American brigs then in the harbour of Alexandria, and he proposed
arming them and sending them round the Cape of Good Hope into the Red
Sea, for he desired to open up a trade with Egypt from India. But
Buckingham pointed out to him that he could not do this without great
risk of losing them, as the East India Company had supreme command of
all the Indian Ocean eastward of the Cape, and would seize and
confiscate all vessels found in those seas without their licence,
French and Portuguese vessels alone excepted.
James S. Buckingham now ascended the Nile beyond the cataracts to
Nubia, but was there seized with ophthalmic blindness. To add to his
distress, on his way to Kosseir he was attacked in the desert by a
band of mutineers of the army of the Pasha, who plundered and left him
entirely naked on the barren waste, many miles from any village, food,
or water; and even when he reached Kosseir, he was obliged to retrace
his steps, as the vessel which should have conveyed him forward had
been seized by the mutineers.
Buckingham next occupied himself with an endeavour to master the
hydrography of the Red Sea, visiting every part in the costume of a
Bedouin Arab.
The Pasha now proposed to him that he should go to India and sound the
merchants there as to establishing a through trade to Europe by the
Red Sea, and a Company of Anglo-Egyptian merchants took the matter up
with zest. But on his proceeding to Bombay he found that the
proposition was coldly received.
Whilst there, in May, 1815, Buckingham had the offer of the command of
the _Humayoon Shah_, a vessel built at the Portuguese port of Damann,
north of Bombay, by the Imaum of Muscat, for trade with China. The
retiring captain, named Richardson, in three successive voyages had
cleared £30,000, and the situation had been sought by several of the
marine officers of the East India Company. When these disappointed men
heard that Buckingham had secured the appointment, they were angry,
and applied to the Company to eject him from India and close every
port there in their power against him. This they did by refusing him a
licence to remain in India.
The British Government, in granting a charter of exclusive trade to
India and China to the East India Company, gave that Company thereby a
right to expel from their dominions all British-born subjects who had
not their licence to reside there, this being deemed necessary to
protect them from the competition of "interlopers" as they were
called, who might undersell them in their own markets. But though the
British Government might thus condemn all the twenty million of its
own native-born subjects to this state of ignominious dependence on
the will or caprice of a handful of monopolists, a body of some
twenty-four directors only--in whose hands lay the power of granting
licences or banishing those who did not possess them--it could not
authorize the exercise of such powers against the natives of any
foreign state; consequently James Silk Buckingham was advised to
become nationalized as an American citizen, in which case the East
India Company would be powerless to expel him.
In point of fact, the case stood thus: all foreigners who had no natural
claim on India as a part of their dominions might visit it freely and
reside and trade in it as long as they pleased, without licence from its
rulers; whereas British-born subjects, who had contributed by their
payment of taxes to support the very Government that made the charter,
were unjustly excluded, although the conquest of India had been made by
British blood and British treasure, and the country was still held under
the British flag. In short, all foreigners were free men there, and the
freeborn Englishman alone was a slave.
Buckingham so felt the iniquity of this system that later, when he
came to England, he agitated and wrote against the continuance of the
charter.
Buckingham returned to Egypt and occupied himself with making a chart
of the Red Sea. But the Anglo-Egyptian merchants, not relishing their
defeat by the East India Company, entered into a compact with Mahomet
Ali to send Buckingham to India as his envoy and representative; and
as such the Company could not refuse to allow him to reside there.
Accordingly, habited as a Mussulman, turbaned and long-robed, with his
speaking eye, jovial face, and dark, flowing beard, he looked every
inch of him a true-born Oriental, and his extraordinary knowledge of
various languages stood him in good stead as he made his way overland
to India, by Palestine and Bagdad. Proceeding still on his course, he
entered Persia, crossed the chain of the Zagros, and embarked at
Bushir in a man-of-war of the East India Company that was bound on an
expedition against some Wahabee pirates in the Persian Gulf, and going
ashore at Ras el Khyma, acted as interpreter to Captain Brydges,
Commander of the Squadron, assisted in bombarding the town, and then
proceeded to Bombay, which he reached after a journey of twelve
months. But his mission was again unsuccessful; either the Bombay
merchants had no confidence in the Egyptian Government, or they were
jealous of any interference with their own line of trade.
Now, however, the Company's licence reached him, authorizing him to
remain in their territories, and he regained the appointment to the
vessel _Humayoon Shah_, in the service of the Imaum of Muscat, and he
remained navigating the Eastern waters till Midsummer, 1818, when,
having received commands from the Imaum to proceed to the coast of
Zanzibar, on a slaving expedition, he threw up his engagement, worth
£4000 per annum, rather than be implicated in such a nefarious trade.
Buckingham next became proprietor and editor of the _Calcutta Mirror_, a
Liberal paper, that instantly obtained an extensive sale, and brought in
to its founder a net profit of £8000 a year. But his resolute advocacy
of Free Trade, free settlement, and free Press, and an exposure of the
misdoings of the East India Company, brought down on him the heavy hand
of Mr. John Adams, the temporary Governor-General. His paper was
suppressed, and he was ordered to quit Calcutta. His little fortune was
sacrificed in a vain attempt to fight the Governor and the Company, and
he was thrown back on the world, almost as poor, save in experience, as
when a youth he trudged from Corunna to Lisbon. He left his magnificent
library at Calcutta, in the hopes of being able to return, after having
obtained redress at home. But the redress he hoped for never came. Too
many interests were involved to accord it to him, and his library, like
his fortune and his hopes, was wrecked.
It was not till after many dreary years, that the East India Company,
under pressure from the Government, could be induced, as an indemnity
for the wrongs done him, to accord him an annuity of £200, in addition
to one of the like amount awarded him by the British Government, "in
consideration of his literary works, and useful travels in various
countries," September 1st, 1851. "Pompey and Cæsar berry much alike."
"The blow to him at Calcutta was altogether a very savage one," says Mr.
S. C. Hall, "but, like all injustice, it recoiled at length on those who
gave it. From the hour that Buckingham was driven from that city
(Calcutta), the power of the great Indian monopoly, both commercial and
governmental, was doomed. It was by no means his case alone which
accomplished that doom. But oppression and vindictiveness, by driving
him home, made him for a time the representative there of voices that
never entirely slept; whilst the impolicy that had aroused them was
persevered in to the last--not ceasing, even after the trade was thrown
open, but at length provoking that rebellion which was followed by John
Company finally having to make an assignment of his whole estate and
effects to John Bull." In England Buckingham started the _Athenæum_, a
literary weekly, but did not long retain it in his hand; he was not, in
fact, qualified for its editorship. He was a Liberal politician _avant
tout_, and a _littérateur_ only in a second or third place.
In 1832, the Reform Bill was passed, and the same general election
that sent Wm. Cobbett to the House of Commons for Oldham, sent James
S. Buckingham from Sheffield, for the avowed purpose of giving him the
best standpoint possible from which to assail the East Indian
monopoly. That Company had never made a more fatal mistake than when
it persecuted and drove him from India. Buckingham was a theme for
caricature in _Punch_ from 1845-1848.
It is open to question whether the East India Company could have
engaged J. S. Buckingham's services if, instead of hounding him out of
India, they had endeavoured to secure a man of such exceptional
ability and intense resolution of purpose in its service. In heart and
soul he was opposed to a monopoly, and if he had been engaged, he
would have accepted an engagement only for the purpose of remedying
some of the abuses of their government, and rectifying some of the
injustices done. But he was so utterly and conscientiously opposed to
the whole system, that it is more than doubtful whether he would have
met favourably any overtures made to him.
In England an excellent conception of his, which he was able to
realize, was the foundation of the "British and Foreign Institute." To
this he was moved by seeing so many Orientals and others adrift in
London, without any centre where they could meet and communicate their
ideas with statesmen and politicians of Great Britain, and where they
might gather for refreshment of mind and body alike. The Duke of
Cambridge became President, and the Society attracted to its soirées
the literary and intellectual of all lands.
His pen and his voice were employed for some years in advocating
reforms.
He died on June 20th, 1855, in his seventieth year, and his wife died
in the house of her son-in-law, Henry R. Dewey, 22nd January, 1865, at
the age of eighty.
It is greatly to be regretted that he did not live to complete his
Memoirs. He had two sons--James, who died in Jamaica, 1867, and
Leicester Forbes Young Buckingham, who ran away with an actress,
Caroline Connor, and married her at Gretna Green, 5th April, 1844. She
had made her first appearance on the London stage at the Haymarket
Theatre in 1842. The marriage was not happy and they separated, she to
return to the stage, where she acted under the name of Mrs. Buckingham
White. He died at Margate 17th July, 1867.
MARY ANN DAVENPORT, ACTRESS
Mary Ann Harvey was born in Launceston in 1759, and was educated at
Bath, where she was seized with a passion for the stage, and made her
first appearance on the boards at Bath as Lappet in _The Miser_ in 1779.
She remained at Bath two years, and during her residence there is thus
described by an eye-witness of her performances: "Miss Harvey, about
the years 1785 and 1786, was a lively, animated, bustling actress;
arch, and of exuberant spirits. Her style was pointed and energetic;
perhaps, indeed, she had less ease than was altogether the thing; but
when she had to speak satirically or in irony--when, in fact, she had
to convey one idea to the person on the stage with her and another to
the audience, she was alone and inimitable; she did not carry you away
with her so much as many young actresses that I have seen, but she
always satisfied you more amply. Then her voice--what a voice hers
was! Nay, what a voice she has still, though it has had a pretty fair
exercise for the last half century and upwards. Then it had all the
clearness for which it is even now distinguishable; and it had,
besides, a witching softness of tone that knew no equal then, and that
I have never heard exceeded since."
There was an _espiègle_ charm about her; she was not exactly
beautiful, but had a witchery of face and of manner that was
unsurpassed by any of her fellow-actresses, who may have possessed
more regularity of feature.
[Illustration: _M^{rs}. Davenport_,
in the Character of M^{rs}. Grundy]
She was not baptized at Launceston, S. Mary Magdalen. Harvey was a
common name at the time in the place; a Harvey was a builder, another a
hatmaker, another a carrier. There were a Joseph Harvey and Catherine
Penwarden married 27th January, 1756. These may have been her parents.
After leaving Bath, Miss Harvey joined the Exeter company, and there met
and married Mr. Davenport, an actor of ordinary talent and low comedy.
After she had been married a short while, Mrs. Davenport went to
Birmingham, where she remained a considerable time in hopes of
obtaining an engagement. But disappointed in this expectation, she
accepted an offer from Dublin, where Daly had opened his theatre, and
there she made her debut as Rosalind in _As You Like It_, a character
exactly suited to her, and in which she aroused great enthusiasm. Her
graceful figure, her voice, now full of tenderness, then of arch
humour, and her expressive face admirably suited the part. She
moreover performed the part of Fulmer in the _West Indian_. The
_Authentic Memoirs of the Green Room_ for 1796 says: "Mrs. Davenport a
tolerable substitute for Mrs. Webb, though not near so great.
The Davenports, tho' not of play'rs the first,
Are far from being in old folks the worst."
In 1794 she first performed at Covent Garden, as Mrs. Hardcastle, in
_She Stoops to Conquer_, and at that theatre she continued without a
rival till 1831, and occasionally filled up vacancies at the
Haymarket. Mr. Davenport died in 1841; by him she had a son and a
daughter. The former died in India, the latter in England.
Robson, in _The Old Playgoer_, says: "Brunton being the tall 'walking
gentleman,' there is no one else worth mentioning but dear, dear
Davenport, most truly not least though last. Lord! what a scream she
would give if she knew I was about to show her up! I can just remember
Mrs. Mattocks and Miss Pope.... But Mrs. Davenport was the McTab, the
Malaprop, the Nurse whose bantling, 'stinted and cried aye,' with a
villainous pain in her back, and a man Peter to carry her fan; the
'old mother Brulgruddery'; the Dame Ashfield with a 'damned bunch of
keys,' who immortalized 'What will Missus Grundy say to that?' and
would persuade a gentleman to put a ham under each arm and a turkey
into his pocket; Jeremy Diddler's beautiful maid at the foot of the
hill, who 'blushed like a red cabbage'; heigho! all visions--all gone.
"It was said of Mrs. Jordan that her laugh would have made the fortune
of any actress if she had not had the wit to bring out one word to
support it; but Mrs. Davenport's strong point was her scream. I wonder
whether she ever indulged her husband with it in the course of a curtain
lecture! Mercy on his nerves if she did! The appearance of her jolly red
face was the presage of mirth, and her scream the signal for a roar of
laughter. Good, cheerful soul! though an _old woman_ forty years, she
outlived nearly all her play-fellows, comfortably, happily, I hope."[28]
As an old lady her most celebrated personifications were the Nurse in
_Romeo and Juliet_, at which, in later times, she was hardly surpassed
by Mrs. Stirling.
The writer of the memoir in the _Georgian Æra_ says of her: "It has
not been inaptly said of her, that in the vulgar loquacity of the
would-be youthful Mrs. Hardcastle--the ugliness of the antiquated
virgin, Miss Durable--the imbecility of four score in Mrs. Nicely--the
sturdy brutality of Mrs. Brulgruddery--the warm-hearted cottager in
_Lovers' Vows_--the attempted elegances of Mrs. Dowlas--the fiery
humoured Dame Quickly--and the obtuse intellect of Deborah, she
overcame all rivalry."
In the edition of the _Authentic Memoirs of the Green Room_ for 1806 it
is said, after a mention of Mr. Davenport: "Wife to the above, and of
primary utility in a theatre as the representative of low, vulgar, and
antiquated characters. In this line she has not her superior on the
London stage. Her Mrs. Thorne in the _Birthday_, Lady Duberly in the
_Heir at Law_, Dame Ashfield in _Speed the Plough_, Widow Warren in _The
Road to Ruin_, Widow Cheshire in the _Agreeable Surprise_, Mrs. Pickle
in the _Spoiled Child_, with a long and diversified list of parts of a
similar description, deservedly rated high in the scale of histrionic
excellence--and what greatly enhances her value, she is not less to be
prized for the generality than for the intensive merit of her
performances. Wide and extensive as is the range of parts which she
sustains, there is not a single character in the whole list in which she
does not acquit herself with distinguished talent and ability."
This bright and merry actress was run over by a dray on July 20th,
1841, and died in S. Bartholomew's Hospital on May 8th, 1843, after a
lingering illness, at the age of eighty-four.
FOOTNOTE:
[28] _The Old Playgoer_, 1854, pp. 82-4.
THE ROYAL FAMILY OF PRUSSIA
"Over against Mousehole, across the great bay of Penzance, is Cudden
Point, jutting out into the sea, forming one horn of a promontory of
which the Enys forms the other, looking in the opposite direction.
Between these two lie three little coves, that of the Pixies, too
exposed and rocky for a harbour, but with its sides riddled with caves.
"Bessie's, called after Bessie Burrow, who kept the _Kidleywink_ on
the cliff, which was the great resort of the smugglers, bears on its
face to-day the traces of its history. A spot so sheltered and
secluded that it is impossible to see what boats are in the little
harbour until one literally leans over the edge of the cliff above; a
harbour cut out of the solid rock, and a roadway with wheel tracks
partly cut and partly worn, crossing the rocks below high-water mark;
and, climbing up the face of the cliff on each side of the cove, caves
and remains of caves everywhere, some with their mouths built up,
which are reputed to be connected with the house above by secret
passages. These are the trade marks of Bessie's Cove, and the world
has not yet known the degree of innocence which could believe that
these were made for the convenience of a few crabbers.
"The eastern and the most open is Prussia Cove. Here still stands
to-day the house in which John Carter, 'the King of Prussia,' lived
and reigned from 1770 to 1807."[29]
[Illustration: AT PRUSSIA COVE. "BESSY'S" COVE FROM BATTERY POINT
_From a drawing by A. Chevallier Taylor in the possession of J. B.
Cornish, Esq._]
The origin of the Carter family is obscure. It is supposed to have come
from Shropshire, and the name is not Cornish. But what could have
brought it to this wild and remote spot in the south-west is quite
unknown. The father, Francis Carter, was born in 1712 and died in 1774,
and his wife, Agnes, died in 1784. They had eight sons and two
daughters. The eldest of the sons was John, the famous Cornish King of
Prussia. He obtained this nickname in the following manner: He and other
boys were playing at soldiers, and the renown of Frederick the Great
having reached him, John dubbed himself the King of Prussia, and the
title not only adhered to him through life, but he has bequeathed the
name of Prussia to the cove, which formerly bore that of Porthleah.
John Carter, when he grew to man's estate, made himself fame as a
daring smuggler, and he was ably seconded by his brother Henry, who
contrived to his own satisfaction to combine perfervid piety with
cheating the customs.
Smuggling in those days was carried on upon a large scale, in cutters
and luggers armed with eighteen or twenty guns apiece. Harry Carter,
in his autobiography, says: "I think I might have been twenty-five
when I went in a small sloop about sixteen or eighteen tons, with two
men besides myself as smugglers, when I had very great success, and
after a while I had a new sloop built for me, about thirty-two tons.
My success was rather beyond common, and after a time we bought a
small cutter of about fifty tons, and about ten men." The measurements
at the present day would be ten, eighteen, and thirty tons.
John Carter was never caught. On one occasion the revenue officers
came to his house and demanded to ransack his sheds. One of these was
locked, and he refused to surrender the key, whereupon they broke it
open, but found that it contained only household articles. As they
were unable to refasten the door, the shed remained open all night,
and by morning everything it had contained had disappeared. The "King"
thereupon sued the officers for all his goods that had been taken from
him. It is perhaps needless to say that he had himself conveyed them
away. The officers had to refund the losses.
On one occasion when John Carter was absent from home, the excise
officers from Penzance came to Prussia Cove in their boats and
succeeded in securing a cargo lately arrived from France. They carried
it to Penzance and placed it under lock and key in the custom-house.
Carter, on his return, heard of the capture. He was highly incensed,
for the brandy had all been promised to some of the gentry round, and
he was not the man to receive an order and fail to execute it.
Accordingly, he made up his mind to recover the whole cargo. Assisted
by his mates, in the night he broke into the custom-house store and
removed every barrel that had been taken from him.
Next morning, when the officers saw what had been done, they knew who
the perpetrator was, for nothing had been touched and removed but what
the "King" claimed as his own; and these smugglers prided themselves
on being "all honourable men."
The most famous episode in John Carter's career was his firing on the
boat of the revenue cutter _The Faery_. A smuggling vessel, hard
pressed, ran through a narrow channel among the rocks between the Enys
and the shore. The cutter, not daring to venture nearer, sent her boat
in; whereupon Carter opened fire upon her from an improvised battery in
which he had mounted several small cannon. The boat had to withdraw.
Next morning the fight was resumed, _The Faery_ opening fire from the
sea. But in the meantime mounted soldiers from Penzance had arrived, and
these fired from the top of the hill upon those working the guns in the
battery, taking them in the rear. This was more than the smugglers could
stand, and they retreated to Bessie Burrow's house, and were not further
molested, the soldiers contenting themselves with remounting their
horses and riding back to Penzance. Unfortunately, with regard to John
Carter, the "King of Prussia," we have but scattered notices and
tradition to rely upon; but it is otherwise with his brother Henry, who
has left an autobiography that has been transcribed and published by Mr.
J. B. Cornish under the title _The Autobiography of a Cornish Smuggler_,
London (Gibbons and Co.), 1900.
But Harry Carter is somewhat reticent about the doings of the
smugglers, and avoids giving names, for when he wrote "free trade" was
in full swing. He wrote in 1809, when John his brother and the "Cove
boys" were still at it, and Prussia Cove had not ceased to be a great
centre of smugglers. He is much more concerned to record his religious
experiences, all of which we could well spare for fuller details of
the goings-on of his brothers and their comrades.
In 1778 an embargo was laid on all English trade, when the French
Government made a treaty with the States of America, and not knowing
of this, Henry Carter was arrested at S. Malo, and his cutter, with
sixteen guns and thirty-six men, taken from him. He was sent to the
prison at Dinan; and in like manner his brother John was taken, and
they were allowed to remain on parole at Josselin till the November of
1779, when they were exchanged by order of the Lords of the Admiralty
for two French gentlemen. "So, after I was at home some time, riding
about the country getting freights, collecting money for the company,
etc., we bought a cutter about 160 tons (50 tons), nineteen guns. I
went in her some time smuggling. I had great success."
In January, 1788, he went with a freight to Cawsand in a lugger of 45
tons in modern measurement, and mounting sixteen carriage guns. But he
was boarded, and so cut about the head, and his nose nearly severed in
two, that he fell bleeding on the deck.