I passed my last remaining holidays with my mother at Exeter, the old
dean and chapter town of the west. Exeter continues in my mind to be a
mediæval city, its inhabitants a people of the middle ages. To enjoy the
height of respectability it was necessary to have a visiting connection
with the bishop of the diocese, and this secured the unenviable
acquaintance of the dean, the Mr. Dean, the divinest of doctors, and the
whole chapter, which, judging from its antecedents, owed its importance
to and was in itself a mere Chapter of Accidents. To think how men,
ignorant of all things save privilege and dogma, can testimonialize
their fellow-citizens by means of a nodding smile! To be admitted into
the close to eat mutton and red-currant jelly with the canons of the
cathedral was a fortune of social rank, sufficiently ample to confer
honour on the dozens who knew them. How strange is all this to minds of
any magnitude! A string of minor infallibles, each the owner of dearly
beloved brethren whom he condescends to despise, ruling over the pauper
intellects and imaginations of a city!
Yet all these idolaters are great economists; instead of earning their
own respectability, they seek to get it dirt-cheap by having it conferred
upon them.
I found my mother in better circumstances; her younger uncle had died,
and as he could not take his hoard away with him, he left it to be
divided among his near relations, but the only one, the Rev. Robert
Clarke, who bore his name, came best off; and he deserved it, not only
for his own sake, but because he was already better off than most of
those who profited under the will! This cousin was the kindest, the most
clerically gentlemanlike of the cloth he favoured. The name of Clarke is
on record at Hexham as that of liberal Church patrons.
But mediæval cities and people of the middle ages, still playing out the
ancestral game, have their theatres. To that of Exeter I went to see
Yates perform the part of Falstaff. I was deeply bitten by the fun, and
the next day performed much of the character myself before my mother, and
kept her in a continual roar of laughter.
The eminent surgeon, Mr. Shelden, was, in times preceding, a
practitioner in the place; as such he was a friend of the Gordons. He
left a relict, whom my mother often took me to see—a charming lady, who
knew how to make herself delightful to a child. Mr. Shelden was Professor
of Anatomy at the College of Surgeons in London. In the museum of the
college there is a mummy which he made, and which he called “Madame
Mahogany.” It excited much curiosity at one time. On visiting the museum,
I readily found it on the left of the entrance door. There is a portrait
of this eminent man in the Devon and Exeter Hospital, painted by the
artist from memory after Shelden’s death, and it was said to be an
excellent likeness by those who remembered him.
It may interest some to know that my grandfather resided for many years
at Bowhill House in St. Thomas’s. The place was purchased over his head,
and made the county lunatic asylum, which purpose I believe it serves to
this day.
With this place were associated some of my mother’s happiest as well
as most miserable recollections. The names of those who were known to
her family are still rife in the old red sandstone country, and have
been distinguished in the new generation. I must mention that of Mr.
Northmore, of Cleve, who was a generous-minded reformer in days when to
be a radical was worse than to lead a life of blasphemy. He was the first
scientific man who succeeded in condensing a gas. The one he operated on
was chlorine; his results were published in _Nicholson’s Journal_ in the
year 1809. So little interest attached to great discoveries in those days
that his researches were forgotten, and Faraday long afterwards succeeded
in the same work. He had never heard the name of Northmore, and published
his own results as the first obtained in that direction. This I learned
from Mr. Northmore himself, when I was grown up. That philosopher did
not even claim his discovery when the scientific world was ringing with
Faraday’s praise.
Among other friends of her youth my mother long remembered with affection
her school-fellow, Ann Gifford, the daughter of a grocer in Exeter. The
name was afterwards known through the brother becoming master of the
rolls and obtaining a peerage as counsel for great George our king,
during the prosecution of the queen.
In those days counsel were at their boldest, when Denman, who had to
examine the Duke of York, could say to him in open court, “Stand forth,
thou slanderer!”
I have heard say that one of the most amusing transfigurations ever
produced, without a miracle, was that of Mr. Wareman Gifford, from a
grocer behind the counter to the brother of a lord.