“What you said of the late Charles Skinner Matthews has set me to my recollections; but I have not
been able to turn up any thing which would do for the purposed Memoir of his
brother,—even if he had previously done enough during his life to sanction the
introduction of anecdotes so merely personal. He was, however, a very extraordinary man,
and would have been a great one: No one ever succeeded in a more surpassing degree than
he did, as far as he went. He was indolent too; but whenever he stripped, he overthrew
all antagonists. His conquests will be found registered at Cambridge, particularly his
Downing one, which was hotly and highly contested and yet
easily won. Hobhouse was
his most intimate friend, and can tell you more of him than any man. William Bankes also a great deal. I myself recollect
more of his oddities than of his academical qualities, for we lived most together at a
very idle period of my life. When I went up to Trinity in 1805,
at the age of seventeen and a half, I was miserable and untoward to a degree. I was
wretched at leaving Harrow, to which I had become attached during the two last years of
my stay there; wretched at going to Cambridge instead of Oxford (there were no rooms
vacant at Christ-church), wretched from some private domestic circumstances of different
kinds, and consequently about as unsocial as a wolf taken from the troop. So that,
although I knew Matthews, and met him often then at Bankes’s (who was my collegiate pastor, and
master, and patron), and at Rhode’s,
| 126 | NOTICES OF THE | A. D. 1808. |
“It was not till 1807, after I had been upwards of a year away from Cambridge, to which I had returned again to reside for my degree, that I became one of Matthews’s familiars, by means of H * *, who, after hating me for two years, because I ‘wore a white hat and a gray coat and rode a gray horse’ (as he says himself), took me into his good graces because I had written some poetry. I had always lived a good deal, and got drunk occasionally, in their company—but now we became really friends in a morning. Matthews, however, was not at this period resident in College. I met him chiefly in London, and at uncertain periods at Cambridge. H * *, in the mean time, did great things: he founded the Cambridge ‘Whig Club’ (which he seems to have forgotten), and the ‘Amicable Society,’ which was dissolved in consequence of the members constantly quarrelling, and made himself very popular with ‘us youth,’ and no less formidable to all tutors, professors, and heads of Colleges. William B * * was gone; while he staid, he ruled the roast—or rather the roasting—and was father of all mischiefs.
“Matthews and I,
meeting in London, and elsewhere, became great cronies. He was not good-tempered—nor am
I—but with a little tact his temper was manageable, and I thought him so superior a man,
that I was willing to sacrifice something to his humours, which were often, at the same
time, amusing and provoking. What became of his papers (and he
certainly had many), at the time of his death, was never known. I mention this by the
way, fearing to skip it over, and as he wrote remarkably well, both in Latin and English. We went down to Newstead
together, where I had got a famous cellar, and Monks’
dresses from a masquerade warehouse. We were a company of some seven or eight, with an
occasional neighbour or so for visitors, and used to sit up late in our Friars’
dresses, drinking burgundy, claret, champagne, and what not, out of the skull-cup, and all sorts of glasses, and buffooning all round the
house, in our conventual garments. Matthews always denominated me
| A. D. 1808. | LIFE OF LORD BYRON. | 127 |
“Matthews and myself had travelled down from London together, talking all the way incessantly upon one single topic. When we got to Loughborough, I know not what chasm had made us diverge for a moment to some other subject, at which he was indignant. ‘Come,’ said he, ‘don’t let us break through—let us go on as we began, to our journey’s end;’ and so he continued, and was entertaining as ever to the very end. He had previously occupied, during my year’s absence from Cambridge, my rooms in Trinity, with the furniture; and Jones the tutor, in his odd way, had said on putting him in, ‘Mr. Matthews, I recommend to your attention not to damage any of the moveables, for Lord Byron, sir, is a young man of tumultuous passions.’ Matthews was delighted with this; and whenever any body came to visit him, begged them to handle the very door with caution; and used to repeat Jones’s admonition, in his tone and manner. There was a large mirror in the room, on which he remarked, ‘that he thought his friends were grown uncommonly assiduous in coming to see him, but he soon discovered that they only came to see themselves.’ Jones’s phrase of ‘tumultuous passions,’ and the whole scene, had put him into such good humour, that I verily believe, that I owed to it a portion of his good graces.
“When at Newstead, somebody by accident rubbed against one of
his white silk stockings, one day before dinner; of course the gentleman apologized.
‘Sir,’ answered Matthews, ‘it may be all very well for you, who
have a great many silk stockings, to dirty other people’s; but to me,
| 128 | NOTICES OF THE | A. D. 1808. |
“One of Matthews’s passions was ‘the Fancy;’ and he sparred uncommonly well. But he always got beaten in rows, or combats with the bare fist. In swimming too, he swam well; but with effort and labour, and too high out of the water; so that Scrope Davies and myself, of whom he was therein somewhat emulous, always told him that he would be drowned if ever he came to a difficult pass in the water. He was so; but surely Scrope and myself would have been most heartily glad that
‘the Dean had lived, And our prediction proved a lie.’ |
His head was uncommonly handsome, very like what Pope’s was in his youth.
“His voice, and laugh, and features, are strongly resembled
by his
| A. D. 1808. | LIFE OF LORD BYRON. | 129 |
“On one occasion, being too late to go home and dress, he was equipped by a friend (Mr. Bailey, I believe), in a magnificently fashionable and somewhat exaggerated shirt and neckcloth. He proceeded to the Opera, and took his station in Fop’s Alley. During the interval between the opera and the ballet, an acquaintance took his station by him, and saluted him: ‘Come round,’ said Matthews, ‘come round.’ ‘Why should I come round?’ said the other; ‘you have only to turn your head—I am close by you.’ ‘That is exactly what I cannot do,’ answered Matthews: ‘don’t you see the state I am in?’ pointing to his buckram shirt collar, and inflexible cravat,—and there he stood with his head always in the same perpendicular position during the whole spectacle.
“One evening, after dining together, as we were going to the Opera, I happened to have a spare Opera ticket (as subscriber to a box), and presented it to Matthews. ‘Now, sir,’ said he to Hobhouse afterwards, ‘this I call courteous in the Abbot—another man would never have thought that I might do better with half a guinea than throw it to a door-keeper;—but here is a man not only asks me to dinner, but gives me a ticket for the theatre.’ These were only his oddities, for no man was more liberal, or more honourable in all his doings and dealings than Matthews. He gave Hobhouse and me, before we set out for Constantinople, a most splendid entertainment, to which we did ample justice. One of his fancies was dining at all sorts of out of the way places. Somebody popped upon him, in I know not what coffee-house in the Strand—and what do you think was the attraction? Why, that he paid a shilling (I think) to dine with his hat on. This he called his ‘hat house,’ and used to boast of the comfort of being covered at mealtimes.
“When Sir Henry Smith
was expelled from Cambridge for a row
| 130 | NOTICES OF THE | A. D. 1808. |
‘Ah me! What perils do environ The man who meddles with hot Hiron.’ |
“He was also of that band of profane scoffers, who, under the auspices of * *, used to rouse Lort Mansel (late Bishop of Bristol) from his slumbers in the lodge of Trinity, and when he appeared at the window foaming with wrath, and crying out ‘I know you, gentlemen, I know you!’ were wont to reply, ‘We beseech thee to hear us, good Lort—Good Lort, deliver us!’ (Lort was his christian name.) As he was very free in his speculations upon all kinds of subjects, although by no means either dissolute or intemperate in his conduct, and as I was no less independent, our conversation and correspondence used to alarm our friend Hobhouse to a considerable degree.
“You must be almost tired of my packets, which will have cost a mint of postage.
