In and About Drury Lane, and Other Papers, Vol. 2 (of 2) / Reprinted from the pages of the 'Temple Bar' Magazine

by Dr. Doran

FOOTNOTE:

[1] It was his son, by a former marriage, who became Lord Chancellor and Earl of Nottingham.

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TO BRIGHTON AND BACK AGAIN.

Some few years ago, philosophers were jostling excursionists in once gay Brighthelmstone; they discussed the prospects of science, and united archæology with a considerable amount of picnicking and claret-cup. We here submit for the general recreation a paper that was not read at the meeting of the British Association in that town, but which will be perused in the larger Elsewhere. Its staple commodity will consist of the anecdotal waifs and strays connected with old Brighton, which philosophers do not regard, but which have an especial value and interest of their own. Accordingly we pass by the Druidical mistletoe, British barrows, Roman coins, and Saxons, Danes, and Normans, and we come at once to the Brighton of the middle of the last century, when rumours of wars from abroad connected themselves with a literary question and song-writing at home.

About the year 1758 fears of invasion caused several camps to be established on our south coast. There was one at Brighton. Martial spirit attuned the popular lyre to both warlike and sentimental strains. One of the airs then composed has remained popular to this day. ‘The Girl I left behind me’ was originally known by that and also by a second name, ‘Brighton Camp,’ to which reference is made in the following verse:—

Oh, ne’er shall I forget the night,

The stars were bright above me,

And gaily lent their silv’ry light,

When first she vow’d to love me.

But now I’m bound to Brighton Camp,

Kind Heaven then pray guide me,

And send me safely back again

To the girl I’ve left behind me.

This air has been claimed as Irish by Moore and by Bunting. The former took great liberties with the air. Bunting left it as he found it. But he did not find it till the year 1800, when he heard it played by an Irish harper named O’Neile. The harper had probably picked it up from some regimental band leaving their quarters; but it was popular in England nearly half a century before the date of its first being known in Ireland.

Let those who throng Brighton now just consider what it was about a century ago. In 1761 we read that ‘the men of the town were wholly employed in fishing, and the women in mending their nets.’ There was, however, a free school in Brighton; and boys of twelve years of age, who had learned navigation there, obtained very fair wages in the ‘fishery.’ There was a population, fixed and movable, even at that period. Many of the houses are described as ‘of flint, with windows and doors frequently adorned with very good brick.’ When Brighton took its first step forward for the purpose of attracting visitors we may learn from a contemporary chronicle of 1761, in which we read that ‘Of late the town has become a resort for the drinking of salt water and for bathing. If the town grows in the next seven years as it has done in the last seven, there will be no better in England.’ Brighton then boasted of ‘one or two public rooms that could be equalled only by those of York.’ People could then put up with what was called ‘accommodation,’ which was of a very uncomfortable character; but everything was of a free-and-easy quality, and most visitors were content to take things as they found them.

To this rule, however, there was one notable exception, just where we should expect to find it.

Nearly a hundred years have elapsed since Dr. Johnson wrote to Boswell, in November of the year 1776, ‘I was some weeks this autumn at Brighthelmstone. The place was very dull, and I was not well.’ The fact is, that Johnson cared little for the beauties of nature. He was like Charles Lamb, who once being at the summit of a mountain from which there was a prospect of unsurpassable grandeur, saw nothing but with his mind’s eye, and that was at the moment directed to the ham and beef shop at the corner of St. Martin’s Court. In like manner, Johnson hated prospects and views. We have the authority of Mrs. Piozzi for recording that Johnson used to say the best garden was the one which produced the most roots and fruits, and the river most to be prized was the one which produced the most fish. The Doctor unmercifully laughed at Shenstone for valuing a stream according to its picturesqueness, and not its productiveness. Mrs. Piozzi believed that a walk in a wood when it rained was the only rural image which pleased Johnson. The pleasure then was perhaps derived from the thought that the rain would swell the peas, or make the turnips grow, or in some way or other tend to the comforting of the inward man. The feeling was akin to that of the epicurean who dwelt fondly on the orient gale which prospered the ship freighted with sugar for his gooseberry pie. It was that of Southey’s philosopher, who reverenced pig, and who, feeling a certain amount of poetry in a fragrant breeze, exclaimed,

O’er yon blossom’d field

Of beans it came, and thoughts of bacon rise.

Johnson detested the very sight of Brighton Downs, ‘because it was a country so truly desolate,’ he said, ‘that if one had a mind to hang oneself for desperation at being obliged to live there, it would be difficult to find a tree on which to fasten the rope.’ When the sage uttered this dictum he had certainly overlooked the subject of mutton. He forgot how admirable Sussex land was for turnip husbandry, and that even where the flints lay thickest the corn crops were all the more luxuriant. He did love forest trees, and might have remembered that the Sussex oak has no superior. He was fond of milk, and might have respected the Sussex cows which keep themselves almost beef, while they give rich milk, if so little of it. Hate the Downs! Let all such people remember, especially if they have a liking for a haunch of mutton, that the rot was never known to be caught upon the South Downs; reason sufficient to authorise an epicure’s respect. We see poetry even in a Brighton fish shop. Was it not Sir Wilfred himself who made first-rate fishermen of the primitive Brighton bunglers?

Johnson and Lamb are not the only intellectual persons whose minds could turn from the contemplation of great to the consideration of smaller things. When Charles James Fox was with a party viewing the old master-pieces in the Louvre, he turned from them to bewail the too great effulgence of the sun. ‘This heat,’ he remarked, ‘will burn up all my turnips at St. Anne’s.’ So, Thomas Granville, replying to Rogers, who was referring to the overpowering glory of a sunset at which they were looking, observed that it was ‘handsome.’

Half a century ago, Brighton was as destitute of trees as it was in Johnson’s time. But now, if the Doctor were alive and had a halter, he would find no difficulty in searching for a branch from which he might hang, the very bulkiest of acorns. Where formerly only the hardy tamarisk grew, we may now see, as a local historian (Erredge) points out, that ‘belts and copses of thriving trees have reared their heads, and the elm, fir, sycamore, horse-chestnut, larch, beech, hazel, birch, hawthorn, and the holly, and other evergreens, having, by culture, become acclimatised, thrive so well as to induce the belief that they are indigenous to the south-east coast.’

That Brighton should have changed in a certain number of years is a matter for no surprise at all. The sea rolls its waves over the site on which the primitive village stood exposed to its fury. The cliffs which from behind the village looked proudly over the waves have been in part destroyed by the assailing waters which, it was once thought, were too remote ever to do them harm. But all this has been the work of time, and of a very long time. Yet change quite as remarkable has been accomplished within the lives of many persons still living. They must be old persons indeed, and must have suffered fourscore years at least of change of themselves, in order to have been within the periods of what Brighthelmstone was and what Brighton is. What it was towards the close of the last century, about 1790, when it had ceased to be the secluded fishing village it once had been, can scarcely now be realised. It was no uncommon thing for the town to be then visited by unlicensed rovers of the deep. These thieves, who ranged from Beachy Head to Selsey Bill, would drop anchor after dark, and send a company of rascals on shore in a boat, whose mission it was to break into some rich farmer’s house, or some well-endowed mansion near the coast, and carry off thence every article of value that was portable and could be turned to pirate’s use. There was such terror of these water-rats, that wherever they broke in their coming paralysed honest people, who were powerless through terror. They bound and gagged the inmates of houses which they intended to despoil, caroused without limit, and having plundered the dwelling, staggered down to the beach, and carried on board their burglarious freight. They would then lift anchor and drop down along the coast on their way to a place of refuge, or to attack some other house where there was promise of booty and good cheer. Their audacity is explicable only on the ground that they had confederates among the police authorities, if such things were in those early days. In ancient times, when the French landed there and attacked the town, the Sussex men turned out with alacrity, and often gave the invaders a tremendous thrashing. The sons of those Sussex men quailed in presence of the native rascalry, which was often cruel, but generally avoided murder.

If any archæologist care about the Druidical name for Brighton—if indeed there ever was one—or sigh to learn by what classic term the Romans designated their station on the sea, the care and the sigh are expended in vain. Let such antiquary console himself by laughing at the explanation of its later name, handed down from one local historian to another. Brighthelmstone, as it was called, has not puzzled the easily-satisfied etymologists. To explain it they invent a Saxon bishop who never existed, Brighthelm. They both beatify and canonise him under the title of St. Brighthelm, and having raised him to this dignity, they erect a stone to commemorate him, or a ‘ton,’ i.e., ‘town,’ in which he may dwell, and thus we arrive at ‘Brighthelmstone.’ Some etymologists pooh-poohed this derivation altogether, and they put forth something worse of their own. With them ‘Brighthelmstone’ is born of the shining helms of the Saxon galleys which used (or did not use) to be off the town! Another party sees in the name simply the indication that the town once belonged to a warrior whose family name was Brighthelm. We must frankly confess that one theory is quite as reasonable as the other.

But, whatever the meaning of the name and whencesoever it came, there was a universal outcry of alarm and disgust when people in a hurry, or not much observant of orthography, cut the name down from a stately three- to a little two-decker. When Brighthelmstone began, in 1787, to be called Brighton, and that even in print, there was a howl of reprobation and a general demand to ‘give us back our three syllables!’ Even Sylvanus Urban in that year moved out of his old ways into the new-fangled groove, and talked of ‘Brighton’ as if he were a fashionable young fop wearing a round hat and his own hair, instead of cocked hat and powder. Sylvanus had announced that a certain Mr. Norman of Bromley had recently died at ‘Brighton!’ Instantly Mr. Urban was assailed with an et tu Brute sort of assault. Afflicted archæologists never thought such a blow could come from St. John’s Gate. One gentleman remonstrated in a tone of the deepest suffering. He argued that, if this abbreviating custom be carried on, Brighthelmstone will not only be wronged, but the world at large, and universal in geography particular, will be thrown into utter confusion. Foreign nations, potentates, governments, scholars, foreign humanity generally, we are told, will be bewildered, and will no longer be able to distinguish between Brighthelmstone in Sussex and Brighton a village in Yorkshire! Brighton in Yorkshire seems to have withdrawn itself modestly from the world; and if the Emperor of Germany reads of the demise of Brown, Jones, or Robinson at Brighton, that august person will not be troubled as to its local whereabout.

If Brighton Camps had their picturesque aspect and a certain connection with poetry, they had occasional deep shadows to contrast with their lights. The camp of 1795 is especially remarkable for its dark colouring. The defenders of the country were left by the circumlocution office of that day with an insufficient quantity of bread, and with nasty flour to make it. The hungry Oxford militia plundered a mill, and having got all they wanted for their own stomachs, they seized a quantity of corn at Newhaven, not for their half-starved comrades in camp, but for the pleasure of throwing the whole of it into the river at that place. Eight of the mutineers were tried, of whom two, Cooke (called ‘Captain’) and Parish, were sentenced to be shot, the rest to be flogged. During the eight days of trial the circumlocution office gave them as little food as when the office drove them to mutiny through hunger. If it had not been for the morning and evening supplies passed to them through the bars of their airing ground by Samaritans of Russell Street, the accused militiamen would not have lived through the trial to be shot or flogged. The last ceremony was carried out with much lugubrious pomp. Three of the six men received an instalment of 300 strokes, equivalent to 2,700 lashes, and the other three were respited for future punishment. Then came the more merciful act of putting quickly to death the two men condemned to be shot. There was indeed much slow circumstance before the two culprits were fairly in face of the company of their fellow-militiamen selected to carry out the sentence. For the support and encouragement of the firing party not to shirk their duty and attempt to run, there was drawn up behind them a company of artillery, with shotted cannon and lighted matches, ready to blow the firing party to atoms if they showed any reluctance to destroy their two comrades. They showed nothing but alacrity under the circumstances. Cooke and Parish, kneeling composedly on their own coffins, were shot by what was curiously described as ‘a delinquent platoon of twelve of their own regiment at the distance of only six paces,’ and then did not kill both! One, as he lay on the ground, had to be ‘finished’ by a pistol-shot through the head. Perhaps the ‘delinquent platoon’ were too hungry to aim steadily. One thing is sure, namely, that nobody at the circumlocution office was flogged for famishing the soldiers, nor was the rascal who supplied the filthy so-called flour hanged. Probably he held the plate at the next Brighton Charity Sermons, and sneered at the poor folk who only contributed ‘coppers.’

In the first year of the present century the ‘Crown and Anchor’ in East Street was proudly known as ‘The Hotel’; but the ‘Ship’ soon endeavoured to attract fashionable visitors by a dining-room decorated with ‘The Story of Telemachus’ in bronze on blue. At that time coaches had not learned to run between Brighton and London in five hours. In summer the earliest coach left Brighton at 7 A.M., and arrived in London at 5 P.M. The night coach left at 10 P.M. and was due in London at 7 the next morning, keeping its time when it could. Then for crossing ‘the streak of liquid silver,’ there were ‘pacquets’ advertised to run ‘in time of peace’ three times a week, always setting sail, weather permitting, in the evening. One of these ‘pacquets’ manifested Napoleonic ideas, for it was called the Buonaparte schooner, and it made a great boast of having two cabins, a state room, and the means of making up twenty beds.

At this period it is amusing to read in a local record that ‘literature is not neglected in this town; for in Middle Street there is an academy where young gentlemen are boarded and educated.’ The idea that a boarding-school necessarily implies literary cultivation has long since expired.

While our pulpits, in the early part of the present century were denouncing the stage, and persuading people to leave theatres to the devil, and to brace up their minds and bodies at the seaside, the marine pulpits were busy in bidding people to avoid the coast and to get back to London and their business as speedily as possible. In ‘Their Majesties’ Servants,’ I have alluded to the audiences who ‘were preached down to the coast, and especially to Brighton, and to the zealous pastors in the latter place who preached them back again. One of these, the Rev. Dr. Styles, of Union Street, Brighton, did his best to stop the progress of London on Sea. He left the question of the stage for others to deal with; but he strictly enjoined all virtuously minded people to avoid watering-places generally and Brighton in particular, unless they wished to play into the devil’s hands. He denounced the breaking up of homes, the mischief of minds at rest, and the consequences of flirting and philandering. He looked upon a brief holiday as a long sin at the seaside; and with prophecy of dire results attending on neglect of his counsel, he drove or sought to drive all the hard workers in search of health and in the enjoyment of that idle repose which helps them in their search, back to London. Then, as now, England stood shamefully distinguished for the indecorum of its sea-coast bathers; but, with certain religious principles whereby to hold firmly, the good doctor does not think that much ill may befal therefrom, and he sends all erring sheep with their faces towards London, and with a reference to Solomon’s Song (above all things!) bidding them to wait for a south wind of the Holy Spirit to blow over their spices!’

The list of Brighton notabilities is not a long one, but it invariably contains the name of Phœbe Hassell, who served in the army as a man and who died at an age which is calculated to make Mr. Thoms shake the head of incredulity. But there is a Brighton woman far worthier of being remembered than old Phœbe Hassell. We allude to the mother of James Rooke, a simple young fellow who had been drawn in by a crafty tailor, named Howell, to rob the mail, as it was then carried on horseback, between Brighton and Shoreham. On Phœbe Hassell’s information, the two were hanged and gibbeted. In course of time, the clothes and flesh of the culprits had utterly wasted away. When nothing remained but the skeletons, the aged mother of Rooke, who had often been a pilgrim to the mournful shrine of her son, went nightly to the gibbets in all weathers. Nothing prevented her from performing that sacred duty; and when her object became known it was sacredly respected. It was to collect the bones of her unhappy son, and of the companion in his sad fate, as time, wind, and tempest shook them apart and out of the respective skeletons till nothing was left in the chains. She gathered them, and carried them reverently and affectionately to her poor home; and when there were no more to gather, she deposited all in a little box, and perhaps with some sad memories of the hour when she had rejoiced at the birth of her son, she, all alone, save those memories, buried them in what she considered the hallowed ground of old Shoreham churchyard. Poor mother! Many a woman has been canonised for the performance of duties not half so holy.

The widow Rooke is forgotten, while the annals of fashion still keep warm the memory of people less worthy of being remembered. There was a time when Mrs. Prince, as old Dame Gunn, the bathing woman, used to call Mrs. Fitzherbert, reigned in Brighton. She was one of those women who justify the old saying that beauty is of every age. She was exquisite when young. There are some among us who may remember that she was queenly, when crowned by years. Like a queen, she was surrounded by duchesses at Brighton; the most august dandies worshipped at her shrine in Castle Square; and among those idolaters were the Prince’s own brothers, with men of less degree, yet perhaps higher fame. In the number of the latter must be reckoned Colonel Hanger (late Lord Coleraine), whose first freak was to join a gang of gipsies, and take a dusky bride from among the daughters in the tents. Hanger led such a rollicking life, that when he grew old and tired of it, the new and enforced quiet came upon him like a novel enjoyment.

There were some singular specimens of ladies in the old Brighton days. None more singular than Lady Clermont, who used to take a tea-spoonful of brandy in her tea, by first pouring the brandy over the back of the spoon and then correcting the mistake, which she attributed to defect of sight, by filling the spoon in the ordinary way. Of a different temper was the fair and ambitious Lady Haggerstone. My lady invited the Prince to a rural festival at her villa near the Spa. She received him in character, as a milkmaid, ready to concoct a syllabub for the royal guest. She carried in one hand a silver pail, in the other a milking stool, such as the most ingenious of artistic upholsterers could alone invent. A characteristic hat, with long cherry-coloured ribbons, adorned her head; and the milkmaid’s apron would have fetched hundreds of pounds for its lace. The syllabub, however, was never accomplished. Some absurd accident brought the attempt to an end, which after brief laughter was altogether forgotten. In contrast with this gentle masquerade, was the bold, loudly-brogued, but beautiful Lady Nagle, with her husband Sir Edmund’s miniature suspended from the longest of chains, flinging about as she moved, but always, as she said, near her heart. The Prince loved to have these and other fair ones about him. They made up his table at whist; brought him all sorts of gossip, home and foreign, and made themselves conspicuous in a hundred ways, as they figured on the Steyne and excited the wonder of simple-minded spectators.

Sir Benjamin Bloomfield was another of the old Brighton celebrities. He owed his position as Master of the Household to the Prince of Wales to an accident. ‘Slade,’ said his Royal Highness to the Colonel of that name, ‘do you know any gentleman who plays the violoncello?’ ‘I only know one, sir,’ replied the Colonel, ‘Captain Bloomfield, of the Artillery.’ ‘Bring him here to dinner,’ rejoined the Prince, ‘and tell him to bring his violoncello with him; we’ll play something together after dinner.’ The Captain played to good purpose. The Prince again invited him as a guest; subsequently he attached the violoncello player to his household, and Sir Benjamin became as well-known a figure on and about the Steyne as the Prince himself was.

The story of the Pavilion will be found more amusing in Cobbett’s satirical chronicle of its rise and progress than in any of the local histories. The history of its decline and fall is within the memory of him who never remembers anything—the oldest inhabitant. The noble eccentrics who figured in the Pavilion circle have been stereotyped. But there were eccentrics without, whose eccentricity amused those within that circle. One of these was well known on the Brighton stage.

An ignorant impatience of taxation was manifested at Brighton, especially when the heavy impost was laid on hair-powder. By nearly general resolve people avoided the tax by leaving off the powder. Anyone who ventured to appear in public, powdered, incurred the peril of being pelted. Even on the stage, when genteel comedy required the sword by the side and the powder on the hair, there was a difference of opinion as to the wearing of it, and the actor portant épée et poudre was both hissed and applauded, as sentiment prevailed among the audience. At Brighton, Mr. Fox, the manager’s son, had to appear in a character of the sword and powder period. He took a singular course. He powdered one half of his hair, and left the other au naturel. People laughed at his droll aspect, and also at his reason for putting it on. Mr. Fox explained that he had taken that course in order to please both parties—the powderers and the anti-powderers. It was accepted for wit.

As far less has been said and written of Brighton just as royalty began to tire of its old love, than of the town when it seemed a seventh heaven to the King, George IV., we will look into one year of its sayings and doings—A.D. 1825—when it was learning to go alone.

Brighton had long rejoiced in the sunshine of royalty. It veiled its head, and wore sackcloth, and cast ashes upon itself, when royalty was absent. At least, it would have done all this, but for certain consolatory circumstances. Nevertheless, it affected a very decent horror. This is especially manifested in the fashionable intelligence in the local papers. The first thing thought of there is the condition and prospects of the Pavilion. That shrine of haut ton is spoken of as a most interesting invalid, who is sick only because the sun is absent, and all Brighton is therefore sick with it. Yet will the invalid be convalescent if Hope is the physician, and then sympathetic Brighton will feel itself also ‘very much better, thank you.’ But ‘should the King’—for we now speak of the time when George IV. had grown tired of his gew-gaw—should ‘his most sacred Majesty’ nothing less than ‘graciously condescend to inhabit’ for awhile the ‘marine palace’ which he once both well and wisely loved—in such case Brighton would not only be restored to health, but would enjoy a sensation of stalwart youth and ecstatic immortality.

It is distressing to read the expression of sorrow at the idea that the King, so to speak, continually went on not coming. With the new year (1825) the wail opens to its old solemn tune. ‘There is no change at the Pavilion.’ ‘We hope that the desire to see his Majesty again among us may speedily be realised.’ Alas! the realisation does not speedily come, and the ‘Fashionable Intelligencer’ wept in its imitation lawn handkerchief, and then wiped its loyal eyes and exclaimed, ‘The gloom of silence and desertion continues to envelop the Pavilion.’ Double envelopes of desertion and of silence. Then followed reports that the King was coming soon. The soon was succeeded by ‘a period not yet determined.’ Finally, it was said that his Majesty would visit Brighton and take up his residence there during the Christmas holidays. But before that time and its event arrived, ‘Fashionable Intelligencer’ discovered that, instead of the King coming, his best wine was going. It did not require much logic to enable observers to come to the conclusion that if the best vintage were taking its departure, Sacred Majesty would not be among speedy arrivals. The town could hardly find consolation in the assurance that wherever the monarch might be, his heart was certainly at Brighton. The King never came. The local banks could not bear it. They unanimously broke.

A royal duke and duchess were scarcely equivalent to a king; yet the appearance of the Duke of York relieved in some degree the heart of Brighton from some of its heavings. There was a burst of joy when it was announced that H.R.H. ‘purposed to give an entertainment to his tonish friends.’ Everyone uninvited must henceforth consider himself to be mauvais ton. What a flutter there was when ‘tonish reporters’ proclaimed in the newspapers that the Duke would give a public breakfast at Ireland’s Royal Gardens, and that ‘the whole fashionable world would partake of the repast.’ Meanwhile ‘Fashionable Intelligencer’ watched the Duke and noted his ducal ways. We read with infinite emotion that his royal princeliness not only entered several shops, but that he purchased various articles in the most unassuming manner. The grand breakfast at last came off, and a very jolly affair it was; but Snob, who was not invited, and who felt his ‘fashionable’ honour very much ruffled in consequence, declared that the thing was low, and that the company were vulgar.

The Duchess of Gloucester did not put herself so prominently forward as the Duke of York; but the local observer did not fail to chronicle the proud circumstance, namely, that ‘The Duchess gives importance by her presence to the Steyne.’ Her condescension, too, was eulogised in lofty terms; but in the practice of proud humility the Duchess was nothing in comparison with the Bishop of Chichester. Robert James Carr was then, as prelate, only a year old. In the bloom of his official age the Right Rev. Father, &c., visited Brighton, and on his first Sunday there he repaired to the Royal Chapel. There was the ordinary congregation, but there was no clergyman. He had been taken ill and was unable to attend. But the diocesan was not proud. The fashionable chronicler tells us that the Bishop performed divine worship himself, ‘with his usual kindness and condescension.’

Sometimes high-born and ill-bred personages condescended to much stranger performances. Thus we find Jeames the Chronicler setting down a record of the fact that Sir Godfrey Webster, one of the fastest of the very rapid men of the day, had left the town, and that the regret was universal; but that the baronet would soon return, in order to take the chair of a free-and-easy at the ‘Swan Inn.’ It is to be observed, that whenever a ‘tonish’ person took his departure, all Brighton was filled with the most poignant regret. Also, that when a family or individual of the haut ton or beau monde (nice distinctions!) arrived, all Brighton was stirred with an indescribable sort of happiness. If Mrs. Fitzherbert left the town drowned in tears, the arrival of Lady Berwick brought it again to life and laughter. Sir Matthew Tierney’s post-carriage, galloping out of Brighton, pierced the hearts of all beholders; but there was balm in Gilead. How sympathetic must have been the fashionable reporter of 1825 when he wrote down the fact that, ‘Grateful rumour states that the esteemed Dukes of Richmond and Argyle, and the Marquis of Anglesea, again propose to add to the importance of the “Royal York Hotel” by residing there before the end of the present year.’ Mark the new and original figure, ‘grateful rumour.’ But to indulge in strange figures was the old Brighton reporter’s dearest delight. ‘The Marquis of Granby,’ says our friend, ‘without any feeling of indisposition, enjoys good spirits in Regency Square.’ This might astonish Mark Tapley, whose spirits were highest under prostration, but to us it seems natural enough. Another fashionable record, this time full of simplicity, is to the effect that ‘Lady William Gordon confesses the salutary influence of the coast air.’ Occasionally an unexpected arrival makes the reporter of it facetious. For example, the local chronicler states how the ‘Barossa,’ homeward bound from St. Helena, had dropped her anchor off the town the previous night, without any idea of her being there, and how her gallant captain, Hutchenson, went ashore, and gave joyous surprise to his lady and family, and how he was on board again, and on his way to the Downs, by five in the morning.

Speaking of ladies as well as of captains, let us not forget—indeed it is impossible to overlook—that incarnation of gaiety and beauty, the Lady Berwick of that day. Before her marriage, she was a Miss Sophia Dubouchet. This young lady was married to the second Lord Berwick in 1812. In some peerages she is styled plain ‘Sophia Dubouchet,’ with no more account of her family than if she had been, like Melchizedek, without father and without mother. It is clear that this lady, who died childless, was not of illustrious descent. How she looked at Brighton, in 1825, and what were ‘pretty Fanny’s ways’ in that year, at that place, we may gather from another of the scraps of intelligence. ‘A la mode Lady Berwick,’ says a contemporary local journal, ‘formerly Miss Sophia de Bouchez’ (the chroniclers were not particular as to names), ‘has been the source of attraction for our fashionable promenades during the week. It afforded us much pleasure to observe that the late abuse of the press has in no degree diminished the vivacity so characteristic of her ladyship and family.’ There were two other ladies at Brighton at that time who were of a quieter quality, and whose wealth was the least of their charms. They are thus registered in the fashionable column: ‘We have two of the richest heiresses in the country now with us, Miss Wykeham and Miss Pleydell.’ How little did the chronicler conjecture that the former lady, who died so recently as 1870, was the heroine of a romance, and might have been Queen of England if she had chosen to bear that magnificent title. When Miss Wykeham was at Brighton, at a much earlier period than 1825, she attracted the attention of the Duke of Clarence. She was then the much honoured heiress of an Oxfordshire squire, Wykeham of Swalcliffe, a member of the family of William of Wykeham. The royal Duke had other opportunities of seeing this beautiful and accomplished heiress; and, overcome by her beauty, her intellectual qualities, and her account at her banker’s, he made her the offer of his hand. With good common sense, Miss Wykeham declined the offer. The Duke subsequently married a German princess, but he never ceased to esteem the heiress, whose presence made Brighton so happy nearly half a century ago. As soon as the Duke became William IV., King of England, he, with the glad sanction of Queen Adelaide, prevailed on the lady whom he had once sought to make his wife, to accept a peerage. Miss Wykeham took the title of Baroness Wenman, whereby she revived an old title in her family. Her grandfather had married the sister and heiress of the Viscount Wenman, in the Irish peerage. The Viscount having died childless, in 1800, the dignity became extinct; but Wenman, as an English baronial title, was conferred on Miss Wykeham in 1834. For six and thirty years she wore it with dignity, and when she died, in 1870, there was not a memory more honoured in the three kingdoms than that of Sophia Elizabeth Wykeham, Baroness Wenman, of Thame Park, county Oxon.

When William IV. took up his residence at Brighton, he played the citizen king. He walked and talked in the streets, and knocked at the doors of his personal friends, paying morning visits, and speedily discovering that, altogether, ‘it wouldn’t do.’ Queen Victoria went down to look at the place, to give it a trial, and to come to the same conclusion, that ‘it wouldn’t do.’ When cabmen or their customers stood on the roofs of their cabs to gaze at the Queen over the garden walls, royalty quietly withdrew, and Brighton took good heart, and has since contrived to get on handsomely alone, but she is ever glad, and naturally so, when a prince or princess is to be reckoned among her visitors. Only now the inhabitants do not go out to meet them, as they did in 1815 to meet Queen Charlotte. Large bodies of them then received permission to welcome the Queen at Patcham. They were dressed in buff, and mounted. As they cantered by the side of the Queen’s carriage, as her escort, she smiled and bowed to such of them as were ‘getting a look at her,’ as if she liked it. The Prince Regent, the Duke of Clarence, and a bright array of nobility, waited in the open space before the Pavilion to do honour to her on her arrival. ‘The present,’ says a contemporary historian, ‘is beyond all doubt the most brilliant period in the annals of Brighton.’

Fitting period wherewith to close these remarks. What a contrast is the fuss to get a sovereign into Brighton with the anxiety to get Charles II. out of it! For effecting the escape of the King, Captain Tattersall was rewarded with a pension of 100l. a year to himself and his descendants. We suppose that the most democratic of politicians would not object to a pension being paid which was originally earned by getting his most ‘religious majesty’ out of the kingdom.

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ON SOME CLUBS, AND THEIR ENDS.

Of all historical parallels, there are few more curious than the one between the first club ever established and any similar association of modern times. We must go as far back as the reign of Philip of Macedon (B.C. 320) for that original club. It consisted of Greek gentlemen, who, from their number, called themselves ‘The Sixty.’ They met once a week, not at a tavern, but in a temple—that of Hercules, at Athens. Their secretary was a sprightly young Achaian, named Callimedes—so sprightly, indeed, that the jolly Sixty nicknamed him the Grasshopper. They must have had the highest opinion of their own wit, for every good thing that was uttered was entered in a book, and any member who had a repartee on the tip of his tongue was obliged to keep it there till what had provoked it had been written down! This book of wit, wisdom, and joking was in such repute that it was lent out to princes and other potentialities, on depositing a security for its return. Thus Athens furnished not only the first club, but the first idea of a circulating library.

One of the most singular features of some of the social gatherings of Roman gentlemen consists in the fact, that if a member did not consider himself ‘clubbable,’ or was not considered so by his colleagues, he might bring with him some one who was. If he possessed an extremely witty slave, and chose to bring him to the meeting, in such case Libanus was as welcome as Demenætus. There are clubs of the present day where dulness so prevails among the associates, where Sir Rayleigh D’Istressin is such a nonentity, and Mr. Hugh Doane Nohoo is so overflowing with nonsense, that it is a pity they cannot be represented by capable substitutes. The latter might be found among the public office clerks. How well many of these persons have discovered what they are especially fitted for is to be seen in the little companies that club together and exhibit themselves with alacrity as Nigger Serenaders!

In England here, although the name of club for a society was not known till the seventeenth century, the thing itself was in active practice three hundred years before. The first English club of which we know anything has a French name—La Cour de Bonne Compagnie. It was founded in the reign of Henry the Fourth, and we may take it that bonne compagnie was understood to signify, in English, good fellows. They met, like ‘The Sixty’ in Athens, once a week. The club was what would now be called a dining club—that is, meeting periodically in order to dine together, and to enjoy the ‘feast of reason and the flow of soul’ which come of good cheer, safe digestion, happy humour, and undying wit.

We may be very sure that at the meetings which took place at ‘The Mermaid,’ and at those where Ben Jonson’s sons sat around him in ‘The Apollo,’ the English language ripened into mellowness, beauty, and strength. Shakespeare, Raleigh, and the men whose sympathies were attuned to those of the soldier and the poet, must have done especially good work to that end during their joyous discussions at ‘The Mermaid.’ Politics do not seem to have been touched upon. The first club founded in London with a political purpose among its other objects was the Rota Club. More than two centuries have elapsed since the Rota saw its table and coffee-cups surrounded by such men as Milton, Cyriac Skinner (to whom Milton addressed the sonnet which urges play as well as work), Marvel, Harrington, Nevill, and very many others. They advocated a going-out of Members of Parliament by rotation, and used a ballot-box for the settlement of club questions—that is to say, they affirmed or negatived by that means the conclusions arrived at by the lecturer for the evening. They also supported the ballot, as the simplest and truest method of voting, generally. To this end we are only on the point of now coming partially.

There were some clubs that, meeting only for recreation, fell into a fixed purpose by accident. Small clubs they were, but they were the beginnings of great consequences. From the meeting together of a few ‘city gentlemen,’ members of the Wednesday Club, in the reign of William III., arose certain discussions on financial matters which led to the ‘Conferences’ of 1695, in which William Paterson took a leading part. From this club, its discussions and conferences, sprang a gigantic result—‘The Old Lady in Threadneedle Street;’ in other words, the Bank of England.

A dozen years later, the first germs of the Royal Society of Antiquaries, long enthroned in Somerset House, were planted in the modest room of ‘The Bear Tavern,’ in the Strand. Three individuals, to whom the past was dearer than the present or the future, there met to talk over the condition of the ancient monuments of the kingdom, while they smoked their pipes and sipped their ale. One of them was Humphrey Wanley, the well-known archæologist, and librarian to Harley, Earl of Oxford. They agreed to add to their numbers, meet every Friday night, and confine themselves to the consideration of matters and monuments which illustrated English history not later than the reign of James the First. The weekly business was to begin at six, and every absentee was to be fined sixpence. The club or society migrated from the parlour of one public-house to another before it found royal patronage, and a home in the palace which occupies the site of the one built by the Protector Somerset. After a brief sojourn of a month at ‘The Bear,’ they went, in 1708, to the ‘Young Devil’ tavern close by, and there they seem to have been housed for above a quarter of a century. In 1739 they moved to more commodious apartments in ‘The Mitre,’ Fleet Street, and they talked no more of sixpences. They numbered a hundred members. Each of them paid a guinea entrance-fee, and twelve shillings annual subscription. In 1770 they commenced the ‘Archæologia’; and in the following year George III. gave them the abiding-place beneath the roof of Somerset House, where, till the removal to Burlington House, they met weekly, on Thursdays, during six or seven months of the year, and sometimes, like Gratiano, spoke an infinite deal of nothing. At other times the meetings are full of interest, and emperors themselves have been glad to be enrolled among the Antiquaries, who began their career as a modest club in a Strand tavern of no great repute.

A more ancient society than the Antiquaries had also a home within Somerset House. The Royal Society is of much older date, but it began in a little club-gathering, in 1645, at Dr. Goddard’s lodgings in Wood Street, and for some time where it could, in Cheapside. After it rose from a club to an incorporated society, it first met in Gresham College, but afterwards occupied rooms in Somerset House for upwards of ninety years, when it migrated to Burlington House. Its first avowed object—the establishing of facts by successive experiments—was highly ridiculed, and that most wittily, by Butler, in ‘The Elephant in the Moon.’ One of the members is described as one who

—— had lately undertook

To prove and publish in a book

That men, whose natural eyes are out,

May, by more pow’rful art, be brought

To see with th’ empty holes as plain

As if their eyes were in again.

Another philosopher is said to be renowned

—— for his excellence

In height’ning words and shad’wing sense.

A third experimentalist and chatterer is transported with the ‘twang of his own trills.’ Collectively they are men who are satisfied,

As men are wont, o’ th’ bias’d side.

The society set up a telescope to make discoveries in the moon. They detect armies fighting, and an elephant moving among them. Delighted with what they had discovered, they drew up a narrative, to be published in the ‘Transactions.’ By the time this had been done, idle explorers have made out that the armies are gnats and flies on the lens, and that the elephant is a mouse that had got imprisoned in the tube. The philosophers are disconcerted, and the satirical poet rides over them roughshod, with a moral which is intended to make them as comfortable as a toad under a harrow. Butler flew at them again, in prose, in ‘An Occasional Reflection upon Dr. Charlton’s feeling a Dog’s Pulse at Gresham College.’ This is exquisite fooling. The paper is supposed to be written by Robert Boyle, Esq., and never was imitation so hard to be distinguished from an original. It is far superior in this respect to the prose imitations, in ‘Rejected Addresses,’ of the styles of Dr. Johnson and of Cobbett. We will not conclude this reference to the Wood-street Club, which has grown to such dignity and usefulness as the present Royal Society, without recording that, a little more than a hundred years ago, a Latin paper, on ‘Volcanoes,’ was read before it by a German, one Raspe. Whether it faithfully narrated Raspe’s experiences, who can tell?—for Raspe subsequently wrote that amusingly serious lie called ‘Baron Munchausen.’

In the early part of the last century, a body of ladies constituted themselves as ‘The Shakespeare Club.’ They met in rooms in Covent Garden, and their object was to raise funds to supply the managers of the two theatres, to enable them to act with appropriate splendour the plays of the national poet strictly according to his text; in other words, the end was to annihilate the adapters of the bard. How even the ladies themselves were divided in opinion and into clubs, is seen in the closing words to Fielding’s ‘Historical Register for 1736.’ The piece closes with a deprecatory appeal to the fair sex present, to whom an actor says: ‘And you ladies, whether you be Shakespeare’s ladies, or Beaumont and Fletcher’s ladies, I hope you will make allowance for a rehearsal.’

There was another club in the last century whose purpose was one which deserves for it everlasting respect and admiration. The excellent object it had in view was the suppression of wearisome preachers, or the putting down of silly and interminable sermons. Whether the means taken to arrive at the ends aimed at could be equally respected and admired, is a matter on which a certain difference of opinion may be justly allowed. It was the fashion of the time for ladies to carry fans, and for gentlemen to be inseparable from their canes. These weapons were turned to church uses by the ladies and gentlemen who were members of the Rattling Club. They were vagrant Christians, who attended such churches as possessed congregations who sat in need of relief from a great oppression—that of being bored by a preacher who (as Voltaire says of them all) stood five feet above contradiction. The Rattlers were perfectly unobtrusive during service, and indeed they were perfectly decorous during sermon, unless they were provoked by absurdity or tediousness. As soon as any provocation of that sort was felt, a Lady-Rattler began to agitate her fan, or a Gentleman-Rattler tapped his cane against the floor or the panelling of his pew. The signal was followed by the other members, and the interruption was continued, gradually increasing till there was such a fluttering of fans and a rattling of canes as to produce conviction on the mind of the preacher that the sooner he pronounced the word ‘finally’ the sooner there would be peace in the church. It would not be very unreasonable to call such conduct unseemly—even vulgar. The Rattling Club, however, had very august precedent for their proceedings. In as far as the eccentric young Queen Christina of Sweden set the example, she may be fairly looked upon as the founder of the Rattlers. In her own royal chapel, as well as in any ordinary church where she happened to be present before she passed over to the Church of Rome, Christina used to give decent attention to the sermon till she thought she had taken as much as would do her good. At that point she would slightly rap with her fan on the top of the back of the chair which always stood before her own in the Chapel Royal, or on any hard substance which happened to be near her, when she was being sermon-vexed in other places. If the preacher neglected to attend to this signal, her Majesty declared open warfare against him, and rattled away with her fan with increasing intensity till she had silenced the pulpit, or (if the preacher continued to pour forth his volleys) till she raised the siege and retreated in vexation. Let us mention here, by the way, that in the early intolerant age of the Reformation which followed the intolerable era of Popery in England, people were compelled (under serious penalties) to go to church whether they were Reformers or Romanists. Many of the latter attended the Protestant service rather than pay the fine, and yet preserved their consistency; and you may fancy the mirth in some old country-house, when the solemn knight and his lady, and the laughing daughters with their haughty brothers, as soon as they heard the church-bells ring, proceeded to stuff wool into their ears, and then went to a sermon with a joyous conviction of being unable to hear a word of it.

Let us now fancy ourselves standing in Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, in the year 1711. We are in front of the Land Bank, which had lately come to grief, and the street was not of the high estate it had been when lords smoked their pipes at its windows, and could smell the haycocks that were in St. Pancras Fields. Let us describe what took place. There was a going in and out, and a standing on the steps, and a gathering of increased numbers, and an universal cheerful gossiping, save on the part of Mr. Ferrers, who was dumb. Passengers stopped to look at these men, and were not slow to recognise the most eminent among the wellnigh five dozen standing or moving about the door, or going in and out. People from Drury Lane knew their neighbour Mr. Vertue, who was talking apart to a little knot of listeners—engravers like himself. There was Michael Dahl, talking a good deal about his Swedish patroness Queen Christina, and still more about his claims to be director of an Academy of Painting. At these claims his hearers may be taken to have smiled, especially if their eye happened to fall on a well-dressed, courteous gentleman, who passed into the house bowing to all who greeted him. There was not a child in Queen Street who could not recognise in him the great Sir Godfrey Kneller. Sir Godfrey was probably greeted most warmly by Laguerre, who had glorified the knight’s house at Whitton with more simple taste than usually distinguished Laguerre. Thornhill stood near the latter, and looked on him with no more perceptible air of triumph than a modest artist could help, who had been substituted for the other in the task of painting the Life of St. Paul within the dome of the metropolitan church. Richardson too was there, and his colleagues respected him as an artist who, if Kneller and Dahl were but away, would be at the head of portraiture in England. A laughing group stood round Richardson; he was narrating to them his own great story, which has been so often retold with other heroes of the tale: ‘The gentleman was singularly annoyed that his friend should declare that his Rubens was only a copy. He said to me: “I will knock any man’s brains out who will call it a copy! My dear Mr. Richardson, come down to my house, and give me your candid opinion!”’ We may fancy that merry and wise Richardson tripping up the steps laughingly, stopping, perhaps, in the hall to talk with two gentlemen, brothers, one of whom exhibits to him, and to smiling Laptist Monnoyer, some paintings on fans which excite his generous unreserved admiration. It is Mr. Godfrey, behind whose marvellously-decorated fans—on which figured landscapes created to make love in—the beauties of the time of Anne and the first two Georges used to feign to blush and hide confusion which they did not feel.

When these and others were assembled in the old bank, they numbered sixty-two. Every man came with his guinea ready for the treasurer. It was to be the annual subscription. Each member had also with him a list of twelve names, whom he voted for as directors for one year. Michael Dahl insinuated his right to be governor, but, saving Dahl’s vote, Kneller was unanimously elected; and with his quietly moving into the chair of that club, was the first Academy of Painting established in England.

The jealousy of Dahl, and a few individual affectations, marred some of the good that the Academy might have accomplished. In the second year, the Swedish favourite of Queen Anne and her husband, Prince George of Denmark, withdrew, because Kneller was still preferred to him as governor or president. The Academy Club elected new members, with or without their consent. At that time there was a French painter in London, named Berchet. He had painted panels and ceilings in England from the time of the latter years of Charles II.; and when De la Fosse was over here, he must have been proud, if he was not jealous, of his pupil. If there be an old painted panel yet in the house that was the Duke of Schomberg’s, in Pall Mall, it is possibly a portion of the decoration of the house, and is, in such case, Berchet’s work. The belles and gallants of the day flocked to Ranelagh, to gaze at the summer-house so daintily tricked out by Berchet’s delicate pencil. Now, he was painting small mythological pieces, in oils; and the ‘Academicians,’ deeming him worthy of being a member, elected him. Berchet (by letter) ‘excused himself, being not well and tysicky, and could not bear the smoke of the lamp.’ His infirmity did not leave him, neither did his industry. He had just put his name at the foot of ‘A Bacchanalian,’ his last work, when the pencil dropped for ever from his hand, and Berchet’s occupation was gone.

We pass from Art to Fashionable Eccentricity. When squires were squires in England, and came up to London to see a little life, a club was founded for them in St. James’s Street, which was (and is) called Boodle’s, but which was long familiarly known as ‘The Topboot and Worsted Stocking Club.’ To rival Boodle’s dinners, or Almack’s, was not a difficult matter, since they seem to have consisted of uncouth legs of mutton, roasted geese, and buttered apple-pies. Something better than mere squirearchy must have been among the members, for Gibbon was one, and a hundred years ago the great historian wrote his letters there. It was the poor cookery of Boodle’s that probably gave rise to the ‘Sçavoir Vivre Club,’ the palates of whose members could not bear, nor their stomachs digest, the mutton, geese, and apple-pies of the club, which still exists. The ‘Sçavoir Vivre’ showed that they knew how to live, by composing or importing new dishes, and they showed that they knew how to dress, by creating the most eccentric of costumes. Among their imported dishes was macaroni. It become such a favourite dish at the club, and was so invariably brought to table, that the clubbists themselves became celebrated as ‘Macaronies.’ In dress they wore a toy cocked hat, gold-laced, buttoned and tasseled over hair fashioned into a foretop above the head, side-curls, and a clubbed tail. Tight striped silk breeches, and an equally tight coat and waistcoat, kept them together. Their tasseled canes were as long as those still carried by state footmen when they ride behind a carriage going to court on a drawing-room day. Like Tiddy Bob, they had a watch in each fob, with cable-chains, and a pound of seals at the end of them. Their white neck-cloths displayed a front bow as large as a cauliflower; and they daintily walked about in white silk stockings and diamond-buckled shoes, in all weathers. In any sense, for a Macaroni to wear a greatcoat was to confess his unworthiness of being a member of the august brotherhood. As equestrians, they figured in the park on little ponies, and looked as if they lacked strength to get on anything higher. The female Macaronies carried heads top-heavy with hair of their own and other peoples—hat, feathers, and a world of knicknackery. Their dress clung almost as closely to the body as the gentlemen’s to theirs. But they dragged after them a long, long gold-embroidered train, the very thought of which reminds us of the poet’s line:—

Hæc nunc auratâ cyclade verret humum.

The Macaronies and the Macaroniesses, as they were called, turned days, nights, hours, and seasons, topsy-turvy; and the former, to show that they were men, ran foot-races on Sundays in Kensington Gardens, very lightly clad, and putting in peril their little lives, by exhaustion of the little breath they carried in their little bodies. Having established macaroni as a dish to be thenceforward known in every household of taste, they died out, and men knew them no more.

The Eccentrics entered into the present century. The Keep-the-Line Club was one of the brilliant, fashionable, and shortlived clubs of the first quarter of the present century. Its members consisted of wits, artists, actors, authors, gentlemen, and peers. It had two purposes—enjoyment and preservation of temper, by putting it to the hardest trials. One of the rules was, that whenever a member was insulted by another, however grossly, the insulted person should rise and offer his best thanks to the offender. A witty fellow might here find good opportunity for his wit, if he only knew how to avail himself of opportunity. Another rule imposed a fine of a dozen of claret to the club, on the member who published any literary composition of his own. Samuel Rogers, Topham, Miles Peter Andrews, Merry, Morton, Reynolds, Fitzgerald, Horace Smith, Boaden, Kenney, and others, paid the fine willingly whenever it was fairly due. The penalty was once demanded of Wilson (the surgeon), and of John Tufton. The first had issued an advertisement announcing a course of lectures; Tufton had addressed an electioneering handbill to his constituents. Both publications were pronounced to be literary. The authors had not only to pay the penalty in claret, but to profess their unfeigned delight at its being imposed on them.

While the Keep-the-Line loved fun, others loved athletics. The Mary-le-bone Cricket Club of the olden days did not at all resemble what it afterwards became when known as Lord’s. In its early age, there was as much difficulty in passing a ballot successfully, as in the most exclusive clubs of the present day. The members included players from every degree in the peerage, members of the House of Commons, and gentlemen of large landed property. The costume of the club was skyblue! and their chief object—even before cricketing—was the performance of practical jokes. One of the latter was played by the bacchanalian Duke of Richmond on Fred Reynolds the dramatist. The Duke put Reynolds on horseback, and rode with him to a match on Moulsey Hurst. The steed ridden by Reynolds was from Astley’s, and the Duke led the way to where a body of soldiers were exercising with gun, drum, and trumpet. The circus war-horse immediately became dramatic, going through a course of unparalleled performances, which he concluded by flinging his sky-blue rider. But there were, besides the practical jokers, serious and accomplished cricketers. For bowling, David Harris; for batting, Tom Walker; and for wicket-keeping, sharp-eyed Hammond, had no equal except in Lord Frederick Beauclerc, who excelled, each in his speciality, and could beat everybody at all three.

In those days, the Mary-le-bone Club had no particular ground. From May to September they moved from place to place, encamping here and bivouacking there by day, and taking their ease in their inn by night. Hospitality varied this course very pleasantly. Sir Horace Mann, the King of Cricket, kept open house for the club at his seat near Maidstone, or at his marine residence at Margate. This hospitality did not cause him to be respected by the practical jokers. Some of the jokes lacked decency; and we do not see much fun in the emptying a man’s box of its snuff and filling it with hellebore, to make him sneeze a hundred times for one! It was a rule that no offence was to be taken at the roughest of these jokes, but it was not always in the power of a man to seem delighted at them. We quite sympathise with Miles Peter Andrews, who, being asked why he looked serious when everybody was laughing loudly at a jest perpetrated by the most convivial of the members, answered—‘My dear sir, I can see no fun in a man who owes me three guineas!’

The hospitality of Mann to the club was, if possible, exceeded by that of Richard Leigh, whose welcomes to the members at Wilmington were feudal in their sumptuousness. His good taste and liberality were manifested in many ways. His musical gatherings were exquisite treats. His love for athletic sports was shown in his zeal at getting up cricket matches. The eccentric Duchess of Gordon, who had married two dukes and a marquis to her three daughters, once said aloud to Richard Leigh: ‘I am the first, but you are the second, match-maker in England, Mr. Leigh.’

One of the droller incidents of the club-matches was long remembered. Reynolds, who was but an amateur, was one day called upon to go in for a member who was too ill to play. He went to the wicket with a feeling of fright, as if he stood in front of a loaded pistol levelled at him, when he saw that the formidable Harris was about to bowl. In his own words, he says: ‘My terrors were so much increased, by the mock pity and sympathy of Hammond, Beldam, and others round the wicket, that when this mighty bowler—the Jupiter Tonans—hurled his bolt at me, I shut my eyes in the intensity of my panic, and mechanically gave a random desperate blow, which, to my utter astonishment, was followed by a loud cry all over the ring of “Run! run!” I did run, and with all my force; and getting three notches, the Duke of Richmond, John Tufton, Leigh, Anguish, and other arch-wags, advanced and formally presented to me twenty-five sixpences in a hat, collected from the bystanders as “the reward of merit.” Even Lord Winchilsea and Sir Horace Mann contributed to this, and then all playfully commenced promoting a new subscription, which only stopped because I could not stop the next ball. To my great joy, up went my stumps and out I walked—certainly with some little éclat, being the first member of the club who had been considered a regular player—i.e., paid for his services.’

We have now to say a few words of some other clubs and their purposes. In the last century, Benjamin Franklin was in the chair at a private club which used to meet weekly at ‘The Prince of Wales’ in Conduit Street. A proposal was made to do something for starving authors. The members murmured over their pipes, stared at the punch-bowl, and thought authors were vulgar people, who were not worth being thought about. The matter, however, was not allowed to drop. Year after year some kind soul or another brought it hot upon the anvil, hammered at it till he was weary, and then passed the hammer to another and another, and he to another, till at last the something was beaten into shape, and shape into substance, till there was fashioned that excellent and praiseworthy institution, the Literary Fund. In its first year only a few shillings could be spared for one hungry author, but now it sends forth welcome relief by hundreds of pounds.

This Literary Fund brings to our mind a literary club which we must not pass over—namely, ‘The Syncretics.’ The worthy gentleman who invented the name has never been discovered; but, dignified as the title looked, it sorely troubled some of the members, particularly those who had looked into a dictionary for the interpretation, yet who, on being asked for the meaning of ‘Syncretic,’ had forgotten the dictionary definition. The object of this united body was the encouragement of the dramatic element among the members. They were to write plays, which managers were to put on the stage for them; and as each play was acted, the Syncretics were bound, or were supposed to be bound, to support the drama of their brother-member by enthusiastic demonstrations of applause. Their motto seemed to be: ‘Hors nous et nos amis nul n’aura de l’esprit.’

When the amiable society had furnished nearly as many new dramas as there were members, the difficulty arose as to which play should have the precedence. It was a delicate matter. Each writer saw peculiar claims and merits in his own play, and those members whose pieces were as yet only on the stocks thought that the club should not be in too great a hurry, lest, by failing in their first venture, they should discourage the possible or probable new Shakespeares who as yet lacked time to bring about their dramatic dénouements. At length a decision was arrived at, and a play called ‘Martinuzzi’ had the good or evil fortune to be selected for representation. The public expectation had been stimulated to a high degree, but disappointment followed. ‘Martinuzzi’ was a lugubrious failure; but an ill-natured world would have it that it was most violently hissed by the author’s fellow-clubbists, the Syncretics. What will not a censorious world assert? The scandal-mongers affirmed that it was a Syncretic rule for each member, except the author, to hiss the play in course of representation, as each sibilant member hoped, by damning his brother’s play, to obtain a better chance of bringing his own forward earlier.

Is there anyone surviving whose pantomimic memories can flash vividly back half a generation? If so, how joyous yet sad must be his remembrance of another literary club—‘The Fielding’—and the pantomime of ‘Harlequin Guy Fawkes,’ acted by the members, at Covent Garden, in 1855! If the set purpose of that society at its formation was to found a school of mimes, the success was undoubted. It was a strange ambition, thought Smelfungus, for professional men and clerks in public offices to attempt to rival—nay, excel—the clowns, harlequins, lovers, and pantaloons who were imbued with the traditions of the times of Grimaldi and Bologna, Barnes and Parsloe. The amateurs were quite up to the regular business. Who that was there will forget the marvellous delivery of the patter song which Albert Smith rattled out as ‘Catesby’? Was ever stage-fight at the old Coburg (where Messrs. Blanchard and Bradley used to slay and be slain nightly with broad-swords, that hacked and hewed to orchestral accompaniments) equal to the terrific combat which was maintained between the awfully savage Catesby and the resolute assassin Guy Fawkes, who had Mr. Holmes under his mask? The latter seemed like a boneless unvertebrated acrobat who could throw his limbs anywhere he pleased out of his own way, or very much in the way of his adversary. The murderous earnestness of his fighting was in strong contrast with the hilarious humour of his burlesque-singing; and Mr. Holmes’s solemn humour was equally well illustrated in the part he took, with three other amateurs, in the performance of acrobatic feats in the scene of the Epsom Racecourse. They executed the easiest of feats with an admirable air of having achieved the impossible. The laughing spectators were almost deceived by the mock seriousness of the pseudo-acrobats; and, when the latter bowed to the applause, with an air of being exhausted by their seemingly laborious efforts, the applause grew louder, and the laughter shook the very house.

There were other members of the club who took part in this celebrated pantomime, and who were quite as effective as their fellows. Spectators calculated in vain the number of government-office windows Mr. Bidwell, the inimitable harlequin, must have leapt through, the government tables he must have vaulted over, and the government chairs he must have waltzed with for supposititious columbines, before he arrived at the perfection which he then displayed. One could not but wonder whether he went down to his office in Whitehall in his spangles covered by a greatcoat, from which he suddenly emerged to stir the often-manifested delight of the porter. Did he go to his desk by a hop, step, and a jump? Did he ever awe a reproving ‘Head of Department’ by shaking his ruler above him, as on the stage he shook his wand and paralysed the clown? Then there was Arthur Smith, who slipped about in Pantaloon as if he had never known boots, and heels to them, since he was born. Nor let us pass over Joe Robins, that airy medical student, who, we suppose, made the dissecting-room funny by his skeleton songs, if he chaunted the scraps of minstrelsy as farcically as he sang ‘Hot Codlins’ in the character of Clown. Horace Walpole said of some amateur actors at whose playing he was present, that they played so well it was a pity they had not sense enough not to play at all. He would not have been epigrammatic in that style had he witnessed the burlesquers and pantomimists of the Fielding Club. It was because of their sense and intelligence that they were so efficient. In their strength and buoyant spirits and exuberant health, they looked immortal. Alas! some of them have passed from the stage-manager to the sexton. One or two, having the alternative put before them, quitted motley and pantomime for ever, and took permanently to their office duties. Two or three went in an opposite direction; they stuck to the stage, and more or less adorn it now, under their proper or under stage-names. An odd fellow or so ‘got up a tree,’ as if that feat belonged to the harlequinade of life; but it is believed that their creditors saw less fun in the reality than in the pantomimic effect. In short, to quote Hood’s ‘Ode on a Distant Prospect of Clapham College’—

Alack! They’re gone a thousand ways!

And some are serving in ‘The Greys,’

And some have perish’d young!—

Jack Harris weds his second wife,

Hal Baylis drives the wane of life,

And blithe Carew is hung!

We can only briefly refer to a few other clubs, some still, others till lately, existing. We may suppose that a member of the ‘Early Rising Association’ has no affinity with the ‘Owls.’ The ‘One-o’-clock Club’ would no more understand a cricket-club than the members of the one could look like the members of the other. ‘The Early Risers’ are members of one of those cricket-clubs. During the season they pitch their wickets at four o’clock in the morning, and play till seven, and then to business—pleasure with them taking the precedence. But work is their business of the day. Put the ‘Owls’ by their side, the foul birds would certainly bear no resemblance to a man and a brother. The ‘Owls’ used to meet at ‘The Sheridan Knowles,’ Bridge Street, Covent Garden. They sat without ever rising. Day and night some blinking member was to be found there making sacrifice of his faculties. It was not much to offer up; but, by one saddened victim or another, the sacrifice was being continually made. The smoke of their sacrifice ascended from their pipes, and their libations were made in the very hottest of mixed liquors. We believe that all the ‘Owls’ were utterly consumed—to the great relief of their friends. Aspiring young imbeciles who call themselves by that name are probably only the much-shattered wrecks of the ‘One-o’clock Club,’ an association which was established for the lofty purpose of late drinking! The ‘One-o’clock’ made ghosts of a good many of its members. If any of its paralysed survivors could bear being taken down to the Serpentine at daybreak on one of these winter mornings, we should like to show them the club of hardy bathers there who take their plunge, though they break the ice for it, and then run across the park to breakfast at a pace that would take all the poor breath out of the poorer body of any survivor of a club like the ‘One-o’clocks.’

We must say for the ‘Owls’ that they did not originally intend to be permanently drinking. They fell into bad ways. Sheridan Knowles himself was, probably, never anything more than the honorary patron of the club. Poor musical Augustine Wade, the composer of ‘Meet me by Moonlight alone,’ and the disposer of Mrs. Waylett, who gave melodious utterance to his ballads, was chairman of the club of ‘Owls’ in its best days. These were when it met upstairs at the ‘Shakespeare’s Head’ in Wych Street—sacred ground, nevertheless, for it was the home of genius, and, according to some authorities, the cradle of Punch.

We will say nothing of ‘The Sublime Society of Beefsteaks,’ for Brother Arnold has written its history and sung its requiem. What a host of great people, home and foreign, used to assemble in a French eating-house in a dirty little street near Leicester Square, where the Foreigners’ Club was held, and Mallet du Pau, Pozzo di Borgo, and our Vansittart were among the best talkers! We may wonder if ‘The Y. Z.’s’ of Liverpool have seen as wise heads among them as once met at ‘The Foreigners.’ Gone are the ‘Fabs,’ the ‘Fortnightly Associated Book Society’; ‘The Jelly Bags’ in nightcaps are as extinct as Barham’s ‘Wigs.’ ‘Our Club,’ whose number was once that of the ‘Forty Thieves,’ has never recovered the prestige it had in the days of Douglas Jerrold, while the ‘Cocked Hats,’ select in number, grow in hilarity as well as in ‘Archæo-knowledgy.’ The ‘Arts,’ or the Upst-Arts, as some wild wit called that club at its foundation, is, at least, existing. The ‘Civil Service’ has a cheerful home—and a hospitable—at ‘The Thatched House.’ Then there is a club so mysterious that we cannot learn whether its name is ‘The Sentry,’ or ‘The Century’; but its purposes are said to be very ‘advanced,’ in the well-understood political meaning of that word. By-and-by we shall probably hear a good deal of them. Meanwhile, we will close this paper with a quotation from Lord Campbell’s Life of Lord Thurlow. It will serve, at least, to show that modern club-ways were not the ways of the clubs of former days: ‘A.D. 1769. At that time, and indeed when I myself first began the study of the law, the modern club-system was unknown, and (as in the time of Swift and Addison) men went in the evenings for society to coffee-houses, in which they expected to encounter a particular set of acquaintance, but which were open to all who chose to enter and offer to join in the conversation, at the risk of meeting cold looks and mortifying rebuffs.’

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THROUGH THE PARKS.

It cannot be said that we are a very grateful people to our kings—to such of them, that is, as have claims on our gratitude. Richard III., when he was yet but a young prince, flying his hawks over his manor at what is now called Notting Hill (an estate which fell to him on the attainder of its old possessor, De Vere, Earl of Oxford), had a great love for the drama. He was the first prince of the blood royal of England that ever formed a company of comedians in his pay, and we all know in what sort of light this Richard is represented on the stage of which he was such a noble patron. Again, take Charles I. Before his time Hyde Park was a royal inclosure. It was a sacred possession of the crown, into which no man dared venture who cared to continue to wear his ears. By special permission of sacred majesty an English nobleman or a foreign ambassador might be allowed to kill a buck there, but if a commoner man only ventured to look over the wall he ran great risk of paying for it in Newgate. Charles I., one bright May-day, threw open Hyde Park to the people. The people cut off his head, and made May-day a Hyde Park festival on many recurring anniversaries. They who were present enjoyed the glory of it; all who were absent envied them, and few had a thought to spend upon the king.

The popular history of Hyde Park really dates from the time when unlucky Charles made a gift of the place to his people. Previous to that circumstance the locality belongs to history of another sort. Druids once sang ‘Derry Down’—a phrase said to be druidical—in its groves, and nightingales once made its evening foliage melodious. It would be impossible for the one or for the other to exist there now. For our own parts, we would rather hear the nightingales than see the Druids, but it would not be for long. London boys would soon silence the birds; and the metropolitan police would probably take the Druids by the beard, and ‘run ’em in.’ Then, does it ever occur to the equestrians in the Row, or to those who charioteer it around the drive, or to the modest pedestrian who looks on at both as a part of the London Summer Exhibition, that through the parks once ran that ancient British or Roman road which began at Chester and ended at Dover? We all know till lately where it crossed the Thames, namely, at Stangate, opposite Horseferry Road. We can only fancy what the wayfarers looked like. We may be sure that they did not in the least resemble any of the groups or individuals who now lounge in or hurry through the park in these later days. The land passed from Briton to Saxon, from Saxon to Norman. William the ‘Conquistor’ gave much of it, in which the present parks were included, to the Abbey of Westminster. The ecclesiastical lords made the most of that part of the gift which comprised the manor of Eia (thence Hythe and Hyde); they enclosed it, but did not keep it solely for purposes of venison, although on questions of game they were excessively jealous. They recognised the salubrity of the place, and sent not only sick and convalescent monks, but nobles and rich merchants to recover their digestions, by drinking the waters of springs which flow now as copiously as ever. The leper house, on the site of which stands Knightsbridge Chapel, abutting on Hyde Park, was a sanatorium for patients so dreadfully afflicted. In other respects, the place was strictly private. There were no steel traps or spring guns, but intruders were kept off by equally efficacious means. It was a preserve, to break into which was almost a capital crime. Ultimately the Reformation dispossessed the ecclesiastics, and the land passed into the hands of the crown. Henry VIII. had no scruples. From St. James’s up to Highgate and Hampstead all (saving a few paths), was made hunting-ground for the king and his friends, native and foreign. The enclosed places were as sacred as the king’s private chamber, and no man, without special permission, or in course of rendering some duty to the king, could pass through the gate of the park any more than he dared step over the threshold of the royal sleeping-chamber, without warrant. Gradually, however, the exclusive sacredness of the place passed away. St. James’s was yet for the most part a palace garden, when Hyde Park was the convenient stage on which hot-headed young gallants and love-stricken court pages privately fought for nothing or their mistresses. People began to murmur at not being allowed to even look into that for the maintenance of which they paid pretty dearly. Then permissions were given to persons of quality to shoot a buck or to take the air. Men of lesser note subsequently gained admission; and at last, but not altogether without restriction, Charles I. opened the park, and invited the citizens to enter. From this point begins, as we have said, the popular history of Hyde Park.

Let us turn here, for a moment, to the other Park of St. James, including the Green, or Little St. James’s, Park. All this was enclosed by Henry VIII. Queen Elizabeth loved to walk in it. One of her appearances there is little known, but it is worth the telling, as it also illustrates her love for art. In 1561 one Vergetius was commissioned by the Queen to procure objects of art for her abroad, which Throckmorton, her envoy in Paris, forwarded to her. In the above year the envoy sent by the hands of a Mr. Sommers ‘the images of the twelve emperors.’ These were alleged to be medals of great antiquity. Throckmorton, however, informed Elizabeth that he had employed expert Italians to look into this matter, and they suspected the medals ‘to be counterfeit.’ Such as they were, their price was ‘six hundred crowns of the sun’—to be delivered in good condition within two months. By the same messenger Throckmorton informed Cecil that an experienced person had assured him that the medals were made of common copper and cunningly gilt.

Sommers, having delivered his despatches to Cecil, exhibited the images of the Cæsars. Cautious Cecil merely observed that ‘he liked them very well, but was not skilful of their antiquity;’ he would refer the question, he said, ‘to some cunning body,’ but ‘would not yet believe that it was æs Corinthium. He had seen such works of ancient art, in gold, silver, and brass, but not in such metal as this. He thought, moreover, that 600 crowns would be far too high a price to expect the Queen to disburse for them.

The loyal Sommers, anxious that Elizabeth should not be suspected of meanness, suggested that Cecil should invent any excuse for returning them rather than let Vergetius suppose ‘that the Queen would stick for 600 crowns to have such a thing of price.’

Thereupon Cecil took Sommers to the Park at St. James’s, where he knew the Queen was walking, and there the messenger, with the box of ‘images’ under his cloak, was presented to Elizabeth, who gave him her hand to kiss, asked how Lady Throckmorton ‘could away with France?’ glanced at his despatches, said she would read them in her chamber, and then, perceiving that Sommers had something under his cloak, ended with a ‘What have ye there?’

Sommers informed her; but when he named the price she protested with a ‘Marry!’ that she had the same set already in silver, but she bade him, as it was growing late, to bring them for inspection on the morrow. Accordingly, Sommers attended on her at the palace, and she laughed at seeing them so daintily handled, all curiously arranged in a gilt box, ‘in the holes made for that purpose,’ and covered over with a piece of crimson velvet. Then she told over the names as she looked at each portrait, and scanned as many of the devices as she, with Sommers’ aid, could decipher. She would come to no terms, however. He must leave them with Cecil for a while. She would consider of it.

Cecil kept the medallion portraits, waiting in vain for a chymist or artificer with skill enough to ‘touch’ them and tell him of what metal they were fashioned. Chaloner looked at them, and did not bring the matter nearer to a solution by remarking, ‘If I were rich, I would give a hundred crowns for them myself.’

The queen wrote with her own hand to Throckmorton. She has seen, she says, ‘the twelve medallions of the emperors, whereof she does not make such estimation as the price assigned. She returns them, and wills him to thank Vergetius for the same, telling him that she has caused certain closets and cabinets of her father to be searched, wherein a great number of such monuments in gold, silver, and copper have been found, and amongst them very fair monuments of the said emperors.’ And so ends this picturesque episode of the imperial ‘images.’ The park scene might suggest a picture to Frith or Ward, if either should ever happen to be in want of a subject.

And now, let us return to Hyde Park, and mark its progress to the end of the seventeenth century. Many a letter has been printed to show how speedily Hyde Park became the sacred ground of fashion. We will add to these illustrations one that has never been quoted.

In January, 1639, the fashionable world was looking out with pleasurable anticipation to the park season; so early in the year Madame Anne Merrick wrote to fair Mrs. Lyddall (both ladies were in the country) to entreat her ladyship to come up to town ‘in Hyde Park time.’ Madame Merrick adds: ‘The fear of a war with the Scots doth not a little trouble me, lest all the young gallants should go for soldiers, and the ladies should want servants to accompany them to that place of pleasure which both of us so zealously affect. I long to see those French ladies, Mme. Mornay and Mme. Darcy, and the new stars of the English court, Mrs. Harrison and Mrs. Vaughan.’ The lady inquires whether sleeves are still worn down to the wrist—the mode brought in by the Duchess de Chevreuse. ‘Do they wear their necks up?’ she asks, meaning covered, not as Herrick says, with ‘a lawn about the shoulders, thrown into a sweet distraction.’ Mistress Merrick does not love the fashion of the gown coming up to the throat, and boldly says, ‘I do not hold any one worthy of a fair neck, or any other good part, that is not free to show it.’ How she looked, head upon pillow, and afterwards saucily erect in the park, may be seen in the modest lady’s request to fair Mrs. Lyddall to buy for her ‘half a dozen white night coifs which tie under the chin, and as many white hoods to wear over them a-days.’ Thus the park beauties of Charles’s time clapt their hoods over their night coifs, and exhibited in the park

The sleepy eye that speaks the melting soul.

Charles I., in opening the parks for free ingress and egress, reserved the crown rights over them as crown lands. Thirteen years after Mrs. Merrick wrote so fondly about it, that is to say, in 1652, the Parliament ordered Hyde Park to be sold for ready money. More than 600 acres fetched a little over 17,000l. The Protectorate did not exclude the people, but everyone who was aristocratic enough to appear in a carriage or on horseback was compelled to pay, each horseman a shilling, a coach half-a-crown, for admission. The fee was roughly levied by fellows armed with sticks, who were the agents of the purchasers of the land, and therefore were empowered by the state to levy the toll. One would like to know if Oliver, when he drove his own coach so awkwardly through the gate, had to pull up, and fumble under his doublet for a shilling. The higher classes grumbled. They could formerly take the air gratis, while Charles and his queen walked on the grass, looked on at the races, or affected to taste the milk offered them by the daintiest of maids. The nightingales and cuckoos never visited the park after it became ‘common.’ Cromwell and his friends, however, made a pretty show in the park, and were ‘mobbed,’ as our manner is. Not every man who stood near and shouted loudest was a Commonwealth man. Assassins watched their opportunity when he rode, or drove, or witnessed military pageants, or was a spectator of the horse-racing or of the hurling by Cornish gentlemen. They never had heart to draw trigger. Even when Cromwell tumbled from his own coach-box, no pistol was discharged save the one which he carried, and that went off by accident. The scene was entirely changed when, after the tap of Monk’s drums was heard coming up the then rural and sweet-savoured Gray’s Inn Lane, the troops by whom monarchy was to be restored encamped in Hyde Park, and all the world went thither to welcome them. Charles II. resumed the possession of the parks, reserving as before the crown rights. He bought the meadows which skirted the Reading Room (Piccadilly) and out of them made what is now called the Green Park. It was added to the land which Henry VIII., when he lived in Whitehall, honestly acquired. It was marshy land, with a hospital for female lepers upon it. Henry removed the leprous ladies, built a palace, and enclosed the park, to which Charles II. added the Upper St. James’s or Green Park, a portion of which was built over at a later period. Hyde Park felt the Restoration. It had become a field: Charles made it a pleasaunce. Fashion went to it rather than to the Mall. There was enjoyment within it all the year through, with high festival on May-day. When it became formal, the gayer pedestrians took possession of St. James’s and the Mall. But formality was not to be seen in the ride or the drive. Coach as well as horse-racing drew crowds of delighted spectators; but this was nothing to the joyous excitement which stirred the hearts and voices of the gazers when saucy Miss Stewart swept into the Park in that wonderful vehicle belonging to the king, the newly-invented ‘calash.’ The other royal mistress had wept and sworn in vain in order to have this triumph. The king’s wife, Queen Catherine, had mildly expressed a wish that she might be the first to enter the park in her husband’s novel carriage; but, poor woman! what was she that she should be heeded when two of the king’s concubines had expressed the same wish? And the gratification was accorded to the saucier of the two—if it can be said that the Stewart could be saucier than the Castlemaine. After Charles’s brother had taken refuge in France there was a recognised Jacobite walk in Hyde Park. The police would sometimes fling their net into the stream of plotters and promenaders with more or less success. The Jacobites were truculent in their joy as the news spread among them, as they walked, that Mons had fallen (A.D. 1691). Queen Mary happened to be walking, not far from them, on that Broad Walk which is now included within Kensington Gardens. Most of the Tory gentlemen paid her the courtesy due to a lady and a queen; but Sir John Fenwick assumed an insulting air, and cocked his hat rudely instead of raising it like a gentleman. Six years after, King William caught Sir John on the hip. The Jacobite was convicted of treason, and William had the greatest pleasure in courteously having him beheaded by act of attainder, as if the man who had insulted his wife had been a peer of the realm.

It is a singular circumstance that, after Hyde Park—the park which had been opened to the people by King Charles—had been sold and divided under Cromwell, ‘James’s Park’ was preserved. The latter was open only to members of Cromwell’s court and to a few other privileged persons who lived in Petty France, on the south-east side of the park. Milton was one of these. Later on a wider permission was given. Commonwealth ladies ruffled it there, and Cromwell himself paced it in serious converse with serious men. His wife kept her cows there, and talked of them with mild congenial spirits. With Charles II. came courtiers, swains, nymphs, lovers. Some took the Mall, and practised gallantry openly; others—chacun avec sa chacune—resorted to the welcome shades round Rosamond’s Pond, in the south-west corner of the park. Under the elms in what is now Pall Mall, or under the limes which skirted the Mall in the park, all that was gay, and light, and frivolous, frisked and frolicked; but thoughtful men threaded their way among them too, and shook their heads at much which some people would have shut their eyes at. Charles, standing under the park wall to exchange light talk with Nell Gwynne, who looked down and laughed upon him from her garden on the other side, was a sight which made Evelyn groan aloud. It was a type of the general naughtiness which prevailed. Half the graceless fops and hussies of the comedy of the period play out their impudent drama in St. James’s Park. In the comedies of that time the manners of people of quality are reflected. As has been remarked, how they dressed, talked, and thought; what they did, and how they did it; what they hoped for, and how they pursued it: all may be learnt from contemporary comedy. We fully agree with the judgment which says of the personages, that the fine gentlemen are such unmitigated rascals, and the women, girls, and matrons are such unlovely hussies—in rascality and unseemliness quite a match for the men—that one escapes from their wretched society, and a knowledge of their one object, and the confidences of the abominable creatures engaged therein, with a feeling of strong want of purification and of that ounce of civet by which the imagination may be sweetened.

With all this there was a leaven of what was respectable or harmless. Charles himself may not seem heroic, but he is at least harmless as we see him, playing with his dogs, feeding his various birds, large and small, in Birdcage Walk, or walking to Whitehall, looking fresh from the dip we are told he had just taken in the canal. Occasionally a thief who admired the king’s breed of puppies would steal a favourite as it trotted at the very heels of majesty. ‘Will they never leave robbing his Majesty?’ is the query at the close of an advertisement, the opening of which implies how often the king was despoiled: ‘We must call upon you again for a black dog,’ &c.

When we remember that Charles often walked alone in both the parks, and that plotters were abroad, we may wonder that he was never molested by anyone worse than an enthusiast. It was a time when promenading ladies in the park took no offence at being accosted by gentlemen who were strangers. On the other hand, ladies saw nothing wrong in taking with them, in their drives in Hyde Park, some handsome boy who acted as girl on the stage, or walking with him in the Mall in his histrionic costume. The great glory of St. James’s was during Charles II.’s reign. His figure always has the park for a background. When he passed away the park was seldom visited by a sovereign; but William occasionally shut himself up on Duck Island, and smoked his pipe as he sat amid the all but stagnant waters. When the seventeenth century closed St. James’s belonged to the public, the lower classes of which went thither to contemplate the leaders of fashion and the gaudiest flowers of husseydom.

In the last century it was ‘the thing’ for promenaders in Hyde Park to gaze through the railings, and watch Queen Anne and her ladies airing their nobility within Kensington Gardens. The most important park incident of that Queen’s reign was the murderous duel between the Tory Duke of Hamilton and the Whig Lord Mohun. Their quarrel was personal and political, and it was embittered by a question as to right of property. On a gloomy November morning of 1712 they fought with swords, before it was quite daylight, and with such ferocity—hacking and rolling over each other on the ground—that, when Mohun dealt the Duke a mortal stab he himself fell dead on the grass. All the world went in crowds to the spot, to moralise, eat cakes, drink ale, and cut poor jokes on the scene of the butchery. No other park duel of the last century was so sanguinary. It was there that Martin, M.P. for Camelford, nearly killed Wilkes by shooting him through and through. ‘It would have been all over with me,’ said Wilkes, ‘only that Martin used government powder.’ It was in Hyde Park that George Garrick and Baddeley went out to pistol one another at instigation of a Jewish lover of Mrs. Baddeley, who hoped that George would kill the lady’s husband; but the affair ended by the parties dining together. A later fight was more serious; it occurred in December 1773. One Hugh Williamson managed to steal the despatches sent by the governors of the American colonies to Whately, one of the under-secretaries in England. Dr. Franklin received the stolen property, and sent the documents to America, where their publication caused the greatest indignation. Whately’s brother, a banker, expressed his suspicion of an American, one Temple, being the thief. Temple called Whately out, and the two pelted each other with shot, and then hacked and thrust at each other with swords, till Whately was removed in an almost dying state. At that time neither the thief nor the receiver was known. It was not till after the fight that Franklin acknowledged that he was the receiver, and it was not till much later that Hugh Williamson was discovered to be the thief. In 1780 the popular Lord Shelburne was hit in the groin in a duel with Colonel Fullarton, of whom, as an attaché to the English Embassy in Paris, the minister had spoken with great contempt. The City of London sent every day a ‘How d’ye do?’ to the leader of the Opposition. Subsequently parsons were not ashamed to do their bit of murder here, or run the risk of being murdered by another. Parson Bate fought his co-proprietor of the ‘Morning Post’ without much harm to either; and Parson Allen stretched his man, Dulany, dead on the turf. For this feat he suffered half-a-year’s imprisonment in Newgate. But this penalty did not prevent the Hon. Cosmo Gordon from killing Colonel Thomas on the same spot, nor weaken the arm of General Stewart in running his sword into Lord Macartney. When people of quality thought butchering one another a salve for wounded honour, fools of lower degree soon followed the example. In June, 1792, one Frizell, weary of a night’s debauch with other Irish law students, was sarcastically rebuked for his comparative sobriety by his friend Clarke. The whole party resorted to Hyde Park, in the beautiful summer dawn, to settle the question with pistols. In five minutes poor Frizell was lying stark dead among the buttercups and daisies. His tipsy companions tumbled the body into a hackney-coach, which was afterwards found standing in Piccadilly, without coachman or any passenger except the dead law student, who was beyond giving any account of himself. In August, 1796, Mr. Pride, an American, killed his countryman, Mr. Carpenter, in the park. In 1797 Colonel King exchanged six shots ineffectually with Colonel Fitzgerald, a married man, from whom King had only recently recovered his sister whom Fitzgerald had seduced from her home. Some time after this duel in the park Fitzgerald went over to Kilworth, Ireland, in order to gain possession again of the unhappy young lady. Her brother, who had become Lord Kingsborough, broke into Fitzgerald’s room for the purpose of chastising him. He would probably have been slain by the stalwart ruffian but for the timely arrival of his father, the Earl of Kingston, who, seeing his son’s danger, fired at Fitzgerald, and killed the rascal on the spot.

But people found life in Hyde Park as well as death. Frost could not keep them from it in February, nor dust and heat in June. Fashion rode round and round the Ring, as equestrians do in a circus, to attract the admiration of spectators. Since hackney-coaches had been forbidden to enter the park, at the close of William’s reign, because their crowded inmates used to indulge in loud and rude comments on such public characters as passed them, the place had become more delightful to exclusive fashionables. Rogues and hussies, however, had the most dashing equipages. Camps and reviews—particularly in the Jacobite period—varied the grand spectacle; and there were crowds who went, as to a festival, to see a soldier nearly flogged to death or shot outright. The fine people, with less curiosity, walked meanwhile, with well-bred indifference, beneath the five rows of walnut trees which flourished there till 1814, when, by the exigencies of war, they were all cut down to be converted into gun-stocks. After the West Bourn was converted into the ‘Serpentine River,’ by order of Queen Caroline, there was boating on it, as now, but the yachts were ‘for the diversion of the royal family.’ That good queen, having taken 300 acres of the park, added them to Kensington Gardens. The good lady would fain have undone the gracious act of Charles I., and would have made the parks private; but she changed her mind on hearing the probable cost: Walpole estimated it at three crowns. The roads at this time were a disgrace to the authorities; and when ducal carriages broke down in the ruts, and commonplace chariots drove through the panels behind which royalty was seated, the public were comforted, for they thought that improvement must ensue. Gallantry, meanwhile, did not care for roads. The sight of Molly Nisbett’s ankle, as she walked by the Serpentine, so moved Lord Macclesfield’s heart that he ‘fell in love’ with her, as the phrase goes; but happening to meet her sister Dorothy when he expected to meet Molly, he fell still more in love with her, and at last married her. Walpole epigrammatically says that the Countess Dolly was my lord’s mistress—or at least other people’s.

Just a hundred and eleven years ago, George II. reviewed, in the park, Colonel Burgoyne’s troop of light horse; and the Colonel’s son, Sir John Burgoyne, died only recently, in his ninetieth year. The review was as nothing compared with a spectacle afforded at a later period by the Ranger of the park, Lord Orford, who drove a four-in-hand of reindeer instead of horses. Deer-hunting in the park by the royal family and privileged persons was not uncommon as late as the latter half of the last century. There, too, might be seen, on his little Welsh pony, great Chatham—he who first called the parks the ‘lungs of London.’ Ugly Wilkes there found willing listeners among the handsomest of women. The beaux about to make the grand tour took leave of home by a display in the park, and probably dined with the Sçavoir Vivre Club, partaking of their favourite dish, from which beaux generally acquired the name of ‘macaronies.’ The headdresses of the latter were something like those of women very recently, and were almost as nasty. The women of that day sailed through the park in head-gear that made them look top-heavy, and long skirts which might be described in the words which Scripture applies to the skirts of Jerusalem. Thieves of every degree were busy among the thoughtless crowd; but gentlemanly young fellows would gallantly protect strange young ladies across the park when it grew dusk, and strip them of everything valuable before they were half across it. A detected thief, however, might think himself lucky if he escaped undrowned from the Serpentine water and unsuffocated from the Serpentine mud. Other dangers came from the park. Rifle practice went on there very actively—so actively that at last the landlord of the King’s Arms, Paddington, naturally complained at a ball, intended for the target, having crashed through his windows, and lodged in the wood of one of the boxes in his tap-room. At this exercise and at the reviews, the belles of the day used to muster in Amazonian uniforms corresponding with those of the regiments they intended to compliment. Blind Lord Derehurst used to ride through the old grass-road full gallop, but with a friend at his side, whereby he once came into collision with a furious rider who could see his way. Both were half killed by the shock; but when the blind lord recovered the use of his limbs he terrified everybody by galloping about the park more furiously than ever. When the men took to four-in-hand driving it was done with a perfection which may be still equalled, but also with a splendour of appointments which is not followed. The ladies, too, took up the reins, and condescended even ‘to whistle sweet their diuretic strains.’ The lady drivers had above a fifty years’ reign, from the days of Young’s Delia, who, in 1728, smacked the silken thong, ‘graceful as Jehu,’ to the period when Lady Archer ‘tooled’ her four white horses through the park, and Mrs. Gordon, in 1783, drove her phaeton and bays almost as rashly as Phaeton himself drove his father’s chariot and broke down before he got to the end of his course.

In the last century, while the charioteers exhibited themselves in Hyde Park, the promenaders took possession of that part of St. James’s known as the Mall. Along a portion of the road, Charles I., had walked his dolorous way to the scaffold at Whitehall; but he walked it like a true gentleman. The gay throng that succeeded remembered little of that King, in connection with the Park. They had lighter things to think of. At one time the scene was as animated as that of Venice in the old Carnival time, especially as long as visor-masks were in fashion. The Mall was the first place in which a newly-appointed chaplain to a lord fluttered his new black silk scarf, the sign and symbol of his dignity. His quality was known by the flag he hung out. The scarf had just been handed to him by my lord’s butler, who kept one or two samples of the article by him, ready to be delivered to any new chaplain named by my lord, in return for which the reverend gentleman was expected to drop into the butler’s hand at least a half-guinea. Even young officers in the Mall had little, if any, advantage of the young chaplain, as long as his scarf bore its new lustre, and his address had the necessary audacity. Old and young men of pleasure lounged in the Mall and idled in the chocolate houses. The ladies were there in beautiful, patched, painted, and scented crowds, the soft evening hours being their particular season. They criticised each other, and each admired herself. There Prior took the air to make himself fat, and Swift to make himself thin. There were walks to suit all tastes. That by Rosamond’s Pond for lovers, sentimental persons, and elegiac poets. The Green Walk had its scandal-mongers and beaux with their hats, not on their heads, but under their arms. Now and then a French or a Frenchified fop was to be seen, as Tom Brown has etched him, with both his hands in his pockets, carrying all his plaited coat before to show his silk breeches. Other figures grouped in the park picture included senators talking, or seeming to talk, of state affairs; milk-people crying ‘A can of milk, ladies! a can of red cow’s milk, sir!’ St. James’s Park had also its Close Walk, at the head of Rosamond’s Pond, in the south-west corner of the park. This got the name of the Jacobites’ Walk before there was one in Hyde Park. It was the resort of Tories in the latter years of William’s reign, whereas the Jacobite Walk in Hyde Park was the favourite conversing ground of the friends of the old and young Pretenders. The park was manifestly losing its fashionable aspect when Warburton ridiculed, while pretending to praise it. What could be more pastoral than the cows and milk-women near Spring Gardens? Comedy, Farce, Satire, were in all the walks. Rosamond’s Pond was the resource of hearts ill at ease. Madrigals and sonnets might best be composed in Birdcage Walk. Georgics and didactic poetry would find inspiration on Duck Island, for which, however, Warburton gives the very poor reason, that ‘the governor of it, Stephen Duck, can both instruct our friend (Mason) in the breed of the wild fowl and lend him of his genius to sing their generations.’ St. James’s has grown common, without lacking any people of the high quality that used to gather there in animated groups. King Charles loitered there for hours amid his birds, to the great delight of the crowds who watched him, killing time. Queen Caroline, George II.’s queen, would fain have had the park to herself, as Elizabeth had, but failing that, she only visited it in her sedan. But where those great personages tarried, for pleasure, personages equally great only hurry along, bent on business. A sovereign drives in the centre of the Mall, to open or close Parliament, or passes along the side of it on her way to hold a levee. But even this is a rare sight now. As for peers and senators of less degree, whichever way they go, they seem bent upon getting out of the park in the quickest way possible.

On the other hand, it is and almost always has been the business of pleasure-seekers to linger in Hyde Park. They go thither with alacrity; tarry with delight; wend their way homeward with regret, and return to the park with renewed zest. It has ever been so. The last century ended a long season of park joys; the present century added to them. People of the highest rank took the dust there, and seemed to enjoy it. The park had not been desecrated in their eyes by footmen fighting duels in it, like their masters. Ladies, indeed, not nicer than jockeys, were lauded for nothing but their riding. One Amazon of the Row was complimented by being likened to Diana, in everything but chastity. The greatest beau of the park at the end of the last century was also the greatest, among a hundred eccentrics, long after the beginning of this: namely, Beau Brummell. He is more familiar to us than Colonel Hanger, who spent 900l. a year on his dress—if he really paid his tailor. Republican France influenced Hyde Park to this extent, that ladies were nearest the French fashion who wore the least amount of dress. They needed only to show their faces to be the most attractive, as was often told them, but they heeded it not, except when they mounted the box to drive four in hand, and even then they looked as much like young coachmen as dress could make them. For years, on succeeding Sundays, Martin Von Butchell, the eccentric doctor, was there, beard and all, on his painted pony, a very good advertisement for the doctor. When death overtook the old man, who had an idea he was immortal, he was more missed than Romeo Coates, with his lofty phaeton, in shape and colour of a sea-shell, and his crest of a cock, with its motto, ‘While I live I’ll crow.’ The park, without Von Butchell and his variously painted pony, may be compared to the Haymarket stage without Compton.

All sorts of oddities were to be seen there, on the old-fashioned Sundays. A Polish countess proved to be a Drury Lane ballet-girl; a magnificent lady turned out to be a lady’s maid; and real ladies stooped to copy the fashions set by the counterfeits. But space fails to permit us to do more than refer to the dainty Petersham, the curled Geramb, the Four-in-hand and the Tandem clubs, the dandies who ruled when the men were at the wars, and the men who came back with the Don Cossacks and the allied sovereigns, and showed themselves in Hyde Park, as a proof that heroes were again upon the throne of fashion. The throne still exists and a full and splendid gathering is around it, on court days. In its way, Hyde Park is one of the most attractive of sights, when the season is at its brightest, and the Somebodies are there, with their kinsfolk eager to admire and imitate them. From royalty downwards, indeed, every class is to be seen in that moving panorama. Princes and mechanics, princesses and flower-girls, every grade is there, and not the least remarkable are those Anonymas, who dress with such exquisite propriety lest they should be mistaken for modest women.

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SOME SCOTSWOMEN.

In the poetry of no nation are the ‘lasses’ more exquisitely courted than in that of Scotland. But old women, with one or two exceptions only, come off with ungallant treatment. This incivility may perhaps have been born of the suspicion that old women had a strong tendency towards growing into witches. On the other hand, witchery was common enough with the younger wenches. There are few things more remarkable in social history than the existence of women in Scotland who professed to be witches, and the cruel punishments inflicted, not only on women who were professed, but on those also who were suspected witches.

There was a grossly immoral side to this story, and the immorality was just the attractive part to individuals who could but practise it under the character of warlocks and witches. The latter, combined with the devil, established a reign of licentiousness in spite of all laws. We believe that the women and the devil did really, in a certain sense, come together, that is, in some cases. The fiend usually went abroad by night. He had a strong kindness for young witches only. Take all as merely human elements, and we know what wicked human nature could make of them. It cannot be doubted that many a licentious scoundrel passed himself off as the devil, and promised supernatural powers to all young witches who would obey him. Hallucinations would come of it; and desire to be witches, with power to severely punish all enemies, would spread among people of diseased minds. The fact that this devil was a worse sort of Don Giovanni, a hard drinker, and that he often piped while the young witches danced, in cutty sarks, or without sarks at all, were circumstances which tend to show a depraved humanity taking advantage of a humanity too weak to resist. Moreover, generally speaking, the devil had little regard for old witches. Nevertheless, these hags sometimes went to the stake asserting their might of sorcery. When they recanted, or urged their complete guiltlessness, they were not believed. In some instances they were proud of belonging to the Amazons of Hell.

The supernatural hags were long in dying out. Even Norna of the Fitful Head was not the last of the mystic queens of storm and rulers of the winds. ’Tis sixty years since, and a woman was then living in Stromness, an old weird woman, who sold winds to mariners at a remarkably low figure. For the small charge of sixpence, ‘awfu’ Bessie Miller’ would sell a wind to a skipper from any point of the compass he chose to have it. One relic of youthful beauty added dread fascination to this storm-witch. The bright blue eyes, that in their time had been the lode-stars of many a laddie’s heart, were bright and blue as ever. All else was old age in its most withered aspect, and the eyes were as two dazzling lights in a skull. The calm or storm vendors have ceased to be; but in the Orkneys there are old women who still earn an ‘honest penny’ by controlling nature; there is not a pain—from the first that a child can cause, to the last a mortal endures in getting well-rid of his mortality—but these crones profess to relieve. We learn too, on competent authority, that old Orkney women still retain an unaccountable aversion to turbot, and avoid naming it when crossing sounds and bays in boats.

Midnight courtships were quite as injurious as midnight meetings of young witches and rattling warlocks. Among the agricultural classes the ordinary time for courting is still, in many parts of Scotland—as it used to be universally—the middle of the night. A farmer’s swain—with an all-overishness about him for a particular lass, with whom he may have had a crack ‘’twixt the gloaming an’ the murk, when the kye comes hame’—will rise at midnight, walk over to his lady’s bower, and find her ready and willing to let him in, as the lady did Finlay, in the ballad, or go down to him, and walk and talk and enjoy ‘courtship,’ till the dawn, if it be summer-time, bids the rustic Romeo and Juliet depart. The report of the Royal Commissioners may be studied for the prose as well as the poetical side of this strange method of wooing—a method sanctioned by parents and not ill-thought of by friends, seeing that such was the course of their wooing an’ wedding, an a’. This custom is, doubtless, referred to in Joanna Baillie’s ballad—‘It fell on a morn when we were thrang’—

When the clocksy laird o’ the warlock glen,

Wha waited without, half blate, half cheery,

And lang’d for a sight o’ his winsome deary,

Raised up the lattice an’ cam’ crousely ben.

His coat was new an’ his o’erlay was white;

His mittens an’ hose were cozie and bien;

But a wooer that comes in braid daylight

Is no like a wooer that comes at e’en.

We may conclude, on other ballad evidence, that it was right unseemly for the lassie to make the first step in this owl-like courtship. The ballad of ‘The Maid gaed to the Mill’ is a warning. She pretended to go merely to get her corn ground, but really that the miller might make love to her—

The maid’s gane to the mill by night,

Hech hey, sae wanton!

The maid’s gane to the mill by night,

Hey, sae wanton she!

In connection with midnight courtship may be noticed the clandestine ‘Ruglen marriages,’ which were so called because in Rutherglen it was more easy to get legally married in spite of law than elsewhere. A couple of centuries ago an Act of Parliament visited clandestine marriages (that is, without banns) with heavy penalties and imprisonment, but it did not invalidate the marriage itself. The Rutherglen justices broke the law while professing to maintain it, made money thereby, and gave especial delight to the lasses. For example: a lad and lass wish to be quietly married; they got a friend to denounce them to a ‘Ruglen magistrate’ for having broken the law. The offenders were summoned before him; they of course acknowledged, in the presence of the court, that they were man and wife, which acknowledgment made them so legally. They were fined five shillings, and were given a copy of the sentence, which they signed; and this was universally taken as a legal certificate of the union. Other magistrates followed this lucrative business. When they told the young offenders that as to the statute penalty of three months’ imprisonment the court would take time to consider, the lad, lass, court, and assistants all laughed aloud, and the Ruglen marriage was a legal one.

In earlier days than those just referred to great evil arose from the fact that girls of twelve years of age could legally effect a marriage of their own will. We might suppose that the lovers could afford to patiently wait for the nymphs till then. Manœuvring mothers, however, frequently sacrificed lovers content to wait, for others whom the mothers preferred to favour. In 1659 the Countess of Buccleuch (in her own right) was married, when only eleven years of age, to Scott of High Chester, a lad of fourteen. This was the evil work of the bride’s mother, the Countess of Wemyss. The validity of the marriage was disputed, but meanwhile the bride finished her twelfth year, and then married the lad of her own accord. She died very early in her teens, and then her successor (for she was a great heiress), her sister Annie, was married, while still a child, to the natural son of Charles II.—the Duke of Monmouth. Parents and guardians were heavily fined for allowing these marriages when the parties were under age; but as they gained more by selling an heiress than they lost in paying the penalty, this did not deter them. On some occasions a gallant would carry off a child-heiress and keep her till she reached the lawful age. Towards the end of the seventeenth century this freak was looked upon as a crime. When Carnagie, the Earl of Northesk’s brother, thus ran off with Mary Gray of Baledgarnie, men said if he could be got, he deserved hanging, for an example to secure men’s children from such attempts.

This practice had died out, but in 1728, we hear of an ‘abduction in the old style.’ The offender was a Highlander. The damsel was a wright’s niece, named Mowbray. Her ‘gouvernante had betrayed her upon a promise of a thousand marks, the young lady having 3,000l. of fortune.’ The uncle luckily caught them near to Queensferry, as they were coming to town to be married. The newspapers add, ‘The gouvernante is committed to prison, as is also the gentleman.’ There were some illegitimate marriages that were severely punished. In the reign of Charles I., a tailor in Currie was beheaded for marrying his deceased wife’s half-brother’s daughter. As late as the reign of William and Mary, we hear of a certain Margaret Paterson, one of the beauties of the then prevailing husseydom. She had drawn into her irresistible toils the two young sons of a kirk minister named Kennedy. For this offence Margaret stood an hour in the ‘jougs,’ was whipped the whole length of the city, and was then transported to the plantations for the term of her natural life.

We have more gentle reminiscences of some Scotswomen, through both poetry and romance—both founded on history. Few maidens are better known in ballad lore than Bessy Bell and Mary Gray. Their true history is not so familiarly known. They were living at the time of the last plague that ever devastated Scotland, A.D. 1645. Bessy was daughter of the Laird of Kincaid: Mary, of the Laird of Lednoch. At the last place, near Perth, Bessy was on a visit to Mary. The plague broke out in the neighbourhood, and raged so fearfully that the young ladies built them a bower, about a quarter of a mile from the mansion, and there dwelt, apart from their family, but not from all human companionship. They were visited and whatever they required was brought to them by a swain who is said to have been equally deeply in love with both—which was a very aggravated symptom of a common sort of plague. Tradition says that death came of it. The lover with two mistresses brought the infection with him. The ladies caught the disease, died, and were buried near where the present mansion stands—a mansion, the name of which has been changed from Lednoch to the more familiar Lynedoch. The gallant soldier who bore that name, built a bower over the graves of a couple of whom we know nothing surely, except that they lived and died.

In legend—one which was born of sad truth, and has passed into Italian opera—there is no maiden more famous than the Bride of Lammermoor. In melancholy prose, the lady was the Honourable Janet Dalrymple, daughter of the first Lord Stair. She and young Lord Rutherford had plighted their troth, had broken a silver coin between them, and had invoked malediction on whichever of the two should be false to the compact. The parents of Lady Janet insisted on her marrying Dunbar of Baldoon. The mother, Lady Stair, was most cruel in forcing her daughter to this match. Janet, broken-hearted and helpless, had an interview with her lover, and sobbed out a text from Numbers xxx. 2, 3, 4, 5, as an excuse for her obedience to her mother’s commands. The lovers parted in sorrow; Rutherford in anger. He had not in him the spirit of young Lochinvar, nor Janet the wit to run away with him herself. The poor thing was, in fact, scared. She was carried to church to be wed, in a semi-crazed and more than half-dead state. At night a hurricane of shrieks came from the bridal chamber, where the bridegroom was found on the ground, profusely bleeding from a stab, and the bride sat near him in her night-gear, bidding them ‘Take up your bonny bridegroom!’ She died insane in less than three weeks. Dunbar of Baldoon recovered, but he was never known to open his lips on the causes which led to the catastrophe. Baldoon evidently took things as they came; after his death, some thirteen years later, in 1682, Andrew Simpson wrote an elegy upon him, in which the romantic adventurer upon marriage with another man’s love was described as a respectable country gentleman who had introduced many improvements into agriculture! Lord Rutherford, the lover, died childless, in 1685. As Dunbar would never suffer the catastrophe to be alluded to, good-natured people invented a story that Rutherford himself was in the chamber before Baldoon reached it, and had stabbed him as soon as he entered it. There is no shadow of the slightest grain of substance for this part of a sufficiently calamitous history.

Janet Dalrymple was a strong-minded woman. She and her contemporaries descended from mothers and grandmothers who were both strong-minded and wrong-headed. Among the Scotswomen who may be so designated may be reckoned those who were accustomed in the latter half of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries to go about in men’s attire. Indeed the sexes would often change clothes. This was done sometimes at bridals, sometime at burials, always in a spirit of jollification, and there is an instance of women and men making this travesty and rioting through Aberdeen, in celebration of their recovery from the plague, but while the foul stigmata of the disease were still upon them! The magistrates had infinite trouble with the women. Fines did not frighten the offenders. Other means were adopted. In March, 1576, certain women ‘tryit presently as dancers in men’s claiths, under silence of night, in houses and through the town;’ the magistrates inform them that if they are caught ‘they shall be debarrit fra all benefit of the kirk and openly proclaimit in the pulpit.’ This masquerading was not confined to women of low degree. Queen Mary Stuart and her ladies, once at least, frolicked through Edinburgh in disguise—that is to say, they went their joyous way as young market-women; this unseemly frolic occurred when weak and ill-starred Darnley was on the point of wedding with the widowed but then light-hearted queen.

Of all the wilful Scotswomen of whom Scottish records make mention, one of the most singular was the Hon. Susan Cochrane, daughter of John, the fourth Earl of Dundonald. At fifteen, she married the Earl of Strathmore, who was accidentally killed three years later, A.D. 1728. Twenty years after this the childless widow married her groom, according to the Rev. Mr. Roger—her ‘factor,’ or bailiff, according to the peerage books. The second husband’s name was Forbes. ‘The groom,’ says Mr. Roger, ‘at first (when she offered herself in marriage to him) thought that the countess had become mentally disordered, but when he perceived she was serious he gladly embraced the good fortune which had so unexpectedly fallen in his way.’ There was a daughter of this marriage. The mother ultimately carried the girl with her to France, when Forbes made the home unfit for a commonly decent woman to live in. Lady Strathmore died in that country in 1754, leaving her daughter, Miss Forbes, in a convent at Rouen. Forbes married again, and then sent for his daughter, who returned to his house. She was so cruelly treated that at last she ran away, wandered through the country, and, when nearly irrecoverably exhausted, was taken into a farm-house, in Fifeshire, by a family named Lauder. The fugitive told her tale, and the Lauders gave her a permanent home. After a while, the eldest son fell in love with and married her. Happiness seemed secured to her at last, but it did not continue long. Her husband fell into adversity, and the honest fellow died under the crushing pressure of it. What the daughter of Lady Strathmore suffered it would be too painful only to conjecture. In 1821 she was found living in a miserable cottage near Stirling, and her influential neighbours took up her case. They represented it to the families of Dundonald and Strathmore, to whom the appeal was not made in vain. They contributed to furnish her with an annuity of 100l. a year. It was thankfully received, and it proved all-sufficient for the wants of the granddaughter of two earls.

Returning to days before the Reformation, it seems to have been then a sort of practical joke on the part of leaders of military bands to quarter their officers and men in convents, which were also places where young ladies of quality were educated and lodged. There were generally means available to get rid of this unmanly intrusion. Similar circumstances, with similar results, occurred in Scotland after the Reformation. The first notice of a regular professional governess in Scotland occurs under the date of 1685. In a petition to the Privy Council this lady, Isabel Cumming, describes herself as a widow and stranger, who has been invited to Edinburgh (in which place she considered that the centre of the virtue of the whole kingdom was to be found!) to instruct young gentlewomen in all sorts of needlework, playing, singing, and several other excellent pieces of work, becoming ladies of honour. She had not only succeeded, but, she says, she was continually improving herself for the advantage of young ladies of quality. This exemplary Isabel petitioned to be made exempt from the affliction of having soldiers quartered upon her; otherwise, what would become of all her young ladies? Their heads would be turned from study, and their hearts would be beating to nought but military airs. The Lords of the Council, who had young kinswomen, perhaps, among the pupils, prudently and promptly granted Mrs. Cumming’s request.

These young ladies, grown into wives, often sorely troubled their lords by going to conventicle instead of to church, as the Act of Charles II., the religious head of that church, ordered them to do, under severe penalty, which, of course, the husband had to pay. The wife of Balcanqui of that ilk so often offended in this way, that her lord at last grew tired of paying her fines. He protested to the king’s council that he conformed himself, but that his wife stoutly refused. He was therefore, desirous, he said, to deliver her up to the council, to be disposed of at their pleasure. The considerate council declared that men like Balcanqui were not to be ruined by the mad and wilful opinions of fanatical wives; and they agreed to remit the fine, if he would send them the lady.

On the other hand, there was at least one lady who was willing, not only to give up her lord for conventicle-haunting, but to see him hanged as a Nonconformist. Her name has not lived in history, but Wodrow records the fact. She was a graceless virago. She mocked him in family prayer, cursed him when he went to conventicle, and flung stools at him when he returned. She had him up to the court at Glasgow, and entreated my lords ‘to hang him.’ They refused, on the ground that hanging could be nothing compared with having to live with her. This fearful sort of woman constantly comes to the front in Scottish annals. Indeed, the question as to woman’s rights was settled in Scotland before it was thought of in England. Take, for example, the ladies who mobbed the Chancellor Stair and Archbishop Sharpe, in Charles’s reign. They cried out that the Gospel was starving in Scotland through rampant prelacy. One of the ladies struck the prelate on the back of the neck as he passed into the Parliament House, crying out, at the same time, that that (his neck) should pay for it ere all was done! The prelate’s life was said to have been in danger. The whole scene, with the beautiful furies pelting the archbishop with epithets of ‘Judas’ and ‘Traitor,’ and hinting at murder, is almost inconceivable now. We should have something like it if the Mrs. Fitzhighflyers were to mob the Dean of Westminster in his own cloisters, and try to hang him from one of his own gargoyles.

If a minister took a wife from women of the temper indicated above, he must have soon felt that the same temper would always regulate home affairs. Very fearful bodies were some of those ministers’ wives. James Fraser, of Ross-shire, who wrote a work on Sanctification during the first half of the last century, had about the worst of them. She kept him tightly up to the collar, worked him hard, and starved him outright. She gloried in her tyranny. It might be said of her, as some say of Bismark, human anguish was a sensual delight. The good man’s neighbours put food in his way when he was permitted to walk abroad, or they treated him hospitably in their houses, where he dared tarry, however, very briefly. In winter, his Fury allowed him neither light nor fire in his study. He worked in it by day and meditated in it by night, when not at a scanty meal. At a ministers’ festival meeting ‘Our Wives’ was one of the toasts. Fraser, on being sportively asked if he would drink it, exclaimed, ‘Aye, heartily! Mine brings me to my knees in prayer a dozen times daily, which is more than any of you can say of yours!’ On the day of Fraser’s death, several ministers, on a formal visit of condolence, waited on her, and found her gaily busy among the poultry which she reared and sold. ‘Oh aye, he’s gane!’ said the widow. ‘Ye can gang in, if ye will, and look at the body!’ and she scattered corn the while, crying, ‘Chick! chick! chick!’ The sentiment of Mrs. Fraser towards her husband was very like that of the Scotswoman in the old song:—

I wish that you were dead, goodman,

An’ a green sod on your head, goodman,

That I might wear my widowhood

Upon a ranting Highlandman.

There’s sax eggs in the pan, goodman,

There’s sax eggs in the pan, goodman.

There’s ane to you, and twa to me,

An’ three to our John Highlandman!

Another Scottish widow reminds us of the widow in Voltaire’s ‘Zadig’ for delicate fidelity towards a deceased husband. The relict in question was one day in spring seen by the clerk of her parish crossing the churchyard with a watering-pot and a bundle. ‘Ah, Mistress Mactavish,’ said the clerk, ‘what’s yer bus’ness, wi’ sic like gear as that y’are carryin’?’ ‘Ah, weel, Mr. Maclachlan,’ replied the widow, ‘I’m just goin’ to my gudeman’s grave. I’ve got some hay-seeds in my bundle, the which I’m goin’ to sow upon it; and the water in the can is just to gi’e ’em a spring like!’ ‘The seeds winna want the watering,’ rejoined the clerk, ‘they’ll spring finely o’ themselves.’ ‘That may well be,’ rejoined the widow; ‘but ye dinna ken that my gudeman, as he lay a-deeing, just got me to make promise that I’d never marry agin till the grass had grown aboon his grave. And, as I’ve had a good offer made me but yestreen, ye see, I dinna like to break my promise, or to be kept a lone widow, as ye see me!’ The minister’s aide-de-camp looked on the widow, indeed, with a mirthful expression. ‘Water him weel, widow,’ said the clerk; ‘Mactavish aye was drouthy!’ The above took place within the Georgian era, when both old and young ladies in Scotland broadly called things by their names. We are not sure that it was not the same everywhere. As a Scottish sample, we take the last duchess of the house of Douglas, who was a ‘jolly’ lady in manner and matter; broad in figure and in speech, and not to be offended by word or innuendo. When the duchess was in Paris with several Scottish gentlemen, in the reign of George III., 1762, the language and ideas of the whole party were of a sort, it is said, to make the hair of the fastest of our day to stand on end. One of the gentlemen suggested that when the duchess went to court she should claim the right to occupy a tabouret, or low seat, in the royal presence, by virtue of her late husband’s ancestors having held a French dukedom (Touraine). Robert Chambers, who had the story from Sir James Stuart of Coltness, one of the party, says that the old lady made all sorts of excuses in her homely way; but when Boysock started the theory that the real objection lay in her grace’s fears as to the disproportioned size of the tabouret for the correlative part of her figure, he was declared, amidst shouts of laughter, to have divined the true difficulty—her grace enjoying the joke as much as any of them. The story may remind some readers of the assembly at Mrs. Montague’s, when that bluntest of ladies asked Dr. Johnson to take a chair, and how that learned savage, in the coarsest way, intimated that there were fewer seats than persons to be seated.

Other ladies of ducal families had their peculiarities—which even in those days excited remark. A very few years have elapsed since there died the old soldier Duncan Mackenzie. He could remember when he kissed the Duchess of Gordon in taking the shilling from betwixt her teeth to become one of her regiment, the Gordon Highlanders. Ladies of rank in England at that time, when elections were hotly contested, bought votes with their kisses. A few years ago there passed away from society, almost unnoticed, a Scottish lady who had made no little noise in her time. We allude to the beautiful Lady Charlotte C., daughter of the Duke of A——. In 1796 she married her namesake, ‘Handsome Jack’ C., of the Guards. At that time the bride was perhaps unequalled for her beauty, and she was not shy of showing it. Indeed, after Lady Charlotte first went to court as a wife, Queen Charlotte sent her word that if she ever came there again she must first take a tuck or two out of her skirts. In Glasgow crowds used to follow this audacious beauty; and no wonder, for local historians say she would walk down the most fashionable street in petticoats almost as short as a Highlander’s kilt. On one occasion, when thus lightly attired, and walking with a lady and a young gentleman, the whole city seemed to gather about them, wondering, admiring, and criticising. Finding themselves mobbed, they took shelter in a shop, whose owner, further to protect them, put up his shutters and locked his door. Instead of dispersing, the mob increased. The shopkeeper, fearing an attack on his premises, by which his goods and his guests would alike suffer, jumped out of a back-window and ran for the guard. A sergeant and three or four men were sent down and posted in front of the premises. Meanwhile, Lady Charlotte C. followed the shopkeeper’s example. She lightly leapt from the back-window into an unfrequented lane, made her way into a decent house, told her story, sent for a coach, and quietly rode to her inn unrecognised. During this flight and escape the mob grew denser and more impatient. At length the shop-door was opened. The tradesman informed the people how Lady Charlotte had got away, and asked undisturbed passage for the young lady and gentleman who remained. This was granted, for there was nothing eccentric about this couple, who were civilly allowed to ‘gang their gait.’ The reigning beauty lived to a great age—between eighty and ninety. Age did not bring wisdom with it, if the story be true that when she was old she went to court in a dress every way as objectionable as that with which, in her youth, she ruffled the plumes of Queen Charlotte’s propriety. In her declining years she had not only lost the once handsome Jack, but his estates too: Islay and Woodhall had gone to creditors. The old lady, however, married a clergyman named Bury, turned to literary pursuits, and, among other books, produced in 1839 the Diary illustrative of the times of George IV., which was edited by Galt.

Lady Grisell Baillie has been called ‘the bravest of all Scotch heroines.’ Her career lasted from 1665 to 1746. In that life of fourscore years and one she wrote one famous song, ‘Were my Heart licht I wad dee,’ and rendered a million good services to her fellow-creatures. One of the eighteen children of Sir Patrick Home, afterwards Earl of Marchmont, she learned the trick of serving her kindred so early and so well that she could not give it up when she was a fine old lady. Till her eighty-first year she rose the earliest of her family, and managed the most difficult of their affairs. When her father was in hiding from the scaffold, and Grisell was eighteen, she walked alone every night, over a dark road, and through an ill-reputed churchyard, to carry food to the fugitive, who was concealed in the family vault. Sir Patrick is described as lying on a mattress wrapped in a Kilmarnock cloak, among the mouldering bones of his ancestors, with nothing to help to spend the time but repeating some of Buchanan’s Latin psalms. Grisell had to be cautious, for there were hostile soldiers in her father’s house ever on the watch. One night, when she was providing the rations for her parent, she contrived to take a sheep’s head from the table. She was nearly betrayed to the soldiers by the remark of a sister, who, suddenly missing the head, gave loud expressions to her wonder at Grisell having so quickly eaten the whole of it. When in exile in Holland, before the Great Revolution, Sir Patrick wrote home as to how the young people should be brought up. He enjoined dancing every day. ‘Lost estates,’ he said, ‘can be recovered again, but health once lost by a habit of melancholy can never be recovered.’ After Grisell married young Baillie of Jerviswood, ‘he never went abroad but she went to the window to look after him (so she did that very day he fell ill, the last time he was abroad), never taking her eyes from him so long as he was in sight.’ Grisell ranks among Scottish songstresses. Some of her tuneful sisters are worthy of notice.

The world does not know much of Alison Rutherford of Fairnalee, but she is familiar to us under her married name of Mrs. Cockburn, authoress of one of the versions of ‘Flowers of the Forest.’ Her period was a long one, within the limits of the last century, 1712-1794. One of the biographers of this Queen of Edinburgh describes the Scotswomen of the early part of that century as highly cultivated. ‘The daughters of the country houses were educated by their fathers’ chaplains and their brothers’ tutors’ (the Dominie Sampsons of the House), ‘when they had brothers, as well as by their mothers’ waiting-women; and when the family happened to be of more than ordinary intelligence, or to be decidedly of a studious turn, the daughters were fairly well-read and well-informed women. Not only were Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Prior, and Addison on many bookshelves in lairds’ and ladies’ closets, but, though the women of the nobility and gentry had not a classical education, they frequently learnt French and Italian, and were very conversant with the former. This was not so much because of the obsolete national alliances which have scattered French words broadcast over the field of the Scottish language, as because of the influence of the vieille cour of the great Louis on manners, and the effects of its beaux esprits on literature, which were felt as far as Scotland. The number of soldiers of fortune belonging to the upper classes who served campaigns abroad and came home with foreign polish increased the influence. Corneille, Racine, and Molière, La Fontaine and La Bruyère were as much the fashion in the Scotch rank that pretended to fashion when Alison Rutherford was young, as they were in English high society when Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Mrs. Delany grew up.’ The above must be taken with some reserve. Scottish governesses of the period were, for the most part, ill-educated, and they were as much servants as teachers. When Jean Adam, the reputed author of ‘There’s nae Luck about the House’ (she was born in 1710), went as governess into the family of a clergyman, Mr. Turner of Greenock, she had to live on pease-brose, nettle-kail, and barley-meal scones. She knitted the minister’s stockings, helped to make the clothes of his wife, his girls, and his boys, worked at the spinning-wheel, nursed the baby, and tended the sick. In the manse of Crawfurdsdyke this governess wore a woollen petticoat and a short gown of striped linen within the house. Her Indian cotton gown and her bon grâce, or straw hat, were for gala trips to Glasgow. The education of Mrs. Cockburn, as we will call her, was defective in spelling, at all events. In one of her notes she complains of the ‘rheumatiz.’ In another she uses the word ‘unparaleled,’ sees the mistake, can’t correct it, and then gaily writes in a postscript, ‘cannot spell unparaleled.’ She was a beauty throughout life—supremely beautiful in her youth. She says prettily of herself: ‘I was a prude when young, and remarkably grave. It was owing to a consciousness that I could not pass unobserved, and a fear of giving offence or incurring censure. I loved dancing extremely, because I danced well.’ She loved it to the end of her days, and would dance with men whose grandfathers had been her partners in days of yore. Mrs. Cockburn also preferred men’s society to that of women. A company without a clever man in it was to her worse than no company at all. The sterling stuff that was in her is to be seen in what she curiously says of the early years of her marriage with young Cockburn, son of the Lord Justice Clerk: ‘I was married, properly speaking, to a man of seventy-five, my father-in-law. I lived with him four years, and as the ambition had seized me to make him fond of me, knowing also that nothing could please his son so much, I bestowed all my time and trouble to gain his approbation.’ Of her husband she wrote, three-and-thirty years after she had become a widow: ‘I was twenty years united to a lover and a friend.’ Perhaps it was the happiness of her own married life that gave her a decided partiality for making matches. ‘She was the confidante,’ her biographers remark, ‘of all lovesick hearts.’ When speaking of a widow ‘being consoled by one who had been longer in that state,’ Mrs. Cockburn contemptuously asked, ‘What’s a woman to a woman?’ That any woman should prefer a single to a married life was a fact she could not account for. ‘The girls are all set agog,’ she writes, ‘in seeking the ideal man, and will have none of God’s corrupted creatures.... Even as a good housewife I would choose my lord and master should have many faults, because there’s so much glory in mending them. One is prouder of darning an old table-cloth than of sewing a new one.’ The sentiment is happier than the simile. To the next sentiment universal mankind would say a loud Amen: ‘It’s a pity woman does not mend with age as wine does.’ There was a rough side to female Scottish character in those days. Among the friends of Mrs. Cockburn, when she was queen of Edinburgh society, was a Miss Suff Johnstone. She is thus sketched in ‘The Songstresses of Scotland,’ of whom Miss Suff was not one: ‘Miss Suff, before women’s rights were mooted, took the law into her own hand, and wore a man’s greatcoat, hat, and square-buckled shoes, practising, with the habiliments, a man’s habit of striding, spitting, and swearing. She shod a horse better than a smith, had a private forge in her bedroom, played on a fiddle, and sang a man’s song in a man’s bass voice.’ Gentle Anne Scott’s foot happening to tread upon the space appropriated by the Amazon, Anne was punished by a rough kick on the shins, and the fierce challenge, ‘What are ye wab-wabstering there for?’ The innocent offender was overwhelmed, and the rest of the party electrified. A contemporary of Mrs. Cockburn, Miss Jean Elliot, whose life ran between the limits of 1727 and 1805, and who was also the author of a version of the song, ‘Flowers of the Forest,’ had a very indifferent opinion of the Scotswomen of her time. ‘The misses,’ she wrote to a friend, ‘are, I am afraid, the most rotten part of the society. Envy and jealousy of their rivals have, I fear, a possession in their minds, especially the old part of the young ladies, who grow perfect beldames in that small society.’ At that period, the lady leaders of fashion of the faster sort frequented the Edinburgh oyster-cellars, exercised the license of men, and had such promising pupils as Miss Suff Johnstone. In an indirect way we owe to this last lady the song of ‘Auld Robin Gray.’ She was in the habit of singing words far from choice to the old tune. Lady Anne Barnard (while she was the yet unmarried daughter of the Earl of Balcarres) took the tune, and supplied it with the words which tell the well-known tale of virtuous distress. The author was forty years of age when she married Mr. Barnard, son of the Bishop of Limerick. She is almost as celebrated for this one song as the Baroness Nairne (by birth an Oliphant of Gask) was for the ‘Laird o’ Cockpen,’ ‘Caller Herrin,’ and a dozen of Jacobite and other songs, in some of which there are indications of great humour, in others of great pathos. In one verse of ‘Caller Herrin,’ she sketches a picture, as George Cruikshank used to do, with two or three strokes:—

When the creel o’ herrin’ passes

Ladies, clad in silk and laces,

Gather in their braw pelisses,

Cast their heads and screw their faces.

In the last century there was a Scottish home discipline, compared with which that of school must have appeared amiable. Take the Lanarkshire home of Joanna Baillie, who passed away just twenty years ago at the venerable age of ninety. She and the other children of the family had parents whose hearts were full of affection, which their principles would not permit them to show. The father never kissed his children. Joanna, hungering for a caress, once clasped her mother’s knee, and was gently chided. ‘But,’ Joanna used to say, ‘I know she liked it.’ It is curious to mark the contrast of Joanna Baillie, who could hardly read at eleven, running wild by the banks of the Clyde or on the braes of Calder, and of Joanna Baillie writing songs and plays in the house of her brother, the physician, in Windmill Street, Haymarket—the site of the house now occupied by the Argyll Dancing-rooms. Byron’s daughter, Ada, Countess of Lovelace, had a wonderful knowledge of mathematics, but she cared nothing for her father’s nor any other person’s poetry. Joanna Baillie had not a poet for her sire, but the numbers came. Therewith she acquired the paternal affection for Euclid, and was great in the demonstration of problems. In her unrestrained Scottish girlhood she knew as little of fear as Nelson ever did. She was not only supreme in all girlish sports, but she rushed into audacious deeds that boys stopped short at. She ran unbonneted and high-kilted, along the parapets of bridges and the tops of walls as deftly as Mazurier or Gouffe over theatrical representations of them. She once induced her brother to mount a horse on which she was seated. The steed, waxing angry, bolted, and flung the brother, whose arm was broken. Her equestrianism was the admiration of the countryside. ‘Look at Miss Jack!’ cried a farmer, who saw her pass, riding at the head of a party on a country excursion. ‘Look at Miss Jack! she sits her horse as if it was a bit of herself.’ Not the least singular thing connected with this Scottish lady is that when, after a long residence in London she returned to Scotland, her Scottish accent was stronger than ever. Her Scottish songs, original or adapted, will probably live longer than her ‘Plays of the Passions,’ with all their unquestionable merits.

We may here put readers on their guard against concluding that even a very Scottish song must necessarily be by a Scottish author. Mrs. John Hunter, who wrote ‘My Mother bids me,’ and a version of ‘Flowers of the Forest,’ was a Yorkshirewoman. Mrs. Grant, famous for ‘Roy’s Wife,’ was Irish. Mrs. Ogilvy, who has given so many samples of Highland minstrelsy, was born in India. Miss Blamire wrote ‘An ye shall walk in Silk Attire,’ but she was a Cumberland lass; and Mrs. Hamilton, of ‘My ain Fireside,’ was, like Mrs. Grant, of Carron, an Irish lady. They are all held to be virtually Scottish by men who deny that Wallace was a Welshman and that Robert Bruce was a native of Yorkshire.

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THE DIBDINS.

For about a hundred years the name of Dibdin was a pleasant name in the ears and eyes of the English people. The Dibdin proper, son of a silversmith, was born at Southampton in the year of the Scotch Rebellion, 1745. The event belongs almost to ancient history, but there are men not yet so very old who can remember in their childhood the once ‘tuneful Charley,’ who became for ever mute in the year 1814.

The name is a local one. There is a place called Dibden (originally Deep Dene), a place of some importance at the time of the Conquest, situated in a thickly wooded dell in Southampton Water. Charles Dibdin was Hampshire born and Hampshire bred. His father, silversmith and parish clerk, sent him to Winchester School, but he was more especially of the Winchester Cathedral choir. He was ‘intended for the Church,’ as the phrase goes, but instead of a bishop writing charges, he became a composer arranging musical scores. In the Church he probably would have written a few indifferent sermons. On and for the stage, and the world, he penned and melodised hundreds of popular songs. Some of these are as good as sermons; others are as unintelligible; there are many of them that are infinitely better. Dibdin knew as much about a ship as many curates know about religion; and now and then he got into the same sort of mess accordingly. On the whole, however, he pulled through successfully. The backbone of all his songs was ‘loyalty.’ It was like insisting on ‘faith’ in sermons. He perhaps would have been a popular preacher, had he not preferred being a popular song-writer—Tyrtæus instead of Calchas.

Charles Dibdin was neither sailor nor parson, but the family was destined to contribute both to the wide-apart professions respectively. Charles had an elder brother who took to sea and became captain of an East Indiaman. Years after, but in the same year, 1775, a son was born to each, and each son was named Thomas. The captain’s son was born at Calcutta. He was put to the law with the object of making a Lord Chancellor of him, but the young fellow turned to the Church, and did not become an archbishop. Nevertheless, he is well remembered as the Rev. Thomas Frognal Dibdin, author of the ‘Bibliomania,’ the ‘Biographical Decameron,’ and many other works of a similar nature. The Rev. Thomas died, a popular preacher, rector of St. Mary’s, Bryanstone Square, in 1847.

The Rev. Thomas’s cousin, Tom, was born in Peter Street, Holborn. You will look for street or house in vain. New Oxford Street has swept it all down. Peter Street was the third of a street which had three names. At the Holborn end it was Bow Street; at the Montague House, or Museum, end, it was Queen Street. The middle portion was Peter Street, which New Oxford Street has knocked out of existence. But for this, you might yourself have knocked at the very house door, as Mr. Garrick did, on the day of Master Tom’s christening, when Roscius was godfather, and he brought with him a hamper of wine, and Frank Aickin, as second godfather. This was ‘Tyrant Aickin,’ as Frank was called, from his having always to play the swaggering, low-mouthed Maximinus of the drama. The godson of the two actors never had the good luck in life of either of his godfathers. He never had a living that made him socially equal with his cousin the rector. The cousins were alike in one point only. Each wrote his own biography, both of which are worth the reading. Thomas Frognal Dibdin, D.D., became one of the founders of the Roxburgh Club. Tom Dibdin of Peter Street was often a guest at the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks. T. F. D. was a popular lecturer, but no lecture of his had such vogue as his cousin Tom’s song, ‘When Vulcan forged the bolts of Jove.’ Tom’s father never wrote a better.

But Tom’s father is waiting, and it is his story that has to be briefly told. After all, Charles Dibdin the elder began life, or would have begun it, with the Church—as organist. He was a candidate for the office at Bishop’s Waltham, in his native county. He was then only fourteen years of age. He was self-taught, save some elementary instruction from Mr. Fussel, the organist of Winchester Cathedral. The village judges, finding him competent, duly rejected him on account of his youth! He was looking at the ruins of the episcopal palace with a humble church officer, who told him it was built by King Stephen’s brother Henry de Blois. ‘And you are a descendant of his,’ said Charles. ‘That’s more than I ever knew before,’ replied his companion. ‘It’s quite true though,’ rejoined Dibdin; ‘are you not Henry the organ-blower?’

The outlines of Dibdin’s career are soon told. He came up to London as poor as Whittington, but with little of his luck. He earned a couple of guineas by composing ballads for music-sellers, by which they made hundreds; and he tuned pianos, and taught how to play on them. At length, wearied with this, he made his first appearance on the stage (he says) at the Richmond Theatre, on the Hill, in 1762, when he was seventeen years of age. Dibdin, however, also states that he first appeared at Birmingham, and Jesse records that Dibdin and Bannister came out originally at Marylebone Gardens. Dibdin speaks of the old Richmond house as the ‘Academy’ and the ‘Histrionic Academy.’ This was one of the names given to the theatre by Theophilus Cibber before a licence had been got to open it. Theophilus called it at first the Cephalic Snuff Warehouse. Snuff, in minute quantities, was sold at the various entrances, and admission followed gratis. It was on this stage that Dibdin is said to have made his début, as Damætas, in ‘Midas’; a thing the more difficult to believe, as ‘Midas’ was not produced in England till 1764, namely, at Covent Garden, and then Damætas was played by Fawcett.

Victor pronounced Charles Dibdin’s Mungo to be ‘as complete a low character as was ever exhibited.’ Isaac Bickerstaffe as highly praised the musical composer as Victor did the actor. ‘The music of this piece,’ he wrote in the preface to it, ‘being extremely admired by persons of the first state and distinction, it would be injustice to the extraordinary talents of the young man who assisted me in it, was I not to declare that it is, under my direction, the entire composition of Mr. Dibdin, whose admirable performance in the character of Mungo does so much credit to himself and me, as well as to the gentleman whose penetration could distinguish neglected genius, and who has taken pleasure in producing it to the public.’ Dibdin’s elder son was named after his father, the character he played, and the author of ‘The Padlock’—Charles Isaac Mungo Dibdin. The author of ‘The Thespian Dictionary,’ writing of the second son, Thomas Dibdin, adds to the fact, ‘but not acknowledged by his father!’

Dibdin’s success as an actor was so complete, that we can only wonder at his leaving it so soon for authorship, musical composition, and entertainments in which he was the sole performer. He was the original Ralph, in ‘The Maid of the Mill,’ and straightway London fluttered with ‘Ralph handkerchiefs.’ Dibdin’s Mungo, in ‘The Padlock,’ another creation, was so naturally and thoroughly to the purpose, it was said that the performer had gone to Jamaica and spent weeks there in order to study the manners and speech of the negroes! The fact is, that he combined impulse with intelligence, and never lost an opportunity. The very first sea-song of his which took the national ear and the national heart, was ‘Blow high, blow low!’ and this, if he did not compose, he imagined, not in the open stormy ocean, on board a man-of-war, but on board a Calais packet which took thirteen hours on a stormy passage across the Straits of Dover.

In nearly all cases of composition, with Dibdin, his method was most singular. In his musical entertainments, he introduced hundreds of songs, words and music by himself. But when he seated himself at the piano, before the public, not a note of the accompaniment was written. He improvised, and never thought of putting a single note down on paper till the music-sellers wanted copy for the engravers.

Dibdin went abroad in the early part of his career to study music; but he merely practised by himself, and noted little but the manners and morals of the people amongst whom he was thrown. The English society at Calais, during his sojourn there, he describes as consisting of three or four fraudulent bankrupts, two or three too successful duellists, a few rich smugglers under strong suspicion of having committed murder, which was the most likely thing in the world, and a high official personage, guilty of forgery, and ‘the father of a nobleman who was afterwards singularly remarkable for having publicly exhibited the hand and head of Struensee.’

Dibdin exchanged Calais for ever pleasant, and then especially pleasant, Nancy. He makes a very curious observation on one incident of his sojourn there. He saw the Emperor of Germany, Joseph, brother of Marie Antoinette, pass through the old capital of the province which had once belonged to the imperial house of Hapsburg Lorraine. There was an outburst of the old affection of the Lorrainers at the sight of the descendant of their old dukes; and such expression was given to this manifestation that Dibdin states his conviction that if the Emperor of Germany were once resolved to relieve Lorraine from the oppression of the French yoke, the inhabitants of the old duchy would give him their enthusiastic support.

We will not follow out Dibdin’s professional career. The biographical dictionaries and his own works tell of his struggles, his ups and downs, his reverses and his triumphs. We rather care to look at him in some of his picturesque moments. We seem to see and to hear him when we look in at St. Bride’s—a mere lad, playing the congregation out with such exquisite power, that instead of departing, they remained to listen. We seem to see the young fellow’s enraptured look when he first heard the crash of an overture. What emotion there must have been in the young soul when he discovered that from simply hearing the combination and working of sounds in that overture, he had grasped the secret of composition; and later, on returning home from some grand musical banquet, he could write out the whole score from memory, with very few errors indeed. It was only natural after Dibdin had composed a great part of the music to ‘Love in the City,’ and to ‘Lionel and Clarissa’—as we write the words, Tom Cooke’s manly voice seems to fill the house with ‘I’ll love thee ever dearly!‘—it is natural, we say, that ‘Charley’ should find himself growing famous. We find him in strange company the year after ‘Lionel and Clarissa’ was produced.

Perhaps the last place in which one would expect to find Dibdin is, not indeed with Dr. Johnson, but in Boswell’s life of the erudite savage. Boswell had composed a ‘little epigrammatical song’ which, he says, he was ‘volatile enough’ to repeat to Johnson, adding, ‘that Garrick had, a few days before, got it set to music by the ingenious Mr. Dibdin.’ This was in 1769, when Charles was four-and-twenty; and this is what he had to go to work upon:—

A MATRIMONIAL THOUGHT.

In the blithe days of honeymoon,

With Kate’s allurements smitten,

I lov’d her late, I lov’d her soon,

And call’d her, ‘dearest kitten!’

But now my kitten’s grown a cat,

And cross, like other wives;

Oh, by my soul, my honest Mat,

I fear she has nine lives!

Doubtless, Dibdin’s music was better than Boswell’s words—it could not be worse. Johnson confined himself simply to literary criticism. ‘My illustrious friend,’ Boswell remarks, said, “It is very well, sir, but you should not swear.” Upon which, I altered “Oh by my soul” to “Alas, alas!”’

It was in this year, 1769, that Dibdin lifted Sedaine’s ‘Deserter’ to the English stage, after which all the sweet throats in town were warbling ‘Somehow, my spindle I mislaid.’ Just ninety-nine years ago this last month of August, Dibdin produced ‘The Waterman,’ which has now entered its hundredth year, and which is as fresh as a pure flood-tide on a bright morning. Many of us may remember having seen in our childhood the original Tom Tug, for Bannister lived half a century after he created the part. And what a whole crew of Tom Tugs have warbled on the boards and concert-room since then! Do you remember, on Edmund Kean’s benefit, June 3rd, 1822, how touchingly he sang ‘Farewell, my trim-built wherry’? Can you not see Braham, so like an amateur waterman? Can you not hear him so like something sweetly superhuman, trilling forth, ‘And have you not heard of a jolly young waterman?’ Only a few nights ago we saw the piece and heard the songs, and were tempted to say as Ophelia says about the things that had been and the things that be. It is ninety-eight years since Dibdin himself, as Solomon, sang his own song, ‘The lads of the village shall merrily, ha!’ in ‘The Quaker,’ and it remains an exquisite song still, but it demands an exquisite voice and tact in the singer.

Charles had a way of his own in adapting French musical pieces to the English stage. He took the pieces, but he fitted them with music by himself. After all, this sort of thing has been done by composers with reference to other composers of the same country. There was, for instance, a ‘Barber of Seville,’ by Paisiello. Well, Rossini appropriated the story, composed his own fresh and immortal music for it, and extinguished Paisiello’s barber for ever. When Dibdin brought out ‘Rose and Colin,’ a piece which had been ‘set’ by Philidor, he was asked why he had not retained the clever Frenchman’s sparkling music. ‘Because,’ answered Charles, ‘Philidor is famous enough, and I have a reputation of my own to make!’ Philidor’s reputation is now more connected with chess (for he was the Philidor) than with music. Nevertheless, he is bracketed with Duni and Monsigny as one of the founders of modern comic French opera; and the song for Medusa, in his opera of ‘Persée,’ ‘J’ai perdu la beauté qui me rendait si vaine,’ remains a masterpiece of harmony. Philidor was better known than Dibdin himself, in London, where he died, indifferent that Charles and others were ‘stealing his thunder,’ with the reputation of being one of the best-tempered, most upright, and most disinterested men that ever lived.

From 1765 to 1775 was Dibdin’s best time in connection with the drama. Subsequently he became erratic. He was proprietor, manager, at the head of a company, or constituting a whole company in himself, now with audiences, now sadly in want of them: now flourishing like a prince, living like three, and falling into bankruptcy and rheumatic gout. He has given an account of his wanderings, in which there is an incident or two worth the telling, when they refer to musical or to theatrical matters. From this book we learn that Shuter had an amusingly sententious critical way with him. When Reddish (George Canning’s stepfather) first played Posthumus (in ‘Cymbeline’), Shuter simply remarked, ‘Henceforth, let every villain be called Posthumus Leonatus.’ And, being asked what he thought of Macklin’s Macbeth, he solemnly replied: ‘The time has been that when the brains were out the man would die, and there an end!’

One day, when Dibdin was near the Land’s End, he passed through a village where he saw several men carrying books and instruments to church. To his questions, they replied that they were going to practise for the Sunday service. ‘Very good,’ said sympathising Charley; ‘and whose music do you sing?’ ‘Oh, Handel, Handel!’ was the rather bold answer of the leader of the choir. ‘Handel!’ rejoined Dibdin, in much amazement; ‘don’t you find him a leetle difficult?’ ‘Well,’ replied the Cornish minstrel, ‘we did at first; but, you see, we altered him, and so we get on very well with him now.’ Charles, who hated Garrick and despised Handel, changed the scene of his dramatic incident to Bath; but it was originally told of the Cornish singers.

It was principally for Dibdin’s own entertainments, not for ‘Dibdin at Home,’ that he wrote and composed his famous sea-songs. How Dibdin came to write and compose sea-songs is accounted for by a tradition. Among the crew of a ship which came into Southampton Water was a cabin-boy who, disgusted with the tyranny of which he was daily the subject, took the first opportunity to escape. The boy remained hid in Southampton till his ship had sailed, and then he appeared in the streets singing naval ditties for bread. The lad sang so sweetly that people got interested in him. His name, he said, was Incledon, and he came from near the Land’s End, Cornwall. Dibdin and Incledon became known to each other, and the Cornish cabin-boy furnished the naval properties which the Hampshire poet put into his naval songs.

But this yarn won’t hold water. Incledon, the silvery-toned son of a Cornish doctor, was articled to the celebrated composer, Jackson of Exeter, at eight years of age. The boy was the petted favourite of the musical people of Exeter for about seven years. At the end of that time, weary of the cathedral choir discipline, for which town popularity could not compensate, Incledon, in 1779, entered as a common sailor on board the Formidable. He served in the West Indies, took part in hard fighting, and, after the lapse of about four years, he determined to go upon the stage as a singer. It was about the year 1783 that Incledon made his first appearance in Southampton and on its stage, at which time some of the best of Dibdin’s sea-songs had long been familiar in the public ear. In 1790 Incledon first appeared in London, as Dermot in ‘The Poor Soldier,’ and for thirty subsequent years he shared with Braham the glory of being the first of English melodists. No one ever did, or ever will, sing Stevens’s ‘Storm,’ or Andrew Cherry’s ‘Bay of Biscay,’ as Incledon sang them and other manly songs; and no couple of vocalists ever did or ever will sing as Braham (Valentine) and Incledon (Fitzwalter) sang the former’s important duet, ‘All’s Well’ to Tom Dibdin’s words. There was so much of the sea in Tom’s songs that some of the best have been frequently attributed to his father.

It was lucky for that father and the nation that he quarrelled with managers, wrote, sang, and played on his own hook, and composed the naval ditties especially, that will make his name last till the New Zealander seats himself on the ruined arch of London Bridge. These songs caused Dibdin to be a power in the country, and his services were not altogether without acknowledgment. Pitt encouraged and paid him to write, sing, publish, and give away loyal war-songs in the old fighting time—testimony enough of the minstrel’s value. George III. rewarded his loyalty by granting him a pension, of which a succeeding Addington ministry deprived him. The bust of the skilled son of song was appropriately placed in Greenwich Hospital, where the singer himself might as appropriately have found a home. Lord Minto patronised an edition of Dibdin’s songs for the use of the navy. They have not been quite slap-banged out of use by the crapulous music-halls. At public dinners far better than the meat is it to hear Ransford sing ‘Yeo heave ho!’ or Donald King ‘Tom Bowling’—the touching monody to the author’s good brother the captain of an East Indiaman. It is said that our Queen conferred a small pension on Dibdin’s suffering daughter, a lady honourably connected with literature. If this be true, let us be glad that all literary annuities, if we may so speak, are not granted to persons far too well off to require them—or to receive them, one would suppose, without a sense of humiliation.

The religion of Charles Dibdin’s sailors ebbs and flows like the sea, and that even in one song. Take, for instance, ‘Poor Jack,’ which has been praised on the very ground of its religious beauty. In the first verse Jack has more comfort than faith. He is careless, on the chance of others caring for him:—

Avast! nor don’t think me a milksop so soft

To be taken for trifles a-back;

For they say there’s a Providence sits up aloft,

To keep watch for the life of poor Jack!

In the second verse Jack has heard the chaplain palaver one day, ‘about souls, heaven, mercy, and such.’ It was, Jack says, as unintelligible to him as high Dutch. Nevertheless, Jack got at some instruction from the reverend gentleman:—

For, he said, how a sparrow can’t founder, d’ye see,

Without orders that come down below;

And a many fine things that prov’d clearly to me

That Providence takes us in tow.

For, says he, d’ye mind me, let storms e’er so oft

Take the topsails o’ sailors a-back,

There’s a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft

To keep watch for the life of poor Jack.

In the next verse Jack is worldly again. When Poll is ‘sniv’ling and piping her eye’ at the idea of parting from him, he says tenderly—and we can hear the voice of T. P. Cooke saying it—‘Why, what a damn’d fool you must be!’ Then comes the change in his religious philosophy:—

Can’t you see the world’s wide, and there’s room for us all,

Both for seamen, and lubbers ashore?

And if to Old Davy I should go, dear Poll!

You never will hear of me more.

What then? all’s a hazard!... &c.

Perhaps he ‘may laughing come back,’ and he supports this doctrine of chances by means of the doctrine of election, in the figure of the cherub up aloft with his protective power over Jack; and which cherub, in the last verse, is commissioned, at the end of all things, to ‘look out a good berth’ for the same theological sailor.

To be sure, such loose theology was to be expected in sailors who had such chaplains to teach them, as Dibdin delineates in another of his songs, ‘There’s nothing like grog’:—

T’other day, as the chaplain was preaching,

Behind him I curiously slunk;

And while he our duty was teaching,

As how we should never get drunk,

I show’d him the stuff, and he twigg’d it,

And it soon set his rev’rence agog;

And he swigg’d, and Nick swigg’d,

And Ben swigg’d, and Dick swigg’d,

And I swigg’d, and all of us swigg’d it,

And swore there was nothing like grog!

At a time when old English ballads are supposed to portray English history, we may point to the above as untruly reflecting naval manners in England in the last century. It is more of a caricature than a naval scene in a pantomime, and the morality is as ‘shaky’ as that in another ballad, ‘When faintly gleams the doubtful day,’ where humanity in hunting matters is illustrated by hunting the hare to the point of death, but then protecting ‘the defenceless creature’ by calling off ‘the well-taught hounds:’—

For cruelty should ne’er disgrace

The well-earn’d pleasures of the chase!

Again, of the fox it is said, ‘Unpitied shall the culprit die’:—

To quell his cruel, artful race,

Is labour worthy of the chase;

as if the quelling was not the last thought of squires who breed foxes. It was very good policy of Dibdin to teach that ‘Every bullet has its billet,’ but in ‘A sailor and an honest heart’ war’s dangers are the sailor’s chances, and his philosophy is to ask no more than ‘grog aboard and girl ashore.’

Ben Backstay and Anna piping their eyes at parting are but sickly sentimentalities. Bill Bobstay, with his purse always open and his veins to the same tune, shedding his blood for the king, is like the stagiest of stage sailors; and Jack Rattlin heaving a sigh as he sits on the ‘pendant yard,’ and dying for love, with his eyes uplifted, when he comes down from it, is not the man who could hand, reef, and steer better than any mate afloat. Indeed Dibdin’s sailors in love are generally great spooneys; in ‘The Boatswain calls’ there is a whole shipload of them. Fancy an entire crew heaving ‘fervent sighs’ as they leave looking at the girls ashore, to turn for consolation to the windlass with ‘Yo heave ho!’ But even these soft ones are to be preferred to the tipplers who declare that ‘the best sort of sounding is sounding the bowl.’ The best side of Dibdin’s philosophy is where he metrically teaches that ‘a brave British sailor should never despair,’ and pays a compliment to the bold royal tar, the Duke of Clarence, who got it made into a law that ‘each tar of his rhino should have his full share,’ and should no more be cheated of his pay, as he used to be. But there was a lack of sincerity in most of Dibdin’s sentimental sea-maxims for sailors, and for one who is cheered in dying for love there are a dozen who are encouraged to find in every port a wife:—

I’ve a spanking wife at Portsmouth Gates,

A pigmy at Goree,

An orange-tawny up the Straits,

A black at St. Lucie;

Thus, whatsomdever course I bend,

I leads a jovial life;

In ev’ry mess I finds a friend,

In ev’ry port a wife.

To our thinking, Charles Dibdin, celebrated as he was for his sea songs, deserves far higher praise for quite another sort of country song, of which we will give an example. His sailors are too much addicted, when storms rage and billows roll, to sling the flowing bowl; landsmen might fancy that Jack’s life consisted of thinking of Nancy afloat, hugging her ashore, drinking to her health unceasingly, and taking a turn of duty with a hornpipe sort of air, as if the galleries were clapping him enthusiastically. It is all good and picturesque in its way, but tuneful Charley is more to our liking when he gets into an English corn-field, strolls down an English lane, or sits at the door of an English cottage. He is then as natural as Moreland treating the same subjects on canvas. The fragrance of the fields comes on the wings of his song, and his English home and peasant are still more truly English than his English ships and sailors. Take, for example:—

THE LABOURER’S WELCOME HOME.

The ploughman whistles o’er the furrow,

The hedger joins the vacant strain,

The woodman sings the woodland thorough,

The shepherd’s pipe delights the plain.

Where’er the anxious eye can roam,

Or ear receive the jocund pleasure,

Myriads of beings thronging, flock,

Of Nature’s song to join the measure;

Till, to keep time, the village clock

Sounds sweet the lab’rer’s welcome home!

The hearth swept clean, his partner smiling;

Upon the dining-table smokes

The frugal meal—which, time beguiling,

The ale the harmless jest provokes.

Ye inmates of the lofty dome,

Admire his lot. His children playing,

To share his smiles around him flock,

And faithful Tray, since morn, that straying,

Trudged with him, till the village clock

Proclaim’d the lab’rer’s welcome home.

The cheering faggot burnt to embers,

While lares around their vigils keep,

That Power that poor and rich remembers,

Each thanks, and then retires to sleep.

And now the lark climbs Heav’n’s high dome,

Fresh from repose, toil’s kind reliever;

And furnish’d with his daily stock—

His dog, his staff, his keg, his beaver—

He travels till the village clock

Sounds sweet the lab’rer’s welcome home!

Here the pictures are perfect; each is in its way a little Bewick. If there is once or twice a slight roughness in the metre, it is such as may be met with in Cowley; and if the introduction of ‘lares’ at an English hearth startles us a little, it is just such surprises as come upon us in Cowley and the poets of his time. The charm of the above song is greatly enhanced by the music. We have no such songs nor any such music for English people generally in these days. Music-hall ruffianism woos the public ear with beastly innuendo, worse than downright speaking, and the Hurlingham husseydoms, after assisting at the butchery of doves, talk music-hall slang and play Champagne Charley quadrilles.

Let us now add a word respecting another child of song, born in Southampton, and still living when Charles Dibdin came there into the world—Isaac Watts. Isaac Watts and Charles Dibdin! Why not? They are not so far apart as you may think. Isaac, the Southampton Nonconformist schoolmaster’s son, lived from 1674, reign of Charles the Second, to 1748, reign of the second George. Charles Dibdin was, at the latter period, three years old. The piety of Watts is no more questionable than the loyalty of Dibdin. Watts upheld piety by simple means in an impious age. Dibdin sustained loyalty at a time when revolutionary ideas were struggling into activity at home, and when there were enemies abroad who found moral support in such a struggle. If Dibdin’s allegiance found occasionally exaggerated expression, so Watts’s piety sometimes found a rather arrogant utterance. Dibdin, however, was—strange as it may appear—more humble and contented than Watts. In a ballad in ‘The Old Woman of Eighty,’ Dibdin makes a crowd of poor unlearned country folk sing:—

Come here, ye rich; come here, ye great;

Come here, ye grave: come here, ye gay;

Behold our blest, though humble fate,

Who, while the sun shines, make our hay.

Therein is Christian philosophy with content. Watts makes his well-born Christian child an insufferable prig, who would have scorned Dibdin’s half-starved wretch; for example, in the ‘Praise for Mercies’:—

While some poor wretches scarce can tell

Where they may lay their head,

I have a home wherein to dwell

And rest upon my bed.

In Dibdin’s ‘True Courage’ Bob Bounce is ready to eat an enemy alive, but the minstrel humanises him, and inculcates the maxim that all men are brothers:—

That my friend Jack or Tom I should rescue from danger,

Or lay my life down for each lad in the mess,

Is nothing at all; ’tis the poor wounded stranger,

And the poorer the more I shall succour distress.

This may be rough morality, but it is of better quality than the following selfish sample in Watts:

Lord, I ascribe it to thy grace,

And not to chance, as others do,

That I was born of Christian race,

And not a heathen or a Jew.

While Dibdin’s Tom or Jack is for ever seeing, after his fashion, a merciful Providence, Watts’s model child can discern only one armed with terrors and tortures. Isaac had no idea of one of Charley’s ‘sweet little cherubs’ sitting aloft watchful to preserve; the Nonconformist’s feverish eye beheld only a demon:—

’Tis dangerous to provoke a god!

His power and vengeance none can tell:

One stroke of his Almighty rod

Shall send young sinners quick to hell.

In the sailor’s philosophy all is harmony; but Watts finds discord where other men find none. Jack does not believe that ‘dogs delight to bark and bite,’ nor that ‘God hath made them so.’ A pat on the head from a master’s hand is the supreme delight of the ever-faithful dog. And if ‘bears and lions growl and fight,’ it is not that ‘it is their nature to;’ any more, at least, than it is the nature of man. It was Nelson who told the young midshipman, as part of his duties, to ‘hate a Frenchman like the devil!’ Dibdin only allowed such feeling in the heat and fury of battle:—

’Tis a furious lion in battle, so let it!

But, fury appeased, ’tis in mercy a lamb!

Watts is always readiest with unpleasant figures. Ordinary parents forgive lovingly the faults of children, but Watts tells each little angelic rebel that—

The ravens shall pick out their eyes,

And eagles eat the same!

Moreover, Watts forgets grace, occasionally, for chance, as in the couplet:—

If we had been ducks, we might dabble in mud,

Or dogs, we might play till it ended in blood,

So foul and so fierce are their natures.

But Thomas and William, and such pretty names,

Should be cleanly and harmless, as doves or as lambs,

Those lovely, sweet, innocent creatures.

Watts’s intentions were as honest as Dibdin’s, and both, no doubt, often erred; but the silversmith’s son was never so loose in logic, philosophy, truth, and metre, as the dwarfish son of the schoolmaster is in the sample just given. It must have been some such sample that soured the spirit of ‘bold Bradbury,’ another dissenting minister, who suspected Watts of not being a good Trinitarian. Once Bradbury’s clerk gave out one of Watts’s hymns, to be sung before the sermon. The minister looked down from the pulpit and said: ‘No, sir, none of Watts’s whims here, if you please.’ In one of the anniversaries of 1688 Bradbury sang, at a public dinner, ‘The Roast Beef of Old England!’ Had he lived long enough he would have sung with equally loyal zest, Tom Dibdin’s famous anti-invasion song, ‘The tight little Island.’

We are not disposed to touch upon Dibdin’s domestic story. A good deal is said in the words that his children loved, honoured, and reverenced their mother. His life led him too much, too far, and too long away from home for the fine domestic sympathies to have ardent play. Even before his melancholy death in 1814, his sons, Charles and Thomas, had distinguished themselves, but they lacked the grace and power of musical composition so remarkable in the father. But in dramatic composition they were his equals, and Tom especially was nearly equal with, though not so prolific as, his father in song-writing.

How Charles the younger caught the ‘trick’ of his father may be seen in a song (published as his in ‘My Spouse and I’), of which here is one stanza:—

We tars have a maxim, your honours, d’ye see,

To live in the same way we fight;

We never give in, and when running a-lee,

We pipe hands the vessel to right.

It may do for a lubber to snivel and that,

If by chance on a shoal he be cast,

But a tar among breakers, or thrown on a flat,

Pull away, tug and tug, to the last;

With a yeo, yeo, yeo, &c.

It was the old Dibdin philosophy of ‘Never say die.’

Tom Dibdin is generally supposed to have adopted the stage for a profession only after he had tried another calling—apprentice to an upholsterer. This is not quite correct. Tom made his first appearance on the stage before he went to school. He acted, or, rather, represented, Cupid in a pageant in which Mrs. Siddons sat as the goddess Venus. As the great actress took him in hand to rectify his dress, little Tom heard the first words from her lips that ever fell on his ear. They were directed to a female dresser, and they were solemnly enunciated: ‘Ma’am, could you favour me with a pin?’ Tom, as he sat at her feet in the pageant, felt a sort of stage-fright, but Sarah kept him under control by repeated murmured promises that if he were a good boy there was barley-sugar in store for him.

As an upholsterer’s apprentice Tom vexed his master’s soul and injured all his materials. The lad was barely eighteen when he made his plunge into the drama. Only the other day, we looked with interest on the front of the old Eastbourne Theatre, in the centre of the village, away from the modern sea-town. It has still, or had a little while ago, a dramatic-looking exterior. Richland, one of the managing partners of the house, had a nephew, a handsome lad of fourteen years of age, who printed the bills, did general business, and was called ‘Little Jerrold.’ When little Jerrold got to York as a manager, he put a fine handle to his name, and was thenceforth known for some time as Mr. Fitz-Jerrold. Tom Dibdin proposed to come out at the Eastbourne Theatre as Norval. Jerrold, on preparing the play-bill, asked him in what name Tom intended to appear. Dibdin replied, ‘My name is Norval!’ ‘I know it is,’ said Jerrold, ‘on the Grampian hills, but what is it in Sussex?’ The name adopted was Merchant. After all, instead of ‘journeying with this intent,’ and playing Norval, Dibdin ‘gilded his humble name’ by playing Valentine, in one of his father’s numerous musical pieces, and singing ‘Poor Jack,’ to the delight of the Eastbourne audience. The handsome Jerrold above alluded to was the father of Douglas Jerrold, whom John Kemble, as Rolla, once carried on his shoulder as Cora’s child, and who ended his career too early, leaving behind him a reputation for wit second to none.

The most amusing portion of Tom Dibdin’s reminiscences are the illustrations of social as well as dramatic life with which it abounds.

Tom belonged to one of those Beef Steak Clubs (this one was theatrical) which seem never to have had the dish on the table from which the name was supposed to be derived. One of their intellectual sports consisted in a member naming an actor, and then calling on another member for a quotation which should be applicable to the actor named. In this way some one named Incledon, whose talk was a bubbling talk, interlarded with ‘my boy,’ and ‘my dear boy,’ as is the traditionary manner with familiar players still. Incledon being named, Const, the magistrate, being called upon, instantly quoted the line ‘Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing.’ Nothing could be apter. Then another member, naming George Frederick Cooke, called on Irish Johnstone for the illustration, and Jack, without hesitation, enunciated ‘Load o’ whisky,’ giving this appropriate turn to the name of an operatic drama then in vogue—‘Lodoiska.’ Emery was once called upon in connection with his own name; but he was tired and embarrassed, and at length he stammered forth, apologetically, ‘Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles me!’ unconscious that he had fulfilled all conditions, and had illustrated himself in a line from Shakespeare.

These intellectual exercises were not confined to the ‘Beef Steaks.’ There was in Tom Dibdin’s days a certain ‘Ad Libitum Club,’ where the intellect was as much exercised as the more sensual appetites were liberally gratified by supper and punch. At these jovial meetings, some one happening to name an individual in course of conversation, would be met by a cry of ‘Skull!’ which implied that the member was to consider the individual dead, if he were not so already; at all events, he was to furnish on the instant that individual’s rhymed epitaph. Tom Dibdin once chanced to refer to Isaac Read, the scholar and antiquary. The cry of ‘Skull’ was immediately raised, and Tom as instantaneously replied to it as follows:—

Reader! by these four lines take heed,

And mend your life, for my sake!

For you must die, like Isaac Read,

Though you read till your eyes ache.

On another occasion Tom, without thinking of the consequences, made some allusion to the materials for writing his own life. He was, in one breath, pronounced to be dead, and with the cry of ‘Skull!’ he was challenged to recite his own epitaph. It was furnished in the lively style that follows:—

Longing, while living, for laurel and bays,

Under this willow a poor poet lays.

With little to censure and less to praise,

He wrote twelve dozen and threescore plays,

He finished his ‘Life’ and went his ways.

While on the subject of epitaphs we may as well give a sample of Tom’s father in this department of literature. The following, penned in all seriousness, is to be found in Lee churchyard, near Blackheath, the tribute of Charley to Parsons, the comic actor:—

Here Parsons lies! Oft on life’s busy stage,

With nature, reader, hast thou seen him vie.

He science knew; knew manners, knew the age,

Respected knew to live—lamented, die.

Thomas Frognall Dibdin, son of ‘Tom Bowling,’ seems to have been early influenced by a desire to show that the Dibdin power of rhyming was in him as well as in his cousins. In 1797 Booker published his ‘Poems.’

Two years after this mild flirtation of the reverend cousin with the Muses, Tom Dibdin made an adaptation from ‘Kotzebue,’ and brought it out with songs, as ‘Of Age To-morrow.’ Our then young grandmothers were soon singing Miss de Camp’s song, ‘Oh no, my Love, no!’ and juvenile actors were all longing to come out in Bannister’s part of Frederick, Baron Willmhurst. Miss de Camp had come from the sawdust of the Surrey Circus, to charm the town; and when she was Mrs. Charles Kemble she became the mother of Fanny Kemble.

They are all gone, these Dibdins, of whom Charles of Southampton was the one whose fame will be the most lasting. Like all men, he is to be judged by his best. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link; a boiler is only as thick as its thinnest part; but a poet is to be measured by his best—the best teachings of the best of his poetry. By this standard the oldest of the Dibdins will rank foremost among those bards and minstrels who have swept the harp and raised the voice to quicken human trust in God, to fan into flame the slumbering but never dead fire of patriotism, and to inculcate loyalty to the powers that be. Dibdin taught perseverance in well-doing with the fervour of a St. Paul, and if he allowed a little too much of the bowl, he was earnest in upholding, when serious, courage and honesty in man, and undying fidelity to woman.

When the youngest of the vocal, musical, and dramatic Dibdins died, in 1841, some one was found to fling, as it were, a stanza or two of sympathy on his tomb. From some lines, called ‘Poor Tom,’ dated from Vienna and printed in the ‘Bath Journal,’ we take the last eight to close our article:—

Poor Tom! As late I wander’d by the Rhine,

I saw its banks in Winter’s mantle clad,

Gaunt, grim, and naked stood each shiv’ring vine—

It was a sight to make the soul feel sad.

‘How many a heart,’ I said, ‘is now made warm

By the bright produce of the joyous tree,

Here left by man to struggle with the storm!’

I sigh’d, Tom; went my way; and thought of thee!

---

HORATIO NELSON AND EMMA HAMILTON.

On Michaelmas-day in the year 1758, the wife of the rector of Burnham Thorpe was delivered of a sickly boy. At that moment Anson was in command of the Channel fleet, and there were old men then in England who had seen Prince Rupert. Exactly a quarter of a century had elapsed since Admiral Byng had surrendered life. Russell, who beat Tourville at La Hogue, had been asleep in the grave for more than thirty years. Churchill, and Dilkes, the terror of Frenchmen and Spaniards in his day, had been at rest for just half a century. These were great men; but in 1758 a greater than all was born in the quiet rectory of Burnham Thorpe. That feeble boy, accepted and tolerated rather than welcomed and cherished, grew up in the possession of all the virtues of the above heroes and with but few of their failings: he had the dashing spirit of Rupert without his imprudence: he possessed the wisdom and valour of Byng without his cold-heartedness: he was as persevering as Anson and in no wise so foolish—as rapid as Russell, but not so rapacious: he was even more enterprising and successful than Dilkes; and, as with the gallant brother of Marlborough, his services claimed high honours long before he obtained them. This puny fragile child, born to achieve such greatness—this almost neglected son of a Norfolk parson, and, by his mother, grandson of a Westminster prebendary—designed, as it were, by nature to be a student, ‘sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,’ and to cultivate learned leisure in trim gardens—this feeble instrument was born with a great mission: let the splendour of its fulfilment make us forgetful of his very few errors!

Yes: when he first saw the light there were old men in England who had seen Prince Rupert beneath the beeches at Windsor. It was but the other day that Nelson’s sister died. Thus is he connected with two periods when the people were at issue with sovereigns: his figure stands half-way between the time, when Roundheads were assailing cavaliers and royalty; and the present period, when democracy, more despotic than any aristocracy, is again howling at palace gates and the hearths of nobles. In his own days the same struggle was going on; but the scene of the struggle was not now within our boundary of home. He was the great champion of royalty, and never had crowned king so unconquerable a champion as he. There was not a democrat abroad who did not hate his name as much as he feared it. For the French democrats his own hatred was in equal measure intense; and, if it be suggested that his contempt was not less intense for French aristocrats, we answer that he lived at a period when the vices, the selfishness, and the tyranny of that aristocracy justified the insurrection, which annihilated one bad system to give temporary life to a worse. He did not despise the dissolute men and the more dissolute women of Naples less than he despised the French; but, in supporting the one and destroying the other, he was the great antagonist of anarchy, and the great promoter of order at home. Loyalty here flourished by the blood of his victories. The veriest would-be rebel in England was proud of the pale warrior whose feeble arm upheld a world of thrones; a defeat at Aboukir might have made him a Republican. But we are hurried from Nelson’s cradle to his glories and his grave. Let us sketch his wondrous career in a more orderly spirit.

She who bore the perils of his birth did not survive to be glad at his greatness. At nine, Nelson was motherless—at twelve he quitted school—and some of his playfellows were yet launching their paper galleons on Norfolk ponds when Nelson had gained respect and reputation for his name. A trip of a few brief months’ duration with his maternal uncle, Captain Suckling, just introduced him to naval life without affording him instruction. The latter he derived under Captain John Rathborn, a naval officer, engaged for the time in the West India trade, under whom Nelson acquired a thorough acquaintance with practical seamanship, and was ever ready to acknowledge his obligation. The writer of this acknowledges his pride, too, in telling his son that his mother is the granddaughter of Nelson’s tutor. Horatio began his real service in the royal navy by entering the Triumph, rated as ‘captain’s servant.’ In a year or so he became midshipman, the duties of which office he efficiently performed during four or five years on board the same vessel, and in the Carcass, the Seahorse, and the Dolphin. During this period, he saw active service in every climate, from the North Pole to Bagdad and Bussorah. We next find him as lieutenant on board the Worcester and the Lowestoft. While on board the last-mentioned vessel he made his first prize, gallantly boarding and capturing an American privateer, from an attempt at which the first lieutenant had retired unsuccessful; and this was accomplished when he was only nineteen years of age! So fond was he of this branch of his profession that he changed to the schooner Lucy, with a sort of roving commission, of which the American traders soon became tremblingly conscious. He subsequently served in the Bristol (the flag-ship of Sir Peter Parker), in the three degrees of lieutenancy; and, in 1778, ere he was yet twenty, the boy was captain of the Badger brig, and with men eager to obey him. But his just ambition was not yet satisfied; and when in his twenty-first year he had the delight of finding himself posted, and in command of the Hinchinbrook, his whole course of daring and dangerous service in the Gulf of Mexico plainly manifested that he was ever keeping in view that ‘top of the tree,’ whose leafy honours first invited him from his father’s rectory. The service alluded to seriously affected his own health and cost the lives of one hundred and ninety out of his crew of two hundred men. On his return home he rested at Bath for a year. He had no long leisure to be ill, for the following year saw him in the old French Albemarle, carrying terror along the Spanish main. In 1782, he was employed in convoy service; and, having occasionally some idle time on shore at Quebec, the young commander got into mischief—that is, he fell most imprudently into love. His friends carried him by violence on board: the sea air cured his passion; and his lucky joining with Hood’s fleet and his subsequent busy time in the West Indies effectually kept his thoughts from any lady then on land. It was at this period that he became known to the Duke of Clarence. The royal sailor thought him the merest boy of a captain that had ever been seen, and could not but laugh at the gigantic and endless queue that hung down his back and seemed to be pulling all the lank unpowdered hair off his head after it. But this plain-looking and youthful commander was then remarkable for being as well acquainted with all naval matters as the oldest and most experienced captain in the fleet. The piping time of peace put him for a season on half-pay. A portion of 1783, and of the year following it, was passed in France. With idleness came evil; and, having nothing better to do, Nelson fell desperately in love with the dowerless daughter of an English clergyman, who, there is some reason to believe, was little affected by the magic he could offer her of half-pay and love in a cottage. The sea again stood his friend. In 1784, the Boreas carried him to the Leeward Islands, where, at great risk of purse and person, he was actively engaged in supporting those Navigation Laws which our modern Whigs have so ruthlessly abolished.

In this matter (says Dr. Pettigrew) he was also opposed by Major-General Sir T. Shirly, the governor of the Leeward Islands, who took in dudgeon the advice of Nelson, and assured him that old generals were not in the habit of taking advice from young gentlemen. Upon which Nelson, with much promptitude and ingenuity, replied—‘Sir, I am as old as the Prime Minister of England, and think myself as capable of commanding one of his Majesty’s ships as that Minister is of governing the State.’

He was engaged in putting down the illicit traffic sought to be carried on by the Americans (whom successful rebellion had made foreigners) in the West Indies, and also in dragging into light the frauds practised by some English officials of no inconsiderable dignity in the islands. He succeeded in all he undertook, but got small thanks and no profit for any service which, in this respect, he rendered to his country. He was much on shore, too; and it is a fact that his foot no sooner touched the land than his good genius left him. He fell in love with a widow; and, what is much worse, married her. In the island of Nevis he became acquainted with Mrs. Nisbet, the widow of a surgeon who had died insane a year and a half after their marriage, leaving her with one son, Josiah, who subsequently owed so much to Nelson and thanked him so little for it. At this time the captain of the Boreas was a man at whom Fame held her finger; he never drank wine save to the healths of his sovereign, the royal family, and his admiral, and these were always bumper toasts to him. He was reserved, grave, and silent; and it was only occasional flashes that gave evidence of the brilliancy within. The narrow-minded people of Nevis could not make him out; and Mrs. Nisbet was set at him, as she was expected to make something of him, because ‘she had been in the habit of attending to such odd sort of people.’ Unfortunately she made a husband of him. She, perhaps, thought it a condescension to marry a man who was of ‘puny constitution—who was reduced to a skeleton—and who put his hopes of recovery in asses’ milk and doctors.’ However this may be, she never looked upon him as a hero, nor was she worthy of being a hero’s wife. She would have been exemplary as the spouse of a village apothecary: she was highly virtuous, very respectable, and exceedingly ill-tempered. The ill-assorted pair were united in 1786: they reached England in 1787, in which year Nelson was kept for months on board his ship at Sheerness, merely taking in slops and lodging pressed seamen. And then ensued the quietest six years of his life: they were passed at Burnham Thorpe, and they were got through with tolerably good success. As a quiet country couple, there was nothing to disturb their stagnant felicity. Nelson busied himself in gardening, getting birds’ nests, and fretting for employment.

It came in 1793; when in place of capturing birds’ nests, Nelson, in the Agamemnon, was with the fleet at the capture of Toulon, its forts, and its navy. But other things came in 1793, too. Nelson was sent to Naples with despatches for our Minister, Sir William Hamilton. He was much on shore, and mischief came of it, of course. Sir William told his wife, the too famous, too erring, and yet much sinned-against Lady Hamilton, that a little man was coming to dine with him who was infirm and ill-looking, but who had in him the stuff of a hero, and who was undoubtedly destined to be the man for the difficulties coming. If Emma Hamilton loved a virtue it was that of courage and ability in man: she loved heroes, and her ardent feelings were soon interested in Nelson.

From this period we must speak more generally of Nelson’s great deeds that we may have fuller space to treat of matters less known, and in the revealing of which lie the chief merit and the chief recommendation of Dr. Pettigrew’s excellent volumes. Lord Howe appointed him (over five senior captains) to blockade Genoa. In 1794 he was active against the French in Corsica, and his men so entered into his own spirit that, as he said himself, they minded shot no more than peas. But for him, Bastia would not have been taken, nor perhaps Calvi, where he received the injury to his right eye which ultimately deprived it of sight. His labour was incessant and his health most wretched; but he was too busy to be invalided. ‘The plan I pursue (said he) is never to employ a doctor;’ and, consequently, though he was ill, he kept himself from the peril of growing worse. In 1795 he had his first ‘brush’ with the French fleet. He thus modestly calls a battle, in which he laid the Agamemnon between the Ça Ira and the Censeur and forced both to yield. The former was large enough to put the Agamemnon in her hold. He was now fully in that vein of conquest which never left him when a French vessel was before him as an antagonist. He now dared to disobey orders when he judged that circumstances authorised him, and he was no bad judge. He had by this time been engaged one hundred times—he was literally the hero of a hundred fights. His ship when docked, in order to be refitted, had neither mast, yard, sail, or rigging, that did not need repair in consequence of the shot she had received: her hull had long been secured by cables sewed around her. Nelson exhibited such discretion in disobeying orders, and success so invariably followed action that resulted from judgment of his own, that at length his admirals ceased to give him any close orders at all. Sir John Jervis left him to act as he thought best: the result was that, in two years, Nelson captured fifty French vessels; and the navy itself, under Jervis and his pale captain, became perfectly invincible. Up to 1797 victory followed victory: there was abundance of honour and salt-beef; but neither prize-money nor even notice in the ‘Gazette.’ He consoled himself by saying that he would one day have a ‘Gazette’ of his own and all to himself. He had well-nigh deserved it for the crowning fight at St. Vincent: he was in the thickest of the struggle where the odds against us were twenty-seven to fifteen. It made Jervis an earl and Nelson a knight, and it opened a new era in naval strategy; for never from that day has British captain bent upon victory paused to count his enemy, or deferred his triumph in calculating the disparity of power except Lord Gambier at Aix.

Honours were both lavished on, and conferred by, the frail conqueror of the San Josef and the San Nicolas. Corporations flung their municipal freedoms at his feet, and gave him endless invitations to dinner. The only thing that he ever designated as dreadful was meeting a provincial mayor and alderman! They voted him more swords than he could ever hope to employ; but they were all outweighed by that which he himself presented to the Corporation of Norwich—the sword which had been surrendered to him by his gallant but vanquished foe on board the San Josef. Norwich will be proud of her trophy when no memory remains of her crapes and bombazeens or of the fair forms that wore them. The Government, too, made him rear-admiral of the blue. He was not an idle one: he went to sea in the Theseus surrounded by men whose hearts, though turbulent, beat in unison with the pulsations of his own: he twice bombarded Cadiz—lost his right arm before Teneriffe—reposed awhile at Bath to recruit his strength—received some pecuniary reward for the loss of it; and, after publicly thanking the Almighty for all His mercies and acknowledging the lightness of His visitations, was again entrusted to save his country by destroying the then enemies of all mankind. With a squadron of observation he scoured the Mediterranean, and after a search unparalleled in its nature, and carrying despair to every heart but his own, he came upon the French at Aboukir and made 1798 for ever memorable in England by the well-won victory which he achieved at the Nile. If honours poured on him after the affair at St. Vincent, they descended now in an avalanche. His king made him a peer who among men was peerless. Parliament thanked him: the nation adored him. Russia endowed him with coloured ribbands—the Sultana stuffed his mouth with sugar-candy—public companies enrolled him among their members. ‘Nelson-squares,’ and ‘streets,’ and ‘terraces,’ arose without number; and curates were weary of christening an endless succession of Horatios. As for Naples, which country he had saved from the very jaws of the French, the people there when he landed nearly killed him with kindness, and did all but devour him. The king, queen, and the entire court, kissed his very feet. He turned with something like disgust from all their homage, and his honest tongue confessed that he despised those whom it was his duty to save, and that he loathed in his very soul the entire court, if not the universal people. He designated the men as scoundrels: the women were what the author of the old ballad of ‘Nancy Dawson’ says that well-known lady was, and they cared as little to keep it from their neighbours; and he brushed away the imprecation on his lips, launched against the Neapolitan ladies, to kiss the hand of Emma Hamilton! But there was a distinction, though we are not going to show where it lay.

From the same year to that which closed the century, 1800, his presence was all but ubiquitous in the Mediterranean, and his name was uttered with awe and reverence all over the world. Within this period he became rear-admiral of the red, and Naples made him Duke of Bronté, in return for his having saved the nation from entire destruction. Within the same period is on record that dark event connected with the name of Carracciolo, to which we will hereafter allude: let it suffice to say here that after sweeping the Mediterranean of the enemies of England, and doing a world of good to those who were not worthy of being reckoned her friends—after executing all entrusted to him to accomplish, and rendering the name of England a tower of strength and pride throughout the world—Nelson returned home across Europe. He did not set out without first writing a sensible letter to the Pope, whom he had restored to Rome, in better fashion than Oudinot lately followed in behalf of Pio Nono. According to the prophecy of honest old Father M’Cormick, Nelson may be said to have taken Rome with his ships—a feat of which he reminds the Pope and remains his ‘very obedient servant.’ That his progress from Leghorn to Hamburgh was one of such triumph as the world had never seen may be readily believed; for no human being had ever deserved such ovation. When he landed at Yarmouth the earth seemed to heave to salute him. Myriads of men blessed him, wept over him, hailed him with shouts—in the warmth of their welcome they did all but pay him divine honours. And his wife—how did she spring forward in exultation and enduring love, impatient to meet the boat that bore her heroic husband? Alas! Lady Nelson was quietly awaiting his arrival at Nerot’s hotel in town, and so cold and unsatisfactory was her greeting when the idol of the nation stepped into her presence that the incense of London adulation must have proved savoury by comparison.

Ere he had leisure to sun his laurels he was again afloat, and in the first year of the present century he passed the wild and stormy steep of Elsinore. The battle was a Titanic struggle, and giants of the same blood grappled with each other. Equal was the valour, and if our compelled rather than willing foes had the advantage in means of assault the better wisdom was ours, without which prowess is but a flail apt to wound the skull of him who wields it. The battle of the Baltic, so gigantically fought and inimitably won, placed on Nelson’s brow the coronet of a viscount; but he did not quit the Baltic until he had fluttered the Russian fleet at Revel, and, when he returned to give a report of his mission accomplished, England already needed him for the fulfilment of another. Napoleon was at Boulogne, and, with a French army, threatening invasion. What the feeling of the times was in the parsonages on the Sussex coast—is it not written in the letters of Peter Plimley? What Nelson’s feelings were may be divined from that saying of his, that the French might come any way they pleased, but that they should not come by sea! England trusted him, and he kept his word as far as in him lay. If he did not destroy the Boulogne flotilla, he at least demonstrated that it could not issue from harbour without his permission nor put out to sea without being destroyed. Boulogne has, in some degree, benefited by the rough messengers which he flung into the port as visiting cards to intimate that he and his followers were outside. Some hundred weights of good English iron were projected into the town, and out of them are the gaspipes constructed which are now laid down in the Bassa Ville and the suburb of Capecure!

While thus giving peace to innumerable homes in England, he was ever, amidst war’s loudest thunder, endeavouring to found a home of peace for himself: that home was at Merton, in Surrey, where it was vouchsafed to him for a very brief season. The name of Merton is more closely connected with great men and great acts than many of our readers may be aware, and it was the fitting resting-place for a man who desired to gain breathing time between his heroic deeds. It was the birthplace of that Walter de Merton to whose liberality some of our readers may possibly be indebted for the instruction they may have received at Oxford—not that Merton College has been very famous for turning out good, at least great, scholars. According to a witty master of that College, it ought to have possessed more learning than any other in the University; for, said he, ‘many scholars brought much knowledge there and left it all behind them.’ Their founder, however, possessed both legal learning and religious wisdom. The law boasts of him as one of the great Chancellors, and the Church approvingly points to him as an exemplary Bishop of Rochester. For much of his learning, and something of his wisdom, he is indebted to the accomplished Augustine canons who cultivated both in the old convent founded by Gilbert Norman in 1115, and the prior of which sat in Parliament as a mitred abbot. It was at Merton that the early French invasion under Louis the Dauphin, made with the intent of driving Henry III. from his inheritance, was compensated for in 1217, by the treaty of peace forced upon the French prince. It was at Merton that the able De Burgh found refuge from his insatiable enemies; above all, it was here that were enacted the famous statutes of Merton. The Parliament of Henry III., which enacted those statutes, will be further ever-memorable for the unshakable firmness with which the barons—those reformers before the Reformation—withstood the insidious overtures of the ambitious prelates for the introduction of the imperial and canon laws. It was at Merton that was uttered a cry as famous, as significant, and as important in its result as the battle signal of Trafalgar. It was there that the barons shouted that famous shout—‘Nolumus leges Angliæ mutari!’

Of all these things which have conferred undying celebrity on the banks of the little river Wandle, Nelson probably knew nothing, and, if possible, cared less. But, notwithstanding this, we repeat that the locality which had been illustrated by humanity, by patriotism, by liberality, and by love of freedom, was a becoming spot whereon to spread the carpet of repose for him whose humanity was as great as his courage—whose patriotism was without a stain—whose liberality was ever extended without selfishness, and whose love of freedom made him the invincible foe of the nation that was endeavouring to enslave the world.

Had he been less liberal and more considerate for himself than for others he might have preserved Merton for his daughter—he would not have been compelled to sell his diamonds—and Merton itself need not have passed to those inheritors of other men’s patrimony—the money-lending Israelites.

For the fearful fight at Copenhagen, in which never were greater perils of navigation overcome, nor had there ever been in sea-fight more of English blood profusely shed—for this fight and victory Nelson received a token of honour from the Sultan; but his own Government granted no medals to the victors. They were permitted to wear the orders sent them by foreign princes, but no such honours awaited them at the hands of those who interpreted, and, perhaps, influenced, the will of King George. The people gave what the Ministry denied; and when the father of Nelson calmly closed his eyes on this world, in the year 1802, almost the last sounds that fell upon his ear were sounds of praise for his noble son. Nelson’s brother, the Rev. Dr. William Nelson, thought Lord Walpole cared little for his connection with the Nelson family, or he would have conferred Burnham Thorpe on the son of the late incumbent—that is to say, on himself. This reverend gentleman certainly does little credit to his profession, even taking him by his own description. When there was a report of his becoming successor to the yet living, but indisposed, Dean of Exeter, he wrote to his brother—‘I wish it may be so. If you see Mr. Addington soon, you may offer my vote for the University of Cambridge for members of Parliament, and for the county of Norfolk to any candidate he may wish.’ ‘The dean’ (adds Dr. Pettigrew) ‘died on July 15, and Nelson applied to Mr. Addington, but Dr. Nelson was not appointed. Exeter failing, in a short time he directed his views to Durham,’ and he hinted his wishes in a letter to Lady Hamilton. After reminding her that he is a Doctor of Divinity of the University of Cambridge, and that such a dignified personage is as much superior to a mere Scottish M.D. ‘as an arch-angel is to an arch-fiend,’ this man, who had little in him of the angelic and still less of the arch-angelic, offers the lady a bribe of Norfolk beafins; and, having thus impressed her with his dignity, and purchased as he thought her good will for ‘half-a-dozen apple-trees,’ thus concludes his very undignified epistle:—‘I see by the papers that there is a stall vacant at Durham—I suppose worth a thousand a year—in the gift of the Bishop (Barrington). I remember some years ago, when the Duke of Portland was Prime Minister, he secured one for Dr. Poyntz, at Durham. There is another vacant at York (if not filled up), in the gift of the archbishop; but I don’t know the value—no very great sum, I believe.’ So very illogical a person was as unsuccessful as he deserved to be. Lord Nelson’s chaplain on board the Vanguard at the Nile fared better, and merited so to fare. On Nelson’s application, Lord Eldon thought himself bound in public duty to pass over his own personal wishes and also the strong claims which individuals had upon him to be attentive to their welfare. Nelson’s chaplain at the Nile had a prior claim: and the Rev. Mr. Comyn received his appointment accordingly to the living asked for—that of Bridgham. While treating of the clerical connections of Nelson, we cannot omit noticing another trait in the brother who so little resembled him. He thus writes to Lady Hamilton:—‘The election for the University took place yesterday (July 5, 1802): the whole was over in five minutes: Mr. Pitt and Lord Euston are re-elected. I had a bow this morning from Billy in the Senate-house—so I made up to him and said a word or two to him.’

Soon after this, Lord Nelson was made a D.C.L. by the University of Oxford. The hero was with the Hamiltons and a party of relatives on a tour to Wales: they took Blenheim in their way. The duke was at home—he declined receiving them; but he sent them out something to eat! The descendant of Marlborough had not been introduced to the man as great as he from whom alone the duke possessed the only greatness he enjoyed, and, therefore, he would not shake hands with him! His grace, with the spirit of a Frenchman, kept himself as secure from the defender of his country as he well could; he rolled himself up like a hedgehog and kept his prickles erect. Had it not been for Nelson, he might not then have had Blenheim wherein to nurture his absurd shyness or absurder pride. Blenheim was the only hearth in England at which Nelson was churlishly received, and its master the only man in the kingdom who did not feel on speaking terms with the hero of the Nile. Nelson paid no fee, touched no food, and turned from the dwelling of him who owned none of his great ancestor’s characteristics, save his meanness, with calm contempt.

In 1802 hostilities were again renewed, and, as a matter of course, all eyes were turned to the defender of his country. His eyesight was failing: he had actual fears of becoming blind, but all his fears were suppressed in his eagerness to be of use to his native land. It may be noticed that, in this year, Sir William Hamilton died; and the fact that Nelson’s continued correspondence with the graceful widow is, from this time, no longer addressed to her as ‘dear friend,’ but ‘dearest Emma,’ plainly, perhaps too plainly, denotes the nature of the connection by which they were now bound. To judge of him by what he effected and what he endured during this year, we might assert that he never took rest nor thought of anything save the welfare of his country and the fighting condition of his fleet; but he had leisure devoted to further the welfare of private friends and other deserving individuals, and he could turn from devising plans for crushing the French to the arrangement of a paddock. All that he immediately cared for was lest his sight should entirely leave him before he could fall upon the French, who had a design upon Naples and Egypt. After he had beaten them, he felt almost certain that his eyes would be in total eclipse: he was resigned to the prospective fate, and contemplated it with a grave but manly resignation.

In a note on a paragraph in a letter written at this time by Lord Nelson, in which he says to Lady Hamilton that she will be sorry but not surprised to hear of Lord Bristol’s death, Dr. Pettigrew informs us that—

—— this nobleman was fourth Earl of Bristol and was also Bishop of Derry. He died on July 8, 1803. To avoid any superstitious exhibition on the part of sailors, who entertain a dread of having a corpse on board, his lordship’s body was packed up in a case and shipped as an antique statue. Could he have anticipated such a circumstance, it would have offered him a capital subject to have written upon.

In 1804, his harassing life in the Mediterranean received something to make it tolerable by his triumph in his case for prize-money against Lord St. Vincent. It was money fairly won after St. Vincent gave up the command; and his award was 13,000l. The sum rescued him from debt and from anxiety; but the enjoyment of it could not relieve him of his most anxious desire to destroy the French fleet, which wanted no inducement to leave Toulon, only that Nelson was waiting outside to receive them. His vigilance had to be doubled, but he had enough for the emergency, and to spare. Suspicions existed that Spain was about to enter into an armed coalition with France against England, and, without increase to his force, Nelson was ready to meet and confident of annihilating both. With all their advantage of superior strength, the French not only lingered in Toulon, but spread forged intelligence all over Europe that, on their making preparations for sea, Nelson had precipitately fled; but the avenger was still there; and, as now and then a French vessel would occasionally show her bowsprit outside of the harbour and retire in all speed at the sight of the flaunting Jack defying them from seaward, Nelson would say that, if the whole fleet did not soon come out and stand a contest, he should go in and try the effect of putting salt upon their tails!

But his own countrymen, or rather the Government which did not represent the feelings of his countrymen, wounded him more deeply than his worst enemies. Nelson was poor, considering the rank he had to maintain and the heavy charges, some voluntarily assumed and all honourably acquitted, on his income. The Ministry knew he was poor; but, because he was not ashamed of his poverty, they kept him plunged in it. In the Mediterranean, with war declared against Spain, there was a prospect of rich prizes being made and some substantial reward being given to him and his gallant band for their labours, their devotedness, and their blood. But between these deserving men and their right, evil influences interposed: unknown to Nelson, another admiral and a small squadron were stationed off Cadiz: their office was to capture all the commercial vessels they could: they performed the office to its uttermost letter—hurried to England with the golden argosies, and divided the proceeds so easily and bloodlessly won. When the fact became known to Nelson it severely shook his manly heart: he continued as steadfast as ever in the fulfilment of his duty, endured reiterated disappointment at not meeting with the French, and sealing his course of victory by a final triumph ere he found refuge in his home from the ingratitude of man, and at length returned to England, on leave, determined to enjoy his sweet reward at Merton, since he was denied any by an ungrateful Ministry.

He arrived at Merton on August 20, 1805. On the 13th of the following month, Captain Blackwood called on Nelson at five in the morning with news that the French and Spanish fleets were in the harbour of Cadiz: Nelson got up, dressed, and was ready to start to ‘give Monsieur Villeneuve a drubbing.’ The two proceeded to the Admiralty, the lords of which were now all eager to grant whatever Nelson asked. The latter knew he must rest satisfied with fifteen or sixteen sail of the line less than his enemies would have in array against him; but with these odds, backed by God’s blessing, he only knew of a full victory as the glorious result. He made some arrangements for those who depended on his bounty—some preparations in case of the sorrowful event that did cloud the general triumph—and, between ten and eleven at night, took his last farewell of Merton and of her who had so long kept him in sweet bonds—gazed once on his sleeping child, breathed a prayer over her, and went forth to death—to death the most glorious that was ever accorded to mortal man whereby to make his passage from time into eternity.

On October 21, he went into battle after fervent prayer to God. How, under fearful odds, he beat his enemy, is known to every schoolboy. Since that day Spain has almost ceased to be a naval power, and France is only now recovering the position from which the hero of that day flung her down. It was a day, the issues of which were left humbly to God, but which were struggled for as though they depended on the arm of mortal man alone. The triumphant result was purchased at a costly rate—the life of England’s dearest son; his mission was fulfilled: he had destroyed the last coalition made to enslave the world, and he died at the fitting moment of certain victory, leaving all dear to him on earth as a legacy to his native country. May his name live for ever!

Almost the last words uttered by Nelson were the expression of a hope that his country would provide for Lady Hamilton and for his adopted daughter. Nelson’s wife was alive, and the marriage had been without issue. Who, then, was this stranger that so closely occupied the last thoughts of the hero—and who the ‘adopted daughter’?—for such was the designation that engaged so engrossing a share of his love.

As for Lady Nelson, she was indeed alive, but she had long been dead to him. The pair, from the first, had been ill-matched; and what began ill begot no happy consequences. Nelson himself had warmth enough of temperament for two: his wife had none. She was, if we may judge by what is written, unmoved at his great triumphs, without pride in his great fame, and she was the last to welcome him when he came home crowned with great deeds: she was the last woman in the world fitted to be the wife of a hero, and perfectly incapable of controlling a hero’s weaknesses. When Nelson on one occasion was speaking warmly in his wife’s presence of the talents and beauty of Lady Hamilton, and of the immense services she had rendered his king and country through him, the hot Creole blood fired up: she rose in a whirlwind of passion, exclaiming that she was sick at hearing the name and praises of Lady Hamilton, and that Nelson must either desist from eulogising her or cease to live with his wife. Nelson defended his favourite with good humour; but from that hour utter estrangement ensued between himself and Lady Nelson, resulting in a separation which, once determined on, was never followed by opportunity or inclination for a reconciliation.

The remarkable individual—as remarkable for her great sufferings and great sorrows as for her great errors—who was in a certain degree the cause of breaking up the indifferent home which Nelson found in the companionship of his wife, may be said to have been the last of a race proverbial for bewitching and irresistible beauty—viz., the Lancashire witches. She was born at Preston, in 1764; her father’s name was Lyon, and her parents were of menial condition. The child, named Emma, was, on the early death of her father, taken by her mother to Hawarden, in Flintshire, where her remaining parent sought to support both by industry, and where Emma grew every day in beauty and ignorance. When old enough she was sent forth to earn her own livelihood. She commenced life in the humble condition of a nursery-maid in a family at Hawarden: subsequently she was engaged in the same capacity in the family of Dr. Budd, Chatham-place, Blackfriars. The good doctor little suspected that he possessed two servants in his house destined to achieve celebrity for themselves, and thus lend something of perpetuity to his own name. The nursemaid was Emma Lyons: the housemaid was Jane Powell, who, in her after career as an actress, was a fine interpreter of Shakespeare, could give interest to the bombast of Nat Lee, and make endurable the platitudes of Rowe—just as Rachel, in our own day, interpreted Racine and endowed with life the metrical dulness of Merope and Chimène. From Dr. Budd’s to the family of a dealer in St. James’s Market was a change from the east to the court end of the town, and it had its consequences. She attracted the attention and won the good-will of a lady of fashion, who withdrew her from servitude and elevated her to what is often more degrading and worse paid, the dignity of a companion. The education she received here was such as might be expected at the hands of a fine lady of the last century. She read all the stilted and not too delicate romances of the day—a course of reading which not only kills time, but which generally destroys the student. It at least did not improve the spelling of the now ‘young lady’; for to the last, though she talked like Aspasia, she spelled as badly as Caroline of Brunswick—a light fault in a day when countesses spelt Physician with an F, and thought G was the first letter of Augustus! The house of Emma’s patroness was the resort of all the great players, poets, and literati of the day. It was the ‘Gore House’ of its time: perhaps, its glories ended as ignobly. As a home and an asylum for a young girl full of beauty, and given to impulses which she knew not how to govern, it deserved not the name. The poor thing was made the Cynthia of the minute: the Trissotins dedicated sonnets to her; her beauty was deified; incense was daily offered to her by fools and knaves, and even by those who were neither: but yesterday she was toiling for wages, and perhaps complacently receiving the coarse compliments of liveried worshippers: to-day she was tended on by delicate hands, her smiles eagerly sought after, her presence acknowledged by a buzz of admiration, her wit celebrated by the ecstatic praises of the witty, and her intellect directed to everything save to the study of divine things. She loved the refinement which concealed the vice yet unknown to her: what was so pleasant could hardly be sinful, for it brought no remorse. The foolish virgin lacked a man at hand to tell her that she was neglecting her lamp; and it was only in after life, when intellect was superseded by cleverness and reflection made her matured beauty all the more radiant, that she sorrowingly acknowledged that to her first patroness had been sacrificed the morning of her youth, and that every opportunity neglected had been fruitful in a multitude of after sorrows.

The first public sin, if we may so express it, was the consequence of the exercise of a great virtue. It was the time of the first American war. The press-gangs were in active pursuit of their terrible calling, and by one of these a humble acquaintance had been captured, and was confined on board a tender in the Thames. She personally interceded to procure his liberty: the officer to whom the application was made was Captain, afterwards Admiral, Willet Payne, the companion of the Prince of Wales. This man drove a bargain and became what is cruelly called the ‘protector’ of the friendless Emma. The first false step made, the descent was rapid. From the dissolute seaman she was won by a profligate squire, Sir Harry Fetherstonehaugh; and she speedily enraptured a whole shire of country gentlemen by her bold and graceful riding, subdued them by her wit, and charmed them, they knew not wherefore, by the refinement of her manners. It is a curious trait marking such a career that, though the baronet was nearly ruined by the extravagant profusion into which he plunged for her sake, to the end of life he spoke of her and wrote to her in terms of the profoundest respect. It was a period when provincial squires were not noted for much delicacy of manner: they had not yet adopted the advice of Lord Chesterfield, and become gentlemanlike in their vices; but nevertheless, like the Athenians of old, they could praise a virtue which they did not practise: not decent themselves, they could admire decency in others.

The unfortunate and fallen woman, on her separation from her ruined admirer, soon learned a deeper misery than she had endured in her native home and early privations. She was at length on the point of being turned into the street by her landlord, who had no admiration for penniless tenants, however greatly endowed with beauty, when she fell in the way of the most stupendous quack that ever gulled the most gullible of patient publics. We need hardly name the once famous Dr. Graham,[2] who, with his mysterious chambers, golden beds, seraphic music, and impudent medical lectures, for some time persuaded the people that he could lead them to the fountain where played the waters endowing man with eternal and vigorous youth. That he was mysterious only proved that he had a secret, and that it was well worth knowing and richly worth paying for. This quack hired the hungry and heart-broken beauty, exhibited her as the ‘Goddess of Health,’ lectured upon her as the result of his system, and made half the fashionable women of his day mad to become like her, glowing with health and splendid with beauty. This public exhibition gave her a particular fame among artists: she became the eagerly sought after and highly purchased model of the day. In Romney’s pictures more especially she is constantly repeated, and the eternal sameness is ever varied and charming: she was, indeed, Romney’s inspiration rather than model: he had but to state what he desired or dreamed of, and the vision stood a breathing reality before him. Heroic, as Joan of Arc; crushed by her grief, as a Magdalene; joyous, as a Bacchante; sublime, as Cassandra; winning, as a Wood Nymph; making sorrow graceful, as Calypso; giving rapture double interpretation—first as the Pythian priestess on her tripod, and next as St. Cecilia—gentle, as Serena; lovely, as Sensibility; and perhaps more intellectually lovely still, as Miranda—we can hardly wonder, as we look on these characters, that Hayley, who saw the original stand for them all, rushed into rhyme to immortalise them, and perpetrated verse that was almost tolerable and very nearly worth reading.

We do not know that we may say that she was rescued from this sort of life by meeting with Mr. Charles Fulke Greville. He was not a mere squire, but a gentleman and a connoisseur: he so loved beauty that when he beheld Romney’s model he longed to possess it as he would have longed to possess a Grecian statue. In this case the matter was negotiable: she passed from the studio to the bower. Mr. Greville discovered her mental powers as well as admired her material beauty, and he was humane enough to do—what no human being had ever thought of doing—educate her. It came of the latest, when the tares had choked the wheat. She progressed, indeed, rapidly in all she studied, and in music she attained a wonderful perfection: her voice, even in speaking, was one to melt the heart: in singing it fairly carried it off by magic. If vanity accompanied the possession of powers such as no one has since possessed—not even our now silent Nightingale—her apology is in her course of life, for much of which others were responsible. This vanity reached its culmination one night at Ranelagh, when, intoxicated by the remarks flung in her way like flowers as she passed, she electrified the entire crowd by breaking forth into song, and, by the exercise of her unequalled vocalisation, flung uncontrollable ecstasy over the idle public of the place. ‘Mr. Greville’ (says Dr. Pettigrew, in his interesting ‘Sketch of Lady Hamilton’) ‘had gone farther than he intended, and became alarmed at her fondness for admiration, and ventured to reproach her for her indiscretion. She retired to her room, threw off the elegant attire in which she was clothed, and, presenting herself before him in a plain cottage dress, proposed to relieve him of her presence. This act, however, served only the more securely to bind him in his chains, and a reconciliation took place.’ It is reported that three children were the fruit of this connection; but there is a letter from Nelson to Lady Hamilton extant, which, if it does not prove the contrary, shows at least that Nelson knew nothing of it—a not likely circumstance if the alleged fact were one in reality. However this may be, Dr. Pettigrew adds, ‘In the splendid misery in which she lived she hastened to call to her her mother, to whom she was through life most affectionate and attentive.’

In 1789, the year of many sorrows, Mr. Greville found himself, by the French Revolution and other accidents, a nearly ruined man. His uncle, Sir William Hamilton, our minister at Naples, stepped in to relieve him of many of his embarrassments—among them of the lady to whom perhaps some of them might be traced. Dr. Pettigrew says:—‘It is only charitable to suppose Sir William to have been ignorant of his nephew’s connection with Emma, but there have not been wanting reports that the condition of the engagement between Sir William and the lady was the payment of the nephew’s debts.’ At this time Sir William was within a year of threescore. He was neither the Pericles of his age, nor was Emma quite the Aspasia; but when we remember the bond which bound the great statesman and refined lover of refined art to the most beautiful and most accomplished woman in Greece—when we remember that in his home intellect and skill were almost deified—that to it her presence, her powers, and even her virtues (for all were not wanting because one was absent) gave its chiefest charm—that without her the war against Samos would not have been a matter of history—that she inspired great commanders, and that but for her, much eloquence would have been mute, which, through her, fired Greece to deeds of noble daring—with these memories about us, we say, there is much in the persons and lives of Sir William Hamilton and his wife that reminds us of Pericles and Aspasia, even down to the very circumstance that the great lawgiver took the courtesan to wife after she had been his mistress.

Dr. Pettigrew thus describes Sir William himself:—

Sir William Hamilton was a native of Scotland, born in 1730, and was Minister at Naples for the long period of thirty-six years. He was a distinguished antiquary, remarkable for his taste in, and appreciation of, the fine arts. He possessed also scientific acquirements, and had some knowledge of mineralogy: he was a Trustee of the British Museum, Fellow of the Royal Society, and a Vice-President of the Society of Antiquaries: he was also a distinguished member of the Dillettanti Club, and appears among their portraits in their meeting-room at the Thatched House Tavern. A portrait of him, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, one of his intimate friends, may be seen in the National Gallery. He is known as an author by his works. With the King of Naples he was a great favourite, and largely shared with him the enjoyment of the chase and other sports, to which the sovereign is well known to have been egregiously addicted.

Such was the sexagenarian philosopher. At this period the Aspasia of his affections, if we may indeed use such a word, was just five-and-twenty. She is thus limned by her biographer:—

Already familiarised to the studies of the painter, and, according to Romney and his biographer, no mean judge of the arts, with Sir William she had in Italy many opportunities of enjoying her taste, of improving herself, and also of imparting knowledge. This she is said to have practically evinced; for with a common piece of stuff she could so arrange it and clothe herself as to offer the most appropriate representations of a Jewess, a Roman matron, a Helen, Penelope, or Aspasia. No character seemed foreign to her, and the grace she was in the habit of displaying under such representations excited the admiration of all who were fortunate enough to have been present on such occasions. The celebrated ‘Shawl Dance’ owes its origin to her invention; but it is admitted to have been executed by her with a grace and elegance far surpassing that with which it has ever been rendered on the stage of any of our theatres. Under the tuition and government of Sir William she improved so greatly, and obtained such complete sway over him, that he resolved upon making her his wife. They came to England, and on September 6, 1791, she, writing the name of Emma Harte (an assumed name under which she had long been known), he married her at the Church of St. George, Hanover Square, resolving to return with her to Naples that she might there be recognised by the Neapolitan Court. But prior to quitting London to return to Naples she was doomed to experience disappointment; for although she had, through the position of Sir William Hamilton and his high connections, together with her own attractions and accomplishments, gained admission into a very high circle of society, she was very properly refused admission into the Court of St. James’s, which Sir William in vain endeavoured most assiduously to effect. In the society, however, in which she now moved, she became distinguished for her great accomplishments; and the dulness of fashionable life was greatly relieved by her displays as a singer and as an actress. The admiration she excited was universal. It is said that at first, upon the return of Sir William Hamilton to Naples, there was some difficulty in the way of her introduction to the Queen, not having been received at the Court of her own country; that, however, was soon removed, and in a short time she maintained the confidential intercourse with her Majesty. That the Queen of Naples should have become intimately attached to Lady Hamilton cannot be a matter of surprise when we recollect the calamities her family had sustained by the French Revolution. To seek consolation in the bosom of the wife of the English Minister—the Minister of that country which almost stood alone in its opposition to the principles and conduct of the French Revolution—seems natural. Friendship is often created by sympathetic associations called forth under the pressure of affliction, and is sustained by the consolations of hope derived from them. There are many letters in my possession from the Queen of Naples to the Lady Hamilton breathing the most ardent attachment, the most unbounded friendship, and expressing eternal gratitude to her.

It was in the year 1793 that Nelson first saw this dangerous beauty. From the period of her arrival up to this time, she appears to have been the only source of joy and admiration to the Neapolitan Court. The Duke of Sussex retained to the last lively recollections of her charms, and of the effect she produced when singing with the famous Mrs. Billington. In the eventful year last named Nelson landed at Naples with despatches from Lord Hood. Sir William, as we have said, on returning home after his interview with Nelson, told Lady Hamilton that he was about to introduce to her a little man who could not boast of being very handsome, but who would be the greatest man that England ever produced. ‘I know it’ (said Sir William) ‘from the very few words of conversation I have already had with him. I pronounce’ (said the Minister) ‘that he will one day astonish the world. I have never entertained any officer in my house, but I am determined to bring him here: let him be put in the room prepared for Prince Augustus.’ Nelson is stated to have been equally impressed with Sir William Hamilton’s merits. ‘You are’ (he said) ‘a man after my own heart: you do business in my own way. I am now only captain; but, if I live, I will be at the top of the tree.’ The impression produced upon him by Lady Hamilton, and her kindness towards the son of Nelson’s’ wife by her first marriage, he thus simply describes in one of his letters:—‘Lady Hamilton has been wonderfully kind and good to Josiah. She is a young woman of amiable manners, and who does honour to the station to which she is raised.’

The early attachment entertained by the Queen of Naples for Lady Hamilton admits of ready and natural explanation. Sir William after his marriage conducted his young bride to Naples by way of Paris, where she was received by the ill-fated Marie-Antoinette. This unhappy queen was sister to the Queen of Naples; and to Lady Hamilton she entrusted the last letter she ever wrote to her scarcely less unhappy relative. The wife of the British Minister became at once the personal friend of the Neapolitan Queen, and her influence so great that the King himself said of her that she had de-Bourbonised them and made them all English. It was from this period that her patriotic mission commenced—a mission which she carried out regardless of personal expense or personal peril, and for the performance of which, though so great in its results, she obtained slight acknowledgment and no recompense.

It was for no individual, but for her country solely, that she exercised her unbounded influence when at Naples. Sir John Jervis named her the ‘patroness of the navy;’ and when he was engaged upon the reduction of Corsica he depended upon Lady Hamilton for despatching to him all the necessaries he required from Naples: he subsequently confessed that the reduction of the island was facilitated and expedited by her aid and energy. At a time when British interests were at stake and nearly all Europe was engaged in destroying them, she was unceasingly wakeful to maintain and strengthen them. We had about this time a most uncertain ally in Spain. It came to the knowledge of Lady Hamilton that a Spanish courier had arrived at Naples with a letter for the King: she forthwith repaired to the Queen, and so exercised the power she possessed over even the powerful mind of that Sovereign that she induced her to repair to the King’s cabinet and abstract the important document from the monarch’s possession. The letter was obtained: it was from the King of Spain himself, and it announced his determination to break up his old alliance and to unite with France against England. Sir William Hamilton was sick and incapable of action; but ‘our General’s wife was now the General;’ and she further prevailed on the Queen to allow her to take a copy of the document. This copy she transmitted by a secure but costly method to Lord Grenville. To effect its safe arrival cost her out of her own private purse not less than four hundred pounds sterling. She was hardly thanked and was never remunerated.

But ingratitude did not render her patriotism weary or unwilling: year after year the British flag in the Mediterranean was indebted to her for triumphs which it achieved, because without her aid the English could not have profited even by opportunity. It must be remembered, too, as Dr. Pettigrew justly remarks, ‘that at this period so high were French ascendency and revolutionary principles in Naples that it was absolutely dangerous for the British Minister to go to court.’

Her greatest service, though not her last, remains to be mentioned. It is of that importance that it merits being mentioned in detail, and the details are so clearly and concisely told by Dr. Pettigrew that we cannot do better than adopt them. Never was service more greatly needed: its having been rendered saved England, changed the aspect of European politics, and gave to Lady Hamilton a branch of the showers of laurel that fell to the victors at the Nile:—

In June, 1798, about three days after the French fleet had passed by for Malta, Sir William and Lady Hamilton were awakened one morning about six o’clock by the arrival of Captain Trowbridge with a letter from Sir Horatio Nelson, then with the fleet lying off the bay near to Capri, ‘requesting that the ambassador would procure him permission to enter with his fleet into Naples or any of the Sicilian ports to provision, water, &c., as otherwise he must run for Gibraltar, being in urgent want; and that, consequently, he would be obliged to give up all further pursuit of the French fleet which he had missed at Egypt on account of their having put into Malta.’ At this time Naples had made peace with France, and an ambassador was resident then at Naples. One of the stipulations of the treaty which had been entered into was to the effect that no more than two English ships of war should enter into any of the Neapolitan or Sicilian ports. However, Sir William Hamilton called up Sir John Acton, the Minister, who immediately convened a council at which the King was present. This was about half-past six. Lady Hamilton went immediately to the Queen, who received her in her bed-room: she represented to her Majesty that the safety of the two Sicilies now depended upon her conduct, and that should the council, as she feared that under the circumstances they must do, decide on negative or half measures, the Sicilies must be lost if Nelson were not supplied agreeably to his request, by which he would be enabled to follow the great French force which had passed in that direction only a few days before. Nothing could exceed the alarm with which the Queen received this intelligence: she urged that the King was in council and would decide with his Ministers. Lady Hamilton dictated, and the Queen wrote a positive order, ‘directed to all governors of the two Sicilies to receive with hospitality the British fleet to water, victual, and aid them.’ In every way this order, as Lady Hamilton well knew, would be more respected than that which might emanate from the King. The council did not break up until eight o’clock, and Lady Hamilton attended Captain Trowbridge and her husband to their residence! The faces of the King, of Acton, and Sir William too plainly told the determination at which they had arrived, and that they could not then break with France. On the way home Lady Hamilton told Sir William and Captain Trowbridge that she had anticipated the result and provided against it; that, whilst they were in council debating on the application, she had been with the Queen and had not without effect implored her Majesty to render the aid required: she then, to his great astonishment and delight, produced the order in question. Nothing could exceed the gladness this occasioned. Trowbridge declared that it would ‘cheer Nelson to ecstasy;’ and that by this means they should be enabled to pursue and conquer the French fleet, otherwise they must have gone for Gibraltar. Sir William Hamilton wrote to Sir Horatio Nelson, communicating to him the formal decision of the council; but added, ‘You will receive from Emma herself what will do the business and procure all your wants.’ Lady Hamilton enclosed to the admiral the order, praying him ‘that the Queen might be as little committed in the use of it as the glory and service of the country would admit of.’ To this Nelson replied that he received the precious order, and that if he gained the battle it should be called hers and the Queen’s; for to Lady Hamilton he should owe his success, as without the order their return to Gibraltar was decided upon; but, he added, ‘I will now come back to you crowned with laurels or covered with cypress.’

It was more especially for this service rendered when he was in his utmost need that Nelson, while dying, recommended Lady Hamilton to the memory and gratitude of his country. The effect of this service we need not repeat. The British ships watered and victualled at Syracuse, spread their huge wings in pursuit of their foe, and at the Nile launched their heavy thunder to his destruction. On the 20th of September the triumphant squadron arrived at Naples, where ships, officers, and men found every want supplied and every wish anticipated. ‘But especially’ (says Dr. Pettigrew) ‘were the broken health and wounded body of the valorous chief regarded. Nelson was taken into the British Minister’s house, and there personally tended by her whose sympathies had been so awakened, and by whose attentions he was after a time restored to health.’ Her services did not terminate here. While all at Naples were at the very high top-gallant of their joy, Lady Hamilton induced the court to break altogether with the French. The ambassador of the Republic was consequently dismissed with scanty courtesy and in considerable haste. When, at a later period, a French army marched on Naples itself and the royal family were reduced to fly to Palermo, the chief arrangements for the safety of the lives and properties of others were made or carried out by Lady Hamilton: she privately removed from the palace the royal jewels and thirty-six barrels of gold. These were marked ‘Stores for Nelson,’ and under that device were safely shipped. Indeed, it was not till the treasure was secured that the King consented to embark. In a despatch to the Admiralty Lord Nelson says, ‘Lady Hamilton seemed to be an angel dropped from heaven for the preservation of the royal family.’ To effect that preservation she was regardless of her own. On the night in which she personally assisted the King, Queen, and children to escape, she attended a party given by Kelim Effendi: she withdrew from this party on foot, leaving her equipage in front of the house, hastened to the place of meeting, conducted the royal family by a subterranean passage to Nelson’s boat waiting to receive them, embarked with the fugitives, and with them went before the storm that blew them to Palermo. To accomplish this Sir William and his wife voluntarily abandoned their entire possessions in their house at Naples: they did not convey away one single article. The whole of their private property was thus left behind in order to prevent discovery of their proceedings in behalf of the royal family. The value of Lady Hamilton’s portion thus abandoned amounted to 9,000l.; not less than 30,000l.’s worth of property was sacrificed which belonged to Sir William. The virtue of this sacrifice was the sole reward gained by those who made it.

It was in this year (1799) that Sir Alexander Ball, who held a part of Malta, the French occupying another part, sent despatches to Nelson at Palermo for provisions, without which he would be compelled to surrender. Nelson was absent at his old occupation looking after the enemies of England. Lady Hamilton opened the despatches, purchased several entire cargoes of corn at her own risk, and forwarded them to the half-starved English in Malta. She expended 5,000l., of which not one shilling was ever returned to her. All that she profited thereby was in receiving the order of St. John of Jerusalem from the Emperor Paul, Grand Master of the Knights. England owed her much and acknowledged nothing. The Queen of Naples acted with more generosity: she put into the hands of Lady Hamilton, on parting from her subsequently at Vienna, a conveyance of 1,000l. per annum; but the latter magnanimously destroyed the deed, remarking that ‘England was just, and to her faithful servants generous, and that she should feel it unbecoming to her own beloved and magnanimous Sovereign to accept of meed or reward from any other hand.’

But the same year is also marked by an occurrence the very mention of which seems to obscure the brightness of Nelson’s name and to fling an additional lurid hue round that of the wife of a British Minister. We say seems; for in truth there is more of seeming than of reality in it, and yet all is not seeming and there is something real. We allude, of course, to the case of Admiral Prince Carracciolo. According to some he was murdered by Nelson at the instigation of Lady Hamilton, who was so fiercely Royalist that, if we may believe partial writers, the blood of a Jacobin was to her of marvellous sweet savour. Divested of exaggeration the story of old Carracciolo is simply this—He was a rich, valiant, and aged seaman, and warmly attached to Royalty until the triumph of Republicanism endangered those who had a distaste for Commonwealths. When the Neapolitan royal family fled from Naples to Sicily their hitherto faithful old servant followed them thither: when the heads of the party who had proclaimed a Republic at Naples threatened to confiscate the property of absentees, Carracciolo returned to protect his own. In thinking over-much of himself he forgot fealty to his Sovereign, and in a brief period he became as hot a Republican as ever he had been an eager Royalist. He took up arms against his King, opposed his restoration, and fired upon his flag. After the principal body of rebels had capitulated to the force in arms to give the King his own again, he was captured in open rebellion, taken on board the Foudroyant, Lord Nelson’s own ship, and there given up to be tried by a court-martial. Nelson, as chief of the united Sicilian and English squadrons, ordered this court-martial to be held: it was formed exclusively of Sicilian officers, but it was held on board the English admiral’s ship. The trial did not exactly exhibit a specimen of Jedburgh justice, by which a man is hung first and tried afterwards, but there was a spirit manifested that was very much akin to it. The president of the court, Count Thurn, was a personal enemy though an old shipmate of Carracciolo. The case for the prosecution was soon gone through: the facts were clear, patent, and undeniable; but the brave and misguided old seaman made a most gallant, fearless, and almost irresistible defence. Probably, the worst enemy of the crown of Naples was the King himself: he was worthless, selfish, weak, vain, and pompous. Carracciolo asserted that he had not deserted the royal cause, but that in fact the King himself had betrayed it: when there was no longer a royalty to defend that was worth the keeping, then alone had he joined the Republicans. Thus far the defence was, perhaps, founded on truth. It was not less true when Carracciolo alluded to his property and the risk he ran of rendering his posterity beggars if he had not taken office under the Republican flag; but this was a sort of truth that was even less valid as an apology for rebellion than the former. The court unanimously found him guilty and sentenced him to be hung by the neck at the yard-arm of his own flag-ship. ‘Hereafter’ (said the undaunted old man with some emotion)—‘hereafter, when you shall be called to your great account, you will weep for this unjust sentence in tears of blood. I take shame to myself for asking for any favour from such men; but, if possible, I wish to be shot as becomes my rank, and not hung up like a felon and a dog.’ ‘It is inadmissible’ (was the curt and savage reply of the court), ‘and the court is hereby dissolved.’ What followed is ever to be deplored. Dr. Pettigrew struggles ably and manfully to defend Nelson from all blame, but he struggles unsuccessfully. The facts are these—even by Dr. Pettigrew’s admission. The sentence was no sooner made known than Nelson issued an order for the immediate execution. The guilty man was to be hung from six o’clock till sunset, ‘when you will have his body cut down and thrown into the sea.’ So run the words to which the name of Nelson is affixed. Lieutenant Parkinson, at the request of the doomed man, interceded with the admiral; but to the prayer of Carracciolo, that he might die the death of a man and not that of a dog, Nelson refused to interfere, and harshly bade the poor lieutenant to go and attend to his duty. The result was that Carracciolo was ignominiously run up to the yard-arm, not of his own flag-ship, but to that of Lord Nelson. The English admiral not only refused the mercy that he unquestionably might have granted, but he, in some sort, became the executioner: he not only insisted that the sentence of hanging should be carried into effect, but he lent a gallows for the purpose.

The sentence was just, and the unfortunate old warrior merited death; but justice would have been satisfied had the great criminal been allowed the melancholy privilege of falling as he might have done in battle. At all events, the yard-arm of a British ship ought not to have been lent for the purpose of hanging a foreigner who had betrayed his trust to a foreign king. In thus much does blame appear attributable to Nelson. That any is due to Lady Hamilton, or that Nelson was in the least degree influenced by her on this occasion, we disbelieve, simply for the reason that such an assertion is unsusceptible of proof.

But the Foudroyant was the scene of other disgraces. We come to the mention of them with reluctance, and will narrate them with all possible brevity. In 1800, Sir William Hamilton was superseded as British Minister at Naples: he and Lady Hamilton, with the Queen of Naples, were on board Nelson’s ship. Nelson himself was now a Neapolitan duke. The whole party were about to leave the Mediterranean, and, with the exception of the Queen, whose destination was Vienna, to return to England by land through Germany. It was during the passage from Palermo to Malta that the intimacy took place which resulted in the birth of that little Horatia who was long thought to be the daughter of the Queen of Naples, but whom Dr. Pettigrew, under Nelson’s own hand, proves to be the child of Lady Hamilton. That Nelson was the child’s father no one ever doubted. The strange party—husband, wife, and friend—reached London in November, 1800. Lady Nelson was not among those who stood first to greet the arrival of the hero or who at meeting greeted him with any warmth of feeling. She had, possibly, heard through her son, Captain Nisbet, of the too friendly terms which existed between her husband and the wife of another. His home was, in consequence, an unhappy one, and he left it to proceed on an excursion with Sir William and his lady. This excursion was an ovation which reached its highest point at Fonthill. Here the celebrities in art, rather than the noble by birth, were assembled to meet the illustrious party: here Banti, the Pasta of her day, joined her voice with the ex-ambassadress; and here West looked on and smiled.

In the gallery of the Abbey, after the repast, the company assembled, and Lady Hamilton enchanted them with one of her remarkable personations—that of Agrippina bearing the ashes of Germanicus in a golden urn, and as presenting herself before the Roman people with the design of exciting them to revenge the death of her husband, who, after having been declared joint Emperor by Tiberius, fell a victim to his envy, and is supposed to have been poisoned by his order at the head of the forces which he was leading against the rebellious Arminians ... Lady Hamilton displayed with truth and energy every gesture, attitude, and expression of countenance, which could be conceived in Agrippina herself, best calculated to have roused the passions of the Romans in behalf of their favourite general. The action of her head, of her hands and arms, in the various positions of the urn, in her manner of presenting it to the Romans, or of raising it up to the gods in the act of supplication, was most classically graceful. Every change of dress, principally of the head, to suit the different situations in which she successively presented herself, was performed instantaneously with the most perfect ease, and without retiring or scarcely turning aside a moment from the spectators. In the last scene of this beautiful piece of pantomime, she appeared with a young lady of the company who was to personate a daughter. Her action in this part was so perfectly just and natural, and so pathetically addressed to the spectators as to draw tears from several of the company.

When the character of the Roman dress is remembered, it is difficult to believe that the representative of Agrippina was in the condition noticed by Dr. Pettigrew.

The final separation between Nelson and his wife took place in the January of 1801. The last scene between the latter is thus described by a yet living witness, Mr. Haslewood:—

In the winter of 1800-1, I was breakfasting with Lord and Lady Nelson at their lodgings in Arlington Street, and a cheerful conversation was passing on indifferent subjects when Lord Nelson spoke of something which had been done or said by ‘dear Lady Hamilton,’ upon which Lady Nelson rose from her chair and exclaimed, with much vehemence—‘I am sick of hearing of dear Lady Hamilton, and am resolved that you shall give up either her or me.’ Lord Nelson, with perfect calmness, said—‘Take care, Fanny, what you say; I love you sincerely, but I cannot forget my obligations to Lady Hamilton, or speak of her otherwise than with affection and admiration.’ Without one soothing word or gesture, but muttering something about her mind being made up, Lady Nelson left the room, and, shortly after, drove from the house. They never lived together afterwards. I believe that Lord Nelson took a formal leave of her ladyship before joining the fleet under Sir Hyde Parker.

Dr. Pettigrew cites this letter of Mr. Haslewood to show that the separation was unavoidable on Lord Nelson’s part: it appears to us to have been inevitable and necessary. Perhaps the strangest part of this incident is that Nelson’s family closely attached themselves to Lady Hamilton. We must make exception, however, of the still stranger incident—namely, the birth of Lady Hamilton’s daughter at her residence in Piccadilly, the absence of all attempt to confer the honours of paternity on Sir William, and the consequent mystification. The birth took place about the last day of January 1801. The child was conveyed to a nurse about a week or ten days afterwards, and was not the home companion of its guilty parents until 1803, after the death of Sir William Hamilton. Nelson’s daughter was recently alive, and was formerly married to Captain Ward, late of the 81st regiment.

Before the death of Sir William Hamilton, Lord Nelson had made his house their common residence. At the death of the former, he, with something of an affected decency, quitted it for private lodgings. Sir William left his widow totally unprovided for. He thought, as Nelson thought, that the Government would not hesitate to make her an ample provision for her services. In the meantime, waiting for an event that was never to occur, Lord Nelson purchased Merton. It is yet the object of many a sailor’s pilgrimage, and is about ten minutes’ walk from the Wimbledon station. Here he offered the deserted widow and the mother of his child a refuge—nay, more, a home. It was such to her; for there she enjoyed the homage and respect not only of every member of Nelson’s family, but also of the great and good of the exterior world. Never was woman placed in so anomalous a condition, in which the anomaly was so carefully concealed from herself and unheeded by the world.

It should have had the realities of the virtue of which it bore so well the semblance. That it had not was, perhaps, one of the causes why it endured so brief a space. It is most touching to read the letters of Nelson, cited by Dr. Pettigrew, and written to his child’s mother at home. The heavy responsibilities connected with Trafalgar, the anxieties coming thick and fast, the duties he had to fulfil—none of these things rendered him forgetful of his treasure. For the safety of one little life his heart beat as only a parent’s heart can beat; and while meditating the array of battle, in which his own life was to cloud the splendour of the victory, he found leisure to send home detailed instructions how a substantial netting should be raised in the grounds of Merton to preserve little Horatia from falling into a pond ambitiously called the Nile. There wanted but one thing to give holiness to Nelson’s character as a father.

To this, as to all his worldly glory, and to all the felicity that had hitherto rested upon Merton, a sudden termination was given by the fatal ball which struck him, when his glory was greatest, on the deck of the Victory, at Trafalgar. The last request of such a man, made in such an hour, and amid such a triumph, purchased by him with his heart’s blood—the dying request of such a man ought to have been held sacred by his country. For five years Lady Hamilton struggled on at Merton: she made application to every source, but she applied in vain. The recompense justly due to her for services rendered was withheld or denied under the most shabby and futile pretences. The worst of all, perhaps, was the pretence, or the plea, of the length of time that had expired since the service itself was rendered!

In a codicil annexed to his will, and made by Nelson as he was about to enter into action at Trafalgar, the Admiral, with a strong feeling that death was near him, asked two favours of his King and Country in whose defence he was about to offer up his own life—one was, protection and provision for Lady Hamilton, whose late husband was the King’s foster-brother; the other, goodwill for his ‘adopted daughter.’ He solemnly bequeathed both to his sovereign and his fellow-countrymen. When the will was proved, this codicil was held back by the Rev. William Nelson, although he and his family had been partaking of Lady Hamilton’s hospitality for months. Indeed, during six years, she was a second mother to his children, to whom he recommended Lady Hamilton as an example and enjoined obedience to her as an instructress. ‘The Earl (says Dr. Pettigrew—for the reverend gentleman was created an earl) fearful that Lady Hamilton should be provided for in the sum Parliament was expected to grant to uphold the hero’s name and family, kept the codicil in his pocket until the day 120,000l. was voted for that purpose. On that day he dined with Lady Hamilton in Clarges Street, and, hearing at table what had been done, he brought forward the codicil, and, throwing it to Lady Hamilton, coarsely said she might now do with it as she pleased. She had it registered the next day at Doctors’ Commons, where it is now to be seen.’

With insufficient means to live in her old dignity at Merton, and with little knowledge of how to make the best of those means, accustomed to find others her stewards and unused to provide for hours of necessity, she at length found herself compelled to make an assignment of the home which Nelson had established for her and their child. She removed to Richmond, and, subsequently, had lodgings in Bond Street. Pursued by creditors, without her child for whom she had no home—and for whom such protection as she could give was not that which a child most needed—she led a miserable life, which was hardly rendered more miserable by her incarceration, in 1813, in the King’s Bench. She passed ten months in this captivity, and was only relieved at last by the humanity of Alderman Smith. With freedom came no measure of happiness: utterly destitute, and abandoned by those who in the days of her prosperity professed to be her slaves, she fled the country that would not aid her, and sought succour in a foreign land. She found shelter, and nothing more, in Calais, in a miserable house, kindly lent her, however, by a Monsieur de Rheims. That it was only shelter, and nothing else, may be inferred from the following account handed to Dr. Pettigrew by the lady who enacts in it so graceful a part:—

Mrs. Hunter was in the habit of ordering meat daily at a butcher’s for a little dog, and on one of these occasions was met by Monsieur de Rheims, who followed her exclaiming, ‘Ah, Madam!—ah, Madam! I know you to be good to the English. There is a lady here who would be glad of the worst bit of meat you provide for your dog.’ When questioned as to who the lady was, and promising that she should not want for anything, he declined telling, saying that she was too proud to see anyone, and that besides he had promised her secrecy. Mrs. Hunter begged him to provide her with everything she required, &c., as if coming from himself, and she would pay for it. This he did for some time, until she became very ill, when he pressed her to see the lady who had been so kind to her; and, upon hearing that her benefactress was not a person of title, she consented, saw her, thanked her, and blessed her.

Shortly after this her infirmities increased, and ultimately she died at Calais of water on the chest, on January 15, 1815. Dr. Pettigrew gives no credence to the report of an anonymous foreign writer that she had been converted to the Romish faith, and had received the sacrament from a Romish priest as long before as during her confinement in the King’s Bench. That she died, as the same anonymous author reported, in the bosom of the Catholic Church, and received its sacraments on her death-bed, can be as little confirmed. The Romish Church would have buried a convert with willing ceremony: as it was, the method of the sad solemnity was thus ordered for one who, even in death, remained, as described by Mrs. Hunter, exceedingly beautiful:—

Mrs. Hunter was anxious to have her interred according to English custom, for which, however, she was only laughed at; and poor Emma was put into a deal-box without any inscription. All that this good lady states that she was permitted to do was to make a kind of pall out of her black silk petticoat stitched on a white curtain. Not an English Protestant clergyman was to be found in all Calais or its vicinity; and, so distressed was this lady to find some one to read the burial service over her remains, that she went to an Irish half-pay officer in the Rue du Havre, whose wife was a well-informed Irish lady. He was absent at the time; but, being sent for, most kindly went and read the service over the body. Lady Hamilton was buried in a piece of ground in a spot just outside the town, formerly called the gardens of the Duchess of Kingston, which had been consecrated and was used as a public cemetery till 1816. The ground, which had neither wall nor fence to protect it, was some years since converted into a timber-yard, and no traces of the graves now remain. Mrs. Hunter wished to have placed a head or foot-stone, but was refused. She, therefore, placed a piece of wood in the shape, as she describes it to me, of a battledore, handle downwards, on which was inscribed ‘Emma Hamilton, England’s friend.’ This was speedily removed—another placed and also removed; and the good lady at length threatened to be shot by the sentinel if she persisted in those offices of charity. A small tombstone was, however, afterwards placed there, and was existing in 1833.

To the latter assertion we may remark that no tombstone was existing there in the month of August of the latter year. We searched the field very narrowly for the purpose, and found but one record of the decease of an English sojourner. The grave itself was pointed out to us by a Calaisian, but its locality was only traditionary. About nine pounds’ worth of effects, twelve shillings in money, a few clothes, and some duplicates of pawned plate were all that was left by the companion and friend of queens. Little as it was, the Reverend Earl Nelson hastened to Calais to claim it. He expected more, and in his cupidity wished to take the pledged trinkets without paying the necessary expenses for getting them out of pawn; he would not even discharge the few debts incurred by her death. These were discharged by Mr. Cadogan, to whom Horatia was entrusted (Mrs. Matcham, Nelson’s sister, receiving her after Lady Hamilton’s decease), and to whom, as to Alderman Smith, the forlorn creature was indebted for much aid ere death placed her beyond the need of requiring it.

This tale bears with it its own moral: retribution followed offence: the commission of sin reaped its usual reward; the wanderer from virtue was visited with terrible affliction; and the penalty awaited not its commencement till the knell of the offender had summoned her to judgment. Thus much man knows, but with thus much he has not condescended to rest satisfied; and the sons of the seducers have been eager to cast stones at her whom their fathers enticed to sin. In the remembrance of her faults they make no account of her services, of her suffering, or of her sorrows; they have no idea that, if there was guilt, there might have been reconciliation, and that the dark season of her long last agony might have been passed in

Owning her weakness,

Her evil behaviour,

And leaving with meekness,

Her sins to her Saviour.

No: man who bore part in the offence constituted himself the judge of this poor daughter of frailty, and she met with such mercy at his hands as man is accustomed to give.

Do not let it be supposed that we are advocates or even apologists in this case: our only anxiety is that, in the sacrifice of one, impunity may not be gained by, perhaps, greater offenders. Let not the man who flung her beauty and her virtue into ruin be allowed to escape. Her sins were of man’s making: if these are to be remembered, let his share in them form part of the example we are taught to avoid. By man she was ruined in body and perilled in soul. Throughout the course of her life she does not appear to have met with one who acted by her in a spirit of Christian charity and anxiety: she was born with qualities that should have led her heavenward: she was early pushed from the path thither tending; nor amid all her royal, her noble, and alas! her clerical companions, was there one who persuaded her that she was erring—nay, but the contrary. The whole correspondence, now for the first time divulged in these volumes, shows the wickedness of men who could seduce to sin—their guilt in maintaining such terms with her who had fallen as to make her feel assured that she had neither incurred sin nor merited disgrace—and their baseness in making her in her helplessness feel with double weight the penalty of a crime which they had in the days of her greatness held to be none. Let us, indeed, learn wisdom from a tale, the heroine of which does not afford the sole example that is to be avoided; but be it also ours to remember her services rather than her sins. The latter, with those of the first seducer who made of her very charity a means to destroy her for ever, may be left to Him who will render an unerring sentence when seducer and victim are in presence together at the tribunal of truth. At all events, let not the hardest blows of humanity fall on the weakest offender. She would have been better but for man—that she was not much worse was for no lack of energy on his part to make her so.

Who made the heart, ’tis He alone

Decidedly can try us:

He knows each chord, its various tone—

Each spring, its various bias.

Then at the balance let’s be mute,

We never can adjust it.

What’s done we partly can compute,

But know not what’s resisted.