Devonshire Characters and Strange Events

The man arrived, and Peele entreated him of his courtesy to leave the lute with him, that he might amuse himself with it in the evening. The barber consented, and departed. George was now left alone with two of his comrades, and he bade them clear out of the house speedily. Then going down into the court he looked at the clouds, and complained of the weather. He was inclined for a stroll. Thereupon the hostess fetched her husband’s best holiday cloak. George thanked her for the loan, called for a cup of sack, tossed it off to success to the “Three Pigeons,” and walked away – to the river where his comrades were awaiting him, and they rowed down to London, where they all met, and sold the horse and the mare, the gown and the lute.

Anthony Nit, the barber, was not satisfied to lose his lute, made inquiries, and found out who had cheated him of it; and pursued George Peele to Town and lighted on him in an alehouse in Seacoal Lane. Peele was shabbily dressed in a worn green jerkin, and had on his head a Spanish platter-fashioned hat, and was then engaged on a peck of oysters. George was not a little abashed at the sight of the barber, but showed no signs of being disconcerted. On the contrary he at once said, “My honest barber, welcome to London. I partly know your business; you come for your lute, do you not?” “Indeed, sir,” quoth Anthony Nit, “that is the purpose of my coming.”

“And believe me,” said Peele, “you shall not lose your labour; I pray you fall to and eat an oyster, and I will go with you presently; for a gentleman in the city, a man of great worship, borrowed it of me for the use of his daughter. But, sir, if you will go along with me to the gentleman’s house you shall have your lute. Had you not come to reclaim it I assure you I would have sent it to you; for you must understand that all that was done at Brentford among us mad gentlemen was but a jest.”

Then Peele said to Barber Anthony, “I really am not in a fit costume to appear in a gentleman’s house. I pray you let me have your cloak and hat, and you put on my green jerkin and the Spanish hat. I doubt, accoutred as I am, that I would be allowed admittance.” The barber agreed, and changed garments with Peele, who led him to an alderman’s house, and knocked at the door, and asked to see the master. Peele was well known there as master of the revels and overseer of the pageants, and was readily admitted.

“Porter,” said he, “let my friend remain with you till I have done my business with the master.”

“Certainly,” said the porter, “and he shall take a small dinner with me.”

Peele was shown into the alderman’s room, and he said to him, “I want you to do me a favour. There is a bum-bailiff in your hall, who has me under arrest for a little sum. Allow me to slip out at your garden door unperceived.” The alderman laughed and consented. So Peele evaded in the cloak and hat of the barber, who failed to get them as well as his lute.

Here is a specimen of manners in the reign of Elizabeth. Peele was invited to supper at the White House in Friday Street, London, by some of his friends. On his way he met an old comrade who was “down on his luck” and had not a shilling wherewith to get his supper.

“I wish that I could take you with me, but I cannot,” said George. “I am an invited guest, and besides, you are in rags. However, I will get you a supper if you will do what I bid.”

Whilst seated at the entertainment, his needy friend pushed into the room and made up to Peele.

“You scoundrel,” shouted the latter, “what are you doing here?”

“I pray you, sir, hear my errand,” pleaded the man.

“Not I, you slave; get you gone!” and snatching a roasted rabbit from the dish, he threw it at him.

“You use me very rudely,” said the man.

“You dunghole – will you outface me!” roared Peele, and snatching up a second rabbit threw it at his head, and then a loaf. After that he drew his dagger and made as though he would stab the man, but his friends interposed. The fellow picked up the rabbits and the bread and ran away with them. So, by this shift, Peele helped his friend to a supper, and was not suspected by the company.

Peele’s Merry Conceited Jests was first published in 1607. Other editions appeared in 1626, 1627, 1657, and 1671. There is also an undated edition. The latest reprint is in Bullen’s Works of George Peele, London, J. C. Nimmo, 1878.

His Merry Conceited Jests shows him to have been a great rogue. That he was a clever man and well educated is undoubted. He wrote several plays, but only some have been preserved, such as The Arraignment of Paris, 1584; The Old Wives’ Tale, 1595; Edward I, 1593; David and Bathsheba, 1599; The Turkish Mahomet and Hiren the Fair Greek, not published at the time. The Battle of Alcazar has been already mentioned. He also composed pageants that were performed at the inauguration of the chief magistrates of the city of London. One composed for Sir Wolstone Dixie, Lord Mayor of London, 29 October, 1595, is curious, as it describes the flourishing condition of the metropolis in the days of Queen Elizabeth. About 1593 Peele seems to have been taken into the patronage of the Earl of Northumberland, to whom he dedicated in that year The Honour of the Garter. In The Puritan, a play attributed but erroneously to Shakespeare, and acted by the children of S. Paul’s, printed in 1607, is a character, George Pieboard, that was meant to be George Peele. Peele died before the year 1598, and left behind him a widow and a daughter.

In 1591 Queen Elizabeth visited Theobalds. Lord Burleigh had lost his mother in 1587, and his wife, to whom he was deeply attached, in 1589; and his daughter, Lady Oxford, had also expired, and depressed by his misfortunes, he retired in 1591 to Theobalds. Queen Elizabeth, to revive his spirits, visited him there; and Peele was commissioned to write the speeches delivered by Robert Cecil, dressed as a hermit, and others, to be addressed to the Queen. Besides the hermit, another performer was the gardener, and a third the molecatcher. The latter begins, “Good Lady, and the best that ever I saw, or any shall, give me leave to tell a plain tale in which there is no device, but desert enough,” and it ends, “Now, for that the Gardiner twitteth me with my vocation, I could prove it a mystery not mechanical, and tell a tale of the Giant’s daughter which was turned to a mole because she would eat fairer bread than is made of wheat, wear finer clothes than is made of wool, drink sweeter wine than is made of grapes; why she was blind, and yet light of hearing; how good clerks told me that moles in fields are like ill subjects in commonwealths, which are always turning up the place in which they are bred. But I will not trouble your Majesty, but every day pray on my knees that those that be heavers at your state may come to a mole’s blessing – a knock on the pate and a swing on a tree.”

PETER PINDAR

John Wolcot, who published his poems under the sobriquet of Peter Pindar, was perhaps the most scurrilous poet in a scurrilous age. If this were a book of Minor Worthies of Devon, I should hesitate about admitting one who was in nothing worthy, but possessed wit caustic and cutting. He was as witty and not so coarse as Swift; witty but not so terse as Pope, and also without Pope’s fine touch.

John Wolcot was the fourth child of Alexander Wolcot by Mary Ryder his wife, and was born at Dodbrooke by Kingsbridge, baptized 9 May, 1738. His father was a country surgeon and the son of a surgeon. The Wolcot family was ancient; it had its origin at Wolcot in Thrushelton, where a moor still bears the name of Wollacot from a farm near by; the heiress of the eldest branch carried Wollacot to the family of Bidlake of Bidlake. A junior branch settled at Chagford, where “John Wolcot for his good service in ye Warres had an addition given him to his Armes, on Chief or, a lis betw. 2 Annulets.” One branch had a residence at Butterstone in Hemyock, where it remained for several generations. The lineal descent of John Wolcot, son of Alexander, from the heraldic family of that name has not been made out, but there can be little doubt that he was so descended.

Alexander Wolcot died 14 June, 1751, and John was left to the care of his uncle, John Wolcot, of Fowey. He was educated at the Kingsbridge Grammar School, and afterwards at Liskeard and Bodmin. In or about 1760 he was sent to France for a twelvemonth to acquire French. He does not seem to have been comfortable there, and he retained through life a distaste for the Gallic people: —

I hate the shrugging dogs,
I’ve lived among them, ate their frogs.

It was decided that he should be a surgeon, as had been his father and grandfather before him, and he went in 1762, to London, and lodged with his maternal uncle, Mr. Giddy, of Penzance. In 1764 he returned to his uncle at Fowey, with whom he lived as assistant till 1767. On 8 September of this year he graduated M.D. at Aberdeen.

Wolcot was connected, it is not clear how, with Sir William Trelawny of Trelawny, Bart., and on Sir William’s appointment in 1767 as Governor of Jamaica, Wolcot was, by his influence, appointed to accompany him as physician. Sir William had succeeded to the baronetcy in 1762, on the death of his cousin Sir Harry Trelawny. Sir Harry had married his cousin Letitia, daughter of Sir Jonathan Trelawny, and Sir William married Letitia, daughter of Sir Harry and Letitia. There was a saying —

Trelawne, her course ’mid cousins run,
Shall weep for many a first-born son,

and when Captain William fell in love with his cousin Letitia he and she knew that their union would be strongly opposed, indeed certainly forbidden, by her parents. Accordingly he prevailed on her to marry him in private, and this was done by her disguising herself in male attire, and being married to him privately one evening in the church, she dressed as a boy.

In Jamaica Wolcot found that there was but little opportunity for him to earn much by his profession, and Sir William proposed to him to take Holy Orders, so that he might appoint him to the rich benefice of S. Anne in the island. Wolcot, without the smallest vocation for Orders, looking only to the monetary value of the living, practically a sinecure, returned home in 1769 and was ordained deacon 24 June in that year, and priest on the following day, by the Bishop of London. Thus equipped he returned to Jamaica in March, 1770, hoping to find the incumbent of S. Anne’s dead – he had left when the man was ailing. But to his vast disgust the rector of S. Anne’s had taken on a new spell of life, and did not at all see his way to vacate the fat benefice to oblige Wolcot. John Wolcot was now given the incumbency of Vere, but lived most of his time in the Governor’s house, leaving a hired deputy to perform the duties of his cure.

Finding that there was little prospect of getting S. Anne’s he threw aside his Orders, reverted to his profession, and was appointed Physician-General to the troops on the island 21 May, 1770. He lived on terms of close friendship with the Trelawny family, where his broad humour, his sarcastic sallies, and his witty stories made him a delightful companion at the table over the wine.

“I was invited,” said he, “to sup with a rich planter and his wife. During the repast, my friend desired a female slave in waiting to mix some toddy, on which the black girl, in her peculiar way, asked him if it was ‘to be drinkey for dry, or drinkey for drunkey.’ When our supper was ended, and our water being exhausted, the planter sent his wife a short distance from the house for a fresh supply. The thunder and lightning being excessive during her absence, I said to him, ‘Why did you not send that girl (the slave) for water on such a night as this, instead of exposing your wife to the storm?’ ‘Oh, no,’ replied he, ‘that would never do. That slave cost me forty pounds.’”

Miss Anne Trelawny was not a little simple and credulous, and Wolcot delighted in hoaxing her. On one occasion, he informed her that a cherub had been caught in the Blue Mountains, and had been put in a cage with a parrot. Before morning, unhappily, the parrot had pecked out the eyes of the poor cherub, all which the lady believed as an indisputable fact. “The Nymph of Tauris,” which was printed in the Annual Register for 1773, was written by Wolcot on the death of this young lady, which occurred in Jamaica.

Sir William Trelawny also died in Jamaica on 11 December, 1772, whereupon Wolcot obtained leave from the new Governor, Dalling, 20 February, 1773, to return to England, accompanying Lady Trelawny, and it was thought not improbable by some that the lady would dry her tears and take Wolcot as her second husband, but death put an end to this scheme, if ever entertained, as she died in the month of August ensuing.

Dr. Wolcot had now entirely dropped his clerical character. He settled at Truro, where he established himself with a view to practising as a doctor. His peculiar treatment, which consisted in giving his fever patients doses of cold water, and his openly proclaimed opinion that a physician did more harm than good by cupping, bleeding, clystering, and by the administration of boluses and draughts, as also that the only good he could effect was by nudging on Dame Nature in the back when slow in recovering the sick, raised a storm against him among his fellow practitioners, and involved him in disputes. Polwhele speaks highly of his medical abilities. “I can say with truth that he had the credit not only of a skilful, but of a benevolent physician. In fevers, he was uncommonly successful. From consumption many were rescued by his hand who had been given up as irrecoverable. As a physician he prescribed medicines; he did more, he examined them, not trusting to the apothecary; and sometimes detected with indignation a cheap medicine substituted for a costly one. He was no favourite with the apothecaries and druggists of the place; but his merit, bearing all before it, showed the impotence of their resentment.”

He quarrelled also with the Corporation of Truro, and when that body attempted to avenge the lampoons he had written upon their vindictive management in planting parish apprentices on him, he removed to Helston in 1779, leaving behind him a characteristic letter: “Gentlemen, your Blunderbuss has missed fire. – Yours, John Wolcot.”

At Truro he had been allowed to drop in occasionally at Polwhele, but the old Mr. Polwhele was always uneasy with him at table, lest he should launch out into gross and unseemly jests and tales.

From Helston he moved to Exeter, practising, but meeting there with small success. At Exeter he made the acquaintance of William Jackson, the organist of the cathedral, and composer, and for him he wrote songs to set to music.

Owing to the success of his songs, Wolcot shifted to London in 1778, to devote himself wholly to the Muse. He took with him young Opie, whose abilities he had recognized; and it really was a token of great good nature that he endured the society of that “unlicked cub of a Carpenter Opie,” as Polwhele calls him, “who was seen now ludicrously exhibited by his keeper, Wolcot, – a wild animal of St. Agnes, caught among the tin works. Not to pick his teeth with a fork at dinner-time, nor at breakfast to ‘clap his vingers’ into the sugar-basin, etc., were instructions of Wolcot at a subsequent stage of Opie’s life when breakfast-rooms and saloons and drawing-rooms were thrown open to his excellence.

“At his first setting out at Falmouth, where it was Wolcot’s pride to exhibit him, he collected upwards of thirty guineas; and Wolcot was one day surprised to see him rolling about on the floor, where a quantity of money lay scattered. ‘See here (says Opie), here be I, rolling in gold.’”

Wolcot had never cared for his profession of medicine, and he was glad to shake it off. And now young Opie was ready for making his way in Town. Wolcot had first become acquainted with the young painter at the house of Mr. Zankwell, at Mithian, in 1775; he took him to his own house at Truro, provided the necessary material, gave him instructions and advice, for Wolcot himself handled the brush and palette, and when fully satisfied with the developing genius of Opie, persuaded him to move with him to London in 1781. An agreement was entered into between him and his protégé, by which both were to share equally in the profits made by the artist by the sale of his pictures. This was not an arrangement likely to last. Wolcot very highly estimated, and justly so, the advantage he had been to Opie, not only in providing for his artistic training, but also by getting him orders in Town; but Opie, as his fame grew, and his prices rose, was reluctant to continue the bargain and halve his profits with Wolcot. The origin of the quarrel is sometimes attributed to Opie’s having passed disparaging criticism on some of Wolcot’s paintings; but this was, if it took place, only one element in the contention that caused a final breach. Wolcot had indeed laid the foundation of Opie’s success, by introducing him to Mrs. Boscawen, and extolling his merits in verse.

Speak, Muse, who formed that matchless head,
The Cornish Boy, in tin mines bred;
Whose native genius, like diamonds shone
In secret, till chance gave him to the sun?
’Tis Jackson’s portrait – put the laurel on it.

In 1782 appeared “Lyric Odes to the Royal Academy, by Peter Pindar, Esq., a distant relative of the Poet of Thebes, and Laureat of the Academy.” They were clever and discriminating. Wolcot recognized the splendid genius of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and the merits of Gainsborough and Wilson. He made merry over a picture by Gainsborough in the Academy that year; but it was good-humouredly done.

And now, O Muse, with song so big,
Turn round to Gainsborough’s Girl and Pig,
Or Pig and Girl I rather should have said;
The pig is white, I must allow,
Is really a well-painted sow:
I wish to say the same thing of the maid.

The success of these lyrics was immediate, and induced Wolcot to continue the publication in 1783, 1785, and 1786. Having hit out at the Academicians and finding that this paid, he now struck at higher game. He knew that any miserable back-stairs gossip about the King and the Court would be greedily devoured. There was in London and in the country a sentiment of Jacobitism. The cause of the Stuarts was dead as Herod, but the prejudice against the House of Hanover continued strong. The German proclivities of George I and George II, who never liked England and the English, had alienated even those who sympathized with the claims of the House of Hanover. The simple life of George III, without state, with little dignity, and so homely as not to appeal to the imagination of the people, served as an admirable field for ridicule. There is not any evidence that Peter Pindar personally hated the King, and that his politics were anti-Hanoverian or anti-royal. He attacked the King and Court because he knew it would pay – that was his main inducement, another was equally unworthy. He hoped that the Government would give him some sinecure office, or some bribe in money to silence his slanderous tongue.

He began his assault on the private life of the King in the Lousiad, a poem in five cantos, the first four published in 1785, and the last in 1795. The subject was disgusting. It turned upon the King having discovered a specially nasty parasitical insect on his plate, and on thereupon ordering the shaving of the heads of his cooks and scullions, grooms of the kitchen, servants of the pantry, etc., to the number of fifty-one. A young man in the kitchen, John Bear, refusing to submit to this indignity, was dismissed his place.