Lady Blessington used to describe Lord Abercorn's conduct at the Priory at Stanmore as very strange. She said it was the most singular place on earth. The moment any persons became celebrated they were invited. He had a great delight in seeing handsome women. Everybody handsome he made Lady Abercorn invite; and all the guests shot, hunted, rode, or did what they liked, provided they never spoke to Lord Abercorn except at table. If they met him they were to take no notice. At this time, Thaddeus of Warsaw was making a noise. "Gad!" said Lord Abercorn, "we must have these Porters. Write, my dear Lady Abercorn." She wrote. An answer came from Jane Porter, that they could not afford the expense of travelling. A cheque was sent. They arrived. Lord Abercorn peeped at them as they came through the hall, and running by the private staircase to Lady Abercorn, exclaimed, "Witches! my lady. I must be off," and immediately started post, and remained away till they were gone.
[Quackery Successful.]
Sir Edward Halse, who was physician to King George III., driving one day through the Strand, was stopped by the mob listening to the oratory of Dr. Rock, the famous quack, who, observing Sir Edward look out at the chariot-window, instantly took a number of boxes and phials, gave them to the physician's footman, saying, "Give my compliments to Sir Edward—tell him these are all I have with me, but I will send him ten dozen more to-morrow." Sir Edward, astonished at the message and effrontery of the man, actually took the boxes and phials into the carriage; on which the mob, with one consent, cried out, "See, see, all the doctors, even the King's, buy their medicines of him!" In their young days, these gentlemen had been fellow-students; but Rock, not succeeding in regular practice, had metamorphosed himself into a quack. In the afternoon, he waited on Sir Edward, to beg his pardon for having played him such a trick; to which Sir Edward replied, "My old friend, how can a man of your understanding condescend to harangue the populace with such nonsense as you talked to day? Why, none but fools listen to you."—"Ah! my good friend, that is the very thing. Do you give me the fools for my patients, and you shall have my free leave to keep the people of sense for your own." Sir Edward Halse used to divert his friends with this story, adding, "I never felt so like a fool in my life as when I received the bottles and boxes from Rock."
[The Grateful Footpad.]
It is related of Jerry Abershawe, the notorious footpad, that on a dark and stormy night in November, after having stopped every passenger on the Wandsworth road, being suddenly taken ill, he stopped at his old haunt, the Bald-faced Stag public-house, when his comrades sent to Kingston for medical assistance, and Dr. William Roots, then a very young man, attended. Having bled him, and given the necessary advice, the doctor was about to return home, when his patient, with much earnestness, said, "You had better, sir, have some one to go back with you, as it is a very dark and lonesome journey." This, however, the doctor declined, observing that he had "not the least fear, even should he meet with Abershawe himself," little thinking to whom he was making this reply. It is said that the footpad frequently alluded to this scene, with much comic humour. His real name was Louis Jeremiah Avershawe. He was tried at Croydon for the murder of David Price, a Union Hall officer, whom he had killed with a pistol-shot, and at the same time wounded a second officer with another pistol. In this case the indictment was invalidated by some flaw; but having been tried and convicted, for feloniously shooting at one Barnaby Turner, he was hung in chains, on Wimbledon Common, in August, 1795.
[A Notoriety of the Temple.]
Through reverses at law, how many persons has melancholy marked for her own. Miss Flight, the little lady who was always hovering about the courts, and behaving eccentrically, was one of this class, known to Dickens's readers. Doubtless, she was considered a mere pen-and-ink sketch from fancy, but she was a fact, every inch of her. She would, we know, stop the most learned judges that sit on the bench when in full swing of their awful judgment. She would rise and shake her lean weird fist at the embodiment of wisdom in horse-hair, and exclaim, "Oh, you vile man! oh, you wicked man! Give me my property! I will issue a mandamus, and have your habeas corpus!" And having continued in a like fashion for a minute or two, she would bind up her papers in "red tape"—at least, tape that had once been red, and had followed her dirty fortunes for years—and either subside into the seat granted her beside the barristers or depart triumphant from court. No usher had dared exclaim "Silence!" or send forth the hush of the cackling animal peculiar to that official. No barrister had nudged her under the fourth rib, as he might have done another, and would have done had she been fairer. And the learned Judge, sitting patiently till the end, with a mild perspiration only rising on the tip of the nose to show that he was in any way put out, would then, as if nothing had occurred, resume the thread of his learned judgment, to be appealed against, perhaps, soon after. What the mystery is between Miss Flight and the Bar no one can tell. She may have been the embodiment of a peculiar wrong, and have appeared in the eyes of the bewigged as a sort of ghost threatening the evil doers with the shades. Perhaps she was pensioned merely out of some stray idea of benevolence. We scarcely thought of that in connection with the object of our comment, and yet to a certain extent it may be true, as she received from the right learned Middle Temple a sum of shillings per week, which she added to a sum of shillings received from the right learned Inner Temple, and so she supported life. But why the learned of the law gave something for nothing, and were afraid of and respectful to the little woman, let no man enquire. The little woman's soul has, however, flitted, and we can say that, after all, the few young lawyers who know nought of her history will send after her whither she has gone a word of regret.—Court Journal.
[A Ride in a Sedan.]
From a house in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, the beautiful Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, and the other fair and high-born women who canvassed for Charles James Fox, used to watch the humours of the Westminster election. Pitt writes to Wilberforce on the 8th of April, 1784, "Westminster goes on well, in spite of the Duchess of Devonshire, and the other women of the people; but when the poll will close is uncertain." Hannah More, as appears from the date of her letters, resided at one period in Henrietta Street, and in one of them we find an amusing account of an adventure which she met with during the Westminster election. To one of her sisters she writes:—"I had like to have got into a fine scrape the other night. I was going to pass the other evening at Mrs. Coles's, in Lincoln's Inn Fields. I went in a chair. They carried me through Covent Garden. A number of people, as I went along, desired the man not to go through the garden, as there were an hundred armed men, who suspected every chairman belonged to Brookes's, and would fall upon us. In spite of my entreaties the men would have persisted, but a stranger, out of humanity, made them set me down, and the shrieks of the wounded, for there was a terrible battle, intimidated the chairmen, who were at last prevailed upon to carry me another way. A vast number of people followed me, crying out, 'It is Mrs. Fox: none but Mr. Fox's wife would dare to come into Covent Garden in a chair; she is going to canvass in the dark!' Though not a little frightened, I laughed heartily at this, but shall stir out no more in a chair for some time."