The law had not long to wait before other offenders were summoned for too freely using the sword. On a night in November, 1727, Savage the poet, with two companions, named Gregory and Merchant, entered a coffee-house near Charing-cross. Merchant insulted the company, a quarrel ensued, swords were drawn, and a Mr. Sinclair was slain by a thrust,—it is said, but not proved, from the sword of Savage. The result of the trial that followed is well known. The verdict of guilty of murder against Savage and Gregory, and of manslaughter against Merchant (who was the most culpable of the three), was exacted by a villanously partial judge, evidently under pressure of the proclamation against swords.
Merchant was at once burned in the hand in open court; he was also fined, compelled to give security for future good behaviour, and discharged. His associates had a narrow escape of an ignominious death, for which they were assiduously prepared by that Dr. Edward Young, who had not then achieved a reputation for ‘Night Thoughts,’ but who was establishing a reputation by the publication of those ‘Satires’ which so faithfully portray the social crimes and errors of the day.
Johnson’s Life of Savage does not notice Merchant’s sentence, nor does it state upon what terms Savage and Gregory obtained their liberty. They were liberated upon condition of their withdrawing to the Colonies for the space of three years, and giving security to keep the peace. The conditions appear to have been evaded. Gregory indeed did proceed to Antigua, where he obtained an appointment in the customs; but the wayward Savage sat down as a pensioner at the hearth of Lord Tyrconnell, whose benevolence, it is hardly necessary to add, he most shamefully abused.
I think that the last duel, certainly the last fatal duel, fought with swords, was between Lord Byron and Mr. Chaworth, in January, 1762. They had quarrelled at the Star and Garter, Pall Mall, upon a question touching manors and game-preserves; they fought in a closed room of the tavern, and Mr. Chaworth was slain. The circumstances of the killing looked much more like murder than in the case of Major Oneby and Mr. Gower. The Peers, however, acquitted Lord Byron of the capital crime, but they found him guilty of manslaughter. His lordship claimed the benefit of the statute of Edward VI., and he was discharged on paying his fees. A bitter mockery of justice!
The sword appears to have been drawn in as hot wrath at the playhouse as in the park; and sometimes to have figured by way of ridicule. I may cite, as an example of the latter, an incident of the time of Charles II. The court was at Dover, whither the King had gone to receive his sister, and the mistress which that sister brought in her hand as a bribe whereby to make of Charles the enemy of his people! At this time, the French courtiers wore laced coats, of various colours, but all ridiculously short. The shortness of the front part was made up for by the breadth of the waistbelt. Nokes, the Keeley of his day, was dressed to play Sir Arthur Addle, in ‘Sir Solomon;’ and his costume, a caricature on the already sufficiently absurd dress of the French, so delighted the celebrated Duke of Monmouth, that the latter took his own sword and belt from his side, and buckled it with his own semi-royal hands about the person of the player. We should be somewhat startled in these days if we were to hear of Lord Augustus Fitzclarence fastening a cutlass upon the thigh of Mr. Keeley, when acting in the ‘Thirst for Gold:’ but in Charles’s days such freaks were very mildly construed of. The appearance of Nokes, in his short coat and long sword, elicited a roar from King and court, all the louder that the French originals were present. The latter must have taken our most religious and gracious King for a sorry barbarian; and, as chivalrous ideas went, it was very well that they did not surround Nokes as he was going home, and “pink” him into an everlasting incapability of ever caricaturing them again.
James II. was unquestionably more of a true gentleman in outward bearing than his brother Charles. I have an instance of this appropriate to this very subject of swords and actors. In the reign of James, an actor of unimpeachable character and of very refined manners, named Smith, had a discussion behind the scenes with a young nobleman, who, losing his temper with getting the worst of the argument, drew his sword and struck Smith,—for want of logic to confute him. The King forbade the courtier to appear in his presence; and by this means proclaimed his opinion that the nobleman was less of a gentleman than the player. But such a manifestation of opinion roused all the so-called gentlemen against the so-called vagabond players; and the next time Smith played they resorted to the theatre, sword in hand and catcall between their lips, and so plied both, that, despite the royal protection, he was driven from the stage for ever. Luckily for him, the “vagabond” was better off, on two points, than the “noble gentlemen,” his antagonists: he had a considerable fortune, and he was in debt to no man, not even to his tailor.
Smith’s story of the swords drawn against him, reminds me of Mrs. Verbruggen’s, with the sword always ready to leap from the scabbard to defend her. Mrs. Verbruggen was the Mrs. Sterling of her period,—that is, the cleverest of artificial actresses. It would be pertinent to my subject of ‘Habits’ to speak of her as she appeared in what is called “breeches parts;” but I am afraid if I were to describe her, as old Anthony Aston does, who so often saw and wondered, it would be considered very impertinent indeed. I may tell however what he says of her face. “It was of a fine smooth oval,” says Anthony, “full of beautiful and well-disposed moles, as were her neck and breast.” He afterwards adds:—“She was the best conversation possible,—never captious or displeased at anything but what was gross or indecent. For she was cautious, lest fiery Jack should so resent it as to breed a quarrel; for he would often say, ‘Damme! though I don’t much value my wife, yet nobody shall affront her;’ and his sword was drawn on the least occasion, which was much in fashion at the latter end of King William’s reign.”
It is a funny trait of the sword-wearers, that they could extol the virtue which they had ineffectually endeavoured to destroy. We see this in the case of Mrs. Bracegirdle, that Diana of the stage before whom Congreve and Lord Lovelace, at the head of a troop of bodkined fops, worshiped in vain. The noblest of the troop,—and it reckoned the Dukes of Devonshire and Dorset, the Earl of Halifax, and half-a-dozen delegates from each rank of the peerage among its members,—were wont, at the coffee-house, and over a bottle, to extol the Gibraltar-like virtue, if I may so speak, of this incomparable woman. “Come,” said Halifax, “you are always praising the virtue; why don’t you reward the lady who will not sell it? I propose a subscription, and there are two hundred guineas, pour encourager les autres.” Four times that amount was raised, and with it the nobles, with their swords in their hands, waited on Mrs. Bracegirdle, who accepted their testimonial, as it was intended in honour of her virtue. What should we think now if⸺? but this is a delicate matter, and I might make a mistake. I will only add, therefore, that had Mrs. Bracegirdle been rewarded for her charity, the recompense would have been, at least, as appropriate. For it is true of her that when the poor saw her they blessed her,—and, we may add, she richly merited the well-earned benedictions. She was, at all events, not quite so prudish as Mrs. Rogers, who not only objected to act any but virtuous characters, but made a public vow of chastity,—in an epilogue,—and broke it, out of good-nature.
It must be understood that the players wore swords in the streets, and used them, like gentlemen, for the destruction of one another. Thus Quin killed Will Bowen, in 1717. The former had declared that Ben Jonson acted Jacomo, in the ‘Libertine,’ better than Bowen. The latter pursued Quin to a tavern, shut the door of the room in which he found him, placed his back against the door, and threatened to pin Quin to the wainscot if he did not immediately draw. Quin remonstrated, but drew and kept on the defensive; while the impetuous Bowen so pressed upon his adversary that he actually fell upon that adversary’s sword and died, after acknowledging his own rashness. Quin was tried and acquitted.
The actors however had need to wear swords to defend themselves from their noble assailants. The latter used to crowd between the side-scenes, and often interrupt the performance by crossing the stage and conversing aloud with one another. On one occasion, at the house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, an earl, who was said to have been drunk for six years continuously, was guilty of this rudeness; and Rich, enraged thereat, threatened never to allow him to be admitted again, whatever he might offer for it. The Peer replied by slapping Rich in the face; and Rich returned the salute with all the vigour and rapidity that belonged to him as an accomplished harlequin. The drunken lord’s drunken companions immediately drew, and solemnly devoted Rich to death. The comrades of the latter, headed by Ryan, the ex-tailor, whipped out their swords too (some of them wore them with their court suits in Macbeth), charged the nobles, and after a bloody mêlée drove them into the streets. The illustrious drunkards, brandishing their weapons, attacked the front of the house, fought their way into the boxes, proceeded to destroy the interior adornments, and would have set fire to the theatre but for the arrival of the “watch,” who captured the whole of the rioters. Justice was both lame and blind in those days, and the peers compromised the matter with the managers; but George I. was as much disgusted with the conduct of his “noble” subjects as a quiet scamp could be at the peccadilloes of noisy ones. The only men, not nobles, who were as great nuisances with their swords, were the Darby Captains. These were old “half-pays” or penniless “disbanded,” who used to pitch their tent at Derby’s Coffee-house in Covent-garden, and who were sanguinary in their cups. The “H. P.’s” who now meet in Ryder-street have little idea of the truculency of their predecessors, who most did congregate at the hostelrie whence they derived their name, and some pretenders their rank.