at Truro, where he established himself with a view to practising as a
doctor. His peculiar treatment, which consisted in giving his fever
patients doses of cold water, and his openly proclaimed opinion that
a physician did more harm than good by cupping, bleeding, clystering,
and by the administration of boluses and draughts, as also that the
only good he could effect was by nudging on Dame Nature in the back
when slow in recovering the sick, raised a storm against him among his
fellow practitioners, and involved him in disputes. Polwhele speaks
highly of his medical abilities. “I can say with truth that he had the
credit not only of a skilful, but of a benevolent physician. In fevers,
he was uncommonly successful. From consumption many were rescued by
his hand who had been given up as irrecoverable. As a physician he
prescribed medicines; he did more, he examined them, not trusting
to the apothecary; and sometimes detected with indignation a cheap
medicine substituted for a costly one. He was no favourite with the
apothecaries and druggists of the place; but his merit, bearing all
before it, showed the impotence of their resentment.”
He quarrelled also with the Corporation of Truro, and when that body
attempted to avenge the lampoons he had written upon their vindictive
management in planting parish apprentices on him, he removed to Helston
in 1779, leaving behind him a characteristic letter: “Gentlemen, your
Blunderbuss has missed fire.--Yours, John Wolcot.”
At Truro he had been allowed to drop in occasionally at Polwhele, but
the old Mr. Polwhele was always uneasy with him at table, lest he
should launch out into gross and unseemly jests and tales.
From Helston he moved to Exeter, practising, but meeting there with
small success. At Exeter he made the acquaintance of William Jackson,
the organist of the cathedral, and composer, and for him he wrote songs
to set to music.
Owing to the success of his songs, Wolcot shifted to London in 1778,
to devote himself wholly to the Muse. He took with him young Opie,
whose abilities he had recognized; and it really was a token of great
good nature that he endured the society of that “unlicked cub of a
Carpenter Opie,” as Polwhele calls him, “who was seen now ludicrously
exhibited by his keeper, Wolcot,--a wild animal of St. Agnes, caught
among the tin works. Not to pick his teeth with a fork at dinner-time,
nor at breakfast to ‘clap his vingers’ into the sugar-basin, etc.,
were instructions of Wolcot at a subsequent stage of Opie’s life when
breakfast-rooms and saloons and drawing-rooms were thrown open to his
_excellence_.
“At his first setting out at Falmouth, where it was Wolcot’s pride to
exhibit him, he collected upwards of thirty guineas; and Wolcot was one
day surprised to see him rolling about on the floor, where a quantity
of money lay scattered. ‘See here (says Opie), here be I, rolling in
gold.’”
Wolcot had never cared for his profession of medicine, and he was glad
to shake it off. And now young Opie was ready for making his way in
Town. Wolcot had first become acquainted with the young painter at the
house of Mr. Zankwell, at Mithian, in 1775; he took him to his own
house at Truro, provided the necessary material, gave him instructions
and advice, for Wolcot himself handled the brush and palette, and
when fully satisfied with the developing genius of Opie, persuaded
him to move with him to London in 1781. An agreement was entered into
between him and his protégé, by which both were to share equally in the
profits made by the artist by the sale of his pictures. This was not an
arrangement likely to last. Wolcot very highly estimated, and justly
so, the advantage he had been to Opie, not only in providing for his
artistic training, but also by getting him orders in Town; but Opie,
as his fame grew, and his prices rose, was reluctant to continue the
bargain and halve his profits with Wolcot. The origin of the quarrel is
sometimes attributed to Opie’s having passed disparaging criticism on
some of Wolcot’s paintings; but this was, if it took place, only one
element in the contention that caused a final breach. Wolcot had indeed
laid the foundation of Opie’s success, by introducing him to Mrs.
Boscawen, and extolling his merits in verse.
Speak, Muse, who formed that matchless head,
The Cornish Boy, in tin mines bred;
Whose native genius, like diamonds shone
In secret, till chance gave him to the sun?
’Tis Jackson’s portrait--put the laurel on it.
In 1782 appeared “Lyric Odes to the Royal Academy, by Peter Pindar,
Esq., a distant relative of the Poet of Thebes, and Laureat of the
Academy.” They were clever and discriminating. Wolcot recognized the
splendid genius of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and the merits of Gainsborough
and Wilson. He made merry over a picture by Gainsborough in the Academy
that year; but it was good-humouredly done.
And now, O Muse, with song so big,
Turn round to Gainsborough’s Girl and Pig,
Or Pig and Girl I rather should have said;
The pig is white, I must allow,
Is really a well-painted sow:
I wish to say the same thing of the maid.
The success of these lyrics was immediate, and induced Wolcot to
continue the publication in 1783, 1785, and 1786. Having hit out at
the Academicians and finding that this paid, he now struck at higher
game. He knew that any miserable back-stairs gossip about the King and
the Court would be greedily devoured. There was in London and in the
country a sentiment of Jacobitism. The cause of the Stuarts was dead as
Herod, but the prejudice against the House of Hanover continued strong.
The German proclivities of George I and George II, who never liked
England and the English, had alienated even those who sympathized with
the claims of the House of Hanover. The simple life of George III,
without state, with little dignity, and so homely as not to appeal
to the imagination of the people, served as an admirable field for
ridicule. There is not any evidence that Peter Pindar personally hated
the King, and that his politics were anti-Hanoverian or anti-royal.
He attacked the King and Court because he knew it would pay--that was
his main inducement, another was equally unworthy. He hoped that the
Government would give him some sinecure office, or some bribe in money
to silence his slanderous tongue.
He began his assault on the private life of the King in the _Lousiad_,
a poem in five cantos, the first four published in 1785, and the last
in 1795. The subject was disgusting. It turned upon the King having
discovered a specially nasty parasitical insect on his plate, and on
thereupon ordering the shaving of the heads of his cooks and scullions,
grooms of the kitchen, servants of the pantry, etc., to the number of
fifty-one. A young man in the kitchen, John Bear, refusing to submit to
this indignity, was dismissed his place.
The subject was inexhaustible, and these attacks on Royalty sold and
brought in much money. Accordingly he worked indefatigably at it. He
was supplied with plenty of information by the favourites of the Prince
of Wales, who himself relished these attacks upon his father.
Peter Pindar jeered at the King’s little note-book in which he dotted
down his observations.
Now Majesty, alive to knowledge, took
A very pretty memorandum-book,
With gilded leaves of asses’ skin so white;
And in it lightly began to write:--
_Mem._ A charming place beneath the grates
For roasting chestnuts or potates.
_Mem._ ’Tis hops that give a bitterness to beer--
Hops grown in Kent, says Whitbread, and elsewhere.
_Queen._ Is there no cheaper stuff? where does it dwell?
Would not horse-aloes do as well?
_Mem._ To try it soon on our small beer--
’Twill save us sev’ral pounds a year.
_Mem._ To remember to forget to ask
Old Whitbread to my house one day.
* * * * *
To Whitbread now deigned Majesty to say,
“Whitbread, are all your horses fond of hay?”
“Yes, please your Majesty”--in humble notes,
The Brewer answer’d--“also, Sir, of oats;
Another thing my horses too maintains,
And that, an’t please your Majesty, are grains.”
“Grains, grains,” said Majesty, “To fill their crops?
Grains? Grains?--that come from hops--yes, hops, hops, hops?”
Here was the King, like hounds sometimes at fault--
“Sire” cry’d the humble Brewer, “give me leave
Your sacred Majesty to undeceive:
Grains, Sire, are never made from hops, but malt.”
“True,” said the cautious Monarch, with a smile;
“From malt, malt, malt--I meant it all the while.”
“Yes,” with the sweetest bow, rejoined the Brewer.
“An’t please your Majesty, you did I’m sure.”
“Yes,” answered Majesty, with quick reply,
“I did, I did, I did, I, I, I, I.”
Peter Pindar scoffed at the parsimony of George III. He scoffed at his
personal appearance, his simple tastes, his attempt to enforce respect
for the Sunday, his admiration for the music of Handel, above all his
patronage of Benjamin West.
E’en with his painter let the King be blest;
Egad! eat, drink, and sleep, with Mister West.
Let the Court, the fashionables, the vulgar populace admire West and
purchase his wretched pictures, Peter will have none of him or of
them. Then he tells an amusing tale of a Toper and the Flies. A group
of topers sat about the table drinking punch. Flies joined the party,
sipped the grog, fell by hundreds into the bowl.
Wanting to drink--one of the men
Dipp’d from the bowl the drunken host,
And drank--then taking care that none were lost,
He put in ev’ry mother’s son agen.
Up jump’d the bacchanalian crew on this,
Taking it very much amiss--
Swearing, and in the attitude to smite:
“Lord!” cry’d the man with gravely lifted eyes,
“Though _I_ don’t like to swallow flies,
I did not know but _others_ might.”
The Queen had removed the cartoons of Raphael from Hampton Court to
St. James’s, and had them cut down so as to fit the place which she
designed them to occupy. This exasperated Peter to the last degree:
it reminded him of a cutting story. In the last war the French
prisoners died by scores, and the Mayor of Plymouth to accommodate a
first cousin, a carpenter, gave him a contract for their coffins. The
carpenter, thinking to save some pence on each coffin, made every one
too short; and so as to accommodate the dead to the receptacles made
for them, cut off the heads of the deceased prisoners and tucked them
_en chapeau bas_ under their arms.
To a Devonshire man one of the most amusing compositions of Peter
Pindar is an account of the royal visit to Exeter in 1788, supposed to
be written by a farmer of Moreton Hampstead to his sister Nan:--
Now meend me, Nan! all Ex’ter town
Was gapin’, rennin’ up and down,
Vath, just leek vokes bewitch’d!
Lord! how they laugh’d to zee the King;
To hear un zay zum marv’lous thing!
Leek mangy dogs they itch’d.
Leek bullocks sting’d by appledranes (wasps),
Currantin’ it about the lanes,
Vokes theese way dreav’d and that;
Zum hootin’, swearin’, scraimin’, bawlin’!
Zum in the muck, and pellum (dust) sprawlin’;
Leek pancakes all zo flat.
On the occasion of the visit of the King, Queen, and the Royal
Princesses, the Bishop of Exeter, John Ross, begged to be excused the
honour of entertaining Majesty--the palace was not roomy enough, he was
infirm, and so on; accordingly their Royal Highnesses were received by
Dean Buller at the Deanery. Ross seems to have been a screw, and he
dreaded the expense of entertaining Royalty. It was said of him that
when his clergy were entertained by him there was no wine on the table,
and they begged to be allowed to taste “his charming water.” The King
and Royal Family went to the cathedral for Morning Prayer, after which
Dean Buller showed them over the church; the King looked about
And zoon beginn’d to speak;
Zo zaid, “Neat, neat--clean, very clean;
D’ye mop it, mop it Measter Dean;
Mop, mop it every week?
Wolcot adds in a note that the King actually did make this observation
at Exeter, as well as at Salisbury some years later.
The royal entry into the city is most humorously described, and Mr.
Rolle’s active attention to the King is hit off:--
Wipin’ his zweatty jaws and poull
All over dust we spy’d Squire Rolle,
Close by the King’s coach trattin’:
Now shovin’ in the coach his head,
Meaning, we giss’d, it might be zed,
The Squire and King be chattin’.
Now goed the Aldermen and May’r,
Zum wey cropp’d wigs, and zum wey hair,
The Royal Voke to ken;
When Measter May’r, upon my word,
Pok’d to the King a gert long sword,
Which he pok’d back agen.
It had been hoped that the King would make the round of the city and
visit the Guildhall and Castle, but he declined to do this. The Mayor
and Alderman had proposed a sumptuous repast at the Guildhall for His
Majesty, but he declined to attend, much to their disappointment.
But this a did--now this was kind--
Knowin’ the people’s longing mind,
And being pretty tall,
A stude ’pon tiptoes, it is zed;
And, condescending pok’d his head
Over the Bishop’s wall.
Zum of the Ex’ter vokes suppose
They plainly zeed his royal nose,
And zum his royal eyes;
And, Lord! whatever peart they zeed,
In this they one and all agreed,
’Twas glorious, gert, and wize.
There is a rollicking swing about the whole composition, which keeps
the narrative going like the steady onward pace of a racing eight-oar.
The conclusion at which Jan Ploughshare arrives is vastly droll:--
Theeze once I’ve made myzelf a vool
And now I feel my courage cool
For zeeing Royal things;
And whan my Bible next I read,--
Zo leet I worship all the breed,
I’ll skep the Book of Kings.
But among offensive things written on George III, perhaps the most
offensive is his “Letter from Brother Peter to Brother Tom,” in which
he contrasts the Prince of Wales with his father. In this and in his
“Expostulary Odes” he treats the vices of the Prince as virtues--an
obvious bid made for his favour. The good old King’s homely ways are
drawn in the Letter with a pen dipped in gall, whereas it is plunged in
honey for the Prince.
Whene’er he hunts, the Monarch is thrown out,
As in his politics--a common thing!
With searching eyes he stares at first about,
Then faces the misfortune as a king.
Hearing no news of nimble Mister Stag,
He sits like Patience grinning on his nag.
Thus, wisdom-fraught, his curious eye-balls ken
The little hovels that around him rise:
To these he trots--of hogs surveys the styes,
And nicely numbers every cock and hen.
Then asks the farmer’s wife or farmer’s maid,
How many eggs the fowls have laid.
What’s in the oven--in the pot--the crock;
Whether ’twill rain or no, and what’s o’clock.
Thus from poor hovels gleaning information,
To serve as future treasure for the nation.
There, terrier-like, till pages find him out,
He pokes his most sagacious nose about;
And scenes in Paradise--like that so fam’d;
Looking like Adam too, and Eve so fair;
Sweet simpletons! who, though so bare,
Were (says the Bible) not asham’d.
No man binds books so well as George the Third.
By thirst of leather glory spurr’d,
At bookbinders he oft is seen to laugh--
And wond’rous is the King in sheep or calf!
_But see! the Prince upon such labour looks
Fastidious down, and only readeth books.
Here by the Sire the son is much surpast;
Which fame should publish on her loudest blast!_
The King beats Monmouth-street in cast-off riches;
That is, in coats, and waistcoats, and in breeches;
Which, draughted once a year for foreign stations,
Make fine recruits to serve some near relations.
_But lo! the Prince, shame on him! never dreams
Of petty Jewish, economic schemes!
So very proud (I’m griev’d, O Tom, to tell it)
He’d rather give a coat away than sell it!_
Fair justice to the Monarch must allow
Prodigious science in a calf or cow;
And wisdom in an article of swine.
What most unusual knowledge for a King!
Because pig-wisdom is a thing
In which no Sov’reign e’er were known to shine.
_Yet who will think I am not telling fibs?
The Prince, who Britain’s throne in time shall grace,
Ne’er finger’d, at a fair, a bullock’s ribs,
Nor even ogled a pig’s face!
O dire disgrace! O let it not be known
That thus a Father hath excell’d a Son._
Peter Pindar spared few. Pitt he hated, because he had not bribed him;
Sir Joseph Banks, Boswell--fair game--Hannah More, Bishop Porteus, who
had ventured in a sermon to speak highly of Hannah; James Bruce, and
many another.
To Lady Mount Edgcumbe he wrote a consolatory stanza on the death of
her favourite pig.
O dry that tear, so round and big;
Nor waste in sighs your precious wind!
Death only takes a single Pig--
Your lord and son are still behind.
In 1793, Wolcot sold the copyright of his public works to J. Walker for
an annuity of £200, and it was stipulated that any future work should
be offered to the same publisher.
On this occasion he craftily overreached the publisher. When Walker
made the proposition to the doctor by letter it was with an offer of
an annuity of two hundred pounds. Wolcot replied by appointing the
publisher to call on him, that day week. He received him in deshabille,
even in his nightcap; and, from having purposely abstained from shaving
for four days, together with the naturally cadaverous complexion,
his appearance was unhealthy; added to which, he assumed a hollow
sepulchral cough. Walker had determined not to make any advance on the
sum he had named, but when the doctor was again taken with a fit of
coughing he was induced to make it two hundred and fifty pounds. This
Wolcot peremptorily refused, and was seized with an attack of coughing
that nearly suffocated him. The publisher, thinking it impossible that
he could last long, agreed to make the annuity three hundred. But some
time after, Pitt having passed a Bill through both Houses to restrain
such libellous writings as those of Peter Pindar, the publisher,
considering that the restraint thereby imposed would militate against
his profits, filed a bill in Chancery against him, and got the sum
reduced to two hundred. Wolcot was furious, and vowed vengeance against
Walker, which he eventually accomplished, by living nearly twenty years
afterwards.
But he presently met his match, William Gifford, also a Devonshire man;
in his “Anti-Jacobin,” Gifford fell upon the poet, and in a review of
his life called him “his disgustful subject, the profligate reviler
of his Sovereign and impious blasphemer of his God.” Peter Pindar was
quite unable to stand his ground against Gifford, whose “Epistle to
Peter Pindar” was savage and caustic in the extreme (1800).
Lo, here the reptile! who from some dark cell,
Where all his veins in the native poison swell,
Crawls forth a slimy toad, and spits and spews
The crude abortions of his loathsome muse
On all that genius, all that worth holds dear--
Unsullied rank, and piety sincere.
* * * * *
Lo, here the brutal sot! who drench’d with gin,
Lashes his wither’d nerves to tasteless sin;
Squeals out (with oaths and blasphemies between)
The impious song, the tale, the jest obscene;
And careless views, amidst the barbarous roar,
His few grey hairs strew, one by one, the floor.
* * * * *
Oh! check, a moment check, the obstreperous din
Of guilty joy, and hear the voice within;
The small, still voice of Conscience, hear it cry:
An atheist thou mayst live, but canst not die.
* * * * *
For me--why shouldst thou with abortive toil,
Waste the poor remnant of thy spluttering oil
In filth and falsehood? Ignorant and absurd!
Pause from thy pains, and take my closing word;
Thou canst not think, nor have I power to tell,
How much I scorn and loathe thee--so--Farewell.
Wolcot was so infuriated that he sought to meet Gifford. They happened
to meet in Wright’s shop in Piccadilly in the same year in which
the epistle had appeared. A scuffle ensued, in which Wolcot was the
aggressor, and got the worst of it. Peter retaliated with “A Cut at a
Cobbler,” but it fell flat.
The Prince of Wales, that “First Gentleman in Europe,” had encouraged
Peter, and is said to have had the poet’s proof sheets forwarded to
him before publication. Peter had licked the Prince’s dirty boots,
and hoped for his reward. But when the Prince became Regent he cooled
towards the savage yet servile poet, and the indignant Peter gave vent
to his feelings of disappointment and resentment in a poem in 1811,
“Carlton House, or the Disappointed Bard.”
In Wolcot’s later years his sight was affected, and in May, 1811,
he was almost totally blind. He still, however, continued to write
and publish. Four volumes of his works had been published by Walker
in 1794, a fifth was added in 1801. He died 14 January, 1819, in
Somerstown, and was buried 21 January, in S. Paul’s Church, Covent
Garden. By his own expressed wish, his coffin was placed beside that of
Samuel Butler, author of _Hudibras_.
In appearance Wolcot was “a thick, squat man, with a large dark and
flat face, and no speculation in his eye.” His portrait, by Opie, is
in the National Portrait Gallery, where is also a miniature of him by
Lethbridge.
He was never married. Indeed, he flouted at marriage. He was a
sensualist. In an “Apology for Keeping Mistresses” he wrote:--
O Love! for heaven’s sake, never leave my heart;
No! thou and I will never, never part:
Go, Wedlock, to the men of leaden brains,
Who hate variety, and sigh for chains.
When Wolcot sought to be sentimental, he was unreal. One piece does
show real tenderness of feeling, and that must be given in conclusion,
to show that he had a glimmering now and then of better feelings than
spite, envy, and resentment.
The old shepherd’s dog, like his master, was gray;
His teeth all departed, and feeble his tongue;
Yet where’er Colin went, he was follow’d by Tray.
Thus happy through life did they hobble along.
When fatigued on the grass the shepherd would lie
For a nap in the sun, ’midst his slumbers so sweet,
His faithful companion crawl’d constantly nigh,
Placed his head on his lap, and lay down at his feet.
When winter was heard on the hill and the plain,
And torrents descended, and cold was the wind,
If Colin went forth ’midst the tempests and rain,
Tray scorned to be left in the chimney behind.
At length in the straw Tray made his last bed;
For vain, against death, is the stoutest endeavour--
To lick Colin’s hand he rear’d up his weak head,
Then fell back, clos’d his eyes, and, ah! clos’d them for ever.
Not long after Tray did the Shepherd remain,
Who oft o’er his grave with true sorrow would bend;
And, when dying, thus feebly was heard the poor swain,
“Oh bury me, neighbours, beside my old friend.”
DR. J. W. BUDD
The Budd family was one of tenants under the earls of Bedford in
Goodleigh, Landkey, and Swymbridge parishes. Parkham and Newton St.
Petrock also contained Budds, the name occurring in the registers as
far back as 1563. The name does not occur in the _Heralds’ Visitation_
of Devon as of a family possessing a right to bear arms. Nor does the
name occur in Lysons’ _Devon_. A Budd was Master of Caius College in
the time of James I. John Turnarine Budd lived at Tancreek, in the
parish of St. Columb Minor. His father before him, the Rev. Richard
Budd, was perpetual curate of St. Columb Minor, and married Gertrude,
daughter of John Turnarine. He died in 1787. John Turnarine Budd was
the father of Samuel Budd, educated at Truro Grammar School. Samuel
settled as a doctor at North Tawton, and there brought up his nine
sons, all intended by him for the medical profession. Five of them
went to Cambridge, every one of whom became a Wrangler, and four
obtained fellowships. The most famous of these was William Budd, born
in 1811, who died in 1880. On one occasion typhoid fever broke out in
North Tawton, and caused many deaths. Dr. Budd at once divined the
cause; indeed, he was the first man thoroughly to trace the fever to
its source, and he persisted in his urgency to have the water supply
thoroughly overhauled, and, succeeding, put a stop to the fever. He
published a work on typhoid fever in 1873, and proved beyond dispute
how it originated, how it was communicated, and how alone it could
be arrested. When the terrible rinderpest broke out in England in
1866, Budd was loud in his recommendations of “a poleaxe and a pit of
quicklime” as the true solution of the difficulty, and although derided
at first, this view was ultimately and successfully adopted.
[Illustration: DR. JOHN W. BUDD
_From a photograph by his brother, Dr. Richard Budd of Barnstaple_]
Rarely has a whole family proved so able--and, what is more, proved the
excellence of a home education, where the father is competent to give
it. Samuel Budd, the surgeon of North Tawton, managed to teach his nine
sons himself in the intervals of his professional calls; and he taught
them so well that not one of his sons but made his mark in the world.
Samuel, the eldest son, was born in 1806. He was one of the seven who
embraced the medical profession. He became a member of the College of
Physicians in 1859. He died, aged seventy-nine, in 1885. George was
born in February, 1808, and became a Fellow of the College in 1841. He
died in March, 1882. Richard was born in April, 1809, became a Fellow
of the College of Physicians in 1863, and died in February, 1896.
William has been already mentioned.