Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. III, No. XVII, October 1851

The illustrious progenitors of bookworms were such personages as the venerable Bede, Alfred the Great, and Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury. Friar Roger Bacon was also an intense bookworm. The noble book-spirit by which the lives of the Oxford Athenians are recorded and preserved, is now probably forgotten by the world. The student, however reveres the name of old Anthony à Wood. The remembrance of his researches amidst paper and parchment documents, stored up in chests and desks, and upon which the moth was "feeding sweetly," is perpetuated in bibliography. We follow in imagination his cautious step, and head bowing from premature decay, and solemn air, and sombre visage, with cane under the arm, pacing from library to library, through Gothic quadrangles, or sauntering along the Isis on his way to some neighboring village, where, may be, with some congenial Radcliffe, he would recreate with pipe and pot. While the Bodleian and Ashmolean collections remain, so long will the memory of his laudable exertions continue unimpaired. Anthony à Wood was in person of a large, robust make, tall and thin, and had a sedate and thoughtful look, almost bordering upon a melancholy cast. Beneath a strange garb and coarse exterior, lay all that acuteness of observation and retentiveness of memory, as well as inflexible integrity, which marked his intellectual character. After he had by continual drudging worn out his body, he left this world contentedly, A.D. 1695.

In the early part of the seventeenth century, lived that very curious collector of ancient popular little pieces, as well as lover of sacred, secret soul soliloquies, that "melancholy Jaques," yclept Robert Burton. He gave a multitude of books to the Bodleian Library. This original, amusing, and now popular author was an arrant book-hunter – a "devourer of authors." Old Burton's constant companion was, we read, the eccentric "Harry" Hastings, a bibliomaniac, yet also an ardent sportsman. Just alighted from the toils of the chase, Harry Hastings, then in his eightieth year, would partake of a substantial dinner, tipple his tankard of ale dry, take his customary nap, wake up, rub his eyes, and behold the "Anatomy of Melancholy" seated before the fire, his visage buried in an opened folio! A rare old boy must have been this Hastings. He is described as low of stature, but strong and active, of a ruddy complexion, with flaxen hair. His clothes were always of Lincoln green. His house was of the old fashion, in the midst of a large park well stocked with game. He kept his hounds, and his great hall was commonly strewed with marrow bones. He lived to be an hundred, and never lost his eyesight nor used spectacles.

Richard Ashmole, the founder of the Ashmolean Museum, was an intimate of the astrologer Lilly, and one of the queerest of bookworms. His life was grotesquely checkered by family jars. He had a termagant wife, who, it appears, was continually "taking the law of him in return for neglect, cruelty," &c. Whether Ashmole was proof or not proof against this peculiar kind of henpecking, we can not report; but it is certain that his bodily health failed him in the course of his wife's persecution; he sought to tinker up his constitution with quack medicines, of which he became the victim.

The Bodleian and Ashmolean collections are emulated by the Harleian. Harley, Earl of Oxford's attachment to books, and the large sums he expended in forming the collection of MSS., have rendered the name celebrated. The Harleian collection of MSS. was purchased by government for the National Library; the purchase-money amounted to £10,000. Harley lived in the middle of the seventeenth century.

A remarkable individual of the order of bookworm, was the musical bibliomaniac, Thomas Britton. This curious character lived in the Augustan age of Queen Anne. He came to London from a northern county, and, after serving an humble apprenticeship, embarked in business as a kind of costermonger; he was in the habit of actually crying his coals about the street. His attire was a Guernsey frock; he carried a black sack on his shoulders, and a coal measure in his hands. In this style he was painted by Woollaston. Britton lived in Aylesbury-street, Clerkenwell, where he fitted up a concert-room, the progenitor of the great philharmonic and ancient nobility concerts of the present day. Sir Robert l'Estrange was one of Britton's first patrons, and by his reputation and example induced the fashionable world of those days to patronize Britton's concerts, at which Handel, Phil Hart, Banister, Dubourg the violinist, and others, performed to the genteelest of audiences. The concert-room was literally but one floor over a coal-shed; and the visitors had to climb up to it by a ladder fixed outside of the house, and to sit under a low roof, against which they could not avoid knocking their heads soundingly. Britton was no composer, only a musician and book-collector. He collected works on the occult art chiefly, and on music; his library sold for a large sum of money in those times. He was quite a notoriety on account of the humble trade he so openly followed, and the refined tastes he was known to cultivate. One day passing nigh the house of Woollaston the painter, in Warwick-lane, Britton, being in his work-a-day attire, gave out lustily his well-known cry of "Small-coal." Woollaston's attention was attracted, and he recognized in the voice that of his musical acquaintance Britton, whom he had never seen in the pursuit of his ordinary trade. The artist at once beckoned Britton in, and there and then took his portrait as he sat, a veritable itinerant coal-dealer. The portrait is most characteristic, and is now to be seen in the collection of paintings of the British Museum. But we must notice the small-coal man under his bibliopolic phase. A bibliomania raged among Queen Anne's nobility. The Earls of Oxford, Pembroke, Sunderland, and Winchelsea, and the Duke of Devonshire, were among the smitten. These personages, on Saturdays, during the winter season, used to resort to the city, and, there separating, take several routes to the booksellers' shops in different parts of the town, to search out old volumes and MSS. Some time before noon, they would assemble at the shop of Christopher Bateman, a bookseller, at the corner of Ave Maria-lane, in Paternoster-row (query, Little Britain?), where they were frequently met by other persons engaged in the same pursuits, and a conversation commenced on the subject of their inquiries. As nearly as possible to the hour of twelve by St. Paul's clock, Britton (uniquely, the "Literary Dustman" of his age), who by that time had finished his round, clad in his blue frock, and pitching his sack of small coal on the bulk of Mr. Bateman's shop window, used to go in and join them. After about an hour's chat, the noblemen adjourned to the Mourning Bush Tavern at Aldersgate (probably the site of the present Albion Tavern), where they dined, and spent the remainder of the day. Poor Britton was indeed a singular character, and died a death as singular as his life. He was, we are told, of an excessively nervous temperament, which rendered him the object occasionally of villainous practical jokes. Unfortunately he incurred the enmity of Honeyman, the ventriloquist. On a certain day, when Britton gave one of his nobility concerts in Aylesbury-street, Honeyman attended. An opportunity occurring, a voice was heard at a distance, which announced that Thomas Britton's hour was near and that he had but a short time to remain in this world. Poor Britton was not proof against the art of the malicious mimic. He felt the ventriloquist's words as though they were a sacred augur; so deep an impression did the incident make upon him, that he died, almost as predicted, in a brief period, aged fifty-eight, 1714.

Browne Willis was another original of whom we are enabled to furnish a few whimsical anecdotes. But we would reserve this respectful remark, that the doctor was, notwithstanding oddities in externals and manners, nevertheless a learned antiquary, and a good man. So were they all, all learned antiquaries, and excellent men. His tastes led him chiefly to the study of ecclesiastical relics. He visited every cathedral in England and Wales. To these journeys he himself gave the name of pilgrimages. Browne Willis lived in the latter part of the seventeenth century. He was grandson of Dr. Thomas Willis, a celebrated physician, and the first to reduce the theory of phrenology to order and system. His person and dress are described by one who knew him well; they were "so singular that, though a gentleman of £1000 per annum, he was often taken for a beggar. An old leathern girdle or belt always surrounded the two or three coats he wore, and over them an old blue cloak. He wrote the worst hand of any man in England, such as he could with difficulty read himself. His boots, which he almost always appeared in, were not the least singular part of his dress. I suppose it would not be falsity to say they were forty years old, patched and vamped up at various times. They were all in wrinkles, and did not come up above half-way of his legs. He was often called, in the neighborhood of Buckingham, 'Old Wrinkle Boots.' The chariot of Mr. Willis was so singular, that from it he was called himself, the 'Old Chariot.' It was his wedding chariot, and had his arms on brass plates about it, not unlike a coffin, and painted black." This rare antiquary was satirized by Dr. Darrell, in some humorous and highly descriptive verses, of which the subjoined couplets are a specimen:

"High on a hill his mansion stoodBut gloomy dark within.Here mangled books, as bones and blood,Lie in a giant's den:"Crude, undigested, half-devoured,On groaning shelves they're thrown;Such manuscripts no eye could read,Nor hand write, but his own."

His wife having written a serious book, Browne Willis wrote on his own copy of the work, "All the connection in this book is owing to the book-binder." He delighted to joke upon Mrs. Willis's book and her authorship.

INCIDENTS OF DUELING

Dueling has fallen into desuetude, and very properly. Times have changed marvelously. Fifty years ago, gentlemen by descent, by property, or by profession, were only esquired; now, if you mistered an attorney's clerk, the letter would be sent repudiated to the dead office. To him only who was entitled to bear arms, an appeal to arms was allowed; and had a man in trade, though worth a plum, in those days presumed to send a message to a gentleman not in trade, nor worth a penny, the odds would be considerable that the bearer of the cartel would have been horsewhipped on the spot. Even liberty to share in certain amusements was considered great condescension on the part of the aristocracy to men who had founded their own fortunes, and accidental meetings at the cover-side were never supposed to warrant aught beyond a field acquaintance. A brutal, but striking anecdote which marked this then prevailing feeling of exclusiveness, is told of the too-celebrated George Robert Fitzgerald. One hunting day, when drawing a fox cover, he observed a well-mounted and smartly-dressed young man join the company; and on inquiring his name from the whipper, was informed that the stranger was a neighboring apothecary.

"An apothecary!" exclaimed the master of hounds. "By Heaven! men's impudence every day becomes more audacious! Why, it would not surprise me after this, that an attorney should join our meeting next. Come, it is time that this dealer in drugs should be taught that fox-hunting is a trade practiced only by gentlemen;" and riding up to the unoffending dabbler in Galenicals, he savagely flogged him off the field.

That dueling has been employed too frequently for bad purposes, by brave men – and for bloody ones, by blackguards, has never been denied. The page of history, in the fatal meeting between Buckingham and Shrewsbury, strikingly exemplifies the former assertion. For the seduction of his wife – Buckingham, by the way, had seduced his own– the injured earl demanded, and obtained satisfaction. In accordance with the barbarous custom of the times, the seconds – two on either side – engaged; on the duke's side, Jenkins was left dead; on the earl's, Sir John Talbot was severely wounded. Buckingham, however, received no hurt beyond a scratch, and ran his antagonist through the body, thus adding murder to seduction. The fair frail one was worthy of the ducal ruffian she had attached herself to. Disguised as a page, from a neighboring coppice she watched the combat, and slept with the murderer of her husband the same night, although the shirt he wore bore bloody evidence of the foul assassination he had just committed. It is reported that the last hours of the adulteress were miserable, and the felon blow that relieved the world of such an unscrupulous villain as the duke, in our poor thinking, was nothing beyond simple retribution.

Another, and an opposite case, both in its results and causes, occurred many years ago, when the writer of these pages was in Paris. The worst and most dangerous companion upon earth is a gamester. "Nemo repente fuit turpissimus;" which, according to Irish translation, meaneth, that a man must be articled for five years to an attorney. As regards play, we hold a different opinion, and believe that the course of demoralization may be more rapidly effected by the alea damnosa than by law. To the proof: – even at the distance of a quarter of a century, we must hold the name sacred; but there are old guardsmen who will remember "Little Joe." A stouter soldier never headed a company. He was kind, well-tempered, too generous probably, and every body liked him. In money matters he was careless; had an early itch for play, and a sojourn with the Army of Occupation confirmed a disease already rooted. In a word, he abandoned a profession he could no longer continue in, and became a regular gambler.

Joe was a first-rate shot, and also constitutionally pugnacious. He felt his own degradation keenly, when to remedy it was too late; and a temper naturally excitable, had now become most dangerous. Is there one gamester out of twenty who, in a very few years, does not go – circumstances only considered – to ruin? Joe formed no exception. He lost caste, and fell, and fell, "deeper and deeper still," until he reached that last degrading status in society – a chevalier d'industrie.

While engaged in his base vocation, a young citizen fell into the hands of the gang with whom Joe, now a member of the body, regularly confederated. The victim was a Londoner, and one, as it was represented, who would stand plucking; and that very extensively. He had crossed the Channel, like the thousand and one fools who flock annually to the French capital to view Parisian lions, and, as a countryman, Little Joe kindly undertook to play Mentor to this Cockney Telemachus. It was not a difficult task for one who knew the world so well as Captain K – to worm himself into the confidence of a raw youth, and he easily succeeded. In every point but one the intended victim was as pliant as could be wished – but on that one he was most obstinate. He had a horror of play. He would drink, racket about, dissipate, but name a game of chance, and he started like a frightened steed. The period allotted by "the governor at home," as he, in London parlance, termed his father, had almost expired; and as plump a pigeon as ever a gambler dropped upon, was about to return to the country-house he had quitted to see the world, without losing a single feather. To the villainous confederation that thought was maddening; and, as a last resource, a decoy duck was tried – and one of the loveliest and most artful of the class, was accidentally introduced by the gallant captain to Monsieur Callico, as he derisively called the citizen.

To describe the progress of this gambling conspiracy would be a waste of time. It was managed with consummate ability. The devoted youth became desperately enamored of this friend, of the captain; he "told his love," and then came proof positive, that Greek and Roman friendship are not comparable to the tremendous sacrifice of personal feeling, which you may expect from a café acquaintance. Damon returned in time to substitute his own neck, and stay the execution of a gentleman called Pythias, while

"Cato the sententiousLent his fair lady to his friend Hortensius."

Now Captain K – , on learning the state of the young Londoner's affections, although himself a secret worshiper at the shrine of the same divinity, resigned his own pretensions, and actually undertook to plead with the fair enslaver for his friend. Great was the intimacy, of course, that succeeded; and at the apartments of Madame La C – , morning, noon, and night, the young Englishman might have been found.

Play was cautiously introduced – nothing was staked excepting a mere bagatelle– beyond the hazard of a trifle, it was evident that any experiment would be dangerous. The day for the citizen's departure was fixed, and it was pretty certain the bird would escape the net of the fowler. Could he have been but led to play he would have been cheated scientifically. That was not to be done, and nothing could succeed but bold and downright felony.

Madame's birthday returned, as it did some twenty times a year; and she gave a petit souper. K – sent in the wine, and the citizen provided the viands. A merrier evening could not be spent. Two or three ladies, and as many gentlemen of high honor, favored La C – with their company. There was play, limited to a few francs, and on the Englishman's part to gloves and garters. Supper was served – all was hilarious – the wine circulated freely, and all the Londoner remembered in the morning when he awoke with a burning head was, that he had become unaccountably drunk, and got home he knew not how.

He strove to get up, but his temples throbbed almost to bursting. An excess in wine had never affected him so before: could this arise from simple drunkenness? The sensation was altogether new. The truth was he had not been drunk, but drugged!

While rolling his aching head from side to side upon the pillow his lacquey de place announced his dear friend, the captain; and next minute "Little Joe" was standing at his bedside.

"Good heaven!" exclaimed the citizen; "how awfully drunk I must have been last night! My very brain's on fire."

"Drunk!" returned his companion; "you were not drunk but mad – what devil possessed you to play? D – n it, you always swore you hated it, and every score of naps you lost you would, though I warned you, lay it on thicker."

"Naps! play!" exclaimed the sick man with a stare; "why, what do you mean? I am but in sorry mood for jesting. I do remember playing for and losing some gloves and garters to the ladies."

"And let me tell you, I am in still less joking humor than yourself," returned the captain, in high dudgeon; "through your cursed obstinacy, I played against my better judgment – and was cleaned by Count F – out of eighteen thousand francs. How shall I come to book? In the devil's name how can I face my creditor this evening at Madame's réunion? The three hundred naps I won from you will go but a short way to meet my losses. I think I shall go mad."

"And I fancy that I am mad already," groaned the sufferer from the bed; "do end this folly, K – ."

"Did I not know you, I should fancy you intended me offense," replied the captain, rather angrily; "what, have you such a conveniency of memory as to forget that you lost three hundred naps to me, eight hundred to the count, and five-and-forty to Madame La C – ?"

Before the unhappy youth could find words to respond, the valet announced another visitor, and Count F – was shown in.

"Monsieur le Comte," pursued the gallant captain, "are you, too, in a jesting mood? My young friend here can not be persuaded that we had a little play last night. Excuse me paying but half my loss till evening; and, in the mean time, accept these billets de banque," and "Little Joe" handed the chevalier a roll of bank notes; "you will find there ten thousand francs."

"Gentlemen," cried the astonished citizen, "I pray you end this farce. I know I am indebted to madame heavily in gloves and ribbons."

"Why, fiends and furies!" exclaimed the captain, "do you pretend, sir, to assert, that you did not lose three hundred naps to me?"

"Or that this acknowledgment for eight hundred was not given?"

The youth, astounded as he was, took the paper. It purported to be an I.O.U., but the forgery was clumsy.

"That is not my writing – nor do I owe either of you a sou."

The scene that followed may be imagined. Instant payment, or a legal security for the alleged debts was demanded – or the alternative – a meeting in the Bois de Boulogne within two hours. Half bewildered, the young dupe assented to give the latter – and at the time appointed he alighted, without friend or weapon, at the place named for the duel, by these infamous men.

Several other persons were on the ground, all strangers to the unfortunate young man. Another attempt was made to induce him to admit the debt of honor, and it was proposed that a reconciliation should take place between him and his former friend, the captain. To do them justice, the gentlemen unknown were ardent in their endeavors to accommodate the matter, and persuade the citizen to pay the money, and they were perfectly sincere in mediation on the occasion, for they were all members of the same dishonest clique. But nothing could shake the youth's determination to repudiate the infamous demand. Captain K – , irritated to madness at his total failure, demanded that the duel should instantly proceed – and the gang, as furious from the unexpected disappointment, determined to murder one who could not be persuaded to submit to bare-faced spoliation.

Never were two combatants more unequally opposed, than the young merchant and the desperate gambler – the one, probably, had never discharged a pistol in his life – the other, and within six months, had killed his man on the very spot the doomed youth was standing.

Other and fouler circumstances went to render the result of the impending duel almost a certainty. K – fought with his own pistols – with the firing signal he was particularly familiar – his back was to the sun, and an open sky behind him. The scoundrel second, who had volunteered his services, placed the young Englishman in a position where the trunk of a large beech formed a leading line of fire, and the stream of sunshine through the vista in the trees, was almost blinding. To the intentional murderer and the intended victim, the loaded weapons were delivered – a preparatory word was spoken, the signal fell. K – coolly raised his pistol, while, by a snap-shot, the flurried Englishman anticipated his executioner by a second. On that momentary advantage life or death depended. The bully, shot directly through the heart, fell on the sward, a dead man. While the bullet destined for the breast of his antagonist, cut the grass harmlessly at the foot of the fortunate survivor. Never was a thoughtless youth more providentially delivered by accident from certain murder – nor a scoundrel sent to his account so justly and unexpectedly as Captain K – .

In riding an hour after the affair had terminated in the forest, I met the body of the dead gambler on a stretcher, en route to the Morgue.

The decline of dueling, from the period it was made ancillary to swindling, or to the settlement of disputes between vulgar scoundrels, who could not lay the slightest claims to the title or privileges of gentlemen, has been rapid and progressive, and its gross abuse did more to remedy its own mischief, than moral appeals and legal enactments. What but disgust can be created against a system when prostituted to the purposes of sheer murder? When two drunken blackguards stagger from the billiard-room to the field, and, by the scoundrels who attend them, are permitted to carry a dispute, emanating in a question of scoring or not scoring a point or two, to an extent that the most flagitious injury would not warrant?

A more recent case which occurred in the neighborhood, and must be still fresh in general recollection, may be adduced to prove how sadly the law of honor is brought to the lowliest estimation. I allude to the case of M – , killed by E – . A quarrel takes place in that sink of infamy, a saloon – and the parties adjourn to Wimbledon to commit murder. One fire is not enough, and, though a bullet passes through the hat of M – , the seconds provide them with fresh weapons, and the wretched blackguard is, on the next fire, shot dead. The ruffian who commits the murder, sees the expiring wretch heaving his last sigh – and remarks to a casual spectator, "I have done for the – ," using an epithet too disgusting to be named. He, and the well-selected seconds, hurry off, without even taking a parting glance at the prostrate victim. The surgeon, with his friends, lugs the dead body into a cab. An inquest is held – "willful murder" is returned, and thus ends, what the papers termed "an affair of honor." And who were the blackguard actors in this cold-blooded tragedy? E – was son of a Taunton publican, and M – a broken linen-draper. Their companions were men of similar caste– for, unless gentility is attached to brick-making, Y – had no other claim.