A miserable malaria fever, caught in the neighbourhood of Constantinople in the summer of 1828, returned upon me in London in the spring of 1829, and reduced me to a pitiful case. That same year I went down to Brighton, to pass the autumn and to get through some of the months of our English winter, with which I had had no acquaintance for the last nine years. King John of Albemarle Street—John II.—gave me a letter of introduction to Horace Smith, who had long been settled at Brighton in a very pleasant and well-frequented house. It was here, two or three days after my arrival, that I first met poor dear Rose. I liked Horace pretty well, but here was a man of my own kidney—a man to my heart of hearts.
The soirée was rather a full one, and contained a fair sprinkling of
celebrities and characters, such as Thomas Campbell,
the poet; poor Kenney, the dramatist; Thomas Hood, of facetious and pathetic memory; Miss Crump, the authoress; old Masquerier, the once fashionable portrait-painter, whom I had known in the
great Babylon in the days of my youth, and who had now retired to Brighton on a decent
fortune obtained by marriage; old Tommy Hill, who sat
for the portrait and character of Paul
Pry; little wizened Mandeville, who was
only remarkable from being the oldest attaché in the Service; and
Beau Cradock or Caradoc, now Lord Howden, Ambassador at the Court of Madrid, and at this
period one of the most handsome and elegant men in Europe. As I had
| 30 | WILLIAM STEWART ROSE | [CHAP. IV |
* “Constantinople in 1828,” 2 vols., 8vo., 1829. |
| CHAP. IV] | DAN HINVES, HIS VALET | 31 |
Among others who called on me the next morning was Rose. He came with empressement to invite me to dinner on the following day, and to tell me that there would always be macaroni and a knife and fork for me at three precisely. He sat with me a long time, and again a good deal of our talk—
“Not tuned to one key, Ran on chase, race, horse, mare, fair, bear, and monkey.”* |
This first dinner was thoroughly Italian, in the best style of that cuisine, and consequently delicious and easy of digestion. I thought that he must have an Italian cook. “No,” said Rose, “this is all done or directed by a thorough John Bull, a very queer fellow whom I caught in his cub-age in the New Forest. By the way, it is time that you should know Dan Hinves, my valet, cook, factotum, everything, who has travelled with me wherever I have travelled, and has been constantly with me these last thirty years and longer. John! tell Dan to step up and show himself!” And presently in trotted Dan, the never-to-be-forgotten, real, original Dan Hinves. He was a shortish, very stout, rubicund-faced, strong-looking, merry man, apparently about fifty years old. He had on a white cotton cap, such as French and Italian cooks always wear; a coloured chintz jacket, such as is worn by English butlers; and a very ample white apron. He had a round, twinkling eye, and his whole face was full of fun and drollery.
“Dan,” said his master, “you have distinguished yourself to-day. That timballo di maccheroni was exquisite, so were those cutlets aux olives. Mr. MacFarlane here is a connoisseur. You ought to feel proud of his approbation!” Hinves made a bow, and a short, neat speech, in which the Hampshire dialect
* This line in C. M.’s writing. The quotation is from Rose’s Epistle to J. H. Frere, “Rhymes,” by W. S. Rose, Brighton, 1837.—Ed. |
| 32 | WILLIAM STEWART ROSE | [CHAP. IV |
Old M. Leroi, a French merchant at Smyrna, was a great gourmet, and kept a female Greek cook, reputed the best cook in Smyrna, where good cooks were, and still are, exceedingly rare. Whenever he had a dinner-party, and Katinka did well and pleased his critical palate, he called her into the dining-room and thanked her, before all the company, in these words, “Katinka, ma chère, vous vous êtes bien distinguée aujourd’hui!” Rose, who could drink very little wine himself, produced au dessert a magnum of old hock, the very best Rüdesheimer, which I and his two other guests, Count P. and Major B., enjoyed as we ought. “It is very old,” said Rose; “it belonged to my father, and he and Mr. Pitt had many a good booze over it—that is, when Mr. Pitt could be seduced from his favourite port. I have still a good quantity in the cellar. Come here to dinner every Sunday and you shall have a magnum. On weekdays you must be satisfied with port, sherry, and tavel.”
From this time, through four months, I was with Rose nearly every day, dining with him two or three times in the week, and
never leaving his pleasant society without regret. He had been a remarkably handsome man;
but, rather early in life, a paralytic attack had nearly deprived him of the use of one
side, and he was now very lame, very weak in the limbs, and subject to rather frequent
attacks of a painful disorder. Yet his face was still fine, and the expression of his
countenance witty, humorous, and benevolent. He had an affectionate, caressing tone of
voice, and his manners were perfect. Disguise, travesty himself as he would, there was
never any possibility of taking Rose for anything but a thorough
English gentleman.
| CHAP. IV] | DAN HINVES, HIS VALET | 33 |
Dan Hinves and I soon became almost as thick as Rose and myself. One particular day, after dinner, when Dan had again been called up and thanked in the manner of M. Leroi, his master said, “You seem to be pleased and amused with my factotum; shall I tell you something about his natural history?” “Andiamo! Rosa senza spina!” said we; and off he went, not at score, for he always spoke very deliberately, but into the very pith of the story.
“In my younger days, when I was living, building, and moon-carving at Gundimore in the New Forest, I was sorely tormented by valets. I tried Italians, Germans, Swiss; and could never get a right one. A Frenchman turned out such a very fine gentleman that I discharged him, with the resolution of never having anything more to do with such fine people. I was looking out for something rustical, young, and rough, when one day as I was riding through a village at the edge of the New Forest, I heard a fellow roaring like a bull, and on looking over a garden wall, I saw a man belabouring a stubby boy with a stick. ‘Oh,’ said I, ‘don’t hit the boy so hard! What has he been doing?’ ‘Doing, sir!’ said the gardener; ‘why, sir, he has been stealing my apples, and when I caught him up in the tree, he pelted me with my own apples because he said they were sour! Yes, sir! pelted me with my own apples, and a pretty job I have had to get him down from the apple-tree!’ The delinquent was my now long-tried and faithful henchman, Mr. Dan Hinves. ‘Hang it!’ thought I;’ this must be a lad of promise, there must be some fun in him.’ I took him home with me, sent for his father, and took him into my service as valet that very afternoon. He was then between fifteen and sixteen years old, and rough and ragged enough in all conscience.
| 34 | WILLIAM STEWART ROSE | [CHAP. IV |
“He had evidently eaten a good many sour apples in his time, and
cannot have been much accustomed to good fare, for though his face was puffed and
chubby, he was very flat and thin in the barrel and about the calves. We soon got him
into condition, and as he filled up, his fun and drollery began to ooze out. His lingo
was scarcely intelligible to ears polite, but we soon mended that also; or, to speak
more correctly, we somewhat improved it, for Dan
has never quite lost his Forest vernacular, and I should be sorry if he had, for his
Hampshire terms now and then help me in my etymological studies. He could read a
little, and I got him a village schoolmaster who improved his reading, and taught him
writing and arithmetic. Since then, as you will find, by living so much among books and
literary people, and by travelling about so much with me, he has become a bit of a
literary character himself. He has long been in correspondence with Walter Scott, who sends him his Scottish novels as they
appear; and he often exchanges a letter with John Hookham
Frere and Mr. Hallam. You can
see, in his room, that he has quite a library of books, these books being, for the most
part, presentation copies. He is very proud of his extensive acquaintance with living
authors. He keeps a sort of diary about them. I have no doubt that he has booked you by
this time. Dan was certainly a bit of a pickle at first starting.
He had frequent fights with the cook about pudding, and combats with the gardener about
apples and pears. Besides this, he had a pernicious tendency to quarrel with my pet
goats, four fine long-bearded fellows that I used to drive in a light chaise, and
which, to tell the truth of them, were about as mischievous as Dan
himself. To cure him of his pranks, I dressed him up as a devil. I invented a capital
costume for him, and got it made up by an ingenious tailor and an enterprising toyman
at Christchurch. It consisted of a long pair of black bull’s horns, a black, very
ugly mask, with nose like
| CHAP. IV] | DAN HINVES AS DEVIL | 35 |
“We took a deal of trouble about these hoofs; they were, of
course, cloven; the colour was black, picked out with fiery red. You must have
concluded before this that Dan had a tail
pendant from the breech, and a splendid tail it was—thick, long, tufted, and forked at
the extremity. I was rather proud of that tail; for, to tell you the truth, I made it
myself. Well, until Dan got out of his cub-age, whenever he
misconducted himself he had to wear that demoniacal dress. My words of command were
these, ‘Go and be devil! Go and stand behind the door until further
orders!’ This masquerade and this whim of mine were a good deal talked
of, and soon understood. But before this came about, a more than half-cracked
neighbouring squire came one morning to pay me a visit; he rang the bell, and
Dan, who had been naughty and was en diable, opened the door. The squire set up a scream of
horror and fright, and ran away as fast as his legs could carry him, to tell the good
people that he had seen the devil at Mr.
Rose’s, and that I had his Satanic Majesty for door-porter. I
could tell you many stories about this crazy squire. Like myself, he belonged to the
Hampshire Yeomanry—I was Captain and he a Lieutenant in that warlike corps; and I
remember that he was always tumbling off his horse, or breaking our line, or riding
over the trumpeter, or getting into some other scrape. When all the Forest, and all the
country along that coast, were ringing with alarms of invasion and reports that
Bony was coming, he said to me, one fine hot
summer’s day, as we were riding home from exercise,
‘Rose, let them come! I will settle them. I have
hit upon such a plan!’ ‘What is it?’ asked I.
‘Listen,’ said he; ‘you know something of our Forest
flies, and how they sting? Well, I have bottled a pretty good
| 36 | WILLIAM STEWART ROSE | [CHAP. IV |
“‘Goosey, goosey gander. Floating down Scamander.’ |
| CHAP. IV] | COLERIDGE AND HINVES | 37 |
“But for the language, which he could not pick up, he would have been very happy and cosy in Italy. He used to say, ‘I can’t understand how English gentlemen who can live in a country like this, and as long as they like, should go scrambling about Turkey and Greece, certain to be half-starved, and eaten up by vermin, and nearly every day running the risk of being murdered.’ When, after our long wanderings, we landed in England, Dan’s joy was most enthusiastic; he capered about like a man demented for a good half-hour, and energetically declared after dinner that there was nothing like English beef-steaks and London porter. At Gundimore, when we had been annoyed by a shoal of memoirs written by people who were nobodies, and who had nothing to tell, Barty Frere and I set Dan to write his autobiography. He took a splendid start, made a most splendid beginning: ‘My name is Daniel Hinves. I was born in the parish of Christchurch, by the New Forest, in the county of Hampshire. My father was a Church of England man, but my mother belonged to the Methodists’ connection. Father used to larrup me because I did not go regularly to church; and mother used to slap and pinch me because I would not go regularly to meeting; and so, between the two, I had rather an unhappy life of it, until I was caught stealing apples.’ Here Dan stopped. He had begun in too high a key. It was quite impossible to keep this up. He has never tried again.
“Dan’s criticisms on
some of the writers of the day are rather amusing. What do you think he said of
Coleridge, who had been staying with me a
week or two at Gundimore? ‘Master, you say this Mr.
Coleridge is a wonderful man, and so says Mr. Frere, and so say all of you; but I
can’t make him out! I can understand Sir Walter
Scott perfectly;
| 38 | WILLIAM STEWART ROSE | [CHAP. IV |
At this time Rose was finishing the last cantos of his version of the “Orlando Furioso,” and was casting about him for some fresh literary occupation. Though so frequently ill, he could not be idle. He had kept up his Greek well. One morning, on going into his study, I found him declaiming aloud, ore rotundo, one of Homer’s battles. “Ah,” said he, “you have caught me at it! Your friend, and my friend and physician, Dr. Todd, recommends reading aloud as capital exercise for a man who cannot take much exercise, and is obliged to lead a sedentary life. Now, I prefer reading Greek, because it has
* In the notes to “Rhymes, by William Stewart Rose, 1837,” it is recorded that a copy of “Christabel” was given by Coleridge to Hinves, with the following letter on the fly-leaf: “Dear Hinves,—Till this book is concluded, and with it ‘Gundimore,’ a poem by the same author, accept of this corrected copy of ‘Christabel,’ as a small token of regard, yet such a testimonial as I would not pay to one I did not esteem, though he were an emperor. Be assured, I will send you for your private library every work I have published (if there be any to be had), and whatever I shall publish. Keep steady to the Faith. If the fountain-head be always full, the stream cannot be long empty.—Yours sincerely, S. T. Coleridge. “Mudiford, 11th Nov., 1816.”
Rose adds: “With respect to the phrase ‘keep steady to the faith,’ I imagine he was cautioning him he was addressing against Foscolo’s supposed licence in religious opinions. ‘Gundimore’ was never completed, nor (I believe) ever begun. I will, however, stoop to pick up one of the morsels that was destined to enter into its composition. Walking with him upon the beach, a long wave came rolling in, and broke at our feet. ‘That wave’ (said he) ‘seems to me like a world’s embrace, and I shall introduce it into ‘Gundimore.’” |
| CHAP. IV] | HINVES AND REFORM | 39 |
One very cold winter day, as Rose, leaning on Dan’s arm, was walking through one of the inferior streets of Brighton, his eye and fancy were struck by a very light drab greatcoat, hanging out at the door of a common slop-shop. He stopped, felt it, and otherwise examined it. “Dan,” said he, “this is a sensible coat, this is really a great coat. Your fashionable tailors make little greatcoats with thin, flimsy cloth; here there is plenty of substance; this is a coat to keep one warm. Dan, I have a great mind to buy it, and wear it home.” “Master,” said the henchman, “if you do I will leave you here, and send John for you. I hope I am not too proud, but hang me if I can be seen walking through the streets with such a greatcoat! Why, it is what the Charlies used to wear! It is fit only for a watchman or a pauper.” Rose gave up the idea of purchase.
While the Reform Bill tempest was raging so furiously, and was carrying so
many anxieties and fears into so many hearts, Rose
became greatly alarmed, for he held a patent, and almost sinecure place; and with the
exception of what he derived from it, he had but little income or property. For a long time
he felt quite sure that the reformers would begin with him by abolishing his place, as he
was a Tory, and the brother of a warm Tory, and the son of a conspicuous Tory who had been
the bosom friend of Mr. Pitt, the bête noire of the Whigs and Radicals. But even when he
most felt this anxiety, and the dread of a violent political change, he could often make
his joke about it. “Dan,” said he
one day after dinner, “the world is to be turned topsy-turvy; the great are to be
made small, the small great; the rich are to be made poor, the poor rich; the master is
to be turned into the servant, the
| 40 | WILLIAM STEWART ROSE | [CHAP. IV |
Though most scrupulous as to cleanliness, Rose, at one time a dandy and a companion of Brummell, Sir Harry Mildmay, and that set, had become careless and even slovenly in his dress. He cared not what coat he wore, nor what hat he put on. Dan, at times, would tell him that he looked like an old clothesman. “You are not going out that figure,” said he one morning, “with those old trousers that are too short for your legs, with the tie of your cravat turned round to the back of your neck, and with Mr. M.’s snuff sticking to your waistcoat!”
To change the nether garment was too serious an operation, he being so very lame on all one side, but he submitted to be brushed, and to have his cravat set right.
At another time Dan came to me with
a very serious and imploring face. “I wish,” said he, “that you
would persuade my master to buy a new hat. He has been wearing that tile these three
years, until it has neither nap nor shape!” One summer Rose started a white hat, with broad brims that were green
underneath. It certainly was an ugly, shocking bad hat, and shabby-looking from the first.
Hinves always maintained that his master and his donkey-boy had
bought it second-hand at the slop-shop where he had been enamoured of the drab
| CHAP. IV] | ROGERS’ HATRED OF DOGS | 41 |
Rose kept a French poodle, an improper thing for any
English gentleman, being a sportsman, to do. But, as I once kept a poodle myself, at
Naples, and spent a mint of money in having his hinder-quarters clean-shaved twice a week,
I must not raise a quarrel on this account. Then, again, Rose’s
dog was maintained for the delectation of an Italian lady, an inmate of his house. The
Italian name “Furbo,” in our
vernacular, would signify rogue or scamp, and certainly poor Furbo was a bit of a scamp to those who did not like his species. Old Sam Rogers hated dogs, and consequently Furbo declared an eternal enmity against the banker poet.
Sydney Smith—the parson, not the Admiral—said that if you venture to visit un homme de lettres at Paris, you will be certain to
have your ankles or calves assailed by a little waspish dog. Furbo, generally in Rose’s study, had not so
universal an appetite for human flesh, but he hated Rogers with an
intensity of canine hatred, and old Sam could hardly gain access to
the studio without the convoy of Dan Hinves or of
some other person on better terms with the poodle. I well remember that one morning he
halted in my rear for a good ten minutes while I pacified Furbo.
On returning from that morning visit, the poet said in his blandest manner, “I
wonder that some attached, confidential friend of Rose’s
doesn’t poison that beast of a poodle that
| 42 | WILLIAM STEWART ROSE | [CHAP. IV |
One quarrel I certainly had with poor Furbo, who must have gone to the bow-wows years ago. I was listening with all my ears and with all my attention to one of Rose’s stories about monkeys, and poodle, without the exertion of a spring, stole from my plate the wing of a delicious partridge. There was a jealousy between Townsend’s “King Charles “and the French dog, but on the whole the two, after belligerency, managed matters pretty well, and got up a canine entente cordiale. But how Rogers did hate poor Furbo! More than a year after, he asked me whether that beast were living or dead. I rather think that Rose, with all his admiration for the poet, an admiration which he frequently expressed, was not altogether unhappy at seeing the poodle charge up to old Sam’s legs, or to hear him vociferate at his approach. That which vexed Rose was that he had never been able to establish a perfect harmony, or even anything like sympathy, between Furbo and his little jackass, Velluti.
| CHAP. IV] | HIS TASTE IN SNUFF | 43 |
There was one other man that Furbo persecuted, Terrick Hamilton, ci-devant Oriental secretary at Constantinople, translator of “Antar,” a very worthy man, a considerable scholar, and the greatest bore then in existence. Poor Rose used to say that the dog showed more than a doggish instinct, that Furbo knew how wearisome Terrick was, and did all that he could to prevent his entrance and to promote his exit. We engaged to write an epitaph for poor Furbo in Italian, but I broke down in the second or third line, and Rose never did a bit of his part, his feelings being too much hurt by the anticipation. Yet dear Rose could never bear to have the poodle following him out of doors, for it was so foreign-looking and French-like. Pax tibi Furbe!
When Rose was in a condition to perform the duties of his place in the House of Commons, he had a lodging, for the Parliamentary season, somewhere down in Westminster, near the House. Growing weary of the same rooms, and fancying he would have more air on the second floor than on the first, on leaving town at the end of the season he arranged with his landlady that he should be transferred to the upstairs apartment. When Parliament reassembled, he returned to town, and to the house where he had been living for some years. With his usual obliviousness, he bolted into the first floor which he had long occupied, and there, to his astonishment, he found a stout, elderly, rubicund, wigged gentleman in black, sitting with his feet on the fender. “Sir,” said he, “may I ask to what I am indebted for the pleasure of this visit?” “Damn it, sir!” said the rubicund old gentleman; “I think it is for me to put that question!” Rose looked about the room, saw that his books, his library table, his easy-chair, were all absent, remembered that he had bargained to change his degree of altitude, blushed, stammered some excuse, bolted out of the room, and went upstairs, au second.
| 44 | WILLIAM STEWART ROSE | [CHAP. IV |
Although he could not take much of it, Rose very much enjoyed a pinch of good, wholesome, unsophisticated snuff, and would very often help me to empty my box; but he had a most perfect horror of artificial mixtures and scented snuffs, like that called the “Prince’s Mixture.” He used to damn them and call them “snuffs of Sodom and Gomorrah,”and conceived a repugnance to Colonel —— because he took them. He had a theory of his own about stenches. “I cannot help fancying,” said he, “that stinks might be harmonized, or that they might be introduced, with good effect, as discords are in music; nor am I quite sure that a Rossini or a Beethoven, turning their attention this way, might not make a very pleasant tune of stenches. Think of this, and when you go to London, talk of it to the musicians and chemists, and to all the philosophers you meet.” His sense of smell was most acute—painfully so. I told him of a family who were utterly devoid of that sense, as many persons are. “Lucky people!” said he; “I can smell a stink a mile off, and I am afraid that for one ‘in populous cities pent’ there are rather more stenches than sweet odours. Upon the breezy downs, or in the garden at the parson’s nest, it is different; but only smell the by-streets of this Brighton, and Brighton is pure compared with most towns! We English boast of our neatness and cleanliness, but, as yet, we are very far from being a cleanly people. Stir up your friend, William Mackinnon, who is waging war on smoky chimneys—stir him up, rouse and excite him on the grand subject of cesspools and drains! There is an immortality to be gained in that direction.
“As a Highlander, you must remember the story of the first milestones, and ‘God bless the Duke of Argyll!’ Well, I, for one, would cry,’ God bless the Laird of Skye!’ if he could only relieve my nose from some of its acute sufferings.”
| ≪ PREV | NEXT ≫ |
