Part 21

During the quarrel with the Duchess of Kingston Foote had bitterly satirized some of her worthless creatures in a piece called 'The Capucin'--the last that he ever wrote except 'The Slanderer,' which, however, he left unfinished at his death.

In May, 1777, he made another attempt to appear on the stage; but illness and anxiety had made fearful havoc with his looks and his gaiety; and a paralytic stroke whilst acting in his own piece, 'The Devil on Two Sticks,' put an end for ever to his stage performances. He retired to Bath, and there his health and sprightliness somewhat recovered; but it was only a flickering of the expiring candle in its socket. The doctors advised him to try Paris, and thither, from his house in Suffolk Street, Pall Mall, he proceeded, by way of Dover, in the following October, with a presentiment that he should never return to Town alive. It was here, whilst waiting at the Ship Inn for a favourable passage, the conversation occurred with the cook-maid, and probably Foote's very last jokes, without which no account of him seems to be considered complete. The woman was boasting that _she_ had never left _her_ native place, when Foote retorted by saying that he had heard upstairs that she had been 'several times all over Greece,' and that he himself had seen her at 'Spithead.' On the following day, the 21st October, 1777, he had another paralytic seizure, and was no more. On the 3rd November he was buried by torch-light in the west cloister of Westminster Abbey.[144] No stone marks his resting-place; but there is an epitaph to his memory at St. Mary's, Dover, of which the following is a copy:

Sacred to the memory of SAMUEL FOOTE, ESQ., Who had a Tear for a Friend, And a Hand and Heart ever ready To Relieve the Distressed. He departed this life Oct. 21st, 1777 (on his journey to France), at the Ship Inn, Dover, aged 55 years. This inscription was placed here by his affectionate Friend, Mr. Wm. Jewell.[145]

He left, besides portraits and small legacies to sundry of his friends, the bulk of the property remaining to him to his two natural children, Francis and George; and I may here observe that, notwithstanding Cooke's positive statement that Foote married a Worcestershire lady, and that shortly after the wedding he took her to his father's house at Truro; and Polwhele's dictum that he married Miss Polly Hicks, of Prince's Street, Truro--(she is said to have been sixteen and Foote eighteen when they married, but she died early of consumption)--I have been unable to discover with certainty whether or not he was ever really married. Certainly, no Mrs. Foote ever appeared upon the scene when he lived at 'The Hermitage,' North End, between Fulham and Hammersmith (to which place he had moved from Parson's Green, where Theodore Hooke afterwards lived). Here he used to be very fond of entertaining his friends, amongst whom were many members of the nobility, and occasionally even royal personages, with his usual wasteful extravagance. There is a story of his having been 'reconciled' to his wife whilst he was living at Blackheath; and another story of his old fellow-collegian Dr. Nash, the historian of Worcestershire, having called to see him when confined for debt in the Fleet Prison, and finding a supposed Mrs. Foote hiding somewhere in the room; but there are, I believe, no proofs positive of the reckless, dissipated subject of this memoir having ever submitted to the marriage tie.

The _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1777 says of him that 'As no man ever contributed more to the entertainment of the public, so no man oftener made the minds of his companions expand with mirth and good-humour; and in the company of men of high rank and superior fortune, who courted his acquaintance, he always preserved a noble independency. That he had his foibles and caprices no one will pretend to deny; but they were amply counterbalanced by his merit and abilities, which will transmit his name to posterity with distinguished reputation.'

We commenced this article by considering how fleeting this reputation was; yet still it is strange that in this case it has died from amongst us so soon. Garrick said of Foote that he was a man of wonderful abilities, and the most entertaining man he had ever known; and this was a tribute from a rival manager and actor, be it remembered. Fox, eminent conversationalist as he was, said that whatever was the subject of conversation, 'Foote instantly took the lead, and delighted us all.' Davies, Tate Wilkinson, and Horace Walpole joined in the chorus of his praise; and even Dr. Samuel Johnson, who perhaps feared Foote as much as he disliked him, admitted that he was a scholar, that his humour was irresistible, and that he could drive any of his rivals out of the room by the sheer force of his wit. The remarks of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Macaulay fall flat after such tributes as the above; and they are probably to be explained by the fact that they never came within the range of the personal influence of the man--without having done which they can hardly be considered competent judges of so amusing an actor, and such an invariably ready, courageous wit and satirist as was Samuel Foote.

FOOTNOTES:

[129] It may be well to note that there was another Samuel Foote, perhaps a family connexion of our hero's, who held the Plymouth Theatre from 1780 to 1784.

[130] According to Taylor, the author of 'Monsieur Tonson,' the grave Murphy intended to write Foote's life; it was afterwards written by Cooke.

[131] Mr. Vivian was Mayor of Truro in 1741 and again in 1754.

[132] There was a John Foote, an eminent attorney, who lived at Lambesso, was town-clerk of Truro in 1676, and Mayor in 1678 and 1696.

[133] A case, with pedigree and opinion, signed Henry Brooke, Oxon, Jan. 21, 1737, states that Mr. Foote was a 'cognatus and consanguineus' of the founder of Worcester College, Sir Thomas Cooke of Bentley, Worcestershire, and was therefore entitled to a fellowship.--MSS. Worcester College.

[134] Garrick and Foote did not get on well together--they were 'two of a trade,' with the usual result; and, whenever they met, our hero, who, as Davies says, 'ran a-tilt at everybody, and was at the same time caressed and feared, admired and hated by all,' never failed to launch the shafts of his satire against Garrick, who was obliged to sit dumb in his presence. It has been said that while the wit of the one shone like a star, that of the other blazed like a meteor: yet the two often dined with each other.

[135] Foote was such a dandy, when a young man, that he was often mistaken for a foreigner.

[136] Cooke, with what, I suppose, he intended as a witticism, introduced Foote to his club at Covent Garden as 'Mr. Foote, the nephew of the gentleman who was lately hung in chains for murdering his brother.'

[137] He played Shylock, in 1758 (with Kitty Clive as Portia!), for his benefit at Drury Lane. On another occasion he was advertised to play Polonius, but seems to have thought better of it.

[138] Foote is said to have realized £500 in five nights by his caricatures of Macklin in his burlesque lectures.

[139] Afterwards enlarged and produced, unsuccessfully, as 'Taste,' a comedy, at Drury Lane, in 1752. Foote _presented_ this comedy to Garrick, as the profits were to be given to a poor actor, named Worsdale.

[140] And this reminds us of the frequent squabbles, almost immediately forgotten by both parties, which used to take place between Foote and Macklin. Thus, on one occasion, in order to test Macklin's boast as to his retentive memory, Foote ran off the well-known nonsense story: 'So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf to make an apple-pie,' etc. Macklin broke down in his attempt to remember them, but the lines themselves have since formed, on more than one occasion, the test of a scholar's power in turning them into Latin or Greek verse; witness the following attempt, which I have found in _Notes and Queries_, 5th series, vol. ix. p. 11:

'Protenus illa foras sese projecit in hortum Pluribus e caulis foliis resecaret ut unum, Dulcia conficeret coctis quo crustula pomis; Quum subito attonitam vadens impune per urbem, Monstrum horrendum ursæ visum est per claustra tabernæ. Inseruisse caput patulisq: adstare fenestris-- "Usque adeo ne omnis saponis copia defit?"'

and so on.

[141] It must be remembered that Whitefield said of him, 'However much you all admire Mr. Foote, the devil will one day make a _foot_-ball of him.'

[142] This play was so successful that Foote launched out into all sorts of extravagances, including the purchase of a magnificent service of plate, at a cost of £1,200.

[143] It is noteworthy that the same miscreant attempted, likewise in vain, to set up a similar charge against Garrick.

[144] I am indebted to the courtesy of Mr. Wright, the Clerk of the Works at Westminster Abbey, for the information that Foote's grave must be somewhere near the middle, perhaps a little north of the middle, of this cloister, though its exact site cannot now be ascertained.

[145] The treasurer of Foote's theatre.

_THE GODOLPHINS OF GODOLPHIN_,

STATESMEN, JURISTS, AND DIVINES.

_THE GODOLPHINS OF GODOLPHIN_,

STATESMEN, JURISTS, AND DIVINES.

'A Godolphin was never known to want wit; a Trelawny, courage; or a Grenville, loyalty.'--_Old Cornish Saying._

'Certes,' says Hals, 'from the time that this family was seised of Godolphin, such a race of famous, flourishing, learned, valiant, prudent men have served their prince and country, in the several capacities of members of parliament, justices of the peace, deputy-lieutenants, sheriffs,[146] colonels, captains, majors, and other officers, both military and civil, as scarce any other family this country hath afforded; which I do not mention (for that my great-grandmother on the one side, the wife of Sir John Arundell, of Tolverne, knight, was daughter of Sir Francis Godolphin, knight, sheriff of Cornwall, 21st Elizabeth), but as their just character and merit; and I challenge the envious justly to detract from the same.'

Without stopping to inquire whether or not Hals's great-grandmother was not Ann the _sister_ of Sir Francis Godolphin (instead of his daughter), that gossiping historian's claim on behalf of his ancestry may at once be conceded; indeed, it is very singular that he did not specify one of the family who lived much nearer his own time, and whose illustrious name makes those of the other Godolphins 'pale their (comparatively) ineffectual fires.' We shall, however, come to treat in his proper place of Sidney Godolphin, the friend of Marlborough, the trusted Prime Minister (for so he might be called) of James II., of William III. and of Anne, and for many years the moving though almost silent spirit of English politics.

It will be convenient to commence our remarks by a description of the family seat where they had settled for so long a period that Colonel Vivian, in his genealogical table, has been obliged to commence the pedigree with John, Lord of Godolphin, 'sans date;' but probably he flourished about the time of Henry III. or Edward I.

Godolphin, which gives its name to a high hill about half-a-mile to the south-west of the house, is situated in the parish now called Breage; and in the parish church, so named after the Irish St. Breaca, as well as in numerous other churches and churchyards of western Cornwall,[147] lie the bones of many a Godolphin, while their helmets--one of them surmounted by the 'canting' crest of a _dolphin_--hang rusting 'in monumental mockery' over some of the tombs. The remains of the mansion (now occupied as a spacious and comfortable farmhouse), the many roads of approach to it, the antique gardens, and the broad, terraced hedges, still testify to its ancient importance. For a place of much consideration it evidently was, even down to the time of Sidney Godolphin, and later. Those were days when the only newspaper which came to so remote a corner of England--and which was procured weekly, together with his despatches (whilst he was in Cornwall), by the Lord Treasurer's own special messenger to Exeter--lay on the table in the hall at Godolphin, now called the King's Room, for the benefit of the neighbouring clergy and gentry. Dr. Borlase gives a more or less conjectural view of the house in its glory, surrounded by its park and groves; and what is supposed to have been a view of it was found on a panel in Pengerswick Castle; but its glories have long departed. Yet, although Godolphin has not vanished from off the face of the earth, like Killigrew, the early abode of the Killigrews in St. Erme, and the two Stows, the residence of the Grenvilles of Kilkhampton, sufficient remains to indicate to the passerby that here may once have lived a family as distinguished as that to whom Hals so proudly refers. The surface of the surrounding landscape is now scarred by mines and clay-works; and the little stream, crossed just below the house by Godolphin Bridge, is discoloured by mine-refuse, disfiguring instead of beautifying the scene.

'No greater Tynne Workes yn al Cornwal then be on Sir Wylliam Godolcan's ground,' wrote Leland, and his statement long held true. It was remarked by the late W. J. Henwood in 1843, that in eighteen years Wheal Vor, an adjacent mine, had raised tin to the value of a million and a quarter sterling, of which £100,000 was profit to the adventurers. To be a steward of the Godolphins was held to be a sure method of attaining wealth and influence; indeed, there is a humorous story told of one of the Godolphin ladies' excusing her late appearance at the dinner-table one day by saying that she had been down to the smelting-house 'to see the cat eat the dolphin;' the allusion being to the respective marks on the Godolphin tin and that smelted at the same time by Coke, the steward, who bore _cats_ on his coat-of-arms. The Godolphin of the period thereupon introduced some much-needed reforms in the management of his tin business.

About a mile to the south of the house, and rising nearly 600 feet high--a considerable elevation in western Cornwall--rises Tregoning (or more properly, Treconan) Hill--the dwelling of Conan--from whose summit, looking to the south-west, the eye commands a vast stretch of waters, over which the sailor might pass to the West Indies without seeing land, unless he chose to touch at the Azores. Nearer at hand, and seeming almost under our feet, lie the noble curves of the Mount's Bay, with, for a central feature, the rocky islet--'both land and island twice a day,' as Carew says--on which stand the Castle and Chair of St. Michael--'Kader Mighel'--still looking

'Tow'rd Namancos and Bayonas' hold.'

Turning our gaze towards the north-west, we see sapphire waves roll on the golden sands which fringe the shores of St. Ives Bay; and, towards the west, the Land's End district so melts into the grey haze of the Atlantic, that it would be as hard to say where the land ended and the sea began, as it would be now to gather the whole truth as to the lost land of Lyonesse, traditionally reported to have been submerged between Bolerium and the Isles of Scilly.

Such were the surroundings of Godolphin. The building itself, originally a castle or fortified residence of some sort, was in ruins in the days of Edward IV. William of Worcester, in 1478, says of it:

'Castellum Godollon dirutum in villa Lodollon'; and Leland, in the days of Henry VIII., describes it in the following words:

'Carne Godolcan on the Top of an Hille, wher is a Diche, and there was a Pile and principal Habitation of the Godolcans. The Diche yet apperith, and many Stones of late Time hath beene fetchid thens. It is a 3 Miles from S. Michael's Mont by Est North Est.'

Rebuilt as Godolphin Hall in the days of Elizabeth, it appeared as a quadrangular mansion, with a fine portico of white granite along the north front, constructed by Francis, the second Earl; but this was the last flickering of its lamp. The rooms over the portico were, it is said, never fitted up, and the mansion of the Godolphins is now occupied by Mr. Rosewarne, a zealous guardian of its crumbling walls.

Concerning the etymology of the name there has been much dispute. Some have claimed for it a Phœnician origin, and said that the word signifies 'a land of tin'--certainly a not inappropriate derivation. Hals is not very dogmatic (as he often is) as to the meaning. He thinks it may mean 'God's Downs,' an 'altogether wooded down or place of springs,' and utterly repudiates Carew's suggestion that it means 'a white eagle.' Others have suggested 'Goon Dolgan'--Dolgan's Down. This, at least, is clear, that the name, as applied to persons, has had more than one narrow escape of becoming extinct. Once, towards the close of the fourteenth century, or early in the fifteenth century, when Ellinor Godolphin married John Rencie; but her husband assumed the patronymic of his wife. Up to that time, and, indeed, for many generations afterwards, we constantly find the Godolphins intermarrying with good old Cornish families, many of whom are now extinct. I find in their family tree such names as Trevanger, Trewledick, Antrewan, Prideaux, Tremrow, Carminowe, Erisey, Bevill, Killigrew, Trenouth, Cararthyn, Carankan, Tredeneck, Pendarves, Carew, Grenville, Arundell, St. Aubyn, Boscawen, Hoblyn, Molesworth, etc. In short, there are very few Cornish families of any distinction in whose veins the blood of the Godolphins of Godolphin did not mingle.

The first Godolphin of note (although, according to Lipscombe, they came in with the Conqueror) would seem to have been one who also bore the ill-omened name of Knava; and who, in 1504, was, as Hals tells us, 'struck Sheriff' of Cornwall. King Henry VII., Hals goes on to say, 'declared his great liking of that gentleman in all circumstances for the said office, but discovered as much dislike of his name after the English,--not understanding the import thereof in Cornish,--and so further said, that as he was _pater patriæ_, he would trans-nominate him to Godolphin, whereof he was lord; and accordingly caused or ordered that in his letters-patent under the broad seal of England, for being Sheriff of Cornwall, he should be styled or named John Godolphin of Godolphin, Esq^{re}, and by that name he accounted at the year's end with that King for his office in the exchequer, and had his acquittance from thence, as appears from the record in the Pipe office there.' Another Cornish gentleman who bore the name of Erisey was, it will be remembered (see the story of the Killigrews), also considered, by James I., to be unfortunate in his patronymic; but in his case the family name remained unchanged until it became extinct.

Sheriff John's son, Sir William, Vice-Warden of the Stannaries, was also sheriff of the county in the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Elizabeth. He was a warrior of note, and a favourite of bluff King Hal, 'who,' Polwhele says, 'for his services conferred on him the honor of knighthood, and constituted Sir William warden and chief steward of the Stannaries. He lived to a great age, and was several times chosen one of the Knights of the Shire for Cornwall in the Parliaments of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. He likewise acquired much fame by his conduct and intrepidity in several military commands, particularly at the siege of Bologne.' Carew ranks Sir William among the Worthies of Cornwall, saying: 'He demeaned himself very valiantly beyond the seas; as appeared by the scars he brought home; no less to the beautifying of his fame, than the disfiguring of his face.' Thomas Godolphin, his brother, was also present at the above-named siege, 'and on Thursday, the 14th August, 1544, he, Mr. Harper, and Mr. Culpepper were hurt with one shot from the town.'

Whether it was this Sir William, or his son (who bore the same name and title), who distinguished himself by his 'valiant carriage' against the Irish rebels towards the close of Elizabeth's reign, is not quite clear; but I am inclined to think it must have been the latter, as the first Sir William was gathered to his fathers in the year 1570, and was buried at Breage.

It was the former Sir William's brother Thomas who took for his first wife a Grenville, and from them descended, for three generations, those Godolphins who probably led happy lives--for (so far as I am aware) they have 'no history'--and whose Christian name at least would imply their peaceful careers,--for there were three Gentle Godolphins in succession. But from Thomas's second union, with Katherine Bonython, sprang the more famous members of the family. One of these was Sir Francis,[148] Vice-Warden of the Stannaries, who was knighted in 1580: he was with his father and uncle at Boulogne, and was the contemporary and friend of Richard Carew, whom he helped in writing the 'Survey of Cornwall.'

Carew thus refers to his colleague:

'This Hill (Godolphin) hath, for divers descents, supplied those gentlemen's bountiful minds with large means accruing from their tin-works, and is now possessed by _Sir Francis Godolphin_, knight, whose zeal in religion, uprightness in justice, providence in government, and plentiful house-keeping, have won him a great and reverent reputation in his country; and these virtues, together with his services to Her Majesty, are so sufficiently known to those of highest place, as my testimony can add little light thereunto: but by his labours and _inventions_[149] in tin matters, not only the whole country hath felt a general benefit, so as the several owners have thereby gotten very great profit out of such refuse works, as they before had given over for unprofitable; but Her Majesty hath also received increase of her customs by the same, at least to the value of £10,000. Moreover, in those works which are of his own particular inheritance, he continually keepeth at work 300 persons, or thereabouts; and the yearly benefit, that out of those his works accrueth to Her Majesty, amounteth, communibus annis, to £1000 at least, and sometimes to much more.'

And there is one other little episode of Cornish history with which the name of Sir Francis Godolphin will always be associated: the repulse of the Spaniards from Penzance in 1595.

There was an old Cornish prophecy which ran thus:

'Ewra teyre a war meane Merlyn Ara Lesky Pawle Pensanz ha Newlyn,'