Curiosities of Impecuniosity. H. G. Somerville
can run a Frenchman through the body, sir?”
“I do not know,” said Coleridge, “as I never tried, but I’ll let a Frenchman run me through the body, before I’ll run away.”
“That will do,” said the general; and Coleridge was turned into the ranks.
Alexander Somerville, author of ‘Cobdenic Policy,’ ‘Conservative Science of Nations,’ &c., &c., was also driven to the extremity of enlisting under circumstances more or less humorous. Unlike Coleridge, Alexander Somerville was not of gentle birth, being, as he styles himself in ‘The Autobiography of a Working Man,’ “One who has whistled at the plough.” He received as a boy but scant education, being sent to a common day school where cruel discipline and unnecessary severity preponderated over learning. Though put to farm-work, where he was by turns carter, mower, stable-boy, thresher, wood-sawyer and excavator, his natural intelligence and love of books made him anxious to turn his face from the parish of Oldhamstocks, where he was brought up, in a westerly direction towards Edinburgh. When about eighteen years of age he was much interested in the Reform Bill of 1830, and gave evidence then of his enthusiasm for politics, became canvasser for a weekly newspaper, but does not appear to have succeeded in this vocation, for his circumstances were such that he wandered about moneyless; and meeting with an old chum they agreed to go and have a chat at any rate with the recruiting corporal of the dragoon regiment popularly known as the Scots Greys.
“My companion,” he says, “had seen the Greys in Dublin, and having a natural disposition to be charmed with the picturesque, was charmed with them. He knew where to enquire for the corporal, and having enquired, we found him in his lodging up a great many pairs of stairs, I do not know how many, stretched in his military cloak, on his bed. He said he was glad to see anybody upstairs in his little place, now that the regimental order had come out against moustachios; for since he had been ordered to shave his off, his wife had sat moping at the fireside, refusing all consolation to herself and all peace to him. ‘I ha’e had a weary life o’t,’ he said plaintively ‘since the order came out to shave the upper lip. She grat there. I’m sure she grat as if her heart would ha’e broken when she saw me the first day without the moustachios.’ Having listened to this and heard a confirmation of it from the lady herself, as also a hint that the corporal had been lying in bed half the day, when he should have been out looking for recruits, for each of whom he had a payment of ten shillings, we told him that we had come looking for him to offer ourselves as recruits. He looked at us for a few moments, and said if we ‘meant’ it he saw nothing about us to object to; and as neither seemed to have any beard from which moustachios could grow, he could only congratulate us on the order that had come out against them as we should not have to be at the expense of getting burnt corks to blacken our upper lips, to make us look uniform with those who wore hair. We assured the corporal that we were in earnest, and that we did mean to enlist, whereupon he began by putting the formal question, ‘Are you free, able and willing to serve his Majesty King William the Fourth?’
“But there was a hitch, two shillings were requisite to enlist two recruits, and there was only one shilling. We proposed that he should enlist one of us with it, and that this one should then lend it to him to enlist the other. But his wife would not have the enlistment done in that way. She said ‘That would not be law: and a bonny thing it would be to do it without it being law. Na na,’ she continued, ‘it maun be done as the law directs.’ The corporal made a movement as if he would take us out with him to some place where he could get another shilling but she thought it possible that another of the recruiting party might share the prize with him—take one of us or both: so she detained him, shut the door on us, locked it, took the key with her and went in search of the King’s requisite coin. Meanwhile as my friend was impatient I allowed him to take precedence of me, and have the ceremony performed with the shilling then present. On the return of the corporal’s wife, who though younger than he in years seemed to be an ‘older soldier,’ I also became the King’s man.”
In connection with music the name of Loder, the clever composer (author of the ‘Night Dancers’ and other charming musical compositions), recalls an interesting episode in his life revealing a remarkable shift to which he was put. One evening when leaving his lodgings with a friend named Jay for the purpose of enjoying a quiet little dinner at Simpson’s, he received an ominous tap on the shoulder from one of those individuals whose attentions are not appetising, since without you can settle the little amount, they require your immediate company. Loder was by no means able to satisfy the law’s demands, and the sheriff’s officer refused to lose sight of his man, even though “he had a most particular appointment;” so the only thing to be done was to invite the bailiff to join them at dinner. After the repast was concluded the party repaired to Sloman’s, a notorious spunging-house in Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane, when just as Jay was taking leave of Loder the latter remembered having something in his pocket which might be turned to account. It was a song by Samuel Lover. “Goodbye, old fellow,” said Loder. “Come to-morrow morning, and see what I shall have ready.” As soon as his friend had gone he set to work and set Lover’s words of ‘The Three Stages of Love’ to music, which was a most successful and satisfactory way of composing himself to sleep, for when Jay called in the morning he received a manuscript which, when taken to Chappell’s, realised £30. The proceeds enabled Loder to pay the debt, and dine with his friend at Simpson’s in the afternoon, without the unwelcome guest of the preceding day.
John Palmer, the original Joseph Surface, in which character he was considered unapproachable, was a man evidently of the greatest plausibility. When complimented by a friend upon the ease of his address, he said, “No, I really don’t give myself the credit of being so irresistible as you have fancied me. There is one thing, though, which I think I am able to do. Whenever I am arrested I can always persuade the sheriff’s officer to bail me.”
Contemporary with John Palmer was another celebrated comedian, also addicted to more extravagant tastes than his income warranted—Charles Bannister, who made his first appearance in London with Palmer in a piece called the “Orators” in May 1762. In this he gave musical imitations, but the performances taking place in the mornings, his convivial habits over night precluded him from shining as he might have done; a fact which was noticed by Foote, the manager. To this Bannister replied, “I knew it would be so; I am all right at night, but neither I, nor my voice, can get up in the morning.” He was invariably in difficulties: on the death of Sir Theodosius Boughton, the topic of the hour in 1781, as he was said to have been poisoned by laurel water, Bannister, said “Pooh! Don’t tell me of your laurel leaves; I fear none but a bay-leaf” (bailiff). Once when returning from Epsom to town in a gig, accompanied by a friend, they were unable to pay the toll at Kennington Gate, and the man would not let them pass. Bannister immediately offered to sing a song, and struck up ‘The Tempest of War.’ His voice was heard afar, the gate being soon thronged by voters returning from Brentford, who encored his effort, and the turnpike-man, calling him a noble fellow, expressed his willingness to pay “fifty tolls for him at any gate.”
John Joseph Winckelmann, who became one of the most famous of German writers on classical antiquities, was the son of a poor cobbler, who not only had to struggle with poverty, but with disease which, while his boy was yet young, compelled him to avail himself of the hospital. When placed at the burgh seminary there, the rector was struck with young Winckelmann’s dawning genius, and by accepting less than the usual fee, and getting him placed in the choir, contrived that the boy should receive all the advantages the school afforded. The rector continued to take the greatest interest in his apt pupil, made him usher, and when seventeen years of age, sent him to Berlin with a letter of introduction to the rector of a gymnasium, with whom he remained twelve months. While there Winckelmann heard that the library of the celebrated Fabricius was about to be sold at Hamburgh, and he determined to proceed there on foot and be present at the sale. He set out accordingly, asking charity (a practice not considered derogatory to struggling students in Germany) of the clergymen whose houses he passed; and, having collected in this way sufficient to purchase some of his darling poets at the sale, returned to Berlin in great glee. After studying at Halle and elsewhere for six years, his early passion for wandering revived, and fascinated with a fresh perusal of Cæsar’s ‘Commentaries,’ he began in the summer of 1740 a