Lecture The Third. Steele
What do we look for in studying the history of a past age? Is it to learn the political transactions and characters of the leading public men? Is it to make ourselves acquainted with the life and being of the time? If we set out with the former grave purpose, where is the truth, and who believes that he has it entire? What character of what great man is known to you? You can but make guesses as to character more or less happy. In common life don't you often judge and misjudge a man's whole conduct, setting out from a wrong impression? The tone of a voice, a word said in joke, or a trifle in behaviour—the cut of his hair or the tie of his neckcloth may disfigure him in your eyes, or poison your good opinion; or at the end of years of intimacy it may be your closest friend says something, reveals something which had previously been a secret, which alters all your views about him, and shows that he has been acting on quite a different motive to that which you fancied you knew. And if it is so with those you know, how much more with those you don't know? Say, for example, that I want to understand the character of the Duke of Marlborough. I read Swift's history of the times in which he took a part; the shrewdest of observers and initiated, one would think, into the politics of the age—he hints to me that Marlborough was a coward, and even of doubtful military capacity: he speaks of Walpole as a contemptible boor, and scarcely mentions, except to flout it, the great intrigue of the Queen's latter days, which was to have ended in bringing back the Pretender. Again, I read Marlborough's life by a copious archdeacon, who has the command of immense papers, of sonorous language, of what is called the best information; and I get little or no insight into this secret motive which, I believe, influenced the whole of Marlborough's career, which caused his turnings [pg 543] and windings, his opportune fidelity and treason, stopped his army almost at Paris gate, and landed him finally on the Hanoverian side—the winning side; I get, I say, no truth, or only a portion of it, in the narrative of either writer, and believe that Coxe's portrait or Swift's portrait is quite unlike the real Churchill. I take this as a single instance, prepared to be as sceptical about any other, and say to the Muse of History, “O venerable daughter of Mnemosyne, I doubt every single statement you ever made since your ladyship was a Muse! For all your grave airs and high pretensions, you are not a whit more trustworthy than some of your lighter sisters on whom your partisans look down. You bid me listen to a general's oration to his soldiers: Nonsense! He no more made it than Turpin made his dying speech at Newgate. You pronounce a panegyric of a hero: I doubt it, and say you flatter outrageously. You utter the condemnation of a loose character: I doubt it, and think you are prejudiced and take the side of the Dons. You offer me an autobiography: I doubt all autobiographies I ever read except those, perhaps, of Mr. Robinson Crusoe, Mariner, and writers of his class. These have no object in setting themselves right with the public or their own consciences; these have no motive for concealment or half-truths; these call for no more confidence than I can cheerfully give, and do not force me to tax my credulity or to fortify it by evidence. I take up a volume of Dr. Smollett, or a volume of the Spectator, and say the fiction carries a greater amount of truth in solution than the volume which purports to be all true. Out of the fictitious book I get the expression of the life of the time; of the manners, of the movement, the dress, the pleasures, the laughter, the ridicules of society—the old times live again, and I travel in the old country of England. Can the heaviest historian do more for me?”
As we read in these delightful volumes of the Tatler and Spectator, the past age returns, the England of our ancestors is revivified. The Maypole rises in the Strand again in London; the churches are thronged with daily worshippers; the beaux are gathering in the coffee-houses; the gentry are going to the Drawing-room; the ladies are thronging to the toy-shops; the chairmen are jostling in the streets; the footmen are running with links before the chariots, or fighting round the theatre doors. In the country I see [pg 544] the young Squire riding to Eton with his servants behind him, and Will Wimble, the friend of the family, to see him safe. To make that journey from the Squire's and back, Will is a week on horseback. The coach takes five days between London and Bath. The judges and the bar ride the circuit. If my lady comes to town in her post-chariot, her people carry pistols to fire a salute on Captain Macheath if he should appear, and her couriers ride ahead to prepare apartments for her at the great caravanserais on the road; Boniface receives her under the creaking sign of the “Bell” or the “Ram”, and he and his chamberlains bow her up the great stair to the state-apartments, whilst her carriage rumbles into the courtyard, where the Exeter “Fly” is housed that performs the journey in eight days, God willing, having achieved its daily flight of twenty miles, and landed its passengers for supper and sleep. The curate is taking his pipe in the kitchen, where the Captain's man—having hung up his master's half-pike—is at his bacon and eggs, bragging of Ramillies and Malplaquet to the townsfolk, who have their club in the chimney-corner. The Captain is ogling the chambermaid in the wooden gallery, or bribing her to know who is the pretty young mistress that has come in the coach? The pack-horses are in the great stable, and the drivers and ostlers carousing in the tap. And in Mrs. Landlady's bar, over a glass of strong waters, sits a gentleman of military appearance, who travels with pistols, as all the rest of the world does, and has a rattling grey mare in the stables which will be saddled and away with its owner half an hour before the “Fly” sets out on its last day's flight. And some five miles on the road, as the Exeter “Fly” comes jingling and creaking onwards, it will suddenly be brought to a halt by a gentleman on a grey mare, with a black vizard on his face, who thrusts a long pistol into the coach window, and bids the company to hand out their purses.... It must have been no small pleasure even to sit in the great kitchen in those days, and see the tide of humankind pass by. We arrive at places now, but we travel no more. Addison talks jocularly of a difference of manner and costume being quite perceivable at Staines, where there passed a young fellow “with a very tolerable periwig”, though, to be sure, his hat was out of fashion, and had a Ramillies cock. I would have liked to travel in those days (being of that class of travellers who are proverbially [pg 545] pretty easy coram latronibus) and have seen my friend with the grey mare and the black vizard. Alas! there always came a day in the life of that warrior when it was the fashion to accompany him as he passed—without his black mask, and with a nosegay in his hand, accompanied by halberdiers and attended by the sheriff,—in a carriage without springs, and a clergyman jolting beside him to a spot close by Cumberland Gate and the Marble Arch, where a stone still records that here Tyburn turnpike stood. What a change in a century; in a few years! Within a few yards of that gate the fields began: the fields of his exploits, behind the hedges of which he lurked and robbed. A great and wealthy city has grown over those meadows. Were a man brought to die there now, the windows would be closed and the inhabitants keep their houses in sickening horror. A hundred years back, people crowded to see that last act of a highwayman's life, and make jokes on it. Swift laughed at him, grimly advising him to provide a Holland shirt and white cap crowned with a crimson or black ribbon for his exit, to mount the cart cheerfully—shake hands with the hangman, and so—farewell. Gay wrote the most delightful ballads, and made merry over the same hero. Contrast these with the writings of our present humourists! Compare those morals and ours—those manners and ours!
We can't tell—you would not bear to be told the whole truth regarding those men and manners. You could no more suffer in a British drawing-room, under the reign of Queen Victoria, a fine gentleman or fine lady of Queen Anne's time, or hear what they heard and said, than you would receive an ancient Briton. It is as one reads about savages, that one contemplates the wild ways, the barbarous feasts, the terrific pastimes, of the men of pleasure of that age. We have our fine gentlemen, and our “fast men”; permit me to give you an idea of one particularly fast nobleman of Queen Anne's days, whose biography has been preserved to us by the law reporters.
In 1691, when Steele was a boy at school, my Lord Mohun was tried by his peers for the murder of William Mountford, comedian. In Howell's State Trials, the reader will find not only an edifying account of this exceedingly fast nobleman, but of the times and manners of those days. My lord's friend, a Captain Hill, smitten with the [pg 546] charms of the beautiful Mrs. Bracegirdle, and anxious to marry her at all hazards, determined to carry her off, and for this purpose hired a hackney-coach with six horses, and a half-dozen of soldiers, to aid him in the storm. The coach with a pair of horses (the four leaders being in waiting elsewhere) took its station opposite my Lord Craven's house in Drury Lane, by which door Mrs. Bracegirdle was to pass on her way from the theatre. As she passed in company of her mamma and a friend, Mr. Page, the Captain seized her by the hand, the soldiers hustled Mr. Page and attacked him sword in hand, and Captain Hill and his noble friend endeavoured to force Madam Bracegirdle into the coach. Mr. Page called for help: the population of Drury Lane rose: it was impossible to effect the capture; and bidding the soldiers go about their business, and the coach to drive off, Hill let go of his prey sulkily, and he waited for other opportunities of revenge. The man of whom he was most jealous was Will Mountford, the comedian; Will removed, he thought Mrs. Bracegirdle might be his: and accordingly the Captain and his lordship lay that night in wait for Will, and as he was coming out of a house in Norfolk Street, while Mohun engaged him in talk, Hill, in the words of the Attorney-General, made a pass and run him clean through the body.
Sixty-one of my lord's peers finding him not guilty of murder, while but fourteen found him guilty, this very fast nobleman was discharged: and made his appearance seven years after in another trial for murder—when he, my Lord Warwick, and three gentlemen of the military profession were concerned in the fight which ended in the death of Captain Coote.
This jolly company were drinking together at Lockit's in Charing Cross, when angry words arose between Captain Coote and Captain French; whom my Lord Mohun and my lord the Earl of Warwick[96] and Holland endeavoured [pg 547] to pacify. My Lord Warwick was a dear friend of Captain Coote, lent him a hundred pounds to buy his commission in the Guards; once when the captain was arrested for 13l. by his tailor, my lord lent him five guineas, often paid his reckoning for him, and showed him other offices of friendship. On this evening the disputants, French and Coote, being separated whilst they were upstairs, unluckily stopped to drink ale again at the bar of Lockit's. The row began afresh—Coote lunged at French over the bar, and at last all six called for chairs, and went to Leicester Fields, where they fell to. Their lordships engaged on the side of Captain Coote. My Lord of Warwick was severely wounded in the hand, Mr. French also was stabbed, but honest Captain Coote got a couple of wounds—one especially, “a wound in the left side just under the short ribs, and piercing through the diaphragma,” which did for Captain Coote. Hence the trials of my Lords Warwick and Mohun: hence the assemblage of peers, the report of the transaction, in which these defunct fast men still live for the observation of the curious. My Lord of Warwick is brought to the bar by the Deputy Governor of the Tower of London, having the axe carried before him by the gentleman gaoler, who stood with it at the bar at the right hand of the prisoner, turning the edge from him; the prisoner, at his approach, making three bows, one to his grace the Lord High Steward, the other to the peers on each hand; and his grace and the peers return the salute. And besides these great personages, august in periwigs, and nodding to the right and left, a host of the small come up out of the past and pass before us—the jolly captains brawling in the tavern, and laughing and cursing over their cups—the drawer that serves, the bar-girl that waits, the bailiff on the prowl, the chairmen trudging through the black lampless streets, and smoking their pipes by the railings, whilst swords are clashing in the garden [pg 548] within. “Help there! a gentleman is hurt”: the chairmen put up their pipes, and help the gentleman over the railings, and carry him, ghastly and bleeding, to the bagnio in Long Acre, where they knock up the surgeon—a pretty tall gentleman—but that wound under the short ribs has done for him. Surgeon, lords, captains, bailiffs, chairmen, and gentleman gaoler with your axe, where be you now? The gentleman axeman's head is off his own shoulders; the lords and judges can wag theirs no longer; the bailiff's writs have ceased to run; the honest chairmen's pipes are put out, and with their brawny calves they have walked away into Hades—all as irrecoverably done for as Will Mountford or Captain Coote. The subject of our night's lecture saw all these people—rode in Captain Coote's company of the Guards very probably—wrote and sighed for Bracegirdle, went home tipsy in many a chair, after many a bottle, in many a tavern—fled from many a bailiff.
In 1709, when the publication of the Tatler began, our great-great-grandfathers must have seized upon that new and delightful paper with much such eagerness as lovers of light literature in a later day exhibited when the Waverley novels appeared, upon which the public rushed, forsaking that feeble entertainment of which the Miss Porters, the Anne of Swanseas, and worthy Mrs. Radcliffe herself, with her dreary castles and exploded old ghosts, had had pretty much the monopoly. I have looked over many of the comic books with which our ancestors amused themselves, from the novels of Swift's coadjutrix, Mrs. Manley, the delectable author of the New Atlantis, to the facetious productions of Tom Durfey, and Tom Brown, and Ned Ward, writer of the London Spy and several other volumes of ribaldry. The slang of the taverns and ordinaries, the wit of the bagnios, form the strongest part of the farrago of which these libels are composed. In the excellent newspaper collection at the British Museum, you may see, besides the Craftsman and Post Boy, specimens, and queer specimens they are, of the higher literature of Queen Anne's time. Here is an abstract from a notable journal bearing date, Wednesday, October 13th, 1708, and entitled The British Apollo; or, Curious Amusements for the Ingenious, by a Society of Gentlemen. The British Apollo invited and professed to answer questions upon all subjects of wit, morality, science, and even religion; and two out of its four pages are filled [pg 549] with queries and replies much like some of the oracular penny prints of the present time.
One of the first querists, referring to the passage that a bishop should be the husband of one wife, argues that polygamy is justifiable in the laity. The society of gentlemen conducting the British Apollo are posed by this casuist, and promise to give him an answer. Celinda then wishes to know from “the gentlemen”, concerning the souls of the dead, whether they shall have the satisfaction to know those whom they most valued in this transitory life. The gentlemen of the Apollo give but cold comfort to poor Celinda. They are inclined to think not: for, say they, since every inhabitant of those regions will be infinitely dearer than here are our nearest relatives—what have we to do with a partial friendship in that happy place? Poor Celinda! it may have been a child or a lover whom she had lost, and was pining after, when the oracle of British Apollo gave her this dismal answer. She has solved the question for herself by this time, and knows quite as well as the society of gentlemen.
From theology we come to physics, and Q. asks, “Why does hot water freeze sooner than cold?” Apollo replies, “Hot water cannot be said to freeze sooner than cold, but water once heated and cold, may be subject to freeze by the evaporation of the spirituous parts of the water, which renders it less able to withstand the power of frosty weather.”
The next query is rather a delicate one. “You, Mr. Apollo, who are said to be the God of Wisdom, pray give us the reason why kissing is so much in fashion: what benefit one receives by it, and who was the inventor, and you will oblige Corinna.” To this queer demand the lips of Phoebus, smiling, answer: “Pretty, innocent Corinna! Apollo owns that he was a little surprised by your kissing question, particularly at that part of it where you desire to know the benefit you receive by it. Ah! madam, had you a lover, you would not come to Apollo for a solution; since there is no dispute but the kisses of mutual lovers give infinite satisfaction. As to its invention, 'tis certain nature was its author, and it began with the first courtship.”
After a column more of questions, follow nearly two pages of poems, signed by Philander, Armenia, and the like, and chiefly on the tender passion; and the paper wound up with a letter from Leghorn, an account of the [pg 550] Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene before Lille, and proposals for publishing two sheets on the present state of Aethiopia, by Mr. Hill; all of which is printed for the authors by J. Mayo, at the Printing Press against Water Lane in Fleet Street. What a change it must have been—how Apollo's oracles must have been struck dumb, when the Tatler appeared, and scholars, gentlemen, men of the world, men of genius, began to speak!
Shortly before the Boyne was fought, and young Swift had begun to make acquaintance with English Court manners and English servitude, in Sir William Temple's family, another Irish youth was brought to learn his humanities at the old school of Charterhouse, near Smithfield; to which foundation he had been appointed by James Duke of Ormond, a governor of the House, and a patron of the lad's family. The boy was an orphan, and described, twenty years after, with a sweet pathos and simplicity, some of the earliest recollections of a life which was destined to be chequered by a strange variety of good and evil fortune.
I am afraid no good report could be given by his masters and ushers of that thick-set, square-faced, black-eyed, soft-hearted little Irish boy. He was very idle. He was whipped deservedly a great number of times. Though he had very good parts of his own, he got other boys to do his lessons for him, and only took just as much trouble as should enable him to scuffle through his exercises, and by good fortune escape the flogging block. One hundred and fifty years after, I have myself inspected, but only as an amateur, that instrument of righteous torture still existing, and in occasional use, in a secluded private apartment of the old Charterhouse School; and have no doubt it is the very counterpart, if not the ancient and interesting machine itself, at which poor Dick Steele submitted himself to the tormentors.
Besides being very kind, lazy, and good-natured, this boy went invariably into debt with the tart-woman; ran out of bounds, and entered into pecuniary, or rather promissory, engagements with the neighbouring lollipop-vendors and piemen—exhibited an early fondness and capacity for drinking mum and sack, and borrowed from all his comrades who had money to lend. I have no sort of authority for the statements here made of Steele's early [pg 551] life; but if the child is father of the man, the father of young Steele of Merton, who left Oxford without taking a degree, and entered the Life Guards—the father of Captain Steele of Lucas's Fusiliers, who got his company through the patronage of my Lord Cutts—the father of Mr. Steele the Commissioner of Stamps, the editor of the Gazette, the Tatler, and Spectator, the expelled Member of Parliament, and the author of the Tender Husband and the Conscious Lovers; if man and boy resembled each other, Dick Steele the schoolboy must have been one of the most generous, good-for-nothing, amiable little creatures that ever conjugated the verb tupto, I beat, tuptomai, I am whipped, in any school in Great Britain.
Almost every gentleman who does me the honour to hear me will remember that the very greatest character which he has seen in the course of his life, and the person to whom he has looked up with the greatest wonder and reverence, was the head boy at his school. The schoolmaster himself hardly inspires such an awe. The head boy construes as well as the schoolmaster himself. When he begins to speak the hall is hushed, and every little boy listens. He writes off copies of Latin verses as melodiously as Virgil. He is good-natured, and, his own masterpieces achieved, pours out other copies of verses for other boys with an astonishing ease and fluency; the idle ones only trembling lest they should be discovered on giving in their exercises, and whipped because their poems were too good. I have seen great men in my time, but never such a great one as that head boy of my childhood: we all thought he must be Prime Minister, and I was disappointed on meeting him in after-life to find he was no more than six feet high.
Dick Steele, the Charterhouse gownboy, contracted such an admiration in the years of his childhood, and retained it faithfully through his life. Through the school and through the world, whithersoever his strange fortune led this erring, wayward, affectionate creature, Joseph Addison was always his head boy. Addison wrote his exercises. Addison did his best themes. He ran on Addison's messages: fagged for him and blacked his shoes: to be in Joe's company was Dick's greatest pleasure; and he took a sermon or a caning from his monitor with the most boundless reverence, acquiescence, and affection.[97]
Steele found Addison a stately college Don at Oxford, and himself did not make much figure at this place. He wrote a comedy, which, by the advice of a friend, the humble fellow burned there; and some verses, which I dare say are as sublime as other gentlemen's composition at that age; but being smitten with a sudden love for military glory, he threw up the cap and gown for the saddle and bridle, and rode privately in the Horse Guards, in the Duke of Ormond's troop—the second—and, probably, with the rest of the gentlemen of his troop, “all mounted on black horses with white feathers in their hats, and scarlet coats richly laced,” marched by King William, in Hyde Park, in November, 1699, and a great show of the nobility, besides twenty thousand people, and above a thousand coaches. “The Guards had just got their new clothes,” the London Post said: “they are extraordinary grand, and thought to be the finest body of horse in the world.” But Steele could hardly have seen any actual service. He who wrote about himself, his mother, his wife, his loves, his debts, his friends, and the wine he drank, would have told us of his battles if he had seen any. His old patron, Ormond, probably got him his cornetcy in the Guards, from which he was promoted to be a captain in Lucas's Fusiliers, getting his company through the patronage of Lord Cutts, whose secretary he was, and to whom he dedicated his work called the Christian Hero. As for Dick, whilst writing this ardent devotional work, he was deep in debt, in drink, and in all the follies of the town; it is related that all the officers of Lucas's, and the gentlemen of the Guards, laughed at Dick.[98] And in truth a theologian in liquor is not a respectable object, and a hermit, though he may be out at elbows, must not be in debt to the tailor. Steele says of himself that he was always [pg 553] sinning and repenting. He beat his breast and cried most piteously when he did repent: but as soon as crying had [pg 554] made him thirsty, he fell to sinning again. In that charming paper in the Tatler, in which he records his father's death, his mother's griefs, his own most solemn and tender emotions, he says he is interrupted by the arrival of a hamper of wine, “the same as is to be sold at Garraway's, next week,” upon the receipt of which he sends for three friends, and they fall to instantly, “drinking two bottles apiece, with great benefit to themselves, and not separating till two o'clock in the morning.”
His life was so. Jack the drawer was always interrupting it, bringing him a bottle from the “Rose”, or inviting him over to a bout there with Sir Plume and Mr. Diver; and Dick wiped his eyes, which were whimpering over his papers, took down his laced hat, put on his sword and wig, kissed his wife and children, told them a lie about pressing business, and went off to the “Rose” to the jolly fellows.
While Mr. Addison was abroad, and after he came home in rather a dismal way to wait upon Providence in his shabby lodging in the Haymarket, young Captain Steele was cutting a much smarter figure than that of his classical friend of Charterhouse Cloister and Maudlin Walk. Could not some painter give an interview between the gallant captain of Lucas's, with his hat cocked, and his lace, and his face too, a trifle tarnished with drink, and that poet, that philosopher, pale, proud, and poor, his friend and monitor of schooldays, of all days? How Dick must [pg 555] have bragged about his chances and his hopes, and the fine company he kept, and the charms of the reigning toasts and popular actresses, and the number of bottles that he and my lord and some other pretty fellows had cracked overnight at the “Devil”, or the “Garter”! Cannot one fancy Joseph Addison's calm smile and cold grey eyes following Dick for an instant, as he struts down the Mall, to dine with the Guard at St. James's, before he turns, with his sober pace and threadbare suit, to walk back to his lodgings up the two pair of stairs? Steele's name was down for promotion, Dick always said himself, in the glorious, pious, and immortal William's last table-book. Jonathan Swift's name had been written there by the same hand too.
Our worthy friend, the author of the Christian Hero, continued to make no small figure about town by the use of his wits.[99] He was appointed Gazetteer: he wrote, in 1703, The Tender Husband, his second play, in which there is some delightful farcical writing, and of which he fondly owned in after-life, and when Addison was no more, that there were “many applauded strokes” from Addison's beloved hand.[100] Is it not a pleasant partnership to remember? Can't one fancy Steele full of spirits and youth, leaving his gay company to go to Addison's lodging, where [pg 556] his friend sits in the shabby sitting-room, quite serene, and cheerful, and poor? In 1704, Steele came on the town with another comedy, and behold it was so moral and religious, as poor Dick insisted, so dull the town thought, that the Lying Lover was damned.
Addison's hour of success now came, and he was able to help our friend, the Christian Hero, in such a way, that, if there had been any chance of keeping that poor tipsy champion upon his legs, his fortune was safe, and his competence assured. Steele procured the place of Commissioner of Stamps: he wrote so richly, so gracefully often, so kindly always, with such a pleasant wit and easy frankness, with such a gush of good spirits and good humour, that his early papers may be compared to Addison's own, and are to be read, by a male reader at least, with quite an equal pleasure.[101]
After the Tatler, in 1711, the famous Spectator made its appearance, and this was followed, at various intervals, by [pg 558] many periodicals under the same editor—the Guardian—the Englishman—the Lover, whose love was rather insipid—the [pg 559] Reader, of whom the public saw no more after his second appearance—the Theatre, under the pseudonym of Sir John Edgar, which Steele wrote, while Governor of the Royal Company of Comedians, to which post, and to that of Surveyor of the Royal Stables at Hampton Court, and to the Commission of the Peace for Middlesex, and to the honour of knighthood, Steele had been preferred soon after the accession of George I, whose cause honest Dick had nobly fought, through disgrace and danger, against the most formidable enemies, against traitors and bullies, against Bolingbroke and Swift in the last reign. With the arrival of the King, that splendid conspiracy broke up; [pg 560] and a golden opportunity came to Dick Steele, whose hand, alas, was too careless to grip it.
Steele married twice; and outlived his places, his schemes, his wife, his income, his health, and almost everything but his kind heart. That ceased to trouble him in 1729, when he died, worn out and almost forgotten by his contemporaries, in Wales, where he had the remnant of a property.
Posterity has been kinder to this amiable creature; all women especially are bound to be grateful to Steele, as he was the first of our writers who really seemed to admire and respect them. Congreve the Great, who alludes to the low estimation in which women were held in Elizabeth's time, as a reason why the women of Shakespeare make so small a figure in the poet's dialogues, though he can himself pay splendid compliments to women, yet looks on them as mere instruments of gallantry, and destined, like the most consummate fortifications, to fall, after a certain time, before the arts and bravery of the besieger, man. There is a letter of Swift's, entitled “Advice to a very Young Married Lady”, which shows the Dean's opinion of the female society of his day, and that if he despised man he utterly scorned women too. No lady of our time could be treated by any man, were he ever so much a wit or Dean, in such a tone of insolent patronage and vulgar protection. In this performance, Swift hardly takes pains to hide his opinion that a woman is a fool: tells her to read books, as if reading was a novel accomplishment; and informs her that “not one gentleman's daughter in a thousand has been brought to read or understand her own natural tongue”. Addison laughs at women equally; but, with the gentleness and politeness of his nature, smiles at them and watches them, as if they were harmless, halfwitted, amusing, pretty creatures, only made to be men's playthings. It was Steele who first began to pay a manly homage to their goodness and understanding, as well as to their tenderness and beauty.[102] In his comedies, the [pg 561] heroes do not rant and rave about the divine beauties of Gloriana or Statira, as the characters were made to do in the chivalry romances and the high-flown dramas just going out of vogue, but Steele admires women's virtue, acknowledges their sense, and adores their purity and beauty, with an ardour and strength which should win the goodwill of all women to their hearty and respectful champion. It is this ardour, this respect, this manliness, which makes his comedies so pleasant and their heroes such fine gentlemen. He paid the finest compliment to a woman that perhaps ever was offered. Of one woman, whom Congreve had also admired and celebrated, Steele says, that “to have loved her was a liberal education”. “How often,” he says, dedicating a volume to his wife, “how often has your tenderness removed pain from my sick head, how often anguish from my afflicted heart! If there are such beings as guardian angels, they are thus employed. I cannot believe one of them to be more good in inclination, or more charming in form than my wife.” His breast seems to warm and his eyes to kindle when he meets with a good and beautiful woman, and it is with his heart as well as with his hat that he salutes her. About children, and all that relates to home, he is not less tender, and more than once speaks in apology of what he calls his softness. He would have been nothing without that delightful weakness. It is that which gives his works their worth and his style its charm. It, like his life, is full of faults and careless blunders; and redeemed, like that, by his sweet and compassionate nature.
We possess of poor Steele's wild and chequered life some of the most curious memoranda that ever were left of a man's biography.[103] Most men's letters, from Cicero down [pg 562] to Walpole, or down to the great men of our own time, if you will, are doctored compositions, and written with [pg 563] an eye suspicious towards posterity. That dedication of Steele's to his wife is an artificial performance, possibly; [pg 564] at least, it is written with that degree of artifice which an orator uses in arranging a statement for the House, or a poet employs in preparing a sentiment in verse or for [pg 565] the stage. But there are some 400 letters of Dick Steele'e to his wife, which that thrifty woman preserved accurately, and which could have been written but for her and her alone. They contain details of the business, pleasures, quarrels, reconciliations of the pair; they have all the genuineness of conversation; they are as artless as a child's prattle, and as confidential as a curtain-lecture. Some are written from the printing-office, where he is waiting for the proofsheets of his Gazette, or his Tatler; some are written from the tavern, whence he promises to come to his wife “within a pint of wine”, and where he has given a rendezvous to a friend, or a money-lender: some are composed in a high state of vinous excitement, when his head is flustered with burgundy, and his heart abounds with amorous warmth for his darling Prue: some are under the influence of the dismal headache and repentance next morning: some, alas, are from the lock-up house, where the lawyers have impounded him, and where he is waiting for bail. You trace many years of the poor fellow's career in these letters. In September, 1707, from which day she began to save the letters, he married the beautiful Mistress Scurlock. You have his passionate protestations to the lady; his respectful proposals to her mamma; his private prayer to Heaven when the union so ardently desired was completed; his fond professions of contrition and promises of amendment, when, immediately after his marriage, there began to be just cause for the one and need for the other.
Captain Steele took a house for his lady upon their marriage, “the third door from Germain Street, left hand of Berry Street,” and the next year he presented his wife with a country house at Hampton. It appears she had a chariot and pair, and sometimes four horses: he himself enjoyed a little horse for his own riding. He paid, or promised to pay, his barber fifty pounds a year, and always went abroad in a laced coat and a large black-buckled periwig, that must have cost somebody fifty guineas. He was rather a well-to-do gentleman, Captain Steele, with the proceeds of his estates in Barbadoes (left to him by his first wife), his income as a writer of the Gazette, and his office of gentleman waiter to his Royal Highness Prince George. His second wife brought him a fortune too. But it is melancholy to relate, that with these houses and [pg 566] chariots and horses and income, the Captain was constantly in want of money, for which his beloved bride was asking as constantly. In the course of a few pages we begin to find the shoemaker calling for money, and some directions from the Captain, who has not thirty pounds to spare. He sends his wife, “the beautifullest object in the world,” as he calls her, and evidently in reply to applications of her own, which have gone the way of all waste paper, and lighted Dick's pipes, which were smoked a hundred and forty years ago—he sends his wife now a guinea, then a half-guinea, then a couple of guineas, then half a pound of tea; and again no money and no tea at all, but a promise that his darling Prue shall have some in a day or two: or a request, perhaps, that she will send over his night-gown and shaving-plate to the temporary lodging where the nomadic captain is lying, hidden from the bailiffs. Oh that a Christian hero and late captain in Lucas's should be afraid of a dirty sheriff's officer! That the pink and pride of chivalry should turn pale before a writ! It stands to record in poor Dick's own handwriting; the queer collection is preserved at the British Museum to this present day; that the rent of the nuptial house in Jermyn Street, sacred to unutterable tenderness and Prue, and three doors from Bury Street, was not paid until after the landlord had put in an execution on Captain Steele's furniture. Addison sold the house and furniture at Hampton, and, after deducting the sum in which his incorrigible friend was indebted to him, handed over the residue of the proceeds of the sale to poor Dick, who wasn't in the least angry at Addison's summary proceeding, and I dare say was very glad of any sale or execution, the result of which was to give him a little ready money. Having a small house in Jermyn Street for which he couldn't pay, and a country house at Hampton on which he had borrowed money, nothing must content Captain Dick but the taking, in 1712, a much finer, larger, and grander house, in Bloomsbury Square; where his unhappy landlord got no better satisfaction than his friend in St. James's, and where it is recorded that Dick, giving a grand entertainment, had a half-dozen queer-looking fellows in livery to wait upon his noble guests, and confessed that his servants were bailiffs to a man. “I fared like a distressed prince,” the kindly prodigal writes, generously complimenting Addison [pg 567] for his assistance in the Tatler,—“I fared like a distressed prince, who calls in a powerful neighbour to his aid. I was undone by my auxiliary; when I had once called him in, I could not subsist without dependence on him.” Poor, needy Prince of Bloomsbury! think of him in his palace, with his allies from Chancery Lane ominously guarding him.
All sorts of stories are told indicative of his recklessness and his good humour. One narrated by Dr. Hoadly is exceedingly characteristic; it shows the life of the time: and our poor friend very weak, but very kind both in and out of his cups.
“My father” (says Dr. John Hoadly, the bishop's son)—“when Bishop of Bangor, was, by invitation, present at one of the Whig meetings, held at the ‘Trumpet’, in Shire Lane, when Sir Richard, in his zeal, rather exposed himself, having the double duty of the day upon him, as well to celebrate the immortal memory of King William, it being the 4th of November, as to drink his friend Addison up to conversation pitch, whose phlegmatic constitution was hardly warmed for society by that time. Steele was not fit for it. Two remarkable circumstances happened. John Sly, the hatter of facetious memory, was in the house; and John, pretty mellow, took it into his head to come into the company on his knees, with a tankard of ale in his hand to drink off to the immortal memory, and to return in the same manner. Steele, sitting next my father, whispered him—‘Do laugh. It is humanity to laugh.’ Sir Richard, in the evening, being too much in the same condition, was put into a chair, and sent home. Nothing would serve him but being carried to the Bishop of Bangor's, late as it was. However, the chairmen carried him home, and got him upstairs, when his great complaisance would wait on them downstairs, which he did, and then was got quietly to bed.”[104]
There is another amusing story which, I believe, that renowned collector, Mr. Joseph Miller, or his successors, have incorporated into their work. Sir Richard Steele, at a time when he was much occupied with theatrical affairs, built himself a pretty private theatre, and, before it was [pg 568] opened to his friends and guests, was anxious to try whether the hall was well adapted for hearing. Accordingly he placed himself in the most remote part of the gallery, and begged the carpenter who had built the house to speak up from the stage. The man at first said that he was unaccustomed to public speaking, and did not know what to say to his honour; but the good-natured knight called out to him to say whatever was uppermost; and, after a moment, the carpenter began, in a voice perfectly audible: “Sir Richard Steele!” he said, “for three months past me and my men has been a-working in this theatre, and we've never seen the colour of your honour's money: we will be very much obliged if you'll pay it directly, for until you do we won't drive in another nail.” Sir Richard said that his friend's elocution was perfect, but that he didn't like his subject much.
The great charm of Steele's writing is its naturalness. He wrote so quickly and carelessly, that he was forced to make the reader his confidant, and had not the time to deceive him. He had a small share of book-learning, but a vast acquaintance with the world. He had known men and taverns. He had lived with gownsmen, with troopers, with gentleman ushers of the Court, with men and women of fashion; with authors and wits, with the inmates of the spunging-houses, and with the frequenters of all the clubs and coffee-houses in the town. He was liked in all company because he liked it; and you like to see his enjoyment as you like to see the glee of a box full of children at the pantomime. He was not of those lonely ones of the earth whose greatness obliged them to be solitary; on the contrary, he admired, I think, more than any man who ever wrote; and full of hearty applause and sympathy, wins upon you by calling you to share his delight and good humour. His laugh rings through the whole house. He must have been invaluable at a tragedy, and have cried as much as the most tender young lady in the boxes. He has a relish for beauty and goodness wherever he meets it. He admired Shakespeare affectionately, and more than any man of his time; and, according to his generous expansive nature, called upon all his company to like what he liked himself. He did not damn with faint praise: he was in the world and of it; and his enjoyment of life presents the strangest contrast to Swift's savage indignation and [pg 569] Addison's lonely serenity.[105] Permit me to read to you a passage from each writer, curiously indicative of his peculiar [pg 570] humour: the subject is the same, and the mood the very gravest. We have said that upon all the actions of man, the most trifling and the most solemn, the humourist takes upon himself to comment. All readers of our old masters know the terrible lines of Swift, in which he hints at his philosophy and describes the end of mankind:—[106]
Amazed, confused, its fate unknown,
The world stood trembling at Jove's throne;
While each pale sinner hung his head,
Jove, nodding, shook the heavens and said:
'Offending race of human kind,
By nature, reason, learning, blind;
You who through frailty stepped aside,
And you who never err'd through pride;
You who in different sects were shamm'd,
And come to see each other damn'd
(So some folk told you, but they knew
No more of Jove's designs than you).
The world's mad business now is o'er,
And I resent your freaks no more;
I to such blockheads set my wit,
I damn such fools—go, go, you're bit!'
Addison, speaking on the very same theme, but with how different a voice, says, in his famous paper on Westminster Abbey (Spectator, No. 26):—“For my own part, though I am always serious, I do not know what it is to be melancholy, and can therefore take a view of nature in her deep and solemn scenes with the same pleasure as in her most gay and delightful ones. When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies within me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents on a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those we must quickly follow.” (I have owned [pg 571] that I do not think Addison's heart melted very much, or that he indulged very inordinately in the “vanity of grieving”.) “When,” he goes on, “when I see kings lying by those who deposed them: when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes,—I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. And, when I read the several dates on the tombs of some that died yesterday and some 600 years ago, I consider that Great Day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together.”
Our third humourist comes to speak upon the same subject. You will have observed in the previous extracts the characteristic humour of each writer—the subject and the contrast—the fact of Death, and the play of individual thought, by which each comments on it, and now hear the third writer—death, sorrow, and the grave, being for the moment also his theme. “The first sense of sorrow I ever knew,” Steele says in the Tatler, “was upon the death of my father, at which time I was not quite five years of age: but was rather amazed at what all the house meant, than possessed of a real understanding why nobody would play with us. I remember I went into the room where his body lay, and my mother sat weeping alone by it. I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a-beating the coffin, and calling papa; for, I know not how, I had some idea that he was locked up there. My mother caught me in her arms, and, transported beyond all patience of the silent grief she was before in, she almost smothered me in her embraces, and told me in a flood of tears, ‘Papa could not hear me, and would play with me no more: for they were going to put him under ground, whence he would never come to us again.’ She was a very beautiful woman, of a noble spirit, and there was a dignity in her grief amidst all the wildness of her transport, which methought struck me with an instinct of sorrow that, before I was sensible what it was to grieve, seized my very soul, and has made pity the weakness of my heart ever since.”
Can there be three more characteristic moods of minds and men? “Fools, do you know anything of this mystery?” says Swift, stamping on a grave and carrying his scorn for mankind actually beyond it. “Miserable, purblind wretches, how dare you to pretend to comprehend the Inscrutable, [pg 572] and how can your dim eyes pierce the unfathomable depths of yonder boundless heaven?” Addison, in a much kinder language and gentler voice, utters much the same sentiment: and speaks of the rivalry of wits, and the contests of holy men, with the same sceptic placidity. “Look what a little vain dust we are;” he says, smiling over the tombstones, and catching, as is his wont, quite a divine effulgence as he looks heavenward, he speaks in words of inspiration almost, of “the Great Day, when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together”.
The third, whose theme is Death, too, and who will speak his word of moral as Heaven teaches him, leads you up to his father's coffin, and shows you his beautiful mother weeping, and himself an unconscious little boy wondering at her side. His own natural tears flow as he takes your hand and confidingly asks your sympathy. “See how good and innocent and beautiful women are,” he says, “how tender little children! Let us love these and one another, brother—God knows we have need of love and pardon.” So it is each man looks with his own eyes, speaks with his own voice, and prays his own prayer.
When Steele asks your sympathy for the actors in that charming scene of Love and Grief and Death, who can refuse it? One yields to it as to the frank advance of a child, or to the appeal of a woman. A man is seldom more manly than when he is what you call unmanned—the source of his emotion is championship, pity, and courage; the instinctive desire to cherish those who are innocent and unhappy, and defend those who are tender and weak. If Steele is not our friend he is nothing. He is by no means the most brilliant of wits nor the deepest of thinkers: but he is our friend: we love him, as children love their love with an A, because he is amiable. Who likes a man best because he is the cleverest or the wisest of mankind; or a woman because she is the most virtuous, or talks French; or plays the piano better than the rest of her sex? I own to liking Dick Steele the man, and Dick Steele the author, much better than much better men and much better authors.
The misfortune regarding Steele is, that most part of the company here present must take his amiability upon hearsay, and certainly can't make his intimate acquaintance. Not that Steele was worse than his time; on the contrary, a far better, truer, and higher-hearted man than most who [pg 573] lived in it. But things were done in that society, and names were named, which would make you shudder now. What would be the sensation of a polite youth of the present day, if at a ball he saw the young object of his affections taking a box out of her pocket and a pinch of snuff: or if at dinner, by the charmer's side, she deliberately put her knife into her mouth? If she cut her mother's throat with it, mamma would scarcely be more shocked. I allude to these peculiarities of bygone times as an excuse for my favourite, Steele, who was not worse, and often much more delicate than his neighbours.
There exists a curious document descriptive of the manners of the last age, which describes most minutely the amusements and occupations of persons of fashion in London at the time of which we are speaking; the time of Swift, and Addison, and Steele.
When Lord Sparkish, Tom Neverout, and Colonel Alwit, the immortal personages of Swift's polite conversation, came to breakfast with my Lady Smart, at eleven o'clock in the morning, my Lord Smart was absent at the Levée. His lordship was at home to dinner at three o'clock to receive his guests; and we may sit down to this meal, like the Barmecide's, and see the fops of the last century before us. Seven of them sat down at dinner, and were joined by a country baronet, who told them they kept Court hours. These persons of fashion began their dinner with a sirloin of beef, fish, a shoulder of veal, and a tongue. My Lady Smart carved the sirloin, my Lady Answerwell helped the fish, and the gallant colonel cut the shoulder of veal. All made a considerable inroad on the sirloin and the shoulder of veal with the exception of Sir John, who had no appetite, having already partaken of a beefsteak and two mugs of ale, besides a tankard of March beer as soon as he got out of bed. They drank claret, which the master of the house said should always be drunk after fish; and my Lord Smart particularly recommended some excellent cider to my Lord Sparkish, which occasioned some brilliant remarks from that nobleman. When the host called for wine, he nodded to one or other of his guests, and said, “Tom Neverout, my service to you.”
After the first course came almond pudding, fritters, which the colonel took with his hands out of the dish, in order to help the brilliant Miss Notable; chickens, black [pg 574] puddings, and soup; and Lady Smart, the elegant mistress of the mansion, finding a skewer in a dish, placed it in her plate with directions that it should be carried down to the cook and dressed for the cook's own dinner. Wine and small beer were drunk during this second course; and when the colonel called for beer, he called the butler, Friend, and asked whether the beer was good. Various jocular remarks passed from the gentlefolks to the servants; at breakfast several persons had a word and a joke for Mrs. Betty, my lady's maid, who warmed the cream and had charge of the canister (the tea cost thirty shillings a pound in those days). When my Lady Sparkish sent her footman out to my Lady Match to come at six o'clock and play at quadrille, her ladyship warned the man to follow his nose, and if he fell by the way not to stay to get up again. And when the gentlemen asked the hall-porter if his lady was at home, that functionary replied, with manly waggishness, “She was at home just now, but she's not gone out yet.”
After the puddings, sweet and black, the fritters and soup, came the third course, of which the chief dish was a hot venison pasty, which was put before Lord Smart, and carved by that nobleman. Besides the pasty, there was a hare, a rabbit, some pigeons, partridges, a goose, and a ham. Beer and wine were freely imbibed during this course, the gentlemen always pledging somebody with every glass which they drank; and by this time the conversation between Tom Neverout and Miss Notable had grown so brisk and lively, that the Derbyshire baronet began to think the young gentlewoman was Tom's sweetheart; on which Miss remarked, that she loved Tom “like pie”. After the goose, some of the gentlemen took a dram of brandy, “which was very good for the wholesomes,” Sir John said; and now having had a tolerably substantial dinner, honest Lord Smart bade the butler bring up the great tankard full of October to Sir John. The great tankard was passed from hand to hand and mouth to mouth, but when pressed by the noble host upon the gallant Tom Neverout, he said, “No faith, my lord, I like your wine, and won't put a churl upon a gentleman. Your honour's claret is good enough for me.” And so, the dinner over, the host said, “Hang saving, bring us up a ha'porth of cheese.”
The cloth was now taken away, and a bottle of burgundy was set down, of which the ladies were invited to partake [pg 575] before they went to their tea. When they withdrew, the gentlemen promised to join them in an hour; fresh bottles were brought, the “dead men”, meaning the empty bottles, removed; and “D'you hear, John? bring clean glasses”, my Lord Smart said. On which the gallant Colonel Alwit said, “I'll keep my glass; for wine is the best liquor to wash glasses in.”
After an hour the gentlemen joined the ladies, and then they all sat and played quadrille until three o'clock in the morning, when the chairs and the flambeaux came, and this noble company went to bed.
Such were manners six or seven score years ago. I draw no inference from this queer picture—let all moralists here present deduce their own. Fancy the moral condition of that society in which a lady of fashion joked with a footman, and carved a great shoulder of veal, and provided besides a sirloin, a goose, hare, rabbit, chickens, partridges, black-puddings, and a ham for a dinner for eight Christians. What—what could have been the condition of that polite world in which people openly ate goose after almond pudding, and took their soup in the middle of dinner? Fancy a colonel in the Guards putting his hand into a dish of beignets d'abricot, and helping his neighbour, a young lady du monde! Fancy a noble lord calling out to the servants, before the ladies at his table, “Hang expense, bring us a ha'porth of cheese!” Such were the ladies of St. James's—such were the frequenters of White's Chocolate-house, when Swift used to visit it, and Steele described it as the centre of pleasure, gallantry, and entertainment, a hundred and forty years ago!
Dennis, who ran amuck at the literary society of his day, falls foul of poor Steele, and thus depicts him,—“Sir John Edgar, of the county of —— in Ireland, is of a middle stature, broad shoulders, thick legs, a shape like the picture of somebody over a farmer's chimney—a short chin, a short nose, a short forehead, a broad, flat face, and a dusky countenance. Yet with such a face and such a shape, he discovered at sixty that he took himself for a beauty, and appeared to be more mortified at being told that he was ugly, than he was by any reflection made upon his honour or understanding.
“He is a gentleman born, witness himself, of very honourable family; certainly of a very ancient one, for his ancestors [pg 576] flourished in Tipperary long before the English ever set foot in Ireland. He has testimony of this more authentic than the Heralds' Office, or any human testimony. For God has marked him more abundantly than he did Cain, and stamped his native country on his face, his understanding, his writings, his actions, his passions, and, above all, his vanity. The Hibernian brogue is still upon all these, though long habit and length of days have worn it off his tongue.”[107]
Although this portrait is the work of a man who was neither the friend of Steele nor of any other man alive, yet [pg 577] there is a dreadful resemblance to the original in the savage and exaggerated traits of the caricature, and everybody who knows him must recognize Dick Steele. Dick set about almost all the undertakings of his life with inadequate means, and, as he took and furnished a house with the most generous intentions towards his friends, the most tender gallantry towards his wife, and with this only drawback, that he had not wherewithal to pay the rent when quarter-day came,—so, in his life he proposed to himself the most magnificent schemes of virtue, forbearance, public and private good, and the advancement of his own and the national religion; but when he had to pay for these articles—so difficult to purchase and so costly to maintain—poor Dick's money was not forthcoming: and when Virtue called with her little bill, Dick made a shuffling excuse that he could not see her that morning, having a headache from being tipsy overnight; or when stern Duty rapped at the door with his account, Dick was absent and not ready to pay. He was shirking at the tavern; or had some particular business (of somebody's else) at the ordinary; or he was in hiding, or worse than in hiding, in the lock-up house. What a situation for a man!—for a philanthropist—for a lover of right and truth—for a magnificent designer and schemer! Not to dare to look in the face the Religion which he adored and which he had offended; to have to shirk down back lanes and alleys, so as to avoid the friend whom he loved and who had trusted him—to have the house which he had intended for his wife, whom he loved passionately, and for her ladyship's company which he wished to entertain splendidly, in the possession of a bailiff's man, with a crowd of little creditors,—grocers, butchers, and small-coal men, lingering round the door with their bills and jeering at him. Alas! for poor Dick Steele! For nobody else, of course. There is no man or woman in our time who makes fine projects and gives them up from idleness or want of means. When Duty calls upon us, we no doubt are always at home and ready to pay that grim tax-gatherer. When we are stricken with remorse and promise reform, we keep our promise, and are never angry, or idle, or extravagant any more. There are no chambers in our hearts, destined for family friends and affections, and now occupied by some Sin's emissary and bailiff in possession. There are no little sins, shabby peccadilloes, importunate [pg 578] remembrances, or disappointed holders of our promises to reform, hovering at our steps, or knocking at our door! Of course not. We are living in the nineteenth century, and poor Dick Steele stumbled and got up again, and got into jail and out again, and sinned and repented; and loved and suffered; and lived and died scores of years ago. Peace be with him! Let us think gently of one who was so gentle: let us speak kindly of one whose own breast exuberated with human kindness.