must except Newton, so long reckoned among those whose brain had given
way under intense thought, we must include Kant, his disciple Wirgman,
and others of less note. William Martin, whose two brothers made
themselves famous in very different lines--one by setting fire to York
Minster, the other by his paintings--was as mad as could be desired,
both in science and poetry. Here is a sample combined:--
"The creation of the world,
Likewise Adam and Eve, we know,
Made by the Great God, from
Whom all blessings flow."
The famous Walking Stewart went crazy on "the polarization of moral
truth." At the dinner-table he spoilt the digestion of his guests by
turning the conversation to his one beloved subject, and he was as
fatal as the Ancient Mariner to any man who might chance to address him
a civil word in public places or conveyances.
A deplorable instance of this class is afforded by Wirgman, the
Kantesian, just named, who, after making a fortune as a goldsmith and
silversmith, in St. James's Street, Westminster, squandered it all as
_a regenerating philosopher_. He printed several works, and had paper
made specially for one, the same sheet being of several different
colours; and as he changed the work many times while it was printing,
the expense was enormous: one book of four hundred pages cost 2,276_l._
He published a grammar of the five senses, which was a sort of system
of metaphysics for the use of children; and he maintained that when it
was universally adopted in schools, peace and harmony would be restored
to the earth, and virtue would everywhere replace crime. He complained
much that people would not listen to him, and that although he had
devoted nearly half a century, he had asked in vain to be appointed
Professor in some University or College--so little does the world
appreciate those who labour unto death in its service. Nevertheless,
exclaimed Wirgman, after another useless application, "while life
remains, I will not cease to communicate this blessing to the rising
world."
A Perpetual-Motion Seeker.
The celebrated French physician, Pinel, relates the case of a
watchmaker who was infatuated with the chimera of Perpetual Motion, and
to effect this discovery, he set to work with indefatigable ardour.
From unremitting attention to the object of his enthusiasm, coinciding
with the influence of revolutionary disturbances, his imagination was
greatly heated, his sleep was interrupted, and at length a complete
derangement took place. His case was marked by a most whimsical
illusion of the imagination: he fancied that he had lost his head upon
the scaffold; that it had been thrown promiscuously among the heads
of many other victims; that the judges having repented of their cruel
sentence, had ordered their heads to be restored to their respective
owners, and placed upon their respective shoulders; but that, in
consequence of an unhappy mistake, the gentleman who had the management
of that business, had placed upon his shoulders the head of one of
his unhappy companions. The idea of this whimsical change of his head
occupied his thoughts night and day, which determined his friends to
send him to an asylum. Nothing could exceed the extravagance of his
heated brain: he sung, he cried, or danced incessantly; and as there
appeared no propensity to commit acts of violence or disturbance, he
was allowed to go about the hospital without control, in order to
expend, by evaporation, the effervescence of his spirits. "Look at
these teeth!" he cried; "mine were exceedingly handsome; these are
rotten and decayed. My mouth was sound and healthy; this is foul and
diseased. What difference between this hair and that of my own head!"
The idea of perpetual motion frequently recurred to him in the midst
of his wanderings; and he chalked on all the doors or windows as he
passed the various designs by which his wondrous piece of mechanism was
to be constructed. The method best calculated to cure so whimsical an
illusion appeared to be that of encouraging his prosecution of it to
satiety. His friends were accordingly requested to send him his tools,
with materials to work upon, and other requisites, such as plates of
copper and steel, and watch-wheels. His zeal was now redoubled; his
whole attention was rivetted upon his favourite pursuit: he forgot
his meals, and after about a month's labour our artist began to think
he had followed a false route. He broke into a thousand fragments the
piece of machinery which he had fabricated with so much toil, and
thought, and labour; he then entered upon a new plan, and laboured for
another fortnight. The various parts being completed, he brought them
together; he fancied that he saw a perfect harmony amongst them. The
whole was now finally adjusted--his anxiety was indescribable--_motion
succeeded_; it continued for some time, and he supposed it capable of
continuing for ever. He was elevated to the highest pitch of ecstasy
and triumph, and ran like lightning into the interior of the hospital,
crying out, like another Archimedes, "At length I have solved this
famous problem, which has puzzled so many men celebrated for their
wisdom and talents!" Grievous to add, he was checked in the midst of
his triumph. The wheels stopped! the _perpetual motion_ ceased! His
intoxication of joy was succeeded by disappointment and confusion;
though to avoid a humiliating and mortifying confession, he declared
that he could easily remove the impediment: but, tired of such
experimental employment, he determined for the future to devote his
attention solely to his business.
There still remained another imaginary impression to be
counteracted--that of the exchange of his head, which unceasingly
occurred to him. A keen and unanswerable stroke of pleasantry seemed
best adapted to correct this fantastic whim. Another convalescent, of
a gay and facetious turn, instructed beforehand, adroitly turned the
conversation to the subject of the famous miracle of St. Denis, in
which it will be recollected that the holy man, after decapitation,
walked away with his head under his arm, which he kissed and condoled
with for its misfortune. Our mechanician strongly maintained the
possibility of the fact, and sought to confirm it by an appeal to his
own case. The other set up a laugh, and replied with a tone of the
keenest ridicule, "Madman as thou art, how could St. Denis kiss his own
head? Was it with his heels?" This equally unexpected and unanswerable
retort forcibly struck the maniac. He retired confused amidst the
laughter which was provoked at his expense, and never afterwards
mentioned the _exchange of his head_.
[Illustration: The Duchess of Newcastle. From the portrait prefixed to
her poems.
"Her beauty's found beyond the skill
Of the best paynter to embrace."
]
The Romantic Duchess of Newcastle.
More than two centuries ago, when Clerkenwell was a sort of
court-quarter of the town, its most distinguished residents were
William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, and his wife, Margaret Lucas,
both of whom are remembered by their literary eccentricities. The
Duke, who was a devoted royalist, after his defeat at Marston Moor,
retired with his wife to the Continent; and with many privations,
owing to pecuniary embarrassments, suffered an exile of eighteen
years, chiefly in Antwerp, in a house which belonged to the widow of
Rubens. Such was their extremity that they were both forced at one
time to pawn their clothes to purchase a dinner. The Duke beguiled his
time by writing an eccentric book on horsemanship. During his absence
Cromwell's parliament levied upon his estate nearly three-quarters
of a million of money. Upon the Restoration, he returned to England,
and was created Duke of Newcastle; he then retired to his mansion in
Clerkenwell; he died there in 1676, aged eighty-four.
The duchess was a pedantic and voluminous writer, her collected works
filling ten printed folios, for she wrote prose and verse in all
their varieties. "The whole story," writes Pepys, "of this lady is a
romance and all she does is romantic. April 26th, 1667.--Met my Lady
Newcastle, with her coach and footman all in velvet, herself, whom I
never saw before, as I have heard her often described, for all the town
talk is now-a-days of her extravagances, with her velvet cap, her hair
about her ears, many black patches because of pimples about her mouth,
naked-necked without anything about it, and a black _just-au-corps_.
May 1st 1667.--She was in a black coach, adorned with silver instead
of gold, and snow-white curtains, and everything black and white.
Stayed at home reading the ridiculous history of my Lord Newcastle,
wrote by his wife, which shows her to be a mad, conceited, ridiculous
woman, and he an asse to suffer her to write what she writes to him
and of him." On the 10th of April, 1667, Charles and his Queen came to
Clerkenwell, on a visit to the duchess. On the 18th John Evelyn went
to make court to the noble pair, who received him with great kindness.
Another time he dined at Newcastle House, and was privileged to sit
discoursing with her grace in her bedchamber after dinner. She thus
describes to a friend her literary employments:--"You will find my
works like infinite nature, that hath neither beginning nor end, and
as confused as the chaos, wherein is neither method nor order, but all
mixed together, without separation, like light and darkness." "But what
gives one," says Walpole, "the best idea of her passion for scribbling,
was her seldom revising the copies of her works, lest it should disturb
her following conceptions. Her servant John was ordered to lie on a
truckle-bed in a closet within her grace's bedchamber; and whenever,
at any time, she gave the summons, by calling out 'John,' I conceive
poor John was to get up, and commit to writing the offspring of his
mistress' thoughts. Her grace's folios were usually enriched with gold,
and had her coat-of-arms upon them. Hence, Pope, in the _Dunciad_, Book
I:--
"Stamp'd with arms, Newcastle shines complete."
In her _Poems and Fancies_, 1653, the copy now in the British Museum,
on the margin of one page is the following note in the Duchess' own
handwriting:--"Reader, let me intreat you to consider only the fancyes
in this my book of poems, and not the language of the numbers, nor
rimes, nor fals printing, for if you doe, you will be my condeming
judg, which will grive me much." Of this book she says:--
"When I did write this book I took great paines,
For I did walk, and thinke, and break my braines;
My thoughts run out of breath, then down would lye,
And panting with short wind like those that dye;
When time had given ease, and lent them strength,
Then up would get and run another length;
Sometimes I kept my thought with strict dyet,
And made them fast with ease, rest, and quiet,
That they might run with swifter speed,
And by this course new fancies they could breed;
But I doe feare they are no so good to please,
But now they're out my braine is more at ease."
At page 228 occurs this strange fancy:--
"Life scums the cream of beauty with Time's spoon,
And draws the claret wine of blushes soon."
Again, she tells us that--
"The brain is like an oven, hot and dry,
Which bakes all sorts of fancies, low and high;
The thoughts are wood, which motion sets on fire;
The tongue a peele, which draws forth the desire;
But thinking much, the brain too hot will grow,
And burns it up; if cold, the thoughts are dough."
To a volume of the Duchess' plays is prefixed a portrait of her Grace,
and this couplet under it:--
"Her beauty's found beyond the skill
Of the best paynter to embrace."
There is a story current that the Duke being once, when in a peevish
humour, complimented by a friend on the great wisdom of his wife, made
answer, "Sir, a very wise woman is a very foolish thing."
Another eccentric inhabitant of Newcastle House was Elizabeth, Duchess
of Albemarle, and afterwards of Montague. She was married in 1669 to
Christopher Monck, second Duke of Albemarle, then a youth of sixteen,
whom her inordinate pride drove to the bottle and other dissipation.
After his death, in 1688, at Jamaica, the Duchess, whose vast estate
so inflated her vanity as to produce mental aberration, resolved never
again to give her hand to any but a sovereign prince. She had many
suitors; but true to her resolution, she rejected them all, until
Ralph Montague, third Lord and first Duke of that name, achieved the
conquest by courting her as _Emperor of China_: and the anecdote has
been dramatized by Colley Cibber, in his comedy of _The Double Gallant,
or Sick Lady's Cure_. Lord Montague married the lady as "Emperor," but
afterwards played the truant, and kept her in such strict confinement
that her relations compelled him to produce her in open court, to prove
that she was alive. Richard Lord Ross, one of her rejected suitors,
addressed to Lord Montague these lines on his match:--
"Insulting rival, never boast
Thy conquest lately won:
No wonder that her heart was lost,--
Her senses first were gone.
"From one that's under Bedlam's laws
What glory can be had?
For love of thee was not the cause:
It proves that she was mad."
The Duchess survived her second husband nearly thirty years, and at
last "died of mere old age," at Newcastle House, August 28th, 1738,
aged ninety-six years. Until her decease, she is said to have been
constantly served on the knee as a sovereign; besides keeping her word,
that she would not stoop to marry anyone but the Emperor of China.
Sources of Laughter.
In a clever paper in the _Saturday Review_ (Oct. 7th, 1865), we find
these amusing anecdotical instances of the sources means _movere
jocum_:--
"A sustained, deliberate pride would have rather prevented than
encouraged that fit of laughter which has preserved to posterity the
name of a certain Marquis of Blandford. He, being noted for laughing
upon small provocation, was once convulsed for half-an-hour together on
seeing somebody fillip a crumb into a blind fiddler's face, the fits
returning whenever the "ludicrous idea" recurred to him. An habitual
sense of superiority would have prevented this sudden glory at sight of
a beggar's helplessness under insult.
"There are personalities which lie so hid under a disguise that they
are not readily known for such. The humorist and the cynic have
each a knack of investing with human weaknesses things, animate and
inanimate, in which plainer minds can see no analogy to human nature.
We have known a man of quaint fancies laugh till the tears ran down
at seeing a rat peep out of a hole. He caught a touch of humanity in
the brute's perplexed air; he guessed at something behind the scenes
impervious to our grosser vision. A bird, frumpish and disquieted on
a rainy day, suggests to such a man some social image of discontent
that makes capital fun for him. He can improve these lower creatures
into caricatures of his friends, or of mankind at large. Mr. Formby
owned himself unable to help "laughing out loud" in the presence of
Egyptian antiquities, with the Memnon at their head; he laughed at
an ancient civilization, at the men of the past personified by their
works. Saturnine tempers can only laugh at imminent danger or positive
calamity; mortal terror is the most ludicrous of all ideas to them.
Mr. Trollope represents Lord de Courcy, who had not laughed for many
a day, exploding at the notion of his neighbour earl having been all
but tossed by a bull: and the joke would have been better still if the
bull had had his will. This tendency is frequently to be seen with a
defective sympathy, and we believe the things that make men laugh are
an excellent clue at once to intellect and temper. Many a man does not
betray the tiger that lurks within him till he laughs. There are times
when the body craves for laughter as it does for food. This is the
laughter which, on some occasion or other, has betrayed us all into
a scandalous, unseasonable, remorseful gaiety. After long abstinence
from cheerful thought, there are few occasions so sad and solemn as to
render this inopportune revolt impossible, unless where grief absorbs
the whole soul, and lowers the system to a uniformity of sadness. In
fact, as no solemnity can be safe from incongruities, such occasions
are not seldom the especial scene of these exposures--of explosions of
a wild, perverse hilarity taking the culprit at unawares; and this even
while he is aghast at his flagrant insensibility to the demand of the
hour.
"This is the laughter often ascribed to Satanic influence. The nerves
cannot forego the wonted stimulus, and are malignantly on the watch, as
it were, to betray the higher faculties into this unseemly indulgence.
Thus John and Charles Wesley, in the early days of their public career,
set forth one particular day to sing hymns together in the fields; but,
on uplifting the first stave, one of them was suddenly struck with a
sense of something ludicrous in their errand, the other caught the
infection, and both fell into convulsions of laughter, renewed on every
attempt to carry out their first design, till they were fain to give
up and own themselves for that time conquered by the Devil. There is a
story of Dr. Johnson much to the same purpose. Naturally melancholy,
he was yet a great laugher, and thus was an especial victim to the
possession we speak of, for no one laughs in depression who has not
learnt to laugh in mirth. He was dining with his friend Chambers in the
Temple, and at first betrayed so much physical suffering and mental
dejection that his companion could not help boring him with remedies.
By degrees he rallied, and with the rally came the need of a general
reaction. At this point Chambers happened to say that a common friend
had been with him that morning making his will. Johnson--or rather his
nervous system--seized upon this as the required subject. He raised a
ludicrous picture of the "testator" going about boasting of the fact
of his will-making to anybody that would listen, down to the innkeeper
on the road. Roaring with laughter, he trusted that Chambers had had
the conscience not to describe the testator as of sound mind, hoped
there was a legacy to himself, and concluded with saying that he would
have the will set to verse and a ballad made out of it. Mr. Chambers,
not at all relishing this pleasantry, got rid of his guest as soon as
he could. But not so did Johnson get rid of his merriment; he rolled
in convulsions till he got out of Temple Gate, and then, supporting
himself against a post, sent forth peals so loud as, in the silence
of the night, to be heard from Temple Bar to Fleet Ditch. We hear of
stomach coughs; this was a stomach, or ganglionic, laugh.
"The mistimed laughter of children has often some such source as this,
though the sprite that possesses them has rarely the gnomelike essence.
A healthy boy, after a certain length of constraint, is sometimes as
little responsible for his laughter as the hypochondriac. Mrs. Beecher
Stowe, in describing, and even defending, a Puritanical strictness of
Sabbath observance, recalls the long family expositions and sermons
which alternated in her youth with prolix Meeting services, at all of
which the younger members of the household were required to assist
in profound stillness of attention. On one of these occasions, on a
hot summer afternoon, a heedless grasshopper of enormous dimensions
leapt on the sleeve of one of the boys. The tempting diversion was
not to be resisted; he slyly secured the animal, and imprisoned a
hind leg between his firmly compressed lips. One by one, the youthful
congregation became alive to the awkward contortions and futile
struggles of the long-legged captive; they knew that to laugh was to be
flogged, but after so many sermons the need was imperative, and they
laughed, and were flogged accordingly. Different from all these types
is the grand frank laugh that finds its place in history and biography,
and belongs to master minds. Political and party feeling may raise,
in stirring times, any amount of animosity, even in good-natured men;
but once bring about a laugh between them, and an answering chord is
struck, a tie is established not easily broken. Something of the old
rancour is gone for ever. There is a story of Canning and Brougham,
after hating and spiting one another through a session, finding
themselves suddenly face to face in some remote district in Cumberland,
with only a turn-pike gate between them. The situation roused their
magnanimity; simultaneously they broke into laughter, and passed each
on his separate way, better friends from that time forth.
"No honest laugher knows anything about his own laugh, which is
fortunate, as it is apt to be the most grotesque part of a man,
especially if he is anything of an original. Character, humour, oddity,
all expatiate in it, and the features and voice have to accommodate
themselves to the occasion as they can. There is Prince Hal's laugh,
"till his face is like a wet cloak ill laid up;" there is the laugh we
see in Dutch pictures, where every wrinkle of the old face seems to
be in motion; there is the convulsive laugh, in which arms and legs
join; there is the whinny, the ventral laugh, Dr. Johnson's laugh like
a rhinoceros, Dominie Sampson's laugh lapsing without any immediate
stage into dead gravity, and the ideal social laugh--the delighted and
delighting chuckle which ushers in a joke, and the cordial triumphant
laugh which sounds its praises. We say nothing of all the laughs--and
how many there are!--which have no mirth in them; nor of the "ha
ha!" of melodrama, and the ringing laugh of the novel, as being each
unfamiliar to our waking ears. Whatever the laugh, if it be genuine and
comes from decent people, it is as attractive as the Piper of Hamelin.
It is impossible not to want to know what a hearty laugh is about. Some
of the sparkle of life is near, and we long to share it. The gift of
laughter is one of the compensating powers of the world. A nation that
laughs is so far prosperous. It may not have material wealth, but it
has the poetry of prosperity. When Lady Duff Gordon laments that she
never hears a hearty laugh in Egypt, and when Mr. Palgrave, on the
contrary, makes the Arabs proper a laughing people, we place Arabia,
for this reason, higher among the countries than its old neighbour. And
it is the same with homes. Wherever there is pleasant laughter, there
inestimable memories are being stored up, and such free play given to
nerve and brain, that whatever thought and power the family circle is
capable of will have a fair chance of due expansion."
_CONVIVIAL ECCENTRICITIES._
Busby's Folly and Bull Feather Hall.
At Busby's Folly, a bowling-green and house of public entertainment,
upon the site of the Belvidere Tavern, Pentonville, there met on the
2nd of May, 1644, a fraternity of Odd Fellows, members of the Society
of Bull Feathers Hall, who claimed, among other things, the toll of
all the gravel carried up Highgate Hill. A rare tract, entitled, _Bull
Feather Hall, or the Antiquity of Horns amply shown_, 1664, relates
the manner of going from Busby's Folly to Highgate:--"On Monday, being
the 2nd of May, some part of the fraternity met at Busby's Folly, in
Islington, where, after they had set all things in order, they thus
marched out, _ordine quisque suo_:--First, a set of trumpets, then the
controller, or captain of the pioneers, with thirty or forty following
him with pickaxes and spades to level the hill, and baskets withal to
carry gravel. After them another set of trumpeters, and also four that
did wind the horn; after them, the standard, _alias_ an exceeding large
pair of horns fixed on a pole, which three men carried, with pennants
on each tip, the Master of the Ceremonies attending it, with other
officers. Men followed the flag, with the arms of the society, with
horned beasts drawn thereon, and this motto:--
'To have, and not to use the same,
Is not their glory, but their shame.'