Part 63

A deplorable instance of this class is afforded by Wirgman, the Kantesian, just named, who, after making a fortune as a goldsmith and silversmith, in St. James's Street, Westminster, squandered it all as a regenerating philosopher. He printed several works, and had paper made specially for one, the same sheet being of several different colours; and as he changed the work many times while it was printing, the expense was enormous: one book of four hundred pages cost 2,276l. He published a grammar of the five senses, which was a sort of system of metaphysics for the use of children; and he maintained that when it was universally adopted in schools, peace and harmony would be restored to the earth, and virtue would everywhere replace crime. He complained much that people would not listen to him, and that although he had devoted nearly half a century, he had asked in vain to be appointed Professor in some University or College--so little does the world appreciate those who labour unto death in its service. Nevertheless, exclaimed Wirgman, after another useless application, "while life remains, I will not cease to communicate this blessing to the rising world."

A Perpetual-Motion Seeker.

The celebrated French physician, Pinel, relates the case of a watchmaker who was infatuated with the chimera of Perpetual Motion, and to effect this discovery, he set to work with indefatigable ardour. From unremitting attention to the object of his enthusiasm, coinciding with the influence of revolutionary disturbances, his imagination was greatly heated, his sleep was interrupted, and at length a complete derangement took place. His case was marked by a most whimsical illusion of the imagination: he fancied that he had lost his head upon the scaffold; that it had been thrown promiscuously among the heads of many other victims; that the judges having repented of their cruel sentence, had ordered their heads to be restored to their respective owners, and placed upon their respective shoulders; but that, in consequence of an unhappy mistake, the gentleman who had the management of that business, had placed upon his shoulders the head of one of his unhappy companions. The idea of this whimsical change of his head occupied his thoughts night and day, which determined his friends to send him to an asylum. Nothing could exceed the extravagance of his heated brain: he sung, he cried, or danced incessantly; and as there appeared no propensity to commit acts of violence or disturbance, he was allowed to go about the hospital without control, in order to expend, by evaporation, the effervescence of his spirits. "Look at these teeth!" he cried; "mine were exceedingly handsome; these are rotten and decayed. My mouth was sound and healthy; this is foul and diseased. What difference between this hair and that of my own head!"

The idea of perpetual motion frequently recurred to him in the midst of his wanderings; and he chalked on all the doors or windows as he passed the various designs by which his wondrous piece of mechanism was to be constructed. The method best calculated to cure so whimsical an illusion appeared to be that of encouraging his prosecution of it to satiety. His friends were accordingly requested to send him his tools, with materials to work upon, and other requisites, such as plates of copper and steel, and watch-wheels. His zeal was now redoubled; his whole attention was rivetted upon his favourite pursuit: he forgot his meals, and after about a month's labour our artist began to think he had followed a false route. He broke into a thousand fragments the piece of machinery which he had fabricated with so much toil, and thought, and labour; he then entered upon a new plan, and laboured for another fortnight. The various parts being completed, he brought them together; he fancied that he saw a perfect harmony amongst them. The whole was now finally adjusted--his anxiety was indescribable--motion succeeded; it continued for some time, and he supposed it capable of continuing for ever. He was elevated to the highest pitch of ecstasy and triumph, and ran like lightning into the interior of the hospital, crying out, like another Archimedes, "At length I have solved this famous problem, which has puzzled so many men celebrated for their wisdom and talents!" Grievous to add, he was checked in the midst of his triumph. The wheels stopped! the perpetual motion ceased! His intoxication of joy was succeeded by disappointment and confusion; though to avoid a humiliating and mortifying confession, he declared that he could easily remove the impediment: but, tired of such experimental employment, he determined for the future to devote his attention solely to his business.

There still remained another imaginary impression to be counteracted--that of the exchange of his head, which unceasingly occurred to him. A keen and unanswerable stroke of pleasantry seemed best adapted to correct this fantastic whim. Another convalescent, of a gay and facetious turn, instructed beforehand, adroitly turned the conversation to the subject of the famous miracle of St. Denis, in which it will be recollected that the holy man, after decapitation, walked away with his head under his arm, which he kissed and condoled with for its misfortune. Our mechanician strongly maintained the possibility of the fact, and sought to confirm it by an appeal to his own case. The other set up a laugh, and replied with a tone of the keenest ridicule, "Madman as thou art, how could St. Denis kiss his own head? Was it with his heels?" This equally unexpected and unanswerable retort forcibly struck the maniac. He retired confused amidst the laughter which was provoked at his expense, and never afterwards mentioned the exchange of his head.

"Her beauty's found beyond the skill Of the best paynter to embrace." ]

The Romantic Duchess of Newcastle.

More than two centuries ago, when Clerkenwell was a sort of court-quarter of the town, its most distinguished residents were William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, and his wife, Margaret Lucas, both of whom are remembered by their literary eccentricities. The Duke, who was a devoted royalist, after his defeat at Marston Moor, retired with his wife to the Continent; and with many privations, owing to pecuniary embarrassments, suffered an exile of eighteen years, chiefly in Antwerp, in a house which belonged to the widow of Rubens. Such was their extremity that they were both forced at one time to pawn their clothes to purchase a dinner. The Duke beguiled his time by writing an eccentric book on horsemanship. During his absence Cromwell's parliament levied upon his estate nearly three-quarters of a million of money. Upon the Restoration, he returned to England, and was created Duke of Newcastle; he then retired to his mansion in Clerkenwell; he died there in 1676, aged eighty-four.

The duchess was a pedantic and voluminous writer, her collected works filling ten printed folios, for she wrote prose and verse in all their varieties. "The whole story," writes Pepys, "of this lady is a romance and all she does is romantic. April 26th, 1667.--Met my Lady Newcastle, with her coach and footman all in velvet, herself, whom I never saw before, as I have heard her often described, for all the town talk is now-a-days of her extravagances, with her velvet cap, her hair about her ears, many black patches because of pimples about her mouth, naked-necked without anything about it, and a black just-au-corps. May 1st 1667.--She was in a black coach, adorned with silver instead of gold, and snow-white curtains, and everything black and white. Stayed at home reading the ridiculous history of my Lord Newcastle, wrote by his wife, which shows her to be a mad, conceited, ridiculous woman, and he an asse to suffer her to write what she writes to him and of him." On the 10th of April, 1667, Charles and his Queen came to Clerkenwell, on a visit to the duchess. On the 18th John Evelyn went to make court to the noble pair, who received him with great kindness. Another time he dined at Newcastle House, and was privileged to sit discoursing with her grace in her bedchamber after dinner. She thus describes to a friend her literary employments:--"You will find my works like infinite nature, that hath neither beginning nor end, and as confused as the chaos, wherein is neither method nor order, but all mixed together, without separation, like light and darkness." "But what gives one," says Walpole, "the best idea of her passion for scribbling, was her seldom revising the copies of her works, lest it should disturb her following conceptions. Her servant John was ordered to lie on a truckle-bed in a closet within her grace's bedchamber; and whenever, at any time, she gave the summons, by calling out 'John,' I conceive poor John was to get up, and commit to writing the offspring of his mistress' thoughts. Her grace's folios were usually enriched with gold, and had her coat-of-arms upon them. Hence, Pope, in the Dunciad, Book I:--

"Stamp'd with arms, Newcastle shines complete."

In her Poems and Fancies, 1653, the copy now in the British Museum, on the margin of one page is the following note in the Duchess' own handwriting:--"Reader, let me intreat you to consider only the fancyes in this my book of poems, and not the language of the numbers, nor rimes, nor fals printing, for if you doe, you will be my condeming judg, which will grive me much." Of this book she says:--

"When I did write this book I took great paines, For I did walk, and thinke, and break my braines; My thoughts run out of breath, then down would lye, And panting with short wind like those that dye; When time had given ease, and lent them strength, Then up would get and run another length; Sometimes I kept my thought with strict dyet, And made them fast with ease, rest, and quiet, That they might run with swifter speed, And by this course new fancies they could breed; But I doe feare they are no so good to please, But now they're out my braine is more at ease."

At page 228 occurs this strange fancy:--

"Life scums the cream of beauty with Time's spoon, And draws the claret wine of blushes soon."

Again, she tells us that--

"The brain is like an oven, hot and dry, Which bakes all sorts of fancies, low and high; The thoughts are wood, which motion sets on fire; The tongue a peele, which draws forth the desire; But thinking much, the brain too hot will grow, And burns it up; if cold, the thoughts are dough."

To a volume of the Duchess' plays is prefixed a portrait of her Grace, and this couplet under it:--

"Her beauty's found beyond the skill Of the best paynter to embrace."

There is a story current that the Duke being once, when in a peevish humour, complimented by a friend on the great wisdom of his wife, made answer, "Sir, a very wise woman is a very foolish thing."

Another eccentric inhabitant of Newcastle House was Elizabeth, Duchess of Albemarle, and afterwards of Montague. She was married in 1669 to Christopher Monck, second Duke of Albemarle, then a youth of sixteen, whom her inordinate pride drove to the bottle and other dissipation. After his death, in 1688, at Jamaica, the Duchess, whose vast estate so inflated her vanity as to produce mental aberration, resolved never again to give her hand to any but a sovereign prince. She had many suitors; but true to her resolution, she rejected them all, until Ralph Montague, third Lord and first Duke of that name, achieved the conquest by courting her as Emperor of China: and the anecdote has been dramatized by Colley Cibber, in his comedy of The Double Gallant, or Sick Lady's Cure. Lord Montague married the lady as "Emperor," but afterwards played the truant, and kept her in such strict confinement that her relations compelled him to produce her in open court, to prove that she was alive. Richard Lord Ross, one of her rejected suitors, addressed to Lord Montague these lines on his match:--

"Insulting rival, never boast Thy conquest lately won: No wonder that her heart was lost,-- Her senses first were gone.

"From one that's under Bedlam's laws What glory can be had? For love of thee was not the cause: It proves that she was mad."

The Duchess survived her second husband nearly thirty years, and at last "died of mere old age," at Newcastle House, August 28th, 1738, aged ninety-six years. Until her decease, she is said to have been constantly served on the knee as a sovereign; besides keeping her word, that she would not stoop to marry anyone but the Emperor of China.

Sources of Laughter.

In a clever paper in the Saturday Review (Oct. 7th, 1865), we find these amusing anecdotical instances of the sources means movere jocum:--

"A sustained, deliberate pride would have rather prevented than encouraged that fit of laughter which has preserved to posterity the name of a certain Marquis of Blandford. He, being noted for laughing upon small provocation, was once convulsed for half-an-hour together on seeing somebody fillip a crumb into a blind fiddler's face, the fits returning whenever the "ludicrous idea" recurred to him. An habitual sense of superiority would have prevented this sudden glory at sight of a beggar's helplessness under insult.

"There are personalities which lie so hid under a disguise that they are not readily known for such. The humorist and the cynic have each a knack of investing with human weaknesses things, animate and inanimate, in which plainer minds can see no analogy to human nature. We have known a man of quaint fancies laugh till the tears ran down at seeing a rat peep out of a hole. He caught a touch of humanity in the brute's perplexed air; he guessed at something behind the scenes impervious to our grosser vision. A bird, frumpish and disquieted on a rainy day, suggests to such a man some social image of discontent that makes capital fun for him. He can improve these lower creatures into caricatures of his friends, or of mankind at large. Mr. Formby owned himself unable to help "laughing out loud" in the presence of Egyptian antiquities, with the Memnon at their head; he laughed at an ancient civilization, at the men of the past personified by their works. Saturnine tempers can only laugh at imminent danger or positive calamity; mortal terror is the most ludicrous of all ideas to them. Mr. Trollope represents Lord de Courcy, who had not laughed for many a day, exploding at the notion of his neighbour earl having been all but tossed by a bull: and the joke would have been better still if the bull had had his will. This tendency is frequently to be seen with a defective sympathy, and we believe the things that make men laugh are an excellent clue at once to intellect and temper. Many a man does not betray the tiger that lurks within him till he laughs. There are times when the body craves for laughter as it does for food. This is the laughter which, on some occasion or other, has betrayed us all into a scandalous, unseasonable, remorseful gaiety. After long abstinence from cheerful thought, there are few occasions so sad and solemn as to render this inopportune revolt impossible, unless where grief absorbs the whole soul, and lowers the system to a uniformity of sadness. In fact, as no solemnity can be safe from incongruities, such occasions are not seldom the especial scene of these exposures--of explosions of a wild, perverse hilarity taking the culprit at unawares; and this even while he is aghast at his flagrant insensibility to the demand of the hour.

"This is the laughter often ascribed to Satanic influence. The nerves cannot forego the wonted stimulus, and are malignantly on the watch, as it were, to betray the higher faculties into this unseemly indulgence. Thus John and Charles Wesley, in the early days of their public career, set forth one particular day to sing hymns together in the fields; but, on uplifting the first stave, one of them was suddenly struck with a sense of something ludicrous in their errand, the other caught the infection, and both fell into convulsions of laughter, renewed on every attempt to carry out their first design, till they were fain to give up and own themselves for that time conquered by the Devil. There is a story of Dr. Johnson much to the same purpose. Naturally melancholy, he was yet a great laugher, and thus was an especial victim to the possession we speak of, for no one laughs in depression who has not learnt to laugh in mirth. He was dining with his friend Chambers in the Temple, and at first betrayed so much physical suffering and mental dejection that his companion could not help boring him with remedies. By degrees he rallied, and with the rally came the need of a general reaction. At this point Chambers happened to say that a common friend had been with him that morning making his will. Johnson--or rather his nervous system--seized upon this as the required subject. He raised a ludicrous picture of the "testator" going about boasting of the fact of his will-making to anybody that would listen, down to the innkeeper on the road. Roaring with laughter, he trusted that Chambers had had the conscience not to describe the testator as of sound mind, hoped there was a legacy to himself, and concluded with saying that he would have the will set to verse and a ballad made out of it. Mr. Chambers, not at all relishing this pleasantry, got rid of his guest as soon as he could. But not so did Johnson get rid of his merriment; he rolled in convulsions till he got out of Temple Gate, and then, supporting himself against a post, sent forth peals so loud as, in the silence of the night, to be heard from Temple Bar to Fleet Ditch. We hear of stomach coughs; this was a stomach, or ganglionic, laugh.