William Combe (1741-1823) was a literary "bravo" of a type that was common enough in the eighteenth century. If he had not the truculence of John Churchill or the coarseness of Peter Pindar, he was little less unscrupulous in his use of the pen. The son of a Bristol merchant, he was educated at Eton and Oxford, and after making the grand tour he was called to the Bar. But "Duke" Combe, as his friends nicknamed him, was too fine a gentleman to work at his profession. He set up an expensive establishment, kept a retinue of servants and several horses, and, thanks to his good looks and attractive manners, obtained an entrance into the most "exclusive circles." At the end of two or three years, having squandered a small fortune left him by his godfather, Combe disappeared from his fashionable haunts, and, if tradition may be believed, underwent strange vicissitudes of fate. He is said to have enlisted as a private, first in the English and afterwards in the French army, and to have figured as a teacher of elocution, a waiter in a restaurant, and a cook at Douai College, where he made such excellent soup that the monks tried to persuade him to join their order. In 1772 he returned to England, and was induced to marry the chère amie of an English nobleman by the promise of a handsome annuity. The annuity not being forthcoming, he wrote a versified satire called The Diaboliad (1776), dedicated to the Worst Man in His Majesty's dominions, who has been variously identified as Lord Irnham and Lord Beauchamp. The satire having a succès de scandale, was followed by The Diablo-lady, and other lampoons in the same style. Combe now settled down to literary work—of a kind—and produced the spurious Letters of the late Lord Lyttelton (which deceived many of the elect), and the equally spurious Letters of Sterne to Eliza. He had made the acquaintance of Sterne during his travels in Italy, and used to boast that he had supplanted the sentimental divine in the good graces of Eliza. In 1789, Combe took service under Pitt as a political pamphleteer, with a pension of £200 a year. This salary ceased when Addington came into office in 1803, but he then obtained a post on the staff of the Times. Crabb Robinson, who met him in the Times office, said that he had known few men to be compared with Combe, and states that he was chiefly employed in consultation, important questions being brought to him to decide in Walter's absence.
Combe's connection with Ackermann began when he was about sixty years of age, and it is remarkable that his greatest successes should have been won when he was nearing seventy. That he was able to produce so much popular work at his advanced age, was probably partly due to the fact that, unlike most of his contemporaries, he was a confirmed water-drinker, and that his life within the Rules was free from anxiety and responsibility. The Rules were jokingly said to extend as far as the East Indies, and it is certain that they extended as far as Ackermann's hospitable table in the Strand. Combe stoutly refused to allow his friends to make any arrangement with his creditors, and no formal contract regulated his dealings with his publisher. "Send me a twenty-pounder," or "Send me a thirty-pounder," he wrote when funds were low, and his employer knew his value too well to neglect his demands. Besides contributing numerous articles to Ackermann's monthly, The Repository of Arts, Literature, Fashions, and Manufactures (1809-28), Combe wrote the descriptive letterpress for several of the large illustrated books published by the same firm, The History of the Thames, The History of Westminster Abbey, and the third volume of the splendid Microcosm of London, illustrated by Rowlandson and Augustus Pugin (1762-1832),[1] the former being responsible for the figures, the latter for the architecture. The first and second volumes were written by W. H. Pyne, author of Wine and Walnuts, who is perhaps better known by his pseudonym of "Ephraim Hardcastle." Combe is seen to most advantage, however, in The English Dance of Death, which was published in 1815, with illustrations by Rowlandson, and followed the succeeding year by The Dance of Life.
By Gamblers link'd in Folly's Noose,
Play ill or well, he's sure to loose.
"The Infamous Combe," as Walpole unkindly dubbed him, was the author of over a hundred books; but as he only put his name to one, there is considerable doubt about the identity of his literary offspring. Though nominally confined in a debtors' prison, Combe, on the death of his first wife in 1814, married a sister of Mrs. Cosway's, but this union was no happier than the first, and the couple were soon separated. In his old age he appears to have amused himself with a platonic love-affair with a young girl, [2] and in the composition of his autobiography. If this was a truthful record of his career, it must have been a more exciting document than all his other books put together; but, unfortunately, in a fit of resentment at the marriage of his adopted son, he burned the manuscript leaf by leaf.
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