tried heat and compression in rheumatism; +put his legs into narrow buckets, which he called his jack-boots; +wore round his throat a tin collar; over each shoulder he had a +large tin thing like a shoulder of mutton; and on his head he +displayed a hollow helmet filled with hot water. In the middle of a +field into which his windows looked, was a skeleton sort of a +machine, his Universal Scratcher; with which every animal from a +lamb to a bullock could scratch itself. Then on the Sunday the +Immortal was called into use, to travel in state to a church like a +barn; about fifty people in it; but the most original idea was +farming through the medium of a tremendous speaking-trumpet from +his own door, with its companion, a telescope, to see what his +people are about! On the 24th of January, 1828, the first notable +piece of preferment was conferred on him by Lord Lyndhurst then +Chancellor, and of widely differing political opinions to Sydney +Smith. This was a vacant stall in the cathedral at Bristol, where +on the ensuing 5th of November, the new canon gave the Mayor and +Corporation of that Protestant city such a dose of 'toleration as +should last them many a year.' He went to Court on his appointment, +and appeared in shoestrings instead of buckles. 'I found,' he +relates, 'to my surprise, people looking down at my feet: I could +not think what they were at. At first I thought they had discovered +the beauty of my legs; but at last the truth burst on me, by some +wag laughing and thinking I had done it as a good joke. I was, of +course, exceedingly annoyed to have been supposed capable of such a +vulgar unmeaning piece of disrespect, and kept my feet as coyly +under my petticoats as the veriest prude in the country till I +should make my escape.' His circumstances were now improved, and +though moralists, he said, thought property an evil, he declared +himself happier every guinea he gained. He thanked God for his +animal spirits, which received, unhappily, in 1829, a terrible +shock from the death of his eldest son, Douglas, aged twenty-four. +This was the great misfortune of his life; the young man was +promising, talented, affectionate. He exchanged Foston-le-Clay at +this time for a living in Somersetshire, of a beautiful and +characteristic name—Combe Florey.</p> +<p>Combe Florey seems to have been an earthly paradise, seated in +one of those delicious hollows or in Combes, for which that part of +the west of England is celebrated. His withdrawal from the +Edinburgh Review—Mackintosh's death—the marriage of his +eldest daughter, Saba, to Dr. Holland (now Sir Henry +Holland)—the termination of Lord Grey's Administration, which +ended Sydney's hopes of being a bishop, were the leading events of +his life for the next few years.</p> +<p>It appears that Sydney Smith felt to the hour of his death +pained that those by whose side he had fought for fifty years, in +their adversity, the Whig party, should never have offered what he +declared he should have rejected, a bishopric, when they were +constantly bestowing such promotions on persons of mediocre talent +and claims. Waiving the point, whether it is right or wrong to make +men bishops because they have been political partizans, the cause +of this alleged injustice may be found in the tone of the times, +which was eminently tinctured with cant. The Clapham sect were in +the ascendancy; and Ministers scarcely dared to offend so +influential a body. Even the gentle Sir James Mackintosh refers, in +his Journal, with disgust to the phraseology of the day:—</p> +<p>'They have introduced a new language, in which they never say +that A. B. is good, or virtuous, or even religious; but that he is +an "advanced Christian." Dear Mr. Wilberforce is an "advanced +Christian." Mrs. C. has lost three children without a pang, and is +so "advanced a Christian" that she could see the remaining twenty, +"with poor dear Mr. C.," removed with perfect tranquillity.'</p> +<p>Such was the disgust expressed towards that school by +Mackintosh, whose last days were described by his daughter as +having been passed in silence and thought, with his Bible before +him, breaking that silence—and portentous silence—to +speak of God, and of his Maker's disposition towards man.</p> +<p>His mind ceased to be occupied with speculations; politics +interested him no more. His own 'personal relationship to his +Creator' was the subject of his thoughts. Yet Mackintosh was not by +any means considered as an advanced Christian, or even as a +Christian at all by the zealots of his time.</p> +<p>Sydney Smith's notions of a bishop were certainly by no means +carried out in his own person and character. 'I never remember in +my time,' he said, 'a real bishop: a grave, elderly man, full of +Greek, with sound views of the middle voice and preterpluperfect +tense; gentle and kind to his poor clergy, of powerful and +commanding eloquence in Parliament, never to be put down when the +great interests of mankind were concerned, leaning to the +Government when it was right, leaning to the people when they were +right; feeling that if the Spirit of God had called him to that +high office, he was called for no mean purpose, but rather that +seeing clearly, acting boldly, and intending purely, he might +confer lasting benefit upon mankind.'</p> +<p>In 1831 Lord Grey appointed Sydney Smith a Canon Resilentiary of +St. Paul's; but still the mitre was withheld, although it has since +appeared that Lord Grey had destined him for one of the first +vacancies in England.</p> +<p>Henceforth his residence at St. Paul's brought him still more +continually into the world, which he delighted by his 'wise wit.' +Most London dinners, he declared, evaporated in whispers to one's +next neighbours. He never, however, spoke to his neighbour, but +'fired' across the table. One day, however, he broke his rule, on +hearing a lady, who sat next him, say in a sweet low voice, 'No +gravy, sir.'—'Madam!' he cried, 'I have all my life been +looking for a person who disliked gravy, let us swear immortal +friendship.' She looked astonished, but took the oath, and kept it. +'What better foundation for friendship,' he asks, 'than similarity +of tastes?'</p> +<p>He gave an evening party once a week; when a profusion of +wax-lights was his passion. He loved to see young people decked +with natural flowers; he was, in fact, a blameless and benevolent +Epicurean in everything; great indeed was the change from his +former residence at Foston, which he used to say was twelve miles +from a lemon. Charming as his parties at home must have been, they +wanted the <i>bon-hommie</i> and simplicity of former days, and Of +the homely suppers in Orchard Street. Lord Dudley, Rogers, Moore, +'Young Macaulay,' as he was called for many years, formed now his +society. Lord Dudley was then in the state which afterwards became +insanity, and darkened completely a mind sad and peculiar from +childhood. Bankes, in his 'Journal,' relates an anecdote of him +about this time, when, as he says, 'Dudley's mind was on the wane; +but still his caustic humour would find vent through the cloud +which was gradually over-shadowing his masterly intellect.' He was +one day sitting in his room soliloquizing aloud; his favourite +Newfoundland-dog was at his side, and seemed to engross all +——m's attention. A gentleman was present who was +good-looking and good-natured, but not overburthened with sense. +Lord Dudley at last, patting his dog's head, said, 'Fido mio, they +say dogs have no souls. Humph, and still they say ——' +(naming the gentleman present) 'has a soul!' One day Lord Dudley +met Mr. Allen, Lord Holland's librarian, and asked him to dine with +him. Allen went. When asked to describe his dinner, he said, 'There +was no one there. Lord Dudley talked a little to his servant, and a +great deal to his dog, but said not one word to me.'</p> +<p>Innumerable are the witticisms related of Sydney Smith, when +seated at a dinner table—having swallowed in life what he +called a 'Caspian Sea' of soup. Talking one day of Sir Charles +Lyell's book, the subject of which was the phenomena which the +earth might, at some future period, present to the geologists. 'Let +us imagine,' he said, 'an excavation on the site of St. Paul's; +fancy a lecture by the Owen of his future era on the thigh-bone of +a minor canon, or the tooth of a dean: the form, qualities, and +tastes he would discover from them.' 'It is a great proof of +shyness,' he said, 'to crumble your bread at dinner. Ah! I see,' he +said, turning to a young lady, 'you're afraid of me: you crumble +your bread. I do it when I sit by the Bishop of London, and with +both hands when I sit by the Archbishop.'</p> +<p>Be gave a capital reproof to a lively young M.P. who was +accompanying him after dinner to one of the solemn evening +receptions at Lambeth Palace during the life of the late Archbishop +of Canterbury. The M.P. had been calling him 'Smith,' though they +had never met before that day. As the carriage stopped at the +Palace, Smith turned to him and said, 'Now don't, my good fellow, +don't call the Archbishop "Howley."'</p> +<p>Talking of fancy-balls—'Of course,' he said, 'if I went to +one, I should go as a Dissenter.' Of Macaulay, he said, 'To take +him out of literature and science, and to put him in the House of +Commons, is like taking the chief physician out of London in a +pestilence.'</p> +<p>Nothing amused him so much as the want of perception of a joke. +One hot day a Mrs. Jackson called on him, and spoke of the +oppressive state of the weather. 'Heat! it was dreadful,' said +Sydney; 'I found I could do nothing for it but take off my flesh +and sit in my bones.' 'Take off your flesh and sit in your bones! +Oh, Mr. Smith! how could you do that?' the lady cried. 'Come and +see next time, ma'am—nothing more easy.' She went away, +however, convinced that such a proceeding was very unorthodox. No +wonder, with all his various acquirements, it should be said of him +that no 'dull dinners were ever remembered in his company.'</p> +<p>A happy old age concluded his life, at once brilliant and +useful. To the last he never considered his education as finished. +His wit, a friend said, 'was always fresh, always had the dew on +it. He latterly got into what Lord Jeffrey called the vicious habit +of water drinking. Wine, he said, destroyed his understanding. He +even 'forgot the number of the Muses, and thought it was +thirty-nine, of course.' He agreed with Sir James Mackintosh that +he had found the world more good and more foolish than he had +thought when young. He took a cheerful view of all things; he +thanked God for small as well as great things, even for tea. 'I am +glad,' he used to say, 'I was not born before tea.' His domestic +affections were strong, and were heartily reciprocated.</p> +<p>General society he divided into classes: 'The noodles—very +numerous and well known. The affliction woman—a valuable +member of society, generally an ancient spinster in small +circumstances, who packs up her bag and sets off in cases of +illness or death, "to comfort, flatter, fetch, and carry." The +up-takers—people who see, from their fingers' ends and go +through a room touching everything. The clearers—who begin at +a dish and go on tasting and eating till it is finished. The +sheep-walkers—who go on for ever on the beaten track. The +lemon-squeezers of society—who act on you as a wet blanket; +see a cloud in sunshine; the nails of the coffin in the ribbons of +a bride; extinguish all hope; people, whose very look sets your +teeth on an edge. The let-well-aloners, cousin-german to the +noodles—yet a variety, and who are afraid to act, and think +it safer to stand still. Then the washerwomen—very numerous! +who always say, "Well, if ever I put on my best bonnet, 'tis sure +to rain," &c.</p> +<p>'Besides this there is a very large class of people always +treading on your gouty foot, or talking in your deaf ear, or asking +you to give them something with your lame hand,' &c.</p> +<p>During the autumn of the year 1844, Sydney Smith felt the +death-stroke approaching. 'I am so weak, both in body and mind,' he +said, 'that I believe if the knife were put into my hand, I should +not have strength enough to stick it into a Dissenter.' In October +he became seriously ill. 'Ah! Charles,' he said to General Fox +(when he was being kept very low), 'I wish they would allow me even +the wing of a roasted butterfly,' He dreaded sorrowful faces around +him; but confided to his old servant, Annie Kay—and to her +alone—his sense of his danger.</p> +<p>Almost the last person Sydney Smith saw was his beloved brother +Bobus, who followed him to the grave a fortnight after he had been +laid in the tomb.</p> +<p>He lingered till the 22nd of February, 1845. His son closed his +eyes. His last act was, bestowing on a poverty-stricken clergyman a +living.</p> +<p>He was buried at Kensal Green, where his eldest son, Douglas, +had been interred.</p> +<p>It has been justly and beautifully said of Sydney Smith, that +Christianity was not a dogma with him, but a practical and most +beneficent rule of life.</p> +<p>As a clergyman, he was liberal, practical, staunch; free from +the latitudinarian principles of Hoadley, as from the bigotry of +Laud. His wit was the wit of a virtuous, a decorous man; it had +pungency without venom; humour without indelicacy; and was copious +without being tiresome.</p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h3><a name="Dodington">GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON, LORD +MELCOMBE.</a></h3> +<blockquote>A Dinner-giving lordly Poet.—A Misfortune for a +Man of Society.— Brandenburgh House.—'The Diversions of +the Morning.'—Johnson's Opinion of Foote—Churchill and +'The Rosciad.'—Personal Ridicule in its Proper +Light.—Wild Specimen of the Poet.—Walpole on +Dodington's 'Diary.'—The best Commentary on a Man's +Life.—Leicester House.—Grace Boyle,—Elegant Modes +of passing Time.—A sad Day.—What does Dodington come +here for?— The Veteran Wit, Beau, and +Politician.—'Defend us from our Executors and +Editors.'</blockquote> +<p>It would have been well for Lord Melcombe's memory, Horace +Walpole remarks, 'if his fame had been suffered to rest on the +tradition of his wit, and the evidence of his poetry.' And in the +present day, that desirable result has come to pass. We remember +Bubb Dodington chiefly as the courtier whose person, houses, and +furniture were replete with costly ostentation, so as to provoke +the satire of Foote, who brought him on the stage under the name of +Sir Thomas Lofty in 'The Patron,'</p> +<p>We recall him most as '<i>l'Amphytrion chez qui on dine</i>;' +'My Lord of Melcombe,' as Mallet says—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'Whose soups and sauces duly season'd,</p> +<p>Whose wit well tim'd and sense well reason'd,</p> +<p>Give Burgundy a brighter stain,</p> +<p>And add new flavour to Champagne.'</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Who now cares much for the court intrigues which severed Sir +Robert Walpole and Bubb Dodington? Who now reads without disgust +the annals of that famous quarrel between George II. and his son, +during which each party devoutly wished the other dead? Who minds +whether the time-serving Bubb Dodington went over to Lord Bute or +not? Who cares whether his hopes of political preferment were or +were not gratified? Bubb Dodington was, in fact, the dinner-giving +lordly poet, to whom even the saintly Young could write:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'You give protection,—I a worthless strain.</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Born in 1691, the accomplished courtier answered, till he had +attained the age of twenty-nine, to the not very euphonious name of +Bubb. Then a benevolent uncle with a large estate died, and left +him, with his lands, the more exalted surname of Dodington. He +sprang, however, from an obscure family, who had settled in +Dorchester; but that disadvantage, which, according to Lord +Brougham's famous pamphlet, acts so fatally on a young man's +advancement in English public life, was obviated, as most things +are, by a great fortune.</p> +<p>Mr. Bubb had been educated at Oxford: at the age of twenty-four +he was elected M.P. for Winchelsea; he was soon afterwards named +Envoy at the Court of Spain, but returned home after his accession +of wealth to provincial honours, and became Lord-Lieutenant of +Somerset. Nay, poets began to worship him, and even pronounced him +to be well born:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'Descended from old British sires;</p> +<p>Great Dodington to kings allied;</p> +<p>My patron then, my laurels' pride.</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>It would be consolatory to find that it is only Welsted who thus +profaned the Muse by this abject flattery, were it not recorded +that Thomson dedicated to him his 'Summer.' The dedication was +prompted by Lord Binning; and 'Summer' was published in 1727 when +Dodington was one of the Lords of the Treasury, as well as Clerk of +the Pells in Ireland, It seemed, therefore, worth while for Thomson +to pen such a passage as this:—'Your example sir, has +recommended poetry with the greatest grace to the example of those +who are engag'd in the most active scenes of life; and this, though +confessedly the least considerable of those qualities that dignify +your character, must be particularly pleasing to <i>one</i> whose +only hope of being introduced to your regard is thro' the +recommendation of an art in which you are a master.' Warton adding +this tribute:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'To praise a Dodington rash bard! forbear.</p> +<p>What can thy weak and ill-tun'd voice avail,</p> +<p>When on that theme both Young and Thomson fail?'</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Yet even when midway in his career, Dodington, in the famous +political caricature called 'The Motion,' is depicted as 'the +Spaniel,' sitting between the Duke of Argyle's legs, whilst his +grace is driving a coach at full speed to the Treasury, with a +sword instead of a whip in his hand, with Lord Chesterfield as +postilion, and Lord Cobham as a footman, holding on by the straps: +even then the servile though pompous character of this true man of +the world was comprehended completely; and Bubb Dodington's +characteristics never changed.</p> +<p>In his political life, Dodington was so selfish, obsequious, and +versatile as to incur universal opprobrium; he had also another +misfortune for a man of society,—he became fat and lethargic. +'My brother Ned' Horace Walpole remarks, 'says he is grown of less +consequence, though more weight.' And on another occasion, speaking +of a majority in the House of Lords, he adds, 'I do not count +Dodington, who must now always be in the minority, for no majority +will accept him.'</p> +<p>Whilst, however, during the factious reign of George II., the +town was declared, even by Horace to be wondrous dull; operas +unfrequented, plays not in fashion, and amours old as marriages. +Bubb Dodington, with his wealth and profusion, contrived always to +be in vogue as a host, while he was at a discount as a politician. +Politics and literature are the highroads in England to that +much-craved-for distinction, an admittance into the great world; +and Dodington united these passports in his own person: he was a +poetaster, and wrote political pamphlets. The latter were published +and admired: the poems were referred to as 'very pretty love +verses,' by Lord Lyttelton, and were never published—and +never ought to have been published, it is stated.</p> +<p>His <i>bon mots</i>, his sallies, his fortunes and places, and +continual dangling at court, procured Bubo, as Pope styled him, one +pre-eminence. His dinners at Hammersmith were the most +<i>recherchés</i> in the metropolis. Every one remembers +Brandenburgh House, when the hapless Caroline of Brunswick held her +court there, and where her brave heart,—burdened probably +with some sins, as well as with endless regrets,—broke at +last. It had been the residence of the beautiful and famous +Margravine of Anspach, whose loveliness in vain tempts us to +believe her innocent, in despite of facts. Before those +eras—the presence of the Margravine, whose infidelities were +almost avowed, and the abiding of the queen, whose errors had, at +all events, verged on the very confines of guilt—the house +was owned by Dodington. There he gave dinners; there he gratified a +passion for display, which was puerile; there he indulged in +eccentricities which almost implied insanity; there he concocted +his schemes for court advancement; and there, later in life, he +contributed some of the treasures of his wit to dramatic +literature. 'The Wishes,' a comedy, by Bentley, was supposed to owe +much of its point to the brilliant wit of Dodington<a id= +"footnotetag14" name="footnotetag14"></a><a href= +"#footnote14"><sup>14</sup></a>.</p> +<p>At Brandenburgh House, a nobler presence than that of Dodington +still haunted the groves and alleys, for Prince Rupert had once +owned it. When Dodington bought it, he gave it—in jest, we +must presume—the name of La Trappe; and it was not called +Brandenburgh House until the fair and frail Margravine came to live +there.</p> +<p>Its gardens were long famous; and in the time of Dodington were +the scene of revel. Thomas Bentley, the son of Richard Bentley, the +celebrated critic, had written a play called 'The Wishes;' and +during the summer of 1761 it was acted at Drury Lane, and met with +the especial approbation of George III., who sent the author, +through Lord Bute, a present of two hundred guineas as a tribute to +the good sentiments of the production.</p> +<p>This piece, which, in spite of its moral tendency, has died out, +whilst plays of less virtuous character have lived, was rehearsed +in the gardens of Brandenburgh House. Bubb Dodington associated +much with those who give fame; but he courted amongst them also +those who could revenge affronts by bitter ridicule. Among the +actors and literati who were then sometimes at Brandenburg House +were Foote and Churchill; capital boon companions, but, as it +proved, dangerous foes.'</p> +<p>Endowed with imagination; with a mind enriched by classical and +historical studies; possessed of a brilliant wit, Bubb Dodington +was, nevertheless, in the sight of some men, ridiculous. Whilst the +rehearsals of 'The Wishes' went on, Foote was noting down all the +peculiarities of the Lord of Brandenburgh House, with a view to +bring them to account in his play of 'The Patron.' Lord Melcombe +was an aristocratic Dombey: stultified by his own self-complacency, +he dared to exhibit his peculiarities before the English +Aristophanes. It was an act of imprudence, for Foote had long +before (in 1747) opened the little theatre of the Haymarket with a +sort of monologue play, 'The Diversions of the Morning,' in which +he convulsed his audience with the perfection of a mimicry never +beheld before, and so wonderful, that even the persons of his +models seemed to stand before the amazed spectators.</p> +<p>These entertainments, in which the contriver was at once the +author and performer, have been admirably revived by Mathews and +others; and in another line, by the lamented Albert Smith. The +Westminster justices, furious and alarmed, opposed the daring +performance, on which Foote changed the name of his piece, and +called it 'Mr. Foote giving Tea to his Friends,' himself still the +sole actor, and changing with Proteus-like celerity from one to the +other. Then came his 'Auction of Pictures,' and Sir Thomas de Veil, +one of his enemies, the justices, was introduced. Orator Henley and +Cock the auctioneer figured also; and year after year the town was +enchanted by that which is most gratifying to a polite audience, +the finished exhibition of faults and follies. One stern voice was +raised in reprobation, that of Samuel Johnson: he, at all events, +had a due horror of buffoons; but even he owned himself +vanquished.</p> +<p>'The first time I was in Foote's company was at Fitzherbert's. +Having no good opinion of the fellow, I was resolved not to be +pleased: and it is very difficult to please a man against his will. +I went on eating my dinner pretty sullenly, affecting not to mind +him; but the dog was so very comical, that I was obliged to lay +down my knife and fork, throw myself back in my chair, and fairly +laugh it out. Sir, he was irresistible.' Consoled by Foote's +misfortunes and ultimate complicated misery for his lessened +importance, Bubb Dodington still reigned, however, in the hearts of +some learned votaries. Richard Bentley, the critic, compared him to +Lord Halifax—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'That Halifax, my Lord, as you do yet,</p> +<p>Stood forth the friend of poetry and wit,</p> +<p>Sought silent merit in the secret cell,</p> +<p>And Heav'n, nay even man, repaid him well.</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>A more remorseless foe, however, than Foote appeared in the +person of Charles Churchill, the wild and unclerical son of a poor +curate of Westminster. Foote laughed Bubb Dodington down, but +Churchill perpetuated the satire; for Churchill was wholly +unscrupulous, and his faults had been reckless and desperate. +Wholly unfit for a clergyman, he had taken orders, obtained a +curacy in Wales at £30 a year—not being able to +subsist, took to keeping a cider-cellar, became a sort of bankrupt, +and quitting Wales, succeeded to the curacy of his father, who had +just died. Still famine haunted his home; Churchill took, +therefore, to teaching young ladies to read and write, and +conducted himself in the boarding-school where his duties lay, with +wonderful propriety. He had married at seventeen; but even that +step had not protected his morals: he fell into abject poverty. +Lloyd, father of his friend Robert Lloyd, then second master of +Westminster, made an arrangement with his creditors. Young Lloyd +had published a poem called 'The Actor;' Churchill, in imitation, +now produced 'The Rosciad,' and Bubb Dodington was one whose +ridiculous points were salient in those days of personality. 'The +Rosciad' had a signal success, which completed the ruin of its +author: he became a man of the town, forsook the wife of his youth, +and abandoned the clerical character. There are few sights more +contemptible than that of a clergyman who has cast off his +profession, or whose profession has cast him off. But Churchill's +talents for a time kept him from utter destitution. Bubb Doddington +may have been consoled by finding that he shared the fate of Dr. +Johnson, who had spoken slightingly of Churchill's works, and who +shone forth, therefore, in 'The Ghost,' a later poem, as Dr. +Pomposo.</p> +<p>Richard Cumberland, the dramatist, drew a portrait of Lord +Melcombe, which is said to have been taken from the life; but +perhaps the most faithful delineation of Bubb Dodington's character +was furnished by himself in his 'Diary;' in which, as it has been +well observed, he 'unveiled the nakedness of his mind, and +displayed himself as a courtly compound of mean compliance and +political prostitution.' It may, in passing, be remarked, that few +men figure well in an autobiography; and that Cumberland himself, +proclaimed by Dr. Johnson to be a 'learned, ingenious, accomplished +gentleman,' adding, 'the want of company is an inconvenience, but +Mr. Cumberland is a million:' in spite of this eulogium, Cumberland +has betrayed in his own autobiography unbounded vanity, +worldliness, and an undue estimation of his own perishable fame. +After all, amusing as personalities must always be, neither the +humours of Foote, the vigorous satire of Churchill, nor the careful +limning of Cumberland, whilst they cannot be ranked among talents +of the highest order, imply a sort of social treachery. The +delicious little colloquy between Boswell and Johnson places low +personal ridicule in its proper light.</p> +<p>Boswell.—'Foote has a great deal of humour.' +Johnson.—'Yes, sir.' Boswell.—'He has a singular talent +of exhibiting characters.' Johnson—'Sir. it is not a +talent—it is a vice; it is what others abstain from. It is +not comedy, which exhibits the character of a species—as that +of a miser gathered from many misers—it is farce, which +exhibits individuals.' Boswell.—'Did not he think of +exhibiting you, sir?' Johnson.—'Sir, fear restrained him; he +knew I would have broken his bones. I would have saved him the +trouble of cutting off a leg; I would not have left him a leg to +cut off.'</p> +<p>Few annals exist of the private life of Bubb Dodington, but +those few are discreditable.</p> +<p>Like most men of his time, and like many men of all times, +Dodington was entangled by an unhappy and perplexing intrigue.</p> +<p>There was a certain 'black woman,' as Horace Walpole calls a +Mrs. Strawbridge, whom Bubb Dodington admired. This handsome +brunette lived in a corner house of Saville Row, in Piccadilly, +where Dodington visited her. The result of their intimacy was his +giving this lady a bond of ten thousand pounds to be paid if he +married any one else. The real object of his affections was a Mrs. +Behan, with whom he lived seventeen years, and whom, on the death +of Mrs. Strawbridge, he eventually married.</p> +<p>Among Bubb Dodington's admirers and disciples was Paul +Whitehead, a wild specimen of the poet, rake, satirist, dramatist, +all in one; and what was quite in character, a Templar to boot. +Paul—so named from being born on that Saint's day—wrote +one or two pieces which brought him an ephemeral fame, such as the +'State Dunces,' and the 'Epistle to Dr. Thompson,' 'Manners,' a +satire, and the 'Gymnasiad,' a mock heroic poem, intended to +ridicule the passion for boxing, then prevalent. Paul Whitehead, +who died in 1774, was an infamous, but not, in the opinion of +Walpole, a despicable poet, yet Churchill has consigned him to +everlasting infamy as a reprobate, in these lines:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>'May I (can worse disgrace on manhood fall?)</p> +<p>Be born a Whitebread, and baptised a Paul.'</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Paul was not, however, worse than his satirist Churchill; and +both of these wretched men were members of a society long the theme +of horror and disgust, even after its existence had ceased to be +remembered, except by a few old people. This was the 'Hell-fire +Club,' held in appropriate orgies at Medmenham Abbey, +Buckinghamshire. The profligate Sir Francis Dashwood, Wilkes, and +Churchill, were amongst its most prominent members.</p> +<p>With such associates, and living in a court where nothing but +the basest passions reigned and the lowest arts prevailed, we are +inclined to accord with the descendant of Bubb Dodington, the +editor of his 'Diary,' Henry Penruddocke Wyndham, who declares that +all Lord Melcombe's political conduct was 'wholly directed by the +base motives of vanity, selfishness, and avarice.' Lord Melcombe +seems to have been a man of the world of the very worst +<i>calibre</i>; sensual, servile, and treacherous; ready, during +the lifetime of his patron, Frederick, Prince of Wales, to go any +lengths against the adverse party of the Pelhams, that Prince's +political foes—eager, after the death of Frederick, to court +those powerful men with fawning servility.</p> +<p>The famous 'Diary' of Bubb Dodington supplies the information +from which these conclusions have been drawn. Horace Walpole, who +knew Dodington well, describes how he read with avidity the +'Diary,' which was published in 1784.</p> +<p>'A nephew of Lord Melcombe's heirs has published that Lord's +"Diary." Indeed it commences in 1749, and I grieve it was not dated +twenty years later. However, it deals in topics that are twenty +times more familiar and fresh to my memory than any passage that +has happened within these six months I wish I could convey it to +you. Though drawn by his own hand, and certainly meant to flatter +himself, it is a truer portrait than any of his hirelings would +have given. Never was such a composition of vanity, versatility, +and servility. In short, there is but one feature wanting in it, +his wit, of which in the whole book there are not three +sallies.'</p> +<p>The editor of this 'Diary' remarks, 'that he will no doubt be +considered a very extraordinary editor; the practice of whom has +generally been to prefer flattery to truth, and partiality to +justice.' To understand, not the flattery which his contemporaries +heaped upon Bubb Dodington, but the opprobrium with which they +loaded his memory—to comprehend not his merits but his +demerits—it is necessary to take a brief survey of his +political life from the commencement. He began life, as we have +seen, as a servile adherent of Sir Robert Walpole. A political +epistle to the Minister was the prelude to a temporary alliance +only, for in 1737, Bubb went over to the adverse party of Leicester +House, and espoused the cause of Frederick, Prince of Wales, +against his royal father He was therefore dismissed from the +Treasury. When Sir Robert fell, Bubb expected to rise, but his +expectations of preferment were not realized. He attacked the new +Administration forthwith, and succeeded so far in becoming +important that he was made Treasurer of the Navy; a post which he +resigned in 1749, and which he held again in 1755, but which he +lost the next year. On the accession of George III., he was not +ashamed to appear altogether in a new character, as the friend of +Lord Bute; he was, therefore, advanced to the peerage by the title +of Baron of Melcombe Regis, in 1761. The honour was enjoyed for one +short year only; and on the 28th of July, 1762, Bubb Dodington +expired. Horace Walpole, in his 'Royal and Noble Authors,' +complains that 'Dodington's "Diary" was mangled, in compliment, +before it was imparted to the public.' We cannot therefore judge of +what the 'Diary' was before, as the editor avows that every +anecdote was cut out, and all the little gossip so illustrative of +character and manners which would have brightened its dull pages, +fell beneath the power of a merciless pair of scissors. Mr. +Penruddocke Wyndham conceives, however, that he was only doing +justice to society in these suppressions. 'It would,' he says, 'be +<i>no</i> entertainment to the reader to be informed who daily +dined with his lordship, or whom he daily met at the table of other +people.'</p> +<p>Posterity thinks differently: a knowledge of a man's associates +forms the best commentary on his life; and there is much reason to +rejoice that all biographers are not like Mr. Penruddocke Wyndham. +Bubb Dodington, more especially, was a man of society: inferior as +a literary man, contemptible as a politician, it was only at the +head of his table that he was agreeable and brilliant. He was, in +fact, a man who had no domestic life; a courtier, like Lord Hervey, +but without Lord Hervey's consistency. He was, in truth, a type of +that era in England: vulgar in aims; dissolute in conduct; +ostentatious, vain-glorious—of a low, ephemeral ambition; but +at the same time talented, acute, and lavish to the lettered. The +public is now the patron of the gifted. What writer cares for +individual opinion, except as it tends to sweep up the gross amount +of public blame or censure? What publisher will consent to +undertake a work because some lord or lady recommended it to his +notice? The reviewer is greater in the commonwealth of letters than +the man of rank.</p> +<p>But in these days it was otherwise; and they who, in the +necessities of the times, did what they could to advance the +interest of the <i>belles lettres</i>, deserve not to be +forgotten.</p> +<p>It is with a feeling of sickness that we open the pages of this +great Wit's 'Diary,' and attempt to peruse the sentences in which +the most grasping selfishness is displayed. We follow him to +Leicester House, that ancient tenement—(wherefore pulled +down, except to erect on its former site the narrowest of streets, +does not appear): that former home of the Sydneys had not always +been polluted by the dissolute, heartless <i>clique</i> who +composed the court of Frederick, Prince of Wales. Its chambers had +once been traversed by Henry Sydney, by Algernon, his brother. It +was their <i>home</i>—their father, Robert Sydney, Earl of +Leicester, having lived there. The lovely Dorothy Sydney, Waller's +Saccharissa, once, in all purity and grace, had danced in that +gallery where the vulgar, brazen Lady Middlesex, and her compliant +lord, afterwards flattered the weakest of princes, Frederick. In +old times Leicester House had stood on Lammas land—land in +the spirit of the old charities, open to the poor after +Lammas-tide; and even 'the Right Hon. the Earl of +Leicester'—as an old document hath it—was obliged, if +<i>he</i> chose to turn out his cows or horses on that appropriated +land, to pay a rent for it to the overseers of St. Martin's parish, +then really 'in the fields.' And here this nobleman not only dwelt +in all state himself, but let, or lent his house to persons whose +memory seems to hallow even Leicester Fields. Elizabeth of Bohemia, +after what was to her indeed 'life's fitful fever,' died at +Leicester House. It became then, temporarily, the abode of +ambassadors. Colbert, in the time of Charles II., occupied the +place; Prince Eugène, in 1712, held his residence here; and +the rough soldier, famous for all absence of tact—brave, +loyal-hearted, and coarse—lingered at Leicester House in +hopes of obstructing the peace between England and France.</p> +<p>All that was good and great fled for ever from Leicester House +at the instant that George II., when Prince of Wales, was driven by +his royal father from St. James's, and took up his abode in it +until the death of George I. The once honoured home of the Sydneys +henceforth becomes loathsome in a moral sense. Here William, Duke +of Cumberland—the hero, as court flatterers called +him—the butcher, as the poor Jacobite designated him—of +Culloden, first saw the light. Peace and respectability then +dignified the old house for ever. Prince Frederick was its next +inmate: here the Princess of Wales, the mother of George III., had +her lying-in, and her royal husband held his public tables; and at +these and in every assembly, as well as in private, one figure is +conspicuous.</p> +<p>Grace Boyle—for she unworthily bore that great +name—was the daughter and heiress of Richard, Viscount +Shannon. She married Lord Middlesex, bringing him a fortune of +thirty thousand pounds. Short, plain, 'very yellow,' as her +contemporaries affirm, with a head full of Greek and Latin, and +devoted to music and painting; it seems strange that Frederick +should have been attracted to one far inferior to his own princess +both in mind and person. But so it was, for in those days every man +liked his neighbour's wife better than his own. Imitating the +forbearance of her royal mother-in-law, the princess tolerated such +of her husband's mistresses as did not interfere in politics: Lady +Middlesex was the 'my good Mrs. Howard,' of Leicester House. She +was made Mistress of the Robes: her favour soon 'grew,' as the +shrewd Horace remarks, 'to be rather more than Platonic.' She lived +with the royal pair constantly, and sat up till five o'clock in the +morning at their suppers; and Lord Middlesex saw and submitted to +all that was going on with the loyalty and patience of a +<i>Georgian</i> courtier. Lady Middlesex was a docile politician, +and on that account, retained her position probably long after she +had lost her influence.</p> +<p>Her name appears constantly in the 'Diary,' out of which +everything amusing has been carefully expunged.</p> +<p>'Lady Middlesex, Lord Bathurst, Mr. Breton, and I, waited on +their Royal Highnesses to Spitalfields, to see the manufacture of +silk.' In the afternoon off went the same party to Norwood Forest, +in private coaches, to see a 'settlement of gypsies.' Then +returning, went to find out Bettesworth, the conjuror; but not +discovering him, went in search of the little Dutchman. Were +disappointed in that; but 'concluded,' relates Bubb Dodington, 'the +peculiarities of this day by supping with Mrs. Cannon, the +princess's <i>midwife</i>.'</p> +<p>All these elegant modes of passing the time were not only for +the sake of Lady Middlesex, but, it was said, of her friend, Mrs. +Granville, one of the Maids of Honour, daughter of the first Lord +Lansdown, the poet. This young lady, Eliza Granville, was scarcely +pretty: a far, red-haired girl.</p> +<p>All this thoughtless, if not culpable, gallantry was abruptly +checked by the rude hand of death. During the month of March, +Frederick was attacked with illness, having caught cold. Very +little apprehension was expressed at first, but, about eleven days +after his first attack, he expired. Half an hour before his death, +he had asked to see some friends, and had called for coffee and +bread and butter: a fit of coughing came on, and he died instantly +from suffocation. An abscess, which had been forming in his side, +had burst; nevertheless, his two physicians, Wilmot and Lee, 'knew +nothing of his distemper.' According to Lord Melcombe, who thus +refers to their blunders, 'They declared, half an hour before his +death, that his pulse was like a man's in perfect health. They +either would not see or did not know the consequences of the black +thrush, which appeared in his mouth, and quite down in his throat. +Their ignorance, or their knowledge of his disorder, renders them +equally inexcusable for not calling in other assistance.'</p> +<p>The consternation in the prince's household was great, not for +his life, but for the confusion into which politics were thrown by +his death. After his relapse, and until just before his death, the +princess never suffered any English, man or woman, above the degree +of valet-de-chambre to see him; nor did she herself see any one of +her household until absolutely necessary. After the death of his +eldest born, George II. vented his diabolical jealousy upon the +cold remains of one thus cut off in the prime of life. The funeral +was ordered to be on the model of that of Charles II., but private +counter-orders were issued to reduce the ceremonial to the smallest +degree of respect that could be paid.</p> +<p>On the 13th of April, 1751, the body of the prince was entombed +in Henry VII.'s chapel. Except the lords appointed to hold the +pall, and attend the chief mourner, when the attendants were called +over in their ranks, there was not a <i>single</i> English lord, +not <i>one</i> bishop, and only one Irish lord (Lord Limerick), and +three sons of peers. Sir John Rushout and Dodington were the only +privy counsellors who followed. It rained heavily, but no covering +was provided for the procession. The service was performed without +organ or anthem. 'Thus,' observes Bubb Dodington, 'ended this sad +day.'</p> +<p>Although the prince left a brother and sisters, the Duke of +Somerset acted as chief mourner. The king hailed the event of the +prince's death as a relief, which was to render happy his remaining +days; and Bubb Dodington hastened, in a few months, to offer to the +Pelhams 'his friendship and attachment.' His attendance at court +was resumed, although George II. could not endure him; and the old +Walpolians, nick-named the Black-tan, were also averse to him.</p> +<p>Such were Bubb Dodington's <i>actions</i>. His expressions, on +occasion of the prince's death, were in a very different tone.</p> +<p>'We have lost,' he wrote to Sir Horace Mann, 'the delight and +ornament of the age he lived in,—the expectations of the +public: in this light I have lost more than any subject in England; +but this is light,—public advantages confined to myself do +not, ought not, to weigh with me. But we have lost the refuge of +private distress—the balm of the afflicted heart the shelter +of the miserable against the fury of private adversity; the arts, +the graces, the anguish, the misfortunes of society, have lost +their patron and their remedy.</p> +<p>'I have lost my companion—my protector—the friend +that loved me, that condescended to hear, to communicate, to share +in all the pleasures and pains of the human heart: where the social +affections and emotions of the mind only presided without regard to +the infinite disproportion of my rank and condition. This is a +wound that cannot, ought not to heal. If I pretended to fortitude +here, I should be infamous—a monster of ingratitude—and +unworthy of all consolation, if I was not inconsolable.'</p> +<p>'Thank you,' writes the shrewd Horace Walpole, addressing Sir +Horace Mann, 'for the transcript from <i>Bulb de Tristibus</i>. I +will keep your secret, though I am persuaded that a man who had +composed such a funeral oration on his master had himself fully +intended that its flowers should not bloom and wither in +obscurity.'</p> +<p>Well might George II., seeing him go to court say: 'I see +Dodington here sometimes, what does he come for?'</p> +<p>It was, however, clearly seen what he went for, when, in 1753, +two years after the death of his 'benefactor,' Dodington humbly +offered His Majesty his services in the house, and 'five members,' +for the rest of his life, if His Majesty would give Mr. Pelham +leave to employ him for His Majesty's service. Nevertheless he +continued to advise with the Princess of Wales, and to drop into +her house as if it had been a sister's house—sitting on a +stool near the fireside, and listening to her accounts of her +children.</p> +<p>In the midst of these intrigues for favour on the part of +Dodington, Mr. Pelham died, and was succeeded by his brother, the +Duke of Newcastle, the issue of whose administration is well +known.</p> +<p>In 1760 death again befriended the now veteran wit, beau and +politician. George II. died; and the intimacy which Dodington had +always taken care to preserve between himself and the Princess of +Wales, ended advantageously for him; and he instantly, in spite of +all his former professions to Pelham, joined hand and heart with +that minister, from whom he obtained a peerage. This, as we have +seen, was not long enjoyed. Lord Melcombe, as this able, intriguing +man was now styled, died on the 28th of July, 1762; and with him +terminated the short-lived distinction for which he had sacrificed +even a decent pretext of principle and consistency.</p> +<p>So general has been the contempt felt for his character, that it +seems almost needless to assert that Bubb Dodington was eminently +to be despised. Nothing much more severe can be said of him than +the remarks of Horace Walpole—upon his 'Diary;' in which he +observes that Dodington records little but what is to his own +disgrace; as if he thought that the world would forgive his +inconsistencies as readily as he forgave himself. 'Had he adopted,' +Horace well observes, 'the French title "<i>Confessions</i>," it +would have seemed to imply some kind of penitence.'</p> +<p>But vain-glory engrossed him: 'He was determined to raise an +altar to himself, and for want of burnt offerings, lighted the +pyre, like a great author (Rousseau), with his own character.'</p> +<p>It was said by the same acute observer, both of Lord Hervey and +of Bubb Dodington, that they were the only two persons he ever knew +that were always aiming at wit and never finding it.' And here, it +seems, most that can be testified in praise of a heartless, clever +man, must be summed up.</p> +<p>Lord Melcombe's property, with the exception of a few legacies, +devolved upon his cousin Thomas Wyndham, of Hammersmith, by whom +his Lordship's papers, letters, and poems, were bequeathed to Henry +Penruddocke Wyndham, with an injunction, that only such as 'might +do honour to his memory should be made public.'</p> +<p>After this, in addition to the true saying, defend us from our +friends one may exclaim, 'defend us from our executors and +editors.'</p> +<hr class="full"> +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1" name= +"footnote1"></a> <b>Footnote 1</b>: <a href= +"#footnotetag1">(return)</a> +<p>Life by Warburton, p 70.</p> +</blockquote> +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote2" name= +"footnote2"></a> <b>Footnote 2</b>: <a href= +"#footnotetag2">(return)</a> +<p>Life of Warburton, p. 63.</p> +</blockquote> +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote3" name= +"footnote3"></a> <b>Footnote 3</b>: <a href= +"#footnotetag3">(return)</a> +<p>Gray migrated to Pembroke in 1756.</p> +</blockquote> +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote4" name= +"footnote4"></a> <b>Footnote 4</b>: <a href= +"#footnotetag4">(return)</a> +<p>The accomplished novelist, Mrs. Gore, famous for her facility, +used to say that a three-volume novel just 'dripped from her +pen.'</p> +</blockquote> +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote5" name= +"footnote5"></a> <b>Footnote 5</b>: <a href= +"#footnotetag5">(return)</a> +<p>Sir Robert Walpole purchased a house and garden at Chelsea in +1722, near the college, adjoining Gough House.—Cunningham's +'London.'</p> +</blockquote> +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote6" name= +"footnote6"></a> <b>Footnote 6</b>: <a href= +"#footnotetag6">(return)</a> +<p>Afterwards the well-known and dissolute Marquis of Hertford.</p> +</blockquote> +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote7" name= +"footnote7"></a> <b>Footnote 7</b>: <a href= +"#footnotetag7">(return)</a> +<p>None of the addresses sent in having given satisfaction, Lord +Byron was requested to write one, which he did.</p> +</blockquote> +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote8" name= +"footnote8"></a> <b>Footnote 8</b>: <a href= +"#footnotetag8">(return)</a> +<p>Another version is that Tom replied: 'You don't happen to have +it about you, sir, do you?'</p> +</blockquote> +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote9" name= +"footnote9"></a> <b>Footnote 9</b>: <a href= +"#footnotetag9">(return)</a> +<p>Lord Edward Fitzgerald was one of the most devoted of her +admirers: he chose his wife, Pamela, because she resembled Mrs. +Sheridan.—See Moore's Life of Lord Edward.</p> +</blockquote> +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote10" name= +"footnote10"></a> <b>Footnote 10</b>: <a href= +"#footnotetag10">(return)</a> +<p>Mr. Jesse says that the Beau's grandfather was a servant of Mr. +Charles Monson, brother to the first Lord Monson.</p> +</blockquote> +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote11" name= +"footnote11"></a> <b>Footnote 11</b>: <a href= +"#footnotetag11">(return)</a> +<p>Another version, given by Captain Jesse, represents this to have +taken place at a ball given at the Argyle Rooms in July, 1813, by +Lord Alvanley, Sir Henry Miklmav, Mr. Pierrepoint, and Mr. +Brummell.</p> +</blockquote> +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote12" name= +"footnote12"></a> <b>Footnote 12</b>: <a href= +"#footnotetag12">(return)</a> +<p>Dr. James Hook, Dean of Worcester, was father to Dr. Walter +Farquhar Hook, now the excellent Dean of Chichester, late Vicar of +Leeds.</p> +</blockquote> +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote13" name= +"footnote13"></a> <b>Footnote 13</b>: <a href= +"#footnotetag13">(return)</a> +<p>Alluding to Lady Scott.</p> +</blockquote> +<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote14" name= +"footnote14"></a> <b>Footnote 14</b>: <a href= +"#footnotetag14">(return)</a> +<p>See Walpole's 'Royal and Noble Authors'</p> +</blockquote> +<hr class="full"> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wits and Beaux of Society +by Grace & Philip Wharton + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WITS AND BEAUX OF SOCIETY *** + +***** This file should be named 10797-h.htm or 10797-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/7/9/10797/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Antje Benter, Sandra Brown and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Wits and Beaux of Society + Volume 2 + +Author: Grace & Philip Wharton + +Release Date: January 22, 2004 [EBook #10797] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WITS AND BEAUX OF SOCIETY *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Antje Benter, Sandra Brown and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + + + + + +THE + +WITS AND BEAUX OF SOCIETY + + +BY + +GRACE AND PHILIP WHARTON + + +EDITED + +BY + +JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY, M. P. + + +_And the original illustrations by_ + +H. K. BROWNE AND JAMES GODWIN + + +TWO VOLS.--VOL. II. + + +1890 + + + +CONTENTS VOL. II. + + +HORACE WALPOLE. + +The Commoners of England.--Horace's Regret for the Death of his Mother.-- +Little Horace in Arlington Street.--Introduced to George I.-- +Characteristic Anecdote of George I.--Walpole's Education.--Schoolboy +Days.-- Boyish Friendships.--Companionship of Gray.--A Dreary Doom.-- +Walpole's Description of Youthful Delights.--Anecdote of Pope and +Frederic of Wales.--The Pomfrets.--Sir Thomas Robinson's Ball.--An +Admirable Scene.--Political Squibs.--Sir Robert's Retirement from +Office.--The Splendid Mansion of Houghton.--Sir Robert's Love of +Gardening.--What we owe to the 'Grandes Tours.'--George Vertue.--Men of +One Idea.--The Noble Picture-gallery at Houghton.--The 'Market Pieces.'-- +Sir Robert's Death.--The Granville Faction.--A very good Quarrel.-- +Twickenham.-- Strawberry Hill.--The Recluse of Strawberry.--Portraits of +the Digby Family.--Sacrilege.--Mrs. Darner's Models.--The Long Gallery at +Strawberry.-- The Chapel.--'A Dirty Little Thing.'--The Society around +Strawberry Hill.--Anne Seymour Conway.--A Man who never Doubted.--Lady +Sophia Fermer's Marriage.--Horace in Favour.--Anecdote of Sir William +Stanhope.--A Paper House.--Walpole's Habits.--Why did he not Marry?-- +'Dowagers as Plenty as Flounders.'--Catherine Hyde, Duchess of +Queensberry.--Anecdote of Lady Granville.--Kitty Clive.--Death of Horatio +Walpole.--George, third Earl of Orford.--A Visit to Houghton.--Family +Misfortunes.--Poor Chatterton.--Walpole's Concern with Chatterton.-- +Walpole in Paris.--Anecdote of Madame Geoffrin.--'Who's that Mr. +Walpole?'-- The Miss Berrys.--Horace's two 'Straw Berries.'--Tapping a +New Reign.--The Sign of the Gothic Castle.--Growing Old with Dignity.-- +Succession to an Earldom.--Walpole's Last Hours.--Let us not be +Ungrateful. + + +GEORGE SELWYN. + +A Love of Horrors.--Anecdotes of Selwyn's Mother.--Selwyn's College +Days.--Orator Henley.--Selwyn's Blasphemous Freak.--The Profession of a +Wit.--The Thirst for Hazard.--Reynolds's Conversation-Piece.--Selwyn's +Eccentricities and Witticisms.--A most Important Communication.--An +Amateur Headsman.--The Eloquence of Indifference.--Catching a +Housebreaker.--The Family of the Selwyns.--The Man of the People.-- +Selwyn's Parliamentary Career.--True Wit.--Some of Selwyn's Witty +Sayings.--The Sovereignty of the People.--On two kinds of Wit.--Selwyn's +Home for Children.--Mie-Mie, the Little Italian.--Selwyn's Little +Companion taken from him.--His Later Days and Death. + + +RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. + +Sheridan a Dunce.--Boyish Dreams of Literary Fame.--Sheridan in Love.--A +Nest of Nightingales.--The 'Maid of Bath.'--Captivated by Genius.-- +Sheridan's Elopement with 'Cecilia.'--His Duel with Captain Matthews.-- +Standards of Ridicule.--Painful Family Estrangements.--Enters Drury +Lane.--Success of the Famous 'School for Scandal.'--Opinions of Sheridan +and his Influence.--The Literary Club.--Anecdote of Garrick's +Admittance.--Origin of the 'Rejected Addresses.'--New Flights.--Political +Ambition.--The Gaming Mania.--Almacks'.--Brookes'.--Black-balled.--Two +Versions of the Election Trick.--St. Stephen's Won.--Vocal Difficulties.-- +Leads a Double Life.--Pitt's Vulgar Attack.--Sheridan's Happy Retort-- +Grattan's Quip.--Sheridan's Sallies.--The Trial of Warren Hastings.-- +Wonderful Effect of Sheridan's Eloquence.--The Supreme Effort.--The +Star Culminates.--Native Taste for Swindling.--A Shrewd but Graceless +Oxonian.--Duns Outwitted.--The Lawyer Jockeyed.--Adventures with +Bailiffs.--Sheridan's Powers of Persuasion.--House of Commons Greek.-- +Curious Mimicry.--The Royal Boon Company.--Street Frolics at Night.-- +An Old Tale.--'All's well that ends well.'--The Fray in St. Giles'.-- +Unopened Letters.--An Odd Incident.--Reckless Extravagance,--Sporting +Ambition.--Like Father like Son.--A Severe and Witty Rebuke.-- +Intemperance.--Convivial Excesses of a Past Day.--Worth wins at last.-- +Bitter Pangs.--The Scythe of Death.--Sheridan's Second Wife.--Debts of +Honour.--Drury Lane Burnt.--The Owner's Serenity.--Misfortunes never come +Singly.--The Whitbread Quarrel.--Ruined.--Undone and almost Forsaken.-- +The Dead Man Arrested.--The Stories fixed on Sheridan.--Extempore Wit and +Inveterate Talkers. + + +BEAU BRUMMELL. + +Two popular Sciences.--'Buck Brummell' at Eton.--Investing his Capital.-- +Young Cornet Brummell.--The Beau's Studio.--The Toilet.--'Creasing +Down.'--Devotion to Dress.--A Great Gentleman.--Anecdotes of Brummell.-- +'Don't forget, Brum: Goose at Four'--Offers of Intimacy resented.-- +Never in love.--Brummell out Hunting.--Anecdote of Sheridan and +Brummell.--The Beau's Poetical Efforts.--The Value of a Crooked +Sixpence.--The Breach with the Prince of Wales.--'Who's your Fat +Friend?'--The Climax is reached.--The Black-mail of Calais.--George the +Greater and George the Less.--An Extraordinary Step.--Down the Hill of +Life.--A Miserable Old Age.--In the Hospice Du Bon Sauveur.--O Young Men +of this Age, be warned! + + +THEODORE EDWARD HOOK. + +The Greatest of Modern Wits.--What Coleridge said of Hook.--Hook's +Family.--Redeeming Points.--Versatility.--Varieties of Hoaxing.--The +Black-wafered Horse.--The Berners Street Hoax.--Success of the Scheme.-- +The Strop of Hunger.--Kitchen Examinations.--The Wrong House.--Angling +for an Invitation.--The Hackney-coach Device.--The Plots of Hook and +Mathews.--Hook's Talents as an Improvisatore.--The Gift becomes his +Bane.--Hook's Novels.--College Fun.--Baiting a Proctor.--The Punning +Faculty.--Official Life Opens.--Troublesome Pleasantry.--Charge of +Embezzlement.--Misfortune.--Doubly Disgraced.--No Effort to remove the +Stain.--Attacks on the Queen.--An Incongruous Mixture.--Specimen of +the Ramsbottom Letters.--Hook's Scurrility.---Fortune and Popularity.-- +The End. + + +SYDNEY SMITH. + +The 'Wise Wit.'--Oddities of the Father.--Verse-making at Winchester.-- +Curate Life on Salisbury Plain.--Old Edinburgh.--Its Social and +Architectural Features.--Making Love Metaphysically.--The Old Scottish +Supper.--The Men of Mark passing away.--The Band of Young Spirits.-- +Brougham's Early Tenacity.--Fitting up Conversations.--'Old School' +Ceremonies.--The Speculative Society.--A Brilliant Set.--Sydney's Opinion +of his Friends.--Holland House.--Preacher at the 'Foundling.'--Sydney's +'Grammar of Life.'--The Picture Mania.--A Living Comes at Last.--The +Wit's Ministry.--The Parsonage House at Foston-le-Clay.--Country Quiet.-- +The Universal Scratcher.--Country Life and Country Prejudice.--The +Genial Magistrate.--Glimpse of Edinburgh Society.--Mrs. Grant of Laggan.-- +A Pension Difficulty.--Jeffrey and Cockburn.--Craigcrook.--Sydney +Smith's Cheerfulness.--His Rheumatic Armour.--No Bishopric.--Becomes +Canon of St. Paul's.--Anecdotes of Lord Dudley.--A Sharp Reproof.-- +Sydney's Classification of Society.--Last Strokes of Humour. + + +GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON, LORD MELCOMBE. + +A Dinner-giving lordly Poet.--A Misfortune for a Man of Society.-- +Brandenburgh House.--'The Diversions of the Morning.'--Johnson's Opinion +of Foote.--Churchill and 'The Rosciad.'--Personal Ridicule in its Proper +Light.--Wild Specimen of the Poet.--Walpole on Dodington's 'Diary.'-- +The best Commentary on a Man's Life.--Leicester House.--Grace Boyle.-- +Elegant Modes of passing Time.--A sad Day.--What does Dodington come +here for?--The Veteran Wit, Beau, and Politician.--'Defend us from our +Executors and Editors.' + + + +SUBJECTS OF THE ILLUSTRATIONS + + +Volume II. + +"WHO'S YOUR FAT FRIEND?" + +STRAWBERRY HILL FROM THE THAMES + +SELWYN ACKNOWLEDGES "THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE" + +THE FAMOUS "LITERARY CLUB" + +A TREASURE FOR A LADY--SHERIDAN AND THE LAWYER + +THEODORE HOOK'S ENGINEERING FROLIC + +SYDNEY SMITH'S WITTY ANSWER TO THE OLD PARISH CLERK + + + +HORACE WALPOLE. + + +The Commoners of England.--Horace's Regret for the Death of his Mother.-- +'Little Horace' in Arlington Street.--Introduced to George I.-- +Characteristic Anecdote of George I.--Walpole's Education.--Schoolboy +Days.--Boyish Friendships.--Companionship of Gray.--A Dreary Doom.-- +Walpole's Description of Youthful Delights.--Anecdote of Pope and +Frederic of Wales.--The Pomfrets.--Sir Thomas Robinson's Ball.--An +Admirable Scene.--Political Squibs.--Sir Robert's Retirement from +Office.--The Splendid Mansion of Houghton.--Sir Robert's Love of +Gardening.--What we owe to the 'Grandes Tours.'--George Vertue.--Men of +One Idea.--The Noble Picture-gallery at Houghton.--The 'Market Pieces.'-- +Sir Robert's Death.--The Granville Faction.--A very good Quarrel.-- +Twickenham.--Strawberry Hill.--The Recluse of Strawberry.--Portraits of +the Digby Family.--Sacrilege.--Mrs. Darner's Models.--The Long Gallery at +Strawberry.--The Chapel.--'A Dirty Little Thing.'--The Society around +Strawberry Hill.--Anne Seymour Conway.--A Man who never Doubted.--Lady +Sophia Fermor's Marriage.--Horace in Favour.--Anecdote of Sir William +Stanhope.--A Paper House.--Walpole's Habits.--Why did he not Marry?-- +'Dowagers as Plenty as Flounders.'--Catherine Hyde, Duchess of +Queensberry.--Anecdote of Lady Granville.--Kitty Clive.--Death of Horatio +Walpole.--George, third Earl of Orford.--A Visit to Houghton.--Family +Misfortunes.--Poor Chatterton.--Walpole's Concern with Chatterton.-- +Walpole in Paris.--Anecdote of Madame Geoffrin.--'Who's that Mr. +Walpole?'--The Miss Berrys.--Horace's two 'Straw Berries.'--Tapping a New +Reign.--The Sign of the Gothic Castle.--Growing Old with Dignity.-- +Succession to an Earldom.--Walpole's Last Hours.--Let us not be +Ungrateful. + + +Had this elegant writer, remarks the compiler of 'Walpoliana,' composed +memoirs of his own life, an example authorized by eminent names, ancient +and modern, every other pen must have been dropped in despair, so true +was it that 'he united the good sense of Fontenelle with the Attic salt +and graces of Count Anthony Hamilton.' + +But 'Horace' was a man of great literary modesty, and always undervalued +his own efforts. His life was one of little incident: it is his +character, his mind, the society around him, the period in which he +shone, that give the charm to his correspondence, and the interest to +his biography. + +Besides, he had the weakness common to several other fine gentlemen who +have combined letters and _haut ton_, of being ashamed of the literary +character. The vulgarity of the court, its indifference to all that was +not party writing, whether polemical or political, cast a shade over +authors in his time. + +Never was there, beneath all his assumed Whig principles, a more +profound aristocrat than Horace Walpole. He was, by birth, one of those +well-descended English gentlemen who have often scorned the title of +noble, and who have repudiated the notion of merging their own ancient +names in modern titles. The commoners of England hold a proud +pre-eminence. When some low-born man entreated James I. to make him a +gentleman, the well-known answer was, 'Na, na, I canna! I could mak thee +a lord, but none but God Almighty can mak a gentleman.' + +Sir Robert Walpole, afterwards minister to George II., and eventually +Lord Orford, belonged to an ancient family in Norfolk; he was a third +son, and was originally destined for the Church, but the death of his +elder brethren having left him heir to the family estate, in 1698, he +succeeded to a property which ought to have yielded him L2,000 a year, +but which was crippled with various encumbrances. In order to relieve +himself of these, Sir Robert married Catherine Shorter, the +granddaughter of Sir John Shorter, who had been illegally and +arbitrarily appointed Lord Mayor of London by James II. + +Horace was her youngest child, and was born in Arlington Street, on the +24th of September, 1717, O.S. Six years afterwards he was inoculated for +the small-pox, a precaution which he records as worthy of remark, since +the operation had then only recently been introduced by Lady Mary +Wortley Montagu from Turkey. + +He is silent, however, naturally enough, as to one important point--his +real parentage. The character of his mother was by no means such as to +disprove an assertion which gained general belief: this was, that Horace +was the offspring, not of Sir Robert Walpole, but of Carr, Lord Hervey, +the eldest son of the Earl of Bristol, and the elder brother of Lord +Hervey, whose 'Memoirs of the Court of George II.' are so generally +known. + +Carr, Lord Hervey, was witty, eccentric, and sarcastic: and from him +Horace Walpole is said to have inherited his wit, his eccentricity, his +love of literature, and his profound contempt for all mankind, excepting +only a few members of a cherished and exclusive _clique_. + +In the Notes of his life which Horace Walpole left for the use of his +executor, Robert Berry, Esq., and of his daughter, Miss Berry, he makes +this brief mention of Lady Walpole:--'My mother died in 1737.' He was +then twenty years of age. + +But beneath this seemingly slight recurrence to his mother, a regret +which never left him through life was buried. Like Cowper, he mourned, +as the profoundest of all sorrows, the loss of that life-long friend. + + 'My mother, when I learn'd that thou wast dead, + Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed? + Hovered thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son? + Wretch even then, life's journey just begun.' + +Although Horace in many points bore a strong resemblance to Sir Robert +Walpole, he rarely if ever received from that jovial, heartless, able +man, any proof of affection. An outcast from his father's heart, the +whole force of the boy's love centred in his mother; yet in after-life +no one reverenced Sir Robert Walpole so much as his supposed son. To be +adverse to the minister was to be adverse to the unloved son who +cherished his memory. What 'my father' thought, did, and said, was law; +what his foes dared to express was heresy. Horace had the family mania +strong upon him; the world was made for Walpoles, whose views were never +to be controverted, nor whose faith impugned. Yet Horace must have +witnessed, perhaps with out comprehending it, much disunion at home. +Lady Walpole. beautiful and accomplished, could not succeed in riveting +her husband to his conjugal duties. Gross licentiousness was the order +of the day, and Sir Robert was among the most licentious; he left his +lovely wife to the perilous attentions of all the young courtiers who +fancied that by courting the Premier's wife they could secure Walpole's +good offices. Sir Robert, according to Pope, was one of those who-- + + 'Never made a friend in private life, + And was, besides, a tyrant to his wife. + +At all events, if not a tyrant, he was indifferent to those +circumstances which reflected upon him, and were injurious to her. He +was conscious that he had no right to complain of any infidelity on her +part, and he left her to be surrounded by men whom he knew to be +profligates of the most dangerous pretensions to wit and elegance. + +It was possibly not unfrequently that Horace, his mother's pet, gleaned +in the drawing-rooms of Arlington Street his first notions of that +_persiflage_ which was the fashion of the day. We. can fancy him a +precocious, old-fashioned little boy, at his mother's apron-string, +whilst Carr, Lord Hervey, was paying his devoirs; we see him gazing with +wondering eyes at Pulteney, Earl of Bath, with his blue ribbon across +his laced coat; whilst compassionating friends observing the pale-faced +boy in that hot-house atmosphere, in which both mind and body were like +forced plants, prophesied that 'little Horace' could not possibly live +to be a man. + +He survived, however, two sisters, who died in childhood, and became +dearer and dearer to his fond mother. + +In his old age, Horace delighted in recalling anecdotes of his infancy; +in these his mother's partiality largely figured. Brought up among +courtiers and ministers, his childish talk was all of kings and princes; +and he was a gossip both by inclination and habit. His greatest desire +in life was to see the king--George I., and his nurses and attendants +augmented his wish by their exalted descriptions of the grandeur which +he effected, in after-life, to despise. He entreated his mother to take +him to St. James's. When relating the incidents of the scene in which he +was first introduced to a court, Horace Walpole speaks of the 'infinite +good-nature of his father, who never thwarted any of his children,' and +'suffered him,' he says, 'to be too much indulged.' + +Some difficulties attended the fruition of the forward boy's wish. The +Duchess of Kendal was jealous of Sir Robert Walpole's influence with the +king: her aim was to bring Lord Bolingbroke into power. The childish +fancy was, nevertheless, gratified: and under his mother's care he was +conducted to the apartments of the Duchess of Kendal in St. James's. + +'A favour so unusual to be asked by a boy of ten years old,' he +afterwards wrote in his 'Reminiscences,' 'was still too slight to be +refused to the wife of the first minister and her darling child.' +However, as it was not to be a precedent, the interview was to be +private, and at night. + +It was ten o'clock in the evening when Lady Walpole, leading her son, +was admitted into the apartments of Melusina de Schulenberg, Countess of +Walsingham, who passed under the name of the Duchess of Kendal's niece, +but who was, in fact, her daughter, by George I. The polluted rooms in +which Lady Walsingham lived were afterwards occupied by the two +mistresses of George II.--the Countess of Suffolk, and Madame de +Walmoden, Countess of Yarmouth. + +With Lady Walsingham, Lady Walpole and her little son waited until, +notice having been given that the king had come down to supper, he was +led into the presence of 'that good sort of man,' as he calls George I. +That monarch was pleased to permit the young courtier to kneel down and +kiss his hand. A few words were spoken by the august personage, and +Horace was led back into the adjoining room. + +But the vision of that 'good sort of man' was present to him when, in +old age, he wrote down his recollections for his beloved Miss Berry. By +the side of a tall, lean, ill-favoured old German lady--the Duchess of +Kendal--stood a pale, short, elderly man, with a dark tie-wig, in a +plain coat and waistcoat: these and his breeches were all of +snuff-coloured cloth, and his stockings of the same colour. By the blue +riband alone could the young subject of this 'good sort of man' discern +that he was in the presence of majesty. Little interest could be +elicited in this brief interview, yet Horace thought it his painful +duty, being also the son of a prime minister, to shed tears when, with +the other scholars of Eton College, he walked in the procession to the +proclamation of George II. And no doubt he was one of _very_ few +personages in England whose eyes Were moistened for that event. +Nevertheless, there was something of _bonhommie_ in the character of +George I. that one misses in his successor. His love of punch, and his +habit of becoming a little tipsy over his private dinners with Sir +Robert Walpole, were English as well as German traits, and were regarded +almost as condescensions; and then he had a kind of slow wit, that was +turned upon the venial officials whose perquisites were at their +disgraceful height in his time. + +'A strange country this,' said the monarch, in his most clamorous +German: 'one day, after I came to St. James's, I looked out of the +window, and saw a park, with walks, laurels, &c.; these they told me +were mine. The next day Lord Chetwynd, the ranger of _my_ park, sends me +a brace of carp out of my canal; I was told, thereupon, that I must give +five guineas to Lord Chetwynd's porter for bringing me my _own_ fish, +out of my _own_ canal, in my _own_ park!' In spite of some agreeable +qualities, George I. was, however, anything but a 'good sort of man.' It +is difficult how to rank the two first Georges; both were detestable as +men, and scarcely tolerable as monarchs. The foreign deeds of George I. +were stained with the supposed murder of Count Konigsmark: the English +career of George II. was one of the coarsest profligacy. Their example +was infamous. + +His father's only sister having become the second wife of Charles Lord +Townshend, Horace was educated with his cousins; and the tutor selected +was Edward Weston, the son of Stephen, Bishop of Exeter; this preceptor +was afterwards engaged in a controversy with Dr. Warburton, concerning +the 'Naturalization of the Jews.' By that learned, haughty disputant, he +is termed 'a gazetteer by profession--by inclination a Methodist.' Such +was the man who guided the dawning intellect of Horace Walpole. Under +his care he remained until he went, in 1727, to Eton. But Walpole's was +not merely a scholastic education: he was destined for the law--and, on +going up to Cambridge, was obliged to attend lectures on civil law. He +went from Eton to King's College--where he was, however, more disposed +to what are termed accomplishments than to deep reading. At Cambridge he +even studied Italian; at home he learned to dance and fence; and took +lessons in drawing from Bernard Lens, drawing-master to the Duke of +Cumberland and his sisters. It is not to be wondered at that he left +Cambridge without taking a degree. + +But fortune was lying, as it were, in wait for him; and various +sinecures had been reserved for the Minister's youngest son: first, he +became Inspector of the Imports and Exports in the Customs; but soon +resigned that post to be Usher of the Exchequer. 'And as soon,' he +writes, 'as I became of age I took possession of two other little patent +places in the Exchequer, called Comptroller of the Pipe, and Clerk of +the Estreats. They had been held for me by Mr. Fane.' + +Such was the mode in which the younger sons were then provided for by a +minister; nor has the unworthy system died out in our time, although +greatly modified. + +Horace was growing up meantime, not an awkward, but a somewhat +insignificant youth, with a short, slender figure: which always retained +a boyish appearance when seen from behind. His face was common-place, +except when his really expressive eyes sparkled with intelligence, or +melted into the sweetest expression of kindness. But his laugh was +forced and uncouth: and even in his smile there was a hard, sarcastic +expression that made one regret that he smiled. + +He was now in possession of an income of L1,700 annually, and he looked +naturally to the Continent, to which all young members of the +aristocracy repaired, after the completion of their collegiate life. + +He had been popular at Eton: he was also, it is said, both beloved and +valued at Cambridge. In reference to his Etonian days he says, in one of +his letters, 'I can't say I am sorry I was never quite a schoolboy: an +expedition against bargemen, or a match at cricket, may be very pretty +things to recollect; but, thank my stars, I can remember things that are +very near as pretty. The beginning of my Roman history was spent in the +asylum, or conversing in Egeria's hallowed grove; not in thumping and +pummelling King Amulius's herdsmen.[1] + +[1: Life by Warburton, p 70.] + +'I remember,' he adds, 'when I was at Eton, and Mr. Bland had set me on +an extraordinary task, I used sometimes to pique myself upon not getting +it, because it was not immediately my school business. What! learn more +than I was absolutely forced to learn! I felt the weight of learning +that; for I was a blockhead, _and pushed above my parts_.'[2] + +[2: Life of Warburton, p. 63.] + +Popular amongst his schoolfellows, Horace formed friendships at Eton +which mainly influenced his after-life. Richard West, the son of West, +Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and the grandson, on his mother's side, of +Bishop Burnet; together with a youth named Assheton--formed, with the +poet Gray, and Horace himself, what the young wit termed the 'Quadruple +Alliance.' Then there was the 'triumvirate,' George Montagu, Charles +Montagu, and Horace: next came George Selwyn and Hanbury Williams; +lastly, a retired, studious youth, a sort of foil to all these gay, +brilliant young wits--a certain William Cole, a lover of old books, and +of quaint prints. And in all these boyish friendships, some of which +were carried from Eton to Cambridge, may be traced the foundation of the +Horace Walpole, of Strawberry Hill and of Berkeley Square. To Gray he +owed his ambition to be learned, if possible--poetical, if nature had +not forbidden; to the Montagus, his dash and spirit; to Sir Hanbury +Williams, his turn for _jeux d'esprit_, as a part of the completion of a +fine gentleman's education; to George Selwyn, his appreciation of what +was then considered wit--but which we moderns are not worthy to +appreciate. Lord Hertford and Henry Conway, Walpole's cousins, were also +his schoolfellows; and for them he evinced throughout his long life a +warm regard. William Pitt, Lord Chatham--chiefly remembered at Eton for +having been flogged for being out of bounds--was a contemporary, though +not an intimate, of Horace Walpole's at Eton. + +His regard for Gray did him infinite credit: yet never were two men more +dissimilar as they advanced in life. Gray had no aristocratic birth to +boast; and Horace dearly loved birth, refinement, position, all that +comprises the cherished term 'aristocracy.' Thomas Gray, more +illustrious for the little his fastidious judgment permitted him to give +to the then critical world, than many have been in their productions of +volumes, was born in Cornhill--his father being a worthy citizen. He was +just one year older than Walpole, but an age his senior in gravity, +precision, and in a stiff resolution to maintain his independence. He +made one fatal step, fatal to his friendship for Horace, when he +forfeited--by allowing Horace to take him and pay his expenses during a +long continental tour--his independence. Gray had many points which made +him vulnerable to Walpole's shafts of ridicule; and Horace had a host of +faults which excited the stern condemnation of Gray. The author of the +'Elegy'--which Johnson has pronounced to be the noblest ode in our +language--was one of the most learned men of his time, 'and was equally +acquainted with the elegant and profound paths of science, and that not +superficially, but thoroughly; knowing in every branch of history, both +natural and civil, as having read all the original historians of +England, France, and Italy; a great antiquarian, who made criticisms, +metaphysics, morals, and politics a principal part of his plan of +study--who was uncommonly fond of voyages and travels of all sorts--and +who had a fine taste in painting, prints, architecture, and gardening' +What a companion for a young man of taste and sympathy! but the friends +were far too clever long to agree. Gray was haughty, impatient, +intolerant of the peculiarities of others, according to the author of +'Walpoliana:' doubtless he detected the vanity, the actual selfishness, +the want of earnest feeling in Horace, which had all been kept down at +school, where boys are far more unsparing Mentors than their betters. In +vain did they travel _en prince_, and all at Walpole's expense; in vain +did they visit courts, and receive affability from princes: in vain did +he of Cornhill participate for a brief period in the attentions lavished +on the son of a British Prime Minister: they quarrelled--and we almost +reverence Gray for that result, more especially when we find the author +of 'Walpoliana' expressing his conviction that 'had it not been for this +idle indulgence of his hasty temper, Mr. Gray would immediately on his +return home have received, as usual, a pension or office from Sir Robert +Walpole.' We are inclined to feel contempt for the anonymous writer of +that amusing little book. + +After a companionship of four years, Gray, nevertheless, returned to +London. He had been educated with the expectation of being a barrister; +but finding that funds were wanting to pursue a legal education, he gave +up a set of chambers in the Temple, which he had occupied previous to +his travels, and retired to Cambridge. + +Henceforth what a singular contrast did the lives of these once fond +friends present! In the small, quaint rooms of Peter-House,[3] Gray +consumed a dreary celibacy, consoled by the Muse alone, who--if other +damsels found no charms in his somewhat piggish, wooden countenance, or +in his manners, replete, it is said, with an unpleasant consciousness of +superiority--never deserted him. His college existence, varied only by +his being appointed Professor of Modern History, was, for a brief space, +exchanged for an existence almost as studious in London. Between the +years 1759 and 1762, he took lodgings, we find, in Southampton Row--a +pleasant locality then, opening to the fields--in order to be near the +British Museum, at that time just opened to the public. Here his intense +studies were, it may be presumed, relieved by the lighter task of +perusing the Harleian Manuscripts; and here he formed the acquaintance +of Mason, a dull, affected poet, whose celebrity is greater as the +friend and biographer of Gray, than even as the author of those verses +on the death of Lady Coventry, in which there are, nevertheless, some +beautiful lines. Gray died in college--a doom that, next to ending one's +days in a jail or a convent, seems the dreariest. He died of the gout: a +suitable, and, in that region and in those three-bottle days, almost an +inevitable disease; but there is no record of his having been +intemperate. + +[3: Gray migrated to Pembroke in 1756.] + +Whilst Gray was poring over dusty manuscripts, Horace was beginning that +career of prosperity which was commenced by the keenest enjoyment of +existence. He has left us, in his Letters, some brilliant passages, +indicative of the delights of his boyhood and youth. Like him, we linger +over a period still fresh, still hopeful, still generous in impulse-- +still strong in faith in the world's worth--before we hasten on to +portray the man of the world, heartless, not wholly, perhaps, but wont +to check all feeling till it was well-nigh quenched; little minded; +bitter, if not spiteful; with many acquaintances and scarce one +friend--the Horace Walpole of Berkeley Square and Strawberry Hill. + +'Youthful passages of life are,' he says, 'the chippings of Pitt's +diamond, set into little heart-rings with mottoes; the stone itself more +worth, the filings more gentle and agreeable. Alexander, at the head of +the world, never tasted the true pleasure that boys of his age have +enjoyed at the head of a school. Little intrigues, little schemes and +policies engage their thoughts; and at the same time that they are +laying the foundation for their middle age of life, the mimic republic +they live in, furnishes materials of conversation for their latter age; +and old men cannot be said to be children a second time with greater +truth from any one cause, than their living over again their childhood +in imagination.' + +Again: 'Dear George, were not the playing-fields at Eton food for all +manner of flights? No old maid's gown, though it had been tormented into +all the fashions from King James to King George, ever underwent so many +transformations as these poor plains have in my idea. At first I was +contented with tending a visionary flock, and sighing some pastoral name +to the echo of the cascade under the bridge ... As I got further into +Virgil and Clelia, I found myself transported from Arcadia to the garden +of Italy; and saw Windsor Castle in no other view than the _Capitoli +immobile saxum_.' + +Horace Walpole's humble friend Assheton was another of those Etonians +who were plodding on to independence, whilst he, set forward by fortune +and interest, was accomplishing reputation. Assheton was the son of a +worthy man, who presided over the Grammar School at Lancaster, upon a +stipend of L32 a year. Assheton's mother had brought to her husband a +small estate. This was sold to educate the 'boys:' they were both clever +and deserving. One became the fellow of Trinity College; the other, the +friend of Horace, rose into notice as the tutor of the young Earl of +Plymouth; then became a D.D., and a fashionable preacher in London; was +elected preacher at Lincoln's Inn; attacked the Methodists; and died, at +fifty-three, at variance with Horace--this Assheton, whom once he had +loved so much. + +Horace, on the other hand, after having seen during his travels all that +was most exclusive, attractive, and lofty, both in art and nature, came +home without bringing, he declares, 'one word of French or Italian for +common use.' He professed, indeed, to prefer England to all other +countries. A country tour in England delighted him: the populousness, +the ease in the people also, charmed him. 'Canterbury was a paradise to +Modena, Reggio, or Parma.' He had, before he returned, perceived that +nowhere except in England was there the distinction of 'middling +people;' he now found that nowhere but in England were middling houses. +'How snug they are!' exclaims this scion of the exclusives. Then he runs +on into an anecdote about Pope and Frederick, Prince of Wales. 'Mr. +Pope, said the prince, 'you don't love princes.' 'Sir, I beg your +pardon.' 'Well, you don't love kings, then.' 'Sir, I own I like the lion +better before his claws are grown.' The 'Horace Walpole' began now to +creep out: never was he really at home except in a court atmosphere. +Still he assumed, even at twenty-four, to be the boy. + +'You won't find me,' he writes to Harry Conway, 'much altered, I +believe; at least, outwardly. I am not grown a bit shorter or fatter, +but am just the same long, lean creature as usual. Then I talk no French +but to my footman; nor Italian, but to myself. What inward alterations +may have happened to me you will discover best; for you know 'tis said, +one never knows that one's self. I will answer, that that part of it +that belongs to you has not suffered the least change--I took care of +that. For _virtu_, I have a little to entertain you--it is my sole +pleasure. I am neither young enough nor old enough to be in love.' + +Nevertheless, it peeps out soon after that the 'Pomfrets' are coming +back. Horace had known them in Italy. The Earl and Countess and their +daughters were just then the very pink of fashion; and even the leaders +of all that was exclusive in the court. Half in ridicule, half in +earnest, are the remarks which, throughout all the career of Horace, +incessantly occur. 'I am neither young enough nor old enough to be in +love,' he says; yet that he was in love with one of the lovely Fermors +is traditionary still in the family--and that tradition pointed at Lady +Juliana, the youngest, afterwards married to Mr. Penn. The Earl of +Pomfret had been master of the horse to Queen Caroline: Lady Pomfret, +lady of the bed-chamber. 'My Earl,' as the-countess styled him, was +apparently a supine subject to her ladyship's strong will and +wrong-headed ability--which she, perhaps, inherited from her +grandfather, Judge Jeffreys; she being the daughter and heiress of that +rash young Lord Jeffreys, who, in a spirit of braggadocia, stopped the +funeral of Dryden on its way to Westminster, promising a more splendid +procession than the poor, humble cortege--a boast which he never +fulfilled. Lady Sophia Fermor, the eldest daughter, who afterwards +became the wife of Lord Carteret, resembled, in beauty, the famed +Mistress Arabella Fermor, the heroine of the 'Rape of the Lock.' Horace +Walpole admired Lady Sophia--whom he christened Juno--intensely. +Scarcely a letter drips from his pen--as a modern novelist used to +express it[4]--without some touch of the Pomfrets. Thus to Sir Horace +Mann, then a diplomatist at Florence:-- + +[4: The accomplished novelist, Mrs. Gore, famous for her facility, used +to say that a three-volume novel just 'dripped from her pen.'] + +'Lady Pomfret I saw last night. Lady Sophia has been ill with a cold; +her head is to be dressed French, and her body English, for which I am +sorry, her figure is so fine in a robe. She is full as sorry as I am.' + +Again, at a ball at Sir Thomas Robinson's, where four-and-twenty couples +danced country-dances, in two sets, twelve and twelve, 'there was Lady +Sophia, handsomer than ever, but a little out of humour at the scarcity +of minuets; however, as usual, dancing more than anybody, and, as usual +too, she took out what men she liked, or thought the best +dancers.'...'We danced; for I country-danced till four, then had tea and +coffee, and came home.' Poor Horace! Lady Sophia was not for a younger +son, however gay, talented, or rich he might be. + +His pique and resentment towards her mother, who had higher views for +her beautiful daughter, begin at this period to show themselves, and +never died away. + +Lady Townshend was the wit who used to gratify Horace with tales of her +whom he hated--Henrietta-Louisa, Countess of Pomfret. + +'Lady Townshend told me an admirable history: it is of _our friend_ Lady +Pomfret. Somebody that belonged to the Prince of Wales said, they were +going to _court_; it was objected that they ought to say to Carlton +House; that the only _court_ is where the king resides. Lady P., with +her paltry air of significant learning and absurdity, said, "Oh, Lord! +Is there no _court_ in England but the king's? Sure, there are many +more! There is the _Court_ of Chancery, the _Court_ of Exchequer, the +_Court_ of King's Bench, &c." Don't you love her? Lord Lincoln does her +daughter--Lady Sophia Fermor. He is come over, and met me and her the +other night; he turned pale, spoke to her several times in the evening, +but not long, and sighed to me at going away. He came over all alone; +and not only his Uncle Duke (the Duke of Newcastle) but even Majesty is +fallen in love with him. He talked to the king at his levee, without +being spoken to. That was always thought high treason; but I don't know +how the gruff gentleman liked it. And then he had been told that Lord +Lincoln designed to have made the campaign, if we had gone to war; in +short, he says Lord Lincoln is the handsomest man in England.' + +Horace was not, therefore, the only victim to a mother's ambition: there +is something touching in the interest he from time to time evinces in +poor Lord Lincoln's hopeless love. On another occasion, a second ball of +Sir Thomas Robinson's, Lord Lincoln, out of prudence, dances with Lady +Caroline Fitzroy, Mr. Conway taking Lady Sophia Fermor. 'The two couple +were just admirably mismatched, as everybody soon perceived, by the +attentions of each man to the woman he did not dance with, and the +emulation of either lady; it was an admirable scene.' + +All, however, was not country dancing: the young man, 'too old and too +young to be in love,' was to make his way as a wit. He did so, in the +approved way in that day of irreligion, in a political squib. On July +14th, 1742, he writes in his Notes, 'I wrote the "_Lessons for the +Day_;" the "Lessons for the day" being the first and second chapters of +the "Book of Preferment,"' Horace was proud of this _brochure_, for he +says it got about surreptitiously, and was 'the original of many things +of that sort.' Various _jeux d'esprit_ of a similar sort followed. A +'Sermon on Painting,' which was preached before Sir Robert Walpole, in +the gallery at Houghton, by his chaplain; 'Patapan, or the Little White +Dog,' imitated from La Fontaine. No. 38 of the 'Old England Journal,' +intended to ridicule Lord Bath; and then, in a magazine, was printed his +'Scheme for a Tax on Message Cards and Notes.' Next the 'Beauties,' +which was also handed about, and got into print. So that without the +vulgarity of publishing, the reputation of the dandy writer was soon +noised about. His religious tenets may or may not have been sound; but +at all events the tone of his mind assumed at this time a very different +character to that reverent strain in which, when a youth at college, he +had apostrophized those who bowed their heads beneath the vaulted roof +of King's College, in his eulogium in the character of Henry VI. + + 'Ascend the temple, join the vocal choir, + Let harmony your raptured souls inspire. + Hark how the tuneful, solemn organs blow, + Awfully strong, elaborately slow; + Now to you empyrean seats above + Raise meditation on the wings of love. + Now falling, sinking, dying to the moan + Once warbled sad by Jesse's contrite son; + Breathe in each note a conscience through the sense, + And call forth tears from soft-eyed Penitence.' + +In the midst of all his gaieties, his successes, and perhaps his hopes, +a cloud hovered over the destinies of his father. The opposition, Horace +saw, in 1741, wished to ruin his father 'by ruining his constitution.' +They wished to continue their debates on Saturdays, Sir Robert's only +day of rest, when he used to rush to Richmond New Park, there to amuse +himself with a favourite pack of beagles. Notwithstanding the minister's +indifference to this his youngest son, Horace felt bitterly what he +considered a persecution against one of the most corrupt of modern +statesmen. + +'Trust me, if we fall, all the grandeur, all the envied grandeur of our +house, will not cost me a sigh: it has given me no pleasure while we +have it, and will give me no pain when I part with it. My liberty, my +ease, and choice of my own friends and company, will sufficiently +counterbalance the crowds of Downing Street. I am so sick of it all, +that if we are victorious or not, I propose leaving England in the +spring. + +The struggle was not destined to last long. Sir Robert was forced to +give up the contest and be shelved with a peerage. In 1742, he was +created Earl of Orford, and resigned. The wonder is that, with a mortal +internal disease to contend with, he should have faced his foes so long. +Verses ascribed to Lord Hervey ended, as did all the squibs of the day, +with a fling at that 'rogue Walpole.' + + 'For though you have made that rogue Walpole retire, + You are out of the frying-pan into the fire: + But since to the Protestant line I'm a friend, + I tremble to think how these changes may end.' + +Horace, notwithstanding an affected indifference, felt his father's +downfall poignantly. He went, indeed, to court, in spite of a cold, +taken in an unaired house; for the prime minister now quitted Downing +Street for Arlington Street. The court was crowded, he found, with old +ladies, the wives of patriots who had not been there for 'these twenty +years,' and who appeared in the accoutrements that were in vogue in +Queen Anne's time. 'Then', he writes, 'the joy and awkward jollity of +them is inexpressible! They titter, and, wherever you meet them, are +always looking at their watches an hour before the time. I met several +on the birthday (for I did not arrive time enough to make clothes), and +they were dressed in all the colours of the rainbow. They seem to have +said to themselves, twenty years ago, "Well, if ever I do go to court +again, I will have a pink and silver, or a blue and silver;" and they +keep their resolutions.' + +Another characteristic anecdote betrays his ill-suppressed vexation:-- + +'I laughed at myself prodigiously the other day for a piece of absence. +I was writing, on the king's birthday, and being disturbed with the mob +in the street, I rang for the porter and with an air of grandeur, as if +I was still at Downing Street, cried, "Pray send away those marrow-bones +and cleavers." + +The poor fellow, with the most mortified air in the world, replied, +"Sir, they are not at _our_ door, but over the way, at my Lord +Carteret's."--"Oh!" said I, "then let them alone; may be, he does not +dislike the noise!" I pity the poor porter, who sees all his old +customers going over the way too.' + +The retirement of Sir Robert from office had an important effect on the +tastes and future life of his son Horace. The minister had been +occupying his later years in pulling down his old ancestral house at +Houghton, and in building an enormous mansion, which has since his time +been, in its turn, partially demolished. When Harley, Earl of Orford, +was known to be erecting a great house for himself, Sir Robert had +remarked that a minister who did so committed a great imprudence. When +Houghton was begun, Sir Hynde Aston reminded Sir Robert of this speech. +'You ought to have recalled it to me before,' was the reply; 'for before +I began building, it might have been of use to me.' + +This famous memorial of Walpolean greatness, this splendid folly, +constructed, it is generally supposed, on public money, was inhabited by +Sir Robert only ten days in summer, and twenty days in winter; in the +autumn, during the shooting season, two months. It became almost an +eyesore to the quiet gentry, who viewed the palace with a feeling of +their own inferiority. People as good as the Walpoles lived in their +gable-ended, moderate-sized mansions; and who was Sir Robert, to set +them at so immense a distance? + +To the vulgar comprehension of the Premier, Houghton, gigantic in its +proportions, had its purposes. He there assembled his supporters; there, +for a short time, he entertained his constituents and coadjutors with a +magnificent, jovial hospitality, of which he, with his gay spirits, his +humourous, indelicate jokes, and his unbounded good-nature, was the very +soul. Free conversation, hard-drinking, were the features of every day's +feast. Pope thus describes him:-- + + 'Seen him, I have, but in his happier hour, + Of social pleasure, ill exchanged for power; + Seen him uncumbered with the venal tribe, + Smile without art, and win without a bribe.' + +Amid the coarse taste one gentle refinement existed: this was the love +of gardening, both in its smaller compass and it its nobler sense of +landscape gardening. 'This place,' Sir Robert, in 1743, wrote to General +Churchill, from Houghton, 'affords no news, no subject of entertainment +or amusement; for fine men of wit and pleasure about town understand +neither the language and taste, nor the pleasure of the inanimate world. +My flatterers here are all mutes: the oaks, the beeches, the chestnuts, +seem to contend which best shall please the lord of the manor. They +cannot deceive; they will not lie. I in sincerity admire them, and have +as many beauties about me as fill up all my hours of dangling, and no +disgrace attending me, from sixty-seven years of age. Within doors we +come a little nearer to real life, and admire, upon the almost speaking +canvas, all the airs and graces the proudest ladies can boast.' + +In these pursuits Horace cordially shared. Through his agency, Horace +Mann, still in the diplomatic service, at Florence, selected and +purchased works of art, which were sent either to Arlington Street, or +to form the famous Houghton Collection, to which Horace so often refers +in that delightful work, his 'Anecdotes of Painting.' + +Amongst the embellishments of Houghton, the gardens were the most +expensive. + +'Sir Robert has pleased himself,' Pulteney, Earl of Bath, wrote, 'with +erecting palaces and extending parks, planting gardens in places to +which the very earth was to be transported in carriages, and embracing +cascades and fountains whose water was only to be obtained by aqueducts +and machines, and imitating the extravagance of Oriental monarchs, at +the expense of a free people whom he has at once impoverished and +betrayed.' + +The ex-minister went to a great expense in the cultivation of plants, +bought Uvedale's 'Hortus Siccus;' and received from Bradley, the +Professor of Botany at Cambridge, the tribute of a dedication, in which +it was said that 'Sir Robert had purchased one of the finest collections +of plants in the kingdom.' + +What was more to his honour still, was Sir Robert's preservation of St. +James's Park for the people. Fond of outdoor amusements himself, the +Premier heard, with dismay, a proposal on the part of Queen Caroline to +convert that ancient park into a palace garden. 'She asked my father,' +Horace Walpole relates, 'what the alteration might possibly +cost?'--_Only three crowns_' was the civil, witty, candid answer. The +queen was wise enough to take the hint. It is possible she meant to +convert the park into gardens that should be open to the public as at +Berlin, Mannheim, and even the Tuileries. Still it would not have been +ours. + +Horace Walpole owed, perhaps, his love of architecture and his taste for +gardening, partly to the early companionship of Gray, who delighted in +those pursuits. Walpole's estimation of pictures, medals, and statues, +was however the fruit of a long residence abroad. We are apt to rail at +continental nations; yet had it not been for the occasional intercourse +with foreign nations, art would have altogether died out among us. To +the 'Grandes Tours,' performed as a matter of course by our young +nobility in the most impressionable period of their lives we owe most of +our noble private collections. Charles I. and Buckingham, renewed, in +their travels in Spain, the efforts previously made by Lord Arundel and +Lord Pembroke, to embellish their country seats. Then came the +Rebellion; and like a mighty rushing river, made a chasm in which much +perished. Art languished in the reign of the second Charles, excepting +in what related to portrait painting. Evelyn stood almost alone in his +then secluded and lovely retirement at Wotton; apart in his undying +exertions still to arrest the Muses ere they quitted for ever English +shores. Then came the deadly frost of William's icy influence. The reign +of Anne was conspicuous more for letters than for art: architecture, +more especially, was vulgarized under Vanbrugh. George I. had no +conception of anything abstract: taste, erudition, science, art, were +like a dead language to his common sense, his vulgar profligacy, and his +personal predilections. Neither George II. nor his queen had an iota of +taste, either in language, conduct, literature, or art. To be vulgar, +was _haut-ton;_ to be refined, to have pursuits that took one from low +party gossip, or heterodox disquisitions upon party, was esteemed odd: +everything original was cramped; everything imaginative was sneered at; +the enthusiasm that is elevated by religion was unphilosophic; the +poetry that is breathed out from the works of genius was not +comprehended. + +It was at Houghton, under the roof of that monster palace, that Horace +Walpole indulged that tastes for pictures which he had acquired in +Italy. His chief coadjutor, however, as far as the antiquities of +painting are concerned, was George Vertue, the eminent engraver. Vertue +was a man of modest merit, and was educated merely as an engraver; but, +conscious of talent, studied drawing, which he afterwards applied to +engraving. He was patronised both by the vain Godfrey Kneller and by the +intellectual Lord Somers: yet his works have more fidelity than +elegance, and betray in every line the antiquary rather than the genius. +Vertue was known to be a first-rate authority as to the history of a +painter; he was admitted and welcomed into every great country house in +England; he lived in an atmosphere of vertu; every line a dilettante +collector wrote, every word he uttered, was minuted down by him; he +visited every collection of rarities; he copied every paper he could +find relative to art; registers of wills, and registers of parishes, for +births and deaths were his delight; sales his recreation. He was the +'Old Mortality' of pictures in this country. No wonder that his +compilations were barely contained in forty volumes, which he left in +manuscript. Human nature has singular varieties: here was a man who +expended his very existence in gathering up the works of others, and +died without giving to the world one of his own. But Horace Walpole has +done him justice. After Vertue's death he bought his manuscripts from +his widow. In one of his pocket-books was contained the whole history of +this man of one idea: Vertue began his collection in 1713, and worked at +it until his death in 1757, forty-four years. + +He died in the belief that he should one day publish an unique work on +painting and painters: such was the aim of his existence, and his study +must have been even more curious than the wonderfully crammed, small +house at Islington, where William Upcott, the 'Old Mortality' in his +line, who saved from the housemaid's fire-lighting designs the MSS. Of +Evelyn's + +Life and Letters, which he found tossing about in the old gallery at +Wotton, near Dorking, passed his days. Like Upcott, like Palissy, Vertue +lived and died under the influence of one isolated aim, effort, and +hope. + +In these men, the cherished and amiable monomania of gifted minds was +realized. Upcott had every possible autograph from every known hand in +his collection: Palissy succeeded in making glazed china; but Vertue +left his ore to the hands of others to work out into shape, and the man +who moulded his crude materials was Horace Walpole, and Vertue's forty +volumes were shaped into a readable work, as curious and accurate in +facts as it is flippant and prejudiced in style and opinions. + +Walpole's 'Anecdotes of Painting' are the foundation of all our small +amount of knowledge as to what England has done formerly to encourage +art. + +One may fancy the modest, ingenious George Vertue arranging first, and +then making a catalogue of the Houghton Gallery; Horace, a boy still, in +looks,--with a somewhat chubby face, admiring and following: Sir Robert, +in a cocked hat, edged with silver lace, a curled short wig, a loose +coat, also edged with silver lace, and with a half humorous expression +on his vulgar countenance, watching them at intervals, as they paraded +through the hall, a large square space, adorned with bas-reliefs and +busts, and containing a bronze copy of the Laocoon, for which Sir Robert +(or rather we English) paid a thousand pounds; or they might be seen +hopping speedily through the ground-floor apartments where there could +be little to arrest the footsteps of the mediaeval-minded Vertue. Who +but a courtier could give one glance at a portrait of George I., though +by Kneller? Who that _was_ a courtier in that house would pause to look +at the resemblance, also by Kneller, of the short-lived, ill-used +Catherine Shorter, the Premier's first wife--even though he still +endured it in his bed-room? a mute reproach for his neglect and +misconduct. So let us hasten to the yellow dining-room where presently +we may admire the works of Titian, Guido, Vanderwerf, and last, not +least, eleven portraits by Vandyck, of the Wharton family, which Sir +Robert bought at the sale of the spendthrift Duke of Wharton. + +Then let us glance at the saloon, famed for the four large 'Market +Pieces,' as they were called, by Rubens and Snyders: let us lounge into +what were called the Carlo Maratti and the Vandyck rooms; step we also +into the green velvet bed-chamber, the tapestry-room, the worked bed +chamber; then comes another dining-room: in short, we are lost in wonder +at this noble collection, which cost L40,000. + +Many of the pictures were selected and bargained for by Vertue, who, in +Flanders, purchased the Market Pieces referred to, for L428; but did not +secure the 'Fish Market,' and the 'Meat Market,' by the same painter. In +addition to the pictures, the stateliness and beauty of the rooms were +enhanced by rich furniture, carving, gilding, and all the subsidiary +arts which our grandfathers loved to add to high merit in design or +colouring. Besides his purchases, Sir Robert received presents of +pictures from friends, and expectant courtiers; and the gallery at +Houghton contained at last 222 pictures. To our sorrow now, to our +disgrace then, this splendid collection was suffered to go out of the +country: Catherine, empress of Russia, bought it for L40,000, and it +adorns the Hermitage Palace of St. Petersburgh. + +After Sir Robert's retirement from power, the good qualities which he +undoubtedly possessed, seemed to re-appear as soon as the pressure of +party feeling was withdrawn. He was fast declining in health when the +insurrection of 1745 was impending. He had warned the country of its +danger in his last speech, one of the finest ever made in the House of +Lords: after that effort his voice was heard no more. The gallant, +unfortunate Charles Edward was then at Paris, and that scope of old +experience + + ----'which doth attain + To somewhat of prophetic strain,' + +showed the ex-minister of Great Britain that an invasion was at hand. It +was on this occasion that Frederick, Prince of Wales, took Sir Robert, +then Lord Orford, by the hand, and thanked him for his zeal in the cause +of the royal family. Walpole returned to Norfolk, but was summoned again +to London to afford the ministry the benefit of his counsels. Death, +however, closed his prosperous, but laborious life. He suffered agonies +from the stone; large doses of opium kept him in a state of stupor, and +alone gave him ease; but his strength failed, and he was warned to +prepare himself for his decease. He bore the announcement with great +fortitude, and took leave of his children in perfect resignation to his +doom. He died on the 28th of March, 1745. + +Horace Walpole--whatsoever doubts may rest on the fact of his being Lord +Orford's son or not--writes feelingly and naturally upon this event, and +its forerunner, the agonies of disease. He seems, from the following +passages in his letters to Sir Horace Mann, to have devoted himself +incessantly to the patient invalid: on his father having rallied, he +thus expresses himself:-- + +'You have heard from your brother the reason of my not having written to +you so long. I have been out but twice since my father fell into this +illness, which is now near a month, and all that time either continually +in his room, or obliged to see multitudes of people: for it is wonderful +how everybody of all kinds has affected to express their concern for +him! He has been out of danger this week; but I can't say he mended at +all perceptibly till these last three days. His spirits are amazing, and +his constitution more, for Dr. Hulse said honestly from the first, that +if he recovered it would be from his own strength, not from their art. +How much more,' he adds, mournfully, 'he will ever recover, one scarce +dare hope about; for us, he is greatly recovered; for himself--' He then +breaks off. + +A month after we find him thus referring to the parent still throbbing +in mortal agony on the death-bed, with no chance of amendment:-- + +'How dismal a prospect for him, with the possession of the greatest +understanding in the world, not the least impaired, to lie without any +use for it! for to keep him from pains and restlessness, he takes so +much opiate, that he is scarce awake four hours of the four-and-twenty; +but I will say no more of this.' + +On the 29th of March, he again wrote to his friend in the following +terms:-- + +'I begged your brothers to tell you what it is impossible for me to tell +you. You share in our common loss! Don't expect me to enter at all upon +the subject. After the melancholy two months that I have passed, and in +my situation, you will not wonder I shun a conversation which could not +be bounded by a letter, a letter that would grow into a panegyric or a +piece of a moral; improper for me to write upon, and too distressful for +us both! a death is only to be felt, never to be talked upon by those it +touches.' + +Nevertheless, the world soon had Horace Walpole for her own again; +during Lord Orford's last illness, George II. Thought of him, it seems, +even though the 'Granvilles' were the only people tolerated at court. +That famous _clique_ comprised the secretly adored of Horace (Lady +Granville now), Lady Sophia Fermor. + +'The Granville faction,' Horace wrote, before his father's death, 'are +still the constant and only countenanced people at court. Lord +Winchelsea, one of the disgraced, played at court at Twelfth-night, and +won; the king asked him next morning how much he had for his own share. +He replied, "Sir, about a quarter's salary." I liked the spirit, and was +talking to him of it the next night at Lord Granville's. "Why yes," said +he, "I think it showed familiarity at least: tell it your father, I +don't think he will dislike it."' + +The most trifling incidents divided the world of fashion and produced +the bitterest rancour. Indeed, nothing could exceed the frivolity of the +great, except their impertinence. For want of better amusements, it had +become the fashion to make conundrums, and to have printed books full of +them, which were produced at parties. But these were peaceful +diversions. The following anecdote is worthy of the times of George II. +and of Frederick of Wales:-- + +'There is a very good quarrel,' Horace writes, 'on foot, between two +duchesses: she of Queensberry sent to invite Lady Emily Lenox to a ball: +her grace of Richmond, who is wonderfully cautious since Lady Caroline's +elopement (with Mr. Fox), sent word "she could not determine." The other +sent again the same night: the same answer. The Queensberry then sent +word, that she had made up her company, and desired to be excused from +having Lady Emily's; but at the bottom of the card wrote, "Too great +trust." There is no declaration of war come out from the other duchess: +but I believe it will be made a national quarrel of the whole +illegitimate royal family.' + +Her Grace of Queensberry, Prior's 'Kitty, beautiful and young,' lorded +it, with a tyrannical hand, over the court. Her famed loveliness was, it +is true, at this time on the wane. Her portrait delineating her in her +bib and tucker, with her head rolled back underneath a sort of half cap, +half veil, shows how intellectual was the face to which such incense was +paid for years. Her forehead and eyebrows are beautiful: her eyes soft +though lively in expression: her features refined. She was as whimsical +in her attire as in her character. When, however, she chose to appear as +the _grande dame_, no one could cope with her, Mrs. Delany describes her +at the Birth-day,--her dress of white satin, embroidered with vine +leaves, convolvuluses, rose-buds, shaded after nature; but she, says her +friend, 'was _so far_ beyond the master-_piece of art_ that one could +hardly think of her clothes--allowing for her age I never saw so +_beautiful a creature_.' + +Meantime, Houghton was shut up: for its owner died L50,000 in debt, and +the elder brother of Horace, the second Lord Orford, proposed, on +entering it again, after keeping it closed for some time, to enter upon +'new, and then very unknown economy, for which there was great need:' +thus Horace refers to the changes. + +It was in the South Sea scheme that Sir Robert Walpole had realized a +large sum of money, by selling out at the right moment. In doing so he +had gained 1000 per cent. But he left little to his family, and at his +death, Horace received a legacy only of L5,000, and a thousand pounds +yearly, which he was to draw (for doing nothing) from the collector's +place in the Custom House; the surplus to be divided between his brother +Edward and himself: this provision was afterwards enhanced by some money +which came to Horace and his brothers from his uncle Captain Shorter's +property; but Horace was not at this period a rich man, and perhaps his +not marrying was owing to his dislike of fortune-hunting, or to his +dread of refusal. + +Two years after his father's death, he took a small house at Twickenham: +the property cost him nearly L14,000; in the deeds he found that it was +called Strawberry Hill. He soon commenced making considerable additions +to the house--which became a sort of raree-show in the latter part of +the last, and until a late period in this, century. + +Twickenham--so called, according to the antiquary Norden, because the +Thames, as it flows near it, seems from the islands to be divided into +two rivers,--had long been celebrated for its gardens, when Horace +Walpole, the generalissimo of all bachelors, took Strawberry Hill. +'Twicknam is as much as Twynam,' declares Norden, 'a place scytuate +between two rivers.' So fertile a locality could not be neglected by the +monks of old, the great gardeners and tillers of land in ancient days; +and the Manor of Twickenham was consequently given to the monks of +Christ Church, Canterbury, by King Edred, in 491; who piously inserted +his anathema against any person--whatever their rank, sex, or order--who +should infringe the rights of these holy men. 'May their memory,' the +king decreed, with a force worthy of the excommunicator-wholesale, Pius +IX., 'be blotted out of the Book of Life; may their strength continually +waste away, and be there no restorative to repair it!' nevertheless, +there were in the time of Lysons, a hundred and fifty acres of +fruit-gardens at Twickenham: the soil being a sandy loam, raspberries +grew plentifully. Even so early as Queen Elizabeth's days, Bishop +Corbet's father had a nursery garden at Twickenham,--so that King +Edred's curse seems to have fallen as powerlessly as it may be hoped all +subsequent maledictions may do. + +In 1698, one of the Earl of Bradford's coachmen built a small house on a +piece of ground, called in old works, Strawberry-Hill-Shot; lodgings +were here let, and Colley Cibber became one of the occupants of the +place, and here wrote his Comedy called 'Refusal; or the Ladies' +Philosophy.' The spot was so greatly admired that Talbot, Bishop of +Durham, lived eight years in it, and the Marquis of Carnarvon succeeded +him as a tenant: next came Mrs. Chenevix, a famous toy-woman. She was +probably a French woman, for Father Courayer--he who vainly endeavoured +to effect an union between the English and the Gallican churches--lodged +here some time. Horace Walpole bought up Mrs. Chenevix's lease, and +afterwards the fee-simple; and henceforth became the busiest, if not the +happiest, man in a small way in existence. + +[Illustration: STRAWBERRY HILL FROM THE THAMES.] + +We now despise the poor, over-ornate miniature Gothic style of +Strawberry Hill; we do not consider with what infinite pains the +structure was enlarged into its final and well-known form. In the first +place, Horace made a tour to collect models from the chief cathedral +cities in England; but the building required twenty-three years to +complete it. It was begun in 1753, and finished in 1776. Strawberry Hill +had one merit, everything was in keeping: the internal decorations, the +screens, the niches, the chimney-pieces, the book-shelves, were all +Gothic; and most of these were designed by Horace himself; and, indeed, +the description of Strawberry Hill is too closely connected with the +annals of his life to be dissevered from his biography. Here he gathered +up his mental forces to support and amuse himself during a long life, +sometimes darkened by spleen, but rarely by solitude; for Horace, with +much isolation of the heart, was, to the world, a social being. + +What scandal, what trifles, what important events, what littleness of +mind, yet what stretch of intellect were henceforth issued by the +recluse of Strawberry, as he plumed himself on being styled, from that +library of 'Strawberry!' Let us picture to ourselves the place, the +persons--put on, if we can, the sentiments and habits of the retreat; +look through its loopholes, not only on the wide world beyond, but into +the small world within; and face the fine gentleman author in every +period of his varied life. + +'The Strawberry Gazette,' Horace once wrote to a fine and titled lady, +'is very barren of weeds.' Such, however, was rarely the case. Peers, +and still better, peeresses,--politicians, actors, actresses,--the poor +poet who knew not where to dine, the Maecenas who was 'fed with +dedications'--the belle of the season, the demirep of many, the +antiquary, and the dilettanti,--painters, sculptors, engravers, all +brought news to the 'Strawberry Gazette;' and incense, sometimes wrung +from aching hearts, to the fastidious wit who professed to be a judge of +all material and immaterial things--from a burlesque to an Essay on +history or Philosophy--from the construction of Mrs. Chenevix's last new +toy to the mechanism of a clock made in the sixteenth century, was +lavished there. + +Suppose that it is noon-day: Horace is showing a party of guests from +London over Strawberry:--enter we with him, and let us stand in the +great parlour before a portrait by Wright of the Minister to whom all +courts bowed. 'That is my father, Sir Robert, in profile,' and a vulgar +face in profile is always seen at its vulgarest; and the +_nex-retrousse,_ the coarse mouth, the double chin, are most forcibly +exhibited in this limning by Wright; who did not, like Reynolds, or like +Lawrence, cast a _nuance_ of gentility over every subject of his pencil. +Horace--can we not hear him in imagination?--is telling his friends how +Sir Robert used to celebrate the day on which he sent in his +resignation, as a fete; then he would point out to his visitors a +Conversation-piece, one of Reynolds's earliest efforts in small life, +representing the second Earl of Edgecumbe, Selwyn, and Williams---all +wits and beaux, and _habitues_ of Strawberry. Colley Cibber, however, +was put in cold marble in the anteroom; a respect very _Horatian_, for +no man knew better how to rank his friends than the recluse of +Strawberry. He hurries the lingering guests through the little parlour, +the chimneypiece of which was copied from the tomb of Ruthall, Bishop of +Durham, in Westminster Abbey. Yet how he pauses complacently to +enumerate what has been done for him by titled belles: how these dogs, +modelled in terra-cotta, are the production of Anne Darner; a +water-colour drawing by Agnes Berry; a landscape with gipsies by Lady Di +Beauclerk;--all platonically devoted to our Horace; but he dwells long, +and his bright eyes are lighted up as he pauses before a case, looking +as if it contained only a few apparently faded, of no-one-knows-who (or +by whom) miniatures; this is a collection of Peter Oliver's best +works--portraits of the Digby family. + +How sadly, in referring to these invaluable pictures, does one's mind +revert to the day when, before the hammer of Robins had resounded in +these rooms--before his transcendent eloquence had been heard at +Strawberry--Agnes Strickland, followed by all eyes, pondered over that +group of portraits: how, as she slowly withdrew, we of the commonalty +scarce worthy to look, gathered around the spot again, and wondered at +the perfect life, the perfect colouring, proportion, and keeping of +those tiny vestiges of a bygone generation! + +Then Horace--we fear it was not till his prime was past, and a touch of +gout crippled his once active limbs--points to a picture of Rose, the +gardener (well named), presenting Charles II. with a pine-apple. Some +may murmur a doubt whether pine-apples were cultivated in cold Britain +so long since. But Horace enforces the fact; 'the likeness of the king,' +quoth he, 'is too marked, and his features are too well known to doubt +the fact;' and then he tells 'how he had received a present the last +Sunday of fruit--and from whom.' + +They pause next on Sir Peter Lely's portrait of Cowley--next on +Hogarth's Sarah Malcolm, the murderess of her mistress; then--and +doubtless, the spinster ladies are in fault here for the delay,--on Mrs. +Damer's model of two kittens, pets, though, of Horace Walpole's--for he +who loved few human beings was, after the fashion of bachelors, fond of +cats. + +They ascend the staircase: the domestic adornments merge into the +historic. We have Francis I.--not himself, but his armour: the +chimneypiece, too, is a copy from the tomb-works of John, Earl of +Cornwall, in Westminster Abbey; the stonework from that of Thomas, Duke +of Clarence, at Canterbury. + +Stay awhile: we have not done with sacrilege yet; worse things are to be +told, and we walk with consciences not unscathed into the Library, +disapproving in secret but flattering vocally. Here the very spirit of +Horace seemed to those who visited Strawberry before its fall to breathe +in every corner. Alas! when we beheld that library, it was half filled +with chests containing the celebrated MSS. of his letters; which were +bought by that enterprising publisher of learned name, Richard Bentley, +and which have since had adequate justice done them by first-rate +editors. There they were: the 'Strawberry Gazette' in full;--one glanced +merely at the yellow paper, and clear, decisive hand, and then turned to +see what objects he, who loved his books so well, collected for his +especial gratification. Mrs. Damer again! how proud he was of her +genius--her beauty, her cousinly love for himself; the wise way in which +she bound up the wounds of her breaking heart when her profligate +husband shot himself, by taking to occupation--perhaps, too, by liking +cousin Horace indifferently well. He put her models forward in every +place. Here was her Osprey Eagle in terra-cotta, a masterly production; +there a _couvre-fire,_ or _cur-few,_ imitated and modelled by her. Then +the marriage of Henry VI. Figures on the wall; near the fire is a screen +of the first tapestry ever made in England, representing a map of Surrey +and Middlesex; a notion of utility combined with ornament, which we see +still exhibited in the Sampler in old-fashioned, middle-class houses; +that poor posthumous, base-born child of the tapestry, almost defunct +itself; and a veritable piece of antiquity. + +Still more remarkable in this room was a quaint-faced clock, silver +gilt, given by Henry VIII. to Anne Boleyn; which perchance, after +marking the moments of her festive life, struck unfeelingly the hour of +her doom. + +But the company are hurrying into a little ante-room, the ceiling of +which is studded with stars in mosaic; it is therefore called jocularly, +the 'Star Chamber;' and here stands a cast of the famous bust of Henry +VII., by Torregiano, intended for the tomb of that sad-faced, +long-visaged monarch, who always looks as if royalty had disagreed with +him. + +Next we enter the Holbein Chamber. Horace hated bishops and archbishops, +and all the hierarchy; yet here again we behold another prelatical +chimneypiece--a frieze taken from the tomb of Archbishop Warham, at +Canterbury. And here, in addition to Holbein's picture of Mary Tudor, +Duchess of Suffolk, and of her third husband Adrian Stokes, are Vertue's +copies of Holbein, drawings of that great master's pictures in +Buckingham House: enough--let us hasten into the Long Gallery. Those who +remember Sir Samuel Merrick and his Gallery at Goodrich Court will have +traced in his curious, somewhat gew gaw collections of armour, +antiquities, faded portraits, and mock horses, much of the taste and +turn of mind that existed in Horace Walpole. + +The gallery, which all who recollect the sale at Strawberry Hill must +remember with peculiar interest, sounded well on paper. It was 56 feet +long, 17 high, and 13 wide; yet was neither long enough, high enough, +nor wide enough to inspire the indefinable sentiment by which we +acknowledge vastness. We beheld it the scene of George Robins's +triumphs--crowded to excess. Here strolled Lord John Russell; there, +with heavy tread, walked Daniel O'Connell. Hallam, placid, kindly, +gentle--the prince of book-worms--moved quickly through the rooms, +pausing to raise a glance to the ceiling--copied from one of the side +aisles of Henry VII.'s Chapel--but the fretwork is gilt, and there is +_petitesse_ about the Gothic which disappoints all good judges. + +But when Horace conducted his courtly guests into this his mind-vaunted +vaulted gallery, he had sometimes George Selwyn at his side; or +Gray--or, in his old age, 'my niece, the Duchess of Gloucester,' leaned +on his arm. What strange associations, what brilliant company!--the +associations can never be recalled there again; nor the company +reassembled. The gallery, like everything else, has perished under the +pressure of debt. He who was so particular, too, as to the number of +those who were admitted to see his house--he who stipulated that four +persons only should compose a party, and one party alone be shown over +each day--how would he have borne the crisis, could he have foreseen it, +when Robins became, for the time, his successor, and was the temporary +lord of Strawberry; the dusty, ruthless, wondering, depreciating mob of +brokers--the respectable host of publishers--the starving army of +martyrs, the authors--the fine ladies, who saw nothing there comparable +to Howell and James's--the antiquaries, fishing out suspicious +antiquities--the painters, clamorous over Kneller's profile of Mrs. +Barry--the virtuous indignant mothers, as they passed by the portraits +of the Duchess de la Valliere, and of Ninon de l'Enclos, and remarked, +or at all events they _might_ have remarked, that the company on the +floor was scarcely much more respectable than the company on the +walls--the fashionables, who herded together, impelled by caste, that +free-masonry of social life, enter the Beauclerk closet to look over +Lady Di's scenes from the 'Mysterious Mother'--the players and +dramatists, finally, who crowded round Hogarth's sketch of his 'Beggars' +Opera,' with portraits, and gazed on Davison's likeness of Mrs. +Clive:--how could poor Horace have tolerated the sound of their +irreverent remarks, the dust of their shoes, the degradation of their +fancying that they might doubt his spurious-looking antiquities, or +condemn his improper-looking ladies on their canvas? How, indeed, could +he? For those parlours, that library, were peopled in his days with all +those who could enhance his pleasures, or add to their own, by their +presence. When Poverty stole in there, it was irradiated by Genius. When +painters hovered beneath the fretted ceiling of that library, it was to +thank the oracle of the day, not always for large orders, but for +powerful recommendations. When actresses trod the Star Chamber, it was +as modest friends, not as audacious critics on Horace, his house, and +his pictures. + +Before we call up the spirits that were familiar at Strawberry--ere we +pass through the garden-gate, the piers of which were copied from the +tomb of Bishop William de Luda, in Ely Cathedral--let us glance at the +chapel, and then a word or two about Walpole's neighbours and anent +Twickenham. + +The front of the chapel was copied from Bishop Audley's tomb at +Salisbury. Four panels of wood, taken from the Abbey of St. Edmund's +Bury, displayed the portraits of Cardinal Beaufort, of Humphrey Duke of +Gloucester, and of Archbishop Kemp. So much for the English church. + +Next was seen a magnificent shrine in mosaic, from the church of St. +Mary Maggiore, in Rome. This was the work of the noted Peter Cavalini, +who constructed the tomb of Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey. +The shrine had figured over the sepulchre of four martyrs, who rested +between it in 1257: then the principal window in the chapel was brought +from Bexhill in Sussex; and displayed portraits of Henry III. and his +queen. + +It was not every day that gay visitors travelled down the dusty roads +from London to visit the recluse at Strawberry: but Horace wanted them +not, for he had neighbours. In his youth he had owned for his playfellow +the ever witty, the precocious, the all-fascinating Lady Mary Wortley +Montagu. 'She was,' he wrote, 'a playfellow of mine when we were +children. She was always a dirty little thing. This habit continued with +her. When at Florence, the Grand Duke gave her apartments in his palace. +One room sufficed for everything; and when she went away, the stench was +so strong that they were obliged to fumigate the chamber with vinegar +for a week.' + +Let not the scandal be implicitly credited. Lady Mary, dirty or clean, +resided occasionally, however, at Twickenham. When the admirable Lysons +composed his 'Environs of London,' Horace Walpole was still living--it +was in 1795--to point out to him the house in which his brilliant +acquaintance lived. It was then inhabited by Dr. Morton. The profligate +and clever Duke of Wharton lived also at Twickenham. + +Marble Hill was built by George II, for the countess of Suffolk, and +Henry, Earl of Pembroke, was the architect. Of later years, the +beautiful and injured Mrs. Fitzherbert might be seen traversing the +greensward, which was laved by the then pellucid waters of the Thames. +The parish of Twickenham, in fact, was noted for the numerous characters +who have, at various times, lived in it: Robert Boyle, the great +philosopher; James Craggs, Secretary of State; Lord George Germaine; +Lord Bute--are strangely mixed up with the old memories which circle +around Twickenham to say nothing of its being, in after years, the abode +of Louis Philippe, and now, of his accomplished son. + +One dark figure in the background of society haunts us also: Lady +Macclesfield, the cruel mother of Savage, polluted Twickenham by her +evil presence. + +Let us not dwell on her name, but recall, with somewhat of pride, that +the names of that knot of accomplished, intellectual women, who composed +the neighbourhood of Strawberry, were all English; those who loved to +revel in all its charms of society and intellect were our justly-prized +countrywomen. + +Foremost in the bright constellation was Anne Seymour Conway, too soon +married to the Hon. John Darner. She was one of the loveliest, the most +enterprizing, and the most gifted women of her time--thirty-one years +younger than Horace, having been born in 1748. He doubtless liked her +the more that no ridicule could attach to his partiality, which was that +of a father to a daughter, insofar as regarded his young cousin. She +belonged to a family dear to him, being the daughter of Field Marshal +Henry Seymour Conway: then she was beautiful, witty, a courageous +politician, a heroine, fearless of losing caste, by aspiring to be an +artist. She was, in truth, of our own time rather than of that. The +works which she left at Strawberry are scattered; and if still +traceable, are probably in many instances scarcely valued. But in that +lovely spot, hallowed by the remembrance of Mrs. Siddons, who lived +there in some humble capacity--say maid, say companion--in Guy's Cliff +House, near Warwick--noble traces of Anne Damer's genius are extant: +busts of the majestic Sally Siddons; of Nature's aristocrat, John +Kemble; of his brother Charles--arrest many a look, call up many a +thought of Anne Damer and her gifts: her intelligence, her warmth of +heart, her beauty, her associates. Of her powers Horace Walpole had the +highest opinion. 'If they come to Florence,' he wrote, speaking of Mrs. +Damer's going to Italy for the winter, 'the great duke should beg Mrs. +Damer to give him something of her statuary; and it would be a greater +curiosity than anything in his Chamber of Painters. She has executed +several marvels since you saw her; and has lately carved two colossal +heads for the bridge at Henley, which is the most beautiful in the +world, next to the Ponte di Trinita and was principally designed by her +father, General Conway.' + +No wonder that he left to this accomplished relative the privilege of +living, after his death, at Strawberry Hill, of which she took +possession in 1797, and where she remained twenty years; giving it up, +in 1828, to Lord Waldegrave. + +She was, as we have said, before her time in her appreciation of what +was noble and superior, in preference to that which gives to caste +alone, its supremacy. During her last years she bravely espoused an +unfashionable cause; and disregarding the contempt of the lofty, became +the champion of the injured and unhappy Caroline of Brunswick. + +From his retreat at Strawberry, Horace Walpole heard all that befel the +object of his flame, Lady Sophia Fermor. His letters present from time +to time such passages as these; Lady Pomfret, whom he detested, being +always the object of his satire:-- + +'There is not the least news; but that my Lord Carteret's wedding has +been deferred on Lady Sophia's (Fermor's) falling dangerously ill of a +scarlet fever; but they say it is to be next Saturday. She is to have +L1,600 a year jointure, L400 pin-money, and L2,000 of jewels. Carteret +says he does not intend to marry the mother (Lady Pomfret) and the whole +family. What do you think my Lady intends?' + +Lord Carteret, who was the object of Lady Pomfret's successful +generalship, was at this period, 1744, fifty-four years of age, having +been born in 1690. He was the son of George, Lord Carteret, by Grace, +daughter of the first Earl of Bath, of the line of Granville--a title +which became eventually his. The fair Sophia, in marrying him, espoused +a man of no ordinary attributes. In person, Horace Walpole, after the +grave had closed over one whom he probably envied, thus describes him:-- + + 'Commanding beauty, smoothed by cheerful grace, + Sat on each open feature of his face. + Bold was his language, rapid, glowing, strong, + And science flowed spontaneous from his tongue: + A genius seizing systems, slighting rules, + And void of gall, with boundless scorn of fools.' + +After having been Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Carteret attended his +royal master in the campaign, during which the Battle of Dettingen was +fought. He now held the reins of government in his own hands as premier. +Lord Chesterfield has described him as possessing quick precision, nice +decision, and unbounded presumption. The Duke of Newcastle used to say +of him that he was a 'man who never doubted.' + +In a subsequent letter we find the sacrifice of the young and lovely +Sophia completed. Ambition was the characteristic of her family: and she +went, not unwillingly, to the altar. The whole affair is too amusingly +told to be given in other language than that of Horace:-- + +'I could tell you a great deal of news,' he writes to Horace Mann, 'but +it would not be what you would expect. It is not of battles, sieges, and +declarations of war; nor of invasions, insurrections and addresses: it +is the god of love, not he of war, who reigns in the newspapers. The +town has made up a list of six-and-thirty weddings, which I shall not +catalogue to you. But the chief entertainment has been the nuptials of +our great Quixote (Carteret) and the fair Sophia. On the point of +matrimony, she fell ill of a scarlet fever, and was given over, while he +had the gout, but heroically sent her word, that if she was well, he +_would_ be well. They corresponded every day, and he used to plague the +cabinet council with reading her letters to them. Last night they were +married; and as all he does must have a particular air in it, they +supped at Lord Pomfret's. At twelve, Lady Granville (his mother) and all +his family went to bed, but the porter: then my lord went home, and +waited for her in the lodge. She came alone, in a hackney chair, met him +in the hall, and was led up the back stairs to bed. What is ridiculously +lucky is, that Lord Lincoln goes into waiting to-day, and will be to +present her!' + +The event was succeeded by a great ball at the Duchess of Richmond's, in +honour of the bride, Lady Carteret paying her ladyship the 'highest +honours,' which she received in the 'highest state.' 'I have seen her,' +adds Horace, 'but once, and found her just what I expected, _tres grande +dame_, full of herself, and yet not with an air of happiness. She looks +ill, and is grown lean, but is still the finest figure in the world. The +mother (Lady Pomfret) is not so exalted as I expected; I fancy Carteret +has kept his resolution, and does not marry her too.' + +Whilst this game was being played out, one of Walpole's most valued +neighbours, Pope, was dying of dropsy, and every evening a gentle +delirium possessed him. Again does Horace return to the theme, ever in +his thoughts--the Carterets: again does he recount their triumphs and +their follies. + +'I will not fail'--still to Horace Mann--'to make your compliments to +the Pomfrets and Carterets. I see them seldom but I am in favour; so I +conclude, for my Lady Pomfret told me the other night that I said better +things than anybody. I was with them all at a subscription ball at +Ranelagh last week, which my Lady Carteret thought proper to look upon +as given to her, and thanked the gentlemen, who were not quite so well +pleased at her condescending to take it to herself. I did the honours of +all her dress. "How charming your ladyship's cross is! I am sure the +design was your own!"--"No, indeed; my lord sent it me just as it is." +Then as much to the mother. Do you wonder I say better things than +anybody?' + +But these brilliant scenes were soon mournfully ended. Lady Sophia, the +haughty, the idolized, the Juno of that gay circle, was suddenly carried +off by a fever. With real feeling Horace thus tells the tale:-- + +'Before I talk of any public news, I must tell you what you will be very +sorry for. Lady Granville (Lady Sophia Fermor) is dead. She had a fever +for six weeks before her lying-in, and could never get it off. Last +Saturday they called in another physician, Dr. Oliver. On Monday he +pronounced her out of danger; about seven in the evening, as Lady +Pomfret and Lady Charlotte (Fermor) were sitting by her, the first +notice they had of her immediate danger was her sighing and saying, "I +feel death come very fast upon me!" She repeated the same words +frequently, remained perfectly in her senses and calm, and died about +eleven at night. It is very shocking for anybody so young, so handsome, +so arrived at the height of happiness, to be so quickly snatched away.' + +So vanished one of the brightest stars of the court. The same autumn +(1745) was the epoch of a great event; the marching of Charles Edward +into England. Whilst the Duke of Cumberland was preparing to head the +troops to oppose him, the Prince of Wales was inviting a party to +supper, the main feature of which was the citadel of Carlisle in sugar, +the company all besieging it with sugar-plums. It would, indeed, as +Walpole declared, be impossible to relate all the _Caligulisms_ of this +effeminate, absurd prince. But buffoonery and eccentricity were the +order of the day. 'A ridiculous thing happened,' Horace writes, 'when +the princess saw company after her confinement. The new-born babe was +shown in a mighty pretty cradle, designed by Kent, under a canopy in the +great drawing-room. Sir William Stanhope went to look at it. Mrs, +Herbert, the governess, advanced to unmantle it. He said, "In wax, I +suppose?" "Sir?" "In wax, madam?" "The young prince, sir?" "Yes, in wax, +I suppose?" This is his odd humour. When he went to see the duke at his +birth, he said, "Lord, it sees!"' + +The recluse of Strawberry was soon consoled by hearing that the rebels +were driven back from Derby, where they had penetrated, and where the +remembrance of the then gay, sanguine, brave young Chevalier long +lingered among the old inhabitants. One of the last traces of his +short-lived possession of the town is gone: very recently, Exeter House, +where he lodged and where he received his adherents, has been pulled +down; the ground on which it stood, with its court and garden--somewhat +in appearace like an old French hotel--being too valuable for the relic +of bygone times to be spared. The panelled chambers, the fine staircase, +certain pictures--one by Wright of Derby, of him--one of Miss +Walkinshaw--have all disappeared. + +Of the capture, the trial, the death of his adherents, Horace Walpole +has left the most graphic and therefore touching account that has been +given; whilst he calls a 'rebellion on the defensive' a 'despicable +affair.' Humane, he reverted with horror to the atrocities of General +Hawley, 'the Chief Justice,' as he was designated, who had a 'passion +for frequent and sudden executions.' When this savage commander gained +intelligence of a French spy coming over, he displayed him at once +before the army on a gallows, dangling in his muff and boots. When one +of the surgeons begged for the body of a deserter to dissect, 'Well,' +said the wretch, 'but you must let me have the skeleton to hang up in +the guard-room,' Such was the temper of the times; vice, childishness, +levity at court, brutality in the camp, were the order of the day. +Horace, even Horace, worldly in all, indifferent as to good and bad, +seems to have been heart sick. His brother's matrimonial infidelity +vexed him also sorely. Lady Orford, 'tired,' as he expresses it, of +'sublunary affairs,' was trying to come to an arrangement with her +husband, from whom she had been long separated; the price was to be, he +fancied, L2,000 a year. Meantime, during the convulsive state of +political affairs, he interested himself continually in the improvement +of Strawberry Hill. There was a rival building, Mr. Bateman's Monastery, +at Old Windsor, which is said to have had more uniformity of design than +Strawberry Hill. Horace used indeed to call the house of which he became +so proud a paper house; the walls were at first so slight, and the roof +so insecure in heavy rains. Nevertheless, his days were passed as +peacefully there as the premature infirmities which came upon him would +permit. + +From the age of twenty-five his fingers were enlarged and deformed by +chalk-stones, which were discharged twice a year. 'I can chalk up a +score with more rapidity than any man in England,' was his melancholy +jest. He had now adopted as a necessity a strict temperance: he sat up +very late, either writing or conversing, yet always breakfasted at nine +o'clock. After the death of Madame du Deffand, a little fat dog, +scarcely able to move for age and size--her legacy--used to proclaim his +approach by barking. The little favourite was placed beside him on a +sofa; a tea-kettle, stand, and heater were brought in, and he drank two +or three cups of tea out of the finest and most precious china of +Japan--that of a pure white. He breakfasted with an appetite, feeding +from his table the little dog and his pet squirrels. + +Dinner at Strawberry Hill was usually served up in the small parlour in +winter, the large dining-room being reserved for large parties. As age +drew on, he was supported down stairs by his valet; and then, says the +compiler of Walpoliana, 'he ate most moderately of chicken, pheasant, or +any light food. Pastry he disliked, as difficult of digestion, though he +would taste a morsel of venison-pie. Never but once, that he drank two +glasses of white wine, did the editor see him taste any liquor, except +ice-water. A pail of ice was placed under the table, in which stood a +decanter of water, from which he supplied himself with his favourite +beverage.' + +No wine was drunk after dinner, when the host of Strawberry Hill called +instantly to some one to ring the bell for coffee. It was served +upstairs, and there, adds the same writer, 'he would pass about five +o'clock, and generally resuming his place on the sofa, would sit till +two in the morning, in miscellaneous chit-chat, full of singular +anecdotes, strokes of wit, and acute observations, occasionally sending +for books, or curiosities, or passing to the library, as any reference +happened to arise in conversation. After his coffee, he tasted nothing; +but the snuff-box of _tabac d'etrennes_, from Fribourg's, was not +forgotten, and was replenished from a canister lodged in an ancient +marble urn of great thickness, which stood in the window seat, and +served to secure its moisture and rich flavour.' + +In spite of all his infirmities, Horace Walpole took no care of his +health, as far as out-door exercise was concerned. His friends beheld +him with horror go out on a dewy day: he would even step out in his +slippers. In his own grounds he never wore a hat: he used to say, that +on his first visit to Paris he was ashamed of his effeminacy, when he +saw every meagre little Frenchman whom he could have knocked down in a +breath walking without a hat, which he could not do without a certainty +of taking the disease which the Germans say is endemical in England, and +which they call _to catch cold_. The first trial, he used to tell his +friends, cost him a fever, but he got over it. Draughts of air, damp +rooms, windows open at his back, became matters of indifference to him +after once getting through the hardening process. He used even to be +vexed at the officious solicitude of friends on this point, and with +half a smile would say, 'My back is the same as my face, and my neck is +like my nose.' He regarded his favourite iced-water as a preservative to +his stomach, which, he said, would last longer than his bones. He did +not take into account that the stomach is usually the seat of disease. + +One naturally inquires why the amiable recluse never, in his best days, +thought of marriage: a difficult question to be answered. In men of that +period, a dissolute life, an unhappy connection, too frequently +explained the problem. In the case before us no such explanation can be +offered. Horace Walpole had many votaries, many friends, several +favourites, but no known mistress. The marks of the old bachelor +fastened early on him, more especially after he began to be governed by +his _valet de chambre_. The notable personage who ruled over the pliant +Horace was a Swiss, named Colomb. This domestic tyrant was despotic; if +Horace wanted a tree to be felled, Colomb opposed it, and the master +yielded. Servants, in those days, were intrinsically the same as in +ours, but they differed in manner. The old familiarity had not gone out, +but existed as it still does among the French. Those who recollect Dr. +Parr will remember how stern a rule his factotum Sam exercised over him. +Sam put down what wine he chose, nay, almost invited the guests; at all +events, he had his favourites among them. And in the same way as Sam +ruled at Hatton, Colomb was, _de facto,_ the master of Strawberry Hill. + +With all its defects, the little 'plaything house' as Horace Walpole +called it, must have been a charming house to visit in. First, there was +the host. 'His engaging manners,' writes the editor of Walpoliana, 'and +gentle, endearing affability to his friends, exceed all praise. Not the +smallest hauteur, or consciousness of rank or talent, appeared in his +familiar conferences; and he was ever eager to dissipate any constraint +that might occur, as imposing a constraint upon himself, and knowing +that any such chain enfeebles and almost annihilates the mental powers. +Endued with exquisite sensibility, his wit never gave the smallest +wound, even to the grossest ignorance of the world, or the most morbid +hypochondriac bashfulness.' + +He had, in fact, no excuse for being doleful or morbid. How many +resources were his! what an even destiny! what prosperous fortunes! What +learned luxury he revelled in! he was enabled to 'pick up all the roses +of science, and to leave the thorns behind.' To how few of the gifted +have the means of gratification been permitted! to how many has hard +work been allotted! Then, when genius has been endowed with rank, with +wealth, how often it has been degraded by excess! Rochester's passions +ran riot in one century: Beckford's gifts were polluted by his vices in +another--signal landmarks of each age. But Horace Walpole was prudent, +decorous, even respectable: no elevated aspirations, no benevolent views +ennobled under the _petitesse_ of his nature. He had neither genius nor +romance: he was even devoid of sentiment; but he was social to all, +neighbourly to many, and attached to some of his fellow-creatures. + +The 'prettiest bauble' possible, as he called Strawberry Hill, 'set in +enamelled meadows in filigree hedges,' was surrounded by 'dowagers as +plenty as flounders;' such was Walpole's assertion. As he sat in his +library, scented by caraway, heliotropes, or pots of tuberose, or +orange-trees in flower, certain dames would look in upon him, sometimes +_malgre lui_, sometimes to his bachelor heart's content. + +'Thank God!' he wrote to his cousin Conway, 'the Thames is between me +and the Duchess of Queensberry!' Walpole's dislike to his fair neighbour +may partly have originated in the circumstance of her birth, and her +grace's presuming to plume herself on what he deemed an unimportant +distinction. Catherine Hyde, Duchess of Queensberry, was the +great-granddaughter of the famous Lord Clarendon, and the great-niece of +Anne, Duchess of York. Prior had in her youth celebrated her in the +'Female Phaeton,' as 'Kitty:' in his verse he begs Phaeton to give Kitty +the chariot, if but for a day. + +In reference to this, Horace Walpole, in the days of his admiration of +her grace, had made the following impromptu:-- + +'On seeing the Duchess of Queensberry walk at the funeral of the +Princess Dowager of Wales,-- + + 'To many a Kitty, Love his car + Would for a day engage; + But Prior's Kitty, ever fair, + Obtained it for an age.' + +It was Kitty who took Gay under her patronage, who resented the +prohibition of the 'Beggar's Opera,' remonstrated with the king and +queen, and was thereupon forbidden the court. She carried the poet to +her house. She may have been ridiculous, but she had a warm, generous +heart. 'I am now,' Gay wrote to Swift in 1729, 'in the Duke of +Queensberry's house, and have been so ever since I left Hampstead; where +I was carried at a time that it was thought I could not live a day. I +must acquaint you (because I know it will please you) that during my +sickness I had many of the kindest proofs of friendship, particularly +from the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry; who, if I had been their +nearest relation and dearest friend, could not have treated me with more +constant attendance then, and they continue the same to me now.' + +The duchess appears to have been one of those wilful, eccentric, spoiled +children, whom the world at once worships and ridicules: next to the +Countess of Pomfret, she was Horace Walpole's pet aversion. She was well +described as being 'very clever, very whimsical, and just not mad.' Some +of Walpole's touches are strongly confirmatory of this description. For +instance, her grace gives a ball, orders every one to come at six, to +sup at twelve, and go away directly after: opens the ball herself with a +minuet. To this ball she sends strange invitations; 'yet,' says Horace, +'except these flights, the only extraordinary thing the duchess did was +to do nothing extraordinary, for I do not call it very mad that some +pique happening between her and the Duchess of Bedford, the latter had +this distich sent to her;-- + + 'Come with a whistle--come with a call: + Come with good-will, or come not at all.' + +'I do not know whether what I am going to tell you did not border a +little upon Moorfields. The gallery where they danced was very cold. +Lord Lorn, George Selwyn, and I retired into a little room, and sat +comfortably by the fire. The duchess looked in, said nothing, and sent a +smith to take the hinges of the door oft. We understood the hint--left +the room--and so did the smith the door.' + +'I must tell you,' he adds in another letter, 'of an admirable reply of +your acquaintance, the Duchess of Queensberry: old Lady Granville, Lord +Carteret's mother, whom they call _the queen-mother_, from taking upon +her to do the honours of her son's power, was pressing the duchess to +ask her for some place for herself or friends, and assured her that she +would procure it, be it what it would. Could she have picked out a +fitter person to be gracious to? The duchess made her a most grave +curtsey, and said, "Indeed, there was one thing she had set her heart +on."--"Dear child, how you oblige me by asking anything! What is it? +Tell me."--"Only that you would speak to my Lord Carteret to get me made +lady of the bedchamber to the Queen of Hungary."' + +The duchess was, therefore, one of the dowagers, 'thick as flounders,' +whose proximity was irritating to the fastidious bachelor. There was, +however, another Kitty between whom and Horace a tender friendship +subsisted: this was Kitty Clive, the famous actress; formerly Kitty +Ruftar. Horace had given her a house on his estate, which he called +sometimes 'Little Strawberry Hill,' and sometimes 'Cliveden;' and here +Mrs. Clive lived with her brother, Mr. Ruftar, until 1785. She formed, +for her friend, a sort of outer-home, in which he passed his evenings. +Long had he admired her talents. Those were the days of the drama in all +its glory: the opera was unfashionable. There were, Horace writes in +1742, on the 26th of May, only two-and-forty people in the Opera House, +in the pit and boxes: people were running to see 'Miss Lucy in Town,' at +Drury Lane, and to admire Mrs. Clive, in her imitation of the +Muscovites; but the greatest crowds assembled to wonder at Garrick, in +'Wine Merchant turned Player;' and great and small alike rushed to +Goodman's Fields to see him act all parts, and to laugh at his admirable +mimicry. It was perhaps, somewhat in jealousy of the counter attraction, +that Horace declared he saw nothing wonderful in the acting of Garrick, +though it was then heresy to say so. 'Now I talk of players,' he adds in +the same letter, 'tell Mr. Chute that his friend Bracegirdle breakfasted +with me this morning.' Horace delighted in such intimacies, and in +recalling old times. + +Mrs. Abingdon, another charming and clever actress, was also a denizen +of Twickenham, which became the most fashionable village near the +metropolis. Mrs. Pritchard, likewise, was attracted there; but the +proximity of the Countess of Suffolk, who lived at Marble Hill was the +delight of a great portion of Horace Walpole's life. Her reminiscences, +her anecdotes, her experience, were valuable as well as entertaining to +one who was for ever gathering up materials for history, or for +biography, or for letters to absent friends. + +In his own family he found little to cheer him: but if he hated one or +two more especially--and no one could hate more intensely than Horace +Walpole--it was his uncle, Lord Wapole, and his cousin, that nobleman's +son, whom he christened Pigwiggin; 'my monstrous uncle;' 'that old +buffoon, my uncle;' are terms which occur in his letters, and he speaks +of the bloody civil wars between 'Horatio Walpole' and 'Horace Walpole.' + +Horatio Walpole, the brother of Sir Robert, was created in June, 1756, +Baron Walpole of Wolterton, as a recompense for fifty years passed in +the public service--an honour which he only survived nine months. He +expired in February, 1757. His death removed one subject of bitter +dislike from the mind of Horace; but enough remained in the family to +excite grief and resentment. + +Towards his own two brothers, Robert, Earl of Orford, and Edward +Walpole, Horace the younger, as he was styled in contradistinction to +his uncle, bore very little affection. His feelings, however, for his +nephew George, who succeeded his father as Earl of Orford in 1751, were +more creditable to his heart; yet he gives a description of this +ill-fated young man in his letters, which shows at once pride and +disapprobation. One lingers with regret over the character and the +destiny of this fine young nobleman, whose existence was rendered +miserable by frequent attacks, at intervals, of insanity. + +Never was there a handsomer, a more popular, a more engaging being than +George, third Earl of Orford. When he appeared at the head of the +Norfolk regiment of militia, of which he was colonel, even the great +Lord Chatham broke out into enthusiasm:--'Nothing,' he wrote, 'could +make a better appearance than the two Norfolk battalions; Lord Orford, +with the front of Mars himself, and really the greatest figure under +arms I ever saw, as the theme of every tongue.' His person and air, +Horace Walpole declared, had a noble wildness in them: crowds followed +the battalions when the king reviewed them in Hyde Park; and among the +gay young officers in their scarlet uniforms, faced with black, in their +buff waistcoats and gold buttons, none was so conspicuous for martial +bearing as Lord Onord, although classed by his uncle 'among the knights +of shire who had never in their lives shot anything but woodcocks.' + +But there was a peculiarity of character in the young peer which shocked +Horace. 'No man,' he says in one of his letters, 'ever felt such a +disposition to love another as I did to love him. I flattered myself +that he would restore some lustre to our house--at least not let it +totally sink; but I am forced to give him up, and all my Walpole +views.... He has a good breeding, and attention when he is with you that +is even flattering;... he promises, offers everything one can wish; but +this is all: the instant he leaves you, all the world are nothing to +him; he would not give himself the least trouble in the world to give +any one satisfaction; yet this is mere indolence of mind, not of body: +his whole pleasure is outrageous exercise.' + +'He is,' in another place Horace adds, 'the most selfish man in the +world: without being in the least interested, he loves nobody but +himself, yet neglects every view of fortune and ambition. Yet,' he +concludes, 'it is impossible not to love him when one sees him: +impossible to esteem him when one thinks on him.' + +The young lord, succeeding to an estate deeply encumbered, both by his +father and grandfather, rushed on the turf, and involved himself still +more. In vain did Horace the younger endeavour to secure for him the +hand of Miss Nicholls, an heiress with L50,000, and, to that end, placed +the young lady with Horace the elder (Lord Walpole), at Wolterton. The +scheme failed: the crafty old politician thought he might as well +benefit his own sons as his nephew, for he had himself claims on the +Houghton estate which he expected Miss Nicholl's fortune might help to +liquidate. + +At length the insanity and recklessness displayed by his nephew--the +handsome martial George--induced poor Horace to take affairs in his own +hands. His reflections, on his paying a visit to Houghton to look after +the property there, are pathetically expressed:-- + +'Here I am again at Houghton,' he writes in March, 1761, 'and alone; in +this spot where (except two hours last month) I have not been in sixteen +years. Think what a crowd of reflections!... Here I am probably for the +last time of my life: every clock that strikes, tells me I am an hour +nearer to yonder church--that church into which I have not yet had +courage to enter; where lies that mother on whom I doated, and who +doated on me! There are the two rival mistresses of Houghton, neither of +whom ever wished to enjoy it. There, too, is he who founded its +greatness--to contribute to whose fall Europe was embroiled; there he +sleeps in quiet and dignity, while his friend and his foe--rather his +false ally and real enemy--Newcastle and Bath, are exhausting the dregs +of their pitiful lives in squabbles and pamphlets. + +When he looked at the pictures--that famous Houghton collection--the +surprise of Horace was excessive. Accustomed to see nothing elsewhere +but daubs, he gazed with ecstasy on them. 'The majesty of Italian +ideas,' he says, 'almost sinks before the warm nature of Italian +colouring! Alas! don't I grow old?' + +As he lingered in the gallery, with mingled pride and sadness, a party +arrived to see the house--a man and three women in riding-dresses--who +'rode post' through the apartments. 'I could not,' he adds, 'hurry +before them fast enough; they were not so long in seeing the whole +gallery as I could have been in one room, to examine what I knew by +heart. I remember formerly being often diverted with this kind of +_seers_; they come, ask what such a room is called in which Sir Robert +lay, write it down, admire a lobster or a cabbage in a Market Piece, +dispute whether the last room was green or purple, and then hurry to the +inn, for fear the fish should be over-dressed. How different my +sensations! not a picture here but recalls a history; not one but I +remembered in Downing Street, or Chelsea, where queens and crowds +admired them, though seeing them as little as these travellers![5] + +[5: Sir Robert Walpole purchased a house and garden at Chelsea in 1722, +near the college, adjoining Gough House.--Cunningham's 'London.'] + +After tea he strolled into the garden. They told him it was now called a +_pleasure-ground._ To Horace it was a scene of desolation--a floral +Nineveh. 'What a dissonant idea of pleasure!--those groves, those +_allees_, where I have passed so many charming moments, were now +stripped up or overgrown--many fond paths I could not unravel, though +with an exact clue in my memory. I met two gamekeepers, and a thousand +hares! In the days when all my soul was tuned to pleasure and vivacity +(and you will think perhaps it is far from being out of tune yet), I +hated Houghton and its solitude; yet I loved this garden, as now, with +many regrets, I love Houghton--Houghton, I know not what to call it--a +monument of grandeur or ruin!' + +Although he did not go with the expectation of finding a land flowing +with milk and honey, the sight of all this ruin long saddened his +thoughts. All was confusion, disorder, debts, mortgages, sales, pillage, +villainy, waste, folly, and madness. The nettles and brambles in the +park were up to his shoulders; horses had been turned into the garden, +and banditti lodged in every cottage. + +The perpetuity of livings that came up to the very park-palings had been +sold, and the farms let at half their value. Certainly, if Houghton were +bought by Sir Robert Walpole with public money, that public was now +avenged. + +The owner of this ruined property had just stemmed the torrent; but the +worst was to come. The pictures were sold, and to Russia they went. + +Whilst thus harassed by family misfortunes, other annoyances came. The +mournful story of Chatterton's fate was painfully mixed up with the +tenour of Horace Walpole's life. + +The gifted and unfortunate Thomas Chatterton was born at Bristol in +1752. Even from his birth fate seemed to pursue him, for he was a +posthumous son: and if the loss of a father in the highest ranks of life +be severely felt, how much more so is it to be deplored in those which +are termed the working classes! + +The friendless enthusiast was slow in learning to read; but when the +illuminated capitals of an old book were presented to him, he quickly +learned his letters. This fact, and his being taught to read out of a +black-letter Bible, are said to have accounted for his facility in the +imitation of antiquities. Pensive and taciturn, he picked up education +at a charity-school, until apprenticed to a scrivener, when he began +that battle of life which ended to him so fatally. + +Upon very slight accidents did his destiny hinge. In those days women +worked with thread, and used thread-papers. Now paper was, at that time, +dear: dainty matrons liked tasty thread-papers. A pretty set of +thread-papers, with birds or flowers painted on each, was no mean +present for a friend. Chatterton, a quiet child, one day noticed that +his mother's thread-papers were of no ordinary materials. They were made +of parchment, and on this parchment was some of the black-letter +characters by which his childish attention had been fixed to his book. +The fact was, that his uncle was sexton to the ancient church of St. +Mary Redcliffe, at Bristol; and the parchment was the fruit of theft. +Chatterton's father had carried off, from a room in the church, certain +ancient manuscripts, which had been left about; being originally +abstracted from what was called Mr. Canynge's coffin. Mr. Canynge, an +eminent merchant, had rebuilt St. Mary Redcliffe in the reign of Edward +IV.: and the parchments, therefore, were of some antiquity. The +antiquary groans over their loss in vain: Chatterton's father had +covered his books with them; his mother had used up the strips for +thread-papers; and Thomas Chatterton himself contrived to abstract a +considerable portion also, for his own purposes. + +He was ingenious, industrious, a poet by nature, and, wonderful to say, +withal a herald by taste. Upon his nefarious possessions, he founded a +scheme of literary forgeries; purporting to be ancient pieces of poetry +found in Canynge's chest; and described as being the production of +Thomas Canynge and of his friend, one Thomas Rowley, a priest. Money and +books were sent to Chatterton in return for little strips of vellum, +which he passed off as the original itself; and the successful forger +might now be seen in deep thought, walking in the meadows near +Redcliffe; a marked, admired, poetic youth. + +In 1769, Chatterton wrote to Horace Walpole, offering to send him some +accounts of eminent painters who had flourished at Bristol, and at the +same time mentioning the discovery of the poems, and enclosing some +specimens. In a subsequent letter he begged Walpole to aid him in his +wish to be freed from his then servile condition, and to be placed in +one more congenial to his pursuits. + +In his choice of a patron poor Chatterton made a fatal mistake. The +benevolence of Horace was of a general kind, and never descended to +anything obscure or unappreciated. There was a certain hardness in that +nature of his which had so pleasant an aspect. 'An artist,' he once +said, 'has his pencils--an author his pens--and the public must reward +them as it pleases.' Alas! he forgot how long it is before penury, even +ennobled by genius, can make itself seen, heard, approved, repaid: how +vast is the influence of _prestige!_ how generous the hand which is +extended to those in want, even if in error! All that Horace did, +however, was strictly correct: he showed the poems to Gray and Mason, +who pronounced them forgeries; and he wrote a cold and reproving letter +to the starving author: and no one could blame him: Chatterton demanded +back his poems; Walpole was going to Paris, and forgot to return them. +Another letter came: the wounded poet again demanded them, adding that +Walpole would not have dared to use him so had he not been poor. The +poems were returned in a blank cover: and here all Walpole's concern +with Thomas Chatterton ends. All this happened in 1769. In August, 1770, +the remains of the unhappy youth were carried to the burial-ground of +Shoe Lane workhouse, near Holborn. He had swallowed arsenic; had +lingered a day in agonies; and then, at the age of eighteen expired. +Starvation had prompted the act: yet on the day before he had committed +it, he had refused a dinner, of which he was invited by his hostess to +partake, assuring her that he was not hungry. Just or unjust, the world +has never forgiven Horace Walpole for Chatterton's misery. His +indifference has been contrasted with the generosity of Edmund Burke to +Crabbe: a generosity to which we owe 'The Village,' 'The Borough,' and +to which Crabbe owed his peaceful old age, and almost his existence. The +cases were different; but Crabbe had his faults--and Chatterton was +worth saving. It is well for genius that there are souls in the world +more sympathizing, less worldly, and more indulgent, than those of such +men as Horace Walpole. Even the editor of 'Walpoliana' lets judgment go +by default. 'As to artists,' he says, 'he paid them what they earned, +and he commonly employed mean ones, that the reward might be smaller.' + +Let us change the strain: stilled be the mournful note on which we have +rested too long. What have wits and beaux and men of society to do with +poets and beggars? Behold, Horace, when he has written his monitory +letter, packs up for Paris. Let us follow him there, and see him in the +very centre of his pleasures--in the _salon_ of La Marquise du Deffand. + +Horace Walpole had perfected his education, as a fine gentleman, by his +intimacy with Madame Geoffrin, to whom Lady Hervey had introduced him. +She called him _le nouveau Richelieu_; and Horace was sensible of so +great a compliment from a woman at once '_spirituelle_ and _pieuse_'--a +combination rare in France. Nevertheless, she had the national views of +matrimony. 'What have you done, Madame,' said a foreigner to her, 'with +the poor man I used to see here, who never spoke a word?' + +'Ah, _mon Dieu!_ was the reply, 'that was my husband: he is dead.' She +spoke in the same tone as if she had been specifying the last new opera, +or referring to the latest work in vogue: things just passed away. + +The _Marquise du Deffaud_ was a very different personage to Madame +Geoffrin, whose great enemy she was. When Horace Walpole first entered +into the society of the Marquise, she was stone blind, and old; but +retained not only her wit, and her memory, but her passions. Passions, +like artificial flowers, are unbecoming to age: and those of the witty, +atheistical Marquise are almost revolting. Scandal still attached her +name to that of Henault, of whom Voltaire wrote the epitaph beginning + + 'Henault, fameus par vos soupers + Et votre "chronologie,"' &c. + +Henault was for many years deaf; and, during the whole of his life, +disagreeable. There was something farcical in the old man's receptions +on his death-bed; whilst, amongst the rest of the company came Madame du +Deffand, a blind old woman of seventy, who, bawling in his ear, aroused +the lethargic man, by inquiring after a former rival of hers, Madame de +Castelmaron--about whom he went on babbling until death stopped his +voice. + +She was seventy years of age when Horace Walpole, at fifty, became her +passion. She was poor and disreputable, and even the high position of +having been mistress to the regent could not save her from being decried +by a large portion of that society which centered round the _bel +esprit_. 'She was,' observes the biographer of Horace Walpole (the +lamented author of the 'Crescent and the Cross,') 'always gay, always +charming--everything but a Christian.' The loss of her eyesight did not +impair the remains of her beauty; her replies, her compliments, were +brilliant; even from one whose best organs of expression were mute. + +A frequent guest at her suppers, Walpole's kindness, real or pretended, +soon made inroads on a heart still susceptible. The ever-green passions +of this venerable sinner threw out fresh shoots; and she became +enamoured of the attentive and admired Englishman. Horace was +susceptible of ridicule: there his somewhat icy heart was easily +touched. Partly in vanity, partly in playfulness, he encouraged the +sentimental-exaggeration of his correspondent; but, becoming afraid of +the world's laughter, ended by reproving her warmth, and by chilling, +under the refrigerating influence of his cautions, all the romance of +the octogenarian. + +In later days, however, after his solicitude--partly soothed by the +return of his letters to Madame du Deffand, partly by her death--had +completely subsided, a happier friendship was permitted to solace his +now increasing infirmities, as well as to enhance his social pleasures. + +It was during the year 1788, when he was living in retirement at +Strawberry, that his auspicious friendship was formed. The only grain of +ambition he had left he declared was to believe himself forgotten; that +was 'the thread that had run through his life;' 'so true,' he adds, +'except the folly of being an author, has been what I said last year to +the Prince' (afterwards George IV.), 'when he asked me "If I was a +Freemason," I replied, "No sir; I never was anything."' + +Lady Charleville told him that some of her friends had been to see +Strawberry. 'Lord!' cried one lady, 'who is that Mr. Walpole?' 'Lord!' +cried a second; 'don't you know the great epicure, Mr. Walpole?' 'Who?' +cried the first,--'great epicure! you mean the antiquarian.' 'Surely,' +adds Horace, 'this anecdote may take its place in the chapter of local +fame.' + +But he reverts to his new acquisition--the acquaintance of the Miss +Berrys, who had accidentally taken a house next to his at Strawberry +Hill. Their story, he adds, was a curious one: their descent Scotch; +their grandfather had an estate of L5,000 a year, but disinherited his +son on account of his marrying a woman with no fortune. She died, and +the grandfather, wishing for an heir-male, pressed the widower to marry +again: he refused; and said he would devote himself to the education of +his two daughters. The second son generously gave up L8oo a year to his +brother, and the two motherless girls were taken to the Continent, +whence they returned the 'best informed and most perfect creatures that +Horace Walpole ever saw at their age.' + +Sensible, natural, frank, their conversation proved most agreeable to a +man who was sated of grand society, and sick of vanity until he had +indulged in vexation of spirit. He discovered by chance only--for there +was no pedantry in these truly well-educated women--that the eldest +understood Latin, and 'was a perfect Frenchwoman in her language. Then +the youngest drew well; and copied one of Lady Di Beauclerk's pictures, +'The Gipsies,' though she had never attempted colours before. Then, as +to looks: Mary, the eldest, had a sweet face, the more interesting from +being pale; with fine dark eyes that were lighted up when she spoke. +Agnes, the younger, was 'hardly to be called handsome, but almost;' with +an agreeable sensible countenance. It is remarkable that women thus +delineated--not beauties, yet not plain--are always the most fascinating +to men. The sisters doted on each other: Mary taking the lead in +society. 'I must even tell you,' Horace wrote to the Countess of Ossory, +'that they dress within the bounds of fashion, but without the +excrescences and balconies with which modern hoydens overwhelm and +barricade their persons.' (One would almost have supposed that Horace +had lived in the days of crinoline.') + +The first night that Horace met the two sisters, he refused to be +introduced to them: having heard so much of them that he concluded they +would be 'all pretension.' The second night that he met them, he sat +next Mary, and found her an 'angel both inside and out.' He did not know +which he liked best; but Mary's face, which was formed for a sentimental +novel, or, still more, for genteel comedy, riveted him, he owned. Mr. +Berry, the father, was a little 'merry man with a round face,' whom no +one would have suspected of sacrificing 'all for love, and the world +well lost.' This delightful family visited him every Sunday evening; the +region of wickenham being too 'proclamatory' for cards to be introduced +on the seventh day, conversation was tried instead; thankful, indeed, +was Horace, for the 'pearls,' as he styled them, thus thrown in his +path. His two 'Strawberries,' as he christened them, were henceforth the +theme of every letter. He had set up a printing-press many years +previously at Strawberry, and on taking the young ladies to see it, he +remembered the gallantry of his former days, and they found these +stanzas in type:-- + + 'To Mary's lips has ancient Rome + Her purest language taught; + And from the modern city home + Agnes its pencil brought. + + 'Rome's ancient Horace sweetly chants + Such maids with lyric fire; + Albion's old Horace sings nor paints, + He only can admire. + + 'Still would his press their fame record, + So amiable the pair is! + But, ah! how vain to think his word + Can add a straw to Berry's.' + +On the following day, Mary, whom he terms the Latin nymph sent the +following lines:-- + + 'Had Rome's famed Horace thus addrest + His Lydia or his Lyce, + He had ne'er so oft complained their breast + To him was cold and icy. + + 'But had they sought their joy to explain, + Or praise their generous bard, + Perhaps, like me, they had tried in vain, + And felt the task too hard.' + +The society of this family gave Horace Walpole the truest, and perhaps +the only relish he ever had of domestic life. But his mind was harassed +towards the close of the eighteenth century, by the insanity not only of +his nephew, but by the great national calamity, that of the king. 'Every +_eighty-eight_ seems,' he remarks, 'to be a favourite period with fate;' +he was 'too ancient,' he said, 'to tap what might almost be called a new +reign;' of which he was not likely to see much. He never pretended to +penetration, but his foresight, 'if he gave it the reign, would not +prognosticate much felicity to the country from the madness of his +father, and the probable regency of the Prince of Wales. His happiest +relations were now not with politics or literature, but with Mrs. Damer +and the Miss Berrys, to whom he wrote:--'I am afraid of protesting how +much I delight in your society, lest I should seem to affect being +gallant; but, if two negatives make an affirmative, why may not two +ridicules compose one piece of sense? and, therefore, as I am in love +with you both, I trust it is a proof of the good sense of your +devoted--H. WALPOLE,' + +He was doomed, in the decline of life, to witness two great national +convulsions: of the insurrection of 1745 he wrote +feelingly--justly--almost pathetically: forty-five years later he was +tired, he said, of railing against French barbarity and folly. +'Legislators! a Senate! To neglect laws, in order to annihilate +coats-of-arms and liveries!' George Selwyn said, that Monsieur the +king's brother was the only man of rank from whom they could not take a +title. His alarm at the idea of his two young friends going to the +Continent was excessive. The flame of revolution had burst forth at +Florence: Flanders was not a safe road; dreadful horrors had been +perpetrated at Avignon. Then he relates a characteristic anecdote of +poor _Marie Antoinette!_ She went with the king to see the manufacture +of glass. As they passed the Halle, the _poissardes_ hurra'd them. 'Upon +my word,' said the queen, 'these folks are civiller when you visit them, +than when they visit you.' + +Walpole's affection for the Miss Berrys cast a glow of happiness over +the fast-ebbing years of his life, 'In happy days,' he wrote to them +when they were abroad, 'I called you my dear wives; now I can only think +of you as darling children, of whom I am bereaved.' He was proud of +their affection; proud of their spending many hours with 'a very old +man,' whilst they were the objects of general admiration. These charming +women survived until our own time: the centre of a circle of the leading +characters in literature, politics, art, rank, and virtue. They are +remembered with true regret. The fulness of their age perfected the +promise of their youth. Samuel Rogers used to say that they had lived in +the reign of Queen Anne, so far back seemed their memories which were so +coupled to the past; but the youth of their minds, their feelings, their +intelligence, remained almost to the last. + +For many years Horace Walpole continued, in spite of incessant attacks +of the gout, to keep almost open house at Strawberry; in short, he said, +he kept an inn--the sign, the Gothic Castle! 'Take my advice,' he wrote +to a friend, 'never build a charming house for yourself between London +and Hampton Court; everybody will live in it but you.' + +The death of Lady Suffolk, in 1767, had been an essential loss to her +partial, and not too rigid neighbours. Two days before the death of +George II. she had gone to Kensington not knowing that there was a +review there. Hemmed in by coaches, she found herself close to George +II. and to Lady Yarmouth. Neither of them knew her--a circumstance which +greatly affected the countess. + +Horace Walpole was now desirous of growing old with dignity. He had no +wish 'to dress up a withered person, nor to drag it about to public +places;' but he was equally averse from 'sitting at home, wrapped up in +flannels,' to receive condolences from people he did not care for--and +attentions from relations who were impatient for his death. Well might a +writer in the 'Quarterly Review' remark that our most useful lessons in +reading Walpole's Letters are not only derived from his sound sense, but +from 'considering this man of the world, full of information and +sparkling with vivacity, stretched on a sick bed, and apprehending all +the tedious languor of helpless decrepitude and deserted solitude.' His +later years had been diversified by correspondence with Hannah More, who +sent him her poem of the _Bas Bleu_, into which she had introduced his +name. In 1786 she visited him at Strawberry Hill. He was then a martyr +to the gout, but with spirits gay as ever: 'I never knew a man suffer +pain with such entire patience,' was Hannah More's remark. His +correspondence with her continued regularly; but that with the charming +sisters was delightfully interrupted by their residence at little +Strawberry Hill--_Cliveden_, as it was also called, where day after day, +night after night, they gleaned stores from that rich fund of anecdote +which went back to the days of George I., touched even on the anterior +epoch of Anne, and came in volumes of amusement down to the very era +when the old man was sitting by his parlour fire, happy with his _wives_ +near him, resigned and cheerful. For his young friends he composed his +'Reminiscences of the Court of England.' + +He still wrote cheerfully of his physical state, in which eyesight was +perfect; hearing little impaired; and though his hands and feet were +crippled, he could use them; and since he neither 'wished to box, to +wrestle, nor to dance a hornpipe,' he was contented. + +His character became softer, his wit less caustic, his heart more +tender, his talk more reverent, as he approached the term of a long, +prosperous life--and knew, practically, the small value of all that he +had once too fondly prized. + +His later years were disturbed by the marriage of his niece Maria +Waldegrave to the Duke of Gloucester: but the severest interruption to +his peace was his own succession to an Earldom. + +In 1791, George, Earl of Orford, expired; leaving an estate encumbered +with debt, and, added to the bequest, a series of lawsuits threatened to +break down all remaining comfort in the mind of the uncle, who had +already suffered so much on the young man's account. + +Horace Walpole disdained the honours which brought him such solid +trouble, with such empty titles, and for some time refused to sign +himself otherwise but 'Uncle to the late Earl of Orford.' He was +certainly not likely to be able to walk in his robes to the House of +Lords, or to grace a levee. However, he thanked God he was free from +pain. 'Since all my fingers are useless,' he wrote to Hannah More, 'and +that I have only six hairs left, I am not very much grieved at not being +able to comb my head!' To Hannah More he wrote in all sincerity, +referring to his elevation to the peerage: 'For the other empty +metamorphosis that has happened to the outward man, you do me justice in +believing that it can do nothing but tease me; it is being called names +in one's old age:' in fact, he reckoned on being styled 'Lord +Methusalem.' He had lived to hear of the cruel deaths of the once gay +and high-born friends whom he had known in Paris, by the guillotine: he +had lived to execrate the monsters who persecuted the grandest heroine +of modern times, Marie Antoinette, to madness; he lived to censure the +infatuation of religious zeal in the Birmingham riots. 'Are not the +devils escaped out of the swine, and overrunning the earth +headlong?'--he asked in one of his letters. + +He had offered his hand, and all the ambitious views which it opened, to +each of the Miss Berrys successively, but they refused to bear his name, +though they still cheered his solitude: and, strange to say, two of the +most admired and beloved women of their time remained single. + +In 1796, the sinking invalid was persuaded to remove to Berkeley Square, +to be within reach of good and prompt advice. He consented unwillingly, +for his 'Gothic Castle' was his favourite abode. He left it with a +presentiment that he should see it no more; but he followed the +proffered advice, and in the spring of the year was established in +Berkeley Square. His mind was still clear. He seems to have cherished to +the last a concern for that literary fame which he affected to despise. +'Literature has,' he said, 'many revolutions; if an author could rise +from the dead, after a hundred years, what would be his surprise at the +adventures of his works! I often say, perhaps my books may be published +in Paternoster Row!' He would indeed have been astonished at the vast +circulation of his Letters, and the popularity which has carried them +into every aristocratic family in England. It is remarkable that among +the middle and lower classes they are far less known, for he was +essentially the chronicler, as well as the wit and beau, of St. James's, +of Windsor, and Richmond. + +At last he declared that he should 'be content with a sprig of rosemary' +thrown on him when the parson of the parish commits his 'dust to dust.' +The end of his now suffering existence was near at hand. Irritability, +one of the unpitied accompaniments of weakness, seemed to compete with +the gathering clouds of mental darkness as the last hour drew on. At +intervals there were flashes of a wit that appeared at that solemn +moment hardly natural, and that must have startled rather than pleased, +the watchful friends around him. He became unjust in his fretfulness, +and those who loved him most could not wish to see him survive the wreck +of his intellect. Fever came on, and he died on the 2nd of March, 1797. + +He had collected his letters from his friends: these epistles were +deposited in two boxes, one marked with an A., the other with a B. The +chest A. was not to be opened until the eldest son of his grandniece, +Lady Laura, should attain the age of twenty-five. The chest was found to +contain memoirs, and bundles of letters ready for publication. + +It was singular, at the sale of the effects at Strawberry Hill, to see +this chest, with the MSS. in the clean _Horatian_ hand, and to reflect +how poignant would have been the anguish of the writer could he have +seen his Gothic Castle given up for fourteen days, to all that could +pain the living, or degrade the dead. + +Peace to his manes, prince of letter-writers; prince companion of beaux; +wit of the highest order! Without thy pen, society in the eighteenth +century would have been to us almost as dead as the _beau monde_ of +Pompeii, or the remains of Etruscan leaders of the ton. Let us not be +ungrateful to our Horace: we owe him more than we could ever have +calculated on before we knew him through his works: prejudiced, he was +not false; cold, he was rarely cruel; egotistical, he was seldom +vain-glorious. Every age should have a Horace Walpole; every country +possess a chronicler so sure, so keen to perceive, so exact to delineate +peculiarities, manners, characters, and events. + + + +GEORGE SELWYN. + + +A Love of Horrors.--Anecdotes of Selwyn's Mother.--Selwyn's College +Days.--Orator Henley.--Selwyn's Blasphemous Freak.--The Profession +of a Wit.--The Thirst for Hazard.--Reynolds's Conversation-Piece.-- +Selwyn's Eccentricities and Witticisms.--A most Important +Communication.--An Amateur Headsman.--The Eloquence of Indifference.-- +Catching a Housebreaker.--The Family of the Selwyns.--The Man of the +People.--Selwyn's Parliamentary Career.--True Wit.---Some of Selwyn's +Witty Sayings.--The Sovereignty of the People.--On two kinds of Wit.-- +Selwyn's Love for Children.--Mie Mie, the Little Italian.--Selwyn's +Little Companion taken from him.--His Later Days and Death. + + +I have heard, at times, of maiden ladies of a certain age who found +pleasure in the affection of 'spotted snakes with double tongue, thorny +hedge-hogs, newts, and in live worms.' I frequently meet ladies who +think conversation lacks interest without the recital of 'melancholy +deaths,' 'fatal diseases,' and 'mournful cases;' _on ne dispute pas les +gouts_, and certainly the taste for the night side of nature seems +immensely prevalent among the lower orders--in whom, perhaps, the +terrible only can rouse from a sullen insensibility. What happy people! +I always think to myself, when I hear of the huge attendance on the last +tragic performance at Newgate; how very little they can see of mournful +and horrible in common life, if they seek it out so eagerly, and relish +it so thoroughly, when they find it! I don't know; for my own part, +_gaudeamus_. I have always thought that the text, 'Blessed are they that +mourn,' referred to the inner private life, not to a perpetual display +of sackcloth and ashes; but I know not. I can understand the +weeping-willow taste among people, who have too little wit or too little +Christianity to be cheerful, but it is a wonder to find the luxury of +gloom united to the keenest perception of the laughable in such a man as +George Selwyn. + +If human beings could be made pets, like Miss Tabitha's snake or toad, +Selwyn would have fondled a hangman. He loved the noble art of +execution, and was a connoisseur of the execution of the art. In +childhood he must have decapitated his rocking-horse, hanged his doll in +a miniature gallows, and burnt his baubles at mimic stakes. The man +whose calm eye was watched for the quiet sparkle that announced--and +only that ever did announce it--the flashing wit within the mind, by a +gay crowd of loungers at Arthur's, might be found next day rummaging +among coffins in a damp vault, glorying in a mummy, confessing and +preparing a live criminal, paying any sum for a relic of a dead one, or +pressing eagerly forward to witness the dying agonies of a condemned +man. + +Yet Walpole and Warner both bore the highest testimony to the goodness +of his heart; and it is impossible to doubt that his nature was as +gentle as a woman's. There have been other instances of even educated +men delighting in scenes of suffering; but in general their characters +have been more or less gross, their heads more or less insensible. The +husband of Madame Recamier went daily to see the guillotine do its vile +work during the reign of Terror; but then he was a man who never wept +over the death of a friend. The man who was devoted to a little child, +whom he adopted and treated with the tenderest care, was very different +from M. Recamier--and that he _had_ a heart there is no doubt. He was an +anomaly, and famous for being so; though, perhaps, his well-known +eccentricity was taken advantage of by his witty friends, and many a +story fathered on Selwyn which has no origin but in the brain of its +narrator. + +George Augustus Selwyn, then, famous for his wit, and notorious for his +love of horrors, was the second son of a country gentleman, of Matson, +in Gloucestershire, Colonel John Selwyn, who had been an aide-de-camp of +Marlborough's, and afterwards a frequenter of the courts of the first +two Georges. He inherited his wit chiefly from his mother, Mary, the +daughter of General Farington or Farringdon, of the county of Kent. +Walpole tells us that she figured among the beauties of the court of the +Prince and Princess of Wales, and was bedchamber-woman to Queen +Caroline. Her character was not spotless, for we hear of an intrigue, +which her own mistress imparted in confidence to the Duchess of Orleans +(the mother of the Regent: they wrote on her tomb _Cy gist l'oisivete_, +because idleness is the _mother_ of all vice), and which eventually +found its way into the 'Utrecht Gazette.' It was Mrs. Selwyn, too, who +said to George II., that he was the last person she would ever have an +intrigue with, because she was sure he would tell the queen of it: it +was well known that that very virtuous sovereign made his wife the +confidante of his amours, which was even more shameless than young De +Sevigne's taking advice from his mother on his intrigue with Ninon de +l'Enclos. She seems to have been reputed a wit, for Walpole retails her +_mots_ as if they were worth it, but they are not very remarkable: for +instance, when Miss Pelham lost a pair of diamond earrings, which she +had borrowed, and tried to faint when the loss was discovered, some one +called for lavender-drops as a restorative. 'Pooh!' cries Mrs. Selwyn, +'give her diamond-drops.' + +George Augustus was born on the 11th of August, 1719. Walpole says that +he knew him at eight years old, and as the two were at Eton about the +same time, it is presumed that they were contemporaries there. In fact, +a list of the boys there, in 1732, furnished to Eliot Warburton, +contains the names of Walpole, Selwyn, Edgecumbe, and Conway, all in +after-life intimate friends and correspondents. From Eton to Oxford was +the natural course, and George was duly entered at Hertford College. He +did not long grace Alma Mater, for the _grand tour_ had to be made, and +London life to be begun, but he was there long enough to contract the +usual Oxford debts, which his father consented to pay more than once. It +is amusing to find the son getting Dr. Newton to write him a contrite +and respectful letter to the angry parent, to liquidate the 'small +accounts' accumulated in London and Oxford as early as 1740. Three years +later we find him in Paris, leading a gay life, and writing respectful +letters to England for more money. Previously to this, however, he had +obtained, through his father, the sinecure of Clerk of the Irons and +surveyor of the Meltings at the Mint, a comfortable little appointment, +the duties of which were performed by deputy, while its holder contented +himself with honestly acknowledging the salary, and dining once a week, +when in town, with the officers of the Mint, and at the Government's +expense. + +So far the young gentleman went on well enough, but in 1744 he returned +to England, and his rather rampant character showed itself in more than +one disgraceful affair. + +Among the London shows was Orator Henley, a clergyman and clergyman's +son, and a member of St. John's, Cambridge. He had come to London about +this time, and instituted a series of lectures on universal knowledge +and primitive Christianity. He styled himself a Rationalist, a title +then more honourable than it is now; and in grandiloquent language, +'spouted' on religious subjects to an audience admitted at a shilling +a-head. On one occasion he announced a disputation among any two of his +hearers, offering to give an impartial hearing and judgment to both. +Selwyn and the young Lord Carteret were prepared, and stood up, the one +to defend the ignorance, the other the impudence, of Orator Henley +himself; so, at least, it is inferred from a passage in D'Israeli the +Elder. The uproar that ensued can well be imagined. Henley himself made +his escape by a back door. His pulpit, all gilt, has been immortalized +by Pope, as 'Henley's gilt tub;' in which-- + + 'Imbrown'd with native bronze, lo! Henley stands, + Tuning his voice and balancing his hands.' + +The affair gave rise to a correspondence between the Orator and his +young friends; who, doubtless, came off best in the matter. + +This was harmless enough, but George's next freak was not so excusable. +The circumstances of this affair are narrated in a letter from Captain +Nicholson, his friend, to George Selwyn; and may, therefore, be relied +on. It appears that being at a certain club in Oxford, at a wine party +with his friends, George sent to a certain silversmith's for a certain +chalice, intrusted to the shopkeeper from a certain church to be +repaired in a certain manner. This being brought, Master George--then, +be it remembered, not at the delicate and frivolous age of most Oxford +boys, but at the mature one of six-and-twenty--filled it with wine, and +handing it round, used the sacred words, 'Drink this in remembrance of +me.' This was a blasphemous parody of the most sacred rite of the +Church. All Selwyn could say for himself was, that he was drunk when he +did it. The other plea, that he did it in ridicule of the +transubstantiation of the Romish Church, could not stand at all; and was +most weakly put forward. Let Oxford Dons be what they will; let them put +a stop to all religious inquiry, and nearly expel Adam Smith for reading +Hume's 'Essay on Human Nature;' let them be, as many allege, +narrow-minded, hypocritical, and ignorant; we cannot charge them with +wrong-dealing in expelling the originator of such open blasphemy, which +nothing can be found to palliate, and of which its perpetrator did not +appear to repent, rather complaining that the treatment of the Dons was +harsh. The act of expulsion was, of course, considered in the same light +by his numerous acquaintance, many of whom condoled with him on the +occasion. It is true, the Oxford Dons are often charged with injustice +and partiality, and too often the evidence is not sufficiently strong to +excuse their judgments; but in this the evidence was not denied; only a +palliative was put in, which every one can see through. The only +injustice we can discover in this case is, that the head of Hart Hall, +as Hertford College was called, seemed to have been influenced in +pronouncing his sentence of expulsion by certain previous _suspicions_, +having no bearing on the question before him, which had been entertained +by another set of tutors--those of Christchurch--where Selwyn had many +friends, and where, probably enough, he indulged in many collegian's +freaks. This knack of bringing up a mere suspicion, is truly +characteristic of the Oxford Don, and since the same Head of this +House--Dr. Newton--acknowledged that Selwyn was, during his Oxford +career, neither intemperate, dissolute, nor a gamester, it is fair to +give him the advantage of the doubt, that the judgment on the evidence +had been influenced by the consideration of 'suspicions' of former +misdeeds, which had not been proved, perhaps never committed. Knowing +the after-life of the man, we can, however, scarcely doubt that George +had led a fast life at the University, and given cause for mistrust. But +one may ask whether Dons, whose love of drinking, and whose tendency to +jest on the most solemn subjects, are well known even in the present +day, might not have treated Selwyn less harshly for what was done under +the influence of wine? To this we are inclined to reply, that no +punishment is too severe for profanation; and that drunkenness is not an +excuse, but an aggravation. Selwyn threatened to appeal, and took advice +on the matter. This, as usual, was vain. Many an expelled man, more +unjustly treated than Selwyn, has talked of appeal in vain. Appeal to +whom? To what? Appeal against men who never acknowledge themselves +wrong, and who, to maintain that they are right, will listen to evidence +which they can see is contradictory, and which they know to be +worthless! An appeal from an Oxford decision is as hopeless in the +present day as it was in Selwyn's. He wisely left it alone, but less +wisely insisted on reappearing in Oxford, against the advice of all his +friends, whose characters were lost if the ostracised man were seen +among them. + +From this time he entered upon his 'profession,' that of a wit, gambler, +club-lounger, and man about town; for these many characters are all +mixed in the one which is generally called 'a wit.' Let us remember that +he was good-hearted, and not ill-intentioned, though imbued with the +false ideas of his day. He was not a great man, but a great wit. + +The localities in which the trade of wit was plied were, then, the +clubs, and the drawing-rooms of fashionable beauties. The former were in +Selwyn's youth still limited in the number of their members, thirty +constituting a large club; and as the subscribers were all known to one +another, presented an admirable field for display of mental powers in +conversation. In fact, the early clubs were nothing more than +dining-societies, precisely the same in theory as our breakfasting +arrangements at Oxford, which were every whit as exclusive, though not +balloted for. The ballot, however, and the principle of a single black +ball suffering to negative an election were not only, under such +circumstances, excusable, but even necessary for the actual preservation +of peace. Of course, in a succession of dinner-parties, if any two +members were at all opposed to one other, the awkwardness would be +intolerable. In the present day, two men may belong to the same club and +scarcely meet even on the stairs, oftener than once or twice in a +season. + +Gradually, however, in the place of the 'feast of reason and flow of +soul' and wine, instead of the evenings spent in toasting, talking, +emptying bottles and filling heads, as in the case of the old Kit-kat, +men took to the monstrous amusement of examining fate, and on +club-tables the dice rattled far more freely than the glasses, though +these latter were not necessarily abandoned. Then came the thirst for +hazard that brought men early in the day to try their fortune, and thus +made the club-room a lounge. Selwyn was an habitual frequenter of +Brookes.' + +Brookes' was, perhaps, the principal club of the day, though 'White's +Chocolate House' was almost on a par with it. But Selwyn did not confine +his attention solely to this club. It was the fashion to belong to as +many of them as possible, and Wilberforce mentions no less than five to +which he himself belonged: Brookes', Boodle's, White's, Miles and +Evans's in New Palace Yard, and Goosetree's. As their names imply, these +were all, originally, mere coffee-houses, kept by men of the above +names. One or two rooms then sufficed for the requirements of a small +party, and it was not till the members were greatly increased that the +coffee-house rose majestically to the dignity of a bow-window, and was +entirely and exclusively appropriated to the requirements of the club. + +This was especially the case with White's, of which so many of the wits +and talkers of Selwyn's day were members. Who does not know that +bow-window at the top of St. James's Street, where there are sure, about +three or four in the afternoon, to be at least three gentlemen, two old +and one young, standing, to the exclusion of light within, talking and +contemplating the oft-repeated movement outside. White's was established +as early as 1698, and was thus one of the original coffee-houses. It was +then kept by a man named Arthur: here Chesterfield gamed and talked, to +be succeeded by Gilly Williams. Charles Townshend, and George Selwyn. +The old house was burnt down in 1733. It was at White's--or as Hogarth +calls it in his pictorial squib, Black's--that, when a man fell dead at +the door, he was lugged in and bets made as to whether he was dead or +no. The surgeon's operations were opposed, for fear of disturbing the +bets. Here, too, did George Selwyn and Charles Townshend pit their wit +against wit; and here Pelham passed all the time he was not forced to +devote to politics. In short it was, next to Brookes', the club of the +day, and perhaps in some respects had a greater renown than even that +famous club, and its play was as high. + +In Brookes' and White's Selwyn appeared with a twofold fame, that of a +pronouncer of _bon-mots_ and that of a lover of horrors. His wit was of +the quaintest order. He was no inveterate talker, like Sydney Smith; no +clever dissimulator, like Mr. Hook. Calmly, almost sanctimoniously, he +uttered those neat and telling sayings which the next day passed over +England as 'Selwyn's last.' Walpole describes his manner admirably---his +eyes turned up, his mouth set primly, a look almost of melancholy in his +whole face. Reynolds, in his Conversation-piece, celebrated when in the +Strawberry Collection, and representing Selwyn leaning on a chair, Gilly +Williams, crayon in hand, and Dick Edgecumbe by his side, has caught the +pseudo-solemn expression of his face admirably. The ease of the figure, +one hand _empochee_, the other holding a paper of epigrams, or what not, +the huge waistcoat with a dozen buttons and huge flaps, the ruffled +sleeve, the bob-wig, all belong to the outer man; but the calm, quiet, +almost enquiring face, the look half of melancholy, half of reproach, +and, as the Milesian would say, the other half of sleek wisdom; the long +nose, the prim mouth and joined lips, the elevated brow, and beneath it +the quiet contemplative eye, contemplative not of heaven or hell, but of +this world as it had seen it, in its most worldly point of view, yet +twinkling with a flashing thought of incongruity made congruous, are the +indices of the inner man. Most of our wits, it must have been seen, have +had some other interest and occupation in life than that of 'making +wit:' some have been authors, some statesmen, some soldiers, some +wild-rakes, and some players of tricks: Selwyn had no profession but +that of _diseur de bons mots_; for though he sat in the House, ne took +no prominent part in politics; though he gambled extensively, he did not +game for the sake of money only. Thus his life was that merely of a +London bachelor, with few incidents to mark it, and therefore his memoir +must resolve itself more or less into a series of anecdotes of his +eccentricities and list of his witticisms. + +His friend Walpole gives us an immense number of both, not all of a +first-rate nature, nor many interesting in the present day. Selwyn, calm +as he was, brought out his sayings on the spur of the moment, and their +appropriateness to the occasion was one of their greatest +recommendations. A good saying, like a good sermon, depends much on its +delivery, and loses much in print. Nothing less immortal than wit! To +take first, however, the eccentricities of his character, and especially +his love of horrors, we find anecdotes by the dozen retailed of him. It +was so well known, that Lord Holland, when dying, ordered his servant to +be sure to admit Mr. Selwyn if he called to enquire after him, 'for if I +am alive,' said he, 'I shall be glad to see him, and if I am dead, he +will be glad to see me.' The name of Holland leads us to an anecdote +told by Walpole. Selwyn was looking over Cornbury with Lord Abergavenny +and Mrs. Frere, 'who loved one another a little,' and was disgusted with +the frivolity of the woman who could take no interest in anything worth +seeing. 'You don't know what you missed in the other room,' he cried at +last, peevishly. 'Why, what?'--'Why, my Lord Holland's picture.'--'Well, +what is my Lord Holland to me?' 'Don't you know,' whispered the wit +mysteriously, 'that Lord Holland's body lies in the same vault in +Kensington Church with my Lord Abergavenny's mother?' 'Lord! she was so +obliged,' says Walpole, 'and thanked him a thousand times!' + +Selwyn knew the vaults as thoroughly as old Anthony Wood knew the +brasses. The elder Craggs had risen by the favour of Marlborough, whose +footman he had been, and his son was eventually a Secretary of State. +Arthur Moore, the father of James Moore Smyth, of whom Pope wrote-- + + 'Arthur, whose giddy son neglects the laws, + Imputes to me and my damned works the cause' + +had worn a livery too. When Craggs got into a coach with him, he +exclaimed, 'Why, Arthur, I am always getting up behind, are not you?' +Walpole having related this story to Selwyn, the latter told him, as a +most important communication, that Arthur Moore had had his coffin +chained to that of his mistress. 'Lord! how do you know?' asked Horace. +'Why, I saw them the other day in a vault at St. Giles's.' 'Oh! Your +servant, Mr. Selwyn,' cried the man who showed the tombs at Westminster +Abbey, 'I expected to see _you_ here the other day when the old Duke of +Richmond's body was taken up.' + +Criminals were, of course, included in his passion. Walpole affirms that +he had a great share in bringing Lord Dacre's footman, who had murdered +the butler, to confess his crime. In writing the confession, the +ingenious plush coolly stopped and asked how 'murdered' was spelt. But +it mattered little to George whether the criminal were alive or dead, +and he defended his eccentric taste with his usual wit; when rallied by +some women for going to see the Jacobite Lord Lovat's head cut off, he +retorted, sharply--'I made full amends, for I went to see it sewn on +again.' He had indeed done so, and given the company at the undertaker's +a touch of his favourite blasphemy, for when the man of coffins had done +his work and laid the body in its box, Selwyn, imitating the voice of +the Lord Chancellor at the trial, muttered, 'My Lord Lovat, you may +_rise_.' He said a better thing on the trial of a confederate of +Lovat's, that Lord Kilmarnock, with whom the ladies fell so desperately +in love as he stood on his defence. Mrs. Bethel, who was famous for a +_hatchet-face,_ was among the fair spectators: 'What a shame it is,' +quoth the wit, 'to turn her face to the prisoners before they are +condemned!' Terrible, indeed, was that instrument of death to those men, +who had in the heat of battle so gallantly met sword and blunderbuss. +The slow, sure approach of the day of the scaffold was a thousand times +worse than the roar of cannon. Lord Cromarty was pardoned, solely, it +was said, from pity for his poor wife, who was at the time of the trial +far advanced in pregnancy. It was affirmed that the child born had a +distinct mark of an axe on his neck. _Credat Judaeus_! Walpole used to +say that Selwyn never thought but _a la tete tranchee_, and that when he +went to have a tooth drawn, he told the dentist he would drop his +handkerchief by way of signal. Certain it is that he did love an +execution, whatever he or his friends may have done to remove the +impression of this extraordinary taste. Some better men than Selwyn have +had the same, and Macaulay accuses Penn of a similar affection. The best +known anecdote of Selwyn's peculiarity relates to the execution of +Damiens, who was torn with red-hot pincers, and finally quartered by +four horses, for the attempt to assassinate Louis XV. On the day fixed, +George mingled with the crowd plainly dressed, and managed to press +forward close to the place of torture. The executioner observing him, +eagerly cried out, '_Faites place pour Monsieur; c'est un Anglais et un +amateur_;' or, as another version goes, he was asked if he was not +himself a _bourreau_.--'_Non, Monsieur,_' he is said to have answered, +'_je n'ai pas cet honneur, je ne suis qu'un amateur._' The story is more +than apocryphal, for Selwyn is not the only person of whom it has been +told; and he was even accused, according to Wraxall, of going to +executions in female costume. George Selwyn must have passed as a +'remarkably fine woman,' in that case. + +It is only justice to him to say that the many stories of his attending +executions were supposed to be inventions of Sir Charles Hanbury +Williams, another wit, and of Chesterfield, another, and a rival. In +confirmation, it is adduced that when the former had been relating some +new account, and an old friend of Selwyn's expressed his surprise that +he had never heard the tale before, the hero of it replied quietly, 'No +wonder at all, for Sir Charles has just invented it, and knows that I +will not by contradiction spoil the pleasure of the company he is so +highly entertaining.' + +Wit has been called 'the eloquence of indifference;' no one seems ever +to have been so indifferent about everything, but his little daughter, +as George Selwyn. He always, however, took up the joke, and when asked +why he had not been to see one Charles Fox, a low criminal, hanged at +Tyburn, answered, quietly, 'I make a point of never going to +_rehearsals_.' + +Selwyn's love for this kind of thing, to believe his most intimate +friend, Horace Walpole, was quite a fact. His friend relates that he +even bargained for the High Sheriff's wand, after it was broken, at the +condemnation of the gallant Lords, but said, 'that he behaved so like an +attorney the first day, and so like a pettifogger the second, that he +would not take it to light his fire with.' + +The State Trials, of course, interested George more than any other in +his eventless life; he dined after the sentence with the celebrated Lady +Townshend, who was so devoted to Lord Kilmarnock-- + + 'Pitied by gentle minds, Kilmarnock died'--Johnson. + +that she is said to have even stayed under his windows, when he was in +prison; but he treated her anxiety with such lightness that the lady +burst into tears, and 'flung up-stairs.' 'George,' writes Walpole to +Montague, 'cooly took Mrs. Dorcas, her woman, and bade her sit down to +finish the bottle.--"And pray," said Dorcas, "do you think my lady will +be prevailed upon to let me go and see the execution? I have a friend +that has promised to take care of me, and I can lie in the Tower the +night before." Could she have talked so pleasantly to Selwyn?' + +His contemporaries certainly believed in his love for Newgatism; for +when Walpole had caught a housebreaker in a neighbour's area, he +immediately despatched a messenger to White's for the philo-criminalist, +who was sure to be playing at the Club any time before daylight. It +happened that the drawer at the 'Chocolate-house' had been himself +lately robbed, and therefore stole to George with fear and trembling, +and muttered mysteriously to him, 'Mr. Walpole's compliments, and he has +got a housebreaker for you.' Of course Selwyn obeyed the summons +readily, and the event concluded, as such events do nine times out of +ten, with a quiet capture, and much ado about nothing. + +The Selwyns were a powerful family in Gloucestershire, owning a great +deal of property in the neighbourhood of Gloucester itself. The old +colonel had represented that city in Parliament for many years. On the +5th of November, 1751, he died. His eldest son had gone a few months +before him. This son had been also at Eton, and was an early friend of +Horace Walpole and General Conway. His death left George sole heir to +the property, and very much he seemed to have needed the heritage. + +The property of the Selwyns lay in the picturesque district of the +Northern Cotswolds. Anybody who has passed a day in the dull city of +Gloucester, which seems to break into anything like life only at an +election, lying dormant in the intervals, has been glad to rush out to +enjoy air and a fine view on Robin Hood's Hill, a favourite walk with +the worthy citizens, though what the jovial archer of merry Sherwood had +to do with it, or whether he was ever in Gloucestershire at all, I +profess I know not. Walpole describes the hill with humorous +exaggeration. 'It is lofty enough for an alp, yet is a mountain of turf +to the very top, has wood scattered all over it, springs that long to be +cascades in many places of it, and from the summit it beats even Sir +George Littleton's views, by having the city of Gloucester at its foot, +and the Severn widening to the horizon.' On the very summit of the next +hill, Chosen-down, is a solitary church, and the legend saith that the +good people who built it did so originally at the foot of the steep +mount, but that the Virgin Mary carried up the stones by night, till the +builder, in despair, was compelled to erect it on the top. Others +attribute the mysterious act to a very different personage, and with +apparently more reason, for the position of the church must keep many an +old sinner from hearing service. + +At Matson, then, on Robin Hood's Hill, the Selwyns lived; Walpole says +that the 'house is small, but neat. King Charles lay here at the seige, +and the Duke of York, with typical fury, hacked and hewed the +window-shutters of his chamber as a memorandum of his being there. And +here is the very flowerpot and counterfeit association for which Bishop +Sprat was taken up, and the Duke of Marlborough sent to the Tower. The +reservoirs on the hill supply the city. The late Mr. Selwyn governed the +borough by them--and I believe by some wine too.' Probably, or at least +by some beer, if the modern electors be not much altered from their +forefathers. + +Besides this important estate, the Selwyns had another at Ludgershall, +and their influence there was so complete, that they might fairly be +said to _give_ one seat to any one they chose. With such double barrels +George Selwyn was, of course, a great gun in the House, but his interest +lay far more in piquet and pleasantry than in politics and patriotism, +and he was never fired off with any but the blank cartridges of his two +votes. His parliamentary career, begun in 1747, lasted more than forty +years, yet was entirely without distinction. He, however, amused both +parties with his wit, and by _snoring in unison_ with Lord North. This +must have been trying to Mr. Speaker Cornwall, who was longing, no +doubt, to snore also, and dared not. He was probably the only Speaker +who presided over so august an assembly as our English Parliament with a +pewter pot of porter at his elbow, sending for more and more to +Bellamy's till his heavy eyes closed of themselves. A modern M.P., +carried back by some fancies to 'the Senate' of those days, might +reasonably doubt whether his guide had not taken him by mistake to some +Coal-hole or Cider-cellar, presided over by some former Baron Nicholson, +and whether the furious eloquence of Messrs. Fox, Pitt, and Burke were +not got up for the amusement of an audience admitted at sixpence a head. + +Selwyn's political jokes were the delight of Bellamy's! He said that Fox +and Pitt reminded him of Hogarth's Idle and Industrious Apprentices. +When asked by some one, as he sauntered out of the house--'Is the House +up?' he replied; 'No, but Burke is.' The length of Burke's elaborate +spoken essays was proverbial, and obtained for him the name of the +'Dinner-bell.' Fox was talking one day at Brookes' of the advantageous +peace he had made with France, and that he had even induced that country +to give up the _gum_ trade to England. 'That, Charles,' quoth Selwyn, +sharply, 'I am not at all surprised at; for having drawn your _teeth_, +they would be d----d fools to quarrel with you about gums.' Fox was +often the object of his good-natured satire. As every one knows, his +boast was to be called 'The Man of the People,' though perhaps he cared +as little for the great unwashed as for the wealth and happiness of the +waiters at his clubs.' Every one knows, too, what a dissolute life he +led for many years. Selwyn's sleepiness was well known. He slept in the +House; he slept, after losing L8oo 'and with as many more before him,' +upon the gaming-table, with the dice-box 'stamped close to his ears;' he +slept, or half-slept, even in conversation, which he seems to have +caught by fits and starts. Thus it was that words he heard suggested +different senses, partly from being only dimly associated with the +subject on the _tapis_. So, when, they were talking around of the war, +and whether it should be a sea war or a Continent war, Selwyn woke up +just enough to say, 'I am for a sea war and a _Continent_ admiral.' + +When Fox had ruined himself, and a subscription for him was talked of, +some one asked how they thought 'he would take it.'--'Take it,' cried +Selwyn, suddenly lighting up, 'why, _quarterly_ to be sure.' + +His parliamentary career was then quite uneventful; but at the +dissolution in 1780, he found that his security at Gloucester was +threatened. He was not Whig enough for that constituency, and had +throughout supported the war with America. He offered himself, of +course, but was rejected with scorn, and forced to fly for a seat to +Ludgershall. Walpole writes to Lady Ossory: 'They' (the Gloucester +people) 'hanged him in effigy, and dressed up a figure of Mie-Mie' (his +adopted daughter), 'and pinned on its breast these words, alluding to +the gallows:--"This is what I told you you would come to!"' From +Gloucester he went to Ludgershall, where he was received by ringing of +bells and bonfires. 'Being driven out of my capital,' said he, 'and +coming into that country of turnips, where I was adored, I seemed to be +arrived in my Hanoverian dominions'--no bad hit at George II. For +Ludgershall he sat for many years, with Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, whose +'Memoirs' are better known than trusted, as colleague. That writer says +of Selwyn, that he was 'thoroughly well versed in our history, and +master of many curious as well as secret anecdotes, relative to the +houses of Stuart and Brunswick.' + +Another _bon-mot_, not in connection with politics, is reported by +Walpole as incomparable.' Lord George Gordon asked him if the +Ludgershall electors would take him (Lord George) for Ludgershall, +adding, 'if you would recommend me, they would choose me, if I came from +the coast of Africa.'--'That is according to what part of the coast you +came from; they would certainly, if you came from the Guinea coast.' +'Now, Madam,' writes his friend, 'is not this true inspiration as well +as true wit? Had any one asked him in which of the four quarters of the +world Guinea is situated, could he have told?' Walpole did not perhaps +know master George thoroughly--he was neither so ignorant nor so +indifferent as he seemed. His manner got him the character of being +both; but he was a still fool that ran deep. + +Though Selwyn did little with his two votes, he made them pay; and in +addition to the post in the Mint, got out of the party he supported +those of Registrar to the Court of Chancery in the Island of Barbadoes, +a sinecure done by deputy, Surveyor of the Crown Lands, and Paymaster to +the Board of Works. The wits of White's added the title of +'Receiver-General of Waif and Stray Jokes.' It is said that his +hostility to Sheridan arose from the latter having lost him the office +in the Works in 1782, when Burke's Bill for reducing the Civil List came +into operation; but this is not at all probable, as his dislike was +shown long before that period. Apropos of the Board of Works, Walpole +gives another anecdote. On one occasion, in 1780, Lord George Gordon had +been the only opponent on a division. Selwyn afterwards took him in his +carriage to White's. 'I have brought,' said he, 'the whole Opposition in +my coach, and I hope one coach will always hold them, if they mean to +take away the Board of Works.' + +Undoubtedly, Selwyn's wit wanted the manner of the man to make it so +popular, for, as we read it, it is often rather mild. To string a list +of them together:--Lady Coventry showed him her new dress all covered +with spangles as large as shillings. 'Bless my soul,' said he, 'you'll +be change for a guinea.' + +Fox, debtor and bankrupt as he was, had taken lodgings with Fitzpatrick +at an oilman's in Piccadilly. Every one pitied the landlord, who would +certainly be ruined. 'Not a bit of it,' quoth George; 'he'll have the +credit of keeping at his house the finest pickles in London.' + +Sometimes there was a good touch of satire on his times. When 'High Life +Below Stairs' was first acted, Selwyn vowed he would go and see it, for +he was sick of low life above stairs; and when a waiter at his Club had +been convicted of felony, 'What a horrid idea,' said he, 'the man will +give of _us_ in Newgate!' + +Dining with Bruce, the Abyssinian traveller, he heard him say, in answer +to a question about musical instruments in the East, 'I believe I saw +one _lyre_ there.'--'Ay,' whispered the wit to his neighbour, 'and +there's one less since he left the country.' Bruce shared the +travellers' reputation of drawing the long-bow to a very considerable +extent. + +Two of Selwyn's best _mots_ were about one of the Foley family, who were +so deeply in debt that they had 'to go to Texas,' or Boulogne, to escape +the money-lenders. 'That,' quoth Selwyn, 'is a _pass-over_ which will +not be much relished by the Jews.' And again, when it was said that they +would be able to cancel their father's old will by a new-found one, he +profanely indulged in a pun far too impious to be repeated in our day, +however it may have been relished in Selwyn's time. + +A picture called 'The Daughter of Pharaoh' in which the Princess Royal +and her attendant ladies figured as the saver of Moses and her +handmaids, was being exhibited in 1782, at a house opposite Brookes', +and was to be the companion-piece to Copley's 'Death of Chatham.' George +said he could recommend a better companion, to wit--the 'Sons of +Pharaoh' at the opposite house. It is scarcely necessary to explain that +pharaoh or faro was the most popular game of hazard then played. + +Walking one day with Lord Pembroke, and being besieged by a troop of +small chimney-climbers, begging--Selwyn, after bearing their importunity +very calmly for some time, suddenly turned round, and with the most +serious face thus addressed them--'I have often heard of the sovereignty +of the people; I suppose your highnesses are in Court mourning,' We can +well imagine the effect of this sedate speech on the astonished +youngsters. + +Pelham's truculency was well known. Walpole and his +friend went to the sale of his plate in 1755. 'Lord,' said the wit, 'how +many toads have been eaten off these plates!' + +[Illustration: SELWYN ACKNOWLEDGES THE "SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE."] + +The jokes were not always very delicate. When, in the middle of the +summer of 1751, Lord North, who had been twice married before, espoused +the widow of the Earl of Rockingham, who was fearfully stout, Selwyn +suggested that she had been kept in ice for three days before the +wedding. So, too, when there was talk of another _embonpoint_ personage +going to America during the war, he remarked that she would make a +capital _breast_-work. + +One of the few epigrams he ever wrote--if not the only one, of which +there is some doubt--was in the same spirit. It is on the discovery of a +pair of shoes in a certain lady's bed-- + + Well may Suspicion shake its head-- + Well may Clorinda's spouse be jealous, + When the dear wanton takes to bed + Her very shoes--because they're fellows. + +Such are a few specimens of George Selwyn's wit; and dozens more are +dispersed though Walpole's Letters. As Eliot Warburton remarks, they do +not give us a very high idea of the humour of the period; but two things +must be taken into consideration before we deprecate their author's +title to the dignity and reputation he enjoyed so abundantly among his +contemporaries; they are not necessarily the _best_ specimens that might +have been given, if more of his _mots_ had been preserved; and their +effect on his listeners depended more on the manner of delivery than on +the matter. That they were improvised and unpremeditated is another +important consideration. It is quite unfair to compare them, as +Warburton does, with the hebdomadal trash of 'Punch,' though perhaps +they would stand the comparison pretty well. It is one thing to force +wit with plenty of time to invent and meditate it--another to have so +much wit within you that you can bring it out on any occasion; one thing +to compose a good fancy for _money_--another to utter it only when it +flashes through the brain. + +But it matters little what we in the present day may think of Selwyn's +wit, for conversation is spoiled by bottling, and should be drawn fresh +when wanted. Selwyn's companions--all men of wit, more or less, affirmed +him to be the most amusing man of his day, and that was all the part he +had to play. No real wit ever hopes to _talk_ for posterity; and written +wit is of a very different character to the more sparkling, if less +solid, creations of a moment. + +We have seen Selwyn in many points of view, not all very creditable to +him; first, expelled from Oxford for blasphemy; next, a professed +gambler and the associate of men who led fashion in those days, it is +true, but then it was very bad fashion; then as a lover of hangmen, a +wit and a lounger. There is reason to believe that Selwyn, though less +openly reprobate than many of his associates, was, in his quiet way, +just as bad as any of them, if we except the Duke of Queensberry, his +intimate friend, or the disgusting 'Franciscans' of Medmenham Abbey, of +whom, though not the founder, nor even a member, he was, in a manner, +the suggester in his blasphemy. + +But Selwyn's real character is only seen in profile in all these +accounts. He had at the bottom of such vice, to which his position, and +the fashion of the day introduced him, a far better heart than any of +his contemporaries, and in some respects a kind of simplicity which was +endearing. He was neither knave nor fool. He was not a voluptuary, like +his friend the duke; nor a continued drunkard, like many other 'fine +gentlemen' with whom he mixed; nor a cheat, though a gambler; nor a +sceptic, like his friend Walpole; nor a blasphemer, like the Medmenham +set, though he had once parodied profanely a sacred rite; nor was he +steeped in debt, as Fox was; nor does he appear to have been a practised +seducer, as too many of his acquaintance were. Not that these negative +qualities are to his praise; but if we look at the age and the society +around him, we must, at least, admit that Selwyn was not one of the +worst of that wicked set. + +But the most pleasing point in the character of the old bachelor--for he +was _too much_ of a wit ever to marry--is his affection for +children--not his own. That is, not avowedly his own, for it was often +suspected that the little ones he took up so fondly bore some +relationship to him, and there can be little doubt that Selwyn, like +everybody else in that evil age, had his intrigues. He did not die in +his sins, and that is almost all we can say for him. He gave up gaming +in time, protesting that it was the bane of four much better +things--health, money, time, and thinking. For the last two, perhaps, he +cared little. Before his death he is said to have been a Christian, +which was a decided rarity in the fashionable set of his day. Walpole +answered, when asked if he was a Freemason, that he never had been +_anything_, and probably most of the men of the time would, if they had +had the honesty, have said the same. They were not atheists professedly, +but they neither believed in nor practised Christianity. + +His love for children has been called one of his eccentricities. It +would be a hard name to give it if he had not been a club-lounger of his +day. I have sufficient faith in human nature to trust that two-thirds of +the men of this country have that most amiable eccentricity. But in +Selwyn it amounted to something more than in the ordinary paterfamilias: +it was almost a passion. He was almost motherly in his celibate +tenderness to the little ones to whom he took a fancy. This affection he +showed to several of the children, sons or daughters, of his friends; +but to two especially, Anne Coventry and Maria Fagniani. + +The former was the daughter of the beautiful Maria Gunning, who became +Countess of Coventry. Nanny, as he called her, was four years old when +her mother died, and from that time he treated her almost as his own +child. + +But Mie-Mie, as the little Italian was called, was far more favoured. +Whoever may have been the child's father, her mother was a rather +beautiful and very immoral woman, the wife of the Marchese Fagniani. She +seems to have desired to make the most for her daughter out of the +extraordinary rivalry of the two English 'gentlemen,' and they were +admirably taken in by her. Whatever the truth may have been, Selwyn's +love for children showed itself more strongly in this case than in any +other; and, oddly enough, it seems to have begun when the little girl +was at an age when children scarcely interest other men than their +fathers--in short, in infancy. Her parents allowed him to have the sole +charge of her at a very early age, when they returned to the Continent; +but in 1777, the marchioness, being then in Brussels, claimed her +daughter back again; though less, it seems, from any great anxiety on +the child's account, than because her husband's parents, in Milan, +objected to their grand-daughter being left in England; and also, not a +little, from fear of the voice of Mrs. Grundy. Selwyn seems to have used +all kinds of arguments to retain the child; and a long correspondence +took place, which the marchesa begins with, 'My very dear friend,' and +many affectionate expressions, and concludes with a haughty 'Sir,' and +her opinion that his conduct was 'devilish.' The affair was, therefore, +clearly a violent quarrel, and Selwyn was obliged at last to give up the +child. He had a carriage fitted up for her expressly for her journey; +made out for her a list of the best hotels on her route; sent his own +confidential man-servant with her, and treasured up among his 'relics' +the childish little notes, in a large scrawling hand, which Mie-Mie sent +him. Still more curious was it to see this complete man of the world, +this gambler for many years, this club-lounger, drinker, associate of +well-dressed blasphemers, of Franciscans of Medmenham Abbey, devoting, +not his money only, but his very time to this mere child, leaving town +in the height of the season for dull Matson, that she might have fresh +air; quitting his hot club-rooms, his nights spent at the piquet-table, +and the rattle of the dice, for the quiet, pleasant terraces of his +country-house, where he would hold the little innocent Mie-Mie by her +tiny hand, as she looked up into his shrivelled dissipated face; +quitting the interchange of wit, the society of the Townshends, the +Walpoles, the Williamses, the Edgecumbes; all the jovial, keen wisdom of +Gilly, and Dick, and Horace, and Charles, as they called one another, +for the meaningless prattle, the merry laughter of this half-English, +half-Italian child, It redeems Selwyn in our eyes, and it may have done +him real good: nay, he must have felt a keen refreshment in this change +from vice to innocence; and we understand the misery he expressed, when +the old bachelor's one little companion and only pure friend was taken +away from him. His love for the child was well known in London society; +and of it did Sheridan's friends take advantage, when they wanted to get +Selwyn out of Brookes', to prevent his black-balling the dramatist. The +anecdote is given in the next memoir. + +In his later days Selwyn still haunted the clubs, hanging about, sleepy, +shrivelled, dilapidated in face and figure, yet still respected and +dreaded by the youngsters, as the 'celebrated Mr. Selwyn.' The wit's +disease--gout--carried him off at last, in 1791, at the age of +seventy-two. + +He left a fortune which was not contemptible: L33,000 of it were to go +to Mie-Mie--by this time a young lady--and as the Duke of Queensberry, +at his death, left her no less than L150,000, Miss was by no means a bad +match for Lord Yarmouth.[6] See what a good thing it is to have three +papas, when two of them are rich! The duke made Lord Yarmouth his +residuary legatee, and between him and his wife divided nearly +half-a-million. + +[6: Afterwards the well-known and dissolute Marquis of Hertford.] + +Let us not forget in closing this sketch of George Selwyn's life, that, +gambler and reprobate as he was, he possessed some good traits, among +which his love of children appears in shining colours. + + + +RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. + +Sheridan a Dunce.--Boyish Dreams of Literary Fame.--Sheridan in Love.--A +Nest of Nightingales.--The 'Maid of Bath.'--Captivated by Genius.-- +Sheridan's Elopement with 'Cecilia.'--His Duel with Captain Matthews.-- +Standards of Ridicule.--Painful Family Estrangements.--Enters Drury Lane. +--Success of the Famous 'School for Scandal.'--Opinions of Sheridan and +his Influence.--The Literary Club.--Anecdote of Garrick's Admittance.-- +Origin of the 'Rejected Addresses.'--New Flights.--Political Ambition.-- +The Gaming Mania.--Almacks'.--Brookes'.--Black-balled.--Two Versions of +the Election Trick.--St. Stephen's Won.--Vocal Difficulties.--Leads a +Double Life.--Pitt's Vulgar Attack.--Sheridan's Happy Retort.--Grattan's +Quip.--Sheridan's Sallies.--The Trial at Warren Hastings.--Wonderful +Effect of Sheridan's Eloquence.--The Supreme Effort.--The Star +Culminates.--Native Taste for Swindling.--A Shrewd but Graceless +Oxonian.--Duns Outwitted.--The Lawyer Jockeyed.--Adventures with +Bailiffs.--Sheridan's Powers of Persuasion.--House of Commons Greek.-- +Curious Mimicry.--The Royal Boon Company.--Street Frolics at Night.--An +Old Tale.--'All's well that ends well.'--The Fray in St. Giles.'-- +Unopened Letters.--An Odd Incident.--Reckless Extravagance.--Sporting +Ambition.--Like Father like Son.--A Severe and Witty Rebuke.-- +Intemperance.--Convivial Excesses of a Past Day.--Worth wins at last.-- +Bitter Pangs.--The Scythe of Death.--Sheridan's Second Wife.--Debts of +Honour.--Drury Lane Burnt.--The Owner's Serenity.--Misfortunes never come +Singly.--The Whitbread Quarrel.--Ruined.--Undone and almost Forsaken.-- +The Dead Man Arrested.--The Stories fixed on Sheridan.--Extempore Wit and +Inveterate Talkers. + + +Poor Sheridan! gambler, spendthrift, debtor, as thou wert, what is it +that shakes from our hand the stone we would fling at thee? Almost, we +must confess it, thy very faults; at least those qualities which seem to +have been thy glory and thy ruin: which brought thee into temptation; to +which, hadst thou been less brilliant, less bountiful, thou hadst never +been drawn. What is it that disarms us when we review thy life, and +wrings from us a tear when we should utter a reproach? Thy punishment; +that bitter, miserable end; that long battling with poverty, debt, +disease, all brought on by thyself; that abandonment in the hour of +need, more bitter than them all; that awakening to the terrible truth of +the hollowness of man and rottenness of the world!--surely this is +enough: surely we may hope that a pardon followed. But now let us view +thee in thy upward flight the genius, the wit, the monarch of mind. + +This great man, this wonderful genius, this eloquent senator, this most +applauded dramatist was--hear it, oh, ye boys! and fling it triumphantly +in the faces of your pedagogues--Sheridan, at your age, was a dunce! +This was the more extraordinary, inasmuch as his father, mother, and +grandfather were all celebrated for their quick mental powers. The last, +in fact, Dr. Sheridan, was a successful and eminent schoolmaster, the +intimate friend of Dean Swift, and an author. He was an Irish man and a +wit, and would seem to have been a Jacobite to boot, for he was deprived +of a chaplaincy he held under Government, for preaching, on King +George's birthday, a sermon having for its text 'Sufficient for the day +is the evil thereof.' + +Sheridan's mother, again--an eccentric, extraordinary woman--wrote +novels and plays; among the latter 'The Discovery,' which Garrick said +was 'one of the best comedies he ever read;' and Sheridan's father, Tom +Sheridan, was famous, in connection with the stage where he was so long +the rival of David Garrick. + +Born of such parents, in September, 1751, Richard Brinsley Sheridan was +sent in due course to Harrow, where that famous old pedant, Dr. Parr, +was at that time one of the masters. The Doctor has himself described +the lazy boy, in whose face he discovered the latent genius, and whom he +attempted to inspire with a love of Greek verbs and Latin verses, by +making him ashamed of his ignorance. But Richard preferred English +verses and no verbs, and the Doctor failed. He did not, even at that +period, cultivate elocution, of which his father was so good a master; +though Dr. Parr remembered one of his sisters, on a visit to Harrow, +reciting, in accordance with her father's teaching, the well-known +lines-- + + '_None_ but the brave, + None but the _brave_, + None _but_ the brave deserve the fair. + +But the real mind of the boy who would not be a scholar showed itself +early enough. He had only just left Harrow, when he began to display his +literary abilities. He had formed at school the intimate acquaintance of +Halhed, afterwards a distinguished Indianist, a man of like tastes with +himself; he had translated with him some of the poems of Theocritus. The +two boys had revelled together in boyish dreams of literary fame--ah, +those boyish dreams! so often our noblest--so seldom realized. So often, +alas! the aspirations to which we can look back as our purest and best, +and which make us bitterly regret that they were but dreams. And now, +when young Halhed went to Oxford, and young Sheridan to join his family +at Bath, they continued these ambitious projects for a time, and laid +out their fancy at full usury over many a work destined never to see the +fingers of the printer's devil. Among these was a farce, or rather +burlesque, which shows immense promise, and which, oddly enough, +resembles in its cast the famous 'Critic,' which followed it later. It +was called 'Jupiter,' and turned chiefly on the story of Ixion-- + + 'Embracing cloud, Ixion like,' + +the lover of Juno, who caught a cold instead of the Queen of Heaven; and +who, according to the classical legend, tortured for ever on a wheel, +was in this production to be condemned for ever to trundle the machine +of a 'needy knife-grinder,' amid a grand musical chorus of 'razors, +scissors, and penknives to grind!' This piece was amusing enough, and +clever enough, though it betrayed repeatedly the youthfulness of its +authors; but less so their next attempt, a weekly periodical, to be +called 'Hernan's Miscellany,' of which Sheridan wrote, or was to write, +pretty nearly the whole. None but the first number was ever completed, +and perhaps we need not regret that no more followed it; but it is +touching to see these two young men, both feeling their powers, +confident in them, and sunning their halcyon's wings in the happy belief +that they were those of the eagle, longing eagerly, earnestly, for the +few poor guineas that they hoped from their work. Halhed, indeed, wrote +diligently, but his colleague was not true to the contract, and though +the hope of gold stimulated him--for he was poor enough--from time to +time to a great effort, he was always 'beginning,' and never completing. + +The only real product of these united labours was a volume of Epistles +in verse from the Greek of a poor writer of late age, Aristaenetus. This +volume, which does little credit to either of its parents, was +positively printed and published in 1770, but the rich harvest of fame +and shillings which they expected from it was never gathered in. Yet the +book excited some little notice. The incognito of its authors induced +some critics to palm it even on such a man as Dr. Johnson; others +praised; others sneered at it. In the young men it raised hopes, only to +dash them; but its failure was not so utter as to put the idea of +literary success entirely out of their heads, nor its success sufficient +to induce them to rush recklessly into print, and thus strangle their +fame in its cradle. Let it fail, was Richard Sheridan's thought; he had +now a far more engrossing ambition. In a word, he was in love. + +Yes, he was in love for a time--only for a time, and not truly. But, be +it remembered, Sheridan's evil days had not commenced. He sowed his wild +oats late in life,--alack for him!--and he never finished sowing them. +His was not the viciousness of nature, but the corruption of success. +'In all time of wealth, good Lord deliver us!' What prayer can wild, +unrestrained, unheeding Genius utter with more fervency? I own Genius is +rarely in love. There is an egotism, almost a selfishness, about it, +that will not stoop to such common worship. Women know it, and often +prefer the blunt, honest, common-place soldier to the wild erratic poet. +Genius, grand as it is, is unsympathetic. It demands higher--the highest +joys. Genius claims to be loved, but to love is too much to ask it. And +yet at this time Sheridan was not a matured Genius. When his development +came, he cast off this very love for which he had fought, manoeuvred, +struggled, and was unfaithful to the very wife whom he had nearly died +to obtain. + +Miss Linley was one of a family who have been called 'a nest of +nightingales.' Young ladies who practise elaborate pieces and sing +simple ballads in the voice of a white mouse, know the name of Linley +well. For ages the Linleys have been the bards of England--composers, +musicians, singers, always popular, always English. Sheridan's love was +one of the most renowned of the family, but the 'Maid of Bath,' as she +was called, was as celebrated for her beauty as for the magnificence of +her voice. When Sheridan first knew her, she was only sixteen years +old--very beautiful, clever, and modest. She was a singer by profession, +living at Bath, as Sheridan, only three years older than herself, also +was, but attending concerts, oratorios, and so forth, in other places, +especially at Oxford. Her adorers were legion; and the Oxford boys +especially--always in love as they are--were among them. Halhed was +among these last, and in the innocence of his heart confided his passion +to his friend Dick Sheridan. At sixteen the young beauty began her +conquests. A rich old Wiltshire squire, with a fine heart, as golden as +his guineas, offered to or for her, and was readily accepted. But +'Cecilia,' as she was always called, could not sacrifice herself on the +altar of duty, and she privately told him that though she honoured and +esteemed, she could never love him. The old gentleman proved his worth. +Did he storm? did he hold her to her engagement? did he shackle himself +with a young wife, who would only learn to hate him for his persinacity? +Not a bit of it. He acted with a generosity which should be held up as a +model to all old gentlemen who are wild enough, to fall in love with +girls of sixteen. He knew Mr. Linley, who was delighted with the match, +would be furious if it were broken off. He offered to take on himself +all the blame if the breach, and, to satisfy the angry parent, settled +L1,000 on the daughter. The offer was accepted, and the trial for breach +of promise with which the pere Linley had threatened Mr. Long, was of +course withheld. Mr. Long afterwards presented Mrs. Sheridan with +L3,000. + +The 'Maid of Bath' was now an heiress as well as a fascinating beauty, +but her face and her voice were the chief enchantments with her ardent +and youthful adorers. The Sheridans had settled in Mead Street, in that +town which is celebrated for its gambling, its scandal, and its +unhealthy situation at the bottom of a natural basin. Well might the +Romans build their baths there: it will take more water than even Bath +supplies to wash out its follies and iniquities. It certainly is strange +how washing and cards go together. One would fancy there were no baths +in Eden, for wherever there are baths, there we find idleness and all +its attendant vices. + +The Linleys were soon intimate with the Sheridans, and the Maid of Bath +added to her adorers both Richard and his elder brother Charles; only, +just as at Harrow every one thought Richard a dunce and he disappointed +them; so at Bath no one thought Richard would fall in love, and he _did_ +disappoint them--none more so than Charles, his brother, and Halhed, his +bosom friend. As for the latter, he was almost mad in his devotion, and +certainly extravagant in his expressions. He described his passion by a +clever, but rather disagreeable simile, which Sheridan, who was a most +disgraceful plagiarist, though he had no need to be so, afterwards +adopted as his own. 'Just as the Egyptian pharmacists,' wrote Halhed, in +a Latin letter, in which he described the power of Miss Linley's voice +over his spirit, 'were wont, in embalming a dead body to draw the brain +out through the ears with a crooked hook, this nightingale has drawn out +through mine ears not my brain only, but my heart also.' + +Then among other of her devotees were Norris, the singer, and Mr. Watts, +a rich gentleman-commoner, who had also met her at Oxford. Surely with +such and other rivals, the chances of the quiet, unpretending, +undemonstrative boy of nineteen were small. But no, Miss Linley was +foolish enough to be captivated by genius, and charmed by such poems as +the quiet boy wrote to her, of which this is, perhaps, one of the +prettiest: + + 'Dry that tear, my gentlest love; + Be hush'd that struggling sigh, + Nor seasons, day, nor fate shall prove + More fix'd, more true than I. + Hush'd be that sigh, be dry that tear; + Cease boding doubt, cease anxious fear: + Dry be that tear. + + 'Ask'st thou how long my love will stay, + When all that's new is past? + How long, ah Delia, can I say + How long my life will last? + Dry be that tear, be hush'd that sigh, + At least I'll love thee till I die: + Hush'd be that sigh. + + 'And does that thought affect thee too, + The thought of Sylvio's death, + That he who only breath'd for you, + Must yield that faithful breath? + Hush'd be that sigh, be dry that tear, + Nor let us lose our Heaven here: + Be dry that tear.' + +The many adorers had not the remotest suspicion of this devotion, and +'gave her' to this, that, or the other eligible personage; but the +villanous conduct of a scoundrel soon brought the matter to a crisis. +The whole story was as romantic as it could be. In a three-volume novel, +critics, always so just and acute in their judgment, would call it +far-fetched, improbable, unnatural; in short, anything but what should +be the plot of the pure 'domestic English story.' Yet, here it is with +almost dramatic effect, the simple tale of what really befel one of our +most celebrated men. + +Yes, to complete the fiction-like aspect of the affair, there was even a +'captain' in the matter--as good a villain as ever shone in short hose +and cut doublet at the 'Strand' or 'Victoria.' Captain Matthews was a +married man, and a very naughty one. He was an intimate friend of the +Linleys, and wanted to push his intimacy too far. In short, 'not to put +too fine a point on it' (too fine a point is precisely what never _is_ +put), he attempted to seduce the pretty, innocent girl, and not dismayed +at one failure, went on again and again. 'Cecilia,' knowing the temper +of Linley pere, was afraid to expose him to her father, and with a +course, which we of the present day cannot but think strange, if nothing +more, disclosed the attempts of her persecutor to no other than her own +lover, Richard Brinsley Sheridan. + +Strange want of delicacy, undoubtedly, and yet we can excuse the poor +songstress, with a father who sought only to make money out of her +talents, and no other relations to confide in. But Richard Brinsley, +long her lover, now resolved to be both her protector and her husband. +He persuaded her to fly to France, under cover of entering a convent. He +induced his sister to lend him money out of that provided for the +housekeeping at home, hired a post-chaise, and sent a sedan-chair to her +father's house in the Crescent to convey her to it, and wafted her off +to town. Thence, after a few adroit lies on the part of Sheridan, they +sailed to Dunkirk; and there he persuaded her to become his wife. She +consented, and they were knotted together by an obliging priest +accustomed to these runaway matches from _la perfide Albion_. + +The irate parent, Linley, followed, recaptured his daughter, and brought +Her back to England. Meanwhile, the elopement excited great agitation in +the good city of Bath, and among others, the villain of the story, the +gallant Captain Matthews, posted Richard Brinsley as 'a scoundrel and a +liar,' the then polite method of expressing disgust. Home came Richard +in the wake of Miss Linley, who rejoiced in the unromantic praenomen of +'Betsy,' to her angry parent, and found matters had been running high in +his short absence. A duel with Matthews seems to have been the natural +consequence, and up Richard posted to London to fight it. Matthews +played the craven--Sheridan the impetuous lover. They met, fought, +seized one another's swords, wrestled, fell together, and wounded each +other with the stumps of their rapiers in true Chevy-Chase fashion. +Matthews, who had behaved in a cowardly manner in the first affair, +sought to retrieve his honour by sending a second challenge. Again the +rivals--well represented in 'The Rivals' afterwards produced--met at +Kingsdown. Mr. Matthews drew; Mr. Sheridan advanced on him at first: Mr. +Matthews in turn advanced fast on Mr. Sheridan; upon which he retreated, +till he very suddenly ran in upon Mr. Matthews, laying himself +exceedingly open, and endeavouring to get hold of Mr. Matthews' sword. +Mr. Matthews received him at point, and, I believe, disengaged his sword +from Mr. Sheridan's body, and gave him another wound. The same scene was +now enacted, and a _combat a l'outrance_ took place, ending in mutual +wounds, and fortunately no one dead. + +Poor little Betsy was at Oxford when all this took place. On her return +to Bath she heard something of it, and unconsciously revealed the secret +of her private marriage, claiming the right of a wife to watch over her +wounded husband. Then came the _denouement_. Old Tom Sheridan rejected +his son. The angry Linley would have rejected his daughter, but for her +honour. Richard was sent off into Essex, and in due time the couple were +legally married in England. So ended a wild, romantic affair, in which +Sheridan took a desperate, but not altogether honourable, part. But the +dramatist got more out of it than a pretty wife. Like all true geniuses, +he employed his own experience in the production of his works, and drew +from the very event of his life some hints or touches to enliven the +characters of his imagination. Surely the bravado and cowardice of +Captain Matthews, who on the first meeting in the Park is described as +finding all kinds of difficulties in the way of their fighting, +objecting now to the ground as unlevel, now to the presence of a +stranger, who turns out to be an officer, and very politely moves off +when requested, who, in short, delays the event as long as possible, +must have supplied the idea of Bob Acres; while the very conversations, +of which we have no record, may have given him some of those hints of +character which made the 'Rivals' so successful. That play--his +first--was written in 1774. It failed on its first appearance, owing to +the bad acting of the part of Sir Lucius O'Trigger, by Mr. Lee; but when +another actor was substituted, the piece was at once successful, and +acted with overflowing houses all over the country. How could it be +otherwise? It may have been exaggerated, far-fetched, unnatural, but +such characters as Sir Anthony Absolute, Sir Lucius, Bob Acres, Lydia +Languish, and most of all Mrs. Malaprop, so admirably conceived, and so +carefully and ingeniously worked out, could not but be admired. They +have become household words; they are even now our standards of +ridicule, and be they natural or not, these last eighty years have +changed the world so little that Malaprops and Acreses may be found in +the range of almost any man's experience, and in every class of society. + +Sheridan and his divine Betsy were now living in their own house, in +that Dull little place, Orchard Street, Portman Square, then an +aristocratic neighbourhood, and he was diligent in the production of +essays, pamphlets, and farces, many of which never saw the light, while +others fell flat, or were not calculated to bring him any fame. What +great authors have not experienced the same disappointments? What men +would ever be great if they allowed such checks to damp their energy, or +were turned back by them from the course in which they feel that their +power lies? + +But his next work, the opera of 'The Duenna,' had a yet more signal +success, and a run of no less than seventy-five nights at Covent Garden, +which put Garrick at Drury Lane to his wit's end to know how to compete +with it. Old Linley himself composed the music for it; and to show how +thus a family could hold the stage, Garrick actually played off the +mother against the son, and revived Mrs. Sheridan's comedy of 'The +Discovery,' to compete with Richard Sheridan's 'Duenna.' + +The first night 'The Rivals' was brought out at Bath came Sheridan's +father, who, as we have seen, had refused to have anything to say to his +son. It is related as an instance of Richard's filial affection, that +during the representation he placed himself behind a side-scene opposite +to the box in which his father and sisters sat, and gazed at them all +the time. When he returned to his house and wife, he burst into tears, +and declared that he felt it too bitter that he alone should have been +forbidden to speak to those on whom he had been gazing all the night. + +During the following year this speculative man, who married on nothing +but his brain, and had no capital, no wealthy friends, in short nothing +whatever, suddenly appears in the most mysterious manner as a +capitalist, and lays down his L10,000 in the coolest and quietest +manner. And for what? For a share in the purchase of Garrick's moiety of +the patent of Drury Lane. The whole property was worth L70,000; Garrick +sold his half for L35,000, of which old Mr. Linley contributed L10,000, +Dr. Ford L15,000, and penniless Sheridan the balance. Where he got the +money nobody knew, and apparently nobody asked. It was paid, and he +entered at once on the business of proprietor of that old house, where +so many a Roscius has strutted and declaimed with more or less fame; so +many a Walking gentleman done his five shillings' worth of polite +comedy, so many a tinsel king degraded the 'legitimate drama,' in the +most illegitimate manner, and whose glories were extinguished with the +reign of Macready, when we were boys, _nous autres_. + +The first piece he contributed to this stage was 'A Trip to +Scarborough,' Which was only a species of 'family edition of Vanbrugh's +play, 'The Relapse;' but in 1777 he reached the acme of his fame, in +'The School for Scandal.' + +But alack and alas for these sensual days, when it is too much trouble +to think, and people go to the play, if they go at all, to feast their +eyes and ears, not their minds; can any sensible person believe that if +'The School for Scandal,' teeming as it does with wit, satire, and +character, finer and truer than in any play produced since the days of +Ben Jonson, Massinger, and Marlowe, were set on the boards of the +Haymarket at this day, as a new piece by an author of no very high +celebrity, it would draw away a single admirer from the flummery in +Oxford Street, the squeaking at Covent Garden, or the broad, exaggerated +farce at the Adelphi or Olympic? No: it may still have its place on the +London stage when well acted, but it owes that to its ancient celebrity, +and it can never compete with the tinsel and tailoring which alone can +make even Shakspeare go down with a modern audience. + +In those days of Garrick, on the other hand, those glorious days of true +histrionic art, high and low were not ashamed to throng Drury Lane and +Covent Garden, and make the appearance of a new play the great event of +the season. Hundreds were turned away from the doors, when 'The School +for Scandal' was acted, and those who were fortunate enough to get in +made the piece the subject of conversation in society for many a night, +passing keen comment on every scene, every line, every word almost, and +using their minds as we now use our eyes. + +This brilliant play, the earliest idea of which was derived from its +author's experience of the gossip of that kettle of scandal and +backbiting, Bath, where, if no other commandment were ever broken, the +constant breach of the ninth would suffice to put it on a level with +certain condemned cities we have somewhere read of, won for Sheridan a +reputation of which he at once felt the value, and made his purchase of +a share in the property of Old Drury for the time being, a successful +speculation. It produced a result which his good heart perhaps valued +even more than the guineas which now flowed in; it induced his father, +who had long been at war with him, to seek a reconciliation, and the +elder Sheridan actually became manager of the theatre of which his son +was part proprietor. + +Old Tom Sheridan had always been a proud man, and when once he was +offended, was hard to bring round again. His quarrel with Johnson was an +instance of this. In 1762 the Doctor, hearing they had given Sheridan a +pension of two hundred a year, exclaimed, 'What have they given _him_ a +pension? then it is time for me to give up mine.' A 'kind friend' took +care to repeat the peevish exclamation, without adding what Johnson had +said immediately afterwards, 'However, I am glad that they have given +Mr. Sheridan a pension, for he is a very good man.' The actor was +disgusted; and though Boswell interfered, declined to be reconciled. On +one occasion he even rushed from a house at which he was to dine, when +he heard that the great Samuel had been invited. The Doctor had little +opinion of Sheridan's declamation. 'Besides, sir,' said he, 'what +influence can Mr. Sheridan have upon the language of this great country +by his narrow exertions. Sir, it is burning a farthing candle at Dover +to show light at Calais.' Still, when Garrick attacked his rival, +Johnson nobly defended him. 'No sir,' he said, 'there is to be sure, in +Sheridan, something to reprehend, and everything to laugh at; but, sir, +he is not a bad man. No, sir, were mankind to be divided into good and +bad, he would stand considerably within the ranks of the good.' + +However, the greatest bully of his age (and the kindest-hearted man) +thought very differently of the son. Richard Brinsley had written a +prologue to Savage's play of 'Sir Thomas Overbury'-- + + 'Ill-fated Savage, at whose birth was giv'n + No parent but the Muse, no friend but Heav'n;' + +and in this had paid an elegant compliment to the great lexicographer, +winding up with these lines:-- + + 'So pleads the tale that gives to future times + The son's misfortunes and the parent's crimes; + There shall his fame, if own'd to-night, survive, + Fix'd _by the hand that bids our language live_-- + +referring at once to Johnson's life of his friend Savage and to his +great Dictionary. It was Savage, every one remembers, with whom Johnson +in his days of starvation was wont to walk the streets all night, +neither of them being able to pay for a lodging, and with whom, walking +one night round and round St. James's Square, he kept up his own and his +companion's spirits by inveighing against the minister and declaring +that they would 'stand by their country.' + +Doubtless the Doctor felt as much pleasure at the meed awarded to his +old companion in misery as at the high compliment to himself. Anyhow he +pronounced that Sheridan 'had written the two best comedies of his age,' +and therefore proposed him as a member of the Literary Club. + +This celebrated gathering of wit and whimsicality, founded by Johnson +himself in conjunction with Sir J. Reynolds, was the Helicon of London +Letters, and the temple which the greatest talker of his age had built +for himself, and in which he took care to be duly worshipped. It met at +the Turk's Head in Gerrard Street, Soho, every Friday; and from seven in +the evening to almost any hour of night was the scene of such talk, +mainly on literature and learning, as has never been heard since in this +country. It consisted at this period of twenty-six members, and there is +scarcely one among them whose name is not known to-day as well as any in +the history of our literature. Besides the high priests, Reynolds and +Johnson, there came Edmund Burke, Fox, Sheridan, and many another of +less note, to represent the senate: Goldsmith, Gibbon, Adam Smith, +Malone, Dr. Burney, Percy, Nugent, Sir William Jones, three Irish +bishops, and a host of others, crowded in from the ranks of learning and +literature. Garrick and George Colman found here an indulgent audience; +and the light portion of the company comprised such men as Topham +Beauclerk, Bennet Langton, Vesey, and a dozen of lords and baronets. In +short, they were picked men, and if their conversation was not always +witty, it was because they had all wit and frightened one another. + +[Illustration: THE FAMOUS LITERARY CLUB.] + +Among them the bullying Doctor rolled in majestic grumpiness; scolded, +dogmatized, contradicted, pished and pshawed; and made himself generally +disagreeable; yet, hail the omen, Intellect! such was the force, such +the fame of his mind, that the more he snorted, the more they adored +him--the more he bullied, the more humbly they knocked under. He was +quite 'His Majesty' at the Turk's Head, and the courtiers waited for his +coming with anxiety, and talked of him till he came in the same manner +as the lacqueys in the anteroom of a crowned monarch. Boswell, who, by +the way, was also a member--of course he was, or how should we have had +the great man's conversations handed down to us?--was sure to keep them +up to the proper mark of adulation if they ever flagged in it, and was +as servile in his admiration in the Doctor's absence as when he was there +to call him a fool for his pains. + +Thus, on one occasion while 'King Johnson' tarried, the courtiers were +discussing his journey to the Hebrides and his coming away 'willing to +believe the second sight.' Some of them smiled at this, but Bozzy was +down on them with more than usual servility. 'He is only _willing_ to +believe,' he exclaimed. '_I do_ believe. The evidence is enough for me, +though not for his great mind. What will not fill a quart bottle will +fill a pint bottle. I am filled with belief.'--'Are you?' said Colman, +slily; 'then cork it up.' + +As a specimen of Johnson's pride in his own club, which always remained +extremely exclusive, we have what he said of Garrick, who, before he was +elected, carelessly told Reynolds he liked the club, and thought 'he +would be of them.' + +'_He'll be of us!_' roared the Doctor indignantly, on hearing of this. +'How does he know we will _permit_ him? The first duke in England has no +right to hold such language!' + +It can easily be imagined that when 'His Majesty' expressed his approval +of Richard Brinsley, then a young man of eight-and-twenty, there was no +one who ventured to blackball him, and so Sheridan was duly elected. + +The fame of 'The School for Scandal' was a substantial one for Richard +Brinsley, and in the following year he extended his speculation by +buying the other moiety of Drury Lane. This theatre, which took its name +from the old Cockpit Theatre in Drury Lane, where Killigrew acted in the +days of Charles II. is famous for the number of times it has been +rebuilt. The first house had been destroyed in 1674; and the one in +which Garrick acted was built by Sir Christopher Wren and opened with a +prologue by Dryden. In 1793 this was rebuilt. In 1809 it was burnt to +the ground; and on its re-opening the Committee advertised a prize for a +prologue, which was supposed to be tried for by all the poets and +poetasters then in England.[7] Sheridan adding afterwards a condition +that he wanted an address without a Phoenix in it. Horace Smith and his +brother seized the opportunity to parody the style of the most +celebrated in their delightful 'Rejected Addresses.' Drury Lane has +always been grand in its prologue, for besides Dryden and Byron, it +could boast of Sam. Johnson, who wrote the address when Garrick opened +the theatre in 1747. No theatre ever had more great names connected with +its history. + +[7: None of the addresses sent in having given satisfaction, Lord Byron +was requested to write one, which he did.] + +It was in 1778, after the purchase of the other moiety of this property, +that Sheridan set on its boards 'The Critic.' Though this was denounced +as itself as complete a plagiarism as any Sir Fretful Plagiary could +make, and though undoubtedly the idea of it was borrowed, its wit, so +truly Sheridanian, and its complete characters, enhanced its author's +fame, in spite of the disappointment of those who expected higher things +from the writer of 'The School for Scandal.' Whether Sheridan would have +gone on improving, had he remained true to the drama, 'The Critic' +leaves us in doubt. But he was a man of higher ambition. Step by step, +unexpectedly, and apparently unprepared, he had taken by storm the +out-works of the citadel he was determined to capture, and he seems to +have cared little to garrison these minor fortresses. He had carried off +from among a dozen suitors a wife of such beauty that Walpole thus +writes of her in 1773:-- + +'I was at the ball last night, and have only been at the opera, where I +was infinitely struck with the Carrara, who is the prettiest creature +upon earth. Mrs. Hartley I find still handsomer, and Miss Linley is to +be the superlative degree. The king admires the last, and ogles her as +much as he dares in so holy a place as an oratorio, and at so devout a +service as Alexander's Feast' + +Yet Sheridan did not prize his lovely wife as he should have done, when +he had once obtained her. Again he had struck boldly into the drama, and +in four years had achieved that fame as a play-writer to which even +Johnson could testify so handsomely. He now quitted this, and with the +same innate power--the same consciousness of success--the same readiness +of genius--took a higher, far more brilliant flight than ever. Yet had +he garrisoned the forts he captured, he would have been a better, +happier, and more prosperous man. Had he been true to the Maid of Bath, +his character would not have degenerated as it did. Had he kept up his +connection with the drama, he would not have lost so largely by his +speculation in Drury Lane. His genius became his temptation, and he +hurried on to triumph and to fall. + +Public praise is a syren which the young sailor through life cannot +resist. Political life is a fine aim, even when its seeker starts +without a shred of real patriotism to conceal his personal ambition. No +young man of any character can think, without a thrill of rapture, on +the glory of having _his_ name--now obscure--written in capitals on the +page of his country's history. A true patriot cares nothing for fame; a +really great man is content to die nameless, if his acts may but survive +him. Sheridan was not really great, and it may be doubted if he had any +sincerity in his political views. But the period favoured the rise of +young men of genius. In former reigns a man could have little hope of +political influence without being first a courtier; but by this time +liberalism had made giant strides. The leaven of revolutionary ideas, +which had leavened the whole lump in France, was still working quietly +and less passionately in this country, and being less repressed, +displayed itself in the last quarter of the eighteenth century in the +form of a strong and brilliant opposition. It was to this that the young +men of ambition attached themselves, rallying under the standard of +Charles James Fox, since it was there only that their talents were +sufficient to recommend them. + +To this party, Sheridan, laughing in his sleeve at the extravagance of +their demands--so that when they clamoured for a 'parliament once a +year, or oftener if need be,' he pronounced himself an +'Oftener-if-need-be' man--was introduced, when his fame as a literary +man had brought him into contact with some of its hangers on. Fox, after +his first interview with him, affirmed that he had always thought Hare +and Charles Townsend the wittiest men he had ever met, but that Sheridan +surpassed them both; and Sheridan was equally pleased with 'the Man of +the People.' + +The first step to this political position was to become a member of a +certain club, where its leaders gambled away their money, and drank away +their minds--to wit, Brookes'. Pretty boys, indeed, were these great +Whig patriots when turned loose in these precincts. The tables were for +stakes of twenty or fifty guineas, but soon ran up to hundreds. What did +it matter to Charles James Fox, to the Man of the People, whether he +lost five, seven, or ten thousand of a night, when the one-half came out +of his father's, the other out of Hebrew, pockets--the sleek, +thick-lipped owners of which thronged his Jerusalem chamber, as he +called his back sitting-room, only too glad to 'oblige' him to any +amount? The rage for gaming at this pandemonium may be understood from a +rule of the club, which it was found necessary to make to interdict it +_in the eating-room_, but to which was added the truly British +exception, which allowed two members of Parliament in those days, or two +'gentlemen' of any kind, to toss up for what they had ordered. + +This charming resort of the dissipated was originally established in +Pall Mall in 1764, and the manager was that same Almack who afterwards +opened a lady's club in the rooms now called Willis's, in King Street, +St. James's; who also owned the famous Thatched House, and whom Gilly +Williams described as having a 'Scotch face, in a bag-wig,' waiting on +the ladies at supper. In 1778 Brookes--a wine-merchant and money-lender, +whom Tickell, in his famous 'Epistle from the Hon. Charles Fox, +partridge-shooting, to the Hon. John Townsend, cruising,' describes in +these lines;-- + + 'And know I've bought the best champagne from Brookes, + From liberal Brookes, whose speculative skill + Is hasty credit, and a distant bill: + Who, nurs'd in clubs, disdains a vulgar trade: + Exults to trust, and blushes to be paid--' + +built and opened the present club-house in St. James's Street, and +thither the members of Almack's migrated. Brookes' speculative skill, +however, did not make him a rich man, and the 'gentlemen' he dealt with +were perhaps too gentlemanly to pay him. He died poor in 1782. Almack's +at first consisted of twenty-seven members, one of whom was C.J. Fox. +Gibbon, the historian, was actually a member of it, and says that in +spite of the rage for play, he found the society there rational and +entertaining. Sir Joshua Reynolds wanted to be a member of it too. 'You +see,' says Topham Beauclerk thereupon, 'what noble ambition will make a +man attempt. That den is not yet opened,' &c. + +Brookes', however, was far more celebrated, and besides Fox, Reynolds, +and Gibbon, there were here to be found Horace Walpole, David Hume, +Burke, Selwyn, and Garrick. It would be curious to discover how much +religion, how much morality, and how much vanity there were among the +set. The first two would require a microscope to examine, the last an +ocean to contain it. But let Tickell describe its inmates:-- + + 'Soon as to Brookes's thence thy footsteps bend + What gratulations thy approach attend! + See Gibbon rap his box--auspicious sign, + That classic compliment and wit combine; + See Beauclerk's cheek a tinge of red surprise, + And friendship give what cruel health denies; + + * * * * * + + Of wit, of taste, of fancy we'll debate, + If Sheridan for once be not too late. + But scarce a thought on politics we'll spare + Unless on Polish politics with Hare. + Good-natured Devon! oft shall there appear + The cool complacence of thy friendly sneer; + Oft shall Fitzpatrick's wit, and Stanhope's ease, + And Burgoyne's manly sense combine to please. + +To show how high gaming ran in this assembly of wits, even so early at +1772, there is a memorandum in the books, stating that Mr. Thynne +retired from the club in disgust, because he had only won L12,000 in two +months. The principal games at this period were quinze and faro. + +Into this eligible club Richard Sheridan, who ten years before had been +agreeing with Halhed on the bliss of making a couple of hundred pounds +by their literary exertions, now essayed to enter as a member; but in +vain. One black-ball sufficed to nullify his election, and that one was +dropped in by George Selwyn, who, with degrading littleness, would not +have the son of an actor among them. Again and again he made the +attempt; again and again Selwyn foiled him; and it was not till 1780 +that he succeeded. The Prince of Wales was then his devoted friend, and +was determined he should be admitted into the club. The elections at +that time took place between eleven at night and one o'clock in the +morning, and the 'greatest gentleman in Europe' took care to be in the +hall when the ballot began. Selwyn came down as usual, bent on triumph. +The prince called him to him. There was nothing for it; Selwyn was +forced to obey. The prince walked him up and down the hall, engaging him +in an apparently most important conversation. George Selwyn answered him +question after question, and made desperate attempts to slip away. The +other George had always something more to say to him. The long finger of +the clock went round, and Selwyn's long white fingers were itching for +the black ball. The prince was only more and more interested, the wit +only more and more abstracted. Never was the young George more lively, +or the other more silent. But it was all in vain. The finger of the +clock went round and round, and at last the members came out noisily +from the balloting-room, and the smiling faces of the prince's friends +showed to the unhappy Selwyn that his enemy had been elected. + +So, at least, runs one story. The other, told by Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, +is perhaps more probable. It appears that the Earl of Besborough was no +less opposed to his election than George Selwyn, and these two +individuals agreed at any cost of comfort to be always at the club at +the time of the ballot to throw in their black balls. On the night of +his success, Lord Besborough was there as usual, and Selwyn was at his +rooms in Cleveland Row, preparing to come to the club. Suddenly a +chairman rushed into Brookes' with an important note for my lord, who, +on tearing it open, found to his horror that it was from his +daughter-in-law, Lady Duncannon, announcing that his house in Cavendish +Square was on fire, and imploring him to come immediately. Feeling +confident that his fellow conspirator would be true to his post, the +earl set off at once. But almost the same moment Selwyn received a +message informing him that his adopted daughter, of whom he was very +fond, was seized with an alarming illness. The ground was cleared; and +by the time the earl returned, having, it is needless to say, found his +house in a perfect state of security, and was joined by Selwyn, whose +daughter had never been better in her life, the actor's son was elected, +and the conspirators found they had been duped. + +But it is far easier in this country to get into that House, where one +has to represent the interests of thousands, and take a share in the +government of a nation, than to be admitted to a club where one has but +to lounge, to gamble, and to eat dinner; and Sheridan was elected for +the town of Stafford with probably little more artifice than the old and +stale one of putting five-pound notes under voters' glasses, or paying +thirty pounds for a home-cured ham. Whether he bribed or not, a petition +was presented against his election, almost as a matter of course in +those days, and his maiden speech was made in defence of the good +burgesses of that quiet little county-town. After making this speech, +which was listened to in silence on account of his reputation as a +dramatic author, but which does not appear to have been very wonderful, +he rushed up to the gallery, and eagerly asked his friend Woodfall what +he thought of it. That candid man shook his head, and told him oratory +was not his forte, Sheridan leaned his head on his hand a moment, and +then exclaimed with vehement emphasis, 'It is in me, however, and, by +Heaven! it shall come out.' + +He spoke prophetically, yet not as the great man who determines to +conquer difficulties, but rather as one who feels conscious of his own +powers, and knows that they must show themselves sooner or later. +Sheridan found himself labouring under the same natural obstacles as +Demosthenes--though in a less degree--a thick and disagreeable tone of +voice; but we do not find in the indolent but gifted Englishman that +admirable perseverance, that conquering zeal, which enabled the Athenian +to turn these very impediments to his own advantage. He did, indeed, +prepare his speeches, and at times had fits of that same diligence which +he had displayed in the preparation of 'The School for Scandal;' but his +indolent, self-indulgent mode of life left him no time for such steady +devotion to oratory as might have made him the finest speaker of his +age, for perhaps his natural abilities were greater than those of Pitt, +Fox, or even Burke, though his education was inferior to that of those +two statesmen. + +From this time Sheridan's life had two phases--that of a politician, and +that of a man of the world. With the former, we have nothing to do in +such a memoir as this, and indeed it is difficult to say whether it was +in oratory, the drama, or wit that he gained the greatest celebrity. +There is, however, some difference between the three capacities. On the +mimic stage, and on the stage of the country, his fame rested on a very +few grand outbursts--some matured, prepared, deliberated--others +spontaneous. He left only three great comedies, and perhaps we may say +only one really grand. In the same way he made only two great speeches, +or perhaps we may say only one. His wit on the other hand--though that +too is said to have been studied--was the constant accompaniment of his +daily life, and Sheridan has not left two or three celebrated bon-mots, +but a hundred. + +But even in his political career his wit, which must then have been +spontaneous, won him almost as much fame as his eloquence, which he +seems to have reserved for great occasions. He was the wit of the House. +Wit, ridicule, satire, quiet, cool, and easy sneers, always made in good +temper, and always therefore the more bitter, were his weapons, and they +struck with unerring accuracy. At that time--nor at that time only--the +'Den of Thieves,' as Cobbett called our senate, was a cockpit as vulgar +and personal as the present Congress of the United States. Party-spirit +meant more than it has ever done since, and scarcely less than it had +meant when the throne itself was the stake for which parties played some +forty years before. There was, in fact a substantial personal centre for +each side. The one party rallied round a respectable but maniac monarch, +whose mental afflictions took the most distressing form, the other round +his gay, handsome, dissolute--nay disgusting--son, at once his rival and +his heir. The spirit of each party was therefore personal, and their +attacks on one another were more personal than anything we can imagine +in the present day in so respectably ridiculous a conclave as the House +of Commons. It was little for one honourable gentleman to give another +honourable gentleman the lie direct before the eyes of the country. The +honourable gentlemen descended--or, as they thought, ascended--to the +most vehement invective, and such was at times the torrent of personal +abuse which parties heaped on one another, while good-natured John Bull +looked on and smiled at his rulers, that, as in the United States of +to-day, a debate was often the prelude to a duel. Pitt and Fox, Tierney, +Adam, Fullarton, Lord George Germain, Lord Shelburne, and Governor +Johnstone, all 'vindicated their honour,' as the phrase went, by 'coffee +and pistols for four.' If Sheridan had not to repeat the Bob Acres scene +with Captain Matthews, it was only because his wonderful good humour +could put up with a great deal that others thought could only be +expiated by a hole in the waistcoat. + +In the administration of the Marquis of Rockingham the dramatist enjoyed +the pleasures of office for less than a year as one of the Under +Secretaries of State in 1782. In the next year we find him making a +happy retort on Pitt, who had somewhat vulgarly alluded to his being a +dramatic author. It was on the American question, perhaps the bitterest +that ever called forth the acrimony of parties in the House. Sheridan, +from boyhood, had been taunted with being the son of an actor. One can +hardly credit this fact, just after Garrick had raised the profession of +an actor to so great an eminence in the social scale. He had been called +'the player boy' at school, and his election at Brookes' had been +opposed on the same grounds. It was evidently his bitterest point, and +Pitt probably knew this when, in replying to a speech of the +ex-dramatist's he said that 'no man admired more than he did the +abilities of that right honourable gentleman, the elegant sallies of his +thought, the gay effusions of his fancy, his _dramatic_ turns, and his +epigrammatic point; and if they were reserved for the _proper stage,_ +they would, no doubt, receive what the hon. gentleman's abilities always +did receive, the plaudits of the audience; and it would be his fortune +_sui plausu gaudere theatri_. But this was not the proper scene for the +exhibition of those elegancies.' This was vulgar in Pitt, and probably +every one felt so. But Sheridan rose, cool and collected, and quietly +replied:-- + +'On the particular sort of personality which the right hon. gentleman +has thought proper to make use of, I need not make any comment. The +propriety, the taste, the gentlemanly point of it, must have been +obvious to the House. But let me assure the right hon. gentleman that I +do now, and will at any time he chooses to repeat this sort of allusion, +meet it with the most sincere good humour. Nay, I will say more: +flattered and encouraged by the right hon. gentleman's panegyric on my +talents, if ever I again engage in the compositions he alludes to, I may +be tempted to an act of presumption--to attempt an improvement on one of +Ben Jonson's best characters, the character of the _Angry Boy_, in the +"Alchemist."' + +The fury of Pitt, contrasted with the coolness of the man he had so +shamefully attacked, made this sally irresistible, and from that time +neither 'the angry boy' himself, nor any of his colleagues, were anxious +to twit Sheridan on his dramatic pursuits. + +Pitt wanted to lay a tax on every horse that started in a race. Lord +Surry, a _turfish_ individual of the day, proposed one of five pounds on +the winner. Sheridan, rising, told his lordship that the next time he +visited Newmarket he would probably be greeted with the line:-- + + 'Jockey of Norfolk, be not so bold--.' + +Lord Rolie, the butt of the Opposition, who had attacked him in the +famous satire, 'The Rolliad,' so popular that it went through twenty-two +editions in twenty-seven years, accused Sheridan of inflammatory +speeches among the operatives of the northern counties on the cotton +question. Sheridan retorted by saying that he believed Lord Rolle must +refer to 'Compositions less prosaic, but more popular' (meaning the +'Rolliad'), and thus successfully turned the laugh against him. + +It was Grattan, I think, who said, 'When I can't talk sense, I talk +metaphor.' Sheridan often talked metaphor, though he sometimes mingled +it with sense. His famous speech about the Begums of Oude is full of it, +but we have one or two instances before that. Thus on the Duke of +Richmond's report about fortifications, he said, turning to the duke, +that 'holding in his hand the report made by the Board of Officers, he +complimented the noble president on his talents as an _engineer_, which +were strongly evinced in planning and constructing that very paper.... +He has made it a contest of posts, and conducted his reasoning not less +on principles of trigonometry than of logic. There are certain +assumptions thrown up, like advanced works, to keep the enemy at a +distance from the principal object of debate; strong provisos protect +and cover the flanks of his assertions, his very queries are his +casemates,' and so on. + +When Lord Mulgrave said, on another occasion, that any man using his +influence to obtain a vote for the crown _ought_ to lose his head, +Sheridan quietly remarked, that he was glad his lordship had said +'_ought_ to lose his head,' not _would_ have lost it, for in that case +the learned gentleman would not have had that evening '_face_ to have +shown among us.' + +Such are a few of his well-remembered replies in the House; but his fame +as an orator rested on the splendid speeches which he made at the +impeachment of Warren Hastings. The first of these was made in the House +on the 7th of February, 1787. The whole story of the corruption, +extortions, and cruelty of the worst of many bad rulers who have been +imposed upon that unhappy nation of Hindostan, and who ignorant how to +_parcere subjectis_, have gone on in their unjust oppression, only +rendering it the more dangerous by weak concessions, is too well known +to need a recapitulation here. The worst feature in the whole of +Hastings' misconduct was, perhaps, his treatment of those unfortunate +ladies whose money he coveted, the Begums of Oude. The Opposition was +determined to make the governor-general's conduct a state question, but +their charges had been received with little attention, till on this day +Sheridan rose to denounce the cruel extortioner. He spoke for five hours +and a half, and surpassed all he had ever said in eloquence. The subject +was one to find sympathy in the hearts of Englishmen, who, though they +beat their own wives, are always indignant at a man who dares to lay a +little finger on those of anybody else. Then, too, the subject was +Oriental: it might even be invested with something of romance and +poetry; the zenanah, sacred in the eyes of the oppressed natives, had +been ruthlessly insulted, under a glaring Indian sun, amid the +luxuriance of Indian foliage, these acts had been committed, &c. &c. It +was a fertile theme for a poet; and how little soever Sheridan cared for +the Begums and their wrongs--and that he did care little appears from +what he afterwards said of Hastings himself--he could evidently make a +telling speech out of the theme, and he did so. Walpole says that he +turned everybody's head. 'One heard everybody in the street raving on +the wonders of that speech; for my part, I cannot believe it was so +supernatural as they say.' He affirms that there must be a witchery in +Mr. Sheridan, who had no diamonds--as Hastings had--to win favour with, +and says that the Opposition may be fairly charged with sorcery. Burke +declared the speech to be 'the most astonishing effort of eloquence, +argument, and wit united, of which there was any record or tradition.' +Fox affirmed that 'all he had ever heard, all he had ever read, when +compared with it, dwindled into nothing, and vanished like vapour before +the sun.' But these were partizans. Even Pitt acknowledged 'that it +surpassed all the eloquence of ancient and modern times, and possessed +everything that genius or art could furnish to agitate and control the +human mind.' One member confessed himself so unhinged by it, that he +moved an adjournment, because he could not, in his then state of mind, +give an unbiassed vote. But the highest testimony was that of Logan, the +defender of Hastings. At the end of the first hour of the speech, he +said to a friend, 'All this is declamatory assertion without proof.' +Another hour's speaking, and he muttered, 'This is a most wonderful +oration!' A third, and he confessed 'Mr. Hastings has acted very +unjustifiably.' At the end of the fourth, he exclaimed, 'Mr. Hastings is +a most atrocious criminal.' And before the speaker had sat down, he +vehemently protested that 'Of all monsters of iniquity, the most +enormous is Warren Hastings.' + +Such in those days was the effect of eloquence; an art which has been +eschewed in the present House of Commons, and which our newspapers +affect to think is much out of place in an assembly met for calm +deliberation. Perhaps they are right; but oh! for the golden words of a +Sheridan, a Fox, even a Pitt and Burke. + +It is said, though not proved, that on this same night of Sheridan's +glory in the House of Commons, his 'School for Scandal' was acted with +'rapturous applause' at Covent Garden, and his 'Duenna' no less +successfully at Drury Lane. What a pitch of glory for the dunce who had +been shamed into learning Greek verbs at Harrow! Surely Dr. Parr must +then have confessed that a man can be great without the classics--nay, +without even a decent English education, for Sheridan knew comparatively +little of history and literature, certainly less than the men against +whom he was pitted or whose powers he emulated. He has been known to say +to his friends, when asked to take part with them on some important +question, 'You know I'm an ignoramus--instruct me and I'll do my best.' +He had even to rub up his arithmetic when he thought he had some chance +of being made Chancellor of the Exchequer; but, perhaps, many a +statesman before and after him has done as much as that. + +No wonder that after such a speech in the House, the celebrated trial +which commenced in the beginning of the following year should have +roused the attention of the whole nation. The proceedings opened in +Westminster Hall, the noblest room in England, on the 13th of February, +1788. The Queen and four of her daughters were seated in the Duke of +Newcastle's box; the Prince of Wales walked in at the head of a hundred +and fifty peers of the realm. The spectacle was imposing enough. But the +trial proceeded slowly for some months, and it was not till the 3rd of +June that Sheridan rose to make his second great speech on this subject. + +The excitement was then at its highest. Two-thirds of the peers with the +peeresses and their daughters were present, and the whole of the vast +hall was crowded to excess. The sun shone in brightly to light up the +gloomy building, and the whole scene was splendid. Such was the +enthusiasm that people paid _fifty guineas_ for a ticket to hear the +first orator of his day, for such he then was. The actor's son felt the +enlivening influence of a full audience. He had been long preparing for +this moment, and he threw into his speech all the theatrical effect of +which he had studied much and inherited more. He spoke for many hours on +the 3rd, 5th, and 6th, and concluded with these words: + +'They (the House of Commons) exhort you by everything that calls +sublimely upon the heart of man, by the majesty of that justice which +this bold man has libelled, by the wide fame of your own tribunal, by +the sacred pledges by which you swear in the solemn hour of decision, +knowing that that decision will then bring you the highest reward that +ever blessed the heart of man, the consciousness of having done the +greatest act of mercy for the world that the earth has ever yet received +from any hand but heaven!--My Lords, I have done.' + +Sheridan's valet was very proud of his master's success, and as he had +been to hear the speech, was asked what part he considered the finest. +Plush replied by putting himself into his master's attitude, and +imitating his voice admirably, solemnly uttering, 'My Lords, I have +done!' He should have added the word 'nothing.' Sheridan's eloquence had +no more effect than the clear proof of Hastings' guilt, and the +impeachment, as usual, was but a troublesome subterfuge, to satisfy the +Opposition and dust the eyeballs of the country. + +Sheridan's great speech was made. The orator has concluded his oration; +fame was complete, and no more was wanted, Adieu, then, blue-books and +parties, and come on the last grand profession of this man of many +talents--that of the wit. That it was a profession there can be no +doubt, for he lived on it, it was all his capital. He paid his bills in +that coin alone: he paid his workmen, his actors, carpenters, builders +with no more sterling metal; with that ready tool he extracted loans +from the very men who came to be paid; that brilliant ornament +maintained his reputation in the senate, and his character in society. +But wit without wisdom--the froth without the fluid--the capital without +the pillar--is but a poor fortune, a wretched substitute for real worth +and honest utility. For a time men forgave to Mr. Sheridan--extravagant +and reckless as he was--what would long before have brought an honester, +better, but less amusing man to a debtor's prison and the contempt of +society; but only for a time was this career possible. + +Sheridan has now reached the pinnacle of his fame, and from this point +we have to trace that decline which ended so awfully. + +Whilst we call him a dishonest man, we must not be supposed to imply +that he was so in heart. It is pleaded for him that he tricked his +creditors 'for the fun of the thing,' like a modern Robin Hood, and like +that forester bold, he was mightily generous with other men's money. +Deception is deception whether in sport or earnest, and Sheridan, no +doubt, made it a very profitable employment. He had always a taste for +the art of duping, and he had begun early in life--soon after leaving +Harrow. He was spending a few days at Bristol, and wanted a pair of new +boots, but could not afford to pay for them. Shortly before he left, he +called on two bootmakers, and ordered of each a pair, promising payment +on delivery. He fixed the morning of his departure for the tradesmen to +send in their goods. When the first arrived he tried on the boots, +complaining that that for the _right_ foot pinched a little, and ordered +Crispin to take it back, stretch it, and bring it again at nine the next +morning. The second arrived soon after, and this time it was the boot +for the _left_ foot which pinched. Same complaint; same order given; +each had taken away only the pinching boot, and left the other behind. +The same afternoon Sheridan left in his new boots for town, and when the +two shoemakers called at nine the next day, each with a boot in his +hand, we can imagine their disgust at finding how neatly they had been +duped. + +Anecdotes of this kind swarm in every account of Richard Sheridan--many +of them, perhaps, quite apocryphal, others exaggerated, or attributed to +this noted trickster, but all tending to show how completely he was +master of this high art. His ways of eluding creditors used to delight +me, I remember, when an Oxford boy, and they are only paralleled by +Oxford stories. One of these may not be generally known, and was worthy +of Sheridan. Every Oxonian knows Hall, the boat-builder at Folly Bridge. +Mrs. Hall was, in my time, proprietress of those dangerous skiffs and +nutshell canoes which we young harebrains delighted to launch on the +Isis. Some youthful Sheridanian had a long account with this elderly and +bashful personage, who had applied in vain for her money, till, coming +one day to his rooms, she announced her intention not to leave till the +money was paid. 'Very well, Mrs. Hall, then you must sit down and make +yourself comfortable while I dress, for I am going out directly.' Mrs. +H. sat down composedly, and with equal composure the youth took off his +coat. Mrs. H. was not abashed, but in another moment the debtor removed +his waistcoat also. Mrs. H. was still immoveable. Sundry other articles +of dress followed, and the good lady began to be nervous. 'Now, Mrs. +Hall, you can stay if you like, but I assure you that I am going to +change _all_ my dress.' Suiting the action to the word, he began to +remove his lower garments, when Mrs. Hall, shocked and furious, rushed +from the room. + +This reminds us of Sheridan's treatment of a female creditor. He had for +some years hired his carriage-horses from Edbrooke in Clarges Street, +and his bill was a heavy one. Mrs. Edbrooke wanted a new bonnet, and +blew up her mate for not insisting on payment. The curtain lecture was +followed next day by a refusal to allow Mr. Sheridan to have the horses +till the account was settled. Mr. Sheridan sent the politest possible +message in reply, begging that Mrs. Edbrooke would allow his coachman to +drive her in his own carriage to his door, and promising that the matter +should be satisfactorily arranged. The good woman was delighted, dressed +in her best, and, bill in hand, entered the M.P.'s chariot. Sheridan +meanwhile had given orders to his servants. Mrs. Edbrooke was shown up +into the back drawing-room, where a slight luncheon, of which she was +begged to partake, was laid out; and she was assured that her debtor +would not keep her waiting long, though for the moment engaged. The +horse-dealer's wife sat down and discussed a wing of chicken and glass +of wine, and in the meantime her victimizer had been watching his +opportunity, slipped down stairs, jumped into the vehicle, and drove +off. Mrs. Edbrooke finished her lunch and waited in vain; ten minutes, +twenty, thirty, passed, and then she rang the bell: 'Very sorry, ma'am, +but Mr. Sheridan went out on important business half an hour ago.' 'And +the carriage?'--'Oh, ma'am, Mr. Sheridan never walks.' + +He procured his wine in the same style. Chalier, the wine-merchant, was +his creditor to a large amount, and had stopped supplies. Sheridan was +to give a grand dinner to the leaders of the Opposition, and had no port +or sherry to offer them. On the morning of the day fixed he sent for +Chalier, and told him he wanted to settle his account. The importer, +much pleased, said he would go home and bring it at once. 'Stay,' cried +the debtor, 'will you dine with me to-day; Lord----, Sir----, and +So-and-so are coming.' Chalier was flattered and readily accepted. +Returning to his office, he told his clerk that he should dine with Mr. +Sheridan, and therefore leave early. At the proper hour he arrived in +full dress, and was no sooner in the house., than his host despatched a +message to the clerk at the office, saying that Mr. Chalier wished him +to send up at once three dozen of Burgundy, two of claret, two of port, +&c., &c. Nothing seemed more natural, and the wine was forwarded, just +in time for the dinner. It was highly praised by the guests, who asked +Sheridan who was his wine-merchant. The host bowed towards Chalier, gave +him a high recommendation, and impressed him with the belief that he was +telling a polite falsehood in order to secure him other customers. +Little did he think that he was drinking his own wine, and that it was +not, and probably never would be, paid for! + +In like manner, when he wanted a particular Burgundy an innkeeper at +Richmond, who declined to supply it till his bill was paid, he sent for +the man, and had no sooner seen him safe in the house than he drove off +to Richmond, saw his wife, told her he had just had a conversation with +mine host, settled everything, and would, to save them trouble, take the +wine with him in his carriage. The condescension overpowered the good +woman, who ordered it at once to be produced, and Sheridan drove home +about the time that her husband was returning to Richmond, weary of +waiting for his absent debtor. But this kind of trickery could not +always succeed without some knowledge of his creditor's character. In +the case of Holloway, the lawyer, Sheridan took advantage of his +well-known vanity of his judgment of horse-flesh. Kelly gives the +anecdote as authentic. He was walking one day with Sheridan, close to +the churchyard of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, when, as ill-luck would +have it, up comes Holloway on horseback, and in a furious rage, +complains that he has called on Mr. Sheridan time and again in Hertford +Street, and can never gain admittance. He proceeds to violent threats, +and slangs his debtor roundly. Sheridan, cool as a whole bed of +cucumbers, takes no notice of these attacks, but quietly exclaims: 'What +a beautiful creature you're riding, Holloway!' The lawyer's weak point +was touched. + +'You were speaking to me the other day about a horse for Mrs. Sheridan; +now this would be a treasure for a lady.' + +'Does he canter well?' asks Sheridan, with a look of business. + +'Like Pegasus himself.' + +'If that's the case, I shouldn't mind, Holloway, stretching a point for +him. Do you mind showing me his paces?' + +'Not at all,' replies the lawyer, only too happy to show off his own: +and touching up the horse, put him to a quiet canter. The moment is not +to be lost; the churchyard gate is at hand; Sheridan slips in, knowing +that his mounted tormentor cannot follow him, and there bursts into a +roar of laughter, which is joined in by Kelly, but not by the returning +Holloway. + +[Illustration: "A TREASURE FOR A LADY"--SHERIDAN AND THE LAWYER.] + +But if he escaped an importunate lawyer once in a way like this, he +Required more ingenuity to get rid of the limbs of the law, when they +came, as they did frequently in his later years. It was the fashionable +thing in bygone novels of the 'Pelham' school, and Even in more recent +comedies, to introduce a well-dressed sheriff's officer at a dinner +party or ball, and take him through a variety of predicaments, ending, +at length, in the revelation of his real character; and probably some +such scene is still enacted from time to time in the houses of the +extravagant: but Sheridan's adventures with bailiffs seem to have +excited more attention. In the midst of his difficulties he never ceased +to entertain his friends, and 'why should he not do so, since he had not +to pay?' 'Pay your bills, sir? what a shameful waste of money!' he once +said. Thus, one day a young friend was met by him and taken back to +dinner, 'quite in a quiet way, just to meet a very old friend of mine, a +man of great talent, and most charming companion.' When they arrived +they found 'the old friend' already installed, and presenting a somewhat +unpolished appearance, which the young man explained to himself by +supposing him to be a genius of somewhat low extraction. His habits at +dinner, the eager look, the free use of his knife, and so forth, were +all accounted for in the same way, but that he was a genius of no slight +distinction was clear from the deep respect and attention with which +Sheridan listened to his slightest remarks, and asked his opinion on +English poetry. Meanwhile Sheridan and the servant between them plied +the genius very liberally with wine: and the former, rising, made him a +complimentary speech on his critical powers, while the young guest, who +had heard nothing from his lips but the commonest platitudes in very bad +English, grew more and more amused. The wine told in time, the 'genius' +sang songs which were more Saxon than delicate, talked loud, clapped his +host on the shoulder, and at last rolled fairly under the table. 'Now,' +said Sheridan, quite calmly to his young friend, 'we will go up stairs: +and, Jack,' (to his servant) 'take that man's hat and give him to the +watch.' He then explained in the same calm tone, that this was a bailiff +of whose company he was growing rather tired, and wanted to be freed. + +But his finest tricks were undoubtedly those by which he turned, +harlequin-like, a creditor into a lender This was done by sheer force of +persuasion, by assuming a lofty indignation, or by putting forth his +claims to mercy with the most touching eloquence over which he would +laugh heartily when his point was gained. He was often compelled to do +this during his theatrical management, when a troublesome creditor might +have interfered with the success of the establishment. He talked over an +upholsterer who came with a writ for L350 till the latter handed him, +instead, a cheque for L200. He once, when the actors struck for arrears +of wages to the amount of L3,000, and his bankers refused flatly to +Kelly to advance another penny, screwed the whole sum out of them in +less than a quarter of an hour by sheer talk. He got a gold watch from +Harris, the manager, with whom he had broken several appointments, by +complaining that as he had no watch he could never tell the time fixed +for their meetings; and, as for putting off pressing creditors, and +turning furious foes into affectionate friends, he was such an adept at +it, that his reputation as a dun-destroyer is quite on a par with his +fame as comedian and orator. + +Hoaxing, a style of amusement fortunately out of fashion how, was almost +a passion with him, and his practical jokes were as merciless as his +satire. He and Tickell, who had married the sister of his wife, used to +play them off on one another like a couple of schoolboys. One evening, +for instance, Sheridan got together all the crockery in the house and +arranged it in a dark passage, leaving a small channel for escape for +himself, and then, having teased Tickell till he rushed after him, +bounded out and picked his way gingerly along the passage. His friend +followed him unwittingly, and at the first step stumbled over a +washhand-basin, and fell forwards with a crash on piles of plates and +dishes, which cut his face and hands in a most cruel manner, Sheridan +all the while laughing immoderately at the end of the passage, secure +from vengeance. + +But his most impudent hoax was that on the Honourable House of Commons +itself. Lord Belgrave had made a very telling speech which he wound up +with a Greek quotation, loudly applauded. Sheridan had no arguments to +meet him with; so rising, he admitted the force of his lordship's +quotation (of which he probably did not understand a word), but added +that had he gone a little farther, and completed the passage, he would +have seen that the context completely altered the sense. He would prove +it to the House, he said, and forthwith rolled forth a grand string of +majestic gibberish so well imitated that the whole assembly cried, +'Hear, hear!' Lord Belgrave rose again, and frankly admitted that the +passage had the meaning ascribed to it by the honourable gentleman, and +that he had overlooked it at the moment. At the end of the evening, Fox, +who prided himself on his classical lore, came up to and said to him, +'Sheridan, how came you to be so ready with that passage? It is +certainly as you say, but I was not aware of it before you quoted it.' +Sheridan was wise enough to keep his own counsel for the time, but must +have felt delightfully tickled at the ignorance of the would-be savants +with whom he was politically associated. Probably Sheridan could not at +any time have quoted a whole passage of Greek on the spur of the moment; +but it is certain that he had not kept up his classics, and at the time +in question must have forgotten the little he ever knew of them. + +This facility of imitating exactly the sound of a language without +introducing a single word of it is not so very rare, but is generally +possessed in greater readiness by those who know no tongue but their +own, and are therefore more struck by the strangeness of a foreign one, +when hearing it. Many of us have heard Italian songs in which there was +not a word of actual Italian sung in London burlesques, and some of us +have laughed at Levassor's capital imitation of English; but perhaps the +cleverest mimic of the kind I ever heard was M. Laffitte, brother of +that famous banker who made his fortune by picking up a pin. This +gentleman could speak nothing but French, but had been brought by his +business into contact with foreigners of every race at Paris, and when +he once began his little trick, it was impossible to believe that he was +not possessed of a gift of tongues. His German and Italian were good +enough, but his English was so splendidly counterfeited, that after +listening to him for a short time, I suddenly heard a roar of laughter +from all present, for I had actually unconsciously _answered him_, +'Yes,' 'No,' 'Exactly so,' and 'I quite agree with you!' + +Undoubtedly much of Sheridan's depravity must be attributed to his +intimacy with a man whom it was a great honour to a youngster then to +know, but who would probably be scouted even from a London club in the +present day--the Prince of Wales. The part of a courtier is always +degrading enough to play; but to be courtier to a prince whose favour +was to be won by proficiency in vice, and audacity in follies, to +truckle to his tastes, to win his smiles by the invention of a new +pleasure and his approbation by the plotting of a new villany, what an +office for the author of 'The School for Scandal,' and the orator +renowned for denouncing the wickednesses of Warren Hastings! What a life +for the young poet who had wooed and won the Maid of Bath--for the man +of strong domestic affections, who wept over his father's sternness, and +loved his son only too well! It was bad enough for such mere worldlings +as Captain Hanger or Beau Brummell, but for a man of higher and purer +feelings, like Sheridan, who, with all his faults, had some poetry in +his soul, such a career was doubly disgraceful. + +It was at the house of the beautiful, lively, and adventurous Duchess of +Devonshire, the partizan of Charles James Fox, who loved him or his +cause--for Fox and Liberalism were often one in ladies' eyes--so well, +that she could give Steele, the butcher, a kiss for his vote, that +Sheridan first met the prince--then a boy in years, but already more +than an adult in vice. No doubt the youth whom Fox, Brummell, Hanger, +Lord Surrey, Sheridan, the tailors and the women, combined to turn at +once into the finest gentleman and greatest blackguard in Europe, was at +that time as fascinating in appearance and manner as any one, prince or +not, could be. He was by far the handsomest of the Hanoverians, and had +the least amount of their sheepish look. He possessed all their taste +and capacity, for gallantry, with apparently none of the German +coarseness which certain other Princes of Wales exhibited in their +amorous address. _His_ coarseness was of a more sensual, but less +imperious kind. He _had_ his redeeming points, which few of his +ancestors had, and his liberal hand and warm heart won him friends, +where his conduct could win him little else than contempt. Sheridan was +introduced to him by Fox, and Mrs. Sheridan by the Duchess of +Devonshire. The prince had that which always takes with Englishmen--a +readiness of conviviality, and a recklessness of character. He was ready +to chat, drink, and bet with Sheridan, or any new comer equally well +recommended, and an introduction to young George was always followed by +an easy recognition. With all this he managed to keep up a certain +amount of royal dignity under the most trying circumstances, but he had +none of that easy grace which made Charles II. beloved by his +associates. When the George had gone too far, he had no resource but to +cut the individual with whom he had hobbed and nobbed, and he was as +ungrateful in his enmities as he was ready with his friendship. Brummell +had taught him to dress, and Sheridan had given him wiser counsels: he +quarrelled with both for trifles, which, if he had had real dignity, +would never have occurred, and if he had had real friendship, would +easily have been overlooked. + +Sheridan's breach with the prince was honourable to him. He could not +wholly approve of the conduct of that personage and his ministers, and +he told him openly that his life was at his service, but his character +was the property of the country. The prince replied that Sheridan 'might +impeach his ministers on the morrow--that would not impair their +friendship;' yet turned on his heel, and was never his friend again. +When, again, the 'delicate investigation' came off, he sent for +Sheridan, and asked his aid. The latter replied, 'Your royal highness +honours me, but I will never take part against a woman, whether she be +right or wrong.' His political courage atones somewhat for the want of +moral courage he displayed in pandering to the prince's vices. + +Many an anecdote is told of Sheridan and 'Wales'--many, indeed, that +cannot be repeated. Their bets were often of the coarsest nature, won by +Sheridan in the coarsest manner. A great intimacy sprang up between the +two reprobates, and Sheridan became one of the satellites of that +dissolute prince. There are few of the stories of their adventures which +can be told in a work like this, but we may give one or two specimens of +the less disgraceful character:-- + +The Prince, Lord Surrey, and Sheridan were in the habit of seeking +nightly adventures of any kind that suggested itself to their lively +minds. A low tavern, still in existence, was the rendezvous of the heir +to the crown and his noble and distinguished associates. This was the +'Salutation,' in Tavistock Court, Covent Garden, a night house for +gardeners and countrymen, and for the sharpers who fleeced both, and was +kept by a certain Mother Butler, who favoured in every way the +adventurous designs of her exalted guests. Here wigs, smock-frocks, and +other disguises were in readiness; and here, at call, was to be found a +ready-made magistrate, whose sole occupation was to deliver the young +Haroun and his companions from the dilemmas which their adventures +naturally brought them into, and which were generally more or less +concerned with the watch. Poor old watch! what happy days, when members +of parliament, noblemen, and future monarchs condescended to break thy +bob-wigged head! and--blush, Z 350, immaculate constable--to toss thee a +guinea to buy plaster with. + +In addition to the other disguise, _aliases_ were of course assumed. The +prince went by the name of Blackstock, Greystock was my Lord Surrey, and +Thinstock Richard Brinsley Sheridan. The treatment of women by the +police is traditional. The 'unfortunate'--unhappy creatures!--are their +pet aversion; and once in their clutches, receive no mercy. The +'Charley' of old was quite as brutal as the modern Hercules of the +glazed hat, and the three adventurers showed an amount of zeal worthy of +a nobler cause, in rescuing the drunken Lais from his grasp. On one +occasion they seem to have hit on a 'deserving case;' a slight skirmish +with the watch ended in a rescue, and the erring creature was taken off +to a house of respectability sufficient to protect her. Here she told +her tale, which, however improbable, turned out to be true. It was a +very old, a very simple one--the common history of many a frail, foolish +girl, cursed with beauty, and the prey of a practised seducer. The main +peculiarity lay in the fact of her respectable birth, and his position, +she being the daughter of a solicitor, he the son of a nobleman. +Marriage was promised, of course, as it has been promised a million +times with the same intent, and for the millionth time was not +performed. The seducer took her from her home, kept her quiet for a +time, and when the novelty was gone, abandoned her. The old story went +on; poverty--a child--a mother's love struggling with a sense of +shame--a visit to her father's house at the last moment, as a forlorn +hope. There she had crawled on her knees to one of those relentless +parents on whose heads lie the utter loss of their children's souls. The +false pride, that spoke of the blot on his name, the disgrace of his +house--when a Saviour's example should have bid him forgive and raise +the penitent in her misery from the dust--whispered him to turn her from +his door. He ordered the footman to put her out. The man, a nobleman in +plush, moved by his young mistress's utter misery, would not obey though +it cost him his place, and the harder-hearted father himself thrust his +starving child into the cold street, into the drizzling rain, and +slammed the door upon her cries of agony. The footman slipped out after +her, and five shillings--a large sum for him--found its way from his +kind hand to hers. Now the common ending might have come; now +starvation, the slow, unwilling, recourse to more shame and deeper vice; +then the forced hilarity, the unreal smile, which in so many of these +poor creatures hides a canker at the heart; the gradual +degradation--lower still and lower--oblivion for a moment sought in the +bottle--a life of sin and death ended in a hospital. The will of +Providence turned the frolic of three voluptuaries to good account; the +prince gave his purse-full, Sheridan his one last guinea for her present +needs: the name of the good-hearted Plush was discovered, and he was +taken into Carlton House, where he soon became known as Roberts, the +prince's confidential servant: and Sheridan bestirred himself to rescue +for ever the poor lady, whose beauty still remained as a temptation. He +procured her a situation, where she studied for the stage, on which she +eventually appeared. 'All's well that ends well:' her secret was kept, +till one admirer came honourably forward. To him it was confided, and he +was noble enough to forgive the one false step of youth. She was well +married, and the boy for whom she had suffered so much fell at +Trafalgar, a lieutenant in the navy. + +To better men such an adventure would have been a solemn warning; such a +tale, told by the ruined one herself, a sermon, every word of which +would have clung to their memories. What effect, if any, it may have had +on Blackstock and his companions must have been very fleeting. + +It is not so very long since the Seven Dials and St. Giles' were haunts +of wickedness and dens of thieves, into which the police scarcely dared +to penetrate. Probably their mysteries would have afforded more +amusement to the artist and the student of character than to the mere +seeker of adventure, but it was still, I remember, in my early days, a +great feat to visit by night one of the noted 'cribs' to which 'the +profession' which fills Newgate was wont to resort. The 'Brown Bear,' in +Broad Street, St. Giles', was one of these pleasant haunts, and thither +the three adventurers determined to go. This style of adventure is out +of date, and no longer amusing. Of course a fight ensued, in which the +prince and his companions showed immense pluck against terrible odds, +and in which, as one reads in the novels of the 'London Journal' or +'Family Herald,' the natural superiority of the well-born of course +displayed itself to great advantage. Surely Bulwer has described such +scenes too graphically in some of his earlier novels to make a minute +description here at all necessary; but the reader who is curious in the +matter may be referred to a work which has recently appeared under the +title of 'Sheridan and his Times,' professing to be written by an +Octogenarian, intimate with the hero. The fray ended with the arrival of +the watch, who rescued Blackstock, Greystock, and Thinstock, and with +Dogberryan stupidity carried them off to a neighbouring lock-up. The +examination which took place was just the occasion for Sheridan's fun to +display itself on, and pretending to turn informer, he succeeded in +bewildering the unfortunate parochial constable, who conducted it, till +the arrival of the magistrate, whose duty was to deliver his friends +from durance vile. The whole scene is well described in the book just +referred to, with, we presume, a certain amount of idealizing; but the +'Octogenarian' had probably heard the story from Sheridan himself, and +the main points must be accepted as correct. The affair ended, as usual, +with a supper at the 'Salutation.' + +We must now follow Sheridan in his gradual downfall. + +One of the causes of this--as far as money was concerned--was his +extreme indolence and utter negligence. He trusted far too much to his +ready wit and rapid genius. Thus when 'Pizarro' was to appear, day after +day went by, and nothing was done. On the night of representation, only +four acts out of five were written, and even these had not been +rehearsed, the principal performers, Siddons, Charles Kemble and +Barrymore, having only just received their parts. Sheridan was up in the +prompter's room actually writing the fifth act while the first was being +performed, and every now and then appeared in the green-room with a +fresh relay of dialogue, and setting all in good humour by his merry +abuse of his own negligence. In spite of this, 'Pizarro' succeeded. He +seldom wrote except at night, and surrounded by a profusion of lights. +Wine was his great stimulant in composition, as it has been to better +and worse authors. 'If the thought is slow to come,' he would say, 'a +glass of good wine encourages it; and when it does come, a glass of good +wine rewards it.' Those glasses of good wine, were, unfortunately, even +more frequent than the good thoughts, many and merry as they were. + +His neglect of letters was a standing joke against him. He never took +the trouble to open any that he did not expect, and often left sealed +many that he was most anxious to read. He once appeared with his begging +face at the Bank, humbly asking an advance of twenty pounds. 'Certainly, +sir; would you like any more?--fifty or a hundred?' said the smiling +clerk. Sheridan was overpowered. He _would_ like a hundred. 'Two or +three?' asked the scribe. Sheridan thought he was joking, but was ready +for two or even three--he was always ready for more. But he could not +conceal his surprise. 'Have you not received our letter?' the clerk +asked, perceiving it. Certainly he had received the epistle, which +informed him that his salary as Receiver-General of Cornwall had been +paid in, but he had never opened it. + +This neglect of letters once brought him into a troublesome lawsuit +about the theatre. It was necessary to pay certain demands, and he had +applied to the Duke of Bedford to be his security. The duke had +consented, and for a whole year his letter of consent remained unopened. +In the meantime Sheridan had believed that the duke had neglected him, +and allowed the demands to be brought into court. + +In the same way he had long before committed himself in the affair with +Captain Matthews. In order to give a public denial of certain reports +circulated in Bath, he had called upon an editor, requesting him to +insert the said reports in his paper in order that he might write him a +letter to refute them. The editor at once complied, the calumny was +printed and published, but Sheridan forgot all about his own refutation, +which was applied for in vain till too late. + +Other causes were his extravagance and intemperance. There was an utter +want of even common moderation in everything he did. Whenever his boyish +spirit suggested any freak, whenever a craving of any kind possessed +him, no matter what the consequences here or hereafter, he rushed +heedlessly into the indulgence of it. Perhaps the enemy had never an +easier subject to deal with. Any sin in which there was a show of +present mirth, or easy pleasure, was as easily taken up by Sheridan as +if he had not a single particle of conscience or religious feeling, and +yet we are not at all prepared to say that he lacked either; he had only +deadened both by excessive indulgence of his fancies. The temptation of +wealth and fame had been too much for the poor and obscure young man who +rose to them so suddenly, and, as so often happens, those very talents +which should have been his glory, were, in fact, his ruin. + +His extravagance was unbounded. At a time when misfortune lay thick upon +him, and bailiffs were hourly expected, he would invite a large party to +a dinner, which a prince might have given, and to which one prince +sometimes sat down. On one occasion, having no plate left from the +pawnbroker's, he had to prevail on 'my uncle' to lend him some for a +banquet he was to give. The spoons and forks were sent, and with them +two of his men, who, dressed in livery, waited, no doubt with the most +vigilant attention, on the party. Such at that period was the host's +reputation, when he could not even be trusted not to pledge another +man's property. At one time his income was reckoned at L15,000 a year, +when the theatre was prosperous. Of this he is said to have spent not +more than L5,000 on his household, while the balance went to pay for his +former follies, debts, and the interest, lawsuits often arising from +mere carelessness and judgments against the theatre! Probably a great +deal of it was betted away, drank away, thrown away in one way or +another. As for betting, he generally lost all the wagers he made: as he +said himself--'I never made a bet upon my own judgment that I did not +lose; and I never won but one, which I had made against my judgment.' +His bets were generally laid in hundreds; and though he did not gamble, +he could of course run through a good deal of money in this way. He +betted on every possible trifle, but chiefly, it would seem, on +political possibilities; the state of the Funds, the result of an +election, or the downfall of a ministry. Horse-races do not seem to have +possessed any interest for him, and, in fact, he scarcely knew one kind +of horse from another. He was never an adept at field-sports, though +very ambitious of being thought a sportsman. Once, when staying in the +country, he went out with a friend's gamekeeper to shoot pheasants, and +after wasting a vast amount of powder and shot upon the air, he was only +rescued from ignominy by the sagacity of his companion, who, going a +little behind him when a bird rose, brought it down so neatly that +Sheridan, believing he had killed it himself, snatched it up, and rushed +bellowing with glee back to the house to show that he _could_ shoot. In +the same way, he tried his hand at fishing in a wretched little stream +behind the Deanery at Winchester, using, however, a net, as easier to +handle than a rod. Some boys, who had watched his want of success a long +time, at last bought a few pennyworth of pickled herrings, and throwing +them on the stream, allowed them to float down towards the eager +disciple of old Izaak. Sheridan saw them coming, rushed in regardless of +his clothes, cast his net and in great triumph secured them. When he had +landed his prize, however, there were the boys bursting with laughter, +and Piscator saw he was their dupe. 'Ah!' cried he, laughing in concert, +as he looked at his dripping clothes, 'this is a pretty _pickle_ +indeed!' + +His extravagance was well known to his friends, as well as to his +creditors. Lord Guildford met him one day. 'Well, Sherry, so you've +taken a new house, I hear.'--'Yes, and you'll see now that everything +will go on like clockwork.'--'Ay,' said my lord, with a knowing leer, +'_tick, tick_.' Even his son Tom used to laugh at him for it. 'Tom, if +you marry that girl, I'll cut you off with a shilling,'--'Then you must +borrow it,' replied the ingenuous youth.[8] Tom sometimes disconcerted +his father with his inherited wit--his only inheritance. He pressed +urgently for money on one, as on many an occasion. 'I have none,' was +the reply, as usual; 'there is a pair of pistols up stairs, a horse in +the enable, the night is dark, and Hounslow Heath at hand.' + +[8: Another version is that Tom replied: 'You don't happen to have it +about you, sir, do you?'] + +'I understand what you mean,' replied young Tom; 'but I tried that last +night, and unluckily stopped your treasurer, Peake, who told me you had +been beforehand with him, and robbed him of every sixpence he had in the +world.' + +So much for the respect of son to father! + +Papa had his revenge on the young wit, when Tom, talking of Parliament, +announced his intention of entering it on an independent basis, ready to +be bought by the highest bidder 'I shall write on my forehead,' said he, +"To let."' + +'And under that, Tom, "Unfurnished,"' rejoined Sherry the elder. The +joke is now stale enough. + +But Sheridan was more truly witty in putting down a young braggart whom +he met at dinner at a country-house. There are still to be found, like +the bones of dead asses in a field newly ploughed, in some parts of the +country, youths, who are so hopelessly behind their age, and indeed +every age, as to look upon authorship as degrading, all knowledge, save +Latin and Greek, as 'a bore,' and all entertainment but hunting, +shooting, fishing, and badger-drawing, as unworthy of a man. In the last +century these young animals, who unite the modesty of the puppy with the +clear-sightedness of the pig, not to mention the progressiveness of +another quadruped, were more numerous than in the present day, and in +consequence more forward in their remarks. It was one of these charming +youths, who was staying in the same house as Sheridan, and who, quite +unprovoked, began at dinner to talk of 'actors and authors, and those +low sort of people, you know.' Sheridan said nought, but patiently bided +his time. The next day there was a large dinner-party, and Sheridan and +the youth happened to sit opposite to one another in the most +conspicuous part of the table. Young Nimrod was kindly obliging his side +of the table with extraordinary leaps of his hunter, the perfect working +of his new double-barrelled Manton, &c., bringing of course number one +in as the hero in each case. In a moment of silence, Sheridan, with an +air of great politeness, addressed his unhappy victim. 'He had not,' he +said, 'been able to catch the whole of the very interesting account he +had heard Mr. ---- relating.' All eyes were turned upon the two. 'Would +Mr. ---- permit him to ask who it was who made the extraordinary leap he +had mentioned?--'I, sir,' replied the youth with some pride. 'Then who +was it killed the wild duck at that distance?'--'I, sir.' 'Was it your +setter who behaved so well?'--'Yes, mine, sir,' replied the youth, +getting rather red over this examination. 'And who caught the huge +salmon so neatly?'--'I, sir.' And so the questioning went on through a +dozen more items, till the young man, weary of answering 'I, sir,' and +growing redder and redder every moment, would gladly have hid his head +under the table-cloth, in spite of his sporting prowess. But Sheridan +had to give him the _coup de grace_. + +'So, sir,' said he, very politely, 'you were the chief _actor_ in every +anecdote, and the _author_ of them all; surely it is impolitic to +despise your own professions.' + +Sheridan's intemperance was as great and as incurable as his +extravagance, and we think his mind, if not his body, lived only on +stimulants. He could neither write nor speak without them One day, +before one of his finest speeches in the House, he was seen to enter a +coffee-house, call for a pint of brandy, and swallow it 'neat,' and +almost at one gulp. His friends occasionally interfered. This drinking, +they told him, would destroy the coat of his stomach. 'Then my stomach +must digest in its waistcoat,' laughed Sheridan. + +Where are the topers of yore? Jovial I will not call them, for every one +knows that + + 'Mirth and laughter.' + +worked up with a corkscrew, are followed by + + 'Headaches and hot coppers the day after.' + +But where are those Anakim of the bottle, who _could_ floor their two of +port and one of Madeira, though the said two and one floored them in +turn? The race, I believe, has died out. Our heads have got weaker, as +our cellars grew emptier. The arrangement was convenient. The daughters +of Eve have nobly undertaken to atone for the naughty conduct of their +primeval mamma, by reclaiming men, and dragging them from the Hades of +the mahogany to that seventh heaven of muffins and English ballads +prepared for them in the drawing-room. + +We are certainly astounded, even to incredulity, when we read of the +deeds of a David or a Samson; but such wonderment can be nothing +compared to that which a generation or two hence will feel, when +sipping, as a great extravagance and unpardonable luxury, two +thimblefuls of 'African Sherry,' the young demirep of the day reads that +three English gentlemen, Sheridan, Richardson, and Ward, sat down one +day to dinner, and before they rose again--if they ever rose, which +seems doubtful--or, at least, were raised, had emptied five bottles of +port, two of Madeira, and one of brandy! Yet this was but one instance +in a thousand; there was nothing extraordinary in it, and it is only +mentioned because the amount drunk is accurately given by the unhappy +owner of the wine, Kelly, the composer, who, unfortunately, or +fortunately, was not present, and did not even imagine that the three +honourable gentlemen were discussing his little store. Yet Sheridan does +not seem to have believed much in his friend's vintages, for he advised +him to alter his brass plate to 'Michael Kelly, Composer of Wine and +Importer of Music.' He made a better joke, when, dining with Lord +Thurlow, he tried in vain to induce him to produce a second bottle of +some extremely choice Constantia from the Cape of Good Hope. 'Ah,' he +muttered to his neighbour, 'pass me that decanter, if you please, for I +must return to Madeira, as I see I cannot _double the Cape_' + +But as long as Richard Brinsley was a leader of political and +fashionable circles, as long as he had a position to keep up, an +ambition to satisfy, a labour to complete, his drinking was, if not +moderate, not extraordinary for his time and his associates. But when a +man's ambition is limited to mere success--when fame and a flash for +himself are all he cares for, and there is no truer, grander motive for +his sustaining the position he has climbed to--when, in short, it is his +own glory, not mankind's good, he has ever striven for--woe, woe, woe +when the hour of success is come! I cannot stop to name and examine +instances, but let me be allowed to refer to that bugbear who is called +up whenever greatness of any kind has to be illustrated--Napoleon the +Great; or let me take any of the lesser Napoleons in lesser grades in +any nation, any age--the men who have had no star but self and +self-glory before them--and let me ask if any one can be named who, if +he has survived the attainment of his ambition, has not gone down the +other side of the hill somewhat faster than he came up it? Then let me +select men whose guiding-star has been the good of their +fellow-creatures, or the glory of God, and watch their peaceful useful +end on that calm summit that they toiled so honestly to reach. The +difference comes home to us. The moral is read only at the end of the +story. Remorse rings it for ever in the ears of the dying--often too +long a-dying--man who has laboured for himself. Peace reads it smilingly +to him whose generous toil for others has brought its own reward. + +Sheridan had climbed with the stride of a giant, laughing at rocks, at +precipices, at slippery watercourses. He had spread the wings of genius +to poise himself withal, and gained one peak after another, while +homelier worth was struggling midway, clutching the bramble and clinging +to the ferns. He had, as Byron said in Sheridan's days of decay, done +the best in all he undertook, written the best comedy, best opera, best +farce; spoken the best parody, and made the best speech. Sheridan, when +those words of the young poet were told him, shed tears. + +Perhaps the bitter thought struck him, that he had _not_ led the best, +but the _worst_ life; that comedy, farce, opera, monody, and oration +were nothing, nothing to a pure conscience and a peaceful old age; that +they could not save him from shame and poverty--from debt, disgrace, +drunkenness--from grasping, but long-cheated creditors, who dragged his +bed from under the feeble, nervous, ruined old man. Poor Sheridan! his +end was too bitter for us to cast one stone more upon him. Let it be +noted that it was in the beginning of his decline, when, having reached +the climax of all his ambition and completed his fame as a dramatist, +orator, and wit, that the hand of Providence mercifully interposed to +rescue this reckless man from his downfall. It smote him with that +common but powerful weapon--death. Those he best loved were torn from +him, one after another, rapidly, and with little warning. The Linleys, +the 'nest of nightingales,' were all delicate as nightingales should be; +and it seemed as if this very time was chosen for their deaths, that the +one erring soul--more precious, remember, than many just lives--might be +called back. Almost within one year he lost his dear sister-in-law, the +wife of his most intimate friend Tickell; Maria Linley, the last of the +family; his own wife, and his little daughter. One grief succeeded +another so rapidly that Sheridan was utterly unnerved, utterly brought +low by them; but it was his wife's death that told most upon him. With +that wife he had always been the lover rather than the husband. She had +married him in the days of his poverty, when her beauty was so +celebrated that she might have wed whom she would. She had risen with +him and shared his later anxieties. Yet she had seen him forget, neglect +her, and seek other society. In spite of his tender affection for her +and for his children, he had never made a _home_ of their home. Vanity +Fair had kept him ever flitting, and it is little to be wondered at that +Mrs. Sheridan was the object of much, though ever respectful +admiration.[9] Yet, in spite of calumny, she died with a fair fame. +Decline had long pressed upon her, yet her last illness was too brief. +In 1792 she was taken away, still in the summer of her days, and with +her last breath uttering her love for the man who had never duly prized +her. His grief was terrible; yet it passed, and wrought no change. He +found solace in his beloved son, and yet more beloved daughter. A few +months--and the little girl followed her mother. Again his grief was +terrible: again passed and wrought no change. Yes, it did work some +change, but not for the better; it drove him to the goblet; and from +that time we may date the confirmation of his habit of drinking. The +solemn warnings had been unheeded: they were to be repeated by a +long-suffering God in a yet more solemn manner, which should touch him +yet more nearly. His beautiful wife had been the one restraint upon his +folly and his lavishness. Now she was gone, they burst out afresh, +wilder than ever. + +[9: Lord Edward Fitzgerald was one of the most devoted of her admirers: +he chose his wife, Pamela, because she resembled Mrs. Sheridan.--See +Moore's Life of Lord Edward.] + +For a while after these afflictions, which were soon completed in the +death of his most intimate friend and boyish companion, Tickell, +Sheridan threw himself again into the commotion of the political world. +But in this we shall not follow him. Three years after the death of his +first wife he married again. He was again fortunate in his choice. +Though now forty-four, he succeeded in winning the heart of a most +estimable and charming young lady with a fortune of L5,000. She must +indeed have loved or admired the widower very much to consent to be the +wife of a man so notoriously irregular, to use a mild term, in his life. +But Sheridan fascinated wherever he went, and young ladies like 'a +little wildness.' His heart was always good, and where he gave it, he +gave it warmly, richly, fully. His second wife was Miss Esther Jane +Ogle, daughter of the Dean of Winchester. She was given to him on +condition of his settling in all L20,000, upon her--a wise proviso with +such a spendthrift--and he had to raise the money, as usual. + +His political career was sufficiently brilliant, though his real fame as +a speaker rests on his great oration at Hastings' trial. In 1806 he +satisfied another point of his ambition, long desired, and was elected +for the city of Westminster, which he had ardently coveted when Fox +represented it. But a dissolution threw him again on the mercy of the +popular party; and again he offered himself for Westminster: but, in +spite of all the efforts made for him, without success. He was returned, +instead, for Ilchester. + +Meanwhile his difficulties increased; extravagance, debt, want of energy +to meet both, brought him speedily into that position when a man accepts +without hesitation the slightest offer of aid. The man who had had an +income of L15,000 a year, and settled L20,000 on his wife, allowed a +poor friend to pay a bill for L5 for him, and clutched eagerly at a L50 +note when displayed to him by another. Extravagance is the father of +meanness, and Sheridan was often mean in the readiness with which he +accepted offers, and the anxiety with which he implored assistance. It +is amusing in the present day to hear a man talk of 'a debt of honour,' +as if all debts did not demand honour to pay them--as if all debts +incurred without hope of repayment were not dishonourable. A story is +told relative to the old-fashioned idea of a 'debt of honour.' A +tradesman, to whom he had given a bill for L200, called on him for the +amount. A heap of gold was lying on the table. 'Don't look that way,' +cried Sheridan, after protesting that he had not a penny in the world, +'that is to pay a debt of honour.' The applicant, with some wit, tore up +the bill he held. 'Now, Mr. Sheridan,' quoth he, 'mine is a debt of +honour too.' It is to be hoped that Sheridan handed him the money. + +The story of Gunter's bill is not so much to his credit, Hanson, an +ironmonger, called upon him and pressed for payment. A bill sent in by +the famous confectioner was lying on the table. A thought struck the +debtor, who had no means of getting rid of his importunate applicant. +'You know Gunter?' he asked. 'One of the safest men in London,' replied +the ironmonger. 'Then will you be satisfied if I give you his _bill_ for +the amount?'--'Certainly.' Thereupon Sheridan handed him the neatly +folded account and rushed from the room, leaving the creditor to +discover the point of Mr. Sheridan's little fun. + +Still Sheridan might have weathered through the storm. Drury Lane was a +mine of wealth to him, and with a little care might have been really +profitable. The lawsuits, the debts, the engagements upon it, all rose +from his negligence and extravagance. But Old Drury was doomed. On the +24th February, 1809, soon after the conclusion of the performances, it +was announced to be in flames. Rather it announced itself. In a few +moments it was blazing--a royal bonfire. Sheridan was in the House of +Commons at the time. The reddened clouds above London threw the glare +back even to the windows of the House. The members rushed from their +seats to see the unwonted light, and in consideration for Sheridan, an +adjournment was moved. But he rose calmly, though sadly, and begged that +no misfortune of his should interrupt the public business. His +independence, he said--witty in the midst of his troubles--had often +been questioned, but was now confirmed, for he had nothing more to +depend upon. He then left the House, and repaired to the scene of +conflagration. + +Not long after, Kelly found him sitting quite composed in 'The Bedford,' +sipping his wine, as if nothing had happened. The musician expressed his +astonishment at Mr. Sheridan's _sang froid_. 'Surely,' replied the wit, +'you'll admit that a man has a right to take his wine by his own +fireside.' But Sheridan was only drowning care, not disregarding it. The +event was really too much for him, though perhaps he did not realize the +extent of its effect at the time. In a word, all he had in the world +went with the theatre. Nothing was left either for him or the principal +shareholders. Yet he bore it all with fortitude, till he heard that the +harpsichord, on which his first wife was wont to play, was gone too. +Then he burst into tears. + +This fire was the opening of the shaft down which the great man sank +rapidly. While his fortunes kept up, his spirits were not completely +exhausted. He drank much, but as an indulgence rather than as a relief. +Now it was by wine alone that he could even raise himself to the common +requirements of conversation. He is described, _before_ dinner, as +depressed, nervous, and dull; _after_ dinner only did the old fire break +out, the old wit blaze up, and Dick Sheridan was Dick Sheridan once +more. He was, in fact, fearfully oppressed by the long-accumulated and +never-to-be-wiped-off debts, for which he was now daily pressed. In +quitting Parliament he resigned his sanctuary, and left himself an easy +prey to the Jews and Gentiles, whom he had so long dodged and deluded +with his ready ingenuity. Drury Lane, as we all know, was rebuilt, and +the birth of the new house heralded with a prologue by Byron, about as +good as the one in 'Rejected Addresses,' the cleverest parodies ever +written, and suggested by this very occasion. The building-committee +having advertised for a prize prologue Samuel Whitbread sent in his own +attempt, in which, as probably in a hundred others, the new theatre was +compared to a Phoenix rising out of the ashes of the old one. Sheridan +said Whitbread's description of a Phoenix was excellent, for it was +quite a _poulterer's description_. + +This same Sam Whitbread was now to figure conspicuously in the life of +Mr. Richard B. Sheridan. The ex-proprietor was found to have an interest +in the theatre to the amount of L150,000--not a trifle to be despised; +but he was now past sixty, and it need excite no astonishment that, even +with all his liabilities, he was unwilling to begin again the cares of +management, or mismanagement which he had endured so many years. He sold +his interest, in which his son Tom was joined, for L60,000. This sum +would have cleared off his debts and left him a balance sufficient to +secure comfort for his old age. But it was out of the question that any +money matters should go right with Dick Sheridan. Of the rights and +wrongs of the quarrel between him and Whitbread, who was the chairman of +the committee for building the new theatre, I do not pretend to form an +opinion. Sheridan was not naturally mean, though he descended to +meanness when hard pressed--what man of his stamp does not? Whitbread +was truly friendly to him for a time. Sheridan was always complaining +that he was sued for debts he did not owe, and kept out of many that +were due to him. Whitbread knew his man well, and if he withheld what +was owing to him, may be excused on the ground of real friendship. All I +know is, that Sheridan and Whitbread quarrelled; that the former did +not, or affirmed that he did not, receive the full amount of his claim +on the property, and that, when what he had received was paid over to +his principal creditors, there was little or nothing left for my lord to +spend in banquets to parliamentary friends and jorums of brandy in small +coffee-houses. + +Because a man is a genius, he is not of necessity an upright, honest, +ill-used, oppressed, and cruelly-entreated man. Genius plays the fool +wittingly, and often enough quite knowingly, with its own interests. It +is its privilege to do so, and no one has a right to complain. But then +Genius ought to hold its tongue, and not make itself out a martyr, when +it has had the dubious glory of defying common-sense. If Genius despises +gold, well and good, but when he has spurned it, he should not whine out +that he is wrongfully kept from it. Poor Sheridan may or may not have +been right in the Whitbread quarrel; he has had his defenders, and I am +not ambitious of being numbered among them; but whatever were now his +troubles were brought on by his own disregard of all that was right and +beautiful in conduct. If he went down to the grave a pauper and a +debtor, he had made his own bed, and in it he was to lie. + +Lie he did, wretchedly, on the most unhappy bed that old age ever lay +in. There is little more of importance to chronicle of his latter days. +The retribution came on slowly but terribly. The career of a ruined man +is not a pleasant topic to dwell upon, and I leave Sheridan's misery for +Mr. J. B. Gough to whine and roar over when he wants a shocking example. +Sheridan might have earned many a crown in that capacity, if +temperance-oratory had been the passion of the day. Debt, disease, +depravity--these words describe enough the downward career of his old +age. To eat, still more to drink, was now the troublesome enigma of the +quondam genius. I say quondam, for all the marks of that genius were now +gone. One after another his choicest properties made their way to 'my +uncle's.' The books went first, as if they could be most easily +dispensed with; the remnants of his plate followed; then his pictures +were sold; and at last even the portrait of his first wife, by Reynolds, +was left in pledge for a 'further remittance.' + +The last humiliation arrived in time, and the associate of a prince, the +eloquent organ of a party, the man who had enjoyed L15,000, a year, was +carried off to a low sponging-house. His pride forsook him in that +dismal and disgusting imprisonment, and he wrote to Whitbread a letter +which his defenders ought not to have published. He had his +friends--stanch ones too--and they aided him. Peter Moore, ironmonger, +and even Canning, lent him money and released him from time to time. For +six years after the burning of the old theatre, he continued to go down +and down. Disease now attacked him fiercely. In the spring of 1816 he +was fast waning towards extinction. His day was past; he had outlived +his fame as a wit and social light; he was forgotten by many, if not by +most, of his old associates. He wrote to Rogers, 'I am absolutely undone +and broken-hearted.' Poor Sheridan! in spite of all thy faults, who is +he whose morality is so stern that he cannot shed one tear over thy +latter days! God forgive us, we are all sinners; and if we weep not for +this man's deficiency, how shall we ask tears when our day comes? Even +as I write, I feel my hand tremble and my eyes moisten over the sad end +of one whom I love, though he died before I was born. 'They are going to +put the carpets out of window,' he wrote to Rogers, 'and break into Mrs. +S.'s room and _take me_. For God's sake let me see you!' See him!--see +one friend who could and would help him in his misery! Oh! happy may +that man count himself who has never wanted that one friend, and felt +the utter helplessness of that want! Poor Sheridan! had he ever asked, +or hoped, or looked for that Friend out of _this_ world it had been +better; for 'the Lord thy God is a jealous God,' and we go on seeking +human friendship and neglecting the divine till it is too late. He found +one hearty friend in his physician, Dr. Bain, when all others had +forsaken him. The spirit of White's and Brookes', the companion of a +prince and a score of noblemen, the enlivener of every 'fashionable' +table, was forgotten by all but this one doctor. Let us read Moore's +description: 'A sheriff's officer at length arrested the dying man _in +his bed_, and was about to carry him off, in his blankets, to a +sponging-house, when Dr. Bain interfered.' Who would live the life of +revelry that Sheridan lived to have such an end? A few days after, on +the 7th of July, 1816, in his sixty-fifth year, he died. Of his last +hours the late Professor Smythe wrote an admirable and most touching +account, a copy of which was circulated in manuscript. The Professor, +hearing of Sheridan's condition, asked to see him, with a view, not only +of alleviating present distress, but of calling the dying man to +repentance. From his hands the unhappy Sheridan received the Holy +Communion; his face, during that solemn rite,--doubly solemn when it is +performed in the chamber of death, 'expressed,' Smythe relates, '_the +deepest awe_' That phrase conveys to the mind impressions not easy to be +defined, not soon to be forgotten. + +Peace! there was not peace even in death, and the creditor pursued him +even into the 'waste wide,'--even to the coffin. He was lying in state, +when a gentleman in the deepest mourning called, it is said, at the +house, and introducing himself as an old and much-attached friend of the +deceased, begged to be allowed to look upon his face. The tears which +rose in his eyes, the tremulousness of his quiet voice, the pallor of +his mournful face, deceived the unsuspecting servant, who accompanied +him to the chamber of death, removed the lid of the coffin, turned down +the shrowd, and revealed features which had once been handsome, but long +since rendered almost hideous by drinking. The stranger gazed with +profound emotion, while he quietly drew from his pocket a bailiff's +wand, and touching the corpse's face with it, suddenly altered his +manner to one of considerable glee, and informed the servant that he had +arrested the corpse in the king's name for a debt of L500. It was the +morning of the funeral, which was to be attended by half the grandees of +England, and in a few minutes the mourners began to arrive. But the +corpse was the bailiff's property, till his claim was paid, and nought +but the money would soften the iron capturer. Canning and Lord Sidmouth +agreed to settle the matter, and over the coffin the debt was paid. + +Poor corpse! was it worth L500--diseased, rotting as it was, and about +to be given for nothing to mother earth? Was it worth the pomp of the +splendid funeral and the grand hypocrisy of grief with which it was +borne to Westminster Abbey? Was not rather the wretched old man, while +he yet struggled on in life, worth this outlay, worth this show of +sympathy? Folly; not folly only--but a lie! What recked the dead of the +four noble pall-bearers--the Duke of Bedford, the Earl of Lauderdale, +Earl Mulgrave, and the Bishop of London? What good was it to him to be +followed by two royal highnesses--the Dukes of York and Sussex--by two +marquises, seven earls, three viscounts, five lords, a Canning, a lord +mayor, and a whole regiment of honourables and right honourables, who +now wore the livery of grief, when they had let him die in debt, in +want, and in misery? Far more, if the dead could feel, must he have been +grateful for the honester tears of those two untitled men, who had +really befriended him to the last hour and never abandoned him, Mr. +Rogers and Dr. Bain. But peace; let him pass with nodding plumes and +well-dyed horses to the great Walhalla, and amid the dust of many a poet +let the poet's dust find rest and honour, secure at last from the hand +of the bailiff. There was but one nook unoccupied in Poet's Corner, and +there they laid him. A simple marble was afforded by another friend +without a title--Peter Moore. + +To a life like Sheridan's it is almost impossible to do justice in so +narrow a space as I have here. He is one of those men who, not to be +made out a whit better or worse than they are, demand a careful +investigation of all their actions, or reported actions--a careful +sifting of all the evidence for or against them, and a careful weeding +of all the anecdotes told of them. This requires a separate biography. +To give a general idea of the man, we must be content to give that which +he inspired in a general acquaintance. Many of his 'mots,' and more of +the stories about him, may have been invented for him, but they would +scarcely have been fixed on Sheridan, if they had not fitted more or +less his character: I have therefore given them. I might have given a +hundred more, but I have let alone those anecdotes which did not seem to +illustrate the character of the man. Many another good story is told of +him, and we must content ourselves with one or two. Take one that is +characteristic of his love of fun. + +Sheridan is accosted by an elderly gentleman, who has forgotten the name +of a street to which he wants to go, and who informs him precisely that +it is an out-of-the-way name. + +'Perhaps, sir, you mean John Street?' says Sherry, all innocence. + +'No, an unusual name.' + +'It can't be Charles Street?' + +Impatience on the part of the old gentleman. + +'King Street?' suggests the cruel wit. + +'I tell you, sir, it is a street with a very odd name!' + +'Bless me, is it Queen Street?' + +Irritation on the part of the old gentleman. + +'It must be Oxford Street?' cries Sheridan as if inspired. + +'Sir, I repeat,' very testily, 'that it is a very odd name. Every one +knows Oxford Street!' + +Sheridan appears to be thinking. + +'An odd name! Oh! ah! just so; Piccadilly, of course?' + +Old gentleman bounces away in disgust. + +'Well, sir,' Sheridan calls after him, 'I envy you your admirable +memory!' + +His wit was said to have been prepared, like his speeches, and he is +even reported to have carried his book of _mots_ in his pocket, as a +young lady of the middle class _might_, but seldom does, carry her book +of etiquette into a party. But some of his wit was no doubt extempore. + +When arrested for non-attendance to a call in the House, soon after the +change of ministry, he exclaimed, 'How hard to be no sooner out of +office than into custody!' + +He was not an inveterate talker, like Macaulay, Sydney Smith, or +Jeffrey: he seems rather to have aimed at a striking effect in all that +he said. When found tripping he had a clever knack of getting out of the +difficulty. In the Hastings speech he complimented Gibbon as a +'luminous' writer; questioned on this, he replied archly, 'I said +_vo_-luminous.' + +I cannot afford to be voluminous on Sheridan, and so I quit him. + + + +BEAU BRUMMELL + + +Two popular Sciences.--'Buck Brummell' at Eton.--Investing his Capital.-- +Young Cornet Brummell.--The Beau's Studio.--The Toilet.--'Creasing +Down.'--Devotion to Dress.--A Great Gentleman.--Anecdotes of Brummell.-- +'Don't forget, Brum: Goose at Four!'--Offers of Intimacy resented.--Never +in love.--Brummell out Hunting.--Anecdote of Sheridan and Brummell.--The +Beau's Poetical Efforts.--The Value of a Crooked Sixpence.--The Breach +with the Prince of Wales.--'Who's your Fat Friend?'--The Climax is +reached.--The Black-mail of Calais.--George the Greater and George the +Less.--An Extraordinary Step.--Down the Hill of Life.--A Miserable Old +Age.--In the Hospice Du Bon Sauveur.--O Young Men of this Age, be warned! + + +It is astonishing to what a number of insignificant things high art has +been applied, and with what success. It is the vice of high civilization +to look for it and reverence it, where a ruder age would only laugh at +its employment. Crime and cookery, especially, have been raised into +sciences of late, and the professors of both received the amount of +honour due to their acquirements. Who would be so naive as to sneer at +the author of 'The Art of Dining?' or who so ungentlemanly as not to +pity the sorrows of a pious baronet, whose devotion to the noble art of +appropriation was shamefully rewarded with accommodation gratis on board +one of Her Majesty's transport-ships? The disciples of Ude have left us +the literary results of their studies, and one at least, the graceful +Alexis Soyer, is numbered among our public benefactors. We have little +doubt that as the art, vulgarly called 'embezzlement,' becomes more and +more fashionable, as it does every day, we shall have a work on the 'Art +of Appropriation.' It is a pity that Brummell looked down upon +literature: poor literature! it had a hard struggle to recover the +slight, for we are convinced there is not a work more wanted than the +'Art of Dressing,' and 'George the Less' was almost the last professor +of that elaborate science. + +If the maxim, that 'whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well,' +hold good, Beau Brummell must be regarded in the light of a great man. +That dressing is worth doing at all, everybody but a Fiji Islander seems +to admit, for everybody does it. If, then, a man succeeds in dressing +better than anybody else, it follows that he is entitled to the most +universal admiration. + +But there was another object to which this great man condescended to +apply the principles of high art--I mean affectation. How admirably he +succeeded in this his life will show. But can we doubt that he is +entitled to our greatest esteem and heartiest gratitude for the studies +he pursued with unremitting patience in these two useful branches, when +we find that a prince of the blood delighted to honour, and the richest, +noblest, and most distinguished men of half a century ago were proud to +know him? We are writing, then, of no common man, no mere beau, but of +the greatest professor of two of the most popular sciences--Dress and +Affectation. Let us speak with reverence of this wonderful genius. + +George Brummell was 'a self-made man.' That is, all that nature, the +tailors, stags, and padding had not made of him, he made for +himself--his name, his fame, his fortune, and his friends--and all these +were great. The author of 'Self-help' has most unaccountably omitted all +mention of him, and most erroneously, for if there ever was a man who +helped himself, and no one else, it was, 'very sincerely yours, George +Brummell.' + +The founder of the noble house of Brummell, the grandfather of our hero, +was either a treasury porter, or a confectioner, or something else.[10] +At any rate he let lodgings in Bury Street, and whether from the fact +that his wife did not purloin her lodgers' tea and sugar, or from some +other cause, he managed to ingratiate himself with one of them--who +afterwards became Lord Liverpool--so thoroughly, that through his +influence he obtained for his son the post of Private Secretary to Lord +North. Nothing could have been more fortunate, except, perhaps, the +son's next move, which was to take in marriage the daughter of +Richardson, the owner of a well-known lottery-office. Between the +lottery of office and the lottery of love, Brummell _pere_ managed to +make a very good fortune. At his death he left as much as L65,000 to be +divided among his three children--Raikes says as much as L30,000 +a-piece--so that the Beau, if not a fool, ought never to have been a +pauper. + +[10: Mr. Jesse says that the Beau's grandfather was a servant of Mr. +Charles Monson, brother to the first Lord Monson.] + +George Bryan Brummell, the second son of this worthy man, honoured by +his birth the 7th of June, 1778. No anecdotes of his childhood are +preserved, except that he once cried because he could not eat any more +damson tart. In later years he would probably have thought damson tart +'very vulgar.' He first turns up at Eton at the age of twelve, and even +there commences his distinguished career, and is known as 'Buck +Brummell.' The boy showed himself decidedly father to the man here. +Master George was not vulgar enough, nor so imprudent, it may be added, +as to fight, row, or play cricket, but he distinguished himself by the +introduction of a gold buckle in the white stock, by never being +flogged, and by his ability in toasting cheese. We do not hear much of +his classical attainments. + +The very gentlemanly youth was in due time passed on to Oriel College, +Oxford. Here he distinguished himself by a studied indifference to +college discipline and an equal dislike to studies. He condescended to +try for the Newdigate Prize poem, but his genius leaned far more to the +turn of a coat-collar than that of a verse, and, unhappily for the +British poets, their ranks were not to be dignified by the addition of +this illustrious man. The Newdigate was given to another; and so, to +punish Oxford, the competitor left it and poetry together, after having +adorned the old quadrangle of Oriel for less than a year. + +He was now a boy of seventeen, and a very fine boy, too. To judge from a +portrait taken in later life, he was not strictly handsome; but he is +described as tall, well built, and of a slight and graceful figure. +Added to this, he had got from Eton and Oxford, if not much learning, +many a well-born friend, and he was toady enough to cultivate those of +better, and to dismiss those of less distinction. He was, through life, +a celebrated 'cutter,' and Brummell's cut was as much admired--by all +but the _cuttee_--as Brummel's coat. Then he had some L25,000 as capital +and how could he best invest it? He consulted no stockbroker on this +weighty point; he did not even buy a shilling book of advice such as we +have seen advertised for those who do not know what to do with their +money. The question was answered in a moment by the young worldling of +sixteen: he would enter a crack regiment and invest his guineas in the +thousand per cents. of fashionable life. + +His namesake, the Regent, was now thirty-two, and had spent those years +of his life in acquiring the honorary title of the 'first gentleman of +Europe' by every act of folly, debauch, dissipation, and degradation +which a prince can conveniently perpetrate. He was the hero of London +society, which adored and backbit him alternately, and he was precisely +the man whom the boy Brummell would worship. The Regent was colonel of a +famous regiment of fops--the 10th Hussars. It was the most expensive, +the most impertinent, the best-dressed, the worst-moralled regiment in +the British army. Its officers, many of them titled, all more or less +distinguished in the trying campaigns of London seasons, were the +intimates of the Prince-Colonel. Brummell aspired to a cornetcy in this +brilliant regiment, and obtained it; nor that alone; he secured, by his +manners, o his dress, or his impudence, the favour and companionship-- +friendship we cannot say--of the prince who commanded it. + +By this step his reputation was made, and it was only necessary to keep +it up. He had an immense fund of good nature, and, as long as his money +lasted, of good spirits, too. Good sayings--that is, witty if not wise-- +are recorded of him, and his friends pronounce him a charming companion. +Introduced, therefore, into the highest circles in England, he could +scarcely fail to succeed. Young Cornet Brummell became a great favourite +with the fair. + +His rise in the regiment was of course rapid: in three years he was at +the head of a troop. The onerous duties of a military life, which +vacillated between Brighton and London, and consisted chiefly in making +oneself agreeable in the mess-room, were too much for our hero. He +neglected parade, or arrived too late: it was such a bore to have to +dress in a hurry. It is said that he knew the troop he commanded only by +the peculiar nose of one of the men, and that when a transfer of men had +once been made, rode up to the wrong troop, and supported his mistake by +pointing to the nose in question. No fault, however, was found with the +Regent's favourite, and Brummell might have risen to any rank if he +could have supported the terrific labour of dressing for parade. Then, +too, there came wars and rumours of wars, and our gallant captain +shuddered at the vulgarity of shedding blood: the supply of +smelling-salts would never have been liberal enough to keep him from +fainting on the battle-field. It is said, too, that the regiment was +ordered to Manchester. Could anything be more gross or more ill-bred? +The idea of figuring before the wives and daughters of cotton-spinners +was too fearful; and from one cause or another our brave young captain +determined to retire, which he did in 1798. + +It was now, therefore, that he commenced the profession of a beau, and +as he is the Prince of Beaux, as his patron was the Beau of Princes, and +as his fame has spread to France and Germany, if only as the inventor of +the trouser; and as there is no man who on getting up in the morning +does not put on his clothes with more or less reflection as to whether +they are the right ones to put on, and as beaux have existed since the +days of the emperor of beaux, Alexander the Macedonian, and will +probably exist to all time, let us rejoice in the high honour of being +permitted to describe how this illustrious genius clothed his poor +flesh, and made the most of what God had given him--a body and legs. + +The private life of Brummell would in itself serve as a book of manners +and habits. The two were his profoundest study; but, alas! his impudence +marred the former, and the latter can scarcely be imitated in the +present day. Still as a great example he is yet invaluable, and must be +described in all detail. + +His morning toilette was a most elaborate affair. Never was Brummell +guilty of _deshabille_. Like a true man of business, he devoted the best +and earliest hours--and many of them too--to his profession, namely-- +dressing. His dressing-room was a studio, in which he daily prepared +that elaborate portrait of George Brummell which was to be exhibited for +a few hours in the club-rooms and drawing-rooms of town, only to be +taken to pieces again, and again made up for the evening. Charles I. +delighted to resort of a morning to the studio of Vandyck, and to watch +his favourite artist's progress. The Regent George was no less devoted +to art, for we are assured by Mr. Raikes that he often visited his +favourite beau in the morning to watch his toilet, and would sometimes +stay so late that he would send his horses away, insisting on Brummell +giving him a quiet dinner, 'which generally ended in a deep potation.' + +There are, no doubt, many fabulous myths floating about concerning this +illustrious man; and his biographer, Captain Jesse, seems anxious to +defend him from the absurd stories of French writers, who asserted that +he employed two glovers to covers his hands, to one of whom were +intrusted the thumbs, to the other the fingers and hand, and three +barbers to dress his hair, while his boots were polished with champagne, +his cravats designed by a celebrated portrait painter, and so forth. +These may be pleasant inventions, but Captain Jesse's own account of his +toilet, even when the Beau was broken, and living in elegant poverty +abroad, is quite absurd enough to render excusable the ingenious +exaggerations of the foreign writer. + +The _batterie de toilette_, we are told, was of silver, and included a +spitting-dish, for its owner said 'he could not spit into clay.' +Napoleon shaved himself, but Brummell was not quite great enough to do +that, just as my Lord So-and-so walks to church on Sunday, while his +neighbour, the Birmingham millionaire, can only arrive there in a +chariot and pair. + +His ablutions took no less than two whole hours! What knowledge might +have been gained, what good done in the time he devoted to rubbing his +lovely person with a hair-glove! Cleanliness was, in fact, Brummell's +religion; perhaps because it is generally set down as 'next to +godliness,' a proximity with which the Beau was quite satisfied, for he +never attempted to pass on to that next stage. Poor fool, he might rub +every particle of moisture off the skin of his body--he might be clean +as a kitten--but he could not and did not purify his mind with all this +friction; and the man who would have fainted to see a black speck upon +his shirt, was not at all shocked at the indecent conversation in which +he and his companions occasionally indulged. + +The body cleansed, the face had next to be brought up as near perfection +as nature would allow. With a small looking-glass in one hand, and +tweezers in the other, he carefully removed the tiniest hairs that he +could discover on his cheeks or chin, enduring the pain like a martyr. + +Then came the shirt, which was in his palmy days changed three times a +day, and then in due course the great business of the cravat. Captain +Jesse's minute account of the process of tying this can surely be relied +on, and presents one of the most ludicrous pictures of folly and vanity +that can be imagined. Had Brummell never lived, and a novelist or +play-writer described the toilet which Captain Jesse affirms to have +been his daily achievement, he would have had the critics about him with +the now common phrase--'This book is a tissue, not only of +improbabilities, but of actual impossibilities.' The collar, then, was +so large, that in its natural condition it rose high above the wearer's +head, and some ingenuity was required to reduce it by delicate folds to +exactly that height which the Beau judged to be correct. Then came the +all-majestic white neck-tie, a foot in breadth. It is not to be supposed +that Brummell had the neck of a swan or a camel--far from it. The worthy +fool had now to undergo, with admirable patience, the mysterious process +known to our papas as 'creasing down.' The head was thrown back, as if +ready for a dentist; the stiff white tie applied to the throat, and +gradually wrinkled into half its actual breadth by the slow downward +movement of the chin. When all was done, we can imagine that comfort was +sacrificed to elegance, as it was then considered, and that the sudden +appearance of Venus herself could not have induced the deluded +individual to turn his head in a hurry. + +It is scarcely profitable to follow this lesser deity into all the +details of his self-adornment. It must suffice to say that he affected +an extreme neatness and simplicity of dress, every item of which was +studied and discussed for many an hour. In the mornings he was still +guilty of hessians and pantaloons, or 'tops' and buckskins, with a blue +coat and buff waistcoat. The costume is not so ancient, but that one may +tumble now and then on a country squire who glories in it and denounces +us juveniles as 'bears' for want of a similar precision. Poor Brummell, +he cordially hated the country squires, and would have wanted rouge for +a week if he could have dreamed that his pet attire would, some fifty +years later, be represented only by one of that class which he was so +anxious to exclude from Watier's. + +But it was in the evening that he displayed his happy invention of the +trouser, or rather its introduction from Germany. This article he wore +very tight to the leg, and buttoned over the ankle, exactly as we see it +in old prints of 'the fashion.' Then came the wig, and on that the hat. +It is a vain and thankless task to defend Brummell from the charge of +being a dandy. If one proof of his devotion to dress were wanted, it +would be the fact that this hat, once stuck jauntily on one side of the +wig, was never removed in the street even to salute a lady--so that, +inasmuch as he sacrificed his manners to his appearance, he may be +fairly set down as a fop. + +The perfect artist could not be expected to be charitable to the less +successful. Dukes and princes consulted him on the make of their coats, +and discussed tailors with him with as much solemnity as divines might +dispute on a mystery of religion. Brummell did not spare them. +'Bedford,' said he, to the duke of that name, fingering a new garment +which his grace had submitted to his inspection, 'do you call this +_thing_ a coat?' Again, meeting a noble acquaintance who wore shoes in +the morning, he stopped and asked him what he had got upon his feet. +'Oh! shoes are they,' quoth he, with a well bred sneer, 'I thought they +were slippers.' He was even ashamed of his own brother, and when the +latter came to town, begged him to keep to the back streets till his new +clothes were sent home. Well might his friend the Regent say, that he +was 'a mere tailor's dummy to hang clothes upon.' + +But in reality Brummell was more. He had some sharpness and some taste. +But the former was all brought out in sneers, and the latter in +snuff-boxes. His whole mind could have been put into one of these. He +had a splendid collection of them, and was famous for the grace with +which he opened the lid of his box with the thumb of the hand that +carried it, while he delicately took his pinch with two fingers of the +other. This and his bow were his chief acquirements, and his reputation +for manners was based on the distinction of his manner. He could not +drive in a public conveyance, but he could be rude to a well-meaning +lady; he never ate vegetables--_one_ pea he confessed to--but he did not +mind borrowing from his friends money which he knew he could never +return. He was a great gentleman, a gentleman of his patron's school--in +short, a well-dressed snob. But one thing is due to Brummell: he made +the assumption of being 'a gentleman' so thoroughly ridiculous that few +men of keen sense care now for the title: at least, not as a +class-distinction. Nor is it to be wondered at; when your tailor's +assistant is a 'gentleman,' and would be mightily disgusted at being +called anything else, you, with your indomitable pride of caste, can +scarcely care for the patent. + +Brummell's claim to the title was based on his walk, his coat, his +cravat, and the grace with which he indulged, as Captain Jesse +delightfully calls it, 'the nasal pastime' of taking snuff, all the rest +was impudence; and many are the anecdotes--most of them familiar as +household words--which are told of his impertinence. The story of Mrs. +Johnson-Thompson is one of those oft-told tales, which, from having +become Joe Millers, have gradually passed out of date and been almost +forgotten. Two rival party-givers rejoiced in the aristocratic names of +Johnson and Thompson. The former lived near Finsbury, the latter near +Grosvenor Square, and Mrs. Thompson was somehow sufficiently fashionable +to expect the Regent himself at her assemblies. Brummell among other +impertinences, was fond of going where he was not invited or wanted. The +two rivals gave a ball on the same evening, and a card was sent to the +Beau by her of Finsbury. He chose to go to the Grosvenor Square house, +in hopes of meeting the Regent, then his foe. Mrs. Thompson was justly +disgusted, and with a vulgarity quite deserved by the intruder, told him +he was not invited. The Beau made a thousand apologies, hummed, hawed, +and drew a card from his pocket. It was the rival's invitation, and was +indignantly denounced. 'Dear me, how very unfortunate,' said the Beau, +'but you know Johnson and Thompson--I mean Thompson and Johnson are so +very much alike. Mrs. Johnson-Thompson, I wish you a very good evening.' + +Perhaps there is no vulgarity greater than that of rallying people on +their surnames, but our exquisite gentleman had not wit enough to invent +one superior to such a puerile amusement. Thus, on one occasion, he woke +up at three in the morning a certain Mr. Snodgrass, and when the worthy +put his head out of the window in alarm, said quietly, 'Pray, sir, is +your name Snodgrass?'--'Yes, sir, it is Snodgrass.' 'Snodgrass-- +Snodgrass--it is a very singular name. Good-bye, Mr. _Snodgrass_.' There +was more wit in his remark to Poodle Byng, a well-known puppy, whom he +met one day driving in the Park with a French dog in his curricle. 'Ah,' +cried the Beau, 'how d'ye do, Byng? a family vehicle, I see.' + +It seems incredulous to modern gentlemen that such a man should have +been tolerated even at a club. Take, for instance, his vulgar treatment +of Lord Mayor Combe, whose name we still see with others over many a +public-house in London, and who was then a most prosperous brewer and +thriving gambler. At Brookes' one evening the Beau and the Brewer were +playing at the same table, 'Come, _Mash-tub_', cried the 'gentleman,' +'what do you set?' Mash-tub unresentingly set a pony, and the Beau won +twelve of him in succession. Pocketing his cash, he made him a bow, and +exclaimed, 'Thank you, Alderman, in future I shall drink no porter but +yours.' But Combe was worthy of his namesake, Shakspere's friend, and +answered very aptly, 'I wish, sir, that every _other_ blackguard in +London would tell me the same.' + +Then again, after ruining a young fool of fortune at the tables, and +being reproached by the youth's father for leading his son astray, he +replied with charming affectation, 'Why, sir, I did all I could for him. +I once gave him my arm all the way from White's to Brookes'!' + +When Brummell really wanted a dinner, while at Calais, he could not give +up his impertinence for the sake of it. Lord Westmoreland called on him, +and, perhaps out of compassion, asked him to dine at _three o'clock_ +with him. 'Your Lordship is very kind,' said the Beau, 'but really I +could not _feed_ at such an hour.' Sooner or later he was glad to _feed_ +with any one who was toady enough to ask him. He was once placed in a +delightfully awkward position from having accepted the invitation of a +charitable but vulgar-looking Britisher at Calais. He was walking with +Lord Sefton, when the individual passed and nodded familiarly. 'Who's +your friend, Brummell?'--'Not mine, he must be bowing to you.' But +presently the man passed again, and this time was cruel enough to +exclaim, 'Don't forget, Brum, don't forget--goose at four!' The poor +Beau must have wished the earth to open under him. He was equally +imprudent in the way in which he treated an old acquaintance who arrived +at the town to which he had retreated, and of whom he was fool enough to +be ashamed. He generally took away their characters summarily, but on +one occasion was frightened almost out of his wits by being called to +account for this conduct. An officer who had lost his nose in an +engagement in the Peninsula, called on him, and in very strong terms +requested to know why the Beau had reported that he was a retired +hatter. His manner alarmed the rascal, who apologized, and protested +that there must be a mistake; he had never said so. The officer retired, +and as he was going, Brummell added: 'Yes, it must be a mistake, for now +I think of it, I never dealt with a hatter without a nose.' + +So much for the good breeding of this friend of George IV. and the Duke +of York. + +His affectation was quite as great as his impudence: and he won the +reputation of fastidiousness--nothing gives more prestige--by dint of +being openly rude. No hospitality or kindness melted him, when he +thought he could gain a march. At one dinner, not liking the champagne, +he called to the servant to give him 'some more of that cider:' at +another, to which he was invited in days when a dinner was a charity to +him, after helping himself to a wing of capon, and trying a morsel of +it, he took it up in his napkin, called to his dog--he was generally +accompanied by a puppy, even to parties, as if one at a time were not +enough--and presenting it to him, said aloud, 'Here, _Atons_, try if you +can get your teeth through that, for I'm d--d if I can!' + +To the last he resented offers of intimacy from those whom he considered +his inferiors, and as there are ladies enough everywhere, he had ample +opportunity for administering rebuke to those who pressed into his +society. On one occasion he was sauntering with a friend at Caen under +the window of a lady who longed for nothing more than to have the great +_arbiter elegantiarum_ at her house. When seeing him beneath, she put +her head out, and called out to him, 'Good evening, Mr. Brummell, won't +you come up and take tea?' The Beau looked up with extreme severity +expressed on his face, and replied, 'Madam, you take medicine--you take +a walk--you take a liberty--but you _drink_ tea,' and walked on, having, +it may be hoped, cured the lady of her admiration. + +In the life of such a man there could not of course be much striking +incident. He lived for 'society,' and the whole of his story consists in +his rise and fall in that narrow world. Though admired and sought after +by the women--so much so that at his death his chief assets were locks +of hair, the only things he could not have turned into money--he never +married. Wedlock might have sobered him, and made him a more sensible, +if not more respectable member of society, but his advances towards +matrimony never brought him to the crisis. He accounted for one +rejection in his usual way. 'What could I do, my dear _fellar_,' he +lisped, 'when I actually saw Lady Mary eat cabbage?' At another time he +is said to have induced some deluded young creature to elope with him +from a ball-room, but managed the affair so ill, that the lovers (?) +were caught in the next street, and the affair came to an end. He wrote +rather ecstatic love-letters to Lady Marys and Miss ----s, gave married +ladies advice on the treatment of their spouses and was tender to +various widows, but though he went on in this way through life, he was +never, it would seem, in love, from the mere fact that he was incapable +of passion. + +Perhaps he was too much of a woman to care much for women. He was +certainly egregiously effeminate. About the only creatures he could love +were poodles. When one of his dogs, from over-feeding, was taken ill, he +sent for two dog-doctors, and consulted very gravely with them on the +remedies to be applied. The canine physicians came to the conclusion +that she must be bled. 'Bled!' said Brummell, in horror; 'I shall leave +the room: inform me when the operation is over.' When the dog died, he +shed tears--probably the only ones he had shed since childhood: and +though at that time receiving money from many an old friend in England, +complained, with touching melancholy, 'that he had lost the only friend +he had!' His grief lasted three whole days, during which he shut himself +up, and would see no one; but we are not told that he ever thus mourned +over any human being. + +His effeminacy was also shown in his dislike to field-sports. His +shooting exploits were confined to the murder of a pair of pet pigeons +perched on a roof, while he confessed, as regards hunting, that it was a +bore to get up so early in the morning only to have one's boots and +leathers splashed by galloping farmers. However, hunting was a fashion, +and Brummell must needs appear to hunt. He therefore kept a stud of +hunters in his better days, near Belvoir, the Duke of Rutland's, where +he was a frequent visitor, and if there was a near meet, would ride out +in pink and tops to see the hounds break cover, follow through a few +gates, and return to the more congenial atmosphere of the drawing-room. +He, however, condescended to bring his taste to bear on the +hunting-dress; and, it is said, introduced white tops instead of the +ancient mahoganies. That he _could_ ride there seems reason to believe, +but it is equally probable that he was afraid to do so. His valour was +certainly composed almost entirely of its 'better part,' and indeed had +so much prudence in it that it may be doubted if there was any of the +original stock left. Once when he had been taking away somebody's +character, the 'friend' of the maligned gentleman entered his apartment, +and very menacingly demanded satisfaction for his principal, unless an +apology were tendered 'in five minutes.' 'Five minutes!' answered the +exquisite, as pale as death, 'five seconds, or sooner if you like.' + +Brummell was no fool, in spite of his follies. He had talents of a +mediocre kind, if he had chosen to make a better use of them. Yet the +general opinion was not in favour of his wisdom. He quite deserved +Sheridan's cool satire for his affectation, if not for his want of mind. + +The Wit and the Beau met one day at Charing Cross, and it can well be +imagined that the latter was rather disgusted at being seen so far east +of St. James's Street, and drawled out to Sheridan,--'Sherry, my dear +boy, don't mention that you saw me in this filthy part of the town, +though, perhaps, I am rather severe, for his Grace of Northumberland +resides somewhere about this spot, if I don't mistake. The fact is, my +dear boy, I have been in the d----d City, to the Bank: I wish they would +remove it to the West End, for re-all-y it is quite a bore to go to such +a place; more particularly as one cannot be seen in one's own equipage +beyond Somerset House,' etc. etc. etc. in the Brummellian style. + +'Nay, my good fellow,' was the answer to this peroration, 'travelling +from the East? impossible!' + +'Why, my dear boy, why?' + +'Because the wise men came from the East,' + +'So, then, sa-ar--you think me a fool?' + +'By no means; I know you to be one,' quoth Sherry, and turned away. It +is due to both the parties to this anecdote to state that it is quite +apocryphal, and rests on the slenderest authority. However, whether fool +or not, Brummell has one certain, though small, claim upon certain small +readers. Were you born in a modern generation, when scraps of poetry +were forbidden in your nursery, and no other pabulum was offered to your +infant stomach, but the rather dull biographies of rather dull, though +very upright men?--if so, I pity you. Old airs of a jaunty jig-like kind +are still haunting the echoes of my brain. Among them is-- + + 'The butterfly was a gentleman, + Which nobody can refute: + He left his lady-love at home, + And roamed in a velvet suit.' + +I remember often to have ruminated over this character of an innocent, +and, I believe, calumniated, insect. He was a gentleman, and the +consequences thereof were twofold: he abandoned the young woman who had +trusted her affections to him, and attired his person in a complete +costume of the best Lyons silk-velvet, _not_ the proctor's velvet, which +Theodore felt with thumb and finger, impudently asking 'how much a +yard?' I secretly resolved to do the same thing as Mr. Butterfly when I +came of age. But the said Mr. Butterfly had a varied and somewhat awful +history, all of which was narrated in various ditties chanted by my +nurse. I could not quite join in her vivid assertion that she _would_ + + '----be a butterfly, + Born in a bower, + Christened in a tea-pot, + And dead in an hour.' + +Aetat four, life is dear, and the idea of that early demise was far from +welcome to me. I privily agreed that I would _not_ be a butterfly. But +there was no end to the history of this very inconstant insect in our +nursery lore. We didn't care a drop of honey for Dr. Watts's 'Busy Bee;' +we infinitely preferred the account--not in the 'Morning Post'--of the +'Butterfly's Ball' and the 'Grasshopper's Feast; and few, perhaps, have +ever given children more pleasures of imagination than William Roscoe, +its author. There were some amongst us, however, who were already being +weaned to a knowledge of life's mysterious changes, and we sought the +third volume of the romance of the flitting gaudy thing in a little poem +called 'The Butterfly's Funeral.' + +Little dreamed we, when in our prettly little song-books we saw the +initial 'B.' at the bottom of these verses, that a real human butterfly +had written them, and that they conveyed a solemn prognostication of a +fate that was _not_ his. Little we dreamed, as we lisped out the verses, +that the 'gentleman who roamed in a' not velvet but 'plum-coloured +suit,' according to Lady Hester Stanhope, was the illustrious George +Brummell, The Beau wrote these trashy little rhymes--pretty in their +way--and, since I was once a child, and learnt them off by heart, I will +not cast a stone at them. Brummell indulged in such trifling poetizing, +but never went further. It is a pity he did not write his memoirs; they +would have added a valuable page to the history of 'Vanity Fair.' + +Brummell's London glory lasted from 1798 to 1816. His chief club was +Watier's. It was a superb assemblage of gamesters and fops--knaves and +fools; and it is difficult to say which, element predominated. For a +time Brummell was monarch there; but his day of reckoning came at last. +Byron and Moore, Sir Henry Mildmay and Mr. Pierrepoint, were among the +members. Play ran high there, and Brummell once won nearly as much as +his squandered patrimony, L26.000. Of course he not only lost it again, +but much more--indeed his whole capital. It was after some heavy loss +that he was walking home through Berkeley Street with Mr. Raikes, when +he saw something glittering in the gutter, picked it up, and found it to +be a crooked sixpence. Like all small-minded men, he had a great fund of +superstition, and he wore the talisman of good luck for some time. For +two years, we are told, after this finding of treasure-trove, success +attended him in play--macao, the very pith of hazard, was the chief game +at Watier's--and he attributed it all to the sixpence. At last he lost +it, and luck turned against him. So goes the story. It is probably much +more easily accountable. Few men played honestly in those days without +losing to the dishonest, and we have no reason to charge the Beau with +mal-practice. However this may be, his losses at play first brought +about his ruin. The Jews were, of course, resorted to; and if Brummell +did not, like Charles Fox, keep a Jerusalem Chamber, it was only because +the sum total of his fortune was pretty well known to the money-lenders. + + 'Then came the change, the check, the fall; + Pain rises up, old pleasures pall. + There is one remedy for all.' + +This remedy was the crossing of the Channel, a crossing kept by beggars, +who levy a heavy toll on those who pass over it. + +The decline of the Beau was rapid, but not without its _eclat_. A breach +with his royal patron led the way. It is presumed that every reader of +these volumes has heard the famous story of 'Wales, ring the bell!' but +not all may know its particulars. + +A deep impenetrable mystery hangs over this story. Perhaps some German +of the twenty-first century--some future Giffard, or who not--will put +his wits to work to solve the riddle. In very sooth _il ne vaut pas la +chandelle_. A quarrel did take place between George the Prince and +George the Less, but of its causes no living mortal is cognizant: we can +only give the received versions. It appears, then, that dining with +H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, Master Brummell asked him to ring the bell. +Considering the intimacy between them, and that the Regent often +sacrificed his dignity to his amusement, there was nothing extraordinary +in this. But it is added that the Prince did ring the bell in +question--unhappy bell to jar so between two such illustrious +friends!--and when the servant came, ordered 'Mr. Brummell's carriage!' +Another version palms off the impertinence on a drunken midshipman, who, +being related to the Comptroller of the Household, had been invited to +dinner by the Regent. Another yet states that Brummell, being asked to +ring the said bell, replied, 'Your Royal Highness is close to it.' No +one knows the truth of the legend, any more than whether Homer was a man +or a myth. It surely does not matter. The friends quarrelled, and +perhaps it was time they should do so, for they had never improved one +another's morals; but it is only fair to the Beau to add that he always +denied the whole affair, and that he himself gave as the cause of the +quarrel his own sarcasms on the Prince's increasing corpulency, and his +resemblance to Mrs. Fitzherbert's porter, 'Big Ben.' Certainly some +praise is due to the Beau for the _sans, froid_ with which he appeared +to treat the matter, though in reality dreadfully cut up about it. He +lounged about, made amusing remarks on his late friend and patron, swore +he would 'cut' him, and in short behaved with his usual _aplomb_. The +'Wales, ring the bell,' was sufficient proof of his impudence, but +'Who's your fat friend?' was really good. + +It is well known, in all probability, that George IV. contemplated with +as much disgust and horror the increasing rotundity of his 'presence' as +ever a maiden lady of a certain age did her first grey hair. Soon after +the bell affair, the royal beau met his former friend in St. James's +Street, and resolved to cut him. This was attacking Brummell with his +own pet weapon, but not with success. Each antagonist was leaning on the +arm of a friend. 'Jack Lee,' who was thus supporting the Beau, was +intimate with the Prince, who, to make the cut the more marked, stopped +and talked to him without taking the slightest notice of Brummell. After +a time both parties moved on, and then came the moment of triumph and +revenge. It was sublime! Turning round half way, so that his words could +not fail to be heard by the retreating Regent, the Beau asked of his +companion in his usual drawl, 'Well, Jack, who's your fat friend?' The +coolness, presumption, and impertinence of the question perhaps made it +the best thing the Beau ever said, and from that time the Prince took +care not to risk another encounter with him.[11] + +[11: Another version, given by Captain Jesse, represents this to have +taken place at a ball given at the Argyle Rooms in July, 1813, by Lord +Alvanley, Sir Henry Miklmav, Mr. Pierrepoint, and Mr. Brummell.] + +Brummell was scotched rather than killed by the Prince's indifference. +He at once resolved to patronise his brother, the Duke of York, and +found in him a truer friend. The duchess, who had a particular fondness +for dogs, of which she is said to have kept no fewer, at one time, than +a hundred, added the puppy Brummell to the list, and treated him with a +kindness in which little condescension was mixed. But neither impudence +nor the blood-royal can keep a man out of debt, especially when he +plays. The Beau got deeper and deeper into the difficulty, and at last +some mysterious quarrel about money with a gentleman who thenceforward +went by the name of Dick the Dandy-killer, obliged him to think of place +and poverty in another land. He looked in vain for aid, and among others +Scrope Davies was written to to lend him 'two hundred,' 'because his +money was all in the three per cents.' Scrope replied laconically-- + + 'MY DEAR GEORGE, + + 'It is very unfortunate, but _my_ money is all in the three per + cents. Yours, + + 'S. DAVIES,' + +It was the last attempt. The Beau went to the opera, as usual, and drove +away from it clear off to Dover, whence the packet took him to safety +and slovenliness in the ancient town of Calais. His few effects were +sold after his departure. Porcelaine, buhl, a drawing or two, +double-barrelled Mantons (probably never used), plenty of old wine, +linen, furniture, and a few well-bound books, were the Beau's assets. +His debts were with half the chief tradesmen of the West End and a large +number of his personal friends. + +The climax is reached: henceforth Master George Bryan Brummell goes +rapidly and gracefully down the hill of life. + +The position of a Calais beggar was by no means a bad one, if the +reduced individual had any claim whatever to distinction. A black-mail +was sedulously levied by the outcasts and exiles of that town on every +Englishman who passed through it; and in those days it was customary to +pass some short time in this entrance of France. The English 'residents' +were always on the look-out, generally crowding round the packet-boat, +and the new arrival was sure to be accosted by some old and attached +friend, who had not seen him for years. Just as Buttons, who is always +breaking the plates and tumblers, has the invariable mode of accounting +for his carelessness, 'they fell apart, sir, in my 'ands!' so these +expatriated Britons had always a tale of confidence misplaced--security +for a bond--bail for a delinquent, or in short any hard case, which +compelled them, much against their wills, to remain 'for a period' on +the shores of France. To such men, whom you had known in seven-guinea +waistcoats at White's and Watier's, and found in seven-shilling coats on +the Calais pier, it was impossible to refuse your five-pound note, and +in time the black-mail of Calais came to be reckoned among the +established expenses of a Continental tour. + +Brummell was a distinguished beggar of this description, and managed so +adroitly that the new arrivals thought themselves obliged by Mr. +Brummell's acceptance of their donations. The man who could not eat +cabbages, drive in a hackney-coach, or wear less than three shirts a +day, was now supported by voluntary contributions, and did not see +anything derogatory to a gentleman in their acceptance. If Brummell had +now turned his talents to account; if he had practised his painting, in +which he was not altogether despicable; or his poetry, in which he had +already had some trifling success: if he had even engaged himself as a +waiter at Quillacq's, or given lessons in the art of deportment, his +fine friends from town might have cut him, but posterity would have +withheld its blame. He was a beggar of the merriest kind. While he wrote +letters to friends in England, asking for remittances, and describing +his wretched condition on a bed of straw and eating bran bread, he had a +good barrel of Dorchester ale in his lodgings, his usual glass of +maraschino, and his bottle of claret after dinner; and though living on +charity, could order new snuff-boxes to add to his collection, and new +knick-knacks to adorn his room. There can be no pity for such a man, and +we have no pity for him, whatever the rest of the world may feel. + +Nothing can be more contemptible than the gradual downfall of the broken +beau. Yet, if it were doubted that his soul ever rose above the collar +of a coat or the brim of a hat, his letters to Mr. Raikes in the time of +his poverty would settle the question. 'I heard of you the other day in +a waistcoat that does you considerable credit, spick-and-span from +Paris, a broad stripe, salmon-colour, and _cramoise_. Don't let them +laugh you into a relapse--into the Gothic--as that of your former +English simplicity.' He speaks of the army of occupation as 'rascals in +red coats waiting for embarkation.' 'English education,' he says in +another letter, 'may be all very well to instruct the hemming of +handkerchiefs, and the ungainly romps of a country-dance, but nothing +else; and it would be a poor consolation to your declining years to see +your daughters come into the room upon their elbows, and to find their +accomplishments limited to broad native phraseology in conversation, or +thumping the "Woodpecker" upon a discordant spinet.' And he proceeds to +recommend a 'good French formation of manners,' and so forth. + +Nor did he display any of that dignity and self-respect which are +generally supposed to mark the 'gentleman.' When his late friend and +foe, by this time a king, passed through Calais, the Beau, broken in +every sense, had not pride enough to keep out of his way. Many stories +are told of the manner in which he pressed himself into George IV.'s +notice, but the various legends mostly turn upon a certain snuff-box. +According to one quite as reliable as any other, the Prince and the Beau +had in their days of amity intended to exchange snuff-boxes, and George +the Greater had given George the Less an order on his jeweller for a +_tabatiere_ with his portrait on the top. On their quarrel this order +was, with very bad taste, rescinded, although Brummell's snuff-box had +already passed into the Prince's hands and had not been returned. It is +said that the Beau employed a friend to remind the king of this +agreement, and ask for his box; to whom the latter said that the story +was all nonsense, and that he supposed 'the poor devil,' meaning his +late intimate friend, wanted L100 and should have it. However, it is +doubtful if the money ever reached the 'poor devil.' The story does not +tell over well, for whatever were the failings and faults of George IV., +he seems to have had a certain amount of good nature, if not absolutely +of good heart, and possessed, at least, sufficient sense of what became +a prince, to prevent his doing so shabby an act, though he may have +defrauded a hundred tradesmen. In these days there _were_ such things as +'debts of honour,' and they were punctiliously attended to. There are, +as we have said, various versions of this story, but all tend to show +that Brummell courted the notice of his late master and patron on his +way through the place of his exile; and it is not remarkable in a man +who borrowed so freely from all his acquaintances, and who was, in fact, +in such a state of dependence on their liberality. + +Brummell made one grand mistake in his career as a Beau: he outlived +himself. For some twenty-four years he survived his flight from England, +to which country he never returned. For a time he was an assiduous +writer of begging-letters and the plague of his friends. At length he +obtained the appointment of consul at the good old Norman town of Caen. +This was almost a sinecure, and the Beau took care to keep it so. But no +one can account for the extraordinary step he took soon after entering +on his consular duties. He wrote to Lord Palmerston, stating that there +were no duties attached to the post, and recommending its abolition. +This act of suicide is partly explained by a supposed desire to be +appointed to some more lively and more lucrative consulate; but in this +the Beau was mistaken. The consulate at Caen was vacated in accordance +with his suggestion, and Brummell was left penniless, in debt, and to +shift for himself. With the aid of an English tradesman, half grocer, +half banker, he managed to get through a period of his poverty, but +could not long subsist in this way, and the punishment of his vanity and +extravagance came at last in his old age. A term of existence in prison +did not cure him, and when he was liberated he again resumed his +primrose gloves, his Eau de Cologne, and his patent _vernis_ for his +boots, though at that time literally supported by his friends with an +allowance of L120 per annum. In the old days of Caen life this would +have been equal to L300 a year in England, and certainly quite enough +for any bachelor; but the Beau was really a fool. For whom, for what +should he dress and polish his boots at such a quiet place as Caen? Yet +he continued to do so, and to run into debt for the polish. When he +confessed to having, 'so help him Heaven,' not four francs in the world, +he was ordering this _vernis de Guiton_, at five francs a bottle, from +Paris, and calling the provider of it a 'scoundrel,' because he ventured +to ask for his money. What foppery, what folly was all this! How truly +worthy of the man who built his fame on the reputation of a coat! +Terrible indeed was the hardship that followed his extravagance; he was +actually compelled to exchange his white for a black cravat. Poor +martyr! after such a trial it is impossible to be hard upon him. So, +too, the man who sent repeated begging-letters to the English grocer, +Armstrong, threw out of window a new dressing-gown because it was not of +the pattern he wished to have. + +Retribution for all this folly came in time. His mind went even before +his health. Though only some sixty years of age, almost the bloom of +some men's life, he lost his memory and his powers of attention, His old +ill-manners became positively bad manners. When feasted and feted, he +could find nothing better to say than 'What a half-starved turkey.' At +last the Beau was reduced to the level of that slovenliness which he had +considered as the next step to perdition. Reduced to one pair of +trousers, he had to remain in bed till they were mended. He grew +indifferent to his personal appearance, the surest sign of decay. +Drivelling, wretched, in debt, an object of contempt to all honest men, +he dragged on a miserable existence. Still with his boots in holes, and +all the honour of beau-dom gone for ever, he clung to the last to his +Eau de Cologne, and some few other luxuries, and went down, a fool and a +fop, to the grave. To indulge his silly tastes he had to part with one +piece of property after another; and at length he was left with little +else than the locks of hair of which he had once boasted. + +I remember a story of a labourer and his dying wife. The poor woman was +breathing her last wishes. 'And, I say, William, you'll see the old sow +don't kill her young uns?'--'Ay, ay, wife, set thee good.' 'And, I say, +William, you'll see Lizzy goes to schule reg'lar?'--'Ay, ay, wife, set +thee good.' 'And, I say, William, you'll see Tommy's breeches is mended +against he goes to schule again?'--'Ay, ay, wife, set thee good.'--'And, +I say, William, you'll see I'm laid proper in the yard?' William grew +impatient. 'Now never thee mind them things, wife, I'll see to 'em all, +you just go on with your dying.' No doubt Brummell's friends heartily +wished that he would go on with his dying, for he had already lived too +long; but he would live on. He is described in his last days as a +miserable, slovenly, half-witted old creature, creeping about to the +houses of a few friends he retained or who were kind enough to notice +him still, jeered at by the _gamins_, and remarkable now, not for the +cleanliness, but the filthiness and raggedness of his attire. + +Poor old fool! one cannot but pity him, when wretched, friendless, and +miserable as he was, we find him, still graceful, in a poor _cafe_ near +the Place Royale, taking his cup of coffee, and when asked for the +amount of his bill, answering very vaguely, 'Oui, Madame, a la pleine +lune, a la pleine lune.' + +The drivellings of old age are no fit subject for ridicule, yet in the +case of a man who had sneered so freely at his fellow-creatures, they +may afford a useful lesson. One of his fancies was to give imaginary +parties, when his tallow dips were all set alight and his servant +announced with proper decorum, 'The Duchess of Devonshire,' 'Lord +Alvanley, 'Mr. Sheridan,' or whom not. The poor old idiot received the +imaginary visitors with the old bow, and talked to them in the old +strain, till his servant announced their imaginary carriages, and he was +put drivelling to bed. At last the idiocy became mania. He burnt his +books, his relics, his tokens. He ate enormously, and the man who had +looked upon beer as the _ne plus ultra_ of vulgarity, was glad to +imagine it champagne. Let us not follow the poor maniac through his +wanderings. Rather let us throw a veil over all his drivelling +wretchedness, and find him at his last gasp, when coat and collar, hat +and brim, were all forgotten, when the man who had worn three shirts a +day was content to change his linen once a month. What a lesson, what a +warning! If Brummell had come to this pass in England, it is hard to say +how and where he would have died. He was now utterly penniless, and had +no prospect of receiving any remittances. It was determined to remove +him to the Hospice du Bon Sauveur, a _Maison de Charite_, where he would +be well cared for at no expense. The mania of the poor creature took, as +ever, the turn of external preparation. When the landlord of his inn +entered to try and induce him to go, he found him with his wig on his +knee, his shaving apparatus by his side, and the quondam beau deeply +interested in lathering the peruke as a preliminary to shearing it. He +resisted every proposal to move, and was carried down stairs, kicking +and shrieking. Once lodged in the Hospice, he was treated by the soeurs +de charite with the greatest kindness and consideration. An attempt was +made to recall him to a sense of his future peril, that he might at +least die in a more religious mood than he had lived; but in vain. It is +not for us, erring and sinful as we are, to judge any fellow-creature; +but perhaps poor Brummell was the last man to whom religion had a +meaning. His heart was good; his sins were more those of vanity than +those of hate; it may be that they are regarded mercifully where the +fund of mercy is unbounded. God grant that they may be so; or who of us +would escape? None but fiends will triumph over the death of any man in +sin. Men are not fiends; they must and will always feel for their +fellow-men, let them die as they will. No doubt Brummell was a fool--a +fool of the first water, but that he was equally a knave was not so +certain. Let it never be certain to blind man, who cannot read the +heart, that any man is a knave. He died on the 30th of March, 1840, and +so the last of the Beaux passed away. People have claimed, indeed for +D'Orsay, the honour of Brummell's descending mantle, but D'Orsay was not +strictly a beau, for he had other and higher tastes than mere dress. It +has never been advanced that Brummell's heart was bad, in spite of his +many faults. Vanity did all. Vanitas vanitatem. O young men of this age, +be warned by a Beau, and flee his doubtful reputation! Peace then to the +coat-thinker. Peace to all--to the worst. Let us look within and not +judge. It is enough that we are not tried in the same balance. + + + +THEODORE EDWARD HOOK. + + +The Greatest of Modern Wits.---What Coleridge said of Hook.--Hook's +Family.--Redeeming Points.--Versatility.--Varieties of Hoaxing.--The +Black-wafered Horse.--The Berners Street Hoax.--Success of the Scheme.-- +The Strop of Hunger.--Kitchen Examinations.--The Wrong House.--Angling +for an Invitation.--The Hackney-coach Device.--The Plots of Hook and +Mathews.--Hook's Talents as an Improvisatore.--The Gift becomes his +Bane.--Hook's Novels.--College Fun.--Baiting a Proctor.--The Punning +Faculty.--Official Life Opens.--Troublesome Pleasantry.--Charge of +Embezzlement.--Misfortune.--Doubly Disgraced.--No Effort to remove the +Stain.--Attacks on the Queen.--An Incongruous Mixture.--Specimen of the +Ramsbottom Letters.--Hook's Scurrility.--Fortune and Popularity.--The End. + + +If it be difficult to say what wit is, it is well nigh as hard to +pronounce what is not wit. In a sad world, mirth hath its full honour, +let it come in rags or in purple raiment. The age that patronises a +'Punch' every Saturday? and a pantomime every Christmas, has no right to +complain, if it finds itself barren of wits, while a rival age has +brought forth her dozens. Mirth is, no doubt, very good. We would see +more, not less, of it in this unmirthful land. We would fain imagine the +shrunken-cheeked factory-girl singing to herself a happy burthen, as she +shifts the loom,--the burthen of her life, and fain believe that the +voice was innocent as the sky-lark's. But if it be not so--and we know +it is not so--shall we quarrel with any one who tries to give the poor +care-worn, money-singing public a little laughter for a few pence? No, +truly, but it does not follow that the man who raises a titter is, of +necessity, a wit. The next age, perchance, will write a book of 'Wits +and Beaux,' in which Mr. Douglas Jerrold, Mr. Mark Lemon, and so on, +will represent the _wit_ of this passing day; and that future age will +not ask so nicely what wit is, and not look for that last solved of +riddles, its definition. Hook has been, by common consent, placed at the +head of modern wits. When kings were kings, they bullied, beat, and and +brow-beat their jesters. Now and then they treated them to a few years +in the Tower for a little extra impudence. Now that the people are +sovereign, the jester fares better--nay, too well. His books or his +bon-mots are read with zest and grins; he is invited to his Grace's and +implored to my Lord's; he is waited for, watched, pampered like a small +Grand Lama, and, in one sentence, the greater the fool, the more fools +he makes. + +If Theodore Hook had lived in the stirring days of King Henry VIII., he +would have sent Messrs. Patch and Co. sharply to the right-about, and +been presented with the caps and bells after his first comic song. No +doubt he was a jester, a fool in many senses, though he did not, like +Solomon's fool, 'say in his _heart_' very much. He jested away even the +practicals of life, jested himself into disgrace, into prison, into +contempt, into the basest employment--that of a libeller tacked on to a +party. He was a mimic, too, to whom none could send a challenge; an +improvisatore, who beat Italians, Tyroleans, and Styrians hollow, sir, +hollow. And lastly--oh! shame of the shuffle-tongued--he was, too, a +punster. Yes, one who gloried in puns, a maker of pun upon pun, a man +whose whole wit ran into a pun as readily as water rushes into a hollow, +who could not keep out of a pun, let him loathe it or not, and who made +some of the best and some of the worst on record, but still--puns. + +If he was a wit withal, it was _malgre soi_, for fun, not for wit, was +his 'aspiration.' Yet the world calls him a wit, and he has a claim to +his niche. There were, it is true, many a man in his own set who had +more real wit. There were James Smith, Thomas Ingoldsby, Tom Hill, and +others. Out of his set, but of his time, there was Sydney Smith, ten +times more a wit: but Theodore could amuse, Theodore could astonish, +Theodore could be at home anywhere; he had all the impudence, all the +readiness, all the indifference of a jester, and a jester he was. + +Let any one look at his portrait, and he will doubt if this be the +king's jester, painted by Holbein, or Mr. Theodore Hook, painted by +Eddis. The short, thick nose, the long upper lip, the sensual, whimsical +mouth, the twinkling eyes, all belong to the regular maker of fun. Hook +was a certificated jester, with a lenient society to hear and applaud +him, instead of an irritable tyrant to keep him in order: and he filled +his post well. Whether he was more than a jester may well be doubted; +yet Coleridge, when he heard him, said: 'I have before in my time met +with men of admirable promptitude of intellectual power and play of wit, +which, as Stillingfleet says: + + "The rays of wit gild wheresoe'er they strike," + +but I never could have conceived such readiness of mind and resources of +genius to be poured out on the mere subject and impulse of the moment.' +The poet was wrong in one respect. Genius can in no sense be applied to +Hook, though readiness was his chief charm. + +The famous Theodore was born in the same year as Byron, 1788, the one on +the 22nd of January, the other on the 22nd of September; so the poet was +only nine months his senior. Hook, like many other wits, was a second +son. Ladies of sixty or seventy well remember the name of Hook as that +which accompanied their earliest miseries. It was in learning Hook's +exercises, or primers, or whatever they were called, that they first had +their fingers slapped over the piano-forte. The father of Theodore, no +doubt, was the unwitting cause of much unhappiness to many a young lady +in her teens. Hook _pere_ was an organist at Norwich. He came up to +town, and was engaged at Marylebone Gardens and at Vauxhall; so that +Theodore had no excuse for being of decidedly plebeian origin, and, Tory +as he was, he was not fool enough to aspire to patricianism. + +Theodore's family was, in real fact, Theodore himself. He made the name +what it is, and raised himself to the position he at one time held. Yet +he had a brother whose claims to celebrity are not altogether ancillary. +James Hook was fifteen years older than Theodore. After leaving +Westminster School he was sent to immortal Skimmery (St. Mary's Hall), +Oxford, which has fostered so many great men--and spoiled them. He was +advanced in the church from one preferment to another, and ultimately +became Dean of Worcester. The character of the reverend gentleman is +pretty well known, but it is unnecessary here to go into it farther. He +is only mentioned as Theodore's brother in this sketch.[12] He was a +dabbler in literature, like his brother, but scarcely to the same extent +a dabbler in wit. + +[12: Dr. James Hook, Dean of Worcester, was father to Dr. Walter +Farquhar Hook, now the excellent Dean of Chichester, late Vicar of +Leeds.] + +The younger son of 'Hook's Exercises' developed early enough a taste for +ingenious lying--so much admired in his predecessor--Sheridan, He +'fancied himself' a genius, and therefore, from school-age, not amenable +to the common laws of ordinary men. Frequenters of the now fashionable +prize-ring--thanks to two brutes who have brought that degraded pastime +into prominent notice--will hear a great deal about a man 'fancying +himself.' It is common slang and heeds little explanation. Hook 'fancied +himself' from an early period, and continued to 'fancy himself,' in +spite of repeated disgraces, till a very mature age. At Harrow, he was +the contemporary, but scarcely the friend, of Lord Byron. No two +characters could have been more unlike. Every one knows, more or less, +what Byron's was; it need only be said that Hook's was the reverse of it +in every respect. Byron felt where Hook laughed. Byron was morbid where +Hook was gay. Byron abjured with disgust the social vices to which he +was introduced; Hook fell in with them. Byron indulged in vice in a +romantic way; Hook in the coarsest. There is some excuse for Byron, much +as he has been blamed. There is little or no excuse for Hook, much as +his faults have been palliated. The fact is that goodness of heart will +soften, in men's minds, any or all misdemeanours. Hook, in spite of many +vulgar witticisms and cruel jokes, seems to have had a really good +heart. + +I have it on the authority of one of Hook's most intimate friends, that +he was capable of any act of kindness, and by way of instance of his +goodness of heart, I am told by the same person that he on one occasion +quitted all his town amusements to solace the spirit of a friend in the +country who was in serious trouble. I, of course, refrain from giving +names: but the same person informs me that much of his time was devoted +in a like manner, to relieving, as far as possible, the anxiety of his +friends, often, indeed, arising from his own carelessness. It is due to +Hook to make this impartial statement before entering on a sketch of his +'Sayings and Doings,' which must necessarily leave the impression that +he was a heartless man. + +Old Hook, the father, soon perceived the value of his son's talents; +and, determined to turn them to account, encouraged his natural +inclination to song-writing. At the age of sixteen Theodore wrote a kind +of comic opera, to which his father supplied the music. This was called +'The Soldier's Return.' It was followed by others, and young Hook, not +yet out of his teens, managed to keep a Drury Lane audience alive, as +well as himself and family. It must be remembered, however, that Liston +and Matthews could make almost any piece amusing. The young author was +introduced behind the scenes through his father's connection with the +theatre, and often played the fool under the stage while others were +playing it for him above it, practical jokes being a passion with him +which he developed thus early. These tricks were not always very +good-natured, which may be said of many of his jokes out of the theatre. + +He soon showed evidence of another talent, that of acting as well as +writing pieces. Assurance was one of the main features of his character, +and to it he owed his success in society; but it is a remarkable fact, +that on his first appearance before an audience he entirely lost all his +nerve, turned pale, and could scarcely utter a syllable. He rapidly +recovered, however, and from this time became a favourite performer in +private theatricals, in which he was supported by Mathews and Mrs. +Mathews, and some amateurs who were almost equal to any professional +actors. His attempts were, of course, chiefly in broad farce and roaring +burlesque, in which his comic face, with its look of mock gravity, and +the twinkle of the eyes, itself excited roars of laughter. Whether he +would have succeeded as well in sober comedy or upon public boards may +well be doubted. Probably he would not have given to the profession that +careful attention and entire devotion that are necessary to bring +forward properly the highest natural talents. It is said that for a long +time he was anxious to take to the stage as, a profession, but, +perhaps--as the event seems to show--unfortunately for him, he was +dissuaded from what his friends must have thought a very rash step, and +in after years he took a violent dislike to the profession. Certainly +the stage could not have offered more temptations than did the society +in which he afterwards mixed; and perhaps under any circumstances Hook, +whose moral education had been neglected, and whose principles were +never very good, would have lived a life more or less vicious, though he +might not have died as he did. + +Hook, however, was not long in coming very prominently before the public +in another capacity. Of all stories told about him, none are more common +or more popular than those which relate to his practical jokes and +hoaxes. Thank heaven, the world no longer sees amusement in the misery +of others, and the fashion of such clever performance is gone out. It is +fair, however, to premise, that while the cleverest of Hook's hoaxes +were of a victimizing character, a large number were just the reverse, +and his admirers affirm, not without some reason, that when he had got a +dinner out of a person whom he did not know, by an ingenious lie, +admirably supported, he fully paid for it in the amusement he afforded +his host and the ringing metal of his wit. As we have all been +boys--except those that were girls--and not all of us very good boys, we +can appreciate that passion for robbery which began with orchards and +passed on to knockers. It is difficult to sober middle-age to imagine +what entertainment there can be in that breach of the eighth +commandment, which is generally regarded as innocent. As Sheridan +swindled in fun, so Hook, as a young man, robbed in fun, as hundreds of +medical students and others have done before and since. Hook, however, +was a proficient in the art, and would have made a successful +'cracksman' had he been born in the Seven Dials. He collected a complete +museum of knockers, bell-pulls, wooden Highlanders, barbers' poles, and +shop signs of all sorts. On one occasion he devoted a whole fortnight to +the abstraction of a golden eagle over a shop window, by means of a +lasso. A fellow dilettante in the art had confidentially informed him of +its whereabouts, adding that he himself despaired of ever obtaining it. +At length Hook invited his friend to dinner, and on the removal of the +cover of what was supposed to be the joint, the work of art appeared +served up and appropriately garnished. Theodore was radiant with +triumph; but the friend, probably thinking that there ought to be honour +among thieves, was highly indignant at being thus surpassed. + +Another achievement of this kind was the robbery of a life-sized +Highlander, who graced the door of some unsuspecting tobacconist. There +was little difficulty in the mere displacement of the figure; the +troublesome part of the business was to get the bare legged Celt home to +the museum, where probably many a Lilliputian of his race was already +awaiting him. A cloak, a hat, and Hook's ready wit effected the +transfer. The first was thrown over him, the second set upon his +bonneted head, and a passing hackney coach hailed by his captor, who +before the unsuspecting driver could descend, had opened the door, +pushed in the prize, and whispered to Jehu, 'My friend--very respectable +man but rather tipsy.' How he managed to get him out again at the end of +the journey we are not told. + +Hook was soon a successful and valuable writer of light pieces for the +stage. But farces do not live, and few of Hook's are now favourites with +a public which is always athirst for something new. The incidents of +most of the pieces--many of them borrowed from the French--excited +laughter by their very improbability; but the wit which enlivened them +was not of a high order, and Hook, though so much more recent than +Sheridan, has disappeared before him. + +But his hoaxes were far more famous than his collection of curiosities, +and quite as much to the purpose; and the imprudence he displayed in +them was only equalled by the quaintness of the humour which suggested +them. Who else would have ever thought, for instance, of covering a +white horse with black wafers, and driving it in a gig along a Welsh +high-road, merely for the satisfaction of being stared at? It was almost +worthy of Barnum. Or who, with less assurance, could have played so +admirably on the credulity of a lady and daughters fresh from the +country as he did, at the trial of Lord Melville? The lady, who stood +next to him, was, naturally, anxious to understand the proceedings, and +betrayed her ignorance at once by a remark which she made to her +daughter about the procession of the Lords into the House. When the +bishops entered in full episcopal costume, she applied to Hook to know +who were 'those gentlemen?' 'Gentlemen,' quoth Hook, with charming +simplicity; 'ladies, I think you mean; at any rate, those are the +dowager peeresses in their own right.' Question followed question as the +procession came on, and Theodore indulged his fancy more and more. At +length the Speaker, in full robes, became the subject of inquiry. 'And +pray, sir, who is that fine looking person?'--'That, ma'am, is Cardinal +Wolsey,' was the calm and audacious reply. This was too much even for +Sussex; and the lady drew herself up in majestic indignation. 'We know +better than that, sir,' she replied: 'Cardinal Wolsey has been dead many +a good year.' Theodore was unmoved. 'No such thing, my dear madam,' he +answered, without the slightest sign of perturbation: 'I know it has +been generally reported so in the country, but without the slightest +foundation; the newspapers, you know, will say anything.' + +But the hoax of hoaxes, the one which filled the papers of the time for +several days, and which, eventually, made its author the very prince of +hoaxsters, if such a term can be admitted, was that of Berners Street. +Never, perhaps, was so much trouble expended, or so much attention +devoted, to so frivolous an object. In Berners Street there lived an +elderly lady, who, for no reason that can be ascertained, had excited +the animosity of the young Theodore Hook, who was then just of age. Six +weeks were spent in preparation, and three persons engaged in the +affair. Letters were sent off in every direction, and Theodore Hook's +autograph, if it could have any value, must have been somewhat low in +the market at that period, from the number of applications which he +wrote. On the day in question he and his accomplices seated themselves +at a window in Berners Street, opposite to that unfortunate Mrs. +Tottenham, of No 54, and there enjoyed the fun. Advertisements, +announcements, letters, circulars, and what not, had been most freely +issued, and were as freely responded to. A score of sweeps, all 'invited +to attend professionally,' opened the ball at a very early hour, and +claimed admittance, in virtue of the notice they had received. The +maid-servant had only just time to assure them that all the chimneys +were clean, and their services were not required, when some dozen of +coal-carts drew up as near as possible to the ill-fated house. New +protestations, new indignation. The grimy and irate coalheavers were +still being discoursed with, when a bevy of neat and polite individuals +arrived from different quarters, bearing each under his arm a splendid +ten-guinea wedding-cake. The maid grew distracted; her mistress was +single, and had no intention of doubling herself; there must be some +mistake; the confectioners were dismissed, in a very different humour to +that with which they had come. But they were scarcely gone when crowds +began to storm the house, all 'on business.' Rival doctors met in +astonishment and disgust, prepared for an _accouchement_; undertakers +stared one another mutely in the face, as they deposited at the door +coffins made to order--elm or oak--so many feet and so many inches; the +clergymen of all the neighbouring parishes, high church or low church, +were ready to minister to the spiritual wants of the unfortunate +moribund, but retired in disgust when they found that some forty +fishmongers had been engaged to purvey 'cod's head and lobsters' for a +person professing to be on the brink of the grave. + +The street now became the scene of fearful distraction. Furious +tradesmen of every kind were ringing the house-bell, and rapping the +knocker for admittance--such, at least, as could press through the crowd +as far as the house. Bootmakers arrived with Hessians and +Wellingtons--'as per order'--or the most delicate of dancing-shoes for +the sober old lady; haberdashers had brought the last new thing in +evening dress, 'quite the fashion,' and 'very chaste:' hat-makers from +Lincoln and Bennett down to the Hebrew vendor in Marylebone Lane, +arrived with their crown-pieces; butchers' boys, on stout little nags, +could not get near enough to deliver the legs of mutton which had been +ordered; the lumbering coal-carts 'still stopped the way.' A crowd--the +easiest curiosity in the world to collect--soon gathered round the +motley mob of butchers, bakers, candlestick-makers, and makers and +sellers of everything else that mortal can want; the mob thronged the +pavement, the carts filled the road, and soon the carriages of the noble +of the land dashed up in all the panoply of state, and a demand was made +to clear the way for the Duke of Gloucester, for the Governor of the +Bank, the Chairman of the East India Company, and last, but, oh! not +least, the grandee whose successor the originator of the plot afterwards +so admirably satirized--the great Lord Mayor himself. The consternation, +disgust, and terror of the elderly female, the delight and chuckling of +Theodore and his accomplices, seated at a window on the opposite side of +the road, 'can be more easily imagined than described;' but what were +the feelings of tradesmen, professional men, gentlemen, noblemen, and +grand officials, who had been summoned from distant spots by artful +lures to No. 54, and there battled with a crowd in vain only to find +that there were hoaxed; people who had thus lost both time and money, +can be neither described nor imagined. It was not the idea of the +hoax--simple enough in itself--which was entitled to the admiration +accorded to ingenuity, but its extent and success, and the clever means +taken by the conspirators to insure the attendance of every one who +ought not to have been there. It was only late at night that the police +succeeded in clearing the street, and the dupes retired, murmuring and +vowing vengeance. Hook, however, gloried in the exploit, which he +thought 'perfect.' + +But the hoaxing dearest to Theodore--for there was something to be +gained by it---was that by which he managed to obtain a dinner when +either too hard-up to pay for one, or in the humour for a little +amusement. No one who has not lived as a bachelor in London and been +reduced---in respect of coin--to the sum of twopence-halfpenny, can tell +how excellent a strop is hunger to sharpen wit upon. We all know that + + 'Mortals with stomachs can't live without dinner;' + +and in Hook's day the substitute of 'heavy teas' was not invented. +Necessity is very soon brought to bed, when a man puts his fingers into +his pockets, finds them untenanted, and remembers that the only friend +who would consent to lend him five shillings is gone out of town; and +the infant, Invention, presently smiles into the nurse's face. But it +was no uncommon thing in those days for gentlemen to invite themselves +where they listed, and stay as long as they liked. It was only necessary +for them to make themselves really agreeable, and deceive their host in +some way or other. Hook's friend, little Tom Hill, of whom it was said +that he knew everybody's affairs far better than they did themselves, +was famous for examining kitchens about the hour of dinner, and quietly +selecting his host according to the odour of the viands. It is of him +that the old 'Joe Miller' is told of the 'haunch of venison.' Invited to +dinner at one house, he _happens_ to glance down into the kitchen of the +next, and seeing a tempting haunch of venison on the spit, throws over +the inviter, and ingratiates himself with his neighbour, who ends by +asking him to stay to dinner. The fare, however, consisted of nothing +more luxurious than an Irish stew, and the disappointed guest was +informed that he had been 'too cunning by half,' inasmuch as the venison +belonged to his original inviter, and had been cooked in the house he +was in by kind permission, because the chimney of the owner's kitchen +smoked. + +The same principle often actuated Theodore; and, indeed, there are few +stories which can be told of this characteristic of the great frolicker, +which have not been told a century of times. + +For instance: two young men are strolling, towards 5 P.M., in the then +fashionable neighbourhood of Soho; the one is Terry, the actor--the +other, Hook, the actor, for surely he deserves the title. They pass a +house, and sniff the viands cooking underground. Hook quietly announces +his intention of dining _there_. He enters, is admitted and announced by +the servant, mingles with the company, and is quite at home before he is +perceived by the host. At last the _denouement_ came; the dinner-giver +approached the stranger, and with great politeness asked his name. +'Smith' was, of course, the reply, and reverting to mistakes made by +servants in announcing, &c., 'Smith' hurried off into an amusing story, +to put his host in good humour. The conversation that followed is taken +from 'Ingoldsby':-- + +'But, really, my dear sir,' the host put in, 'I think the mistake on the +present occasion does not originate in the source you allude to; I +certainly did not anticipate the honour of Mr. Smith's company to-day.' + +'No, I dare say not. You said _four_ in your note, I know, and it is +now, I see, a quarter past five; but the fact is, I have been detained +in the City, as I was going to explain--' + +'Pray,' said the host, 'whom do you suppose you are addressing?' + +'Whom? why Mr. Thompson, of course, old friend of my father. I have not +the pleasure, indeed, of being personally known to you, but having +received your kind invitation yesterday,' &c. &c. + +'No, sir, my name is not Thompson, but Jones,' in highly indignant +accents. + +'Jones!' was the well-acted answer: 'why, surely, I cannot have--yes I +must--good heaven! I see it all. My _dear_ sir, what an unfortunate +blunder; wrong house--what must you think of such an intrusion? I am +really at a loss for words in which to apologize; you will permit me to +retire at present, and to-morrow--' + +'Pray, don't think of retiring,' rejoined the host, taken with the +appearance and manner of the young man. 'Your friend's table must have +been cleared long ago, if, as you say, four was the hour named, and I am +too happy to be able to offer you a seat at mine.' + +It may be easily conceived that the invitation had not to be very often +repeated, and Hook kept the risible muscles of the company upon the +constant stretch, and paid for the entertainment in the only coin with +which he was well supplied. + +There was more wit, however, in his visit to a retired watchmaker, who +had got from government a premium of L10,000 for the best chronometer. +Hook was very partial to journeys in search of adventure; a gig, a +lively companion, and sixpence for the first turnpike being generally +all that was requisite; ingenuity supplied the rest. It was on one of +these excursions, that Hook and his friend found themselves in the +neighbourhood of Uxbridge, with a horse and a gig, and not a sixpence to +be found in any pocket. Now a horse and gig are property, but of what +use is a valuable of which you cannot dispose or deposit at a +pawnbroker's, while you are prevented proceeding on your way by that +neat white gate with the neat white box of a house at its side? The only +alternative left to the young men was to drive home again, dinnerless, a +distance of twenty miles, with a jaded horse, or to find gratuitous +accommodation for man and beast. In such a case Sheridan would simply +have driven to the first inn, and by persuasion or stratagem contrived +to elude payment, after having drunk the best wine and eaten the best +dinner the house could afford. Hook was really more refined, as well as +bolder in his pillaging. + +The villa of the retired tradesman was perceived, and the gig soon drew +up before the door. The strangers were ushered in to the watchmaker, and +Hook, with great politeness and a serious respectful look, addressed +him. He said that he felt he was taking a great liberty--so he was--but +that he could not pass the door of a man who had done the country so +much service by the invention of what must prove the most useful and +valuable instrument, without expressing to him the gratitude which he, +as a British subject devoted to his country's good, could not but feel +towards the inventor, &c. &c. The flattery was so delicately and so +seriously insinuated, that the worthy citizen could only receive it as +an honest expression of sincere admiration. The Rubicon was passed; a +little lively conversation, artfully made attractive by Hook, followed, +and the watchmaker was more and more gratified. He felt, too, what an +honour it would be to entertain two real gentlemen, and remarking that +they were far from town, brought out at last the longed-for invitation, +which was, of course, declined as out of the question. Thereupon the old +gentleman became pressing: the young strangers were at last prevailed +upon to accept it, and very full justice they did to the larder and +cellar of the successful chronometer-maker. + +There is nothing very original in the act of hoaxing, and Hook's way of +getting a hackney-coach without paying for it, was, perhaps, suggested +by Sheridan's, but was more laughable. Finding himself in the vehicle, +and knowing that there was nothing either in his purse or at home to pay +the fare, he cast about for expedients, and at last remembered the +address of an eminent surgeon in the neighbourhood. He ordered the +coachman to drive to his house and knock violently at the door, which +was no sooner opened than Hook rushed in, terribly agitated, demanded to +see the doctor, to whom in a few incoherent and agitated sentences, he +gave to understand that his wife needed his services, immediately, being +on the point of becoming a mother. + +'I will start directly,' replied the surgeon; 'I will order my carriage +at once.' + +'But, my dear sir, there is not a moment to spare. I have a coach at the +door, jump into that.' + +The surgeon obeyed. The name and address given were those of a +middle-aged spinster of the most rigid virtue. We can imagine her +indignation, and how sharply she rung the bell, when the surgeon had +delicately explained the object of his visit, and how eagerly he took +refuge in the coach. Hook had, of course, walked quietly away in the +meantime, and the Galenite had to pay the demand of Jehu. + +The hoaxing stories of Theodore Hook are numberless. Hoaxing was the +fashion of the day, and a childish fashion too. Charles Mathews, whose +face possessed the flexibility of an acrobat's body, and who could +assume any character or disguise on the shortest notice, was his great +confederate in these plots. The banks of the Thames were their great +resort. At one point there was Mathews talking gibberish in a disguise +intended to represent the Spanish Ambassador, and actually deceiving the +Woolwich authorities by his clever impersonation. At another, there was +Hook landing uninvited with his friends upon the well-known, +sleek-looking lawn of a testy little gentleman, drawing out a note-book +and talking so authoritatively about the survey for a canal, to be +undertaken by Government, that the owner of the lawn becomes frightened, +and in his anxiety attempts to conciliate the mighty self-made official +by the offer of dinner--of course accepted. + +[Illustration: THEODORE HOOK'S ENGINEERING FROLIC.] + +Then the _Arcades ambo_ show off their jesting tricks at Croydon fair, a +most suitable place for them. On one occasion Hook personates a madman, +accusing Mathews, 'his brother,' of keeping him out of his rights and in +his custody. The whole fair collects around them, and begins to +sympathise with Hook, who begs them to aid in his escape from his +'brother.' A sham escape and sham capture take place, and the party +adjourn to the inn, where Mathews, who had been taken by surprise by the +new part suddenly played by his confederate, seized upon a hearse, which +drew up before the inn, on its return from a funeral, persuaded the +company to bind the 'madman,' who was now becoming furious, and who +would have deposited him in the gloomy vehicle, if he had not succeeded +in snapping his fetters, and so escaped. In short, they were two boys, +with the sole difference, that they had sufficient talent and experience +of the world to maintain admirably the parts they assumed. + +But a far more famous and more admirable talent in Theodore than that of +deception was that of improvising. The art of improvising belongs to +Italy and the Tyrol. The wonderful gift of ready verse to express +satire, and ridicule, seems, as a rule, to be confined to the +inhabitants of those two lands. Others are, indeed, scattered over the +world, who possess this gift, but very sparsely. Theodore Hook stands +almost alone in this country as an improviser. Yet to judge of such of +his verses as have been preserved, taken down from memory or what not, +the grand effect of them--and no doubt it _was_ grand--must have been +owing more to his manner and his acting, than to any intrinsic value in +the verses themselves, which are, for the most part, slight, and devoid +of actual wit, though abounding in puns. Sheridan's testimony to the +wonderful powers of the man is, perhaps, more valuable than that of any +one else, for he was a good judge both of verse and of wit. One of +Hook's earliest displays of his talent was at a dinner given by the +Drury Lane actors to Sheridan at the Piazza Coffee House in 1808. Here, +as usual, Hook sat down to the piano, and touching off a few chords, +gave verse after verse on all the events of the entertainment, on each +person present, though he now saw many of them for the first time, and +on anything connected with the matters of interest before them. Sheridan +was delighted, and declared that he could not have believed such a +faculty possible if he had not witnessed its effects: that no +description 'could have convinced him of so peculiar an instance of +genius,' and so forth. + +One of his most extraordinary efforts in this line is related by Mr. +Jerdan. A dinner was given by Mansell Reynolds to Lockhart, Luttrell, +Coleridge, Hook, Tom Hill, and others. The grown-up schoolboys, pretty +far gone in Falernian, of a home-made, and very homely vintage, amused +themselves by breaking the wine-glasses, till Coleridge was set to +demolish the last of them with a fork thrown at it from the side of the +table. Let it not be supposed that any teetotal spirit suggested this +inconoclasm, far from it--the glasses were too small, and the poets, the +wits, the punsters, the jesters, preferred to drink their port out of +tumblers. After dinner Hook gave one of his songs which satirized +successively, and successfully, each person present. He was then +challenged to improvise on any given subject, and by way of one as far +distant from poetry as could be, _cocoa-nut oil_ was fixed upon. +Theodore accepted the challenge; and after a moment's consideration +began his lay with a description of the Mauritius, which he knew so +well, the negroes dancing round the cocoa-nut tree, the process of +extracting the oil, and so forth, all in excellent rhyme and rhythm, if +not actual poetry. Then came the voyage to England, hits at the Italian +warehousemen, and so on, till the oil is brought into the very lamp +before them in that very room, to show them with the light it feeds and +make them able to break wine-glasses and get drunk from tumblers. This +we may be sure Hook himself did, for one, and the rest were probably not +much behind him. + +In late life this gift of Hook's--improvising I mean, not getting +intoxicated--was his highest recommendation in society, and at the same +time his bane. Like Sheridan, he was ruined by his wonderful natural +powers. It can well be imagined that to improvise in the manner in which +Hook did it, and at a moment's notice, required some effort of the +intellect. This effort became greater as circumstances depressed his +spirits more and more and yet with every care upon his mind, he was +expected, wherever he went, to amuse the guests with a display of his +talent. He could not do so without stimulants, and rather than give up +society, fell into habits of drinking, which hastened his death. + +We have thrown together the foregoing anecdotes of Hook, irrespective of +time, in order to show what the man's gifts were, and what his title to +be considered a wit. We must proceed more steadily to a review of his +life. Successful as Hook had proved as a writer for the stage, he +suddenly and without any sufficient cause rushed off into another branch +of literature, that of novel-writing. His first attempt in this kind of +fiction was 'The Man of Sorrow,' published under the _nom de plume_ of +_Alfred Allendale_. This was not, as its name would seem to imply, a +novel of pathetic cast, but the history of a gentleman whose life from +beginning to end is rendered wretched by a succession of mishaps of the +most ludicrous but improbable kind. Indeed Theodore's novels, like his +stage-pieces, are gone out of date in an age so practical that even in +romance it will not allow of the slightest departure from reality. Their +very style was ephemeral, and their interest could not outlast the +generation to amuse which they were penned. This first novel was written +when Hook was one-and-twenty. Soon after he was sent to Oxford, where he +had been entered at St. Mary's Hall, more affectionately known by the +nickname of 'Skimmery.' No selection could have been worse. Skimmery +was, at that day, and, until quite recently, a den of thieves, where +young men of fortune and folly submitted to be pillaged in return for +being allowed perfect licence, as much to eat as they could possibly +swallow, and far more to drink than was at all good for them. It has +required all the enterprise of the present excellent Principal to +convert it into a place of sober study. It was then the most +'gentlemanly' residence in Oxford; for a gentleman in those days meant a +man who did nothing, spent his own or his father's guineas with a +brilliant indifference to consequences, and who applied his mind solely +to the art of frolic. It was the very place where Hook would be +encouraged instead of restrained in his natural propensities, and had he +remained there he would probably have ruined himself and his father long +before he had put on the sleeves. + +At the matriculation itself he gave a specimen of his 'fun.' + +When asked, according to the usual form, 'if he was willing to sign the +Thirty-nine Articles,' he replied, 'Certainly, sir, _forty_ if you +please.' The gravity of the stern Vice-Chancellor was upset, but as no +Oxford Don can ever pardon a joke, however good, Master Theodore was +very nearly being dismissed, had not his brother, by this time a +Prebendary of Winchester, and 'an honour to his college, sir,' +interceded in his favour. + +The night before, he had given a still better specimen of his +effrontery. He had picked up a number of old Harrovians, with whom he +had repaired to a tavern for song, supper, and sociability, and as usual +in such cases, in the lap of Alma Mater, the babes became sufficiently +intoxicated, and not a little uproarious. Drinking in a tavern is +forbidden by Oxonian statutes, and one of the proctors happening to pass +in the street outside, was attracted into the house by the sound of +somewhat unscholastic merriment. The effect can be imagined. All the +youths were in absolute terror, except Theodore, and looked in vain for +some way to escape. The wary and faithful 'bulldogs' guarded the +doorway; the marshal, predecessor of the modern omniscient Brown, +advanced respectfully behind the proctor into the room, and passing a +penetrating glance from one youth to the other, all of whom--except +Theodore again--he knew by sight--for that is the pride and pleasure of +a marshal--mentally registered their names in secret hopes of getting +half-a-crown a-piece to forget them again. + +No mortal is more respectful in his manner of accosting you than an +Oxford proctor, for he may make a mistake, and a mistake may make him +very miserable. When, for instance, a highly respectable lady was the +other day lodged, in spite of protestations, in the 'Procuratorial +Rooms,' and there locked up on suspicion of being somebody very +different, the over-zealous proctor who had ordered her incarceration +was sued for damages for L300, and had to pay them too! Therefore the +gentleman in question most graciously and suavely inquired of Mr. +Theodore Hook-- + +'I beg your pardon, sir, but are you a member of this university?'--the +usual form. + +'No, sir, I am not. Are you?' + +The suavity at once changed to grave dignity. The proctor lifted up the +hem of his garment, which being of broad velvet, with the selvage on it, +was one of the insignia of his office, and sternly said,--'You see this, +sir.' + +'Ah!' said Hook, cool as ever, and quietly feeling the material, which +he examined with apparent interest, 'I see; Manchester velvet: and may I +take the liberty, sir, of inquiring how much you have paid per yard for +the article?' + +A roar of laughter from all present burst forth with such vehemence that +it shot the poor official, red with suppressed anger, into the street +again, and the merrymakers continued their bout till the approach of +midnight, when they were obliged to return to their respective colleges. + +Had Theodore proceeded in this way for several terms, no doubt the +outraged authorities would have added his name to the list of the great +men whom they have expelled from time to time most unprophetically. As +it was, he soon left the groves of Academus, and sought those of Fashion +in town. His matriculation into this new university was much more +auspicious; he was hailed in society as already fit to take a degree of +bachelor of his particular arts, and ere long his improvising, his fun, +his mirth--as yet natural and over-boiling--his wicked punning, and his +tender wickedness, induced the same institution to offer him the grade +of 'Master' of those arts. In after years he rose to be even 'Doctor,' +and many, perhaps, were the minds diseased to which his well-known mirth +ministered. + +It was during this period that some of his talents were displayed in the +manner we have described, though his great fame as an improvisatore was +established more completely in later days. Yet he had already made +himself a name in that species of wit--not a very high one--which found +favour with the society of that period. We allude to imitation, 'taking +off,' and punning. The last contemptible branch of wit-making, now +happily confined to 'Punch,' is as old as variety of language. It is not +possible with simple vocabularies, and accordingly is seldom met with in +purely-derived languages. Yet we have Roman and Greek puns; and English +is peculiarly adapted to this childish exercise, because, being made up +of several languages, it necessarily contains many words which are like +in sound and unlike in meaning. Punning is, in fact, the vice of English +wit, the temptation of English mirth-makers, and, at last, we trust, the +scorn of English good sense. But in Theodore's day it held a high place, +and men who had no real wit about them could twist and turn words and +combinations of words with great ingenuity and much readiness, to the +delight of their listeners. Pun-making was a fashion among the +conversationists of that day, and took the place of better wit. Hook was +a disgraceful punster, and a successful one. He strung puns together by +the score--nothing more easy--in his improvised songs and conversation. +Take an instance from his quiz on the march of intellect:-- + + 'Hackney-coachmen from _Swift_ shall reply, if you feel + Annoyed at being needlessly shaken; + And butchers, of course, be flippant from _Steele_, + And pig-drivers well versed in _Bacon_. + From _Locke_ shall the blacksmiths authority brave, + And gas-men cite _Coke_ at discretion; + Undertakers talk _Gay_ as they go to the _grave_, + And watermen _Rowe_ by profession.' + +I have known a party of naturally stupid people produce a whole century +of puns one after another, on any subject that presented itself, and I +am inclined to think that nothing can, at the same time, be more +nauseous, or more destructive to real wit. Yet Theodore's strength lay +in puns, and when shorn of them, the Philistines might well laugh at his +want of strength. Surely his title to wit does not lie in that +direction. + +However, he amused, and that gratis; and an amusing man makes his way +anywhere if he have only sufficient tact not to abuse his privileges. +Hook grew great in London society for a time, and might have grown +greater if a change had not come. + +He had supported himself, up to 1812, almost entirely by his pen: and +the goose-quill is rarely a staff, though it may sometimes be a +walking-stick. It was clear that he needed--what so many of us need and +cannot get--a certainty. Happy fellow! he might have begged for an +appointment for years in vain, as many another does, but it fell into +his lap, no one knows how, and at four-and-twenty Mr. Theodore Edward +Hook was made treasurer to the Island of Mauritius, with a salary of +L2,000 per annum. This was not to be, and was not, despised. In spite of +climate, mosquitoes, and so forth, Hook took the money and sailed. + +We have no intention of entering minutely upon his conduct in this +office, which has nothing to do with his character as a wit. There are a +thousand and one reasons for believing him guilty of the charges brought +against him, and a thousand and one for supposing him guiltless. Here +was a young man, gay, jovial, given to society entirely, and not at all +to arithmetic, put into a very trying and awkward position--native +clerks who would cheat if they could, English governors who would find +fault if they could, a disturbed treasury, an awkward currency, liars +for witnesses, and undeniable evidence of defalcation. In a word, an +examination was made into the state of the treasury of the island, and a +large deficit found. It remained to trace it home to its original +author. + +Hook had not acquired the best character in the island. Those who know +the official dignity of a small British colony can well understand how +his pleasantries must have shocked those worthy big-wigs who, exalted +from Pump Court, Temple, or Paradise Row, Old Brompton, to places of +honour and high salaries, rode their high horses with twice the +exclusiveness of those 'to the manner born.' For instance, Hook was +once, by a mere chance, obliged to take the chair at an official dinner, +on which occasion the toasts proposed by the chairman were to be +accompanied by a salute from guns without. Hook went through the list, +and seemed to enjoy toast-drinking so much that he was quite sorry to +have come to the end of it, and continued, as if still from the list, to +propose successively the health of each officer present. The gunners +were growing quite weary, but having their orders, dared not complain. +Hook was delighted, and went on to the amazement and amusement of all +who were not tired of the noise, each youthful sub, taken by surprise, +being quite gratified at the honour done him. At last there was no one +left to toast; but the wine had taken effect, and Hook, amid roars of +laughter inside, and roars of savage artillery without, proposed the +health of the waiter who had so ably officiated. This done, he bethought +him of the cook, who was sent for to return thanks; but the artillery +officer had by this time got wind of the affair, and feeling that more +than enough powder had been wasted on the health of gentlemen who were +determined to destroy it by the number of their potations, took on +himself the responsibility of ordering the gunners to stop. + +On another occasion he incurred the displeasure of the governor, General +Hall, by fighting a duel--fortunately as harmless as that of Moore and +Jeffrey-- + + 'When Little's leadless pistol met his eye, + And Bow-street myrmidons stood laughing by,' + +as Byron says. The governor was sensible enough to wish to put down the +'Gothic appeal to arms,' and was therefore the more irate. + +These circumstances must be taken into consideration in Hook's favour in +examining the charge of embezzlement. It must also be stated that the +information of the deficit was sent in a letter to the governor by a man +named Allan, chief clerk in the Treasury, who had, for irregular +conduct, been already threatened with dismissal. Allan had admitted that +he had known of the deficit for fifteen months, and yet he had not, till +he was himself in trouble, thought of making it known to the proper +authorities. Before his examination, which of course followed, could be +concluded, Allan committed suicide. Now, does it not, on the face of it, +seem of the highest probability that this man was the real delinquent, +and that knowing that Hook had all the responsibility, and having taken +fair precautions against his own detection, he had anticipated a +discovery of the affair by a revelation, incriminating the treasurer? +_Quien sabe_;--dead men tell no tales. + +The chest, however, was examined, and the deficit found far greater yet +than had been reported. Hook could not explain, could not understand it +at all; but if not criminal, he had necessarily been careless. He was +arrested, thrown into prison, and by the first vessel despatched to +England to take his trial, his property of every kind having been sold +for the Government. Hook, in utter destitution, might be supposed to +have lost his usual spirits, but he could not resist a joke. At St. +Helena he met an old friend going out to the Cape, who, surprised at +seeing him on his return voyage after a residence of only five years, +said: 'I hope you are not going home for your health.'--'Why,' said +Theodore, 'I am sorry to say they think there is something wrong in the +_chest._ Something wrong in the chest' became henceforward the ordinary +phrase in London society in referring to Hook's scrape. + +Arrived in England, he was set free, the Government here having decided +that he could not be criminally tried; and thus Hook, guilty or not, had +been ruined and disgraced for life for simple carelessness. True, the +custody of a nation's property makes negligence almost criminal; but +that does not excuse the punishment of a man before he is tried. + +He was summoned, however, to the Colonial Audit Board, where he +underwent a trying examination; after which he was declared to be in the +debt of Government: a writ of extent was issued against him; nine months +were passed in that delightful place of residence--a Sponging-house, +which he then exchanged for the 'Rules of the Bench'--the only rules +which have no exception. From these he was at last liberated, in 1825, +on the understanding that he was to repay the money to Government if at +any time he should be in a position to do so. + +His liberation was a tacit acknowledgment of his innocence of the charge +of robbery; his encumberment with a debt caused by another's +delinquencies was, we presume, a signification of his responsibility and +some kind of punishment for his carelessness. Certainly it was hard upon +Hook, that, if innocent, he should not have gone forth without a stain +on his character for honesty; and it was unjust, that, if guilty, he +should not have been punished. The judgment was one of those compromises +with stern justice which are seldom satisfactory to either party. + +The fact was that, guilty or not guilty, Hook had been both incompetent +and inconsiderate. Doubtless he congratulated himself highly on +receiving, at the age of twenty-five, an appointment worth L2,000 a year +in the paradise of the world; but how short-sighted his satisfaction, +since this very appointment left him some ten years later a pauper to +begin life anew with an indelible stain on his character. It was absurd +to give so young a man such a post; but it was absolutely wrong in Hook +not to do his utmost to carry out his duties properly. Nay, he had +trifled with the public money in the same liberal--perhaps a _more_ +liberal--spirit as if it had been his own--made advances and loans here +and there injudiciously, and taken little heed of the consequences. +Probably, at this day, the common opinion acquits Hook of a designed and +complicated fraud; but common opinion never did acquit him of +misconduct, and even by his friends this affair was looked upon with a +suspicion that preferred silence to examination. + +But why take such pains to exonerate Hook from a charge of robbery, when +he was avowedly guilty of as bad a sin, of which the law took no +cognizance, and which society forgave far more easily than it could have +done for robbing the State? Soon after his return from the Mauritius, he +took lodgings in the cheap, but unfashionable neighbourhood of Somers +Town. Here, in the moment of his misfortune, when doubting whether +disgrace, imprisonment, or what not awaited him, he sought solace in the +affection of a young woman, of a class certainly much beneath his, and +of a character unfit to make her a valuable companion to him. Hook had +received little moral training, and had he done so, his impulses were +sufficiently strong to overcome any amount of principle. With this +person--to use the modern slang which seems to convert a glaring sin +into a social misdemeanour--'he formed a connection.' In other words, he +destroyed her virtue. Hateful as such an act is, we must, before we can +condemn a man for it without any recommendation to mercy, consider a +score of circumstances which have rendered the temptation stronger, and +the result almost involuntary. Hook was not a man of high moral +character--very far from it--but we need not therefore suppose that he +sat down coolly and deliberately, like a villain in a novel, to effect +the girl's ruin. But the Rubicon once passed, how difficult is the +retreat! There are but two paths open to a man, who would avoid living a +life of sin: the one, to marry his victim; the other, to break off the +connection before it is too late. The first is, of course, the more +proper course; but there are cases where marriage is impossible. From +the latter a man of any heart must shrink with horror. Yet there _are_ +cases, even, where the one sin will prove the least--where she who has +loved too well may grieve bitterly at parting, yet will be no more open +to temptation than if she had never fallen. Such cases are rare, and it +is not probable that the young person with whom Hook had become +connected would have retrieved the fatal error. She became a mother, and +there was no retreat. It is clear that Hook ought to have married her. +It is evident that he was selfish and wrong not to do so;--yet he shrank +from it, weakly, wickedly, and he was punished for his shrinking. He had +sufficient feeling not to throw his victim over, yet he was content to +live a life of sin, and to keep her in such a life. This is perhaps the +blackest stain on Hook's character. When Fox married, in consequence of +a similar connection, he 'settled down,' retrieved his early errors, and +became a better man, morally, than he had ever been. Hook _ought_ to +have married. It was the cowardly dread of public opinion that deterred +him from doing so, and, in consequence, he was never happy, and felt +that this connection was a perpetual burden to him. + +Wrecked and ruined, Hook had no resource but his literary talents, and +it is to be deplored that he should have prostituted these to serve an +ungentlemanly and dishonourable party in their onslaught upon an +unfortunate woman. Whatever may be now thought of the queen of 'the +greatest gentleman'--or _roue_--of Europe, those who hunted her down +will never be pardoned, and Hook was one of those. We have cried out +against an Austrian general for condemning a Hungarian lady to the lash, +and we have seen, with delight, a mob chase him through the streets of +London and threaten his very life. But we have not only pardoned, but +even praised, our favourite wit for far worse conduct than this. Even if +we allow, which we do not, chat the queen was one half as bad as her +enemies, or rather her husband's parasites, would make her out, we +cannot forgive the men who, shielded by their incognito, and perfectly +free from danger of any kind, set upon a woman with libels, invectives, +ballads, epigrams, and lampoons, which a lady could scarcely read, and +of which a royal lady, and many an English gentlewoman, too, were the +butts. + +The vilest of all the vile papers of that day was the 'John Bull,' now +settled down to a quiet periodical. Perhaps the real John Bull, heavy, +good-natured lumberer as he is, was never worse represented than in this +journal which bore his name, but had little of his kindly spirit. Hook +was its originator, and for a long time its main supporter. Scurrility, +scandal, libel, baseness of all kinds formed the fuel with which it +blazed, and the wit, bitter, unflinching, unsparing, which puffed the +flame up, was its chief recommendation. + +No more disgraceful climax was ever reached by a disgraceful dynasty of +profligates than that which found a King of England--long, as Regent, +the leader of the profligate and degraded--at war with his injured +Queen. None have deserved better the honest gratitude of their country +than those who, like Henry Brougham, defended the oppressed woman in +spite of opposition, obloquy, and ridicule. + +But we need not go deeply into a history so fresh in the minds of all, +as that blot which shows John Bull himself upholding a wretched +dissipated monarch against a wife, who, whatever her faults, was still a +woman, and whatever her spirit--for she had much of it, and showed it +grandly at need--was still a lady. Suffice it to say that 'John Bull' +was the most violent of the periodicals that attacked her, and that +Theodore Hook, no Puritan himself, was the principal writer in that +paper. + +If you can imagine 'Punch' turned Conservative, incorporated in one +paper with the 'Morning Herald,' so that a column of news was printed +side by side with one of a jocular character, and these two together +devoted without principle to the support of a party, the attack of +Whiggism, and an unblushing detraction of the character of one of our +princesses, you can form some idea of what 'John Bull' was in those +days. There is, however, a difference: 'Punch' attacks public +characters, and ridicules public events; 'John Bull' dragged out the +most retired from their privacy, and attacked them with calumnies for +which, often, there was no foundation. Then, again, 'Punch' is not +nearly so bitter as was 'John Bull:' there is not in the 'London +Charivari' a determination to say everything that spite can invent +against any particular set or party; there is a good nature, still, in +master 'Punch.' It was quite the reverse in 'John Bull,' established for +one purpose, and devoted to that. Yet the wit in Theodore's paper does +not rise much higher than that of our modern laughing philosopher. + +Of Hook's contributions the most remarkable was the 'Ramsbottom +Letters,' in which Mrs. Lavinia Dorothea Ramsbottom describes all the +_memory billions_ of her various tours at home and abroad, always, of +course, with more or less allusion to political affairs. The 'fun' of +these letters is very inferior to that of 'Jeames' or of the 'Snob +Papers,' and consists more in Malaprop absurdities and a wide range of +bad puns, than in any real wit displayed in them. Of the style of both, +we take an extract anywhere:-- + +'Oh! Mr. Bull, Room is raley a beautiful place. We entered it by the +Point of Molly, which is just like the Point and Sally at Porchmouth, +only they call Sally there Port, which is not known in Room. The Tiber +is a nice river, it looks yellow, but it does the same there as the +Thames does here. We hired a carry-lettz and a cocky-olly, to take us to +the Church of Salt Peter, which is prodigious big; in the centre of the +pizarro there is a basilisk very high, on the right and left two +handsome foundlings; and the farcy, as Mr. Fulmer called it, is +ornamented with collateral statutes of some of the Apostates.' + +We can quite imagine that Hook wrote many of these letters when excited +by wine. Some are laughable enough, but the majority are so deplorably +stupid, reeking with puns and scurrility, that when the temporary +interest was gone, there was nothing left to attract the reader. It is +scarcely possible to laugh at the Joe-Millerish mistakes, the old world +puns, and the trite stories of Hook 'remains.' Remains! indeed; they had +better have remained where they were. + +Besides prose of this kind, Hook contributed various jingles--there is +no other name for them--arranged to popular tunes, and intended to +become favourites with the country people. These like the prose +effusions, served the purpose of an hour, and have no interest now. +Whether they were ever really popular remains to be proved. Certes, they +are forgotten now, and long since even in the most Conservative corners +of the country. Many of these have the appearance of having been +originally _recitati_, and their amusement must have depended chiefly on +the face and manner of the singer--Hook himself; but in some he +displayed that vice of rhyming which has often made nonsense go down, +and which is tolerable only when introduced in the satire of a 'Don +Juan' or the first-rate mimicry of 'Rejected Addresses.' Hook had a most +wonderful facility in concocting out-of-the-way rhymes, and a few verses +from his song on Clubs will suffice for a good specimen of his talent:-- + + 'If any man loves comfort, and has little cash to buy it, he + Should get into a crowded club--a most select society; + While solitude and mutton-cutlets serve _infelix uxor_, he + May have his club (Like Hercules), and revel there in luxury. + Bow, wow, wow, &c. + + 'Yes, clubs knock houses on the head; e'en Hatchett's can't demolish + them; + Joy grieves to see their magnitude, and Long longs to abolish them. + The inns are out; hotels for single men scarce keep alive on it; + While none but houses that are in the family way thrive on it. + Bow, wow, wow, &c. + + 'There's first the Athenaeum Club, so wise, there's not a man of it, + That has not sense enough for six (in fact, that is the plan of it); + The very waiters answer you with eloquence Socratical; + And always place the knives and forks in order mathematical. + Bow, wow, wow, &c. + + * * * * * + + 'E'en Isis has a house in town, and Cam abandons her city. + The master now hangs out at the Trinity University. + + * * * * * + + 'The Union Club is quite superb; its best apartment daily is, + The lounge of lawyers, doctors, merchants, beaux, _cum multis aliis_. + + * * * * * + + 'The Travellers are in Pall Mall, and smoke cigars so cosily, + And dream they climb the highest Alps, or rove the plains of Moselai. + + * * * * * + + 'These are the stages which all men propose to play their parts upon, + For _clubs_ are what the Londoners have clearly set their _hearts_ + upon. + Bow, wow, wow, tiddy-iddy-iddy-iddy, bow, wow, wow, &c. + +This is one of the harmless ballads of 'Bull.' Some of the political +ones are scarcely fit to print in the present day. We cannot wonder that +ladies of a certain position gave out that they would not receive any +one who took in this paper. It was scurrilous to the last degree, and +Theodore Hook was the soul of it. He preserved his incognito so well, +that in spite of all attempts to unearth him, it was many years before +he could be certainly fixed upon as a writer in its columns. He even +went to the length of writing letters and articles against himself, in +order to disarm suspicion. + +Hook now lived and thrived purely on literature. He published many +novels--gone where the bad novels go, and unread in the present day, +unless in some remote country town, which boasts only a very meagre +circulating library. Improbability took the place of natural painting in +them; punning supplied that of better wit; and personal portraiture was +so freely used, that his most intimate friends--old Mathews, for +instance--did not escape. + +Meanwhile Hook, making a good fortune, returned to his convivial life, +and the enjoyment--if enjoyment it be--of general society. He 'threw out +his bow window' on the strength of his success with 'John Bull,' and +spent much more than he had. He mingled freely in all the London circles +of thirty years ago, whose glory is still fresh in the minds of most of +us, and everywhere his talent as an improvisatore, and his +conversational powers, made him a general favourite. + +Unhappy popularity for Hook! He, who was yet deeply in debt to the +nation--who had an illegitimate family to maintain, who owed in many +quarters more than he could ever hope to pay--was still fool enough to +entertain largely, and receive both nobles and wits in the handsomest +manner. Why did he not live quietly? why not, like Fox, marry the +unhappy woman whom he had made the mother of his children, and content +himself with trimming vines and rearing tulips? Why, forsooth? because +he was Theodore Hook, thoughtless and foolish to the last. The jester of +the people must needs be a fool. Let him take it to his conscience that +he was not as much a knave. + +In his latter years Hook took to the two dissipations most likely to +bring him into misery--play and drink. He was utterly unfitted for the +former, being too gay a spirit to sit down and calculate chances. He +lost considerably, and the more he lost the more he played. Drinking +became almost a necessity with him. He had a reputation to keep up in +society, and had not the moral courage to retire from it altogether. +Writing, improvising, conviviality, play, demanded stimulants. His mind +was overworked in every sense. He had recourse to the only remedy, and +in drinking he found a temporary relief from anxiety, and a short-lived +sustenance. There is no doubt that this man, who had amused London +circles for many years, hastened his end by drinking. + +It is not yet thirty years since Theodore Hook died. He left the world +on August the 24th, 1841, and by this time he remains in the memory of +men only as a wit that was, a punster, a hoaxer, a sorry jester, with an +ample fund of fun, but not as a great man in any way. Allowing +everything for his education--the times he lived in, and the unhappy +error of his early life--we may admit that Hook was not, in character, +the worst of the wits. He died in no odour of sanctity, but he was not a +blasphemer or reviler, like others of this class. He ignored the bond of +matrimony, yet he remained faithful to the woman he had betrayed; he was +undoubtedly careless in the one responsible office with which he was +intrusted, yet he cannot be taxed, taking all in all, with deliberate +peculation. His drinking and playing were bad--very bad. His improper +connection was bad--very bad; but perhaps the worst feature in his +career was his connection with 'John Bull,' and his ready giving in to a +system of low libel. There is no excuse for this but the necessity of +living; but Hook, had he retained any principle, might have made enough +to live upon in a more honest manner. His name does, certainly, not +stand out well among the wits of this country, but after all, since all +were so bad, Hook may be excused as not being the worst of them. +_Requiescat in pace_. + + + +SYDNEY SMITH. + + +The 'Wise Wit.'--Oddities of the Father.--Verse-making at Winchester.-- +Curate Life on Salisbury Plain.--Old Edinburgh.--Its Social and +Architectural Features.--Making Love Metaphysically.--The Old Scottish +Supper.--The Men of Mark passing away---The Band of Young Spirits.-- +Brougham's Early Tenacity.--Fitting up Conversations.--'Old School' +Ceremonies.--The Speculative Society.--A Brilliant Set.--Sydney's Opinion +of his Friends.--Holland House.--Preacher at the 'Foundling.'--Sydney's +'Grammar of Life.'--The Picture Mania.--A Living Comes at Last.--The +wit's Ministry.--The Parsonage House at Foston-le-Clay.--Country Quiet. +The Universal Scratcher.--Country Life and Country Prejudice.--The Genial +Magistrate.--Glimpse of Edinburgh Society.--Mrs. Grant of Laggan. A +Pension Difficulty.--Jeffrey and Cockburn.--Craigcrook.--Sydney Smith's +Cheerfulness.--His Rheumatic Armour.--No Bishopric.--Becomes Canon of St. +Paul's.--Anecdotes of Lord Dudley.--A Sharp Reproof.--Sydney's +Classification of Society.--Last Strokes of Humour. + + +Smith's reputation--to quote from Lord Cockburn's 'Memorial of +Edinburgh'--'here, then, was the same as it has been throughout his +life, that of a wise wit.' A wit he was, but we must deny him the +reputation of being a beau. For that, nature, no less than his holy +office, had disqualified him. Who that ever beheld him in a London +drawing-room, when he went to so many dinners that he used to say he was +a walking patty--who could ever miscall him a beau? How few years have +we numbered since one perceived the large bulky form in canonical +attire--the plain, heavy face, large, long, unredeemed by any +expression, except that of sound hard sense--and thought, 'can this be +the Wit?' How few years is it since Henry Cockburn, hating London, and +coming but rarely to what he called the 'devil's drawing room,' stood +near him, yet apart, for he was the most diffident of men; his wonderful +luminous eyes, his clear, almost youthful, vivid complexion, contrasting +brightly with the gray, pallid, prebendal complexion of Sydney? how +short a time since Francis Jeffery, the smallest of great men, a beau in +his old age, a wit to the last, stood hat in hand to bandy words with +Sydney ere he rushed off to some still gayer scene, some more +fashionable circle: yet they are all gone--gone from sight, living in +memory alone. + +Perhaps it was time: they might have lived, indeed, a few short years +longer; we might have heard their names amongst us; listened to their +voices; gazed upon the deep hazel, ever-sparkling eyes, that constituted +the charm of Cockburn's handsome face, and made all other faces seem +tame and dead: we might have marvelled at the ingenuity, the happy turns +of expression, the polite sarcasm of Jeffrey; we might have revelled in +Sydney Smith's immense natural gift of fun, and listened to the 'wise +wit,' regretting with Lord Cockburn, that so much worldly wisdom seemed +almost inappropriate in one who should have been in some freer sphere +than within the pale of holy orders: we might have done this, but the +picture might have been otherwise. Cockburn, whose intellect rose, and +became almost sublime, as his spirit neared death, might have sunk into +the depression of conscious weakness; Jeffery might have repeated +himself, or turned hypochondriacal; Sydney Smith have grown garrulous: +let us not grieve; they went in their prime of intellect, before one +quality of mind had been touched by the frostbite of age. + +Sydney Smith's life is a chronicle of literary society. He was born in +1771, and he died in 1845. What a succession of great men does that +period comprise! Scott, Jeffrey, Mackintosh, Dugald Stewart, Homer, +Brougham and Cockburn were his familiars--a constellation which has set, +we fear, for ever. Our world presents nothing like it: we must look +back, not around us, for strong minds, cultivated up to the nicest +point. Our age is too diffused, too practical for us to hope to witness +again so grand a spectacle. + +From his progenitors Sydney Smith inherited one of his best gifts, great +animal spirits--the only spirits one wants in this racking life of ours; +and his were transmitted to him by his father. That father, Mr. Robert +Smith, was odd as well as clever. His oddities seem to have been coupled +with folly but that of Sydney was soberized by thought, and swayed by +intense common sense. The father had a mania for buying and altering +places: one need hardly say that he spoiled them. Having done so, he +generally sold them; and _nineteen_ various places were thus the source +of expense to him, and of injury to the pecuniary interests of his +family. + +This strange spendthrift married a Miss Olier, a daughter of a French +emigrant, from Languedoc. Every one may remember the charming attributes +given by Miss Kavanagh, in her delicious tale, 'Nathalie,' to the French +women of the South. This Miss Olier seems to have realized all one's +ideas of the handsome, sweet-tempered, high-minded Southrons of _la +belle France_. To her Sydney Smith traced his native gaiety; her beauty +did not, certainly, pass to him as well as to some of her other +descendants. When Talleyrand was living in England as an emigrant, on +intimate terms with Robert Smith, Sydney's brother, or Bobus, as he was +called by his intimates, the conversation turned one day on hereditary +beauty. Bobus spoke of his mother's personal perfections: _'Ah, mon +ami,'_ cried Talleyrand, _c'etait apparemment, monsieur: volre pere qui +n'etait pas bien.'_ + +This Bobus was the schoolfellow at Eton of Canning and Frere; and with +John Smith and those two youths, wrote the 'Microcosm.' Sydney, on the +other hand, was placed on the Foundation, at Winchester, which was then +a stern place of instruction for a gay, spirited, hungry boy. Courtenay, +his younger brother, went with him, but ran away twice. To owe one's +education to charity was, in those days, to be half starved. Never was +there enough, even of the coarsest food, to satisfy the boys, and the +urchins, fresh from home, were left to fare as they might. 'Neglect, +abuse, and vice were,' Sydney used to say, 'the pervading evils of +Winchester; and the system of teaching, if one may so call it, savoured +of the old monastic narrowness.... I believe, when a boy at school, I +made above ten thousand Latin verses, and no man in his senses would +dream of ever making another in after-life. So much for life and time +wasted.' The verse-inciting process is, nevertheless, remorselessly +carried on during three years more at Oxford and is much oftener the +test of patient stupidity than of aspiring talent, Yet of what +stupendous importance it is in the attainment of scholarships and +prizes; and how zealous, how tenacious, are dons and 'coaches' in +holding to that which far higher classics, the Germans, regard with +contempt! + +Sydney's proficiency promoted him to be captain of the school, and he +left Winchester for New College, Oxford---one of the noblest and most +abused institutions then of that grand university. Having obtained a +scholarship, as a matter of course, and afterwards a fellowship, he +remarked that the usual bumpers of port wine at college were as much the +order of the day among the Fellows as Latin verses among the +undergraduates. We may not, however, picture to ourselves Sydney as +partaking of the festivities of the common room; with more probability +let us imagine him wandering with steady gait, even _after_ Hall--a +thing not even then or now certain in colleges--in those evergreen, +leafy, varied gardens, flanked by that old St. Peter's church on the one +side, and guarded by the high wall, once a fortification, on the other. +He was poor, and therefore safe, for poverty is a guardian angel to an +undergraduate, and work may protect even the Fellow from utter +deterioration. + +He was turned out into the world by his father with his hundred a year +from the Fellowship, and never had a farthing from the old destroyer of +country-seats afterwards. He never owed a sixpence; nay, he paid a debt +of thirty pounds, which Courtenay, who had no _iron_ in his character, +had incurred at Winchester, and had not the courage to avow. The next +step was to choose a profession. The bar would have been Sydney's +choice; but the church was the choice of his father. It is the cheapest +channel by which a man may pass into genteel poverty; 'wit and +independence do not make bishops,' as Lord Cockburn remarks. We do not, +however, regard, as he does, Sydney Smith as 'lost' by being a +churchman. He was happy, and made others happy; he was good, and made +others good. Who can say the same of a successful barrister, or of a +popular orator? His first sphere was in a curacy on Salisbury Plain; one +of his earliest clerical duties was to marry his brother Robert (a +barrister) to Miss Vernon, aunt to Lord Lansdowne. 'All I can tell you +of the marriage,' Sydney wrote to his mother, 'is that he cried, she +cried, I cried.' It was celebrated in the library at Bowood, where +Sydney so often enchanted the captivating circle afterwards by his wit. + +Nothing could be more gloomy than the young pastor's life on Salisbury +Plain: 'the first and poorest pauper of the hamlet,' as he calls a +curate, he was seated down among a few scattered cottages on this vast +flat; visited even by the butcher's cart only once a week from +Salisbury; accosted by few human beings; shunned by all who loved social +life. But the probation was not long; and after being nearly destroyed +by a thunder-storm in one of his rambles, he quitted Salisbury Plain, +after two years, for a more genial scene. + +There was an hospitable squire, a Mr. Beach, living in Smith's parish; +the village of Netherhaven, near Amesbury. Mr. Beach had a son; the +quiet Sundays at the Hall were enlivened by the curate's company at +dinner, and Mr. Beach found his guest both amusing and sensible, and +begged him to become tutor to the young squire. Smith accepted; and went +away with his pupil, intending to visit Germany. The French Revolution +was, however, at its height. Germany was impracticable, and 'we were +driven,' Sydney wrote to his mother, 'by stress of politics, into +Edinburgh.' + +This accident,--this seeming accident,--was the foundation of Sydney +Smith's opportunities; not of his success, for that his own merits +procured, but of the direction to which his efforts were applied. He +would have been eminent, wherever destiny had led him; but he was thus +made to be useful in one especial manner; 'his lines had, indeed, fallen +in pleasant places.' + +Edinburgh, in 1797, was not, it is almost needless to say, the Edinburgh +of 1860. An ancient, picturesque, high-built looking city, with its +wynds and closes, it had far more the characteristics of an old French +_ville de province_ than of a northern capital. The foundation-stone of +the new College was laid in 1789, but the building was not finished +until more than forty years afterwards. The edifice then stood in the +midst of fields and gardens. 'Often.' writes Lord Cockburn, 'did we +stand to admire the blue and yellow crocuses rising through the clean +earth in the first days of spring, in the house of Doctor Monro (the +second), whose house stood in a small field entering from Nicolson +Street, within less than a hundred yards from the college.' + +The New Town was in progress when Sydney Smith and his pupil took refuge +in 'Auld Reekie.' With the rise of every street some fresh innovation in +manners seemed also to begin. Lord Cockburn, wedded as he was to his +beloved Reekie, yet unprejudiced and candid on all points, ascribes the +change in customs to the intercourse with the English, and seems to date +it from the Union. Thus the overflowing of the old town into fresh +spaces, 'implied,' as he remarks, 'a general alteration of our habits.' + +As the dwellers in the Faubourg St. Germain regard their neighbours +across the Seine, in the Faubourg St. Honore, with disapproving eyes, so +the sojourners in the Canongate and the Cowgate considered that the +inundation of modern population vulgarized their 'prescriptive +gentilities.' Cockburn's description of a Scottish assembly in the olden +time is most interesting. + +'For example, Saint Cecilia's Hall was the only public resort of the +musical; and besides being our most selectly fashionable place of +amusement, was the best and most beautiful concert-room I have ever +seen. And there have I myself seen most of our literary and fashionable +gentlemen, predominating with their side curls and frills, and ruffles, +and silver buckles; and our stately matrons stiffened in hoops, and +gorgeous satin; and our beauties with high-heeled shoes, powdered and +pomatumed hair, and lofty and composite head-dresses. All this was in +the Cowgate; the last retreat now-a-days of destitution and disease. The +building still stands, through raised and changed. When I last saw it, +it seemed to be partly an old-clothesman's shop and partly a brazier's.' +Balls were held in the beautiful rooms of George Square, in spite of the +'New Town piece of presumption,' that is, an attempt to force the +fashionable dancers of the reel into the George Street apartments. + +'And here,' writes Lord Cockburn, looking back to the days when he was +that 'ne'er-do-weel' Harry Cockburn, 'were the last remains of the +ball-room discipline of the preceding age. Martinet dowagers and +venerable beaux acted as masters and mistresses of ceremonies, and made +all the preliminary arrangements. No couple could dance unless each +party was provided with a ticket prescribing the precise place, in the +precise dance. If there was no ticket, the gentleman or the lady was +dealt with as an intruder, and turned out of the dance. If the ticket +had marked upon it---say for a country-dance, the figures, 3, 5; this +meant that the holder was to place himself in the 3rd dance, and 5th +from the top; and if he was anywhere else, he was set right or excluded. +And the partner's ticket must correspond. Woe on the poor girl who with +ticket 2, 7, was found opposite a youth marked 5, 9! It was flirting +without a licence, and looked very ill, and would probably be reported +by the ticket director of that dance to the mother.' + +All this had passed away; and thus the aristocracy of a few individuals +was ended; and society, freed from some of its restraints, flourished in +another and more enlightened way than formerly. + +There were still a sufficient number of peculiarities to gratify one who +had an eye to the ludicrous. Sydney Smith soon discovered that it is a +work of time to impart a humorous idea to a true Scot. 'It requires,' he +used to say, 'a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch +understanding.' 'They are so embued with metaphysics, that they even +make love metaphysically. I overheard a young lady of my acquaintance, +at a dance in Edinburgh, exclaim in a sudden pause of the music, "What +you say, my Lord, is very true of love in the _abstract_, but,--" here +the fiddlers began fiddling furiously, and the rest was lost.' He was, +however, most deeply touched by the noble attribute of that nation which +retains what is so rare--the attribute of being true friends. He did +ample justice to their kindliness of heart. 'If you meet with an +accident,' he said, 'half Edinburgh immediately flocks to your doors to +inquire after your _pure_ hand, or your _pure_ foot.' 'Their temper,' he +observed, 'stands anything but an attack on their climate; even Jeffrey +cannot shake off the illusion that myrtles flourish at Craig Crook.' The +sharp reviewer stuck to his myrtle allusions, and treated Smith's +attempts with as much contempt as if he had been a 'wild visionary, who +had never breathed his caller air,' nor suffered under the rigours of +his climate, nor spent five years in 'discussing metaphysics and +medicine in that garret end of the earth,--that knuckle end of +England--that land of Calvin, oat-cakes, and sulphur,' as Smith termed +Scotland. + +During two years he braved the winters, in which he declared +hackney-coaches were drawn by four horses on account of the snow; where +men were blown flat down on the face by the winds; and where even +'experienced Scotch fowls did not dare to cross the streets, but sidled +along, tails aloft, without venturing to encounter the gale.' He +luxuriated, nevertheless, in the true Scotch supper, than which nothing +more pleasant and more unwholesome has ever been known in Christendom. +Edinburgh is said to have been the only place where people dined twice a +day. The writer of this memoir is old enough to remember the true +Scottish _Attic_ supper before its final 'fading into wine and water,' +as Lord Cockburn describes its decline. 'Suppers,' Cockburn truly says, +'are cheaper than dinners,' and Edinburgh, at that time, was the +cheapest place in Great Britain. Port and sherry were the staple wines: +claret, duty free in Scotland until 1780, was indeed beginning to be a +luxury; it was no longer the ordinary beverage, as it was when as +Mackenzie, the author of the 'Man of Feeling,' described--it used, upon +the arrival of a cargo, to be sent through the town on a cart with a +horse before it, so that every one might have a sample, by carrying a +jug to be filled for sixpence: still even at the end of the eighteenth +century it was in frequent use. Whisky toddy and plotty (red wine mulled +with spices) came into the supper-room in ancient flagons or _stoups_ +after a lengthy repast of broiled chickens, roasted moorfowl, pickled +mussels, flummery, and numerous other good things had been discussed by +a party who ate as if they had not dined that day. 'We will eat,' Lord +Cockburn used to say after a long walk, 'a profligate supper,'--a supper +without regard to discretion, or digestion; and he usually kept his +word. + +In Edinburgh, Sydney Smith formed the intimate acquaintance of Lord +Jeffrey, and that acquaintance ripened into a friendship only closed by +death. The friendship of worthy, sensible men he looked upon as one of +the greatest pleasures in life. + +The 'old suns,' Lord Cockburn tells us, 'were setting when the band of +great thinkers and great writers who afterwards concocted the "Edinburgh +Review," were rising into celebrity.' Principal Robertson, the +historian, had departed this life in 1793, a kindly old man. With +beaming eyes underneath his frizzed and curled wig, and a trumpet tied +with a black ribbon to the button-hole of his coat, for he was deaf, +this most excellent of writers showed how he could be also the most +zealous of diners. Old Adam Ferguson, the historian of Rome, had 'set,' +also: one of the finest specimens of humanity had gone from among his +people in him. Old people, not thirty years ago, delighted to tell you +how 'Adam,' when chaplain to the Black Watch, that glorious 42nd, +refused to retire to his proper place, the rear, during an action, but +persisted in being engaged in front. He was also gone; and Dugald +Stewart filled his vacant place in the professorship of moral +philosophy. Dr. Henry, the historian, was also at rest; after a long +laborious life, and the compilation of a dull, though admirable History +of England, the design of which, in making a chapter on arts, manners, +and literature separate from the narrative, appears to have suggested to +Macaulay his inimitable disquisition on the same topics. Dr. Henry +showed to a friend a pile of books which he had gone through, merely to +satisfy himself and the world as to what description of trousers was +worn by the Saxons. His death was calm as his life. 'Come out to me +directly,' he wrote to his friend, Sir Harry Moncrieff: 'I have got +something to do this week; I have got to die.' + +It was in 1801, that Dugald Stewart began his course of lectures on +political economy. Hitherto all public favour had been on the side of +the Tories, and independence of thought was a sure way to incur +discouragement from the Bench, in the Church, and from every Government +functionary. Lectures on political economy were regarded as innovations; +but they formed a forerunner of that event which had made several +important changes in our literary and political hemisphere: the +commencement of the 'Edinburgh Review.' This undertaking was the work of +men who were separated from the mass of their brother-townsmen by their +politics; their isolation as a class binding them the more closely +together by links never broken, in a brotherhood of hope and ambition, +to which the natural spirits of Sydney Smith, of Cockburn, and of +Jeffrey, gave an irresistible charm. + +Among those who the most early in life ended a career of promise was +Francis Horner. He was the son of a linen-draper in Edinburgh; or, as +the Scotch call it, following the French, a merchant. Homer's best linen +for sheets, and table-cloths, and all the _under garments_ of +housekeeping, are still highly esteemed by the trade. + +'My desire to know Horner,' Sydney Smith states, 'arose from my being +cautioned against him by some excellent and feeble-minded people to whom +I brought letters of introduction, and who represented him as a person +of violent political opinions.' Sydney Smith interpreted this to mean +that Horner was a man who thought for himself; who loved truth better +than he loved Dundas (Lord Melville), then the tyrant of Scotland. 'It +is very curious to consider,' Sydney Smith wrote, in addressing Lady +Holland, in 1817, 'in what manner Horner gained, in so extraordinary a +degree, the affections of such a number of persons of both sexes, all +ages, parties, and ranks in society; for he was not remarkably good +tempered, nor particularly lively and agreeable; and an inflexible +politician on the unpopular side. The causes are, his high character for +probity, honour, and talents; his fine countenance; the benevolent +interest he took in the concerns of all his friends; his simple and +gentlemanlike manners; his untimely death.' 'Grave, studious, +honourable, kind, everything Horner did,' says Lord Cockburn, 'was +marked by thoughtfulness and kindness;' a beautiful character, which was +exhibited but briefly to his contemporaries, but long remembered after +his death. + +Henry Brougham was another of the Edinburgh band of young spirits. He +was educated in the High School under Luke Fraser, the tutor who trained +Walter Scott and Francis Jeffrey. Brougham used to be pointed out 'as +the fellow who had beat the master.' He had dared to differ with Fraser, +a hot pedant, on some piece of Latinity. Fraser, irritated, punished the +rebel, and thought the matter ended. But the next day 'Harry,' as they +called him, appeared, loaded with books, renewed the charge, and forced +Luke to own that he was beaten. 'It was then,' says Lord Cockburn, 'that +I first saw him.' + +After remaining two years in Edinburgh, Sydney Smith went southwards to +marry a former schoolfellow of his sister Maria's--a Miss Pybus, to whom +he had been attached and engaged at a very early period of his life. The +young lady, who was of West Indian descent, had some fortune; but her +husband's only stock, on which to begin housekeeping, consisted of six +silver tea-spoons, worn away with use. One day he rushed into the room +and threw these attenuated articles into her lap--'There, Kate, I give +you all my fortune, you lucky girl!' + +With the small _dot_, and the thin silver-spoons, the young couple set +up housekeeping in the 'garret end of the earth.' Their first difficulty +was to know how money could be obtained to begin with, for Mrs. Smith's +small fortune was settled on herself by her husband's wish. Two rows of +pearls had been given her by her thoughtful mother. These she converted +into money, and obtained for them L500. Several years afterwards, when +visiting the shop at which she sold them, with Miss Vernon and Miss Fox, +Mrs. Smith saw her pearls, every one of which she knew. She asked what +was the price. 'L1,500,' was the reply. + +The sum, however, was all important to the thrifty couple. It distanced +the nightmare of the poor and honest,--debt. L750 was presented by Mr. +Beach, in gratitude for the care of his son, to Smith. It was invested +in the funds, and formed the nucleus of future savings,--'_Ce n'est que +le premier pas qui coute_' is a trite saying. '_C'est le premier pas qui +gagne_, might be applied to this and similar cases. A little +daughter--Lady Holland, the wife of the celebrated physician, Sir Henry +Holland--was sent to bless the sensible pair. Sydney had wished that she +might be born with one eye, so that he might never lose her; +nevertheless, though she happened to be born with two, he bore her +secretly from the nursery, a few hours after her birth, to show her in +triumph to the future Edinburgh Reviewers. + +The birth of the 'Edinburgh Review' quickly followed that of the young +lady. Jeffrey,--then an almost starving barrister, living in the eighth +or ninth flat of a house in Buccleuch Place,--Brougham, and Sydney Smith +were the triumvirate who propounded the scheme, Smith being the first +mover. He proposed a motto: 'Tenui Musam meditanum avenir:' We cultivate +literature on a little oatmeal; but this being too near the truth, they +took their motto from Publius Syrus; 'of whom,' said Smith, 'none of us +had, I am sure, read a single line.' To this undertaking Sydney Smith +devoted his talents for more than twenty-eight years. + +Meantime, during the brief remainder of his stay in Edinburgh, his +circumstances improved. He had done that which most of the clergy are +obliged to do--taken a pupil. He had now another, the son of Mr. Gordon, +of Ellon; for each of these young men he received L400 a year. He became +to them a father and a friend; he entered into all their amusements. One +of them saying that he could not find conversation at the balls for his +partners, 'Never mind,' cried Sydney Smith, 'I'll fit you up in five +minutes.' Accordingly he wrote down conversations for them amid bursts +of laughter. + +Thus happily did years, which many persons would have termed a season of +adversity, pass away. The chance which brought him to Edinburgh +introduced him to a state of society never likely to be seen again in +Scotland. Lord Cockburn's 'Memorials' afford an insight into manners, +not only as regarded suppers, but on the still momentous point, of +dinners. Three o'clock was the fashionable hour, so late as the +commencement of the present century. That hour, 'not without groans and +predictions,' became four--and four was long and conscientiously adhered +to. 'Inch by inch,' people yielded, and five continued to be the +standard polite hour from 1806 to 1820. 'Six has at length prevailed.' + +The most punctilious ceremony existed. When dinner was announced, a file +of ladies went first in strict order of precedence. 'Mrs. Colonel Such +an One;' 'Mrs. Doctor Such an One,' and so on. Toasts were _de rigueur_: +no glass of wine was to be taken by a guest without comprehending a +lady, or a covey of ladies. 'I was present,' says Lord Cockburn, 'when +the late Duke of Buccleuch took a glass of sherry by himself at the +table of Charles Hope, then Lord Advocate, and this was noticed as a +piece of ducal contempt.' Toasts, and when the ladies had retired, +_rounds_ of toasts, were drunk. 'The prandial nuisance,' Lord Cockburn +wrote, 'was horrible. But it was nothing to what followed.' + +At these repasts, though less at these than at boisterous suppers, a +frequent visitor at the same table with Sydney Smith was the illustrious +Sir James Mackintosh, a man to whose deep-thinking mind the world is +every day rendering justice. The son of a brave officer, Mackintosh was +born on the banks of Loch Ness: his mother, a Miss Fraser, was aunt to +Mrs. Fraser Tytler, wife of Lord Woodhouselee, one of the judges of the +Court of Session and mother of the late historian of that honoured name. + +Mackintosh had been studying at Aberdeen, in the same classes with +Robert Hall, whose conversation, he avowed, had a great influence over +his mind. He arrived in Edinburgh about 1784, uncertain to what +profession to belong; somewhat anxious to be a bookseller, in order to +revel in 'the paradise of books;' he turned his attention, however, to +medicine, and became a Brunonian, that is, a disciple of John Brown, the +founder of a theory which he followed out to the extent in practice. The +main feature of the now defunct system, which set scientific Europe in a +blaze, seems to have been a mad indulgence of the passions; and an +unbridled use of intoxicating liquors. Brown fell a victim to his vices. +Years after he had been laid in his grave, his daughter, Euphemia, being +in great indigence, received real kindness from Sir James and Lady +Mackintosh, the former of whom used to delight in telling the story of +her father's saying to her: 'Effy, bring me the mooderate stimulus of a +hoonderd draps o' laudanum in a glass o' brandy.' + +Mackintosh had not quitted Edinburgh when Sydney Smith reached it. Smith +became a member of the famous Speculative Society. Their acquaintance +was renewed years afterwards in London. Who can ever forget the small, +quiet dinners given by Mackintosh when living out of Parliament, and out +of office in Cadogan Place? Simple but genial were those repasts, +forming a strong contrast to the Edinburgh dinners of yore. He had then +long given up both the theory and practice of the Brunonians, and took +nothing but light French and German wines, and these in moderation. His +tall, somewhat high-shouldered, massive form; his calm brow, mild, +thoughtful; his dignity of manner; his gentleness to all; his vast +knowledge; his wonderful appreciation of excellence; his discrimination +of faults--all combined to form one of the finest specimens ever seen, +even in that illustrious period, of a philosopher and historian. + +Jeffrey and Cockburn were contrasts to one whom they honoured. Jeffrey, +'the greatest of British critics,' was eight years younger than +Mackintosh, having been born in 1773. He was the son of one of the +depute clerks to the Supreme Court, not an elevated position, though one +of great respectability. When Mackintosh and Sydney Smith first knew him +in Edinburgh, he was enduring, with all the impatience of his sensitive +nature, what he called 'a slow, obscure, philosophical starvation' at +the Scotch bar. + +'There are moments,' he wrote, 'when I think I could sell myself to the +ministers or to the devil, in order to get above these necessities.' +Like all men so situated, his depression came in fits. Short, spare, +with regular, yet _not_ aristocratic features;--speaking, brilliant, yet +_not_ pleasing eyes;--a voice consistent with that _mignon_ form;--a +somewhat precise and anxious manner, there was never in Jeffrey that +charm, that _abandon_, which rendered his valued friend, Henry Cockburn, +the most delightful, the most beloved of men, the very idol of his +native city. + +The noble head of Cockburn, bald, almost in youth, with its pliant, +refined features, and its fresh tint upon a cheek always clear, +generally high in colour, was a strong contrast to the rigid _petitesse_ +of Jeffrey's physiognomy; much more so to the large proportions of +Mackintosh; or to the ponderous, plain, and, later in life, swarthy +countenance of Sydney Smith. Lord Webb Seymour, the brother of the late +Duke of Somerset, gentle, modest, intelligent,--Thomas Thomson, the +antiquary,--and Charles and George Bell, the surgeon and the advocate,-- +Murray, afterwards Lord Murray, the generous pleader, who gave up to its +rightful heirs an estate left him by a client,--and Brougham--formed the +staple of that set now long since extinct. + +It was partially broken up by Sydney Smith's coming, in 1803, to London. +He there took a house in Doughty Street, being partial to legal society, +which was chiefly to be found in that neighbourhood. + +Here Sir Samuel Romilly, Mackintosh, Scarlett (Lord Abinger), the +eccentric and unhappy Mr. Ward, afterwards Lord Dudley, 'Conversation' +Sharp, Rogers, and Luttrell, formed the circle in which Sidney +delighted. He was still very poor, and obliged to sell the rest of his +wife's jewels; but his brother Robert allowed him L100 a year, and lent +him, when he subsequently removed into Yorkshire, L500. + +He had now a life of struggling, but those struggles were the lot of his +early friends also; Mackintosh talked of going to India as a lecturer; +Smith recommended Jeffrey to do the same. Happily, both had the courage +and the sense to await for better times at home; yet Smith's opinion of +Mackintosh was, that 'he never saw so theoretical a head which contained +so much practical understanding;' and to Jeffrey he wrote: + +'You want nothing to be a great lawyer, and nothing to be a great +speaker, but a deeper voice--slower and more simple utterance--more +humility of face and neck--and a greater contempt for _esprit_ than men +_who have so much_ in general attain to.' + +The great event of Sydney Smith's first residence in London was his +introduction at Holland House; in that 'gilded room which furnished,' as +he said, 'the best and most agreeable society in the world,' his +happiest hours were passed. John Allen, whom Smith had introduced to +Lord Holland was the peer's librarian and friend. Mackintosh, who Sydney +Smith thought only wanted a few bad qualities to get on in the world, +Rogers, Luttrell, Sheridan, Byron, were among the 'suns' that shone, +where Addison had suffered and studied. + +Between Lord Holland and Sydney Smith the most cordial friendship +existed; and the eccentric and fascinating Lady Holland was his constant +correspondent. Of this able woman, it was said by Talleyrand: '_Elle est +toute assertion; mais quand on demande la preuve c'est la son secret_' +Of Lord Holland, the keen diplomatist observed: '_Cest la bienveillance +meme, mais la bienveillance la plus perturbatrice, qu'on ait jamais +vue._' + +Lord Holland did not commit the error ascribed by Rogers, in his +Recollections, to Marlay, Bishop of Waterford, who when poor, with an +income of only L400 a year, used to give the best dinners possible; but, +when made a bishop, enlarged his table, and lost his fame-had no more +good company--there was an end of his enjoyment: he had lords and ladies +to his table--foolish people--foolish men--and foolish women--and there +was an end of him and us. 'Lord Holland selected his lords and ladies, +not for their rank, but for their peculiar merits or acquirements.' Then +even Lady Holland's oddities were amusing. When she wanted to get rid of +a fop, she used to say: 'I beg your pardon, but I wish you would sit a +little farther off; there is something on your handkerchief which I +don't quite like.' Or when a poor man happened to stand, after the +fashion of the lords of creation, with his back close to the +chimney-piece, she would cry out, 'Have the goodness, sir, to stir the +fire.' + +Lord Holland never asked any one to dinner, ('not even _me_,' says +Rogers, 'whom he had known so long,') without asking Lady Holland. One +day, shortly before his lordship's death, Rogers was coming out from +Holland House when he met him. 'Well, do you return to dinner?' I +answered. 'No, I have not been invited.' The precaution, in fact, was +necessary, for Lord Holland was so good-natured and hospitable that he +would have had a crowd daily at his table had he been left to himself. + +The death of Lord Holland completely broke up the unrivalled dinners, +and the subsequent evenings in the 'gilded chamber.' Lady Holland, to +whom Holland House was left for her life-time, declined to live there. +With Holland House, the mingling of aristocracy with talent; the +blending ranks by force of intellect; the assembling not only of all the +celebrity that Europe could boast, but of all that could enhance private +enjoyment, had ceased. London, the most intelligent of capitals, +possesses not one single great house in which pomp and wealth are made +subsidiary to the true luxury of intellectual conversation. + +On the morning of the day when Lord Holland's last illness began, these +lines were written by him, and found after his death on his +dressing-table:-- + + 'Nephew of Fox, and Friend of Grey, + Sufficient for my fame, + If those who know me best shall say + I tarnished neither name.' + +Of him his best friend, Sydney Smith, left a short but discriminative +character. 'There was never (amongst other things he says) a better +heart, or one more purified from all the bad passions--more abounding in +charity and compassion--or which seemed to be so created as a refuge to +the helpless and oppressed.' + +Meantime Sydney Smith's circumstances were still limited; L50 a year as +evening preacher to the Foundling Hospital was esteemed as a great help +by him. The writer of this memoir remembers an amusing anecdote related +of him at the table of an eminent literary character by a member of Lord +Woodhouselee's family, who had been desirous to obtain for Sydney the +patronage of the godly. To this end she persuaded Robert Grant and +Charles Grant (afterwards Lord Glenelg) to go to the Foundling to hear +him, she hoped to advantage; to her consternation he broke forth into so +familiar a strain, couched in terms so bordering on the jocose,--though +no one had deeper religious convictions than he had,--that the two +saintly brothers listened in disgust. They forgot how South let loose +the powers of his wit and sarcasm; and how the lofty-minded Jeremy +Taylor applied the force of humour to lighten the prolixity of argument. +Sydney Smith became, nevertheless, a most popular preacher; but the man +who prevents people from sleeping once a week in their pews is sure to +be criticised. + +Let us turn to him, however, as a member of society. His circle of +acquaintance was enlarged, not only by his visits to Holland House, but +by his lectures on moral philosophy at the Royal Institution. Sir Robert +Peel, not the most impressionable of men, but one whose cold shake of +the hand is said--as Sydney Smith said of Sir James Mackintosh--'to have +come under the genus _Mortmain_' was a very young man at the time when +Albemarle Street was crowded with carriages from one end of the street +to the other, in consequence of Sydney Smith's lectures; yet he declared +that he had never forgotten the effect given to the speech of Logan, the +Indian chief, by Sydney's voice and manner. + +His lectures produced a sum sufficient for Sydney to furnish a house in +Orchard Street. Doughty Street--raised to celebrity as having been the +residence, not only of Sydney Smith, but of Charles Dickens--was too far +for the _habitue_ of Holland House and the orator of Albemarle Street +long to sojourn there. In Orchard Street, Sydney enjoyed that domestic +comfort which he called 'the grammar of life;' delightful suppers, to +about twenty or thirty persons, who came and went as they pleased. A +great part of the same amusing and gifted set used to meet once a week +also at Sir James Mackintosh's, at a supper, which, though not exactly +Cowper's 'radish and an egg,' was simple, but plentiful--yet most +eagerly sought after. 'There are a few living,' writes Sydney Smith's +daughter, 'who can look back to them, and I have always found them do so +with a sigh of regret.' + +One night, a country cousin of Sydney Smith's was present at a supper. +'Now, Sydney,' whispered the simple girl, 'I know all these are very +remarkable people; do tell me who they are.'--'Oh, yes; there's +Hannibal,' pointing to a grave, dry, stern man, Mr. Whishaw; 'he lost +his leg in the Carthagenian war: there's Socrates,' pointing to +Luttrell: 'that,' he added, turning to Horner, 'is Solon.' + +Another evening, Mackintosh brought a raw Scotch cousin--an ensign in a +Highland regiment--with him. The young man's head could carry no idea of +glory except in regimentals. Suddenly, nudging Sir James, he whispered, +'Is that the great Sir Sydney Smith?'--'Yes, yes,' answered Sir James; +and instantly telling Sydney who he was supposed to be, the grave +evening preacher at the Foundling immediately assumed the character +ascribed to him, and acted the hero of Acre to perfection, fighting his +battles over again--even charging the Turks--whilst the young Scot was +so enchanted by the great Sir Sydney's condescension, that he wanted to +fetch the pipers of his regiment, and pipe to the great Sir Sydney, who +had never enjoyed the agonizing strains of the bagpipe. Upon this the +party broke up, and Sir James carried the Highlander off, lest he should +find out his mistake, and cut his throat from shame and vexation. One +may readily conceive Sydney Smith's enjoying this joke, for his spirits +were those of a boy: his gaiety was irresistible; his ringing laugh, +infectious; but it is difficult for those who knew Mackintosh in his +later years--the quiet, almost pensive invalid to realize in that +remembrance any trace of the Mackintosh of Doughty Street and Orchard +Street days. + +One day Sydney Smith came home with two hackney coaches full of +pictures, which he had picked up at an auction. His daughter thus tells +the story: 'Another day he came home with two hackney-coach loads of +pictures, which he had met with at an auction, having found it +impossible to resist so many yards of brown-looking figures and faded +landscapes going for "absolutely nothing, unheard of sacrifices." "Kate" +hardly knew whether to laugh or cry when she saw these horribly +dingy-looking objects enter her pretty little drawing-room, and looked +at him as if she thought him half mad; and half mad he was, but with +delight at his purchase. He kept walking up and down the room, waving +his arms, putting them in fresh lights, declaring they were exquisite +specimens of art, and if not by the very best masters, merited to be so. +He invited his friends, and displayed his pictures; discovered fresh +beauties for each new comer; and for three or four days, under the magic +influence of his wit and imagination, these gloomy old pictures were a +perpetual source of amusement and fun.' + +At last, finding that he was considered no authority for the fine arts, +off went the pictures to another auction, but all re-christened by +himself, with unheard-of names. 'One, I remember,' says Lady Holland, +'was a beautiful landscape, by Nicholas de Falda, a pupil of Valdezzio, +the only painting by that eminent artist. The pictures sold, I believe, +for rather less than he gave for them under their original names, which +were probably as real as their assumed ones.' + +Sydney Smith had long been styled by his friends the 'Bishop of +Mickleham,' in allusion to his visits to, and influence in, the house of +his friend, Richard Sharp, who had a cottage at that place. A piece of +real preferment was now his. This was the living of Foston-le-Clay, in +Yorkshire, given him by Lord Erskine, then Chancellor. Lady Holland +never rested till she had prevailed on Erskine to give Sydney Smith a +living. Smith, as Rogers relates, went to thank his lordship. 'Oh,' said +Erskine, 'don't thank me, Mr. Smith; I gave you the living because Lady +Holland insisted on my doing so; and if she had desired me to give it to +the devil, _he_ must have had it.' + +Notwithstanding the prediction of the saints, Sydney Smith proved an +excellent parish priest. Even his most admiring friends did not expect +this result. The general impression was, that he was infinitely better +fitted for the bar than for the church. 'Ah! Mr. Smith,' Lord Stowell +used to say to him, 'you would be in a far better situation, and a far +richer man, had you belonged to us.' + +One _jeu d'esprit_ more, and Smith hastened to take possession of his +living, and to enter upon duties of which no one better knew the mighty +importance than he did. + +Among the Mackintosh set was Richard Sharp, to whom we have already +referred, termed, from his great knowledge and ready memory, +'Conversation Sharp.' Many people may think that this did not imply an +agreeable man, and they were, perhaps, right. Sharp was a plain, +ungainly man. One evening, a literary lady, now living, being at Sir +James Mackintosh's, in company with Sharp, Sismondi, and the late Lord +Denman, then a man of middle age. Sir James was not only particularly +partial to Denman, but admired him personally. 'Do you not think Denman +handsome?' he inquired of the lady after the guests were gone. 'No? Then +you must think Mr. Sharp handsome,' he rejoined; meaning that a taste so +perverted as not to admire Denman must be smitten with Sharp. Sharp is +said to have studied all the morning before he went out to dinner, to +get up his wit and anecdote, as an actor does his part. Sydney Smith +having one day received an invitation from him to dine at Fishmongers' +Hall, sent the following reply:-- + + 'Much do I love + The monsters of the deep to eat; + To see the rosy salmon lying, + By smelts encircled, born for frying; + And from the china boat to pour + On flaky cod the flavoured shower. + Thee above all, I much regard, + Flatter than Longman's flattest bard, + Much-honour'd turbot! sore I grieve + Thee and thy dainty friends to leave. + Far from ye all, in snuggest corner, + I go to dine with little Horner; + He who with philosophic eye + Sat brooding o'er his Christmas pie; + Then firm resolved, with either thumb, + Tore forth the crust-enveloped plum; + And mad with youthful dreams of deathless fame, + Proclaimed the deathless glories of his name.' + +One word before we enter on the subject of Sydney Smith's ministry. In +this biography of a great Wit, we touch but lightly upon the graver +features of his character, yet they cannot wholly be passed over. Stanch +in his devotion to the Church of England, he was liberal to others. The +world in the present day is afraid of liberality. Let it not be +forgotten that it has been the fanatic and the intolerant, not the mild +and practical, among us who have gone from the Protestant to the Romish +faith. Sydney Smith, in common with other great men, had no predilection +for dealing damnation round the land. How noble, how true, are +Mackintosh's reflections on religious sects! 'It is impossible, I think, +to look into the interior of any religious sect, without thinking better +of it. I ought, indeed, to confine myself to those of Christian Europe, +but with that limitation it seems to me the remark is true; whether I +look at the Jansenists of Port Royal, or the Quakers in Clarkson, or the +Methodists in these journals. All these sects, which appear dangerous or +ridiculous at a distance, assume a much more amicable character on +nearer inspection. They all inculcate pure virtue, and practise mutual +kindness; and they exert great force of reason in rescuing their +doctrines from the absurd or pernicious consequences which naturally +flow from them. Much of this arises from the general nature of religious +principle--much also from the genius of the Gospel.' + +Nothing could present a greater contrast with the comforts of Orchard +Street than the place on which Sydney Smith's 'lines' had now 'fallen.' +Owing to the non-residence of the clergy, one-third of the parsonage +houses in England had fallen into decay, but that of Foston-le-Clay was +pre-eminently wretched. A hovel represented what was still called the +parsonage-house: it stood on a glebe of three hundred acres of the +stiffest clay in Yorkshire: a brick-floored kitchen, with a room above +it, both in a ruinous condition was the residence which, for a hundred +and fifty years, had never been inhabited by an incumbent. It will not +be a matter of surprise that for some time, until 1808, Sydney Smith, +with the permission of the Archbishop of York, continued to reside in +London, after having appointed a curate at Foston-le-Clay. + +The first visit to his living was by no means promising. Picture to +yourself, my reader, Sydney Smith in a carriage, in his superfine black +coat, driving into the remote village, and parleying with the old parish +clerk, who after some conversation, observed, emphatically, shaking his +stick on the ground, 'Master Smith, it stroikes me that people as comes +froe London is such _fools_.--'I see _you_ are no fool,' was the prompt +answer; and the parson and the clerk parted mutually satisfied. + +The profits, arising from the sale of two volumes of sermons, carried +Sydney Smith, his family, and his furniture, to Foston-le-Clay in the +summer of 1809, and he took up his abode in a pleasant house about two +miles from York, at Heslington. + +[Illustration: SYDNEY SMITH'S WITTY ANSWER TO THE OLD PARISH CLERK.] + +Let us now, for a time, forget the wit, the editor of the 'Edinburgh +Review,' the diner out, the evening preacher at the Foundling, and +glance at the peaceful and useful life of a country clergyman. His +spirits, his wit, all his social qualities, never deserted Sydney Smith, +even in the retreat to which he was destined. Let us see him driving in +his second-hand carriage, his horse, 'Peter the Cruel,' with Mrs. Smith +by his side, summer and winter, from Heslington to Foston-le-Clay. Mrs. +Smith, at first, trembled at the inexperience of her charioteer; but +'she soon,' said Sydney, 'raised my wages, and considered me an +excellent Jehu.' 'Mr. Brown,' said Sydney to one of the tradesmen of +York, through the streets of which he found it difficult to drive, 'your +streets are the narrowest, in Europe,'--'Narrow, sir? there's plenty of +room for two carriages to pass each other, and an inch and a half to +spare!' + +Let us see him in his busy peaceful life, digging an hour or two every +day in his garden to avoid sudden death, by preventing corpulency; then +galloping through a book, and when his family laughed at him for so soon +dismissing a quarto, saying, 'Cross-examine me, then,' and going well +through the ordeal. Hear him, after finishing his morning's writing, +saying to his wife, 'There, Kate, it's done: do look over it; put the +dots to the i's, and cross the t's:' and off he went to his walk, +surrounded by his children, who were his companions and confidants. See +him in the lane, talking to an old woman whom he had taken into his gig +as she was returning from market, and picking up all sorts of knowledge +from her; or administering medicine to the poor, or to his horses and +animals, sometimes committing mistakes next to fatal. One day he +declared he found all his pigs intoxicated, grunting 'God save the King' +about the sty. He nearly poisoned his red cow by an over-dose of +castor-oil; and Peter the Cruel, so called because the groom once said +he had a cruel face, took two boxes of opium pills (boxes and all) in +his mash, without ill consequences. + +See him, too, rushing out after dinner--for he had a horror of long +sittings after that meal--to look at his 'scratcher.' + +He used to say, Lady Holland (his daughter) relates, 'I am all for cheap +luxuries, even for animals; now all animals have a passion for +scratching their backbones; they break down your gates and palings to +effect this. Look! there is my universal scratcher, a sharp-edged pole, +resting on a high and a low post, adapted to every height, from a horse +to a lamb. Even the Edinburgh Reviewer can take his turn: you have no +idea how popular it is; I have not had a gate broken since I put it up; +I have it in all my fields.' + +Then his experiments were numerous. Mutton fat was to be burned instead +of candles; and working-people were brought in and fed with broth, or +with rice, or with porridge, to see which was the most satisfying diet. +Economy was made amusing, benevolence almost absurd, but the humorous +man, the kind man, shone forth in all things. He was one of the first, +if not the first, who introduced allotment-gardens for the poor: he was +one who could truly say at the last, when he had lived sixty-six years, +'I have done but very little harm in the world, and I have brought up my +family.' + +We have taken a glimpse--and a glimpse merely--of the 'wise Wit' in +London, among congenial society, where every intellectual power was +daily called forth in combative force. See him now in the provincial +circles of the remote county of York. 'Did you ever,' he once asked, +'dine out in the country? What misery do human beings inflict on each +other under the name of pleasure!' Then he describes driving in a +broiling sun through a dusty road, to eat a haunch of venison at the +house of a neighbouring parson. Assembled in a small house, 'redolent of +frying,' talked of roads, weather, and turnips; began, that done, to be +hungry. A stripling, caught up for the occasion, calls the master of the +house out of the room, and announces that the cook has mistaken the soup +for dirty water, and has thrown it away. No help for it--agreed; they +must do without it; perhaps as well they should. Dinner announced; they +enter the dining-room: heavens! what a gale! the venison is high! + +Various other adverse incidents occur, and the party return home, +grateful to the post-boys for not being drunk, and thankful to +Providence for not being thrown into a wet ditch. + +In addition to these troubles and risks, there was an enemy at hand to +apprehend--prejudice. The Squire of Heslington--'the last of the +Squires'--regarded Mr. Smith as a Jacobin; and his lady, 'who looked as +if she had walked straight out of the Ark, or had been the wife of +Enoch,' used to turn aside as he passed. When, however, the squire found +'the peace of the village undisturbed, harvests as usual, his dogs +uninjured, he first bowed, then called, and ended by a pitch of +confidence;' actually discovered that Sydney Smith had made a joke; +nearly went into convulsions of laughter, and finished by inviting the +'dangerous fellow,' as he had once thought him, to see his dogs. + +In 1813 Sydney Smith removed, as he thought it his duty to do, to +Foston-le-Clay, and, 'not knowing a turnip from a carrot,' began to farm +three hundred acres, and not having any money, to build a +parsonage-house. + +It was a model parsonage, he thought, the plan being formed by himself +and 'Kate.' Being advised by his neighbours to purchase oxen, he bought +(and christened) four oxen, 'Tug and Lug,' 'Crawl and Haul.' But Tug and +Lug took to fainting, Haul and Crawl to lie down in the mud, so he was +compelled to sell them, and to purchase a team of horses. + +The house plunged him into debt for twenty years; and a man-servant +being too expensive, the 'wise Wit' caught up a country girl, made like +a mile-stone, and christened her 'Bunch,' and Bunch became the best +butler in the county. + +He next set up a carriage, which he christened the 'Immortal,' for it +grew, from being only an ancient green chariot, supposed to have been +the earliest invention of the kind, to be known by all the neighbours; +the village dogs barked at it, the village boys cheered it, and 'we had +no false shame.' + +One could linger over the annals of Sydney Smith's useful, happy life at +Foston-le-Clay, visited there indeed by Mackintosh, and each day +achieving a higher and higher reputation in literature. We see him as a +magistrate, 'no friend to game,' as a country squire in Suffolk solemnly +said of a neighbour, but a friend to man; with a pitying heart, that +forbade him to commit young delinquents to gaol, though he would lecture +them severely, and call out, in bad cases, 'John, bring me out my +_private gallows_,' which brought the poor boys on their knees. We +behold him making visits, and even tours, in the 'Immortal,' and +receiving Lord and Lady Carlisle in their coach and four, which had +stuck in the middle of a ploughed field, there being scarcely any road, +only a lane up to the house. Behold him receiving his poor friend, +Francis Homer, who came to take his last leave of him, and died at Pisa, +in 1817, after earning honours, paid, as Sir James Mackintosh remarked, +to intrinsic claims alone--'a man of obscure birth, who never filled an +office.' See Sydney Smith, in 1816, from the failure of the harvest (he +who was in London 'a walking patty'), sitting down with his family to +repast without bread, thin, unleavened cakes being the substitute. See +his cheerfulness, his submission to many privations: picture him to +ourselves trying to ride, but falling off incessantly; but obliged to +leave off riding 'for the good of his family, and the peace of his +parish' (he had christened his horse, 'Calamity'). See him suddenly +prostrate from that steed in the midst of the streets of York, 'to the +great joy of Dissenters,' he declares: another time flung as if he had +been a shuttlecock, into a neighbouring parish, very glad that it was +not a neighbouring planet, for somehow or other his horse and he had a +'trick of parting company.' 'I used,' he wrote, 'to think a fall from a +horse dangerous, but much experience has convinced me to the contrary. I +have had six falls in two years, and just behaved like the Three per +Cents., when they fell--I got up again, and am not a bit the worse for +it, any more than the stock in question.' + +This country life was varied by many visits. In 1820 he went to visit +Lord Grey, then to Edinburgh, to Jeffrey travelling by the coach, a +gentleman, with whom he had been talking, said, 'There is a very clever +fellow lives near here, Sydney Smith, I believe; a devilish odd +fellow.'--'He may be an odd fellow,' cried Sydney, taking off his hat, +'but here he is, odd as he is, at your service.' + +Sydney Smith found great changes in Edinburgh--changes, however, in many +respects for the better. The society of Edinburgh was then in its +greatest perfection. 'Its brilliancy, Lord Cockburn remarks, 'was owing +to a variety of peculiar circumstances, which only operated during this +period. The principal of these were the survivance of several of the +eminent men of the preceding age, and of curious old habits, which the +modern flood had not yet obliterated; the rise of a powerful community +of young men of ability; the exclusion of the British from the +Continent, which made this place, both for education and for residence, +a favourite resort of strangers; the war, which maintained a constant +excitement of military preparation and of military idleness: the blaze +of that popular literature which made this the second city in the empire +for learning and science; and the extent and the ease with which +literature and society embellished each other, without rivalry, and +without pedantry. + +Among the 'best young' as his lordship styles them, were Lord Webb +Seymour and Francis Horner; whilst those of the 'interesting old' most +noted were Elizabeth Hamilton and Mrs. Grant of Laggan, who had +'unfolded herself,' to borrow Lord Cockburn's words, in the 'Letters +from the Mountains,' 'an interesting treasury of good solitary +thoughts.' Of these two ladies, Lord Cockburn says, 'They were excellent +women, and not _too_ blue. Their sense covered the colour.' It was to +Mrs. Hamilton that Jeffrey said, 'That there was no objection to the +blue stocking, provided the petticoat came low enough to cover it.' +Neither of these ladies possessed personal attractions. Mrs. Hamilton +had the plain face proper to literary women; Mrs. Grant was a tall dark +woman, with much dignity of manner: in spite of her life of misfortune, +she had a great flow of spirits. Beautifully, indeed, does Lord Cockburn +render justice to her character: 'She was always under the influence of +an affectionate and delightful enthusiasm, which, unquenched by time and +sorrow, survived the wreck of many domestic attachments, and shed a glow +over the close of a very protracted life.' + +Both she and Mrs. Hamilton succeeded in drawing to their +_conversazioni_, in small rooms of unpretending style, men of the +highest order, as well as attractive women of intelligence. Society in +Edinburgh took the form of Parisian _soirees_, and although much divided +into parties, was sufficiently general to be varied. It is amusing to +find that Mrs. Grant was at one time one of the supposed 'Authors of +"Waverley,"' until the disclosure of the mystery silenced reports. It +was the popularity of 'Marmion,' that made Scott, as he himself +confesses, nearly lose his footing. Mrs. Grant's observation on him, +after meeting the Great Unknown at some brilliant party, has been +allowed, even by the sarcastic Lockhart, to be 'witty enough.' 'Mr. +Scott always seems to me to be like a glass, through which the rays of +admiration pass without sensibly affecting it; but the bit of paper[13] +that lies beside it will presently be in a blaze--and no wonder.' + +[13: Alluding to Lady Scott.] + +Scott endeavoured to secure Mrs. Grant a pension; merited as he +observes, by her as an authoress, 'but much more,' in his opinion, 'by +the firmness and elasticity of mind with which she had borne a great +succession of domestic calamities.' 'Unhappily,' he adds, 'there was +only about L100 open on the Pension List, and this the minister assigned +in equal portions to Mrs. G---- and a distressed lady, grand-daughter of +a forfeited Scottish nobleman. Mrs. G---- , proud as a Highlandwoman, +vain as a poetess, and absurd as a blue-stocking, has taken this +partition in _malam partem_, and written to Lord Melville about her +merits, and that her friends do not consider her claims as being fairly +canvassed, with something like a demand that her petition be submitted +to the king. This is not the way to make her _plack_ a _bawbee_, and +Lord M---- , a little _miffed_ in turn, sends the whole correspondence +to me to know whether Mrs. G---- will accept the L50 or not + +Now, hating to deal with ladies when they are in an unreasonable humour, +I have got the good-humoured Man of Feeling to find out the lady's mind, +and I take on myself the task of making her peace with Lord M---- . +After all, the poor lady is greatly to be pitied:--her sole remaining +daughter deep and far gone in a decline.' + +The Man of Feeling proved successful, and reported soon afterwards that +the 'dirty pudding' was eaten by the almost destitute authoress. Scott's +tone in the letters which refer to this subject does little credit to +his good taste and delicacy of feeling, which were really attributable +to his character. + +Very few notices occur of any intercourse between Scott and Sydney Smith +in Lockhart's 'Life,' It was not, indeed, until 1827 that Scott could be +sufficiently cooled down from the ferment of politics which had been +going on to meet Jeffrey and Cockburn. When he dined, however, with +Murray, then Lord Advocate, and met Jeffrey, Cockburn, the late Lord +Rutherford, then Mr. Rutherford, and others of 'that file,' he +pronounced the party to be 'very pleasant, capital good cheer, and +excellent wine, much laugh and fun. I do not know,' he writes, 'how it +is, but when I am out with a party of my Opposition friends, the day is +often merrier than when with our own set. It is because they are +cleverer? Jeffery and Harry Cockburn are, to be sure, very extraordinary +men, yet it is not owing to that entirely. I believe both parties meet +with the feeling of something like novelty. We have not worn out our +jests in daily contact. There is also a disposition on such occasions to +be courteous, and of course to be pleased.' + +On his side, Cockburn did ample justice to the 'genius who,' to use his +own words, 'has immortalized Edinburgh and delighted the 'world.' Mrs. +Scott could not, however, recover the smarting inflicted by the +critiques of Jeffrey on her husband's works. Her--'And I hope, Mr. +Jeffrey, Mr. Constable paid you well for your Article' (Jeffrey dining +with her that day), had a depth of simple satire in it that ever, an +Edinburgh Reviewer could hardly exceed. It was, one must add, +impertinent and in bad taste. 'You are very good at cutting up.' + +Sydney Smith found Jeffrey and Cockburn rising barristers. Horner, on +leaving Edinburgh, had left to Jeffrey his bar wig, and the bequest had +been lucky. Jeffrey was settled at Craigcrook, a lovely English-looking +spot, with wooded slopes and green glades, near Edinburgh; and Cockburn +had, since 1811, set up his rural gods at Bonally, near Colinton, just +under the Pentland Hills, and he wrote, 'Unless some avenging angel +shall expel me, I shall never leave that paradise.' And a paradise it +was. Beneath those rough, bare hills, broken here and there by a +trickling burn, like a silver thread on the brown sward, stands a Norman +tower, the addition, by Playfair's skill, to what was once a scarcely +habitable farmhouse. That tower contained Lord Cockburn's fine library, +also his ordinary sitting-rooms. There he read and wrote, and received +such society as will never meet again, there or elsewhere--amongst them +Sydney Smith. Beneath--around the tower--stretches a delicious garden, +composed of terraces, and laurel-hedged walks, and beds of flowers, that +bloomed freely in that sheltered spot. A bowling-green, shaded by one of +the few trees near the house, a sycamore, was the care of many an hour; +for to make the turf velvety, the sods were fetched from the hills +above--from 'yon hills,' as Lord Cockburn would have called them. And +this was for many years one of the rallying points of the best Scottish +society, and, as each autumn came round, of what the host called his +Carnival. Friends were summoned from the north and the south--'death no +apology.' High jinks within doors, excursions without. Every Edinburgh +man reveres the spot, hallowed by the remembrance of Lord Cockburn. +'Every thing except the two burns, he wrote, 'the few old trees, and the +mountains, are my own work. Human nature is incapable of enjoying more +happiness than has been my lot here. I have been too happy, and often +tremble in the anticipation that the cloud must come at last.' And come +it did; but found him not unprepared, although the burden that he had to +bear in after-life was heavy. In their enlarged and philosophic minds, +in their rapid transition from sense to nonsense, there was an affinity +in the characters of Sydney Smith and of Lord Cockburn which was not +carried out in any other point. Smith's conversation was wit--Lord +Cockburn's was eloquence. + +From the festivities of Edinburgh Sydney Smith returned contentedly to +Foston-le-Clay, and to Bunch. Amongst other gifted visitors was Mrs. +Marcet. 'Come here, Bunch,' cries Sydney Smith one day; 'come and repeat +your crimes to Mrs. Marcet.' Then Bunch, grave as a judge, began to +repeat: 'Plate-snatching, gravy-spilling, door-slamming, blue-bottle- +fly-catching, and curtsey-bobbing. 'Blue-bottle-fly-catching,' means +standing with her mouth open, and not attending; and 'curtsey-bobbing' +was curtseying to the centre of the earth. + +One night, in the winter, during a tremendous snowstorm, Bunch rushed +in, exclaiming, 'Lord and Lady Mackincrush is com'd in a coach and +four.' The lord and lady proved to be Sir James and his daughter, who +had arrived to stay with his friends in the remote parsonage of +Foston-le-Clay a few days, and had sent a letter, which arrived the day +afterwards to announce their visit. Their stay began with a blunder; and +when Sir James departed, leaving kind feelings behind him--books, his +hat, his gloves, his papers and other articles of apparel were found +also. 'What a man that would be,' said Sydney Smith, 'had he one +particle of gall, or the least knowledge of the value of red tape!' It +was true that the indolent, desultory character of Mackintosh interfered +perpetually with his progress in the world. He loved far better to lie +on the sofa reading a novel than to attend a Privy Council; the +slightest indisposition was made on his part a plea for avoiding the +most important business. + +Sydney Smith had said that 'when a clever man takes to cultivating +turnips and retiring, it is generally an imposture;' but in him the +retirement was no imposture. His wisdom shone forth daily in small and +great matters. 'Life,' he justly thought, 'was to be fortified by many +friendships,' and he acted up to his principles, and kept up friendships +by letters. Cheerfulness he thought might be cultivated by making the +rooms one lives in as comfortable as possible. His own drawing-room was +papered on this principle, with a yellow flowering pattern; and filled +with 'irregular regularities;' his fires were blown into brightness by +_Shadrachs_, as he called them--tubes furnished with air opening in the +centre of each fire, His library contained his rheumatic armour: for he +tried heat and compression in rheumatism; put his legs into narrow +buckets, which he called his jack-boots; wore round his throat a tin +collar; over each shoulder he had a large tin thing like a shoulder of +mutton; and on his head he displayed a hollow helmet filled with hot +water. In the middle of a field into which his windows looked, was a +skeleton sort of a machine, his Universal Scratcher; with which every +animal from a lamb to a bullock could scratch itself. Then on the Sunday +the Immortal was called into use, to travel in state to a church like a +barn; about fifty people in it; but the most original idea was farming +through the medium of a tremendous speaking-trumpet from his own door, +with its companion, a telescope, to see what his people are about! On +the 24th of January, 1828, the first notable piece of preferment was +conferred on him by Lord Lyndhurst then Chancellor, and of widely +differing political opinions to Sydney Smith. This was a vacant stall in +the cathedral at Bristol, where on the ensuing 5th of November, the new +canon gave the Mayor and Corporation of that Protestant city such a dose +of 'toleration as should last them many a year.' He went to Court on his +appointment, and appeared in shoestrings instead of buckles. 'I found,' +he relates, 'to my surprise, people looking down at my feet: I could not +think what they were at. At first I thought they had discovered the +beauty of my legs; but at last the truth burst on me, by some wag +laughing and thinking I had done it as a good joke. I was, of course, +exceedingly annoyed to have been supposed capable of such a vulgar +unmeaning piece of disrespect, and kept my feet as coyly under my +petticoats as the veriest prude in the country till I should make my +escape.' His circumstances were now improved, and though moralists, he +said, thought property an evil, he declared himself happier every guinea +he gained. He thanked God for his animal spirits, which received, +unhappily, in 1829, a terrible shock from the death of his eldest son, +Douglas, aged twenty-four. This was the great misfortune of his life; +the young man was promising, talented, affectionate. He exchanged +Foston-le-Clay at this time for a living in Somersetshire, of a +beautiful and characteristic name--Combe Florey. + +Combe Florey seems to have been an earthly paradise, seated in one of +those delicious hollows or in Combes, for which that part of the west of +England is celebrated. His withdrawal from the Edinburgh +Review--Mackintosh's death--the marriage of his eldest daughter, Saba, +to Dr. Holland (now Sir Henry Holland)--the termination of Lord Grey's +Administration, which ended Sydney's hopes of being a bishop, were the +leading events of his life for the next few years. + +It appears that Sydney Smith felt to the hour of his death pained that +those by whose side he had fought for fifty years, in their adversity, +the Whig party, should never have offered what he declared he should +have rejected, a bishopric, when they were constantly bestowing such +promotions on persons of mediocre talent and claims. Waiving the point, +whether it is right or wrong to make men bishops because they have been +political partizans, the cause of this alleged injustice may be found in +the tone of the times, which was eminently tinctured with cant. The +Clapham sect were in the ascendancy; and Ministers scarcely dared to +offend so influential a body. Even the gentle Sir James Mackintosh +refers, in his Journal, with disgust to the phraseology of the day:-- + +'They have introduced a new language, in which they never say that A. B. +is good, or virtuous, or even religious; but that he is an "advanced +Christian." Dear Mr. Wilberforce is an "advanced Christian." Mrs. C. has +lost three children without a pang, and is so "advanced a Christian" +that she could see the remaining twenty, "with poor dear Mr. C.," +removed with perfect tranquillity.' + +Such was the disgust expressed towards that school by Mackintosh, whose +last days were described by his daughter as having been passed in +silence and thought, with his Bible before him, breaking that +silence--and portentous silence--to speak of God, and of his Maker's +disposition towards man. + +His mind ceased to be occupied with speculations; politics interested +him no more. His own 'personal relationship to his Creator' was the +subject of his thoughts. Yet Mackintosh was not by any means considered +as an advanced Christian, or even as a Christian at all by the zealots +of his time. + +Sydney Smith's notions of a bishop were certainly by no means carried +out in his own person and character. 'I never remember in my time,' he +said, 'a real bishop: a grave, elderly man, full of Greek, with sound +views of the middle voice and preterpluperfect tense; gentle and kind to +his poor clergy, of powerful and commanding eloquence in Parliament, +never to be put down when the great interests of mankind were concerned, +leaning to the Government when it was right, leaning to the people when +they were right; feeling that if the Spirit of God had called him to +that high office, he was called for no mean purpose, but rather that +seeing clearly, acting boldly, and intending purely, he might confer +lasting benefit upon mankind.' + +In 1831 Lord Grey appointed Sydney Smith a Canon Resilentiary of St. +Paul's; but still the mitre was withheld, although it has since appeared +that Lord Grey had destined him for one of the first vacancies in +England. + +Henceforth his residence at St. Paul's brought him still more +continually into the world, which he delighted by his 'wise wit.' Most +London dinners, he declared, evaporated in whispers to one's next +neighbours. He never, however, spoke to his neighbour, but 'fired' +across the table. One day, however, he broke his rule, on hearing a +lady, who sat next him, say in a sweet low voice, 'No gravy, +sir.'--'Madam!' he cried, 'I have all my life been looking for a person +who disliked gravy, let us swear immortal friendship.' She looked +astonished, but took the oath, and kept it. 'What better foundation for +friendship,' he asks, 'than similarity of tastes?' + +He gave an evening party once a week; when a profusion of wax-lights was +his passion. He loved to see young people decked with natural flowers; +he was, in fact, a blameless and benevolent Epicurean in everything; +great indeed was the change from his former residence at Foston, which +he used to say was twelve miles from a lemon. Charming as his parties at +home must have been, they wanted the _bon-hommie_ and simplicity of +former days, and Of the homely suppers in Orchard Street. Lord Dudley, +Rogers, Moore, 'Young Macaulay,' as he was called for many years, formed +now his society. Lord Dudley was then in the state which afterwards +became insanity, and darkened completely a mind sad and peculiar from +childhood. Bankes, in his 'Journal,' relates an anecdote of him about +this time, when, as he says, 'Dudley's mind was on the wane; but still +his caustic humour would find vent through the cloud which was gradually +over-shadowing his masterly intellect.' He was one day sitting in his +room soliloquizing aloud; his favourite Newfoundland-dog was at his +side, and seemed to engross all ----m's attention. A gentleman was +present who was good-looking and good-natured, but not overburthened +with sense. Lord Dudley at last, patting his dog's head, said, 'Fido +mio, they say dogs have no souls. Humph, and still they say ----' +(naming the gentleman present) 'has a soul!' One day Lord Dudley met Mr. +Allen, Lord Holland's librarian, and asked him to dine with him. Allen +went. When asked to describe his dinner, he said, 'There was no one +there. Lord Dudley talked a little to his servant, and a great deal to +his dog, but said not one word to me.' + +Innumerable are the witticisms related of Sydney Smith, when seated at a +dinner table--having swallowed in life what he called a 'Caspian Sea' of +soup. Talking one day of Sir Charles Lyell's book, the subject of which +was the phenomena which the earth might, at some future period, present +to the geologists. 'Let us imagine,' he said, 'an excavation on the site +of St. Paul's; fancy a lecture by the Owen of his future era on the +thigh-bone of a minor canon, or the tooth of a dean: the form, +qualities, and tastes he would discover from them.' 'It is a great proof +of shyness,' he said, 'to crumble your bread at dinner. Ah! I see,' he +said, turning to a young lady, 'you're afraid of me: you crumble your +bread. I do it when I sit by the Bishop of London, and with both hands +when I sit by the Archbishop.' + +Be gave a capital reproof to a lively young M.P. who was accompanying +him after dinner to one of the solemn evening receptions at Lambeth +Palace during the life of the late Archbishop of Canterbury. The M.P. +had been calling him 'Smith,' though they had never met before that day. +As the carriage stopped at the Palace, Smith turned to him and said, +'Now don't, my good fellow, don't call the Archbishop "Howley."' + +Talking of fancy-balls--'Of course,' he said, 'if I went to one, I +should go as a Dissenter.' Of Macaulay, he said, 'To take him out of +literature and science, and to put him in the House of Commons, is like +taking the chief physician out of London in a pestilence.' + +Nothing amused him so much as the want of perception of a joke. One hot +day a Mrs. Jackson called on him, and spoke of the oppressive state of +the weather. 'Heat! it was dreadful,' said Sydney; 'I found I could do +nothing for it but take off my flesh and sit in my bones.' 'Take off +your flesh and sit in your bones! Oh, Mr. Smith! how could you do that?' +the lady cried. 'Come and see next time, ma'am--nothing more easy.' She +went away, however, convinced that such a proceeding was very +unorthodox. No wonder, with all his various acquirements, it should be +said of him that no 'dull dinners were ever remembered in his company.' + +A happy old age concluded his life, at once brilliant and useful. To the +last he never considered his education as finished. His wit, a friend +said, 'was always fresh, always had the dew on it. He latterly got into +what Lord Jeffrey called the vicious habit of water drinking. Wine, he +said, destroyed his understanding. He even 'forgot the number of the +Muses, and thought it was thirty-nine, of course.' He agreed with Sir +James Mackintosh that he had found the world more good and more foolish +than he had thought when young. He took a cheerful view of all things; +he thanked God for small as well as great things, even for tea. 'I am +glad,' he used to say, 'I was not born before tea.' His domestic +affections were strong, and were heartily reciprocated. + +General society he divided into classes: 'The noodles--very numerous and +well known. The affliction woman--a valuable member of society, +generally an ancient spinster in small circumstances, who packs up her +bag and sets off in cases of illness or death, "to comfort, flatter, +fetch, and carry." The up-takers--people who see, from their fingers' +ends and go through a room touching everything. The clearers--who begin +at a dish and go on tasting and eating till it is finished. The +sheep-walkers--who go on for ever on the beaten track. The +lemon-squeezers of society--who act on you as a wet blanket; see a cloud +in sunshine; the nails of the coffin in the ribbons of a bride; +extinguish all hope; people, whose very look sets your teeth on an edge. +The let-well-aloners, cousin-german to the noodles--yet a variety, and +who are afraid to act, and think it safer to stand still. Then the +washerwomen--very numerous! who always say, "Well, if ever I put on my +best bonnet, 'tis sure to rain," &c. + +'Besides this there is a very large class of people always treading on +your gouty foot, or talking in your deaf ear, or asking you to give them +something with your lame hand,' &c. + +During the autumn of the year 1844, Sydney Smith felt the death-stroke +approaching. 'I am so weak, both in body and mind,' he said, 'that I +believe if the knife were put into my hand, I should not have strength +enough to stick it into a Dissenter.' In October he became seriously +ill. 'Ah! Charles,' he said to General Fox (when he was being kept very +low), 'I wish they would allow me even the wing of a roasted butterfly,' +He dreaded sorrowful faces around him; but confided to his old servant, +Annie Kay--and to her alone--his sense of his danger. + +Almost the last person Sydney Smith saw was his beloved brother Bobus, +who followed him to the grave a fortnight after he had been laid in the +tomb. + +He lingered till the 22nd of February, 1845. His son closed his eyes. +His last act was, bestowing on a poverty-stricken clergyman a living. + +He was buried at Kensal Green, where his eldest son, Douglas, had been +interred. + +It has been justly and beautifully said of Sydney Smith, that +Christianity was not a dogma with him, but a practical and most +beneficent rule of life. + +As a clergyman, he was liberal, practical, staunch; free from the +latitudinarian principles of Hoadley, as from the bigotry of Laud. His +wit was the wit of a virtuous, a decorous man; it had pungency without +venom; humour without indelicacy; and was copious without being +tiresome. + + + +GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON, LORD MELCOMBE. + + +A Dinner-giving lordly Poet.--A Misfortune for a Man of Society.-- +Brandenburgh House.--'The Diversions of the Morning.'--Johnson's Opinion +of Foote--Churchill and 'The Rosciad.'--Personal Ridicule in its Proper +Light.--Wild Specimen of the Poet.--Walpole on Dodington's 'Diary.'--The +best Commentary on a Man's Life.--Leicester House.--Grace Boyle,--Elegant +Modes of passing Time.--A sad Day.--What does Dodington come here for?-- +The Veteran Wit, Beau, and Politician.--'Defend us from our Executors +and Editors.' + + +It would have been well for Lord Melcombe's memory, Horace Walpole +remarks, 'if his fame had been suffered to rest on the tradition of his +wit, and the evidence of his poetry.' And in the present day, that +desirable result has come to pass. We remember Bubb Dodington chiefly as +the courtier whose person, houses, and furniture were replete with +costly ostentation, so as to provoke the satire of Foote, who brought +him on the stage under the name of Sir Thomas Lofty in 'The Patron,' + +We recall him most as '_l'Amphytrion chez qui on dine_;' 'My Lord of +Melcombe,' as Mallet says-- + + 'Whose soups and sauces duly season'd, + Whose wit well tim'd and sense well reason'd, + Give Burgundy a brighter stain, + And add new flavour to Champagne.' + +Who now cares much for the court intrigues which severed Sir Robert +Walpole and Bubb Dodington? Who now reads without disgust the annals of +that famous quarrel between George II. and his son, during which each +party devoutly wished the other dead? Who minds whether the time-serving +Bubb Dodington went over to Lord Bute or not? Who cares whether his +hopes of political preferment were or were not gratified? Bubb Dodington +was, in fact, the dinner-giving lordly poet, to whom even the saintly +Young could write:-- + + 'You give protection,--I a worthless strain. + +Born in 1691, the accomplished courtier answered, till he had attained +the age of twenty-nine, to the not very euphonious name of Bubb. Then a +benevolent uncle with a large estate died, and left him, with his lands, +the more exalted surname of Dodington. He sprang, however, from an +obscure family, who had settled in Dorchester; but that disadvantage, +which, according to Lord Brougham's famous pamphlet, acts so fatally on +a young man's advancement in English public life, was obviated, as most +things are, by a great fortune. + +Mr. Bubb had been educated at Oxford: at the age of twenty-four he was +elected M.P. for Winchelsea; he was soon afterwards named Envoy at the +Court of Spain, but returned home after his accession of wealth to +provincial honours, and became Lord-Lieutenant of Somerset. Nay, poets +began to worship him, and even pronounced him to be well born:-- + + 'Descended from old British sires; + Great Dodington to kings allied; + My patron then, my laurels' pride. + +It would be consolatory to find that it is only Welsted who thus +profaned the Muse by this abject flattery, were it not recorded that +Thomson dedicated to him his 'Summer.' The dedication was prompted by +Lord Binning; and 'Summer' was published in 1727 when Dodington was one +of the Lords of the Treasury, as well as Clerk of the Pells in Ireland, +It seemed, therefore, worth while for Thomson to pen such a passage as +this:--'Your example sir, has recommended poetry with the greatest grace +to the example of those who are engag'd in the most active scenes of +life; and this, though confessedly the least considerable of those +qualities that dignify your character, must be particularly pleasing to +_one_ whose only hope of being introduced to your regard is thro' the +recommendation of an art in which you are a master.' Warton adding this +tribute:-- + + 'To praise a Dodington rash bard! forbear. + What can thy weak and ill-tun'd voice avail, + When on that theme both Young and Thomson fail?' + +Yet even when midway in his career, Dodington, in the famous political +caricature called 'The Motion,' is depicted as 'the Spaniel,' sitting +between the Duke of Argyle's legs, whilst his grace is driving a coach +at full speed to the Treasury, with a sword instead of a whip in his +hand, with Lord Chesterfield as postilion, and Lord Cobham as a footman, +holding on by the straps: even then the servile though pompous character +of this true man of the world was comprehended completely; and Bubb +Dodington's characteristics never changed. + +In his political life, Dodington was so selfish, obsequious, and +versatile as to incur universal opprobrium; he had also another +misfortune for a man of society,--he became fat and lethargic. 'My +brother Ned' Horace Walpole remarks, 'says he is grown of less +consequence, though more weight.' And on another occasion, speaking of a +majority in the House of Lords, he adds, 'I do not count Dodington, who +must now always be in the minority, for no majority will accept him.' + +Whilst, however, during the factious reign of George II., the town was +declared, even by Horace to be wondrous dull; operas unfrequented, plays +not in fashion, and amours old as marriages. Bubb Dodington, with his +wealth and profusion, contrived always to be in vogue as a host, while +he was at a discount as a politician. Politics and literature are the +highroads in England to that much-craved-for distinction, an admittance +into the great world; and Dodington united these passports in his own +person: he was a poetaster, and wrote political pamphlets. The latter +were published and admired: the poems were referred to as 'very pretty +love verses,' by Lord Lyttelton, and were never published--and never +ought to have been published, it is stated. + +His _bon mots_, his sallies, his fortunes and places, and continual +dangling at court, procured Bubo, as Pope styled him, one pre-eminence. +His dinners at Hammersmith were the most _recherches_ in the metropolis. +Every one remembers Brandenburgh House, when the hapless Caroline of +Brunswick held her court there, and where her brave heart,--burdened +probably with some sins, as well as with endless regrets,--broke at +last. It had been the residence of the beautiful and famous Margravine +of Anspach, whose loveliness in vain tempts us to believe her innocent, +in despite of facts. Before those eras--the presence of the Margravine, +whose infidelities were almost avowed, and the abiding of the queen, +whose errors had, at all events, verged on the very confines of +guilt--the house was owned by Dodington. There he gave dinners; there he +gratified a passion for display, which was puerile; there he indulged in +eccentricities which almost implied insanity; there he concocted his +schemes for court advancement; and there, later in life, he contributed +some of the treasures of his wit to dramatic literature. 'The Wishes,' a +comedy, by Bentley, was supposed to owe much of its point to the +brilliant wit of Dodington[14]. + +[14: See Walpole's 'Royal and Noble Authors'] + +At Brandenburgh House, a nobler presence than that of Dodington still +haunted the groves and alleys, for Prince Rupert had once owned it. When +Dodington bought it, he gave it--in jest, we must presume--the name of +La Trappe; and it was not called Brandenburgh House until the fair and +frail Margravine came to live there. + +Its gardens were long famous; and in the time of Dodington were the +scene of revel. Thomas Bentley, the son of Richard Bentley, the +celebrated critic, had written a play called 'The Wishes;' and during +the summer of 1761 it was acted at Drury Lane, and met with the especial +approbation of George III., who sent the author, through Lord Bute, a +present of two hundred guineas as a tribute to the good sentiments of +the production. + +This piece, which, in spite of its moral tendency, has died out, whilst +plays of less virtuous character have lived, was rehearsed in the +gardens of Brandenburgh House. Bubb Dodington associated much with those +who give fame; but he courted amongst them also those who could revenge +affronts by bitter ridicule. Among the actors and literati who were then +sometimes at Brandenburg House were Foote and Churchill; capital boon +companions, but, as it proved, dangerous foes.' + +Endowed with imagination; with a mind enriched by classical and +historical studies; possessed of a brilliant wit, Bubb Dodington was, +nevertheless, in the sight of some men, ridiculous. Whilst the +rehearsals of 'The Wishes' went on, Foote was noting down all the +peculiarities of the Lord of Brandenburgh House, with a view to bring +them to account in his play of 'The Patron.' Lord Melcombe was an +aristocratic Dombey: stultified by his own self-complacency, he dared to +exhibit his peculiarities before the English Aristophanes. It was an act +of imprudence, for Foote had long before (in 1747) opened the little +theatre of the Haymarket with a sort of monologue play, 'The Diversions +of the Morning,' in which he convulsed his audience with the perfection +of a mimicry never beheld before, and so wonderful, that even the +persons of his models seemed to stand before the amazed spectators. + +These entertainments, in which the contriver was at once the author and +performer, have been admirably revived by Mathews and others; and in +another line, by the lamented Albert Smith. The Westminster justices, +furious and alarmed, opposed the daring performance, on which Foote +changed the name of his piece, and called it 'Mr. Foote giving Tea to +his Friends,' himself still the sole actor, and changing with +Proteus-like celerity from one to the other. Then came his 'Auction of +Pictures,' and Sir Thomas de Veil, one of his enemies, the justices, was +introduced. Orator Henley and Cock the auctioneer figured also; and year +after year the town was enchanted by that which is most gratifying to a +polite audience, the finished exhibition of faults and follies. One +stern voice was raised in reprobation, that of Samuel Johnson: he, at +all events, had a due horror of buffoons; but even he owned himself +vanquished. + +'The first time I was in Foote's company was at Fitzherbert's. Having no +good opinion of the fellow, I was resolved not to be pleased: and it is +very difficult to please a man against his will. I went on eating my +dinner pretty sullenly, affecting not to mind him; but the dog was so +very comical, that I was obliged to lay down my knife and fork, throw +myself back in my chair, and fairly laugh it out. Sir, he was +irresistible.' Consoled by Foote's misfortunes and ultimate complicated +misery for his lessened importance, Bubb Dodington still reigned, +however, in the hearts of some learned votaries. Richard Bentley, the +critic, compared him to Lord Halifax-- + + 'That Halifax, my Lord, as you do yet, + Stood forth the friend of poetry and wit, + Sought silent merit in the secret cell, + And Heav'n, nay even man, repaid him well. + +A more remorseless foe, however, than Foote appeared in the person of +Charles Churchill, the wild and unclerical son of a poor curate of +Westminster. Foote laughed Bubb Dodington down, but Churchill +perpetuated the satire; for Churchill was wholly unscrupulous, and his +faults had been reckless and desperate. Wholly unfit for a clergyman, he +had taken orders, obtained a curacy in Wales at L30 a year--not being +able to subsist, took to keeping a cider-cellar, became a sort of +bankrupt, and quitting Wales, succeeded to the curacy of his father, who +had just died. Still famine haunted his home; Churchill took, therefore, +to teaching young ladies to read and write, and conducted himself in the +boarding-school where his duties lay, with wonderful propriety. He had +married at seventeen; but even that step had not protected his morals: +he fell into abject poverty. Lloyd, father of his friend Robert Lloyd, +then second master of Westminster, made an arrangement with his +creditors. Young Lloyd had published a poem called 'The Actor;' +Churchill, in imitation, now produced 'The Rosciad,' and Bubb Dodington +was one whose ridiculous points were salient in those days of +personality. 'The Rosciad' had a signal success, which completed the +ruin of its author: he became a man of the town, forsook the wife of his +youth, and abandoned the clerical character. There are few sights more +contemptible than that of a clergyman who has cast off his profession, +or whose profession has cast him off. But Churchill's talents for a time +kept him from utter destitution. Bubb Doddington may have been consoled +by finding that he shared the fate of Dr. Johnson, who had spoken +slightingly of Churchill's works, and who shone forth, therefore, in +'The Ghost,' a later poem, as Dr. Pomposo. + +Richard Cumberland, the dramatist, drew a portrait of Lord Melcombe, +which is said to have been taken from the life; but perhaps the most +faithful delineation of Bubb Dodington's character was furnished by +himself in his 'Diary;' in which, as it has been well observed, he +'unveiled the nakedness of his mind, and displayed himself as a courtly +compound of mean compliance and political prostitution.' It may, in +passing, be remarked, that few men figure well in an autobiography; and +that Cumberland himself, proclaimed by Dr. Johnson to be a 'learned, +ingenious, accomplished gentleman,' adding, 'the want of company is an +inconvenience, but Mr. Cumberland is a million:' in spite of this +eulogium, Cumberland has betrayed in his own autobiography unbounded +vanity, worldliness, and an undue estimation of his own perishable fame. +After all, amusing as personalities must always be, neither the humours +of Foote, the vigorous satire of Churchill, nor the careful limning of +Cumberland, whilst they cannot be ranked among talents of the highest +order, imply a sort of social treachery. The delicious little colloquy +between Boswell and Johnson places low personal ridicule in its proper +light. + +Boswell.--'Foote has a great deal of humour.' Johnson.--'Yes, sir.' +Boswell.--'He has a singular talent of exhibiting characters.' +Johnson--'Sir. it is not a talent--it is a vice; it is what others +abstain from. It is not comedy, which exhibits the character of a +species--as that of a miser gathered from many misers--it is farce, +which exhibits individuals.' Boswell.--'Did not he think of exhibiting +you, sir?' Johnson.--'Sir, fear restrained him; he knew I would have +broken his bones. I would have saved him the trouble of cutting off a +leg; I would not have left him a leg to cut off.' + +Few annals exist of the private life of Bubb Dodington, but those few +are discreditable. + +Like most men of his time, and like many men of all times, Dodington was +entangled by an unhappy and perplexing intrigue. + +There was a certain 'black woman,' as Horace Walpole calls a Mrs. +Strawbridge, whom Bubb Dodington admired. This handsome brunette lived +in a corner house of Saville Row, in Piccadilly, where Dodington visited +her. The result of their intimacy was his giving this lady a bond of ten +thousand pounds to be paid if he married any one else. The real object +of his affections was a Mrs. Behan, with whom he lived seventeen years, +and whom, on the death of Mrs. Strawbridge, he eventually married. + +Among Bubb Dodington's admirers and disciples was Paul Whitehead, a wild +specimen of the poet, rake, satirist, dramatist, all in one; and what +was quite in character, a Templar to boot. Paul--so named from being +born on that Saint's day--wrote one or two pieces which brought him an +ephemeral fame, such as the 'State Dunces,' and the 'Epistle to Dr. +Thompson,' 'Manners,' a satire, and the 'Gymnasiad,' a mock heroic poem, +intended to ridicule the passion for boxing, then prevalent. Paul +Whitehead, who died in 1774, was an infamous, but not, in the opinion of +Walpole, a despicable poet, yet Churchill has consigned him to +everlasting infamy as a reprobate, in these lines:-- + + 'May I (can worse disgrace on manhood fall?) + Be born a Whitebread, and baptised a Paul.' + +Paul was not, however, worse than his satirist Churchill; and both of +these wretched men were members of a society long the theme of horror +and disgust, even after its existence had ceased to be remembered, +except by a few old people. This was the 'Hell-fire Club,' held in +appropriate orgies at Medmenham Abbey, Buckinghamshire. The profligate +Sir Francis Dashwood, Wilkes, and Churchill, were amongst its most +prominent members. + +With such associates, and living in a court where nothing but the basest +passions reigned and the lowest arts prevailed, we are inclined to +accord with the descendant of Bubb Dodington, the editor of his 'Diary,' +Henry Penruddocke Wyndham, who declares that all Lord Melcombe's +political conduct was 'wholly directed by the base motives of vanity, +selfishness, and avarice.' Lord Melcombe seems to have been a man of the +world of the very worst _calibre_; sensual, servile, and treacherous; +ready, during the lifetime of his patron, Frederick, Prince of Wales, to +go any lengths against the adverse party of the Pelhams, that Prince's +political foes--eager, after the death of Frederick, to court those +powerful men with fawning servility. + +The famous 'Diary' of Bubb Dodington supplies the information from which +these conclusions have been drawn. Horace Walpole, who knew Dodington +well, describes how he read with avidity the 'Diary,' which was +published in 1784. + +'A nephew of Lord Melcombe's heirs has published that Lord's "Diary." +Indeed it commences in 1749, and I grieve it was not dated twenty years +later. However, it deals in topics that are twenty times more familiar +and fresh to my memory than any passage that has happened within these +six months I wish I could convey it to you. Though drawn by his own +hand, and certainly meant to flatter himself, it is a truer portrait +than any of his hirelings would have given. Never was such a composition +of vanity, versatility, and servility. In short, there is but one +feature wanting in it, his wit, of which in the whole book there are not +three sallies.' + +The editor of this 'Diary' remarks, 'that he will no doubt be considered +a very extraordinary editor; the practice of whom has generally been to +prefer flattery to truth, and partiality to justice.' To understand, not +the flattery which his contemporaries heaped upon Bubb Dodington, but +the opprobrium with which they loaded his memory--to comprehend not his +merits but his demerits--it is necessary to take a brief survey of his +political life from the commencement. He began life, as we have seen, as +a servile adherent of Sir Robert Walpole. A political epistle to the +Minister was the prelude to a temporary alliance only, for in 1737, Bubb +went over to the adverse party of Leicester House, and espoused the +cause of Frederick, Prince of Wales, against his royal father He was +therefore dismissed from the Treasury. When Sir Robert fell, Bubb +expected to rise, but his expectations of preferment were not realized. +He attacked the new Administration forthwith, and succeeded so far in +becoming important that he was made Treasurer of the Navy; a post which +he resigned in 1749, and which he held again in 1755, but which he lost +the next year. On the accession of George III., he was not ashamed to +appear altogether in a new character, as the friend of Lord Bute; he +was, therefore, advanced to the peerage by the title of Baron of +Melcombe Regis, in 1761. The honour was enjoyed for one short year only; +and on the 28th of July, 1762, Bubb Dodington expired. Horace Walpole, +in his 'Royal and Noble Authors,' complains that 'Dodington's "Diary" +was mangled, in compliment, before it was imparted to the public.' We +cannot therefore judge of what the 'Diary' was before, as the editor +avows that every anecdote was cut out, and all the little gossip so +illustrative of character and manners which would have brightened its +dull pages, fell beneath the power of a merciless pair of scissors. Mr. +Penruddocke Wyndham conceives, however, that he was only doing justice +to society in these suppressions. 'It would,' he says, 'be _no_ +entertainment to the reader to be informed who daily dined with his +lordship, or whom he daily met at the table of other people.' + +Posterity thinks differently: a knowledge of a man's associates forms +the best commentary on his life; and there is much reason to rejoice +that all biographers are not like Mr. Penruddocke Wyndham. Bubb +Dodington, more especially, was a man of society: inferior as a literary +man, contemptible as a politician, it was only at the head of his table +that he was agreeable and brilliant. He was, in fact, a man who had no +domestic life; a courtier, like Lord Hervey, but without Lord Hervey's +consistency. He was, in truth, a type of that era in England: vulgar in +aims; dissolute in conduct; ostentatious, vain-glorious--of a low, +ephemeral ambition; but at the same time talented, acute, and lavish to +the lettered. The public is now the patron of the gifted. What writer +cares for individual opinion, except as it tends to sweep up the gross +amount of public blame or censure? What publisher will consent to +undertake a work because some lord or lady recommended it to his notice? +The reviewer is greater in the commonwealth of letters than the man of +rank. + +But in these days it was otherwise; and they who, in the necessities of +the times, did what they could to advance the interest of the _belles +lettres_, deserve not to be forgotten. + +It is with a feeling of sickness that we open the pages of this great +Wit's 'Diary,' and attempt to peruse the sentences in which the most +grasping selfishness is displayed. We follow him to Leicester House, +that ancient tenement--(wherefore pulled down, except to erect on its +former site the narrowest of streets, does not appear): that former home +of the Sydneys had not always been polluted by the dissolute, heartless +_clique_ who composed the court of Frederick, Prince of Wales. Its +chambers had once been traversed by Henry Sydney, by Algernon, his +brother. It was their _home_--their father, Robert Sydney, Earl of +Leicester, having lived there. The lovely Dorothy Sydney, Waller's +Saccharissa, once, in all purity and grace, had danced in that gallery +where the vulgar, brazen Lady Middlesex, and her compliant lord, +afterwards flattered the weakest of princes, Frederick. In old times +Leicester House had stood on Lammas land--land in the spirit of the old +charities, open to the poor after Lammas-tide; and even 'the Right Hon. +the Earl of Leicester'--as an old document hath it--was obliged, if _he_ +chose to turn out his cows or horses on that appropriated land, to pay a +rent for it to the overseers of St. Martin's parish, then really 'in the +fields.' And here this nobleman not only dwelt in all state himself, but +let, or lent his house to persons whose memory seems to hallow even +Leicester Fields. Elizabeth of Bohemia, after what was to her indeed +'life's fitful fever,' died at Leicester House. It became then, +temporarily, the abode of ambassadors. Colbert, in the time of Charles +II., occupied the place; Prince Eugene, in 1712, held his residence +here; and the rough soldier, famous for all absence of tact--brave, +loyal-hearted, and coarse--lingered at Leicester House in hopes of +obstructing the peace between England and France. + +All that was good and great fled for ever from Leicester House at the +instant that George II., when Prince of Wales, was driven by his royal +father from St. James's, and took up his abode in it until the death of +George I. The once honoured home of the Sydneys henceforth becomes +loathsome in a moral sense. Here William, Duke of Cumberland--the hero, +as court flatterers called him--the butcher, as the poor Jacobite +designated him--of Culloden, first saw the light. Peace and +respectability then dignified the old house for ever. Prince Frederick +was its next inmate: here the Princess of Wales, the mother of George +III., had her lying-in, and her royal husband held his public tables; +and at these and in every assembly, as well as in private, one figure is +conspicuous. + +Grace Boyle--for she unworthily bore that great name--was the daughter +and heiress of Richard, Viscount Shannon. She married Lord Middlesex, +bringing him a fortune of thirty thousand pounds. Short, plain, 'very +yellow,' as her contemporaries affirm, with a head full of Greek and +Latin, and devoted to music and painting; it seems strange that +Frederick should have been attracted to one far inferior to his own +princess both in mind and person. But so it was, for in those days every +man liked his neighbour's wife better than his own. Imitating the +forbearance of her royal mother-in-law, the princess tolerated such of +her husband's mistresses as did not interfere in politics: Lady +Middlesex was the 'my good Mrs. Howard,' of Leicester House. She was +made Mistress of the Robes: her favour soon 'grew,' as the shrewd Horace +remarks, 'to be rather more than Platonic.' She lived with the royal +pair constantly, and sat up till five o'clock in the morning at their +suppers; and Lord Middlesex saw and submitted to all that was going on +with the loyalty and patience of a _Georgian_ courtier. Lady Middlesex +was a docile politician, and on that account, retained her position +probably long after she had lost her influence. + +Her name appears constantly in the 'Diary,' out of which everything +amusing has been carefully expunged. + +'Lady Middlesex, Lord Bathurst, Mr. Breton, and I, waited on their Royal +Highnesses to Spitalfields, to see the manufacture of silk.' In the +afternoon off went the same party to Norwood Forest, in private coaches, +to see a 'settlement of gypsies.' Then returning, went to find out +Bettesworth, the conjuror; but not discovering him, went in search of +the little Dutchman. Were disappointed in that; but 'concluded,' relates +Bubb Dodington, 'the peculiarities of this day by supping with Mrs. +Cannon, the princess's _midwife_.' + +All these elegant modes of passing the time were not only for the sake +of Lady Middlesex, but, it was said, of her friend, Mrs. Granville, one +of the Maids of Honour, daughter of the first Lord Lansdown, the poet. +This young lady, Eliza Granville, was scarcely pretty: a far, red-haired +girl. + +All this thoughtless, if not culpable, gallantry was abruptly checked by +the rude hand of death. During the month of March, Frederick was +attacked with illness, having caught cold. Very little apprehension was +expressed at first, but, about eleven days after his first attack, he +expired. Half an hour before his death, he had asked to see some +friends, and had called for coffee and bread and butter: a fit of +coughing came on, and he died instantly from suffocation. An abscess, +which had been forming in his side, had burst; nevertheless, his two +physicians, Wilmot and Lee, 'knew nothing of his distemper.' According +to Lord Melcombe, who thus refers to their blunders, 'They declared, +half an hour before his death, that his pulse was like a man's in +perfect health. They either would not see or did not know the +consequences of the black thrush, which appeared in his mouth, and quite +down in his throat. Their ignorance, or their knowledge of his disorder, +renders them equally inexcusable for not calling in other assistance.' + +The consternation in the prince's household was great, not for his life, +but for the confusion into which politics were thrown by his death. +After his relapse, and until just before his death, the princess never +suffered any English, man or woman, above the degree of valet-de-chambre +to see him; nor did she herself see any one of her household until +absolutely necessary. After the death of his eldest born, George II. +vented his diabolical jealousy upon the cold remains of one thus cut off +in the prime of life. The funeral was ordered to be on the model of that +of Charles II., but private counter-orders were issued to reduce the +ceremonial to the smallest degree of respect that could be paid. + +On the 13th of April, 1751, the body of the prince was entombed in Henry +VII.'s chapel. Except the lords appointed to hold the pall, and attend +the chief mourner, when the attendants were called over in their ranks, +there was not a _single_ English lord, not _one_ bishop, and only one +Irish lord (Lord Limerick), and three sons of peers. Sir John Rushout +and Dodington were the only privy counsellors who followed. It rained +heavily, but no covering was provided for the procession. The service +was performed without organ or anthem. 'Thus,' observes Bubb Dodington, +'ended this sad day.' + +Although the prince left a brother and sisters, the Duke of Somerset +acted as chief mourner. The king hailed the event of the prince's death +as a relief, which was to render happy his remaining days; and Bubb +Dodington hastened, in a few months, to offer to the Pelhams 'his +friendship and attachment.' His attendance at court was resumed, +although George II. could not endure him; and the old Walpolians, +nick-named the Black-tan, were also averse to him. + +Such were Bubb Dodington's _actions_. His expressions, on occasion of +the prince's death, were in a very different tone. + +'We have lost,' he wrote to Sir Horace Mann, 'the delight and ornament +of the age he lived in,--the expectations of the public: in this light I +have lost more than any subject in England; but this is light,--public +advantages confined to myself do not, ought not, to weigh with me. But +we have lost the refuge of private distress--the balm of the afflicted +heart the shelter of the miserable against the fury of private +adversity; the arts, the graces, the anguish, the misfortunes of +society, have lost their patron and their remedy. + +'I have lost my companion--my protector--the friend that loved me, that +condescended to hear, to communicate, to share in all the pleasures and +pains of the human heart: where the social affections and emotions of +the mind only presided without regard to the infinite disproportion of +my rank and condition. This is a wound that cannot, ought not to heal. +If I pretended to fortitude here, I should be infamous--a monster of +ingratitude--and unworthy of all consolation, if I was not +inconsolable.' + +'Thank you,' writes the shrewd Horace Walpole, addressing Sir Horace +Mann, 'for the transcript from _Bulb de Tristibus_. I will keep your +secret, though I am persuaded that a man who had composed such a funeral +oration on his master had himself fully intended that its flowers should +not bloom and wither in obscurity.' + +Well might George II., seeing him go to court say: 'I see Dodington here +sometimes, what does he come for?' + +It was, however, clearly seen what he went for, when, in 1753, two years +after the death of his 'benefactor,' Dodington humbly offered His +Majesty his services in the house, and 'five members,' for the rest of +his life, if His Majesty would give Mr. Pelham leave to employ him for +His Majesty's service. Nevertheless he continued to advise with the +Princess of Wales, and to drop into her house as if it had been a +sister's house--sitting on a stool near the fireside, and listening to +her accounts of her children. + +In the midst of these intrigues for favour on the part of Dodington, Mr. +Pelham died, and was succeeded by his brother, the Duke of Newcastle, +the issue of whose administration is well known. + +In 1760 death again befriended the now veteran wit, beau and politician. +George II. died; and the intimacy which Dodington had always taken care +to preserve between himself and the Princess of Wales, ended +advantageously for him; and he instantly, in spite of all his former +professions to Pelham, joined hand and heart with that minister, from +whom he obtained a peerage. This, as we have seen, was not long enjoyed. +Lord Melcombe, as this able, intriguing man was now styled, died on the +28th of July, 1762; and with him terminated the short-lived distinction +for which he had sacrificed even a decent pretext of principle and +consistency. + +So general has been the contempt felt for his character, that it seems +almost needless to assert that Bubb Dodington was eminently to be +despised. Nothing much more severe can be said of him than the remarks +of Horace Walpole--upon his 'Diary;' in which he observes that Dodington +records little but what is to his own disgrace; as if he thought that +the world would forgive his inconsistencies as readily as he forgave +himself. 'Had he adopted,' Horace well observes, 'the French title +"_Confessions_," it would have seemed to imply some kind of penitence.' + +But vain-glory engrossed him: 'He was determined to raise an altar to +himself, and for want of burnt offerings, lighted the pyre, like a great +author (Rousseau), with his own character.' + +It was said by the same acute observer, both of Lord Hervey and of Bubb +Dodington, that they were the only two persons he ever knew that were +always aiming at wit and never finding it.' And here, it seems, most +that can be testified in praise of a heartless, clever man, must be +summed up. + +Lord Melcombe's property, with the exception of a few legacies, devolved +upon his cousin Thomas Wyndham, of Hammersmith, by whom his Lordship's +papers, letters, and poems, were bequeathed to Henry Penruddocke +Wyndham, with an injunction, that only such as 'might do honour to his +memory should be made public.' + +After this, in addition to the true saying, defend us from our friends +one may exclaim, 'defend us from our executors and editors.' + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wits and Beaux of Society +by Grace & Philip Wharton + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WITS AND BEAUX OF SOCIETY *** + +***** This file should be named 10797.txt or 10797.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/7/9/10797/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Antje Benter, Sandra Brown and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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