ON an evening in April, 1779, the play, “_Love in a Village_” was being
performed at Covent Garden Theatre before a large audience. In the front
row of the boxes sat two ladies, one of them young and handsome, the
other not so young and not so beautiful--a dark-faced, dark-eyed woman
whom no one could mistake for any nationality except Italian. Three
gentlemen who sat behind them were plainly of their party--elegant
gentlemen of fashion, one of them an Irish peer. Every person of
quality in the theatre and a good many others without such a claim to
distinction, were aware of the fact that the most attractive member of
the group was Miss Reay, a lady whose name had been for several years
closely associated--very closely indeed--with that of Lord Sandwich,
the First Lord of the Admiralty, and one of the most unpopular men in
England. She had driven to the theatre in his lordship's carriage, and
two of the gentlemen with whom she conversed freely in the box were high
officials of the department over which his lordship presided.
Almost from the moment of her arrival, Miss Reay and her friends were
watched eagerly by a hollow-eyed, morose gentleman in black. He looked as
if he had not slept for many nights; and no one observing him could have
failed to perceive that he had come to the theatre not for the sake of
the play which was being performed, but to watch the lady. He kept his
fierce eyes fixed upon her, and he frowned every time that she turned to
make a remark to one of her friends; his eyes blazed every time that one
of her friends smiled over her shoulder, and his hands clenched if she
smiled in return. Several times it seemed as if he found it impossible
to remain in his place in the upper side box, where his seat was, for
he started up and hurried out to the great lobby, walking to and fro in
great agitation. More than once he strode away from the lobby into the
Bedford Coffee House just outside the theatre, and there partook of
brandy and water, returning after brief intervals to stare at Miss Reay
and her companions in the front row of the boxes.
[Illustration: 0327]
At the conclusion of the play, he went hastily into the vestibule,
standing to one side, not far from the exit from the boxes; but if he
intended to be close to Miss Reay while she walked to the main exit, his
object was defeated by reason of the crush of people congregating in
the vestibule, the people of quality waiting for their carriages to
be announced, the others waiting for the satisfaction of being in such
close proximity to people of quality.
Among the crowd there was a lady who had recently become the wife of a
curious gentleman named Lewis, who some years later wrote a grisly
book entitled _The Monk_, bringing him such great fame as cancelled for
posterity the names of Matthew Gregory, given to him by his parents, and
caused him to be identified by the name of his book only. This lady made
a remark to her neighbour in respect of a lovely rose which Miss Reay
was wearing when she left the box exit and stood in the vestibule--a
beautiful rose early in the month of April might have excited remark in
those days; at any rate, Mrs. Lewis has left the record that at the
very moment of her speaking, the rose fell to the floor, and Miss Reay
appeared to be profoundly affected by this trifling incident, and said
in a faltering voice, “I trust that I am not to consider this as an evil
omen!” So Mrs. Lewis stated.
A few moments later Lord Sandwich's carriage was announced, and Miss
Reay and her companion made a move in the direction of the door. The
gentlemen of the party seem to have left earlier, for on the ladies
being impeded by the crush in the vestibule, a stranger, named Mr.
Macnamara, of Lincoln's Inn, proffered his services to help them to
get to the carriage. Miss Reay thanked him, took his arm, and the crowd
opened for them in some measure. It quickly opened wider under a more
acute persuasion a few seconds later, when the morose gentleman in black
pushed his way among the people until he was within a few feet of the
lady and her escort. Only for a second did he pause--certainly he spoke
no word to Miss Reay or any one else--before he pulled a pistol from his
pocket and fired almost point-blank at her before any one could knock up
his hand. Immediately afterwards he turned a second pistol against his
own forehead and pulled the trigger, and fell to the ground.
The scene that followed can easily be imagined. Every woman present
shrieked, except Miss Reay, who was supported by Mr. Macnamara. The
ghastly effects of the bullet were apparent not only upon the forehead
of the lady where it lodged, but upon the bespattered garments of every
one about the door, and upon the columns of the hall. Above the shrieks
of the terror-stricken people were heard the yells of the murderer,
who lay on the ground, hammering at his head with the butt end of his
weapon, and crying, “Kill me! Kill me!”
A Mr. Mahon, of Russell Street, who was said to be an apothecary, was
the first to lay a hand upon the wretched man. He wrested the pistol
from his grasp and prevented him from doing further mischief to himself.
He was quickly handed over to the police, and, with his unfortunate
victim, was removed to the Shakespeare Tavern, a surgeon named Bond
being in prompt attendance. It did not take long to find that Miss Reay
had never breathed after the shot had been fired at her; the bullet had
smashed the skull and passed through the brain. The man remained for
some time unconscious, but even before he recovered he was identified as
James Hackman, a gentleman who had been an officer in the army, and
on retiring had taken Orders, being admitted a priest of the Church of
England scarcely a month before his crime. There were rumours respecting
his infatuation for Miss Reay, and in a surprisingly short space of
time, owing most likely to the exertions of Signora Galli, the Italian
whom Lord Sandwich had hired to be her companion, the greater part of
the romantic story of the wretched man's life, as far as it related to
Miss Reay, was revealed.
It formed a nine days' wonder during the spring of the same year (1779).
The grief displayed by Lord Sandwich on being made acquainted with the
circumstances of the murder was freely commented on, and the sympathy
which was felt for him may have diminished in some measure from his
unpopularity. The story told by Croker of the reception of the news by
Lord Sandwich is certainly not deficient in detail. “He stood as it
were petrified,” we are told, “till suddenly, seizing a candle, he ran
upstairs and threw himself on the bed, and in agony exclaimed, 'Leave
me for a while to myself, I could have borne anything but this!' The
attendants remained for a considerable time at the top of the staircase,
till his lordship rang the bell and ordered that they should all go to
bed.”
Before his lordship left the scene of his grief in the morning Sir John
Fielding, the Bow Street magistrate, had arrived at the Shakespeare
Tavern from his house at Brompton, and, after a brief inquiry, ordered
Hackman to be taken to Tothill Fields Prison. In due course he was
committed to Newgate, and on April 16th his trial took place before
Blackstone, the Recorder. The facts of the tragedy were deposed to by
several witnesses, and the cause of the lady's death was certified by
Mr. Bond, the surgeon. The prisoner was then called on for his defence.
He made a brief speech, explaining that he would have pleaded guilty
at once had he not felt that doing so “would give an indication of
contemning death, not suitable to my present condition, and would in
some measure make me accessory to a second peril of my life. And I
likewise thought,” he added, “that the justice of my country ought to
be satisfied by suffering my offence to be proved, and the fact to be
established by evidence.”
This curious affectation of a finer perception of the balance of justice
than is possessed by most men was quite characteristic of this man, as
was also his subsequent expression of his willingness to submit to the
sentence of the court. His counsel endeavoured to show that he had
been insane from the moment of his purchasing his pistols until he had
committed the deed for which he was being tried--he did not say anything
about “a wave of insanity,” however, though that picturesque phrase
would have aptly described the nature of his plea. He argued that a
letter which was found in the prisoner's pocket, and in which suicide
only was threatened, should be accepted as proof that he had no
intention of killing Miss Reay when he went to the theatre.
The Recorder, of course, made short work of such a plea. He explained to
the jury that “for a plea of insanity to be successful it must be shown
not merely that it was a matter of fits and starts, but that it was
a definite thing--a total loss of reason and incapability of reason.”
Referring to the letter, he said that it seemed to him to argue a
coolness and premeditation incompatible with such insanity as he
described.
The result was, as might have been anticipated, the jury, without
leaving the box, found Hackman guilty, and he was sentenced to be
hanged.
Mr. Boswell, who was nearly as fond of hearing death-sentences
pronounced as he was of seeing them carried out, was present in the
court during the trial, and to him Mr. Booth, the brother-in-law of the
prisoner, applied--he himself had been too greatly agitated to be able
to remain in the court--for information as to how Hackman had deported
himself, and Boswell was able to assure him that he had behaved “as
well, sir, as you or any of his friends could wish; with decency,
propriety, and in such a manner as to interest every one present. He
might have pleaded that he shot Miss Reay by accident, but he fairly
told the truth that in a moment of frenzy he did intend it.”
While he was in the condemned cell at Newgate he received a message from
Lord Sandwich to the effect that if he wished for his life, he (Lord
Sandwich) had influence with the King, and might succeed in obtaining
a commutation of his sentence. Hackman replied that he had no wish to
live, but he implored his lordship to give him such assurance that those
whom Miss Reay had left behind her would be carefully looked after, as
would, on meeting her in another world, enable him to make this pleasing
communication to her.
He spent the few days that remained to him in writing fervid letters to
his friends and in penning moralisings, in a style which was just the
smallest degree more pronounced than that which was fashionable at his
period--the style of the sentimental hero of Richardson and his inferior
followers.
His execution at Tyburn attracted the most enormous crowds ever seen
upon such an occasion. The carriage in which the wretched man was
conveyed to the gibbet could only proceed at a walking pace; but still,
the vehicle which followed it, containing the Earl of Carlisle and
James Boswell, arrived in good time for the final scene of this singular
tragedy, which for weeks, as the Countess of Ossory wrote to George
Selwyn, was the sole topic of conversation.
And, as a matter of course, Horace Walpole had something to communicate
to one of his carefully-selected correspondents. Oddly enough it was
to a parson he wrote to express the opinion that he was still uncertain
“whether our clergy are growing Mahometans or not”; adding sagely, “they
certainly are not what they profess themselves; but as you and I should
not agree, perhaps, in assigning the same defects to them, I will not
enter on a subject which I have promised you to drop, all I allude to
now is the shocking murder of Miss Reay by a divine. In my own opinion
we are growing more fit for Bedlam than for Mahomet's paradise. The poor
criminal, I am persuaded, is mad, and the misfortune is the law does
not know how to define the shades of madness; and thus there are twenty
out-pensioners of Bedlam for one that is confined.”
Most persons will come to the conclusion that the judge who tried
Hackman made a most successful attempt to expound to the jury exactly
where the law drew a line in differentiating between the man who should
be sent to Bedlam and the man who should be sent to Tyburn, and will
agree with the justice of the law that condemned to the gallows this
divine of three weeks' standing for committing an atrocious crime, even
though the chances are that Hackman spoke the truth when he affirmed
that he had brought his pistols down to the theatre with no more
felonious intent than to blow out his own brains in the presence of the
lady and to fall dead at her feet. At the same time one is not precluded
from agreeing with Walpole's opinion that the people of his period were
growing more fit for Bedlam than for Eblis.
The truth is that an extraordinary wave of what was called
“sensibility” was passing over England at that time. It was a wave of
sentimentality--that maudlin sentimentality which was the exquisite
characteristic of the hero and heroine of almost every novel that
attained to any degree of success. To people who have formed their ideas
of the latter half of the eighteenth century from studying Boswell's
_Life of Johnson_, every page of which shows a healthy common sense;
or from the plates of Hogarth--robust even to a point of vulgarity--it
would seem incredible that there should exist in England at practically
the same time a cult of the maudlin and the lachrymose. Such a cult had,
however, obtained so great a hold on a large section of society that all
the satire of Smollett, Sterne, and Goldsmith, was unable to ridicule it
out of existence.
And the worst of the matter was that the types of these weeping
sentimentalists were not unreal. They began by being unreal, but in the
course of a short time they became real, the fact being that people in
all directions began to frame their conduct and their conversation upon
these flaccid creatures of the unhealthy fancy of third-rate novelists
and fourth-rate poetasters. More than once, it may be remarked, even
in our own time “movements” have had their origin in the fancy of a
painter--in one case of a subtle caricaturist. An artist possessed of
a distorted sense of what is beautiful in woman has been able to set
a certain fashion in the unreal, until people were well-nigh persuaded
that it was the painter who had taken the figures in his pictures from
the persons who had simply sought a cheap notoriety by adopting the
pose and the dress of the scraggy posturantes for whose anatomy he was
responsible.
So it was that, when certain novel-writers in the eighteenth century,
having no experience of the life which they attempted to depict, brought
forth creatures out of their own unhealthy imaginations, and placed them
before their readers as types of heroes and heroines, the public never
failed to include quite a number of readers who were ready to live up to
all those essentials that constituted the personages of the fiction.
And not alone over England had the sighs of a perpetually sighing hero
and heroine sent a lachrymose flood; France and Germany, if not actually
inundated, were at least rendered humid by its influence. _The Sorrows
of Werther_ was only one of the many books which helped on the cult of
the sentimental, and it was as widely read in England as in Germany.
Gessner's _Death of Abel_ had an enormous vogue in its English
translation. The boarding-school version of the tale of Abelard and
Heloise was also much wept over both in France and Germany; and the
true story of James Hackman and Martha Reay, as recorded by the
correspondence of the pair, published shortly after the last scene in
the tragedy had been enacted, and reissued with connecting notes some
twelve years ago, might pass only as a somewhat crude attempt to surpass
these masterpieces of fancy-woven woes. James and Martha might have been
as happy as thousands of other Jameses and Marthas have been, but they
chose to believe that the Fates were bothering themselves with this
particular case of James and Martha--they chose to feel that they were
doomed to a life of sorrowful love--at any rate, this was Martha's
notion--and they kept on exchanging emotional sentiments until James's
poor head gave way, and he sought to end up their romance in accordance
with the mode of the best models, stretching himself a pallid corpse at
the feet of his Martha; but then it was that Fate put out a meddlesome
finger, and so caused the scene of the last chapter to take place at
Tyburn.
The romance of Mr. Hackman and Miss Reay would never have taken place,
if Lord Sandwich had been as exemplary a husband as George III or Dr.
Johnson or Edmund Burke--the only exemplary husbands of the eighteenth
century that one can recall at a moment's notice. Unhappily his lordship
was one of the many examples of the unexemplary husband of that period.
If the Earl of Chesterfield advanced the ill-treatment of a wife to one
of the fine arts, it may be said that the Earl of Sandwich made it one
of the coarse. He was brutal in his treatment of the Countess, and never
more so than when he purchased the pretty child that Miss Reay must have
been at the age of thirteen, and had her educated to suit his tastes.
He went about the transaction with the same deliberation as a gourmand
might display in ordering his dinner. He was extremely fond of music,
so he had the child's education in this direction carefully attended
to. His place at Hinchinbrook had been the scene of the performance of
several oratorios, his lordship taking his place in the orchestra at the
kettledrums; and he hoped that by the time he should have his purchase
sent home, her voice would be equal to the demands put upon it by the
most exacting of the sacred soprano music of Handel or Gluck.
As it turned out he was not disappointed. Martha Reay, when she went to
live at Hinchinbrook at the age of eighteen, showed herself to be a most
accomplished young lady, as she certainly was a very charming one. She
was found to possess a lovely voice, and was quite fitted to take
her place, not merely in his lordship's music-room, but also in his
drawing-room to which he advanced her. To say that she was treated as
one of his lordship's family would be to convey a wrong impression,
considering how he treated the principal member of his family, but
certainly he introduced her to his guests, and she took her place at his
table at dinner parties. He even put her next to the wife of a bishop
upon one occasion, feeling sure that she would captivate that lady,
and as it turned out, his anticipations were fully realised; only the
bishop's lady, on making inquiries later on, protested that she was
scandalised by being placed in such a position as permitted of her
yielding to the fascinations of a young person occupying a somewhat
equivocal position in the household.
It was when she was at Hinchinbrook, in October, 1775, that Miss Reay
met the man who was to play so important a part in her life--and death.
Cradock, the “country gentleman,” tells in his _Memoirs_ the story of
the first meeting of the two. Lord Sandwich was anxious that a friend of
his own should be elected to a professorship at Cambridge, and Cradock,
having a vote, was invited to use it on behalf of his lordship's
candidate, and to stay for a night at Hinchinbrook on his way back to
London. He travelled in Lord Sandwich's coach, and when in the act of
driving through the gateway at Hinchinbrook, it overtook a certain Major
Reynolds and another officer who was stationed on recruiting duty in the
neighbourhood. Lord Sandwich, being acquainted with Reynolds, dismounted
and invited him and his friend to a family dinner at his lordship's
place that evening. Major Reynolds expressed his appreciation of this
act of courtesy, and introduced his friend as Captain Hackman. The party
was a simple affair.
It consisted of Lord Sandwich, Miss Reay, another lady, the two
officers, and Mr. Cradock. After coffee had been served two rubbers of
whist were played, and the party broke up.
This was the first meeting of Hackman and Miss Reay. They seem to have
fallen in love immediately, each with the other, for the first letter in
the correspondence, written in December, 1775, contains a good deal that
suggests the adolescence of a passion. Hackman was a man of education and
some culture, and he showed few signs of developing into that maudlin
sentimentalist who corresponded with the lady a year or two later. He
was but twenty-three years of age, the son of a retired officer in the
navy, who had sent him to St. John's College, Cambridge, and afterwards
bought him a commission in the 68th Foot. He was probably only an
ensign when he was stationed at Huntingdon, but being in charge of the
recruiting party, enjoyed the temporary rank of captain.
He must have had a pretty fair conceit of his own ability as a
correspondent, for he kept a copy of his love letters. Of course, there
is no means of ascertaining if he kept copies of all that he ever wrote;
he may have sent off some in the hot passion of the moment, but those
which passed into the hands of his brother-in-law and were afterwards
published, were copies which he had retained. Miss Reay was doubtless
discreet enough to destroy the originals before they had a chance of
falling into the hands of Lord Sandwich. It is difficult for us who
live in this age of scrawls and “correspondence cards” to imagine the
existence of that enormous army of letter-writers who flourished
their quills in the eighteenth century, for the entertainment of their
descendants in the nineteenth and twentieth; but still more difficult
is it to understand how, before the invention of any mechanical means
of reproducing manuscript, these voluminous correspondents first made
a rough draft of every letter, then corrected and afterwards copied
it, before sending it--securing a frank from a friendly Member of
Parliament--to its destination.
Superlatively difficult is it to imagine an ardent lover sitting down to
transcribe into the pages of a notebook the outpourings of his passion.
But this is what Ensign Hackman did, although so far as the consequences
of his love-making were concerned, he is deserving of a far higher place
among great lovers than Charlotte's Werther, or Mr. Swinburne's Dolores.
Charlotte we know “went on cutting bread and butter” after the death of
her honourable lover; but poor little Miss Reay was the victim of the
passion which she undoubtedly fanned into a flame of madness. Ensign
Hackman made copies of his love-letters, and we are grateful to him, for
by their aid we can perceive the progress of his disease. They are
like the successive pictures in a biograph series lately exhibited at a
conversazione of the Royal Society, showing the development of a blossom
into a perfect flower. We see by the aid of these letters how he gave
way under the attack of what we should now call the bacillus of that
maudlin sentimentality which was in the air in his day.
He began his love-letters like a gallant officer, but ended them in the
strain of the distracted curate who had been jilted just when he has
laid down the cork lino in the new study and got rid of the plumbers. He
wrote merrily of his “Corporal Trim,” who was the bearer of a “billet”
from her. “He will be as good a soldier to Cupid as to Mars, I dare say.
And Mars and Cupid are not now to begin their acquaintance, you know.”
Then he goes on to talk in a fine soldierly strain of the drum “beating
for volunteers to Bacchus. In plain English, the drum tells me dinner is
ready, for a drum gives us bloody-minded heroes an appetite for eating
as well as for fighting.... Adieu--whatever hard service I may have
after dinner, no quantity of wine shall make me let drop or forget my
appointment with you tomorrow. We certainly were not seen yesterday, for
reasons I will give you.”
This letter was written on December 7th, and it was followed by another
the next day, and a still longer one the day following. In fact,
Corporal Trim must have been kept as busy as his original in the service
of Uncle Toby, during the month of December, his duty being to receive
the lady's letters, as well as to deliver the gentleman's, and he seems
to have been equally a pattern of fidelity.
Hackman's letters at this time were models of good taste, with only
the smallest amount of swagger in them. His intentions were strictly
honourable, and they were not concealed within any cocoon of sentimental
phraseology. One gathers from his first letters that he was a simple and
straightforward gentleman, who, having fallen pretty deeply in love
with a young woman, seeks to make her his wife at the earliest possible
moment. Unfortunately however, the lady had fallen under the influence
of the prevailing affectation, and her scheme of life did not include a
commonplace marriage with a subaltern in a marching regiment. One might
be disposed to say that she knew when she was well off. The aspiration
to be made “a respectable woman” by marriage in a church was not
sufficiently strong in her to compel her to sacrifice the many good
things with which she was surrounded, in order to realise it. But, of
course, she was ready to pose as a miserable woman, linked to a man
whom she did not love, but too honourable to leave him, and far too
thoughtful for the career of the man whom she did love with all her soul
ever to become a burden to him. She had read the ballad of “Auld Robin
Gray”--she quoted it in full in one of her letters--and she was greatly
interested to find how closely her case resembled that of the wife in
the poem. She had brought herself to think of the man who had bought her
just as he would buy a peach tree, or a new tulip, as her “benefactor.”
Did she not owe to him the blessing of a good education, and the culture
of her voice, her knowledge of painting--nay, her “keep” for several
years, and her introduction to the people of quality who visited at
Hinchinbrook and at the Admiralty? She seemed to think it impossible
for any one to doubt that Lord Sandwich had acted toward her with
extraordinary generosity, and that she would be showing the most
contemptible ingratitude were she to forsake so noble a benefactor. But
all the same she found Hinchinbrook intolerably dull at times, and she
was so pleased at the prospect of having a lover, that she came to fancy
that she loved the first one who turned up.
She was undoubtedly greatly impressed by the ballad of “Auld Robin
Gray,” and she at once accepted the rôle of the unhappy wife, only she
found it convenient to modify one rather important line--
“I fain would think o' Jamie, but that would be a sin.”
She was fain to think on her Jamie whether it was a sin or not, but she
did so without having the smallest intention of leaving her Auld Robin
Gray. So whimsical an interpretation of the poem could scarcely occur
to any one not under the influence of the sentimental malady of the day;
but it served both for Miss Reay and her Jamie. They accepted it, and
became deeply sensible of its pathos as applied to themselves. Ensign
Hackman assured her that he was too high-minded to dream of making love
to her under the roof of Lord Sandwich, her “benefactor.”
“Our love, the inexorable tyrant of our hearts,” he wrote, “claims his
sacrifices, but does not bid us insult his lordship's walls with it.
How civilly did he invite me to Hinchinbrook in October last, though an
unknown recruiting officer. How politely himself first introduced me to
himself! Often has the recollection made me struggle with my passion.
Still it shall restrain it on this side honour.”
This was in reply to her remonstrance, and probably she regretted that
she had been so strenuous in pointing out to him how dreadful it would
be were she to show herself wanting in gratitude to Lord Sandwich. She
wanted to play the part of Jenny, the lawful wife of Robin Gray, with
as few sacrifices as possible, and she had no idea of sacrificing
young Jamie, the lover, any more than she had of relinquishing the many
privileges she enjoyed at Hinchinbrook by making Jamie the lover into
Jamie the husband.
It is very curious to find Hackman protesting to her all this time that
his passions are “wild as the torrent's roar,” apologising for making
his simile water when the element most congenial to his nature was fire.
“Swift had water in his brain. I have a burning coal of fire; your hand
can light it up to rapture, rage, or madness. Men, real men, have never
been wild enough for my admiration, it has wandered into the ideal world
of fancy. Othello (but he should have put himself to death in his wife's
sight, not his wife), Zanga are my heroes. Milk-and-water passions are
like sentimental comedy.”
Read in the light of future events this letter has a peculiar
significance. Although he became more sentimental than the hero of any
of the comedies at which he was sneering, he was still able to make an
honest attempt to act up to his ideal of Othello. “_He should have put
himself to death in his wife's sight_.” It will be remembered that he
pleaded at his trial that he had no design upon the life of Miss Reay,
but only aimed at throwing himself dead at her feet.
Equally significant are some of the passages in the next letters which
he wrote to her. They show that even within the first month of his
acquaintance with his Martha his mind had a peculiar bent. He was giving
his attention to Hervey's _Meditations_, and takes pains to point out to
her two passages which he affirms to be as fine as they are natural. Did
ever love-letter contain anything so grisly? “A beam or two finds its
way through the grates (of the vault), and reflects a feeble glimness
from the nails of the coffins.” This is one passage--ghastly enough
in all conscience. But it is surpassed by the others which he quotes:
“Should the haggard skeleton lift a clattering hand.” Respecting the
latter he remarks, “I know not whether the epithet 'haggard' might
not be spared.” It is possible that the lady on receiving this curious
love-letter was under the impression that the whole passage might have
been spared her.
But he seems to have been supping off horrors at this time, for he goes
on to tell a revolting story about the black hole of Calcutta; and then
he returns with zest to his former theme of murder and suicide. He had
been reading the poem of “Faldoni and Teresa,” by Jerningham, and he
criticises it quite admirably. “The melancholy tale will not take up
three words, though Mr. J. has bestowed upon it 335 melancholy lines,”
he tells the young lady. “Two lovers, meeting with an invincible
object to their union, determined to put an end to their existence
with pistols. The place they chose for the execution of their terrible
project was a chapel that stood at a little distance from the house.
They even decorated the altar for the occasion, they paid a particular
attention to their own dress. Teresa was dressed in white with
rose-coloured ribbands. The same coloured ribbands were tied to the
pistols. Each held the ribband that was fastened to the other's trigger,
which they drew at a certain signal.” His criticism of the poem includes
the remark that Faldoni and Teresa might be prevented from making
proselytes by working up their affecting story so as to take off the
edge of the dangerous example they offer. This, he says, the author has
failed to do, and he certainly proves his point later by affirming that
“while I talk of taking off the dangerous edge of their example, they
have almost listed me under their bloody banners.”
This shows the morbid tendency of the man's mind, though it must be
confessed that nearly all the remarks which he makes on ordinary topics
are eminently sane and well considered.
A few days later we find him entering with enthusiasm into a scheme,
suggested by her, of meeting while she was on her way to London, and it
is plain from the rapturous letter which he wrote to her that their plot
was successful; but when she reached town she had a great deal to occupy
her, so that it is not strange she should neglect him for a time. The
fact was, as Cradock states in his _Memoirs_, that the unpopularity of
Lord Sandwich and Miss Reay had increased during the winter to such a
point that it became dangerous for them to show themselves together in
public. Ribald ballads were sung under the windows of the Admiralty, and
Cradock more than once heard some strange insults shouted out by
people in the park. It was at this time that she spoke to Cradock about
appearing in opera, and he states that it reached his ears that she had
been offered three thousand pounds and a free benefit (a possible extra
five hundred) for one season's performances.
Now if she had really been in love with Hackman this was surely the
moment when she should have gone to him, suffered him to marry her, and
thus made up by a few years on the lyric stage for any deficiency in his
fortune or for the forfeiture of any settlement her “benefactor” might
have been disposed to make in her favour. But she seems to have shown a
remarkable amount of prudence throughout the whole of her intrigue, and
she certainly had a premonition of the danger to which she was exposed
by her connection with him. “Fate stands between us,” she wrote in
reply to one of his impetuous upbraiding letters. “We are doomed to be
wretched. And I, every now and then, think some terrible catastrophe
will be the result of our connection. 'Some dire event,' as Storge
prophetically says in _Jephtha_, 'hangs over our heads.' Oh, that it
were no crime to quit this world like Faldoni and Teresa... by your hand
I could even die with pleasure. I know I could.”
An extraordinary premonition, beyond doubt, to write thus, and one is
tempted to believe that she had ceased for a moment merely to play the
part of the afflicted heroine. But her allusion to Jephtha and, later in
the same letter, to a vow which she said she had made never to marry
him so long as she was encumbered with debts, alleging that this was
the “insuperable reason” at which she had hinted on a previous occasion,
makes one suspicious. One feels that if she had not been practising the
music of _Jephtha_ she would not have thought about her vow not to marry
him until she could go to him free from debt. Why, she had only to sing
three times to release herself from that burden.
Some time afterwards she seems to have suggested such a way of getting
over her difficulties, but it is pretty certain she knew that he would
never listen to her. Her position at this time was undoubtedly one
of great difficulty. Hackman was writing to her almost every day, and
becoming more high-minded and imperious in every communication, and she
was in terror lest some of his letters should fall into the hands of
Lord Sandwich. She was ready to testify to his lordship's generosity in
educating her to suit his own tastes, but she suspected its strength to
withstand such a strain as would be put on it if he came upon one of Mr.
Hackman's impetuous letters.
She thought that when she had induced her lover to join his regiment
in Ireland she had extricated herself from one of the difficulties that
surrounded her; and had she been strong enough to refrain from
writing to the man, she might have been saved from the result of her
indiscretion. Unhappily for herself, however, she felt it incumbent on
her to resume her correspondence with him. Upon one occasion she sent
him a bank-note for fifty pounds, but this he promptly returned with
a very proper letter. Indeed, all his letters from Ireland are
interesting, being far less impassioned than those which she wrote to
him. Again she mentioned having read _Werther_, and he promptly begged
of her to send the book to him. “If you do not,” he adds, “I positively
never will forgive you. Nonsense, to say it will make me unhappy, or
that I shall not be able to read it! Must I pistol myself because a
thick-blooded German has been fool enough to set the example, or because
a German novelist has feigned such a story?”
But it would appear that she knew the man's nature better than he
himself did, for she quickly replied: “The book you mention is just the
only book you should never read. On my knees I beg that you will never,
never read it!” But if he never read _Werther_ he was never without some
story of the same type to console him for its absence, and he seems to
have gloated over the telling of all to her. One day he is giving her
the particulars of a woman who committed suicide in Enniskillen because
she married one man while she was in love with another. His comment is,
“She, too, was _Jenny_ and had her _Robin Gray_.” His last letter from
Ireland was equally morbid. In it he avowed his intention, if he were
not granted leave of absence for the purpose of visiting her, of selling
out of his regiment. He kept his promise but too faithfully. He sold out
and crossed to England without delay, arriving in London only to find
Miss Reay extremely ill.
His attempts to cheer her convalescence cannot possibly be thought very
happy. He describes his attendance upon the occasion of the hanging of
Dr. Dodd, the clergyman who had committed forgery; and this reminds
him that he was unfortunately out of England when one Peter Tolosa was
hanged for killing his sweetheart, so that he had no chance of taking
part in this ceremony as well, although, he says, unlike George
S.--meaning Selwyn--he does not make a profession of attending
executions; adding that “the friend and historian of Paoli hired a
window by the year, looking out on the Grass Market in Edinburgh,
where malefactors were hanged.” This reference to Boswell is somewhat
sinister. All this letter is devoted to a minute account of the
execution of Dodd, and another deals with the revolting story of the
butchery of Monmouth, which he suggests to her as an appropriate subject
for a picture.
At this time he was preparing for ordination, and, incidentally, for
the culmination of the tragedy of his life. He had undoubtedly become a
monomaniac, his “subject” being murder and suicide. His last lurid story
was of a footman who, “having in vain courted for some time a servant
belonging to Lord Spencer, at last caused the banns to be put up at
church without her consent, which she forbad. Being thus disappointed
he meditated revenge, and, having got a person to write a letter to her
appointing a meeting, he contrived to waylay her, and surprise her in
Lord Spencer's park. On her screaming he discharged a pistol at her and
made his escape.”
“Oh love, love, canst thou not be content to make fools of thy slaves,”
he wrote, “to make them miserable, to make them what thou pleasest? Must
thou also goad them on to crimes?”
Only two more letters did he write to his victim. He took Orders and
received the living of Wiveton, in Norfolk, seeming to take it for
granted that, in spite of her repeated refusals to marry him, she
would relent when she heard of the snug parsonage. This was acting on
precisely the same lines as the butler of whom he wrote. When he found
that Miss Reay was determined to play the part taken by the servant in
the same story, the wretched man hurried up to London and bought his
pistols.
The whole story is a pitiful one. That the man was mad no one except a
judge and jury could doubt. That his victim was amply punished for her
indiscretion in leading him on even the strictest censor of conduct must
allow.