Curiosities of Impecuniosity Part 3

The literary, musical, and dramatic professions are the most prolific in furnishing curious cases of impecuniosity; and separate chapters will be devoted to those three branches of art, but there are a few instances more directly of the nature of "shifts" which I have included in the present portion of the subject; amongst others being the incident of Dr. Johnson dining with his publisher, and being so shabby that, as there was a third person present, he hid behind a screen. This happened soon after the publication of the lexicographer's 'Life of Savage,' which was written anonymously, and though the circ.u.mstance of the hiding must have been rather humiliating to the mighty Samuel, yet the attendant consequences were pleasant. The visitor who was dining with Harte, the publisher, was Cave, who, in course of conversation, referred to 'Savage's Life,' and spoke of the work in the most flattering terms. The next day, when they met again, Harte said, "You made a man very happy yesterday by your encomiums on a certain book." "I did?" replied Cave. "Why, how could that be; there was no one present but you and I?" "You might have observed,"

explained Harte, "that I sent a plate of meat behind a screen. There skulked the biographer, one Johnson, whose dress was so shabby that he durst not make his appearance. He overheard our conversation, and your applause of his performance delighted him exceedingly." It is also recorded that so indigent was the doctor on another occasion that he had not money sufficient for a bed, and had to make shift by walking round and round St. James' Square with Savage; when, according to Boswell, they were not at all depressed by their situation, but in high spirits, and brimful of patriotism; inveighing against the ministry, and resolving that they would _stand_ by their country.

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

The able author of 'The Road to Ruin' was likewise one who had travelled some distance on that th.o.r.n.y path, for at one time he found himself in the streets of London without money, without a home, or a friend to whom his shame or pride would permit his making known his necessity. Wandering along he knew not whither, plunged in the deepest despondency, his eye caught sight of a printed placard, "To Young Men," inviting all spirited young fellows to make their fortunes as common soldiers in the East India Company's Service. After reading it over a second time he determined without hesitation to hasten off and enroll himself in that honourable corps, when he met with a person he had known at a sporting club he had been in the habit of frequenting. His companion seeing his bundle and rueful face, asked him where he was going, to which Holcroft replied that had he enquired five minutes before he could not have told him, but that now he was "for the wars." At this his friend appeared greatly surprised, and told him he thought he could put him up to something better than that.

Macklin, the famous London actor, was going over to play in Dublin, and had asked him if he happened to be acquainted with a young fellow who had a turn for the stage, and, said his friend, "I should be happy to introduce you." The offer was gladly accepted, and when the introduction had been managed Holcroft was asked by Macklin "what had put it into his head to turn actor?" to which he replied, "He had taken it into his head to suppose it was genius, but that it was very possible he might be mistaken."

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

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

"A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear, A stifled, drowsy, unimpa.s.sioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet, no relief, In word, or sigh, or tear."

In this state of mind he came to London, strolled about the streets till night, and then rested on the steps of a house in Chancery Lane. Beggars importuned him for alms and to them he gave the little money he had left.

Next morning he noticed a bill to the effect that a few smart lads were wanted for the 15th Elliot's Light Dragoons. Thinking to himself "I have all my life had a violent antipathy to soldiers and horses, and the sooner I can cure myself of such absurd prejudices the better," he went to the enlisting-station, where the sergeant finding that Coleridge had not been in bed all night, made him have some breakfast and rest himself.

Afterwards, he told him to cheer up, to well consider the step he was about to take, and suggested that he had better have half-a-guinea, go to the play, shake off his melancholy and not return. Coleridge went to the theatre, but afterwards resought the sergeant, who was extremely sorry to see him, and saying with evident emotion, "Then it must be so," enrolled him. In the morning he was marched to Reading with his new comrades, and there inspected by the general of the district. Looking at Coleridge, that officer said,--

"What's your name?"

"Comberback!"

"What do you come here for, sir?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In connection with music the name of Loder, the clever composer (author of the 'Night Dancers' and other charming musical compositions), recalls an interesting episode in his life revealing a remarkable shift to which he was put. One evening when leaving his lodgings with a friend named Jay for the purpose of enjoying a quiet little dinner at Simpson's, he received an ominous tap on the shoulder from one of those individuals whose attentions are not appetising, since without you can settle the little amount, they require your immediate company. Loder was by no means able to satisfy the law's demands, and the sheriff's officer refused to lose sight of his man, even though "he had a most particular appointment;" so the only thing to be done was to invite the bailiff to join them at dinner. After the repast was concluded the party repaired to Sloman's, a notorious spunging-house in Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane, when just as Jay was taking leave of Loder the latter remembered having something in his pocket which might be turned to account. It was a song by Samuel Lover. "Goodbye, old fellow,"

said Loder. "Come to-morrow morning, and see what I shall have ready." As soon as his friend had gone he set to work and set Lover's words of 'The Three Stages of Love' to music, which was a most successful and satisfactory way of composing himself to sleep, for when Jay called in the morning he received a ma.n.u.script which, when taken to Chappell's, realised 30. The proceeds enabled Loder to pay the debt, and dine with his friend at Simpson's in the afternoon, without the unwelcome guest of the preceding day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"MY DEAR GEORGE,

"'Tis very unfortunate, but all _my_ money is in the Three per Cents.

"Yours, "S. DAVIES."

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

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

"Well I think I shall dine there too," said Brummell.

"But you haven't an invitation, have you?"

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

As soon as the caller left, Brummell sent a _pate de foie gras_, which he had received from Paris, with a grand message to Jones. The courtesy seemed so disinterested, that the Radical sent a pressing invitation by return; and when Brummell's visitor of the morning joined the party, he saw the beau installed in the seat of honour at the hostess's right.

Brummell told his friend next day how he had managed. The gentleman said, "But I did not see the pie on the table."

"True," explained Brummell; "I know it never made its appearance. It was a splendid pie--a _chef-d'oeuvre_, and I felt deeply interested in its fate.

When going away I inquired what had been done with the pie. The cook said, 'Master had kept it for Master Harry's birthday.' To be the 'cut and come again' of a nursery dinner. To be the prey of the little Joneses and their nurses was atrocious. It was an insult to me and my pie! 'Go,' I said, 'to your kitchen; I particularly want to see the _pate de foie gras_.' Feeling that it would have been a sin to leave it with such people, I took it away. It was not honest, but as I cut into it this morning I almost felt justified, for I never inserted a knife into such another."

It certainly was anything but honest, and it would have been well had Brummell remembered the childish saying about "give a thing and take a thing," but where a person's _amour-propre_ is touched on such an important matter as a game pie it would not be right of course to judge the action by the ordinary standard. The idea of taking the pie back for the reasons alleged was really funny, though the fact of the beau being extremely "hard up" very possibly had a good deal to do with his conduct.

_Apropos_ of this condition it may be news to some to know that there once existed an inst.i.tution called the "Hard Up Club" the formation of which is alluded to by "Baron" Nicholson in his autobiography. He says "just before I left the Queen's Bench I had a visit from Pellatt (a well-known man about town in that day, who had formerly been clerk and solicitor to the Ironmongers' Company), with the news that he and another jolly old friend of mine had made a discovery of a place of rest suitable to our condition in life, which I must say was seedy in every respect. Pellatt had been in the habit of coming over to the Bench almost daily to dine with me and others, who were delighted with his amusing qualities. He gave excellent imitations of the past and present London actors, and his genius for entertaining was brought into active operation in our prison circle. The history of the discovery of 'The Nest,' or tranquil house of entertainment, was this: Pellatt and a friend of his, 'Old Beans' (whose right name was Bennett, yclept 'Old Beans' for shortness), were strolling about the Strand one foggy November night, their habiliments were uncomfortably ventilated, their crab-sh.e.l.ls of the order hydraulic; snow was on the ground, and their castors 'shocking bad hats.' Not liking to enter any very public places they strayed round the back streets on the river side of the Strand, and turning from Norfolk Street into Howard Street, _vis-a-vis_ they perceived a tavern, a dull, unlighted (save by a dim lamp), small, old-fashioned public-house in Arundel Street, with the sign of 'The Swan.' '"The Swan,"' said Pellatt, as he read the sign, 'will never sink! Beans, old fellow, we'll go into the 'Never Sink!'

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

"'Any hot joint?' said the traveller.

"'No, sir; no hot joint, sir.'

"'Any cold one?'

"'Cold one, sir? No, sir; no cold one, sir.'

"'Can you broil me a fowl?'

"'Fowl, sir? No, sir; no fowl, sir.'

"'No fowl, and in a country inn!' exclaimed Mathews. 'Let me have some eggs and bacon then.'

"'Eggs and bacon, sir?' said the waiter. 'No eggs and bacon, sir.'