|AMONG a ragged regiment of books, very dear to their owner, but in
whose dilapidated company no reputable volume would greatly care to
travel through Coventry, is a sheepskin-clad tract entitled 'Mémoires
Relating to the State of the Royal Navy of England, For Ten Years,
Determin'd December 1688.' It dates from those antiquated days when even
statistics had their air of scholarship and their motto from 'Tully' or
'the Antients' (_Quid Didcius Otio Litterato?_--it is in this case); and
the year of issue is 1690. The name of the author does not appear, but
his portrait by Kneller does; and he was none other than the diarist
Samuel Pepys, sometime Secretary to the Admiralty under the second
Charles and his successor. *
* The copy hero described also contains--but apparently only
inserted by a former owner--the scroll book-plate of Pepys.
In itself the little volume is an extremely instructive one, as much
from the light it throws upon the prominent part played by its writer
in the reconstruction of the Caroline navy, as from its exposure of
the lamentable mismanagement which permitted toad-stools as big as Mr.
Secretary's fists to flourish freely in the ill-ventilated holds of his
Majesty's ships-of-war. But the special attraction of the particular
copy to which we are referring lies in certain faded inscriptions which
it contains. On March 14, 1724, it was presented by one 'C. Jackson' to
'Tho. Coram,' by whom in turn it was transferred to a Mr. Mills, being
accompanied by a holograph note which is pasted at the end: 'To Mr Mills
These Worthy Sir I happend to find among my few Books, Mr Pepys, his
mémoires [there has evidently been a struggle over the spelling of the
name], wch I thought might be acceptable to you & therefore pray you to
accept of it. I am wth much Respect Sir your most humble Scrfc Thomas
Coram. June 10th, 1746.' It is not a lengthy document, but, with its
unaffected wording and its simple reference to 'my few Books,' it gives
a pleasant impression of the brave old mariner to whom, even at the
present day, so many hapless mortals owe their all; and whose ruddy,
kindly face, with its curling white hair, still beams on us from
Hogarth's canvas at the Foundling.
Captain Coram must have been seventy-eight years old when he wrote the
above letter, for he had been born, at Lyme Regis in Dorsetshire, as
far back as 1668. Of his boyhood nothing is known; but in 1694 he
was working as a shipwright at Taunton, Massachusetts. His benevolent
instincts seem to have developed early, for in December, 1703, he
conveyed to the Taunton authorities some fifty-nine acres of land as the
site for a church or schoolhouse.
In the deed of gift he is described as 'of Boston, in New England,
sometimes residing in Taunton, in the County of Bristol, Shipwright.'
He also gave a library to Taunton; and, from the fact that the Common
Prayer Book used in the church of that town was presented to him for the
purpose by Mr. Speaker Onslow, must have been successful in enlisting in
his good offices the sympathies of others. In course of time he became
master of a ship; and, in 1719, a glimpse of his life, of which there
are scant details, shows him being plundered and maltreated by wreckers
at Cuxhaven, while a passenger on a vessel called the 'Sea Flower,' upon
which occasion the affidavit describes him as 'of London, Mariner and
Shipwright.' At this date he was engaged in the supply of stores to
the navy. He must have prospered fairly in his calling, for he soon
afterwards retired from a sea-faring fife in order to live upon his
means, and occupy himself entirely with charitable objects. In the
Plantations, as they were then called, he took great interest;
being notably active as regards the colonization of Georgia and the
improvement of the Nova Scotian cod fisheries. Lord Walpole of Wolterton
(Horace Walpole's uncle), who had met him, testified warmly to his
honesty, his disinterestedness, and his knowledge of his subject.
Neither an educated nor a polished man (and not always a judicious one),
he was indefatigable in the pursuit of his purpose, and his singleminded
philanthropy was beyond the shadow of a doubt. 'His arguments,' said his
intimate friend Dr. Brocklesby, 'were nervous, though not nice--founded
commonly upon facts, and the consequences that he drew, so closely
connected with them, as to need no further proof than a fair
explanation. When once he made an impression, he took care it should
not wear out; for he enforced it continually by the most pathetic
remonstrances. In short, his logic was plain sense; his eloquence, the
natural language of the heart.'
His crowning enterprise was the obtaining of a charter for the
establishment of the Foundling Hospital. Going to and fro at
Rotherhithe, where in his latter days he lived, he was constantly coming
upon half-clad infants, 'sometimes alive, sometimes dead, and sometimes
dying,' who had been abandoned by their parents to the mercy of the
streets; and he determined to devote his energies to the procuring of
a public institution in which they might find an asylum. For seventeen
years, with an unconquerable tenacity, and in the face of the most
obstinate obstruction, apathy, and even contempt, he continued to urge
his suit upon the public, being at last rewarded by a Royal charter and
the subscription of sufficient funds to commence operations. An estate
of fifty-six acres was bought in Lamb's Conduit Fields for £3,500;
and the building of the Hospital was begun from the plans of Theodore
Jacobsen. Among its early Governors were many contemporary artists who
contributed freely to its adornment, thereby, according to the received
tradition, sowing the seed of the existing Royal Academy. Handel, too,
was one of its noblest benefactors. For several years he regularly
superintended an annual performance of the 'Messiah' in the Chapel (an
act which produced no less than £7,000 to the institution), and he also
presented it with an organ. Having opened informally in 1741 at a house
in Hatton Garden, the Governors moved into the new building at the
completion of the west wing in 1745. But already their good offices
had begun to be abused. Consigning children to the Foundling was too
convenient a way of disposing of them; and, even in the Hatton Garden
period, the supply had been drawn, not from London alone, but from all
parts of the Kingdom. It became a lucrative trade to convey infants from
remote country places to the undiscriminating care of the Charity. Once
a waggoner brought eight to town, seven of whom were dead when they
reached their destination. On another occasion a man with five in
baskets got drunk on the road, and three of his charges were suffocated.
The inevitable outcome of this was that the Governors speedily
discovered they were admitting far more inmates than they could possibly
afford to maintain. They accordingly applied to Parliament, who voted
them £10,000, but at the same time crippled them with the obligation to
receive all comers. A basket was forthwith hung at the gate, with the
result that on the first day of its appearance, no less than 117 infants
were successively deposited in it. That this extraordinary
development of the intentions of the projectors could continue to work
satisfactorily was of course impossible, and great mortality ensued.
As time went on, however, a wise restriction prevailed; and the Hospital
now exists solely for those unmarried mothers whose previous character
has been good, and whose desire to reform is believed to be sincere.
Fortunately, long before the era of what one of the accounts calls its
'frightful efflorescence'--an efflorescence which, moreover, could never
have occurred under Captain Coram's original conditions--its benevolent
founder had been laid to rest in its precincts. After his wife's death
he fell into difficulties, and subscriptions were collected for his
benefit. When this was broken to the old man--too modest himself to
plead his own cause, and too proud to parade his necessity--he made,
according to Hawkins, the following memorable answer to Dr. Brocklesby:
'I have not wasted the little wealth of which I was formerly possessed
in self-indulgence, or vain expenses, and am not ashamed to confess,
that in this my old age I am poor.'
Although the Sunday services are still well attended, Captain Coram's
Charity is no longer the 'fashionable morning lounge' it was in the
Georgian era, when, we are told, the grounds were crowded daily with
brocaded silks, gold-headed canes, and three-cornered hats of the
orthodox Egham, Staines and Windsor pattern. *
* Egham, Staines, and Windsor form a triangle. According to
J. T. Smith, Alderman Boydell was one of the last who wore a
hat of this type ('Book for a Rainy Day,' 1861, p. 221).
No members of the Royal Academy now assemble periodically round the
historical blue dragon punch-bowl, still religiously preserved, over
which Hogarth and Lambert and Highmore and the other pictorial patrons
of a place must often have chirruped 'Life a Bubble,' or 'Drink and
Agree,' at their annual dinners; neither is there of our day any
munificent _maestro_ like Handel to present the institution with a new
organ or the original score of an oratorio. But if you enter to the left
of Mr. Calder Marshall's statue at the gate in Guildford Street, you
shall still find the enclosure dotted with red-coated boys playing at
cricket, and with girls in white caps; and in the quiet, unpretentious
building itself are many time-honoured relics of its past. Here, for
example, is one of Hogarth's contributions to his friend's enterprise,
the 'March of the Guards towards Scotland, in the year 1745,' commonly
called the 'March to Finchley'--that famous performance for which King
George the Second of irate memory said he ought to be 'bicketed,'
and which the artist, in a rage, forthwith dedicated to the King of
_Prusia_, with one 's.' A century and a half has passed since it was
executed, but it is still in excellent preservation, having of late
years, for greater precaution, been placed under glass. *
* It was disposed of in 1750 by raffle or lottery.
'Yesterday,'--says the 'General Advertiser' for May 1 in
that year,--'Mr. Hogarth's subscription was closed. 1843
chances being subscrib'd for, Mr Hogarth gave the remaining
107 chances to the Foundling Hospital. At two o'clock the
Box was opened, and the fortunate chance was No. 1941, which
belongs to the said Hospital; and the same night Mr Hogarth
delivered the Picture to the Governors.'
Here, too, is the already mentioned full-length of the founder--a
portrait of the masterly qualities and superb colouring of which neither
McArdell's mezzotint nor Nutter's stipple gives any adequate idea. Here,
again, is one of Hogarth's 'failures,' the 'Moses Brought to Pharaoh's
Daughter,' which is not so great a failure after all. Certainly it
compares favourably with the 'Finding of Moses' by the professed
history-painter, Frank Hayman, which hangs hard by, and is an utterly
bald and lifeless production. On the contrary, in Hogarth's picture, the
expression in the eyes of the mother, which linger on the child as her
hand mechanically receives the money, is one of those touches which make
the whole world kin. Among the circular paintings of similar charities
is a charming little Gainsborough of the Charterhouse, while the
'Foundling' and 'St. George's Hospital' are from the brush of Richard
Wilson.
There is a dignified portrait of Handel by Kneller, which makes one
wonder how the caricaturists could ever have distorted him into the
'Charming Brute;' and also a bust by Roubiliac, being the original model
for the statues in Westminster Abbey and Old Vauxhall Gardens. There are
autographs of Hogarth and Coram and John Wilkes the demagogue; there
is a copy of his 'Christmas Stories' presented by the author, Charles
Dickens; there is a case in one of the windows full of the queer,
forlorn 'marks or tokens' which, in the basket days, were found attached
to its helpless inmates--ivory fish, silver coins of Queen Anne or
James, scraps of paper with doggerel rhymes, lockets, lottery tickets,
and the like. As you pass from the contemplation of these things--a
contemplation not without its touch of pathos--you peep into the church,
mentally filling the empty benches in the organ loft with the singing
faces and pure voices of the childish choristers, and you remember that
here Benjamin West painted the altar-piece, and here Laurence Sterne
preached. Once more in Guildford Street, you turn instinctively towards
another thoroughfare, where lived a later writer who must often have
made the pilgrimage you have just accomplished. For at No. 13 Great
Coram Street was the home of William Makepeace Thackeray, and from the
shadow of the Foundling, in July, 1840, he sent forth his 'Paris Sketch
Book.' When, seven years later, he was writing his greatest novel,
Captain Coram's Charity still lingered in his memory. It is on the wall
of its church that old Mr. Osborne, of 'Vanity Fair' and Russell Square,
erects his pompous tablet to his dead son: it is in the same building
that, sitting 'in a place whence she could see the head of the boy under
his father's tombstone,' poor Emmy feasts her hungry maternal eyes on
unconscious little Georgy.