of talent; but he was so pleased with what he did hear that when the
songstress came off the stage, Burroughs went round and exultingly
announced that he had procured an engagement for her at Liverpool,
at two pounds ten per week; and to find her own satin shoes and silk
stockings. In prospect of such a Potosi, the Columbine danced that
night as boundingly as if Dan Mercury had lent her the very pinions
from his heels.
“Mr. Burroughs,” said Lizzy, as he was escorting her and her mother
home, “this is the second Christmas you have made happy for us. I hope
you may live to be Lord Chief Justice.”
“Thank you, Lizzy, that is about as likely as that Liverpool will make
of the Wakefield Columbine a countess.”
* * * * *
A few years had again passed away since the Christmas week which
succeeded that spent at Wakefield, and which saw Lizzy Farren the only
_Rosetta_ which Liverpool cared to listen to, and it was now the same
joyous season, but the locality was Chester.
There was a custom then prevailing among actors, which exists nowhere
now, except in some of the small towns in Germany. Thus, not very long
ago, at Ischl, in Austria, I was surprised to see a very pretty actress
enter my own room at the inn, and putting a play-bill into my hand,
solicit my presence at her benefit. This was a common practice in the
north of England till Tate Wilkinson put an end to it, as derogatory
to the profession. The custom, however, had not been checked at the
time and in the locality to which I have alluded. On the Christmas
eve of the period in question, Lizzy Farren was herself engaged in
distributing her bills, and asking patronage for her benefit, which
was to take place on the following Twelfth Night. As appropriate to
the occasion she had chosen Shakespeare’s comedy of that name, and was
to play _Viola_, a part for which Younger, who loved her heartily, had
given her especial instruction.
Miss Farren had not been very successful in her “touting.” She had been
unlucky in the two families at whose houses she had ventured to knock.
The first was that of an ex-proprietor of a religious periodical, who
had a horror of the stage, but who had a so much greater horror of
Romanism, that, like the Scottish clergy of the time, he would have
gone every night to the play during Passion week, only to show his
abhorrence of popery. This pious scoundrel had grown rich by swindling
his editors and supporting any question which paid best. His household
he kept for years, by inserting advertisements in his journal for
which he was paid in kind. He was a slimy, sneaking, mendacious
knave, who would have advocated atheism if he could have procured a
dozen additional subscribers by it. His lady was the quintessence of
vulgarity and malignity. She wore diamonds on her wig, venom in her
heart, and very-much-abused English at the end of her tongue.
Poor Lizzy, rebuffed here, rang at the garden-gate of Mrs. Penury
Beaugawg. She was a lady of sentiment who drank, a lady of simplicity
who rouged, a lady of affected honesty who lived beyond her income, and
toadied or bullied her relations into paying her debts. Mrs. Penury
Beaugawg would have graciously accepted orders for a private box; but a
patronage which cost her anything, was a vulgarity which her gentle and
generous spirit could not comprehend.
Lizzy was standing dispirited in the road at the front of the house,
when a horseman rode slowly up; and Lizzy, not at all abashed at
practising an old but not agreeable custom, raised a bill to his hand
as he came close to her, and solicited half-a-crown, the regular
admission-price to the boxes.
“Lizzy!” cried the horseman, “you shall have such a house at Chester,
as the old town has not seen since the night Garrick was here, and
played _Richard_ and _Lord Chalkstone_.”
The equestrian was Mr. Burroughs, then in training for the bar, and as
willing to help Miss Farren now as he was to aid her and her bowl of
milk across the market-place at Salisbury. The incipient barrister kept
his word. The Chester theatre was crammed to the ceiling; and, as Lizzy
said, Mr. Burroughs was her Christmas angel, the thought of whom was
always associated in her mind with plumbs, currants, holly----
“And mistletoe,” said the budding counsellor, with a look at which both
laughed merrily and honestly.
On the Christmas eve of 1776, Miss Farren was seated in Colman’s parlor
in London, looking at him while he read two letters of introduction;
one from Burroughs, the other from Younger; and both in high praise of
the young bearer, for whom they were especially written. My limits will
only allow me to say that Lizzy was engaged for the next summer-season
at the Haymarket, where she appeared on June 9, 1777, in “She Stoops
to Conquer.” She was _Miss Hardcastle_, and Edwin made his first
appearance in London with her, in the same piece. Colman would have
brought out Henderson too, if he could have managed it. That dignified
gentleman, however, insisted on reserving his _début_ for _Shylock_,
on the 11th of the same month. And what a joyous season did Lizzy make
of it for our then youthful grandfathers. How they admired her double
talent in _Miss Hardcastle_! How ecstatic were they with her _Maria_,
in the “Citizen!” How ravishedly did they listen to her _Rosetta_! How
they laughed at her _Miss Tittup_, in “Bon Ton!” and how they extolled
her playfulness and dignity as _Rosina_, of which she was the original
representative, in the “Barber of Seville!” It may be remarked that
Colman omitted the most comic scene in the piece, _that_ wherein the
Count is disguised as a drunken trooper--as injurious to morality!
When, in the following year, she played Lady Townley, she was declared
the first, and she was then almost the youngest of living actresses.
And when she joined the Drury Lane company in the succeeding season,
the principal parts were divided between herself, Miss Walpole, Miss P.
Hopkins, and _Perdita_ Robinson. Not one of this body was then quite
twenty years of age! Is not this a case wherein to exclaim--
“O mihi præteritos referat si Jupiter annos?”
Just twenty years did she adorn our stage; ultimately taking leave of
it at Drury Lane, in April, 1797, in the character of Lady Teazle.
Before that time, however, she had been prominent in the Christmas
private plays at the Duke of Richmond’s, in which the Earl of Derby,
Lord Henry Fitzgerald, and the Honorable Mrs. Dormer acted with her;
and that rising barrister, Mr. Burroughs, looking constantly at the
judicial bench as his own proper stage, was among the most admiring
of the audience. It was there that was formed that attachment which
ultimately made of her, a month after she had retired from the stage,
Countess of Derby, and subsequently mother of a future countess, who
still wears her coronet.
Not long after this period, and following on her presentation at
Court, where she was received with marked kindly condescension by
Queen Charlotte, the countess was walking in the marriage procession
of the Princess Royal and the Duke of Wurtemberg; her foot caught in
the carpeting, and she would have fallen to the ground, but for the
ready arms, once more extended to support her, of Mr. Burroughs, now an
eminent man indeed.
Many years had been added to the roll of time, when a carriage,
containing a lady was on its way to Windsor. It suddenly came to a
stop, by the breaking of an axle-tree. In the midst of the distress
which ensued to the occupier, a second carriage approached, bearing a
goodnatured-looking gentleman, who at once offered his services. The
lady, recognising an old friend, accepted the offer with alacrity. As
the two drove off together in the gentleman’s carriage toward Windsor,
the owner of it remarked that he had almost expected to find her
in distress on the road; for it was Christmas Eve, and he had been
thinking of old times.
“How many years is it, my lady countess,” said he, “since I stood at my
father’s shop-door in Salisbury, watching your perilous passage over
the market-place, with a bowl of milk?”
“Not so long at all events,” she answered with a smile, “but that I
recollect my poor father would have lost his breakfast, but for your
assistance.”
“The time is not long for memory,” replied the Judge, “nor is Salisbury
as far from Windsor as Dan from Beersheba; yet how wide the distance
between the breakfast at the cage-door at Salisbury, and the Christmas
dinner to which we are both proceeding, in the palace of the king!”
“The earl is already there,” added the countess, “and he will be
happier than the king himself to welcome the legal knight who has done
such willing service to the Lady of the Knight of the Bath.”
To those whose power and privilege it is to create such knights, we
will now direct our attention, and see how kings themselves behaved in
_their_ character as knights.
THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS.
FROM THE NORMANS TO THE STUARTS.
“Un roi abstrait n’est ni père, ni fils, ni frère, ni parent, ni
chevalier, ami. Qu’est il donc? _Roi_, même quand il dort.”--DIDEROT.
If we judge some of our kings by the strict laws of chivalry, we shall
find that they were but sorry knights after all. They may have been
terrible in battle; but they were ill-mannerly in ladies’ bower.
William the Conqueror, for instance, had none of the tender sentiment
of chivalry; in other words he showed little gentleness in his bearing
toward women. It is said by Ingerius, that after Matilda of Flanders
had refused his hand, on the ground that she would not have a bastard
for a husband, he waylaid her as she was returning from mass in one of
the streets of Bruges, dragged her out from among her ladies, pommelled
her brutally, and finally rolled her in the mud. A little family
difference arose in consequence; but as it was less bitter than family
quarrels usually are, a reconciliation took place, and Matilda gave
her hand to the knight who had so terribly bruised her with his arm.
She loved him, she said, because he had shown more than the courage of
common knights, by daring to beat her within sight of her father’s own
palace. But all’s well that ends well; they were not only a handsome
but a happy couple, and Matilda was head of the household at the
Conqueror’s hearth. The general’s wife was _there_ the general.
How William bore himself in fight is too well known to need
recapitulating here. He probably never knew fear but once, and that was
at the sounds of a tumult in the street, which reached his ears as he
was being crowned. Then, indeed, “’tis true this god did shake,” for
the first and only time. His successor, who was knighted by Archbishop
Lanfranc, was in the field as good a knight as he, and generous to an
adversary, although he was never so to any mortal besides. But Rufus
was nothing of a knight in his bearing toward ladies. His taste with
regard to the fair sex was of the worst sort; and the court of this
royal and reprobate bachelor was a reproach at once to kingship and
knighthood, to Christianity and civilization. He had been accused, or
rather the knights of his time and country, with having introduced into
England the practice of a crime of which the real introducer, according
to others, was that Prince William who was drowned so fortunately
for England, on the sea between Calais and Dover. The chivalrous
magnanimity of Rufus is exemplified in the circumstance of his having,
in disguise, attacked a cavalier, from whom he received so sound a
beating, that he was at length compelled to avow himself in order to
induce his conqueror to spare his life. The terrified victor made an
apology, in the very spirit of the French knight of the Holy Ghost to
a dying cavalier of the Golden Spur, whom he had mortally wounded in
mistake: “I beg a thousand pardons,” said the polite Frenchman, “but I
really took you for somebody else.” So William’s vanquisher began to
excuse himself for having nearly battered the king’s skull to a jelly,
with his battle-axe, on the ground of his having been unacquainted
with his rank. “Never heed the matter,” said the king, “you are a good
fellow, and shall, henceforth, be a follower of mine.” Many similar
instances might be cited. Further, Rufus was highly popular with all
men-at-arms; the knights reverenced him as the very flower of chivalry,
and I am glad that the opprobrium of having slain him in the New Forest
no longer attaches itself to a knight, although I am sorry an attempt
has been made to fix it upon the church. No one now believes that Sir
Walter Tyrrel was the author of the crime, and chivalry is acquitted of
the charge against one of its members of having slain the flaxen-haired
but rubicund-nosed king.
Henry Beauclerc was more of a scholar than a knight, without, however,
being so very much of the first. The English-born prince was far less
chivalrous of spirit than his former brother Robert; that is, if not
less brave, he was less generous, especially to a foe. When he was
besieged on St. Michael’s Mount by Robert, and reduced to such straits
that he was near dying of thirst, Robert supplied him with water; an
act for which Rufus called the doer of it a fool; but as poor Robert
nobly remarked, the quarrel between him and their brother was not of
such importance that he should be made to perish of thirst. “We may
have occasion,” said he, “for a brother hereafter; but where shall we
find one, if we now destroy this?” Henry would hardly have imitated
conduct so chivalrously generous. He was more knightly in love, and
it is recorded to his honor, that he married Matilda, daughter of
Malcolm, King of Scotland, for pure love, and not for “filthy lucre,”
preferring to have her without a marriage portion, than to wait till
one could be provided for her. This would have been praiseworthy enough
had Henry not been, subsequently, like many other persons who marry in
haste--for ever looking for pecuniary assistance from other resources
than his own. He especially lacked too what was enjoined on every
knight, a love of truth. His own promises were violated with alacrity,
when the violation brought profit. He wanted, too, the common virtue
of fidelity, which men of knightly rank were supposed to possess above
all others. The fact that fifteen illegitimate children survived him,
speaks little for his respect for either of his consorts, Matilda of
Scotland, or Adelicia of Louvain. Generally speaking, however, the
character of the royal scholar may be described in any terms, according
to the view in which it is taken. With some historians, he is all
virtue, with others all vice.
Stephen had more of the knightly character about him. He was an
accomplished swordsman, and loved the sound of battle as became the
spirit of the times, which considered the king as the first knight
in the land. He had as little regard as Henry for a sense of justice
when disposed to seize upon that to which he had no right, but he was
incontestably brave, as he was indefensibly rash. Stephen received the
spurs of knighthood from his uncle, Henry I., previous to the battle
of Tinchebray; and in that fray he so bore himself as to show that he
was worthy of the honor that had been conferred upon him. But Stephen
was as faithless to his marriage vow as many other belted knights, and
Matilda of Boulogne had to mourn over the faithlessness of one who had
sworn to be faithful. It is said, too, of this king that he always went
into battle terribly arrayed. This was in the spirit of those birds
that raise their crests to affright their enemies.
Henry II., like his brother kings, we can only consider in his
character of knight. In this character he is almost unexceptionable,
which is more than can be said of him generally as king or as man. He
was brave and generous, two chief characteristics of knighthood. He
it was who abolished that burdensome and unprofitable feudal military
service, which brought the barons or military tenants into the field,
for forty days. The camp consequently abounded in unskilful and
disorderly men. Henry accordingly introduced the practice of commuting
their military service for money, by levying scutages from his baronies
and knights-fees, or so much for every shield or bearer of it that
_should_ attend but had purchased exemption.
Henry II., not only loved knightly practice himself, but he loved
to see his sons exercising knight-errantry, and wandering about in
disguise from court to court, displaying their prowess in tournaments,
and carrying off prizes from all adversaries. To the stories of these
adventures of his by no means exemplary sons he would listen with
delight. He was himself, however, a sire who set but indifferent
example to his children; and his two sons, of whom fair Rosamond
was the mother, were brought up and educated with his children by
Eleanor. He received much knightly service and true affection from his
illegitimate children. William, Earl of Salisbury, is known by his
chivalric surname of “Longsword,” but Geoffrey, Bishop of Lincoln, the
second son of Henry and Rosamond, was not the less a knight for being
a bishop before he was twenty. It was this prelate who, at the head
of an armed force put down the first great northern insurrection. He
was on his triumphant way back, at the head of one hundred and forty
knights, when he was met by his royal sire, who embraced him warmly,
exclaiming the while, “Thou alone art my legitimate son, the rest are
all bastards.” That he himself could endure much was evinced when he
submitted to correction at the shrine of Becket. He was flagellated
by the prelates, abbots, bishop, and eighty monks; and the first
refreshment he took after the long penance, was some water in which
a portion of Becket’s blood was mingled. His claim to be considered
chivalrous never suffered, in the mind of the church at least, because
of this humiliating submission.
But in the dissensions which led to this humiliation, the church
incurred perhaps more disgrace than the king. Nothing could possibly
be more disgraceful than the conduct of the pope and the diplomacy
of the Roman government throughout the continuation of the quarrel
between Becket and the king. Double-dealing, atrocious deceit, and an
unblushing disregard for truth, marked every act of him who was looked
upon as the spiritual head of Christendom. Comparing Becket with the
king, it is impossible to avoid coming to the conclusion that, in many
of the requirements of knighthood, he was superior to the sovereign.
His death, that is the way in which he met it, was sublime. Throughout
the great quarrel, of which that death was a consequence, Becket
never, like Henry, in his moments of defeat and discouragement, gave
way to such impotent manifestations of rage as were shown by his royal
antagonist. The latter forgot the dignity, not only of knight, but
of manhood, when he was seen casting his cap violently to the earth,
flinging away his belt, tearing his clothes from his body, and dragging
the silk coverlet from his bed, on which, in presence of his captains,
he rolled himself like a maniac, grasping the mattress in his mouth,
and gnawing the wool and the horsehair which he drew out with his teeth.
Richard I. has a brilliant reputation as a knight, and if valor
were the only virtue required, he would not be undeserving of the
pre-eminence which is claimed for him. But this was his sole virtue.
Of the other qualifications for, or qualities of chivalry, he knew
nothing, or little cared for them. He was faithless in love; regardless
of his pledged word; cruel, extravagant, dishonest; and not even always
brave, when away from the clamor and excitements of war. But John
lacked the one rough quality of Richard, and was not even brave--that
is to say, he was not distinguishedly brave. When he stole away
Isabella of Angoulême from her first lover, Sir Hugh de Lusignan, it
was not done with the dashing gallantry of Young Lochinvar. John,
in fact, was a shabby and recreant knight; and when stout Sir Hugh
challenged him to single combat, because of his crime of abduction,
John offered to accept it by deputy, and to fight also by deputy. Sir
Hugh knew the craven prince thoroughly, and truly enough remarked that
the deputy would be a mere assassin, and he would have nothing to do
with either principal or representative. John kept the lady; and, if
there be any persons curious to see how niggardly he kept her, they
are referred to the duly-published chronicles wherein there are full
details.
Henry III. was the most pacifically-minded of the kings of England who
had hitherto reigned. He had little of the knight about him, except the
courtesy, and he could occasionally forget even that. Devotion to the
fair, too, may fairly be reckoned among his knightly qualities; but he
lacked the crowning virtue of fidelity. He wooed many, was rejected
by several, and jilted the few who believed in him. He exhibited, it
must be allowed, a chivalrous generosity in at last marrying Eleanor
of Castile, without dowry; but he was not the more true to her on that
account. Mild as he was by nature, he was the especial favorite of the
most warlike of the orders of knighthood--the Templars. They mourned
for him when dead, as though he had been the very flower of chivalry,
and the most approved master of their order. They buried him, too, with
a pomp which must have drawn largely even on their well-lined purses,
and the Knights of the Temple deposited the king in the tomb of the
most pious of monarchs--Edward the Confessor. It is difficult to say
why the Templars had such love for the weak king, for he was not an
encourager of knightly associations and observations. At the same time
he may be said to have lowered the estimation in which knighthood had
been held, by making the honor itself cheap, and sometimes even less
than that--unwelcome. Henry III. issued a writ in the twenty-ninth
year of his reign, summoning tenants in chief to come and receive
knighthood at his hands: and tenants of mesne lords to be knighted by
whomsoever they pleased. It may be believed that this last permission
was abused, for soon after this period “it became an established
principle of our law that no subject can confer knighthood except by
the king’s authority.” So says Hallam. The most extraordinary law or
custom of this reign with respect to chivalry was, that any man who
possessed an annual income of fifteen pounds derived from land, was to
be _compelled_ to receive the honor of knighthood.
The successor of Henry, Edward I., was of a far more knightly quality.
Faithful in love, intrepid in battle, generous to the needy, and
courteous to all--except when his temper was crossed--he may pass
muster as a very respectable knight. He was active and strong, and,
with one hand on the back of his steed, could vault, at a single bound,
into the saddle. Few men cared less for finery. He was even reproved
on one occasion by a bishop, for being dressed beneath his dignity of
either king or knight. “Father,” said Edward, “what could I do more in
royal robes than in this plain gaberdine?”
Edward would have acted little in the spirit of a true knight if he had
really acted toward the Bards, according to the cruel fashion recorded
in history. I am inclined to believe with Davies, in his “Mythology
of the Druids,” that this king has been calumniated in this respect.
“There is not the name,” says Davies, “of a single bard upon record
who suffered either by his hand or by his orders. His real act was
the removal of that patronage, under which the bards had, hitherto,
cherished the heathenish superstition of their ancestors, to the
disgrace of our native princes.” This king showed a feeling common
with many knights, that however indifferently they might look living,
in rusty armor or faded mantle, they should wear a decent and comely
covering when dead. Thus he ordered that every year his tomb should be
opened, and his remains covered with a new cere-cloth or pall. It was a
pride akin to that of Mrs. Oldfield’s, in the days of our grandmothers,
who was buried in a Brussels lace head-dress, a Holland shift with
tucker and double ruffles of the same lace, and a pair of new kid
gloves. The same weakness of nature marked both the tragedy-queen and
the actual king; and it marks many more than they. There was more
humility, however, in the second Duke Richard of Normandy, who was far
more chivalrous than Edward I., and who ordered his body to be buried
at the church-door, where passengers might tread upon it, and the
spouts from the roof discharge their water upon it.