list of the numerous charities of which your Royal Highness is the
ostensible head. It may seem, at first sight, inconsistent with the
Christian precepts to give so much notoriety to benevolent actions;
but, even in this view, your Royal Highness's conduct is above all
imputation: that precept applies to the hand, and not to the head;
and though your Royal Highness gives your great personal weight to
the chair of those associations, your worst enemy cannot say that
you were ever known to give any thing else. Your left hand (which,
agreeably to the scriptural suggestion, is as discerning as your
Royal Highness's intellect) does certainly not know of any particular
charity, performed by your Royal Highness's right hand.
You are thus enabled, Sir, to extend the sphere of your utility and
beneficence. Actual donations must have had a limit; but the charity
which costs nothing, may, as we see in your Royal Highness's case, be
indefinitely extended, to the great encouragement and increase of the
contributions of others.
To all the above mentioned distinctions, equally high, equally
honourable, and equally deserved, your Royal Highness, on the
principle just stated,--that you have still countenance enough to
bestow on meritorious institutions,--has intimated your gracious
intention of succeeding Sir Joseph Banks as President of the Royal
Society. Amongst your many and obvious claims to this situation, the
first is, that you are a _fishmonger_; for thus your Royal Highness
will be in a condition to solve that celebrated problem propounded to
the Society by its Royal Founder Charles the Second, and which has
not been yet satisfactorily explained, relative to the respective
gravities of fish, dead or alive. Nor if the late President had been
a fishmonger, would the Society have been involved in the failure and
disgrace of that experiment which the indignant poet has immortalized
by the line
"Fleas are not lobsters--Damn their souls!"
But though I could not avoid touching upon these matters, it is as
a citizen of London, and as the condescending friend of our most
patriotic magistrates--our modern Whittingtons--that I presume to
address your Royal Highness, and to solicit your favour to an essay
towards the history of that great man, the honour of which cannot
fail to be reflected on his successors; and in addition to this
gracious patronage for myself, I am charged by others to solicit your
Royal Highness, to be pleased to lend your name as President to a new
literary and most useful association, held in Bearbinder Lane, at
the back of the Mansion House, called "The Whittington Institution,
for teaching Aldermen to read, write, cypher, and dance, on Mr.
Lancaster's system."
In humble hope of your Royal Highness's most gracious condescension,
I have the honour to remain, Sir,
Your Royal Highness's
Most devoted and obedient Servant,
VICESIMUS BLINKINSOP.
[Illustration: (end of section icon)]
TENTAMEN, &c.
In looking at the propensities of the age we live in, comparatively
with those of times past, one cannot fail to observe a laudable love
for the noble science of antiquities: of which it may be truly said,
that it is conversant with peaceful and unoffending yesterdays, while
the idle votaries of the world are busied about to-day, and the
visionaries of ambition are dreaming of to-morrow.
Connected with this grave and useful pursuit is the general
inclination to search into the minutiæ of history, which never before
prevailed amongst us in so ardent a degree. The smallest information
upon traditional points is received with an avidity more salutary
and commendable than that which is the result of a commonplace love
of novelty; and the smaller the information, the greater the merit
of the painstaking author; who, like a skilful clock-maker, or other
nice handy-craftsman, is lauded in proportion to the minuteness of
his work.
Such are, for instance, the valuable discoveries which that excellent
philosopher and novelist Mr. Godwin hath made and edited, of and
concerning the great poet Chaucer; and, inasmuch as the nice and
small works of clock-makers, which we have mentioned, are carefully
placed in huge towers and steeples, beyond malicious or impertinent
curiosity, so this prudent philosopher hath disposed his small facts
in two tall volumes, equally out of the reach of the vulgar.
Such also are those valuable illustrations of the private lives of
public men which have issued from the Press under the titles of
"Ana," "Remains," and "Memoirs," and which have so admirably answered
the purposes for which they were put forth--namely, that of being
sold--while they at the same time maintain a discreet silence on
all matters which the ingenious subject of the biography might wish
to conceal, agreeably to that excellent maxim, _de mortuis nil nisi
bonum_: by these means, such treatises become a delectable kind of
reading, wherein nothing is admitted which can hurt the feelings
of any of the worthy persons mentioned in the course of the work,
particularly if they be deceased. This mode of writing conduces to
good humour and charity amongst men, and manifestly tends, as Dr.
Johnson observes on another occasion, to raise the general estimate
of human nature.
On these principles and considerations have I been induced, at no
small cost of time and labour, to endeavour to throw a new light upon
the life of Matthew Whittington, some time Mayor (or Lord Mayor, as
the courtesy goeth) of this worthy City of London,--a man, whose fame
needs no addition, but only to be placed in a proper point of view,
to challenge the admiration of a grateful posterity of Mayors and
Aldermen.
In humble imitation of my aforesaid friend Mr. Godwin, and of divers
other well-reputed authors, I have written this life in one hundred
and seventy-eight quires of foolscap paper, in a small and close,
but neat hand; which by my computation, having counted the number
of words therein contained, as well as the number of words in the
learned Bishop Watson's life of himself (which made my excellent
friend Dr. Snodgrass, who lent me the same, facetiously declare,
that I was the only man he ever knew who could get through it); I
say, having counted all these words, I find that my life of Mr.
Whittington (including thirteen quires on the general history of
Cats) would, if duly printed after the manner of Mr. Davison, who
never puts more than sixteen lines into a quarto page, make or
constitute five volumes of a similar size and shape to Dr. Watson's
life, which, with cuts by Mr. John Britton, author of several curious
topographical works, might be sold for the reasonable sum of £31
10_s._, being only six guineas the volume; and if it should please
the Legislature, in its wisdom, to repeal the Copy-right Bill (by
which costly books are made accessible to poor students at the
Universities, who have no business with such sort of works), my said
work might be furnished at the reduced price of £31 4_s._ 6_d._
But small as this sum is, it is with grief I say, that such is the
badness of the times, occasioned by the return of peace, and the
late long succession of plentiful harvests, that I find booksellers
strangely reluctant to embark in this transaction with me.[28] They
offer indeed to print my work if I can get it previously praised
in the _Edinburgh Review_; and the Reviewers say, that they are
not unwilling to praise it, but that it must, of a necessity, be
previously printed.
I have observed to Mr. Jeffrey in my seventh letter to him on this
subject, that this condition is not only new and injurious to me,
but, by his own showing, clearly gratuitous and unnecessary; because,
for aught that appears in the generality of his articles, he may
never have read the work which is the subject-matter of them; nay, it
hath sometimes been proved from the context, that he never hath even
seen the work at all; and as this little accident hath not hindered
his writing an excellent essay under colour of such work, so I
contended, that he need not now make the preliminary _sine quâ non_,
as to having my work printed; for "de non impressis et de non lectis
eadem est ratio."
But I grieve to say, that all my well-grounded reasoning hath been
unavailing; and as neither party will give up his notion, I stand at
a dead lock between the booksellers and reviewers.
In this dilemma, I should--like Aristotle's celebrated ass--have
starved till doomsday; but that, through the kindness and prudent
advice of my learned friends Mr. Jonas Backhouse, Jun. of
Pocklington, and the Rev. Doctor Snodgrass of Hog's-Norton, I have
been put upon a mode of extricating myself, by publishing, in a small
form, a tentamen, specimen, or abridgement of part of my great work,
which I am told Mr. Jeffrey will not object to review, he being
always ready to argue "à particulari ad universale:" so that, in
future time, the learned world may have hope of seeing my erudite
labours at full length, whereof this dissertation is a short and
imperfect sample or pattern.
* * * * *
The whole history of the illustrious Whittington is enveloped
in doubt. The mystery begins even before he is born; for no one
knows who his mother, and still less who his father, was. We are
in darkness as to where he first saw the light, and though it is
admitted that he most probably had a Christian name, _adhuc sub
judice lis est_, as to what that Christian name was.
This important point, however, my revered friend, the Rev. Dr.
Snodgrass of Hog's-Norton hath enabled me to decide.
Tradition has handed down to us that Whittington was a charity
boy, as it is called, and received the rudiments of letters at the
parish school of Hog's-Norton aforesaid; this clue directed the
Doctor's researches, and by that enlightened zeal for which he was
conspicuous, he has been so fortunate as to discover rudely carved on
the wainscot by some fellow-pupil,
M. W. IS A FOOL;
M. W. IS A DUNCE;
And one, which is more satisfactory,
M----W, W. IS A STUPID DOG,
1772.
This date seems at first sight to apply to a period long posterior
to Mr. Whittington; but when we recollect how often the wisest men,
the most careful copyists, the most expert printers, mistake dates
and transpose figures, we are not to be surprised at a similar error
in an unlettered and heedless school-boy; and therefore, as Dr.
Snodgrass judiciously advises--(a noble conjecture indeed, which
places the critic almost on a level with the original writer)--the
mistake may be corrected by the simple change of placing the figures
in their obvious proper order, 1277, which, as Mr. Whittington is
known to have been Sheriff or Mayor about the year 1330, when he
was probably near sixty, shews that he was about seven when at
Hog's-Norton; and proves incontestably, that to him and him alone
these ancient and fortunately discovered inscriptions refer.
Having established their authenticity, it is easy to show that Mr.
Whittington's name was not Richard, as the vulgar fondly imagine; R,
and not M, being the initial of Richard; and we might perhaps have
doubted between Matthew, Mathias, Moses, Melchisedec or Mark; but the
concluding W. of the last inscription seems to settle the matter in
favour of Matthew, which is the only name that I know of in ordinary
use which begins with M, and ends, as all the world sees, with a W.
I shall say little of an erroneous supposition--built on the strength
of the words "fool," "dunce," and "stupid dog;" and on the manifestly
mistaken date,--which would refer these characteristic sentences to
a worthy alderman now alive; (with whose initials they do, indeed,
by a strange accident, agree.) Such a supposition is clearly false
and untenable, as may be proved by one decisive observation, _inter
alia_; that they appear to be the work of some jealous rival,
displeased at Mr. Whittington's superior ability: perhaps they
were even engraved by a fraud on the parish furniture, after Mr.
Whittington's rise had given some handle to envy; whereas it is well
known and universally admitted, to be the happiness of the worthy
alderman now alive, that no human being either ever did, or could
envy _him_:--this sets that important question asleep for ever.
It may seem to some readers that these epithets,--opprobria, as
some may think them,--do not redound to the credit of Mr. Alderman
Whittington's intellect; but even if they are not, as before
suggested, the production of envy, they are by no means inconsistent
with Whittington's successful progress in life; on the contrary,
they seem to designate him as a person who would naturally rise to
City honours. It is grown to be a proverb, and admitted by the best
writers on the subject, that Lord Mayors are "stupid dogs."[29] The
City hath a prescription to choose "fools," for places of honour
therein; and, as Matthew was at least twice Lord Mayor, he might with
great propriety have been twice as great a fool as any of the others.
This leads me to the important consideration of how often the
illustrious Matthew had the honour of so worthily filling the Civic
throne.
An ancient and well-known ballad has this beautiful, and indeed
important, rhyme,--
"---- ---- Whittington,
_Twice_ Lord Mayor of London."[30]
Some copies indeed, and one in particular, (penis R. Pria Knight,
F.R.S.) have it "thrice." This, however, on a careful collation with
all the best MSS. and some very fair black-letter editions, has been
most satisfactorily disproved: it has crept into the old versions,
either from the well-known predilection for the _trine_ number; or,
from the writer's having composed the work during Matthew's second
Mayoralty, when, as it appears from some old papers in the Tower,
he, as well as many of his zealous friends, had a notion that he
would have been again elected to the dignified office which he had
for two successive years filled so satisfactorily--to himself.
That such a re-election would have delighted him, nobody can doubt,
who is aware of the fact of his being so anxious to discharge
correctly the duties of his great office, that he practised the
part,--or, as it is in one account quaintly phrased, _played at
Lord Mayor_,--for some time before he had attained the station; and
for many years after he had passed the chair, evinced his gratitude
by keeping up the same laudable practice. An old account of one of
his private dinners states, that even to the day of his death, when
he was at home, he sat in state at the head of his table, with his
loving spouse beside him, and his chief guest, if it were but the
deputy of the ward, upon his right, while the other members of his
family were ranged as regularly in order as if they had been at the
Easter dinner in the Mansion House.
As it affects Mr. Whittington's character, the little variation
between twice and thrice is at present quite immaterial. He that
deserved to be twice Lord Mayor could hardly have been additionally
ennobled by having been so three or more times; and, considering that
the statements rest on public rumour, and, perhaps, the partiality
of friends, of which not one-half is generally true, it seems a not
unfair proportion to believe two-thirds.
But, proud as Matthew naturally was at his double elevation, for he
had sitten on the two forks of the civic Parnassus, it seems that
in a subsequent period of his life he began to grow weary of his
legitimate honours, and bursting from that civic chrysalis, the
alderman's gown, strove to soar by gaudier flights into what it may
be imagined he deemed better company. But the City Icarus tried his
wings, there is reason to suppose, in a temperature somewhat too
glowing; and if it were not for that indulgent principle of modern
biography to which I have alluded, of saying nothing disagreeable
either of the living or dead, I might be able to show that Matthew
had earned the detestation of some, the ridicule of others, and the
contempt of all, and forfeited much of that grave respect which
aldermen are heirs to, by presuming to meddle with things the which
he could of no possibility understand.
The several particulars of his life upon which the old Chronicles
are at variance, and which in my large work I think I may--_absit
invidia_--say, I have reconciled and explained, are these:--
1. His political principles.
2. His trade, and what it really was.
3. The quality of his intellect.
4. The quantity[31] of his intellect.
5. Whether the bells did preternaturally ring his recall to London;
or, whether it were merely the force of his own vanity which gave
this favourable meaning to an idle sound.
6. Whether he really was maltreated, as tradition reports, by a
kitchen-maid.
7. What sort of company he kept.
8. What the Cat was by which he rendered himself chiefly notorious,
and whether his famous expedition to catch the Cat was undertaken
prior, or subsequently, to his second Mayoralty.
9. And lastly, whether he died a natural or disgraceful death.
All these are points at issue, and will probably so continue till
the publication of my great work, except one, namely, the 8th, which
relates to his memorable Cat, upon which it is my intention to offer
in this _opusculum_ some lights and solutions.
History cannot perhaps be impartially written during the lives
of those to whom it relates, and the nine-fold term of existence
assigned to the feline species has probably been the cause of much
of the misrepresentation which we are, alas! doomed to deplore; but
sufficient time has now elapsed since Whittington, and even since his
Cat, left the world, to have destroyed every particle of prejudice,
and it is a great satisfaction to me to be able to speak plainly
upon the subject, without the fear of an imputation of any feeling,
other than a strict love of truth and justice, tempered and directed
by that candid resolution which I have avowed, of not saying a harsh
thing even of a dead Cat.
As some of the hypotheses upon the very intricate subject of the
Cat, suppose her to have been a human female, it seems proper, _in
limine_, to satisfy the fair sex, by setting at rest the disputes
which have hitherto existed as to Matthew's personal appearance. We
always feel more interested in a hero after he has been described to
us, even if (as it is in this case) his _tout-ensemble_ should happen
not to be particularly engaging; indeed, who can be so extravagant
and preposterous as to look for personal beauty in an alderman? It
is therefore not derogating from his great character to confess
that Matthew Whittington, to judge of him by a woodcut (the only
genuine likeness extant), had one of those hard and vulgar faces
which resemble the heads of certain clumsily-carved walking-sticks,
or tobacco-stoppers, in which a fixed smile relaxes (by the mere
comicality of its brisk and vulgar self-satisfaction) the muscles of
the beholders. Mr. W. seemed to smile eternally at himself, and the
smile was so contagious, that few could look at him without laughing.
It is also necessary towards understanding what is to follow, that
I should touch a little on the progress of this great man to the
mercantile eminence which he afterwards (whether by means of the Cat
or not) attained.
It is known that the Kings of England have a private, or rather a
notoriously public, mark, whereby they distinguish their property,
known to the initiated as the King's _Broad Arrow_, but vulgarly
called the King's Broad R. This mark is held up by all "dealers in
marine stores" of these our days to their children as the Scylla of
their voyage through life. They are taught never to purloin (if there
be any other within reach) any timber, thick stuff, or plank, or iron
or copper bolts, belaying-pins, gudgeons, stauncheons, fastenings
or sheathing, or any other article having on or about it the King's
Broad Arrow by "stamp, brand, or otherwise," and carefully to abstain
(as far as possible) from meddling with any cordage of three inches
and upwards wrought with a white thread the contrary way (which
thread is improperly called the rogue's yarn) or any canvas wrought
or unwrought with a blue streak in the middle; or any bewper wrought
with one or more streaks of raised white tape, as they believe in and
fear the 22 Charles II., cap. 5; the 9 and 10 William III., cap. 41;
9 George I., cap. 8; 17 George II., cap. 40; 39 and 40 George III.,
cap. 89, sects. 5 and 6 most especially.[32]
Unfortunately, Mr. Whittington early in life formed an intimacy
with a man whose name was Joshua, who, for want of proper tuition,
had fallen foul, not exactly of the above-named statutes (inasmuch
as they were enacted long after his demise, and were therefore,
strictly speaking, not applicable to him) but of sundry others,
partly confirmed and partly repealed by the 31 of Elizabeth, cap. 4,
which unfortunately affected him, since he was detected in the fact
of adapting to his own use sundry marked articles appertaining to our
then liege sovereign, Edward I. This Joshua was of a very low origin,
and was ironically called Joshua the son of _none_, never having an
ostensible father or mother; to which untoward circumstance may
be charitably attributed the errors into which he was occasionally
betrayed. The first notion of property which a child receives, is
from being told, I am _your_ parent; you are _my_ son; this is _your_
milk; that is _his_ bread. The poor innocent who does not receive
this early instruction is naturally deficient in this particular;
whence it happens that such persons are generally found rather lax
in their principles of _meum_ and _tuum_ to the end of their lives;
which, however, by an equal dispensation of Providence, are usually
shortened by a special interposition of the law.
Matthew's affection, we are led to believe, was less for this man's
qualities than for his property; and with that characteristic
prudence injuriously called cunning, he resolved to live on good
terms with him, so that, although he should never run the risk of
engaging actively in the acquirement of capital, he might (knowing
how bare of branches Joshua's family tree was) at some future
period get possession of whatever this receiver-general might have
accumulated: indeed, while quite a lad he continually used to say
when shewing Joshua's cellars full of iron to any acquaintance--"I
consider that one day or other these will all be mine, Sir;" and so
eventually they were.
It was in allusion to these hoards, and the means and times by which
they were collected, that in the quaint biblical facetiousness of
that age it used to be observed, that if Joshua of old had known how
to do his business by night, as well as his modern namesake, he need
not have desired the sun to stand still; a witticism which Speed
records with great delight.
It is after this era in Matthew's life that all the writers are
puzzled; it has been ascertained that he was apprenticed to a trade,
but what that trade was, or what affinity it bore to the traffic he
subsequently carried on, nobody has yet decided. The incident which
drove him from his master's house was, as is generally allowed, a
beating (or more technically speaking a basting) which the kitchen
wench gave him as a punishment for purloining a sop in the pan, a
mode of acquiring, to which his admiration of Joshua's proceedings
had probably given him a turn.
It is also added, that Whittington had a sneaking kindness, or what
is politely called a _tendre_ for the housemaid of the family, who
espoused his cause in this very quarrel, and that he never ceased
to retain a feeling of gratitude towards one of his fellow-servants
commensurate with his just animosity towards the other.
There is a probability on the face of this fact, which is opposed
to the story of his attachment to Miss Alice Fitzwarren, his
master's daughter. Affections or antipathies formed in youth, and
nurtured through life, always manifest themselves in the more marked
peculiarities of age, and certain it is that Mr. Whittington when
in very different circumstances, maintained his rooted dislike to a
Cook, while his favourite remembrance of the housemaid's kindness
evinced itself in the respect he openly professed for a Broom,
(however cracked or crazy it might be) wherever he saw one.