Curiosities of Impecuniosity

by H. G. Somerville

Another most melancholy, and equally tragical record connected with impecuniosity is furnished in the life of Dr. Dodd, a literary divine, and one of the most popular preachers of the last century; though his troubles were not the outcome of actual want, but rather the result of want of self-control and principle. He commenced as a writer for the press, published ‘The Beauties of Shakespeare,’ obtained several lectureships, which he held with great success, and subsequently became Chaplain to the King. The list of his different appointments is most numerous, and most of them not only important, but highly remunerative, but his extravagance was such that no income would have been sufficient to keep him out of debt. Owing to his excesses he lost the royal favour, and though he was in the receipt of a large income from his preaching, it was not enough to satisfy his expensive habits, and he foolishly sent an anonymous letter to Lady Apsley offering her £3000 if she would prevail on her husband, the Lord Chancellor, to appoint him to the rectory of St. George’s, Hanover Square. The letter was traced to the doctor, and in consequence his name was struck off the list of royal chaplains. After a sojourn abroad he returned to this country, obtained from Lord Chesterfield a living in Buckinghamshire, but could not forsake his old habits; he still plunged into debt, and from being pressed for money forged the name of his patron to a bill for £4200, was tried, found guilty, and executed at the Old Bailey, in 1777.

The career of Thomas Otway, the dramatist, though short, for he was but thirty-four years of age when he died, was one continued course of monetary difficulty, the result of irregular living. The son of a Sussex rector and educated at Winchester and Christ Church, Oxford, he betrayed no anxiety to follow his father’s footsteps, but at the age of twenty-three manifested a most practical preference for Thespis rather than theology, though he does not seem to have possessed any great genius for acting. He subsequently became a cornet in a regiment, which was sent to Flanders, but distinguished himself most as a dramatic writer, for which profession he was eminently suited, many of his plays meeting with exceptional success, particularly ‘Venice Preserved,’ which has held possession of the stage for about two hundred years. His circumstances, never good, gradually went from bad to worse, owing to his dissolute proclivities, and he died at last on the 14th April, 1685, in a wretched state of penury, at a public-house called ‘The Bull,’ on Tower Hill, whither he had gone to avoid the too pressing attention of his creditors. It is generally believed that the actual cause of his death was choking, which occurred through his having been without food for some time, and then too eagerly devouring a piece of bread which, through the generosity of a friend, he had been able to purchase. That Otway should have excelled in tragedy is not surprising, the power that he displayed in depicting domestic suffering being easily accounted for by the fact that he must have been constantly experiencing distress in private life, for when his tragic end was brought about he was hiding from sheriff’s officers, his misery terminating only with death.

It is terribly sad to see such men as these, blessed with natural gifts far beyond the common, yet in spite of these endowments sinking to a lower level than their inferiors in intellect; and unfortunately the literary list of these erring ones is a long one, for since the days of Robert Greene, said to be the first Englishman who wrote for a living, and who died in the house of a poor shoemaker, who took pity upon him when he was destitute, there have always been men unable to withstand the seductions of vicious courses, and who have consequently paid the penalty of intemperance, and immorality, by death-beds of misery, and remorse, to say nothing of the life-long inconveniences of impecuniosity. Lamentable as is the contemplation of these lost lives, there is yet a sadder picture still, for pitiable as it is to think of men, indifferent alike to their well-being in this world and in that which is to come, the sadness is intensified when the object of pity is a woman, one who has been referred to as “a sort of female Otway, without his genius.”

The individual in question was Colley Cibber’s younger daughter, Charlotte, whose education from her earliest years was eminently masculine, which resulted in the girl becoming proficient in manly sports and pastimes, such as shooting, hunting, riding, &c. When very young she married Mr. Richard Clarke, a celebrated violinist, with whom she soon disagreed, and from whom she speedily separated, and she then devoted herself to the stage, and commenced a career, which for strange and harrowing vicissitudes is unequalled in the annals of British biography—one day courted, admired and affluent; the next an outcast, uncared for, and despised. Singularly enough, the first character she assumed on the stage after the quarrel with her husband was Mademoiselle in ‘The Provoked Wife,’ in which character, and several subsequent assumptions at the Haymarket Theatre, she was highly successful, and obtained an uncommonly good salary. Her temper however, like herself, was eccentric, and it was not long before she quarrelled with Fleetwood, the manager, and left the theatre at a moment’s notice. From being a regular performer, she then took to travelling about the country with strollers, and shared with them the starvation fate that is so often associated with their nomadic existence. Tiring of this, she set up as a grocer, in Long Acre, but failed in that business, as well as at puppet-show keeping, at which she tried her hand in a street near the Haymarket. On the death of her husband, she was thrown into prison for debt, but released by the subscriptions of ladies of questionable repute, whose charity is proverbially more conspicuous than their virtue. After remarrying, and again becoming a widow, Charlotte Clarke (for by that name she has always been known) assumed male attire, and obtained occasional engagements at the theatres, and, though she suffered most distressing deprivations was able to present so good an appearance, that an heiress became madly attached to her, and was inconsolable when the wretched woman revealed her sex. The next adventure she claims to have participated in is her becoming valet to an Irish nobleman, which situation she did not retain for any length of time; and then she attempted to earn her living as a sausage-maker, but was unsuccessful. Twice she became a tavern proprietor, and for a time was in the most flourishing circumstances, but her prosperity was excessively ephemeral, and amongst the other occupations that she is credited with having undertaken are those of waiter at the King’s Head, Marylebone; worker of a set of puppets, and authoress of her extraordinary biography, which she published in 1755. It was with the proceeds of this book that she was enabled to open one of the public-houses mentioned; but the amount realised by its sale was not of much benefit to the poor misguided creature, for within five years (she died in 1760), she was discovered in a more wretched, forlorn condition than ever, according to the account of two gentlemen who visited her. The widow, who, petted and pampered by her parents, had, as a child been brought up in luxury, was then domiciled in a wretched, thatched hovel in the purlieus of Clerkenwell Bridewell, at that time a wild suburb, where the scavengers used to throw the cleansings of the streets. The house and its scanty furniture sufficiently indicated the extreme poverty of the inmates.

“Mrs. Clarke sat on a broken chair by a little scrap of fire, and the visitors were accommodated with a rickety deal board. A half-starved dog lay at the authoress’s feet; a cat sat on one hob, and a monkey on the other; while a magpie perched on the back of its mistress’s chair. A worn-out pair of bellows served for a writing-desk, and a broken cup for an inkstand; these were matched by the pen, which was worn down to the stump, and was the only one on the premises. The lady asked thirty guineas for the copyright. The bookseller offered five, but was at length induced by his friend to give ten, on condition that Mr. Whyte (the friend) would pay a moiety and take half the risk of the novel.”

In the year 1759 she played Marplot, in ‘The Busybody,’ for her own benefit at the Haymarket, when the following advertisement appeared.

“As I am entirely dependent on chance for a subsistence, and am desirous of getting into business, I hope the town will favour me on the occasion, which, added to the rest of their indulgence, will ever be gratefully acknowledged by their truly obliged, and obedient servant, Charlotte Clarke.”

This was shortly before her death, which took place on the 6th April, 1760.

It would be extremely difficult to find a more sorrowful story in connection with impecuniosity than that of Colley Cibber’s daughter; and though the degraded character of the greater part of her life has robbed her misfortunes of much of the sympathy that would otherwise have been freely accorded, it would have been well if some who have animadverted so severely upon her shortcomings had remembered that much in her life that was so unwomanly was undoubtedly due to her masculine and defective training.

The celebrated actress Mrs. Jordan—whose acting, according to Hazlitt—“gave more pleasure than that of any other actress, because she had the greatest spirit of enjoyment in herself”—was so unfortunate in her last days, that she is fully entitled to a place with those whose monetary embarrassments have been particularly sad. For years she had lived in uninterrupted domestic harmony with the Duke of Clarence, afterwards William the Fourth; but when the connection was suddenly severed in 1811, a yearly allowance of £4400, was settled upon her for the maintenance of herself and daughters; with a provision that, if Mrs. Jordan should resume her profession, the care of the duke’s daughters, together with £1500 per annum allowed for them, should revert to his Royal Highness. Within a few months of this arrangement she did return to the stage, but through having incautiously given blank notes of hand to a friend in difficulties on the understanding that the amounts to be filled in were but small, she awoke one morning to find herself called upon to pay amounts utterly beyond her power. In her terror and dismay she fled to France, but her peace of mind was gone. Separated from her children, and racked by the torturing thought of the liability she was unable to discharge, she gradually pined away, and died in terrible distress of mind at St. Cloud in June 1816.