■■>?^' ^iS- 'f'.p- :^'\:i ' ■ % i?i-te- WiMii^^BB^W^HsiSi^s?l ■?JS5 CORNELL UNIVERSrrY LIBRARY Cornell University Library DA 485.S99 1903 Side-lights on tlie Geor lian period 924 028 015 240 olln The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028015240 SIDE-LIGHTS ON THE GEORGIAN PERIOD MISS BURNEY (madami-: h'akiu av) fkom a kikikaii l'.v l.uwaku i'.lrnev SIDE-LIGHTS ON THE GEORGIAN PERIOD BY GEORGE PASTON author of •little memoirs op the eighteenth century" "little memoirs of the nineteenth century" ETC. etc. ^ lW\\CV'i ^, 'fsv^jLv hjri » 66 j> „ 68 » „ 72 » » 79 » » 90 }) „ 105 » „ 129 )) » 136 >j „ 169 » „ 182 j> » 219 » » 255 VU A BURNEY FRIENDSHIP A BURNEY FRIENDSHIP (WITH LETTERS FROM MADAME D'ARBLAY AND DR. BURNEY TO MRS. WADDINGTON)i PART I IN January 1783, Mrs. Delany, as readers of her Autobiography and Correspondence may remember, first made the acquaintance of Fanny Burney, who was brought to her house in St. James' Place by Mrs. Chapone. Miss Burney was then at the height of her fame, having cemented the popularity she gained with Evelina in 1778 with the publication of Cecilia in 1782. But, however much she may have secretly appreciated her success, her natural bashfulness pre- vented her from presuming upon it, and left her, to all outward appearance, a modest and retiring young woman. In 1785 we find Mrs. Delany — a fastidious judge of female manners and morals — observing that " Miss Burney's novels, excellent as they are, are her meanest praise. Her admirable understanding, tender affections, and sweetness of manners make her in- valuable to those who have the happiness to know her." At the period in question Mrs. Delany's great-niece, * These Letters appeared in the September and October numbers of the Monthly Review, but they are now first published in volume form. 3 4 A BURNEY FRIENDSHIP Georgiana Mary Ann Port,^ a girl of fourteen, was in- stalled as a permanent member of her household ; and it is probable that the aunt, who was then in her eighty-sixth year, thought that the companionship of a sensible and intelligent young woman like Miss Burney would be an advantage to her little niece, despite the twenty years' difference in their ages. In July 1785, the death of the Dowager-Duchess of Portland having deprived Mrs. Delany of her summer home at Bulstrode, George ill. bestowed upon his aged favourite a house at Windsor and a pension of ;6^300 a year. In Sep- tember the venerable lady and her niece took possession of their new domain, while Miss Burney, who had been staying in St. James* Place just before the move, was invited to pay them an early visit. From a packet of unpublished letters addressed by Miss Burney and her father to Miss Port, which the present writer has been privileged to read,^ the earliest in date (24th September 1785) may be cited as a curious example of the playful vein of the author of Evelina, It must be owned that the style of this letter is inferior in ease and spontaneity to that of the comic scenes in Miss Burney's early novels, but it argues much for the writer's good nature that she should have expended so much time and trouble upon the amusement of a girl of fourteen. The epistle deals, as will be seen, with some valueless articles — a pen, a pocket-book, and an old bureau — which had probably been used in the writing of one of Fanny's immortal * Miss Port was the daughter of Mr. Port of Ham, whose wife was Mary Dewes, daughter of Ann Dewes {nie Granville), Mrs. Delan/s only sister. 2 By the kindness of the Honourable Mrs. Herbert of Llanover, granddaughter of Mrs. Waddington {n^c Port). A BURNEY FRIENDSHIP 5 works — and were coveted on that account by her young friend, " And so my fair little Tyrant," runs the document, "demands a letter all to herself? and she would kneel to me again, would she ? — O most unmerciful Per- secutrix ! delighting to conquer, and determined to stigmatise with hard-heartedness all opposition to your sway ! — Three times already have you cast upon me that stigma; once for a miserable old shabby Bureau, another time for a nasty split steel Pen, and another time for a poor, worn, emaciated ass's-skin Pocket-book. " Nor even here will you rest ; for now my Letters — though they must all pass through your hands, all fall under your eyes, and all owe their best recommendation to your voice ^ — you yet claim exclusive possession of, and, with your customary tyranny, make that claim so eloquent, so graceful, and so flattering, that to refuse it would be odious. " Can Power be more despotic or Will more arbitrary than this ? — I tremble for the vicinity of certain Per- sonages to so dangerous an object, and have some thoughts of offering a Petition to Parliament praying for your removal to distant quarters, or close confine- ment for life, lest your influence and example, in a neighbourhood so important, should gradually lead to a total subversion of our Laws and Liberties. "But while I ruminate a little on this patriotic remonstrance, previous to its execution, let me return to the three articles summed up against you in St. 1 Miss Port acted as reader and secretary to her aunt, whose sight was failing. 6 A BURNEY FRIENDSHIP James* Place, for I mean to bring them forth in my Petition as charges tending to prove an instinctive propensity to an Absolute Government. "First, then, for that miserable old shabby Bureau. Your demand for it was simply expressed by a declara- tion that you wished to have it ; no other reason was assigned; and it evidently appeared you thought that sufficient. A plain proof this of a Disposition most illegal. Nor once, in the eagerness of the request, did you weigh the hazards of the unfortunate owner if she granted it. Yet were they manifold. "In the first place, the shattered condition of the goods must have occasioned so great a fall of fragments in the removal, that she might have been indicted the next day by her neighbours for a rubbish nuisance before her door. "In the second place, these Fragments in their fall, separating into splinters, might have been blown by the wind into the eyes of sundry Passengers, who being thenceforth blinded, might bring a charge against her upon ^e Coventry Act for maiming and defacing. "In the third place, when it arrived at your door, poor Joe would blush and expostulate against his Lady's niece receiving so rude an offering ; and Molly Butcher would tell the Porter he had mistaken the Direction, for that no such tatter de malHon Furniture should enter her Mistress's house. Between the Porter and the servants a scuffle would then ensue, and the poor hapless Bureau, unable to bear one jolt, would fall piecemeal on the ground. The servants would then be called to order, and dismissed from their places, and come complaining to me the next morning — who, alas ! could never find them such again ! A BURNEY FRIENDSHIP 7 "In the fourth place, Miss Port would herself run out to save what she could from the wreck, and when in some future riot of Lord George Gordon ^ the hoard was discovered, they would be taken for some relics of Popery, the original owner would be betrayed, and a Pile would be raised to consume her in her own litters. " These are a few of the consequences that must have followed that one fatal concession. I have no room to speak of the Pen and the Tablets, but doubtless they would not have been productive of less formidable evils. O think, little Tyrant, think how by this single grant I must have been risen against by my neighbours; cast by Lawyers, upbraided by servants, and burnt by the Mob ! — If you do not repent and shrink — Nero was a little sucking -lamb to you. " And now, has this representation sufficiently softened you to permit me to send a message^ at least, else- where? If it has, tell the dear little Tyrant's much- loved Aunt, with my most affectionate respects, that I earnestly beg to see her, and wish much to know what time would be most convenient to her dear self, that I may manage matters as nearly to that point as may be in my power — and tell her dear little Neice {sic) that, with all her spirit for Dominion, I love her sincerely, and am her most bounden vassal. F. B." The visit was delayed a few weeks longer, Fanny's next letter, which is addressed to Mrs. Delany, being dated from St. Martin's Lane, the 23rd of November * The Gordon riots had occurred only five years previously, and were evidently still fresh in the public memory. 8 A BURNEY FRIENDSHIP 1785. From this we learn that it was a difficult and hazardous undertaking at that period to convey an un- married lady, thirty-three years of age, from London to Windsor, a distance of some one-and-twenty miles. "Dearest Madam" (writes Fanny), — "I am just come to town to have a little peep at my father, and meant to go to Mrs. Walsingham to-morrow; but some circumstances obliging me to defer my visit to her yet longer, my wishes most earnestly lead me to wait upon you wjthout more delays ; for though quitting you afterwards will be truly unpleasant to me, I know not how to be reconciled, as I otherwise must, to staying still another fortnight before I see you. " Can you, then, according to your first kind plan, send for me to Hounslow, whither my Father's coach can carry me ? I could meet your chaise at the King's Head, where I should stop for it, if not arrived, without getting out of the carriage. " I am ready now, at any time ; but if the present should be at all inconvenient to my dearest Mrs. Delany, I beseech her by no means to hesitate in postponing my coming ; — if, however, it may be directly, I shall be happier, for my patience begins to weary of so much exertion. "Will my dear little Tyrant be so gracious as to write me a line, either if it will be more commodious I should take the happiness of waiting upon you some time hence, or to name the Day and the Hour when I may be met at Hounslow, which, on my part, will not require a moment's further delay ? " I left my beloved friends quite well at Norbury. A BURNEY FRIENDSHIP 9 Mr. Locke ^ brought me to town, but will be most glad to hear of my leaving it again for the regale he knows I have in store. " Adieu, Dearest Madam, for, I kope^ a very short time. With the truest Respect, I am, most affectionately, your obedient and devoted F. B." From Madame D'Arblay's published Diary we have the satisfaction of learning that she arrived safely at Hounslow almost at the same moment as Mrs. Delany's carriage containing her confidential maid, Mrs. Astley, who, by the way, had no very exalted opinion of her mistress's guest. This visit led to important events in the life of Miss Burney, who was privately presented by Mrs. Delany to George III. and Queen Charlotte. Their Majesties were interested in Fanny's literary career, and had heard so much in praise of her character and conduct that they were desirous of finding her some place about the Court. It was not until the following spring, however, that the retirement of Madame Hagger- dorn left the post of second Keeper of the Robes at the disposal of the Queen, who at once offered it to Miss Burney. The situation, it will be remembered, was most reluctantly accepted by Fanny, under strong pres- sure from Dr. Burney, who had just been disappointed of the Mastership of the King's Band, promised him by a former Lord Chamberlain. The first two years of Miss Burney's uncongenial service were lightened by the companionship of Mrs. * The wealthy art amateur, whose name so frequently appears in contemporary memoirs, and always in terms of the most enthusiastic commendation. 10 A BURNEY FRIENDSHIP Delany and her niece, whom she saw nearly every day. Miss Port frequently drank tea at the table presided over by Fanny and her ill-tempered colleague, Madame Schwellenberg, which was also the rendezvous of the equerries in attendance upon the King. Miss Burney*s favourite among these gentlemen was Colonel Digby (who figures in her Diary as "Mr. Fairly"), but Miss Port's admirers-in-chief were Colonel Goldsworthy and Colonel Manners. The former was, according to family tradition, a serious lover, but his sister. Miss Golds- worthy, was unfavourable to the match, and there is a suspicion that her friend Miss Burney aided her in nipping the little romance in the bud. Colonel Golds- worthy is described as "a rattle" when at his ease and pleased with his company, but as reserving his sport and humour for particular days and particular favourites. " The moment he sees anybody he fears or dislikes, he assumes a look of glum distance and sullenness, and will not utter a word, scarcely even in answer.*' It would probably not be difficult to make mischief between a man of so sensitive a nature and the girl to whom he was secretly attached. The other admirer. Colonel Manners, was an orna- mental personage, whose high spirits, good humour, and boyish simplicity of character made him an irre- sistibly diverting companion. He was the only gentle- man about the Court who was not afraid of the sour Madame Schwellenberg, whom he alternately teased, bullied, flattered, and contradicted, until she threatened to retire to her own room or to complain of him to the King. Yet we are told that she never could dis- guise her real liking for her good-looking tormentor. A BURNEY FRIENDSHIP 11 It was Colonel Manners who, after pressing Miss Port to attend the Ascot Races, shocked his colleagues by observing that as he was in waiting he should " consider it his duty to be civil to the King." It was the same gentleman who complained that whenever he was about to speak on any topic in the House of Commons, Mr, Pitt invariably got up and went through the whole subject, leaving nothing more to be said ; and declared that he had never voted but once against his conscience, and that was for the " bacheldors* " tax, which he held to be unconstitutional, since " How can a man help being a bacheldor if nobody will have him? And besides, it's not any fault to be taxed for, because we did not make ourselves bacheldors, for no one was born married, so we were made bacheldors by God." Miss Barney chronicles one very lively tea-party at the castle (in Madame Schwellenberg*s absence), when Colonel Manners, who declared that the Court concerts sounded like nothing but " Caw ! caw ! caw ! " insisted on showing off his own musical accomplishments. Miss Port begged him to sing " Care, thou bane of love and joy," while Colonel Greville encouraged him to attempt a " shake." As he had no ear and less voice, he pro- duced such extraordinary noises that the other equerries roared for mercy, and the ladies were nearly " demolished with laughter." ^ The fun and flirtation over the tea-table came to an abrupt conclusion with the death of Mrs. Delany in April 1788. Fanny Burney knelt beside Miss Port at the * Gillray published a portrait of Colonel Manners with the motto— "Gentle Manners, with affections mild, In wit a man, simplicity a child." 12 A BURNEY FRIENDSHIP deathbed of her friend, and writes when all was over : " Poor sweet unfortunate girl ! what deluges of tears did she shed over me ! I promised her in that solemn moment my eternal regard, and she accepted this, my first protestation of any kind made to her, as some solace to her sufferings. Sacred shall I hold it, sacred to my last hour." ^ Mrs. Delany had bequeathed her great-niece to the guardianship of her uncle, Mr. Court Dewes of Wellesbourne, the family place in Warwick- shire, and to Wellesbourne the poor girl, stunned and almost heart-broken at the break-up of her home and the separation from her friends, was obliged to repair after a brief farewell visit to Windsor. Her father had been compelled to let his own place. Ham, and retire to a house at Derby with his wife and seven younger chil- dren. Marianne, as she was now called, who had not lived with her parents since she was seven years old, felt that she was not wanted at home; and it only too soon became apparent that she was not wanted by her uncle Court, who is described as a man of un- genial nature, with no liking for the society of young people. The next in order of our unpublished papers is the following brief note, dated May 1788, and endorsed by Miss Port, " The first letter from Miss Burney after I had left London on the death of Mrs. Delany, and whilst residing with my uncle Dewes at Wellesbourne " : — " 1 had not waited the promised second letter could I have found time to answer sooner the sweet words of the first— my dear Miss Port !— they melted, pleased, ^ Diary and Letters* A BURNEY FRIENDSHIP 13 and pained me throughout. You can have no feelings that will seem too strong for the irreparable loss you have sustained ; that we have sustained, let me rather say, for who, out of your own family, will have cause to mourn so long, so closely, or so sadly as myself? . . . I heartily rejoice you continue at Wellesbourne ; I am sure it will be for your consolation now, and your happiness by and by. All your friends the Equerries were at Windsor the last excursion, and Colonels Golds- worthy and Manners inquired after you much, and desired their compliments when I wrote. I indulged the latter by letting him frank you my letter in return for the kind words he spoke of you. He said the Ascot Races made him feel quite melancholy from re- collecting how all was broke up since we had them last year. Write to me long letters and often, my dear Marianne, and pardon short and scanty returns, certain of the lasting and faithful affection of your truly sympathising F, B." In a longer letter, dated June 1788, we find Miss Burney throwing cold water on Miss Port's very natural desire to open a correspondence with one of her old friends at Windsor — possibly with one who was nearer and dearer than a friend : — " How angry have I been with myself, my dear Marianne," writes Fanny, "how angry have you reason to be with me, that I suffered my haste in my last letter to run away with my thanks for so many marks of your kindness as you had left and sent me :— yet let me, at the same time, own myself 14 A BURNEY FRIENDSHIP highly gratified that I can see, by so many fresh tokens, you forgive and understand my omissions, and will not let them do me any mischief in your kind affections. Believe me, my dear Miss Port, your letters are truly interesting to me, and either carry me to you where you are, or remove me back to old dear and happy times, in almost every line. "Your hope of Cheltenham gives me very great pleasure indeed. If anything should deprive you of it, I believe I should be as much mortified and con- cerned as yourself. Pray tell me when it is you go, and where you are to be; and give my compliments to your uncle Dewes, and tell him I am quite delighted in the prospect for you. It will be very kind in him to give you such an excursion, and I venture to prognosticate it will be very salutary to you. " I cannot tell you how benighted seems Windsor ; — my very greatest satisfaction now is to quit it, — and fortunately for me, we have hitherto been chiefly at Kew, and shall, I hope, for this year, be less at Windsor than for any year since it has been the royal residence. Have you been frightened for his Majesty? Thank God we have had no occasion for fright upon the spot, his indisposition having simply been troublesome, but without confinement or alarm ; and now there is scarce a symptom of it re- maining.i "As you ask my advice about your correspondents — I must give it you honestly — I cannot wish you to renew any yourself. I think those only who seek it can be worthy of it from you. I have always been 1 The King's mental disease did not show itself till October of this year. A BURNEY FRIENDSHIP 15 a little proud for my dear Marianne, and I feel no inclination to be less so. " How beautifully the knotting is done ! it was most kind to remember me in such a gratifying partition. How do I value whatever has been in her beloved hands ! ^ The apron was too much indeed — yet I will keep and wear it, for all the tender sakes — but one — you enumerate. . . . " I have seen nothing of your friends the Equerries lately, as we have lived but little at Windsor. The last meeting I had with them was upon the road, when I passed them at eight o'clock in the morning, in a post-chaise, with my head and hair full-dressed; and as it was not a Drawing-room day, I saw them lift up their hands and eyes in wonder and amaze. They were Colonels Gwynn and Goldsworthy. I believe they thought me a little crazy. I was on my way to Westminster Hall, to hear Mr. Sheridan close his oration.^ And there I met your friend, Mr. Jerningham,^ and there he met his friend Mrs. Anderson, who looked very pretty, and wanted no one to tell her so." Miss Port's eagerness for a visit to Cheltenham must rather have surprised Miss Burney, since the young lady's deep mourning would not have allowed of her taking part in the festivities of that fashionable watering- place. But Fanny had not such early knowledge of the possible movements of the Court as her friend, judging from a little note, dated July 1788 and endorsed, "To ^ Mrs. Delany was famous for her " sugar-plum " knotting, as well as for all other kinds of needlework. ^ At the trial of Warren Hastings. ^Edward Jerningham, the Delia Cruscan poet. 16 A BURNEY FRIENDSHIP confirm the report that the King and Queen and two eldest Princesses would be at Cheltenham, whither I was going with my Uncle and Mrs. Granville and my Uncle Dewes." In this note Miss Burney declares that one of her sincerest pleasures in this excursion will be " the most unexpected gratification of receiving and returning the affectionate embraces of my dear Marianne Port." The gentlemen in attendance upon the King during his sojourn at Cheltenham were Colonels Gwynn and Price and Lord Courton. We hear nothing of Colonel Goldsworthy, who, however, if the romance had been running smoothly, might easily have found some pretext for a visit to a place that was honoured by the presence of his royal master. From Miss Burney's Diary we learn that, having no sitting-room of her own, she could not see so much of Miss Port as she desired, but she records a visit to the theatre in company with Marianne and her Dewes relations, to see Mrs. Jordan in the Country Girl. Miss Port spent the following winter at Bath with another uncle and aunt, Mr, and Mrs. John Granville, a kind-hearted couple, who were warmly attached to their niece, and whose only desire was for her happiness. The girl's uncommon beauty attracted many admirers, among the number being Mr. Waddington, a middle- aged gentleman of good fortune and estimable character. It is uncertain whether he had ever exchanged a word with Miss Port when he proposed for her hand to Mr. Granville. According to a chronicler of family history,^ the first hint that she received of Mr. Waddington's ^ Mr. Augustus Hare, f<.^'' MISS PORT (afterwards MRS. WADDINGTOX) FROM A MINIATURE IN THE POSSESSION OF THE HON. MRS. HERBERT OF LLANOVER A BURNEY FRIENDSHIP 17 intentions was gleaned from some conversation upon the subject, accidentally overheard, between her uncle and aunt. Sensitive and impulsive by nature, she became possessed with the idea that her relations regarded her as a burden, and that they could not have her real interest at heart if they could desire her marriage with a man whom she scarcely knew. At the same time, the conviction that this unknown suitor must feel for her a disinterested affection, determined her to accept his proposal. Oppressed by grief for the double loss of her aunt and her lover, and stung by the idea that she was not wanted in her own family, she believed, with the ready pessimism of youth, that she could never be happy again, and that life had nothing more to offer her than the opportunity of proving a dutiful wife to a man whom she respected. Miss Port was married to Mr. Waddington early in 1789, and for the first two years of their union the couple lived at Dunstan Park, Berkshire, where two daughters were born to them. In Miss Burney's Corre- spondence ^ we find two letters to Mrs. Waddington (who figures as " Mrs. ") which prove that Fanny had been made the confidante of her friend's sorrows and per- plexities. An extract or two from these letters will serve to illustrate the intimacy of their relations at this time. " I thought with greatly added satisfaction," writes Miss Burney on the 6th of March, " from what the last letter contains of Mr. 's religious principles. There, indeed, ^ Where long gaps occur in the unpublished correspondence the story of the friendship is elucidated by brief extracts from Miss Burney's published letters to Mrs. " ," otherwise Mrs. Waddington. 2 18 A BURNEY FRIENDSHIP you have given a basis to my hopes of your happiness that no other consideration could have given me. To have him good is very important to me : to have you impressed with his goodness, I had almost said, is yet more so. Only guard yourself all you can from rumin- ating too deeply, and from indulging every idle emotion, whether of pain or of pleasure. You are made up of propensities to both; I see it with concern, yet with added tenderness ; see it also yourself, and it can do no evil." . . . On receiving a reply from the young wife, giving apparently a reassuring account of her feelings and circumstances, Miss Burney wrote again on the 17th of March : " How tranquillising a letter, my sweet friend, have you at last sent me ! . . . When you tell me you have not known so much comfort for time immemorial, you show that right disposition to be happy which forms one of the principal powers for becoming so. I do indeed flatter myself that now, since your destiny in the world is fixed, your mind will continue in the same serene state in which you describe it ; for I know your sense of duty (may I say so to a married woman ?), and I know the excellent resolutions with which you began your new course of life." . . . After some good advice, and the fallacious assurance that whoever sets out with the intention of sacrificing herself for the happiness of others, never failed of preserving the most grateful affection in the object of her devotion, the didactic Fanny continues : " And you, my dear M[arianne], I well know, have a thousand powers for keeping awake at the same time the most lively admiration. And you will not let them languish because j/t?^^ are married \ for A BURNEY FRIENDSHIP 19 you require affection and kindness ; they are necessary to your peace ; you have enjoyed them in full sway all the best and happiest part of your life, and you could do nothing to diminish them that would not chiefly end in punishing yourself. No, no, I do not fear this from you, common as is the fault. Your poor mind has been tutored — torn rather in the school of early adversity, and you will not yourself roughen the harbour that brings you to rest." ^ . . . A brief note of congratulation on the birth of a daughter is followed in June 1790 by a letter of con- dolence on the death of the child. In 1791 Mr. Waddington bought the White House at Llanover, in the valley of the Usk, and here his wife remained in almost complete seclusion for the next eleven years, occupying herself with her books, her drawing, and the education of her little daughters, of whom seven were born to her, though only three lived to grow up. Meanwhile Fanny Burney's failing health had compelled her to resign her place at Court in 1792, and to retire to her father's house at Chelsea. On the 5th of July 1792 she writes to Mrs. Waddington, who was now settled in her new home : — " I must rejoice to see such long letters from my dearest M , so much in her old and early style of openness and communication, little as I can rejoice to think of her as so distant, or to see her sympathy in that point. ... I am much better in health again, my dear friend. I rejoice your little ones are well. Do you get at all stouter yourself? Do you drink goat's milk? Who are your twelve visiting houses? Whether you 1 Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay. 20 A BURNEY FRIENDSHIP like them or not, give me some idea by whom you are surrounded."^ . . . In the spring of 1793, it will be remembered, Miss Burney became engaged to M. D'Arblay, a distin- guished member of the little colony of French emigris, which had settled at Juniper Hall, near Norbury, and, after some opposition on the part of her family, was married to him on the 31st of July. It is apparent that she had not the courage to write and tell Mrs. Wadding- ton of the change in her plan of life until the time for remonstrances was past. Three days after her marriage she addressed a long explanatory letter to her friend, which opens in the following rather apologetic style : — " How in the world shall I begin this letter to my dearest M ! how save her from a surprise almost too strong for weak nerves and tender heart ! . . . Do you recollect, when you were last in town, my warm interest for the loyal part of the French exiles ? — do you remember my doge of a French officer in particular, a certain M. D'Arblay ? . . . The iloge I then made was to prepare you for an event I had reason to expect ; such, however, was the uncertainty of my situation from pru- dential obstacles, that I dared venture at no confidence ; though my heart prompted it strongly to a friend so sweetly sympathising in all my feelings and all my affairs — so constantly affectionate — so tenderly alive to all that interests and concerns me." The writer goes on to describe the opposition that had at one time threatened to thwart her wishes, the excellent qualities of her ^ Diary and Letters, A BURNEY FRIENDSHIP 21 bridegroom — including a passion for reading and writing as marked as her own — and her intention of building a ** neat plain habitation " on a piece of ground that Mr. Locke had given them in his park. "One of my first pleasures in our little intended home," she concludes, " will be finding a place of honour for the legacy of Mrs. Delany [a portrait of Sacharissa], Whatever may be the general wonder, and perhaps blame, of general people at this connexion, equally indiscreet in pecuniary points for us both, I feel sure that the truly liberal and truly intellectual judgment of that most venerated character would have accorded its sanction when the worthiness of the object who would wish it was made known." ^ Mrs. Waddington, also, it must be supposed, accorded her sanction to this imprudent match, for we are told that she used her interest at Court to obtain a continuance of Madame D'Arblay's pension after her marriage. The correspondence was kept up in the intermittent fashion usual between two people who seldom meet, and we find that Fanny is obliged more than once to defend herself against charges of what Miss Seward would have called "epistolary negligence." In April 1795 she writes from Bookham to protest against a " dry reproof" from her friend for not having informed her of the production of her unsuccessful tragedy, and in June of the same year begs her " dearest Marianne " " not to suffer this, our only communication, to dwindle away for me ; though the least punctual of correspondents, I am perhaps the most faithful of all friends ; for my regard, 1 Diary and Letters, 22 A BURNEY FRIENDSHIP once excited, keeps equal energy in absence as in presence, and an equally fond and minute interest in those for whom I cherish it, whether I see them but at the distance of years, or with every day's sun." This last letter contains an announcement of the approaching publication of her novel Camilla by sub- scription, the proceeds of which were to be spent partly on the building of Camilla Cottage and partly on the education of her only child, Alexander, born in 1 794. The next letter that has been preserved is dated June 1797, when the relations between the two ladies appear to be somewhat strained. Mrs. Waddington had written to reproach Madame D'Arblay for writing short letters, and giving no information except on the subject of her health and affection. Fanny replies with some heat, and more than her customary frankness : " It appears to me, perhaps wrongly, you have wrought yourself into a fit of fancied resentment against a succession of short letters, which could only have been merited by letters that were unfriendly. You forget, meanwhile, the numerous letters I have received from yourself, not merely of half pages, but of literally three lines, and you forget them because they were never received with reproach nor answered with coldness." . . . After pointing out that her friend would be the first to deride an elaborate composition, written for admiration, and that a gay, amusing prattle could only flow from the humour of the moment, she continues : " From all this, which reluctantly, though openly, I have written, you will deduce that, while you think me unkind (as I apprehend), I think you unjust." ^ ^ Diary and Letters, A BURNEY FRIENDSHIP 23 To the same year, 1797, belongs the following unpublished letter, from the opening sentences of which it will be gathered that there was still some little friction existing between the two friends : — "My dear Marianne, — You will accept me, then, according to my offered condition^ /or better /or worse; I, too, must accept the acceptance^ though not without some unpleasant feelings in finding how strongly the worser part seems to you the larger. I thank you for your bathing advice, and rejoice with my whole heart in the flourishing state of your lovely little ones. I know how much yours is wrapt up in them ; nor can I wonder that your invariable excessive tenderness to them should have produced the effect you mention, in the terrible test to which you put my heroic little namesake. Gratitude is not a taught, but an instinctive feeling, and its operations are commonly among the earliest promises from which we may flatter ourselves with future good. Much of this delightful anticipation is already accorded me, and I cherish all its offerings and its augurs as my (almost) first happiness. "M. D'Arblay is much gratified that you are an enthusiast for Count Rumford,^ whom he studies night and day. Our few chimneys in our little cottage are all of his construction, and the tiny laundry is so also, with alterations which we flatter ourselves will be improve- 1 Count Rumford, better known as Benjamin Thompson, the American scientific philanthropist. He was born in Massachusetts in 1753, and leaving his own country at the time of the War of Secession, entered the service of the Elector of Bavaria. He distinguished himself by introducing reforms into the army and the poor-laws, and inventing an economical cooking -range, .h THE ART OF PRESENTING A FAN FRUM "the rudiments OF GENTEEL BEHAVIOUR THE IDEAL WOMAN 91 If we examine the pronouncements of Dr. Johnson on the subject of the other sex, we must be careful to distinguish between his sayings when he was talking from conviction and his sayings when he was talking for victory. He seems to have been talking from con- viction when he declared that " ladies set no value on the moral character of men who pay their addresses to them ; the greatest profligate will be as well received as the man of the greatest virtue, and this by a very good woman, by a woman who says her prayers three times a day. ... A lady will take Jonathan Wild as readily as St. Augustine if he has threepence more, and, what is worse, her parents will give her to him. Women have a perpetual envy of our vices ; they are less vicious than we, not from choice, but because we restrict them." Possibly he was only talking for victory when, as Boswell relates, " He [Johnson] maintained to me, contrary to the common notion, that a woman would not be the worse wife for being learned ; in which, from all I had observed, I humbly differed from him. . . . Johnson declared that a man of sense should meet a suitable companion in a wife. It was a miserable thing when the conversation could be only such as, whether the mutton should be boiled or roasted, and a probable dispute about that." Pope, as we know, asserted that " most women have no characters at all," and that "every woman is at heart a rake." Goldsmith's contempt for the sex peeps out of every page of the Vicar of Wakefield^ while the characters of Fielding's women, as a modern critic has aptly pointed out, "are made to hinge solely on their willingness or unwillingness to turn a blind eye. If 92 THE IDEAL WOMAN I they are ready to do this, they are angels, but if they are not willing to forgive, why then they are unsexed and held up to the ridicule and reprobation of all pretty women and good fellows." Richardson alone among the Georgians took woman seriously and created a new feminine type in fiction, since, until his Clarissa set the fashion, "Woman in literature as a self-suffering indi- viduality, as an existence endowed with equal rights to independence of choice, volition, action, had not begun to be." 1 The Georgian woman did not very often give ex- pression to her candid opinion of man, but when she did the result was apt to be rather unexpected. Mrs. Pendarves, who was regarded by her contemporaries as a living embodiment of the feminine ideal, replies to her sister, who has accused her of working havoc among the men, " Would it were so that I went ravag- ing and slaying all odious men, for that would go near to clear the world of that sort of animal. You know I never had a good opinion of them, and every day my dislike strengthens \ some few I except, but very few ; they have so despicable an opinion of women, and treat them by their words and actions so ungenerously and inhumanly. By my manner of inveighing, anybody less acquainted with me than yourself would imagine that I had very lately received some very ill-usage. No, 'tis my general observation on conversing with them. The minutest indiscretion in a woman (tho' occasioned by themselves) never fails of being enlarged into a notorious crime ; but men are to sin on without limitation or blame. A hard case ! not the restraint we » W. E. Henley. THE IDEAL WOMAN 93 are under — for that I extremely approve of — but the un- reasonable licence tolerated in the men." To turn from a character in real life to a character in fiction, Clarissa's confidante, Miss Howe, who was accepted by the public as a vivid portrait of a certain feminine type, is not less uncomplimentary towards her male acquaintance than was Mrs. Pendarves. On one occasion, it may be remembered, she breaks out into bitter indignation against the "giddy fools" of her own sex for their leniency towards Lovelace and his kind. "To this it is," she exclaims, "that such vile fellows owe much of their vileness, whereas if they found themselves shunned and despised and treated as beasts of prey, they would run to their caverns and howl by themselves." On another occasion she eagerly protests against Clarissa^s dictum that women need aim at nothing more than excelling in their mother- tongue. " I," she declares, with breathless disregard of syntax, "who think our sex inferior in nothing to the other, but in want of opportunities of which the narrow- minded mortals seek industriously to deprive us, lest we should surpass them in what they chiefly value themselves upon, as we do in all the graces of a fine imagination, could never agree with her in that!' Turning to the alleged satisfaction of the Georgian woman with the limitations of her lot, we find that her apparent contentment was sometimes a mask worn to conceal from the world her profound disappointment with the emptiness of her life. Take the case of Miss Berry, whose beauty and conversational attractions brought her a social success which lasted from early youth till extreme old age. In 1805, when she had 94 THE IDEAL WOMAN reached her forty-third year, she ardently desired some regular occupation, possibly a place about the Court, but was persuaded to give up the idea. In a letter to a friend upon this subject, she says : " You do me the justice to believe that regular and useful employment would greatly increase my happiness. Believe me, it would constitute it. Regular employment would be repose, restoration, and comfort to my mind. ... I have gone on sacrificing the present to the future, till no future remains to me." On her sixtieth birthday, the l6th of March 1823, Miss Berry writes in her diary : " Thirty-nine years have passed since I was here on the anniversary of this day, when I had reached my twenty-first year. What regrets I felt then at having been born a woman, and deprived of the life and position which as a man I might have had in the world. But I am calm and resigned now. . . . I remember that my youth, which ought to have been so brilliant, never brought any enjoyments that satisfied my heart or my understanding." The fate of the unmarried woman, gifted with energy and intelligence, yet condemned to fritter away her time in futile employments, was certainly no enviable one. Dr. Gregory, whose Advice to his Daughters has already been quoted, observes : " I know nothing that renders a woman more despicable than her thinking it essential to happiness to be married," an opinion which seems rather unreasonable in view of his subse- quent moving description of "the forlorn and un- protected condition of the old maid, the chagrin and peevishness which are apt to affect their tempers. . . . I see some unmarried women of active, vigorous minds THE IDEAL W0MA:N 95 and great vivacity of spirits, degrading themselves, sometimes by entering into a dissipated course of life unsuited to their years, sometimes by oppressing their acquaintances with impertinent intrusions into their private affairs ; and sometimes by being the propagators of scandal and defamation. All this is owing to an exuberant activity of spirit, which, if it had found employment at home, would have rendered them respectable and useful members of society." From all which it will be seen that the woman of the good old days, who has been idealised by the more conservative of modern men, was not so conscious of the blessings and privileges of her position as is commonly supposed. The close of a century seems to bring with it a temper of unrest, a tendency to revolution, and woman as well as man has been affected by the electricity in the social atmosphere. At the end of the seventeenth century Mrs. Mary Astell was hurling her pamphlets in defence of, or apology for, her sex into the face of an astonished and disapproving world. At the end of the eighteenth century (confining our attention to England only) the blue-stocking was abroad, and Mary Wollestonecraft was fighting for the Rights of Women. At the end of the nineteenth century — but the echoes of that revolution have not yet died away. It is still believed by those who have never read Mary Wollestonecraft's Rights of Women that the book is a compound of wild and unreasonable demands for impossible privileges, the whole being tinctured by the lax principles that had governed her own life. As a matter of fact, the gist of the work is contained in the 96 THE IDEAL WOMAN temperately reasoned theory, then new and considered highly revolting, that women, instead of being deliber- ately rendered feeble in body and mind, timid, emotional, and overflowing with the sensibility that is the antithesis of sense, should be so educated as to become the friends and companions of man, instead of his playthings in youth and his drudges in age. Granting that woman is naturally weaker and more foolish than man, why, asks the author, should it be thought proper for her to labour to increase that natural inferiority ? " Women," she points out, " have remained in ignorance and slavish dependence for many, many years, and still we hear of nothing but their fondness for pleasure and power, their preference for rakes and soldiers, and childish attachment to toys. ... It is not a bold attempt to emulate masculine virtues ; it is not the enchantment of literary pursuits, or the steady investigation of scientific subjects, that leads women astray from duty. It is indolence and vanity — the love of pleasure and the love of sway, that will reign paramount in an empty mind." To these and other such self-evident pro- positions the man of the day replied with his favourite argument — an uncomplimentary nickname. He called the author a hyaena in petticoats. Less than twenty years later Sydney Smith wrote an article on Female Education in the Edinburgh Review^ in which he figures as one of the earliest masculine champions of the learned woman. "We seem to imagine,'' he remarks, "that Cimmerian ignorance can aid maternal affection, and the circle of arts and sciences produce its destruction. It would appear that ignor- ance, feminine ignorance, has been the great civiliser THE IDEAL WOMAN 97 of the world. Women are delicate and refined only because they are ignorant; they manage their house- holds only because they are ignorant ; they attend to their children only because they know no better. . . . There is a general opinion that if you suffer women to eat of the tree of knowledge, the rest of the family will soon be reduced to the same unsatisfactory diet." Seriously, he professes himself unable to understand why a woman of forty should be more ignorant than a boy of twelve, and inquires what can be more absurd than the supposition that a mother's love for her children depends upon her ignorance of Greek and mathematics, or that she would desert an infant for a quadratic section. Now this man was a heretic ! Although the great majority of the nation held fast to the old ideals, the cloven hoof of the new woman — that Ancient of Days — was making more frequent prints upon the sand. Miss Edgeworth introduced into her novel Leonora^ published in 1802, a female of the type that would now be called "advanced." This lady exclaims against the misfortune of being born a woman, the slave or outcast of society, condemned to excessive hypocrisy. A writer in the newly started Edinburgh Review complimented the author upon the pains she had taken to hold up to ridicule "the pretensions of those who are commonly called women of spirit; and to point out the gross folly and im- propriety of that vindictive and irritating temper of mind in defence of which we have heard so many ladies grow eloquent." Another type of heroine, whom we were pleased, at 7 98 THE IDEAL WOMAN the close of the nineteenth century, to think the quintessence of all that was modern, appears in a poem of Crabbe's. This is a maiden named Arabella, who declares that she will never change her state save at the suit of a lover " With manners like her own, His life unquestioned, his opinions known, His stainless virtue must all tests endure. His honour spotless and his bosom pure. He at all times his passions must command, And yet possess — or be refused her hand." Arabella rejects a most eligible suitor on account of his past, declaring that '* The way from vice the erring mind to win Is with presuming sinners to begin, And show, by scorning them, a just contempt for sin." But when her youth has fled, and the dread pros- pect of perpetual maidenhood confronts her, she consents to marry an India merchant, with a varie- gated past, explaining her change of sentiment in the concluding lines — "The noblest way, she judged, a soul to win, Was with an act of kindness to begin. To make the sinner sure, and then to attack the sin." But in spite of new prophets and revolutionary doctrines, the first part of the nineteenth century was outwardly a quiet and peaceful period for women. It was the lull before the storm. Those were stirring times for men, days full of clamour and agitation, and hard-fought, hardly-won battles for liberty and oppor- tunity. It was reluctantly recognised, even by the conservative, that with the advance of civilisation the social and political conditions of life, as they affected THE IDEAL WOMAN 99 men, stood in need of change and modification. But with woman, the ideal woman, the case, of course, was different. When a man's shoe pinched and he clamoured for a new pair, he called himself nothing worse than a radical ; but when a woman's shoe pinched, and she too clamoured for relief, he called her a "shrieking sister." However changed the conditions of life, the social theories that had governed the women of an Oriental nation thousands of years ago were held to be completely adapted to the needs of Western women in the nineteenth century. The men who pinned their political faith on Bentham or Cobbett still quoted Moses and St. Paul to their wives and daughters. At this period " It was the universal opinion that no gentlewoman could possibly earn money without derogating altogether from her rank (unless, indeed, by card - playing), and housekeeping and needlework (of the most inartistic kinds) were her only fitting pursuits. The one natural ambition of her life was supposed to be a suitable marriage; the phrase always referring to settlements rather than to sentiments. Study of any sort was disapproved, and accomplishments only were cultivated. A married woman's inheritance and earnings could be taken from her by her husband, and spent on other women. She could make no will, and her husband might bequeath the control of her children to a man or woman whom she abhorred. A husband who had beaten and wronged his wife in every possible way could force her by law to live with him.'* ^ Woman's apparent acquiescence in the masculine ^ The Autobiography of Miss F. Power Cobbe. 100 THE IDEAL WOMAN ideals that ruled her education and conduct under the last of the Georges, was the more praiseworthy since the conditions under which she lived pressed far more hardly upon her than they had done in the preceding century. Money was scarcer, necessaries were dearer, the chance of marriage was more un- certain, while there were as yet no new occupations open to her. It is probably needless to explain that the word " woman " is here used to| indicate the female of the upper class, since it is with the conditions of her life alone that the masculine idealist ever troubles himself. Throughout the slow-pacing centuries, the peasant woman has bent her back and hardened her hands in arduous, ill-rewarded labour, and all the while she has been un pitied, unreproved, and wholly un- idealised by her brother man. As early as 1819 a writer in the Quarterly Review^ dealing with the subject of commercial depression, remarked that the condition of the unprotected female in the professional classes was perhaps the greatest evil in the existing state of society, and continued : " How many daughters of professional men, and of that numerous class who derive their support from life-incomes, are yearly left with a scanty provision, or with none at all. All the circumstances and all the prejudices of society are against them. Of the few employments which are left for them, there is not one to which they can betake themselves without a certain degree of degradation, and all are overstocked. They have fallen from the rank in which they have grown up, and they wither upon the stalk, not in single blessedness, but in forlorn desertion ; with no other joys THE IDEAL WOMAN 101 than what religion can bestow, and no hope in this life except the prospect of the next." It is significant that the writer does not suggest any remedy for this state of things, such as the throwing open of new occupations for women, or training girls to proficiency in some useful handicraft. He probably shared the popular opinion that it was more desirable that they should wither in forlorn desertion than that they should unsex themselves by learning anything thoroughly or by practising a lucrative profession. The ideal woman, if she did not marry or die prematurely of insufficient nourishment, occupied herself with a mild kind of amateur philanthropy. Any really effectual help to her poorer neighbours would have demanded organisation and co-operation, and these would have involved publicity. Now the ideal woman would have shrunk from helping her own grandmother at the cost of personal publicity, for would she not then have run the risk of losing her chief glory, that of never being spoken of for good or evil among men? The high standard reached by the masculine ideal of feminine perfection at this period may be gauged by the fact that the words " independent " and " strong- minded" were terms of the bitterest reproach when applied to women. What the man of the day desired in the tete-h-tete companion of a lifetime, and in the ancestress of all future members of his race, was presumably the opposite of a strong-minded female, namely, a woman of weak intellect, though not perhaps in an advanced stage of imbecility. The words "strong-minded," "independent," "learned," still hold some reproach, are still waved warningly 102 THE IDEAL WOMAN in the faces of progressive womanhood, while even the most superficial study of modern life and literature leads to the conviction that the average man's standard of feminine perfection has altered but little in the course of the last two hundred years. His ideal remains the same, but woman's acquiescence in that ideal, her attempt to live up to it, has come to a painfully abrupt con- clusion. She, impudent hussy, has demanded the right to learn, the right to work, and the right to vote, and has actually obtained two-thirds of her preposterous desires. The change has not been brought about without considerable friction and some suffering, but, fortunately for the unideal woman of the twentieth century — '• Disappointment's dry and bitter root, Envy's harsh berries, and the choking pool Of the world's scorn, are the right mother-milk To those tough hearts that pioneer their kind." / THE FELON 103 O O u o O u p I— I O r» s o -J -^ o w "^ 23 •rH THE FELON IF the annals of crime should ever be compiled by an historian with a catholic mind and an eye to the picturesque, the eighteenth century would probably be described as the golden age of felony, and the London of the same period as the happy hunting-ground of the habitual criminal. With no telegraphs, no railways, no gas-lamps, no police (in the modern understanding of the word), no scientific means of identification, no laws of extradition, and no efficient communication between the authorities of ward, borough, or district, it seems a miracle that a felon should ever have been apprehended, except through his own recklessness or the treachery of one of his associates. His position might be compared to that of a cunning old fox, who, inhabiting a country riddled with earths, rather enjoys the excitement of the chase, well knowing that, as soon as it becomes too hot for pleasure, he can dive down a friendly drain, and lie perdu till the danger is over. In the case of the wily criminal, conviction by no means necessarily followed capture. The anomalous condition and cumbrous machinery of the penal laws gave a clever Old Bailey lawyer every opportunity to quibble his client out of a scrape. False witnesses ^ould 105 106 THE FELON be bought cheap at Westminster Hall, where they daily walked up and down with straws in their shoes to denote their profession ; while, if the crime were not too serious, "benefit of clergy," that primitive form of the First Offenders' Act, might be allowed, and a burnt hand substituted for a dislocated neck. Again, the ferocity of the punishments for small crimes, an anachronism in an age of growing humanity, deterred injured persons from prosecuting, and juries from convicting, criminals. It is true that, throughout the century, felons were hanged by scores and transported by hundreds; but still the convictions represented so small a percentage of the crimes committed, that the immunity of the habitual criminal became a reproach to the legislature and a byword in the land. Upon the working of the penal code during the earlier half of the century, upon the conditions of prisons, the procedure of police courts, and the security, or rather the insecurity, of person and property, a strong light has been thrown by one who combined the trained observation of the novelist with the technical experience of the Bow Street magistrate — in a word, by Henry Fielding. Fortunately for himself and us, Fielding lived in an age which had not made the great discovery that "purpose" is incompatible with art. Consequently, when he wished to expose an anomalous law, or tilt at a legal authority, he did not scruple to stop the action of his story in order to express his views through the mouths of his characters. In the opening pages of Amelia^ it will be remembered, the author mounts one of his favourite hobbies, the inefficiency of the police (so-called), and indulges in a diatribe against the THE FELON 107 watchmen who, "being to guard the streets by night from thieves and robbers, an office which at best requires strength of body, are chosen out of those poor decrepit old people who are, from their want of bodily strength, rendered incapable of getting a liveli- hood by work. These men, armed only with a pole, which some of them are scarce able to lift, are to secure the persons and houses of His Majesty's subjects from the attacks of young, bold, stout, desperate, and well-armed villains." Magistrates have been regarded as fair game by playwright and novelist from the time of Shakespeare downwards; but Fielding's Mr. Thresher is as un- favourable a specimen as can be found in fiction, being depicted as venal, callous, ignorant, and prejudiced. From the scene at his court some idea may be gained of the magisterial manners and customs of the period. For example, the well-to-do delinquents are let off after a significant whisper in the ear of the magistrate's clerk ; an Irishman is committed for trial, though there is no evidence against him beyond his brogue; and a little servant-girl, arrested as a person of doubtful character while running through the streets at night to fetch a midwife to her mistress, is sent to Bridewell for a month. Curiously enough, Henry Fielding's half- brother. Sir John, who succeeded him at Bow Street, was accused of being one of the " trading magistrates " so thoroughly exposed by the novelist. Sir John is said to have enriched himself by first encouraging and then detecting criminals, as well as by securing police advertisements for the newspapers. He rendered himself obnoxious to the public by printing an open 108 THE FELON letter to Garrick, demanding the suppression of the Beggar's Opera^ which, he asserted, sent a thief to Tyburn every time it was performed ; and he was generally condemned for what was termed his " wicked action" in admitting reporters to his court, and even supplying them with pens and ink. Still taking Fielding as our guide, we pass with the unfortunate Captain Booth through the gates of Newgate. At this time, and indeed for long afterwards, there was little or no attempt at classification of prisoners. Men and women, debtors and felons, adults and children, were herded together, and left to their own devices, whether for good or evil. Compared with our modern penal establishments, the Newgate of those days could have possessed small terrors for the hardened habitual criminal so long as he had the means where* with to supplement the prison allowance and keep the gaoler in good humour. The inmates of the great city prison spent their time, we are told, in smoking, singing, gambling, and fighting, those under the very shadow of the gallows to all outward seeming as light-hearted as the rest. Private rooms with fires and beds could be hired by the more prosperous, the public tap-room was kept well supplied by the turnkey, and the floors of cells were hollowed out as receptacles for stores of tobacco and other smuggled luxuries. It must be remembered that the prison population of those days consisted almost entirely of debtors, persons committed for trial, and felons awaiting punishment, the great mass of convicted criminals being either hanged or transported to our American colonies. The minor offenders, who had been sentenced to short terms of THE FELON 109 imprisonment, were confined in the bridewells, or houses of correction, where, as it seemed to be nobody's business to provide them with employment, the period of punish- ment was often passed in complete idleness, and the houses of correction were only too accurately nicknamed " houses of corruption." It is not, of course, contended that the prisons were agreeable places of residence except to the roughest members of the community, who were usually supported by their associates without the walls. To persons of any degree of refinement, and more especially to the penniless, both gaols and bride- wells must have seemed veritable hells upon earth. Prisoners who were unable to pay their "garnish" or footing, were compelled to part with some of their clothing for this purpose, and were then left in a pitiable state, since the prison allowance (in London) included neither fuel nor straw for bedding. The food allowance consisted nominally of a penny loaf a day, but in many county prisons the inmates had to depend entirely upon the bounty of their friends, while in others the prisoners were farmed out at so much a head to the gaoler, who, to increase his profits, kept his guests for months at a time on a diet of water soup — i,e, boiled bread and water. The worst of the prison abuses arose from the absolute power that was vested in the gaoler or turnkey. He was permitted to charge his captives heavy fees, and, even after they had been acquitted of the accusations brought against them, to detain them in prison till they had paid these involuntary debts. The hardest case introduced to Mr. Booth's notice during his residence in Newgate was that of a war-worn veteran with a wooden leg and no THE FELON many honourable scars, who had been arrested on a charge of stealing three red herrings. Of this crime he had been acquitted several months before, but being unable to pay his gaoler's fees, had been thrown into prison again, where it seemed likely that he would spend the remainder of his days. Another evil arose from the insecure state of many of the prisons, the provincial gaols being often little better than broken-down sheds. As the gaoler's only recognised duty towards his charges was to keep them in safe custody, he naturally saved himself trouble and expense by loading them with irons. That practice, however, increased to such a pitch in the early years of the century, that in 1728 a committee was appointed by Parliament to inquire into the matter, when many shocking practices were brought to light. Hogarth has a fine plate representing the committee at their labours, with Bambridge,^ the infamous Warden of the Fleet, under examination, and one of his victims giving evidence against him. To this inquiry Thomson refers in the lines — '* And here can I forget the generous band Who, touched with human woe, redressive, search Into the horrors of the gloomy jail? • ••••••« Ye sons of mercy ! yet resume the search ; Drag forth the legal monsters into light — Wrench from their hands oppression's iron rod, And bid the cruel feel the pains they give."^ Turning from the treatment of criminals to the laws by which they were supposed to be convicted, we find several curious anomalies still prevailing, which must have helped to save many a guilty neck, though they can * Sometimes spelt Bainbridge. ^ xh& Seasons : Winter, THE FELON ill scarcely have added to the security of the innocent. Fielding introduces two scenes into Amelia with the obvious purpose of exposing certain legal abuses, since they have little or nothing to do with the story. In the first place, a little servant-maid in Booth's employ elopes with some linen valued at about thirty shillings, which she disposes of to a pawnbroker. Her master, on dis- covering the crime, hales her before a magistrate with the intention of prosecuting both thief and receiver. To his mingled astonishment and disgust, he learns that this is impossible, because the linen had been entrusted to the girl's care, and, to quote the justice, "a breach of trust is no crime in our law, except in a servant, and then the Act requires that the goods taken be of the value of forty shillings." The pawnbroker could not be prosecuted, even had the theft been proved, because he had taken care to leave a little boy in his shop to receive the goods, remaining himself in the background. " One would think,'' comments the magistrate, after explaining the state of the case, " that our laws were made for the protection of rogues rather than for the punishment of them." Again, when the attorney Murphy, who (after the fashion of attorneys in fiction) has ruined a whole family by forgery and the misappropriation of title-deeds — when this miscreant is captured by the worthy clergyman. Dr. Harrison, the latter applies for a warrant to search Murphy's house. The magistrate informs him that he has no power to issue a search-warrant save where there is a suspicion that stolen goods are concealed, and title- deeds savouring of realty, it would not be felony to steal them. However, he adds, by way of consolation, that if 112 THE FELON the deeds had been taken away in a box, it would be felony to steal the box. Whereupon Dr. Harrison exclaims, with not unnatural indignation, " This is impudent as well as childish trifling with the lives and properties of men." In reading the memoirs, journals, and correspond- ence of the century, we cannot but be struck by the infrequency of the allusion to the crimes that were daily enacted throughout the land ; the few that touched the imagination of the educated public being those in which persons of a superior class were implicated. A careful study of contemporary records, however, points to the conclusion that the crimes most prevalent during the period under discussion were forgery, highway robbery, and shop-lifting. For the frequency of these three forms of felony, the causes may be found in the social conditions of the century. With regard to forgery, for example, which was made a capital offence in 1729, the increase in the paper currency, the clumsy system of payment by bonds, bills of exchange, and promissory notes, together with the new ideas of luxury that accompany a growing commercial prosperity, but at the same time outrun individual means of gratifying them — these are probably some of the chief causes for the prevalence of this crime. Extravagance and ostentation at this time found almost their sole outlet in sensual indulgence. A dinner-party, with the subsequent drinking, often lasted seven hours, while a friendly repast, consisting of two removes of sixteen dishes each, would now furnish forth a mayoral banquet. Three-bottle men were expensive guests, to say nothing of boon companions of the Peter Pindar type, who did not begin to be amusing until after THE FELON 113 their twelfth tumbler of steaming punch. Men of the middle classes laid down their wine by the pipe instead of by the dozen, and the cellar cost annually more than house-rent or a son's education. People cared little for fine houses, for expensive furniture, or for the collecting of pictures and curios, but they did care that tables should groan and corks fly when they took part in the all-important event of the day. This form of ex- travagance, perhaps the least respectable of its kind, together with high prices and heavy taxes during time of war, and the exceedingly complicated system by which men paid their debts or collected the money due to them, kept the families of the professional classes in constant hot water. A visit to a sponging-house was too frequent to be regarded as any disgrace, while the Fleet was like a second home to many a worthy house- holder. The continual " settlements " and arrangements with creditors made by members of the literary and artistic professions, few of whom seem to have owned a banking account, or any income from invested capital, are enough to make a modern financier's head whirl, and the wonder is that anybody ever came by his own. A man involved in these incessant monetary em- barrassments was sorely tempted to forge a bill pay- able three or six months after date, since he could always quiet his conscience with the assurance that he was only borrowing from the friend or patron whose name he counterfeited, and would certainly repay the debt long before it fell due. In the three historic forgery cases of Dr. Dodd, the Perreau brothers, and William Ryland the engraver, we find that extravagant self-indulgence led in each case to the commission of the 8 114 THE FELON crime, and that each criminal had sought a — professedly — temporary expedient to relieve himself from terrible pressure. The most remarkable of these cases, and perhaps the least familiar, is that of Ryland, who in 1783 forged a bill for £7114 on the East India House, which is described as the most extraordinary piece of deceptive art ever produced. There were thirty or more signatures in hands of various styles and inks of different degrees of blackness, the whole so wonderfully imitated that at the trial not one person whose name was inserted could venture to swear that the forged signature was not his own. Ryland was convicted, chiefly through the evidence of the paper manufacturer, and sentenced to death ; but a respite was granted in order that he might finish, for the benefit of his family, a fine engraving that he had just begun — the last of a series from the pictures of Angelica Kauffmann, Meanwhile his friends hoped that a pardon might be obtained for so fine a craftsman — more especially as it was known that Ryland was a favourite with the King. But that rigid moralist, George ill., when petitioned to pardon the engraver on the score of his exceptional abilities, replied that a man with such ample means of providing for his wants could not reasonably plead necessity in extenuation of his crime. The extraordinary sympathy shown by the public towards Dodd, Ryland, and other felons of the better class, must have been partly due to a recollection of the old custom, already alluded to, of allowing "benefit of clergy" to first offenders — a privilege that in early days was extended only to peers and priests, but afterwards to all who could read. By the begin- THE FELON 115 ning of the eighteenth century, however, any felon, whatever his education, might be punished as a " clerk- convict" — in other words, his first offence might be expiated by burning in the hand, whipping, or imprison- ment, instead of by the forfeiture of his life. One of the few privileges still remaining to the criminal of gentle birth was that of riding to Tyburn in a mourning coach instead of in the open cart that carried the common malefactor on his last journey. Highway robbery during the early part of the century seems to have been regarded as rather a gentlemanly career, something between guerilla warfare and an ex- citingly dangerous sport. The romantic associations connected with the names of Robin Hood and his merry men still cast a glamour over the knights of the road, who won the secret admiration of the public by their daring, their fine horsemanship, and their skill with firearms. A certain number of gentlemen — as a rule, the outlaws of society — were attracted by the freedom and excitement of the life, and stories, more or less apocryphal, of their craft, their courage, their chivalry towards women, and their generosity to the poor, con- stituted the favourite reading of the lower classes. But in spite of the sympathy of the public, in spite of the many sanctuaries that were open to them, Dick Turpin and Jack Shepherd seldom enjoyed a lengthy career. Sooner or later the highwayman came to a violent end, whether by the pistol of an adversary or the hangman's rope. In the latter case, so long as he died game, the gallows was his theatre and the mob his admiring audience. Ballads and legends were made upon his name, his relics became treasures of great price, and his 116 THE FELON career formed a picturesque contribution to the criminal literature of the period. Truly it was a glorious end, and one that must have inspired many youthful Hooligans with a desire to emulate such fame. In 175 1 Henry Fielding published an Inquiry into the Causes of the late Increase of Robberies^ in which he attributes the evil to the " vast ,torrent of luxury which of late years hath poured itself into this nation." Fore- most among these luxuries he places the public diversions of the working-classes, the " Gardens, Hot-wells, Hops, and Music-meetings," which were humble imitations of the ridottos and masquerades of the aristocracy. It is a curious instance of the change that has since taken place in public opinion that our municipal authorities should now be attempting to re-establish cheap open-air amusements with a view to providing the people with harmless recreation. Fielding was so strongly averse to the waste of time and money involved in such diversions (which he terms illegal), that he actually invited the public to inform magistrates, by means of anonymous communications, where and when these social meetings were to be held, in order that officers might be sent to break them up. Fielding advocates, as a means of preventing serious crimes, the severer punishment of small misdemeanours, and protests against the tenderness of juries and the frequency of pardons. A few years later Sir John Fielding published a pamphlet containing an account of the origin and effects of a police system instituted by his brother in 1753 for the purpose of suppressing robbery and other crimes of violence. From this we learn how were the mighty fallen, for he tells us that the highway- THE FELON 117 men of that day lived for the most part in the low quarters of London, and rode out on hired horses to pursue their calling, returning to town at night to divide their booty. A larger number of highway robberies were committed on the road within twenty miles of London in one year than in the whole of the rest of the kingdom put together. The Fielding brothers established a corps of "thief-takers," which, however, soon fell into evil odour, the members being mostly ex-constables, rough fellows who were hand-in-glove with the publicans and keepers of gambling hells throughout the city. They drank and gamed with their intended victims, whom, if report speaks true, they trepanned into com- mitting crimes, and then pocketed the rewards paid for the apprehension of criminals. Of this breed was Egan, the notorious informer, who was stoned to death in the pillory in 1756. In the short intervals between our frequent wars, many discharged soldiers and sailors joined the ranks of the highwaymen, who, in times of great scarcity, grew as bold as wolves in winter. In 1772, when the Pantheon was opened in the Oxford Road, we learn from Mrs. Delany that to balance the delights of the entertainments there provided, " the High Street robbers give many panics, but pleasure will con- quer all fears ; and men on horseback with a pistol at your breast will at last grow so familiar as not to be regarded more than a common turnpike." During the middle and later years of the century London swarmed with shop-lifters and pickpockets, recruited from among the neglected offspring of porters and sedan chairmen. The increase of commercial prosperity had not been accompanied by a corresponding 118 THE FELON improvement in the methods of protecting property; tradesmen still carried on their business in a primitive fashion, and the haphazard arrangement of goods in large shops presented magnificent opportunities of plunder. The female shop-lifters usually visited mercers* or drapers' establishments, being able to conceal pieces of silk or linen and other bulky articles beneath their clothes ; while the men patronised jewellers' and lace shops, where they palmed brooches and rings, or conveyed lappets of lace up their sleeves. Although the theft of goods from a shop to the value of five shillings and upwards was a capital offence, this form of crime seems to have been practised with comparative security. A good deal of curious information on this point may be gathered from the autobiographies of Charles Speckman and James Hardy Vaux. The former, who was executed in 1753, .boasts of having committed no fewer than five hundred felonies during the fifteen years of his career. Lace shops were the chief objects of his attentions, and he preferred to patronise establishments kept by the weaker sex, because, as he pleasantly observes, " women are less on their guard than men, and delighted with anyone who will hear them prate and chatter." Hardy Vaux, a youth of respectable parentage and some education, seems to have been a typical specimen of the swell mobsman of his day. In early youth he entered upon a successful career of shop-lifting and pocket -picking, by which he regularly gained as much as ten or fifteen pounds a week. In the course of a visit to a Piccadilly jeweller's, in the character of a young man of fashion who desired to order an expensive THE FELON 119 watch, he contrived to secrete and carry off a card to which were attached three diamond rings, a gold seal, a belt clasp, and a valuable brooch. A few days later he had the audacity to return to the same shop, "to complete his order," and although the proprietor's suspicions were evidently aroused, the youth's aplomb carried him through, and he was not detained. Shortly afterwards a reward was offered for his apprehension, but there was little likelihood that he would ever have been caught by the detectives of that day, had he been able to resist the temptation of returning to some of his old haunts. In a flash public-house in Clare Market he was betrayed by the publican to the Bow Street officers, and, being brought up for trial, not by any means for the first time, received a death sentence, which was after- wards commuted to one of transportation for life. It may be noted in this connection that the English practice of hanging or transporting persons convicted of minor offences was universally condemned on the Continent. The English, for their part, looked with horror and detestation upon the continental custom of stretching prisoners on the rack, breaking them on the wheel, and immuring them during long periods in dark and loathsome dungeons. From the literature of the last decades of the eighteenth century, it is easy toperceive that a change was gradually coming over public opinion with regard to the penal laws and the "general treatment of prisoners — a change that was mainly due to Beccaria's famous work on Crimes and Punishments^ of which an Engiren translation was published in 1764. Hitherto it seems to have been thoughTthat a punishment should be proportioned, not to 120 THE FELON the heinousness of a crime, but to the facility with which it could be committed. Even Blackstone thought it reasonable that the theft of a handkerchief should be punished by death, and the theft of a load of hay by transportation. Beccaria, on the other hand, argued that the certainty.„of a punishment was far more effectual than its severity, and that juries would be more likely to convict if the penalty were proportioned to the crime. , He further put forward the novel and startling theory that a term of imprisonment might be regarded as an opportunity for reforming a criminal instead of merely a deterrent to other ill-disposed persons. To his vigorous protests the civilised world owes the final abolition of torture, which still lingered in England under the form of the peine forte et dure — otherwise " pressing " — and was in full force on the Continent. The influence exercised by Beccaria's book on national opinion may be exemplified by comparing the point of view of Fielding with that of Goldsmith. " Our punishments," declared the former in 175 1, '*are the mildest in the known world. It is generally allowed that our laws are merciful, just, and perfectly agreeable to the genius of this nation." In 1766, two years after the publication of Crimes and Punishments^ Goldsmith asks, through the mouth of his Vicar : " Can I avoid questioning the validity of that right which social combinations have assumed, of capitally punishing offences of a slight nature? . . . When by indiscriminate penal laws a nation beholds the same punishment affixed to dissimilar degrees of guilt, from perceiving no distinction in the penalty, the people are led to lose all sense of distinction in the guilt." Again, he expresses THE FELON 121 the desire that " legislative power would direct the law to reformation rather than severity — that it would seem convinced that the work of eradicating crime is not by- making punishments familiar but formidable." The Vicar, it will be remembered, when committed to the county gaol for debt, found much the same state of things prevailing as in the Newgate of Mr. Booth's day. He was obliged to pay " garnish," and his contribution was at once turned into liquor, the whole prison being filled with riot, laughter, and profanity. The only employments of the prisoners were quarrelling, playing cards, and cutting tobacco-stoppers. " From this last mode of idle industry," says the Vicar, " I took the hint of setting such as chose to work at cutting pegs for tobacconists and shoemakers, the proper wood being bought by a general subscription, and when manu- factured, sold by appointment, so that each earned something every day — a trifle, indeed, but sufficient to maintain him." It is not surprising that counterblasts should have been issued against these new theories, which the con- servative regarded as the outcome of a wild and foolish sentimentality. Madan, in his Thoughts on Executive Justice (1784), advocated the unflinching execution of the laws as they stood, and protested against the frequency of pardons. Paley, in his Moral and Political Philosophy (1785), also defended (with reservations) the established laws, and attacked the weak timidity of juries, which led them to be over-scrupulous about evidence. The House of Lords and many of the highest legal authorities were opposed to legislative reform ; but there was a large and increasing party, with Sir Samuel 122 THE FELON I Romilly at their head, who regarded the penal code as 1 a legal anachronism. It^must Jbej;emember^^^ that at this time there were above one hundred and sixty- capital* offences on the statute book. Theft from the I 'person of an article one shilling in value, theft from V a shop of an article five shillings in value, sending threatening letters, illegally cutting down trees, cutting ; hopbinds or breaking down the banks of a fish-pond — ; all these, and many more equally trivial, were nominally \ punishable by death, though in practice the penalty was frequently commuted to transportation for life. The laws relating to offences committed by women were still of ferocious cruelty. The statute ordaining that women should be burnt alive at the public stake for high or petty treason was not repealed until 1790. In 1777 a girl of fourteen was sentenced to be burnt I alive for whitewashing farthings to make them look like / sixpences, and a reprieve only arrived when the cart was ready to take her to the stake. In 1782 Rebecca Downing was publicly burnt for poisoning her master, and in 1784 Mary Bayley suffered the same punishment for aiding and abetting the murderers of her husband. While a man might be pardoned for stealing a horse, a woman seems to have been hanged for looking over a stable wall. For example, a case is reported of ; a young married woman of nineteen, whose husband \ had been carried off by the pressgang, leaving her and her child without any means of support. Rendered desperate by hunger, she entered a shop and took up a j piece of linen that lay on the counter ; but, perceiving that her action was observed, she laid it down again. For this terrible crime she was condemned to death. THE FELON 123 and was hanged, we are told, with her infant at her breast ! The pillory was a favourite form of punish- ment for women who had been convicted of minor offences, such as fortune-telling. " A woman in the pillory," says George Meredith, "restores the original bark of brotherhood to mankind," and this mode of delivering over a culprit to lynch law sometimes re- sulted in the death of the victim. Transportation, with all the horrors of a convict ship and the subsequent isolation in an unknown land, seems to have powerfully affected the female imagination; for on one occasion, when George III. in a merciful mood offered twenty- three women convicts their choice between hanging and transportation, no fewer that six preferred death to exile. In spite of, or rather because of, the harshness of the criminal laws, the hardened habitual criminal en- joyed a period of unexampled prosperity during the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The police was almost as scandalously inefificient as in the days of Fielding. In 1796 there were one thousand "peace- officers" for the whole of the metropolis, but of these only fifty were stipendiary. There were, besides, about two thousand watchmen, who were comparatively use- less by reason of their age and infirmity. Moreover, these were under the direction of seventy different trusts, regulated by double as many Acts of Parlia- ment. The result of this disjointed system was that a criminal, who might be badly wanted in Clerkenwell, had only to fly to Southwark, and he would be almost as secure from apprehension as if he had crossed the Channel. 124 THE FELON Even when apprehended and brought to trial, the felon kept a stout heart, since the odds were about twelve to one in favour of his acquittal. " The injured, through compassion, would forbear to prosecute ; juries, through compassion, would sometimes forget their oaths, and either acquit the guilty or mitigate the nature of the offence ; and judges, through compassion, would respite one half the convicts, and recommend them to royal mercy." ^ Many a rogue got off scot free, much to his own surprise ; but even when convicted he was in a better position than the felon of the earlier part of the century. Four-fifths of the criminals sentenced to death were pardoned on condition of entering the army or navy, then depleted by long- continued wars. Transportation had lost much of its terror since the "dumping-ground" for convicts had been changed, after the outbreak of the War of Rebellion in 1775, from North America to Australia. In former days felons had been, to all intents and purposes, exported for sale to American settlers, and it was said that the black slaves and white were set to work together on the same plantations. At Botany Bay, on the other hand, convicts were only " assigned " to settlers for a limited period. When employed by Government they seem to have lived in clover, for Hardy Vaux tells us that when acting as clerk in the commissariat department during his first period of transportation, he had a " neat brick house," a garden, and two servants at his disposal. Reform had already begun in the English prisons and bridewells, thanks to the voluntary efforts of Jonas * Blackstone. THE FELON 125 Hanway and John Howard. The chief physical abuses discovered by the two philanthropists were insufficient food, want of ventilation and drainage, and the absence of proper arrangements for cleanliness, which more than accounted for the terrible epidemics of gaol-fever. The worst of the moral evils arose from the lack of any system of classification or of discipline, and the failure on the part of the authorities to provide work for the prisoners. In 1784 an Act was passed ordaining that eleven divisions should be made — the felons being separated from the debtors, the convicts from the ddtenuSy the men from the women, the adults from the children, and so forth; but as late as 181 8 there were only twenty-three prisons out of the five hundred and eighteen in the United Kingdom in which the inmates were separated according to law. In the majority of the county prisons the gaol deliveries only took place once a year, and consequently innocent, or comparatively innocent, persons, while awaiting trial, might be locked up for many months in " a sink of corruption, where their minds were polluted and their morals inevitably tainted by their vile associates." Howard, with his demands for prison inspectors, chaplains, surgeons, baths, employments, and a more liberal diet for prisoners, was accused of desiring to pamper the felon. But, to take the question of diet alone, it would hardly now be thought that he erred in the direction of extravagance. The prison allowance (where there was any) still consisted of one penny loaf per head a day. This amount had been fixed in 1557, when the penny loaf weighed twenty-six ounces; whereas at the end of the eighteenth century it only 126 THE FELON weighed eight or nine ounces. The bill of fare drawn up by Howard consisted of one pound and a half of bread a day, with a pennyworth of cheese, butter, or vegetables, and on Sundays half a pound of coarse boiled beef; but this last indulgence was to be contingent on good behaviour during the week. It cannot be supposed that the habitual criminal appreciated all Howard's efforts for his welfare, least of all those which resulted in the abolition of the public tap-room, and in the establishment of regular tasks and a stricter discipline ; but at least his health and comfort were better attended to, and he was protected in some measure from the tyranny of the gaoler. But the dawn of the nineteenth century ushered in a new era in the history of the felon, and from this time forward every- thing seems to have gone against him. In 1808 Sir Samuel Romilly got a Bill through Parliament abolishing capital punishment for small thefts, with the result that there was a great and sudden increase in the number of prosecutions and convictions. As time went on the machinery of the penal laws was simplified, a public prosecutor was appointed, the new police was established, new-fangled bolts and alarms were invented, gas-lamps rendered the streets comparatively safe by night, railways ruined the profession of the highway robber, the telegraph cut off a criminal in full flight, while the extradition laws abolished the sanctuary once provided by a foreign country. Of a truth, with the passing of the eighteenth century the palmy days of felony in England were at an end for ever. THE FENCING SCHOOL 127 fj^^<'j- ■ . PREMIER ROSI riON DU SALU i' FKUM ANGELu'i. l'ECoLE UES AKMliS, 1763 THE FENCING SCHOOL A CENTURY and a half ago, when the small sword was a common accessory of the toilet, and a duel the natural outcome of a hasty word or even an un- guarded look ; when, consequently, men's lives depended upon their skill in tierce and carte, the fencing master was a power in the land. Not only was he hand-and- glove with his fellow-artists of the bow and the brush, but he was the spoiled child of royal and noble circles, and took rank as an aristocrat in upper Bohemia. The most distinguished members of the profession were usually of French or Italian origin, since Englishmen, born sportsmen and fighters though they be, are seldom more than glorified amateurs in art, even in the noble art of self-defence. Where strength and courage are the chief elements of success, as in boxing, wrestling, quarter-staff play, and rough-riding, they are easily first ; but in the fencing saloon and the manage they have generally been eclipsed, in point of grace and finish, by their French and Italian rivals. A head and shoulders above his fellows rises the stately form of Domenico Angelo Malevolti Tre- mamondo, otherwise known as the elder Angelo, who raised the standard of swordsmanship in England, and stood at the top of his profession during the last forty 9 130 THE FENCING SCHOOL years of the eighteenth century. Born at Leghorn in 17 1 6, the son of a prosperous merchant, Angelo began his career as a brilliant amateur. His education con- cluded, as was then customary, with foreign travel, and a liberal allowance enabled him to spend a lengthened period in Paris, where he mixed in the best society of the time, and studied riding and fencing under the famous Teillagory, instructor at the Manage Royal and the Academic des Armes. His finances failed to keep pace with his expensive habits, and in 1755 he resolved to try and redeem his fortunes in London, that Eldorado of needy foreigners. This project may have been partly inspired by a pronounced flirtation with Peg Woffington, who was then on a visit to Paris. Mrs. Woffington, we are told, had met the handsome Italian at a party, and, being struck by his appearance, attended a public fencing match at which Angelo was to try his skill with the most renowned professors and amateurs of the period. Before the beginning of the fray. Peg stepped forward and presented him with a small bouquet of roses, which Angelo gallantly placed over his heart, exclaiming, " This I will defend against all opposers." In the course of the match he fenced with several of the first swordsmen in Paris, but not one of them was able to disturb a single leaf of the bouquet. In the summer of 1755 Angelo travelled to England in company with Mrs. Woffington, who introduced him to the Sheridans and other members of the theatrical profession. A few months after his arrival he was appointed master of the horse to Henry Herbert, tenth Earl of Pembroke. Lord Pembroke was colonel of the crack cavalry regiment known as Elliott's Light Horse THE FENCING SCHOOL 131 (afterwards the Fifteenth Hussars), and Angelo, who was anxious to introduce an improved method of cavalry riding into the army, was permitted to make experiments by instructing some of the picked men of Elliott's Horse. Among his pupils was Philip Astley, the founder of Astley's Circus, who so astonished the country people by riding with his head on the saddle and his heels in the air, that they declared Corporal Astley must be the devil in disguise. In 1756 Angelo married a Miss Masters, daughter of a naval officer, who had been pointed out to him at the theatre one night by his old flame. Peg Wofifington. " Is she not as beautiful as an angel ? " Peg had asked ; and Angelo, with less than an Italian's gallantry, had rapturously agreed, followed the angel home, got intro- duced to her family, and finally married her. The pair, by Lord Pembroke's request, settled in the neighbour- hood of Wilton, where they remained until 1759, when Angelo, in response to many tempting offers, decided to come to London and open a fencing school and manege in the then fashionable neighbourhood of Soho Square. About this time he was introduced to George II., before whom he gave a performance of " riding the great horse " in the continental style. The King declared that Mr. Angelo was the most elegant horseman of the day, and suggested that Mr. West, who had been commissioned to paint a picture of the Battle of the Boyne, should take Angelo, mounted on his grey horse Monarch, as his model for the equestrian figure of William III. Angelo the younger, Harry by name, was born in 1757, and it is from his published Reminiscences that we gain our knowledge of the family history, or more 132 THE FENCING SCHOOL properly of the family circle. His two volumes form a collection of anecdotes relating to the many distinguished persons who frequented his father's house and school. The elder Angelo especially affected the society of painters, who, he declared, were the most interesting members of his circle, being as amusing as actors, more lively than musicians, and more sterling in reputation than either. " I have observed," he said once to Tom Sheridan, " that among painters in every age have been found no inconsiderable number who cultivated the art of music; but how few musicians have troubled their heads with the study of painting ! " Angelo was engaged by the Princess of Wales to instruct the heir to the throne and his brother princes, while many persons of rank placed their sons with him as boarders, between the period of their leaving school and entering college. Riding, fencing, and dancing constituted the regular curriculum of the school, but the pupils incidentally learnt manners from their polished instructor, and picked up a smattering of foreign tongues, as well as some knowledge of the fine arts from the many continental professors whom they met at his table. At the height of his prosperity Angelo is said to have made as much as four thousand a year, a princely income for those days ; but his hospitality was too profuse to allow of his making any provision for his old age. The little son of the house was naturally the plaything and spoiled child of his father's pupils. Captain Hervey, afterwards Lord Bristol, got the six- year-old Harry rated on his books as a midshipman. After distinguishing himself with his ship, the Dragon^ under the guns of the Moro Castle, Captain Hervey THE FENCING SCHOOL 133 presented Mrs. Angelo with twenty-five guineas as her son's share of the prize-money ! The family acquaintances were not exclusively artistic and Bohemian, for many of their noble patrons treated the couple as equals and friends. The Duke and Duchess of Queensbury had known Mrs. Angelo before her marriage, and on more than one occasion invited the whole family to spend a few days at Amesbury. " I recollect," writes Harry, " the Duchess [Prior's " Kitty "] in her formal dress, her long stomacher, point-lace apron, and her grey locks combed smoothly over her cushion ; and the Duke, a tall, lean, upright figure, with a short-skirted frock, gold-laced hat, and high leather gaiters." Miss Skaites, the Duchess's companion and the most agreeable of ancient spinsters, loved to talk of the golden days when Pope, Swift, Handel, Prior, and Gay had met round the Duke's table. Miss Skaites had the deepest contempt for " that Lord March," as she called the young rake who succeeded to the titles and estates, though not to the dignities, of her " dear lord Duke." George II., it will be remembered, had dispensed with the Queensburys' attendance at Court, in consequence of their indiscreet patronage of Gay, but they reappeared at the Coronation of George III. The morning after the ceremony the Duchess sent for Miss Skaites and her other female attendants, and, scattering her Court attire on the floor, exclaimed, "There, my good friends; I hope never to see another coronation — so share it amongst you." She then sat down, and assisted in ripping the point-lace, pearls, and other valuable orna- ments off her discarded finery. In his recollections of his boyhood, Harry Angelo has 134 THE FENCING SCHOOL much to tell of David Garrick, who was an intimate friend of the family. The elder Angelo had suggested many improvements in stage decorations and machinery to the greatest of actor - managers, and introduced to him the artist Loutherbourg, who was engaged at a salary of five hundred a year to superintend this department. Angelo was also consulted by Garrick on the subject of stage costume, the absurdities and anachronisms of which had long been a disgrace to the English theatre. In return for the Italian's advice and assistance Garrick presented him with a magnificent silver cup, on which was inscribed, " Pegno (Tamicizia di David Garrick\al suo amicio Angelo Malevolti" At Eton, where Harry Angelo was admitted as a scholar in 1764, in consequence of his father's appointment as fencing instructor to the college, the boy*s chief friends were Carrington and Nathan Garrick, nephews of the actor. On one occasion Mr. and Mrs. Garrick came down to Eton, and took the three boys over Windsor Castle, winding up the day with a dinner at the "Christopher,'' and recitations at dessert. On his departure " Davy " tipped his guests a guinea apiece, with the usual admonitions to " be good boys and mind their books." Harry, who had been forbidden by his father to accept money from any friend, was obliged to stammer out an excuse, and return his guinea. His host, struck by the boy's obedience, took him into high favour, and in 1769 invited him to accom- pany his parents to the famous Shakespearean Jubilee at Stratford-on-Avon, when the elder Angelo was to be the chief engineer of the fireworks, and the younger was to appear as Ariel. Unfortunately, a heavy downpour THE FENCING SCHOOL 135 of rain entirely spoilt the show, the procession having to be abandoned and the fireworks refusing to go off. In 1763 Angelo brought out his famous work, LEcole des ArmeSy which contained forty-seven copperplates, drawn by Gwynne and engraved by Rylands.^ Angelo himself is said to have stood for one of the figures throughout a whole series, and that mysterious person, the Chevalier D'Eon, for the other. The Chevalier also assisted with the letterpress and general arrange- ment of the book, which was at once recognised as a standard work, and, in French and English versions, went through many editions. D'Eon and Angelo had been pupils of the same instructor at Paris in their young days, and the Chevalier was regarded as a first-rate swordsman. He was accustomed to dress in the uniform of a French dragoon, and his countenance, we are told, was rather effeminate, with blue eyes, small features, and dark beard. " The first time I saw him dressed as a woman," says Harry Angelo, " my father took me to him. On my entrance, to my surprise, I beheld a lusty dame, dressed in black silk, the head-dress a rosed toupet and laced cap. He had not the least beard, a diamond necklace, long stays, and an old-fashioned stomacher. My father leading me to the assumed lady, I received, h la Francaise, a kiss on each cheek. Ever afterwards, when he dined at our house, though dressed as a woman, when the ladies retired he remained to enjoy the glass and conversation. When I last saw him he lived a few doors beyond Astley's Theatre. He always dressed in black silk, ^ This excellent engraver was hanged for forgery. See "The Felon," p. 114. 136 THE FENCING SCHOOL and looked like a woman worn out with age and care." Among other habitues of Angelo's house were Cipriani and Bartolozzi, who gave young Harry lessons in drawing, "English" Bach and Abel the viol da gamba player, who often made music till long past midnight, and Stubbs, said to be the first English artist who understood the anatomy of the horse. At the dinner-table were constantly to be seen the " patriot," John Wilkes, Home Tooke, and old Tom Sheridan, who used to sit over the bottle in interminable arguments upon the politics of the day. Home Tooke, who was then living in Dean Street, Soho, used to amuse old Sheridan by singing a parody of " God save the King " ; but this was not allowed under Angelo's roof, for the Italian would never permit anyone to speak disrespect- fully of the King or Government in his presence. In 1772 Harry Angelo, then in his sixteenth year, was sent to Paris to learn French and study the latest methods in fencing under the celebrated Mottet. On his return he was appointed assistant to his father, who had now bought Carlisle House from Lord Delaval, and also set up a country house at Acton. Here Sir Joshua Reynolds, who had painted a portrait of Mrs. Angelo, used to dine in company with Garrick and Gainsborough. Sir Joshua was not averse to talking of his early struggles, when he had painted portraits for half a guinea, his first employers being sailors, who were touched off to the life, with gold-laced hats, epaulets, collars, and buttons for this modest sum. Gainsborough used to cause his friends a good deal of entertainment by his numerous musical experi- X w H 2 ^— ( ^ O* a fl rO o w H-) < 'A ^ M p a :7: u J M D 'J r"" UJ ■^ "j h— ( ID O y a o x; Pi < W r^* P o < u. Ci5 < Pi ^ J\ id ^. r^ THE FENCING SCHOOL 137 ments. He fancied that melody lay in the instru- ment rather than in the player, and after hearing Giardini perform, insisted on buying his violin, but was disappointed on finding that all the virtue had gone out of it. He afterwards acquired Fischer's hautbois, Abel's viol da gamba, and some other player's harp, though he never had the patience to master any of his purchases. While Angelo was in attendance as fencing instructor at Buckingham House, Gainsborough was employed in painting the royal children's portraits. It is to be feared that his taste was somewhat obscured by his loyalty, for he used to inform his friend that he was all but raving mad with ecstacy at beholding such a constella- tion of youthful beauty. "Talk of the Greeks," he would exclaim, " the pale-faced, long-nosed, unmeaning ghosts ! Look at the living delectable carnations in this royal progeny. Talk of old Dame Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi — Sir, here you behold half a score of youthful divinities." Gainsborough used to call George III. the "Morning Star of England," and declare that His Majesty was not only a first-rate art connoisseur, but that he uttered more original jeux-de-mots than any other person of rank whom he had ever known. Gainsborough related how upon one occasion he had told the King that painters should be employed to design the fashions for feminine costume, to which His Majesty replied, " You are quite right, Mr. Gains- borough. Why do not you and Sir Joshua set about it ? But," he added with a twinkle, " the ladies are bewitching enough as it is — hey, Gainsborough, hey ? " " Like a saucy dog as I am," continued the 138 THE FENCING SCHOOL artist, " I said what I am almost ashamed to repeat, ' Yes, and please your Majesty, it were as well to leave the dowdy angels alone ! ' " Harry Angelo's favourite amusement was amateur acting. He was a member of the famous Picnic Club, which gave performances under the direction of Le Texier, and took part in the theatricals got up by the Margravine of Anspach at Brandenburgh House, and by Lord Barrymore at Wargrave. Lady Buckingham- shire was the moving spirit of the Picnic Society, which held its meetings in rather happy-go-lucky fashion at the Old Tottenham Rooms. Tickets inscribed with the names of dishes to be provided for the supper-table were put into a bag, and drawn by members of the society. The chief drawback to this arrangement was that those who had the smallest means usually drew the most expensive lots ; a perigord pie worth three guineas falling to the share of a penniless beauty, and a dozen of champagne to a younger brother, while a rich nabob drew a pound-cake or half a dozen oranges. The Picnics, as they were called, were cruelly caricatured, by Gillray, and attacked for their supposed immoral practices by the gutter-press of the day, so that it is small wonder the society was dissolved after a chequered career of not quite three years. At Brandenburgh House the Margravine — formerly Lady Craven — used to write or adapt her own dramas, and, though long past middle age, always insisted on playing the part of youthful heroine. Her son, Keppel Craven, played the jeune premier^ and her chamberlain the heavy father. Harry Angelo was seldom entrusted with any but a minor part ; but on one occasion the THE FENCING SCHOOL 139 Margravine insisted upon his playing the hero in an adaptation of Nourjahad^ a part which had been refused by the rest of the company on account of its enormous length. Much against his will, he was com- pelled to learn one thousand lines, and between this mental labour and his terror at appearing as the Margravine's princely lover, he was thrown into a fever which confined him to his room for a fortnight after the performance. A more congenial part was that of the robber chief in a translation of Schiller's Die Rduber \ but Angelo fell into lasting disgrace with the Margravine for substituting a dying speech for the groan with which the robber was supposed to expire. For this bit of gag he was severely reprimanded by his hostess, though he declares that he received the sympathy of the remainder of the company, who had all suffered from the lady's determination to allow no one but herself and her beloved Keppel a chance of distinction. The eccentric Lord Barrymore was an enthusiast for the drama, and the theatrical performances which he gave at Wargrave were celebrated in the social annals of the time. Young Angelo, who had studied elocution under the two Sheridans, was soon enrolled in his lordship's corps, but fortunately for himself his pro- fessional engagements prevented his spending more time at Wargrave than was actually necessary for the rehearsals and performances. All the recorded pranks of Rochester and Buckingham, all the mysterious rites of Medenham Abbey, were said to have been outdone by Lord Barrymore and his brothers, "a trio whose notoriety for dissipation had no parallel in the annals of folly." The satirical scribbler, Williams, who went 140 THE FENCING SCHOOL by the name of Anthony Pasquin, was poet-laureate of Wargrave, with a salary greater than that of the royal laureate, though less regularly paid. Angelo gives some account of Lord Barrymore's flights of humour, from which the reader will gain no very high idea of the intellect of this "roystering blade." "After our midnight revels," he writes, "I have often travelled with him in his high phaeton to Wargrave. One very dark night, going through Colnbrook and the long street called Featherbed Lane, he kept whipping right and left, breaking the windows, and delighted with the noise as he heard them crack. This he called fanning the daylights" Another time, after a dinner at Lord Barrymore's house at Brighton, it was proposed that he and Angelo should serenade Mrs. Fitzherbert, who lived near by. His lordship, dressed in the cook-maid's clothes, sang "Ma ch^re amie," while Angelo played the accompaniment on an old guitar. The next day the Prince is reported to have said to the chief delinquent, " Barrymore, you may make a fool of yourself as much as you please, but if I had known it was Angelo, I would have horse- whipped him into the sea." From the year 1785 Harry Angelo was practically at the head of his father's school, Angelo pere retiring to Eton, where he continued to give private lessons till within a few days of his death in 1802. The school was removed to Opera-House Buildings, and afterwards, following the stream of fashion, to Old Bond Street, while a branch establishment was opened in the city, at the Paul's Head Tavern, Cateaton Street. Among Angelo's city pupils were many gentlemen who rode THE FENCING SCHOOL 141 in the city of London Light Horse Volunteers, a corps which, for its general equipment, and particularly for the value of its horses, could not be surpassed by any regiment in Europe. Harry seems to have kept up the traditions of his family in the matter of hospitality. Like his father, he was the friend of many artists, Gillray, Rowlandson, and Morland among others. At his city establishment he had a suite of rooms where he could return the hospitalities of some of his superiors — not indeed, as he confesses, with soups and ragoiits served on gold plate, but with a savoury "cod's head followed by a well-roasted pork griskin." The dinners were heavy and the drinking deep, even among the professional and artistic classes, whose members, it might be thought, required a quick eye, a steady hand, and a cool head, to enable them to accomplish their daily tasks. Angelo describes many a Gargantuan meal, chief among these being a dinner given by the Duke of Sussex to the Neapolitan Club, which lasted eight hours, the glasses being incessantly replenished. By keeping steadily to some fine old hock, and talking very little, Angelo contrived to keep fairly sober, though he admits that had he stood less in awe of the company, he should probably have been under the table long before the meal was over. Among Harry Angelo's many distinguished pupils was the author of Childe Harold, When Byron came up from Cambridge, and took rooms in the Albany, he engaged his former instructor to attend him daily for practice with the broadsword. " It was arranged," says our author, "that any day at twelve he should be glad to see me, baguette h la main^ instead of foil. 142 THE FENCING SCHOOL This was an exercise he preferred to fencing, as the defect in his foot did not prevent it from being an amusement to him, and at the same time he thought it would be the means of reducing his size. Perfectly- satisfied he could beat me, independently of the exercise to his health, it was a diversion to him. Now having a daily scholar far more lucrative than any of the others, I took good care to make the assaults satisfactory to him ; keeping always on the defensive, retreating on his attacks, and now and then receiving a stroke." Byron's preparation for his exercise con- sisted of putting on a thick flannel jacket, and over it a pelisse lined with fur, the whole tied round with a Turkish shawl ! In 1817 Angelo the Second retired from his school in favour of his eldest son, Angelo the Third, but he con- tinued to give private lessons until an unlucky accident, a few years later, put a stop to his active career. Some time in the " twenties " his friend Kean took a benefit, at which he exhibited his various accomplishments — music, dancing, and fencing — and Angelo assisted him to prepare for the performance. " As usual," he writes, " I had recruited myself for two months in the country after ten months' professional labours. At my return to town, I did not find my health so good as it had been whilst exercise kept me employed. On my first visit to Mr. Kean, we both complained of having increased in size, when I observed that we were losing our genteel comedy shapes, and suggested that we should have a good bout of fencing every morning before breakfast. Kean agreed, and the next morning we made our ddbut, carte and tierce, to supple THE FENCING SCHOOL 143 our limbs preparatory to the grand assaut. In the very first lunge I made, I so strained the tendons of my left thigh as to cause a sudden check and pain, so that it was with difficulty I could remain on my legs. From that time (after more than forty years of labour) I have bade adieu to the practical exertions of the science, depriving myself of that health and flow of spirits I had before been accustomed to. I have therefore sad reason to remember the last act of my performance with Mr. Kean." Like his father, Harry Angelo seems to have saved but little out of his fine professional income, for he tells us that he retired on a small annuity ; and it was probably to add to his means that he published his Reminiscences in 1830. The success of this work led him to bring out his Picnic^ or Table-Talk in 1835. This was a scrappy collection of rather pointless anecdotes with a clever coloured frontispiece by George Cruick- shank. The second Angelo died in 1839, aged eighty- three, leaving the family traditions to be carried on by his son Henry, who had been appointed superintendent of sword-exercise to the army in 1833. This last of the Angelos died in 1852, but the historical salle-d'armeSy which had been removed to St. James' Street, was continued under other management to within quite recent times. THE "MONTHLY REVIEW" to THE "MONTHLY REVIEW" IN her preface to Evelina^ Miss Burney, it will be remembered, addresses an artfully worded appeal to the "Authors of the Monthly and Critical Re- views I' beginning with an apology for offering them the trifling production of a few idle hours, and con- tinuing in her best Johnsonian style : X" But the extensive plan of your critical observations — which, not confined to works of utility or ingenuity, is equally open to those of frivolous amusement — and yet worse than frivolous amusement — encourages me to seek for your protection, since — perhaps for my sins! — it entitles me to your annotation^ To resent, therefore, this offering, however insignificant, would ill-become the universality of your undertak- ing, though not to despise, may, alas ! be out of your power." The modern reader, for whom periodical criticism began in the first decade of the nine- teenth century with the birth of the Edinburgh and the Quarterly Reviews^ may be inclined to regard with mingled amusement and contempt this obsequious petition addressed to the critical authorities of those dark ages when Jeffrey was in petticoats and Lockhart as yet unborn. Yet the two great "We's" of the 147 148 THE "MONTHLY REVIEW" eighteenth century, the Monthly and the Critical, played no unimportant part in the literary educa- tion of contemporary readers; and although neither of the twain could boast of such a galaxy of en- cyclopaedic intellects as the Edinburgh Review in its palmy days, yet the name of the one is connected (not over creditably, it must be admitted) with that of Goldsmith, and of the other with that of Smollett, while the literary staff of each was re- cruited from among the sounder wits of Upper Grub Street. Although it is not for a moment suggested that literary criticism was in its infancy in the middle of the eighteenth century, it may safely be asserted that the periodical reviewer was still only feeling his way. Not one of the literary journals that had appeared during the first half of the century, the Memoirs of Literature, the Present State of the Republic of Letters^ Historia Liter aria, or the Grub Street Journal, had enjoyed a lengthy or prosperous career. In 1749, when Ralph Griffiths, a thriving bookseller, started the Monthly Review at the Sign of the Dunciad (name of ill- omen !) in St. Paul's Churchyard, there was practically no other competitor in the field. Mr. Griffiths, who had begun life as a Presbyterian watchmaker in Staffordshire, acted as his own publisher and editor, assisted by his wife, a lady of literary tastes. The Review came into the world in singularly modest fashion, its simple, straightforward title - page and editorial advertisement presenting a refreshing con- trast to the parade and puffery which had accompanied the first numbers of other contemporary periodicals. THE "MONTHLY REVIEW" 149 The public was merely informed that the Monthly Review was .A PERIODICAL WORK GIVING An Account, with Proper Abstracts of, and Extracts from, the New Books, Pamphlets, etc., as they come out. BY Several Hands. The first number, a double one for May and June 1749, contains non-critical summaries of eleven new books, including A System of Moral Philosophy by Grove, a translation of the Odes of Pindar by Gilbert West, Bolingbroke's Letters on the Spirit of Patriotism, Smollett's juvenile tragedy. The Regicide, and an " Essay on Design ; together with Proposals for erecting a Public Academy, to be supported by voluntary sub- scriptions for educating the British Youth in Drawing, and the several arts depending thereon." In the second number the plan was adopted of printing in small type a monthly catalogue of current literature, which con- tained the titles, together with brief descriptive para- graphs, of such romances, plays, poems, and pamphlets as were not considered worthy of more elaborate treat- ment. It is remarkable that in this literary rubbish- heap appeared the first notices of nearly all the con- temporary works that outlived their own generation and have been acclaimed by posterity as immortal masterpieces. The body of the Review was taken up with ten or twelve lengthy articles upon what Miss Burney would have called "works of utility or in- 150 THE "MONTHLY REVIEW genuity " — the theological treatises, philosophical reflec- tions, moral essays, and long didactic poems which poured from the eighteenth-century press. The Monthly Review met at the outset with a very moderate measure of success ; indeed, at one time it seemed doubtful whether the new-comer would live to celebrate its first birthday. However, at the conclusion of volume one, the editor begs leave to thank the public for their candid reception of the Review^ " not- withstanding any imperfections which have happened in the infancy of the undertaking," and assures the supporters of the work that "no care or proportional expense shall be spared that may be necessary for its improvement." He proposes, at the same time, to introduce an account of foreign works, and occasionally to print an extra sheet, which extra sheet afterwards developed into a half-yearly supplement. He concludes with the observation that " Our business is to enter no farther into the province of criticism than just so far as may be indispensably necessary to give some idea of such books as come under our consideration." This abstention from detailed criticism saved the Monthly^ in its early and feeble days, from the frequent and sometimes damaging attacks that were made by out- raged authors upon its more outspoken and audacious rival, the Critical Review. Besides, the day of the specialist had hardly yet dawned, and while it was comparatively easy for a good all-round writer to give an intelligent summary of an abstruse work, only a man of encyclopaedic knowledge could criticise with impunity the various scientific and philosophical folios that came up periodically for review. THE "MONTHLY REVIEW" 151 ^y 1755 the Monthly Review seems to have been prosperously established as the leading critical organ, its proprietor being enabled to take a country house at Turnham Green, and to set up two coaches on the profits of his venture, which at one time amounted to two thousand a year. By his contemporaries Dr. Griffiths (he had some American diploma) is described as a firm friend, a lover of domestic life, a steady advocate of literature, and an excellent companion, abounding beyond most men in literary anecdote and reminiscence. Among his coadjutors at various times were Dr. Kippis, the Presbyterian editor of the second edition of the Bibliographia Britannica ; the Rev. John Langhorne, author of numerous sentimental tales and poems ; the Rev. William Ludlam, a distinguished mathematician ; James Ralph, a miscellaneous writer, now chiefly remembered as the author of an attack upon the Dunciad^ and the subject of a brilliant riposte in the second edition of that satire ; Sir John Hawkins, the musical historian; Dr. Aiken, brother of Mrs. Barbauld, and Dr. Rose, who kept a school at Chiswick, and translated the classics after the manner of his kind. While wading through the reviews of dead histories, forgotten travels, exploded scientific theories, and ob- solete theological doctrines that fill the pages of the early volumes of the Monthly ^ the reader is occasionally rewarded for his pains by stumbling upon the first notice of some immortal work, whose title gleams from out the page like a jewel shining out of a heap of mud. Thus, hidden away in the catalogue of current literature for February 175 1, we come upon the announcement: ^^ Elegy in a Country Churchyard, 152 THE "MONTHLY REVIEW" Dodsley. 6d. The excellence of this little piece amply compensates for its want of quantity." With these few words of patronising praise was a deathless masterpiece launched into the world by the self- appointed guides of literary taste. In the same year we have the first mention of two classic novels, Smollett's Peregrine Pickle and Fielding's Amelia, Before dealing with the former, the reviewer comments upon the melancholy fact that " Serious and useful works are scarce read, and hardly anything of morality goes down unless ticketed with the label of amusement. Thence that flood of novels, tales, romances, and other monsters of the imagination, imitated from the French, whose literary levity we have not been ashamed to adopt." He approves of the biographical form of fiction used by Fielding and Smollett, but censures both writers for their choice of characters — highwaymen, ostlers, bailifls, innkeepers, and the like — which, " how- ever exact copies of nature, are chosen in too low and disgustful a range of it, and too long dwelt upon." Even the irreproachable Sir Charles Grandison^ which convulsed the novel-reading world in 1753, is only allowed a small-type paragraph in the rubbish-heap of " Current Literature." " We have read Sir Charles Grandison with alternate pleasure, and disgust," observes the reviewer. "With pleasure, from the great good sense of the author, his many excellent sentiments and moral reflections; with disgust, from the absurdity of a scheme that supposes a set of people devoting almost their whole time to letter- scribbling — from the author's continued trifling with the patience of his readers, by his extreme verbosity THE "MONTHLY REVIEW" 153 throughout the work — from the studied formality in his method, the frequent affectation in his language, and the inconsistency of some of the persons in his drama." So much for Richardson ! It was probably owing to the fact that Mrs. Griffiths was a lady of literary tastes that the Monthly Reviewers displayed a quite abnormal gallantry towards what they called "the Fair,*' even when the Fair persistently appeared in blue-stockings. There are numerous notices to the effect that " This work is written by a Lady; consequently not the object of severe criticism " ; or, " Many circumstances entitle the softer sex to a more delicate treatment than our own, and therefore it is always with tenderness that we look upon the productions of a female pen/' As the staff obviously intended to propitiate the editor's wife by these remarks, it is to be hoped that Mrs. Griffiths did not perceive the intellectual insults underlying such professedly chivalrous protestations. The favour shown by otherwise flinty-hearted reviewers to the productions of a " female pen " naturally led to a large number of novels being issued with the words, "By a Lady," or "By a Young Lady; being her first Literary Attempt," upon the title-page. Dealing with one of these avowedly feminine romances, the critic declares that he has too high an opinion of the sex to believe that any woman who could write at all would ever write anything so dull and insipid. " A female author," he asserts, "is generally a wit, and sure to produce lively and sprightly, if not very solid, things." After pointing to the productions of Mrs. Aphra Behn, Mrs. Pilkington, and others, he continues: "In short, 'tis 154 THE "MONTHLY REVIEW 55 needless to mention more instances to prove how well the ladies are qualified to shine in the republic of letters when their natural tastes are cultivated ; the difficulty in truth would be to find a bad book, especially a dull book, written by a woman. Dulness is the peculiar mark of the male scribbler." In January 1756 the Monthly Review was confronted with a powerful rival in the shape of the Critical Review^ started by a Scotch printer named Archibald Hamilton, under the editorship of the redoubtable Dr. Smollett, who was assisted in his labours by a " Society of Gentle- men." The new-comer, thanks to its slashing style and the merciless fashion in which it trampled on its victims, speedily got itself into hot water. Authors who should have been crushed flat had an objectionable habit of retaliating upon their critics in impertinent pamphlets, or else through the medium of advertisements in the daily papers, for which privilege they paid the modest sum of two shillings. As a specimen of the Critical Reviewers^ style and taste, we may quote their observa- tion in the number for October 1756, that "The season is now advancing when that dung-hill the town never fails to produce an innumerable quantity of literary mushrooms^ which spring up one day and decay the next. Novels generally usher in the Winter, as snow- drops do the Springy and like them^ have little beauty to recommend them, besides early appearance." It need scarcely be said that there was no love lost between the gentlemen of the Monthly and the gentle- men of the Critical Reviews^ and although they were frequently bracketed together in the attacks of vindictive scribblers, it does not appear that they ever made THE "MONTHLY REVIEW" 155 common cause against the enemy. Dr. Griffiths publicly stated that the staff of the Critical was composed of " Physicians without practice, authors without learning, men without decency, and critics without judgment " ; while Smollett retorted that his Review at least was not conducted by " a parcel of obscure hirelings under the restraint of a bookseller and his wife, who presume to revise, alter, and amend the articles." Mrs. Griffiths is more particularly described in language, now happily obsolete among gentlemen of the press, as " an antiquated Sappho, or rather a Pope Joan in taste and literature, pregnant with abuse, begot by rancour, under the canopy of ignorance ! " Dr. Johnson, it will be remembered, in his famous interview with George III., gave his own personal — and not unprejudiced — opinion of the distinctive qualities of the two Reviews. "The King asked him," relates Boswell, "if there were any other literary journals published in this kingdom except the Monthly and the Critical Reviews ; and on being answered there was no other. His Majesty asked which of them was the best. Johnson answered that the Monthly Review was done with the most care, the Critical upon the best principles ; adding that the authors of the Monthly Review were enemies to the Church. This the King said he was sorry to hear." Johnson's statement was founded on the fact that the Monthly was conducted on Whig principles and coloured by the Nonconformist sympathies of its editor ; while the Critical was professedly Tory (though Smollett frequently attacked both Ministry and Opposition) and supported the Anglican party in the Church, The Monthly^ however, to its credit be it said, 156 THE "MONTHLY REVIEW 3> showed but little party prejudice, and indeed ran some risk of offending its subscribers by its impartiality. In the number for May 1770 there is a notice to the effect that "In these days of civil dudgeon, it is no wonder that the moderation of the Monthly Reviewers hath drawn upon them the censure of the immoderate and uncandid persons who appear to be friends of the ins^ complaining of our partiality to the outs ; while, on the other hand, remonstrances from the outs scruple not to charge us with writing under ministerial influence." It was in the month of April 1757 that Dr. Griffiths, happening to dine with his friend Dr. Milner, who kept a school at Peckham, was much impressed by the conversation of a young Irish usher, Oliver Goldsmith by name, who, on this occasion at least, seems to have talked more like an angel than like "poor Poll." So much to the point were his remarks on the subject of the newly-started rival Review^ that Dr. Grififiths took him aside after dinner, and suggested that he should send in a few specimens of criticism to the Monthly^ in which organ it is probable that new blood was badly wanted. The specimens were duly sent in, and found so satisfactory that the usher was invited to board and lodge with Mr. and Mrs. Griffiths, and, in return for a small regular salary, to devote his whole time to the service of the Review, The offer was accepted, but the arrangement lasted no more than five months, from May to September. Goldsmith, who only wrote twelve reviews, which he afterwards refused to acknowledge, during the whole period, complained that he was under- fed and overworked, and accused the editor and his wife of tampering with his articles. Griffiths, on his side, THE "MONTHLY REVIEW" 157 declared that his assistant was idle, unpunctual, and generally impracticable. Probably both parties had some justification for their complaints. The young Irishman's Bohemian ways must have sorely aggravated the steady, industrious little printer, while Goldsmith could hardly have been expected to submit meekly to Mrs. Griffiths' emendations of his text. In December of the same year, when Goldsmith had broken off his official connection with the Monthly y he was accommodated by Dr. Griffiths with a suit of clothes, which he failed to pay for,' or to return at the stipulated time. Fierce was the wrath of the publisher at this breach of faith, and he was only pacified by an undertaking on the part of his debtor to write him a Life of Voltaire for twenty pounds, the price of the clothes to be deducted from this modest sum. In his Inquiry into the State of Polite Learning in Europe^ published in 1759, Goldsmith took the opportunity of "scoring off" his former employer. He attacked the system by which the poor author, unpatronised by the rich, became the creature of the bookseller, and had a hit at the monthly reviews and magazines, which " might be pardoned were they frothy, pert, or absurd, but which, in being dull and dronish, encroached upon the prerogative of a folio." Kenrick, the notorious libeller, who had succeeded Goldsmith on the staff of the Monthly y was employed to review his predecessor's work, which he did with so much virulence that it was thought advisable to apologise for and explain away the worst portions of his article in a subsequent number of the Review, The result of this and other quarrels was that 158 THE "MONTHLY REVIEW" Goldsmith's work was invariably underestimated by the gentlemen of the Monthly Review, When the Vicar of Wakejield appedived in 1766, the novel was only allowed a brief notice in small type, from which the first sentence may be quoted : " Through the whole course of our travels through the wild regions of romance, we never met with anything more difficult to characterise than the Vicar of Wakefield', a performance which contains beauties sufficient to entitle it to the highest applause, and defects enough to put the reader out of patience with an author so strangely capable of under- writing himself" Even less lenient treatment was meted out to She Stoops to Conquer, The reader is informed that Dr. Goldsmith's play must be considered in the light of a series of improbabilities, since most of its incidents are offences against nature. " His merit," proceeds the reviewer, "is in that sort of dialogue which lies on a level with the most common understandings, and in that low mischief and mirth which we laugh at while we despise ourselves for so doing/' Immediately after Goldsmith's death in 1774, a little catchpenny Life was published, in which it was stated that he had formerly been employed to superintend the Monthly Review, In a notice of the book. Dr. Griffiths contradicts this statement, observing that *' the Dr. had his merits as a man of letters ; but alas ! those who knew him must smile at the idea of such a superintendent of a concern which most obviously required some degree of prudence, as well as a competent acquaintance with the world. It is true that he had for a while a seat at our board ; and that so far as his knowledge of books THE "MONTHLY REVIEW" 159 extended, he was not an unuseful assistant." Poor Goldy ! Probably he had no more suspicion than his employer that in time to come one of the Monthly Review's chief claims to remembrance would lie in its brief connection with a " not unuseful assistant." The gentlemen of the Monthly^ having once begun to "feel their feet," presently adopted what Sir Walter Scott would have called the " big bow-wow " style of criticism, and set themselves up as popes of literature, against whose infallible decrees it was blasphemous to protest. They would have held, with Longfellow, that the critic is "a sentinel in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews to challenge every new author," rather than with Bacon, that he is a " brusher of noblemen's clothes." It must be admitted that they took their profession seriously, and prided themselves upon being at once the leaders of the public taste, the guardians of the public morals, and the custodians of the best traditions of English literature. That arch-critic, Jeffrey, even in his most bumptious days, scarcely attained to the calm arrogance of an anonymous gentleman on the Monthly ^ who, in replying to the attack of an aggrieved author, explains that "the design of our work is mistaken by such as suppose it to be the business of the reviewers to set every wrong-headed author right. They think it in general sufficient that they point out the principal defects in the performance of such mistaken writers, who would do well, instead of persisting in their errors, and growing impatient under well-meant reproof, to submit with patience, and profit by just correction." The contributors to the Critical^ while equally convinced of 160 THE "MONTHLY REVIEW their infallibility, stood less upon their dignity, and frequently condescended to bandy insults with their foes. On one occasion, after defending themselves against an onslaught in the Gentleman*s Magazine, they conclude, " Tho* the authors of the Critical Review have thus deigned for once to expose the nakedness and futility of their antagonists, they will not for the future take up the cudgels against every desperate witling or furious lunatic who can afford to pay two shillings for an advertisement fraught with nonsense and scurrility ; nor will they stoop so far below themselves as to maintain dispute or altercation with any low-bred, pedantic Syntax - monger, retained as servant or associate by any bookseller or bookseller's wife, who may have an interest in decrying their performance." It is to be feared that no one ever was quite so moral as these eighteenth - century critics professed to be. The theory of " Art for Art's sake " had not yet been evolved, " Morality for Morality's sake " being the unwritten motto of the reviewers. In the course of a notice of a feeble but well-intentioned romance, a writer in the Monthly observes that, "where a performance discovers internal marks that it was the principal intention of the writer to promote virtue and good manners, we do not think ourselves at liberty to speak of it in that pert and flippant manner which those who pride themselves upon their critical skill sometimes do." If the virtuous were thus encouraged, the evil-doers were warned and exhorted in no uncertain tones. When Sterne published his Sermons with the words ** By Mr.Yorick " on the title-page, our moral friends thought that it became them to make strong animadversions on this method THE -MONTHLY REVIEW" 161 of advertisement, which they considered "the greatest outrage upon sense and decency that has been offered since the first establishment of Christianity — an outrage which would scarce have been tolerated even in the days of Paganism ! " John Wesley comes off no better than poor Yorick. In a notice of his famous Hymnal, the reviewer declares that " the irreverent treatment which the Bible continually meets with in this Protestant Country from the swarms of Hackney commentators, expositors, and enthusiasic hymn-makers, would almost provoke the rational Christian to applaud even the Church of Rome for the care she has taken to preserve it from vulgar profanation." In their capacity of sentinels in the grand army of letters, the Monthly critics challenged not only new authors, but new words and phrases, before they would admit them into the citadel of letters. Thus, in an article on Goldsmith's Life of Bolingbroke the reviewer observes that he wishes to take the opportunity of exposing " that false, futile, and slovenly style which, to the utter neglect of grammatical precision and purity, disgraces so many of our modern compositions." He proceeds to quote no less than eighteen specimens of " false language " from Goldsmith's no doubt hastily written work. With regard to new words we find a reviewer remarking, d propos of Sterne's Sentimental fourney^ and the host of imitations to which it gave rise, " The word sentimental is, like continental, a barbarism that has lately disgraced our language, and it is not always easy to conceive what is meant by it." As early as 1749 Lady Bradshaigh had written to Richardson to ask him the meaning of the word " sentimental," so II 162 THE "MONTHLY REVIEW" much used by the polite. " Everything ckver and agreeable is comprehended in that word," she observes, "but I am convinced a wrong interpretation is given, because it is impossible that everything clever and agreeable can be so common as this word." The most frequent complaint with the reviewers is to the effect that their table is groaning beneath " the load of vile romances that almost daily crawl from the press," while even their tenderness towards the female pen is forgotten in view of their apprehension lest " our very cook-maids should be infected with the Cacoethes scribendi and think themselves above the vulgar employment of mixing a pudding or rolling a pye- crust." Yet there seems to have been but slight foundation for their complaints, since it is seldom that more than two novels are noticed in one month's number, and often three or four months go by without any mention of a work of fiction. The modern critic would hold himself blessed indeed if he were permitted to polish off the accumulations of romance in the summary fashion adopted by his eighteenth - century prototypes. In a contemporary skit called the Battle of the Reviews it was stated that a member of the Monthly staff had invented a wooden machine in which all the novels, poetry, and other unread publications were placed. When the handle was turned, a number of brief paragraphs were ground out, signifying that the subjects under consideration were "d d stuff," " impertinent trifles," or " stupid nonsense." Frequently, when dealing with works of imagination, the re- viewers so far forgot the dignity of their calling as to indulge in a species of elephantine humour, of which THE "MONTHLY REVIEW" 163 the following may be quoted as a not unfavourable sample : — " The History of Lord Clayton and Miss Meredith. Ill-imagined, ill-written, ill-printed, and — the author will probably add — very ill-reviewed!' The standard of fiction fell so low during the later years of the century that it is hardly surprising that Evelina^ on its appearance in 1778, should have been warmly welcomed by the critics. The Monthly Reviewer pronounced it " one of the most sprightly, entertaining, and agreeable productions of this kind which has of late fallen under our notice." He is even more enthusiastic on the subject of Cecilia^ in which he sees much of the pathos and dignity of Richardson and much of the acuteness and ingenuity of Fielding, while the style appears to him to have been formed on the best model of Dr. Johnson's. He thinks it necessary to add that he is wholly unconnected with the author, because it has been publicly intimated that he had depreciated the writings of Miss Blower in order to enhance those of Miss Burney. Poor Miss Blower was the author of George BatemaUy published in the same year as Evelina^ and other long-forgotten novels. The only kind of poetry that received the ungrudging applause of the reviewers was that wherein harmonious versification was combined with correct imagery and pleasing sentiments. Novelty of expression invariably puzzled the critics, while originality of thought positively enraged them. Hence their chief praises were reserved for such blameless bards as Beattie and Hayley, while they were roused to positive enthusiasm by three female minstrels, Mrs. "Epictetus" Carter, Miss Aikin (after- 164 THE "MONTHLY REVIEW" wards Mrs. Barbauld), and Hannah More. " In all Mrs. Carter's poems," we are assured, "there is that fine sensibility, serene dignity, and lofty imagination that characterise the writings of the divine philosopher. Her style is perfectly Horatian, elegantly polished and harmoniously easy." While the ingenious translator of Epictetus is thus compared to Plato and Horace, the critic perceives in Miss Aikin's pieces "a justness of thought and vigour of expression inferior only to the works of Milton and Shakespeare." With Hannah More's early tragedy, the Inflexible Captive^ this literary expert is so enchanted that, unable to express his feelings in plain prose, he bursts forth into the following poetic strains : — *' To Greece no more the tuneful minds belong, Nor the high honours of immortal song ; To More, Brooke,^ Lennox,^ Aikin, Carter due, To Greville, Griffith, » Whateley, Montague ! Theirs the strong genius, theirs the voice divine ; And favouring Phoebus owns the British NineJ*^ In view of the intellectual infallibility to which the eighteenth-century reviewers laid claim, it is passing strange that they should invariably have been the dupes of literary deceptions, even of the most transparent kind. It was natural, perhaps, that they, in company with many other wiseacres, should have believed in the authenticity of Macpherson's " Ossian " poems ; but it is difficult to understand how any qualified critic could ^ Frances Brooke (i 724-1 789), author of Lady Julia MandevilU^ etc. 3 Charlotte Lennox (1720- 1804), author of the Female Quixote, etc. 8 Elizabeth Griffith (i 720-1 793), published with her husband the Genuine Letters of Henry and Francesca, THE "MONTHLY REVIEW" 165 be deceived for a moment by the pseudo-Gothic style of the Castle of Otranto, The first edition of Walpole's romance, which appeared in 1755, bore upon the title- page the name of William Marshall, Gent., who was supposed to have translated the work from an Italian manuscript of the eleventh or twelfth century. The Monthly Reviewer dLtmonncQS that the book was written by no common pen (which was certainly true), that the char- acters are highly finished, the period considered, and that the language is accurate and elegant. When, a few weeks later, a second edition appeared in all the pomp and apparel of Strawberry Hill, with the initials '* H. W. " on the title-page, the Monthly changes its tone, and expresses a somewhat acrid surprise that " an author of refined and polished genius should be an advocate for re-establishing the barbarous superstitions of Gothic devilism.*' On the first appearance of Chatterton's " Rowley " poems, the learned Dr. Griffiths was inclined to doubt their authen- ticity, but on receiving communications from many re- spectable gentlemen at Bristol, one and all attesting the genuineness of Chatterton's "discoveries," he commits himself to the statement that "these poems are un- doubtedly the original productions of Rowley, with many alterations and additions by Chatterton." The Critical Review brought its somewhat chequered career to an end in 1791. The first series of the Monthly Review consisted of eighty-one volumes, and ran from 1749 to 1790. In the latter year a second and enlarged series was started, which, under the editorship of Ralph Griffiths the younger, was continued down to 1825. Dr. Griffiths, who kept a nominal control over the Review till his death in 1803, was closely connected 166 THE "MONTHLY REVIEW" in his later years with the Enfields, Aikins, and other literary members of the Unitarian body. Dr. Enfield was the first critic to discover the merits of Samuel Rogers* early poems, which he praised in the pages of the Monthly, Rogers has left on record that when dining at Dilly's in 1792, with Parr, Cumberland, and others, the conversation turned on Ralph Griffiths, who was said to receive two guineas the printed sheet for editing the Monthly Review, Cumberland said that he did not envy him his place, and compared him to the keeper of a bridewell. Cumberland himself, as Rogers comments, had often found it a house of correction. In 1825 Griffiths the younger sold the Review^ which, in fresh hands, seems to have entered upon a new lease of life, in spite of the powerful opposition of those young giants, the Edinburgh and the Quarterly. It was not until 1845 that it finally expired, probably of senile decay, after a more or less successful career of ninety- six years. LONDON THROUGH FRENCH EYE-GLASSES js*;" 167 I ^. c 'A O V X O O o LONDON THROUGH FRENCH EYE-GLASSES IT has been said that the verdict of foreigners is equivalent to that of contemporary posterity. How- ever this may be in our own day, when so many of our insular angularities have been rubbed off, and when free trade has been established in national cus- toms, it is probable that in the eighteenth century the French regarded the English from much the same point of view as posterity; that is to say, with the half- envious, half- disapproving, wholly puzzled criticism with which we are apt to regard the robustious heroes and sentimental heroines of the early Georgian period. When George III. was young, we were still, in our neighbours' eyes, the half-savage islanders whom Roman rule and Norman rule alike had failed to civilise, while our barbarous eccentricities presented a fine field for observation and criticism to the learned traveller, who, notebook in hand, braved the perils of a Channel passage. Two of the most distinguished French tourists who invaded Britain in the middle years of the eighteenth century were Madame du Boccage and M. Grosley. The former was born at Rouen in 17 lO, and won her literary laurels with an imitation of Paradise Losty a 160 170 LONDON THROUGH tragedy, and an ambitious poem in ten cantos called La Columhiade, She was admitted a member of numerous learned societies, was a friend of Voltaire's and a protigde of Fontenelle's. M. du Boccage, a receveur de tallies at Dieppe, occupied his leisure with a study of the English tongue, and published a volume of translations from English prose and verse. In the spring of 1750 the couple spent a few weeks in London, during which period the lady wrote regularly to her sister, describing her novel experiences. These letters, which are quite simple and unpretentious in style, were published in 1770, and greatly enhanced the reputation that she had gained by her laboured and artificial poetry. M. Pierre Grosley was a lawyer and litterateur of Troyes, in which city he was born in 17 18. Several volumes upon the antiquities of his birthplace, and an account of a journey to Italy, made his literary reputation, and obtained for him the distinction of being chosen an associate of the Academic des In- scriptions et Belles Lettres at Paris. In the spring of 1765 he spent six weeks in London, and his ex- periences, although he understood not a word of English, furnished him with the materials for an ex- haustive work upon the capital of Great Britain, which was published in 1790. In the midst of a great deal of chaff, consisting of classical quotations, annotations, and irrelevant digressions, there is a modicum of good grain in the shape of minute observations and graphic descriptions — sometimes based on misapprehensions — from which the modern reader may glean a fairly accurate idea of eighteenth - century London as it appeared in the eyes of contemporary posterity. FRENCH EYE-GLASSES 171 Before dealing with the works of these bond fide travellers it may be worth while to give a glance at a curious little book called the Savages of Europe, an English translation of a French work, published in 1764. It was thought important enough, the trans- lator tells us, to be sent to Havana and other Spanish dominions during the war, but after the peace was signed it was difficult to obtain in Paris, almost all the copies having been bought up by the Govern- ment.i The writer showed some not inconsiderable acquaintance with England and English laws, but he ignored the passing of the Marriage Act, supposed that Catholic priests were actually hanged when convicted of performing the rites of their Church, because the law said that they might be hanged, and repeated the usual lies about the treatment of French prisoners in England. On the last-named subject, observes the translator, if an Englishman were to read the infamous falsehoods published in every political pamphlet in France and Flanders during the late war, he would not wonder at our author insisting on so popular though so false a prejudice. The story deals with the adventures of a young French couple who, not being allowed to marry by their family, elope to England, the land of liberty, as they fondly believe, where they hope to find a priest willing to marry them. On the voyage they make the acquaintance of an old Chinese philosopher whose mission in life it is to civilise barbarous nations, and who is now on his way to Britain for the purpose of civilis- ^ A copy of this scarce book, which has some quaint illustrations, is in the Print Room at the British Museum. 172 LONDON THROUGH ing the savage English. The lovers refuse to believe in his account of British barbarity, and ask indignantly, " Are not the novels of their Fielding and their Richard- son replete with sentiments of politeness? Do they not breathe that humanity and all those virtues which distinguish these islanders?" Alas, for all their fond illusions ! On arriving at Dover the first sight that met their eyes was a heap of miserable wretches, tied neck and heel, who were being plundered by the natives. These proved to be some French prisoners of war, who were presently dragged away to noisome dungeons, where a few morsels of unwholesome food were occasionally flung to them by their savage keepers. The young Frenchman, Delouaville, tries to interfere between the prisoners and their captors, with the re- sults that he, his lady-love, Cecilia, and the Chinese philosopher, are all lodged in gaol. Being rescued by the Dutch sailors belonging to their ship, they at last set out for London, hoping to find that the capital is more civilised than the seaport. On arriving in town, the travellers alight at a gloomy inn, in which a party of smokers are sullenly drinking a dusky liquor, and others are devouring slices of half-raw beef, without the accompaniment of any bread. Wishing to divert themselves after all their troubles, they attend a theatre, where, instead of the fine spectacle they anticipated, they are regaled with the sight of half- naked men armed with cutlasses, who, to the exquisite joy of the audience, fight until one is killed and the other carried off covered with wounds. The trio now resolve to return to France as soon as Cecilia has recovered from her fatigues and alarms. FRENCH EYE-GLASSES 173 Meanwhile Delouaville and his Chinese friend visit a coffee-house, where they enter into conversation with an Englishman, who must have been one of the progenitors of our modern pro-Boers. He joins the foreigners in bewailing the brutality of the English mob, and makes but the feeblest attempt to defend his countrymen from the charges of lawlessness, irre- ligion, and inhumanity levelled against them. In the course of the discussion Delouaville observes that " the whole world would be too happy if the English were no more than uncivilised ; but if we only call to mind all those virtues of which they are ignorant, and all those vices which they possess, the sum total will be that they are not only savages, but savages of the most barbarous caste." The Englishman meekly re- sponds, " How shall I answer reproaches which have but too just a foundation ? . . . Our neighbours the French might indeed be of the greatest service to us, by inspir- ing us with that spirit of society which alone makes life agreeable ; but we make it a duty to hate them, and so long as we do hate them, we shall continue savages." The troubles of the civilised foreigners increase from day to day. Delouaville is entrapped into a Fleet marriage by a girl with whom he has a passing flirtation, while Cecilia is carried off by the infuriated father of her lover's undesired wife. Then follows a blood-curdling series of violence, stabbing, suicide, and the holocaust of a whole family, from which Cecilia escapes, dangerously wounded, to find the unfortunate Delouaville also at death's door. The pair are tended in their distress by a worthy Catholic priest, who is dragged away to prison and subsequently hanged 174 LONDON THROUGH for the crime of having administered the rites of his religion. The Chinese philosopher, who is also suspected of being a Catholic, only escapes the same fate by addressing a rationalistic speech to the mob. As soon as he has been rescued from the gallows, the foreigners shake off the dust of perfidious Albion from their shoes, and return to France, " making firm but unnecessary protestations of never revisiting the abominable asylum of the Savages of Europe." Turning from fiction to reality, we find less prejudice but scarcely more trustworthy knowledge of the actual life and customs of the British nation. M. Grosley evidently aims at impartiality, while Madame du Boccage seems to be actually on the lookout for subjects of admiration during her stay in the English capital. The former sailed from Boulogne on Saturday, the nth of April 1765, and after a long and stormy voyage arrived at Dover, which he found crowded with Frenchmen who had been detained by stress of weather. He could get nothing to eat at his inn, he tells us, except beef-steaks, and he was obliged to go into the kitchen and take them off the coals for himself. His bill was double what it ought to have been, because an elderly Englishwoman and her amiable daughter, with whom he had travelled from Boulogne, contrived in concert with an old Irish officer that M. Grosley should pay a part of their expenses. This incident, which reads like a bit out of one of Thackeray's novels, our author mentions in order to observe, to the honour of the English, that it was the only trick ever put upon him in the kingdom ! In consequence of the great multitude of travellers, FRENCH EYE-GLASSES 175 the law forbidding public conveyances to travel on Sundays was relaxed, and accordingly M. Grosley was able to set out early next morning in a " flying machine," drawn by six horses, which carried him to town for the moderate sum of one guinea. Sunday travelling had its advantages in those days, for no highwaymen were to be seen, except those who were dangling, fully dressed and with wigs on their heads, from the gibbets at the wayside. Custom-house officers were also making holiday, and the coachman and postilions were in high good-humour over the casks of brandy which they were able to drop, free of duty, at the inns along the road. The coach entered London by way of Westminster towards the close of day, when the lamps were already lighted upon Westminster Bridge and in the neighbouring streets. "These streets," writes M. Grosley, "are broad, regular, and lined with high houses, forming the most beautiful quarter of London. The river covered with boats, the bridge and streets filled with coaches, and the broad footpaths crowded with people, offered to my eye such a sight as Paris would present if I were to enter it by the finest streets of the Faubourg St. Germain or of the Place Venddme, supposing that quarter to be as much frequented by the common people as by persons of quality." The traveller found a lodging near Leicester Fields in the house of a Frenchman who held some post in the royal kitchen. For his apartment of two slightly furnished rooms he paid a guinea a week, which was considered a very reasonable price. The landlord spoke French and English equally well, and thus could be of great service to his lodger, who made no attempt 176 LONDON THROUGH to learn the barbarous British tongue, holding that "no man of sense meddles with languages after forty." The morning after his arrival, having carefully studied the map of London, M. Grosley ventured alone on foot through the streets of the capital. Along the Oxford Road and Holborn to St. Paul's and the Royal Exchange, across London Bridge, through Southwark and home by Westminster — this constituted his first itinerary, and he prides himself, not without reason, on having only once gone out of his way. Except for the new quarter lately built, he thought the city contained but little to gratify the eye, and that little it owed to the river. " I have said that the Thames flows alongside London," he writes, " for opposite to Westminster it has only the country, in which are scattered up and down pleasure-houses and agreeable gardens, the number of which increases every day. Opposite it, London has only Southwark, a quarter of the town ill-built, and almost entirely occupied by tanners and weavers." He was quite distressed by the neglect with which the natural advantages of the river had been treated. London Bridge should, he thought, be replaced by a bridge of boats like that at Rouen, so that large ships could sail up the stream as far as Whitehall, where the port of London should be situated. " The spacious canal formed by the Thames might," he urges, "present us with as noble and striking an object as the great canal of Venice ; but the banks of the Thames are occupied by tanners, dyers, and other manufacturers, who there have an opportunity of easily supplying themselves with water. The streets where these manufactures are carried on are the dirtiest in FRENCH EYE-GLASSES 177 the city; the bridges have no prospect of the river except through a balustrade of stone, with a rail of modillions three feet high. ... In a word, in the first excursion which I made, in order to take a survey of London, I could not have a full view of the Thames, either on the side of the city or on that of South- wark, unless I entered the houses and manufactories which stand close to the river. The reason which some assign for this is the natural bent of the English, and in particular the people of London, to- wards suicide." For the narrow streets and irregular buildings of what he calls " Old London," M. Grosley had a proper eighteenth-century contempt. Walking in this quarter was, he tells us, extremely unpleasant, and driving practically impossible. The middle of the Strand was constantly foul with a puddle three or four inches in depth, whose splashings covered the foot-passengers, filled coaches when the windows were down, and bedaubed the lower parts of the houses. The English, however, were not afraid of the dirt, being defended from it by their wigs of brown hair, their black stockings, and blue surtouts, made in the form of night-gowns. The pavement was composed of round stones, just as they were brought from the quarry, which rolled loosely about in a bottom of old mud. Madame du Boccage, writing fifteen years earlier, gave precisely the same account of the London pavements, with the added information that the nuisance was partly due to the necessity for frequently breaking up the streets in order to mend the pipes that conveyed water to the houses. Our forefathers were at least happy in that they had 12 178 LONDON THROUGH no gas-pipes or telephones to afford additional excuses for street- wrecking. In M. Grosley's time the principal streets of the new quarters were already paved with freestone, which was brought to London at vast expense, and, a few years later, this system of paving was extended to the chief thoroughfares of the old town. Both travellers seem to have been equally impressed by the admirable organisation of the London traffic, and by the powers of self-control exhibited by the drivers. Though slow and cumbrous waggons were continually going through the most crowded streets on their way to the wharves or the Custom House, they never occasioned any disturbance, but proceeded in two files, moving in contrary directions, the slowest setting the pace, and the finest carriages in London falling into line with the rest. If the occupants were in a hurry, they got out and finished their journey on foot. "You are well acquainted," writes Madame du Boccage to her sister, " with the disturbances which our coachmen make when they fall foul of each other. Such accidents often happen in the narrowest streets of London ; but upon such occasions the drivers come down and extricate themselves with the utmost diligence, and sometimes without uttering an unnecessary word." M. Grosley corroborates this assertion, explaining that the people of London, though haughty and ungovernable, are in themselves good-natured and humane, taking care to avoid frays, and in traffic showing the greatest readiness to turn aside, retire, or lend a hand. "Let us add, to the honour of English coachmen," he continues, " that I have seen four hundred coaches together at Ranelagh, FRENCH EYE-GLASSES 179 which placed themselves in a file, passed each other, and were always ready at the first word, without either guards or directors to keep order." The width of the new streets and the regularity of the architecture in the new quarters extorted from M. Grosley the admiration that he had withheld from the old town. The parish of St. Giles, a cluster of mean shops in the days of Swift and Pope, had already developed into an assemblage of palaces; the Oxford Road would soon see its shabby houses trans- formed into splendid mansions; and it was evident that London would presently extend as far as the rural village of Marylebone. Some twenty thousand houses had sprung up since 1750, the majority of them being built upon the model — in miniature — of Bedford House, the work of Inigo Jones. Each house- holder was obliged to furnish two oil-lamps, which were fastened to his railing, and provided sufficient light for the side-path, but left the middle of the street in obscurity. The chief inconvenience in this method of lighting arose from the fact that, "in spite of the respectful attention of the British workman to oblige the public," it was difficult for those who were daily employed in renewing the oil to prevent some of it from falling on the heads of the passers-by. The great and sudden increase of London about the middle of the eighteenth century is attributed to the extravagant passion conceived by wealthy noblemen for building houses commensurate with their position and dignity. Hitherto, they had been content to live upon their country estates, only coming up to hired apart- ments when business required their presence in town. 180 LONDON THROUGH If the present rage for building continued, M. Grosley was of opinion that by the next century London would be doubled in size, a prophecy that was more than fulfilled. Unfortunately, the new town, being situated in a rich and level plain, was always damp, and quite as dirty as the old, though attempts had been made to remedy the evil by forbidding the inhabitants to throw water out of the windows, and by employing carts to carry away the mud. The finest shops, strange to say, were to be found, not in these spacious new quarters, but in the narrow ways of Fleet Street and the purlieus of the Strand. These shops were, in our traveller's opinion, the most striking object that London could offer to the eye of a stranger. " They are all enclosed," he tells us, " with great glass doors ; all adorned on the outside with ancient pieces of architecture ; all brilliant and gay, as well on account of the things sold in them as in the exact order with which they are kept ; so that they make a most splendid show, greatly superior to anything of the kind in Paris." From M. Grosley's account of the atmosphere of London in the month of April 1765, it would appear that the nuisance of fog and smoke has diminished rather than increased with the growth of the metropolis. It must be remembered that in the eighteenth century factories were allowed to stand in the best residential neighbourhoods, while no heating apparatus was as yet in use which professed to consume its own smoke. Hence, even in April the fog, we are told, formed a cloud which enveloped London like a mantle — " a cloud which the sun pervades but rarely; a cloud which, recoiling back upon itself, suffers the sun to break out FRENCH EYE-GLASSES 181 only now and then, which casual appearance procures the Londoners a few of what they call glorious days. The great love of the English for walking defies the badness of other days. On the I2th of April St. James' Park, incessantly covered with fog, smoke, and rain, that scarce left a possibility of distinguishing objects at the distance of four paces, was filled with walkers, who were an object of musing and admiration to me during that whole day. . . . The vapours with which the atmo- sphere is loaded drag with them in their fall the heaviest particles of smoke ; this forms black rains, and produces all the ill effects which may be justly expected from it upon the clothes of those who may be exposed to it. Their effect is the more certain and unavoidable as it is the rule with the people of London not to use, or to suffer foreigners to use, our umbrellas of waxed silk or taffeta. For this reason London swarms with the shops of the scourers, busied in scouring, repairing, and new- furbishing the clothes that are smoked in this manner." If M. Grosley was severe upon our atmosphere, he went to the other extreme in his account of our municipal administration and civic virtues. London, he says, differed in nothing so much from Paris as in its system of police. Though said to be swarming with pickpockets, it had neither troops, patrol, nor regular watch, being guarded during the night only by old men chosen from among the dregs of the people, and unarmed except for a lanthorn and a pole. Yet London, he asserts, was the only great city in the world in which neither murders nor assassinations happened — a statement which seems to have been based on the author's own personal experience. He had never seen an assassination in 182 LONDON THROUGH London, and therefore — though such crimes do not usually take place in public — he convinced himself that none was committed. Of the honesty of the "people he was equally satisfied : in the first place, because he saw empty pewter pots confidingly left outside the houses for the publicans' boys to collect ; and in the second, because he twice went to sleep in a public resort without finding that he had been robbed on awaking. On one of these occasions a pleasant little adventure befell him, the account of which is worth quoting in his own words, " Happening to be in Kensington Gardens, and having turned to the sun one of those boxes which are scattered up and down the grass-plots, and move upon pivots, I gave way to sleep; but my awakening was attended with the most agreeable surprise imaginable. The box was taken by a company of handsome young women, who had kept the most profound silence. For this they now indemnified themselves by entering into a very gay chat with me, which lasted as long as could be expected between persons who did not rightly understand each other. My book, which I was looking for, was in the hands of one of the handsomest of them, who gave me leave to testify my gratitude with a kiss. This is the only theft to which my want of precaution against pick- pockets exposed me/' The police, we are assured, was relieved of its chief cares by the institution of the poor-rate, which had cleared the streets of beggars. Owing to the immense sums raised by this rate (more than three and a half millions) there were but few poor persons in London as compared with other great cities. The citizens of the u H O ■A O o c/5 FRENCH EYE-GLASSES 183 lower sort paid the tax cheerfully, looking upon it as a fund, the interest of which was secured to their widows and children. Some dishonest persons, it was admitted, enriched themselves by its manipulation, and the House of Lords had taken into consideration a Bill for the establishment of a central office, in order that the rate should be collected, divided, and distributed by a general administration instead of by each parish individually. The Bill was dropped after some discussion, and jobbery continued to flourish ; notwithstanding which our friendly and only too optimistic critic regarded the poor-rate as the noblest method by which an opulent people could derive honour from their wealth. If there were comparatively few persons actually destitute in London, the working classes were not so prosperous as might have been expected, considering the high rate of their wages. Although they were as regular in their morals and conduct as Parisians were the reverse, they were obliged, in consequence of heavy taxes and the extreme dearness of all provisions, to live in the same hand-to-mouth fashion as the worst-paid labourers of other countries. According to M. Grosley, bread in 1765 was twopence halfpenny a pound, coarse meat fourpence halfpenny, roasting beef ninepence, bacon tenpence, and butter elevenpence a pound. At this time great discontent had been excited among the people by the high price of corn ; but the only measure taken by the Government to remedy the evil was to lay an embargo on the exportation of English corn, and to allow the free importation of foreign corn during a period of three months. The labouring classes are described as being so independent of spirit that nothing short of sheer 184 LONDON THROUGH necessity would induce them to work. When driven by actual want, they attacked their tasks like madmen ; choosing rather to toil with all their might, and to rest themselves from time to time, than to pass a whole day gently and easily in their employment. " The perfection of handicraft and the love of liberty in the lowest class of artificers,*' continues M. Grosley, " contribute equally to render English manufactures very dear. In vain has the State attempted to diminish this excessive dearness by laying such heavy taxes as render it impossible for them to have money beforehand : they enter into associations, they refuse to work, they revolt and obtain an increase of their wages when the latter become insufficient to enable them to live as usual ; and this is always a great burden on trade." The commercial and professional classes of England took life very easily at this period, if our informant may be believed. The merchant rose late and passed an hour at home, drinking tea with his family. At ten he went to the coffee-house for another hour, after which he returned home again, or met people on business, and at two o*clock he went on 'Change. On his return he lounged at the coffee-house till four, his dinner-hour. Dinner concluded his working day, the evening being passed at social clubs or in country excursions. Even the bankers, who had most business on their hands, did not confine themselves constantly to their counting- houses, except on the two foreign post-days. " The idle time which this procures them amazed me at first," writes the traveller, " but my surprise ceased when I was given to understand that they by no means keep the same number of books as the French and Italian FRENCH EYE-GLASSES 185 merchants. As they enter upon their business with that spirit of order and regularity which characterises their nation, simple minutes sufficiently enable them to transact the most important concerns." The middle- class paterfamilias^ though he conducted his affairs in this airy fashion, had by no means an economical house- hold to maintain, if we may judge by the sums paid for house-rent and servants' wages. An ignorant, country girl, who could only sweep and scour, was paid six guineas a year, with an extra guinea for her tea, while a cook-maid who knew how to roast and boil commanded twenty guineas a year. For a medium-sized house in the neighbourhood of Leicester Fields, the rent was thirty-eight guineas a year, to which was added a guinea for water, two guineas for poor-rate, and three guineas for the window-tax. M. Grosley was no great admirer of our English dietary. The bread he describes as good and fine, but, like the author of the Savages of Europe^ he evidently thought that the English ate far too little of it in pro- portion to their consumption of animal food. " The butter and tea which Londoners live on from morning till three or four o'clock in the afternoon," he observes, " occasion the chief consumption of bread, which is cut in slices, and so thin that it does as much honour to the address of the person that cuts it as to the sharpness of the knife. Two or three of these slices furnish out a breakfast. They are no less sparing in their other meals ; what would be scarce enough for a Frenchman of ordinary appetite would suffice three hungry English- men." This observation is curious in view of the contempt with which the typical John Bull has always regarded 186 LONDON THROUGH what he believed to be the typical French fare of frogs* legs and soup maigre, Madame du Boccage, however, alluding to the little bits of biscuit, like consecrated cakes, that were served with cherry wine at London parties, says, " The share of six persons would hardly satisfy mer M. Grosley found that the much-vaunted beef of England was no better than that of France, except in being more easily chewed and digested, while the mutton had nothing to recommend it but its fat, and the fowls were soft and flabby. The garden stuffs were very dear, and all that grew near London were impregnated with smoke. The water, brought from the Thames, was indifferent, and the wine quite undrinkable. "With regard to red wines," he explains, " I was informed by a vintner, a master of his business, that the country people gather sloes and blackberries in the hedges round London, which they publicly sell to the wine-merchants ; that many of these merchants have brambles and wild shrubs in the country which bear fruits of this sort, and when they are ripe the vintage commences in London ; that is to say, the wines then begin to be brewed, the chief ingredient in which is the juice of turnips boiled to a total dissolution. This juice, mixed with that of wild fruit, with beer and litharge, after a slight fermentation produces the port wine drunk at taverns and places of public diversion in and about London." Madame du Boccage, it may be noted, is much more complimentary than her compatriot towards our food and drink. She soon reconciled herself, she tells her sister, to the simple cookery of the English, to their fowls with buttered sauce, their inevitable plum puddings, and the great FRENCH EYE-GLASSES 187 crabs and lobsters that were served up as aids to the digestion ! Our home-made cherry wine she likens to Burgundy, and as for tea, " you must understand," she writes, " that there is no good tea to be had anywhere but in London." M. Grosley seems to have seen but little of English society, except under its more public aspect, as at Ranelagh and Vauxhall, or at the social clubs, which were then supported not only by every class, but by every clique. At the dining-clubs he found that public affairs formed the chief topic, gay and pleasant con- versation being unknown in these societies. At the numerous gaming-clubs play was very deep, and pro- portionately absorbing. At one of these clubs a new dish had recently been invented which has retained its popularity down to our own times, and has even been received with favour in continental circles. "A Minister of State," so runs M. Grosley's version of the story, "had recently passed twenty-four hours at a gaming table, so absorbed in play that during the whole time he took no sustenance except a bit of beef between two slices of toasted bread. This dish grew highly in vogue during my stay in London ; it was called by the name of the minister who invented it." This anecdote enables us to date, with tolerable accuracy, the invention of the necessary and generally harmless sandwich. If the men had their dining and gambling clubs, the ladies were not without their coteries, at which they too talked chiefly of politics. The learned Frenchman approved of the interest shown by Englishwomen in national affairs, which, he considered, gave a new pleasure to social life. Their husbands, moreover, 188 LONDON THROUGH always found someone at home to whom they could open their minds, and converse as long and earnestly as they pleased on those subjects which they had most at heart. All appearance of intimacy between the sexes, however, was dropped in public places, play being the only thing that ever united them. If they met merely for social purposes, the women placed them- selves near the door, and left the upper end of the apartment and all the conversation to the men. From this account it may be inferred that M. Grosley associated chiefly with the middle-class families that inhabited the neighbourhood of Leicester Fields. Madame du Boccage tells a very different story when she describes the delightful fetes she attended in London, and especially the breakfasts given by Mrs. Montagu in a room "lined with the painted paper of Pekin and furnished with the choicest movables of China." It is certain that the Queen of the Blue- stockings would not have been content to leave all the conversation to the men. Both travellers agree that the English ladies wore no rouge, and cared little about dress, generally appearing in the daytime in a short gown, long white apron, and small flat hat. M. Grosley attributes their indifference to dress to their confidence in their own beauty — a confidence which he considers entirely justified. Having inquired of members of both sexes, Which ruled the house in England, the husband or the wife? he was unable to obtain any definite answer; but nevertheless he proceeds to solve the problem to his own satisfaction. " The English ladies," he declares, " with the most mild and gentle tone, and with an air of indifference, coldness, and languor, FRENCH EYE-GLASSES 189 exercise a power equally despotic over husbands and lovers, a power so much the more permanent as it is established and supported by a complaisance and submissiveness from which they never depart." Although M. Grosley condescended to describe ladies* hats and the amusements of the frivolous, it must not be supposed that he neglected more weighty matters, such as the politics, commerce, and jurisprudence of England, her religious sects, and her societies for encouraging art and science. Into these deep subjects, which he discusses at great length and with many learned digressions, it is impossible here to follow him ; but we may glance for a moment at his interesting analysis of the causes of our deeply-rooted national melancholy. This distemper he attributes in the first instance to the damp of our climate and to our too solid diet of beef and beer. Our religion, education, public diversions and literature, so far from ameliorating the malady, seemed to this profound observer to have no other end in view but to feed and propagate it. Visits to Eton and Westminster proved to him that even in our schoolboys a gloomy seriousness supplied the place of those winning graces that elsewhere are discoverable in boys of tender age. Although, generally speaking, very handsome and distinguished by an air of the utmost mildness, they were, he was informed, the most obstinate and intractable creatures that ever came out of the hands of Nature. On the occasion of his visit to Eton he arrived at the college at sunset, when the dews had begun to fall and the grass was covered with moisture. " Yet at this very time," he relates, " we saw about sixty of the boys in their shirts, dripping with 190 LONDON THROUGH sweat, and playing at cricket. A pretty youth, nearly related to the Earl of Chesterfield, quitted his play, and came to pay his respects. With astonishment I heard that he and his companions took this recreation every day at the same hour and in the same place. These boys were watched by one person only, who sat upon the banks of the Thames with a book in his hand." M. Grosley gives but a dismal account of our theatres and other public entertainments, with which, he ex- plains, the police refrains from meddling "because it thinks itself in duty bound to respect the pleasures and transient gaiety of a nation which has only these places to suspend the melancholy and natural seriousness that form its characteristic." At Ranelagh and Vauxhall the pleasure-seekers looked as grave as at the Bank or at church, and each seemed to be mentally asking the question which is said to have been put by a young English nobleman to his tutor at some place of amuse- ment, ^^ Am I as joyous as I ought to be?" The tragedies which were performed at the London theatres consisted of a number of bloody scenes shock- ing to humanity ; in the Shakespearean tragedies more especially, whatever the most barbarous cruelty or the most refined wickedness could possibly conceive was presented to the view. The English comedy was unable to obliterate or weaken the impressions of melancholy which tragedy left behind it; indeed, it sometimes created new ones, due to the nocturnal scenes which it frequently exhibited. The best comedies, moreover, consisted of complicated intrigues, which put the minds of those who attempted to unravel them to the torture. Madame du Boccage may here FRENCH EYE-GLASSES 191 be permitted to put in a word for our much-maligned diversions. The English, she declares, excel in low comedy, which they play in a much more natural manner than the French; she admires the order and stillness that prevail at Ranelagh, whereas in France the smallest assemblage occasions a stunning noise ; and she is delighted with that peculiarly British enter- tainment, the oratorio or pious concert, of which the great Mr. Handel was the moving spirit. Turning from amusements to literature, we learn from M. Grosley that our best compositions scarcely afford any relief against the national dejection. " The Spectator" he says, " is the masterpiece of the English, in the lively and facetious style ; but all the humour of this work lies in the form under which it delivers some lessons of morality. The works of Dr. Swift are political and theological tracts, varnished over with a satire rather pungent than delicate, where it would be in vain to look for the refined raillery or the delicacy and ease of Pascal's Provincial Letters. . . . The English, both writers and readers, prefer the sentimental to the ludicrous style. How spacious a field has the latter to display itself in those numerous pamphlets with which London is every day overrun by contending parties, who should naturally endeavour to turn each other into ridicule ! And the sourest hits, the bitterest gall, and the most mortifying truths supply the place of that raillery and gaiety which Horace required in this species of composition." As for religion, the English, it appears, were accustomed to connect piety with melancholy, and the Jewish rigour with which they were obliged to keep 192 LONDON THROUGH the Sabbath was an absolute specific to nourish their gloomy temper. "On this day the theatres and all houses of entertainment are shut ; all sorts of gaming and dancing are forbid; people are neither allowed to sing at home nor to play upon any instrument; the newspapers, the favourite food of national curiosity, are discontinued ; the watermen cease to ply upon the river Thames; the tolls to be paid upon coming into London are doubled, and some are even trebled, on account of a late Act of Parliament, which has assigned the product of this increase of tolls to new-pave the capital. Except in church-time the inhabitants of London wait, with their arms folded, till service is again celebrated, or till the day is over, without having any other amusement but to gaze in a melancholy mood at those who pass to and fro in the streets." No wonder that the traveller was shown twenty skulls, supposed to be those of suicides, which had been taken out of the Thames when the foundations of the new bridge at Blackfriars were being dug ! M. Grosley is quite ready with a panacea for this unhappy state of things. Fortunately his remedy is a simple one, consisting merely of a reduction of the duties upon French wines. These exorbitant duties, he points out, had constrained the nation to have recourse to domestic wines; that is to say, to a sort of liquor that was but little palatable to those who had a good taste, and destructive to persons who, in the use of it, followed the impulse of an inordinate appetite. Since the general disuse of foreign wines by the English, " insipid raillery, pitiful conundrums, dull metaphysics, and plaintive elegies have supplied the place of light FRENCH EYE-GLASSES 193 conversation, amiable simplicity, sprightly wit, and joyous parodies ; in fine, funeral urns, coffins and cypress boughs, are become fashionable even in buildings of the most elegant taste." When once the use of genuine French wine was restored to England, the people, we are assured, would grow more tractable and less speculative, more gay and less addicted to wrangling, more sociable and less taciturn, more submissive and less occupied with state affairs, more religious and less metaphysical ; in short, they would then be a perfect people, living in a state of almost paradisaical bliss. This little homily, the author reminds us, is preached from a text consecrated by the authority of Holy Writ, namely, " Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts " (Prov. xxxi. 6). We may be allowed to suspect, how- ever, that this sermon was inspired, not so much by the text above quoted, as by the fact that the preacher was a native of Troyes, the capital of Champagne, and that throughout his life he was remarkable for the ardour of his local patriotism. 13 A SPINSTER'S RECOLLECTIONS 196 A SPINSTER'S RECOLLECTIONS AMONG Fanny Burney's younger contemporaries was one whose early life ran on curiously similar lines with her own. This was Letitia Matilda, daughter of Sir John Hawkins. Each father employed his daughter as his amanuensis, and each wrote a History of Music, the whole of Sir John's work and the first part of Dr. Burney's appearing in the same year — 1776. Each daughter was secretly occupied in writing a novel, which the younger brother of each assisted in getting published anonymously. Although Miss Hawkins' best-known novel, the Countess and Gertrude, did not become a classic like Evelina^ it was immensely popular with serious readers in the early decades of the nine- teenth century. Her volumes of Biographical Sketches and Memoirs cannot compare for interest and value with Madame D'Arblay's Diary and Letters^ but they are ill-natured enough to be amusing. The year of Letitia's birth remains a mystery, since, like Madame de Stael and Lady Morgan, she does not deal in such vulgar things as dates. Sir John Hawkins was married in 1753, and his eldest son, John Sidney, was born in 1758. Although Letitia speaks of her elder and younger brothers, and tells an anecdote to prove that she was "about" four years younger than 197 198 A SPINSTER'S RECOLLECTIONS Miss Cornelia Knight, who was born in 1/57, it seems not improbable, judging from the early assistance that she gave her father, that she was the eldest of her family. At anyrate, we shall hardly be maligning her if we place the date of her birth between 1755 and 1760, in the same decade, therefore, as that of Fanny Burney. In her anecdotal memoirs Letitia gives so caustic an account of the friends of her family that it is impossible not to feel that there may once have been some justification for the now-exploded superstition anent the sour temper of the typical old maid. But Miss Hawkins was so unfortunate as to inherit an acidulated disposition. Her father, it will be remembered, was described by Johnson as a most " unclubbable " man, and one, moreover, who was distinguished by a degree of brutality — even of savagery — that could not easily be defended. Her brother, John Sidney, the antiquarian, is also said to have been cursed with a morose and jealous temper. Letitia, one gathers from her writings, was a rigid moralist and a strict disciplinarian, with but little toleration for the foibles of her friends. After the fashion of her time, she excuses herself for writing any- thing so trifling as her recollections — " this low species of work,'' as she phrases it — on the ground that she has been prohibited severe intellectual exertion after a long illness, her memoirs being but the amusement of her convalescence. In truth, the compilation of these desultory records cannot have imposed any very severe strain upon the intellect. Besides being almost guilt- less of dates, they contain no connected story of her life ; A SPINSTER'S RECOLLECTIONS 199 but, taken for what they are — mere fragmentary chit- chat — some entertainment is still to be gleaned from them. Certainly there was no occasion for the author to defend herself, as she does in the Preface, against the possible accusation that she had condescended to flattery, while her protest, that " never having had acquaintance with any but the worthy and the good, I have it not in my power to produce specimens of what is very wrong,'' is scarcely supported by the majority of her character sketches. In Letitia's young days it was the custom to allow children to sit on the carpet till dinner was announced, as well as to appear with the almonds and raisins at dessert. This custom gave her the opportunity of over- hearing wearisome discussions about the King of Prussia and the " balance of power," and of making the acquaint- ance of several queer and rather foolish persons whom, in after life, she was amazed to find famous. " We were well-disciplined children," she writes, " and taught to be very respectful; but I little thought I should have to boast when Goldsmith taught me to play Jack and Jill with two bits of paper, or when Israel Mauduit, author of Considerations on the German War^ dissected a flower of the horse-chestnut to give me an idea of botany. . . . Of any notice bestowed on me by Sir Joshua Reynolds I cannot brag, but Dr. Johnson fondled me in his way \ that is to say, he kept me standing before a good fire, unconscious that he had not dismissed me from his urbanities^ while to my terror, from the displeasure of my nurse-maid, he leant his wig on my shoulder. When he recollected me, he would ask if I would be his little housekeeper. It was happily not necessary to reply." 200 A SPINSTER'S RECOLLECTIONS In 1762 Sir John Hawkins, who had received a fortune with his wife, Miss Storer, took a house at Twickenham, where he carried on his magisterial duties and literary pursuits. Chief among the residents in what Miss Hawkins calls " our lovely situated and elegantly inhab- ited village," were Horace Walpole, Kitty Clive, Lady Tweedale, who seems to have been given to interfering with her neighbours' affairs, and that curious specimen of the old school, Sir Samuel Prime, while the Garricks were within easy visiting distance. Letitia's recollections of Horace Walpole, though slight, are interesting if only on account of their minuteness and their obvious im- partiality. She describes him as not only tall, but more properly long^ and slender to excess, with hands and complexion of a most unhealthy paleness. "His eyes were remarkably bright and penetrating, very dark and lively ; his voice was not strong, but his tones were extremely pleasant and highly gentlemanly. He always entered a room in that style of affected delicacy which fashion had then made almost natural — chapeau bras between his hands as if he wished to compress it, knees bent, and feet on tiptoe as if afraid of a wet floor. His dress was most usually in summer a lavender suit, the waistcoat embroidered with a little silver or white silk, partridge silk stockings and gold buckles, ruffles and frill of lace. In summer no powder, but his wig combed straight, showing his very smooth, pale forehead, and queued behind." Miss Hawkins regarded Walpole's " bauble villa " with the natural contempt of the sensible woman, and testifies to the truth of the statement that he outlived three sets of battlements. " I wonder," she observes, " that he was A SPINSTER'S RECOLLECTIONS 201 not sickened long before his death of a thing so childish, for his external decorations provoked the wanton malice of the lower classes, who, almost as soon as new pinnacles were put to a pretty Gothic entrance, broke them off." She defends the lord of Strawberry Hill against the charges of irreligion and inhospitality that were frequently levelled against him, though with regard to the latter accusation she admits that his servants were kept on board wages, and that his table was not adapted for casual visitors. In showing indifference to his religious duties, Walpole, she points out, merely followed the fashion of his class and period. " I can truly say," she continues, " that we are greatly improved in the regular attendance on the church service. I know that, even in our own family, notice of going to church on Sunday morning was shouted through the house, not understood in silence as a matter the contrary of which required to be notified. I have heard my mother say that some years before there were such obstacles to be overcome on a Sunday morning as proved that piety must be very ardent, or the motives that satirists ascribe to the frequenters of public worship very keen, to make a congregation numerous." Letitia is by no means in accord with Walpole's ex- travagant estimate of the merits of Lady Di Beauclerk's drawings, which he placed on a level with the produc- tions of the old masters. " When the Beauclerk closet, as it was ostentatiously called, was permitted to be seen — a permission far better withheld, considering the subject — all envy and indeed all admiration must have ceased," so runs her criticism ; " for unless the proportions of the human figure are of no importance in drawing it, 202 A SPINSTER'S RECOLLECTIONS these Beauclerk drawings can only be looked upon with disgust and contempt." It was Walpole who advised Sir John Hawkins to undertake his History of MusiCy a service which Hawkins repaid by getting up a success- ful agitation to prohibit the threatened performance of Horace's unpleasant play, the Mysterious Mother. It says much for the author's good sense that this inter- ference caused no coolness between the two neighbours. Sir John Hawkins' pride and stormy temper led to fre- quent quarrels with his friends and acquaintance. With Kitty Clive, among others, he fell out over a road-rate, which she, with a round oath, refused to pay. The quarrel with Garrick took place much later, and at this time he seems to have been an intimate friend of the family. " I confess," writes Letitia, " I was afraid of him more than I was of Johnson, whom I knew not to be, nor could ever suppose he would be thought, an extraordinary man. Garrick had a frown, and spoke impetuously ; Johnson was slow, and kind in his way to children." When walking with her father one day on Twickenham Common they met Garrick riding his pretty pony and wearing his favourite dark blue coat and small cocked hat laced with gold. " He moved my compassion," she relates, " by lamenting the misery of being summoned to town in hot weather to play before the King of Denmark. I thought him sincere and his case pitiable, till my father assured me that he was in reality very well pleased, and that what he groaned at as labour was an honour paid to his talents." Garrick used to make fun of the Hawkinses to the Burneys, but prior to the quarrel that was brought about by the mischief-making of George Steevens, he seems to A SPINSTER'S RECOLLECTIONS 203 have been glad to apply to the magistrate for advice when in any trouble or difficulty. A scandalous report that his wife was about to leave him on account of his infidelity brought poor Davy to Twickenham in a state of complete dejection. He admitted that the early part of his life had been productive of much irregularity, but declared that from the hour of his marriage his affec- tions had never for a moment wavered from Mrs. Garrick. "This serious part of his complaint over," continues Miss Hawkins, " he dashed off in imagination to the various representations of the supposed fact that would probably be made by each inhabitant of Twickenham. It was a most perfect piece of acting as to every imitable particular, even to the click of encouragement with which one gentleman, inclined to be the hasty bearer of news about a village, would set his horse off again after he had disburdened his mind." When only ten years old, Letitia was dressed out in pink satin and muslin, and taken to an evening party at Sir Joshua Reynolds'. "Little indeed thought I," she writes, "that I should ever commit to paper this mention of the evening, or that the persons whom I saw were or could ever be thought of importance. Among the guests was the afterwards noted Miss Cornelia Knight,^ a precocious young person; for, though only fourteen, she was extraordinarily tall. She was dressed in a very rich white satin, beautifully embroidered by her own hands. This was much admired, and Miss Reynolds added to the commendation bestowed on this 1 Author of Dinarbusy a sequel to Rasselas, Flaminitis, and an interesting Autobiography. Appointed companion to Queen Charlotte in 1805, and to Princess Charlotte in 1813. 204 A SPINSTER'S RECOLLECTIONS industry and taste the further praise of the young lady having translated two of Sir Joshua's Discourses into the most elegant French. After ten we juniors accom- panied the younger of Sir Joshua's nieces, the Miss Palmers, into his painting-room, where she stole, for the service of her aunt, all the colours that she could scrape from his easel." Sir Joshua was the subject of an apt quotation with which Dr. Farmer delighted Letitia one day at her father's table. Some allusion being made to the report that the painter shared the sums received by his man Ralph for showing off his pictures, Farmer quoted from Hudibras — "A squire he had whose name was Ralph, Who in the adventure went his half." Of Goldsmith, although he had taught her to play Jack and Jill, Miss Hawkins held but a very poor opinion. The least discreditable anecdote that she tells of him deals with his discovery of what he believed to be a fine Vandyck hidden away in an inn parlour. " He called in the mistress of the house,'' so runs the tale, " and asked her if she set any value on that old- fashioned picture. Finding that she was wholly a stranger to its worth, he told her that it bore a very great resemblance to his aunt Salisbury, and that if she would sell it cheap, he would buy it. A bargain was struck, a small price paid, and Goldsmith, on taking his purchase home, found that by this trick he had secured a genuine and very valuable Vandyck." Having de- molished his moral character, Letitia relates one or two anecdotes to prove the low estimate in which his in- tellectual powers were held by his friends. For example : " When Goldsmith expressed an inclination A SPINSTER'S RECOLLECTIONS 205 to visit Aleppo for the purpose of importing some of the mechanical inventions in use there, Dr. Johnson said, * Goldsmith will go, and he will bring back a frame for grinding knives, which he will think a contrivance peculiar to Aleppo.'" For Johnson himself Letitia Hawkins, unlike Fanny Burney, was entirely without respect or reverence. "The ladies of the time when his notice was considered an honour," she observes, " made it too much a point of honour to obtain an introduction; where this honour was to be found, I confess I never could discover. For myself, I can but say it was a severe punishment to me to share in any of my father's visits to him, and I never heard him say six words that would compensate for the trouble of getting to his den, and the disgust of seeing such squalidness as I saw nowhere else. I perfectly remember, on one of those days when I was not in favour, my father's saying, *Miss,* which was my designation of disgrace, * I shall take you to Dr. Johnson's this evening.' " In the course of a description of Johnson's dress and appearance, she observes : " I can now call to mind his brown hand, his metal sleeve- buttons, and my surprise at seeing him with plain wrist-bands instead of ruffles. His wig in common was cut and bushy ; if by chance he had one that had been drest in separate curls, it gave him a disagreeable look, not suited to his age and character. I certainly had no idea that the same Dr. Johnson, whom I thought rather a disgraceful visitor to our house, and who was never mentioned by ladies but with a smile, was to be one day an honour, not only to us, but to his country." Lady Hawkins had been accustomed to brag that Dr. 206 A SPINSTER'S RECOLLECTIONS Johnson had never been uncivil to her, till one night at her own table she asked him if he would not take a little wine, and concluding by his not replying that he had not heard her, repeated the question. He there- upon thundered out, " I drink no wine — why do you tease me?" Letitia remarks with glee that her mother's boasting was then at an end, and that she remained on the same level with the eighteen ladies who were so incautious as to go in a body to wait on Dr. Johnson. " I can imagine," she writes, " the dozen and a half of damsels, all ready to prostrate themselves on the carpet, sooty and smoky as it was, and to cast garlands at his feet, when he tumbled off the stairs into the dingy parlour, shoulder first, and mouthed out, * If I had known there were so many of you, I wouldn't have come.' To one, the spokeswoman, who had an oration ready, he saved the trouble of recital by crying out, ' Fiddle-de-dee, my dear.' " On Johnson's death in 1784, the booksellers Strahan and Cadell called on Sir John Hawkins to ask if he would write a Life of Johnson and edit a new edition of his works. Two hundred pounds was the remunera- tion they offered, which would enable him, they pointed out, to employ an amanuensis, and turn over the correc- tion of the press to others. Apparently they thought that, as a man of means, he would require little or no recompense for his own labour. Indeed, he was wont to say that he expected no more profit from his History of Music than would suffice to buy a new pair of carriage-horses, although he knew that the publisher regarded the copyright of the work as a provision for his daughters. When Sir John told his daughter of A SPINSTER'S RECOLLECTIONS 207 Strahan and Cadell's proposal, he inquired if she would care to undertake the mechanical part of the work, adding, " It will be a large volume of six or seven hundred pages ; but it is a trifling job to you, and as for that part of the corrections with which I shall concern myself, you are so used to it that it will be nothing." Letitia says that she would willingly have undertaken the task, even without payment, for the various knowledge she would gain, but her father was no ungenerous exactor. " He never even suffered me to peel an orange for him," she tells us, " without giving me what we as children called two * pigs.' He therefore in this spirit offered me such remuneration as I joy- fully accepted, and eventually trebled it — I had forty pounds ! " A report got about that Miss Hawkins had written the Life, but she declares that she furnished no more than the reviews of the works connected with the subject. It must not be supposed that Letitia has a bitter word for all her father's friends, but she is kinder to the minor celebrities of his circle, now for the most part forgotten, than to those who insisted on becoming immortal with- out her sanction. " As I grew up," she writes, " I enjoyed those now despised soirees in which a few persons met, without any pretensions to conversation, but to partake of each other's society. Alas ! such intercourse is gone now — the noise of large assemblies drums down every- thing but those rapid inquiries which not only do not require, but do not admit of reply. . . . Music, dancing, and cards are all good at times and seasons ; but surely their prosperity does not require the entire sacrifice of that intercourse in which interest was excited and 208 A SPINSTER'S RECOLLECTIONS attention fixed, if a veteran in the world would unlock the stores of his active days, and when the young were kindly encouraged to hear, without being frightened at the sound of their own voice." Among Miss Hawkins' chief favourites were Bennet Langton, Israel Mauduit, Alexander Scott the traveller, and Dr. Henley, author and antiquarian, who translated Beckford's Vathek into English from the French version in which it first appeared, contributed to the Monthly Review^ and for several years was principal of the East India College. For conversational purposes she rated George Steevens, the Shakespearean com- mentator, very high, though she strongly disapproved of his moral character. " I can picture to myself," she observes, " as a day of perfect conversational enjoyment, one in which Steevens should have been at the break- fast-table, Henley at dinner, and at the tea-table Bennet Langton." Israel Mauduit, author of Considerations on the German Wary combined the rdles of fine gentleman, woollen draper, and political pamphleteer. He was always exquisitely dressed, kept a handsome chariot adorned with the punning motto Deus me audita and regularly attended the Sunday Drawing-Rooms, dining with the Hawkinses afterwards. He never failed to bring Lady Hawkins a full and faithful account of the Queen's dress, and finished his visit in time to go to one of the grave and informing conversation parties held on Sunday evenings by Dr. Heberden, or Dr. Green, Bishop of Lincoln, or Dr. Johnson, Bishop of Worcester. During the Rebellion of 1745, his firm accepted a Government contract for supplying the troops with flannel waistcoats, A SPINSTER'S RECOLLECTIONS 209 which they duly executed, but refused all profit on the transaction. Before the quarrel which ended most of the Hawkins friendships, George Steevens was much at their house. Although an agreeable visitor, particularly at breakfast, he was not considered a very reputable acquaintance. In his own neighbourhood of Hampstead, his attentions to young ladies were regarded, according to Letitia, as a blasting mildew that would injure their reputations, and cause them to be shunned by society. This fine scholar and industrious writer was guilty, moreover, of the petty faults of a village scandalmonger. " With the most manly sense of the sublime and beautiful," writes Letitia, " he could yet panegyrise the delicacy of furniture, make nonsense of indispensable importance, and affect to be a follower of fashionable folly. It grieved him that we in London kept a white dog ; and he spoke with abhorrence of anything that might soil his carpets or tread down the grass on his lawn." Of his affectation Miss Hawkins gives, in the following anecdote, what she describes as an incredible proof : — " He had strolled in to sit with my father one warm evening in July. We were still in town, and at the close of a day of fatiguing heat such a visitor was orgeat and lemonade. He sat till near ten, and then said he wished he had a chance of spending the next two hours as agreeably as the two last. This exciting a question, he said that he was engaged to a masquerade, his man being in waiting with his dress ; and he then began one of his descants on the horror of coming out into daylight in a hat and feathers, a domino, and, to use his own phrase, 'one's white satin shoes.' All this was non- 14 210 A SPINSTER'S RECOLLECTIONS sensical ; he was certainly not bound to be ridiculous even in his own eyes. But there was no danger ; he was under no such obligation. No whiter shoes was he called on to wear than those made white by the dust of the Hampstead Road, for he was going straight home, and thither he went. There he staid, and employed himself in his usual way, rising with the lark next morning ! " The inevitable explosion took place in consequence of the mischief that Steevens had made by his squibs between Hawkins, Garrick, and Murphy, mischief which, after long suspicion, was at last brought home to him. " Everything was now prepared to inflict on Steevens the punishment he merited," relates Letitia ; " and I was in the act of copying a statement of grievances, when he entered the room. My father met him with the paper in his hand, and verbally taxed him with being the cause of hostility between himself, Garrick, and Murphy. I heard him, with guilt in his countenance, deny it, and offer to take the Sacrament on the truth of what he asserted. I remember my father's saying, * A pretty fellow you to talk of taking the Sacrament ! ' and then taking him by the collar, and turning him out of doors.*' Chief among Miss Hawkins' female friends was Anne Welch, daughter of Saunders Welch, the police magis- trate who succeeded Fielding at Bow Street. Mr. Welch was a man of literary tastes, an occasional essay-writer, and the associate of many men of genius. Dr. Johnson, it will be remembered, attended Saunders Welch's police-court for a whole winter to hear the examinations of culprits, and, oddly enough, used to translate the magistrate's swelling phrases into colloquial language A SPINSTER'S RECOLLECTIONS 211 in order that the prisoners might more easily under- stand him. The magistrate was early left a widower with two young daughters, who, like the heroines of a fairy tale, grew up, the one extraordinarily beautiful but stupid, the other plain but with unusual powers of mind and conversation. Mary, the beauty, who is said to have been the original of Pekuah, in Johnson's RasselaSy married Nollekens the sculptor, became infected with her husband's miserly tastes, and quickly relapsed into dingy squalor. Dr. Johnson had given her much good advice on her marriage, and recommended her to imitate Lady Hawkins in her domestic economy, the liberality of her table, and the scrupulous neatness of her person, advice which seems to have been completely thrown away. The elder daughter, Miss Nancy, as Johnson called her, cultivated her mind with diligence, learnt seven languages, and made considerable progress in mathe- matics. Mrs. Thrale said of her that " with every means of being agreeable she had not the power of being so." She pleased once in her life, however, for a man-servant of her father's threw up his situation on the ground that " Miss Anna's conversation at table was so agreeable that he could attend to nothing else." Letitia tells us that Nancy's tones, from her living so much with Dr. Johnson, had acquired a modulation unlike that of other females, and she gave what she considered the proper names to things, calling dress " apparel," servants " domestics," victuals " esculents," and an account book a " diary of expenses." This pedantic lady went to Italy with her father in 1776, when his health had broken down. Dr. Johnson was anxious that Miss Nancy should keep a careful record of her 212 A SPINSTER'S RECOLLECTIONS observations and experiences, but it does not appear that she, any more than her sister, followed his recom- mendations. The most striking result of her sojourn in Italy was her adoption, while in that country, of masculine " apparel," including a bag- wig and a sword, a breach of decorum that sorely shocked her friend Miss Hawkins when it was brought to her ears. Mrs. Nollekens, we learn from her husband's biographer, was not fond of Miss Hawkins, who gave her tongue liberties when speaking of Dr. Johnson, and, whenever BoswelFs name was mentioned, would throw herself into a rage because that gentleman had asserted that Sir John Hawkins was the son of a carpenter ! Letitia tells us curiously little about her own life and adventures, the chief personal incidents that she mentions being her experiences during the Gordon riots and the circumstances that attended the publica- tion of her first book. Sir John Hawkins, in his pro- fessional capacity, was in the thick of the No Popery riots, and seems to have done his best to protect persons and property. He was sent for by Lord Mansfield when that unpopular gentleman's house was threatened, and advised the posting of a military force outside. His Lordship, afraid of inflaming the mob yet more, refused to allow the guards to remain on the spot, but ordered them to be posted at St. George's Church, whence they were to be summoned if necessary. He was obeyed, with the result that by the next morning only the walls of his house were left standing. Sir John having received information that his own house was to be demolished — he was then living in Westminster — went home to superintend the removal of his goods and the departure A SPINSTER'S RECOLLECTIONS 213 of his family. The furniture was stored in some empty stables, and the ladies were sent to Clapton, where they were taken in by some relations of their old friend, Israel Mauduit. Even here safety was not assured, for it was supposed from their flight that they must be Roman Catholics, and their friends were themselves suspected of papistical sympathies for harbouring them. The lady of the house having been observed dusting some china figures on the chimney-piece, it was asserted that she had been seen to worship " some little Jesuses ! " It must have been about this time — for it was a few years previous to the death of Johnson — that Letitia made her first appearance in print. " Being in want of money," she tells us, " for a whim of girlish patronage, I wrote a down-right novel. ... It was done in the secrecy of a corner, my only confidential friend being my younger brother." The manuscript was published by Hookham, who was content to remain in ignorance of the writer's identity, sent her twice as much money as she required, and kindly encouraged her to proceed in a literary career. The incident is described at length in the Countess and Gertrude^ Gertrude being the anonymous writer, and receiving fifty guineas for her novel. " I wrote many subsequent novels," continues Miss Hawkins, " but still preserved my incognito. I scarcely know why I acted thus clandestinely. I was certainly afraid of some displeasure, I was ashamed of my em- ployment, and though my father sometimes urged me to write, I preferred my obscurity, though it forced me to exertions of industry which nothing but the con amore of application could have enabled me to make when I had no time but what I could purloin, and was writing 214 A SPINSTER'S RECOLLECTIONS six hours a day for my father, and reading aloud to my mother nearly as long. But two thousand pages never daunted me. I learnt Italian, and extracted from every book that came in my way ; I made as large a part of my clothes as could be made at home ; I worked muslin ; I learnt botany ; and I was my mother's storekeeper. Air and exercise were little thought on. I aired, indeed, with Lady Hawkins in the carriage, but I read or worked." The earliest book by Letitia Hawkins which has found a place in the British Museum Library under its author's name is Siegwart^ a translation published in 1 806. The Countess and GertrudCy or Modes of Discipline appeared in 1811 or 1812; in 1814 came a work by herself and her brother Henry, called Sermonets addressed to those who have not yet acquired the inclination to apply the powers of attention to compositions of a higher kind, Rosanne^ or a Fathef^s Labour Lost appeared in the same year, Heraldine^ or Opposition Proceedings in 1821, Devotional Exercises \n 1823, and her Memoirs'^ from 1822 to 1824. The Countess and Gertrude made an instant success, and retained its popularity for many years. In the feminine correspondence of that period it is fre- quently mentioned with enthusiasm, and is sometimes bracketed with Mrs. Brunton's Self Control, It is a didactic tale in four volumes, wherein are set forth the various modes of discipline to which Gertrude, the heroine, is subjected by her foolish patroness, the Countess, and by her various teachers and pastors. It ^ The first volume was called Anecdotes, Biographical Sketches^ and Memoirs i the second and third MetnoirSy Anecdotes, Facts ^ and Opinions, A SPINSTER'S RECOLLECTIONS 215 was highly appreciated by those persons, apparently a numerous class, who rapturously accepted advice and assistance from unmarried ladies on the subject of the education of children. Miss Hawkins tells us in a preface to the second edition that she had received innumerable letters from parents and guardians thank- ing her for the help she had given them in their task of training the young. After the death of Sir John Hawkins in 1789, Letitia appears to have lived with her brother Henry, who con- tributed to several of her works. In 1822 she was living at Windsor ; but with her last volume, dated 1 824, she passes from our vision. In spite of the popularity of her educational novel, and the notoriety gained by her MemoirSy she has not been allowed a niche of her own, so far as the present writer can discover, in any of the biographical dictionaries. A line or two under her father's name is the most that has been vouchsafed to her, and in none of these meagre notices is there any record of the dates of her birth or of her death. For her uncharitable judgments of her illustrious contemporaries, and the belittling anecdotes that she related of them, Letitia has suffered the just reward of oblivion. THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 217 SIR JOHN MALCOLM THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR (WITH EXTRACTS FROM A MANUSCRIPT BY SIR JOHN MALCOLM) HISTORY repeats itself — more especially in South Africa. That is the text upon which an in- structive sermon might be preached by the aid of the old manuscript that lies before me — a faded, stained, and tattered manuscript, dated 1795, and endorsed in a trembling hand, " Account of Cape Colony, by my son John." Son John was no less a person than Sir John Malcolm, soldier, diplomatist, and administrator, the biographer of Clive, the political historian of India, and, proudest title of all, " Lord Wellesley's factotum at Calcutta." His manuscript is written in a fine copper- plate hand, and the style is exceptionally terse and lucid, but the spelling is somewhat erratic, even for that tolerant period, the eighteenth century. The fourth son of George Malcolm of Burnfoot, Dumfriesshire, John was born in 1769. His father, having a patriarchal family of ten sons and seven daughters to provide for, tried to improve his fortunes by speculation, and ended — the story is a familiar one — by losing all that he possessed. When the crash came, helping hands were held out by friends of the family, 219 220 THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR and berths were found for several of the elder boys. A nomination to a cadetship in the East India Company's service was offered to John, then not quite twelve years old, but it was feared that he was too young to be accepted by the authorities. However, he was taken to the India House, and was in a fair way to be rejected on account of his age and size, when one of the directors asked, " Why, my little man, what would you do if you were to meet Hyder Ali ? " " Cut aff his heid," was the laconic reply. The little Scotsman's language was so much taller than himself that it won his case. " You'll do," said the director. " Let him pass." After twelve years' service at Madras, young Malcolm was invalided home in 1794. In the spring of the following year he was appointed aide-de-camp to General Alured Clarke, and on the 17th of May sailed with his chief for the East. Their ship belonged to a squadron of East Indiamen which sailed with sealed orders ; and it was an open secret that the troops on board were likely to have the monotony of the long sea voyage varied in a rather unusual manner. The squadron anchored in Simon's Bay on the 4th of Sep- tember, having made a rapid passage of less than four months; and the manuscript above described opens abruptly with an account of the landing of troops and military stores. Since even in these days every reader is not familiar with the history of Cape Colony, it may be as well briefly to recapitulate the circum- stances that led to our attack upon Capetown at a time when we were supposed to be the friends and allies of its Dutch rulers. On the ist of February 1793 France had declared war against England and the Netherlands. THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 221 A French army at once advanced to the Dutch frontier, and an English force under the Duke of York was despatched to assist the Stadtholder. From the first things went badly for the Netherlands, and it was feared that the French would next attack the Dutch dependencies, of which Cape Colony was in the most defenceless position. The nominal Governor, Van der Graafe, had been recalled, and the Commissioner- General, Abraham Sluysken, was practically at the head of affairs. At this time the burghers were deeply incensed against the Government on account of the existing system of imposts and monopolies ; the Dutch East India Company was insolvent; an incessant war was being waged with the Bushmen on the frontiers ; and the small garrison of Capetown was chiefly com- posed of foreign mercenaries, who could only be de- pended upon to support the party which offered the best pay. It was clear that the colony could not defend itself; and at first Great Britain turned a deaf ear to all appeals for help. However, the series of disasters in the Netherlands, the overthrow of the Stadtholder's Government, and the report that the South African burghers were inclined to change sides and join the French, induced England to send out a small expedition under Admiral Sir George Elphinstone (afterwards Lord Keith) and General Craig in the early part of 1795. Upon their arrival in Simon's Bay in June, the commanders wrote to the Council of Cape Colony stating that they had brought a mandate signed by the Prince of Orange, then a fugitive in England, ordering the Governor to admit British troops into 222 THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR the fort, and to consider them as the forces of a friendly power sent to protect the colony against the French until such time as it would be possible to restore it to its lawful owner. This communication placed the Council in an awkward dilemma. They knew that the mandate had no official force, having been signed by the Prince alone, who was an exile in a foreign country. No newspapers had reached them for several months, and they knew nothing of what had been happening in the mother country except what the English chose to tell them, namely, that the Nether- lands had fallen into the hands of the French without terms of capitulation. The commanders suppressed the facts that the democratic party had given the French an enthusiastic welcome, and that the national Government had been remodelled. In the circumstances the Council felt that the best thing they could do was to temporise. They offered to supply provisions to the English fleet as long as it remained in the Bay, and promised to ask for help should they be attacked by the French. A little later, in spite of the strict blockade maintained by the British, a Dutch ship got in with newspapers containing a notice issued by the States - General, absolving all persons in the Netherlands and their dependencies from the oath of allegiance to the Prince of Orange, and stating that the Stadtholderate had been abolished and an independent republic established. On receipt of this news the Council decided that it was their obvious duty to prevent the English from obtaining possession, temporary or otherwise, of the colony. Early in August, a British picket having been fired THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 223 upon near Simonstown, hostilities began. The Dutch camp at Muizenberg on the road to Capetown was bombarded and captured, the burghers falling back upon Wyndberg. Craig, having only sixteen hundred men, and not a single field-gun, was too weak to ad- vance upon Capetown, and his position at Muizenberg was for a short period extremely critical. In the nick of time, however, thirteen East Indiamen sailed into the bay, bringing three thousand ^troops under the com- mand of General Clarke. On the 9th of September the Council were warned that unless they surrendered their town, in accordance with the favourable terms already offered, possession would be taken by violent means. To this ultimatum Sluysken replied that his oath re- quired him to defend the colony for its lawful owner. John Malcolm's manuscript begins, as has been said, with an account of the arrival of the squadron in Simon's Bay. The first few pages were quoted by Kaye in his Life of Sir fohn Malcolm (185^, and may therefore be briefly summarised. The troops, we learn, were rapidly landed, and marched to Muizenberg, where they were anxiously awaited by Craig's little band, who had lost all hope of succeeding without these reinforcements. The chief difficulty was the transport of provisions to camp, these having to be carried from the boats on the backs of the soldiers. Thanks chiefly to the zeal and decision of the admiral, the force was enabled to march on Capetown as early as the 14th of September, taking with them four days' provisions and leaving eight days' provisions at Muizenberg. The army consisted of five thousand men, made up of infantry, artillery, blue-jackets, and marines, and having twelve 224 THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR six-pounders and two howitzers. They had not ad- vanced more than five hundred yards before they were harassed by small parties of burghers, mounted on active little horses, and carrying with them a long gun, presumably an eighteenth-century Long Tom. " They appeared to have no Discipline," says Malcolm, " and any person who had seen irregular Cavalry must have instantly supposed them to be a very contemptible enemy. These Burghers were the farmers of the Country, who were by far the most violent party against any terms being entered into with us. Unaccustomed to fire at anything but Roebuck and Ostriches till our arrival, they were eager to try their hands at new game, as they used scoffingly to term our Troops. They had met with petty successes against the advanced party of General Craig's little army, whose prudent conduct in not advancing against Capetown till General Clarke's arrival they readily construed into a fear of their Prowess." Although the ground was particularly favourable for their methods of warfare, being studded with sand- hills and intersected with deep lagoons, the burghers were intimidated by the steady advance of the British, and fled from height to height, keeping up an irregular fire, seldom nearer than a quarter of a mile. The ground presently opened into a level plain, and across this the enemy fell back upon the little Wyndberg, where a party of infantry with nine field-pieces had taken up a strong position. The high road ran through the centre of their line, though it would have been possible, as Malcolm afterwards discovered, to have found **a way round" out of reach of their cannon. THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 225 The British halted in the plain for their second column under Colonel Campbell, which had been much detained for want of proper guides, but at four p.m. the combined attack began. One detachment of eight hundred was ordered to turn the enemy's left flank, and one of six hundred to turn their right, while the remainder advanced to attack in front. Confused by the well- directed fire of the British gunners, and alarmed by the appearance of the parties upon their flanks, the burghers very soon abandoned their position, but, "having ex- cellent Cattle, they easily drew off their Guns." As it was now dark, a halt was called, and the men were ordered to lie on their arms till morning. "The Casualties of the day had been very trifling," says Malcolm, " particularly considering the great noise that had been made : one man killed and about twenty wounded." Evidently, then as now, the bark of the Boer guns was worse than their bite. The fugitives took the news of the defeat into Capetown, and at ten o'clock the same night a flag came from Governor Sluysken, and a truce of forty-eight hours was requested. One of twenty-four hours was granted, and next morn- ing General Craig met the commissioners half-way between the town and the camp, when the terms of capitulation were agreed upon, and the fort taken possession of in the name of his Britannic Majesty, The burghers had apparently as strong an objection to street - fighting and the destruction of property as have their descendants at the present day, the capitula- tion of Capetown being as sudden and complete as that of Johannesburg or Pretoria. There were, however, divided councils in the enemy's camp. The Scotch 15 226 THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR commander-in-chief of the Dutch army, Colonel Gordon, was supposed to be in favour of a British occupation, while Van Baalen, who had been in command the previous day at Wyndberg, was alleged to have drawn up his forces in such a faulty position that they were practically certain of defeat. The burghers, declaring that they were betrayed and sold, dispersed and returned to their farms, thus rendering any further defence of the colony impossible, whatever the inten- tions of the Government may have been. The terms of capitulation provided for the surrender of the Dutch troops as prisoners of war, while the colonists were to retain all their existing rights, including the existing form of religion. Everything belonging to the Dutch East India Company was to be handed over to the British commanders, but otherwise all property was to be respected. Malcolm declares that nothing could have been more fortunate than the termination of this affair, since, "had the original terms been accepted, our Commanders would have been tied down to the in- vidious task of supporting a system of Government deservedly odious to all classes, and the divided authority of the civil government under the Prince of Orange, and the military under his Britannic Majesty, would have proved a continual source of Discord, Jealousy, and Recrimination." The writer expresses his satisfaction that the Dutch had not, by an infatuated resistance, obliged the English to attack the capital, since in that case the consequences would have been dreadful. " Our Success would have been certain, and no power could have restrained an army composed THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 227 like ours of wild Sailors, and raw (I may almost say undisciplined) Soldiers from Carnage and Plunder." As soon as he was in possession of the town, General Clarke began to try by every means in his power to quiet the minds of the inhabitants, conciliate their affections, and reconcile them to a change of Government His efforts met with a speedy success, for in a few days order was restored, the women who had fled to the country returned, and "even the most violent Burghers, allured by the prospect of gain, began to bring in their cattle. Every man followed his former occupation, and a stranger would not have believed that any change had happened." Kaye quoted no further from the manuscript than the foregoing passage, but Sir John's account of his subsequent experiences in Cape Colony is not without interest, especially at the present time. "The Com- manders," he proceeds, "not chusing to place any Confidence in the affection and Loyalty of our new subjects, who had almost all taken the oath of allegiance to the King of Great Britain, very wisely determined to leave all the Regiments in Garrison at the Cape, and to abandon all thoughts of prosecuting the Expedition any farther. The whole of the Military did not amount to more than three thousand effective men, a force hardly sufficient to defend the Cape against a French Invasion, on the Supposition that the Inhabitants were well-inclined, which there was good reason to suspect they were not, particularly those in the Country, where French principles had made wide progress, — but of this hereafter. The money in the Treasury was very trifling. Military stores and cannon in great abund- 228 THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR ance, and stores of corn to an immence amount were found, and many other articles of value." Malcolm observes that no occurrence worthy of mention happened during his two months* stay at the Cape, except the tragic death of Colonel Gordon. " That officer," he says, " was the son of General Gordon of the Scotch Brigade in the Dutch service, an officer well known in Europe. The Colonel was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Dutch Troops at the Cape twenty years ago, and had a Regiment of his own who chiefly composed the Garrison of that place. His attachment to the English nation was strong and avowed, and whether from his public character or from private correspondence I know not, thus far is certain, great hopes were formed of his either publicly or privately aiding us in getting posses- sion of the Cape for the Stadtholder, whose part it was imagined that he would take against the Republic. This hope proved ill-founded, yet he was not free of the suspicion of being well-inclined towards us, particu- larly among the lower classes and in his own Regiment. His supineness during the period that Hostilities were actually carrying on, when he certainly neglected all his official duties, and his having recommended the acceptance of the first offers of Sir George and General Craig, rendered him still more suspected. These cir- cumstances occasioned his being very grossly insulted by the men of his own Regiment the day they lay down their arms. On the morning of the 25th of October he put an end to his existence with a pistol being no longer able to endure the disgrace he conceived he had fallen into with both parties. THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 229 "Colonel Gordon was a man remarkable for his humanity and philanthropy. He was a Traveller, an Antiquarian, and a natural Philosopher. Botany was latterly his favourite study. He travelled farther inland from the Cape than any European had ever done. As he committed his observations on every subject to paper, his MSS., which are in his Widow*s possession, are probably valuable. His wavering conduct at a period when, whatever party he had chosen, he ought to have acted with resolution, may be deemed the original cause of his unfortunate end. He had long deservedly held the first and most respectable rank in the society in which he lived. He thought he was degraded, and could not support the reflection. I have also heard that the stream of his Domestic Joys was poisoned. If so, it is not to be wondered at that a mind, whose powers were weakened by illness, should fall under such accumulated misfortunes. He was buried privately, but his Corps was attended to the Grave by near forty English officers.'' Theal, in his History of South Africa, states that Colonel Gordon was so bitterly disappointed at finding that the govern- ment was to be carried on in the name of the King of England, without reference to the Prince of Orange, that he died by his own hand. Malcolm gives an interesting summary of his observa- tions on the climate, soil, productions, and inhabitants of the Cape. "I was informed," he remarks, "by a Gentleman who went upwards of one hundred miles inland, that after he had travelled one day's Journey, nothing new met his eye, as a general sameness pre- vailed. The Plantations were in common eleven or 230 THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR twelve miles from each other, and the intermediate space was a Barren Waste." There is no mention of the mineral treasures with which the name of South Africa is now inseparably connected. At that time the only portions of the country explored by Europeans were, besides Cape Colony, the western coast belt as far north as Wallfisch Bay, the eastern coast belt to the Zambesi Valley, and a few localities along the eastern border of the territory now known as Rhodesia. Western Rhodesia, Basutoland, and the country now included in the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony were entirely unknown. Malcolm was especially struck with the excellence of the Cape vines, and with the variety and profusion of the flowers. " On one side of their Bleak Mountains," he writes, "you may cull a Nosegay superior in the Scent and Beauty of its flowers to one selected from every Garden in England. The profusion with which the hand of Nature has scattered them, apparently in the most ungenial situations, prevents the Inhabitants from attending to them so much in gardens, as they might be disposed to do were they more rare." Cape- town he describes as the cleanest and most regularly well-built town he has ever seen, declaring that there is not a mean house in it. " The number of Dutch Inhabitants in the Colony," he continues, " may be computed — men, women, and children — at 8000; of slaves of different descriptions, 20,000. Few of the Inhabitants are very wealthy ; most of them are com- fortable. They partake, of course, of the character of the Country from which they are derived. The men are rather heavy, but in general good-humoured and THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 231 friendly. Few of them are remarkable for their abilities, and few are very ignorant. They appear unambitious of a great character, but desirous to show they have not a low one. They are fonder of eating than drink- ing, and are almost without exception incesssant smoakers. " The Ladies, particularly of the better Class, are in general, when they are young, good-looking — many of them handsome; as they get older they in common grow more lusty than exactly suits a fastidious English Eye. They are almost all well-educated, and some of them accomplished in Music, Dancing, etc. If they do not arrive at the elegance of the European Fair Ones, they are much seldomer found wanting in a modest and becoming Deportment." This passage may be compared with a published letter from Malcolm to his sister, in which he says : " The Frows were some of them very pretty, and appeared more lovely when their modest decent manners were contrasted with that ridiculous extravagance, both in dress and manners, of some young ladies escaped from a London Seminary on their flight to India to lead the fashions there, whose behaviour made me blush for them." After describing the housewifely virtues of the Dutch ladies, he proceeds : " The Society at the Cape is too much of a sober and sedate nature to please the pallate of an Englishman, habituated to gayer Circles and more Dissipated parties. It certainly wants life, and is rendered listless by its sameness. There is no place of public Entertainment, and Dances are very unfrequent. The only amusement is visiting, and being visited. . . . The Clergy have the appearance of being unassum- 232 THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR ing good men. The Farmers in the Country are in general Boorish, both in their manners and appear- ance, but are kind and hospitable to strangers. They, as well as the Inhabitants of the Town, are very religious. " The Slaves appear in general happy, and I believe, with a few exceptions, are well treated. There are numbers of Malays at the Cape, who are, like all their countrymen, remarkable for their spirit of Revenge, ungovernable rage, and Desperate Fury, which often occasions their running ahmuck^ a phrase well known in the East. In such cases they Dishevel their Hair, tear their Clothes, and dart into the most frequented streets with a dagger in their hands, and kill all whom they meet indiscriminately, till they are put to death themselves.'' The Government of Cape Colony, previous to the arrival of the British, had consisted of a President and Council of nineteen, though latterly almost the sole authority had been vested in the Commissioner- General, Abraham Sluysken. Good order was main- tained in the town by the Fiscal, who had under him a considerable number of constables, and was empowered to take up rioters and other disorderly persons, and punish them in a summary manner. "Almost all the Inhabitants of any respectability," observes Malcolm, *' were in the Company's Service. All those whom the Governor favoured were employed as Contractors, others as Book-keepers or writers in the various offices, where business was carried on in a wonderfully minute and exact manner. Monopolies in other Countries are partial. Here every Article of trade, as well as the THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 233 commonest Articles of life, were monopolised by the Dutch Company. They also supplied the Inhabitants with the Productions of Europe. The Company was not enriched by this ill-judged Policy, but their servants, thro' whose hands the property passed, amassed Fortunes. " The Parties among themselves at the period of our arrival ran very high. French principles had been very generally disseminated, particularly in the Country, where the ignorant Farmers were wrought up to a Frenzy by two or three designing men. They talked of nothing but establishing their Independence as a Republick, making Capetown a free Port, being, as they termed it, the friends of all nations but the slaves of none. They spoke of imitating the Glorious examples set them in Europe. These sentiments prevailed so much that they superceded in reality of power the established Government. The Governor was obliged to act as the Burghers directed, and in my opinion, had we not arrived, he would have been deprived of his office, if not of his life. A list proscribing near one Hundred of the first Inhabitants, including him and all his adherents, had been made out, and they were to have been put to death had the party prevailed. This spirit is far from being iradicated. On the contrary, the futile and contemptible opposition which they made to us, has joined a spirit of Revenge to it, and were a French Invasion to take place, they would soon be openly joined by almost all the Inhabitants in the Country, and secretly aided by many in the Town." The average annual revenue of the colony amounted 234 THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR to about ;f 30,ocx), we are told, and Malcolm enumerates the various imposts and monopolies from which it was raised. It is evident that during his short stay he gave a good deal of thought and attention to the affairs of the country and its future prospects, for his manu- script concludes with a brief review of the measures that had been adopted by the British with regard to the conquered colony, and of those which, in his opinion, should be adopted if we were to retain possession of it. " The Commanders at the Cape," he writes, " acted with the greatest prudence on gaining possession of it. They studied by every means in their power to conciliate the minds of the Inhabitants ; convinced that the establishing of any new system of Government requires mature con- sideration and cautious conduct, the regulations they made were merely temporary. They were content with giving the machine motion ; to make it turn with vigour they left to others who had more time, and were more accustomed to such Tasks. The Cape, while we retain such a communication as we have at present with India, must be of great value to us for two reasons. In the first place, it furnishes in profusion every refreshment for our Ships, and in the second, we might suffer severely from its situation were it in the hands of a Powerful Enemy. It becomes our first policy to render it as prosperous as possible. This is only to be done by encouraging its trade and cultivation, and by finding an Export for its productions, Corn and Wine. If we keep the Cape after the War is over, its future prosperity will become of course a subject of serious consideration. I shall offer a few crude observations on what I consider would tend to that desirable end. THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 235 " Commissioners should be sent to settle its laws, and to give it a Government on as Economical principles as possible. This Government, except the immediate heads of Departments, to consist of natives of the Cape. All subordinate offices to be held exclusively by them. This measure is indispensibly necessary if it is meant they should forget they are a conquered people, and become attached Loyal subjects. . . . The greatest consideration would be to find an Export trade for their Corn, Wine, etc. When a Peace takes place a good deal would be sent to the French Islands ; of their better wines a considerable quantity would find a Market in India, where its cheapness would secure its sale, and in return they would bring Coarse Cloths, Suggars, Tobacco, Coffee, Teas. Supplies of all kinds might be sent to Botany Bay, which is not a voyage of more than six or eight weeks, and at the same time that the Cape was benefited, a considerable saving to our Government would take place. I am not of opinion that a trade of any consequence could be es- tablished with the Brazil Coast. The jealousy of the Portugese would be an insuperable barrier to this. They would fear the smuggling of Indian goods. Taxes ought, if laid on, to be done with great caution, particularly on Exports, otherwise you check the spirit of Adventure which alone can make the place prosperous. Imported luxuries might be Taxed, and I think higher duties laid on wine, particularly on that of an inferior quality, which is consumed at the Cape. The Tithe on Corn amounts to a trifling sum, and is a most unpopular Tax with that Body of men who ought to be most encouraged. It ought to be struck off, and a small Tax on Imported 236 THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR Goods made in its lieu, by which the same set of men would pay double the money, though in an indirect manner, without complaining." With these remarks, in which may be recognised the germs of the policy of the future Indian administrator, the manuscript concludes. In a published letter to his sister, written towards the end of his stay at the Cape, Malcolm says : " I have got an honourable but trouble- some employment in recruiting men out of the prisoners of war for the service of the Company in India. A set of finer fellows I never knew — all Germans. I have been very successful." The young aide-de-camp was fortunate in his chief, whom he describes as one of the best men he ever knew, " mild and gentlemanly in manners, clear and just in his own conduct, and a declared foe to all dark dealings and speculations. He never will, I am convinced, make an indirect half- penny. . . . He carries on a good-humoured war with my negligent habits, and my desire to please him makes me endeavour to conquer them. I never was a swearer, but I can venture to say that I never now, even in an unguarded moment, let slip an oath." This testimony to General Clarke's character is worth noting, as he seems to have thought that he was unfairly treated in con- nection with the booty captured during the brief campaign at the Cape. On the 15th of November 1795 Malcolm sailed with his chief for Madras, where we must take leave of him at the beginning of the most brilliant period of his career. General Craig was left in command of the garrison at the Cape, which was ruled by British governors until the Peace of Amiens in 1 802, when it was restored to THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 237 Holland. On the renewal of the war it was again captured by the British under Sir David Baird, and has remained in our possession ever since, though it was not finally ceded to us by the Netherlands till the peace of 1815. THE YEOMAN'S DAUGHTER 239 THE YEOMAN'S DAUGHTER THANKS to the industry of the painful biographer and the garrulity of the recorder of reminiscences, our knowledge of the political, literary, or fashionable celebrities who flourished a century ago is sufficiently ample and minute. With the upper middle-class again — those comfortable squires and clergymen, who, with their large families, constituted the aristocracy of the country villages — we are, thanks to the Dutch paintings of Jane Austen, as familiar as with our own relations and personal friends. But when we take a step down- wards in the social scale, and seek to make acquaintance with that lower middle-class, which is chiefly represented by farmers, factors, and prosperous tradesmen, we find ourselves somewhat at a loss. In her unfinished novel The WatsonSy Miss Austen seems to have set herself to deal with this class, and she was just beginning to revel in the affairs of the big homely family that her imagina- tion had conjured up, and to sketch their humours with her usual unerring touch, when the pen fell for ever from the hand that could alone have done justice to such a theme. That the yeomen class of the period under considera- tion — the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century — might have afforded excellent material for the 16 242 THE YEOMAN'S DAUGHTER humorist, some evidence may be found in a bundle of girlish letters written by Elizabeth Girling, the daughter of a yeoman farmer living at Weston in Norfolk, to various members of her family, between the years 1796 and 1805. These sprightly effusions seem to have been carefully treasured by the recipients, who probably looked upon Sister Bet as the wit, if not the genius, of the family. Her education at a boarding- school at East Dereham had, fortunately, not resulted in the repression of her high spirits, the quenching of her innate sense of humour, or the conversion of her racy methods of expression into elegant platitudes. She had learned to write an exquisite copperplate hand, to do fancy-work, to draw and paint in a fashion to please herself, and to sing and play in a fashion to alarm her family ; but she had imbibed no spurious gentility, nor was she, like so many of her fellows of the present day, a cheap imitation of the daughters of the neighbouring gentry. Although Elizabeth and her sisters knew nothing of croquet or lawn tennis, they had gaieties for almost every season of the year in the shape of Assize Week at Norwich, Wroxham Water- Frolic, Wymondham Fair, Lenwade Races, the annual sheep-shearing, and frequent visits to the Norwich theatre, which then main- tained a good stock company. There were plenty of beaux, if not many serious ones, at these festivities, for the land could still support her sons, and Australia was still a receptacle for convicts. Of literature we hear nothing in these letters, and very little of the outside world beyond occasional rumours of wars, more especially of the threatened French invasion ; but the inner life of the large, closely-united family, its marriages, deaths, and THE YEOMAN'S DAUGHTER 243 betrothals, its comediettas and minor tragedies — all these are sketched for us by Elizabeth's lively pen. Even in her schooldays our heroine occasionally contrived to be thrilling, as when she informs her family that a man at East Dereham has sold his wife and all the furniture for ten shillings, and that the blacksmith has sent all the dogs mad by pouring melted quicksilver into their ears. On the 30th of November 1798 she reports that "we had a holiday on Thursday, and hot apple-pie for supper, which was charmingly good, and drunk His Majesty's health and Lord Nelson's for this late noble victory" (the battle of the Nile). In 1 80 1 the young lady is home for good, her education finished, and her head full of lovers, as appears from the following extract from a letter to her sister Maria, then on a visit to some relations in another part of the county : " I am much obliged to my dear Sister for her generosity in giving me what she had some idea I had no great aversion to, that is — a — a — sweetheart, but too late. I have set my cap, I mean my eye, at a Scotch Laddy. Oh, he have such a dimpled face, and then such a penetrating eye, such grace in every motion — 'twas very well you was not in the way, or I am sure you would have lost your heart. Ha, ha, ha! what do you think of him? I wish the description don't set your head a -gadding. But never mind me. If the young man you propose be a decent, well-behaved young fellow, you may tell him you have a sister at home, a well-meaning young woman and a very clever — but enough, I have altered my mind all of a sudden. I'll have nothing to say 244 THE YEOMAN'S DAUGHTER about any of them, but mean to live and die an old maid." Another letter to Maria records a feat of horseman- ship on which Elizabeth, not unjustifiably, prides herself. " Last Monday," she writes, " I rode my brother Tom's spirrity mare from the farmhouse with a man's saddle and without stirrups — there's for you ! Had my mother met me, Zooks, what a fright she would have been in, and faith, so should I, for I don't doubt but I should have had the cramp and fell off." The young lady was evidently a better horsewoman than musician, for she continues — " And now for what I call a sad piece of news. I was last Tuesday morning very earnest singing Bright Chanticleer, when I heard a bustling noise on the stairs. Presently I heard my mother say, * I am sure 'twas she.' The maid answered, ' No, ma'am. Miss Bet is in the kitchen.' At that I went to see what was the matter, when, would you believe it, Maria, my mother had taken my singing for moaning, and positively declared she thought I was dying, and I had every reason in the world to believe she was in earnest, for she stood upon the stairs with nothing but a loose white morning dress on. The alarm was, I believe, owing to my not having sung very lately, so had not the right tune, or, in all probability, by its being taken for moaning, no tune at all. 'Tis very disheartening. However, I don't think I shall ever attempt to sound my musical pipe again. . . . " I have made myself a hat and handkerchief to walk in. Our gowns are like your mother's, black, with a small purple zigzag. I hear you intend going to THE YEOMAN'S DAUGHTER 245 Wymondham Fair. I wish you would buy me a heart, as I am under great apprehension with regard to my own. Pray let it be a sweet one. Adieu." In the spring of 1803 Bet's brother William went to Manchester, apparently to enter some business there, and she undertook to keep him informed of the family affairs. Her first letter contains an account, written with great gusto, of the sudden deaths of three friends or connections of the Girlings. The next, dated the 19th of August, is couched in a more cheerful strain. " Well, my dear William," she begins, " here I am just returned from these bustling Assizes [at Norwich] to the still more bustling Harvest. The hot meat, hot pudding, and hot weather all together are fit to put anybody into a high fever, especially such as I. The Assize Week I spent at Mr. Clipperton's, and a very pleasant one it was, so you may perceive I like a bustle very well. They had a deal of company the whole week, but on the Wednesday we were obliged to sleep four in a bed. [Here follows a list of twelve ladies and five gentlemen who were entertained by the hospitable Mr. Clipperton.] The play on Wednesday was John Bull} a very good thing and quite new. On the Thursday we went to the great church, and were very well entertained. [This was probably St. Andrew's Hall, formerly a church.] We, that is Mr. C.'s party, went to the gardens on Friday night ; the singing was very moderate, but the fireworks very good. On the Saturday we went to the play, which was Old Whims, rather silly. The entertainment A House to Let] liked it very much. . . . Home on Saturday with my Father 1 By George Coleman the younger. 246 THE YEOMAN'S DAUGHTER and Mother, and ever since IVe felt shockingly dull and lazy, so you see the effect of frolicking. I saw your sister Maria on Saturday. She gave me a terrible account of her time — not one single day without giving or receiving visits, worse than I a good deal. "We have very little talked of among us but the French. Great preparations are made to receive them, should they attempt to pay us a visit. Your Father is superintendent of Weston, and have to see that the names of people, cattle, etc., are taken down. The men are all going to learn the use of a gun. Some people are quite terrified about it. When I called on Mrs. Willings on Saturday she was crying, and had been, she told me, for above three hours. Your brother John intend, should they attempt coming, to send his wife and child over to us. I hope we shall never see them on such an occasion. The little girl begin to step about prettily, and talk a wonderful deal, but not to be understood. "You never gave me any account of your Manchester ladies, whether they are pretty or ugly, merry or grave. Do they wear caps, or go much the same as we? In a former letter I believe you said something about perfect witches, but you know, my dear Brother, there are such things as young witches. Pray don't forget to tell me all about it." In a letter to William, dated the i8th of November 1803, we have an account of a domestic event that seems to have thoroughly bored Elizabeth. After apologising for the length of time that has elapsed since her last letter, she continues — " But you will, nay must, forgive the omission when THE YEOMAN'S DAUGHTER 247 you have heard the cause. In the first place, your sister's wedding kept us in continual employ for some weeks. [This was the marriage of the eldest sister Sarah.] I don't know how it is, but I don't like weddings. They are so dull, so very dull. I will never be at another, that's poz. There was your Grandmother, your Uncle and Aunt Howlett, your Father and Mother, the Bride and Bridegroom, Maria and myself, all moved as stately as if we went upon wires. Then such a formal drinking of health and happiness, 'twas fit to give anyone the vapours for a month at least. . . . " Most of the cavalry have volunteered themselves to go to Yarmouth for a week or a fortnight. The Norfolk Rangers were there last week, and used no better than common soldiers. They are obliged to get up at any time of the night if they hear the Bugle, and sometimes are taken six or seven miles by the seaside. One of them was put into the Black Hole for helping himself to some corn for his horse, not being in the way when it was given out. The talk is now that when they have once volunteered they can be sent anywhere. The people seem very much dissatisfied about it. Your brothers neither of them intend leaving their homes till the French come. "W. Wright have got a steward's place fifty miles beyond London, but I don't suppose he'll stay long, as Mr. Wright said the people were barbarians, and his son was afraid of being murdered as he went about. Besides all this he left his heart with Eliza Foster." A couple of letters written during the summer of 1 804 give some further account of the gaieties enjoyed by a country girl at that remote period. 248 THE YEOMAN'S DAUGHTER " This last fortnight," writes Elizabeth on the i8th of May, " I spent at Hautboys, and came home by Norwich, where I met a party for the play, which was He would he a Soldier, The entertainment was to have been Who is the Dupe ? But owing to a bustle in the playhouse we were all dupes, for we had no entertain- ment at all. It was occasioned by the farewell address of Eastmere, who Mr. Kines the manager have dismissed the stage. He being a good actor, the people in general did not approve it, so called Kines on to give his reasons, and the moment he made his appearance they hissed him. He sneered at them, and went off, which provoked the people so they would not let the play go on ; so after setting a considerable time, we were obliged to leave the house. . . . " 2'jthjuly, — I should have answered your letter sooner, but wanted to include Lenwade Races, which were lost last Wednesday. It was a very rainy day, yet I think we had as much company as usual at ours. , . . And now let me introduce you to a wedding, so pray guess whose. ' Who ? Why, one of my sisters, I suppose.* * Your sisters ! Oh no, no ; I am sadly afraid they are doomed to be old maids. Only think, these eighteen years they have been living, and never a sweetheart yet.' ' Well, then, there are the Miss C.'s or P.'s.' * No.' 'Any of your near neighbours?' *No.' * Oh, then, I have it, Miss Burton.' " Right, my good brother, for last Thursday she was married to Mr. Palmer of Carleton Rode. I shall expect a piece of cake to draw through a ring, and then only think how sweetly I shall dream. . . . " The Assizes are next week, to which we are going THE YEOMAN'S DAUGHTER 249 for two days only. The week after is Wroxham Water- Frolic, to which we are invited, but I am afraid cannot go. . . . " We went yesterday with our company to look over Weston House and gardens. The family were away, so we ranged about as we pleased. The butler played us several tunes upon the organ, violin, and German flute — the silliest man I ever saw in my life. He walked down to ours once with Mr. Smith, and talking about music, he said he frequently took his flute, and stretched himself under a spreading tree, and played himself into oblivion, I saw Richard Wright yesterday, and you can't think what a beau he is become. His shirt-collar up to his eyes, his waistcoat hardly above a finger's length, with a very deep frill, and a remark- able opera-glass hung on the outside. . . . " 2ist September, — And so you have leave of absence for a month or six weeks, yet don't mean to come and see us. Only think how glad we should be to see you, and what a while it is since we have seen you. Here is Father, Mother, Brothers, and Sisters all, and you talk of going to quite another part of the world. Your Father seem to think you quite right to see about as much as possible, but if you have not particularly engaged your- self, we should be very, very glad to see you at Weston. We intend sending you a Haunch of Venison when the weather gets a little cooler, and when you have a mind to any birds you must let us know. Your brother Tom is got to be a pretty good shot, and will shoot eight or ten brace a day, which considering last season he used to manage but one a week, is getting on. ... I wish you were here to see Maria's and my 250 THE YEOMAN'S DAUGHTER painting and drawing, for we keep doing a little of both, and think we improve, though 'tis but slowly. Your Mother came up just now, and bade me be sure and caution you, should you go to Liverpool, not to venture on the sea. The same fearful Mother, you see, as ever." In March 1805 Elizabeth has just returned from a visit to the neighbouring village of Melton, and finding that no letter has arrived from her brother during her absence, writes to jog his memory. " I begin to think," she observes, " that the old maids, or, what is more probable, the young maids, take up a deal of leisure time ; if so, why we must excuse you for not writing more frequently. Now I should vastly like to know who it is (so you see IVe made up my mind there's somebody). Depend upon my keeping the secret. Now, poz, if I had a serious beau I would give you his whole pedigree, age, stature, and temper, though you'll allow the latter rather a difficult matter. You men are so cunning ; you don't often sport your tempers till after the knot is tied (I allow some ex- ceptions); but if I ever should have a beau, I'll use him to contradiction at first. Don't you think that would be a very good plan? A propos^ talking of beaux remind me that ours have made a very handsome addition to the hind part of their heads in the form of a tail ; quite irresistible, I assure you. As to our ladies, why, wigs are quite prevalent now ; some, I find, wear them instead of hats to walk in. . . . " By the by, we go out a good deal more than we used to do, and the married ladies tell us now is the time, for should we fall into the matrimonial trap, our THE YEOMAN'S DAUGHTER 251 Dearys will be for tying us closer to the table's foot. God forbid that should ever be my case. Maria and I have made up our minds not to marry farmers (but women's minds are very apt to alter), and so if you can find a couple of spare linen-drapers or grocers, why you may send them over. Or as you give us some hopes you are coming yourself, why you may bring them with you. " 2.Qth June. — To-morrow Maria and I are going to Norwich to take another look at Fashions, as we have not yet suited ourselves with summer hats, nor indeed have we wanted them, as the weather is very cold for the time of year. . . . We clip sheep next Tuesday, and ex- pect to spend a pleasant day or two, as we expect a few friends who think it quite a treat to see the sheep dipt. " My pen was so very bad I sent to borrow a knife, not being worth one myself, and here I've got Mr. Young's, He is our Lyng shop-keeper, and such a little snaffling man, if I may use the expression, I hardly ever heard. He is going to bring Mrs. Young here in his gig on Sunday. She is not seventeen. He married her against her friends' consent ; that is, he stole her. She was kept locked up, but bolts and bars were no use. As she said, he wore silk stockings, and drove a very handsome gig, so you know he must be irresistible. A propos, don't you really think I had better give up all thoughts of a city beau (that is, something of a shop-keeper) when you hear how smart even the country ones are, and take a plodding country- man, that is, if a plodding country-man will take me, which is doubtful. But seriously, I should very well like to stand behind a counter." 252 THE YEOMAN'S DAUGHTER This is the last letter of the packet, and we have no further information as to the fate of Elizabeth Girling. It would be interesting to know whether she declined on a plodding countryman, or achieved her ambition of standing behind a counter. The love-letters of Elizabeth would, one fancies, have been pleasant reading, but it may have been that her quick wit, her lively tongue, and disposition to quiz were too much for the beaux — snaffling or otherwise — of the neighbour- hood. She passes out of our knowledge to all appear- ance fancy-free, though not before she has given a good deal of careful attention to the important subject of matrimony. As a type of country life she is now practically extinct, for the yeoman's daughter of the present day would certainly consider Bet Girling shock- ingly ungenteel; but whatever her shortcomings, she reveals herself to us in her letters as a real live girl with a warm heart, a high spirit, a keen contempt for shams and affectations, and a most saving sense of humour. AN ENGLISH MADAME ROLAND 2&3 ^"St^ ELIZA I>A\VSON (afterwards MRS. FLETCHER) AN ENGLISH MADAME ROLAND (ELIZA FLETCHER) IN an essay upon that rather dry subject, Scottish Borough Reforms, Lord Brougham has an eloquent passage upon the virtues of those eminent patriots who, from very early days, had been unremitting in their labours for the removal of municipal abuses. Chief among these champions of Reform he places Archibald Fletcher, an upright lawyer, who devoted his whole life to the cause of civil liberty, and "whose zeal for the maintenance of these principles," to quote Brougham's panegyric, " was still further excited by his alliance with a lady of Whig family in Yorkshire, one of the most accomplished of her sex, who, with the utmost purity of life that can dignify and enhance female charms, combined the inflexible principles and deep political feeling of a Hutchinson or a Roland." Character being but a poor passport to fame, the object of this splendid tribute has been suffered to fall into neglect, if not into oblivion. She left, it must be admitted, no works of a nature to perpetuate her name ; she was simply one of those experts in the art of living who are usually appreciated by their con- 265 256 AN ENGLISH MADAME ROLAND temporaries, but whose successful practice of the most difficult of all the arts seldom touches the imagination of posterity. The good that men do may live after them, but unless it takes some striking or tangible form, the memory of the doer is too often buried in his tomb. The name of our English Madame Roland is enshrined in many of the letters and journals of her period, but her Autobiography, published after her death, was composed in too simple and modest a style to make much impression upon a public that is accustomed to take those that bid for its suffrages at their own valuation. But the life of a woman who, for the best part of ninety years, worked for the cause of liberty, fought against injustice and oppression, and stimulated by her generous enthusiasm the genius or heroism of her contemporaries ; who could sympathise with present suffering, yet retain a lively faith in the ultimate triumph of good ; who combined the rdles of an acknowledged beauty, a leader of intellectual society, and an angel of the hearth — the life of such a woman may be worthy of remembrance, even though it contains no very exciting incidents and is told without a trace of picturesque exaggeration. Eliza Dawson, afterwards Mrs. Fletcher, was born in 1770 at Oxton, near Tadcaster, in Yorkshire, where her father farmed a small estate. Her mother, a Miss Hill, died when Eliza was born, but Mr. Dawson's mother, sister, and brother, who lived with him in patriarchal fashion, all seem to have conspired to spoil the only child of the house. Mrs. Fletcher has left a pleasant record of her early days. The sheep- shearings, the haymaker's dances, the harvest supper, the AN ENGLISH MADAME ROLAND 257 gathering of flowers for the May-day garlands, and of cowslips for home-made wine — these were among the festivals of the year ; and we are assured that, though little was said or written about the people^s amusements, the labouring poor had lighter spirits then than now, and not only showed more taste for the Christmas mumming and periodical feasts, but were more habitually cheerful in their domestic ways. In Eliza Dawson's case, the child was certainly the mother of the woman. One of her earliest recollections was of the American War of Independence. Her father and her grandfather Hill, both staunch Whigs, agreed in reprobating the taxation of the colonies. The child listened with intense interest to these solemn dis- cussions, and learnt from them her first lessons on the subject of national justice. But, unlike some modern Radicals, she was not for peace at any price, since her martial ardour was roused at a very early age by means of a militia review, and the attentions of the commanding officer, Sir George Savile. Sir George was no Adonis ; but it was enough that he was accounted a hero, and for many a day after she had been honoured by a seat on his knee, Eliza used to frizzle out her hair in imitation of Sir George's sparse grey locks, and march about the garden with an imaginary musket on her shoulder. One of the bitterest disappointments of her childhood was caused by a well-meaning friend, who took her to a toy-shop, and bought her an expensive doll instead of the sword, gun, or trumpet for which her soul longed. Needle- work, as might be expected, found small favour in the eyes of this youthful Amazon, who had to be 17 258 AN ENGLISH MADAME ROLAND bribed to execute the inevitable sampler by per- mission to supplement the usual alphabet and floral designs with a favourite passage from Pope's Horner^ ending with the sounding couplet — "Who dares think one thing, and another tell, My soul detests him as the gates of hell." So ardent a lover of liberty could hardly be happy amid the restraints of a boarding-school, and Eliza, who spent four years at an establishment near York, " where nothing useful could be learned, and where everything was artificial and uninteresting," declares that she only knew happiness when she mounted her pony to ride home for the holidays. On leaving school, at the age of fifteen, she revelled in her newly recovered freedom, rising at four o'clock on the summer mornings, and sauntering in the fields with a favourite volume of poetry in order that not an hour of the precious daylight might be wasted. An old friend had placed twenty pounds at her disposal when she left school, so that she might add to her scanty supply of books. In after life she never forgot the keen delight with which she entered the bookseller's shop at York to make her purchases. Chief among these were Warton's edition of Milton's Lesser Poems, Brydone's Tour, Cowper's Poems, and Hayley's Works. An early portrait of Eliza Dawson shows us a beauti- ful girl " with a romantic tale on her eyelashes." Even in secluded Oxton a succession of lovers made their appearance. The first suitor was a young officer, whose proposal Mr. Dawson commanded his daughter to refuse. This harshness made her wretched, she tells us, AN ENGLISH MADAME ROLAND 259 not because she was in love with the gentleman, but because she firmly believed that he would die of grief, as he had threatened, if he were dismissed. Her admirers furnished her with " serious occupation " during the next two or three years, for she could never bring herself to make light of the troubles of the heart, and on one occasion was obliged to give up a ball because she had disfigured herself by weeping over the Sorrows of Werter. One of the most cherished ambitions of her romantic girlhood was to get a sight of the poet Mason, then Precentor of York ; and at length her desire was in the same moment gratified and disappointed. "I figured him an interesting-looking man," she writes, " worn with deep affliction, for I had read his beautiful Monody on his wife. But when he entered Mr. Foster's drawing-room, what was my surprise to see a little fat old man of hard-featured countenance squat himself down at a card-table, and give his whole attention to a game of whist ! " It was about this time that Eliza Dawson gave public proof of that generous ardour in the cause of the oppressed which distinguished her throughout her long life. In this case the supposed victim was Mrs. Yearsley, the poetical milkwoman of Bristol, whose squabble with Hannah More had just been made public. Hannah, it will be remembered, had "discovered" Mrs. Yearsley, and collected for her benefit a sum of three or four hundred pounds, which was invested in the funds by trustees. Mrs. Yearsley desired to have the uncontrolled disposal of the interest, to which Hannah objected, and soon patroness and protdgde were at daggers drawn, Eliza, having read Mrs. Yearsley's narrative of the 260 AN ENGLISH MADAME ROLAND transaction, decided that here was an attempt to oppress the weak, and, with her father*s approval, wrote to the milkwoman offering to collect subscriptions for her new volume of poems. The offer was accepted with effusion, and Mrs. Yearsley eventually received fifty pounds from her champion, which she repaid with a copy of compli- mentary verses. In the spring of 1787 a married school friend of Eliza's paid a visit to Oxton, accompanied by her husband and by Mr. Archibald Fletcher, author of a pamphlet on the Principles of the Bill for Scottish Borough Reform^ which measure was shortly to be brought before Parliament. Mr. Fletcher, who was then over forty, is described as a man of grave and benevolent appearance. He was an admirer of Ossian^s PoemSy as well as a firm believer in their authenticity, and after his departure he sent Miss Dawson a copy of the work, with a request that she would honour him with a letter on the subject. A correspondence was thus begun, which continued intermittently during the next two years; but throughout the whole of this period it remained upon a platonic and philosophical basis. Nevertheless, it presently became apparent that Eliza had made a serious impression upon her middle-aged admirer, who paid two visits to Oxton in the course of 1788, and our heroine admits that she curled her hair with particular attention when she knew that he was expected. Mr. Fletcher usually addressed his correspondent as " Sophia," having fallen in love with Fielding's heroine on his first reading of Tom fones, ten years before. To the modern reader Sophia may seem but an inane AN ENGLISH MADAME ROLAND 261 sort of puppet, but to the romantic Scotsman she was an ideal woman. Her person, her manners, her disposi- tion, her sentiments were such as he found it impossible not to admire, and he confesses that during his perusal of the book he was perfectly uneasy when she was off the stage. Sophia remained his feminine ideal until he met Eliza Dawson, when he fancied that he perceived an extraordinary resemblance between the heroine of print and the girl of flesh and blood. He admitted, however, that the mental accomplishments of Eliza were superior to those of the amiable Sophia Western, and thus apostrophised his favourite author — "You seem to think. Fielding, that knowledge of books is no ornament to a woman ; but had you known Eliza you would have altered your opinion. She would have taught you how compatible literary acquirements are with the most engaging feminine manners, and when so blended you would have seen how much they must contribute both to the happiness and ornament of life." Eliza disclaims all idea of love at first sight on her side, and though she enjoyed an intellectual flirtation with a clever man, remained heart-whole for a couple of years longer. She seems to have had a peculiar attraction for middle-aged men, one of her many lovers being the Rev. Edmund Cartwright, inventor of the power-loom, who was then a widower of forty with five children. Another suitor was Lord Grantley, a man of near fifty, clever and agreeable, but of no very good reputation. Eliza was flattered by his attentions, but further intercourse with Mr. Fletcher had converted esteem and respect into a sentiment of a tenderer nature 262 AN ENGLISH MADAME ROLAND (the expressions are her own), and Lord Grantley was given to understand that his suit was hopeless. At this point the troubles of true love began. Mr. Dawson, who had formed splendid expectations for his child's future, refused his consent to her marriage with Mr. Fletcher, a middle-aged barrister with no private fortune. Eliza agreed to give up her lover in obedience to her father's wishes, but announced her intention of marrying no one else. This was not what Mr. Dawson desired, and he became stern and harsh towards his once-idolised daughter, with the result that she entered into a secret correspondence with Mr. Fletcher. At the end of two years she had been reasoned by her apostle of freedom into the conviction that marriage to him, with or without her father's consent, would be the best thing for all parties. Her health had begun to suffer, her home was no longer happy, and in July 1791, when she had attained her majority, the wedding took place in Tadcaster Church. Though Mr. Dawson refused to be present at the ceremony, he did not withhold an affectionate farewell from his only child. Her marriage day, declares Eliza, was the most miserable of her whole life, and the pang of parting with her family nearly broke her heart. The newly-married couple settled down in Edinburgh, where they were received with great kindness and hospitality by Mr. Fletcher's friends. The bride soon recovered her spirits, for she found herself at one with her husband in all his ideas and aspirations ; while he, unlike most men at that period, allowed his wife to share his interests, and encouraged her to cultivate her mind and enlarge her sympathies. Mr. Fletcher is AN ENGLISH MADAME ROLAND 263 described by Lord Cockburn as a pure and firm patriot, the father and untiring champion of electoral reform in Scotland. After the outbreak of the French Revolu- tion, when the words liberty and equality were supposed to spell bloodshed and rapine, Mr. Fletcher's well-known political opinions rendered him so unpopular that his professional interests were much affected. "We were often," writes his wife, "reduced to our last guinea; but such was my sympathy with my husband's public feelings, that I remember no period in my married life happier than that in which we suffered for conscience sake," It was actually reported in all seriousness that Mrs. Fletcher had provided herself with a miniature guillotine, which she exercised in beheading poultry, rats, and mice, in order to be expert when French principles should prevail north of the Tweed ! In the summer of 1792 Mr. Dawson visited his daughter, and the family reconciliation was completed by the birth of a son, Miles, in the autumn of that year. Mr. Dawson presented the Fletchers with a good house in Queen Street, where their eldest daughter, Elizabeth, was born in 1793. At this time the trials of Home Tooke and Hardy for high treason were occupying the public mind, and full reports of the proceedings were read aloud at the young mother's bedside. So keen was her interest in these events, and so intense her joy at the acquittals of the accused, that the excitement was followed by a sharp attack of fever, and for the time being both newspapers and politics were forbidden to the invalid. During the early years of her married life, Mrs- Fletcher was chiefly occupied in her domestic duties, 264 AN ENGLISH MADAME ROLAND though these were enlivened by her unwearied interest in public affairs. She also took an active part in promoting several much -needed institutions for the benefit of the poor of Edinburgh. In the face of much difficulty and opposition, she helped to found a Female Benefit Society, the first of its kind in the Scottish capital. Similar institutions for men had long been in existence, but as all innovations were then looked upon with alarm and suspicion, the establish- ment of a female society was vehemently opposed by the city authorities. For ladies to take any share in a public institution was considered too novel and ex- traordinary a proceeding to be countenanced by sensible men. The society, however, when once started, was carried on in so admirable a manner that it came to be regarded as a model for all other clubs of a similar nature. Mrs. Fletcher was also instrumental in founding the first refuge for fallen women that was opened in Edin- burgh, a humble shelter, whose inmates she regularly visited and helped to respectable employment. One of the friends who assisted her in these charitable works was a Highland lady, who was popularly known as " Susan the Good." In order to support her mother and educate her sisters, Susan exercised the craft of dressmaking, though unfortunately she was not a skilful modiste. Her mind was occupied with great subjects, such as negro emancipation and the relief of the poor, while her fingers vainly attempted to make a good fit. To Susan the Good, Mrs. Fletcher, an acknowledged beauty, be it remembered, gave all her custom so long as such support was necessary, and AN ENGLISH MADAME ROLAND 265 many interesting discussions were held during the so-called fittings-on. Six children — two boys and four girls — -were born to the Fletchers during the first dozen years of their married life. Mr. Dawson died in 1798, and the in- heritance that came to his daughter, together with Mr. Fletcher's gradually increasing professional income, put the couple at their ease, and enabled them to take a country cottage for the summer months, as well as to see more of their friends in the winter. Those were the golden days of Edinburgh society, Scott, Jeffrey, Brougham, Horner, and Henry Mackenzie being among the leading lights. Brougham always maintained that Mrs. Fletcher's friendship had been of great use to him as a young man, since she never failed to rouse him to noble aims for the honour and good of his country. Mrs. Fletcher, though she sympathised warmly with Jeffrey's political ideals, was not at first particu- larly attracted by his social qualities. Conversational brilliancy was then his forte, and flippancy his foible. "It was probably," she writes, " the secret ambition of those who conversed with him that made them afraid of him ; I know this from experience. He delighted in checking aspiring and ambitious women, as he used to call Mrs. Millar and me — ^ women that would plague him with rational conversation' — and for many years of our early acquaintance I feared more than I liked him. Just in proportion as I aspired less, I gained more of his esteem and respect." The chief excitements, national and literary, of the opening years of the new century, were the prospect of a French invasion and the starting of the Edinburgh 266 AN ENGLISH MADAME ROLAND Review, Mr. Fletcher, though he had the Whig hatred of war, buckled on his sword, and joined a corps of Highland volunteers. The sedate, elderly lawyer amused his family and friends by setting about his military duties with as much earnestness as if the defence of his country depended on his individual exertions. On one occasion, in the course of a sham fight, he was ordered to fall back with his corps, whereupon he declared in all seriousness that he never could com- mand Highlanders to retreat, but that if he did, he hoped they would disobey him ! The death of Pitt in 1806, and the return of Fox to power, rejoiced the hearts of both the Fletchers. In their eyes a Whig Ministry could do no wrong, and though they had been declaiming for years against the war policy of Pitt, yet when Fox discovered that it was impossible to conclude a peace with France, they contentedly accepted his decision, feeling confident that a Whig Cabinet would take the first opportunity of bringing the war to an honourable conclusion. A little later, another of their most ardent ambitions was gratified by the abolition of the slave trade. It was reserved for the Whig administration of 1806-7, as Mrs. Fletcher triumphantly observes, to have the glory and happiness of putting an end to British traffic in human flesh. A great event in the life of our heroine was a first visit to London, where she was introduced to Joanna Baillie and Mrs. Barbauld. "Joanna's manners and accent," she writes, "were very Scottish, very kind, simple and unaffected, but less frank than those of her sister. She seemed almost studiously to avoid literary AN ENGLISH MADAME ROLAND 267 conversation, but spoke with much interest of old Scotch friends and early days in Scotland. . . . With the brilliancy and power of Mrs. Barbauld's conversational talents my husband and I were greatly delighted. She took the same views on public affairs that we did, and had felt deeply disappointed in the disastrous turn of the French Revolution." Some years later (in 1 8 lo) Mrs. Fletcher sent her eldest daughter, Elizabeth, to spend a few months in Mrs. Barbauld's house. "I wished my child," she observes, " to have a high standard of moral and intellectual perfection, and in placing her with Mrs. Barbauld I had my wish accomplished. I think it was Mrs. Barbauld's admirable essay on the Education of Circumstances that gave me so great a desire to place my daughter in the enviable circumstance of being her inmate." By this time Mrs. Fletcher had quite lived down her Red Republican reputation, and had blossomed into one of the social leaders of Edinburgh. Her drawing- room was the rallying-place of the Whig party, as the drawing-room of her friend, Mrs. Grant of Laggan, was that of the Tory party. It was as much a matter of course that a distinguished stranger who visited Edinburgh should be presented to those rival queens as that he should be taken to Calton Hill or Arthur's Seat. Mrs. Fletcher confesses that a love of popularity was her besetting sin, and that though she cared no- thing for compliments to her beauty, she was ambitious of being distinguished for mental superiority. She certainly enjoyed her heart's desire during these prosperous years, since few women have ever been more admired or better appreciated in their own social sphere. 268 AN ENGLISH MADAME ROLAND Mr. Fletcher retired from active life in 1816, though he still continued to take a keen interest in public affairs. The Edinburgh winters were now alternated with jaunts to places of interest, such as the Lakes, where the family made their first acquaintance with Wordsworth and Southey ; to York, where they saw much of Sydney Smith, who was frequently in the town for a short course of " noise, dirt, and bad air " ; or to Callander, where Mrs. Fletcher was converted to what she had hitherto considered her husband's partial estimate of the Highland character " The respect paid to old age," she writes, " is one of the most beautiful features of this primitive state of society. Age is not merely tolerated, but it is honoured. I saw a woman of near eighty living in a neat cottage, with an acre of land and a cow, purchased for her by five sons, who were simply Highland shepherds. Proud she was, and well might she be so, of her little possessions. I never saw so much real virtue in humble life as this view of society afforded me. It made me detest poor-rates more than ever, and manufacturing districts ; it made me, I fancy, a bad political economist, but a greater lover of my fellow-creatures." In 1 8 10 Mrs. Fletcher had made the acquaintance of Allan Cunningham, then a young stone-mason, who was pointed out to her by one of his employers as a youth with a pretty turn for verse. When he came to Edinburgh to improve himself in his trade, she lent him books and gave him letters of introduction ; while, after his departure for London, where he obtained employ- ment in Chantrey's studio, she kept up a regular corre- spondence with him. Some years later, Cunningham AN ENGLISH MADAME ROLAND 269 wrote to offer his old friend a cast from one of Chantrey's works, and suggested that she might like the bust of Sir Walter Scott. In a characteristic letter, Mrs. Fletcher stated her preference for a bust of Sir Samuel Romilly. "You must find the solution for this puzzling preference," she observes, " in the importance which my husband and I attach to the principles of public men. I believe Sir Walter to be an excellent private character, as well as a man of consummate genius ; but then he is a writer in support of principles which we think injurious to the dignity, the purity, and elevation of the national character, while Sir Samuel spent his whole valuable life in advocating that cause and those principles which have raised England to the high rank she holds in the scale of nations. You may say, perhaps, *Will you prefer a bust of Lord Byron, whose sentiments are those of ultra- Whiggism ? ' I answer, * No ; because Lord Byron has trampled on private morals, and shamefully violated the charities of public life, and not all his powerful genius can save him from dishonour.*" In 1822 the citizens of Edinburgh were all agog in expectation of a visit from George iv., and if he had been the wisest, bravest, and most patriotic king that ever wore a crown, he could not have been received with more loyal devotion. Mrs. Fletcher went to view the royal procession, and her friends had a good laugh at her expense ; for though notoriously no lover of kings she was detected in shedding tears, and waving her handkerchief as enthusiastically as the Tory Mrs. Grant. Even Mr. Fletcher, though infirm in health, insisted on taking his seat upon the platform prepared 270 AN ENGLISH MADAME ROLAND for the gentlemen of the bar, and cheered "the first magistrate of a free people" with all his heart. The king's triumph was complete when it was reported that he had said to Sir Walter Scott, " I always heard that the Scotch were a proud people, and they may well be proud, for they are a nation of gentlemen, and live in a city of palaces." Another distinguished visitor of the same year was Miss Edgeworth, who, with her sisters, spent some time in Edinburgh. " Miss Edgeworth's personal appearance is not attractive," writes Mrs. Fletcher, " but her vivacity, good humour, and cleverness in conversation quite equalled my expectations. I should say she was more sprightly than refined ; she excelled in the raciness of Irish humour, but the great defect of her manner was an excess of compliment, or what in Ireland is called * blarney ' ; and in one who had moved in the best circles it surprised me not a little. She repelled all approach to intimacy on my part by the excess of her complimentary reception when we were first introduced to each other. I never felt confidence in the reality of what she said afterwards." In 1824 the family went to live at Auchendinny House, nine miles from Edinburgh, where they led a quiet, rational existence, with no cravings after the gaieties of the capital. Here Mrs. Fletcher was persuaded by her children to print a little volume of Dramatic Sketches which she had written some years before. It did not, and was not intended to, attract public attention, but it brought the author many appreciative letters from literary friends, such as Joanna Baillie, Lucy Aiken, and Mrs. Grant of Laggan. About AN ENGLISH MADAME ROLAND 271 this time Mr. Fletcher began to show signs of failing health and spirits, but to the last his mind remained as clear and his sympathy with the cause of liberty as warm as in the best days of his manhood. When he lay on his deathbed in 1827 the Greek Revolution occupied all his thoughts. Only a few days before he died, relates his wife, " I found Mr. Turner, our surgeon, giving Mr. Fletcher an account of the successful struggle the Greeks were making against their Turkish oppressors. I never saw Mr. Fletcher look more animated, and turning to me, he said, ' My dear, Mr. Turner says I must take some port wine, and you must take a glass with us to wish success to the Greeks.* I mention this as an instance of the ruling passion being strong in death." On 20th December 1827 the old patriot died, and thus closed, writes his widow, "a union of as much happiness as is commonly the portion of human life. . . . Considering the great disparity of years, there was un- usual sympathy between us. He had none of that narrow and paltry feeling which belongs to men of little minds, a desire of exercising power and authority in small matters. It was my happiness to be able to sympathise completely in all his public feelings and opinions. If I had not done so, our union would have been far less happy, for he lived in times when private interests were sacrificed to public principles by all who truly loved truth and justice, and had minds sufficiently enlightened, and honesty sufficiently steadfast, to prefer public good to private and personal advantage." Auchendinny House had to be given up after the master's death, and as Mrs. Fletcher wished to leave Edinburgh for a time, she decided to join forces with 272 AN ENGLISH MADAME ROLAND her eldest daughter, Mrs. Taylor, whose marriage seems to have been unfortunate. The^ question of a school for Mrs. Taylor's son was under consideration, and the choice was made by his grandmother in characteristic fashion. Happening to read Dr. Arnold's pamphlet on the Christian Duty of Conceding the Catholic Claims^ Mrs. Fletcher at once declared "Rugby is the school for us." Accordingly, a house was taken at Rugby, and the educational experiment, based on a political pamphlet, turned out a brilliant success. In Arnold Mrs. Fletcher found a kindred spirit, and a warm friend- ship was then begun between the two families, which was afterwards cemented at Fox How. In 1830, during the Rugby period, Margaret Fletcher, the second daughter, was married to Dr. Davy, a brother of Sir Humphrey Davy, who held a post at Malta. Mrs. Fletcher accompanied the newly-married couple to Paris, where she visited many of the charitable in- stitutions of the city, and made the acquaintance of Lafayette, Benjamin Constant, Mignet, and other celebrities. In 1831-32 the whole country was in a ferment over the question of Reform, and in the winter of 1832 the hustings were erected in Edinburgh for the first popular election under the new conditions. " I often took my three grandsons," writes Mrs. Fletcher, at this time on a visit to her former home, " and explained to them how their grandfather and father would have rejoiced to see that day, for the sake of the improvement of their country and the security of future freedom." On the actual day of the election Mrs. Fletcher was invited by the Jeffreys to come to their house in Moray Place, AN ENGLISH MADAME ROLAND 273 from whose windows she might see the new Whig members (Jeffrey and Abercromby) brought home in triumph. In the course of the day Lord Cockburn rushed into the drawing-room, looked round upon the crowd of Whig ladies, and exclaimed, "Where's Mrs. Fletcher? She's the woman I want." When his old friend came forward the two clasped hands, and had a " good greet " together, weeping tears of joy, it need not be said, at the fulfilment of their hearts* desire. The next two summers were spent in the Lake district, where Mrs. Fletcher enjoyed the society of the Wordsworths, Southeys, and Arnolds. She was amazed to find what gloomy views the two poets took of the state of public affairs. " What was the opening of new hope for the evils of the country to Dr. Arnold and us," she writes, " was to Wordsworth and his family the end of England's glory. I have now lived to feel that we were more in the right than our great poet at Rydal, and also the excellent but desponding Southey at Keswick." In 1835 Mrs. Fletcher took a cottage at Darland in Kent, in order to be near her daughter, Mrs. Davy, whose husband had obtained an appointment at Fort Pitt. Though the next three years were spent at Darland, our north-country heroine never became re- conciled to what she called " this arid land of chalky cliffs and official understandings," and it was with un- feigned joy that, in the beginning of 1838, she turned her back upon " chilly Kent," and found herself, after an absence of ten years, settled once again in the — intellectually — warmer atmosphere of Edinburgh. As it was necessary to find a home for the summer months, during which the Scottish capital is deserted by 18 274 AN ENGLISH MADAME ROLAND even its most ardent admirers, negotiations were entered into for the purchase of the little farm of Lancrigg in Easedale, a favourite haunt of Wordsworth's, who acted as amateur estate-agent throughout the affair. The farm was bought in 1840, and the old poet gave his friends much practical advice as to the necessary alterations and improvements. " One of our Grasmere workmen," writes Mrs. Fletcher, "amused us by his opinion of Mr. Wordsworth. My daughter, when en- forcing her desire to have the chimneys like those in Troutbeck, said, * Mr. Wordsworth thinks they are the best for this country, and we must do what he tells us.* *Yes,' said the man deliberately, *m'appen he has as much sense as most on us.' " Lancrigg became so great a favourite with the family that in 1843 they decided to give up their Edinburgh house, and, as Mrs. Fletcher expressed it, " to marry the Lakes after flirting with them so long." The quiet life at Lancrigg was diversified by occasional visits to London, and by opportunities of making acquaintance with the many distinguished pilgrims who came to do homage at the shrine of Wordsworth. The public events of the next few years which especially interested our republican heroine were the Repeal of the Corn Laws and — in 1 848 — the revolutions on the Continent. Mrs. Fletcher happened to be at an evening party in the house of a London friend when the news came of the revolution in Paris. " Mr. Carlyle was sitting by me at the time," she writes. " I looked at him, hoping he would speak. He said not a word, but broke into a loud laugh, and left the house to devour the evening journals, which were filled with the news AN ENGLISH MADAME ROLAND 275 from Paris." Mazzini, with whom Mrs. Fletcher had struck up an ardent friendship on his first arrival in London, breakfasted with her the next morning, when the flight of the king and Guizot had become known. " It was beautiful," she writes, " to hear Mazzini's simple and eloquent lamentation over the moral degradation of Guizot. * It was from his lectures,' he said, * that I first learned to love civil and religious liberty ; and that such a man should truckle to the base measures of Louis Philippe is deplorable.' I asked Mazzini what effect this would produce in Italy. * The most glorious effect,' he answered. ' The fall of the French monarchy is the restoration and union of Italy.' . . . What a beautiful manifestation does this contrast of 1848 to 1792 make as to the improvement and progress of Europe in the last sixty years. It is a comfort to know that the smallest services that those we loved best rendered to the good cause in those days of cowardly repression, when they, and honest men like them, never shrank from the maintenance of high principles, tells now in the different reception that England and Scotland gave to this over that state of things in France in 1792." Kossuth and Thomas Wright, the prison philan- thropist, were added to Mrs. Fletcher's long list of public heroes in her extreme old age, while the Crimean War was the last great national crisis she lived to see. In January 1855 her generous indignation was aroused by a report of the neglect with which a ship- load of wounded soldiers, just arrived at Portsmouth, had been treated by the authorities. " I sit down boiling with indignation," she writes to her daughter, 276 AN ENGLISH MADAME ROLAND Lady Richardson, who was then living at Portsmouth, " against the inhabitants of Portsmouth for not giving a more fitting reception to the maimed and mutilated men who came home in the Himalaya, I have just been reading that article in the Evening Mail, describing the shameful neglect those brave men have experienced, and beg you will write, if possible, to contradict such a report of national ingratitude and want of right feeling not only in officials, but in the whole mass of the people, who ought to have vied with each other in proving their sense of the strong claim those brave men had upon their sympathy. I can imagine, though I cannot forgive, the miserable jealousies and little formalities which prevent naval officers from taking any part in disembarking military men, otherwise we know dear Sir John would have been foremost to help them, and I wonder you, dearest Mary, were not there. I am sure your old mother would have gone down to the jetty in defiance of military etiquette to hail these poor fellows." During her old age Mrs. Fletcher occupied herself in writing her Autobiography^ and also a brief memoir of her husband and of her gifted daughter Grace, the child of her heart, who died in her twenty-first year. She was happy enough to retain her strength and activity of mind and body almost to the last, while her beauty is said to have matured rather than faded. In the winter of 1857 her health showed the first signs of failing, and the indomitable spirit, that had carried her through many trials, began to droop under the burden of years. The weakness rapidly increased, and on the 5th of February 1858 the old heroine passed away in her sleep, having just entered her eighty-ninth year. AN ENGLISH MADAME ROLAND 277 Mrs. Fletcher's character and aspect in her later years, as they appeared to a stranger of her own sex, have been graphically described by Margaret Fuller, who paid a visit to Lancrigg in 1846. "Seventy-six years have passed over her head," wrote Miss Fuller, "only to prove the truth of my theory that we need never grow old. ... In childhood she had warmly sympathised in the spirit that animated the American Revolution, and Washington had been her hero ; later, the interest of her husband in every struggle for freedom had cherished her own. She had known in the course of her long life many eminent men, and sympathised now in the triumph of the people over the corn laws, as she had in the American victories, with as much ardour as when a girl, though with a wiser mind. Her eye was full of light, her manner and gesture of dignity ; her voice rich, sonorous, and finely modulated ; her tide of talk marked by candour and justice, showing in every sentence her ripe experience and her noble, genial nature. Dear to memory will be the sight of her in the beautiful seclusion of her home among the mountains, a picturesque flower- wreathed dwelling, where affection, tranquillity, and wisdom were the gods of the hearth, to whom was offered no vain oblation. Grant us more such women. Time ! Grant to men to reverence, to seek for such ! " AN AMERICAN IN ENGLAND 279 AN AMERICAN IN ENGLAND^ IN the early decades of the nineteenth century, the American litterateur on a visit to the Old Country seems to have enjoyed a decided advantage over his English colleagues so far as social advantages were concerned. He was generally regarded as an interesting human novelty, free from the drawback common to other foreigners, of an imperfect mastery of the English tongue. Coming, moreover, from a country in which all men were nominally equal, his actual position was so difficult to gauge that, if he were an agreeable, well- conducted person, almost all circles were open to him, from the most exclusive to the ultra-Bohemian, Some- times his head was turned by his social success, but commonly he regarded his reception as one of the rights of a free-born American, made the most of his " good time," and thought that he had sufficiently repaid his welcome when he had asked his English friends to visit him on the " other side." There could not, perhaps, be a greater contrast be- tween two men, both American travellers in Europe, than that which exists between N. P. Willis, the Penciller by the * The narratives of this and the preceding paper overlap into the Victorian period, but as the greater portion of each deals with the later years of the Georgian period, they have been included in this collection. 281 282 AN AMERICAN IN ENGLAND Way, and George Ticknor, the Harvard professor. It must be confessed that Willis is the more amusing and illuminative of the twain, if only by reason of his many indiscretions. The biographer of Ticknor had evidently taken to heart the strictures of English critics on Willis' work, for he has done his editing in almost too scrupulous a spirit. Famous names follow one another swiftly across the pages, but an exasperating system of dots and dashes combines with Ticknor's naturally reserved style to deprive the reader of the little personal touches which constitute the chief charm of social reminiscences. Nevertheless, in the course of two stout, closely-printed volumes, we renew our acquaintance with many of the literary and political celebrities of the early decades of the nineteenth century, and have their portraits drawn and their conversation reported by a sober, conscientious pen. George Ticknor was the only child of Elisha Ticknor of Boston, who, to quote a famous epitaph, was born a man and died a grocer. But Elisha was something more than a grocer ; he was also a good citizen and an ideal father. His only son was born in 1791, one of his early recollections being the death of his namesake, George Washington, in 1799. He used to relate how each tradesman when he heard that the hero was dead shut up his shop, as a matter of course, and in two hours all business was stopped. " My father came home and could not speak, he was so overcome," he tells us. " My mother was alarmed to see him in such a state, till he recovered enough to tell her the sad news. For some time everyone, even the children, wore crape on the arm ; no boy could go into the street without it." AN AMERICAN IN ENGLAND 283 George was well educated according to the standards of those days, and after three years in a lawyer's office was admitted to the bar in 1 8 1 3. But having taken a hearty dislike to his profession, he confided to his father his desire to go to Europe for two or three years with a view to preparing himself for a literary calling. The excellent father agreed that the law should be abandoned, and that his son should take the then unusual course of entering at a German university. At this time Germany, her literature and her philosophy, were just coming into fashion in England, but in Boston not a soul could be found to teach the aspiring student the language, nor could he buy a German grammar or dictionary in the town. However, by dint of begging and borrowing the necessary books, he contrived to make some progress in his new studies before sailing for Europe in the spring of 181 5. On the nth of May he arrived at Liverpool, the pilot who took the ship into harbour telling the passengers the startling news of Napoleon's escape from Elba. In connection with this event Ticknor relates a curious anecdote told him by Southey. Sir James Mackintosh had just written an able and elaborate article for the Edinburgh Review to prove that the war with France ought to have been avoided, and that its consequences to England could only be unfortunate. The number was actually printed, stitched, and ready for distribution ; but it was thought better to postpone its appearance in the anticipation of a military reverse, which would give it the appearance of prophecy. In- stead of the reverse, however, the victory of Waterloo came like a thunderclap, and the article was suppressed, one on " Gall and his Craniology " being printed in its stead. 284 AN AMERICAN IN ENGLAND Ticknor was amazed at the manner in which the Whigs regarded the war, and at their attitude towards England's enemies. On his way to London he stopped at Hatton, and visited Dr. Parr, a sturdy specimen of the peace-at-any-price Little Englander who is sometimes supposed to be the peculiar product of our own times. " Sir," he assured his American visitor, " I should not think I had done my duty if I went to bed any night without praying for the success of Napoleon Buonaparte." Ticknor says that the Doctor resembled the portraits of his old friend, Samuel Johnson, with just such a coat and dirty bob-wig. " His conversation was fluent and various — full of declamation and sounding phrases, and as dictatorial as an emperor's. On American politics he was bold and decisive. He thought we had ample cause for the war, and seemed to have a very favourable opinion of our principal men and our late measures. ' Thirty years ago,' said he, in a solemn tone that would have been worthy of Johnson, * thirty years ago, sir, I turned on my heel when I heard you called rebels, and I was always glad when you beat us.' " Ticknor spent a month in London before leaving for Germany, and in this short time contrived to see a good deal of literary society. He had an introduction to Sir Humphrey and Lady Davy, the former then little over thirty, and one of the best-looking men in England. Ticknor had been curious to see Lady Davy, of whom Madame de Stael had said that she possessed all Corinne's talents without any of her faults or extra- vagances. "I found her," he writes, "working on a dress, the contents of her work-basket strewed about the table, and looking more like home than anything I AN AMERICAN IN ENGLAND 285 had seen since I left it. . . . Her conversation is agree- able, particularly in the choice and variety of her phraseology, and has more the air of eloquence than I ever heard before from a lady. But then it has some- thing of formality and display which injures conversation. Her manner is gracious and elegant; and though I should not think of comparing her to Corinne, yet I think she has uncommon powers.*' Ticknor was taken by Gifford, whom he describes as one of the best-natured, most open, and well-bred gentle- men he had ever met, to the room over Murray's book-shop, which was then used as a sort of literary lounge. Here he met Byron, Hallam, and Boswell, a son of Johnson's biographer. Byron seems to have taken a fancy to the stranger, for he invited him to call next day. In his journal Ticknor gives a full account of this visit, and notes his surprise at finding the poet so unlike what he had expected, with a round, open face, easy and careless air, gentle manners and conciliat- ing tones, instead of the gloomy countenance and sinister mien of a Childe Harold. " I turned the conversation towards his own poems," writes Ticknor, "and particularly towards his English Bards^ which he has so effectually suppressed that a copy is not easily to be found. He said he wrote it when he was very young and very angry; which, he added, were the only circumstances under which a man could write such a satire. When he returned to England Lord Holland and Rogers asked him to print no more of it, and he suppressed it. Since then he had become acquainted with the persons he had satirised, and whom he then knew only by their books — was now the friend 286 AN AMERICAN IN ENGLAND of Moore, the correspondent of Jeffrey, and intimate with the Wordsworth school, and had a hearty liking for them all." In the course of this visit Sir James Bland Burgess hurried in, exclaiming, " My lord, my lord, a great battle has been fought in the Low Countries, and Buonaparte is entirely defeated." " But is it true ? " asked Lord Byron. "Yes, my lord. An aide-de-camp arrived in town last night; he has been in Downing Street this morning, and I have just met him as he was going to Lady Wellington's.^ He says he thinks Buonaparte is in full retreat towards Paris." After a moment's pause, Byron replied, " I am d d sorry to hear it," adding, " I didn't know but I might live to see Lord Castlereagh's head on a pole. But I suppose I shan't now." " And this," observes Ticknor, "was the first impression pro- duced on his impetuous nature by the news of the battle of Waterloo." On the same occasion the American got his first glimpse of Lady Byron. " She is pretty — not beautiful," he says, " for the prevalent expression of her counten- ance is that of ingenuousness. ' Report speaks goldenly of her.' She is a baroness in her own right, has a large fortune, is rich in intellectual endowments, possesses common accomplishments in an uncommon degree, and adds to all this a sweet temper. She was dressed to go and drive, and after a few moments went to her carriage. Lord Byron's manner to her was most affectionate ; he followed her to the door, and shook hands with her as if he were not to see her again for a month." On calling by appointment a few days later, Ticknor found Lady ^ Duchess of Wellington since the previous year. AN AMERICAN IN ENGLAND 287 Byron alone. "She did not seem so pretty to me as she did the other day," he observes, " but what she may have lost in regular beauty she made up in expression and variety of countenance. She is diffident, but she is very young — not more than nineteen, I think — and is obviously possessed of talent, though she does not talk at all for display. She talked upon a considerable variety of subjects — of America, of which she seemed to know much ; of France and Greece, with something of her husband's visit there; and spoke of all with a justness and a light good -humour that would have struck me even in one of whom I had heard nothing. With Byron I had an extremely pleasant and instructive conversation of above an hour. He is, I think, simple and unaffected. When he speaks of his early follies he does it with sincerity ; of his journeys in Greece and the East without ostentation; of his own works he talks with modesty, and of those of his rivals with justice, generosity, and discriminating praise." It was at Byron's house that Ticknor met Mrs. Siddons, who, he says, had one of the finest and most spirited countenances, and one of the most dignified and commanding figures, he had ever beheld. "Her con- versation," he continues, "corresponded well with her person. It is rather stately, but not, I think, affected, and, though accompanied by considerable gesture, not really over-acted. She gave a lively description of the horrible ugliness and deformity of David the painter, told us some of her adventures in France a year ago, and in speaking of Buonaparte repeated some powerful lines from the Venice Preserved which gave me some intimations of her powers of acting. She formed a 288 AN AMERICAN IN ENGLAND singular figure by Lady Byron, who sat by her side, all grace and delicacy, and thus showed Mrs. Siddons* masculine powers in the stronger light of contrast." Ticknor was contemplating a tour in Greece before his return to America, and Byron gave him a good deal of useful information about the country, as well as some valuable letters of introduction. On the 30lh of June, just before his departure for Germany, he notes in his journal : " I think I have received more kindness from Lord Byron than from any other person in England. Besides the letters he has sent me, he accompanied the last with a present of a magnificent pistol, and a copy of his own poems, and one of Dr. Holland's Travels in Greece, . . . After all, it is difficult for me to leave him, thinking either of his early follies or present eccentricities ; for his manners are so gentle, and his whole character so natural and unaffected, that I have come from him with nothing but an indistinct impression of the goodness and vivacity of his disposition." From London Ticknor travelled to Gottingen, where he spent the best part of the next two years in unre- mitting study. He seems to have had enormous powers of application, and to have absorbed languages and literature with extraordinary ease and rapidity. During his six weeks' vacation in the summer of 1816, Ticknor went to Weimar, where he was accorded an interview by Goethe, of whom he drew a rather melancholy picture. " He lives now in his old age in unconsoled solitude ; sees almost nobody, and rarely goes out. His enjoyment of life seems gone, his inclination for exer- tion gone, and nothing remains to him that I can see but a very few years of cold and unsatisfied retirement." AN AMERICAN IN ENGLAND 289 On his return to Gottingen, Ticknor received the offer of the Professorship of French and Spanish Literature and the Belles Lettres at Harvard University. The salary was small, and in order to prepare for his duties he would be obliged to give up his Greek tour, and devote the remainder of his stay in Europe to the study of the French, Italian, and Spanish literatures, each in the country of its birth. After much consideration the offer was accepted, and in the spring of 1 8 1 7 the future professor left Gottingen for Paris, where he studied from dawn till dusk, and spent his evenings in the best society to which he could obtain an entrance. He found a pleasant literary coterie established by the young Duchesse de Broglie, who was doing the honours for her mother, Madame de Stael, then stricken with her last illness. Here he made the acquaintance of Chateaubriand, Madame de Recamier, Schlegel, and Humboldt, and was admitted more than once to the bedside of the dying Corinne. Her amour propre as a phrase-maker seems to have survived to the last, for he observes that "everything she said was marked with that imagination which gives such a peculiar energy to her works, and which has made her so long the idol of French society ; but whenever she seemed to be aware that she was about to utter any phrase of force and aptness, her languid features were kindled with an animation which made a strange contrast with her feeble condition. Especially when she said of America, *Vous ^tes Tavant-garde du genre humain, vous etes I'avenir du monde,' there came a slight tinge of feeling into her face, which spoke plainly enough of the pride of genius." 19 290 AN AMERICAN IN ENGLAND Six months in Italy, and a like period in Spain, enabled the student to obtain what, in those days, was considered a good working knowledge of the literature of each country. In January 1819 he returned to London. On this occasion he was fortunate in obtain- ing the entrh to Holland House. " Lord Holland," he writes, " is a good scholar and a pleasant man in con- versation. Sir James Mackintosh was staying in the house, Sydney Smith and Brougham came there very often, and Heber, Frere, Lord Lansdowne, Lord John Russell, etc. I do not well know how dinners and evenings could be more pleasant. There was no alloy but Lady Holland, whom I did not like ; but I should have been very foolish if I had suffered this to prevent my enjoyment, when to avoid it I had only to talk to someone else." Brougham, who was then only eight-and-thirty, is described as thin and rather awkward, with a plain, in- expressive face. " On common topics no one is more commonplace. He does not feel them ; but if the subject excites him, there is an air of originality in his remarks which convinces you that you are talking to an extraordinary man. . . . Sydney Smith, who then happened to be in London, was in one respect the soul of society. I never saw a man so formed to float down the stream of conversation, and without seeming to have any direct influence upon it, to give it his own hue and charm. , . . Notwithstanding the easy grace and light playfulness of his wit, he is a man of much culture, with plain good sense, a sound, discreet judgment, and remarkably accurate habits of reasoning. . . . While his humour gives such grace to his argument that it AN AMERICAN IN ENGLAND 291 comes with the charm of wit, and his wit is so appropriate that its sallies are often logic in masquerade, his good sense and good nature are so prevalent that he never offends against the proprieties or society, and never says anything that he need afterwards regret." Ticknor seems to have been able to hold his own in the circle in which he now found himself, and on one notable occasion even administered a snub to Lady Holland. The lady having observed, in her usual pleasant style, that the majority of Americans were the descendants of convicts, he reminded her that her own family, the Vassalls, were of American extraction. After paying visits at Hatfield, Woburn, and other great country houses, Ticknor went north to study Scottish literature on its own ground. In Edinburgh he made the acquaintance of Professor Wilson (Christopher North), " a pretending young man with a great deal of talent " ; of Hogg, " vulgar as his name, and a perpetual contradiction in conversation to the exquisite delicacy of his Kilmeny " ; and of Henry Mackenzie, "an active little old gentleman, talking fast and well on all common subjects, and without the smallest indication of the Man of Feeling." But the lord of the ascendant in Edinburgh circles was of course Walter Scott, whom Ticknor thought as re- markable in intercourse and conversation as in any of his writings. " I met him in court one morning," runs an entry in the journal, " and he proposed to take a walk with me. He carried me off, and showed me the houses of Ferguson, Blair, Hume, Smith, and Robertson, telling 292 AN AMERICAN IN ENGLAND at the same time amusing anecdotes of these men, and bringing out a story for almost every lane and close. He explained and defended more at large the opinion he has advanced in Guy Mannering, that the days of these men were the golden days of Edinburgh, and that we live in the decline of society. Among other anecdotes, Mr. Scott told me that he once travelled with Tom Campbell in a stage-coach alone, and that, to beguile the time, they talked of poetry, and began to repeat some. At last Scott asked Campbell for some- thing of his own, and he said there was one thing he had written but never printed, that was full of drums and trumpets and blunderbusses and thunder, and he didn't know if there was anything good in it. And then he repeated Hohenlinden. Scott listened with the greatest interest, and when he had finished, broke out, * But do you know, that is devilish fine ; why, it's the finest thing you ever wrote, and it must be printed.' " Ticknor seems to have been particularly struck with Scott's eldest daughter, Sophia, afterwards Mrs. Lockhart. During a visit of two or three days to Abbots ford, he writes that " Sophia can tell as many Border stories as her father, and repeat perhaps as many ballads, and certainly more Jacobite songs. She is, indeed, in some respects an extraordinary person. There is nothing romantic about her, for she is as perfectly right-minded as I ever saw one so young ; and indeed, perhaps right-mindedness is the prevailing feature of her character. She has no uncommon genius, and yet I am sure he must have little taste or feeling who could find her conversation dull. She is not beautiful, though after seeing her several times in AN AMERICAN IN ENGLAND 293 company with those handsomer than herself, I found my eye rested with most pleasure on the playful simplicity and natural openness of her countenance/' On leaving Abbotsford Ticknor journeyed to the Lake country, where he was cordially received by Southey and Wordsworth. At the house of the former he was introduced to Mrs. Coleridge, " a good, respectable woman of five-and-forty,'' and to her daughter Sara, " a sweet creature of uncommon beauty and gentleness, not quite sixteen." The guest was amazed at the proofs he saw of his host's untiring industry. " Southey is certainly a most extraordinary man," he writes, *'one of those characters I find it difficult to comprehend, because I hardly know how such elements can be brought together, such rapidity of mind with such patient labour and wearisome exactness, so mild a disposition with so much nervous excitability, and a poetical talent so elevated with such an immense mass of minute dull learning. He considers himself completely an author by profession, and therefore never writes anything that will not sell in the hours he regularly devotes to labour. For this reason his poetry has been strictly his amusement, and he has taken the time before breakfast for his muse — which cannot be more than half an hour or an hour — and has not allowed himself any other. When I add that his light reading after supper is the fifty-three folios of the Acta Sanctorum, I have given to myself an idea of such industry as I never saw but in Germany." Wordsworth, with whom Ticknor spent a day or two, was then about fifty-three, and is described as having a grave, tranquil manner, a Roman cast of countenance, and a Roman dignity and simplicity. " He presented 294 AN AMERICAN IN ENGLAND me to his wife, a good, very plain woman, who seems to regard him with reverence and affection; and to his sister, not much younger than himself, with a good deal of spirit, and, I should think, more than common talent and knowledge. His conversation surprised me by being so different from all I had anticipated. It was exceed- ingly simple, strictly confined to subjects he understood familiarly, and more marked by plain good sense than by anything else. When, however, he came upon poetry and reviews, he was the Khan of Tartary again, and talked as metaphysically and extravagantly as ever Coleridge wrote.'' In April Ticknor was back again in London. He visited Hazlitt, whose conversation, he observes, was in the nature of a commonplace book, full of pointed and pithy sentences, such as that Curran was the " Homer of blackguards," or that the Emperor Alexander was the "Sir Charles Grandison of Europe." He became acquainted about the same time with Godwin and his second wife : the former a stout, well-built man of fifty- five, with a cool, dogged manner ; the latter a spirited, active woman, who controlled the house. "When I looked at Godwin," he continues, " and saw with what cool obstinacy he adhered to everything he had once assumed, and what a cold selfishness lay at the bottom of his character, I felt a satisfaction in the thought that he had a wife who must sometimes give a start to his blood and a stir to his nervous system. The true way, however, to see all these people was to meet them all together, as I did once at a Saturday Night Club at Hunt's, where they felt themselves bound to show off and produce an effect ; for then Lamb's gentle AN AMERICAN IN ENGLAND 295 humour, Hunt's passion, Curran's volubility, Hazlitt's sharpness and point, and Godwin's great head full of cold brains, all coming into contact and conflict, and agreeing in nothing but their common hatred of every- thing that had been more successful than their own works, made one of the most curious and amusing olla podrida I have ever met." Ticknor sailed for New York early in May 1819. His induction to the Harvard Professorship took place in the following August, and he at once entered upon the duties of his office, residing in the paternal home down to the time of Elisha Ticknor's death in June 1821. In August of that year he was married to Miss Anna Eliot, the daughter of a prosperous merchant who had founded the Greek Professorship at Harvard. Ticknor seems to have been fortunate both in his profession and in his domestic life. He was not a brilliant, but a sound and judicious lecturer, his fortune was easy, and his house was for many years the centre of the most culti- vated society in Boston. Life flowed smoothly with him during the next ten or twelve years; but in 1834 he sustained a crushing blow in the death of his only son, a child of five years old. His wife's health having suffered from the shock, he determined to resign his professorship, and take his family to Europe for two or three years. It was just twenty years after his first visit that the Professor, with his wife and two daughters, landed at Liver- pool on the 25th of June 1835. As before,he kept a copious journal, and one of the earliest entries records that " we all breakfasted — including Nannie — with the excellent and kind old Mr. Rogers, nobody being present except 296 AN AMERICAN IN ENGLAND Campbell the poet, who returned two or three days ago from his Algerine expedition. I need not say that the two hours we thus passed were extremely agreeable. The vast amount of Mr. Rogers' recollections, extending back through the best society for sixty years, his exquisite taste, his excellent common sense and sound judgment, and his sincere gentle kindness, coming quietly, as it does, from the venerableness of his age, render him one of the most delightful men a stranger can see in London." Ticknor renewed his acquaintance with the Hollands and Lady Byron, dined with Kenyon to meet Harness and Crabb Robinson, and with the Bullers to meet O'Connell and Mrs. Austin. He took his wife and daughters to a ball at Almack's, to St. Paul's to hear Sydney Smith preach, and to Hampstead to lunch with Joanna Baillie. Of the old poet-dramatist he writes : '* She is now above seventy, and, dressed with an exact and beautiful propriety, received us most gently and kindly. Her accent is still Scotch ; her manner strongly marked with that peculiar modesty which you sometimes see united to the venerableness of age, and which is then so very winning; and her conversation, always quiet and never reminding you of her own claims as an author, is so full of good sense, with occasionally striking remarks and a little touch of humour, that I do not know when I have been more pleased and gratified than I was by this visit. She lives exactly as an English gentlewoman of her age and character should live, and everything about her was in good taste and appropriate to her position, even down to the delicious little table she had spread for us in her quiet parlour. When I asked her about her AN AMERICAN IN ENGLAND 297 own work, she answered my questions very simply and directly, but without any air of authorship ; and I was very glad to hear her say that in the autumn she intends to publish the remaining volumes of her plays, thinking that it is better to * do up ' all her own work, as she has lived to be so old, rather than leave it to her executors." After an interesting season in London, the Ticknors set out on the 25th of July for a tour through England, Wales, and Ireland, travelling in a big carriage drawn by four horses, which formed their movable home during the next two years. In the course of the tour they visited Miss Mitford at Reading, attended the meetings of the British Association at Dublin, spent two or three delight- ful days at Edgeworth town, and returned by way of the Lake country. Ticknor was favourably impressed by Miss Edgeworth, and has much praise for her "un- common quickness of perception, her fertility of allusion, and the great resources of fact which a remarkable memory supplies to her. . . . Her conversation was always ready, and as full of variety and vivacity as I can imagine. It was, too, no less full of good nature. She was disposed to defend everybody, even Lady Morgan, as far as she could, and in her intercourse with her family she was delightful." During his stay at the Lakes, Ticknor renewed his acquaintance with the Wordsworths and Southeys, find- ing both families in melancholy circumstances. Words- worth's sister, Dorothy, was lying at the point of death, and his daughter was suffering from spine complaint, while Mrs. Southey had been hopelessly deranged for some months, and was then supposed to be fading away. 298 AN AMERICAN IN ENGLAND It was no wonder that both poets seemed depressed, and took a gloomy view even of public affairs. Wordsworth talked incessantly as usual, and gave a mournful descrip- tion of his last visit to Scott, just before the novelist set out for Naples, broken down in mind and body, and only too conscious of his condition. When his last two books were mentioned, he said, " Don't speak of them ; they smell of apoplexy." Southey, white-haired and bent, was engaged upon his Life of Cowper^ the last work, he declared, that he should ever do for the booksellers, though he hoped to live to finish his History of Portuguese Literature^ and to write a History of the Monastic Orders, " His conversation," observes Ticknor, " was very various, sometimes quite remarkable, but never rich or copious like Wordsworth's, and never humorous or witty. It was rather abundant in matters of fact, and often in that way quite striking and effective." The next two or three years were spent by the Professor and his family between Germany, Italy, and France, but in March 1838 the travellers were back again in London for a final visit, previous to their departure for America. At this time Ticknor was particularly anxious to urge on the reviewers the claims of his friend Prescott's newly published History of Ferdinand and Isabella, With this view he went to John Murray's " literary lounge," where he met Lockhart. " He is the same man he always has been, and always will be," writes Ticknor, "with the coldest, most dis- agreeable manners I have ever seen. I wanted to talk to him about Ferdinand and Isabella^ and by a sort of violence done to myself as well as to him, I did so. He said he had seen it, but had heard no opinion about it. AN AMERICAN IN ENGLAND 299 I gave him one with little ceremony, which I daresay he thought was not worth a button ; but I did it in a tone of defiance to which Lockhart's manners irresistibly impelled me, and which I daresay was as judicious with him as any other tone, though I am sure it quite astonished Murray, who looked as if he did not com- prehend what I was saying." The Ticknors returned to Boston in June 1838. During the years that he had spent in Europe, the Professor had been steadily preparing himself for the chief work of his life, his History of Spanish Literature^ which appeared in 1849. This book, a sound and conscientious piece of workmanship, was cordially received by the critics (it was said that there were not six men in Europe qualified to review it), and was translated into three languages. Ticknor's next undertaking was the founding of the Boston Public Library, for which he drew up the plan, and acted as a kind of honorary superintendent. In 1856 he was persuaded to take a trip to Europe for the purpose of dealing at first-hand in the book-markets. In the space of eighteen months he visited the various continental markets, examining the bookseller's shops, and establishing agents in the most likely centres. On his arrival in London he found that Macaulay was the lion of the season, though de Tocqueville ran him close. Of the former Ticknor writes : " He has been asked to meet us seven times, so that it has got to be a kind of joke. Like everybody else, I have been astonished at the resources of his memory. They are fabulous. ... He talked after his fashion for half an hour with great richness and knowledge, chiefly on female beauty, which, by the most curious citations from Lady 300 AN AMERICAN IN ENGLAND Mary Wortley Montagu, from Sir Charles Grandison, Congreve's plays, and such out-of-the-way places, he proved had greatly increased in England since the disappearance of the smallpox. It was very amusing, but the first rush, as he comes down upon you, is like a shower-bath, or rather like a water-spout." From this, his last visit to Europe, the Professor returned to America in August 1857. His next work, a veritable labour of love, was a memoir of his friend of forty years' standing, Prescott the historian, who died in 1859. Before this book was finished — it appeared in 1 864 — the Civil War had broken out, to the furtherance of which Ticknor contributed largely in money, and in such other ways as were open to a man of over seventy. His old age was calm, cheerful, and free from actual disease down to the beginning of 1871, when the first signs of paralysis appeared. His long and intellectually active life ended on the 26th of January 1871, when he had nearly completed his eightieth year. His chief claims to remembrance, apart from his books, are based upon the reforms which he promoted at Harvard University, and the Public Library which he helped to establish at Boston. To the latter institution he bequeathed the rare and valuable library of Spanish books which he had collected while engaged upon his History of Spanish Literature, INDEX Aiken, Dr., 151, 163, 164. Alison, Archibald, 46. Angelo, Domenico, 134-137, 140. Angelo, Henry, 1 31-133, 138-143- Angelo, Mrs., 1 31-133. Anspach, Margravine of, 138, 139. Armstrong, Dr., 29. Arnold, Dr., 272, 273. Astell, Mary, 83, 95. Astley, Philip, 131. Austen, Miss, 87. Baillie, Joanna, 266, 296. Baird, Sir David, 237. Banti, Signora, 42. Barbauld, Mrs., 151, 266, 267. Barrymore, Lord, 138, 139, 140. Bayley, Mary, 122. Berry, Miss, 93, 94. Billington, Mrs., 41, 42. Blower, Miss, 163. Bos well, James, 91. Broglie, Duchesse de, 289. Broome, Mrs., 52. Brougham, Lord, 265, 290. Buckinghamshire, Lady, 1 38. Bunbury, Lady Sarah, 62. Bunsen, Chevalier, 49. Burke, Edmund, 27. Burney, Charles, 9, 26-28, 31, 33, 36, 38, 40, 43. Burney, Fanny, i, 2, 9-i3> I5-I9j 71, 87, 147, 163, 197. Bute, Lord, 66. Byron, Lady, 286, 287, 288. 301 Byron, Lord, 47, 141, 142, 269, 285-288. Campbell, Colonel, 225. Campbell, Thomas, 292, Carlyle, Thomas, 274. Carter, Elizabeth, 163, 164. Cartwright, Rev. Edmund, 261. Catalani, Madame, 39, 41-43. Chapone, Mrs., i, 85. Chesterfield, Lord, 90. Clarke, Alured, 220, 223, 236. Clive, Mrs., 62, 202. Cockbum, Lord, 273. Coleridge, Mrs., 293. Coleridge, Sara, 293. Cornelys, Mrs., 67. Courton, Lord, 16. Craig, General, 221, 225, 226. Crewe, Mrs., 28, 29, 34, 35, 37, 40, 41. Crewe, Miss, 34. Cumberland, Richard, 166. Cunningham, Allan, 268. D'Arblay, Alexander, 21, 31, 32, 44, 5o> 55- D'Arblay, General, 19, 20, 23, 24, 26, 31, 49, 51- D'Arblay, Madame, 21, 22, 26, 31, 34, 44, 47-51, 55, 56. Davy, Sir Humphrey, 284. Davy, Lady, 284. Davy, Dr., 272. Dawson, Eliza, 255-262. 302 INDEX Dawson, Mr., 256, 262, 263, 265. Delany, Mrs., i, 2, 7, 9-12, 20, 53, SSy 117. D'Eon, Chevalier, 135. Dewes, Bernard, 24. Dewes, Court, 12, 15. Digby, Colonel, 10, 25, 87. Dodd, Dr., 113, 114. Downing, Rebecca, 122. Du, Boccage Madame, 169, 170, 177, 186, 188, 196. Dupuis, Thomas, 37. Edgeworth, Maria, 82, 97, 270, 297. Eliot, Anna, 295. Elphinstone, Sir George, 221. Fielding, Henry, 107, 108, 116. Fielding, Sir John, 107, 116. Fielding, Miss, 41. Fitzherbert, Mrs., 140. Fletcher, Archibald, 255, 260-263, 266, 268, 269, 271. Fletcher, Eliza, 256-277. Fletcher, Margaret, 272. Fox, Charles, 34, 35. Fry, Mrs., 82. Fuller, Margaret, 277. Gainsborough, Thomas, 136, 137. Garrick, David, 134, 202, 203, 204. George iii., 4, 9, I37, IS5- Gifford, William, 285. Girling, Elizabeth, 242-252. Gloucester, Duke of, 62. Godwin, William, 294, 295. Goldsmith, Oliver, 69, 91, 120, 156-158, 161, 199, 204. Goldsworthy, Colonel, 10, 13, 15, 16. Gordon, Colonel, 226, 228, 229. Gordon, Lord George, 7. Gordon, Lrord William, 62. Grant of Laggan, Mrs., 267, 269 Grantley, Lord, 261. Granville, Rev. John, 15, 16. Granville, Mrs., 15, 16. Gregory, Dr., 85, 94. Greville, Colonel, 10. Greville, Fulke, 35, 37. Grevilles, the Miss, 37. Griffiths, Mrs., 148, 153, 155- 157. Griffiths, Ralph, 148, 151, 155, 158, 165. Grosley, Pierre, 169, 170, 174- 192. Gunning, Miss, 87. Gw)ain, Colonel, 15, 16. Haggerdorn, Madame, 9. Hamilton, Archibald, 154. Hanway, Jonas, 125. Harington, Dr., 38. Hawkins, Henry, 214, 215. Hawkins, Sir John, 151, 197, 200, 202, 206, 212, 215. Hawkins, John Sidney, 197, 198. Hawkins, Letitia, 197-215. Hazlitt, William, 294, 295. Henley, Dr., 208. Hervey, Captain, 132. Holland, Lady, 290, 291. Holland, Lord, 290. Howard, John, 125. Jeffrey, Lord, 46, 48, 265, 273. Jerningham, Edward, 15. Johnson, Samuel, 64, 82, 91, 155, 199, 205, 206, 210, 2X1. Jordan, Mrs., 16. Kean, Edmund, 142. Kippis, Dr., 151. Knight, Cornelia, 198, 203. Langton, Bennet, 208. Le Texier, M., 138. INDEX 303 Llanover, Lady, 50, 55, 56. Locke, Mr., 9. Locke, Mrs., 25, 46. Lockhart, John, 298, 299. Lovatini, Giovanni, 33, 34. Ludlam, Rev. William, 151. Lyttleton, Lord, 84. Macaulay, Lord, 299. Mackenzie, Henry, 291. Malcolm, George, 219. Malcolm, Sir John, 219, 220, 223- 237. Manby, Colonel, 50. Manners, Colonel, 10, 11, 13, 2 , Mansfield, Lord, 212. Mason, William, 259. Mauduit, Israel, 199, 208, 213. Milner, Dr., 156, Mitford, Miss, 297. Montagu, Mrs., 188. More, Hannah, 29, 259. Naldi, Guiseppe, 42. Narbonne, M. de, 45. Ord, Mrs., 29. Parr, Samuel, 284. Pembroke, Lord, 130. Pennington, Lady, S6. Phillips, Fanny, 28, 30, 31, 39. Port, Miss, 2, 10-13, ^5-^7- Portland, Duchess of, 40. Portland, Duke of, 34, 40. Price Colonel, 16. QUEENSBERRY, DucheSS of, I33. Queensberry, Duke of, 133. Ralph, James, 151. Reeves, Mr., 45. Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 203, 204, Reynolds, Miss, 82. Richards, Miss, 36-38. Richards, Mr., 37, 38. Richardson, Lady, 276. Richardson, Samuel, 88, 92. Rogers, Samuel, 166, 295, 296. Romilly, Sir Samuel, 122, 126, 269. Rose, Dr., 151. Rumford, Count, 23. Ryland, William, 113, 114. Sapio, Signor, 39. Savile, Sir George, 257. Schwellenberg, Madame, lo, 11. Scott, Alexander, 208. Scott, Sophia, 292. Scott, Sir Walter, 46, 269, 275, 281, 291, 292. Seward, Miss, 89. Sheridan, Richard, 15. Sheridan, Thomas, 136. Siddons, Mrs., 287, 288. Skaites, Miss, 133. Sluysken, Abraham, 221, 223, 225. Smith, Sydney, 82, 96, 290. Smollett, Tobias, 148, 154, 155. Southey, Mrs., 297. Southey, Robert, 293, 298. Stael, Madame de, 45, 47, 289. Steevens, George, 208. Sterne, Laurence, 64, 69. Sussex, Duke of, 141. Swift, Jonathan, 83. Thrale, Mrs., 64. Ticknor, Elisha, 282, 295. Ticknor, George, 282-300, Vaux, Hardy, 118, 124. Waddington, Augusta, 50. Waddington, Emily, 49. Waddington, Frances, 38, 49. Waddington, Mrs., 20-22, 26, 27, 3i> 36, 38, 40, 43» 46, 47» 49, 5i» 553 56. Waddington, Mr., 16, 17, 19, 34. 304 INDEX Waldegrave, Lady, 62. Walpole, Horace, 62, 165, 200-202. Walsingham, Lord, 25. Walsingham, Mrs., 8. Welch, Anne, 210-212. Welch, Mary, 211. Welch, Saunders, 2io, Wilkes, John, 136. Wilson, John, 47, 291. Woffington, Margaret, 130, 131. Wollestonecraft, Mary, 95. Wordsworth, Dorothy, 297. Wordsworth, William, 274, 293, 298. Yearsley, Mrs., 259, 260. PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED, EDINBURGH (jDntcU llniwcrsity Htliaca. New ^Jork THE GIFT OF .JV- .C.XM^5^^