BARHAM: THE AUTHOR OF THE _INGOLDSBY LEGENDS_
There are _coteries_, circles inner and outer, in the world of letters,
and there have always been. There are some in this time of ours whose
members think they are of the giants whose memory the world will not
willingly let die. There were other _coterie_ when the nineteenth
century was but newly come into its second quarter, when the period
that is now known as Early Victorian was in the making, and when the
Queen was young. The members of those literary brotherhoods are gone,
each one to his place, and the memories of the most of them, of the
books they wrote, the jokes they cracked, of their friendships and
quarrels, are dim and dusty to-day. The taste in humour and pathos
is not the taste of this time, which laughs at the pathos, and finds
the humour, when not dull, merely spiteful and vindictive. When you
rise from a perusal of Douglas Jerrold's wounding wit, you think him
ungenerous and a cad, De Quincey's frolics merely elephantine, Hood's
facilities dull, and Leigh Hunt's performances but journalism.
All this is but the foil to show the brilliant humour, the fun, and
the truly pathetic note of Richard Harris Barham's writings to better
effect. Time has breathed upon the glass through which we see the
lives and performances of Barham's contemporaries, and has obscured our
view of them; but the author of the _Ingoldsby Legends_ remains, almost
alone among that Early Victorian band, as acceptable to-day (nay,
perhaps even more acceptable) than he was fifty years ago.
The _Ingoldsby Legend_ will never be allowed to die. Indeed, we live
in times when their admirable sanity might well be invoked as a
counterblast to modern neurotic conditions, and a healthy revulsion
from superstitious revivals. Written at that now historic time when
the Ritualistic innovations and tendency towards Roman Catholicism of
the new school of theology at Oxford were agitating English thought,
they express the common-sense scorn of the healthy mind against the
mystification and deceit of the religion that the Reformation pitched,
neck and crop, out of England, close upon three hundred and seventy
years ago, and for which the large-minded tolerance of to-day is not
enough. Domination is its aim, but no mind that can enjoy the mirth and
marvels of the Legends has any room for such ghostly pretensions, and
their continued popularity is thus, by parity of reasoning, something
of an assurance. The _Ingoldsby Legends_ are included in the _Index
Expurgatorium_ of Rome.
Superfine critics have in recent years declared that Barham's fun has
grown out of date, and that they cannot read him as of old. But your
critic commonly speaks only for himself; and moreover, the superfine,
who cannot read Dickens, for example, have been sadly flouted of late
by the still increasing popular favour of that novelist.
It was in the fertile county of Kent that Barham was born, in the
midst of a district that has ever been the cradle of Barhams. Eight
miles to the south of the old Cathedral of Canterbury, and near
by the Folkestone Road, there lies, secluded in a deep valley, an
old-fashioned farmhouse, unpretending enough to the outward glance, but
quaint and curious within. This is the old manor house of Tappington
Everard, mentioned so often and so familiarly in the _Ingoldsby
Legend_, and for many centuries the home of Richard Harris Barham's
ancestors. "Tom Ingoldsby" himself was, indeed, born at Canterbury,
near the Cathedral precincts, and first saw the world beneath the
shadow of that great Church, of whose glories he was in after years
to tell in his own peculiar and inimitable way. His father, made rich
by hops, was a man of consideration at Canterbury, and filled an
Aldermanic chair with all the dignity that comes of adipose tissue
largely developed. He was, in fact and few words, a fat man, and it was
probably in reference to him that Tom Ingoldsby, in later years, wrote
of the "aldermanic nose" trumpeting in the Cathedral during service.
The Rev. Richard Harris Barham, the self-styled "Thomas Ingoldsby",
claimed descent from the De Bearhams, anciently the FitzUrses, whose
possessions extended round about Tappington for many miles of this fair
county of Kent. He delighted to think that he was descended from one
of those four knights who, on that dark December day of 1170, broke in
upon the religious quiet of the Cathedral and slaughtered Becket in
the north transept. When their crime was wrought the murderers fled,
FitzUrse escaping to Ireland, where he is said to have taken the name
of MacMahon, the Irish equivalent of his original patronymic, which was
just the Norman-Latin for "Bear's Son".
He died an exile, leaving his Manor of Barham to his brother, who,
so odious had the name of FitzUrse now become, changed it for an
Anglicised variant, and called himself "De Bearham." Eventually the
aristocratic prefix "De" fell out of use, and in course of time even
Bearham became "Barham."
The Barhams held place and power here for centuries, giving their name
to the village of Barham, which nestles, embowered in foliage, beneath
the bleak and bare expanse of Barham Downs; their estates dropping from
them little by little until, in the time of James I., the remaining
property was alienated by a Thomas Barham, a nerveless, unworthy
descendant of the fierce FitzUrses, who sold it to the Reverend Charles
Fotherby, Archdeacon of Canterbury. Thus were the Barhams torn from
their native soil and rendered landless.
The adjoining manor of Tappington, next Barham, had been held in
1272 by one Gerrard de Tappington, as one knight's fee. In the reign
of Henry VIII. it was purchased by a certain John Boys, who died in
1544, when his son, William Boys, alienated a small portion of the
demesne to a person named Verrier, and the manor, with the remainder
of the demesne, to one Marsh, to whose descendants it passed until at
length sold by Colonel Thomas Marsh to Mr. Thomas Harris, hopfactor of
Canterbury, who died in 1729, and whose daughter and sole heiress had,
by a singular freak of fate, married a John Barham, bringing him not
only the old manor of Tappington, or Tapton Wood, as it has sometimes
been styled, as her dower, but also some portions of the long-lost
lands of those whom he claimed for ancestors, including the manors of
Parmstead (called in olden times Barhamstead).
It will be noted that it was a John Barham--not necessarily one of
the Barhams of Tappington--who thus secured the Harris heiress. Kent
contains more than one family of the name, but let us hope, for the
sake of sentiment, that all Barhams, of whatever district, descend from
the original assassin. It would certainly have been a grievous thing
to Tom Ingoldsby if he had been compelled to cherish a doubt of the
blood-boltered genuineness of his own ancestry. We have, indeed, some
slightly different versions of what became of the FitzUrse family. One
tells us that a branch lingered long in the neighbourhood of Williton,
in Somerset, under their proper name, which became successively
corrupted into Fitzour, and Fishour, and at last assumed the common
form of Fisher. This is good news for Fishers anxious to assume long
descent, even if they have to date from a murderer. Time throws an
historic condonation over such things, and many an ambitious person who
would not willingly kill a fly, and who would very naturally shrink
from owning any connection with a homicidal criminal now on his trial,
would glow with pride at an attested family tree springing from that
blood-thirsty knight.
Another tales gives the Italian name of Orsini as a variant of
FitzUrse. If there be anything in it, then assuredly the notorious
Orsini of the infernal machine, who attempted the life of Napoleon
III., was a reversion to twelfth century type.
Other Barhams there are known to fame: Henry, surgeon and natural
history writer, who died in 1726, and was one of the family of Barhams
of Barham Court; and Nicholas Barham, lawyer, of Wadhurst, Sussex,
who died in 1577, and was descended from the Barhams of Teston,
near Maidstone. Nicholas was ever a favourite Christian name with
all branches of the family, and Tom Ingoldsby so named his youngest
son--the "Little Boy Ned" of the Legends.
The witty and mirth-provoking Reverend Richard Harris Barham, destined
to bear the most distinguished name of all his race, was fourth in
descent from the peculiarly fortunate John Barham who wedded the Harris
hopfields and the Harris daughter. His father, himself a "Richard
Harris" Barham--was that alderman of capacious paunch of whom mention
has already been made. He resided at 61, Burgate Street, Canterbury, a
large, substantial house of pallid grey brick, plain almost to ugliness
outside, but remarkably comfortable and beautifully appointed within,
standing at the corner of Canterbury Lane. A brick of the garden wall
facing the lane may be observed, scratched lightly with "M. B. 1733."
To this house he had succeeded on the death of his father, Richard
Barham, in 1784. He did not very long enjoy the inheritance.
[Illustration: "TOM INGOLDSBY": THE REV. RICHARD HARRIS BARHAM.
_From a drawing by his son, the Rev. Richard Harris Dalton Barham._]
The alderman was of truly aldermanic proportions, for he weighed
nineteen stone. Existing portraits of him introduce us to a personage
of a more than Falstaffian appearance, and the tale is still told how
it was found necessary to widen the doorway at the time of his funeral.
For eleven years he lived here; and here it was, December 6th, 1788,
that the only child of himself and his housekeeper, Elizabeth Fox, was
born.
Elizabeth Fox came from Minster-in-Thanet. A miniature portrait of her
shows a fair-haired, bright-eyed woman, with abundant indications of
a sunny nature, rich in wit and humour. It is quite clear that it was
from his mother Ingoldsby derived his mirthful genius, just as in a
companion miniature of himself, painted at the age of six, representing
him as a pretty, vivacious little boy with large brown roguish eyes, he
bore a striking likeness to her.
It is singular to note that the future rector of St. Mary Magdalene in
the City of London was as an infant baptised at a church of precisely
the same dedication--that of St. Mary Magdalene in Burgate Street, a
few doors only removed from his birthplace. The tower only of that
church is now standing, the rest having been pulled down in 1871. It is
still possible to decipher some of the tablets fixed against the wall
of the tower, but exposed to the weather and slowly decaying. There is
one to Ingoldsby's grandfather, Richard, who died December 11th, 1784,
aged 82, and to his grandmother, Elizabeth Barham, who died October
2nd, 1781, aged 81; and other tablets commemorate his aunts Eliza and
Sarah, who died September 26th, 1782, and December 16th, 1784, aged
respectively forty-six and forty-four years.
[Illustration: THE HOUSE, 61, BURGATE STREET, CANTERBURY, WHERE
THE AUTHOR OF THE "INGOLDSBY LEGENDS" WAS BORN.]
[Illustration: ST. MARY MAGDALENE, BURGATE STREET, CANTERBURY.]
Ingoldsby was only in his seventh year when a very serious thing
befell, for his father, the alderman, died in 1795. Those who love
their Ingoldsby and everything that was his, as the present writer
does, will be interested to know that he was buried at Upper Hardres
("Hards," in the Kentish speech), a small and lonely village, four
miles from Canterbury, on the old Stone Street, as you go towards
Lympne and Hythe. There, in the village church, high up on the south
wall of the nave, the tablet to his memory may be found. What became
of Elizabeth Fox is beyond our ken. We are told, in the _Life and
Letters of Richard Harris Barham_, by his son the Reverend Richard
Dalton Barham, that she was at the time a confirmed invalid.
[Illustration: WESTWELL.]
[Illustration: THE HALL, 61, BURGATE STREET, CANTERBURY, WHERE THE
AUTHOR OF THE "INGOLDSBY LEGENDS" WAS BORN.]
To three guardians had been given the administration of the
comfortable patrimony of the boy, and by them he was sent to St.
Paul's School, then in the City of London. Thence he went to
Brasenose, Oxford, leaving the university with a modest B.A., degree
in 1811. Meanwhile the villain of the piece had been at work, in
the person of a dishonest attorney, one of his guardians, by whose
practices his fortune was very seriously reduced. Returning to
Canterbury, he seems to have contemplated studying for the law, but
quickly relinquished the idea, and prepared himself for the Church.
He was admitted to holy orders, and in 1813, in his twenty-fifth year
obtained a curacy at Ashford. This was exchanged in the following year
for the curacy of the neighbouring village of Westwell. Thus he was
fairly launched on his professional career, becoming successively
Rector of Snargate and Curate of Warehorne, Minor Canon of St. Paul's
and Rector of the united parishes of St. Mary Magdalene with St.
Gregory-by-St.-Paul's, and finally, by exchange in 1842, Rector of
St. Faith-by-St.-Paul's--a fine mid-nineteenth century specimen of
the "squarson." A competent genealogist, an accomplished antiquary,
a man of letters, he, by force of his sprightly wit, welded the
fragmentary legends of the country--but largely those of his native
county of Kent--into those astonishing amalgams of fact and fiction
which, published first, from time to time, in _Bentley's Miscellany_,
were collected and issued as the _Ingoldsby Legends_. It is not the
least among the charms of those verses that fact and fiction are so
inextricably mixed in them that it needs the learning of the skilled
antiquary to sift the one from the other; and so plausible are many of
his ostensible citations from old Latin documents, and his fictitious
genealogies so interwoven with the names, the marriages and descents
of persons, real and imaginary, that an innocent who wrote some years
ago to _Notes and Queries_, desiring further particulars of what
he thought to be genuine records, is surely to be excused for his
too-ready faith.
The assumed name of "Ingoldsby" is stated by his son to be found in
a branch of the family genealogy, but inquiry fails to trace the
name in that connection, and it may be said at once that the Kentish
Ingoldsbys are entirely figments of Barham's lively imagination.
Yorkshire knows a family of that name, of whom Barham probably had
never heard anything save their name. He was a man of property, and
modestly proud of the descent he claimed, and though by no means
rich, his place was among--
The _élite_ of the old county families round,
Such as Honeywood, Oxenden, Knatchbull and Norton,
Matthew Robinson, too, with his beard, from Monk's Horton,
The Faggs, and Finch-Hattons, Tokes, Derings, and Deedses,
And Fairfax (who then called the castle of Leeds his).
He was, in fact, "armigerous", as heralds would say, and the arms of
his family were--not those lioncels of the Shurlands impaled with the
saltire of the Ingoldsbys, of which we may read in the Legends--but as
pictured here. It may be noted that another Barham family--the Barhams
of Teston, near Maidstone--bore the three bears for arms, without the
distinguishing fesse; and that they are shown thus on an old brass
plate in Ashford church, which Ingoldsby must often have seen during
his early curacy there.
[Illustration: THE BARHAM COAT-OF-ARMS.]
When, however, he talks of the escutcheons displayed in the great hall
of Tappington, charged with the armorial bearings of the family and
its connections, he does more than to picturesquely embroider facts.
He invents them, and the "old coat" "in which a _chevron between
three eagles' cuisses sable_ is blazoned quarterly with the _engrailed
saltire_ of the Ingoldsbys"--which Mr. Simpkinson found to be that
of "Sir Ingoldsby Bray, _temp._ Richard I."--is one not known to the
Heralds' College.
Behind that farcical "Mr. Simpkinson, from Bath," lurks a real person,
and one not unknown to those who have read Britton and Brayley books
on Cathedral antiquities. John Britton, the original of Simpkinson,
was, equally with his contemporary Barham, an antiquary and genealogist
of accomplishment, and a herald of repute. Barham would not have
allowed as much, for there was, it would seem, a certain amount of
ill-feeling between the two, which resulted in the satirical passages
relating to "Mr. Simpkinson" to be met with in the pages of the
_Ingoldsby Legends_. They tell us that he was, among other things,
"an influential member of the Antiquarian Society, to whose 'Beauties
of Bagnigge Wells' he had been a liberal subscriber"; and that "his
inaugural essay on the President's cocked-hat was considered a miracle
of erudition; and his account of the earliest application of gilding
to gingerbread a masterpiece of antiquarian research." In all this one
finds something of that rapier-thrust of satire, that mordant wit which
comes of personal rivalry; and the heartfelt scorn of a man who loved
architecture, and was, indeed, a member of the first Archæological
Institute, but who whole-heartedly resented the introduction of picnic
parties into archæological excursions, and revolted at popularising
architecture and antiquarian research by brake parties, in which
the popping of champagne corks punctuated the remarks of speakers
holding forth on the architectural features of buildings in a style
sufficiently picturesque and simple to hold the attention of the
ladies. Those who have found how unconquerable is the indifference of
the public to these things will appreciate to the fullest extent the
feelings of Tom Ingoldsby, while yet reserving some meed of admiration
for John Britton's labours, which did much to advance the slow-growing
knowledge of Gothic architecture in the first half of the century.
His work may halt somewhat, his architectural knowledge be something
piecemeal and uninformed with inner light; but by his labours many
others were led to pursue the study of ecclesiastical art.
But the humour with which Barham surrounded "Mr. Simpkinson's" doings
took no count of his accomplishments, as may be seen in the excursion
to "Bolsover Priory", narrated in "The Spectre of Tappington".
"Bolsover Priory", said Mr. Simpkinson, "was founded in the reign of
Henry VI. about the beginning of the eleventh century. Hugh de Bolsover
had accompanied that monarch to the Holy Land, in the expedition
undertaken by way of penance for the murder of his young nephews in
the Tower. Upon the dissolution of the monasteries, the veteran was
enfeoffed in the lands and manor, to which he gave his own name of
Bolsover, or Bee-Owls-Over (by corruption Bolsover)--a Bee in chief
over Three Owls, all proper, being the armorial ensigns borne by this
distinguished crusader at the siege of Acre."
Thus far Simpkinson. Now Barham turns, with good effect, on the
ignorant sightseers to whom ruins are just a curiosity and nothing
more.
"'Ah! that was Sir Sidney Smith,' said Mr. Peters; 'I've heard tell of
him, and all about Mrs. Partington, and--'
"'P., be quiet, and don't expose yourself!' sharply interrupted his
lady. P. was silenced, and betook himself to the bottled stout.
"'These lands,' continued the antiquary, 'were held in grand sergeantry
by the presentation of three white owls and a pot of honey----'
"'Lassy me! how nice!' said Miss Julia. Mr. Peters licked his lips.
"'Pray give me leave, my dear--owls and honey, whenever the king should
come a-rat-catching in this part of the country.'
"'Rat-catching!' ejaculated the Squire, pausing abruptly in the
mastication of a drum-stick.
"'To be sure, my dear sir; don't you remember that rats once came under
the forest laws--a minor species of venison? "Rats and mice, and such
small deer," eh?--Shakespeare, you know. Our ancestors ate rats; and
owls, you know, are capital mousers----'
"'I seen a howl,' said Mr. Peters."
"Bolsover Priory" is one of those few places mentioned by Ingoldsby
that have not been identified with any real place in Kent. It might
have been taken to mean the ruins of the Preceptory at Swingfield
Minnis, some two miles from Tappington, had not Barham expressly said,
in his prefatory notes to the "Witches' Frolic," that they were not the
same.
[Illustration: NO. 4, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD, DEMOLISHED 1901.]
The literary landmarks associated with Barham's residence in London
are readily traced. On leaving Kent in 1821 to take up his residence
in London, he, for a time, rented the upper part of the house, still
standing, No. 51, Great Queen Street, Holborn. There his eldest
surviving daughter, Caroline Frances Barham, afterwards Lady Bond,
was born, July 22nd, 1823. In 1824, following his appointment to
the rectorship of St. Mary Magdalene, the family removed to a house
numbered "4" on the south side of St. Paul's churchyard, and there
remained until 1839, when an exchange was made to a house in Amen
Corner, Paternoster Row--the first house through the gateway--by
arrangement with Sydney Smith, who was leaving it to reside in Green
Street, Mayfair.
He describes the garden at the back of this house as "containing three
polyanthus roots, a real tree, a brown box border, a snuff-coloured
jessamine, a shrub which is either a dwarf acacia or an overgrown
gooseberry bush, eight broken bottles, and a tortoise-shell tom-cat
asleep in the sunniest corner, with a wide and extensive prospect of
the back of the 'Oxford Arms,' and a fine _hanging_ wood (the 'new
drop' at Newgate) in the distance."
[Illustration: AMEN CORNER, WHERE BARHAM DIED.]
But the sprightly wit, the sound common-sense, the good-natured satire,
were doomed to early extinction. It was in the prime of life, and
when he might well have looked forward to further consolidating and
extending the fame his genius had already brought, that the blow fell
which laid him low. He had already, some twenty years earlier, suffered
some slight temporary trouble with a sensitive throat, and although
in general a robust man, was in that respect peculiarly liable to the
weather. It happened, unfortunately, that he was present as a spectator
at the opening by the Queen of the new Royal Exchange, October 28th,
1844. It was a bleak day, and, sitting at an open window in Cheapside
placed at his disposal by a friend, he caught a chill from whose
effects he never recovered. The evil was a stubborn inflammation of
the throat, which clung to him throughout the winter, and by degrees
reduced the strong man to an alarmingly weak condition. In the February
of 1845 he was induced to visit Bath, in the hope of recovery in that
mild atmosphere, but an imprudent return to London in the treacherous
month of March, in order to attend a meeting of the Archæological
Association, aggravated the malady. Still, that strong physique
struggled against illness, and he once more partly recovered, only to
be again laid low by a cold caught at an April vestry meeting in St.
Paul's. It was, however, not merely an exaggerated susceptibility to
cold that by this time dogged his every excursion into the open air,
but the grossly mistaken treatment of his medical man, who had inflamed
the malady by applying caustic to the uvula. At the beginning of May,
although reduced almost to the condition of a helpless child by his
sufferings, he was taken again to the west; this time to Clifton, near
Bristol. Unhappily, the local practitioner who was called in to attend
him was by no means a properly qualified man, and on hearing of the
mistaken treatment already followed, could think of nothing better than
to continue it. It is not remarkable, under the circumstances, that he
experienced no relief from the climate of Clifton, but grew steadily
weaker. It was a sad time, for his wife was simultaneously laid low
with illness. Everything devolved upon his daughter, Frances, then only
in her twentieth year, for his son Dick was away in Cambridgeshire,
doing duty as a clergyman.
The dying man--for the truth could be no longer disguised--kept a
spirit of the supremest cheerfulness and Christian courage. His
humorous verses on the incidents of his distressing illness--originally
composed as replies to the inquiries of anxious friends and afterwards
published in the collection of _Ingoldsby Lyrics_ as "The Bulletin,"
are no whit inferior to the productions of his careless health.
[Illustration: RUINS OF ST. MARY MAGDALENE, OLD FISH STREET HILL, CITY
OF LONDON, AFTER THE FIRE OF DECEMBER 1886.]
When recovery at Clifton seemed hopeless, he was removed again to
London, to the house he had occupied for the last six years, and made a
grim joke as they assisted him into the house, on the appropriateness
of his being brought at that juncture to Amen Corner. A few days he lay
there, life ebbing away from sheer weakness; his mind still clear, and
divided between making the most careful disposition of his property and
fond memories of that "little boy Ned" who had died, untimely, some
years before. It was then he wrote that last poem, the beautiful "As I
Laye a-thynkynge," printed at the end of all editions of the _Ingoldsby
Legends_ as "The Last Lines of Thomas Ingoldsby." There is not, to my
mind, anything more exquisitely beautiful and pathetic in the gorgeous
roll of English literature than the seven stanzas of the swan-song of
this master of humour and pathos. It is wholly for themselves, and not
by reason of reading into them the special circumstances under which
they were written, that so sweeping a judgment is made. That they have
never been properly recognised is due to the Wardour Street antiquity
of their spelling, and still more to that strange insistence which
ordains that the accepted wit and humourist must always be "funny" or
go unacknowledged. It is a strange penalty; one that would seek to
deprive the humourist of all human emotions save that of laughter, and
so make him that reproach of honest men--a cynic.
It was on June 17th, 1845, that Barham died, untimely, before the
completion of his fifty-seventh year. He was buried in the vaults of
his former church, St. Mary Magdalene, Old Fish Street Hill, one of
those half-deserted city churches built by Sir Christopher Wren after
the Great Fire of London. There he might have lain until now, but for
the fire of December 2nd, 1886, which destroyed the building. For at
least four years the blackened and roofless ruins stood, fronting
Knightrider Street, and then they were removed, to make way for
warehouses. The contents of the vaults were at the same time dispersed,
the remains of Tom Ingoldsby being removed to Kensal Green Cemetery,
while the tablet to his memory was appropriately transferred to St.
Paul's, where, in the crypt, it may still be seen.