Her old wound in the leg became bad again, and she went into St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, and on her discharge, partially cured, she petitioned the King and the Duke of York for relief. The latter gave her five pounds. Then she cast about for the means of earning a livelihood, and bethought her that, when she was a prisoner at Dunkirk, she had watched a German make little ornaments out of gold-wire, which he sold at a good profit; and she did the same, working at the shop of a jeweller in St. Giles’s, and so expert was she that she made the chains for a gold bracelet worn by Queen Charlotte. But the old wound still broke out, and she went into St. George’s Hospital for seven months. When she came out, she led a shiftless, loafing existence, always begging for money—of Mr. Dundas, of the Duke of York, or anyone else that might possibly be generous.
At last these kind friends got her case introduced in the very highest quarters, and she kissed the Queen’s hand at Buckingham House, as it was then called; and soon afterwards she was directed to apply at the War Office, in her sailor’s dress, to receive a half-year’s payment of a pension the Queen had granted her, in the name of John Taylor. Still her wound kept breaking out, and twice she had to go into Middlesex Hospital. She had some idea of going on the stage, and performed several parts at the Thespian Society in Tottenham Court Road, but she gave it up, finding begging a more profitable business; but even then she had to go to Newgate for a small debt. She took in washing, but the people did not pay her, and misfortune pursued her everywhere.
One night, in September, 1804, she was thrown from a coach into a hole left by the carelessness of some firemen, in Church Lane, Whitechapel, and she broke her arm, besides bruising herself badly. The fire office would give her no compensation, but many people were interested in her case, among them a Mr. Kirby, a publisher in Paternoster Row, who employed her as a domestic servant. In 1807, she fell into a decline, doubtless induced by the very free life she had led; and she died on the 4th of February, 1808, having just completed her thirtieth year.
It is not to be thought that England enjoyed the monopoly of these viragos—the country of Jeanne d’Arc was quite equal to the occasion, and Renée Bordereau affords an illustration for the last century. She was born, of peasant parents, in 1770, at the village of Soulaine, near Angers; and at the time of the insurrection in La Vendée, when the royalists were so cruelly punished, she lost forty-two relations in the struggle, her father being murdered before her eyes.
This crushed out of her any soft and feminine feelings she might have possessed, and she vowed vengeance on the hated Republicans. She obtained a musket, taught herself how to use it, learned some elementary drill, and then, donning man’s attire, joined the royalists. Among them she was known by the name of Langevin, and where the fight was fiercest, there she would be, and none suspected that the daring trooper was a woman. On horseback, and on foot, she fought in above two hundred battles and skirmishes, frequently wounded, but seldom much hurt. Such was the terror with which she inspired the Bonapartists, that, when the rebellion was put down, Napoleon specially exempted Langevin from pardon, and she languished in prison until the Restoration. She died in 1828.
THE ‘TIMES’ AND ITS FOUNDER.
A discursive book anent the eighteenth century, as this is, would be incomplete without a mention of one of the greatest powers which it produced. This marvellous newspaper, whose utterances, at one time, exercised a sensible influence over the whole of the civilised world, and which, even now, is the most potent of all the English press, was founded by Mr. John Walter, on January 1, 1788.
This gentleman was born either in 1738 or 1739, and his father followed the business of a ‘coal buyer,’ which meant that he bought coals at the pit’s mouth, and then shipped them to any desired port, or market. In those days almost all coals came, by sea, from Newcastle, and its district, because of the facility of carriage; the great inland beds being practically unworked, and in many cases utterly unknown: it being reserved for the giant age of steam to develop their marvellous resources.