|ON the 19th of May, 1708, Her Majesty Queen Anne being then upon the
throne of Great Britain and Ireland, a coach with two horses, gaudy
rather than neat in its appointments, drew up at the door of my Lord
Sunderland's Office in Whitehall. It contained a lady about thirty, of
considerable personal attractions, and dressed richly in cinnamon satin.
She was a brunette, with a rather high forehead, the height of which was
ingeniously broken by two short locks upon the temples. Moreover, she
had distinctly fine eyes, and a mouth which, in its normal state, must
have been arch and pretty, but was now drawn down at the corners under
the influence of some temporary irritation. As the coach stopped,
a provincial-looking servant promptly alighted, pulled out from the
box-seat a large case of the kind used for preserving the voluminous
periwigs of the period, and subsequently extracted from the same
receptacle a pair of shining new shoes with square toes and silver
buckles. These, with the case, he carried carefully into the house,
returning shortly afterwards. Then ensued what, upon the stage, would
be called 'an interval' during which time the high forehead of the lady
began to cloud visibly with impatience, and the corners of her mouth to
grow more ominous. At length, about twenty minutes later, came a sound
of laughter and noisy voices; and by-and-by bustled out of the Cockpit
portal a square-shouldered, square-faced man in a rich dress, which,
like the coach, was a little showy. He wore a huge black full-bottomed
periwig. Speaking with a marked Irish accent, he made profuse apologies
to the occupant of the carriage--apologies which, as might be expected,
were not well received. An expression of vexation came over his
good-tempered face as he took his seat at the lady's side, and he lapsed
for a few minutes into a moody silence. But before they had gone many
yards, his dark, deep-set eyes began to twinkle once more as he looked
about him. When they passed the Tilt-Yard a detachment of the Second
Troop of Life Guards, magnificent in their laced red coats, jack boots,
and white feathers, came pacing out on their black horses. They took
their way towards Charing Cross, and for a short distance followed the
same route as the chariot. The lady was loftily indifferent to their
presence; and she was, besides, on the further side of the vehicle. But
her companion manifestly recognized some old acquaintances among them,
and was highly gratified at being recognized in his turn, although at
the same time it was evident he was also a little apprehensive lest
the 'Gentlemen of the Guard,' as they were called, should be needlessly
demonstrative in their acknowledgment of his existence. After this,
nothing more of moment occurred. Slowly mounting St. James's Street,
the coach turned down Piccadilly, and, passing between the groups of
lounging lackeys at the gate, entered Hyde Park. Here, by the time
it had once made the circuit of the Ring, the lady's equanimity was
completely restored, and the gentleman was radiant. He was, in truth, to
use his own words, 'no undelightful Companion.' He possessed an infinite
fund of wit and humour; and his manner to women had a sincerity of
deference which was not the prevailing characteristic of his age.
There is but slender invention in this little picture. The gentleman was
Captain Steele, late of the Life Guards, the Coldstreams, and Lucas's
regiment of foot, now Gazetteer, and Gentleman Waiter to Queen Anne's
consort, Prince George of Denmark, and not yet 'Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff'
of the immortal 'Tatler.' The lady was Mrs. Steele, _née_ Miss Mary
Scurlock, his 'Ruler' and 'absolute Governesse' (as he called her),
to whom he had been married some eight months before. If you ask at the
British Museum for the Steele manuscripts (Add. MSS. 5,145, A, B, and
C), the courteous attendant will bring you, with its faded ink, dusky
paper, and hasty scrawl, the very letter making arrangements for this
meeting ('best Periwigg' and 'new Shoes' included), at the end of
which the writer assures his 'dear Prue' (another pet name) that she
is 'Vitall Life to YT Oblig'd Affectionate Husband & Humble Sernt Richd
Steele.' There are many such in the quarto volume of which this forms
part, written from all places, at all times, in all kinds of hands. They
take all tones; they are passionate, tender, expostulatory, playful,
dignified, lyric, didactic. It must be confessed that from a perusal
of them one's feeling for the lady of the chariot is not entirely
unsympathetic. It can scarcely have been an ideal household, that 'third
door right hand turning out of Jermyn Street,' to which so many of them
are addressed; and Mrs. Steele must frequently have had to complain to
her _confidante_, Mrs. (or Miss) Binns (a lady whom Steele is obviously
anxious to propitiate), of the extraordinary irregularity of her
restless lord and master. Now a friend from Barbados has stopped him on
his way home, and he will come (he writes) 'within a Pint of Wine;' now
it is Lord Sunderland who is keeping him indefinitely at the Council;
now the siege of Lille and the proofs of the 'Gazette' will detain him
until ten at night. Sometimes his vague 'West Indian business' (that is,
his first wife's property) hurries him suddenly into the City;
sometimes he is borne off to the Gentleman Ushers' table at St. James's.
Sometimes, even, he stays out all night, as he had done not many days
before the date of the above meeting, when he had written to beg that
his dressing-gown, his slippers, and 'clean Linnen' might be sent to
him at 'one Legg's,' a barber 'over against the Devill Tavern at Charing
Crosse,' where he proposes to lie that night, chiefly, it has been
conjectured from the context, in order to escape certain watchful
'shoulder-dabbers' who were hanging obstinately about his own mansion
in St. James's. For--to tell the truth--he was generally hopelessly
embarrassed, and scarcely ever without a lawsuit on his hands. He was
not a bad man; he was not necessarily vicious or dissolute. But his
habits were incurably generous, profuse, and improvident; and his
sanguine Irish nature led him continually to mistake his expectations
for his income. Naturally, perhaps, his 'absolute Governesse' complained
of an absolutism so strangely limited. If her affection for him was
scarcely as ardent as his passion for her, it was still a genuine
emotion. But to a coquette of some years' standing, and 'a cried-up
beauty' (as Mrs. Manley calls her), the realities of her married life
must have been a cruel disappointment; and she was not the woman to
conceal it. 'I wish,' says her husband in one of his letters, 'I knew
how to Court you into Good Humour, for Two or Three Quarrells more
will dispatch me quite.' Of her replies we have no knowledge; but from
scattered specimens of her style when angry, they must often have been
exceptionally scornful and unconciliatory. On one occasion, where he
addresses her as 'Madam,' and returns her note to her in order that she
may see, upon second thoughts, the disrespectful manner in which she
treats him, he is evidently deeply wounded. She has said that their
dispute is far from being a trouble to her, and he rejoins that to him
any disturbance between them is the greatest affliction imaginable. And
then he goes on to expostulate, with more dignity than usual, against
her unreasonable use of her prerogative. 'I Love you,' he says, 'better
than the light of my Eyes, or the life-blood in my Heart but when I have
lett you know that, you are also to understand that neither my sight
shall be so far inchanted, or my affection so much master of me as to
make me forgett our common Interest. To attend my businesse as I ought
and improve my fortune it is necessary that my time and my Will should
be under no direction but my own.' Clearly his bosom's queen had been
inquiring too closely into his goings and comings. It is a strange
thing, he says, in another letter, that, because she is handsome, he
must be always giving her an account of every trifle, and minute of
his time. And again--'Dear Prue, do not send after me, for I shall be
ridiculous:' It had happened to him, no doubt. 'He is governed by his
wife most abominably, as bad as Marlborough,' says another contemporary
letter-writer. And we may fancy the blue eyes of Dr. Swift flashing
unutterable scorn as he scribbles off this piece of intelligence to
Stella and Mrs. Dingley.
In the letters which follow Steele's above-quoted expostulation, the
embers of misunderstanding flame and fade, to flame and fade again. A
word or two of kindness makes him rapturous; a harsh expression sinks
him to despair. As time goes on, the letters grow fewer, and the
writers grow more used to each other's ways. But to the last Steele's
affectionate nature takes fire upon the least encouragement. Once, years
afterwards, when Prue is in the country and he is in London, and she
calls him 'Good Dick,' it throws him into such a transport that he
declares he could forget his gout, and walk down to her at Wales. 'My
dear little peevish, beautiful, wise Governess, God bless you,' the
letter ends. In another he assures her that, lying in her place and on
her pillow, he fell into tears from thinking that his 'charming little
insolent might be then awake and in pain'-.with headache. She wants
flattery, she says, and he flatters her. 'Her son,' he declares, 'is
extremely pretty, and has his face sweetened with something of the Venus
his mother, which is no small delight to the Vulcan who begot him.' He
assures her that, though she talks of the children, they are dear to him
more because they are hers than because they are his own. *
* A few sentences in this paper are borrowed from the
writer's 'Life of Steele,' 1886.
And this reminds us that some of the best of his later letters are about
his family. Once, at this time of their mother's absence in Wales, he
says that he has invited his eldest daughter to dinner with one of her
teachers, because she had represented to him 'in her pretty language
that she seemed helpless and friendless, without anybody's taking notice
of her at Christmas, when all the children but she and two more were
with their relations.' So now they are in the room where he is writing.
'I told Betty,' he adds, 'I had writ to you; and she made me open the
letter again, and give her humble duty to her mother, and desire to know
when she shall have the honour to see her in town.' No doubt this was in
strict accordance with the proprieties as practised at Mrs. Nazereau's
polite academy in Chelsea; but somehow one suspects that 'Madam Betty'
would scarcely have addressed the writer of the letter with the same
boarding-school formality. 'Elsewhere the talk is all of Eugene, the
eldest boy. 'Your son, at the present writing, is mighty well employed
in tumbling on the floor of the room and sweeping the sand with a
feather. He grows a most delightful child, and very full of play and
spirit. He is also a very great scholar: he can read his Primer; and
I have brought down my Virgil. He makes most shrewd remarks upon the
pictures. We are very intimate friends and play-fellows.' Yes: decidedly
Steele's children must have loved their clever, faulty, kindly father.