veins when my Grandmother died. Of all days, too, that the Thirtieth of
January should have been ordered for her passing away! It was
mid-winter, and the streets were white with Innocent Snow when she was
taken ill. She had not been one of those trifling and trivanting
gentlewomen that pull diseases on to their pates with drums and routs,
and late hours, and hot rooms, and carding, and distilled waters. She
had ever been of a most sober conversation and temperate habit; so that
the prodigious age she reached became less of a wonder, and the
tranquillity with which her spirit left this darksome house of clay
seemed mercifully natural. They had noticed, so early as the autumn of
'19, that she was decaying; yet had the roots of life stricken so
strongly into earth as to defy that Woodman who pins his faith to
shaking blasts at first, but when he finds that windfalls will not serve
his turn, and that although leaves decay, and branches are swept away,
and the very bark is stripped off, the tree dies not, takes heart of
grace, and lays about him with his Axe. Then one blow with the sharp
suffices. So for many months Death seemed to let her be, as though he
sat down quietly by her side, nursing his bony chin, and saying, "She is
very old and weak; yet a little, and she must surely be mine." Mistress
Talmash appeared to me, in the fantastic imagination of a solitary
childhood, to take such a part, and play it to the Very Death; and there
were sidelong glances from her eyes, and pressures of her lips, and a
thrusting forth of her hands when the cordial or the potion was to be
given, that seemed to murmur, "Still does she Tarry, and still do I
Wait." This gentlewoman was never hard or impatient with my Grandmother;
but towards the closing scene, for all the outward deference she
observed towards her, 'twas she who commanded, and the Unknown Lady who
obeyed. Nor did I fail to mark that her bearing was towards me fuller of
a kind of stern authority than she had of aforetime presumed to show,
and that she seemed to be waiting for me too, that she might work her
will upon me.
The ecclesiastic Father Ruddlestone was daily, and for many hours,
closeted with my kinswoman and benefactress; and I often, when admitted
to her presence after one of these parleys, found her much dejected, and
in Tears. He had always maintained a ghostly sway over her, and was in
these latter days stern with her almost to harshness. And although I
have ever disdained eavesdropping and couching in covert places to hear
the foregatherings of my betters (which some honourable persons in the
world's reckoning scorn not to do), it was by Chance, and not by Design,
that, playing one wintry day in the Withdrawing-room adjoining the
closet where my Grandmother still sat among her relics, I heard high
words--high, at least, as they affected one person, for the lady's rose
not above a mild complaint; and Father Ruddlestone coming out, said in
an angry tone:
"My uncle saved the King's life when he was in the Oak, and his soul
when he was at Whitehall; and I will do his bidding by you now."
"The Lord's will be done, not mine," my Grandmother said meekly.
Then Father Ruddlestone passed into the Withdrawing-room, and seeing me
on a footstool, playing it is true at the Battle of Hochstedt with some
leaden soldiers, and two wooden puppets for the Duke and Prince Eugene,
but still all agape at the strange words that had hit my sense, he
catches me a buffet on the ear, bidding me mind my play, and not listen,
else I should hear no good of myself, or of what an osier wand might
haply do to me. And that a change was coming was manifest even in this
rude speech; for my Grandmother, albeit of the wise King's mind on the
proper ordering of children, and showing that she did not hate me when I
needed chastening, would never suffer her Domestics, even to the
highest, to lay a finger upon me.
It was after these things, and while I was crying out, more in anger
than with the smart of the blow, that she called me into her closet and
soothed me, giving me to eat of that much-prized sweetmeat she said was
once such a favourite solace with Queen Mary of Modena, consort of the
late King James, and which she only produced on rare occasions. And then
she bewailed my hurt, but bade me not vex her Director, who was a man of
much holiness, full, when we were contrite, of healing and quieting
words; but then, of a sudden, nipping me pretty sharply by the arm, she
said:
"Child, I charge thee that thou abandon that fair false race, and trust
no man whose name is Stuart, and abide not by their fatal creed." In
remembrance of which, although I am by descent a Cavalier, and bound by
many bonds to the old Noble House,--and surely there was never a Prince
that carried about him more of the far-bearing blaze of Majesty than the
Chevalier de St. G----, and bears it still, all broken as he is, in his
Italian retreat,--I have ever upheld the illustrious House of Brunswick
and the Protestant Succession as by Law Established. And as the barking
of a dog do I contemn those scurril flouts and obloquies which have of
old times tossed me upon tongues, and said of me that I should play fast
and loose with Jacobites and Hanoverians, drinking the King over the
Water on my knees at night, and going down to the Cock-pit to pour news
of Jacobites and recusants and other suspected persons into the ears of
Mr. Secretary in the morning. Treason is Death by the Law, and legal
testimony is not to be gainsaid; but I abhor those Iscariot-minded
wretches, with faces like those who Torture the Saints in old Hangings,
who cry, aha! against the sanctuaries, and trot about to bear false
witness.[F]
There were no more quarrels between my Grandmother and her Director.
Thenceforth Father Ruddlestone ruled over her; and one proof of his
supremacy was, that she forewent the use of that Common Prayer-Book of
our Anglican Church which had been her constant companion. From which I
conjecture that, after long wavering and temporizing, even to the length
of having the Father in her household, she had at length returned to or
adopted the ancient faith. But although the Substance of our Ritual was
now denied her, she was permitted to retain its Shadow; and for hours
would sit gazing upon the torn-off cover of the book, with its device of
the crown and crossed axes, in sad memory of K. C. 1st.
A most mournful Christmas found her still growing whiter and weaker, and
nearer her End. At this ordinarily joyful season of the year, it was her
commendable custom to give great alms away to the poor,--among whom at
all times she was a very Dorcas,--bestowing not only gifts of money to
the clergy for division among the needy, but sending also a dole of a
hundred shillings to the poor prisoners in the Marshalsea, as many to
Ludgate, and the Gatehouse, and the Fleet,--surely prisons for debt were
as plentiful as blackberries when I was young!--and giving away besides
large store of bread, meat, and blankets at her own door in Hanover
Square: a custom then pleasantly common among people of quality, but
now--when your parish Overseer, forsooth, eats up the very marrow of the
poor--fallen sadly into disuse. They are for ever striking Poor's Rates
against householders, and will not take clipped money; whereas in my day
Private Charity, and a King's Letter in aid from the pulpit now and
then, were enough; and, for my part, I would sooner see a poor rogue
soundly firked at the post, and then comforted with a bellyful of bread
and cheese and beer by the constable, and so passed on to his
belongings, than that he should be clapped up in a workhouse, to pick
oakum and suck his paws like a bear, while Master Overseer gets
tun-stomached over shoulder of veal and burnt brandy at vestry-dinners.
For it is well-known, to the shame of Authority, that these things all
come out of the Poor Rate.
Ere my Grandmother was brought so low, she would sit in state on
almsgiving morning, which was the day after Christmas; and the more
decent of her bedesmen and bedeswomen would be admitted to her presence
to pay their duty, and drink her health in a cup of warm ale on the
staircase. Also the little children from Lady Viellcastel's
charity-school would be brought to her by their governante to have cakes
and new groats given to them, and to sing one of those sweet tender
Christmas hymns which surely fall upon a man's heart like sweet-scented
balsam on a wound. And the beadle of St. George's would bring a great
bowpot of such hues as Christmas would lend itself to, and have a bottle
of wine and a bright broad guinea for his fee; while his Reverence the
rector would attend with a suitable present,--such as a satin work-bag
or a Good Book, the cover broidered by his daughters,--and, when he sat
at meat, find a bank-bill under his platter, which was always of silver.
And I warrant you his Reverence's eyes twinkled as much at the bill as
at the plum-porridge, and that he feigned not to see Father Ruddlestone,
if perchance he met that foreign person on the staircase, or in the
store-office where Mistress Nancy Talmash kept many a toothsome cordial
and heart-warming strong water.
This dismal Christmas none of these pleasant things were done. My Lady
gave one Sum to her steward, Mr. Cadwallader, and bade him dispose of it
according to his best judgment among the afflicted, bearing not their
creed or politics or parish in mind, but their necessities. And I was
bereft of a joyful day; for in ordinary she would be pleased that I
should be her little almoner, and hand the purses with the groats in
them to the poor almsfolk. What has become, I wonder, of those good old
customs of giving away things at Christmas-tides? Where is the Lord
Mayor's dole of beef-pies to the vagrant people that lurk in St.
Martin's-le-Grand, that new Alsatia? Where is the Queen's gift of an
hundred pounds to the distressed people who took up quarters in Somerset
House? Where are the thousand guineas which the Majesty of England was
used to send every New-Year's morning to the High Bailiff of Westminster
to be parted among the poor of the Liberty? Nothing seems to be given
nowadays. 'Tis more caning than cakes that is gotten by the charity
children; and Master Collector, the Jackanapes, is for ever knocking at
my door for Poor's Rates.
In the middle of January my Grandmother was yet weaker. Straw was laid
before her door, and daily prayers--for of course the Rector knew
nothing about Father Ruddlestone--were put up for her at St. George's.
And I think also she was not forgotten in the orisons of those who
attended the chapel of the Venetian Envoy, and in that permitted to the
use of the French Ambassador. Doctor Vigors was now daily in attendance,
with many other learned physicians, who almost fought in the
antechambers on the treatment to be observed towards this sick person.
One was for cataplasms of bran and Venice turpentine, another for
putting live pigeons to her feet, another for a portion of hot wine
strained through gold-leaf and mingled with hellebore and chips of
mandrake. Warwick Lane suggested mint-tea, and Pall Mall was all for
bleeding. This Pall Mall physician was about the most passionate little
man, with the biggest ruffles and the tallest gold-headed cane I ever
saw. His name was Toobey.
"Blood, sir! there's nothing like blood!" he would cry to Doctor Vigors;
and he cried out for "blood, sir," till you might fancy that he was a
butcher or a herald-at-arms, or a housewife making black puddings.
Says Doctor Vigors in a Rage, "You are nothing but a barber-surgeon,
brother, and learnt shaving on a sheep's head, and phlebotomy on a cow
that had the falling fever."
"Mountebank and quacksalver!" answers my passionate gentleman, "you
bought your diploma from one that forges seamen's certificates in Sopar
Lane. Go to, metamorphosed and two-legged ass! Where is your worship's
stage in the Stocks Market, with pills to purge the vapours, and powders
to make my lady in love with her footman, and a lying proclamation on
every post, and a black boy behind you to beat on the cymbals when you
draw out teeth with the kitchen pliers."
"Rogue!" screams Dr. Toobey, "but for the worshipful house we are in, I
would batoon you to a mummy."
"Mummy forsooth!" the other retorts; "Mummy with a murrain! Why, you dug
up your grandmother, and pounded her up with conserve of myrrh, and
called the stuff King Pharaoh, that was sovereign to cure the
strangury."
"Better to do that," quoth Toobey, calming down into mere give and
take--for he had, in truth, done some droll things in mummy
medicaments,--"than to have been a Fleet parson, that was forced to sell
ale and couple beggars for a living, and turned doctor when he had cured
a bad leg for one that had lain too long in the bilboes."
This was too much for Doctor Vigors, who had once been in orders, and
was still a Nonjuror, winked at, for his skill's sake, by Authority. He
was for rushing on the Pall-Mall mummy-doctor and tousling of his wig,
when Mistress Talmash came out of her lady's closet, and told them that
she was fainting. This was the way that doctors disagreed when I was
young, and I fancy that they don't agree much better now.
She lingered on, however, still resolutely refusing to take to her bed,
and seeing me, if only for a moment, every day, for yet another
fortnight. On the Twentieth of January, it was her humour to receive the
visit of a certain great nobleman. Very many of the quality had daily
waited upon her, or had sent their gentlemen to inquire after her; but
for many weeks she had seen none but her own household. The nobleman I
speak of had lately come down from the Bath, where he had been taking
the waters; for he was full of years, and of Glory, and of infirmities.
A message went to his grand house in Pall Mall, and he presently waited
on my Grandmother. He was closeted with her for an hour, when the tap of
my Grandmother's cane against the wainscot summoned Mistress Talmash,
and she, doing her errand, brought me into the presence.
"My Lord," whispered my Grandmother, as she drew me towards her, and
gave me a kiss that was almost of a whisper too, so feebly gentle was
it,--"My Lord Duke, will you be pleased to lay your hand on the boy's
head and give him your blessing, and it will make him Brave."
He smiled sadly at her fancy, but did as she entreated. He laid a hand
that was all covered with jewelled rings, and that shook almost as much
as my Grandmother's, on my locks, and prattled out to me something about
being a good boy and not playing cards. He, too, was almost gone. He had
a mighty wig, and velvet clothes all covered with gold-lace, a diamond
star, and broad blue ribbon; but his poor swollen legs were swathed in
flannel, and he was so feeble that he had to be helped down-stairs by
two lacqueys. I too ran down-stairs unchecked, and saw him helped,
tottering, into his chair, a company of the Foot-guards surrounding it;
for he was much misliked by the mobile at that time, and few cried, God
bless him! Indeed, as the company moved away, I heard a ragged fellow
(who should have been laid by the heels for it) cry, "There goes
Starvation Jack, that fed his soldiers on boiled bricks and baked
mortar."
"He is a Whig now," said my Grandmother to me, when I rejoined her; "but
he was of the bravest among men, and in the old days loved the true King
dearly."
When this man was young and poor, the mobile used to call him "Handsome
Jack." When he was rich and old and famous, he was "Starvation Jack" to
them. And of such are the caprices of a vain, precipitate age. But I am
glad I saw him, Whig and pinchpenny as he was. I am proud of having seen
this Great Captain and Prince of the Holy Roman Empire. The King of
Prussia, the Duke of Cumberland, my Lord George Sackville, Marshal
Biron, Duke Richelieu, and many of the chiefest among the Turkish
bashaws, have I known and conversed with; but I still feel that Man's
trembling hand on my head; my blood is still fired, as at the sound of a
trumpet, by the remembrance of his voice; I still rejoice at my fortune
in having set eyes, if only for a moment, on John Churchill, Duke of
Marlborough.
It was on the Twenty-ninth of January (o.s.) that our servants, who had
declared to having heard the death-watch ticking for days, asserted that
those ominous sounds grew faster and faster, resolving themselves at
length into those five distinct taps, with a break between, which are
foolishly held by the vulgar to spell out the word DEATH. And although
the noise came probably from some harmless insect, or from a rat
nibbling at the wainscot, that sound never meets my ear--and I have
heard it on board ship many a time, and in gaol, and in my tent in the
desert--without a lump of ice sliding down my back. As for Ghosts, John
Dangerous has seen too many of them to be frightened.[G]
That night I slept none. It was always my lot in that huge house to be
put, little fellow as I was, in the hugest of places. My bed was as
spacious as a Turkish divan. Its yellow silken quilt, lined with
eiderdown, and embroidered with crimson flowers, was like a great waving
field of ripe corn with poppies in it. When I lay down, great weltering
waves of Bed came and rolled over me; and my bolster alone was as big as
the cook's hammock at sea, who has always double bedding, being swollen
with other men's rations. This bed had posts tall and thick enough to
have been Gerard the Giant's lancing-pole, that used to stand in the
midst of the bakehouse in Basing Lane; and its curtains of yellow
taffety hung in folds so thick that I always used to think birds nestled
among them. That night I dreamt that the bed was changed into our great
red pew at St. George's, only that it was hung with dark velvet instead
of scarlet baize, and that the clergyman in the pulpit overhead, with a
voice angrier than ever, was reading that service for the martyrdom of
K. C. 1st, which I had heard so often. And then methought my dream
changed, and two Great Giants with heading-axes came striding over the
bed, so that I could feel their heavy feet on my breast; but their heads
were lost in the black sky of the bed's canopy. Horror! they stooped
down, and lo, they were headless, and from their sheared shoulders and
their great hatchets dripped, dripped, for ever dripped, great gouts of
something hot that came into my mouth and tasted salt! And I woke up
with my hair all in a dabble with the nightdews, with my Grandmother's
voice ringing in my ears, "Remember the Thirtieth of January!" Mercy on
me! I had that dream again last night; and the Giants with their axes
came striding over these old bones--then they changed to a headless
Spaniard and a bleeding Nun; but the voice that cried, "Remember!" spake
not in the English tongue, and was not my Grandmother's. And the hair of
my flesh stood up, as Job's did.
In the morning, when the clouds of night broke up from the pale winter's
sky, and went trooping away like so many funeral coach-horses to their
stable, they told me that my Grandmother was Dead; that she had passed
away when the first cock crew, softly sighing "Remember." It was a
dreadful thing for me that I could not, for many hours, weep; and that
for this lack of tears I was reproached for a hardened ingrate by those
who were now to be my most cruel governors. But I could not cry. The
grief within me baked my tears, and I could only stare all round at the
great desert of woe and solitude that seemed to have suddenly grown up
around me. That morning, for the first time, I was left to dress myself;
and when I crept down to the parlour, I found no breakfast laid out for
me--no silver tankard of new milk with a clove in it, no manchet of
sweet diet bread, no egg on a trencher in a little heap of salt. I asked
for my breakfast, and was told, for a young cub, that I might get it in
the kitchen. It would have gone hard with me if, in my Grandmother's
time, I had entered that place to her knowledge; but all things were
changed to me now, and when I entered the kitchen, the cook, nay, the
very scullion-wench, never moved for me. John Footman sat on the dresser
drinking a mug of purl that one of the maids had made for him. The cook
leered at me, while another saucy slut handed me a great lump of dry
bread, and a black-jack with some dregs of the smallest beer at the
bottom. What had I done to merit such uncivil treatment?
By and by comes Mr. Cadwallader with a sour face, and orders me to my
chamber, and get a chapter out of Deuteronomy by heart by dinner-time,
"Or you keep double fast for Martyrdom-day, my young master," he says,
looking most evilly at me.
"Young master, indeed," Mrs. Nancy repeated; "young master and be saved
to us. A parish brat rather. No man's child but his that to hit you must
throw a stone over Bridewell Wall. Up to your chamber, little varlet,
and learn thy chapter. There are to be no more counting of beads or
mumblings over hallowed beans in this house. Up with you; times are
changed."
Why should this woman have been my foe? She had been a cockering,
fawning nurse to me not so many months ago. Months!--yesterday. Why
should the steward, who was used to flatter and caress me, now frown and
threaten like some harsh taskmaster of a Clink, where wantons are sent
to be whipped and beat hemp. I slunk away scared and cowed, and tried to
learn a chapter out of Deuteronomy; but the letters all danced up and
down before my eyes, and the one word "Remember," in great scarlet
characters, seemed stamped on every page.
It should have been told that between my seventh and my eighth year I
had been sent, not only to church, but to school; but my grandmother
deeming me too tender for the besom discipline of a schoolmaster,--from
which even the Quality were not at that time spared,--I was put under
the government of a discreet matron, who taught not only reading and
writing, but also brocaded waistcoats for gentlemen, and was great
caudle-maker at christenings. It was the merriest and gentlest school in
the town. We were some twenty little boys and girls together, and all we
did was to eat sweetmeats, and listen to our dame while she told us
stories about Cock Robin, Jack the Giant-Killer, and the Golden
Gardener. Now and then, to be sure, some roguish boy would put pepper in
her snuff-box, or some saucy girl hide her spectacles; but she never
laid hands on us, and called us her lambs, her sweethearts, and the like
endearing expressions. She was the widow of an Irish colonel who
suffered in the year '96, for his share in Sir John Fenwick's
conspiracy; and I think she had been at one time a tiring-woman to my
Grandmother, whom she held in the utmost awe and reverence. I often pass
Mrs. Triplet's old school-house in what is now called Major Foubert's
Passage, and recall the merry old days when I went to a schoolmistress
who could teach her scholars nothing but to love her dearly. It was to
my Grandmother, a kind but strict woman, to whom I owed what scant
reading and writing ken I had at eight years of age.
Rudely and disdainfully treated as I now was, my governors thought it
fit, for the world's sake, that I should be put into decent mourning;
for my grandmother's death could not be kept from the Quality, and there
was to be a grand funeral. She lay in State in her great bedchamber;
tapers in silver sconces all around her, an Achievement of arms in a
lozenge at her head, the walls all hung with fine black cloth edged with
orris, and pieced with her escocheon, properly blazoned; and she
herself, white and sharp as waxwork in her face and hands, arrayed in
her black dress, with crimson ribbons and crimson scarf, and a locket of
gold on her breast. They would not bury her with her rubies, but these,
too, were laid upon her bier, which was of black velvet, and with a fair
Holland sheet over all.
Not alone the chamber itself, but the anterooms and staircase were hung
from cornice to skirting with black. The undertaker's men were ever in
the house: they ate and drank whole mountains of beef and bread, whole
seas of ale and punch (thus to qualify their voracity) in the servants'
hall. They say my Grandmother's funeral cost a thousand pounds, which
Cadwallader and Mrs. Talmash would really have grudged, but that it was
the will of the executors, who were persons of condition, and more
powerful than a steward and a waiting-woman. In her own testament my
Grandmother said nothing about the ordering of her obsequies; but her
executors took upon them to provide her with such rites as beseemed her
degree. In those days the Quality were very rich in their deaths; and,
for my part, I dissent from the starveling and nipcheese performances of
modern funerals. It is most true that a hole in the sand, or a
coral-reef, full fathom five, has been at many times my likeliest
Grave; but I have left it nevertheless in my Will--which let those who
come after me dispute if they dare--that I may be buried as a Gentleman
of long descent, with all due Blacks, and Plumes, and Lights, and a
supper for my friends, and mourning cloaks for six poor men.