Volume II Part 42 (1/2)
”Ladies and gentlemen,--I know nothing I have done to offend you, and has set ('sic') those who are sent here to hiss me; I will be very much obliged to you to turn them out.”
This unfortunate speech made matters worse; the audience refused to hear her, and her part was finished by Miss Searle.
Miss Mudie was said to be only eight years old. But J. Kemble, being asked if she were really such a child, answered, ”'Child'! Why, sir, when I was a very young actor in the York Company, that little creature kept an inn at Tadcaster, and had a large family” (Clark Russell's 'Representative Actors', p. 363, 'note' 2). The 'Morning Post' (April 5, 1806) says that Miss Mudie afterwards joined a children's troupe in Leicester Place, where, ”though deservedly discountenanced at a great theatre, she will, no doubt, prove an acquisition to the infant establishment” (Ashton's 'Dawn of the XIXth Century in England', pp.
333-336).]
[Footnote 2: Macbeth, act iv. sc. 1.]
[Footnote 3: For Lun, or Rich, see p. 157, end of 'note' 1. Hunt, in the notes to Johnson's 'Prologue' (Gilfillan's edition of Johnson's 'Poestical Works', p. 38), is said to be ”a famous stage-boxer, Mahomet, a rope-dancer.”]
256.--To William Bankes.
Cheltenham, September 28, 1812.
MY DEAR BANKES,--When you point out to one how people can be intimate at the distance of some seventy leagues, I will plead guilty to your charge, and accept your farewell, but not _wittingly_, till you give me some better reason than my silence, which merely proceeded from a notion founded on your own declaration of _old_, that you hated writing and receiving letters. Besides, how was I to find out a man of many residences? If I had addressed you _now_, it had been to your borough, where I must have conjectured you were amongst your const.i.tuents. So now, in despite of Mr. N. and Lady W., you shall be as ”much better” as the Hexham post-office will allow me to make you. I do a.s.sure you I am much indebted to you for thinking of me at all, and can't spare you even from amongst the superabundance of friends with whom you suppose me surrounded.
You heard that Newstead [1] is sold--the sum 140,000; sixty to remain in mortgage on the estate for three years, paying interest, of course.
Rochdale is also likely to do well--so my worldly matters are mending. I have been here some time drinking the waters, simply because there are waters to drink, and they are very medicinal, and sufficiently disgusting. In a few days I set out for Lord Jersey's [2], but return here, where I am quite alone, go out very little, and enjoy in its fullest extent the _dolce far niente_. What you are about I cannot guess, even from your date;--not dauncing to the sound of the gitourney in the Halls of the Lowthers? one of whom is here, ill, poor thing, with a phthisic. I heard that you pa.s.sed through here (at the sordid inn where I first alighted) the very day before I arrived in these parts. We had a very pleasant set here; at first the Jerseys, Melbournes [3], Cowpers [4], and Hollands, but all gone; and the only persons I know are the Rawdons [5] and Oxfords [6], with some later acquaintances of less brilliant descent.
But I do not trouble them much; and as for your rooms and your a.s.semblies ”they are not dreamed of in our philosophy!!”--Did you read of a sad accident in the Wye t'other day [7]? A dozen drowned; and Mr.
Rossoe, a corpulent gentleman, preserved by a boat-hook or an eel-spear, begged, when he heard his wife was saved--no--_lost_--to be thrown in again!!--as if he could not have thrown himself in, had he wished it; but this pa.s.ses for a trait of sensibility. What strange beings men are, in and out of the Wye!
I have to ask you a thousand pardons for not fulfilling some orders before I left town; but if you knew all the cursed entanglements I _had_ to wade through, it would be unnecessary to beg your forgiveness.--When will Parliament (the new one) meet [8]?--in sixty days, on account of Ireland, I presume: the Irish election will demand a longer period for completion than the const.i.tutional allotment. Yours, of course, is safe, and all your side of the question. Salamanca is the ministerial watchword, and all will go well with you. I hope you will speak more frequently, I am sure at least you _ought_, and it will be expected. I see Portman means to stand again. Good night.
Ever yours most affectionately,
[Greek: Mpairon.]
[Footnote 1: Newstead was put up at Garraway's in the autumn of 1812; but only 90,000 were bid, and the property was therefore withdrawn.
Subsequently it was privately sold to a Mr. Claughton, who found himself unable to complete the purchase, and forfeited 25,000 on the contract.
Newstead was eventually sold, in November, 1817, to Colonel Wildman, Byron's Harrow schoolfellow, for 94,500.]
[Footnote 2: For Lady Jersey, see p. 112, 'note' 1 [Footnote 1 of Letter 230]. The following pa.s.sage, from Byron's 'Detached Thoughts', gives an account of the party at Middleton:
”In 1812 at Middelton (Lord Jersey's), amongst a goodly company of Lords, Ladies, and wits, etc., there was poor old Vice Leach, the lawyer, attempting to play off the fine gentleman. His first exhibition, an attempt on horseback, I think, to escort the women--G.o.d knows where--in the month of November, ended in a fit of the Lumbago--as Lord Ogleby says, 'a grievous enemy to Gallantry and address'--and if he could have but heard Lady Jersey quizzing him (as I did) next day for the _cause_ of his malady, I don't think that he would have turned a 'Squire of dames' in a hurry again. He seemed to me the greatest fool (in that line) I ever saw. This was the last I saw of old Vice Leach, except in town, where he was creeping into a.s.semblies, and trying to look young--and gentlemanly.
”Erskine too!--Erskine was there--good but intolerable. He jested, he talked, he did everything admirably, but then he 'would' be applauded for the same thing twice over. He would read his own verses, his own paragraphs, and tell his own story again and again; and then 'the trial by Jury!!!'--I almost wished it abolished, for I sate next him at dinner, and, as I had read his published speeches, there was no occasion to repeat them to me. Chester (the fox-hunter), surnamed 'Cheek Chester,' and I sweated the Claret, being the only two who did so. Cheek, who loves his bottle, and had no notion of meeting with a 'bonvivant' in a scribbler, in making my eulogy to somebody one evening, summed it up in 'by G-d, he 'drinks like a Man'!'”]