Curiosities of Impecuniosity

by H. G. Somerville

In 1748 there resided in the wilds of Connaught a lady named Gunning, of whom little is known but that before her marriage she was the Hon. Bridget Bourke, and that after it she became the mother of two exquisitely beautiful daughters, destined to make such a stir in Society, as was unknown before, and has been unequalled since. Before they left Dublin they were invited to some brilliant festivities at the Castle, which were on a scale of magnificence unequalled, it is said, in the memory of the oldest courtier. To such an entertainment Mrs. Gunning was anxious to introduce her daughters, for their faces were literally their fortunes; but the overwhelming difficulty of dress presented itself. They had nothing that by any amount of manipulation could be transformed into Court costumes, so in her difficulty Mrs. Gunning obtained an introduction to Tom Sheridan, who was then managing the Dublin Theatre. He was struck by the beauty and grace of the girls, placed the wardrobe of the theatre at their disposal; and by lending them the dresses of Lady Macbeth and Juliet, in which they appeared most lovely, enabled them to obtain the entrée to that aristocratic circle in which they afterwards shone so brilliantly. In addition to providing the necessary garments for the great event Tom Sheridan is credited with superintending the finishing touches of their toilets, for which it is said he claimed a kiss from each as his reward. These beautiful creatures were at one time in even greater straits for funds.

Miss Bellamy, the actress, asserts that she once found Mrs. Gunning and her children in the greatest distress, with bailiffs in the house and the family threatened with immediate eviction. With the assistance of her man-servant, who stood under the windows of the house at night, after the bailiffs were admitted, everything that could be carried away, was removed. But for this and other help the Gunnings were not grateful. Indeed, in the case of the Countess of Coventry who had borrowed money from Miss Bellamy, presumably for her wedding trousseau, the monetary obligation was repaid by unpardonable insult. One night when this actress was playing Juliet, and had just arrived at the most impressive part of the tragedy, the countess, who occupied the stage-box, uttered a loud laugh. Miss Bellamy was so overcome by the interruption that she was obliged to leave the stage, and when Lady Coventry was remonstrated with, she replied that “since she had seen Mrs. Cibber act Juliet she could not endure Miss Bellamy.” When they came to London in the autumn of 1751 the fashionable world went mad after “the beautiful Miss Gunnings,” who were positively mobbed in the Park and elsewhere, and were compelled on one occasion to obtain the protection of a file of the Guards. When they travelled in the country the roads were lined with people anxious to catch a glimpse of their lovely faces; and hundreds of people were known to remain all night outside an inn at which they were staying, in order to behold them in the morning.

Not many months after their début in London, the Duke of Hamilton, owner of three dukedoms in Scotland, England, and France, and regarded as the haughtiest man in the kingdom, became deeply enamoured of the younger sister, and was married to her at Mayfair Chapel one night at half-past twelve o’clock, the suddenness of the ceremony compelling the divine who performed the service to make use of a ring from a bed-curtain.

The elder sister, became Countess of Coventry in the following March, and was then acknowledged as leader of fashion in the metropolis, although from the seclusion in which the early part of her life had been spent in Ireland, she was little fitted, so far as accomplishments were concerned, to hold that post. Her reign was brief as it was brilliant. In 1759 her health completely broke down, and she died in October 1760, of consumption, the result of artificial aids to beauty, which in her case were utterly unnecessary.

Curran, the advocate and wit, experienced vicissitudes almost as startling. He was born at Newmarket, County Cork, in 1750, and describes himself as “a little ragged apprentice to every kind of idleness and mischief, all day studying whatever was eccentric in those older, and half the night practising it for the amusement of those who were younger than myself. One morning I was playing at marbles in the village ball alley, with a light heart and a lighter pocket. The gibe, and the jest, and the plunder, went gaily round. Those who won laughed, and those who lost cheated, when suddenly there appeared amongst us a stranger of a very venerable and cheerful aspect. His intrusion was not the least restraint upon our merry little assemblage; he was a benevolent creature, and the days of infancy (after all, the happiest we shall ever see) perhaps rose upon his memory. God bless him! I see his fine form, at the distance of half a century, just as he stood before me in the little ball alley in the days of my childhood. His name was Boyse; he was the rector of Newmarket. To me he took a particular fancy.... Some sweetmeats easily bribed me home with him. I learned from poor Boyse my alphabet, and my grammar, and the rudiments of the classics: he taught me all he could, and then he sent me to the school at Middleton—in short, he made a man of me. I recollect it was about five-and-thirty years afterwards when I had risen to some eminence at the bar, and when I had a seat in Parliament, and a good house in Ely Place, on my return one day from Court, I found an old gentleman seated alone in the drawing-room, his feet familiarly placed on each side of the Italian marble chimney-piece, and his whole air bespeaking the consciousness of one quite at home. He turned round—it was my friend of the ball alley. I rushed instinctively into his arms. I could not help bursting into tears. Words cannot describe the scene that followed. ‘You are right, sir—you are right; the chimney-piece is yours, the pictures are yours, the house is yours; you gave me all I have—my friend—my father!’”[2]

After leaving school at Middleton, Curran passed to Trinity College, Dublin, which he entered as a sizar when nineteen years of age. He does not appear to have distinguished himself at the University, from whence he proceeded to London, and contrived, quodcunque modo, to enter his name on the books of the Middle Temple. At that time, he says, he read “ten hours every day; seven at law, and three at history and the general principles of politics, and that I may have time enough”—it is believed he wrote for the magazines, etc., as a means of support—“I rise at half-past four. I have contrived a machine after the manner of an hour-glass, which wakens me regularly at that hour. Exactly over my head I have suspended two vessels of tin, one above the other. When I go to bed, which is always at ten, I pour a bottle of water into the upper vessel, in the bottom of which is a hole of such a size as to let the water pass through so as to make the inferior reservoir overflow in six hours and a half;” so that if he wished to remain in bed after daylight, he could only do so by consenting to a cold shower-bath.

He was called to the bar in 1775, and for some time had a tremendously uphill fight, wearing, according to his own account, his teeth to the stumps at the Cork Sessions without any adequate recompense. He then removed to Dublin, and for a time fared no better. “I then lived” said he, “upon Hog Hill: my wife and children were the chief furniture of my apartments, and as to my rent it stood pretty much the same chance of liquidation with the National Debt. Mrs. Curran, however, was a barrister’s lady, and what she wanted in wealth she was determined should be supplied by dignity. The landlady, on the other hand, had no idea of any gradation except that of pounds, shillings, and pence. I walked out one morning to avoid the perpetual altercations on the subject, in no very enviable mood. I fell into the gloom, to which from my infancy I had been occasionally subject. I had a family for whom I had no dinner, and a landlady for whom I had no rent. I had gone abroad in despondence, I returned home almost in desperation. When I opened the door of my study, where Lavater alone could have found a library, the first object which presented itself was an immense folio of a brief, twenty gold guineas wrapped up beside it, and the name of Old Bob Lyons marked upon the back of it. I paid my landlady, bought a good dinner, gave Bob Lyons a share of it, and that dinner was the date of my prosperity.” From this time he rapidly rose to the top of his profession, and his services were eagerly sought for. Wonderfully eloquent, with a highly imaginative and powerfully poetic mind, his sway was something marvellous, for, added to these gifts, his wit and power of mimicry were unapproachable.

In the case of Valentine Jamerai Duval, who ultimately became Professor of Antiquities and Ancient and Modern Geography in the Academy of Luneville, youthful hardships occasioned extraordinary expedients. The son of labouring people, at the age of fourteen he was ignorant of the alphabet. His occupation was that of turkey-keeper, but after an attack of small-pox, which nearly killed him, he wandered through certain parts of Champagne, then in a condition of famine, in search of employment. When he reached the Duchy of Lorraine, he obtained a situation as shepherd, and became acquainted with the hermit, Brother Palimon, whom he helped in his rural labours. In return for these services the hermit gave him instruction, and subsequently he lived as a labourer with the four hermits of St. Anne, studying arithmetic and geography in his leisure moments. His one object then was to obtain books, impossible without money, which, situated as he was, seemed equally unattainable. Finding out, however, that a furrier at Luneville purchased skins, he set snares for wild animals, and by this means realised enough money to procure the books he coveted.

But beyond the self-denial of Curran with his primitive invention for early rising, and the contrivance of Duval for obtaining the needful, is the interesting career of Bernard Palissy, the Potter, who, in addition to his fame as an artist in pottery, was celebrated as a glass painter, naturalist, philosopher, and for his devotion to the Protestant cause in the sixteenth century. Born in 1510, at Chapelle Biron, a poor hamlet near the small town of Perigord, he was brought up as a worker in painted glass, in pursuit of which occupation he travelled considerably, devoting all the spare time of his wanderings to the study of natural history, in which he delighted. Though an ardent student of nature, he yet found opportunity to make himself acquainted with the teaching of Paracelsus, of the alchemists and of the reformers of the Church. He did not settle down till nearly thirty years of age, when he established himself at Saintes as a painter on glass, and surveyor, and then turned his attention to the making of pottery and the production of white enamel, which latter was useless excepting as a covering for ornamental pottery, and at this time Palissy was not sufficiently skilled to make a rough pipkin. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that his wife took exception to the money expended in the purchase of drugs, the buying of pots, and the building of a furnace, as the loss of time told heavily on his limited resources; and it would be perfectly truthful to say that the first things Bernard Palissy produced in the way of pottery were family jars. Mrs. Palissy was undoubtedly very wroth at his going on in this way, more especially because, as is so frequently the case, his family increased as his income decreased, and she succeeded at last in stopping his experiments for a time. He then obtained an appointment as Surveyor to the Government, in which profession he was remarkably proficient, but before very long the old craving for experimenting returned with redoubled vigour, and he again set to work in search of white enamel. The expense incurred was so great that his wife and children became ragged and hungry: nothing daunted, he broke up twelve new earthen pots, hired a glass furnace, and for months continued watching, burning, and baking. At last his eager eyes were gladdened by the sight of a piece of white enamel amidst the bakings. Urged on by this, he felt he must have another furnace; he succeeded in obtaining the bricks on credit, became his own bricklayer’s boy and mason, and built the structure himself. On one occasion he spent six days and nights watching his baking clay, sleeping only a few minutes at a time near his fire, but disappointment was all the result. The vessels were spoilt. In desperation he borrowed more money for his experiments, which was consumed in like manner, until at last he was without fuel for the furnace. Insensible to everything but the project on which he was bent, he tore up the palings from the garden, and when these were exhausted he broke up the chairs and tables. His wife and children rushed about frantic, thinking that he had lost his senses, and well they might when they saw the demolition of the furniture followed by the tearing up of the floor. Success ultimately crowned his praiseworthy perseverance, but not until he had devoted sixteen years of unremunerated labour, enduring unexampled fatigue and discouragements. When at length he succeeded in obtaining a pure white enamel he was enabled to produce works in which natural objects were represented with remarkable skill, his fame spread rapidly, his sculptures in clay and his enamelled pottery being at once accepted as works of art of the highest order. His career, however, was destined to be remarkable at every stage, for no sooner had he acquired renown and riches than he was subjected to religious persecution, which would have ended in death had it not been for the Duke de Montmorency, one of his patrons, who succeeded in rescuing him from prison. When established in Paris, assisted by his sons, he continued to produce most remarkable specimens of ornamental pottery, and in addition to his artistic labours instituted a series of conferences which were attended by the most distinguished doctors and scientific savants, where he set forth his views on fountains, stones, metals, etc., desirous of knowing whether the great philosophers of antiquity interpreted nature as he did. Although in the ordinary sense an unlettered man, his theories were never once controverted, and for ten years his lectures were delivered before the most enlightened of that age, but his teaching once more arousing the animosity of his religious opponents, he was thrown into the Bastille, where he died after being incarcerated for two years.

After such a “shift” as having to tear up the floor of a dwelling, most other instances might be expected to appear more or less tame; but the experiences of William Thom, the Inverary poet, are scarcely inferior in intensity. This untutored, but extremely sweet songster, whose first poem, ‘Blind Boys’ Pranks,’ appeared in the Edinburgh Herald, was a hand-loom weaver, who was deprived of his occupation by the failure of certain American firms, and compelled to tramp the country as a pedlar. Before resorting to that line of life, and when in the receipt of the sum of five shillings weekly, he relates how on a memorable spring morning, he anxiously awaited the arrival of this small amount: and though the clock had struck eleven, the windows of the room were still curtained, in order that the four sleeping children, who were bound to be hungry when awake, might be deluded into believing that it was still night, for the only food in their parents’ possession was one handful of meal saved from the previous day. The mother with the tenderest anxiety sat by the babes’ bedside lulling them off to sleep as soon as they exhibited the least sign of wakefulness, and speaking to her husband in whispers as to the cooking of the little meal remaining, for the youngest child could no longer be kept asleep, and by its whimpering woke the others. Face after face sprang up, each little one exclaiming, “Oh, mither, mither, give me a piece;” and says the poor fellow, “The word sorrow was too weak to apply to the feelings of myself and wife during the remainder of that long and dreary forenoon.” When compelled to leave the humble dwelling which, poverty-stricken though it was, had all the endearing influences of home, he made up a pack consisting of second-hand books and some trifling articles of merchandise, and sadly started with wife and bairns through mountain paths and rugged roads, often sleeping at night in barns and outhouses. The precarious nature of a pedlar’s life must have been terribly trying to one so sensitive, especially when, as in his case, it ended in his having to have recourse to the profession of musical beggar. Before entering Methven he sold a book to a stone-breaker on the road, the proceeds of which (fivepence halfpenny) was all the money he possessed. The purchaser when making the bargain had noticed Thom’s flute which he carried with him, and had offered such a good price for the instrument that the poet had been much tempted to part with it, though it had been his solace and companion on many and many an occasion. Thinking that possibly it might be the means of his earning a few pence, he resisted the temptation to part with it, and soon after took up his post outside a genteel-looking house, and played ‘The Flowers of the Forest’ with such exquisite expression that window after window was raised, and in ten minutes after he found himself possessed of three and ninepence, which sum was increased to five shillings before he reached his lodging.