A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV

by Justin McCarthy; Justin H. McCarthy

Poetry, romance, and art suffered many heavy losses during the same time. We have already chronicled the death of Walter Scott. One who had known him and had been kindly welcomed by him, James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, died three years after Scott in 1835. The death of George Crabbe was one of the memorable events of the reign. Crabbe might well be described in the words which a later singer set out for his own epitaph, as "the poet of the poor." Crabbe pictured the struggles, the sufferings, the occasional gleams of happiness which are common to the lives of the poor with a realism as vigorous and as vivid as the prose of Charles Dickens himself could show, and he had touches here and there of exquisitely tender poetic feeling which were not unworthy of Keats or Wordsworth. Nothing was nobler in the life of Burke than his early appreciation and generous support of Crabbe. Hannah More died in 1833. The fame of this remarkable woman has somewhat faded of late years, and even the {283} most successful of her writings find probably but few readers among the general public. She has, however, won for herself a distinct place in history, not less by her life itself than by her work in various fields of literature. In her early days she had been an associate of Samuel Johnson, Burke, and Goldsmith, and Reynolds, and she had known Macaulay from his childhood. She was always a writer with a purpose, whether she wrote a religious tract or an ethical essay, a tragedy or a novel. She always strove to be a teacher, and the intellectual gifts with which she had been endowed were only valued by her in so far as they enabled her to serve the education and the moral progress of humanity. "The rapt One of the godlike forehead, the heaven-eyed creature," as Wordsworth described Samuel Taylor Coleridge, died in 1834. Coleridge belonged to an order of intellect far higher than that to which Crabbe or Hannah More had any claim. He was indeed a man of genius in all but the very highest meaning of the word. He was poet, philosopher, teacher, and critic, and in each department, had he worked in that alone, he must have won renown. Perhaps if he had not worked in so many fields he might have obtained even a more exalted position than that which history must assuredly assign to him. His influence as a philosopher is probably fading now, although he unquestionably inspired whole schools of philosophic thought, and the world remembers him rather as the author of "The Ancient Mariner" than as the metaphysical student and teacher. As a critic, in the highest sense of the word, he will always have the praise that should belong to the first who aroused the attention of Englishmen to the great new school of thoughtful criticism which was growing up in Germany under the influence of Lessing and of Goethe. He would have deserved fame if only for his translations of some of Schiller's noblest dramas. It has been justly said that Coleridge by his successful efforts to spread over England the influence of the higher German criticism did much to restore Shakespeare to that position as head of the world's modern literature from which English {284} criticism and English tastes had done so much to displace him since the days of Dryden.

[Sidenote: 1775-1836—Mrs. Siddons and Edmund Kean]

The death of Coleridge was soon followed by that of Charles Lamb, and, indeed, Coleridge's death may have had some effect in hastening that of his dear and devoted friend. In the same poem from which we have just quoted the lines that picture Coleridge, Wordsworth tells how "Lamb, the frolic and the gentle, has vanished from his lonely hearth." Lamb was the most exquisite of essayists and letter-writers, a man whose delicate humor, playful irony, and happy gift of picturesque phrase claim for him true poetic genius. The present generation has probably but a faint memory of Felicia Hemans, whose verse had at one time an immense popularity among all readers with whom sweetness of sentiment, musical ease, fluency of verse, and simple tenderness of feeling were enough to constitute poetic art. She, too, died not long before the close of the reign. Many men who had won wide fame as pulpit orators and as religious teachers of various orders marked by their deaths as well as by their lives this chapter of history. Rowland Hill was one of these, the great popular preacher, who flung aside conventionalities, and was ready to preach anywhere if he had hope of gathering an audience around him whom he could move and teach, whether he spoke from the pulpit of a church or a chapel, or from a platform in the open air, or in the midst of a crowd with no platform at all. Another was Robert Hall, admittedly one of the most eloquent preachers of modern times. Yet another was Adam Clarke, the author of the celebrated "Commentary on the Holy Scriptures." Of course the fame of these men and women does not belong in the fuller sense to the reign of William the Fourth. Some of them had wellnigh done their work before the reign began, none of them can be said to have won any new celebrity during the reign. Their names are introduced here because their deaths were events of the moment and lend, in that way, additional importance to the reign's history.

The fame of Mrs. Siddons can hardly be said to belong in any sense to the days when William the Fourth sat on {285} the English throne, for she had retired from the stage many years before his accession, and only appeared in public on rare occasions and for some charitable object; but she died within the reign, and it must therefore find another distinction by its association with her name. Two years later died Edmund Kean, who also may be said to have closed his career as an actor before the reign had begun. Of the fame that is won on the boards of a theatre posterity can only judge by hearsay. The poet, the novelist, the historian, the philosopher, the painter, the sculptor, leave their works always living behind them, and the later generation has the same materials on which to form its judgment as were open to the world when the author or artist had just completed his work. Even the orator can bequeath to all ages the words he has spoken, although they are no longer to be accompanied by the emphasis of his gesture and accentuated by the music of his voice. Of the actor and the actress who have long passed away we can know nothing but what their contemporaries have told us, and can form no judgment of our own. We can hardly be wrong, however, in regarding Mrs. Siddons as by far the greatest tragic actress who has ever appeared on the English stage, and Edmund Kean as the greatest actor of Shakespearian tragedy whom England has seen since the days of Garrick. In mentioning these two names, we must also be reminded of the name of Charles Mathews the elder, an actor of extraordinary versatility and genuine dramatic power, who is, however, best remembered as the originator of the style of theatrical entertainment which may be described as the "At Home" performance, in which he probably never had a rival. Many of us can still remember his yet more gifted son, the younger Charles Mathews, the incomparable light comedian of a later day.

We have told thus far, in this chapter, only of lights going out in literature, art, philosophy, theology, and science. Let us relieve the picture by recording that one rising star of the first magnitude in literature cast its earliest rays over these latest years of William the Fourth. Early in 1836 the "Sketches by Boz" were published in a {286} collected form, and a little later in the same year appeared the first number of "The Pickwick Papers." Then the world began to know that a man of thoroughly original genius had arisen, and before the reign was out the young author, Charles Dickens, was accorded by all those whose judgment was worth having that place among the foremost English novelists which he has ever since retained and is ever likely to retain. "The Pickwick Papers" opened a new era in the history of English novel-writing. By a curious coincidence, the proposal of a young art student to furnish illustrations for Dickens's books being declined by the author, led the young art student to believe that he had mistaken his vocation in trying to illustrate the works of other men, and he turned his attention to literature, and afterwards became the one great rival of Dickens, and will be known to all time as the author of "Vanity Fair" and "The Newcomes." None of the writings which made Thackeray's fame appeared during the time of William the Fourth, but his name may be associated with the close of the reign by the incident which brought him into an acquaintanceship with Dickens, and which led to his abandoning the pencil for the pen.

[Sidenote: 1772-1834—The impositions of Princess Olivia]

Towards the close of the reign died one of the most audacious and astonishing impostors known to modern times. Even the Tichborne claimant of the reign that followed makes but a poor show for inventiveness and enterprise when compared with the woman who described herself as the Princess Olivia of Cumberland, and who claimed to be the daughter of King William's brother. This woman was the daughter of a house painter named Wilmot, and was educated under the care of her uncle, the Rector of a parish in Warwickshire. She received a good education, and even in her young days seemed to have a desire to exhibit herself as the heroine of strange adventures. At an early age she was married to John Serres, a man distinguished in his art, who obtained the position of painter to the King and the Duke of Clarence, afterwards William the Fourth, and it was probably this association with the surroundings of greater personages that inspired {287} her with some of her bold conceptions. Her husband and she did not get on very well together, and a separation took place; after which for a while Mrs. Serres appeared on the stage, and then took to the art of painting on her own account, and actually succeeded in getting herself appointed landscape painter to the Prince of Wales. Her next attempt was at novel-writing, and she also published a volume of poems and even ventured on the composition of an opera. Later still she made herself conspicuous by writing a volume to prove that her uncle, the Rev. James Wilmot, was the actual author of the letters of Junius. That was only a beginning, for she soon after proclaimed herself the legitimate daughter, by a secret marriage, of the Duke of Cumberland. She made her claims known to the Prince Regent and all the other members of the royal family, and demanded a formal hearing in order that she might prove her right to rank as one of them. She was so far successful that her claim was actually taken up by a member of the House of Commons, who moved for the appointment of a Committee of the House to give it a full investigation. Sir Robert Peel promptly settled the question, so far as regarded the appointment of a committee, by announcing that he held in his hand a manifesto of the Princess Olivia, addressed to the high powers of the kingdom of Poland, in which she claimed to be the descendant of Stanislaus Augustus. Sir Robert Peel urged that as the two claims were practically irreconcilable and were both made by the same claimant, the House of Commons might consider itself relieved from the necessity of appointing a Committee of Inquiry, and the House accepted his advice. Still, it is almost needless to say that many persons were found quite willing to believe in the genuineness of the Princess Olivia's claim, and even in the genuineness of both her claims, and she had indeed, for a time, a party of faithful and credulous followers as strong as that which backed up the pretensions of the adventurer from Wapping who proclaimed himself to be Sir Roger Tichborne. The later years of the self-created Princess Olivia were spent in poverty, and she died within the rules of the {288} King's Bench. Even in much later days, however, her name was not wholly forgotten.

A few lines may be spared to describe the career of a man who died not long after the death of the Princess Olivia, and who belonged to that class which used to be described as wonderful characters. This was a man named James Norris, who came of a family of good position having property near Devizes. Norris received a good education, and at one time promised to make a name for himself as a student of natural history. He is described as "handsome in person and elegant in manners," and we are told that "he possessed a highly cultivated mind which seemed to promise in early life eminence in society, and that he would rise to be an ornament to the age in which he lived." At a comparatively early age he had outlived all his family, and thus became the owner of large landed property. He suddenly became a prey to strange, overmastering habits of indolence, apathy, and shyness, which gradually estranged him from all society. He neglected his property, allowed his rents to remain for years and years in the hands of his steward, without troubling himself about them, and allowed his dividends to grow up in the hands of his bankers without concerning himself as to their amount, or even opening any letters which might be addressed to him on the subject. He gave up shaving and allowed his hair and board to grow as they would; he never changed his clothing or his linen until they became worn to rags; he lay in bed for the greater part of the day, took his principal meal about midnight, then had a lonely ramble, and returned to bed as the morning drew near. He was hardly ever seen by anybody but his servants, and declined any communication even with his nearest neighbors. When an occasion arose which actually compelled him to communicate with any one from the outer world, he would only consent to speak with a door, or at least a screen, between him and the other party to the conversation. All the time he does not seem to have been engaged in any manner of study or work, and he appears to have simply devoted himself to the full indulgence of his {289} passion for solitude. His figure, or some sketch suggested by it, has been made use of more than once by writers of fiction, but the man himself was a living figure in the reign of William the Fourth, and died not long before its close.

Under the date of March 31, 1837, Charles Greville writes: "Among the many old people who have been cut off by this severe weather, one of the most remarkable is Mrs. Fitzherbert, who died at Brighton at above eighty years of age. She was not a clever woman, but of a very noble spirit, disinterested, generous, honest, and affectionate, greatly beloved by her friends and relations, popular in the world, and treated with uniform distinction and respect by the Royal Family." The death of this celebrated woman recalls to memory one of the saddest and most shameful chapters in the whole sad and shameful story of the utterly worthless Prince who became George the Fourth.

[Sidenote: 1756-1837—Illness of William the Fourth]