Transcriber’s notes:
In this e-text, paired underscores denote _italicised text_, and a
^ (caret) indicates superscripted text. Footnotes have been positioned
below the relevant paragraphs. A small number of spelling and
typographic errors have been corrected silently.
_Some Eccentrics
& a Woman_
_First Published in 1911_
[Illustration: A VIEW from the PUMP ROOM, BATH.]
_Some Eccentrics
& a Woman_
_By Lewis Melville_
_London_
_Martin Secker_
_Number Five John Street_
_Adelphi_
NOTE
Of the eight papers printed here, “Some Eighteenth-Century Men About
Town,” “A Forgotten Satirist: ‘Peter Pindar’,” “Sterne’s Eliza,”
and “William Beckford, of Fonthill Abbey,” have appeared in the
_Fortnightly Review_; “Charles James Fox” appeared in the _Monthly
Review_, “Exquisites of the Regency” in _Chambers’s Journal_, and
“The Demoniacs” in the American _Bookman_. To the editors of these
periodicals I am indebted either for permission to reprint, or
for their courtesy in having permitted me to reserve the right of
publication in book form. “Philip, Duke of Wharton” is now printed for
the first time.
LEWIS MELVILLE
_Contents_
PAGE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY MEN ABOUT TOWN 13
SOME EXQUISITES OF THE REGENCY 47
A FORGOTTEN SATIRIST: “PETER PINDAR” 103
STERNE’S ELIZA 129
THE DEMONIACS 161
WILLIAM BECKFORD OF FONTHILL ABBEY 189
CHARLES JAMES FOX 219
PHILIP, DUKE OF WHARTON 253
INDEX 283
_List of Illustrations_
“A VIEW FROM THE PUMP ROOM, BATH” _Frontispiece_
_A Facsimile Reproduction of a Drawing by Richard Deighton_
SIR JOHN LADE _To face page_ 16
_From the Painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds_
THE PRINCE OF WALES " " 48
_From the Miniature by Cosway_
LUMLEY SKEFFINGTON " " 80
_From a Contemporary Miniature_
PETER PINDAR " " 112
_From the Painting by John Opie_
LAURENCE STERNE " " 144
_From the Painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds_
WILLIAM BECKFORD " " 192
_From the Painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds_
CHARLES JAMES FOX " " 224
_From the Painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds_
PHILIP, DUKE OF WHARTON " " 256
_From a Contemporary Painting_
Some Eighteenth-Century Men about Town
When his Royal Highness George, Prince of Wales, afterwards George
IV., freed himself from parental control, and, an ill-disciplined lad,
launched himself upon the town, it is well known that he was intimate
with Charles James Fox, whom probably he admired more because the King
hated the statesman than for any other reason. Doubtless the Prince
drank with Fox, and diced with him, and played cards with him, but
from his later career it is obvious he can never have touched Fox
on that great man’s intellectual side; and, after a time, the royal
scapegrace, who would rather have reigned in hell than have served in
heaven, sought companions to whom he need not in any way feel inferior.
With this, possibly sub-conscious, desire, he gathered around him a
number of men about town, notorious for their eccentricities and for
the irregularity of their lives. With these George felt at home; but,
though he was nominally their leader, there can be little doubt that
he was greatly influenced by them at the most critical time of a young
man’s life, to his father’s disgust and to the despair of the nation.
Of these men the most remarkable were Sir John Lade, George Hanger
(afterwards fourth Lord Coleraine of the second creation), and Sir
Lumley Skeffington; and, by some chance, it happens that little has
been written about them, perhaps because what has been recorded is for
the most part hidden in old magazines and newspapers and the neglected
memoirs of forgotten worthies. Yet, as showing the temper of the times,
it may not be uninteresting to reconstruct their lives, and, as far as
the material serves, show them in their habit as they lived.
Sir John Lade, the son of John Inskipp, who assumed the name of Lade,
and in whose person the baronetcy that had been in the family was
revived, was born in 1759, and at an early age plunged into the fast
society of the metropolis with such vigour that he had earned a most
unenviable reputation by the time he came of age, on which auspicious
occasion, Dr Johnson, who knew him as the ward of Mr Thrale, greeted
him savagely in the satirical verses which conclude:
“Wealth, my lad, was made to wander:
Let it wander at its will;
Call the jockey, call the pander,
Bid them come and take their fill.
When the bonnie blade carouses,
Pockets full and spirits high--
What are acres? what are houses?
Only dirt, or wet and dry.
Should the guardian friend or mother
Tell the woes of wilful waste,
Scorn their counsels, scorn their pother,
You can hang, or drown, at last.”
Sir John became one of the Prince of Wales’s cronies, and for a while
had the management of his Royal Highness’s racing stable; but while it
has been hinted of him, as of George Hanger, that during his tenure
of that office he had some share in the transactions that resulted in
Sam Chifney, the Prince’s jockey, being warned off the turf, it is but
fair to state that there is no evidence in existence to justify the
suspicion. Indeed, he seems to have been honest, except in incurring
tradesmen’s debts that he could never hope to discharge; but this
was a common practice in fashionable circles towards the end of the
eighteenth century, and was held to throw no discredit on the man who
did so--for was it not a practice sanctioned by the example of “The
First Gentleman of Europe” himself?
Sir John’s ambition, apparently, was to imitate a groom in dress and
language. It was his pleasure to take the coachman’s place, and drive
the Prince’s “German Waggon,”[1] and six bay horses from the Pavilion
at Brighton to the Lewes racecourse; and, in keeping with his _pose_,
he was overheard on Egham racecourse to invite a friend to return to
dinner in these terms:--“I can give you a trout spotted all over like
a coach dog, a fillet of veal as white as alabaster, a ‘pantaloon’
cutlet, and plenty of pancakes as big as coach-wheels--so help me.”
[1] Barouches were so described on their first introduction into
England.
Dr Johnson naturally took an interest in Sir John, and, when Lady Lade
consulted him about the training of her son, “Endeavour, madam,” said
he, “to procure him knowledge, for really ignorance to a rich man is
like fat to a sick sheep, it only serves to call the rooks round him.”
It is easier, however, to advocate the acquisition of knowledge than
to inculcate it, and knowledge, except of horses, Sir John Lade never
obtained in any degree. Indeed, his folly was placed on record by
“Anthony Pasquin” in
AN EPIGRAMMATIC COLLOQUY,
Occasioned by Sir John Lade’s Ingenious Method of
Managing his Estates.
Said Hope to Wit, with eager looks,
And sorrow streaming eyes:
“In pity, Jester, tell me when,
Will Johnny Lade be--wise?”
“Thy sighs forego,” said Wit to Hope,
“And be no longer sad;
Tho’ other foplings grow to men,
He’ll always be--a _Lad_.”
[Illustration: _Sir John Lade_]
When Sir John was little more than a boy, Johnson, half in earnest,
proposed him as a fitting mate for the author of “Evelina,” so Mrs
Thrale states; and, indeed, Miss Burney herself records a conversation
in 1778 between that lady and the doctor. The inadvisability of the
union, however, soon became apparent, and when Sir John, a little
later, asked Johnson if he would advise him to marry, “I would advise
no man to marry, sir,” replied the great man, “who is not likely to
propagate understanding”; but the baronet, who doubtless thought this
was an excellent joke, and as such intended, crowned his follies by
espousing a woman of more than doubtful character. When Sir John met
his future wife, she was a servant at a house of ill-fame in Broad
Street, St Giles, and, rightly or wrongly, was credited with having
been the mistress of Jack Rann, the highwayman, better known as
“Sixteen-string Jack,” who deservedly ended his career on the gallows
in 1774. Marriage did not apparently mend her manners or her morals,
for, according to Huish--who, it must, however, be admitted, was an
arrant scandalmonger--she was for some time the mistress of the Duke of
York, and also acted as procuress for the Prince of Wales; while her
command of bad language was so remarkable that the Prince used to say
of any foul-mouthed man: “He speaks like Letty Lade.”
Like her husband, Lady Lade was a fine whip, and many stories are told
of her prowess as a driver of a four-in-hand.
“More than one steed Letitia’s empire feels,
Who sits triumphant o’er the flying wheels;
And, as she guides them through th’ admiring throng,
With what an air she smacks the silken thong.
Graceful as John, she moderates the reins;
And whistles sweet her diuretic strains;
_Sesostris_-like, such charioteers as these
May drive six harness’d princes, if they please.”
Lady Lade offered to drive a coach against another tooled by a
sister-whip eight miles over Newmarket Heath for five hundred guineas a
side, but, when it came to the point, no one had sufficient confidence
to take up the wager. There is, however, an account of another race
in which she participated: “Lady Lade and Mrs Hodges are to have a
curricle race at Newmarket, at the next Spring Meeting, and the horses
are now in training. It is to be a five-mile course, and great sport
is expected. The construction of the traces is to be on a plan similar
to that of which Lord March, now Marquis of Queensberry, won his
famous match against time. The odds, at present, are in favour of Lady
Lade. She runs a grey mare, which is said to be the best horse in the
Baronet’s stalls.”
Like the rest of his set, Sir John spent his patrimony and fell upon
evil days, which ended, in 1814, in imprisonment for debt in the King’s
Bench, being, as Creevey happily puts it, “reduced to beggary by having
kept such good company.” Some arrangement was made with his creditors,
and Sir John was released; whereupon Lord Anglesea went to the Prince
of Wales, and insisted upon his giving Lade five hundred a year out
of his Privy Purse--no easy task, one may imagine, for “Prinney” was
not given to providing for his old friends. William IV. continued the
annuity, but reduced it to three hundred pounds, and it was feared that
at his death it would be discontinued. However, when the matter was put
before Queen Victoria, she, hearing that Sir John was in his eightieth
year, generously expressed the intention to pay the pension, which she
put as a charge on her Privy Purse, for the rest of his life. Sir John
was thus freed from anxiety, but he did not long enjoy her Majesty’s
bounty, for he died on 10th February 1838, having outlived his wife by
thirteen years.
A more interesting and a more intelligent man was George Hanger, who
born in 1751, and, after attending a preparatory school, was sent to
Eton and Göttingen, and was gazetted in January 1771, an ensign in the
first regiment of Foot Guards. In the army he distinguished himself
chiefly by his harum-scarum mode of living, and by his adventures,
most of which were of too delicate a nature to bear repetition, though
his quaint “Memoirs” throw a light upon the company he kept. He met a
beautiful gipsy girl, styled by him “the lovely Ægyptea of Norwood,”
who, according to his account, had an enchanting voice, a pretty taste
for music, and played charmingly on the dulcimer. She won his heart
with a song, the refrain of which ran:
“Tom Tinker’s my true love,
And I am his dear;
And all the world over,
His budget I’ll bear.”
He married her according to the rites of the tribe, introduced her to
his brother officers, and bragged to them of her love and fidelity;
but, alas! the song which enchanted him was based, not upon fiction,
but upon fact, and after Hanger had lived in the tents with his
inamorata for a couple of weeks, he awoke one morning to learn she had
run off with a bandy-legged tinker.
For some years he remained in the Foot Guards, where he was very
popular with his brother officers; but in 1776 he threw up his
commission in anger at someone being promoted over his head, unjustly,
as he thought. His early love of soldiering, however, was not yet
abated, and he sought and obtained a captaincy in the Hessian Jäger
corps, which had been hired by the British Government to go to America.
He was delighted with his new uniform--a short, blue coat with gold
frogs, and a very broad sword-belt--and, thus attired, swaggered
about the town in great spirits, to the accompaniment of his friends’
laughter. During the siege of Charlestown he was aide-de-camp to Sir
Henry Clinton; he was wounded in an action at Charlottetown in 1780,
and two years later was appointed Major in Tarleton’s Light Dragoons,
which regiment, however, was disbanded in 1783, when Hanger was given
the brevet rank of Colonel, and placed on half pay.
At the close of the war Hanger left America for England, but his
affairs were in such an unsettled state that he thought it advisable
to go direct to Calais, where he remained until his friend, Richard
Tattersall, could arrange his affairs. Hanger attributed his insolvency
at this time to the fact that the lawyer to whom he had given a power
of attorney having died, his estate was sold for the benefit of
the mortgagee at half its value. This is probably true, but it is
certainly only a half-truth, for his embarrassment was mainly caused
by his extravagance when he was in the Foot Guards. He did not often
play cards, but he was passionately fond of the turf, kept a stable at
Newmarket, and bet heavily on all occasions, though it is said that
on the whole he was a considerable winner, and it is recorded that he
won no less than seven thousand pounds on the race between Shark and
Leviathan. His pay in the Foot Guards of four shillings a day did not,
of course, suffice even for his mess-bills, and he wasted much money on
dissipation, and more on his clothes. “I was extremely extravagant in
my dress,” he admitted. “For one winter’s dress-clothes only it cost me
nine hundred pounds. I was always handsomely dressed at every birthday;
but for one in particular I put myself to a very great expense, having
two suits for that day. My morning vestments cost me near eighty
pounds, and those for the ball above one hundred and eighty. It was a
satin coat _brodé en plain et sur les coutures_, and the first satin
coat that had ever made its appearance in this country. Shortly after,
satin dress-clothes became common among well-dressed men.”[2]
[2] “Life, Adventures, and Opinions of Colonel George Hanger.”
On his return to England, Hanger stayed with Tattersall for a year,
and then was engaged in the recruiting service of the Honourable East
India Company at a salary which, with commission, never amounted to
less than six hundred pounds a year; and he was also appointed, with a
further three hundred pounds a year, an equerry to the Prince of Wales,
with whom he was on very intimate terms.
The next few years were the happiest of his life, but misfortune soon
overcame him. His employment under the East India Company came to an
abrupt end owing to a dispute between the Board of Control and the
Company, relative to the building of a barrack in this country to
receive the East India recruits prior to embarkation, which ended in a
change of the whole system of recruiting, when Hanger’s services were
no longer required. This was bad enough, but worse was to come, for
when he had served as equerry for four years, the Prince of Wales’s
embarrassed affairs were arranged by Parliament, which, making the
essential economies, dismissed Hanger.
When this happened, having no means whatever with which to meet some
comparatively trifling debts, he surrendered to the Court of King’s
Bench, and was imprisoned within the Rules from June 1798 until April
in the following year, when the successful issue of a lawsuit enabled
him to compound with his creditors. “Twice have I begun the world
anew; I trust the present century will be more favourable to me than
the past,” he wrote in his “Memoirs”; and it is much to his credit
that instead of whining and sponging on his friends, having only a
capital of forty pounds, he started in the business--he called it the
profession--of coal-merchant.
According to Cyrus Redding, who used to meet him at the house of Dr
Wolcot (“Peter Pindar”), Hanger had fallen out of favour with the
Prince by administering a severe reproof to that personage and to
the Duke of York for their use of abominable language, and was no
longer invited to Carlton House. This, however, does not ring true,
for Hanger’s language was none of the choicest, and if there was any
disagreement, this can scarcely have been the cause. Indeed, if at
this time there was a quarrel, it must soon have been made up; and
undoubtedly the twain were on friendly terms long after, for when
Hanger was dealing in coal, the Prince, riding on horseback, stopped
and made friendly inquiry: “Well, George, how go coals now?” to which
Hanger, who had a pretty wit, replied with a twinkle, “Black as ever,
please your Royal Highness.” Certainly Hanger felt no grievance
concerning the alleged quarrel, for in his “Memoirs” he spoke in high
terms of the heir-apparent in a passage that deserves to be read,
as one of the few sincere tributes ever paid to the merits of that
deservedly much-abused person.
Whether through the influence of the Prince of Wales or another,
Hanger was in 1806 appointed captain commissary of the Royal Artillery
Drivers, from which he was allowed to retire on full pay two years
later, a proceeding which drew some observations from the Commissioners
of Military Inquiry in their seventeenth report, to which Hanger
published an answer. As the years passed, however, the free manners
and the coarse outspokenness of the Colonel jarred on the Prince, and
slowly the men drifted more and more apart, after which the former
moved in less distinguished and probably less vicious company.
The first Lord Coleraine had long since been dead; Hanger’s eldest
brother, the second Baron, had followed his father to the grave, and
the title was now enjoyed by his second brother, William, popularly
known as “Blue” Hanger, from the colour of the clothes he wore in his
youth. Charles Marsh declared him to be “perhaps the best-dressed man
of his age,” which is an ambitious claim for any person in the days
when clothes were more regarded in fashionable society than anything
else in the world; but that there was some ground for the statement
cannot be doubted, since “Tom” Raikes reiterates it. “He was a _beau_
of the first water, always beautifully powdered, in a light green coat,
with a rose in his buttonhole. He had not much wit or talent, but
affected the _vieille cour_ and the manners of the French Court; he had
lived a good deal in Paris before the Revolution, and used always to
say that the English were a very good nation, but they positively knew
not how to make anything but a kitchen poker. I remember many years
ago, the Duchess of York made a party to go by water to Richmond, in
which Coleraine was included. We all met at a given hour at Whitehall
Stairs, and found the Admiralty barge, with the Royal Standard, ready
to receive us, but by some miscalculation of the tide, it was not
possible to embark for near half-an-hour, and one of the watermen said
to the Duchess, ‘Your Royal Highness must wait for the tide.’ Upon
which Coleraine, with a very profound bow, remarked, ‘If I had been the
tide I should have waited for your Royal Highness.’ Nothing could have
been more stupid, but there was something in the manner in which it was
said that made everyone burst out laughing.” “Blue” Hanger, it will be
seen, was as remarkable for his politeness as for his satire!
Heavy losses at the card-table forced William Hanger to go abroad to
avoid his creditors, and he remained in France until the death of his
elder brother in 1794, when, able to settle his affairs, he returned,
completely transformed in manners and appearance into a Frenchman.
Thereby hangs the story that, shortly after he arrived in England,
he went to Drury Lane, when, next to him in the dress circle sat a
stranger wearing top-boots. This would have been regarded as a gross
breach of etiquette in France, and Lord Coleraine was not inclined to
brook this affront to the company because he was in England.
“I beg, sir, you will make no apology,” he said, with an innocent and
reassuring air.
His neighbour stared in blank amazement. “Apology, sir! Apology for
what?” he demanded angrily.
“Why,” said “Blue,” pointing to the offending boots, “that you did not
bring your horse with you into the box.”
“Perhaps it is lucky for you I did not bring my _horsewhip_,” retorted
the other, in a fine frenzy of passion; “but I have a remedy at hand,
and I will pull your nose for your impertinence.” Whereupon he threw
himself upon Lord Coleraine, only to be dragged away by persons sitting
on the other side of him.
Cards were exchanged between the combatants, and a duel seemed
imminent. “Blue” went at once to his brother to beg his assistance.
“I acknowledge I was the first aggressor,” he said, in anything but a
humble frame of mind; “but it was too bad to threaten to pull my nose.
What had I better do?” To which the unfeeling Colonel made reply,
“_Soap it well_, and then it will easily slip through his fingers!”
This characteristic advice George Hanger was never weary of repeating,
and he insisted that when anyone wished to calumniate another
gentleman, he ought to be careful to take the precaution to _soap his
nose_ first. “Since I have taken upon myself the charge of my own
sacred person,” he said, returning to the subject in his “Memoirs,” “I
never have been pulled by the nose, or been compelled to soap it. Many
gentlemen of distinguished rank in this country are indebted to the
protecting qualities of soap for the present enjoyment of their noses,
it being as difficult to hold a soaped nose between the fingers as it
is for a countryman, at a country wake, to catch a pig turned out with
his tail soaped and shaved for the amusement of the spectators.”
“Blue” Hanger died on 11th December 1814, when the title and estates
devolved upon the Colonel, who, however, could never be persuaded to
change his name. “Plain George Hanger, sir, if you please,” he would
say to those who addressed him in the more formal manner. It has
generally been supposed that this was merely another of the peer’s
many eccentricities, but there was a kindly reason for it. “Among the
few nobility already named,” wrote Westmacott in the long-forgotten
“Fitzalleyne of Berkeley,” “more than one raised modest birth and merit
to their own rank; one made a marriage of reparation; nay, even the
lord rat-catcher,[3] life-writer (and it was his own), and vendor of
the black article of trade, was faithful to his engagements where the
law bound him not; and one of his reasons for forbidding his servants
to address him as ‘My Lord’ was that she might bear his name as Mrs
Hanger.”
[3] Hanger wrote a pamphlet on rat-catching.
Hanger, now in the possession of a competence, made little change in
his manner of living, and though death did not claim him until 31st
March 1824, at the age of seventy-three, he never again went into
general society. At the time of his succession to the peerage he was
residing, and during the last years of his life he continued to reside,
at Somers Town, whence he would occasionally wander, shillelagh in
hand, to the “Sol Arms,” in Tottenham Court Road, to smoke a pipe.
This has been so often repeated, to the exclusion of almost any other
particulars of his life, that the comparatively few people who have
heard of Hanger think of him as a public-house loafer; but this was
far from being the case, for if he went sometimes to the “Sol Arms” he
would also go to Dr Wolcot to converse with the veteran satirist, or to
Nollekens, the sculptor; or he would ride on his grey pony so far as
Budd & Calkin’s, the booksellers in Pall Mall, where, leaving his horse
in charge of a boy--for he never took a groom with him--he would sit on
the counter, talking with the shopkeepers and their customers.
Nor was Hanger illiterate, as were so many of the associates of his
early years, and he wrote very readable letters; but his intelligence
does not rest only on his correspondence, for he was an industrious
writer on military subjects. Reference has already been made to his
autobiography, which appeared in 1801 under the title of “The Life,
Adventures, and Opinions of Colonel George Hanger”; but though it was
stated on the title-page that the volumes were “Written by Himself,”
it has since transpired that they were compiled from his papers and
suggestions by William Combe, the author of “The Tours of Dr Syntax.”
It is an unpleasant work, and deals frankly with subjects tacitly
avoided by present-day writers; but it is not without value, for
it contains, besides excellent descriptions of debtors’ prisons and
the rogueries of attorneys at the end of the eighteenth century,
common-sense views on social subjects--views much in advance of the
general opinions of the day--and a frank avowal of hatred of hypocrisy.
This last quality induced Hanger maliciously to relate a story of a
dissenter who kept a huxter’s shop, where a great variety of articles
were sold, and was heard to say to his shopman, “John, have you watered
the rum?” “Yes.” “Have you sanded the brown sugar?” “Yes.” “Have you
wetted the tobacco?” “Yes.” “Then come in to prayers.” The “Memoirs”
will perhaps best be remembered for Hanger’s famous prophecy that “one
of these days the northern and southern Powers [of the United States]
will fight as vigorously against each other as they have both united to
do against the British.”
It is, however, not as a soldier, a pamphleteer, or a seer that Hanger
has come down to posterity; and while some may recall that in 1772
he distinguished himself by being one of the gentlemen who, with
drawn swords, forced a passage for the entry of Mrs Baddeley into the
Pantheon, and eight and thirty years later rode on his grey palfrey in
the procession formed in honour of the release of Sir Francis Burdett,
it is for his eccentricities and his humour that he is remembered.
Nollekens has related how one day he overheard Lord Coleraine inquire
of the old apple-woman at the corner of Portland Road, evidently an
old acquaintance, who was packing up her fruit, “What are you about,
mother?” “Why, my Lord, I am going home to tea.” “Oh! don’t baulk
trade. Leave your things on the table as they are; I will mind shop
till you return”; and the peer seated himself in the old woman’s wooden
chair, and waited until the meal was over, when he solemnly handed her
his takings, threepence halfpenny.
Although Cyrus Redding declared that Hanger was well known in his
day for an original humour which spared neither friend nor foe, and
although Hanger could sneer at those who accepted the invitations to
dinner that Pitt was in the habit of sending to refractory members of
his party--“The rat-trap is set again,” he would say when he heard
of such dinner-parties: “is the bait _plaice_ or paper?”--there
were many who found themselves in a position to praise Hanger’s
generosity. We have it on the authority of Westmacott--and there can
be no surer tribute than this, since Westmacott would far rather have
said a cruel than a kind thing--that Hanger never forgot a friend or
ignored an acquaintance because he had fallen upon evil days. When an
out-at-elbows baronet came to see him, Hanger received him heartily,
insisted upon his remaining as his guest for some time, and, summoning
his servants, addressed them characteristically: “Behold this man, ye
varlets! Never mind me while he is here; neglect me if ye will, but
look upon him as your master; obey him in all things; the house, the
grounds, the game, the gardens, all are at his command; let his will
be done; make him but welcome, and I care not for the rest.” For his
kind heart much may be forgiven Hanger; and who could be angry with
a man who possessed so keen a sense of humour as is revealed in this
story? Late one night he went into his bedroom at an inn, and found
it occupied. The opening of the door awoke an irate Irishman, the
occupier, who inquired in no measured terms: “What the devil do you
want here, sir? I shall have satisfaction for the affront. My name is
Johnson.” Aroused by the clamour, a wizen-faced woman by Johnson’s side
raised her head from the pillow. “Mrs Johnson, I presume?” said Hanger
dryly, bowing to the lady.
Sir Lumley St George Skeffington had at least more claim to distinction
than most of his brother fops, though it was their habit to sneer at
him, especially after Byron had given them the cue. Born on 23rd
March 1771, Lumley was educated at Henry Newcome’s school at Hackney,
where he showed some taste for composition and poetry, and took part
in the dramatic performances for which that institution had been noted
for above a century. On one occasion there he delivered an epilogue
written by George Keate, the subject of which was the folly of vanity;
but the lad did not take the lesson to heart, for so soon as he was
his own master he set up as a leader of fashion. At an early age he
began to be talked about, and such notoriety was the _open sesame_ to
Carlton House. The Prince of Wales condescended to discuss costume with
the young man, who, thus encouraged, was spurred to fresh efforts,
and acquired fame as the inventor of a new colour, known during his
lifetime as Skeffington brown. Indeed, Skeffington, who was vain of
his personal appearance--though, it must be confessed, without much
reason--dressed in the most foppish manner; and as an example may be
given a description of his costume at the Court held in honour of the
King’s birthday in 1794: “A brown spotted silk coat and breeches, with
a white silk waistcoat richly embroidered with silver, stones, and
shades of silk; the design was large baskets of silver and stones,
filled with bouquets of roses, jonquilles, etc., the _ensemble_
producing a beautiful and splendid effect.”
Though elated at being recognised as a _beau_, Skeffington did not
desert his first love, and he mixed much in theatrical society, and
became on intimate terms with many of the leading actors, including
Joseph Munden, John Kemble, Mrs Siddons, and T. P. Cooke. He was an
inveterate “first-nighter,” and would flit from theatre to theatre
during the evening; but he was not content to be a hanger-on to the
fringe of the dramatic profession, and desired to be a prominent
member of the _coterie_. He had abandoned any idea of following up his
youthful successes as an actor, but he had so early as 1792, at the
age of one and twenty, made his bow as an author, with a prologue to
James Plumptre’s comedy, _The Coventry Act_, performed at the latter’s
private theatre at Norwich.
Spurred by the praise bestowed upon this trifle, he penned
complimentary verses to pretty actresses; but after a time he aspired
to greater distinction, and endeavoured to secure literary laurels by
the composition of several plays. His _Word of Honour_, a comedy in
five acts, was produced at Covent Garden Theatre in 1802, and in the
following year his _High Road to Marriage_ was staged at Drury Lane;
but neither of these had any sort of success, and it was not until
_The Sleeping Beauty_ was performed at Drury Lane, in December 1805,
that the author could look upon his efforts with any pride.
To judge from a contemporary account, _The Sleeping Beauty_, with music
by Addison, was an agreeable, albeit an over-rated, entertainment of
the nature of an extravaganza. “Mr Skeffington,” we are told, “has not
confined himself to the track of probability; but, giving the rein
to his imagination, has boldly ventured into the boundless region of
necromancy and fairy adventure. The valorous days of Chivalry are
brought to our recollection, and the tales which warmed the breasts
of youth with martial ardour are again rendered agreeable to the mind
that is not so fastidious as to turn with fancied superiority from
the pleasing delusion. The ladies in particular would be accused of
ingratitude were they to look coldly upon the Muse of Mr Skeffington,
who had put into the mouths of his two enamoured knights speeches and
panegyrics upon the sex, which would not discredit the effusions of
Oroondates, or any other hero of romance.”
The book of the play was never printed, but the song, duets, and
choruses of this “grand legendary melodrama” were published, and so it
is possible to form some opinion of the merits of this production of
the author, who is described by a writer in _The Gentleman’s Magazine_
as “the celebrated Mr Skeffington ... a gentleman of classic genius,
[who] it is well known figures high in the most fashionable circles.”
It is to be feared that Skeffington’s fame as a man of fashion threw
a glamour upon this critic, for to modern eyes the “classic genius”
is nowhere in evidence, although the verses certainly do not compare
unfavourably with the drivel offered by the so-called lyric writers
whose effusions figure in the musical comedies of to-day.
Unexpectedly, however, _The Sleeping Beauty_ achieved immortality,
though not an immortality of the pleasantest kind, for the piece
attracted the attention of Byron, who pilloried it in his “English
Bards and Scotch Reviewers”:
“In grim array though Lewis’ spectres rise,
Still Skeffington and Goose[4] divide the prize:
And sure great Skeffington must claim our praise,
For skirtless coats and skeletons of plays,
Renown’d alike; whose genius ne’er confines
Her flight to garnish Greenwood’s gay designs;
Nor sleeps with ‘sleeping beauties,’ but anon
In five facetious acts come thundering on,
While poor John Bull, bewilder’d with the scene,
Stares, wond’ring what the devil it can mean;
But as some hands applaud--a venal few--
Rather than sleep, John Bull applauds it too.”
[4] Dibdin’s _Mother Goose_, which ran for a hundred nights at Covent
Garden.
For years before this satire appeared Skeffington was a personage in
society, and if his plays secured him undying notoriety at the hands
of the satirist, his costume was to produce the same result by the
attention drawn to it by Gillray, who represented him, in 1799, as
“Half Natural,” in a Jean de Bry coat, all sleeves and padding, and
in the following year in a second caricature as dancing, below which
is the legend: “So Skiffy skipt on, with his wonted grace.” In these
days, indeed, his appearance offered a very distinct mark for the
caricaturist. Imagine a tall, spare man, with large features, sharp,
sallow face, and dark curly hair and whiskers, arrayed in the glory
of a dark blue coat with gilt buttons, yellow waistcoat, with cord
inexpressibles, large bunches of white ribbons at the knees, and short
top-boots! But in latter years Skeffington went even further, for he
distinguished himself by wearing a _vieux-rose_ satin suit, and a wig,
and rouging his cheeks and blacking his eyebrows and eyelashes, until
he looked like a French doll; while the air in his vicinity was made
noxious by the strong perfumes with which he drenched himself. Horace
Smith summed him up as “an admirable specimen of the florid Gothic,”
and Moore lampooned him in Letter VIII. of _The Twopenny Post Bag_,
from “Colonel Th-m-s to Sk-ff-ngt-n, Esq.”:
“Come to our _fête_, and bring with thee
Thy newest best embroidery,
Come to our _fête_, and show again
That pea-green coat, thou pink of men,
Which charmed all eyes that last surveyed it;
When Brummell’s self enquired: ‘Who made it?’
Oh! come (if haply ’tis thy week
For looking pale) with paly cheek;
Though more we love thy roseate days,
When the rich rouge pot pours its blaze
Full o’er thy face, and amply spread,
Tips even thy whisker-tops with red--
Like the last tints of dying day
That o’er some darkling grove delay.
Put all thy wardrobe’s glories on,
And yield in frogs and fringe to none
But the great Regent’s self alone.”
Skeffington’s success with _The Sleeping Beauty_ occurred at the time
when he was most prominent in society. “I have had a long and very
pleasant walk to-day with Mr Ilingworth in Kensington Gardens, and
saw all the extreme crowd there about three o’clock, and between that
and four,” Lord Kenyon wrote to his wife on 1st June 1806. “The most
conspicuous figure was Mr Skeffington, with Miss Duncan leaning on
his arm. He is so great an author that all which is done is thought
correct, and not open to scandal. To be sure, they looked rather a
comical pair, she with only a cap on, and he with his curious whiskers
and sharp, sallow face.”
Gradually, however, as time changed, Skeffington was left behind in
the race, and was no longer regarded as a leader of fashion, and at
the same time he was not fortunate enough to win further success as a
dramatist, for his _Mysterious Bride_ in 1808, his _Bombastes Furioso_
played at the Haymarket in 1810, and his _Lose no Time_, performed
three years later at Drury Lane, were each and all dire failures.
In January 1815 Sir William Skeffington died, and Lumley succeeded to
the baronetcy. Sir William, however, had embarrassed his estates, and
Lumley, to save his father from distress, had generously consented to
cut the entail, and so had deprived himself of a considerable fortune.
The comparatively small amount of money that now came to him had been
forestalled, and he was compelled to seek refuge for several years
within the rules of the King’s Bench Prison. Eventually, though he
failed in the attempt to regain an interest in the estates of his
maternal family, the Hubbards, at Rotherhithe, he came into possession
of an estate worth about eight hundred pounds a year; but when he came
again upon the town his old friends showed a marked disposition to
avoid him; and when one day Alvanley was asked who was that solitary,
magnificently attired person, “It is a second edition of _The Sleeping
Beauty_,” he replied wittily; “bound in calf, richly gilt, and
illustrated by many cuts.”
Skeffington now resided quietly in Southwark, where he still
entertained members of the theatrical profession, but no longer the
leaders of the calling, only the members of the adjacent Surrey
Theatre. Henry Vizetelly met him towards the end of his life, and
described him as “a quiet, courteous, aristocratic-looking old
gentleman, an ancient fop who affected the fashions of a past
generation, and wore false hair and rouged his cheeks,” who had, he
might have added, a large fund of _histoires divertissants_ with which
to regale his visitors.
He outlived all his brother dandies, but to the end would wander in
the fashionable streets, recalling the glories of his early manhood,
attracting attention in his long-waisted coat, the skirts of which
descended to his heels, but recognised by none of the generation that
had succeeded his own. In other circles, however, he found listeners
interested in his stories of the palmy days of Carlton House, when
he was one of the leaders of fashion in society and prominent in the
_coulisses_. He died, unmarried, in his eightieth year, and attributed
his long life to the fact that he did not stir out of doors in the
cold, damp winter months, but moved from room to room so as never to
remain in vitiated air.
In conclusion it must be pointed out that Skeffington’s popularity
was largely contributed to by his good humour and vivacity, and by
the fact that in an age when wit spared nobody he was never known to
say an unkind word of anyone; nor was the reason for this, as was
said of another _beau_, that he never spoke of anyone but himself.
“As to his manners, the suffrages of the most polished circles of
this kingdom have pronounced him one of the best bred men of the
present times, blending at once the decorum of what is called the
_vieille cour_ with the careless gracefulness of the modern school;
he seems to do everything by chance, but it is such a chance as study
could not improve,” so ran a character sketch of the dandy in _The
Monthly Review_ for 1806. “In short, whenever he trifles it is with
elegance, and whenever occasion calls for energy he is warm, spirited,
animated.” He had, however, his share of the _nonchalance_ affected
by the fashionable folk of his day, and the story is told that when,
on a visit to a gentleman in Leicester, he was disturbed in the night
with the information that the adjoining house was in flames, his sole
comment was that this was “a great bore”; and when with difficulty he
had been induced to move quickly enough to escape into the street,
there, standing in his nightdress, bareheaded and with his hair in
papers, he called out, “What are these horrid creatures about with so
much filthy water, that I cannot step without wetting my slippers?”
Some Exquisites of the Regency
When Almack’s Club, composed of all the travelled young men who wore
long curls and spying-glasses, was in 1778 absorbed by Brooks’s, the
day of the Macaronis was past. Then, as Wraxall records, Charles James
Fox and his friends, who might be said to lead the Town, affecting a
style of neglect about their persons and manifesting a contempt of all
the usages hitherto established, first threw a sort of discredit on
dress. “Fox lodged in St James’s Street, and as soon as he rose, which
was very late, had a _levée_ of his followers and of the members of
the gambling club at Brooks’s--all his disciples,” Walpole wrote. “His
bristly black person, and shagged breast quite open and rarely purified
by any ablutions, was wrapped in a foul linen nightgown, and his bushy
hair dishevelled. In these cynic weeds, and with epicurean good humour,
did he dictate his politics, and in this school did the heir of the
Crown attend his lessons and imbibe them.”
The young Prince of Wales might study statecraft under Fox; but in the
matter of dress he fell in line with the new race of _beaux_, bucks,
or, to use a word that came into general use at this time, dandies.
The most famous of the latter were Lord Petersham, Lord Foley, Lord
Hertford (immortalised by Thackeray in “Vanity Fair” as the Marquis of
Steyne, and by Disraeli in “Coningsby” as Lord Monmouth), the Duke of
Argyll, Lord Worcester, Henry Pierrepoint, Henry de Ros, Colonel Dawson
Darner, Daniel Mackinnon, Lord Dudley and Ward, Hervey Ashton, Gronow
the memoirist, Sir Lumley Skeffington, and Brummell.
These exquisites were disinclined to yield the palm even to an
heir-apparent with limitless resources. The Prince of Wales, however,
contrived to hold his own. At his first appearance in society he
created a sensation. He wore a new shoe-buckle! This was his own
invention, and differed from all previous articles of the same kind,
insomuch as it was an inch long and five inches broad, reaching
almost to the ground on either side of the foot! This was good for an
introduction to the polite world, but it was not until he attended
his first Court ball that he did himself full justice. Then his
magnificence was such that the arbiters of fashion were compelled
reluctantly to admit that a powerful rival had come upon the scene.
A contemporary was so powerfully impressed by the splendour of the
Prince’s costume that he placed on record a description: “His coat was
pink silk, with white cuffs; his waistcoat white silk, embroidered with
various coloured foil, and adorned with a profusion of French paste;
and his hat was ornamented with two rows of steel beads, five thousand
in number, with a button and loop of the same metal, and cocked in a
new military style.”
[Illustration: _George, Prince of Wales_]
The laurels won in early youth he retained all the days of his life.
Expense was no object to him, and, indeed, it must be confessed
he spent money in many worse ways than on his clothes. Batchelor,
his valet, who entered his service after the death of the Duke of
York, said that a plain coat, from its repeated alterations and the
consequent journeys from London to Windsor to Davison the tailor, would
often cost three hundred pounds before it met with his approbation!
George had a mania for hoarding, and at his death all the coats,
vests, breeches, boots, and other articles of attire which had graced
his person during half-a-century were found in his wardrobe. It is
said he carried the catalogue in his head, and could call for any
costume he had ever worn. His executors, Lord Gifford and Sir William
Knighton, discovered in the pockets of his coats, besides innumerable
women’s love letters, locks of hair, and other trifles of his usually
discreditable amours, no less than five hundred pocket-books, each
containing small forgotten sums of money, amounting in all to ten
thousand pounds! His clothes sold for fifteen thousand pounds; they
cost probably ten times that amount.
Lord Petersham was a Mæcenas among the tailors, and the inventor of
an overcoat called after him. He was famous for his brown carriages,
horses, and liveries, all of the same shade; and his devotion to this
colour was popularly supposed to be due to the love he had borne a
widow of the name. He never went out before six o’clock in the evening,
and had many other eccentricities. Gronow has described a visit to his
apartments: “The room into which we were ushered was more like a shop
than a gentleman’s sitting-room. All around the wall were shelves, upon
which were placed the canisters containing congou, pekoe, souchong,
bohea, gunpowder, Russian, and many other teas, all the best of their
kind; on the other side of the room were beautiful jars, with names
in gilt letters of innumerable kinds of snuff, and all the necessary
apparatus for moistening and mixing. Lord Petersham’s mixture is
still well known to all tobacconists. Other shelves and many of the
tables were covered with a great number of magnificent snuff-boxes;
for Lord Petersham had perhaps the finest collection in England, and
was supposed to have a fresh box for every day in the year. I heard
him, on the occasion of a delightful old light-blue Sèvres box he was
using being admired, say in his lisping way, ‘Yes, it is a nice summer
box, but it would not do for winter wear.’” Queen Charlotte had made
snuff-taking fashionable in England, but the habit began to die out
with the Regency. George IV. carried a box, but he had no liking for
it; and, conveying it with a grand air between his right thumb and
forefinger, he was careful to drop it before it reached his nose. He
gave up the custom of offering a pinch to his neighbours, and it was
recognised as a breach of good manners to dip uninvited into a man’s
box. When at the Pavilion the Bishop of Winchester committed such an
infringement of etiquette, Brummell told a servant to throw the rest
of the snuff into the fire. When Lord Petersham died, his snuff was
sold by auction. It took three men three days to weigh it, and realised
three thousand pounds.
Another eccentric was Lord Dudley and Ward, sometime Secretary of State
for Foreign Affairs, who eventually lost his reason. His absence of
mind was notorious, and he had a habit of talking aloud that frequently
landed him in trouble. Dining at the house of a _gourmet_, under
the impression he was at home, he apologised for the badness of the
_entrées_, and begged the company to excuse them on account of the
illness of his cook! Similarly, when he was paying a visit he imagined
himself to be the entertainer, and when his hostess had exhausted her
hints concerning the duration of his call, he murmured, “A very pretty
woman. But she stays a devilish long time. I wish she’d go.” Still more
amusing were his remarks in the carriage of a brother peer who had
volunteered to drive him from the House of Lords to Dudley House: “A
deuce of a bore! This tiresome man has taken me home, and will expect
me to ask him to dinner. I suppose I must do so, but it is a horrid
nuisance.” This was too much for his good-natured companion, who, as
if to himself, droned in the same monotonous tones, “What a bore! This
good-natured fellow Dudley will think himself obliged to invite me to
dinner, and I shall be forced to go. I hope he won’t ask me, for he
gives d----d bad dinners.” These stories recall another related of
an absent-minded royal duke, who, when during the service the parson
proposed the prayer for rain, said in a voice audible throughout the
church, “Yes, by all means let us pray, but it won’t be any good. We
sha’n’t get rain till the moon changes.”