Part 15

His monument, of white marble, is an imposing piece of statuary, the most prominent part of which is a bust designed by Adam, and executed by Rysbrack, which well displays the bluff, portly, and determined features of one of England's bravest and ablest sons. But, to my mind, the best and loveliest part of that trophied memorial is the following inscription from the pen of the well-beloved partner of all his joys and sorrows:

'_Satis Gloriæ sed haud satis Reipublicæ_:

'Here lies the Right Honourable Edward Boscawen, Admiral of the Blue, General of Marines, Lord of the Admiralty and one of his Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council. His birth tho' noble, his titles tho' illustrious, were but incidental additions to his greatness.

'History, in more expressive and more indelible characters, will inform latest posterity with what ardent zeal, with what successful valour, he served his country, and taught her enemies to dread her naval power.

'In command he was equal to every emergency--superior to ev'ry difficulty. In his high departments masterly and upright. His example form'd while his patronage rewarded merit.

'With the highest exertions of Military greatness he united the gentlest offices of humanity.

'His concern for the interest and unwearied attention to the health of all under his command softened the necessary exactions of duty and the rigors of discipline by the care of a guardian and the tenderness of a father.

'Thus belov'd and rever'd, amiable in private life as illustrious in public, this gallant and profitable servant of his country, when he was beginning to reap the harvest of his toils and dangers, in the full meridian of years and glory, after having been providentially preserved from every peril incident to his profession, died of a fever on the 10th of Jany. in the year 1761, the 50th of his age, at Hatchlands Park in Surrey, a seat he had just finished at the expense of the enemies of his country, and (amidst the groans and tears of his beloved Cornishmen) was here deposited.

'His once happy wife inscribes this marble--an unequal testimony of his worth, and of her affection.'

Here perhaps it may conveniently be added that his name is still honourably remembered in the Navy, for the _Boscawen_, of 101 guns, was one of the Baltic fleet in 1854; and there is a ship of that name, now stationed at Weymouth, used as a naval training-ship for boys.

The career of Admiral Boscawen depicts his character. It was that of a brave, blunt, determined sailor of the old school. He could not look at a French ship without desiring to fight her; and his determination, according to his enemies, amounted to obstinacy. Walpole tells us how the Admiral in 1757 is said to have been recalled from his then station to serve under Hawke, which he declined to do, 'and his Boscawenhood is now much more Boscawened; that is surly in the deepest shade;' and the same writer says, in another place, that he was 'the most obstinate man of an obstinate family.' Yet even Walpole is compelled to pay this somewhat unwilling tribute to the Admiral's worth during the perilous time when he served his country so well: 'Never did the bravery of the English and the want of spirit in the French appear in greater opposition; the former making their attacks on spots which the French deemed impregnable, threw them into utter dismay; and dictated a very quick and unjustifiable submission--Boscawen's rough courage was fully known before.' And a recent critic, who has already been quoted more than once (himself a naval officer), thus sums up our hero's character: 'He was virtuous like Anson and Hawke, and as brave and eager for employment and distinction as Nelson himself.'

But the prize which the Cornish hero must have valued most must have been the eulogium which Chatham, when Prime Minister, addressed to him--words with which I may not inaptly close this imperfect sketch of his life and actions:

'When I apply to other officers respecting any expedition I may chance to project, they always raise difficulties; _you_ always find expedients.'

_MRS. BOSCAWEN._

It is not too much to say of the Admiral's wife that she was worthy of him, and that she was duly proud of his name and reputation. We have seen how she thought her daughter Elizabeth was no unfit match for a duke, remarking that she was '_Admiral Boscawen's_ daughter;' and she was dearly fond of the sea, 'delighting in it (as she used to say) beyond all sights and all objects whatever,' until the mournful day came when he for whose sake she had loved it so dearly had ended his connexion with it for ever; and then she spoke of it as that sea whose memories 'had cost her so many tears.' She was the only daughter of William Evelyn Glanville, Esq., of St. Clere near Ightham, Kent, and was of the family of the celebrated John Evelyn, whom she was fond of calling her 'good, old uncle;' and she took immense interest accordingly in the production of Dr. Hunter's new edition of the 'Sylva.'[100]

When twenty-four years of age she was married, in December, 1742, to Admiral Boscawen, seven years her senior, and they seem to have been a well-suited, happy couple. Her character is perhaps best seen in the interesting gossiping letters which she and Mrs. Delany (a Grenville of Stow) interchanged. She was also a correspondent of Hannah More and Mrs. Chapone.

Hannah More, in her 'Sensibility,' writes thus of her:

'Accept, Boscawen! these unpolish'd lays, Nor blame too much the verse you cannot praise. For you far other bards have wak'd the string; Far other bards for you were wont to sing. * * * * * You heard the lyres of Lyttelton and Young; And this a Grace, and that a Seraph strung.'

And in another place she adds:

'On you, Boscawen, when you fondly melt In raptures none but mothers ever felt, And view, enamour'd, in your beauteous race, All Leveson's sweetness, and all Beaufort's grace! Yet think _what dangers_ each lov'd child may share, The youth _if valiant_, and the maid _if fair_?'

The reason for dedicating this poem of '_Sensibility_' to Mrs. Boscawen is glanced at in the following couplet:

''Tis _this_, whose charms the soul resistless seize, And gives Boscawen half her pow'r to please.'

On the death of her husband, Dr. Young thus addressed her, in a postscript to his poem 'Resignation',

'Why mourn the dead? You wrong the grave, From storms that safe resort; We still are tossing out at sea-- Our _Admiral's_ in port.'

As another illustration of her intimacy with literary people, and of her fondness for their pursuits, it may be mentioned that Mrs. Boscawen was one of the society of 'eminent friends, both ladies and gentlemen,' who used to meet at Mrs. Montagu's, where she made herself welcome, says Dr. Doran, by 'the strength of her understanding, the poignancy of her humour, and the brilliancy of her wit.' A Mr. Stillingfleet, one of the coterie, was rather slovenly in his costume, and, amongst other delinquencies, wore _grey_ stockings, which caused Admiral Boscawen humorously to affix to the whole party a name which has now become a household word--'The Blue Stockings.'

After they had been dining together on the 29th April, 1778, at Allan Ramsay's--when Dr. Johnson and Sir Joshua Reynolds had been of the party--Boswell wrote of Mrs. Boscawen, 'If it be not presumptuous in me to praise her, let me say that her manners were the most agreeable, and her conversation the best of any lady of our party with whom I had the happiness of being acquainted.' Tenderhearted and sprightly she undoubtedly was; and, as an instance of her vivacity, I may perhaps be excused for quoting a passage in one of her letters to Mrs. Delany which Lady Llanover has given in those well-known 'Memoirs' of her ancestress, to which I have already more than once referred. 'The first time,' writes Mrs. Boscawen, 'I experienced the pains of child-bearing, I concluded that no woman had ever endured the like upon the like occasion, and that I could not possibly recover it; whereas I danced a minuet about my room in ten days, to insult my nurse-keeper and set her a scolding for my diversion!'

But she was something more than a vivacious letter-writer and a dilettante, for she dabbled too in political affairs, especially in the Cornish elections, giving her interest to 'the old members' rather than to Sir William Lemon in 1774. She took, of course, great interest in the warlike views of the day; and on returning to her inn one evening whilst she was travelling through the country, on hearing of the retaking of Long Island, 'made a most agreeable supper and drank health to the noble brothers'--the two Howes. When her son-in-law, Mr. Leveson, had the command of the _Valiant_, man-of-war, conferred upon him in November, 1776, she set to work for him 'with great alacrity,' as she says, to raise a crew of fishermen in Cornwall. In fact, throughout her life her correspondence shows that she took the keenest possible interest in the doings of our army and navy. As an illustration of the warlike spirit which at this time pervaded even the bosoms of the gentler sex, Walpole thus writes in May, 1778: 'The Parliament is only to have short adjournments; and our senators, instead of retiring to horse-races (_their_ plough), are all turned soldiers, and disciplining militia. Camps everywhere, and the ladies in the uniforms of their husbands.' 'It is said,' writes Mrs. Boscawen to Mrs. Delany, 'that the Duchess of Devonshire marched through Islington at the head of the Derbyshire Militia, dressed in the uniform of that regiment!'

Her residence when in London seems to have been generally in Audley Street; but she also had a pretty place at Enfield, and a small house at Colney Hatch which she used to call her 'nut-shell.'

When about eighty years of age she was living at Rosedale, a place near the entrance to Richmond from Kew, which was formerly occupied by the poet Thomson, whose table, cane, and chair were long preserved in the house; and whilst residing here a little poetical correspondence took place which may be worth recording, not only as an illustration of the courtly politeness of the time, and of the respect in which the good old lady was evidently held by her contemporaries, but also because Mrs. Boscawen's letter, written in a firm, almost manly hand, notwithstanding her advanced age, is still preserved in the British Museum, where it will be found in the Additional MSS. Pye, the Poet Laureate, had written a sonnet on Rosedale, which he communicated to the Rev. W. Butler, who sent it on to Mrs. Boscawen. The lines, by no means remarkable for vigour or originality, conclude thus:

'Still Fancy's Train your verdant Paths shall Trace, Tho' clos'd her fav'rite Votary's dulcet lay; Each wonted Haunt their footsteps still shall grace, Still Genius thro' your green Retreats shall stray: For, from the Scene BOSCAWEN loves to grace, Th' Attendant Muse shall ne'er be long away.'

The lady graciously acknowledged the compliment conveyed to her in the last two lines, and thus replied on the 26th June, 1797:

'SIR,

'I am sure I ought to return you my gratefull acknowledgm^{ts} for the obliging Present you have made me of some sweet Stanzas on this spot,--and my two Predecessors. Mr. Ross was certainly an Admirer of His, & paid that Respect to his Memory as to retain the little Parlour where Mr. Thomson liv'd, tho' he rebuilt every other Part of the House, extending it very much.

'The little Rustick Seat w^{ch} inspir'd your poetick Dialogue I found in such a State of decay that I was oblig'd to take it down, _but, reserving all the Materials_, I have replac'd it in a retir'd part of the Garden much enlarg'd and hung round with votive Tablets or Inscriptions in Honour of your admir'd Poet. His Bust is on the Pedament of the Seat, and in front is written

'"Here Thomson sung The Seasons & their Change."

In the Alcove is a little old Table, w^h I am assur'd belonged to Him, but Sir, if ever you sh^d have leisure to pay another Visit to your _matchless Favourite_, You will I hope find Him honour'd by

'Your most humble Serv^t,

'F. BOSCAWEN.'

After surviving her husband for forty-four years, and never marrying again, the Honourable Frances Evelyn Boscawen closed her long and amiable life at her house in Audley Street, in March, 1805, at the venerable age of eighty-six; and was buried in the same vault with her husband at St. Michael Penkivel, where a monument designed by her son, George Evelyn, third Viscount Falmouth, and executed by Nollekens, was erected to her memory. An epitaph does her no more than justice.

FOOTNOTES:

[80] It is somewhat singular that, notwithstanding the early and close connexion of the Boscawen family with this church, which is one of unusual interest--containing an oratory with a stone altar in the tower--though the Boscawen monuments here are numerous, yet there is no earlier example than one to Hugh, who married a lady of the Carminow family, and who died in 1559.

[81] Dr. Borlase mentions the high esteem in which the elder-tree was held by the Cornu-Britons, and states, with reference to the height to which it will reach under favourable circumstances, that Mr. Tonkin was informed that one of these trees, nearly fifty feet high, was blown down in Carhayes Park during a gale, about the year 1720.

[82] According to Hals, the Buryan Boscawens also transplanted their dwelling-places to Tregameer in St. Columb Major, and Trevallock in Creed, or St. Stephen's, and from thence, by marriage with the daughter and heir of Tregothnan, by Lawrence Boscawen, gentleman, attorney-at-law, temp. Henry VII., who died 1567, and lies buried in the north transept of St. Michael Penkivel Church, as is testified by a brass inscription on his gravestone, there lately extant, upon which, on a lead escutcheon, was engraved his paternal coat armour. He it was who built the towers of old Tregothnan House.

[83] He must have been a wealthy man, for Davies Gilbert says that on Hugh Boscawen's daughter Bridget's marriage with Hugh Fortescue he gave her £100,000.

[84] Sub. _Basset_.

[85] According to Lysons, the Deanery of the royal chapel of St. Burian was a dignity held immediately under the Crown, and in a Cartulary, 20th Edw. I., the incumbent is called Dean of the King's Free Chapel of St. Burian. He used to exercise an independent jurisdiction in all ecclesiastical matters within the parish and its immediate dependencies. The three prebends belonging to the church of St. Burian were Prebenda Parva, Prebenda de Respermel and Prebenda de Tirthney; though there may have possibly been a fourth, called Trethyn, a place in this parish where there was once a chapel. The first-named Prebend was in the gift of the Bishop; the two others were annexed to the Deanery of St. Burian. The 'Deanery' has, however, ceased to be; the three parishes are separated, and there are now simply Rectors of St. Buryan, St. Levan, and St. Sennen. (Cf. a paper on 'The Cornish Chantries' by Mr. H. Michell Whitley, in the Truro Diocesan Kalendar for 1882.)

[86] His medallion portrait on his monument at St. Michael Penkivel, was designed by his mother, and was sculptured by Nollekens.

[87] He is so depicted in his portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds in our National Portrait Gallery. There are numerous engraved portraits of him in the Print Room of the British Museum.

[88] Edgcumbe took home the Admiral's despatches in the _Shannon_.

[89] Yet the French _ships_ were in many respects better than the English; Professor Montagu Burrows (Captain R.N.) considers that an English 70-gun ship of the line was then not more than equal to a French 52. Many of the vessels were absolutely rotten, and the provisioning was grossly mismanaged. The officers too, it is said, were often found combining prudence with valour in somewhat un-English proportions.

[90] 'Hawke's grandfather (says Professor Burrows), a London merchant, had, like his ancestors for many generations, been settled at Treriven or Treraven (? Raven on the one-inch ordnance map, near the interesting old house of Trebasil), in the parish of St. Cleather, in Cornwall, about half-way between Launceston and Tintagel Head. Cornwall thus has the honour of having produced the two greatest admirals of the period, Hawke and Boscawen.' I did not myself venture to claim Hawke as a Cornishman, inasmuch as his father, a barrister of Lincoln's Inn, settled at Bocking in Norfolk.

[91] It is extremely gratifying to record that on that glorious morning scions of distinguished Cornish families were present--a Boscawen and a St. Aubyn--viz., the eldest son of the present Viscount Falmouth, and the second son of the present Sir John St. Aubyn, Bart.

[92] Walpole has pointed out, in his 'Memoirs of the last Ten Years of George II.,' how the reserved and proud Anson, 'who had been round the world, but never in it,' had carried off all the glory of the victory at Cape Finisterre, though Boscawen had done the service. In this view Professor Burrows concurs.

[93] Pondicherry (or Puducheri) as it is called by the natives, seems to have had a somewhat chequered history. It was purchased by the French, from the King of Benjapore, in 1672; it was taken from them by the Dutch in 1693, who considerably enlarged the town and fortifications. At the Treaty of Ryswick it was restored to France; in 1748 it was, as we have seen, unsuccessfully besieged by Boscawen; but in 1761, after a long, tedious blockade, it was captured by Coote. At the Peace of 1763 it was again restored to France; in 1778 it was once more surrendered to England, and finally it was delivered up to France in 1783, to become the capital of the French Settlements in India.

[94] Here, too, Cook, the circumnavigator, won his first laurels.

[95] A still more complete and detailed account, illustrated by a map, will be found in R. Brown's 'History of Cape Breton.'

[96] The year after Boscawen expelled the French from Cape Breton, Wolfe and Saunders drove them out of Canada.

[97] His tactics were to get to windward of his opponents, notwithstanding the advantage that gave their gunnery at first, whilst waiting to leeward for the attack; but the British crews were not given to flinching under fire, and when once Boscawen got within half musket-shot of the enemy he 'hammered away into his antagonists' hulls, and it was soon all over with them.'

[98] The French Admiral's ship, the _Ocean_, carried 80 guns; besides her, the fleet comprised five ships of 74 guns, three of 64 guns, two of 50 guns, one of 26 guns, and two of 24 guns. Admiral Ekins could never sufficiently admire Admiral Boscawen's action in shifting his flag to the _Newark, during_ the fight with De la Clue, observing that we have had but one example since Boscawen's time of this being done; viz., by Commodore Nelson on 14th February. Ekins gives a capital account of this engagement, by a midshipman who was present.

[99] There is a local tradition that the Admiral caused the tower of this church to be lowered, lest it should serve as a landmark to the enemy!

[100] Luttrell (v. 594) says that (Sept., 1705) John Evelyn, Esq., was married to Mrs. Boscawen, niece to the Lord Treasurer (? Godolphin).

_DAVY_,

THE MAN OF SCIENCE.

_DAVY_,

THE MAN OF SCIENCE.

'Igne constricto, vita secura.'

_Davy's Motto._

The pretty little homestead--or as it is called in Cornwall, the 'town-place'--of Varfel, (or Barfell as it was sometimes spelt) in Ludgvan, lies on a southern slope, about two and a half miles N.E. of Penzance, and is a somewhat less distance from St. Michael's Mount, a view of which, as well as of the famous Mount's Bay and of the Lizard district, it commands. Varfel seems to have belonged from an early period to the Davy family, some of whose monuments in Ludgvan Church are nearly 300 years old. Either here, on the 'paternal acres,' or in the town of Penzance, on 17th December, 1778, at 5 a.m., was born to 'Carver' Robert Davy (so called from his proficiency in his trade as a wood-carver and gilder) and his wife Grace Millett, their eldest son,[101] who was destined to emerge from this remote and obscure corner of England, and become President of the Royal Society--a man of science so distinguished that Brande, in his celebrated 'History of Chemistry,' spoke of Davy's death as nothing less than 'a serious national calamity.'

The district of Penwith, with its wild furze-clad granite moors, its rugged cliffs, and emerald bays, proved

'Fit nurse for a poetic child;'

and the imaginative faculties of the future illustrious chemist were not nursed in vain. Like Pope, he 'lisped in numbers,' reciting, when only five years old, his own rhymes at some Christmas gambols; and his poetic vein never left him, even in the laboratory or in the lecture-room, compelling the aristocratic idlers of London to love Science, because, as they were constrained to confess, under his magic guidance, Science was made beautiful, and was attired by the Graces. It was said by Coleridge that had Davy not devoted himself to Science, he would have shone with the highest lustre as a poet; and the following youthful lines, full of true local colour, certainly show, as indeed did his whole life, that he had drunk of 'the fount of Helicon:'

'TO THE LAND'S END.

'On the Sea The sunbeams tremble; and the purple light Illumes the dark Bolerium, seat of Storms! Drear are his granite wilds, his schistine rocks Encircled by the wave, where to the gale The haggard cormorant shrieks; and, far beyond, Where the great ocean mingles with the sky, Behold the cloud-like islands[102] grey in mist.'

It was this poetic temperament, derived (as his brother, Dr. Davy, thinks) from their grandmother, which induced the gifted Dr. Henry, F.R.S., thus to refer to the subject of this memoir:

'Bold, ardent, enthusiastic, Davy soared to greatest heights; he commanded a wide horizon, and his keen vision penetrated to its utmost boundaries. His imagination, in the highest degree fertile and inventive, took a rapid and extensive range in pursuit of conjectural analogies, which he submitted to close and patient comparison with known facts, and tried by an appeal to ingenious and conclusive experiments. He was imbued with the spirit and was master in the practice of inductive logic; and he has left us some of the noblest examples of the efficacy of that great instrument of human reason in the discovery of truth. He applied it, not only to connect classes of facts of more limited extent and importance, but to develop great and comprehensive laws, which embrace phenomena that are almost universal to the natural world. In explaining those laws he cast upon them the illumination of his own clear and vivid conceptions; he felt an intense admiration of the beauty, order, and harmony which are conspicuous in the perfect _Chemistry of Nature;_ and he expressed those feelings with a force and eloquence which could issue only from a mind of the highest powers and of the finest sensibilities.'

Davy's first school was at Penzance, his first schoolmaster a Mr. Bushell; his next, the Rev. Mr. Coryton, seems to have been one of the old rough sort, determined that his pupils should not lack correction, even if they did not profit by his instruction. He used to address the little boy in the following doggrel, whenever he thought he saw an opportunity of administering castigation:

'Now, Master Davy, Now, sir! I have 'ee! No one shall save 'ee-- Good Master Davy!'