Chapter III: Part 3

“Old Q.” was a dangerous man at the card-table. The turf had no mysteries for him. He was ever ready to bet, and he preferred to bet on something that was very nearly a certainty. He was full of resource, and his success was due at least as much to his cleverness as to his luck. His was the day of wagers, and at White’s a betting-book was laid upon a table for all bets made in the building to be inserted. His name frequently occurs therein:

“_June 1751._--Lord March wagers Captain Richard Vernon fifty guineas to twenty that Mr St Leger is married before him.” The bet requires the explanatory note that “him” stands for Captain Vernon.

“_March 1784._--The Duke of Queensberry bets Mr Grenville ten guineas to five that Mr Fox does not stand a poll for Westminster if the Parliament should be dissolved within a month from the date hereof. _N.B._--If a coalition takes place between Mr Pitt and Mr Fox this bet is to be off.” It is to be noticed that the Duke was not convinced of the sincerity of politicians.

The Duke bet Sir John Lade a thousand guineas as to which could produce a man to eat the most at one sitting. The Duke could not be present at the contest, but he received the result from a representative. “I have not time to state particulars, but merely to acquaint your Grace that your man beat his antagonist by a pig and an apple-pie.” What must they have eaten!

White’s betting-book is full of quaint wagers. “Lord Northington bets Mr C. Fox, June 4, 1774, that he (Mr. C. F.) is not called to the Bar before this day four years.” On 11th March 1775 is an interesting entry: “Lord Bolingbroke gives a guinea to Mr Charles Fox, and is to receive a thousand from him whenever the debt of this country amounts to one hundred and seventy-one millions. Mr Fox is not to pay the thousand pounds till he is one of his Majesty’s Cabinet.” The following is dated 7th April 1792: “Mr Sheridan bets Lord Lauderdale and Lord Thanet twenty-five guineas each that Parliament will not consent to any more lotteries after the present one voted to be drawn in February next.” Lotteries were then a regular source of revenue to the State, the average profit being about three hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year, besides many brokers’ annual licences at fifty pounds. Private lotteries were forbidden by law, and required a special Act of Parliament to enable them to be drawn. The result was that the only two private lotteries were the Pigot Diamond in 1800 and Boydell’s pictures five years later. Lotteries were first drawn at Guildhall and later at the Coopers’ Hall, and the tickets were taken from the wheels by Bluecoat boys. The last public lottery took place in October 1826, and so Mr Sheridan lost his bet.

On 8th May 1809, “Mr G. Talbot bet Lord Charles Manners ten guineas that the Duke of Queensberry is not alive this day two years.” Another entry records that “Mr C. H. Bouverie bets Mr Blackford that the Duke of Queensberry outlives the Duke of Grafton.” “Lord Mountford bets Sir John Bland twenty guineas that Nash outlives Cibber.” But the bet was cancelled, because before either Nash or Cibber died the two wagerers committed suicide!

Apparently no subject was thought unfit for a bet. Wagers were made as to which of two married ladies would first give birth to a live child, and as to which of two men would marry first. They bet with equal heartiness on the duration of a Ministry or the life of a Minister, on a horse, or a dog, or a prize-fight, or a cock-fight. Walpole tells the story of a simple parson entering White’s on the morning of a severe earthquake, and hearing bets laid whether the shock was caused by an earthquake or the blowing up of powder mills, went away in horror, protesting that they were such an impious set that he believed if the Last Trump were to sound they would bet puppet-show against Judgment!

All other English clubs where gaming took place fade into insignificance before Crockford’s. Crockford was originally a fishmonger at the old Bulkshop next door to Temple Bar Without, and later a “leg” at Newmarket. He became part-proprietor of a gambling-house, and with his partner, at a twenty-four hours’ sitting, he won a hundred thousand pounds from five punters, including Lord Thanet, Lord Granville and Ball Hughes. He then built the famous palace in St James’s Street opposite to White’s.

“No one can describe the splendour and excitement of the early days of Crockford’s,” Gronow relates. “A supper of the most exquisite kind, prepared by the famous Ude, and accompanied by the best wines in the world, together with every luxury of the season, was provided gratis. The members of the club included all the celebrities of England, from the Duke of Wellington to the youngest ensign of the Guards; and at the gay and festive board, which was constantly replenished from midnight till early dawn, the most brilliant sallies of wit, the most agreeable conversation, the most interesting anecdotes, interspersed with grave political discussions and acute logical reasoning on every conceivable subject, proceeded from the soldiers, scholars, statesmen, poets, and men of pleasure, who, when the House was ‘up’ and balls and parties at an end, delighted to finish their evenings with a little supper and a good deal of hazard at old Crockey’s. The tone of the club was excellent. A most gentleman-like feeling prevailed, and none of the rudeness, familiarity, and ill-breeding which disgrace some of the minor clubs of the present day would have been tolerated for a moment.”

The whole establishment was organised on a scale of wonderful magnificence; and to keep it select, the election of members was controlled by a committee. Talleyrand, Pozzo di Borgo, General Alava, Esterhazy, and other ambassadors belonged to it; the Duke of Wellington, Lord Raglan, Lord Anglesea, Sir Hussey Vivian, Disraeli, Bulwer, Croker, Horace Twiss, and, as a matter of course, Lord Alvanley and Count D’Orsay. Though many members never touched a card, Crockford with his hazard bank won a sum estimated at between one million two hundred thousand and two million pounds, or, as a contemporary put it very neatly, “the whole of the ready money of the then existing generation.” He died worth seven hundred thousand pounds, after having sustained heavy losses in mining and other speculations. The retirement of Crockford marks an epoch, for after that date the craze for gambling on a vast scale slowly but surely died out. By this time, however, it had done as much harm to the aristocracy as the South Sea Bubble did to the general public.

A Forgotten Satirist: “Peter Pindar”

The amusing banter of Mr E. V. Lucas and Mr C. L. Graves, and the delightful parody of Mr Owen Seaman, are the nearest approach that England can now show to the satirical productions for which it was once famous. Indeed, we are becoming an amiable race, developing, or at least feigning, the milk of human kindness to such an extent that even modern caricature can scarcely be distinguished from portraiture, and only Mr Max Beerbohm flings the tomahawk of pictorial satire. A study of the lampoons and the vigorous personal onslaughts in prose and verse of the Georgian days, however, gives us pause for reflection whether we refrain from such practices because of our improved manners or increasing effeminacy: though, perhaps, it may be attributed largely to the signed review which makes it difficult, in these days of numerous literary associations, for a sociable or a nervous scholar to gibbet his erring brethren with an acerbity once general. Certain it is that current criticism is for the most part the art of saying pleasant things graciously, while our excursions into the personal element are usually headed “Appreciations.” Whatever the cause, it is a sad thought for militant spirits that a wave of politeness has engulfed the heretofore blunt, outspoken John Bull, that typical figure, of which--it is pathetic to note in these days of unsuppressed emotion--we are still so proud.

The most casual incursion into Georgian history reveals a great mass of almost forgotten satirical productions, all of it trenchant, most of it coarse and not a little scurrilous, indeed, but much of it readable and amusing. There were scores of virile pamphleteers in the pay of Ministers and Oppositions, as well as a number of independent writers of lampoons on all sorts and conditions of men and things. The best of the latter class was Charles Churchill, the famous author of “The Rosciad” and of those terrible onslaughts on Hogarth and Sandwich, on Martin and other small fry. His mantle was in due course assumed by Wolcot, who, though scarcely remembered to-day, was a man of considerable talent and extensive knowledge, and, though of course without the genius of his predecessor, was widely read, enjoyed a vast popularity, and undoubtedly influenced a great body of people.

John Wolcot, the son of a country surgeon, was born in May 1738. He was educated at various schools of no great repute, and in the early twenties paid a lengthy visit to France, for the inhabitants of which land he conceived the insular prejudice usual in his day:

“I never will put Merit on the rack:
No; yet, I own, I hate the shrugging dogs.
I’ve lived among them, eat their frogs,
And vomited them up, thank God, again.”

He studied medicine in London until 1764, when he went as assistant to his uncle, John Wolcot of Fowey, taking a Scotch Degree of Doctor of Medicine three years later, immediately after which, his distant connection, Sir William Trelawny, going to Jamaica as Governor, he accompanied him as physician. In that island he saw little or no prospect of securing a paying practice, and paid a flying visit to England in 1769 to take holy orders. On his return to Jamaica he found that the lucrative living for which he had been destined, had, contrary to expectation, not been vacated, whereupon, after holding a minor clerical post for a few months, he reverted to his old profession, and obtained the post of physician-general to the troops. Sir William Trelawny died at Spanish Town in 1772, and Wolcot again came to England, where he established himself as a doctor at Truro, but, after disputes with his medical _confrères_ and the Corporation, removed in 1779 to Helstone and then to Exeter.

Wolcot abandoned the practice of medicine in 1781, when he came to London, urged to this step partly by the desire to advance the prospects of his _protégé_, Opie, the painter, and partly by the desire to establish himself there as a man of letters. The last project was not so mad as it may have appeared to his country neighbours, for under the pseudonym of “Peter Pindar” he had already obtained some success with the publication of a “Poetical Epistle to Reviewers” in 1778, in which he declared:

“In Sonnet, Ode, and Legendary Tale,
Soon will the press my tuneful Works display.”

He fulfilled this promise, and in 1782 issued “Lyric Odes to the Royal Academicians for 1782,” by “Peter Pindar, Esq., a distant relative of the Poet of Thebes and Laureat to the Academy,” which were at once so successful, that in quick succession came from his fertile pen, “More Lyric Odes to the Royal Academicians for 1783,” “Lyric Odes for 1785,” and, in 1786, “Farewell Odes to Academicians.” These vigorous verses attracted much attention, for the critic was outspoken in his dislikes, and lashed with the utmost contempt “George’s idol,” West, and other fashionable artists; though he showed his discrimination by praising the works of Gainsborough, Reynolds (“Of whose fine art I own myself a lover”), and of the unfairly neglected Richard Wilson (“By Britain left in poverty to pine”):

“But honest Wilson, never mind;
Immortal praises thou shalt find,
And for a dinner have no cause to fear.
Thou start’st at my prophetic rhymes:
Don’t be impatient for those times;
Wait till thou hast been dead a hundred year.”

It was not because Wolcot had exhausted this vein (for he returned to it again and again, even in 1808 having “One more Peep at the Royal Academy”) that he looked for another theme, but that he discovered, so long as he wrote on art and artists, let him be never so humorous, he would have to be content with praise alone for his reward. No man cared less for money than he, but he certainly thought the labourer worthy of his hire, and, since he depended for his livelihood on his pen, it behoved him to select a subject that would appeal to a larger public. To the exceeding joy of his own and subsequent generations, he decided to exercise his humour at the expense of the King and Queen, with an occasional playful blow at a Minister.

No satirist could ask for better subjects for his wit than George III. and Queen Charlotte. The slow-witted monarch and his parsimonious consort offered every conceivable temptation to Wolcot’s nimble humour, and he was not slow to take advantage of this rare chance. Of course, he was not the first in the field, but he was head and shoulders over his rivals in talent and wit, and, if he did not silence, at least he succeeded in eclipsing them. He was especially fortunate in having accurate information concerning the internal economy of the royal palaces, and, though he took a poet’s licence to embroider the facts, there was always some foundation for his lampoons. Thus, when the King found a noxious insect in his plate at dinner and gave orders that everyone in the kitchens, from _chef_ to scullion, should be shaved, “Peter Pindar” wrote a “heroi-comic poem,” “The Lousiad,” in which he gave a version of the story. “I had this (incident),” he wrote to a friend, “from the cooks themselves, with whom I dined several times at Buckingham House and Windsor, immediately after the ‘shave’ took place.”

“‘Some spirit whispers that to Cooks I owe
The precious Visitor that crawls below;
Yes, yes, the whispering Spirit tells me true,
And soon that vengeance all the locks pursue.
Cooks, Scourers, Scullions, too, with Tails of Pig,
Shall lose their coxcomb Curls and wear a Wig.’
Thus roared the King, not Hercules so big;
And all the Palace echoed, ‘Wear a Wig!’”

So successful was the first canto of “The Lousiad,” which appeared in 1785, that during the next ten years four additional cantos were written, in which members of the Household and Ministers were introduced, scarified and dismissed; but the gem of the collection is the lengthy “Petition of the Cooks,” which, after references to France, the Schwellenberg and Wilkes, concludes:

“‘O King, our Wives are in the Kitchen roaring,
All ready in rebellion now to rise;
They mock our humble methods of imploring,
And bid us guard against a wig surprise:
“_Yours_ is the hair,” they cry, “th’ Almighty gave ye,
And not a King in Christendom should shave you.’”

‘Lo! on th’ event the World impatient looks,
And thinks the joke is carried much too far;
Then pray, Sir, listen to your faithful Cooks,
Nor in the Palace breed a Civil War:
Loud roar our Band; and, obstinate as Pigs,
Cry, “Locks and Liberty and damn the Wigs!”’”

Eventually the attention of the Privy Council was drawn to this poem, and that body, according to Wolcot, decided to prosecute the author, and refrained from doing so only when it discovered that the poem had its foundation in fact. “Are you sure of a verdict?” it is stated that Chancellor Thurlow inquired; “for, if not so, we shall look like a parcel of fools.” Huish states emphatically that the idea of prosecuting the poet did not originate with the King; and Galt says that the effusions of the satirist produced on George “no other effect than a smile of wonder at the perverse ingenuity of the man: and the most serious thing he was ever known to say of them was on the occasion of Peter’s lampooning General Carpenter, when his Majesty observed, that ‘for himself he cared nothing; but he was hurt to see a worthy man calumniated, because he happened to be one of his servants.’ As far as they were capable of exciting a good-natured laugh, the King enjoyed that laugh as much as any man; and when they were otherwise, as was but too often the case, he observed a dignified forbearance, leaving the author to enjoy all the triumph there might be in making a base attack on a party whom he knew to be precluded, by his dignity, from descending into the arena in his own defence.”

It may, however, he doubted whether Hazlitt was accurate in stating that “the King as well as the nation delighted in the bard,” for George had not a spark of humour in his composition, and was the last man in the nation to take a joke at his own expense in good part.

If, however, the King suffered in silence, the Queen was determined not to submit to similar attacks, and her solicitor warned Wolcot that if he exercised his wit against her Majesty, proceedings would at once be taken--representations that had the desired effect, although they furnished the subject for one of Peter’s verses:

“Great was the Bard’s desire to sing the Queen,
Vast in her soul, majestic in her mien;
But fierce George Hardinge swore, if pens or pen
Of woman, women, man or men,
In any wise or shape, in Ode or Tale,
Dared mention that _superior_ Lady, lo!
The law should deal them _such_ a blow!
Hang, pillory, or confine for life in jail.”

When the Doctor was once reproved by an acquaintance for the liberties he took with his sovereign, “I confess there exists this difference between the King and me,” he replied; “the King has been a good subject to me, but I have been a bad subject to him.” This he admitted, but that he was guilty in any sense of serious offence he pooh-poohed:

“Such is the Song: and do not thou, severe,
With ‘Treason! Treason!’ fill a royal ear;
For gentle jokes, at times, on Queens and Kings,
Are pleasant, taking, nay, _instructive_ things.
Yet _some_ there are who relish not the sport,
That flutter in the sunshine of a Court;
Who, fearful Song might mar their high ambition,
Loose the gaunt Dogs of State, and bawl ‘Sedition.’”

Wolcot was clever enough usually to take for his verse topics in which the public were interested, and it was to this acuteness his success with his contemporaries must be largely attributed. He attacked Lord Lonsdale when that nobleman showed a great disregard of his neighbour’s rights, and “expostulated” with Hannah More, when in her “Strictures on Female Education,” she wrote, “The Poets again, to do them justice, are always ready to lend a helping hand when any mischief is to be done.” He inveighed against the strict enforcement of Sunday Observance, which to some extent resulted from Lady Huntingdon’s petition to the King, and the Puritanism of the Methodists:

“‘No,’ roars the Huntingdonian Priest; ‘no, no:
Lovers are liars; love’s a damned trade.
Kissing is damnable; to Hell they go:
The _Devil claws_ away the rogue and jade.’”

And he gave a fanciful description of the result of the unpopular Hair-Tax, which, according to him, evoked so much disgust that, “the male sex have already sacrificed their favourite curls, to disappoint the rapacity of a minister.”

“See groups of Hairdressers all idle stand,
A melancholy, mute, and mournful band;
And Barbers _eke_, who lift the crape-clod Pole,
And round and round their eyes of horror roll;
Desponding, pale, like Hosier’s Ghost so white,
Who told their sorrows ’mid the morning light.
But see! each hopeless wight with fury foams;
His curling-irons breaks, and snaps his combs:
Ah! doom’d to shut their _mouths_ as well as _shops_;
For dead is Custom, ’mid the world of _crops_.”

Wolcot, as a defender of Mrs Fitzherbert, thought no words too strong in which to express his opinion of those who attacked her, and when John Rolle introduced the question of her marriage to the Prince of Wales in the House of Commons, he fell foul of him, and of Pitt, who supported him:

“Sick at the name of Rolle (to thee tho’ dear),
The name abhorr’d by Honour’s shrinking ear,
I draw reluctant from thy venal throng,
And give it mention, though it blacks my song.

How could’st thou bid that Rolle, despised by all,
On helpless beauty, like a mastiff fall;
Then meanly to correct the brute pretend,
And claim the merit of the Fair One’s friend?”

He had the courage to say a good word for Paine and “The Rights of Man”:

“O Paine! thy vast endeavour I admire. How brave the hope, to set a realm on fire! Ambition smiling praised thy giant wish. Compared to _thee_, the man, to gain a name, Who to Diana’s temple put the flame, A simple Minnow to the Prince of Fish.”

He was fearless in his denunciation of the Duke of York, when it transpired that during the latter’s occupation of the position of Commander-in-Chief, his mistress had been selling commissions and offices, and he voiced the public clamour:

“Heavens, what a dire confusion beauty makes!
The Horse Guards tremble, and old Windsor shakes.
Like bees, the mob around St Stephen’s swarms;
And every street and alley feels alarms:
Men, women, coaches, gigs, each other jostle;
And thou the cause of all this horrid bustle!
Hotels and tap-rooms sound with mingled din,
And every coffee-house is on the grin.
From morn to eve, from eve to midnight dark,
Naught strikes the ear but ‘Duke and Mistress Clarke.’
Nay, too, the parrot and the simple starling
Cry from their cages naught but ‘Duke and Darling’!”

When, as a consequence of the inquiry, the Duke resigned, Wolcot drew a malicious picture of his loneliness:

“No longer now the Duke excites our wonder,
’Midst gun, drum, trumpet, blunderbuss and thunder;
Amidst his hosts, no more with rapture dwells
On Congreve’s rockets, and on Shrapnell’s shells;
But quits with scornful mien the field of Mars,
And to Sir David’s genius leaves the wars.
Now in dull Windsor rides the youth is seen;
Now, in dull walks to Frogmore with the Queen;
At Oaklands, where pigs and poultry charm,
Like Cincinnatus on his Sabine farm;
Now, o’er a lonely dish in Stable Yard,
Without a friend, and (strange!) without a card!”

Wolcot sometimes contrived to combine his attacks upon art and royalty, as in “Subjects for Painters,” in the introduction to which he explained that the rage for historical pictures, “so nobly rewarded by Messieurs Boydell and Macklin,” tempted him to offer subjects that would be useful when the painters had exhausted Shakespeare and Milton.

“Pitt trying to unclench Britannia’s fist,
Imploring money for a King;
Telling _most mournful_ tales of Civil List,
The Lady’s _tender_ heart to wring:

Tales of expense in doctors’ bills,
High price of blisters, boluses, and pills;
Long journey to Saint Paul’s t’_oblige_ the Nation,
And give thanks for Restoration:--
Britannia, with arch look the while,
Partaking strongly of a smile,
Pointing to that huge Dome,[15] the Nation’s wealth;
Where _people_ sometimes place their Cash by _stealth_,
And, all so modest with their secret store,
Inform the World they’re _poor_, ah! _very poor_!”

[15] The Bank of England.

As a rule, however, Wolcot directed his lampoons against the King, whose foibles he most unmercifully laid bare. He was never weary of decrying a monarch who preferred farming to art, and whose economies were a source of scandal to the whole nation. It is said that the bitterness on this latter score arose from the King having purchased a picture from a friend of the satirist and having given him only half the market value. This, indeed, was only one instance out of many of George’s meanness. He would put an artist to the expense of bringing his pictures to Windsor, and not offer to pay the carriage, even when, in the case of one such command, the cost was twenty-five pounds. He would invite eminent singers and actors to perform at Court functions and give them never a sou, thinking the honour sufficient reward.

“At length the Actress ceased to read and spout,
Where Generosity’s a crying Sin:
Her curtsey dropp’d, was nodded to; came out.
So rich! How rich? As rich as she went in.

Should Mara call it cruelty, and blame
Such royal conduct, I’d cry, Fie upon her!
To Mistress Siddons freely say the same:
Sufficient for _such people_ is the _honour_.”

Wolcot was never weary of harping upon this unroyal quality that was common to both the sovereigns. He returned to it in the “Odes to Kien Long, Emperor of China.”

“Give nothing from the Privy Purse away, I say:
Nay, should thy coffers and thy bags run o’er;
Neglect, or pension Merit on the Poor.
Give not to Hospitals; thy Name’s enough:
To death-face Famine, not a pinch of snuff.
On Wealth, thy Quarry, keep a Falcon-view,
And from the very children steal their due!”

The King’s love of farming for profit--a king with a Civil List of eight hundred thousand pounds and occasional special grants amounting to millions--was a subject much discussed, and not likely to escape the attention of our satirist.

“... the note is, ‘How go sheep a score?
What, what’s the price of Bullocks? How sells Lamb?
I want a Boar, a Boar, I want a Boar;
I want a Bull, a Bull; I want a Ram!’
Whereas it should be this: ‘I want a Bard,
To cover him with honour and reward.’”

Indeed, nothing that the King did was allowed to pass without comment. Did he go to Weymouth, “Peter Pindar” accompanied him in spirit:

“See! Cæsar’s off: the dust around him hovers;
And gathering, lo, the King of Glory covers!
The Royal hubbub fills both eye and ear,
And wide-mouth’d Wonder marks the wild career.”

Did George visit Samuel Whitebread’s brewery, the event was duly recorded:

“Now moved the King, Queen, and Princesses, so grand,
To visit the first Brewer in the land;
Who sometimes swills his beer and grinds his meat,
In a snug corner christen’d Chiswell Street;
But oftener, charmed with _fashionable_ air,
Amidst the gaudy Great of Portman Square.”

Popular as such verses were, and wide as was their circulation, they were easily eclipsed in both respects by those in which the stupidity of the King was chronicled, and people, being so much amused by them, forgot that the foundation of truth was often so built upon as to obscure it. “Peter Pindar” was in his element poking fun at George’s ignorance, as shown when looking through Lord Pembroke’s treasures at Wilton House.

“‘Who’s this? Who’s this? Who’s this fine fellow here?’
‘Sesostris,’ bowing low, replied the Peer.
‘_Sir Sostris_, hey? _Sir Sostris?_ ‘Pon my word!
Knight or a Baronet, my Lord?
One of _my making_? what, my Lord, _my making_?’
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
‘Pray, pray, my Lord, who’s that big fellow there?’
‘’Tis Hercules,’ replied the _shrinking_ Peer.
‘Strong fellow, hey, my Lord? strong fellow, hey?
Clean’d stables; crack’d a Lion like a flea;
Kill’d Snakes, great Snakes, that in a cradle found him--The
Queen, Queen’s coming: wrap an apron round him.’”

The best thing that Wolcot ever wrote, and one that provoked a laugh all over England, was “The King and the Apple-Dumplings,” in which he described George’s astonishment at first seeing a dumpling, one of which he took into his hand to examine:

“‘’Tis monstrous, monstrous hard, indeed,’ he cried:
‘What makes it, pray, so hard?’ The Dame replied,
Low curtseying, ‘Please your Majesty, the Apple!’

‘Very astonishing indeed! Strange thing!’
(Turning the Dumpling round, rejoined the King).
‘’Tis most extraordinary then, all this is;
It beats Pinetti’s conjuring all to pieces:
Strange I should never of a Dumpling dream!
But, Goody, tell me where, where, where’s the seam?’

‘Sir, there’s no Seam,’ quoth she, ‘I never knew
That folks did Apple-Dumplings _sew_.’
‘No!’ said the staring Monarch with a grin:
‘How, how the devil got the Apple in?’”

Since it was thought unwise to prosecute Wolcot, after a time an endeavour was made to silence him by gentler means, and, through the instrumentality of Yorke, the Government offered the satirist a pension of three hundred a year, at which he professed to be much astonished:

“Great is the shout indeed, Sir, all abroad,
That you have order’d me this handsome thing;
On which, with lifted eyes, I’ve said, ‘Good God!
Though great my merits, yet how great the King!’

And yet, believe me, Sir, I lately heard
That all your doors were doubly lock’d and barr’d
Against the Poet for his tuneful art;
And that the tall, stiff, stately, red Machines,
Your Grenadiers, the guards of Kings and Queens,
Were ordered all to stab me to the heart:

That if to the House of Buckingham I came,
Commands were given to Mistress Brigg,
A comely, stout, two-handed Dame,
To box my ears and pull my wig;
The Cooks to spit me; curry me, the Grooms;
And Kitchen queans to baste me with their brooms.

You’re told that in my ways I’m very evil;
So ugly, fit to travel for a show;
And that I loot all grimly where I go,
Just like a devil;
With horns, and tail, and hoop, that make folks start,
And in my breast a Mill-stone for a Heart.”

Nothing came of the proposal, for it fell through owing to a difference of opinion as to the conditions which it would carry with it.

“This pension was well meant, O glorious King,
And for the Bard a very pretty thing:
But let me, Sir, refuse it, I implore;
I ought not to be rich while you are poor.
No, Sir, I cannot be your humble Hack:
I fear your Majesty would break my back.”

Wolcot then made a bid for the favour of the Prince of Wales in the “Expostulatory Odes.”

“Elate, to Carlton House my rhymes I sent,
Before the Poem met the public eye:
Which gain’d _applause_, the Poet’s great intent
But naught _besides_, I say it with a sigh.”

Thereafter, but not necessarily because of this, he found the Prince nearly as useful a subject for his scathing verses as the King, and when the former was appointed Regent, “Peter Pindar” was ready with “The Royal First-Born, or, The Baby out of his Leading Strings.”

“The P[rince] he promised to _be good_,
And do as every R[egen]t should,
Nor give vile slander cause to say things:
He owned with grief his conduct _wildish_,
And swore no longer to be _childish_,
But part with his _Imperial Playthings_.

This is the day when Britain’s pride
Shall throw his leading-strings aside,
And pass a solemn confirmation;
And, being now arrived at age,
From hence shall for himself engage
To do his duty to the nation.

No longer like a baby toss
The bold M[aho]n as his ball,
Make S[heri]d[a]n his rocking horse,
Himself a laughing stock for all.

When he no more in many a frolic
Shall give to Decency the Cholic,
Hang Truth in his imperial garters,
Butchers good-breeding at a jerk,
And crucify (O Parricide and Turk!)
Poor Virtue and Morality, like Martyrs.”

He often returned to administer castigation to the Prince, whose profligacies were notorious, and when the heir-apparent was said to be suffering from a sprained ankle, he voiced the general opinion that the confinement was the result of a thrashing from Lord Yarmouth, whose wife had been insulted by “The First Gentleman of Europe.”

“Ye Princes, as you love your lives,
Ne’er meddle with _your neighbours’ wives_,
But keep your brittle hearts from tripping;
Lest some rude _Lord_, to scare beholders,
Should compliment your princely shoulders,
With such another _royal_ whipping.
So let us sing, Long live the King,
The Regent long live he;
And when again he gets a _sprain_,
May I be there to see.”

Wolcot’s sight began to fail, and in 1811 he was nearly blind, but he still contrived to continue his literary work almost until his death, which took place on 14th January 1819. By his express desire he was buried in St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden, by the side of the coffin which contained the mortal remains of Samuel Butler, of whom, perhaps, and not without some reason, he considered himself a humble disciple.

He was a very sane man, sensible of his limitations, and not given to value his work unduly. Indeed, in his first work, “The Epistle to Reviewers,” he stated the position to which he aspired:

“I am no cormorant for Fame, d’ye see;
I ask not _all_ the laurel, but a _sprig_:
Then hear me, Guardian of the sacred Tree,
And stick a Leaf or two about my wig.”

At the same time, he was by no means inclined to hide his light under a bushel, and his verses contain many deliberately humorous references to his talents. “Had I not stepped forward as the Champion of my own Merit (which is deemed so necessary now-a-days for the obtention of public notice, not only by Authors, but by tête-makers, perfumers, elastic truss and Parliament-speech makers, &c., who, in the daily newspapers, are the heralds of _their own_ splendid abilities),” he wrote in “Subjects for Painters,” “I might possibly be passed by without observation; and thus a great part of a poetical Immortality be sacrificed to a pitiful _mauvaise honte_.”

Of course he made many enemies, as every satirist must, but he bore attacks unflinchingly, as, indeed, every satirist should.

“Great are my Enemies in Trade, God knows:
There’s not a Poet but would stop my note;
With such a world of Spite their venom flows,
With such _good-will_ the knaves would cut my throat.”

As a rule he treated his revilers with good-humoured banter, but once a critic raised his ire by an unmerciful attack on his “Nil Admirari, or, A Smile at a Bishop,” in _The Anti-Jacobin_, in which he was styled, “this disgraceful subject, the profligate reviler of his sovereign and impudent blasphemer of his God.” Gifford at once issued as a counterblast, “An Epistle to Peter Pindar,” the savagery of which made the subject so sore that he endeavoured to thrash the author, who, however, had the best of the struggle.

“False fugitive! back to thy vomit flee--
Troll the lascivious song, the fulsome glee;
Truck praise for lust, hunt infant genius down,
Strip modest merit of its last half-crown;
Blow from thy mildew’d lips, on virtue blow,
And blight the goodness thou canst never know.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
But what is he that with a Mohawk’s air,
Cries havock, and lets slip the dogs of war?
A blotted mass, a gross unkneaded clod,
A foe to man, a renegade from God,
From noxious childhood to pernicious age,
Separate to infamy, through every stage.”

Yet the man of whom these words were spoken was described by his friends as of “a kind and hearty disposition,” with little or no malice in his composition, a lover of flowers, music and art. Not even his blindness or the infirmities of age soured his temper, and in his last years he said to Cyrus Redding, “You have seen something of life in your time. See and learn all you can more. You will fall back upon it when you grow old--an old fool is an inexcusable fool to himself and others--store up all; our acquirements are most useful when we become old.” Yet he did not suffer age gladly, and when on his death-bed John Taylor asked, “Is there anything I can do for you?” the reply--Wolcot’s last words on earth--came. “Bring me back my youth.”

“The historian of _Sir Joseph Banks_ and _The Emperor of Morocco_, of the _Pilgrims and the Peas_, of the _Royal Academy_, and of _Mr Whitebread’s Brewing-Vat_, the bard in whom the nation and the King delighted,” Hazlitt wrote the year before the satirist died, “is old and blind, but still merry and wise; remembering how he has made the world laugh in his time, and not repenting of the mirth he has given; with an involuntary smile lighted up at the mad pranks of his Muse, and the lucky hits of his pen-- ‘faint pictures of those flashes of his spirit, that were wont to set the table in a roar’; like his own expiring taper, bright and fitful to the last; tagging a rhyme or conning his own epitaph; and waiting for the last summons, grateful and contented.” Indeed, while the coarseness and offensiveness of many of Wolcot’s works must be admitted and deplored, it is impossible not to like the man, for he was such a jovial wight, so well able to appreciate a joke against himself and ready to join in the laugh, a very prince of good fellows in an age of less severe restrictions in taste and morality.

Sterne’s Eliza

Not Swift so loved his Stella, Scarron his Maintenon, or Waller his Sacharissa, as I will love, and sing thee, my bride elect! All these names, eminent as they were, shall give place to thine, Eliza.” Thus Sterne in a letter to Mrs Elizabeth Draper, written in the early part of the year 1767; and though, in spite of this fervent protestation, not Stella, nor Maintenon, nor Sacharissa has paled before Eliza, yet most assuredly Eliza has come to be ranked with them among the heroines of romance.

Of the antecedents of Mrs Draper nothing apparently was generally known to writers on the subject until 1897, when Mr Thomas Seccombe, in the article in the _Dictionary of National Biography_ on William Sclater, Rector of Pitminster, showed that her descent could be traced from William’s father, Anthony. Anthony Sclater, born in 1520, was appointed in 1570 Rector of Leighton Buzzard, which benefice he held until his death in 1620, when he was succeeded in this clerical office by a younger son, Christopher. Christopher’s son William served in the Civil Wars as a Cornet of Horse, and subsequently entered the Church. He was presented in 1666 to the living of St James’s, Clerkenwell, and later became Rector of Hadley. He died in 1690, having outlived by five years his son Francis. Francis had a son Christopher, born in 1679, who held the livings of Loughton and Chingford, in Essex, married in 1707 Elizabeth, daughter of John May, of Working, Hants, and by her had thirteen children. The tenth son, May, born on 29th October 1719, went out to India, probably as a cadet in the service of the East India Company, and there married a Miss Whitehall, who bore him three daughters, Elizabeth (Sterne’s Eliza), born on 5th April 1744, Mary, and Louisa. The only other children of Christopher with which this narrative is concerned are Elizabeth, who married Dr Thomas Pickering, Vicar of St Sepulchre’s, and Richard, the fourth son, born in 1712, who became an alderman of the City of London.[16]

[16] From Alderman Richard Sclater is descended the present Lord Basing, by whose generous courtesy the present writer has had access to the unpublished letters, preserved at Hoddington House, written from India by Elizabeth Sclater, afterwards Mrs Draper, to members of her family in England. Passages from these letters are printed in this article.

When his daughters were born, May Sclater was factor of Anjengo, on the Malabar coast, and it was long assumed that his girls were brought up there. Even so late as 1893, Mr James Douglas, the author of “Bombay and Western India,” gave credence to the legend, and after stating that there were very few Europeans at Anjengo, “it seems a marvel,” he added, “how, never having been in Europe, Eliza should yet have been able to carry herself and attract so much attention there from men who, whatever were their morals, claimed a first position in society and letters.” However, as a matter of fact, like most children born in India of English parents, Eliza and her sisters were at an early age sent home for the sake of their health.

In England Eliza stayed alternately with her aunt, Mrs Pickering, and with her uncle, Richard, for whose eldest children, Thomas Mathew and Elizabeth, she conceived an enduring affection. Not until she was in her fourteenth year did she return to her father, now a widower, and she arrived two days after Christmas, 1757, at Bombay, where he then resided.

“I was never half so much rejoiced at going to any ball in my life as when we first saw the land,” (she wrote to her cousin in England, Elizabeth Sclater, 13th March 1758). “The Dutch people are white, but their servants are all black, they wear nothing at all about them but a little piece of rag about their waist which to us at first appeared very shocking.”

“My Papa’s house is the best in Bombay, and where a great deal of company comes every day after dinner.”

Among the company that came to May Sclater’s house was Daniel Draper, who, entering the East India Company’s service in or about 1749, had in the intervening nine years risen to a fairly good position. In those days lads went out to India at an early age, and Draper, in 1757, may well have been no more than thirty, though Dr Sidney Lee has suggested that he was at least four years older. Draper fell in love with Eliza, and married her on 28th July 1758, she being then but fourteen. Such marriages, however, were not then uncommon in India. Two children were born of this union, a boy in 1759, and a girl in October 1761.

Mrs Draper suffered from ill-health, and in 1765, with her husband and children, she came to England. The children were taken to an establishment at Enfield, where Anglo-Indian children were cared for during the absence of their parents in the tropical zone, and presently Draper had to return to his post in Bombay. Mrs Draper, however, remained in England to recover her strength. She stayed with relatives of her mother and father, but with her movements we are not here concerned until she was temporarily domiciled in London during the winter of 1766. It was not until December of that year that she met Sterne, probably at the town house in Gerrard Street, Soho, of William James and his wife--the “Mr and Mrs J.” of Sterne’s published correspondence.

William James, Commodore of the Bombay Marine, having amassed a fortune by prize-money and mercantile enterprises, retired from the service at the age of eight and thirty, and came to England in 1759, when he purchased an estate at Eltham, near Blackheath, and married Anne, daughter of Edmund Goddard, of Hartham, in Wiltshire. Presently he became chairman of the East India Company, and in 1778, five years before his death, he was made a baronet. When Sterne first became acquainted with the Jameses cannot now be determined, but probably it was not earlier than after his return from the second visit to the Continent. It is evident, however, that he was on very intimate terms with them at the end of 1766, as his references to them in his letters to Mrs Draper show, though they are mentioned for the first time to his daughter, then with her mother at Marseilles, in a letter dated 23rd February 1767. In this letter we learn that the gossips were already busy coupling Sterne’s name with Mrs Draper’s.

“I do not wish to know who was the busy fool, who made your mother uneasy about Mrs Draper. ’Tis true I have a friendship for her, but not to infatuation--I believe I have judgment enough to discern hers, and every woman’s faults. I honour thy mother for her answer--‘that she wished not to be informed, and begged him to drop the subject.’”

Nor was Mrs Sterne’s informant the only person who disapproved of the relations of Sterne and Mrs Draper.

“The ----’s, by heavens, are worthless! I have heard enough to tremble at the articulation of the name.--How could you, Eliza, leave them (or suffer them to leave you, rather), with impressions the least favourable? I have told thee enough to plant disgust against their treachery to thee, to the last hour of thy life! Yet still, thou toldest Mrs James at last, that thou believest they affectionately love thee.--Her delicacy to my Eliza, and true regard to her ease of mind, have saved thee from hearing more glaring proofs of their baseness.--For God’s sake write not to them; nor foul thy fair character with such polluted hearts. _They_ love thee! What proof? Is it their actions that say so? or their zeal for those attachments, which do thee honour, and make thee happy? or their tenderness for thy fame? No.--But they _weep_, and say _tender things_.--Adieu to such for ever. Mrs James’s honest heart revolts against the idea of ever returning them one visit. I honour her, and I honour thee, for almost every act of thy life, but this blind partiality for an unworthy being.”

The remonstrances of these friends of Eliza were not so outrageous as Sterne deemed them. There was, indeed, some ground for gossip, though perhaps not for scandal--enough, certainly, to alarm people interested in the lady: Sterne’s visits to Mrs Draper were too frequent, and Mrs Draper was so indiscreet as to visit Sterne at his lodgings in Old Bond Street and dine there with him _tête-à-tête_. There has been much discussion as to whether the relations of the Brahmin and the Brahmine, as they loved to call each other, were innocent or guilty; but there can be no doubt that the intimacy was not carried to the last extreme. “I have had no commerce whatever with the sex--not even with my wife--these fifteen years,” Sterne told his physicians shortly after Eliza had returned to India. This in itself would not be conclusive evidence, though there could have been no reason for him to lie to these people; but the fact that he wrote down this conversation in a Journal intended exclusively for the eye of Mrs Draper makes it certain that his assertion was accurate--at least, so far as he and she were concerned. A man would scarcely trouble falsely to tell his mistress in confidence that he had had no intimacy with her. The Jameses most certainly believed in the innocence of the friendship, else they could scarcely have countenanced it; and not even Thackeray, who shares with John Croft the distinction of being Sterne’s most envenomed critic, could have believed that the following letter (whether ultimately despatched or not) could have been written by a guilty man.

LAURENCE STERNE TO DANIEL DRAPER

“Sir, I own it, Sir, that the writing a Letter to a gentleman I have not the honour to be known to, and a Letter likewise upon no kind of business (in the Ideas of the World) is a little out of the common course of Things--but I’m so myself--and the Impulse which makes me take up my pen is out of the Common way too--for it arises from the honest pain I should feel in avowing in so great esteem and friendship as I bear Mrs Draper--If I did not wish and hope to extend it to Mr Draper also. I fell in Love with your Wife--but ’tis a Love you would honour me for--for ’tis so like that I bear my own daughter who is a good creature, that I scarce distinguish a difference betwixt it--the moment I had--that Moment would have been the last. I wish it had been in my power to have been of true use to Mrs Draper at this Distance from her best Protector--I have bestowed a great deal of pains (or rather I should say pleasure) upon her head--her heart needs none--and her head as little as any Daughter of Eve’s--and indeed less than any it has been my fate to converse with for some years.--I wish I could make myself of any Service to Mrs Draper whilst she is in India--and I in the world--for worldly affairs I could be of none.--I wish you, dear Sir, many years’ happiness. ’Tis a part of my Litany to pray for her health and Life--She is too good to be lost--and I would out of pure zeal take a pilgrimage to Mecca to seek a Medicine.”[17]

[17] British Museum, Add. MSS. 34527.

If the intimacy was, as is here contended, not carried to the last extreme, there is no doubt of the vigour with which Sterne and his Brahmine flirted, and therefore Sterne cannot be acquitted of insincerity when he wrote to Daniel Draper that he looked upon Eliza as a daughter. But if there is little that is paternal in the few letters of his to Mrs Draper that have been preserved, on the other hand there is nothing from which the conclusion of undue intimacy can be built up.

It may be taken for granted that Mrs Draper’s feelings were not very deeply engaged by Sterne. A woman of three and twenty does not often find such enduring attraction in a man of four and fifty as a man of that age does in a woman more than thirty years his junior. But Sterne had fame and undoubted powers of fascination, and Mrs Draper had in her composition an innocent vanity that induced her to encourage him. The homage of one of the most famous men in England was a compliment not lightly to be ignored; and, being flattered, Eliza, unhappy at home, was far from unwilling to enjoy herself abroad. She was clever and bright--perhaps a little bitter, too, remembering that she had been married before she was old enough to know what marriage meant, to a man with uncongenial tastes, dour, and bad-tempered. It is to her credit that she never told Sterne of her marital infelicity, though candid friends left him in no doubt as to her relations with her husband. “Mrs James sunk my heart with an infamous account of Draper and his detested character,” Sterne wrote in the “Journal to Eliza” on 17th April 1767, a few weeks after the lady to whom it was addressed had sailed for India.

Eliza is a figure so fascinating to the world interested in the personal side of literary history that a few pages may perhaps be devoted to tracing her life after her acquaintance with Sterne. She was undoubtedly an attractive woman, and made conquest of others than the author of “Tristram Shandy” during this visit to England. The Abbé Raynal, a man about the same age as Sterne, fell a victim to her charms, and expressed his passion in a strange and wild piece of bombast, which he inserted in the second edition of his “History of the Indies.”

It was not only to men of middle age that Mrs Draper appealed, for her cousin and playmate of her youth, Thomas Mathew Sclater, was one of her most devoted admirers. That she was fascinating may be taken for granted, but wherein lay her attractiveness is not so clear. Raynal laid more stress on the qualities of her mind than on her appearance. Sterne, too, by his own not too artless confession, was in the first instance drawn to her by something other than her good looks.