“Sir,—I should as soon think of applying to a Methodist parson to preach for my benefit as to a Quaker to recommend me to Mr. Wilkinson. I don’t want to come.
“E. Knight.”
After an interval of twelve months, when the elder Mathews seceded from his company, he wrote to Knight as follows:
“Mr. Methodist Parson,—I have a living that produces twenty-five shillings per week. Will you hold forth?
“Tate Wilkinson.”
The invitation was gladly accepted, and for seven years he continued at York with unvarying success; at the end of which time he obtained an engagement at Drury Lane, and became a metropolitan favourite.
Though perhaps not so striking an example as any of the foregoing, an episode in the life of William Dobson (called by Charles the First “the English Tintoret”) is more or less of the same fortunate nature. Dobson, who always betrayed in his best efforts the want of proper training, was, as a boy, apprenticed to a Mr. Peake, who was more of a dealer in, than a painter of, pictures, and who consequently was anything but a competent teacher. Nevertheless, his collection of paintings, which included some by Titian and Van Dyck, was most valuable to the youngster, who copied both those masters with such wonderful correctness that none but an expert could detect the difference. When very young, and very poor, he managed to get one of his copies of a Van Dyck exhibited in a shop window on Snow Hill, which, strangely enough, was seen by no less a person than the author of the original, who immediately sought out the individual who had reproduced his work with such fidelity, and finding him toiling away in a miserable garret, took him by the hand, and brought him to the notice of King Charles.
Another instance of luck not dissociated with impecuniosity is found in the case of Perry, of The Morning Chronicle. Educated at Marischal College, Aberdeen, which he entered in 1771, he was first employed in that town as a lawyer’s clerk; but full of literary ambition, and possessed of much literary culture, he made his way to Edinburgh, where he almost starved, not being able to find employment of any kind. From Edinburgh he went to Manchester, where he just managed to eke out an existence; but believing London was the El Dorado for men of letters, he was not content till he had started for the great city. Amongst others who had promised him work was Urquart, the bookseller, to whom he wrote without success. One morning he called upon that gentleman, and was leaving the shop after a fruitless interview, when the bookseller said he had just experienced great pleasure in reading an article in The General Advertiser, and, said he, “If you could write like that, I could soon find you an engagement.” It so happened that Perry had sent in an article to that paper, and his joy may be imagined when he was able to claim the lauded production as his own; bringing out of his pocket another of the same sort, which he was about to drop into the editor’s box as before. He was immediately engaged as a paid contributor to The General Advertiser and Evening Post, and ultimately became editor and proprietor of The Morning Chronicle.
One of the most remarkable of the lucky illustrations, however, is that of Hogarth, when he was a struggling artist. At the time referred to, when studying at St. Martin’s Lane Academy, he was oftentimes reduced to the lowest possible water-mark; and while laying the foundation of his future celebrity, he was exposed to all the humiliating inconveniences too frequently associated with penury, not the least of such annoyances being the contemptuous insolence of an ignorant letter of lodgings. The story goes that on one of these occasions when he was unmercifully dunned by his landlady for the small sum of a sovereign, he was so exasperated that, with a view to being revenged upon her, he made a sketch of her face so excruciatingly ugly, that it revealed at once his marvellous power as a caricaturist.
Turning to the opposite side of the subject—the unlucky, there is, it must be admitted, a dearth of similarly appropriate examples. It is not that there is any scarcity of cases of great misfortune in connection with impecuniosity, but the circumstances connected with such cases are not so apparently the result of accident. In the lucky instances enumerated the chance element was conspicuous, but the same cannot be said of the adverse anecdotes; for they, or rather those that have come under my notice, are unfortunate cases rather than unlucky. For instance, the impecuniosity that introduced the Irish giant to some one he would not otherwise have met, who put him in the way of realising a competency, was manifestly lucky; but the impecuniosity that attended Stow, the antiquary, in his latest years, could not in the same sense be called unlucky, inasmuch as it was owing to no particular act or chance circumstance that he continued poor. The kind of cases that I consider would more properly illustrate this phase of the subject would be those of persons who, from, say, missing an appointment with some patron of eminence owing to being hard up, lost an opportunity of advancement, which never occurred again; or by not having some small amount of ready money were unable to avail themselves of an advantageous offer, which would have resulted in a fortune. That such mishaps have occurred in the long list of unrecorded lives there is little doubt; but I cannot call any to remembrance at the present time. The only instances I have met with in my research being those of unfortunate persons, whose histories of hardship would be more fittingly recounted as the sad side of impecuniosity.