_Mrs. Partington_ (Vol. ii., p. 377.).--IGNORANS no doubt refers to the
oft-repeated allusion to "Dame Partington and her mop;" and taking it for
granted that he does so, I will enlighten him a little on the subject. The
"original Mrs. Partington" was a respectable old lady, living, at Sidmouth
in Devonshire; her cottage was on the beach, and during an awful storm
(that, I think, of Nov. 1824, when some fifty or sixty ships were wrecked
at Plymouth) the sea rose to such a height as every now and then to invade
the old lady's place of domicile: in fact, almost every wave dashed in at
the door. Mrs. Partington, with such help as she could command, with mops
and brooms, as fast as the water entered the house, mopped it out again;
until at length the waves had the mastery, and the dame was compelled to
retire to an upper story of the house. I well recollect reading in the
Devonshire newspapers of the time an account similar to the above: but the
first allusion to the circumstance was, I think, made by Lord Brougham in
his celebrated speech in the house of Commons on the Reform Bill, in which
he compared the Conservative opposition to the bill to be like the
opposition of "Dame Partington and her mop, who endeavoured to mop out the
waves of the Atlantic."