Portraits of Curious Characters in London, &c. &c. / With Descriptive and Entertaining Ancedotes.

by Anonymous

The model which Mr. Elwes left to future members may, perhaps, be looked on rather as a work to wonder at than to follow, even under the most virtuous of administrations. Mr. Elwes came into Parliament without expense, and he performed his duty as a member would have done in the pure days of our constitution. What he had not bought, he never attempted to sell; and he went forward in that straight and direct path, which can alone satisfy a reflecting and good mind. In one word, Mr. Elwes, as a public man, voted and acted in the House of Commons, as a man would do who felt there were people to live after him, who wished to deliver unmortgaged to his children the public estate of government; and who felt, that if he suffered himself to become a pensioner on it, he thus far embarrassed his posterity, and injured their inheritance.

When his son was in the Guards, he was frequently in the habit of dining at the officers' table there. The politeness of his manner rendered him generally agreeable, and in time he became acquainted with every officer in the corps. Amongst the rest, was a gentleman of the name of Tempest, whose good humour was almost proverbial. A vacancy happening in a majority, it fell to this gentleman to purchase; but as money is not always to be got upon landed property immediately, it was imagined that some officer would have been obliged to purchase over his head. Old Mr. Elwes hearing of the circumstance, sent him the money the next morning, without asking any security. He had seen Captain Tempest, and liked his manners; and he never once afterwards talked to him about the payment of it. But on the death of Captain Tempest, which happened shortly after, the money was replaced.

This was an act of liberality in Mr. Elwes which ought to atone for many of his failings. But behold the inequalities which so strongly mark this human being! Mr. Spurling, of Dynes-Hall, a very active and intelligent magistrate for the county of Essex, was once requested by Mr. Elwes to accompany him to Newmarket. It was a day in one of the spring meetings which was remarkably filled with races; and they were out from six in the morning till eight o'clock in the evening before they again set out for home. Mr. Elwes, in the usual way, would eat nothing; but Mr. Spurling was somewhat wiser, and went down to Newmarket. When they began their journey home, the evening was grown very dark and cold, and Mr. Spurling rode on somewhat quicker; but on going through the turnpike by the Devil's Ditch, he heard Mr. Elwes calling to him with great eagerness. On returning before he had paid, Mr. Elwes said, "Here! here! follow me—this is the best road!" In an instant he saw Mr. Elwes, as well as the night would permit, climbing his horse up the precipice of the ditch. "Sir," said Mr. Spurling, "I can never get up there." "No danger at all!" replied old Elwes: "but if your horse be not safe, lead him!" At length, with great difficulty, and with one of the horses falling, they mounted the ditch, and then, with not less toil got down on the other side. When they were safely landed on the plain, Mr. Spurling thanked heaven for their escape. "Ay," said old Elwes, "you mean from the turnpike: very right; never pay a turnpike if you can avoid it!" In proceeding on their journey, they came to a very narrow road: on which Mr. Elwes, notwithstanding the cold, went as slow as possible. On Mr. Spurling wishing to quicken their pace, old Elwes observed, that he was letting his horse feed on some hay that was hanging to the sides of the hedge. "Besides," added he, "it is nice hay, and you have it for nothing!"

Thus, while endangering his neck to save the payment of a turnpike, and starving his horse for a halfpenny-worth of hay, was he risking the sum of twenty-five thousand pounds on some iron works across the Atlantic Ocean, and of which he knew nothing, either as to produce, prospect or situation.

In the advance of the season, his morning employment was to pick up any stray chips, bones, or other things, to carry to the fire, in his pocket; and he was one day surprised by a neighbouring gentleman in the act of pulling down, with some difficulty, a crow's nest, for this purpose. On the gentleman wondering why he gave himself this trouble.

"Oh, Sir," replied he, "it is really a shame that these creatures should do so. Do but see what waste they make!"

To save, as he thought, the expense of going to a butcher, he would have a whole sheep killed, and so eat mutton to the—end of the chapter. When he occasionally had his river drawn, though sometimes horse-loads of small fish were taken, not one would he suffer to be thrown in again, for he observed, "He should never see them more!" Game in the last state of putrefaction, and meat that walked about his plate, would he continue to eat, rather than have new things killed before the old provision was exhausted.

When any friends, who might occasionally be with him, were absent, he would carefully put out his own fire, and walk to the house of a neighbour; and thus make one fire serve both. His shoes he never would suffer to be cleaned, lest they should be worn out the sooner. But still, with all this self-denial—that penury of life to which the inhabitant of an alms-house is not doomed—still did he think he was profuse; and frequently said, "he must be a little more careful of his property." When he went to bed, he would put five or ten guineas into a bureau, and then, full of his money, after he had retired to rest, sometimes in the middle of the night, he would come down to see if it was safe. The irritation of his mind was unceasing. He thought every body extravagant; and when a person was talking to him one day of the great wealth of old Mr. Jennings, (who is supposed to be worth a million,) and that they had seen him that day in a new carriage, "Ay, ay," said old Elwes; "he will soon see the end of his money!"

Mr. Elwes now denied himself every thing, except the common necessaries of life; and, indeed, it might have admitted a doubt, whether or not, if his manors, his fish-ponds, and grounds in his own hands, had not furnished a subsistence, where he had not any thing actually to buy, he would not, rather than have bought any thing, have starved. He one day, during this period, dined upon the remaining part of a moor-hen, which had been brought out of the river by a rat! and, at another, ate an undigested part of a pike, which a larger one had swallowed, but had not finished, and which was taken in this state in a net! At the time this last circumstance happened, he discovered a strange kind of satisfaction; for he said to Capt. Topham, who happened to be present, "Ay! this is killing two birds with one stone!" Mr. Elwes, at this time, was perhaps worth nearly 800,000l. and at this period he had not made his will, of course was not saving from any sentiment of affection for any person.