CHAPTER IX.

“I sent him a guinea,” says Johnson, “and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested him for rent, at which he was in a violent passion. I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had got a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which he might be extricated. He then told me that he had a novel ready for the press, which he produced to me. I looked into it and saw its merits, and told the landlady I should soon return, and, having gone to a bookseller, sold it for £60. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady for having used him so ill.”

The novel thus sold was the ‘Vicar of Wakefield,’ and its purchaser, Francis Newberry, the bookseller, who kept it unprinted for two years, when its author’s ‘Traveller,’ having appeared and proved successful, the novel was published (in March 1766) and in a month reached a second edition.

In Forster’s ‘Life of Goldsmith,’ the following account of his earliest state of penury has no little romantic interest:—

“It was,” says the author of that famous work, “a year and a half after he had entered college, at the commencement of 1747, his father suddenly died. The scanty sums required for his support had often been intercepted; but this stopped them altogether. It may have been the least and most trifling loss connected with that sorrow; but ‘squalid poverty,’ relieved by occasional gifts, according to his small means, from Uncle Contarine, by petty loans from Bryanton or Beatty, or by desperatepawning of his books of study, was Goldsmith’s lot henceforward. Yet even in the depths of that despair arose the consciousness of faculties reserved for better fortune than continual contempt and failure. He would write street ballads to save himself from actual starving; sell them at the Reindeer repository in Mountrath Court for five shillings apiece, and steal out of the college at night to hear them sung.“Happy night, to him worth all the dreary days! Hidden by some dusky wall, or creeping within darkling shadows of the ill-lighted streets, this poor neglected sizar watched, waited, lingered, listened there, for the only effort of his life which had not wholly failed. Few and dull perhaps the beggar’s audience at first, but more thronging, eager, and delighted as he shouted forth his newly-gotten ware; cracked enough, I doubt not, were those ballad singing tunes; nay, harsh, extremely discordant, and passing from loud to low without meaning or melody; but not the less did the sweetest music which this earth affords fall with them on the ear of Goldsmith. Gentle faces, pleased old men, stopping by the way; young lads, venturing a purchase with their last remaining farthing; why here was a world in little with its fame at the sizar’s feet! ‘The greater world will be listening one day,’ perhaps he muttered as he turned with a lighter heart to his dull home.”

“Happy night, to him worth all the dreary days! Hidden by some dusky wall, or creeping within darkling shadows of the ill-lighted streets, this poor neglected sizar watched, waited, lingered, listened there, for the only effort of his life which had not wholly failed. Few and dull perhaps the beggar’s audience at first, but more thronging, eager, and delighted as he shouted forth his newly-gotten ware; cracked enough, I doubt not, were those ballad singing tunes; nay, harsh, extremely discordant, and passing from loud to low without meaning or melody; but not the less did the sweetest music which this earth affords fall with them on the ear of Goldsmith. Gentle faces, pleased old men, stopping by the way; young lads, venturing a purchase with their last remaining farthing; why here was a world in little with its fame at the sizar’s feet! ‘The greater world will be listening one day,’ perhaps he muttered as he turned with a lighter heart to his dull home.”

Johnson’s sympathy with Goldsmith was, no doubt, warmed and quickened by the remembrance of his own early struggles with the foul fiend impecuniosity. He remembered well enough his first London lodging in Exeter Street, Strand, when, as he said, “I dined very well for eightpence, with very good company, at the Pine Apple in New Street fast by. Several of them had travelled, they expected to meet every day; but they did not know one another’s names. It used to cost the rest a shilling, for they drank wine; but I had a cut of meat for sixpence, and bread for a penny, so that I was quite well served, nay, better than the rest, for they gave the waiter nothing.”

Johnson used to relate of an Irish painter, that he, the painter, practically realised a theory that £30 a year was enough to enable a man to live there without being contemptible. He allowed £10 for clothes and linen. He said, “A man might live in a garret at eighteen pence a week. Few people would inquire where he lodged; and if they did it was easy to say, ‘Sir, I am to be found at such a place.’ By spending threepence in a coffee-house, he might be for some hours in very good company; he might dine for sixpence, breakfast on bread and milk for a penny, and do without supper. On clean shirt day he could go abroad and pay visits.”

I have already quoted the Doctor’s views on the subject ofimpecuniosity, and this reminds me of a very suggestive incident of his life, which perhaps will prove better than anything else the non-desirability of want of means. It is unquestionable that in his marvellous dictionary, there are parts that are much superior to others, which has been accounted for by the fact that he was paid for the work as it progressed—the publisher paying him as his “copy” was delivered. Consequently, when his purse was full, he worked awaycon amore, and produced the best result; but on the purse growing empty, as those mercenary creditors will do, the Doctor worked hurriedly, aiming at making as much “copy” as possible, so as to replenish his failing treasury.

Thomas Cooper, author of the ‘Purgatory of Suicides,’ who also found out by severe experience the cheapest way of living in London, tells in his autobiography how, after having been at Lincoln as reporter, journalist, and miscellaneous literary man, he with his wife left that city for London. He says:

“On the 1st of June, 1839, we got on the stage-coach with our boxes of books at Stamford, and away I went to make my first venture in London. We lodged in Elliott’s Row, Southwark; I earned five pounds by contributing reviews and prose sketches to some papers having but an ephemeral existence. I had other ventures and adventures in a small way; but it would weary any mortal man to recite; and the recital would only be one which has been often told already, by poor literary adventurers. The very little I could bring to London was soon gone, and then I had to sell my books. I happily turned into Chancery Lane and asked Mr. Lumley to buy my beautifully-bound ‘Tasso’ and ‘Don Belleanis of Greece,’ a small quarto black-letter romance, which I had bought of an auctioneer in Gainsboro’, who knew nothing of its value. Mr. Lumley gave me liberal prices, wished I could bring him more such books, and conversed with me very kindly. We were often at ‘low-water mark’ now in our fortunes; but my dear wife and I never suffered ourselves to sink into low spirits. Our experience, we cheerily said, was a part of London adventure, and who did not know that adventurers in London often underwent great trials before success was reached? We strolled out together in the evenings all over London, making ourselves acquainted with its highways and byways, and always finding something to interest us in its streets and shop-windows. Every book I brought from Lincolnshire, and I had had about 500 volumes great and small, had been sold by degrees, and at last I was obliged to enter a pawnshop. Spare articles of clothing, and my father’s old silver watch, ‘went up the spout,’ as the experience goes of those who most sorrowfully know what it means. Travelling-cloak, large box, hat-box, and every box or movable that could be spared in any possible way, had ‘gone to our uncle’s,’ and we saw ourselves on the veryverge of being reduced to threadbare suits when deliverance came. I had been in London from the evening of 11th June, 1839, until near the end of March, 1840, when I answered an advertisement respecting the editorship of a country paper printed in London. I went to the printing office in Great Windmill Street, Haymarket, and was engaged at a salary of £3 per week; the paper was theKentish Mercury.”

Very similar was the experience of Robert Southey, who, disowned by friends, and without money, came to London seeking literary employment, in which alone he found content and happiness.

“For it,” say his biographers, Messrs. Austin and Ralph, “he sacrificed proffered rank and power; and joyfully devoted to its service a toiling life of unexampled industry. Yet this man so wedded to his absorbing vocation, in the social capacity of husband, father, relative, and friend, stands above reproach.“His life is one emphatic denial of the daring falsehood, that genius and virtue are incompatible.“England knew not a happier circle than that which for years assembled by the humble hearthstone at Greta Hall. It is refreshing to turn aside from the world and contemplate that peaceful home, nestling amid the Cumberland Mountains.”

“His life is one emphatic denial of the daring falsehood, that genius and virtue are incompatible.

“England knew not a happier circle than that which for years assembled by the humble hearthstone at Greta Hall. It is refreshing to turn aside from the world and contemplate that peaceful home, nestling amid the Cumberland Mountains.”

Such an opinion again hardly fits in with that of Thackeray already quoted.

“On Friday, October 18th, 1794, his aunt, Miss Tyler, turned him out of doors on a stormy night, and without a penny in his pocket. He made his way on foot, through wind and driving rain, along the dark country roads to Bath. Without any visible resource he was thrown upon the world, and as he paced the streets, weary, footsore, and sick at heart, he dreamed of the lofty things in literature he would strive to accomplish, now that he was his own master, with a will unfettered by a care for wishes other than his own, and of the pride that would glow within the swelling bosom of the fair Edith of his love, for whose dear sake he had submitted to be thus cast adrift. An uncle from Portugal wished to take him back with him to that country. ‘My Edith persuades me to go,’ said he, ‘and yet weeps at my going.’ And we are told how sadly after their secret marriage in Redcliffe Church, his maiden wife watched his departure with the wedding-ring she was afraid to wear suspended round her neck.”

In Southey’s life by his son, we read that he had recourse under the pressure of impecuniosity to delivering lectures at Bristol, and the following prospectus is quoted:—

“Robert Southey, of Balliol College, Oxford, proposes to read a course of Historical Lectures in the following order:—1st. Introductory on theOrigin and Progress of Society; 2nd. Legislation of Solon and Lycurgus; 3rd. State of Greece from the Persian War to the Dissolution of the Achaian League; 4th. Rise, Progress, and Decay of the Roman Empire; 5th. Progress of Christianity; 6th. Manners and Irruptions of the Northern Nations; Growth of the European States; Feudal System, and other equally abstruse subjects.”

The lectures were given in 1795, tickets for the course, 10s.6d., sold at Cottle’s, bookseller, High Street.

Southey stated about this time that if he and Coleridge could get £150 a year between them, they would marry and retire into the country.

Another of these friendless dreamers who came to London, seeking literary employment and reputation, was George Borrow, the famous author of ‘Romany Rye,’ ‘The Bible in Spain,’ ‘Wild Wales,’ etc., the son of a military officer. He was born in Norfolk, early in the present century, and began life at the desk of a solicitor at Norwich. Becoming disgusted with that life, he started off with his stick and bundle to walk to London, where with his knowledge of languages he hoped to have no difficulty in earning a living. Reaching the great metropolis, he found out Sir Richard Phillips, editor and proprietor of theMonthly Magazine, who suggested that the young literary adventurer should devote himself to the writing of Newgate lives and trials. Having spent his loose cash in buying books on the subject, he went carefully to work. Sir Richard Phillips wanted less care and more expedition.

Borrow sent in his copy too slowly to please his exacting and overbearing employer, whose parsimony was only equalled by his greediness. He was paid in bills subject to discount, and led altogether a very wretched life. One morning he awoke with the disagreeable conviction that his plight had grown desperate, only half-a-crown remaining in his purse. Wandering out disconsolately, he saw a bill in the shop window of a bookseller, giving notice that a “novel or tale was much wanted,” went to his garret, and after a meal of bread and water, began to write a fictitious biography of ‘Joseph Tell.’ At this he continued to work unceasingly, day after day, eating nothing but bread, drinking only water, until on the fifth day the story was finished. And none too soon, for after he had laid aside the pen, want of rest and nourishment had so exhausted him that he swooned away. He had threepence left, and to reinvigorate him after he had left hisMS., he spent the whole of that sum at one fell swoop on bread and milk, and went to bed penniless. When he called, the bookseller was willing to buy the novel, and after some haggling over the price, gave him twenty pounds for it, a sum which was as veritable a godsend to him as the price of the ‘Vicar of Wakefield’ was to Oliver Goldsmith.

Borrow’s incessant writing reminds me of the incessant reading of the poet, Gerald Massey, who was born in 1828, near Tring, in Herts, in a little stone hovel, the rent of which was one shilling per week. His father was a poor canal boatman, who supported himself and family on ten shillings per week, and could not of course afford to give Gerald any opportunities of educating himself. As soon as he had attained his eighth year, he was set to work at a silk-mill, beginning work at five in the morning, and quitting it at half-past six in the evening, for a weekly wage of 1s.9d.He was fifteen years of age when he came to London and obtained employment as an errand-boy, and having taught himself to read, eagerly devoured every book, paper, and magazine that was within his reach.

Says Massey himself:

“Now I began to think that the course of all desire and the sum of all existence was to read and get knowledge. Read, read, read. I used to read at all possible times and all possible places; up in bed till two or three in the morning, nothing daunted by once setting the bed on fire. Greatly indebted was I to the bookstalls, where I have read a great deal, often folding a leaf in a book, and returning the next day to continue the subject; but sometimes the book was gone, and then great was my grief. When out of a situation I have often gone without a meal to purchase a book.”

Another English poet who sprang from as low an origin, and who as a boy was as uneducated as Massey, was John Clare, known as the Northamptonshire poet. He was born at Helpston, a village near Peterboro’, in 1793. His father was a poverty-stricken farm labourer, a cripple, unable to exist without occasional help from the parish, and whose struggle to keep the most wretched of homes, and supply potatoes and water gruel for food, was a ceaseless and desperate one. For all that, when the sickly little fellow Jack was old enough for school, the few pence requisite for sending him there were squeezed out of the poor father’s weekly pittance, and when the boy’s own paltry earningsin the fields began to come in, merely a few pence a week, he was sent to an evening school, the master of which allowed him the run of his little library, a privilege of which John enthusiastically and gratefully availed himself.

Often his parents returning from work found the boy, after being at school till late, crouching down by the fire, and tracing in the faint glimmer of a burning log, incomprehensible signs upon bits of paper and even wood, too poor to buy paper of the coarsest kind. John was in the habit of picking up shreds of the same material, such as used by grocers and other tradesmen, and of scratching thereon signs and figures, sometimes with pencil, oftener with charcoal. Never were there more ungracious and unfavourable conditions for the study of arithmetic and algebra.

A maternal uncle, footman to a lawyer at Wisbech, called one day at Helpston, and told the family there was a vacancy for a clerk in his master’s office. John was to apply. The mother ransacked her scanty wardrobe, to try and give her son a decent appearance, made him a pair of breeches out of an old dress, and a waistcoat out of a shawl, and begged from village crones an old white necktie and a pair of old black woollen gloves. What he wore was very large and also ancient. His costume excited amazement as he went his way. He reached Wisbech by canal boat, saw his uncle, was taken to Mr. Councillor Bellamy, who, after inspecting the nephew, said, “Well, I may see him again.” John, after staying a day or two with his uncle, then went back home and became serving lad at the Blue Bell, where he was treated well, and was able to pursue his beloved studies. There, too, he fell in love with Mary Joyce, daughter of a farmer, who forbade his daughter to have anything to do with the beggar boy, so he carved her name on every tree.

At this time occurred a great event in the poet’s life, one ever to be remembered with a quickening pulse and a sense of mighty triumph. He had read Thomson’s ‘Seasons,’ which had been described to him as only a trumpery book which could be bought for 1s.6d.at Stamford. John had only sixpence, and his wages were not due. He went to his father for a shilling. Hopeless chance! His mother was also tried for that amount, and by superhuman exertion she raised sevenpence; the fraction remaining and required was raised at the Blue Bell. The day of the purchase came. Unable to sleep through excitement, he was up beforedaybreak, and started off for Stamford in hot haste. A six or seven mile walk was as nothing to the ardent lad, and he arrived before the bookseller’s shop he was seeking had its shutters down. He waited and waited, and you can imagine his dismay when at last he found that the shop never opened at all that day. So he went back to Helpston. By the way a bright thought occurred. By making a tremendous effort he obtained twopence more—proposed to a cowherd boy that for one penny he should look after the cattle, and for another penny keep the secret that he was going away for a few hours. Monday morning arrived, and his confederate. John soon walked the eight miles to Stamford. Bookseller’s shop closed. John sat on the doorstep and waited. Directly the door opened, the poor, thin, haggard country boy, with wild gleaming eyes, rushed to him for a copy of the ‘Seasons.’ The tradesman asked questions. John told his story in hurried words, and the bookseller said that he would let him have a copy for a shilling. “Keep the sixpence, my boy,” said the man, and away went John. In Barnack Park, amidst some thick shrubs, John Clare read the book. He did not know how to give vent to his happiness, but he had a pencil and a piece of coarse crumpled paper in his pocket, and on that he wrote his poem the ‘Morning Walk.’

The remainder of Clare’s life presents nothing specially remarkable beyond the fact that he was throughout it curiously unlucky; and though from time to time he met with good friends, misfortune had marked him for her own, and eventually, through brooding over some unsuccessful commercial enterprises, his mind gave way.

From John Clare to George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron, is a far cry; the former being purely a small pastoral poet, the latter impurely a great genius.A proposof being involved and being indebted to the children of Israel for supplies, his lordship wrote:

“In my young days they lent me cash that way,Which I found very troublesome to pay.”

Tom Moore says that Byron’s marriage with the daughter of Sir Ralph Milbank was contracted in the hope that her dowry would extricate him from his monetary difficulties, but it apparently only increased his misery, and, notwithstanding the serious reason for their separation, as given by Mrs. Beecher Stowe,there is no doubt debt had a considerable share in bringing it about, for “during the first year of his marriage his house was nine times in the possession of bailiffs, his door almost daily beset by duns, and he was only saved from gaol by the privileges of his rank.”

Coming down to the more modern school of writers, it is especially noticeable that the circumstances connected with their impecuniosity are much less sombre in character than those of the like previous age. Douglas Jerrold, the novelist, dramatist and essayist, contributes an amusing reminiscence in connection with the first money he earned, a story which he himself was wont to relate with great delight in after years. At the time of the incident the young fellow’s home was far from cheerful; his mother and sister were away (in all probability acting in the provinces), and he and his father were the sole occupants of the lodgings. Old Mr. Jerrold was weak and ailing, and anything but good company for the high-spirited, happy-natured boy, who eventually developed into one of the most witty and satirical authors of his time. The picture of the poor old gentleman sitting helplessly in the corner, when the wants of the family so needed a strong arm to work for them, was undoubtedly depressing; but the dreary monotony was broken on the day when Douglas Jerrold returned home excitedly jubilant with his first earnings as an apprentice. A thorough Englishman, he naturally thought the occasion must be celebrated by a dinner and at once proceeded to purchase the ingredients of a beef-steak pie. When he returned, amply repaid for the money he had expended by the proud satisfaction visible on his father’s face, he was met by rather a serious difficulty. It was true the materials for the dish were all there, but who was to make the delicacy? Mr. Jerrold, senior, was incapable, and there was, therefore, nothing for it but for the boy to turn to and try his hand at a crust. He did so, and amidst much merriment the pie was made, taken to the baker’s, and eaten by the happy pair (at any rate, happy on that occasion), with a relish and pleasure no doubt far in excess of that experienced at many of those grander banquets which he afterwards graced by his presence. It is said by his son that “the memory of this day always remained vivid to him. There was an odd kind of humour about it that tickled him. It so thoroughly illustrated his notions on independence that he couldnot forbear from dwelling again and again on it among his friends.”

There is no doubt that Douglas Jerrold cherished the memory of this honourable impecuniosity as he did everything else that was noble and pure, for in his slashing satire levelled against those meaningless decorations or orders of the wealthy he clearly shows his lasting sympathy for poverty with honour. He says: “The Order of Poverty—how many sub-orders might it embrace! As the spirit of Gothic chivalry has its fraternities, so might the Order of Poverty have its distinct devices.” He then goes on to enumerate the nobility and dignity of labour exemplified in the cases of the peasant, the shepherd, the weaver, the potter, and other callings, not neglecting even the pauper, of whom he writes:—

“And here is a pauper, missioned from the workhouse to break stones at the roadside. How he strikes and strikes at that unyielding bit of flint! Is it not the stony heart of the world’s injustice knocked at by poverty? What haggardness is in his face! What a blight hangs about him! There are more years in his looks than in his bones. Time has marked him with an iron pen. He wailed as a babe for bread his father was not allowed to earn. He can recollect every dinner—they were so few—of his childhood. He grew up, and want was with him, even as his shadow. He has shivered with cold, fainted with hunger. His every-day life has been set about by goading wretchedness.“Around him, too, were the stores of plenty. Food, raiment, and money mocked the man half-mad—mad with destitution. Yet, with a valorous heart, a proud conquest of the shuddering spirit, he walked with honesty and starved. His long journey of life has been through stormy places, and now he sits upon a pile of stones on the wayside, breaking them for workhouse bread. Could loftiest chivalry show greater heroism, nobler self-control, than this old man—this weary breaker of flints? Shall he not be of the Order of Poverty? Is not penury to him even as a robe of honour? His grey workhouse coat braver than purple and miniver? He shall be Knight of the Granite if you will. A workhouse gem, indeed—a wretched highway jewel—yet, to the eye of truth, finer than many a ducal diamond.... And so, indeed, in the mind of wisdom, is poverty ennobled. And for the Knights of the Golden Calf, how are they outnumbered! Let us then revive the Order of Poverty. Ponder, reader, on its antiquity! For was not Christ Himself Chancellor of the Order, and the Apostles Knight Companions?”

“Around him, too, were the stores of plenty. Food, raiment, and money mocked the man half-mad—mad with destitution. Yet, with a valorous heart, a proud conquest of the shuddering spirit, he walked with honesty and starved. His long journey of life has been through stormy places, and now he sits upon a pile of stones on the wayside, breaking them for workhouse bread. Could loftiest chivalry show greater heroism, nobler self-control, than this old man—this weary breaker of flints? Shall he not be of the Order of Poverty? Is not penury to him even as a robe of honour? His grey workhouse coat braver than purple and miniver? He shall be Knight of the Granite if you will. A workhouse gem, indeed—a wretched highway jewel—yet, to the eye of truth, finer than many a ducal diamond.... And so, indeed, in the mind of wisdom, is poverty ennobled. And for the Knights of the Golden Calf, how are they outnumbered! Let us then revive the Order of Poverty. Ponder, reader, on its antiquity! For was not Christ Himself Chancellor of the Order, and the Apostles Knight Companions?”

Although Douglas Jerrold may be best remembered by the many for his felicitous epigrams and wondrous wit, it should be borne in mind that he contributed materially to the high tonethat now prevails in our literature. The fine spirit was touched to fine issues, and the influences which he aided by his life will be his enduring bequest to the future. He was, like Dickens, constantly at war with abuses, ever writing with a purpose, and always aiming to crush tyranny, injustice, or some kindred social monster. Like Dickens, he delighted in assisting the cause of the poor and weak, which characteristic, so conspicuous in both, may be accounted for by the impecunious surroundings in which they were both reared.

With regard to Charles Dickens, undeniably the most popular novelist of this century, and generally considered to be one of the greatest humourists we have ever had, it would seem as if we had to thank impecuniosity for much of his marvellous characterisation; and though he bitterly deplored the want of early education and proper home-training, it is possible that but for the hardness of his youthful lot he might never have developed the faculty of observation to the extent he did. From the needy circumstances of his parents he was compelled from very early years to think for himself; and this is, according to John Forster, what he thought of his father:—

“He was proud of me in his way, and had a great admiration of the comic singing. But in the ease of his temper and the straitness of his means he appeared to have utterly lost at this time the idea of educating me at all, and to have put from him the notion that I had any claim upon him in that regard whatever. So I degenerated into cleaning his boots of a morning and my own, and making myself useful in the work of the little house, and looking after my younger brothers and sisters (we were now six in all), and going on such poor errands as arose out of our poor way of living.”

After his father’s arrest for debt and his incarceration in the Marshalsea (particulars of which are so graphically described in ‘David Copperfield’), Charles Dickens, when little more than ten years of age, was placed at a blacking manufactory, where he earned the sum of six shillings per week, and which is thus described by him:—

“The blacking warehouse was the last house on the left hand side of the way, at old Hungerford Stairs. It was a crazy tumble-down old house abutting, of course, on the river, and literally overrun with rats. The wainscotted rooms and its rotten floors and staircase and the old grey rats swarming down in the cellars, and the sound of their squeaking andscuffling coming up the stairs at all times, and the dirt and decay of the place, rise up visibly before me as if I were there again. My work was to cover the pots of paste blacking first with a piece of oil paper and then with a piece of blue paper, to tie them round with a string, and then to clip the paper close and neat all round, until it looked as smart as a pot of ointment from an apothecary’s shop. When a certain number of grosses of pots had attained this pitch of perfection, I was to paste on each a printed label, and then go on again with more pots.”

With regard to the way he lived at this time, he says:

“Usually I either carried my dinner with me or went and bought it at some neighbouring shop. In the latter case it was commonly a saveloy and a penny loaf, and sometimes a fourpenny plate of beef from a cookshop, sometimes a plate of bread and cheese and a glass of beer from a miserable old public-house over the way—the ‘Swan,’ if I remember right, or the Swan and something else that I have forgotten. Once I remember tucking my own bread (which I had brought from home in the morning) under my arm, wrapped up in a piece of paper like a book, and going into the best dining-room in Johnson’s Alamode Beef House in Charles’ Court, Drury Lane, and magnificently ordering a small plate of Alamode beef to eat with it. What the waiter thought of such a strange little apparition coming in all alone, I don’t know, but I can see him now staring at me as I ate my dinner, and bringing up the other waiter to look. I gave him a halfpenny, and I wish now that he had not taken it.”

Soon after Dickens entered upon his engagement at the uncongenial blacking establishment, his mother’s home was broken up and she joined his father in the debtors’ prison, and Master Charles was then placed with a Mrs. Roylance at Camden Town, with whom he lodged for some time, boarding himself on his six shillings a week, which he apparently found by no means an easy job, as his appetite seems to have troubled him considerably by this.

“I was so young and childish and so little qualified—how could I be otherwise?—to undertake the whole charge of my own existence, that in going to Hungerford Stairs of a morning I could not resist the stale pastry put out at half price on trays at the confectioner’s doors in Tottenham Court Road. I often spent in that the money I should have kept for my dinner. Then I went without my dinner, or bought a roll or a slice of pudding. There were two pudding shops between which I was divided according to my finances. One was in a court close to St. Martin’s Church (at the back of the church), which is now removed altogether. The pudding at that shop was made with currants, and was rather a special pudding, but was dear: two penn’orth not being larger than a penn’orth of more ordinary pudding. A good shop for the latter was inthe Strand, somewhere near where the Lowther Arcade is now. It was a stout, hale pudding, heavy and flabby, with great raisins in it stuck in whole, at great distances apart. It came up hot, at about noon every day, and many and many a day did I dine off it. I know I do not exaggerate, unconsciously and unintentionally, the scantiness of my resources and the difficulties of my life. I know that if a shilling or so were given me by any one I spent it in a dinner or a tea. I know that I worked from morning to night with common men and boys, a shabby child. I know that I tried, but ineffectually, not to anticipate my money, and to make it last the week through, by putting it away in a drawer I had in the counting-house, wrapped into six little parcels, each parcel containing the same amount, and labelled with a different day. I know that I have lounged about the streets insufficiently and unsatisfactorily fed. I know that, but for the mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken of me, a little robber or a little vagabond.”

Contemporary with Dickens figured another popular writer of light fiction, who, though perhaps a trifle jollier and more genial in his fun, cannot claim to be placed in the same category with the immortal author of ‘Nicholas Nickleby,’ ‘A Tale of Two Cities,’ etc. etc. I allude to Albert Smith, who whether detailing on paper “The Adventures of Mr. Ledbury” or recounting to an audience at the Egyptian Hall his “Ascent of Mont Blanc,” was always extremely amusing.

Owing to a slight similarity in the style of their writing it sometimes happened that unfortunate comparisons were made between the two men, when naturally poor Albert Smith suffered. For instance, when a friend speaking of the two authors to Douglas Jerrold said, that as humourists Charles Dickens and Albert Smith “rowed in the same boat,” Jerrold replied with more or less warmth, “True, they do row in the same boat, but with very different skulls.” Unlike Dickens, Albert Smith was not practically acquainted with absolute poverty, though at times as a student there is no doubt he was familiar with that condition known as “rather short of funds,” and his account of an Alpine journey made on the most economical principles may be cited as curious and not unconnected with impecuniosity.

In September 1838 he started from Paris for Chamounix with another equally humbly appointed traveller, who like himself intended to do the grand Alpine tour with £12, which was to pay for travelling expenses and board and lodging for five weeks. They carried their money in five-franc pieces, stuffed in leathern belts round their waists, bought two old military knapsacks atthree francs each, and two pairs of hobnailed shoes at five and a half francs each. Before starting they made a good breakfast at acaféand obtained from the cook a dozen hard-boiled eggs for the journey, supplying themselves also with alitreofvin ordinaire, a flat bottle of brandy, and a leathern cup that folded up. Oppositiondiligenceswere running on the road from Paris to Geneva, and for two pounds they secured seats on one which took seventy-eight successive hours—i.e., from 8 o’clock on Friday morning till 2P.M.on the following Monday. On arriving at the place where the other passengers lunched at a cost of three francs, Smith and his friend regaled themselves on their eggs, with the addition of some bread and pears bought in the town, which place they inspected while their fellow-travellers were luxuriating over theirdéjeûner. When dinner-time came, instead of patronising the hotel, they repaired to a more humble restaurant, and for 24 sous each obtained all that they required. At night they crept under the tarpaulin roof of thediligence, stacked all the luggage on each side, and collecting some straw, on which they reclined, slept tolerably well. In the morning they walked on before the conveyance started, bathed in the river, and after breakfast (managed in the same inexpensive way), were picked up by the diligence. In this manner they travelled for the three days, observing pretty much the same routine (except on the Sunday, when they washed at the fountain in the market-place at Dole, to the great delight and amusement of a party of girls, who lent them towels and a huge piece of soap), their expenses for the journey to Geneva being £2 12s.6d.each. As a specimen of how they managed to do and see so much on so very little: at Arpenay, where a cannon is fired to produce a certain marvellous echo, they simply waited until a party more capable of paying for such a luxury arrived, and then availed themselves of the opportunity.

On the same principle, when starting for the Mer de Glace they followed a party at some little distance, and by this means dispensed with the services of a guide. They bathed on the top of the Foxlay, and there in the springs, washed their linen, spreading their things on the stones afterwards to dry; and in such way the Alpine tour was made by the two friends completely, safely, and without exceeding the amount of funds they possessed.

Scarcely so honourable, though a trifle more exciting, is areminiscence related of the late Robert Brough, more generally known to those who were acquainted with him and loved him dearly as Bob Brough. Unfortunately he was a man who was unable to make his income and expenditure balance: whether it was that the former was too small, or the latter too large, it matters not; but as a natural consequence, debt and difficulty were his constant companions. At one time when things had been going very badly (that is, in all probability to mine uncle’s) he found it necessary to seek a more congenial clime. England was found to be unpleasantly hot, owing to the warm attention of a money-lending creditor, and foreign travel was known to be absolutely imperative. The proprietor of theSunday Timesbeing made acquainted with the circumstances commissioned him to write a series of articles, to be entitled “Brussels Sprouts.” Desirous of executing the commission, and longing for a dip in the sea, he started off to Ostend, and on arriving there, was not long in going through the preliminaries of taking “a header.” He took it, but to his horror on coming to the surface he met with what is slangily termed a “facer,” for he found himself face to face with the identical creditor from whom he was fleeing. “Oh, this is the way my money goes, is it! I’ll lock you up, you——” began the money-lender, but before the sentence was finished Brough dived again, swam to shore, secured his luggage, started for Paris, and left the “Brussels Sprouts” to take care of themselves.

As I commenced this chapter by quoting the somewhat ungenerous strictures of Thackeray on his unhappy brethren, it will be a fitting termination to close with an incident of impecuniosity connected with his life, which circumstance, by the way, was caused by no fault of his. How could it have been? He was so terribly correct and proper! However, when sojourning on one occasion in France, he had the misfortune to be robbed of his purse, and immediately wrote off to a relative for fresh supplies. In the meantime he borrowed a ten-pound note, which he spent in little more than a week, thinking he should by that time be in possession of a remittance from his aunt. But no remittance came. He then humorously describes the horrors that arose in his mind as day after day passed on and there was no response from England. His intense desire for a frothy pot of beer, ungratified of course from his impecunious state, his alarmlest the landlord should present his bill, and his forebodings when passing a prison-house, with his elation of spirits when the long-delayed cheque at length arrived, are presented with all the charm of comedy and the interest of romance, and playfully alluded to in these four lines:—

“My heart is weary, my peace is gone,How shall I e’er my woes reveal?I have no money, I lie in pawn,A stranger in the town of Lille.”

THE ROMANCE OF IMPECUNIOSITY.

Although at first sight the condition of impecuniosity seems more calculated to produce practicality, and render persons matter-of-fact, in the foregoing chapters there have not been wanting illustrations to prove that impecuniosity has been responsible for some romance. The case of Angelica Kauffman may be taken as an example. Owing to the poverty of her father she was compelled to accept the hospitality of an English peer in Switzerland, who insulted her, and afterwards, when unable to obtain a favourable reception of his suit, in revenge induced a married adventurer to make love to and marry her. This was romantic, without question, and undoubtedly attributable to want of money, as but for that she would never have been brought in contact with the disgraceful nobleman in question.

When we remember, however, how impecuniosity has been produced, how that it has been brought about by misfortune, extravagance, heroism, want of principle, want of foresight, inadequacies of justice, eccentricity of character, extreme benevolence of disposition, and by other equally varied causes, it is not surprising that there should be found considerable connection between it and romance, more especially as the consequences of the condition have been crime of every description, from comparatively venial offences against society to the universally reprobated sins of forgery and murder. Again, the strange and unexpected means by which people have been delivered from their impecuniosity savours strongly of the unreal, of the world of fiction rather than of the world of fact. But that real life is prolific of romance has long been acknowledged by all but thosewhose knowledge of human life is small, and whose ignorance of history is entire. As the poet pithily puts it—

“Truth is always strange,Stranger than fiction: if it could be told,How much would novels gain by the exchange.”

Admitting this, and judging from the facts that we are possessed of, what marvellously romantic deeds must impecuniosity have been connected with that will never be recorded!—devoted deeds of self-sacrifice that will never be known to any save the sufferers! Not long since I read in a popular periodical of something suggestively similar. A girl on the way to join her husband, to whom she has been only married by the Scotch law, learns by accident that her marriage alone stands between her husband and a fortune. Circumstances so happening that she can make it appear credible that she was on board a vessel that was lost, she does so, believing that by her renunciation she is giving up “all for him.” “Truth is stranger than fiction,” and it follows, therefore, that such instances of self-abnegation induced by impecuniosity have been and will be found. But to facts.

I have included in the list of the causes of impecuniosity the want of foresight, and this is painfully instanced by the story of a poor old woman at Plymouth, who did not like the formality, or could not afford the expense, of having a will prepared. Being exceedingly ill, she thought she would like to leave her little property—furniture, a small amount of money, and household movables—to her neighbours and acquaintances. This wishvivâ voceshe practically carried out. Of her own proper authority she gave and willed away chairs and tables to one, her bed to this friend, her cloak to that, money, utensils, nicknacks, to others. Crones, housewives, and young women gathered sympathetically around her, and soon carried away the various things bequeathed to them. It was not long after they had departed that she unexpectedly recovered from her illness, and sent to have her things back again, but not one of them could she get, and she was left without a rag to cover her or a friend to give her a kind word.

Strange as was this circumstance, here is something surpassing strange, being the romantic record of one who was literally “a funny beggar.”

Less than half a century since there used to be seen on theQuai des Celestines in Paris a mendicant holding in one hand some lucifer-matches. Wan, self-possessed, scantily but neatly attired, there were in the beggar’s visage traces of refinement and good breeding. Round his neck was a loop of black silk ribbon, to which was suspended a piece of pasteboard having an inscription to the effect that the wearer was a poor man, and craved relief on the plea that “he had lived longer than he should.”

The petitioner’s history was a singular one. Jules André Gueret, when twenty-five years old, became the possessor of a large fortune. He remained a bachelor, and turned his estate into hard cash. An epicurean, a man of some taste, and a bit of a philosopher, he began a calculation to ascertain how he could best enjoy himself. Making no investments, he kept his cash at home. Gueret came to the conclusion that a sober man’s life averaged seventy years, but that a pleasure-seeking, gay man’s life might only last fifty-five or sixty years. He then divided his finances into so many equal portions. Each portion was to be an annual allowance, the pleasure-seeker arranging that the money should last five-and-thirty years. Gueret, in conclusion, made a compact with himself that if he lived beyond sixty years of age, suicide would prevent his suffering ills at the hands of poverty. But when turned sixty years of age, and when his money was exhausted, either love of life or fear of death prevented the once gay and opulent Gueret from committing self-destruction. It will be seen that it was a terribly true inscription on the bit of pasteboard hanging from the neck of the beggar haunting the Quai des Celestines.

The vicissitudes of Gueret were obviously self-created, andà proposof a man’s idiosyncrasy impelling him on to impecuniosity, there is hardly a more curious illustration to be found than that contained in the biography of Combe, the author of the ‘Adventures of Dr. Syntax.’ This man was a born eccentric, perverse, whimsical, and humorous. Possessing natural gifts, and the heir to a large fortune, he frittered away his mental resources, wasted his patrimony, and often committed acts worthy of the simpleton or lunatic. He went through the curriculum of Eton and Oxford, and by the refinements of his taste and the elegance of his manners won the title of “Duke Combe.” In a comparatively short period, by his prodigality and reckless expenditure he was reduced to penury, and finding no means of subsistence, enlistedas a private in the army. While in the ranks he was reading one day, when an officer passing him managed to see the book, which was a copy of Horace. “My friend,” said the officer, “is it possible that you can read Horace in the original?” “If I cannot,” said Combe, “a great deal of money has been thrown away on my education.”

Escaping from the English army, he joined the French service, and again fleeing, he entered a French monastery, remaining there until he had passed his noviciate. He subsequently left the Continent and became a waiter in South Wales. On several occasions, while in that capacity, he met with acquaintances whom he had known in college days, but he was never embarrassed even when seen tripping along with a napkin under his arm.

Combe afterwards married an amiable and devoted woman, and settled down for a time as an author. Some of his writings contained questionable morality, and others were of scurrilous and venal character. ‘Letters from a Nobleman to his Son,’ said to be by Lord Lyttelton, and ‘Letters from an Italian Nun to an English Nobleman,’ said to be by Rousseau, were both from the pen of “Duke Combe.” At last he became an inmate of the King’s Bench Prison, and he remained there several years. When a friend offered to make an arrangement with his creditors, he replied: “If I compounded with those to whom I owe money I should be obliged to give up the little I possess, and on which I can manage to live in prison. These rooms in the Bench are mine at a very few shillings a week in right of my seniority as a prisoner. My habits have become so sedentary, that if I lived in the airiest square of West-End London, I should not walk round it once a month. I am quite content with my cheap quarters.”

It was in the King’s Bench Prison that Combe wrote for the publisher Ackerman, ‘The Adventures of Dr. Syntax in Search of the Picturesque,’ ‘The Dance of Life,’ and ‘The Dance of Death.’

At one period of Combe’s career Roger Kemble gave him a theatrical benefit, and Combe promised to speak an address on the occasion. There had been much gossip and many conjectures concerning his real name, history, and condition. To such gossip and conjectures he referred when he stood before the curtain, and in the presence of a crowded auditory. Then he added, “But now, ladies and gentlemen, I shall tell you who and what I am.” There was an eager and expectant expression on the countenancesbefore him. Combe paused—all present leaning forward to hear him—gathered himself up, as if for a great effort, and then said, “I am, ladies and gentlemen—your most obedient, humble servant.”

It is evident Combe’s peculiar disposition was the cause of his peculiar circumstances. He was a perverse, whimsical man, rather than an unfortunate one, and it was much the same with the son of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, the Hon. Mr. Wortley Montague, notorious for his roving and adventurous disposition. When a boy he ran away from home, and became a chimney sweep. It is true that young Montague’s father was cold in his manners and severe in his discipline to the lad, who in addition chafed under the somewhat stringent arrangements of the Westminster masters, for enforcing law and order amongst their pupils. At Westminster School, however, where the lad was placed in 1729, he at once showed himself brilliant and precocious, but vain, impatient of control, and of truant disposition. Reckless and petulant, he resolved to see the world, and without a single confidant, one day quitted the seminary, roamed the streets, and at night made his way into the fields about Chelsea, and there slept till morning. After a few days his stock of money became low, and while reading the newspapers over his tavern breakfast, he noticed in an advertisement an accurate description of his face, figure, and costume, with the notification that a handsome reward would be paid by his parents to recover their lost child. Hastily paying his bill, he made his way from the tavern, perambulated the streets, utterly at a loss how to act in order to shun the humiliation of meeting his father and mother, and of again having to undergo the restrictions of domestic and scholastic routine. Meeting a chimney-sweeper’s apprentice, Montague entered into conversation with him and agreed to exchange clothes, which transformation was accomplished in an empty house. The truant was not satisfied yet, and actually accompanied the apprentice to his master’s house for the purpose of trying to become a chimney-sweep himself. From motives of benevolence or cupidity the master sweep agreed to induct young Montague into the mysteries of cleansing flues, and the lad remained in his employment for some months.

During the period of his connection with the “sooty trade” the aristocratic young truant went through many adventures and played many pranks. His roaming disposition, however, causedhim to run away from his master, which he did without warning, and he soon found himself again walking about the streets of the metropolis, his money exhausted. He had but one thing left, a carefully-preserved watch, by which he could obtain the necessaries of life; driven to desperation, he walked into a jeweller’s shop and offered the watch for sale. The proprietor was courteous but wary, and being suspicious that the lad had become possessed of the valuable article in a dishonest manner, took the opportunity of sending for a constable. Montague was arrested and conveyed to Bow Street, where the magistrate closely questioned the culprit. Young Montague, with the utmost frankness, gave an account of his strange and romantic adventures from the moment when he had quitted Westminster School. It was not long ere his parents were made acquainted with the particulars of their son’s flight and safety, and the foolish wanderer was speedily taken back with caresses and delight. All was forgotten and forgiven, and in a few weeks Montague was reinstated in his old place at Westminster.

It is said that what is bred in the bone comes out in the flesh, and it was not long before the crack-brained scholar again became unsettled. Through an older companion, young Montague sought the good offices of a knavish money-lender, who, making himself acquainted with the lad’s position and prospects, advanced him a sum of money. With the loan he felt free to make another flight, and away he went to Newmarket. He was amused and delighted with the spectacle of horses, jockeys, and bruisers. Enjoying himself at an inn, he fell into the company of card-sharpers, who soon eased him of the guineas he had brought down from London. His position was unfortunate and perilous, but wandering out through the town, he encountered a friend of the family, who resolutely conveyed him back to his parents, who, as before, after due admonition, forgave him. The debt to the money-lender was paid, and the youngster again found himself surrounded by all the luxuries of an aristocratic home. But his restless spirit could not endure the harness of conventional life.

Once more he sought the office of the usurer, who made the required advances, and he then made up his mind to taste the joys of sea voyages and the novelties of foreign travel. Making his way to Wapping, he struck up a friendship with the captain of a trading-vessel bound for Cadiz. Montague agreed to visitCadiz with him, making the commander acquainted with the particulars of his history. The youth prepared for the journey, and thought that his last night in England should be a convivial one, and consequently ordered at one of the Wapping taverns a sumptuous supper. The landlord during the evening introduced some card-sharping rogues who proposed play, and in the course of an hour or two the son of Lady Mary had lost heavily. He was made drunk and taken away senseless to bed.

When he came to himself in the morning he found that he had been robbed of everything, including his watch, and that he was utterly impotent to pay the heavy bill for the previous night’s banquet. The landlord affected much indignation, and went out of the house under the pretence of procuring a constable. Young Montague was at his wit’s end, when the hostess advised him to quit the tavern. Taking the hint, he hurried to the captain and told his story, and the captain intimated that he would seek the landlord. Captain James being a rogue, came to an understanding with the Wapping host, who agreed to hand over part of the spoil. James returned to the young dupe, and informed him that no redress could be afforded, but that if he liked he might work his way out to Cadiz. So Montague was the victim of both landlord and captain. During the voyage to Cadiz the youth underwent numerous trials and hardships. On landing at Cadiz he at once left Captain James and found himself in a foreign town without money and without friends. However, he found the Wapping card-sharpers had left him a pair of Mocoa sleeve-buttons set in gold, and having sold them he lived on the money for a few weeks. When that money was exhausted he happened to make the acquaintance of a muleteer, who, wanting a helper, found a ready and active one in the adventurous youth. All his subsequent adventures were of like irrational character, and he died of a fever contracted during foreign travel when a comparatively young man.

I now turn to a pathetic story of poverty, in which the victim, but for the cruel deeds of a crafty and malignant woman, might have been surrounded by the auxiliaries of wealth and feudal splendour. Fortune occasionally plays strange pranks, and in the instance I am about to quote it will be seen that her caprices sometimes fall on unoffending and worthy men with pitiless andtremendous severity. More than two hundred and fifty years since a miserable bowed man might have been seen working about the fields and roads outside Leicester, doing that slavish and drudging work which falls to the lot of the English peasant. But for an unhappy episode connected with his ancestors he might have been summoned to dinner by sound of horn and taken his food from burnished silver. He was the heir of the famous Sir Robert Scott of Thirlestane, a cadet of the House of Buccleuch. Sir Robert Scott lived in the time of the sixth James of Scotland, and was a man of noble character, though of iron will and fiery blood, and little knew the awful cloud that gathered over his house when he married his second wife. Scott of Thirlestane had a son by his first marriage, and the heir was loved by the father with all the intensity and tenderness of a strong man’s nature.

From the time the second wife bore children to Sir Robert, she hated the stepson with unceasing and sleepless malignity. She saw that as long as he lived the future possessions of her own children would be but little. She was cruel, crafty, and unscrupulous: and her worst feelings were excited when she learned that Sir Robert proposed building a tower at Gamescleugh in honour of the young laird’s majority. The father had also arranged a marriage for his son. The stepmother then entered upon plans to murder him on the occasion of the opening of the new castle, when a great festival was to take place. Her agent in the crime was John Lally, the family piper, who obtained three adders, from which he abstracted poison, and conveyed it to Lady Thirlestane, who mixed it with a bottle of wine. On the day of festivity the young laird inspected the tower and received from Lally’s hand the poisoned wine in a silver flagon, and drank a hearty draught. In an hour the heir of the house of Thirlestane was dead, and Lally had fled no one knew whither. News of the heir’s death soon reached the ears of the father, who had the alarm bugle sounded to call together his retainers. On the earl calling out to his assemblage, “Are we all here?” a voice answered, “Yes, all but John Lally, the piper.” It was ominous, for the husband knew the confidence his wife placed in that retainer, and Sir Robert swooned. Strange was it that Sir Robert could not be induced to make a public example of his wife; but he announcedto his friends that the estate belonged to his murdered son, who, if he could not enjoy it living, should enjoy it dead. The body of the heir was embalmed with drugs and spices, and laid out in state for a year and a day. For twelve months the unhappy father kept up one continuous round of costly and magnificent revels. Wine flowed like a river, and the scenes of carousal were of unprecedented extravagance. Soon after the funeral Sir Robert was borne to the grave and the family reduced to utter beggary. The stepmother wandered about an outcast and pauper, and in after years the heir of the Thirlestane family worked as a common ditcher, as I have described.

A similar strange and pathetic story, in which it is shown that the innocent suffered for the guilty, is that of Sir John Dinely, who, at the beginning of the century, was one of the Poor Knights of Windsor. Dinely was a singularly eccentric and unfortunate man. He was often to be seen mysteriously creeping by the first light of a winter’s morning through the great gate of the lower ward of Windsor Castle into the narrow back streets of the town. He used to wear a roquelaure, beneath which appeared a pair of thin legs encased in dirty silk stockings. In wet weather he carried a large umbrella and walked on pattens. He lived in one of the houses of the military knights, then called Poor Knights, to which body he belonged. Except the eccentric possessor, no human being entered his abode, and he dispensed with all domestic service. Dinely in the morning went forth to make his frugal purchases for the day—a faggot, a candle, a small loaf, and perhaps a herring. The Poor Knight of Windsor might have fared better, but every penny except those laid out for absolute necessaries of life was capitalised in the promotion of an absorbing and quixotic scheme. Regular attendance at St. George’s Chapel was Dinely’s duty; and the long blue mantle which the Poor Knights wore covered his shabby habiliments, as the dingy morning cloak hid red herrings and farthing candles.

Such were some of the phases—sombre, squalid phases—of Sir John’s existence. But there were periods when the Poor Knight assumed the externals of aristocratic opulence. The poor hunchback lover in the introduction to the pantomime, who, by the enchanter’s wand in the transformation-scene, becomes the gay and spangled harlequin, typifies Dinely dressed for his marketing,and Dinely dressed for the promenade. Any circumstances drawing together a crowd at Windsor, whether the presence of royalty, the attractions of the military parade, or of the promenade, did not fail to draw forth Dinely from his poverty-stricken home. When he appeared on festive occasions, his cloak was cast aside, and he might have sat to any painter desiring to reproduce on canvas a gentleman of the time of George II. An embroidered coat, silk flowered waistcoat, nether garments of velvet, carefully meeting silk stockings, which surmounted shoes and silver buckles, in addition to a lace-edged cocked hat, and powdered wig, set off the attenuated figure of the Poor Knight of Windsor. His object in so presenting himself was to attract the notice of some rich lady for matrimonial ends, matrimony being the medium through which he imagined he could transform his splendid dreams into no less splendid realities—the reason for his eccentric economy being explained by his history.

In January, 1741, there were two brothers living at Bristol who had become enemies on account of an entail of property. The elder of these brothers was Sir John Dinely Goodyere, Baronet, the other Samuel Dinely Goodyere, a captain in the navy. Estrangement had taken place, but a common friend, at Samuel’s request, brought them together. They dined, had pleasant hours, and fraternal words were exchanged. On parting Sir John went his way across College Green, and while there was met by his brother and six other sailors. Sir John was brutally treated, carried away to a ship, and on it he was strangled. Retribution followed swiftly, and in two months Samuel Dinely Goodyere had expiated his crime on the gallows.

The Poor Knight of Windsor was the son of the murderer, and it is generally believed that the family estates which might have come to Captain Goodyere were forfeited to the Crown. To recover the family estates was the day dream of Sir John. Not having sufficient money to obtain the requisite legal help to regain the lost inheritance, the poor old man resorted to the matrimonial scheme. His proceedings were perfectly serious, dignified, and earnest. Frequently has he been seen on the terrace at Windsor presenting to some county widow or elegantly attired gentlewoman a printed paper which with the utmost gravity he would take from his pocket. Shouldthe lady accept the paper, Sir John Dinely would make her the most profound of bows, and then withdraw.

The following is an extract from one of the documents:—

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