Authors: Russell Potter
Pyg (25 page)
(66) Monsieur
Bussart
, Monsieur
Redigé
, Signor
Scaglioni
,
La Belle Espagnole, Herr Hautknochen.
The troupe is undoubtedly that of Alexandre
Placide
Bussart
who, together with his wife, led a famous company of tight-rope performers and dancers in the 1790s. He was said to have been the most graceful rope-dancer and gymnast of his
day, performing with much success in both Paris and London. In 1792, he travelled with his company to the United States, where they performed before President George Washington. In England, they
often appeared with Monsieur Redigé, who was also known as the ‘Little Devil’. A treatise of the time noted that ‘At Sadler’s
Wells
, the performances, other
than music or dancing, consisted of posturing by a boy called the Infant Hercules, and tight-rope dancing by Madame Romaine, another female artiste known as La Belle Espagnole, and two lads, one of
whom was a son of Richer, the other known as the “Little Devil”.’ According to Richard Findlater’s 1978 book
Joe Grimaldi,
His Life and Theatre
, La Belle
Espagnole did indeed dance ‘with two swords tied to her feet, and two eggs under them, while she carried two baskets on a board’, much as T
OBY
has described. As
for Signor Scaglioni and his Dogs, we have a 1788 handbill from Salisbury which declares that,
On MONDAY, August 11, 1788, will be exhibited the real Original DANCING DOGS, And other ENTERTAINMENTS, Particularly the imitation of various Song Birds; likewise Singing,
Dancing, and a variety of novel Amusements, Under the Direction of Signor SCAGLIONI and Mr HERMAN. Boxes 2
s
.– Pit 1
s
.—Gallery 6
d
. The doors to be opened at
half past six and begin at eight. Performances every evening this week, Saturday excepted.
Herr
Hautknochen
, whose stage-name is German for ‘skin and bones’, has not been identified.
(71) Mr
Robinson
of the
Freeman
’
s Journal.
The
Freeman
’
s Journal,
founded in 1763 by Charles Lucas
,
began as a strident
platform for Irish nationalism, but this changed in 1784 when Francis Higgins gained control of the paper, after which it took a decidedly pro-British stance. Mr
Robinson
has not been
identified.
(77) D
RUMCONDRA
, Mr
Bellows
. Drumcondra (Irish:
Droim Conrach
, meaning ‘Conra’s Ridge’) is a residential area and inner
suburb on the Northside of Dublin, Ireland. It is administered by Dublin City Council. The river Tolka and the Royal Canal flow through the area. The editor has visited the place, and its character
is remarkably unaltered—though far more densely populated—from its state in T
OBY’S
day. Mr
Bellows
has not been identified.
(81) ‘The V
AULTS
’, Belfast, Mr
Atkins
. According to John C. Greene, in his invaluable treatise
Theatre in Belfast:
1736
–
1800
, a theatre of this name opened in disused wine cellars in Belfast in 1731 under the management of a ‘Mr Johnes’. There is some confusion as to the exact
location of this venue, but in any case, according to Mr Greene’s study, the last recorded performance was in 1766, which would mean that T
OBY’S
appearance there
extends its known life by two decades or more. Mr
Atkins
is most likely the same man who was noted as the manager of the Belfast Theatre in 1785, when Mrs Siddons—whom T
OBY
was later to meet in Lancaster—visited Belfast and praised Mr Atkins for his ‘probity and excellent management’. (George Benn,
A History of the Town of
Belfast
, Vol. II).
(88) The constable has not been identified.
(93) Edward
Dobbs
. Mr
Dobbs
has proven difficult to identify. If we suppose him to have been long-lived, however, he may be identical with the man of that name
awarded five pounds as the First Prize for ‘Fat Pigs, not exceeding nine months old’ in Birmingham in 1835 (
Farmer
’
s Magazine
, Vol. 21).
(97) T
HEATRE
-R
OYAL
, Chester; Messrs
Banks
&
Ward
, Mr
Dawes.
Michael Kelley, in his
Reminiscences of
Michael Kelly,
of the King
’
s theatre,
and Theatre royal
(1826), speaks of meeting ‘
Banks
and
Ward
, the proprietors of the Chester and Manchester
Teatres’. Mr
Dawes
has not been identified.
(97) Mrs Cowley’s ‘More Ways than One’. Hannah
Cowley
(14 March 1743–11 March 1809) was a successful English dramatist and poet. Legend has it
that, on attending the theatre with her husband, she remarked to him that she could write as good a piece as the one being performed, and within a fortnight she had finished her first play,
The
Runaway
, which was produced at Drury Lane by David Garrick in 1776. Many more followed, most notably
The Belle
’
s Stratagem
in 1782, which was her most successful.
More
Ways Than One
, the play within which T
OBY’S
interlude was featured, had opened at Covent Garden in 1783 and was, at the time of our narrative, nearing the end of
its subsequent provincial tour.
(99) Mr
Edwin
as ‘Sir Marvell
Mushroom
’. A ‘Mr
Edwin
’ is indeed mentioned in this role in the
dramatis personae
in the 1813
edition of the
Plays of Mrs Cowley
; he apparently appeared in many productions of her plays. We have been unable to find out much else about him.
(109) Sir William
Dunkinfield
, Baronet, High Sheriff of C
HESHIRE
. A person of this name held that office from 1751 to 1774; although he was
(apparently) no longer Sheriff by the time his name was invoked by Mr Nicholson, he must have retained something of the mantle of that office, at least among the hoi-polloi.
(119) S
T
G
ILES
’
S
F
AIR
.
St Giles
’
s Fair
is an annual
fair held in St Giles, a wide thoroughfare in central north Oxford, in September of each year. It was, just as T
OBY
describes it, very much an affair of
town
and not
of
gown
. Never the less, it has been warmly and richly recalled by at least one undergraduate, who in an essay for the
Magdalen College School Journal
described it thus:
The next excitement is St Giles’s F
AIR
, when the whole length of the street from the Church to the Martyr’s Memorial is occupied by
four rows of booths, tenanted by the fat woman, the thin child, the pig with two heads, and similar wonders; penny peepshows and roundabouts, waxworks and cake stalls, cheapjacks,
‘theatres’ and shooting galleries make up the rest. All the villagers round flock to this their holiday: infant Oxford devotes itself for a couple of days to gingerbread, drums
and whistles; youthful Oxford gives itself up entirely to ‘scratch-backs’, weapons to which we, not being Scotchmen, have a decided objection; staider Oxford, who are above such
trifles, retire to the public-house in the vicinity of the fair.
It should be noted that that description dates to some years after the present narrative, and to a time when—
learned
pigs being apparently no longer
available—those with two heads were the best that could be obtained.
(125) Dr William
Adams
, Master of P
EMBROKE
C
OLLEGE
,
Oxon
. William
Adams
DD (
c
. 1706–13
January 1789) was Fellow and Master of Pembroke College, Oxford. A brief Life is given by Charles Partington in his
British Cyclopedia
of 1837:
Dr Adams was born at Shrewsbury, and at the age of thirteen was entered at Pembroke College, where he remained to take his master’s degree, and obtained a
fellowship. It has generally been reported that he was afterwards tutor to the celebrated Dr Johnson; but Dr Adams very handsomely contradicted this report, by saying that had Johnson
returned to College after Jordan’s (his tutor’s) death, he might have been his tutor: ‘I was his nominal tutor, but he was above my mark.’
In 1732, he obtained the curacy of St Chad’s in Shrewsbury, and left the college. Never the less, when, forty-three years later, John Ratcliffe, master of Pembroke, died, Dr Adams
was elected to take his place. His term commenced on 26 July 1775, and he presided over the college with universal approbation, earning the affections of the students by his courteous
demeanour and affability, mixed with the firmness necessary for the preservation of discipline. In his apartments here, he frequently cheered the latter days of his old friend Dr Johnson,
whom he survived but a few years; dying at his house at Gloucester, 13 January 1789, aged eighty-two. He was interred in Gloucester Cathedral, where a monument was erected, with an
inscription celebrating his ingenuity, learning, eloquence, piety and benevolence.
It was doubtless to the fund for this last-mentioned memorial that T
OBY
contributed.
(125) Dr Samuel
Johnson
. Samuel
Johnson
(18 September 1709 [OS 7 September]–13 December 1784), often referred to simply as ‘Dr Johnson’, was
widely regarded as the most distinguished man of letters of his day. He is best known for his
Dictionary of the English Language
, published in 1755, as well as for his essays, poems and
other writings, particularly the romance
Rasselas: Prince of Abyssinia
(1759), a copy of which T
OBY
tells us was among his most prized possessions. After a year as a
student at Pembroke College, he was obliged to leave due to lack of funds just prior to Dr Adams’s appointment as a Fellow; although they had not in fact been pupil and master, they never the
less developed a strong friendship that lasted until Johnson’s death.
During the time described in the book, Dr Johnson was in the throes of what was to be his final illness; he had recently undergone surgery for gout and had been confined to his bed for much of
the latter part of 1783. By the summer of 1784, his condition seemed to have improved somewhat, and that season he made his final visit to Oxford, which gives a definite date to his appearance in
the present narrative. That autumn, his health in rapid decline, Johnson expressed a desire to die in London and arrived there on 16 November. His final days were painful in the extreme, although
he still managed at times to display his characteristic spirit; when his physician, Dr Warren, asked him in his usual manner whether he was feeling better, Johnson replied, ‘No, Sir; you
cannot conceive with what acceleration I advance towards death.’ He was buried at Westminster Abbey in ‘Poets’ Corner’, not far from the graves of Chaucer and Spenser.
(134) Miss Anna
Seward
. Anna
Seward
(12 December 1747–25 March 1809) was an English Romantic poet, often referred to as the Swan of Lichfield. Born at Eyam in Derbyshire, she
spent nearly all her life in Lichfield, beginning at an early age to write poetry, partly at the instigation of Erasmus Darwin. Her verses include numerous elegies—so many that Sir Walter
Scott was said to have been reluctant to edit her works while she yet lived, lest she end up composing one for
him
. After her death, Scott edited Seward’s
Poetical Works
in
three volumes (1810). To these he prefixed a memoir of the author, along with extracts from her literary correspondence. He declined, however, to include the bulk of her letters, and these were
published in six volumes by A. Constable as
Letters of Anna Seward 1784
–
1807
(Edinburgh, 1811). Her connections with Dr Johnson are documented in a variety of sources, but see
especially Margaret Ashmun’s
The Singing Swan: An Account of Anna Seward and her Acquaintance with Dr Johnson,
Boswell,
and others of their Time
(1931)
.
(140) ‘
Invidia gloriae comes
’: Envy is a companion to glory.
(141) Reverend Mr
Chapman
, Vice-Chancellor of O
XFORD
U
NIVERSITY
. Joseph
Chapman
, graduate of Trinity College
(1763); DD, 1777, served as Proctor (1775), President (1776–1808), and Vice-Chancellor (1784–8).
(141) T
HE
E
AGLE
AND
C
HILD
. The Eagle and Child is a public house in St
Giles’s, Oxford, which is owned by St John’s College, Oxford. It had been part of an endowment belonging to University College since the seventeenth century. The first record of its
name is from 1684, and is said to derive from the crest of the Earl of Derby. The image is alleged to refer to a story of a noble-born baby having been found in an eagle’s nest. The
pub’s long-standing nickname is ‘the Bird and Baby’.
(142) ‘
O tempora, o mores!’
: ‘Oh, the times! Oh, the customs!’ This sentence by Cicero in found in his First Oration against Catiline, which
T
OBY
mentions having studied with Dr Adams.
(144) ‘
aut disce aut discede
’: one must either ‘learn or leave’; this was the motto of the old Cathedral School at St Paul’s, as well as
of various later educational establishments.
(145) ‘
Docendo discimus, mi alme sus
’: ‘By your pupils you are taught, my dear pig!’ The first part of this is a well-known Latin saw.
(148) Mr Maurice
Morgann
. Maurice
Morgann
(1725–1802) was a government administrator and literary scholar, in the latter field of which he was renowned for
his ingenious ‘Essay on the character of Falstaff’. He once had the opportunity of entertaining Johnson for a day or two at Wickham, when its lord was absent, of which two anecdotes are
related by
Boswell
:
