Part 8

He retired from Covent Garden in 1815--when he took a parting benefit at the Italian Opera House; but, like so many other public favourites, he made several 'last appearances' on the boards: one of the really last ones being at Southampton, where he commenced his career as a singer.

During the summer months, when the theatre was closed, and, indeed, during most of the latter part of his career, it was Incledon's practice to visit the provinces, giving entertainments, one of which he called 'Variety,' and the other 'The Wandering Melodist,' very much after the style of Dibdin's; and for the nonce styling himself also 'The Wandering Melodist.' It will be readily understood that these performances were highly appreciated in the days when locomotion was so much more difficult than it is nowadays, and when to have 'been to London' was the exception rather than the rule. It was probably on one of these occasions that H. C. Robinson fell in with him, on the top of a coach, and thus records his impressions, in his diary of 4th April, 1811. After noting that Incledon was just the man he expected to find him, with seven rings on his fingers, five seals on his watch-ribbon, and a gold snuff-box in his pocket, Robinson goes on to say:

'I spoke in terms of rapture of Mrs. Siddons. He replied, "Ah! Sally's a fine creature. She has a charming place on the Edgware Road. I dined with her last year, and she paid me one of the finest compliments I ever received. I sang "The Storm" after dinner. She cried and sobbed like a child. Taking both my hands, she said. "All that I and my brother ever did, is nothing compared with the effect you produce!"" Incledon spoke with warmth, and apparent knowledge, of Church music, praising Purcell especially, and mentioning Luther's simple hymns. I was forced to confess that _I_ had no ear for music; and he, in order to try me, sang in a sort of song-whisper some melodies, which I certainly enjoyed more, I thought, than anything I had heard from him on the stage.'

But in order to show that Incledon did not himself exaggerate the effect which the fire of his manner and the sweetness of his singing sometimes produced, let the following story testify. William Robson, in the 'Old Playgoer,' says:

'I remember when the _élite_ of taste, science, and literature were assembled to pay the well-deserved compliment of a dinner to John Kemble, and to present him with a handsome piece of plate on his retirement. Incledon, on being requested, sang, as his best song--on what he, I am sure, considered a great, though melancholy event--"The Storm." The effect was sublime, the silence holy, the feeling intense; and, while Talma was recovering from his astonishment, Kemble placed his hand on the arm of the great French actor, and said in an agitated, emphatic, yet proud tone, "_That_ is an English singer."' Munden adds that Talma jumped up from his seat, and embraced Incledon _à la Française_.

A list of his favourite songs at these entertainments, preserved at the British Museum, may not be unacceptable, as showing the musical tastes of the day; some of them are still sung occasionally, but most are long since forgotten. The songs in the 'Variety' entertainment, which was in three acts, were an introductory recitation and song entitled 'Variety;' 'The Thorn;' 'Jack Junk;' 'The Glasses Sparkle on the Board;' 'Black-eyed Susan;' 'The Post Captain;' 'Charming Kitty;' 'The Irish Phantasmagoria;' 'The Captive to his Bird;' 'The Storm;' 'Inconstant Sue;' 'Irish Hunting-song;' A new loyal and national song; 'The Maid with the Bosom of Snow;' and, for a finale, 'Loud let the merry, merry welkin sound.'

'The Wandering Melodist' comprised: 'The Married Man;' 'Patrick O'Stern;' 'The Farmer's Treasure;' 'Mr. Mullins and Miss Whack;' 'Mad Tom;' 'The Despairing Damsel;' 'The Sea-Boy on the Giddy Mast' (which, by the way, must have reminded him of old times); 'Fortune's Wheel;' 'Tom Moody;' 'The Siege;' 'Sally Roy;' 'Mariner's Compass;' 'Hail to the Beam of Morning;' 'The Italian Count and English Captain;' 'The Finale; or The Rose, Shamrock, and Thistle.'

Incledon's last benefit at Drury Lane--when Elliston engaged him in 1820, at £15 a week--is said to have brought him £1,000; but, as we have seen, towards the latter part of his career he did not often appear in London, and on 8th October, 1824, he sang, for the last time in public, at Southampton. His voice was observed to falter as he sang the final verse of 'Then Farewell my trim-built Wherry;' and he thus took leave of his audience:

'Ladies and Gentlemen,--It is with the sincerest feelings of gratitude that I acknowledge this evening the distinguished favour you have ever conferred upon me. In this town, and on these boards, I first appeared as a singer; and the encouragement I then received from you was, I may say, the passport to my fame. Since that time I have passed through many vicissitudes. I have served His Majesty in many engagements: there is not a ship in the navy, nor many towns in the country, that I have not sung in; but still your early liberality has never been effaced from my memory. It is now six years ago since I left the stage, but it has always been my wish to appear once more before you. Age, sickness, and infirmities have altered me much from what I once was, but I have always done my best to please; and, I repeat it, while I live I shall never forget the kindly support I have received from the inhabitants of Southampton.'

Another authority (Donaldson) adds that on this occasion Incledon also referred to his darling wives, saying: 'I have had three--the first was the sainted Jane [Miss Lowther, of Bath]; the second the angel Mary [Miss Howell, of Bath--she died May, 1811]; and the third, still living, is the divine Martha.'[48]

It will be seen that each of the entertainments referred to above consisted of fifteen songs, and must have taxed the singer's powers severely. I was a little surprised at not finding either 'The Heaving of the Lead,' or 'My bonny, bonny Bet, sweet Blossom,' on either list; for the latter especially was a great favourite, and Incledon always had to sing it twice, often three times; but probably this was the very reason why he omitted it from these programmes.

I have not been able to put my hand upon more than one example of his talents as a composer, namely, a song called 'Soft as the Morning's blushing Hue,' which he used to sing in 'Family Quarrels' (but Shield used to say that Incledon generally managed to improve _his_ composition). The song mentioned above is a rather pretty, flowing melody, eminently adapted to the remarkable compass and flexibility of Incledon's voice; there is a copy of it at the British Museum, with the initials 'C.I.,' in faded ink, sprawling over the first page. And here it may be well to observe that having added 'Charles' to his Christian name Benjamin, he at length dropped the latter name altogether.

Incledon did not confine his musical experiences to England; but occasionally made trips to Ireland, where 'no singer was ever more caressed.'

R. W. Procter, in his 'Manchester in Holiday Dress,' says: 'When Incledon was returning home from Dublin, on one occasion, the vessel in which he embarked was upset in passing the bar. Several of the passengers were drowned, but the singer saved himself by climbing, in sailor fashion, to the round top, with his wife lashed to him; Incledon all the while uttering a strange mixture of oaths, prayers, and confessions. They remained in that perilous position for several hours, until rescued by some fishermen.'

Once, towards the close of his career, when his powers, enfeebled by his careless manner of life, were on the wane, he even ventured across the Atlantic. In America, however (notwithstanding that a writer in the _New Monthly Magazine_, for 1838, asserts that he made £5,000 by this trip), he is said to have been a failure; though Incledon himself would insist upon it, to the last, that his want of success there was merely an example of the caprice of the public.

On his return to England he went to Brighton, where, by a slight attack of paralysis, he received his first warning that his career was nearly closed. The 11th of February, 1826, found him, now sixty-four years old, at Worcester, organizing one of his entertainments. Here he attended a meeting of a local glee-club, but declined, for some reason, to take his part in the music. At his inn, however, 'The Reindeer,' he did sing in the kitchen[49]--to gratify the servants--his last song:

'Then farewell, my trim-built wherry! Coat, and oars, and badge, farewell!'

and a few nights afterwards, on the 19th February, he bade farewell to a world which had often hung upon his lips for the sweetest and manliest strains that any English singer had ever warbled forth. 'The hunting-song, the sea-song, and the ballad,' observes C. R. Leslie, in his autobiography, 'may be said to have expired with Incledon.'

All contemporary accounts agree as to his vocal merits. Parkes says that in twenty-four years he never knew Incledon sing out of tune: indeed, it has been observed that he _could_ not have done so if he had tried, for whilst his ear was marvellously accurate, his knowledge of music was slight. Parkes speaks of his friend's memory being quick and retentive, for melodies; but Incledon seems to have had the greatest difficulty in recollecting any 'part;' and more than once, when he had forgotten it, he has been known to give an impromptu turn to the dialogue in order to introduce some ballad appropriate to the occasion, whilst cudgelling his brains for the lost 'cue.'

The few glimpses we have had of his private character do not prepare us to expect much elegance or refinement in Incledon, off or on the stage. Indeed, it must be confessed that he was vain, coarse, irritable at times, and dissipated; but he had the redeeming traits of frankness and generosity; and allowances must be made for his having lived in 'three-bottle' days. Cyrus Redding tells an amusing story of Incledon's having been invited to a dinner at 'The Pope's Head' Inn, Plymouth, in order that he might be induced to entertain the company afterwards. The wine of course circulated freely, and Incledon, as was his wont, freely partook of it. He attempted a recitation of the lines from 'Samson Agonistes,' beginning 'Total eclipse!' but the good cheer had proved too much for his wits, his head sank upon his shoulders, and he became for a time totally eclipsed himself:--he had been 'dining out' daily, for a week before. It was, however (though he drank hard), very rarely that he succumbed like this. And Fitz Ball (Edward Ball)--who, by the way, mentions that latterly Incledon got very fat--tells a story which may be fitly inserted here. Being once at Bury St. Edmund's, whilst some military ball was going on, Incledon, well in his cups, said something to a young officer about 'featherbed captains,' which the military hero chose to regard as a personal affront, and accordingly, accompanied by some friends (so the story goes), besieged Incledon's room the next morning, and demanded satisfaction. In the first place, there was great difficulty about waking the singer from his deep, vinous slumbers; and when at last he did awake, he was quite at a loss to know why his privacy had been invaded. On learning, however, that 'satisfaction' was what was wanted, he sat up in bed and sang, in his most exquisite manner, 'Black-eyed Susan,' so that there was at last not a dry eye in the room. When he had finished, 'There, my fine fellow!' said Incledon blandly, '_that_ has satisfied thousands--let it _satisfy_ you;' and, putting out his hand, it was as generously taken as it was offered.

Some accounts give Incledon three wives, others two; but those who are at all acquainted with the history of the stage, seventy or eighty years ago, will admit that this is a point upon which Incledon himself might possibly not have been very clear. There was one 'Mrs. Incledon,' however, who, like the songster himself, was very fond of good living; and there is a story that once, when Incledon was entertaining at dinner, at his house, No. 13, Brompton Crescent, his friend and medical adviser, Dr. Moseley of Chelsea Hospital, and two or three others, the dish of fish was artfully so arranged that a fine dory (to which the host and hostess were both very partial) was completely overlaid by herrings; and it was not until the guests had all been helped to the humbler fish, that the gourmands' favourite was--as if by accident--discovered. On this memorable occasion we hear that 'pink _and_ white champagne' were handed round; that on its production, the trio 'Beviamo tutte tre' was sung by Shield, Parkes, and Incledon, with appropriate action; and that, when the conversation turned upon the sort of deaths which the Chelsea veterans died, Incledon, delighted with Dr. Moseley's satisfactory account of them, got up and persuaded all who were present to join in singing Dr. Callcott's noble glee, 'Peace to the Souls of the Heroes!'

Incledon, though he made plenty of money, was often pecuniarily embarrassed, owing no doubt to that 'lax and sailor-like twist of mind' which, as Leigh Hunt says, always hung about him. An instance of this occurs in a letter preserved among the Egerton MSS., in which Incledon, writing to the magniloquent George Robins, from Ipswich, in February, 1816, tells how he had been arrested a few days before, at Colchester, for £19, by a Mr. Marriot of Fleet Street, for the balance of a bill of over £100. The singer had recently taken a house, and had been put to great expense in furnishing it; and his object in writing to Robins was to get him to contradict, in London, the report that 'Incledon was about to fly from the kingdom.' He adds that he was then going on to Norwich, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and Dublin, and finishes by saying that his wife was with him, and that his being 'arrested has given my Poor Little Woman so great a Shock that she will not soon get over. She is now very Ill, and continually in Tears.' He nevertheless was supposed[50] to have been worth £8,000 when he died, leaving this third wife a widow with three children. He was buried in Hampstead churchyard, on the 20th February, 1826, aged sixty-four, by the side of his first and second wives, and five of their children.

So lived and so died Charley Incledon--'generous as a prince,' as Charles Mathews wrote of him, 'never ashamed of his antecedents;' and as Dowton says,

'Unrivalled in his native minstrelsy.'

One of his sons, Charles, who had been unsuccessful as a farmer near Bury St. Edmund's, attempted, under Braham's auspices, to succeed as a singer: he made his _début_ either as Hawthorn in 'Love in a Village,' or as Young Meadows, at Covent Garden, on the 3rd October, 1829; but in this attempt, too, the poor fellow (who had a large family, and who had, moreover, a strong objection to the stage on moral and religious grounds) failed. Another son, Frank, became a well-to-do London tradesman; and a daughter married well, and settled in Sunderland.

FOOTNOTES:

[43] He was, however, christened on Christmas Day, 1763, at Upton-Helions, near Crediton, Devon.

[44] When he first ran away to Plymouth, to go to sea, it was with a fellow-chorister--all their property 'tied up in a blue and white pocket-handkerchief;' but on this occasion they were overtaken at Ivy Bridge, and brought back to Exeter.

[45] There is an engraved portrait of him, in which he is represented as singing this song.

[46] Other authorities say October, but I have followed Parkes in the above dates; and this is a point on which he ought to have been accurate.

[47] For minuter details of the singer's professional career, an article entitled 'Leaves from a Manager's Note-Book,' in the _New Monthly Magazine_, for 1838, may be advantageously consulted.

[48] His third wife's name has not been traced by me.

[49] The kitchen seems always to have had attractions for poor Incledon. One night, whilst at a friend's house, he was missed for a time, but was at length discovered helping the servants to 'pick parsley' for supper. Another of his peculiarities was a fondness for all sorts of quack medicines, and cough-drops, lozenges, and the like, of which he never failed to carry a large assortment in his pocket.

[50] 'Era Almanac,' 1870.

_THE KILLIGREWS_;

DIPLOMATISTS, WARRIORS, COURTIERS, AND POETS.

_THE KILLIGREWS_;

DIPLOMATISTS, WARRIORS, COURTIERS, AND POETS.

'Fuimus.'

A little ploughed field in the parish of St. Erme, about five miles north of Truro, on a farm still called Killigrew, is the site of the old residence of this distinguished family. Their place knows them no more; and even their own name is, with the sole exception just referred to, and in one or two instances where it appears as a Christian name of some of their remote descendants, 'clean blotted out.' Yet it was once--as the old Cornish word implies--'a grove of eagles'; for we shall find that their race soared high, and produced examples of each of the distinguished classes noted above; and that their memory is worthy of their tombs in Westminster Abbey, and of a local monument--the pyramid which one who married into the family and assumed the name, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, erected at Falmouth in 1737-38.[51] There is some reason to believe that the family was of royal descent. The first of the name whom I have been able to trace, is one Ralph Killigrew, said to have been a natural son of Richard, Earl of Cornwall, and King of the Romans, by his concubine Joan de Valletort. Hence, so it is said, the double-headed spread eagle and the 'border bezanty' of the family arms.[52] Henry, Otho, Simon, Thomas, John, and Maugan are other Christian names of very early Killigrews.

Lysons gives the following instances of their being at an early date possessors of lands in Cornwall: John de Killigrew, of Killigrew, had £20 a year or more in land in 1297; Henry de Killigrew held a military feu in Orchard Marries (? Marrais) in the hundred of Stratton in 3rd Henry IV. (1402); Rad. de Killigrew held a 'feod. parv.' at some place in the hundred of Powder; Henry, son of Maugi de Killigrew, had a similar tenure in Trewyn, in the same hundred--and they retained the Manor of Killigrew till 1636, so Lysons says. I may add, as an early instance of the name being mentioned, that there was a Richard (or Michael) Killigrew, one of a riotous lot of junior scholars at Merton College, Oxon, about the year 1350.

After the lapse of about a century and a half from the time of Ralph, one of the Killigrews married the heiress of Arwenack, near Falmouth--a lady of broad lands, for her estates extended, it is said, from Arwenack (an old Cornish name which is said to signify either 'the beloved, still cove,' or 'upon the marsh') to the mouth of the Helford river, a distance along the coast of some five or six miles. To this place, overlooking the beautiful waters of Falmouth Haven, then a deeper and far more important harbour than it is at present, the Killigrew of the day, Simon by name, moved from his ancestral abode in St. Erme sometime during the reign of Richard II., probably about 1385; and here the Killigrews remained for nearly four centuries, acting as governors of Pendennis Castle for a great part of that period, intermarrying with many of the oldest Cornish families, and attending at the Courts of Henry VIII., Elizabeth, the first and second James, the first and second Charles, and William III.--loyal, able, and trusted adherents.

The earliest monument to any member of the family is, so far as I can ascertain, the brass in Gluvias Church, near Penryn, to Thomas Killigrew and his two wives Joan and Elizabeth, and all their children.[53] On the brass Thomas Killigrew is described as a gentleman ('generosus'); he is represented in the costume of the latter part of the fifteenth century, in a long handsome robe trimmed with fur, and carries on his right shoulder his hat, after the fashion of the time--a wealthy merchant, in all probability. Thus far and no further, I regret to say, can I trace anything of interest respecting the early Killigrews.

But we now approach comparatively modern times, and are soon bewildered by the number of more or less illustrious names from which to select examples. A genealogical table, which I compiled for my guidance, offers at least fifty names not unknown in history, and of whose possessors accounts, not without interest, might be given.[54] But to do this would be to write a book instead of a chapter; and a far smaller number must suffice.

The Killigrew family seems naturally to divide itself into two classes, roughly speaking, complementary to each other: viz., the elder branch, which was on the whole the steadier and the more prosperous, whose present representative (by marriage) is the Earl of Kimberley, Secretary of State for India; and the younger branch (now also extinct in the male line) more fertile than the former in statesmen, soldiers, and wits. This division it is proposed to adopt in the following notices of both branches of the family.

_Seniores priores._ Let us commence with the first John Killigrew, of importance, upon record. His brass, like that of the first Thomas, is to be found in another little village church--St. Budock by name--near Falmouth. Evidently a grim warrior, covered _cap-à-pied_ with plate armour, and associated in the representation with his wife--one of another good old Cornish family (now also extinct)--Elizabeth, daughter of James Trewinnard of St. Erth. This John was a rich man, his estate being worth no less than £6,000 a year; and he was the first Captain of Pendennis Castle, built on his own ground, under his own superintendence, and with the co-operation of Thomas Treffry of Place (who, by the way, married Elizabeth Killigrew, John's sister), in the reign of our castle-building King, Henry VIII. The same John Killigrew was appointed in 1551, together with Sir William Godolphin and Francis Godolphin, to survey the Islands of Scilly, and to build a fort there; no doubt that which stands on St. Mary's Isle, and is now known as Elizabeth Castle, with its inscription, 'E.R. 1593,' over the principal entrance. He was, moreover, sheriff for the county, and in that capacity wrote a letter, dated at Truro, to Cardinal Wolsey, on the subject of a threatened French invasion. Not content with building a castle for his King, John built (or rather rebuilt) for himself (about 1571, according to Hals), Arwenack House, in such a style that it was reputed the finest and most costly in the county at that time. Little did he think that one of his descendants was to see it almost entirely destroyed, either by Waller, or by the owner himself, to prevent its falling into the enemy's hand, nearly a century later. Some part of the structure still stands, and is used as a manor-office; and here is preserved a conjectural restoration of Arwenack House in its long-since-departed glory.

To him succeeded his son, Sir John Killigrew, Knight, as second captain of the fortress. I find nothing further recorded of him, save that he married one Mary Wolverston,[55] and that when he died on the 5th March, 1584, he too was buried at St. Budock.