From "The life of James Sheridan Knowles" (John's grandson), by his son Richard Brinsley Knowles:

I have not been able to trace my father’s descent further back than to his grandfather, John Knowles, of Dublin; but as John Knowles traced it back to the days of the Conqueror, I trust it may be taken for granted that the author of Virginius came from a good family.

He himself cared very little for matters of this kind; and indeed he was one of the few radicals I have met who have not at heart a profound veneration for good birth. He was proud of his relationship to the Sheridans because of their talent; and I have heard him boast, as far as boasting was in his line, that his mother claimed a descent from the family of Sir Matthew Hale.

But John Knowles was not so indifferent. He is described to me by his grand-daughter as a poor and proud gentleman, who, whatever straits he had to suffer, was rigid in having his plate stamped with the family crest: an elephant, with the legend “Semper paratus.” Whether the legend was at all times appropriate to the man, I have my doubts. In Samuel Whyte’s “Miscellanea,” I find his brother-in-law, Thomas Sheridan, writing to Whyte under date, “Blois, October 14, 1764: -“ I send you enclosed a letter to Knowles, as I think you are, at present, better able to pay the postage than he; but don’t tell him I said so.” I am therefore surprised to learn that, when he died, he left behind a widow and four children in straitened circumstances.

I cannot ascertain that he had any definite employment. When Thomas Sheridan had the theatre in Smock Alley, he acted as his treasurer; and Whyte speaks of him generally at the time as Sheridan’s alter ipse in the management of the money-matters of the theatre. I, however, think it possible he may have had the scholastic turn of mind which distinguished his son and grandson; and if he was the author of a work entitled “Principles of the English Grammar, with critical remarks,” I may hope for him that he had other sources of emolument than the one I have mentioned. This book reached a fourth edition; but I have no other reason for supposing him to have been its author beyond the fact that it was published in Dublin, and that “John Knowles” is the author’s name. It is certain, however, that he married Frances Sheridan, youngest daughter of the Rev. Dr. Sheridan, of Quilca, the friend of Dean Swift, who wrote “Gulliver’s Travels” in his house; the father of Thomas Sheridan, author of the “Pronouncing Dictionary” [1780], on which Walker or his publishers afterwards throve, and the “Art of Reading Prose and Verse;” and grandfather of the famous Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

But John Knowles having gone the way of all flesh, leaving behind him a widow and four children unprovided for, it became necessary for Widow Frances to justify the family crest. That she did so successfully is clear from the fact that the plate which bears it still remains in her daughter’s family. She was cleaver, as a Sheridan ought to be; a woman of spirit, and well educated. She opened a ladies’ school in Dublin, and her speculation throve so well that she was soon relieved of all care for the future. As her son grew up, two of them went out to Jamaica. Her daughter was married to the Rev. Peter Le Fanu, of St. Paul’s, Dublin, an incumbency which has long been filled by his son; and she had now only to provide for her youngest son, James.

Uncle Thomas Sheridan had paid great attention to this young man, and took pains, as he was destined for the Church, that his exercitations in the pulpit should be worthy of family. He carefully instructed him in the principles of reading. If the pupil’s subsequent performances were a fair specimen of their master’s art, I cannot say that it was a very lively one. But it was not destined to be exercised in the cure of souls. Somewhere between 1777 and 1780 a vacation ramble in the South of Ireland took the young student to Cork; and there, at a party, he saw that which drove divinity and the art of reading out of his head – a handsome widow.

This was the lady who claimed kindred with the English judge. She was the widow of a Mr. Daunt, the daughter of Andrew Peace, or Pace, the first, or one of the first, medical practitioners in Cork, and of whom it was commonly said, that “If ever there was an angel on earth, Andrew Peace was one.” His widowed daughter was one of the beauties of the city: but she outstripped them all in her powers of singing, which, for an amateur, seem to have been something extraordinary. She as above the middle height, a brunette with beautiful dark eyes: and, I believe, not destitute of that which improves even the brightest eyes.

Her marriage with Mr. Daunt had been short-lived. In little more than a year he died, leaving her, with an infant daughter, to return to her father’s house. And now it would seem that not only was the student from Dublin smitten with her, but that she was smitten with him. As a young man he must have been handsome, for he was good-looking even in old age: a courtly little gentleman, of polished, winning manners, scrupulously neat to the last about the sit of his coat and the polish of his boots, and able to make himself very agreeable. In vain did Mr. Peace expostulate with his daughter against this second marriage. In vain did he urge the suitor’s state of impecuniosity, the disparity between their ages (for the lady had the advantage in time as well as money), and his general disapproval of the match. “love was still the lord of all;” and, some time before the year 1780, James Knowles, bachelor, and Jane Daunt, widow, became man and wife.

That step taken, the next thing to be done was to prove that it had not been a foolish one. The newly-married pair opened a school, and the lady’s popularity, backed by her husband’s ability, soon made it a success. The came incidents not so satisfactory, but beyond their control. The first child was carried off by small-pox. Another came, and in like manner succumbed to that dreadful plague. But on the 12th of May, 1784, in their house on Anne Street, a third came, this time a son, who was not only to fill the void his infant sisters had left, but to fill up another void; for, during all the time that had elapsed since her marriage, Andrew Peace had not spoken to his daughter. This was a great drawback to her happiness. Her hear yearned for the love of the old fireside; and so, when baby had been christened “James,” after his father, and “Sheridan” after the orator, his mother and a lady-friend of hers laid their hands together, to see whether they could not utilize him to bring about a reconciliation between Andrew Peace and his daughter.

The lady-friend was one of Andrew’s patients, and one day he was sent for to come and see her. Not dreaming into what trap he was being decoyed, the old surgeon obeyed, and arriving at the lady’s house was shewn into a room, into which presently came, not the lady, but his daughter Jane, with the little olive branch in her arms. It was strange, if old friends, who have quarreled, can come face to face unexpectedly, and not feel a prompting to take each other by the hand before they have time to recollect that they are enemies. But here were father and daughter, and a little mute petitioner for an old man’s love, in his child’s arms. The plot succeeded, and Andrew Peace took his daughter back to his heart, from which he had not been able to drive her very far. In this touching little drama, did the author of “Virginius” play his first important part in life: a drama not, in interest, unlike those he was afterwards to write.

It was well that this reconciliation took place, for the child was so delicate and excitable, that it needed all his grandfather’s skill, and all his mother’s watchfulness, to carry him safely through a succession of illnesses with which he was attacked. In the struggle between brain and body which should get the upper hand; and the body was so small, that the gossips said, “You might put him into a quart pot, and shut down the lid too, if it wasn’t for fear of stifling the babby.” Again and again it seemed to his parents, as they watched beside his little cot, as if every minute would decide the question between life and death. On one of these occasions, his mother, whose feelings were overwrought by this constant alternation between hope and despair, ventured to question the will of providence, and exclaimed, “Why did Heaven send me this fragile child?” A French Abbé, an intimate of the family, who stood by, gently rebuked her. He explained, while examining the child’s features, that his delicacy proceeded from the brain. He pointed out the full eyes, the defined nose and mouth, the general character of the face, which much more resembled that of a boy of ten, than a child of three; and he then prognosticated that if he lived, he would become an eminent man. His mother often recalled the Abbe’s words when she afterwards saw the dawning of her son’s abilities, and stood between him and his father, as the latter tore up his scraps of poetry, and did all that the stern exercise of parental authority could, to make him as prosaic as himself.

Meantime it was found necessary that he should be sent out of town, and left with his nurse for greater purity of air. To this worthy woman’s thatched cottage, on the Bandon road, to which his father had a room built for his separate use, he accordingly went. Here his mother came daily to visit him; and she had the happiness before long to see that nature had begun to restore the balance between brain and body. Its renovating power was strong within him; and at six years of age, his health was sufficiently established to admit of his being placed in his father’s school.

Nothing was now wanting to the happiness of my grandfather’s family but that things should continue as they were. He was at the head of a prosperous establishment, living in a large mansion at the upper end of Dyke Walk; his wife and he were reconciled with her father, and her darling and only son was daily becoming a fine, vigorous lad, for whom a prosperous future was already marked out; for it was decided that he should be educated for the medical profession, with a view to his succeeding to his grandfather’s practice. This pleasant state of things, however, was not to last. Andrew Peace died, and there was an end of the practice. But there was worse to come.

In 1792-3, meetings were held throughout Ireland, and petitions signed, to promote the cause of Catholic emancipation. My grandfather, though a sound Protestant, was anything but a bigot. He had amongst his intimate friends many Catholic clergymen, including the Rev. Father O’Leary, “poor in everything but genius and philosophy;” and while he was strongly attached to the Church of England, of which all his family had been members, and some of them clergymen, he was a consistent advocate of religious liberty. But there are positions in which a man may be pardoned, if consulting the better part of valor, he holds aloof from political contests, even though he may have strong convictions with regard to them. Clearly his position was of this nature. He was entirely dependent on the favour of the Cork gentry. Their patronage could unmake, as it had made him. He was not an indispensable doctor, or lawyer, or prosperous merchant, or professional politician. All he possessed was his school, and a small freehold its profits had enabled him to purchase in the neighborhood of the city. He had a wife, a son, and two daughters depending on him. All was at stake. But when the Cork liberals determined upon forwarding a petition to Parliament, he signed it.

It was spirited; but from that moment it was all over with his school. The well-filled forms began to show gaps. A little more, and the whole establishment would be ruined. The “little more” was not long in coming.

One of his friends, the editor of a liberal newspaper, provoked the hostility of the Government, and was prosecuted for libel. The offence was bailable, and my grandfather proffered himself as one of the required sureties. The defendant was found guilty by a packed jury, and sentenced to two years imprisonment. My grandfather walked with him from the court to the prison through the crowded streets, accompanied by a guard of soldiers, and entered the prison along with him. Rank rebellion against the gentry of Cork! Presumption not to be pardoned in a school master! Down with him! and down he went In a week his school was deserted. Here was a great reverse; poverty staring him in the face, where, a short time before, he had been comparatively affluent. Cork now too hot, or too cold, to hold him; and, selling off everything he possessed, he resolved to make his way to London, and try his fortune there.


It was toward the middle of 1793, or perhaps a little later, that he left Ireland, tasking his son with him, then nine years of age, and leaving his wife and daughter till he should have a home prepared for them in London. An incident occurred at parting strongly indicative of the boy’s disposition; of his impulsiveness and warmth of heart.

His nurse in the Badon Road had been a second mother to him, and loved him tenderly. Indeed, in one respect she loved him more than was at all times agreeable, for when he had grown out of petticoats, and had begun to roam the streets of Cork as a schoolboy, whenever she met him she would embrace him and fondle him, with such a to-do about her “jewel,” and her “honey,” and her darling, as put him sorely to the blush. Dreading an exhibition of this kind in a much exaggerated form, it was almost a relief to him to find that amongst the farewells that had to be taken at the quay side, that of the nurse was not included, for the nurse was not there. So he was no sooner on board that he made his way down into the cabin, resolved to remain there till the ship should drop down the river before venturing on deck again. But as the time for sailing drew near, he began to think that to leave Cork without bidding his foster-mother goodbye, would be even worse than the shame of being fondled by her before the profane multitude. Just then he heard sounds as of the packet-boat clearing from the quay. Just then, too, he heard the sound of a woman’s voice, well known to him, enquiring where was her “son,” her darling son.?” It was the nurse. In the twinkling of an eye her “son” was on deck. The packet was unmooring, and already a space intervened between it and the quay. But no matter; with a run he cleared the distance and ran into her arms. She was the last to embrace him when he was leaving his native city, a child. Forty years afterwards I saw her embrace him again within a couple of hours after he returned to it with the Abbe’s prophecy fulfilled.

It was some time before the roof-tree was established in London as comfortably as it had been in Cork, nor was the feat accomplished without difficulty, and, I fear, some suffering. In this interval my grandmother charged herself with her son’s education, and until she died he had no other teacher… She was well qualified for both tasks, for she was a well-educated intellectual woman, of noble character; and perhaps it was as much owing to her instructions at the time, and to the standard of conduct which she held up to him, as it was his own instincts that he owed that pure and chivalrous habit of thought and feeling which, under a somewhat rugged and sturdy exterior, glowed within him. Mother and son were of one mind in all things… He would discourse away for hours on the glories of the British Constitution, or on the relative merits of Mr. Sheridan’s and Mr. Walker’s Pronouncing Dictionaries; and he heard of his son’s beginning to write verses with much the same horror he would have felt if he had caught him playing at pitch and toss.

Woe to the young poet’s MSS. if his father came across them; fire was their doom. When he found that the boy was in the habit of sitting up nights scribbling, he made it a point to go himself to his bed-room, and take away the candle. “I used,” said my father, “to secrete candle ends, and light them when he was gone.” His mother was wiser – she did not discourage his poetic flights; far from it. To her husband she said, “Don’t check him; this talent may one day be of use to him.” Paterfamilias lived to appreciate his value.

When he was twelve years old his compositions began to take a dramatic form. He had been taken to the theatre, and was fired with the ambition to be a dramatist. Having obtained his mother’s permission that he and some of his companions should act a play in her drawing-room, a play which he should write, they constructed a toy-theatre out of a tea-chest, and pained scenes and characters to be pushed on and off the stage upon slides, while the author and his friends, concealed from the audience by a curtain at the further end of the room, spoke the dialogue. This attempt was followed by an opera founded on the story of the Chevalier de Grillon; and two years later, when he was fourteen , he obtained his first fraught of fame by the production of “The Welsh Harper,” which became one of the popular ballads of the day. It was kept a secret even from his mother, and she knew nothing of it till one day, flushed and breathless, he rushed into her room and laid a published copy of the words and music upon her knee.

The air of this song was composed by a young gentleman named Theodore Smith, one of many friends whom my father made in his boyhood, and who, though several years his senior, admitted him to his society on terms of equality.

Another of these friends was William Hazlitt. He was then recently left the Unitarian College at Hackney, and was trying his hand at painting. He was a frequent visitor to my grandfather’s house, and both my father and his sister Charlotte served him as subjects for his canvas. The latter he painted in white muslin, lamenting over a dead bird which she held in her lap. The former proved an unprofitable model, as appears from Hazlett’s exclamation upon one occasion: -“ Hang your fat checks-frown, James.” At other times the critic and his pupil would diversify their labours by improvising a tight-rope, and trying to dance upon it; an art which Hazlitt desired, or fancied he desired, to cultivate. Later on he introduced the “Boy-poet,” as he called him, to Charles Lamb, and to Coleridge, who on one occasion favoured him with an extemporaneous lecture on poetry. Better still, he took the trouble of listening to his compositions and critiquing them. The tutelage of such a mind was invaluable to a lad who, with a strong love for poetry, had as yet insight only into his own ideas. And it was the more valuable because Hazlitt knew how to encourage as well as to blame. He had an enduring tenderness of heart towards those whom he loved, and this was just the quality, and the only quality, which could gain complete mastery over the young poet. There is something very pleasing in the picture of a young man of Hazlitt’s vigorous mind and large acquaintances with literature, conscious of powers, which would make him a master among men, taking pains with a boy six years his junior, when he himself was not well out of his teens, and endeavoring to enlarge his views, and correct his judgment. “He loved me,” said my father, years afterwards, looking back to the time; taught me as a friend, endearingly praising and condemning, as he saw cause, every little poem which I wrote. There was ore in him, and rich, but his maturer friends were blind to it. I saw it. He was a man to whom I could have submitted my life. He was cinic to the general, but he had cause. I believe that, young as I was, I could have persuaded him when others would have failed. There was a want, but it was neglected in his youth. He was honest; and, when he met with a friend, intensely affectionate. I never saw a father who was more wrapt up in a son.”

Very grateful was the “Boy-poet” in after years for all the kindly criticisms which Hazlett bestowed upon him in his early youth. He recalled them as having been of infinate service to him; spoke of Hazlitt as his “mental-father;” and more filly expressed his obligations to him in the following lines written under the copy of a chalk drawing of Hazlitt by William Bewick, the pupil and friend of Haydon, and one of Hazlitt’s intimates: -


“It minds me of my boyhood; he had then
A smile for me, which, while it saw me child,
Acknowledged me companion. As you'd lift
An urchin whom you saw on tip-toe strain
To catch a glimpse or some rare sight alone
Within the reach or manly vision, so
Rais'd he my infant mind, made up to it
For lack or stature, and enabled it
To brow the shows and pageants of the Muse-
Smit with the love of her ere well I knew
Her quality and name."

Upon the original drawing-though whether upon the drawing itself or only in reference to it, I cannot say-he wrote: -

“Thus Hazlitt look’d! There’s life in every line.
Soul, language, tire that colour could not give
See on that brow how pale-robed thought divine
In an embodied radiance seems to live.
Ah, in the gaze of that entranced eye,
Humid yet burning, there beams passion's flame
Lighting the check, and quivering through the frame,
While round the lips the odour of a sigh
Yet hovers fondly,and its shadow sits
Beneath the channel of the glowing thought,
And fire-clothed eloquence which comes in fits
Like Pythiac inspiration. Bewick, taught
By thee, invain doth slander's venom'd dart
Do its foul deed 'gainst him. This head must own a heart.

It was not long after he mad Hazlitt’s acquaintance, that he sustained his greatest loss which could befall him in the death of his mother when he was only sixteen. The talent of the Sheridans had not passed into the Knowles family with the marriage of Frances Sheridan to John Knowles, or, if it had, it did not display itself in the first generation. Whatever poetic genius my father possessed, he derived from his mother, not the paterfamilias, who had none. What he was in other respects, too, she made him; and I cannot recall his simple, affectionate, and manly nature, so perfectly free from the slightest trace of vice, without feeling that she – who so molded her “blessing and her pride,” as she called him, that if he could have had only a strong dash of worldly wisdom infused into him he would have been as nearly perfect as a man can be, - must have been a woman of a remarkable and admirable character.


CHAPTER II

HIS FATHER MARRIES MISS MAXWELL - HEJOINS THEWILTSHJIRE.MILITIA - DR. WILLAN OFFERS HIMHIS PRACTICE – HE IS APPOINTEDVACCINATOR FORTHEJENNERIAN SOCIETY – ATTENDS ROWLAND HILL'SCHAPEL - HISPIILANTHIROPY -WRITESTHE “5PANISH STORY"AND "HERSILIA"- HEDETERMINES TO GOON THE STAGE IN THEPROVINCES.

I suppose it is no one’s fault that second marriages are so often unpropitious to the children of the first. At sixteen years of age my father had an opportunity of proving this in his own case.

His mother died in 1800. Shortly afterwards his father married a Miss Maxwell. It may not have been this lady’s fault that the new home was not like the old one. Suffice it that, one day, in a burst of indignations, my father left his sire’s house, and, as an inmate, never returned to it.

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It is to this lady Mr. Leigh Hunt alludes in his autobiography (1850) chap. ii – “I behold at this moment, with lively distinctness, the handsome face of Miss C, who was the first person I remember seeing at a piano-forte; and I have something of a like impression of that of Miss M, mother, if I mistake not, or at all events near relation of my distinguished friend Sheridan Knowles. My parents and his were acquainted.”

It may not have been this lady’s fault that the new home was not like the old one. Suffice it that, one day, in a burst of indignation, my father left his sire’s house, and, as an inmate, never returned to it.

The world was now before him, and how he managed to make his way in it for the next four years, I have not been able to ascertain. But even at this early age he had shown a singular power of making friends, and valuable ones; and he had, moreover, the best of all friends a man can have, self-reliance, and indomitable energy. I know that during part of this time he acted as secretary to a gentleman whose name has escaped me. One of his oldest friends has some idea that during another part of it, he held an appointment in the Stamp Office which Mr. Sheridan obtained for him. But just before 1805, I find him serving in the Isle of Wight, as ensign in the Wiltshire Malitia; remarkable for his good spirits, and for being late at drill; remarkable, too, for a humane consideration for those under him. When the regiment was on the march, if he saw a soldier showing signs of distress, he would take his gun from him and shoulder it himself. Presently his eye might light upon a woman who was carrying her husband’s to relieve him; that too, he would take, and march with a musket over each shoulder.

It happened on one occasion, while he was in the Isle of Wight, that, having to pay the monthly bills of the mess, the butcher gave him wrong change. He did not perceive the error till he had left the shop, and when he returned and represented the state of the case, the man either could not or would not be convinced. The result was, that if he made good the loss out of his month’s pay he would not be able to dine with the mess for the next month, or indeed, in any proper sense, to dine at all, without going into debt which he had no means of defraying. He went to his brother officers, and told them what had happened, as the reason why, for the next month, he must deny himself the pleasure of their company. And although they offered to take his loss upon themselves, and pressed him most urgently to forego his resolution, he was firm; and, for the next month, breakfasted, dined, and supped on such rations of bread and milk as the few shillings the butcher had left him could purchase.

Amongst his friends at this time was the late Dr. Gissing of Woodbridge, Suffolk, who was Assistant-Surgeon to the regiment. He had won Ensign Knowles’ admiration by an act of generous forbearance. The first Surgeon was not highly accomplished in his profession, and, indeed, knew little of nothing of it. This fact, and the proofs of it, Dr. Gissing concealed so far that, so long as he remained in the regiment, he wrote his Chief’s prescriptions for him, which the other privately copied. There was another link between the Ensign and the Assistant-Surgeon. The latter possessed an old Cremona, from which as he walked up and down his room he wakened some wild notes under whose inspiration the Ensign sat and wrote verses. Thirty years afterwards, when the Ensign was acting in his own plays at Ipswich, he heard that Dr. Gissing was practicing at Woodbridge, who, by the description given of him, he thought must be his old friend from the militia days. He at once ordered a fly, frove over to Woodbridge, burst into the house, and finding that Gissing was the real Gissing, took him by the shoulders, and shook him from pure love. “Not a bit changed,” he cried, “ not a bit, except the grey hairs.” And then, forgetting nothing of the old times, he added, “And where’s the old Cremona?”

From the Wilts Militia, he was transferred to the 2nd Tower Hamlets, on the 25th of January, 1805.

_________________

[FOOTNOTE: “About 1805,” says the author of the “Records of a Stage Veteran,” “ I remember Knowles with a light heart and a slight figure, carrying a pair of colours in the Tower Hamlets Militia, 2nd regiment. It was a custom (more honored in the breach than in the observance, certainly) among the subs, to nickname one another. Knowles had the soubriquet of ‘Jeremiah,” which was enunciated after the fashion of giving the word command, i.e. “Jeremiah, hem!’ A pleasant, jolly young fellow he was, and generally liked by all who knew him…. Years and travel had made the name of Ensign Knowles, and the 2nd Tower Hamlets, a thing unremembered by the many who had enjoyed his society, and non of them, during the situation which his name excited some three years since, thought of their quondam comrade. Indeed many who might have remembered ‘Jeremiah’ had forgotten ‘Knowles;’ so certain is aught of the rediculous to live the longest in our minds.


“About two years since, at a provisional city, some old friends went to witness the representation of the ‘Hunchback.’ One of the party was ‘Bacchi picnus,’ and unfortunatrely this gentleman had formerly been, if not in, connected with, the Tower Hamlets. The face, the voice, the manner of Sheridan Knowles, at the interval of at least twenty-seven years, all struck him. He was in a fever of bewilderment. The place was crowded, and the party in question had arrived late, and obtained therefore only furtive glances over the shoulders of the more fortunate and ealier visitors. As his friends attributed his vehement declaration that Knowles had been a comrade of his to the errors of intoxication, they endeavored to silence him, and told him he most probably mistook Knowles for some one who resembled him. ‘It’s ill contradicting drunken bodies, right or wrong,’ says Jack Harrison, ‘for he who will to Cupar main to Cupar.’ So it proved here, for the milirary gentleman, during one of Knowles’ pauscs in Master Walker, shouted out the soubriquet with all the vehemence imaginable. So unheard of and unexplicable a solocism in manners occuring in the boxes naturally created a cry of ‘Turn him out,’ and he was turned out, but not before he again shouted ‘Jeremiah, hem!’ so as visibly to attract the attention of Knowles. To the remoonstrances of the police and of his friends, the delinquent made no reply, but ejaculating, ‘it’s he; I’ll be damned but it’s Jeremiaah!’ The next morning he was so heartily ashamed of the affair that nothing could prevail uopon him to call upon or write to the dramatist, who possibly might feel as much pleasure in recognizing an old acquaintance at a proper time, as he was annoyed by the recgnition under such singular circumstances.” END OF FOOTNOTE]


It was while he was in this regiment that an offer was made to him by the celebrated Dr. Willan, one of the brightest lights of his profession, and a man as good as he was great, which opened to him the most favorable prospects. Dr Willan had realized a considerable fortune by his profession; he had but one son, whom he intended for the church; and looking forward to the time, not distant, when he must retire, he conceived the generous idea of bestowing the reversion of his practice upon some man of talent. His choice fell upon my father, who had long been a welcome guest at his house, but who for some reason, probably the fear that it might compromise his independence, of which he was always sensitively jealous, was not in haste to accept of proferred generosity. It was not until Dr. Willan most kindly urged upon him the wisdom of throwing up his commission and becoming his pupil that he consented to do so. But at last, some time in 1806 he took leave of the Tower Hamlets, and commenced to study medicine under this distinguished preceptor.

Here, then, he was on the high road to the profession to which he had been destined in his early childhood, for which he had the qualification of a clear and vigorous intellect, and which he now commenced under the happiest auspices. There was to be no waiting for patients when his period of study was over. The practice was made and he had only to step into it. Dr. Willan prescribed his course of study, read with him, and took him about with him to visit his patients, and make him known to them. He did more for him than even this. He was one of the earliest, as he was one of the most powerful supporters of vaccination. To show his faith in it, he carried his only son, after he had been vaccinated, through the wards of the Small Pox Hospital, and examined the patients with the child in his arms. He was, of course, a friend of Jenner’s and as the Jennerian Society about this time contemplated the appointment of a resident vaccinator at their house in Salisbury Square, Fleet Street, the appointment, at Dr. Willan’s request, was given to my father. He also obtained for him the degree of Doctor of Medicine from Aberdeen, a nominal honor which, however, was necessary to the post. And thus, a little more than a year after he resigned the meagre pay of an Ensign, he had not only in posse the succession to Dr. Willan’s practice, but he had in esse two hundred pounds a year, with perquisites, a much larger income then than it is now, the upper part of the house in Salisburg Square, with coals and candles ad libitum. The duties of his office were not severe, and, had they been so, the almost miraculous effects of vaccination would have made them pleasant to him.

No man ever more enjoyed the luxury of doing good. One of his first acts upon entering on his office was to appoint a housekeeper. Any elderly person would have sufficed for the post, and certainly a married couple with a large family could not be considered ineligible. But such a pair he knew, who had just been burnt out of house and home, and without weighing the question of economy he appointed them and undertook to board as well as lodge the whole family till they should find some more profitable occupation. To save money while any one near him was suffering from a want of it, was a feat quite beyond his philosophy.

The sheltering of the poor family was a grand coup for him; but the immediate duties of his office were a far greater source of happiness. They brought him into immediate contact with the very poorest of his countrymen, and armed him with a spell of power to charm away their severest afflictions by shielding their offspring against the ravages of a terrible disease.

I have a little volume of poems which he published in Waterford in 1810. One of them is entitled “Vaccination, a Dramatic Poem, “ and has some notes appended to it which, as they possess an historical interest, I may be allowed to transcribe here. The first treats of the ravages of the disease, and the efficacy of the preventive.

“The small pox is attended with a dreadful mortality in some families. It is not uncommon for a little circle of domestic affection and happiness to be completely annihilated by such a visitation. About two years ago, I had a melancholy opportunity of witnessing this. The small pox made its appearance in St. Giles’s in London, a quarter inhabited by the lower orders of my countrymen. In my official capacity, being then the Resident Innoculator to the Jennerian Society, I attended the poor people every day for the course of six or eight weeks. The scenes which I witnessed are not to be described. Domestic affliction has made the heart of the Irishman its peculiar shrine. Nearly the half of those who caught the small pox fell victim to it. Great was the woe of fathers and of mothers. There was scarcely a family in which death had not made more or less havoc. I remember well one poor widow woman who had three children. When I visited her, one of them lay dead, another was dying, the third, a fine girl of eleven years of age, was in the first stage of the confluent eruption. The mother had parted with the last article of apparel she could spare to obtain such things as the gossips had recommended. For several days she had not tasted food. not one of her darlings was spared to her. Language becomes dumb when it would desire such misery as this. But what a contrast did the cow-pox produce! I saved about forty children by vaccinating them in time, and had the satisfaction to see them resist the small pox, although there was not one that had been exposed to contagion: nay, the greater part had slept in the rooms, or in the beds, with variolous patients.”

But the new practice had to contend against savage opposition: -

“The idea [of the poem] was suggested by a poetical effusion from the pen of Mr. Ring, whose disinterested and indefatigable exertions in promoting the cow-pox entitle him to the applause of every friend of humanity. The object was to expose the anti-vaccinists, whose doctrines deserve to be combated by no other weapon than that of ridicule; whose prectices were a course of systematic falsehood, calumny, and misrepresentations, or else the effect of fanacicism wrought up to an access of insanity. It is, indeed, hardly to be credited that men who had received the [s]lightest culture of civilization should utter such folly, or evince such malignity as have marked the proceedings of these personages. It is also a matter of astonishment that such a discription of men with such a description of policy should have greatly succeeded in their object, in opposition to almost the entire medical body of the United Kingdon, and the huge mass of evidence afforded by foreign nations. It is a melancholy truth that their labours produced a rich and plenteous harvest of human misery in the destruction of thousands and thousands of their fellow-creatures, who had otherwise lived to swell the population of their country, and add to her prosperity and fame. In every other part of the globe the introduction of the cow-pox was hailed and cherished as the inestimable blessing which it is. Our enemies eagerly received it from our hands,, honouring it for the divine virtue with which it was fraught.
________________

[FOOTNOTE: “It is a curious fact that though the application of Dr. Jenner, the Emperor of the French has liberated several English prisoners. “ – Note to the Pecum.]

National institutions were universally appointed. In several foreign populous cities the small pox was extinguished, whilst in Great Britain the new prectice had to struggle with every embarrassment that inveterate prejudice, illiberality and folly could throw in its way. Soon after its introduction, which was attended by the most happy effects, the weekly bills of mortality having been thereby thereby reduced in an incredible degree, the invidious anti-vaccinists began to ring the alarm in the ears of vredulity, timidity, and ingnorance, and the small pox renewed its ravages with its former rigour.”

One more passage, for the sake of its reference to Dr. Willan: -

“They who have not perused the works of these personages will scarcely credit that they should have uttered things so monstrous. A child who had been vaccinated happened some time after to be afflicted with scrofula. The anti-vaccinists immediately caught hold of this case, and very gravely asserted that the child's face had been changed to that of an ox by the influence of the new practice. In another instance they declared that a patient went on all fours, and lowed like a bull in consequence of having been vaccinated! In a third case in which the patient was afflicted with an inveterate eruption of impetigo, which in its advanced stage exhibits a moist and clammy sore, they said that the child was covered with cow's-hair, the wool of the blankets having adhered to the affected parts. In short there was not an eruption of the most simple and common kind which they did not endeavour to transform into some hideous attendant of the cow-pox. Here, however, they had to combat an adversary before whom rashness and falsehood could never stand, for he was accomplished in wisdom and truth, and virtue, of consummate skill as a general practitioner, and minutely versed in the knowlcdge of cutaneous diseases. Before the deliberate and active investigation of Dr. Willan these phantasies of the anti-vaccinists vanished wherever they were found, and thus the peace and tranquillity of innumerable families were preserved, and the new practice upheld, notwithstanding the outrageous violence of those who attempted to overthrow and crush it."

Dr. Willan appears to have been well supported and backed in these labours by the Jennerian Society. When an outcry was raised in newspapers and other publications that vaccination had signally failed in Hampshire the matter was brought before the Society by the Right Hon. George Rose. Though neither he nor they had any doubt that the statements which were spread abroad were calumnies set on foot by the opponents of the cause, it was deemed requisite in order to quiet the public anxiety that they should be confronted. Accordingly it was determined that a deputatin from the society should be sent down to Ringwood to test the alleged failures. It consisted of Mr. Ring, Mr. Blair, and Dr. Knowles,who on their arrival were met by Dr. Fowler of Salisbury, the Right Hon. Mr. Rose, several magistrates and clergymen, Mr. Westcote and Mr. Macilwain, Surgeons, and the principal inhabitants of the town and its neighbourhood. For two days before this assemblage the deputation publicly investigated the alleged cases of failure, which they proved to the satisfaction of their audience had no existence but in the calumnious assertions of the enemies of vaccination. Their report is dated the 3rd of February, 1808, and its accuracy is vouched by Dr.Fowler and Mr. Rose. As an evidence of the "rancorous and unmanly opposition" which at this period Dr.Jenner and his discovery had to encounter, Dr.Baron, in his "Life of Jenner," says it was actually stated in one of the anti-vaccinist papers, "that the deputies carried pistols to defend themselves against the astonished populace at Ringwood."

And now I have to relate, surely, one of the wildest and noblest exploits that it ever entered into the mind of a young man of four-and twenty to indertake.

From early childhood his mind had a strong religious tendency, and at no period to which my recollection of him reaches was he anything else than a sincerely religious man. At the time of which I am now writing all the world was crowding to the Surrey Chapel to hear Rowland Hill. Amongst his regular hearers was my father, who, from attending not only his Sunday but his week-day ministrations, came to be one of his imtimate friends, and was so carried away with admiration of his pastor, and enthusiasm for the cause, that it was with difficuty he could be persuaded from occupying his leisure hours with preaching on his own account.

One of the topics on which Rowland Hill dwelt frequently was that melancholy phase of life which of late years has been called the "social evil." One evening a French gentleman, a friend of my grandfather’s, came to him in haste, beseeching him to go immediately to “this bou James Sheridan, for that certainly he must be out of his mind.” He went on to say that he and a friend had just met “James Sheridan” coming out of the Surrey Chapel, and that it was all they could do to keep him from preaching to the women in Fleet Street. No doubt this was after one of Mr.Hill's powerful sermons. But if he was not to be allowed to preach, there was no stopping him from turning his pastor's instructions to practical account in another way. He determined, as far as he had time and means, to devote himself to the reclaiming of unfortunate women; and he had hardly formed this resolution before he began to put it in practice.

One evening he presented himself at the door of his house in Salisbury Square together with a woman who a few minutes before had accosted him in Fleet Street. He ushered her into his sitting-room,and bidding his housekeeper remain, asked the girl some questions in her presence, and, the answers being satisfactory, exacted from her a promise that she would not leave the house until he saw her again, which would be on the following morning.

All was well so far; but now an unexpected difficulty presented itself. The housekeeper, horrified at the thought of such a person remaining under the same roof with her, followed him out of the room, and declared that, late as it was,she and her family must leave the house unless the girl was at once sent about her business. What was to be done now? He told her to call her husband; and when the man came, he first told them plainly that there the girl was, and thatt here she must remain till he could get her into a penitentiary, and then he appealed to them as Christians to help him to save a fellow creature from sin and destruction. Overborne by his earnestness, they consented; and having thus made his preliminary arrangements, he left the house, and went to seek a lodging forhimself at the house of a friend.

To this friend he told what he had done, and asked his advice and help. At firs this announcement was received with astonishment and misgiving. These presently gave place to a feeling of admiration for the generous impulse which had suggested so extraordinary an undertaking; and, in the result, the friend promised a letter of introduction to the governor of a house of refuge for fallen women, which was presented the next day. A clergyman was, in consequence, deputed to visit the girl. He found her willing to enter the asylum; so willing, that she told him her whole story without reservation, and gave him the name and address of the parents from under whose roof she had wandered into the pollution from which there was now a hope that she might be rescued.

And her story was this. She was the daughter of a respectable farmer in ___. She had been engaged to be married to a young man in her own station in life, when one day she met with “an officer and a gentleman,” who, after a time, persuaded her to elope with him to London. When he was tired of her he threw her off; and, ashamed to go back to the home she had disgraced, she took to the streets. What an old, old story it is!

As soon as the address of her parents was ascertained, my father wrote to them; told them of what state he had found their child, how willing she was to repent and reform, and urging upon them the duty of forgiving her, and receiving her back into their home. The father at once replied, expressing his willingness and anxiety to do so; but the mother for a time absolutely refused to see her. She, too, however, melted shortly afterwards; and the daughter one day received an invitation from the parents to come back to the old home, where all would be forgiven and forgotten.

Good example is catching. She had been recused from the streets by an enthusiast worthy to be a disciple of St. Vincent of Paul; and with the hope of a better life than she had been leading, which was thus awakened within her, came the flowing back into her heart of early sentiments of virtue, and with them the inseparable accompaniment of true regret-the desire to do penance. She felt it was more fitting that she should pass through the probation of the asylum than return at once to the restored comforts of home, and the forgiveness of her parents. So, when she received their invitation, she refused it

On being appraised of her resolution to this effect, they came up to London to see their lost sheep before she entered the asylum, and were lodged in my father’s quarters in Salisbury Square. In their wake came the young man to whom she was engaged before her fall. He, as her father and mother had done, forgave her, and even went so very far as to promise that, at the end of her probation, if she went through it well, he would marry her. A few days afterwards she entered the asylum. In due time she left it a reclaimed character. Her parents received her back to their fireside; and, before long, her much-forgiving swain redeemed his promise, and made her his wife.

This was one out of seven cases in which my father turned Rowland Hill’s preaching to practical account. In six he succeeded either in restoring the women to their friends, or placing them in an asylum. The seventh case was incorrigible. But such generous audacity in a youth four-and-twenty deserves to be recorded in his honour. It shows a heart intensely earnest and compassionate, and a mind fearless of appearances or consequences, wherever it recognized what it held to be a duty. [JEA ED Note – it is striking how such traits descend down in a family and how generations later Joan Andrews displayed the same such attitude toward, and devotion to, the down-trodden.]

All this time the drama was not neglected. It was, indeed, uppermost in his thoughts, and his friends complained that he was always either writing or reciting poetry, and that he spoke to them in blank verse. To those who observed him closely, it seemed doubtful whether his prospect of succeeding to Dr. Willan's practice would be realized. He had been dabbling in private theatricals, and had become the leading tragedian of a company of amateurs, for whom he wrote "The Spanish Story," a tragedy in five acts, and "Hersilia." His efforts as actor and author met with such success, that the hope of his justifying the honour Aberdeen had bestowed upon him was daily dwindling. Even with so kind a patron as Dr. Willan, he could not submit to the position of protégé; and at last he fairly announced to his friends that he had made up his mind to go upon the stage.

“I wish to be independent, he said. “I will write for the stage, and make name and fortune for myself. I will go to the provinces and practise,and when I am fit for a London audience, I will come back to you. Some worthy fellow will be the better for the position I have held so long, and for which I have no liking, though Ihave tried to gratify you."

This declaration fell amongst his friends like a thunderbolt. But he had made it,and he would not unsay it. Dire was the wrath of Pater-familias, and no wonder: so dire, that he refused to bid his son goodbye. Dr. Willan, too, was disappointed; but he hoped that the stage-fit would soon pass off.

"Farewell, my boy," he said, when his pupil came to take leave of him. "I hope you will soon be back with us. Remember, this is your home. I begin to wish for rest. House, patients,carriage, all are here ready for you. Take your fancy out, and come back soon."

Everyone about him seems to have regretted his determination; but all, save his father – I can easily imagine his vexation-busied themselves in any way they could to contribute to the success of his plans. Letters of introduction were got for him right and left. But an old lady, who knew him well, when asked to add to the stock, made answer:-

“He wants no letters of introduction. His face will introduce him into any house, and his heart will keep him there."

CHAPTER III

…The Rev. Peter Le Fanu, who had married John Knowles’ only daughter and was thus his uncle by marriage, did much to dissuade him from going upon the stage…

(27) While he was aspiring after distinction in a profession in which he [28] was not destined to be a “bright particular star,” but some knowledge of which would be useful to him in that in which he was, two orphan girls, Maria and Catherine Charteris, came from the theatre at Edinburgh, of which city they were native, to join Mr. Smithson’s company at Wexford. With the elder of these, then in her eighteenth year, he fell in love, proposed and was accepted. She was an extremely comely girl, with a melodious voice; of mild and retiring manners, but in her quiet way not without a touch of enthusiasm. Both parents had been dead for some time; and, when little more than a child herself, she became a mother to her younger sister, who looked up to her with a perfect confidence that whatever she did was wisely done… She herself, if she had continued in the profession, would probably one day have made herself a name. Well do I remember her clear, bright voice, and the exquisite taste and feeling with which she sang long years after the time of which I am speaking; and all of the Virginias I have ever seen I can recall none who spoke the speeches with the gentle enthusiasm with which she spoke them, sitting with us at her fireside and descanting upon their beauty. But another mission was in store for her; she was to give aim and purpose to a life which had thus far been unsettled and without object. This was all that was waiting to develop my father’s character and talents, and he found it in that which his mother had often prayed he might be blessed with, a good wife. …

(30) Three months after their first meeting they were married; but, short as their courtship was, the course of true love managed to maintain its reputation…

a quarrel occurred between my father and Mr. Smithson, in consequence of which the former thought it necessary to call the later out. The latter did not think it necessary to go; and , unwilling to have so fiery a Thespian in his company, canceled the engagement. My mother, with her intense religious feelings, shocked at the idea that she had promised to marry a man who could think of fighting a duel, canceled her other engagement, and wrote him word that she would have nothing more to say to him. This was bad enough, but Fortune contrived to add yet another sting to her malice.

Just when this quarrel occurred, my mother and her sister were upon the eve of taking their benefit, and my father had promised himself the pleasure of singing “The Exile of Erin” on the occasion – a performance by which he had won great favour with the Wexford public, and which, he had no doubt would add to the evenings attractions…

CHAPTER IV

(54)… my father’s love for sea extended to the woods and pebbles on the beach.

CHAPTER V

(76) … Above all the questions of the day the one which was nearest and dearest to him was Catholic emancipation. One of my earliest recollections is his taking me with him by the hand when he was going to sign a petition in its favor, and explaining to me on the way what it was he was about to do. Another is his lecturing yearly for the benefit of the Roman Catholic Poor School Association; in which he took such an interest that he dedicated his comedy, the “Begger’s Daughter,” to Kirkman Finlay, the president of the association….

(77) Next came the “Abolition of Negro Slavery in the West Indies; and then followed “Parliamentary Reform,” “Municipal Reform.” and Abolition of Capital Punishment,” except in cases of murder…

CHAPTER VI

[86] One object of his removal from Glasgow to Edinburgh was to enable my eldest brother to complete his medical studies in the school of the latter city, famous at this date as the best in these kingdoms.