Memoirs of Eighty Years

by Thomas Gordon Hake

While at Brighton I first knew Count Pepoli, the head of an illustrious Bolognese family. He was the author of some pleasant works, and wrote the opera of “I Puritani” for his friend Bellini, the composer who furnished the music. He was banished from his country, and had his estates put under forfeiture by Pius IX., whose utmost science could do no better than proclaim the dogma of an immaculate conception, and announce himself infallible, as occupying upon earth the rotten throne of an Almighty. Yet this gentleman, by the aid of his superstitious adherents, was able to expel the best families from Bologna, for not wishing to retain him in his place of civil chief—put into that place by those supernatural chemists, the cardinals, who, by mumbling cabalistic words over a drink of wine, could turn it into blood, and, by showing the whites of their eyes, could metamorphose a mouthful of dry bread into the flesh of Christ. They mean well, they administer to existing wants; but the drinking and the eating of these would be cannibalism of the worst description, and this they have not the imagination to perceive.

Pepoli reached England a poor man, though the owner of many palaces and lands. He supported himself by becoming, almost at once, Professor of the Italian Language, Literature, and Antiquities at the University of London, in Gower Street; and he retained this post for some twenty years. When the pope was shown the shortest cut out of Rome, Pepoli rushed back to Bologna, and got hold of his magnificent palaces once more, and recovered his lordly position.

Some twenty years after this, when I last visited Italy, on my way to Rome I stopped at Bologna, and inquired of my landlord, Pellagrini, the way to the Palazzo Pepoli, which I accordingly sought and found. It was a massive, ancient structure, and on inquiring of the janitor if the count was at home, was informed that his kinswoman, the Countess Maria Pepoli, lived there; and I was directed to his residence, which was a large building occupying one side of an open Place, and which seemed only to need a sentinel to complete its pretensions to being a royal palace.

Unfortunately for me, the count was at his country seat.

This nobleman, while in London, married a Scotch lady. My old friend, Mr. Plattnaur, kept up a constant correspondence with the count, informing him of all that happened to his English friends. Plattnaur was very intimate with Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle. The lady once asked when he would join them at dinner. He replied, “If you please, to-morrow.” “Yes,” she answered, “do come to-morrow: it will be the first day of the chicken.”

I have not spoken of Sir Matthew Tierney, a physician of Irish extraction, a good-looking plausible man, always equal to the occasion, whatever might fall in his way. He had the look of a baronet when once you knew he was one—a title that he won easily, by a stroke of worldly wisdom. When George No. 4 was a Brighton man, reposing under that Chinese umbrella, the Pavilion, he was surrounded by physicians, one of whom, Dr. Bankhead, I was intimately acquainted with in Italy during 1831 and 1832. Bankhead was a powerful-looking Scotchman, with a large red face and hair to match, living abroad for reasons, and practising among the English residents at Florence, by whom he was much liked and courted, and as little respected as many of them were respected by themselves. But all liked his anecdotes of life high and low, more especially so did the men after dinner, when the ladies had left the table.

He told me that he used to meet the king’s physicians every morning before visiting the royal patient, and that he and the others invariably passed away an hour in inventing scandalous stories about the aristocracy, calculated to give amusement and pleasure to their patient. He had been Lord Londonderry’s physician; with him he had lived in town and country, and so had become acquainted with the noblest in the land, and with all their foibles.

Bankhead knew the history of Tierney’s rise to the summit, which had a very humble beginning. The king, always self-indulgent, was of course always ill. At that time his favourite groom, who was suffering under circumstances similar to those of his master, and could get no attention from the medical men of the palace, consulted Tierney. That astute physician saw his chance, and giving the groom as much care as he would have bestowed on royalty itself, effected a cure, which, commending itself to the king, led to Tierney being summoned, and to his advice being followed with marked advantage.

Sir Matthew kept up a handsome house at Brighton, on the Grand Parade, where he resided in the season, living in London during the fashionable months. He was a favourite, and a man of very pleasant manners.