+-------------------------------------------------+
|Transcriber’s note: |
| |
|Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. |
| |
+-------------------------------------------------+
DRURY LANE
VOL. II.
LONDON: PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET
IN AND ABOUT
DRURY LANE
_AND OTHER PAPERS_
REPRINTED FROM THE PAGES OF THE ‘TEMPLE BAR’ MAGAZINE
BY
DR DORAN
AUTHOR OF ‘TABLE TRAITS AND SOMETHING ON THEM’ ‘JACOBITE LONDON’
‘QUEENS OF ENGLAND OF THE HOUSE OF HANOVER’
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. II.
[Illustration: Logo FIDE·ET·FIDUCIA RB]
LONDON
RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen
1881
_All rights reserved_
CONTENTS
OF
THE SECOND VOLUME.
PAGE
LIFE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 1
THE POSTMAN’S KNOCK 26
THE TWENTY-THOUSAND-POUND WIDOW 53
TO BRIGHTON AND BACK AGAIN 78
ON SOME CLUBS, AND THEIR ENDS 105
THROUGH THE PARKS 134
SOME SCOTSWOMEN 160
THE DIBDINS 190
HORATIO NELSON AND EMMA HAMILTON 222
EDWARD WORTLEY MONTAGU 285
ROYAL AND IMPERIAL JOKERS 327
_LIFE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY._
But for Pepys and Evelyn we should know but little of the social life
of the seventeenth century. A host of letter writers--Walpole, Mrs.
Delany, and Mrs. Montagu, at the head of them--may be said to have
photographed the next century for us. Lord Malmesbury, Lord Auckland,
and some others succeeded; and now we are beginning to have revelations
exclusively of the first years of the nineteenth century. The most
important contributor to our knowledge in this respect is the late Sir
George Jackson, whose volumes, ably edited by his widow, will afford
us samples of the times in which our grandmothers were young and had
swains at their feet--unless war called them away.
Gay people on the Continent had a bad time of it when war broke out
in 1803, and the French government issued orders for the arrest of
all English persons on whom hands could be laid. Bath expected to be
more brilliant than ever by the return of the absentees; but their
difficulty was _how_ to return. All who were in France were made
prisoners. A precipitate flight of crowds of English travellers from
Geneva took place. They were not safe on any part of the Continent;
but some, in disguise and on foot, reached Berlin, others got to the
sea and arrived in England; but Bath was not sensible of any increase
in numbers or gaiety, for the times were out of joint, though dowagers
still played whist and young couples danced minuets.
Many of those who were shut up at Verdun chafed under the restraint as
intolerable. Some, however, bore it philosophically, others gaily. A
few took to French mistresses; other few to French wives. The French
officials made ‘a good thing’ out of those who had money, granting
them partial liberty for so many days or hours, according to the
‘consideration.’ Two or three, having spent hundreds of pounds in
their bribes, at last took ‘French leave,’ and were lucky in not being
recaptured. Their course is not to be commended. We have a higher
opinion of Sir Sidney Smith, who, when a prisoner in the Temple,
refused to have his parole, used to tell the governor to be vigilant,
as he would be off on the first opportunity, and ultimately kept his
word, broke prison, and found his painful way to England.
The seriousness of the times and their events little affected the
Prince of Wales. He was indeed thought to be ill in the early part
of 1804; but the illness arose, it was said, from the fact that the
Prince and the Duke of Norfolk had been so drunk, for three whole
days, that the former at last fell like a pig, and would have died
like one, but for prompt and copious bleeding. How rude the ‘first
gentleman’ could be, when he chose, to his wife, is well-known. At a
drawing-room, held by Queen Charlotte in June 1807, when the Prince
and Princess of Wales were present, he took no notice of the Princess.
Turning his back upon her, he stood between her and the Queen, and
as long as the Princess remained he kept up a conversation with his
sisters, thereby preventing them from addressing a word to his wife.
This feeling against his wife he paraded everywhere. He was jealous of
her popularity--quite unnecessarily, for she made herself ridiculous,
and the subject of scornful criticism, by her lavish display at
evening parties of her protuberant beauties. At these parties, the
Prince would stare at ladies whom he knew, without speaking to them.
His condescending speech was addressed only to his first wife, Mrs.
Fitzherbert, and her sister, Lady Haggerstone. The first of these
ladies lived at Brighton with the state of a queen and the spirit
of a goddess of mirth. Meanwhile, his Royal Highness flirted with
his ‘future Duchess,’ the Marchioness of Hertford. One of Queen
Fitzherbert’s merriest tales related how a man had sent to her some
lemonade powders he had invented, on the ground that they were highly
approved and constantly used by the Marchioness in question.
In 1802 Bath was surprised by a visit from the Duke of York. He brought
the Duchess with him, and left her there next day. Her friends reported
that she had been bitten in the hand by one of her numerous pet dogs,
and that the wound was privately pumped upon daily. But the public
story was, that his Royal Highness had lost 200,000_l._ at play, and
had been compelled to break up his town establishment. The scandalous
story of the Duke and Mrs. Clarke, a mistress, who sold places and
commissions, is pleasantly balanced by an incident respecting a son
of the Duke of Clarence and his mistress, Mrs. Jordan--Lieutenant
Fitzclarence, in 1809. He was in Spain with our army in that year, and
he reversed La Fontaine’s fable of the mule who was always talking
of his mother the mare, but said little of his father the ass. The
lieutenant was the foolish aide-de-camp of a foolish General Shaw, who
was always showing him about to the Spaniards as the King of England’s
grandson.
That grandson was about to be despatched on a mission to the Continent
in 1813, but ministers changed their minds. They were afraid he would
write every thing to his father, who would publish it in Bond Street;
and so the gentleman was kept at home to sun himself in the bow window
at White’s.
The grandest fête of sixty years since was the one given by the Prince,
at Carlton House, in 1811. The King was in such ill health and the
Princess Amelia in such a precarious condition that it was often
deferred; and Jekyll remarked that no one could ever again say, ‘Fixed
as fate!’ At length it came off, and, for one happy invited guest,
made a hundred mad who were not invited. The Queen and Princesses
declined to be present; but Louis XVIII. and the sad-looking Duchess
of Angoulême appeared there, and the Prince received the former as
a sovereign _de facto_. ‘I am only a Comte de Lille,’ said Louis
modestly. ‘Sire,’ said the Prince, ‘you are the King of France and
Navarre;’ and he treated his guest accordingly. Both the Prince’s wives
(Mrs. Fitzherbert and the Princess of Wales) sat at home by themselves;
but the ‘favourite’ was honoured by a command to attend the festival.
One of the Prince’s ideas was to divorce his second wife and shut her
up in Holyrood House for ever. This grand fête, it may be added, was
soon forgotten in the excitement caused by the fight that was to come
off between the Baltimore negro, Molyneux, and the chief of English
boxers, Tom Cribb! It was a time, moreover, when later hours began to
be fashionable. We hear of a ball lasting from twelve till eight; and
of another at which the majority of dancers kept it up till ten in the
morning.
We go back a couple of years, in order to remark that in 1809, while
there was no lack of enjoyment among optimists, the press saw the worst
side of everything; and the ‘Times’ especially denied or explained
away our victories generally, and that of Talavera in particular. The
public seem to have been almost as ill-informed as to what was being
done abroad as they are now by ‘our own correspondents,’ who are
sent to describe battle-fields or other troublesome matters, and who
write columns on the boiling of their eggs and the obstinacy of their
laundresses. ‘It is too much,’ says Jackson, ‘to hear the victory of
Talavera called in question by the “Times;” a victory as honourable to
British arms and British generalship as any they ever achieved. That
paper should be offered up as a sacrifice to the manes of the heroes
who fell on the Alberche. I have not patience to read it.’
In 1814 the Prince Regent had a narrow escape for his life. On one of
his evenings of _ennui_ he sent for George Colman to come from the
King’s Bench, where he was a prisoner, to amuse him. Court jester and
prince, they passed the night, drinking and fooling, till six o’clock,
when his Highness was carried to bed in an apoplexy, from which he
only recovered at the cost of seven and twenty ounces of blood! He
was as near death at this critical juncture as a man could be and yet
live. His constitution, however, carried him through. When the allied
sovereigns entered London he was ready for all the duties and eager for
all the pleasures that the occasion offered; but he shocked some people
on one occasion by presiding at a public dinner on a Sunday.
That English society wanted refinement in the first decade of the
present century is not to be disputed. When Mr. Jackson returned from
long diplomatic service abroad in 1806, he dined one day at Lord
Westmoreland’s. The guests were chiefly Russians. They were as much out
of their element in English society as the young diplomatist says _he_
was after the sociability, ease, and elegance of the society at foreign
courts to which he had so long been accustomed.
Some of that foreign society was quite as free as it was easy. Jackson
and other Englishmen at the Prussian court were admitted to the morning
toilette of Madame de Vos, the King of Prussia’s _grande maîtresse_.
While under the hands of her hairdresser she laughed and flirted with
the English lords and gentlemen, who paid tribute to her beauty by
making her presents of wine and tea, and other English matters, which
she greedily accepted. There are three things, says the Welsh proverb,
which always swallow and are never satisfied--the grave, the sea, and a
king’s concubine.
Austerlitz killed Pitt as surely as Trafalgar killed Nelson. Each died
for his country, but that country mourned more deeply for the great
admiral, stricken down in the battle where he was the victor, than it
did for the great minister who died of a broken heart. The last book
he read, at Bath, was Miss Owenson’s (Lady Morgan’s) ‘Novice of St.
Dominic.’ That now unreadable romance, Pitt said, he could not lay down
till he had finished it, and thence did the ‘Novice’ come to be the
rage for a time. People almost fought to obtain it at the libraries,
and nothing in literature was talked of but a book which has long since
fallen out of literature and of memory altogether. People, too, fought
for another novel, ‘A Winter in London,’ in which fashionable life was
illustrated by an incapable whose name and whose work are equally wrapt
in oblivion.
Fox did not long survive his great rival Pitt. He died on the 13th
of September, 1806. A week previously, when he was already dying, he
transacted public business. He gave an audience in his bedroom to
George Jackson, with instructions as to how the latter was to act on
his new mission to Germany. There was a mixture of the solemn and
the ludicrous in the scene. When Jackson was announced Mrs. Fox, in
complete deshabille, was in the room. In her flurry she slipped into a
closet, and, as the interview was prolonged, the lightly-draped lady
kept signalling to Mr. Fox, as if he alone could hear her, by little
coughs and murmurs, to warn him not to over-exert himself, or to
dismiss the envoy, that she might be set free. At a moment when there
was a pause in the conversation between the minister and his agent the
fair captive tapped at the panel, asked if the young gentleman was
not gone, and complained of being cold. The dying statesman looked
at Jackson with a languid smile, and with friendly wishes bade him
farewell--as it proved, for ever.
Descending to minor legislators, we meet with an Irish M.P., who,
being told that the favour he asked would be granted on condition
of his supporting government, replied that he would not give his
_constant_ support for so paltry a favour. The Irish member obtained
the favour, and voted twice for government in payment for it. This was
better diplomacy than Sir Charles Stuart’s (Marquis of Londonderry),
who, when named to a post in Germany, told people that he was going
to Spain, by way of being diplomatic. We were unlucky in our leading
diplomatists generally at that time. Lord Aberdeen may serve as an
example. He went to Toplitz, as English ambassador, and had the bad
taste and idiotic indiscretion to say one day, openly at dinner, that
he could not bear the undertaking, and would not go on with it to keep
the crowns on the allied heads! One qualification was necessary to even
a decently moderate success, namely, the ability to speak French; but
Lord Aberdeen not only could not speak two words of French, but had
the folly to tell everybody who addressed him in that language that he
hated it. There was in some persons as much bad taste in acts as there
was in others in words; and it is not without surprise that we hear of
gentlemen sightseers who would pass the morning amid the horrors of a
field of recent battle, and the evening at the play, philandering with
ladies and talking an infinite deal of nothing. On another occasion, we
hear of the gayest and most gigantic of picnics, where luxury abounded,
while, within a few miles, French soldiers were dropping dead with
hunger as they slowly retreated.
Mrs. Fitzherbert was in the early part of the century the Queen of
Brighton, if not of England, and she was popularly called ‘Mrs.
Prince.’ She certainly was one of the most queen-like women that
ever lived; and stood in favourable contrast with Lady Holland, who
is justly described as fussy, almost rude, straining at effect, and
losing it in the very effort. There was another lady then in England
striving to be effective, Madame de Staël; and she (who horrified Henry
Brougham) was pronounced by female critics as ‘too anxious to glitter
to be intrinsically good.’ A still more remarkable woman of that day
was Lady Caroline Lamb. She was at a party at Lady Heathcote’s, had
been flirting and quarrelling with Lord Byron, and therefore ‘stabbed
herself with a knife at supper, so that the blood flew about her
neighbours.’ When she came to, after a faint, a glass of water was
handed to her, but she smashed the glass and cut herself with the
pieces. ‘A little discipline,’ said Francis Jackson, ‘will bring these
school-girl fancies into order.’ A good deal of disorder was to be
found at breakfast as well as at supper-tables. Lady Caroline Hood was,
probably, counselled not to go to the Regent’s ‘breakfast’; but ladies
will, under certain circumstances, disregard friends and doctors also.
Lady Caroline went, and had only herself to blame when she had to be
carried away wrapped up in blankets.
Mrs. Fitzherbert’s conduct at Brighton was not always in the best
taste. Mrs. Gunn, the bathing-woman, invariably addressed her as ‘Mrs.
Prince’; but the latter did not live at the level of that dignity. She
held afternoon gossips in her little drawing room, hung with black
profiles (her _salon aux silhouettes_). Only guests of distinction were
admitted here to exchange the stories of the day for piquant anecdotes
and a cup of tea. There, too, M. le Prince was a subject of discussion.
His sayings and doings were pretty freely handled. It was all done
with gusto and elicited much mirth; but some visitors, who were glad to
be there, professed to think it all very naughty and in the worst taste.
The fair one who had the reputation of being fairest where all were
fair--the reigning queen of beauty in fact--was Miss Rumbold, daughter
of Sir George. She was a ‘dashing’ beauty; but if to be beautiful was
not common, to be dashing was to be fashionable. Accordingly, we find
Miss Rumbold attended so little to the hints and admonitions of the
Bishop of Durham, that the love of showing off an amazingly fine ankle
prevented more than one offer from among the crowd of her adorers. The
same pretty vanity was strong in the Princess Charlotte, at a later
period, but Prince Leopold was not kept thereby from being a suitor.
It may be concluded that gentlemen were, after all, not so particular
as the adorers of Miss Rumbold, if Texier truly said of his daughter
(whose beauty he was always praising in her presence) that there were
five hundred lords, any one of whom would have been the happiest of men
to have her for his own.
The utmost regularity was not incompatible with much eccentricity in
many of the foremost individuals of the time. One of them, the Duke of
Bedford, arranged his movements for a whole year in advance; and if one
went wrong, his Grace was put out for six or eight months together.
The silent Duke was under the thumb of his rattling Duchess, who used
to laugh at his announcement, on starting for a long journey, of the
precise moment of his return, and what dishes were to be ready for him
on his arrival. He would be there, D.V., of course; but in any case,
there he would be. The Duchess was as irregular as the Duke was the
opposite. His obedience to her was that of Jerry Sneak. She would cry
out in a room full of people, Johnny, do this; Johnny, do that; Johnny,
I did not see you bow to such a person! Speak to him directly, and
speak German, Johnny--and Duke Johnny answered not, but like a good
boy, unhesitatingly obeyed.
Lady Holland, fanciful, sharp, and impertinent, did not attract
Jackson’s brother Francis. Clever, he allowed that wayward lady to be,
but not a wit of the quality she would fain have been thought. ‘There
is too much effort--a straining after effect in all she says and does;
and the effect is not always what she wishes or imagines it to be.’
In behalf of some of the fine ladies of the time, government officials
cheated their own revenue department without scruple. Jackson was,
one day in 1810, amused to find the ‘subs’ at the Foreign Office very
anxious, at Lord Wellesley’s suggestion, to devise means of getting
a box of shoes which had been sent from Spain, for Lady Holland, but
which had been seized by the Custom House officers. Lady Holland was
capricious, and as often insolent as civil; but she was not mean, like
Lady Hyde Parker, who gave a ball to a crowd of guests and sent them
home without supper. By the way, when there was a ball at Buckingham
House, in the opening years of the century, no guests under the rank of
earls’ sons and daughters were invited; but this exclusiveness had to
be laid aside.
Nearly sixty years ago there was a queen of hearts in London who broke
as many as she could, voluntarily or involuntarily. She was a Miss
Acklom, daughter of a Nottinghamshire squire. Down at Exmouth, amid
the loveliness and the idleness of the place, the nymph and a gallant
officer named Tilson fell in love, or seemed to do so, with each other.
The warrior, at all events, was deeply smitten, and marriage was to
plunge him still deeper in love; but, almost at the church door, the
cruel nymph declined to go further. The lover went straightway abroad.
After a while, Miss Acklom was subdued by another wooer, Mr. Maddox;
the beauty consented to become his wife. As the time of the nuptials
drew near the lady’s grandfather died. She went into mourning, and
came out of it with an announcement of a quality to put her lover
into it; namely, that she had changed her mind. Like Tilson, Maddox
sought solace in going to the stirring scenes abroad. Jackson wrote
from his quarters at Dijon, in 1814, that the swain so ill-treated by
Venus was ‘trying his luck with Mars, as an amateur.... From being a
very handsome and lively-tempered young man, he has become quite the
reverse.’ While two lovers were despairing a third presented himself.
He was no other than that Lord Althorpe, who became so distinguished
in the House of Commons as a statesman and a minister. My lord was
accepted. Just as the marriage was about to take place this third
lover’s grandmother died; whereupon the nymph put on mourning and went
down to Bath to live in retirement. Old Mrs. Jackson prophesied that
Miss Acklom would, on coming out of mourning, jilt the heir to an
earldom as she had done ‘poor Maddox.’ George replied that Tilson had
recently returned to England, a general, and ‘this perhaps may win her
smiles again.’ Lord Althorpe proved to be a successful swain. Esther
Acklom married him, about a month after Mrs. Jackson had presaged that
she would play this lover false. The wedding was celebrated in April
1815, and in little more than three years the once volatile nymph was
carried to her grave, leaving a childless widower to mourn a good
wife’s loss.
The great scandal in high life within the first ten years of this
century was the elopement of Lord Paget, afterwards the celebrated
Marquis of Anglesea, with Lady Charlotte, wife of Henry Wellesley,
nephew of the subsequently famous Arthur, and better known to us as the
first Lord Cowley. All the world of fashion had seen what was going on
except the lady’s husband. The guilty parties pleaded uncontrollable
passion. The seducer abandoned his wife and eight children, the lady
left a husband and four children; but she asked Mr. Arbuthnot to break
the matter gently to their father. Lord Paget, who had told _his_
father that he had sought death in battle in order to avoid the social
catastrophe, was challenged by Colonel Cadogan, Lady Charlotte’s
brother. The Colonel declared that one of them must die; but Lord
Paget declined the chance on the ground that his life was devoted to
the Colonel’s sister. To this lady he was married in 1810, in which
year his union with his first wife was dissolved, and that lady became
Duchess of Argyll.
Provincial fine society was somewhat rough but hearty; ‘all very
friendly and hospitable; but as regards stuffing it would be difficult,
I confess, to excel them.’ The allusion is to a Northumbrian high
sheriff’s dinner party. At Brighton, described in 1809 as a dangerous
rival to Bath, we are at a ball given by a Mr. and Mrs. Parker, ‘good
people who have more money than sense or acquaintances, but who made
up for the latter deficiency by giving balls to all whom they did not
know and the few whom they did.’ Illustrious strangers went to dance,
eat suppers, and drink champagne, and perhaps laugh at Mrs. Parker,
who told everybody on coming in, and by way of compliment, that she
had been disappointed of _the flower_ of her party--some three or
four personages who could not come. The lady was, after all, not such
a fool as she looked. There was good satirical humour (when she went
up to Lady Boyne, who was then in deep mourning for her daughter) in
her request to the exemplary mother to open the ball! And apropos
to Brighton, now so rich in vehicles, we smile at the record of the
extortion of Brighton chairmen in 1809, and how they were brought to
their senses by an ex-coachman to a gentleman. Jehu bought the old
blue coach of the Blackburns, with the cock and trumpet upon it, which
had been the glory of Bath; putting a pair of horses to it, the owner
conveyed people all over the town at a shilling per person for the
trip, before midnight, and one-and-sixpence after. While the chairmen
stood upon their rights, earning nothing, this clever coachman whipped
up a very pretty little fortune.
One of the most pushing and successful men in Bath in 1809 was Sigmond,
who, after being a footman in Germany, set up as a dentist in the
City of Hot Waters. His wife had been his mistress. The two together
made more dash and lived at more expense than almost anybody in that
city. They once invited the Duke of Gloucester to a grand supper, and
he so far accepted the invitation as to send one of his gentlemen to
represent him. People of better standing than the footman-dentist and
his married mistress hardly behaved better. The mother of Sir George
Jackson remembered Mrs. Piozzi and Dr. Johnson at Bath, and she could
not imagine how Mrs. Piozzi could tolerate so coarse and bear-like a
person as the Doctor; though the Doctor’s coarseness was matched by the
lady’s levity. ‘Their manners,’ Mrs. Jackson wrote to her son, ‘were
more disgusting than pleasing to most persons ... they both ought to
have been ashamed of themselves.’
Sixty or seventy years ago locomotion was considered rapid when the
Newcastle mail left that northern town on a Monday morning and reached
London on the ensuing Wednesday at 5 A.M. In these days of electric
cables and telegraphs, it is amusing to read of the method taken by a
Rothschild to obtain news. We had not then got so far as sending or
receiving news by carrier pigeons. In February 1807 Jackson arrived in
London from Munich. The head of the Rothschild firm, hearing of the
arrival, waited on the diplomatist, and, as the latter said, probed him
dexterously to elicit any secrets he might possess relative to Prussian
financial difficulties and state affairs generally. The Government was
as ill off occasionally as the financier. They at one time depended
on the French papers for news from abroad, and for the loan of these,
ministers were indebted to the charity of the editor of the ‘Times.’
Looking into private life, we find various illustrations of its
character. While war was raging abroad the waltz conquered the prudes
of Bath, who, after gracefully battling against it, embraced it and
their partners therein with a sort of ecstasy. Those were the days of
heavy postage; and we read of a lady who thought to cheat the revenue
by stuffing a hare sent to a friend, with letters, which that friend
was to hand over according to the addresses. The ingenious method
failed, inasmuch as the cook who received the hare tossed all the
rumpled and blood-stained letters with which it was lined into the fire.
While Mr. Jackson had the affairs of the world to set down on paper,
and often rose from the table where he was writing despatches only
to catch a hasty glance at a battle, or to be off in a hurry, hardly
pressed by a victorious foe, he was overwhelmed with commissions from
thoughtless people. Some asked him to purchase for them carriages and
horses, others hammers and nails; and, wrote his mother, ‘If in the
course of your rambles through Saxony or Silesia you can meet with
a piece of fine cambric for handkerchiefs pray secure it for me, as
cambric is now of an exorbitant price in this country.’ Thousands of
men were bleeding to death for want of bandages, and the easy-going old
lady at Bath could think only of cheap handkerchiefs for herself.
One incident of the times reads like a page or two from Fielding.
It refers to the Irish servant, Pat O’Raffer, who was with George
Jackson in Bohemia. Pat was as lean as if he had lived for a month at a
French _table d’hôte_. In Bath, when his master fell in love with Miss
Rumbold, Pat fell in love with Miss Rumbold’s maid. In his absence,
however, the abigail gave her company to another young man, but Pat
continued to write to her ‘a very pretty letter’ all the same. As one
of these letters especially contained a good deal of political and
personal gossip, which began to spread through Bath, old Mrs. Jackson
thought it would be well to secure it, and to stop the writing of
similar epistles for the future; and she sent for the damsel, with the
success narrated below.
The good, stupid wench mentioned regretfully that the postage
was two shillings and ninepence. I said, ‘Susan, this long story
about things that you know nothing of, and can take no interest
in, my good girl, has cost you, it seems, far more than it is
worth.’ ‘Yes, indeed, ma’am,’ she answered, ‘it has. I like very
well to hear from Mr. Raffer, but I do wish he would pay the
postage.’ ‘Has this thoughtless man often put you to the expense?’
I inquired. ‘Oh, no, ma’am; it’s the first since he went; but
he says he shall write again.’ ‘Shall you answer it, Susan?’ I
asked. ‘Lor, ma’am,’ she said, ‘I should never know where to find
a place to begin upon. Doesn’t you think, ma’am, it’s more like a
piece of reading in the newspaper than a letter? Then I shouldn’t
like to pay another two-and-ninepence.’ ‘Then, Susan,’ I said,
‘as my son’s name is mentioned in this letter, suppose I give you
five shillings for it--that will pay the postage, and buy you a
nice frilled neckerchief.’ Susan blushed and smiled with delight.
The bargain was struck at once for this and any other despatch
Mr. Raffer may send, silence on the subject being promised.... My
only qualm of conscience in getting hold of the letter was, that I
suggested to Susan to buy a _frilled_ neckerchief, never allowing
my own maids to wear any but plain ones.
In those days mistresses could rule the costume of their maids. In ours
the latter dress in the same ill-taste adopted by their mistresses. But
chignons, at last, have gone out, and with them the abominable smell
which ‘pervaded’ the atmosphere.
By 1813 the minuet, a knowledge of dancing which Mrs. Montagu thought
of more importance than a knowledge of French, ceased to be known in
the ball-room. It fingered on the stage. The Coburg Theatre audiences
looked upon the Minuet de la Cour and Gavotte, danced by M. and Mdme.
Le Clercq, with a sort of wondering delight, and Taglioni and Fanny
Elsler danced it on our opera stage, forty years ago, as a lady and
cavalier of the time of Louis the Fourteenth. When the waltz first
attempted (with its vulgar familiarity and an intimacy which made an
Oriental ambassador almost faint) to supplant the minuet, in which the
gentleman scarcely touched the tips of the lady’s fingers, and seemed
abashed at his own audacity, there was a general outcry of fie upon
it. But young ladies soon learned to laugh at the objections of their
mothers, and flung themselves on the shirt-fronts of their partners
with alacrity. Fashion sanctified it, and the youthful world thought
it ill-bred prudery to set its face against what fashionable people of
good taste considered innocent and amusing.
The actors of the first half of the century come pleasantly to the
memories of some survivors, and to the knowledge of others who will be
glad to become acquainted with them. Graceful Elliston, in Octavian,
is said to have been superior to John Kemble. George Frederick Cooke
was always fine, but never sober; ‘_often_ so drunk as not to be able
to come on the stage at all, and _generally_ as not to be able to
stand when on.’ We sit with Cooke’s exasperated audience, kept half
an hour beyond time, when he was to play Mr. Oakley, and we join in
the hissing when he does appear, and enjoy the mingled surprise and
indignation that light up his countenance. ‘He, however, recollected
himself, and after one violent effort, in which every feature of his
speaking countenance had its peculiar expression, made a sort of
half-disdainful half-respectful bow, and an exit steadier than his
entrée, though hardly steady enough for dignity.’ Cooke’s Oakley, in
its way, was as good as Emery’s Tyke, which, as a bit of tragi-comedy,
was inexpressibly grand.
In 1809 Kemble was declining. In reference to his Hamlet, Jackson
says, ‘Kemble was, of course, great, and his triumph, I believe,
complete; but, in my humble opinion, he has gone off a good deal.’
Of the then new Covent Garden (burnt down in 1808), he writes; ‘It
appears to me small, and the prevailing colour--brick red--very common
and ineffective. The doors too, though they cost a large sum, and
will, if they last as long, be very handsome some years hence, have
a mean appearance, the mahogany being so very pale.’ Kemble lingered
too long upon the stage. In 1801 we read, in reference to his Hotspur,
‘In some parts he warmed up to the situation and was very good; but
he is too old for such a character, and the dress only shows off his
unfitness the more. It made him appear decidedly aged, and thus, in
a great measure, rendered all he had to say ineffective.’ But in
those last years of his career Kemble flashed forth gleams of his old
glory. In the year last named he and Mrs. Siddons played inimitably in
‘Isabella,’ in which Charles Kemble played Carlos, and showed signs
that he was not going to remain the mere ‘stick’ which he had been for
many years. Mrs. Siddons was, on the other hand, deteriorating. She
had grown enormously large. When she killed herself, in ‘Isabella,’
and fell to the ground, the stage groaned beneath her; and if, in any
character, she knelt, it took two good men to get her comfortably on
her legs again. The greatest theatrical novelty of the day was when
Kemble appeared at court to take leave on his intended departure for
America, where he was to play twenty-two nights for six thousand pounds
and his expenses paid. After all, Kemble did not go; his appearance at
court, ‘a player,’ made some people think the world was coming to an
end. But there was a worse sign of the times. When Bellingham, after
shooting Mr. Percival, was conveyed in a coach to Newgate, the mob
escorted and cheered him, shook hands with him, and congratulated him
on having murdered a minister.
It is startling to find Mrs. Siddons accused of want of feeling when
she took leave of the stage. As John Kemble continued to linger on it,
his power of attracting audiences grew less. In 1812 it is said of his
King John, ‘his conception of the character remains, of course, as
excellent as ever; but his voice is gone, and I am told when the play
is ended he is so exhausted as hardly to be able to speak or move.’
We conclude these desultory samples of by-gone life with an example of
the remuneration of a leading barrister of the first years of this
century, namely, Garrow. It is said of him that ‘he went into court one
morning at York, made a speech of about twenty minutes, then doffed his
wig and gown, pocketed four hundred pounds, besides one hundred pounds
for his expenses, and drove off again to London.’
Those who have examined these grains from a full measure may find more
perfect enjoyment by perusing ‘The Diaries and Letters of Sir George
Jackson,’ and the interesting second series of the work known as ‘The
Bath Archives.’
_THE POSTMAN’S KNOCK._
‘A foot post doth come from Bury, in Suffolk, to the Green Dragon, in
Bishopsgate Street, every Wednesday, by whom letters may be conveyed
to and fro.’ So writes the water poet, John Taylor, in his ‘Carrier’s
Cosmography,’ A.D. 1637. In like manner we learn that a foot post from
Wasingham came every second Thursday to the Cross Keys, Holborn; and
one from York, to the Rose and Crown, in St. John Street. Letters,
however, could be sent every Monday to Scotland, ‘by the post that
doth lodge at the King’s Arms, at the upper end of Cheapside.’ Letters
did not travel then as fast as a certain general made one travel, by
enclosing it in a cannon ball and firing it into a besieged town, for
the purpose of conveying a message. Between the time when the first
letter was written and that signalled by the postman’s knock this
morning there never was a more singular mode of despatch.
The first letter ever written! Where is it? Let us be content to know,
as beyond dispute, that the earliest sample we have of a letter is
that of David to Joab. When we remember the contents and the purpose
of that letter we may be honestly ashamed of the writer. We could have
wished this letter had not been preserved; and we turn from it readily
to consider the letters of more recent and less sacred kings.
The earliest royal sign manual existing of our own kings is that of
Richard II. The grandest and firmest is that of Richard III. There
exists a document of this king’s which was begun under dictation.
Richard seems to have grown impatient with his secretary, snatched
the pen from his hand, and finished the document with his own hand.
His signature, _Ricardus Rex_, is written with wonderful boldness.
The cross line of the ‘x’ looks like a pike-staff, and has a wickedly
threatening air with it. There are letters of a far more interesting
quality than the above, also written by Richard, in the collection
of letters of the time of that king, with others of the later time
of Henry VII. The work is one of the series published under the
sanction of the Master of the Rolls. Richard’s letters are those of
a kind-hearted man, who considers no subject to be too trifling for
consideration. Several letters prove that he was an affectionate
husband to Lady Anne. When she was Richard’s queen and had fallen
sick, her husband wrote to Louis XI., civilly requesting him to send
over some Burgundy and wines of Haute France, for the comforting and
strengthening of that august lady’s stomach. On another occasion, when
the governess of his little son Edward (that boy-prince of Wales whose
unexpected death at Middleham nearly drove his father mad) was likely
to lose some property through the dishonesty of a kinsman, Richard
looked into her affairs and energetically set about seeing her righted.
In details like these he comes before us, like a good-natured head of
a family, sympathising with all who live under his roof. It is quite
curious, too, to see that matters of dress were not beneath his notice.
One of his many Irish favourites--favourites because they had supported
the cause of Richard’s noble father, the Duke of York--was the Earl of
Desmond. Richard was not only generous to the earl, he was desirous of
seeing him dressed in the fashion which prevailed in England, but which
had not yet reached Ireland. Richard requests Desmond to ‘renounce the
wearing and usage of the Irish array, and to use the manner of apparel
for his person after the English guise.’ The king sent patterns of
dress to Ireland by the hands of a bishop. The right reverend _modiste_
carried with him samples of ‘gowns, doublets, hose, and bonnets,’ of
the latest taste, with a fac-simile of the king’s livery, a collar of
gold of Richard’s device, and, finally, a neat assortment of ‘hats,
kerchiefs, tippets, and shirts.’ In connection with such articles, and
with the above household details, we hardly recognise the dark Richard
of history and the drama. But light and shade prevail throughout.
Richard could stoop to invent the fashion of a coat, and could climb
through murder to a throne. Whatever may be his guilt with regard to
the young princes in the Tower, he showed his wisdom when he took for
wife Lady Anne, the daughter of the fierce Countess of Warwick, by
immediately locking up his uncomfortable mother-in-law!
This series of letters is worthy of being studied. Richard appears
quite another manner of man than we have been accustomed to take him
to be. Henry VII., on the other hand, remains unaltered--mean, cruel,
treacherous, and crafty. We will only allude to a letter of James IV.
of Scotland to show his intelligence. In one of them, written to the
King of Denmark, James announces that a band of Gipsies, pretending to
be Christian pilgrims, had been in Scotland, and that he had sent them
to Denmark, the latter country being, as he believed, in the vicinity
of Egypt, from whence the wanderers had started.
In dealing with old letters, as much caution is necessary as in dealing
with old pictures. All are not ancient masters that are called so. Some
years ago there was an aged man in a German capital, who, throughout a
long life, had made a decent income by painting pictures by any great
artist of any time or place. If a rich amateur, travelling that way,
wanted a work by some renowned painter of the early times he went to a
dealer, and the dealer, undertaking to find him one, went to the old
painter of other men’s pictures, who in a week produced a Da Vinci,
a Raffaelle, or a Del Sarto, a Rubens, a Claude, or a Wouvermans--it
mattered not what; and each party was satisfied. Once the old fellow
tried to paint a picture of his own, but there was such a confusion
of styles in it he could not offer it for sale, and in order to live
respectably he was obliged once more to resort to forgery.
As for forged letters, they are thick as leaves in Vallambrosa. A few
years ago a writer in the ‘Athenæum,’ referring to this fact, remarked,
‘In no age has literature been free from the intrusion of spurious
records into the domain of truth. One man forges for the pure love
of sport, throws his forged papers into a collection, to be found a
hundred years later, merely to perplex the pundits. Another forges to
sustain a crotchet or a principle. But the most industrious and the
most facile are those who forge for profit. Everyone familiar with old
papers is aware that the publication of historical documents--letters,
plays, poems, maps, charts, and cylinders--has now ceased to be a
learned profession, and has become a manufacture. As the Old Bailey
had its tribes of rascals ready to witness against anybody and anything
for money, so literature has its race of outcasts ready to furnish any
document that may be wanted, from a Wardour Street pedigree, derived
from scrolls in a Cheshire muniment room, up to a copy of Homer from
a monastery at the summit of Mount Athos.’ Of the above there is no
doubt. We may add that, in some cases, letters have been authentic and
yet have been no more genuine than if they had been forged. That is to
say, they misrepresented the feelings of the writers themselves. We
have one sample of something intended in this way, though not carried
out, by Crebillon and Sterne. Fun, profit, and mystification were at
the bottom of it. Sterne, writing to Garrick in April 1762, says:
‘Crebillon has made a convention with me, which, if he be not too lazy,
will be no bad persiflage. As soon as I get to Toulouse he has agreed
to write me an expostulatory letter upon the indecorums of “Tristram
Shandy,” which is to be answered by recriminations upon the coarseness
of his own works. These are to be printed together--Crebillon against
Sterne: Sterne against Crebillon. The copy to be sold, and the money to
be equally divided. This is good Swiss policy!’ Nothing came of this
design, but it illustrates how a letter may be authentic and yet not be
genuine.
Widows’ letters are rudely said to be sometimes of this quality. This
is, no doubt, untrue. The idea, however, is as old as Massinger. That
dramatic poet makes his Hilario, in ‘The Picture,’ remark:
There be some
That in their husband’s sicknesses have wept
Their pottle of tears a day; but, being once certain,
At midnight, he was dead, have in the morning
Dried up their handkerchiefs, and thought no more on’t!
But Hilario, who says this, is the fool of the piece.
There are historical personages, whose letters and manuscripts
generally we should expect would have disappeared altogether; voluntary
destruction having been applied to them. On the other hand, there are
personages whose manuscripts and whose letters, we should suppose,
would have been preserved with a reverential affection. In each case
the expectation is contrary to fact. We will instance Margaret of
Anjou and William Shakespeare. When Edward IV. was on the throne he
was so desirous to secure every letter or despatch written by that
heroic wife of an unheroic king, that the penalty of death was awarded
against any person who, receiving a letter, or being in possession of
a letter from Queen Margaret, delayed in surrendering the same to the
government. One would suppose that such a penalty would lead every
individual holding such documents, if not to surrender at least to
destroy them. But human nature is perverse, as well as bold, courageous
and defiant. Many of Margaret’s correspondents hid the letters she
had written to them; some of these have lately been published by the
Camden Society. The volume is one of the most interesting of the series
published by that Society, and the letters themselves are creditable
to the writer. They show her less as a fiercely struggling, deeply
sorrowing, terribly avenging queen, than as a sympathising woman, not
so busy in her own affairs as to lack time for being interested in the
affairs of others. She is ever ready to say a good word for a worthy
man seeking advancement, and her heart responds to appeals from young
maidens with whom the course of true love does not run smooth. For
them, Queen Margaret writes with affectionate urgency to that sort of
sire who is apt to say of a suitor to his daughter, who is unwelcome to
himself, ‘I can’t imagine what the girl can see in such a fellow, to
like him!’ To such stern fathers Margaret of Anjou writes like a wise
and affectionate woman. She may be called a ‘matchmaker,’ for she seems
to have gone to the work of coupling with great alacrity, but we are
sure that many a young couple, in those turbulent times, owed to her a
happiness and a harmony in their married life which poor Margaret never
enjoyed in her own.
But Shakespeare! It is nothing less than marvellous that a man who
wrote as he wrote--and, altogether, no other man ever wrote like
him--that a poet, the author of such plays and such poems; that a man
possessing so many friends and admirers, with whom his correspondence
must have been extensive, should not have left a single line behind
him traced by his own hand. Of all his poems and plays there does not
exist a page, a line, a single word, in manuscript. _All_ Shakespeare’s
manuscript plays could not have perished in the fire which destroyed
the Globe Theatre. The author must have made little account of them
himself; but how great would our estimation be of a single act of any
one of Shakespeare’s plays, in his own handwriting! We have just now
got among us a parallel to the tulip mania. Thousands of pounds are
willingly paid for a picture which the same number of shillings would
once have purchased. Rather, let us say that the shillings were given
for the picture, and that the pounds by thousands are given for the
painter’s name. Well, what would not be willingly paid (for the sake of
Shakespeare’s name) for the original manuscript, say of ‘Hamlet’? There
would be a fierce fight among competitors for even a single passage.
We fancy that the lines beginning with ‘The quality of mercy is not
strained,’ or those that open with ‘Canst thou not minister to a mind
diseased?’ or with ‘She never told her love,’ and hundreds of others,
would not be had for guineas covering each letter. What a contention
there would be for the first love-letter or for any love-letter which
the poet wrote to Anne Hathaway; or indeed for any letter, addressed to
anyone. A costly holograph! Alas! there are neither lines nor letters.
All that has been saved of Shakespeare’s handwriting is confined to
a couple of signatures of his name to certain deeds, and in those
subscriptions the name is spelt differently. Even the forgers have not
dared to produce a letter by Shakespeare.