Part 40

Altogether, there was occasionally a very mixed society on and about the course: among the so-to-speak professional habitués, men who made a business of the pursuit there--who were actors rather than spectators, and all of whom have disappeared without leaving a successor in his peculiar line,--we may mention the old Duke of Leeds, redolent of port; the white-faced Duke of Cleveland, "the Jesuit of the Ring;" P. W. Ridsale, ex-footman, then millionaire, finally pauper; blacksmith Richardson, who, shaking his head at "Leeds," would remark of himself, that sobriety alone had saved him from being hanged; Mr. Beardsworth, who had been originally a hackney-coachman, then sporting his crimson liveries; Mr. Crook, who commenced life with a fish-basket; and the well-known son of the ostler at the Black Swan, in York, wearing diamond rings and pins, betting his thousands, and looking as cool the while, as if he not only largely used the waters of Pactolus, but owned half the gold-dust on its banks.

The two extremes of the official men as regarded rank, were, perhaps, Lord George Bentinck and Mr. Gully, the ex-pugilist. The former introduced, at Doncaster, the signal-flag to regulate the "starts," and he founded the Bentinck Fund (with the money subscribed for a testimonial to himself), for the relief of decayed jockeys and trainers. The two men were equals in one respect, the coolness with which they either won or lost. They who remember the year when Petre's Matilda beat Gully's Mameluke, and who witnessed the event and its results, speak yet with a sort of pride of Gully's conduct. He had lost immensely; but he was the first man who appeared in the betting-rooms to pay anyone who had a bet registered against him; and he was the last man to leave, not retiring till he was satisfied that there did not remain a single claimant. He paid away a grand total on that occasion which properly invested, would have set all the poor in Doncaster at ease for ever.--Abridged from the Athenæum, No. 1715.

"Walking Stewart."

Early in the year 1821, London lost one of its famous eccentrics, who rejoiced in the above distinction, which, it must be admitted, he had fairly earned. He was one of the lions of the great town, and his ubiquitous nature was thus ingeniously sketched:--

"Who that ever weathered his way over Westminster Bridge has not seen Walking Stewart (his invariable cognomen) sitting in the recess on the brow of the bridge, spencered up to his throat and down to his hips with a sort of garment, planned, it would seem, to stand powder, as became the habit of a military man; his dingy, dusty inexpressibles (truly inexpressibles), his boots travel-stained, black up to his knees--and yet not black neither--but arrant walkers, both of them, or their complexions belied them; his aged, but strongly-marked, manly, air-ripened face, steady as truth; and his large, irregular, dusty hat, that seemed to be of one mind with the boots? We say, who does not thus remember Walking Stewart, sitting, and leaning on his stick, as though he had never walked in his life, but had taken his seat on the bridge at his birth, and had grown old in his sedentary habit? To be sure, this view of him is rather negatived by as strong a remembrance of him in the same spencer and accompaniments of hair-powder and dust, resting on a bench in the Park, with as perfectly an eternal air: nor will the memory let him keep a quiet, constant seat here for ever; recalling him, as she is wont, in his shuffling, slow perambulation of the Strand, or Charing Cross, or Cockspur Street. Where really was he? You saw him on Westminster Bridge, acting his own monument. You went into the Park--he was there! fixed as the gentleman at Charing Cross. You met him, however, at Charing Cross, creeping on like the hour-hand upon a dial, getting rid of his rounds and his time at once! Indeed, his ubiquity appeared enormous, and yet not so enormous as the profundity of his sitting habits. He was a profound sitter. Could the Pythagorean system be entertained, what other would now be tenanted by Walking Stewart? Truly, he seemed always going, like a lot at an auction, and yet always at a stand, like a hackney-coach! Oh, what a walk was his to christen a man by! A slow, lazy, scraping, creeping, gazing pace--a shuffle--a walk in its dotage--a walk at a stand-still--yet was he a pleasant man to meet. We remember his face distinctly, and allowing a little for its northern hardness, it was certainly as wise, as kindly, and as handsome a face as ever crowned the shoulders of a soldier, a scholar and a gentleman.

"Well! Walking Stewart is dead! He will no more be seen niched in Westminster Bridge, or keeping his terms as one of the benchers of St. James's Park, or painting the pavement with moving but uplifted feet. In vain we looked for him 'at the hour when he was wont to walk.' The niche in the bridge is empty of its amiable statue, and as he is gone from this spot he has gone from all, for he was ever all in all! Three persons seemed departed in him. In him there seems to have been a triple death!"

We are tempted "to consecrate a passage" to him, as John Buncle expresses it, from a tiny pamphlet entitled "The Life and Adventures of the celebrated Walking Stewart, including his travels in the East Indies, Turkey, Germany, and America," and the author, "a relative," has contrived to out-do his subject in getting over the ground, for he manages to close his work at the end of the sixteenth page.

John Stewart, or Walking Stewart, was born of two Scotch parents, in 1749, in London, and was in due time sent to Harrow, and thence to the Charter House, where he established himself as a dunce--no bad promise in a boy, we think. He left school and was sent to India, where his character and energies unfolded themselves, as his biographer tells us, for his mind was unshackled by education.

He resolved to amass 3,000l., and then to return to England. No bad resolve. To attain this, he quitted the Company's Service and entered that of Hyder Ally. He now turned soldier, and became a general. Hyder's generals were easily made and unmade. Stewart behaved well and bravely, and paid his regiment without drawbacks, which made him popular. Becoming wounded somehow, and having no great faith in Hyder's surgeons, he begged leave to join the English for medical advice. Hyder gave a Polonius kind of admission, quietly determining to cut the traveller and his journey as short as possible, for his own sake and that of the invalid. Stewart sniffed the intention of Ally, and taking an early opportunity of cutting his company before they could cut him, he popped into a river, literally swam for his life, reached the bank, ran before his hunters like an antelope, and arrived safely at the European forts. He got in breathless, and lived. How he was cured of his wounds is thus told by Colonel Wilks in his Sketches of the South of India:--

"An English gentleman commanded one of the corps, and was most severely wounded after a desperate resistance; others in the same unhappy situation met with friends, or persons of the same caste, to procure for them the rude aid offered by Indian surgery; the Englishman was destitute of this poor advantage; his wounds were washed with simple warm water, by an attendant boy, three or four times-a-day; and, under this novel system of surgery, they recovered with a rapidity not exceeded under the best hospital treatment."

A writer in the Quarterly Review, 1817, appends to the above quotation the following:--"This English gentleman is the person distinguished by the name of Walking Stewart, who, after the lapse of half a century, is still alive, and still, we believe, walking daily, in the neighbourhood of the Haymarket and Charing Cross."

Hitherto, Stewart had saved little money. He now entered the Nabob of Arcot's service, and became prime minister, the memoir does not say how.

At length he took leave of India, and travelled over Persia and Turkey on foot, in search of a name, it should seem, or, as he was wont to say, "in search of the Polarity, and Moral Truth." After many adventures he arrived in England: he brought home money, and commenced his London life in an Armenian dress, to attract attention.

He next visited America, and on his return, "made the tour of Scotland, Germany, Italy, and France, on foot, and ultimately settled in Paris," where he made friends. He intended to live there; but after investing his money in French property, he smelt the sulphur cloud of the Revolution, and retreated as fast as possible, losing considerable property in his flight. He returned to London, and suddenly and unexpectedly received 10,000l. from the India Company, on the liquidation of the debts of the Nabob of Arcot. He bought annuities, and fattened his yearly income. The relative says:--"One of his annuities was purchased from the County Fire Office at a rate which, in the end, was proved to have been paid three, and nearly four times over. The calculation of the assurers was here completely at fault: every quarter brought Mr. Stewart regularly to the cashier, whom he accosted with, 'Well, man alive! I am come for my money!'"--which Stewart enjoyed as a joke.

Mr. Stewart now lived in better style, gave dinners and musical parties. Every evening a conversazione was given at his house, enlivened by music; on Sundays he gave select dinner parties, followed by a philosophical discourse, and a performance of sacred music, chiefly selected from the works of Handel, and concluding with the "Dead March in Saul," which was always received by the company as a signal for their departure.

Stewart was attached to King George IV., and lived peaceably until the arrival of Queen Caroline, when her deputations and political movements alarmed the great pedestrian, and awakened his walking propensities, and his friends had great difficulty to prevent him from going to America.

Stewart's health declined in 1821; he went to Margate, returned, became worse, and on Ash Wednesday he died.

To all entreaties from friends that he would write his travels, he replied, No; that his were travels of the mind. He, however, wrote essays, and gave lectures on the philosophy of the mind. It is very odd that men will not tell what they know, and will attempt to talk of what they do not know.

Youthful Days of the Hon. Grantley Berkeley.

At Cranford, Mr. Grantley Berkeley had the first enjoyments of a boy let loose into the country with a brother for a companion. "All day," he says, "we were together fishing, shooting, setting traps for vermin, rat hunting,--in short, seeking sport wherever it was attainable." This, as he suggests, was not exactly the orthodox way of bringing up a boy as he should go; but he is certain that it laid the foundation of his after success as a sportsman. Among other incidents of these days, he broke his collarbone and dislocated his shoulder; and, among other exercises popular in his time, he became familiar with Cribb, Figg, and other heroes of the then "ring," and derived from them as much pugilistic science as they could impart to a young, active, and enthusiastic pupil. At Cranford, moreover, he enjoyed a little private bull-baiting, but that was confessedly more on the account of his brother Augustus, or his brother Augustus's dog, than himself. "Bull," which was the name of the latter, was an eager and extempore performer in this department of the writer's education. At length "Bull" and Augustus left Grantley, who tells us:--

"As we proceeded along the high road, nearing the spot of our separation, we were overtaken by a respectable tradesman, as he appeared, driving his wife towards the neighbouring town in a buggy. It was Augustus's last chance of inducting us into a row, and not to be lost; so he made some most insulting remark upon these unoffending passengers, which so provoked the female, that she unfortunately took up the casus belli, and, with other abuse, called her assailant a 'barber's clerk.' He replied, 'I know I am a barber, and I have shaved you.' When the man heard this wordy war he joined in it. On this my brother told him, that 'if it was not for his woman he would pull him out of his rattletrap and tread on him.' Here was a circumstance that caused my boyish mind considerable speculation. Hard names and some swearing seemed not much to insult the man in the buggy; but on hearing the female at his side called his 'woman,' his wrath knew no bounds. With the exclamation, 'My woman, you rascal! she is my wife!' he set to work lashing my brother with his gig whip, commencing a sort of artillery duel at long practice, not in accordance with the cavalry arm of my brother, nor with his way of fighting. A charge upon the buggy was therefore made by him, keeping his right side open for mischief; and in the obscure darkness I could hear the crown of the hat of the driver get ten blows for one, for his long weapon was useless at close quarters. The female, wife or woman, whichever she was, very quickly saw that the combat was all one way, for with a very much damaged crown her king crouched down on the cushion at her side; so that she awakened up the heath with shrieks of 'Murder!' 'Be off, as hard as you can split,' was then the order to us from the offender. We obeyed, as we heard the heels of his horse speed on far in advance of the buggy."

From The Times Review of his Life, 1865.

To give Mr. Grantley Berkeley fair credit, he condemns the recklessness of such robust adventures, but he pleads that such was the practice in the days when he was raised; and to his own advantage, as he admits, he was summarily recalled to a more quiet regimen by the sudden appearance of a tutor who required from him other exercises. Nevertheless, his stories of little private fights with the sons of the Vicar of Berkeley and one of the keepers, which are very amusing, show that in stable and backyards he enjoyed consolations, though he declares that this was done chiefly for the amusement of his brother Henry, who used to invite him to the stable with the gloves to fight one of the boys above mentioned, when the battle always ended by his knocking the head of his opponent into the manger. He says,

"I remember that for months during these, to my brother, amusing combats my lips were sometimes so cut against my teeth that I could not eat any salad with vinegar, the acid occasioned so much smarting. I could lick my antagonist as far as the fight with the gloves was permitted to go, but in a few days at the word of command the lad was ready for another licking, so that week after week I had no peace, and had to lick him again; nor had I resolution enough to withstand the taunts of being vanquished, if I refused to set to, although my superior proficiency had been a hundred times asserted. All things must have an end: every day strengthened my tall and growing limbs, and every day my power over my antagonist increased, when, for some ill conduct, he lost his service and these, to him, not very agreeable encounters. My brother then for a time lost his amusement; 'Othello's occupation' was gone, for nothing came into service at Cranford that approached the age of a boy. A new footman was, however, inducted, a grown man and not a little one, but a cross-grown lout of a fellow; and, mere boy as I was, we were ordered to the stable, in front of my brother's usual throne, the corn-bin, and there desired to do battle. By this time I had got into such habits of pugnacious obedience that if a bear had been introduced, and I had been told that the beast was to vanquish me, I should at once have boxed with him. The combat I am now alluding to was not unlike one of a boy and bear. I stepped back, put in, and then gave way successfully, for a short time; but at last the man met me with a half-round blow, and hit me clean down on the rough stones of the stable. Henry did not seem to care much; but Moreton, who was present, spoke out loudly against the shame of putting such a boy to fight with a grown man, and I believe, feeling slightly annoyed at the way he had overmatched me, our elder brother stopped any further assault on my part, and suggested that Peter should put the gloves on with his own servant, a well-built, active little fellow, whom he had daily thrashed into one of the most expert boxers of his size. Peter, all agreeable, set to with Shadrach, when the former caught such a right-hander in the face as sent him as if he had been shot upon the stable stones. He rose crying, and deprived of all wish for another blow--my fall very sufficiently avenged. I have often wondered why I was not cowed by all this brutality, or why I ever took to those more gentle accomplishments in life that used to get me the name of 'dandy' among some of my rougher compeers. However, time wore on; I fought through the stable-boys and men-servants, and had sense enough not to acquire any rudeness of manner, nor dislike to more refined occupations."

The author then gives some anecdotes of the persons who visited the Cranford-bridge Inn at this time, most of them for shooting or hunting; and such is the penalty which one gentleman still alive must pay for his presence on one of these occasions that Mr. Berkeley stigmatizes him as a most dangerous companion to shoot with, as he was nearly peppering his (Mr. B.'s) legs and those of the Duke of York. Liston and Dowton, the comedians, used also to come to the Cranford-bridge Inn, and Mr. Berkeley tells a characteristic story of the latter. The astonishment of John Varley, the artist, who taught his sisters drawing, at a man on horseback clearing a fence in his presence, is depicted with a dash of humour, and it is evident from what Mr. Berkeley says of Varley in other respects that he must have been well acquainted with his various eccentricities.

Again we come upon some of his hunting experiences in the neighbourhood of Cranford, such as those shared with Lord Alvanley, who in answer to the question, "What sport?" at White's, replied, "Oh, the melon and asparagus beds were devilish heavy--up to our hocks in glass all day; and all Berkeley wanted was a landing-net to get his deer out of the water." It was with G. B. also that the late Sir George Wombwell, having missed his second horse, spoke to one of the surly cultivators of that stiff vale thus:--"I say farmer, ---- it, have you seen my fellow?" The man, with his hands in his breeches' pockets, eyed his questioner in silence for a minute and then exclaimed, "No, upon my soul I never did!" Hunting about Harrow became very expensive from the damage it did to the farmers in that district, and the claims for compensation which it entailed upon Mr. Berkeley and his friends. The result of this, he says, at once became evident; a mine of wealth would soon have been insufficient to cover the cost of a single run over the Harrow vale, and "reluctantly I saw that if I intended to keep hounds I must go farther from the metropolis, and seek a wilder scene in which to hunt a fox instead of a stag, and thus take a higher degree in the art of hunting." Accordingly, negotiations were entered into for his becoming the master of hounds to the Oakley Club in Bedfordshire for 1,000l. a-year, the club taking all the cost of the earth-stopping upon themselves and other incidental expenses. The depreciation of West India property which occurred about this time, and the larger expenses contingent on taking a country in which to hunt a fox four days a week, made him resolve to give up his seasons in London and settle down quietly to a country life, thus avoiding every unnecessary expenditure. His arrangements, in spite of opposition from some members of the club, appear to have been satisfactory and eventually popular, until the sport of his last season was positively brilliant, when in Yardley Chase alone he found seventeen foxes, and killed fourteen of them with a run.

What Became of the Seven Dials

Whoever is familiar with the history of St. Giles's will recollect that Seven Dials is an open area so called because there was formerly a column in the centre, on the summit of which were (traditionally) seven sun-dials, with a dial facing each of the seven streets which radiate from thence. They are thus described in Gay's Trivia:--