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CHAPTER XIV.

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PAST TIMES CONTINUED.

The days gone by—from shore to shore Their ever-lengthening shadows spread; On, on, till Time shall breathe no more, And Earth itself be with the dead: Each brief unnoticed minute bears The mandate of its God on high; And death and silence are the heirs Of days gone by—of days gone by!—Swain.

I have already mentioned my accession to the staff of the “Morning Post,” and I subsequently reported nearly three sessions for the “British Press,” so that my apprenticeship in this line filled, with a few vacations, almost the customary term of seven years. Within that period I had migrated from furnished residences in Craven Street, Strand, and Curzon Street, May Fair, to a roomy, old, and old-fashioned unfurnished house in Old Brompton, called Cromwell Cottage, a short distance from Gloucester Lodge, the last abode of Mr. Canning, in which domicile I lived for several years.

Cromwell House, close by, and said to derive its name from being one of the secret sleeping-places of the Protector in the vicinity of London, was inhabited by an amiable family of the name of Dakin, nearly related to the Prebendary of Westminster; and several of my other

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neighbours were “noticeable” people. Blanshard, the comic performer, had a cottage at hand; and a larger house was occupied by Mrs. Hedgeland, now the wife of a tea grocer, better known as Isabella Kelly, the authoress of some popular novels, and the mother of Sir Fitzroy Kelly, the present Solicitor-general. The eminent lawyer was then a very pretty, smart, boy, with a younger brother equally attractive in his smaller way, and a sister. Mrs. Hedgeland, as well as the latter, is still, I believe, alive, and better provided for than in not very distant bygone years, though enjoying an annuity from the Lonsdale family, in which she was a governess. The second son became enamoured of the stage, and whilst his legal brother rose to wealth and distinction, afforded another melancholy example of the folly of reliance upon desultory pursuits, instead of learning a profession or a business. Under the assumed name of Keppell he tried his fortune in Romeo, and I think also essayed his powers in America, but without success; and, after suffering great mortifications, he died prematurely with an almost broken heart. His person was small, but his proportions and countenance well suited to the part of the devoted Italian lover; nor were his endowments of a mediocre order, but fortune did not smile upon him, he was hardly ever known beyond a very limited circle, and is now forgotten. As a memorial of him, I add a letter respecting his debut, as I remember, at the Queen’s Theatre, near Tottenham Court Road, and which failed to make a sufficient impression upon the public.

Among other pleasant neighbours we reckoned a family of Rapers, who tenanted the cottage once inhabited by the famed Miss Gunnings. Adjoining were the Woods, a merry and agreeable Northumbrian race; the second very pretty daughter, now the dowager Mrs. Compton, of Carham, a lovely spot on the Tweed, near the site of my vignette; and Mr. Vincent Dowling, so generally known for his talents in the periodical press, and as the acknowledged supreme

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chronicler of the Fancy World and Life in London. He was my tenant in a cottage standing in the same garden, and called the Bath, from an ancient and very cold accommodation of that sort, in a small orchard adjoining the dwelling. Miss Glossop, afterwards a favourite cantatrice on the stage, was also a neighbour. The whole of this little suburban locality bore traces of having been of some note in former times. I dug up statues and other pieces of sculpture; and I had reason to believe that if Oliver Cromwell did not, Chief Justice Hale did, occupy Cromwell House; which was the very building for a ghostly romance, and, in point of fact, haunted in my time so as to create considerable alarm, but, happily, on investigation, discovered to have nothing supernatural in the noises, nor so fearful to the servant maids as was at first supposed. Old Noll’s fetch and the other Hale fellow well met, were exorcised, and the place restored to tranquillity.

But besides what I may enumerate as constant resident neighbours, there was an occasional summer occupant of a retired cottage on the other side of Cromwell House from me, and nearer town, who had a frequent visitor whom it was no small gratification to meet in the privacy of a very limited, very confidential, and very social circle. The amphytrion was Mr. Peake, the father of the humourous and facetious Dick (whom much I esteemed) and treasurer of Drury Lane Theatre; and his guest was Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who, after business was got through somehow or other, or anyhow, turned about, and to old Brompton, with renovated gusto, to pleasure. It was truly delectable; but no body could describe what it was. It was an abandonment of self, and a charm cast on all around. There was none of the prepared wit for which Moore gives him credit, but a natural overflow of racy conversation and anecdote. The most

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extraordinary conversations men whom I have known were Sheridan, Sydney Smith, Canning, and Theodore Hook; but they were all as dissimilar to each other, as if the realm of wit and humour were peopled by quite different races, “Black, White, Mulatto, and Malay,” who all spoke different languages, saw with different eyes, and fancied with different imaginations and peculiarities of mind. Sheridan charmed, Canning fascinated, Sydney Smith entertained, and Theodore Hook amazed you. Sheridan threw himself into your arms and upon your heart with such apparently boundless confidence, that you could not help considering yourself, at once, a trusted friend; and on many and many a trying occasion did he reap the benefit of this implanted feeling. This is not, however, the place to dissect character; and though anticipating time by a quarter of a century (having spoken of the elder, and the second Sheridan in my preceding pages) I will not leave the name without adding a few words of a third, Francis or Frank, the son of Tom, whose early loss, in my opinion, deprived it of another lustre which would have shone brightly in a family constellation, brilliant alike in the male and female stars. Frank Sheridan was a warm-hearted, generous youth, and though playfully pictured by his relative as

“The fine young English gentleman, One of the modern times:”

had stuff in him, like the fifth Henry, to make these wild-oat foibles only the foils to his mature and shining light. I have read poetry of his composition which well deserved preservation; and a full comedy, written when barely of age, was proof how richly he inherited the genius of the author of the School for Scandal. Respecting this drama I have a note to the writer from poor Tyrone Power, who observes, “I long to see your comedy. As your grandfather said of himself, I say of you, ‘You have it in you, and, confound you, it must and shall come out.’” As the rest of this note touches on theatrical matters, and is a fair specimen of Power’s clever off-hand manner, I make no excuse for copying it here. It is addressed from America to the Garrick Club, London, and runs thus:

I append the letter from Frank, which enclosed this scrap, and which will serve to show that our “fine young English gentleman” was quite alive to affairs which required notice or correction, and where friends were concerned.

* Mr. Francis Mills, a first-rate dramatic connoisseur, fine judge of the arts, and pleasant and accomplished gentleman.—J.

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