CURIOSITIES
OF
IMPECUNIOSITY.

BY
H. G. SOMERVILLE,
AUTHOR OF
“NOT YET,” “SELF AND SELF-SACRIFICE,” ETC.

LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET, W.
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen.
1896.

LONDON:
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.

PREFACE.

It is customary for the proprietor when starting a newspaper or periodical to issue a notice to the public explaining—or purporting to explain—the raison d’être of the new venture, which notices, with very trifling exceptions, are to the effect that the projected journal “will supply a want long felt.”

I might, in sending forth the following pages, state something similar with perfect truth, since if the little work be as successful as (I say it with all modesty) it ought to be, it will unquestionably supply a want long felt—by the author.

It is frequently averred nowadays that much that is written bears evidence of being of a non-practical character, and under these circumstances, I felt I should take a pardonable pride in being able to point to one volume in the English language to which this stigma could not be applied; for I flatter myself the subject of Impecuniosity is one with which I have long—too long—been practically familiar.

H. G. Somerville.

CONTENTS.

CURIOSITIES OF IMPECUNIOSITY.

CHAPTER I.

THE MORAL AND IMMORAL EFFECTS OF IMPECUNIOSITY.

“I wish the good old times would come again, when we were not quite so rich,” says Bridget Elia. “I am sure we were a great deal happier. A purchase is but a purchase now that you have money enough. Formerly it used to be a triumph. When we coveted a cheap luxury, we were used to have a debate two or three days before, and to weigh the for and against, and think what we might spare it out of, and what savings we could hit upon that would be an equivalent. A thing was worth buying then, when we felt the money we paid for it. Do you remember the brown suit which you made to hang upon you, it grew so threadbare, and all because of that folio Beaumont and Fletcher which you dragged home late at night from Barker’s in Covent Garden? Do you remember how we eyed it for weeks before we could make up our minds to the purchase, and had not come to a determination till it was near ten o’clock on the Saturday night, when you set off from Islington, fearing you should be too late; and when the old bookseller with some grumbling opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper lighted out the relic from his dusty treasure-house, and when you lugged it home wishing it were twice as cumbersome, and when you presented it to me, and when we were exploring the perfection of it, and while I was repairing some of the loose leaves with paste, which your impatience would not suffer to be left till daybreak, was there no pleasure in being a poor man? Do you remember our pleasant walks to Enfield, and Potter’s Bar, and Waltham, when we had a holiday? Holidays and all other fun are gone now we are rich,—and the little hand-basket in which I used to deposit our day’s fare of savoury cold lamb, and how you would pry about at noontide for some decent house where we might go in and produce our store, only paying for the ale that you must call for, and speculate upon the looks of the landlady. We had cheerful looks for one another, and would eat our plain food savourily. You are too proud to see a play anywhere now but in the pit. Do you remember where it was we sat when we saw the ‘Battle of Hexham,’ and ‘The Surrender of Calais,’ and Bannister and Mrs. Bland in ‘The Children of the Wood,’ when we squeezed out our shillings apiece to sit three or four times in a season in the one shilling gallery? You used to say that the gallery was the best place for seeing, and was the best place of all for enjoying a play socially, that the company we met there, not being in general readers of plays, were obliged to attend the more. I appeal to you whether, as a woman, I met generally with less attention and accommodation than I have since in more expensive situations in the house. You cannot see, you say, in the gallery now. I am sure we saw—and heard too—well enough then; but sight and all, I think, is gone with our poverty.”

But this is not the experience of every one. “Moralists,” Sydney Smith remarks, “tell you of the evils of wealth and station, and the happiness of poverty. I have been very poor the greater part of my life and have borne it, I believe, as well as most people; but I can safely say I have been happier for every guinea I have earned.”

Doctor Johnson, in addition to alleging that “Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable and others extremely difficult,” maintains that “poverty takes away so many means of doing good, and produces so much inability to resist evil, both natural and moral, that it is by all virtuous means to be avoided.” Burns is stronger still in his denunciation, exclaiming, “Poverty, thou half-sister of death, thou cousin-german of hell, where shall I find force of execration equal to the amplitude of thy demerits?” But in striking contrast to these, is that remarkable passage in George Sand’s ‘Consuelo,’ in which every known blessing and virtue is attributed to “the goddess—the good goddess—of poverty.”

Samuel Smiles is of opinion that “nothing sharpens a man’s wits like poverty. Hence many of the greatest men have originally been poor men. Poverty often purifies and braces a man’s morals. To spirited people difficult tasks are usually the most delightful ones. If we may rely upon the testimony of history, men are brave, truthful, and magnanimous, not in proportion to their wealth, but in proportion to the smallness of their means.”

With this I agree to a certain extent; but I claim for impecuniosity certain charms and characteristics not associated with poverty. To me the former conveys the idea of a temporary shortness of funds; the latter of a chronic state of want.

I should also have preferred to say, “Nothing sharpens a man’s wits like impecuniosity,” for to many minds poverty, pur et simple, has been simply crushing.

A volume might be filled with the different opinions that have been expressed on this subject, and as there is abundant proof that many who have become great in science, literature, and art, have found insufficient means a stimulus to exertion, it must be conceded that poverty is a splendid thing for those who are equal to fighting against it.

Although impecuniosity has been most extensively experienced by actors, authors, and artists, many of the mighty in law, medicine, and the army and navy, have furnished instances of its universality, but comparatively few cases are to be found connected with commerce. Of course it may be urged that the struggles of business men are, with few exceptions, unrecorded; but still I think their experience on this subject is rather of “the trials of poverty.”

The history of George Moore furnishes an interesting instance of the early struggles of a literally “commercial” man. When he came to London in 1825, he was possessed of a most modest amount of money; and on the day following his arrival in London he made application after application for employment without success, being sometimes received with laughter on account of his country-cut clothes and Cumberland dialect. At the establishment of Messrs. Meeking in Holborn, he was asked if he wanted a porter’s situation. So broken-hearted was he at his many rebuffs, that he could not send a letter home, it was so blotted with tears.

At last he was engaged by Mr. Ray, of Soho Square, at a salary of £30 a year, and bargained with a man driving a pony-cart to convey the box containing all his personal effects. They had not proceeded far when Moore missed the man: pony, cart, and trunk had vanished.

The poor fellow sat down on a doorstep almost broken-hearted at his misfortune.

After waiting for two hours, not knowing what to do for the best, he beheld a pony-cart approaching, and his joy may be imagined when he recognised the identical man with his identical trunk.

The carrier, who had called somewhere in a bye-street and so missed Moore, did not scruple to laugh at him for his “greenness” in trusting a stranger. In gratitude, young Moore proffered the man his whole capital, consisting of nine shillings, which the driver declined, saying “he had agreed for five, and five was all he wanted,” an instance of honesty which Mr. Moore, the merchant, never forgot.

Want of money does not always demoralise. Andrew Marvell, the son of a Yorkshire minister and schoolmaster, entered Trinity College, Cambridge, at the early age of thirteen. Decoyed from home by the Jesuits, he was discovered by his father in a bookseller’s in London, and induced to return to college, where he took his B.A. degree in 1628. He then appears to have travelled considerably in France and Italy, while from 1663 to 1665 he was secretary to the Embassy to Muscovy, Sweden, and Denmark. In 1660 he was chosen to represent his native town, Kingston-on-Hull, in Parliament. Here he made himself so obnoxious to the governing party, that his life was threatened, and he was forced to go into hiding. His conspicuous ability and marvellous wit were acknowledged by all, and appreciated by Charles II., who took pleasure in his company, and on one occasion instructed his Lord Treasurer to ferret him out, and ascertain in what way he could help him. At this time Marvell was living in a court off the Strand, up two pair of stairs, and there Lord Danby, abruptly opening the door, discovered him writing. He suggested that the Treasurer had mistaken his way; but his lordship replied, “Not now I have found Mr. Marvell;” adding that “His Majesty wished to know what he could do to serve him.” Marvell replied that “it was not in His Majesty’s power to serve him;” adding that “he knew full well the nature of Courts, having been in many; and that whosoever is distinguished by the favour of the prince, is expected to vote in his interest.” Lord Danby told him that “His Majesty, from the just sense he had of his merit alone, desired to know whether there was any place at Court he could be pleased with.” The answer to this was that “he could not with honour accept the offer, since if he did he must either be ungrateful to the king in voting against him, or false to his country in giving in to the measures of the Court. The only favour therefore which he begged of His Majesty was, that he would esteem him as faithful a subject as any he had, and more truly in his interest by refusing his offers, than he could have been by embracing them.” After this Lord Danby said that “the king had ordered Mr. Marvell £1000, which he hoped he would receive till he could think of something farther to ask His Majesty;” whereupon Marvell called to his serving-boy,—

“Jack, what had I for dinner yesterday?”

“The little shoulder of mutton.”

“Right! What shall I have to-day?”

“The blade bone boiled.”

“Right! You see, my lord, my dinner is provided, and I do not want the piece of paper.”

The Lord Treasurer departed, finding his mission vain; and, shortly afterwards, Marvell sent his boy out to borrow a guinea from a friend. The incorruptible integrity he had displayed was by no means due to affluence.

Another historical case where poverty and patriotism have been blended is that of Admiral Rodney. At the general election in 1768 he was returned for Northampton, after a violent contest, the expense of which, combined with a fatal passion for gaming, compelled him to fly from the importunities of his creditors.

While residing in Paris he is said to have been occasionally in want of the veriest trifle for necessaries, which fact becoming known, the French Government, through the Duc de Biron, offered him high rank in their navy. His reply was worthy of a sailor and a gentleman. “Monsieur le Duc,” said he, “my distresses have driven me from my country, but no temptation can estrange me from her service; had this offer been voluntary on your part, I should have considered it an insult; but it proceeds from a source that can do no wrong.”

The foregoing illustrations of the inability of impecuniosity to drag certain characters from off their high pedestal of honour, are unfortunately counterbalanced by the considerably too numerous instances of those who have not been proof against its degrading effects. The characteristics of such as have succumbed are naturally the antitheses of those just referred to; instead of strong, healthy, moral minds, their natures are found to be more or less weak, selfish, and in every case wanting, to some extent, in self-respect. The last-named attribute undoubtedly supplying the chief cause of defection.

In this category may be placed Desiderius Erasmus, one of the most remarkable scholars of the 15th and 16th centuries, if not, as is considered by some, one of the most illustrious men that ever lived. The benefits that he conferred on the world at large by his profound and extensive erudition are so priceless that it seems a shame to pillory one so revered; but “necessity has no law,” and as he was chronically necessitous his weakness on one occasion must be laid bare.

Independently of his failing to rise superior to the want of money, which will be referred to directly, it will be seen that his character lacked nobility, by his own confession. He was at the time of Luther pre-eminent in the world of letters, his fame as a student of the deepest research was world-wide, acknowledged not only by the sovereigns and popes of Europe, but by our own monarch, Henry VIII., and by all the men of learning of that age. Thus his power and influence were immense, and it is deeply to be regretted that his cowardice should have prevented him from espousing the doctrines of Luther, since there is no doubt he believed in them.

“Many loved truth and lavished life’s best oil
Amid the dust of books to find her,
Content at last for guerdon of their toil
With the cast mantle she had left behind her.
Many in sad faith sought for her,
Many with crossed hands sighed for her,
But these our brothers fought for her,
At life’s dear peril wrought for her,
So loved her that they died for her.”

Erasmus was not one of those who died for the love of truth, but rather one who “with crossed hands, sighed for her,” since in one of his letters he says,—

“Wherein could I have assisted Luther if I had declared myself for him, and shared the danger along with him? Only thus far, that, instead of one man, two would have perished. I cannot conceive what he means by writing with such a spirit (so fearlessly); one thing I know too well, that he hath brought a great odium upon the lovers of literature. It is true that he hath given us many wholesome doctrines and many good counsels, and I wish he had not defeated the effect of them by his intolerable faults. But if he had written everything in the most unexceptionable manner I had no inclination to die for the sake of truth. Every man has not the courage requisite to make a martyr; and I am afraid, that if I were put to the trial, I should imitate St. Peter.”

Deliciously truthful this, is it not? The practical way in which he reveals his creed, “self-preservation is the first law of nature,” is particularly interesting, more especially as it is so thoroughly in keeping with the sentiments displayed on the occasion when from want of money he penned the following letter to his friend James Battus, beseeching him to dun the Marchioness of Vere, in the following terms:

“You must go to her and excuse my shyness on the ground that I cannot tolerate explaining my difficulties in person. Tell her the need I am in. That Italy is the place to get a degree; explain to her how much more honour I am likely to do her than those theologians she keeps about her. They give forth mere commonplaces. I write what will last for ever. Tell her that fellows like them are to be met with everywhere—the like of me only appears in the course of many ages—i.e. if you don’t mind drawing the long-bow in the cause of friendship. What a discredit it would be to her should St. Jerome”—whose works he was preparing—“appear with discredit for the want of a few gold pieces.”

That the opinions expressed were perfectly truthful there is no gainsaying; but the taste, or rather, want of it, that dictated such an epistle is pitiable, and materially mars the character of one who as far as learning is concerned was indisputably great.

If culture could avail against the deteriorating effects of impecuniosity the career of Orator Henley would have been a different one. The son of a Leicestershire vicar, and educated at St. John’s, Cambridge, he attained considerable eminence as a linguist, and while keeping a school in his native place compiled his ‘Universal Grammar,’ which was written in ten languages. He afterwards came to be regarded as a sort of ecclesiastical outlaw, having a room in Newport Market, Leicester Square, where he started as a quack divine and public lecturer, Sundays being devoted to divinity, Wednesdays and Thursdays to secular orations, the charge for admission one shilling. He afterwards migrated to Clare Market, and became a favourite among the butchers; but though gifted with much oratorical power, he obtained but a precarious subsistence. When at his pecuniary worst he seems to have been at his inventive best, and in proportion to the lowness of his funds his audacity rose. On one occasion when particularly pressed he advertised a meeting for shoemakers to witness a new invention for making shoes, undertaking to make a pair in presence of the audience in an incredibly short space. When the evening arrived, and the room was filled with the followers of Crispin, Mr. Henley simply cut the tops off a pair of old boots, and thereby illustrating the motto to his advertisement, “Omne majus continent in se minus” (“The greater includes the less”).[1]

Dr. Howard, the Rector of St. George’s, Southwark, and Chaplain to the Dowager Princess of Wales, towards the close of the last century, was invariably short of money, a fact pretty well known to his tradesmen. On one occasion he ordered a canonical wig from a peruke-maker’s in Leicester Fields, and the porter had instructions not to leave it till the bill was paid.

Arrived at the rectory, the man asked for the doctor.

“I’ve brought your wig home, sir.”

“Oh, ah,” replied the doctor; “quite right—you can leave it. Just put it down there.”

“No, I can’t leave it, sir—that is, without the money.”

“Oh, very well, then. I’ll try it on.”

The man handed him the wig, and as soon as the doctor put it on, he said to the messenger,—

“This article has been bought and delivered; if you dare to touch it, I will prosecute you for robbery.”

Dr. Howard once preached from the text, “Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all”—a passage gratifying to the feelings of an audience including many of his creditors. He dwelt at considerable length on the blessings and duty of patience, till it was time to close, and then said, “Now, brethren, I am come to the second part of my discourse, which is, ‘And I will pay ye all,’ but that I shall defer to a future opportunity.”

Colton, the author of ‘Lacon,’ who became vicar of the poor living of Kew and Petersham, must likewise be included in the list of those who have succumbed to circumstances. Finding himself unable to pay the price of apartments in the neighbourhood of his living, he transported his gun, fishing-rod, and few books (one of which was De Foe’s ‘History of the Devil’) to Soho, where he rented a couple of rooms in a small house overlooking St. Anne’s burial-ground. There he wrote his book of ‘Aphorisms,’ a broken phial placed in a saucer serving him as an inkstand. His copy was written on scraps of paper and blank sides of letters, and he dined at an eating-house, or cooked a chop for himself. At one time he opened a wine-cellar in another person’s name under a Methodist chapel in Dean Street, Soho, a position for a spiritual adviser which would scarcely be tolerated even in these days of considerable religious liberty.

Many amusing stories are told of Joe Haines, a comedian of the time of Charles II., sometimes called “Count” Haines. It is said that he was arrested one morning by two bailiffs for a debt of £20, when he saw a bishop, to whom he was related, passing along in his coach. With ready resource he immediately saw a loophole for escape, and, turning to the men he said, “Let me speak to his lordship, to whom I am well known, and he will pay the debt and your charges into the bargain.”

The bailiffs thought they might venture this, as they were within two or three yards of the coach, and acceded to his request. Joe boldly advanced and took his hat off to the bishop. His lordship ordered the coach to stop, when Joe whispered to the divine that the two men were suffering from such scruples of conscience that he feared they would hang themselves, suggesting that his lordship should invite them to his house, and promise to satisfy them. The bishop agreed, and calling to the bailiffs, he said, “You two men come to me to-morrow morning, and I will satisfy you.”

The men bowed and went away pleased, and early the next day waited on his lordship, who, when they were ushered in, said, “Well, my men, what are these scruples of conscience?”

“Scruples?” replied one of them, “we have no scruples! We are bailiffs, my lord, who yesterday arrested your cousin, Joe Haines, for a debt of £20, and your lordship kindly promised to satisfy us.”

The trick was strange, but the result was stranger, for his lordship, either appreciating its cleverness, or considering himself bound by the promise he had unintentionally given, there and then settled with the men in full.

John Rich, manager of the Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Covent Garden Theatres, 1681-1761, was another dramatic delinquent. It was owing to his marvellous ability as harlequin that pantomime achieved its popularity. His gesticulation is said to have been so perfectly expressive of his meaning that every motion of his hand or head was a kind of dumb eloquence, readily understood by the audience. One evening, when returning from the theatre in a cab, having ordered the coachman to drive to the “Sun,” a tavern in Clare Market, he threw himself out of the coach window and through the open window of the tavern parlour, just as the driver was about to draw up. The man then descended from the box, touched his hat, and stood waiting for his passenger to alight. Finding at length there was no one visible he besought a few blessings on the scoundrel who had imposed upon him, remounted his box, and was about to drive off, when Rich, who had been watching, vaulted back into the vehicle, and, putting his head out, asked, “where the devil he was driving to?” Almost paralyzed with fear the driver got down again, but could not be persuaded to take his fare, though he was offered a shilling for himself, exclaiming, “No no, that won’t do. I know you too well for all your shoes; and so Mr. Devil, for once you’re outwitted.” In addition to his successful pantomimes, his production of the ‘Beggar’s Opera’ was a wonderful hit; but he seems never to have been well off, and was at one time in such difficulties that he hit upon the clever expedient of taking a house situated in three different counties in order to free himself from the attentions of sheriffs’ officers.

One name must not be omitted from this section of the subject, that of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. His adroitness in profiting by his very practical jokes commenced soon after his leaving Harrow, when spending a few days at Bristol. He wanted a new pair of boots, but, not having money to pay for them, ordered a pair from two bootmakers, to be sent home on the morning of his departure, payment being promised on delivery. When the first tradesman arrived he complained of the fit of one boot, and when the second came he objected to his make of the boot for the other foot. Each bootmaker took a boot back to be stretched. When the dupes called next day, each displaying a boot, they found that Sheridan had departed in the fellow pieces of their property.

Later in life his difficulties became chronic, but his ingenuity was generally equal to them. Having arranged to give a banquet to the leaders of the Opposition, he found himself on the morning of the event without port or sherry, his wine-merchant having positively refused to supply any more without payment. In this dilemma he sent for Chalier, and told him he wished to settle his account. The wine-merchant, much delighted, proposed running home for it, when Sheridan stopped him with “What do you say to dining with me to-day? Lord This, and Sir So-and-so That” (mentioning several celebrities), “will be here.” The offer was accepted with enthusiasm, the merchant leaving his office early in order to dress for the occasion. As soon as he made his appearance Sheridan despatched a messenger to the clerk at the office, to the effect that Mr. Chalier desired so many dozen of different kinds of wine sent at once, which instructions were promptly executed, the Burgundy, hock, &c., &c. arriving just in time for the dinner.

One Friday evening at Drury Lane, just after the half-price money had been taken, Sheridan was informed by his treasurer that unless a certain amount could be raised there was not sufficient to pay the salaries of even the subordinates, and the house would have to close the following Monday. After making certain suggestions which were voted useless by his business-man, Sherry took a look at the meagrely-filled house, and calling a servant, said to him, “You see that stout, goodtempered-looking man in such and such a box?” “Yes, sir.” “Immediately the act-drop is down go to him; have a boy who can bow gracefully precede you with a pair of wax candles. Open the box-door, and in a voice loud enough to be heard by everyone, say, ‘Mr. Sheridan requests the pleasure of a private interview with you, sir.’ Treat him with the greatest attention, and see that a bottle of the best port and a couple of wine-glasses are placed in my study.” These directions were all carried out, and when the manager was alone with his visitor, after expressing the great pleasure he always experienced in seeing any one from Staffordshire, he said, “I think you told me you came to London twice a year.” “Yes,” was the reply, “January and June, to receive my dividends. I have been to the bank to-day and got my £600.” “Ah you are in Consols, whilst I, alas, am Reduced and can get nothing till April, when you know the interest is paid, and till then I shall be in great distress.” “Oh,” said his constituent, “let not that make you uneasy; if you give me the power of attorney to receive the money for you, I can let you have £300, which I shall not want till then.” “Only a real friend,” said Sheridan, “could have made such a proposition.” The £300 duly changed hands, and when April came the power of attorney was handed to Sheridan to sign, “I never spoke of Consols in Reduced,” said he, “I only spoke of my Consols being reduced. Unhappy is the man who cannot understand the weight of prepositions.” The Stafford man went to Sheridan in a fearful rage, but the latter was as cool as a cucumber. He made a clean breast of it, and told all. “But,” he said, “my dear sir, I am now commanded to go to the Prince Regent, to whom I shall narrate your noble conduct. My carriage is waiting, and I can take you to Carlton House.” The creditor was delighted. He shook Sherry by the hand, exclaiming, “I forgive you, never mention the debt again,” to which Sheridan readily assented, and we may be sure kept his word for once. The carriage came, into which both entered, but when it arrived at Carlton House Sheridan alighted, closed the door, and told the coachman to drive the gentleman to his hotel. The Stafford man expostulated that he understood he was going into Carlton House, when Sheridan calmly told him, “That’s another mistake of yours,” and of course, though his statement inferred as much, he only said he would take his constituent to Carlton House. It goes without saying that at the next election the Staffordshire elector voted on the other side.

There is no doubt that at last Sheridan was so desperately involved that his life became, “not to put too fine a point on it,” that of a schemer. He lived in an atmosphere of duns, but such a thorough master was he of the subject that it was the tradesmen who eventually were “done” by him. It was customary for them to assemble early in the morning to catch him before he went out, and when informed “Mr. Sheridan is not down yet, sir,” they were shown into the rooms on each side of the entrance-hall. When he had finished his breakfast he would say, “Are those doors all shut, John?” and on being informed that they were, would deliberately walk out as pleased as though he had obtained a great moral victory.

CHAPTER II.

IMPECUNIOSITY OF THE GREAT.

It must be admitted that impecuniosity is impartial, the peer and the peasant being equally open to its visits, and the Sovereign, under certain conditions, as liable to its influence as the subject. Edward the Third was compelled to pawn his jewels, and his imperial crown three times, once abroad, and twice to Sir John Wosenham, his banker, in whose custody the crown remained eight years. Henry the Fifth was also under the necessity of pawning his crown and the silver table and stools which he had from Spain. The Black Prince made the same use of his plate, and Queen Elizabeth was obliged to part with some of her jewels.

More than two centuries ago when Clerkenwell was a sort of Court quarter of London, and could boast amongst other distinguished residents the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle, this couple, both of whom are remembered by their literary eccentricities, had more than once to patronise the pawnbroker. The duke, who was a devoted Royalist, after his defeat at Marston Moor, retired with his wife to the Continent, and with many privations owing to pecuniary embarrassments suffered an exile of eighteen years, chiefly in Antwerp, in a house which belonged to the widow of Rubens.

Many of our most illustrious families have been indebted to the exertions or the genius of some humble ancestor. The case of Charles Abbot, afterwards Lord Tenterden, is a typical one. He was the son of a Canterbury barber, and at the age of seven was admitted on the foundation of the King’s School in that town, where he soon attracted attention by his industry and intelligence. At an early age he much wished to become a chorister, and was so disappointed when he failed that in after years, when visiting the Cathedral with Mr. Justice Richards, who commended the voice of a singer in the choir, his lordship exclaimed, “Ah, that is the only man I ever envied. When at school in this town, we were candidates for a chorister’s place and he obtained it.” When seventeen, there was no prospect for the clever youth but the drudgery of trade, and on this becoming known in the school there was a general wish expressed that his perseverance and ability should be rewarded. To private generosity he was indebted for his outfit, the trustees conferring a small exhibition upon him, and adding a pittance which enabled him to live, with rigid economy, until he took his B.A. degree. When asked by Mr. Lamont, the father of the lady to whom he was engaged, what means he had to maintain a wife, he replied, “The books in this room and two pupils in the next.”

Sir Peter Laurie, when Lord Mayor of London, said at a dinner given to the judges: “What a country is this we live in! In other parts of the world there is no chance except for men of high birth and aristocratic connections, but here genius and industry are sure to be rewarded. You see before you the example of myself, the chief magistrate of the metropolis of this great empire, with the Chief Justice of England sitting at my right hand, both now in the highest offices of the State, and both sprung from the very dregs of the people.” There are many men who would have been anything but pleased at this reference to their humble extraction; but it was not distasteful to his lordship.

Macready, in recounting a visit to Canterbury Cathedral, says he was shown by the verger the spot where a little shop once stood, and was informed that when Lord Tenterden last visited the Cathedral, he said to his son, “Charles, you see this little shop. I have brought you here on purpose to show it you. In that shop your grandfather used to shave for a penny. That is the proudest reflection of my life. While you live never forget that, my dear Charles,” an injunction which, coming from a Chief Justice of England who died worth £120,000, ought to have a salutary effect on upstarts.

The equally famous Lord Erskine, though a man of gentle birth, was nevertheless indebted, to a certain extent, to impecuniosity for the greatness he achieved, since that impelled him to the spirited defence of Captain Baillie, which attracted the attention of all England. Called to the bar on the 3rd July, 1778, Erskine made his first appearance in public on the 24th November. Previous to this time he had been unknown. His first brief fell to his lot in this way: A certain Captain Baillie, who, for gallant services, had been appointed to a post in Greenwich Hospital, discovered the gravest abuses there, and brought the state of things to the notice of those in power, but being unable to get them remedied, determined to publish the facts of the case. His statement implicated Lord Sandwich, the First Lord of the Admiralty, who, to serve his political purposes, had filled the vacant posts at the Hospital with certain landsmen. The Board of Admiralty immediately suspended the captain, and a criminal information for libel was lodged against him, the case exciting the greatest public interest. During the vacation Erskine had met Captain Baillie at the house of a mutual friend, and, utterly unconscious of his presence, had, after dinner, so strongly censured the shameful practices ascribed to Lord Sandwich that the captain immediately inquired who the young fellow was, and on being told that Erskine had formerly been in the navy, but had recently been called to the bar, he exclaimed with warmth, “Then that’s the man I’ll have for my counsel!”

In due course this now historic trial came on, when the young barrister’s marvellous speech created an impression called by Lord Campbell, “the most wonderful forensic effort of which we have any account in our annals. It was the début of a barrister just called, and wholly unpractised in public speaking, before a court crowded with men of the greatest distinction, belonging to all parties of the State. He came after four eminent counsel, who might have been supposed to have exhausted the subject. He was called to order by a venerable judge, whose word had been law in that hall above a quarter of a century. His exclamation, ‘I will bring him’ (Lord Sandwich) ‘before the Court!’ and the crushing denunciation of Lord Sandwich, in which he was enabled to persevere, from the sympathy of the bystanders, and even of the judges, who, in strictness, ought to have checked his irregularity, are as soul-stirring as anything in this species of eloquence presented to us by ancient or modern times.” As Erskine walked along the hall after the rising of the judges, attorneys flocked around him with their briefs. When asked how he had the courage to stand up so boldly against Lord Mansfield, he replied that he fancied he could feel his little children plucking at his robe, and that he heard them saying, “Now, father, is the time to get us bread!”

Lord Eldon’s life furnishes abundant proof that he was perfectly familiar with adversity. The son of a “fitter” employed in conveying coals in barges from the pits to the different ports on the Tyne, John Scott was born at Newcastle on the 4th June, 1751, and after being educated at the Grammar School in the town would have been apprenticed to his father’s business but for the remonstrances of his brother William (afterwards Lord Stowell), who had obtained an Oxford scholarship, and subsequently a fellowship at the University. The success of the one son induced the father to send John also to college, where he at first studied for the church. While at Oxford he made a runaway match with Miss Bessy Surtees, the daughter of a Newcastle banker. The young couple went to the Queen’s Head, at Morpeth, but on the third morning of their married life their funds were exhausted, and they had no home to go to. Mrs. Scott was naturally very much upset at the predicament in which they were placed, but while lamenting it she suddenly caught sight of a fine wolf-dog belonging to the family, called Loup, whose presence at Morpeth was to her the joyous sign that help was at hand. In a few moments Mr. Henry Scott, her husband’s brother, entered the room. John Scott had written a repentant letter from Morpeth to his father, which had the desired effect, and the younger brother had been sent to announce pardon to the offending couple, and to invite them to take up their abode under the parental roof. The year of grace allowed for retaining a fellowship after marriage having elapsed, Mr. Scott abandoned the thought of taking holy orders and studied law. He was called to the bar in 1776, when he says, “Bessy and I thought all our troubles were over, and we were to be rich almost immediately.” This golden dream was however speedily dissipated, for during the first year the total amount of his professional income was ten shillings and sixpence. But when Lord Chancellor, and living in a magnificent mansion in the vicinity of Hyde Park, he often referred to this period of poverty as the happiest time of his life, for then, he maintained, his wife, to whom he was always passionately attached, was able to show him attentions never so freely bestowed when Society asserted its claims on them. Like Lord Tenterden he gloried in the obstacles he had overcome, and used to point to a small house in Cursitor Street, saying “There was my first perch; many a time have I run down to Fleet Market to buy sixpennyworth of sprats for supper.”

Edward Lord Thurlow, who rose to the woolsack in 1778, was not always affluent. After being called to the bar in 1758 he seldom had the means of going on circuit, and it is asserted that on one occasion he reached the assizes on a horse that he had taken out on trial from London. Lord Chief Justice Kenyon is found guilty of having been poor on the evidence of Horne Tooke, his constant companion when they were students, who, with a friend named Dunning, used to dine with him in vacation-time at a small eating-house in Chancery Lane, for 7½d. a head. Says Tooke, “Dunning and myself were generous for we gave the girl who waited on us a penny a piece, but Kenyon rewarded her with a halfpenny, and sometimes with only a promise.”

Sir Samuel Romilly also says, “At a later period of my life—after a success at the bar which my wildest and most sanguine dreams had never painted to me—when I was gaining an income of £8000 or £9000 a year—I have often reflected how all that prosperity had arisen out of the pecuniary difficulties and confined circumstances of my father.”

Lord Campbell, before he was Lord Chief Justice and Lord Chancellor of England, often knew the inconvenience of want of money. The son of the Rev. Dr. Geo. Campbell, second minister of Cupar, Fifeshire, he was educated at the local Grammar School and the University of St. Andrew’s, and though intended originally for the ministry, after spending some years at college gave up the idea of the church, and went up to London to try some more congenial occupation. His first appointment was as tutor to a Mr. Webster, and while engaged in that capacity he penned the following letter:

“My dear brother,—I live very economically; I dine at home for a shilling, go to the coffee-house once a day, 4d., to the theatre once a week, 3s. 6d. My pen will keep me in pocket-money. I this day begin a job which I must finish in a fortnight, and for which I am promised two guineas, but alas! Willy Thompson paymaster. He owes me divers yellow-boys already. I go no farther than write the history of the last war in India for him till he pays me all.”

After this he obtained the post of reporter and dramatic critic to the Morning Chronicle, but in 1800 he determined to try the law, and entered himself a student of Lincoln’s Inn. At this time, however, there was a strong feeling against one of their set having anything to do with journalism, so that his position was uncomfortable and mortifying, and his reporting prevented him from forming any acquaintance with his fellow-students. He entered a special pleader’s office in 1804, and in June 1805, was able exultingly to announce that “he was no longer a newspaper man.” Called to the bar in 1806, he became a bencher in 1827; member of Parliament for Stafford in 1830; Solicitor-General in 1832; Attorney-General in 1834; Lord Chancellor of Ireland in 1841; Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in 1846 (in which year he produced his celebrated work ‘The Lives of the Chancellors’); Lord Chief Justice in 1850, and Lord Chancellor in 1859.

Sir Rowland Hill, to whom we are indebted for the penny postage system, was the son of a Birmingham schoolmaster, a man of simple, but high character. An outbuilding attached to their house contained benches, blacksmith’s forge, and a vice. Here Rowland and his brother spent much spare time and cash, which latter he remarks was very scanty. “Ever since I can remember,” he writes, “I have had a taste for mechanics, but the best mechanician wants materials and materials cost money,” and this want caused his brother and himself on Good Friday morning to turn tradesmen. They had been sent with a basket to buy a quantity of hot cross buns for the family and as they went along were much amused by the itinerant vendors, who were calling out, as was the custom in Birmingham then,

“Hot cross buns! Hot cross buns! One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns,
Sugar ’em, and butter ’em, and clap ’em in your muns, one a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns.”

On their way home the boys in the pure spirit of fun began to repeat the cry, Matthew, the elder, being a capable mimic; and to their surprise they found the public respond to their offers, the result being that the youngsters soon “sold out,” and had to return for more to the wholesale establishment, the difference in this case between buying and selling being, as is usual, very well worth the trouble. When the family lived at Hill Top, his mother presented Rowland with a portion of the garden for his own use, covered with horehound, which he was about to root out to make way for his flowers, when he was given to understand that the horehound possessed a monetary value. Immediately on discovering this, he cut it up carefully, tied it in bundles, and borrowing a basket from his mother started off to the market-place, where he took up his position with all the air of a regular trader, but was saved the bother of retail dealing by disposing of his entire stock for eightpence to a woman standing near, who he presumed made a hundred per cent. by the transaction, though with true business tact she complained of her purchase, and told him to tell his mother, “she must tie up bigger bunches next time.” The proceeds of the sale went to purchase some tools and materials for the mechanical contrivances spoken of.

The early years of Benjamin Franklin (one of a family of seventeen) were uncongenially spent with his father, a soap-boiler and tallow-chandler, and his brother, a printer. When seventeen years old he sold his books and took a passage from Boston to New York, whence he was advised to proceed to Philadelphia in search of work. On arriving there he tells us that he was “fatigued with walking, rowing, and the want of sleep, and very hungry: my whole stock of cash consisted in a single dollar, and about a shilling in copper coin, which I gave to the boatmen for my passage. At first they refused it, on account of my having rowed: but I insisted on their taking it. Man is sometimes more generous when he has little money than when he has plenty, perhaps to prevent his being thought to have but little. I walked towards the top of the street, gazing about till near Market Street, where I met a boy with bread. I had often made a meal of dry bread, and inquiring where he had bought it, I went immediately to the baker’s he directed me to. I asked for biscuits, meaning such as we had in Boston. That sort it seems was not made in Philadelphia. I then asked for a threepenny loaf, and was told they had none. Not knowing the different prices, nor the names of the different sorts of bread, I told him to give me three pennyworth of any sort. He gave me accordingly, three great puffy rolls. I was surprised at the quantity, but took it; and having no room in my pockets, walked off with a roll under each arm, and eating the other. Thus I went up Market Street, as far as Fourth Street, passing by the door of Mr. Read, my future wife’s father, when she, standing at the door, saw me, and thought I made, as I certainly did, a most awkward, ridiculous appearance. Then I turned and went down Chestnut Street, and part of Walnut Street, eating my roll all the way, and coming round, found myself again at Market Street Wharf, near the boat I came in, to which I went for a draught of the river water; gave my other rolls to a woman and her child that came down the river in the boat with us, and were waiting to go farther. Thus refreshed, I walked again up the street, which by this time had many clean-dressed people in it, who were all walking the same way. I joined them, and thereby was led into the great Meeting House of the Quakers, near the market. I sat down among them, and after looking round awhile and hearing nothing said, being very drowsy through labour and want of rest the preceding night, I fell fast asleep, and continued so till the meeting broke up, when some one was kind enough to rouse me. This, therefore, was the first house I was in, or slept in, in Philadelphia.”

A strange beginning to the career of one who, in addition to his valuable discoveries in electricity, lived to attain the highest honours his country could bestow, and to be the ambassador to foreign countries; whose marvellous intelligence carried out diplomatic undertakings which undoubtedly affected the destinies of nations. It is interesting to note, now that electricity plays such a leading part in the inventions of the day, that when Franklin made his discovery of the identity of lightning and electricity, it was sneered at, and people asked, “Of what use is it?” To which he replied, “What is the use of a child? It may become a man.”

William Cobbett is another example of the wonderful results to be attained by temperance, frugality, and unflagging industry, who, originally an uninteresting yokel, rose to be a power in the land, to edit political papers, to write political pamphlets (one of which had a circulation of 100,000), and to pen, amongst other most important matter, a volume of ‘Advice to Young Men,’ which, if followed by the rising generation, could not fail to make them more worthy the name of Englishmen. At the time referred to, when he was eleven years old, he was employed in the Bishop of Winchester’s garden at Farnham Castle, and happening to hear of the royal gardens at Kew, he thought that he should like to be employed there, started off next morning with only the clothes he was wearing, and sixpence halfpenny in his pocket, he arrived at Richmond towards evening, having expended threepence halfpenny on bread and cheese and small beer and as he jogged along tired and weary with his walk of thirty miles he was attracted to a bookseller’s window, in which was displayed a second-hand copy of Swift’s ‘Tale of a Tub,’ price 3d. He expended his remaining coppers on its purchase, sat down in an adjoining field, read till he could see no longer, then putting the book into his pocket he dropped off to sleep by the side of a haystack. In the morning, roused by the birds, he continued his journey to Kew Gardens, where he succeeded in getting engaged by an old Scotch gardener. A year, or two after this, when he was working again in his native town of Farnham, the old idea of getting into a larger field of action came back to him, and while waiting one day for some young women whom he had arranged to escort to Guildford fair, he was tempted by the sight of the London coach, secured the one vacant place, and before he had time to realise the importance of the step, was being whirled away in the direction of the metropolis. When he arrived the next morning at the Saracen’s Head on Ludgate Hill, his possessions amounted to two shillings and sixpence, but fortunately he had managed to interest a hop merchant, one of his fellow-passengers, who took him home, and in the course of a day or two managed to obtain a situation for him in a lawyer’s office. Here he soon discovered that he had made a “miserable exchange,” for his want of skill as a penman made his duties exceptionally irksome, and his close, confined lodging was very wretched to one coming fresh from fields musical with the sweet songsters of the spring.

Eight months later, he enlisted in the 54th regiment of foot, and was ordered to Nova Scotia in twelve months. Here in five years, by temperance and industry, he managed (doing clerical work for the quarter-master and pay-sergeant) to save £150, and it was while serving with this regiment that he acquired a knowledge of Lindley Murray. “I learned grammar,” he says, “when I was a private soldier on the pay of sixpence a day. The edge of my berth was my seat to study in; my knapsack was my book-case; a bit of board lying on my lap was my writing-table, and the task did not demand anything like a year of my life. I had no money to purchase candle or oil; in winter time I could rarely get any evening light but that of the fire, and only my turn even of that. And if I, under such circumstances, and without parent or friend to advise or encourage me, accomplished this undertaking, what excuse can there be for any youth, however poor, however pressed with business, or however circumstanced as to room or other conveniences? To buy a pen or a sheet of paper, I was compelled to forego some portion of food, though in a state of half-starvation; I had no moment of time that I could call my own, and I had to read and to write amidst the talking, laughing, singing, whistling, and brawling of at least half a score of the most thoughtless of men, and that, too, in the hours of their freedom from all control. Think not lightly of the farthing that I had to give now and then, for pen, ink, or paper! That farthing was, alas! a great sum to me! I was tall as I am now; I had great health and great exercise. The whole of the money not expended for us at market was twopence a week for each man. I remember, and well I may, that on one occasion, I, after all necessary expenses, had on a Friday made shifts to have a halfpenny in reserve, which I had destined for the purchase of a red herring in the morning; but when I pulled off my clothes at night, so hungry then as to be hardly able to endure life, I found that I had lost my halfpenny! I buried my head under the miserable sheet and rug, and cried like a child!”

Wonderful, however, as were the achievements of Franklin and Cobbett in self-education, they were both eclipsed by Elihu Burritt. The son of a shoemaker, he was at the age of sixteen apprenticed to the “village blacksmith,” and from that time applied himself to the study of languages with such success, that he mastered French, German, Italian, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, Bohemian, Polish, Danish, Syriac, Samaritan, Turkish, Ethiopic and Persian. To understand how he accomplished this, we take a glance at his diary.

“Monday, June 18: Headache; forty pages Cuvier’s ‘Theory of the Earth,’ sixty-four pages French, eleven hours’ forging. Tuesday: sixty-five lines of Hebrew, thirty pages of French, ten pages Cuvier’s ‘Theory,’ eight lines Syriac, ten ditto Danish, ten ditto Bohemian, nine ditto Polish, fifteen names of stars, ten hours’ forging. Wednesday: twenty-five lines Hebrew, fifty pages of astronomy, seven hours’ forging. Thursday: fifty-five lines Hebrew, eight ditto Syriac, eleven hours’ forging. Friday: unwell; twelve hours’ forging. Saturday: unwell; fifty pages of Natural History, ten hours’ forging. Sunday: lessons for Bible class.”

There were times when, for a short season, he abandoned the anvil, and devoted his whole time to study; but after a few months’ absence from the forge he would return to earn money for his support, and for the purchase of books. Hearing one day of an Antiquarian Library at Worcester, U.S., he determined to go there to work as a journeyman, for the sake of obtaining access to such rare books, and started off to walk. It was a long journey, and when he reached Boston Bridge, footsore and weary, he encountered a waggon being driven by a boy, who was going to Worcester, forty miles distant. All his valuables consisted of a dollar and an old silver watch. He availed himself of the chance of a lift, but felt reluctant to part with his single dollar, and suggested that the waggoner should take his watch, which, if properly repaired, would be worth a great deal more than his indebtedness, also suggesting that, in the event of the boy having the watch mended, he should give Burritt the difference in money if they met again in Worcester.

The young blacksmith obtained work on his arrival, and some short time after received a visit from the waggon lad, who honourably brought him a few dollars, the estimated difference. Some years afterwards Burritt happened to be travelling from Worcester to New Britain by railway, when he was accosted by a handsome, well-dressed fellow-traveller.

“You have forgotten me, Mr. Burritt?”

Burritt was obliged to confess that he had.

“Oh,” said he, “I’m the boy to whom you gave the watch. I’m now a student of Harvard College.”

After chatting for a bit, Burritt said,—

“I should like to have that watch back again.”

“You shall,” said the student. “I sold it, but I know where it is.”

In a few days he received the watch, which hung for many years in his printing-office as a memento of early vicissitudes.

Michael Faraday, unquestionably one of the greatest English chemists and natural philosophers, had few educational advantages before he was apprenticed to a bookbinder in Blandford Street, Manchester Square, and while working at his trade he constructed an electrical machine and other scientific apparatus. These having been seen by his master, Mr. Riebau, he called the attention of Mr. Dance to them, and he took the boy with him to hear the last four lectures delivered by Sir Humphry Davy at the Royal Institution. Faraday took copious notes of the lectures, and afterwards wrote them out fairly in a quarto volume, and sent it to Sir Humphry, begging him for employment, that he might quit the trade he hated, and follow science, which he loved. The answer is a model of kindness and courtesy:

“December 24th, 1812.

“Sir,

“I am far from displeased with the proof you have given me of your confidence, and which displays great zeal, power of memory, and attention. I am obliged to go out of town, and shall not be settled in town till the end of January. I will then see you at any time you wish. It would gratify me to be of any service to you. I wish it may be in my power.

“I am, sir,
“Your obedient, humble servant,
“H. Davy.”

Through Sir Humphry’s interest, Faraday obtained the post of assistant in the laboratory of the Royal Institution, where he remained ever afterwards, eventually becoming its first professor. Tyndall says of Faraday, “His work excites admiration, but contact with him warms and elevates the heart. Here, surely, is a strong man. I love strength, but let me not forget its union with modesty, tenderness, and sweetness in the character of Faraday.... Taking the duration of his life into account, this son of a blacksmith and apprentice to a bookbinder had to decide between a fortune of £150,000 on the one side, and his unendowed science on the other. He chose the latter, and died a poor man. But his was the glory of holding aloft among the nations the scientific name of England for a period of forty years.” In 1835, when Sir Robert Peel retired from office, he recommended Faraday to William IV. for a pension of £300. The minute was placed in the hands of Lord Melbourne, Peel’s successor, who saw Faraday, and involved him in religious and political discussion, wanting to entrap the philosopher into a promise to support the Government. Failing in this, Lord Melbourne said, “I look upon the whole system of giving pensions to literary and scientific people as a piece of gross humbug.” To which Faraday replied, “After this, my lord, I see that my business with you is ended. I wish you good morning.” The next day Lord Melbourne received the following letter:

“My Lord,

“After the pithy manner in which your Lordship was pleased to express your sentiments on the subject of pensions that have been granted to literary and scientific persons, it only remains for me to relieve you, as far as I am concerned, from all further uneasiness. I will not accept any favour at your hands nor at the hands of any Cabinet of which you are a member.

“M. Faraday.”

It is said that for some years Faraday’s income never exceeded £22 a year, and it is a fact that when a youth he was much exercised about the purchase of an electrical machine which he had seen in an optician’s window, price 4s. 6d. He had no money, but out of his dinner allowance he saved the requisite sum, and this machine was the one he used in all those early experiments which led to some of his great discoveries.

CHAPTER III.

THE SHIFTS OF IMPECUNIOSITY.

In 1748 there resided in the wilds of Connaught a lady named Gunning, of whom little is known but that before her marriage she was the Hon. Bridget Bourke, and that after it she became the mother of two exquisitely beautiful daughters, destined to make such a stir in Society, as was unknown before, and has been unequalled since. Before they left Dublin they were invited to some brilliant festivities at the Castle, which were on a scale of magnificence unequalled, it is said, in the memory of the oldest courtier. To such an entertainment Mrs. Gunning was anxious to introduce her daughters, for their faces were literally their fortunes; but the overwhelming difficulty of dress presented itself. They had nothing that by any amount of manipulation could be transformed into Court costumes, so in her difficulty Mrs. Gunning obtained an introduction to Tom Sheridan, who was then managing the Dublin Theatre. He was struck by the beauty and grace of the girls, placed the wardrobe of the theatre at their disposal; and by lending them the dresses of Lady Macbeth and Juliet, in which they appeared most lovely, enabled them to obtain the entrée to that aristocratic circle in which they afterwards shone so brilliantly. In addition to providing the necessary garments for the great event Tom Sheridan is credited with superintending the finishing touches of their toilets, for which it is said he claimed a kiss from each as his reward. These beautiful creatures were at one time in even greater straits for funds.

Miss Bellamy, the actress, asserts that she once found Mrs. Gunning and her children in the greatest distress, with bailiffs in the house and the family threatened with immediate eviction. With the assistance of her man-servant, who stood under the windows of the house at night, after the bailiffs were admitted, everything that could be carried away, was removed. But for this and other help the Gunnings were not grateful. Indeed, in the case of the Countess of Coventry who had borrowed money from Miss Bellamy, presumably for her wedding trousseau, the monetary obligation was repaid by unpardonable insult. One night when this actress was playing Juliet, and had just arrived at the most impressive part of the tragedy, the countess, who occupied the stage-box, uttered a loud laugh. Miss Bellamy was so overcome by the interruption that she was obliged to leave the stage, and when Lady Coventry was remonstrated with, she replied that “since she had seen Mrs. Cibber act Juliet she could not endure Miss Bellamy.” When they came to London in the autumn of 1751 the fashionable world went mad after “the beautiful Miss Gunnings,” who were positively mobbed in the Park and elsewhere, and were compelled on one occasion to obtain the protection of a file of the Guards. When they travelled in the country the roads were lined with people anxious to catch a glimpse of their lovely faces; and hundreds of people were known to remain all night outside an inn at which they were staying, in order to behold them in the morning.

Not many months after their début in London, the Duke of Hamilton, owner of three dukedoms in Scotland, England, and France, and regarded as the haughtiest man in the kingdom, became deeply enamoured of the younger sister, and was married to her at Mayfair Chapel one night at half-past twelve o’clock, the suddenness of the ceremony compelling the divine who performed the service to make use of a ring from a bed-curtain.

The elder sister, became Countess of Coventry in the following March, and was then acknowledged as leader of fashion in the metropolis, although from the seclusion in which the early part of her life had been spent in Ireland, she was little fitted, so far as accomplishments were concerned, to hold that post. Her reign was brief as it was brilliant. In 1759 her health completely broke down, and she died in October 1760, of consumption, the result of artificial aids to beauty, which in her case were utterly unnecessary.

Curran, the advocate and wit, experienced vicissitudes almost as startling. He was born at Newmarket, County Cork, in 1750, and describes himself as “a little ragged apprentice to every kind of idleness and mischief, all day studying whatever was eccentric in those older, and half the night practising it for the amusement of those who were younger than myself. One morning I was playing at marbles in the village ball alley, with a light heart and a lighter pocket. The gibe, and the jest, and the plunder, went gaily round. Those who won laughed, and those who lost cheated, when suddenly there appeared amongst us a stranger of a very venerable and cheerful aspect. His intrusion was not the least restraint upon our merry little assemblage; he was a benevolent creature, and the days of infancy (after all, the happiest we shall ever see) perhaps rose upon his memory. God bless him! I see his fine form, at the distance of half a century, just as he stood before me in the little ball alley in the days of my childhood. His name was Boyse; he was the rector of Newmarket. To me he took a particular fancy.... Some sweetmeats easily bribed me home with him. I learned from poor Boyse my alphabet, and my grammar, and the rudiments of the classics: he taught me all he could, and then he sent me to the school at Middleton—in short, he made a man of me. I recollect it was about five-and-thirty years afterwards when I had risen to some eminence at the bar, and when I had a seat in Parliament, and a good house in Ely Place, on my return one day from Court, I found an old gentleman seated alone in the drawing-room, his feet familiarly placed on each side of the Italian marble chimney-piece, and his whole air bespeaking the consciousness of one quite at home. He turned round—it was my friend of the ball alley. I rushed instinctively into his arms. I could not help bursting into tears. Words cannot describe the scene that followed. ‘You are right, sir—you are right; the chimney-piece is yours, the pictures are yours, the house is yours; you gave me all I have—my friend—my father!’”[2]

After leaving school at Middleton, Curran passed to Trinity College, Dublin, which he entered as a sizar when nineteen years of age. He does not appear to have distinguished himself at the University, from whence he proceeded to London, and contrived, quodcunque modo, to enter his name on the books of the Middle Temple. At that time, he says, he read “ten hours every day; seven at law, and three at history and the general principles of politics, and that I may have time enough”—it is believed he wrote for the magazines, etc., as a means of support—“I rise at half-past four. I have contrived a machine after the manner of an hour-glass, which wakens me regularly at that hour. Exactly over my head I have suspended two vessels of tin, one above the other. When I go to bed, which is always at ten, I pour a bottle of water into the upper vessel, in the bottom of which is a hole of such a size as to let the water pass through so as to make the inferior reservoir overflow in six hours and a half;” so that if he wished to remain in bed after daylight, he could only do so by consenting to a cold shower-bath.

He was called to the bar in 1775, and for some time had a tremendously uphill fight, wearing, according to his own account, his teeth to the stumps at the Cork Sessions without any adequate recompense. He then removed to Dublin, and for a time fared no better. “I then lived” said he, “upon Hog Hill: my wife and children were the chief furniture of my apartments, and as to my rent it stood pretty much the same chance of liquidation with the National Debt. Mrs. Curran, however, was a barrister’s lady, and what she wanted in wealth she was determined should be supplied by dignity. The landlady, on the other hand, had no idea of any gradation except that of pounds, shillings, and pence. I walked out one morning to avoid the perpetual altercations on the subject, in no very enviable mood. I fell into the gloom, to which from my infancy I had been occasionally subject. I had a family for whom I had no dinner, and a landlady for whom I had no rent. I had gone abroad in despondence, I returned home almost in desperation. When I opened the door of my study, where Lavater alone could have found a library, the first object which presented itself was an immense folio of a brief, twenty gold guineas wrapped up beside it, and the name of Old Bob Lyons marked upon the back of it. I paid my landlady, bought a good dinner, gave Bob Lyons a share of it, and that dinner was the date of my prosperity.” From this time he rapidly rose to the top of his profession, and his services were eagerly sought for. Wonderfully eloquent, with a highly imaginative and powerfully poetic mind, his sway was something marvellous, for, added to these gifts, his wit and power of mimicry were unapproachable.

In the case of Valentine Jamerai Duval, who ultimately became Professor of Antiquities and Ancient and Modern Geography in the Academy of Luneville, youthful hardships occasioned extraordinary expedients. The son of labouring people, at the age of fourteen he was ignorant of the alphabet. His occupation was that of turkey-keeper, but after an attack of small-pox, which nearly killed him, he wandered through certain parts of Champagne, then in a condition of famine, in search of employment. When he reached the Duchy of Lorraine, he obtained a situation as shepherd, and became acquainted with the hermit, Brother Palimon, whom he helped in his rural labours. In return for these services the hermit gave him instruction, and subsequently he lived as a labourer with the four hermits of St. Anne, studying arithmetic and geography in his leisure moments. His one object then was to obtain books, impossible without money, which, situated as he was, seemed equally unattainable. Finding out, however, that a furrier at Luneville purchased skins, he set snares for wild animals, and by this means realised enough money to procure the books he coveted.

But beyond the self-denial of Curran with his primitive invention for early rising, and the contrivance of Duval for obtaining the needful, is the interesting career of Bernard Palissy, the Potter, who, in addition to his fame as an artist in pottery, was celebrated as a glass painter, naturalist, philosopher, and for his devotion to the Protestant cause in the sixteenth century. Born in 1510, at Chapelle Biron, a poor hamlet near the small town of Perigord, he was brought up as a worker in painted glass, in pursuit of which occupation he travelled considerably, devoting all the spare time of his wanderings to the study of natural history, in which he delighted. Though an ardent student of nature, he yet found opportunity to make himself acquainted with the teaching of Paracelsus, of the alchemists and of the reformers of the Church. He did not settle down till nearly thirty years of age, when he established himself at Saintes as a painter on glass, and surveyor, and then turned his attention to the making of pottery and the production of white enamel, which latter was useless excepting as a covering for ornamental pottery, and at this time Palissy was not sufficiently skilled to make a rough pipkin. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that his wife took exception to the money expended in the purchase of drugs, the buying of pots, and the building of a furnace, as the loss of time told heavily on his limited resources; and it would be perfectly truthful to say that the first things Bernard Palissy produced in the way of pottery were family jars. Mrs. Palissy was undoubtedly very wroth at his going on in this way, more especially because, as is so frequently the case, his family increased as his income decreased, and she succeeded at last in stopping his experiments for a time. He then obtained an appointment as Surveyor to the Government, in which profession he was remarkably proficient, but before very long the old craving for experimenting returned with redoubled vigour, and he again set to work in search of white enamel. The expense incurred was so great that his wife and children became ragged and hungry: nothing daunted, he broke up twelve new earthen pots, hired a glass furnace, and for months continued watching, burning, and baking. At last his eager eyes were gladdened by the sight of a piece of white enamel amidst the bakings. Urged on by this, he felt he must have another furnace; he succeeded in obtaining the bricks on credit, became his own bricklayer’s boy and mason, and built the structure himself. On one occasion he spent six days and nights watching his baking clay, sleeping only a few minutes at a time near his fire, but disappointment was all the result. The vessels were spoilt. In desperation he borrowed more money for his experiments, which was consumed in like manner, until at last he was without fuel for the furnace. Insensible to everything but the project on which he was bent, he tore up the palings from the garden, and when these were exhausted he broke up the chairs and tables. His wife and children rushed about frantic, thinking that he had lost his senses, and well they might when they saw the demolition of the furniture followed by the tearing up of the floor. Success ultimately crowned his praiseworthy perseverance, but not until he had devoted sixteen years of unremunerated labour, enduring unexampled fatigue and discouragements. When at length he succeeded in obtaining a pure white enamel he was enabled to produce works in which natural objects were represented with remarkable skill, his fame spread rapidly, his sculptures in clay and his enamelled pottery being at once accepted as works of art of the highest order. His career, however, was destined to be remarkable at every stage, for no sooner had he acquired renown and riches than he was subjected to religious persecution, which would have ended in death had it not been for the Duke de Montmorency, one of his patrons, who succeeded in rescuing him from prison. When established in Paris, assisted by his sons, he continued to produce most remarkable specimens of ornamental pottery, and in addition to his artistic labours instituted a series of conferences which were attended by the most distinguished doctors and scientific savants, where he set forth his views on fountains, stones, metals, etc., desirous of knowing whether the great philosophers of antiquity interpreted nature as he did. Although in the ordinary sense an unlettered man, his theories were never once controverted, and for ten years his lectures were delivered before the most enlightened of that age, but his teaching once more arousing the animosity of his religious opponents, he was thrown into the Bastille, where he died after being incarcerated for two years.

After such a “shift” as having to tear up the floor of a dwelling, most other instances might be expected to appear more or less tame; but the experiences of William Thom, the Inverary poet, are scarcely inferior in intensity. This untutored, but extremely sweet songster, whose first poem, ‘Blind Boys’ Pranks,’ appeared in the Edinburgh Herald, was a hand-loom weaver, who was deprived of his occupation by the failure of certain American firms, and compelled to tramp the country as a pedlar. Before resorting to that line of life, and when in the receipt of the sum of five shillings weekly, he relates how on a memorable spring morning, he anxiously awaited the arrival of this small amount: and though the clock had struck eleven, the windows of the room were still curtained, in order that the four sleeping children, who were bound to be hungry when awake, might be deluded into believing that it was still night, for the only food in their parents’ possession was one handful of meal saved from the previous day. The mother with the tenderest anxiety sat by the babes’ bedside lulling them off to sleep as soon as they exhibited the least sign of wakefulness, and speaking to her husband in whispers as to the cooking of the little meal remaining, for the youngest child could no longer be kept asleep, and by its whimpering woke the others. Face after face sprang up, each little one exclaiming, “Oh, mither, mither, give me a piece;” and says the poor fellow, “The word sorrow was too weak to apply to the feelings of myself and wife during the remainder of that long and dreary forenoon.” When compelled to leave the humble dwelling which, poverty-stricken though it was, had all the endearing influences of home, he made up a pack consisting of second-hand books and some trifling articles of merchandise, and sadly started with wife and bairns through mountain paths and rugged roads, often sleeping at night in barns and outhouses. The precarious nature of a pedlar’s life must have been terribly trying to one so sensitive, especially when, as in his case, it ended in his having to have recourse to the profession of musical beggar. Before entering Methven he sold a book to a stone-breaker on the road, the proceeds of which (fivepence halfpenny) was all the money he possessed. The purchaser when making the bargain had noticed Thom’s flute which he carried with him, and had offered such a good price for the instrument that the poet had been much tempted to part with it, though it had been his solace and companion on many and many an occasion. Thinking that possibly it might be the means of his earning a few pence, he resisted the temptation to part with it, and soon after took up his post outside a genteel-looking house, and played ‘The Flowers of the Forest’ with such exquisite expression that window after window was raised, and in ten minutes after he found himself possessed of three and ninepence, which sum was increased to five shillings before he reached his lodging.

It would hardly be possible to conceive anything more truly touching than the shift of William Thom, when he practised the pardonable deception upon his hungry children of turning day into night, though for downright deprivation the experience of John Ledyard, the traveller, may be said to excel it. This celebrated discoverer, who came into Europe from the United States in 1776, when making a tour of the world with Captain Cook, as corporal of a troop of Marines, arrived in England in 1780. He then formed the design of penetrating from the North West to the East Coast of America, for which purpose Sir Joseph Banks furnished him with some money. He bought sea stores with the intention of sailing to Nootka Sound, but altered his mind, and determined to travel overland to Kamschkatka, from whence the passage is short to the opposite shore of the American continent. Towards the close of the year 1786, he started with ten guineas in his pocket, went to and from Stockholm, because the Gulf of Bothnia was frozen; proceeding north he walked to the Arctic Circle, passed round the head of the Gulf of Bothnia, and descended on its east side to St. Petersburg, where he arrived in March 1787, without shoes or stockings. He proceeded to the house of the Portuguese Ambassador, who gave him a good dinner, and obtained for him twenty guineas on a bill drawn in the name of Sir Joseph Banks, with which sum he proceeded to Yakutz, accompanying a convoy of provisions, and there met Captain Cook. He says in his Journal, “I have known both hunger and nakedness to the utmost extremity of human endurance. I have known what it is to have food given me as charity to a madman, and I have at times been obliged to shelter myself under the miseries of that character to avoid a heavier calamity. My distresses have been greater than I have ever owned, or will own to any man. Such evils are terrible to bear, but they never yet had power to turn me from my purpose.”

To have to submit to be thought a lunatic to escape starvation must certainly have been rather trying, though from the fact of part of the journey being performed without shoes or stockings it would certainly look as if John Ledyard were anything but particular; and it is well for us that he and other glorious pioneers were not, otherwise we should not be living in such an age of marvellous enlightenment as is our present privilege. Round the world in eighty days, facilitated by Cook’s tourist coupons would hardly have been practicable, had not men like Ledyard been martyrs in the cause of exploration.

Apropos of travelling in days gone by, an incident in the life of the Rev. Henry Tevuge presents a somewhat strange shift; at any rate, strange for a clergyman. This eccentric clerical was Rector of Alcester in 1670, and afterwards Incumbent of Spernall, which he appears to have left in 1675, for on May 20th in that year he writes, “This day I began my voyage from my house at Spernall, in the county of Warwick, with small accoutrements, saving what I carried under me in an old sack. My steed like that of Hudibras, for mettle, courage, and colour (though not of the same bigness), and for flesh, one of Pharaoh’s lean mares ready to seize (for hunger) on those that went before her, had she not been short-winged, or rather leaden-heeled. My stock of moneys was also proportionable to the rest; being little more than what brought me to London in an old coat and breeches of the same, an old pair of hose, and shoes, and a leathern doublet of nine years old and upwards. Indeed, by reason of the suddenness of my journey, I had nothing but what I was ashamed of, save only

“An old fox broad sword, and a good black gown,
And thus old Henry came to London Town.”

At that time chaplains were not provided with bed or bedding, and the divine, having no money, and wishing to redeem a cloak which had been long in pawn for 10s., he sold his lean mare, saddle and bridle for 26s., released the cloak, but only to re-pledge it for £2. A writer, alluding to that period, says “it must have been a rare time for cavaliers, clerical and secular, when the cloak that had been pawned for 10s. acquired a fourfold value when offered as a new pledge.” It must have been a rare time for clergymen of the Church of England when a navy chaplain is found on such intimate terms with “No. 1 round the corner,” but that circumstance is accounted for by the fact that the Rev. Mr. Tevuge is spoken of as having “contracted convivial and expensive habits.”

The literary, musical, and dramatic professions are the most prolific in furnishing curious cases of impecuniosity; and separate chapters will be devoted to those three branches of art, but there are a few instances more directly of the nature of “shifts” which I have included in the present portion of the subject; amongst others being the incident of Dr. Johnson dining with his publisher, and being so shabby that, as there was a third person present, he hid behind a screen. This happened soon after the publication of the lexicographer’s ‘Life of Savage,’ which was written anonymously, and though the circumstance of the hiding must have been rather humiliating to the mighty Samuel, yet the attendant consequences were pleasant. The visitor who was dining with Harte, the publisher, was Cave, who, in course of conversation, referred to ‘Savage’s Life,’ and spoke of the work in the most flattering terms. The next day, when they met again, Harte said, “You made a man very happy yesterday by your encomiums on a certain book.” “I did?” replied Cave. “Why, how could that be; there was no one present but you and I?” “You might have observed,” explained Harte, “that I sent a plate of meat behind a screen. There skulked the biographer, one Johnson, whose dress was so shabby that he durst not make his appearance. He overheard our conversation, and your applause of his performance delighted him exceedingly.” It is also recorded that so indigent was the doctor on another occasion that he had not money sufficient for a bed, and had to make shift by walking round and round St. James’ Square with Savage; when, according to Boswell, they were not at all depressed by their situation, but in high spirits, and brimful of patriotism; inveighing against the ministry, and resolving that they would stand by their country.

Being thus intimately associated, it is only natural that the doctor in his ‘Life of Savage’ should thoroughly believe that individual’s version of his own birth and parentage, which was that he was the illegitimate son of the Countess of Macclesfield, and that his father was Lord Rivers; the birth of Richard Savage giving his mother an excuse for obtaining a divorce from her husband, whom she hated. It is stated that “he was born in 1696, in Fox Court, a low alley leading out of Holborn, whither his mother had repaired under the name of Mrs. Smith—her features concealed in a mask, which she wore throughout her confinement. Discovery was embarrassed by a complication of witnesses; the child was handed from one woman to another until, like a story bandied from mouth to mouth, it seemed to lose its paternity.” Lord Rivers, it is alleged, looked on the boy as his own, but his mother seems always to have disliked him; and the fact that Lady Mason, the mother of the countess, looked after the child’s education, and had him put to a Grammar School at St. Albans, certainly favours the view of his aristocratic parentage. He was subsequently apprenticed to a shoemaker, but discovering the secret, or the supposed secret, of his birth, for not a few discredit his story, he cut leather for literature, and appealed to his mother for assistance. His habit was to walk of an evening before her door in the hope of seeing her, and making an appeal; but his efforts were in vain, he could neither open her heart nor her purse. He was befriended by many, notably by Steele, Wilks the actor, and Mrs. Oldfield, a “beautiful” actress, who allowed him an annuity of £50 during her life; but in spite of all the assistance he received, his state was one of chronic impecuniosity. No sooner was he helped out of one difficulty than he managed to get into another, and though he is described by some biographers as a literary genius, his genius seemed principally a knack of getting into debt. Rambling about like a vagabond, with scarcely a shirt to his back, he was in such a plight when he composed his tragedy (without a lodging, and often, without a dinner) that he used to write it on scraps of paper picked up by accident, or begged in the shops which he occasionally stepped into, as thoughts occurred to him, craving the favour of pen and ink as if it were just to make a memorandum.

The able author of ‘The Road to Ruin’ was likewise one who had travelled some distance on that thorny path, for at one time he found himself in the streets of London without money, without a home, or a friend to whom his shame or pride would permit his making known his necessity. Wandering along he knew not whither, plunged in the deepest despondency, his eye caught sight of a printed placard, “To Young Men,” inviting all spirited young fellows to make their fortunes as common soldiers in the East India Company’s Service. After reading it over a second time he determined without hesitation to hasten off and enroll himself in that honourable corps, when he met with a person he had known at a sporting club he had been in the habit of frequenting. His companion seeing his bundle and rueful face, asked him where he was going, to which Holcroft replied that had he enquired five minutes before he could not have told him, but that now he was “for the wars.” At this his friend appeared greatly surprised, and told him he thought he could put him up to something better than that. Macklin, the famous London actor, was going over to play in Dublin, and had asked him if he happened to be acquainted with a young fellow who had a turn for the stage, and, said his friend, “I should be happy to introduce you.” The offer was gladly accepted, and when the introduction had been managed Holcroft was asked by Macklin “what had put it into his head to turn actor?” to which he replied, “He had taken it into his head to suppose it was genius, but that it was very possible he might be mistaken.”

Holcroft was engaged for the tour, became an actor, and though he does not appear to have shone particularly strong on the stage, acquired considerable celebrity as a dramatic author, his play before mentioned being one of the few works of the old dramatists that has not become out of date with the playgoing public.

More than one literary man of note, has been compelled by poverty to accept the Queen’s shilling. Coleridge, according to one of his biographers, left Cambridge partly through the loss of his friend Middleton, and partly on account of college debts. Vexed and fretted by the latter, he was overtaken by that inward grief which in after life he described in his ‘Ode to Dejection.’

“A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,
A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet, no relief,
In word, or sigh, or tear.”

In this state of mind he came to London, strolled about the streets till night, and then rested on the steps of a house in Chancery Lane. Beggars importuned him for alms and to them he gave the little money he had left. Next morning he noticed a bill to the effect that a few smart lads were wanted for the 15th Elliot’s Light Dragoons. Thinking to himself “I have all my life had a violent antipathy to soldiers and horses, and the sooner I can cure myself of such absurd prejudices the better,” he went to the enlisting-station, where the sergeant finding that Coleridge had not been in bed all night, made him have some breakfast and rest himself. Afterwards, he told him to cheer up, to well consider the step he was about to take, and suggested that he had better have half-a-guinea, go to the play, shake off his melancholy and not return. Coleridge went to the theatre, but afterwards resought the sergeant, who was extremely sorry to see him, and saying with evident emotion, “Then it must be so,” enrolled him. In the morning he was marched to Reading with his new comrades, and there inspected by the general of the district. Looking at Coleridge, that officer said,—

“What’s your name?”

“Comberback!”

“What do you come here for, sir?”

“For what most other persons come, to be made a soldier!”

“Do you think you can run a Frenchman through the body, sir?”

“I do not know,” said Coleridge, “as I never tried, but I’ll let a Frenchman run me through the body, before I’ll run away.”

“That will do,” said the general; and Coleridge was turned into the ranks.

Alexander Somerville, author of ‘Cobdenic Policy,’ ‘Conservative Science of Nations,’ &c., &c., was also driven to the extremity of enlisting under circumstances more or less humorous. Unlike Coleridge, Alexander Somerville was not of gentle birth, being, as he styles himself in ‘The Autobiography of a Working Man,’ “One who has whistled at the plough.” He received as a boy but scant education, being sent to a common day school where cruel discipline and unnecessary severity preponderated over learning. Though put to farm-work, where he was by turns carter, mower, stable-boy, thresher, wood-sawyer and excavator, his natural intelligence and love of books made him anxious to turn his face from the parish of Oldhamstocks, where he was brought up, in a westerly direction towards Edinburgh. When about eighteen years of age he was much interested in the Reform Bill of 1830, and gave evidence then of his enthusiasm for politics, became canvasser for a weekly newspaper, but does not appear to have succeeded in this vocation, for his circumstances were such that he wandered about moneyless; and meeting with an old chum they agreed to go and have a chat at any rate with the recruiting corporal of the dragoon regiment popularly known as the Scots Greys.

“My companion,” he says, “had seen the Greys in Dublin, and having a natural disposition to be charmed with the picturesque, was charmed with them. He knew where to enquire for the corporal, and having enquired, we found him in his lodging up a great many pairs of stairs, I do not know how many, stretched in his military cloak, on his bed. He said he was glad to see anybody upstairs in his little place, now that the regimental order had come out against moustachios; for since he had been ordered to shave his off, his wife had sat moping at the fireside, refusing all consolation to herself and all peace to him. ‘I ha’e had a weary life o’t,’ he said plaintively ‘since the order came out to shave the upper lip. She grat there. I’m sure she grat as if her heart would ha’e broken when she saw me the first day without the moustachios.’ Having listened to this and heard a confirmation of it from the lady herself, as also a hint that the corporal had been lying in bed half the day, when he should have been out looking for recruits, for each of whom he had a payment of ten shillings, we told him that we had come looking for him to offer ourselves as recruits. He looked at us for a few moments, and said if we ‘meant’ it he saw nothing about us to object to; and as neither seemed to have any beard from which moustachios could grow, he could only congratulate us on the order that had come out against them as we should not have to be at the expense of getting burnt corks to blacken our upper lips, to make us look uniform with those who wore hair. We assured the corporal that we were in earnest, and that we did mean to enlist, whereupon he began by putting the formal question, ‘Are you free, able and willing to serve his Majesty King William the Fourth?’

“But there was a hitch, two shillings were requisite to enlist two recruits, and there was only one shilling. We proposed that he should enlist one of us with it, and that this one should then lend it to him to enlist the other. But his wife would not have the enlistment done in that way. She said ‘That would not be law: and a bonny thing it would be to do it without it being law. Na na,’ she continued, ‘it maun be done as the law directs.’ The corporal made a movement as if he would take us out with him to some place where he could get another shilling but she thought it possible that another of the recruiting party might share the prize with him—take one of us or both: so she detained him, shut the door on us, locked it, took the key with her and went in search of the King’s requisite coin. Meanwhile as my friend was impatient I allowed him to take precedence of me, and have the ceremony performed with the shilling then present. On the return of the corporal’s wife, who though younger than he in years seemed to be an ‘older soldier,’ I also became the King’s man.”

In connection with music the name of Loder, the clever composer (author of the ‘Night Dancers’ and other charming musical compositions), recalls an interesting episode in his life revealing a remarkable shift to which he was put. One evening when leaving his lodgings with a friend named Jay for the purpose of enjoying a quiet little dinner at Simpson’s, he received an ominous tap on the shoulder from one of those individuals whose attentions are not appetising, since without you can settle the little amount, they require your immediate company. Loder was by no means able to satisfy the law’s demands, and the sheriff’s officer refused to lose sight of his man, even though “he had a most particular appointment;” so the only thing to be done was to invite the bailiff to join them at dinner. After the repast was concluded the party repaired to Sloman’s, a notorious spunging-house in Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane, when just as Jay was taking leave of Loder the latter remembered having something in his pocket which might be turned to account. It was a song by Samuel Lover. “Goodbye, old fellow,” said Loder. “Come to-morrow morning, and see what I shall have ready.” As soon as his friend had gone he set to work and set Lover’s words of ‘The Three Stages of Love’ to music, which was a most successful and satisfactory way of composing himself to sleep, for when Jay called in the morning he received a manuscript which, when taken to Chappell’s, realised £30. The proceeds enabled Loder to pay the debt, and dine with his friend at Simpson’s in the afternoon, without the unwelcome guest of the preceding day.

John Palmer, the original Joseph Surface, in which character he was considered unapproachable, was a man evidently of the greatest plausibility. When complimented by a friend upon the ease of his address, he said, “No, I really don’t give myself the credit of being so irresistible as you have fancied me. There is one thing, though, which I think I am able to do. Whenever I am arrested I can always persuade the sheriff’s officer to bail me.”

Contemporary with John Palmer was another celebrated comedian, also addicted to more extravagant tastes than his income warranted—Charles Bannister, who made his first appearance in London with Palmer in a piece called the “Orators” in May 1762. In this he gave musical imitations, but the performances taking place in the mornings, his convivial habits over night precluded him from shining as he might have done; a fact which was noticed by Foote, the manager. To this Bannister replied, “I knew it would be so; I am all right at night, but neither I, nor my voice, can get up in the morning.” He was invariably in difficulties: on the death of Sir Theodosius Boughton, the topic of the hour in 1781, as he was said to have been poisoned by laurel water, Bannister, said “Pooh! Don’t tell me of your laurel leaves; I fear none but a bay-leaf” (bailiff). Once when returning from Epsom to town in a gig, accompanied by a friend, they were unable to pay the toll at Kennington Gate, and the man would not let them pass. Bannister immediately offered to sing a song, and struck up ‘The Tempest of War.’ His voice was heard afar, the gate being soon thronged by voters returning from Brentford, who encored his effort, and the turnpike-man, calling him a noble fellow, expressed his willingness to pay “fifty tolls for him at any gate.”

John Joseph Winckelmann, who became one of the most famous of German writers on classical antiquities, was the son of a poor cobbler, who not only had to struggle with poverty, but with disease which, while his boy was yet young, compelled him to avail himself of the hospital. When placed at the burgh seminary there, the rector was struck with young Winckelmann’s dawning genius, and by accepting less than the usual fee, and getting him placed in the choir, contrived that the boy should receive all the advantages the school afforded. The rector continued to take the greatest interest in his apt pupil, made him usher, and when seventeen years of age, sent him to Berlin with a letter of introduction to the rector of a gymnasium, with whom he remained twelve months. While there Winckelmann heard that the library of the celebrated Fabricius was about to be sold at Hamburgh, and he determined to proceed there on foot and be present at the sale. He set out accordingly, asking charity (a practice not considered derogatory to struggling students in Germany) of the clergymen whose houses he passed; and, having collected in this way sufficient to purchase some of his darling poets at the sale, returned to Berlin in great glee. After studying at Halle and elsewhere for six years, his early passion for wandering revived, and fascinated with a fresh perusal of Cæsar’s ‘Commentaries,’ he began in the summer of 1740 a pedestrian journey to France, to visit the scene of the great Roman’s military exploits. His funds, however, soon became exhausted, and when close to Frankfort-on-the-Maine, he was obliged to return.

When he arrived at the bridge of Fulda, he remarked his own dishevelled, travel-stained appearance, and believing himself alone, began to effect an alteration. He had pulled out a razor, and was about to operate on his chin, when he was disturbed by shrieks from a party of ladies, who, imagining that he was about to make away with himself, cried loudly for help. The facts were soon explained, and the fair ones insisted on his accepting a monetary gift that enabled him to return without inconvenience.

It was not until the year 1755, when Winckelmann was thirty-eight years of age, and had published his first book, the ‘Reflections on Imitation of the Greeks in Painting and Statuary,’ that he freed himself from penury.

Flaxman, who throughout his honourable life seems to have entertained a most modest view of his own talents, married before he had acquired distinction, though regarded as a skilful and exceedingly promising pupil; and when Sir Joshua Reynolds heard of the indiscretion of which he had been guilty, he exclaimed, “Flaxman is ruined for an artist!” But his mistake was soon made manifest. When Mrs. Flaxman heard of the remark, she said, “Let us work and economize. It shall never be said that Ann Denham ruined John Flaxman as an artist;” and they economised accordingly, her husband undertaking amongst other things to collect the local rates in Soho.

It is to a “shift” of this nature that we are to a certain extent indebted for the writings of Bishop Jeremy Taylor. After the death of Charles I., Dr. Taylor’s living of Uppingham, in Rutlandshire, was sequestered, and the gifted ecclesiastic repaired to Golden Grove, Carmarthenshire, and taught a school for the subsistence of his children and himself. While thus employed, he produced some of those copious and fervent discourses, whose fertility of composition, eloquence of expression and comprehensiveness of thought, have enabled him to rank as one of the first writers in the English language.

Beau Brummell, the autocrat of fashion when in his zenith, was in the days of his decline particularly shifty. After George IV. had cut him, and when he was about to depart for France to undertake the consulate of Caen, he made a desperate effort to raise money, and, amongst other people, he wrote to Scrope Davies for a couple of hundred pounds, which he promised to repay on the following morning, giving as a reason for his request, that the banks were shut for the day, and all his money was in the Three per Cents. To this Davies, who happened to know how hard up Brummell was, sent the following laconic reply:—

“My dear George,

“’Tis very unfortunate, but all my money is in the Three per Cents.

“Yours,
“S. Davies.”

Brummell’s appointment at Caen, owing to the representations of Madame la Marquise de Seran, and others who had known him in London, was known in that place some time before he arrived, which had the effect of making all the young Frenchmen of the Carlist party anxious to become acquainted with him. Soon after he was settled down, three of them paid him a morning visit, and, though late in the day, found him deep in the mysteries of his toilet. They naturally wished to retire, but Brummell insisted on their remaining. “Pray stay,” said he, as he laid down the silver tweezers with which he had just removed a straggling hair, “pray remain; I have not yet breakfasted—no excuses. There is a pâté de foie gras, a game pie,” and many other dainties that he enumerated with becoming gastronomic fervour, but which failed to overcome the scruples of the young men, who went away enchanted with Brummell’s politeness and hospitality, one of the trio afterwards remarking that “he must live very well.”

There is not the slightest doubt that the beau was pretty sure his visitors had breakfasted, and it was only the extreme improbability of their accepting his invitation that made him give it. Had they taken him at his word, instead of the magnificent repast which he offered them, his guests would have sat down to an uncommonly plain breakfast, for the polite and hospitable host had nothing but a penny roll and the coffee simmering by his bedroom fire. On another occasion a visitor called on him, and in course of conversation said he was going to dine with a certain Mr. Jones, a retired soap-boiler, who had radically opposed the appointment of a man like Brummell to superintend the British interests at Caen.

“Well I think I shall dine there too,” said Brummell.

“But you haven’t an invitation, have you?”

“No,” was the reply; “but I think I shall dine there all the same.”

As soon as the caller left, Brummell sent a pâté de foie gras, which he had received from Paris, with a grand message to Jones. The courtesy seemed so disinterested, that the Radical sent a pressing invitation by return; and when Brummell’s visitor of the morning joined the party, he saw the beau installed in the seat of honour at the hostess’s right. Brummell told his friend next day how he had managed. The gentleman said, “But I did not see the pie on the table.”

“True,” explained Brummell; “I know it never made its appearance. It was a splendid pie—a chef-d’œuvre, and I felt deeply interested in its fate. When going away I inquired what had been done with the pie. The cook said, ‘Master had kept it for Master Harry’s birthday.’ To be the ‘cut and come again’ of a nursery dinner. To be the prey of the little Joneses and their nurses was atrocious. It was an insult to me and my pie! ‘Go,’ I said, ‘to your kitchen; I particularly want to see the pâté de foie gras.’ Feeling that it would have been a sin to leave it with such people, I took it away. It was not honest, but as I cut into it this morning I almost felt justified, for I never inserted a knife into such another.”

It certainly was anything but honest, and it would have been well had Brummell remembered the childish saying about “give a thing and take a thing,” but where a person’s amour-propre is touched on such an important matter as a game pie it would not be right of course to judge the action by the ordinary standard. The idea of taking the pie back for the reasons alleged was really funny, though the fact of the beau being extremely “hard up” very possibly had a good deal to do with his conduct. Apropos of this condition it may be news to some to know that there once existed an institution called the “Hard Up Club” the formation of which is alluded to by “Baron” Nicholson in his autobiography. He says “just before I left the Queen’s Bench I had a visit from Pellatt (a well-known man about town in that day, who had formerly been clerk and solicitor to the Ironmongers’ Company), with the news that he and another jolly old friend of mine had made a discovery of a place of rest suitable to our condition in life, which I must say was seedy in every respect. Pellatt had been in the habit of coming over to the Bench almost daily to dine with me and others, who were delighted with his amusing qualities. He gave excellent imitations of the past and present London actors, and his genius for entertaining was brought into active operation in our prison circle. The history of the discovery of ‘The Nest,’ or tranquil house of entertainment, was this: Pellatt and a friend of his, ‘Old Beans’ (whose right name was Bennett, yclept ‘Old Beans’ for shortness), were strolling about the Strand one foggy November night, their habiliments were uncomfortably ventilated, their crab-shells of the order hydraulic; snow was on the ground, and their castors ‘shocking bad hats.’ Not liking to enter any very public places they strayed round the back streets on the river side of the Strand, and turning from Norfolk Street into Howard Street, vis-à-vis they perceived a tavern, a dull, unlighted (save by a dim lamp), small, old-fashioned public-house in Arundel Street, with the sign of ‘The Swan.’ ‘“The Swan,”’ said Pellatt, as he read the sign, ‘will never sink! Beans, old fellow, we’ll go into the ‘Never Sink!’

“The house was better known for years afterwards by this name than by its real sign. The two wayfarers entered. Old Charles Mathews in his ‘At Home’ used to tell a story of pulling up at a road-side inn, and interrogating the waiter as to what he could have for dinner.

“‘Any hot joint?’ said the traveller.

“‘No, sir; no hot joint, sir.’

“‘Any cold one?’

“‘Cold one, sir? No, sir; no cold one, sir.’

“‘Can you broil me a fowl?’

“‘Fowl, sir? No, sir; no fowl, sir.’

“‘No fowl, and in a country inn!’ exclaimed Mathews. ‘Let me have some eggs and bacon then.’

“‘Eggs and bacon, sir?’ said the waiter. ‘No eggs and bacon, sir.’

“‘Confound it,’ at length said the traveller. ‘What have you got in the house?’

“‘An execution, sir,’ was the prompt response of the doleful waiter.

“And so it was at ‘The Swan.’ When Pellatt and his friend entered the parlour there was but a glimmer of light, and no fire. A most civil man, whose name turned out to be Mathews, informed his guests that he would instantly light a fire and make them comfortable.

“‘Not worth while,’ said Pellatt, ‘We only want a glass of gin and water, and a pipe.’

“The host would not be denied. In a few minutes there was a blazing fire, the hot grog was upon the table, and Pellatt and Old Beans were smoking away like steam. The supposed landlord was invited to take a seat with them, and during the conversation informed them that he was the man in possession, and that he was allowed to provide a little spirits, and a cask of beer, and reap the profits himself just to keep the house open until a purchaser could be found for it, and he further stated how glad he should be if the gentlemen would come again. Being told by Pellatt all about the ‘Never Sink,’ when I again left the Queen’s Bench Prison, and visited the outer world, I aided them in establishing what we dignified by the title of ‘The Hard Up Club.’ Its institution commenced by Old Beans being appointed steward, and in that capacity began his campaign by buying a pound of cold boiled beef at Cautis’s, Temple Bar, and four pennyworth of hot roasted potatoes from the man who stood with the baked ‘tatur’ can in front of Clement’s Inn. As the club increased in number so did our commissariat in supplies and importance, and the office of ‘Old Beans’ became no sinecure. His duty, and it was performed con amore, was to be in attendance early in the day at the club to provide the dinner. The money to pay for this was invariably collected over night; and I have known the funds to be so short that ‘Old Beans’s’ ingenuity has been frequently and greatly taxed to meet the necessary requirements and expenditure. A shoulder of mutton was a familiar dish, Beans preparing heaps of potatoes, and with a skilful culinary nicety, for which he was eminent, making the onion sauce himself. A bullock’s heart was also a favourite with us, provided always that Old Beans made the gravy and stuffing. I said to our gracious and economical steward the first day we had the ox heart, ‘Beany, you’ll want some gravy beef.’

“‘The deaf ears’ (the hard, gristly substance attached to the top of a bullock’s heart), said he, ‘will make excellent gravy. The ‘Hard Ups’ can’t afford beef. No, no, we’ll make the deaf ears do.’ It may be imagined that Old Beans’s place was a difficult one. One Kay, a large, seedy lawyer, who wore shabby black and white stockings, and shoes, was always behindhand with his share of cash. If a shilling were required, Kay would pay into the hands of the steward about nine pence halfpenny, vowing that he had no more, and Beans always declared himself out of pocket by Kay. We had, however, a visitor who added lustre to our association, but he was not a dining member—he could not be—his means were too limited even for our humble carousings. This member was a very old man, Colonel Curry, formerly a member of the Irish Parliament. He lodged in one room in Arundel Street, therefore the ‘Never Sink’ was to him a convenient hostelry, and he could do as he liked. He did so. On a small shelf over the parlour-door the colonel kept his own table-napkin, mustard, pepper, and salt. He also had a small gravy-tight tin case, and in that he brought with him every day four pennyworth of hot meat, generally bought at the corner of Angel Inn Yard, Clement’s Inn. All he spent at the ‘Never Sink’ was three halfpence for a glass of rum, which he diluted from six o’clock in the evening till eleven o’clock at night: in the last mixing the rum was unrecognisable, the water colourless. Curry was a proud Irishman, never accepting the oft-proffered hospitality of others. His conversation was delightful, amusing, instructive. He never complained, and we were left to doubt whether his economy proceeded from parsimony or poverty; but from his highly honourable sentiments I should conclude the latter. It was a rule with the club that all the good sort of fellows with whom the members might be acquainted should be pressed into the general service of the club: thus any member who in better days had been a good customer to a thriving publican (and there was scarcely one exception in the whole society) should use his best endeavour to introduce that publican to the ‘Never Sink,’ and get him to stand treat. The number of dinners and liquors obtained by such endeavours were prodigious. The club included several members of the republic of letters, who, to quote Tom Hood, had not a sovereign amongst them. Indeed, they had but one passable crown. One hat served nine; their shirts were latent; their dinners intermittent, and their grog often eleemosynary. Nothing sparkled about them but their wit, which was as keen as their appetites. The man of genius crouches in social poverty in a commonwealth of mutual privation.

“‘There wit, subdued by poverty’s sharp thorn,
Was joined by wisdom equally forlorn;
And stinted genius took a draught of malt
On baked potatoes mixed with attic salt.’”

CHAPTER IV.

THE LUCK AND ILL LUCK OF IMPECUNIOSITY.

Shakespeare, though he says “There’s a divinity doth shape our ends, rough-hew them how we will,” admits that “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune,” which certainly looks as if we had something to do with the matter. “Man,” it has been said, “is the architect of his own fortune,” but it is equally a fact that some individuals have many more chances than others of making that fortune, especially those who are apparently undeserving. In the same way, impecuniosity has with some been the very means of introducing them to the road to success, while it has only plunged others in suffering.

Amongst the former may be ranked Benjamin Charles Incledon, who flourished in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and in the beginning of the nineteenth. He was born at Callington, in Cornwall, and at a very early age was a choir-boy in Exeter Cathedral, in which city he received his musical education from Jackson, the composer. At sixteen he entered the navy, and in the course of the two years that he remained in the service was in several engagements. When the Formidable was paid off at Chatham, in 1784, the young sailor turned his steps towards Cornwall, but when he reached Hitchen Ferry, near Southampton, he had got rid of whatever money he started with, and had to ask assistance of a recruiting sergeant, who not only gave him the means to get ferried over, but invited him to a public-house in the town, where they made merry over bread and cheese, and ale. The company became convivial, and Incledon, in his turn, sang a ballad which delighted everybody, but especially the prompter of the Southampton Theatre, who happened to be sitting in the bar-parlour smoking his pipe, and who rushed out to his manager before the song was finished to tell him of the rara avis he had found. Collins, the manager, returned forthwith, and was so delighted with the sailor’s vocal abilities that he offered him an engagement at half-a-guinea a week, there and then, which offer was accepted, Incledon making his first appearance as Alphonso in ‘The Castle of Andalusia.’ His career was most successful, and he is spoken of by more than one authority as the first English singer on the stage of his day.

Under the circumstances it must surely be conceded, that the impecuniosity which caused him to sing that song at that particular time, was particularly lucky, and Incledon is not the only individual who has been blessed with good fortune through the same means. In ‘The Life of a Showman,’ by D. G. Miller, that gentleman relates that one winter’s afternoon he arrived with his family at a Cumberland village in a most pitiable plight, for though he had several “children he had but one sixpence.” The journey, effected with a horse and cart, had been extremely trying, because across the road they had travelled ran a small rivulet, which was frozen, and a passage through which had to be made for the horse, the driver standing upon the shafts across the back of the horse, while the showman waded through the water nearly up to his waist, a state of discomfort enhanced by the plunging of the horse and the shrieks of the children. When the party arrived at the public-house (where there was a large room which was occasionally let for entertainments, &c.), they were nearly frozen, and proceeded to warm themselves by the kitchen fire. After calling for a quart of ale, and paying for it with the solitary sixpence in his possession, the showman proceeded to look after his properties, and found that the man with the cart, being anxious to get back, had unloaded the luggage at the door. Enquiring of the landlady if he could engage the large room for a few nights for a very superior exhibition, the itinerant performer was informed by her, “I can’t tell, but I think not. The last people who were here didn’t pay the rent. However, the landlord is not at home, and I can say nothing about it.”

After this he asked if they could be supplied with some tea, and on being replied to in the affirmative, says, “The expression on my wife’s face seemed to say, ‘Are you mad—where will you get the money to pay for it?’ I paid no attention, however, to her look: the tea was got ready, and we sat down and made a hearty meal—at least, the children and I did. As to my wife, she was alarmed at my conduct, and was too frightened to eat, although she had tasted nothing since breakfast.”

After tea he asked if they could be accommodated with beds, but was refused by the landlord, who showed his suspicions. The showman pointed to the snow, which was falling heavily, and asked permission for his wife and children to remain by the fire all night, professing to be able to pay, and at last the landlord sulkily agreed to let them have beds. After the wife and children retired, a good number of customers came in, and a raffle was started for a watch, thirty members at a shilling. While this was being arranged the visitors joked and sang, and presently the showman was asked if he would oblige with a song; he readily complied, and was voted a jolly good fellow by all present, including the landlord, who apologised then for having demurred about the accommodation. When the raffle began, it was found there was one more subscriber wanted, and the showman was asked to join, which he said he would gladly do, but his wife kept the purse and she had gone to bed, and being very tired he did not like to disturb her. The landlord at once said, “Certainly not, here’s a shilling; pay me in the morning.” He accepted the proffered coin, threw the dice, and won the watch, which he sold for a sovereign. He then gave an exhibition of his skill with sleight of hand tricks, to the great delight of the customers, and was informed by the landlord before he went to bed that he could have the big room for a night or two. To this he replied, “I will think it over,” and joined his wife, whom he found in a state of the greatest trepidation at the thought of their not having the money to pay for their board and lodging. He set her fears literally at rest, by showing her the proceeds of the watch he had sold. The next and two following evenings he gave three most successful performances in the big room, and finally left the village with flying colours, en route for Carlisle. His good fortune, as in the case of Incledon, being fairly attributable to the singing of a song; which savours strongly to my mind of what is generally understood by the term “lucky.”

Though somewhat different in detail, the impecuniosity of the late distinguished journalist, G. A. Sala, when a young man, was equally felicitous. Born in 1827 of not over-wealthy parents (Mrs. Sala was an operatic singer and teacher of music), he from an early age suffered with bad eyes, which prevented him learning to read until he was nine years old. When fourteen he began to earn his own living, and from that time till he was four-and-twenty, his mode of existence seems to have been more or less precarious. At one time engaged in copying plans of projected railways, then acting as assistant scene-painter at fifteen shillings a week, afterwards designing the cheapest and least elegant description of valentines, and subsequently drawing woodcuts for those inferior periodicals pretty generally known as “penny dreadfuls.” In the year 1851 his health gave way while he was pursuing the avocation of an engraver. The acids used in engraving so affecting his eyes that for a time he was quite blind, and loss of eyesight meant loss of work, and loss of work involved loss of income. The poverty he suffered at this time must have been of the direst; but though he had lost almost everything else, he never apparently quite lost heart, and when his sight improved he dashed off an article called “The Key of the Street,” descriptive of a night spent by a poor wanderer in London, which he sent in to Dickens, who had not long started Household Words. The feelings of the homeless man were described in a manner that shows the writer felt his subject, although it is hinted that the experiences related may have been the result of caprice.

He says, “I have no bed to-night. Why, it matters not. Perhaps I have lost my latch-key—perhaps I never had one; yet am fearful of knocking up my landlady after midnight. Perhaps I have a caprice—a fancy—for stopping up all night. At all events, I have no bed; and, saving ninepence (sixpence in silver, and threepence in coppers), no money. I must walk the streets all night; for I cannot, look you, get anything in the shape of a bed for less than a shilling. Coffee-houses, into which—seduced by their cheap appearance—I have entered, and where I have humbly sought a lodging, laugh my ninepence to scorn. They demand impossible eighteenpences—unattainable shillings. There is clearly no bed for me.

“It is midnight—so the clanging tongue of St. Dunstan’s tells me—as I stand thus bedless at Temple Bar. I have walked a good deal during the day, and have an uncomfortable sensation in my feet, suggesting the idea that the soles of my boots are made of roasted brickbats. I am thirsty too (it is July and sultry), and just as the last chime of St. Dunstan’s is heard, I have half-a-pint of porter, and a ninth part of my ninepence is gone from me for ever. The public-house where I have it (or rather the beer-shop, for it is an establishment of ‘the glass of ale and sandwich’ description) is an early closing one, and the proprietor, as he serves me, yawningly orders the potboy to put the shutters up, for he is ‘off to bed.’ Happy proprietor! There is a bristly-bearded tailor too, very beery, having his last pint, who utters a similar somniferous intention. He calls it ‘Bedfordshire.’ Thrice happy tailor!

“I envy him fiercely, as he goes out, though, God wot, his bedchamber may be but a squalid attic, and his bed a tattered hop-sack, with a slop great-coat from the emporium of Messrs. Melchisedek & Son, and which he had been working at all day, for a coverlid. I envy his children (I am sure he has a frouzy, ragged brood of them) for they have at least somewhere to sleep. I haven’t.”

Then follows a most graphic account of the persons encountered during the eight hours’ enforced prowl (including a flying visit to a fourpenny lodging-house, which was not a “model” of cleanliness), all the personages met with, and the occurrences witnessed being described with a freshness and fidelity that stamped the author as a descriptive writer of uncommon power. Charles Dickens at once forwarded a cheque for the contribution named, and, in the words of Oliver Twist, “asked for more;” and the late George Augustus Sala has for years been regarded as the journalist par excellence of the day.

In like manner the needy circumstances of Charlotte Cushman had much to do with her obtaining an engagement at the Princess’s Theatre, and making the great reputation she achieved in England. When first introduced to Mr. Maddox, the then lessee and manager of the house in Oxford Street, she did not impress him favourably. She had no pretensions to beauty, and Mr. Maddox considered she had not the qualities essential to a stage heroine. From London she went to Paris, in the hope of getting engaged by an English company performing there, but failing, and having obtained a letter of introduction from some one supposed to have great influence with the lessee, she again sought Mr. Maddox, with no better result. Stung to the quick by this second repulse, and made desperate by her critical situation, she turned when she had almost reached the door, exclaiming, “I know I have enemies in this country, but” (here she cast herself on her knees, raising her clenched hand aloft), “so help me Heaven, I’ll defeat them!” Mr. Maddox was at once satisfied with the tragic power of his visitor, and offered her an engagement forthwith.

If there is any doubt as to Charlotte Cushman’s success being attributable to impecuniosity the case of O’Brien, the celebrated Irish giant, is most clear.

This lengthy individual, whose height was 8ft. 7in., was born at Kinsale, where, with his father, he laboured as a bricklayer. His extraordinary size soon attracted the attention of a travelling showman, who, on payment of £50 per annum, acquired the right of exhibiting him for three years in England.

Not satisfied with this extremely good bargain, his master tried to sublet him to another person in the show business, a proceeding which Cotter (the giant’s real name) objected to, and for which objection he was saddled with a fictitious debt, and thrown into Bristol Jail. This apparent misfortune was, in the end, one of the luckiest things that could have happened to him. While in prison he was visited by a gentleman who took compassion on his distress, and believing him to be unjustly detained, very generously became his bail, ultimately investigating the affair so successfully as to obtain for him not only his liberty but his freedom to discontinue serving his taskmaster any longer. It happened to be September when he was liberated, and by the further assistance of his benefactor he was enabled to set up for himself in the fair then held in St. James’s, and such an attraction did he prove that in three days he realised the considerable sum of £30. From that time he continued to exhibit himself for twenty-six years, when, having realised a fortune sufficient to enable him to keep a carriage and live in luxury, he retired into private life.

A practical joke led to the ultimate success of Edward Knight, a popular comedian of last century. While with Mr. Nunns, manager of the Stafford company, he received a message from a stranger desiring his presence at a certain inn. On repairing thither he was courteously received by a gentleman who desired to show his gratification at Knight’s performance by giving him permission to use his name (Phillips) to Mr. Tate Wilkinson, the manager of the York Theatre, who, the stranger felt sure, on account of his intimacy with him would be sure to give Knight a good engagement. Next morning a letter was sent by the elated actor, who in due course received the following reply:

“Sir,—I am not acquainted with any Mr. Phillips, except a rigid Quaker, and he is the last man in the world to recommend an actor to my theatre. I don’t want you.

“Tate Wilkinson.”

This rebuff was so unexpected, and so mortifying, that the recipient sent a short and sharp answer:

“Sir,—I should as soon think of applying to a Methodist parson to preach for my benefit as to a Quaker to recommend me to Mr. Wilkinson. I don’t want to come.

“E. Knight.”

After an interval of twelve months, when the elder Mathews seceded from his company, he wrote to Knight as follows:

“Mr. Methodist Parson,—I have a living that produces twenty-five shillings per week. Will you hold forth?

“Tate Wilkinson.”

The invitation was gladly accepted, and for seven years he continued at York with unvarying success; at the end of which time he obtained an engagement at Drury Lane, and became a metropolitan favourite.

Though perhaps not so striking an example as any of the foregoing, an episode in the life of William Dobson (called by Charles the First “the English Tintoret”) is more or less of the same fortunate nature. Dobson, who always betrayed in his best efforts the want of proper training, was, as a boy, apprenticed to a Mr. Peake, who was more of a dealer in, than a painter of, pictures, and who consequently was anything but a competent teacher. Nevertheless, his collection of paintings, which included some by Titian and Van Dyck, was most valuable to the youngster, who copied both those masters with such wonderful correctness that none but an expert could detect the difference. When very young, and very poor, he managed to get one of his copies of a Van Dyck exhibited in a shop window on Snow Hill, which, strangely enough, was seen by no less a person than the author of the original, who immediately sought out the individual who had reproduced his work with such fidelity, and finding him toiling away in a miserable garret, took him by the hand, and brought him to the notice of King Charles.

Another instance of luck not dissociated with impecuniosity is found in the case of Perry, of The Morning Chronicle. Educated at Marischal College, Aberdeen, which he entered in 1771, he was first employed in that town as a lawyer’s clerk; but full of literary ambition, and possessed of much literary culture, he made his way to Edinburgh, where he almost starved, not being able to find employment of any kind. From Edinburgh he went to Manchester, where he just managed to eke out an existence; but believing London was the El Dorado for men of letters, he was not content till he had started for the great city. Amongst others who had promised him work was Urquart, the bookseller, to whom he wrote without success. One morning he called upon that gentleman, and was leaving the shop after a fruitless interview, when the bookseller said he had just experienced great pleasure in reading an article in The General Advertiser, and, said he, “If you could write like that, I could soon find you an engagement.” It so happened that Perry had sent in an article to that paper, and his joy may be imagined when he was able to claim the lauded production as his own; bringing out of his pocket another of the same sort, which he was about to drop into the editor’s box as before. He was immediately engaged as a paid contributor to The General Advertiser and Evening Post, and ultimately became editor and proprietor of The Morning Chronicle.

One of the most remarkable of the lucky illustrations, however, is that of Hogarth, when he was a struggling artist. At the time referred to, when studying at St. Martin’s Lane Academy, he was oftentimes reduced to the lowest possible water-mark; and while laying the foundation of his future celebrity, he was exposed to all the humiliating inconveniences too frequently associated with penury, not the least of such annoyances being the contemptuous insolence of an ignorant letter of lodgings. The story goes that on one of these occasions when he was unmercifully dunned by his landlady for the small sum of a sovereign, he was so exasperated that, with a view to being revenged upon her, he made a sketch of her face so excruciatingly ugly, that it revealed at once his marvellous power as a caricaturist.

Turning to the opposite side of the subject—the unlucky, there is, it must be admitted, a dearth of similarly appropriate examples. It is not that there is any scarcity of cases of great misfortune in connection with impecuniosity, but the circumstances connected with such cases are not so apparently the result of accident. In the lucky instances enumerated the chance element was conspicuous, but the same cannot be said of the adverse anecdotes; for they, or rather those that have come under my notice, are unfortunate cases rather than unlucky. For instance, the impecuniosity that introduced the Irish giant to some one he would not otherwise have met, who put him in the way of realising a competency, was manifestly lucky; but the impecuniosity that attended Stow, the antiquary, in his latest years, could not in the same sense be called unlucky, inasmuch as it was owing to no particular act or chance circumstance that he continued poor. The kind of cases that I consider would more properly illustrate this phase of the subject would be those of persons who, from, say, missing an appointment with some patron of eminence owing to being hard up, lost an opportunity of advancement, which never occurred again; or by not having some small amount of ready money were unable to avail themselves of an advantageous offer, which would have resulted in a fortune. That such mishaps have occurred in the long list of unrecorded lives there is little doubt; but I cannot call any to remembrance at the present time. The only instances I have met with in my research being those of unfortunate persons, whose histories of hardship would be more fittingly recounted as the sad side of impecuniosity.

The individual just referred to, John Stow, the antiquary, is a most melancholy case in point. A profound scholar in every sense, he devoted his life and substance to the study of English antiquities; oftentimes travelling tremendous distances on foot to save monuments, and rescue rare works from the dispersed libraries of monasteries. His enthusiasm for study was unbounded, and at his death he left stupendous excerpts in his own handwriting. At an advanced age, when worn out by study and travel, and the cares and anxieties of poverty—for he was utterly neglected by the pretended patrons of learning—his other troubles were increased by most acute pains in the feet, which he good-humouredly referred to by saying “his affliction lay in that part which formerly he had made so much use of.” At last he became so necessitous that he petitioned James the First for a licence to collect alms for himself, “as a recompense for his labour and travel of forty-five years, in setting forth the Chronicles of England, and eight years taken up in the Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, towards his relief now in his old age: having left his former means of living, and only employing himself for the service and good of his country”—which petition was granted by letters patent under the Great Seal, permitting him to seek assistance from all well-disposed people within this realm of England. The terms in which this permit was set forth (“to ask, gather, and take the alms of all our loving subjects”) were scarcely correct; that is to say, “to ask, gather, and take the alms of all our loving subjects—who will give” would have been more complete; for though the letters patent were published by the clergy from their pulpits, the result was so trifling that they had to be renewed for another twelvemonth; one entire parish in the city subscribing but seven and sixpence to the poor scholar’s appeal.

Learning in Stow’s time, and for a long time after, was evidently but poorly patronised, for his is by no means an isolated experience. Myles Davies, author of ‘Athenæ Britannicæ,’ &c., published in 1716, suffered similar neglect; his mind, it is alleged, becoming quite confused amidst the loud cries of penury and despair.

Alluding to those who were supposed to support such as himself, he scathingly says, “Some parsons would halloo enough to raise the whole house and home of the domestics to raise a poor crown; at last all that flutter ends in sending Jack or Tom out to change a guinea, and then ’tis reckoned over half-a-dozen times before the fatal crown can be picked out, which must be taken as it is given, with all the parade of almsgiving [Davies, be it remembered, was a Welsh divine], and so to be received with all the active and passive ceremonial of mendication and alms-receiving, as if the books, printing, and paper were worth nothing at all, and as if it were the greatest charity for them to touch them, or let them be in the house. ‘For I shall never read them,’ says one of the five-shilling chaps. ‘I have no time to look into them,’ says a third. ‘’Tis so much money lost,’ says a grave dean. ‘My eyes being so bad,’ said a bishop, ‘that I can scarce read at all.’ ‘What do you want with me?’ said another. ‘Sir, I presented you the other day with my ‘Athenæ Britannicæ,’ being the last part published.’ ‘I don’t want books, take them again; I don’t understand what they mean.’ ‘The title is very plain,’ said I, ‘and they are writ mostly in English.’ ‘I’ll give you a crown for both the volumes.’ ‘They stand me, sir, in more than that, and ’tis for a bare subsistence I present or sell them; how shall I live?’ ‘I care not a farthing for that—live or die, ’tis all one to me.’ ‘Damn my master,’ said Jack, ‘’twas but last night he was commending your books and your learning to the skies, and now he would not care if you were starving before his eyes; nay, he often makes game at your clothes, though he thinks you the greatest scholar in England.’”

So much for the way literature was encouraged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and that it was little better in the eighteenth century is only too well-known a fact; for “in those days, a large proportion of working literary men were little better than outcasts;—persons exiled from decent society, partly by their own vices, partly by the fact of their following a profession which had hardly acquired a recognised standing in the world, or found for itself a definite and indisputable sphere of usefulness. The reading public was not sufficient to maintain an extensive fraternity of writers, and the writers consequently often starved, and broke their hearts in wretched garrets, or earned a despicable living by flattering the great.”

These animadversions are especially meant to apply to that class of littérateurs known as “Grub Street pamphleteers,” but not a few notable names in the world of letters can be found to verify the gloomy picture. Nathaniel, or “Nat” Lee, as he is more often called, was one of those who failed to find fortune, but it must be admitted his “own vices” are answerable for his indigence. The son of a clergyman, he was educated at Westminster School, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took his B.A.; and, at a very early age, manifested conspicuous ability for dramatic writing; his first effort, ‘Nero, Emperor of Rome,’ produced in 1675, being received with marked success. From that time until his death, which occurred fifteen years later, he brought out eleven plays, not one of which was a failure, but he was so rakishly extravagant as to be frequently plunged into the lowest depths of misery. In November 1684, his excesses, coupled with a naturally excitable temperament, succeeded in fitting him to be an inmate of Bedlam, where he was confined for four years. On his release in April 1688, he resumed his occupation of dramatist, producing ‘The Princess of Cleve’ in 1689, and ‘The Massacre of Paris’ the following year. Notwithstanding the considerable profits arising from these performances he was reduced to so low an ebb, that a weekly stipend of 10s. from the Theatre Royal was his chief dependence. He died the same year, 1690, the result of a drunken frolic in the street; and although the author of eleven plays, all acted with applause, and dedicated, when printed, to the Earls of Dorset, Mulgrave, and Pembroke, and the Duchesses of Portsmouth and Richmond, who were numbered among his patrons, he was buried by the Parish of St. Clement Danes, Strand.

The vicissitudes of Spenser, in contrast to those of the author just referred to, were undoubtedly due to a want of appreciation on the part of those in power; for none of his biographers even hint at want of rectitude in his past life. Created Poet Laureate by Queen Elizabeth, he, for some time, only wore the barren laurel, and possessed the place without the pension; for Lord Treasurer Burleigh, for some motive or other, intercepted the Queen’s intended bounty to him. It is said that Her Majesty, upon Spenser presenting some poems to her, ordered him £100, but that her Lord Treasurer, objecting to it, said with considerable scorn, “What! all this for a song?” Whereupon the Queen replied, “Then give him what is reason.” Some time after, the poet, not having received the promised gift, penned the following poetic petition—

“I was promised on a time,
To have reason for my rime; (sic)
From that time unto this season
I received nor rime nor reason”—

which, when sent to his sovereign, had the desired effect of producing the monetary reward, and also obtained for Lord Burleigh the reprimand he so well deserved. That Spenser felt keenly the neglect to which he was subsequently subjected is pretty clearly shown in the following lines—

“Full little knowest thou, that hast not try’d
What hell it is in suing long to bide:
To lose good days that might be better spent,
To wast long nights in pensive discontent:
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow,
To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow:
To have thy Prince’s grace, yet want her peers,
To have thy asking, yet wait many years:
To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares,
To eat thy heart with comfortless despairs:
To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run,
To spend, to give, to want, to be undone”—

which is but one of many bemoanings of hard and undeserved treatment; and though there be some who have accused him of lacking philosophy in thus making known his poverty, I should think it very much too literally poor philosophy that would suffer in silence when it comes to a matter of bread and cheese. There were times, of course, in Spenser’s history, when his genius was fully acknowledged, both before and after the neglect recorded, when, for instance, he made the acquaintance of that chivalrous poet soldier, Sir Philip Sidney—the historically self-denying Sir Philip, who when mortally wounded at the battle of Zutphen, and about to revel in a draught of water that he had called for, denied himself the coveted drink, and gave it away to a poor comrade. He it was who was the first to recognise Spenser’s great claim as a poet. It is stated that when a perfect stranger to Sir Philip, Spenser went to Leicester House, and introduced himself by sending in the ninth canto of ‘The Fairy Queen,’ which he had just completed.

The young nobleman was much surprised with the description of “Despair” in that canto, and betrayed an unusual kind of transport on the discovery of so new and uncommon a genius. After he had read some verses he called his steward, and bade him give the person who brought those verses £50; but upon reading the next stanza, he ordered the sum to be doubled. The steward was as much surprised as his master, and thought it his duty to make some delay in executing so sudden and lavish a bounty; but upon reading one stanza more, Sir Philip raised his gratuity to £200, and commanded the steward to give it immediately, lest, as he read farther, he might be tempted to give away his whole estate. Unfortunately this generous patron was killed at the early age of thirty-two, and it was after his decease that Spenser for a time was under a cloud. Subsequently he was befriended by the Earl of Leicester, and upon the appointment of Lord Grey of Wilton to be Lord Deputy of Ireland, the poet became his secretary, and was rewarded by a grant from the Queen of three thousand acres. This he was not destined to enjoy very long, for in the rebellion of Tyrone he was plundered, and deprived of his estate, and when he arrived in England he was heart-broken by his misfortunes. He died in the greatest distress on the 16th January, 1599, and though interred in Westminster Abbey at the expense of the Earl of Essex, his death according to Ben Jonson was actually occasioned by “lack of bread.”

It is difficult to determine which is the more pitiable, the want and misery produced by the neglect of others, or the destitution resulting from evil courses; both demand our commiseration, though some of the stern moralists affect to have “no pity” for those whose troubles are the outcome of self-indulgence and dissipation. “A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind,” and only those who have been the victims of that enslaving mania for drink, which has blasted so many bright lives will have compassion for such a man as Samuel Boyce. This misguided mortal, the son of a dissenting minister, was born at Dublin in the year 1708, and when eighteen was sent to the Glasgow University, his father having designed him for the ministry. He married when he had been at college little more than a year, and soon developed habits of indulgence and extravagance, which effectually ruined him, in spite of much assistance received from the nobility and others. In the year 1731 he published a volume of poems, to which is subjoined the “Tablature of Cebes,” and a letter upon liberty, which appeared originally in the Dublin Journal five years previously. These productions gained him considerable reputation and substantial patronage from the Countess of Eglinton, to whom they were dedicated.

His next successful effort was an elegy upon the death of the Viscountess Stormont (a woman of the most refined taste, well versed in science, and a great admirer of poetry), entitled, ‘The Tears of the Muses,’ which so pleased Lord Stormont, the deceased lady’s husband, that he advertised for the author in one of the weekly papers, and caused his attorney to make him a very handsome present. In addition to the favour of Lady Eglinton and Lord Stormont, he was also befriended by the Duchess of Gordon, who gave him most material assistance while he continued in Scotland; and when he went to London, gave him a letter of introduction to Pope, and obtained another for him to Sir Peter King, Lord Chancellor of England. He had many other most valuable recommendations when he arrived in the metropolis, and possessing as he did ability of no common order, his opportunities were exceptionally fine; but nothing can withstand the devastating influences of the demon of drink; and at the age of thirty-two he is described as reduced to such an extremity of human wretchedness that he had not a shirt, a coat, or any kind of apparel to put on. The sheets in which he lay were carried to the pawnbroker’s, and he was obliged to be confined to his bed with no other covering than a blanket, and in this condition, thrusting his arm through a hole, he scribbled a quantity of verse for the Gentleman’s Magazine.

His genius was not confined to poetry, for he was skilled in painting, music, and heraldry; but by his pen alone, had he chosen to live decently, he could have commanded a very good living. His translations from the French were admittedly excellent; but the drawback to employing him at this work was that when he had copied a page or two he would pawn the original and re-pawn it as often he could induce his acquaintances to “get it out” for him. On one occasion Dr. Johnson managed to get up a sixpenny subscription for him in order to redeem his clothes, but the effort to help him was useless, for within two days he pawned them again, and the last state was at any rate no better than the first. He seems to have been so demoralised by drink that he was dead to every sense of honour and humanity; for, whenever he obtained half-a-guinea, whether by writing poetry or a begging letter, he would sit squandering it in a tavern while his wife and child starved at home. He got from bad to worse, and in 1742, when locked up in a spunging-house, sent the following appeal to Cave:

“I am every moment threatened to be turned out here, because I have not money to pay for my bed two nights past, which is usually paid beforehand; and I am loth to go into the Compter, till I can see if my affairs can possibly be made up. I hope, therefore, you will have the humanity to send me half-a-guinea for support till I finish your papers in my hands. I humbly entreat your answer, not having tasted anything since Tuesday evening I came here; and my coat will be taken off my back for the charge of the bed, so that I must go into prison naked, which is too shocking for me to think of.”

There are several accounts given of his death, which occurred when he was but forty-one years of age; and, though they vary as to the precise nature of his end, there is no doubt that it was accelerated by the habit he indulged in—of drinking hot beer to excess, which at last obscured and confused his intellectual faculties.

The sad side of impecuniosity is, unfortunately, so vast a subject that it would require an entire volume, instead of part of a chapter, to properly record the miseries of mind and body endured by those in past ages, who, not unknown to fame, have been permitted to pine and die in despair. The poets alone, so prolific are they in this respect, would furnish material sufficient; but the neglect of genius is anything but an uncommon thing, and therefore commonplace sufferings might not be regarded as “Curiosities of impecuniosity,” though in one sense it certainly is curious that their wants should not have been recognised. Men like Henry Carey or Cary, the author of ‘Sally in our Alley,’ and said by some to be the composer of the National Anthem, who was considered by all authorities to be a true son of the Muses, have been driven to desperation through want. It is said, “At the time that this poet could neither walk the streets nor be seated at the convivial board without listening to his own songs and his own music—for in truth the whole nation was echoing his verse, and crowded theatres were applauding his wit and humour; while this very man himself, urged by his strong humanity, founded a ‘Fund for Decayed Musicians’—he was so broken-hearted, and his own common comforts so utterly neglected, that in despair, not waiting for nature to relieve him from the burden of existence, he laid violent hands on himself; and when found dead had only a halfpenny in his pocket.”

The following lines written some time before his melancholy end show that he was no stranger to the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” and that his self-destruction was not the result of momentary madness, but rather induced by the humiliating torture of ills long borne.

“Far, far away then chase the harlot Muse,
Nor let her thus thy noon of life abuse;
Mix with the common crowd, unheard, unseen,
And if again thou tempt’st the vulgar praise,
May’st thou be crown’d with birch instead of bays!”

The untimely end of Chatterton is a companion picture to that of Cary, but the circumstances of his early death, his being without food for two days, and his poisoning himself with arsenic and water, when lodging at Mrs. Angel’s, a sack-maker in Brook Street, Holborn, are so well known that it is only necessary to mention his melancholy fate, which if it stood alone in the history of literature would be sufficient to show there is a very pathetic side to impecuniosity. Although this rash act is attributed to the state of starvation to which the poet was reduced, there is little doubt that Horace Walpole by his unsympathising, though strictly correct, reproof had much to do with the disordered condition of the poor fellow’s mind. When living at Bristol, Chatterton became possessed of some parchments which had been extracted from the coffin of a Mr. Canynge, and upon these he produced some poetry, which he described as a production of Thomas Canynge, and of his friend, one Thomas Rowley, a priest; sent them to Walpole and asked for assistance to enable him to quit his uncongenial occupation, and pursue one more poetic. The poems were submitted to competent antiquaries, and pronounced forgeries, whereupon Horace Walpole refused the boy’s application for help, at the same time reproving the attempted fraud in the most cold and cutting terms. For this treatment the great wit and prince of letter-writers has been severely censured; one writer remarking, “Just or unjust, the world has never forgiven Horace Walpole for Chatterton’s misery. His indifference has been contrasted with the generosity of Edmund Burke to Crabbe, a generosity to which we owe ‘The Village,’ ‘The Borough,’ and to which Crabbe owed his peaceful old age, and almost his existance. The cases were different, but Crabbe had his faults, and Chatterton was worth saving. It is well for genius that there are souls in the world more sympathising, less worldly, and more indulgent, than those of such men as Horace Walpole.”

Another most melancholy, and equally tragical record connected with impecuniosity is furnished in the life of Dr. Dodd, a literary divine, and one of the most popular preachers of the last century; though his troubles were not the outcome of actual want, but rather the result of want of self-control and principle. He commenced as a writer for the press, published ‘The Beauties of Shakespeare,’ obtained several lectureships, which he held with great success, and subsequently became Chaplain to the King. The list of his different appointments is most numerous, and most of them not only important, but highly remunerative, but his extravagance was such that no income would have been sufficient to keep him out of debt. Owing to his excesses he lost the royal favour, and though he was in the receipt of a large income from his preaching, it was not enough to satisfy his expensive habits, and he foolishly sent an anonymous letter to Lady Apsley offering her £3000 if she would prevail on her husband, the Lord Chancellor, to appoint him to the rectory of St. George’s, Hanover Square. The letter was traced to the doctor, and in consequence his name was struck off the list of royal chaplains. After a sojourn abroad he returned to this country, obtained from Lord Chesterfield a living in Buckinghamshire, but could not forsake his old habits; he still plunged into debt, and from being pressed for money forged the name of his patron to a bill for £4200, was tried, found guilty, and executed at the Old Bailey, in 1777.

The career of Thomas Otway, the dramatist, though short, for he was but thirty-four years of age when he died, was one continued course of monetary difficulty, the result of irregular living. The son of a Sussex rector and educated at Winchester and Christ Church, Oxford, he betrayed no anxiety to follow his father’s footsteps, but at the age of twenty-three manifested a most practical preference for Thespis rather than theology, though he does not seem to have possessed any great genius for acting. He subsequently became a cornet in a regiment, which was sent to Flanders, but distinguished himself most as a dramatic writer, for which profession he was eminently suited, many of his plays meeting with exceptional success, particularly ‘Venice Preserved,’ which has held possession of the stage for about two hundred years. His circumstances, never good, gradually went from bad to worse, owing to his dissolute proclivities, and he died at last on the 14th April, 1685, in a wretched state of penury, at a public-house called ‘The Bull,’ on Tower Hill, whither he had gone to avoid the too pressing attention of his creditors. It is generally believed that the actual cause of his death was choking, which occurred through his having been without food for some time, and then too eagerly devouring a piece of bread which, through the generosity of a friend, he had been able to purchase. That Otway should have excelled in tragedy is not surprising, the power that he displayed in depicting domestic suffering being easily accounted for by the fact that he must have been constantly experiencing distress in private life, for when his tragic end was brought about he was hiding from sheriff’s officers, his misery terminating only with death.

It is terribly sad to see such men as these, blessed with natural gifts far beyond the common, yet in spite of these endowments sinking to a lower level than their inferiors in intellect; and unfortunately the literary list of these erring ones is a long one, for since the days of Robert Greene, said to be the first Englishman who wrote for a living, and who died in the house of a poor shoemaker, who took pity upon him when he was destitute, there have always been men unable to withstand the seductions of vicious courses, and who have consequently paid the penalty of intemperance, and immorality, by death-beds of misery, and remorse, to say nothing of the life-long inconveniences of impecuniosity. Lamentable as is the contemplation of these lost lives, there is yet a sadder picture still, for pitiable as it is to think of men, indifferent alike to their well-being in this world and in that which is to come, the sadness is intensified when the object of pity is a woman, one who has been referred to as “a sort of female Otway, without his genius.”

The individual in question was Colley Cibber’s younger daughter, Charlotte, whose education from her earliest years was eminently masculine, which resulted in the girl becoming proficient in manly sports and pastimes, such as shooting, hunting, riding, &c. When very young she married Mr. Richard Clarke, a celebrated violinist, with whom she soon disagreed, and from whom she speedily separated, and she then devoted herself to the stage, and commenced a career, which for strange and harrowing vicissitudes is unequalled in the annals of British biography—one day courted, admired and affluent; the next an outcast, uncared for, and despised. Singularly enough, the first character she assumed on the stage after the quarrel with her husband was Mademoiselle in ‘The Provoked Wife,’ in which character, and several subsequent assumptions at the Haymarket Theatre, she was highly successful, and obtained an uncommonly good salary. Her temper however, like herself, was eccentric, and it was not long before she quarrelled with Fleetwood, the manager, and left the theatre at a moment’s notice. From being a regular performer, she then took to travelling about the country with strollers, and shared with them the starvation fate that is so often associated with their nomadic existence. Tiring of this, she set up as a grocer, in Long Acre, but failed in that business, as well as at puppet-show keeping, at which she tried her hand in a street near the Haymarket. On the death of her husband, she was thrown into prison for debt, but released by the subscriptions of ladies of questionable repute, whose charity is proverbially more conspicuous than their virtue. After remarrying, and again becoming a widow, Charlotte Clarke (for by that name she has always been known) assumed male attire, and obtained occasional engagements at the theatres, and, though she suffered most distressing deprivations was able to present so good an appearance, that an heiress became madly attached to her, and was inconsolable when the wretched woman revealed her sex. The next adventure she claims to have participated in is her becoming valet to an Irish nobleman, which situation she did not retain for any length of time; and then she attempted to earn her living as a sausage-maker, but was unsuccessful. Twice she became a tavern proprietor, and for a time was in the most flourishing circumstances, but her prosperity was excessively ephemeral, and amongst the other occupations that she is credited with having undertaken are those of waiter at the King’s Head, Marylebone; worker of a set of puppets, and authoress of her extraordinary biography, which she published in 1755. It was with the proceeds of this book that she was enabled to open one of the public-houses mentioned; but the amount realised by its sale was not of much benefit to the poor misguided creature, for within five years (she died in 1760), she was discovered in a more wretched, forlorn condition than ever, according to the account of two gentlemen who visited her. The widow, who, petted and pampered by her parents, had, as a child been brought up in luxury, was then domiciled in a wretched, thatched hovel in the purlieus of Clerkenwell Bridewell, at that time a wild suburb, where the scavengers used to throw the cleansings of the streets. The house and its scanty furniture sufficiently indicated the extreme poverty of the inmates.

“Mrs. Clarke sat on a broken chair by a little scrap of fire, and the visitors were accommodated with a rickety deal board. A half-starved dog lay at the authoress’s feet; a cat sat on one hob, and a monkey on the other; while a magpie perched on the back of its mistress’s chair. A worn-out pair of bellows served for a writing-desk, and a broken cup for an inkstand; these were matched by the pen, which was worn down to the stump, and was the only one on the premises. The lady asked thirty guineas for the copyright. The bookseller offered five, but was at length induced by his friend to give ten, on condition that Mr. Whyte (the friend) would pay a moiety and take half the risk of the novel.”

In the year 1759 she played Marplot, in ‘The Busybody,’ for her own benefit at the Haymarket, when the following advertisement appeared.

“As I am entirely dependent on chance for a subsistence, and am desirous of getting into business, I hope the town will favour me on the occasion, which, added to the rest of their indulgence, will ever be gratefully acknowledged by their truly obliged, and obedient servant, Charlotte Clarke.”

This was shortly before her death, which took place on the 6th April, 1760.

It would be extremely difficult to find a more sorrowful story in connection with impecuniosity than that of Colley Cibber’s daughter; and though the degraded character of the greater part of her life has robbed her misfortunes of much of the sympathy that would otherwise have been freely accorded, it would have been well if some who have animadverted so severely upon her shortcomings had remembered that much in her life that was so unwomanly was undoubtedly due to her masculine and defective training.

The celebrated actress Mrs. Jordan—whose acting, according to Hazlitt—“gave more pleasure than that of any other actress, because she had the greatest spirit of enjoyment in herself”—was so unfortunate in her last days, that she is fully entitled to a place with those whose monetary embarrassments have been particularly sad. For years she had lived in uninterrupted domestic harmony with the Duke of Clarence, afterwards William the Fourth; but when the connection was suddenly severed in 1811, a yearly allowance of £4400, was settled upon her for the maintenance of herself and daughters; with a provision that, if Mrs. Jordan should resume her profession, the care of the duke’s daughters, together with £1500 per annum allowed for them, should revert to his Royal Highness. Within a few months of this arrangement she did return to the stage, but through having incautiously given blank notes of hand to a friend in difficulties on the understanding that the amounts to be filled in were but small, she awoke one morning to find herself called upon to pay amounts utterly beyond her power. In her terror and dismay she fled to France, but her peace of mind was gone. Separated from her children, and racked by the torturing thought of the liability she was unable to discharge, she gradually pined away, and died in terrible distress of mind at St. Cloud in June 1816.

Contrasted with its brilliant beginning the close of Mrs. Jordan’s life is painfully sad, and it might be urged that the sorrowful end was but an instance of retributive justice on account of the fair and frail one’s social sin. Experience, however, proves that the breaking of the moral law does not always involve punishment in this life, and even if this were not so, many instances could be cited of misfortunes as heavy, and far heavier, falling to the lot of those who to all intents and purposes have led blameless lives.

Foremost among such cases would be the crushing blow that befell the noble and greatly gifted novelist and poet, Sir Walter Scott, at the age of fifty-five years, when, having given to the world the greater part of those glorious works that have placed his name pre-eminent in the world of literature, and being, as was supposed, the happy enjoyer of a handsome fortune and splendid estate, it transpired that he was a ruined man. So successful had been his literary labours for thirty years that it was generally and naturally supposed that the enormous sums spent on Abbotsford were the proceeds of his novels and poems, but it seems he had for a long time been a partner in the printing firm of Ballantyne & Co., who were closely connected with Messrs. Constable, the publishers. These firms had engaged in transactions of a speculative character, and in the commercial crisis of 1825 both failed, Sir Walter’s immense private fortune being swallowed up in the crash, while as a partner in the house of Ballantyne he was responsible for the enormous amount of £147,000. At the time of this calamity his health had already been considerably shattered, the slightly grey hair had in the year 1819 been turned to snowy white by an attack of jaundice, and his frame further enfeebled four years later by an attack of apoplexy, so that it would not have been surprising if this frightful crash had proved his death-blow. Far from it; with a heroism unparalleled, and a high sense of honour, that adds more lustre to his name than the most brilliant effusion of his pen, he determined manfully to face this overwhelming catastrophe, refusing all proffered aid, and merely asking for time. “Gentlemen,” said he to the creditors, “time and I against any two. Let me take this good ally into my company, and I believe I shall be able to pay you every farthing. It is very hard thus to lose all the labours of a lifetime and to be made a poor man at last when I ought to have been otherwise, but, if God grant me life and strength for a few years longer, I have no doubt I shall redeem it all.” The redemption referred to his property, all of which he gave up, retiring into modest lodgings, where he zealously set to work to accomplish the Herculean task of writing off the gigantic sum named. ‘Woodstock,’ which realised £8228, was the first novel after his misfortune, and that occupied him only three months; but it was as, he said, “very hard” at his time of life to every day perform the allotted task of producing thirty pages of printed matter, for the work on which he was then occupied was not that fiction which he wrote with such facility, but a voluminous ‘Life of Napoleon Buonaparte,’ necessitating reference to no end of books and papers; and day after day for many a month might he have been seen, slowly and sorrowfully, wading through work after work in order to verify each date and fact. The nine volumes were finished in 1827, and these were followed by ‘The Chronicles of the Canongate,’ ‘Tales of a Grandfather,’ ‘The Fair Maid of Perth,’ ‘Count Robert,’ and ‘Castle Dangerous’—the last named published in 1831—a year before his death, which may be fairly attributed to the undue strain of mind and body; the raison-d’être of this overtaxing of his strength being simply and solely impecuniosity.

The picture of this truly great man being obliged to wear out the last years of his life by unceasing labour when he should have been enjoying a well-earned rest, is excessively sad and touching—but the sadness is to some extent relieved by the heroic nature of the act. The melancholy end of the man is swallowed up in the imperishable name he has left behind, which name, for generations to come, will serve as the synonym of honour. Sad, far more sad, were the closing days of Sheridan, whose last moments were also darkened by impecuniosity, but utterly unrelieved by any acts of self-sacrifice; and made far more melancholy by the fact that the monetary misery was caused by unnecessary extravagance.

Alas, poor Sheridan! If ever man in his declining days had good reason to say with the preacher, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,” thou hadst! for thou wert bitterly punished at the last, by the desertion and neglect of those who should have succoured and solaced thee. True thy shortcomings were many, but only one blessed with such brilliant gifts could possibly realise thy temptation; and the sorrow thou didst endure must silence detraction. Says one of his biographers, “For six years after the burning of the old theatre, he continued to go down and down. Disease now attacked him fiercely. In the spring of 1816 he was fast waning towards extinction. His day was past, he had outlived his fame as a wit and social light; he was forgotten by many, if not by most, of his old associates. He wrote to Rogers, ‘I am absolutely undone and broken-hearted.’ Poor Sheridan! in spite of all thy faults, who is he whose morality is so stern that he cannot shed one tear over thy latter days! God forgive us, we are all sinners; and if we weep not for this man’s deficiency, how shall we ask tears when our day comes? Even as I write, I feel my hand tremble and my eyes moisten over the sad end of one whom I love, though he died before I was born. ‘They are going to put the carpets out of window,’ he wrote to Rogers, ‘and break into Mrs. S.’s room and take me. For God’s sake let me see you!’ See him! see one friend who could and would help him in his misery! Oh, happy man may that man count himself who has never wanted that one friend, and felt the utter helplessness of that want. Poor Sheridan! had he ever asked, or hoped, or looked for that Friend out of this world it had been better; for ‘the Lord thy God is a jealous God,’ and we go on seeking human friendship and neglecting the divine till it is too late. He found one hearty friend in his physician, Dr. Bain, when all others had forsaken him. The spirit of White’s and Brookes’, the companion of a prince and a score of noblemen, the enlivener of every fashionable table, was forgotten by all but this one doctor. Let us read Moore’s description. ‘A sheriff’s officer at length arrested the dying man in his bed, and was about to carry him off in his blankets to a spunging-house, when Dr. Bain interfered?’ Who would live the life of revelry that Sheridan lived to have such an end? A few days after, on the 7th July, 1816, in his sixty-fifth year, he died. Of his last hours the late Professor Smythe wrote an admirable and most touching account, a copy of which was circulated in manuscript. The professor, hearing of Sheridan’s condition asked to see him, with a view not only of alleviating present distress, but of calling the dying man to repentance. From his hands the unhappy Sheridan received the Holy Communion; his face during that solemn rite—doubly solemn when it is performed in the chamber of death—‘expressed,’ Smythe relates, ‘the deepest awe.’ That phrase conveys to the mind impressions not easy to be defined, not easy to be forgotten.

“Peace! There was not peace even in death, and the creditor pursued him even into the ‘waste wide,’ even to the coffin. He was lying in state, when a gentleman in the deepest mourning called, it is said, at the house, and introducing himself as an old and much-attached friend of the deceased, begged to be allowed to look upon his face. The tears which rose in his eyes, the tremulousness of his quiet voice, the pallor of his mournful face, deceived the unsuspecting servant, who accompanied him to the chamber of death, removed the lid of the coffin, turned down the shroud, and revealed features which had once been handsome, but long since rendered almost hideous by drinking. The stranger gazed with profound emotion, while he quietly drew from his pocket a bailiff’s wand, and touching the corpse’s face with it, suddenly altered his manner to one of considerable glee, and informed the servant that he had arrested the corpse in the King’s name for a debt of £500. It was the morning of the funeral, which was to be attended by half the grandees of England, and in a few minutes the mourners began to arrive. But the corpse was the bailiff’s property till his claim was paid, and nought but the money would soften the iron capturer. Canning and Lord Sidmouth agreed to settle the matter, and over the coffin the debt was paid.”

The pall-bearers were the Duke of Bedford, the Earl of Lauderdale, Earl Mulgrave, Lord Holland, Lord Spencer, and the Bishop of London, and the body was followed by two Royal Highnesses—the Dukes of York and Sussex—by two Marquises, seven Earls, three Viscounts, five Lords, and a perfect army of honourables and right honourables. This show of respect and homage after death, when nothing had been done to assuage his last sufferings in life, was regarded by those who loved him as a bitter mockery, and Moore’s lines justly denounced it.

“Oh, it sickens the heart to see bosoms so hollow,
And friendship so false in the great and high-born,
To think what a long line of titles may follow,
The relics of him who died friendless and lorn!
How proud they can press to the funeral array
Of him whom they shunned in his sickness and sorrow,
How bailiffs may seize his last blanket to-day,
Whose pall shall be held up by nobles to-morrow!”

CHAPTER V.

THE INGENUITY OF IMPECUNIOSITY.

In the opening chapter, several instances of considerable ingenuity were referred to; but as the conduct of the individuals in question was not sans peur et sans reproche, the cases came under the head of the immoral effects of the want of money, and were necessarily not illustrations of ingenuity proper, but ingenuity slightly improper.

In the present chapter, the majority of the reminiscences related are innocent of the unscrupulous characteristics, and are intended to be examples of the theory that “nothing sharpens a man’s wits like poverty,” which assertion can be supported by the accepted axiom “necessity is the mother of invention;” for it stands to reason that people are more or less stimulated to exercise their faculties of contrivance in proportion to their need. Hence it is that the very needy become exceptionally sharp in more senses than one.

The men who have made their mark in any department of knowledge, or have achieved positions of eminence, are for the most part, those who have wanted to be clever, or those who have wanted to attain certain celebrity. It is the want of the thing that has enabled them to devote their whole lives to study, or given them the power to persevere; and so it is with regard to impecuniosity. The want of money—that is an anxious desire for it on account of its being needed—has caused men to cudgel their brains to extricate themselves from their difficulties, has made them plot and plan, scheme and contrive, or, in other words, has greatly developed the gift of ingenuity.

Charles Phillips, the barrister, who, when first he practised at the Old Bailey bar, was remarkably hard up, was wont to relate, with great glee, how he succeeded with one of his early briefs, which he had from an Israelite attorney, in what might be termed “Jewing” the Jew. The case involved an indictment brought by one omnibus company against another for “nursing” (that is, too closely following one another for the purpose of driving the rival off the road), and the trial lasted over three days. For this brief, which was an important one, he had received a disgracefully small fee, which he could not decline on account of his necessitous condition; but he determined, if he could get a chance, to be equal with his parsimonious employer, and on the last day of the trial the opportunity came. The attorney was most anxious that Phillips himself should examine a noted Paddington driver, who was a most important witness, and early on the morning he accosted the barrister, saying: “What an interesting day this will be in Court. You have to examine the Paddington coachman. The Court is crowded with conductors and drivers from all parts.”

“Indeed,” said Phillips, “I feel no interest in it. The trial has lasted three days, and look at my miserable fee. Now you must give me ten guineas, or I won’t examine him.”

The Jew was thunderstruck, and white with fear for the issue of his cause, declared he had not such a sum with him, but said he would leave the amount at Phillips’ chambers after the trial. The counsel knowing his man, and what his promise was worth, declined the proposition, whereupon the other produced his cheque-book, and forthwith wrote out a cheque for the sum demanded. As soon as the barrister received it, he asked to be excused for a few moments, on the plea that he would have to hand over another brief which he had to a brother counsel. He then privately gave the cheque to one of the attendants, telling him to run as hard as he could, or take a cab, and get the cheque cashed as quickly as possible. On his return, he managed to keep his victim engaged in conversation till he thought the messenger had obtained a sufficient start, feeling sure that the Jew, although so much interested in the trial, would rush off to the bank and stop payment. It was as Phillips anticipated; but the attorney was not quite quick enough, for, as he rushed into the bank, the man with the money came out, and the state of perspiration and cursing in which the baffled Israelite regained the Old Bailey can be understood without detailing.

There is no doubt in Phillips’ case that impecuniosity sharpened his wits; for the transaction was nothing more nor less than a piece of sharp practice, indefensible on strictly moral grounds, but hardly blameable when the character and conduct of the grinding attorney are remembered.

The name of Phillips is associated with another record of ingenuity; but in the second instance it was Harlequin Phillips—no relation whatever of the legal luminary, though from his aptitude in taking advantage of an adversary he was worthy to be related, or at any rate his anecdote is.

This celebrated pantomimist, who was contemporaneous with Garrick, and was regarded as one of the cleverest men in his profession at that time, was not clever enough to keep himself out of debt and the spunging-house, though he proved himself equal to making his escape from custody by an admirably-conceived plan. After treating the bailiff very freely, he pretended that he had a dozen of particularly choice wine at home, already packed, which he begged permission to send for, to drink while he was detained, offering to pay sixpence a bottle for the privilege.

His custodian acceded to the request, and Phillips wrote a letter giving particulars of what he wanted, which letter was duly despatched to his residence. Some time after, a sturdy porter presented himself with the load, and the turnkey called to his master that a porter with a hamper for Mr. Phillips had come. “All right,” replied the bailiff; “then let nothing but the porter and hamper out.” The messenger, who was an actor thoroughly accustomed to “heavy business,” came in, apparently loaded with a weighty hamper, and went out as lightly as if he were carrying an empty package, though in reality it contained Mr. Phillips inside.

This was indeed carrying out the character of harlequin (who is always supposed to be invisible) “to the letter;” and shows that the pantomimist of the past was an inventive genius, in addition to being an agile acrobat, and more or less up to tricks. A propos of tricks, the life of Philippe, the conjuror, introduces a legitimate illustration of a man poor in pocket, but rich in resource. Though he appeared at the St. James’ and Strand Theatres in 1845, under the name of Philippe, his real cognomen was Talon-Philippe Talon.

Born at Alais, near Nismes, where he carried on the trade of confectioner, he came to London, and subsequently went to Aberdeen, in the hope of succeeding as a manufacturer of Scotch sweets; but found himself unable to compete with the native makers, and in possession at last of nothing but a quantity of unsaleable confectionery. In utter despair of being ever able to get rid of his stock, he bethought him of turning conjuror, having always had a great penchant for sleight-of-hand performances, and being, he believed, equal to giving an exhibition in public. Certain apparatus, was, however, necessary, which, of course, in his insolvent condition, he was unable to purchase. He made a visit to the theatre, and found that—fortunately for him—the entertainment being given was anything but successful; the bill, theatrically speaking, was “a frost,” and the manager consequently open to discuss any scheme for pulling up the business. In a moment Philippe saw his opportunity, and suggested that two or three special performances should be given, at which every person paying for admission should have with his check a packet of confectionery given to him, and a ticket entitling the holder to a chance in a prize of the value of £15. The suggestion was acted upon, the bait took, and the result was a succession of crowded houses, whereby Talon cleared off all his stock of sweets, netting a sufficient sum to enable him to purchase conjuring apparatus, which enabled him to give a series of entertainments with great success; the same that were subsequently represented with such profit in England, France, Austria, and elsewhere. Talon, or Philippe, as he was known to the entertaining public, was the first to perform with bare arms, and was one of the first to introduce the “globes of fish” trick in this country.

Another of the “legitimate” description of examples is found connected with the theatrical experience of Mr. C. W. Montague, who for years was a very well-known circus-manager, having been connected at one time or another with the equestrian establishments of Messrs. Sanger, Bell, F. Ginnetts, Myers, Newsome, and George Ginnett. Some years ago, when he joined the circus owned by the last-named at Greenwich, he found that business was in a most melancholy condition; the show, although a very good one, failed to fetch the people in, and the receipts, not sufficient to pay expenses, were getting worse and worse. This dismal state of things was most disheartening to Montague, who was at his wits’ end to know what to do, when one day, while he was being shaved, the barber noticing some one who had just passed the shop, said: “There goes poor Townsend.” “And who might he be?” asked the manager; being told in reply that the gentleman referred to had originally represented Greenwich in Parliament, but owing to great pecuniary difficulties had been obliged to resign. It also transpired that the late M.P. was a most excellent actor, the barber having seen him enact Richard III. “quite as good as any right down reg’ler perfeshional.” In addition, Mr. Townsend had been deservedly popular in the district, and especially in Deptford; for he had been the means, when in the House of Commons, of getting dockyard labourers’ wages considerably advanced. These two facts, combined with the broken-down appearance of the gentleman spoken of, immediately presented themselves to Mr. Montague in a business light. What a capital idea it would be if he could manage to get the ex-M.P. to appear in the circus! So popular a man would be a tremendous draw! With this object in view, he waited upon Mr. Townsend the next morning, and put the proposition to him, but without success. The unfortunate gentleman admitted that his circumstances were such that the prospect of making money by the venture was most tempting; but his pride would not admit of his accepting the offer. The idea of appearing as a paid performer in a circus in the very place where he had been regarded with such respect was repugnant to his feelings, and he felt that he could not consent to the sacrifice of dignity. Away from Greenwich he would not have minded; but this arrangement of course would have been no good to Mr. Montague. Nothing daunted by the refusal, the theatrical man of business determined not to give up the idea, but on several subsequent occasions pressed him hard, using such powerful arguments in favour of the scheme that at last Mr. Townsend consented to appear as Richard “for twelve nights only,” on sharing terms. As soon as this was arranged, another and by no means unimportant difficulty presented itself. With the exception of Mr. Ginnett and his manager, there was no one in the company capable of supporting the tragedian; but stimulated by the seriousness of the situation, Mr. Montague set to work, cut down the tragedy with unsparing energy, and so arranged a version that enabled Mr. Ginnett and himself to double the parts of Richmond, Catesby, Norfolk, Ratcliffe, Stanley, and the ghosts. Notwithstanding these drawbacks, the production (which would never have been thought of or undertaken but for the impecunious state of affairs) proved a palpable hit, Townsend’s share being so considerable that he insisted on treating the company to a supper, shortly after which he went to America.

The mention of America, and connected with circus managing, naturally suggests to the mind the name of that arch-humbug, but most successful showman, P. T. Barnum, who was not always the wealthy caterer he now is. On the contrary, his early life was associated with such poverty-stricken surroundings, that the want of money had undoubtedly much to do with that smartness for which his name has become famous. His father died leaving the family very badly off, the mother being put to all sorts of straits to keep the home together; and when Barnum—who was first of all a farmer’s boy—commenced his career, he, according to his own account, “began the world with nothing, and was barefooted at that.” His first berth of any consequence was a clerkship in a general store, at which time he was “dreadfully poor;” but, says he, “I determined to have some money.” Consequently, impelled by impecuniosity, he speedily became ingenious. One day, when left in charge of the business, a pedlar called with a waggon full of common green glass bottles, varying in size from half a pint to half a gallon. The store was what was called a barter store. A number of hat manufacturers traded there, paying in hats, and giving store orders to many of their employés, and other firms did likewise, so that the business boasted an immense number of small customers. The pedlar was anxious to do business, and Barnum knew that his employers had a quantity of goods that were regarded as unsaleable stock. Upon these he put inordinately high prices, and then expressed his willingness to barter some goods for the whole lot of bottles. The pedlar was only too glad, never dreaming of disposing of all his load, and the exchange was effected. Shortly after, Mr. Keeler, one of the firm, returned, and, on beholding the place crowded with the bottles, asked in amazement, “What have you been doing?” “Trading goods for bottles,” replied Barnum; to which his employer made the unpalatable rejoinder, “You are a fool;” adding, “You have bottles enough for twenty years.”

Barnum took the reproof very meekly, only saying that he hoped to get rid of them in less than three months, and then explained what goods he had given in exchange. The master was very pleased when he found that his assistant had got rid of what was regarded as little better than lumber, but still was dubious as to how on earth he would be able to find customers for the glass, more especially as there was a quantity of old tinware, dirty and flyblown, about which Barnum was equally sanguine. In a few days the secret was out. His modus operandi was this: a gigantic lottery—1000 tickets at 50 cents each. The highest prize 25 dollars, payable in goods; any that the customers desired to that amount. Fifty prizes of five dollars each, the goods to that amount being mentioned, and consisting as a rule of one pair cotton hose, one cotton handkerchief, two tin cups, four pint glass bottles, three tin skimmers, one quart glass bottle, six nutmeg graters, and eleven half-pint glass bottles. There were 100 prizes of one dollar each, and 100 prizes of fifty cents each, and 300 prizes of twenty-five cents each, glass and tinware forming the greater part of each prize. Headed in glaring capitals “Twenty-five dollars for fifty cents; over 500 prizes.” The thousand tickets sold like wild-fire, the customers never stopping to consider the nature of the prizes. Journeyman hatters, boss hatters, apprentice boys, hat-trimmers, people of every class and kind bought chances in the lottery, and in less than ten days all the tickets were sold.

This was Barnum’s first stroke of business, the success of it no doubt having much to do with his subsequent enterprises; and as, according to his own showing, the scheme was the result of needy circumstances, and a determination to have money, it is impossible to say how much his present prosperity is due to that early expedient.

To give a less modern instance of the power of impecuniosity to render people ingenious, there is an anecdote of this nature recorded of Captain William Winde, a celebrated architect, the dates of some of whose designs are 1663-1665. Amongst many other of his achievements is included Buckingham House, in St. James’s Park, which he designed for the Duke of Buckingham, but the money for which he could not obtain. The edifice was nearly finished when the arrears of payment were so considerable that the architect felt he could not continue unless he obtained a settlement; but how to do it? That was the thing. Asking was perfectly useless, and writing to his grace was equally ineffectual. At last a brilliant idea occurred to him. He requested the duke to mount the leads, to behold the wonderful view that could be obtained therefrom, and when the noble owner complied, he locked the trap-door, and threw the key away.

“Now,” said Winde, “I am a ruined man, and unless I have your word of honour that the debts shall be paid, I will instantly throw myself over.”

“What is to become of me?” asked the duke.

“You shall come along with me!” replied Winde; whereat his grace immediately promised to pay, and the trap was opened at a given signal by a workman who was in the plot.

There is a similar kind of story told of Sir Richard Steele and a carpenter who had built a theatre for him, but who was unable to get his money. Finding all ordinary means of no avail, the carpenter took the opportunity when Sir Richard had some friends present, who had assembled for the purpose of testing the capabilities of the building, of going to the other end of the theatre; and when told to speak out something pretty loudly, to test the acoustic properties, roared as loud as ever he could that he wished to goodness Sir Richard Steele would settle his account. This is the same individual who gave a splendid entertainment to all the leading people of the time, and had them waited upon by a number of liveried servants. After dinner Steele was asked how such an expensive retinue could be kept upon his fortune, when he replied he should be only too glad to dispense with his servants’ services, but he found it impossible to get rid of them.

“Impossible to get rid of them?” asked his friends. “What do you mean?”

“Why, simply that these lordly retainers are bailiffs with an execution,” replied Steele, adding that “he thought it but right that while they remained they should do him credit.”

It is said that his friends were so amused by the humorous ingenuity displayed, that they paid the debt, which is not unlikely, considering how popular he was. As a literary man, Steele was always regarded with the highest esteem, and his personal merits were equally recognised, since his want of economy was considered his only sin, it having been said of him that “he was the most innocent rake that ever entered the rounds of dissipation.”

The same could not be said of Sheridan unfortunately, whose ingenuity under monetary pressure (and when wasn’t he pressed for money?) was remarkable. One of the least harmless of the many incidents recorded of this character is the circumstance of his obtaining a handsome watch from Harris the proprietor of Covent Garden Theatre. He had made innumerable appointments with Harris, none of which had ever been kept, and at last the manager sent word through a friend that if Sherry failed to be with him at one o’clock as arranged, he would positively have nothing more to do with him. Notwithstanding the importance of the interview, at three o’clock Sheridan was at Tregent’s, a famous watchmaker’s, and in course of conversation he told Tregent that he was on his way to see Harris.

“Ah!” said the watchmaker, “I was at the theatre a little while ago, and he was in a terrible rage with you—said he had been waiting for you since one.”

“Indeed,” said Sheridan; “and what took you to Covent Garden?”

“Harris is going to present Bate Dudley with a gold watch,” was the reply; “and I took him a dozen to choose from.”

Sheridan left on hearing this, and went straight to the theatre, where he found Harris exceedingly wroth at having, as he said “had to wait over two hours.”

“My dear Harris,” began the incorrigible one, “these things occur more from my misfortune than my faults, I assure you. I thought it was but one o’clock. It happens I have no watch, and am too poor to buy one. When I have one, I shall be as punctual as any one else.”

“Well,” replied the manager, “you shall not want one long. Here are half-a-dozen of Tregent’s best—choose whichever you like.”

Sheridan did not hesitate to avail himself of the offer; nor did he, as it will be understood, select the least expensive one of the number.

A propos of watchmakers, there is the story of Theodore Hook dining with one with whom he was utterly unacquainted save by name, which ingenious plan was evolved through lack of funds. Driving out one afternoon with a friend in the neighbourhood of Uxbridge, Hook remembered that he had not the means wherewith to procure dinner, and turning to his companion said, “By the way, I suppose you have some money with you?” But he had reckoned without his host. “Not a sixpence—not a sou,” was the reply, the last turnpike having taken his friend’s last coin. Both were considerably crestfallen, for it was getting late, and the drive had made them remarkably hungry. What was to be done? Presently they passed an exceedingly pretty residence. “Stay,” said Hook, “do you see that house—pretty villa, isn’t it? Cool and comfortable—lawn like a billiard-table. Suppose we dine there?” “Do you know the owner?” asked the friend. “Not the least in the world,” laughed Hook. “I know his name. He is the celebrated chronometer-maker. The man who got £10,000 premium from Government, and then wound up his affairs and his watches.” Without another word they drove up to the door, asked for the proprietor, and were ushered into the worthy tradesman’s presence. “Oh, sir,” said Hook, “happening to pass through your neighbourhood, I could not deny myself the pleasure and honour of paying my respects to you. I am conscious it may seem impertinent, but your celebrity overcame my regard for the common forms of society, and I, and my friend here, were resolved, come what might, to have it in our power to say that we had seen you, and enjoyed for a few minutes, the company of an individual famous throughout the civilised world.” The old man blushed, shook hands, and after conversing for a few minutes, asked them if they would remain to dinner, and partake of his hospitality? Hook gravely consulted with his friend, and then replied that he feared it would be impossible for them to remain. This only increased the watchmaker’s desire for their society, and made him invite them more pressingly, till, at length the pretended scruples were overcome, the pair sitting down to a most excellent repast, to which they both did more than justice.

On another occasion, when Hook was very much worried for money, he went as a dernier ressort to a publisher who knew him, in the hope that he would help him; but unfortunately the man knew him “too well,” and refused, unless he had something to show that he would get his money’s worth, or at any rate a portion of it. Thereupon Hook went home, sat up all night, wrote an introduction to a novel “on a new plan,” appended a hurried chapter, which he took the next day to the publisher, asserting that he had had a most liberal offer for it elsewhere, and so persuaded the man to advance the required sum.

Amusing as are many of the anecdotes quoted, there is one which may be called “divinely” funny, being connected with a once well-known theologian—Dr. John Brown of Haddington. This famous Biblical commentator, who flourished from 1784 to 1858, was anything but rich in this world’s goods; and so poor when staying at Dunse, that he went into a shop and asked to be accommodated with a halfpennyworth of cheese. The shopman, awfully disgusted with the meanness of the order, remarked haughtily, that “they did not make” such small quantities; upon which the doctor asked, “Then what’s the least you can sell?” “A penn’orth,” was the reply. On the divine saying “Very well,” the man proceeded to weigh that quantity, and then placed it on the counter, anticipating to be paid for it. “Now,” said Dr. Brown, “I will show you how to sell a halfpennyworth of cheese;” upon which, in the coolest manner conceivable, he cut the modicum into two pieces, and appropriating one half, put down his coin and departed.

Impecuniosity in addition to sharpening men’s wits, by which expression is understood the sharpening of the inventive faculties, has also the power of making sharp man’s wit, as instanced in the case of the beggar who accosted Marivaux, the well-known French writer of romance. This mendicant, who appears to have been what we were wont to call a “sturdy rogue,” looked so unlike what one soliciting alms should, that the man of letters said to him, “My good friend, strong and stout as you are, it is a great shame that you do not go to work;” when he was met with the reply, “Ah, master, if you did but know how lazy I am!” for which amazing audacity, he was rewarded by Marivaux, who said, “Well, I see thou are an honest fellow. Here’s a piece of money for you.”

Though, perhaps not strictly witty, the man’s remark was excessively comic, and for aught I know, it may have been his conduct that gave rise to the now well-known expression—“funny beggar.”

For impromptu wit connected with impecuniosity, there is the case of Ben Jonson, who was invited to dinner at the Falcon Tavern, by a vintner, to whom he was much in debt, and then told that if he could give an immediate answer to four questions, his debt should be forgiven him. The interrogatories put to him by the vintner were these, “What is God best pleased with? What is the Devil best pleased with? What is the World best pleased with? and what am I best pleased with?” To which Ben replied:

“God is best pleased when men forsake their sin.
The devil is best pleased when they persist therein.
The world’s best pleased when thou dost sell good wine,
And thou’rt best pleased when I do pay for mine.”