said to have been the widow of a grandson of Brawn, the celebrated
cook who kept 'The Rummer,' in Queen Street, and who had himself kept
'The Rummer' public-house, at the Old Mews Gate, at Charing Cross.
Brummel spoke with a relish worthy a descendant of 'The Rummer,' of
the savoury pies of his aunt Brawn, who then resided at Kilburn. Henry
Carey, in the _Dissertation on Dumpling_, assumes Braun, or Braund, as
he calls him, to have been the direct descendant in the male line of
his imaginary Brawnd, knighted by King John for his unrivalled skill in
making dumplings, and who subsequently resided, as he tells us, "at the
ancient manor of Brands, _alias_ Braunds, near Kilburn, in Middlesex."
Curious the accident that found Brummel's "Aunt Brawn" a resident at
Kilburn, a century after the _Dissertation on Dumpling_ was written.
[Illustration: Beau Brummel at Calais.]
[Illustration: Sir Lumley Skeffington in a "Jean de Brie."]
Sir Lumley Skeffington, Bart.
This accomplished gentleman was the son of Sir William Skeffington, a
much respected Baronet of Bilsdon, in Leicestershire, where he enjoyed
considerable estates and great provincial esteem. He was born in 1778,
and was educated at Soho School, and at Newcome's, at Hackney. At
the latter he distinguished himself in the dramatic performances for
which the school was long celebrated. Dr. Benjamin Hoadley, author
of _The Suspicious Husband_, and his brother, Dr. John Hoadley, were
both educated here, and shone in their amateur performances; at the
representation of 1764, there were upwards of "one hundred gentlemen's
coaches." Young Skeffington excelled in Hamlet, as he afterwards shone
in "the glass of fashion." His hereditary prospects afforded him a
ready introduction to the fashionable world, and during upwards of
twenty years he was considered as a leader of _ton_, and one of the
most finished gentlemen in England. He was a person of considerable
taste in literature: he wrote _The Word of Honour_, a comedy, and the
dialogue and songs of a highly finished melodrama, founded on the
legend of _The Sleeping Beauty_. In 1818 he lost his father, who having
embarrassed his estates, his son, as an act of filial duty to rescue a
parent from distress, consented to the cutting off the entail, by which
he deprived himself of that substantial provision without which the
life of a gentleman is a life of misery.
Sir Lumley was the dandy of the olden time, and a kinder,
better-hearted man never existed. He was of the most polished manners;
nor had his long intercourse with fashionable society at all affected
that simplicity of character for which he was remarkable. He was a
true dandy, and much more than that, he was a perfect gentleman. In
1827, a contributor to the _New Monthly Magazine_ wrote: "I remember,
long, long since, entering Covent Garden Theatre, when I observed
a person holding the door to let me pass; deeming him to be one of
the box-keepers, I was about to nod my thanks, when I found, to my
surprise, that it was Skeffington who had thus good-naturedly honoured
a stranger by his attention. We with some difficulty obtained seats in
a box, and I was indebted to accident for one of the most agreeable
evenings I remember to have passed.
"I remember visiting the Opera when late dinners were the rage, and
the hour of refection was carried far into the night. I was again
placed near the fugleman of fashion, for to his movements were all eyes
directed, and his sanction determined the accuracy of all conduct. He
bowed from box to box, until recognizing one of his friends in the
lower tier, 'Temple,' he exclaimed, drawling out his weary words,
'at--what--hour--do--you--dine--to-day?' It had gone half-past eleven
when he spoke.
"I saw him once enter St. James's Church, having at the door taken
a ponderous red morocco prayer-book from his servant; but although
prominently placed in the centre aisle, the pew-opener never offered
him a seat; and stranger still, none of his many friends beckoned him
to a place. Others in his rank of life might have been disconcerted at
the position in which he was placed; but Skeffington was too much of
a gentleman to be in any way disturbed; so he seated himself upon the
bench between two aged female paupers, and most reverently did he go
through the service, sharing with the ladies his book, the print of
which was more favourable to their devotions than their own diminutive
liturgies."
Sir Lumley Skeffington continued to the last to take especial interest
in the theatre and its artists, notwithstanding his own reduced
fortunes. He was a worshipper of female beauty, his adoration being
poured forth in ardent verse. Thus, in the spring 1829, he inscribed to
Miss Foote the following ballad:
When the frosts of the Winter in mildness were ending,
To April I gave half the welcome of May;
While the Spring, fresh in youth, came delightfully blending
The buds that are sweet, and the songs that are gay.
As the eyes fixed the heart on a vision so fair,
Not doubting, but trusting what magic was there,
Aloud I exclaim'd, with augmented desire,
I thought 'twas the Spring, when in truth 'twas Maria!
When the fading of stars in the region of splendour
Announc'd that the morning was young in the east,
On the upland I rov'd, admiration to render,
Where freshness, and beauty, and lustre increas'd.
Whilst the beams of the morning new pleasures bestow'd,
While fondly I gaz'd, while with rapture I glow'd,
In sweetness commanding, in elegance bright,
Maria arose! a more beautiful light.
Again, on the termination of the engagement of Miss Foote, at Drury
Lane Theatre, in May, 1826, Sir Lumley addressed her in the following
impromptu:
Maria departs! 'tis a sentence of dread;
For the Graces turn pale, and the Fates droop their head!
In mercy to breasts that tumultuously burn,
Dwell no more on departure, but speak of return.
Since she goes when the buds are just ready to burst,
In expanding its leaves, let the willow be first.
We here shall no longer find beauties in May;
It cannot be Spring when Maria's away!
If vernal at all, 'tis an April appears,
For the blossom flies off in the midst of our tears.
Sir Lumley, through the ingratitude and treachery of
Friends found in sunshine, to be lost in storm,
became involved in difficulties and endless litigation, and his latter
years were clouded with sorrow; still his buoyant spirits never
altogether left him, although "the observed of all observers" passed
his latter years in compulsory residence in a quarter of the great town
ignored by the Sybarites of St. James's.
When Madame Vestris established a theatre of her own, Sir Lumley thus
sang, in the columns of _The Times_:--
Now Vestris, the tenth of the Muses,
To Mirth rears a fanciful dome,
We mark, while delight she infuses,
The Graces find beauty at home.
In her eye such vivacity glitters,
To her voice such perfections belong,
That care, and the life it embitters,
Find balm in the sweets of her song.
When monarchs o'er valleys are ranging,
A court is transferr'd to the green;
And flowers, transplanted, are changing
Not fragrance, but merely the scene.
'Tis circumstance dignifies places;
A desert is charming with spring!
And pleasure finds twenty new graces
Wherever the Vestris may sing!
Sir Lumley, who had long been unheard of in fashionable circles, died
in London in 1850 or 1851.
[Illustration: Skiffy at the Birthday Ball.]
[Illustration: Robert Coates, the Amateur of Fashion, as Romeo.]
"Romeo" Coates.
This celebrated leader of fashion, who rejoiced in the sobriquets of
"Romeo" and "Diamond," obtained the former from his love of amateur
acting, and the latter from his great wealth obtained from the West
Indies. He was likewise noted by his splendid curricle, the body of
which was in the form of a cockleshell, bearing the cock-bird as his
crest; and the harness of the horses was mounted with metal figures of
the same bird, with which got associated the motto of "Whilst we live,
we'll crow."
By his amateur performances he shared with young Betty (Roscius)
the admiration of the town. A writer in the _New Monthly Magazine_,
1827, pleasantly describes one of these performances:--"Never shall I
forget his representation of Lothario (some sixty years since), at the
Haymarket Theatre, for his own pleasure, as he accurately termed it;
and certainly the then rising fame of Liston was greatly endangered by
his Barbadoes rival. Never had Garrick or Kemble in their best times so
largely excited the public attention and curiosity. The very remotest
nooks of the galleries were filled by fashion; while in a stage-box sat
the performer's notorious friend, the Baron Ferdinand Geramb.
"Coates's lean Quixotic form being duly clothed in velvets and in
silks, and his bonnet highly fraught with diamonds (whence his
appellation), his entrance on the stage was greeted by so general a
_crowing_ (in allusion to the large cocks, which as his crest adorned
his harness), that the angry and affronted Lothario drew his sword upon
the audience, and actually challenged the rude and boisterous tenants
of the galleries, _seriatim_ or _en masse_, to combat on the stage.
Solemn silence, as the consequence of mock fear, immediately succeeded.
The great actor, after the overture had ceased, amused himself for some
time with the Baron ere he condescended to indulge the wishes of an
anxiously expectant audience.
"At length he commenced: his appeals to the heart were made by the
application of the left hand so disproportionately lower down than
'the seat of life' has been supposed to be placed; his contracted
pronunciation of the word 'breach,' and other new readings and actings,
kept the house in a right joyous humour, until the climax of all mirth
was attained by the dying scene of
that gallant, gay Lothario:
but who shall describe the grotesque agonies of the dark seducer, his
platted hair escaping from the comb that held it, and the dark crineous
cordage that flapped upon his shoulders in the convulsions of his dying
moments, and the cries of the people for medical aid to accomplish his
eternal exit? Then, when in his last throes his coronet fell, it was
miraculous to see the defunct arise, and after he had spread a nice
handkerchief on the stage, and there deposited his head-dress, free
from impurity, philosophically resume his dead condition; but it was
not yet over, for the exigent audience, not content 'that when the men
were dead, why there an end,' insisted on a repetition of the awful
scene, which the highly flattered corpse executed three several times,
to the gratification of the cruel and torment-loving assembly."
Coates was destined to be tantalized by the celebrated fête given
at Carlton House, in 1821, in honour of the Bourbons. Having no
opportunity of learning in the West Indies the propriety of being
presented at Court ere he could be upon a more intimate footing with
the Prince Regent, he was less astonished than delighted at the
reception of an invitation on that occasion to Carlton House. What
was the fame acquired by his cockleshell curricle; his theatrical
reputation; all the applause attending the perfection of histrionic
art; the flatteries of Billy Finch, a sort of kidnapper of juvenile
actors and actresses of the O.P. and P.S., in Russell Court; the
sanction of a Petersham; the intimacy of a Barry More; even the polite
endurance of a Skeffington to this! To be classed with the proud,
the noble, and the great! It seemed a natural query whether the
Bourbon's name were not a pretext for his own introduction to Royalty,
under circumstances of unprecedented splendour and magnificence. It
must have been so. What cogitations respecting dress, and air, and
port, and bearing! What torturing of the confounded lanky locks, to
make them but revolve ever so little! Then the rich cut velvet,--the
diamond buttons,--ay, every one was composed of brilliants. The night
arrived--but for Coates's mortification. Theodore Hook had contrived to
imitate one of the Chamberlain's tickets, and to produce a facsimile,
commanding the presence of Coates; he then put on a scarlet uniform,
and delivered the card himself. On the night of the fête, June 19th,
Hook stationed himself by the screen at Carlton House, and saw Romeo
arrive and enter the palace; he passed in without question, but the
forgery was detected by the Private Secretary, and Coates had to
retrace his steps to the street, and his carriage being driven off,
to get home to Craven Street in a hackney-coach. When the Prince was
informed of what had occurred, he signified his regret at the course
the Secretary had taken; he was sent by his Royal Highness to apologize
in person, and invite Coates to come and look at the state rooms; and
Romeo went.
Mr. Coates, who by his cockleshell curricle had acquired some of his
celebrity, lost his life by a vehicular accident: he died February 23,
1848, from being run over in one of the London streets. He was in his
seventy-sixth year.
Abraham Newland.
Abraham Newland, who was nearly sixty years in the service of the Bank
of England, and whose name became a synonym for a bank-note, was one of
a family of twenty-five children, and was born in Southwark in 1730.
At the age of eighteen he entered the Bank service as junior clerk. He
was very fond of music, which led him into much dissipation. Still,
he was very attentive to business, and in 1782 he was appointed chief
cashier, with a suite of rooms for residence in the Bank, and for
five-and-twenty years he never once slept out of the building. The
pleasantest version of his importance is contained in the famous song
in the _Whims of the Day_, published in 1800:--
There ne'er was a name so handed by fame,
Thro' air, thro' ocean, and thro' land,
As one that is wrote upon every bank note,
And you all must know Abraham Newland.
Oh, Abraham Newland!
Notified Abraham Newland!
I have heard people say, sham Abraham you may,
But you must not sham Abraham Newland.
For fashion or arts, should you seek foreign parts,
It matters not wherever you land,
Jew, Christian, or Greek, the same language they speak
That's the language of Abraham Newland!
Oh, Abraham Newland!
Wonderful Abraham Newland!
Tho' with compliments cramm'd, you may die and be d--d,
If you hav'n't an Abraham Newland.
The world is inclin'd to think Justice is blind;
Lawyers know very well they can view land;
But, Lord, what of that, she'll blink like a bat
At the sight of an Abraham Newland.
Oh, Abraham Newland!
Magical Abraham Newland!
Tho' Justice, 'tis known, can see through a millstone,
She can't see through Abraham Newland.
Your patriots who bawl for the good of us all,
Kind souls! here like mushrooms they strew land;
Tho' loud as a drum, each proves orator mum,
If attack'd by an Abraham Newland!
Oh, Abraham Newland!
Invincible Abraham Newland!
No argument's found in the world half so sound
As the logic of Abraham Newland!
The French say they're coming, but sure they are mumming;
I know what they want if they do land;
We'll make their ears ring in defence of our king,
Our country, and Abraham Newland.
Oh, Abraham Newland!
Darling Abraham Newland!
No tricolour, elf, nor the devil himself
Shall e'er rob us of Abraham Newland.
In 1807, he retired from the office of chief cashier, after declining
a pension. He had hitherto been accustomed, after the business at
the Bank in his department had closed, and he had dined moderately,
to order his carriage and drive to Highbury, where he drank tea at a
small cottage. Many who lived in that neighbourhood long recollected
Newland's daily walk--hail, rain, or sunshine--along Highbury Place. It
was said that he regretted his retirement from the Bank; but he used
to say that not for 20,000_l._ a year would he return. He then removed
to No. 38, Highbury Place. His health and strength declined, it is
said, through the distress of mind brought upon him by the forgeries of
Robert Aslett, a clerk in the Bank, whom Newland had treated as his own
son. It was well known that Abraham had accumulated a large fortune;
legacy-hunters came about him, and an acquaintance sent him a ham as a
present; but Newland despised the mercenary motive, and next time he
saw the donor he said, "I have received a ham from you; I thank you for
it," said he, but raising his finger in a significant manner, added, "I
tell you it won't do, it won't do."
Newland had no extravagant expectations that the world would be drowned
in sorrow when it should be his turn to leave it; and he wrote this
ludicrous epitaph on himself shortly before his death:--
Beneath this stone old Abraham lies:
Nobody laughs and nobody cries.
Where he's gone, and how he fares,
No one knows, and no one cares!
His physician, in one of his latest visits, found him reading the
newspaper, when the doctor expressing his surprise, Newland replied,
smiling, "I am only looking in the paper in order to see what I am
reading to the world I am going to." He died November 21, 1807, without
any apparent pain of body or anxiety of mind, and his remains were
deposited in the church of St. Saviour, Southwark.
Newland's property amounted to 200,000_l._, besides a thousand a year
landed estates. It must not be supposed that this was saved from his
salary. During the whole of his career, the loans for the war proved
very prolific. A certain amount of them was always reserved for the
cashier's office (one Parliamentary Report names 100,000_l._), and
as they generally came out at a premium, the profits were great. The
family of the Goldsmids, then the leaders of the Stock Exchange,
contracted for many of these loans, and to each of them he left 500_l._
to purchase a mourning ring. Newland's large funds, it is said, were
also occasionally lent to the Goldsmids to assist their various
speculations.
[Illustration: Squire Mytton on his bear.]
The Spendthrift Squire of Halston, John Mytton.
The extravagant fellows of a family, says Sir Bernard Burke, Ulster,
have done more to overturn ancient houses than all the other causes
put together; and no case could be more in point to establish the
fact than the history of John Mytton, descended from the Myttons of
Halston, who represented, in the days of the Plantagenets, the borough
of Shrewsbury in Parliament, and filled the office of High Sheriff
of Shropshire at a very remote period. So far back as 1480, Thomas
Mytton, when holding that appointment, was the fortunate captor of
Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, whom he conducted to Salisbury for trial
and decapitation; and in requital Richard III. bestowed on "his trusty
and well-beloved squire, Thomas Mytton," the Duke's forfeited castle
and lordship of Cawes. Halston, to which the Myttons transferred their
seat from their more ancient residence of Cawes Castle and Habberley,
is called in ancient deeds "Holystone," and was in early times a
preceptory of Knights Templars. The Abbey, taken down about one hundred
and sixty years ago, was erected near where the present mansion stands.
In the good old times of Halston, before reckless waste had dismantled
its halls and levelled its ancestral woods, the oak was seen here in
its full majesty of form; and it is related that one particular tree,
coeval with many centuries of the family's greatness, was cut down by
the spendthrift squire in the year 1826, and contained ten tons of
timber.
In the great civil war, Mytton of Halston was one of the few Shropshire
gentlemen who joined the Parliamentary standard. From this gallant
and upright Parliamentarian, the fifth in descent was John Mytton,
the eccentric, wasteful, dissipated, open-hearted, open-handed Squire
of Halston, in whose day and by whose wanton extravagance and folly,
a time-honoured family and a noble estate, the inheritance of five
hundred years, was recklessly destroyed.
John Mytton was born September 30th, 1796. His father died when he
was only eighteen months old, so that his minority lasted almost
twenty years; and during its continuance a very large sum of money
was accumulated, which, added to a landed property of full 10,000_l._
a year, and a pedigree of even Salopian antiquity and distinction,
rendered the Squire of Halston one of the first commoners in England.
But a boyhood unrestrained by proper control, and an education utterly
neglected, led to a course of profligacy and eccentricity, amounting
almost to madness, that marred all these gifts of fortune. Young Mytton
commenced by being expelled from both Westminster and Harrow; and
though he was entered on the books of the two universities, he did not
matriculate at either; the only indication he ever gave of an intention
to do so was his ordering three pipes of port wine to be sent to him,
addressed "Cambridge." When a mere child, he had been allowed a pack of
harriers at Halston, and at the age of ten was a confirmed scapegrace.
At nineteen he entered the 7th Hussars, and immediately joined his
regiment, then with the army of occupation in France. Fighting was,
however, all over, and the young Cornet turned at once to racing and
gaming, in which he was a serious loser.
In 1818 he married the eldest daughter of Sir Thomas Tyrrwhitt Jones,
Bart., of Stanley Hall. By this lady, who died in 1820, he had an only
child, Harriet, married in 1841 to Clement, youngest brother of Lord
Hill. After his wife's decease, the wayward extravagance which marked
the career of John Mytton has probably no parallel. He would not suffer
any one to advise him. When heavy liabilities had been incurred, but
previously to the disposal of the first property he sold, his agent
assured Mr. Mytton that if he would content himself for the following
six years with an income of 6,000_l._, the fine old Shrewsbury
estate--the earliest patrimony of his ancestors--might be saved; when
besought to listen to this warning counsel, "No, no," replied Mytton;
"I would not give a straw for life if it was to be passed on 6,000_l._
a year." The result confirmed the agent's apprehensions: the first
acre alienated led to the gradual dismemberment of the whole estate;
and from this moment may be dated the ruin of the Myttons of Halston.
Such was the prodigality of this unfortunate man, that it was said,
"If Mytton had had an income of 200,000_l._, he would have been in
debt in five years." Most certain it is that, within the last fifteen
years of his life, he squandered full half-a-million sterling, and sold
timber--"the old oaks of Halston"--to the amount, it is stated, of
80,000_l._
The late Mr. Apperley (Nimrod) wrote a kindly biography of Mytton,
illustrated with coloured plates of his strange adventures. One gives
a view of Halston, with its glorious plantations, and its noble sheet
of water, through which, as the shortest cut, its eccentric owner is
riding home. Another illustrates Mytton's "wild duck shooting." "He
would sometimes," says Nimrod, "strip to his shirt to follow wild-fowl
in hard weather, and once actually laid himself down on the snow to
await their arrival at dusk. On one occasion he out-heroded Herod,
for he followed some ducks _in puris naturalibus_, and escaped with
perfect impunity." The third plate commemorates a practical joke of
the frolic-loving squire. One evening the clergyman and doctor, who
had dined at Halston, left to return on horseback. Their host having
disguised himself in a countryman's frock and hat, succeeded, by riding
across the park, in confronting them, and then, in true highwayman
voice, he called out, "Stand and deliver!" and before a reply could
be given, fired off his pistol, which had of course only a blank
cartridge. The affrighted gentlemen, Mytton used to say, never rode
half so fast in their lives, as when, with him at their heels, they
fled that night to Oswestry.
Another of the plates exhibits Mr. Mytton in hunting dress, entering
his drawing-room full of company mounted on a bear: and another
exemplifies the old saying, "Light come, light go." Mytton, travelling
in his carriage, on a stormy night from Doncaster, fell asleep while
counting the money he had won; the windows were down, and a great many
of the bank-notes were blown away and lost. The reckless gambler used
often to tell the story as an amusing reminiscence.