Like most other county towns Lewes had many mansions. These in olden
times were the winter residences of nobles and squires, and, at their
death, of their relicts, for the women always survived the men. It
was considered in those days that the taste of port wine struck the
highest note on the palatal gamut, and that gout, though painful, was
a distinction. The best lives seldom exceeded sixty-nine. The vesical
and gall compartments at that age, generally, had completed their
mineralogical collection, and death was not pleasant.
Many of these mansions had the charms of not having been decorated or
repaired for a hundred years, whence they looked much the same as when
inhabited by the dowagers of bygone generations. So sensible were some of
the later occupants of this, that they preserved them in their pristine
state, and sat in them in old armchairs till they imagined themselves to
be ancestors; and in an instance or two donned the pigtail to complete
the illusion. So honourable was this emblem, that no tradesman, however
mean his calling, could wear it without being spoken of as the old
gentleman, and he doubtless felt himself to be such, though he might be
serving a customer with a jar of spermaceti oil.
As aforesaid, Gideon Mantell was an inhabitant of Lewes, struggling for
fame by his researches within the chalk strata, and for a livelihood by
his practice as a surgeon and apothecary, in which he had a fair amount
of success, no doubt due to his great abilities, but in the estimation
of many to the flash of his surroundings. His gig and groom were models
as they waited at his door. His coat of arms embraced your vision as it
shone in the fan-light and whispered of greatness within. He was tall,
graciously graceful, and flexible, a naturalist, realizing his own
lordship of the creation.
Mantell had a brother in his business, a man, short and deformed, of
a quiet, obliging manner. His name was Joshua. He had a son who also
made himself heard in later times from the wilds of New Zealand, as a
successful scientific explorer.
Some years later the good Earl of Egremont, lord of Petworth Castle,
great in his generosity, presented Mantell with a large sum of money to
start him in a spacious mansion at Brighton, where he might set up his
fine museum, and pursue his profession in a wider field. Removing to this
from Lewes he still pursued his science, but the sort of ground he needed
was preoccupied, and, disposing of his collection to the trustees of the
British Museum, he migrated finally to a suburb of London, I think it was
to Clapham.
Had Government allowed such a man as Mantell a thousand a year for the
purposes of science, he would have brought the geology of his day to
perfection! How creditably they might have amended the sacrifice by
withholding the £70,000 from the British Gallery for the purchase of a
sham Raphael, and a preposterous Rembrandt, which the pencils of those
artists never touched—an invalid housemaid on a throne as Virgin, and a
Charles the King on a cart-horse! Raphael painted only beauty, Rembrandt
only grace. But the English are the meanest judges of art in Europe. An
Italian picture-dealer would have set them right in a few minutes.
What have the trustees done with those fabulous Correggios, which once
made such a figure and were shelved to the entrance passage, when the
National Gallery was still in Mr. Angerstein’s mansion in Pall Mall?
“Per arte e l’inganno,
Si vive mezzo l’anno;
Per inganno e l’arte
Si vive l’altro parte.”
There were other worthies in this town of Lewes: Mr. Horsfield, author of
the “History and Antiquities of Lewes;” Mr. Lower, a stationer, who wrote
on Sussex worthies; and the master of the Grammar School, Dr. Proctor,
whose voice crackled emphasis and accent. He was one of the rolling
stones that gather no moss; Lewes failed him and he took a mansion
towards Kemp town; he was tempted from his school there to Jersey, and
became Principal of its College, but this did not fit him for any length
of time. My brother, who was his pupil, met him now and then in after
days in the streets of London; he was then always on his way to see the
bishop.