Again let hope-fed Fancy see
Life's picture bright and fair.
Oh! steal from care my heart away,
To sip thy healing spring;
And let me taste that bliss to-day
To-morrow may not bring."
The friendship of the Duke of Norfolk and Charles Morris extended far beyond the Steaks meetings; and the author of the Clubs of London tells us by what means the Duke's regard took a more permanent form. It appears that John Kemble had sat very late at one of the night potations at Norfolk House. Charles Morris had just retired, and a very small party remained in the dining-room, when His Grace of Norfolk began to deplore, somewhat pathetically, the smallness of the stipend upon which poor Charles was obliged to support his family; observing, that it was a discredit to the age, that a man, who had so long gladdened the lives of so many titled and opulent associates, should be left to struggle with the difficulties of an inadequate income at a time of life when he had no reasonable hope of augmenting it. Kemble listened with great attention to the Duke's jeremiade; but after a slight pause, his feelings getting the better of his deference, he broke out thus, in a tone of peculiar emphasis:—"And does your Grace sincerely lament the destitute condition of your friend, with whom you have passed so many agreeable hours? Your Grace has described that condition most feelingly. But is it possible, that the greatest Peer of the realm, luxuriating amidst the prodigalities of fortune, should lament the distress which he does not relieve? the empty phrase of benevolence—the mere breath and vapour of generous sentiment, become no man; they certainly are unworthy of your Grace. Providence, my Lord Duke, has placed you in a station where the wish to do good and the doing it are the same thing. An annuity from your overflowing coffers, or a small nook of land, clipped from your unbounded domains, would scarcely be felt by your Grace; but you would be repaid, my Lord, with usury;—with tears of grateful joy; with prayers warm from a bosom which your bounty will have rendered happy."
Such was the substance of Kemble's harangue. Jack Bannister used to relate the incident, by ingeniously putting the speech into blank verse, or rather the species of prose into which Kemble's phraseology naturally fell when he was highly animated. But, however expressed, it produced its effect. For though the Duke (the night was pretty far gone, and several bottles had been emptied) said nothing at the time, but stared with some astonishment at so unexpected a lecture; not a month elapsed before Charles Morris was invested with a beautiful retreat at Brockham, in Surrey, upon the bank of the river Mole, and at the foot of the noble range of which Box Hill forms the most picturesque point.
The Duke went to his rest in 1815. Morris continued to be the laureate of the Steaks until the year 1831, when he thus bade adieu to the Society in his eighty-sixth year:—