"By Jove, Sir, I begin to think you are a gentleman!"
"I hope so, Sir," answered Poole; "and I hope you are the same!"
"Nothing of the kind," said the stranger; "and if you are a gentleman, what business have you here?"
Upon which he rang the bell, and, as the waiter entered, indignantly exclaimed,—
"That's a gentleman,—turn him out!"
Poole had unluckily entered and taken his seat in the commercial room of the hotel!
All who knew Poole know that he was ever full of himself,—believing his renown to be the common talk of the world. A whimsical illustration of this weakness was lately told me by a mutual friend. When at Paris recently, he chanced to say to Poole, "Of course you are full of all the theatres."—"No, Sir, I am not," he answered, solemnly and indignantly. "Will you believe this? I went to the Opéra Comique, told the Director I wished a free admission; he asked me who I was; I said, 'John Poole.' Sir, I ask you, will you believe this? He said, he didn't know me!"
The Queen gave him a nomination to the Charter-House, where his age might have been passed in ease, respectability, comfort, and competence; but it was impossible for one so restless to bear the wholesome and necessary restraint of that institution. He came to me one day, boiling over with indignation, having resolved to quit its quiet cloisters, his principal ground for complaint being that he must dine at two o'clock and be within walls by ten. He resigned the appointment, but subsequently obtained one of the Crown pensions, took up his final abode in Paris, where, during the last ten years of his life, he lived, if that can be called "life" which consisted of one scarcely ever interrupted course of self-sacrifice to eau-de-vie. His mind was of late entirely gone. I met him in 1861, in the Rue St. Honoré, and he did not recognize me, a circumstance I could scarcely regret.
I am not aware of any details concerning his death. When I last inquired concerning him, all I could learn was that he had gone to live at Boulogne,—that two quarters had passed without any application from him for his pension,—and that therefore, of course, he was dead. His death, however, was a loss to none, and I believe not a grief to any.
He was a tall, handsome man, by no means "jolly," like some of his contemporary wits,—rather, I should say, inclined to be taciturn; and I do not think his habits of drinking were excited by the stimulants of society.[G] Little, I believe, is known of his life, even to the actors and playwrights, with whom he chiefly associated, from the time when his burlesque of "Hamlet Travestie" (printed in 1810) commenced his career of celebrity, if not of fame, to his death, (in the year 1862, I believe,) being then probably about seventy years old.