reconducted to the mansion. My lord accosted him in a very rough
manner, asked where the other fellow was, and told him he should be
made to find him. “Mr. Carew in the mean Time stood thunder-struck,
expecting nothing less than Commitment to Prison; but upon Examination,
made out his Story as well as he could. After having thus terrified
and threatened him for a considerable Time, away goes his Lordship,
and divesting himself of his Habit and Character of a Nobleman, again
puts on his Rags, and is by his Trusty Valet de Chambre (alone in the
Secret) ushered into the Room where his Brother Beggar stood sweating
with Fear. They confer Notes together, whispering to each other what
to say, in order that their Accounts might agree when examined apart.
The Steward took Mr. Carew aside into a private chamber, and there
pretending that the other Fellow’s Relation contradicted his, proved
them to be both Counterfeits; a Prison must be the Portion of them
both; indeed nothing was omitted that might strike Mr. Carew with the
greatest Terror and Confusion. By this Time my Lord having thrown off
his Rags and put on his fine Apparel, Mr. Carew was again brought into
his Presence to receive his Sentence; when my Lord, having sufficiently
diverted himself with the Consternation of his Brother Mumper,
discovered himself to him.”
After that Lord Weymouth, to whom before Bampfylde had confided his
real name, showed him hospitality and liberality and took him along
with himself to the Warminster horse-races.
We need not follow in detail all Bampfylde-Moore Carew’s adventures.
He went to Sweden, where he collected money on the ground that he
was a Presbyterian Minister, to Paris where he posed as a refugee
Romanist from England; he was again arrested and sent to Maryland, and
again escaped. He pretended to be a soldier wounded at Fontenoy, and
exhibited a raw beefsteak attached to his knee as his open wound. In a
word his disguises, his rascalities were endless.
Many attempts were made by his family to reclaim him, by Lord Clifford
who was his first cousin, but all in vain.
He died in obscurity in 1758, at the age of fifty-five, at Bickleigh,
where he is buried. It is not known what became of his daughter, the
only child he had.
WILLIAM GIFFORD
William Gifford, the satirist, was born at Ashburton in April, 1756.
His father’s name was Edward, and he says that his great-grandfather
“was possessed of considerable property at Halsbury, a parish in the
neighbourhood of Ashburton.” There is no such parish, but there is the
_manor_ of Halsbury that belonged to the Giffords or Giffards in the
neighbourhood of Bideford, in Parkham parish.
As William Gifford does not give the Christian names of his grandfather
and great-grandfather, it will not be an easy matter to trace descent
from the Giffards of Halsbury. That estate was sold by Roger Giffard,
who died in 1763, seven years after the birth of William.
Roger had inherited Halsbury from his great-uncle, of the same
Christian name, who died without issue in 1724. There is no trace of
any legitimate son of this Roger.
No Giffords appear in the Ashburton register prior to 1716, when Mary,
daughter of Edward Gifford, was baptized; but there were Giffords, but
not gentlefolk, in the neighbouring parish of Ilsington.
William Gifford’s great-grandfather was of the same generation as Roger
Giffard of Halsbury, second son of John Giffard, of Brightleigh, who
succeeded to Halsbury, under some family arrangement, in consequence
of the then heads of the Halsbury Giffards dying without issue. It
is possible that the last Halsbury Giffard may have left his estate
to Roger of Brightleigh, in consequence of his having disinherited a
worthless son. In this case William Gifford’s story of a disinheritance
may have some foundation. But one would expect to find an entry in the
Parkham registers of the baptism of such a son; and there is none.
[Illustration:
_I. Hoppner, R.A._
_R. H. Cromek_
W. GIFFORD]
William’s grandfather was dissipated and extravagant, and his father,
Edward, was not much better. He had been sent to the Grammar School at
Exeter, but ran away, and entered on board a man-of-war. His father
bought him out, but he was incorrigible; he again ran away, and joined
Bampfylde-Moore Carew in his vagabondage, when the latter was an old
man. On leaving this choice society he became a plumber and glazier at
Ashburton, and married a carpenter’s daughter named Elizabeth Cain, 3
September, 1750.[20] Edward Gifford now moved to South Molton and set
up there; but after four or five years, having involved himself in
trouble by attempting to excite a riot in a Methodist conventicle, he
deemed it advisable to show a pair of heels, and went to sea on board
the _Lyon_, a transport. Mrs. Gifford then returned to her native
place, Ashburton, where William was born.
So away went Edward, singing, I doubt not, a popular Devonshire song--
My fortune is pretty well spent,
My lands and my cattle and corn;
I must put on a face of content,
When as naked as when I was born.
No more I’ll be troubled with wealth,
My pockets are drained full dry,
I walk where I please for my health,
And never fear robbing, not I.
* * * * *
O once I could lie on the best,
The best of good beds made of down,
If sure of a flock of good straw
I am glad to keep off the cold ground.
Some say that Old Care killed the cat,
And starv’d her for fear she should die;
Henceforth I’ll be wiser than that,
To my cares bid for ever good-bye.
So adieu to old England, adieu!
And adieu to some thousands of pounds!
If the world had been done, ere my life was begun,
My sorrows would then have had bounds.
Mrs. Gifford was left very badly off. All she had for her maintenance
was the rent of four small fields--all that remained of the land as yet
unsold.
Edward Gifford returned from sea in 1764, having been absent eight
years. He had received over a hundred pounds of prize money in
addition to his wages, which were considerable; but as he reappeared
in Ashburton his pockets were nearly empty. The little property yet
left was therefore turned into money, and Edward Gifford set up a
second time as glazier, plumber, and house-painter. William was now
sent to the free school in S. Laurence’s Chapel, the master of which
was Hugh Smerdon. This school was founded by Bishop Stapeldon in the
tower of the old Chantry Chapel. On the dissolution of the chantries,
the scholars and master moved out of the tower into the body of the
chapel. It was further endowed with funds by Edward Gould, Esq., of
Pridhamsleigh, and Mr. Peter Blundell, of Tiverton. In this school
William Gifford learned to read, write, and cypher. He remained there
till his father’s death three years later. Edward Gifford had learned
nothing by his misfortunes. He preferred to drain the pewter in the
tavern to doing pewterer’s work in the shop. He died and was buried 9
June, 1767, leaving beside a widow and his son William another son
aged six or eight months. Mrs. Gifford unwisely continued the business
without knowing anything about it, and committed the management to a
couple of journeymen, who wasted her property and embezzled her money.
In less than a twelvemonth she died, and was buried 29 November, 1768.
William was then thirteen and his brother not two years old; and they
had not a relation or friend in the world. Everything left was seized
by a man named Carlile for money advanced to Mrs. Gifford. The youngest
child was sent to an almshouse, and William was taken charge of by
Carlile, who was his godfather, not out of pity, but because he was
afraid of forfeiting the respect of his fellow citizens if he turned
the orphan adrift.
The life of the unfortunate youngest child was short. He was indeed
The child of misery, baptized in tears.
When aged seven the parish bound him apprentice to a farmer of the
name of Leman, with whom he endured incredible hardships, and at nine
broke his thigh. On his recovery he tried the sea, and went on board
the _Egmont_, but was allowed to do this by the grasping Leman, as his
apprenticeship was not expired, only on condition that his wages should
be paid into his (Leman’s) hands. The poor lad knew no favourable
change of fortune, for he fell sick and died at Cork.
Carlile sent the unfortunate William to drudge at the plough; but
William was physically incapable of driving the plough. During his
father’s life, in attempting to clamber up a table, he had fallen
backwards and drawn it after him; its edge fell on his chest, and it is
possible that his spine was also jarred, giving him ever after a look
of deformity. Ploughing was out of the question, and he was forced to
be withdrawn from field labour.
His guardian then thought of sending him to Newfoundland to assist in
a storehouse, and for this purpose entered into correspondence with
a Mr. Holdsworth, of Dartmouth, who consented to see the boy. When,
however, he had cast eyes on the puny, sickly child, he declined to
have anything to do with him, and Carlile then sent him on board a
coaster at Brixham, with a man named Full, plying between Dartmouth and
Plymouth, and sometimes going as far as Portsmouth.
In this boat he continued for a twelvemonth.
On Christmas Day, 1770, he was summoned back to Ashburton by his
godfather. It seemed that the fishwives who went from Brixham to
Ashburton with their wares had spoken there pretty freely of the little
ragged urchin who wandered about the quay, and of his delicacy and
of the rough treatment to which he was exposed. This roused a strong
feeling in Ashburton against Carlile, and he was constrained to bring
the boy back so as to allay the prejudice his conduct had awakened.
He sent him again to school in the old chapel, where he sat on the
benches at the long desks, and looked up at the huge plaster-work
gaily-painted shield and bearings of Ashburton over the headmaster’s
desk, and those of the benefactors to the school down the sides. Here
he worked assiduously at his books and made astonishing progress. He
was even employed as a monitor to teach the younger boys, and received
a few coppers for his services. The ambition of his young heart was to
qualify himself to take the place of the old schoolmaster, Smerdon, who
was becoming infirm and past work.
But these dreams of future happiness in the school where he had
passed his most enjoyable hours were dashed. Carlile wanted to get the
lad out of Ashburton and relieve his pocket of the burden of finding
him clothes and bread and butter. He was determined to wash his
hands of the orphan altogether; and accordingly, without consulting
the boy’s wishes, indentured him in January, 1772, to a cobbler, a
cousin of his in Exeter, with whom he would be bound to remain till
he was twenty-one. The shoemaker with whom he was placed was a sour
and narrow-minded Presbyterian, who read nothing but controversial
pamphlets relative to a theological dispute then raging between two of
the clergy of Exeter and some of the Dissenting preachers of the city,
and of these controversial pamphlets the cobbler read only those of his
own side.
Gifford had no books save a Bible, a Thomas à Kempis, and a
black-letter romance, _Parismus and Parismenus_, that had belonged
to his mother, together with some chapbooks, _The Golden Bull_, and
such like trifles. However, he found a stray treatise on algebra in
a lodging-house, and commandeered it. But this last book was not at
this time of any advantage to him, as to understand it a preliminary
knowledge of simple equations was necessary--and what “equations” meant
he knew no more than did the man in the moon, who had at his command no
library whatsoever.
However, his master’s son had a Flemming’s _Introduction to Knowledge_,
which, as a spiteful boy, he refused to let Gifford use, and hid it
away. William, however, by accident discovered where the book was
concealed and carried it off, sat up for several nights, and poring
over it with avidity mastered the contents, and was then able to pursue
his studies in algebra.
He says: “I hated my new profession with a perfect hatred; I made no
progress in it, and was consequently little regarded in the family, of
which I sank by degrees into the common drudge.”
Whilst at Ashburton his dreary life had been cheered by making friends
with some of his schoolfellows. One of these was young Hoppner,
afterwards a famous portrait painter, a rival of Sir Thomas Lawrence,
and in after years he looked back to this friendship with pleasure, and
wrote to him, on the death of Sir Joshua Reynolds--
One Sun is set, one Glorious Sun, whose rays
Long gladdened Britain with no common blaze;
O may’st thou soon (for clouds begin to rise)
Assert thy station in the Eastern skies,
Glow with his fires, and give the world to see
Another Reynolds rise, my friend, in thee!
But dearer still to him had been the Ashburton butcher’s son, John
Ireland, afterwards Dean of Westminster, and to him he wrote--
Sure if our fates hang on some hidden Power,
And take their colour from the natal hour,
Then, Ireland! the same planet on us rose,
Such the strong sympathies our lives disclose!
Thou know’st how soon we felt this influence bland,
And sought the brook and coppice, hand in hand,
And shaped rude bows, and uncouth whistles blew,
And paper kites (a last great effort) flew;
And when the day was done, retired to rest,
Sleep on our eyes, and sunshine in our breast.
But in Exeter he had no friends, none who would associate with him. He
was utterly alone and miserable. He had not a penny wherewith to bless
himself. One only little streak of sunlight entered his gloomy life,
and this was the cheery notice of a young woman, a neighbour, who daily
gave the depressed boy, as he passed her door, a smile and a kindly
greeting, and the gratitude he felt for this slight encouragement was
the first pleasing sensation he had ventured to entertain for many
dreary months.
In his _Autobiography_ he says: “Pen, ink, and paper were for the most
part as completely out of my reach as a crown and sceptre.” He had but
one resource, which required the utmost caution and secrecy in applying
it. He beat out pieces of leather as thin and smooth as possible, and
in his garret, by the tiny window, with a blunt awl worked out on the
leather his algebraical calculations.
Hitherto he had not so much as dreamed of poetry, but his first attempt
was on the occasion of a person who had undertaken to paint a sign
for an inn; it was to have been a lion, but the artist had produced
a creature much more like a dog. One of his acquaintances wrote some
lines on it. Gifford looked them over, shook his head, and said that
he thought that he could do better. Accordingly he composed an epigram
on the theme, so cutting and droll that his shopmates declared he
had succeeded in a masterly manner. After that he ventured on other
attempts--doggerel, he says they were, but all caustic and humorous,
and these circulated, were laughed over, and gained him not a little
applause. When he had composed some brief little satire he would read
it to a select circle, and was rewarded by the gift of a few pence,
amounting occasionally to sixpence. Did he write also a few tender and
grateful lines to the pretty, smiling girl on the doorstep in the same
street, who had cheered the lonely boy? I have not the smallest doubt
in my mind that he did.
To one so long in absolute want of money, such a resource seemed
like a gold-mine, and although at this time he thought lightly, even
contemptuously of the Muse, and all his energies of mind were devoted
to mathematics, yet, as these trifles brought him in money, and so
enabled him to buy paper and ink, and books on geometry and algebra, he
continued to compose verses.
But a storm was gathering. There is a delightful picture by Phiz in
_David Copperfield_, where Mr. Creakle, the schoolmaster, enters the
schoolroom leaning on the arm of his factotum Tungay, just as a boy has
drawn a caricature of both on the blackboard.
Inevitably some of the keen shafts of Gifford’s ridicule had been
levelled at his master, the cobbler. This man laid himself open to
being satirized. He possessed a dictionary of synonyms; and it was
his practice never, when he could avoid it, to employ a direct word
when he could find a roundabout mode of expressing himself; a weeding
with him would be a _runcation_, and to ride would be to _equitate_.
It was not in human nature that William Gifford should withhold his
hand from turning out some neat lines taking off the sanctimonious and
pretentious cobbler, and so revenging himself for slights and insults
many. It is not in human nature that he should refrain from showing
this product to his fellow apprentices. It is not in human nature that
some sneak among them should not apprise the master or that master’s
son of what the sullen, discontented lad had done.
Whether it was this, or whether it was that the shoemaker as a strict
Puritan looked on laughter and jest and poetry as ungodliness, the
master’s anger was raised to fury. He searched Gifford’s garret, took
away all his books and papers, and dared him to touch paper with pen
or read any other books in future than the Bible. This was a severe
blow, and was followed soon after by another that was as great. Mr.
Hugh Smerdon, whom he had hoped to succeed, died, and was succeeded as
master in the Ashburton Grammar School by another man not much older
and still less qualified for the station than himself. Thus at once
crumbled to nothing all his castles in the air that he had built; and
still the only light in his darkness continued to be the smile and
welcome from the girl a few doors off.
There is a ballad, “The Little Girl Down the Lane,” sung to a
plaintive, sweet air, greatly affected at one time by apprentices, and
not yet forgotten in Devonshire; it relates the loves and sorrows of a
’prentice boy, bound by his articles to a tailor, who loved a maiden
in the same lane, and who induced her to marry him. But, alas! as the
couple were in church and the knot was about to be tied, the master
tailor got wind of it, rushed in, stopped the ceremony, and carried
off the bridegroom to his bench again. The words are mere doggerel,
but they would appeal to Gifford, as they have appealed to many a
Devonshire apprentice, and often in his garret he may have hummed over
the pathetic air as he thought of the kind young face that alone in
Exeter had smiled on him.
The darkest hour precedes the dawn. And now, when he was in the
profoundest depths of depression, help arrived, and that from an
unexpected quarter. Mr. William Cookesley, a surgeon of Ashburton,
a large-hearted and open-handed man, having by accident heard some
of his verses, recalled the unfortunate boy, thrust from pillar to
post, and inquired after him. His history was well known to all in
Ashburton, and he at once interested himself in Gifford, and not only
gave from his own scantily furnished purse, but begged help from his
friends and patients to cancel Gifford’s apprenticeship and further
his education. On examining his literary attainments, he found that,
with the exception of mathematics, he was woefully ignorant; his
handwriting was bad, and his language very incorrect. Mr. Cookesley
now started a subscription list headed “A Subscription for purchasing
the remainder of the time of William Gifford, and for enabling him to
improve himself in Writing and English Grammar.” Few contributed more
than five shillings, and none beyond half a guinea; enough, however,
was collected to free him from his apprenticeship, which amounted to
six pounds (there were but eighteen months of that bondage to run), and
also to maintain him for a few months during which he attended school
under the Rev. Thomas Smerdon.
The hard life, the starvation of his early days, mentally and
physically for a while stunted his faculties, so that he could not keep
pace with youths of his own age or even younger, and his master talked
of putting him into a lower class; on which he wrote the following
lines, adopting playfully his somewhat significant nickname:--
Tho’ my name is Cloudy,
Yet cast me not away;
For many a cloudy morning
Brings forth a shining day.
However, by dint of hard work, after two years and two months he was
pronounced by Mr. Smerdon fit to go to the University.
Assistance was afforded by Mr. Thomas Taylor, of Denbury, who had
already given him friendly support, and who procured for him a Bible
readership at Exeter College; and this, with occasional help from Mr.
Cookesley and his friends, was considered sufficient to enable him to
live until he could take his degree.
The first act of Gifford on reaching Oxford was heartily to thank his
friend Cookesley for all he had done for him. The surgeon replied:
“Though I have ever esteemed you, my dear Gifford, yet I was far from
perceiving the extent of my regard for you till you left Ashburton; and
I am only reconciled to the loss of your society by the prospects of
advantage and honour which are now before you. Believe me, I shall ever
feel myself as much interested in your future fortune as if you were my
brother or my son.”
When Gifford was preparing to issue his _Pastorals_ he insisted
that Mr. Cookesley’s name should stand at the head of the list of
subscribers. “I will suck my fingers for a month rather than draw my
pen to put a name over yours in my subscription book. Therefore look to
it! I am Wilful and Wishful; and Wilful will do it.”
Unfortunately those who promised to subscribe to maintain Gifford at
college were slack in paying the sums they had agreed to find, and this
put both Cookesley and Gifford in pecuniary straits.
Cookesley was one day dining with Governor Palk, near Ashburton, when
he told him that Gifford was in sore want of a _Juvenal_, and could not
afford to buy a second-hand copy at sixteen shillings. The governor
then exclaimed: “Oh! he shall not want a _Juvenal_. My dear” (to his
wife), “give Mr. Cookesley a guinea, and tell Gifford from me that he
shall have his _Juvenal_ and a little firing to read it by; and tell
him, moreover, that I’ll make my subscription three guineas annually.”
Cookesley’s letters to Gifford were carefully preserved. They were
often written between sleeping and waking. One day he gives, as
an excuse for the shortness of his letter: “I am quite fatigued,
having been without sleep for a great part of the past night, and on
horseback for several hours to-day.... Your account of the meadows of
Christchurch almost made me so far forget myself as to cry out, ‘I am
resolved forthwith to set out for Oxford’; but, alas! to begin one’s
journey without money would be rather worse than ending it so.”
Mr. Cookesley’s active benevolence was cut short by his untimely death.
He did not live long enough to do more than start his young friend on
the road to fame and affluence. This event took place on 15 January,
1781. He died suddenly, and with a letter of Gifford’s unopened in his
hands. He left his family but scantily provided for, but a man’s good
works follow him, and the harvest comes sometime, if late, as we shall
see in the sequel.
In his _Autobiography_, written twenty years later, Gifford says: “It
afflicted me beyond measure, and in the interval I have wept a thousand
times at the recollection of his goodness; I yet cherish his memory
with filial respect; and at this distant period my heart sinks within
me at every repetition of his name.”
Gifford was, however, encouraged by the unexpected friendship of the
Rev. Servington Savery. He had, moreover, gained other friends, not
more kindly, but better able to serve him with their purses. His
acquaintance with his greatest patron, Earl Grosvenor, was made through
an accident. He had formed a college acquaintance with a young man
who kept up a correspondence with him, and to whom, when this latter
left college, he addressed his letters under cover to Lord Grosvenor.
But on one occasion he forgot to put his friend’s name to the letter,
and it was opened by the Earl, who read it, and was surprised at the
wit and brilliance of scholarship it evinced, and he begged for an
introduction. This led to his being sent as tutor to travel abroad
with Lord Belgrave, Earl Grosvenor’s son. Under the auspices of this
nobleman he entered upon London life, and gradually rose to an eminent
position among men of letters.