Part 31

When boxing-night came, there was a crowded house, and Lizzy created a _furore_. Like Carlotta Grisi, she could sing as well as dance, and there was a bright intellect, to boot, pervading all she did. On the night in question, she sang between the acts; and young Burroughs, ever watchful, especially marked the effect of her singing upon a very ecstatic amateur who was seated next to him. “What a treasure,” said the amateur, “would this girl be in Liverpool!” “Well,” remarked Burroughs, “I am ready to accept an engagement for her. State your terms. Thirty shillings a-week, I presume, will not quite exhaust your treasury.” “I will certainly,” said the stranger, “tell our manager, Younger, of the prize which is to be acquired so cheaply; and the affair need not be delayed; for Younger is at the Swan, and will be down here to-night, to see the pantomime.”

In five minutes, Burroughs was sitting face-to-face with Younger at the inn, urging him to go at once, not to see Columbine dance, but to hear her sing. “I wonder,” said the manager, “if your young friend is the child of the Cork surgeon who married the daughter of Wright, the Liverpool brewer. If so, she’s clever; besides, why----”

“Why she’ll make your fortune,” said the lawyer’s clerk. “She is the grand-daughter of your Liverpool brewer, sings like a nightingale, and is worth five pounds a week to you at least. Come and hear her.”

Younger walked leisurely down, as if he was in no particular want of talent; but he was so pleased with what he did hear that when the songstress came off the stage, Burroughs went round and exultingly announced that he had procured an engagement for her at Liverpool, at two pounds ten per week; and to find her own satin shoes and silk stockings. In prospect of such a Potosi, the Columbine danced that night as boundingly as if Dan Mercury had lent her the very pinions from his heels.

“Mr. Burroughs,” said Lizzy, as he was escorting her and her mother home, “this is the second Christmas you have made happy for us. I hope you may live to be Lord Chief Justice.”

“Thank you, Lizzy, that is about as likely as that Liverpool will make of the Wakefield Columbine a countess.”

* * * * *

A few years had again passed away since the Christmas week which succeeded that spent at Wakefield, and which saw Lizzy Farren the only _Rosetta_ which Liverpool cared to listen to, and it was now the same joyous season, but the locality was Chester.

There was a custom then prevailing among actors, which exists nowhere now, except in some of the small towns in Germany. Thus, not very long ago, at Ischl, in Austria, I was surprised to see a very pretty actress enter my own room at the inn, and putting a play-bill into my hand, solicit my presence at her benefit. This was a common practice in the north of England till Tate Wilkinson put an end to it, as derogatory to the profession. The custom, however, had not been checked at the time and in the locality to which I have alluded. On the Christmas eve of the period in question, Lizzy Farren was herself engaged in distributing her bills, and asking patronage for her benefit, which was to take place on the following Twelfth Night. As appropriate to the occasion she had chosen Shakespeare’s comedy of that name, and was to play _Viola_, a part for which Younger, who loved her heartily, had given her especial instruction.

Miss Farren had not been very successful in her “touting.” She had been unlucky in the two families at whose houses she had ventured to knock. The first was that of an ex-proprietor of a religious periodical, who had a horror of the stage, but who had a so much greater horror of Romanism, that, like the Scottish clergy of the time, he would have gone every night to the play during Passion week, only to show his abhorrence of popery. This pious scoundrel had grown rich by swindling his editors and supporting any question which paid best. His household he kept for years, by inserting advertisements in his journal for which he was paid in kind. He was a slimy, sneaking, mendacious knave, who would have advocated atheism if he could have procured a dozen additional subscribers by it. His lady was the quintessence of vulgarity and malignity. She wore diamonds on her wig, venom in her heart, and very-much-abused English at the end of her tongue.

Poor Lizzy, rebuffed here, rang at the garden-gate of Mrs. Penury Beaugawg. She was a lady of sentiment who drank, a lady of simplicity who rouged, a lady of affected honesty who lived beyond her income, and toadied or bullied her relations into paying her debts. Mrs. Penury Beaugawg would have graciously accepted orders for a private box; but a patronage which cost her anything, was a vulgarity which her gentle and generous spirit could not comprehend.

Lizzy was standing dispirited in the road at the front of the house, when a horseman rode slowly up; and Lizzy, not at all abashed at practising an old but not agreeable custom, raised a bill to his hand as he came close to her, and solicited half-a-crown, the regular admission-price to the boxes.

“Lizzy!” cried the horseman, “you shall have such a house at Chester, as the old town has not seen since the night Garrick was here, and played _Richard_ and _Lord Chalkstone_.”

The equestrian was Mr. Burroughs, then in training for the bar, and as willing to help Miss Farren now as he was to aid her and her bowl of milk across the market-place at Salisbury. The incipient barrister kept his word. The Chester theatre was crammed to the ceiling; and, as Lizzy said, Mr. Burroughs was her Christmas angel, the thought of whom was always associated in her mind with plumbs, currants, holly----

“And mistletoe,” said the budding counsellor, with a look at which both laughed merrily and honestly.

On the Christmas eve of 1776, Miss Farren was seated in Colman’s parlor in London, looking at him while he read two letters of introduction; one from Burroughs, the other from Younger; and both in high praise of the young bearer, for whom they were especially written. My limits will only allow me to say that Lizzy was engaged for the next summer-season at the Haymarket, where she appeared on June 9, 1777, in “She Stoops to Conquer.” She was _Miss Hardcastle_, and Edwin made his first appearance in London with her, in the same piece. Colman would have brought out Henderson too, if he could have managed it. That dignified gentleman, however, insisted on reserving his _début_ for _Shylock_, on the 11th of the same month. And what a joyous season did Lizzy make of it for our then youthful grandfathers. How they admired her double talent in _Miss Hardcastle_! How ecstatic were they with her _Maria_, in the “Citizen!” How ravishedly did they listen to her _Rosetta_! How they laughed at her _Miss Tittup_, in “Bon Ton!” and how they extolled her playfulness and dignity as _Rosina_, of which she was the original representative, in the “Barber of Seville!” It may be remarked that Colman omitted the most comic scene in the piece, _that_ wherein the Count is disguised as a drunken trooper--as injurious to morality!

When, in the following year, she played Lady Townley, she was declared the first, and she was then almost the youngest of living actresses. And when she joined the Drury Lane company in the succeeding season, the principal parts were divided between herself, Miss Walpole, Miss P. Hopkins, and _Perdita_ Robinson. Not one of this body was then quite twenty years of age! Is not this a case wherein to exclaim--

“O mihi præteritos referat si Jupiter annos?”

Just twenty years did she adorn our stage; ultimately taking leave of it at Drury Lane, in April, 1797, in the character of Lady Teazle. Before that time, however, she had been prominent in the Christmas private plays at the Duke of Richmond’s, in which the Earl of Derby, Lord Henry Fitzgerald, and the Honorable Mrs. Dormer acted with her; and that rising barrister, Mr. Burroughs, looking constantly at the judicial bench as his own proper stage, was among the most admiring of the audience. It was there that was formed that attachment which ultimately made of her, a month after she had retired from the stage, Countess of Derby, and subsequently mother of a future countess, who still wears her coronet.

Not long after this period, and following on her presentation at Court, where she was received with marked kindly condescension by Queen Charlotte, the countess was walking in the marriage procession of the Princess Royal and the Duke of Wurtemberg; her foot caught in the carpeting, and she would have fallen to the ground, but for the ready arms, once more extended to support her, of Mr. Burroughs, now an eminent man indeed.

Many years had been added to the roll of time, when a carriage, containing a lady was on its way to Windsor. It suddenly came to a stop, by the breaking of an axle-tree. In the midst of the distress which ensued to the occupier, a second carriage approached, bearing a goodnatured-looking gentleman, who at once offered his services. The lady, recognising an old friend, accepted the offer with alacrity. As the two drove off together in the gentleman’s carriage toward Windsor, the owner of it remarked that he had almost expected to find her in distress on the road; for it was Christmas Eve, and he had been thinking of old times.

“How many years is it, my lady countess,” said he, “since I stood at my father’s shop-door in Salisbury, watching your perilous passage over the market-place, with a bowl of milk?”

“Not so long at all events,” she answered with a smile, “but that I recollect my poor father would have lost his breakfast, but for your assistance.”

“The time is not long for memory,” replied the Judge, “nor is Salisbury as far from Windsor as Dan from Beersheba; yet how wide the distance between the breakfast at the cage-door at Salisbury, and the Christmas dinner to which we are both proceeding, in the palace of the king!”

“The earl is already there,” added the countess, “and he will be happier than the king himself to welcome the legal knight who has done such willing service to the Lady of the Knight of the Bath.”

To those whose power and privilege it is to create such knights, we will now direct our attention, and see how kings themselves behaved in _their_ character as knights.

THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS.

FROM THE NORMANS TO THE STUARTS.

“Un roi abstrait n’est ni père, ni fils, ni frère, ni parent, ni chevalier, ami. Qu’est il donc? _Roi_, même quand il dort.”--DIDEROT.

If we judge some of our kings by the strict laws of chivalry, we shall find that they were but sorry knights after all. They may have been terrible in battle; but they were ill-mannerly in ladies’ bower.

William the Conqueror, for instance, had none of the tender sentiment of chivalry; in other words he showed little gentleness in his bearing toward women. It is said by Ingerius, that after Matilda of Flanders had refused his hand, on the ground that she would not have a bastard for a husband, he waylaid her as she was returning from mass in one of the streets of Bruges, dragged her out from among her ladies, pommelled her brutally, and finally rolled her in the mud. A little family difference arose in consequence; but as it was less bitter than family quarrels usually are, a reconciliation took place, and Matilda gave her hand to the knight who had so terribly bruised her with his arm. She loved him, she said, because he had shown more than the courage of common knights, by daring to beat her within sight of her father’s own palace. But all’s well that ends well; they were not only a handsome but a happy couple, and Matilda was head of the household at the Conqueror’s hearth. The general’s wife was _there_ the general.

How William bore himself in fight is too well known to need recapitulating here. He probably never knew fear but once, and that was at the sounds of a tumult in the street, which reached his ears as he was being crowned. Then, indeed, “’tis true this god did shake,” for the first and only time. His successor, who was knighted by Archbishop Lanfranc, was in the field as good a knight as he, and generous to an adversary, although he was never so to any mortal besides. But Rufus was nothing of a knight in his bearing toward ladies. His taste with regard to the fair sex was of the worst sort; and the court of this royal and reprobate bachelor was a reproach at once to kingship and knighthood, to Christianity and civilization. He had been accused, or rather the knights of his time and country, with having introduced into England the practice of a crime of which the real introducer, according to others, was that Prince William who was drowned so fortunately for England, on the sea between Calais and Dover. The chivalrous magnanimity of Rufus is exemplified in the circumstance of his having, in disguise, attacked a cavalier, from whom he received so sound a beating, that he was at length compelled to avow himself in order to induce his conqueror to spare his life. The terrified victor made an apology, in the very spirit of the French knight of the Holy Ghost to a dying cavalier of the Golden Spur, whom he had mortally wounded in mistake: “I beg a thousand pardons,” said the polite Frenchman, “but I really took you for somebody else.” So William’s vanquisher began to excuse himself for having nearly battered the king’s skull to a jelly, with his battle-axe, on the ground of his having been unacquainted with his rank. “Never heed the matter,” said the king, “you are a good fellow, and shall, henceforth, be a follower of mine.” Many similar instances might be cited. Further, Rufus was highly popular with all men-at-arms; the knights reverenced him as the very flower of chivalry, and I am glad that the opprobrium of having slain him in the New Forest no longer attaches itself to a knight, although I am sorry an attempt has been made to fix it upon the church. No one now believes that Sir Walter Tyrrel was the author of the crime, and chivalry is acquitted of the charge against one of its members of having slain the flaxen-haired but rubicund-nosed king.

Henry Beauclerc was more of a scholar than a knight, without, however, being so very much of the first. The English-born prince was far less chivalrous of spirit than his former brother Robert; that is, if not less brave, he was less generous, especially to a foe. When he was besieged on St. Michael’s Mount by Robert, and reduced to such straits that he was near dying of thirst, Robert supplied him with water; an act for which Rufus called the doer of it a fool; but as poor Robert nobly remarked, the quarrel between him and their brother was not of such importance that he should be made to perish of thirst. “We may have occasion,” said he, “for a brother hereafter; but where shall we find one, if we now destroy this?” Henry would hardly have imitated conduct so chivalrously generous. He was more knightly in love, and it is recorded to his honor, that he married Matilda, daughter of Malcolm, King of Scotland, for pure love, and not for “filthy lucre,” preferring to have her without a marriage portion, than to wait till one could be provided for her. This would have been praiseworthy enough had Henry not been, subsequently, like many other persons who marry in haste--for ever looking for pecuniary assistance from other resources than his own. He especially lacked too what was enjoined on every knight, a love of truth. His own promises were violated with alacrity, when the violation brought profit. He wanted, too, the common virtue of fidelity, which men of knightly rank were supposed to possess above all others. The fact that fifteen illegitimate children survived him, speaks little for his respect for either of his consorts, Matilda of Scotland, or Adelicia of Louvain. Generally speaking, however, the character of the royal scholar may be described in any terms, according to the view in which it is taken. With some historians, he is all virtue, with others all vice.

Stephen had more of the knightly character about him. He was an accomplished swordsman, and loved the sound of battle as became the spirit of the times, which considered the king as the first knight in the land. He had as little regard as Henry for a sense of justice when disposed to seize upon that to which he had no right, but he was incontestably brave, as he was indefensibly rash. Stephen received the spurs of knighthood from his uncle, Henry I., previous to the battle of Tinchebray; and in that fray he so bore himself as to show that he was worthy of the honor that had been conferred upon him. But Stephen was as faithless to his marriage vow as many other belted knights, and Matilda of Boulogne had to mourn over the faithlessness of one who had sworn to be faithful. It is said, too, of this king that he always went into battle terribly arrayed. This was in the spirit of those birds that raise their crests to affright their enemies.

Henry II., like his brother kings, we can only consider in his character of knight. In this character he is almost unexceptionable, which is more than can be said of him generally as king or as man. He was brave and generous, two chief characteristics of knighthood. He it was who abolished that burdensome and unprofitable feudal military service, which brought the barons or military tenants into the field, for forty days. The camp consequently abounded in unskilful and disorderly men. Henry accordingly introduced the practice of commuting their military service for money, by levying scutages from his baronies and knights-fees, or so much for every shield or bearer of it that _should_ attend but had purchased exemption.

Henry II., not only loved knightly practice himself, but he loved to see his sons exercising knight-errantry, and wandering about in disguise from court to court, displaying their prowess in tournaments, and carrying off prizes from all adversaries. To the stories of these adventures of his by no means exemplary sons he would listen with delight. He was himself, however, a sire who set but indifferent example to his children; and his two sons, of whom fair Rosamond was the mother, were brought up and educated with his children by Eleanor. He received much knightly service and true affection from his illegitimate children. William, Earl of Salisbury, is known by his chivalric surname of “Longsword,” but Geoffrey, Bishop of Lincoln, the second son of Henry and Rosamond, was not the less a knight for being a bishop before he was twenty. It was this prelate who, at the head of an armed force put down the first great northern insurrection. He was on his triumphant way back, at the head of one hundred and forty knights, when he was met by his royal sire, who embraced him warmly, exclaiming the while, “Thou alone art my legitimate son, the rest are all bastards.” That he himself could endure much was evinced when he submitted to correction at the shrine of Becket. He was flagellated by the prelates, abbots, bishop, and eighty monks; and the first refreshment he took after the long penance, was some water in which a portion of Becket’s blood was mingled. His claim to be considered chivalrous never suffered, in the mind of the church at least, because of this humiliating submission.

But in the dissensions which led to this humiliation, the church incurred perhaps more disgrace than the king. Nothing could possibly be more disgraceful than the conduct of the pope and the diplomacy of the Roman government throughout the continuation of the quarrel between Becket and the king. Double-dealing, atrocious deceit, and an unblushing disregard for truth, marked every act of him who was looked upon as the spiritual head of Christendom. Comparing Becket with the king, it is impossible to avoid coming to the conclusion that, in many of the requirements of knighthood, he was superior to the sovereign. His death, that is the way in which he met it, was sublime. Throughout the great quarrel, of which that death was a consequence, Becket never, like Henry, in his moments of defeat and discouragement, gave way to such impotent manifestations of rage as were shown by his royal antagonist. The latter forgot the dignity, not only of knight, but of manhood, when he was seen casting his cap violently to the earth, flinging away his belt, tearing his clothes from his body, and dragging the silk coverlet from his bed, on which, in presence of his captains, he rolled himself like a maniac, grasping the mattress in his mouth, and gnawing the wool and the horsehair which he drew out with his teeth.

Richard I. has a brilliant reputation as a knight, and if valor were the only virtue required, he would not be undeserving of the pre-eminence which is claimed for him. But this was his sole virtue. Of the other qualifications for, or qualities of chivalry, he knew nothing, or little cared for them. He was faithless in love; regardless of his pledged word; cruel, extravagant, dishonest; and not even always brave, when away from the clamor and excitements of war. But John lacked the one rough quality of Richard, and was not even brave--that is to say, he was not distinguishedly brave. When he stole away Isabella of Angoulême from her first lover, Sir Hugh de Lusignan, it was not done with the dashing gallantry of Young Lochinvar. John, in fact, was a shabby and recreant knight; and when stout Sir Hugh challenged him to single combat, because of his crime of abduction, John offered to accept it by deputy, and to fight also by deputy. Sir Hugh knew the craven prince thoroughly, and truly enough remarked that the deputy would be a mere assassin, and he would have nothing to do with either principal or representative. John kept the lady; and, if there be any persons curious to see how niggardly he kept her, they are referred to the duly-published chronicles wherein there are full details.

Henry III. was the most pacifically-minded of the kings of England who had hitherto reigned. He had little of the knight about him, except the courtesy, and he could occasionally forget even that. Devotion to the fair, too, may fairly be reckoned among his knightly qualities; but he lacked the crowning virtue of fidelity. He wooed many, was rejected by several, and jilted the few who believed in him. He exhibited, it must be allowed, a chivalrous generosity in at last marrying Eleanor of Castile, without dowry; but he was not the more true to her on that account. Mild as he was by nature, he was the especial favorite of the most warlike of the orders of knighthood--the Templars. They mourned for him when dead, as though he had been the very flower of chivalry, and the most approved master of their order. They buried him, too, with a pomp which must have drawn largely even on their well-lined purses, and the Knights of the Temple deposited the king in the tomb of the most pious of monarchs--Edward the Confessor. It is difficult to say why the Templars had such love for the weak king, for he was not an encourager of knightly associations and observations. At the same time he may be said to have lowered the estimation in which knighthood had been held, by making the honor itself cheap, and sometimes even less than that--unwelcome. Henry III. issued a writ in the twenty-ninth year of his reign, summoning tenants in chief to come and receive knighthood at his hands: and tenants of mesne lords to be knighted by whomsoever they pleased. It may be believed that this last permission was abused, for soon after this period “it became an established principle of our law that no subject can confer knighthood except by the king’s authority.” So says Hallam. The most extraordinary law or custom of this reign with respect to chivalry was, that any man who possessed an annual income of fifteen pounds derived from land, was to be _compelled_ to receive the honor of knighthood.