Part 57 (1/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration: page226]

Imagine such an animated, whispering, gazing, inquiring scene, as I have here presented you with a slight sketch of, and, reader, you will be able to form some idea of the first appearance of the English Spy and his friend the artist, among the ways and walks of merry Cheltenham.

Then here

'At once, I dedicate my lay To the gay groups that round me swarm, Like May-bees round the honied hive, When fields are green, and skies are warm And all in nature seems alive.'

Time was, a certain amorous colonel carried every thing here, and bore away the belle from all compet.i.tors; the hunt, the ball, the theatre, and the card-party all owned his sovereign sway; although it must be admitted, that, in the latter amus.e.m.e.nt, he seldom or ever hazarded enough to disturb his financial recollections on the morrow. But time works wonders--notoriety is of two complexions, and what may render a man a very agreeable companion to foxhunters and frolicsome lordlings, is not always the best calculated to recommend him in the eyes of the accomplished and the rigid in matters of moral propriety. But other equally celebrated and less worthy predilections have been trumpeted forth in courts and newspapers, until the fame of the colonel has spread itself through every grade of society, and, unlike that wreath which usually decks the gallant soldier's brow, a cypress chaplet binds the early gray, and makes admonitory signal of the ill-spent past. The wrongs of an injured ~227~~and confiding husband, whose fortunes, wrecked by the false seducer, have left him a prey to shattered ruin, yet live in the remembrance of some honest Cheltenham hearts; and although these may feel for the now abandoned object of his illicit pa.s.sion, there are but few who, while they drop a tear of pity as she pa.s.ses them daily in the street, do not invoke a n.o.bler feeling of indignation upon the ruthless head of him who forged the shafts of misery, and pierced at one fell blow the hearts of husband, wife, and children! What father that has read Maria's hapless tale of woe, and marked the progress of deceptive vice, will hereafter hazard the reputation of his daughters by suffering them to mix in Cheltenham society with the branded seducer and his profligate a.s.sociates?

Gallantry, an unrestricted love of the fair s.e.x, and a predilection for variety, may all be indulged in this country to any extent, without betraying confidence on the one hand or innocence upon the other, without outraging decency, or violating the established usages of society. While the profligate confines his sensual pleasures with such objects as I allude to within the walls of his harem, the moralist has no right to trespa.s.s upon his privacy; it is only when they are blazoned forth to public view, and daringly opposed to public scorn, that the lash of the satirist is essentially useful, if not in correcting, at least in exposing the systematic seducer, and putting the inexperienced and the virtuous on their guard against the practice of profligacy. It is the frequency and notoriety of such scenes that has at last alarmed the Chelts, who, fearing more for their suffering interests than for their suffering fellow-creatures, begin to murmur rather loudly against the Berkeley Adonis, representing that the town itself suffers in respectability and increase of visitors, by its being known as the rendezvous of the bloods and blacks of Berkeley. The truth of this a.s.sertion may be gathered from the ~228~~following _jeu d' esprit_, only one among a hundred of such squibs that have been very freely circulated in Cheltenham and the neighbourhood within the last year.

'NEWS FROM CHELTENHAM.

'The season runs smartly in Cheltenham's town, The gossips are up, and the colonel is down; He has taken the place of the famous Old Gun {1} That exploded last year, and created some fun.

Were no lives then lost? some say, Yes! and some, No!

The report even shook the old walls of Glasgow.{2} And the Bushe was found out to be no safe retreat, For in love, as in war, you may chance to be beat; And a h.e.l.l-shaming fellow can never be reckon'd, Whate'er he may publish, a capital second.'

”But now having had our fling at his vices, let us speak of him more agreeably; for the fellow hath some qualifications which, if humour suit, enables him to s.h.i.+ne forth a star of the first magnitude among _bons vivants_ and sporting characters, who ride, amble, and vegetate upon the banks of the Chelt. Such is his love of hunting, a pleasure in which he not only indulges himself, but enables others, his friends, to partic.i.p.ate with him, by keeping up a numerous stud of thirty well trained horses, and a double pack of fox-hounds, that no appropriate day may be lost, nor any opportunity missed, of pursuing the sports of the chase. This is as it should be, and smacks of that glorious spirit which animated his ancestors; although the violence of his temper will sometimes break out even here, in the field, when some young and forward Nimrod, unable to restrain his fiery steed, _o'er-caps_ the hounds, or crosses the scent. As the Chelts are, or have been, greatly benefited by the hounds being kept alternately during the hunting months between

1 A good-morrow to you, Captain Gun.

2 Miss Glasgow, divine perfection of antique virgin purity!

what could the poet mean by this allusion?

~229~~Cheltenham and Gloucester, they must at least feel some little grat.i.tude to be due to the man who is the cause of such an increase of society, and consequent expenditure of cash. But, say they, we lose in a fourfold degree; for the respectable portion of the fas.h.i.+onable visitants have of late cut us entirely, to save their sons and daughters from pollution and ruin, by a.s.sociation or the force of example. 'Tis not in the nature of the English Spy rudely to draw aside the curtain, even to expose the midnight revelries and debaucheries, of which he possesses some extraordinary anecdotes; events, which, if recorded here, would, in the language of the poet,

'Give ample room, and verge enough, The characters of h.e.l.l to trace; How through each circling year, on many a night, Have Severn's waves re-echoed with affright The shrieks of (maids) through Berkeley's roofs that ring.'

”But let these tales be told hereafter, as no doubt they will be, by the creatures who now pander to vice, when the satiated and the sullen chief sinks into decay, or cuts from his emaciated trunk the filthy excrescences which, like poisonous fungus, suck the sap of honour and of life. The colonel hath had many trials in this life, and much to break down a n.o.ble and a proud spirit. In earlier days, a question of birthright, while it cut off one entail, brought on another, which entailed a name, not the ancient gift of a monarch, but one still more ancient, and, according to Dodsley's Chronology of the Kings of England, the origin of British sovereignty itself--a '_filius nullius,_' a t.i.tle that left it open to the wearer to have established his own fame, and to have been the architect of a n.o.bler fortune; for

'Who n.o.bly acts may hold to scorn The man who is but n.o.bly born.'

”Had the colonel acted thus, there is little doubt but long ere this the kind heart of his Majesty would have ~230~~warmed into graciousness as he reflected upon the untoward circ.u.mstances which removed from the eldest born of an ancient house the honours of its armorial bearings; the _engrailed bar_ might have been erased from the s.h.i.+eld, and the coronet of n.o.bility have graced the elder brother, without invading the legal designation or claims of the legitimate younger; but

I sing of a day that is gone and past, Of a chance that is lost, and a die that's cast.

And even now, while I am sermonizing on late events but too notorious, the busy hum of many voices buzzes a tale upon the ear that sickens with its unparalleled profligacy; but the English Spy, the faithful historian of the present times, refuses to stain his pages by giving credit to, or recording, the imputed profligate connexion. Adieu, _monsieur_ the colonel; fain would I have pa.s.sed you by without this comment; but your a.s.sociation with the black spirits of the 'Age'{3} has placed you upon a pedestal, the proper mark for satire to shoot her barbed arrows at.

”But let us take a turn down the High Street; and as I live here comes an old flame of the colonel's, Miss R*g*rs, who is now turned into Mrs.

E***n, and who, it is said, most wickedly turned her pen, and pointed the following _jeu d'esprit_ against her late protector, when he was laid up by a serious accident, which happened to his knee after the more serious loss of a--_Foote_.

3 ”A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind” says Pope; and it would appear so from the intimacy which subsists between the colonel and his jackall Bunn, the would-be captain, who it is said is the _filius nullius_ of old Ben Bunn the _conveyancer_, not of legal t.i.tle or estate by roll of parchment, but of the very soil itself. Lord W. Lennox, too, no doubt, prides himself upon the illegitimate origin of his ancestry; and the publisher of the infamous scandals manufactured in the Quadrant is also of the same kidney, being the reputed natural son of jolly old Bardolph Jennyns.

What the remaining portion of the coterie spring from, the Gents and Bs., the sensitive nose of a sensible man will very easily discover.

~231~~

'To Cupid's colonel help, ye people all; He's missed his _Footing_, 'Pride has had a fall;'

The knee's uncapp'd, the calf laid open quite, The Foote presents the most distressing sight; Its form so perfect, pity none were nigh, With warning voice to guard from injury.

Waltzers! your peerless partner view, The gallant gay Lothario quite _perdu; Sans Foote_ to rest upon, his claims deny'd To take a birth by English n.o.bles' side.

Let him to Cheltenham, 'tis not to go far; He's sure to find a _seat--on Irish car_.'

”I am told, but I cannot discover the allusion myself, that Miss B*g*rs was prompted to this effusion of the satiric muse by the green-eyed monster, Jealousy, Observe that machine yonder, rumbling up the street like an Irish jaunting-car, that contains the numerous family of M***r, the vinegar merchant, whose lady being considered by the Chelts as lineally descended from the Tartar race, they have very facetiously nicknamed muriatic acid. The mad wag with the sandy whiskers yonder, and somewhat pleasant-looking countenance, is a second-hand friend of the colonel's; mark how he is ogling the young thing in the milliner's shop through the window: his daily occupation, making a.s.signations, and his nightly amus.e.m.e.nt, a new favourite. A story is told of his father, a highly respected legal character in the Emerald Isle, that, on being asked by a friend why his son had left the country, replied, 'By Jasus, sir, it was high time: sure I am there's enough of the family left behind. Is not his lady in a _promising_ way, and both his female servants, and those of two or three of his friends, and are not both mine in a similar situation? Zounds, sir, if he had remained here much longer, there would not have been a single female in the whole country.