Cornish Worthies: Sketches of Some Eminent Cornish Men and Families, Volume 1 (of 2)

ADMIRAL VISCOUNT EXMOUTH.

ADMIRAL VISCOUNT EXMOUTH.

The life of this gallant sailor and good man was told so admirably in 1835, by my late valued friend, Edward Osler, F.L.S.—for many years editor of the Royal Cornwall Gazette, and himself one of our Cornish Athenæ—that his memoir must necessarily form the backbone of any account of Lord Exmouth's career. To Mr. Osier's well-known work I would therefore refer those who desire a more detailed account than space allows me to give to the subject of this chapter. I should, however, add that I have been fortunate enough to gather some facts to which even Mr. Osier does not refer in his elaborate memoir.

Lord Exmouth's career was both eventful and distinguished; but, notwithstanding its brilliancy, his chief glory was his unswerving devotion to his country, irrespective of all party feeling (and he was a strong Tory)—his generosity in recognising to the fullest extent the merits of his subordinates—his combined strictness and kindness to his men—and his constant recognition of the Divine Hand in all his victories. No vessel under the orders of Pellew was ever taken by the enemy.

Like many another Cornish worthy, Edward Pellew was a man of comparatively small beginnings. Originally, it is said, of Norman extraction, the Pellews were an old-established West Cornwall family, whose tombs may still be found at Breage. Humphry Pellew, his grandfather, an American merchant, the builder of part of the little town of Flushing in Falmouth harbour, took for his wife, in 1692, Judith Sparnon of Sparnon and Pengelly in Breage, by whom he had six children; but the children of Samuel, the youngest son (who was only eight years old when his father died in 1721), were at length the only male survivors of the family. This Samuel Pellew, Lord Exmouth's father, a man of determined character, commanded a post-office packet on the Dover station. He married in 1752 Constance, daughter of Edward Langford, Esq., of a Herefordshire family, settled at or near Penzance—a woman, Mr. Osier says, 'of extraordinary spirit,' and fitted, as indeed her husband also was, to be a parent of heroes.

In 1765 Samuel Pellew died, leaving a widow and six children; of whom Edward, the second, was born at Dover, 19th April, 1757. In 1765 he removed with his mother to Penzance; and here, when quite a child, gave an early instance of his love of the 'pomp and circumstance of glorious war,' by walking all the way from Penzance to Helston, in order to follow a troop of soldiers; and of his indomitable courage, when somewhat older, by removing from a burning house a quantity of gunpowder which had been stored there. He frequently played truant from school in order to get into a boat at the quay; and was a great favourite with the loafers there, who taught him to box. Bottrell says that Mrs. Pellew and her family lived in a thatched cottage 'near the Alverton entrance to Fox's gardens;' the house still stands, on the left-hand side of the road as the traveller leaves Penzance for the Land's End.

The Truro Grammar School, where the Rev. R. Polwhele was one of his schoolfellows, as appears from his 'Reminiscences,'[122] was the next scene of his combative energy; and here he thrashed so many of his schoolfellows, that, in order to escape a still severer thrashing with which the head-master (then Mr. Conon) threatened him, he ran away, and—against his grandfather's consent, but luckily for English glory, and for his own fame—went to sea. Whilst at Truro, hastening through the courtyard of the Red Lion Hotel to assist in putting out a fire, Pellew found the high back gate shut; but he sprang over it, and I remember the spot being pointed out to me in evidence of his strength and agility. His freaks on the water in after-life were of the most daring kind, and he often set the example on board ship, when no sailor could be found bold and active enough to perform some dangerous act of seamanship.

In the year 1770, being then about thirteen or fourteen years of age, Edward Pellew entered the Navy in the Juno, and went his first voyage to the Falkland Islands. Thence, under the same captain (Stott), he sailed in the Alarm to the Mediterranean, where, at Marseilles—a place which he was destined afterwards to save from destruction by its own inhabitants—he left the ship, in consequence of a gross and uncalled-for insult inflicted by the Captain on one of Pellew's brother midshipmen, named Cole.

He next joined the Blonde, under Captain Pownoll—who had been trained in the school of another Cornish naval hero, Admiral Boscawen—and with whom he soon became a prime favourite. It was on board the Blonde that he so alarmed and amused General Burgoyne, by standing on his head on the yard-arm when the General came on board to make his ill-starred expedition to America; and from the fore-yard of the same ship Pellew sprang to rescue a man who had fallen overboard. His magnificent physique and perfect courage enabled him to perform similar services on more than one occasion.

A smart engagement with a superior American force on Lake Champlain was his next exploit, in which, though unsuccessful, he found another opportunity of showing his coolness and bravery; and his services on this occasion gained him his lieutenant's commission. Shortly afterwards he very nearly captured, single-handed, the American Commander-in-Chief Arnold. The stock and buckle, which General Arnold left behind him in his flight, were long (and perhaps still are) preserved by the Pellew family.

Joining Burgoyne's unlucky army, and sharing in all the dangers and hardships which it underwent, Pellew, though only twenty years old, was summoned to the council of war at Saratoga, at which (against his own advice) it was resolved, in October, 1777, to capitulate to an American force of double the strength of the English. On his way home to England, in a transport, he fought an American privateer, and beat her off with his usual pluck and skill.

On receiving his commission to a guard-ship, he threatened to throw it up rather than remain at so inactive a post; and it was not until he declared his intention to command a privateer that he obtained his appointment to the Licorne, in which he sailed for Newfoundland in the spring of 1779. He returned, however, to England in the following winter, and joined the Apollo, under his old friend—his 'only one on earth,' as he said—Captain Pownoll, taking part in an engagement with the French frigate Stanislaus, on which occasion the Captain left to Pellew the honour of completing her capture.

The old sloop Hazard, of which he was promoted to be commander, was his next ship, and the East Coast of Scotland his station in the summer of 1780. Then followed the Pelican, a French prize, whilst commanding which he drove ashore some French privateers near the Isle of Bass, an exploit for which he was made a post-captain on board the Suffolk:—thus obtaining every step in his profession as a reward for some successful action. When it is added that, whilst in temporary command of the Artois, he captured on 1st July, 1782, the French frigate Prince of Robego, we may conclude this part of his career by observing that this was his last service before the Peace, which left him without any employment in His Majesty's service for four years.

The year 1783 saw him a denizen of Truro,[123] and married to Susan, daughter of J. Frowde, Esq., of Knowle, in Wiltshire. Doubtless, in his wooing, he told her—

It was probably about this time, also, that he became, according to Polwhele, a member of the Truro Corporation. He soon, however, removed to Flushing, near Falmouth, a curious little village, which had for Pellew, as we have seen, family associations, and where his elder brother, Samuel Humphry, formerly a surgeon of Marines, was collector of the Customs.

In 1786 we find him on board the Winchelsea, and once more on the Newfoundland station, into every harbour of which he squeezed his ship with the utmost intrepidity, often exhibiting remarkable feats of personal strength and activity.

The Winchelsea was paid off in 1789, and till 1791 Captain Pellew served in the Salisbury, of 50 guns, again on the Newfoundland station; and this time with his younger brother, Israel, as first lieutenant. He afterwards became Admiral Sir Israel Pellew, K.C.B.—an officer whose distinguished career was scarcely less illustrious than that of his more celebrated brother. He was born at Flushing in 1761, and died at Plymouth in 1832. His ship, the Amphion, of 32 guns, blew up in the Hamoaze, Plymouth, on 22nd September, 1796, and only her commander and a few others escaped with their lives.

Once again the distasteful 'piping times of peace' came round; and Pellew, for want of something to do, turned farmer. His experiments in this capacity were made on the little family estate of Treverry, near Falmouth; but they were a failure; and the declaration of war against France, in February, 1793, promised him a most agreeable relief after his enforced idleness. He was appointed to the Nymphe (formerly a French frigate) of 36 guns; and, to Cornishmen at least, his connexion with this ship—manned as she was for the most part by Cornish miners, eighty of whom joined her at Spithead—is one of the most interesting parts of his career. On the evening of 19th June, 1793, the Nymphe came up with the French frigate Cleopatra,[124] of 40 guns, and after a furious cannonade of three-quarters of an hour, the Cornish crew, most of whom had certainly smelt powder before (underground), though none had ever before heard a cannon fired, had the proud delight of seeing the enemy's pennant hauled down, and of capturing the first frigate in the war,—thus illustrating Drayton's lines in his 'Barons' Warres':

For this action Pellew was knighted ten days afterwards. The Portsmouth correspondent of the Gentleman's Magazine, writing in July, 1793, of this engagement, says that 'the commencement of the action between the Nymphe and Cleopatra was the most notable and awful that the naval history of the world ever recorded. The French captain ordered his ship to be manned, and, coming forward on the gangway, pulled off his hat, and called out, "Vive la nation!" when the ship's company gave three cheers. Captain Pellew, in like manner, ordered his men from quarters to the shrouds, and gave three cheers to "Long live King George the Third!" and his putting on his hat again was the signal for action, one of the most desperate ever fought.' The captain of the Cleopatra, Citoyen Mullon, was buried in Portsmouth churchyard.

In January, 1794, he joined the Arethusa, which formed one of the cruising frigates of the Western Squadron, a branch of the service which our hero may be said to have originated. In the engagement between the small French and English squadrons on 23rd April, 1794, off the Isle of Bass, he captured the Pomone, a larger vessel than his own, and carried her into Portsmouth harbour, on which occasion Pellew received the warmest thanks of the First Lord of the Admiralty, and of Earl Howe. Another French squadron was, in the following August, driven ashore near Brest, by Pellew and his brave companions in arms; and the Channel was thus practically cleared of the enemy's cruisers for a while. But the following October saw the Frenchmen once more on the move; and it was not until after a smart engagement off Ushant between the Artois and the large French frigate Révolutionnaire, on which occasion Pellew commanded the squadron, that the French navy was completely cowed.

On the 2nd January, 1795, private intelligence having reached Sir Edward that the enemy's fleet, consisting of thirty-five sail of the line, thirteen frigates, and sixteen smaller vessels, had put to sea from Brest, he set forth from Falmouth with his little squadron of five ships to reconnoitre; but no engagement resulted from this expedition.

He now joined the Indefatigable, which he successfully insisted upon having cut down and rigged after his own method. She sailed from Falmouth on 2nd March; and shortly after, the squadron of which she formed part captured fifteen out of a convoy of twenty-five vessels near the Penmarcks rocks.

The scene now shifts to Plymouth Sound, where he performed, on 26th January, 1796, one of the most heroic acts that it has ever fallen to the lot of man to accomplish. He was in evening dress, and on his way to a dinner-party, when he heard that a large ship, an East Indiaman, the Dutton, was on the rocks under the citadel, and that no one was able to go to her assistance; but, with his usual hardihood, he swam out to her through the surf, and thus became the means of saving the lives of between 500 and 600 of his fellow-creatures. This service he performed at the imminent risk of his own life, and when, as we have seen, no other witness of the wild scene had the courage to make the attempt. For his gallant conduct on this memorable occasion he was created a baronet, as Sir Edward Pellew, of Treverry. The Corporation of Plymouth voted him the freedom of their town, and the merchants of Liverpool presented him with a service of plate. The civic wreath and the stranded ship which appear as honourable augmentations on his coat-of-arms were derived from this event.

On the 20th April following, our sailor was again at sea, and the action was fought between the Indefatigable and the Virginie, which ended—as usual with Pellew—in victory. 'He takes everything!' said the brave French Captain Bergeret, weeping bitterly as he surrendered his sword to his opponent.

November, 1798, witnessed the well-known futile descent of the French upon Ireland. In the ineffectual steps taken by the British fleet to prevent it, Pellew had no share beyond watching Brest, and reporting progress. But in January, 1799, he fell in with the Droits de l'Homme, and, in the midst of a furious gale, and after an engagement of eleven hours (during the latter part of which the Indefatigable was assisted by the Amazon, Captain Reynolds),[125] the French ship was driven on shore in the Bay of Audierne. The Amazon was also wrecked, and the Indefatigable herself had a narrow escape.

The capture of a few privateers is all we now have to chronicle until we hear of Sir Edward making the daring proposal of attacking with a few frigates the whole of the French fleet then in harbour at Brest; but, whether from timidity on the part of the Admiralty, or, as was suggested, from the jealousy of Pellew's superior officer, Lord Bridport, the offer was declined.

The Impetueux, one of his captures from the French, was his next ship; and in her, at Bantry Bay, he promptly quelled a mutiny, which, but for his courage and sagacity, would probably have extended to other ships, whose disaffected crews, demoralized by the reports of the mutinies at Spithead and the Nore, were, it is said, only waiting a successful result of the rising on board Sir Edward's ship. The Impetueux soon after joined Earl St. Vincent in the Mediterranean, and formed part of the force which pursued the combined fleets from the Mediterranean to Brest.

In the siege of Ferrol, August, 1800, the Impetueux played an important part; but, Pellew's advice (which seemed to Sir J. B. Warren too dangerous to follow) not being taken, the place was not captured; though it was afterwards discovered that Pellew's advice should have been followed, and that the garrison were quite prepared to lay down their arms.

A short period of retirement which he spent in the bosom of his family at Trefusis, on the shores of Falmouth harbour, followed.

The year 1801 saw him nearly at the head of the list of post-captains, and appointed a Colonel of Marines. In the following year he was elected Member for Barnstaple; but inactive posts did not suit him, and at the very first moment possible he returned to his beloved profession, being appointed to the Tonnant, of 80 guns, one of the Channel fleet. Detached from the squadron, together with the Mars and the Spartiate and five other sail of the line, which were placed under his orders, he blockaded the French at Corunna and at Ferrol. But he was recalled by the Ministry in order to support the Government against an attack made upon their Naval Administration by Pitt, and on Pellew's excellent speech on this occasion the vindication of the Ministry is said to have in a great measure depended.

On 23rd April, 1804, he was promoted to be Rear-Admiral of the White, and was appointed Commander-in-Chief in India, hoisting his flag in the Culloden. Whilst on this station he was ever on the alert for French and Dutch privateers, of most of which the Admiral himself or his captains never failed to give a good account, to the great advantage of British commerce. The destruction of the enemy's fleet at Batavia, on 2nd November, 1805, was an expedition on a larger scale. In this Sir Edward's son, Captain Fleetwood Pellew,[126] in the Terpsichore, took a prominent part; and a successful attack upon Sourabaya, in Java, soon followed. This sums up his Oriental experiences; and in February, 1809, he sailed from India with a fleet of Indiamen under his convoy, and safely arrived once more in England, after a narrow escape during a severe gale. The spring of the following year, 1810, saw him, on board the Christian VII., and Commander-in-Chief in the North Sea, effectively blockading the Dutch fleet in the Scheldt.

In 1811, in the Caledonia, he succeeded Sir Charles Cotton as Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean fleet, jealously watching the coast from the Ionian Islands to Gibraltar, and striving, with the utmost energy and success, to promote the efficiency and welfare of all who served under him. He was present at the capitulation of Genoa in February, 1814; and shortly afterwards saw the termination of the war, and the confinement of Napoleon as a prisoner in the island of Elba.

Of this happy event advantage was taken by the Government to confer on our hero the dignity of a baron—an unexpected honour to him—and he chose 'Exmouth of Canonteign' as his title, that being an estate which he had purchased as a family property. He also obtained the pension usually granted for services so distinguished as his had been (it amounted to £2,000 a year), and the next year he received the additional honour of being made a G.C.B.

He went to the Mediterranean again in 1815, on the return of Napoleon from Elba, hoisting his flag in the Boyne, with his brother, Sir Israel Pellew, as Captain of the Fleet. Naples he rescued from anarchy on the flight of Murat before the Austrian army, and for this service King Ferdinand gave him the Order of St. Ferdinand and Merit. Next he saved Marseilles from the rebel Marshal Brune; and finally spent the winter of this year in Leghorn roads.

The commencement of 1816 found him preparing for what is perhaps his most celebrated exploit, viz., the siege of Algiers; the objects of which, it will be remembered, were to obtain the release of all the Ionian slaves, who, by recent political arrangements, had become British subjects; and to repress the piratical excursions of the Barbary States.

The preliminary reconnoitre was admirably performed by Captain Warde, and the squadron, shortly afterwards, set sail for Algiers, where the demand for the release of the Christian slaves was forthwith promised. Tunis and Tripoli followed suit; and Lord Exmouth returned to Algiers in order to press upon the Dey the abolition of Christian slavery. Only evasive answers could, however, be procured; and, having secured from the Dey a promise at least to treat, the British Admiral returned for a short space to England for further instructions.

It need scarcely be said that Mr. Osler's description of the siege of Algiers, the guilty 'pirate city,' is given with all that perspicacity and fullness of detail which characterized all his literary work; and to his account the technical reader may confidently be referred. The formidable sea defences alone consisted of 500 guns; and these Exmouth proposed to attack with only five sail of the line! Nelson is said to have named (under incorrect information, it is true) twenty-five as the proper force; but, at any rate, the attack of such fortifications as these by a few ships was quite a novelty in the annals of war.

Joined by five frigates, four bomb-vessels, and five gun-brigs, the fleet sailed from Portsmouth on the 25th July, 1816, practising regularly with their guns on the voyage, and arriving before Algiers on the 26th August.

Very early on the following morning, after waiting long and anxiously for the sea-breeze, which came at last, the Queen Charlotte, with Lord Exmouth (now sixty-five years of age) on board, led the attack amidst three ringing cheers from his men;—and in a few minutes her broadsides destroyed the defences of the Mole. It was reported that 500 Moors were killed by the first discharge of the English guns. The Algerines then attempted, in their gunboats, to board the British ships; but, as soon as they were discovered through the smoke, the heavy guns of the Leander and other ships sent 33 out of the 37 which composed the flotilla to the bottom. The enemy's ships at anchor were then fired; and by ten at night, after a cannonade of nearly nine hours, the town and fortifications of Algiers were in ruins. 128 men only were killed and 690 wounded in the British ships, and 13 killed and 52 wounded in the Dutch squadron—losses by no means excessive under the circumstances; the enemy's loss, which must have been fearful, is not known. Lord Exmouth was struck (but only very slightly wounded) in three places; yet his coat was slit and torn by musket-balls as if it had been slashed by a madman's scissors.[127]

British sailors had never fought more bravely and determinedly, or in grimmer silence. When wadding failed, they cut up their clothes as a substitute for it; and even the women on board handed the shot and shell to their husbands. The Impregnable and the Leander suffered most from the enemy's fire; the former was hulled by 263 shot, 209 of which were between wind and water, and she herself discharged 6,730 round shot.

The next morning, the 28th of July, the Dey, Omar Pasha, a brutal and ferocious ex-Aga of Janissaries, whilst Algiers was in flames, and her sea-batteries pounded into ruins, sent in his complete submission; peace was signed under a salute of 21 guns for England, and the same for Holland; and 3,003 slaves, of whom 1,083 were Christians, and some of whom were English, were liberated, and returned to their respective countries.

Honours now fell thick and fast upon Lord Exmouth. He was created a Viscount by George III.; the Kings of Holland, Spain, and Sardinia conferred knighthood upon him; the City of London voted him its freedom; Oxford conferred upon him the degree of D.C.L.; and he received the thanks of Parliament; the letter from the Speaker, dated 3rd February, 1817, conveying them, being as follows:

Pellew had now attained the summit of his ambition; and, in 1817, having been appointed to the naval command at Plymouth,[128] was instrumental in saving from destruction the historic fortress of Pendennis Castle, which, from motives of economy, the Government of the day had proposed to destroy.

He passed the close of his life quietly near Teignmouth, the only additional honour which was bestowed upon him being that of his appointment, in 1832, as Vice-Admiral of England, a post which, however, he only filled for a few months; for, on the 23rd of January, 1833, in the seventy-sixth year of his age, the old sea lion calmly passed away, in pious confidence, to his rest. A brother officer who was often with him during his last hours, said, 'I have seen him great in battle, but never so great as on his death-bed.'

He was buried at Christow, the parish in which are the family mansion and estate of Canonteign; and in the church there an elaborate marble monument records his faith and piety, his honours and his virtues.

There are three or four good portraits of Pellew, of which the three-quarter length by Northcote in the National Portrait Gallery is perhaps the best. It gives the unmistakably Cornish physiognomy of the original, and does full justice to the determined look of the lower part of his face. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy Exhibition at Somerset House in 1819, when Pellew was sixty-two years of age. Another fine portrait is by Sir Wm. Beechy (engraved by C. Turner), a full-length, representing the hero on the deck of the Queen Charlotte at the siege of Algiers, giving orders for furling her mainsail, when she was in imminent danger of being set on fire by an Algerine vessel, which was in flames close by.

SAMUEL FOOTE,

WIT AND DRAMATIST.

SAMUEL FOOTE,[129]

WIT AND DRAMATIST.

It is not a little remarkable that the fame of Samuel Foote, great as it was during his lifetime, and for some time after his death, has so rapidly dimmed; for he was not only a capital mimic, a boon companion, a most generous master to his subordinates, a ready wit, and an accomplished actor, but he was also a fair scholar, a bitter though an avowed satirist, and a prolific, as well as skilled, dramatic writer and critic. He wrote about thirty pieces for the stage (which were translated into the German in 1796), and the list of his works in their various editions occupies about thirty pages in the MS. British Museum catalogue. His slightest sayings were carefully preserved; and the very slightness of some of them is, perhaps, one of the strongest evidences of the fame which he enjoyed.

Foster says of him, in the Quarterly Review for 1854, that his writings are 'not unworthy of a very high place in literature;' and that his name 'was once both a terrible and a delightful reality.' And yet, notwithstanding the amusing picture which they present of the manners and conversation of London a hundred years ago, they have not sufficed to preserve his fame. Who of the rising generation has ever read anything of Foote's besides his ever-ready and often quoted bon-mots; or knows anything more of his plays than has been learnt from an occasional representation of 'The Liar' on the stage? It is hardly necessary to inquire into the cause of this, for the joker's reputation is proverbially fleeting. Moreover, Foote's pieces are somewhat too slightly constructed, depending not so much upon the plot or the dénouement as upon such a delineation of the various characters as seems hardly to come within the scope of our modern actors; but, nevertheless, it certainly does cause one to reflect how soon a man, not without strong claims to be remembered, may be forgotten. Yet, while he lived, his name was in every man's mouth, and in a vast number of contemporaneous books. 'No man,' says Baker, 'was more courted when in the zenith of his fame: for instance, when the Duke of York returned from the Continent, he went first to his mother's, then to His Majesty's, and directly from them to Mr. Foote's.' And yet it should be well understood that he was, withal, no toady. To the Scotch nobleman, boasting of his old wine, which he doled out in very small glasses—'It is very little, of its age,' said Foote, handling his glass. He congratulated the Duke of Cumberland on his digestion, when the Duke said he had come for the purpose of swallowing all Foote's good things—'for,' said the coarse wit, 'you never bring any of them up again.' And when the Duke of Norfolk consulted him as to going to a masquerade in a new character—'Go sober,' was Foote's instant reply.

It will be the object of the following memoir not only to sketch the life of the Truro wit, and to enumerate most of his plays in chronological order, but also to give one or two short specimens of his powers as a writer: the difficulty on the latter point being to make a selection from the very numerous examples left to us. But it should always be remembered that the parts played by Foote are, as written, but a very faint reflexion of what he actually uttered, often impromptu.

Samuel Foote was the older of two sons of Samuel and Eleanor Foote, of Truro. His younger brother Edward, a clergyman, was all but an imbecile, and in his later years depended almost entirely upon his elder brother for support. Samuel was born, not as is generally stated, at the Red Lion Inn, in Boscawen Street, which was at one time the residence of Henry Foote—a distant relation; but 'at Johnson Vivian's[131] house, near the Coinage Hall' (now removed). So far as I can ascertain, this house must have stood nearly opposite to the Red Lion, on the site of the old King's Head inn, where, Lysons says, a nunnery of Poor Clares once stood, and close to the spot where Lemon Street and Boscawen Street now join. Polwhele suggests that the inscription 'I. F., 1671,' still to be seen over the door of the Red Lion, refers to John Foote, the dramatist's grandfather.[132] His father was M.P. for Tiverton, Mayor and Alderman of Truro, a Commissioner of the Prize Office, and Receiver of Fines for the Duchy of Cornwall; and had his summer residence at Pencalenick, about a mile east of the new city. And here it may be said that Foote was to the last very proud of his genealogy. His father died at 'Pednkallinick,' as his epitaph records, on 12th March, 1754, in the seventy-sixth year of his age, and was buried at St. Clement's, near Truro: his grave-stone is on the east wall of the little north transept. But the Footes had another residence in the same parish, namely, at Lambesso, where, according to Lysons, they were seated in the days of Charles II. His mother was a daughter of Sir Edward Goodere, Bart. (a descendant of the Earl of Portland), M.P. for Herefordshire; she was a lady of considerable vivacity, from whom Foote is supposed to have derived what Carlyle calls the 'aroma' of his character, rather than from his father. She was eighty-four years of age when she died, and 'Hesiod' Cooke (who wrote Foote's life) says, she was as sprightly at seventy-nine as most women are at forty. She was as thriftless as her celebrated son himself, and he had ultimately to grant her an annual allowance. The following letters once passed between them:

However, he added, by way of postscript:

Samuel Foote, the subject of our sketch, was christened on 17th January, 1720, at St. Mary's Church (on the site of the Cathedral now in progress), and was educated first at the Truro Grammar School, under Mr. Conon, where he was particularly fond of his Terence, and afterwards under Dr. Miles, at Worcester. Notwithstanding his strong propensity for jokes and tricks, he was a favourite with his master, and made fair progress with his studies; and he never failed, when visiting Truro, to call at the old school, and, in mock-heroic style, to beg a holiday for the boys.

In 1737, he was entered at Worcester College, Oxford, which had been in 1714 founded anew by a connexion of the Foote family,[133] and worked tolerably hard, acquiring considerable proficiency in the lighter classical authors; but his chief delight lay in caricaturing the Provost, Dr. Gower, and in playing tricks upon him and the verger of the College Chapel. One of these tricks consisted in tying a wisp of hay to the bell-rope which hung outside the chapel, in a lane down which certain cows went to grass. The cows naturally snatched at the tempting morsel, and rung the bell in a most weird manner, to the alarm of the authorities, who determined on sitting up to watch the rope one night in order to discover the author of the trick played upon them. Another of Foote's Oxford freaks is recorded by Murphy, who says that whilst at Oxford the future player and dramatist acted in the part of Punch.

Shortly after he came of age, which was in 1741, he was entered at the Inner Temple, where he distinguished himself chiefly by the magnificence of his chambers, and by the smartness of his oral criticisms on the actors of the day, when discussing their merits and their faults with other sparks and critics at the Grecian, in Devereux Court, or at the Bedford Coffee-house in Covent Garden. The dry study of the law had little or no attraction for our volatile hero; and Dr. Barrowby (the friend and adviser of Macklin in his controversy with Foote's chief rival, Garrick[134]) has thus sketched the Truro youngster for us at this period of his life. One evening, says he, I saw a young man extravagantly dressed out in a frock-suit of green and silver lace, bag-wig, sword, bouquet, and point ruffles, enter the room,[135] and immediately join the circle at the upper end. Nobody recognised him; but such was the ease of his bearing, and the point and humour of remark with which he at once took part in the conversation, that his presence seemed to disconcert no one, and a sort of pleased buzz of 'Who is he?' was still going round the room unanswered, when a handsome carriage stopped at the door, and the servants announced that his name was Foote, that he was a young gentleman of family and fortune, a student of the Inner Temple, and that the carriage had called for him on its way to the assembly of a lady of fashion. Vanity was indeed to the last one of Foote's besetting sins, and he could not shake it off, even on the stage; for he was very greedy of applause, and often sacrificed his fellow-actors performances to his own ends. 'Fine feathers, however, do not make fine birds;' and Foote must have relied a great deal on the skill of his tailor; for he was in person rather short and stout—exactly like his mother—and his features were plain and coarse. Yet, his arch smile and merry eye, preserved to us in his likeness, when fifty years old, by Colson (engraved by Caroline Watson), redeemed his otherwise commonplace visage, and made him, on the whole, not an unattractive-looking person. Zoffani also painted two admirable portraits of him, in character; but the best is that by Sir Joshua, now at the Garrick Club, painted about the year 1760, when Foote was forty years of age.

Two of Foote's 'three fortunes' came chiefly through his mother, who succeeded to the Goodere family property, said to have been worth about £5,000 a year, in a most strange and tragic manner; but he also inherited some property left by his father. Mrs. Foote's elder brother Sir John, a man of weak intellect, was entrapped on board his brother Samuel's ship, the Ruby, in Bristol Roads, and was then and there strangled by him—a crime for which the younger Goodere was deservedly hanged.[136] Foote, at that time in terrible pecuniary straits—in fact, literally a stockingless Foote, as he himself would perhaps have said—wrote, for £20, a pamphlet, describing the murder, and endeavouring, but vainly, to exculpate his uncle and namesake. It was published anonymously in April, 1741.

With so much wealth and popularity as he had even thus early acquired, it is wonderful that Foote continued his legal studies for so long a period as three years; but, in fact, he can hardly be said to have done this, for he had already begun to earn money by his pen (chiefly by writing a few pamphlets), having contrived in a couple of years, like the prodigal of old, to 'waste all his substance in riotous living,' and to fall into sad straits.

Accordingly, his connexion with the stage, to which he seems to have been introduced by some excellent amateur actors, his valued friends the Delaines, now commenced, in 1743, by his taking a share with his friend Macklin in the wooden theatre in the Haymarket, known as 'The Little' or 'Summer Theatre,' and 'The Hay'—the laudable and distinguishing feature of the performances being a natural mode of elocution and gesture, as contra-distinguished from the stilted and drawling sing-song style then in vogue (from which Foote used to think Garrick himself was not entirely free), and at least an attempt to dress the characters in something like correct costume. And here it may be convenient to observe that the title of the 'English Aristophanes,' by which Foote came to be generally known, is not altogether applicable to him. Foote could lay small claim to Aristophanes' genius as a poet; whilst, on the other hand, he never libelled his country or his gods, as did the illustrious Greek.

With that strange infatuation which induces so many born comic actors to fancy themselves tragedians, he made his début as a paid actor at the above theatre on 6th February, 1744, as Othello; the performance was, as might have been expected, an utter failure, as were likewise his attempts at Shylock[137] and Pierre on other occasions. The same may be said of his essay at genteel comedy as Lord Foppington, in 'The Relapse.' But in the following winter he found his true line, and appeared at Drury Lane in the characters of Sir Paul Pliant, Fondlewife, and Bayes; in all of which (especially in the latter) he succeeded admirably, and his success determined his career as that of a comic player and writer.

His first piece, 'The Diversions of a Morning,' in which he himself played the part of Puzzle (intended for Macklin[138]), was brought out at the Haymarket in the spring of 1747; but the satire was so keenly felt by many of the persons represented, mostly prominent actors of the day, that, at their instance, the magistrates withdrew Foote's license, and he adopted an expedient which it is said had also been employed by Garrick at the Goodman's Fields Theatre, of evading the interdict of the justices by inviting his friends to 'drink tea' with him 'at playhouse prices,' and entertaining his audience with 'The Diversions of a Morning' whilst tea was getting ready,—a 'tea' which never appeared.

This venture had what was then considered the long run of forty representations; in fact, 'to drink a dish of tea with Mr. Foote' became the rage of the season. It was succeeded by a somewhat similar performance entitled 'An Auction of Pictures,'[139] in which Foote 'knocked down' sundry worthless persons of the day at ruinous prices, contriving that the stage company of purchasers should make satirical observations on the subjects of the pictures. Peter Aretine, 'the Scourge of Princes,' says Davies, was not more dreaded than Foote had now become; and in this piece the satire was again so biting that Foote made many enemies, for there was somewhat of a vindictive character in his vein. Yet, notwithstanding, perhaps partly in consequence of, the coarse and furious lampoons with which he was assailed, and of which notable specimens will be found in Churchill's 'Rosciad,' and in Chetwood's 'General History of the Stage,' the town continued to run after and applaud him. And here it may be added that Polwhele records how Foote's address and politeness had a similar soothing effect upon two gentlemen who called to cudgel him for caricaturing them, to that which Incledon's singing had on a somewhat similar occasion.

The same season saw the production of 'The Knights,' in which Foote introduces the character of Timothy, who speaks in the Cornish dialect; the performance of this part by a Mr. Castallo was warmly applauded. Foster says of this piece that 'it is the first sprightly running of a wit which to the last retained its sparkle and clearness; that its flow of dialogue is exquisitely neat, natural, and easy; and that its expression is always terse and characteristic.'

About this time, 1748, he got another windfall of money from the Goodere estates; and, not warned by the misery and poverty to which his previous recklessness and extravagance had reduced him, again went on in his old way, now setting up his carriage with the motto 'Iterum, iterum, iterumque,' on its panels, in allusion to his having been left a third fortune. The story goes that the only attempt that Foote ever made to regulate his money matters was to keep one paying and one receiving pocket. Four years of fast living in France dissipated nearly all his money, and the year 1752 witnessed his return to London, confuting by his arrival all sorts of rumours which had been circulated as to his death by many who had felt the sting of his whip, and who doubtless were believing, because they hoped, the rumours true. To these Foote alludes in the prologue (said to have been written by Garrick) to 'The Englishman at Paris'—his next production.

Foote once again took the Haymarket Theatre in 1754; and, for a few nights, ridiculed Macklin's celebrated School of Oratory, in the 'Inquisition.'[140] But he soon returned to Drury Lane, as an actor chiefly in his own pieces, and at the same time was occupied in preparing for publication his amusing farce of 'The Knights.' 'The Author,' which was successful, but which was suppressed by the Lord Chamberlain in consequence of the severity of its satire on Mr. Ap Reece (Cadwallader), appeared in 1757; and, probably owing to complications arising out of the matter, early in 1758 Foote went to Dublin with Tate Wilkinson the mimic (who imitated Foote himself so well, as more than once to deceive a shrewd audience). With the same companion Foote visited Edinburgh during the following season, where they reaped a good harvest. It was whilst on this occasion in Ireland that he exclaimed of the Irish peasantry: 'I never knew before what the English beggars did with their cast-off clothes.' In the winter, however, the two returned to Dublin, and here on 28th January, 1760, that clever comedy, 'The Minor,' made its first appearance, but with indifferent success, so that Foote lost a considerable sum of money. During his first visit to Dublin, in January, 1758, having hung a room at his lodgings in black, and provided himself with a dark lanthorn, Foote disseminated hand-bills to the effect that 'there was a man to be met with at such a place who wrote down people's fortunes without asking them any questions.' He is said to have carried on the deception with great success for many days, sometimes clearing as much as £30 a day, it is said, from his dupes. He soon after returned to London, and, having enlarged and improved 'The Minor,' brought it again before the public, and this time with the most satisfactory results, the theatre closing, after the piece had run thirty-eight nights, 'with a full treasury.' Foster thinks its three acts are worth almost any five that he knew. The object of the play was to ridicule religious cant, and especially Whitefield, then in the height of his popularity.[141] The story runs that Foote submitted the MS. to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Secker, with a request that his Grace would strike out anything that, from a religious point of view, might appear objectionable. But the Archbishop—knowing the sort of character he had to deal with—returned the MS. untouched, observing that if he erased or corrected anything, Foote would probably have advertised the piece as 'corrected and prepared for the press by the Archbishop of Canterbury.' 'The Minor' elicited many sharp pamphlets and letters against Foote, but he readily disposed of them all in a reply which he published, replete with learning, wit, and satire; and which contains an admirable vindication of the Comic Muse. It has been said that if all his other works had perished, this one letter would have sufficed to establish his wit, scholarship, and sense as of the rarest order; every line tells. His defence of the course which he adopted in ridiculing Whitefield contains the following spirited passage:

Foote seems at this time to have lodged in Suffolk Street, and to have got into several petty quarrels with his fellow-actors, whose manners and defects he imitated only too closely, and whose antecedents he used to make fun of: for instance, alluding to Garrick's having failed in his first start in life as a wine-merchant, Foote used to say: 'I remember Davy when he used to live in Durham Yard, and all his stock-in-trade was three quarts of vinegar in what he called his wine-cellar.' But such were his tact and jolly manner, that the estrangements were rarely of long endurance; and most, if not all of the offended parties were, sooner or later, glad to shake hands with the reckless mimic. He was always, however, implacably hostile to newspaper critics—then, by the way, a new institution—and very coarse in his remarks upon them, although the critics generally wrote of him with respect and praise; but it should be added that at one time managers were almost invariably their own critics, and the innovation was to them most unwelcome. Nor did he think much of the reliability of the judgment of the public. In Foote's 'Treatise on the Passions,' he says: 'There are 12,000 playgoers in London; but not the four-and-twentieth part of them can judge correctly of the merits of plays or players.'

In January, 1762, 'The Liar,' the plot of which was taken from the Spanish, was produced at Covent Garden, and those who, like the writer of these pages, have had the good fortune to see the late Charles Mathews in the piece, will readily believe that it was highly successful. 'The Orators' shortly followed; it is said that it was in this piece that he intended to introduce Dr. Samuel Johnson, and that he was only deterred from doing so by the sturdy Doctor's threat that, if Foote did, he would get on the stage and soundly thrash the mimic with an oaken cudgel. But Johnson had a real regard for Foote and his abilities. Resolved not to be pleased with him, the Doctor was compelled to give in, and to laugh with the rest of the company that Foote was entertaining. 'Sir,' said Johnson, 'the dog was so very comical that he was irresistible.' Charles James Fox thought even more highly still of Foote's conversational powers. In fact he generally got the better of his opponents in all verbal encounters:—but the tables were once turned against him. He leased the Edinburgh Theatre for 500 guineas a year—a lawsuit arose, and Foote was defeated. The Scotch lawyer called upon him for his bill of costs; and on Foote's paying him the money and observing to the lawyer that he would no doubt, like most of his countrymen, return in the cheapest way possible, was drily answered: 'Yes, I shall travel on foot.'

'The Mayor of Garrat;'[142] 'The Patron' (in which he ridiculed the 'Enthusiasm of Antiquaries,' drawing his friend and host, Lord Melcombe, in the character of Sir Thomas Lofty, which Foote played himself); and 'The Commissary' (in which the Duke of Newcastle figured as Matthew Mug), followed 'The Orators' at the Haymarket in rapid succession, bringing Foote considerable profit, and his worldly success now seemed assured. But early in 1766, a sad accident whilst hunting (when he broke his leg) marred his prospects, and embittered the close of his career. Amputation above the knee was pronounced necessary, and, though this was, of course, before the days of chloroform, he bore the terrible operation with remarkable fortitude, and could not, even then, resist the temptation to joke, begging the surgeons to deal gently with him, as it was his 'first appearance in the character of a patientee'—an allusion which will presently be made apparent. From this time he always wore, and played in, a cork leg. It was pitiable, O'Keefe remarks, to see Foote leaning sorrowfully against the wall of his stage dressing-room while his servant dressed this sham leg to suit the character in which his master was to appear; but in an instant resuming all his high comic humour and mirth, he hobbled forward, entered the scene, and gave the audience what they expected, their fill of laughter and delight.

The Duke of York, with whom Foote seems to have been a favourite, now procured for him a Royal Patent for a summer theatre, thus enabling him to keep it open between the 14th May and the 14th September; and in May, 1767, the old theatre having been pulled down, and a new one erected in its stead, Foote appeared, as Himself, in 'An Occasional Prelude,' concluding with the following not ungraceful allusion to his Royal Highness's timely succour in the hour of misfortune:

'Consult,' he says, referring to the audience on the opening night:

The 'Devil on Two Sticks,' an excellent little piece, which appeared in 1768, and which ran for a whole season, is said to have brought Foote some three or four thousand pounds! This play is a satire on medical quackery. Amongst others caricatured was Sir William Browne, 'whose wig, coat, and contracted eye firmly holding an eye-glass, and his remarkably upright figure were all there; but the caricaturist had forgotten Sir William's special characteristic—his muff, which the good-tempered doctor sent to Foote, to make the figure complete!'

But, 'lightly come, lightly go;' Foote could not keep money as easily as he could earn it; and, on his way once more to Ireland, he fell in with some blacklegs at Bath, to whom he lost all his money; so that he was 'ruined once more,' and actually had to borrow £100 in order to complete his journey. The 'Devil on Two Sticks,' however, took as well in Dublin as it had done in London; Foote was again rehabilitated, and was received with great favour at the Castle.

His play 'The Lame Lover,' produced in London in 1770, did not prove a success; it was followed, in 1771, by the 'Maid of Bath;' and by the 'Nabob' in 1772. But the 'Primitive Puppet-show,' or rather 'Piety in Pattens,' in which the 'Puppet-show' was introduced, brought crowded houses to the Haymarket in 1773; it was performed by wooden puppets nearly as large as life. In the prologue, spoken by Foote in propriâ personâ, and in a scarlet livery, as was the practice with the theatrical managers of the time, he says: 'All our actors are the produce of England ... to their various families you are, none of you, strangers. We have modern patriots made from the box—it is a wood that carries an imposing gloss and is easily turned; for constant lovers we have the encircling ivy; crab-stocks for old maids; and weeping-willows for Methodist preachers; for modish wives we have the brittle poplar; their husbands we shall give you in hornbeam;' and so on. In this piece he ridiculed 'Sentimental Comedy;' it was not one of his most successful productions; but the 'Exordium' was very clever, and is given entire in the Town and Country Magazine, vol. v., p. 319.

'The Cozeners' appeared in 1774, with a prologue written by Garrick, to whom Foote was again reconciled, after a quarrel caused by Garrick's refusing to lend his successful but impecunious friend the sum of £500. 'The Cozeners' fairly enough caricatured Mrs. Grieve as Mrs. Fleecem—a woman who extorted money from her victims by promising to procure for them Government appointments. Now, Foote himself was generally thought to have obtained an annuity from Sir Francis Delaval, by bringing about a marriage between him and Lady Nassau Powlett, with whom Foote had been very intimate. It was, however, too bad of Foote to caricature, under the name of Mrs. Simony, the widow of the Rev. Dr. Dodd, then only recently hanged. But Foote's aims were really not lofty; he sought, as Dr. Doran says, less to reform vice and folly than to produce amusement (sometimes unscrupulously enough), by holding them up to ridicule. And here it must be observed that, although he was thin-skinned, and not over-courageous, yet Davies wrote of him: 'There is hardly a public man in England who has not entered Mr. Foote's theatre with an aching heart, under the apprehension of seeing himself laughed at.'

The following year saw Foote involved in one of the most disastrous and disagreeable events of his life—namely, his prosecution at the instance of the profligate Duchess of Kingston, whom Foote had prepared to lampoon in a little piece called 'A Trip to Calais,' in respect of her then approaching trial for bigamy, when she was found guilty by the House of Peers. The Duchess's influence, however, prevailed to prevent the appearance of the piece, and the Lord Chamberlain's license was withheld; and correspondence of a most virulent nature between Foote and the Duchess ensued. It was on this occasion that Foote penned the following defence of his writings: 'During my continuance in the service of the public I never profited by flattering their passions, or falling in with their humours. In exposing follies I never lost my credit with the public, because they knew I proceeded upon principle.' The Duchess tried to buy off her persecutor, but in vain; attacks on each side, of the grossest and most virulent nature, now appeared in the papers; and an expensive prosecution of Foote on a foul but imaginary charge, by one Jackson,[143] was instituted; but Lord Mansfield summed up in Foote's favour, and the result was his immediate and honourable acquittal (the jury not even turning round in the box to consider their verdict). The worry and anxiety attendant upon so abominable a persecution shattered Foote's health and spirits, and unfitted him for awhile for appearing again on the stage. He accordingly sold his patent, including the theatrical wardrobe and leave to perform any of Foote's unpublished plays, to George Coleman, for £1,600 a year; and he only went on the stage thrice afterwards.

During the quarrel with the Duchess of Kingston Foote had bitterly satirized some of her worthless creatures in a piece called 'The Capucin'—the last that he ever wrote except 'The Slanderer,' which, however, he left unfinished at his death.

In May, 1777, he made another attempt to appear on the stage; but illness and anxiety had made fearful havoc with his looks and his gaiety; and a paralytic stroke whilst acting in his own piece, 'The Devil on Two Sticks,' put an end for ever to his stage performances. He retired to Bath, and there his health and sprightliness somewhat recovered; but it was only a flickering of the expiring candle in its socket. The doctors advised him to try Paris, and thither, from his house in Suffolk Street, Pall Mall, he proceeded, by way of Dover, in the following October, with a presentiment that he should never return to Town alive. It was here, whilst waiting at the Ship Inn for a favourable passage, the conversation occurred with the cook-maid, and probably Foote's very last jokes, without which no account of him seems to be considered complete. The woman was boasting that she had never left her native place, when Foote retorted by saying that he had heard upstairs that she had been 'several times all over Greece,' and that he himself had seen her at 'Spithead.' On the following day, the 21st October, 1777, he had another paralytic seizure, and was no more. On the 3rd November he was buried by torch-light in the west cloister of Westminster Abbey.[144] No stone marks his resting-place; but there is an epitaph to his memory at St. Mary's, Dover, of which the following is a copy:

He left, besides portraits and small legacies to sundry of his friends, the bulk of the property remaining to him to his two natural children, Francis and George; and I may here observe that, notwithstanding Cooke's positive statement that Foote married a Worcestershire lady, and that shortly after the wedding he took her to his father's house at Truro; and Polwhele's dictum that he married Miss Polly Hicks, of Prince's Street, Truro—(she is said to have been sixteen and Foote eighteen when they married, but she died early of consumption)—I have been unable to discover with certainty whether or not he was ever really married. Certainly, no Mrs. Foote ever appeared upon the scene when he lived at 'The Hermitage,' North End, between Fulham and Hammersmith (to which place he had moved from Parson's Green, where Theodore Hooke afterwards lived). Here he used to be very fond of entertaining his friends, amongst whom were many members of the nobility, and occasionally even royal personages, with his usual wasteful extravagance. There is a story of his having been 'reconciled' to his wife whilst he was living at Blackheath; and another story of his old fellow-collegian Dr. Nash, the historian of Worcestershire, having called to see him when confined for debt in the Fleet Prison, and finding a supposed Mrs. Foote hiding somewhere in the room; but there are, I believe, no proofs positive of the reckless, dissipated subject of this memoir having ever submitted to the marriage tie.

The Gentleman's Magazine for 1777 says of him that 'As no man ever contributed more to the entertainment of the public, so no man oftener made the minds of his companions expand with mirth and good-humour; and in the company of men of high rank and superior fortune, who courted his acquaintance, he always preserved a noble independency. That he had his foibles and caprices no one will pretend to deny; but they were amply counterbalanced by his merit and abilities, which will transmit his name to posterity with distinguished reputation.'

We commenced this article by considering how fleeting this reputation was; yet still it is strange that in this case it has died from amongst us so soon. Garrick said of Foote that he was a man of wonderful abilities, and the most entertaining man he had ever known; and this was a tribute from a rival manager and actor, be it remembered. Fox, eminent conversationalist as he was, said that whatever was the subject of conversation, 'Foote instantly took the lead, and delighted us all.' Davies, Tate Wilkinson, and Horace Walpole joined in the chorus of his praise; and even Dr. Samuel Johnson, who perhaps feared Foote as much as he disliked him, admitted that he was a scholar, that his humour was irresistible, and that he could drive any of his rivals out of the room by the sheer force of his wit. The remarks of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Macaulay fall flat after such tributes as the above; and they are probably to be explained by the fact that they never came within the range of the personal influence of the man—without having done which they can hardly be considered competent judges of so amusing an actor, and such an invariably ready, courageous wit and satirist as was Samuel Foote.