The Wits and Beaux of Society Part 13

'Yet here no confusion--no tumult is known; Fair order and beauty establish their throne; For order, and beauty, and just regulation, Support all the works of this ample creation.

For this, in compa.s.sion to mortals below, The G.o.ds, their peculiar favour to show, Sent Hermes to Bath in the shape of a beau: That grandson of Atlas came down from above To bless all the regions of pleasure and love; To lead the fair nymph thro' the various maze, Bright beauty to marshal, his glory and praise; To govern, improve, and adorn the gay scene, By the Graces instructed, and Cyprian queen: As when in a garden delightful and gay, Where Flora is wont all her charms to display, The sweet hyacinthus with pleasure we view, Contend with narcissus in delicate hue; The gard'ner, industrious, trims out his border, Puts each odoriferous plant in its order; The myrtle he ranges, the rose and the lily, With iris, and crocus, and daffa-down-dilly; Sweet peas and sweet oranges all he disposes, At once to regale both your eyes and your noses.

Long reign'd the great Nash, this omnipotent lord, Respected by youth, and by parents ador'd; For him not enough at a ball to preside, The unwary and beautiful nymph would he guide; Oft tell her a tale, how the credulous maid By man, by perfidious man, is betrayed: Taught Charity's hand to relieve the distrest, While tears have his tender compa.s.sion exprest; But alas! he is gone, and the city can tell How in years and in glory lamented he fell.

Him mourn'd all the Dryads on Claverton's mount; Him Avon deplor'd, him the nymph of the fount, The crystalline streams.

Then perish his picture--his statue decay-- A tribute more lasting the Muses shall pay.

If true, what philosophers all will a.s.sure us, Who dissent from the doctrine of great Epicurus, That the spirit's immortal (as poets allow): In reward of his labours, his virtue and pains, He is footing it now in the Elysian plains, Indulged, as a token of Proserpine's favour, To preside at her b.a.l.l.s in a cream-colour'd beaver.

Then peace to his ashes--our grief be supprest, Since we find such a phoenix has sprung from his nest; Kind heaven has sent us another professor, Who follows the steps of his great predecessor.'

The end of the Bath Beau was somewhat less tragical than that of his London successor--Brummell. Nash, in his old age and poverty, hung about the clubs and supper-tables, b.u.t.ton-holed youngsters, who thought him a bore, spun his long yarns, and tried to insist on obsolete fas.h.i.+ons, when near the end of his life's century.

The clergy took more care of him than the youngsters. They heard that Nash was an octogenarian, and likely to die in his sins, and resolved to do their best to shrive him. Worthy and well-meaning men accordingly wrote him long letters, in which there was a deal of warning, and there was nothing which Nash dreaded so much. As long as there was immediate fear of death, he was pious and humble; the moment the fear had pa.s.sed, he was jovial and indifferent again. His especial delight, to the last, seems to have been swearing against the doctors, whom he treated like the individual in Anstey's 'Bath Guide,' shying their medicines out of window upon their own heads. But the wary old Beckoner called him in, in due time, with his broken, empty-chested voice; and Nash was forced to obey. Death claimed him--and much good it got of him--in 1761, at the age of eighty-seven: there are few beaux who lived so long.

Thus ended a life, of which the moral lay, so to speak, out of it. The worthies of Bath were true to the wors.h.i.+p of Folly, whom Anstey so well, though indelicately, describes as there conceiving Fas.h.i.+on; and though Nash, old, slovenly, disrespected, had long ceased to be either beau or monarch, treated his huge unlovely corpse with the honour due to the great--or little. His funeral was as glorious as that of any hero, and far more showy, though much less solemn, than the burial of Sir John Moore. Perhaps for a bit of prose flummery, by way of contrast to Wolfe's lines on the latter event, there is little to equal the account in a contemporary paper:--'Sorrow sate upon every face, and even children lisped that their sovereign was no more. The awfulness of the solemnity made the deepest impression on the minds of the distressed inhabitants. The peasant discontinued his toil, the ox rested from the plough, all nature seemed to sympathise with their loss, and the m.u.f.fled bells rung a peal of bob-major.'

The Beau left little behind him, and that little not worth much, even including his renown. Most of the presents which fools or flatterers had made him, had long since been sent _chez ma tante_; a few trinkets and pictures, and a few books, which probably he had never read, const.i.tuted his little store.[21]

Bath and Tunbridge--for he had annexed that lesser kingdom to his own--had reason to mourn him, for he had almost made them what they were; but the country has not much cause to thank the upholder of gaming, the inst.i.tutor of silly fas.h.i.+on, and the high-priest of folly.

Yet Nash was free from many vices we should expect to find in such a man. He did not drink, for instance; one gla.s.s of wine, and a moderate quant.i.ty of small beer, being his allowance for dinner. He was early in his hours, and made others sensible in theirs. He was generous and charitable when he had the money; and when he had not he took care to make his subjects subscribe it. In a word, there have been worse men and greater fools; and we may again ask whether those who obeyed and flattered him were not more contemptible than Beau Nash himself.

So much for the powers of impudence and a fine coat!

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 19: Warner ('History of Bath,' p. 366), says, 'Nash was removed from Oxford by his friends.']

[Footnote 20: A full-length statue of Nash was placed between busts of Newton and Pope.]

[Footnote 21: In the 'Annual Register,' (vol. v. p. 37), it is stated that a pension of ten guineas a month was paid to Nash during the latter years of his life by the Corporation of Bath.]

PHILIP, DUKE OF WHARTON.

Wharton's Ancestors.--His Early Years.--Marriage at Sixteen.--Wharton takes leave of his Tutor.--The Young Marquis and the Old Pretender.--Frolics at Paris.--Zeal for the Orange Cause.--A Jacobite Hero.--The Trial of Atterbury.--Wharton's Defence of the Bishop.--Hypocritical Signs of Penitence.--Sir Robert Walpole duped.--Very Trying.--The Duke of Wharton's 'Whens.'--Military Glory at Gibraltar.--'Uncle Horace.'--Wharton to 'Uncle Horace.'--The Duke's Impudence.--High Treason.--Wharton's Ready Wit.--Last Extremities.--Sad Days in Paris.--His Last Journey to Spain.--His Death in a Bernardine Convent.

If an ill.u.s.tration were wanted of that character unstable as water which shall not excel, this duke would at once supply it: if we had to warn genius against self-indulgence--some clever boy against extravagance--some poet against the bottle--this is the 'shocking example' we should select: if we wished to show how the most splendid talents, the greatest wealth, the most careful education, the most unusual advantages, may all prove useless to a man who is too vain or too frivolous to use them properly, it is enough to cite that n.o.bleman, whose acts gained for him the name of the _infamous_ Duke of Wharton.

Never was character more mercurial, or life more unsettled than his; never, perhaps, were more changes crowded into a fewer number of years, more fame and infamy gathered into so short a s.p.a.ce. Suffice it to say that when Pope wanted a man to hold up to the scorn of the world, as a sample of wasted abilities, it was Wharton that he chose, and his lines rise in grandeur in proportion to the vileness of the theme:

'Wharton, the scorn and wonder of our days, Whose ruling pa.s.sion was a love of praise.

Born with whate'er could win it from the wise, Women and fools must like him or he dies; Though raptured senates hung on all he spoke, The club must hail him master of the joke.

Shall parts so various aim at nothing new?

He'll s.h.i.+ne a Tully and a Wilmot too.

Thus with each gift of nature and of art, And wanting nothing but an honest heart; Grown all to all, from no one vice exempt, And most contemptible, to shun contempt; His pa.s.sion still, to covet general praise, His life to forfeit it a thousand ways; A constant bounty which no friend has made; An angel tongue which no man can persuade; A fool with more of wit than all mankind; Too rash for thought, for action too refined.'

And then those memorable lines--

'A tyrant to the wife his heart approved, A rebel to the very king he loved; He dies, sad outcast of each church and state; And, harder still! flagitious, yet not great.'

Though it may be doubted if the 'l.u.s.t of praise' was the cause of his eccentricities, so much as an utter restlessness and instability of character, Pope's description is sufficiently correct, and will prepare us for one of the most disappointing lives we could well have to read.

Philip, Duke of Wharton, was one of those men of whom an Irishman would say, that they were fortunate before they were born. His ancestors bequeathed him a name that stood high in England for bravery and excellence. The first of the house, Sir Thomas Wharton, had won his peerage from Henry VIII. for routing some 15,000 Scots with 500 men, and other gallant deeds. From his father the marquis he inherited much of his talents; but for the heroism of the former, he seems to have received it only in the extravagant form of foolhardiness. Walpole remembered, but could not tell where, a ballad he wrote on being arrested by the guard in St. James's Park, for singing the Jacobite song, 'The King shall have his own again,' and quotes two lines to show that he was not ashamed of his own cowardice on the occasion:--

'The duke he drew out half his sword, ---- the guard drew out the rest.'

At the siege of Gibraltar, where he took up arms against his own king and country, he is said to have gone alone one night to the very walls of the town, and challenged the outpost. They asked him who he was, and when he replied, openly enough, 'The Duke of Wharton,' they actually allowed him to return without either firing on or capturing him. The story seems somewhat apocryphal, but it is quite possible that the English soldiers may have refrained from violence to a well-known mad-cap n.o.bleman of their own nation.

Philip, son of the Marquis of Wharton, at that time only a baron, was born in the last year but one of the seventeenth century, and came into the world endowed with every quality which might have made a great man, if he had only added wisdom to them. His father wished to make him a brilliant statesman, and, to have a better chance of doing so, kept him at home, and had him educated under his own eye. He seems to have easily and rapidly acquired a knowledge of cla.s.sical languages; and his memory was so good that when a boy of thirteen he could repeat the greater part of the 'aeneid' and of Horace by heart. His father's keen perception did not allow him to stop at cla.s.sics; and he wisely prepared him for the career to which he was destined by the study of history, ancient and modern, and of English literature, and by teaching him, even at that early age, the art of thinking and writing on any given subject, by proposing themes for essays. There is certainly no surer mode of developing the reflective and reasoning powers of the mind; and the boy progressed with a rapidity which was almost alarming. Oratory, too, was of course cultivated, and to this end the young n.o.bleman was made to recite before a small audience pa.s.sages from Shakspeare, and even speeches which had been delivered in the House of Lords, and we may be certain he showed no bashfulness in this display.

He was precocious beyond measure, and at sixteen was a man. His first act of folly--or, perhaps, _he_ thought, of manhood--came off at this early age. He fell in love with the daughter of a Major-General Holmes; and though there is nothing extraordinary in that, for nine-tenths of us have been love-mad at as early an age, he did what fortunately very few do in a first love affair, he married the adored one. Early marriages are often extolled, and justly enough, as safeguards against profligate habits, but this one seems to have had the contrary effect on young Philip. His wife was in every sense too good for him: he was madly in love with her at first, but soon shamefully and openly faithless. Pope's line--

'A tyrant to the wife his heart approved,'

requires explanation here. It is said that she did not present her boy-husband with a son for three years after their marriage, and on this child he set great value and great hopes. About that time he left his wife in the country, intending to amuse himself in town, and ordered her to remain behind with the child. The poor deserted woman well knew what was the real object of this journey, and could not endure the separation. In the hope of keeping her young husband out of harm, and none the less because she loved him very tenderly, she followed him soon after, taking the little Marquis of Malmsbury, as the young live branch was called, with her. The duke was, of course, disgusted, but his anger was turned into hatred, when the child, which he had hoped to make his heir and successor, caught in town the small-pox, and died in infancy.

He was furious with his wife, refused to see her for a long time, and treated her with unrelenting coldness.

The early marriage was much to the distaste of Philip's father, who had been lately made a marquis, and who hoped to arrange a very grand 'alliance' for his petted son. He was, in fact, so much grieved by it, that he was fool enough to die of it in 1715, and the marchioness survived him only about a year, being no less disgusted with the licentiousness which she already discovered in her Young Hopeful.

She did what she could to set him right, and the young married man was s.h.i.+pped off with a tutor, a French Huguenot, who was to take him to Geneva to be educated as a Protestant and a Whig. The young scamp declined to be either. He was taken, by way of seeing the world, to the petty courts of Germany, and of course to that of Hanover, which had kindly sent us the worst family that ever disgraced the English throne, and by the various princes and grand-dukes received with all the honours due to a young British n.o.bleman.

The tutor and his charge settled at last at Geneva, and my young lord amused himself with tormenting his strict guardian. Walpole tells us that he once roused him out of bed only to borrow a pin. There is no doubt that he led the worthy man a sad life of it; and to put a climax to his conduct, ran away from him at last, leaving with him, by way of hostage, a young bear-cub--probably quite as tame as himself--which he had picked up somewhere, and grown very fond of--birds of a feather, seemingly--with a message, which showed more wit than good-nature, to this effect:--'Being no longer able to bear with your ill-usage, I think proper to be gone from you; however, that you may not want company, I have left you the bear, as the most suitable companion in the world that could be picked out for you.'

The tutor had to console himself with a _tu quoque_, for the young scapegrace had found his way to Lyons in October, 1716, and then did the very thing his father's son should not have done. The Chevalier de St.

George, the Old Pretender, James III., or by whatever other _alias_ you prefer to call him, having failed in his attempt 'to have his own again'

in the preceding year, was then holding high court in high dudgeon at Avignon. Any adherent would, of course, be welcomed with open arms; and when the young marquis wrote to him to offer his allegiance, sending with his letter a fine entire horse as a peace offering, he was warmly responded to. A person of rank was at once despatched to bring the youth to the ex-regal court; he was welcomed with much enthusiasm, and the empty t.i.tle of Duke of Northumberland at once, most kindly, conferred on him. However, the young marquis does not seem to have _goute_ the exile's court, for he stayed there one day only, and returning to Lyons, set off to enjoy himself at Paris. With much wit, no prudence, and a plentiful supply of money, which he threw about with the recklessness of a boy just escaped from his tutor, he could not fail to succeed in that capital; and, accordingly, the English received him with open arms. Even the amba.s.sador, Lord Stair, though he had heard rumours of his wild doings, invited him repeatedly to dinner, and did his best, by advice and warning, to keep him out of harm's way. Young Philip had a horror of preceptors, paid or gratuitous, and treated the plenipotentiary with the same coolness as he had served the Huguenot tutor. When the former, praising the late marquis, expressed--by way of a slight hint--a hope 'that he would follow so ill.u.s.trious an example of fidelity to his prince, and affection to his country, by treading in the same steps,'

the young scamp replied, cleverly enough, 'That he thanked his excellency for his good advice, and as his excellency had also a worthy and deserving father, he hoped he would likewise copy so bright an example, and tread in all his steps;' the pertness of which was pertinent enough, for old Lord Stair had taken a disgraceful part against his sovereign in the ma.s.sacre of Glencoe.

His frolics at Paris were of the most reckless character for a young n.o.bleman. At the amba.s.sador's own table he would occasionally send a servant to some one of the guests, to ask him to join in the Old Chevalier's health, though it was almost treason at that time to mention his name even. And again, when the windows at the emba.s.sy had been broken by a young English Jacobite, who was forthwith committed to Fort l'Eveque, the hare-brained marquis proposed, out of revenge, to break them a second time, and only abandoned the project because he could get no one to join him in it. Lord Stair, however, had too much sense to be offended at the follies of a boy of seventeen, even though that boy was the representative of a great English family; he, probably, thought it would be better to recall him to his allegiance by kindness and advice, than, by resenting his behaviour, to drive him irrevocably to the opposite party; but he was doubtless considerably relieved when, after leading a wild life in the capital of France, spending his money lavishly, and doing precisely everything which a young English n.o.bleman ought not to do, my lord marquis took his departure in December, 1716.

The political education he had received now made the unstable youth ready and anxious to s.h.i.+ne in the State; but being yet under age, he could not, of course, take his seat in the House of Lords. Perhaps he was conscious of his own wonderful abilities; perhaps, as Pope declares, he was thirsting for praise, and wished to display them; certainly he was itching to become an orator, and as he could not sit in an English Parliament, he remembered that he had a peerage in Ireland, as Earl of Rathfernhame and Marquis of Catherlogh, and off he set to see if the Milesians would stand upon somewhat less ceremony. He was not disappointed there. 'His brilliant parts,' we are told by contemporary writers, but rather, we should think, his reputation for wit and eccentricity, 'found favour in the eyes of Hibernian quicksilvers, and in spite of his years, he was admitted to the Irish House of Lords.'

When a friend had reproached him, before he left France, with infidelity to the principles so long espoused by his family, he is reported to have replied, characteristically enough, that 'he had p.a.w.ned his principles to Gordon, the Chevalier's banker, for a considerable sum, and, till he could repay him, he must be a Jacobite; but when that was done, he would again return to the Whigs.' It is as likely as not that he borrowed from Gordon on the strength of the Chevalier's favour, for though a marquis in his own right, he was even at this period always in want of cash; and on the other hand, the speech, exhibiting the grossest want of any sense of honour, is in thorough keeping with his after-life. But whether he paid Gordon on his return to England--which is highly improbable--or whether he had not honour enough to keep his compact--which is extremely likely--there is no doubt that my lord marquis began, at this period, to qualify himself for the post of parish-weatherc.o.c.k to St. Stephens.

His early defection to a man who, whether rightful heir or not, had that of romance in his history which is even now sufficient to make our young ladies 'thorough Jacobites' at heart, was easily to be excused, on the plea of youth and high spirit. The same excuse does not explain his rapid return to Whiggery--in which there is no romance at all--the moment he took his seat in the Irish House of Lords. There is only one way to explain the zeal with which he now advocated the Orange cause: he must have been either a very designing knave, or a very unprincipled fool. As he gained nothing by the change but a dukedom for which he did not care, and as he cared for little else that the government could give him, we may acquit him of any very deep motives. On the other hand, his life and some of his letters show that, with a vast amount of bravado, he was sufficiently a coward. When supplicated, he was always obstinate; when neglected, always supplicant. Now it required some courage in those days to be a Jacobite. Perhaps he cared for nothing but to astonish and disgust everybody with the facility with which he could turn his coat, as a hippodromist does with the ease with which he changes his costume.

He was a boy and a peer, and he would make pretty play of his position.

He had considerable talents, and now, as he sat in the Irish House, devoted them entirely to the support of the government.

For the next four years he was employed, on the one hand in political, on the other in profligate, life. He shone in both; and was no less admired, by the wits of those days, for his speeches, his arguments, and his zeal, than for the utter disregard of public decency he displayed in his vices. Such a promising youth, adhering to the government, merited some mark of its esteem, and accordingly, before attaining the age of twenty-one, he was raised to a dukedom. Being of age, he took his seat in the English House of Lords, and had not been long there before he again turned coat, and came out in the light of a Jacobite hero. It was now that he gathered most of his laurels.

The Hanoverian monarch had been on the English throne some six years.

Had the Chevalier's attempt occurred at this period, it may be doubted if it would not have been successful. The 'Old Pretender' came too soon, the 'Young Pretender' too late. At the period of the first attempt, the public had had no time to contrast Stuarts and Guelphs: at that of the second, they had forgotten the one and grown accustomed to the other; but at the moment when our young duke appeared on the boards of the senate, the vices of the Hanoverians were beginning to draw down on them the contempt of the educated and the ridicule of the vulgar; and perhaps no moment could have been more favourable for advocating a restoration of the Stuarts. If Wharton had had as much energy and consistency as he had talent and impudence, he might have done much towards that desirable, or undesirable end.

The grand question at this time before the House was the trial of Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, demanded by Sir Robert Walpole. The man had a spirit almost as restless as his defender. The son of a man who might have been the original of the Vicar of Bray, he was very little of a poet, less of a priest, but a great deal of a politician. He was born in 1662, so that at this time he must have been nearly sixty years old.

He had had by no means a hard life of it, for family interest, together with eminent talents, procured him one appointment after another, till he reached the bench at the age of fifty-one, in the reign of Anne. He had already distinguished himself in several ways, most, perhaps, by controversies with Hoadly, and by sundry high-church motions. But after his elevation, he displayed his principles more boldly, refused to sign the Declaration of the Bishops, which was somewhat servilely made to a.s.sure George the First of the fidelity of the Established Church, suspended the curate of Gravesend for three years because he allowed the Dutch to have a service performed in his church, and even, it is said, on the death of Anne, offered to proclaim King James III., and head a procession himself in his lawn sleeves. The end of this and other vagaries was, that in 1722, the Government sent him to the Tower, on suspicion of being connected with a plot in favour of the Old Chevalier.

The case excited no little attention, for it was long since a bishop had been charged with high treason; it was added that his gaolers used him rudely; and, in short, public sympathy rather went along with him for a time. In March, 1723, a bill was presented to the Commons, for 'inflicting certain pains and penalties' on Francis, Lord Bishop of Rochester, and it pa.s.sed that House in April; but when carried up to the Lords, a defence was resolved on. The bill was read a third time on May 15th, and on that occasion the Duke of Wharton, then only twenty-four years old, rose and delivered a speech in favour of the bishop. This oration far more resembled that of a lawyer summing up the evidence than of a parliamentary orator enlarging on the general issue. It was remarkable for the clearness of its argument, the wonderful memory of facts it displayed, and the ease and rapidity with which it annihilated the testimony of various witnesses examined before the House. It was mild and moderate, able and sufficient, but seems to have lacked all the enthusiasm we might expect from one who was afterwards so active a partisan of the Chevalier's cause. In short, striking as it was, it cannot be said to give the duke any claim to the t.i.tle of a great orator; it would rather prove that he might have made a first-rate lawyer. It shows, however, that had he chosen to apply himself diligently to politics, he might have turned out a great leader of the Opposition.