6 rate the curiosity was in common between the high and the low. One of these fair ladies became Duchess of Hamilton. The world is still mad about the Gunnings: the Duchess of Hamilton was presented on Friday; the crowd was so great that even the noble mob in the drawingroom clambered upon chairs and tables to look at her. There are mobs at their doors to see them get into their chairs; and people go early to get places at the theatres when it is known they will be there.'* Ten years later there was another great sight to which all resorted-the Cock-lane Ghost. How characteristic of the period is the following description of a visit to the den of the ghost!"We set out from the opera, changed our clothes at Northumberland House, the Duke of York, Lady Northumberland, Lady Mary Coke, Lord Hertford, and I, all in one hackney-coach, and drove to the spot: it rained torrents; yet the lane was full of mob, and the house so full we could not get in; at last they discovered it was the Duke of York, and the company squeezed themselves into one another's pockets to make room for us. The house, which is borrowed, and to which the ghost has adjourned, is wretchedly small and miserable. When we opened the chamber, in which were fifty people, with no light but one tallow-candle at the end, we tumbled over the bed of the child to whom the ghost comes, and whom they are murdering by inches in such insufferable heat and stench. At the top of the room are ropes to dry clothes. I asked if we were to have rope-dancing between the acts? We had nothing. They told us, as they would at a puppetshow, that it would not come that night till seven in the morning, that is, when there are only 'prentices and old We stayed, however, till half an hour after one.'† Imagine a prince of the blood, two noble ladies, a peer, and the son of a prime minister, packing in one hackneycoach from Northumberland House on a winter's night, and in a dirty lane near Smithfield watching till half past * Horace Walpole to Mann, March 23, 1752. Horace Walpole to Montagu, February 2, 1762. women. one by the light of a tallow-candle, amidst fifty of the 'unwashed,' for the arrival of a ghost! In those days the great patron of executions was the fashionable George Selwyn; and this was the way he talked of such diversions: Some women were scolding him for going to see the execution [of Lord Lovat], and asked him, "how he could be such a barbarian to see the head cut of?" "Nay," says he, "if that was such a crime, I am sure I have made amends, for I went to see it sewed on again." When M'Lean, the highwayman, was under sentence of death in Newgate, he was a great attraction to the fashion able world. Lord Mountford, at the head of half White's, went the first day. **** But the chief whe personages have been to comfort and weep over this fallen hero are Lady Caroline Petersham and Miss Ashe.' These were the heroines of the minced chickens at Vauxhall; and we presume they did not visit the condemned cell to metamor phose the thief into a saint, as is the whim' of our own times. The real robbers were as fashionable in 1750 as their trumpery histories were in 1840. You can't corceive the ridiculous rage there is of going to Newgate: and the prints that are published of the malefactors, and the memoirs of their lives and deaths set forth with as much parade as-as-Marshal Turenne's-we have no generals worth making a parallel.' The visitors had abundant opportunities for the display of their sympathy:It is shocking to think what a shambles this country is grown! Seventeen were executed this morning.'§ Amidst such excitements, who can wonder that a man of talent and taste, as Walpole was, should often prefer pasting prints into a portfolio, or correcting proofs, at poor little Strawberry!' The reckless and improvident spirit of the period when Horace Walpole was an active member of the world of *Horace Walpole to Conway, April 16, 1747. Id. October 18, 1750. § Id. March 23, 1752. In fashion is strikingly shown in the rash, and we may say indecent, manner in which persons of rank rushed into marriage. The happiness of a life was the stake which the great too often trusted to something as uncertain as the cast of a die or the turn-up of a trump. It seems almost impossible that in London, eighty or ninety years ago only, such a being as a Fleet parson could have existed, who performed the marriage ceremonial at any hour of the day or night, in a public-house or a low lodging, without public notice or public witnesses, requiring no consent of parents, and asking only the names of the parties who sought to be united. We might imagine, at any rate, that such irreverend proceedings were confined to the lowest of the people. The Fleet parsons had not a monopoly of their trade. the fashionable locality of May Fair was a chapel in which one Keith presided, who advertised in the newspapers, and made, according to Walpole, a very bishopric of revenue.' This worthy was at last excommunicated for contempt of the Holy and Mother Church;' but the impudent varlet retaliated, and excommunicated at his own chapel Bishop Gibson, the Judge of the Ecclesiastical Court, and two reverend doctors. Keith was sent to prison, where he remained many years; but his shop flourished under the management of his shopmen, called Curates; and the public were duly apprised of its situation and prices:— To prevent mistakes, the little new chapel in May Fair, near Hyde Park Corner, is in the corner-house opposite to the City side of the great chapel, and within ten yards of it, and the minister and clerk live in the same cornerhouse where the little chapel is; and the licence on a crown stamp, minister and clerk's fees, together with the certificate, amount to one guinea, as heretofore, at any hour till four in the afternoon. And that it may be the better known, there is a porch at the door like a country church porch.** Keith issued from his prison a manifesto against the Act to prevent clandestine marriages, to which *Daily Post, July 20, 1744; quoted in Mr. Burn's valuable work on 'The Fleet Registers.' |