Volume Ii Part 5 (1/2)
I will add but a word or two more. I am criticised for the expression _tinker up_ in the preface. Is this one of those that you object to? I own I think such a low expression, placed to ridicule an absurd instance of wise folly, very forcible. Replace it with an elevated word or phrase, and to my conception it becomes as flat as possible.
George Selwyn says I may, if I please, write Historic Doubts on the present Duke of G[loucester] too. Indeed, they would be doubts, for I know nothing certainly.
Will you be so kind as to look into Leslie ”De Rebus Scotorum,” and see if Perkin's Proclamation is there, and if there, how authenticated. You will find in Speed my reason for asking this. I have written in such a hurry, I believe you will scarce be able to read my letter--and as I have just been writing French, perhaps the sense may not be clearer than the writing. Adieu!
_WILKES IS RETURNED M.P. FOR MIDDLEs.e.x--RIOTS IN LONDON--VIOLENCE OF THE MOB._
TO SIR HORACE MANN.
ARLINGTON STREET, _Thursday, March_ 31, 1768.
I have received your letter, with the extract of that from Mr.
Mackenzie. I do not think any honours will be bestowed yet. The Peerages are all postponed to an indefinite time. If you are in a violent hurry, you may pet.i.tion the ghosts of your neighbours--Masaniello and the Gracchi. The spirit of one of them walks here; nay, I saw it go by my window yesterday, at noon, in a hackney chair.
_Friday._
I was interrupted yesterday. The ghost is laid for a time in a red sea of port and claret. The spectre is the famous Wilkes. He appeared the moment the Parliament was dissolved. The Ministry despise him. He stood for the City of London, and was the last on the poll of seven candidates, none but the mob, and most of them without votes, favouring him. He then offered himself to the county of Middles.e.x. The election came on last Monday. By five in the morning a very large body of Weavers, &c., took possession of Piccadilly, and the roads and turnpikes leading to Brentford, and would suffer n.o.body to pa.s.s without blue c.o.c.kades, and papers inscribed ”_No. 45, Wilkes and Liberty_.” They tore to pieces the coaches of Sir W. Beauchamp Proctor, and Mr. Cooke, the other candidates, though the latter was not there, but in bed with the gout, and it was with difficulty that Sir William and Mr. Cooke's cousin got to Brentford. There, however, lest it should be declared a void election, Wilkes had the sense to keep everything quiet. But, about five, Wilkes, being considerably ahead of the other two, his mob returned to town and behaved outrageously. They stopped every carriage, scratched and spoilt several with writing all over them ”No. 45,”
pelted, threw dirt and stones, and forced everybody to huzza for Wilkes.
I did but cross Piccadilly at eight, in my coach with a French Monsieur d'Angeul, whom I was carrying to Lady Hertford's; they stopped us, and bid us huzza. I desired him to let down the gla.s.s on his side, but, as he was not alert, they broke it to shatters. At night they insisted, in several streets, on houses being illuminated, and several Scotch refusing, had their windows broken. Another mob rose in the City, and Harley, the present Mayor, being another Sir William Walworth, and having acted formerly and now with great spirit against Wilkes, and the Mansion House not being illuminated, and he out of town, they broke every window, and tried to force their way into the House. The Trained Bands were sent for, but did not suffice. At last a party of guards, from the Tower, and some lights erected, dispersed the tumult. At one in the morning a riot began before Lord Bute's house, in Audley Street, though illuminated. They flung two large flints into Lady Bute's chamber, who was in bed, and broke every window in the house. Next morning, Wilkes and Cooke were returned members. The day was very quiet, but at night they rose again, and obliged almost every house in town to be lighted up, even the Duke of c.u.mberland's and Princess Amelia's. About one o'clock they marched to the d.u.c.h.ess of Hamilton's in Argyle Buildings (Lord Lorn being in Scotland). She was obstinate, and would not illuminate, though with child, and, as they hope, of an heir to the family, and with the Duke, her son, and the rest of her children in the house. There is a small court and parapet wall before the house: they brought iron crows, tore down the gates, pulled up the pavement, and battered the house for three hours. They could not find the key of the back door, nor send for any a.s.sistance. The night before, they had obliged the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Northumberland to give them beer, and appear at the windows, and drink ”Wilkes's health.” They stopped and opened the coach of Count Seilern, the Austrian amba.s.sador, who has made a formal complaint, on which the Council met on Wednesday night, and were going to issue a Proclamation, but, hearing that all was quiet, and that only a few houses were illuminated in Leicester Fields from the terror of the inhabitants, a few constables were sent with orders to extinguish the lights, and not the smallest disorder has happened since.
In short, it has ended like other election riots, and with not a quarter of the mischief that has been done in some other towns.
There are, however, difficulties to come. Wilkes has notified that he intends to surrender himself to his outlawry, the beginning of next term, which comes on the 17th of this month. There is said to be a flaw in the proceedings, in which case his election will be good, though the King's Bench may fine or imprison him on his former sentence. In my own opinion, the House of Commons is the place where he can do the least hurt, for he is a wretched speaker, and will sink to contempt, like Admiral Vernon,[1] who I remember just such an illuminated hero, with two birthdays in one year. You will say, he can write better than Vernon--true; and therefore his case is more desperate. Besides, Vernon was rich: Wilkes is undone; and, though he has had great support, his patrons will be sick of maintaining him. He must either sink to poverty and a jail, or commit new excesses, for which he will get knocked on the head. The Scotch are his implacable enemies to a man. A Rienzi[2] cannot stop: their histories are summed up in two words--a triumph and an a.s.sa.s.sination.
[Footnote 1: In 1739 our Government had declared war against Spain.
”There was at the time among the members of the Opposition in the House of Commons a naval captain named Vernon, a man of bold, bl.u.s.tering tongue, and presumed therefore by many to be of a corresponding readiness of action. In some of the debates he took occasion to inveigh against the timidity of our officers, who had hitherto, as he phrased it, spared Porto Bello; and he affirmed that he could take it himself with a squadron of six s.h.i.+ps. The Ministry caught at the prospect of delivering themselves from his harangues, and gave him half as many s.h.i.+ps again as he desired, with the temporary rank of Vice-admiral; and on July, 1739, he sailed for the American coast. When he reached it he found that the news of the rupture of the peace had not yet reached the governor of the city, and that it was in no condition to resist an attack. Many of the guns were dismounted; and for those that were serviceable there was not sufficient ammunition. A fire of musketry alone sufficed to win the fort that protected the entrance to the harbour, and an equally brief cannonade drove the garrison from the castle. The governor had no further means of defence; and thus in forty-eight hours after his arrival Vernon had accomplished his boast, and was master of the place.” In a clever paper in the ”Cambridge Museum Philologic.u.m” Bishop Thirlwall compared the man and his exploit to Cleon and his achievement at Sphacteria in the Peloponnesian War. (See the Editor's ”History of the British Navy,” c. 9.)]
[Footnote 2: ”_Rienzi._”
Then turn we to her latest tribune's name, From her ten thousand tyrants turn to thee, Redeemer of dark centuries of shame, The friend of Petrarch, hope of Italy, Rienzi; last of Romans.
(”Childe Harold,” iv. 114.)
His story is told with almost more than his usual power by Gibbon (c.
70). Born in the lowest cla.s.s, ”he could inherit neither dignity nor fortune; and the gift of a liberal education, which they painfully bestowed, was the cause of his glory and his untimely end.” He, while still little more than a youth, had established such a reputation for eloquence, that he was one of the deputies sent by the Commons to Avignon to plead with the Pope (Clement VI.). The state of Rome, aggravated by the absence of the Pope, was miserable in the extreme. The citizens ”were equally oppressed by the arrogance of the n.o.bles and the corruption of the magistrates.” Rienzi recalled to their recollection ”the ancient glories of the Senate and people from whom all legal authority was derived. He raised the enthusiasm of the populace; collected a band of conspirators, at whose head, clad in complete armour, he marched to the Capitol, and a.s.sumed the government of the city, declining ”the names of Senator or Consul, of King or Emperor, and preferring the ancient and modern appellation of Tribune.... Never perhaps has the energy and effect of a single mind been more remarkably felt than in the sudden, though transient, reformation of Rome by the Tribune Rienzi. A den of robbers was converted to the discipline of a camp or convent. Patient to hear, swift to redress, inexorable to punish, his tribunal was always accessible to the poor and the stranger; nor could birth, nor dignity, nor the immunities of the Church protect the offender or his accomplices.” But his head was turned by his success. He even caused himself to be crowned, while ”his wife, his son, and his uncle, a barber, exposed the contrast of vulgar manners and princely expense; and, without acquiring the majesty, Rienzi degenerated into the vices of a king.” The people became indignant; the n.o.bles whom he had degraded found it easy to raise the public feeling against him.
Before the end of the same year (1347) he was forced to fly from Rome, and lived in exile or imprisonment at Avignon seven years; and returned to Rome in 1354, only to be murdered in an insurrection.]
I must finish, for Lord Hertford is this moment come in, and insists on my dining with the Prince of Monaco, who is come over to thank the King for the presents his Majesty sent him on his kindness and attention to the late Duke of York. You shall hear the suite of the above histories, which I sit quietly and look at, having nothing more to do with the storm, and sick of politics, but as a spectator, while they pa.s.s over the stage of the world. Adieu!
_FLEETING FAME OF WITTICISMS--”THE MYSTERIOUS MOTHER.”_
TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.
STRAWBERRY HILL, _April_ 15, 1768.
Mr. Chute tells me that you have taken a new house in Squireland, and have given yourself up for two years more to port and parsons. I am very angry, and resign you to the works of the devil or the church, I don't care which. You will get the gout, turn Methodist, and expect to ride to heaven upon your own great toe. I was happy with your telling me how well you love me, and though I don't love loving, I could have poured out all the fulness of my heart to such an old and true friend; but what am I the better for it, if I am to see you but two or three days in the year? I thought you would at last come and while away the remainder of life on the banks of the Thames in gaiety and old tales. I have quitted the stage, and the Clive[1] is preparing to leave it. We shall neither of us ever be grave: dowagers roost all around us, and you could never want cards or mirth. Will you end like a fat farmer, repeating annually the price of oats, and discussing stale newspapers? There have you got, I hear, into an old gallery, that has not been glazed since Queen Elizabeth, and under the nose of an infant Duke and d.u.c.h.ess, that will understand you no more than if you wore a ruff and a coif, and talk to them of a call of Serjeants the year of the Spanish Armada! Your wit and humour will be as much lost upon them, as if you talked the dialect of Chaucer; for with all the divinity of wit, it grows out of fas.h.i.+on like a fardingale. I am convinced that the young men at White's already laugh at George Selwyn's _bon mots_ only by tradition. I avoid talking before the youth of the age as I would dancing before them; for if one's tongue don't move in the steps of the day, and thinks to please by its old graces, it is only an object of ridicule, like Mrs. Hobart in her cotillon. I tell you we should get together, and comfort ourselves with reflecting on the brave days that we have known--not that I think people were a jot more clever or wise in our youth than they are now; but as my system is always to live in a vision as much as I can, and as visions don't increase with years, there is nothing so natural as to think one remembers what one does not remember.