Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 67, No. 411, January 1850
From the prisoner, and the subject of prison-discipline, it is well known that the attention of Howard was directed to measures for arresting the plague. It was a grand idea this – that he would lead the way to some general scheme to be adopted throughout Europe, and the contiguous parts of Asia, for checking the incursions of, and perhaps finally exterminating, the plague. For no object did he suffer so much, or expose himself to so great dangers; embarking purposely in a vessel with a foul bill of health, and undergoing the perilous confinement of the lazaretto, that every practice of the quarantine might be thoroughly known to him. Nowhere was his conduct more heroic. It cannot be said here, however, that his object was equally well chosen, or that his labours were attended with any good result. Whilst it would be difficult to over-estimate the value of his service as inspector-general of the prisons of Europe, we can detect nothing in this latter scheme but an unfortunate waste of heroic benevolence. In dealing with jails and houses of correction, he was dealing with evils, the nature of which he, and all men, could well understand; but, in dealing with the pestilence, he was utterly in the dark as to the very nature of the calamity he was encountering. It is very probable that, had he realised his utmost wishes, and built a lazaretto on the most improved plan, combining every valuable regulation he had observed in every lazaretto of Europe, it would only have proved an additional nuisance.
This period of his life is more full of striking incidents than any other, but we must hurry rapidly over it.
"The point," says Mr Brown, "at which he wished to commence his new investigations was Marseilles; but the extreme jealousy of the French government respecting their Levant trade, had long kept the lazaretto of that port carefully concealed from the eye of every foreigner; but, as Mr Howard's object was such as ought to have awakened neither political nor commercial jealousy in any one, Lord Caermarthen, then secretary of state for foreign affairs, made an application to the French minister for permission for him to view this celebrated building. After waiting some time at the Hague, in expectation of its arrival, he went to Utrecht to visit his friend Dr Brown, at whose house he received a letter from his lordship, informing him, not only that the request he preferred had been peremptorily refused, but that he must not think of entering France at all, as, if he did, he would run a risk of being committed to the Bastille. Howard, however, was not to be deterred. He started immediately for Paris. At Paris, "having gone to bed, according to his usual custom, about ten o'clock, he was awaked between twelve and one, by a tremendous knocking at his room door, which, starting up, in somewhat of an alarm, he immediately opened; and, having returned to bed, he saw the chambermaid enter with a candle in each hand, followed by a man in a black coat, with a sword by his side, and his hands enveloped in an enormous muff. This singular personage immediately asked him if his name was not Howard. Vexed at this interruption, he hastily answered, 'Yes – and what of that?' He was again asked if he had not come to Paris in the Brussels diligence, in company with a man in a black wig? To this question he returned some such peevish answer, as that he paid no attention to such trifles; and his visitor immediately withdrew in silence. Not a little alarmed at this adventure, though losing none of his self-possession, and being unable to compose himself to sleep, Mr Howard got up; and, having discharged his bill the night before, took his small trunk, and, removing from this house, at the regular hour of starting took his seat in the diligence, and set off for Lyons."
Such is the narrative of Mr Brown. It has been supposed that this midnight visitor was an officer of the police, and that, had Howard remained a few hours longer at his hotel, he would have been arrested. But some mystery still hangs over this adventure. Howard, in one of his letters, alluding to it, says that he had since learnt who his strange visitor was, and adds that "he had had a narrow escape;" and his biographer Mr Brown tells us that —
"He learned that the man in a black wig was a spy, sent with him to Paris, by the French Ambassador at the Hague, and that he himself would have been arrested then, (at Paris,) if Mr Le Noir had not been at Versailles on the day of his arrival; and, several persons having recently been arrested on very false or frivolous grounds, he had left orders for no arrests being made before his return, which was not until late in the evening of the next day, when he was pursued, but not overtaken."
If it was this that Howard learnt, we think his informant must have deceived him. An air of great improbability hangs over this story. The French government is represented as being so anxious to arrest Howard, if he should enter France, that it sends a spy to travel with him from the Hague; if so, the identity of Howard was sufficiently known to the police on his arrival at Paris. Yet we are next told that an officer visits Howard at midnight, only to assure himself that it is Howard; – pays a visit, in short, that can have no other effect than to give the alarm to his intended captive. In addition to this, we are to suppose that this person, whom the French government is so anxious to arrest, pursues his journey unmolested, and spends five days at Marseilles, visiting the very lazaretto to which it was known he was bound, and the inspection of which that government was so solicitous to prevent.
As to the other motives by which Mr Brown accounts for these hostile proceedings of the French government, we can attach no weight to them whatever. On a previous visit to Paris, Howard had been extremely desirous to survey the interior of the Bastille. Not being able to obtain permission, he had boldly knocked at the outer door, and, assuming an air of official authority, walked in. He had penetrated to some of the inner courts before this little ruse was detected. He was then, of course, conducted out. He was obliged to content himself with an account of the Bastille written in French, and the publication of which had been forbidden by the government. He obtained a copy, and translated it into English. For this, and for another cause of offence of a far slighter character, it is difficult to suppose that Howard had excited the peculiar animosity of the French government.
Howard visited the lazaretto of Marseilles, however, under the full impression that the police were on the search for him. From Marseilles he went to Toulon, and inspected the arsenal and the condition of the galley-slaves. To obtain admission into the arsenal, he dressed himself, says Mr Brown, "in the height of the French fashion," Englishmen being strictly prohibited from viewing it at all. We are told that this disguise was easy to him, "as he always had much the air and appearance of a foreigner, and spoke the French language with fluency and correctness." Mr Dixon, faithful to his system of caricaturing all things, describes him as "dressed as an exquisite of the Faubourg St Honoré!" We presume that it was the French gentleman of the period, and not the French dandy, that Howard imitated.
He next visited the several lazarettos of Italy – went to Malta – to Smyrna – to Constantinople, everywhere making perilous inquisitions into the plague. At Smyrna he is "fortunate enough" to meet with a vessel bound to Venice with a foul bill of health, and he embarks in it. On its way, the vessel is attacked by pirates. "The men," says Mr Brown, "defended themselves for a considerable time with much bravery, but were at length reduced to the alternative of striking, or being butchered by the Moors, when, having one very large cannon on board, they loaded it with whatever missiles they could lay their hands upon, and, pointed by Mr Howard himself, it was discharged amongst the corsair crew with such effect that a great number of them were killed, and the others thought it prudent to sheer off." Pointed by Mr Howard himself! We can well understand it. The intrepid, energetic man, Fellow too of the Royal Society, would look at the elevation of the gun, and lend a helping hand to adjust it.
We throw into a note a parting specimen of the manner of Mr Dixon. Not satisfied with the simple and probable picture which Mr Brown presents to us, he makes Howard load the gun as well as point it – makes him sole gunner on board; and in order to improve his tableau, after having fought half the battle through, recommences it, that he may discharge his gun with the more effect.11 Mr Dixon advertises, as his next forthcoming work, a history of our prisons. We are sorry that so good a subject has fallen into such bad hands. Unless he should greatly improve, we shall have a book necessarily replete with much popular and interesting matter, in not one page of which will the narrative be strictly trustworthy.
At Venice he is conducted to the lazaretto, to undergo the quarantine. He is shut up in a close loathsome room, the very walls of which are reeking with foul and pestilential odours. Surely never was a valuable life so heroically ventured, for so futile a purpose. Whilst lying here, smitten with a low fever, he received – we quote from Mr Brown – "intelligence from England of two circumstances which had transpired there, each of them an occasion of the deepest affliction to his mind. The first was the formation of a fund for the erection of a statue to his honour; the second the misconduct of his only son."
We can well believe they were both afflictions. Those who have entered into the character of Howard, will feel at once that the project of doing him any public honour would be, in his own language, "a punishment, and not a reward." It was mingling with his conduct and motives that very alloy of vanity, and consideration for men's opinion, which he was so anxious to keep them clear from. If a generous man has done a kind action for kindness' sake, how it spoils all if you pay him for it! You lower him at once. He refuses your payment; he would deny, if he could, his previous action; he begs, at all events, it may be utterly forgotten. To pay Howard in praise was, to his mind, as great an incongruity. He shrank from the debasing coin. He would have denied his philanthropy: "Say it is my hobby, if you will," he is heard at one time to mutter. Dying, he says to his friend – "Lay me quietly in the earth, place a sun-dial over my grave, and let me be forgotten." Child of Time – was it not enough?
When he had escaped the lazaretto and returned to England, he wrote a letter to the gentlemen who had undertaken to collect subscriptions, requesting them to lay aside their project. The money collected was in part returned, a part was spent in liberating a certain number of poor debtors, and the residue was applied towards erecting, at his death, the statue of him in St Paul's Cathedral.
His son he was compelled to consign to the care of a lunatic asylum. He now published the information he had obtained, at so much risk, upon lazarettos, and the mode of performing quarantine, together with additional observations upon prisons and hospitals at home and abroad. Connected with this publication, an incident is related, which shows the extraordinary value Howard had put on the materials he had collected, and also the singular perseverance and determination of the man. We give it in the words of Mr Brown: —
"On his return from his Turkish tour, one of his boxes was stolen as he was getting into a hackney-coach in Bishopsgate Street, from the stage in which he had travelled from Dover. It contained a duplicate of his travels, twenty-five guineas, and a gold watch. The plan of the lazaretto of Marseilles, of which he possessed no duplicate, was, happily, in the other box. Had it not been so, he declared to his friend Dr Lettsom, that, notwithstanding the risks he had run in procuring that document, so important did he consider it, that he would a second time have exposed himself to the danger of a visit to France to supply its place."
We believe he would.
This publication completed, and his son so unhappily disposed of, the veteran philanthropist quitted his country again, and for the last time. It was still against the plague that his enterprise was directed. He seems to have thought that successful barricades, by quarantine and other measures, might be erected against it. With the plague, as with the cholera, it is generally admitted there is some occult cause which science has not yet penetrated; but the predisposing, or rather the co-operating causes, are, in both cases, dirt and bad diet; and the quarantine which would attack these is the only measure which, in our present state of knowledge, is worthy of serious consideration. It was his purpose, this time, to travel through Russia into Turkey, and thence, perhaps, to extend his journey far into the East, to whatever city this grim enemy of mankind might have taken possession of.
He had reached as far as Cherson, on the eastern borders of Russia, visiting, according to his wont, prisons and hospitals on his way. Here he was seized by a fever which proved mortal, and which he is supposed to have caught in visiting, with his usual benevolence, a young lady, to whom also it proved fatal. He was buried in the grounds belonging to the villa of a French gentleman who had shown him much attention. A small brick pyramid, instead of the sun-dial he had suggested, was placed over his grave. The little pyramid or obelisk still stands, we are told – stands alone, "on a bleak desolate plain." But Protestant England has a monument in that little pyramid, which will do her as much honour as any colony or empire she has planted or subdued.
THE DARK WAGGON
BY DELTA
I
The Water-Wraith shrieked over Clyde,
The winds through high Dunbarton sighed,
When to the trumpet's call replied
The deep drum from the square;
And, in the midnight's misty shade,
With helm, and cloak, and glancing blade,
Two hundred horsemen stood arrayed
Beneath the torches' glare.
II
Around a huge sepulchral van
They took their stations, horse and man —
The outer gateway's bolts withdrawn,
In haste the drawbridge fell;
And out, with iron clatter, went
That sullen midnight armament,
Alone the leader knew where bent,
With what – he might not tell.
III
Into the darkness they are gone: —
The blinded waggon thundered on,
And, save of hoof-tramp, sound was none: —
Hurriedly on they scour
The eastward track – away – away —
To none they speak, brook no delay,
Till farm-cocks heralded the day,
And hour had followed hour.
IV
Behind them, mingling with the skies,
Westward the smoke of Glasgow dies —
The pastoral hills of Campsie rise
Northward in morning's air —
By Kirkintilloc, Cumbernold,
And Castlecary, on they hold,
Till Lythgo shows, in mirrored gold,
Its palaced loch so fair.12
V
Brief baiting-time: – the bugle sounds,
Onwards the ponderous van rebounds
Mid the grim squadron, which surrounds
Its path with spur and spear.
Thy shrine, Dumanie, fades on sight,13
And, seen from Niddreff's hazelly height,
The Forth, amid its islands bright,
Shimmers with lustre clear.14
VI
The Maiden Castle next surveyed,
Across the furzy hills of Braid,
By Craig-Milor,15 through Wymet's glade
To Inneresc they wound;16
Then o'er the Garlton crags afar,
Where, oft a check to England's war,
Cospatrick's stronghold of Dunbar17
In proud defiance frowned.
VII
Weep through each grove, ye tearful rills!
Ye ivied caves, which Echo fills
With voice, lament! Ye proud, free hills,
Where eagles wheel and soar,
Bid noontide o'er your summits throw
Storm's murkiest cloud! Ye vales below,
Let all your wild-flowers cease to blow,
And with bent heads deplore!
VIII
Ye passions, that, with holy fire,
Illume man's bosom – that inspire
To daring deed, or proud desire,
With indignation burn!
Ye household charities, that keep
Watch over childhood's rosy sleep,
Ashes bestrew the hearthstone, – weep
As o'er a funeral urn!
IX
On – on they speed. Oh dreary day,
That, like a vampire, drained away
The blood from Scotland's heart – delay,
Thou lingering sun to set!
Rain, twilight! rain down bloody dews
O'er all the eye far northward views;
Nor do thou, night of nights! refuse
A darkness black as jet.
X
Heroic spirits of the dead!
That in the body nobly bled,
By whom the battle-field for bed
Was chosen, look ye down, —
And see if hearts are all grown cold, —
If for their just rights none are bold, —
If servile earth one bosom hold,
Worthy of old renown?
XI
The pass-word given, o'er bridge of Tweed
The cavalcade, with slackened speed,
Rolled on, like one from night-mare freed,
That draws an easier breath;
But o'er and round it hung the gloom
As of some dark, mysterious doom,
Shadows cast forward from the tomb,
And auguries of death.
XII
Scotland receded from the view,
And, on the far horizon blue,
Faded her last, dear hills – the mew
Screamed to its sea-isle near.
As day-beams ceased the west to flout,
Each after each the stars came out,
Like camp-fires heaven's high hosts about,
With lustre calm and clear.
XIII
And on, through many a Saxon town
Northumbrian, and of quaint renown,
Before the morning star went down,
With thunderous reel they hied;
While from the lattices aloof,
Of many an angled, gray-stone roof.
Rose sudden heads, as sound of hoof
And wheel to southward died.
XIV
Like Hope's voice preaching to Despair,
Sweetly the chimes for matin prayer
Melted upon the dewy air
From Hexham's holy pile;
But, like the adder deaf, no sound,
Or stern or sweet, an echo found
'Mid that dark squadron, as it wound
Still onwards, mile on mile.
XV
Streamers, and booths, and country games,
And brawny churls, with rustic names,
And blooming maids, and buxom dames, —
A boisterous village fair!
On stage his sleights the jongleur shows,
Like strutting cock the jester crows,
And high the morrice-dancer throws
His antic heels in air.
XVI
Why pause at reel each lad and lass?
A solemn awe pervades the mass;
Wondering they see the travellers pass,
The horsemen journey-worn,
And, in the midst, that blinded van
So hearse-like; while, from man to man,
"Is it of Death" – in whispers ran —
"This spectacle forlorn?"
XVII
Bright are thy shadowy forest-bowers,
Fair Ashby-de-la-Zouche! with flowers;
The wild-deer in its covert cowers,
And, from its pine-tree old,
The startled cushat, in unrest,
Circles around its airy nest,
As forward, on its route unblest,
Aye on that waggon rolled.
XVIII
And many a grove-encircled town,
And many a keep of old renown,
That grimly watched o'er dale and down,
They passed unheeding by;
Prone from the rocks the waters streamed,
And, 'mid the yellow harvests, gleamed
The reapers' sickles, but all seemed,
Mere pictures to the eye.
XIX
Behold a tournay on the green!
The tents are pitched – the tilters keen
Gambol the listed lines between —
The motley crowds around
For jibe, and jest, and wanton play
Are met – a merry holiday;
And glide the lightsome hours away
In mirth, to music's sound.
XX
And hark! the exulting shouts that rise,
As, cynosure of circling eyes,
Beauty's fair queen awards the prize
To knight that lowly kneels.
"Make way – make way!" is heard aloud —
Like Red Sea waters part the crowd,
And, scornful of that pageant proud,
On grinding rush the wheels!
XXI
Hundreds and hamlets far from sight,
By lonely granges through the night
They camped; and, ere the morning light
Crimsoned the orient, they
By royal road, or baron's park,
Waking the watchful ban-dog's bark,
Before the first song of the lark,
Were on their southward way.
XXII
By Althorpe, and by Oxendon,
Without a halt they hurried on,
Nor paused by that fair cross of stone,
Now for the first time seen,
(For death's dark billows overwhelm
Both jewelled braid, and knightly helm!)
Raised, by the monarch of the realm,
To Eleanor his queen.18
XXIII
Five times through darkness and through day,
Since crossing Tweed, with fresh relay
Ever in wait, their forward way
That cavalcade had held;
Now joy!!! for, on the weary wights,
Loomed London from the Hampstead heights,
As, by the opal morning, Night's
Thin vapours were dispell'd.
XXIV
With spur on heel, and spear in rest,
And buckler'd arm, and trellised breast,
Closer around their charge they press'd —
On whirled, with livelier roll,
The wheels begirt with prancing feet,
And arms, – a serried mass complete,
Until, by many a stately street,
They reached their destined goal.
XXV
Grim Westminster! thy pile severe
Struck to the heart like sudden fear; —
"Hope flies from all that enter here!"
Seemed graven on its crest.
The moat o'erpassed, at warn of bell,
Down thundering the portcullis fell,
And clang'd the studded gates, – a knell
Despairing and unblest.
XXVI
Ye guardian angels! that fulfil
Heaven's high decrees, and work its will —
Ye thunderbolts! launched forth to kill, —
Where was it then ye slept —
When, foe-bemocked, in prison square,
To death fore-doomed, with dauntless air,
From out that van,
A shackled man —
Sir William Wallace stept!