"Dr. Messenger Monsey, in the heyday of his prosperity, used to assert to
his friends that the first of his known ancestors was a baker and a
retailer of hops. At a critical point of this worthy man's career, when
hops were 'down,' and feathers 'up,' in order to raise the needful for
present emergencies he ripped up his beds, sold the feathers, and refilled
the ticks with hops. When a change occurred in the market soon afterwards
the process was reversed; even the children's beds were reopened, and the
hops sold for a large profit over the cost of replacing the feathers!"
"That's the way, sirs, that my family hop-ped from obscurity," the doctor
would conclude, with great gusto.
The Duke of Leeds used, in the same manner, to delight in boasting of his
lucky progenitor, Jack Osborn, the shop lad, who rescued his master's
beautiful daughter from a watery grave at the bottom of the Thames, and
won her hand away from a score of noble suitors, who wanted, literally,
the young lady's _pin_-money as much as herself. Her father was a pin
manufacturer, and had in his shop on London Bridge amassed a considerable
wealth in the business. The jolly old man, instead of disdaining to
bestow the lovely and wealthy maid--his only child--on an apprentice,
exclaimed,--
"Jack Osborn won her, and Jack shall wear her."
When Lord Bath vainly endeavored to effect a reconciliation between the
doctor and Garrick, who had fallen out, Monsey said,--
"Why will your lordship trouble yourself with the squabbles of a
merry-andrew and a _quack_ doctor?"
Monsey continued his quarrel with Garrick up to the day of the death of
the great tragedian. The latter seldom retaliated, but when he did his
sarcasm cut to the bone.
Garrick's style of satire may be inferred from his epigram on James Quin,
the celebrated actor, and illegitimate son of an Irishman, "whose wife
turned out a bigamist." When Garrick make his debut on the London stage,
at Godman's Fields playhouse, October 19, 1741, as "Richard the Third,"
Quin objected to Garrick's original style, saying,--
"If this young fellow is right, myself and all the other actors are
wrong."
Being told that the theatre was crowded to the dome nightly to hear the
new actor, Quin replied that "Garrick was a new religion; Whitefield was
followed for a time, but they would all come to church again." Hence
Garrick wrote the following epigram:--
"Pope Quin, who damns all churches but his own,
Complains that heresy infects the town;
That Whitefield-Garrick has misled the age,
And taints the sound religion of the stage.
'Schism,' he cries, 'has turned the nation's brain,
But eyes will open, and to church again!'
Thou great Infallible, forbear to roar;
Thy bulls and errors are revered no more.
When doctrines meet with general approbation,
It is not _heresy_, but reformation."
When confined to his bed in his last sickness, Garrick had the advice of
several of the best physicians, summoned to his villa near Hampton, and
Monsey, in bad taste and worse temper, wrote a satire on the occurrence.
He accused the actor of parsimony, among other mean qualities, and though,
after the death of Garrick, January 22, 1779, he destroyed the verses,
some portions of them got into print, of which the following is a
sample:--
"Seven wise doctors lately met
To save a wretched sinner.
'Come, Tom,' said Jack, 'pray let's be quick,
Or we shall lose _our_ dinner.'
"Some roared for rhubarb, jalap some,
And others cried for Dover;[3]
'Let's give him something,' each one said,
'And then let's give him over.'"
At last, after much learned wrangling, one more learned than the others
proposed to arouse the energies of the dying man by jingling a purse of
gold in his ear. This suggestion was acted upon, and
"Soon as the favorite sound he heard,
One faint effort he tried;
He oped his eyes, he scratched his head,
He gave one grasp--and died."
Riding on horseback through Hyde Park, Monsey was accompanied by a Mr.
Robinson, a Trinitarian preacher, who knew that the doctor's religion was
of the Unitarian stamp. After deploring, in solemn tones, the corrupt
state of morals, etc., the minister turned to Monsey, and said,--
"And, doctor, I am addressing one who believes there is no God."
"And I," replied Monsey, "one who believes there are _three_."
[Illustration: HEALING THE SICK WITH A GOLDEN DOSE.]
The good man, greatly shocked, put spurs to his horse, and, without
vouchsafing a "good day," rode away at a high gallop.