Life of Edmond Malone/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII.
1786—1789.
So obliging a correspondent as he proved was not left long unemployed by his Irish friends. Lord Charlemont assails him with the usual solicitations, apologizes for the trouble given, and increases it by further requests.
Not less importunate is Bishop Percy for books, transcripts from the British Museum, inquiries as to Ritson’s censures and criticisms upon portions of the Reliques, with such varieties, new or old, in literature as excited notice or promised interest. He likewise asks for “Baretti’s Tolondron, and whatever answer my friend Bowle published in reply; and favour me with a little insight into that curious controversy.”
Again the Bishop returns to the charge: “I thank you for the particulars of the last hours of my much honoured friend Tyrwhitt. A few more such losses would thoroughly wean me from all desire to visit my native country, especially if you and a few other friends would enliven this solitude by sending me now and then such a letter as your last, informing me what you are doing yourself, and what attracts the attention of the literary world. I shall be truly anxious to see your edition of Shakspeare. When it comes, I will set to read his works with attention, which may suggest something for a future edition.”
He desires to thank Boswell for an obliging letter. He had promised a few anecdotes of Johnson’s earlier life, but now thinks them too trivial, or anticipated by Mrs. Piozzi. One however he tells, which Boswell has not failed to chronicle: “I have heard him observe that, at Lichfield, he learnt nothing from the master, but a great deal in his school; and at Stourbridge, that he learnt a great deal from the master, and nothing in his school.”
The muse of his friend Jephson had again become pregnant—and again was the critic seduced into consultation on the best mode of ushering the “interesting stranger” into light. In short, he had written a new tragedy. The birth of a play or poem, like that of heir to an estate, usually brings the family together in council in order to relieve the affectionate anxieties of paternity.
While in progress, it had been submitted to Malone who suggested various alterations. Jephson replied in a well-filled sheet of foolscap, so early as January, 1785. He adopts most of the suggestions, allows lines to be dropped, words to be altered; dwells on the stage business, incidents, order of the scenes, more or less prominence of characters—always keeping Mrs. Siddons pre-eminent—weighing the proper allowance of stabbings and poisonings so that too many dead shall not encumber the stage at the same moment! In short, we are let into all the agonies of a tragic playwright. Even the title must be sacrificed in order not to let the public too soon into the mystery of the story. First it was The Cruel Lover. Then Julia, or the Fatal Constancy. The author also objects to one of the actors, although of good repute in theatrical history—“Gentleman Smyth,” as he was usually called; and begs his correspondent to keep out of the play “that most detestable of all actors and coxcombs.”
Many who knew the writer amid the pleasures, politics, and wit of Dublin, wondered how he could be studious enough for a tragic subject. The talent, however, was within him, and the way to the London stage smooth. None of the perplexities of an unknown author could be felt where the manager, the first tragic actor of the day, and an eminent dramatic critic figured as his personal friends. To Malone was confided preliminary matters and the prologue; to Courtenay, the epilogue; to the manager, all his moral influence over performers; and to Kemble and his great sister, the embodiment of sentiment and situation in the principal characters. To prepare the way more favourably, the Count of Narbonne was played shortly before; and a new edition printed, edited by Malone.
On the 17th April, 1787, appeared at Drury Lane, Julia, or the Italian Lover. A brilliant audience received it well. Kemble acted the principal character admirably, and also spoke the prologue; he is said on that night to have even outshone the talents of his sister, and by his exertions to have brought on serious illness. Delay became, therefore, unavoidable; it was withdrawn for the season; and possessing perhaps no inherent vitality, lost place upon the stage.
The following is Malone’s chief contribution; but Courtenay, being idle or otherwise occupied, left half the epilogue also to him:—
PROLOGUE TO “JULIA, OR THE ITALIAN LOVER.”
The Stage has shown the dire abuse of power;
What mighty mischief from ambition springs,
The fate of heroes and the fall of kings.
But these high themes, howe’er adorned by art,
Have seldom gained the passes of the heart.
Calm we behold the pompous mimic woe,
Unmoved by sorrows we can never know.
For other feelings in the soul arise,
When private griefs arrest our ears and eyes;
When the false friend, and blameless suffering wife,
Reflect the image of domestic life.
And still more wide the sympathy, more keen,
When to each breast responsive is the scene;
And the fine chords that every heart entwine
Dilated vibrate with the flowing line.
Such is the theme that now demands your ear,
And claims the silent plaudit of a tear;
One tyrant passion all mankind must prove,
The balm or poison of our lives—is love.
Love’s sovereign sway extends o’er every clime,
Nor owns a limit or of space or time;
For love the generous fair one hath sustained
More poignant ills than ever poet feigned;
For love the maid partakes her lover’s tomb,
Or pines long life out in sad soothless gloom;
Ne’er shall oblivion shroud the Grecian wife
Who gave her own to save a husband’s life.
With her contending see our Edward’s bride,
Imbibing passion from his mangled side;
Nor less, though proud of intellectual sway,
Doth haughty man this tyrant power obey—
From youth to age by love’s wild tempest tossed;
For love e’en mighty kingdoms have been lost!
Vain—wealth and fame, and fortune’s fostering care,
If no fond breast the splendid blessings share,
And each day’s bustling pageantry once past,
There—only there—his bliss is found at last.
For woes fictitious oft your tears have flowed,
Your cheek for wrongs imaginary glowed.
To-night our Poet means not to assail
Your throbbing bosom with a fancied tale.
Scarce sixty years their annual course have rolled,
Since all was real that our scenes unfold;
To touch your hearts with no unpleasing pain,
The Muse’s magic makes it live again.
Bids mingled characters, as once in life,
Resume their functions, and renew their strife;
While pride, revenge, and jealousy’s wild rage,
Rouse all the Genius of the impassioned stage.
Literary and antiquarian correspondence diversified his own peculiar pursuits. Thomas Warton amused him with references to the poems of H. Constable of Elizabeth’s time; and on the changes of proprietors of Tichfield monastery, which came afterwards into the hands of Lord Southampton. Lord Charlemont writes no less than four letters. He taxes him with silence, yet sympathizes with an allusion from his heart-stricken friend, who had not yet escaped from the tyranny of Cupid, as we may presume by his own axiom in the preceding prologue,—
The balm or poison of our lives—is love.”
“But the best hearts are the weakest,” adds his lordship, “and their weakness is but too apt to prevail over the strength of the most vigorous understanding. Experto crede Roberto. Yet one remedy there is which has not yet, as I believe, been tried. Vacuity is probably the source of the disorder. Why is not the void filled up? When a picture has gotten a dint, the best method of cure is by new lining.”
From love his lordship flies off to dramatic business. Shakspeare, he says, is an unanswerable excuse for everything.
“Many thanks for your kind and persevering attention in supplying my literary wants. The number of my last volume in small quarto is thirty-three; in the larger size, twenty-nine. The Morocco volume contains:—Hamlet (no date), Henry V. (1608), Henry VI. (no date), Midsummer Night’s Dream (1600), Merchant of Venice (1600), Merry Wives of Windsor (1619), King Lear (1608). What others of my Shakspeares have you got, and what have you been able to procure?” Another letter relates to Italian writers. One also to Mrs. Hogarth, which has been previously noticed. A fourth coincides in almost every point with Malone’s dissertation, which he had now perused, on the parts of Henry VI.
To the inquiry of his friend as to the first theatrical performances in Dublin, his lordship says no satisfactory information could be given. Mr. Cooper Walker, well known in the literary circles of Dublin, had done all he could. The records were few and scanty; but the result, such as it was, is, for the information of the curious reader, transferred to a note.[1]
Another Dublin correspondent, whose name does not appear to his communication, sketches his lordship and a scene at the Royal Irish Academy, then recently instituted by his means, showing his harmless nationality, though not at the expense of amiability or good temper.
Our Academy will venture abroad this winter. The different essays were all determined upon before I had the honour of being admitted a member, and I have not yet learned either their numbers or the subjects. But I am not without some panic about them. This being the first publication (of the Transactions), a preface became necessary, the writing of which was consigned to the youngest man in the society. That was a good leading step! Such a rant on the heroism, genius, learning, and arts of Ireland as would have given the coup de grace to our reputation. We had a warm battle—a division at last, in which Bishop Percy, Mr. Kirwan, and I were left to ourselves by a vast majority. However, they cooled a little, and, at the next meeting, Mr. Kirwan prevailed to have two-thirds of the preface expunged. . . . . There has arisen in Ireland, within a few years, such a spirit of extravagant, fulsome self-adulation, that it exceeds everything human vanity has heretofore made pretensions to. There cannot be a stronger bar to improvement, and every sincere rational friend to the public should discourage it.
Our amiable friend, the president (Lord Charlemont), is more wild and boisterous on the subject of Ireland than you can conceive. Many a warm dispute we have. I told him,}} not long ago, that my motto was “Nil admirari,” and that I was determined to combat all their cloud-capped notions about their country, shake every idea that tends to set one race above another, or promote national distinctions. His lordship said I should have enough to do, but we have agreed much better ever since.
A morning visit from the fastidious genius of Strawberry Hill elicited some of his usual free and forcible remarks upon the public characters of a previous day.
“December 29th, 1787.—Mr. Horace Walpole, while he sat with me this morning, mentioned a singular anecdote relative to the late Mr. West, whose rage for collecting varieties was such, that what he could not otherwise procure he stole. He was one of the executors to Lord Oxford (Harley), and is thought, on very good grounds, to have secreted a great many curious letters and papers belonging to that statesman.
“It is well known that all the proceedings against Lord Oxford by the House of Commons were very suddenly stopped. This was effected by Harley’s writing a letter to the Duke of Marlborough, reminding him that he (Harley) had in his hands authentic proofs of the Duke having been in treaty with the Pretender in order to seat him on the throne. The letter was carried by Lord Duplin to the Duke, whom Duplin found walking on the Pantiles at Tunbridge Wells almost in a state of dotage. When he received it, he burst into tears, and very soon afterwards the prosecution was stopped.[2] This letter, of which a rumour had got abroad, the Duchess of Portland made a long search for among her father’s papers, but it was not to be found. Soon after his death, Mr. West was brought into Parliament for the borough of St. Albans by the Duchess of Marlborough, and it was generally supposed that his giving up the original letter, in Lord Oxford’s handwriting, to her grace was the price of his seat. And not being found among the Harley papers appears to justify such an opinion.
“When Mr. West died, the Duchess of Portland, desirous to recover such other papers of her father as this gentleman had secreted, sent to the widow, offering any reasonable price for them, if that were an object: but she did not like to furnish proof of her husband’s criminal conduct, and refused. However, some years afterwards they were sold by Mr. West’s daughter to Lord Shelburne (now Marquis of Lansdown) for a thousand pounds.”
In pursuit of materials for Shakspeare, it will not be supposed his native town was overlooked. The date of the critic’s first trip thither does not appear, nor were visits thither at any time frequent. His inquiries were chiefly epistolary, addressed to the vicar, the Rev. Mr. (afterwards Dr.) Davenport, whose patience and politeness in reply appear to have been exemplary. Nineteen long letters were written to him on this fertile and favourite theme, from the commencement of the correspondence in April 1788, to the publication of the edition in 1790; twelve in 1793; and several others at intervals, making together, thirty-six. To the vicar as to the critic, it must have been a labour of love. He replied to innumerable questions requiring laborious and tedious investigations in a spirit of zeal and good humour, which to the end won the gratitude and friendship of his correspondent.[3]
The latter, at the end of a long letter, and in remembrance of the scene where the mulberry-tree stood, warms to the theme, drops the cold pen of criticism, and seizes upon the lyre to propitiate the owner.—
In giving an account of Mr. Hunt’s garden, I could not help breaking out into a poetical rhapsody, which may perhaps render him more propitious to my inquiries. I fear these lines are entitled to the reverse of Ovid’s description, Materiam superabat opus. However, such as they are, let them make some small amends for this very tedious letter. I wish them not to wander out before my “books” which will not be ready for some months.[4]
With matchless skill surveyed all human kind.
Here let each sweet that blest Arabia knows,
‘Flowers of all hues, and without thorn the rose,’
To latest times their balmy odours fling,
And Nature here display eternal spring.”
These lines, with an account of New Place, then the residence of Mr. Charles Hunt, appeared in print. But the destroyer of the Mulberry Tree, and indeed of Shakspeare’s house, is well-known to have been the Reverend Mr. Gastrell. It is difficult to account for such an act of human perversity; but the researches of Malone appear to make it an act of divided delinquency. To Mr. Davenport he writes in May 1788, what it would have been inconvenient to put forth in print.
“A friend of mine read me yesterday part of a letter of a lady from Lichfield who is in great wrath at Mrs. Gastrell, whom she describes as little better than a fiend. Having had some disagreement with a lady to whom she had let a place, called I think Stow Hill in the neighbourhood of Lichfield, she has turned her out, and resolved that the poor, to whom this lady was very charitable, shall not derive any benefit from any inhabitant of that house; for that it never shall be let again, but remain empty. The rent was, it seems, one hundred guineas a year. The writer of this letter speaks of it as a known thing—that it was this lady and not her husband who cut down the celebrated Mulberry Tree. Perhaps she was only an accomplice. If this Lichfield story is not exaggerated, this lady and her husband seem to have been well-matched.”
Correspondence with Mr. Davenport drew attention from one of his humbler neighbours, Mr. John Jordan, a carpenter and wheelwright, commonly known there as the “Poet.” What his productions were I have not seen.[5] But his tastes rose above his occupations. He amused himself with the study of ancient memorials, inscriptions, ballads, family anecdotes, and such similar lore as may flash across the path, or enliven the hours of a rural genius. But more especially was he devoted to such points as were available regarding his illustrious townsman. Malone’s inquiries further stimulated his exertions; and having wants to supply as well as information to communicate, he early in 1790 forwarded a packet of papers on that subject to the Critic in London.
One of the letters of Jordan—April 1790, in Mr. Rooper’s collection, with its truth vouched by the Vicar of Stratford—offers his services in any mode of research likely to be useful, but prefaces it by a history of his life. Like so many unlucky followers of the Muse, it had been but a series of evils. He had experienced neglect, disappointment, misfortune, poverty, sickness, starving and scarcely-clothed children; reduced from master-tradesman to journeyman at nine shillings a week by an “ungrateful brother, who basely usurped the business during a long illness arising from quotidian ague.” He is refused by a rich sister-in-law even a shilling a week for the schooling of his children; “is overwhelmed by misfortune, misery, and wretchedness.” Even the Rev. Mark Noble, a near relative of his wife, and author of Memoirs of the Cromwell Family, had promised aid and some small place under government, but both expectations remained unfulfilled. “Alas!” he cries, “I am unnoticed by the world, oppressed with affliction, and wrecked with despair; the anchor of hope has totally forsook me; I am dashed by the waves of a boundless sea of trouble, sorrow, and misery, which brings to my mind an expression of Shakspeare, that
Being low is not relieved by any.”
This melancholy detail had due effect upon the heart and purse of the Critic.
The latter appeared rather surprised at the variety of small facts noted by his correspondent; and in return, always alive to the chance of imposition upon an inquisitive antiquary, questions him minutely on the origin of each. More than fifty queries as to date, name, and source whence obtained, occupy three or four of the first letters. Several hundreds succeeded during the first year. “Good Mr. Jordan,” as he was styled, had ample employment in fulfilling the requests of his precise and inquisitive friend, which did not cease till the edition of Shakspeare had appeared. In return, the hints of pecuniary distress and a “family,” already quoted, were not forgotten. Malone gave him good Christian advice, and added a more substantial soother of uneasiness in a note for forty pounds raised among his friends in London. Nor did his kindness cease there. Occasional correspondence continued; and a small post in the Excise was procured him, but being over age he proved to be ineligible for the place.[6]
Of some of his favourite associates at this time, and of the promised Shakspeare, we have glimpses in the letters of his friends. Boswell writes to Bishop Percy, February 1788:—“I dined at Mr. Malone’s on Wednesday, with Mr. W. G. Hamilton, Mr. Flood, Mr. Wyndham, Mr. Courtenay, &c. . . . . Malone flatters himself that his Shakspeare will be published in June. I should rather think we shall not have it till winter. Come when it may, it will be a very admirable book.”
An amusing letter from John Kemble, then in Dublin, incites the Critic to play off a trick not wholly new upon his friend Jephson, then said to be on his way to London with a poetical production in hand. This was to commit to memory the passage sent in the letter, repeat it when Jephson presented the poem, and then gravely accuse him of having stolen it from a previous writer! Theatricals appear at that moment not to have been in the ascendant in the Irish metropolis.
Dear Sir,—I am mad till I give you an occasion of surprising Jephson, when he sends you his poem, which will be, no doubt, very soon after he has shown you himself. Here is the character which he gives of Virgil, and which you may pretend to have seen before:—
Apollo listens to the Mantuan’s song.
Yon chief who feels bright Inspiration’s flame,
With mighty Homer’s palm divide his claim;
Fav'rite with me of all the tuneful choir,
A boy, I felt him, and a man, admire.
When grief or pain my anxious mind engage,
Secure of ease, I search great Maro’s page;
For deep and rankling sure must be the pain
That finds no balm in his mellifluous strain:
As Jesse’s son Saul’s phrenzy could compose,
The madness sinking as the musick rose;
The oil, diffused by philosophic skill,
At once the agitated waves can still;
This gentle magick o’er my senses glides,
The charm prevails and all my rage subsides.
From Tityrus, stretch’d the beechen shade beneath,
To Turnus, shrinking from the uplifted death—
Some careful Muse presides o’er every line,
And all is sense and harmony divine.”
I have committed no robbery, I assure you, for the Poet gave me free leave to take as much of his work as I could carry off with me. Never was town so empty as Dublin is now, since Mark Anthony was left alone in the market-place with the air which was uncivilly tempted also to forsake him.
The Count of Narbonne, however, brought all the country round into the play-house, and will be acted to another crowded theatre, I dare say, again on Saturday. The ragamuffishness of the players, and the filthy meanness of everything behind the scenes (I don’t know how I can say scenes, when there are none) of the New Theatre Royal surprises even me, who lived two years at Smock Alley, in what I thought very reasonably good idleness, drunkenness, and dirt.
The city itself is, in every particular which my observation can reach, incredibly improved. The lights are as regularly sustained by night as they are in London. They affect to be oppressed in various shapes by the institution of the police, but I know they keep the streets ten thousand times more orderly and quiet than the old watchmen ever did. They do permit some frail beauties to walk their charms along the wood pavement of Dame Street, but then they are very still in their solicitations, leves sub nocte susurri are the loudest violences they offer to the solemnity of silence and dignity of municipal institutions.
Peg Plunket is dying. Do you know that H has a pension on this establishment? Poor Mr. O’Neill is very ill. Mr. Greville hardly hoped for. Mr. Sheridan[7] has one foot in his grave. By Mrs. Lefanu’s account, he is no more than sixty-six. He sailed yesterday with Miss Sheridan and Mrs. Crewe for England, to consult in London upon his case (dropsy and jaundice they say) with Dr. Turton. Between you and me, Mrs. Lefanu told me she firmly believed that, finding himself too old and weak to undertake the direction of the county schools, which do not exist anywhere but in his own brain, this disappointment of his whole life’s hopes had contributed more than disease to destroy his nerves and debilitate his faculties.
Have you seen Mr. Hitchcock’s History of the Irish Stage? It is the first volume of a work commencing at the earliest and proceeding to the latest date of theatres in this kingdom. It is full of wretched blunders in facts, and stuffed with whole pages of follies in opinions.
I fancy Jephson is the only one of my acquaintance you have in London now. Pray give him my best compliments, and believe me, dear sir, most sincerely your servant and friend, J. P. Kemble.
Two letters from Lord Charlemont form his contributions for the year; one mentions the transmission of a translation from the Italian. His name is not to be affixed, and it is to be “corrected without mercy.” His idea of rendering one language into another is perfectly just, were it always practicable.
“Not content with giving the sense of an author, I would always wish, if possible, to communicate his manner. This is, in my opinion, best done by, as far as the difference of idiom will permit, copying his phrase; a mode of translating hostile to elegance but friendly to fidelity. I would at all times rather choose to be faithful than elegant. Above all things, the characteristics of the original should be preserved, which in the case before us has a certain simplicity or naiveté, and this I have endeavoured to copy, though in so doing I may very probably have rendered my language so faulty as to require much correction.”
The second adverts to the paucity of corrections in the piece so transmitted, which he attributes to Malone’s delicacy. He asks, as usual, for further supplies of books:—Dante, in large paper; some of the Delphine Classics; Gatt’s Travels; Ford’s Plays, “to which I am very partial;” and some others. He glances also at the trial of the then great Indian delinquent—“As a man, and for the sake of human nature, I am happy that Hastings has been so ably attacked. As a friend, I am delighted at Burke’s success. When next you see him, tell him so from me. It is, I think, impossible that even partiality can screen the tyrant of the East from punishment; and the disgrace will be greater in proportion to that partiality.”
All writers who have spoken of Dr. Warburton’s career have usually dwelt upon his good fortune in meeting with Pope. But by the following account, the latter would appear to have been the greater gainer of the two by the intimacy. The Poet made the Divine a Bishop, and the Divine made the Poet a Christian.
“January 15th, 1789.—Dr. Joseph Warton, talking last night at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s of Pope’s Essay on Man, said that much of his system was borrowed from King’s book on the Origin of Evil. This was first published in Dublin, in Latin, in 1704, and translated into English by Bishop Law, in 1731, not very long before the Essay on Man was written. Dr. Warton mentioned that Lord Lyttleton told him that he lived much with Pope at that time, and that Pope was then undoubtedly a Free-thinker; though he afterwards either changed his opinion, or thought it prudent to adopt Warburton’s explanation and comment, who saw his meaning as he chose to express it, ‘better than he did himself.’ Dr. Warton forbore to state this in his Essay on Pope.”
The subject of the following conversation has been so much the theme of animadversion in talk, in writing, in verse, and in prose, that notwithstanding her talents, there is too much reason to believe she opened the way for a large share of that scandal which fastened upon her fame in life and has clung to her in the grave. Unlucky, indeed, must that person be against whom Pope and Walpole united in the bitterest censure! Some further particulars will be found in the note subjoined to this statement, made to the hero of our story.
“March 8, 1789.—Mr. Horace Walpole remembers Lady M. W. Montague perfectly well, having passed a year with her at Florence. He told me this morning that she was not handsome, had a wild, staring eye, was much marked with the smallpox, which she endeavoured to conceal, by filling up the depressions with white paint. She was a great mischief-maker, and had not the smallest regard for truth. Her first gallant after her marriage was Lord Stair, our ambassador at Paris.
“Worsdale, the painter, told Mr. Walpole that the first cause of quarrel between her and Pope was her borrowing a pair of sheets from the poet, which, after keeping them a fortnight, were returned to him unwashed. She had a house at Twickenham, near Pope’s.
“The line of that poet—
alludes to two of her most disreputable actions. Her sister was Lady Mar, who resided some time at Paris. After her coming to England she went mad, and Lady M. W. Montague had the custody of her person. She put her under the care of one who was used to that employment, but allowed so scantily for her maintenance (though the Court of Chancery had furnished her with means for the support of the lunatic), and paid so little attention to her, that her keeper, to save trouble, used to put the three meals intended for her into one, and then lock her up, that she might be free herself for the rest of the day. When Lady Mar’s daughter, Lady Mary Erskine, came of age, she applied to the Court of Chancery, got her mother out of Lady M. W. Montague’s custody, took her into her own house, and carefully attended to her till her death.
“The latter part of the line—‘who forswears a debt’—alludes to another unprincipled transaction. Soon after Lady Mary W. Montague’s return from Constantinople, she fell in love with a French gentleman who was very fond of her, and to whom she gave her person while she remained in Paris. He followed her into England with about two thousand pounds in his pocket, which soon after his arrival, she persuaded him to put into her hands to dispose of in the English funds to the best advantage, lest from ignorance of our customs he might be imposed upon. Soon afterwards she assured him her husband had discovered their intrigue, and that he could not stay longer in England without danger to his life. The poor Frenchman in vain begged to have his money; but she said that withdrawing it from the funds would take up too much time; and that he must fly instantly. He fled accordingly, and solicited in vain afterwards to have the money remitted. Lady M. W. Montague had the impudence to disown the whole transaction; and even to write to her sister, Lady Mar, to incite her husband, or Lord Stair (Lady Mary’s old lover) to punish the Frenchman for defamation.
“On her death-bed she gave seventeen large volumes in MS. of her letters, memoirs, and poems, to the clergyman who attended her, with an injunction to publish them; but Lady Bute, her daughter, being very desirous to prevent this, prevailed on her husband, who was then Prime Minister, to give the clergyman a good Crown living. For this bribe he broke his trust, and surrendered the letters, which will probably never see the light.
“Of twelve of her letters, however, addressed to Lady Mar at Paris, there are copies in the hands of Colonel Erskine, Lady Mar’s grandson, which will probably some time or other get into print. He has also a copy of a very curious letter of Lady M. W. Montague’s, giving an account of a private society that used to meet about the year 1730 at Lord Hillsborough’s in Hanover Square, where each gentleman came masked, and brought with him one lady—either his mistress, or any other man’s wife, or perhaps a woman of the town—who was also masked. They were on oath not to divulge names, and continued masked the whole time. There were tables set out for supper, artificial arbours, couches, &c, to which parties retired when they pleased and called for what refreshment they chose. This letter is not one of the twelve above-mentioned. This institution probably lasted but a short time. The late Captain O’Brien told me that his father, Sir Edward, was one of the members.
“Aviennus and his wife, in Pope’s verses, were Wortley Montague and Lady Mary. Wordly was also Mr. Wortley.
“Lady W. Montague had two children by the Frenchman alluded to, and this amour was the cause of being separated from her husband.
“(From the information of Colonel Erskine.)”[8]
Occasional excursions to the country varied the enjoyments of town and of the club. One of these was to his distinguished countryman in Buckinghamshire, of which we have a few details.
“July 28, 1789.—Went to Gregoriess, near Beaconsfield, the seat of Mr. Burke, with Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Wyndham, and Mr. Courtenay, and passed three days there very agreeably.
“As I walked out before breakfast with Mr. B., I proposed to him to revise and enlarge his admirable book on the Sublime and Beautiful, which the experience, reading, and observation of thirty years could not but enable him to improve considerably. But he said the train of his thoughts had gone another way, and the whole bent of his mind turned from such subjects; that he was much fitter for such speculations at the time he published that book (about 1758[9]) than now. Besides, he added, the subject was then new, but several writers have since gone over the same ground, Lord Kames and others. The subject he said had been long rolling in his thoughts before he wrote his book, he having been used from the time he was in college to speculate on the topics which form the subjects of it. He was six or seven years employed on it, and produced it when he was about 28 or 29 years old—a prodigious work for such a period of life.
“On Thursday, 30th, we went in the morning to Amersham, to see Mr. Drake’s very noble seat. He has some of the tallest trees in England; two particularly fine, a beech and an ash, that are as straight as the mast of a ship, and the former several years ago was 112 feet high to the top of the branches. It is now much higher of course.
“Mr. Drake has a few good pictures, particularly four very fine by Vernet, as Sir Joshua Eeynolds said. They were done in the early part of his life, as he observed, with great care, and in his opinion were worth 500l. apiece. Vernet is still alive and very old. All his later works, in consequence of the great business he has had and his great age, were done very carelessly; yet for these latter he has received a great price; for the former a very moderate one.
“There was a portrait here of Lord Chancellor Hatton, said in the Catalogue to be done by Jameson, the Scotch Vandyke; but this must be a mistake, for Jameson was born in 1586, and Hatton died in 1591. Possibly however it might be a copy by Jameson.
“There was also a portrait of Queen Elizabeth, said to be done by Hilliard, which by no means qualified the high praises given him by his contemporaries. Like most of the other portraits of the queen, this has not the least shade to the face, and her hair is quite red.
“We dined this day at Hall-barn, as it is now called, though Dr. Johnson, in his life of Waller, calls it Hill-barn, and I took another look at Waller’s portraits. I did not before observe, that on that by Cornelius Jansen is written ‘Ann. ætat. 23 vitæ vix primo.’ Sir J. Reynolds said it was done with great care, and probably was an exact resemblance; but that it had the fault which all Jansen’s pictures have—the flesh has too much the appearance of ivory. He thought the portrait of Waller, in his old age, was done by Kneller in his first and best manner. When Kneller came first from Italy (he said) he painted much more carefully than afterwards, and was less of a mannerist. In his latter works he gave every woman pouting cherry lips, as Lely gave all his ladies a sleepy eye.
“Sir J. Reynolds found out another portrait of Waller here, which he supposed to be done by Lely in his first manner, when he imitated Vandyke so closely that some of his pictures have been mistaken for those of that master. Afterwards, he too became a mannerist. Lely was born in 1617, and came into England in 1641. He at first painted landskips (sic) as well as portraits, and he gave some designs for ornamental engravings prefixed to books. One of his designs of this kind may be found in Lovelace’s Poems. He died in 1680, at sixty-three. Kneller was born about the year 1648, went to Italy in 1672, remained there for some time, and came to England in 1674. He died October 27, 1723, aged 75.”
- ↑ He can find nothing in the Auditor-general’s office relative to plays acted at the Castle. The most ancient theatre of Dublin appears to have been a booth erected in Hoggin Green, now College Green, where mysteries principally were acted, to which the Lords Lieutenant were frequently invited. A theatre in Werburgh Street succeeded to this, which was open till 1641, and the last play there exhibited was Landegartha, a tragi-comedy, by Henry Burnell, an Irish gentleman. Respecting the rejoicings mentioned by Ware:—In a MS. in the library of Trinity College is the following passage—“In the Parliament of 1541, wherein Henry VIII. was declared King of Ireland, there were present the Earls of Ormond and Desmond, the Lord Barry, MacGilla Phadrig, chieftain of Ossory, the sons of O’Bryan, MacCarthy More, with many Irish lords. And on Corpus Christi day they rode about the streets with the procession in their Parliament robes, and the Nine Worthies was played, and the mayor bore the mace before the deputy on horseback.”
- ↑ See a further notice of this subject in the subsequent anecdotes.
- ↑ For the communication of these I am indebted to their owner, Mr. Hunt, of Stratford.
- ↑ This was written in April, 1788, and the edition did not appear till November, 1790. But what chance have literary resolutions against the innumerable obstructions which continually occur to mar them?
- ↑ Mr. Halliwell obligingly informs me that he published a poem, Welcombe Hills, in 4to, about 1770, anonymously. He is not aware of anything else of his in print.
- ↑ Our critic, and other prosaic people, had been zealously at work in attempting to discover earthly facts of the Poet’s life. But inquirers of another order aimed to ascertain how the heavens were affected at the moment of his birth. Such a genius could scarcely arise, thought astrological pundits, without the stars having some hand in it, as the reader may be amused to hear:—
“By the amazing intellectual faculties,” says Mr. John Bolton to the Shakspeare Club at Stratford in 1829, “and surprising, as well as unexampled depth of genius of the immortal Bard, as well as his poetic powers, retentive memory and other mental gifts, which have, like the refulgent Sun, shone far and near, and victoriously surmounted the mightiest efforts of all other dramatic writers. These most astonishing powers are well denoted by the Moon, Mercury, and Mars being in cardinal signs; by the opposition of the Moon and Mercury; the trine of the Moon and Venus; the position of Venus and Luna in scientific signs; but more especially the approaching great conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter, the two superiors in the regal sign Leo in trine also to Mercury. The square of Mercury and Mars was undoubtedly the cause of his early misfortunes, his being obliged to leave his native home, and subsequently was the cause of his pecuniary troubles; and yet, but for this restlessness, I expect the dramatic world would have probably been without the matchless writings of this illustrious Poet.”
- ↑ Mr. Thomas Sheridan, father of Richard Brinsley.
- ↑ Whether these statements, even from a relative, be true, will now be difficult to decide. Walpole, however familiar with her history, was certainly very hostile to her in feeling; yet he could scarcely descend to invent and string together such a tissue of offences, however he may have given a ready ear to rumour or exaggeration. Much in her history is no doubt difficult to explain. She often lived in equivocal society, and her reputation must pay the penalty; for her friends, by destroying her papers, have left complete vindication impossible.
For the story of the children, mentioned on the authority of the colonel, no sufficient foundation appears. No record marks separation from her husband, so as to admit the birth of two children from the time of their return from Constantinople till her departure from England on a twenty years’ exile. She was then forty-nine years old. Time, therefore, would seem to acquit her at least of child-bearing.
It is certain from admissions in her own letters that a Frenchman, who professed the strongest attachment, and who we must suppose was a previous acquaintance, wrote from France, requesting permission to join her in England. This after some time was conceded. He was not, however, to come empty-handed. With his money, or a joint sum, purchases were made in the funds; but disagreement arising, she wished him to quit England leaving his investment behind. He would not go. She sought the return of her letters from him, which were refused; he even made communications to her husband, which she had ingenuity enough to intercept; and then, it is said, threatened him with personal violence, if not assassination. In return he threatened the publication of her letters. This produced agonies of terror, as evinced in communications to her sister, such as are not known in any of her writings. Exposure, no doubt, would have been ruin, but her good genius prevailed in staying its execution.
Lady Mary, it appears, kept a journal from her earliest years to their close. Her sister, afterward Countess of Mar, destroyed it on her elopement with her husband, Mr. Wortley. After marriage, the practice was resumed and continued. At her death—whether procured, as stated, from the clergyman in attendance does not appear—it fell into the hands of Lady Bute, who ever after kept it under lock and key. Occasionally she would read passages to her family and friends, but would not trust any portion of it out of her own hands, except a few of the early copybooks, which she allowed one of the family, Lady Louisa Stuart, to read alone, on condition that nothing should be transcribed. Shortly before her death, Lady Bute burned the entire journal, to the great grief of the junior portion of the family.
What disclosures or explanations were made in those papers, none can now tell. Unquestionably they must have been curious in a high degree in literature, morals, wit, anecdote, and sketches of personal character, from one who saw so much and described so freely in her journey through life.
Lord Wharnclifte, in his edition of her works, puts the best construction on unexplained points. This is natural and charitable. We readily go with him where we can, though not at the expense of truth. We would all desire to see genius as pure in conduct as noble in attributes—willing to exalt our common nature, untainted by those vices that drag them down to the level of the unprincipled and vulgar. Should the reader wish further details, he may turn to the Quarterly Review, No. 115, in the notice of Lord Wharncliffe’s volumes—written no doubt by the late Right Hon. J. W. Croker.
- ↑ It should be 1757. The anecdote had been communicated to me in substance many years ago.