ORDERS: AND LINCOLN'S INN.
Soon after leaving Oxford, and when some attempts to help my speech
seemed to be partially successful, my father wished me to take orders,
which also from religious motives was my own desire (for M'Neile at
Albury, and Bulteel at Oxford, had been instruments of good to me, the
first since I was 15, the other as a young collegian) and as Earl
Rivers, whom my father had financially assisted promised me a living,
and a curacy was easy where the mere licence was enough by way of
salary, I soon found myself standing for introductory approval before
Bishop Burgess at his hotel in Waterloo Place, a candidate for orders by
Examination. The good Bishop being a Hebrew scholar was glad enough to
hear that I (with however slight a smattering) had studied that
primitive tongue under Pusey and Pauli,--and I began to hope before his
awful presence. But, when he told me to read, and soon perceived my only
half-cured infirmity, he faithfully enough assured me with sorrow that I
could not be ordained unless I had my speech. So that first and sole
interview came to an untimely end: for soon after, not meaning to give
up the struggle at once, I resolved, before my next Episcopal visit, to
go down to Blewbury, the vicarage of my friend Mr. Evanson, who had
agreed to license me to his curacy, in order that by reading the lessons
in church I might practically test my competency. Of course, I prepared
myself specially by diligence, and care, and prayer, to stand this new
ordeal. But I failed to please even the indulgent vicar, though he got
his curate for nothing, and though his fair daughter amiably welcomed
the not ungainly Coelebs; and as for the severe old clerk,--he naïvely
blurted out, "Tell'ee what, sir, it won't do: you looks well,--but what
means them stops?" Alas! they meant the rebellion of tongue and lips
against every difficult letter, a _t_, or a _p_, or a far too current
_s_. And so I came to the wise conclusion that I was not to be a parson.
And perhaps it's as well I'm not; for my natural combativeness would
never have tolerated my bishop or my rector, or even the parish
churchwarden, specially in these days of Ritualism and Romanism. I was
thus thrown back upon myself: and I now see gratefully and humbly how I
was being schooled and forced into a mental era of silent
thoughtfulness, in after years the seed of several volumes as well as
innumerable ballads and poems which have flown as fly-leaves over the
world.
After this clerical failure, my good father urged me to turn to the law,
thinking that as a chamber counsel my intellectual attainments (and I
had worked hard for many years) might yet be available to society and to
myself, though on the "silent system:" but alas! verbal explanations are
as necessary in a room as at the bar; I soon perceived that all could
not be done on paper, and as I thoroughly hated law I speedily turned to
other sorts of literature, in especial the fixing of my own rhymed or
rhythmed thoughts in black and white.
There is a small chamber in the turret of No. 19 Lincoln's Inn Old
Square, on the second floor of rooms then belonging to my late friend
Thomas Lewin (afterwards a Master in Chancery, and well known not only
for his Law books, but also for his Life of St. Paul) where I used to
dream and think and jot down Proverbial morsels on odd bits of paper
which gradually grew to be a book. Lewin once, I remember, picked up
from the wastepaper basket these lines which he admired much, and asked
me where they came from:
"For that a true philosophy commandeth an innocent life,
And the unguilty spirit is lighter than a linnet's heart."
They occur in my Essay on Ridicule, first series, so I had to confess as
found out.
When my book appeared Lewin offered to review it for me in the _Literary
Gazette_, then edited by his friend Mr. Landon, L.E.L.'s brother. An
unusual rush of business just then coming in to him, and the editor
pressing for copy, Lewin begged me to write the Article myself, to which
I most reluctantly assented; resolving however to be quite impartial.
The result was that when I handed the critique to my busy friend, he
quickly said after a hurried glance, "Why, this won't do at all; you
have cut yourself up cruelly, instead of praising, as you ought to have
done. I must do it myself, I suppose. Here, copy out this Opinion for
me, if you can read it: it's Mr. Brodie's, and I can't." With that he
threw my MS. into the wastepaper basket, and I did his work for him,
whilst he commended me with due vigour, and sent his clerk off with a
too kind verdict in hot haste to the expectant editor.
The mention of Brodie reminds me that I spent a year copying old deeds
in his murky chamber, 49 Lincoln's Inn Fields, where nobody could read
his handwriting except his clerk (appropriately yclept Inkpen), and
when _he_ couldn't it was handed back to Mr. Brodie for exposition,
wherein if he himself failed, as was sometimes the case, he had to write
a new Opinion. Inkpen was a character, as a self-taught entomologist,
breeding in me then the rabies of collecting moths and beetles, as a
couple of boxes full of such can still prove. He lived at Chelsea, near
the Botanical Gardens there; and attributed his wonderful finds of
strange insects in his own pocket-handkerchief garden to stray
caterpillars and flies, &c., that came his way from among the packets of
foreign plants. He used also to catch small fowl on passengers' coats
and blank walls, as he passed on his daily walks to his office and back,
having pill-boxes in his pocket, and pins inside his hat to secure the
spoil. In the course of years he had amassed butterflies and beetles to
so valuable an extent, that when he was compelled by adverse fortune to
sell his cabinets by auction at Stevens's, he netted £1200 for his
collection: this he told me in later years himself; immediately after
the sale, he commenced collecting anew,--and having been made curator of
Lincoln's Inn Fields (through Mr. Brodie's interest), he soon found an
infinity of new insects,--derived perhaps from the Surgeon's Hall
Museum, or straying to the nine acres of that Garden,--is it not the
area of Cephren's Pyramid?--as a refuge for them out of smoky London.
The good man always brought a new flower to look at every morning while
at desk work; it lived in an old inkbottle of water, till one happy day
I bethought me charitably of giving him a pretty China vase,--that good
man, I say, is now long since gone to a world of light and
beauty--whence, I am sure, flowers and butterflies cannot be excluded.
About the same time this memorable matter may receive a notice. One day
at Brodie's chambers we heard a riotous noise in Lincoln's Inn Fields,
and running out, I found that the Duke of Wellington, for some political
offence, was being mobbed,--and that too on the 18th of June! He was
calmly walking his horse, surrounded by roaring roughs,--a groom being
behind him at some distance, but otherwise alone. Disgusted at the
scene, I jumped on the steps of Surgeon's Hall, and shouted
out--Waterloo, Waterloo! That one word turned the tide of execrations
into cheers, and the Iron Duke passed me silently with a military
salute: as the mob were thus easily converted ("mob" being, as we
conveyancers say, a short form for "mobilé", changeable) and escorted
our national hero to his home in safety, I really think the little
incident worth recording. We are just now in the throes of such a
mobocracy,--and know how much one firm policeman can avail to calm a
riot. While speaking of the Duke and Apsley House, let me add here
another word of some interest. My uncle, Arthur W. Devis, had painted
life-sized portraits of Blucher and Gneisenau, which his widow had given
to me: and as the Duke had always been my father's friend, I asked his
Grace if he would accept them from me; this he declined, but said, "get
Colnaghi to value them and I'll buy them"--as accordingly I did, and the
pictures are still I presume either at Apsley House or Strathfieldsaye.
My small memories of the Great Duke are summed up in these four
monosyllables, plain, blunt, firm, kind.
After Brodie's, my liberal father would give for me another hundred
pounds, this time to his cousin Mr. Walters of No. 12 in the Square, to
make me more learned as a conveyancer: but it was all of no use: "He
penned a stanza when he should engross:" however, I ate my terms and was
duly called to the Bar. At Walters' my most eminent colleague, amongst
others, was Roundel Palmer, now Lord Selborne, who, some time after,
when we both had chambers in the Inn, wanted me (but I repudiated the
idea) to be proposed as a candidate member for Oxford University, just
before Gladstone was induced to stand; I daresay he will remember it. As
to M.P.ship I may have had other chances, but I never cared for a
position of endless care and toil by night and day, to say nothing of my
impediment of speech, and as to the magic letters I rather despised
them: this being one reason. Not very many years ago my brother Charles
was offered Nottingham if he would pay £3000 for the honour,--and so I
failed to appreciate any such distinction. I think too that votes were
at one time purchasable even at Guildford, my county town: but that was
of course at a less upright and immaculate time of day than this.
At Walters' were also three of my cotemporaries,--De Morgan, who had the
business after decease of our principal, and whose brother is or was the
famous psychological philosopher; Domville, since Sir Charles, I
believe; and Gunn, a West Indian, of whom the jest was to inquire of
Walters, a very nervous man, if he liked us to have a gun in chambers:
all these, and there were more, were clever men and worthy, but as the
tide of life flows on I have lost sight of them.
* * * * *
I have just found an old letter of my own, dated December 28, 1839,
which (with my own permission asked and granted) I will give as to a
matter quite forgotten by me, viz., that Lady Spencer promised my
father to get me an Indian Writership,--as also that previously I had
once hopes of the Registrarship from Lord John Russell, afterwards given
to Mr. Lyster. The letter proves how much my no-speech hindered both my
good father's efforts and my own;--and explains itself. In those days it
cost 9d. between Albury and London.
My Dearest Father,--I can fully, though not perhaps so
fully as you can, enter into your great anxieties about your five
great boys, and actuated by this sympathy I sit down to say a word
more about India.--I do hope you have not yet given Lady Spencer a
decisive answer, as the horizon seems a little to clear of its
indigenous hurricanes. Since my last letter to you I have, I can
truly say, made every effort to speak like a man, but, alas I too
unsuccessfully: my tongue seems only able to say veto to the
Church, and that speaking is a necessary qualification "needs no
demonstration." Aunt Fanny has strongly recommended me to think
more seriously about it, and Mr. M'Neile has also given me his
valuable opinion on the subject, that at least I must inquire what
I am more fitted for, and not lightly put aside those opportunities
which Providence places in my way. However, I would by no means be
hurried in my choice either way: I must inquire what is the office
of a writer; whether oratorical powers be not requisite, &c., for
as yet I have a very vague and indefinite idea of what I reject or
choose. I really do find my impediment most truly a grievous
impediment to what appears more desirable; but I would wish to
consider this, as every other constitutional infirmity or
affliction, as but an instrument in the hands of God to subserve
some wise purpose. Let this letter therefore, if you please, serve
as a preventive, if not too late, to your final decision about it,
and put me, my dear father, in possession of more of the peculiar
features, in a writer's employment if you can, I hope to be with
you on Friday.
Till then, and ever believe me, my dear father, your affectionate
son,
M.F. Tupper.
Albury, _December 28th, Wednesday._
The day after I took my degree as a barrister, I married my cousin after
a nine years' engagement; my father having resolved I should not marry
without a profession. I did my best at this vocation of the law much
against the grain, and actually achieved, with Lewin's help, a
voluminous will, and a marriage settlement, with some accessory deeds,
procured for me by my mother's friend Mr. Hunt, through one Dangerfield,
a solicitor. I have often felt anxious to know how far my conveyancing
held water; but the thought of Lewin's skill has comforted me--and
besides I have never heard a word about it now for half a century. My
fee for all was fifty guineas--pretty well for a first and last exploit
in the way of law and its rewards.
As I am just leaving my father's house for Park Village, and thereafter
Albury, here I will insert two little memories of past days when I lived
with my parents at No. 5. Here is one. Theodore Hook's famous Berners
Street hoax had lately made such exploits very catching among
schoolboys--and in my Charterhouse days it was repeated by "Punsonby &
Co." at my father's town-house. On a certain Saturday when I had my
weekly holiday at home, I marvelled to find the street crowded with
vans, coal-carts, trucks, a mourning coach, fishmongers, butchers, and
confectioners with trays, and a number of servants wanting places. All
these were crowding round No. 5, as ordered or advertised for by Mr.
Tupper: of course soon explained away, and rejected, to a general
indignation at the hoaxers. Now, as I had my suspicions, I sat unseen at
the front drawing-room window, and watched: and as more than once I had
noticed P. and his friends pass down the street on the opposite side, I
taxed them with their exploit on the Monday; and I rather think it cost
them not a trifling sum to satisfy that crowd of disappointed tradesmen.
Happily such practical joking is now long since (or ought to be) a
social outrage of the past; Hook's being first had the grace of original
humour,--but imitations are dull repetition, not to be excused. I only
once met Theodore Hook, and that was in his decadence; he looked puffy
and only semi-sober; but I recollect with how much deference and
expectation the "livener-up" was eagerly surrounded, and how sillily the
dupes laughed at every word he uttered, whether humorous or not.
* * * * *
For another last memory of No. 5, in the dining-room whereof Lord
Sandwich, who had once lived there, is said to have invented
"sandwiches," I will record this.
In those days of long ago, how well I remember our next-door neighbour,
old Lady Cork, "The Dowager-Countess of Cork and Orrery," as her
door-plate proclaimed, some of whose peculiarities I may mention without
offence, as they were notorious and (the physicians judged) innocent
and venial. Whenever she found herself alone (and she kept profuse
hospitality three or four days a week, with her vast illuminated
conservatory full of artificial flowers and grapes and oranges tied on
everything), when those famous routs were silent, and dance music no
longer kept us awake at night, the little old lady would send in a
message, asking "neighbour Tupper to give her a dinner
to-day"--sometimes even coming unannounced. She usually appeared all in
white, even to her shoes and bonnet, which latter she would keep on the
whole evening; the only colour about her being rouged cheeks, sometimes
decorated with a piece of white paper cut into the shape of a heart, and
stuck on "to charm away the tic." Well, her ladyship was always full of
society anecdotes; and I only wish that her diary may soon be published,
as probably a more spicy record of past celebrities than even Pepys's in
old times, or Greville's in our own; but she is said to have left
instructions to her executors not to publish till every one mentioned by
her was dead: so we must wait till that tontine is over. But the
specialty of the aged countess, who died at past ninety but never owned
to more than sixty, was a propensity to annex small properties; always
it happened that next morning after a visit either her butler or her
lady's-maid would bring to us a spoon or a fork or a piece of
_bric-à-brac_ which she had carried off with her in seeming
unconsciousness; and as she never inquired for them afterwards, possibly
it was so. Let doctors decide. _Requiescat._ The forthcoming memoirs of
that once famous and lovely Miss Monckton will be interesting indeed, if
not over-edited.