It was to Dr. Burney that the idea of this election first occurred; no one else at the club, at that period, being equally acquainted with the claims of Mr. William Locke to confraternity with such a society. The Doctor communicated this project, in which he felt great interest, to West Hamble.
“Fanny Phillips[59] and I,” he says, “have dined thrice lately with your excellent neighbours, the Lockes, who rise in my esteem and affection at every visit. I have been long thinking of putting up Mr. William Locke at our club, but would not venture without his permission. After the last dinner, therefore, I drew him aside, and fairly asked him whether he would give me leave to try for his election at a club, established under Dr. Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Mr. Burke? and he said, after some modest scruples of being unworthy, that nothing would flatter him more. Yesterday, therefore, I began to canvass Malone, at his own house, and Lord Macartney, a sotto voce, in the club-room, before dinner. Malone was readily de mon avis; but Lord Macartney, following up the known plan of Dr. Johnson, to select the first man in every profession, for the more exact information of the rest upon those points of which they were ignorant, argued that we ought to have a great painter to supply, as well as he could, the loss of Sir Joshua Reynolds.
“‘And you will have one, my Lord,’ I cried. ‘The painters all honour themselves in being of that mind with respect to Mr. William Locke. He only happens, by chance, to be heir to a considerable estate; he would else have been a painter by profession, as well as by talent and excellence. In Mr. William Locke we shall have every gratification we can wish for in a new member; he is a scholar, a traveller, a gentleman; and, when he can be prevailed with to talk, the best informed and most pleasing converser with whom men of cultivated minds can wish to associate.’
“This gave me Lord Macartney as well as Malone; and, after dinner, on that very day, Lord Macartney himself, seconded by Mr. Langton, put up your dear friend’s ‘eldest hopes.’ I was applied to for giving [Pg 299] the Christian name, and an assurance that the election was desired by the proposed new member. An entry then was made in the books, and the election will come on at the next club.”
The ensuing letter to West Hamble, will shew the happy effect of the Doctor’s success upon his spirits:
“I went to the club to-day with fear and trembling, lest I should have involved Mr. William Locke in any disappointment. Langton, though he had willingly seconded Lord Macartney’s motion, could not be there: it was a great day at the House, where they were debating the Adultery Bill, which lost us Windham, Canning, Bishop Douglas, Lords Spencer, Ossory, Palmerston, and Mr. Frere, of all whose suffrages I was sure. There were only nine members present; and I saw, on entering the room, with fear and dismay, the person suspected as a general black-baller. I’ll try to recollect the nine members: Lord Macartney, Sir Robert Chambers, Malone, Sir Charles Bunbury, Marsden, Dr. Fordyce, Mr. Thomas Grenville, Dr. Vincent, and your humble servant. Canning, whose turn it was to be President, being away, Lord Macartney, and two or three more, invited me to take the chair; but I modestly declined the honour! Well, we all seemed in perfect good-humour, and I hobbed a nob; and got two or three more to hob a nob, with the Knight of the Negro Ball; and, after dinner, when the box went round, Sir Charles Bunbury acted as Vice President, and opened it,—and—would you think it?—all was as white as milk!—and Mr. William Locke, jun. was declared duly elected.
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“Sir Charles wrote the usual letter of inauguration, and I one of congratulation; and I sent my own man with both to Manchester Square. And so that fright, at least, is happily over.
“If Mr. and Mrs. Locke are with you, pray lay my best respects at their feet; and my love at the hearts of your two Alexanders. And so good night. It is past twelve, and time for all but owls and bats to be at roost.
“C. B.”
1801.
In 1801, also, there was but a single event that the Doctor thought worth committing to paper: and that, indeed, was of a kind that no one who knew him could read, first without trembling, and next without rejoicing; for, in the summer of 1801, and in his seventy-sixth year, he had an escape the most providential from sudden and violent destruction.
He had accompanied Mrs. Crewe, and some of her friends, to a review on Ascot Heath, when, in returning home by water, as the boat was disembarking its crew at Staines, feeling himself light and well, and equal to a small leap, he jumped incautiously from the boat on what he believed to be a tuft of grass; but what proved to be a moss-covered stone, or hillock, which, far from bending, as he had expected, to the touch of his foot, struck him backwards into the boat with frightful violence, and a risk the most imminent of breaking his neck, if not of fracturing his skull. Happily, no such dreadful evil ensued! and every species of care and kindness were vigilantly exerted to keep aloof further mischief than accrued from a few bruises.
Mr. Windham, who was of the party, had the Doctor conveyed immediately to the nearest inn, to be blooded, and to have all the injured parts examined and bathed. The Doctor’s carriage came to him there, and he got back to Chelsea, slowly, but tolerably well: and nothing more followed from this dangerous accident than a confinement of several days.
That the mind, however, was far stronger than the frame, became now indisputably evident, from the spirit with which he supported the fright, the pain, and the mortification of this untoward experiment upon his remnant and unsuspectedly failing corporeal force. But who discovers the exact moment of arriving defalcation either of body or mind, till taught it by one of those severe instructors, Disease, or Accident?