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THE SHIFTS OF IMPECUNIOSITY.

In 1748 there resided in the wilds of Connaught a lady named Gunning, of whom little is known but that before her marriage she was the Hon. Bridget Bourke, and that after it she became the mother of two exquisitely beautiful daughters, destined to make such a stir in Society, as was unknown before, and has been unequalled since. Before they left Dublin they were invited to some brilliant festivities at the Castle, which were on a scale of magnificence unequalled, it is said, in the memory of the oldest courtier. To such an entertainment Mrs. Gunning was anxious to introduce her daughters, for their faces were literally their fortunes; but the overwhelming difficulty of dress presented itself. They had nothing that by any amount of manipulation could be transformed into Court costumes, so in her difficulty Mrs. Gunning obtained an introduction to Tom Sheridan, who was then managing the Dublin Theatre. He was struck by the beauty and grace of the girls, placed the wardrobe of the theatre at their disposal; and by lending them the dresses of Lady Macbeth and Juliet, in which they appeared most lovely, enabled them to obtain the entrée to that aristocratic circle in which they afterwards shone so brilliantly. In addition to providing the necessary garments for the great event Tom Sheridan is credited with superintending the finishing touches of their toilets, for which it is said he claimed a kiss from each as his reward. These beautiful creatures were at one time in even greater straits for funds.

Miss Bellamy, the actress, asserts that she once found Mrs. Gunning and her children in the greatest distress, with bailiffs in the house and the family threatened with immediate eviction. With the assistance of her man-servant, who stood under the windows of the house at night, after the bailiffs were admitted, everything that could be carried away, was removed. But for this and other help the Gunnings were not grateful. Indeed, in the case of the Countess of Coventry who had borrowed money from Miss Bellamy, presumably for her wedding trousseau, the monetary obligation was repaid by unpardonable insult. One night when this actress was playing Juliet, and had just arrived at the most impressive part of the tragedy, the countess, who occupied the stage-box, uttered a loud laugh. Miss Bellamy was so overcome by the interruption that she was obliged to leave the stage, and when Lady Coventry was remonstrated with, she replied that “since she had seen Mrs. Cibber act Juliet she could not endure Miss Bellamy.” When they came to London in the autumn of 1751 the fashionable world went mad after “the beautiful Miss Gunnings,” who were positively mobbed in the Park and elsewhere, and were compelled on one occasion to obtain the protection of a file of the Guards. When they travelled in the country the roads were lined with people anxious to catch a glimpse of their lovely faces; and hundreds of people were known to remain all night outside an inn at which they were staying, in order to behold them in the morning.

Not many months after their début in London, the Duke of Hamilton, owner of three dukedoms in Scotland, England, and France, and regarded as the haughtiest man in the kingdom, became deeply enamoured of the younger sister, and was married to her at Mayfair Chapel one night at half-past twelve o’clock, the suddenness of the ceremony compelling the divine who performed the service to make use of a ring from a bed-curtain.

The elder sister, became Countess of Coventry in the following March, and was then acknowledged as leader of fashion in the metropolis, although from the seclusion in which the early part of her life had been spent in Ireland, she was little fitted, so far as accomplishments were concerned, to hold that post. Her reign was brief as it was brilliant. In 1759 her health completely broke down, and she died in October 1760, of consumption, the result of artificial aids to beauty, which in her case were utterly unnecessary.

Curran, the advocate and wit, experienced vicissitudes almost as startling. He was born at Newmarket, County Cork, in 1750, and describes himself as “a little ragged apprentice to every kind of idleness and mischief, all day studying whatever was eccentric in those older, and half the night practising it for the amusement of those who were younger than myself. One morning I was playing at marbles in the village ball alley, with a light heart and a lighter pocket. The gibe, and the jest, and the plunder, went gaily round. Those who won laughed, and those who lost cheated, when suddenly there appeared amongst us a stranger of a very venerable and cheerful aspect. His intrusion was not the least restraint upon our merry little assemblage; he was a benevolent creature, and the days of infancy (after all, the happiest we shall ever see) perhaps rose upon his memory. God bless him! I see his fine form, at the distance of half a century, just as he stood before me in the little ball alley in the days of my childhood. His name was Boyse; he was the rector of Newmarket. To me he took a particular fancy.... Some sweetmeats easily bribed me home with him. I learned from poor Boyse my alphabet, and my grammar, and the rudiments of the classics: he taught me all he could, and then he sent me to the school at Middleton—in short, he made a man of me. I recollect it was about five-and-thirty years afterwards when I had risen to some eminence at the bar, and when I had a seat in Parliament, and a good house in Ely Place, on my return one day from Court, I found an old gentleman seated alone in the drawing-room, his feet familiarly placed on each side of the Italian marble chimney-piece, and his whole air bespeaking the consciousness of one quite at home. He turned round—it was my friend of the ball alley. I rushed instinctively into his arms. I could not help bursting into tears. Words cannot describe the scene that followed. ‘You are right, sir—you are right; the chimney-piece is yours, the pictures are yours, the house is yours; you gave me all I have—my friend—my father!’”[2]

After leaving school at Middleton, Curran passed to Trinity College, Dublin, which he entered as a sizar when nineteen years of age. He does not appear to have distinguished himself at the University, from whence he proceeded to London, and contrived, quodcunque modo, to enter his name on the books of the Middle Temple. At that time, he says, he read “ten hours every day; seven at law, and three at history and the general principles of politics, and that I may have time enough”—it is believed he wrote for the magazines, etc., as a means of support—“I rise at half-past four. I have contrived a machine after the manner of an hour-glass, which wakens me regularly at that hour. Exactly over my head I have suspended two vessels of tin, one above the other. When I go to bed, which is always at ten, I pour a bottle of water into the upper vessel, in the bottom of which is a hole of such a size as to let the water pass through so as to make the inferior reservoir overflow in six hours and a half;” so that if he wished to remain in bed after daylight, he could only do so by consenting to a cold shower-bath.

He was called to the bar in 1775, and for some time had a tremendously uphill fight, wearing, according to his own account, his teeth to the stumps at the Cork Sessions without any adequate recompense. He then removed to Dublin, and for a time fared no better. “I then lived” said he, “upon Hog Hill: my wife and children were the chief furniture of my apartments, and as to my rent it stood pretty much the same chance of liquidation with the National Debt. Mrs. Curran, however, was a barrister’s lady, and what she wanted in wealth she was determined should be supplied by dignity. The landlady, on the other hand, had no idea of any gradation except that of pounds, shillings, and pence. I walked out one morning to avoid the perpetual altercations on the subject, in no very enviable mood. I fell into the gloom, to which from my infancy I had been occasionally subject. I had a family for whom I had no dinner, and a landlady for whom I had no rent. I had gone abroad in despondence, I returned home almost in desperation. When I opened the door of my study, where Lavater alone could have found a library, the first object which presented itself was an immense folio of a brief, twenty gold guineas wrapped up beside it, and the name of Old Bob Lyons marked upon the back of it. I paid my landlady, bought a good dinner, gave Bob Lyons a share of it, and that dinner was the date of my prosperity.” From this time he rapidly rose to the top of his profession, and his services were eagerly sought for. Wonderfully eloquent, with a highly imaginative and powerfully poetic mind, his sway was something marvellous, for, added to these gifts, his wit and power of mimicry were unapproachable.

In the case of Valentine Jamerai Duval, who ultimately became Professor of Antiquities and Ancient and Modern Geography in the Academy of Luneville, youthful hardships occasioned extraordinary expedients. The son of labouring people, at the age of fourteen he was ignorant of the alphabet. His occupation was that of turkey-keeper, but after an attack of small-pox, which nearly killed him, he wandered through certain parts of Champagne, then in a condition of famine, in search of employment. When he reached the Duchy of Lorraine, he obtained a situation as shepherd, and became acquainted with the hermit, Brother Palimon, whom he helped in his rural labours. In return for these services the hermit gave him instruction, and subsequently he lived as a labourer with the four hermits of St. Anne, studying arithmetic and geography in his leisure moments. His one object then was to obtain books, impossible without money, which, situated as he was, seemed equally unattainable. Finding out, however, that a furrier at Luneville purchased skins, he set snares for wild animals, and by this means realised enough money to procure the books he coveted.

But beyond the self-denial of Curran with his primitive invention for early rising, and the contrivance of Duval for obtaining the needful, is the interesting career of Bernard Palissy, the Potter, who, in addition to his fame as an artist in pottery, was celebrated as a glass painter, naturalist, philosopher, and for his devotion to the Protestant cause in the sixteenth century. Born in 1510, at Chapelle Biron, a poor hamlet near the small town of Perigord, he was brought up as a worker in painted glass, in pursuit of which occupation he travelled considerably, devoting all the spare time of his wanderings to the study of natural history, in which he delighted. Though an ardent student of nature, he yet found opportunity to make himself acquainted with the teaching of Paracelsus, of the alchemists and of the reformers of the Church. He did not settle down till nearly thirty years of age, when he established himself at Saintes as a painter on glass, and surveyor, and then turned his attention to the making of pottery and the production of white enamel, which latter was useless excepting as a covering for ornamental pottery, and at this time Palissy was not sufficiently skilled to make a rough pipkin. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that his wife took exception to the money expended in the purchase of drugs, the buying of pots, and the building of a furnace, as the loss of time told heavily on his limited resources; and it would be perfectly truthful to say that the first things Bernard Palissy produced in the way of pottery were family jars. Mrs. Palissy was undoubtedly very wroth at his going on in this way, more especially because, as is so frequently the case, his family increased as his income decreased, and she succeeded at last in stopping his experiments for a time. He then obtained an appointment as Surveyor to the Government, in which profession he was remarkably proficient, but before very long the old craving for experimenting returned with redoubled vigour, and he again set to work in search of white enamel. The expense incurred was so great that his wife and children became ragged and hungry: nothing daunted, he broke up twelve new earthen pots, hired a glass furnace, and for months continued watching, burning, and baking. At last his eager eyes were gladdened by the sight of a piece of white enamel amidst the bakings. Urged on by this, he felt he must have another furnace; he succeeded in obtaining the bricks on credit, became his own bricklayer’s boy and mason, and built the structure himself. On one occasion he spent six days and nights watching his baking clay, sleeping only a few minutes at a time near his fire, but disappointment was all the result. The vessels were spoilt. In desperation he borrowed more money for his experiments, which was consumed in like manner, until at last he was without fuel for the furnace. Insensible to everything but the project on which he was bent, he tore up the palings from the garden, and when these were exhausted he broke up the chairs and tables. His wife and children rushed about frantic, thinking that he had lost his senses, and well they might when they saw the demolition of the furniture followed by the tearing up of the floor. Success ultimately crowned his praiseworthy perseverance, but not until he had devoted sixteen years of unremunerated labour, enduring unexampled fatigue and discouragements. When at length he succeeded in obtaining a pure white enamel he was enabled to produce works in which natural objects were represented with remarkable skill, his fame spread rapidly, his sculptures in clay and his enamelled pottery being at once accepted as works of art of the highest order. His career, however, was destined to be remarkable at every stage, for no sooner had he acquired renown and riches than he was subjected to religious persecution, which would have ended in death had it not been for the Duke de Montmorency, one of his patrons, who succeeded in rescuing him from prison. When established in Paris, assisted by his sons, he continued to produce most remarkable specimens of ornamental pottery, and in addition to his artistic labours instituted a series of conferences which were attended by the most distinguished doctors and scientific savants, where he set forth his views on fountains, stones, metals, etc., desirous of knowing whether the great philosophers of antiquity interpreted nature as he did. Although in the ordinary sense an unlettered man, his theories were never once controverted, and for ten years his lectures were delivered before the most enlightened of that age, but his teaching once more arousing the animosity of his religious opponents, he was thrown into the Bastille, where he died after being incarcerated for two years.

After such a “shift” as having to tear up the floor of a dwelling, most other instances might be expected to appear more or less tame; but the experiences of William Thom, the Inverary poet, are scarcely inferior in intensity. This untutored, but extremely sweet songster, whose first poem, ‘Blind Boys’ Pranks,’ appeared in the Edinburgh Herald, was a hand-loom weaver, who was deprived of his occupation by the failure of certain American firms, and compelled to tramp the country as a pedlar. Before resorting to that line of life, and when in the receipt of the sum of five shillings weekly, he relates how on a memorable spring morning, he anxiously awaited the arrival of this small amount: and though the clock had struck eleven, the windows of the room were still curtained, in order that the four sleeping children, who were bound to be hungry when awake, might be deluded into believing that it was still night, for the only food in their parents’ possession was one handful of meal saved from the previous day. The mother with the tenderest anxiety sat by the babes’ bedside lulling them off to sleep as soon as they exhibited the least sign of wakefulness, and speaking to her husband in whispers as to the cooking of the little meal remaining, for the youngest child could no longer be kept asleep, and by its whimpering woke the others. Face after face sprang up, each little one exclaiming, “Oh, mither, mither, give me a piece;” and says the poor fellow, “The word sorrow was too weak to apply to the feelings of myself and wife during the remainder of that long and dreary forenoon.” When compelled to leave the humble dwelling which, poverty-stricken though it was, had all the endearing influences of home, he made up a pack consisting of second-hand books and some trifling articles of merchandise, and sadly started with wife and bairns through mountain paths and rugged roads, often sleeping at night in barns and outhouses. The precarious nature of a pedlar’s life must have been terribly trying to one so sensitive, especially when, as in his case, it ended in his having to have recourse to the profession of musical beggar. Before entering Methven he sold a book to a stone-breaker on the road, the proceeds of which (fivepence halfpenny) was all the money he possessed. The purchaser when making the bargain had noticed Thom’s flute which he carried with him, and had offered such a good price for the instrument that the poet had been much tempted to part with it, though it had been his solace and companion on many and many an occasion. Thinking that possibly it might be the means of his earning a few pence, he resisted the temptation to part with it, and soon after took up his post outside a genteel-looking house, and played ‘The Flowers of the Forest’ with such exquisite expression that window after window was raised, and in ten minutes after he found himself possessed of three and ninepence, which sum was increased to five shillings before he reached his lodging.

It would hardly be possible to conceive anything more truly touching than the shift of William Thom, when he practised the pardonable deception upon his hungry children of turning day into night, though for downright deprivation the experience of John Ledyard, the traveller, may be said to excel it. This celebrated discoverer, who came into Europe from the United States in 1776, when making a tour of the world with Captain Cook, as corporal of a troop of Marines, arrived in England in 1780. He then formed the design of penetrating from the North West to the East Coast of America, for which purpose Sir Joseph Banks furnished him with some money. He bought sea stores with the intention of sailing to Nootka Sound, but altered his mind, and determined to travel overland to Kamschkatka, from whence the passage is short to the opposite shore of the American continent. Towards the close of the year 1786, he started with ten guineas in his pocket, went to and from Stockholm, because the Gulf of Bothnia was frozen; proceeding north he walked to the Arctic Circle, passed round the head of the Gulf of Bothnia, and descended on its east side to St. Petersburg, where he arrived in March 1787, without shoes or stockings. He proceeded to the house of the Portuguese Ambassador, who gave him a good dinner, and obtained for him twenty guineas on a bill drawn in the name of Sir Joseph Banks, with which sum he proceeded to Yakutz, accompanying a convoy of provisions, and there met Captain Cook. He says in his Journal, “I have known both hunger and nakedness to the utmost extremity of human endurance. I have known what it is to have food given me as charity to a madman, and I have at times been obliged to shelter myself under the miseries of that character to avoid a heavier calamity. My distresses have been greater than I have ever owned, or will own to any man. Such evils are terrible to bear, but they never yet had power to turn me from my purpose.”

To have to submit to be thought a lunatic to escape starvation must certainly have been rather trying, though from the fact of part of the journey being performed without shoes or stockings it would certainly look as if John Ledyard were anything but particular; and it is well for us that he and other glorious pioneers were not, otherwise we should not be living in such an age of marvellous enlightenment as is our present privilege. Round the world in eighty days, facilitated by Cook’s tourist coupons would hardly have been practicable, had not men like Ledyard been martyrs in the cause of exploration.

Apropos of travelling in days gone by, an incident in the life of the Rev. Henry Tevuge presents a somewhat strange shift; at any rate, strange for a clergyman. This eccentric clerical was Rector of Alcester in 1670, and afterwards Incumbent of Spernall, which he appears to have left in 1675, for on May 20th in that year he writes, “This day I began my voyage from my house at Spernall, in the county of Warwick, with small accoutrements, saving what I carried under me in an old sack. My steed like that of Hudibras, for mettle, courage, and colour (though not of the same bigness), and for flesh, one of Pharaoh’s lean mares ready to seize (for hunger) on those that went before her, had she not been short-winged, or rather leaden-heeled. My stock of moneys was also proportionable to the rest; being little more than what brought me to London in an old coat and breeches of the same, an old pair of hose, and shoes, and a leathern doublet of nine years old and upwards. Indeed, by reason of the suddenness of my journey, I had nothing but what I was ashamed of, save only

“An old fox broad sword, and a good black gown,

And thus old Henry came to London Town.”

At that time chaplains were not provided with bed or bedding, and the divine, having no money, and wishing to redeem a cloak which had been long in pawn for 10s., he sold his lean mare, saddle and bridle for 26s., released the cloak, but only to re-pledge it for £2. A writer, alluding to that period, says “it must have been a rare time for cavaliers, clerical and secular, when the cloak that had been pawned for 10s. acquired a fourfold value when offered as a new pledge.” It must have been a rare time for clergymen of the Church of England when a navy chaplain is found on such intimate terms with “No. 1 round the corner,” but that circumstance is accounted for by the fact that the Rev. Mr. Tevuge is spoken of as having “contracted convivial and expensive habits.”

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 circumstance 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 associated, 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 embarrassed 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 assistance. 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 assistance 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 principally 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 scraps 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 thorny 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, unimpassioned 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 circumstances 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 canvasser for a weekly newspaper, but does not appear to have succeeded in this vocation, for his circumstances 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 assured 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 manuscript 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 pass. 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 noble 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 classical 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 passed; 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 passion for wandering revived, and fascinated with a fresh perusal of Cæsar’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:—