Notwithstanding the large income of Vandyck, his style of living was so splendid and costly as to involve him in heavy debt. To repair his fortunes, he studied alchemy for a time, in the hope of discovering the philosopher's stone. But towards the end of his life he was enabled to retrieve his position, and to leave a comfortable competency to his widow. Rembrandt, on the other hand, involved himself in debt through his love of art. He was an insatiable collector of drawings, armour, and articles of vertu, and thus became involved in such difficulties that he was declared a bankrupt. His property remained under legal control for thirteen years, until his death.
The great Italian artists were for the most part temperate and moderate men, and lived within their means. Haydon, in his Autobiography, says, "Rafaelle, Michael Angelo, Zeuxis, Apelles, Rubens, Reynolds, Titian, were rich and happy. Why? Because with their genius they combined practical prudence." Haydon himself was an instance of the contrary practice. His life was a prolonged struggle with difficulty and debt. He was no sooner free from one obligation, than he was involved in another. His "Mock Election" was painted in the King's Bench prison, while he lay there for debt. There is a strange entry in his Journal: "I borrowed £10 to-day of my butterman, Webb, an old pupil of mine, recommended to me by Sir George Beaumont twenty-four years ago, but who wisely, after drawing hands, set up a butter shop, and was enabled to send his old master £10 in his necessity." Haydon's Autobiography is full of his contests with lawyers and sheriffs' officers. Creditors dogged and dunned him at every step. "Lazarus's head," he writes, "was painted just after an arrest; Eucles was finished from a man in possession; the beautiful face in Xenophon in the afternoon, after a morning spent in begging mercy of lawyers; and Cassandra's head was finished in agony not to be described, and her hand completed after a broker's man in possession, in an execution put in for taxes."[1]
[Footnote 1: Haydon—Autobiography, vol. ii., p. 400.]
Cowper used to say that he never knew a poet who was not thriftless; and he included himself. Notwithstanding his quiet, retired life, he was constantly outrunning the constable. "By the help of good management," he once wrote, "and a clear notion of economical matters, I contrived in three months to spend the income of a twelvemonth." But though the number of thriftless poets may be great, it must not be forgotten that Shakespeare, who stands at the head of the list, was a prudent man. He economized his means, and left his family in comfort. His contemporaries were, however, for the most part indebted men. Ben Jonson was often embarrassed, and always poor, borrowing twenty shillings at a time from Henslowe; though he rarely denied himself another jolly night at the "Mermaid." Massinger was often so reduced in circumstances as not to be able to pay his score at the same tavern.
Greene, Peele, and Marlowe lived lives of dissipation, and died in poverty. Marlowe was killed in a drunken brawl. When Greene was on his deathbed, dying of the disease which his excesses had caused, he was haunted by the debt of ten pounds which he owed to the shoemaker who had lodged him. He then warned his friend Peele to amend his ways; but Peele, like him, died in distress and debt, one of the last letters he wrote being an imploring letter to Burleigh asking for relief,—"Long sickness," said he, "having so enfeebled me as maketh bashfulness almost impudency." Spenser died forsaken, and in want. Ben Jonson says of him that "he died for lack of bread in King Street, and refused twenty broad pieces sent to him by my lord of Essex," adding, "he was sorrie he had no time to spend them."
Of later poets and literary men, Milton died in obscurity, though not in debt. Lovelace died in a cellar. Butler, the author of "Hudibras," died of starvation in Rose Alley, the same place in which Dryden was beaten by hired ruffians. Otway was hunted by bailiffs to his last hiding-place on Tower Hill. His last act was to beg a shilling of a gentleman, who gave him a guinea; and buying a loaf to appease his hunger, he choked at the first mouthful. Wycherley lay seven years in gaol for debt, but lived to die in his bed at nearly eighty. Fielding's extravagance and dissipation in early life involved him in difficulties which he never entirely shook off, and his death was embittered by the poverty in which he left his widow and child in a foreign land.
Savage had a pension of fifty pounds a year, which he usually spent in a few days. It was then fashionable to wear scarlet cloaks trimmed with gold lace; and Johnson one day met him, just after he had got his pension, with one of these cloaks upon his back, while, at the same time, his naked toes were sticking through his shoes. After living a life of recklessness and dissipation, he died in prison, where he had lain six months for debt. In concluding his "Life of Savage," Johnson says: "This relation will not be wholly without its use, if those who, in confidence of superior capacities or attainments, disregard the common maxims of life, shall be reminded that nothing will supply the want of prudence, and that negligence and irregularity, long continued, will make knowledge useless, wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible."
Sterne died poor, if he did not die insolvent. At his death, a subscription was got up for the support of his wife and daughter. Churchill was imprisoned for debt, occasioned by his dissoluteness and extravagance,—Cowper characterizing him as "spendthrift alike of money and of wit." Chatterton, reduced to a state of starvation and despair, poisoned himself in his eighteenth year. Sir Richard Steele was rarely out of debt. In many respects he resembled Sheridan in temperament and character. He was full of speculation, and was always on the point of some grand stroke of luck, which was to make his fortune. He was perpetually haunted by duns and bailiffs; yet he did not stint himself of luxuries so long as he obtained credit. When appointed to the office of Commissioner of Stamps, with a moderate income, he set up a carriage with two and sometimes four horses; and he maintained two houses, one in London, the other at Hampton. His means being altogether inadequate to this style of living, he soon became drowned in greater debt than before. He was repeatedly impounded by lawyers, and locked up in sponging-houses. Executions were put into his houses; his furniture was sold off; his wife wanted the commonest necessaries of life; and still the pleasure-loving Steele maintained his equanimity and good temper. Something great was always on the point of turning up in his favour. One of his grandest schemes was that for bringing fish alive to the London market; "and then," said he to his wife, "you will be better provided for than any lady in England." But the good turn never came to Sir Richard; and he died out at elbows on his wife's little property in Wales.
Goldsmith was another of the happy-go-lucky debtors. He swam in debt. He was no sooner out of it, than he was plunged into it again, deeper than before. The first money he earned as a tutor—it was all the money he had—was spent in buying a horse. His relations raised £50, and sent him to the Temple to study law, but he got no farther than Dublin, where he spent or gambled away all the money. Then he went to Edinburgh to study medicine, and was forced to fly from it, having become surety for a friend. He started on the tour of Europe without any money in his pocket—with nothing but his flute; and he begged and played, until he came back to England, as poor as he went. He himself used afterwards to say that there was hardly a kingdom in Europe in which he was not a debtor.[1]
[Footnote 1: FORSTER—Life of Goldsmith, ed. 1863, p. 41.]