near Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire, a hermit whose real name was
scarcely known, though he had resided there nearly fifteen years. Yet
he was no recluse, no ascetic, but lived comfortably, and enjoyed his
dinner, his beer, and his pipe; and, according to his own definition,
he was entitled to be called a hermit. "True hermits," he said,
"throughout every age, have been the firm abettors of freedom." As
regarded his appearance, his fancies, and his habits, he was a hermit,
a _solitaire_ in the midst of human beings. He wore a long beard, and
had a very venerable appearance. He was very fantastic in his dress,
and had a multitude of suits. He had no less than twenty different
kinds of hats, each with its own name and form, with some emblem or
motto on it--sometimes both. Here are a few examples:--
No. Name. Motto or Emblem.
1. Odd Fellows Without money, without friends, without
credit.
5. Bellows Blow the flames of freedom with God's
word of truth.
7. Helmet Will fight for the birthright of
conscience, love, life, property, and
national independence.
13. Patent Teapot To draw out the flavour of the tea
best--Union and Goodwill.
17. Wash-basin of Reform White-washed face and collyed heart.
20. Bee-hive The toils of industry are sweet; a wise
people live at peace.
The shapes of the hats and the devices on them were intended to
symbolize some important fact or sentiment.
He had twelve suits of clothes, each with a peculiar name, differing
from the others, and, like his hats, intended to be emblematical. One
dress, which he called "Odd Fellows," was of white cotton or linen.
It hung loosely over the body, except being bound round the waist
with a white girdle buckled in the front. Over his left breast was a
heart-shaped badge, bearing the words, "Liberty of Conscience," which
he called his "Order of the Star." The hat which he wore with the dress
was nearly white, and of common shape, but had on it four fanciful
devices, bound with black ribbon, and inscribed, severally, with these
words: "Bless, feed--good allowance--well clothed--all workingmen."
Another dress, which he called "Foresters," was a kind of frock-coat,
made of soft brown leather, slightly embroidered with braid. This coat
was closed down the front with white buttons, and bound round the waist
with a white girdle, fastened with a white buckle. The hat, slightly
resembling a turban, was divided into black and white stripes, running
round it.
Another dress, which he named "Military," had some resemblance to the
military costume at the beginning of the present century; the hat
was between the old-fashioned cocked-hat and that worn by military
commanders; but, instead of the military plume, it had two upright
peaks on the crown, not unlike the tips of a horse's ears. This hat,
which he asserted cost five pounds, he never wore but on important
occasions.
A mania for _symbolization_ pervaded all his thoughts and doings. His
garden was a complete collection of emblems. The trees--the walks--the
squares--the beds--the flowers--the seats and arbours--were all
symbolically arranged. In the passage leading into the garden were
"the three seats of Self-Inquiry," each inscribed with one of these
questions: "Am I vile?" "Am I a Hypocrite?" "Am I a Christian?"
Among the emblems and mottoes which were marked by different coloured
pebbles or flowers were these:--"The vessels of the Tabernacle;" "The
Christian's Armour--olive-branch, baptismal-font, breastplate of
righteousness, shield of faith," &c. "Mount Pisgah;" a circle enclosing
the motto, "Eternal Love has wed my Soul;" "A Beehive;" "A Church;"
"Sacred Urn;" "Universal Grave;" "Bed of Diamonds;" "A Heart, enclosing
the Rose of Sharon." All the Implements used in Gardening: "The two
Hearts' Bowers;" "The Lovers' Prayer;" "Conjugal Bliss;" "The Hermit's
Coat-of-Arms;" "Gossips' Court," with motto, "Don't tell anybody!"
"The Kitchen-walk" contains representations of culinary utensils, with
mottoes. "Feast Square" contains, "Venison Pasty;" "Round of Beef,"
&c. "The Odd Fellows' Square," with "The Hen-pecked Husband put on
Water-gruel." "The Oratory," with various mottoes; "The Orchestry,"
mottoes, "God save our Noble Queen;" "Britons never shall be Slaves,"
&c. "The Sand-glass of Time;" "The Assembly-room;" "The Wedding-Walk;"
"The Holy Mount;" "Noah's Ark;" "Rainbow;" "Jacob's Ladder," &c. "The
Bank of Faith;" "The Saloon;" "The Enchanted Ground;" "The Exit"--all
with their respective emblems and mottoes. Besides these fantastical
devices, there are, or were, in his garden, representations of the
Inquisition and Purgatory; effigies of the Apostles; and mounds covered
with flowers, to represent the graves of the Reformers. In the midst
of the religious emblems stood a large tub, with a queer desk before
it, to represent a pulpit. His garden was visited by persons residing
in the neighbourhood, when he would clamber into his tub, and harangue
the people against all kinds of real or fancied religious and political
oppressions. He declaimed vociferously against the Pope as Antichrist
and the enemy of humanity; and when he fled from Rome in the guise of
a servant, our old hermit decked his head with laurels, and, thus
equipped, went to the Independent Chapel, declaring that "the reign of
the man of sin was over." He also raised a mock-gallows in his garden,
and suspended on it an effigy of the Pope, whimsically dressed, with
many books sticking out of his pockets, which, he said, contained
the doctrines of Popery. However, these preachings proved very
unprofitable; the hermit grew poor, and gladly accepted any assistance
which did not require him to relinquish his eccentric mode of living.
In his own words, his heart was in his garden. We abridge this account
from a contribution to the _Book of Days_.
It is curious to find many instances of what are termed "Ornamental
Hermits," set up by persons of fortune seeking to find men as eccentric
as themselves, to represent, as it were, the eremitical life in
hermitages provided for them upon their estates.
Archibald Hamilton, afterwards Duke of Hamilton (as his daughter, Lady
Dunmore, told Mr. Rogers, the poet), advertised for "a hermit," as an
ornament to his pleasure-grounds; and it was stipulated that the said
hermit should have his beard shaved but once a year, and that only
partially.
Gilbert White, in his poem, _The Invitation to Selborne_, has these
lines:--
Or where the Hermit hangs the straw-clad cell,
Emerging gently from the leafy dell:
By fancy plann'd, &c.
In a note, this hermitage is said to have been a grotesque building,
contrived by a young gentleman who used occasionally to appear in the
character of a hermit.
Some fancy of this kind at Lulworth Castle, in Dorsetshire, exaggerated
or highly coloured by O'Keefe, was supposed to afford him the title and
incident of his extravagant but laughable comedy of _The London Hermit;
or, Rambles in Dorsetshire_, first played in 1793.
In _Blackwood's Magazine_ for April, 1830, it is stated by Christopher
North, in the _Noctes Ambrosianæ_, that the then editor of another
magazine had been "for fourteen years hermit to Lord Hill's father,
and sat in a cave in that worthy baronet's grounds with an hour-glass
in his hand, and a beard belonging to an old goat, from sunrise to
sunset, with orders to accept no half-crowns from visitors, but to
behave like Giordano Bruno." In 1810, a correspondent of _Notes and
Queries_, visiting the grounds at Hawkstone, the seat of the Hills,
was shown the hermitage there, with a stuffed figure dressed like the
hermits of pictures, seen by a dim light; and the visitors were told
that it had been inhabited in the daytime by a poor man, to whom the
eccentric but truly benevolent Sir Richard Hill gave a maintenance on
that easy condition; but that the popular voice against such _slavery_
had induced the worthy baronet to withdraw the reality and substitute
the figure.
A person advertised to be engaged as _a hermit_, in the _Courier_,
January 11th, 1810: "A young man, who wishes to retire from the world
and live as a hermit, in some convenient spot in England, is willing
to engage with any nobleman or gentleman who may be desirous of having
one. Any letter directed to S. Lawrence (post paid), to be left at Mr.
Otton's, No. 6, Coleman's Lane, Plymouth, mentioning what gratuity will
be given, and all other particulars, will be duly attended."
In 1840, there died in the neighbourhood of Farnham, in Surrey, a
recluse or hermit, who had been originally a wealthy brewer, but
becoming bankrupt, wandered about the country, and having spent at an
inn what little money he had, took up his abode in the cavern popularly
known as "Mother Ludlam's Hole," in Moor Park. The "poor man" did not
long avail himself of this ready-made excavation, but chose his resting
place just above, in the sandstone rock, upon a spot where a fox had
been run to ground and dug out not long since. The hermit occasionally
walked out, but was little noticed, although, from the bareness of
the trees, his retreat was seen from a distance. He soon excavated
for himself twenty-five feet in the sandstone, and about five feet in
height, with a shaft to the summit of the hill, for the admission of
light and air. Here, in unbroken solitude, with fewer luxuries than
Parnell's hermit--
His food the fruits, his drink the crystal well--
our Surrey hermit subsisted almost entirely upon _ferns_, which abound
in this neighbourhood. On January 11th, 1840, he was seen by two
labourers, who described him as not having "two pounds of flesh on
all his bones." He was carried to the nearest cottage, placed in a
warm bath, next wrapped in blankets, and conveyed to the poor-house of
Farnham, where he soon died; his last words being, "Do take me to the
cave again."
A few miles from Stevenage, and not more than thirty from the
metropolis, there was living, not many years since, in strange
seclusion, a man of high intellectual powers, in the prime of manhood,
and possessing ample means, yet wasting his days in eremitic misery. A
Correspondent of the _Wolverhampton Chronicle_ was invited to see this
extraordinary character, and here is the result of his visit:--
"I had pictured to my mind a venerable old man, with a beard as white
as snow, a massive girdle, and a profusion of books and hour-glass,
in a cell of picturesque beauty and neatness. Alas, how soon was I to
experience that imagination is one thing and reality another! I shall
not venture in future to speculate upon objects so unearthly. At the
termination of the road a mansion of no ordinary size met my view,
but better and happier times had reigned within; without, all was
desolation and ruin; time, that destroyer of all things, had done its
work here; every inlet was barricaded by the rude axe and hammer; its
portals no mortal had passed for eleven long years; the interior, which
was one rich in design and comfort, is now mouldering to decay; no
cheering voice is heard within its walls, only the noise of rats and
vermin. In tracing my steps to the scene of the hermit's cell, which is
situated at the back of the building, and looking through the wooden
bars of a window devoid of glass, I perceived a dismal, black, and
dirty cellar, with an earth floor; not one vestige of furniture, except
a wooden bench and a few bottles, with the remnants of a fire.
"With difficulty, by the faint rays of light admitted into this
loathsome den, I could trace a human form, clothed only in a horse
rug, leaving his arms, legs, and feet perfectly bare; his hair was
prodigiously long, and his beard tangled and matted. On my addressing
him he came forward with readiness. I found him a gentleman by
education and birth, and most courteous in his manner; he anxiously
inquired after several aristocratic families in Staffordshire and
adjoining counties. It is evident he had at one period mixed in the
first circles, but the secret of his desolate retirement is, and
probably ever will remain, a mystery to his neighbours and tenantry,
by whom he is supplied with food (chiefly bread and milk). Already
eleven weary winters has he passed in this dreary abode, his only bed
being two sheepskins, and his sole companions the rats, which may be
seen passing to and fro with all the ease of perfect safety. During
the whole of his seclusion he has strictly abstained from ablution,
consequently his countenance is perfectly black. How much it is to be
regretted that a man so gifted as this hermit is known to be should
spend his days in dirt and seclusion."
To another class belonged one Roger Crab, a gentleman of fortune, long
resident at Bethnal Green, and one of the eccentric characters of
the seventeenth century. All that is known of him is gathered from a
pamphlet, now very rare, written principally by himself, and entitled,
_The English Hermit, or Wonder of the Age_: by this it appears that he
had served seven years in the Parliamentary army, and had his skull
cloven in their service, for which he was so ill requited that he was
sentenced to death by the Lord Protector, and afterwards suffered two
years' imprisonment. When he obtained his release, he opened a shop at
Chesham, as a dealer in hats. He had not long been settled there before
he imbibed a notion that it was a sin against his body and soul to eat
any sort of fish, flesh, or living creature, or to drink wine, ale, or
beer. Thinking himself at the same time obliged to follow literally the
injunction given to the young man in the Gospel, he quitted business,
and disposing of his property, gave it among the poor, reserving to
himself only a small cottage at Ickenham, in Middlesex, where he
resided; he had a rood of land for a garden, on the produce of which
he subsisted at the expense of three farthings a week, his food being
bran, herbs, roots, dock-leaves, mallows, and grass; his drink water.
How such an extraordinary change of diet agreed with his constitution,
the following passage from his pamphlet will show:--"Instead of strong
drinks and wines I give the old man a drop of water; and instead of
roast mutton and rabbits, and other dainty dishes, I give him broth
thickened with bran, and pudding made with bran, and turnip-leaves
chopped together, and grass; at which the old man (meaning my body)
being moved, would know what he had done that I used him so hardly;
then I showed him his transgression: so the warre began; the law of the
old man in my fleshy members rebelled against the law of my mind, and
had a shrewed skirmish; but the mind being well enlightened, held it
so that the old man grew sick and weak with the flux, like to fall to
the dust; but the wonderful love of God, well-pleased with the battle,
raised him up again, and filled him with the voice of love, peace,
and content of mind, and is now become more humble; for he will eat
dock-leaves, mallows, or grasse."
Little is known of Crab's subsequent history, or whether he continued
his diet of herbs; but a passage in his epitaph seems to intimate
that he never resumed the use of animal food. It is not one of the
least extraordinary parts of his history, that he should so long
have subsisted on a diet which, by his own account, had reduced him
almost to a skeleton in 1655--being twenty-five years previous to his
death--in 1680: he is buried in Stepney churchyard.
The Recluses of Llangollen.
Many years ago, there lived together, in romantic seclusion, in the
Vale of Llangollen, in Denbighshire, two ladies, remarkable not only
for the singularity of their habits and dispositions, but as the
daughters of ancient and most distinguished families in the Irish
peerage.
Lady Eleanor Butler was the youngest sister of John, sixteenth Earl
of Ormonde, and aunt of Walter, seventeenth Earl, who died in 1820.
Miss Mary Ponsonby was the daughter of Chambre Ponsonby, Esq., and
half-sister to Mrs. Lowther, of Bath.
These two ladies retired at an early age, about the year 1729, from
the society of the world to the Vale of Llangollen. Lady Butler had
already rejected several offers of marriage, and as her affection for
Miss Ponsonby was supposed to have formed the bar to any matrimonial
alliance, their friends, in the hope of breaking off so disadvantageous
a companionship, proceeded so far as to place the former in close
confinement. The youthful friends, however, found means to elope
together, but being speedily overtaken, were brought back to their
respective relations. Many attempts were renewed to entice Lady Butler
into wedlock; but on her solemnly and repeatedly declaring that nothing
should induce her to alter her purpose of perpetual maidenhood, her
friends desisted from further importuning her.
Not many months after this a second elopement was planned. Each lady
taking with her a small sum of money, and having confided the place of
their retreat to a confidential servant of the Ormonde family, who was
sworn to inviolable secrecy, they deputed her to announce their safety
at home, and to request that the trifling annuities allowed them might
not be discontinued. The message was received with kindness, and their
incomes were even considerably increased.
[Illustration: The Ladies of Llangollen.]
When Miss Seward visited the spot, our heroines had resided in their
romantic retirement about seventeen years; yet they were only known
to the neighbouring villagers as _the Ladies of the Vale_. The verses
which Miss Seward dedicated to the Recluses, and wherein she celebrated
"gay Eleanor's smile," and "Zara's look serene," conclude with this
morceau of sentimental affectation:--
May one kind ice-bolt from the mortal stores
Arrest each vital current as it flows,
That no sad course of desolated hours
Here vainly nurse their unsubsiding woes.
While all who honour virtue gently mourn
Llangollen's vanish'd pair, and wreathe their sacred urn.
But they did not vanish for many a long year: they neither married
nor died till they were grown too old for the world to care whether
they did either or both. On one occasion, indeed, a party of tourists,
male and female, unable to procure accommodation at the village inn,
requested and obtained admittance at "the cottage," when they proved
to be near relatives of Miss Ponsonby. No entreaties, however, could
allure their fair cousin from her seclusion.
Lady Eleanor is described as tall, of lively manners, and masculine.
She usually wore a riding-habit, and donned her hat with the air of a
finished sportsman. Her companion, on the contrary, was fair, pensive,
gentle, and effeminate. Their abode was a neat cottage, with about two
acres of pleasure-ground. Avoiding every appearance of dissipation
or gaiety, they led a life as retired as the situation. Two female
servants waited on them, and while Miss Ponsonby superintended the
house, my Lady amused herself with the garden. The name of the retreat
is Plas Newydd, about a quarter of a mile from Llangollen, hidden among
the trees on ascending the Vale behind the church. By some the ladies
are said not to have led here a life of absolute seclusion, but to have
visited their neighbours and received friends. The cottage was built
purposely for them. They died after a life full of good deeds, within
eighteen months of each other--Lady Eleanor, June 2nd, 1829, at the
patriarchal age of ninety; Miss Ponsonby, December 9th, 1830. Their
monument, in Llangollen churchyard, in which they were buried, has
three sides, each bearing a touching epitaph; the third to the memory
of Mary Carrol, a faithful Irish servant.
Snuff-taking Legacies.
On April 2nd, 1776, there died, at her house in Boyle Street,
Burlington Gardens, one Mrs. Margaret Thompson, whose will affords a
notable specimen of the ruling passion strong in death. The will is
as follows:--"In the name of God, Amen. I, Margaret Thompson, being
of sound mind, &c., do desire that when my soul is departed from this
wicked world, my body and effects may be disposed of in the manner
following: I desire that all my handkerchiefs that I may have unwashed
at the time of my decease, after they have been got together by my old
and trusty servant, Sarah Stuart, be put by her, and by her alone, at
the bottom of my coffin, which I desire may be made large enough for
that purpose, together with such a quantity of the best Scotch snuff
(in which she knoweth I always had the greatest delight) as will cover
my deceased body; and this I desire the more especially as it is usual
to put flowers into the coffins of departed friends, and nothing can
be so fragrant and refreshing to me as that precious powder. But I
strictly charge that no man be suffered to approach my body till the
coffin is closed, and it is necessary to carry me to my burial, which I
order in the manner following:--
"Six men to be my bearers, who are known to be the greatest
snuff-takers in the parish of St. James, Westminster; instead of
mourning, each to wear a snuff-coloured beaver hat, which I desire may
be bought for that purpose, and given to them. Six maidens of my old
acquaintance, _viz._ &c., to bear my pall, each to bear a proper hood,
and to carry a box filled with the best Scotch snuff to take for their
refreshment as they go along. Before my corpse, I desire the minister
may be invited to walk and to take a certain quantity of the said
snuff, not exceeding one pound, to whom also I bequeath five guineas
on condition of his so doing. And I also desire my old and faithful
servant, Sarah Stuart, to walk before the corpse, to distribute every
twenty yards a large handful of Scotch snuff to the ground and upon
the crowd who may possibly follow me to the burial-place; on which
condition I bequeath her 20_l._ And I also desire that at least two
bushels of the said snuff may be distributed at the door of my house in
Boyle Street."
She then particularizes her legacies; and over and above every legacy
she desires may be given one pound of good Scotch snuff, which she
calls the grand cordial of nature.
Burial Bequests.
In June, 1864, there died at Drogheda one Miss Hardman, at the
advanced age of ninety-two years. She was buried in the family vault
in Peter's Protestant Church. The funeral took place on the eighth
day of her decease. It is not usual in Ireland to allow so long an
interval to elapse between the time of a person's death and burial; in
this instance it was owing to the expressed wish of the deceased, and
this originated in a very curious piece of family and local history.
Everybody has heard of the lady who was buried, being supposed dead,
and who bearing with her to the tomb, on her finger, a ring of rare
price, this was the means of her being rescued from her charnel
prison-house. A butler in the family of the lady, having his cupidity
excited, entered the vault at midnight in order to possess himself of
the ring, and in removing it from the finger the lady was restored to
consciousness and made her way in her grave-clothes to her mansion. She
lived many years afterwards before she was finally consigned to the
vault. The heroine of the story was a member of the Hardman family--in
fact, the late Miss Hardman's mother--and the vault in Peter's Church
was the locality where the startling revival scene took place.
The story is commonly told in explanation of a monument in the Church
of St. Giles, Cripplegate, London, which is commemorative of Constance
Whitney, and represents a female rising from a coffin. "This," says
Mr. Godwin, in his popular history of the _Churches of London_, "has
been erroneously supposed to commemorate a lady, who, having been
buried in a trance, was restored to life through the cupidity of the
sexton, which induced him to dig up the body to obtain possession of
a ring." The female rising from the coffin is undoubtedly emblematic
of the Resurrection, and may have been repeated upon other monuments
elsewhere; but there is no such monument at Drogheda, which as above is
claimed as the actual locality.
On May 24th, 1837, there died at Primrose Cottage, High Wycombe, Bucks,
Mr. John Guy, aged sixty-four. His remains were interred in a brick
grave in Hughenden Churchyard: on a marble slab, on the lid of the
coffin, is inscribed:
Here, without nail or shroud, doth lie,
Or covered with a pall, John Guy,
Born May 17th, 1773.
Died, „ 24th, 1837.
On his gravestone are the following lines:--
In coffin made without a nail,
Without a shroud his limbs to hide;
For what can pomp or show avail,
Or velvet pall to swell the pride?