On the 19th of May, 1708, Her Majesty Queen Anne being then upon the
throne of Great Britain and Ireland, a coach with two horses, gaudy
rather than neat in its appointments, drew up at the door of my Lord
Sunderland's office in Whitehall. It contained a lady about thirty, of
considerable personal attractions, and dressed richly in cinnamon
satin. She was a brunette, with a rather high forehead, the height of
which was ingeniously broken by two short locks upon the temples.
Moreover, she had distinctly fine eyes, and a mouth which, in its
normal state, must have been arch and pretty, but was now drawn down
at the corners under the influence of some temporary irritation. As
the coach stopped, a provincial-looking servant promptly alighted,
pulled out from the box-seat a large case of the kind used for
preserving the voluminous periwigs of the period, and subsequently
extracted from the same receptacle a pair of shining new shoes with
square toes and silver buckles. These, with the case, he carried
carefully into the house, returning shortly afterwards. Then ensued
what, upon the stage, would be called "an interval" during which time
the high forehead of the lady began to cloud visibly with impatience,
and the corners of her mouth to grow more ominous. At length, about
twenty minutes later, came a sound of laughter and noisy voices; and
by-and-by bustled out of the Cockpit portal a square-shouldered,
square-faced man in a rich dress, which, like the coach, was a little
showy. He wore a huge black full-bottomed periwig. Speaking with a
marked Irish accent, he made profuse apologies to the occupant of the
carriage--apologies which, as might be expected, were not well
received. An expression of vexation came over his good-tempered face
as he took his seat at the lady's side, and he lapsed for a few
minutes into a moody silence. But before they had gone many yards, his
dark, deep-set eyes began to twinkle once more as he looked about him.
When they passed the Tilt-Yard a detachment of the Second Troop of
Life Guards, magnificent in their laced red coats, jack boots, and
white feathers, came pacing out on their black horses. They took their
way towards Charing Cross, and for a short distance followed the same
route as the chariot. The lady was loftily indifferent to their
presence; and she was, besides, on the further side of the vehicle.
But her companion manifestly recognized some old acquaintances among
them, and was highly gratified at being recognized in his turn,
although at the same time it was evident he was also a little
apprehensive lest the "Gentlemen of the Guard," as they were called,
should be needlessly demonstrative in their acknowledgment of his
existence. After this, nothing more of moment occurred. Slowly
mounting St. James's Street, the coach turned down Piccadilly, and,
passing between the groups of lounging lackeys at the gate, entered
Hyde Park. Here, by the time it had once made the circuit of the Ring,
the lady's equanimity was completely restored, and the gentleman was
radiant. He was, in truth, to use his own words, "no undelightful
Companion." He possessed an infinite fund of wit and humour; and his
manner to women had a sincerity of deference which was not the
prevailing characteristic of his age.
There is but slender invention in this little picture. The gentleman
was Captain Steele, late of the Life Guards, the Coldstreams, and
Lucas's regiment of foot, now Gazetteer, and Gentleman Waiter to Queen
Anne's consort, Prince George of Denmark, and not yet "Mr. Isaac
Bickerstaff" of the immortal Tatler. The lady was Mrs. Steele, _nee_
Miss Mary Scurlock, his "Ruler" and "absolute Governesse" (as he
called her), to whom he had been married some eight months before. If
you ask at the British Museum for the Steele manuscripts (Add. MSS.
5,145, A, B, and C), the courteous attendant will bring you, with its
faded ink, dusky paper, and hasty scrawl, the very letter making
arrangements for this meeting ("best Periwigg" and "new Shoes"
included), at the end of which the writer assures his "dear Prue"
(another pet name) that she is "Vitall Life to Yr. Oblig'd
Affectionate Husband & Humble Sernt. Richd. Steele." There are many
such in the _quarto_ volume of which this forms part, written from all
places, at all times, in all kinds of hands. They take all tones; they
are passionate, tender, expostulatory, playful, dignified, lyric,
didactic. It must be confessed that from a perusal of them one's
feeling for the lady of the chariot is not entirely unsympathetic. It
can scarcely have been an ideal household, that "third door right hand
turning out of Jermyn Street," to which so many of them are addressed;
and Mrs. Steele must frequently have had to complain to her
_confidante_, Mrs. (or Miss) Binns (a lady whom Steele is obviously
anxious to propitiate), of the extraordinary irregularity of her
restless lord and master. Now a friend from Barbados has stopped him
on his way home, and he will come (he writes) "within a Pint of Wine";
now it is Lord Sunderland who is keeping him indefinitely at the
Council; now the siege of Lille and the proofs of the "Gazette" will
detain him until ten at night. Sometimes his vague "West Indian
business" (that is, his first wife's property) hurries him suddenly
into the City; sometimes he is borne off to the Gentleman Ushers'
table at St. James's. Sometimes, even, he stays out all night, as he
had done not many days before the date of the above meeting, when he
had written to beg that his dressing-gown, his slippers, and "clean
Linnen" might be sent to him at "one Legg's," a barber "over against
the Devill Tavern at Charing Cross," where he proposes to lie that
night, chiefly, it has been conjectured from the context, in order to
escape certain watchful "shoulder-dabbers" who were hanging
obstinately about his own mansion in St. James's. For--to tell the
truth--he was generally hopelessly embarrassed, and scarcely ever
without a lawsuit on his hands. He was not a bad man; he was not
necessarily vicious or dissolute. But his habits were incurably
generous, profuse, and improvident; and his sanguine Irish nature led
him continually to mistake his expectations for his income. Naturally,
perhaps, his "absolute Governesse" complained of an absolutism so
strangely limited. If her affection for him was scarcely as ardent as
his passion for her, it was still a genuine emotion. But to a coquette
of some years' standing, and "a cried-up beauty" (as Mrs. Manley calls
her), the realities of her married life must have been a cruel
disappointment; and she was not the woman to conceal it. "I wish,"
says her husband in one of his letters, "I knew how to Court you into
Good Humour, for Two or Three Quarrells more will dispatch me quite."
Of her replies we have no knowledge; but from scattered specimens of
her style when angry, they must often have been exceptionally scornful
and unconciliatory. On one occasion, where he addresses her as
"Madam," and returns her note to her in order that she may see, upon
second thoughts, the disrespectful manner in which she treats him, he
is evidently deeply wounded. She has said that their dispute is far
from being a trouble to her, and he rejoins that to him any
disturbance between them is the greatest affliction imaginable. And
then he goes on to expostulate, with more dignity than usual, against
her unreasonable use of her prerogative. "I Love you," he says,
"better than the light of my Eyes, or the life-blood in my Heart but
when I have lett you know that, you are also to understand that
neither my sight shall be so far inchanted, or my affection so much
master of me as to make me forgett our common Interest. To attend my
businesse as I ought and improve my fortune it is necessary that my
time and my Will should be under no direction but my own." Clearly his
bosom's queen had been inquiring too closely into his goings and
comings. It is a strange thing, he says, in another letter, that,
because she is handsome, he must be always giving her an account of
every trifle, and minute of his time. And again--"Dear Prue, do not
send after me, for I shall be ridiculous!" It had happened to him, no
doubt. "He is governed by his wife most abominably, as bad as
Marlborough," says another contemporary letter-writer. And we may
fancy the blue eyes of Dr. Swift flashing unutterable scorn as he
scribbles off this piece of intelligence to Stella and Mrs. Dingley.
In the letters which follow Steele's above-quoted expostulation, the
embers of misunderstanding flame and fade, to flame and fade again. A
word or two of kindness makes him rapturous; a harsh expression sinks
him to despair. As time goes on, the letters grow fewer, and the
writers grow more used to each other's ways. But to the last Steele's
affectionate nature takes fire upon the least encouragement. Once,
years afterwards, when Prue is in the country and he is in London, and
she calls him "Good Dick," it throws him into such a transport that he
declares he could forget his gout, and walk down to her at Wales. "My
dear little peevish, beautiful, wise Governess, God bless you," the
letter ends. In another he assures her that, lying in her place and on
her pillow, he fell into tears from thinking that his "charming little
insolent might be then awake and in pain" with headache. She wants
flattery, she says, and he flatters her. "Her son," he declares, "is
extremely pretty, and has his face sweetened with something of the
Venus his mother, which is no small delight to the Vulcan who begot
him." He assures her that, though she talks of the children, they are
dear to him more because they are hers than because they are his
own.[54] And this reminds us that some of the best of his later
letters are about his family. Once, at this time of their mother's
absence in Wales, he says that he has invited his eldest daughter to
dinner with one of her teachers, because she had represented to him
"in her pretty language that she seemed helpless and friendless,
without anybody's taking notice of her at Christmas, when all the
children but she and two more were with their relations." So now they
are in the room where he is writing. "I told Betty," he adds, "I had
writ to you; and she made me open the letter again, and give her
humble duty to her mother, and desire to know when she shall have the
honour to see her in town." No doubt this was in strict accordance
with the proprieties as practised at Mrs. Nazereau's polite academy in
Chelsea; but somehow one suspects that "Madam Betty" would scarcely
have addressed the writer of the letter with the same boarding-school
formality. Elsewhere the talk is all of Eugene, the eldest boy. "Your
son, at the present writing, is mighty well employed in tumbling on
the floor of the room and sweeping the sand with a feather. He grows a
most delightful child, and very full of play and spirit. He is also a
very great scholar: he can read his Primer; and I have brought down my
Virgil. He makes most shrewd remarks upon the pictures. We are very
intimate friends and play-fellows." Yes: decidedly Steele's children
must have loved their clever, faulty, kindly father.
[Footnote 54: A few sentences in this paper are borrowed from the
writer's "Life of Steele," 1886.]
_Austin Dobson._