The Duke of Cumberland wanted a lodging for the night, and stayed accordingly in the house of Mr. Savage, who, during the progress of the affair, had locked himself in, while his daughter-in-law hid in the kitchen cupboard. The Quaker’s account of the Duke was, “pleasant agreeable company he was—a man of parts, very friendly, and no pride in him.”
A CHARMED LIFE
None came so well out of that fight as Colonel Honeywood of Howgill, who seems to have been a host in himself, and would have done even better had it not been for an accident by which even the bravest of the brave might be brought ingloriously to earth. His prowess was vouched for by a Highlander, who, asked how his people got on, quaintly replied: “We gat on vary weel, till the lang man in the muckle boots cam ower the dyke, but his fut slipped on a turd, and we gat him down.” The Highlanders nearly did for the “lang man,” for they gave him three sword cuts on the head, and then left. He seems to have lived a charmed life, for he was at that time invalided home from Continental warfare, in which, at the Battle of Dettingen, he had received no fewer than twenty-three broadsword cuts and two musket balls.
His hurts do not seem to have permanently harmed him, for he lived forty years longer.
XXI
In the lowlands beneath Clifton stands Brougham Hall, and near it Brougham Castle, both beside the Eamont river. A good deal of the Hall is ancient, but most of the exterior, recased in a baronial way, looks like (what it is) an academic attempt at recovering the architectural style of the fourteenth century. When it is said that the work was done in the early part of the nineteenth century, it will be supposed, with a good deal of truth, that the result is dull and lifeless. Anciently the seat of the Broughams, it came at length to the Bird family, from whom the property was purchased in 1727 by the grandfather of the Lord Brougham who was Lord Chancellor and a great political figure in the days of George the Fourth, William the Fourth, and Queen Victoria. Dr. Granville, travelling hereabouts in the middle of the nineteenth century, sampling medicinal spas, looked upon the Hall with awe, as the residence of that statesman.
The Doctor cherished a remarkable veneration for that able, but eccentric personage, and was perhaps the only person to do so. Says he, “Like the Château de Vernet, Brougham Hall, when the grave shall have swept away prejudices and political animosities, will be visited by thousands, eager to behold the château of the English Voltaire; he who, to the encyclopædic knowledge and pungent wit of the French philosopher, joined the impassioned and fiery eloquence of Mirabeau.” Thus the enthusiastic Granville.
LORD BROUGHAM
Eloquence? Brougham could tear a passion to tatters with any one, but he ranted. It is true that the post-boys used to drive the chaises of travellers in these regions somewhat out of the direct road, in order to glimpse the residence of Lord Brougham; but those travellers viewed the place, and Brougham himself, with curiosity, just as one might an Icelandic geyser, to which, indeed, he is not inaptly to be compared. His spoutings were as plentiful and as hot.
Not every one looked upon Brougham with awe, as the caricatures of his grotesque physiognomy prove. Jemmy Anderson, a well-known post-boy in this district, was not abashed by him; but then post-boys venerated no one. It was in the days when the future Lord Chancellor was still Mr. Henry Brougham, Q.C., that Jemmy Anderson drove him, post, from Shap to Penrith, and “took him down” an unwonted peg. Jemmy jogged quietly along at about seven miles an hour, mounted upon an almost broken-down wheeler, until the fiery spirit within the post-chaise could stand it no longer. Letting down the front window the future Lord Chancellor vociferated: “Post-boy, I shan’t give you a farthing, for you have driven me like a snail.” “Indeed,” replied the shrewd Cumbrian, “thee wunna gie me a farden, wunna thee? Then ah’ve coomed far enow for nowt!” With that he slowly dismounted and began to detach his horses from the chaise, until an appealing voice from within led to a compromise, by which the angry lawyer, who had been specially retained to appear in a cause célèbre at Penrith, capitulated, and upon paying his money down—upon which the offended post-boy insisted—Jemmy Anderson was persuaded to finish the stage.