CHAPTER I. ENTER DAME GOSSIP AS CHORUS

Everybody has heard of the beautiful Countess of Cressett, who was

one of the lights of this country at the time when crowned heads were

running over Europe, crying out for charity’s sake to be amused after

their tiresome work of slaughter: and you know what a dread they have

of moping. She was famous for her fun and high spirits besides her good

looks, which you may judge of for yourself on a walk down most of our

great noblemen’s collections of pictures in England, where you will

behold her as the goddess Diana fitting an arrow to a bow; and elsewhere

an Amazon holding a spear; or a lady with dogs, in the costume of the

day; and in one place she is a nymph, if not Diana herself, gazing at

her naked feet before her attendants loosen her tunic for her to take

the bath, and her hounds are pricking their ears, and you see antlers of

a stag behind a block of stone. She was a wonderful swimmer, among other

things, and one early morning, when she was a girl, she did really swim,

they say, across the Shannon and back to win a bet for her brother Lord

Levellier, the colonel of cavalry, who left an arm in Egypt, and changed

his way of life to become a wizard, as the common people about his

neighbourhood supposed, because he foretold the weather and had cures

for aches and pains without a doctor’s diploma. But we know now that

he was only a mathematician and astronomer, all for inventing military

engines. The brother and sister were great friends in their youth, when

he had his right arm to defend her reputation with; and she would have

done anything on earth to please him.

There is a picture of her in an immense flat white silk hat trimmed with

pale blue, like a pavilion, the broadest brim ever seen, and she

simply sits on a chair; and Venus the Queen of Beauty would have been

extinguished under that hat, I am sure; and only to look at Countess

Fanny’s eye beneath the brim she has tipped ever so slightly in her

artfulness makes the absurd thing graceful and suitable. Oh! she was a

cunning one. But you must be on your guard against the scandalmongers

and collectors of anecdotes, and worst of any, the critic, of our

Galleries of Art; for she being in almost all of them (the principal

painters of the day were on their knees for the favour of a sitting),

they have to speak of her pretty frequently, and they season their dish,

the coxcombs do, by hinting a knowledge of her history.

‘Here we come to another portrait of the beautiful but, we fear, naughty

Countess of Cressett.’

You are to imagine that they know everything, and they are so indulgent

when they drop their blot on a lady’s character.

They can boast of nothing more than having read Nymriey’s Letters and

Correspondence, published, fortunately for him, when he was no longer to

be called to account below for his malicious insinuations, pretending

to decency in initials and dashes: That man was a hater of women and the

clergy. He was one of the horrid creatures who write with a wink at you,

which sets the wicked part of us on fire: I have known it myself, and I

own it to my shame; and if I happened to be ignorant of the history of

Countess Fanny, I could not refute his wantonness. He has just the same

benevolent leer for a bishop. Give me, if we are to make a choice, the

beggar’s breech for decency, I say: I like it vastly in preference to a

Nymney, who leads you up to the curtain and agitates it, and bids you

to retire on tiptoe. You cannot help being angry with the man for both

reasons. But he is the writer society delights in, to show what it is

composed of. A man brazen enough to declare that he could hold us in

suspense about the adventures of a broomstick, with the aid of a yashmak

and an ankle, may know the world; you had better not know him--that is

my remark; and do not trust him.

He tells the story of the Old Buccaneer in fear of the public, for it

was general property, but of course he finishes with a Nymney touch: ‘So

the Old Buccaneer is the doubloon she takes in exchange for a handful of

silver pieces.’ There is no such handful to exchange--not of the kind

he sickeningly nudges at you. I will prove to you it was not Countess

Fanny’s naughtiness, though she was indeed very blamable. Women should

walk in armour as if they were born to it; for these cold sneerers

will never waste their darts on cuirasses. An independent brave young

creature, exposing herself thoughtlessly in her reckless innocence, is

the victim for them. They will bring all society down on her with one

of their explosive sly words appearing so careless, the cowards. I say

without hesitation, her conduct with regard to Kirby, the Old Buccaneer,

as he was called, however indefensible in itself, warrants her at heart

an innocent young woman, much to be pitied. Only to think of her, I

could sometimes drop into a chair for a good cry. And of him too! and

their daughter Carinthia Jane was the pair of them, as to that, and so

was Chillon John, the son.

Those critics quoting Nymney should look at the portrait of her in

the Long Saloon of Cresset Castle, where she stands in blue and white,

completely dressed, near a table supporting a couple of holster pistols,

and then let them ask themselves whether they would speak of her so if

her little hand could move.

Well, and so the tale of her swim across the Shannon river and back

drove the young Earl of Cresset straight over to Ireland to propose for

her, he saying; that she was the girl to suit his book; not allowing her

time to think of how much he might be the man to suit hers. The marriage

was what is called a good one: both full of frolic, and he wealthy and

rather handsome, and she quite lovely and spirited.

No wonder the whole town was very soon agog about the couple, until at

the end of a year people began to talk of them separately, she going her

way, and he his. She could not always be on the top of a coach, which

was his throne of happiness.

Plenty of stories are current still of his fame as a four-in-hand

coachman. They say he once drove an Emperor and a King, a Prince

Chancellor and a pair of Field Marshals, and some ladies of the day,

from the metropolis to Richmond Hill in fifty or sixty odd minutes,

having the ground cleared all the way by bell and summons, and only a

donkey-cart and man, and a deaf old woman, to pay for; and went, as you

can imagine, at such a tearing gallop, that those Grand Highnesses had

to hold on for their lives and lost their hats along the road; and a

publican at Kew exhibits one above his bar to the present hour. And

Countess Fanny was up among them, they say. She was equal to it. And

some say, that was the occasion of her meeting the Old Buccaneer.

She met him at Richmond in Surrey we know for certain. It was on

Richmond Hill, where the old King met his Lass. They say Countess Fanny

was parading the hill to behold the splendid view, always admired so

much by foreigners, with their Achs and Hechs! and surrounded by her

crowned courtiers in frogged uniforms and moustachioed like sea-horses,

a little before dinner time, when Kirby passed her, and the Emperor made

a remark on him, for Kirby was a magnificent figure of a man, and used

to be compared to a three-decker entering harbour after a victory. He

stood six feet four, and was broad-shouldered and deep-chested to match,

and walked like a king who has humbled his enemy. You have seen big

dogs. And so Countess Fanny looked round. Kirby was doing the same.

But he had turned right about, and appeared transfixed and like a royal

beast angry, with his wound. If ever there was love at first sight,

and a dreadful love, like a runaway mail-coach in a storm of wind and

lightning at black midnight by the banks of a flooded river, which was

formerly our comparison for terrible situations, it was when those two

met.

And, what! you exclaim, Buccaneer Kirby full sixty-five, and Countess

Fanny no more than three and twenty, a young beauty of the world of

fashion, courted by the highest, and she in love with him! Go and gaze

at one of our big ships coming out of an engagement home with all her

flags flying and her crew manning the yards. That will give you an idea

of a young woman’s feelings for an old warrior never beaten down an inch

by anything he had to endure; matching him, I dare say, in her woman’s

heart, with the Mighty Highnesses who had only smelt the outside edge of

battle. She did rarely admire a valiant man. Old as Methuselah, he would

have made her kneel to him. She was all heart for a real hero.

The story goes, that Countess Fanny sent her husband to Captain Kirby,

at the emperor’s request, to inquire his name; and on hearing it, she

struck her hands on her bosom, telling his Majesty he saw there the

bravest man in the king’s dominions; which the emperor scarce crediting,

and observing that the man must be, then, a superhuman being to be

so distinguished in a nation of the brave, Countess Fanny related the

well-known tale of Captain Kirby and the shipful of mutineers; and how

when not a man of them stood by him, and he in the service of the first

insurgent State of Spanish America, to save his ship from being taken

over to the enemy,--he blew her up, fifteen miles from land: and so

he got to shore swimming and floating alternately, and was called Old

Sky-high by English sailors, any number of whom could always be had to

sail under Buccaneer Kirby. He fought on shore as well; and once he came

down from the tops of the Andes with a black beard turned white, and

went into action with the title of Kirby’s Ghost.

But his heart was on salt water; he was never so much at home as in a

ship foundering or splitting into the clouds. We are told that he never

forgave the Admiralty for striking him off the list of English naval

captains: which is no doubt why in his old age he nursed a grudge

against his country.

Ours, I am sure, was the loss; and many have thought so since. He was

a mechanician, a master of stratagems; and would say, that brains will

beat Grim Death if we have enough of them. He was a standing example of

the lessons of his own MAXIMS FOR MEN, a very curious book, that fetches

a rare price now wherever a copy is put up for auction. I shudder at

them as if they were muzzles of firearms pointed at me; but they were

not addressed to my sex; and still they give me an interest in the

writer who would declare, that ‘he had never failed in an undertaking

without stripping bare to expose to himself where he had been wanting in

Intention and Determination.’

There you may see a truly terrible man.

So the emperor being immensely taken with Kirby’s method of preserving

discipline on board ship, because (as we say to the madman, ‘Your

strait-waistcoat is my easy-chair’) monarchs have a great love of

discipline, he begged Countess Fanny’s permission that he might invite

Captain Kirby to his table; and Countess Fanny (she had the name from

the ballad

‘I am the star of Prince and Czar,

My light is shed on many,

But I wait here till my bold Buccaneer

Makes prize of Countess Fanny’:--

for the popular imagination was extraordinarily roused by the elopement,

and there were songs and ballads out of number), Countess Fanny

despatched her husband to Captain Kirby again, meaning no harm, though

the poor man is laughed at in the songs for going twice upon his

mission.

None of the mighty people repented of having the Old Buccaneer--for that

night, at all events. He sat in the midst of them, you may believe, like

the lord of that table, with his great white beard and hair--not a lock

of it shed--and his bronze lion-face, and a resolute but a merry eye

that he had. He was no deep drinker of wine, but when he did drink, and

the wine champagne, he drank to show his disdain of its powers; and the

emperor wishing for a narrative of some of his exploits, particularly

the blowing up of his ship, Kirby paid his Majesty the compliment of

giving it him as baldly as an official report to the Admiralty. So

disengaged and calm was he, with his bottles of champagne in him, where

another would have been sparkling and laying on the colours, that he was

then and there offered Admiral’s rank in the Imperial navy; and the Old

Buccaneer, like a courtier of our best days, bows to Countess Fanny, and

asks her, if he is a free man to go: and, No, says she, we cannot spare

you! And there was a pretty wrangle between Countess Fanny and the

emperor, each pulling at the Old Buccaneer to have possession of him.

He was rarely out of her sight after their first meeting, and the

ridiculous excuse she gave to her husband’s family was, she feared he

would be kidnapped and made a Cossack of! And young Lord Cressett, her

husband, began to grumble concerning her intimacy with a man old enough

to be her grandfather. As if the age were the injury! He seemed to think

it so, and vowed he would shoot the old depredator dead, if he found

him on the grounds of Cressett: ‘like vermin,’ he said, and it was

considered that he had the right, and no jury would have convicted him.

You know what those days were.

He had his opportunity one moonlight night, not far from the castle, and

peppered Kirby with shot from a fowling-piece at, some say, five paces’

distance, if not point-blank.

But Kirby had a maxim, Steady shakes them, and he acted on it to receive

his enemy’s fire; and the young lord’s hand shook, and the Old Buccaneer

stood out of the smoke not much injured, except in the coat-collar, with

a pistol cocked in his hand, and he said:

‘Many would take that for a declaration of war, but I know it ‘s only

your lordship’s diplomacy’; and then he let loose to his mad fun,

astounding Lord Cressett and his gamekeeper, and vowed, as the young

lord tried to relate subsequently, as well as he could recollect the

words--here I have it in print:--‘that he was a man pickled in saltpetre

when an infant, like Achilles, and proof against powder and shot not

marked with cross and key, and fetched up from the square magazine in

the central depot of the infernal factory, third turning to the right

off the grand arcade in Kingdom-come, where the night-porter has to wear

wet petticoats, like a Highland chief, to make short work of the sparks

flying about, otherwise this world and many another would not have to

wait long for combustion.’

Kirby had the wildest way of talking when he was not issuing orders

under fire, best understood by sailors. I give it you as it stands here

printed. I do not profess to understand.

So Lord Cressett said: ‘Diplomacy and infernal factories be hanged! Have

your shot at me; it’s only fair.’ And Kirby discharged his pistol at the

top twigs of an old oak tree, and called the young lord a Briton, and

proposed to take him in hand and make a man of him, as nigh worthy of

his wife as any one not an Alexander of Macedon could be.

So they became friendly, and the young lord confessed it was his family

that had urged him to the attack; and Kirby abode at the castle, and all

three were happy, in perfect honour, I am convinced: but such was

not the opinion of the Cressetts and Levelliers. Down they trooped to

Cressett Castle with a rush and a roar, crying on the disgrace of an

old desperado like Kirby living there; Dukes, Marchionesses, Cabinet

Ministers, leaders of fashion, and fire-eating colonels of the King’s

body-guard, one of whom Captain John Peter Kirby laid on his heels at

ten paces on an April morning, when the duel was fought, as early as the

blessed heavens had given them light to see to do it. Such days those

were!

There was talk of shutting up the infatuated lady. If not incarcerated,

she was rigidly watched. The earl her husband fell altogether to

drinking and coaching, and other things. The ballad makes her say:

‘My family my gaolers be,

My husband is a zany;

Naught see I clear save my bold Buccaneer

To rescue Countess Fanny!’

and it goes on:

‘O little lass, at play on the grass,

Come earn a silver penny,

And you’ll be dear to my bold Buccaneer

For news of his Countess Fanny.’

In spite of her bravery, that poor woman suffered!

We used to learn by heart the ballads and songs upon famous events in

those old days when poetry was worshipped.

But Captain Kirby gave provocation enough to both families when he went

among the taverns and clubs, and vowed before Providence over his big

fist that they should rue their interference, and he would carry off the

lady on a day he named; he named the hour as well, they say, and that

was midnight of the month of June. The Levelliers and Cressetts foamed

at the mouth in speaking of him, so enraged they were on account of

his age and his passion for a young woman. As to blood, the Kirbys

of Lincolnshire were quite equal to the Cressetts of Warwick. The Old

Buccaneer seems to have had money too. But you can see what her people

had to complain of: his insolent contempt of them was unexampled. And

their tyranny had roused my lady’s high spirit not a bit less; and she

said right out: ‘When he comes, I am ready and will go with him.’

There was boldness for you on both sides! All the town was laughing and

betting on the event of the night in June: and the odds were in favour

of Kirby; for though, Lord Cressett was quite the popular young English

nobleman, being a capital whip and free of his coin, in those days men

who had smelt powder were often prized above titles, and the feeling,

out of society, was very strong for Kirby, even previous to the fight

on the heath. And the age of the indomitable adventurer must have

contributed to his popularity. He was the hero of every song.

“‘What’s age to me!” cries Kirby;

“Why, young and fresh let her be,

But it ‘s mighty better reasoned

For a man to be well seasoned,

And a man she has in me,” cries Kirby.’

As to his exact age:

“‘Write me down sixty-three,” cries Kirby.’

I have always maintained that it was an understatement. We must

remember, it was not Kirby speaking, but the song-writer. Kirby would

not, in my opinion, have numbered years he was proud of below their due

quantity. He was more, if he died at ninety-one; and Chillon Switzer

John Kirby, born eleven months after the elopement, was, we know,

twenty-three years old when the old man gave up the ghost and bequeathed

him little besides a law-suit with the Austrian Government, and the care

of Carinthia Jane, the second child of this extraordinary union; both

children born in wedlock, as you will hear. Sixty-three, or sixty-seven,

near upon seventy, when most men are reaping and stacking their sins

with groans and weak knees, Kirby was a match for his juniors, which

they discovered.

Captain John Peter Avason Kirby, son of a Lincolnshire squire of an

ancient stock, was proud of his blood, and claimed descent from a chief

of the Danish rovers.

‘“What’s rank to me!” cries Kirby;

“A titled lass let her be,

But unless my plans miscarry,

I’ll show her when we marry;

As brave a pedigree,” cries Kirby.’

That was the song-writer’s answer to the charge that the countess had

stooped to a degrading alliance.

John Peter was fourth of a family of seven children, all males, and hard

at the bottle early in life: ‘for want of proper occupation,’ he says in

his Memoirs, and applauds his brother Stanson, the clergyman, for

being ahead of him in renouncing strong dunks, because he found that

he ‘cursed better upon water.’ Water, however, helped Stanson Kirby to

outlive his brothers and inherit the Lincolnshire property, and at the

period of the great scandal in London he was palsied, and waited on by

his grandson and heir Ralph Thorkill Kirby, the hero of an adventure

celebrated in our Law courts and on the English stage; for he took

possession of his coachman’s wife, and was accused of compassing the

death of the husband. He was not hanged for it, so we are bound to think

him not guilty.

The stage-piece is called ‘Saturday Night’, and it had an astonishing

run, but is only remembered now for the song of ‘Saturday,’ sung by the

poor coachman and labourers at the village ale-house before he starts

to capture his wife from the clutches of her seducer and meets his

fate. Never was there a more popular song: you heard it everywhere. I

recollect one verse:

‘O Saturday money is slippery metal,

And Saturday ale it is tipsy stuff

At home the old woman is boiling her kettle,

She thinks we don’t know when we’ve tippled enough.

We drink, and of never a man are we jealous,

And never a man against us will he speak

For who can be hard on a set of poor fellows

Who only see Saturday once a week!

You chorus the last two lines.

That was the very song the unfortunate coachman of Kirby Hall joined in

singing before he went out to face his end for the woman he loved. He

believed in her virtue to the very last.

‘The ravished wife of my bosom,’ he calls her all through the latter

half of the play. It is a real tragedy. The songs of that day have lost

their effect now, I suppose. They will ever remain pathetic to me; and

to hear the poor coachman William Martin invoking the name of his dear

stolen wife Elizabeth, jug in hand, so tearfully, while he joins

the song of Saturday, was a most moving thing. You saw nothing but

handkerchiefs out all over the theatre. What it is that has gone from

our drama, I cannot tell: I am never affected now as I was then; and

people in a low station of life could affect me then, without being

flung at me, for I dislike an entire dish of them, I own. We were

simpler in our habits and ways of thinking. Elizabeth Martin, according

to report, was a woman to make better men than Ralph Thorkill act

evilly--as to good looks, I mean. She was not entirely guiltless, I am

afraid; though in the last scene, Mrs. Kempson, who played the part (as,

alas, she could do to the very life!), so threw herself into the pathos

of it that there were few to hold out against her, and we felt that

Elizabeth had been misled. So much for morality in those days!

And now for the elopement.