Part 37

Sometimes Peter himself got castigated for his satire on the sovereign. Here is an amusing instance. Those who recollect the figure of the satirist in his robust upright state, and the diminutive appearance of Mr. Nollekens, the sculptor, can readily picture to themselves their extreme contrast, when the former accosted the latter one evening at his gate in Tichfield Street, nearly in the following manner:--"Why, Nollekens, you never speak to me now; pray what is the reason?" _Nollekens._--"Why you have published such lies of the King, and had the impudence to send them to me; but Mrs. Nollekens burnt them, and I desire you'll send no more. The royal family are very good to me, and are great friends to all artists, and I don't like to hear anybody say anything against them." Upon which the Doctor put his cane upon the sculptor's shoulders, and exclaimed, "Well said, little Nolly; I like the man who sticks to his friends; you shall make a bust of me for that!" "I'll see you d--d first," answered Nollekens; "and I can tell you this besides--no man in the Royal Academy but Opie would have painted your picture; and you richly deserved the broken head you got from Gifford in Wright's shop. Mr. Cook, of Bedford Square, showed me his handkerchief dipped in your blood; and so now you know my mind. Come in, Cerberus, come in." His dog then followed him in, and he left the Doctor at the gate, which he barred up for the night.

A severer castigation he received from a brother author. It appears that William Gifford had wielded his galled pen against the morals and poetry of Wolcot. It was so stringent and caustic that the Doctor sought his lampooner in the shop of Mr. Wright, a political publisher in Piccadilly, opposite Old Bond Street. Thither Peter repaired with a stout cudgel in hand, determined to inflict a summary and severe chastisement on his literary opponent. Gifford was a small and weak person; Wolcot was large and strengthened by passion; but he was a coward, and after a short personal struggle, was turned into the street by two or three persons then in the shop. Gifford afterwards wrote and printed _An Epistle to Peter Pindar_, in which he dealt out a most virulent tirade against the Doctor, who replied in _A Cut at the Cobbler_. Gifford had been apprenticed to a shoemaker.

As each published his own story of the transaction, the one in his own name, the other by his aide-de-camp, Mr. Wright, it may not be unamusing to recapitulate the different statements of the transaction:--

_Peter Pindar._--"Determined to punish a R---- that dared to propagate a report the most atrocious, the most opprobrious, and the most unfounded, I repaired to Mr. Wright's shop in Piccadilly to _catch him_, as I understood that he paid frequent visits to his worthy friend and publisher. On opening the shop-door I saw several people, and among the rest, as I thought, Gyffard. I immediately asked him if his name was Gyffard? Upon his reply in the affirmative, without any further ceremony, I began to cane him. Wright and his customers and his shopmen immediately surrounded me, and wrested the cane from my hand. I then had recourse to the fist, and really was doing ample and easy justice to my cause, when I found my hands all on a sudden confined behind me, particularly by a tall Frenchman. Upon this Gyffard had time to run round, and with his own stick, a large one too, struck me several blows on the head. I was then hustled out of the shop, and the door was locked against me. I entreated them to let me in, but in vain. Upon the tall Frenchman's coming out of the shop, I told him that he was one of the fellows that held my hands. I have been informed that his name was Peltier. Gyffard has given out as a matter of triumph that he possesses my cane, and that he means to preserve it as a trophy. Let me recommend an inscription for it:--'The cane of Justice, with which I, William Gyffard, late cobbler of Ashburton, have been soundly drubbed for my infamy.'--I am, Sir, &c., J. WOLCOT."

_Mr. Wright._--"Whoever is acquainted with the miscreant calling himself 'Peter Pindar,' needs not be informed, that his disregard and hatred of truth are habitual. He will not, therefore, be surprised to learn that the account this Peter has published in a morning paper is a shameless tissue of falsehoods from beginning to end.

"I was not in the shop when it happened; but I am _authorized_, by the only two witnesses of it, to lay before the public the following statement:--

"Mr. Giffard was sitting by the window with a newspaper in his hand, when Peter Pindar came into the shop, and saying, 'Is not your name Giffard?' without waiting for an answer, raised a stick he had brought for the purpose, and levelled a blow at his head with all his force. Mr. Giffard fortunately caught the stick in his left hand, and quitting his chair, wrested it instantly from the cowardly assassin, and gave him two severe blows with it; one of which made a dreadful impression on Peter's skull. Mr. Giffard had raised the stick to strike him a third time, but seeing one of the gentlemen present about to collar the wretch, he desisted, and coolly said, 'Turn him out of the shop.' This was _literally and truly all_ that passed.

"After Peter was turned into the street, the spectacle of his bleeding head attracted a mob of hackney-coachmen, watermen, paviours, &c., to whom he told his lamentable case, and then, with a troop of boys at his heels, proceeded to a surgeon's in St. James's Street, to have his wounds examined, after which he slunk home.--J. WRIGHT."

Peter used to boast that he was the only author that ever outwitted or took in a publisher. His works were very popular, and produced the writer a large annual income. Walker, his publisher, in Paternoster Row, was disposed to purchase the copyrights, and print a collected edition. He first made the author a handsome offer in cash, and then an annuity. The poet drove a hard bargain for the latter, and said that "as he was very old and in a dangerous state of health, with a d--d asthma and stone in the bladder, he could not last long." The publisher offered 200_l._ a year; the Doctor required 400_l._ and every time the Doctor visited the Row, he coughed violently, breathed apparently in much pain, and acted the incurable invalid in danger so effectively that the publisher at last agreed to pay him 250_l._ annually for life. A collected edition of his works was printed in 1812, but it is defective, for they were so numerous that the author could not retain them all in his memory. An imperfect list in the _Annual Biography_ for 1819 enumerates no less than sixty-four works. One of the portraits of the Doctor was published as a separate print, which did not sell to any extent; but its publisher derived a great profit by taking out the name of Peter Pindar and substituting that of "Renwick Williams the Monster," who was infamous for stabbing women in the street. This incident was told to Mr. Britton by Wolcot himself.

There is a fashion in the burlesque poetry of every age that is palatable to the public of that age only. The subjects of Wolcot's verses were ephemeral, and are now mostly forgotten. But his popularity was not entirely earned by his audacious personalities. His versification is nervous, his language racy and idiomatic, his wit often genuine; and through all his puns and quaintnesses there runs a strain of strong manly sense. Wolcot was equal to Churchill as a satirist, as ready and versatile in his powers, and possessed of a quick sense of the ludicrous, as well as a rich vein of fancy and humour. Some of his songs and effusions are tender and pleasing. Burns greatly admired his ballad of "Lord Gregory," and wrote another on the same subject. After all his biting satires on George III. and Pitt, he accepted a pension from the administration of which Pitt was the head--not to laud it, but to vituperate its opponents. He had a shrewd intellect, and his literary compositions have the finish of an artist; but he was utterly selfish, and was a self-indulgent voluptuary.

Peter lived to the age of eighty-one, much to the annoyance of his publisher, Walker. His last abode was in a small house in Montgomery's nursery-gardens, which occupied the site of the north side of Euston Square. Here he dwelt in a secluded, cheerless manner, the victim of an asthma, very deaf, and almost entirely blind, with only a female servant to attend him. His mind, however, retained its full power. He lived only for himself; declined dinner invitations, "to avoid the danger of loading his stomach with more than Nature required;" lay in bed the greater part of his time, because "it would be folly in him to be groping around his drawing-room," and because, "when up and in motion he was obliged to carry a load of eleven or twelve stone, while here he had only a few ounces of blanket to support." When out of bed, he amused himself with his violin, or examining, as well as his sight permitted, his crayons and pictures. He showed no aversion to "receive notoriety-hunters," who came to see and hear "Peter Pindar," but evinced no desire for society.

John Britton, who lived in Burton Street, often went to see Peter on a Saturday afternoon, and there met Mr. John Taylor, editor of the _Sun_ newspaper. This gentleman was an inveterate and reckless punster, and often teased Peter by some pointless puns. At one of these visits, on taking leave, Taylor exclaimed, pointing to Peter's head and rusty wig, "Adieu! I leave thee without hope, for I see _Old Scratch_ has thee in his claws." Peter died in the above house, January 14th, 1810, and was buried in the churchyard of St. Paul, Covent Garden, close to the grave of Butler. He left a considerable property to his relations. In early life he lived in the same parish, at No. 13, Tavistock Row; and in the garret of this house he wrote many of his invectives against George III. and the Royal Academicians. In 1807, he lodged in the first floor of a house in Pratt Place, Camden Town, rented by a Mr. and Mrs. Knight. The husband was a sea-faring man, seldom at home; and the Doctor, who was not over-scrupulous, is said to have seduced the wife's affections. Knight brought an action against the Doctor, but the jury very properly acquitted him of the charge.--_See Cunningham's London_, p. 409.

Peter was not emulous to shine as a wit in his colloquial intercourse, either with strangers or his most intimate associates. Indeed, his usual manner exhibited so little of that character which strangers had imagined of the writer of his lively satires, that they were commonly disappointed. The wife of a player, at whose house Wolcot often passed an evening, used to say that "his wit seems to lie in the bowl of a teaspoon." Angelo, in his _Reminiscences_, tells us that he could not guess the riddle, until one evening he observed that each time Peter replenished his glass goblet with brandy-and-water, in breaking the sugar, the corners of his lips were curled into a satisfactory smile, and he began some quaint story, as if, indeed, the new libation begot a new thought. To prove the truth of the discovery, one night, after supper, at his own home in Bolton Row, Angelo made the experiment. One of the party being in the secret, and fond of practical joking, came provided with some small square pieces of alabaster. Peter's glass waning fast, the joker contrived to slip the alabaster into a sugar-basin provided for the purpose; when the Doctor, reaching the hot water, and pouring in the brandy, the sugar-tongs were handed to him, and then the advanced basin of alabaster. "Thank you, my boy," said Peter, putting in five or six pieces, and taking his teaspoon, began stirring as he commenced his story. Unsuspicious of the trick, Peter proceeded, "Well, sirs,--and so the old parish priest. What I tell you (then his spoon was at work) happened when I was in that infernally hot place, Jamaica (then another stir). Sir, he was the fattest man on the island (then he pressed the alabaster); yes, d----, sir, and when the thermometer, at ninety-five, was dissolving every other man, this old slouching, drawling son of the church got fatter and fatter, until, sir--(curse the sugar! some devil-black enchanter has bewitched it.) By ----, sir, this sugar is part and parcel of that old pot-bellied parson--it will never melt;" and he threw the contents of the tumbler under the grate. The whole party burst into laughter, and the joke cut short the story. The mock sugar was slipped out of the way, and the Doctor, taking another glass, never suspected the frolic.

Peter, on seeing West's picture of Satan in the Exhibition, broke out in the following couplet:--

"Is this the mighty potentate of evil? 'Tis damn'd enough, indeed, but not the Devil."

The Author of "Dr. Syntax."

Dr. Syntax's _Tour in Search of the Picturesque_ was a large prize in the lottery of publication and was also a novelty in origin and writing. It was written to a set of designs instead of the designs being made to illustrate the poet: in other words, the artist preceded the author by making a series of drawings, in which he exhibited his hero in a succession of places, and in various associations, calculated to exemplify his hobby-horsical search for the picturesque. Some of these drawings, made by Rowlandson, than whom no artist ever expressed so much with so little effort, were shown at a dinner-party at John Bannister's, in Gower Street, when it was agreed that they should be recommended to Ackermann, in the Strand, for publication. That gentleman readily purchased, and handed them, two or three at a time, to William Combe, who was then confined in the King's Bench Prison for debt. He fitted the drawings with rhymes, and they were first published in the _Poetical Magazine_, where they became so popular that they extended to three tours in as many volumes, and passed through several editions. The work reminds one of _Drunken Barnaby's Journal_ by its humour: it has been called "rhyming, rambling, rickety, and ridiculous," but by a very inexperienced critic. The illustrations were, doubtless, the attraction, which was so great, that the demand kept pace with the supply. Hence _Syntax_ was succeeded by the _Dance of Life_, the _Dance of Death_, _Johnny Quægenus_, and _Tom Raw the Griffin_, all of the same class and character, and ultimately extending to 295 prints, with versified letter-press "by Dr. Syntax." Of late years these works have been republished at reduced prices.

Combe, the author of these strange works was of good family connection, had been educated at Eton and Oxford, and very early came into possession of a large fortune, in ready money. He started in the world by taking a large mansion at the west end of London, furnished it superbly hired servants, and bought carriages, and assembled around him a set of sycophants and parasites, who made short work of it, for from the commencement to the drop-scene of the farce did not exceed one year. The consequence was disgraceful ruin, and Combe fled from his creditors and from society. We next hear of him as a common soldier, and recognized at a public-house with a volume of Greek poetry in his hand. He was relieved; but he still lived a reckless life, by turns in the King's Bench Prison and the Rules, the limits of which do not appear to have been to him much punishment. Horace Smith, who knew Combe, refers to the strange adventures and the freaks of fortune of which he had been a participator and a victim: "a ready writer of all-work for the booksellers, he passed all the latter portion of his time within _the Rules_, to which suburban retreat the present writer was occasionally invited, and never left without admiring his various acquirements, and the philosophical equanimity with which he endured his reverses." Mr. Smith further states, that if there was a lack of matter occasionally to fill up the columns of their paper, "Combe would sit down in the publisher's back-room and extemporize a letter from Sterne at Coxwould, a forgery so well executed that it never excited suspicion." Mr. Robert Cole, the antiquary, had among his autographs a list of the literary works and letters of Combe.

Combe was principally employed by Ackermann, who, for several years, paid him at least 400_l._ a-year. On the first lithograph stone which Mr. Ackermann printed, when he had prepared everything for working, Combe wrote:--

"I have been told of one Who, being asked for bread, In its stead Return'd a stone.

"But here we manage better. The stone we ask To do its task, And it returns in every letter."

"WILLIAM COMBE, _Jan. 23, 1817_."

Combe was often a guest at Ackermann's table; he proved a friend to him during his last illness, and contributed to the expenses of his funeral, tomb, &c. Subsequent to his death, in 1823, a small volume was published, entitled _Letters to Marianne_, said to have been written by him after the age of seventy, to a young girl. We remember to have visited him in the Rules, near New Bethlem Hospital, when we learnt that he had written a memoir of his chequered life. Campbell, in his _Life of Mrs. Siddons_, states that Combe lived nearly twenty years in the King's Bench, and never quitted that prison; which is not correct. Combe had nearly been Mrs. Siddons's reading preceptor.

Rowlandson, who designed the Syntax illustrations, was as improvident as Combe: he had a legacy of 7,000_l._, and other property, bequeathed to him by an aunt: this he dissipated in the gaming-houses of Paris and London, where he alternately won and lost without emotion several thousand pounds. When penniless, he would return to his professional duties, sit down coolly to make a series of new designs, and exclaim stoically, "I've played the fool, but (holding up his pencils) here is my resource." To Rowlandson, as well as Combe, Ackermann proved a warm and generous patron and employer.

Dr. Doran, in his piquant Notes to the _Last Journals of Horace Walpole_, tells us that "Combe burst on the world as a wonderfully well-dressed _beau_, and was received with _éclat_ for the sake of his wealth, talents, grace, and personal beauty. He was popularly called 'Count Combe,' till his extravagance had dissipated a noble fortune; and then, addressing himself to literature, the Count was forgotten in the Author. In the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for May, 1862, there is a list of his works, originally furnished by his own hand. Not one was published with his name, and they amount in number to sixty-eight. Combe was a teetotaller in the days when drunkenness was in fashion, and was remarkable for disinterestedness and industry. He was the friend of Hannah More, whom he loved to make weep by improvised romances, in which he could 'pile up the agony' with wonderful effect. Religious faith and hope enabled William Combe to triumph over the sufferings of his latter years. His second wife, the sister of the gentle and gifted Mrs. Cosway, survived him."

Horace Walpole, 1779, speaking of the poem, _The World as it Goes_, describes it as "by that infamous Combe, the author of the _Diabolical_. It has many easy poetic lines, imitates Churchill, and is fully as incoherent and absurd in its plan as the worst of the latter's."

Again, in 1778, Walpole describes "Combe" as "a most infamous rascal, who had married a cast mistress of Lord Beauchamp, and wrote many satiric poems not quite despicable for the poetry, but brutally virulent against that Lord, and others, particularly Lord Irnham." But, as Dr. Doran aptly observes, "Walpole however fond of satire, hated satirists, particularly when they were fearless and outspoken, like Combe."

Mrs. Radcliffe and the Critics.

It is singular that although Mrs. Radcliffe's beautiful descriptions of foreign scenery, composed solely from the materials afforded by travellers, collected and embodied by her own genius, were marked in a particular degree with the characteristics of fancy portraits, yet many of her contemporaries conceived them to be exact descriptions of scenes which she had visited in person. One report transmitted to the public by the _Edinburgh Review_, stated that Mr. and Mrs. Radcliffe had visited Italy; that Mr. Radcliffe had been attached to one of the British embassies in that country; and that it was here his gifted consort imbibed the taste for picturesque scenery, and for mouldering ruins, and for the obscure and gloomy anecdotes which tradition relates of their former inhabitants. This is so far a mistake, as Mrs. Radcliffe never was in Italy; but it has been mentioned, in explanation, that she probably availed herself of the acquaintance she formed in 1793 with the magnificent scenery on the banks of the Rhine, and the frowning remains of feudal castles with which it abounds. The inaccuracy of the reviewer is of no great consequence; but a more absurd report found its way into print, namely, that Mrs. Radcliffe, having visited the fine old Gothic mansion of Haddon House, had insisted upon remaining a night there, in the course of which she had been inspired with all that enthusiasm for Gothic residences, hidden passages, and mouldering walls, which marks her writings. Mrs. Radcliffe, we are assured, never saw Haddon House; and although it was a place excellently worth her attention, and could hardly have been seen by her without suggesting some of those ideas in which her imagination naturally revelled, yet we should suppose the mechanical aid to invention--the recipe for fine writing--the sleeping in a dismantled and unfurnished old house, was likely to be rewarded with nothing but a cold, and was an affectation of enthusiasm to which Mrs. Radcliffe would have disdained to have recourse.

These are the opinions of Sir Walter Scott; appended to them are these somewhat depreciatory remarks made by Dunlop, in his _History of Fiction_:--

"In the writings of Mrs. Radcliffe there is a considerable degree of uniformity and mannerism, which is perhaps the case with all the productions of a strong and original genius. Her heroines too nearly resemble each other, or rather they possess hardly any shade of difference. They have all blue eyes and auburn hair--the form of each of them has 'the airy lightness of a nymph'--they are all fond of watching the setting sun, and catching the purple tints of evening, and the vivid glow or fading splendour of the western horizon. Unfortunately they are all likewise early risers. I say unfortunately, for in every exigency Mrs. Radcliffe's heroines are provided with a pencil and paper, and the sun is never allowed to rise nor set in peace. Like Tilburina in the play, they are 'inconsolable to the minuet in Ariadne,' and in the most distressing circumstances find time to compose sonnets to sunrise, the bat, a sea-nymph, a lily, or a butterfly."