_Judas Maccabeus_ was first performed. I squeezed in among the chorus
singers, and was remarked by Handel when he entered, as a stranger.
‘Who are you?’ says he. ‘Can you play? Can you sing? If not, open your
mouth and pretend to sing; for there must be no idle persons in my
band.’ He was right. However, in the course of the evening, by turning
his leaf and some other little attentions, there became some sort
of intimacy between us, so that I gained admittance to the frequent
repetitions of this oratorio.”
Jackson made the acquaintance and gained the friendship of
Gainsborough. Of him he says: “His profession was painting, music
was his amusement,” and the reverse might be said with equal truth
of Jackson. Each undertook to instruct the other in his own art, and
Jackson rather prided himself on his paintings than on his music. In
his volume of essays, _The Four Ages_, he gives his reminiscences of
Gainsborough, and they are amusing. His account can here be briefly
summed up:--
“There were times when music seemed to be his employment, and painting
his diversion. When I first knew him he lived at Bath, where Giardini
had been exhibiting his then unrivalled powers on the violin. His
performance made Gainsborough enamoured of that instrument; and
conceiving, like the servant maid in the Spectator, that the music
lay in the fiddle, he was frantic until he possessed himself of the
very instrument which had given him so much pleasure--but seemed much
surprised that the music of it remained behind with Giardini.
“He had scarcely recovered this shock when he heard Abel on the
viol-di-gamba. The violin was hung on the willow--Abel’s viol-di-gamba
was purchased, and the house resounded with melodious thirds and
fifths. Many an adagio and many a minuet were begun, but never
completed. This was wonderful, as it was Abel’s _own_ instrument, and
therefore _ought_ to have produced Abel’s own music.
“Fortunately, my friend’s passion had now a fresh object--Fischer’s
hautboy; but I do not recollect that he deprived Fischer of his
instrument, though he procured a hautboy.
“The next time I saw Gainsborough he had heard a harper at Bath. The
performer was soon left harpless, and now Fischer, Abel, and Giardini
were all forgotten--there was nothing like chords and arpeggios.
“More years passed, when, upon seeing a Theorbo in a picture of Van
Dyck, he concluded that the Theorbo must be a fine instrument.” But
Theorbos were no more played. The nearest approach to one was a lute.
On inquiry Gainsborough ascertained that there was a poor German
professor who performed on the lute, living in a garret. To him went
the artist full of eagerness. The lute he must have. The poor man was
reluctant to part with it; but finally sold it for ten guineas.
“But I must have the book of airs for the instrument,” said
Gainsborough; “the instrument is no good without the book.” After much
haggling, at last the German parted with the music-book for another ten
guineas. “In this way,” says Jackson, “Gainsborough frittered away his
musical talents, and though possessed of ear, taste, and genius, he
never had application to learn his notes.”
Another acquaintance of Jackson’s was Sir Joshua Reynolds. Of him
he says: “Whatever defects a critical eye might find in his works,
a microscopic eye could discover none in his heart. If constant
good-humour and benevolence, if the absence of everything disagreeable,
and the presence of everything pleasant, be recommendations for a
companion, Sir Joshua had these accomplishments.”
Of Jackson’s musical powers it is not necessary to speak. Details
concerning his compositions may be found in Grove’s _Dictionary of
Music_, and his songs “Love in thine eyes for ever dwells,” “Take, O
take those lips away,” and “Time hath not thinned my flowing hair,” are
still not quite dead. His “Te Deum in F” rang through every village
church in England.
He made many visits to London, and returned each time more dissatisfied
with Exeter, to which he was bound by his occupation as organist of the
cathedral, and by his family.
The Literary Society of Exeter and its environs was not inconsiderable
in number. Several of the resident clergy, some physicians and other
gentlemen, had instituted what they called “The Exeter Society.”
They proposed to rival, by volumes of their own, the _Transactions_
of the Manchester Society, whose occasional appearance had attracted
some notice. But a committee sitting judicially on the contributions
of their neighbours and of each other nearly broke up their friendly
intercourse.
In this “Exeter Society” from the first Jackson had declined to enrol
himself as a member. He kept aloof; he took no interest in their
enterprise. He kept on good terms with the members, not entering into
friendship with any, but also keeping free from their rivalries and
contentions.
He was known throughout England as “Jackson of Exeter.” This was
because, on the publication of his first set of songs, he had described
himself as “William Jackson of Exeter” to distinguish himself from
another Jackson who was a musician at Oxford. The last twenty years of
his life were passed in a voluntary seclusion. A good many regretted
this; he supposed that his talents made him an object of jealousy
in the petty world of a cathedral city. He was not made as much of
there as he deemed that he deserved. Few strangers, however, visited
Exeter without seeking an introduction to this eminent man; and his
door was always open to those young men who were of a poetical cast
of mind. Even Dr. Wolcot, the venomous Peter Pindar, had a kindly
word to say for him in verse. His favourite composer of words for his
songs was one Bampfylde, a Devonshire poet, whose sonnets have never
been collected, and which would not commend themselves to modern
taste. Rendal, a polished versifier, composed for him a series of
fairy personifications, with distinct scenery and appropriate action,
to introduce new combinations of music. The fays were in caverns, on
lakes, on a volcano, among glaciers, in the billows of the sea, in
groves lit by the evening star. The music of the “Fairy Fantasies,” as
these were called, was one of the latest compositions of Jackson.
Jackson occupied and amused himself with literary compositions. His
_Thirty Letters_ touched on many interesting points of art, literature,
and philosophy.
In _The Four Ages_ he put together a collection of various articles and
stories. The volume took its title from the leading essay, in which he
showed that the opinion of the Ancients as to a sequence of Golden,
Silver, Brass, and Iron Ages should be inverted--that early man began
in the Iron Age, and that society and culture were rapidly progressing
to the Golden Age.
Dr. Burney said with severity, yet not without some truth, of Jackson:
“He has never been remarkable for sailing with the tide of general
opinion on any occasion. He would, perhaps, suppose the whole universe
rather than himself to be in the wrong, in judging of any of the arts.”
The critic ascribed his perverse ingenuity to “prejudice, envy, a
provincial taste, or perhaps all together, which prevented his candid
attention.”
He possessed a certain amount of wit, but it was of a cumbrous nature.
On one occasion, being called upon at a public dinner for a toast, he
said: “I have great pleasure, Mr. Chairman, in complying with your
command, and give you the opening words of the third Psalm.” The
chairman, astonished at the inappropriateness of the idea, stopped the
musician short by exclaiming: “Oh, fie, Mr. Jackson! the beginning of a
Psalm as a convivial toast?”
“Yes, sir, unless you can suggest a better. I give you _Lord How_.”
But what humour he had acidulated into sarcasm, as he could not move
musically with the times. He could not advance out of the restricted
circle of his own ideals, which was very narrow. To such a mind, Gothic
architecture could only exhibit “an incongruous mass of absurdities--it
is a false style, only showing the want of skill in the builders in
mixing forms which cannot accord.”
He was greatly incensed that the public appreciated the music of
Haydn, Mozart, and even Handel, whose strains were “an imposition of
the feelings drawn from illegitimate sources.” Why could not English
ears rest satisfied with Greene and Boyce and Blow? He affected to
smile on “musical expression,” which he considered so contemptible
that fantastic Germans were only capable of attempting it. Did the
poet ask, “What passion cannot music raise or quell?” I ask in turn,
What passion _can_ music raise or quell? Poets or musicians can only
produce different degrees of pure pleasure, and when they have produced
this last effect they have attained the utmost in the power of poetry
or music. Jackson published his _Observations on the Present State of
Music in London_ in 1791, in which he gave vent to his spleen. Dr.
Burney replied, “And must we go to Exeter to ask Mr. Jackson how to
please and be pleased? Are we to have no music in our concerts but
elegies and balads? Mr. Jackson’s favourite style of music has been
elegies, but what is an elegy to a tragedy or to an epic poem? He sees
but one angle of the art of music, and to that all his opinions are
referred. His elegy is no more than a closet in a palace.”
The great Handel Commemoration in Westminster Abbey in 1784 affected
the organist of Exeter Cathedral with an attack of the spleen, from
which he seems never to have recovered. At first, when that gigantic
project was announced, he declared it to be impracticable, for that
so stupendous a band, composed of many hundred instruments, could
produce only a universal and deafening clash. When, however, the
miracle succeeded, he took exception at the selection of pieces that
had been performed. Lest Handel should obtain an exclusive triumph, he
protested that there were other musicians beside Handel who deserved to
be heard, and merited as high honours as were accorded to him. In 1790
came Haydn to London, and the cup of Jackson’s wrath overflowed. His
ear could not endure the lively melodies and gorgeous effects of _The
Creation_. It was then, in the rage of his heart, that he published his
_Observations_. Artists and amateurs, according to him, who welcomed
the ravishing music of Haydn were taking “their present musical
pleasure from polluted sources.” And on his accustomed principle and
in his usual style he declared that, “judging of the sensations of
others by his own, the public is not pleased with what it applauds with
rapture.”
Jackson entertained the greatest contempt for the physicians of his
day, and perhaps not unjustly. He imagined that all the diseases to
which man is heir are produced by misconduct and intemperance, and
that they could be resisted by sobriety; and prevention, said he,
was better than cure. His decision, persevered in, of using only
abstinence, when his constitution was broken, precipitated his end. He
died of asthma on 5 July, 1803, and was buried in S. Stephen’s Church,
Exeter, where is a tablet to his memory, with a eulogistic description
of his talents and attainments, written by his friend, William Kendall.
The tablet also records the death of his widow, his daughter Mary, and
four sons. One of his sons was ambassador to the King of Sardinia, and
afterwards to Paris and Berlin. His eldest son, William, at an early
age entered the service of the East India Company, and was secretary
to Lord Macartney in his embassy to China. He amassed a considerable
fortune in India, and married Frances, the only plain daughter of
Charles Baring, of Courtlands, near Exmouth. One of the other daughters
married Sir Stafford Northcote, Bart., of Pynes, another Sir Samuel
Young, Bart., of Formosa Place, on the Thames. William purchased Cowley
Barton, where he built Cowley House. The design is said to have been
suggested by his father, as bearing some resemblance to an organ front.
He was High Sheriff of Devon in 1806. He died in 1842, without leaving
any issue.
Among William Jackson’s musical compositions was a setting of Pope’s
elegy, _Vital Spark of Heavenly Flame_, which was sometimes used as
an anthem, and has been known to be given out by a clerk in a village
church thus: “Let us sing to the praise and glory of God--Poppy’s
Legacy.”
The authorities for Jackson’s life are:--
Grove’s _Dictionary of Music_.
_A Dictionary of Musicians._ London, 1827.
The autobiography already referred to in _The Leisure Hour_, 1882.
“Jackson of Exeter,” in the _New Monthly Magazine_ for 1832.
G. Townsend, “William Jackson,” in _Transactions_ of the Devonshire
Association, 1882.
The _Dictionary of National Biography_, etc.
JOHN DUNNING, FIRST LORD ASHBURTON
At Walkhampton is an old farm called Guatham that had pertained for
several generations to the family of Dunning, originally well-to-do
yeomen, but not dignified enough to be recorded as bearing arms at
the Heralds’ Visitation of 1620. In 1661 Richard Dunning, in a deed,
mentions his mother, Wilmot, his sister Mary, and his brother, John
Dunning. His wife was Mary, and he had besides his sister Mary another,
Margaret, who married Edward Gould, gent., of Pridhamsleigh, in
Staverton; the marriage settlement was dated 7 February, 14 Charles
II (1662). She died shortly after her marriage, and was buried at
Staverton 26 April, 1662, where was erected a brass to her memory
bearing the inscription:--
Here lies the gentle Margaret
A pearl in Gold right meetly set.
Her brother Richard held Guatham, and wrote himself “Gentleman.” He was
the author of a tract published in the year 1686, in which he described
the condition of the poor of the county. Macaulay says:--
“That he understood his subject well it is impossible to doubt; for a
few months later his work was reprinted, and was, by the magistrates
assembled in quarter sessions at Exeter, strongly recommended to the
attention of all parochial officers. According to him the wages of the
Devonshire peasant were, without food, about five shillings a week.”
Richard died s.p.
[Illustration:
_Sir Joshua Reynolds pinxt._ _F. Bartolozzi sculpt._
LORD ASHBURTON]
John Dunning, brother of the pamphleteer, lived with Mary, his wife, at
Guatham. After eleven years of married life he died in 1706, leaving
four sons and three daughters. The second of their sons who attained
manhood was born in 1701, and bore his father’s name of John. He was
bred to the law, and having married Agnes, daughter of Henry Jutsham,
of Old-a-Port, in Modbury, settled down as an attorney at Ashburton,
probably drawn there by the representations of his uncle Edward Gould.
He settled into a house at Gulwell, in the parish of Staverton, a
stone’s-throw from the boundary of Ashburton.
This attorney Dunning had a son John born on 18 October, 1731. Attorney
Dunning now moved into Ashburton into a house in West Street, where he
resided till his death, which took place in 1780. Day by day in his
youth did the ugly, ungainly boy John Dunning trudge to the school
of Ashburton, occupying the ancient chapel of S. James. This chapel
had been decorated with large coats-of-arms in plaster, coloured
periodically, of benefactors. Above the master’s desk at the east
end were the arms of Ashburton. The other coats were Harris, Gould,
Blundell, and Young. As the urchin, ugly as an imp from the abyss,
sat on his form looking up at the great blue and gold lion of the
Goulds--his uncle’s coat--did it ever flash across his mind that he
might eventually, like the cuckoo, kick them out of their nest and
gather all their property into his own hands?
At the early age of thirteen he left school and was taken into the
paternal office for five years’ service as an articled clerk. Here
he acquired the neat and formal hand that distinguished his writing
through life.
One of Attorney Dunning’s clients was Sir Thomas Clarke, Master of
the Rolls, who employed him as agent to his property about Ashburton.
An incident in his stewardship led to important consequences. A legal
instrument was prepared by the young John Dunning, who forwarded it
to Sir Thomas in his father’s absence, and was accordingly taken to
task by his father for his presumption. A letter was dispatched in hot
haste to the client, apologizing for the errors which it was feared
must be found in a draft prepared by a lad under nineteen, and which
his father had not been allowed opportunity of revising. Greatly to the
parent’s relief, however, the distinguished lawyer expressed himself
perfectly satisfied with the document, and volunteered to push the
young man in his profession, and incur the sole charge of fitting him
for a career at the Bar. Under this patron’s auspices young Dunning,
in the twenty-first year of his age, was entered as a student at
the Middle Temple on 8 May, 1752. In turn he made acquaintance with
Kenyon, afterwards Lord Kenyon, who succeeded Lord Mansfield on the
King’s Bench; also Horne Tooke, who addressed to Dunning that _Letter
on the English Particle_, which was afterwards expanded into _The
Diversions of Purley_. Out of term these three friends dined together
at a little eating-house near Chancery Lane at the modest charge of
7-1/2d. each. Tooke and Dunning would generously add to this a penny
for the waitress; but the more thrifty Kenyon rewarded the girl with a
halfpenny, and sometimes with the promise to remember her next time.
After four years Dunning was called to the Bar in July, 1756, and
betook himself to the Western Circuit, but with little success, owing
mainly to his forbidding appearance. Polwhele declares that “had
Lavater been at Exeter in 1759, he must have sent Counsellor Dunning
to the hospital for idiots. Not a feature marked him for the son of
wisdom.” He was stunted in growth, his limbs were misshapen, and his
features mean and the general expression repellent. Horne Tooke was
wont to tell a story illustrative of Dunning’s personal appearance.
On one occasion Thurlow wished to see him privately, and went to the
coffee-house that he frequented and inquired of the waiter whether Mr.
Dunning was there. The waiter, who was new to the place, said that
he did not know him. “Not know him!” roared Thurlow with a volley of
oaths. “Go into the room upstairs, and if you see a gentleman there
like the Knave of Clubs, tell him that he is particularly wanted.” The
waiter did as desired, and returned promptly with Dunning. He alone
seemed to be unaware of his own ungainly appearance. One story is
told of this when he was retained in defence in an assault case, and
his object was to disprove the identity of the person named by an old
woman as the aggressor. Abandoning his usual tactics of browbeating the
witness, he commenced the cross-examination with much gentleness.
“Pray, my good woman,” he inquired, “are you thoroughly acquainted with
this person?”
“O, yes, sir; very well indeed.”
“Come now, describe him to me. Was he short or tall?”
“Stumpy, sir; almost as much so as your honour.”
“Humph! What kind of nose had he?”
“Snubby, as I should say, just like your own, sir, only not cocked up
quite so much.”
“Humph! His eyes?”
“Well now, he has a kind of cast in them, sir, a sort of a squint very
much like your honour’s eyes.”
“Psha! You may go down.”
In or about 1768 John Dunning was retained in a case of murder. The
story told is this:--
Edward Gould, of Pridhamsleigh, died in 1736, and as he was the last
of the elder branch of the family, he left all his lands in Staverton,
Ashburton, Holne, Widdecombe-on-the-Moor, and Chudleigh to William
Drake Gould, of Lew Trenchard, the representative of the next branch,
who was then a minor. This William Drake Gould died in 1766, and all
his estates devolved on his only son Edward, born in 1740. Edward was
a spendthrift and a gambler. One evening he had been playing late and
deep, and had lost every guinea he had about him. Then he rode off, put
a black mask over his face, and waylaid the man who had won the money
of him, and on his appearance, challenged him to deliver. The gentleman
recognized him and incautiously exclaimed, “Oh! Edward Gould, I did not
think this of you!”
“You know me, do you?” was his reply, and Edward shot him dead. Then
he rode to Pridhamsleigh, reversed his horse’s shoes, and sped across
Dartmoor to Lew Trenchard.
Now there had been a witness, a man who had seen Edward take up his
position, and who, believing him to be a highwayman, had secreted
himself and waited an opportunity to effect his escape. Edward Gould
was tried for the murder. Dunning was engaged to defend him. It was
essential to weaken or destroy the testimony of the witness. On the day
of the trial he cross-questioned this same witness sharply.
“How can you be sure that the man on the horse was Mr. Gould,” asked
Dunning, “when, as you say, it was past midnight?”
“Sir, the full moon shone on him. I recognized his horse. I knew his
coat. Besides, when he had shot the other he removed the mask.”
“The full moon was shining, you assert?”
“Yes, your honour. I saw his face by the clear moonlight.”
“Pass me a calendar,” said the judge. “Who has got a calendar?”
At that time almanacs were not so plentiful as they are now. As it
happened, no one present possessed one. Then Dunning said, standing
up:--
“My lord, I had one yesterday, and put it, I believe, in my overcoat
pocket. If your lordship will send an apparitor into the ante-room to
search my pocket, it may be found.”
The calendar was produced. There was no moon on the night of the
murder. The evidence against the prisoner broke down, and he was
acquitted.
Dunning on the previous day had purchased an almanac, removed the
sheets containing among others the month and those preceding and
following it, and had had the calendar reprinted, altering the moons so
that there might be none on the night in question.
This was considered at the time a clever and sharp bit of practice of
Mr. Dunning; it occurred to no one that it was immoral.
This story rests entirely on tradition, but the tradition lived both at
Lew Trenchard and at Ashburton. I have been unable to find any record
in the Assize Rolls, but then I do not know whether the murder took
place in Devon, as the tale goes, or elsewhere, so that I cannot be
sure that the trial took place in Exeter, or perhaps at Bath.
Dunning lent Edward Gould large sums. These were repaid every now
and then by his mother, but they amounted to so great a sum, all
the estates about Ashburton, Widdecombe, Holne, and Staverton being
mortgaged, that finally Dunning foreclosed and secured all. Edward
Gould retired to end his days in lodgings in Shaldon.
Lew Trenchard would have been lost like the rest had not Edward Gould’s
mother secured it by a lease of ninety-nine years.
Dunning had already made his mark before this came on to enhance his
fame as an astute lawyer, if the story be true. He had made it in this
way:--
After the French had been driven from their settlements in Hindustan,
the Dutch East India Company, jealous of the advanced power of their
English rivals, addressed a remonstrance against the violation of
their privileges as neutrals, alleging sundry acts of interruption of
their trade that they held to be unjustifiable. This was presented to
Lord Bute, then Prime Minister, and he called on the English company
to reply. The drawing up of the counter memorial was confided to John
Dunning as a subtle, shrewd, and not scrupulous pleader. It succeeded,
and he was rewarded with a fee of five hundred guineas. Seven years had
now passed since Dunning’s call to the Bar, and five of these had been
years of famine. In 1766 he became Recorder of Bristol, and in 1767 was
appointed Solicitor-General. In 1768 he was elected member for Calne,
and his entry into Parliament was hailed as a great gain to the Whig
party.
“Among the new accessions to the House of Commons at this juncture,”
writes Lord Mahon, “by far the most eminent in ability was John
Dunning.... He was a man both of quick parts and strong passions; in
his politics a zealous Whig. As an orator, none ever laboured under
greater disadvantages of voice and manner; but those disadvantages
were most successfully retrieved by his wondrous power of reasoning,
his keen invective, and his ready wit. At the trial of the Duchess of
Kingston for bigamy, when he appeared as counsel against her Grace,
Hannah More, who was present, thus describes him: ‘His manner is
insufferably bad, coughing and spitting at every word, but his sense
and expression pointed to the last degree. He made her Grace shed
bitter tears.’”