A melancholy, mute, and mournful band;
And Barbers _eke_, who lift the crape-clod Pole,
And round and round their eyes of horror roll;
Desponding, pale, like Hosier’s Ghost so white,
Who told their sorrows ’mid the morning light.
But see! each hopeless wight with fury foams;
His curling-irons breaks, and snaps his combs:
Ah! doom’d to shut their _mouths_ as well as _shops_;
For dead is Custom, ’mid the world of _crops_.”
Wolcot, as a defender of Mrs Fitzherbert, thought no words too strong
in which to express his opinion of those who attacked her, and when
John Rolle introduced the question of her marriage to the Prince of
Wales in the House of Commons, he fell foul of him, and of Pitt, who
supported him:
“Sick at the name of Rolle (to thee tho’ dear),
The name abhorr’d by Honour’s shrinking ear,
I draw reluctant from thy venal throng,
And give it mention, though it blacks my song.
How could’st thou bid that Rolle, despised by all,
On helpless beauty, like a mastiff fall;
Then meanly to correct the brute pretend,
And claim the merit of the Fair One’s friend?”
He had the courage to say a good word for Paine and “The Rights of Man”:
“O Paine! thy vast endeavour I admire. How brave the hope, to set a
realm on fire! Ambition smiling praised thy giant wish. Compared to
_thee_, the man, to gain a name, Who to Diana’s temple put the flame, A
simple Minnow to the Prince of Fish.”
He was fearless in his denunciation of the Duke of York, when it
transpired that during the latter’s occupation of the position of
Commander-in-Chief, his mistress had been selling commissions and
offices, and he voiced the public clamour:
“Heavens, what a dire confusion beauty makes!
The Horse Guards tremble, and old Windsor shakes.
Like bees, the mob around St Stephen’s swarms;
And every street and alley feels alarms:
Men, women, coaches, gigs, each other jostle;
And thou the cause of all this horrid bustle!
Hotels and tap-rooms sound with mingled din,
And every coffee-house is on the grin.
From morn to eve, from eve to midnight dark,
Naught strikes the ear but ‘Duke and Mistress Clarke.’
Nay, too, the parrot and the simple starling
Cry from their cages naught but ‘Duke and Darling’!”
When, as a consequence of the inquiry, the Duke resigned, Wolcot drew a
malicious picture of his loneliness:
“No longer now the Duke excites our wonder,
’Midst gun, drum, trumpet, blunderbuss and thunder;
Amidst his hosts, no more with rapture dwells
On Congreve’s rockets, and on Shrapnell’s shells;
But quits with scornful mien the field of Mars,
And to Sir David’s genius leaves the wars.
Now in dull Windsor rides the youth is seen;
Now, in dull walks to Frogmore with the Queen;
At Oaklands, where pigs and poultry charm,
Like Cincinnatus on his Sabine farm;
Now, o’er a lonely dish in Stable Yard,
Without a friend, and (strange!) without a card!”
Wolcot sometimes contrived to combine his attacks upon art and
royalty, as in “Subjects for Painters,” in the introduction to which
he explained that the rage for historical pictures, “so nobly rewarded
by Messieurs Boydell and Macklin,” tempted him to offer subjects that
would be useful when the painters had exhausted Shakespeare and Milton.
“Pitt trying to unclench Britannia’s fist,
Imploring money for a King;
Telling _most mournful_ tales of Civil List,
The Lady’s _tender_ heart to wring:
Tales of expense in doctors’ bills,
High price of blisters, boluses, and pills;
Long journey to Saint Paul’s t’_oblige_ the Nation,
And give thanks for Restoration:--
Britannia, with arch look the while,
Partaking strongly of a smile,
Pointing to that huge Dome,[15] the Nation’s wealth;
Where _people_ sometimes place their Cash by _stealth_,
And, all so modest with their secret store,
Inform the World they’re _poor_, ah! _very poor_!”
[15] The Bank of England.
As a rule, however, Wolcot directed his lampoons against the King,
whose foibles he most unmercifully laid bare. He was never weary of
decrying a monarch who preferred farming to art, and whose economies
were a source of scandal to the whole nation. It is said that the
bitterness on this latter score arose from the King having purchased a
picture from a friend of the satirist and having given him only half
the market value. This, indeed, was only one instance out of many of
George’s meanness. He would put an artist to the expense of bringing
his pictures to Windsor, and not offer to pay the carriage, even when,
in the case of one such command, the cost was twenty-five pounds. He
would invite eminent singers and actors to perform at Court functions
and give them never a sou, thinking the honour sufficient reward.
“At length the Actress ceased to read and spout,
Where Generosity’s a crying Sin:
Her curtsey dropp’d, was nodded to; came out.
So rich! How rich? As rich as she went in.
Should Mara call it cruelty, and blame
Such royal conduct, I’d cry, Fie upon her!
To Mistress Siddons freely say the same:
Sufficient for _such people_ is the _honour_.”
Wolcot was never weary of harping upon this unroyal quality that was
common to both the sovereigns. He returned to it in the “Odes to Kien
Long, Emperor of China.”
“Give nothing from the Privy Purse away, I say:
Nay, should thy coffers and thy bags run o’er;
Neglect, or pension Merit on the Poor.
Give not to Hospitals; thy Name’s enough:
To death-face Famine, not a pinch of snuff.
On Wealth, thy Quarry, keep a Falcon-view,
And from the very children steal their due!”
The King’s love of farming for profit--a king with a Civil List of
eight hundred thousand pounds and occasional special grants amounting
to millions--was a subject much discussed, and not likely to escape the
attention of our satirist.
“... the note is, ‘How go sheep a score?
What, what’s the price of Bullocks? How sells Lamb?
I want a Boar, a Boar, I want a Boar;
I want a Bull, a Bull; I want a Ram!’
Whereas it should be this: ‘I want a Bard,
To cover him with honour and reward.’”
Indeed, nothing that the King did was allowed to pass without comment.
Did he go to Weymouth, “Peter Pindar” accompanied him in spirit:
“See! Cæsar’s off: the dust around him hovers;
And gathering, lo, the King of Glory covers!
The Royal hubbub fills both eye and ear,
And wide-mouth’d Wonder marks the wild career.”
Did George visit Samuel Whitebread’s brewery, the event was duly
recorded:
“Now moved the King, Queen, and Princesses, so grand,
To visit the first Brewer in the land;
Who sometimes swills his beer and grinds his meat,
In a snug corner christen’d Chiswell Street;
But oftener, charmed with _fashionable_ air,
Amidst the gaudy Great of Portman Square.”
Popular as such verses were, and wide as was their circulation, they
were easily eclipsed in both respects by those in which the stupidity
of the King was chronicled, and people, being so much amused by them,
forgot that the foundation of truth was often so built upon as to
obscure it. “Peter Pindar” was in his element poking fun at George’s
ignorance, as shown when looking through Lord Pembroke’s treasures at
Wilton House.
“‘Who’s this? Who’s this? Who’s this fine fellow here?’
‘Sesostris,’ bowing low, replied the Peer.
‘_Sir Sostris_, hey? _Sir Sostris?_ ‘Pon my word!
Knight or a Baronet, my Lord?
One of _my making_? what, my Lord, _my making_?’
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
‘Pray, pray, my Lord, who’s that big fellow there?’
‘’Tis Hercules,’ replied the _shrinking_ Peer.
‘Strong fellow, hey, my Lord? strong fellow, hey?
Clean’d stables; crack’d a Lion like a flea;
Kill’d Snakes, great Snakes, that in a cradle found him--The
Queen, Queen’s coming: wrap an apron round him.’”
The best thing that Wolcot ever wrote, and one that provoked a laugh
all over England, was “The King and the Apple-Dumplings,” in which
he described George’s astonishment at first seeing a dumpling, one of
which he took into his hand to examine:
“‘’Tis monstrous, monstrous hard, indeed,’ he cried:
‘What makes it, pray, so hard?’ The Dame replied,
Low curtseying, ‘Please your Majesty, the Apple!’
‘Very astonishing indeed! Strange thing!’
(Turning the Dumpling round, rejoined the King).
‘’Tis most extraordinary then, all this is;
It beats Pinetti’s conjuring all to pieces:
Strange I should never of a Dumpling dream!
But, Goody, tell me where, where, where’s the seam?’
‘Sir, there’s no Seam,’ quoth she, ‘I never knew
That folks did Apple-Dumplings _sew_.’
‘No!’ said the staring Monarch with a grin:
‘How, how the devil got the Apple in?’”
Since it was thought unwise to prosecute Wolcot, after a time an
endeavour was made to silence him by gentler means, and, through the
instrumentality of Yorke, the Government offered the satirist a pension
of three hundred a year, at which he professed to be much astonished:
“Great is the shout indeed, Sir, all abroad,
That you have order’d me this handsome thing;
On which, with lifted eyes, I’ve said, ‘Good God!
Though great my merits, yet how great the King!’
And yet, believe me, Sir, I lately heard
That all your doors were doubly lock’d and barr’d
Against the Poet for his tuneful art;
And that the tall, stiff, stately, red Machines,
Your Grenadiers, the guards of Kings and Queens,
Were ordered all to stab me to the heart:
That if to the House of Buckingham I came,
Commands were given to Mistress Brigg,
A comely, stout, two-handed Dame,
To box my ears and pull my wig;
The Cooks to spit me; curry me, the Grooms;
And Kitchen queans to baste me with their brooms.
You’re told that in my ways I’m very evil;
So ugly, fit to travel for a show;
And that I loot all grimly where I go,
Just like a devil;
With horns, and tail, and hoop, that make folks start,
And in my breast a Mill-stone for a Heart.”
Nothing came of the proposal, for it fell through owing to a difference
of opinion as to the conditions which it would carry with it.
“This pension was well meant, O glorious King,
And for the Bard a very pretty thing:
But let me, Sir, refuse it, I implore;
I ought not to be rich while you are poor.
No, Sir, I cannot be your humble Hack:
I fear your Majesty would break my back.”
Wolcot then made a bid for the favour of the Prince of Wales in the
“Expostulatory Odes.”
“Elate, to Carlton House my rhymes I sent,
Before the Poem met the public eye:
Which gain’d _applause_, the Poet’s great intent
But naught _besides_, I say it with a sigh.”
Thereafter, but not necessarily because of this, he found the Prince
nearly as useful a subject for his scathing verses as the King, and
when the former was appointed Regent, “Peter Pindar” was ready with
“The Royal First-Born, or, The Baby out of his Leading Strings.”
“The P[rince] he promised to _be good_,
And do as every R[egen]t should,
Nor give vile slander cause to say things:
He owned with grief his conduct _wildish_,
And swore no longer to be _childish_,
But part with his _Imperial Playthings_.
This is the day when Britain’s pride
Shall throw his leading-strings aside,
And pass a solemn confirmation;
And, being now arrived at age,
From hence shall for himself engage
To do his duty to the nation.
No longer like a baby toss
The bold M[aho]n as his ball,
Make S[heri]d[a]n his rocking horse,
Himself a laughing stock for all.
When he no more in many a frolic
Shall give to Decency the Cholic,
Hang Truth in his imperial garters,
Butchers good-breeding at a jerk,
And crucify (O Parricide and Turk!)
Poor Virtue and Morality, like Martyrs.”
He often returned to administer castigation to the Prince, whose
profligacies were notorious, and when the heir-apparent was said to be
suffering from a sprained ankle, he voiced the general opinion that the
confinement was the result of a thrashing from Lord Yarmouth, whose
wife had been insulted by “The First Gentleman of Europe.”
“Ye Princes, as you love your lives,
Ne’er meddle with _your neighbours’ wives_,
But keep your brittle hearts from tripping;
Lest some rude _Lord_, to scare beholders,
Should compliment your princely shoulders,
With such another _royal_ whipping.
So let us sing, Long live the King,
The Regent long live he;
And when again he gets a _sprain_,
May I be there to see.”
Wolcot’s sight began to fail, and in 1811 he was nearly blind, but he
still contrived to continue his literary work almost until his death,
which took place on 14th January 1819. By his express desire he was
buried in St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden, by the side of the coffin
which contained the mortal remains of Samuel Butler, of whom, perhaps,
and not without some reason, he considered himself a humble disciple.
He was a very sane man, sensible of his limitations, and not given
to value his work unduly. Indeed, in his first work, “The Epistle to
Reviewers,” he stated the position to which he aspired:
“I am no cormorant for Fame, d’ye see;
I ask not _all_ the laurel, but a _sprig_:
Then hear me, Guardian of the sacred Tree,
And stick a Leaf or two about my wig.”
At the same time, he was by no means inclined to hide his light under
a bushel, and his verses contain many deliberately humorous references
to his talents. “Had I not stepped forward as the Champion of my own
Merit (which is deemed so necessary now-a-days for the obtention of
public notice, not only by Authors, but by tête-makers, perfumers,
elastic truss and Parliament-speech makers, &c., who, in the daily
newspapers, are the heralds of _their own_ splendid abilities),” he
wrote in “Subjects for Painters,” “I might possibly be passed by
without observation; and thus a great part of a poetical Immortality be
sacrificed to a pitiful _mauvaise honte_.”
Of course he made many enemies, as every satirist must, but he bore
attacks unflinchingly, as, indeed, every satirist should.
“Great are my Enemies in Trade, God knows:
There’s not a Poet but would stop my note;
With such a world of Spite their venom flows,
With such _good-will_ the knaves would cut my throat.”
As a rule he treated his revilers with good-humoured banter, but once a
critic raised his ire by an unmerciful attack on his “Nil Admirari, or,
A Smile at a Bishop,” in _The Anti-Jacobin_, in which he was styled,
“this disgraceful subject, the profligate reviler of his sovereign
and impudent blasphemer of his God.” Gifford at once issued as a
counterblast, “An Epistle to Peter Pindar,” the savagery of which made
the subject so sore that he endeavoured to thrash the author, who,
however, had the best of the struggle.
“False fugitive! back to thy vomit flee--
Troll the lascivious song, the fulsome glee;
Truck praise for lust, hunt infant genius down,
Strip modest merit of its last half-crown;
Blow from thy mildew’d lips, on virtue blow,
And blight the goodness thou canst never know.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
But what is he that with a Mohawk’s air,
Cries havock, and lets slip the dogs of war?
A blotted mass, a gross unkneaded clod,
A foe to man, a renegade from God,
From noxious childhood to pernicious age,
Separate to infamy, through every stage.”
Yet the man of whom these words were spoken was described by his
friends as of “a kind and hearty disposition,” with little or no malice
in his composition, a lover of flowers, music and art. Not even his
blindness or the infirmities of age soured his temper, and in his last
years he said to Cyrus Redding, “You have seen something of life in
your time. See and learn all you can more. You will fall back upon it
when you grow old--an old fool is an inexcusable fool to himself and
others--store up all; our acquirements are most useful when we become
old.” Yet he did not suffer age gladly, and when on his death-bed John
Taylor asked, “Is there anything I can do for you?” the reply--Wolcot’s
last words on earth--came. “Bring me back my youth.”
“The historian of _Sir Joseph Banks_ and _The Emperor of Morocco_,
of the _Pilgrims and the Peas_, of the _Royal Academy_, and of _Mr
Whitebread’s Brewing-Vat_, the bard in whom the nation and the King
delighted,” Hazlitt wrote the year before the satirist died, “is old
and blind, but still merry and wise; remembering how he has made the
world laugh in his time, and not repenting of the mirth he has given;
with an involuntary smile lighted up at the mad pranks of his Muse,
and the lucky hits of his pen-- ‘faint pictures of those flashes of
his spirit, that were wont to set the table in a roar’; like his own
expiring taper, bright and fitful to the last; tagging a rhyme or
conning his own epitaph; and waiting for the last summons, grateful
and contented.” Indeed, while the coarseness and offensiveness of many
of Wolcot’s works must be admitted and deplored, it is impossible
not to like the man, for he was such a jovial wight, so well able to
appreciate a joke against himself and ready to join in the laugh, a
very prince of good fellows in an age of less severe restrictions in
taste and morality.
Sterne’s Eliza
Not Swift so loved his Stella, Scarron his Maintenon, or Waller his
Sacharissa, as I will love, and sing thee, my bride elect! All these
names, eminent as they were, shall give place to thine, Eliza.” Thus
Sterne in a letter to Mrs Elizabeth Draper, written in the early part
of the year 1767; and though, in spite of this fervent protestation,
not Stella, nor Maintenon, nor Sacharissa has paled before Eliza, yet
most assuredly Eliza has come to be ranked with them among the heroines
of romance.
Of the antecedents of Mrs Draper nothing apparently was generally
known to writers on the subject until 1897, when Mr Thomas Seccombe,
in the article in the _Dictionary of National Biography_ on William
Sclater, Rector of Pitminster, showed that her descent could be traced
from William’s father, Anthony. Anthony Sclater, born in 1520, was
appointed in 1570 Rector of Leighton Buzzard, which benefice he held
until his death in 1620, when he was succeeded in this clerical office
by a younger son, Christopher. Christopher’s son William served in the
Civil Wars as a Cornet of Horse, and subsequently entered the Church.
He was presented in 1666 to the living of St James’s, Clerkenwell, and
later became Rector of Hadley. He died in 1690, having outlived by five
years his son Francis. Francis had a son Christopher, born in 1679,
who held the livings of Loughton and Chingford, in Essex, married in
1707 Elizabeth, daughter of John May, of Working, Hants, and by her
had thirteen children. The tenth son, May, born on 29th October 1719,
went out to India, probably as a cadet in the service of the East
India Company, and there married a Miss Whitehall, who bore him three
daughters, Elizabeth (Sterne’s Eliza), born on 5th April 1744, Mary,
and Louisa. The only other children of Christopher with which this
narrative is concerned are Elizabeth, who married Dr Thomas Pickering,
Vicar of St Sepulchre’s, and Richard, the fourth son, born in 1712, who
became an alderman of the City of London.[16]
[16] From Alderman Richard Sclater is descended the present Lord
Basing, by whose generous courtesy the present writer has had access
to the unpublished letters, preserved at Hoddington House, written
from India by Elizabeth Sclater, afterwards Mrs Draper, to members of
her family in England. Passages from these letters are printed in this
article.
When his daughters were born, May Sclater was factor of Anjengo, on the
Malabar coast, and it was long assumed that his girls were brought up
there. Even so late as 1893, Mr James Douglas, the author of “Bombay
and Western India,” gave credence to the legend, and after stating that
there were very few Europeans at Anjengo, “it seems a marvel,” he
added, “how, never having been in Europe, Eliza should yet have been
able to carry herself and attract so much attention there from men
who, whatever were their morals, claimed a first position in society
and letters.” However, as a matter of fact, like most children born in
India of English parents, Eliza and her sisters were at an early age
sent home for the sake of their health.
In England Eliza stayed alternately with her aunt, Mrs Pickering, and
with her uncle, Richard, for whose eldest children, Thomas Mathew and
Elizabeth, she conceived an enduring affection. Not until she was in
her fourteenth year did she return to her father, now a widower, and
she arrived two days after Christmas, 1757, at Bombay, where he then
resided.
“I was never half so much rejoiced at going to any ball in my life
as when we first saw the land,” (she wrote to her cousin in England,
Elizabeth Sclater, 13th March 1758). “The Dutch people are white, but
their servants are all black, they wear nothing at all about them but
a little piece of rag about their waist which to us at first appeared
very shocking.”
“My Papa’s house is the best in Bombay, and where a great deal of
company comes every day after dinner.”
Among the company that came to May Sclater’s house was Daniel Draper,
who, entering the East India Company’s service in or about 1749, had in
the intervening nine years risen to a fairly good position. In those
days lads went out to India at an early age, and Draper, in 1757, may
well have been no more than thirty, though Dr Sidney Lee has suggested
that he was at least four years older. Draper fell in love with Eliza,
and married her on 28th July 1758, she being then but fourteen. Such
marriages, however, were not then uncommon in India. Two children were
born of this union, a boy in 1759, and a girl in October 1761.
Mrs Draper suffered from ill-health, and in 1765, with her husband
and children, she came to England. The children were taken to an
establishment at Enfield, where Anglo-Indian children were cared
for during the absence of their parents in the tropical zone, and
presently Draper had to return to his post in Bombay. Mrs Draper,
however, remained in England to recover her strength. She stayed with
relatives of her mother and father, but with her movements we are not
here concerned until she was temporarily domiciled in London during
the winter of 1766. It was not until December of that year that she
met Sterne, probably at the town house in Gerrard Street, Soho, of
William James and his wife--the “Mr and Mrs J.” of Sterne’s published
correspondence.
William James, Commodore of the Bombay Marine, having amassed a fortune
by prize-money and mercantile enterprises, retired from the service
at the age of eight and thirty, and came to England in 1759, when he
purchased an estate at Eltham, near Blackheath, and married Anne,
daughter of Edmund Goddard, of Hartham, in Wiltshire. Presently he
became chairman of the East India Company, and in 1778, five years
before his death, he was made a baronet. When Sterne first became
acquainted with the Jameses cannot now be determined, but probably it
was not earlier than after his return from the second visit to the
Continent. It is evident, however, that he was on very intimate terms
with them at the end of 1766, as his references to them in his letters
to Mrs Draper show, though they are mentioned for the first time to his
daughter, then with her mother at Marseilles, in a letter dated 23rd
February 1767. In this letter we learn that the gossips were already
busy coupling Sterne’s name with Mrs Draper’s.
“I do not wish to know who was the busy fool, who made your mother
uneasy about Mrs Draper. ’Tis true I have a friendship for her, but
not to infatuation--I believe I have judgment enough to discern hers,
and every woman’s faults. I honour thy mother for her answer--‘that she
wished not to be informed, and begged him to drop the subject.’”
Nor was Mrs Sterne’s informant the only person who disapproved of the
relations of Sterne and Mrs Draper.