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YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

GLANCES BACK
THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS.

FKOM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN 1663

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GLANCES BACK

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL AND OTHER REMINISCENCES

By henry VIZETELLY,
CHEVALIER OP THE OBDEE OF FBAMZ-JOSEF,
AUTHOR OP "the STORY OP THE DIAMOND NECKLACE,"
'BERLIN UNDER THE NEW EMPIRE," "PARIS IN PEBIL," ETC.

' And sometimes I remember days of old
When fellowship was not so far to seek.
And all the world and I seemed much less cold,
And at the rainbow's foot lay surely gold,
And hope felt strong and life itself not weak."

IN TWO VOLUMES.
Vol. I.

LONDON:
KEGAN PAUL, TEENCH, TUtjBNER & CO., Ltd.
1893.

• Looking back along life's trodden way,
Gleams and greenness linger on the track ;
Distance melts and mellows all to-day,
Looking back.
' Rose and purple and a silvery grey,
Is that cloud the cloud we called so black ;
Evening harmonises all to-day,
Looking back."

The public will be the best judges whether the author of
the following pages was well or ill-advised by partial
friends to pen these rambling reminiscences of an active,
if not an exciting career, covering well-nigh three reigns.
The chapters that form a contribution to the history of
Pictorial journalism, and the recollections of Mr. Thackeray
and a few other notable men, French as well as English,
may possibly have a certain value, mixed up though they
be with notices of- men and things which the world, in its
peremptory way, has made up its mind to forget. Yet
readers, on the whole, may find the writer's reminder of
such matters not uninteresting, and the volumes generally
neither prosy nor dull. This is the utmost the writer
pretends to claim for them, and in this spirit he commends
the book to his brethren of the press.

Heatherlands, near Farnham,
September 1893.

CONTENTS OF VOL. L

(1820-30.)
WHEN GEORGE IV. WAS KING.
I am cockney born and christened by a future bishop — A well-feathered episcopal
nest — Only the old gentleman and himself in the secret — An ill-requited
patron — The rector gets the best of the bishop — Tradition respecting the first
Vizzetelli located in England — Journeymen printers' swords and silver buckles
— I live at Kennington with some superstitious grandparents — Charming away
warts — My lamented missionary friend — Political meetings on Kennington-
common — Unequal taxation and chronic distress — The Marchioness of Conyng-
ham's rapacity — Orator Hunt and his election for Preston — The Kennington-
common gibbet — A churoh erected on its site — Coach robbery by highwaymen
— Suburban footpads — ^ Whipping at the cart's tail — Midnight burial of suicides
— The last London stocks — The pillory in face of Newgate — The murder of
Mr. Weare — The pork-chop supper — The crime dramatized with the real horse
and gig on the stage — Manager Davidge — A story of a learned pig — Revival
of " Tom and Jerry " — The Charlies in for it again — Prize-flghting and bull
and badger baiting — The supposed pig-faced lady — My father's firm publish the
" Boy's own Book " — Its author, William Clarke, the firm's literary hack — •
" Three Courses and a, Dessert " — Cruikshank's clever illustrations — Some
sketches by Seymour require being written-up to — Clarke precluded from ac
cepting the job — Dickens undertakes the task, and "Pickwick" results — A
' ' Natural History " by Clarke and Harvey — Clarke's death and an unlooked-for
discovery — The London genuine tea company — Its saloon decorated by Stan
field and Eoberts — State lottery tickets and Gye the printer of them — He
gains a £30,000 prize — His unlucky wine company — Gye and partners buy
Vauxhall gardens — Ups and downs of the enterprise — Gye in Parliament — His
daughters aspire to marry peers — His estrangement from his eldest son — The
last days of the State lotteries — The St. George's day mail coach procession —
Fleet-street in the ' ' thirties " — The Monday hangings at Newgate — A barbar
ous criminal code — Peel's new police — Their unpopularity — The old Bow-street
runners' contempt for them — Some erratic members of the new force — Partial
transformation of London — The eighth wonder of the world — The nucleus of
the street of palaces — The fat Adonis of sixty-five in retirement — Eegent-
street and the reign of stucco — ^The king's mews and adjacent waste ground —
The national coUection of pictures — The Haymarket blocked with farmers' wag
gons — Chunee and the old Exeter-change — London street traffic as it was and is
— The fusty hackney coaches and their drunken jarvies — The first London
omnibuses — The tollgate nuisance — The gigman's little miseries in cold, rainy
weather — The river above and below bridge — Old London-bridge rapids — The
gibbets at Execution dock — The Deptford prison ship— The great bell of St.
Paul's announces George IV. 's death — Popular hopes of a brighter future —
What the clerk of the king's privy council thought of his master— The Duke oE

vill CONTENTS.

PAGE

York's backslidings — His pecuniary relations with his mistress — The so-called
" soldiers' friend "—The duke's French cook on his death — The newspapers
overlook the duke's failings, but rake up all George IV. 's misdeeds . 1-32
II.
(1830-35.)
SCHOOL DATS.
A prototype of Waokf ord Squeers — A classical and commercial academy in the old
days — Chislehurst mainly notable for its rural and sylvan beauty — Gates's
coach — Our head-master an old volunteer — His military appearance and bear
ing — A frequent change of ushers — The fat old "Jack of Clubs " — His wrongs
and his emphatic enunciation of them — His threatening peroration — Little
learning and less discipline — Food and liberty in abundance — The young lady
pupU'a youthful admirers — The pugilistic status of the boys — An Eton boy
kUled at a stand-up fight — An abortive prosecution — Half -holiday amusements
— Equestrian exercises — Nemesis in cords and gaiters — Bonfire preparations —
An unfortunate biU stroke — A ticklish enterprise — The "up-town" bonfire
surreptitiously kindled — An unsuccessful chase — Firing the furze — Anger of
Lord Sydney — The culprit makes tracks — A poaching stableman — Hares for
home — Stringent game laws — Man-traps and spring-guns — Severe punishments
for poachers — Our stableman is dismissed — He is tried for a suspected mur
der and is eventually transported — The burking scare — The ladies' night
escort — Body-snatching — Armed churchyard watchers — A resurrectionist's
single night's work — The Camden House murder — The perpetrator seeks to
cheat the gaUows — The footman in ghostly garb — The victims' monument in
Chislehurst churchyard — Scadbury, the birth-place of Lord Keeper Bacon —
'' Carotid artery cutting Castlereagh " — His purchase of the lethal penknife —
The dead statesman's ghost — Ineffaceable blood stains — The marquis perse
cuted by a gang of extortioners — Suicide of Earl Rivers — His fortune gambled
away — "You're always tying that confounded shoe of yours ! " — Hook's witti
cism — Peers at divine service — The ancient monuments in Chislehurst Church
— Noble lords gossip in the porch — Rude and perplexed schoolboys — Lord
Sydney's ancestor, ' ' Tommy Townsend " — Opposition to Reform — Chislehurst
cricket matches — Herbert Jenner's splendid wicket-keeping — A healing lotion
— Charles Harenc's bowling practice — A. Mynn's terrific overhanders — Little
LiUywhite and big Fuller Pilch — Mr WiUiam Ward's unprecedented score —
Light-hearted Sir St. Vincent Cotton — Chislehurst fair — Singlestick, wrestling,
and jingling in the ancient cockpit — Other rustic amusements — Fortune-
teUing gypsies — Forty years afterwards — A striking transformation — The
exiled French imperial family — Obsequious reception of them — Painful recol
lections of the Paris siege and Commune — The national disasters brought
about by imperial rule — The fallen emperor undeserving of homage , 3.3 5Q
III.
(1830-32.)
THE REFORM FRENZY AND THB RICK BURNINGS — RICHARD CARLILE 
SIR P. BURDETT — DANIEL O'CONNELL.
Political excitement foUowing on the death of George IV. — The French revolu
tion of 1830 — Mob orators' covert suggestions — Popularity of the sailor king
— It is suggested he is a mixture of the blackguard and the buffoon —Royal

CONTENTS. IX
PAGE
visit to the city abandoned — Hints of a formidable conspiracy — Alarmed
city shopkeepers — The Duke of Wellington's defensive preparations — The
corporation discuss the civic forces — The Lumber-troop — The mob urged to
settle "Peel's bloody gang" — Some cracked skuUs and a vision of cavalry
disconcert the rioters — Jeers and jibes for Lord Mayor Key — A west-end
jeweller's story — Her ladyship forestaUs his lordship — East-end roughs and
famished Spitalfields' weavers — The Temple gates closed — People entering
the city forced to shout for Reform — The roughs' bludgeons and police
truncheons come in contact — The gates of Temple Bar are shut — The crowd
driven battledore and shuttlecock fashion — The city marshal unhorsed — The
rabble reinforced — The poUce triumph — Net results of the fray — ^A political
lunatic's wiU — The first ricks burnt — Poaching and spirit-smuggling erroneously
supposed to ha,ve been the cause of them — The agricultural labourers' new
refrain — Threatening letters signed " Swing " — A jocular missive to the Eton
headmaster — The rick burnings attributed to some occult organisation — The
incendiaries remain undetected — Supposed mysterious methods by which the
fires were caused — Indiscriminate arrests during the panic — Doubtful con
victions and severe sentences — Prisoners get off through a lucky accident —
CarlHe the deistical bookseller — His novel way of selling an incriminated
"Swing" pamphlet — His personal appearance and pretended "caU" — His
long years of imprisonment and heavy pecuniary penalties — His consignment
to Dorchester jail — His wife and sister also imprisoned — His shopmen
sentenced in batches — One or two of them tum against him — CarUle's
opposition to church rates — He exhibits life-size effigies of a bishop and
old Nick — He is prosecuted for his " Swing " pamphlet and again imprisoned
— He writes to the Bishop of London and Sir R. Peel on church reform —
Cobbett's trial for libel — He gives no quarter to the whig government — The
jury acquit him — Hetherington twits CarlUe with making a profit by his
martyrdom — The Rotunda and the Iris scandal — The Eeform bill and the
rotten boroughs — The swagger about resorting to physical force — Parliament
dissolved and a general illumination — The mob attack Apsley House — "The
bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill ! " — Popular violence — .Joke
against the Marquis of Londonderry — Sir Walter Scott's death — A good look
at Charles Lamb — Tall Carus Wilson's feat — The Bristol riots and firing of the
city — Sir C. Wetherell's pig-headed obstinacy — Recourse to drastic measures
recommended by mob orators — Alarm caused by the cholera — Mrs Partington's
attempted exploit — The Irish crossing-sweeper's panacea for poverty — A
Reform meeting at the Crown and Anchor — Sir F. Burdett and Daniel
¦O'ConneU — The Liberator's appearance and winning manner — "The honour
of ould Oireland ! " — O'Connell's pet style of oratory — His abuse of Lord
Alvanley — Duel between the peer and the Liberator's son — Alvanley's joke
with the hackney coachman — Sydney Smith's chaff of " dear Daniel " — The
Duke of WeUington attacked in the city — He is assailed by roughs in Hyde
Park— The fickle multitude speedily veer round— The duke meets with general
respect— The bullet proof shutters of Apsley House continue closed . 57-84
IV.
(1832-36.)
THE FLOOD OF PENNY LITERATURE — THE UNSTAMPED PRESS —
POPULAR PREACHERS AND ACTORS.
The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge— The " Penny and Saturday
Magazines "—" The Mirror "—Limbird, its proprietor, and John Timbs, its

X CONTENTS. PAGE
editor — Timbs's unamiable nature — His captious criticisms — His fondness for
contradiction— His mania for " snippets " — His paste and scissors volumes —
The popular picture galleries — The umbrella printsellers — Tegg's reprints of
standard works — His short way of limiting a volume's size — An avalanche of
penny publications — The " Poor Man's Guardian " — " Established contrary to
law" — Its levelling doctrines — Hetherington summoned to Bow-street — He
declines the magisterial invitation and goes out of town — The "runners" on
his track — He escapes through a window — His subsequent arrest and incar
ceration — Responsible newsagents imprisoned for selling "the Guardian" —
Ruses to evade the officials — The paper sent to the provinces hidden among
tea, boots, and haberdashery — Newsmen secrete copies on their persons —
Hetherington's stratagems to avoid re-arrest — He disguises himself as a quaker
— He is captured and tried before Lord Lyndhurst — Is acquitted and
triumphant — The newspaper stamp reduced to a penny — Hetherington again
imprisoned for seUing a forbidden book — He retaliates by prosecuting Moxon
for selling Shelley's "Queen Mab" — The poets' publisher is found guilty —
The Houses of Parliament burnt down— -EeooUections of Irving and the
unknown tongue — ^Eowland Hill's oddities of manner — W. J. Pox's eloquent
and logical discourses — His failure in parliament — The Eev. E. Taylor at the
Areopagus — His foppish get up and theatrical manner at the Eotunda — The
Ulustrious singer and the pot of porter legend — Charles Kemble — Macready's
jerky elocution and stilted mannerism — Listen on and off the stage — A troupe
of stage beauties — My boyish admiration of T. P. Cooke and of Jack Eeeve's
unconscious humour — 0. Smith with red and blue fire accompaniments —
" Jump Jim Crow !" turns the town crazy .... 85-101

(1834-36.)
SONGS AND SLANG PHRASES — GEORGE CRUIKSHANK AND THE " COMIC
almanack" — DEBTORS' PRISONS AND DEAR LAW — SALARIES
AND SINECURES — SIXTY TEARS AGO.
Namby-pamby lyrics — Butterfly Bayly's mawkish inanities — Alphabet Bayley's
imbecUe imitations — Vulgar slang phrases — Untaxed almanacks for the hat
the handkerchief, the prayer-book, and the waistcoat pocket — The " Comio
Almanack" — My father edits it under the cognomen of Eigdum Funnidos 
A letter on a lost article from the poet Campbell — George Cruikshank's
almanack etchings — A lucky political prophecy — Cruikshank somewhat of a,
fop — His mania for introducing himself into his designs — His etching of
Pagin in the condemned cell — His ambition to shine in high art — He becomes
a slave to convivial indulgence— His nights of debauch and painful morrow-
mornings — TUt's passion for amassing money — His large profits from French
lithographs — He selects a successor — A valuation and an unexpected proposal
— Tilt's great command of ready cash — His bold advance on a weU-known
copyright — Inmates of the Fleet and King's Bench prisons — Power of debtors
to pile up law expenses — Ridiculous nature of certain legal proceedings 
Policeman X.'s indignation — Exorbitant legal salaries and absurd sinecure
offices — Samples of some held by the fair sex — ^The simple habits and tastes of
past times — ^Wine a rarity — Travelling dear and uncomfortable — Town locomo
tion expensive — Long working hours the rule — A paucity of letters and news
papers — Only few theatres — No music halls or society journals — Plenty of
handsome women, but no professional beauties — Cattle trucks for third-class

CONTENTS. XI
PAGE
railway passengers — The steam gun — Flogging in the services — Extravagant
fashions— Heavy postage of letters— Dando the oyster eater— St. Johu Long
the ladies' rubber — Joseph Ady's offer of something to one's advantage — Ikey
Solomons, the jew " fence "—Sir Andrew Agnew's agony biU . . 102-118
VI.
(1835-37.)
EARLY PENCIL AND GRAVER WORK — THB FRASER FRACAS — A PHENOM
ENAL SNOWSTORM — IN THB ISLE OF WIGHT AND AT STONBHENGE.
-After slightly studying drawing I am apprenticed to a wood-engraver —
Bonner's two clever pupUs — W. J. Linton's political sympathies— His rank as
a wood-engraver — Long working hours — My first attempts with the graver —
— ^An unmethodical course of reading — Forbidden books — A victim to political
bigotry — Shelley's "Queen Mab" — London-bridge in the "thirties" — Pogle
fakers — The stolen handkerchief mart in Field-lane — The first London gin
palace — ^A low counter for juvenile tipplers — The "Pickwick" excitement —
Bonner is attacked with brain fever — A blood-letting physician has him
cupped — He dies, as had been predicted — Kentish rambles — Grantley Berke
ley's assault on Fraser the publisher — "Berkeley Castle," and Maginn's
slashing review of it — Craven Berkeley on guard while Grantley unmercifully
belabours his victim — Grantley's duel with Maginn — Maginn justifies himself
in " Fraser " — He is assailed with BUlingsgate abuse — He declines to fight the
Berkeley family — Fraser brings an action claiming £6000 — He gets only £100,
and escapes proceedings for libel — L. E. L. complains of Maginn's too ardent
addresses — She styles Grantley Berkeley the Bayard of the age — My recollec
tion of L. E. L. — I found her far from pretty, and dowdUy dressed — Maginn
brought low by debt and drink — Alaric Watts' rhymes upon him — Thackeray's
supposititious loan to him — Thackeray's own hints as to how he got rid of his
fortune — The severe snowstorm of 1836 — The mails have to be dug out —
Coasting vessels employed to carry letters— Cooking's fatal parachute descent
— His dead body is made a show of — The Greenacre engravings in the
" Weekly Chronicle " — I start on a pedestrian excursion — To Portsmouth by
night luggage van — Sandown, Shanklin, Ventnor, aud Freshwater nearly sixty
years ago — The wax-candle impost — Stonehenge during a storm — A shepherd
who had 'passed his life on Salisbury plain — His ignorance of the reigning
sovereign's name, what year it was, and his own age — Had heard of Captain
Swing, but never of Eeform — A welcome unlooked-for arrival — A picnic within
the druidical circle ........ 119-133
VII.
(1837-38.)
SOME STRUGGLING ARTISTS —DOUGLAS JERROLD — ANNUALS AND OTHER
GIFT BOOKS — DIAMOND CUT DIAMOND.
I become a pupil of Orrin Smith's — Kenny Meadows's drawings for "Bell's
life " — Chatfield a pupil and pecuniary victim of Haydon, the painter — His
last picture — Deaf old Thomas Landseer — His mania for depicting men as
monkeys — His pretty and garrulous wife — Leech senior's disastrous table d'h6te
— John Leech, Percival Leigh, and Albert Smith, medical students together —
Leech abandons medicine, and takes to humorous drawing — He obtains a foot-

Xll CONTENTS. PAGK
ing in " BeU's Life " — His clever Parisian types — His good looks and interest
ing air of melancholy — His contempt for the chartists — His reserved manners —
His morbid aversion to noise — His unlucky quest of countiy quiet — An artist
in dread of bailiflfs — Douglas Jerrold's striking appearance — His continuous
flow of wit — His inability to bridle his tongue — Establishing tavern clubs with
epigrammatic names his hobby — Jerrold's plays — His " Men of Character " and
pithy newspaper comments — He joins the navy when a lad — Quits it to set up
type — He is given a theatrical criticism of his own to compose — Abandons print
ing to write for the stage — Drudgery at the Coburg — He takes service under
EUiston at the Surrey — Wonderful success of " Black-eyed Susan " — Elliston's
advice to the author — The Surrey manager's bibulous propensities — The best
time to caU on him — "Black-eyed Susan" becomes the rage in the West —
Jerrold on the stage with Dickens's amateur troupe — His carefuUy studied Master
Stephen — Lord Melbourne's candid criticism — Laman Blanohard's neglect by
the whigs — Harrison Ainsworth a bit of a fop — Astounding popularity of his
Newgate novel — The " Annual " craze — The royal revenues yielded by these
books — Large sum offered to T. Moore for a poem — A marvellous drawing on
wood by Meissonier — Its great value at the present day — A Meissonier sketch
on a photographer's panel — Lawsuit between the members of my father's
firm — George Lewis's legal story — A London tradesman is sued for a fictitious
debt — His solicitor advises a plea of payment, and instructs his client as to the
evidence to be caUed — A dinner is given at wliich the pretended debt is dis
charged — The guests are all called as witnesses of the payment — Their
evidence is unshaken on cross-examination — The defendant obtains an easy
verdict — Another legal story — The doyen of the Savage club — A large and
very bright brass door-plate — Mr. BoUow is served with a writ — " Not within
at present " — £10,000 claimed for maiming the plaintiff — Mr. BoUow is referred
to plaintiff's " sliss'er " — No trial — Costs wiped off by insolvency — New notice
of trial — Plaintiff compromised with — Mr. Bollow's bright brass plate costs
him £150  134-151
VIII.
(1838-40.)
" HEADS OF THE PEOPLE " AND " ILLUSTRATED SHAKSPERE "  THE QUEEN'S
CORONATION — " ORION " HORNE — SOME PRIVATE THEATRICALS —
CLARKSON STANFIELD AND CAPTAIN MARRYAT.
Death of my father — My eldest brother starts in business as a printer — Kenny
Meadows's ambition gratified — His typical " Heads of the People " — The
"IUustrated Shakspere" — W. B. Scott's modest estimate of himself — Mead
ows's graceful and epigrammatic fancy — Peace typified by a butterfly flutter
ing at the mouth of a cannon — The artist's weak and puny frame — His con
vivial habits — He receives a government pension — His patriarchal old age 
I make preliminary sketches in reference to the queen's coronation — Vincent
Dowling — He disarms the assassin of Spencer Percival — His scheme of a new
police force — His "Fistiana" — He takes Gavarni under his protection to a
prize fight — Respect shown him by the rogues and roughs at the railway
station — Dowling's watch mistakenly purloined and restored with apologies 
A characteristic letter from the great duke — I make coronation sketches at
Westminster Abbey, the royal stables, and various official departments — ^A
drawing of the procession twelve feet long — The day of the coronation — The
beau monde in Court dress thread their way through the crowd — Old Marshal

CONTENTS. XUl PAGE
Soult and the Conde state coach — His reception outside and inside the abbey
— Prince Bsterhazy's traditional diamonds — Home's "Life of Napoleon" —
His farthing edition of "Orion" — His anecdote of "Athenseum" Dilke — He
emigrates to Australia and becomes head of the mounted police — His dread
of damp feet — David Eoberts fresh from the Holy Land — A contemplated life
of Nelson illustrated by Clarkson Stanfield — Difficulties encountered by
Stanfield in drawing upon wood — Captain Marryat's " Poor Jack " — Orrin
Smith's stage-struck pupils — Carpenter, the radical — His "Peerage for the
People" — His son at some private theatricals — A party in a stage box — A
colossal wreath of vegetables — Misplaced comments and applause — The
wreath is flung to Othello — Our box is attacked — We retreat to the stage — I
clamber between the ceiling and the roof — The former gives way aud I
dangle suspended over the pit — Shouts and screams below — We are mulcted
of a money penalty — Young Carpenter enlists — He shoots his superior officer
in India, and is condemned to death — I am released from my engagement
with Orrin Smith — Stanfield's quiet manners — His passion for the picturesque
— Exaggeration the rule in most of Roberts's works — A sketching club —
Captain Marryat's quarter-deck style— Campbell suggests he has the flogging
propensities of his planter ancestors — Marryat's West Indian stories and
naval anecdotes — A contemplated co-operative "London Charivari" — Leech
makes designs for it — Thackeray dreads a partnership — The scheme coUapses
— Henry Mayhew subsequently revives it, and ' ' Punch " results . 152-167

IX.
(1839-43.)
RIBALD NEWSPAPERS AND THEIR EDITORS — PENNY POSTAGE — THE EGLINTON
TOURNAMENT — A SHERIDAN ROLAND FOR THB SHUCKBOROUGH OLIVER.
Eenton Nicholson's "Town"— Its illustrator, Archibald Henning — Nicholson's
squabble with Barnard Gregory— He is committed for trial for publishing
"the Town" — He poses as the champion of moral purity, and appeals to his
readers for funds for his defence — Gregory gets quodded and Nicholson
escapes — Imitations of "the Town" — The nauseous "Judge and Jury
society " — Jerrold's cutting jest — The chief baron and his court — Night
haunts of men about town — " The Finish," a resort of the rowdy marquis and
his companions — The Cyder CeUar aud some of its habitues, Person, Maginn,
Thackeray, Albert Smith— " The Age " and its editor, Charles Molloy West-
macott— His obscure origin— His "English Spy "— Maolise's portrait and the
symbolic dog-whip— Westmacott pommelled by Charles Kemble and the
dropped police proceedings — The strapping Irishman in waiting ou incon
venient caUers — Barnard Gregory's "Satirist" — Its attacks on Queen
Adelaide and the Duke of Cumberland— Gregory's good dinners attract
capital company— His histrionic abilities and efliorts to display them in public
— He appears as Hamlet and is hooted down — He indicts the Duke of Bruns
wick and others for conspiracy — He fails, and the duke retaliates — Gregory is
convicted and goes into hiding— He is advertised for in unflattering terms —
He is captured in a cupboard and lodged and boarded in Newgate — The
origin of the "John Bull"— Ita rapid success— Hook's anxiety to conceal his
connection with it — Its corpulent proprietor, Shackell — Hook's visits to
aristocratic country houses — ShackeU dances attendance on him with proofs
and rolls of bank-notes — Hook's superstitious nature — His pretended en
counter with the Plying Dutchman off the Cape— His visions of lucky lottery

XIV CONTENTS. PAGE
numbers in the embers of his grate— I meet Hook at ShackeU's— The former
much courted wit " done up in purse, in mind, and body, too, at last " —
Engravers' petition in favour of penny postage — Marvellous effects of the
change— The abuse of franks— Sydney Smith's croak— The Mulready envelope
and the ridicule it met with — Sergeant Talfourd's copyright biU and Dickens's
forecast of the benefits that would result — The EgUnton tournament pre
parations — The dripping banners and the drenched and dejected knights and
squires — The king of the tournament and his gingham — The feeble jousts and
feebler jokes of the official jester — The Queen of Beauty commends the victor
— The Lord of the Tournament has to pay the piper — Louis Napoleon combats
and dances — The Queen of Beauty's correspondence with Lady Shuckborough
— Lady S.'s professed cook and pert housekeeper — The little Shuckboroughs'
turnip heads and cauliflower wigs — Couch not Pouch's cutting sarcasm . 168-187

X.
(1839-41.)
A DERBYSHIRE EXCURSION — SMUGGLING SIXTY TEARS AGO — ILLUS
TRATED BOOKS — BYRON'S JOHN MURRAY AND THE LONGMANS.
sketching trip through Derbyshire — Nelson's birthplace — Asleep on the box
seat of a night coach — Belvoir Castle and Nottingham "lambs" — My com
panion and I meet at Chesterfield — We scale the Great Tor ridge at Matlock- —
An unforeseen obstacle — A moment of imminent peril — ^We reach the summit
at last — Recent chartist outbreaks — "Hang 'em up for scarecrows!" — Ark-
wright's colossal fortune — His quarrel with his son — The Peak cavern show —
The Castleton wake — Derbyshire songs — In search of Kinder Scout — Our wild-
goose chase — We lose our way in the rain and darkness — A prospective night
on the bleak moor — ^We escape this mishap and return to London — A
suggested smuggling transaction — A night expedition to some wrecks on the
Goodwins— Young railway surveyors secure Whitstable damsels' dowries — A
hitch — Smugglers land kegs of hoUands in broad daylight at St Leonards — A
preventive man brutaUy assaulted — Fishermen-smugglers at Hastings — A
fight with the coastguard — A cargo of spirits beached at Worthing—
Desperate encounter with revenue officers — A pleasure yacht peppered to
make it lie to — How the heavy duty on kid gloves was ingeniously avoided —
Nollekens' artifice for defrauding the revenue — The daring Kentish knockers
— Smuggling by private yachts at the present day — The illuminated edition
of Lockhart's "Spanish ballads" — Owen Jones — His grand work on the
Alhambra produced under difficulties and at great loss — He is heavily taxed
for its production — " They manage these matters better in France" — A visit
from Byron's "my Murray" — I dine with some literary Titans in Albemarle-
street — Sir Francis Head — Imitation the sincerest form of flattery — The Duke
of Wellington's surprize at never being mistaken for Jones, R.A. — Some en
gravings for the Etching club's "Thomson's Seasons" — A dinner at Mr
Thomas Longman's — Jordan's smart joke about "the Wits' MisceUany" —
The artists prove prosy and Jordan's jests laboured — Bellingham's arrest —
The slashing of Sir John Soane's portrait — Hawthorne finds Jordan "time-
worn but not venerable " — Thomas Norton Longman's rigid exaction of
respect — I encounter Charles Dickens at Longmans' after his split with
Chapman & Hall— My first trip abroad — I do the grand gothic edifices and
art galleries of Belgium, and the ' ' castled Ehine " . . .186-204

CONTENTS. XV
XI.
(1841-43.)
alfred bunn and alfred crowquill — f. w. n. bayley and gilbert
a'beckbtt. PAGn
VauxhaU gardens during the " thirties "—An unfortunate acrobat— Ascent of
Green's great baUoon — Alfred Buun assumes the management of the gardens
— "Vauxhall papers " by Bunn and CrowquUl — The inevitable dinner to talk
over the scheme — CrowquiU's cheery manners and indifferent designs — We
dine in Bunn's bedroom — Our host brims over with anecdote and story — ^The
Macready assault and what it cost the tragedian — Some early rhymes by
Thackeray ou manager Bunn — The unwiUing danoe of a master of the cere
monies— "ShaU the Poet Bunn have a statue?" — His smart "Word with
Punch '' effectually sUences the aggressive hunchback — Thackeray supplants
Bayley on the "National Standard" — Colbourn's literary puffs — Bayley's
rhymes upon them — Colbourn retires and reappears as a publisher — Bayley's
newspaper poems on popular pictures — He subsides into the position of fashion
able reporter on the "Post " — His Chelsea fete alfresco — He outruns the con
stable — He is cleverly trapped and captured by one of Slowman's assistants —
His personal appearance and seedy fashionable get-up — How he wrote "Blue
beard," a comic nursery tale — Little Red Eiding Hood's lacking moral —
Gilbert a' Beckett's ready pen and retiring manners — His ' ' Figaro in London "
— He quarrels with Seymour, his illustrator, and abuses him in print — The
artist quietly retaliates with a crushing caricature, the death of A' Beckett —
A string of abortive cheap publications — A' Beckett's work in other directions
— He is appointed an assistant poor-law commissioner — Is engaged as leader-
writer on " the Times " — Secures the post of police magistrate . 205-220
XII.
(1842.)
THE ORIGIN OF THE " ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS " — RECOLLECTIONS
OF INGRAM, MARRIOTT, AND BAYLEY.
A portrait of Old Parr commissioned by Ingram and Cooke — Illustrations for
Parr's life — I am engaged by Marriott on a new publication — Ingram proves
to be its proprietor — His unprepossessing appearance, frank manners, and
slovenly style of dress — He is grossly flattered in the published portraits — A
stoppage of the supply of Morison's piUs — Their place supplied by Old Parr's
— Great success of the fraudulent nostrum — A dinner at the Cock — Ingram
develops his scheme, which proves to be an iUustrated criminal record — I
suggest a wider range and less objectionable choice of subject — I embody my
ideas in a prospectus, which is adopted — Ingram, infiuenced by his family,
dreads the possible pecuniary loss — The Cock port wine inspires him with new
courage — The paper is announced, and engravings are prepared — F. W. N.
Bayley suggested for editor — He is introduced to Ingram and Marriott — His
reasons for desiring a blow on the river — A dinner ordered by Bayley at the
Star and Garter — The mauvais quart d'heure after a jolly evening — Ingram's
last half-crown spumed by a Richmond boatman — Bayley secures it and is
driven south, while Ingram and Marriott trudge northwards on foot — The
queen's fancy dress ball — Gilbert's facile and imaginative pencil — Difficulties
under which the early news iUustrations were produced — The Hamburg con
flagration — My reply to Lady Watkin respecting Ingram's so-caUed social and

XVI CONTENTS. PAGE
moral aspirations — City men scan the newspaper on their way homewards
— ^Ingram hankers after his ideal newspaper, and publishes a portrait of Good
the murderer — The " Illustrated London News "' a success from the outset —
Mark Lemon's fable about the weeping Ingram famUy — Bayley fails to fly a
"kite" — Ingram's characteristic action — Marriott's multifarious schemes —
— The division of the spoU at the " Chat" office — Marriott' opens a bank
at San Francisco — He founds the " News Letter," and starts a company for
launching navigable balloons ..... 221-241
XIII.(1843.)
THE " PICTORIAL TIMES " — HER MAJESTY'S PRINTER — SOME MEMBERS
OF MY STAFF — JOHN BRIGHT — CHAM, THE CARICATURIST.
I start an illustrated paper in conjunction with the queen's printer — Mr. Andrew
Spottiswoode and his relations with the anti-0'ConneUite political association
— Interchange of courtesies between Sir Francis Burdett and the Liberator — ¦
Disraeli's maiden speech — His bizarre get-up — ^He is cheered by Sir Robert
Peel — His famous prophecy and Monckton MUnes's endorsement of it — The
" Pictorial Times " literary team — Jerrold, Thackeray, A' Beckett, Mark
Lemon, Peter Cunningham, and Knight Hunt — Hunt's former diversified
career — He is duped by P. W. N. Bayley — I engage him as sub-editor — I
subsequently recommend him to W. H. Wflls — He becomes editor of the
" DaUy News," and dies in harness — I introduce Douglas Jerrold, the agres-
sive radical, to Andrew Spottiswoode, the orange tory— Their mutual urban
ity — I interview Thackeray in an attic in Jermyn-street, and engage him as a
contributor — His letters on art-unions — His notices of the academy and
other picture exhibitions — His reviews of Macaulay's " Essays " and Dis
raeli's "Coningsby" — With Mr. John Gilbert at a Drawing-room at St.
James's — The Duke of WeUington, Lord Lyndhurst, and Sir Felix Booth —
Charles Martin's literary portraits — John Martin, the painter — His grand
Thames embankment scheme — The incendiary of York minster — A doll dances
by electricity — Yoimg Martin's pleasant saunter through life — An impecunious
marquis cashes up — The flunkeys' anticipated gratuity — Peter Cunningham's
early industry and enthusiasm — His predelictions for Uterature and art — His
bonhomie and anecdotal store — His unhappy failings — His life down hUl with
other castaways — They hob-nob with Charles Dickens's hermit — They drop off
one by one pitied and lamented — John Bright's chUdish vanity — Cham's cari
cature of the queen and Prince Albert — His ready and rapid pencil . 242-261
XIV.
(1843-46.)
THE CHEVALIER WIKOFF AND HIS CAPTURE OF AN HEIRESS — THE TAHI-
TAN DILEMMA — TOM THUMB AND HAYDON THE PAINTER — JERROLD's
SUCCESS WITH THE DEMOCRACY — MY CHANCERY EXPERI
ENCE — FORGERIES OF ROUBLE NOTES.
A visit from the Chevalier Wikoff — His relations with Fanny EUsler  His con
templated illustrated newspaper in the States — I facilitate the enterprise and
his appreciation of my services — His boastful Yankee talk — He is nonplussed
by summary process — He hoodwinks Lord Palmerston — He scents an English
heiress — Hastens to propose marriage to Miss Gamble, and is promptly

CONTENTS. XVII PAGE
rejected — He tracks her over the Continent — She again repels his advances —
He chases her to Turin — Plots to get her into his power — Extorts a written
promise of marriage from her — An exciting scene between the pair — The
lady is eventually set at liberty — The chevalier and his accomplices ai-e
arrested — He is sentenced to fifteen months' imprisonment — On his release
he hastens to Paris — Meets with a rebuff and proceeds to London— Seeks com
pensation from his victim for the loss of her hand and fortune — Has the
audacity to publish "My courtship and its consequences" — My rambles
about Kent — Songs by the Down peasants — The expulsion of Consul Pritchard
from Tahiti — I secure later Tahitian news from a whaler — "The Times"
publishes it in leaded type — Mr Delano's midnight anxiety — A supper with
the Ojibbeways — Their reckless flourishes with the cutlery — I come across
Tom Thumb and Barnum at St. James's Palace — The pigmy's indignation at
being dandled on a lady's knee — Haydon the painter and his scheme for
decorating the Parliament palace — His excessive vanity — Macaulay's onslaught
on him — Scanty attendance at the artist's Egyptian HaU exhibition — The
crowds that rush to see Tom Thumb — Haydon's despair and suicide — George
Cruikshank on the Tom Thumb mania — The public indifference to Cruik
shank's "Triumph of Bacchus" — A solitary spectator at a dioramic exhibition —
He speculates how the lecturer will address him — He is relieved from his
embarrassment — Jerrold's justification of short letters — His newspaper and
its collapse — He edits " Lloyd's Weekly News," and largely increases its sale
— ^Lloyd amasses a fortune of more than half a miUion — " The pens that break
the sceptres" — Jerrold's joke about Lloyd's wines — A suit in chancery— The
lawyers divide the toothsome oyster — Polish Jews entrapped to forge
Eussian notes — Troublesome subjects got rid of — Collisions at sea — How
counsel secured a verdict ...... 262-280
XV.
(1844-48.)
MY RECOLLECTIONS OF W. M. THACKERAY — A RISE AND FALL DURING
THB RAILWAY MANIA — A NOTABLE CHARLATAN. .
The first publication of Hood's "Bridge of Sighs" — Suggested posting of a de
faulter on the Great Pyramid — A puzzling passage for future commentators —
Carlyle's customary displeasure — M. A. Titmarsh's artistic criticisms — The
manuscript and sketches of the early chapters of " Vanity Fair" — The work
snapped up by Bradbury & Evans — The fable of its being hawked round the
trade — I am invited by Thackeray to a Cham breakfast — Cham as a raconteur
— His stories last through the afternoon — Thackeray a witty commentator,
but not a brUUant talker — His equable temper and sensitive disposition —
His good-natured envy of Dickens — His commendation of Dickens's power
of pathos — His hunger for women's admiration — His seeming jealousy
of Jerrold's " Punch " influence — His high opinion of Leech and
Doyle's work — He excuses praising Leech in "the Quarterly" — Thackeray
and Jerrold's opinions of each other — Lord Carlisle's duU dinner party
— ^With Thackeray at the D'Orsay maisonette — The noveUst'a partiality
for young men's society — In favour of clean linen — The railway mania
and the ragged capitalists — An indigent and bereaved applicant for scrip
— A lucky turn of Fortune's wheel — Temporary affluence foUowed by per
manent ruin — EaUway schemers and their modus operandi — Alexis Soyer
— ^His wife's monument turned to profitable account — His little luncheons at
the Eeform — His Gore House symposium and its Salaesque staircase — He gives
culinary lessons to half-starved soldiers in the Crimea, and presides over soup
kitchens for the famished Irish , . . 281-301

XVlll CONTENTS. XVI.
(1845-48.)
Disraeli's friendly overtures to "punch" — samubl carter hall
and jenny lind — two working-men poets — high jinks
at cambridge — albert smith. PAGE
A printers' pension dinner — Disraeli's advances to Leech — The health of Mr. Punch
— Disraeli's magnanimity — His wife's idolatry of him — A Pecksniffian art critic
—The Jenny Lind crush at Her Majesty's and at the Eosery— "Which of you
two is the other?" — Good-natured, dapper Sam Lover — MUler, the basket-
maker poet — Is patronised by Lady Blessington and befriended by Eogers —
His fitness for an itinerant preacher — Thomas Cooper the chartist — His pain
ful jaU experiences — His petition to the House of Commons — High jinks at
Cambridge — Dr Whewell's courtesy — Reception of the great duke— A portly
beau and a sneering bishop — Lord Bacon's statue — Ineffectual struggle of
church dignitaries — Alone in Trinity coUege hall — The mistress of the robes
smartens up the queen — Merriment of the royal couple when the chan
cellor advances bowing — The public orator's address — Albert Smith — His
dingy Percy-street " diggings " and its crowd of trumpery curios — The
wonderful success of " the Gent " — Thackeray's " Esmond " — His dislike of and
contempt for Albert Smith — "Talent and tac'" — Jerrold's witty rebuff — A
threat of personal chastisement — The ascent of Mont Blanc — The Chamounix
rumour how the last stage was accomplished — A Uthographic circular for
impecunious friends — The grim jest of Smith's will . . . 302-322

XVII.(1848.)
" PASQUIN " AND THE " PUPPET SHOW " — JENKINS OP THE " POST "-
JAMES HANNAY — THE CHARTISTS AND THB SPECIAL CONSTABLE
CRAZE — HARE-BRAINED WILLIAM NORTH — GAVARNI —
A MASTERSTROKE IN WORTHLESS PAPER.
Imitations of "Punch" — The "Puppet Show ''-^"Pasquin'' and ex-midshipman
Hannay and Sutherland Edwards — Hannay's onslaughts on Jenkins of the
"Post" — Jenkins at Apsley House — He takes his revenge on Thackeray —
His little slip in French at u Paris dinner — He surreptitiously accompanies
Prince Albert in the royal yacht — He is tumbled into a boat at the stern and
landed in the mud — Hannay assails " the mudlark" in "Pasquin" — Hannay's
passion for spouting — He talks down the young lawyers at the old Cheshire
Cheese — Blood and culture his idolatry — Grape shot for agitators — Hannay's
admiration for Carlyle — I accompany him to Cheyne-row — Literary men rated
for making shows of themselves — The " Puppet Show " prospectus and its
staff — Unbounded confidence of its juvenile contributors — Their attacks on
the "eminent writers" of "Punch" — The special constable craze — The
chartists on Kennington common and their petition — " Burly Balderdash "
— ^A gentleman in blue acts as a damper on their proceedings — The petition
conveyed to the House in a cab — Ernest Jones's prison wail — The wholesale
transportation of crazy Cuffey and his fellow-conspirators — William North
and his diatribes against society — He goes to arouse the Young World at
New York — Is received with derision, and puts a bullet in his brain — Gavarni

CONTENTS. XIX PAGE
arrives in England — He declines all friendly advances — His sketches for
"Gavarni in London," and partiaUty for coal heavers — His fondness for roast
mutton and English porter — A pleasant night in a Paris restaurant leads to a
long and disagreeable sojourn in Clichy — Gavarni's scientific hobbies — He dies
a confirmed misanthrope — French attempts to bribe the English press — Un
successful efforts to buy up Louis Napoleon's acceptances — Achille Fould fore
stalls the operation — Ingram starts ' ' the Telegraph " newspaper on economical
lines — He ascribes its failure to the editor's foreign vocabulary . . 323-342
XVIII.
(1849-52.)
A FICTITIOUS GOLDFINDER'S DIARY — MULREADY, R.A. — MYSTIFICATION OF
A MANAGER — IN THE PRINTING AND PUBLISHING MILL — A MILITARY
NIGHT SEARCH— MY CONNECTION WITH " UNCLE TOM'S CABIN."
A successful literary fraud — " Pour Months among the Goldfinders " — The book is
welcomed by the trade and extoUed by the reviewers — "The Quarterly"
quotes it against the advocates for Sunday postal labour — Captain Sutter
indignantly repudiates a fictitious scar — Mulready the painter — His recluse
life at Bayswater — His former pugUistio prowess — He arrests an armed foot
pad — His unfortunate early marriage — His complaints against the Chalons
and other academicians — Inferiority of his early work — Mendoza's consolatory
remark — A royal academy dinner — Note from Mr. Thackeray — G. H. Lewes's
mystification of manager Webster — The ugliest man in London — A perform
ing French poodle on its hind legs — Birket Foster's illustrations to "Evange
line " — Miss Jane Benham's art-enthusiasm — Jessie Meriton White — Her poli
tical sympathies and energetic nature — Kaulbach's reception of two girl
students — Four years in the printing and publishing mill — M. F. Tupper's
complacent conceit — Snubbing of Keats's friend, Severn — " The Kickleburys
on the Ehine "aud "Thunder and small beer" — "The National Illustrated
Library" — "NapolSon le Petit" — I am subjected to a mysterious military
search at Calais — First English reprint of " Uncle Tom's Cabin " — It proves a
failure — Its marveUous success when issued at a shilling — A repudiated part
nership — A settlement — The disastrous "Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin" —
Downfall of a mushroom firm ..... 343-361
XIX.
(1852-53.)
A THEFT FROM NAPOLEON'S PRIVY PURSE — A BLASE SYBARITE —
IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF A POET — PASSPORTS WANTED.
The impending French empire — Paris swarming with mouchards— Theft of bank
notes from the emperor's cabinet — Pietri's surmise as to who is the thief —
General Cornemuse kUled in a duel by Marshal St Amaud — Lionel Lawson in
Brook-street — His assumed intimacy with the Prince of Wales — The cup of
pleasure drained to the dregs— LongfeUow's " Hyperion "—Three pilgrims in
the footsteps of Paul Fleming — A Ehine chevalier d'industrie— Perpetual
bocks of beer — Dogs interdicted at students' duels — A hypochondriac fellow-
traveller — His eager pursuit of medical advice — The enchanted vaUey and the
old miUer  A hunt through the convent at Interlachen — An avalanche —
Sentimental adieux to two charming Swiss maidens— Over-lively bedfeUows —

XX CONTENTS. PAGE
The Meyringen orchards and the Handeck falls — The Grimsel hospice — My
horse swims the torrent of the Rhone — A moment of extreme danger — Some
sharp little screams recaU a vision of long ago — A race across the Devil's bridge
— As the crow flies to Coire — Black bread and goat's mUk — Our respectful
reception at a Romansch viUage — We are constrained to go supperless to bed
— The priest and his congregation bid us " God speed " — A fictitious " sare
gute weg" — We colUde with a boulder and smash up — A travelling bag tilted
into the Upper Rhine — We trudge along on foot heavily laden — The old
Chateau of Reichenau and the young Duo de Chartres — We are threatened
with cold steel — The Liechtenstein territory and standing army — At Inns
bruck — Maximilian's tomb — Wanted a barber — A priest arrives who
knows his " Pickwick " by heart — A night alarm — Passports at Salzburg — St.
Gilgen — The quaint village inn, its kellnerine and landlord — Along the lake to
St. Wolfgang — The Falkenstein echo — A storm threatens — " I kiss your hand,
I thank you ! " — We meet with Mr. A. S. Ayrton at Munich — Visit the
colossal statue of Bavaria with him — Captain Mayne Reid in want of passports
— His contemplated journey in disguise with Kossuth to Milan . . 362-384

XX.
(1853-56.)
macaulay's SPEECHES — TALKS AND WALKS WITH MR. COBDEN  THE
"ILLUSTRATED TIMES'' — GUSTAVE DORifi — COUNT D'ORSAY's WELLINGTON
BUST — AT THE PALACE OF ST. CLOUD — SOME LONDON PRISONS.
Mr. Macaulay's speeches — A controversy with the distinguished historian —
Tampering with the revised speeches — My petition against the newspaper
stamp leads to an acquaintance with Mr. Cobden — Anticipated beneflts of an
untaxed press — Cobden's admiration of Mr. Gladstone — His indifference to
general conversation — The "Illustrated Times" started — Its principal artists
— Phiz's various contributions — A discursive novel — Gustavo Dor€, a gamin de
genie — His hungering after house property, and how he toiled to pay for it —
Gay evenings at his Paris studio — He subsides into a sadly disappointed man —
C. H. Bennett's Darwinesque development of human types from kindred
animals — Nicholson's share in the D'Orsay statuettes — Sir H. Cole's story of
the Wellington bust — Douro is appalled at the likeness — The duke's own
energetic opinion — Minton misses a fortune — The literary staff of the "Illus
trated Times " — The paper appears before the stamp is aboUshed — I am sued
for £12,000 accumulated penalties— The suit is dropped — The new paper in
great demand — An explosion and an attack — The queen's visit to the emperor
and empress of the French — Interviews with the imperial chamberlain and Lord
Cowley — A Prenchgeneralathis toilette — A pass from the emperor — Thequeen's
bed-chamber woman and shortening a table's legs — A false alarm — Follow my
leader in the palace vestibule — A formal embrace — The queen startled by the
unexpected sight of the Cent-gardes — With the Corps diplomatique  The
imperial tailor obligingly supplies a Court suit— My brother figures at state
performances and balls — He falls overboard and is drowned during a voyage
to the Cape- -The first sketches of the fall of Sebastopol — They are sent to
Windsor by the queen's desire — An unfortunate newspaper speculation 
Henry Mayhew's "London Prisons" — Masks and parti-colour prison dress at
Pentonville— Signalling at chapel — Criminal nurses — "What a big oat!" 
Room in the prison van for an aspiring joker — Meeting-s of juvenile prisoners
and ticket-of-leave men ......_ 385-408

CONTENTS. XXI
XXI.
(1856-57.)
THE PALMER TRIAL — A FICTITIOUS LIFE OF THE POISONER — THB COST
OF AN EXTINGUISHED CIGAR — A BOSTON ELECTION HIT — WITH
THE SIAMESE AMBASSADOR IN THE THRONE ROOM AT
WINDSOR AND IN A HAYMARKET NIGHT-HOUSE. PAGE
Palmer the Rugeley poisoner — An unpunished contempt of court — The Dunmow
flitch — ^Augustus Mayhew and the virgins of the jury — Early rising city alder
men — The over-punctual Newgate ordinary — Peers at the twelve days' Palmer
trial — The counsel and the judges — The gentlemanly-looking prisoner — Cock-
bum's remarkable lucidity — The impending halter — The witnesses audaciously
described — Professor Taylor's evidence — His indignation with Henry Mayhew
— StartUng information from the insurance offices — Serjeant Shoe's blundering
defence — His bombastic declamation — A juvenile physician's surprising
evidence, and the attorney-general's severe comment on it — Lord CampbeU's
logical and hostile summing up — The death sentence — "It's the riding that did
it" ! — A hashed-up life of Palmer — A broken leg, and my loss through an
extinguished cigar — Lord Palmerston's joke — Cordial reception of a Tiverton
elector at Cambridge House — The Boston election and Old Parr — An explana
tion — " PUly Parr oh " I — Ingram acquires a share in the " Illustrated Times "
— Mark Lemon's crafty bonhomie — A state- wriggling of the Siamese ambas
sadors — A dinner with the embassy — " Brandy by — ! " — The chief ambassador
makes a night of it — He indulges the houi-is' craving for champagne — His
return home in a helpless condition in a common "growler" — He purchases
some scientific trifles and an expensive diamond-hilted sword . 409-431

Glances Back
Through Seventy Years.
— * —
I.
(1820-30.)
WHEN GEORGE IV. WAS KING.
I WAS born within sound of Bow-bells, and certain old lady
relatives of mine used to consider I enjoyed an exceptional
honour in having been christened by a clergyman who
subsequently rose to be a distinguished bishop. This was
Dr. Biomfield, rector of the rich living of St. Botolph's,
Bishopsgate, the registers of which record the baptism of
Edward Alleyn, the actor-manager and founder of Dulwich
College, and the marriage of the great Marquis of Argyle
of the Scottish Covenant.
The rector of St. Botolph's was noted for his scholar
ship ; and as in those days (private patronage being-
lacking) the classics were a surer passport than theology
to advancement in the Church, Dr. Biomfield, whilst still
holding on to his wealthy city benefice, secured first of all
promotion to the see of Chester, and eventually to that of
London, when he lost no time in well-feathering his com
fortable episcopal nest. It was of this aggrandising prelate
that Hartley Coleridge once remarked, " There are only
two individuals who know what his income is — himself and
VOL. I. A

GLANCES BACK

the devil." Bishop Biomfield used to be twitted with
having requited the Duke of Wellington, to whom he
owed his appointment to the- metropolitan see, and who
counted upon the customary suit and service being rendered
in return, by voting against Catholic Emancipation, when,
regardless of the fierce agitation which this measure pro
voked, and " No Popery I " inscribed on every blank wall,
his patron was convinced of the danger of its being any
longer withheld, and in favour of Reform when the duke
and the rest of the tory peers still ofiered this their
strenuous opposition. The bishop, however, simply went
with the mob, who, in its usual illogical way, shouted,
" Reform ! " and " No Popery ! " in the same breath.
Charles Greville tells a story of Bishop Biomfield and
a disreputable parson of his diocese — Capel, rector of
Watford, and brother of the Earl of Essex — who notoriously
neglected his clerical duties. To get rid of the scandal,
Capel had been ordered to provide himself with a curate,
but fiatly refused to do so, whereupon the bishop appointed
one himself. Certain informalities having occurred in con
nection with this proceeding, the refractory rector brought
an action against his spiritual superior which cost the
latter nearly a thousand pounds. Years afterwards the
bishop went to Watford to preach a charity sermon, and to
everybody's astonishment was Capel's guest on the occasion.
Lord Clarendon, the don of the district, was especially
perplexed at the circumstance, and asked Capel, " How
was it you managed to get the bishop to come to your
house 1 "
"Why," replied the other, "don't you remember the
good licking I formerly gave him ? That made him civil,
and we are now excellent friends."
There was a tradition in our family that the first
Vizzetelli — so the name is understood to have been
originally spelt — who settled in this country came from

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS, 3
Venice, and had to do with introducing the manufacture of
plate glass into England. The spelling of the name was
¦changed during the great Continental War — when consider
able prejudice against foreigners prevailed — with the view
¦of imparting to it an anglicised appearance. Both my
grandfather and father were printers, and my grandfather
having died when my father was a boy, the latter served
his apprenticeship with Cox & Son, of Great Queen-street,
Lincoln's -inn-fields, printers to the then powerful East
India Company. I have heard my father say that in his
father's time it was the custom for journeymen pressmen —
now gradually becoming an extinct class — to wear swords
at their sides and silver buckles in their shoes. But this
most likely referred to particular instances only, and to
the epoch when public lotteries were in full swing, and
¦exceptionally high wages were the rule with the handi
craftsmen who worked off the attractive coloured and
pictorial broadsides which the more energetic lottery
office-keepers kept the town liberally posted with.
In my juvenile days (1823 to 1829) I lived for a little
while at Ealing, and then at Kennington, principally with
my maternal grandparents, who were Cheshire people, and
strongly imbued with those superstitious notions which
have been such a long time dying out in the remoter
provincial districts. My grandfather after he had been
settled for years near London still continued to be a stout
believer in Mother Shipton's prophecies, and to place
implicit credence in the predictions of Mr. Francis Moore,
physician, whose then highly-priced almanack, after a
century and a quarter of existence, sold by hundreds of
thousands yearly,^ greatly to the profit of the Stationers'
Company, who, so long as almanacks were liable to a
1 According to Haydn's " Dictionary of Dates," at one time as many as 430,000 copies
were sold of ttiis publication annually, and in the first number of the " Athenaeum "
<1825) it was stated thjat the Stationers' Company paid the Government £40,000 yearly
:f or stamp dufey ,0B the almanacks which they issued.

GLANCES BACK

heavy stamp, enjoyed almost a monopoly in respect of the-
production of these essentially useful publications.
This old grandfather of mine boasted possessing what
he maintained to be an infallible recipe for getting rid.
of warts, his plan being to cut as many notches in a
small piece of wood as there were warts to be charmed
away, and then submitting this to certain incantations.
On one occasion I was selected to be the subject of his-
experiments, and was taken at daybreak, on a raw, misty
morning, to some unfrequented common, where after a
muttered exorcism the notched stick was mysteriously
spirited away, and my warts were absurdly supposed to
have been effectually got rid of.
While we lived at Kennington a sedate-looking gentle
man, dressed in black, and inclined to be portly, occasionaUy
visited my grandfather, and took a good deal of notice of
me. By promises of presents of one kind and another he
induced me, I remember, to learn by heart many of Dr.
Watts's hymns, and to recite them to him. He was a near
neighbour of ours, and a clergyman, with manners so
singularly gentle and engaging that everyone who knew
him became attached to him. Subsequently he dis
tinguished himself by his missionary zeal, and quitted.
England to both christianise and civilise the heathen in.
some remote tropical region ; but after a few years' earnest
labour, which found its reward in the attachment of those
whom he came to rescue, he fell a slow victim to the
unhealthy climate, passing sadly away, like many another
silent martyr, the record of whose self-sacrifice fails to get
trumpeted to the ends of the earth.
In the pre-Reform days Kennington-common was the
frequent scene of boisterous political meetings, at which.
Orator Hunt and others vociferated against current abuses
to a hungry and excited crowd — the price of the quartern
loaf, it may be mentioned, was then a shilling and up-

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 5
wards. Hunt and his party, with a contingent of drums
:and trumpets and bespangled banners, the inscriptions on
which trenched as closely on the seditious as the political
agitators of those dangerous days dared venture upon, used
to drive on to the common in Hunt's " Matchless Blacking"
vans, after the mob had levelled sufficient of the surround
ing railings to give admittance to the cumbrous vehicles.
It should be remembered there were then no dictatorial
police to interfere with the "sovereign people" at their
gatherings. The speeches delivered from the principal
van were mostly after one pattern — fierce and well-merited
denunciations of pensioners and pluralists, rotten boroughs
and ratting placemen, a rapacious Church, a vicious
aristocracy, and a venal House of Commons.
These were the days when taxation was scandalously
unequal — years previously Pitt had maintained that three-
fifths of a poor man's wages passed into the public exchequer
— and when distress in the manufacturing districts was
•chronic. Then the operatives, in their ignorant despair,
wrecked factories, and smashed frames and power-looms at
the rate of 10,000 a month. A parliamentary committee
reported that many families in the disturbed districts
had to subsist on sixteenpence per head per week, and
that there were some who starved on a weekly pittance of
fourpence per head. There was rioting at the ports owing
to shipments of corn, at the same time that the famished
weavers of Carlisle and Bethnal-green were clamouring
loudly for the repeal of the laws which interfered with its
free importation. All that was done was to stifle their
forlorn cries by calling out the military and passing heavy
sentences upon the disaffected at special assize commissions ;
and this too under the administration of the same . states
man whose boast it was twenty years later that he had
enabled the toilinof masses " to eat their hard-earned bread
unleavened by the bitterness of taxation."

6 GLANCES BACK
In the latter part of George IV.'s reign the Conyngham
family were the especial objects of popular derision, and
were vehemently abused by Hunt and his friends— the
marchioness for her depravity and rapaciousness, which
stuck neither at crown jewels, nor at hot dinners conveyed
from his majesty's kitchen to banquet guests bidden to her
own home ; ^ the marquis for his disgraceful complacency,
and the young lord, their son, for the degrading services
which he was supposed to render to the king.
Hunt, who had been a country squire before starting
as a political agitator and blacking manufacturer, was a
very tall stout man, with a fat face and a ruddy complex
ion, which was invariably set off by a white beaver hat.
This led, after a while, to the white hat being regarded as-
symbolical of radicalism, as the bonnet rouge was of re
publicanism at the time of " the Terror." While playing
the part of a political agitator, Hunt always kept up the
appearance of a country gentleman, sporting the orthodox
blue coat, light waistcoat, knee breeches, and top-boots —
polished, of course, to perfection with his own matchless
blacking. He was undoubtedly a typical demagogue of the
" thump it and stump it, and blow his own trumpet " order
— ^blustering and passionate in speech, and vain, like leaders
of the democracy usually are.^ His jovial manner, how
ever, made him a great favourite with the multitude, and
what largely added to his popularity was the imprisonment
he had undergone for presiding at the famous Peterloo
meeting, when the raw yokels of the Cheshire yeomanry
1 Greville recounts that when the Conynghams gave a dinner party, the dinner was.
cooked at St, James's-palace, and conveyed in heated receptacles constructed for the
purpose in hackney coaches to their family residence in Hamilton-place. All their
servants, too, held sinecure appointments in the king's household in order that their
wages might be charged on the royal establishment.
2 While Hunt was railing against the aristocracy his son was hanging on to the fringe
of that exclusive order. Young Hunt's sporting propensities brought him into contact
with men of rank, with one of whom he made a bet during the severe frost of 1826 that
he would drive his father's blacking van with four blood horses across the frozen Serpentina
at its broadest part -without accident, a feat he successfully accomplished.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 7
flushed their maiden sabres, slashing right and left at the
crowd, killing a dozen persons and wounding, it was said,
six hundred others.
Ten or twelve years afterwards (1830) Hunt managed
to get elected to the unreformed parliament for the pot-
walloping borough of Preston, beating the future Rupert
of debate, then Irish secretary, who accused the timorous
returning officer of having permitted Hunt's supporters to
vote over and over again at different polling booths.
Parenthetically it may here be noted that the expenses
of contested elections at this period were usually enormous.
A few years before Lord Althorpe stated in the House of
Commons that a recent election for Yorkshire had cost the
candidates £120,000, although it never came to a poll,
and had it gone to a poll the cost would have been at
least half a million ! When it was proposed to prohibit
the use of bands, flags, and ribbons, one member pathetic
ally pleaded that if this were done, the electors would not
know whose heads they were breaking, and added that it
was downright folly to attempt to make an English election
as demure and orderly as a Methodist love-feast. ..
The traditions of the executions that had taken place
on Kennington-common, first of the unfortunate adherents
of the pretender, implicated in the rising of '45, and then
of highwaymen and others at a later date, still survived in
the neighbourhood. Many had heard their fathers tell of
the former, and of the appalling barbarities perpetrated on
these unhappy enthusiasts in a worthless cause ; and plenty,
in their youthful days, had themselves been witnesses of
the latter.^ Since the removal of the gallows the locality
had been completely transformed, the common being en
closed and built round, and a new church, St. Mark's,
erected on the very spot where the gibbet, on w^hich the
1 Ten years before, Townsend, the Bow-street ranner, told a committee of the House
of Commons of eight men being hanged on Kennington-common on the same morning.

GLANCES BACK

Surrey highwaymen used to swing, formerly reared its
head. A favourite hunting-ground of these gentry was
the then lonely neighbouring St. George's-fields, where
Bedlam and the Surrey theatre now stand. The locality
seems to have been an equivocal one even in Shakespeare s
time, for we find mad Master Shallow reminding his old
boon companion, Falstaff, of the "merry night they had
when they lay in the windmill in St. George's-fields."
My grandfather, who had been part owner of several
stage coaches, and w^ho occasionally drove one of his own
vehicles, had no end of stories about the highwaymen's
daring in his younger days. One of these, I remember,
referred to a couple of confederates, who, got up to look
like a young squire and his tutor, secured two of the back
seats on the coach, and managed to have the guard in their
grip, as well as his blunderbuss, at the critical moment
when their accomplice rode up in the darkness, pistol in
hand, and called on the driver to stop, a summons at once
obeyed in order to save the horses from being shot. When
the occupants of the vehicle had been duly despoiled of
their valuables the coach was allowed to proceed with two
passengers the less, and the discomfited guard minus, of
course, his blunderbuss.
In the days, however, when George IV. was king, the
regular highwayman may be said to have been extinct ;
but the sneaking foot-pad, undeterred by a death penalty
never enforced, still lingered in the more lonely London
suburbs, and on dark evenings would lie in wait and
relieve timid pedestrians of their purses and watches. It
was the custom in a few suburban places for a horn to be
blown at stated intervals as a signal for people to cross
some particularly dangerous spot in a body for mutual
protection. The more general use of gas, combined with
Peel's new police, however, speedily rid the suburbs of
these depredators. Culprits guilty of petty thefts from

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS.

shopkeepers, which a few years previously had ranked as
capital offences, were then frequently punished with the
lash, and I recollect seeing one of these delinquents
whipped at a cart's tail, under a broiling sun, along the
dusty road between Kennington-turnpike and the Elephant
and Castle at Newington, the perspiration streaming down
the parish constable's face as he administered the regula
tion stripes. These public fioggings w^ere of frequent
occurrence in the London suburbs, and were only aban
doned after the newspapers had protested energetically
against such brutalising exhibitions.
In the early part of George IV.'s reign society was
accustomed to revenge itself upon suicides by burying
them at cross roads at night time, with a stake driven
vindictively through their bodies ; and for several years
subsequently the favourite discipline for bringing about
the reformation of drunkards and rogues and vagabonds
generally were the stocks. A disused example of this
once familiar instrument of correction, and the last speci
men remaining in the metropolis, used to exist, I re
member, in Portugal-street, Lincoln's-inn-fields, famous for
that accommodating tribunal to which insolvent spend
thrifts resorted from the spunging houses in the neighbour
hood to purge themselves of their loads of liabilities.
During my midsummer holidays, and only a day or
two before George IV. died, I recollect seeing, one hot
summer's afternoon, a terrified-looking individual stand
ing in the pillory, put up for the occasion, immediately
facing Newgate. He had been convicted of perjury, and
quite as great a crowd as the execution of some remark
able criminal usually got together was attracted by this
novel exhibition. The pillory, mounted on a raised plat
form, comprised simply an upright pole, with a cross
board pierced with holes for the culprit's arms and head.
This board moved on a pivot, and when the poor terrified

10 GLANCES BACK
delinquent had been placed in position by the Jack Ketch
of the period, he was required to perambulate round and
round, like a horse in a mill, for the space of an hour.
The authorities had mercifully forbidden missiles being
thrown, and as the crowd was more curious than vindic
tive, the victim of this almost obsolete mode of punish
ment escaped the rough handling that usually befel
pilloried culprits.
One of my earliest recollections extends back to a
tranquir autumn evening in 1823, when our quiet neigh
bourhood was suddenly disturbed by the sonorous shout
ing of several of Mr. Catnach's gruff-voiced hawkers, but
the only words one could distinctly catch were, " 'orrible
murder of Mr. William Weare ! " ^ The excitement over
this brutal affair was immense. People were almost as
much horrified at the idea of the murderers sitting down
to a supper of hot pork chops, as soon as Mr. William
Weare's brains had been effectually battered in, as they
were at the atrocity of the crime itself. Before the trial
of Thurtell and his accomplices, the incidents of the
murder had been worked up into a sensational and
realistic melodrama for the Surrey theatre, when there
figured on the stage the hired gig in which Thurtell had
given the first murderous blow to his victim, the " iron
grey horse with white face and legs," the table round
which the murderers had feasted, and the sofa whereon
Thurtell had snatched a brief repose after the fatigues
of this terrible night. The theatre was crowded from
floor to ceiling for the few nights the piece was played ;
and then a promising long run was suddenly cut short
by the Court of King's-bench interdicting any further
performance. 1 In Hihdley's " Life and Times of James Catnach," it is stated that a quarter of a
million copies of the broadside giving particulars of Weare's murder were sold during
the first week ot its issue, and that double that number were sold of the sheet giving
an account of the trial. Catnach seems to have netted £500 by the affair.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 11
At the Coburg theatre a play with the same title,
" The Gamblers," was simultaneously produced ; but al
though the scene was laid in France, and the leading
incidents in the Weare murder were by no means closely
followed, Davidge, the manager, thought it prudent to
withdraw the piece as soon as the Court had expressed its
opinion with regard to the play at the rival establishment.
Davidge, I may mention, had been a fellow-apprentice
of my father's at Cox & Son's, the printers ; but he had
forsaken the composing stick for Harlequin's wand, and
after pirouetting in pantomime for a time he trod the
boards in melodrama, and finally became lessee and
manager, first of the Coburg and then of the Surrey
theatre, where he made a comfortable fortune.
Douglas Jerrold, who was hack-dramatist at the Coburg
for several years during Davidge's reign, had a good story,
which I once heard him tell at Orrin Smith's dinner-table,
before he used it up in his " Men of Character," respecting
the manager and a certain performing pig, a former member
of the Coburg company. It seems that the performances
of a cleverly-trained porker, known as " the learned pig,"
were all the rage at some London exhibition, and that
Davidge was seized with the idea that the introduction of
an intelligent animal of the same species on the Coburg
boards would attract crowded houses. A trained pig was
accordingly secured from some travelling showman, and
Jerrold was instructed to write the necessary piece in w^hich
the intelligent Toby might display his surprising talents.
The dramatist by no means relished the idea, and raised
endless objections, but Davidge was obdurate, and in the
end the piece was written.
The play, with the pig in the principal part, proved
fairly successful, but at length the time arrived when it
became necessary to withdraw it, and the question then
arose what should be done with the pig. "Eat him,"

12 GLANCES BACK
bluntly suggested Jerrold, "Toby's stUl young and succu
lent." " Good heavens ! how can you propose such a
thing ?" rejoined the indignant manager. "To eat ones
benefactor would be the basest ingratitude — worse, indeed,
than cannibalism. I couldn't swallow a mouthful even."
The dramatist, abashed by the reproof, made no reply.
A few weeks afterwards Jerrold happened to call on
Davidge at his private residence, when the manager and
his wife were dining. He was about to retire, but Mrs.
Davidge pressed him to stay, coaxingly adding, " I am sure
you'll not refuse when you know what we have for dinner."
Whereupon, raising a cover, she exposed to view an inviting
hand of pickled pork in which a tolerable inroad had been
made, remarking as she did so, " It 's a piece of your old
friend Toby." Jerrold could not conceal his surprise, and
turning to Davidge, exclaimed reproachfully, "Et tu, Brute!
Why, only a fortnight ago you pretended you couldn't
swallow a mouthful of your benefactor." " No more I
could, sir," urged Davidge gravely, "if the animal hadn't
been salted."
" Tom and Jerry, or Life in London," on its revival,
either at the Adelphi or the Coburg, was the first play I
remember having seen performed. Its original success had
been phenomenal, and its mere revival sufficed to produce
a new crop of imitators of the " sprees and rambles, larks
and gambols '' of the rowdy trio, whom Pierce Egan and
the Cruikshanks had rendered so immensely popular.
Now-a-days we find the letterpress of " life in London "
sad rubbish, and yet the first gentleman ir» Europe, charmed
with so congenial a subject, gave his gracious permission
for the work to be dedicated to him. Moncrieff had a con
temptible opinion of Pierce Egan's share in the performance
from the very outset, for years afterwards I heard him tell
my father that when he dramatized the work he pitched
the letterpress into the fire, and wrote the play from the

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 13
etchings alone, remarking that he had often nettled Pierce
Egan by telling him the same thing. On the revival of
" Tom and Jerry," onslaughts on the decrepit old charlies
once more became the fashion, and even in so quiet a neigh
bourhood as Kennington then was, the watchman's box
posted at the corner of a narrow turning ^ facing the com
mon was on several occasions toppled over on its slumber
ing inmate, by parties of young bloods fresh from flowing
bowls of punch at the neighbouring Vauxhall-gardens.
Prize fights and duels were of common occurrence
during George IV.'s reign, and, indeed, for several years
afterwards. Under the heading of "Affairs of the Fancy,"
the numerous pugilistic contests were regularly chronicled
in the newspapers, and every week one might read of some
" game one," battered well-nigh beyond recognition by his
intimate friends, coming up smiling in the orthodox
fashion to receive the remainder of his punishment. When
ever one of the combatants chanced to get killed, and
his opponent was put upon his trial, he was certain to
be acquitted by a sympathising jury — upholders to a
man of the "noble art of self-defence," — spite of .the
strong counter-opinion which was persistently expressed
by the judges. It came, therefore, as a surprise to a
notorious pugilist of the period who had hired himself
out, according to custom, to pommel reform voters at
some contested election, and w^as tried for assault, to find
himself sentenced to four months' imprisonment. While
prize-fighting met with general encouragement it is
scarcely surprising that bear and badger baiting continued
favourite amusements with a certain section of the com
munity, who fiocked twice a week to the Westminster pit
in Duck-lane to witness these barbarous contests.
1 This was at some little distance from the Horns tavern, the then famous hostelry
of the locaUty, in the assembly rooms of which balls, attended by the neighbouring
gentry, used periodically to be given. When the tavern was originally built it stood
quite in the country, and had its tea-gardens and bowling-green attached to it.

Jo

X4 GLANCES BACK
I remember there used to flit about Kennington a
mysterious-looking lady, dressed in the deepest black and
wearing a long thick veil, through which not the faintest
glimpse of her features could be obtained, and which she
had never been known to raise. No one spoke to her or
knew where she came from, but she was commonly alluded
to as the pig-faced lady. Pig-faced women were believed to
be common in these days, and my grandmother was firmly
convinced that the poor lady had a porcine countenance,
and that this was the reason why she concealed it. I and
other youngsters, I know, always shrank from the poor
woman with the greatest dread. Years afterwards I learned
that this mysterious person was the sister of some Bank of
England clerk who had been hanged either for embezzle
ment or forgery, and that she had a habit of calling regu
larly at the ¦ bank on stated days in expectation of seeing
her brother, whose unhappy fate had affected her reason.
My father was in partnership with Mr. R. Branston, son
of Robert Branston, a wood-engraver of note in the days of
the revival of the art, and contemporary with Bewick.
'There was also a sleeping partner in the concern named
Whitehead. The business was originally carried on at
No. 135 and subsequently at No. 76 Fleet-street. The
first publication issued by the firm was the well-known
" Boy's Own Book," " the Justinian of the playground," as
one of its critics happily designated it. The immediate and
¦continuous success of the work was very great ; and after it
had been published seven and twenty years the copyright
readily realized £1000. The idea of the work was my
father's, and it had been arranged between him and a
-couple of friends — one Mr. Wm. Clarke, author of "The
Cigar," and the other Mr. T. Richardson, a well-known
printer, — to produce the work in conjunction and divide
the profits. On my father joining Mr. Branston, however,
Richardson was bought out of the scheme for £100, and

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 15
Clarke was assured a liberal sum for writing the book in
consideration of his waiving all future interest in it. The
" Boy's Own Book " was followed by the " Young Lady's
Book," the success of which, though considerable, was not
to be compared with that of its famous predecessor.
Clarke's talents were of a very versatile order. He was,
I believe, an Irishman, but at anj'^ rate he had Celtic blood
in his veins. He was big built, witty in conversation, and
a capital story teller, and like most literary men of his day,
of a decidedly convivial turn. He had written " The
Cigar," and was subsequently author of numerous stories
and essays in the "Monthly Magazine," of which he was for
some time editor. With the exception of two or three
leading novelists, few prose writers made incomes of any
amount in those days ; and so uncertain were Clarke's
earnings that he was glad to hire himself out as literary
hack to Vizetelly, Branston & Co., to do whatever work
was required of him, and under the obligation to write for
no one else, at a weekly salary of £6. I have frequently
heard my father express surprise at so able a man selling
himself for years for such a pittance ; yet the upshot
proved, as I shall presently show, that Clarke had by far
the best of the bargain.
After editing the " Young Lady's Book," Clarke wrote
the clever collection of tales, published anonymously under
the epigrammatic title of "Three Courses and a Dessert."
The book was illustrated by his intimate friend, George
Cruikshank, who was aided in his task by the author's own
suggestive sketches. In the preface Clarke acknowledged
his indebtedness to the artist for "translating his rude
sketches into a proper pictorial state," and certainly Cruik
shank's clever designs have been the means of saving the
work from oblivion.
Georo-e Cruikshank's recent critics have vied with each
other in their admiration of one particular illustration to

16 GLANCES BACK
the "Three Courses," namely, the inimitable deaf postillion.
But Clarke was himself the first to recognize the great
merits of this design in his essay on the " Life and Genius of
George Cruikshank," published in the "Monthly Magazine "
shortly after "Three Courses and a Dessert" made its
appearance. Among the subordinate illustrations to the
volume the palpable human character, which the artist
has succeeded in imparting to the bacchanalian group
of lemons, the supercilious mushroom, and the contented,
jovial-looking oyster, is scarcely less deserving of admira
tion than his felicitous rendering of the highly praised deaf
postillion. The reviewers of 1830 had much to say in favour of
Clarke's share in the volume, besides which several of his
stories were seized hold of by contemporary playwrights
and put upon the stage. This induced Chapman & HaU,
when they were casting about for a smartish writer to pen
the letterpress to some cockney sporting sketches by
Seymour, which they contemplated publishing, to make an
offer to Clarke, who, by reason of the engagement he was
under, was constrained to decline it.^ Dickens was then
applied to, and "Pickwick," as we all know, was the
result. Clarke's next employment was in connection with a
comprehensive " Natural History," the text of M'^hich, after
being prepared by a scientific naturalist of repute, was to
be popularized by the author of "Three Courses and a
Dessert." As may be supposed, the dry man of science
and the lively man of letters failed to work in harmony,
1 In a brief memoir of Seymour prefixed to an edition of his ' ' Humorous Sketches,"
Mr. H. G. Bohn, the publisher, makes the absurd statement that the reason why Clarke
was not entrusted with the letterpress to Seymour's sketches was because there had been
a quarrel between the two respecting some bill of costs which Clarke had sent to the
artist for whom he acted as solicitor. I have a faint recollection of once hearing that
Clarke had been in a lawyer's office in his youth, but he certainly never practised as a
solicitor. Besides 1 frequently heard both Clarke and my father speak of Chapman &
Hall's offer and of the reason why Clarke was unable to accept it.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 17
and the result w^as the retirement of the former. It was
then settled that Clarke, assisted by certain scientific con
freres, should write the work himself. William Harvey,
Bewick's cleverest pupil — well known to connoisseurs as
the engraver of the large woodcut after Haydon's " Den-
tatus," and, moreover, an accomplished draughtsman on
wood especially clever at animals — had had carte blanche
given to him to draw from life all the suitable subjects he
could find in the gardens of the Zoological Society, and the
Tower and other menageries. The scientific editors were
charmed with his designs, but Kenny Meadows, I re
member, used to chaff Harvey, whose well-known love for
the graceful had caused him, he said, to make all his wild
beasts turn out their toes as though they had been taught
their steps by a fashionable dancing-master. " Beauty,"
Meadows would jestingly insist, "was Harvey's evil genius,
and grace was his damnation."
By the time that some hundreds of Harvey's drawings
were engraved and several thousand pounds had been
expended upon the work, disagreements on other matters
arose between the members of my father's firm, and the
natural history project was shelved for a time. Clarke,
however, continued to be paid his customary salary for
several years, on the presumption that he was steadily pro
gressing with the text. One day, however, he suddenly
dropped down dead in his garden at Hampstead, and, on
search being made among his papers for the "Natural
History" manuscript, for which he had received about
£1200, there was great consternation when merely a
quantity of rough notes relating to the subject, and these,
too, of no kind of value, could be found.
The truth was, Clarke loved convivial in preference to
learned leisure, and for nearly five years past had troubled
himself in regard to the " Natural History " only so far as
to pay occasional visits to the Zoological-gardens and
VOL. I. B

18 GLANCES BACK
make weekly calls in Fleet-street, invariably primed with
a capita] story, over which the cashier duly chuckled
as he handed him the customary half-dozen sovereigns.
The writer of the brief memoir of Clarke in the "Dic
tionary of National Biography" observes that "in the last
years of his life he devoted himself to an elaborate work
on Natural History which does not appear to have been
published." How it was that the world came to be de
prived of this advantage, the writer of the memoir will
now understand.
My father had been a clever amateur actor in his
younger days, and had played the part of Sir Edward
Mortimer in Colman's " Iron Chest" with some success in
public. His fondness for things theatrical led to his
keeping up an intimacy with his former fellow-apprentice,
Davidge, and through him making the acquaintance of
Clarkson Stanfield, when the latter, fresh from the sea, was
painting scenes at the Coburg theatre. At this time Mr.
Frederick Gye had just started what he termed the
" London genuine Tea company," most likely in conse
quence of some recent criminal trials in which the whole
sale manufacture of imitation tea out of dried sloe leaves,
coloured with copperas, and largely sold in packets at the
west-end of London, had been exposed, sending something
like a thrill through the tea-drinking community. The
new company owned several establishments, and at the
principal one had built a grand saloon, which Gye was
desirous of having decorated in a unique style. My
father, who was a great friend of his, introduced both
Stanfield and David Roberts to him, and they were forth
with engaged to paint the walls of the apartment with
Chinese views and other appropriate subjects. Their task
accomplished, the saloon was luxuriously furnished in the
Eastern style, and altogether a resplendent result was
secured, which was not without its influence on provincial

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 19
grocers, who were here received and cajoled into giving
large orders.
Gye was at that period a w-ealthy man. He had been
brought up as a printer, and was then head of a firm in
the city, which had secured the government contract for
printing the State lottery tickets, and did moreover a large
business in the printing of lottery posters and puffs, prin
cipally for the famous Tom Bish. As Theodore Hook
pattered at the time in the " John Bull " —
" Bish used to print paragraphs artfully penned —
We saw not his aim till -we read to the end —
' Great news from abroad ! ' — ' A suspicion of treason ! '
' A mermaid exhibiting just in the season ! '
Through foreign ne-ws, mermaid, or radical plotter, he
Always contrived to get round to the lottery."
It was not, however, out of printing, profitable as he
had found it, that Gye had made his fortune : a singular
piece of good luck had befallen him. On the eve of the
drawing of one of the great lotteries Bish found himself
with a whole ticket on his hands — lottery tickets used con
siderately to be sold in fractions as small as sixteenths for
the convenience of the humbler class of gamblers. Almost
at the last moment Bish prevailed on Gye to relieve him of
the ticket in question, and luckily for the purchaser the
number gained one of the great prizes of £30,000. Excep
tionally novel or clever ideas for lottery posting bills were
then greatly in request, and my father having furnished
Gye with a considerable number which had taken Bish's
fancy and led to extensive orders for printing, Gye, who
was a very liberal man, acknowledged the obligation by a
present amounting to several hundred pounds.
To catch the topers as well as the tea-drinkers Gye had
also established a wine company, which for a time was very
successful. But as old wines were unprocurable from the
growers, and tawny crusted port was then the fashionable

20 GLANCES BACK
tipple, the company found itself under the necessity of
laying down large stocks and waiting for their subsequent
development. Partly, possibly, with this object in view,
but more probably in a spirit of speculation, Gye foolishly
bought up in advance a considerable proportion of a par
ticular port vintage. The investment proved a bad one ;
the wane turned out of very inferior quality, and a heavy
loss, from which the concern never recovered, was the
result. So far back as 1821 Gye had taken a Mr. Hughes, a
gentleman with strong musical tastes, into partnership, and
one of the first operations of the new firm was the purchase
of Vauxhall-gardens from the Tyers family for £28,000.
Gye's friend Bish joined them in their venture, but after a
season or two retired from it. Owing to the attraction of
Ramo Samee, the sword swallower, a clever shadow panto
mime, and Madame Vestris's dulcet warbling of " Cherry
Ripe " — a song over which the town grew positively mad —
the first few years were successful enough. Afterwards
varying fortunes and wet seasons set in, brightened, how
ever, I well remember, by Paganini's single string perfor
mances, Green's ascents in the great Nassau balloon, and
the classical poses plastiques. Nevertheless, Vauxhall-
gardens proved on the whole a steady pecuniary drain :
the tea company had to be sold, and the proceeds were
sunk in them ; the wine company, too, after going from
bad to worse, was obliged to be given up. At last the
crash came, and the Gardens passed into the hands of other
speculators, equally sanguine of highly profitable results, as
the late unfortunate proprietors had originally been, and
equally doomed to disappointment.
Gye, in his palmy days, by means of a big bribe
promising continuous employment to the woollen operatives
of Chippenham, succeeded in getting elected to Parliament
for that borough, and continued to represent it until its-

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 21
disenfranchisement under the Reform bill. His sons were
educated at foreign universities, and afterwards went the
orthodox continental tour ; and it was commonly asserted
that each of his two daughters would receive £30,000 on
her wedding day. The young ladies, however, set their
minds upon coronets, which they failed to secure, and on
the collapse of Gye's various enterprises, they found them
selves doomed to spinsterhood, and on exceedingly meagre
pittances. Gye's eldest son, who had been brought up as
heir-expectant to a large fortune, resented his father's
commercial downfall by declining to speak to him again, and,
moreover, adhered to his resolution. Years subsequently,
when the former M.P. for Chippenham was a broken down
old man, with a still surviving passion for the luxuries of
life, and his son had become lessee of Covent-garden
theatre,^ Gye senior used to call periodically upon me — I
was then editing a newspaper of large circulation — and get
me to procure him free admissions to the opera, for which
he well knew he would have asked his son in vain.
The State lotteries had come to an end many years
before Gye's course of ill-luck set in, the last one having
been drawn in 1826. Looking back to those days, one
is surprised to find the annual revenue derived by the
State from lotteries set down in budget after budget
at no more than £250,000 ; yet it needed years to dis-
¦cover that this paltry sum was as nothing compared to
the evU consequences which State-encouraged gambling
brought in its train. When the abolition of these lotteries
was at last resolved on, either the mania for this particular
form of gambling was on the wane, or else the habitual
speculators were at a very low ebb, for the lottery-office
keepers had to make extraordinary efforts to get rid of the
1 Nearly twenty years subsequent to the time I am referring to, Mr. Frederick Gye,
junior, while out with a shooting party at Viscount Dillon's, was accidentally shot, and
died from his wounds.

22 GLANCES BACK
tickets remaining on their hands, although the bait offered
included no less than six prizes of £30,000. The usual
flaming posters, the artful pictorial puffs, the songs foisted
into farces and shouted in the streets, proved of little avail.
Itinerant vocalists piped to no purpose —
" 0 dear ! what can the matter be ?
To tell, who can be at a loss ?
The people are running by hundreds to Bish's,
To make out their dreams, and fulfil all their wishes.
To try and come in for the loaves and the fishes.
At Cornhill number 4, and 9 Charing-cross."
In this juncture the principal lottery agents resolved
upon trying the effect of a brilliant cavalcade, with
trumpeters and banner-bearers in resplendent frippery,
and a huge lottery wheel drawn by prancing horses, as
well as other eccentric devices, to arouse the public from
their apathy. Fleet-street and the Strand and all the
leading thoroughfares were paraded, I remember, for weeks,
and bellmen proclaimed to gaping crowds that now was
positively their last chance of gaining a fortune for an
insignificant outlay ; yet, with all this, the sale of tickets
still flagged, and the day officially appointed for drawing
the six £30,000 prizes had to be postponed for several
months. At this period, a far more interesting procession than
the above used to pass through the principal London
streets regularly every spring. This was the St. George's
day procession of mail coaches, with the handsome horses
in spick-and-span new harness, and their heads bedecked
with ribbons and rosettes, while the drivers and guards,
tricked out in new scarlet liveries, proudly flaunted the
biggest of bouquets. At the head of the stream of coaches,
caracoled the general postmen (deliverers of the letters from
the provinces and abroad), while the rear was brought up
by the "flying" postboys, in their new scarlet toggery.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 23
cracking their whips and sounding lively fanfares on
their horns.
The state of my father's health obliging him to reside
in the immediate neighbourhood of his business, we
removed into town, and for several years occupied the
upper part of a house on the north side of Fleet-street,
which at that period had undergone no particular trans
formation since the days of Dr. Johnson. The heads of
the rebels, it is true, no longer gazed vacantly down
from Temple Bar ; but old St. Dunstan's church, with its
projecting clock and the two wild men who struck the
quarters with their clubs, was still existent, as were several
picturesque old houses which have since been swept away.
The house in which Dr. Johnson lived in Johnson's-court
had grown somewhat shabby-looking, but was otherwise
unchanged. The Bolt-court house in which he died had
been pulled down, but the house in Gough-square — in
the garret of which the famous dictionary was compiled —
and the doctor's chambers in Inner Temple-lane remained
intact, and so continued for many years to come. And
though the old Devil tavern had been demolished, John
son's favourite box at the IVIitre survived unaltered.
The Fleet-street of those days, unappropriated as it then
was by newspaper and betting men, although still the same
cheerful scene which Boswell had formerly found it, was
almost a quiet thoroughfare compared with Fleet-street
as it is now. I remember its stylish silk mercers' shops,
and Alderman Waithman's handsome shawl warehouse at
the corner of New Bridge-street, and have seen ladies,
on their shopping expeditions, promenading the pavement
accompanied by their lap-dogs. To-day, ladies with lap-
dogs in Fleet-street would create quite as much surprise
as burly Dr. Johnson himself, swinging his huge frame
from side to side of the footpath according to his wont.
Frequently, on Monday mornings, Ludgate-hill was for

24 GLANCES BACK
hours well-nigh impassable, owing to the crowd assembled
to witness the Old Bailey executions, which sometimes
numbered as many as half-a-dozen on the same day. The
bodies were left dangling opposite the old debtors' door
of Newgate for an hour or so afterwards, by way of
warning it was understood to the evil-disposed. When
passing up Ludgate-hill one Monday morning, I recollect
being startled at seeing as many as four poor wretches —
one of them, I think, a woman — hanging in a row. The
criminal code was barbarously severe at this time, more
than a dozen different offences being capital; still it
must be remembered that only some five per cent, of
the death sentences were really carried out,i partly per
haps owing to the well-known repugnance of George IV. —
commonly credited with being so callous-hearted — to sign
death warrants. Included in the then category of capital
crimes were such offences as highway robbery, arson, horse
and sheep stealing, coining, forgery, burglary, letter stealing
by post-office servants, returning from transportation before
the expiration of the sentence, and larceny in a dwelling
house to the value of £5 — a few years previously shop
lifting to the value of 5 s. was also punishable by death.
The establishment of Peel's new police force (1829)
came as an unpleasant check to the criminal classes, yet
the public generally regarded their new protectors with
considerable suspicion. Advocates for Reform saw in
them almost a purely political force, and one or two
popular newspapers assailed them virulently for years.
Magistrates habituated to the old police officers, watch- ¦
men, parish constables, and beadles, were lukewarm in
their appreciation of the change ; while the vestries com
plained of the inefficiency of the new force, and persistently
1 Of 1066 persons sentenced to death at the Old Bailey in 1824, only 43 were hanged ;
of 1036 sentenced in 1825, 50 went to the gaUows ; in 1826 out of 1200 who had been
sentenced, 57 underwent the death penalty ; and of 1529 persons convicted of capital
crimes in 1827, no more than 73 were executed.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 25
grumbled at its expense. All the ancient guardians of
the peace were naturally irate at the innovation. The
famous scarlet -vested Bow-street runners — nick-named
" Robin Redbreasts " by some poetical metaphorist of the
time — and heretofore the chief thief-takers, looked on these
raw recruits, who were destined to supplant them, with
much the same misplaced contempt as a few years after
wards the old stage coachmen regarded railways and the
'" steam-pot," as they derogatively termed the locomotive,
which was soon to supersede their famous " highflyers."
Some of the new lictors were ludicrously arbitrary in
their proceedings — one recently enlisted constable haled, I
remember, a small boy before the magistrate for trundling
his hoop across Camberwell-green, and another zealous
officer brought a respectable maid-servant before the Marl-
borough-street functionary on the ludicrous charge of carry
ing a silk umbrella in Piccadilly. Black sheep, moreover,
were not altogether absent from the new protective flock.
One peeler, ambitious of rapid promotion, privately put a
bullet through his own hat, and then swore he had been
attacked by armed thieves. Two other constables, accused
first of robbing a person on his way home late at night,
and then taking him into custody because he resisted being
despoiled, were found to have the stolen money concealed
in their boots, A fourth presumed thief-taker was caught
stealing a leg of mutton, a circumstance promptly laid hold
of by the street boy of the period, with whom " Who stole
the mutton ? " became at once a favourite cry.
During the latter part of George IV.'s reign London
underwent considerable alteration and improvement, chiefiy
at the initiative of Nash and Wyatteville's much-abused
patron, who in giving us Regent-street — the first reason
ably wide thoroughfare London could boast of — started
that rebuilding of the metropolis, which has been going
on uninterruptedly ever since. Citywards a new London-

26 GLANCES BACK
bridge was in course of construction, necessitating the de
molition or divergence of several tortuous old streets, and
the formation of more direct new ones, and involving the
sweeping away of the famous Boar's Head tavern and other
notable buildings. Brunei's tunnel, too, underneath the
Thames, and at that time almost regarded as the eighth won
der of the world thousrh now no one would cross the road
to look at it, was steadily progressing, until stopped by a
serious inundation. ^ In the west the Charing-cross end of
the Strand had been entirely relaid out, and streets of
stucco houses were rising on the site. A score or more of
mansions, too, reared their stuccoed fronts in the once
secluded gardens of Carlton House, and one or two hand
some club houses, ¦ recently erected in Pall-mall, formed
the nucleus of that street of palaces which this historic
thoroughfare was afterwards to become. Although Carlton
House had been demolished, the new Buckingham Palace
was making only slow progress ; for the " jaded voluptuary,"
as the whilom first gentleman in Europe is now commonly
styled, abandoning his favourite PavUion at Brighton — the
great and little domes of which suggested to Lord Alvanley
that St. Paul's had been down to Brighton and pupped —
was secluding himself in " the cottage " at Windsor, in
the society of the fat and fair Marchioness of Conyngham.
1 In the ' ' John BuU " of that day Theodore Hook ridiculed the many engineering schemes
afloat after the following fashion. It will be seen from the last few lines that Sir Edward
Watkin's Channel tunnel project is only another instance of history repeating itself —
" When Greenwich coaches go by steam on roads of iron railing, sir.
How pleasant it will be to see a dozen in a Une :
And ships of heavy burden over hills and vaUeys sailing, sir,
Shall cross from Bristol's channel to the rivers Tweed or Tyne.
And Dame Speculation, if she ever fuUy hath her ends,
WiU give us docks at Bermondsey, St. Sa-viour's and St. Catherine's ;
While side-long bridges over mud shall fill the folks with wonder, sir.
And lamp-lit tunnels all day long convey the cockneys under, sir.
" A tunnel underneath the sea, from Calais straight to Dover, sir.
That qualmish folks may cross by land from one to t' other shore,
With sluices made to drown the French, if e'er they would come over, sir.
Has long been talked of, til) at length 'tis thought a monstrous bore."

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 27
There he hoped to escape the shafts of ridicule freely
levelled at his no longer graceful figure, spite of all the gold
frogs and embroidery his tailor had bedizened him with.
The stucco buildings with which the Prince Regent's
favourite architect overran the west end of London aroused
contemporary satire, although most of the houses built in
the preceding generation were, as Canova described them,
nothing more than brick walls pierced with holes at stated
distances. One epigram ran —
"Augustus at Eome was for building renowned,
And of marble he left- what of brick he had found.
But is not our Nash, too, a very great master '? —
He finds us all brick and he leaves us all plaster ! "
So much of what is now Trafalgar-square, as the court
yard of the royal mews with its dingy boundary wall did
not encroach upon, was in George IV.'s reign a mere waste
piece of ground, enlivened by a hackney coach stand, and
overlooked by the historic lion that surmounted old North
umberland House. Until 1827 the king's mews occupied
the site of the present National Gallery, the few score of
pictures of which the collection then consisted being located
at Mr. Angerstein's house in Pall-mall — since absorbed
by the present War office. When as a boy I was taken
there to see them many of the pictures (possibly those given
by Sir George Beaumont) were, I remember, lying against
the walls of the rooms unhung. In the neighbouring Hay
market ruddy-faced farmers still chaffered over the price of
hay, while lumbering waggons blocked up the thoroughfare.
The church of St. Martin's, too, had not yet been shorn of
its churchyard, and builders were busy over King William-
street and the Lowther-arcade. The old Exeter-change —
where Cross had his famous menagerie, and Chunee, the
mad elephant, had been recently shot by a detachment of
foot guards — stfll protruded over the Strand footway,
though its demolition was soon to be effected.

28 GLANCES BACK
Perhaps the greatest change of all, however, from the
London of George IV.'s days to the London of the present,
is apparent in the street traffic. Although there were
occasional long stoppages where the traffic was most con
gested, there was none of that legion of omnibuses and swift
and crawling cabs, or that continuous stream of light carts,
heavy waggons, and ponderous railway and other vans
which now blocks all the business thoroughfares of the
metropolis, and needs police interference to regulate it.
Then there were a comparatively moderate number of carts
and waggons, a sprinkling of hackney coaches and cabs,
some occasional four-horse stages starting from or arriving
at the great coaching inns, and a few gigs and brewers'
drays. The old hackney coaches were mainly discarded
carriages of the upper classes, shabby-looking on the out
side, spite of the ancient emblazonments on their panels,
and uncommonly fusty within, while the drunken jarvies
who drove them wore both in summer and winter heavy
drab greatcoats furnished with innumerable capes as a pro
tection against the rain. The cab of those days resembled
the ordinary cabriolet except for a little box perched at the
side, from which the driver was often shot into the road
whenever his horse stumbled or was suddenly checked.
Omnibuses were only introduced the year before George
IV. died. When these then novel vehicles first commenced
running with their three horses abreast, but with neither
knifeboard nor garden seats at the top, they were regarded
quite as much as objects of curiosity as conveniences to be
profited by. They very soon, however, became immensely
popular, and gradually swept all the suburban stage coaches
ofi" the road. The adroit conductor, or cad, as he was
originally called, early developed the accomplishment,
described by Dickens in one of his sketches, of " chucking
old gen'l'men into his 'bus, shutting them in and rattling
off before they know where it's a-going."

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 29'
Every possible outlet from the small area within which,,
towards the close of the Georgian era, the metropolis was
confined had its turnpike, or toll gate, as it was indifferentlj
called, and in the suburbs themselves these gates were fre
quently not more than a mile apart. It will be understood
from this how heavily the impost must have pressed on
owners of all kinds of vehicles passing in or out of London.
Pike-keepers, we know, were in Mr Weller senior's opinion
men who had been disappointed in life and revenged them
selves on their fellow-creatures by taking tolls. The nature-
of the torments to which their victims were exposed is-
graphically set forth in a contemporary lamentation.
" An individual driving himself starts, say from Bishop-
gate-street to Kilburn. The day is cold and rainy, his
fingers are benumbed, his gloves soaked with wet, his two
coats buttoned up, and his money is in the pocket of his tight
pantaloons,"^ while he himself is late for dinner. He has
to pull up in the middle of the street in Shoreditch and pay
a toll : as he means to return he takes a ticket, letter A.
On reaching Shoreditch church he turns into the Curtain-
road, pulls up again, drags off his wet glove with his teeth-
— his other hand being fully occupied with the reins and
whip — pays again, gets another ticket. No. 482, drags on
his glove, buttons up his coats, and rattles away into Old-
street-road. Here he is stopped at another gate ; more
pulling and poking, unbuttoning and squeezing; eventually
he pays and takes another ticket, letter L. The operation
of getting all to rights has to be gone through, and is not
repeated until the driver reaches Goswell-street-road ; here
he performs all the ceremonies already described a fourth
time, and gets a fourth ticket. No. 732, which is to clear
him through the gates in the New-road as far as the bottom
of Penton ville-hill. Arrived there he performs the same
1 The convenient little outer pocket for tickets and small change had not then been-
thought of by some inventive tailor.

30 GLANCES BACK
evolutions and procures a fifth ticket, letter X, which is to
clear him to the Paddington-road. ... On reaching Pad
dington gate he pays afresh and obtains a ticket, No. 691,
with which he proceeds swimmingly until stopped again at
Kilburn to pay a toU which would clear him all the way to
Stanmore if he were not going to dine at a house three
doors beyond this very turnpike, where he pays for the
seventh time and obtains a ticket, letter G." ^
Thames watermen and wherries were an institution in
the " twenties," when above bridge there were no steamers
beyond a few running to Richmond. Occasionally, how
ever, some stately barges, belonging to the city companies,
gay with flags and gilding, and with watermen in brave
liveries, enlivened this portion of the stream, which, un-
exploited as it then was by speculative builders, presented,
beyond Chelsea and the cockney tea-gardens, a succession
of pleasant pastoral spots — where
" Lazy cows wrench many a scented flower,
Eobbing the golden markets of the bees,"
— which one seeks for to-day in vain.
Down stream, the steamers all started from St.
Katherine's-wharf, for none dared attempt to shoot the
narrow arches, and encounter the dangerous rapids of old
London-bridge. On journeying down the river, one used,
as a boy, to gaze with curiosity and awe at the grim
gibbets, with their rusty swinging chains, which rose up
among the lonesome Blackwall marshes, and on which, not
many years before, the bodies of condemned pirates and
mutineers might have been seen hanging by way of warning
to the crews of outward-bound ships : —
1 Barham's Life of Theodore Hook, I. 61. The acts of parliament authorising these
toUs were often very loosely drawn. A person from whom a sixpenny toU had been
exacted for a child's wicker carriage appealed against the impost to the quarter sessions,
and had his appeal dismissed on the ground that the act authorized a. toll of sixpence to
.be levied on any vehicle drawn or propelled otherwise than by horses !

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 31
•'¦' We are all blanched and soddened of the rain,
And eke dried up and blackened of the sun ;
Corbies and pyets have our eyes out-ta'en.
And plucked our beard and hair out, one by one.
Whether by night or day, rest have we none :
Now here, now there, as the wind shifts its stead.
We swing and creak and rattle overhead,
No thimble dinted like our bird-pecked face."
At this time, however, no rotting, weather-beaten
corpses hung in the creaking chains — " tossing with every
breeze that blows, dancing where fires of dawning play "
— the barbarous custom having been abandoned for some
years, Yet the gibbets themselves, with their rusty chains,
were suffered to remain well into the reign of William IV.
Another tristful object scanned with interest was the dismal
old prison ship anchored off Deptford, on board of which,
at night time, the convicts working in the neighbouring
dockyard were confined.
On June 26, 1830, following upon frequent bulletins
preparing the public for the event, the booming of the
great bell of St. Paul's gave notice that George IV. had
ceased to live. Nobody seemed in the least to regret the
¦dead king. On the contrary, people felt a sort of relief at
his exit, and looked forward hopefully to the new and
happier era, which they believed was now about to open
out. Unfavourable as popular opinion of the late king was,
it fell short of that entertained of him by those who knew
him well. The clerk of his privy councU thought him
" a contemptible, selfish, unfeeling dog ; a spoiled, selfish,
odious beast," and believed " there was nothing false and
base he would not have been guilty of if he had dared,
only he was such a coward, and in such perfect awe of the
Duke of Cumberland ! "
It was very different when the Duke of York died a few
years before, though in many respects there was scarcely a
pin to choose between the two brothers. Both were the

32 GLANCES BACK THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS.
incarnation of selfishness, but the duke's amiability and
good temper told immensely in his favour. The duke, too,
certainly lived with his admirable wife, although he con
stantly left her at Oatlands in great pecuniary straits, with
out money to pay the trades-people and with the house
almost in ruins, as no builder would trust him for repairs.
All this while he was gambling away every sovereign he
could get hold of; and this too, when, as custodian of his
lunatic father, he was in receipt of an extra aUowance of
£10,000 a year. When the duchess died, the duke treated
his mistress in much the same fashion, leaving her to defray
the expenses of their joint establishment by the sale of army
commissions, to which he pretended to shut his eyes.
And yet when he died, in spite of all this and his great
unpopularity in political matters, there was something like
general sorrow among all classes, for the reason, I suppose,
that towards the close of his career he had come to be some
what affectionately regarded as the soldier's friend. At his
death a few newspapers censured his extravagance and his
connection with Mrs. Clark, but they soon veered round
and he was universally panegyrised. Ude, the famous
French cook, had his own ideas respecting his royal patron.
" He shall miss me wherever he has gone to," he naively
said when lamenting the duke's death. The newspapers
were less indulgent towards George IV. than they had been
to his brother, for the breath was scarcely out of his body
before, as Greville puts it, "they burst out in full cry,
and raked up all his vices, follies, and misdeeds."
As, however, the whirligig of time is said to bring round
its revenges, it is not at all improbable that in the coming
years some master of sophistry will seek to rehabilitate this
much reviled First Gentleman in Europe.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 33

IL
(1830-35.)
SCHOOL BAYS.
After a year's probation at a school near Clapham-com-
mon, kept by a superior sort of Wackford Squeers, who
taught his pupUs caligraphy by pounding away at their
knuckles with an ebony ruler, I was sent ^ to one of those
" classical and commercial academies," to the usually in
competent principals of which the intellectual development
of boys belonging to the middle-classes was at this period
confided. The Clapham pedagogue was a great stickler for
corporal punishment in the case of small boys, and to the
administration of this the shell suits then worn lent them
selves admirably. Little boys in these days were dressed
up to look the greatest of guys. They had no natty
knickerbocker, Balmoral, reefer, or other nice suits to set
them off. From petticoats they were shifted into trowsers,
fastening to jackets with many buttons, while a huge white
frill encircled the neck ; and this, which was a supreme
moment in a boy's existence, was called being breeched.
My new school was situated at Chislehurst, then undis
covered by the madding crowd of holiday excursionists and
undreamt of by the speculative builder, and remarkable
for its sequestered rural and sylvan beauty. At the time I
am speaking of (1831), the place was as secluded as though
it were a hundred miles away from the metropolis. Gates's
coach — rattling across the breezy commons, or scudding
VOL. L c

34 GLANCES BACK
along the shady lanes,' forcing the droning waggoner to
pull his creeping team aside — passed daily through the
quiet village on its way from Orpington to London. Its
passengers, with rare exceptions, comprised simply dweUers
in the locality, and most of them descended where the
coach put up at one of the old galleried Borough inns,
pictured so pleasantly in " Pickwick."
The great charm of Chislehurst in these days was its
sequestered woods, its picturesque commons bordered by
noble trees, and the many beautiful parks attached to the
residences of the nobility and gentry in the immediate
neighbourhood, which anybody might then freely roam
over. The school I was sent to was kept by a Mr. Wyburn, a
tall and military-looking personage, who had shouldered a
musket as one of the old volunteers at the time of the
threatened French invasion, and flourished a sabre in the
ranks of the Kent yeomanry. Though rather elderly, he
was remarkably erect, and with his well-powdered hair,
capacious white cravat, and singularly prim attire, presented
a most dignified appearance. Associated with him was his
son-in-law, and the pair were assisted by a couple of ushers,
one of whom was constantly being changed, his place being
usuaUy supplied from the crowded ranks of those who had
failed in other pursuits. Thus, I remember, we had at one
time a brewer's accountant, who was superseded by a
methodistical individual, reported to have once been an
itinerant preacher. He quickly gave place to an amiable,
irresolute young fellow in reduced circumstances, who,
having been brought up to no calling whatever, had only
the scholastic profession — that refuge for the destitute —
open to him.
It is, however, of the principal usher that I have to
speak, a rather old and remarkably podgy individual. His
rounded paunch, rubicund countenance, leering eye, and

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 35
scanty white locks were strongly suggestive of Falstaff,
though for some reason or other he had obtained the nick
name of the " Jack of Clubs." His real name was Feldon,
and in happier times he had been one of the masters of the
Philological School, a circumstance of which he was con
tinually boasting. His years and his unwieldly figure
rendered him totally unfit to cope with the unruly lads
committed out of school hours almost exclusively to his
-charge, so that he was constantly complaining to the head
master of his authority being defied, and of the personal
insults heaped upon him.
He had a habit of brooding over his wrongs, and of
seizing on an auspicious moment, when perfect silence pre
vailed in the school-room, to abruptly advance from his
own desk in a remote corner to the centre of the floor,
facing the pulpit desk of the head-master, who recognised
at once what was about to follow. All eyes being turned
towards the obese old gentleman, the latter would deliver
himself of a set harangue, accompanying it by that con
ventional action of the arms which little boys employed
when declaiming, " My name is Nerval," the stock juvenile
oration of the period. Having made his complaint, he
would proceed to boast of the position he had formerly
filled, and wind up by proclaiming, that sooner than suffer
ibhe indignities he was at present exposed to, " he would beg
his bread to London first."
No matter how his speech began, or what the subject
lof it, it always ended in the same fashion. The boys,
having regard to the old gentleman's twenty-stone weight,
which .constrained him to waddle very slowly along, invari-
.ably grinned among themselves at this pet peroration ;
Wybuam growled out some threats of what would happen
to the culprits if only they could be pointed out to him,
.and Feldon, satisfied with having unburthened himself of
ihis wroDgSi, and with Wyburn's stereotyped assurance,

36 GLANCES BACK
retired to his accustomed corner, leaving lessons to follow
their routine course.
The school was a capital one in all respects save the
scantiness of the instruction imparted to the pupils, and
the lack of anything like discipline. But the boys, of
course, never complained of these shortcomings. The
food being excellent and plentiful, the daily tasks light,
and the liberty allowed excessive, the pupils at Chislehurst
Academy were as contented as schoolboys are ever Kkely
to be. With the majority it was a matter of principle to
learn as little as possible, whUe the few who were studi
ously inclined were generally chaffed or bullied into neglect
ing their tasks. Our great difficulty was to scramble
through the class examinations on subjects of which we
had not so much as a smattering of knowledge ; but in
case of failure there was always a chance of punishment
being meted out where it was undeserved, as in the typical
case of the boy who, knowing the rule in syntax, but not
the reason for it, got a fiogging for his presumed ignor
ance, owing to the loose way in which the master had pro
pounded the question. Written exercises were, of course,
got through easily enough by the duller boys bribing the
sharper ones to do their work for them.
Besides a couple of day scholars, sons of farmers in the
neighbourhood, a young lady of fifteen came to the school
to take daily lessons. She was the niece of an imperious
dame who lived at the manor-house, which, according to
the common talk of the village, the lady's late husband —
a nefarious old London solicitor — had acquired by forgery
or fraud. The niece sat apart from the boys generally,
and being very pretty, was not only the cynosure of neigh
bouring eyes, but the object of desperate devotion on the
part of the more manly amongst her admirers, who seemed
ready then and there to slay each other with their pocket-
knives to secure the favour of the fair one's smiles.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 37
At Chislehurst a boy's status in the school was not de
termined by his position in his class, but solely by his
pugilistic performances. New boys were, of course, put
through the customary examination as to where they lived,
what their fathers were, how much the latter Avere worth :
whether they had any pretty sisters, and the damsels' ages
— these last enquiries proceeding from the youthful Don
Juans of the school. This inquisition over, the new-comers
were speedily matched against boys of their own size, and
had rank assigned them according to the way they acquitted
themselves in these encounters. Though school conflicts
of this character were not openly tolerated, they were
usually winked at by the boys' mentors, who never seemed
at all curious as to the origin of the many discoloured eyes
and swollen noses w^hich it was impossible to prevent from
coming under their observation.
It was not surprising that this state of things obtained
at private establishments, when at public schools set
pugilistic contests between the boys took place. Not long
before, there had been an organised stand-up fight in the
Eton playing-fields, between a son of Lord Shaftesbury's and
a nephew of the Marquis of Londonderry's. The two lads
fought stripped to the waist in strict professional fashion,
and had their bottle-holders and backers to sustain and
encourage them. After fighting sixty rounds, occupying a
couple of hours, the earl's son, the younger of the two
combatants, who during the contest had been freely plied
with neat brandy, was withdrawn by his backers, only to
die, however, a few hours afterwards.
An inquest was held, and the marquis's nephew was
put upon his trial for manslaughter, when a lord, a
baronet, an M.P., two colonels, and other gentlemen ac
companied him into the dock. As, however, no counsel
appeared for the prosecution, and none of the witnesses
who had been subpoenaed answered to their names, a ver-

38 GLANCES BACK
diet of "not guUty" was returned. No doubt the legaL
farce was supplemented by the judge gravely observing in
conventional fashion that the aristocratic young bruiser
"left the court without the slightest stain upon his
character." On half-holidays great license was allowed to the elder
boys of our school. They could always obtain leave of
absence, on asking for it, until 8 o'clock, but commonly
deferred their return until an hour or more later. They
used to set out after dinner in smaU gangs, the bigger
boys — aping the farmers and gamekeepers of the neighbour
hood — swaggering in leather leggings. During autumn
they would go on nutting excursions through the woods,
but more frequently on marauding expeditions to orchards,
sufficiently remote to be pillaged wholesale without at
tracting suspicion towards the actual delinquents. In the
spring bird-nesting was the rule, for Chislehurst, besides
being embowered in woods, abounded in sequestered um
brageous spots, and most of the boys could climb the tallest
trees like squirrels.
In summer time, if cricket proved an insufficient attrac
tion, horses grazing in the meadows would be secured, and
galloped round the field till Nemesis suddenly appeared in
the shape of some choleric individual in cords and gaiters,
armed with a far-reaching driving whip, to interrupt the
exciting sport and warn these ardent equestrians to make
rapid tracks. One boy who had the ill-luck to get caught,
was held across a rail while a heavy riding whip was applied
to his tightened nether garments with so much energy that
his bello wings and plaintive appeals for mercy penetrated
our ears a quarter of a mile off, and gave wings to our
already nimble feet. For a month afterwards he must
have wished himself a cherubim, so painful did he find a
sitting posture.
When autumn winds —

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 39
"With scourge of fury were lashing down
The delicate rankM golden corn
That never more shall rear its crown
And curtsey to the morn,"
orchards, as I have said, were commonly raided, and later on
the boys took to cutting furze and underwood and stacking
them round the tall fir-pole raised on the common opposite
our school, for the huge bonfire on the night of November
5th. On one of these furze cutting expeditions my elder
brother had his foot half-severed by an ill- directed bill
stroke, and remained for months under a surgeon's care.
Chislehurst village was divided into what was termed
" up-town " and " down-town," the common separating the
two. There was always a bitter struggle between up
town and down-town as to which should have the largest
bonfire on Guy Fawkes night ; and our school being down
town, the boys rendered the latter all the assistance they
could. Stacking the furze and faggots for these huge
bonfires began about the middle of October, and each party
anxiously watched the other's progress. On one occasion,
shortly before the 5th, having noticed that the up-town
bonfire was likely to be considerably larger than any the
down-townsmen would succeed in stacking, we resolved to
kindle it surreptitiously before the proper time. To ac
complish this, three of us were lowered out of our bedroom
windows, on a cold November morning, shortly before
daybreak, when, after possessing ourselves of some tar and
turpentine, purchased the day before from the village
house-painter, and a heap of hay bands, with tinder-box,
matches, and lantern — which we had prevailed on the
stableman to lend us — we scaled the high school-gateway,
and boldly sallied forth.
Keeping the lantern light concealed, we hurried across
the common to the old village cockpit, in which the
materials for the up-town bonfire were stacked. Fiist

40 GLANCES BACK
posting one of our party to give an alarm in case of
surprise on the part of anyone on the alert, we next
deposited the hay bands among the furze and faggots, and
after thoroughly saturating them with tar and turpentine,
set them alight. We then scampered off at full speed, for
the bonfire instantly blazed up, and the faggots loudly
crackling aroused some young fellows who had been
deputed to keep watch, and three of whom immediately
gave us chase. We, however, tore rapidly along, and had
succeeded in scaling the school-gates, and getting ourselves
drawn up to our bedrooms again by some boys on the
look-out for our return, before in the early morning
obscurity our pursuers could realise what had become of
us. Vigorous efforts were made to extinguish the bonfire,
but to no purpose. It burned itself completely out, and
down-town there were tlie wildest rejoicings over our
successful enterprise.
Another fire kindled on the common in the ensuing
summer was likely to have led to unpleasant consequences.
The season was an exceedingly hot one, and as we were
returning home from our accustomed bath in a pond of
clear water, situated in a sequestered corner of the
common, one of the boys, experimenting with some
phosphoric or lucifer matches — then recently introduced —
foolishly tried the effect of a lighted one on the furze,
which was instantly in a blaze. The fire spread with fearful
rapidity, attracting a crowd of villagers to the spot, and
also a couple of Lord Sydney's keepers. The flames were
only extinguished after much damage had been done, and
the beauty of the common seriously impaired. Thc
neighbouring gentry were a good deal irritated, and the
matter having come to the ears of Lord Sydney, who was
the recognised king of the place, he angrily ordered the
village constable to make enquiries and report to him.
The culprit was soon discovered, and there was a talk

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 41
of issuing a warrant, which sent Wyburn off post haste
to Lord Sydney at Frognal, where he made a pathetic
appeal to the irate peer, not by any means on the boy's
account, but solely to avert the disgrace that would
inevitably fall on the school, promising his lordship that
the offending lad should receive the severest castigation
that he had ever administered since he had wielded birch
and ferule. Now, the one thing beyond all others on
which Wyburn prided himself was being strictly a man of
his word, and, unfortunately, an unforeseen circumstance
prevented him from keeping it in this particular instance.
The guilty one, alarmed at the sight of the constable, and
having visions of Maidstone jail and the treadmill before
his eyes, at once turned his six-bladed pocket-knife, his
lop-eared rabbits, and his cricket bat into ready cash, and
watching his opportunity, surreptitiously trotted off to
Tottenham on the other side of London, where his people
lived ; whilst Wyburn was endeavouring to calm the
ruffled lord of the manor, and expatiating on the sound
lacing which the young rascal should inevitably receive at
his hands. The school stableman of whom I have spoken was a
stalwart, black-whiskered, handsome-looking scoundrel,
greatly in favour with all the girls of the village, and on
intimate terms with some notable poachers. He, more
over, did a little poaching on his own account, setting
wires for hares and rabbits in unfrequented parts of
Woodheath, a preserve of Lord Sydney's which skirted
a meadow in the rear of our playground. He confided
the secret of the position of these wires to one or two of
the bigger boys, who during play hours would visit the
.spots where they were set, and report to Master William
if a hare or rabbit had been snared. They were rather
proud of participating in the risk of being caught by the
gamekeepers, which involved being thrashed within an inch

42 GLANCES BACK
of their lives, although they had not the remotest chance
of sharing in the poaching profits. Most of the hares
caught in this fashion were sold to the boys, who, after
labelling them in the stable, stealthily forwarded them by
Gates's coach as presents to their fathers in town in full
expectation, of course, of receiving a handsome tip in return..
It should be remembered that at this time the game
laws were excessively stringent. Only owners of land of
the annual value of £1U0 — that is, fifty times the qualifi
cation needed to vote for a member of parliament — or
clergymen holding livings of not less than £150 a year,
were then privileged to kill game. Others could only
legally participate in the sport by pretending to engage
themselves as gamekeepers to the friends whose preserves
they shot over. The sale of game was altogether pro
hibited, excepting by landholders on whose estates it had
been killed, though the prohibition was to a certain extent
evaded by dealers pretending to sell it on commission.
The penalty for dealing in game was a heavy one, but its
partial remission was readily secured by the simple process
of privately informing against some other offender in the
same line.
Ineffectual attempts had more than once been made to
pass a bill rendering the sale of game legal. It was
absurd, said Lord Wharncliffe, to tell an alderman that he
might purchase a turkey but not a partridge. In England
the setting of man-traps and spring guns to warn poachers
off particular preserves was a misdemeanour only, whereas
the Scotch judges held in the case of a man killed by a
spring gun that the gamekeeper who had set it was guilty
of murder. In those game-law ridden days anyone might
have his house searched on mere suspicion, and if either
game, gun, or snare was found therein, could be sent to
prison, and after being well flogged, be set to hard labour.
Before I left school, unpleasant rumours were afloat

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 43'
with reference to our stableman. Several gigs had been
stopped late at night at the rise of some of the steeper hiUs
in the neighbouring secluded roads, and their occupants-
compelled to pay tribute. Suspicion pointed strongly to-
Master William, and some amiable excuse had to be
found for relieving him of any further service at the school,.
for he Avas held in too much dread by his employers to be-
openly dismissed.
He very soon turned his back upon Chislehurst, to the'
great grief of his female admirers, and nothing was heard
of him for nearly a twelvemonth, when the toll-keeper on
some lonely road in Kent, hearing the rumbling of a gig in
the middle of the night, saw, on going out to unlock the
gate, that the vehicle, which he recognised as belonging to
a neighbouring country brewer, was without a driver. A
search along the road led to the discovery that a brutal
murder had been committed, the victim's skull having,
been battered in with a hedge-stake. A considerable
sum of money, which, it was afterwards ascertained, the
murdered man had collected, had disappeared. Our late
stableman and a couple of his companions were arrested,
and tried at Maidstone assizes for the murder and highway
robbery, but although circumstances told dead against
them, there was a deficiency of legal proof, and they
escaped conviction. From this time Master William was a
marked man, and before many months had gone by he was
again put upon his trial for some less heinous offence, and
found guilty. Transportation followed, and henceforward
his old Chislehurst acquaintances knew him no more.
When I first went to Chislehurst the burking scare,
following on the murder of the Italian boy by Bishop and
Williams in 1831, and the disposal of the dead body to the
hospital doctors, was at its height. Some years before,
Burke and Hare had been convicted of similar crimes in
Edinburgh, but the scene of their atrocities was too remote

44 GLANCES BACK
in those pre-railway days to excite any particular appre
hension in the minds of people living in London and its
neighbourhood. When, however, Londoners realised that
a regular trade in murder was being carried on at their
own doors, simply for the sake of the few pounds the
corpse would bring, that dead bodies were transported
hither and thither in hackney coaches, and carried by hired
market porters in hampers or sacks from hospital to hos
pital until a satisfactory sale could be effected, and that
well-known dentists, asking no questions, were ready pur
chasers of the victims' teeth, people grew dreadfully
alarmed, and scarcely dared stir out in unfrequented neigh
bourhoods at night-time.
Rumours were current, and not without foundation, of
murders committed in lonesome places by miscreants who
laid in wait for solitary passers-by, over whose mouths
they suddenly placed pitch plasters, stifling their cries and
¦stopping their breathing at the same moment. The terror
inspired by these rumours had penetrated even to Chisle
hurst, and whenever the ladies of the school went out to
dances or card parties, and their usual protectors were
debarred from accompanying them, some of the bigger
boys (provided with lighted lanterns and stout sticks, and
feeling intensely proud of the duty confided to them) would
be commissioned to escort the fair ones home, across the
lonely commons or along the dark country lanes at mid
night or later ; real or pretended dread of burkers being
invariably assumed by the younger damsels whenever any
particularly lonely spot was passed.
The supply of corpses to the London hospitals through
the medium of recognized resurrection men had for long
been complained of as insufficient. People, after burying
their kinsfolk with all the undertaker's expensive pomp,
were naturally averse to the graves being rifled a few days
afterwards, and the bodies of those near and dear to them

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 45
being hacked about in the interests of science. The
churchyards were therefore watched at night-time by men
with loaded firearms, and any resurrectionist who had not
come to a previous understanding with the sexton, stood a
good chance of getting an ounce or two of lead into his
carcass. As a rule the body-snatchers preferred going for
workhouse "subjects," the coffins of these being packed
close together and only a couple of feet or so below the
ground, thus enabling several subjects to be secured in a
short space of time. One "professional" told a com
mittee of the House of Commons that he had once
"snatched" as many as twenty-three bodies in a single
night. Rich people, he pathetically complained, were very
difficult to get, owing to their corpses being buried so
tremendously deep.
There were certain dismal associations chnging to
Chislehurst and the neighbourhood at the time I refer to,
and more especially to Camden House, where Camden the
antiquary, and a century and a half after him Lord Chan
cellor Camden, lived, and where in later years, when the
house had been transformed or rebuilt. Napoleon III. died
in exile. Early in the century the gloomy old mansion had
been the scene of a horrible crime, its then owner, a wealthy
Russian merchant, named Bonar, and his wife having been
found one morning murdered in their bed. The affair was
a most mysterious one : no noise had been heard during the
night, and no property was missing. For a time it was
supposed that the house must have been entered by thieves,
who, disturbed in their proceedings, had murdered Mr
Bonar and his wife in order to escape detection. But the
Bow-street runners soon found reasons for suspecting a
man-servant, named Nicholson, who eventually confessed
having committed the crime on the impulse of the moment,
and with no kind of motive. Subsequently he contrived to
cut his own throat, but Mr., afterwards Sir, Astley Cooper,
the famous surgeon, succeeded in healing the wound suffi-

-46 GLANCES BACK
ciently for the Kentish hangman to adjust the noose, and
the murderer was duly hanged on Penenden-heath.
On some palings of the park facing Chislehurst-common
a rude deep cross had been cut, which the old people ofthe
villao-e, who remembered all the circumstances of the
murder, said marked the spot where the footman had
buried his bloody linen under some laurel bushes. These
old villagers used also to point out to the boys the windows
of the bedroom to which the footman, dressed up like a
ghost, they said, stole softly after midnight and butchered
the old couple in their sleep ; and would tell of the crowds
of people whom the discovery of the crime attracted to the
spot from the neighbouring country side, and the many
hundreds who flocked from miles around to see the victims
buried. In a prominent part of Chislehurst churchyard a
monument was erected to the murdered couple, the touch
ing inscription on which, from being constantly pored over,
was known by heart to most of the boys in the school.
North Cray Place was the scene of another dismal
occurrence ; and one of our favourite walks on half-holidays
was to the neighbourhood of the deserted mansion. After
crossing Scadbury -park, with its ancient oaks of huge girth
and the remnant of the old Tudor manor-house, where Lord
Keeper Bacon, father of the great Sir Francis, and Secretary
Walsingham were born, we passed through the village of
Foots Cray, from which North Cray Place was a mile or so
distant. It was here that some ten years before (1822) the
handsome, amiable, but intensely unpopular Marquis of
Londonderry, or as Byron cruelly christened him, " carotid
artery cutting Castlereagh," put an end to his existence. All
the circumstances of the suicide, and the purchase of the
cheap penknife with which it was accomplished,^ were still
1 The Rev. J. Richardson, long a member of "the Times" staff, and whom
1 knew very well, in his " RecoUections of the last half-century " (vol i., p. 30i),
mentions having seen Lord Londonderry purchase this penknife from one of the
hawkers of cheap cutlery who used to hang about the coaches starting from the White
Horse cellar, and try the blade of the knife on his thumb-nail as if to test its sharpness.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 47
in the recollection of persons living in the neighbourhood ;
while the more superstitious among them firmly believed
that the house was haunted, maintaining that the ghost of
the dead statesman regularly roamed through the rooms
after nightfall. The housekeeper did not contradict these
Tumours, but she was evidently not in the least alarmed by
them, as for a satisfactory fee she was only too happy to
gratify the curiosity of strangers by shewing them the
little room where the suicide had taken place, and the
bloodstains on the fioor, which, she pretended, neither soap
nor scrubbing brush was able to obliterate.
To-day it is commonly believed that the marquis was
driven to do " What Cato did and Addison approved "
through the persistent exactions of a gang of extortioners
who, having made certain discoveries seriously affecting
the marquis's moral character, allowed him no peace. He
seems, indeed, to have lived in perpetual dread of some
painful exposure. At the inquest that was held, after it
had been falsely given out that the marquis had died of
gout in the stomach, his physician said that when he
entered his bedroom on the morning of the fatal occurrence
the marquis abruptly enquired "whether he had anything
unpleasant to tell him," and on his replying "no," said
" he had reason to be in some degree suspicious."
Friends whom Lord Londonderry had previously con
sulted had advised him to appeal to the law, and to give his
persecutors into custody, but he lacked the courage to face the
exposure that would have inevitably ensued ; and no wonder,
for the popular hatred and contempt in which he was held
were already intense enough. Even his unhappy end failed
to awaken the smallest pity, as was evident from the
loud shout of execration which burst from the assembled
crowd when the corpse of the noble suicide was being re-

48 GLANCES BACK
moved from the hearse to its resting-place in Westminster
Abbey. From our school a view was obtained of a large mansion
perched on a hUl near Eltham, and pointed out by the
villagers as having been the home of another noble suicide
— Earl Rivers, who one frosty morning in 1831 was found
mysteriously drowned in the Serpentine, when the family
sought to have it believed that his death was due to an
accident. It was well known, however, that the earl was
an inveterate gambler, and in the habit pf playing for very
high stakes at the Union Club, of which; he was an habitu^,
and where he had been seen at times tp sit down to play
with as much as £100,000 in bank no|:es before him. A
night of persistent ill-luck had, it was said, utterly ruined
him, and drove him to commit suicide. Temporary insanity
might well have been alleged in his case, for this irrepres
sible gambler had somewhat inconseqjential ideas. On
one occasion, on leaving the club in brmd daylight after a
night of heavy losses, he encountered a city clerk, who, on
his way to business, had stopped to fasl/en Ius ^Kie-string
on the club steps. Sorely needing sonsKthing on which to
vent his vexation, the moody earl sent the astonished clerk
flying with a well-directed kick, exclaiming as he did so,,
although he had never set eyes on his victim before, " Drat
you ! you 're always tying that confounded shoe of yours."
In these days all the clubs were more or less gam
bling hells, and, recognising this, Crockford, the little
Temple Bar fishmonger, cut in with a club of his own,
established under none of the flimsy false pretences cur
rent, but ostensibly for the purpose of play. He enticed
players to his faro bank by gratuitous suppers of a most
recherche character, having, if I remember right, secured
the services of the famous Ude as cook after the Duke of
York's death. These suppers, and the plucking of the
plump pigeons attracted by them, called forth a clever

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 49
witticism from Hook, who applied to Crockford the well-
known Scripture quotation : " He fiUeth the hungry with
good things, and the rich He hath sent empty away."
More interesting, however, to the boys of our school
than these two dead lords, Castlereagh and Rivers, were the
various live lords resident in the neighbourhood of Chisle
hurst, three of whom attended the Sunday morning service
at church pretty regularly. These were young Lord Sydney,
the lord of the manor, who soon afterwards married the
handsome daughter of the rakish Marquis of Anglesea ;
Lord Bexley, who drove over from Sidcup or Foots Cray,
I believe ; and Lord Wynford, a gouty, old law lord,
living at Ijeesons, who used generally to be wheeled in a
bath-chair up the church aisle to his comfortably cushioned
pew, where he commonly paid the parson the compliment
of dozing throughout the sermon.
Chislehurst church had not then been restored and
decorated out of all recognition on the part of those who
had grown familiar with it in its more primitive state.
The interior still possessed all the quaint picturesqueness
which antiquity usually confers, but which the restorer
generally does his best to obliterate. I have a dim recol
lection of a fine monument' to one of the Walsinghams —
Queen Elizabeth's famous secretary, who, as I have already
mentioned, was born at Scadbury, close by ; but the
monument we boys took most interest in was one, I think,
to Sir Philip Warwick, secretary to Charles I., by reason
of the rusty helmet and sword, and the moth-eaten gaunt
lets dangling above it, which we, in our crass ignorance,
associated with those remoter chivalrous times we had
read about in Sir Walter Scott's and G. P. R. James's
historical novels.
When the service was over, the three lords used to meet
just outside the church porch and exchange compliments,
talk scandal, crack jokes, and discuss Reform — to which, of
VOL. I. D

'50 GLANCES BACK
course, they were all opposed — the spreading rick burnings,
which sorely perplexed and troubled them, quarter sessions
business, and the abundance or scarcity of game ; while the
more ill-mannered boys of the school, posting themselves
as close as they dared, gazed timorously at their high-
mightinesses — for lords were then much more mysterious
and powerful personages than they are thought to be in
these democratic days — trying hard to catch all they were
talking about. I remember being somewhat puzzled at
finding that peers of the realm presented nothing different
in their appearance to ordinary country gentlemen ; that
they wore not the slightest distinguishing emblem — such
as a ribbon or a star — betokening their exalted rank.
Other boys, similarly perplexed, inquisitively asked why
it was these noble lords did not come to church in their
coronets and robes, as the " Penny Magazine " engraving,
after Copley's picture of the death of the Earl of Chatham
in the House of Lords, depicted peers wearing.
Lord Sydney, who was far more intimately connected
with Chislehurst than either of his two associates, was a
descendant of the Tommy Townsend commemorated in
Goldsmith's " Retaliation," and the subject of Lord North's
neat repartee. Townsend, while inveighing against the
prime minister, had angrily exclaimed, " Nothing wfll
satisfy me but the noble lord's head," to which North
quietly rejoined, " The honourable gentleman demands my
head ; however, I bear him no malice, and assure him
that on no account would I have his in return."
Lord Bexley, whose forte was finance, had taken to
presiding over the Bible Society, and belonged to the
band of pious peers of the "No Popery" type. "We
are told," exclaimed he, "that the bigots are growing
old, and fast wearing out; if it be so, why not let us
die in peace ! " Lord Wynford, an arbitrary, ill-tempered
old sinner, known to be addicted to hard drinking and

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 51
loud swearing — qualities that made him in favour with
the Carlton House set, to which in his younger days he
had belonged — was an orange tory of the good old stamp,
and brought an absurd bill into the House of Lords for
promoting a better observance of the Sabbath, though
he really did not care a straw about the matter. Lord
Brougham attacked the bill in a scathing speech, with
the result that, although it had the support of the bench
of bishops, and passed the house by a small majority,
nothing further was heard of it. During the later dis^
cussions in the House of Lords on the Reform bill, I
frequently saw old Lord Wynford posting past our school
on his way to Westminster, to take a prominent part in
the exciting debates and divisions which preceded the
passing of the measure. Lord Sydney confined his oppo
sition to voting against the bill, but so strong was the
Reform feeling, that his action led to the resignation of
all those members of the yeomanry corps, of which he was
colonel, who, not being his tenants, could afford to display
their independence.
In these far-off Chislehurst days, Kent ranked as the
leading cricketing county, and had just commenced to
play single-handed against all-England again. These
annual matches came off on the common near a pictur
esque old mill, the return matches being played at
Lord's cricket ground. Everybody in Chislehurst made
holiday on the two days when the West Kent eleven tried
its strength against the gentlemen and players got together
by the Marylebone Club from all the crack cricketing
counties. The gentry drove and rode in from miles
around, pedestrians came from all the outlying villages,
and freshly -painted waggons, decorated with green boughs,
rumbled along the dusty country lanes, bringing florid-
looking, well-to-do farmers, with their buxom wives and
pretty blushing daughters, to participate in the victory

52 GLANCES BACK
which the county was sure to gain, and get all the enjoy
ment they could from the pleasant summer outing.
Two of the best cricketers in the West Kent eleven
were Chislehurst men. One was Mr. Herbert Jenner,
son of Sir Herbert Jenner, and subsequently a proctor
practising in the Arches' Court, over which his father
presided. He was, perhaps, the best and neatest wicket-
keeper that ever stood behind the stumps. He was far
superior to his contemporary. Box, and, though in keep
ing wicket he had to encounter Alfred Mynn's terrific
bowling, he never flinched, never lost a chance, and
disdained to wear gloves or any other protection. After a.
day's play his hands were dreadfully bruised and swollen,.
and he was said to get them into condition again by the
application of some lotion, the secret of which he had
learnt from the gypsies, who always came to Chislehurst
in force during the cricket matches and at fair time.
Herbert Jenner, besides being supreme as a wicket-
keeper, was more than an average batsman, and always
safe for a fair number of runs.
The other cricketer on whom Chislehurst prided itself
was Mr Charles Harenc, member of an old Kentish family,
and certainly the " demon bowler " of his epoch. His
style has since found many imitators. He delivered the
ball overhand with great velocity, but with perfect fair
ness — no throwing was tolerated in those days— and as
it left his hand he gave it a certain spin by some peculiar
action of the arm and wrist, which caused it, after pitch
ing close to the batsman's left foot— rendering it exceed
ingly difficult to play — to bound swiftly into the wicket.
Young Harenc was in the habit of practising very fre
quently on the common at aj^set of stumps, with a large
net spread behind them to stop the ball, which his groom
used to throw back to him. He always placed a small
white feather on the spot where, if a batsman were play-

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 53
ing at the wicket his left foot would rest ; and, after the
ball pitched there, it was surprising to see how neatly
it would turn aside, displacing the stumps, and sending
the bails flying into the air.
The second bowler on the Kentish side was Mr. Alfred
Mynn, who, on his then recent discovery at Town Mailing,
had been forthwith admitted to the West Kent eleven.
Mr. Mynn was of herculean build, and his bowling, over
hand, was remarkable for its terrific swiftness. At this
time neither gloves, pads, nor any kind of protection were
in use in the cricket field. Those engaged in the game
too, usually wore top hats — beaver was then almost your
only wear, though for a season or two light hats made of
horse hair were in fashion with the gentlemen players.
Another Kent cricketer of whom I have a distinct recollec
tion was Hilly er, a splendid short slip, who never allowed
the chance of a catch to escape him, though the ball, when
played off Mynn's bowling, often had almost the velocity
of a cannon shot.
Of the all-England side I can remember two celebrated
professionals, little LiUywhite, the famous bowler, and big
Fuller Pilch, the equally famous batsman, who some years
subsequently changed sides and was enrolled in the Kent
eleven. Another batsman whose play was generally
watched with interest was Mr. Wm. Ward, who, in his
younger days, in a match between Norfolk and the Maryle
bone Club, had made the greatest score that had been then
recorded, namely 238, after being missed in an easy catch
before he had scored 30. Mr. Ward's phenomenal score was
capped more than half-a-century afterwards at Canterbury,
when Mr. W. G. Grace made no less than 344 runs, and
more^ recently by Shrewsbury with a score of 267.^
Mr. Ward, at the time I remember him, was past middle
age, and carried far too much flesh for a first-rate cricketer.
1 Even larger scores have, I believe, been made since the iibove was written.

54 GLANCES BACK
He was an important city man, a great Russia merchant, a
director of the Bank of England, and tory M.P. for the
city of London. He was also father of Mr. W". G. Ward,
the friend of Pusey and Newman, and one of the early
leaders of the Tractarian movement, who, on being de
prived of his degree at Oxford by reason of certain passages
in his " Ideal of a Christian Church," soon afterwards
went over to Rome.
An occasional member of the all-England eleven, with
whom as a boy I picked up an acquaintance which was
renewed whenever he visited Chislehurst in the cricketing
season, was Sir St. Vincent Cotton. He tested both my bat
ting and bowling capabilities, and invariably had a smile and
a kind word for me whenever he met me. I used to think
him one of the most light-hearted and pleasantest of men ;
and felt genuinely sorry when, in after years, I learnt that
he had long since run through his fortune, and was profit
ing by his skill, as one of the best whips of his day, to
drive the fastest team running on the Brighton road for
the sake of the " tips " given by the passengers.
In the early summer-time a genuine rustic fair used to
be held on Chislehurst-common. This did not depend for
its attractions on any vulgar human or animal monstrosi
ties, or circuses, menageries, peep shows, roundabouts, or
any nonsense of that kind. Such old English sports as
single-stick, wrestling and jingling — all in the ancient
cockpit near the church — with climbing the greasy pole,
walking the bowsprit across the deepest pond on the com
mon, jumping in sacks, racing blindfold with wheel bar
rows, and races by women for hem-stitched and gaily be-
ribboned smocks, formed the regular programme. For the
prizes given at single-stick, wrestling, and races by women
the gypsies attending the fair, mostly all of fine physical
development, were the chief competitors. They scorned to
make themselves laughing-stocks by taking part in the

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 55
greasy pole, the bowsprit, the jumping in sacks, and the
blind barrow-wheeling contests, disdainfully leaving all
these to be competed for by the yokels of the neighbour
hood. The dark- eyed women of the tribe were constantly
on the watch to draw the village girls aside to some retired
spot and there beguile them of their small savings while
fooling them with flattering portraits of their promised
husbands, and they not infrequently prevailed on the well
born damsels of the place to lend a willing ear to their
wUy predictions.
Forty years after I had left school I paid a flying visit
one Sunday to Chislehurst, in order to see how the old
place then looked. I soon discovered that the railway had
completely transformed the neighbourhood. Adjoining the
station were rows of pleasant villas, and new roads inter
sected the once solitary woods. The old mill near the
cricket ground had disappeared, and houses occupied its
site. The school had been converted into a gentleman's
residence, and around the common many new houses had
been built. The interior of the church had been more or
less Romanized and changed beyond recognition, and in
the trim kept churchyard the newer graves were scarcely
visible under their chaplets and clusters of flowers. The
quaint little manor-house had been enlarged and restored,
the thoroughfare through Scadbury-park had been closed,
and the public could no longer enjoy the old charming
walk to Sidcup. Much of the beautiful undulating ground
of Bonar's-park was covered with fine mansions, and
sequestered Woodheath had been recently lotted out by
surveyors for building purposes. A bran new ornamental
gateway gave access to the grounds of Camden House,
which I saw had either been rebuilt or greatly enlarged
and modernized.
As I stood pondering over the many changes which the
past forty years had brought about, the exiled Emperor

56 GLANCES BACK
and Empress of the French, and the young Prince Louis,
attended by some few members of their suite, passed on
foot through the gUded gateway ^ on to the common,
where a small crowd of well-dressed sycophants were
assembled to receive them with that blind obsequious
homage which our tuft-hunting British race invariably
accords to rank. I had only just arrived from Paris after
its capture, first by the Germans and next from the Com
mune ; and had recently seen its western suburbs laid
waste by the bombardment of the Versailles troops, and
witnessed the destruction of several of its historic hdtels
by shells fired by the Communards from Montmartre. I
had beheld, too, the desperate fighting in the streets, seen
cannon sweeping the city's handsomest boulevard, and the
bodies of slaughtered National guards lying unburied for
days together in the principal thoroughfares ; had seen,
moreover, the summary execution of scores of Communards,
the blazing palaces and public buildings, the captured
pStroleuses and other viragoes to which that unhappy time
gave birth ; and I could not but feel that most of the grave
disasters which had befallen France had their origin in that
imperial rule so much belauded by English people, and I
preferred to stand aside and not to seem to render respect
where I felt that respect was certainly not due.
1 " Camden-place is doomed. A great notice board stares you in the face at the broad
gates through which the body of the dead emperor was borne to its last resting-place,
iind informs you that this eligible, &c., property is to be let for building purposes ; and
already the ground is being cut up into plots for the erection of ' modern mansions.' " —
The Referee, Nov. 16, 1890.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 57

IIL
(1830-32.)
THE REFORM FRENZY AND THE RICK BURNINGS — RICHARD
CARLILE — SIR F. BURDETT — DANIEL o'cONNELL.
During my schooldays, until our family went to live at
Brixton, my holidays were for the most part spent in London.
I came up to town, too, on other occasions, and remember
the great political excitement subsisting at this period
(1830), the Reform frenzy being then at its height. The
death of George IV. had inspired the partisans of Reform
with hope, and the subsequent revolution in France had
rendered them daring. The mob orators and the more
reckless scribes of the party, in denouncing the tory
government, excitedly pointed out that the Parisians had
shewn what could be accomplished by pikes and barri
cades, and how troops might be worsted in street fights,
and they covertly suggested to the distressed and dis
contented masses that they should profit by the example
lately set them.
The new king was immensely popular, though no one
knew exactly why. It was scarcely because of his bluff
sailor-like manners, for, as Greville insists, he had much
of the blackguard and more of the buffoon about him.
Still, there is no doubt that the idea of a sailor-king had
a strong fascination for the populace, with whom recent
stage presentments had exalted the British tar into a
favourite hero, and the new sovereign was frantically
cheered whenever he stirred abroad. This popularity was

58 GLANCES BACK
taken advantage of to arrange a State visit to the city
on the ensuing lord mayor's day ; and I obtained per
mission from home to come up and see the royal pro
cession, which was expected to be a very grand one, pass
along Fleet-street, where we then lived. Great prepar
ations had been made for the king's reception, and the
multitude of flags, evergreens, devices, and transparencies
gave the dingy houses along the line of route quite a gay
look in the gloomy November weather.
There was bitter disappointment when, almost at the
eleventh hour, it became know^n that the tory ministry
had persuaded the king to put off his visit, and I
well remember the consternation prevailing at the time
of my arrival. Excited crowds blocked all the prin
cipal streets, traffic was completely interrupted, and the
wildest rumours were in circulation. It was first of all
pretended that a formidable conspiracy had been dis
covered to isolate the city while the customary feasting
and toasting were in full swing at the Guildhall, by
barricading the bridges, blocking up particular thorough
fares, and closing the gates of Temple Bar. The gas was
then to be suddenly cut off, and a general pillage was to
follow. Eventually it oozed out that the royal visit had
been abandoned at the instigation of the lord mayor-elect,
who had alarmed the government with some cock-and-bull
story of a contemplated murderous attack upon the Duke of
Wellington, the then prime minister, as he passed through
the city.
These rumours, for which there was little or no founda
tion, caused such a panic that consols fell three per cent. ;
while many city shopkeepers, fearing the suggested raid,
either routed out such old arms as they had by them or
purchased sword-stiqks and pistols. At the same time,
some of our more terrified neighbours closed their shops,
and one or two of them securely barricaded their doors.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 59
Even the government shared in the panic. On the pre
vious day, Sunday, a civic deputation had three interviews
with the Duke of Wellington, and were plainly told by him
that unless the royal visit was abandoned the city would
have to be garrisoned by a strong military force. He
knew what street fighting was, he significantly said, and
should make his own preparations ; which meant crowding
the metropolitan barracks with troops, ordered up by
forced marches from Brighton, Windsor, and elsewhere,
and issuing instructions for sailors and marines to be
instantly dispatched to London from the nearest ports.
The alarm was intensified when strong reinforcements
for the guards on duty at the Bank and the Mint passed
through the city, and additional artillerymen arrived from
Woolwich at the Tower, the gates of which were closed,
whilst the moat was filled with water. Meantime, fussy
aldermen and common-councilmen assembled in full con
clave and discussed the situation. One alderman was
evidently inclined to take a jocular view of the state of
funk in which some of his fellow-citizens appeared to be, as
in enumerating the forces available for the maintenance of
order within the city he sarcastically included the Lumber-
troop, describing it as that respectable smoking club famed
for the quantity of tobacco it consumed and the many
gallons of porter it swilled at its meetings.
In the afternoon, regardless of all injunctions, I stole
out and mixed with the crowd, among whom handbills
were being stealthily circulated urging the discontented to
come armed the next day and have it out with " Peel's
bloody gang," who, they were told by way of encourage
ment, had been furnished with some thousands of cut
lasses from the Tower. The police were at this time
especial objects of popular wrath ; still the crowd re
mained quiet enough until evening, when a mob coming
from an excited meeting at the Rotunda, on the other side

60 GLANCES BACK
of Blackfriars-bridge rushed along Fleet-street on its way
to the Houses of Parliament, shouting, " Down with
Wellington and Peel ! Down with the new police ! " and
emphasising their denunciations with yells and groans.
The peelers of 1830 were not the same stalwart, helmetted
men as the peelers of to-day, besides which they were
badly drilled, and in their top-hats and swallow-tails had
anything but a martial look. Their blood was up, how
ever, and they retaliated by cracking a few skulls, and
this, with the sight of mounted troops at the Horse Guards
drawn up in readiness to act, damped the ardour of the
more daring rioters, and the night passed off quietly
enough. The city was in a state of turmoil all the next day
(November 9). Crowds of sight-seers came in early from
round about to discover that they were not to be gratified
by the usual show, and that there were to be no illuminations.
The mere sight of the new lord mayor, Sir John Key, in
his private carriage on his way to be sworn in at West
minster, was but a poor compensation for a full view of
the gilt gingerbread state coach, and the portly men in
armour comically striving to sit their steeds securely ; and
as it was generally known that Sir John was the cause
of the royal visit being abandoned, he was received with
jeers and hisses along the entire line of route, even the
inhabitants of his own ward indicating their disfavour — a
circumstance on which he was twitted in a squib of the
time — " Now pale is the tip of each alderman's nose.
And sad must the souls of the citizens be,
Since summit is wrong, as the locksmiths suppose.
When the ward is no longer on terms with the Key.
Poor Galloway growls, Charley Pearson he pouts.
And Figgins and Wiggins and Scroggins are queer ;
.For November to them without free guzzling bouts
Might as well be wiped out from the months of the vear."

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 61
r^ The mob, tickled by a piece of street wit, assailed the
new civic potentate with cries of " Don-Key ! " and for
weeks afterwards, under the guise of this much-suffering
quadruped, he was contemptuously caricatured in every
imaginable way. But Sir John good-humouredly laughed
at all these efforts to turn him into ridicule, and when his
own ward-beadle, swollen with importance, brought some
unfortunate fellow before him for hawking these caricatures
about the streets, he at once discharged the man, amiably
expressing a hope that he had found the trade profitable.
Next day a newspaper came out with the following : —
" They call thee Don-Key for thy silly trick,
Th' effect of which each civic gourmand feels ;
But as it seems thou 'rt not inclined to kick,
'Tis plain thy head's in fault, and not thy heels."
Our family had made preparations to entertain a party
of friends when the royal procession passed along Fleet-
street, and had afterwards apprised them of the king's
visit being abandoned. Some few, nevertheless, put in an
appearance, including a well-known Regent-street jeweller
named Macphail, the patentee of the then familiar mosaic
gold, a tolerably good imitation of the precious metal.
The jeweller, who was a slave to his stomach, never
refused an invitation that gave promise of good cheer, and
after he had feasted himself, told us, I remember, an
amusing story by way of proving how difficult it was to
distinguish between his counterfeit mosaic, which he never
lost an opportunity of puffing, and the genuine article.
" One afternoon," said he, "a carriage, which I re
cognised as that of Lord C  , drove up to my shop.
Soon afterwards a footman entered with a small case
covered with green baize, and placing it on the counter
said Lord C  was coming to speak to me, after w^hich
intimation he withdrew. In a few seconds his lordship
made his appearance, and expressed a wish to have a few

62 GLANCES BACK
words with me in private respecting the contents of the
case his servant had just left. I thereupon invited him
into my sanctum on the floor above, and followed him
with the case in question.
" Lord C  at once proceeded to business. ' This
<;ase,' said he, 'contains the jewels worn by Lady C 
on high days and holidays. At present her ladyship is
in the country, where, owing to the state of her health,
she is likely to remain for several months, so that she
will have no occasion for these particular jewels until the
next season begins. Now, what I want you to do is
to make me an imitation set precisely similar to the
originals, only in your mosaic gold, and, of course, with
false stones. You will have plenty of time for this. Lady
C  is no judge of these things, and will never discover
the difference. You can retain the originals and dispose
of them among your customers, allowing me the difference
in value between the two sets. But I must ask you to let
me have the larger part of the amount at once, as I have a
pressing necessity for money just now.' "
Macphail slipped off the green baize cover, the peer
produced the key and unlocked the case, at the contents
of which the jeweller curiously glanced, and then re
marked, " My lord, it is the simplest thing in the world to
match these jewels in the way you suggest, but I should
inform your lordship that the value between the two sets
would not be a penny piece. The present jewels are
counterfeit. I purchased the originals from Lady C 
more than two years ago and made her these imitations,
which are such excellent ones, that I am not at aU
surprised they should have deceived so good a judge of
jewels as your lordship is known to be."
Macphail said the peer was thunderstruck at this dis-
. closure, and beat a hasty retreat.
To return, however, to the events of November 9, 1830.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 63
Towards evening the crowds assembled in the city,
disappointed at there being no illuminations, became
disagreeably demonstrative. I noticed a noisy mob with
a tricolor flag — an emblem which was as irritating to the
peeler of those days as a red rag is to an infuriated bull,^
— parading Fleet-street in the direction of Temple Bar.
The police, caring no more then than they do now for any
pretended right of procession (on which, by the way, the
most radical journals in those days never thought of
insisting), at once pounced upon the demonstrators, dis
banding them and capturing their flag, when such of the
discomflted patriots as could manage it joined the rabble
already gathered in the neighbourhood of the Bar.
Later on I made for the skirts of the crowd, composed
chiefly of east-end roughs armed with bludgeons, and
half-famished Spitalfields weavers, provided with slender
strips of wood, a blow from which would not have even
dinted a peeler's hat. By this time the uproar was so
great that the Templars prudently closed their gates.
Regardless of the scarlet-coated city marshal, who, mounted
on horseback, was endeavouring to struggle through and
control the mob, the leaders stopped all vehicles enter
ing the city, and before permitting them to pass, com
pelled drivers and occupants alike to shout for Reform
and the extermination of Peel's new police.
Suddenly there was a great swaying of the crowd,
and a desperate rush was made through the Bar, when,
from the clatter of bludgeons and batons, and the shrieks
and yells which followed, I surmised that the mob had
come to close quarters with the police posted in the
Strand. The retreat of the rabble, with the constables
at their heels, was as rapid as their advance had been,
and no sooner were they driven back into the city, than
1 On one occasion the police actually summoned several shopkeepers for displaying
jplacards, the only .objection to which, they admitted, was their tricolor borders.

64 GLANCES BACK
the Strand police took upon themselves to close the
Bar gates, which swung heavUy on their rusty hinges.
At this the city marshal fired up, and ordered the gates
to be re-opened amidst the cheers of the mob, to whose
great delight city and metropolitan police commenced
batoning each other. For some time the crowd swayed
backwards and forwards, driven by the truncheons of the
constables, now eastward and then westward, in reg-ular
shuttlecock fashion, head after head being audibly cracked
with the same precision that obtains at an Irish faction
fight. During the mSlee stones were showered about,
and the city marshal, who, on horseback and in scarlet
uniform, furnished a conspicuous target, received a blow
which necessitated his removal from the field of battle.
All this time I kept on the outskirts of the crowd,
and was therefore beyond any particular danger; still the
position was sufficiently unpleasant that I was glad to
escape at the first opportunity. Next morning we learnt
from the papers that the contest had lasted till past
midnight, the rabble having been reinforced by a new
contingent, preceded by the defiant tricolor flag. Bellow
ing " Reform ! " and execrating the police, the new
comers dashed through the Bar and swept along the
Strand, until they neared Exeter Hall, when some con
stables, posted in the side streets, rushing suddenly upon
them, severely belaboured all who came within reach of
their truncheons, and hauled off a score or more to Bow-
street police station.
The net result of all this rioting, which the terrified
authorities and the more timid citizens had fancied would
lead to great loss of life, was the capture of several batches
of street ruffians and innocent onlookers, a score or two
of injuries, more or less severe, to the police, and a goodly
number of broken heads from blows impartially distri
buted by them among the crowd, leading to a continuous

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 65
run on the neighbouring chemists' shops for the needful
strapping and sticking-plaster. On some few of the
captured rioters crowbars were found, while others had
pistols secreted about them ; but the richest discovery
was made upon a stripling of a clerk, who, to an in
flated address to the People of England, had annexed
his own duly signed will, wherein he gravely bequeathed
" his physical strength to the cause of liberty, and his
body as a barricade against the advance of the military
in the event of his falling in the coming fray."
These street disturbances continued throughout the
winter, although a whig ministry had come into power,
pledged to bring in a sweeping measure of Reform. But
what agitated people's minds just then far more than any
question of reforming the parliamentary representation
were the mysterious rick-burnings, which began in Kent
during the autumn, and after speedily spreading to the
neighbouring counties, finally extended as far as Wiltshire,
Huntingdonshire, Lincolnshire, and Norfolk. The first of
these incendiary fires occurred at Orpington and Brasted,
and were thought to be simply acts of vengeance against
a couple of gentlemen farmers, who had been unusually
officious in repressing poaching and more especially spirit
smuggling, which at this period was largely carried on in
country districts many miles away from the coast. It
was soon evident, however, that want of work and the
low wages paid to the agricultural labourers, who attri
buted most of their distress to the employment of thrash
ing and other machines, were the real causes of these con
flagrations. Poor famished Hodge no longer took delight
in his favourite century-old songs, but chanted the new
refrain — " May God above send down His love
With swords as sharp as sickles.
To cut the throats of gentlefolks
Who grudge poor men their victuals."
VOL. I. E

66 GLANCES BACK
Threatening letters condemning the use of machinery
— mostly badly written and spelt, and signed " Swing"-—
were sent to farmers not on the best of terms with their
men, and were promptly followed up by the burning of
their stack-yards. A joker of the period sent one of these
missives to the head-master of Eton, warning him that
unless he laid aside his thrashing machine he would hear
further from Captain Swing. The latter ill-omened word,
the reason for adopting which no one knew, was chalked
on palings and dead walls throughout the southern agri
cultural districts, where, as the winter advanced, scarcely a
night passed without half-a-dozen of these mysterious con
flagrations, the frequency and secrecy of which led to the
belief that this destruction of the people's food, at a time
of great distress^ and scarcity, was instigated by some
powerful occult organization.
The alarm increased when it became evident that
neither the incessant patrolling of the villages and country
roads by the military, nor the offer of a large reward by
the government had contributed in the least to the detec
tion of the incendiaries.^ Farmers were in continual dread
and constantly on the watch, but although the rick-
burnings were as numerous as ever, it was impossible to
discover how they originated. In those days there were
no lucifer matches, and the common mode of obtaining a
light was by means of a flint and steel, the striking together
of which would certainly have been heard and have aroused
suspicion. Some imaginative persons pretended that they
saw a light running along the edge of a stack and then
1 According to the government's own statement, unemployed farm-labourers, whose
ordinary daily wage was only Is. 8d. , were then working on the parish roads for aa little
as 3d. and 4d. a day.
2 Three years afterwards an incendiary, who had been in the habit of setting fire to
agricultural property, in order to obtain the gratuity of 6s. 6d. bestowed on any one
giving information of a flre at the nearest fire-engine station, was hanged at Cambridge.
It was computed that he had destroyed property to the value of £60,000 for the sake of
a few pounds paid to him in rewards.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 67
down its sides, and that a moment afterwards the stack
was ablaze. The wiseacres, on the other hand, insisted
that the fires were caused by the discharge of some inflam
mable substance from an air-gun ; still the incendiaries
remained undetected, and people were more perplexed than
ever. Simultaneously with these rick-burnings, the destruc
tion of thrashing-machines on an extensive scale was carried
on ; but offenders of this class were more readily discovered,
and were promptly brought to justice, or, 1 should rather
say, to unrelenting punishment, so cruelly was the law
administered in their cases.
The panic in the disturbed districts was such that
persons were arrested on the most absurd suspicions. The
Mansfield magistrates, moreover, committed for trial the
head-master of the grammar school there — a clergyman of
the Church of England— on the supposition that he was
the writer of some " Swing" letters received by farmers in
the neighbourhood. A well-known gentleman, too, who
was travelling post, and had been driven out of his way
late at night by a drunken postboy, was haled by a con
stable before the magistrates on suspicion of being Captain
Swing. Although, on giving satisfactory explanations, he
was at once released, other less fortunate suspected persons
were promptly sent for trial ; when juries, under the influ
ence of the prevailing panic, found most of the accused
guilty, and judges, with rare exceptions, sentenced them
to be hanged or transported for life.
These severe sentences were sought to be excused in a
callous epigram, which, if I remember rightly, ran thus —
" As Swing's wild justice is to burn.
We 've only to reverse the thing,
And tell the culprit in his turn —
' Burn's Justice rules that he shall swing.' "
At every assize the loud weeping and wailing of women
and children penetrated the walls of the court-room imme-

68 GLANCES BACK
diately after the sentences were passed. Lads of eighteen
were; sent to the gallows, and died protesting their innocence,
while several of those who admitted their guilt declared they
had been induced to commit the crime by the very indivi
duals who had informed against them to secure the govern
ment reward. One set of prisoners had a lucky escape.
A magistrate, when reading the Riot Act, had omitted
the customary formula of " God save the King ! " The
prisoners' counsel availed himself of this lapse to raise an
objection, which the judges held to be fatal, and the
accused, who were looking forward to a long sojourn in
Norfolk island, were, to their great amazement, promptly
set at liberty.
Richard CarlUe, the notorious deistical bookseller, pub
lished some cheap pamphlet relating to this "Swing"
business, professing to make startling revelations and to be
partly written by Captain Swing himself. The house we
occupied in Fleet-street overlooked Carlile's shop, which
was then at the corner of Water-lane, now Whitefriars-
street. In the window a statue of Thomas Paine was
exhibited, and the outside of the shop was placarded over
with notices which, in accordance with the conventional
language of the attorney-generals of those days, were
" highly infiammatory." Among them were several an
nouncements of this " Swing " pamphlet, which was just
then creating some little stir, as CarlUe had been prose
cuted for selling it only a day or two before at the Old
Bailey. Curiosity with regard to a work which had pro
cured its publisher a sentence of two years' imprisonment
in the City compter made me eager to obtain a copy, and
I paid a stealthy visit to Carlile's dingy and somewhat.
repellent-looking shop. Inside, the arrangements were
peculiar. Barham in his Life of Theodore Hook mentions
that no shopman was visible there, and that an intending
purchaser had to indicate on a dial the particular publica-

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 69
tion he required, and to hand the price of it through a
sliding panel, when the work he wanted was shot down
to him through a wooden spout from a room above.
The dial arrangement had existed, I believe, some years
before, but I saw no trace of it at the time of my visit
(1831). With the exception of a few boldly written
placards announcing various works on sale, the shop pre
sented a singularly bare appearance, the shelves being for
the most part empty. As I advanced towards the counter
I noticed that there was no one to serve me, and I knocked
rather loudly, when a voice proceeding from a small
aperture overhead enquired what I wanted. I called out
the title of the "Swing" pamphlet, whereupon a small
basket guided by a cord descended in front of me, and the
same voice directed me to place the price — a few pence —
in it. This having been done, the basket was drawn up,
to be again lowered with the publication I had asked for,
but which to my very great disgust I afterwards found con
tained no revelations whatever, but simply some accounts
of recent fires taken from newspapers, accompanied by
rather a mild justification of the rick-burners' proceedings.
I frequently met CarlUe in Fleet-street on his way to a
second shop he had in the Strand. He was a corpulent
individual, somewhat beyond the middle height and with a
snub nose. For such a decided democrat as he professed
to be he was singularly foppish in his dress, and wore, I
remember, the then fashionable tall shirt collar of the
modern Gladstonian type ; but in lieu of the customary
buckled stiff stock, with which people voluntarily half-
throttled themselves in those days, he encircled his neck
with a silk band fastening with a clasp in front. Carlile's
career was certainly a strange one. He is said to have
been originally a tinker, and to have persuaded himself
that he had a call to propagate certain writings of a politi
cal and theological character which the law forbade the

70 GLANCES BACK
circulation of For publishing and selling particular works
that are, now to be found in most second-hand booksellers'
catalogues, such as Paine's " Age of Reason " — the mere
possession of which by a private individual was then a
penal offence — -or that have passed into oblivion, like
Palmer's "Principles of Nature," he spent ten years ofthe
best part of his life in prison, and was fined several
thousand pounds. It is true that he never paid a penny
of this amount, although certain wealthy sympathisers in
one or two instances furnished him with the necessary
means. It was a principle of his to keep the money and
to wipe off his fines by undergoing additional terms of
imprisonment. CarlUe commenced his avocation as a publisher of
political and free-thinking literature, then branded as
seditious and atheistical, by reprinting ^-Sbuthey's " Wat
Tyler," after which he issued Paine's political writings,
and followed these up with his theological works. For
selling Hone's notable " Parodies " he underwent eighteen
weeks' imprisonment, and was only set at liberty on Hone's
triumphant acquittal. A couple of years afterwards (1819)
the government prosecuted CarlUe for publishing Paine's
works, when, following Hone's example, he conducted
his own defence, speaking daUy for some hours during
several days. Though he had all Hone's energy, he
was very far from possessing Hone's intelligence, and was
much laughed at for his ludicrous mispronunciation of
words slightly out of the common. He had, too, a dis
agreeable lisp, so that his long oratorical display was
anything but eflective. On this, or some similar occasion,
he adopted the ingenious plan of reading the whole of the
incriminated work in the course of his address to the jury,
in order tbat he might include it in a report of the trial
that he intended publishing and thereby legalize its sale.
Unlike Hone, CarlUe was convicted and sentenced to three

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 71
years' imprisonment and to pay a fine of £1500 ! He was
at once handcuffed, and in the middle of the night was
carried off by a couple of armed officers to Dorchester jail.
The sheriff duly levied for the fine, and seized all he could
lay hands on, which was little enough, consequently
Carlile's imprisonment was prolonged for another three
years by way of liquidating the balance of the amerce
ment. Subsequently Carlile's wife, and then his sister, were
sent to join him in Dorchester jail for selling the same or
similar works to those that led to his own conviction.
These proceedings failed, however, to stop the sale of the
incriminated books, and numbers of Carlile's shopmen were
next sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. Eight
of them were prosecuted at the Old Bailey in a batch, and
in addition to being imprisoned, were required to enter
into recognizances to keep the peace for their natural
lives! Whereupon Theodore Hook jeeringly rhymed in
the tory " John BuU "—
" Unblessed was their lot.
When Murray and Sharpe with the constables came.
And for want of good bail
They were sent off to jail.
Their mittimus signed with an alderman's name."
On their liberation several of them roundly abused CarlUe
in print for not only failing to compensate them for the
imprisonment they had undergone, but for leaving them to
pay the legal expenses they had been put to. One of them
even started a pubUcation called "The BuU-dog" for the
express purpose of savagely attacking CarlUe and several
well-known reformers who were supposed to sympathize
with him. It had, however, only a very brief existence.
Naturally enough, CarlUe objected to church rates,
and I remember that on one occasion, after his goods
had been distrained upon for their non-payment, he re-

72 GLANCES BACK
moved the two first-floor windows from his house in
Fleet-'street to exhibit life-size figures of a bishop and a
bailiff. Eventually, to the great scandal of the neighbour
hood, he substituted for the bailiff an effigy of old Nick
furnished with the traditional hoofs, horns, tail and toast
ing fork. The exhibition attracted such crowds that
CarlUe was indicted for a nuisance and again consigned to
the City compter.
The ferment excited by the " Swing " conflagration*
led to the whig government prosecuting CarlUe for a sedi
tious libel, contained in the pamphlet of which I have
already spoken, and which, up to this time had had but
little circulation and could have exercised no kind of influ
ence. How the sale of the pamphlet was proved I do not
remember, but most likely it had been openly vended in
Carlile's shop previous to these proceedings being taken.
The specific offence charged was " bringing the crown into
disrepute, and addressing inflammatory language to the
labouring classes." , The jury after many hours' delibera
tion could not see their way to convicting CarlUe of the
first offence, but on learning that they would be locked up
all night without food, fire, or candle — and it was then the
depth of winter — if they did not come to a speedy decision,
they compromised matters by finding him guilty of the
second. CarlUe was thereupon again fined and imprisoned
and ordered to find sureties for ten years ! While under
going this new sentence he addressed a most respectful and
temperate letter to our old friend Dr. Biomfield, Bishop of
London, suggesting some reform in the Church ; and he
afterwards wrote a long and equally temperate letter to
Sir Robert Peel upon the same subject, dating it from
Giltspur-street compter in the tenth year of his imprison
ment ! It would appear from this as though Carlile, like
Hone, became devout in his later days.
Cobbett, who was tried a few months after Carlile for a

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 73
similar offence, was more fortunate, as in his case the jury
disagreed. The whigs who canted so much about the
liberty of the press, were in office when both Carlile and
Cobbett were indicted, and Cobbett in his address to the jury
thus scathingly assailed them : — " I have lived," said he,
" twenty-one years under a tory administration and under
six tory attorney -generals, but have never been prosecuted,
although, if the present is a libel I have written plenty of
a similar description. The country had been ruled with
rods by the tories but the whigs scourged them with
scorpions. . . . This whig government has carried on more
state prosecutions during the seven months they have been
in office than their tory predecessors in seven years. Lank
and merciless as a hungry wolf, they are filling their
pockets with the public money, and I must be crushed,
and crushed I shall certainly be if you do not stand be
tween them and me." Luckily for Cobbett certain recalci
trant jurymen sat up all night rather than return a verdict
of guilty, and so saved the sturdy pamphleteer from the
dreaded calamity.
The affair was not without its amusing side, for Cobbett
had subpoenaed the principal members of the government
to give evidence, and actually examined one or two of
them. While they were detained in Court they were
compelled to listen to the defendant's tirade and the
crowd's approval of his denunciation of the whig ministry
and its crooked ways.
Owing to the strong prejudice that existed against
Carlile whenever he, or any one connected with him, was
put upon his. trial, conviction inevitably followed. For
publishing deistical writings Carlile was branded as an
atheist, and we all know what this meant sixty years ago,
and how differently the atheist was then regarded to what,
under his modern designation of agnostic, he is in the
present day. The mere selling of Hone's " Parodies "

74 GLANCES BACK
was sufficient to ensure Carlile's imprisonment ; whereas
Hone, who not merely sold them, but wrote them and had
them printed, secured a jubilant acquittal. In the same
way, Carlile was sent to prison for a couple of years for
espousing the cause of the distressed agricultural labourers,
whilst Cobbett, for doing precisely the same thing, came
off scot-free. These various prosecutions and imprisonments, if not
exactly courted by Carlile, seem to have been accepted by
him willingly enough. The truth is, they paid him very
well. As Uriah Heap liked to be despised, so Carlile was
not averse to being prosecuted. In a controversy between
him and Hetherington, the publisher of the unstamped
"Poor Man's Guardian," the latter twitted Carlile with
having received, according to his own admission, as much
as £4000 from sympathising friends ; besides which the
prosecutions had led to such an increased demand for his
publications that his wife acknowledged taking over the
counter in one particular week no less a sum than £500.
Hetherington too speaks of the comforts enjoyed by Carlile
in prison, including not merely good food, firing, and
plenty of books, but a piano on which his daughter used
to play to him, to while away the fiagging hours or solace
him in his desponding moments.
Carlile at one time leased the Rotunda in the Black-
friars-road, and devoted it to democratic meetings and
lectures by freethinkers. One of his lecturers was a young
woman of very advanced views, who went under the cog
nomen of " Isis," and with her Carlile contracted what he
called a moral marriage, leading to his turning his legal
wife, a somewhat violent-tempered woman, out of doors
with her grown-up sons. She started in business on her
own account in Shoe-lane, and one of her first publications
was the re-issue of a large engraving of " the Manchester
Massacre," by the versatile George Cruikshank.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 75
Between the Carlile and Cobbett trials, ministers had
brought in their Reform bUl (March 1831), and Lord John
Russell had epigrammaticaUy summed up the three most
notorious rotten boroughs (euphemistically styled " close "
by the tory party) as " a ruined mound, three inches of
stone wall, and a park without the vestige of a dwelling,
each returning its two members to the imperial parliament."
Shiel, too, had suggested that as a Turkish sultana on her
marriage had a province given her for her necklace, another
for her bracelets, and a third for her girdle, an English
lady of fashion might in the same way have Gatton ^ given
her for dowry, and Old Sarum for pin money. Still the
last thing the owners of these pocket boroughs would have
consented to was to alienate them. They preferred pack
ing the Lower House with their nominees —
" ' Pray what are his qualifications 1 ' ' One :
He 's the Earl of Fitz-flummery's eldest son.' "
With the object of overawing the opponents of the
Reform bill, the Birmingham Political Union indulged
in some very tall talk, threatening, among other things,
to send up to London in support of ministers a couple
of armies " as good as the one which fought at Waterloo "
— a threat which Colonel de Lacy Evans somewhat ludi
crously supplemented, by promising a contingent of 10,000
Sussex yokels. The strange thing was that many sensible
middle-class people who, although earnest reformers, had
not the faintest desire to see the needful political change
compassed by acts of violence, as well as the ignorant
multitude, actually believed in this swagger ; and I re
member how, for several days, the mail coach from
Birmingham used to be surrounded on its arrival at
St. Martin's-le-grand, and the guard beset with inquiries,
1 A relative of Sir John Shelley (father of the poet) sat for Gatton at this time.

76 GLANCES BACK
one of which was whether the promised armies had
started on their march.
Yet the Commons threw out the bill on the second
reading, and there was a dissolution, ahd, in celebration
thereof, a general illumination, which, as I had never
witnessed such a sight before, I was allowed to come
home to see. There were abundant devices and trans
parencies symbolic of the blessings that were to flow
from Reform, but the grand sight of all was the shipping
in the pool, with its masts and yards defined by myriads
of lights, which repeated themselves in countless reflec
tions in the dark waters below. In the city, owing to
the illuminations being general, the crowd were good-
humoured enough, but at the west-end the windows of
the more prominent opponents of Reform were duly
smashed, Apsley House being an especial object of attack.
When the mob recognized that it was in utter darkness,
they aroused the inmates by a shower of stones, to which
the duke's servants replied by firing a volley of blank
cartridges over the heads of the crowd. This, however,
failed to intimidate the malcontents, and every square
of glass that could be pelted with stones from the
roadway or the park was demolished.
With the dissolution came the famous popular out
cry, " The bUl, the whole bill, and nothing but the biU."
The phrase " caught on," as the expression goes. It was
the single pledge exacted from candidates, it figured at
the head of election addresses, was inscribed on banners,
placarded in shop windows, and chalked on walls and
palings everywhere. Popular feeling was so roused that
many opponents of the bill dared not show themselves
on the hustings, and the elections went in favour of the
government. But, although the bill passed the Commons,
the Lords rejected it, and excited public meetings and
demonstrative processions were organized all over the
metropolis.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 77
We had a kind of lord mayor's show a month before
the usual anniversary, on the occasion of the state pre
sentation of some civic address to the "patriot" king.
A procession of thirty or forty carriages conveying the
"flower of the. corporation" passed along Fleet-street,
the lumbering old state coach, with the lord mayor
and the rosy-gilled old sword-bearer, and the rest of the
paraphernalia forming part of the pageant of course. The
mob cheered the military-looking city marshals in their
plumed cocked-hats and scarlet toggery, and even treated
the ward-beadles, much bedizened with gold lace, and
marching gravely with their gilt-nobbed staffs, with be
coming deference. Later in the afternoon the obnoxious
Duke of Cumberland was pulled off his horse in the
park, and the Marquis of Londonderry was pelted with
stones, rousing his Celtic blood to that high pitch that,
presenting a pistol, he threatened to blow out the brains
of the next man who assailed him ; whereupon one of
the Reform journals spitefully suggested that the marquis,
having managed to do without brains of his own for so
long, thought other people might very well dispense with
theirs. From the circumstance that I was then absorbed in the
perusal of the Waverley novels, having just secured the
opportunity of reading the whole of them for the first
time, T remember quite well, how, in the. midst of all this
wild excitement about Reform, Sir Walter Scott, worn out
with over-work, sailed to Italy in the hope of recruiting
his shattered health. Although the news came like a
shock to many thousand homes, it was curtly given in the
newspapers without a word of regretful comment, so
absorbed was public feeling in the single subject of Reform.
Unhappily the hand of death was already upon the illus
trious romancist, who returned home within the year, to be
soon afterwards laid to his last rest in Dryburgh abbey.

GLANCES BACK

It must have been shortly after this time (1832) that
my father pointed out to me the small attenuated figure
of another great writer walking slowly along near the
corner of Chancery-lane — his gait a trifle uncertain, and
he himself, spite of the restless movement of his eyes,
apparently oblivious of all that was passing around. This
was Charles Lamb, whose " Essays," but recently collected
and published, was already a well-thumbed book in our
household. For this reason I had a good look at him, and
distinctly remember being struck by something of a Jewish
look in his face, although his dress, an old-fashioned suit of
black — swallow-tail, small clothes, and gaiters — gave him
very much the appearance of a decayed old-fashioned peda
gogue. Once afterwards I had a brief and final glimpse of
him in Holborn. Carus Wilson, the extraordinarily tall
lawyer, who might have obtained more money by exhibiting
himself than ever he made by his profession, was often to be
seen in Fleet-street at this time, the top of his hat almost
on a level with the street lamps, which, of an evening, he
was said to open without raising himself from the ground,
when he wanted a light for his cigar.
The turmoil which followed upon the rejection of the
Reform bill by the Lords swiftly spread from London to
the provinces, and from Derby, Nottingham, and elsewhere
news kept arriving of outbreaks more or less serious.
When at length the alarming tidings came of the rioting
and loss of life at Bristol, and the firing of the city by a
drunken mob, the consternation and inquietude were
general. The newspapers, the ordinary numbers of which,
although costing sevenpence, were no larger than the half
penny papers of to-day, rose to a premium, and there was
an eager rush on the newsvendors' shops. Moreover, as the
news only arrived in dribblets, the most exaggerated rumours
were blazed about, and increased the prevailing excitement.
The papers had previously announced that some

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 79
dragoons from Gloucester were to act as a bodyguard to
ultra-tory Sir Charles Wetherell, the Bristol recorder,
when he opened the assizes ; and one journal had jokingly
suggested, in allusion to a well-known pecularity of Sir
Charles's, that the only bodyguard he needed was a pair
of braces to close the wide aperture between his vest and
nether garments. Intensely unpopular though Sir Charles
Wetherell was known to be, it was scarcely anticipated that
any outbreak would occur with which the authorities would
be unable to cope. But when the serious turn that matters
had taken became known, everyone was indignant with Sir
Charles for his " pig-headed obstinacy " in insisting on a
public entry into Bristol. The mayor, too, w^as roundly
abused for his cowardice, and the commander of the troops
for his stupidity — expiated by his suicide a few days
before four of the rioters were hanged and several score
more were imprisoned or transported.
So frightened was the easy-going home secretary at this
Bristol business, that when the Ijondon political unionists
talked of holding meetings of all the political unions in
the kingdom on a given day, after blandly warning them
of the illegality of their proceedings, he gave the com
mander-in-chief carte blanche to act, with the result that
such an overwhelming display of military force was made
in London as had the effect of cowing the agitators com
pletely. After the Reform bill had been passed a second time by
the Commons, and had been again thrown out by the
Lords, not only was the cry long and loud for the creation
of new peers to swamp the tory lords' majority, but the
multitude were enjoined to cease paying taxes — this was
the favourite tune to which in seasons of difficulty mob
orators generally piped — and to get up a run on the Bank
of England, though the speakers knew very well that the
" sovereign people " lacked the necessary notes. Petitions,

80 GLANCES BACK
too, kept pouring into the House of Commons praying it
to stop the supplies, when there was not the slightest
chance of any such step being taken.
The ferment was now greater than ever. The cholera,
which had already made its appearance in the north of
England, burst out in London when the Reform excite
ment was at its zenith, causing almost as much alarm as
though the city was about to be decimated by a second
plague. Howling mobs paraded the streets, and conflicts
with the police were incessant. I remember the gates of
Temple Bar being repeatedly shut to keep Westminster
and Covent-garden roughs from joining forces with the
noisy rabble swarming in Fleet-street. All over the
country there were indignant meetings ; and it was at one
of these that Sydney Smith, in alluding to the futility of
the lords' efforts to stay Reform, tickled his hearers with
the well-known anecdote of the indefatigable Mrs Parting
ton, mop in hand and perched on her pattens, striving to
push back the stormy Atlantic Ocean.
At the great meeting held at the " Crown and Anchor"
in the Strand — then a notable place for liberal political
gatherings — I recollect seeing the popular Westminster
radical, Sir Francis Burdett, and the famous Irish agitator,
Daniel O'ConneU, for the first time. There was a story, I
remember, then current about Sir Francis and a drunken
Irish crossing-sweeper — a radical reformer of the extreme
type — with whom the affable baronet occasionaUy ex
changed a few words on the politics of the day.
" Mike," inquired Sir Francis during some crisis, " what
do you suggest in the present alarming state of things ? "
"Well, yer honour," rejoined Mike, "there's only one
cure ; and it 's certain there '11 niver be peace tUl we
have a fair sharing all round — rich and poor all taking
alike." "That's all very fine, Mike," said Sir Francis,
laughingly, "but a drunken fellow like you would soon

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 81
run through his share, and what would you do then ? "
Sir Francis imagined this would have been a poser, but
Mike was equal to the occasion. " Do then, yer honour ? "
exclaimed he in seeming surprise ; " why, of course, share
and share again."
I can distinctly call to mind the slim and aristocratic-
looking Sir Francis Burdett, in his customary buckskins
and top boots, as he appeared at the Crown and Anchor
meeting. He was evidently very ill, and had his doctor
with him to take care of him. The burly Liberator, on
the other hand, seemed the picture of robust health, and
glanced around him with a peculiar waggish look, just as
if he were some low comedian taking stock of his audience.
Sir Francis was voted into the chair, and made an
exciting speech, but O'ConneU was the favourite of the
afternoon. I recollect his being called upon to mount the
reporters' table so that the densely packed meeting might
obtain a better view of him. Once seen, it was impossible
to forget his broad, good-humoured, clean-shaven face, his
curly locks (reported to be artificial), and the merry
twinkle in his eyes, which emphasized, as it were, the
racy, winning brogue that gave such piquancy to his most
ordinary phrases. Scarcely had he opened his mouth,
when a loud voice from a distant corner of the room called
upon him to " spake up for the honour of ould Oireland ! "
whereupon O'ConneU retorted — " Be still, will ye, Pat ?
Shure, you've no honour to ould Oireland." His speech
was a mixture of hearty abuse of the lords, whom he de
scribed in his customary vituperative strain as simpletons
and maniacs, and demagogic clap-trap ofthe "give me liberty
or give me death" order, dwelling upon his hearers' en
slavement, and expressing his confidence in their dying to
a man to enforce their rights ; yet with all this O'ConneU,
by dint of his oratorical arts and wheedling manner,
VOL. I. F

82 GLANCES BACK
succeeded in rousing his audience to outbursts of the
wildest enthusiasm.
Since this occasion, I often heard the great tribune
speak, but it never occurred to me that his opponents could
pay him the compliment which a sturdy tory rendered to
Fox, when he admitted that Fox had often convinced his
reason, though he was proud to say he had never in
fluenced his vote. Dickens has recorded that once, in the
gallery of the House, he was so moved by O'Connell's
pathos that he was forced to lay down his pencU, unable
to proceed with his notes. Still, the Liberator's forte was
denunciation and abuse, varied with an admixture of
irresistible brOad humour.
When O'ConneU called the Duke of Wellington " a
stunted corporal," the duke allowed the invective to pass
unnoticed ; but when he described Lord Alvanley in the
House of Commons as " a creature, half-idiot, half-maniac,"
and " a bloated buffoon," the prince regent's old friend,^
bursting with rage, demanded satisfaction. He lacked the
sang froid of Paul Louis Courier, who, when simUarly
assailed by a French professor, quietly remarked, " I fancy
he must be vexed. He calls me jacobin, rebel, plagiarist,
thief, poisoner, forger, leper, madman, impostor, calumnia
tor, libeller, a horrible, filthy, grimacing rag-picker. 1
gather what he wants to say ; he means that he and I are
not of the same opinion, and this is only his way of putting
it." As O'ConneU had already killed his man in a duel,
and registered a vow never to fight another, the irate peer
was constrained to go out with the Liberator's son, with-
1 Greville describes Lord Alvanley as delightful — gay, natural, irresistibly comical)
and diffusing universal cheerfulness around him. His wit and drollery made him the
delight of society. Although he made no scruple of violating every sort of pecuniaty
engagement or obligation, such was his irresistible attraction that his friends invariably
forgave him. Alvanley was the most distinguished of the mil set that flourished during
the Regency ; and while all the rest were ruined and dispersed, he, from being a peer,
was invulnerable to arrest, and in the enjoyment of a fortune which his uncle had left
to trustees for his benefit.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 83
out, however, any harm befalling either combatant, although
as many as three shots were exchanged on either side.
Alvanley thought he had a narrow escape, for, on discharg
ing the hackney coachman who had driven him to and
from the place of meeting, he gave him a sovereign, saying,
¦" Understand, I don't give you this for taking me there,
but for bringing me back again."
Sir Charles Wetherell, in satirically styling O'ConneU
the " member for Ireland," paid him an unintentional com
pliment. The same, however, cannot be said in reference
to the epithet of the " Big Beggarman," bestowed on him
when he was levying tribute from the " finest pisantry in
the world " to gull about getting the Union repealed. " I
am with you heart and soul in detestation of injustice done
to Ireland, but when you come to the perilous nonsense
of Repeal," said sagacious Sydney Smith, " I 'U take my
leave. Pray, what, dear Daniel, is the object of all govern
ment? Why, roast mutton, potatoes, claret, a stout con
stable, an honest justice, a clear highway, a free chapel.
What trash to be bawling in the streets about the ' green
isle of the ocean,' the bold anthem of ' Erin-go-Braugh.' A
far better anthem would be ' Erin-go-bread-and-cheese,'
' Erin-go-cabins-that-will-keep-out-the-rain,' and ' Erin-go-
pantaloons-without-holes-in-them. ' "
During the whole of the Reform bill excitement the
mob never missed an opportunity of hooting at and pelt
ing the Duke of Wellington. On the anniversary of
Waterloo, a few days after the lords had shot Niagara —
to quote Lord Sherbrooke's famous phrase apropos of a
subsequent reform measure — and had passed the bill,
the duke was attacked in the city, and nearly unhorsed.
A yelling mob pursued him to the gate of Apsley House,
where, on taking leave of Lord St. Germans, who had
acted as his escort, he quietly remarked, " An odd day this
to choose 1 " I remember, on the occasion of some inspec-

84. GLANCES BACK
tion of troops in Hyde-park, seeing the duke most foully
assailed as he rode, unattended, through Decimus Burton's
archway, up the open gates of which some London ruffians
had climbed. Yelled at and spat upon by these black
guards, and pelted with mud and more offensive refuse by
their companions, the duke rode calmly on at a walking
pace — making no effort to avoid the filth flying around
him — ^until the police, fighting their way through the
crowd, came to the old soldier's rescue.
Within a few weeks after the passing of the Reform
bill the fickle multitude veered round, and whenever the
duke showed himself in public, he was received with
general respect, if not with enthusiasm. He might con
stantly be met, in his buttoned-up blue frockcoat and white
duck-trousers, walking along Piccadilly at his usual slow
pace, and saluting in military fashion all who bowed to
him. Spite, however, of this change in the popular
demeanour, the bullet-proof iron shutters which the duke
had had put up at Apsley House, when the demonstrations
against him were the most hostile, remained unopened for
very nearly twenty years.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 85

IV.
(1832-36.)
THE FLOOD OP PENNY LITERATURE — THE UNSTAMPED
PRESS — POPULAR PREACHERS AND ACTORS.
In the midst of all the excitement that preceded parlia
mentary Reform, two agencies were silently at work, the
immense future infiuence of which was then unforeseen.
These were the spread of cheap literature, and the intro
duction of railways. Shortly after the Society for the
Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, bent upon teaching the
working-classes something of everything, if not every
thing of something, started on its educational crusade,
with its science made easy, philosophy popularized,
biography boiled down, history in a nutshell, and the
like, Mr Henry Brougham, its president, made haste to
proclaim that the schoolmaster was abroad.
A few years later the society, in order to capture a
humbler and more youthful class of readers, issued its
" Penny Magazine," the immense success of which was
due, it was thought, largely to the taking adjective
¦" penny " in the title. In this instance, however, the
word was not applied to a popular periodical for the
first time, a " Penny Medley " having been published
nearly a hundred years before. The success which the
" Penny Magazine " secured, induced the Christian Know
ledge Society speedily to follow suit with a " Saturday
Magazine." Both publications were started on much the
same lines as " the Mirror," a twopenny weekly, which

86 GLANCES BACK
had already been in existence sixteen years, and the
contents of which comprised occasionally long, and by
no means lively, articles on topographical and other
topics, varied by an abundance of " facts and scraps,
original and select."
Limbird, who kept a stationer's shop in the Strand,
was the publisher and proprietor of "the Mirror," and
John Timbs — in subsequent years sub-editor of the
" Illustrated London News " — ^from being shopman, first
of all to Sir Richard Phillips, and afterwards to Lim
bird, had been promoted to be its editor. Limbird's
next-door neighbour was Mr. W. H. Smith, father of
the late first lord of the treasury, and founder of the
famous firm of W. H. Smith & Son, and, at the time I
speak of, a rapidly rising London newsagent. Limbird
was a dull-brained individual, with a swinish cast of
countenance, giving the idea that he was of a glutton
ous turn ; while the tinted tip of Timbs's nose suggested
that "the Mirror" editor was not averse to what is
called the cheerful glass, and yet he developed into a
singularly sour and cantankerous individual.
In after-life he seemed to take especial delight in
repeating all the spiteful tales he could pick up, pre
ferentially respecting his more intimate friends, next
about casual acquaintances, and finally about strangers.
I never knew him to betray himself into praising any
body or anything. He was, in fact, the general skeleton
at all banquets. When people were inclined to be
jubilant over the warbling of Jenny Lind, or the splendid
success of the Great Exhibition of 1851, Timbs was
prompt to "hint a fault and hesitate dislike." Every
thing indeed which everybody in those days agreed to
admire was certain to be the object of his animadversion,
whether it was Dickens's "Carol," or his "David
Copperfield"; Macaulay's "History," or his "Ballads";

'THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 87
Thackeray's " Snob Papers," or his " Vanity Fair " ; John
Leech's " Mr Briggs," or his cleverest political carica
tures ; Carlyle's " Cromwell," or Cruikshank's " Bottle " ;
Jerrold's " Caudle Lectures," or his latest witticism — one
and all were equally sneered at by this modern Thersites,
who, moreover, took an especial delight in depreciating
youthful talent, and frowning down anything like youth
ful enthusiasm. Singularly enough, although he always
had a sneer for the productions of so-called comic writers,
who were his especial aversion, he was uncommonly proud
of having printed Albert Smith's earliest literary effort
—"The Confessions of a Dissecting-room Porter" — in
" the Mirror," whilst this was under his editorship.
Not only did Timbs disapprove of everything, but he
had an offensive habit of contradicting almost everything
which anybody happened to say. As Sydney Smith ob
served of Croker, the chances were that "in the next
world he would even dispute the dates of his own pecca
dilloes with the recording angel." Timbs spent the best
part of a busy life, scissors in hand, making " snippets."
Such of these as could not be used up in " the Mirror "
were carefully stored, and when later on he became sub
editor of the " Illustrated London News " and editor of
the " Year-Book of Facts," he profited by his opportunities
to add largely to his collection. By-and-by he classified
his materials, and discovered that, by the aid of a paste
brush and a few strokes of the pen, he could instruct
a lazy public respecting " Things not generally known,"
explain "Popular Errors," and provide "Something for
Everybody," and that he had, moreover, amassed a perfect
store of " Curiosities " of science, history, and other subjects
of general interest, wherein people partial to snippets might
positively revel. The result was half a score of volumes,
of which several secured a truly phenomenal success.
With the Penny and Saturday magazines the pictures

88 GLANCES BACK
formed a great attraction, for engravings of a common
class were comparatively rare until these Ulustrated periodi
cals made their appearance. Yet they were but sorry
affairs on the whole, for good draughtsmen and wood-en
gravers were few in those days, and good woodcut printers
rarer stiU. Now and then the " Penny Magazine " came
out with a poor but pretentious copy of some priceless
work of art, and of this a good deal was thought at the
time, for no kind of attempt had then been made to edu
cate the popular taste in matters artistical.
The shop-windows of the London printsellers were the
people's real picture galleries at this period, and always
had their gaping crowds before them. The caricatures of
the day, representations of famous prize fights, and Cruik
shank's and Seymour's comic sketches were most to the
taste of the cognoscenti of the pavement ; still the fine line
engravings after Wilkie's popular pictures found many
admirers ; while the stupendous proportions and theatrical
effects of John Martin's architectural phantasies, with
their myriads of seething figures and their suggestions of
illimitable space, were gazed at with something like
wonderment. Most of the book illustrations were copper
plates — the annuals were then in their hey-day — and odd
collections of these used to be hawked in the principal
thoroughfares, arranged in umbrellas spread open on the
ground, and were the only cheap prints people then had
an opportunity of purchasing.
" Chambers's Edinburgh Journal," which originally
came out in folio form almost contemporaneously with the
"Penny Magazine," speedily made its way on this side of
the border, spite of its then local character, its somewhat
feeble essays, and its dreary Scotticisms. Hone's " Every
day, Table and Year Books," with Samuel Williams's clever
sketchy illustrations, were among the popular publications
of an earlier date, having originally appeared in weekly

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 89
numbers some years before. Other cheap weeklies, which
the illustrations, with their Rembrandt-like effects, of the
same skilful artist, long kept alive, were "the Olio" and
^' the Parterre," both mainly devoted to romantic fiction.
Tegg, the publisher — whom Hood is understood to
have satirized in his " Tylney Hall," as Mr. Twigg, a
vulgar, ignorant, retired dealer in hardware, who always
speaks of himself as " a man of my property " — was at
this period the principal reprinter and publisher of cheap
editions of so-called standard works — those books which,
as Charles Lamb has it, no gentleman's library should be
without. When he first embarked in the pursuit, Tegg was
accustomed, I have heard, to work off these reprints to the
public by means of book auctions in London and the pro
vinces, at which he acted as his own auctioneer. He was not
at all particular about the accuracy of his texts. All he cared
for, in those days of heavily -taxed paper and dear press-
work and binding, was that a volume of a given number
of pages should not cost more than a certain sum. When
ever it happened that one of these British classics — say
Burton's " Anatomy of Melancholy," Johnson's " Lives of
the Poets," or Selden's "Table Talk"— was a trifle too
bulky to be brought into the regulation number of pages
(without having recourse to small type, which would, of
course, have involved extra expense) it was Tegg's practice
to tear out as many leaves at the end of the original work
as would reduce the volume to the proper dimensions,
quite regardless of its breaking off in the middle of a sen
tence, as this difficulty was got over by instructing the
printer to let the reprint volume end at the last full
stop ! Wordsworth, in an angry mood, wrote of Tegg :
"The wretch says his 'line is to watch expiring copy
rights ' ; and would be, no doubt, if he dared, to murder
the authors for the sake of getting sooner at his prey."
The great success of the " Penny Magazine " led to a

90 GLANCES BACK
run on the word " penny," and to an avalanche of penny
publications, including the " Penny paper for the People,"
the "Penny Story-teller," the "Penny Comic Magazine,"
the " Penny Trumpet," the " Penny Athenseum," and the
" Penny Evangelical Magazine." There were also penny
dreadfuls, like the " Terrific Penny Magazine," and after a
while such scurrilous journals as the " Penny Satirist."
As may be supposed, the majority of these publications
were only short-lived, several of them being unable to
struggle even beyond their first number.
Among the mass of penny periodicals the one that made
the most stir was unquestionably the " Poor Man's
Guardian," the publication of which had preceded the
" Penny Magazine " by several months. In those days of
intense political excitement the working-classes hungered
for political news, and this was the kind of intelligence the
paper chiefly gave. It boldly announced in each number
that it was " established contrary to law . . . and pub
lished despite the laws, or the will and pleasure of any
tyrant or bodies of tyrants." It attacked king, lords, and
commons all round, protested against the new civil list
and the proposed extra grant to the Duchess of Kent
and her daughter, and denounced the Reform bill as an
accursed measure promoted in the interests of the middle-
classes. Still, on the whole, the language of the " Guardian" was
far less violent than that employed by several of its un
stamped contemporaries, such as ' ' the Republican," which
talked of " the diabolical machinations of the villains in
power," and " the Prompter," which proclaimed " down
with kings, priests, and lords, whose system is a system of
murder, plunder, and spoliation." The most reprehensible
article published in the " Poor Man's Guardian " was one
which professed to be a review of a book by the aide-de
camp of the King of Naples, and gave what it called

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 91
"Defensive instructions for the people," the Ulustrative
engravings to which shewed how civilians armed with
long lances might rout cavalry successfully, and parry
bayonet charges.
Before, however, many numbers of " the Guardian " had
appeared, Hetherington, its publisher and proprietor, was
summoned on the charge of publishing a newspaper with
out a stamp — every copy of a newspaper was then required
to be impressed with a fourpenny stamp. ^ Instead of
obeying the Bow-street mandate, Hetherington sent a note
to the magistrates informing them that he could not have
the pleasure of the proposed interview, as he was going
out of town ; and he at once set off on a provincial tour to
push the sale of his publication. In a second summons
that was issued Hetherington was apprized that if he
failed to attend, the court would proceed ex parte. To
this he responded by a chaffing note asking the magistrates
the meaning of the phrase, and why the English language,
which he could understand, was not made use of
This was too much for the Bow-street justices, and
runners were started on Hetherington's track. They soon
discovered from the public meetings he had been holding
that he was at Manchester, but owing to their having
invoked the assistance of a couple of local constables to
assist in his capture, Hetherington was forewarned, and as
the officers made their entrance at the door of his lodgings,
he sprang out of the window and made his way to Maccles
field. His mother being seriously ill, he returned secretly
to London ; but spies were on the w^atch, and he was seized
the very moment he laid his hand on the door knocker,
and lodged in the police station. By the Bow-street
magistrates he was ordered to be imprisoned for six months
' In addition to this fourpenny stamp newspapers then paid a tax of three shiUings
and sixpence on every advertisement inserted ; there was also a duty of threepence per
lb. on the paper on which they were printed. These three items constituted what after
wards came to be known as " the taxes upon knowledge."

92 GLANCES BACK
in Clerkenwell jail ; and soon after the expiration of his
sentence he was again consigned to the same prison for a
like term. Still the " Poor Man's Guardian " continued to
be published, and every week newsagents and street
hawkers were sent to jail for selling a paper which it was
contended ought to bear a fourpenny stamp.
But these repressive measures were of no avail ; people
suffered imprisonment again and again, and yet still went
on selling "the Guardian." Nor was this remarkable per
tinacity confined to the humbler vendors of the publica
tion. Cleave, a fairly well-to-do radical newsagent in
Shoe-lane, whom I knew very well in after years, and
from whom I gathered many of these particulars of the
dangers and difficulties which beset the vendors of thfe
unstamped press in the days I am speaking of, was
more than once incarcerated. So was Guest, the largest
newsagent in Birmingham, and so, I believe, was Mrs
Mann of Leeds. Abel Hey wood of Manchester, a man'
of considerable substance, who subsequently had the ¦
honour of being chosen chief magistrate of the city,
after suffering alike in person and in pocket, resolutely
refused to discontinue the sale of " the Guardian."
Many of the more humble distributors of the paper
sought to argue both the law and the justice of the case
with the magistrates, and on being promptly silenced,
hurled defiance at the bench, although they knew that
by so doing they were increasing their sentences four
fold. One sapient city alderman sent a little boy, who
had sold a copy of the paper, to prison for three months,
on the pretence that a severe sentence was necessary,
otherwise children would be made use of wholesale to
set at nought the supreme majesty of the law.
All manner of ruses were adopted to evade the vigil
ance of the stamp-office officials, who were ever lying in
wait to seize the " Poor Man's Guardian " in the hands of

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 93
the London retailers, or on its way to provincial news
agents. Dummy parcels used to be made up and sent
out of the office by apparent stealth, the bearers glancing
furtively around before proceeding on their way. They
had received instructions to throw themselves, as if un
consciously, into the officers' arms, and then to argue and
dispute with them with reference to the contents of the
parcels they were carrying, so as to detain the officers as long
as possible, while the genuine parcels for country customers
were being smuggled out the back way. The authorities,,
finding themselves foUed in this fashion, took to seizing
parcels of " the Guardian " at the carriers' receiving
offices, and from vans and stage coaches ; but in order
to baulk them in these proceedings the' papers were
packed, by arrangement, in cases containing shoes, chests
of tea ordered by country grocers, and bales destined
for provincial haberdashers, and were claimed by the
-newsagents on reaching their destination.
Bundles of the " Poor Man's Guardian " were alsO'
conveyed privately at night time from the printing office
to empty houses and other " safe places " in various
quarters of the metropolis, where neighbouring retailers
were enabled to obtain their supplies. These they wrapped
round their bodies beneath their waistcoats, or stowed
away in capacious pockets, and concealed in tall top hats,
for so vigilant had the authorities become, that people
were stopped in the streets, and compelled to open any
parcels suspected to contain unstamped publications.
Hetherington announced that he lent the paper out to
read at the charge of a penny, being able, he said, by
this means, to evade the stamp act, which only related
to papers "published for, and exposed to sale."^ After
his painful prison experiences — he having had to endure all
1 It was then iUegal to let out stamped papers on hire, but the lending of unstampecJ
papers involved no penalty.

^4 GLANCES BACK
the hardships to which a common criminal was subjected
— Hetherington took every possible precaution to avoid
being re-arrested. He lived out of town, and entered
his place of business in the Strand by a roundabout
way through the Savoy, and generally in the disguise
of a drab-coated quaker.
His time, however, came at last ; but instead of being
again dealt with by police magistrates, he was tried in
a superior court before Lord chief baron Lyndhurst and
a special jury. He made a clever and sensible defence,
urged the jury not to accept a mere lawyer's definition
of a newspaper, whether given by the solicitor-general,
or even by the lord chief baron himself, insisting that
his opinion as to what formed a newspaper was quite as
good as theirs. Lyndhurst laughed heartily, and in the
end left the matter entirely to the jury — the prosecution
being instigated by the whig Reform government, the
tory chief baron, likely enough, was not particularly
anxious for it to succeed. To Hetherington's surprise
the jury acquitted him, and he jubilantly, announced in
all future numbers of the " Poor Man's Guardian," that
the paper, " after sustaining a government prosecution
of three and a half years, during which five hundred
persons had been unjustly imprisoned for vending it,
had at a trial in the Court of Exchequer, before Lord
chief baron Lyndhurst and a special jury, been declared
a legal publication." Henceforth Hetherington gave no
quarter to his whig prosecutors, " those knaves," he said,
" who used to split the ears of the groundlings with talk
about the palladium of our liberties, and of a free press
being like the air we breathe ; which, if we have not,
we die." Little more than a year afterwards (Sept. 1836) the
government were constrained formally to admit that
neither fines nor imprisonment enabled them to cope any

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 95
longer with the unstamped press. Thereupon the news'
paper stamp was reduced from fourpence to a penny, the
advertisement duty from three shillings and sixpence to
eighteen pence, and the paper duty from threepence to
three half-pence per lb. Tory Lord Lyndhurst not only
ofiered no opposition to the measure, but contemptuously
asked the government why the paltry penny stamp was
to be retained.
I have gone somewhat fully into the particulars of this
struggle between the Reform administration and the un
stamped press, partly from the interest I have always taken
in the subject, and partly from the circumstance that twenty
years afterwards it was my lot to be proceeded against by
the commissioners of stamps for penalties amounting to
£12,000, for publishing an unstamped newspaper. Of the
incident that led to this I shall have occasion to speak by-
and-by. Hetherington, not content with the victory he had
gained, stUl carried on his confiict with the authorities, and
a few years later was sent to prison for four months for
selling a now forgotten pamphlet, Haslam's " Letters to the
Clergy." He retaliated by prosecuting Moxon, the poets'
publisher, and Charles Lamb's " young friend," for issuing
Shelley's "Queen Mab," and as the jury fell in with Lord
Denman's dictum that they were bound to take the law
as they found it, a verdict of guilty followed as a matter
of course. It was when the contest between the government and
the vendors of unstamped newspapers was fiercest, that
a couple of labourers, who had been instructed to burn
an accumulation of wooden tallies in the stoves of the
House of Lords, seem to have set to work to disprove the
truth of the old adage, " the more haste the less speed,"
for in their desperate hurry to get through with their
task, they not merely made a rapid bonfire of all the

96 GLANCES BACK
tallies, but of the two Houses of Parliament as well. The
fire was an astounding one, and I and a couple of com
panions, anxious to obtain a near view of it, made great
efforts to reach Palace-yard, but as all London was mov
ing in crowds in the same direction our attempts were
futile. We thereupon bethought ourselves of the river, and
eventually succeeded in bargaining with a waterman to row
us close to the scene. Shoals of barges and wherries were
hurrying in the same direction, and as soon as we had passed
through Westminster-bridge we found the river choked with
craft, while the view of the fire was something stupendous.
When I was a youth I frequently heard Irving, Row
land Hill, W. J. Fox, and other noted London preachers,
for my father held very broad view^s, and was never averse
to my attending other Sunday morning services besides
those of St. Bride's, where we had our family pew. Irving,
the high priest of the mysterious unknown tongue, was
then a good deal talked about, and I had a great curiosity
to see and hear him. Such recollection as I have retained
of him is due entirely to his striking personality, differing
so utterly as it did from the ordinary clergyman, rather than
to the subject-matter of any of his sermons, which were, I
remember, inordinately long and delivered with a strong
northern accent, as well as far too abstruse for my youth
ful comprehension. What, however, chiefly attracted, me
to the chapel in Newman-street was the expectation, gener
ally realised, of the spirit moving some hysterical shrieking
sister or frantic Boanerges brother (posted in the raised'
recess behind Irving's pulpit) to suddenly burst forth with
one of those wild rapid utterances, which, spite of their
unintelligibility, sent a strange thrill through all who heard
them for the first time.
The popularity which Irving originally enjoyed had
long been on the wane. So far as his aristocratic following
was concerned the spell was broken. Women of rank no

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 97
longer courted him, and signified their willingness to share
his name and participate in his destinies. No lines of
carriages blocked up the street as when the intellectual and
fashionable world of London fiocked to the shabby little
chapel in Hatton-garden to listen to the preacher's weird,
prophetic eloquence. Obviously, Irving did not take the
same view of the preacher's office as Archbishop Manners
Sutton, who recommended Bishop Heber to simply preach
the Gospel and subdue all enthusiasm. At the time I saw
Irving he had grown grey and haggard-looking, and this,
with his long, straggling hair and restless look, emphasized
by the cast in his eye, gave him a singularly wild and
picturesque appearance. His voice too was piercingly
loud, and his gestures were as vehement as those of any
street ranter of the day.
I heard Rowland Hill preach several times at the
Surrey chapel, but he was then a hale old man verging on
eighty, with reddish face, long white hair, and wandering
eyes that seemed to be searching out every member of his
congregation by turn. One went to hear him more from
the amusement derived from his ludicrous remarks and
oddities of manner than for anything profitable he was
likely to give utterance to. He was so egotistical in his
sermons that it was commonly remarked he talked far too
much about himself for his observations to be of any
particular benefit to other people.
W. J. Fox was in the habit of delivering Sunday morn
ing discourses, which were anything but sermons, at his
chapel in South-place, Finsbury. He usually took his
subject from some leading topic of the day. At one time
he would discourse on the queen's coronation, at another
time on duelling, then perhaps on the aristocracy or church
rates, and even on such well-worn subjects as the liberty
of the press. Indeed, most of his lectures might, in a less
expanded form, have served as leading articles in the radical
VOL. I. G

98 GLANCES BACK
"True Sun" newspaper, of which Fox was at that time
the editor. He was a short, thick-set man, with dark hair
and eyes, and as sanctimonious-looking as any primitive
methodist. He always spoke extempore, combining with a
fine choice of language great clearness and closeness of
reasoning, and what his admirers used to term the per
fection of elocution. He not only numbered many of the
philosophical radicals of the time among his hearers, but
men of the most opposite opinions came to listen to him.
Besides being editor of the " True Sun," Fox conducted
the " Monthly Repository," which had Hazlitt, Crabbe
Robinson, Harriett Martineau, and Robert Browning
among its contributors. At the time of the anti-corn law
agitation the leaders found in Fox one of their most
powerful auxiliaries, although his subsequent career in
parliament, where logic counts for little, and such
eloquence as his was at a discount, proved anything but
successful. There was another preacher to whom I went once or
twice by stealth to listen, having to disburse a few coppers
by way of entrance money for the privilege of doing so.
This was the Rev. Robert Taylor, who used to hold forth
at the Rotunda in the Blackfriars-road, and had attained
to considerable notoriety through having been prosecuted
for denying the divinity of Christ, then held to be flat
blasphemy. He was a vain, conceited fop, who had origin
ally been an apothecary, but had exchanged the pestle and
mortar for a clergyman's gown, in which he made his first
appearance at " the Areopagus " in Cannon-street. After
undergoing a year's imprisonment in Oakham jail, he
betook himself to the Rotunda, when Carlile was its lessee.
There he assumed bishop's robes and white kid gloves;
posed with an eye-glass in his eye, and his hair in curls over
his forehead, according to the latest fashion ; and while he
preached, made a point of flourishing a scented cambric

THROUGH SEVENTY. YEARS. 99
handkerchief, trimmed with a deep lace border, at every
pause in his discourse.
The transition from the Rev. Robert Taylor in the
Rotunda pulpit, with his theatrical get-up, his stagey
manner, and his ranting delivery, to actors of a legitimate
type is simple and natural enough. Of the illustrious
Malibran, who was equally great as an actress and a singer,
I have retained a vivid recollection, and remember her par
ticularly in her pathetic part of Amina, in Bellini's "La
Sonnambula," when Bunn was paying her, before she stepped
upon the stage, the then unheard-of salary of £125 per
night ; a mere bagatelle, however, compared with the £800
which Patti, in my judgment an altogether inferior artiste,
exacts at the present time. From the simple circumstance
that on one or two occasions Malibran sustained herself by
partaking of a glass of stout in the course of a trying part,
the legend has grown up, and is likely to endure, that the
great singer was in the nightly habit of swilling a pint of
porter at the wings. Of notable actors, I remember having
seen Charles Kemble — during his Covent-garden manage
ment, and when he was long past middle age — " stroll into
Angers with infinite grace " as Falconbridge, the part of all
others in which he excelled ; and I more than once saw his
gifted daughter Fanny in the character of Juliet, almost
twenty years prior to her return to the stage as Mrs.
Butler. Sixty years ago most old playgoers swore by the
Kembles, and spoke with becoming reverence of the great
Sarah Siddons and her brother John, whom all agreed
to be unapproachable in Corialanus.
Macready was the pet tragedian at this period, but I
confess that I failed to appreciate his jerky elocution and
stUted mannerisms. Perhaps I was prejudiced against
him through constantly hearing the unhappy Elton and
other minor actors rail against his tyrannical treatment of
them on the stage. Later on, Macready's friends, Serjeant

100 GLANCES BACK
Talfourd, Bulwer Lytton, "Examiner" Forster, and even
Dickens, in a less degree, so bepraised him to his face, and
to one another, that Jerrold, Kenny Meadows, and other
independent members of the then newly -formed Shakspeare
Club, used to be constantly complaining of the way in
which they nurtured his intolerable self-conceit.
I can just remember seeing the elder Matthews on one
occasion in his famous "At Home"; and Listen too I saw
only once, but then it was in his superlative part of " Paul
Pry," for some one's benefit. Years afterwards I used con
tinually to meet a grave-mannered old gentleman, snub-
nosed, with hanging jowl and large vacant-looking eyes,
mooning about Knightsbridge, in the comical cut of whose
features one had no difficulty in recognising the former
famous comedian, who then lived at St. George's-row, in a
little house facing the park. Here the omnibus drivers
used to point him out sitting at the first floor window,
watch in hand, timing them as they drove by. It is said
that when any of them were late Listen would either
lament or grumble, according to the humour he was in.
This timing of the omnibuses became a sort of monomania
with him, and he sank at last into a state of profound
melancholy, never smiling, and speaking but rarely. I
remember fascinating Madame Vestris in Planche's " Olym
pic Revels," and all through those palmy Olympic days,
before age had withered her infinite variety ; also charming
Mrs. Honey, the lovely, laughing, frolic Nisbet, and pert
Mrs. Waylett, with her famous " Buy a broom ! " song, and
all the rest of the stage beauties who turned the heads of
the play-going young simpletons of the time.
As a youngster I, of course, thought T. P. Cooke un
commonly fine, alike as Long Tom Coffin, the Flying
Dutchman, and William in Jerrold's " Black-eyed Susan'' ;
but later on, when I used to pay for my own seat at the
play, I invariably chose the Adelphi pit, where I could

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 101
Toar with laughter at brandy-and-water primed Jack
Reeve's seemingly unconscious humour, or be scared half
out of my wits by the demoniacal flights of 0. Smith in
Fitzball's " Bottle Imp " and " Black Vulture," with their
red and blue fire accessories. The then popular melo-
dramatist's partiality for red and blue fire was such that
his friends jokingly accused him of always burning one or
the other in his parlour grate at home. When the Ameri
can comedian, T. D. Rice, came to England to turn the
town crazy with his " Jump Jim Crow," I saw him both
at the Surrey and the Adelphi, where the performance,
from its sheer absurdity, at once made a hit ; and soon
every barrel organ in London was grinding the tune, and
every street boy piping the words and striking the regula
tion attitude. And yet what arrant rubbish the words
were which secured the singer fame and fortune —
" How are you, massa gemmen,
An' de ladies in a row ?
All for to tell you whar I 'm from,
I 'se going for to go !
For I wheel ahout an' turn about, an' do just so,
An' ebery time I turn about 1 jump Jim Crow ! '

102 GLANCES BACK

(1834-36.)
SONGS AND SLANG PHRASES — CRUIKSHANK AND THE " COMIC
ALMANACK "  DEBTORS' PRISONS AND DEAR LAW — SALARIES
AND SINECURES  SIXTY YEARS AGO.
At the period of what was in reality the first invasion of
the nigger minstrel, sentimental songs were the rage in
London drawing-rooms, and very likely " Jump Jim Crow"
was found an agreeable relief from the namby-pamby lyrics
then in fashion. One of the tribe of " Annual " poets, a
contributor, moreover, to the " John BuU," and a literary
lion of his day, Thomas Haynes Bayly — commonly known as
Butterfiy Bayly from a stupid song called " I 'd be a butter
fly," that made the fortune of some lucky music publisher — •
had for several years flooded the town with mawkish inani
ties, in which the romantic young ladies of the day used
positively to revel. One season every drawing-room would
ring with " I never was a favourite," or " Oh ! no, we
never mention her, her name is never heard " — in allusion
to some fair one by whom the author had been jilted.
Next season, "She wore a wreath of roses," or "I'm
saddest when I sing," would be in vogue, and these in
their turn would give place to the dismal ditty of
" We met, 'twas in a crowd, and I thought he would shun me.
He came, I could not breathe, for his eye was upon me.
He called me by my name as the bride of another.
Oh, thou hast been the cause of this anguish, my mother ! "

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 103
Strange to say, so keen a satirist as Thackeray, in one of
his amiable moods, professed to discover in Haynes Bayly's
twaddling rhymes " numberless good-natured, simple ap
peals to the affections."
The craving for songs of this class was such that
another Bayley soon joined in supplying the demand. The
new poet was known both as Alphabet Bayley, from the
string of initials he prefixed to his name, and as Omnibus
Bayley, from a periodical he edited, and in which he pub
lished, puffed, and advertised his own trashy lyrics. For
distinction's sake the small wits of the day christened the
pair of sentimental songsters "Old Bayly" and "New
Bayley." The latter failed to catch completely the dismal
spirit which pervaded the lays of the poet he simulated,
and which seems to have been their principal charm, conse
quently he never attained to the same degree of popularity.
StiU, his " I heard a voice, its tones were sweet," " Over
the distant hills she gazed," " I stood among the glittering
throng," and " He never said he loved," had their full
complement of imbecile admirers.
While these were the class of songs that found universal
favour in the drawing-room, and in due time got echoed
in the street, no end of unmeaning slang phrases, chiefiy
remarkable for their stupidity and vulgarity — and origin
ating one scarcely knew how or where, for no music-halls
then existed to coin these inanities — were in circulation
among the multitude and the "faster" section of society.
One's ears were incessantly assailed with such cries as
" What a shocking bad hat ! " " There he goes with his eye
out ! " " How are you off for soap ? " " Flare up ! and join
the union," " Does your mother know you 're out ? " or
" It 's all very fine, Mr. Fergusson, but you don't lodge
here." It was at this period (1834) that the stamp duty upon
almanacks was repealed ; and as a necessary consequence,

104 GLAHrCES BACK
the country became flooded with these useful publications
in every imaginable form. There were elegant bijou
almanacks for the drawing-room table, Sunday almanacks
for the prayer-book, miniature almanacks for the waistcoat
pocket, circular almanacks for the crown of the hat, and
almanacks even printed upon pocket handkerchiefs. The
latter were, no doubt, suggested by those " moral wipes "
which the missionary societies were then so fond of sending
out to " Afric's burning sands" for the benefit of negroes
troubled with a cold in the head, and which the reverend
Mr. Stiggins approvingly described as " combining instruc
tion with amusement, and blending select tales with wood
cuts." In the rush to cater for the public taste, my father,
taking his idea, no doubt, from Hood's popular " Comic
Annual," proposed to Mr. Charles Tilt, the publisher, the
joint production of a comic almanack, to be illustrated by
George Cruikshank. Tilt approved of the scheme, and the
work was undertaken in partnership.
My father, who had contributed all sorts of articles to
the magazines in his younger days,^ edited the almanack
1 1 turned up the other day among some old papers a letter to my father from
Campbell, the poet, when the latter was editing the "New Monthly Magazine." I re
print it simply as an example of the attention which even anonymous contributors met
with in those days from editors of the first position. Campbell, it should be remembered,
was then at the height of his fame. To-day, providing ho had enclosed the required
stamps, an anonymous contributor's application respecting his lost MS. would be
acknowledged by a postcard, even if it met with any notice at all : —
"Sir, — I ara exceedingly distressed that you have had so much trouble ahout
your article, and that my reply should now reach you so late. I assure you no
slight was intended on my part. But from the multitude of papers which accumu
lated some weeks ago, at a time when I was in bad health, it was impossible for
me to peruse your paper on the Inequality of Intellects earlier than last
month. When I was in the country, to which I was obliged to retire in May in a very
weakly state, I remember distinctly reading your Essay, and recollect parts of it, par
ticularly the account of the boy whose knowledge of classical learning was conspicuous
at ten years old. I recollect also enclosing your paper in a cover with a note address'd
to you apologizing for my not being able to insert it, as the rage for fashionable reading
at present calls for light articles. I can give my word of honour, which I believe no man
who knows me will doubt, that to the best of my recollection I came to town and left the
article on Mr Colboume's table — delivering it with others to himself. But, most un
happily, Mr Colbourne cannot iind the paper, and thinks that I must have made a
mistake in returning it under a cover address'd to some one else. Mr Colboume's
belief and my own are here at variance. That I have made no mistake, I certainly can-

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 105
under the pseudonym of Rigdum. Funnidos until his death
a few years afterwards, and wrote the larger portion of
the earUer issues of the publication, including nearly the
whole of the first number for the year 1835, which
Thackeray, in his " Essay on George Cruikshank," fiatter-
ingly remarks showed "a great deal of comic power."
He, moreover, suggested the subjects for Cruikshank's
etchings for that year, and penned the verses that ac
company them. The general letterpress, of course, dealt
with such topics of the day as Chancellor Brougham's
oscUlations, the great comet, St. John Long, the fashion
able rubbing doctor, Morison's pUls, &c., whUe the
season's signs and weather prophecies were satirical skits
ou the ridiculous predictions to which Francis Moore's
almanack, published by the Stationers' company, was
principally indebted for its success. George Cruikshank
at this time had given up political caricature, and could
not be prevailed on to put my father's suggestion of
Brougham's downfall between two stools (peers aud
people) on the wood-block, although its subsequent great
success, owing to the prediction being speedily ful
filled, induced him to contribute a caricature apropos of
municipal reform the following year.
The plate for March in the first number of the " Comic
Almanack" gives a view of Tilt's shop, 86 Fleet-street,
and just inside the open door Tilt and Cruikshank are
seen engaged in conversation. George Cruikshank was in
constant communication with my father at this time, and I
used to see a good deal of him at 76 Fleet-street. One
not swear ; but I have given you my sincere declaration that I have read your paper,
and to the best of my knowledge have return'd it to the place where you ought to have
found it. It affects me that you should lose your MS. by this accident. Mr Colbourne
says positively he has it not. All that I can do is to wait the issue of the correspondent
returning it to whom it is alleged that it may have possibly been sent by mistake. If it
is not restored, it must remain my unqualified conviction that not myself, but Mr Col-
"bourue, has mislaid it ; for I remember its being among the papers which I inspected and
brought to town. — I am. Sir, with respect, your obedt. Servt.,
" London, ith June 1822. " T. Campbell.''

106 GLANCES BACK
was not long in discovering how conceited the clever
artist was in regard to his personal appearance, for he
stealthily eyed himself in the glass on every available
opportunity. He had been in the habit of picturing
himself as a buck in his youth, and was still a bit of a fop,
kept his hair well oiled and his whiskers punctiliously
brushed, and was natty in his dress. A notable weakness
of his was pridiug himself upon being one of the last men
in London to give up wearing hessian boots. It was this
same weak vanity about his personal appearance that led
him in after-life to bring a long lock of his scanty hair
forward to try and conceal 'his baldness, and secure it in
its place with an elastic band, which he foolishly hoped
would be invisible to the most searching glances.
Like Thackeray, George Cruikshank was fond of
introducing his own portrait into his designs, but, unlike
Thackeray, he never depicted himself under a ridiculous
aspect. On the other hand, he presented the public with
a series of fiattering self-likenesses, from which one would
scarcely be led to believe that the original was a little
man, with an unmistakeable Jewish cast of countenance —
a hooked nose and keen, not to say fierce-looking eyes —
which in his old age developed something of the ex
pression that he has given to his own Fagin, in whom
quite unconsciously he reproduced a kind of semblance of
himself, excepting that the jew lacks old Time's forelock,
of the possession of which Cruikshank was seemingly so
proud. I question if at any period of his life was George
Cruikshank the Adonis and the dandy he was so fond
of picturing himself
Apropos of the famous etching of Fagin in the con
demned cell, the artist used to say that he got the happy
idea of depicting the old reprobate biting his finger nails
in his remorse and vexation, from catching sight of himself
in a looking-glass engaged in a similar occupation, while

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. lOT
he was sitting up in bed bothering his brains as to the
most tragic way of treating the subject.
In the same way that Listen regarded tragedy as his
forte, George Cruikshank frequently fretted at being com
pelled to employ his pencil upon ludicrous subjects, his
ambition being to picture at least the epic and the his
torical, if not the sublime. Many of his later etchings, like
those for Ainsworth's " Tower of London," certainly show
that the artist had not over-estimated his powers. Out
side his artistic genius and his marvellous industry — he
never seems to have refused any commission offered to
him, excepting that after he made his mark as a book illus
trator, he declined anything in the shape of political cari
cature — the circumstance of his temperance triumph fol
lowing upon long years of convivial indulgence is one of the
most remarkable features in his career. In those repented-
of convivial days " Genial George," or " Good old George,"
as he used to be familiarly styled by his more youthful
associates, was certainly capital company, not more egotis
tical than most men, and excellent at telling a story, and
vivifying his narrative with appropriate action.
Somewhere in the " forties," before the publication of his
famous " Bottle," drink had so far got the mastery over
him, that he was pretty constantly in police custody during
the smaU hours of the morning ; having either been found
in the street in an insensible condition, fuU length on the
pavement like his own famous " spirit level," or been
taken in charge for his personal protection until his friend,
Mr. Bogue, the publisher, was roused up to bail him out,
as, at one time, he was periodically called upon to do.
Dickens described George Cruikshank at this unhappy
period of his career as turning up at his friends' houses at
unseasonable hours in the morning, unkempt and unwashed
and smelling of tobacco, beer, and sawdust. As Blanchard
Jerrold truly remarked, he " must have passed many

108 GLANCES BACK
painful morrow mornings before the epoch of his reform
ation." George Cruikshank, as we all know, expiated his pecca
dilloes in this direction a hundredfold, and temperance never
had a more enthusiastic advocate than he proved himself
to be. As to his general merits Thackeray honestly set
them forth when he said, " he has told a thousand truths
in as many strange and fascinating ways ; he has given a
thousand new and pleasant thoughts to millions of people ;
he has never used his wit dishonestly ; he has never in all
the exuberance of his frolicsome humour caused a single
painful or guilty blush."
The first publisher of the " Comic Almanack " had a
genius for making money. He toiled and moiled at this
one pursuit with the regularity of clockwork for a stated
number of years, and retired from business at middle age
with a considerable fortune. Not only were Tilt's publish
ing ventures successes, but when lithography was a novelty,
and picture scrap-books were very general, and engravings
with which to fill them rather rare, he imported from
France large sheets' crowded with designs, chiefly figure
subjects, by Victor Adam and others. For years Tilt had
this trade almost entirely in his own hands, utilising the
long side window of his shop to display the immense
variety of his collection, and frequently turning over, I
have heard him say, several hundred pounds per week,
more than half of which was profit, from the sale of these
lithographs alone.
When Tilt made up his mind to retire from business,
instead of looking outside his own establishment for a
purchaser, he carefully considered which of his assistants
was most suited to succeed him, and to secure him the
largest amount he could hope to obtain for his stock and
copyrights. One of these assistants he knew had money,
but he was not equally certain with regard to his brains*

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 109^
Another had expectations and rich relatives, and the
ambition to figure as a publisher of importance ; while a
third had plenty of practical knowledge, coupled with
more than average taste. The fourth, and youngest, of
these assistants, had nothing beyond his general shrewd
ness and steady application to business to recommend him,,
and Tilt, passing all the others by, fixed upon him as his
successor. One afternoon he quietly mentioned that he
wished him to remain after the shop was closed and help
in checking some accounts ; and the other assistants, little
dreaming of what was passing in Tilt's head, were one and
all delighted that this extra duty had not devolved on
themselves. As soon as the shop was closed Tilt produced a state
ment of the last stock-taking, and went carefully through it
with his assistant, occasionally reducing the valuations.
whenever, after discussion, this was considered advisable.
He then informed his companion that he had decided tO'
retire from business, and staggered him by asking whether
he would like to take over the stock at the valuation they
had just arrived at. In this case, he said, he contemplated
taking him at once into partnership for a limited term, at
the expiration of which he proposed handing everything
over to him, including the book debts and sufficient capital
to carry on the business on its accustomed lines. Ample
time, "Tilt said, would be allowed him to pay the amount.
of the valuation, and to repay any capital advanced — the
two forming a total estimated, if I remember right, at
some forty to fifty thousand pounds.
This proposal came like a thunder-clap to the assistant,
who, with neither resources of his own, nor expectations-
from his friends, had until that moment seen nothing be
fore him but steady drudgery for the rest of his life. In his
agitation he thanked Tilt as he best could for the con
fidence he was prepared to place in him, and, of course,.

110 GLANCES BACK
promised to do his utmost to justify the good opinion he
had formed.
Next day Tilt called his other assistants together and
told them that he had taken Mr. Bogue into partnership.
The deed and the agreement for the conveyance of the
business were duly executed, and at the appointed time
Tilt bade adieu to publishing. He however still went on
amassing and investing money, but always taking care to
have a hundred thousand pounds or more within reach to
profit by any eventuality that might arise. He had not
long to wait, as during the railway mania (1845) the pro
prietors of a celebrated publication had speculated deeply
in the shares of new and dubious undertakings, and were
in need of temporary assistance. Bankers then would no
more lend money upon copyrights than they would on rail
way scrip. Tilt, however, had no such objection, and came
promptly forward with £50,000, drawing up himself within
the limits of half a sheet of notepaper the assignment of
the copyright, which was to serve as security for this large
advance. Five-and-fifty years ago literature was either a more
precarious pursuit than it is at present, or else literary men
were more improvident. I can recall a string of names —
half of them still remembered by the public, the other half
forgotten — of journalists and magazine writers who were
accustomed to spend a fair portion of their lives within th<!
high walls of the Fleet or King's Bench prisons. Whem
my father was requiring some assistance on the " Comid
Almanack " the two writers whom he thought best adaptedi
to the purpose chanced to be in limbo, and I remember
being entrusted with letters and proofs for delivery to
them at their quarters in the Fleet and the Bench.
To me the kaleidoscopic scene inside these places
was as good as any play. The stupendous get-up and
general gaiety of the many seedy swells puzzled me, and

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. Ill
the dissipated, devil-may-care looks of most of the en
caged ones, and the dismal demeanour of some few of the
others surprised me. Among the prisoners there were,
I remember, one or two notorious jew gaming-house keepers,
who having been ordered to pay fines of £5000 and to
give securities for £20,000 more, had made up their minds,
if petitioning the Crown failed them, to spend the rest of
their lives in duresse. It was, however, the racket-play
ing in " Spike park," as Mr. Jingle styled it, and the
enthusiasm shown by the players that took my fancy, and
on subsequent occasions I spent hours together in witness
ing some of the more exciting matches.
Besides those incarcerated within the lofty prison walls
there were well-to-do debtors, who, preferring to live on
their means rather than satisfy the demands of creditors,
availed themselves of the privilege of living within a cir
cumscribed distance of the Bench and the Fleet — in what
were known as the " rules." For this liberty a substantial
fee was exacted, and no doubt security had also to be given,
besides which rents within the rules were exorbitantly
high for very indifferent accommodation. A debtor who had
secured this privilege was forbidden to stir beyond the pre
scribed limits unless he had previously provided himself for
a stated fee with a day rule, permitting him to absent him
self for a certain number of hours, and thus enabling him
to go to the Derby, a prize fight, or other equally excit
ing amusement. When I was a lad I knew a quiet, cour
teous, aristocratic-looking old gentleman, an ancient fop
who affected the fashions of a past generation, and wore
false hair and rouged his cheeks, but was unable to
straighten his bent frame. This was Sir Lumley Skeffing
ton, said to be descended from one of the Irish kings, and
some quarter of a century previously one of the bloods
of the regency. He had written several comedies, which
secured him a couplet in Byron's " English Bards" —

112 GLANCES BACK
" And sure great Skeffington must claim our praise
For skirtless coats and skeletons of plays."
He was passionately fond of theatrical society, had been
an habitud of the green-rooms of the principal theatres,
and penned complimentary verses to popular actresses in
the newspapers. At the time I knew him he was living
within the rules of the Bench, near to the Surrey
theatre, and, so far as was practicable under such dismal
conditions, in rather a luxurious style.
As, in the circumstances in which he was placed, he
was unable to secure the society of the higher professionals,,
he was glad to entertain certain members of the Surrey
company at his apartments. The old gentleman, who
had a fund of anecdote about members of his own set
— all belonging to a world equally strange and fascinating
to the generality of his hearers — used to boast that his
secret for long life consisted in never stirring out of doors
during the cold damp winter months, and in living in a
suite of rooms which admitted of his constantly shifting
from one apartment to another, and so securing the neces
sary fresh air. He was of course referring to the time
when he was a prisoner within the rules, from which, after
years of duresse, he by some happy accident got freed, and
attained the good old age of eighty.
These were golden days for knavish attorneys and
extortionate bum-bailiffs, when as many as six thousand
debtors passed yearly through his majesty's prisons of the
Fleet, the King's Bench, and the Marshalsea ; nearly half
of them, too, for debts under £20. To recover a debt of
less than £5 in the Court of King's Bench then cost as
much as £15, even when no defence was made. If a
debtor owned a copyhold estate, it was sacred against the
law's assaults ; but in the case of a freehold, the creditors
could secure half the rents. They could not, however.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 113
attach funded property, neither could they seize bank
notes or coin belonging to a debtor. Absurdly enough,
if when making a levy the sheriff's officer happened
to find a pile of money upon a table, he dared not
touch it, although he was privileged to seize the table
itself Debtors could weary out their creditors by putting
them to exorbitant expense, should the latter invoke the
law's assistance to recover their just claims. On being
arrested and held to bail, a debtor, after being served with
a declaration, could put in a special plea ; or, if he should
still be in custody, his attorney could plead in person at
a cost of a guinea, and thereby run the creditor to £30
expense. The proceedings that followed were altogether
of the most absurd character. In the first place, the
plaintiff, on obtaining judgment, was obliged to send his
debtor a paper book, which the latter was entitled to return
to the plaintiff's attorney with a fee of 7s. 6d. Thereupon
his own attorney, after searching the final judgment office,
could give the attorney on the other side notice to be
present when the costs were taxed, and could then serve
him with a writ of error, thereby putting his client to great
¦expense, which he would have to pay or go entirely over
the ground again.
The cost to the defendant of this writ of error was
.£4, 4s., but for another guinea the writ could be made
returnable in Parliament at an expense to the plaintiff
of not less than £100. If in spite of this the plaintiff
•still determined to proceed, the defendant could file a
bUl in Chancery or the Exchequer, and on the plaintiff
failing to answer it, an injunction might be obtained
.against him, when an attachment would issue, and a
committal to prison follow for contempt of court. The
costs incurred by the plaintiff and defendant respectively,
through these proceedings, would be as follows : —
VOL. I. H

114 GLANCES BACK
Plaintiff. Defendant.
Answer to special plea £30 0 0 Special Plea .... £1 1 0
„ Writ of Error 100 0 0 Paper hook .... 0 7 &
„ Bill in Chancery 100 0 0 Writ of Error ... 440
Bill in Ex- If returnahleinParliament 1 I 0
chequer  84 0 0 Bill in Chancery . . 12 0 0
Bill in Exchequer . . 6 6 0

£314 0 0 £24 19 6-
In these days, not only the nefarious Palace Court,
but all the other law courts, were deserving of being
apostrophized in the indignant language of Policeman X. —
" Good sport it is to you
To grind the honest pore.
To pay their just or unjust debts
With 800 per cent, for Lor ;
" Come down from that tribe wn.
Thou shameless and Unjust ;
Thou Swindle, picking pockets in
The name of Truth august :
Come down, thou hoary Blasphemy,
For die thou shalt and must.
" Else up. Sir John Jervis,
And shut me up that den ;
That sty for fattening lawyers in.
On the bones of honest men."
As may be supposed, there were some swingeing salaries
and sinecures for the benefit of official drones in these
scandalous days. A subordinate official like the clerk
of the rules of the King's Bench prison then received
upwards of £5000 a year, or more than feU to the lot
of a cabinet minister, and nearly as much as a judge of
the court was paid. Lord EUenborough possessed the

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 115
snug berth of clerk to this same Court of King's Bench,
with the comfortable emolument of £9625 per annum,
at the same time that he was drawing a salary of £5060
as president of the board of commissioners for the affairs
of India. The Duke of Grafton, descended from one of
Charles II.'s illegitimate brood, performed the arduous duties
of sealer in the Court of Common Pleas by deputy, for
the paltry sum of £3888 yearly, or considerably less
than half of what Lord EUenborough was paid for his
clerkship. The salary of the House of Commons door
keeper then topped the salaries of both the Royal Astro
nomer and the Principal Librarian of the British Museum,
as, while he received £874, they were paid only £800
each. With regard to sinecures, one of the most notorious
cases was that of Lord William Bentinck, who, whUe
exercising the high functions of Governor of Bengal,
retained the menial office of clerk of the pipe, one of
whose duties was to assist the man who held up Lord
Chancellor Brougham's train ! The Beresfords positively
revelled in sinecures in the sister isle, being at once
wine-tasters, storekeepers, packers, and craners. The
fair sex, moreover, was not forgotten. A well-to-do
baroness held the derogatory post of sweeper of the
mall in St. James's-park, and another lady of title was
chief usher in the Court of Exchequer. The Honourable
Louisa BrowTiing and Lady Martin were custodes brevium,
of course without duties, but not without emoluments.
No end of noble lords and ladies, and right honourable
and honourable gentlemen, and their children also, filled
the sinecure offices of prothonotaries, clerks, tide-waiters,
harbour masters, searchers, gangers, packers, craners, and
wharfingers, the aggregate value of which was about
£180,000 per annum. Of this amount, one-third was
in respect to sinecures in the law courts.

116 GLANCES BACK
If these were the days of great abuses, they were also
the days of simple habits and simpler tastes. Average
middle-class people had not then a tithe of the luxuries
or a quarter of the recreation they now enjoy. They had
to eat their grandest dinners without iced champagne, and
on ordinary occasions wine of any kind was a comparative
rarity. There were no railways to encourage us to be per
petually on the rush after excitement and change. Travel
ling then was a serious business, expensive, and attended
with no end of discomforts, spite of excellent inns and
splendidly-horsed coaches. Instead of club trains to
whisk us to Paris and dine us en route, eight hours' coach
ing was needed to reach Dover, then several hours' misery
had to be endured in crossing the channel, and twenty-two
additional hours of intense torment before one got to Paris.
In London omnibuses were still rare, and no fares were below
a shilling : people going from one part of town to another
mostly trudged on foot, unless they could afford to pay a
shilling and more a mile for a cab. For a couple of years,
when I was qualifying for a wood-engraver, I walked
regularly from Brixton to Judd-street, rising every morn
ing before six, and never once missing arriving at my des
tination by eight o'clock. At eight p.m. — for the eight
hours' working day was then undreamt of — I started on
my return home again.
No penny post then inundated us with letters, and
obliged us to be constantly writing replies whether we
wished to do so ot no. No telegrams then worried us
from daybreak to midnight ; no penny and half-penny
newspapers, with their fresh editions almost every half-
hour, pestered us with their latest, or outbid each other
with apocryphal intelligence. Half a score of theatres
then sufficed for the amusement of London and the
suburbs, and we managed to jog on without a single music
hall. Then we found the Pickwickian harlequinade, as

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 117
some superfine people now derogatively call it, sufficiently
funny for us not to trouble ourselves about any prospec
tive new style of humour. We, moreover, managed to do
without society papers and interviewers, and all those
blessings which are supposed to flow from the " new
journalism." There were plenty of handsome women, but
no troops of professional beauties like we have to-day ; and
when middle-class people married their daughters, it was
altogether a private affair, and paterfamilias escaped being
bled for pictures of the bride and her trousseau in the
fashion papers. A considerate legislature had not pro
vided us with bank holidays, and of course there were no
cheap excursion trains. After the advent of railways,
when for economy's sake we travelled third-class, we had
to take our stand — rfor seats there were none — in what
was nothing less than an open cattie-truck ; with no
shilling shockers, penny and halfpenny comics, and "tit
bits " and " short cuts " to amuse and confuse us during
our uncomfortable journey.
These were the halcyon days, when Perkins's destruc
tive steam-gun was to have revolutionized warfare, and
rendered it so deadly as to be no longer persisted in, but
which, after subsiding into a popular exhibition, eventually
ended in smoke ; when our brave defenders, as we never tired
of calling them, by sea and land, were mercilessly flogged
for the most trivial offences ; when ladies wore bonnets of
such preposterous dimensions that the doorways of closed
carriages would scarcely admit them ; with big balloon-
sleeves, which at dinner tables almost effaced their neigh
bours, and surprisingly short gowns, that seemed specially
adapted to the display of sandelled ankles ; when the
postage of a letter to Brighton was eightpence, and to
Italy (prepaid) three shillings and twopence; when a
single steel pen cost nearly as much as a hundred nibs do
now ; when Dando, the ravenous oyster eater, was inces-

118 GLANCES BACK
santly swallowing his ten or twelve dozen bivalves, with
out a thought of paying for them, until at last death in
prison, through semi-starvation, gave the quietus to his
unnatural appetite ; when St. John Long, the fashionable
quack doctor, every now and then rubbed some too confiding
lady patient to death ; when Joseph Ady was periodicaUy
haled before the magistrates for pestering people with unpaid
letters, promising to tell them something to their advan
tage in return for a sovereign ; when Ikey Solomons, the
notorious jew "fence," stUl carried on his nefarious prac
tices ; and when Sir Andrew Agnew was striving his hardest
to make people religious by act of parliament — his proposed
Agony bill, as it was called, according to the jokers of the
period, forbade —
" Even Epsom salts to work on Sundays !
Besides, sir, here 's a poser —
At least to me it seems a closer.
And shews a shocking lack of legislative skill —
If nothing, sir, 's to work from Saturday to Monday,
Pray how 's your Bill
To work on Sunday ? "

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 119

VI.
(1835-37.)
EARLY PENCIL AND GRAVER WORK — THE ERASER FRACAS 
A PHENOMENAL SNOWSTORM — IN THE ISLE OF WIGHT
AND AT STONEHENGE.
When, in 1835, the time arrived for me to leave school, a
certain aptitude I had shown for drawing led my father to
think of educating me for an artist. But after I had spent
a few months in copying from the flat and the round, and
had attended some occasional Royal Academy lectures,
wood-engraving was deemed a preferable • profession for me
to follow, owing to my father's position as a publisher. I
was thereupon apprenticed to a friend of the famUy, Mr.
G. W. Bonner, a second-rate w^ood-engraver, who intensified
in his woodcuts the conventional mannerisms of the bold
water-colour drawings which he was somewhat an adept at
producing. Bonner had recently turned out two remark
ably clever pupils, one of whom, named Powis, died early,
while the other, Mr. W. J. Linton — the future friend of
Mazzini and other advanced liberals, at a time when to
know them even was regarded as a crime — is still living,
and may be said to have ranked in his palmy days — John
Thompson only excepted — as the first wood-engraver of
his epoch. This was prior to the craze in favour of
the American style of wood-engraving — all tone and no
texture, and, above aU, a microscopic minuteness of
execution which has more the character of mechanism
than of art.

120 GLANCES BACK
Bonner employed several assistants, and had one other
apprentice, who, like myself, lived with the family at
Newington. Advocates ofthe "eight hours" craze will,
-no doubt, think the seventy-two hours of steady work
which 1 got through regularly every week something ex
cessive, whereas I simply regarded it as a matter of course.
Ten hours' work a day was our allotted portion, but I
voluntarily devoted another couple of hours daily to draw
ing from plaster casts. Summer and Winter I was up by
half-past five, and during the latter season lighted my own
fire and trimmed my own lamp with hands terribly swollen
with chilblains. Nothing, however, seemed a hardship in
those lightsonie laborious days. In the course of the first
few months I sla,ughtered with a graver a certain number
of my own drawings on the wood, after which I was en
trusted with the engraving of a series of rustic figures,
which, to my great satisfaction, were duly published in
some spelling-book of the period.
The year or two I spent at Bonner's passed monoton
ously enough. Such winter evenings after working hours
as were not devoted to drawing, were, in a self-educational
fit, given to the reading of Bacon's " Essays " and Locke
" Op the , Understanding " in Chambers's cheap reprints,
but to one's no great after benefit, I am sorry to say, and
to mastering Dr. Combe's " Principles of Physiology," and
his brother George's "Constitution of Man." A score or
two. of educated men had not then perplexed the rising
genfera;tidn with their divergent opinions respecting the
best hundred books to read, so that one had to content
one's self by supplementing this somewhat dry if instructive
reading with the monthly number of " Pickwick," and
occasionally one of Captain Marryat's novels. I had
already read aU the " Waverley novels," and most of G.
P. R. James's romances, and during a serious illness at
school I had devoured with the utmost zest every page of

THROUGH. SEVENTY YEARS. 121
the dozen volumes of "Clarissa Harlowe," which Mrs.
Wyburn had lent me to read. More recently I had read
by stealth " Tom Jones," and Smollett's novels, surrep
titiously abstracted from the top shelf of my father's book
case ; had pored with delight over the " Sentimental
Journey," and dipped into " Tristam Shandy " ; and had
read with boyish zest Swift's "Gulliver," and the incom
parable " Tale of a Tub." Pope's translation of the
" Iliad " had also fascinated me, and I knew its more
striking passages by heart;
The most democratic opinions were current in the
workroom at Bonner's ; and forbidden books, furtively ob
tained, were eagerly read by us out of working hours and
freely discussed while work was going on. Among them
were Paine's "Rights of Man" and "Age of Reason," both
now regarded as harmless publications; Southey's "Wat
Tyler," and Byron's "Vision of Judgment"; and a well-
thumbed verbatim , report of a trial for sedition, which
recalled the old Star chamber days. It was that of Muir,
a liberal-minded young Scotch advocate, and a victim to the
political bigotry of the time. After the lord jnstice-clerk
had brow-beaten the accused in Judge Jeffrey's fashion, and
had wheedled the jury to return a verdict of guilty, the un
happy young fellow was transported for life, although his
only crime had been the lending of a political work of
Paine's to some working-man.
The book that, of all others, had the greatest fascination
for us was Shelley's " Queen Mab," in which ardent liberals
found the expression of their aspirations, and which, a few
years afterwards came to be known as the "chartists' bible."
At that time we did not read Shelley as he is now read,
for his poetic imagery and mellifiuous diction, but because
this, ostracised poem of his teemed with agnostic and re
publican ideas boldly expressed in impassioned language.
At this period, during the long summer evenings, I

122 GLANCES BACK
managed to get an occasional hour at cricket on the neigh
bouring common, or I walked over London-bridge to meet
a young friend, whose city hours were even longer than
my own, on his way home towards Clapham. London-
bridge was, in these days, a favourite hunting ground with
youthful pickpockets — " fogle-fakers " is, I believe, the
orthodox term — accomplished pupils of old Fagin, with
whom Dickens was soon to make us acquainted ; and I
often amused myself by following in their wake, and
watching their proceedings. It was then almost impossi
ble for anyone to pass over London-bridge of an evening
with a silk handkerchief in the pocket of his coat tails
without losing it. Instead of comparatively worthless lawn
handkerchiefs, genuine Bandannas costing five or six
shillings each were the usual wear, and if your pocket
chanced to get picked of one, to recover it you had to
walk as far as Field-lane — at the back of which the open
foul Fleet ditch then ran — and you would see hundreds of
stolen silk handkerchiefs hanging on long poles projecting
from the windows of almost every house. A couple of
shillings or half-a-crown would secure the lost article,
which was only recognizable by its pattern, all marks
having been picked out the moment the " wipe " came into
the " fence's " possession.
It was near Field-lane, and in a measure for the accom
modation of its inhabitants, that the first London gin
palace was built. The polished mahogany counters, the
garish bar fittings, the smartly-painted vats, inscribed
" Old Tom " and " Cream of the Valley," the rows of showy
bottles of noyau and other cordials, and above all, the
immense blaze of gas-light within and without these
buildings as soon as dusk set in, were all so many novelties
and came as a vision of splendour to the besotted denizens
of the neighbouring slums. I remember that one of these
so-called palaces had a second and lower counter for the

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 123
accommodation of the children and juvenile thieves whom
it counted among its patrons.
" Pickwick " was then appearing in its green monthly
covers, and no sooner was a new number published than
needy admirers flattened their noses against the booksellers'
windows, eager to secure a good look at the etchings, and
peruse every line of the letterpress that might be exposed to
view, frequently reading it aloud to applauding bystanders.
Everyone who could afford a shilling a month devoured
the number the moment it appeared ; but enthusiasts, less
well-to-do, paid their twopences to the libraries for the
loan of it, and impatiently awaited their turn. So great
was the craze, that " Pickwick" secured far more attention
than was given to the ordinary politics of the day ; each
new number of it being much more eagerly watched for
than House of Commons divisions on English Church
Reform, or Irish Corporation, or Tithe bills. For some
thing like a couple of years previously I had been on
the look out for the funny stories and sketches signed
" Boz," appearing periodically in the old " Monthly
Magazine," and pronounced by the few who knew of
them to be inimitable ; so that it was scarcely a matter
for great surprise when, by and by, this " unknown young
man modestly came and took his place," as Mr. Thackeray
flatteringly puts it, " at the head of English literature."
Some trivial illness of Bonner's having developed into an
attack of brain fever, Dr. Uwins was called in to attend him;
but as there was no amelioration in the patient's condition
under his treatment, further advice was considered desirable.
The family doctor, however, thought differently, simply
because, as he said, Uwins would have to be consulted,
and would be certain to recommend Dr. Clutterbuck, who
would as certainly order the patient to be cupped, in which
case he would inevitably die. The famUy doctor's warning
was unheeded, however, and everything turned out as he

124 GLANCES BACK
had predicted. Within a few hours after Bonner had been
bled, the physicians, seemingly undismayed at the result
of their drastic treatment, calmly proceeded to prescribe
frequent smaU doses of brandy, with a view, as they said,
of sustaining exhausted nature, but all to no purpose, for
within eight and forty hours their patient was a corpse.
The circumstance made a deep impression on my mind,
which has never been effaced.
In the summer of 1836 I accompanied my father into
Kent, where I spent several weeks roaming about sketch
ing. While we were away we learned from the daily
papers the particulars of Grantley Berkeley's brutal attack
on Fraser, the publisher, with whom my father had a
business acquaintance, and whom I had also seen on vari
ous occasions. The story, although a well-known one, will
bear telling again. In the August number of " Eraser's
Magazine," at that time a somewhat unscrupulous publica-
cation, an abusive review of Grantley Berkeley's noveb
" Berkeley Castle," had appeared, in which, after reviv
ing the old story of the illegitimacy of the then head of
the Berkeley family, the writer asked, " Why, then, bore
us with long panegyrics upon the purity, antiquity, and
nobility of the Berkeley blood ? AVhy torment us with a
book vilely written ? . . . We take the goods the donkey
provides us. ... As for the book, it is trash. Grantley
Berkeley has no knowledge, literary or antiquarian. . . .
This work puts an end to his puppy appearance any longer
in literature." The tirade wound up with a suggestion
that Lord Euston, to whose wife the novel was dedicated,
should borrow a horsewhip, which he was assured he might
use with perfect impunity..
On a sultry afternoon a day or two after the magazine
was published, two of the Berkeleys, Grantley and his
brother Craven, both tall, powerful men, entered Eraser's
shop in Regent-street when the publisher was quite alone^

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 125
his assistants being then away at dinner. Grantley
Berkeley, introducing himself, demanded the name of the
writer of the abusive article, and the publisher, according
to his own account, reasonably enough requested time to
consider before giving a reply. But no time was allowed him,
for he was instantly knocked down and struck some score
of times over the face and hands with a heavy riding-
whip. Being a little man, and no match for his powerful
antagonist, he shouted out for help, and his cries brought
the passers-by to the shop-door, but Craven Berkeley,
posted there on guard, prevented anyone from entering.
Grantley Berkeley mentions in his memoirs that before
he went to Eraser's shop he sent the " shrewd" hall-porter
at Crockford's there on a fictitious errand to discover if
Fraser was present — and possibly also to find out if the
coast was entirely clear. He says he thought the publisher
looked a conceited swell, and as he positively declined to
give up the name asked for, he at once knocked him down
with his fist — Grantley prided himself on having learnt
boxing from Jackson, Byron's tutor in the pugilistic art —
and then seized him by the collar and hurled him into the
middle of the shop, where he " gave him a severe flogging,
which was concluded in the gutter of the street," up
which, he says, his victim fled calling loudly for help.
Dr. Maginn, who had written the article, put him
self in communication wdth Grantley Berkeley, and a
duel was fought in a field off the Harrow-road, when, it
was said, Maginn's third bullet grazed his adversary's coat
collar, and Berkeley's bullet struck the ground close to
Maginn's foot. Grantley Berkeley not only gave a
different version of the affair, but even pretended that
Maginn came to the ground padded, and urged on by
Fraser to kill his man, under the threat of being arrested
for debt should he fail in doing so.
The matter, however, did not end here. Maginn

126 GLANCES BACK
entered upon a justification of himself in " Fraser,"
whereupon another of the brothers Berkeley assailed him
in choice Billingsgate, styling him " a blackguardly
hireling of the most profligate part of the press, a
stipendiary assassin of character, and a mean and malig
nant liar." Maginn, ignoring the offensive personalties
which he had himself indulged in, rejoined that "it
would be indeed strange if vague and commonplace abuse
constituted a claim to the privilege of a gentleman ; that
he had no notion of fighting a second time in one
quarrel, and that he would not recognise the principle of
being bound to offer a succession of hostile meetings to all
the members of the Berkeley family."
Fraser brought an action for assault, laying his
damages at £6000, but a tuft-hunting British jury only
awarded him £100, the estimated amount of his
doctor's bill. He obtained leave for a new trial, but in
the meantime proceedings had been commenced against
the magazine for libel, which led to a compromise. By
the terms of this the new trial was to be abandoned and
the libel suit settled for 40s. damages, without costs.
Grantley Berkeley declared that before his duel with
Maginn, Miss Landon (L.E.L.) had appealed to him for
protection against the doctor's persistent persecution,
asserting that, although a married man, he had made
much too ardent love to her, and not meeting with the
encouragement he expected, had then endeavoured to
extort money from her. It is quite certain that she spoke
of Grantley Berkeley as the " Bayard of the age " —
although this possibly might have referred to his efforts to
secure the admission of ladies to hear the parliamentary
debates — and that after the Fraser-Maginn atiair she wrote
to him in the most friendly fashion.
I am ignorant of what L.E.L.'s pretensions to beauty
may have been in the days when she captivated the too

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 127
amorous Maginn after the susceptible Jerdan had been
enamoured of her ; but when I saw her on one occasion no
very long time afterwards, prior to her ill-fated marriage,
she was certainly most unattractive, and I failed to
recognize any resemblance to the flattering portrait that
formed the frontispiece to one of her books. The recol
lection I have preserved is of a pale-faced, plain-looking
little woman, with lustreless eyes, and somewhat dowdily
dressed, whom no amount of enthusiasm could have
idealized into a sentimental poetess.
Debt and drink brought Maginn down very low at last,
though it may be doubted whether he ever descended, as
Grantley Berkeley asserts, to appealing to his old enemy to
let bygones be bygones, and proffering a favourable review
of the next Berkeley novel in return for a few pounds.
Alaric Watts thus pictured the erratic Irishman —
" Although he writes the ' LL.D.'
After his name, he '11 never be
A whit the graver than he is —
Less fond of drunken develries,
Less ready for a vulgar hoax.
Addicted less to pot-house joke.=.
Give him a glass or two of whiskey.
And in a trice he grows so frisky.
So full of frolic, fun, and satire.
So ready dirt around to scatter.
And so impartial in his blows.
They fall alike on friends and foes ;
Nay, rather than his humour baulk.
His mother's son he 'd tomahawk ! "
Maginn, as we all know, enjoyed the friendship of
Lockhart, and also of Thackeray, in whose Captain
Shandon his portrait is to be recognised. Thackeray is
said, on no very reliable authority, however, to have lent
(which is equivalent to having given) Maginn £500 when
he was a prisoner for debt in the Fleet. There used to be

128 GLANCES BACK
a good many romantic stories current as to the way in
which Thackeray got rid of the modest fortune he had
inherited. Some accounts asserted that he had been
swindled out of it while studying as an artist at
Rome ; others maintained that he had lost it at the
Frascati gaming - tables in Paris ; while others again
credited him with disbursing it with a too generous hand
among his brethren of the pen and pencil. It is scarcely
likely that Maginn participated in it, as Macready, when
recording in his diary that he had met Thackeray in 1836,
mentions as a matter of common rumour that he had then
^' lost all his fortune," whereas Thackeray's acquaintance
with Maginn could only have commenced the year before,-
when he first began writing for " Eraser's Magazine."
Thackeray was reticent himself on the subject of his lost
patrimony, whenever any faint allusion happened to be
made to it in his presence ; but froni certain passages in
" Lovel the Widower " it would seem that a portion of
his property at any rate was swallowed up in the literary
ventures in which he is known to have engaged.^
" An old coUege acquaintance," he says, " whom I was idiot enough
to imagine a respectable man, . . and a queer wine merchant and bill
discounter, Sherrick by name, had somehow got possession of that neat
little literary paper, ' The Museum ' [? ' The National Standard ' 2], which
perhaps you remember ; and this eligible literary property my friend
Honeyman, with his wheedling tongue, induced me to purchase. ... I
gave myself airs as editor of that confounded ' Museum,' and proposed
to educate the public taste, to diffuse morality and sound literature
throughout the nation, and to pocket a liberal salary in return for my
services. I daresay I printed my own sonnets, my own tragedy, my own
verses. ... I daresay I wrote satirical articles, in which I piqued myself
on the fineness of my wit, and criticisms got up for the nonce out of
encyclopedias and biographical dictionaries."
1 A recent correspondent of " The World," who appears to be well informed on the
subject, asserts that Thackeray's fortune was lost by his step-father, Major Carmichael
Smyth, who invested both his own and Thackeray's money in an Indian bant, which
afterwards failed. According to this correspondent the story of the Bundlecundbankip
-" The Newcomes" is really a chapter in Thackeray's own family history.
2 See post, p. 211.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 129
The snow that is falling while I am now writing, and
the dreary white waste on which one's eye rests every
where around, reminds me of the great snowstorm during
the winter of this year (1836). On Christmas day tardy
visitors on their way to pleasant parties turned back,
dinnerless, rather than face the heavy snowfall and the
howling tempest further. The mail guards were unani
mous in reporting Christmas night to have been the
severest they had ever experienced. Without a moment's
intermission the snow continued to descend for five days
and nights. The mails which ought to have arrived in
London at six o'clock on the morning of Boxing day, in
most cases stuck fast in the snow. Some few succeeded
in making their way safely to St. Martin's-le-Grand, but
the earliest did not arrive until eight o'clock at night.
The guard of the Holyhead mail rode in an exhausted con
dition on one of his leaders to the general-post-ofiice, and
reported that the Manchester, Holyhead, and Chester
mails were all embedded in snowdrifts at Hockley-hill,
near Dunstable.
The snowfall extended over every part of the kingdom.
At Lewes it drifted in an avalanche, and buried seven cot
tages and their inmates. In some of the worst places the
drifts were as much as fifty feet deep, and several coach
men averred that the banks of snow, through which armies
of labourers had to cut a way for their vehicles, towered
high above their heads as they sat on the box. The guard
of the mail which left Exeter on the evening of the 26th
stated that before the vehicle reached London, on the night
of the 29th, it was buried five times in different drifts, and
had to be dug out on each occasion. The town of St.
Albans was crowded with mail and other coaches, which
could pass neither up nor down the road ; and on the
morning of the 27th, as the snow kept falUng heavier than
ever, fourteen of these vehicles had to be abandoned, after
VOIL. L I

130 GLANCES BACK
the bags had been removed and the horses extricated,
until the storm abated.
On the previous evening the driver of the Dover mail
started defiantly from Gracechurch-street at the usual
time, with the guard for his solitary companion. Before
many hours had elapsed the two oflicials returned, report
ing that with infinite difiiculty they had got to the top of
Shooter's-hill, beyond which point they had found the road
absolutely impassable. Between Canterbury and Dover the
letters were conveyed on sledges drawn by three or four
horses, tandem fashion, and such few passengers as these
could accommodate had to pay two pounds per head.
Indeed the interruption of postal communication was so
complete that for a time coasting vessels were employed to.
convey letters between one part of the coast and another.
The following summer I saw the unfortunate land
scape painter Cocking ascend from Vauxhall Gardens in a
parachute of his own invention, suspended from Green's
balloon ; and in the hope of disposing of it to the " Weekly
Chronicle" newspaper, I made a sketch of the amateur
aeronaut in his parachute car. Next day, after the fatal ter
mination of his unscientific experiment, I had the bad taste,
I am sorry to say, to sketch the poor man's lifeless body, then
being made a sixpenny show of, at the Tiger's Head at Lee.
The over-confident aeronaut, after some experiments with
a toy parachute in his back-garden, jumped to the con
clusion that he had made a discovery in aerostatics. He^
thereupon had a parachute constructed after his own design,
not unlike an open monster umbrella, turned upside down,
and although he was upwards of sixty years of age,
ascended with it attached to the car of Green's balloon.
When an altitude of considerably more than a mile was.
reached, Cocking detached the parachute — Green having all
along judiciously declined to take any such responsibility
upon himself — whereupon the tin tubes forming the frame-

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 13!
work of the machine, being unable to resist the pressure
of the atmosphere, collapsed with a sound resembling
thunder, sending, as one of the witnesses at the inquest
said, all the sheep in the neighbouring fields scampering in
terror. Cocking fell with such force to the ground that
his -sternum was fractured, and nearly all his ribs were
broken. Mr. Frederick Marriott of the " Weekly Chronicle "
gladly purchased the Cocking sketches from me. This
recently started newspaper made a feature of publishing
coarsely executed woodcuts of subjects of passing interest,
and had lately leaped into a vulgar notoriety through its
portraits of Greenacre, Sarah Gale, and Hannah Brown,
and its views of the localities where the latter waa
murdered and her dismembered remains were found.
Greenacre, when under remand, was actually allowed to
write to the "Weekly Chronicle" to correct certain state
ments that had gone forth unfavourable to himself,
giving as his reason for selecting that paper that it was
largely read by his acquaintances. Marriott was prompt
to profit by such a dubious testimonial, and the next
number of the " Weekly Chronicle " came out with a
facsimile of Greenacre's letter.
The money I obtained from the Cocking sketches was
the first I had ever earned, and with it and some accumu
lated savings I joined a couple of young friends in a
pedestrian excursion through the Isle of Wight and the
New Forest. There was no railway either to Portsmouth
or Southampton at that time, and as the mail coach fares
were far beyond our means, we set forth with our knap
sacks on our backs and traveUed outside a night luggage
van which took a few passengers to Portsmouth. The Isle
of Wight, although a favourite place of resort, was not
already overrun by the ubiquitous holiday tripper. San
down, at the time I am speaking of, had not a single house

132 GLANCES BACK
beyond its one hotel and its coastguard station. There
was, I remember, a grand and solitary look in the sweep
of its spacious bay, then unhemmed in with bricks and
mortar as it is now. At Shanklin there were a few fisher
men's huts and only two or three lodging-houses, with a
picturesque-looking rustic hotel for the accommodation ' of
tourists. At Ventnor, I remember an hotel and a row of
half-a-dozen cottages, but there was not a house of any
kind where the large town has since sprung up, and there
were none of the countless villas that at present crowd
every coign of vantage in this favourite seaside resort.
Freshwater, too, w^as a comparative solitude. Here,
stretched on the grass in the fierce sunshine, we watched
the summer clouds lazily
" Flit across the downs, and leap
Sheer off the cliff upon the sea.
And sail and sail far out of sight."
The state of our finances compelled us to travel very
economically, so that we had to content ourselves with a
good breakfast and plain bread and cheese for the rest of the
day. I remember how we used to chafe at having to pay
the customary hotel charge of a couple of shillings for the
momentary use in the coffee-room of a pair of wax candles ;
which the waiter always persisted in lighting, so that they
might duly figure in the bill, while he went to inform the
chambermaid that three beds were wanted. From the Isle
of Wight we crossed to Lymington and roamed through the
New Forest, after which my friends returned to London,
while I trudged on to Salisbury to see the cathedral and
Stonehenge. After going over the former, I walked to
Amesbury, where, at the village inn, I was charged the
modest sum of sixpence for my bed. Breakfasting early, I
set off for the druidical circle, and just as I reached Stone
henge was overtaken by a violent storm, which obliged

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 133
me and an old shepherd to seek such shelter as the huge
stones afforded.
Here, while watching anxiously for signs of finer
weather, I listened to my companion's recital of the
monotonous incidents of a life spent amidst these solitary
surroundings. He told me he was born in the poorhouse,
and had had care of sheep on the plain ever since he was
sent out to get his own living, when he was little more
than a child. He had heard speak of London, but did not
know where it was, and of Salisbury, but had never been
there, although it was only six or seven miles away. He
had no idea what year it was, and had long lost count of
his own age. He thought King George was still the
reigning sovereign, but whether he was called George I. or
George IV". he could not say. Some years before he had
been told that Captain Swing went about the country
setting the stackyards on fire to make the farmers give
their men more to eat ; but though they had had several
blazes round about, he had never once known what it was
to have his belly full. Although Old Sarum was in the
immediate neighbourhood, I gathered from the old shep
herd that he had never so much as heard speak of
Reform. After a time he left me to look after his flock, and
I remained patiently waiting for a break in the dark
clouds, but none shewed itself I was, however, glad to
see a gig, which had come from some considerable distance,
drive up with a couple of gentlemen and a goodly laden
hamper, their contribution to an intended picnic at Stone
henge on that day. The weather, however, had evidently
interfered with their friends' turning up, and I was bidden
to the feast, which was not only welcome, but, as the rain
gave over in the nick of time, and my companions were
jolly fellows, proved a very pleasant one.

131 GLANCES BACK

VII.
(1837-38.)
SOME STRUGGLING ARTISTS  DOUGLAS JERROLD — ANNUALS
AND OTHER GIFT-BOOKS — DIAMOND CUT DIAMOND.
Soon after my Isle of Wight excursion I became a pupU of
Orrin Smith, the engraver, who was not only a great en
thusiast in his profession, but had the knack of inspiring
those associated with him with much of his own zeal. It
was at this time that I- got to know Kenny Meadows, who
was a near neighbour of Sniith's, and had for some time
past been drawing a series of characteristic heads for
" Bell's Life in London," wherein he had shewn himself
equally felicitous in depicting graceless blackguards as he
was known to be in drawing graceful cupids and other
subjects which admitted of his giving scope to a somewhat
exuberant fancy.
Another artist I became acquainted with was Edward
Chatfield, who, in his days of innocence, while he was a
pupil of Haydon's with the Landseers and others, had
inconsiderately obliged the unthrifty painter of colossal
canvasses by putting his name to a bill, and been thereby
mulcted of a considerable slice of his modest fortune. Chat
field was looked upon as a promising artist, a rather clever
magazine writer, and a passionate student of Shakspeare.
He had his painting room and lived at Smith's house in
Judd-street, and here he also died, while I was still a pupil,
leaving behind him an unfinished picture, on which he had
put forth his best powers, representing the wives of soldiers

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 135
ordered abroad drawing lots to settle which of them
should enjoy the coveted privilege of embarking with
their husbands.
John Leech, in his young days, also came to live in
Smith's house, and I used to meet both him and Chatfield
daily at the family dinner-table, at which, moreover, Douglas
Jerrold and Laman Blanchard were at this time rather
frequent guests. Deaf old Thomas Landseer, who was a
•draughtsman on wood — chiefiy known for his illustrations
to the " Devil's Walk" — as well as the engraver of many of
his talented younger brother's famous pictures, was another
of the artistic fraternity whom I became acquainted with
at this period Having carefully studied the quadrumana
species in the adjacent Zoological-gardens, Thomas Land
seer fancied it the perfection of humour to depict mankind
as monkeys, as he was constantly doing in some boldly
executed etchings. He was so deaf that every word one
desired to say to him had to be shouted into his ear through
a long tin trumpet, unless his pretty and garrulous wife
chanced to be present to transact his business for him.
This loquacious lady enjoyed the credit of having suggested
to Charles Dickens his immortal Mrs Nickleby.
John Leech's father had made an unfortunate specula
tion. He had started table d'hote dinners — heretofore
unknown in England — at Anderton's hotel. Fleet-street, at
the trifiing charge of eighteenpence per head for four or
five courses, but the public not having responded kindly to
the invitation, the enterprising caterer was driven into the
gazette. His son, after leaving the Charter House, where,
as is well-known, he had been a schoolfellow of Thackeray's,
had gone the regular hospital round in company with
Albert Smith and Percival Leigh, in the rowdy medical
student days when probationary " sawbones " made night
hideous in quiet neighbourhoods with their inebriate shouts
of " lul-ler-li-ety," the cant exclamation of the epoch.

136 GLANCES BACK
Young Leech, however, possibly owing to the state of his
father's affairs, had thrown aside the lancet for the pencil
and taken to caricature, slavishly imitating Seymour in
his early amateurish efforts. Through Orrin Smith's in
fluence he was fortunate enough to get some of his sketches
accepted for " Bell's Life Gallery of Comicalities," the
popularity of which was such that when the engravings
were collected in a sheet some half million copies used to
be sold. Luckily for Leech in the spring of 1838, while Kenny
Meadows was supplying " Bell's Life " with a weekly
head from either " Pickwick " or " Oliver Twist," he made.
a trip to Paris, most likely in company with his friend
Albert Smith, and brought back with him a number of
characteristic sketches of Parisian types, which were so good
as to be at once accepted for publication by the " Bell's-
Life " editor. I engraved several of these " Paris Originals,"
which shewed such a marked improvement on anything
Leech had heretofore produced, that his reputation as a
humorous draughtsman was at once established. Among
them were, of course, the student and the grisette, the caf6
gargon and the dame de comptoir, the exquisite and the
chevalier d'industrie, the soldier and the bonne, and similar
marked Parisian types. Leech was somewhat of an adept
in this line, and it will be remembered that it was with a
group of Leicester-square foreign loafers that he made his
d^but in " Punch " shortly after the publication started.
Leech was a good-looking young fellow, though some
what of the Dundreary type — tall and slim, with glossy
brown hair negligently arranged in the then prevaUing
fashion, and the luxuriant whiskers of half-a-century ago.
He had about him that interesting air of melancholy which
romantic young ladies, still under the influence of " Lara"
and the " Corsair," used to find so captivating. At the
time I knew him, and all through his life I believe, he waa

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 137
of a reserved disposition. Conservative in politics, and
with aristocratic sympathies, he held the early chartists in
abhorrence, but never seemed to care about obtruding his
opinions. Altogether his quiet, well-bred manners were in
striking contrast to the boisterous, bumptious vulgarity of
his intimate friend, Albert Smith. At the Judd-street
dinner-table, whether the conversation was lively and
witty, or grave and disputatious, Leech rarely spoke unless
personally appealed to, and speedily retired into his shell
again. He had a good bass voice, and at convivial even
ing meetings, in the private room of some tavern to which
Orrin Smith had introduced him, he would now and then
allow himself to be coaxed into trolling out in lugubrious
tones, while his eyes roamed searchingly over the ceiling,
Barry Cornwall's " King Death is a rare old fellow ! "
Later in life Leech became exceedingly nervous, and
had a morbid aversion to barrel organs, railway whistles,
and church bells. He used to say he dreaded that, in
a moment of desperation, he might be tempted to take
the life of some itinerant organ-grinder, and he professed
to wonder whether, considering the provocation, any
British jury would really find him guilty of murder. It is
a well-known story that while he was living at Phillimore-
gardens, Kensington, and complaining a good deal of
these annoyances, a friend invited him to seek a fort
night's quiet in the country. Leech, charmed at the
thought, readily accepted the invitation ; but the harsh
grating of the garden roller, as it was being trundled
in the early morning over his friend's gravelled walks
immediately beneath the artist's bedroom window, com
bined with the matutinal chirping of a band of feathered
choristers, at once drove the visitor, whose overstrung
nerves made his life miserable, back again to town,
spite of all the discordant sounds that so harassed him
there.

138 GLANCES BACK
There were very few illustrated publications five and
fifty years ago, and struggling artists of a facetious fancy,
but sublimely indifferent to accuracy of drawing, strove
their hardest to secure a footing on any paper which
published humorous sketches. I remember being sent
to one of the fraternity for a drawing for the forthcoming
number of "Bell's Life," and knocking and ringing at
the house to no purpose. At last I caught sight of a
female face above the parlour blind, scanning me curi
ously, and a minute or two afterwards the first-floor
window was thrown up, and a voice exclaimed : " You've
eome, I suppose, for the ' BeU's Life ' drawing ; can you
catch '^ " On my replying in the afiirmative, the drawing
on wood was chucked neatly into my hands, and the
window drawn down again. The artist's street door, I
afterwards learnt, was kept scrupulously closed, out of
dread of prowling bailiffs. i
The first time I saw Douglas Jerrold was at Orrin
Smith's, when he was a youngish man of three or four
and thirty. There was a peculiarity about his personal
appearance certain to strike even the most casual observer.
His small, and even then, slightly stooping figure, his
head, with its long, light, falling hair, which, in moments
of great excitement, he tossed about as a lion does its
mane, and his prominent, searching blue eyes, that seemed
to penetrate everywhere, invariably attracted the atten
tion of strangers. He was a great gain to any company,
for he always enlivened the dullest of conversations with
his irrepressible wit. The many good things he said
were evidently unpremeditated. They escaped from his
lips on the spur of the moment, instead of being in
geniously led up to after the usual fashion of professional
wits. Even his puns were singularly felicitous, and far
beyond mere feats of verbal cleverness.
It is a moot point whether Jerrold was really that

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 139
amiable jester which some of his sycophantic friends
pretended him to have been. He certainly said many
cutting things with the full intention that they should
wound, and succeeded completely in his purpose ; al
though, in other instances, his sarcasms were simply due
to a temptation too strong to be resisted. Such was the
reply he made when Heraud asked him if he had seen
his " Descent into Hell " (an epic poem he had lately
written), and Jerrold responded, as any one who saw the
evident opening for a smart rejoinder might have done,
" No, but I should dearly like to." It was at Heraud's
expense, though not to his face, that Jerrold made another
biting jest. Some one having wondered how it was the
careless poet always had such dirty hands, the wit
suggested that it arose from his habit of constantly
putting them up to his face. When Mrs. Jerrold was
no longer young, and Jerrold laughingly told her that
he wished wives were like bank notes, so that one of
forty could be changed into two of twenty ; and, when
in answer to an inquiry as to who it was that was dancing
with his wife (whose dancing days might be considered
to be over), he replied, " some member of the Humane
society," nobody believed for a moment that he intended
anything beyond a jest. As some one discriminatingly
said of him, " when the jest came to the tip of his
tongue it had to explode, though the heavens themselves
should crack."
That Jerrold, on occasions, could " wound with a
touch that's scarcely felt or seen," was shewn in his
reply to the incipient young poet, one of whose most
ambitious efforts he had charitably promised to read in
manuscript. Shortly afterwards, on the bard mildly in
quiring of his critic if he thought the poem good, Jerrold
neatly replied, " Good ! my dear boy, is not the word."
Jerrold, before his election to the Reform Club, had a

140 GLANCES BACK
positive mania for establishing tavern clubs, mostly with
epigrammatic titles, at which an inordinate consumption ;of
strong drinks was the rule. He started the Mulberries —
so named after Shakspeare's mulberry tree — ^which used to
meet at the Wrekin in Vinegar-yard, Catherine-street, and
eventually developed into the more punctilious Shakspeare
Club, of which Dickens, Macready, Talfourd,"Maclise, and
others were members. The Museum Club, too, and Hooks
and Eyes, and Our Club were among Jerrold's failures or
successes ; besides which the much-chaffed Whittington
Club for clerks and shopmen was brought into being,
mainly through his co-operation.
When I first knew Douglas Jerrold, he was at the height
of his dramatic reputation. " Punch " had not yet been
started, and Jerrold was known to the public simply as the
author of many plays and certain sketches, called " Men of
Character," which had recently appeared in " Blackwood,"
and been issued in a collected form with some execrable
illustrations by Thackeray. With Jerrold's friends it was an
open secret that he was also the contributor of some biting
comments on the justice's justice of the day, and kindred
topics, to the columns of the grandmotherly "Morning
Herald." As everyone knows, Jerrold had been a midship
man on board the Namur guardship when Clarkson Stan
field was a common seaman on the same vessel. After
serving his majesty for a year or two, he abandoned the
profession of the sea, and took to setting up type, with
Laman Blanchard for fellow-apprentice. Eventually he
secured employment as a compositor in the office of the
" Monitor," a London weekly newspaper, and while so en
gaged was delighted at having a theatrical criticism,
which he had himself written, and secretly dropped into
the editor's box, handed to him to put up in type.
Thus encouraged, Jerrold abandoned the composing
stick as readily as he had doffed his middy's uniform, and

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 141
eventually blossomed into a dramatic author, on hire at
a few pounds per week at the Coburg theatre, then under
Davidge's management. After he had spent a year or two
in penning pieces to order, and licking the crude attempts
of amateur playwrights into shape, Davidge, in an evil
moment for himself, thought proper to quarrel with his
well-worked dramatic hack. The latter thereupon betook
himself to the opposition shop —
" 'Twas called the Circus once, but now the Surrey '' —
of which the sanguine, gay, and unscrupulous EUiston,
after being turned out of Drury-lane, had become lessee.
A bargain was soon struck. Jerrold was to receive five
pounds per week, and the famous nautical drama, " Black-
eyed Susan " was the first fruits of his new engagement.
Everyone knows that the play succeeded as no play
had ever succeeded before, that it set the lucky manager
on his financial legs again, netting him many thousand
pounds. As commonly happens under similar circum
stances, the author got nothing beyond his stipulated
salary, excepting some gratuitous advice. After the play
had run three hundred nights, EUiston had the coolness
to say to him : " Jerrold, I have a capital idea for you.
Prompt some one to suggest to your friends to get up a
testimonial to you. You can put my name down as
treasurer, and the thing will be safe to go."
In these days EUiston was invariably fresh drunk every
night, and stale drunk every morning. A caller having
complained to Jerrold of never being able to get an inter
view with the bibulous manager, whatever hour he came,
morning or afternoon, Jerrold slyly suggested, " Call in the
evening, and then he '11 see you twice, for after six he
always sees double." When " Black-eyed Susan " was
making Elliston's fortune at the Surrey, the lessee of
Covent-garden bargained with the lucky manager for the

142 GLANCES BACK
play, and night after night a cab carried T. P. Cooke iu his
blue jacket and loose white ducks from the Blackfriars-
road to Bow-street, where sentimental west-end damsels
gave him the tribute of their tears.
Many years after his " Black-eyed Susan " success,
Jerrold himself courted public approval as an actor in
company with the rest of Dickens's amateur troupe,
comprising chiefiy literary men and artists. Jerrold's
personal appearance was so peculiar that it seemed
scarcely possible he could make up well for the stage
and thoroughly lose his own identity, yet he did so most
effectively in the part he undertook in " Every man in his
humour." With the exception of the acting of Dickens,
whom everyone found admirable as Captain Bobadil, and
Mark Lemon's clever presentation of Brainworm, I thought
Jerrold's studied rendering of Master Stephen alone dis
played real histrionic power. Forster, of course, was just
as stilted on the stage as Kitely, as he commonly was in
ordinary society, and most of the other performers were
decidedly amateurish. Of course friendly newspaper critics
extolled the performance generally, and the audience, who
cared even less for Ben Jonson than an audience of the
present day might possibly do, pretended to be pleased
with it. Still, the majority were really of old Lord
Melbourne's opinion, although they were not equally
candid in expressing it. Melbourne, it will be remem
bered, was overheard talking to himself between the acts.
" I knew well enough the play would be dull," said he,
in a self-satisfied fashion, " but never thought it would
be so damnably dull as this."
Another rather frequent visitor at Orrin Smith's was
Laman Blanchard — not Blanchard the pantomime writer,
who only assumed the prefix several years after the death
of the real Simon Pure — but the editor of "the Courier"
newspaper, a clever political writer who served the whigs

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 143.
well during a rather critical period, and reaped the usual
reward — contemptuous neglect. Laman Blanchard was a
general favourite in all circles. He was genial in disposi
tion, amiable in manner, and lively in conversation, with a
perpetual smile playing over his dark, handsome, Jewish
features. He was both a witty and graceful writer, and in
addition to his daily routine newspaper work, contributed
regularly to the magazines and annuals of the time.
On one occasion he called at Orrin Smith's, accompanied,.
I remember, by Harrison Ainsworth, whose " Jack Shep
pard" was then running through "Bentley's Miscellany."
Its young and good-looking author, who had made his first
mark in fiction with his spirited Turpin's ride in " Rook-
wood," was at this moment the literary lion of the day.
He was somewhat of a fop in his dress, but that was the
way with good-looking men in those days, and made an
.unnecessary display of the many rings he wore, but his
manners were singularly pleasant, and there was not a
particle of conceit at the astounding success his Newgate
novel had met with. A few grave censors shook their
heads and lamented the demoralising infiuence of this
exalting of vulgar scoundrels into sentimental heroes, but-
most people went with the tide, and read each new instal
ment of the novel with avidity. For a time Dickens's
star paled, and when "Jack Sheppard" was dramatized,
and Mrs. Keeley fascinated the town in the title r61e, and
burly Paul Bedford nightly brought down the gallery with
" Nix my dolly, pals fake away ! " Ainsworth's popularity
took a wider range, and the "stone jug" lyric was
chanted by street boys from morning till night.
The rapid development of the class of gift-books known
as "Annuals," of which I have just spoken, with their
highly finished steel engravings, had been something
phenomenal. Ackermann, who kept a shop at the corner
of Beaufort-buildings, in the Strand, taking the idea from

144 GLANCES BACK
Germany, started the first annual, called the " Forget me
not." Its success produced crowds of imitators, many of
which speedUy outstripped the original in the quality of
their literary and more especially their pictorial contents.
In their palmy days the " Keepsakes," " Books of Beauty,"
and the like sold in their tens of thousands at high prices,
and yielded royal revenues. Portraits of society beauties
were as much sought after when they were only to
be obtained in guinea volumes as they are now, when
.scattered broadcast by sixpenny and penny journals.
For these annuals the services of the ablest artists and
engravers were eagerly sought, and a hundred pounds or
more were paid for a steel engraving merely a few inches
in size. Although "Annual" editors relied mainly on
writers with titled names, great efforts were occasionally
made to secure contributions from authors of the highest
.standing. Moore used to boast of having rejected an offer,
from Charles Heath, the engraver, of six hundred guineas
for a short poem for "the Keepsake" ; whereat Lockhart
contemptuously remarked that it was doubtful which was
the greater fool of the two. Heath who made the offer or
Moore who refused it.
At length the time came when the crowd of annuals,
with their delicately finished steel and copperplate engrav
ings, were superseded by works less fugitive in character,
and illustrated by high-class engravings on wood, the lead in
-publishing which was taken by one or two Paris houses,
and notably that of L^on Curmer. Orrin Smith engraved
many ofthe designs for that publisher's handsome edition
of " Paul and Virginia and the Indian Cottage." Wood-
engraving at that time had not revived in France to the
•extent it had in England under Bewick and his contem
poraries and their successors, and most of the drawings for
the above work were sent over from Paris to be engraved
by the most experienced English wood-engravers. Meis-

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 145
sonier, then a young and unknown artist, made the principal
drawings for the " Indian Cottage," and I remember how
much we were struck by the beauty and extreme minute
ness of his silverpoint pencilling.
The final drawing of Meissonier's that Smith received
was about three and a-half by two and a-half inches in
size, and within this small compass the artist had depicted
some dozen or more full length figures seated at a table,
every one of them a perfect study both as regards attitude
and expression. The drawing was passed round and care
fully examined by the aid of a powerful magnifying glass,
and we all agreed that it was impossible for any engraver
to do justice to its matchless excellence and delicacy. The
publisher had written that owing to the book being on the
eve of completion only ten days could be allowed for the
engraving of this subject, and that if these were insuffi
cient he would abandon it. The time being altogether
inadequate, the drawing was laid aside, and Orrin Smith
decided to reduce the thickness of the boxwood and to
frame the design as a curiosity. If it is still in existence,
and the whitened surface of the block has not become
chemically discoloured, this piece of boxwood w^ould now
be worth twenty times its weight in gold.
Thirty or forty years later I remember Bingham —
well known for his photographic reproductions of Meis
sonier's pictures^showing me in Paris the figure of a
halberdier, which during certain waiting moments the
great painter had, almost unconsciously as it were,
sketched on one of the panels of the partition that shut
off the photographer's operating-room from his outer
office. The figure, which was nearly two feet high, had
been touched in with black and red chalk, as one or
the other chanced to be within the artist's reach.
Bingham told me that whenever Meissonier called he
invariably worked for a few minutes on the sketch, yet
VOL. I. K

146 GLANCES BACK
neither one nor the other had ever made the slightest^
remark in reference to it ; and that when Meissonier
had given over touching upon the subject, it was his
intention to have the panel removed and framed. I'
suggested that he should leave some oil-colours and
brushes lying about near the sketch, on the chance that
Meissonier might make use of them, and so produce a
far more valuable work. Bingham, I heard, adopted
my suggestion, but with what result I never learned.
While I was pecking away at boxwood blocks for
Lane's "Arabian Nights," and Dr. Wordsworth's "Greece,"
the members of my father's firm got to loggerheads, the
working partners holding one view as to the conduct of
the business, and the sleeping partner another. The
result was a recourse to the law, when Lewis & Lewis
acted as my father's solicitors. During the progress of
the case, Mr. George Lewis, uncle of the George Lewis
of to-day, used frequently to come to our house and
consult with my father, whose ill-health confined him
within doors. I remember on one of these occasions hear
ing Lewis tell a professional story of some wholesale
perjury, unhesitatingly resorted to, to defeat an unjust
claim, which almost made one's hair stand on end.
It seems that one day a London tradesman, to his
great astonishment, was served with a writ for a con
siderable sum of money, pretended to have been lent
to him by the plaintiff, whom he had never before heard
of, and, so far as he knew, had never seen. He hurried
off to his lawyer, and explained to him his ignorance of
the whole affair, which the lawyer readily believed, as
soon as he had glanced at the attorneys' names endorsed
on the writ. " It 's no use, however,'" said he, " denying
the claim; Quirk, Gammon & Snap will prove beyond
a doubt that you have had the money, and you will
lose the case, unless we, too, can prove beyond a doubt
that you have paid the money back again."

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 147
The client hereupon began to protest, but the lawyer
interposed, " Now, don't be impatient, but hear me out.
Our only plan is to meet roguery by roguery, and we
must be prepared with half-a-dozen good men and true,
who will swear that they saw you repay the amount.
To account for so many people being present on the
occasion, we had better arrange for the repayment fo
have been made after a dinner you had been giving at
your own house to celebrate your birthday, or any other
event that can be made to fit in with the particular date.
Of course none of our witnesses will know the plaintiff",
but as he is a notorious sharper who attends all the
races and prize fights, and is to be met with of an
evening at the sporting public-houses, there will be no
difficulty in pointing him out to such witnesses as we
arrange to call ; so that, if required, they may be able
to describe him, and, if need be, swear to his identity.
" Now you go and talk the matter over with any
intimate friends whom you can implicitly trust ; candidly
tell them everything, and appeal to them to help us
to play this game of diamond cut diamond that has
been forced upon us, and what is more, to win it. If
you cannot persuade them, bribe them to come up and
.swear they saw you repay the money with their own
eyes. When everything is settled, give them a dinner
-on an early day, getting some one to act the part of
the plaintiff for this occasion only, and then and there
repay him the amount said to have been borrowed,
in bank notes and gold, in presence of the rest. They
wiU then aU be able to tell one story, not merely about
the retum of the money, but anything else, trivial or
otherwise, that may occur during the dinner, for they wdll
certainly be severely cross-questioned on the subject.
" Of course it will be necessary to put back the date
of the dirmer to within a month or so of the time when

148 GLANCES BACK
the plaintiff says the money was lent, which we shall
get from his declaration. By the way, while I think
of it, it will be as well for one or two of the witnesses —
not more mind — to make an entry in their pocket-books,
such as " Dined at Mr. Johnson's, Brown, Jones, and
Robinson there " — on the date remember when the dinner
is supposed to have come off. Be particular about this.
It will account for their being able to fix the precise
day on which the spread took place."
The dinner was given as planned ; on the cloth being
removed, and the guests lighting their cigars, the sham
jilaintiff" had his notes and gold temporarily handed to him,'
and chaffingly pretended to minutely examine the former, to
satisfy himself that none of them were forged ; one or twO'
gentlemen then favoured the company with a song, and as
several of the guests had business to attend to, the party
broke up early. The trial, too, came off in its turn.
Witnesses were duly called, who swore to the sum claimed
having been lent in their presence, and to the defendant
having promised to return it in a few weeks' time. They
admitted neither I.O.U. nor other document passed, but
did not think this strange, as they knew the plaintiff and
defendant were frequently in the habit of obliging each
other with temporary loans, without taking written acknow
ledgments of them. Everything seemed plain as the day,
and the jury thought there was an end of the case.
When the counsel for the defendant blandly admitted
that he had not the smallest intention of disputing that
his client had had the money, and proceeded to unfold the
nature of his defence, the countenance of Mr. Snap, the
plaintiffs attorney, fell. He discerned at once that they
were nonplussed, and nervously awaited the catastrophe.
None of the defendant's witnesses broke down in their
severe cross-examination. They all agreed as to the chaff
about the genuineness of the bank notes, the subjects

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 149
talked about during dinner, and the songs sung afterwards.
Some slight discrepancy in their evidence on trivial points
was thought by the judge to tell rather in their favour,
and without throwing the smallest doubt on the truthful
ness of the evidence adduced in support of the plaintiff''s
claim, he summed up dead against the latter. Thereupon
the jury gave a verdict for the defendant without leaving
the box, and the victory was celebrated by another dinner,
at which the guests complimented each other on the able
way in which they had withstood the searching cross-
examination of the plaintiff's counsel.
Edward Draper, the doyen of the Savage Club, which
he has known through the varied phases of its seedy
Bohemian days to the grand white-bosomed display of a
few years ago, when the heir to the throne was entertained
as a member — Edward Draper, who for many years wrote
a clever weekly rt^sumt^ of " Law and Crime " in a popular
newspaper I edited, used to tell of a similar action brought
in support of a fictitious claim, not a whit less impudent
than that which formed the subject of Lewis's story.
It seemed that a well-to-do old gentleman, named
BoUow, indulged in the harmless weakness of a large and
very bright brass-plate on the gate of his suburban villa.
One day when this plate had been polished more brightly
than ever, its splendour unfortunately attracted the atten
tion of a party of legal scamps on their return from Hamp
ton races ; and fancying there might be money in it, a few
days afterwards one of the gang, in a semi-intoxicated
state, rang a smart peal on the bell of the Wandsworth
vUla, and wanted to see Mr. BoUow. The latter, who at
the time chanced to be peeping over the parlour blind,
politely declined the interview, whereupon the disap
pointed caller shouted to thp servant that Mr. . B. was
keeping out of the way to avoid process. This promptly
brought that gentleman on the scene, when the copy of

150 GLANCES BACK
a writ was thrust into his hands, and the legal party
quietly staggered off.
All that Mr. BoUow could make out from the docu
ment he had been favoured with was that a writ had been
issued at the suit of Jonathan Grim by a solicitor named
Meggs. Never having so much as heard the name of
Grim before, Mr. BoUow proceeded to Meggs's office to
explain that a mistake had certainly been made, but, as
usually happens under similar conditions, the clerk who
attended to that particular matter was never within. This
being the case on two or three occasions, Mr. BoUow
thought it prudent to consult his own solicitors, to whom
he explained the particuUrs of the affair, and asked them
whether, under such circumstances, an action could be
maintained. They oracularly answered that one could
certainly be brought, and on seeing Meggs's name upon
the writ, warned their astonished client that he would
most likely have plenty of hard swearing to contend
against : at present all thfey could do was to enter an
appearance, and see what Meggs's declaration disclosed.
This set forth that BoUow owned a gig, and on a
particular day at a certain spot wantonly and u,nskilfully
drove the said vehicle, wdiereby he knocked down and
maimed the plaintiff, who, after languishing for six weeks,
was crippled for life, and claimed £10,000 damages.
As Mr. BoUow happened to be at Boulogne with his
family on the day Grim was said to have been knocked
down and maimed, and as, moreover, he had never driven
a gig or had a driving whip in his hands in his life, he
felt a trifle cocksure about the case, and thought if his
solicitors only saw the plaintiff they could set the matter
right in a few minutes. But they explained to him that
professional etiquette debarred them from taking this step,
though he might call on the plaintiff himself if he felt
inclined. The address being obtained, he paid a visit to

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 151
Mr. Grim, whom he found helplessly intoxicated, and only
able to hiccup out that he referred him to his " sliss'er."
Notice of trial at the ensuing Guildford assizes was
given, and counsel for the defence were duly briefed.
There the defendant and his witnesses danced attendance
for several days, but when the cause was at last reached,
Mr. BoUow learnt to his great astonishment that plaintiff's
attorney had withdrawn the record, so that there was no
trial after all. This scandalous attempt at extortion had
cost the plaintiff merely a trifle over half-a-sovereign,
namely, 5s. for the writ, 5s. for the return fare to Guild
ford, and a few pence for paper, parchment, and postage ;
but, on the other hand, the taxed costs of the defendant
totalled up to about eighty pounds. Mr. Grim, of course,
wiped off this debt in the Insolvent Court, swearing at his
examination that he had brought the action on the advice
of his solicitor, and forthwith obtained his discharge. Mr.
BoUow was naturally far from pleased ; still he con
gratulated himself that he was safe against future im
position, in which, however, he w^as greatly mistaken. A
well-known precedent had established the fact that Grim's
imprisonment and discharge under the Insolvent debtors'
act was a satisfaction of Bollow's claim, while from his
action against BoUow being personal, his right of main
taining it had not passed to the official assignee ; conse
quently Grim gave new notice of trial at Kingston assizes.
Poor BoUow was in despair, and to escape a repetition
of what had gone before gladly agreed to pay Grim fifty
pounds in full settlement of his claim. To this amount
had to be added something for Meggs, and his own
solicitors' charges ; so that the luxury of a large, bright,
brass plate on the gate of his suburban villa cost him on
the whole about £150. This was due to the admirable
state of the law only. some five and thirty years ago.

152 GLANCES BACK

VIIL
(1838-40.)
" HEADS OF THE PEOPLE" AND "ILLUSTRATED SHAKSPERE" —
THE queen's CORONATION — " ORION " HORNE — SOME
PRIVATE THEATRICALS  CLARKSON STANFIELD
AND CAPTAIN MARRYAT.
Before the law^suit between the partners in my father's
firm was decided, my father, who had suffered from ill-
health for years, died, and my eldest brother, although not
yet of age, established himself with the assistance of some
of our friends as a printer at Peterborough-court, Fleet-
street, where the " Daily Telegraph " offices now are, while
I still remained with Orrin Smith. Kenny Meadows was
at this time in great straits, with nothing to depend upon
beyond the few drawings he made on wood and some occa
sional water colours for steel engravers of " Byron Beauties "
and " Shakspeare Heroines," and pot boilers — verging at
times on the naughty — disposed of to dealers. His typical
heads in " BeU's Life " had considerable point and
character, and he lamented the want of opportunity to
carry out the idea on a more extensive scale. The diffi
culty was to find the speculative publisher willing to take
up the scheme.
Eventually Kenny Meadows's " Heads of the People,"
a work of some little note in its day, which numbered
Jerrold, Thackeray, Captain Marryat, Nimrod, and many
others among its contributors, was produced at the joint
risk of Orrin Smith, my brother, and Tyas, the publisher.
The success it met with led to the production of a far more
important work, depending exclusively on Kenny Meadows's

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 153
designs. This was the " Illustrated Shakspere," and as
Meadows was a slow and not very regular worker, he
found it necessary to obtain outside assistance, and more
particularly on the landscape and architectural portions of
the illustrations. Charles Jacque, the French artist, since
celebrated for his masterly etchings of landscape and cattle
subjects, who had come to England in search of employ
ment, was first selected, and made one or two drawings
for the early plays, which Meadows promptly rejected.
Mr. W. B. Scott, then a young man of five or six and
twenty, with a strong northern accent, who had come up
to London from Edinburgh a few years before, was next
tried, and proved more successful, Meadows finding him
very useful in putting portions of his designs upon the
wood and working up his feeble attempts at landscape
composition. This was long before Scott essayed and
failed in higher artistic fiights. At the time 1 speak of he
appeared to have a very moderate estimate of his own
abilities, and by no means disdained journeyman's work.
We knew he wrote verse, which he wisely kept to himself,
for when, in after years, he took to publishing it, the public
gave it only a cold reception. Although later in life
Scott attempted various ambitious works of art, and became
master of the Newcastle School of Design, he remained to
the last an indifferent draughtsman.
Kenny Meadows was remarkable for the epigrammatic
character of many of his less pretentious designs. His
drawing was always faulty, but he was gifted with a
graceful and witty fancy. His happy idea of typifying
the blessings of peace by a butterfiy fluttering at the
mouth of a cannon, which was published in "Punch" if T
remember rightly, preceded Sir Edwin Landseer's famous
picture, and was thought by many to have suggested it.
Meadows had a quaint way of viewing most things. I
remember on one occasion encountering him on the stair-

154 GLANCES BACK
case leading to the workroom on the fourth floor of a well-
known engraver, who was a very bad paymaster ; when
he remarked as he rested to take breath, " I never go up
this staircase unless I want money very badly, and then
always wdth the certainty of not getting it."
Meadows had a weak, puny frame, and was constantly
writhing with rheumatism. With all that he was quite as
fond of carousing far into the morning as any of his clever
associates, and yet he managed to outlive them all —
Jerrold, Forster, Macready, Dickens, Lemon, the Mayhews,
and the rest. He illustrated Shakspeare to good purpose,
as it secured him, through the influence of Lord Palmer
ston, who, by the way, cared little about Shakspeare and
even less about art, a government pension ; and many
years ago he retired into the country, and, to the surprise
of every one who knew the kind of life he had formerly
led, lived to a patriarchal old age.
When preparations were on foot for the queen's cor
onation in 1838, I had to make the preliminary sketches
for a series of engravings to be published in "the Ob
server" and " BeU's Life in London " newspapers. "The
Observer " had been in the habit of now and then giving
illustrations of events of primary importance, and was al
together conducted with considerable spirit. When news
papers were interdicted under a penalty of £500 from
publishing reports of unfinished cases in the law courts,
" the Observer," at the trial of Thistlewood and the Cato-
street conspirators boldly set the prohibition at naught
a,nd made a great hit by so doing. As fortune usually
favours the brave, so it did in this particular instance, for
the authorities never enforced the penalty to which the pro
prietor of the offending journal had rendered himself liable.
Mr. Vincent Dowling, the editor of " BeU's Life," gave
me my instructions. He had been initiated into journalism
by his father while the latter was on the staff of " the

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 155
Times ; " and his brother had attained the position of a
colonial judge. I have heard Dowling tell that when he
was a young man he chanced to be in the lobby of the
House of Commons on the memorable evening when
Spencer Percival was shot, and that he assisted in arresting
Bellingham, from whose pockets he took a loaded pistol.
To the editor of " BeU's Life " London was indebted for
the scheme of the new police force, which was formulated
in that paper in the fullest detail a couple of years before
Sir Robert Peel introduced his valuable measure. All this,
however, is forgotten now, and Dowling, who was held in
something like reverence by the pugilistic fraternity of his
day, has only the chance of being remembered as the
author of " Fistiana, the oracle of the Ring."
Gavarni, when over here after the Paris revolution of
1848, was exceedingly anxious to witness a prize fight,
and Dowling consented to take him under his wing to see
the match between George Crockett and Hazeltine on
Woking-common — which Crockett won after seventy-
four rounds lasting a couple of hours had been fought
— for stakes of merely £50 a-side. Real hard hitting
with the naked fists and small stakes were the rule
in those days. Dowling's instructions to Gavarni, and
one or two English friends who accompanied him, were
to leave all watches and jewellery at home, and tie up
any gold they thought it necessary to take with them in
their neckerchiefs. The crowd at the special train, accord
ing to habit, drew back respectfully to make way for the
editor of the great sporting paper, to whose gold repeater
and snuff-box, purse and scarf-pin, the light-fingered
gentry who always mustered in force on these occasions
accorded the customary immunity. Once upon a time
some novice, to whom Dowling's familiar figure was un
known, succeeded in relieving him of his watch, but the
older hands no sooner heard of this piece of sacrUege than

156 GLANCES BACK
they took immediate steps to secure the return of the
massive gold ticker, which was duly delivered next day
vvith many apologies into Dowling's hands.
The necessary authorisation to sketch inside Westmin
ster Abbey and at the royal stables, and elsewhere, having
been obtained for me, Dowling next wrote to the Duke of
Wellington, asking permission for a sketch to be taken
from the roof of Apsley House, of the royal procession
winding its way from Constitution-hill along Piccadilly.
The duke, who was continually being pestered with all
sorts of applications, kept by him a series of lithographic
forms w'hich, with dates filled in, served for replies to the
majority of these correspondents. Dowling's letter, how-.
evever, required a special answer, and one was penned by
the duke in his familiar Roman hand and customary curt
style. It ran as follows : —
" F. M. the Duke of Wellington has received a letter signed Vincent
Dowling. " The Duke has no knowledge of the writer of the letter, neither is
he interested in any way in ' the Observer ' newspaper. Apsley House
is not a public building but the Duke's private residence, and he declines
to allow any stranger to go upon the roof.
" Apsley House,
"June 21, 1838."
Sketches were made of the preparations inside the
abbey and of the western entrance where the queen was
to alight. I also sketched the royal state coach and the
trappings of the eight cream-coloured horses at the stables
of Buckingham Palace, and the uniforms of the royal
watermen, huntsmen, yeomen-prickers and foresters, the
heralds and trumpeters, the beefeaters and the gentlemen-
at-arms, at different official departments, for as no engrav
ings existed from which these could be copied, it was
necessary to go to the fountain-head for one's authorities
in those days. Most of the ambassadors sorely grudged

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 157
the expense the coronation ceremony would put them to,
and were chary of any extra outlay, so that it was only
necessary to sketch a few especially handsome equipages at
their respective stables. The engravings being restricted
to a couple of pages of "the Observer," and nothing
approaching the present rapid mode of reproducing draw
ings being practicable at that time, many sketches had tO'
be thrown aside. These, however, 1 afterwards utilised for
a panoramic drawing in colours, a dozen or more feet in
length, which was published by Tyas, who paid me for it,
1 remember, at the rate of so much per foot !
Provided with a pass from the chief commissioner of
police, authorising me to pass through the lines of police
men occupying all the streets leading to the abbey, and to
move freely in its immediate proximity, I was astir early
on the day of the coronation, before the great crowds of
people commenced streaming towards Westminster. It
was a warm, bright summer morning, although a drizzling
shower or two fell later on. Near the abbey I encountered
many ladies and gentlemen in court and full dress — the ladies
with nodding plumes on their heads and dainty white satin
shoes on their feet, and with their embarrassing long trains-
gathered up in their arms — who, foreseeing a possible diffi
culty of reaching the abbey in their carriages, were calmly
proceeding there pn foot, laughing among themselves at
the curiosity they excited in the crowd.
Being more anxious to catch a glimpse of old Marshal
Soult than to see any other of the notabilities who w^ere to
be present at the ceremony, I posted myself at the entrance,
where I had been told the ambassadors would arrive. Of
all the vehicles in the procession, with the exception of the
queen's ¦ state coach, the marshal's w^as the most richly
decorated. It had been the state carriage of the last Prince
de Conde, whose mistress, suspected of complicity in his
mysterious death, had secured a large slice of his vast

158 GLANCES BACK
fortune by means of a doubtful will. The approach of the
Duke of Wellington's ancient adversary was signalled while
he was yet a long way off by the loud cheers with which he
was greeted. The white-haired veteran was evidently
affected at the cordial reception he met with, and recalled
the circumstance with gratification years afterwards in the
course of a speech which he made in the French Chamber in
favour of the English alliance. Equal honour was shown to
the old soldier inside the abbey, for when, with his breast
covered with military orders, he trudged slowly along,
preceded by heralds and ushers, a murmur of applause
greeted him throughout his passage.
One other ambassador was likewise the observed of all
observers. This was Prince Esterhazy, who, in the striking
.costume of a Hungarian magnate, sparkled with the tradi
tional family diamonds, from the aigrette of his plume down
to the spurs in his boots. The moment when the actual
crowning of the young Victoria took place, was signalled by
loud shouts of " God save the queen ! " reverberating in
side the abbey, and heard distinctly outside the edifice,
where they were taken up enthusiastically by the vast
assembled crowd.
About this time my brother and myself were engaged
in producing a life of Napoleon by R. H. Horne, illustrated
with Raffet and Horace Vernet's designs. Horne, who had
attracted some attention with his " New Spirit of the Age,"
modelled on Hazlitt's well-known work, is now best remem
bered, perhaps, as the author of the epic poem, " Orion,"
the rare first edition of which, printed at our office a few
years afterwards, he ingeniously brought into notoriety by
.announcing it as published at one farthing. This proved a
splendid advertisement, and although the publisher refused
to sell more than a single copy to any one individual, the
edition was speedily exhausted. The work has since been
reprinted several times, and published at a greatly enhanced

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 159
price ; and I notice that at the present moment the last
edition of " Orion " figures in the publishers' catalogue at
seven shillings.
Horne never made the mark in literature which flatter
ing friends prophesied he would. He ascribed this in the
usual way to unfair treatment on the part of prejudiced
critics. I remember that, like scores of other writers, he
had a grievance against Dilke the first, ofthe "Athenseum,"
of whom he used to say that if ever he invited a literary
man to breakfast or dine with him he took especial care
that his next book should be well cut up in " the Athen
seum," so that there might be no kind of suspicion of his
rigid impartiality. The author of "Orion" got through
a large amount of literary work, from tragedies and epics
down to articles in the very lightest of veins for the popu
lar magazines, yet he temporarily abandoned authorship in
his middle age and emigrated to Australia, where for half-
a-dozen years he filled the post of chief of the mounted
police in one of the colonies. This was a strange duty to
be undertaken by an epic poet, and especially one who had
such a mortal dread of wet feet that he always carried
about wdth him a pair of reserve socks, wherewith to replace
his damp ones when the streets happened to be slushy. I
have known him on several occasions make the change
quite unconcernedly in our counting-house while he was
waiting for proofs.
The illustrated life of Napoleon was to have been
followed by a new life of Nelson, with designs by Clarkson
Stanfield, then at the zenith of his fame. I remember
calling upon him on the subject at the same house in
Momington-crescent where George Cruikshank afterwards
resided. David Roberts — just returned from his travels in
the Holy Land, whither he had been on a sketching ex
pedition for the large work subsequently published by
Adlerman Moon — chanced to be with Stanfield at the time.

100 GLANCES BACK
Stanfield w^as a tall and somewhat slim individual, with
none of the hardy sailor look about him suggestive of the
fore-mast-man of " the Namur," while Roberts was rather
short and stout, with a clear rosy complexion, wdiich seemed
to belie his having lately sojourned a considerable time in
the broiling East. Both of them remembered my father
well, and also the circumstance of the Chinese saloon of the
London genuine tea company, and reminded each other of
certain amusing experiences when the feet of both rested
on the lower rungs of the ladder of fame.
Subsequently I saw a good deal of Clarkson Stanfield,
who commenced the designs for the projected work, but,
like many other painters, found the difficulty of drawing on
the boxwood block with the necessary neatness and pre
cision almost insurmountable. Soon afterwards Captain
Marryat claimed from him the fulfilment of a promise made
some time before to execute a series of drawings for a
naval work that had been a long while in contemplation.
This was " Poor Jack," and the Nelson drawings had to be
laid aside in order that the new designs might be pro
ceeded wdth. About half of the latter were subsequently
entrusted to me to engrave.
At the time I was with Orrin Smith he had, I remember,
a couple of stage-struck pupils — one an ambitious writer of
five act tragedies, who, later in life, found broad farce more
in his line ; and the other a self-satisfied imitator of Mac
ready's worst mannerisms. The latter was the son of Wil
liam Carpenter, the radical, who had formerly done battle for
the unstamped press, and paid the penalty of a few months'
imprisonment. He was author of a clever, though some
people called it a scurrilous, "Peerage for the People,"
wherein were shewn how the peers, as a later writer has
pointedly put it, " in the first epoch of their career robbed
the People ; in the second the Church ; in the third the
Crown ; while in the fourth they have always been the

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 161
steady foes of every beneficial reform." Carpenter was,
moreover, the first editor of " the Era " newspaper, when
it started in the beery interest, with capital supplied by
Sir Henry Meux. What is now the office of " the Echo,"
in Catherine-street, Strand, was then a private theatre,
hired by amateur actors ambitious of strutting and fretting
their little hour upon the stage, under the kindly-critical
eyes of admiring friends. Young Carpenter and some
fellow-amateurs had engaged the house for a particular
night, and a party was formed at Orrin Smith's to take
one of the stage boxes for the occasion.
" Othello " was the play that had been selected, and
Carpenter junior was announced to appear for the first time,
in the title r61e. It was decided by his fellow-pupils at
Smith's to accord him an unexampled reception, and for
this purpose a wooden hoop was procured, round which we
bound a choice selection of all the vegetables in season —
small carrots and turnips and heads of broccoli, interspersed
with plenty of green stuff, so as to present a good pictorial
effect. It was winter time, and long bravo-like cloaks
being then the common wear, I succeeded in smuggling
the wreath into the theatre, secreted beneath one of
these capacious garments, without awakehing the slightest
suspicion. Throughout the performance the party in our box kept
up an audible running commentary on Othello's choicest
declamatory passages, varying this with such uproarious
applause as completely drowned the actor's voice. At
first some of the audience mildly protested, then they
grew slightly angry, and at last somewhat threatening.
We rejoined by chaffing them good-humouredly, hoping
thereby to mollify them, but unsuccessfully. Our object
was to get all the fun we could out of the performance,
whUe the rest of the audience were burning with indigna
tion at lago's treachery, and looking forward to lamenting
over Desdemona's unhappy fate.
VOL. I. L

162 GLANCES BACK
The climax was reached when, at the conclusion of the
play, Othello re-appeared on the stage, in response to our
repeated calls, to bow his acknowledgments. At this
moment the huge vegetable wreath, deftly fiung upon the
stage, plumped down at the amateur tragedian's feet. Then
arose a succession of yells, and the more enraged portion of
the audience made for our box. Some attacked it in front,
and were easily disposed of by a few rapid blows struck
clean from the shoulder, for in those days every young
fool about town did not carry a crutch stick. But while
the front attack was being successfully repulsed, the
side door of the box was suddenly burst open, and to
escape the blows directed at us from a score of fists and
half-a-dozen umbrellas, we beat a retreat through the
opposite door .of the box communicating with the stage.
This, however, was only getting out of the frying-pan
into the fire, for here we found a hostile band of actors
and scene-shifters prepared to receive us. It was a case of
sauve qui pent ; so after diving rapidly across the stage,
hitting out right and left as I did so, and turning a corner
or two, I caught sight of a fiight of narrow steps, up which
I scrambled, with a yelling crowd at my heels, one or two
of whom kept peremptorily shouting out, " Come down ! "
Paying no regard to them, I quickened my pace, and soon
found myself in a kind of loft, with a lath and plaster
flooring, which gave way under my feet at every step I
took. My pursuers being close upon me, I struggled hard
to break completely through the lath and plaster, thinking
that I should drop merely a few feet, into perhaps some
dressing-room below, and so effect my escape.
While I was thus struggling to force my body through,
and my legs were dangling in mid-air, I heard loud shouts
and screams beneath me, and suddenly I was seized hold of
by the collar and dragged backwards, and forced to descend
the steps up which I had clambered. I afterwards learnt

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 163
that I had made my way between the outer roof of the
building and the false bell-shaped roof of the theatre itself,
and that if I had succeeded in my attempt to force my body
through the lath and plaster, I should have fallen some
sixty feet or so into the pit beneath. The shouts and
screams I had heard proceeded from that portion of the
audience which had not taken its departure, and had
caught sight of my legs dangling beside the chandelier
overhead. Others of my friends had been captured on the stage,
and it was seriously proposed, either to place us under the
pump or duck us in the capacious cistern belonging to the
establishment. Neither of these suggestions sounded at
all inviting with the thermometer below zero, and eventu
ally we bargained for and purchased our liberty for a fixed
sum — to recoup the proprietor, as he in a business-way
suggested, for the large amount of damage we had done.
Young Carpenter soon afterwards abandoned both
wood-engraving and the stage. " The pride, pomp, and
circumstance of glorious war " seem to have unfolded their
fascinations to him, and he enlisted as a private in the
service of John Company. He had not been in India long
before the astounding news reached home that he was under
sentence of death for firing at his superior officer. A petition
suggesting that he had a touch of insanity about him, and
praying for a commutation of the sentence, was imme
diately promoted in this country, and sent to the proper
authorities, but whether it had the effect of saving the
unhappy youth's life I never heard.
About this time the payment of a liberal sum to Mr.
Orrin Smith obtained my release from the engagement I
was under to him, and I joined my brother in business.
For several years our struggle was a hard one, for we had
a mother to support, and a couple of younger brothers and
a sister to educate and provide for. Among the earliest

164 GLANCES BACK
work that I managed to secure was the engraving of the
Stanfield drawings for " Poor Jack," of which I have
already spoken. While engaged on these I was brought
into frequent intercourse with both author and illustrator,
and dined with them on one occasion at Stanfield's house.
Stanfield was a man of simple, quiet habits, and seemingly
absorbed in his art. With him, however, the leading idea
did not appear to be so much a faithful transcript of nature
as the grouping together of a multiplicity of picturesque
details. The picturesque, at any price, was evidently what
he hungered after.
I saw Stanfield on many occasions in his painting-room,
and had frequent opportunities of observing the nature of
the liberties he took when transferring sketches, which he
had made on the spot, to canvas. Clumps of trees were set
to grow where none had grown before ; flat, uninteresting
masses were broken up with diversified details ; and carefully
studied, picturesque foregrounds teemed with animate or
inanimate objects where in the original sketch all was
barren. He never seemed to aspire to the grand, and
studiously avoided the sombre, striving consistently after
the picturesque regardless of the sacrifice to truth which
this involved. In the colouring, too, of some of his pic
tures, the conventional artifice of the scene painter is not
unfrequently apparent. David Roberts seemed still more
indififerent than even Stanfield in regard to truthful tran
scripts from nature. Clever and characteristic as his Spanish
sketches were the whole of the architecture was so ex
aggerated, while the figures were of singularly diminutive
proportions, that a most misleading idea was given of the
places they were intended to represent.
Stanfield belonged to a sketching club which assembled
weekly to draw and sup at the different members' houses in
turn. The host of the evening used to give out the sub
ject for a design, commonly furnished by a short poetical

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 165
quotation, and at the end of a couple of hours or so the
drawings were collected, compared, and criticized, after
which they remained the host's property. Stanfield gener
ally showed me the sketches which had fallen to his share,
and it was curious to note the varying ways in which the
marine, the landscape, the figure, and the animal painter,
and the imaginative and matter-of-fact artist had treated
the same subject.
Captain Marryat was tall, like Stanfield, but broad
shouldered and thick set. There was nothing of the jovial
"salt" about him; none of that flow of animal spirits
which his writings might have led one to expect, nor aught
that could be termed genial even. On the contrary, his
manners were grave, and he had rather a peremptory way
of speaking, which his friends, though never in his hearing,
for that would have been dangerous, were in the habit of
terming his " quarter-deck style." Marryat's autocratic
proceedings at the time he owned the " Metropolitan
Magazine," led to its former editor, Campbell the poet,
suggesting that he evidently had plenty of the family's old
planter's blood in his veins, and that he would deafly like
to flog his contributors for their shortcomings.
On the occasion of the dinner I have mentioned. Cap
tain Marryat told one or two good West Indian stories,
interspersing them with anecdotes of his naval experience,
and generally had the talk nearly all to himself In
scarcely any of his stories, however, was there more than a
glimpse of that rollicking fun which abounds in his novels,
and all through the evening he preserved a good deal of
the gravity of the traditional judge. Among his stories, I
remember, was a well-known one of the Irish emigrant, who,
on landing in Jamaica, was hailed by some niggers, imitating
the brogue, with "Good luck to yer, Pat, how are yer?"
The new^-comer, taking them for fellow-countrymen, looked
at them with astonishment, and exclaimed, " Be Jases I

166 GLANCES BACK
what, you 've turned black already, have yer ? " Stanfield,
throughout the evening, was content to be almost a silent
listener, according to his wont ; and I only ventured to
interpose an occasional remark when my land-lubberly
intelligence failed to grasp the proper meaning of the cap
tain's occasionally too technical phraseology.
Many suggestions were mooted at Orrin Sniith's in con
versations between him and his friends for starting new
publications which might bring grist to the mills of authors
and artists involuntarily under the necessity of working
half-time. Among other schemes propounded was one of
a satirical journal on the lines of Phillipon's Paris " Chari
vari," excepting that the proposed new venture was to be a
weekly instead of a daily publication. As the philanthropic
capitalist with funds for all manner of journalistic enterprises,
and a sneaking desire to acquire social standing through a
connection with the press, had not yet declared himself, it
was determined to start the " London Charivari " on the
co-operative principle. The prospect was hardly an en
couraging one, for all the satirical papers of the past decade
had died off one after the other. The strongest of them
all, " Figaro in London," had succumbed after half-a-dozen
years of existence, and " the Ass," " the Wasp," " the
Wag," and " the Scorpion," with " Punch in London,"
and "the Penny Trumpet," had sparkled, blazed, and
expired. After considerable negotiation, the following list of pro
prietors of the proposed new satirical journal was decided
upon : Authors — Jerrold, Thackeray, Laman Blanchard,
and Percival Leigh (who had lately come into note through
his Comic Latin and English Grammars) ; Poole, the author
of " Paul Pry" and " Little Pedlington," was to have been
one of the paid contributors : artists — Kenny Meadows,
Leech, and, I think, Alfred CrowquUl: engraver — Orrin
Smith : printers — Jobbins, lithographic ; J. Vizetelly,

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 167
letterpress : publisher — R. Tyas. It was intended that
with each number of the new periodical a separate litho
graphic caricature should be issued, after the plan of the
•" Charivari," and Leech actually made several of these
drawings on the stone. Specimen pages of the text were
also put into type, but the scheme unexpectedly collapsed
through a singular misconception. By some means or
other Thackeray got hold of the idea that each co-partner
in the proposed publication would not only be liable for
its debts, but also for the private debts of his co-partners ;
and as none of the latter possessed sufficient legal know
ledge to point out the fallacy of this assumption, and some
were suspicious of the soundness of the position of one
¦or two of their proposed colleagues, the contemplated
" London Charivari " was forthwith abandoned.
Some years afterwards the idea cropped up again on
the initiative of Henry Mayhew, w^ho at the time it was
first broached was courting Jerrold's daughter, and had
heard from Jerrold all the details of the scheme. The
result was " Punch, or the London Charivari," started on
the same co-operative principle under which the somewhat
more ambitious project was to have been launched. Henry
Mayhew was its first editor, but was soon deposed from his
position, as, although an exceedingly clever man, brimming
•over with ideas, he was never up to time with anything he
undertook ; and Mark Lemon, fresh from serving beer and
brandy and water at his Wych-street "public," was in
stalled editor in Mayhew's place.

168 glances BACK

IX.
(1839-43.)
RIBALD NEWSPAPERS AND THEIR EDITORS  PENNY POSTAGE
 THE EGLINTON TOURNAMENT  A SHERIDAN ROLAND
FOR THE SHUCKBOROUGH OLIVER.
While the scheme of the "London Charivari" was under
consideration, " the Town," a weekly journal as notorious
for its grossness as its vulgarity, and of which burly
Renton Nicholson, a broken-down pawnbroker, was editor
and proprietor, was having a large and increasing sale. It
published on its first page either a sketch of some familiar
London type, or the portrait of a noted west-end demirep
from the pencil of Archibald Henning, son of a well-known
sculptor, and brother-in-law of Kenny Meadows, and sub
sequently Punch's original cartoonist. Henning had pre
cisely the qualification that Nicholson needed, being some
what of a loose fish and a frequenter of sporting " publics"
and other low haunts of that epoch. As for the letterpress-
of " the Town," this dealt with the shadiest subjects, includ
ing some which no publication of to-day would even hint at.
After a time Nicholson got into collision with Barnard
Gregory of " Satirist" notoriety, and the pair fell to abus
ing each other in their respective organs. As Nicholson
managed to fling the most mud, Barnard Gregory, by some
roundabout manoeuvre, set the law in motion against " the
Town," and Nicholson was sent for trial. Thereupon, the
latter, posing before his readers as the champion of moral
purity and the meritorious exposer of the blackmaihng
fraternity to w^hich his opponent notoriously belonged,
appealed for support in aid of his defence. Several hun-

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 169
dred pounds were subscribed, and the case was removed to
the Court of Queen's Bench ; but on its being called on, no
prosecutor appeared in support of it, and Nicholson was
acquitted. It seems that at this time Barnard Gregory
was himself undergoing three months' imprisonment for
libelling and attempting to extort money from a lady.
Shortly after the Barnard Gregory squabble "the
Town " languished, and ere long came to an end, not, how
ever, until it had had its crop of imitators in " Paul Pry,"'
" Peter Spy," and the like — publications which flourished
on anonymous scandal respecting the private lives of people
of the lower middle class. Nicholson now started his
notorious Judge and Jury society, which assembled nightly
at the Garrick's Head in Bow-street, facing Covent-garden
theatre. Passers-by were sought to be attracted to the
nauseous entertainment by a large picture exhibited in the
window, in which the artist, Archibald Henning, had
depicted, as present at one of these gatherings, many of the
celebrities of the day, from the Duke of Wellington and
Count d'Orsay down to Paul Bedford of "jolly nose" re
nown, and Owen Swift, the pugilist, who years before had
killed his man — Brighton Bill — in a fair stand-up fight.
Men about town, city clerks of aU kinds, betting men, and
provincials ambitious of initiation into the shady side of
London life, formed the principal part of Nicholson's
audience. An inebriated young provincial, lost in the
mazes of Covent-garden, once enquired of Douglas Jerrold
the way to the " Judge and Jury." " Keep (m, young man,
in the way you are now going, and you 'U be with them
before long," was the wdtty moralist's reply.
A shilling was charged for admission to the room at the
Garrick's Head, and a glass of grog and a bad cigar were
presented to the visitor by way of a whet in return.
Nicholson, a burly, coarse-looking individual, with a red
face and a leering eye, styled himself " chief -baron," and

170 GLANCES BACK
Lord Abinger submitted to the indignity without protest.
Wearing a judge's wig and robes, the Garrick's Head chief-
baron sat at a raised desk, railed off, together with the
table for the counsel and the jury box, from the part where
the audience grinned and guzzled. Recent divorce cases,
with variations and additions, or mock trials of a similar
nature, liberally interspersed with indelicate innuendoes or
¦double entendres of exceptional grossness formed the stock
proceedings. The sham counsel who figured therein made
themselves up to resemble the more noted advocates of the
day, and gave exaggerated imitations of their peculiarities
of manner and oratorical flights.
Other haunts of men about town at this period were
the Cyder Cellar, the Strand Coal Hole, the Piccadilly
Saloon, Mother H.'s and " the Finish," the latter an all-
night coffee house in James-street, Covent-garden, the resort
of early market people, fast men, pugilists, and the profligate
of both sexes, where, while dancing and sparring went on on
the first fioor, market-gardeners' carters and Irish porters
tippled and wrangled below. "The Finish" used to be
patronized by the impulsive Marquis of Waterford and his
set, prior to their breakfasting (after the fatigues of the
night) with the knockers, bell-handles, and other trophies
of their nocturnal escapade forming the table ornaments.
After the mettlesome marquis's visit to Norway, and the
blow he received from a Norwegian watchman's " morning
star," ^ he sobered down, indulging no more in drunken
street frolics, or such mad freaks as smashing monumental
clocks on club mantelpieces with a blow of his naked fist,
as told by his friend, Grantley Berkeley ; and never again
struggling against the police to bring a high-mettled horse
bodily into court to disprove a charge of furious driving,
but working off any exuberant animal spirits in fox-hunting
over his Irish estates.
^ A formidable club with whioh the night guardians of the peace in Norway are
provided.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 17 1
A more reputable place of resort than " the Finish "
was the Maiden -lane " Cave of Harmony," as Thackeray
in " Pendennis," christened the well-known " Cyder Cellar."
Sham cyder casks, ranged against the walls, gave the
place its name, and at the tables, filling the centre of the
room, some good glee singers carolled, whilst the guests
supped off devilled kidneys and welsh rabbits, accompanied
by beakers of unsophisticated stout, with endless " goes "
of something hot and strong to follow, On one particular
day of the week there was an ordinary. It was at the
Cyder Cellar that the little Jew Sloman ran his idiotic im
provisations off the reel,^ that lanky Herr von Joel warbled
" an't were any nightingale," and Ross sang his lugubri
ous and immensely popular " Sam Hall." By the time,
however, that the small hours of the morning were reached,
and guests and singers had imbibed more than was good for
them, the songs became decidedly equivocal in character.
The Cyder Cellar had an ancient renown, having been
a favourite resort of Porson, the tippling Greek professor,
whose portrait at one time graced its walls, and later on
of Maginn, Thackeray, and others of the "Fraser" set.
That Thackeray continued to be a frequenter of the place
until as late as 1848 is evident from a letter of Albert
Smith's, in which Smith says : "Last night I met Thackeray
at the Cyder Cellars, and we stayed there until three in
the morning. He is a very jolly fellow, and no High Art
about him," an obliging admission which, I fancy, however,
Thackeray would not have reciprocated. Eventually
Evans, the then proprietor, transferred the Cyder Cellar
entertainment to the Piazza, Covent-garden, to what was
long known as Evans's supper rooms, of which Thackeray
was an habitu^ almost up to the time of his death.
1 Thackeray, in some verses on Braham in the " National Standard," written in his
youthful days, has the line : " Sloman repeats the strains his father sang," to which he
appends a satirical note, signed W. Wordsworth, saying, " It is needless to speak of this
eminent vocalist and improvisatore. He nightly delights a numerous and respectable
audience at the Cyder Cellar."

172 GLANCES BACK
There were two notorious newspapers at this date which
fiourished on a wholesale system of blackmailing, and
the attacks of which on private character led Chief-justice
Denman to remark that everyone within range of their
influence was living under the greatest of tyrannies ever
known. These were " the Age " and " the Satirist," the one
a tory, the other a radical journal. Articles in slip, based
on private information, furnished by false friends of those
assailed, were forwarded to the latter with an intimation
that silence might be secured for a specified sum, which
at times went even into thousands of pounds. For in
stance, the notorious Charles Molloy Westmacott, who had
started "the Age" in 1828, was openly accused of, and
never denied, extorting £5000 to suppress the particulars
of some long since forgotten intrigue in which certain
members of the Court and a general officer were said to
have been mixed up.
Westmacott was reported to be the son of a sweep
named Molloy, living in some street off the Strand, whereas
he himself maintained that his father was Westmacott,
the sculptor, although this was indignantly denied by the
artist's family. How or where he obtained his education
no one seems to have known. A year or two before " the
Age " was started, he gathered together all the scurrilous
gossip current respecting the notabilities of the day, and
published it with coloured plates etched by the indefatig
able George Cruikshank, under the title of "the English
^PJ)" by Bernard Blackmantle — a nom-de-plume which he
for the nonce assumed, and under which he moreover
published a romance in two volumes, based on the Berkeley
peerage scandal. Some time previously he had penned a
savage onslaught on Jerdan of the "Literary Gazette,"
then a power in the world of letters, satirizing him as the
Blowfly in a work called " Cockney Critics." Jerdan, who
many years before, had conducted a scurrilous publication

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. l73
of his own, of course fumed at being subjected to the same
measure which he had himself meted out to other people,
but that was all.
In spite of Westmacott's shady reputation he was ac
corded a place in the Fraser portrait-gallery among illus
trious literary characters, accompanied by a by no means
ill-natured notice from the pen of Maginn. Maclise
depicted him with his foot firmly planted on Bulwer's
last volumes, which he had recently cut up in "the Age."
A dog whip, curled round the inside of his hat, might be
taken as indicative not only of the symbolic flagellations
he used to administer, but of the kind of retaliation he had
himself to put up with from many of those he assailed.
A Captain Phillipson, against whom Westmacott had
sought protection at Bow-street, twitted him in open court
with having been horsewhipped more than twenty times,
and Westmacott gave no denial to the soft impeachment,
but contented himself with asserting that he had never
once been horsewhipped without attempting to defend
himself One of the persons who had soundly castigated
him was Thomas Slingsby Duncombe, the well-known
radical M.P.
Some short time before Westmacott applied at Bow-
street for protection, during a pause in the performance at
Covent-garden theatre, Charles Kemble had knocked him
down with a stout stick in the front of the house for hav
ing, as he said, traduced his daughter. Miss Fanny Kemble,
in " the Age." This Westmacott energetically denied, but
the singular part of the affair was that a superintendent
of police, who was by when the assault was committed,
refused to interfere, and that the Bow-street proceedings
were subsequently dropped. Westmacott is the newspaper
scribe who used to have in waiting at the office of his paper
a stalwart Irishman, armed with a stout shillelagh, whose
duty it was to receive irascible visitors, who demanded to see

174 GLANCES BACK
the editor and indiscreetly blustered about administering
personal chastisement to him.
Barnard Gregory's newspaper, " the Satirist," was
started several years after " the Age," and so far as politics
were concerned, attacked only the tory party. Most of the
earlier numbers contained political caricatures, in which
Queen Adelaide and the Duke of Cumberland commonly
figured under the most disparaging aspects. Five-and-
twenty years before there had been a monthly publication
with the same title, which Jerdan, afterwards of the
" Literary Gazette," carried on until forced to give it up,
owing to the law-suits, duels, and assaults he was inces
santly threatened with.
Barnard Gregory, like others of the same shady frater
nity, had a fund of anecdote, and passed with those who
knew him for an extremely amusing and clever fellow.
He was noted for giving good dinners, and spite of the dis
graceful r61e he filled, had no difficulty in assembling plenty
of talented, but by no means squeamish, people round his
table. He was known to be a good amateur actor of
Shakspearian characters, and it was his great ambition to
achieve distinction in public ; but whenever he made the
attempt he was invariably hissed and hooted down by an
indignant audience. I was present at Drury-lane, some
time in 1843, on the memorable occasion when he essayed
to perform the part of Hamlet. The house was anything
but crowded — ordinary playgoers evidently foreseeing a row
— while the audience appeared to be almost exclusively
composed of partisans and opponents of the actor, the
opponents being evidently in the majority.
The moment the words, " A little more than kin and
less than kind," escaped from Barnard Gregory's lips a
terrific huUaballoo arose. The actor was assailed with
loud, continuous whistling, catcalls, and derisive shouting,
so that not another syllable he uttered could be heard.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. l75-
The notorious Duke of Brunswick, who had long been
subjected to most abominable attacks in " the Satirist,"
had engaged the 0. P. box for himself and friends, and by
signals with a whistle appeared to direct the disturbances,
which speedily put an end to the performance. Subse
quently Gregory brought an action against the duke and
others for a conspiracy, and called as witnesses manager
Bunn, a former secretary of Edmund Kean's, Lords
Gardner and Belfast, and several gentlemen to prove that
he possessed great merits as an actor, and that he would
certainly have succeeded had he been given a fair chance.
Two witnesses, moreover, deposed to having been paid to-
hoot Gregory ; nevertheless, in such detestation was the
editor of " the Satirist " held, that the duke won the verdict.
in a canter.
A few months afterwards the duke and his solicitor,.
Vallance, indicted Barnard Gregory for libels published in
" the Satirist." Gregory was convicted, but as he did not
appear to receive sentence, Vallance, as the duke's solicitor,
offered a reward for information that would lead to his
arrest ; and at the same time put forward the following un
complimentary description to aid the identification of the
individual "wanted." His height was stated to be no
more than five feet two inches, and his age about fifty-five.
He was said to be the son of a Mrs. Gregory who kept a
greengrocer's shop in Goswell-street, and to have been a
schoolmaster, an itinerant preacher, then a druggist,.
auctioneer, brewer, and banker, and finally a bankrupt.
He was unflatteringly described as high-shouldered, and
slightly knock-kneed ; as dressing shabbily in black, and
having an embarrassed and uncertain kind of walk. His
forehead was represented as projecting, his nose short and
Ul-shapen, his natural hair grey and scanty ; but this, it
seems, he had the vanity to disguise with wigs of differ
ent colours. He was without whiskers, had a sneering,.

176 GLANCES BACK
lowering expression, a pompous and vulgar manner, and a
fawning style of speech. This elaborate description, com
bined with the offered reward, led to Barnard Gregory's
capture in a locked-up cupboard, wherein he had sought
refuge in a house at Southend, on learning that the officers
were at his heels. Sentences of four and eight months
imprisonment were passed upon him, and during his in
carceration in Newgate he was subjected to the same
treatment as a common felon.
The " John Bull " in its early days was a thoroughly
scurrilous publication, assailing the private as well as the
public characters of those whom it singled out for attack,
though it disdained to have recourse to blackmailing.
The paper was started with the avowed intention of abus
ing Queen Caroline and the more prominent members of
her party. Theodore Hook's original idea was to bring out
a monthly magazine with this object, but Miller, the well-
known publisher — the same who had given Charles James
Fox £4,500 for his " History of the reign of James II." —
to whom Hook applied, refused to entertain the sugges
tion. Shackell, the printer, was then consulted, and he
advised the starting, of a newspaper, offering to find the
necessary funds, and to give Hook a half-share in the
paper free from all pecuniary risk. ShackeU's proposal
was accepted, and the first number of the new journal duly
made its appearance. Through its combined audacity and
ability it speedily worked its w^ay to success, and by the
time it had been in existence six weeks its sale exceeded
ten thousand copies, and Hook's editorial salary was fixed
at £2000 a-year.
Hook was not wanting in cupidity ; still he had a certain
sense of shame, and at first was extremely anxious to keep
his connection with the " John Bull " a profound secret.
In order to throw the public off the true scent, a paragraph
was inserted in an early number expressing surprise on

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 177
the part of the editor that anything which had appeared
in the paper should have been mistaken for Mr. Hook's,
and intimating that a person in Mr. Hook's position would
uo doubt consider himself disgraced by any connection
with " John BuU." Before many years had elapsed. Hook's
expensive habits obliged him to dispose of his share in the
paper to his co-proprietor, but he still continued editor of
it. Proprietary rights in a publication of this kind had
their attendant drawbacks, swingeing profits being invari
ably tempered by frequent fines and continual imprison
ment for libel, and of course both fell to ShackeU's lot.
Imprisonment, however, had no ill-effect upon his physical
condition, for in figure Shackell was not only a typical
John Bull, but he was an exceedingly corpulent one. His
ample paunch told of years of civic gormandising, and late in
life he became so unwieldy that he could only move about
with considerable difficulty, and cab drivers and omnibus
conductors always looked askance whenever he hailed them.
Shackell was rather fond of talking of the time when
Hook would be spending the autumn on a round of country
visits to his aristocratic friends, and he had to go and meet
him regularly every week, posting across country to some
beggarly little inn near the grand house where Hook was
installed. Glad enough at having been able to secure
even these humble quarters, he waited patiently until
Hook could steal away from his gay companions to read
through the proofs Shackell had brought with him, and
discuss and decide upon the contents of the forthcoming
number of "John Bull." ShackeU used to say that on
these expeditions he invariably provided himself with a
roll of bank notes which Hook was certain to be in need of
to settle some recently contracted gambling debt which he
was bound to discharge within the next four and twenty
hours. Hook is known to have been exceedingly superstitious.
VOL. I. M

178 GLANCES BACK
He used positively to affirm that when the ship which
brought him home a prisoner, after his arrest in the
Mauritius for deficiencies in the treasury chest, was off
the Cape they encountered the spectral Flying Dutchman ;
and he, moreover, had great faith in certain cabalistic
numbers winning prizes in the foreign lotteries, in which
he steadily speculated so long as he had the means, in the
vain hope of repairing his broken fortunes.
Shackell once told me that, when towards the close of
his career. Hook was a completely ruined man, and was
deeply in his debt, he appealed earnestly to him to advance
the money to purchase a ticket for a particular number in
some German lottery. Hook's story ran that while he was
seated at his fireside late the night before, looking steadily
into the grate while pondering over his own unfortunate
affairs, and the chance of bettering them by gaining some
big lottery prize, he had seen the number to which he
referred distinctly indicated in the live embers of the fire,
and felt confident it was a good omen. Shackell humoured
Hook's whim, purchased the ticket, and to his no very great
surprise it drew a blank. Next year Hook repeated the
request, and in regard to the very same number, asserting
that he had again seen the figures more than once and
more distinctly than ever, and that he was convinced luck
would this time be in his favour. Shackell, however,
refused to be persuaded, and afterwards learnt from Hook
that he had found a clue to the mystery. It seems that the
fire grate had certain raised figures at its back, forming the
manufacturer's number, and that when the fire had burnt
itself low and the back of the grate was still red hot, these
figures w^ere readily discernible through the embers ; hence
Hook's superstitious fancy that he had alighted upon a
winning number in the Hamburg lottery.^
^ There is a different version of this circumstance in Barham's " Life of Hook,
but I had the story as I have here told it from Shackell direct.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 179
I once saw Hook for a short time at Shaclfell's private
house at Hammersmith. He boasted of having been able
to walk over from Fulham, through the green lanes inter
secting the market gardens lying between the two places.
His errand, as Shackell afterwards mentioned to me, was
the usual one — to borrow money. Hook was then a wreck
of his former self — " done up," as he expressed it, " in purse,
in mind, and in body, too, at last." There was no more
merry jingling of the cap and bells, and none of the old
bumptious manner of the days when the spoilt wit was
hand and glove with a string of lords. Hook's bloated face
and shrunken form and generally dissipated look, his un
certain gait, his alternately abstracted and restless manner,
his occasional feeble attempts to sustain his old reputation
"for facetiousness, and the craving which he was unable to
conceal for brandy and water in the early part of the day,
painfully struck me, and I w^as not surprised to hear, some
jnonths afterwards, of his death.
At the time of the agitation on behalf of Rowland Hill's
penny postage scheme, so general was the feeling in favour
¦of cheap postage that the petition to the House of Commons
of the London wood-engravers, then less than two hundred
in number, was signed by every known member of the pro
fession, assistants and apprentices included. Those who
do not remember the old condition of things, when the
postage of a letter for a distance of fifteen miles cost four-
pence, and for fifty mUes sevenpence, can scarcely realise
the vastness of the change which the universal penny rate
brought about. The year before the reduction (1839)
eighty-two and a half millions of letters, equivalent to
three per head of the population, passed through the post,
and of these nearly seven per cent, were franked — in other
words, the taUsmanic signature of some peer or M.P.
allowed them to go free.
Now the number of letters annually transmitted by

180 GLANCES BACK
post is seventeen hundred millions, averaging forty-four
letters per head ! To the above should be added two
hundred and seventeen million post-cards, four hundred
and forty-four million packets and circulars, and one
hundred and sixty million newspapers. Between 1820
and 1835 there w^as a positive diminution of the postal
revenue, although the population had increased twenty -five
per cent, during the fifteen years. This was in a great
measure due to the illicit conveyance of letters under post-
office rates on an extensive scale. The official postage of a
single letter to Edinburgh was then one shilling and three
halfpence, although it transpired before a parliamentary
committee that the conveyance of a thousand letters to the
Scotch capital cost less than a shilling.
The system of franks was greatly abused. Peers and
members of the House of Commons were not only privileged
to frank their own letters, but those of friends and others
without limit, the consequence being that members of
Parliament franked letters for their constituents whole
sale. It resulted from this, that a class of people who
could well afford to pay postage had their letters conveyed
at the cost of those who could least afford to bear the
burden. Sydney Smith, who, no doubt, managed to secure
franks for all his own correspondence, was one ofthe croakers
over " a million of revenue being given up to the nonsen
sical penny postage scheme," as he phrased it, " which
indicated sad and unworthy weakness on part of the
government calculated to fill reasonable men with alarm."'
Mulready, as everybody knows, was entrusted to design the
new postal envelope, which, it was erroneously thought at
the time, the public would largely make use of. Absurdly
enough the design was engraved on brass, in relief— a
laborious and difficult process productive of a result greatly
inferior to high-class wood engraving. This employment

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 181
of brass would have been all very well if it had been in
tended to print the envelopes from the original metal,
which would have given off several million copies, but
instead of this they were printed from soft metal stereo
types. The new envelope speedily became a butt for the
satirists of the day. Leech and a host of others caricatured
it, and Barham in the " Ingoldsby Legends " had his
fling at " Those queer-looking envelope things.
Where Britannia (who seems to be crucified) flings
To her right, to her left, funny people with wings
Among elephants, Quakers, and Catabaw kings."
Parliament passed Serjeant Talfourd's new copyright
bUl during the same session that it sanctioned Rowland
Hill's penny postage scheme. The year before the measure
had secured a small majority in the Commons mainly
through a telling speech which Disraeli made in its favour.
Everybody will remember Dickens's touching dedication of
" Pickwdck " to Talfourd, in which, referring to his friend's
recent copyright bill, he says : — " Many a fevered head
and palsied hand will gather new vigour in the hour of
sickness and distress ; many a widowed mother and orphan
child who would have reaped nothing from departed genius
but its too frequent legacy of poverty and suffering, will
bear higher testimony to the value of your labours than
the most lavish enconium of which lip and pen are capable."
To-day, I fancy, most people are of the opinion that such
a condition of things as Dickens eloquently pictured has
scarcely resulted from the extended term of copyright, of
which such immoderate expectations were formed at the
time. Within a few weeks after the new postal scheme had
been sanctioned by the legislature public attention turned
to Eglinton Castle, on the Ayrshire coast, where the jousts
and junkettings of mediseval times were about to be repro-

182 GLANCES BACK
duced on a scale of great magnificence. The newspapers
told of a galaxy of banners floating from the castle walls,
and bagpipes resounding through the castle precincts ; of
warders at the gates repelling the entrance of the anxious,
and of squires and grooms in the stables accustoming their
mettlesome steeds to the housings and trappings of the
knights who were to figure at the approaching tourney.
The castle, we were told, was crowded with fair women and
brave men, guests of the Lord of the Tournament, and a
small army of cooks was busy in the kitchens preparing the
grand banquets that were to regale them.
Although the month of August had been chosen for the
pageant, this failed to secure the hoped-for fine weather,
aud on the day the tournament was held the newspaper
correspondents trooped in from the neighbouring little
village in a dripping and despondent state ; while the pro
cession from the castle to the lists set forth in a heavy
downpour of rain, which drenched the silken banners, and
damped alike the fine feathers and the ardour of most of
the participators in the ceremony. The sprightly tunes of
the musicians and the lively blasts of the trumpeters failed
to revive the drooping spirits of the guests. The Queen of
Beauty (Lady Seymour), one of Thomas Sheridan's lovely
daughters, instead of riding on horseback in state, sur
rounded by her esquires and pages, was glad to shelter
herself in a carriage, and her lady attendants judiciously
followed her example. Lord Londonderry, the King of
the Tournament, resorted to the undignified protection of
an umbrella, but the pelting rain ran down the polished
armour of the score or so of knightly coliibatants like the
water off the traditional duck's back.
After a fanfare and proclamation from the heralds in
their richly embroidered tabards, the lists were declared
open and a couple of knights riding at a moderate pace
poked at each other with their lances and nearly always

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 183
missed their mark. Whenever there chanced to be a hit
the lance, made apparently of some exceedingly fragile
wood, usually snapped in two. Sawdust had been lavishly
laid down in the lists to receive unhorsed combatants, but
throughout the jousts not a single knight was thrown or
even made to reel in his saddle. Between the various
encounters M'lan, the actor-artist, who figured as jester,
and was rigged out in parti-coloured frippery, tried his
hardest to be funny, but signally failed, and was generally
voted an intolerable bore. To add to the ludicroushess of
his appearance he was mounted upon a donkey which led
to Jerrold's characterising him as an ass-centaur, adding
that it was impossible to discover where the one animal
began and the other ended.
In the final encounter between the Lord of the
Tournament and the Knight of the Dragon (the rowdy
Marquis of Waterford), the lance of the former forcibly
struck his adversary's shield when the pair were riding at
full tilt, but the Dragon remained firm in his saddle as
the traditional rock. At a second charge the Earl of
Eglinton shivered his lance against the marquis's helmet,
for which feat, although he failed to unhorse his opponent,
he was with becoming partiality declared the victor.
Thereupon the Lord of the Tournament, attended by his
squires and pages, rode to where the Queen of Beauty was
seated beneath a rich canopy, and made her a humble
obeisance ; whUe she, on her part, smiled her sweetest
smiles and in queenly fashion commended the victor's
knightly valour. By this time no doubt the drenched
and dejected actors in the solemn farce were glad enough
the tourney was over.
This bedraggled pageant with such a pitiful result cost
the Lord of the Tournament a large slice of his fortune,
which years of after economy only imperfectly repaired.
It, however, effectually quelled his jousting aspirations, and

184 GLANCES BACK
henceforward the heralds' fanfares were no longer heard
resounding along the Ayrshire coast.
Louis Napoleon, who, a couple of years before, had
failed in his Strasburg attempt to overthrow Louis
Philippe, was present among the guests at Eglinton Castle,
although, not as one of the knights taking part in the
jousts. He donned, however, a steel cuirass and visored
helmet and engaged in a foot combat with Mr. Charles
Lamb. At the ball the prince exchanged his armour for a
velvet tunic and satin hose and danced with one of the
beauties of the fete, the Lady Saville.
Towards the end of the ensuing year the Queen of
Beauty wittily acquitted herself in a correspondence she
had got into on such a commonplace subject as a servant's
character, with a very dignified personage of her own sex,
rejoicing in the whimsical name of Shuckborough. The
letters that passed were published in the newspapers of
the time and caused general amusement. Lady Seymour,
it seems, had among other things ventured to enquire of
Lady Shuckborough whether Mary Stedman could cook
plain dishes well. This was too much for the great
Shuckborough who tartly informed the Queen of Beauty
that she kept a professed cook as well as a housekeeper,
and was generally indignant at its being supposed that she
could trouble herself about the characters of under servants,
" this being always done by the housekeeper, Mrs. Couch,
and this was well known to the young woman ; therefore.
Lady Shuckborough is surprised at her referring any lady
to her for a character. . . . Lady Shuckborough cannot
imagine Mary Stedman to be capable of cooking for any
but the servant's hall."
Lady Seymour rejoined, begging Lady Shuckborough
to "order her housekeeper, Mrs. Pouch, to send the girl's
character ; otherwise another young woman will be sought
for elsewhere, as Lady Seymour's children cannot remain

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 185
without their dinners because Lady Shuckborough, keep
ing a 'professed cook and housekeeper,' thinks a knowledge
of the details of her establishment beneath her notice.
Lady Seymour understood from Stedman that in addition
to her other talents, she was actually capable of dressing
food fit for the little Shuckboroughs to partake- of when
hungry." To the above note was appended a clever pen-and-ink
vignette by the Queen of Beauty, representing the three
little Shuckboroughs, with large turnip-looking heads and
cauliflower wigs, seated ait a round table, eating voraciously,
scrambling for mutton chops dressed by Mary Stedman,
who is looking on with supreme satisfaction, while Lady
Shuckborough appears in the distance in evident dismay.
This was too much for the great Shuckborough, w^ho kept
" a professed cook as well as a housekeeper," and the latter
was thereupon put forward to reply with biting sarcasm :
"Madain, — Lady Shuckborough has directed me to acquaint you
that she declines answering your note, the vulgarity of which is beneath
contempt ; and although it may be the characteristic of the Sheridans to
be vulgar and witty, it is not that of a ' lady,' unless she happens to have
been born in a garret and bred in 'the kitchen. Mary Stedman informs
me that you only require a girl who can cook a mutton chop ; if so,
I apprehend that Mary Stedman or any other scullion will be found fully
equal to cook for, or manage the establishment of, the Queen of Beauty.
I am, your ladyship's, etc.,
Elizabeth Couch (not Pouch)."

186 6LANCI5S BACK

X.
(1839-41.)
A DERBYSHIRE EXCURSION — SMUGGLING SIXTY YEARS
AGO — ILLUSTRATED BOOKS — BYROn's JOHN MURRAY
AND THE , LONGMANS.
A SKETCHING tour through Derbyshire in the autumn of
the foUowing year (1840), with Horace Harral, one ofthe
cleverest of Orrin Smith's pupils whom I had become rather
intimate with, - furnished a pleasant variation to months
of monotonous graver work. My companion was a great
friend of Ebenezer Jones, author of " Studies of Sensation
and Event," and one of those unrecognised poets whom
admirers are apt to go into raptures over, while the world
at large regards them with cold indifference. Jones was a
clerk, toiling long hours in a Mincing-lane house, and a
demonstrative pessimist, who attuned his lyre in this
aggressive strain : —
" I hurl detecting scorn
At life's old harlot zone ;
I crush her masks for centuries worn ;
I strip her on her throne."
As I was bent on a preliminary visit to Norfolk, for
the purpose of obtaining sketches of Nelson's birth place
and the church his father had been rector of, for the life
which Clarkson Stanfleld was to have illustrated, I started
off alone, after arranging with my friend to meet him at
Chesterfield on. a given day. I took the steamer to Yar
mouth and walked across the Norfolk fiats to Burnham
Thorpe, where I discovered that the house in which Nelson

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 187
had been born was no longer standing, although the church
remained in much the same condition as when he worshipped
there as a boy. I sketched the latter and copied an old
view of Nelson's birth place which I met with at the
parish clerk's house.
From Burnham Thorpe I trudged on to Lynn, and
took the night coach to Derby, skirting the Wash where
King John lost his crown and treasure before he indulged
in that unlucky refection of fruit and sour cider at Swines
head Abbey, which cost him his life. We started off at a
merry pace, and once the outskirts of the town were
reached, whirled rapidly along the level road into the
murky darkness, guided solely by the bright flashes from
our own lamps. I occupied the box seat, and so tired out
was I that I slept through the night, subject to continual
digs in the ribs from the butt end of the coachman's whip,
accompanied by warnings to keep awake unless I wished-
to be pitched' off. When morning broke I remember how
surprised I was at the sudden apparition of Belvoir Castle,
with its towers and terraces, its woods and hUls rising
vaguely in the distance, and the scene of sylvan beauty,
which, when the sun had fairly risen, subsequently de
veloped itself. The chartist excitement was then at its
height, and on our arrival at Nottingham we found the
strdets filled wdth an angry crowd — genuine Nottingham
lambs — ^who stopped the coach, and required no end of
coaxing, on the part of the driver and guard, before allow
ing the vehicle to proceed.
. My companion and I met at Chesterfield at the very
hour we had appointed, and made our way to Matlock
Bath, where the rippling Derwent courses along between
the rocky ridge (of which the High Tor forms the loftiest
point) and the grassy slopes known as the Heights of
Abraham. Somehow or other the mad freak of scaling the
ridge, in the immediate proximity of the Tor, occurred to

188 GLANCES BACK
us, but when three fourths of the ascent had been accom
plished, my friend, who was leading the way, shouted out
that a huge projection in the rock barred all further pro
gress. Descent was even more impracticable, so that the
situation was a most embarrassing one. If my companion
slipped, he would topple me over in his fall, and the
Derwent lay more than two hundred feet beneath us.
Fortunately, however, he managed to work round the pro
jecting rock, and we succeeded in scrambling to the
summit, where we fiung ourselves full length upon the
ground, panting with exertion and excitement over the
danger we had escaped.
Later on we halted at the little inn in Matlock village,
and found a party of loafers eagerly discussing the recent
doings of the chartists, who had responded to the royal
proclamation recently levelled against them by a so-called
national petition, with more than a million signatures.
Pikes had been clandestinely manufactured wholesale;
secret drillings went on in particular districts ; and rioting
in the north had led to the arrest of many of the ring
leaders. As this last proceeding produced a temporary
calm, the government was congratulating itself on hav
ing dealt an effective blow to the movement when the
uprising of the Newport colliers under Frost, Jones and
Williams came upon the authorities like a thunder-clap.
We know the upshot of the affair ; how numbers of the
chartists were shot down, and the rest fied helter-skelter,
and the brave mayor of Newport was compensated for the
wounds he received by being knighted and made much of
by the queen at the Windsor dinner, to which he was
afterwards invited.
Several of the Matlock village politicians were mad
about the five points of the Charter, and most energetic in
their defence of the Welsh colliers and rioters nearer home.
One sturdy dissentient, however, sought to silence their

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS.

189

sympathy wdth the imprisoned men by every now and
then growling out, " Hang 'em up for scarecrows ! " This
was his single sharp remedy for political disaffection, which,
he maintained, brought about the ruin of the working man
from the disastrous effect it had upon trade. And, yet, at
the time of the outbreak, the stocking weavers in the
neighbouring county of Leicestershire were only receiving
a weekly wage of four shillings and sixpence,^ while the
hands at Arkwright's great spinning mill at Cromford,
within a mile or two of Matlock, were not a very great
deal better off.
Old Arkwright, whose wealth was estimated at eight
millions sterling, enjoyed the reputation of being by far
the richest man in England at a time when railway, silver,
diamond, mineral oil, and nitrate kings were unknown.
The founder of the family, as eveiyone is aware, had been
a barber who accumulated a vast fortune by means of
patents for inventions, said to have been filched by him
from other people. His son having married a w^oman of
whom he disapproved, was turned adrift with, however, a
mill to depend upon. By the time old Arkwright was
appointed sheriff, the son had grown as rich as the father,
which had the effect of bringing about a reconciliation ; and
most of the old man's great wealth passed at his death to
the son, whom he had formerly discarded and vowed he
would disinherit.
From Matlock, I and my companion went the regular
tourist round, visiting, of course, Chatsworth, where the
huge conservatories, which afterwards suggested the
Exhibition Palace of 1851, were still among the wonders of
the Peak. Thence we proceeded to Castleton and explored
the cavern with the customary torches and bengal lights,
while the reverberating echoes were awakened by the
discharge of some ricketty old pistol. It chanced to be the
^ Life of Thomas Cooper, written by himself.

190 GLANCES BACK
annual wake or holiday at Castleton, and as visitors to the
Peak were comparatively few half a century ago, and any
body from London was an object of almost reverential
curiosity, we found ourselves pressed to stay with one or
another person in the village for the fortnight the wake
lasted. We however, compromised matters by accepting
invitations to one or two carouses, whereat the guests
trolled out genuine Derbyshire songs, one of the liveliest
of which dealt with the delights of the fair at some
neighbouring High Peak village, something after this
lasnion . >, After an hour they tripped to a bower
To play for ale and cakes.
And kisses too ; and till these came due
The maidens held the stakes.
But the lasses quickly began
To quarrel with the men,
Aud bade 'em take their kisses back
And giv' 'em their own again."
Here ensued by way of chorus quite a chirruping of kisses
on the part of some of the less bashful couples present, and
then the song proceeded : —
" ' Dolly,' says I, ' now homeward hie.
And I '11 go wi' thee a mile ; '
And Dolly she twinkled her eyes wi' a sigh .
As I helped her over the stile ;
Then I cuddled and kissed her face.
D'ye think I was much to blame 1
If you 'd only been in my place
I guess you 'd ha' done the same ! "
To a second song, the hero of which was a fuddled
Tideswell butcher, the men drank and danced an accom
paniment : —
" Down leapt the butcher from his horse.
Full fain I wot was he ;
And he drank till the summer sun had set
In that jolly company.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 191
He drank till the summer sun went down.
And the stars began to shine ;
And his greasy noddle was dazed and addle
With the nut-brown barley wine.
" Then four mad fellows up arose.
And joining hand in hand.
They danced around the hostel floor
And sung though they scarce could stand :
' We 've aye been drunk on yester-night
And drunk the night before ;
And we '11 get drunk again to-night
If we never get drunk any more.' "
Kinder Scout, the highest point inthe Peak, being only
ten or twelve miles distant from Castleton, we decided to
visit it ere we turned our steps southwards. On our way
we passed through Edale, a village lying in a hollow on
the other side of the Mam Tor or shivering mountain,
which rises some thirteen hundred feet above the level of
the valley. At this time Edale was almost secluded from
the outside world. Letters only reached it once a week,
and during winter the inhabitants often found themselves
snowed in for weeks together. Imagining we should have
no difficulty in spotting Kinder Scout towering above the
neighbouring peaks, we foolishly disregarded the advice
given us to take a guide, and set forth alone on our voyage
of discovery. By and by we found ourselves in a hilly
region and ascended the steep sides, " crowned with black
edges and cliffs of grit," of a brown and sombre moor,
intersected by deep ravines and countless watercourses
which we crossed with difficulty whilst making our way,
as we thought, to the particular grey peak we were in
search of No sooner, however, was one high point ascended
than some loftier one came in sight, and we pursued our
wild goose chase in quest of Kinder Scout, wandering over
the inhospitable moorland under the gathering darkness.

192 GLANCES BACK
until a drizzling rain set in, to be speedily followed by
almost complete obscurity.
Our position was now one of some anxiety. We had
lost all idea of the direction in which our return road lay,
and were only able to stir at the risk of being precipitated
to the bottom of some neighbouring ravine. Our choice
seemed to lie between this and remaining where we were
all night, numbed with cold and drenched to the skin.
Finally we made an effort to grope our way out from the
moor, crawling cautiously on our hands and knees. Every
now and then the moon broke out from the clouds, and its
rays glistening on the neighbouring pools served for a time
to guide us. Eventually we joyfully discerned the lights of
a neighbouring cottage in the gloom, and knew by this that
we must be upon the borders of the moor. The occupants
on being aroused soon put us in the right road for Hayfield,
where we were thankful to obtain shelter for the night, and
next day we started on our return journey to London.
A singular application was made to me soon after my
arrival home. A Frenchman named Fillineau, acting as
agent for several Paris publishers, who were in the habit
of sending drawings on wood to London to be engraved,
asked me if I knew any master of a coasting vessel who,
for a handsome consideration, would undertake to run in
at any part of the French coast, where the vigilance of the
douaniers might be most easily eluded, a small cargo of
bookbinders' cloth, on which a prohibitive import duty
then existed. Having often heard the owner of a couple
of oyster smacks, with whom I had struck up an acquaint
ance at Whitstable, tell some exciting yarns of hand-to-
hand fights with preventive men on the Kentish coast,
when he and his mates had attempted to run a few score
tubs of spirits ashore under cover of a pitch dark night,
I recommended him to Fillineau as being precisely the
man for his purpose.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 193
I had several times stayed with him at Whitstable, and
remember being roused one fearfully stormy night and
asked if I would like to accompany him and his son on
some expedition to the Goodwins. I willingly agreed,
and as soon as we had encased ourselves in tarpaulin and
sou'-westers the yawl was launched. The gale was a
fierce one, and it was some time before we came upon the
wrecks. I then soon discovered that my friendly skipper
was less intent on renderino- assistance to the various
vessels in distress and saving human life, than on the
quiet plundering of the cargoes and the more valuable
fittings of such ships as chanced to be beyond salvation,
and I remember how elated the old fellow was at securing
a rather valuable ship's chronometer, which he carefully
hid away at the bottom of our boat.
Whitstable was at this time only a small village,
inhabited chiefly by oyster dredgers and their families.
Everything there was of primitive fashion, for seaside
sojourners and holiday trippers had not yet found the
place out. It boasted several rather well-to-do inhabitants,
who had amassed some of their wealth from the well-known
oyster beds, but much more by smuggling and w^recking
in days gone by, when a section of the Kentish knockers^
used to obtain their supplies of brandy and hoUands from
cargoes run ashore at Whitstable. These prosperous indi
viduals had a fair sprinkling of pretty daughters, who had
received boarding-school educations, and whose aspirations
in matters matrimonial consequently ranged higher than
the sheepish, ungainly Whitstable fisher lads, especially
as the majority of these damsels had portions of £3000
or so. When the South-Eastern line to Canterbury was
being surveyed, several of the young fellows engaged on
the task strayed over to Whitstable, and paid their court
to these attractive belles, whom they carried off and
^ See post, p. 197.
VOL. I. N

194 GLANCES BACK
married as soon as they learned they were so well-dowered ;
much to the indignation and digust of the equally mer
cenary Whitstable swains, who regretted the loss of these
young ladies' portions far more than the loss of the damsels
themselves. My smack-owning friend was willing enough to under
take the bookbinders' cloth job, as he knew, he said, a
quiet cove on the Normandy coast just suited to the
purpose. The sum to be paid him was agreed upon, but
a difficulty arose in the event of his getting captured and
his craft being condemned. He was prepared to run the
risk of a more or less long sojourn in a French prison, but
if his boat was seized, he required to be indemnified to the
extent of its value. This the French publishers would not
consent to, and they consequently had to wait several
years for their binding cloth — until indeed some enterpris
ing fellow-countryman established a factory in France for
its manufacture. A few years prior to the time I am alluding to, con
flicts between smugglers and preventive men at the Kent
and Sussex watering places were far from uncommon. I
remember my father, on his return from a holiday spent at
St. Leonards, describing how one bright, sunny morning
when he was strolling on the esplanade with other pro-
menaders, and while bathing was in full swing, an old
fishing-boat with a cargo of hoUands was deliberately run
ashore under the windows of the marine library, where
visitors were reading the newly-arrived London evening
papers. A crowd of fishermen and others armed with
bludgeons quickly assembled, when a few of the more
agile ones boarded and unloaded the ricketty craft, and
their comrades made off with the tubs in all directions.
On the preventive man on duty discharging his pistol to
summon assistance, he was at once knocked down and would
have been killed, my father used to say, had not some plucky

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 195
young fellows among the visitors interfered to save him.
As for the boat's contraband cargo, this was all stowed
away in safe places before assistance arrived.
A similar affair occurred next year at Hastings, where,
during a dead calm a boat put off from a sloop anchored
in the offing, and made for the beach, where several groups
of fishermen seemed busy with their nets, and visitors were
idly gossiping. Nearly a hundred kegs of spirits were
landed like a shot, and the fishermen tucking them under
their arms scuttled off with them. The coastguard, who
were on the alert, fired and wounded several, but other
fishermen coming up rushed on the few officers, and so
belaboured them with their staves that they made a rapid
retreat. Again, in the following year, at Worthing, another
favourite Sussex watering-place, a boat was sighted, by the
preventive man on the look-out, making rapidly for the
ishore. Suspecting its object, he at once signalled for
assistance, which promptly arrived, but by this time the
boat had been beached, and nearly a couple of hundred
men had commenced relieving it of its cargo. While some
carried off the kegs, others attacked the officers and drove
them inland, when a hand-to-hand fight, with cutlasses on
the one side and cudgels on the other, took place, ending
in one of the smuggling party being kUled, and the serious
wounding of three others, while several of the coastguard
were more or less maimed. Their commander fared the
worst, for he had his head broken, his ear slit, and his arm
fractured in two places.
In these not very remote days smuggling was carried
•on wholesale, even in the waters of the Thames. So late
as the year 1838, a gentleman complained to a poHce
magistrate of his river yacht having been fired at no less
than eighteen times, by a revenue cutter stationed near
the mouth of the Thames ; all this ammunition being, no

196 GLANCES BACK
doubt, expended to oblige the yacht to lie to, that it might
be overhauled. The strange part of the matter was that
there should have been such a large expenditure of
ammunition and no damage done. Overhauling ordinary
craft was then a necessary proceeding, for not long before,
a pleasure yacht sailing leisurely up stream, having excited
the suspicion of some wary custom-house officers, they
chased it for twenty miles, and on boarding it, were
rewarded by discovering no fewer than sixty tin cases,
filled with foreign silks and ribbons, stowed away under
the timbers of the deck.
These were the days when prohibitory duties tempted
large west -end silk-mercers to enter into intimate relations-
with importers of contraband goods. I have heard a
member of a well-known firm describe how he and his
partners managed to evade the heavy duty on a large con
signment of French kid gloves, by the ingenious stratagem
of importing some thousand dozens, everyone of which was
right-handed. On the firm refusing to pay the duty
demanded, the gloves were confiscated, and sold by auc
tion in the usual way, and being all odd ones, were bought.
by the agents of the importing firm for a mere song. No
sooner was possession of them secured, than orders were
sent for the left-hand gloves to be shipped, and on this.
being done, the same farce was again gone through. When.
at last right and left-handed gloves were re-united, the
enterprising firm who had performed the successful trick,
commenced underselling their rivals to an extent that the
latter, after having paid full duty on all the kid gloves they
had imported, could never understand.^
It was Nollekens, the sculptor, I think, who made a
considerable fortune by smuggling in the days when George
^ During a debate iu the House of Commons, in 1842, Sir Robert Peel read a
letter, from a smuggler, offering to supply, by "the indirect channel," French gloves,
laoes, and silks, at an increase of from eight to thirteen per cent, on their foreign.
value, which, as he put it, was " a great deal under English custom-house duties. "

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 197
HI. was king. His plan was to import life-size plaster
casts of celebrated statues and busts in foreign museums,
with their hollow insides crammed with expensive lace,
and then solidly plastered at the base. On the arrival of
the carefully-packed cases containing these priceless works
of art (as represented by Nollekens), the anxious sculptor
nsed to hurry down to the Custom House to superintend
their being opened. His plan was always to impress upon
the officers both the great value and the extreme fragility
of their contents, and to urge the utmost possible care
being taken in handling them ; for he knew full well, that
had a head or an arm got accidentally knocked off, his
secret would at once have been discovered, and have led to
a disgraceful exposure as well as a heavy fine, and most
likely a long term of imprisonment.
I remember, when I was at school, being told by
Wyburn's son-in-law, that gangs of smugglers, well armed,
so as to be able to repel force by force, and known as Kent
ish knockers, used formerly to ride periodically through
the county of Kent with kegs of brandy and hoUands slung
across the saddle-bows of their strong, hardy horses. They
called upon the farmers and the smaller gentry, all of
whom obtained their supplies of spirits from this source.
The more daring of these Kentish knockers occasionally
extended , their journey to the metropolis, riding over one
of the bridges unmolested, and after ridding themselves of
their kegs of contraband spirits, quietly turning their
horses' heads home again.
Foreign silks and ribbons being [no longer liable to
duty, the yachting smuggler of to-day exercises his in
genuity in defrauding her majesty's customs in regard to
other articles which it pays him well to [land. Not very
long ago, a steam yacht — say " the Flipper " — was in the
habit of anchoring off a quiet village in the Isle of Wight,
where there is nothing whatever to induce a fashionable

198 GLANCES BACK
yacht to repair, either on business or pleasure. Her owner
was said to be ill and not on board, but in his absence the
yacht was cruising about to keep her crew handy. The
authorities received a hint, and as there was no coastguard
station at the little port at which the yacht was so fond of
putting in, a detective was dispatched there, and a day or
two after his arrival " the Flipper " anchored in the bay.
The crew landed on the pretence that they had come for
fresh vegetables, and after spending an hour in the village,
returned to the yacht laden with a few cabbages and a large
number of vegetable marrows. By-and-by, the boat again
put off from the yacht, when it was noticed that the crew
were bringing back the marrows with them. This set the
detective thinking, and when the first man came up the
pier-steps, with a net full of marrows on his back he
stopped him. " What 's up, mate ? ain't they good enough
for you ? " asked he, iu his assumed character of a sea-side
lounger. " No," answered the other ; "the beastly things
are rotten, and we are going to change them for onions."
In the twinkling of an eye the detective snatched one of
the marrows out of the net, and found that it had been
scooped hollow and was filled with small bottles of French
scents and essences, the duty on which is 16s. 6d. per
gallon. There were a good many gallons in that lot of
marrows, and the dodge had been carried on for a consider
able time before the day of retribution arrived.
On coming of age, about a year after I left Mr.
Orrin Smith's, I went into partnership with my brother ;
having acquired the freedom, then necessary for carrying
on business within the sacred civic precincts, by so-called
servitude. On the death of Mr. Bonner I had been for
mally apprenticed to my father at Stationers' Hall in what
I think was the council -room, hung round with engravings
of Hogarth's Industrious and Idle Apprentices, and in the
grave presence of the Master of the Stationers' Company.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 199
After the indenture had been duly signed and sealed, this
dignitary expatiated to me upon the honourable results
certain to be secured by good conduct ; and summoned up
visions of my representing in the coming years the ward
of Farringdon-without in the Court of Common Council,
then of my election to the Court of Aldermen and serving
the honourable office of sheriff, and finally attaining the
rank, coveted by all good citizens, of chief magistrate of
an ancient and illustrious corporation. I remember that
he said nothing about the quantity of turtle needed to be
swallowed and the amount of good liquor that had to be
imbibed to secure that becoming portliness and those
rubicund gUls then regarded as essential in all occupants
of the civic chair. His discourse took altogether a higher
flight, and at its conclusion he courteously shook me by
the hand and presented me with a Bible, having on it in
gold letters " The gift of the Stationers' Company " — a
memento which I often take credit to myself for having
carefully preserved.
When I and my brother were plodding along as
printers and engravers at Peterborough-court, Fleet-street,
and occasionally engaging in some publishing enterprise,
the great establishment over the way which my father had
helped to found suddenly collapsed. Whitehead, unaided
by his former partners' practical knowledge and intelli
gence, hurried steadily along the road to ruin until at
last the crash came. One result of it was the transfer
of the printing of a new edition of Lockhart's " Spanish
Ballads," with illustrations and coloured borders and
initials, to our modest establishment. Mr. John Murray,
junior, son of John Murray the second — Byron's famous
"My Murray" — and the late respected head of the
Albemarle-street house, made the arrangements, and put
my brother and myself into communication with Mr.
Owen Jones, to whom the decorative portion of the volume

200 GLANCES BACK
had been entrusted. For some years I continued in friendly
intercourse with this acknowledged master in well-nigh all
styles of ornament, whose singularly amiable disposition
caused him to be esteemed by all who knew him.
Owen Jones was educated as an architect, and a chance
visit to the East awoke within him that passion for Arabic
ornament which for a time completely absorbed him. It
was this craze which took him to Granada where he
quietly sat himself down before that architectural marvel,
the Alhambra palace, and laboured there diligently with
pencil and brush for years. On returning home with a
grand collection of drawings, gorgeous in colours and gUd-
ing, none of the skilful chromo-lithographers he applied to
would undertake their reproduction, owing to the enormous
difficulties of the task. Nothing daunted, Owen Jones took
a suite of rooms in the Adelphi, engaged the best orna
mental draughtsmen and printers he could secure, and set
up printing presses, and after years of anxious toil, subject
to constant and disheartening disappointments, he issued
his unique and magnificent work upon the Alhambra, the
production of which cost him a small fortune.
The volume was a commercial failure, and Owen Jones
bitterly complained that the government, instead of assist
ing him, as foreign governments helped their subjects by
subscribing for copies of similar works, actually taxed him
to the extent of two or three hundred pounds — exacting
in strict accordance with the law, five expensive India
paper copies of the work, published at some fifty pounds
each, for the benefit of certain public libraries. No more
iniquitous tax than the foregoing exists, and why pub
lishers have not long since combined to free themselves
from an exaction to which no other trade is subject, and
which secures neither monopoly nor other benefits, passes
ordinary comprehension. They certainly manage these
matters better in France. I remember at the time of

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 201
Owen Jones's complaint, being told by the Paris publisher
of Botta's large and expensive work on Nineveh, that before
he embarked on his enterprise the French government
engaged to take three hundred copies of the book for the
public libraries of France, and thereby contributed largely
towards the great expense of its production, which the
ordinary sales could not possibly have met.
While the printing of the " Spanish Ballads " was in
progress, I remember being called down from my engraving-
room one morning, and finding a cheery florid- complexioned
old gentleman seated in our counting-house, whom I soon
discovered to be no other than Byron's John Murray, the
recognised prince of London publishers and one of the
kindest, most considerate and liberal of men. Youngsters
as we were, my brother and I were several times invited
to his famous dinner parties, at which I remember meet
ing Dean Milman, John Gibson Lockhart, Eichard Ford,
Horace Twiss, John Blackwood of Edinburgh, and the
terrible John Wilson Croker. While my relations with the
Albemarle-street house lasted I was brought into frequent
connection with Lockhart, whose translations of " Spanish
Ballads " in their elaborately illustrated form went rapidly
into a second edition ; Dean Milman, who edited the works
of Horace, which Scharf Ulustrated with copies of antique
gems, and Owen Jones with tasteful adaptations of classical
ornament ; and Sir Francis Head, the old Waterloo soldier,
of " Bubbles from the Brunnens of Nassau " fame, who had
only recently been supplanted in his Canada government
for dealing with the rebellion in that colony in a concilia
tory fashion which failed to commend itself to the imperious
authorities at home.
Sir Francis Head at the time I knew him used, in
common with several other individuals who resembled the
Duke of Wellington in figure, to copy the duke's style of
dress somewhat closely, affecting the well-known -buttoned-

202 GLANCES BACK
up blue surtout, the white ducks, and the stove-pipe hat
with extremely narrow brim. Sir Francis's get-up, how
ever, was far from the slavish copy which the Eoyal
Academy keeper's was. Indeed, Jones E.A. dressed him
self up so exactly after the ducal pattern, including the
familiar short military cloak which the duke used to wear
in cold weather, that he was constantly being mistaken
for his distinguished model. As the story goes, when
this was told to the duke as something remarkable, he
grumpishly rejoined that if the fact was as stated he
thought it still more surprising he should never once have
been mistaken for Mr. Jones.
The example set by the French publishers of editions
de luxe upwards of half a century ago, led to several of
their English confreres occupying themselves with the
production of books, largely illustrated with wood-engrav
ings of a superior class. The success achieved by
Mr. Murray with Lockhart's " Spanish Ballads " induced
Mr. Thomas Longman to try his hand in the getting up
of various illustrated works, one of the earliest of which
was an edition of Thomson's " Seasons," with designs by
members of the Etching Club. Mr. Frederick Tayler
having pronounced my engravings from his designs to be
"cut with much feeling and expression," I was invited to
the dinner which Mr. Thomas Longman gave to the
principal artists employed upon the work. From my
knowledge of these gentlemen, I thought the party likely
to be a somewhat prosy one, but when I learnt that Jerdan
of the "Literary Gazette" and several authors belonging to
the Longman set were to be present, I anticipated that the
conversation would be rather brilliant, instead of which it
was, I remember, distressingly dull.
Jerdan was the recognised wit of the evening. He.
had recently made a hit with his well-known joke apropos
of changing the title of the new magazine, edited by

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 203
Dickens, from "The Wits" to "Bentley's Miscellany," asking
the publisher, with an assumed air of innocence, when told
of the alteration, " What need was there to have gone to
the opposite extreme ? " The artists proving as I had
foreseen rather prosy talkers, something smart from
Jerdan seemed to be constantly anticipated, and he
certainly tried his hardest to justify the expectations
formed of him, with, however, but a sorry result. His
jokes were all laboured, and such laughter as they evoked
was equally forced. I could not help contrasting Jerdan's
feeble efforts with the brilliancy of Douglas Jerrold's
witticisms on kindred occasions.
Jerdan was one of the half score of people who claimed
to have laid hands on Bellingham after he had shot
Spencer Percival in the lobby of the House of Commons-
He had acquired some little opprobrium a few years before
the Longman dinner by slashing into ribbons a portrait of
old Sir John Soane which Maclise had painted and pre
sented to the Literary Fund, simplj'- because Sir John
in his excessive vanity did not consider the likeness
sufficiently flattering. In the latter years of Jerdan's life,
when his well-known convivial habits had left their mark
on him, Nathaniel Hawthorne found him " timeworn, but
not venerable ; " which sums up very accurately Jerdan's
appearance in his languishing old age.
I recollect on one occasion Mr. Thomas Longman intro
ducing me in Paternoster-row to his father, Thomas Norton
Longman, a somewhat enfeebled old gentleman who was
supposed to stand a good deal on his own dignity. He
condescendingly murmured a few words to me as he sat
bolt upright in his armchair, gravely munching an apple.
He was treated by his sons, Thomas and William, with all
the old-fashioned filial respect which parents exacted from
their children in the last century. Although the eldest of
the brothers was then within a few years of forty, they

204 GLANCES BACK
both addressed the old gentleman as " sir," and always
remained standing in his presence until he told them to
sit down. The apprentices of the firm who were in the
habit of being invited in turn to Thomas Norton Long
man's house at Hampstead on Sundays, used to tell of the
awe they were in of the old gentleman on these occasions,
and how seriously this interfered with the proper indul
gence of their appetites at his well-spread dinner-table.
One day in 1844, on calling in Paternoster-row to see
Mr. Thomas Longman, who had then become the head of
the firm, I found Mr. Charles Dickens, whom I readUy
recognised from Maclise's portrait, seated in the waiting-
room. The customary remarks about the weather had
scarcely been exchanged between us, when Mr. Dickens
was summoned into the Longman sanctum. The inter
view was not a very lengthy one, and a month or two
afterwards, when I learned that Dickens had quarrelled
with Chapman & Hall over the " Carol " and " Chuzzle-
wit " profits, and that Bradbury & Evans were to be his
future publishers, I could not help connecting this visit of
his to Longman & Co. with the change which was then in
contemplation ; and I marvelled how it could possibly have
happened that the great Paternoster-row house had failed
to come to terms with the popular novelist who was then
at the zenith of his fame.
I went abroad for the first time in the autumn of 1841
and" scampered in the usual style through the famous
old Belgian cities, their art galleries and their grand gothic
town halls and churches, long before the era of cheap ex
cursions and personally conducted tours. I then went up
the inevitable " castled Ehine," finding, of course, every^
thing so new and strange, so delightful as well as inexpen
sive, that when the time came to resume work at the mill
again I returned to the smoke and bustle of Fleet-street
with feelings of real regret.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 205

XL
(1841-43.)
ALFRED BUNN AND ALFRED CROWQUILL — F. W. N. BAYLEY
AND GILBERT a'beCKETT.
My earliest recollection of Vauxhall-gardens extends back
nearly twenty years prior to their decadency, — to the time
when the high price charged for admission kept the com
pany frequenting them select ; when on certain grand
occasions Braham and Pasta sang, and Taglioni danced
there, and Paganini made his violin speak and sing by
turns in the crowded little theatre ; when Madame Saqui
disported on the tight rope in a shower of fireworks, and
later on when Fitzball's inane song of " My pretty Jane,
my dearest Jane, ah ! never look so shy " used to be rap
turously encored nightly. How cosy the suppers in the
little boxes round about the orchestra then seemed, and
how nectar-like even the hot punch tasted on those sultry
July nights five and fifty years ago !
I remember one dismal evening at Vauxhall when some
venturesome acrobat — a part of w^hose programme was to
simulate hanging himself — remained suspended high up in
the air perfectly motionless for several minutes, until loud
shouts arose among the alarmed spectators of " Cut him
down ! " A couple of long ladders were raised and the
poor posture-master was laid in his sUks and spangles on
the gravelled space, while a surgeon's lancet was applied
to his jugular vein. Only a drop or two of blood oozed
out, however, for the unhappy mountebank had hanged

206 GLANCES BACK
himself effectually. I also remember witnessing the ascent
of Green's great balloon from the gardens in the gloomy
month of November, 1836, when the aeronaut and his two
companions — Messrs. Holland and Monck Mason — started
to cross the channel, and after an eighteen hours' voyage,
dropped down in the grand duchy of Nassau, to the sore
perplexity of the country people, who, for the moment,
regarded the aeronauts as visitants from the moon.
After the wreck of Gye's affairs one vigorous attempt
was made to restore the' fallen fortunes of Vauxhall, which
had been a favourite place of public resort for nearly a
couple of centuries, and been patronised by the beaux and
beauties of half a dozen reigns ; by George II.'s undutiful
son Fred and the Prince Eegent and the young bloods of
his set. A triumvirate, composed of Alfred Bunn, recently
deposed from Drury-lane, and Messrs. Andrews and Mit
chell, the well-known Bond-street librarians, entered with
confidence upon the enterprise of reviving the ancient
popularity of the place ; Bunn being, of course, installed
manager, and his partners engaging to provide the neces
sary funds. This was in 1841, and to attract attention to
the entertainments provided, a little leafiet called " Vaux
hall Papers," with Bunn as editor and Alfred CrowquUl
(Forrester) as illustrator, was freely circulated.
" Vauxhall Papers " were made up of antiquarian notes,
going back to the time when the Gardens were known in
differently as the New Spring-gardens and Fox-hall, and
people of quality proceeded there by water ; of feeble jests
about the place generally, and some still feebler illustra
tions from Forrester's scarcely humorous, although occa
sionally grotesque, pencil. Strangely enough, Bunn
ventured to reproduce the well-worn jokes against Vaux
hall suppers, telling of the ham which was shaved into
such tissue-paper like slices that a newspaper might be
read through them on a moonlight evening ; and of all the

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 207
carvers at the Gardens undergoing a preliminary test which
involved the covering of an acre of ground with the slices
of a single ham. CrowquUl, moreover, illustrated these
old facetise vvith a humorous sketch.
It having been decided that " Vauxhall Papers " should
be printed at our office, Alfred Forrester and myself were
invited to dine with Bunn and talk over details with him.
Forrester was notable for his jovial appearance and
manners. He had a cheery laugh at command for his own
small jokes, and had schooled himself to bear the ordinary
annoyances of life in a pleasant philosophical way. While
uncommonly mindful of his own interests he was always
ready to make the best of whatever ran counter to them,
and passed through life with a smiling countenance. The
best productions of his pen were perhaps the articles he
wrote to accompany the collected edition of Seymour's
"Humourous Sketches," many of which by the way were
originally published in their separate form by CarlUe,
the deistical Fleet-street bookseller. Of the thousands of
book-illustrations which proceeded from CrowquiU's prolific
pencil, very few, in my judgment, can lay claim to any
particular merit.
At the time I am referring to, Bunn was residing in a
house attached to Vauxhall-gardens, and on our arrival we
learned that he was laid up with some internal complaint
which periodically confined him to his bed. The footman
ushered us into his room where we found him writhing
and shouting with pain, while he jocosely lamented his
unfortunate condition, and apologised for the necessity he
was under of asking us to dine by ourselves. We pro
tested against any such arrangement, and eventually the
servant was ordered to serve the dinner in Bunn's bed
room. From the potage d, la bisque, and the sercial
madeira to the chateau la tour claret, and the early straw
berries, everything was perfection. Bunn was propped up

208 GLANCES BACK
with pillows, and between the pauses in the feast, rattled
off some amusing anecdote or told some capital story with
a tinge of cynicism, yet with all that verve for which he was
noted. Every now and then his knife and fork would fall
from his hands, and some pleasantry would be interrupted
by a suppressed yell or a few low moans, as a more than
ordinary sharp, internal twinge seized hold of him. When
this occurred the footman would rush downstairs and
return with several hot bricks encased in fiannel, the
application of which afforded Bunn temporary relief; and
on he would rattle again as though determined that no
amount of physical pain should swamp his natural gaiety.
Bunn was a shady personage at the best. His
commercial failures never seemed to diminish his private
means, and it was notorious that he had transferred his
wife to Colonel Berkeley in consideration of a handsome
annuity to himself. Macready, influenced seemingly by
nothing in particular beyond his own irascible temper, had
blackened Bunn's eyes and otherwise maltreated him when
acting under his management at Drury-lane. Bunn com
plained piteously of the irate tragedian having abruptly
assaulted him in his private room at the theatre when he
was immersed in his managerial accounts. A blow from
the tragedian's fist had completely closed up one of his
eyes, he said, and then he had been felled to the ground,
whereby his ankle was severely sprained and the table
upset, causing him to be saturated with blood, ink, and
lamp oil. All Serjeant Talfourd's eloquent pleading in
defence of an assault, when according to the biassed
advocate " talent, right, and strength gained the day,"
failed to save his pugnacious client from the consequences
of his hasty act, and the choleric tragedian had to pay
£150 damages, and costs, for his few minutes' athletic
exercise. In one of Thackeray's early literary speculations called

THROUGH SEVENTY 'YEARS. 209
the " National Standard," which had F. W. N. Bayley for
its original editor, and was purchased by Thackeray with a
view to conducting it himself, we come across a character
istic portrait of Manager Bunn, evidently from Thackeray's
pencil, as the doggrel rhymes that accompany it are
certainly from his pen. The last two of these stanzas run
thus : — " Dressed out as gorgeous as a lord.
Stuck to his side a shining sword,
A-murmuring loyal speeches.
The gentleman who 's coming on
Is Mr. Manager A. Bunn,
AU in his velvet breeches.
" He moves our gracious queen to greet
And guide her to her proper seat,
(A bag-wigged cicerone).
0 Adelaide ! you will not see,
'Mong all the German com-pa-ny,
A figure half so droll as he.
Or half so worth your money."
In spite of the great efforts made the Vauxhall venture
did not prove a successful one. There were masquerades
which principally attracted the usual doubtful characters ;
and on ordinary evenings parties of young fellows, emulous
of the Marquis of Waterford's mad doings, indulged in
such pranks as tripping up hurrying waiters, seizing and
devouring dishes of cold chicken and ham in transit,
bonneting unwary lookers-on, and pinching the calves of
poor old Simpson till the ancient master of the ceremonies
danced again with pain.
These Vauxhall disturbances generally led to the ring
leaders spending a night in the station-house, and to
magisterial fines next morning ; still the rowdyism went
on, the result being that quiet people kept aw^ay, and dur
ing the Gardens' few remaining years of existence their
popularity steadily declined.
VOL. I. 0

210 GLANCES BACK
Bunn's quarrel with " Punch " and his " Word " with
his cynical adversary are well known. When A'Beckett
edited " Figaro in London," Bunn had been a favourite
butt of his, and after " Punch " was started the ancient
attacks were revived in its pages. The "Poet Bunn"
figured therein as Apollo, and when the controversy arose
as to whether Cromwell should have a statue in the new
Houses of Parliament, " Punch " mooted the inquiry, ShaU
the Poet Bunn have one ? Eventually, like the traditional
worm, the victim turned, and Bunn's quotations from Mark
Lemon's librettos of " Fridolin " and the Ehineboat " Lady
of the Lake " proved beyond question that at least one
contributor to " Punch " was capable of writing far greater
rubbish than any that had proceeded from the much-abused
manager's pen. Bunn merely twitted A'Beckett with the
number and variety of his literary schemes, as set forth in
his schedule on the files of the Insolvent Court, and all of
which, said he, " had turned out failures spite of the catch
penny character of their titles." Against Jerrold he had
little to say. He rather complimented him on his ready
wit when, inquiring of him in St. James's-street if he was
engaged in picking up character, Jerrold had replied,
" There's plenty of it lost hereabouts." The clever illus
trations to a " Word with Punch " were drawn by George
Augusta Sala, then a mere lad picking up a knowledge of
art under difficulties in the scene-painting room of the
Princess's theatre. Altogether the brochure scored a great
success, and " Punch " from this time forward prudently
left the Poet Bunn alone.
Phillipon, of Paris " Charivari " renown, who set the
Parisians laughing at the resemblance he discovered
between the head of Louis PhUippe and a pear, published
in 1842 in one of his periodicals a series of humour
ous Ulustrations to " Bluebeard " designed by Cham, and
followed these up with other illustrations to Perrault's

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 211
popular " Contes," treated in a similar grotesque fashion.
My brother and I purchased the cliches of these engravings
from Phillipon, and used them to illustrate a series of small
volumes of irregular verse which were published under the
general title of " Comic Nursery Tales." The success of
F. W. N. Bayley's " New Tale of a Tub," penned in the
same style of rollicking rhyme, led to his being engaged to
write the commencing volumes of the series.
At this period the " National Omnibus," the most
famous of Bayley's literary bantlings, had long since come
to an end, and two other papers — the " National Standard "
and the " Literary Times " — with which he had been sub
sequently associated had also expired. When Bayley was
deposed from the editorship of the " National Standard "
to make room for Thackeray, the notice which the latter
gave of the change was characteristic : " Under the head
ing of this ' National Standard ' of ours," observed
W. M. T., "there originally appeared the following:
' Edited by F. W. N. Bayley, assisted by the most eminent
men of the day.' Now we have change tout cela — no,
not exactly tout cela, for we still retain the assistance of a
host of literary talent, but Frederick WUliam Naylor
Bayley has gone. We have got free of the Old^ Bailey,
and changed the Governor." Thackeray, in becoming
" National Standard " bearer, was scarcely aware on how
forlorn a hope he was embarking ; neither his caricature
portraits, his verses, his letters from Paris, nor the tem
porary transformation of the paper into a purely literary
organ achieved success for it, and after being carried on by
its new editor for some months, with a slight change in its
title and an addition to its price, it succumbed early in its
second year of existence.
In the " National Omnibus " Bayley not only puffed
himself persistently, but also the publishers, who speculated
^ The " New " would have been more accurate. See ante, p. 103.

212 GLANCES BACK
in the words of his lachrymose songs or supported him
with their advertisements, at the very time when he was
joining in the onslaughts —originally initiated by Dilke of
the " Athenseum " — on the system of puffery practised by
Colbourn, the publisher. Much so-called literary criticism
was bought and sold in those days. Cyrus Eedding men
tions that Colbourn used to say a hundred pounds laid out
discreetly in advertising would make any book go down
with the public, as the expenditure of this amount
materially infiuenced the criticisms. Colbourn, however,
had other and less expensive strings to his bow in the
shape of half-a-dozen journals, of which he was either sole
or principal proprietor, and in which he was able to secure
puffs. These were the " Literary Gazette," the " New
Monthly Magazine," the " Court Journal," the " Literary
Gleaner," and the " United Service Journal." At one
time, too, he even had a finger in the " Athenseum " itself,
and Bayley, in a parody of a well-known Irish melody,
insinuated that the "Courier" and the "Morning Post""
were also under the enterprising publisher's infiuence : —
" The Puff, that once through Colbourn's halls
The soul of humbug shed,
Now lies as mute 'neath Colbourn's walls
As if that soul were fled.
So sleeps the praise of many books.
Whose sale, alas ! is o'er.
And men who once were gulled thereby
Will now be gulled no more.
" ISTo more to chiefs and ladies bright
The Puff of Colbourn swells,
For those who con ' Court Journal ' now
Heed not the tale it tells ;
And people who read paragraphs
In ' Courier ' and in ' Post,'
Think no more of them than old maids
Of tea and buttered toast."

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 213
Colbourn, soon after taking his printer, Eichard
Bentley, into partnership, retired with a fortune, bind
ing himself not to set up as a publisher within twenty
miles of London, under a penalty of some thousands of
pounds. Having been accustomed to judge books not by
their literary merits but solely with reference to the
amount of profit made out of them, he found his leisure
sit uneasily upon him, as any retired cheesemonger under
simUar circumstances might have done, and soon after
wards he started in business again, at Windsor, which was
beyond the twenty- miles limit. Desirable authors, how
ever, were indisposed to journey two or three hours by
coach to exchange a few words with even a bibliopole of
Colbourn's importance, so the latter paid the forfeit and
established himself in Great Marlborough -street, where he
engaged in a spirited contest wdth his former partner for
the works of writers then in fashion.
To return, however, to F. W. N. Bayley. Since he had
had to resign his editorial functions his career had been a
curious one. Having managed to get introduced to Barnes
of " the Times " he prevaUed on him to publish occasional
columns of verse based upon the popular pictures of the
day, such as Landseer's " Bolton Abbey in the olden
time," and the like. Then when Barnes thought "the
Times'" readers had had enough of Bayley's florid
verses, other editors of daily newspapers were found
willing to accept his rhymes on the strength of their
having formerly found favour with " the Thunderer."
Eventually aU the popular pictures were exhausted, and
Bayley talked the editor of the "Morning Post" into
engaging him as a kind of fashionable reporter, to record,
in his habitual highflowing style, the doings of duchesses
and other grandes dames during the London season.
In pursuit of this vocation he used to attend the Duchess
of Sutherland's, Lady Palmerston's and other aristocratic

214 GLANCES BACK
parties in the capacity of something between a flunkey
and a visitor ; aud he also had his stall at the opera, to
enable him to observe and comment on the aristocratic
element amongst the audience, and indirectly on the
singers and dancers as well. This soon led to his admis
sion behind the scenes and to his being introduced to the
stars, whose more striking impersonations he from time to
time commemorated in poems in the " Post."
I remember Bayley having a fUe al fresco at his
Chelsea villa during these palmy days, when Edginton
generously supplied the marquees, Waterer the tropical
plants, Gunter the refreshments, and Weippert the music.
Grisi, too, graced the entertainment with her presence,
and what is more, condescended to sing. These glorious
days were, however, over when Bayley undertook to write
"Bluebeard" for the "Comic Nursery Tales." He had
an unfortunate habit of " outrunning the constable," as we
used to call it then, and this, moreover at a topmost rate
of speed, which naturally led to his finding himself on the
wrong side of the iron bars of spunging houses and the
high walls of her majesty's Bench. 'The brokers, too, had
cleared out the contents of his Chelsea villa, and he had
been cashiered by the "Morning Post." Edginton,
Waterer, and Gunter had consequently transferred their
favours elsewhere, and Grisi no longer smiled on the
newspaper bard who had sung her praises so lavishly.
With Bayley, if money was not precisely like the air you
breathe, which having not you die, the want of it was
certainly, in his opinion, the root of all evil.
At the time I am speaking of there were so many
ca'sas out against the reckless journalist that for the
security of his person he was constantly changing both his
name and his lodgings, and he never ventured abroad
excepting in a cab with the blinds drawn carefully down.
In spite of all these precautions, however, Solomon Levy,

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 215
one of Sloman the sheriff-officer's most active assistants,
made the discovery that he occasionally visited a certain
dingy printing office in his capacity of editor of some
struggling weekly journal, and thither Levy went in the
hope of renewing an acquaintance which had been upon
the whole rather profitable to him. Entering the dark,
dirty room that formed the printer's warehouse, on the
chance of effecting a surprise, he was disappointed at
¦finding there only a smutty-faced little printer's devil
who had been left in charge.
" Ma poy," said Levy, " isn't Mr. Bayley here ? "
"Don't know," replied the unsuspecting youth, "I'll
go an' see."
With this he whipped through a door in the darkest
corner of the warehouse, followed on tiptoes by the cun
ning Levy, who heard him announce to some one in an
inner office, "A gent wants to see you, sir." Levy
instantly darted forward, but was amazed to find no one
in the room in question beyond the little imp who had
just preceded him, and who informed him, quite unneces
sarily by the way, that Bayley was not there. When,
however, his sharp eyes discerned a hat upon the table,
a walking-stick he was familiar with standing in a corner,
and he heard the click of a key turning in a door opposite,
he realised that he had been baulked of his quarry.
Eetracing his steps he was soon in the street again, and
noticed for the first time a four-wheel cab standing a few
doors off. A ray of hope lighted up his Israelitish eyes as
he inquired of the driver if he was waiting for the gent at
the printer's. On learning that he was. Levy informed
him that his fare would be out presently, and that he was
going westward with him, and would meanwhile get inside.
This he accordingly did, and the cabman closed the door
after him. Before five minutes had elapsed the young
printer's devil made his appearance, whistling his loudest,

216 GLANCES BACK
and after glancing up and down the street retired inside
the office again. Then Bayley cautiously emerged, peeped
round the door-post to the right and to the left, and find
ing the coast clear brought his burly form fairly outside
the printer's premises. Hurrying up to the cab he was
saying to the driver, as the latter opened the door, " Drive
to — " when a voice inside completed the sentence by shout
ing, " Sloman & Sons, Chancery-lane ! " and quick as
lightning Bayley found himself tapped on the shoulder,
while a piece of parchment commencing "Middlesex to
wit " was thrust under his astonished eyes.
" Wot, the spunging house ? " gasped cabby, indignant
at the shabby trick that had been played him, which he
saw would deprive him for some time to come of a valu
able daily fare, and the fare himself of his Uberty.
At the time when I first became acquainted with Bayley
years of high feeding had imparted a certain portUness to
his figure, and his Hibernian partiality for punch and
other strong drinks had given a somewhat bloated look
to his otherwise handsome countenance. His hair, which
was raven black, hung in long, snake-like ringlets over the
greasy, velvet collar of his seedy, blue dress-coat, which
he prided himself had been made by Stultz,
"  that doctor of our modern shapes,
The all-wise Stultz who maketh even apes
Look fashionable gentlemen."
Bayley's wardrobe was evidently limited at this period.
Summer and winter alike he was always rigged out in the
same threadbare, yet irreproachably cut, black kerseymere
trousers, the same richly embroidered though soiled satin
waistcoat, and the same velvet-collared, blue dress-coat
with gilt buttons, in which he had been accustomed to
flaunt at aristocratic parties, and exhibit himself in the
stalls of the opera. Bayley had grown much stouter since
the garments were made for him, and every moment you

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 217
expected to hear the seams of his coat cracking at the back ;
while as for his nether garments he must have followed
Count d' Artois' well-known example, and been hoisted in
the air and dropped neatly into them. An important part
of Bayley's costume was his shabby beaver, which he wore
jauntily on one side, and when chaffed about its dilapi
dated condition, he found consolation in the reflection
that it was at any rate a Jupp.
Bayley wrote "Bluebeard" on the plan that I have
heard Bulwer Lytton pursued with regard to his novels.
He sent in a scrap of " copy," which being set up in type
a proof was forwarded to him. This he returned corrected,
with a piece more "copy" tacked on to it, and duly
received a new proof of the whole. With the new proof
he sent back additional " copy," and so the book grew^ — a
few lines of " copy " arriving one day, and new proofs being
returned the next, until the end of the story was reached.
Even at this lapse of time Bayley's opening stanza comes
jinghng in my ears as I write : —
" In former times,
In the warmest of climes,
A gentleman gloried in several crimes :
Some terrible deeds he was known to have done,
And 'twas hinted that murder was certainly one.
For six of his wives
Had been rid of their lives
In the darkest of manners under the sun."
" Bluebeard " met with remarkable success, and " Little
Eed Eiding Hood," which was designed to follow it, was
written after the same fashion. For the versified moral,
however, which was to form an epilogue as it were to each
tale, the book was kept waiting for months ; during which
time Bayley was continually obtaining small advances,
and being dined and generally pampered on repeated
promises — which his consummate blarney always induced
one to put faith in — that the lacking moral should be forth-

218 GLANCES BACK
coming on the morrow. After months had been wasted,
and Bayley had been paid for the volume twice over to
induce him to point the moral to Little Eed Eiding Hood's
dolorous story, all hope was abandoned, and Mr. Gilbert
A'Beckett eventually supplied what was necessary.
The " Comic Nursery Tales " dispensed with any further
assistance from Bayley. The remaining stories were
written by A'Beckett, Albert Smith, and Percival Leigh ;
and were illustrated by Cham, CrowquUl, and Leech.
With Mr. Gilbert A'Beckett I subsequently had closer
relations ; at the time he formed one of the staff of the
" Pictorial Times." He was the quietest and most diffident
of men, singularly retiring in manner, yet always ready to
undertake any amount of work. He had gone through a
long journalistic experience, and although humour was his
especial forte, he wrote cleverly on almost any topic.
Editors favoured him, for, no matter what herculean task
he undertook, his "copy" was always to time. In the
early part of his career he had been, I heard, in a kind of
literary partnership with one of the clever Mayhew famUy,
who, on account of his inability to meet a bill, given to
stave off the demands of some dunning printer, had put an
end to his own existence.
A'Beckett was connected for a time with Hetherington's
"Poor Man's Guardian,"^ but it was as editor-proprietor
of " Figaro in London " that he was best known. This
penny satirical journal was started during the Eeform
agitation, and originated those periodical comments on
magisterial decisions which subsequently became general
in the newspapers, under the title of " Justices' Justice."
" Figaro " was carried on by A'Beckett, with some slight
outside literary aid, with much spirit. It proved so
successful that a rival sprang up to compete with it, in the
shape of "Punch in London," which, although it had
^ See ante, p. 90 et seq.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 219
Douglas Jerrold for editor, enjoyed but a brief existence.
Like other editors of unsuccessful publications, Jerrold
stoutly maintained that the death of the bantling was
solely due to want of sufficient capital.
Seymour, the creator, pictorially, of the immortal
Mr. Pickwick, was the " Figaro " caricaturist for several
years, until, in fact, financial disagreements arose between
him and A'Beckett, who had got into difficulties through
losses at the unlucky Fitzroy theatre, of which he was lessee,
and which subsequently became so prosperous as the Prince
of Wales's, under the Bancrofts. The payments to Seymour
for his " Figaro " drawings becoming irregular, the artist
struck work, whereupon A'Beckett announced that arrange
ments had been made for the future illustration of the
journal by the illustrious Cruikshank — suppressing the
fact that it was Eobert, and not George, the recognised
Cruikshank at that date, who had been engaged.
A'Beckett, moreover, spitefully attacked his late cari
caturist in "Answers to 'Figaro' Correspondents," observing
at one time, with the old, well-worn, feeble effort at wit,
" It is not true that Seymour has gone out of his mind,
for he never had any mind to go out of ; " and at another
time, coarsely remarking : " A correspondent wants to
know how it is that Seymour can't write his own name.
We reply, ' Ignorance, gross and beastly ignorance.' We
are told a subscription was raised to teach Seymour to
spell, but his hard and obstinate bit of brain rebounded
from the process, and he never got beyond words of one
syllable. It is well-known that all the ideas for the ' Figaro '
caricatures were supplied by the editor, Seymour being
a perfect dolt, except in the mechanical use of his pencil."
This was adding insult to injury with a vengeance
and Seymour retaliated with a clever caricature travestying
the murder of Thomas A'Beckett. In this he depicted
himself as Eeginald Fitz-Urse slashing away at the pro-

220 GLANCES BACK
strate figure of the " Figaro " editor, clad in archiepiscopal
robes, and appealingly exclaiming, " For the sake of com
mon justice don't give me any more cuts ! [i.e., woodcuts].
I hav^e had too many already, which I 've never paid for."
Eobert Cruikshank's " Figaro " caricatures were very
inferior to Seymour's, and when A'Beckett retired from the
publication shortly afterwards and Henry Mayhew became
editor, Seymour was re-instated in his former position, and
occupied it until his unhappy suicide, in 1836.
A'Beckett's literary schemes, with "catch-penny"
titles, which Bunn twitted him upon in his " Word vtith
Punch," furnish ample evidence of their author's activity,
if not of his good taste. Their variety is, at anyrate,
charming. Besides " Figaro in London," there were " the
Wag," "the EvangeUcal Penny Magazine," "the Thief,"
" the Penny Trumpet," " the Ghost," " the Terrific Penny
Magazine," "Poor Eichard's Journal," "the Lover," and "the
Gallery of Terrors." The lives of the majority were uncom
monly short, and as their deaths arose from deficient circu
lation, their existences can scarcely have been merry ones.
In the course of his laborious literary career, A'Beckett wrote
between fifty and sixty plays, edited George Cruikshank's
" Table Book " and " Omnibus," was a regular contributor
to " Punch " from its commencement, and as everybody
knows, was author of " the Comic Blackstone " and " the
Comic Histories of England and Eome." Being a member
of the bar he managed to secure the post of assistant
poor-law commissioner to inquire into the scandals of the
Andover union, and his report thereon led to his engage
ment as a " Times " leader-writer, and subsequently to his
appointment as a London police magistrate, a position
which he held up to the time of his death. He was excep
tionally fortunate, for it is a rare circumstance, in any
country, for a professional jester to attain to the dignity of
even the magisterial bench.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 221

XII.
(1842.)
THE ORIGIN OF THE " ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS " —
RECOLLECTIONS OF INGRAM, MARRIOTT, AND BAYLEY.
Early in 1841 I received a letter from Ingram &; Cooke,
news-agents of Nottingham, enclosing a fancy portrait of
Old Parr from Wilson's "Wonderful Characters," and
requesting that a wood- cut might be made from it, with
the words " From a picture by Sir Peter Paul Eubens "
underneath. I wrote back that the portrait was a purely
imaginary one, concocted more than a hundred and fifty
years after both Parr and Eubens were dead, and was
surprised to receive a reply saying, " No matter. Put
Eubens's name aU the same, as it is a well-known one."
Subsequently an engraving of Old Parr's gravestone in
Westminster Abbey was ordered, and then instructions
were received for designs to be made of Old Parr gathering
medicinal herbs, his introduction to King Chajles, ajid
other incidents in the old Shropshire peasant's apocryphal
long life. This latter commission was sent on to Mr, now
Sir John Gilbert, and the illustrations afterwards figured in
a more or less fictitious memoir of Old Parr, of which many
million copies have since been printed. In the course of a few^
months the Nottingham firm removed to London, and carried
on a roaring trade in Parr's pretended specific for attaining
a stupendous old age, at Crane-court, Fleet-street, where
pUes of cases four feet long filled with many thousand
small boxes of pills ordinarily blocked up the passage.

222 GLANCES BACK
It was at this time that Marriott of the "Weekly
Chronicle," with whom I had kept up a casual acquaint
ance, sought my assistance in procuring a supply of draw
ings for some new illustrated publication which a friend
of his 'contemplated bringing out. Marriott, it should be
mentioned, was an inveterate and over sanguine schemer,
always planning new ventures, spite of his having already
lost in the " Weekly Chronicle " and other undertakings,
as much of his wife's fortune as he could prevail on her
trustees to let him have the control of. At this very moment
he was hungering after a speculative capitalist — one who like
himself believed that a colossal fortune was to be made out
of paper and print, — and he fancied that he had discovered
the individual he was seeking in the friend of whom he
had spoken to me.
While still preserving a mysterious reticence respecting '
the nature of the proposed publication, Marriott offered
me on the part of his friend a moderate fixed salary to
assist him with hints and suggestions in regard to it, and
undertook to bring his friend on the morrow to confirm
the arrangement, when to my very great surprise he came
accompanied by Mr. Herbert Ingram, whom I already
knew perfectly well.
Ingram was at this time just over thirty. He was
short, thick-set and round-shouldered, with a head a good
deal too big for his body, and large coarse features. He
was careless too, not to say slovenly, in his dress, and had a
slouching gait which served to render him stUl more ungainly
looking. When one came to know him, however, all this
was over-looked by reason of his frank and simple manners.
The published portraits of Ingram, I may mention, grossly
flatter him. In his ungainly appearance, Marriott dis
cerned so close a resemblance to Phiz's delineation of
Quilp, as to Ulnaturedly bestow this nickname on his
friend. A few years afterwards, when Ingram had estab-

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 223
lished his position, he was a trifle more particular in his
dress, and I remember occasions when he affected the get-
up of a fox-hunting farmer — cut-away coat with steel
buttons, white cords, fluffy light beaver hat and a blue
bird's eye neckerchief. In this bucolic trim he was proud
to show himself at Epsom, Ascot, and other public gather
ings. Ingram had been brought up as a printer, and served
his time with, or else afterwards worked for, Mr. Noble of
Boston, whence he came up to London where he worked,
I believe, for a year or two. He then removed to
Nottingham and went into partnership with his brother-
in-law, Mr. Nathaniel Cooke ; when the pair started as
printers, stationers, and news-agents, and afterwards
became agents for the sale of Morrison's then famous
vegetable pills. Some money disagreement having arisen
with Morrison, an end was abruptly put to a rather profit
able agency, and Ingram & Cooke were in sore straits for
a pill in lieu of the one, the supply of which had ceased.
Knowing how ignorant and gulUble the Nottingham
lace weavers were, Ingram bethought himself of utilising
the famous Old Parr legend, and soon got some medical
man to settle the ingredients of a harmless aperient bolus.
Under the taking title of " Parr's Life Pills," the new
nostrum speedily secured local fame, and its popularity
gradually extended throughout the manufacturing districts.
The lucky inventor of this profitable patent medicine told
me that as soon as he had cleared a thousand pounds by
it, he decided that his future field should be London, and
in accordance with this resolution he soon afterwards
turned his back upon Nottingham, and established himself
in Crane-court, Fleet-street. Here he enlisted into Old
Parr's service, a notable personag'' \njoying an immense
reputation among the ignorant arid superstitious, namely.
Old Moore — the Francis Moore, physician, of the Stationers'

224 GLANCES BACK
Company — famous for his predictions, and whose almanack
issued gratis by Ingram in its hundreds of thousands
helped materially to puff the new pill into popularity.
After some general conversation at the interview men
tioned Marriott suggested an adjournment to the old Cock
tavern — " The celebrated Cock, near Temple-bar ;
Whose porter best of all bespeaks its praise —
Porter that 's worthy of the poet's lays."
Here " point " steaks and porter were followed by a bottle of
old crusted port,
" Whose father grape grew fat on Lusitanian summers,"
produced with due solemnity from some special bin by the
same "plump head waiter," whom Tennyson commemorates
iri his "Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue."^ The
generous wine proved an incentive to business. Ingram
unfolded his scheme, which proved to be simply an illus
trated criminal record on the lines of the Greenacre num
bers of the " Weekly Chronicle," some hundred and thirty
thousand copies of which had been circulated, and vast
quantities sold by Ingram in his news-agent's shop at
Nottingham. He admitted that a good murder was not to
be hoped for every week or even every month, still there
were police cases, and Old Bailey, and assize trials, as well
as factory riots, rick-burnings, coining, sacrilege, horse
stealing, and the like, the engravings of some of which
subjects, he maintained, could easily enough be prepared
in advance. This was the original sorry conception of the
now world-famous " Illustrated London News."
^ " The old Cock is swept away now — with a bank on its site — and the enthusiast
who is anxious to get a notion of its appearance must content himself with the pictures
of its staircase and dining-room, which hang in a room in a new tavern under the old
name, opposite the Fleet-street end of Chancery-lane. The ' old grill-room,' as it is
called, is refitted with the boxes 'larded with the steam of thirty thousand dinners,'
with their brass rods and rusty curtains. The iine old oak fireplace has been moved
there bodily ; the floor is still sanded, and the crockery is of the willow pattern."
— Tennyson : A Study of His Life and Work. By Arthur Waugh.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 225
With his imagination quickened by the wine Ingram
gave us his ideas of how the coining, rick-burning, horse
stealing, and sacrilege subjects might be treated, growing
quite enthusiastic, I remember, with regard to the latter.
He pictured a fine old country church nestling among the
trees, and a rough-looking man emerging from one of the
handsome gothic windows with the communion plate stowed
under his arm, while the moon shone brightly on ewer and
chalice. Ingram was so wedded to this subject, that
although he subsequently allowed himself to be persuaded
to abandon his other suggestions, he adhered to this
particular one firmly, and it was the very first engraving
put in hand for the new illustrated paper, although,
as it happened, it was never published.
The suggestion of a newspaper wdth every number of
it more or less filled with engravings, came as a sort of
revelation to me, and I at once realised the vast field it
opened up. I strongly combated the notion of giving a
general criminal tone to the illustrations, but although
Ingram wavered a little, I failed to bring him to my w^ay
of thinking. He argued that it was only the Greenacre,
Hocker and similar numbers of the "Weekly Chronicle"
that had had any large sale, and that when engravings of
the new Houses of Parliament, the Guildhall banquet, the
Bedouin Arabs, and the Queen taking an airing, were
published, merely a few extra copies of the paper were sold.
Eventually it was settled that I should draught a prospectus
embodying my own views, and as Ingram was impatient
I promised to have it ready by noon the next day, which
I remember happened to be a Sunday.
I was then living in apartments in Salisbury-square,
Fleet-street, where Ingram and Marriott arrived at the
appointed time. I read out my prospectus, wherein I made
a great point of the Afghan and Chinese wars in which we
were then engaged, and of the many "telling" subjects
VOL. I. p

226 GLANCES BACK
these would furnish to the engraver. I referred too to the
scenes of state ceremonial, the important political gather
ings — the agitation against the corn laws was then at its
height — and the crowd of general public events, including
every class of popular amusement, which were equally
susceptible of illustration ; and pointed out the facUities
which the recent discovery of daguerreotjrpe gave for the
publication of portraits of political and other celebrities.
After the prospectus was set up in type and the proof
corrected, Ingram wrote on it in his sprawling hand,
" Print one million." The title of the paper, " Illustrated
London News," had been already settled, Ingram having
fixed upon it from the circumstance that the Nottingham
people used to come into his shop in Chapel Bar, indifferent
as to any particular paper, and simply saying they wanted
the London new^s.
Before the prospectuses were printed, however, Ingram
funked at the pecuniary risk he was incurring. His
mother prophesied he would ruin himself, and other female
relatives croaked words of ill-omen. The engravings he
had ordered were all abandoned for a time. Marriott, who
hoped to be rewarded with a share in the new paper free
from all risk, was in a dreadful state of mind and could hit
on no better expedient than another meeting at the Cock.
He nervously urged me not to neglect being present, and
to make sure of me, came round himself to fetch me after
he had safely deposited Ingram in one of the gloomy boxes
of the Fleet-street tavern.
Our joint arguments and the potent infiuence of the
old port inspired Ingram with new courage, and he vowed
that he would not be dictated to by his relations ; his
money wa,s his own, he said, and he could do as he liked
with it. The scene was an amusing one. Marriott became
quite enthusiastic and refilled Ingram's glass, patted him
encouragingly on the back, and extolled his determination

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 227
not to submit to petticoat dictation. The same kind of
wavering, however, on Ingram's part, alternating with
renewed resolutions to proceed with the scheme, went on
for some little time longer; but eventually the prospectuses
and posters were printed, the circulars to the trade directed,
the title heading to the paper engraved, and Ingram so far
committed to the undertaking that any idea of drawing
back was now quite out of the question.
Only one thing troubled him, and that was the appoint
ment of an editor. He knew no one connected with
literature or journalism, and had come to be somewhat
suspicious of Marriott, whose advice he regarded as in
terested. At this time F. W. N. Bayley was in a des
perately hard-up condition, and out of pure charity my
brother and I recommended him to Ingram, and I promised
he should be at Peterborough-court the following day in
order to be introduced, Ingram suggesting an early dinner
afterwards at the Cock.
Bayley was in waiting when Ingram accompanied by
Marriott arrived, and the introduction took place as
arranged. Proprietor and prospective editor eyed each
other inquisitively. In the short, negligently dressed and
ungainly-looking individual with a big head, Bayley failed
to recognise the capitalist of his imagination, and Ingram,
on his part, seemed staggered by the first sight of his
expectant editor, whose shabby-genteel appearance rendered
Ingram somewhat suspicious of him. Bayley was attired
as usual in his seedy dress suit, but he was well brushed
up and clean shaven, and his snake-like ringlets glistened
with Eowland's "incomparable oil macassar." His easy
nonchalance, coupled with the ready jest and the neat little
story he had judiciously come prepared with, speedily pre
possessed Ingram in his favour. It chanced that some
business affair prevented me from dining with them and
Bayley, Ingram and Marriott sallied forth, not, however.

228 GLANCES BACK
as it afterwards transpired, to feed at the neighbouring
Cock, but to feast further afield and in far less primitive
fashion. From Marriott I learned how the rest of the day
was spent.
Just before the trio reached the end of Peterborough-
court Bayley begged Marriott to go in advance and note
whether any queer-looking customer was loitering about.
None being observed Bayley suggested that they should
cross the road, and without waiting for a reply darted
between the cabs and omnibuses, and diving down Crown-
court, hurried on through Whitefriars and the Temple, with
Ingram and Marriott, perplexed as to what he was after,
following at his heels.
The fact was Bayley was in great danger of arrest, and
observed every possible precaution against such a catas
trophe. When proceeding from one part of London to
another he used the river steamers as far as practicable,
under the idea — whether correct or the reverse I know
not — that only one officer was empowered to arrest people
for debt upon the river, and as, according to Bayley, he
had to wear a small silver oar in his buttonhole, he was of
course readily recognisable. Bayley, not daring to risk
marching up Fleet-street to the Cock, had made his way
towards the river as quickly as possible, excusing himself
to Ingram, when he paused to take breath, by pretending
that he was dying for a blow upon the water — it was in
fact a balmy spring day — and adding that he would take
him to a nice, quiet riverside place where they could have
a much more comfortable dinner than in the stuffy room,
odorous of tobacco and sawdust, at the Fleet-street Cock.
By this time they had arrived at a steamboat pier, and
as the first boat that called there chanced to be a Eichmond
one they stepped on board it, and Bayley, freed from all
anxiety about arrest, was soon in high spirits again. It
was not long, however, before he discovered that the river-

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 229
breeze required to be tempered with occasional glasses of
warm brandy and water in search of which he dived
below, taking Ingram with him to discharge the score.
When the steamer reached Eichmond- bridge Bayley had
formed his plans, and at once proceeded to march his sub
missive companions up the hill to the Star and Garter,
which, with the knowledge that he had a capitalist in tow,
he entered as though he were a lord, utterly regardless of
his seedy habiliments.
After informing the orthodox " sneering waiter with
newly curled hair," who advanced to receive the party, that
he required dinner in a private room — " one with the view,
mind," — which said view Thackeray found had its hair
curled like the swaggering waiter, Bayley proceeded to
interrogate the latter as to the contents of the larder,
Ingram and Marriott standing by dumbfounded. Eventu
ally he decided upon the menu which, as he was partial to
high feeding, comprised among other things, turtle soup,
eels with sauce tartare, ducklings with early peas, and pdte
de foie gras. Being only a poor judge of wine, and not
caring particularly for it, he simply ordered some sherry
and a bottle of 1834 port with the cheese. The dinner
prolonged itself till dusk, for Bayley from time to time
fired off most of his best jokes and told all his old stories,
which were of course novelties to his present listeners, who
were quite charmed with his humour and vivacity. Mean
while neither of them gave so much as a thought to
the famous view which people pretend they go to the Star
and Garter to see. By and by lights and cigars were
called for, and a bowl of hot punch was ordered to be
brewed ; and under its potent influence Bayley rattled off
some more capital stories, and altogether the trio conceived
that they were passing a very jolly evening.
At length the waiter hinted something about closing,
whereupon the bill was demanded, and then the customary

230 GLANCES BACK
mauvais quart d'heure ensued. Ingram in fact, as he
often afterwards mentioned, was on tenter-hooks ; he had
no experience of the cost of Star and Garter dinners, but
he surmised correctly enough that whatever it was he
would be called upon to pay the piper, and he was in
terrible doubt as to whether he had sufficient money about
him. He knew from experience that no help could be
counted on from Marriott, whose wife never entrusted him
with more than a few shillings of pocket money at a time,
and Bayley's general seedy appearance sufficiently indicated
that there was no chance of his being able to make good
any deficiency.
The bill was brought. It was for a handsome sum,
though less than it would have been in these days of
absurdly expensive dinners, which neither the menus nor
the wines justify. By dint of rummaging in all his
pockets Ingram at last got together the amount, and then,
at Bayley's instigation, he made a further search for some
thing for the swaggering waiter. The latter came off far
from as well as he had hoped, and was by no means
mollified by Bayley's assurances that he would be remem
bered on some future occasion. This, however, did not
distress the party overmuch as they sallied forth into the
moonlight in the highest of spirits. The air was fresh and
pleasant, and they all agreed that it was just the evening
for a walk, although scarcely for one of ten or a dozen
miles. And yet there was no other .js/ay of getting home.
Marriott's means were limited to a fourpenny piece, Bayley
had not a copper, and Ingram, by dint of further diving
into his pockets, could only succeed in fishing up a final
half-crown. As they neared the bridge they encountered
a jolly young waterman, just turned out of a neighbouring
public house, humming " the Lass of Eichmond-hill," and
tried to strike a bargain with him to row them as far as

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 231
VauxhaU, Chelsea, or Putney even. But he of course
spurned the notion of a mere paltry half-crown, though
"the tide being favourable he wouldn't mind undertaking
the job if they liked to add another sovereign. Even
then," he impertinently added, as he surveyed Bayley's
portly figure, " it will be under ninepence a stone."
There was no alternative but to trudge up to town, and
as Bayley was somewhat of a gouty subject, they soon
found this to be slow and weary work. While marching
moodily along just before reaching Barnes, the rumbling
sound of a returning fly interrupted their meditations.
The vehicle proved to be empty, and Bayley ascertained
from the driver that his home was somewhere Newington
way. Now it chanced that Bayley resided in that direc
tion, whereas Ingram and Marriott both lived at Padding
ton, exactly the opposite side of London. An earnest
discussion ensued, which ended by Bayley cajoling Ingram
out of the half-crown, and persuading the flyman to drive
him home in exchange for it. This settled, he was in the
fly like a shot, waiving his adieux to the pair of pedestrians,
who trudged grumpishly on across Hammersmith-bridge,
and, after constantly taking the wrong road and going over
twice as much ground as they need have done, arrived at
Paddington weary and footsore just as the early housemaids
were sweeping their doorsteps, and exchanging confidences
respecting the unfiattering things which their respective
mistresses had been saying of each other.
The preparations for the first number of the " Illus
trated London News " now went steadily on. It had been
announced that a grand fancy dress ball was to take place
at Buckingham Palace, and the women were all in a fiutter
of excitement about it. This ball was a piece of great good
luck for the new paper, and it was settled to publish the
first number at the end of the week that the ball took
place. I arranged with Mr. John GUbert, who had put

232 GLANCES BACK
several of Stanfield's drawings for " Poor Jack " upon the
wood for me in a masterly manner, to make a couple of
pages of designs, and designs they were in the strictest sense
of the term, for the only authorities he had to guide him
were such scanty scraps of information respecting the guests
and their costumes as appeared from time to time in " the
Times" and "Morning Post." I remember that at the
last moment it was announced Prince Albert would wear
a coronal of pearls, which was foolishly interpreted to be a
string of these gems (instead of a tiara, as was intended),
and it so figured in the newspaper engraving.
When the hour arrives the necessary man is said to be
always forthcoming, and this was unquestionably true in
the instance of the " Illustrated London News." In 1842
it would have been well-nigh impossible to have kept an
illustrated paper, containing from twenty to thirty engrav
ings weekly, going had not Mr. John Gilbert's facile and
imaginative pencil been available for the purpose. I use
the word " imaginative" advisedly, for the system pursued
with regard to the majority of engravings of current events
— foreign, provincial, and even metropolitan when these
transpired unexpectedly — was to scan the morning papers
carefully, cut out such paragraphs as furnished good sub
jects for illustration, and send them with the necessary
boxwood blocks to the draughtsmen employed. Of these
Mr. Gilbert was a good deal more than a head and shoulders
above all the rest, and, as time went on, every week, and
occasionally every day, newspaper paragraphs and boxwood
blocks used to be sent by hand to him at Blackheath,
whereupon he would tell the bearer to take a turn on the
heath and come back in an hour or so ; when he would
invariably find the drawing ready for him to hurry up
to London with.
In the case of important metropolitan and provincial
events, of which announcements had been made before-

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 233
hand — such as a royal journey, a great anti-corn law
meeting, a grand official banquet, or the laying of the
foundation-stone of some notable public building, an
artist was sent to sketch the locality and also the actual
incident if he could succeed in obtaining the necessary
facilities, which were, however, only occasionally accorded
him, and usually after a good many rebuffs, for the illus
trated newspaper — not then the social power it has since
become — met with but scant favour in official quarters.
Any kind of views of such localities as were then the
seat of war in China and Afghanistan were only to be
procured with the greatest difficulty. Obtaining them
from the fountain-head was at this period quite out of the
question, and publishers being exceedingly jealous of
the illustrated newspaper — which Mr. John Murray the
elder prophesied would seriously interfere with the sale of
books — were indisposed to grant permission for subjects to
be copied from any of the illustrated works issued by them.
A few days before the first number of the new paper
made its appearance, a considerable portion of the city of
Hamburg, comprising some two thousand houses and public
buildings, was destroyed by fire, the loss of property
amounting to more than seven millions sterling. This event
furnished a telling subject for the first page of the paper,
but Mr. C. N. Williamson errs in stating in his " Illustrated
Journalism in England," that an old woodcut of Hamburg
was routed out and had flames and rolling clouds of smoke
engraved in the sky. Any wood-engraver will recognise
the impossibility of producing dark clouds of smoke by the
means suggested, to say nothing of the crowd of boats and
people that fill the river and occupy the foreground of the
subject. The view of the city was engraved by one of my
assistants and was copied, I remember, from a print inthe
British Museum, the artist, in drawing the subject upon
the wood, having added the necessary flames and volumes

234 GLANCES BACK
of smoke, as well as the crowd of people, in boats and on
the river bank, supposed to have been attracted by the
confiagration.^ *3if* The substance of the foregoing narrative of the origin of
the "Illustrated London News" was published in the Jubilee num
ber of that paper, and shortly afterwards Lady Watkin (Herbert
Ingram's widow) disputed my statement respecting Ingram's
original intention being to produce a kind of illustrated police
gazette. Her words are : —
" Although I do not pretend to deny that worldly success had some
share in his (Ingram's) calculations, I can yet well remember that with
it was mingled a very large measure of social and moral aspiration. He
always talked of his coming newspaper as a great educational force, as an
organ which would have its strongest ally in the clergy of the country ;
and never once did he breathe a suggestion that vulgar sensationalism
was to have any place in his projects. Is it likely that with his mind
once set upon illustration of crime, he would have been so entirely
turned from his purpose as to admit only one single illustration of a
murderer ? . . . Throughout the early volumes there is absolute consis
tency — state functions and social festivities, every phase of life, indeed,
except crime."
My reply to Lady Watkin is simply this : —
First, that the narrative she throws doubt upon is true in every
particular. Secondly, that it is at least singular Lady Watkin should have
allowed the story to pass current for many years without attempt
ing to contradict it. On the same page of the " Illustrated London
News," in which her letter appears, the editor admits that " in the
several books which treat of this phase of journalistic history, it is
stated that Ingram's original idea was to found a record of crime.
It is accepted, without question, in the ' Dictionary of National
Biography ' (1892), and in the ' Pictorial Press ' (1884), by Mr.
Mason Jackson " (then as now art-editor of the " Illustrated London
1 Mr. Spielmann's statement (" Illustrated London News " Summer number, 1892,
p. xii.) that the heading of the paper was engraved in Paris, and that all else in the
first number came from Landells and Sly, is singularly incorrect. The river view of
London was engraved in Sly's establishment, and the somewhat clumsy looking letter
ing above it in mine. It was a long time afterwards when the London view was
reproduced on copper by a French firm. As for Landells, he engraved nothing what
ever for the new paper until it had been several months in existence.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 235
News.") Here I may remark that neither the writer of the
memoir in the " Dictionary of National Biography," nor Mr. Mason
Jackson, received a particle of information of any kind from me, so
that they must have derived their knowledge from a perfectly
independent source.
Thirdly, I desire to ask Lady Watkin why it is that the con
tradiction of this oft repeated story has been delayed until all of
those familiar with the facts of the case, excepting myself, are
dead. I allude to Ingram's partner and brother-in-law, Nathaniel
Cooke ; to his friend Marriott ; and to Bayley, Monahan, Palmer,
and Clayton, the original editor, sub-editor, printer and publisher
of the " Illustrated London News."
As for Ingram's "social and moral aspirations," these are, I
think, disposed of by recalling the circumstance, that the very
money which enabled him to start the " Illustrated London News,"
had been made by him by a vulgar fraud on an ignorant public —
by his falsely pretending in the life of Old Parr, and elsewhere,
that the pills he palmed off on his credulous dupes were com
pounded from a secret recipe of Old Parr's, of which he had become
possessed ; and which he hoaxed them into believing had been the
means of the Shropshire peasant attaining a patriarchal old age-
I knew Ingram well up to the time of his death, and was inti
mately associated with him in more than one important under
taking, and I certainly never heard him suggest that " social and
moral aspirations" had aught to do with his many enterprises.
He was a bold speculator, and usually dealt liberally with those
whose assistance was essential to him, but he always seemed to
have only two objects in view — making money, and consolidating
by means of its expenditure the position in society which he had
secured for himself. Ingram's great and commendable ambition
was to sit in Parliament for his native city, and this led to his
disbursing considerable sums towards the construction of the
Boston and Sleaford railway and supplying Boston with gas and
water, and in acquiring the presentation to the living of St.
Botolph. Most people will recognise considerable political fore
sight and plenty of worldly shrewdness, but certainly no moral
aspirations, in all this.
It will scarcely be pretended that Ingram's moral aspirations
led him to intimately connect himself with the notorious John
Sadleir, and engage with him in " a scheme to deceive Mr. Vincent

236 GLANCES BACK
Scully." These are Lord Campbell's exact words, giving his
interpretation of the finding of the jury who tried the action
which Scully subsequently brought against Ingram. This suit,
in which heavy damages were claimed on the part of the plaintiff,
is a matter of history, as well as the verdict of the jury award
ing Scully £300 after Ingram had been subjected to a severe cross-
examination by Edwin James. Ingram's counsel moved for and
obtained a new trial, but before this came off, Ingram, quite
unsolicited, proffered a loan to Edwin James, who was well known
to be up to his eyes in debt, and actually lent (?) him £1250. As
a consequence, he escaped the second severe cross-examination
which he so dreaded. The man who lends a large sum of money
to the impecunious counsel of his opponent, while a suit is still
pending, certainly cannot lay claim to any high moral principles,
and is scarcely less deserving of reprobation than the embarrassed
Q.C., who, after being tempted, stooped to accept the loan.
To return, however, to the matter with which I am more
immediately concerned. Almost convincing proof of the accuracy
of my narrative is furnished by the " Illustrated London News "
itself In the Jubilee number the editor states that " Mr. Herbert
Ingram always acknowledged that it was the Greenacre murder, a
ghastly crime which startled the country in 1837, which finally
determined him to the enterprise [of an illustrated newspaper].
. . . Ingram made his first attempt at illustrated journalism by
the production of a broadsheet entitled ' The Life, Death, and
Horrible Crimes of Thomas Greenacre, the Camberwell murderer.' "
What faith, I may ask, is to be placed in the fable of Ingram being
actuated by social and moral aspirations after this 1
The fact of the " Illustrated London News " having published
only one portrait of a murderer proves really nothing with regard
to the original intentions of its projector. Before the first number
appeared, and prior to the visit which Sir John Gilbert received
from Ingram, when, as he says, no allusion was made to the
illustration of crime, Ingram had been almost completely weaned
from his pet original idea — Bayley, who had strong conservative
instincts, and who firmly believed in the great advantages of
family and clerical support, having doae all he could to induce
him to abandon it. That he had not entirely given it up seems
apparent from a passage in the opening address, where, in allusion
to subjects for future illustration, "when the pencil must at least

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 237
be oracular with the spirit of truth," it is said : " You can have
broadly before you all the pith and' marrow of the administration
of justice, with points of force, of ridicule, of character, or of
crime." On May 14, 1842, the first number of the new paper,
which was printed, by the way, in Crane-court within a door
or two of the Parr's Life Pills' depot, duly made its appear
ance. The news-agents had provided themselves wdth a
good supply, and on the afternoon of publication troops of
city men on their way home westward were to be seen with
copies of the paper, eagerly scanning its engravings as
they walked along. Bayley's opening address was little
else than an amplification of the prospectus, couched in
the writer's customary high flown style, only he sought to
hoodwink the public by saying that, "should the pen ever
be led into fallacious argument the pencil must at least be
oracular with the spirit of truth." And this, too, with not
even a single engraving in the opening number derived
from an authentic source !
The principal feature of the second number of the
" Illustrated London News " was the famous Strawberry
Hill sale which was illustrated with views and portraits —
including a characteristic one of the grandiloquent George
Eobins by CrowquUl — and representations of some of the
objects sold. Views were also given of the overland mail
route to India, and Mr WiUiamson, in his " Illustrated
Journalism," points out that Ingram was evidently still
hankering after his ideal police gazette, "there being," he
observes, " a strong taint of criminal horror about the
paper-^a portrait of Daniel Good, the murderer, appearing
in one of the pages — and reports of police cases being not
only copious but frequently accompanied by sketches
by Alfred CrowquUl who had been specially engaged for
the purpose." Good had just been executed for the
Roehampton murder, and the genuineness of the portrait

238 GLANCES BACK
published in the "Illustrated London News" was certified
by a memorandum from the murderer's soUcitor, repro
duced in fac-simile.
The third number dealt mainly with the Derby day,
and the fourth contained a sketch of Oxford's attempt to
shoot the queen, and a ludicrous representation of his
examination before the privy council. This vulgar-look
ing subject forms a striking contrast to Gilbert's equally
fanciful but graceful design of the queen holding a levee.
Some wretched portraits of Muntz, Ferrand, Cobden, and
other political celebrities of the time w^ere given in subse
quent numbers of the paper.
Draughtsmen on wood were far from numerous in the
early days of the " Illustrated London News," and the
more talented among them, like William Harvey, were not
only unaccustomed to a bold and rapid style of drawing,
but they looked with something like disdain upon the
interloper. So few were the designers employed on the
new paper during the first few months of its existence that
they might almost have been told off on the fingers of one
hand. Prominent among them was Henry Anelay, a
protege of Sly's, who may certainly be credited with having
produced in the earlier numbers some of the worst figure
subjects the paper ever published.
The " Illustrated London News " was a success from the
very beginning, although the contrary has been often
asserted, and quite recently by Mr. Joseph Hatton, pro
fessedly on the authority of Mark Lemon who, as he was
engaged at his Wych-street " pub " at the time, could have
known nothing whatever about the matter. According to
this dubious testimony, the Ingram family, after the new
illustrated paper was started, were in the habit of sitting
round the table on Saturday nights indulging in a good
cry over the week's losses, a statement as unfounded as it
is absurd.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 239
The weekly sale of the " Illustrated London News "
was stated in the seventh number to have reached twenty
thousand copies, a great rise having been secured by what was
regarded in those over cautious days as a somewhat venture
some piece of expenditure. Eight or ten thousand copies
of a particular number, wdth engravings of the installation
of a new Archbishop of Canterbury, were sent to all the
Church of England parsons in the kingdom, a bold step,
which was attended by immediate and satisfactory results.
The preface to volume I., penned by Bayley in his
favourite high falutin' style, was a singularly hazy produc
tion, and shows the sort of rubbish which, when he was
obfuscated with brandy and water, he occasionally rattled
off. It claimed that the paper was " conducted with a
view to the promotion of national intelligence, and the
more ennobling principles of moral philosophy (?), pre
senting a new, beautiful, and hitherto untilled field to
the novelist and historian, dedicated to justice (?) and the
good of society, and above all, clasping literature and art
together in the firm embrace of mind ! "
Bayley brought an impecunious fellow-countryman of
his, named Monahan, on to the paper in the capacity of
sub- editor. The pair were always endeavouring to fiy
kites together, but rarely succeeded in their attempt. In
Ingram they fancied they had discovered a plump pigeon
waiting to be plucked. To effect their object Bayley drew
a bill upon Monahan for fifty pounds and, availing himself
of an opportunity when no injudicious adviser was hover
ing at Ingram's elbow, proffered the bill for discount.
Ingram first scanned the face of the document and then
the endorsement, after which, to Bayley's great amaze
ment, he threw the acceptance into the fire. Bayley of
course protested and pretended to be extremely angry,
whUe Ingram quietly taking a five pound note from his
pocket handed it to him, saying, "Here, you can make

240 GLANCES BACK
lots of 'em with this." Bayley's indignation was speedily
mollified by the fiver, and he never tried to palm off
worthless paper on Ingram again.
Before even the first number of the " Illustrated
London News" was published Marriott and Ingram
quarrelled and parted ; and Marriott was again on the
lookout for some fresh capitalist whom he might assist
to ruin over one of the many wild schemes germinating
in his fertUe brain. After taking up, about a year later,
with Henson's aerial steam carriage, which was to have
been steered through space, but in spite of numerous
puffs in the illustrated and other journals speedily col
lapsed and was heard of no more, Marriott succeeded in
hoodwinking the solicitor to the Eastern counties railway,
I think it was, from whom he extracted the requisite
funds to start, first of all, "the Death Warrant," a
lugubrious journal with a skull and crossbones for heading
and a deep mourning border round every page, and then
"the EaUway BeU." Mr. H. Ward, radical M.P. for
Sheffield, one of the few liberal members who denounced
the set made against Sir James Graham for opening
Mazzini's letters, and who subsequently became commis
sioner for the Ionian Islands, was another of Marriott's
pecuniary victims. Having purchased the " Weekly
Chronicle " he was cajoled by Marriott into issuing a series
of expensively engraved steel portraits, as supplements to
it, at a loss of many thousand pounds.
Marriott's final journalistic venture in this country
was " Chat," concerning which Mr. George Augustus Sala,
who was at once its editor, artist, and publisher, can tell
many a good story. When the publication collapsed
Marriott thought it prudent to disappear, leaving the
office fixtures to satisfy the demands of contributors and
others, whose salaries were in arrear. A meeting was
promptly held for the division of the spoil, when one

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 241
creditor satisfied his claim by appropriating the shaky
office table, a second contented himself with the counter,
and a third had to put up wdth two or three ricketty
chairs. The office partition, the shelving, and the gas
fittings were in turn speedily laid claim to, and nothing
whatever seemed left for one timid individual who had
certainly been most backward in pressing his claims.
Suddenly a thought seized him and stooping down he
scraped the dirty fiooring with his pocket knife. " Lead,
by jingo ! " shouted he. " I collar this ; " and he was
delighted to discover, when the broker was called in to
value the lot and clear the place, that this find of his,
when taken up, proved to be worth nearly as much as all
the rest of the office sticks together.
Marriott made his way to California, where, as he had
" nary a cent " of his own, he naturally opened a bank,
and I remember, on the occasion of a flying visit which he
subsequently paid to this country, his proudly exhibiting
to me some of his handsome twenty-dollar notes, which
flimsy securities he managed to exchange with the Cali-
fornian gold-diggers for their solid auriferous nuggets.
Eventually Marriott abandoned banking and reverted to
newspaper schemes, founding the " San Francisco News
Letter," which he conducted up to the time of his death,
a year or two ago. To the last he clung to his aerial
navigation fad, to advance which he had floated a com
pany in the far West, but with his death Aero-Plane
scrip, of not much account before, passed beyond the
realms of stock exchange quotation.

VOL. I.

242 GLANCES BACK

XIII. (1843.)
THE PICTORIAL TIMES — HER MAJESTY's PRINTER — SOME
MEMBERS OE MY STAFF — JOHN BRIGHT — CHAM,
THE CARICATURIST.
Ingram was one of those men who are swayed by the last
person who secures their ear, and as it was not worth my
while to be constantly dancing attendance upon him, I
severed my connection with the "Illustrated London News,"
on receipt of a certain sum in lieu of notice, and early the
following year (1843) I started an opposition paper in con
junction with Mr. Andrew Spottiswoode, the queen's printer.
Mr. Spottiswoode was a tory of the deepest orange hue,
who had married a daughter of Thomas Norton Longman,
the great Paternoster-row publisher. He was a tall
aristocratic-looking individual, with finely chiseUed
features, slightly bald, and whiskered after the Duke of
Cumberland pattern. He was reticent of speech, and a
trifie imperious in manner, and exacted almost obsequious
respect from every one in his employ. He had sat in
Parliament for Colchester until compelled to resign his
seat as the holder of her majesty's patent. This con
tretemps was brought about through his having accepted
the office of either president or treasurer to a political
association, whigh had been formed for furnishing funds
to protestant Irish candidates, and contesting the vaUdity
of the elections of those catholic M.P.s, who formed
O'Connell's famous tail, by petitioning wholesale against

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 243
their return. The aggrieved Irish members and their
radical allies denounced the association as the " Spottis
woode gang," and Smith O'Brien, the subsequent hero of the
Widow Cormack's cabbage garden, made a motion in the
House, which Lytton Bulwer seconded, for the appoint
ment of a select committee on the subject. Sir Francis
Burdett was one of the subscribers to the funds of the
arraigned association, and while admitting what he termed
the follies of his youth, he spoke boldly in the association's
defence, which brought O'ConneU — his former chum at
Crown and Anchor Eeform meetings, but whom he now
stigmatised as the " paid patriot of Ireland " — thundering
down upon him, complaining of having been vilified and
traduced by an " old renegade."
'J) Bi Disraeli made his memorable maiden speech on this
occasion. Having an old score to clear off with O'ConneU,
he rose the instant the latter sat down, and in a rambling
style taunted him upon the many Irish subjects he had
introduced into his " oratorical rhetoric." The liberal
benches responded with laughter and jeers which were
¦continued till Disraeli saw it was useless to persevere any
longer. The newspapers charitably thought that the
rebuff the speaker met wdth was mainly due to his absurd,
theatrical get-up, in a bottle green frock-coat and loud
fancy-pattern pantaloons, an open white waistcoat hung
¦over with glittering chains, and a black stock hiding every
particle of shirt collar. Strange to say, Sir Eobert Peel,
who was at all times exceedingly chary of his applause
in the House, turned round to face the debutant, and
frequently cheered him in stentorian tones. Disraeli,
thus encouraged, persevered for some time but finally
gave way and, as we all know, resumed his seat with the
memorable expression, since become historical : " Though
I sit down now the time will come when you will hear me."
Lord Houghton used to relate that he was sitting

244 GLANCES BACK
beside Disraeli on this occasion, and as he had to go
through the ordeal of making his own maiden speech — he
was then Mr. Monckton Milnes, and M.P. for Pontefract — ;
he sought to cheer the discomfitted orator by responding
in an undertone : " So it wUl, old fellow."
The new illustrated paper was named the "Pictorial
Times," and its literary team comprised the following not
able writers — Douglas Jerrold, leader writer on social topics
only, party politics being altogether ignored ; Thackeray,
art critic and literary reviewer ; Mark Lemon (then editor
of " Punch "), theatrical critic ; Gilbert A'Beckett, con-
tributoi: of humorous column ; Peter Cunningham, anecdotic
commentator on living literary celebrities ; ahd Knight
Hunt (afterwards author of "the Fourth Estate,'' and
editor of the " Daily News "), sub-editor.
While the earlier volumes of " Comic Nurseiy Tales "
were in progress, a pale-looking, nervous youn^' fellow
called several times at Peterborough-court, to inquire after
F. W. N. Bayley. The latter on being informed of the
circumstance seemed by no means anxious for an interview,
and by and by, after the patience of our somewhat frequent
visitor was completely tired out, he explained who he was,
and his object in wishing to see Bayley. It transpired,
from what he told me at the time and subsequently, that
his name was Frederick Knight Hunt, and that after
acting as clerk to a barrister, and doing a little chance
newspaper night work, he had studied medicine with the
view of following it as a profession. While waiting for
patients he started the " Medical Times," in opposition to
Wakley's " Lancet," and on a particular occasion made a
daring attack upon Listen, the eminent surgeon, who he
maintained had recklessly killed one of the patients at
University College hospital by probing an aneurism with
his scalpel, while professing to demonstrate to the assembled
students that the man was suffering from some totally

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 245
different disease. The article was headed " a Field-day in
Gower-street," and excited, I believe, considerable sensa
tion in medical circles at the time.
Either owing to actions for libel brought against the
paper, or pecuniary difficulties of another kind, Hunt was
compelled to give up the " Medical Times," on the strength
of which he had married, and to seek his fortune in the
wilds of Norfolk, where he obtained the appointment of
medical' officer to some poor law union, which allowed him
the liberal salary of from forty to fifty pounds a-year, out
of which he had to keep a horse and gig, and provide
drugs and other medicaments for the pauper patients com
mitted to his charge. A brief experience satisfied him of
the impossibility of his continuing to hold the post on such
starving conditions, and he returned to London and boldly
threw himself into literature.
Knowing no one who could assist him with introduc
tions to either editors or publishers, his prospects were
gloomy enough. He chanced, however, to get acquainted
with Bayley, who, seeing that the young fellow was clever
and had plenty of smart ideas, talked to him, in his accus
tomed big way, of the great infiuence he possessed with
editors and publishers ; and eventually bargained with
Hunt to plant anything the latter might write, on condi
tion that he was to be remunerated for his trouble with
half of the proceeds. In accordance with this arrange
ment, Hunt had handed Bayley some half-dozen articles
which had been published in a magazine belonging to
Colnaghi and Puckle, and duly paid for ; yet Hunt had
never received a sixpence on account of them. He could,
moreover, obtain no reply to letters sent to the various
addresses which Bayley — who was then hiding from bailiffs,
and withheld his actual place of residence from everyone —
had furnished him with.
I knew Bayley's slippery ways, and what little chance

2 46 GLANCES BACK
there was of bringing him to book, still, I promised Hunt
that I would endeavour to make some satisfactory arrange
ment for him, and he left me his address, at the offices of
the Anti-corn-law League in the Strand, where, he told me,
he was then fiUing an upper clerk's post, at a salary of fifty
shillings a-week.^ It is scarcely necessary to say I was
unable to do anything with Bayley, but I had glanced
through the articles in the Colnaghi magazine, which were
all upon current topics, and decided to offer Hunt a post
upon the new paper.
With this object I went to the Anti-corn-law League
offices, at the corner of Duncannon-street, nearly opposite
to where the Charing-cross railway station now is, and
was referred to the upper floor of the building, where
I found a score or so of desks, at which twice as many pens
were vigorously scratching over sheets of foolscap paper.
Hunt came forward in response to my inquiries, and after
a few minutes' conversation, in one of the window recesses,
I engaged him as my sub-editor, at a weekly salary of
three guineas, with the opportunity of earning a couple of
guineas more by writing up to cuts, and supplying occa
sional notices of new books. Hunt was delighted with
the engagement, and arranged to be at his new post at the
stipulated time.
As I had foreseen, he made an excellent sub-editor,
and when I subsequently parted with my share in the
" Pictorial Times," he secured the editorship of the paper,
and held it for a couple of years. A further change in the
proprietorship then taking place (1846), he had to give up
his appointment, and I remember his calling on me, at
Peterborough-court, to inform me of the circumstance, re
minding me at the same time that I had done him a good
1 In a memoir of Knight Hunt, published in " the Athenseum," just after his
death, and reprinted in " John Francis, and the Athenseum," it is stated that Hunt
was secretary to the Loudon Anti-oorn-law League and sub-editor of the " Illustrated
London News." Both assertions are incorrect.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 247
turn three years before, and expressing a hope that, now
he was adrift, I might again be able to assist him.
It chanced that we were just then printing a little book
caUed the " Family Joe Miller," for Mr. W. H. WUls, who
had been brought up as a wood-engraver in my father's
office, and had since drifted into literature, under the wing
of Mrs. Cornwall Baron Wilson, a magazine poetess of the
period, whose patronage he ill-requited in a fashion that
imperilled his liberty, and something like a cloud hung
over him for several years afterwards. Wills next came
into notice from having written a successful play or two,
one of which, on the well-known incident of Dr. Dodds'
conviction for forgery, gave the author, I remember,
the opportunity of introducing a score or so of notable per
sonages of the time, including George IIL, the Earl of
Chesterfield, Dr. Johnson, with Boswell dogging his foot
steps, note-book in hand, Burke, Goldsmith, Sir Joshua
Eeynolds, and even Jonathan Wild and Blueskin. I don't
think Jack Sheppard figured in Wills's dramatis personcB,
the author having considerately drawn the line at Blueskin.
The piece was played at the Surrey, and Vale, I remember,
was great in the principal comic part.
Subsequently, WiUs contributed to " Punch " from its
commencing number, for a year or two ; and he next
obtained the editorship of" Chambers's Journal," and married
the sister of its proprietors. A day or two prior to Hunt's
visit. Wills had confided to me that a new daily news
paper was on the eve of being started, with Mr. Charles
Dickens as editor, and that he had been appointed Mr.
Dickens's secretary. I told Hunt all this, and gave him a
strong letter of recommendation to Wills, which secured
him the post of provincial editor on the new paper. Wills,
as is well known, subsequently became Dickens's sub-editor
on "Household Words" and " AU the Year Eound," and
Lady Burdett-Coutts' almoner.

248 GLANCES BACK
Hunt gradually worked his way upward on the "DaUy
News." When Dickens resigned the editorship and Forster
succeeded him, and Dilke assumed the management and
reduced the price from fivepence to twopence halfpenny,
thereby increasing the circulation sixfold, Hunt had be
come the principal sub-editor. Sometime after Dilke's
retirement, and when the paper on which nearly £200,000
had been lost was in sore financial straits, Hunt proposed
to the solicitor, who, I believe, was also one of the partners
in the concern, to put the " Daily News," then igno
miniously nicknamed the "Daily Snooze," on a paying
footing upon certain conditions. These, which involved
the getting rid of some half-a-dozen drones in the enjoy
ment of berths to the tune of some thousands a year, were
agreed to. In consideration of the extra work thrown
upon the shoulders of the real working members of the
staff, their salaries were slightly raised. Hunt was appointed
editor — this was in 1851 — and the "Daily News" through
these judicious changes secured a new lease of Ufe.
For years previously Hunt's health had been delicate.
The strong nervous energy which he had always exhibited
lacked the requisite physical stamina to sustain it, and
this, coupled with the vitiated atmosphere of a newspaper
office, and late hours at London clubs, rendered him an
easy prey to disease. When, therefore, fever attacked him,
he speedily succumbed, and died before he was forty, after
having occupied his editorial post little more than three
years. As soon as I had arranged with Knight Hunt to sub
edit the new illustrated paper, I put myself in communica
tion with Douglas Jerrold, with a view to his writing the
leading articles, which, as already mentioned, were to be
confined exclusively to social topics. Jerrold at once
accepted my offer, and suggested my engaging Mark
Lemon for the theatres, a step in which I acquiesced.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 249
I then arranged to introduce Jerrold to Mr. Spottiswoode,
and the meeting between the two was rather a curious one.
Jerrold was an aggressive radical with a professed contempt
for titled folks, and no kind of sympathy with the opinions
which her majesty's printer was known to hold. He was
ever ou the look out to attack something or somebody, and
had recently been described by an American tourist as
fumbling his thunderbolts in Fleet-street, watching for an
object at which to level them. Mr. Spottiswoode on the
other hand was an uncompromising tory, a stickler for
church and state, a contemner of the democracy, and of
course a confirmed protectionist ; and if he could have had
his own way, would certainly have transported every
chartist in the kingdom, and not unlikely every anti-corn-
law leaguer as well.
The interview, however, passed off beautifully. As
soon as the formalities of introduction were over, the
radical satirist and the tory place-holder vied with each
other in displaying their urbanity. Jerrold, who was at
once deferential and genial, soon saw an opening for an
inoffensive jest, and duly availed himself of it. Spottis-
woode's habitual austerity at once relaxed ; he laughed
appreciatively, and the conversation drifted into a pleasant
channel; all points of dissidence being scrupulously
avoided, and the interview ending with cordial leave-
takings on either side.
I next saw Mr. Thackeray, an introduction to whom
I procured from Mr. Nickesson, successor to Fraser the
publisher, whose early death was said to have been due to
Grantley Berkeley's brutality some six or seven years
before. On calling at the address given me — a shop in
Jermyn-street, eight or ten doors from Eegent-street, and
within a few doors of the present Museum of Geology —
and knocking at the private entrance, a young lodging-
house slavey in answer to my inquiries bade me follow her

250 GLANCES BACK
upstairs. I did so, to the very top of the house, and after
my card had been handed in, I was asked to enter the
front apartment, where a tall slim individual between thirty
and thirty-five years of age, with a pleasant smUing
countenance and a bridgeless nose, and clad in a dressing
gown of decided Parisian cut, rose from a small table stand
ing close to the near window to receive me. When he stood '
up, the low pitch of the room caused him to look even
taller than he really was, and his actual height was well
over six feet. This then was Michael Angelo Titmarsh,
author ofthe " Yellowplush Papers," "the Great Hoggarty
Diamond," "the Fitzboodle Confessions," and the "Paris
and Irish Sketch Books," the last named of which had
only recently been published. This work, Mr. Thackeray
afterwards told me, was to have come out under the
Titmarshian title of " The Cockney in Ireland," but the
publisher preferring the delightful ambiguity of " Sketch
Book," so ticketted the volume.
The apartment was an exceedingly plainly furnished
bedroom, with common rush seated chairs and painted
French bedstead, and with neither looking-glass nor prints
on the bare, cold, cheerless-looking walls. On the table
from which Mr. Thackeray had risen, a white cloth was
spread, on which was a frugal breakfast tray — a cup of
chocolate and some dry toast — and huddled together at the
other end were writing materials, two or three numbers of
"Eraser's Magazine," and a few slips of manuscript. I
presented Mr. Nickesson's letter and explained the object of
my visit, when Mr. Thackeray at once undertook to write
upon art, to review such books as he might fancy, and to
contribute an occasional article on the opera, more with
reference to its frequenters, he remarked, than from a
critical point of view. So satisfied was he with the three
guineas offered him for a couple of columns weekly, that
he jocularly expressed himself wUling to sign an engage-

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 251
ment for life upon these terms. I can only suppose from
the eager way in which he closed with my proposal that
the prospect of an additional £160 to his income, was at
that moment anything but a matter of indifference. The
humble quarters in which he was installed seemed at any
rate to indicate that for some reason or other strict economy
was just then the order of the day with him.
Thackeray's contributions to the " Pictorial Times " com
prised some letters on Art unions, signed Michael Angelo
Titmarsh, notices of the Academy and the Water-colour
exhibitions ; and reviews of Macaulay's newly collected
" Essays," and Disraeli's " Coningsby." He was very
anxious to review Macaulay at length, and to illustrate his
notice with a number of portraits, views, &c., drawn by
himself, but his suggestion not being adopted, the review
he furnished was both brief and singularly commonplace,
and I question if a single sentence of it came from his pen.
It was altogether different with the " Coningsby " notice,
in every line of which the writer may be recognized. As I
believe this latter article has failed to find a place in any
collection of Thackeray's miscellaneous writings I venture,
at the risk of being described as a literary ghoul, to quote
the principal part of it, more as" a literary curiosity than for
any other reason : —
" If this hook do not hecome popular, what other novel has a chance ?
' Coningsby ' possesses all the happy elements of popularity. It is per
sonal, it is witty, it is sentimental, it is outrageously fashionable, charm
ingly malicious, exquisitely novel, seemingly very deep, but in reality
very easy of comprehension, and admirably absurd ; for you do not only
laugh at the personages whom the author holds up to ridicule, but you
laugh at the author too, whose coxcombries are incessantly amusing.
They are quite unlike the vapid cool coxcombries of an English dandy,
they are picturesque, wild, and outrageous ; and as the bodily D'Israeli
used to he seen some years ago about town arrayed in green velvet
inexpressibles, with a gold stripe down the seams, an ivory cane, and for
what we know a peacock's feather in his hat, D'Israeli, the writer, in
like manner assumes a magnificence never thought of by our rigid

252 GLANCES BACK
northern dandies ; and astonishes by a luxury of conceit which is quite
oriental. He paints his own portrait in this book in the most splendid
fashion ; it is the queerest in the whole queer gallery of likenesses ; he
appears as the greatest philosopher, the greatest poet, the greatest horse
man, the greatest statesman, and the greatest roiie in the world ; with aU
the qualities of Pitt, and Byron, and Burke, and the great Mr. Widdi-
combe of Batty's Amphitheatre. Perhaps one is reminded of the last
named famous individual more than of any other.
" The book has kept the town in talk for a whole week past. The
circulating libraries are dunned for copies ; the volumes are snatched off
the tables at the club reading-rooms, and everybody recognises every
body's portrait. The chief character of the book after the author's own
is that of the late Marquis of Hertford, here figuring under the title of
the Marquis of Monmouth ; his friend. Lord Eskdale, is no other than
Lord Lonsdale ; Lord John Manners appears as Lord Sydney, and the
house of the Duke of Eutland at Belvoir, is recognised by everybody in
the novel under its title of Beaumanior ; above all there is the great
character of Eigby, in which the Eight Honourable John Wilson Joker
is shewn up in such a way as must make him happy in his retirement to
find that all the world is so amused by him.
" The way in which all the newspapers have extracted the passages
relative to Mr. Wilson Joker is quite curious. ' The Chronicle ' began
on Monday; on Wednesday, 'The Times' charitably foUowed; on
Thursday, ' The Post ' gave the self-same extracts ; so that by this time
every newspaper reader in the British Empire has perused the history of
Mr. Eigby, and knows how he writes slashing articles against women for
preference, and how convenient a friend he is to a great man. A better
portrait of a parasite has never been written since Juvenal's days, and we
can fancy that even ages hence people will read this book as a singular
picture of manners and society in our times. . . .
" What person is there, in town or country, from the squire down to
the lady's maid who will not be anxious to peruse a work in which the
secrets of high life are so exposed ? In all the fashionable novels ever
published, there is nothing so piquant or so magnificently genteel. Every
politician too will read it with avidity — the details are so personal.
Whigs and Conservatives are abused with such equal bitterness and
truth, that in consideration of the manner in which his neighbour is
attacked, a man of either party will pardon the onslaught made on his
own friends. . . ."
A few weeks after writing this notice Mr. Thackeray
set out on his tour to Egypt, and his contributions to the

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 253
" Pictorial Times " ceased. It will be remembered that he
subsequently selected " Coningsby " as a subject for parody
under the title of "Codlingsby," which Mr. Anthony TroUope
thought by far the best of the sketches comprised in
"Punch's Prize Novelists."
The stuccoed front of the house in Fleet-street, where
the " Pictorial Times " established itself, was emblazoned
from roof to pavement in gold and colours by Mr. Owen
Jones, and the ornamental heading to the paper was also
designed by him. The principal artist whom I secured for
the news illustrations was Mr. John Gilbert, who during
many months after the paper started, furnished consider
ably more drawings to it than he did to the " Illustrated
London News." One of the early numbers contained some
clever subjects by him of her majesty's drawing-room.
Through Mr. Spottiswoode's infiuence tickets for St.
James's Palace had been secured, enabling one to obtain
a view of what may be termed the fringe of the ceremony :
Mr. Gilbert's imagination, aided by descriptive notes,
skUfuUy supplied the rest. I very well remember the
crush that the debutantes were exposed to on the stair
case, up which the old Duke of Wellington, jostled by
anxious dowagers, slowly tottered ; how stately Lord
Lyndhurst was kept waiting by his purse-bearer, or some
other official who should have attended him almost into
the royal presence ; and how poor Sir Felix Booth, the
wealthy gin-spinner, who had spent £20,000 in fitting out
an Arctic expedition, and was at the time I am speaking
of under a social cloud, had a wide berth given him by
friends and foes alike.
A young artist named Charles Martin contributed a
series of full-length portraits of literary notabilities to the
new paper, something in the style of the Maclise portraits
in "Fraser," but always drawn at sittings given for the
purpose. Among others who sat were Dickens, Harrison

254 GLANCES BACK
Ainsworth, Disraeli, Talfourd, Lady Blessington, &c.
Thackeray was at this time not sufficiently known to
the general public for his portrait to figure in a popular
gallery. Besides, he was a contributor to the paper, and
as the benevolent Yankee institution of log-rolling was
then unknown, publishing his portrait would have been
regarded as puffing him, in spite of the great "Fraser"
example to have kept one in countenance.
Peter Cunningham, young Martin's brother-in-law,
then a clerk in the Audit office, and busily occupied with
outside literary work, much of which was done in the
customary fashion in the public time, wrote the short
sketchy articles that accompanied the portraits.
Charles Martin was the son of John Martin, the once
celebrated painter of sombre religious pictures, in which
the architecture was invariably of titanic proportions, and
the landscapes weirdly unreal No flight was too lofty for
his ambitious fancy. He revelled in such tremendous
subjects as made ordinary artists pause — like the Last
Judgment, the Deluge, the ominous Handwriting on the
Wall, Satan enthroned, and Adam and Eve driven from
Paradise ; and so highly was he thought of outside the
walls of the Academy that Sir Edward Bulwer extolled
him as a more original genius than Michael Angelo. Some
years before he distinguished himself, his lunatic brother
Jonathan had secured a painful notoriety by setting fire to
York Minster. The painter Martin, it should be remem
bered, was the first to suggest the embankment of the
Thames, and it was a part of his scheme that the river
front should be lined along its entire length by a range
of noble public buildings, offering a magnificent coup d'ceil
unmatched in any city in the world. A grand idea such
as this might probably have had a chance of realisation in
France, but in England it of course fell on the deafest
of long ears.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 255
John Martin was fond of getting clever people of very
opposite tastes at his weekly evening receptions in St.
Martin's-lane, and it was at one of these that an unknown
young scientist surprised and amused the company by
causing a doll to dance on a grand piano, independent of
mechanical aid. On being eagerly questioned as to how
the feat was accomplished, his reply that it was per
formed by lightning was received with a shout of
derisive laughter. This young man subsequently achieved
fame as the inventor of the electric telegraph, and became
celebrated as Sir Charles Wheatstone.
Charles Martin was a young fellow about town who at
all times got himself up in the very pink of fashion. He
belonged to that tribe of fortunate, lavender-kidded young
men, who saunter successfully and pleasantly through life
tiU confronted by the spectre of grim middle age, when
their carefuUy nurtured hair begins to grizzle and " thin
at the top," and their waists need lacing in ; and who
judiciously taking the hint- turn their attention in the
direction of so-called domestic felicity. One striking
characteristic of Martin _^?s was his pertinacity in pushing
his way into upper-class society, then far more difficult of
accomplishment than in the present less exclusive days.
Young Martin used to tell an amusing story of his
efforts to extract some money due to him from an insolvent
young nobleman — heir to an impoverished dukedom, and
engaged to be married to the eldest daughter of a wealthy
earl, — for whom he had designed a couple of fancy
costumes to be worn by him and his fiancee at a bal
costume at Buckingham Palace. The moderate sum of
three guineas charged for the two designs was applied
for unsuccessfully nearly a score of times, and then the
artist gave up the matter as a bad job. A few months
later, however, seeing from the " Morning Post " that his
impecunious patron was about " to lead to the hymeneal

256 GLANCES BACK
altar the beautiful and accomplished Lady Vaseline, eldest
daughter of the wealthy Earl of Shuttlecock," he deter
mined on making a new effort to obtain payment of his
little account.
He called as usual at the paternal residence, and was
surprised to find four tall, powdered footmen in magnificent
liveries stationed in the usually deserted hall. Fully
expecting to be rebuffed for his impertinence, he timidly
intimated to the foremost fiunkey the object of his visit,
and to his great gratification was immediately ushered into
a small ante-room where a mild-looking gentleman
in black was deeply immersed in papers and accounts.
On learning Martin's name and business he referred
to a list at once and handed him the amount of his
claim. When our artist on retiring ran the gauntlet of the
four tall, powdered footmen, one of them, noting the
gratified expression of his countenance, advanced towards
him and familiarly observed : " Well, you didn't have
much trouble over your little affair."
" Trouble ! " rejoined Martin, " I don't know about
that ; it 's the twentieth time I have had to call."
" Ah ! but you 've got it at last," insinuated fiunkey
No. 2.
" Yes, I have," responded Martin.
" Then what are you going to stand ? " promptly
enquired flunkey No. 3.
This was a poser. Such magnificent looking fellows as
these the artist thought would scorn a,nything but gold,
and half a sovereign apiece would be more than half
of what he had received. Even a sovereign between them
would be a serious tax, and yet he fancied they might
consider this rather shabby ; so he apologetically observed,
" Stand ! what can a fellow stand out of three guineas 1 "
The four tall footmen looked at Martin in turn, and

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 257
then at each other ; and presently flunkey No. 4 mildly
suggested, " Well, I suppose you can manage a ' bob '
between the four of us ! "
I soon afterwards completely lost sight of young
Martin, but with Martin's brother-in-law, Peter Cunning
ham, I kept up an acquaintance till within a year or two
of his death. Peter's career had a melancholy ending.
At the time I first knew him he was a hard-working
young enthusiast, hunting after facts not merely for his
London handbook but his contemplated " Story of
Nell Gwynn," for lives of the poets and the doings of
Horace Walpole and his friends. He was much given
to poring over musty parish registers, and was delighted
beyond measure when he unearthed some trivial truth of
a historical, literary, or antiquarian character, even though
it corrected merely an unimportant date, or set right the
number of a house in some street where an undistinguished
individual was supposed to have once lived. It is on his
industry in this direction that Cunningham's literary repu
tation mainly rests. His researches and extensive desul
tory reading had only one object in view, the garnering of
facts, too often of no very great significance. Although a
most wretched versifyer himself, and possessing little or no ,
poetic taste, the slightest circumstance about any one of the
poets figuring in Johnson's Lives was to Cunningham a
matter of the profoundest interest. Every new discovery
he made was laudably noted with its authority in a common
place book, and transferred thence to a ledger under its
proper head, only to be written off after it had been used
up in print. I recollect Peter telling me that on his
explaining his system to John Wilson Croker, this some
what inaccurate editor candidly admitted that if he had
only adopted a similar plan he would have saved himself
any amount of useless labour and avoided shoals of
unpardonable blunders.
VOL. I. R

258 GLANCES BACK
Cunningham resided at Kensington, and regarded it as
one of the pleasures of life to be so situated as to have
Piccadilly on the one hand and Eichmond on the other.
In those days he was often to be met at Christie's, on the
look-out for some bargain in the shape of a miniature or
other portrait of Nell Gwynn, Pepys, the " fantastical and
original-brained Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle," and
similar out-of-the-way personages. Occasionally, on early
summer mornings, I came across him in company with
young Mr. John Murray at Searle's, the Sandgate boat
builder's, and with a friend raced the pair up to Don
Saltero's where, after resting and refreshing, we rowed
back again in good time for the business of the day.
There was a certain bonhomie about Peter, which his
pleasant open countenance and portly figure helped to
emphasize, and which, coupled with the store of anecdotes
he had at command, secured him a ready entrance to
society, and gained him many friends among the literary
men and wits of the time ; but unfortunately with the
damaging result that the fascinations of good fellowship
turned him aside from his favourite pursuits ; and, as Mr.
Forster euphemistically phrases it, " all the deeper
purposes of his life were sacrificed to the present tempt
ations of a festive hour." Eegardless where his steps were
tending Peter "gaed his ain gait," and eventually this ardent
enthusiast in literary and antiquarian research, this pains
taking garnerer of multifarious minute facts, and pleasant
gossiper of cultivated taste, sank so low that his nights
were commonly spent in disreputable "pubs," and low
coffee houses, where he snatched a few hours unquiet sleep.
Finally Peter retired to St. Albans, and with two
congenial spirits, Frederick Dickens and Wiltshire Austin,
made the acquaintance of Charles Dickens's famous hermit,
whom they used periodically to visit at his cinder-bestrewn
den, mainly to tipple fiery sherry and bitters, of which the

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 259
nineteenth century recluse seemed to possess a never-
faUing supply. Finding the hermit so generous with his
liquor they thought he might be equaUy liberal with his
•cash — it was known that he had a banking account, and
that the publican who sent him his periodic supplies cashed
his cheques — so one day they tried to obtain a loan from
him on the strength of their joint note of hand. Strange
to say, although our anchorite friend had been almost iso
lated from mankind for many years, he had still sufficient
worldly wisdom to disapprove of the proffered security,
and the artfulness to assure his impecunious acquaintaitces
that it was solely shortness of the " ready " which prevented
him from placing his banking balance at their service.
Those were merry times had it not been for certain
¦gloomy days when, racked with sharp twinges of gout, these
three unhappy mortals were accustomed to hobble with the
aid of stout walking sticks from one St. Albans " public "
to another, each bitterly complaining of his individual
aUments at every stej) he took, but invariably meeting
with no kind of sympathy from his similarly afflicted
fellows. It is not surprising that these poor victims of
convivial indulgence found the bracing air of Hertfordshire
too keen for their broken constitutions, and that this trio
of clever men dropped off one after the other, sincerely
pitied and regretted by shoals of friends, who had known
them in happier days and cordially liked them for their
genial natures.
In the summer of 1843 Mr. John Bright, who had risen
rapidly into celebrity through his eloquent speeches at
anti-corn-law meetings, was first elected to Parliament, as
member for the city of Durham. On my applying to him
for his portrait, for publication in the " Pictorial Times,"
he agreed to pay a visit to M. Claudet, and a small full-
length daguerreotype portrait was the result. A proof of
the engraving was sent to Mr. Bright before publication,

260 GLANCES BACK
and the same evening, as I was about to leave the office,
the new member for Durham presented himself in quaker
garb, and producing the proof, proceeded to explain to me
that there was something about the expression of the
mouth which he did not quite like, and much wished to
have altered before the engraving was printed off.
It chanced that the Ulustrated side of the newspaper
sheet went to machine that evening, and it was, conse
quently, necessary to make the alteration at once. Send
ing, therefore, for the woodcut and a few engravdng tools,
I proceeded to alter the mouth in accordance with Mr.
Bright's suggestions, while the popular tribune stood erect
before me, and gave to his lips that pliant expression which
he thought most becoming. Although the face in the
woodcut was no bigger than one's finger-nail, I had to
make repeated attempts before I succeeded in satisfying
the new M.P., whose childish vanity amused me immensely.
Fifteen years afterwards, when the agitation against the
paper duty was in full swdng, I used to see a good deal of
John Bright. I recognised the same old vanity about him,
though his admirers I daresay will demur to this assertion ;
and a complacent assumption of the wisdom of the serpent
on almost all subjects, regardless of his occasional imperfect
acquaintance with them. I was struck, moreover, by a
certain pomposity of manner, which I thought somewhat
strange in a quaker. At this date, it should be remembered
John Bright's former fierce opponents had all taken to
belauding him, and thereby confirmed him in the high esti
mate which he had evidently formed of his own sagacity.
M. de Noe, the French caricaturist Cham, was in
London, for a short time, during the autumn of 1843,.
when I became temporarily intimate with him. The queen
and Prince Albert had been recently visiting the French
royal family at Eu, and the incident formed the subject of
some humorous verse in a forthcoming volume of the

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 261
"Comic Album." This Cham illustrated with some designs
that were more than usually grotesque. The volume was
subsequently reviewed in the " Pictorial Times," when
several of Cham's illustrations were thoughtlessly selected
to accompany the notice. As they exhibited the queen
and the prince in the reverse of a favourable light, con
siderable indignation was evoked in official quarters, and,
I am sorry to say, got her majesty's printer, whose connec
tion with the paper w^as well known, into temporary
serious trouble. It was on the occasion of this Eu visit
that the lord chamberlain rigidly struck out the name of
every artist from the list of proposed invites, on the ground
that birth and rank, as well as mere talent, were necessary
qualifications to render their possessor a fit subject for pre
sentation to the British queen.
Cham was great at improvised caricature, and one day,
when he was dining with us, a remarkably tall young
Russian, who was of the party, challenged him to a display
of his powers. Cham at once dashed off a sketch of a
Russian bear perched on the top of a very tall pole, and
succeeded in imparting to Bruin's countenance a speaking
hkeness to the Tartar features of our Eussian friend.
Cham was anxious to familiarize himself with London
scenes, and among other places that we took him to, were
several Fleet-street chop houses, the monotonous menus at
which suggested to him several amusing caricatures.
He was an exceedingly rapid draughtsman, and evi
dently did not care two straws about depicting either
minute, or even broad, shades of character. He had a few
stock types which, with him, served every purpose. On
one occasion, I remember Mark Lemon sent him a large
parcel of boxwood for some drawings he was to make for
" Punch," and was amazed to receive it back the following
morning, with every block completely covered, and a
memorandum from the artist asking for " more woods."

262 GLANCES BACK

XIV.
(1843-46.)
THE CHEVALIER WIKOFF AND HIS CAPTURE OF AN HEIRESS
 THE T A HIT AN DILEMMA — TOM THUMB AND HAYDON THE
PAINTER — jerrold's SUCCESS WITH THE DEMOCRACY —
MY CHANCERY EXPERIENCE — FORGERIES OF ROUBLE NOTES.
A TALL, over-dressed American, whose voice had a more
unpleasant nasal twang than the ordinary yankee drawl,
called upon me one day (in 1843) at the " Pictorial Times "
office, with a letter of introduction. His name was Wikofi",
and he had acquired, I remembered, some little notoriety
by acting as escort to Fanny EUsler, a protegee of his friend
Mrs. Grote, when she visited the United States some few
years before. Subsequently, he gave his own version in
" Eraser's Magazine " of his ambiguous relations with the
celebrated danseuse, whose money he considerately took
care of, but was compelled eventually, by legal process, to
refund. Mrs. Grote was wife of the banker M.P., noted
at the time for his annual motion in favour of the ballot,
and afterwards as the historian of Greece. Wikoff had
picked up a travelling acquaintance with the lady, which
his unbounded assurance succeeded in converting into a
kind of friendship. His business with me related to an
illustrated paper which he proposed starting in the United
States, and he was anxious to be furnished with any prac
tical information that might be useful to him.
This I cheerfully gave him, and as he wished to secure
an able draughtsman and a wood-engraver to take charge

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 263
of the establishment he contemplated forming in New
York, I recommended to him Mr. George Thomas, a clever
young artist, and elder brother of Mr. W. L. Thomas, now
manager of " the Graphic," and Mr. Harrison, a competent
wood-engraver. Wikoff engaged them, and the paper was
started, but not continued long enough to give it a fair
chance of success. After Wikoff had left England, I was
rather amused to hear, from the friend who had sent him
to me, that he had been profuse in his thanks, for he had
got all he wanted he said, and, in fact, had " sucked my
brains as clean as an orange."
Wikoff paid subsequent visits to England, and by
sheer impudence, aided by the countenance of Mrs. Grote,
he forced his way into tolerably good society. This was
rather surprising, as he was the reverse of a judicious
braggart, for he talked in the very tallest yankee style,
and pretended to be on familiar terms with every
politician of note in his own country, and to know half
the statesmen of Europe intimately. He spoke, too, of
coming forward as a candidate at the next presidential
election, not only as though it was a settled affair, but as
if he were certain of success. Some business transactions
subsequently took place between us which induced me to
ask him for a commercial reference, whereupon he gave
the house of Baring brothers. The firm testified, without
hesitation, to his financial means, but when the day for
payment arrived Wikoff returned the draft without a
word of explanation.
At that time a person about to leave this country was
liable to prompt arrest for any debts he owed, and the
defaulting Wikoff was nabbed at Long's hotel as, with all
his luggage packed up, he was preparing to start for Liver
pool. He obtained his release on putting in bail, but an
unscrupulous solicitor whom he employed delayed the
settlement of the claim until considerable time had elapsed

264 GLANCES BACK
and a heavy bill of costs had been incurred, which was,
however, finally recovered from Wikoff by the same
summary style of process, on the occasion of a subsequent
visit which he paid to this country.
From the foregoing circumstances I had formed no
very favourable opinion of the Chevalier Wikoff as he
dubbed himself on his visiting cards, and I was not at all
surprised, several years later (1848), to hear that, by means
of introductions obtained by chicanery and bounce, he had
secured an interview with Lord Palmerston, then secretary
for foreign affairs, and had so far imposed upon him as to
receive an invitation to spend a week at Broadlands
during the parliamentary recess. Wikoff chimed in so
completely with Palmerston's views as to the necessity of
maintaining peace between England, France, and the
United States ; and talked so glibly of his intimacy with
Girardin and other notable French journalists, and of the
influence he was in a position to exercise over the New
York press that Palmerston was taken in, and engaged
him on his own terms (£500 a-year) to go to Paris with
the view of moderating the violent language which the
French newspapers constantly employed with regard to
perfide Albion.
After a few months' trial Palmerston found out how
insignificant the performances of the chevalier were in
comparison with his big promises, and intimated to him,
through the phlegmatic under-secretary at the foreign
office, that his services would not be required after the
conclusion of his year's engagement. Wikoff, however,
managed to secure a clear twelvemonth's notice, and at
the expiration of this time endeavoured, but unsuccess
fully, to obtain a handsome gratuity on the plea of the
great pecuniary sacrifices the Paris mission had entailed
on him. Wikoff on returning to London chanced to hear of the

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 265
recent death of the uncle and aunt of a lady named
Gamble, with whom he had had some kind of travelling
acquaintance many years before ; and what was of far
more interest to him, he discovered, through one of the
partners in Baring's house, that she had succeeded to a
large fortune. He thereupon renewed the acquaintance,
and obtained permission to visit the wealthy damsel at
Bournemouth. There, after a few days' intercourse, he
pretended to be greatly smitten by her innocent ways and
virgin charms — Miss Gamble was then a middle-aged
spinster turned forty — and made proposals of marriage to
her, which were, how^ever promptly rejected.
Nothing daunted, Wikoff followed the cruel fair one
about Europe, pestering her with his attentions, and
pressing his suit, until at last his perseverance was so far
rewarded that the lady promised to consult her friends in
respect to the marriage which he was always pressing her
to consent to. The friends who were appealed to,
Mr. Bates of Barings' among the number, came to the
conclusion that any such marriage was altogether unadvis-
able, and that the Chevalier Wikoff was certainly not
a proper match for the demoiselle Gamble. Their decision
was communicated to this persistent suitor, but he was
not to be shaken off, and forced himself into the lady's
presence, when, as she herself said at a trial to which
I shall presently refer, "it was the old song over again —
undying love and a speedy marriage."
Subsequently, Wikoff chased Miss Gamble to Turin,
and on her refusing him an interview, he followed her
to Genoa, where, by the written promise of a bribe of
£500, he secured her courier, one Vannoud, as an ally.
Wikoff then hired rooms in a house where the Eussian
consul had his office, and engaged a man-servant recom
mended by Vannoud. Everything being now in readiness
he instructed Vannoud to inform Miss Gamble that her

266 GLANCES BACK
passport was lost, and that it was necessary for her to
accompany him to the intendant of police to obtain a new
one. This the courier did, but instead of going with
Miss Gamble to the police office, he took her and her
lady-companion to the house where Wikoff was installed.
Here the servant, acting on previous instructions, showed
Miss Gamble into a saloon, while the courier, by means of
some specious excuse, induced the companion to return to
their hotel. All this happened on November 15, 1851.
Wikoff now entered the saloon, and at the sight of
him Miss Gamble instantly screamed out, whereupon he
placed his hand over her mouth and commenced to threaten
her, telling her that he was surrounded by persons in his
pay, and had had her brought where she was to force her
to marry him ; his intention being, he said, to keep her
there all night and get a clergyman to perform the cere
mony in the morning. He threatened if she made any
resistance to have her carried by force on board a ship,
and conveyed to the Archipelago. In the meantime he
insisted on her writing out and signing a promise to marry
him, or to forfeit half of her fortune should she fail to do so.
This little piece of business having been transacted to
the chevalier's satisfaction, he sent the servant out for
a dinner which the domestic considered could be most
conveniently fetched in Miss Gamble's carriage. On its
being served, the imprisoned damsel was with difficulty
prevailed upon to swallow a few spoonsful of soup and a
mouthful of bread. The servant stated at the trial that
during the repast he was offered a thousand francs by
Miss Gamble if he would convey her back to her hotel,
but Wikoff outbid this offer and promised him two thousand
as soon as the marriage was over.
A message was next sent to Miss Gamble's companion
to the effect that the lady intended sleeping out, and
wished her night things to be brought to her. Her maid

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 267
accordingly hastened with them, and Miss Gamble hearing
her voice in an adjoining room, rushed out to join her. On
mistress and maid demanding to be allowed to go, a violent
scene ensued. Wikoff gallantly threatened his intended
bride with a pistol, whereupon she seized the fire shovel
and dashed it through the window into the street below.
Then writing on a card an offer of a thousand francs to
any one who would inform the police of her detention, she
threw this after the shovel, and subsequently tried to set
fire to the window-curtains, hoping by this means to raise
an alarm which might lead to her rescue.
When calm was restored, Wikoff pretended that some
mysterious personage on the premises would not permit
him to let Miss Gamble and her maid leave; but eventually,
at three o'clock in the morning he conducted them to an
hotel close by, where they remained for a few hours — until,
in fact, they could return to their own hotel without excit
ing unpleasant remarks.
The Genoese police having heard of Wikoff's rascally
proceedings, at once arrested him and his accomplices ; and
in due course the culprits were put upon their trial before
the High Court of Genoa, when the foregoing facts came
out in evidence. The servant further stated that he had
been asked by Vannoud to have a clergyman in readiness,
because, as he told him, according to the English law, any
lady who remained in company with a gentleman during
a single night was obliged to marry him next morning 1
Towards the close of the proceedings, after Wikoff had
made several of his many false statements, Miss Gamble
laid her hand upon the Testament, and exclaimed that she
swore before God he was " a liar, a calumniator, and a
coward." Nothing that Wikoff's counsel could urge regard
ing the pretended high position in society which his client
occupied, exercised any infiuence on the judgment of the
court. The document which Miss Gamble had been com-

268 GLANCES BACK
pelled to sign was pronounced to be of no effect ; Wikoff
and the courier were both sentenced to fifteen months'
imprisonment and to the costs of the proceedings ; while
the servant, owing to the insignificant part he had played,
got off scot free.
The affair was noised all over Europe at the time, an
account of the trial appearing in all the newspapers;
nevertheless, when Wikoff obtained his liberty early in
1853, he hastened to Paris, and, in spite of the wide pub
licity given to the outrage he had committed, and the
punishment he had met with, he intrigued, though unsuc
cessfully, to secure a reception at the Tuileries. His
character, however, was altogether too shady even for
the shady set at the new imperial court. Disappointed
at his failure he proceeded to London, and set male and
female emissaries at work to make him appear less black
than the world had chosen to paint him, and above all, to
try and induce the wealthy spinster to compensate him for
the loss of her hand and fortune ! Wikoff, moreover,
sought to put himself right with his old acquaintances
by publishing a garbled narrative of his intercourse with
the lady and his abduction of her, under the title of
','My courtship and its consequences," and he had the
assurance to call on me while I was editing a London
newspaper of large circulation, to ask me to review his
book, and place his dastardly conduct in a favourable light
before the English public.
In the spring of 1844 I married and went to reside at
Kensington. The occasional leisure days which I managed
to secure from my newspaper and other duties were spent
in roaming about Kent, always keeping, however, within a
few miles of the Thames. The result of these rambles was
a small illustrated volume ; and subsequently I commenced
collecting materials for a similar work relating to some of
the picturesque old houses abounding in this beautiful

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 269
county, visiting by invitation the Earl of Eomney at Mote
Park, and finding him especially gracious in taking no end
of pains to identify the more interesting historical portraits
in his possession ; also Sir Edmund Filmer at East Sutton
Place, and Mr. C. Wykeham Martin at Leeds Castle.
I had the advantage of examining many interesting docu
ments preserved in the muniment rooms at these places,
and roamed at my leisure through their charming parks,
the silent woods, the luxuriant hop-gardens, and the sweet-
smelling country lanes, where —
" Straight trees in every place
Their thick tops interlace.
And pendant branches trail their foliage fine.''
Much of the contemplated work was written ; neverthe
less more pressing avocations interfered with its comple
tion, and the volume was finally relegated to that long list
of carefully planned books which are destined never to be
perfected. 1 remember during these Kentish rambles that when
1 was returning to Maidstone along the banks of the river
Medway, about ten o'clock on a moonlight night, a couple
of bargees darted out in advance of me from a small plant
ation on some rising ground on my left, intending to knock
me down, and then no doubt to rob me, and pitch me into
the swollen river. A blow aimed with a hedge-stake missed
me, but in avoiding it I stumbled and fell. I was, how
ever, instantly on my legs again, and scuttling along at
my topmost speed. The different properties skirting the
river were divided at this part, and pedestrians along the
bank had to pass through a succession of swing-gates
several hundred yards apart. The instant I had passed
through one, I heard it swinging behind me for a few
seconds in the dead stiUness of the night, and then the
sound ceased, soon however to commence again, accom
panied by loud oaths and the heavy tread of the bargees

270 GLANCES BACK
following at my heels. I ran, I should think, nearly a
couple of miles, catching sound at intervals of the clatter
ing gates and the tramp of my pursuers, before the noise
ceased and I was satisfied that the bargees had given up
the chase. After this experience I provided myself with a
pair of pocket pistols — it was before the era of revolvers —
which I always carried with me when my excursions were
likely to extend after nightfall, but although on several
occasions I was out very late in the loneliest parts, and
met gangs of noisy navvies, and evil-looking tramps, I
never found myself in the same dangerous position again.
Shortly after the above-mentioned incident, one even
ing towards the close of the autumn, I chanced to be
belated at Down, an isolated Kentish village — since
rendered famous by Charles Darwin making it his home —
and secured quarters at its little inn for the night. It
was on a Saturday, I remember, and shortly after dusk
the neighbouring farm labourers began to assemble there,
and to my great surprise trolled out, not the " British
bayoneteers," or " It 's my delight on a shiny night," or
other songs in praise of poaching, such as were current
among the Kentish hinds at that epoch, but genuine old
ballads about doughty knights and ladies fair, (including
one telling of Patient Griselda's tribulations), which had
most likely been sung by their forefathers with but little
variation for a couple of centuries.
In the spring of 1844 there was great excitement over
the news of Consul Pritchard's expulsion from Tahiti, an
event which nearly brought about a war between England
and France. A few days after " the Times " had published
a long letter from Tahiti on the subject, signed "a British
naval officer," (who, I believe, was none other than
Pritchard himself), my Whitstable friend — the same who
had volunteered to land bookbinders' cloth in France —
called on me one morning to tell me that he had met at

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 271
the docks the day before the master of a whaler recently
returned from the south seas, which had made a remarkably
quick passage and brought fourteen days' later news from
Tahiti than any that had reached this country. As I was
connected with newspapers, he thought I might like to
know of this, and he volunteered to take me to see the
whaling skipper if I cared to hear what he had to say.
I at once accepted his offer, and we hurried in a cab to the
docks, where I learned from the master of the " Favourite,"
the name of the whaler in question, that there had been a
skirmish between the French and the Tahitans a few days
before he sailed, and that other matters of less importance
had occurred on the island.
I made a note of all I could extract from him, and
promptly saw Mr. W. F. Delane, manager of " the Times,"
who at first smiled incredulously when I told him that I
was in possession of fourteen days' later intelligence from
Tahiti than any that the paper had published, but eventu
ally he arranged with me that I should supply my informa
tion exclusively to " the Times " within the next hour or
two, and call the following day.
Having despatched the article as promised, I w^ent
home to Kensington, and on arriving in town next
morning was surprised to hear that some one from "the
Times " had knocked up the people at my office during the
night, and on being admitted to my room had rummaged
among the papers on my table, and minutely examined the
contents of the waste paper basket. The article printed
in leaded type on one of the opening pages of " the Times "
made about a-third of a column, and almost side by side
with it was an announcement of the queen having that
morning given birth to another prince (Alfred) at Windsor.
When I called on Mr. Delane he told me they had had
a good deal of trouble about the article. " You didn't
mention," said he, "what day the whaler reached this

272 GLANCES BACK
country, but simply said 'lately arrived.' You also stated
that she brought despatches for the government, and as we
couldn't find any fuller information on these points in your
rough notes which we sent after, we had to knock some
one up at the Admiralty and make inquiries." I explained
that the whaler had already been two or three days in the
docks before I heard of its arrival, and that in an affair
which seemed likely to lead to a war between England and
France, it would never have done to publish the fact of the
ship having been here several days in possession of impor
tant news without " the Times " knowing anything about
it. Mr. Delane readily admitted this, and then suggested
writing me a cheque for fifteen guineas, saying that, if this
did not satisfy me, he would make it twenty. I thought
myself, however, sufficiently well paid with the sum he
originally offered me, which was at the rate of some five
or six shillings a line.
This year (1844) a party of Ojibbeway Indians came to
England to be made a show of, and Mr. Eankin, their entre
preneur invited me to a private supper with half-a-dozen
ofthe "braves." They were magnificently got up for the
occasion in all their war paint, and under the influence of
the fire-water which they imbibed in considerable quanti
ties, and which, in no form, seemed to come amiss to them,
they grew unpleasantly excitable and flourished the table
knives like any Indian juggler, causing one to fancy that
in some absent-minded moment they might take it into
their heads to tomahawk and scalp the "pale faces"
present, and dance a war dance over their bleeding corpses.
Happily, however, overpowered by the iced champagne
and more potent fluids they dropped off one after another
into a stertorous sleep.
A couple of years later, when I was occupied one
morning sketching several of the state rooms at St.
James's Palace, for some engravings of a forthcoming levee.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 273
Showman Barnum and General Tom Thumb, who were
being taken over the state apartments, entered the room
where I was engaged. At that time there had been no
exhibition in this country of the conceited little dwarf,
about whom, however, any number of newspaper para
graphs calculated to excite general curiosity had appeared.
Barnum was judiciously waiting for a summons from
royalty before introducing his prodigy to the public, and
was showing him a few special London sights in the mean
time. Tom Thumb's arrival in England having been so well
trumpeted about, as soon as it became known that he was
within the palace precincts, several ancient dames occupy
ing apartments there hurried to obtain a view of him, when
their surprise and admiration of course knew no bounds.
One of these ladies, I remember, was so enraptured with
the young cub that she took him up in her arms, and seat
ing herself on an adjacent couch commenced dandling him
on her knee, as though he were a baby to be fondled.
This was more than the pigmy in undress general's uniform
thought it prudent to stand, and he showed himself highly
indignant, kicking and struggling violently to free himself.
Although Tom Thumb was then only a mere child, it was
Barnum's game to pretend that he was very much older,
and the young monkey was carefully taught to resent any
approach to that feminine fondling which interesting
children are ordinarily pestered with.
Shortly before the above incident I became acquainted
with Haydon, the painter, through a criticism in the" Pic
torial Times " on his cartoon " The Curse." Writing to me
on the subject, Haydon said : " After the abuse and sneers
and contempt, which were so unjustly heaped upon the
cartoon last season, you may tell the writer of the notice
that 'it drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek,' when the
bitterest abuse could not have moved them." The decora-
VOL. I. s

274 GLANCES BACK
tion of the parliament palace with frescoes was then under
consideration, and Haydon, who as far back as 1812, had
propounded a scheme in regard to the old houses, felt
deeply hurt at the way his claims were being ignored by
those in authority. " There exists," he wrote, " a secret
determination to lower me before the decoration is decided
upon, that I may then be passed over without surprise.
When a man gets a principle acknowledged, he is expected
to die and make room for others to carry it out. To live
and see it acted upon by those who are altogether strange
to it, is to him insufferable ; while the idea of entrusting
him with the execution of his own conception is too shock
ing to be entertained for one moment."
Haydon furnished a notable example of the truth of the
saying, that actors are not the only artists who are eaten
up with vanity. No one had a greater contempt, both for
the painter and his works than Macaulay, and the savage
onslaught he penned on Haydon, after reading his Life and
Journal was not entirely undeserved.
" Haydon,'' remarked he, "had all the morbid peculiarities, which are
supposed by fools to belong to intellectual superiority — eccentricity,
jealousy, caprice, infinite disdain for other men, and yet he was as poor
commonplace a creature as any in the world. . . . Whether you struck
him or stroked him, starved him or fed him, he snapped at your hand in
just the same way. He would beg you in piteous accents to buy an acre
and a half of canvas that he had spoiled. Some good natured lord asks
the price, Haydon demands a hundred guineas. His lordship gives the
money out of mere charity, and is rewarded by some such entry as this
in Haydon's journal: 'A hundred guineas and for such a work! I
expected that for very shame he would have made it a thousand. But
he is a mean, sordid wretch.' In the meantime the purchaser is looking
out for the most retired spot in his house to hide the huge daub he has
bought out of mere compassion.''
Haydon opened an exhibition of some few of his more
important works — including the banishment of Aristides,
and Nero playing on his lyre while Eome was burning-^at
the Egyptian Hall, the same building where Tom Thumb,

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 275
then become a London celebrity, was installed. In his
diary, Haydon alludes to the half dozen solitary visitors, of
whom I chanced to be one, who looked in upon him on his
opening day. We all know how bitterly the disappointed
painter complained of the public passing his exhibition
scornfully by while rushing by thousands to see Tom
Thumb. " They push, they fight, they scream, they faint,
they cry 'help,' and 'murder.' They see my bills, my
boards, my caravans, and don't read them. Their eyes are
open but their sense is shut. It is an insanity, a rabies, a
madness, a furor, a dream." A few days afterwards he
records that " Tom Thumb had twelve thousand people
last week, Benjamin Eobert Haydon, one hundred and
thirty-two and a half — the half a little girl." Two months
later (June, 1846) the dead body of this unfortunate apostle
of high art, this enthusiast of great aims and sorry perform
ances, was found lying in a pool of blood in his painting-
room, in front of a large unfinished picture of Alfred the
Great and the first British jury.
George Cruikshank seized on the incident of the ill-
fated artist and the fortunate dwarf for the forthcoming
" Comic Almanack," and in an etching entitled " Born a
genius," he depicted a garret wdth a starving artist crouch
ing despairingly before his unfinished work. In a second
etching inscribed " Born a dwarf," the scene is a magnificent
drawing-room with an over-dressed pigmy reclining on a
luxurious couch and lazily toying with a jewel, while bags
of money lie at his feet and all the elements of prosperity
and plenty surround him.
Singularly enough a year or two afterwards Cruikshank
himself had to put up with much the same neglect from a
•capricious public as fell to poor Haydon's lot. When, as
Thackeray puts it, "he armed himself to do battle with
the demon of drunkenness," and after long preparation
produced his laborious work, " the Triumph of Bacchus,"

276 GLANCES BACK
it was his fate to linger solitarily in his exhibition room
day after day, as Haydon had done, watching for the
admiring crowds who came not, and sick at heart with
disappointed hope.
This watching and waiting for anticipated visitors
reminds me of an anecdote I heard from a well-known
artist, who on one occasion found himself the only occu
pant of the long rows of seats at some dioramic exhibition,
at the hour announced for the lecture to commence. Pre
sently the drop curtain was pulled a little aside and a
survey made of " the front of the house " where the artist
was sitting in solitary state. This proceeding was again
and again repeated, but the audience being still limited to
one, and it appearing useless to wait any longer the curtain
was eventually raised, disclosing the lecturer and the open
ing scene of the entertainment. During the pause that
ensued the artist speculated what formula the lecturer
would employ when commencing his address. The con
ventional " ladies and gentlemen " was out of the question,
and simple " sir " would sound somewhat strange. The
lecturer evidently felt the awkwardness of the situation as
the pair gazed steadily at each other, but after a moment
or two he plunged boldly into his subject and was soon in
the clouds. Presently he seemed to hesitate, and addressed
his audience almost apologetically, as if surmising that the
impassive individual before him might possibly know more
of the subject than he knew himself and enter into dis
cussion with him. At last, to the artist's great relief, a
couple of ladies with some children made their appearance,
and while they were hesitating over the perplexing choice
of seats he picked up his hat and slunk quietly away.
When Douglas Jerrold was doing some of his best
work for " Punch," and his infiuence was very generally
recognised — prior to the time when Thackeray took the
lead of him with his " Snobs of England " — the proprietors.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 277
were nervously anxious to secure his exclusive services,
and on the stoppage in 1844 of the " Illuminated Maga
zine " of which Jerrold had been editor, they induced him
to give up his engagement on the " Pictorial Times " in
return for an equivalent increase of salary upon " Punch."
This led to the termination of my connection with Jerrold,
in the course of which I had seen a good deal of him and
had constantly corresponded with him, still not a single
one of his epigrammatic notes seems to have been preserved.
His letters to every one were invariably very short, and I
remember he used jocularly to justify their brevity on the
score that epistolary " copy " was never paid for.
After the French revolution of 1848 Jerrold, who was
no longer the power upon " Punch," that he had formerly
been — having made a succession of failures following upon
his famous " Caudle Lectures " — started a newspaper of
his own with the assistance of a few friends, in which he
commented wittily, if loquaciously, on subjects of the day
in " the barber's chair." The paper sold well at the outset
through the force of Jerrold's name, but the circulation
gradually dwindled and the editor's contributions deterior
ated, till at last it was thought advisable to give the
publication up. At this time Lloyd was running a cheap
weekly newspaper, after having made some money by
publishing certain trumpery imitations of Dickens's works
— such as the " Penny Pickwick " and " Oliver Twiss," by
Bos, and numerous penny " shockers " like " Ada, the
betrayed," " the Horrors of Zindorf castle," " the Wreck of
the Heart " and " the Grave of the Forsaken."
At first the paper was illustrated and called " Lloyd's
Illustrated London News," but finding the engravings
expensive, and possibly dreading an injunction, the pro
prietor changed the title to "Lloyd's Weekly London
Newspaper," and when Jerrold was obliged to stop his
own paper he offered him the editorship at a salary of £20

278 GLANCES BACK
per week. Forty years ago this was more than sufficient
temptation to a writer of Jerrold's reputation to ally him
self to a publication of such poor standing as Lloyd's
paper then enjoyed. Someone epigrammaticaUy remarked
that Jerrold found it, as it were, in the gutter, and
annexed it to literature. The increase in the sale under
his editorship was something remarkable, and for years
afterwards the circulation became larger and larger, with
the result that the former obscure publisher of "Oliver
Twiss," by Bos, " the Maniac Father," and " Gertrude of
the Eock," who had long since ignored the methods by
which he struggled to success, died the other day leaving
behind him a personality sworn under £563,022 ! Success,
we all know, goes for much, but Sir Edmund Arnold need
not have claimed for Lloyd that " he swayed the pens that
break the sceptres "i— -an assertion at which Lloyd himself
would certainly have smiled.
Lloyd was at one time glad to get the few literary men
connected with his paper to tuck their legs under his
dinner-table at his country house in Essex, where he
primed them with fiery wines, and especially with some
abominable port. Ou one occasion, finding that the
decanter was not circulating as freely as he wished, for in
his way he was a most generous host, in order to inspire
his guests with confidence he remarked that the wine was
Hedges & Butler's. "More of the hedges than the
butler's," drily suggested Jerrold, to the guests' amuse
ment and their host's discomfiture.
Some time during " the forties " I acquired an involun
tary and far from satisfactory experience of the unreformed
Court of Chancery, so scathingly satirised in Dickens's
"Bleak House." While the "Illustrated Shakspere " was
in progress, the management of the work had devolved on
my brother and myself, when some trifling disagreement
^ Beneath memorial window in St Margaret's, Westminster.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 279
having arisen between the partners, one of them sought to
adjust it by commencing a suit in Chancery. This
dragged slowly along until an order was obtained for the
total amount we had received — about £1100 — to be paid
into court. No sooner was this done than the suit pro
gressed by leaps and bounds. On one day a string of
interrogatories had to be answered ; on another further
accounts had to be furnished ; on a third an inspection of
our books was ordered, and more interrogatories foUowed ;
and so the game was kept merrily up. When the matter
was ripe for hearing, it suddenly occurred to the solicitors
on both sides that a compromise was desirable, especially
as owing to the smallness of the amount in dispute this
would decidedly be the opinion of the Court. Eventually
terms were settled, but what they were I do not remember,
and it is not of the slightest consequence, for as soon as an
order for the payment of the money out of court was
obtained, the lawyers on both sides were ready with their
bills, and promptly gobbled up the toothsome £1100
oyster, leaving their astonished clients to regale themselves
on the horny shells.
The legal firm who were supposed to concern themselves
with our interests in this matter, but who really looked so
excellently after their own, were solicitors to the Eussian
embassy, and in this capacity had periodically to pro
secute forgers of Eussian rouble notes in this country.
After John or Daniel Forrester had captured the culprits
and obtained possession of the engraved forged plates, the
solicitors used to send the latter on to us for proofs to be
taken for production at the trial. On one occasion they
subpoenaed me to explain some technical point connected
with the seized engravings, and from the conversation
I then had with Forrester, the Mansion House police
officer, I divined what was going on behind the scenes.
All these forgeries were it seems " put up " affairs ; the

280 GLANCES BACK
perpetrators, invariably Polish jews, had been entrapped
by an immediate advance of cash for plates and printing
presses, and by promises of a future swingeing bonus ; their
employer being always a foreign jew of apparently ample
means, and without doubt in the pay of the Russian
embassy over here. Directly the plates were engraved
and the forged notes were in course of being printed, the
embassy used to swoop down on the poor ensnared Poles
and have them arrested, red-handed as it were. The
evidence was invariably so overwhelming that they were
certain to be convicted, and the Czar was by this means
relieved of a few more of his troublesome Polish subjects,
who were credited with always hatching revolutions in the
countries where they found an asylum.
When the trial was over the solicitors gave a dinner
at the London tavern to the police officers and the
witnesses engaged in the proceedings, and I was amazed
at the number of seemingly well-to-do foreign jews who
were present, and to whose not over clean hands some of
the Czar's gold, provided for manufacturing these sort of
cases, had no doubt stuck.
The solicitors I have been speaking of had numerous
shipping firms among their clients, and at their offices
there was quite a little museum of models of Indiamen,
barques, brigs, schooners and the like, all completely
rigged. So thoroughly did the firm go into any important
salvage or colliding case that the witnesses whom it was
proposed to call invariably underwent a preliminary
examination by their standing counsel, to whom, by the
aid of these models, everything that had happened was made
clear, as well as the precise nature of the evidence the
witnesses were able to give ; thus securing to the advocate
a complete mastery over his case before he went to fight
it out with adversaries, less well coached than himself, in
the Admiralty Court.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 281

XV.
(1844-48.)
MY RECOLLECTIONS OF W. M. THACKERAY — A RISE AND PALL
DURING THE RAILWAY MANIA — A NOTABLE CHARLATAN.
At the end of the year 1844 I sold my share in the
" Pictorial Times " to Mr. Spottiswoode, to enable me to
give greater attention to the largely increasing business
which my brother and I were then carrying on, for at
this time we were printing illustrated books for all the
principal London publishers. Before I left the paper,
I remember I had the satisfaction of printing in it Hood's
famous poem, " the Bridge of Sighs," before it was pub
lished elsewhere.. This arose from Mr. Spottiswoode, who
had a mania for speculation, becoming financially interested
in "Hood's Magazine," w^hich, through the shortcomings
of its editor, usually made its monthly appearance about
a week after the proper time. One day an early proof of
Hood's poem was handed to me, and I printed it in the
forthcoming number of the " Pictorial Times," which under
ordinary circumstances would have been published simul
taneously with " Hood's Magazine." But as usual the
magazine came out very late, and the paper consequently
had a day or two's start of it. Hood, I may here mention,
had been an old friend of my father's, and introduced him
by name in some rambling rhymes in one of the early
Comic Annuals.
On Mr. Thackeray's return from his Egyptian tour,
Chapman & HaU purchased the MS. of the "Journey from
Cornhill to Grand Cairo," and sent us the volume to print.

282 GLANCES BACK
Through some oversight Thackeray had not been paid for
his "Coningsby" review in the "Pictorial Times" before
he left England, and when he was home again he reminded
me of the circumstance in the following note :
" Why doesn't the P. T. pay up ? Eate Keys^ for not sending on
my cheque. I had more than half a mind to post the holder of Queen
Vic's patent as a defaulter at the top of Cheops' Pyramid for the
information of future gadders about. The vigilant old centuries, which
look down so inquisitively, would have blinked their weary eyes at the
exposure." Thackeray's " Cornhill to Cairo " has been reprinted
half a score of times by different firms, yet one passage
in it having reference to the printer of the first edition
has been allowed to remain unchanged, and will possibly
puzzle future commentators. It occurs near the beginning
of Chapter X., and is as follows :
" There should have been a poet in our company to describe that
charming little bay of Glaucus, into which we entered on the 26th of
September in the first steamboat that ever disturbed its beautiful waters.
You can't put down in prose that delicious episode of natural poetry ; it
ought to be done in a symphony full of sweet melodies and swelling
harmonies ; or sung in a strain of clear crystal iambics, such as Milnes
knows how to write. ^ A mere map drawn in words gives the mind no
notion of that exquisite nature. What do mountains become in type, or
rivers in Mr. Vizetelly's best brevier 1 "
The immaculate Carlyle was irate wdth Thackeray over
this African tour, owing to his having accepted a free passage
from the P. and 0. company. Mr. Charles Gavan Dufi'y
mentions that Carlyle "compared the transaction to the
practice of a blind fiddler going to and fro on a penny
ferry-boat in Scotland, and playing tunes to the passengers
for halfpence." Duffy says, " Charles BuUer told Thackeray
' The publisher.
" Thackeray rarely missed au opportunity of extolling Monckton Milnes, be
tween whose wit and his own there ¦was much in common. When Lady Waldegrave
sought to compliment Milnes by teUing him that he had a large heart, he cynically
replied, " That may be, but it is not nearly so useful as a narrow mind."

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 283
of this, and when he complained thought it necessary to in
form him frankly it was undoubtedly his opinion that, out
of respect for himself and his profession, a man Uke him
ought not to have gone fiddling for halfpence or otherwise
in any steamboat under the sky." Considering that Thac
keray had in nowise puffed the P. and 0. all this virtuous
indignation seems a trifie superfluous.
Mr. Thackeray was at this period painfully cognisant of
his lack of technical skUl as an etcher, and he asked me to
find him some one who would etch the frontispiece to the
Cairo volume from his water-colour sketch. I gave the
job to a young fellow in our employment named Thwaites,
who subsequently put a number of Thackeray's sketches
for " Mrs. Perkins's Ball " on the wood, and touched up the
hands and other matters in those subjects drawn on the
blocks by Thackeray himself The annexed note evidently
refers to some of the drawings made by Thwaites.
" Dear Sir, — I retum the drawings after making a few alterations in
them. Present Mr. Titmarsh's compliments to your talented young
man, and say M. A. T. would take it as a favour if he would kindly
confine his improvements to the Mulligans' and Mrs. Perkins's other
guests' extremities. In your young gentleman's otherwise praiseworthy
corrections of my vile drawing, a certain je ne sais quoi, which I flatter
myself exists in the original sketches, seems to have given him the slip,
and I have tried in vain to recapture it. Somehow I prefer my own
Nuremberg dolls to Mr. Thwaits's superfine wax models. — Yours,
"W M T
"Sept. 13." vv.ivi. i.
From the little services in this way which I had been able
to render Mr. Thackeray, I had become rather intimate with
him, and w^hUe the drawings for "Perkins's Ball," and others
of his Christmas books printed by us, were in progress,
I saw a good deal of him, for he was almost as fastidious,
as I afterwards found Mr. Euskin to be, in regard to the
manner in which his sketches were transferred to the
wood. One afternoon, when he called in Peterborough-

284 GLANCES BACK
court, he had a small brown paper parcel with him, and
opened it to show me his two careful drawings for the page
plates to the first number of " Vanity Fair." Tied up
with them was the manuscript of the earlier portion of the
work, of which he had several times spoken to me, refer
ring especially to the quaint character that Chiswick Mall —
within a stone's throw, of which I was then living — still
retained. His present intention, he told me, was to see
Bradbury & Evans, and offer the work to them. Although
Thackeray never showed himself eager after praise —
Serjeant Ballantine's assertion to the contrary notwithstand
ing— he was always depressed by disparaging remarks,
and I felt glad at being able to praise his two drawings,
respecting the merits of wdiich he professed to be in
considerable doubt, and to congratulate him on the capital
title he had chosen for the work, which he then mentioned
to me for the first time.
In little more than half-an-hour Mr. Thackeray again
made his appearance, and with a beaming face gleefully
informed me that he had settled the business. " B. & E.,"
said he, " accepted so readily, that I am deuced sorry
I didn't ask them another tenner. I am certain they would
have given it." He then explained to me that he had
named fifty guineas per part, including the two sheets of
letterpress, a couple of etchings, and the initials at the
commencement of the chapters. He reckoned the text, I
remember, at no more than five-and-twenty shillings a
page, the two etchings at six guineas each, while, as for the
few initials at the beginning of the chapters, he threw these
in. Such was Mr. Thackeray's own estimate of his com
mercial value as an author and illustrator, a.d. 1846.
The fable of " Vanity Fair" having gone the round of
the publishing trade before a purchaser could be found,
has appeared in print scores of times, and will, no doubt,
continue to be repeated, as a striking example of the dull-

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 285
wittedness of London bibliopoles of a past generation.
And yet, there is not a particle of truth in the story. If
the records of the principal publishing firms at that date
were searched, I am confident they would be found to con
tain nothing whatever relative to the MS. of " Vanity
Fair" having been submitted for consideration. It is not
unlikely that Mr. Thackeray may have mentioned the work
to Chapman & Hall, his then publishers, and that they
may not have received the suggestion encouragingly, for
Hall, who was the moving spirit in the firm, had no great
literary taste. I feel certain, however, that not so much
as a hint about " Vanity Fair " was conveyed to any other
publisher, or Mr. Thackeray would have mentioned it in the
course of the many conversations I had with him regard
ing the work.
The hawking about of " Vanit}^ Fair " in the way pre
tended, of course pre-supposes that the MS. was complete,
and was submitted in this state to the half-score fatuous
fools who declined it with thanks, but I am positive that,
when arrangements were made with Messrs. Bradbury &
Evans for the publication of the work, with no further
knowledge on their part of its nature than could be gleaned
from Mr. Thackeray during a brief interview, nothing
beyond Number I. was written.
I have no doubt whatever that the publishers of "Vanity
Fair" bought it — like most works by known authors are
purchased — solely on its writer's then reputation, which his
"Snobs of England," in " Punch," had greatly extended. I
know perfectly well that, after the publication commenced,
much of the remainder of the work was written under
pressure from the printer, and not unfrequently the final
instalment of " copy," needed to fill the customary thirty-
two pages, was penned while the printer's boy was waiting
in the hall at Young-street. This was a common occurrence
with much of Mr. . Thackeray's monthly work, and the

286 GLANCES BACK
strange thing is that, produced under such disadvantageous
conditions as these, it should have been so uniformly and
thoroughly good.
I think it was while "Vanity Fair" was in progress
that our friend Cham (M. de Noe), paid another visit to
England, when Thackeray, who had made his acquaintance
in Paris, gave him, I remember, a breakfast in Young-
street, to which my brother and myself were invited.
Thackeray had previously mentioned to me that De Noe
was in England and had expressed his intention of look
ing him up. Here is the letter which he afterwards sent
me : —
" Young Street, Thursday.
"Dear H. V. — I have discovered Cham in Salisbury Square — in
what I fancy was Pamela-Eichardson's old house, and he is to breakfast
in Young Street on Sunday. Please be of the party, as there are only
you and your brother whom de No6 knows over here that I can ask to
meet him. The hour, eleven, will admit of the devout attending early
matins. I have asked Higgins,^ T. T. [Tom Taylor], Dickey ' D.
[Doyle], and Leech, but neither Mark [Lemon] nor Jerrold. Young
Douglas, if asked, would most likely not come, but if he did, he 'd take
especial care that his own efi'ulgence should obscure all lesser hghts,
Cham's included. — Yours, -\Y. M. Thackebat."
The breakfast, which to me was a memorable one, was
given in the small dining-room to the left of the entrance
hall of Thackeray's modest house in Young-street. After
the hot dishes had been handed round by the young
footman — for Thackeray now sported a lackey out of
livery on the strength of the success of " Vanity Fair " —
the latter was dismissed and the entertainment was soon
in full swing. One guest after another retailed the latest
piece of gossip he had picked up the night before, while
1 " His name ia Jacob Homniuin, Exquire ;
And if I 'd committed crimes,
Good Lord ! I wouldn't have that mann
Attack me in ' the Times.' " — Ballads of Policeman X.
~ Here a small bird was sketched in the original in accordance witli a common
practice of Thackeray's.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 287
Cham, on his part, commented somewhat humorously on
our insular manners and customs, ridiculing among other
things what he termed our guillotine windows, which, if
the cord snapped while they were up, might decapitate
any too curious person who had thrust out his head the
moment before. Then a few short stories, which the
narrators privately prayed might prove new to the present
company, were related, and occasional jokes were fired off,
after which Cham took up the running and told a capital
story of intrigue apropos of a recent bal masque in Paris.
The story was so amusing that everyone called out for
a fresh one, and De Noe, who understood English
thoroughly, and only made use of French words to point
his moral and adorn his tale the more, rattled off one
excellent story after another to the delight of his listeners,
every one of whom felt that their own best stories would
pale by comparison. An soon as one witty tale was
finished Cham was entreated to commence another, and
owing to his ready compliance and relays of claret and
cigars, the breakfast prolonged itself until nearly four
o'clock. An adjournment for another hour or so then took
place to the drawing-room, where Thackeray produced a
number of his best sketches, not merely humorous figure
subjects, but serious views sketched in the course of his
various rambles over Europe.
The reason why Cham achieved such a complete
success was not far to seek. He told only the very best
•of the many good stories he had picked up in Paris during
past years, all of which were quite new to his English
hearers : added to this, he was a first-rate raconteur.
After Cham had made his great hit no one else dared
venture to tell even his smartest stories, as these were
aU more or less known to friends present. Higgins had
already trotted out a couple of new and fairly good ones,
and Tom Taylor, who could never conceal the absurdly

288 GLANCES BACK
high estimation in which he held himself, some particu
larly feeble ones. Leech and Doyle w^ere both very silent.
Thackeray, according to his wont, was in the same
dilemma as the needy knife-grinder, " Story ! God bless
you, sir, I 've none to tell ; " and he contented himself by
encouraging anyone who was disposed to contribute to the
general entertainment.
I read with some surprise Dean Hole's statement that
Thackeray, when he chose to talk, said so many good
things that they trod down and suffocated each other.
Certainly this was not my own experience or that of many
others who were in terms of intimacy with Mr. Thackeray,
and were a good deal in his society. During the seven or
eight years that I saw much of Mr. Thackeray, and knew
him tolerably intimately, he never appeared to me to shine
in conversation, and he most certainly made no kind of
effort to do so — never in fact talked for effect, and indeed
never usurped any large share of the conversation. Ordi
narily he would interpose occasional quaint -humorous com
ments, and would show himself far more tolerant than men
of his capacity usually are of bores. Whenever the talk
grew dull and wearying, he would content himself by fillip
ing it up with some witty or shrewd satirical remark, and
turn it into a new channel. None of the little aside ser
mons which he preached in his books by any chance fell
from his lips. At this period of his career his placid
temper and pleasant courtesy, in spite of the mild sarcasms
in which he indulged, charmed all who came in contact
with him.
On thinking over the many occasions on which I saw
Mr. Thackeray in his unreserved moments, I cannot call to
mind a single instance of his showing himself at all ruffled
when anything disagreeable had happened ; and yet that
he was unusually sensitive, there cannot be the smallest
doubt, for more than a glimpse of this is had in his Eound-

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 289'
about paper, "Thorns in the cushion." To me he seemed
to look at life in a light philosophic way, and to get all the
harmless enjoyment he could out of it. And certainly at
this time there was no trace of that reserve, or that austerity
of manner, which in subsequent years, when " Time had his
flowing locks to silver turned," came to be attributed to
him. When I went to reside at Kensington again, I
frequently had to see Mr. Thackeray about the iUustrations
to his Christmas books, or the etchings to his novels, on
which I still obtained him occasional assistance, finding
him some new hand, perhaps, to do the mechanical biting
in. At one period I generally called upon him on two
mornings in the week. At these times, as he was a late
riser, he was accustomed to have me shown up into his
bedroom, when he would give me a cigar and chat whilst
dressing in the most unreserved fashion on all manner
of topics, talking to me in his habitual familiar way as
though I was his equal. From his conversation I gathered
that he was envious, but not ill-naturedly so, of the great
influence which Dickens had acquired over his women
readers, whom the misfortunes of his juvenile heroes and
heroines were, he said, always moving to tears.
In spite of Thackeray's remark that he had never read
the Nelly part of the " Old Curiosity Shop " more than
once, whereas he had Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness
by heart, there is no doubt of his having been genuinely
impressed by Dickens's pathos. Mark Lemon used to tell
of his flinging down before him the "Dombey" number,
containing the death of little Paul, and excitedly exclaim
ing, " There 's no writing against this ; one hasn't an atom.
of chance. It 's stupendous ! " " Vanity Fair," it should
be remembered, was then in course of publication. To-day
a very different opinion prevails with regard to the merits
of this famous death-bed scene, which Thackeray pronounced
Vol. l t

290 GLANCES BACK
to be stupendous, and of which Edinburgh Eeview Jeffrey
exaggeratedly wrote, " there has been nothing in literature
like the actual dying of that sweet Paul." Most people are
now inclined to agree with Mr. Andrew Lang who discerns
in Dickens's much belauded description, " the kind of thing
that appears in Sunday-school books about the virtuous
little boy who died." Thackeray was on all occasions loud
in his praise of Dickens as a writer, and yet no one could
have been more conscious than he of the exaggerated
amiability of those characters which evoked at the time
such a prodigious amount of feminine sympathy.
We all remember Thackeray's observation, " When I
say I know women I mean that I know I don't know
them." One thing is certain, however ; he hungered after
their admiration, for he openly confessed this on several
occasions in my hearing, and he was, moreover, childishly
vain when he succeeded in securing it. It may be bad
taste to mention the circumstance, but more than once I
received from him drawings on wood for his Christmas
books, wrapped up in notes from his feminine corres
pondents, who at times allowed their admiration to wander
somewhat indiscreetly beyond the range of his books.
These communications could scarcely have been so numer
ous, I fancy, as to have been brought under my notice by
mere accident on Mr. Thackeray's part. He rather wished,
I think, to publish abroad that he was overburthened with
this sort of idolatry.
To-day, with Douglas Jerrold's waning reputation, it
seems strange to recall to mind that he was the one literary
man, of whom Thackeray, when in his prime, seemed to be
seriously jealous. I was several times present when the
early number of " Punch " reached Young-street, and well
remember how, as Thackeray nervously tore off the wrapper,
he would exclaim, " Now let's see what young Douglas has
to say this week." For some little while he would remain

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 291
absorbed in the chapter of the " Caudle lectures," or of
" Miss Eobinson Crusoe," or whatever Jerrold's contribu
tion may then chance to have been ; and would afterwards
proceed to scan and comment on the miscellaneous contents
of the number with an invariable pean of praise for the
sketches of Leech and Doyle, which he thought the public
cared far more about, than for the smartest writing
" Punch " had ever published.
On Thackeray's expressing the same opinion in the
" Quarterly Eeview," Jerrold indignantly resented the
suggestion, and the " Punch " writers generally professed
to feel hurt at it. Thackeray admitted the blunder he
had made in a letter to his old friend Percival Leigh —
¦one of the oldest contributors to " Punch," and familiarly
known as the professor — to whom he wrote :
" Of all the slips of my fatal pen, there 's none 1 regret more than the
unlucky half line which has given pain to such a kind and valued old
friend as you have been, and I trust will be still to me. I ought never
to have said that 'Punch' might as well be left unwritten but for
Leech — it was more than my meaning, which is certainly that the draw
ing is a hundred times more popular than the writing, but I had no
business to write any such thing ; and forgot it so much that I was quite
surprised when I first heard that I had been accused of sneering at
' Punch.' I knew when I came back from Paris aud read the line in the
'Q. B., which I had forgotten as utterly as many another speech, which
I had made and didn't ought. Jerrold has had his fire into me, and do
jou know, I feel rather comforted."
Thackeray's suggestion that in Leech's drawings the
pubhc had the pith of " Punch," was only a roundabout
way of extolling Leech, and not to be taken seriously. In
his modest way of speaking about his own writings, he was
given at times to self-depreciation — real and not affected.
'StiU, it is idle to suppose he was not conscious that the
reputation enjoyed by "Punch" was due quite as much to
his own " Snob papers," and to Jerrold's "Caudle lectures,"
as to the best of Leech's, Doyle's, and Tenniel's caricatures.

292 GLANCES BACK
It wUl be remembered that Jerrold sought to continue
the success which Mrs. Caudle had secured in " Punch " by
a simUar series of sketches called " Mrs. Bib's baby.''
Unluckily for him, however, Thackeray commenced his
Snob papers shortly afterwards, and Bib's baby speedily
gave up the ghost. After this calamity, Jerrold's hand
was missed from "Punch" for some considerable time,.
causing it to be surmised that he and " Punch " had
parted company. Jerrold publicly gave vent to his
indignation at the rumour, and in a week or two after
wards the opening chapters of " Miss Eobinson Crusoe "
made their appearance. When about a dozen chapters.
had been published, no more was heard of Miss Crusoe,.
whereas the Snob papers pursued their triumphant course
for the full period of twelve months.
Thackeray was reticent in expressing his opinions upon
people whom he did not like, and very rarely said ill-
natured things about anyone. He took no pains, however,
to disguise his contempt for Jerrold's democratic profes
sions. I remember him mentioning to me his having-
noticed at the Earl of Carlisle's a presentation copy of
one of Jerrold's books, the inscription in which ran : " To-
the Eight Honourable the Earl of Carlisle, E.G., K.C.B.,
&c., &c." "Ah!" said Thackeray, "this is the sort of
style in which your rigid, uncompromising radical always
toadies the great." " There is," he remarked in one of his
books, " an odour in the English aristocracy that always-
intoxicates plebeians." Unquestionably there was an
utter want of sympathy between the two men. Jerrold
on his part thought Thackeray full of crotchets, and found
him somewhat of a mystery to the last. " I have known
Thackeray eighteen years," he used to say, " and I don't
know him yet." On the other hand, when Thackeray
heard of the great rise in the sale of " Lloyd's newspaper "'
under Jerrold's editorship, he expressed himself glad, and.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 293
characteristically remarked, " I am quite pleased with
myself at finding myself pleased at men getting on in
the world."
Lord Carlisle, who was uncommonly like Listen, and
whose face would have been equally a fortune to him on
the stage, posed at this time as the patrician friend to
literature, and I remember Thackeray's mentioning his
having once invited a dozen literary men, including four
or five of the " Punch " set, to dinner, when to his lord
ship's evident chagrin the repast turned out a singularly
dull affair. " Of course," said Thackeray, " we all knew
ea(3h others' pet stories, and all the dear old jokes, and
this acted as a wet blanket upon us. No one would have
thought of trotting out a good new story simply for one
of his confrhres to crib for his next magazine article. If
Lord Carlisle had asked half-a-dozen literary men and
half-a-dozen lords, we should in this case have fit audience
found, and been able to amuse the quality at the trifling
inconvenience of boring ourselves."
Occasionally when I made one of my early morning
caUs upon Mr. Thackeray, he would propose walking up to
town with me, and, after the slightest of breakfasts and a
glance at " the Times " over a cigar, he would be ready to
sally forth. We always parted company at the corner of
St. James's-street, where he turned off to the Eeform Club.
On one of these journeys, soon after Lady Blessington gave
up Gore House to reside in Paris, I remember his taking
me with him to look over the little crib, adjacent to the
big mansion, where Count D'Orsay, Lady Blessington's
recognised lover, was understood to have resided with the
view of saving appearances. For years past the ringletted
and white-kidded count, although his tailor and other
obliging tradespeople dressed him for nothing, or rather
in consideration of the advertisement that his equivocal
patronage procured for them, had been a self-constituted

294 GLANCES BACK
prisoner through dread of arrest for debt. It was only on
Sundays that he ventured outside the Gore House grounds,
and for his protection on other days the greatest possible
precaution was exercised when it was necessary for any
of Lady Blessington's many visitors to be admitted.
D'Orsay 's Mend, Thomas Slingsby Duncombe, who was
mixed up with him in numerous bill transactions, used
to say that the count's debts amounted to £120,000,
and that before he retired to the safe asylum of Gore
House, he was literally mobbed by duns.
On going over the inconvenient little crib where the
count was supposed to have kept up a miniature establish
ment, I noticed that there was not the faintest attempt at
decoration in any of the rooms, and that the wall papers
were commonplace and much the worse for wear. There
was in fact nothing in the place to excite the smallest
surprise or awaken the faintest interest, and yet Thackeray
carefully examined every room from basement to garret,
peered into every nook and cranny, and learnt the place
so to speak thoroughly by heart. In spite, however, of its
remarkably pleasant situation, he could hardly have thought
of taking up his quarters there, for it was a mere doll's
house compared to his Young-street abode. Possibly his
intention at the time was to utilise all he saw in some
essay, touching upon the humble surroundings with
which misfortune makes the discarded leader of fashion
acquainted. Thackeray's visit to Gore House after Lady
Blessington's exodus (when her servant professed to have
noticed tears in his eyes on his leaving, and thought him
the only one of the countess's old friends who was really
affected at her departure) must have preceded this inspec
tion of the D'Orsay maisonette by only a few days.
Lady Blessington's literary reputation had long been
on the wane before she migrated to Paris. For a time
she was a novelty in the London publishing world, but

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 295
when the worthlessness of her writings became evident, her
pen was no longer in the same request, and her name as
editor had no kind of weight. The prince-president gave
his old friend D'Orsay an appointment, but he was unable
to do anything for the countess. It is said that he overtook
her one day when she was driving in the Champs Elys6es,
and after a few courteous observations asked her if she was
staying in Paris for any time. Cut to the quick by his
question she sarcastically replied with another : " And
yourself, prince ; do you expect to remain here long ? "
Thackeray was especially good to young men, and
personally I always met with the greatest kindness from
him. He seemed to take especial pleasure in having
young fellows at his house, in encouraging them, and
putting them completely at their ease while drawing them
out. I remember when several smart young writers —
whose success had emboldened them to turn their backs
on Bohemia and most of its free and easy ways, but who
were still somewhat regardless of their personal appearance
— were frequent guests at Thackeray's dinner-table where
every courtesy was shown them by their distinguished host.
After one of these entertainments I heard him remark, in
the hope, no doubt, that the hint would be conveyed to
those for whom it was intended, " They are all capital
fellows, but wouldn't be a whit the worse for cleaner
shirts." Before his daughters grew up, and while " Vanity
Fair " was in progress Thackeray had no home society, and
he seemed thoroughly to enjoy these evenings, spent away
from the club and Evans's late supper rooms of which he
was at one time a rather constant frequenter.
Those who remember the railway mania of 1845 when
everybody gambled in scrip, will readily recall Thackeray's
pair of. ragged capitalists in " Punch " — " those dismal
beggars who spoke of nothing but railroad shares," and
afterwards supped on " taters smoking hot ... in the

296 GLANCES BACK
lonely Haymarket." They recall to one's mind a well-
known newspaper man of the time, whose identity may
be partially disguised under the epithet of "Eaggedy"
commonly prefixed to his name, and who, when the rail
way mania was at its height was in a desperately forlorn
condition, living with his family literally in a two-stall
stable and coach-house at Croom's-hill, Greenwich. He
was ready enough to "bless railroads everywhere . . .
bless every railroad share," and to believe that "never a
beggar need now despair." Acting on this conviction he
invested most of his week's scanty earnings in some deep
mourning-bordered letter-paper, a stick of black sealing-
wax and a score of postage stamps, and forthwith sent out
applications for shares right and left, sealing his letters,'
dated simply from Croom's-hill, with an old seal crowded
with as many quarterings as a wohl-geboren Teuton's
escutcheon. His intention was to convey the impression that he
was a person of good family who had just succeeded to
a fortune through the death of some near relative, and
in accordance with the example set by the shrewdest of
Thackeray's ragged capitalists he always wrote for a good
number of shares. In those days it was unnecessary to
send any deposit with an application, and the new com
panies not only dispensed with bankers' references, but
rarely troubled themselves to make the slightest inquiries
respecting the financial position of applicants for scrip.
Things were in a precarious state at Croom's-hill, when
an agent arrived there from some over-cautious company
to which the customary application for shares had been
addressed. Meeting a little girl hurrying along with a
foaming pot of porter, he asked her to show him where
the writer of the letter — whose name he mentioned —
lived, and was surprised to learn that the youthful Hebe
was going there herself Arrived at the stable of which

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 297
I have spoken, a tap at the door caused this to be opened,
when the agent found himself confronted by a perspiring
and dilapidated-looking individual in his shirt sleeves,
engaged in frying a rumpsteak and onions (which the pot
of foaming porter was presently to assist him in washing
down) over a blazing fire.
The agent had already seen sufficient for his purpose,
stiU he courteously asked a question or two before retiring.
Our newspaper friend at once realised that there was no
hope of shares from that quarter, yet he was by no means
cast down. "Thank goodness !" he cheerfully remarked to a
sympathising "stag" of his acquaintance, " other companies
are not so deucedly particular ; " and so propitious were
the turns of Fortune's wheel, that before many weeks
had elapsed he managed to exchange the two-stall stable
for a handsomely furnished suburban villa, and to start a
railway newspaper. Its proprietor was the first of the
great race of corruptible financial tipsters, and made it his
business to prophecy exorbitant dividends from the rot-
tenest railway schemes in return for paid-up shares and
columns of high priced advertisements. Having an eye to
appearances he set up a cabriolet a la D'Orsay, with a
diminutive tiger slung behind ; which was one of the sights
of Fleet-street, and the great admiration of the printers'
boys whenever he visited the office of his newspaper. At
his dinners too champagne flowed more freely than ever
porter had done in the brave days of old.
It was a merry time while it lasted, but unluckily it did
not last long. " The Times " thundered against the new
companies ; railway scrip fell, until, as the saying goes, no
one would touch much of it with tongs even ; and a general
crash ensued, in which our nouveau riche and his news
paper, his furnished villa, cabriolet, and diminutive tiger
were all involved in one common ruin. More than once
he attempted. Phoenix-like, to rise anew, but never sue-

298 GLANCES BACK
ceeded in again attaining his former pinnacle. He devised
no end of journalistic enterprises on the comforting theory
that with five pounds in hand for petty cash a newspaper
could be started without further capital. Years ago he
submitted to a hard-headed friend a carefully prepared
scheme embodying their joint acquisition of the Brighton
pavilion, and its conversion into a place of public amuse
ment. His friend thought the idea an excellent one, but
enquired where the capital w^as to come from ? " Ah !
that's just like you," was the reply, " you throw cold water
on the grandest schemes by your narrow-minded scruples
about money."
Before the crash which I have been speaking of came,
and the last day arrived for the required parliamentary
notice of all new railway projects to be given, it was found
necessary to enlarge the current number of the " London
Gazette" to close upon 600 pages 1 While the mania was
at fever heat, and "plunging" was general, even the
soberest individuals dabbled in railway scrip, and I can
remember staid London publishers, calling on business at
our office, having a little transaction in shares together
before they left. Not even the most infatuated believed
in the possibility of these multifarious schemes being
carried out, yet every one hoped to make his own pUe
before the day of doom arrived.
At the time of the mania there was no end of amateur
surveyors engaged in planning out new lines of railway by
the simple process of ruling on an ordinary map a series
of zigzag lines connecting as large a number of important
towns as possible — say between John O'Groats and the
Land's End — and always taking especial care to call their
devious routes " direct." The map was then sent to some
lithographer overburthened with similar work, and all of
whose hands had been working night and day for weeks,
to draw out for the prospectus, and he naturally took

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 299
advantage- of the situation, and charged I know not how
many guineas an inch for his labour. In drafting the
prospectus any statistics that could be twisted to the
promoter's purpose were set forth in a grossly exaggerated
form, and friends were then applied to — city men by pre
ference and those with imposing addresses — to join the
provisional committee — baits of large allotments of shares
and corresponding pecuniary benefits being held out by
way of inducement.
Impecunious sons of peers and seedy baronets were
eagerly snapped up by these promoters of bogus schemes,
and the one who had the highest sounding title generally
secured the post of chairman. A list of one of these com
mittees frequently filled an entire column of " the Times "
newspaper. Solicitors without business were only too
ready to place their offices at the new company's service,
and engineers without experience were glad to have their
names advertised in connection with such a spirited under
taking. Bankers were scarcely so complaisant, still the
commission they were to get tempted them to lend their
names and receive applications for shares.
Everything being ready, the company was launched in
the advertising columns of " the Times," and as no deposit
had to accompany applications for shares, no end of these
flowed in. Knight Hunt, my sub-editor on the " Pictorial
Times," and an inveterate schemer, planned several of
these so-called " direct " lines of railway, and even man
aged to get one or two of them floated. His ingenious
theory was, that to make money while the infatuation lasted
it was desirable to have your own railway project, and not
to be dependent on other people's.
Among the half dozen noted charlatans whom I have
known at one time or other, Alexis Soyer, whose acquain
tance I made when he was chef of the Eeform Club, should
not be omitted. He was born in France, and his wife, an

300 GLANCES BACK
indifferent painter of genre subjects had died young, when
Soyer erected a bizarre monument of his own design to
her memory at Kensal-green. So vain was he of this pro
duction that he published views of it right and left, and let
it figure as a frontispiece to one of his many cookery books.
He was always endeavouring to attract attention to him
self, and had his clothes cut in an extravagant fashion,
with the two lappels of his coat as unlike each other
as they well could be. With all his weaknesses, he
was of a very generous nature, though in one particular
instance he indulged his hospitable inclinations at other
people's expense, and to his own great disadvantage.
As a matter of course, Soyer posed as the gastronomic
authority par excellence of his day, and the Eeform Club
greatly plumed itself on having secured his services. In his
independent way, however, Soyer was in the habit of giving
at the club's expense periodical luncheons of his own cook
ing to various newspaper friends, in his private rooms at
Pall-mall. The Eev. John Eichardson, a rosy-gilled bon
vivant on the staff of " the Times," — a position which he
utilised to guttle and guzzle in good company at every
possible opportunity — was a constant attendant at these
little spreads. The reader will perhaps remember that this
is the same reverend gentleman who many years before
had witnessed Lord Londonderry's purchase of the cheap
penknife^ with which a day or two afterwards the per
secuted peer cut his throat. To these Eeform Club
luncheons of Soyer's the club butler was invariably in
vited, in order that every one of the chef's own recherche
dishes might be accompanied by its appropriate wine,
selected from the choicest vintages in the club cellars.
Thackeray, to whom I mentioned these Lucullus-like
luncheons, used often to joke about them, and regret that
his position as a member of the Eeform precluded him
' See ante, p. 46.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 301
from participating in them. Eventually certain discon
tented dinner-givers grumbled to the club committee that
they were neglected while Soyer was feasting and carous
ing with his friends, and the chef was obliged to send in
his resignation. Subsequently, when London was mad over its great
exhibition of 1851, Soyer rented Gore House, Lady
Blessington's old place, after she had vacated it to renew
her acquaintance with Prince Louis Napoleon on his
election to the presidency of the French republic. Soyer
proceeded to turn the mansion into what he called a Sym
posium, and George Augustus Sala, fresh from the scene-
painting room of the Princess's theatre, and with all the
necessary technique at his fingers' ends, decorated the stair
case for him, painting, he tells us, what he thought to be " a
highly comic panorama of the celebrities of the epoch."
In spite, however, of the great notoriety into which
Soyer had persistently puffed himself and his undoubted
culinary accomplishments, as well as the proximity
of Paxton's Crystal Palace, visitors were few, and the
scheme proved a failure. A few years afterwards, with a
loud flourishing of trumpets in all the newspapers, the
famous cAe/ hurried to the Crimea to teach our half-starved
soldiers before Sebastopol how to cook filet Chdteaubriand
and cotelettes a la jardiniere. Subsequently, at the height
of the Irish famine, he opened a soup kitchen at Dublin
with a new fanfare, and this was I believe the last great
opportunity for self-advertisement that Soyer was able to
profit by.

302 GLANCES BACK

XVL
(1846-48.)
Disraeli's friendly overtures to "punch" — samuel
carter hall and jenny lind — two working-men
poets — high jinks at cambridge — albert smith.
In the summer of 1845, Mr. Disraeli took the chair at
the annual dinner of the " Printers' Pension Society," when
the stewards, of whom I was one, received him in the
drawing-room ofthe Albion, in Aldersgate-street. Immedi
ately after his entrance he posted himself in a nonchalant
fashion with his back to the mantelpiece, and his thumbs
in his waistcoat pockets, an attitude Thackeray was fond of
assuming, and began to chat famUiarly with those near him.
In a minute or two he asked if Mr. Leech were present
(Leech was one of the stewards), as if he were he would
like to make his acquaintance. The famous " Punch "
caricaturist thereupon stepped forward and was duly intro
duced. Disraeli showed himself particularly gracious and
warmly complimented the artist, whose pencil had lately
been employed in satirizing him in a disparaging fashion,
depicting him as a nice young man for a small party — i.e.,
the Young England party, as a jew dealer in cast-off
notions, and as young Gulliver before the Brobdingnag
minister (Sir E. Peel). Disraeli tried his hardest to
ingratiate himself with the distinguished caricaturist, but
Leech, proof against the wiles of the charmer, rejoined
some months afterwards with the famous cartoon; wherein

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 303
Disraeli, who had lately proclaimed, that although the
cause was lost there should be retribution for those who
had betrayed it, figured as a spiteful ringletted viper and
Peel as a smiling unconcerned old file.
During the dinner the chairman did his best to make
himseff pleasant, and bobbed and nobbed unreservedly
with his immediate neighbours. A tall Jewish footman in
livery with the prominent proboscis of his race and
powdered hair, waited upon him ; and while the speeches
were being deUvered, stood stock still as a statue behind
his master's chair, without so much as moving a muscle of
his face, when everyone else was roaring with laughter at
some witty sally which the chairman had made.
When the toasts had been drunk and the secretary had
read out the list of subscriptions, and the quiet family-
men had hurried off to catch the last suburban omnibus,
Mr. Disraeli showed no disposition to vacate the chair.
Seeing this, the remaining guests drew up to his end of
the table, and a lively discourse ensued, in which a casual
allusion to " Punch " was made. Disraeli profited by this
to rise to his feet, and in a clever and amusing speech
proposed the health of Mr. Punch, towards whom, he pro
tested, he felt no kind of malice on account of any strictures,
pictorial or verbal, which that individual might have passed
upon him. Everybody entered into the spirit of the joke,
and after the toast had been drunk calls were made in
differently upon Lemon and A'Beckett, both of whom were
present, to respond. Mark, however, rose, and in a brief
and witty speech returned thanks for the honour that had
been done, as he neatly put it, to an absent friend.
Disraeli's amiable advances availed him nothing. For
a long time afterwards " Punch " gave no quarter to the
" Red Indian of debate," who as Sir James Graham pithily
phrased it, " cut his way to power with the tomahawk."
The time, however, came when Disraeli could show his

304 GLANCES BACK
magnanimity. Leech who had satirized him almost weekly,
and so familiarised everyone with his face and figure, that
an aristocratic little damsel, on being presented to him,
exclaimed, " I know you ! I 've seen you in ' Punch ' I " —
Leech had had a pension given to him by the liberals, and
when he died, the pension would have died with him, had
not Disraeli, who had at last risen to power, interposed and
secured it for his family. It wUl be remembered that he
acted equally generously towards Carlyle, who had called
him a mountebank, and otherwise abused him. In return
he offered Carlyle the grand cross of the Bath and a corres
ponding life income, but the Chelsea Diogenes would have
neither the honour nor the pelf
Disraeli had at one time a young Scotchman named
David Bryce for private secretary, to whom, on quitting
his service, he confided the publication of his novels, till
Bryce went financially astray with other speculations, and
the novels had to be withdrawn from him. The former
secretary was full of stories of Mrs. Disraeli's excessive
adulation of her husband ; of the extreme care with which
she managed her life interest in her property, in order that
the savings effected might be heaped up for Disraeli's bene
fit ; of the exuberance of her affection, when the rising
statesman returned home during the day-time, kissing and
fondling him before the embarrassed secretary, and waiting
upon him in an almost slavish way, bringing a bowl of warm
water, and washing and drying her idol's hands, and then
curling and smoothing his ringletted raven locks.
I made the acquaintance of Samuel Carter Hall — the
original of Dickens's Pecksniff — and his more celebrated
wife, at the time the former was editing an illustrated
" Book of British Ballads," which was printed at our office.
Hall, like many another man given to persistent affecta
tion, expanded in his palmy days into a complete carica
ture of himself Although devoid of the slightest critical

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 305
faculty, and possessing only commonplace taste in matters
of art, without even the power of expressing himself
logically. Carter Hall had, with Hibernian self-confidence,
set himself up as the artistic oracle of the day — Euskin, it
should be noted, had not then arisen. Having been
editor of one of the crowd of Ulustrated annuals so much
in fashion a few years before, he regarded this as sufficient
qualification, and promulgated his dicta in the " Art
Union" — nicknamed by "Punch" the " Pecksniffery " —
as the "Art Journal" was then called. Pushing young
artists and ambitious art-manufacturers competed for
words of praise from his pen. Those who made offerings
of little studies in oil or water colour, or choice examples
of ceramic ware, were pretty certain to be belauded.
And yet, with all this perfectly well known and openly
talked about, Carter Hall had the coolness to expatiate
upon the serious obligation entailed by his position in
this impudent and Pecksniffian fashion : —
"Without at all inclining to exaggerate our responsibilities, we
know them to be great. We know there are many individuals (and it
cannot be presumptuous to allude to a fact we have borne constantly in
mind as one that ought to make us exceedingly cautious as well as
rigidly upright) who take our opinions as guides to their own — who give
lo our integrity and judgment that confidence which they have not in
their own knowledge and experience, and who consequently look to us
for determining the course they are to pursue in reference to purchases."
Hall talked even far more priggishly and foolishly
than he wrote, and I have more than once felt surprised
at hearing him launch out at his own dinner-table without
any attempt being made to check him by his sensible wife.
True, he assumed an intellectual superiority over her, and
she blandly accepted the false position, but no one was
taken in by this.
At one of Mrs. Hall's receptions, at that little doU's-
house, the Old Brompton Eosery, I remember Jenny Lind
VOL. I. u

306 GLANCES BACK
being present. She was then residing next door to the
Halls, and a certain intimacy existed between the noveUst
and the singer. Jenny Lind had only been a short time
in England, and the crush to hear her at Her Majesty's
was stUl formidable; so that to see her in private,
and with a chance, too, of speaking with her, was an
irresistible attraction to the shoal of people Mrs. HaU
had invited. It was one of those assemblages at which the
guests commonly spend an hour or two on the staircase and
the landing and then retire disgusted. Getting in and out
of the suite of little rooms at the Eosery was scarcely to
be accomplished by any amount of struggling, and I long
remained hemmed in near the lady whom everyone was so
eager to see and pass their opinion upon. The women were
naturally disappointed at finding her so simply dressed, and
talked of the want of style in the unsophisticated Swedish
young lady ; but what they could not at all understand was
her being so quiet and unassuming when the furore about
her was so great — a circumstance she must certainly have
been conscious of They readily paid her the safe though
rather indefinite compliment of terming her pleasant -
looking, but would not admit she had any pretensions to
be considered pretty.
I had heard Jenny Lind on several occasions at Her
Majesty's, whose fortunes had been steadily falling ever
since the secession of Costa, Grisi, Mario, and others
of the troupe, spite of the dithyrambic bounds of the
goddesses of the ballet — those white muslin parasols with
duplex handles as an American critic irreverently charac
terised them. Jenny Lind's nightingale notes, however,
speedily set matters right and replenished Mr. Lumley 's
empty coffers. To hear the new diva from either pit or
gallery it was necessary to fight one's way to a place. At
this time the capacious pit had not been absorbed by stalls,
and formidable barriers to prevent crushing were put up in

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 307
the passages leading to it, but failed to serve their intended
purpose ; for I remember seeing ladies whirled along half
fainting and almost half disrobed, while the young swell of
that day had to struggle violently through at the risk of
being shorn of his claw-hammer coat tails.
Two other Irishmen whom I occasionally met, of a
very different stamp to Samuel Carter Hall, were Sheridan
Knowles and Samuel Lover. A singular peculiarity about
Sheridan Knowles was his remarkable absent-mindedness.
On one occasion he posted a considerable sum of money in
banknotes to his wife, and to his horror discovered, a week
afterwards, that the letter had never reached her. In a
towering rage he wrote to the postmaster-general, and
learnt in reply that the missing notes were quite safe in
the dead-letter office, whither they had been sent as
Knowles had not only neglected to address the envelope
but had omitted to sign his name and append his address
to the letter.
Knowles was constantly blundering over the identity
.of two well-known fellow playwrights, Mark Lemon and
Lemon Eede, and confounding not only their names but
their persons also. One day on meeting the pair arm
in arm he was more perplexed than ever. " Well now,
I'm bothered intirely!" he exclaimed in his choicest
brogue, " come, one of you tell me, which of you two is
the other ? "
Once, when Knowdes was contemplating a journey in
the dear postage times, he asked a friend if he could take
any letters for him. " You 're very kind," said the latter,
" but where are you going 1 " " Well, now," replied
Knowles, " that is inquisitive — I haven't yet quite made
up my mind."
Good-natured, dapper, little Samuel Lover, my other
Irish friend, seemed to be always as brisk and lively as the
proverbial lark. He w-as almost as clever with his brush

308 GLANCES BACK
as with his pen, and was quite as proud of his artistic and
musical, as of his literary attainments. When he sat
down to the piano to accompany himself and warble one of
his own sentimental songs to the admiring damsels who
gathered round him, he recalled to one's recollection simUar
oft-described scenes in which his fellow-countryman, the
author of the " Irish Melodies," conspicuously figured.
Later in life Lover essayed the role of public entertainer,
but in spite of his vocal abilities, secured only an indiffer
ent success. He then tried the stage, but again failed to
make a hit.
A publishing speculation, " the Boy's own Library " —
in which Messrs. Chapman & Hall were likewise concerned
— brought me into relationship about this time with
Thomas Miller, the basket-maker poet, who some years
before had been a lion for the nonce at Gore House. He
was the son of a Lincolnshire agricultural labourer, and had
written in his youth a number of poems, and what is more,
had succeeded in getting a volume of them printed, and
noticed in the literary journals of the time. This induced
him to turn his back upon basket-making and make his
way to London where Lady Blessington took the uncouth
bard under her patronage and, rigging him out in a slop
suit, showed him off admiringly at her receptions.
Jerdan of the "Literary Gazette" Avas induced to find
Miller occasional employment on his paper, and Samuel
Eogers, after inviting him to his breakfasts, generously set
him up in business ; not, however, as a basket-maker or some
kindred craft, at which he might have prospered, but as a
bookseller and publisher — of all callings in the world —
requiring special training and knowledge, such as a
labouring man from the Lincolnshire wolds would certainly
not possess. The result was of course failure, and MUler
took to his pen again, and wrote numerous books dealing-
principally with rural life. His experiences in this direc-

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 309
tion, however, eventually became exhausted, and his books
being no longer in demand, he had a hard struggle to live,
which would have been all the more severe had not Sir
Robert Peel periodically befriended him, and the Literary
Fund made him frequent timely gifts.
It always struck me that Miller had mistaken his
vocation, and that he was really cut out for an itinerant
preacher — a calling in which he would certainly have
achieved success. He had studied his Bible carefully,
and knew by heart all the grand poetical passages which,
whenever an opportunity offered, he was in the habit
of declaiming, in a tremulous yet sonorous voice, and with
half-closed eyes, and altogether in a manner that was most
impressive. Miller wrote the " Boy's Country Year Book," for the
new library, and it was decided to make an important
feature of its many illustrations. Edward Duncan, the
water-colour artist, had already made a few rather
uninteresting drawings for the work, when one day a
young fellow called upon me with a large round of box
wood, which he had covered with cleverly pencilled
sketches of rural subjects, as a specimen of his abilities.
I saw at a glance he was the very individual we were in
want of, and after purchasing his specimen drawings there
and then, promised him immediate and constant employ
ment. The young fellow I speak of was Birket Foster,
whose charming and truthful pictures of English rural
scenes have long since been universally admired.
After a while Miller sent to me an old Lincolnshire
friend of his who had been, I believe, originaUy a stocking-
weaver, till hard times had made him a chartist agitator,
and who had subsequently drifted from advocating
chartism into literature. He was then painfully anxious
to secure employment, and after we had talked the matter
over I entrusted one or two volumes of the new Boy's

310 GLANCES BACK
Library to him to write. Miller's friend was Thomas Cooper,
author of " the Purgatory of Suicides," who had been
prosecuted for his political opinions by the whig govern
ment — that professed liberal, Serjeant Talfourd, holding
the brief against him — and sentenced to two years'
imprisonment in Stafford jail, from which he had recently
been discharged. The story he used to tell of his incarcera
tion was a pitiful one. Treatment of the harshest kind
was then the usual lot of political prisoners. Cooper's food
was both coarse and insufficient, while his bedstead con
sisted of an iron slab resting on two large stones ; a bag of
straw and a couple of blankets serving by way of bedding.
Through some of the debtors confined in the prison.
Cooper secretly obtained pen, ink, and paper, and wrote a
petition to the House of Commons, asking that he might
have proper food, be privileged to correspond with his
wife, and be allowed the use of books and writing materials.
This petition was handed to the governor to be given to
the visiting justices, by whom it was studiously suppressed.
Cooper, however, found means to transmit a letter to
Thomas Slingsby Duncombe, the spendthrift radical
member for Finsbury, and the recognised friend of all
political convicts, apprising him of what he had done.
This led to the petition reaching its destination, when the
Speaker of the House gravely notified that it was neither
right nor constitutional for a petition from a political
prisoner to be kept back. The result was that Cooper
obtained all he had asked for, and was able to employ his
weary prison hours in writing his well-known "Purgatory
of Suicides." On his release Serjeant Talfourd, as though
ashamed of the part he had played in securing his convic
tion, made him a handsome present by way of solatium.
It is a far cry from Stafford jail, with its chartist
prisoners taking their broken rest on iron slabs, to Cam
bridge University and its high jinks over Prince Albert's

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 311
installation as chancellor in the summer of 1847, which
come next in order in these desultory reminiscences. A
few days before the event I went down to Cambridge to
make some preliminary sketches for the " Illustrated Lon
don News," and availed myself of the opportunity to
interview the vice-chancellor, who at once fiatly refused to
afford me any facilities in regard to the forthcoming cere
mony; basing his refusal on the circumstance that a few years
before, when the queen had visited Cambridge, the paper
had published some execrable engravings of the incident.
Eventually I succeeded in talking the great man over, and
he promised to post me the necessary admissions, but
neglected to do so ; and when I arrived in Cambridge on
the morning of the installation I found Catherine Hall so
beset with caps and gowns that there was no chance of
obtaining an interview with him.
In this unlooked-for dilemma I determined to apply to
Dr. Whewell, the master of Trinity, whose position in the
university was scarcely inferior to the vice-chancellor's.
Dr. Whewell, of whom it was wittily said that science was
his forte and omniscience his foible, was notorious for his
bearish ways, and it was only my utter helplessness that
induced me to appeal to him. To my very great surprise
and delight he proved the pink of courtesy, and, although
he was busy with his preparations for receiving the queen
and the prince, who, on their arrival, were to alight at
Trinity College, he listened to all I had to say, and gave
rae cards of admission signed by himself to both the college
hall and the Senate House. He told me, too, I might have
the run of the great hall of his official residence, where
aU the more distinguished guests would assemble prior to
the presentation of the university address to the queen.
What added largely to Dr. Whewell's importance on
this occasion was the conspicuous part he had taken in
securing Prince Albert's election in teeth of the opposition

312 GLANCES BACK
of the church party, who pitted Earl Powis against the
prince, and canvassed and circularised resident and non
resident university men to an extent that left them no
peace. The contest was an exceedingly bitter one, and,
though the prince secured a majority, it was not thought
sufficiently large for him to accept the proffered dignity
ofihand. In this dUemma Peel came to the rescue with
half-a-dozen specious reasons w^hich satisfied the queen and
the prince, and the installation was determined on.
As I had an hour or two before me previous to the
queen's arrival, I occupied myself with sketching a few
characteristic groups in the college quadrangle — notably
the old Duke of Wellington in academical rig tottering
along, preceded by the university bedells with shouldered
maces, whilst learned professors, masters of arts, and
doctors of laws and divinity cheered him vociferously like
so many schoolboys ; also Sir Eobert Peel in his capacious
buff waistcoat, the picture of a portly beau, bowing to the
Duke of Saxe-Weimar with a grace which the distinguished
Turveydrop himself might have envied, but at which Peel's
companion, the Bishop of Oxford, only superciliously
sneered. Shortly afterwards in the hall of Dr. Whewell's
house I amused myself with watching the adulation
heaped upon the Duke of Wellington, till evidently
wearied with it, he marched slowly up to and leisurely
contemplated a replica of Lord Bacon's monument in
St. Michael's church, St. Alban's, gazing at it so long and
attentively as led one to imagine that he had never seen
or heard of the famous sitting statue of the author of the
" Novum Organum " before.
After hurrying to the railway station to sketch the
arrival of the queen and prince, I returned to Trinity
College intent on securing a good place in the great hall
where the new chancellor was to read the university
address to her majesty. Here I encountered church

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 313
dignitaries and university dons struggling perspiringly
with meaner mortals to obtain early admission and front
places; but on their reaching the last of the barriers, which
had been erected to keep off the distinguished crowd, even
the blandishments of bishops proved unavailing, and all
were ruthlessly turned back. Dr. Whewell's talismanic ticket,
however, procured me instant ingress, when I noticed that
the large hall was completely vacant, excepting that a couple
of college bedells sat motionless as statues opposite to each
other at the angles of the recess, where a state chair had
been placed on the dais for the queen's use.
I stationed myself near one of these individuals, and
soon afterwards some official with a long wand entered from
behind the dais, made a hasty inspection, and retired. A
few ladies were next introduced by Sir George Grey, and
took up the position assigned them. Presently the queen,
accompanied by the Duchess of Sutherland and another
lady, made her appearance, and then an amusing little
scene ensued. The duchess, after glancing inquietly at
me (as though wondering what business an individual in
ordinary morning dress could possibly have at a swell
function of this description) advanced a few paces in front
of the queen, and carefuUy scrutinised her toilette. Then,
stepping up to her, she proceeded to smooth back a lock
of hair that had strayed from the bandeaux on the royal
forehead ; next she readjusted the queen's bonnet and its
delicate marabout feather, which she fancied had got dis
placed ; and then studiously arranged the royal robe and
lace pelerine to her seeming satisfaction, expressing this
by approving nods and smiles, while her majesty, appar
ently pleased with all this concern about her personal
appearance, smiled appreciatively in return.
These toilette mysteries over the duchess disappeared,
evidently to inform the gentlemen of the suite that they
would now be admitted to the dais; the gallery at the

314 GLANCES BACK
further end of the hall speedily became filled, and the hall
doors being thrown open, the new chancellor, with his
train-bearers and the Duke of Wellington, a bishop or
two, the vice-chancellor and other university officials as
his supporters, advanced slowly up to the dais, bowing to
the queen at every third or fourth step he took. As the
prince drew nearer and the queen and he caught each
other's eyes they commenced to smile and soon were
unable to resist laughing outright. Likely enough the
scene had been already rehearsed between them, but at
any rate the ludicrousness of these frequent, if essential
genuflexions, was too much for their gravity, in spite of
the dignified onlookers and the stateliness of the occasion.
After reading the address the prince retired, stepping
backwards all the way and making the same profound
obeisances as had marked his advance. This gave rise to
renewed merriment on the part of the two principal actors
in the amusing scene.
Later in the afternoon there was a rush to the Senate
House where Mr. Crick, the public orator, delivered an
address — obsequiously complimentary of the new chancellor
and brimming over with praises of his predecessor — which
Thackeray humorously satirised in the ensuing number
of "Punch" : — " About his venerated dust
Our teardrops tumble thick ;
He was our champion kind and just.
In him was all our hope and trust —
(Says Eeverend Mr. Crick).
" But, weep and blubber tho' we must
For this of Dukes the pick.
We must not cry until we bust ;
Such conduct would inspire disgust —
(Says Eeverend Mr. Crick)."
I saw a good deal of Albert Smith during the ten years
between 1842 and 1852, and faded to form the same

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 315
favourable opinion of him which his friend, Mr. Edmund
Yates, entertained. I first knew him through his contri
buting various articles to the " Comic Album," a common
place illustrated annual which my brother and I had
started, and in which several " Bon Gaultier ballads " by
Theodore Martin originally appeared. Albert Smith was
then supposed to practise as a dentist at the dingy- looking
house he rented in Percy-street, off Tottenham Court-road,
and where, in addition to a skeleton exposed in the hall,
no end of trumpery bizarre nick-nacks, picked up by
him chiefiy during his excursions abroad, were displayed.
One of the most striking of these was a small working
model of a guillotine, which had the place of honour
assigned to it on the mantelpiece of the stuffy back room
where Albert in his French ouvrier's blouse usually wrote
his copy. In these careless days Smith's great delight was
to caper at some masked ball in the guise of a Gavarni
debardeur, or a booted and bewigged French postilion,
dancing energetically till daylight with some fourth rate
actress of whom he had become temporarily enamoured.
After the "Adventures of Mr. Ledbury," it was his
three or four little volumes of social types that brought
Albert Smith prominently into notice. And yet anyone
who now-a-days glances at " the Gent " will be amazed at
the phenomenal success which this and other brochures of
the " Social Zoologies " series met with on their first
publication. The sketch is without a particle of wit,
and its sole merit seems to have consisted in opportunely
satirising, in commonplace fashion, a current popular
nuisance. Some portions of " the Gent " had originally
appeared in " Punch " and " Bentley's Miscellany," and
these with many corrections and additions were handed to
me by Mr. Bogue to get set up in type. CrowquUl com
menced illustrating the book, but the few drawings he
made possessed even less point than the text which they

316 GLANCES BACK
were intended to enliven, and a more humorous pencil
had to be sought for.
This was extremely awkward, as no suitable artist
appeared to be available. Leech's engagement on
" Punch " precluded him from illustrating the book.
Phiz declined the task, and George Cruikshank con
sidered it beneath his notice. The subject was not in
Kenny Meadow's line, and Archibald Henning, whose
pencil had been running riot in Baron Nicholson's" Town,"
was thought altogether too vulgar. Things w^ere therefore
at a dead lock. Bogue, who had long since paid Albert
Smith for the " copy," offered to sacrifice the amount to
be relieved of the book. Smith was unwiUing to incur
any risk, and " the Gent " was then offered to my brother
and me on condition of our foregoing payment of the
preliminary printing bill. As we foolishly declined it, the
iUustrations were given to Henning to complete, and then,
as often happens, the unexpected came about. " The Gent "
as soon as published leapt into a stupendous success, to
the great surprise of everyone connected with it.
The ten thousand copies which had been printed were
speedily disposed of, and edition followed edition with
a similar result. Nearly a thousand pounds must have
been made out of this trumpery brochure, the sale of
which was so great as to justify first editions of — I dare
not trust myself to say how many thousand copies of the
more popular succeeding volumes of the series. Each of
them comprised something like a hundred pages of a size
that could almost be squeezed into the waistcoat pocket,
and the price was a shilling ! To-day publishers give
double this quantity of paper and print for a quarter of the
money. Quite a small fortune must have been made out of
these wretched little books. While their publication was
in progress, at Mr. Bogue's request I applied to Mr.
Thackeray (with whom I was then in close intercourse,

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 317
and a single chapter of whose " Snob papers " contained
more wit than any half-dozen of Albert Smith's and
Angus Eeach's "Physiologies,") to write as many volumes
as he chose to undertake at the price of one hundred
guineas each. This being double the amount Thackeray
was then receiving for a monthly part of " Vanity Fair "
(including the etching of a couple of plates), he frankly
admitted that the' offer was a tempting one, but he even
tually declined it, by reason of his strong disinclination
to ally himself with anything that Albert Smith was
connected with.
Thackeray, who had an abhorrence of things vulgar,
found Smith's mauvais gout more than he could stand.
When brought into contact with him he treated him wdth
contemptuous toleration, showing him outward civility,
but the occasional sarcastic observations w^hich he per-^
mitted to escape him, disclosed his true sentiments respect
ing Albert's mountebank ways. Subsequently, when
I offered Thackeray, on the part of Messrs. Smith & Elder,.
a thousand pounds to write a novel for them, he at once
accepted the commission, and the result was " Esmond,"^
' After the publishers had been informed that their offer was accepted, Mr.
George Smith seems to have called on Mr. Thackeray to conclude the transaction,
for it is evidently to " Esmond" that Mrs. Ritchie refers in the following extract : —
" My father was hard at work finishing a book which some people stiU say is the
best of all his books. People read it then, when it came out, and read it still, and
re-read it. He used to write in his study with the vine shading the two windows,
and we used to do our lessons, or sit sewing and reading in the front room with the
bow-window to the street ; and one day, as we were there with our governess, my
father came in, in great excitement. 'There's a young fellow just come,' said he ;
' he has brought a thousand pounds in his pocket ; he has made me an offer for my
book, it 's the most spirited, handsome offer, I scarcely like to take him at his word ;
he's hardly more than a boy, his name is George Smith ; he is waiting there now,
and I must go back ; ' and then, after walking once up and down the room, my father
went away."
The foregoing suggests a single observation. Although Mr. Thackeray was
undoubtedly a generous-minded man, he was not in the habit, after the success he
had achieved with "Vanity Fair," of setting less than a publisher's value upon his-
literary labours. And certainly when I proposed to him the by no means exorbitant
sum of a thousand pounds, he never for one moment suggested that the amount was^
excessive.

318 GLANCES BACK
not published, I think, till two or three years afterwards.
The publishers, who had expected that the work would
relate to modern times, were in the first instance dis
appointed ; but I subsequently learned from Mr. Smith
Williams, their literary adviser, that the immediate success
of "Esmond" had so far exceeded their expectations, that
a cheque for two hundred and fifty pounds beyond the
sum agreed upon had been handed to Mr. Thackeray ; and
yet Anthony TroUope records in his "Memoir," that
Thackeray complained to him that people didn't read
the book.
Until the unforeseen success of the three or four little
volumes which comprised his contribution to the series
of " Social Zoologies," Albert Smith had always been in
the habit of proclaiming that he "didn't believe in his own,
but in other people's ; " meaning by this that he preferred
others and not himself should be at the expense of wafting
him upwards on the wings of fame. He had already managed
to get his name well before the public by incessantly
fighting against the system of anonymity, and by care-
tullj republishing every available scrap of his contributions
to "Punch" and other periodicals under his own name.
He stipulated, too, that in all advertisements and posters
relating to his theatrical or other productions, the words
"Albert Smith" should form a prominent line. Eule,
whose oyster shop in Maiden-lane was patronised by many
popular literary men of the time, amusingly summed up
the difference which, according to his lights, existed
between Charles Dickens and Albert Smith. "You see,"
Eule used to saj^ in an authoritative fashion, "with
Charles Dickens it 's all talent and very little tac' [tact],
but with Albert it 's just the opposite — all tac' and very
little talent."
What largely conduced to the ill favour with which
Smith was regarded by many literary men of the time,

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 319
were the imbecile canons of taste in literature and art
which he so persistently enunciated, and though the
idolaters of culture pretended to smile at his ignorance,
they were none the less irritated at his huge self-conceit.
It was a pet dogma of his that Shakspeare was ludicrously
overrated, and that high art was all " rot," and he thought
to set the world right on both these points by persistent
though feeble efforts at ridicule. Indeed, until he had
made his great success as a showman, he never ceased
harping on the one over-strained string.
Few of Smith's associates could stand his noisy self-
assertion and boisterous behaviour. After his " entertain
ments " had made him a celebrity, and he had the oppor
tunity of consorting with sw^ells, he certainly acquired a
varnish of politeness, but prior to this he retained for the
most part his old medical student manners, which were not
rendered any the more bearable by his unpleasant falsetto
voice. When addressing Leech he was in the habit of
always calling him " Jack," until one day Douglas Jerrold
quietly observed, "How long is it necessary to know you.
Leech, before one is privileged to cull you Jack ? " Pigmy
as Jerrold physically was Albert Smith quailed before him,
and Jerrold's stinging repartee- — when Albert, smarting
under one of his remarks, coaxingly reminded him that
they both rowed in the same boat — i.e., " Punch " — " Yes,
but not with the same sculls," is a matter of ancient history.
Jerrold indulged in another spiteful jest at Albert Smith's
expense when, observing the initials A.S. at the foot of one
of his magazine articles, he remarked that the signature
conveyed only two-thirds of the truth.
On one occasion when an application had been made to
Jerrold to contribute to a, publication called " Gavarni in
London," of which Smith was editor, he declined in such
offensive language that Smith's friends were sorely per
plexed as to the way it could best be resented. Albert on

320 GLANCES BACK
his part, pretending that it would be downright cruelty to
inflict personal chastisement on a feeble mite of a man like
Jerrold, purchased a penny toy -whip which he carried about
with him and exhibited everywhere, boasting that he
intended whipping little Master Jerrold at the first oppor
tunity. The joke was but a ghastly one, for everyone
had noticed how cowed Smith always was in Jerrold's
presence, and knew, moreover, that he lacked the courage
to carry out his harmless threat ; whereas Jerrold openly
braved him and never let an opportunity slip of jesting
spitefully at his expense. After Albert Smith's unquestion
able success with his entertainments, Jerrold and he became
reconciled — in the common fashion of literary men who had
once striven their best to say the bitterest things of each
other — and henceforth Smith enjoyed immunity from
Jerrold's spiteful tongue.
Albert Smith made his debut as a lecturer with the
"Overland Mail," and this' proved sufficiently successful
for him to decide upon following it up with the " Ascent
of Mont Blanc;" which had, however, to be first of all
ascended. Hodder records in his " Memories of my time,"
" that when Smith told him he was ofi' the next morning to
Chamouni, and meant to make the ascent of Mont Blanc
in a day or two," he observed that it was " a bold thing for
a man to do who had not been in training," and that Smith
rejoined, "Pluck will serve me instead of training."
Pluck, however, did no such thing, for according to the
gossip current at Chamouni at the time. Smith was so dead-
beat towards the end of the ascent, that he was unable to
proceed any further. As it was essential, how^ever, that he
should be able to proclaim that he had reached the summit,
the only course was to carry him up there, and this, his
stalwart guides somehow or other managed to accomplish
between them. Ill-natured people did not scruple to say
that the adventurous author was carried up to the

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 321
summit of the mountain in one of the big provision
baskets. Credence was given to the story from Smith's continu
aUy flourishing in the eyes of his friends a certificate of his
having made the ascent, which his guides had supplied him
with. Experienced mountaineers maintained that the feat
was far from so formidable as to need such a document to
authenticate the achievement ; and it was suggested that
the guides had been " tipped " to give it, to enable Smith
to silence any unpleasant rumours that might get abroad
respecting the precise method in which the crowning
stage of the ascent had been accomplished.
When Albert had decided upon announcing the Mont
Blanc lecture, he sketched out a rude idea for a showcard
of the entertainment, and brought it to me to get it
redrawn for him in more artistic fashion. In this sketch
his own name figured twice as large as the words " Mont
Blanc," but as the latter had long been dubbed " the
monarch of mountains," I suggested to the artist the pro
priety of reducing the dimensions of Smith's name and
increasing those of the line, "Mont Blanc." The sugges
tion was acted upon, and an effective " nocturne," as Mr.
Whistler would phrase it, in blue and silver, was produced,.
but evidently not to Smith's taste, for he angrily expressed
his dissatisfaction. As I very innocently failed to see what
he could possibly have to complain of, the annoyance he
felt was all the greater when it became necessary for him
to explain, that be considered his own name of far greater
importance than the subject-matter of his lecture.
Albert Smith was unquestionably an admirable
raconteur, and, in spite of his cracked voice, had the rare
art of rendering even the poorest stuff amusing. For the
smarter passages in his lecture, he was understood to be
indebted to Sala, Eobert Brough, and other young feUows
who were then glad to pick up a few sovereigns for a peck of
VOL. I. X

322 GLANCES BACK
jokes. The public fiocked to the Egyptian Hall, and Smith
began coining money fast. Before long some of the lucky
lecturer's less fortunate literary associates at painfully
hard-up moments — there were real bohemians among the
fraternity in those days, altogether different to the sham
race which prates so glibly of its gypsy doings in these
more comfortable times — sought to borrow small sums of
money from him. Albert, however, was equal to the
occasion, and had a lithographic circular prepared, embody
ing the trite remark that
"  loan oft loses both itself and friend,"
and sent this in reply to his importuning correspondents,
who realized the truth of the old adage that blood was not
to be extracted from a stone.
Smith played off a grim jest on some of his more inti
mate friends, to whom in moments of confidence he imparted
that he had not forgotten them in his will. He, more
over, dropped hints to the same effect with regard to other
friends, very well knowing these would certainly be con
veyed to them. By this means he managed to gather
about him a knot of sycophants who trumpeted his praises
from the house-tops. At his death, however, all these
expectant legatees were doomed to disappointment, for
to none of them did he bequeath so much as a penny-
piece.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 323

XVII.
(1848.)
"pasquin" and THE "PUPPET SHOW" — JENKINS OF THE
"post" — JAMES HANNAY — THE CHARTISTS AND THE SPECIAL
-CONSTABLE CRAZE — HARE-BRAINED WILLIAM NORTH —
GAVARNI — A MASTER-STROKE IN WORTHLESS PAPER.
The great success which " Punch " had attained to in
1847-8 produced a crop of imitators, among which were
"the Man in the Moon," "Puck," "Pasquin," "the
Spark," "Diogenes," etc., and early in 1848 my brother
and I started the " Puppet Show," which, as the first
number chanced to make its appearance just after the
French revolution of February, leapt at once into tem
porary success. Humorous authors of an original turn
were exceedingly rare in those days, and we thought our
selves lucky in securing the co-operation of two smart
young writers just out of their teens, James Hannay and
Sutherland Edwards, who between them had written the
eight or ten numbers of " Pasquin," a clever and exceed
ingly pungent satirical journal, which after a transitory
¦existence, had either frightened by its brutal boldness, or
tired out with its weekly losses, the timid capitalist who
financed the speculation.
Hannay was then a shock-headed young feUow of
twenty, who, after a brief spell in her majesty's navy, had
retired from the service, written a clever Uttle book called
'" Biscuits and Grog," and been for a while on the staff of
¦the " Morning Chronicle " newspaper. He had parted

324 GLANCES BACK
wdth the proprietors of that moribund " daily " on the
reverse of friendly terms, and attacked the paper ruth
lessly in " Pasquin " as long as this smartly- written
publication lasted.
Another favourite butt for Hannay's savage satire was
Eumsey Forster — the Jenkins of the "Morning," or, as
Hannay dubbed it, the " Fawning Post " — who had sup
planted the ci-devant midshipman in the affections of some
pretty barmaid at a London tavern which they both fre
quented. Forster was most energetic in his particular call
ing, and is said on one occasion to have obtained admission,
in. the interests ofthe "Morning Post," to a Waterloo banquet
at Apsley House, by getting himself up as one of the
extra servants out of livery, called in to assist on these
occasions. He was highly indignant with Thackeray for
the way in which he persistently ridiculed him in " Punch"
under the cognomen of Jenkins ; and I remember, after
the author of " Vanity Fair " had become a celebrity, and
began to be invited by other wearers of purple and fine
linen, besides Lord Carlisle, to their aristocratic soirees,.
being highly amused by Forster teUing me bow he had
taken his revenge.
"You should know, sir," he said solemnly, "that at-
Stafford House, Lady Palmerston's, and the other swell
places, a little table is set for me just outside the drawing-
room doors, where I take down the names of the company
as these are announced by the attendant footmen. Well,.
Mr. Thackeray was at the Marquis of Lansdowne's the
other evening, and his name was called out as customary ;
nevertheless, I took very good care that it should not
appear in the list of the company at Lansdowne House^
given in the ' Post.' A night or two afterwards I was at
Lord John Eussell's, and Mr. Thackeray's name was again
announced, and again I designedly neglected to write it
down ; whereupon the author of ' the Snobs of England,'

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 325
of all persons in the world " — [it must be candidly con
fessed Thackeray was himself a bit of a tuft-hunter] —
" bowed, and bending over me, said : ' Mr. Thackeray ; ' to
which I replied : ' Yes, sir, I am quite aware ; ' neverthe
less the great Mr. Thackeray's name did not appear in the
' Post ' the following morning."
Another anecdote of Eumsey Forster may here be
noted. On the occasion of one of my trips to Paris I was
invited to dine with a small party, of which Forster formed
one, at the Trois Frferes. It was our host's first visit to
the French capital, where he had come to spend a week
with a hundred pounds in his pocket, and required some
assistance in getting rid of the amount. While the dinner
was being served one of the waiters persistently left the
room door open, to the evident annoyance of Forster, who
was sitting near to it. The latter knew only a few words
of French, but fancied he knew sufficient for the occasion.
So, waving his hand in rather an imperious manner, and
unintentionally transposing a phrase he had often heard
used, and thought he had pat upon his tongue, he said to
the offending waiter, " Gargon, portez la ferme ! s'U vous
plait." The gargon, of course, stared amazed, and we
diners, I am sorry to say, were all rude enough to roar with
laughter. One unlucky incident in Forster's career formed the
subject of some savage satirical lines in an early number of
" Pasquin." When the prince consort contemplated pur
chasing Osborne House he crossed over to the Isle of
Wight one day in the royal yacht, accompanied by a few
gentlemen of his suite. On the return journey the prince
noticed on deck a gentleman standing some little distance
from him whom he failed to recognise, and he asked one of
the suite who it was. The latter had to admit his ignor
ance, but at once stepped up to the stranger and inquired
his name, w^hereupon Forster produced his card, on which

320 GLANCES BACK
his caUing, " fashionable reporter of the ' Morning Post,' "
was duly inscribed. The gentleman returned to the prince,
and an earnest colloquy ensued, after which he came a
second time to Forster, and gravely lectured him on the
very great liberty he had taken in obtruding himself on
the prince's privacy. It was impossible, he observed, that
he could be allowed to remain, and he was therefore
requested to at once take his place in the small boat which
the yacht was towing at its stern.
Having been tumbled into this by some of the crew on
the pretence of rendering him assistance, Forster, owing to
the swell that chanced to be on, speedily found himself
completely drenched. It was low water when the yacht
neared Portsmouth, and a couple of sailors were ordered
to cast the boat off and put its occupant ashore, a com
mission which they executed by landing him in the soft
mud, through which, to the great amusement of those on
board the yacht, he had to wade up to his knees for half a
mile or more before he reached firm ground. In " Pasquin "
Hannay, after a preliminary onslaught on his luckless rival,
touched upon the Osborne incident in his usual biting
style : — " Some lingering traces of ancestral evil
Fired his ambition to turn printer's devil ; ^
In this succeeding, see his views extend —
How fast weeds sprout ! — he 's next the flunkey's friend.
At every pot-house where the menials meet
Exchanging all the scandal of the street ;
A dirty barter fitted to degrade
Where falsehood forms the staple of the trade.
Where lies are currency, and no men fear
To vend their baseness for a pot of beer.
Our -Mudlark, like the owl at night, would fly
With long-stretched ears to catch the passing lie.
Would greet the butler with a friendly hand
(The coryphoeus of the servile band),
' Forster had been an apprentice in my father's printing office.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 327
Nod to the footman, with the groom beguile
The passing hour, and on the shoeblack smile.
The freshest scandal culled, away he 'd steal
To shoot the rubbish and secure his meal.
******
" Once on a time when England's gentle queen
. Wearied with councils, sought a calmer scene,
The royal yacht stole softly through the water
As erst fair Cleopatra's, beauty's daughter.
******
" Prince Albert smoked his meerschaum as they flew,
And many a jest regaled the merry crew ;
But what is this that taints the ambient air ?
Lurks there corruption in a scene so fair 1
******
" So here the caitiff stealthily had fled
(Liners '¦ rush in where premiers fear to tread).
As cobwebs clustering in some favourite room
Fly at the touch of active housemaid's broom.
As weeds are rooted out from each fair spot
And left on dunghill lingeringly to rot.
Just so the wretch was hurled into the flood.
And left to wallow in congenial mud ;
Smeared o'er with filth he struggled to the shore.
And gained his safe obscurity once more.
Such the adventure whence he drew his fame.
And gained a ducking and a Mudlark's name."
In this juvenile production there are ample evidences
of that trenchant style which characterised all Hannay's
subsequent writings, whether these took the shape of
satirical effusions, literary or political essays, commentaries
on the classics, or naval stories and sketches. Hannay
was, moreover, an exceedingly ready and effective speaker,
although somewhat inclined to ponderosity, and I remem
ber with what delight we used to pit him against the
youthful legal luminaries who, in landlord Dolamore's
days, were among the evening frequenters of the Old
Cheshire Cheese smoking-room. Spouting was a positive
' Penny-a-liuera.

328 GLANCES BACK
passion with Hannay, and at this period nothing delighted
him better than airing his budding oratory at the neigh
bouring Cogers' Hall.
Prominent among the Cheshire Cheese smoking-room
habitues was the elder brother of Sir Henry James, the
distinguished advocate who was at that time content to
plead for a two-guinea fee in the Lord Mayor's Court, whUe
his more fortunate brother enjoyed the snug berth of a
county court treasurer, or registrar, at something like a
thousand a-year. The latter's weakness was a too great
partiality for Dolamore's magnums of old port, and when
he had primed himself with this potent liquor he became
exceedingly disputatious and dogmatical, and pompously
expounded his views on questions of the day in such a
cock-sure fashion as would have caused Macaulay himself
to blink. He was the Cheshire Cheese Sir Oracle, and
when be oped his mouth few dogs dared bark.
Hannay was, however, a match for him. The ex-
middy's reading was, extensive, and after a few vigorous
satirical observations, usually unpleasantly personal,
Hannay would ridicule the views enunciated by his
opponent, and by the aid of his singularly retentive
memory would roll off some diatribe, more or less germain
to the subject, cribbed from his favourite authors —
Junius, Johnson, Swift, ChurchiU, or Carlyle — and so
perplex the county court treasurer as to cause him to
retire from the discussion querulous and crestfallen.
Hannay had one amiable weakness. He had all that
love of genealogy which characterised the Scot in the past,
and was for ever fond of expatiating on the depths of the
roots and the stalwartness of the trunk of the family
genealogical tree, thereby boring his bohemian brethren
immensely. They readUy enough recognised his power
of invective and his abiUty to quote from Junius by the
hour, but, like Tennyson's grand old gardener, they smUed

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 329
at his claims to long descent. " Blood and culture " was
Hannay's motto, and the trading and lower classes — the
" plebs," as he always disdainfully termed them — were
objects of his supreme contempt. Political agitators of
every description he abhorred, sardonically maintaining
that Carlyle's whiff of grape-shot was your true panacea
for disaffection.
It will be gathered from this that, besides being an
ardent worshipper of Carlyle from a literary point of view,
Hannay found the latter's autocratic ideas in matters politi
cal much to his own taste. He was not only well read in
Carlyle's works, but had carefully studied his style and
was fond of parodying it in the comic papers at every
avaUable opportunity. In course of time the sage and
his disciple got to know one another, and Hannay made
frequent pilgrimages to Chelsea to drink in Carlyle's
perennial fiow of talk. On one of these occasions he
took me with him to gratify my curiosity with a sight of
the Craigenputtock Diogenes. Mrs. Carlyle was away in
Scotland, and Carlyle was in one of his unamiable moods.
He, however, consented to see us, although he gave us
only a cold welcome. He was slovenly dressed in a
shabby old dressing-gown, and one was struck by his
general unkempt appearance and wearied look, and especi
ally by the little inclination he showed to talk. All
Hannay's attempts to " draw " him temporarily failed, but
after a while Carlyle invited us to smoke, and under the
soothing infiuence of tobacco from, a long " church
warden," and fiattery cautiously administered, his tongue
loosened and an oracular outburst ensued.
Presently the conversation turned on Thackeray having
recently taken to lecturing, and Carlyle inveighed in his
habitual loud way against the growing habit of literary
men making a public show of themselves. Years ago he
said, referring to the amateur performances of Dickens and

330 GLANCES BACK
others, they strutted as stage buffoons, and now they
went about exhibiting themselves to a lot of inquisitive
people who were too lazy to read what they paid their
shillings to listen to. He railed against bringing in the
comic actor element — the mimicking the voice and gesture
of the characters to heighten the effect of the humorous
passages ; all such stage trickeries, he angrily said, were
beneath the dignity of the literary calling. He tempered
his denunciations with only a single gleam of indirect
approval when he remarked that Thackeray's histrionic
deficiencies told somewhat in his favour ; still he insisted
that these shilling shows should be left to stage players,
or such born mountebanks as Albert Smith.
A short time before the starting ofthe "Puppet Show"
Gavarni, the clever pictorial satirist of Parisian life, came
to England to escape incarceration in the debtor's prison
at Clichy ; and he designed for us a figure of the show
man with his company of puppets for the first number
of the new publication which had been announced in rather
a novel style of prospectus : —
" Puppet Show : a pungent penny pictorial periodical, polishes
popular politicians politely, punishes peevish prattling persons preach
ing pattern progress principles, pooh-poohs pompous presuming purse
proud parvenus, puts-down paltry prolix publications, patronises play
houses pulling pointless performances to pieces, and publishes piquant
pictures, playful puns, priceless poems, pleasing prose, popular parodies
and political pasquinades. Princes, peers and policemen, poets, players
and paupers, patriots, philanthropists, and puffed-up pretenders purchase
the Puppet Show."^
Besides Hannay and Sutherland Edwards, the " Puppet
Show " staff at one time or another included John Bridge-
man who acted as editor ; Shirley Brooks, then a young
lawyer who found the penning of jocular prose and verse
more pleasant and profitable than poring over Black-
^ The publishing office in Wellington-street was the same that Dickens fixed on
a few years afterwards for "All the Year Round."

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 331
stone and Coke upon Littleton, and afterwards editor
of " Punch ; " Angus Eeach, a gallery reporter for the
" Morning Chronicle," and contributor to every publication
where he could possibly plant " copy," and who very
speedily killed himself by positive overwork ; Dr. Mackay,
who contributed poems of " the good time coming " order,
with which he had made his mark on the " Daily
News " during Dickens's editorship ; Eobert Brough, then
a dyspeptic beardless youth freshly arrived from Liver
pool ; E. "Blanchard, subsequently known by his half-
hundred pantomimes ; William North, who regarded
himself as a sort of coming Messiah, but was equally
ready to jeer as to preach ; and several others. I
contributed, I recollect, among other things, some half-
a-dozen Tennysonian parodies, including one of " Godiva "
as represented by Madame Wharton in silken tights,
in a popular tableau vivant at a place called " the
WalhaUa." Nearly all the " Puppet Show " writers were very young
men, and several of them were even under age. Still they
had unbounded confidence in their own opinions, and dis
tributed their attacks with charming impartiality all round,
though " Punch's " " eminent writers," as they used to be
fulsomely styled, received rather more than their fair share
of abuse. In a so-called " Literary Derby," for instance,
the probable starters were said to be "Mark Lemon's
Dulness, by Himself out of His own Head ; Douglas
Jerrold's Bitterness, by Bad Temper out of Eespect-
abiUty; Albert Smith's Catchpenny, by Tact out of
Commonplace ; Sterling Coyne's Old Joke, by Scizzors
out of Joe Miller ; and Horace Mayhew's Bad Pun, by
Appropriation out of Anybody." Again, when it became
known that the discontinuance of Jerrold's " Shilling
Magazine " was imminent, the opening stanzas of Burger's
" Leonora " were thus parodied for the occasion : —

332 GLANCES BACK
" The Douglas at the blush of day
From his tenth tumbler started —
' My magazine, 'tis said, don't pay,
Success from it has parted.
I've puffed it long with all my might.
And yet it 's in an awful plight ;
It cometh out unheeded.
And each month less is needed.'
***-**
" And up and down amid the crew
Who with him had been drinking
The heated Douglas madly flew.
And on his journal thinking.
He sought relief, but found none there ;
And then he tore his turnip hair.
To earth his carcass flinging,
The bell in fury ringing."
In 1848, the same as forty years afterwards, the right
of a mob to assemble in Trafalgar-square, was energeticaUy
contested by the authorities of the day. This will, perhaps,
be news to Mr. John Burns and Mr. Cunninghame-Graham,
who seem to have conceived that they were contesting for
a liberty formerly enjoyed by the London roughs, whereas
the " Puppet Show " tells us that —
" When a mob is convened in Trafalgar Square
It soon is dispersed when the Peelers appear ;
Like the sprigs of a birch broom they quickly, quickly
Sweep all the place and the thoroughfares clear.
Letters and numbers their necks disclose,
But on their staves they count more than those ;
Press them — distress them — with bruises, their use is
To answer and fell you beneath their blows."
There are plenty of people who remember the panic
prevailing at this period ; how the government in a state
of funk at the proposed great chartist meeting on Kenning
ton-common, went through the farce of having between
one and two hundred thousand special constables sworn in ;
how troops and artillery were stealthily marched at dead of

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 333
night to the neighbourhood of the various bridges, and
hidden away in inn yards and other enclosed places ; and
how the Bank of England and all the public ofiices were
fortified and strongly garrisoned, and the clerks had lethal
weapons distributed to them. Shopkeepers in the main
thoroughfares, taking alarm at rumours of these mUitary
preparations, closed their shops and nervously awaited the
course of events. Many timid people remained indoors in
the full belief that grape shot would be sweeping the streets.
before the day was over, and that there would be a general
conflagration at night time ; and all this because some
twenty thousand men were demonstrating in theatrical
fashion with triumphal cars and seditious banners, and
trundling a monster petition about, on a suburban
common. The chartists had certainly indulged in a good deal of
tall talk about marching in a body with their petition and
its pretended six millions of signatures — the larger portion
of which, by the way, were fraudulent — to the House of
Commons ; but stalwart carrotty-haired Feargus O'Connor,
who claimed descent from the wild kings of Connaught,
but whom O'ConneU contemptuously nicknamed " Burly
Balderdash," seems to have thought better of it when he
learnt that the chief police commissioner was in attendance
at the neighbouring Horns tavern. The presence of this
functionary in his unpretending blue uniform was quite
sufficient to overawe the malcontents, without recourse
being had to a hundred thousand special constables and a
large military force ; and the chartist leader, after communi
cations had passed between him and this dreaded ofiicial,
prudently decided upon conveying the many rolls of the
so-caUed national petition to the House in and outside a
four-wheel cab, unaccompanied by the smallest escort.
When the vehicle rolled into Palace-yard without so
much as a pikehead poking out of the windows, the

334 GLANCES BACK
members of the government breathed freely again, and the
troops of specials and their anxious wives and mothers all
rejoiced at the good tidings which travelled apace. It was
amusing to note how the very people who had been almost
prostrated with terror in the morning plucked up courage
and laughed at what they described as their neighbours'
fears ; pretending that they themselves had never for a
moment believed there was reason for apprehending the
faintest danger. The fact was, as in other instances of
great popular excitement, the timid, well-to-do classes,
greatly magnified the peril of the situation, and as a con
sequence the existing generation fancies it to have been far
more serious than it really was.
To counteract the disturbing infiuence of the various
continental revolutions the government hurriedly passed an
act, making the open advocacy of republican opinions
felony. Political meetings, however, continued to be held
and plenty of strong language was used, at which sensible
people only smiled, though the authorities certainly lost
their heads over it. The result was that Ernest Jones and
other chartists were put upon their trial, and Jones was
sentenced to a couple of years' imprisonment, of which a
portion was ordered to be solitary confinement.
" For the first nineteen months," ran Jones's subsequent
piteous complaint, " I was without books, pen, ink, or
paper, besides being locked up for a fortnight in a dark cell
on bread and water, during the height of the cholera in
1849. I was allowed to exchange a letter with my wife
only four times a year, and to see her only four times
during this period in presence of a turnkey. When I once
wrote to Sir George Grey, I was not allowed to write to my
wife ; when I once saw several members of Parliament I
was not allowed to see my wife that quarter. . . . My
day cell had unglazed windows all the winter through ; my
night cell had a grating a foot and a half square, opening

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 335
at once on the air. I wrote by stealth, ' The New World '
and a number of minor pieces, and having no ink I chiefiy
wrote," poor Jones melodramatically adds, " with my
blood." What, one may here ask, have those Irish M.P.s who
were constantly bullying Mr. Secretary Matthews, when
ever one of the accomplices of the despicable Phoenix-park
assassins happened to catch cold, to say to this ?
The much-abused Ernest Jones was simply a political
enthusiast in advance of his time, whose sincerity can
scarcely be questioned. He made important pecuniary
and social sacrifices for the cause he had espoused. His
father was a major in the army, and equerry to the
unpopular Duke of Cumberland, after whom Ernest Jones
was named. When a youth Jones ran away from home
to join the Poles, but was overtaken and brought back
again to be well lectured by the duke's equerry, who
considered his position compromised by this radical esca
pade. For a time Jones's liberal tendencies were controlled
by his aristocratic surroundings, he having been presented
to the queen by the Duke of Beaufort a few years before
he joined the chartist movement.
Ernest Jones's prison lot was certainly a hard one, but
the punishment meted out to his ignorant associates was
still more severe. Learning from the newspapers that
national workshops were in full swing in Paris, they
foolishly hoped that plenty of frothy talk would have the
effect of securing them double pay for half the usual quantity
of labour, their notions of political economy being based
on the belief, as some one amusingly put it, that entire
communities might manage to exist by the simple process
of taking in each other's washing.
I well remember the nervous inquietude of the well-
to-do middle- classes at the time when the half-witted
Cuffey and his accomplices were put upon their trial on

336 GLANCES BACK
the portentous charge of conspiring " to levy war against
our sovereign lady the queen, ber crown, and dignity."
Most of those who had succeeded in obtaining admission
to the court looked half-scared. None dared express an
opinion favourable to the accused, for the mistrust seemed
to be general. There were three judges to try the
prisoners, and Parry, Ballantine, Huddlestone, and other
famous criminal counsel, including Kenealy, who obtained
such notoriety in the Tichborne affair, conducted the
defence. The judges' bearing, spite of an affected impar
tiality, was studiously unfavourable to the accused. On the
jury entering the box, counsel pertinaceously but futdely
claimed the right to question them with a view to challeng
ing them if their answers were unsatisfactory, and crazy
Cuffey clamoured to be tried by his peers, according to
the principles of Magna Charta. Then the attorney-
general. Sir John Jervis, droned through his opening
speech, and the informer gave his evidence.
Nervous jurymen, caUing up visions of the sacking of
their shops, and swayed by observations from the bench,
found all the prisoners guilty, when the Court, after glibly
expatiating in conventional style on the blessings of the
constitution under which we had the happiness to live, and
severely upbraiding Cuffey and the rest for plotting the
destruction of a peaceful city, the slaughter of innocent
citizens, and the taking possession of the government by
force and bloodshed, passed sentence of transportation for
life on all the prisoners, in no one instance — not even that
of Dowling, the young Irish portrait painter — tempering
justice with mercy.
To the few who sympathised with the accused, the
proceedings seemed almost a burlesque of that pure
administration of justice of which we contentedly boast,
and to lookers-on, who had not taken leave of their senses,
the exhibition was a somewhat melancholy one.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 337
All that was proved against the accused was that they
had indulged in a ridiculous travesty of a conspiracy
against the State. They had been captured by the police
at a well-known public-house, to which, egged on by the
customary government spies who swarmed at all these
political gatherings, some few had come wearing tin breast
plates under their fustian waistcoats, and armed with rusty
pistols that would not go off, stage daggers that would
scarcely have pierced a batter pudding, unmounted pike-
heads, and other useless warlike implements. The whole
affair was in fact a carefully prepared trap, into which the
shaUow-pated Cuffey and his fatuous fellow-conspirators
complacently fell.
To return, however, to the " Puppet Show." Among
its later contributors was one whom most of his confreres
looked upon as more fitted for Bedlam than to be left to
roam at large down Fleet-street and the Strand. This was
William North, who in addition to joking on topics of the
day, indulged in savage diatribes against the existing
condition of society. Being possessed of some private
means, he had these jeremiads put into print at his own
expense, but they speedily found their way to the
omnivorous butterman or trunkmaker.
North entertained certain mystical opinions respecting
the coming regeneration of mankind, in which he was to
be an important factor ; but in spite of his great self-con
ceit, he eventually realised that his preaching only fell upon
deaf ears. Disgusted with the indifference of the old
world, he buoyed himself up with the insane belief that a
favourable reception would be accorded to his ideas in the
new, and he thereupon packed up his portmanteau and
crossed the Atlantic.
Arrived at New York, he at once proclaimed the age of
" believe and live," as he termed it, to be past, and that to
" comprehend and know " was the business of the future,
VOL. I. Y

338 GLANCES BACK
"The Voice of the Young World," wrote he, "must be
announced in thunder . . . thousands of light infantry
in the shape of prospectuses and pamphlets must traverse
the civilised globe, telling of the inauguration of a new
system which invites universal correspondence, shrinks
before no perU, and must and will and shall prevail."
The young world, however, instead of thundering forth
as invited, remained mute, and as the New Yorker^ only
laughed at the lunatic seer, the poor fellow in his despair
put a bullet into his skull when perambulating Broadway
one evening ; and his bleeding corpse lay stretched upon
the pavement, scaring passers-by, until borne away by
the police.
Two or three months before the Paris revolution of
1848 Gavarni, as already mentioned, came to England.
He brought with him a letter of introduction from the
Due de Montpensier to Prince Albert, who received him
at Windsor with his accustomed courtesy, and thereby
ensured him an entrance into the best English society.
Gavarni, however, did not care to profit by the oppor
tunities offered him, partly by reason of his impecunious
position, but chiefiy because he sensibly enough under
stood that English aristocratic patronage was hardly likely
to be extended to an artist who had depicted the inner life
of the Parisian lorette, and whose forte was social satire.
The " Punch " set I believe invited him to a dinner, and
Thackeray I know called upon him and tried to enter into
cordial relations with him, but all to no purpose ; Gavarni
received these and other advances with studied coldness.
The cynical delineator of the shady side of Parisian life
was glad enough, however, to accept temporary employment
upon the " Illustrated London News," and to undertake a
work which my brother, who was a great friend of his,
schemed out, and prevailed upon Bogue, the publisher, to
embark in, called " Gavarni in London." The publication

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 339
met with indifferent success. Gavarni's drawings had too
much of a French character about them, besides which
Thackeray and others, who had originally promised to con
tribute to the work, drew back, not so much because they
were piqued at Gavarni's morose behaviour, but from the
strong objections they had to writing for any publication
edited by Albert Smith. Of the various London types,
which every pains were taken to make Gavarni acquainted
with, the artist regarded the coal heaver as by far the most
interesting and picturesque ; and he spent days in river
side " publics," off which the coal barges then lay, studying
the manners and customs of their grimy frequenters.
In the early months of his sojourn over here Gavarni
lodged, like Cham had done, in Salisbury-square, Fleet-
street, and day after day the whilom blase habitue of
Very's, Vefour's, and the Trois Frferes Provengaux, unre-
gretful of their choice cuisine and grandes caves, would
betake himself to the one o'clock ordinary at the humble
Barley Mow, there to feed off English roast leg of mutton,
and swill English porter out of the homely pewter. He
had lived an exceedingly fast life in Paris, not only reck
lessly spending the large sums of money he received from
the " Charivari " and other publications, and from aristo
cratic patrons for drawings commissioned by them, but
getting deeply and hopelessly into debt.
A story used to be told of one of Gavarni's largest
¦creditors who had long had an unsatisfied judgment against
him, inviting him to a supper at a swell Parisian restaur
ant, and keeping the entertainment going till early morn,
so that the artist might be legally arrested after sunrise by
a couple of bailiffs whom the creditor had lying in wait the
night through. The result was that Gavarni had to under
go a long term of enforced seclusion in the debtor's prison
a,t Chchy. Late in life the reformed rake married, and spent much

340 GLANCES BACK
of his time in dreaming over certain plans that had long
been revolving in his active brain for propelling balloons
through the air, for, besides being a great artist, Gavarni
was a clever civil engineer, having been originally educated
for that profession ; and in devising a new mathematical
system which he fondly believed would supplant algebra.
In this way the once petted artist, the former habituS of
coulisses and the caustic satirist of the quartier Breda
mainly spent his later years. Finally he became a perfect
misanthrope, shutting himself up in a house he had bought
at Auteuil, and wasted a lot of money upon, and refusing
to see either friends or strangers who sought to penetrate
his austere solitude.
FUlineau, the French conamission agent, of whom I
have formerly spoken,^ turned up again in London a little
while before the French presidential election, deputed by
the Cavaignac party to get as many articles abusive of
Louis Napoleon inserted in the London newspapers as.
bribery could secure. To his great disgust he found the
London press far less venal than the Parisian had proved,
and he fared even worse with regard to another mission he
had been entrusted with, namely, the buying up of a
batch of the prince's overdue acceptances. Fillineau com
plained that, although he had called on all the more
notorious jew money-lenders at the west-end, and had
offered ten shillings in the pound for the prince's almost
worthless paper, he had been unable to secure a single
acceptance. The fact is, some sharper individual had been before
Fillineau, and bought up all the promises to pay bearing
Louis Napoleon's cramped little signature that were in the
hands of London usurers, hoping the speculation might-
prove a good one — a piece of faith which, though ridiculed
at the time, was amply justified by subsequent events..
1 See ante, p. 192.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 341
This individual was none other than M. Achille Fould, the
well-knowm banker, who was afterwards rewarded for his
. foresight with the post of minister of finance. There is no
doubt as to the service he rendered the prince in buying
up these acceptances before the Cavaignac party could get
hold of them, as tEeir intention was to obtain a judgment,
and shut the prince up in the debtor's' prison at CUchy, for
at this time his impecunious followers could never have
scraped sufficient together to pay the amount.
Louis Napoleon had procured the funds for his descent
on Boulogne eight years before from a man named Eapallo,
who had got hold of some of the exchequer bills which
Beaumont Smith forged on so magnificent a scale — ap
proaching half a million sterling — and having succeeded in
putting them into circulation, he undertook the financing
of the prince's abortive expedition. When Louis Napoleon
escaped from Ham he speedily sought the assistance of
London money-lenders, but the best of them had for a time
lost faith in his star, and this drove him into the arms of
some biUs of exchange thieves, one of whom he prosecuted
for stealing from him a couple of acceptances for £1000
each. In connection with the French presidential election, I re
member, many years afterwards, when Eouher Avas enthroned
vice-emperor of France, hearing Jules Simon tell an amusing
story. Like other aspiring politicians anxious as to which
dhection the wind would blow, Eouher had faded to realize
the vitality of the Napoleonic legend, and voted without
hesitation for General Cavaignac. When the result of the
election became known he was horrified, and complained
to Jules Simon that he was a lost man. " And so am I,"
rejoined Simon, good-humouredly. " Oh, no," said Eouher,
" you 'U stUl retain your professor's chair at the Sorbonne,
but as for me, I am simply ruined." " In that case, hasten
and make your peace wdth the conqueror," urged Simon.

342 GLANCES BACK
" Ah, it's easy to say so, but he'd receive me like a dog,"
suggested Eouher. " Perhaps so on the first occasion,"
Simon repUed, " but at the next interview you'll kiss his
hand, and at the third you'U be appointed minister."
Unlike other predictions made in jest, this one, as we aU
know, was actually fulfilled.
The famous year of revolutions gave rise to an abortive
attempt to estabUsh a cheap London daily newspaper,
published several hours after the other daUy papers had
made their appearance, in order to crib all their news, and
more especially their many expensive telegrams from
abroad. The title was " the London Telegraph," and the
originator of this brilliant scheme for getting up a daily
paper economically was Herbert Ingram, of the "Illustrated
London News." It had one novel feature, a feuUleton,
after the fashion of continental journals, consisting of a
continuous story, " the Pottleton legacy," by Albert Smith.
The leading articles, which, in the then disturbed state of
Europe, were chiefly on continental politics, were mainly
written by the editor, a discarded member of the " Daily
News " staff. He had an insane weakness for foreign
words, and was especially fond of introducing the word
" bureaucracy " into his leaders, much to Ingram's disgust.
Indeed, the latter always attributed the failure of the new
paper to this fatal editorial habit, plaintively urging that
in a single number of " the Telegraph " he had counted the
detestable word occurring in leading articles more than
twenty times, "which," he bitterly said, "was quite enough
to damn any paper, however promising its prospects might
have been."

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 343

XVIII.
(1849-52).
A FICTITIOUS GOLDFINDER's DIARY  MULREADY, R.A. 
MYSTIFICATION OF A MANAGER — IN THE PRINTING AND
PUBLISHING MILL — A MILITARY NIGHT SEARCH —
MY CONNECTION WITH " UNCLE TOM's CABIN."
Following upon the chartist scare, and Louis Napoleon's
jack-in-the-box-like elevation to power, came the news of
the gold discovery in California. It chanced that I had
recently been reading Colonel Fremont's narrative of his
expedition across the hitherto unexplored far western
continent, and the idea occurred to me of writing a
fictitious narrative, giving the experiences of a party of
immigrants to the new Tom Tiddler's ground, prefaced by
a pretended circumstantial account of the first discovery
of the precious metal. I broached the matter to Mr. David
Bogue, who at once offered to publish the book on the
usual half-profit terms, and it was settled that the greatest
secrecy was to be observed in regard to the deception
about to be practised on a confiding public.
I engaged to have the manuscript complete in a fort
night's time, and determined that it should take the form
of a diary, penned by a young M.D., calling himself J.
Tyrwhitt Brooks, which I thought looked quite the kind
of name likely to disarm suspicion. As I was fully occupied
with my regular duties during the daytime, I had to write the
work after my arrival home in the evening, and remember
that I found the task a much tougher one than I had
anticipated.

344 GLANCES BACK
As the manuscript was written it was taken by me'
chapter by chapter to different law stationers to be copied*
out, so that my handwriting might not betray the author
ship, and when everything was complete the diary was
duly despatched from some place in the country, to which
it had been forwarded for transmission to Mr. Bogue, who,
after pretending to examine it carefully, sent to ask me to
call upon him. Then, in presence of his assistants, he
went through the farce of discussing the number of pages
the manuscript would run to, how many copies of the
volume he would be warranted in printing, and the
approximate cost. These points settled, the manuscript
was gravely handed over to me, with instructions for it to
be printed off as rapidly as possible. In about ten days'
time the volume was ready, and the trade gave it an
interested welcome, while the reviewers in a body received
the impudent imposter, I am grieved to say, with open arms.
In a notice very nearly three columns in length " the
Times," which then wielded a power — such as can be
hardly realised in these days — of securing the success of
any work it reviewed, thus introduced the volume to its
readers : — ^
" Here is a gentleman who knows all about it ! — a live Englishman
who has set foot in the diggings, has had his hand in the washings, has
scratched for the dust tiU his back ached, has picked up lumps as big as
your fist without any labour at all, has made his fortune like a ' stag,' ^
and lost it like a donkey, and in fact gone through a regular Californian
experience in less than no time at all. We are by no means sorry to
take J. Tyrwhitt Brooks, M.D., by the button for ten min-utes, and to
hear from his own lips a veritable account of the mystery. Indeed, we
need a little of his cooling medicine before the next packet arrives to
recover from the excitement occasioned by the extraordinary accounts
brought by the last.
" Our medical friend's experience is a perfect febrifuge. We strongly
recommend it to all the agitated curates, lawyers' clerks, and bankers'
1 " The Times," AprU 11, 1849.
" An impecunious speculator in railway scrip.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 347
ditto, who are firmly resolved to throw up civilisation and their hundrtto
a-year next quarter-day, to buy with their poor savings a spade and a
cradle, and to set up in another hemisphere upon their own account as
dealers in bullion wholesale and for exportation. The close is not a
severe one. A very few pages tell the whole business. The doctor was
not long, as the title of his volume indicates, in California, but quite long
enough to be sickened. He leaves El Dorado as poor as he went thither,
and comes away by no means elated by his adventures. He is just the
man for us at the present crisis. He shall tell his own tale."
After giving a summary of the contents of the volume,
interspersed with extracts, the reviewer proceeded to
deduce the moral which this purely imaginary narrative
was conceived to supply : —
" Great lawlessness prevailed as newcomers arrived. The party got
robbed, and the state of things was such that, as the doctor wrote, ' No
man kno-wn to be in the possession of much gold dare say when he lays
his head down at night that he wiU ever rise from his pillow.'
" There are sermons in stones, there is a moral in gold, and in this in
stance there needs little digging and scratching to bring it out. Dr Brooks
was on the spot when the glorious tidings of a newly-discovered world
came to his ears. Within a few miles of him there was gold enough on
the earth's bosom to buy an empire. He stretched forth his hands, and
burned his fingers. Reader, why should you journey over sea and moun
tain, through difficulty, danger, heat, vexation, and trouble to achieve
the same foolish and unprofitable purpose 1 "
Thus moralised " thc Times " and the astute " Quarterly
Eeview," in an article on Sunday postal labour, pressed
my imaginary narrative into its service in support of the
views it was bent on enforcing. It remarked : —
" In a little volume, entitled ' Four Months among the Goldfinders
of Alta California,' the author, after describing very graphically the
manner in which lawless adventurers from all parts of the world were
recklessly, and in many instances murderously engaged in the attainment
of gold, says : ' Don Luis was the only one who, on the score of its being
Sunday, would not go to the diggings. He had no objection to amuse him
self on Sunday, but he would not work. . . 1 worked hard, as indeed
all the others did, the whole morning.'
" It does not appear," continued the reviewer, "that Dr. Brooks or his

344

GLANCES BACK

jsociates felt the slightest remorse at desecrating the Sabbath for the
sake of gold, yet in the brief space of three weeks he makes the follow
ing remarkable entry in his journal : —
'"./Mne 25, Sunday. — We have all of us given over working on
Sundays, as we found the toil on six successive days quite hard
enough.' " Thus," chuckled the reviewer, " even in picking up gold, an occupa
tion that had burst the bands of almost all human compacts, one day's
rest out of seven was found to he practically necessary. ' The fact is,'
preaches J. Tyrwhitt Brooks, M.D., as soon as he became dead tired, 'the
human frame will not stand, and was never intended to stand a course of
incessant toil ; indeed, I believe that in civilized communities the Sabbath
bringing round as it does a stated remission from labour is an institution
physically necessary.' "
"The Athenseum " ^ placed Dr. J. Tyrwhitt Brooks's
pretended diary at the head of a string of publications per
taining to the newly discovered gold fields, and devoted no
less than six columns to comments on and extracts from the
work, accepting every line of it as veracious. It quoted at
length the fictitious narrative of the original discovery of
the gold which I had put into the mouth of Captain Sutter,
who was, however, a real enough personage himself, prefac
ing it with an exclamation likely to whet the appetite of
the curious. " And now for the story of stories ! " Further
on, alluding to that portion of the work where I had
described the selfishness and ¦ distrust which I assumed the
possession of large quantities of gold to have developed
among the diggers, the reviewer remarked : —
" In brief but terrible touches, Dr. Brooks indicates how the demon
greed in its progress hardened the human heart. Though he himself was
under its spell, he writes as if unconscious of the cruel and suspicious
spirit which it had evidently engendered in his own breast."
I have referred only to the notices of the book in " the
Times," " Quarterly Eeview," and " the Athenseum," as
these were the recognised literary authorities of the time.
1 Feb. 17, 1849.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 347
AU the other newspapers and reviews, however, piped to
the same tune, and almost a volume might be filled with
extracts from these notices. The work I should mention
was instantly reprinted in a cheap form on the other side
of the Atlantic, where it met with a large sale, and was
translated into several foreign languages with the result
that for years it held the position of chief authority on the
subject. Even Haydn's " Dictionary of Dates " epitomized
my account of the gold discovery, and told how this first
got noised abroad through the instrumentality of an imagin
ary wily Kentuckian workman.
To give a certain individuality to Captain Sutter, of
whom I knew nothing beyond his name, and his Swiss
extraction, and that it was reported he had formerly been
an officer of Charles X.'s Swiss guard, I described him as
being marked with a scar on the cheek due to a sabre cut
given him by one of the Polytechnic youths during the
"three glorious days" of July, 1830. Several years after
wards I was greatly amused in reading an account of a
visit paid to Captain Sutter by some New Yorker who had
accepted my recital as gospel, and had expressed his surprise
to the captain at the complete disappearance of the famous
scar of which all Europe and the States had heard. This
led to an explanation, and to Captain Sutter indignantly
repudiating the authenticity of my narrative.
During 1849 I had engraved some designs made by
Mulready to illustrate the poems of an early friend of his,
and, from this circumstance, was brought into relation with
the artist, who was then living in almost melancholy
seclusion in his desolate home at Linden-grove, Bayswater.
Here he alw^ays seemed to be completely absorbed in the
pictures he was engaged ujjon, and the carefully finished
chalk studies he was so fond of making from the nude.
There was about him none of the Irish sprightliness of the
old days when he stood up with the gloves against Gentle-

348 GLANCES BACK
man Jackson, Byron's pugilistic preceptor, and when Men-
doza, the jew bruiser, was his intimate friend. In proof of
Mulready's former physical prowess, a story used to be told
of his having once captured an armed footpad, who ignorant
of his man, accosted him one night, as he was trudging
along the then lonely Bayswater road, and called upon him
to "stand and deliver!" but who to his great surprise
found himself clutched in an iron grasp, and speedily thrust
inside the nearest watch-house.
Mulready's early marriage had turned out unhappy,
and he certainly gave one the idea of a disappointed man,
whose life had been partially wrecked. His conversation
was never in the least degree cheerful, and I cannot
remember having once seen him smile. I had not known
him long before he gave me to understand that he felt his
position in regard to his fellow academicians to be far below
what he thought it should have been. One day he dejectedly
remarked, " Many years ago I was a drawing master, and
this is why I am looked down upon to-day by the men of
most influence in the Academy." He mentioned, I
remember, as though he were a trifle proud of the fact,
that Miss Milbanke, afterwards Lady Byron, had been one
of his pupils.
I was surprised at Mulready imagining that the circum
stance of his having formerly taught drawing, operated to
his prejudice in the eyes of his fellow academicians, as J.
J. Chalon — who as well as his brother Alfred, the fashion
able painter of doll-like portraits for the Books of Beauty
of the day, was regarded by Mulready as an influential
member of the inner Academy ring — turned drawing
master himself, when an attack of paralysis compelled him
to lay aside his palette and brushes, while later on the once
extolled Alfred, outliving his reputation, mooned about
town the ghost of the admired Amphitryon and dandy of
old. Mulready used to say that the clique hung together

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 349
by constantly feasting each other with good dinners, and
thus kept the management of the Academy very much in
their own hands. If such was the fact one can quite
understand their not caring to admit their lonesome and
morose confrere into their gay and convivial circle.
Of late years attempts have been made by amiable
enthusiasts to magnify the merits of Mulready's early
designs for the many children's books he appears to have
iUustrated, but from the be-praised " Butterfly's ball and
Grasshopper's feast" to the illustrations to Lamb's " Tales
from Shakspeare," they are all exceedingly poor and com
monplace. In the scores of designs where animals are
depicted with certain human attributes about them one
recognises none of that wonderful character which the
French artist, Grandville, imparted to even his slightest
productions, nor the faintest suggestion of that quaint
humour which Ernest Griset so abundantlj'- displays. In
spite of the strong inclination which Mulready as a boy
exhibited towards an artistic career, it is quite certain that
he only became a great painter by dint of sheer hard work.
The son of a breeches-maker in a small Irish town, he had
a desperately hard time of it in early life, and did not
improve it by marrying, when only eighteen, the sister of
Yarley, the water-colour artist, to separate permanently from
her when there were four hungry little mouths to provide for.
Mulready used to tell an amusing anecdote of his
meeting Mendoza, whose portrait he had painted in
the days when they were chums together, after both had
arrived at middle age, and the artist was privileged to
append A.E.A. to his name. Mendoza having asked his
old friend how he was getting on, and what he was then
doing, Mulready replied, " painting pictures," whereupon
the distinguished bruiser consolingly and compassionately
observed : " Ah ! well, old fellow, we must all do some
thing for a living."

350 GLANCES BACK
The " Illustrated London News," being desirous of
publishing a careful engraving of the Eoyal Academy
banquet of 1849, showing all the principal guests in their
particular places, the Academy officials were appUed to, but
refused to afford any facilities whatever. The report in
" the Times " and Mr. John GUbert's ready pencil were
therefore all there was to depend upon. Knowing that
Mr. Thackeray had been present at the dinner, I sent him
a sketch which had been drawn out from " the Times' "
description, and asked him to be good enough to inform me
whether it was correct. This brought the following
reply : —
" Your arrangement of the company at the Academy dinner is all
wrong, Jupiter [' the Times '] notwithstanding. The plan I have
roughly sketched out will show you where most of the big and little
stars twinkled. It was a very cold and formal affair — almost as dull as
my Lord Carlisle's late patronising spread ^ given to certain well-known
gents from Grub-street. W. M. T."
Somewhere about this time I met at a friend's house at
Kensington George Henry Lewes, editor of " the Leader '
and author of " the Life of Goethe." This was long prior
to his separation from his handsome and erring wife, and
his strange escapade in flinging up all his literary engage
ments and retiring to the continent with the personally
unattractive Miss Evans (George Eliot), about whom
nothing was then known, excepting that she had trans
lated Strauss's " Life of Jesus." Lewes was the pink of
self-conceit, and shortly before he had mystified Webster,
then lessee of the Haymarket, the fortunes of which hap
pened not to be at their highest, in a rather amusing
manner. He wrote to Webster, and inquired what terms
he was prepared to offer to an author of the highest repute
and of recognised histrionic powers who contemplated seek
ing before the footlights that public applause which had
already been accorded to his writings.
1 See ante, p. 293.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 351
Webster was somewhat puzzled, and wondered who on
earth this great literary genius could be. Possibly
Dickens, whose amateur performances had been lately very
highly commended ; or could it be Sir Edward Bulwer,
" the man who wears the stays, and shakes a mane
en papillotes." Say what they might, he certainly had a
handsome presence, which would tell greatly in his favour
on the boards. As for Thackeray, his unfortunate nose put
him completely out of the running ; still, there was Alfred
Tennyson, with a noble face and figure, and certain, every
body said, to be the future laureate. In his perplexity
Webster replied to Lewes that he cordially entertained his
suggestion, but wished to be informed (of course in strict
confidence) who the distinguished author was on whose
behalf he had written. To Webster's amazement Lewes
rejoined that it was himself. This was quite enough for the
disappointed manager, whose hopes had been so unduly
raised, and he indignantly closed the correspondence.
Lewes, although he had written his " Biographical His
tory of PhUosophy," a shoal of anonymous critical articles,
one or two indifferent novels, and a by no means successful
play, had not then penned his well-known " Life of
Goethe," and was almost unknown to the general public.
Even by the few who were familiar with his writings he was
certainly not regarded as a distinguished author. He had
had some little stage experience, having essayed the part
of Shylock, played once or twice with Dickens's amateur
company, and acted in his own piece, " the Noble Heart,"
in the provinces, but in none of the characters he had
assumed had he scored even a moderate success. He must
unquestionably have cut a strange figure on the stage,
being a mean-looking little man of a decided Jewish type,
pock-marked, and, according to Jerrold, " the ugliest man
in London." Yet, with all this, he was a ludicrous cox
comb, whose airs and graces, combined with his long curly

352 GLANCES BACK
tresses, had led to his being derogatively compared to a
performing French poodle strutting about on its hind legs.
Birket Foster, after completing the illustrations to
Miller's " Boy's Country Year-Book," had made many mis
cellaneous drawings for me, exhibiting so much freshness,
truth, variety, and grace that it was obvious the clever
young artist, whom I had so fortunately met with, was
capable of something far beyond the shepherds and milk
maids, the reapers and threshers, and the haymaking and
harvest-home scenes which so picturesquely illustrated
Miller's descriptions of English rural life, and I suggested
his making some designs for an illustrated edition of Long
fellow's " Evangeline " — a poem then scarcely known in
this country — which I contemplated producing. I showed
Foster's preliminary sketches to Bogue, the publisher, who
readily embarked in the enterprise, and the success of the
volume was such as led to the production of corresponding
editions of the rest of Longfellow's poetical works, as well
as of his well-known romance, " Hyperion." So profitable
did this series of volumes prove, and so fair-dealing and
generous a man was David Bogue, that one day he quietly
told me he had credited my account with the considerable
sum of £1200, to which he thought me entitled for having
planned out this series of works, and given him the oppor
tunity of engaging in their publication. A kinder-hearted
man than Bogue never breathed, or one more tolerant
towards the failings of certain authors whose books he
published, or more ready at all times to help friends who
had been less worldly fortunate than himself. To my
knowledge he blotted out from his ledger very considerable
amounts, advanced by him to struggling writers, which he
knew they could ill afford to repay.
The " Evangeline," for which John Gilbert and a grave
and enthusiastic young lady. Miss Jane Benham, made a
few of the designs, unquestionably owed its great success

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 353
to Birket Foster's graceful and versatile pencil. Some of
his illustrations were strikingly beautiful, and have never
been surpassed by the artist even in his most mature
efforts. Mr. Marcus Huish, in his " Life and Work of
Birket Foster," tells how the volume was received by
" the Athenseum," the chief literary and artistic authority
of those days : —
" On Foster's coming," says he, " one morning into Vizetelly's ofiBce
he was greeted with the exclamation, ' Here 's " the Athenseum " i By
Jove, they have given it to you ! ' Foster's heart may be said to have
sunk into his boots at this announcement, but when the notice was
handed to him and he read it, he hardly knew whether he stood on his
head or his heels, for this is what it said : ' A more lovely book than
this has rarely been given to the public ; Mr. Foster's designs, in particu
lar, have a picturesque grace and elegance which recall the pleasure we
experienced on our first examination of Mr. Eoger's " Italy " when it came
before us illustrated by persons of no less refinement and invention than
Stothard and Turner. Any one disposed to carp at our praise as over
strained is invited to consider the " Boat on the Mississippi," which, to
our thinking, is a jewel of the first water.' "
An illustrated edition of Longfellow's minor poems fol
lowed upon "Evangeline," and Miss Benham made numerous
drawings for it. This clever young lady had two particu
larly intimate friends, one the daughter of William and
Mary Howitt — an artist like herself — and the other Miss
Jessie Meriton White, afterwards Madame Mario, whose
devotion to Garibaldi is well known. All Miss Benham's
ideas were centred in the pursuit of her art, whereas those
of this enterprising friend of hers spread themselves over
the entire field of political disaffection. This energetic
young lady subsequently became governess to Garibaldi's
young son, and an active member of the conspiracy formed
to accelerate the movements of the Italian patriots. Prior
to this, however, and after Miss Benham had married and
settled in Paris, I met Miss Jessie Meriton White on
several occasions at her house, when the young lady's
earnest conversation impressed me with the idea that,
VOL. I. z

354 GLANCES BACK
mere girl though she was; she intended o-ver-riding all
conventionalities, and playing her part on the political
stage at the earliest opportunity that presented itself.
WhUe Miss Benham was stUl in her teens, she and her
other friend. Miss Mary Howitt, swayed by their admiration
of the works of Kaulbach, betook themselves to Munich,
and asked the great painter to be allowed to study under
him. Kaulbach was so struck with the courage and
enthusiasm of the two young English girls that he at once
admitted them to his studio, and gave them the benefit of
his advice and instruction for as long as they cared to
profit by them. The result was that they prolonged their
stay in Munich for several years.
Most of my time between 1850 and 1854 was given up
to the production of illustrated books, and Longfellow's
other works were soon supplemented by an edition of his
recently published " Golden Legend," with Birket Foster's
and Miss Benham's designs. A year or two before I had
edited and printed a volume called " Christmas with the
Poets," to which Foster contributed numerous charming
tinted illustrations, with the result that the work went
rapidly through several editions, and at the time of the
exhibition of 1851 had the honour of being selected by the
trustees of the British Museum to be shown to distin
guished foreign visitors as an example of contemporary
book -illustration and printing. I also commenced the
publication of a series of " Eeadable Books," the initial
volume of which comprised Poe's " Tales and Poems,"
which until then had never been printed in this country.
The sale of these books was very large, the first editions of
the six or eight volumes that I produced, before I parted with
the series, invariably consisting of twenty thousand copies.
I had also printed the now much sought-after first edition
of Mr. Euskin's " King of the Golden Eiver," with Eichard
Doyle's designs, for Messrs. Smith & Elder, and had

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 355
engraved two or three of Mr. Euskin's own sketches for
some of the minor illustrations to " the Stones of Venice ; "
but I regret to say not to the great art critic's entire satis
faction. Forty years ago there was a book in much repute
among a particular class of readers : this was Tupper's
" Proverbial Philosophy," which had had a large steady
sale for fifteen years past. When books abounding with
highly-finished woodcuts and printed on toned paper were
the fashion, the publishers of Tupper's work decided to
issue an illustrated edition of it, and the printing being
entrusted to me, I saw a good deal of the author while the
volume was in progress. The phenomenal sale of " Pro
verbial Philosophy " had inflated Tupper, an amiable and
good-hearted little man, with astounding vanity. This,
with his admirers' peans of praise, rendered him callous to
the derisive banter of his censors, and caused him to smile
complacently at the constant girdings of the comic papers,
which he set down to envy, hatred, and malice, or some
other form of uncharitableness. Nothing seemed to flutter
Tupper's self-conceit. When, after being asked to lecture
at the university of St. Andrews, he found himself
face to face with empt)^ benches, he was not at all
disconcerted ; a circumstance which suggested to the
principal of St. Andrews, who had invited him there,
the comforting reflection that when the wind was not
tempered to the lamb, the lamb was usually provided
with a tolerably thick fleece of self-esteem to oppose to the
inclement blast.
Tupper frequently called upon me accompanied by a
friend of his who had made some rather unsatisfactory
designs for his book. This was Joseph Severn, memorable
to-day as the devoted friend of Keats — " a friend that
aticketh closer than a brother " — still, at the time I speak
¦of, his former intimate association with the dying poet

356 GLANCES BACK
inspired scarcely any interest. The Keats cult was not
then what it is to-day, and poor Severn, I remember, had
to submit not only to being snubbed by the publisher, but
also by the publisher's young man, who was charged with
seeing the new illustrated volume through the press.
A year or two previously I had engraved Mr. Thackeray's
drawings for "the Kickleburys on the Ehine," and had
printed the work, and remember Mr. Thackeray caUing
upon me, accompanied by his fidus Achates, M. J. Higgins
(Jacob Omnium), of colossal stature like himself but of
far more stalwart build, and handing me the memorable
preface for the second edition, " An Essay on Thunder and
Small Beer," in reply to the recent " Times " criticism on
the book. Thackeray was in high glee over the circum
stance of a second edition of the work being called for at
the very moment " the Times " was launching its little
thunderbolt ; and in his excitement he read several sen
tences of the preface aloud, in which he thought he had
made his keenest thrusts. Mr. Sala has somewhere stated
that Thackeray always suspected " the Times " review to
have been written by Charles Lamb Kenney. This, how
ever, does not accord with my own recollection of the
subject, for Thackeray frequently spoke in my hearing of
the obnoxious criticism having been written by Samuel
Phillips, author of the forgotten " Caleb Stukely." More
over, the language of the review is not at all in Kenney's.
Style. The whole was apparently a mere friendly passage-
of-arms, as not long after the publication of Thackeray's
amusing retort, his May-day Ode on the opening of the
1851 exhibition came out in " the Times."
About this time Mr. Herbert Ingram, who was a restless
speculator, conceived the idea of embarking in the publi
cation of books upon a large scale, and my eldest brother
and I suggested to him the production of a cheap
" National Illustrated Library " for his opening venture..

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 357
He adopted the idea, and the series, which extended to
some half hundred volumes, met with remarkable success,
and many of the works are to-day even in regular demand.
All the earlier volumes were printed by my brother or my
self, and a handsome royalty was, moreover, secured to us on
the sales. At this period, after the whilom special constable
during the ridiculous chartist scare had swept the peaceful
Paris boulevards with grapeshot, Victor Hugo's famous
"Napoleon le Petit" was making a great sensation, and my
brother published an English version of the work, which,
as well as the original Belgian edition, was strictly inter
dicted in France. In spite, however, of all the precautions
taken, the Belgian volume in a miniature form was exten
sively smuggled into France, and the authorities were
sorely perplexed how, in face of their incessant watchful
ness, this could possibly be accomplished.
One night early in 1852 I crossed over to Calais, en
route to Paris, on some very harmless business, when, after
the police commissary had minutely scrutinised my pass
port, I was told to pass out by a different door to that
which the other passengers had left by. On doing so, I
found myself face to face with a couple of soldiers, who,
crossing their muskets in front of me, ordered me to at
once empty my pockets. This I, of course, did, and they
then felt outside my clothes, to satisfy themselves that I
had nothing concealed about me. Next they directed me
to take off my boots, which they minutely examined, and
afterwards passed their hands round the outside of my
socks. I thought the proceeding a strange one, and was
glad to be told that I might go, and there the matter
ended. I afterwards learned that a diminutive edition of
" Napoleon le Petit " had been printed in Brussels, and
that travellers were in the habit of smuggling copies of it
into France tucked into their boots, and it was suggested
to me that this was the reason for the mysterious military

358 GLANCES BACK
search to which on landing at Calais I had been subjected.
Possibly the incident may not have ended here, aud dur
ing my short sojourn in Paris I may have been shadowed
in all my movements by the French police.
It must have been soon after this affair that I brought
out, in conjunction with Salisbury the printer, who used to
machine " Eeadable Books " for me, and Clarke, who bound
the volumes, the first edition published in England of
Mrs. Beecher Stowe's world-famous romance, " Uncle Tom's
Cabin." A year or two ago I found it necessary to tell the
history of this reprint in a letter to the " Literary World,"
the principal passages of which may here be quoted :
" I fail to see that any particular honour or merit is
due to the person who first introduced ' Uncle Tom's
Cabin ' to the English public : still, it may be as well to
correct the mis-statements contained in the letter you
have published, signed Charles M. Clarke, who, if born at
the time the incidents occurred, of which he speaks so
positively from his own personal knowledge, could only
have been a baby in long clothes, or, at most, a little boy
in knickerbockers. " The true circumstances connected wdth the issue of
the English reprint of the book are these : — In the first
place no advance copy of the work was submitted to any
London publisher, but Mr. Bogue received an ordinary copy
of ' Uncle Tom's Cabin ' from a young man in Putnam's
New York house, accompanied by a letter stating that the
book was selling rapidly in the States, and suggesting that
Mr. Bogue should reprint it, and send him a trifle for his
pains. Mr. Bogue, however, not caring to embark in cheap
reprints of American authors, offered me the work for my
series of 'Eeadable Books.'
"The American edition of ' Uncle Tom's Cabin' being
in two stout volumes, I hesitated to run the risk of issuing
the work at a shilling, and while I was considering what to

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 359
do with it, I received a visit from Messrs. Salisbury and
Clarke, who, being well aware of the great success of the
'Eeadable Books' series, were constantly bothering me
to suggest some further literary venture, which would
provide work for their establishments, and might be under
taken in partnership. To get rid of their importunities, I
offered them to join with me in reprinting ' Uncle Tom's
Cabin,' and it was agreed to produce an edition of the book
in shares, each of us being responsible for a third of the
cost." Mrs. Stowe's second title, " Life among the Lowly," was
changed by me to "Negro life in the Slave States of
America," and a writer, then little known, but who is now
widely appreciated, both as journalist and essayist, wrote a
preface to the work for the modest sum of two guineas.
The book was printed crown 8vo size, and the price was
half-a-crown. "Although well advertised, the volume — of which
2500 copies had been printed — proved a failure, but a
rather singular circumstance contributed to its eventual
success. In the ' Eeadable Books ' series I had reprinted
Curtis's 'Nile Notes,' much to the annoyance of Mr.
Richard Bentley, who had a half-guinea edition of the
work. ' Uncle Tom's Cabin ' being advertised with both
my own and Clarke's imprint, Mr. Bentley, by way of
retaliation against me, 1 imagine, announced a shilling
edition of the book. With the view of checkmating him,
I had a cover printed with ' Price one shilling ' on it, and
got Clarke to do up a copy of our edition in paper boards,
trimming it as near to a foolscap 8vo as could be managed.
I then sent the volume to Mr. Bentley with my compli
ments, and a notification that the accompanying shiUing
edition of ' Uncle Tom's Cabin ' was on the eve of publica
tion. This induced Mr. Bentley to hold his hand, and as
there was scarcely any sale for the book at half-a-crown in

360 GLANCES BACK
cloth, it was determined to work off the remaining sheets
in paper boards at a shiUing.
" Shortly after this had been decided upon I went
abroad with Mr. Birket Foster, and was absent for two or
three months. On my return I found that ' Uncle Tom's
Cabin ' had been and stUl was the book which everybody
was reading and talking about. After a reasonable delay
I applied to Clarke for an account of the sales, when he
referred me to Salisbury and Mr. S. 0. Beeton, who, in the
interim had joined Clarke and Salisbury in partnership.
These gentlemen laughed at the idea of my asking for an
account, told me that during my absence abroad they had
paid my clerk for the work I had done in connection with
the volume, and had also repaid to him the five pounds
which had been forwarded to Putnam's young man, and
that they declined to recognise me any further in the
matter. " I made short work of this impudent repudiation, told
them I would give them a few hours to decide what they
would do, but that if I did not receive a satisfactory pro
posal by noon, next day, I would at once file a bill in
Chancery for an account. At 11 o'clock the following
morning, Mr. S. 0. Beeton called upon me, and offered me
first £200 and then £300, provided I would waive an
account. I replied that the extremest sum I had ever
hoped to make out of my share of the ' Uncle Tom's Cabin '
reprint was £500, and that after the dishonourable way in
which I had been treated, I was determined not to accept
a penny less. Before the day expired I received the
acceptances of Clarke, Salisbury, and Beeton for the sum
in question, and my connection with ' Uncle Tom's Cabin '
thereupon ceased." _,
Beeton, greatly dreading that the firm in which he had
become partner might be forestalled by some enterprising
London publisher with respect to Mrs. Stowe's next book.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 361
hastened to America and offered that lady electrotypes
from the engravings of an English illustrated edition of
" Uncle Tom's Cabin," which he and his partners had pro
duced, for republication in the United States, hoping by this
economical sop to secure the early sheets of her new volume.
The lady and her husband, however, laughed at him
in a polite way, and hinted that a money payment on
account of the large profits which had been made out of the
English reprint of " Uncle Tom " would be better appre
ciated. Finally, Beeton gave Mrs. Stowe the bills of the
firm for a few hundred pounds, and secured in return the
promise of the early sheets of the " Key to Uncle Tom's
Cabin." With a daring confidence, that staggered most
sober-minded people, the deluded trio, Clarke, Beeton, and
Salisbury, printed a first edition of fifty thousand copies,
I think it was, the bulk of which eventually went to the
trunk makers, while the mushroom firm was obliged to go
into speedy liquidation.

362 GLANCES BACK

XIX.
(1852-53.)
A THEFT FROM NAPOLEON's PRIVY PURSE — A BLASE SYBARITE
— IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF A POET — PASSPORTS WANTED.
A FEW months after my Calais experience, business again
took me to Paris when the prince president made his impos
ing entry into the capital on returning from his Strasburg
tour — an event which furnished a pretext, that the prince's
accomplices carefully profited by, to prepare the Parisians for
the advent of the future empire. On the grand triumphal
arches and other out-door decorations, of which there were
a liberal supply, the ominous words " Vive I'Empereur !
Vive I'Empire I " were prominently displayed. Lionel
Lawson, of "Daily Telegraph" notoriety, who was then
li-ving in Paris, had engaged an entresol at some swell cafe
on the boulevards, commanding a capital view of the
brUliant presidential cortege as it passed by; and here
throughout the day he entertained in his habitual liberal
style a party of guests of whom I was one.
As far as the eye could reach, soldiers in close double
line were to be seen posted along both sides of the
boulevards, whilst among the crowd, relegated well to the
rear, De Maupas had distributed some hundreds of Corsican
and other mouchards, all attired in irreproachable black, and
carrying stout walking sticks with which they might
almost have felled an ox. Plots against the president's
life had recently been discovered, and the spy system

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 363
prevailed in all sections of Paris society. Indeed, I have
little doubt that even among Lawson's guests, comprising
Plon the publisher, and the superintendent of the national
printing office, there was at least one spy, whose calling
was of course unknown to our host. All traces of the
sanguinary 2nd of December were not entirely obliterated
from the boulevards, for I remember that Sallandrouze's
carpet warehouse, which had been knocked to pieces by
artillery, still remained in ruins.
When I next visited Paris, the empire was an accom
plished fact. Louis Napoleon's adversaries had either been
deported wholesale to Lambessa and Cayenne, or put under
lock and key in the prisons of the State, while his shady
adherents were eagerly battening on the spoil. Not content,
however, with dipping their hands into the public purse,
they scarcely scrupled, when opportunity offered, to plunder
each other, and even the emperor himself was not allowed
to enjoy immunity.
On this last occasion I remember Lawson — w^ho through
his friend Plon, the emperor's private printer and publisher,
picked up a good deal of the current gossip about people
in high places — telling me the story of the recent mysteri
ous death of General Cornemuse, who had been killed by
Marshal St. Arnaud in a duel — fought, some people said, at
night-time in a garden, whUst others declared that a room at
the Tuileries was the scene of the fatal encounter. The affair
gave rise to the wildest rumours at the time, still there
was no kind of doubt that the duel had its origin in the
positive theft of 100,000 francs in bank notes from the
new emperor's private cabinet, not by some dishonest
lackey, but by one of Napoleon's trusted adherents having
free access to the apartment in question. It seems that
the emperor had temporarily quitted the room, leaving a
pocket-book containing the sum mentioned on the table,
and that on his return he found the money gone. Equally

364 GLANCES BACK
amazed and irritated, he made immediate enquiries, and
then summoned M. Pietri, who had succeeded Senator De
Maupas as prefect of police.
Pietri naturally enough inquired if any one had been in
the room during the emperor's absence. "Yes," replied
Napoleon, " General Cornemuse." " General Cornemuse ! "
repeated the prefect, " then it may possibly have been he,
though I must confess my surprise, for the general bears a
very high reputation. Is your majesty quite sure, however,
that he was the only person who entered the room whilst
you were away ? " " Ma foi, non," the emperor replied,
" I have learnt that King Jerome also came here in search
of me." " King Jerome ! " exclaimed the prefect with the
satisfied air of a man who finds himself relieved of a
perplexing difficulty, " then we need not trouble ourselves
any further about General Cornemuse. King Jerdme is by
far the more likely culprit." "But there is still some one
else," interrupted the emperor, "I am told that Marshal
St. Arnaud also entered the room to fetch some papers."
" Oh ! if the marshal has been here," said the prefect,
smiling significantly, " we need not look in any other direc
tion. Your majesty may be certain that the money was
taken by him."
The upshot was that St. Arnaud was formally charged
with the theft, which he denied, however, with a great
show of indignation, protesting that others besides himself,
notably General Cornemuse, had been in the emperor's
cabinet. Eventually he and Cornemuse were confronted,
and an angry altercation ensued between them. St. Arnaud,
in reiterating his innocence, appealed to his sword, chal
lenged his comrade, and promptly killed him. In the old
days of ordeal by battle, this would no doubt have been
accepted as conclusive proof of Cornemuse's guilt, but the
sceptical Parisians, well acquainted with St. Arnaud's shady
antecedents and pecuniary difficulties, shared M. Pietri's

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 365
opinion that the money had really been taken by the
spendthrift marshal to relieve his more pressing necessi
ties. Lawson eventually came to reside in England, and I
remember, when breakfasting with him one morning in his
plainly-furnished rooms in Brook-street, his saying to me,
by way of proof of how little he cared for display since he
had become a millionaire, that if he were offered permission
to knock a way through into the adjacent house, and annex
to his own a splendid suite of rooms, he would not give ten
shiUings a month for the privUege. Not a single picture
graced the walls of his sitting-room, which was bare indeed
of a single work of art, or nick-nack of any kind, and I
never remember to have seen even a stray book lying.
about. Beyond its comfortable commonplace furniture the
only noticeable objects in this apartment were the piles of
cigar-boxes, containing the very finest brands, on which
Lawson greatly prided himself, and as his friends knew
with excellent reason.
On one occasion he spoke to me of his recent rejection
at certain London clubs, and consoled himself with boast
fully remarking that not one of his concealed enemies
could do as he could — have the first gentleman in the
land to breakfast in his rooms, whenever he asked him.
During the last two or three years of his life Lawson had
become thoroughly blase — to adopt the well-worn phrase,
he had drained the cup of pleasure to the dregs — and
scarcely found enjoyment in anything. As his wealth
increased he had developed a languid interest in high-class
horse fiesh, and prided himself on the perfect action of
the steed driven in his brougham, although he usually
availed himself far more of hansom cabs than of his
own private carriage.
When Mr. Bogue had issued all of Longfellow's poetical
works, then published, in an illustrated form, 1 suggested pro-

366 GLANCES BACK
ducing an edition of " Hyperion," with engravings of the
different scenes in which the hero of the romance figures, from
sketches to be taken by Mr. Birket Foster on the spot.
Mr. Bogue readily acquiesced, and in the summer of 1852
Foster and I started on our expedition, accompanied by a
somewhat eccentric individual named Fry, who, knowing
our deficiencies in the German language, had suggested
that his knowledge of it would be of immense use, and
that his familiarity with the continent especially qualified
him to personally conduct the party. AVe were by no
means of the same opinion, still we consented to his com
ing with us.
On the Ehine we fell victims to the usual sharper, in
the guise of a long-haired spectacled student, who suc
ceeded in extracting three English sovereigns from us on
the plea that he was hastening to the bedside of a dying
mother, and had in some unaccountable way lost his purse.
Having chanced to mention that we were on our way to
Heidelberg, our student friend offered us a draft on some
pretended relative of his, a Herr professor there, who, he
assured us, would duly honour it on presentation. While
speaking of his dying mother he feigned to brush aside
some tears, and his voice was apparently so broken with
emotion that we were completely taken in. Strange to
say, the professor on whom the draft was given really did
exist, which was more than we expected after calmly re-
fiecting over the circumstances ; but the savant smiled
blandly, if not exactly childlike, when the document was
handed to him, remarking that it was far from the first
which the swindler, who impudently claimed relationship
with him, had palmed off on our unsuspecting fellow-
countrymen. Before turning aside to Heidelberg we went on to
Mannheim, where, at a beer garden into which we strolled,
we found, I remember, an odd regulation in force. There

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 367
the rule was for the kellner to replenish all empty bocks
without waiting for orders to do so. These, it seems, were
only given when it was desired that the supply should
cease, an arrangement which generally led to an habitual
frequenter of the garden imbibing from a dozen to twenty
bocks of beer before the kellner was enjoined to stay his
replenishing hand.
In the environs of Heidelberg a little inn was pointed
out to us where the students' duels were accustomed to
take place, and wounded juvenile honour was sought to be
avenged. A notice hanging up in the room intimated that
dogs were not permitted to be present during these encoun
ters, and the story ran that the reason for this interdiction
was because on one occasion when a student dexterously
snipped off the tip of his opponent's nose with his schlager
a hungry cur hastily snapped up and bolted the dainty
morsel ; thus rendering it impossible for the attendant
surgeon to fix the important little piece of gristle in its
place again, and thereby restore to the dismembered nasal
organ its proper degree of prominence.
Our travelling companion Fry proved to be somewhat
of a hypochondriac. He was always fancying himself ailing
and in need of the best medical advice, which, when he
had secured it, he rarely followed. It was a confirmed
opinion of his that no man who valued his bodily health
should venture to travel without being accompanied by
his private physician. Whenever we arrived at a town of
any size his first inquiry invariably was, " Who is the
most distinguished doctor in the place ? " Different people
held different opinions on this point, so that the replies he
received were often exceedingly perplexing, and hindered
hitn from seeking the advice he fancied he so sorely needed
until we were on the eve of leaving the town. Having
secured a prescription at the very last moment, on arriving
at the next halting-place he would rush off to the chemist's.

368 GLANCES BACK
and, while having it made up, would extract from Herr
Bolus the name of the local practitioner who in his opinion
occupied the highest rank. Then he would hasten to him,
and in his very best German describe his imaginary
symptoms, tell him all about the last doctor he had con
sulted, show him the prescription he had received ; and
would usually be gravely informed that it was a most
fortunate circumstance he had taken none of the medicine,
otherwise the consequences might have been — well, cer
tainly something alarming, and most likely even fatal.
So long as the money Fry had provided himself with
lasted he frittered it away in this ridiculous fashion alike
in Germany, Switzerland, and the Tyrol. OccasionaUy he
would return to the hotel after visiting some physician
only a few minutes before the time the train was appointed
to leave. This was while we were in Germany, for in
Switzerland at this date the railway only went to Berne
and Basle, and the engineering feats of scaling the Swiss
mountain peaks were then undreamt of. Fry, in his
trepidation, would hastily strap up his valise, stuff his
night shirt and slippers into his coat pockets, and then
rush wildly off to the railway station with his hair and
tooth brushes and other toilet requisites in his hands, and
leap distractedly into the carriage to the bewilderment of
our phlegmatic fellow-passengers.
When Mr. Longfellow heard from Mr. Bogue of the
contemplated tour in the track he had himself followed
fifteen or sixteen years before, he begged that he might be
kept informed of our progress, and the letters which I wrote
to Mr. Bogue from our various halting-stations were all
sent on to the poet in the States. Subsequently he wrote
to me, and at his suggestion I penned a few notes of the
tour, w-hich were printed as an appendix to the volume.
When traversing the Odenwald we entered the wood
land dell, which LongfeUow lauds as the " enchanted valley

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 369
of Birkenau," and were perplexed, I remember, in our
search for the mill referred to by the poet, owing to there
being three mills in the valley, and all within the space of
a mile. We discovered, however, that only one served the
double purpose of a mill and inn, and as it was evidently
here that the poet had stayed, we visited it with the inten
tion of passing the night there. The old miller recollected
nothing of the distinguished guest he had entertained some
fifteen or sixteen years before — his wife with the shrill
voice was dead, and his son, he told us, was undergoing
imprisonment for some part he had taken in the Baden
revolution of 1848.
At first the old man said we could not have rooms for
the night, but after we had ordered several bottles of wine,
and spent our fiorins freely, two unoccupied sleeping apart
ments were offered us, but as a third chamber was not to
be had, we eventuaUy returned to Weinheim to sleep. I
fancy we were indebted for the offer of the rooms to an
idea which had penetrated the old miller's head, that the
eccentric friend who accompanied us, was a person of con
sequence, as after watching him attentively for a consider
able time, he suddenly leant over the table, and asked me
in a gruff whisper, " Is he a baron ? " Had I been able to
answer — yes, no doubt an appeal to my friend would have
followed, entreating his good offices on behalf of the old
man's " quodded " son.
At Interlachen we had, I remember, a long search for
the apartment in the convent, which Longfellow had
formerly tenanted. An old crone having charge of a
portion of the building, was the first person we inquired of,
but questioning her with almost judicial strictness only
led to a barren result. Commiserating our disappointment
she handed us over to an old soldier who occupied some
rooms above, and he, after hearing what we had to say,
transferred us to a venerable old gentleman who, with his
VOL. I. 2 a

370 GLANCES BACK
two pretty, fair-haired, limpid-eyed daughters, sympatheti
cally listened to our re-statement of the case, and
endeavoured, though fruitlessly, to help us out of our diffi
culty. Next morning, we turned our attention to a different
quarter. Since Longfellow's visit in 1836, the portion of
the old convent beyond the cloisters, had been transformed
into a police office, and we pursued our search through the
rambling building, civilly assisted by the clerks of the
prefect, who,, while regarding the investigation as a some
what ludicrous one, enjoyed it quite as much as though the
unravelling of some criminal mystery depended on the
result. Numerous alterations, consequent upon the new
purposes to which the building was then applied, had
changed the entire aspect of the interior. But bearing in
mind Longfellow's description, that the room was on the
lower floor, that it had three lofty and narrow windows, and
that it was wainscotted with oak, and looked into a flower-
garden, we were at length convinced that it could be no
other than the apartment which at the time of our visit
served as the prefect's audience chamber.
I remember that during our sojourn at Interlachen, we
made the ascent of one of the lesser mountains of the
Bernese Oberland — the Wengern alp, I think it was — and
that while resting at a chalet near the summit we had a
splendid view of an avalanche careering down into the
valley with the roar of thunder. After Mr. Foster had
made all the sketches he required in the valley of Lauter-
brunnen, and other places around Interlachen, we took the
steamer along the Lake of Brienz and landed near the
famous Geissbach cascade. At the neighbouring hotel we
were waited upon by two charming Swiss maidens,
bewitchingly and coquettishly attired in the picturesque
costume of the canton, from whom we were very loth
indeed to part. It was, however, necessary that we should

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 371
push forward, so with sighs and sentimental adieux we
mounted the horses we had engaged, and accompanied by
a guide set forth for Andermatt.
- This was in the evening, and we afterwards discovered
that we had made a great mistake in starting towards the
close of the day instead of in the early morning, as we were
obliged to put up for the night at places where we should
simply have dined, and where the sleeping accommodation
was something abominable. One of these rude chalets was
infested with an objectionable species of live stock of such
persistence and ferocity that, as Curran once remarked on
a similar occasion, had the creatures only been unanimous
they might easily have dragged us out of our beds. Sleep
was of course entirely out of the question, and when day
broke every garment had to be shaken violently out of the
window before one dared venture to put it on.
We passed, I remember, through the cherry orchards of
Meyringen, the picturesque Swiss village of wood-carvers,
recently almost entirely destroyed by fire, then by the
Hasli thai to the foaming falls of the Aar at Hendeck, and
afterwards skirted the glacier of the Ehone. We rode past
the huge icy mass frozen, I remember, on the one side, and
roasted by a broiling sun on the other, till we finally
reached the Grimsel hospice, where we rested for the night.
The horse which carried me was a powerful punchy animal,
with a singular fondness for straggling to the very brink of
the more fearful Alpine precipices. For a time I made
strenuous efforts to guide him into safer courses, but soon
had to give up the task in despair, and henceforward, with
slackened reins, I allowed him to pursue the even tenour
of his way.
On emerging from the Grimsel pass, and descending
into the valley through which the torrent of the Ehone
dashes over monster boulders, I noticed that the stream was
•crossed by a frail wooden bridge, two planks wide, and with

372 GLANCES BACK
a rail at one side. I was riding at the head of our party
and wondered whether the proper course was to cross the
torrent by the narrow bridge and run the risk of the horse
toppling over with me into the surging waters, to be carried
by them in due course to the Lake of Geneva, or to ford
the torrent which was evidently of no great depth. In
my perplexity I thought the best course was to leave, the
matter to the discretion of my horse, who had no doubt
passed this way many times before, and evidently had a
will of his own ; so with the reins slackened more than
ever, I allowed him to make his choice.
He decided to take the torrent, which he ploughed
vigorously through, while I, over my knees in water,
kept his head well to the stream to prevent our being
swept against the wooden piles of the bridge. Eventually
our progress was interrupted by some huge boulders, and
the horse raising himself on his haunches essayed to plant
his forefeet on the slippery rock, but all his efforts failed
to secure him a firm footing and he stumbled backwards.
Luckily he managed to keep his legs and I my seat. I was
startled, however, at hearing some sharp little screams,
and looking up saw a party of tourists, among whom were
several ladies, on the opposite bank, anxiously watching
my horse's movements.
Swift as thought, in this moment of imminent danger,
these little screams recalled to my mind the loud terrified
cries in the Catherine- street theatre some dozen years
before, when, with half my body forced through the flimsy-
false roof, my legs were dangling above the grand chande
lier, and the people below were momentarily expecting to
see me fall some fifty feet into the pit. Ijuckily for me the
intelligent animal I was astride of, nothing daunted, raised
himself on his hind-legs again and made a fresh attempt to-
scale the boulder, and this time fortunately succeeded,
with the result that in the course of a few minutes we were-

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 373
both safely landed on dry ground. My companions passed
over the bridge with the guide leading their horses, which,
I discovered too late, was the orthodox way for equestrians
to cross the torrent of the Ehone.
I think we afterwards pushed forward through the Furca
pass. I remember, however, our having a race across the
Devil's bridge, and subsequently obtaining my first and
last glimpse of Italy, which I had long wished to visit.
Later on, when Foster had made a sketch of the bridge,
we turned our horses' heads round to the hotel at Ander
matt, where we parted wdth both guide and horses, which,
after a slight rest, started on their return journey to the
Geissbach falls. We managed to secure another guide,
but as only a single horse was avaUable this was laden with
our baggage, and we all tramped along on foot. Instead
of going in the orthodox round-about way to Innsbruck,
our point of destination, we determined to make a straight
cut to Coire, or Chur, across a district at that time never
by any chance frequented by tourists. To-day, however,
all is changed, the route is intersected by fine macadam
ised roads, along which diligences run at stated times,
and there are good inns where one can dine well, and sleep
comfortably. Forty years ago one had to follow an obscure
mountain track where a guide even occasionally lost himself.
I recollect on the first or second day our skirting a
large salt water lake and coming in the evening to a strag
gling little village, the inhabitants of which chiefly culti
vated flax, and spoke no other language but Eomansch, a
bastard dialect, many of the words composing which are
a sort of vulgarised Latin. Our guide could not speak it,
but we made ourselves understood by means of a few
simple Latin words, which procured us a plentiful supply
of rye bread and milk — no other food was obtainable — for
which, and the rough sleeping accommodation cheerfully
provided us, the poor undemoralised villagers scorned to

374 GLANCES BACK
accept payment. After putting up with this frugal fare
for several days, we were delighted at hearing from the
guide that we were approaching a large village, where
there was a comfortable inn at which he prophesied we
should find excellent cheer. This was Ilanz, where it had
been arranged he was to leave us. Shortly before we
entered the village we overtook a French-speaking Swiss
who, to our great gratification, offered to act as our inter
preter, as Eomansch was still the lingo of the locality.
We learned from our new acquaintance that we should
have no difficulty in procuring a vehicle at Ilanz to take
us on to Eeichenau, some fifteen miles distant, that even
ing. At Ilanz the villagers all came to their doors to catch
a sight of the new, and to them strange looking, arrivals,
for we wore neither tourists' suits nor wideawakes, but the
same top hats and black frock coats in which we were
accustomed to perambulate the streets of London.
On entering the inn, the men of the village assembled
there rose up and remained respectfully standing, until a
table was prepared for us to seat ourselves at. We were
ravenously hungry, not having taken kindly to the simple
fare we had had to put up with during the last few days,
and were sadly disappointed when we were told that the
greatest delicacies the innkeeper could offer us were wheaten
bread and goat's milk. After considerable cross- question
ing through the medium of the interpreter, we learned with
delight that there was some dried beef in the house, and
at once ordered it to be brought. I remiember the viand
well, even at this distance of time. The slices lay tempt
ingly in the dish, but our forks were powerless to penetrate
them — of itself an ominous sign. On endeavouring to
divide the meat with our knives we soon discovered the
task was a hopeless one. In despair we seized it with our
fingers and attempted to bite it, but found this was more
than our sharpest molars could accomplish. The meat was

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 375
in fact of the consistency of a well-hammered piece of
leather for the sole of a shoe.
Finding we could procure nothing else to eat, we asked
our interpreter to arrange at once with the villager who he
had said would drive us to Eeichenau. The man, who soon
made his appearance, spoke German and, in reply to Fry's
inquiries as to what kind of road it was, assured us that it
was a " sare gute weg." As, however, the sun had already
gone down and there were no signs of a moon, though we
were assured that it would be a fine moonlight night,
we decided to defer our journey until the morning, and
shortly afterwards went as good as supperless to bed.
We climbed to our capacious bedroom, I remember, up
a long step ladder, and were greatly surprised to find that
it contained not only several comfortable beds and ancient
carved chests and wardrobes, but that its walls were
covered with a gorgeous fiock and gold paper, which the
landlord had no doubt brought back with him to that out
of the way little village, on the occasion of some journey
he had made to Berne or Zurich. In the morning we
were pleased at finding that eggs and cow's instead of the
strong-flavoured goat's milk, had been provided for our
breakfast, and as soon as this was over we prepared to
start off in the light pair-horse waggon which was already
waiting for us before the inn door. To our intense sur
prise the entire village had turned out to witness the
departure of the three strangers in black surtouts and top
hats. There were first of all the priest, and the sacristan,
and then the schoolmaster at the head of his troop of
chubby-faced urchins, the burger-meister or whatever he
may have styled himself, the white haired gaffers and
gammers, and many of the youths and maidens of the place.
In face of such an assembly we of course put on our very
best London manners, and courteously saluted the com
pany, who saluted us in return. Then the priest made a

376 GLANCES BACK
short speech, possibly conveying his blessing to us, but
not understanding what he said we thought it safest to
raise our hats and bow politely.
The driver, who had grown impatient, now cracked his
whip and off we sped. In a few minutes the " sare gute
weg," of which he had boasted the night before came sud
denly to an end, and we found ourselves spinning along,
over green turf strewn thickly with huge boulders, and
unpleasantly near the edge of the precipitous rocks form
ing the gorge of the Ehine. Our driver went merrily on,
leaving his horses to thread their way as best they could
among the masses of rock. This they did apparently to
their own satisfaction, but not entirely to ours, for one of
the wheels of the vehicle came in violent contact with a boul
der which shattered it, overturned the waggon, completely
wrecking it and sending one of our travelling bags flying
over the brink of the precipice into the Ehine, which was
rushing along several hundred feet below. Fortunately
we foresaw the impending collision and jumped off before
it occurred, otherwise we should most likely have accom
panied the lost travelling bag in its gymnastical descent.
The bag of course was gone past recovery, and as it was
impossible to proceed any further with the vehicle, our
only plan was to tramp forward, carrying the rest of our
luggage between us, until we met with some peasant who
for a liberal trinkgeld would relieve us of our load.
The walk was a weary one ; the fierce sun shone down
perpendicularly upon us, and we overtook no needy way
farer willing, for the bribe of a fiorin, to act as our beast
of burthen. We halted so frequently to rest, and remained
resting so long, that it was night by the time we reached
Eeichenau, where we stopped at an inn which had formerly
been a convent, and was then kept by an Italian, who was
a first-rate cook and ministered compassionately to our
ravenous appetites. In the morning we paid a visit to the

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 377
neighbouring old chateau, where, after it had been turned
into a school during the revolutionary epoch, Louis
Philippe, then Due de Chartres, and in hiding from the
sans-culottes, filled the post of usher for a time ; teaching
the young idea of the neighbourhood how to shoot, so far
as history, mathematics, and the French language were
concerned. From Eeichenau we walked over to Coire, the frontier
Alpine town, with its great mouldering gateways and
venerable walls and ramparts, constructed ages ago, not
merely to keep outside enemies at bay, but to protect its
protestant and catholic inhabitants against each other.
Here we found ourselves once more in the civilised world.
Here were no longer mountain tracks difficult to discover,
but good macadamized roads running to Liechtenstein and
Feldkirch, Kloster, and Davosplatz ; with shops and foun
tains, and paved streets along which diligences and other
vehicles rumbled.
We secured a carriage at Coire, and on our way to
Liechtenstein passed through a village where we endea
voured to obtain quarters for the night. The peasants,
however, misunderstanding some question Fry addressed
to them, thought he intended an insult to their wives,
and retorted in menacing language. Then, after commun
ing together, they drew long knives from their sashes,
and rushed towards us. Observing their movement, the
driver whipped up his horses, and the band gave us chase,
flourishing their knives and gesticulating frantically. One
or two of the fieetest among them caught us up, but we
kept them at bay with our alpenstocks, while the driver
lashed his horses into a gallop, and Fry, -who was in a
mortal funk, and perspiring nervously, prodded the animals
with the sharp spike which, while we were on our Alpine
journey, he had had fixed into an ordinary walking-stick.
In spite of our perilous position, Foster and I could not

378 GLANCES BACK
resist shouting with laughter at the energy Fry was display
ing, and at the anxious way in which he every now and then
glanced round to see whether our irate pursuers were gain
ing upon us. After an uncommonly exciting quarter of an
hour, the speed of our horses told; the angry villagers
treated us to a volley of oaths and a parting flourish of
their lethal weapons, and gave up the chace, leaving us to
congratulate ourselves on having escaped a serious danger.
Next day, after our baggage had been minutely over
hauled at the frontier in the interest of his highness's
customs, we passed through the Prince of Liechtenstein's
tiny territory in the space of about an hour, having the
satisfaction of witnessing en route a military inspection of
the Liechtenstein army, comprising less than a hundred
men. Eventually we reached Feldkirch, whence we took
the diligence to Innsbruck. After a day or two spent here,
— of which I recollect nothing, excepting our visit to the
famous tomb of Maximilian, one of those impressive monu
ments which once seen are rarely forgotten — we engaged a
carriage to take us to Salzburg, occupying, I think, a
three days' journey, and then full of Austrian soldiers.
Italy at that time being in a state of great ferment, large
bodies of troops were massed in the neighbourhood of the
frontier. Even the isolated little village of St. Gilgen,
which was our ultimate destination, harboured, I remem
ber, almost half as many soldiers as it had able-bodied male
inhabitants. I imagine that in the course of our journey we must
have crossed and recrossed the Austrian frontier at some
particular point, for I remember our being stopped at an
isolated post, with no houses in sight for miles, and being
ordered to alight. First of all, our modest baggage was
minutely overhauled, and then our vehicle was subjected
to a searching examination, all the cushions being taken
out, the seats searched under, the driver's box ransacked.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 379
and the roof and fioor of the carriage prodded, to make quite
certain that we were smuggling neither contraband articles,
nor arms and ammunition into Austrian territory. After
the officials had acted as custom-house officers, they trans
formed themselves into police agents, and scrutinized our
passports, when, finding mine was an Italian name, they
cross-examined us with all the severity and pertinacity of
a French juge d' instruction. We were asked our ages and
callings, whether we were married or single, what our
object was in coming to Austria, whither we were then
going, and how long we intended staying there, and — this
evidently sorely perplexed the head official — how it was
we could afford to travel in a private carriage, and yet
possessed so very little luggage. It will be remembered
that early in our journey we had left the great bulk of this
behind, on finding its transport inconvenient.
The questions were, of course, put to us in German,
and Fry answered them to the best of his ability
linguistically and otherwise. But when he was asked
our object in visiting Austria, he thought it neces
sary to consult Foster and myself, as he knew it
would never be credited if he said we were simply follow
ing in the steps of an American poet, for the purpose
of obtaining sketches of the localities he had traversed.
This consultation, which was,' of course, in English, led to
the concoction of some cock and bull story which it was
thought more likely to be swallowed, the stolid official
appearing not to understand a single word of our conversa
tion. At length the examination came to an end : our
luggage was packed up again, the carriage cushions were
replaced, and our passports were handed to us by our in
quisitorial questioner, who politely wished us a pleasant
journey in the most perfect EngUsh ; by way, I suppose,
of a hint that he had understood all we had been saying,
and, in spite of our fibs, had come to the conclusion that

380 GLANCES BACK
we were not engaged in any of the manifold conspiracies
then rife against the Austrian government.
At the village of Waidring in the Tyrol, close to the
magnificent mountain pass of which Longfellow speaks in
" Hyperion," an odd misunderstanding introduced us to
the parish priest, and led to our spending a pleasant even
ing with him. Fry, who was a very fussy individual, had
suddenly taken it into his head that he would be unable
to sleep that night unless he was shaved before going to
bed, and he asked excitedly of everybody at the inn to
fetch him a barber. How it happened I cannot conceive,
but under the idea that Fry wanted to confess himself
someone Avent for the priest of the place, and shortly
afterwards the latter made his appearance. Luckily he
understood English perfectly, and, after laughing good-
humouredly at the explanation given, accepted our
invitation to discuss a bottle or two of the host's best
wine. He proved to be a most entertaining companion —
read " Pickwick " with delight in the original, quoted and
chuckled over Old Weller's exasperation -with the Eeverend
Stiggins, and then, changing the subject, expressed himself
an intense admirer of Uhland's poems. He translated the
"Black Knight" and the "Castle by the Sea" for us in a
literal form to prove to us how admirably Longfellow had
rendered them into English verse. I ha,d shown him the
volume of "Hyperion" I carried about with me, and
interested him so much in the romance that I doubt not
the work was soon added to the priest's little library of
English books.
Fry's presentiment— no shave, no sleep — proved to be
correct, and not only did he Ue aw^ake himself but he did
his best to disturb the rest of others. In the dead stillness
of the night fancying that he heard someone stealing softly
into his room, and calling to mind the many stories current
of cut-throat innkeepers in lonely places dispatching their

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 381
guests, he jumped out of bed, fiung open the window, and
frantically shouted, " Murder ! murder ! " much to the
perplexity of the slumbering inhabitants of the little
Tyrolean village whom he aroused with his terrified cries.
Next morning the good-natured innkeeper asked us if our
friend was right in his upper storey, while as for Fry he
simply chuckled over the whole affair as though it were an
excellent joke.
On arriving at Salzburg we found the passport
regulations in force there uncommonly strict ; obliging us
to pose before the civil authorities while a minute descrip
tion of all our graces and defects, such as our foreign
office passport naturally failed to furnish, was leisurely
noted down by scrutinising officials in the police books —
huge indexed volumes that could only be moved from their
shelves with difficulty — before we were permitted to enter
the city. Our passports were, I remember, taken away,
and in place of them a simple permit of residence was given
to us, which had to be produced at the police office every
time we desired to pass beyond the city boundaries even
for an hour or two. If I recollect rightly, when we went
on to St. Gilgen, where we intended to remain for several
days, our passports were still withheld from us, and we
only obtained them on returning to Salzburg prior to our
taking the diligence from that city to Munich.
We found Longfellow's descriptions of St. Gilgen —
"the little white village reposing like a swan on its reedy
nest " — and the places adjacent minutely exact. Before
the inn still stood the broad-armed tree shading the
benches and tables beneath. The painting of the bear
hunt across the front of the house had perceptibly faded,
and the sun dial was becoming obliterated. The smart
servant girl had given place to another equally smart, who
also wore the distinguishing silver spoon in her girdle, and
was much given to fiirtation with the male guests. At

382 GLANCES BACK
the village school-house opposite the school girls and bare
footed urchins were still speUing out their lessons on a
bench at the door, while at the next house more than one
poor woman was knitting in the shade. The fountain still
discharged its stream of clear water into the rough
w^ooden trough ; the travelling carriage without horses
stood at the inn door where the postilion lounged.; and
only the blacksmith was wanting to complete the picture
which Longfellow had painted so minutely some fifteen
years before.
The landlord and his wdfe were verging on a green old
age. Having pointed out to the former his name in the
copy of " Hyperion " which I carried about with me, the
old man read it through his spectacles with undisguised
delight ; and pressing his finger against his breast said
proudly, " Franz Schondorfer ! that's me ! that's me ! "
We made the excursion to St. Wolfgang in a boat
rowed by a couple of peasant women, passing beneath the
" mighty precipice of Falkenstein," when to the evident
trepidation of our boatwomen w^e ventured to shout out
one or two of the least objectionable phrases described in
" Hyperion," as having been made use of by Berkley, and
which the echo repeated with that " aw^ful distinctness "
which Longfellow speaks of. Soon after arriving at St.
Wolfgang something like a storm seeming to be gathering
— due, the superstitious boatwomen insisted, to our profane
behaviour when putting the Falkenstein echo to the test —
our rowers, praying fervently with every stroke of their
oars, spirited us back to St. Gilgen wdth all possible
despatch. On landing, after I had paid them the money
agreed upon for the trip, they with sundry curtseys and
smUes chattered away with perplexing volubility. Catch
ing, however, the sound of the word " trinkgeld," I gave
them each an extra zwanzigger, and " I thank you ! I kiss
your hand ! I thank you ! " came from both their lips ;

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 383
then quick as lightning, each seized a hand and smothered
it with kisses before I could comprehend the meaning of
the strange proceeding, which was merely putting into
practice a custom (almost fallen into desuetude) of kissing
the hand of the donor of a gift. The use of the phrase
was common enough, but one had never before found it
put into practice.
On our way homewards we picked up a travelling
acquaintance at Munich with Mr. Acton Smee Ayrton,
subsequently M.P. for the Tower Hamlets, and an
excellent, though unpopular chief commissioner of Works
simply because he kept a tight hold on the purse strings
of his department. We visited with him Schwanthaler's
big statue of Bavaria at the Euhmeshalle in the outskirts
of Munich, and of course mounted up into the head, some
sixty or seventy feet from the ground, for the sake of the
view to be obtained through its gigantic eyes. A few
years afterwards I came across Ayrton again on board the
Great Eastern steamship, and subsequently got to know
him more intimately when the agitation for the repeal of
the paper duty, in which he took rather an active part,
was in full swing. His long sojourn in India, accumulating
money there by practising as a solicitor, had told upon his
hver and given a deep jaundiced hue to his complexion.
Some time after my return to England I had a visit
from Captain Mayne Eeid, whom I knew very well from
having engraved many of the illustrations to the series of
boys' books which he wrote for Mr. David Bogue. In his
young days, when he was a journalist in New York, Eeid
had fiung aside his pen to take part in the war against
Mexico, and while still burning with military ardour he
had come to Europe to place his sword, as the expression
goes, at the service of the Hungarians. But before the
expedition which he was endeavouring to get together in
London was organised, news came of the Temesvar disaster

384 GLANCES BACK
and Kossuth's flight into Turkey, and with this the
captain's dream of repeating his Mexican exploits on
Hungarian soil was at once dispelled.
The object of Mayne Eeid's visit to me was to obtain
the passport with which I and Mr. Birket Foster had lately
been travelling, now that, as he said, we could have no
further use for it. He admitted he wanted it to enable
him to carry out a mad scheme he had devised of going to
Milan in company of Kossuth — the pair of them being of
course duly disguised — to assist in a rising against the Aus
trians which had just then taken place. Knowing that trav
elling in their own names would lead to their arrest as soon
as they crossed the Swiss frontier Eeid was anxious to slip
past the authorities with a false passport. He was good
enough to say that if I had any scruples about handing
over the document direct to him I might easily contrive to
lose it ; and he suggested that at a given time on a
particular day I should accidentally draw it out of my
pocket with my handkerchief and let it drop on the
ground at a certain spot in Lincoln's-inn-fields where a
trusty person would be on the look-out to pick it up.
As may be supposed I scouted the suggestion, and told
the fire-eating captain that with every disposition to
oblige him neither I nor Mr. Birket Foster would care to
become marked individuals in the eyes of the police
authorities all over Europe.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 385

XX.
(1853-56.)
macaulay's speeches — TALKS AND WALKS WITH MR.
COBDEN — THE "ILLUSTRATED TIMES "- — GUSTAVE DO^t
— COUNT d'oRSAY's WELLINGTON BUST — AT THE
PALACE OF ST. CLOUD — SOME LONDON PRISONS.
This year (1853) I was drawn into an epistolary contro
versy with Mr. Macaulay in reference to an edition of his
speeches which I had collected and published. Subse
quently the distinguished essayist and historian rated me
so soundly in print for my share in this transaction that
I was induced to take counsel's opinion as to whether
an action for libel would lie. The reply was in the
affirmative, but I was warned at the same time that it w-as
doubtful whether any of the judges would venture to sum
up against the great man, consequently all idea of seeking
legal redress had to be abandoned. Mr. Macaulay's parlia
mentary speeches, I should mention, had been taken from
" Hansard's Debates," and Mr. Hansard had been paid his
own demand for the privilege. At my interview with Mr.
Hansard I learnt from him that before any speech was
published in " the Debates " a proof was invariably sent to
the M.P. who had delivered it, and who returned the
proof if any correction were necessary within a certain
number of weeks ; otherwise it was assumed, in accord
ance -with an understanding of which aU the members were
cognisant, that the speech might be put to press as it
stood. I mention this because Mr. Macaulay based his
indignation against me on a misrepresentation of his own
VOL. I. 2 b

386 GLANCES BACK
to the effect that I had charged myself with editing his
orations, whereas, so far as the parliamentary speeches
were concerned, I had simply undertaken to reprint them
verbatim from " Hansard," which in those days was
commonly accepted in the House of Commons as an
unimpeachable authority.
In an edition which Mr. Macaulay himself subsequently
prepared of his speeches, which he professed to have
merely revised while materially altering them to suit his
more recent opinions, he took special exception to the
report published in " Hansard " of a speech he had
delivered on the Dissenters' Chapel bill, and put forward
an amended version of his own ; justifying this mode of
dealing with speeches, the accuracy of which for twenty or
thirty years had passed unchallenged, by the following
ingenious piece of special pleading : —
" I do not pretend to give with accuracy the diction of these speeches
which I did not myself correct within a week after they were delivered.
Many expressions, and a few paragraphs linger in my memory. But the
rest, including much that had been carefully premeditated, is irrevocably
lost. . . . My delivery is, I believe, too rapid.' Able shorthand writers
have complained that they could not follow me, and . . . as I am unable
to recall the precise words which I used, I have done my best to put
my memory into words which I might have used."
This was Mr. Macaulay's complacent justification for
changing the language of the speeches included in the
collection made by himself, but he was silent as to his
reason for omitting his famous oration in favour of the
ballot, and his three speeches refiecting upon Sir James
Graham for the opening of Mazzini's letters at the Post
Office. The reason is, however, not far to seek. The
whigs, when in office scouted the idea of the ballot, and as
1 1 am unaware whether Mr. Macaulay spoke as rapidly in private — where, as is
well-known, he commonly monopolised all the conversation — as he here represents
himself as doing in Parliament, but I remember that Lord Brougham, who was
sufficiently loquacious himself, spitefully compared Macaulay's incessant flow of talk to
the chatter of ten parrots and a chime of bells.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 387
for Sir James Graham, he had veered round to whiggery
since Thomas Slingsby Duncombe assailed him for tampering
in the interest of Austria with Mazzini's correspondence.
WhUe the war in the Crimea was dragging its slow
length along, and the repeal of the newspaper stamp was
being fitfully agitated, I drew up a petition to the House of
Commons, in the course of which I quoted statistics to prove
that the cheap, and what Lord John Eussell stigmatised
as a ribald press, had furnished far fewer occasions for
setting the law in motion than its high-priced contem
poraries had done. I forwarded this petition to Mr. Cobden
with a note asking him to be good enough to present it,
and next day received an invitation to call upon him ;
when, after mentioning that the petition furnished many
¦excellent arguments for getting rid of the obnoxious stamp,
he promised to recommend the parliamentary committee
on petitions to have it printed and circulated with the
votes, which was eventually done.
This incident led to a brief acquaintance with Mr. Cobden,
•on whom I often called while the agitation against the
newspaper stamp was going on. On these occasions he
generally invited me to walk with him from Grosvenor-
place to the Free Trade Club, then located in the Adelphi,
when I remember his heavy and uncertain tread made it
-exceedingly difficult for me to keep step with him. Cobden
¦was most anxious about the repeal of the newspaper stamp,
which he regarded as something iniquitous, and said
he wished Dickens and other popular writers would take
the matter up, and help to rid us of it as they had of other
obnoxious abuses. He constantly exclaimed against the
overwhelming, and as he maintained, the pernicious influ-
¦ence of " the Times," and wished to counteract it by calling
into existence a cheap daily press in all the large provincial
towns, where an independent public opinion might be
created to hold the influence exercised by the metropolis

388 GLANCES BACK
in proper check. At this time Cobden was in the habit of
highly praising Mr. Gladstone, whom he thought the only
man of any note among the governing set, whig or tory,
who was influenced by argument, and had the courage of
his convictions. Gladstone, although then a member of a
conservative administration, was, in Cobden's view, the
hope of the liberal party ; the great free trade leader seem
ing to have divined at this early date, the services which
Mr. Gladstone was eventually to redder to the popular
cause. Cobden could scarcely be said to have shined in
conversation, and one soon discovered that it was useless
attempting to converse with him on general topics ; he
cared nothing for desultory talk, and whatever subject might
be started, he quickly brought it round to a political or
economic one, when he always showed himself particularly
anxious to acquire information outside his own great store
of knowledge. When the repeal of the newspaper stamp had become
imminent, Bogue, the publisher, influenced by the circum
stance of the Crimean war being then in progress, proposed to
me the starting of a cheap illustrated paper, and I agreed
to join him in the enterprise. We decided to call the new
paper the " Illustrated Times," settled it should be a trifle
smaller in size than the " Illustrated London News," and
fixed the price of it at twopence. I at once dispatched
young Julian Portch, who had been a pupil of my own,.
to the Crimea to make sketches in the British camp ;.
and arranged with Captain, afterwards Major-General,.
Crealock, who was with the troops, to send sketches of
any interesting incidents that came under his notice.
For the ordinary illustrations of the paper I secured the
services of Edward Morin, a spirited French artist, then
located in London ; Hablot Browne (Phiz) ; Birket Foster ;:
Kenny Meadows ; Ansdell, the royal academician ; Gustavo
Dore, then a young artist whom Phillipon, late of " the

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 389
Charivari," had just introduced to the Parisian public ;
C. H. Bennett, who, although but a poor draughtsman,
possessed a highly original humorous fancy ; Charles Doyle,
brother of the celebrated Eichard, and now the able
director of the Dublin national gallery ; G. H. Andrews, a
clever marine artist ; William M'Connell, a somewhat
vulgarized imitator of John Leech, and Gustave Janet, a
versatile and graceful French draughtsman. Subsequently,
George Cruikshank and Harrison Weir made a few drawings
for me, and two very smart young ladies, Adelaide and
Florence Claxton, who had been round the world in their
teens, cleverly satirized the social follies of both hemi
spheres. Later on, young Matt Morgan, afterwards the
crack cartoonist of the scurrilous " Tomahawk," and then
just home from Algiers, contributed some picturesque
sketches, and clever Charles Keene, during several years,
supphed the paper with a considerable number of capital
designs. Phiz made many drawings for the paper, comprising
humorous social scenes, characteristic types of military
recruits, hunting incidents, Christmas festivities, panto
mime audiences, and the like ; and for so long as we
succeeded in getting the " copy " in sufficient time, he
designed the illustrations to Sala's clever but painfully
discursive novel, " The Paddington Peerage/' which ran
its erratic course through the " Illustrated Times." I
remember complaining to the author that in one long
chapter the only advance made in the story was the hero's
ordering a cup of tea, and that the sole incident in the
foUowing chapter was the bringing of it. Like Leech,
Phiz was of a retiring disposition. He lived at Duppa's-
hill, Croydon, then an open down, and during the hunting
season found most of his enjoyment in following the Surrey
hounds. He came, it was commonly said, of an old French
stock, the Lebruns, whom the revocation of the edict of

390 GLANCES BACK
Nantes had driven to England, where they eventually
anglicised their name to Browne.
Gustave Dore — Theophile Gautier's gamin de genie —
when he commenced to draw for me was little more than a
youth, who had quite recently made his mark in PhUUpon's
" Musee Fran gais- Anglais," to which he contributed some
striking imaginative designs, based on certain dramatic
incidents in the Crimean War. His rapidity with his pencil
was extraordinary, and though he eventually' became over
burthened with work he under no circumstances refused it.
Like other Frenchmen he was fond of buying house pro
perty, to be paid for by monthly instalments, and while he
was a young man he laboured for years like a giant to meet
the heavy engagements he thus contracted. At this time his
price for drawings of a newspaper page size was only £6, so
that even with all his marvellous rapidity his biographer's
estimate that between 1850 and 1870 he made no less than
£14,000a-year,^ornearly£270a-week is simplypreposterous.
Dore,in his transcripts of Spanish and other scenes,trusted
far more to his remarkable keenness of observation than to
the jotting down of details in his note-book, having, as he
jocosely expressed it, an abundance of collodion in his head.
A younger brother of mine, Frank Vizetelly, was a great
friend of Dore's, who painted a full length portrait of him
on the walls of his spacious studio in the Eue St.
Dominique. The portrait was life-size, and so life-like
that every one visiting the studio for the first time took it
for the moment for a real individual. I recollect the gay
evenings there used to be at this period at Dore's atelier.
Frequently troops of artist-friends would look in, and
there would be music and singing, fencing and boxing and
la savate, gymnastics and circus feats, -with amateur clowns
posing on their heads and trotting about on their hands
with their legs flourishing in the air.
^ Life and Reminiscences of Gustave Dor^, by Blanche Roosevelt.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 391
Gustave Dore was the gayest and wildest of the mad
party, and, indeed, until he was thirty he always seemed
to be exuberantly happy. Five years later he was a sad
dened man, and on attaining fifty was in a state of chronic
wretchedness, solely because French art critics refused
to recognise in him a great painter. They made it their
business, he used to say, to confine an artist to some par
ticular groove from which he must not presume to stray.
In his case they sought to restrain him to drawing in black
and white, and positively contested his right to paint ;
whereas Dore himself regarded the tall pale Christs and
gigantic apostles that filled his colossal canvasses as his
grandest works, and used often to say, " If I had to begin
my life again 1 wouldn't make a single drawing. If it
were not for my drawings more justice would be rendered
to my paintings." So convinced was he of this that in his
later years he disliked to hear his drawings spoken about,
and chance acquaintances, who thought to please him by
complimenting him on their marvellous power and origin
ality, speedily discovered their mistake.
By far the best things drawn by C. H. Bennett for the
" Illustrated Times " were his clever series, " the Origin of
Species," in which certain familiar human types were
depicted in gradual stages of Darwinesque development
from kindred animals, such as the pig, the bull, the parrot,
the ass, the owl, the bull-dog, and the like. Bennett
usually failed in his attempts at characteristic portraiture,
although he prided himself a good deal on his efforts in
this direction from having been selected by Mark Lemon
to make sketches of minor notabilities in the House of
Commons for the use of the " Punch " cartoonists.
T. H. Nicholson, who was another " Illustrated Times "
artist, confined himself chiefiy to equestrian subjects.
He was a crack draughtsman of horses, delineating them
with considerable spirit, but in a rather conventional style.

392 GLANCES BACK
He modelled weU in plaster, and no secret was made of
Count D'Orsay's obligations to him in regard to his famous
equestrian statuettes and miniature busts, the faces of
which were modelled by Behnes before he beeame cele
brated as a sculptor. The statuette of the Duke of Wel
lington on horseback was undoubtedly Nicholson's, and that
famous bust of the iron duke which was to make the for
tune of the lucky manufacturer who reproduced it in porce
lain, is said to have been his and Behnes's joint work.
Sir Henry Cole — Old King Cole of the Brompton
boilers, and Felix Flummery of the art-manufacture craze
— used to tell an amusing story of the high estimate,
artistic and pecuniary, which D'Orsay set upon this pro
duction. The count had written to ask him to call at Gore
House, and on his proceeding there, after handing his card
through the wicket, he was cautiously admitted to the
grounds and safely piloted between two enormous mastiffs
to the door of the house. He was then conducted to the
count, whom he found pacing up and down Lady Blessing
ton's drawing-room in a gorgeous dressing-gown.
D'Orsay, Cole used to say, at once broke out with — "You
are a friend of Mr. Minton's I I can make his fortune for
him ! " Then turning to the servant, " Francois," said he,
"go to my studio and in the corner you will find a bust.
Cover it over with your handkerchief and bring it care
fuUy here." Frangois soon returned carrying his burthen
as tenderly as though it were a baby, and when he had
deposited it on the table, the count removed the handker
chief and posing before the bust with looks of enrapt
adniiration, he promptly asked Cole, "What do you think of
that ? " " It 's a close likeness," Cole cautiously replied.
" Likeness ! indeed it is a likeness ! " shouted the count,
"why, Douro when he saw it exclaimed, 'D'Orsay, you
quite appal me with the likeness to my father ! ' " The
count then confided to Cole that the duke had given him

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 393
four sittings, after refusing, said he, a single sitting to
" that fellow Landseer."
The duke it seems came to inspect the bust after it was
completed. In D'Orsay's biassed eyes he was as great in
art as he was in war, and always went, the count main
tained, straight up to the finest thing in the room to look
at it. Naturally, therefore, he at once marched up to the
bust, paused, and shouted, " By G  D'Orsay you have
done what those d  d busters never could do." The puff
preliminary over, the count next proceeded to business.
" The old duke wdll not live for ever," he sagely remarked ;
he must die one of these days. Now, what I want you
to do is to advise your friend Minton to make ten thou
sand copies of that bust, to pack them up in his warehouse
and on the day of the duke's death to flood the country
with them, and heigh presto ! his fortune is made."
The count hinted that he expected a trifle of £10,000 for
his copyright, but Cole's friend, Minton, did not quite see
this, and proposed a royalty upon every copy sold. D'Orsay,
who was painfully hard up for ready cash, indignantly
spurned the offer, and Minton missed the fortune which the
count protested was within his grasp.
The literary staff of the "Illustrated Times" included
James Hannay,^ who had at this time worked his way to
the position of a quarterly reviewer ; Eobert Brough, whose
chronic melancholia never seemed to interfere with the
sportive and sarcastic wit that flowed freely from his pen ;
Edmund Yates, who came to the paper at its fourth num
ber with the suggestion of his popular "Lounger at the
Clubs," — undoubtedly the earliest essay in the direction of
society journalism — in which later on clever and sag
acious J. C. Parkinson, and House of Commons door
keeper White collaborated ; George Augustus Sala, who
transferred his picturesque pen to the " Illustrated Times,"
1 See ante, p. 323.

394 GLANCES BACK
after a tiff with Charles Dickens while contributing to
'¦ Household Words," and who had not yet commenced
"roaring gently as any sucking dove" among the other
young lions ofthe "Daily Telegraph" menagerie; Suther
land Edwards, whose musical notes were then as lively and
learned as they have continued to be for five-and-thirty years
afterwards ; Frederick Greenwood, who subsequently
founded the " Pall Mall Gazette " and speedily placed
it in the very first rank among London newspapers ;
Augustus Mayhew the gros bon enfant, who after pre
tending to study art in Paris took to writing funny books
and funnier farces, and whom everybody liked and laughed
with ; Edward Draper, whose weekly commentary on " Law
and Crime " was a notable feature of the paper to the very
last ; White, formerly a bookseller of Bedford, for whom the
whig duke obtained the post of House of Commons door
keeper, owing to his radical opinions being too pronounced
for the calm atmosphere of a quiet country town ; and who
graphically chronicled the Inner Life of our so-called great
legislative assembly in the " IUustrated Times " for eight or
ten consecutive sessions. To the above may be added
half-a-score of other writers, who joined the staff at
different times, including practical John HoUingshead,
scholarly W. B. Bands, clever John Lang, Tom Hood,
Tom Eobertson, Thomas Archer, Blanchard Jerrold, and his
brother-in-law Edmund Blanchard.
The paper was announced to appear on June 9, 1855,
by which date it was calculated the bill for the abolition
of the newspaper stamp would have passed the House of
Lords and received the queen's assent. Every scheme
that could be devised was employed to give publicity to
the new journal. Not only was it extensively advertised
in the newspapers and on the walls of every town in the
kingdom, but the pavements round the provincial exchanges
were indelibly stenciUed during the night time with the

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 395
announcement. The result was that before the day of
publication, orders for nearly 100,000 copies — an unheard
of quantity in those days — were received from newsmen
for the first number.
Meanwhile an unforeseen difficulty had arisen ; the
progress of the biU through the House of Lords had been
delayed and it was evident the measure would not pass for
several weeks. This caused considerable consternation
among those who like ourselves had spent large sums in
announcing the publication of new unstamped journals on
Saturday the 9th of June, and I remember Mr. Charles
Knight, Mr. John Cassell, and others calling upon me to
inquire what we proposed doing under the changed condi
tion of things. Mr. Bogue and I had already come
to a decision. We had spent between one and two
thousand pounds in advertisements which appeared to
promise an excellent result, and were disinclined to
sacrifice the advantages we had gained. If we pub
lished without a stamp the government could only sue
us for penalties, which in our simpUcity we thought might
amount to a fine of a thousand pounds or so, and we
believed that from the publicity which would be given
to the circumstance this would be money well spent.
The " Illustrated Times " was accordingly published
without a stamp on the day announced and secured at once
a circulation of 200,000 copies, but none of the other con
templated newspapers ventured to make their appearance.
We issued several numbers before the newspaper stamp
abolition bUl came into force, and in my capacity of regis
tered proprietor I was sued by the commissioners of inland
revenue for penalties amounting to £12,000. I at once
sought Mr. Cobden's advice and he told me not to be
alarmed, that the government would not dare do anything
so unpopular as to press the proceedings to their legitimate
issue, and his surmise proved to be correct. Messrs. Lewis

396 GLANCES BACK
& Lewis appeared for me to the writ and the suit proceeded
no further. The success of the " Illustrated Times " was something
marvellous. Five or six sets of both engravings and type
had to be electrotyped and stereotyped to enable as many
sets of the paper to be put to machine simultaneously, still
with all this it was found impossible to supply the full early
demand on the Friday afternoon. On one occasion when
the doors of the publishing office had been locked, to keep
out the crowd of irate newsagents who were in the habit of
demolishing the counters and partitions whenever they
were kept waiting an inordinate time, the lock was blown
open with gunpowder and a free fight ensued between the
inrushing newsagents and the publisher's assistants, who
had to be reinforced by the editorial staff before their
assailants could be chased off the premises. One writer,
who now wields a potent pen in the reviews and journals
of the time, greatly distinguished himself with his fists,
1 remember, on this tumultuous occasion.
When a month or two after this incident the queen and
Prince Albert were about to pay a visit to the Emperor
and Empress of the French, I sent my younger brother,
Frederick, to Paris beforehand, to secure official faciUties
for sketches being made of all the more interesting
incidents. He saw the emperor's chamberlain, Count
Bacciocchi, time after time, and was politely led to believe
that his request would be complied with, but he faUed
to make more satisfactory progress. When the time for
the visit drew nigh, I hastened to Paris myself and obtained
an interview with the imperial grand chamberlain, who had
married a lady of the emperor's family — a lucky accident
for him, as in addition to his handsome salary he managed
to pocket under the empire a quarter of a million sterling
of public money.
As it happened, however, he did not profit long by his

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 397
ill-gotten gains, for I remember he was soon afterwards
attacked by a singular malady. Some occult infiuence
which he was unable to resist impelled him to keep con
stantly on the move, obliging him to walk for hours and
hours, until indeed he dropped from sheer exhaustion. He
then slept for a short time, but no sooner was he awake
than he felt compelled to start off again and continue his
interminable peregrination like the mythical Wandering
Jew. He existed in this state for several months, his once
burly figure wasting gradually away, till he shrunk to a
mere shadow of his former self and eventually died.
I recognised that nothing more than fair words were
likely to be obtained from Count Bacciocchi, and, there
fore betook myself to Lord Cowley, whom the Parisians used
to twit so much about his smokeless kitchen chimneys..
He told me that he had an appointment with the emperor
that afternoon, and promised, when speaking to him about
the English newspapers generally, to make particular
mention of the paper I represented. Later on, I learnt
from the ambassador that he had done as he promised,
and that I was to call on General EoUin at the Tuileries
at one o'clock the following day.
On doing so, I found the general out, and when he
returned in a highly flurried state, he begged me to
accompany him to his dressing-room, where he proceeded
to encase his portly person in full-dress uniform, for a
reception the emperor was to hold at two o'clock, and
whUe he puffed and blowed as he struggled excitedly
into his tight-fitting red pantaloons, he informed me that
everything was settled, and that an imperial order had
been drawn up in my favour which I could obtain from
the registrar at St. Cloud as early as I pleased the next
day. I went to St. Cloud with my brother and a French
artist, who was to make the necessary sketches, and after

398 GLANCES BACK
securing the order — which bore the emperor's signature and
that of General EoUin, as adjutant-general of the imperial
household, and authorised me to be present at all the
state receptions and entertainments given in honour of the
Queen of England — we boldly presented ourselves at the
principal entrance to the palace. While we were waiting
in the hall for a servant to conduct us to the apartments
destined for the queen, a carriage drew up from which the
emperor and General EoUin alighted. On seeing three
strange, and possibly somewhat suspicious-looking indi
viduals standing at the foot of the palace staircase, the
emperor started back as if alarmed, but on General EoUin
advancing and shaking hands with me he was evidently
reassured. We were now shown to the queen's apartments, and
the artist at once proceeded with his sketches. By-and-by
the hour for dejeuner arrived, whereupon the Frenchman
coolly rang the bell and inquired of the magnificent
individual in the imperial green and gold livery who
answered it, if we could have dejeuner served to us— just
as though the palace were an hotel. The flunkey gravely
shook his powdered head and was then requested to bring
some plates, knives and forks, and the like ; whUe my
brother proceeded to the H6tel de la Tete Noire to secure
a cold fowd and a couple of bottles of Pontet Canet for our
luncheon. The footman having brought us plates of precious
Sevres porcelain, and wine glasses engraved all over -with
imperial bees and the Napoleonic cypher, we sat down to
our hastily improvised repast. At its conclusion, our
artistic friend nonchalantly lighted up his cigar and
smoked in the royal bed-chamber for the rest of the day,
and also on the day following, until within a few hours of
her majesty's arrival at St. Cloud. For the time being we
had the run of the wing of the palace where the queen,

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 399
Prince Albert and the Prince of Wales and their suites
were shortly to be installed ; and on several occasions we
encountered the emperor, invariably with a cigarette
between his lips, and always ready to courteously
acknowledge our salute. Once he addressed me quite
unexpectedly to my very great embarrassment, although
it was only to remark in English that he hoped we were
progressing satisfactorily with our labours.
On the day the queen was to arrive, as we were entering
the chateau on the garden side, the empress descended the
steps and passed quite close to us. She was about to take a
private drive in the park, and a carriage was waiting into
which I remember Colonel Fleury, who, according to the
gossips ofthe boulevards, was too openly her admirer, handed
her with a display of rapturous regard. On the carriage
driving off we made for the queen's apartments and the artist
had scarcely started on his >vork, when a discussion arose,
between the queen's confidential bed-chamber woman and a
French workman, which afforded us much amusement. The
former had evidently been accustomed to have her orders
promptly obeyed, and she stared amazed when the workman
showed signs of hesitation. He was unwilling, it appeared,
to saw several inches off the legs of a valuable marqueterie
table, formerly belonging to Marie Antoinette, which the
bed-chamber woman had placed beside a small couch at the
foot of the queen's bedstead. "At this table," said the
abigail, consequentially, " her majesty will read every even
ing for half-an-hour or so before she goes to bed, and as she
will require to rest her arms upon it, it is imperative that it
should be a very low one." The workman was reluctant
to carry out the instructions given him and argued the
point while the bed-chamber woman was biting her lips
with vexation ; but eventually he gave in and sawed off a
few inches of the offending legs, thereby, of course,
damaging beyond repair this historic piece of furniture.

400 GLANCES BACK
A bribe of a couple of francs secured us the four small bits
of marqueterie, as a memento of the amusing incident.
We had left the palace to dine at the H6tel de la Tete
Noire on the evening the queen was to arrive, and on our
return at dark found the courtyard full of troops — picked
men of the imperial guard — and the band of the Guides
playing triumphal airs. Orders had been given to allow
no one to pass, but the document I produced at once
secured me an interview with the officer in command. It
authorised, however, only the passage of a single individual,
and the difficulty was to prevail on the commandant to
permit three people to pass with it. I forget all the argu
ments that we used — though years afterwards, at the time
of the siege of Paris, I learned it was possible to accomplish
a good deal in this way by judiciously flattering the
grande nation. At any rate the arguments proved
efficacious, and we soon found ourselves in the palace
vestibule among a crowd of imperial footmen, and the
Anaks of the Cent-gardes in their burnished breast-plates
and gorgeous uniforms.
A little scene now ensued suggestive of a full-dress
theatrical rehearsal. Marshal Vaillant, minister of war,
made his appearance and disposed the Cent-gardes in
a variety of positions, but evidently not in any instance to
his owQ. satisfaction. Eventually the idea occurred to him
to station them, one on either side, up every step of the
palace staircase, and the effect was a singularly striking
one. Then the empress's ladies of honour were summoned
and took their places at the top of the staircase among the
marshals and generals there congregated, the radiant
robes and briUiant uniforms, with the blaze of jewelry and
military decorations, presenting a magnificent coup d'ceil
against a background of luxuriant tropical foliage.
Suddenly a distant salvo of artillery was heard, where
upon, under the idea that the queen had arrived, the em-

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 401
press's ladies, the marshals and the generals descended the
grand staircase and arranged themselves in the centre of
the vestibule, the ladies forming a semi- circle and the
marshals and others being posted behind them. Then a
tall lady with a sweet but saddened expression of counten
ance, in whom one instantly recognised the empress, glided
silently in by a side door, followed by the Princess
MathUde, and took her place in advance of the assembled
group. Presently it was discovered that the alarm was a
false one, and that the queen was not likely to arrive yet
awhUe. The empress, who was then in an interesting
condition, showed signs of fatigue and sought for a seat,
running round the vestibule in search of one with her
ladies of honour at her heels, and the corpulent marshals
and generals of the second empire waddling at a respect
ful distance after them. It was the game of foUow-my-
leader under a new aspect. It chanced that there was
only a single settee in the vestibule and on this our party
were seated. We instantly rose up and moved aside so as.
to place the seat at the empress's service, but she gracefully^
bowing declined it. Eventually a bath chair was wheeled
by a servant into a neighbouring corridor and in this the
empress seated herself, until the band of the Guides strik
ing up " God save the queen," and the sound of carriage
wheels grating on the gravel gave notice that the expected
guests had at last arrived.
My brother and myself with M. Gustave Janet and
another French artist, who had been commissioned by the
emperor to paint a picture of the incident, were the only
persons present on the queen's arrival at the palace of St.
Cloud, beyond those officially connected with the reception.
The two French artists had plenty of scandalous stories to
tell regarding people in high places, and I was amused by
their speculations as to whether the chaste Queen of Eng
land would condescend to kiss the Princess MathUde,
VOL. L 2 c

402 GLANCES BACK
The one found the idea altogether " too shocking," whereas
Gustave Janet thought that royal and imperial etiquette
would outweigh any personal antipathy, and a wager
between the two was the result.
The emperor having assisted the queen to alight, a
smUe of evident satisfaction brightened his cold impassive
countenance as he led her up to the empress, and a
chirruping of kisses ensued. It was undoubtedly a proud
moment for the parvenu potentate when he realised that
he had at last secured the Queen of England as a guest
beneath his roof Princess MathUde on being introduced
to the queen was kissed by her without the slightest
hesitation, and Janet consequently won his wager. Prince
Albert blandly smiling engaged in lively talk with the
empress, to whom he presently offered his arm, and
immediately afterwards the Princess MathUde appropriated
that of the young Prince of Wales. The emperor now led
the queen towards the staircase, which rose to the right of
the vestibule and was only visible when the corner was
turned. One noticed that her majesty started suddenly
back on being unexpectedly confronted with the giants of
the Cent-gardes, in their gleaming breastplates and with
drawn sabres, standing like statues on every stair, while the
emperor almost chuckled on observing her evident alarm.
Next day was Sunday and a day of repose, but on the
Monday I was present at the queen's reception of the Corps
diplomatique at the Elysee. I presented my authority to
the concierge of the palace who, after closely scrutinising
it, consulted the officer of the guard. There was, however,
no gainsaying the imperial signature, and I was cere
moniously conducted, although in ordinary morning dress,
to the apartment where the foreign ambassadors bedizened
with countless orders were assembled, waiting for the
queen's arrival. I found myself the only individual in
every-day attire among this galaxy of brilliant costumes,

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 403
just as I was the sole person present who was unaccredited
to the Court of the Tuileries; and I was glad to escape the
¦observation directed towards me, by taking up a position
behind the door. By-and-by the queen, attended by
Lords Clarendon and Cowley, entered the apartment and
spoke a few polite words to each of the foreign representa
tives who had posted themselves erect against the walls of
the room like so many puppets, and bowed mechanically to
her majesty as she walked leisurely round.
Before leaving Paris I handed over the emperor's
¦signed order to my brother who, on exhibiting it to
Napoleon III.'s tailor, obtained the loan of a court suit, and
in this blue and gold frippery he figured .at the night fete
at the palace of Versailles, and the state performances in
the little theatre of St. Cloud, and, "whilst the music
maddened the whirling skirts of the ball," danced till day
break at the H6tel de Ville. I often laughed over his
;audacity and his boastful stories of the grand acquaintances
he had made, and the intrigues he had taken part in under
his court disguise. Some years afterw^ards, when on a
voyage to the Cape, the poor fellow had the ill-fortune to
fall overboard, on the ship's lurching during a heavy gale.
As the accident happened at night-time, although my
brother was a first-rate swimmer and life buoys were at
•once flung overboard and boats lowered, the efforts made
to save him proved unsuccessful.
A few months after the queen's trip to Paris Sebastopol
fell, and the " Illustrated Times " was so fortunate as to
receive the first sketches that reached this country of an
'event that had been long wearily waited for. These
depicted among other incidents the conflagration that
preceded the retreat of the Eussian troops, and the aspect
•of the principal streets of the city on the entry of the
•allies. There was of course great excitement over the
mews of the downfall of the Eussian stronghold, and it was

404 GLANCES BACK
officially intimated to the publisher of the paper that the
queen desired to see the original sketches received from the
Crimea. These were accordingly forw^arded to Windsor for
her majesty's inspection.
Another iUustrated paper called the " Illustrated News
of the World " made its appearance soon after this time,
the principal feature of which was its steel-engraved por
traits of political and other celebrities. Mr. John TaUisy
who was the speculative capitalist, had recently retired
from some canvassing publishing company with what forty
or fifty years ago was regarded as a large fortune. His
fingers were, however, soon itching to be at work again, and
in this contingency chance threw him into contact with
Herbert Ingram, of whom he offered to purchase the
" Illustrated London News " for £100,000 it was said.
Ingram, after accepting the offer, drew back at the last
moment which greatly irritated hot-headed Tallis who
vowed bitter vengeance, but unluckily for him this took
the form of the newspaper I have spoken of.
Having, by the payment of some preposterous sum,,
secured publishing offices within a door or two of the
" Illustrated London News," he entered on his doubtful
campaign with insane confidence. The paper, a common
place affair, without a spark of talent either in its engrav
ings or its articles, proved a ludicrous failure. The sale
was small and the advertisements few, while the outlay
was exceptionally heavy owing to the cost of the steel-
engraved portraits and the expense of printing them. lit
the course of a year or two, Tallis had lost nearly all he-
possessed without doing the " Illustrated London News '"
the smallest damage, whereupon his newspaper venture-
came to an end, and he was reduced to wooing fortune-
again in other fields of enterprise.
Several years after Henry Mayhew had completed his-
letters on "London Labour and the London Poor," under-

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 405
taken for the " Morning Chronicle " when it was under the
management of Douglas Cook, the subsequent founder of
"the Saturday Eeview," he engaged in a work on the
London prisons, and I accompanied him on many of his
visits to the various metropolitan jails. At this period the
silent system was I remember rigidly enforced at Penton-
viUe, then known as the model prison, and the prisoners
wore not only parti-coloured clothes but a particular
kind of mask which rendered it impossible for them
to recognise one another. At chapel, where they were
aUowed to remove their strange looking visors, they
were shut up in separate boxes, which admitted of their
having a view of the clergyman and one or two of the
warders, but prevented them from obtaining the smallest
glimpse of each other. Yet this, we were told, was the time
chosen for communications to pass between themselves.
Half a dozen different ways of coughing expressed as many
different things, shuffling the feet and cracking the finger
joints had their special signification, and sniffing and sneez
ing their respective meanings.
At the female prison at Brixton, when we were shown
over the nursery I remember noticing a number of benevo
lent-looking old ladies in charge of the little children born
inside the prison, and whose mothers were still undergoing
their sentences. On inquiring if these ancient dames were
superannuated female warders entrusted with the care of
these unfortunate little ones, I was surprised to learn that
the majority had been convicted of poisoning their husbands
or other relatives, or attempting in some way to murder
them, and that it was solely owing to their great age that
they had had their sentences commuted to penal servitude
for Ufe. It had formerly been the practice, we were told,
for all chUdren born inside the prison to remain immured
there until their mothers' sentences expired, but owing to
a young child, whom one of the female warders had taken

406 GLANCES BACK
out by way of a treat, having delightedly exclaimed on
seeing a horse for the first time : "Oh my ! what a big
cat ! " it wsLS decided that the little ones should in future
have the opportunity of acquiring outside the prison -walls
some little knowledge of the distinction existing between
the equine and feline species of domestic animals.
Henry Mayhew used to tell an amusing anecdote which
he professed to have heard from the police officer who figures
in it. This official, while leisurely driving a prison van was
jocosely hailed by a fast young gentleman with the enquiry,
" Got any room ? " " Yes," was the prompt reply, " I 've kep'
a place for you, jump in quick ! " "Oh, but what's the fare 1 "
cautiously asked the other. " Same as before," coaxingly
responded the driver ; " nice dry bread and water, and
if you're good taters and skilly on Sundays."
Henry Mayhew was one of those who thought the
tinkering of the constitution might fairly wait until some
thing had been done towards lessening poverty and
endeavouring to reform the criminal population, a labour
of which he appeared to take a far too hopeful view. One
cause he especially espoused was that of the sorely com
plaining ticket-of-leave men, and several meetings were got
up by him, at which, unintimidated by police presence, they
could give expression to their grievances. A few years
before, he had convened some meetings of male juvenile
thieves at one of which on his announcing, by way of put
ting his audience at their ease, that with the exception of
the visitors on the platform all those present were thieves,
the comforting statement was greeted wdth three rounds of
applause. Subsequently when a youth of nineteen was
introduced to the meeting as having already been in prison
twenty-nine times, the audience rose en masse to look
at him, and signified their admiration of his career by a
perfect delirium of cheers, clapping of hands and catcaUs.
To secure a good attendance at the meetings it was found

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 407
necessary to bribe the men with the promise of a supper,
or its equivalent. The speakers, who employed very few
slang words, naturally inveighed against their assumed
persecutors, the police, whom then as now they accused of
taking delight in doing all they could to prevent them
from getting an honest living. I was scarcely surprised
at hearing one speaker describe ticket-of-leave men as
" vUified innocent lambs ; " but when another of the
fi^aternity gravely maintained that half of the robberies
and garrottings, which threw London into fits of terror,
were committed by soldiers and militiamen, I was a trifle
incredulous, in spite of the applause which greeted this
astounding assertion. The speaker, thus encouraged,
confidentially informed the meeting that " only last week
one of your beautiful militiamen garrotted a man, and all
the while a blooming p'liceman looked quietly on, watching
how neatly the trick was done." This statement was
greeted with roars of laughter, in the midst of which the
orator, proud of the point he had made, judiciously retired
from the platform.
At a meeting which was presided over by Lord Carnarvon
we were much amused, I remember, by a bullet-headed,
middle-aged individual suddenly starting up and warning
his fellow ticket-of-leave men against Mayhew's philan
thropic pretensions. " I am a bold man and come here to
speak the truth," said he, as though this were a novelty
with him. " Who, I should like to know, is Mr. Henry
Mayhew? I want to caution you against speaking of
your lives in public for his benefit. His object in calling
us together is to sell his books. He 's a nice man, ain't
he, to come here and get you to tell your confessions ?
He stated the other day in a Sunday paper that while a
ticket-of-leave man could make £5 a-week and keep a
pony trap by his old practices, it was useless to expect
him to become a clerk, or a porter, for fifteen bob every

408 GLANCES BACK
Saturday. That's what your kind friend sitting there
thinks of you ! " The bold man having had his fling at the
promoter of the meeting — ^in which it must be admitted,
there was a certain amount of truth — then sat down,
evidently well satisfied with himself, and a weU-dressed
mason next described in bitter terms the light in which
ticket-of-leave men were commonly regarded.
" There are great numbers of people," said he, " who
think we 're perfect wild beasts, and I have myself heard
ladies say when they came to see us, ' Lord bless me ! how
very quiet they are ! ' " — here the audience could not resist
shouting with laughter — " I am sure," resumed the speaker,
"they must have thought we were chained demons."
Henry Mayhew was altogether a remarkable man, a
singular combination of the humorist and the sciologist.
He made his mark while a youth with the farce of " the
Wandering Minstrel," and was afterwards the moving
spirit in the starting of " Punch." Later on, he became a
contributor to Jerrold's " Shilling magazine," for which he
wrote some striking essays, notably one entitled, "What
is the Cause of Wonderment ? " and eventually he embarked
upon his encyclopaedia-like, "London Labour and the London
Poor." Mayhew was a man of multifarious schemes and
singularly original ideas, but of torpid energy ; nimble of
speech, but nerveless in action ; a great adept at planning
novel enterprises, but a feeble worker when the oppor
tunity presented itself for developing them. The half-
score of humorous books professed to be written by the
Brothers Mayhew were indebted to him for their conception
and most of their ideas, but were mainly penned by
Augustus, who also collected much of the materials relating
to the London poor.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 409

XXI.
(1856-57.)
THE PALMER TRIAL — A FICTITIOUS LIFE OF THE POISONER 
THE COST OF AN EXTINGUISHED CIGAR — A BOSTON
ELECTION HIT — WITH THE SIAMESE AMBASSADOR
IN THE THRONE ROOM AT WINDSOR AND
IN A HAYMARKET NIGHT- HOUSE.
When the investigations following upon the mysterious
death of Cook, the young Lutterworth solicitor and betting
man, in November of 1855, led to his friend Palmer, the
sporting surgeon of Eugeley, being charged with having
poisoned him, the " Illustrated Times " came out with a
Eugeley number filled with portraits and views sketched on
the spot, and a narrative of this and other crimes of a
similar nature of which Palmer was supposed to be guilty ;
together with the private family history of the accused,
and all the incriminating gossip concerning him that
could be picked up in the place. The latter had been
taken down by Augustus Mayhew, special correspondent
of the paper, from the lips of persons intended to be called
as witnesses at the forthcoming trial, and who had already
given evidence before 'the coroner, whom, strange to say,
Palmer had sought to bribe with a basket of game and a
£5 note. To-day one cannot but express one's amaze
ment that a quarter of a million copies of this number
of the paper were allowed to be sold without the courts
being appealed to on behalf of the accused, and special
correspondent, editor, printer, publisher, and proprietor

410 GLANCES BACK
being all promptly packed off to gaol for so outrageous a
contempt of court.
The paper published column after column of statements
made by the landlord, housekeeper, boots and postboy of
the hotel where Cook died shouting " Murder ! " in bis
agony, by the landlords, boots, and postboys of other
hotels in the town, by Dr. Waddell, who had cautioned
the insurance offices in which Palmer had sought to insure
his brother's life for £82,000, and by Bate, the broken-
down farmer earning twenty shillings a week, whose life
Palmer tried hard to insure for no less than £25,000,
evidently intending that he should be his next victim.
Parenthetically I may mention that Augustus Mayhew
was one of the most jocose and lighthearted of special
correspondents, and the lugubrious details he was sent to
pick up at Eugeley were not by any means in his line. He
was far more at home when describing, some few months
before, the revival, after the lapse of a hundred years, of
the well-known Dunmow custom of bestowing a fiitch of
fat bacon on any two married simpletons who chose to
declare in presence of a gaping crowd that they had
enjoyed a twelvemonth and a day of connubial felicity, and
had never once wished themselves unwed.
A party of us went down to Dunmow to witness the
so-called ceremony, which attracted shoals of people from
London and the neighbourhood of the old Essex town.
The streets were crowded with carriages, carts, vans, and
waggons, and with jovig,l-looking farmers on horseback and
grinning yokels on foot, whUe Harrison Ainsworth, the
still popular novelist, thought it not beneath his dignity to
pose as president over the select assemblage, crammed into
the little pill-box called a town-hall.
Eobert Bell, editor of the " British Poets," and Dudley
Costello, a well-known magazine writer, vied with each
other as to which should make the biggest fool of himself

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 411
in the respective r61es of counsel for and against the
claimants to the coveted flitch. The bachelors forming
half the jury had all got themselves up in their Sunday
best, and pomaded their hair with great liberality, not
to say ostentation ; while the virgins — selected from
the prettiest Drury-lane ballet girls, and " clothed all in
modesty," like Tennyson's Godiva — looked becomingly
bashful for the occasion. I remember, before the proceed
ings at the town-hall opened, hunting about for Mayhew,
who had mysteriously disappeared, and discovering him,
surrounded by these young ladies, in a garden arbour of
the hotel, enga.ged in deftly pitching strawberries into their
open mouths, while vowing the latter to be so unpre-
cedentedly diminutive that only the minutest mincemeat
could ever have been intended to pass between their
cherry lips. Augustus Mayhew was essentially a ladies'
man, and used gallantly to maintain that the pleasantest
sound in nature was the merry laughter of a pretty girl.
A year or more afterwards, Mayhew, like the rest of
his brothers, came in for a slice of Mayhew pore's fortune,
and for a while life to him, according to a favourite slang
expression, was pretty much all " beer and skittles," only
the proportion of the former to the latter was as Falstaff's
"intolerable deal of sack" to his scurvy "ha'porth of
bread." During the twelve days the Palmer trial lasted I was
present on every one of them at the Central Criminal
Court, and took notes of the principal incidents. Admis
sion was only to be obtained by tickets issued by the
sheriffs, and, on the first day, when many thought to
secure entrance to the court by means of liberal tips to
the doorkeepers, the crush was tremendous. Of course
these Old Bailey janitors indulged in the stereotype in
quiry as to " the good of pushing," with the usual unsatis
factory result. Once inside the court, on glancing round,

412 GLANCES BACK
I saw a few early aldermen in their great gold chains
already installed on the bench, and looking as if they had
been deprived of half their accustomed sleep, chatting
languidly with the portly, rosy-gilled ordinary of Newgate
(recognisable by his clerical band and gown), though it
was fully a week before he was likely to be called upon to
intone " Amen ! " to the sentence pronounced by the lord
chief justice after donning the ominous black cap.
Earl Grey limped into the court, and at once hid
himself behind an open sheet of " The Times " newspaper,
and Lord Derby, attracted I suppose by the sporting
elements in the case, soon afterwards joined him. Both
these peers were pretty regular attendants throughout the
trial, and occasionally other magnates, such as the Dukes
of Cambridge and Wellington — not the great Arthur, but
his son, — the Earl of Albemarle and General Peel, kept
them company. One of the under-sheriffs, a dapper little
man in lace frills and ruffles, strutted about with his
sword at his side, nervously awaiting the arrival of the
judges ; and, among the barristers crowding the well of
the court, one had no difflculty in picking out the cleanly
cut, intellectual features of her majesty's attorney-general,
and the portly figure of the somewhat dissipated-looking
Edwin James. Palmer's solicitor, John Smith of Birming
ham, a provincial buck, with hair in ringlets, and gilt
buttons to his waistcoat, was deep in consultation with the
prisoner's leading counsel, snuffy, slovenly -looking Serjeant
Shee, and Grove, Q.C., of scientific renown. Suddenly
everyone rose to his feet as the judges sailed in like three
staid dowagers, each adorned with a handsome bouquet,
as though the affair were some f^te. Lord Campbell at
once installed himself in the centre seat, while Creswell
dropped into the seat on his right hand and Alderson
into that on his left.
The moment the tkree judges had taken their places,

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 413
the usher shouted " Silence ! " and the case of William
Palmer being called on, the governor of Newgate was
seen to pop up from the stairs communicating between
the cells and the dock, followed by a fair-complexioned,
sandy-haired, good-natured looking individual, of medium
height and stoutish build, clad in a glossy black surtout,
light grey trousers, and carefully fitting gloves, and with
nothing particularly striking about him, save a somewhat
thickish neck. This gentlemanly personage w^as the
Eugeley apothecary, accused of poisoning and plundering
his intimate friend.
Cockburn's opening statement occupied, if I remember
rightly, five hours or more. During all this time he never
once tripped in his minute and lucid narrative, never once
hesitated for the right word, or recalled a wrong one, as
dramatically, though by no means theatrically, he un
folded in proper sequence all the details of this remarkable
case. Although these were generaUy known, every indi
vidual in the crowded court listened with sustained atten
tion from the commencement to the close of the attorney-
general's clear, precise and impressive speech.
It has been stated that on Lord Campbell being appealed
to he instantly gave permission for a chair to be placed in
the dock for Palmer's accommodation, and that from this
ready compliance of his the usher of the court inferred that
the lord chief justice had already made up his mind to
hang the prisoner.^ The story is, however, a pure inven
tion, for Palmer during the w-hole time the trial lasted
stood leaning over the ledge of the dock, and one could
see from the gallery-above that no kind of seat had been
provided for him. StiU it is nevertheless certain that
CampbeU was bent upon hanging the prisoner, for no
more damaging summing up ever proceeded from a judge's
lips. He was minutely careful over the evidence, persist-
1 Serjeant Ballantine's " Experiences of a Barrister's Life.''

414 GLANCES BACK
ing in taking every w^ord of it down, and while so engaged
constantly pulled up the witnesses with his impatient
" Stop now ! stop, stop ! "
In the " Illustrated Times' " report of the trial, of which
several hundred thousand copies were sold, every little
incident that occurred in court, as well as the personal
appearance of the various witnesses and their behaviour
in the box, was minutely chronicled. Lord Derby's merri
ment, when allusion was made to Palmer's anxiety as to
whether one of the earl's horses would run at Shrewsbury,
was also duly noted, as was the circumstance of all the
opera glasses in court being focussed on the prisoner at the
exciting moment when inspector Crisp produced the memo
randum book found at Palmer's house containing the
damaging words, " strychnine kills by causing a tetanic
fixing of the respiratory organs," in Palmer's handwriting.
The report moreover alluded to several of the witnesses in
far from fiattering terms. One for instance was described
as a seedy -looking country apothecary, another was twitted
with his long black hair being matted with grease, a third
was said to resemble a pantaloon in private life, while
the distinguished Sir Benjamin Brodie's scanty locks were
described as hanging in skeins over his wrinkled forehead.
Palmer listened to the evidence given by Professor
Taylor with ill-concealed anxiety, craning over the dock
to catch every word the famous toxicologist uttered. The
reason was that Taylor had written a letter to "the
Lancet " wherein he said : " The mode in which the sus
pected Eugeley poisonings will affect the person accused is
of minor importance compared with their probable influence
on society. I have no hesitation in saying that the future
security of life in this country will mainly depend on the
judge, the jury, and the counsel who may have to dispose
of the charges of murder which have arisen out of these
investigations." It was, I remember, commonly believed at

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 415
the time that this note of warning sounded by Professor
Taylor induced Lord Campbell to try Palmer's case
himself Previous to the trial Henry Mayhew had interviewed
Dr. Taylor with reference to the poison he had detected in
the exhumed body of Palmer's wife, and the many cases of
secret poisoning that had come under his notice in his
capacity of government analyst, and the information thus
obtained had been published in the " Illustrated Times."
This, and the professor's letter to " the Lancet," led to his
sharp cross-examination by Shee, and his seeking to escape
from the inferences drawn by accusing Mayhew of having
violated private confidence. The latter was anxious to
set the attorney-general right upon this point, and when
the court adjourned for luncheon I accompanied him in
search of Cockburn whom we found washing his hands in
one of the upstairs' lavatories. He listened to the explana
tion which appeared to perfectly satisfy him, and laugh
ingly remarked that the badgering Taylor had met with
in the witness box had driven him to make a mountain out
of what was in reality a molehill.
I should mention that Mayhew besides interviewing
Dr. Taylor had conducted an inquiry for the paper at the
principal life assurance offices with somewhat startling
results. First, he had ascertained that the practice of tam
pering with life in order to secure the insurance money was
far more general than the public had any idea of Secondly,
that although in England there were many cases of sus
picious poisoning as well as of people intentionally done
to death by unlimited supplies of drink, the worst cases of
the latter class were in connection with Irish policies, the
lives of confirmed whisky drinkers being heavily insured
by strangers who took good care to provide these bibulous
dependents with a plentiful supply of their favourite
liquor. Thirdly, that the dishonourable portion of the

416 GLANCES BACK
medical profession was largely mixed up with these frauds,
and that most offices made it a rule never to insure the
life of a medical man's wife.
Poor old Sergeant Shoe's rambling speech for the
defence lasted eight weary hours and was in striking con
trast to Cockburn's masterly opening statement and his
equally masterly reply. Palmer after he was found guilty
had good reason for saying, " It's the riding has done it," ^
meaning thereby that to Cockburn's able conduct of the
case the verdict was due. It was rumoured at the time
that the brief for Palmer's defence had been offered to Sir
Fitzroy Kelly who, not caring for the job — doubtless he
remembered his failure to save another poisoner, Tawell the
quaker, from the gallows — demanded a prohibitory fee of
a thousand guineas. Sergeant Wilkins was then retained,
but owing to his state of health he had to give up the case,
which was eventually entrusted to Sergeant Shee. Possibly
no more inefficient opponent to the attorney -general could
have been found among all the big wigs who figured on
occasion at the Central Criminal Court. The task Shee
had undertaken was no doubt an exceedingly difficult one,
still none the less his speech for the defence was a signal
failure. The befogged advocate blundered from the very outset
over the names of people and places, and commonly mis
stated dates. Once, when referring to Dr. Taylor and
tetanus, he transposed the words, and spoke of Dr. Tetanus
and taylor ; and I well remember that in a lengthy argu
ment, intended to demonstrate that Palmer had no motive
for taking Cook's life, he misplaced the names of culprit
and victim throughout, and only discovered his blunder
while deducing his conclusions at the close.
The unprofessional step taken by Shee in giving expres
sion to his personal conviction in Palmer's innocence was
' Sergeant Ballantine's " Experiences," &c.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 417
far from favourably regarded by the jury, and his bombastic
declamations, accompanied by heavy thumps on his desk,
and his general forced melodramatic action, betokened
rather the vulgar ranter than the calm, sagacious advocate.
Every now and then he paused to wipe his perspiring
forehead, with the result that he invariably lost the thread
of his argument, and rarely succeeded in recovering it.
His efforts, too, to be pathetic in his allusions to the
trembling anxiety of Palmer's aged mother, to his sister
sinking under the most dreadful suspense, and to the
brave and gallant brother striving against all obstacles
to save his unhappy relative from an awful doom, fell
completely flat on listeners in the last stage of weariness.
Had Grove, Q.C., been entrusted with the speech for
the defence, his logical mind would have certainly suggested
grave reasons for doubt with reference to many of the
assumed facts, although, in face of the mass of damnifying
evidence, he could hardly have hoped to secure a verdict of
acquittal. Several of the medical witnesses for the defence, who
came forward mainly to advertise themselves, strenu
ously maintained that Cook did not die from poison ;
and the now notable Dr. B. W. Eichardson, at that time
an unknown young man with, I remember, lank black hair
and a wildish look about his eyes, even suggested that
Cook's death was due to a spasmodic disease called
" angina pectoris." This statement came as a thunder
clap. Cockburn was evidently perplexed, for only the
medical portion of the audience so much as knew the
name of the disease spoken of When, however, the
attorney-general rose to reply, the young man wich lank
black hair was not forgotten. "The gentleman," said
Cockburn, " who talked of ' angina pectoris ' would not
have escaped so easily if I had had certain books under
my hand at the time, and been able to expose, as I would
VOL. I. 2d

418 GLANCES BACK
have done, the ignorance or presumption of the assertion
he dared to make — I say ignorance or presumption, or,
what is worse, an intention to deceive. I assert it in the
face of the whole medical profession, and I am satisfied I
shall have a verdict in my favour."
Palmer, who had all along expressed himself certain of
being acquitted, lost some of his assumed confidence when
Lord Campbell — the impersonation of a sharp Scotch terrier
guarding a rat-hole — in the course of his summing up de
molished one after another the various theories advanced
by the defence. From time to time Palmer covered his
face with his hands as if to conceal the emotion he was
unable to control. When, however, the verdict of " guilty "
was given, and sentence of death was afterwards being
passed, he appeared perfectly unmoved, though at one
moment he drew himself up as if about to interpose some
observation. At the conclusion of the sentence he turned
quickly round and disappeared down the steps leading
to the cells, without waiting for the warder's customary
bidding. There was such tremendous excitement over the Palmer
affair, and the public showed themselves so eager for infor
mation respecting the prisoner's past career, that I was
induced to get together a so-called life of the sporting
doctor, including all the trivial gossip retailed about him at
Eugeley and current among betting men, with the tradi
tions that had survived of his medical student days, the
tales of his doings at west end hells and other disreputable
haunts, and such information as could be extracted from
the insurance offices which had been favoured with Palmer's
colossal proposals for insuring the lives of his nearest and
dearest relatives and friends.
As time was an important element in the affair, half-a-
dozen hungry young literary ghouls were set to work to
rake up any kind of information respecting the early life

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 419
of the condemned man within the forthcoming eight-and-
forty hours, and the result was a strange medley of mate
rials, in which I have not the slightest doubt fiction played
a far more important part than fact. These after being
hastily hashed together were sorted into chapters, and
within a week a shilling life of the great poisoner of the
nineteenth century was in all the booksellers' shops, and on
all the railway bookstalls. The life was illustrated with
no end of "appropriate" woodcuts, gathered from all
manner of sources, for nearly the whole of them had done
•duty in books and periodicals more than once before ; and
I remember to this day how much my ingenuity was taxed
to assimilate the text with the puzzling pictures which
were supposed to illustrate it.
The book went like wild-fire. Night and day for a
fortnight printing machines rolled off their thousands
upon thousands of copies without the orders that had
come in being overtaken. A small fortune was made out
of the affair, but although I was a half proprietor in it,
¦only a trifling sum fell to my share owing to an unlucky
accident. At this period I was an inveterate smoker, having con
tracted a diseased habit of puffing away at a cigar every
moment I was not eating or sleeping. As I only smoked
the very best brands, I spent in those careless days more
for cigars than it now costs me to live upon. Well, one
afternoon a day or two before " Palmer's Life " was pub
lished, I had been to a prize cattle show at Chelmsford, and
then to a dinner with the Eoyal Agricultural society ; and
on arriving in town by the last train, as I was walking
homewards my cigar unfortunately went out, and much
to my annoyance I discovered I had no fusees about me.
The streets, too, were deserted, so that there was nobody
from whom a light could be obtained.
On descending Ludgate-hill I noticed that the glass of

420 GLANCES BACK
the gas lamp, perched high up against the wall just within
Belle Sauvage-yard, was broken. There being a slanting
ledge at the lower part of this wall I placed my foot on it,
and springing up succeeded in lighting a paper spill which
I had improvised, but in my rapid descent one of my feet
unluckily caught the edge of the curb and I dislocated my
ankle and broke the small bone of my leg. Quick as
thought I wrenched the ankle into its place again, but it
was not so easy to unite two pieces of fractured bone, so I
hopped to a neighbouring post and there awaited the
protecting peeler's periodic round.
He came at last and charitably put me into a cab, and
accompanied me to the neighbouring " Illustrated Times"
office, which fortunately chanced to be open all night for
packing the papers to go by the early morning trains. I
was carried upstairs and laid on the floor of my room,
and a surgeon being sent for, the broken limb was set.
Then I was put to bed and told I should have to remain
there a month or more, and it was while I was fretting
under this involuntary confinement that my partner in
" Palmer's Life " paid me a sympathetic visit and bought
me out of the speculation for a mere song, without of course
saying a word to me of the phenomenal success our joint
venture had already met with. Owing to this circumstance
I have always reckoned that my cigar going out as it did
cost me about £1500, which actuaries tell me would, .with.
compound interest added, have amounted to some £6000
at this date — a sum sufficient, I fancy, to buy up all the
" partagas imperiales superfinos " in the world. After such
a result any sensible man would have given up smoking,
but I am sorry to say I lacked the resolution to do so.
The Anti-tobacco society is welcome to utilize this little
incident to its own advantage in the next tract condemna
tory of the pernicious habit that it issues.
A story was told at the time of the Palmer affair about

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 421
Lord Palmerston, which like many another good story
probably lacks the merit of truth. It was said that a
deputation from Eugeley waited upon him to obtain
official sanction to change the name of their town, to
which Palmer's crimes had given an unpleasant notoriety.
They were, however, in a state of perplexity respecting the
new name to be given to it. " Why not call it Palmer's
town?" observed the jaunty minister, " the name will not
only be appropriate, but at the same time you'll be paying
a rather dubious compliment to me."
A young Devonshire farmer whom I chanced to meet
at this period was highly elated over an interview^ he had
recently had with Lord Palmerston. Having come up
to London to see its sights, he was desirous of witnessing
a debate in the House of Commons, and enjoying the
offhand way in which the member for Tiverton, of which
borough he was an elector, was accustomed to floor
troublesome political opponents. Not knowing how else
to obtain an admission to the strangers' gallery, he made
appUcation for one at Cambridge House, Palmerston's
private residence. Having explained to a tall footman
the object of his visit, he asked him to procure an order
from his lordship's private secretary, while he waited.
John Thomas, however, demurred and told the applicant
he must write, but a silver coin removed the flunkey's
scruples, and off he went to deliver the message. Shortly
afterwards he returned and, to the young farmer's astonish
ment, informed him that his lordship would like to speak
with him.
Our Devonshire friend was presently shewn into a
room littered -with papers, where a grey-whiskered gentle
man, who appeared to be all alone, was standing at a desk
in front of one of the windows, and he recognised Lord
Palmerston 'at a glance. The premier, in a cheery way,
at once asked his visitor how he had left all their good

422 GLANCES BACK
Tiverton friends, naming one well-known local man after
another, and not forgetting the Tiverton butcher who
always had his fling at Palmerston on the hustings, and
whom the latter used jauntily to put to the rout with his
ready, good-humoured wit. The young farmer was after
wards questioned about the opinion of Tiverton people
upon the political questions of the day, and was duly
pumped as to the feeling at the local club, the talk that
went on in the railway train when he journeyed to Exeter
on market days, and what the farmers said on the corn
exchange and at their dinner after market business was
over. Palmerston, who was then tory chief of a liberal ministry,
having extracted in an easy-going, jocular fashion all the
information he cared for, wrote out the order for the
strangers' gallery, summoned a servant, to whom he gave
some instructions in an undertone, and then, shaking his
visitor warmly by the hand, with a cheery smile wished
him good-morning. The flunkey now conducted the young
farmer to the butler's room, where a capital cold luncheon
was speedily set before him. After he had fed well, a
bottle of fine old port was broached and he and the butler
having finished this between them, he quitted Cambridge
House in a rather blissful frame of mind.
On returning to Tiverton he no doubt trumpeted
Palmerston's affable behaviour and the butler's entertain
ment of him, all over the place, greatly to the advantage
of the premier's local popularity. Still it was not alto
gether without its drawbacks, as, when any Tiverton
elector went up to London, he, in all probability, made a
point of presenting himself at Cambridge House, and if he
failed in obtaining an interview with his distinguished
parliamentary representative, he would at least have
expected to be hospitably entertained by the premier's
butler.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 423
A month or two before the Palmer trial, Timbs, of
"Things not generally known" celebrity, and sub-editor
of the " Illustrated London News," called upon Bogue, the
pubUsher, to whom he confided the profound secret—
which, by the way, he was bursting to divulge to someone —
that Ingram was about to seek the suffrages of the electors
of Boston, his native town, and that his election address
would appear next morning in all the London papers.
Bogue shortly afterwards imparted the profound secret to
me, and I felt more interested in the news than I should
otherwise have done, for the following reason.
Our cheap illustrated paper was at this time running
the "Illustrated London News" rather close. It had
more than double the circulation of the older paper,
which, on the abolition of the stamp, had lowered its
price and enlarged its size, hoping thereby to increase its
sale, but found its cheap rival a serious impediment. Its
prestige, too, had suffered through its being behindhand
with its illustrations of certain important events, such as
the fall of Sebastopol, for instance.
Anxious to crush a troublesome competitor, Ingram
adopted the bold course of starting a couple of cheap
illustrated papers, called respectively the "Picture" and
" People's Times," a perfectly fair enough proceeding, so
long as it kept within the bounds of honest rivalry, which,
as wUl be seen, it did not long continue to do.
The large circulation of the " Illustrated Times " ren
dered it necessary for its engravings to be ready very early
in the week, and by some mysterious means one or the
other of Ingram's cheap papers constantly contained an
engraving on its front page similar to the one occupying
precisely the same position in the " Illustrated Times."
Evidently an early sheet from the " cut form " of our paper
reached the hands of Ingram's editors the moment the
form was put to machine, thus enabling them to reproduce

424 GLANCES BACK
with a few trivial alterations its most prominent illustration
in sufficient time to be pubUshed in a paper circulating
merely a few thousand copies — the object of course being
to create confusion in the minds of the public and the trade
as to the identity of the respective journals.
On hearing of Ingram's proposed candidature I saw an
opportunity for retaliating, and thought it would be a good
joke to disturb the harmony of his contemplated triumph
— to assist and celebrate which quite a tribe of literary
notabilities, including Douglas Jerrold, Mark Lemon,
Dr. Mackay, and others were about to betake themselves
to Boston, there to be royally entertained at Ingram's
expense. I accordingly drew up a short advertisement,
and, when the newspaper publishing offices had closed for
the day, sent copies of it (in accordance with the then
prevailing practice) to the composing-rooms of the principal
morning papers, with the exception of the " DaUy News "
towards the capital of which Ingram had subscribed, my
object being to ensure the advertisement escaping the
scrutinizing eyes of the publishing staff. Knowing how
Ingram hated publicity being given to his connection with
Parr's Life Pills since the " Illustrated London News " had
hoisted him into a position of some importance, I spite
fully worded the advertisement as follows : —
" Old Parr for Boston. Electors, reserve your votes ! Old Parr,
supposed to be dead, but whose life has been miraculously' preserved
by repeated doses of his famous pUls, will appear on the hustings on the
day of nomination." i
All the papers to which the advertisement was sent,
with the exception of " the Morning Post," where Ingram
had a friend in the printing office, inserted it, though
" the Times " withdrew it after a portion of its edition had
been printed off. One or two of the papers even printed
it immediately under Ingram's own electoral address.
1 London morning papers, Feb. 26, 1856.

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 425
When the new candidate for parliamentary distinction,
and the sycophants who battened on him, set their as
tonished eyes upon it, they divined that something dis
agreeable was in the wind, and Ingram instantly concluded
that I was at the bottom of it. I, on my part, was not in the
least surprised at receiving an early visit from his brother-
in-law, Mr. W. Little, who was curious to know " what it
was I wanted," and at a couple of anxious telegrams, —
sent by Ingram himself, — arriving shortly afterwards from
Boston, holding out the olive branch and entreating that
bygones might be bygones. The upshot was that I went
down to the sleepy capital of the fen country, where, at an
interview with Ingram and Dr. Mackay, I expounded my
little grievance. Ingram excused himself as best he could,
but admitted that it was our mutual friend, Lionel Lawson,
then a printing ink manufacturer, who obtained the early
sheet of the " Illustrated Times " for him. In such a dire
state of funk was he after I had recited him some verses
with the burden of " PUly Parr oh ! " ^ which I suggested
it was intended to have bawled about Boston on the
day of the election, that he signalled to Mackay to retire.
He then offered to suppress his two cheap Ulustrated
papers ; and, in proof of his earnestness, wrote out and
handed to me directions to their respective printers to
follow whatever instructions regarding them I might
think proper to give.
Ingram now grew confidential, and confessed that the
"Illustrated Times" was a great thorn in his side. Not
only, said he, had it seriously injured his own paper from
a financial point of view, but he was so incessantly chaffed
about it that he would be glad to get rid of the annoyance
at any cost. Then he suggested buying the paper, if we
cared to sell it, for £12,000, or to purchase any share in it
that we chose to sell at a proportionate rate ; and to show
^ " Billy Barlow " was the popular music hall song at this time.

426 GLANCES BACK
his bond fides, he put the proposal into writing. I subse
quently submitted this to Mr. Bogue, who declined the offer ;
but a few weeks after his election for Boston, Ingram became
the holder of a third share in the paper for a trifle under
£5000, without, however, any power of interfering in its
management. Mr. Edmund Yates in his " EecoUections " ^ gives an
amusing account of the ingenious way in which Mark
Lemon with an exuberant display of affected bonhomie
worked bim out of Ingram's private room at the Brighton
hotel, when it was desired to dispense with his company
after he had been invited there to breakfast by Ingram
himself In this little anecdote we have the cool imper
tinence of "Punch's" famous editor limned to the life.
With a broad, beaming face, on which a crafty smUe played
at command. Lemon was certainly one of the most accom
plished humbugs of his time, rude or obsequious by turns
as suited his own interest. The influence which by his
superior will he exercised over Ingram, whose private
secretary he then was, perfectly astonished casual lookers on.
When Ingram had resolved to acquire a share in the
" Illustrated Times," he evidently dreaded Lemon's inter
ference and cautioned me never to write to him at the
" IUustrated London News " office, as Mark would be
certain, he said, to open the letters. He even rented a
private room at Dick's coffee-house,^ where all the details
of our arrangement were discussed and decided upon,
unknown to anyone but ourselves. This purchase of a
' Edition 1885, p. 221.
2 Mr Thomas Archer, in his "Highway of Letters," tells an apocryphal story re
specting Ingram and Augustus Mayhew at some imaginary meeting of a so-called Wits
Club, which a^embled it is said at the old Cheshire Cheese chop-house. At the period
to which Mr Archer's story refers, Ingram had never set foot within the place, for I
remember his remarking, at a dinner given iu the upstairs private room of the Cheshire
Cheese, several years after the death of Mr Brough senior, that that was the first time
he had ever been inside the house. Originally the Cock tavern was Ingram's habitual
resort, but subsequently he frequented Dick's and Peele's coffee-houses.
Mr Archer is further in error in including Dr Johnson among the habittih of the old
Cheshire Cheese. Neither in Boswell's Life nor in the memoirs and letters of the time

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 427
share in the " Illustrated Times " secured me at once a
handsome salary as editor, and a, participation in all future
profits — a piece of good fortune to be marred ere long by
the sudden death of my excellent wife, whose health had
been a source of great anxiety to me for several years
past. In the autumn of 1857 the dual Kings of Siam took it
into their heads to despatch several Siamese dignitaries,
eager to spend a holiday at this end of the world, with an
abundance of presents to Queen Victoria, to whom they
were charged to address no end of high fiown oriental
compliments. As the Siamese kings invariably travelled
through their own dominions at the expense of the districts
they honoured with their presence, they appeared to be not
unwilling for their ambassadors to follow the same econo
mical practice many thousand miles away. The British
government understanding this, housed the embassy at
Claridge's and paid the hotel bill of its members as long
as they thought proper to honour us with their company.
I succeeded in getting a glimpse of the ambassadors'
reception by the queen in the throne room of Windsor
Castle, and remember that Prince Frederick William of
Prussia, a grave-looking manly young fellow, who was
then courting our princess royal, was present on the
occasion. The chief ambassador, charged with letters from
the twin kings of Siam, advanced towards the queen
bending as low as he could without losing his equilibrium,
while bearing the letters before him on a large gold salver ;
is any mention made of Dr Johnson in connection with the place. Moreover in the days
when I knew the Cheshire Cheese well (1840 to 1860) there was not even a tradition re
lating to any such circumstance. In a, corner of the large front room was a con
spicuous mark where the paint of the grained-oak panelling had been worn away by
the constant friction of the head and shoulders of some bibulous guest, who found the
comer more than ordinarily comfortable for an afternoon or evening snooze. This mark
used to be jocularly pointed out by Albert Smith to strangers as having been caused by
the burly frame of the great lexicographer, and it was explained to them that such was
the reverence of successive landlords for so distinguished a guest that not one of them
would permit the worn place in the graining to be renovated.

428 GLANCES BACK
but the other ambassadors and the members of the suite
wriggled themselves — from the further end of the apart
ment to within a few feet of the throne — on their hands,
knees, and stomachs, while their lips almost licked the
ground, suggesting the idea of a procession of corpulent
reptiles, and provoking smiles from the grave officials and
audible titters from the Coui-t ladies, which even the pre
sence of royalty failed to restrain. After the ceremony
was over, Captain Clavering, the officer in charge of the
mission, introduced me to the Siamese grand interpreter, a
most important personage in his own country, related as
he was by marriage to both the kings, and I was honoured
wdth an invitation to a dinner given by their copper-
coloured excellencies at Claridge's hotel a few days after
wards. On the arrival of the guests their visiting cards were
conveyed to the interpreter by Siamese servants, who prone
on their stomachs wriggled dexterously along the carpet,
much as the second and third ambassadors had done at
their audience of the queen, to the further end of the
apartment where their excellencies and the principal mem
bers of their suite were seated in state, and where our
respective presentations afterwards took place. Unlike
other orientals the Siamese make no pretence of eschew
ing fermented liquors, and at dinner our hosts tippled off
their sherry and champagne as though to the manner born.
One of them, however, seemed to have a sly preference
for something considerably stronger, for I recollect that
Captain Clavering, who sat next to the principal ambas
sador at the dinner, after filling his glass from a special
decanter that had been placed for his excellency's o-wn
particular use, set it down again the instant it had touched
his lips, ejaculating as he did so — " Brandy ! by g  ! "
At this time the neighbourhood of the Haymarket
swarmed with night-houses in the unhealthy atmosphere

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 429
of which fleurs du mal freely blossomed, and where in
company of graceless scoundrels, men about town, officers
of both services, professional men of more or less note,
prosperous provincials, and beardless young squires with
more money than brains, and a sprinkling of our Lower
House legislators, were wont to wind up the evening and
waste the succeeding small hours. At the principal of
these establishments only habituh, or new comers intro
duced by them, were admitted after undergoing a searching
inspection through the eyelet holes with which the double
set of doors, giving admission to the retreat, was provided.
A short flight of stairs conducted to a large apartment,
where suppers and drinks were served. At one end was
an American bar where " gum- ticklers," "eye-openers,"
and "corpse-revivers " were dispensed ; and at the other a
velvet-canopied throne on which portly Mistress Katherine,
the sultana of the establishment, supported by the hand
somest and most stylishly attired of her hand-maidens, sat
in semi-state. This was the swell night-house of the period, and
although no dancing went on there it filled the place of
the old Piccadilly saloon and was the favourite resort of
the young and middle-aged monied fools of the day. It
was free from the disgraceful rowdyism of the now forgotten
" Pic," the waiters at which used to be chosen for their
pugilistic prowess, while the proprietor smothered his
fingers with diamond rings with which by well-directed
blows he could slit the noses and cheeks of his more turbu
lent drunken guests before ordering them to be chucked
into the street.
The police never troubled themselves to visit the
"Pic," but they made a pretended regular inspection of the
better-known night-houses of a later date. At Kate's the
instant their arrival had been notified by a signal from
below, tables were cleared of tell-tale tumblers, and cham-

430 GLANCES BACK
pagne bottles were hastily bundled under the seats.
Then a police sergeant and constable, both looking becom
ingly stern, marched in and paraded round the room, affect
ing to direct their eagle eyes into every hole and corner,
to spy out, I suppose, whether excisable liquors were being
retailed, and not appearing the least surprised at seeing
scores of people seated at tables with nothing but lucifer
match pots before them. The fact is a heavy police black
mail was levied on the proprietors of these establishments,
and the farce of putting the glasses and bottles temporarily
out of sight was merely gone through to save appearances.
When the party at Claridge's broke up, some one con
templating a visit to Kate's, casually spoke of it to the
Siamese grand interpreter, and he in his turn mentioned
it to the principal ambassador, a portly gentleman who,
fuddled though he was with brandy, found his curiosity
whetted, and autocratically determined to gratify it. A
carriage was at once ordered, and presently the frequenters
of this notorious nocturnal resort were amazed at seeing
the grave Siamese ambassador and grand interpreter, in all
the splendour of their native official costume, enter in
company with two or three of their English guests. Had '
his excellency come, they asked themselves, to secure a
few European recruits for the Siamese kings' famous body
guard of amazons, or to pick out one or two of the least
faded beauties for his own well stocked harem ?
Phya Mantri Suriywanse's first proceeding conduced
to his instant popularity. Prompted by his introducers
he at once ordered unlimited champagne for the droughty
Portland and Argyll Eooms houris, who gathered round
and promptly showed their appreciation of his considerate
benevolence by exhausting the supply of the establishment.
All these frail fair ones of course sought to render them
selves especially engaging to this oriental dignitary,
arrayed in gold tissue and richly jeweUed belt ; but owino-

THROUGH SEVENTY YEARS. 431
to the potency of the liquor he had freely imbibed, he
merely smiled at them in a vacuous way, so that no jealous
feelings were aroused in their susceptible breasts. His
excellency only retired as day was about breaking, when,
owing to his helpless condition, he had to be carried in an
undignified fashion to the seedy night cab in which he and
the interpreter were driven back to Claridge's hotel.
The ambassadors, I remember, pretended to be exceed
ingly anxious about introducing some of the marvels of
European civilization into their own country ; but they
eventually contented themselves with purchasing a micro
scope and a few similar things, and an out-of-date second
hand edition of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," price
£13, 10s., for the royal library. The chief ambassador,
however, treated himself to a magnificently jewelled sword,
for which a well-knowm Bond-street firm charged him a
thousand pounds. This struck me as very like the ha'p'orth
of bread to the intolerable quantity of sack over again.

END OF VOLUME L

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