Chapter LVI: Book III: , chap, i, p. 326, line 19: for “Frank”, Thackeray by an (11)

He has a Northern Circuit story of those days, about a party at the house of a certain Lawyer Fawcett, who gave a dinner every year to the counsel.

“On one occasion,” related Lord Eldon, “I heard Lee say, ‘I cannot leave Fawcett’s wine. Mind, Davenport, you will go home immediately after dinner, to read the brief in that cause that we have to conduct to-morrow.’

“ ‘Not I,’ said Davenport. ‘Leave my dinner and my wine to read a brief! No, no, Lee; that won’t do.’

“ ‘Then,’ said Lee, ‘what is to be done? who else is employed?’

“_Davenport._—‘Oh! young Scott.’

“Lee.—‘Oh! he must go. Mr. Scott, you must go home immediately, and make yourself acquainted with that cause, before our consultation this evening.’ ”

“This was very hard upon me; but I did go, and there was an attorney from Cumberland, and one from Northumberland, and I do not know how many other persons. Pretty late, in came Jack Lee, as drunk as he could be.

“ ‘I cannot consult to-night; I must go to bed,’ he exclaimed, and away he went. Then came Sir Thomas Davenport.

“ ‘We cannot have a consultation to-night, Mr. Wordsworth’ (Wordsworth, I think, was the name; it was a Cumberland name), shouted Davenport. ‘Don’t you see how drunk Mr. Scott is? it is impossible to consult.’ Poor me! who had scarce had any dinner, and lost all my wine—I was so drunk that I could not consult! Well, a verdict was given against us, and it was all owing to Lawyer Fawcett’s dinner. We moved for a new trial; and I must say, for the honour of the Bar, that those two gentlemen, Jack Lee and Sir Thomas Davenport, paid all the expenses between them of the first trial. It is the only instance I ever knew, but they did. We moved for a new trial (on the ground, I suppose, of the counsel not being in their senses), and it was granted. When it came on, the following year, the judge rose and said,—

“ ‘Gentlemen, did any of you dine with Lawyer Fawcett yesterday? for, if you did, I will not hear this cause till next year.’

“There was great laughter. We gained the cause that time.”

On another occasion, at Lancaster, where poor Bozzy must needs be going the Northern Circuit, “we found him,” says Mr. Scott, “lying upon the pavement inebriated. We subscribed a guinea at supper for him, and a half-crown for his clerk”—(no doubt there was a large Bar, and that Scott’s joke did not cost him much),—“and sent him, when he waked next morning, a brief, with instructions to move for what we denominated the writ of _quare adhaesit pavimento?_ with observations duly calculated to induce him to think that it required great learning to explain the necessity of granting it, to the judge before whom he was to move.” Boswell sent all round the town to attorneys for books, that might enable him to distinguish himself—but in vain. He moved, however, for the writ, making the best use he could of the observations in the brief. The judge was perfectly astonished, and the audience amazed. The judge said, “I never heard of such a writ—what can it be that adheres _pavimento_? Are any of you gentlemen at the Bar able to explain this?”

The Bar laughed. At last one of them said,—

“My lord, Mr. Boswell last night _adhaesit pavimento_. There was no moving him for some time. At last he was carried to bed, and he has been dreaming about himself and the pavement.”

The canny old gentleman relishes these jokes. When the Bishop of Lincoln was moving from the deanery of St. Paul’s, he says he asked a learned friend of his, by name Will Hay, how he should move some especially fine claret, about which he was anxious.

“Pray, my lord bishop,” says Hay, “how much of the wine have you?”

The bishop said six dozen.

“If that is all,” Hay answered, “you have but to ask me six times to dinner, and I will carry it all away myself.”

There were giants in those days; but this joke about wine is not so fearful as one perpetrated by Orator Thelwall, in the heat of the French Revolution, ten years later, over a frothing pot of porter. He blew the head off, and said, “This is the way I would serve all kings.”

Now we come to yet higher personages, and find their doings recorded in the blushing pages of timid little Miss Burney’s _Memoirs_. She represents a prince of the blood in quite a royal condition. The loudness, the bigness, boisterousness, creaking boots and rattling oaths, of the young princes, appeared to have frightened the prim household of Windsor, and set all the tea-cups twittering on the tray. On the night of a ball and birthday, when one of the pretty, kind princesses was to come out, it was agreed that her brother, Prince William Henry, should dance the opening minuet with her, and he came to visit the household at their dinner.

“At dinner, Mrs. Schwellenberg presided, attired magnificently; Miss Goldsworthy, Mrs. Stanforth, Messrs. Du Luc and Stanhope, dined with us; and while we were still eating fruit, the Duke of Clarence entered.

“He was just risen from the king’s table, and waiting for his equipage to go home and prepare for the ball. To give you an idea of the energy of his royal highness’s language, I ought to set apart an objection to writing, or rather intimating, certain forcible words, and beg leave to show you in genuine colours a royal sailor.

“We all rose, of course, upon his entrance, and the two gentlemen placed themselves behind their chairs, while the footmen left the room. But he ordered us all to sit down, and called the men back to hand about some wine. He was in exceeding high spirits, and in the utmost good humour. He placed himself at the head of the table, next Mrs. Schwellenberg, and looked remarkably well, gay, and full of sport and mischief; yet clever withal, as well as comical.

“ ‘Well, this is the first day I have ever dined with the king at St. James’s on his birthday. Pray, have you all drunk his majesty’s health?’

“ ‘No, your royal highness; your royal highness might make dem do dat,’ said Mrs. Schwellenberg.

“ ‘Oh, by ——, I will! Here, you’ (to the footman). ‘bring champagne; I’ll drink the king’s health again, if I die for it. Yes, I have done it pretty well already; so has the king, I promise you! I believe his majesty was never taken such good care of before; we have kept his spirits up, I promise you; we have enabled him to go through his fatigues; and I should have done more still, but for the ball and Mary;—I have promised to dance with Mary. I must keep sober for Mary.’ ”

Indefatigable Miss Burney continues for a dozen pages reporting H.R.H.’s conversation, and indicating, with a humour not unworthy of the clever little author of _Evelina_, the increasing state of excitement of the young sailor prince, who drank more and more champagne, stopped old Mrs. Schwellenberg’s remonstrances by giving the old lady a kiss, and telling her to hold her potato-trap, and who did not “keep sober for Mary”. Mary had to find another partner that night, for the royal William Henry could not keep his legs.

Will you have a picture of the amusements of another royal prince? It is the Duke of York, the blundering general, the beloved commander-in-chief of the army, the brother with whom George IV had had many a midnight carouse, and who continued his habits of pleasure almost till death seized his stout body.

In Pückler Muskau’s _Letters_, that German prince describes a bout with H.R.H., who in his best time was such a powerful toper that “six bottles of claret after dinner scarce made a perceptible change in his countenance”.

“I remember,” says Pückler, “that one evening,—indeed, it was past midnight,—he took some of his guests, among whom were the Austrian ambassador, Count Meervelt, Count Beroldingen, and myself, into his beautiful armoury. We tried to swing several Turkish sabres, but none of us had a very firm grasp; whence it happened that the duke and Meervelt both scratched themselves with a sort of straight Indian sword so as to draw blood. Meervelt then wished to try if the sword cut as well as a Damascus, and attempted to cut through one of the wax candles that stood on the table. The experiment answered so ill, that both the candles, candlesticks and all, fell to the ground and were extinguished. While we were groping in the dark and trying to find the door, the duke’s aide de camp stammered out in great agitation, ‘By G——, sir, I remember the sword is poisoned.!’

“You may conceive the agreeable feelings of the wounded at this intelligence! Happily, on further examination, it appeared that claret, and not poison, was at the bottom of the colonel’s exclamation.”

And now I have one more story of the bacchanalian sort, in which Clarence and York, and the very highest personage of the realm, the great Prince Regent, all play parts. The feast took place at the Pavilion at Brighton, and was described to me by a gentleman who was present at the scene. In Gilray’s caricatures, and amongst Fox’s jolly associates, there figures a great nobleman, the Duke of Norfolk, called Jockey of Norfolk in his time, and celebrated for his table exploits. He had quarrelled with the prince, like the rest of the Whigs; but a sort of reconciliation had taken place; and now, being a very old man, the prince invited him to dine and sleep at the Pavilion, and the old duke drove over from his castle of Arundel with his famous equipage of grey horses, still remembered in Sussex.

The Prince of Wales had concocted with his royal brothers a notable scheme for making the old man drunk. Every person at table was enjoined to drink wine with the duke—a challenge which the old toper did not refuse. He soon began to see that there was a conspiracy against him; he drank glass for glass; he overthrew many of the brave. At last the First Gentleman of Europe proposed bumpers of brandy. One of the royal brothers filled a great glass for the duke. He stood up and tossed off the drink. “Now,” says he, “I will have my carriage, and go home.” The prince urged upon him his previous promise to sleep under the roof where he had been so generously entertained. “No,” he said, he had had enough of such hospitality. A trap had been set for him; he would leave the place at once and never enter its doors more.

The carriage was called, and came; but, in the half-hour’s interval, the liquor had proved too potent for the old man; his host’s generous purpose was answered, and the duke’s old grey head lay stupefied on the table. Nevertheless, when his post-chaise was announced, he staggered to it as well as he could, and stumbling in, bade the postilions drive to Arundel. They drove him for half an hour round and round the Pavilion lawn; the poor old man fancied he was going home. When he awoke that morning he was in bed at the prince’s hideous house at Brighton. You may see the place now for sixpence: they have fiddlers there every day; and sometimes buffoons and mountebanks hire the Riding House and do their tricks and tumbling there. The trees are still there, and the gravel walks round which the poor old sinner was trotted. I can fancy the flushed faces of the royal princes as they support themselves at the portico pillars, and look on at old Norfolk’s disgrace; but I can’t fancy how the man who perpetrated it continued to be called a gentleman.

From drinking, the pleased Muse now turns to gambling, of which in his youth our prince was a great practitioner. He was a famous pigeon for the play-men; they lived upon him. Egalité Orleans, it was believed, punished him severely. A noble lord, whom we shall call the Marquis of Steyne, is said to have mulcted him in immense sums. He frequented the clubs, where play was then almost universal; and, as it was known his debts of honour were sacred, whilst he was gambling Jews waited outside to purchase his notes of hand. His transactions on the turf were unlucky as well as discreditable: though I believe he, and his jockey, and his horse Escape, were all innocent in that affair which created so much scandal.

Arthur’s, Almack’s, Bootle’s, and White’s were the chief clubs of the young men of fashion. There was play at all, and decayed noblemen and broken-down senators fleeced the unwary there. In Selwyn’s _Letters_ we find Carlisle, Devonshire, Coventry, Queensberry, all undergoing the probation. Charles Fox, a dreadful gambler, was cheated in very late times—lost 200,000_l._ at play. Gibbon tells of his playing for twenty-two hours at a sitting, and losing 500_l._ an hour. That indomitable punter said that the greatest pleasure in life, after winning, was losing. What hours, what nights, what health did he waste over the devil’s books! I was going to say what peace of mind; but he took his losses very philosophically. After an awful night’s play, and the enjoyment of the greatest pleasure but _one_ in life, he was found on a sofa tranquilly reading an Eclogue of Virgil.

Play survived long after the wild prince and Fox had given up the dice-box. The dandies continued it. Byron, Brummell—how many names could I mention of men of the world who have suffered by it! In 1837 occurred a famous trial which pretty nigh put an end to gambling in England. A peer of the realm was found cheating at whist, and repeatedly seen to practise the trick called _sauter la coupe_. His friends at the clubs saw him cheat, and went on playing with him. One greenhorn, who had discovered his foul play, asked an old hand what he should do. “Do!” said the Mammon of Unrighteousness, “_back him, you fool_.” The best efforts were made to screen him. People wrote him anonymous letters and warned him; but he would cheat, and they were obliged to find him out. Since that day, when my lord’s shame was made public, the gaming-table has lost all its splendour. Shabby Jews and blacklegs prowl about racecourses and tavern parlours, and now and then inveigle silly yokels with greasy packs of cards in railroad ears; but Play is a deposed goddess, her worshippers bankrupt, and her table in rags.

So is another famous British institution gone to decay—the Ring: the noble practice of British boxing, which in my youth was still almost flourishing.

The prince, in his early days, was a great patron of this national sport, as his grand-uncle Culloden Cumberland had been before him; but, being present at a fight at Brighton, where one of the combatants was killed, the prince pensioned the boxer’s widow, and declared he never would attend another battle. “But, nevertheless,”—I read in the noble language of Pierce Egan (whose smaller work on Pugilism I have the honour to possess),—“he thought it a manly and decided English feature, which ought not to be destroyed. His majesty had a drawing of the sporting characters in the Fives Court placed in his boudoir, to remind him of his former attachment and support of true courage; and when any fight of note occurred after he was king, accounts of it were read to him by his desire.” That gives one a fine image of a king taking his recreation;—at ease in a royal dressing-gown;—too majestic to read himself, ordering the prime minister to read him accounts of battles: how Cribb punched Molyneux’s eye, or Jack Randall thrashed the Game Chicken.

Where my prince _did_ actually distinguish himself was in driving. He drove once in four hours and a half from Brighton to Carlton House—fifty-six miles. All the young men of that day were fond of that sport. But the fashion of rapid driving deserted England; and, I believe, trotted over to America. Where are the amusements of our youth? I hear of no gambling now but amongst obscure ruffians; of no boxing but amongst the lowest rabble. One solitary four-in-hand still drove round the parks in London last year; but that charioteer must soon disappear. He was very old; he was attired after the fashion of the year 1825. He must drive to the banks of Styx ere long,—where the ferry-boat waits to carry him over to the defunct revellers, who boxed and gambled and drank and drove with King George.

The bravery of the Brunswicks, that all the family must have it, that George possessed it, are points which all English writers have agreed to admit; and yet I cannot see how George IV should have been endowed with this quality. Swaddled in feather-beds all his life, lazy, obese, perpetually eating and drinking, his education was quite unlike that of his tough old progenitors. His grandsires had confronted hardship and war, and ridden up and fired their pistols undaunted into the face of death. His father had conquered luxury, and overcome indolence. Here was one who never resisted any temptation; never had a desire but he coddled and pampered it; if ever he had any nerve, frittered it away among cooks, and tailors, and barbers, and furniture-mongers, and opera dancers. What muscle would not grow flaccid in such a life—a life that was never strung up to any action—an endless Capua without any campaign—all fiddling, and flowers, and feasting, and flattery, and folly? When George III was pressed by the Catholic question and the India Bill, he said he would retire to Hanover rather than yield upon either point; and he would have done what he said. But, before yielding, he was determined to fight his ministers and Parliament; and he did, and he beat them. The time came when George IV was pressed too upon the Catholic claims: the cautious Peel had slipped over to that side; the grim old Wellington had joined it; and Peel tells us, in his _Memoirs_, what was the conduct of the king. He at first refused to submit; whereupon Peel and the duke offered their resignations, which their gracious master accepted. He did these two gentlemen the honour, Peel says, to kiss them both when they went away. (Fancy old Arthur’s grim countenance and eagle beak as the monarch kisses it!) When they were gone he sent after them, surrendered, and wrote to them a letter begging them to remain in office, and allowing them to have their way. Then his Majesty had a meeting with Eldon, which is related at curious length in the latter’s _Memoirs_. He told Eldon what was not true about his interview with the new Catholic converts; utterly misled the old ex-chancellor; cried, whimpered, fell on his neck, and kissed him too. We know old Eldon’s own tears were pumped very freely. Did these two fountains gush together? I can’t fancy a behaviour more unmanly, imbecile, pitiable. This a Defender of the Faith! This a chief in the crisis of a great nation! This an inheritor of the courage of the Georges! Many of my hearers no doubt have journeyed to the pretty old town of Brunswick, in company with that most worthy, prudent, and polite gentleman, the Earl of Malmesbury, and fetched away Princess Caroline for her longing husband, the Prince of Wales, Old Queen Charlotte would have had her eldest son marry a niece of her own, that famous Louisa of Strelitz, afterwards Queen of Prussia, and who shares with Marie Antoinette in the last age the sad pre-eminence of beauty and misfortune. But George III had a niece at Brunswick: she was a richer princess than her Serene Highness of Strelitz:—in fine, the Princess Caroline was selected to marry the heir to the English throne. We follow my Lord Malmesbury in quest of her; we are introduced to her illustrious father and royal mother; we witness the balls and fêtes of the old Court; we are presented to the princess herself, with her fair hair, her blue eyes, and her impertinent shoulders—a lively, bouncing, romping princess, who takes the advice of her courtly English mentor most generously and kindly. We can be present at her very toilette, if we like, regarding which, and for very good reasons, the British courtier implores her to be particular. What a strange Court! What a queer privacy of morals and manners do we look into! Shall we regard it as preachers and moralists, and cry, Woe, against the open vice and selfishness and corruption; or look at it as we do at the king in the pantomime, with his pantomime wife, and pantomime courtiers, whose big heads he knocks together, whom he pokes with his pantomime sceptre, whom he orders to prison under the guard of his pantomime beefeaters, as he sits down to dine on his pantomime pudding? It is grave, it is sad, it is theme most curious for moral and political speculation; it is monstrous, grotesque, laughable, with its prodigious littlenesses, etiquettes, ceremonials, sham moralities; it is as serious as a sermon, and as absurd and outrageous as Punch’s puppet-show.

Malmesbury tells us of the private life of the duke, Princess Caroline’s father, who was to die, like his warlike son, in arms against the French; presents us to his courtiers, his favourite; his duchess, George III’s sister, a grim old princess, who took the British envoy aside, and told him wicked old stories of wicked old dead people and times; who came to England afterwards when her nephew was regent, and lived in a shabby furnished lodging, old, and dingy, and deserted, and grotesque, but somehow royal. And we go with him to the duke to demand the princess’s hand in form, and we hear the Brunswick guns fire their adieux of salute, as H.R.H. the Princess of Wales departs in the frost and snow; and we visit the domains of the Prince Bishop of Osnaburg—the Duke of York of our early time; and we dodge about from the French revolutionists, whose ragged legions are pouring over Holland and Germany, and gaily trampling down the old world to the tune of _Ça ira_; and we take shipping at Slade, and we land at Greenwich, where the princess’s ladies and the prince’s ladies are in waiting to receive her royal highness.

What a history follows! Arrived in London, the bridegroom hastened eagerly to receive his bride. When she was first presented to him, Lord Malmesbury says she very properly attempted to kneel. He raised her gracefully enough, embraced her, and turning round to me, said,—

“Harris, I am not well; pray get me a glass of brandy.”

I said, “Sir, had you not better have a glass of water?”

Upon which, much out of humour, he said, with an oath, “No; I will go to the queen.”

What could be expected from a wedding which had such a beginning—from such a bridegroom and such a bride? I am not going to carry you through the scandal of that story, or follow the poor princess through all her vagaries; her balls and her dances, her travels to Jerusalem and Naples, her jigs, and her junketings, and her tears. As I read her trial in history, I vote she is not guilty. I don’t say it is an impartial verdict; but as one reads her story the heart bleeds for the kindly, generous, outraged creature. If wrong there be, let it lie at his door who wickedly thrust her from it. Spite of her follies, the great, hearty people of England loved, and protected, and pitied her. “God bless you! we will bring your husband back to you,” said a mechanic one day, as she told Lady Charlotte Bury with tears streaming down her cheeks. They could not bring that husband back; they could not cleanse that selfish heart. Was hers the only one he had wounded? Steeped in selfishness, impotent for faithful attachment and manly enduring love,—had it not survived remorse, was it not accustomed to desertion?

Malmesbury gives us the beginning of the marriage story;—how the prince reeled into chapel to be married; how he hiccupped out his vows of fidelity—you know how he kept them; how he pursued the woman whom he had married; to what a state he brought her; with what blows he struck her; with what malignity he pursued her; what his treatment of his daughter was; and what his own life. _He_ the first gentleman of Europe! There is no stronger satire on the proud English society of that day, than that they admired George.

No, thank God, we can tell of better gentlemen; and whilst our eyes turn away, shocked, from this monstrous image of pride, vanity, weakness, they may see in that England over which the last George pretended to reign, some who merit indeed the title of gentlemen, some who make our hearts beat when we hear their names, and whose memory we fondly salute when that of yonder imperial manikin is tumbled into oblivion. I will take men of my own profession of letters. I will take Walter Scott, who loved the king, and who was his sword and buckler, and championed him like that brave Highlander in his own story, who fights round his craven chief. What a good gentleman! What a friendly soul, what a generous hand, what an amiable life was that of the noble Sir Walter! I will take another man of letters, whose life I admire even more,—an English worthy, doing his duty for fifty noble years of labour, day by day storing up learning, day by day working for scant wages, most charitable out of his small means, bravely faithful to the calling which he had chosen, refusing to turn from his path for popular praise or princes’ favour;—I mean _Robert Southey_. We have left his old political landmarks miles and miles behind; we protest against his dogmatism; nay, we begin to forget it and his politics: but I hope his life will not be forgotten, for it is sublime in its simplicity, its energy, its honour, its affection. In the combat between Time and Thalaba, I suspect the former destroyer has conquered. Kehama’s curse frightens very few readers now; but Southey’s private letters are worth piles of epics, and are sure to last among us, as long as kind hearts like to sympathize with goodness and purity, and love and upright life. “If your feelings are like mine,” he writes to his wife, “I will not go to Lisbon without you, or I will stay at home, and not part from you. For though not unhappy when away, still without you I am not happy. For your sake, as well as my own and little Edith’s, I will not consent to any separation; the growth of a year’s love between her and me, if it please God she should live, is a thing too delightful in itself, and too valuable in its consequences, to be given up for any light inconvenience on your part or mine.... On these things we will talk at leisure; only, dear, dear Edith, _we must not part!_”

This was a poor literary gentleman. The First Gentleman in Europe had a wife and daughter too. Did he love them so? Was he faithful to them? Did he sacrifice ease for them, or show them the sacred examples of religion and honour? Heaven gave the Great English Prodigal no such good fortune. Peel proposed to make a baronet of Southey; and to this advancement the king agreed. The poet nobly rejected the offered promotion.

“I have,” he wrote, “a pension of 200_l._ a year, conferred upon me by the good offices of my old friend C. Wynn, and I have the laureateship. The salary of the latter was immediately appropriated, as far as it went, to a life insurance for 3,000_l._, which, with an earlier insurance, is the sole provision I have made for my family. All beyond must be derived from my own industry. Writing for a livelihood, a livelihood is all that I have gained; for, having also something better in view, and never, therefore, having courted popularity, nor written for the mere sake of gain, it has not been possible for me to lay by anything. Last year, for the first time in my life, I was provided with a year’s expenditure beforehand. This exposition may show how unbecoming and unwise it would be to accept the rank which, so greatly to my honour, you have solicited for me.”

How noble his poverty is, compared to the wealth of his master! His acceptance even of a pension was made the object of his opponents’ satire: but think of the merit and modesty of this state pensioner; and that other enormous drawer of public money, who receives 100,000_l._ a year, and comes to Parliament with a request for 650,000_l._ more!

Another true knight of those days was Cuthbert Collingwood; and I think, since Heaven made gentlemen, there is no record of a better one than that. Of brighter deeds, I grant you, we may read performed by others; but where of a nobler, kinder, more beautiful life of duty, of a gentler, truer heart? Beyond dazzle of success and blaze of genius, I fancy shining a hundred and a hundred times higher, the sublime purity of Collingwood’s gentle glory. His heroism stirs British hearts when we recall it. His love, and goodness, and piety make one thrill with happy emotion. As one reads of him and his great comrade going into the victory with which their names are immortally connected, how the old English word comes up, and that old English feeling of what I should like to call Christian honour! What gentlemen they were, what great hearts they had! “We can, my dear Coll,” writes Nelson to him, “have no little jealousies; we have only one great object in view,—that of meeting the enemy, and getting a glorious peace for our country.” At Trafalgar, when the _Royal Sovereign_ was pressing alone into the midst of the combined fleets, Lord Nelson said to Captain Blackwood: “See how that noble fellow Collingwood takes his ship into action! How I envy him!” The very same throb and impulse of heroic generosity was beating in Collingwood’s honest bosom. As he led into the fight, he said: “What would Nelson give to be here!”

After the action of the 1st of June, he writes:—“We cruised for a few days, like disappointed people looking for what they could not find, _until the morning of little Sarah’s birthday_, between eight and nine o’clock, when the French fleet, of twenty-five sail of the line, was discovered to windward. We chased them, and they bore down within about five miles of us. The night was spent in watching and preparation for the succeeding day; and many a blessing did I send forth to my Sarah, lest I should never bless her more. At dawn, we made our approach on the enemy, then drew up, dressed our ranks, and it was about eight when the admiral made the signal for each ship to engage her opponent, and bring her to close action; and then down we went under a crowd of sail, and in a manner that would have animated the coldest heart, and struck terror into the most intrepid enemy. The ship we were to engage was two ahead of the French admiral, so we had to go through his fire and that of two ships next to him, and received all their broadsides two or three times, before we fired a gun. It was then near ten o’clock. I observed to the admiral, that about that time our wives were going to church, but that I thought the peal we should ring about the Frenchman’s ears would outdo their parish bells.”

There are no words to tell what the heart feels in reading the simple phrases of such a hero. Here is victory and courage, but love sublimer and superior. Here is a Christian soldier spending the night before battle in watching and preparing for the succeeding day, thinking of his dearest home, and sending many blessings forth to his Sarah, “lest he should never bless her more.” Who would not say Amen to his supplication? It was a benediction to his country—the prayer of that intrepid loving heart.

We have spoken of a good soldier and good men of letters as specimens of English gentlemen of the age just past: may we not also—many of my elder hearers, I am sure, have read, and fondly remember his delightful story—speak of a good divine, and mention Reginald Heber as one of the best of English gentlemen? The charming poet, the happy possessor of all sorts of gifts and accomplishments, birth, wit, fame, high character, competence—he was the beloved parish priest in his own home of Hoderel, “counselling his people in their troubles, advising them in their difficulties, comforting them in distress, kneeling often at their sick-beds at the hazard of his own life; exhorting, encouraging where there was need; where there was strife the peacemaker; where there was want the free giver.”

When the Indian bishopric was offered to him he refused at first; but after communing with himself (and committing his case to the quarter whither such pious men are wont to carry their doubts), he withdrew his refusal, and prepared himself for his mission and to leave his beloved parish. “Little children, love one another, and forgive one another,” were the last sacred words he said to his weeping people. He parted with them, knowing, perhaps, he should see them no more. Like those other good men of whom we have just spoken, love and duty were his life’s aim. Happy he, happy they who were so gloriously faithful to both! He writes to his wife those charming lines on his journey:—

If thou, my love, wert by my side, my babies at my knee,
How gladly would our pinnace glide o’er Gunga’s mimic sea!

I miss thee at the dawning grey, when, on our deck reclined,
In careless ease my limbs I lay and woo the cooler wind.

I miss thee when by Gunga’s stream my twilight steps I guide;
But most beneath the lamp’s pale beam I miss thee by my side.

I spread my books, my pencil try, the lingering noon to cheer;
But miss thy kind approving eye, thy meek attentive ear.

But when of morn and eve the star beholds me on my knee,
I feel, though thou art distant far, thy prayers ascend for me.

Then on! then on! where duty leads my course be onward still,—
O’er broad Hindostan’s sultry meads, o’er bleak Almorah’s hill.

That course nor Delhi’s kingly gates, nor wild Malwah detain,
For sweet the bliss us both awaits by yonder western main.

Thy towers, Bombay, gleam bright, they say, across the dark blue
sea:
But ne’er were hearts so blithe and gay as there shall meet in
thee!

Is it not Collingwood and Sarah, and Southey and Edith? His affection is part of his life. What were life without it? Without love, I can fancy no gentleman.

How touching is a remark Heber makes in his _Travels through India_, that on inquiring of the natives at a town, which of the governors of India stood highest in the opinion of the people, he found that, though Lord Wellesley and Warren Hastings were honoured as the two greatest men who had ever ruled this part of the world, the people spoke with chief affection of Judge Cleaveland, who had died, aged twenty-nine, in 1784. The people have built a monument over him, and still hold a religious feast in his memory. So does his own country still tend with a heart’s regard the memory of the gentle Heber.

And Cleaveland died in 1784, and is still loved by the heathen, is he? Why, that year 1784 was remarkable in the life of our friend the First Gentleman of Europe. Do you not know that he was twenty-one in that year, and opened Carlton House with a grand ball to the nobility and gentry, and doubtless wore that lovely pink coat which we have described. I was eager to read about the ball, and looked to the old magazines for information. The entertainment took place on the 10th February. In the _European Magazine_ of March, 1784, I came straightway upon it:—

“The alterations at Carlton House being finished, we lay before our readers a description of the state apartments as they appeared on the 10th instant, when H.R.H. gave a grand ball to the principal nobility and gentry.... The entrance to the state room fills the mind with an inexpressible idea of greatness and splendour.

“The state chair is of a gold frame, covered with crimson damask; on each corner of the feet is a lion’s head, expressive of fortitude and strength; the feet of the chair have serpents twining round them, to denote wisdom. Facing the throne, appears the helmet of Minerva; and over the windows, glory is represented by St. George with a superb gloria.

“But the saloon may be styled the _chef-d’œuvre_, and in every ornament discovers great invention. It is hung with a figured lemon satin. The window-curtains, sofas, and chairs are of the same colour. The ceiling is ornamented with emblematical paintings, representing the Graces and Muses, together with Jupiter, Mercury, Apollo, and Paris. Two ormolu chandeliers are placed here. It is impossible by expression to do justice to the extraordinary workmanship, as well as design, of the ornaments. They each consist of a palm, branching out in five directions for the reception of lights. A beautiful figure of a rural nymph is represented entwining the stems of the tree with wreaths of flowers. In the centre of the room is a rich chandelier. To see this apartment _dans son plus beau jour_, it should be viewed in the glass over the chimney-piece. The range of apartments from the saloon to the ballroom, when the doors are open, formed one of the grandest spectacles that ever was beheld.”

In the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, for the very same month and year—March, 1784—is an account of another festival, in which another great gentleman of English extraction is represented as taking a principal share:—

“According to order, H.E. the Commander-in-Chief was admitted to a public audience of Congress; and, being seated, the president, after a pause, informed him that the United States assembled were ready to receive his communications. Whereupon he arose, and spoke as follows:—

“ ‘Mr. President,—The great events on which my resignation depended having at length taken place, I present myself before Congress to surrender into their hands the trust committed to me, and to claim the indulgence of retiring from the service of my country.

“ ‘Happy in the confirmation of our independence and sovereignty, I resign the appointment I accepted with diffidence; which, however, was superseded by a confidence in the rectitude of our cause, the support of the supreme power of the nation, and the patronage of Heaven. I close this last act of my official life, by commending the interests of our dearest country to the protection of Almighty God, and those who have the superintendence of them to His holy keeping. Having finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of action; and, bidding an affectionate farewell to this august body, under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my commission and take my leave of the employments of my public life.’ To which the President replied:—

“ ‘Sir, having defended the standard of liberty in the New World, having taught a lesson useful to those who inflict and those who feel oppression, you retire with the blessings of your fellow citizens; though the glory of your virtues will not terminate with your military command, but will descend to remotest ages.’ ”

Which was the most splendid spectacle ever witnessed:—the opening feast of Prince George in London, or the resignation of Washington? Which is the noble character for after-ages to admire;—yon fribble dancing in lace and spangles, or yonder hero who sheathes his sword after a life of spotless honour, a purity unreproached, a courage indomitable, and a consummate victory? Which of these is the true gentleman? What is it to be a gentleman? Is it to have lofty aims, to lead a pure life, to keep your honour virgin; to have the esteem of your fellow citizens, and the love of your fireside; to bear good fortune meekly; to suffer evil with constancy; and through evil or good to maintain truth always? Show me the happy man whose life exhibits these qualities, and him we will salute as gentleman, whatever his rank may be; show me the prince who possesses them, and he may be sure of our love and loyalty. The heart of Britain still beats kindly for George III,—not because he was wise and just, but because he was pure in life, honest in intent, and because according to his lights he worshipped Heaven. I think we acknowledge in the inheritrix of his sceptre, a wiser rule, and a life as honourable and pure; and I am sure the future painter of our manners will pay a willing allegiance to that good life, and be loyal to the memory of that unsullied virtue.

FOOTNOTES

1 The influence of Scott on Thackeray is undoubted and freely
confessed. But I cannot fall in with “certain persons of
distinction” in making _Esmond_ very specially indebted to
_Woodstock_. _Woodstock_ is a very great book in itself and amazing
when one knows its circumstances: but it is, even for Scott, very
specially and exclusively _objective_. _Esmond_ is subjective also
in the highest degree.

2 This form, which he used elsewhere than in the _Biographia
Literaria_, is better than _esemplastic_ which he employed there.

3 The justice or accuracy of his individual presentments and even of
his general view of the time is quite another matter. We may touch
on part of it presently. But the real point is that the whole is of
a piece at least _in potentia_: that it gives a world that might
have existed.

4 The lectures on the _Humourists_ were, of course, delivered before
_Esmond_ was published; but, in another sense, they are only
aftercrops or by-products. The notes, sometimes very interesting,
are James Hannay’s.

5 As might perhaps have been expected from its original appearance,
not piecemeal but in the regular three-volume form, _Esmond_ was not
very much altered by its author in later issues. There was, indeed,
a “revised” edition in 1858, in which a considerable number of minor
changes, nearly all for the better, were made. These have been
carefully considered, but in practically every case there was really
nothing to do but to follow them silently. For it would be absurd,
in the present edition, to chronicle solemnly the rectification of
mere misprints like “H_o_xton” for “H_e_xton”, or the change from
“was never” to “never was”. In some points of orthography
“Chelse_a_” and “Chelse_y_”, for instance, Thackeray never reached
full consistency, and he has sometimes been caught in the
intricacies of the Castlewood relations and nomenclature, &c. So,
too, Walcote, which is near _Wells_ at first, moves to the
neighbourhood of _Winchester_ later; and there are other
characteristic oversights. But, on the whole, there is little need
of comment, and none of variants, save in a very few instances,
where the “revised” edition seems to have been altered for the
worse.

On the other hand, in recent editions of Thackeray, published by his
representatives, considerable alterations to _The English
Humourists_, &c., in text and notes have been introduced, dates
being changed in accordance with later researches, quotations (in
which Thackeray was pretty lax) adjusted to their originals, and so
forth. As the chief authorities consulted in making these
alterations were the late Sir Leslie Stephen, Mr. Austin Dobson, and
Mr. Sidney Lee, there need not be much question as to their
accuracy: and it perhaps shows undue hardihood in the present editor
not to adopt them. But it seems to him that Thackeray’s books are
not so much text-books of history, literary and other, where
accuracy is the first point, as literature, where it is not. Such
corrections could be most properly introduced in the notes of a
fuller commentated edition: less so, it may seem, in an almost
unannotated text. In particular, Thackeray’s _mis_quotations (they
are not seldom distinct improvements) sometimes directly form the
basis of his own remarks, which become less apposite if the
citations are corrected.

As the text of this volume has few original illustrations some
miscellaneous sketches are added to it.

6 Lionel Tipton, created Baron Bergamot, ann. 1686, Gentleman Usher of
the Back Stairs, and afterwards appointed Warden of the Butteries
and Groom of the King’s Posset (on the decease of George, second
Viscount Castlewood), accompanied his Majesty to St. Germains, where
he died without issue. No Groom of the Posset was appointed by the
Prince of Orange, nor hath there been such an officer in any
succeeding reign.

7 To have this rank of marquis restored in the family had always been
my lady viscountess’s ambition; and her old maiden aunt, Barbara
Topham, the goldsmith’s daughter, dying about this time, and leaving
all her property to Lady Castlewood, I have heard that her ladyship
sent almost the whole of the money to King James, a proceeding which
so irritated my Lord Castlewood that he actually went to the parish
church, and was only appeased by the marquis’s title which his
exiled majesty sent to him in return for the 15,000_l._ his faithful
subject lent him.

8 Ὄ πόποι, οἷον δή νυ θεοὺς βροτοὶ αἰτιόωνται, ἐξ ἡμέων γάρ φασι κάκ᾽
ἔμμεναι; οἱ δὲ καὶ αὐτοὶ σφῇσιν ἀτασθαλίῃσιν ὑπὲρ μόρον ἄλγε᾽
ἔχουσιν.

9 My mistress before I went this campaign sent me John Lockwood out of
Walcote, who hath ever since remained with me.—H. E.

10 This passage in the memoirs of Esmond is written on a leaf inserted
into the MS. book, and dated 1744, probably after he had heard of
the duchess’s death.

11 Our grandfather’s hatred of the Duke of Marlborough appears all
through his account of these campaigns. He always persisted that the
duke was the greatest traitor and soldier history ever told of: and
declared that he took bribes on all hands during the war. My lord
marquis (for so we may call him here, though he never went by any
other name than Colonel Esmond) was in the habit of telling many
stories which he did not set down in his memoirs, and which he had
from his friend the Jesuit, who was not always correctly informed,
and who persisted that Marlborough was looking for a bribe of two
millions of crowns before the campaign of Ramillies.

And our grandmother used to tell us children, that on his first
presentation to my lord duke, the duke turned his back upon my
grandfather; and said to the duchess, who told my lady dowager at
Chelsea, who afterwards told Colonel Esmond—“Tom Esmond’s bastard
has been to my levee: he has the hang-dog look of his rogue of a
father”—an expression which my grandfather never forgave. He was as
constant in his dislikes as in his attachments; and exceedingly
partial to Webb, whose side he took against the more celebrated
general. We have General Webb’s portrait now at Castlewood, Va.

12 ’Tis not thus _woman loves_: Col. E. hath owned to this folly for a
_score of women_ besides.—R.

13 And, indeed, so was his to them, a thousand, thousand times more
charming, for where was his equal?—R.

14 See Appendix, p. 464.

15 What indeed? Ps. xci. 2. 3, 7.—R. E.

16 The managers were the bishop, who cannot be hurt by having his name
mentioned, a very active and loyal Nonconformist divine, a lady in
the highest favour at Court, with whom Beatrix Esmond had
communication, and two noblemen of the greatest rank, and a Member
of the House of Commons, who was implicated in more transactions
than one in behalf of the Stuart family.

17 There can be very little doubt that the doctor, mentioned by my dear
father, was the famous Dr. Arbuthnot.—R. E. W.

18 My dear father saith quite truly, that his manner towards our sex
was uniformly courteous. From my infancy upwards, he treated me with
an extreme gentleness, as though I was a little lady. I can scarce
remember (though I tried him often) ever hearing a rough word from
him, nor was he less grave and kind in his manner to the humblest
negresses on his estate. He was familiar with no one except my
mother, and it was delightful to witness up to the very last days
the confidence between them. He was obeyed eagerly by all under him;
and my mother and all her household lived in a constant emulation to
please him, and quite a terror lest in any way they should offend
him. He was the humblest man, with all this; the least exacting, the
most easily contented; and Mr. Benson, our minister at Castlewood,
who attended him at the last, ever said—“I know not what Colonel
Esmond’s doctrine was, but his life and death were those of a devout
Christian.”—R. E. W.

19 This remark shows how unjustly and contemptuously even the best of
men will sometimes judge of our sex. Lady Esmond had no intention of
triumphing over her daughter; but from a sense of duty alone pointed
out her deplorable wrong.—R. E.

20 In London we addressed the prince as royal highness invariably;
though the women persisted in giving him the title of king.

21 The anecdote is frequently told of our performer, Rich.

22 He was from a younger branch of the Swifts of Yorkshire. His
grandfather, the Rev. Thomas Swift, Vicar of Goodrich, in
Herefordshire, suffered for his loyalty in Charles I’s time. That
gentleman married Elizabeth Dryden, a member of the family of the
poet. Sir Walter Scott gives, with his characteristic minuteness in
such points, the exact relationship between these famous men. Swift
was “the son of Dryden’s second cousin”. Swift, too, was the enemy
of Dryden’s reputation. Witness the _Battle of the Books_:—“The
difference was greatest among the horse” says he of the moderns,
“where every private trooper pretended to the command, from Tasso
and Milton to Dryden and Withers.” And in _Poetry, a Rhapsody_, he
advises the poetaster to—

Read all the Prefaces of Dryden,
For these our critics much confide in,
Though merely writ, at first, for filling,
To raise the volume’s price a shilling.

“Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet,” was the phrase of Dryden
to his kinsman, which remained alive in a memory tenacious of such
matters.

23 “Miss Hetty” she was called in the family—where her face, and her
dress, and Sir William’s treatment of her, all made the real fact
about her birth plain enough. Sir William left her a thousand
pounds.

24 Sometimes, during his mental affliction, he continued walking about
the house for many consecutive hours; sometimes he remained in a
kind of torpor. At times, he would seem to struggle to bring into
distinct consciousness, and shape into expression, the intellect
that lay smothering under gloomy obstruction in him. A pier-glass
falling by accident, nearly fell on him. He said, he wished it had!
He once repeated, slowly, several times, “I am what I am.” The last
thing he wrote was an epigram on the building of a magazine for arms
and stores, which was pointed out to him as he went abroad during
his mental disease:—

Behold a proof of Irish sense:
Here Irish wit is seen;
When nothing’s left that’s worth defence,
They build a magazine!

25 Besides these famous books of Scott’s and Johnson’s, there is a
copious _Life_ by Thomas Sheridan (Dr. Johnson’s “Sherry”), father
of Richard Brinsley, and son of that good-natured, clever, Irish
Doctor, Thomas Sheridan, Swift’s intimate, who lost his chaplaincy
by so unluckily choosing for a text on the king’s birthday,
“Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof!” Not to mention less
important works, there is also the _Remarks on the Life and Writings
of Dr. Jonathan Swift_, by that polite and dignified writer, the
Earl of Orrery. His lordship is said to have striven for literary
renown, chiefly that he might make up for the slight passed on him
by his father, who left his library away from him. It is to be
feared that the ink he used to wash out that stain only made it look
bigger. He had, however, known Swift, and corresponded with people
who knew him. His work (which appeared in 1751) provoked a good deal
of controversy, calling out, among other brochures, the interesting
_Observations on Lord Orrery’s Remarks_, &c., of Dr. Delany.