Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

hanged to-morrow.' 'That is true," says the other, 'but the ordinary sups with him, and you know he is a devil of a fellow for butter.' If the continental air has not altered you, this will please you; at least I have known the time when you have gone a good way for such a morsel.”

The best stories regarding his taste for executions are related by Walpole, and well known. Innumerable are the jokes levelled at him for this peculiarity. The best is the first Lord Holland's, who was dying. "The next time Mr. Selwyn calls, show him up. If I am alive, I shall be delighted to see him; and if I am dead, he will be glad to see me." Lord Holland was not the only statesman of the period who could joke under such circumstances. Mr. Legge (the story is Gilly Williams's) told a very fat fellow who came to see him the day he died, "Sir, you are a great weight; but, let me tell you, you are in at the death." Another of the same gentleman's stories is probably meant as a warning"I remember a man seeing a military execution in Hyde Park, and when it was over he turned about and said, 'By G—, I thought there was more in it!' He shot himself the next morning."

The writer of a letter in the Gentleman's Magazine, for April, 1791, supposed to be the Rev. Dr. Warner,.makes a gallant effort to rescue Selwyn's memory from what he terms an unjust and injurious imputation. After urging that nothing could be more abhorrent from Selwyn's character, and that he had the most tender and benevolent of hearts, he thus proceeds: "This idle but wide-spread idea of his be

ing fond of executions (of which he never in his life attended but at one, and that rather accidentally from its lying in his way, than from design) arose from the pleasantries which it pleased Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, and the then Lord Chesterfield, to propagate from that one attendance, for the amusement of their common friends. Of the easiness with which such things sat upon him, you may judge from the following circumstance, which I have heard him more than once relate. Sir Charles was telling a large company a similar story to that of his attending upon executions, with many strokes of rich humor received with great glee, before his face, when a gentleman who sat next to the object of their mirth, said to him in a low voice, 'It is strange, George, so intimate as we are, that I should never have heard of this story before.' 'Not at all strange,' he replied in the same voice, for Sir Charles has just invented it, and knows that I will not, by contradiction, spoil the pleasure of the company he is so highly entertaining.' And such was his goodnature in everything." This may account for the pleasantries, but hardly for the facts stated by Walpole and others; or for such an epistle as the following: "I can with great pleasure inform you, my dear Selwyn, that the head is ordered to be delivered on the first application made on your part. The expense is a little more than a guinea; the person who calls should pay for it. Adieu, mon cher mon

dain. T. PHILLIPS."

[ocr errors]

As to tenderness and benevolence, there surely was no necessity for assuming that the taste in question was irreconcilable with such qualities. It was simply

a craving for strong excitement; a modification of the feeling which still induces the Spanish women to attend bull-fights, and formerly lured the gentlest and noblest of the sex to tournaments. Moreover, people were by no means so refined or squeamish in Sel wyn's time as now, when the spectacle of bloody heads over Temple Bar would not be tolerated for ar hour. Crowds of all classes pressed round to gaze or those of the rebel lords in 1746; and telescopes were fixed for the use of the curious at a halfpenny a peep. "I remember " says Johnson, as reported by Boswell, once being with Goldsmith in Westminster Abbey. While we surveyed the Poets' Corner, I said to him,

66

'Forsitan et nomen nostrum miscebitur istis.'

When we got to Temple Bar, he stopped me, pointed to the heads upon it, and slyly whispered me,

'Forsitan et nomen nostrum miscebitur istis." "

Nay, not much more than twenty years ago, it was customary for the governor of Newgate to give a breakfast to thirteen or fourteen persons of distinction on the morning of an execution. The party attended the hanging, breakfasted, and then attended the cutting down, but few had any appetite for the second and third parts of the ceremonial. A very pretty girl (the governor's daughter, we believe), who spoke of the sufferers as our people," distributed the tea and coffee. She assured us, in confidence, that the first call of the incipient amateur was invariably for brandy; and that the only guest who never

66

failed to do justice to the broiled kidneys (for which she was famous) was the ordinary.

Storer (one of the Selwyn set) writes in 1774, "You will get by your edition of Madame de Sévigné's Letters enough to pay for as much Vin de Grave as ever she drank en Bretagne." Selwyn rivalled, or outran Walpole in his admiration of Madame de Sévigné, and paid a visit to her residence, Les Rochers (excellently described, as at present existing, in Lady Morgan's "Book of the Boudoir; ") but we find no other proof of direct literary intentions on his part; and there is consequently no ground for disputing the applicability of the remark with which Mr. Jesse introduces the topic of his wit:

:

"Perhaps no individual has ever acquired so general a reputation for mere wit as George Selwyn. Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, Lords Dorset, Rochester, Chesterfield, and Hervey, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, Bubb Doddington, Sheridan, and (perhaps the most brilliant luminary in this galaxy of wit) the late Theodore Hook, were men who had, one and all, distinguished themselves in following the paths of literature, while more than one of them had rendered himself eminent in the senate. Thus the character which each maintained for wit was supported by the adventitious aid of a reputation for literary or oratorical talents, while the fame of George Selwyn stands exclusively on his character for social pleasantry and conversational wit.”

Not quite, we must observe. It stood also on his three seats in Parliament, and his family connections. These, at the very outset, procured him that vantageground to which Sheridan and Hook were obliged to win their way at the risk of fretting a thousand vanities. This may not apply to the rest on Mr. Jesse's list; but then it is a very imperfect one, and

admits of large additions-as (omitting all living examples) Foote, Wilkes, Jekyll, Curran, Colman.

Dr. Johnson disliked Foote; but when one of the company, at a dinner party at Dilly's, called him a merry-andrew, a buffoon, the sage at once declared. that he had wit, and added, "The first time I was in company with Foote was at Fitzherbert's. Having no good opinion of the fellow, I was resolved not to be pleased; and it is very difficult to please a man against his will. I went on taking my dinner pretty sullenly, affecting not to mind him. But the dog was so very comical, that I was obliged to lay down my knife and fork, throw myself back on my chair, and fairly laugh it out. No, sir, he was irresistible." It was said to be impossible to take Foote unawares, or put him out. As he was telling a story at a fine dinner party, a gentleman, to try him, pulled him by the coat-tail, and told him that his handkerchief was hanging out. "Thank you, sir," said Foote, replacing it, "you know the company better than I do,” and went on with his story.

Wilkes's fame may be rested on his reply to Lord Sandwich, and his fling at Thurlow. Jekyll needs no trumpeter. Lord Byron says of Colman, "If I had to choose, and could not have both at a time, I would say, 'Let me begin the evening with Sheridan, and finish it with Colman.'" Of Curran he says, “I have met him at Holland House; he beats everybody his imagination is beyond human, and his humor (it is difficult to define what is wit) perfect. Then he has fifty faces, and twice as many voices, when he mimics." This, we may add, was

« ZurückWeiter »