The Duke of Norfolk, and anecdotes respecting him--The Duke of
Queensberry, and anecdotes--Charles Morris--The Prince out shooting--A
grand review--French _émigrés_--Smuggling--The Prince's birthday,
1792--Poem on the _émigrés_.
Another of the Prince's companions, until they quarrelled, was Charles
Howard, eleventh Duke of Norfolk, who possessed all the habits and
attributes of a hog.[64] Slovenly and dirty in his attire, he was
rarely washed, but when he was drunk, and then by his servants; and the
story is told that one day he was complaining to Dudley North that he
suffered terribly from rheumatism, for which he could find no cure, and
was answered by the question, 'Pray, my lord, did you ever try a clean
shirt?'
Hear what the anonymous writer of 'The Clubs of London,' says of the
old glutton, when writing of the Beefsteak Club. Speaking of a visit to
that club in 1799, he says:
'I do not recollect all who were present on that day, but I
particularly remarked John Kemble, Cobb of the India House, his Royal
Highness the Duke of Clarence, Sir John Cox Hippisley, Charles Morris,
Ferguson of Aberdeen, and his Grace of Norfolk. This nobleman took the
chair when the cloth was removed. It is a place of dignity, elevated
some steps above the table, and decorated with the various insignia of
the Society; amongst which was suspended the identical small cocked-hat
in which Garrick used to play the part of Ranger. As soon as the clock
strikes fives, a curtain draws up, discovering the kitchen, in which
the cooks are dimly seen plying their several offices, through a sort
of grating, with this appropriate motto from Macbeth inscribed over it
'"IF IT WERE DONE, WHEN 'TIS DONE, THEN 'TWERE WELL IT WERE DONE
QUICKLY."
'But the steaks themselves;--they were of the highest order, and I
can never forget the goodwill with which they were devoured. In this
respect, no one surpassed the Duke of Norfolk. He was _totus in illis_.
Eyes, hands, mouth, were all intensely exercised; not a faculty played
the deserter. His appetite, literally, grew by what it fed on. Two or
three succeeding steaks, fragrant from the gridiron, rapidly vanished.
In my simplicity, I thought that his labours were over. I was deceived,
for I observed him rubbing a clean plate with a shallot, to prepare it
for the reception of another.
'A pause of ten minutes ensued, and his Grace rested upon his knife
and fork; but it was only a pause, and I found that there was a good
reason for it. Like the epic, a rump of beef has a beginning, a middle,
and an end. The palate of an experienced beef steaker can discern all
its progressive varieties, from the first cut to the last; and he
is a mere tyro in the business, who does not know, that towards the
middle, there lurks a fifth essence, the perfect ideal of tenderness
and flavour. Epicurism itself, in its fanciful combinations of culinary
excellence, never dreamed of anything surpassing it. For this cut, the
Duke had wisely tarried, and, for this, he re-collected his forces.
At last he desisted, but more, I thought, from fatigue than satiety:
_lassatus non satiatus_. I need not hint, that powerful irrigations of
port encouraged and relieved, at intervals, the organs engaged in this
severe duty.
'Nor could I help admiring that his Grace, proverbially an idolater
of the table, should have dined with such perfect complacency upon
beef steaks:--he, whose eyes and appetite roved every day amidst the
rich variety of a ducal banquet, to which ocean, air and earth, paid
their choicest contingents. His palate, I thought, would sigh, as
in captivity, for the range in which it was to expatiate. A member,
who sat next me, remarked that in beef steaks there was considerable
variety, and he had seen the most finished gourmands about town quite
delighted with the simple repast of the Society. But, with regard to
the Duke of Norfolk, he hinted that it was his custom, on a beef steak
day, to eat a preliminary dish of fish in his own especial box at the
Piazza, and then adjourn time enough for the beef steaks. He added
also, and I heartily concurred in his remark, that a mere dish of fish
could make no more difference to the iron digestion of his Grace, than
a tenpenny nail, more or less, in that of an ostrich.
'After dinner, the Duke was ceremoniously ushered to the chair, and
invested with an orange coloured ribbon, to which a silver medal, in
the form of a gridiron, was appended.... I was astonished to see how
little effect the sturdy port wine of the Society produced on his
adamantine constitution; for the same abhorrence of a vacuum, which had
disposed him to do such ample justice to his dinner, showed itself no
less in his unflinching devotion to the bottle.'[65]
Sir N. Wraxall, in his 'Historical Memoirs of My Own Time ... 1772 to
1784,' writes thus of him: 'Drunkenness was in him an hereditary vice,
transmitted down, probably, by his ancestors from the Plantagenet
times, and inherent in his formation. His father indulged equally
in it, but he did not manifest the same capacities as his son, in
resisting the effects of wine. It is a fact that, after laying his
father and all the guests under the table at the Thatched House Tavern
in St. James's Street, he has repaired to another festive party in the
vicinity, and there recommenced the unfinished convivial rites.'
The caricaturists openly made fun of his hoggish propensities, as did
the public press, _vide_ these two extracts from the _Times_ (March 1,
1793):
'ON THE LATE INUNDATION IN OLD PALACE YARD.
'On one side, Duke Norfolk pushed forward with strife,
FOR HE NEVER LIKED WATER throughout his whole life.'
_February 17, 1794._--'The Duke of NORFOLK is attacked by the
_Hydrophobia_, he can't bear the sight of _water_. His physicians have
prescribed WINE. The Marquis of _Stafford_, Marquis of _Bath_, and Lord
_Thurlow_ who were present, sanctified this prescription with their
most hearty consent.'
And yet it is over this wretched old sensualist that Thackeray, in his
'Four Georges,' gets maudlinly sentimental!
'And now I have one more story of the bacchanalian sort, in which
Clarence and York, and the very highest personage of the realm, the
great Prince Regent, all play parts. The feast took place at the
Pavilion at Brighton, and was described to me by a gentleman who was
present at the scene. In Gillray's caricatures, and amongst Fox's jolly
associates, there figures a great nobleman, the Duke of Norfolk, called
Jockey of Norfolk in his time, and celebrated for his table exploits.
He had quarrelled with the Prince, like the rest of the Whigs; but a
sort of reconciliation had taken place; and now, being a very old man,
the Prince invited him to dine and sleep at the Pavilion, and the old
Duke drove over from his Castle of Arundel with his famous equipage of
grey horses, still remembered in Sussex.
'The Prince of Wales had concocted, with his royal brothers, a notable
scheme for making the old man drunk. Every person at table was enjoined
to take wine with the Duke--a challenge which the old toper did not
refuse. He soon began to see that there was a conspiracy against him;
he drank glass for glass; he overthrew many of the brave. At last, the
First Gentleman of Europe proposed bumpers of brandy. One of the royal
brothers filled a great glass for the Duke. He stood up and tossed off
the drink. "Now," says he, "I will have my carriage, and go home." The
Prince urged upon him his previous promise to sleep under the roof
where he had been so generously entertained. "No," he said, he had had
enough of such hospitality. A trap had been set for him; he would leave
the place at once, and never enter its doors more.
'The carriage was called, and came; but, in the half hour's interval,
the liquor had proved too potent for the old man: his host's generous
purpose was answered, and the old man's grey head lay stupefied on the
table. Nevertheless, when his post chaise was announced, he staggered
to it as well as he could, and stumbling in, bade the postilions
drive to Arundel. They drove him for half an hour round and round
the Pavilion lawn; the poor old man fancied he was going home. When
he awoke that morning he was in bed at the Prince's hideous house at
Brighton. You may see the place now for sixpence: they have fiddlers
there every day; and, sometimes, buffoons and mountebanks hire the
Riding House, and do their tricks and tumbling there. The trees are
still there, and the gravel walks round which the poor old sinner was
trotted. I can fancy the flushed faces of the royal princes as they
support themselves at the portico pillars, and look on at old Norfolk's
disgrace; but I can't fancy how the man who perpetrated it continued to
be called a gentleman.'
Another of the Prince's intimates and visitor to the Pavilion was that
disreputable old roué William Douglas, third Earl of March and fourth
Duke of Queensberry, commonly called 'Old Q,' well known on the turf
as a racehorse-owner and betting man, a thorough gambler and finished
debauchee.
'And there, insatiate yet with folly's sport,
That polished, sin-worn fragment of the Court,
The shade of Queensb'ry should with Clermont meet,
Ogling and hobbling down St. James's Street.'
Nearly forty years older than the Prince, he was his Mentor in every
kind of vice, and rooked him of thousands of pounds at play and in
betting.
Thackeray, in 'The Virginians,' portrays him under no pseudonym. He
is called simply by his title of Lord March. In Chapter XXVI. Mr.
Warrington is at the White Horse Tavern, where are Lords Chesterfield
and March:
'"My Lord Chesterfield's deuce is deuce ace," says my Lord March. "His
Lordship can't keep away from the cards, or dice."
'"My Lord March has not one, but several devils. He loves gambling,
he loves horse-racing, he loves betting, he loves drinking, he loves
eating, he loves money, he loves women, and you have fallen into bad
company, Mr. Warrington, when you lighted upon his Lordship. He will
play you for every acre you have in Virginia."
'"With the greatest pleasure in life, Mr. Warrington!" interposes my
Lord.
'"And for all your tobacco, and for all your spices, and for all your
slaves, and for all your oxen and asses."
* * * * *
'"Unfortunately, my Lord, the tobacco, and the slaves, and the
asses, and the oxen, are not mine, as yet. I am just of age, and my
mother--scarce twenty years older--has quite as good chance of long
life as I have."
'"I will bet that you survive her. I will pay you a sum now, against
four times the sum to be paid at her death. I will set a fair sum over
this table against the reversion of your estate in Virginia at the old
lady's departure."'
Certainly, it is pleasant to turn from such companions of Florizel's to
another, whose only fault was his conviviality. I mean Captain Charles
Morris, punch-maker and bard to the Beefsteak Society, where he met
with the Prince, at his admission into the society, in 1785; and the
author of the 'Clubs of London' thus describes him:
[Illustration: CAPTAIN MORRIS.]
'But Charles Morris--can anyone think of the Beefsteaks without
including thy revered image in the picture? The faculties of man are
not equal to an abstraction so metaphysical. For many, many years,
during which several of man's autumnal generations have fallen, he has
been faithful to his post. He is the bard of the Society, who, in the
person of this, her favourite disciple, may still boast _non caret vate
sacro_, fortune has not yet struck this old deer of the forest. You
should have seen him, as was his wont at the period I am speaking of,
making the Society's punch, his ancient and rightful office. It was
pleasing to see him at his laboratory at the side board, stocked with
the varied products that enter into the composition of that nectareous
mixture; then, smacking an elementary glass, or two, and giving a
significant nod, the fiat of its excellence; and what could exceed the
extasy with which he filled the glasses that thronged round the
bowl; joying over its mantling beauties with an artist's pride, and
distributing the fascinating draught
'"That flames and dances in its crystal bound."'
Morris's songs, which after his death were published in two volumes,
under the title of 'Lyra Urbanica,' rendered him a welcome guest at
Carlton House and the Pavilion; and, strange to say, he enjoyed the
favour and countenance of Florizel, both as Prince and King, until the
death of his royal patron.
We have a very good portrait of Captain Morris, dated July 1, 1789,
with the lines:
'When the fancy stirring Bowl
Wakes its World of pleasure,
Glowing Visions gild my Soul,
And Life's an endless treasure.'
These were some of the more notorious of the Prince's intimates at that
time; some of the minor ones may be mentioned later on.
We hear very little of the Prince at Brighton in 1791. He went there,
for the season, on June 13, and he soon had his old set round him. I
can only find one record of their doings, and that is in the _Sussex
Weekly Advertiser_ of September 26: 'Between six and seven o'clock,
on Monday morning last, the Prince, accompanied by Sir John Lade, in
his curricle, drove through this town, on a shooting excursion, to
Haremere, an estate belonging to Sir John; but no day ever proved more
unfavourable to the sport, for the gamekeeper who attended on the
occasion, with all his diligence, was unable to spring more than one
solitary bird. About seven in the evening his Royal Highness returned
here, and, after taking fresh horses, which were in readiness at the
White Hart, proceeded on to Brighton.
'Lady Lade and the Barrys had the honour to be of the party. Her
Ladyship, in rallying the Prince and Sir John, on their bad success,
observed she thought even an object as large as a goose, might, with
great safety, come in their way; but was, soon after, convinced of her
error, by being presented with a goose, which the Prince and Sir John
had shot in a neighbouring pond. The joke was accompanied with great
pleasantry; and the farmer, who owned the goose, had the benefit of it,
by receiving a handsome present from the Royal purse.'
In 1792 the Prince went down to Brighton earlier than usual--in
April--and his regiment was quartered there for the defence of the
coast; things on the Continent were very disturbed, and war with France
broke out the next year. We read in the _Sussex Weekly Advertiser_ of
May 21: 'On Friday the 10th Regiment of Light Dragoons had a grand
field day, in honour of the Prince; after which, his Royal Highness
honoured the officers with his company to dinner, at the Old Ship
tavern; and, the next morning, set out for town. The Prince is expected
at Brighton this day, previous to the grand review of his regiment
to-morrow, by Gen. Lascelles, on the Downs, near that place. On Friday
next, the above regiment is to have another field day, in review order,
at which the Duke and Duchess of York are expected to be present.'
The French Revolution was seething, and prudent people were leaving
France. We read in the same newspaper: 'There has been, lately, a great
importation of _French Emigrants_ to Brighthelmstone. Last Wednesday,
twelve of them, seemingly persons of distinction, passed through this
town, in four post chaises, on their route to Dover, in order to embark
there for Brussels. Another cargo of the same quality, has also been
smuggled in an open boat to Bulverhithe,[66] on our coast, likewise on
their way to the ex-Princes.'
_En passant_, let me just give one anecdote of the manners and customs
of Brighton at this time _re_ smuggling (_Sussex Weekly Advertiser_,
August 27, 1792): 'On Wednesday last, a smuggling cutter, having been
closely chased at sea, in order to lighten her lading, threw 300 tubs
of spirits overboard, and, by means thereof, escaped her pursuers. The
Brighton fishermen seeing many of the tubs float on a very rough sea
before that town, swam out at the hazard of their lives and saved some
of them. Two Revenue officers, who looked on while these hardy sons of
Neptune buffeted the angry waves for the sake of their favourite grog,
endeavoured to seize the fruits of their labour. But, one of them, in
pursuing a woman, who had received a tub from her husband, or brother,
fell down the bank and broke one of his legs, in a manner that the
bone appeared through his stocking. The other, having gone down on the
beach, in order more effectually to intercept his prey, was hustled by
the crowd off one of the groins, and broke three of his ribs in the
fall. Honest Jack, seeing his foes thus disabled, secured every tub
that fell in his way, and in his dripping jacket, drank confusion to
Excise.'
On August 27 Florizel gave a fête to celebrate his birthday, and this
is a contemporary account of it (_Sussex Weekly Advertiser_, September
3): 'At the Prince's fête on Brighton Level, last Monday, no fewer than
four thousand persons were supposed to have attended; the majority to
feast their eyes, while the others feasted more substantially on a fine
ox, with a proportionate quantity of bread and strong beer prepared for
the occasion. The ox was taken from the fire about 3 o'clock, and very
skilfully dissected by Mr. Russel, at the bottom of a large pit, while
the spectators and expectants stood, in theatric gradation, on its
sloping sides. The day proved very favourable to this rustic festivity.
His Royal Highness's guests were very accommodating and good humoured
to each other, until the strong beer began to operate. The Prince and
Mrs. Fitzherbert looked on for a considerable time with great good
humour, and had the satisfaction of hearing that no accident nor injury
occurred in so large a concourse, except a few blackeyes and bloody
noses, at the close of the evening.'
The French Revolution grew apace. On August 10 the Royal Swiss Guards
were cut to pieces and 5,000 persons massacred. On August 26 there was
a decree of the National Assembly against the priests, and 40,000 of
them were exiled. From September 2 to 5 there was a fearful massacre in
Paris; the prisons were broken open, and 1,200 persons, including 100
priests, were slain.
Of these priests Charlotte Smith speaks in her poem called 'The
Emigrants':
'SCENE--_On the Cliffs to the Eastward of the Town of Brighthelmstone,
in Sussex_.
'TIME--_A morning in November, 1792_.
* * * * *
'Behold, in witness of this mournful truth,
A group approach me, whose dejected looks,
Sad Heralds of distress! proclaim them Men,
Banish'd for ever, and for Conscience' sake,
From their distracted Country, whence the name
Of Freedom misapplied, and much abus'd
By lawless Anarchy, has driven them far
To wander; with the prejudice they learn'd
From Bigotry (the Tut'ress of the blind),
Thro' the wide World unshelter'd; their sole hope,
That German spoilers, thro' that pleasant land
May carry wide the desolating scourge
Of War and Vengeance; yet unhappy Men,
Whate'er your errors, I lament your fate:
And, as disconsolate and sad ye hang
Upon the barrier of the rock, and seem
To murmur your despondence, waiting long
Some fortunate reverse that never comes;
Methinks, in each expressive face, I see
Discriminated anguish; there droops one,
Who in a moping cloister long consum'd
This life inactive, to obtain a better,
And thought that meagre abstinence, to wake
From his hard pallet with the midnight bell,
To live on eleemosynary bread,
And to renounce God's works, would please that God.
And now the poor pale wretch receives, amaz'd,
The pity, strangers give to his distress;
Because these strangers are, by his dark creed,
Condemn'd as Heretics--and, with sick heart,
Regrets his pious prison, and his beads,' etc.[67]
FOOTNOTES:
[64] Gillray caricatured him (May, 1792) in 'Le Cochon et ses deux
Petites,' where, holding a tumbler of wine in his hand, he is toying
with two very fleshly ladies.
[65] 'The Clubs of London,' etc.; London, 1828, 8vo., vol. ii. p. 27.
[66] One mile from St. Leonards Station, and two miles west of
Hastings. It is supposed to be the landing-place of Julius Cæsar.
[67] 'The Emigrants: a Poem,' by Charlotte Smith; London, 1793, 4to.,
p. 7.
[Illustration: Decorative panel]