In and About Drury Lane, and Other Papers Vol. 1 (of 2): Reprinted from the pages of the 'Temple Bar' MagazineDoran, Dr. (John)
General
In and About Drury Lane, and Other Papers Vol. 1 (of 2): Reprinted from the pages of the 'Temple Bar' Magazine
Doran, Dr. (John)
London (England) -- Social life and customs -- 19th century; Theater -- England -- London -- Anecdotes
Among the other deaths of the year 1773, the following are noteworthy.
At Vienna, of a broken heart, from the miseries of his country, the
brave Prince Poniatowski, brother to the King of Poland, and a general
in the Austrian service, in which he had been greatly distinguished
during the last war. The partition of Poland was then only a year old,
and the echoes of the assertions of the lying Czar, Emperor, and King,
that they never intended to lay a finger on that ancient kingdom,
had hardly died out of the hearing of the astounded world. England
is always trusting the words of Czars and their Khiva protestations,
always learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth. A name
less known than Poniatowski may be cited for the singularity attached
to it. ‘Hale Hartson, Esq., the author of the “Countess of Salisbury”
and other ingenious pieces--a young gentleman of fine parts, and
who, though very young, had made the tour of Europe three times.’ An
indication of what a fashionable quarter Soho, with its neighbourhood,
was in 1773, is furnished by the following announcement: ‘Suddenly,
at her house in Lisle Street, Leicester Fields, Lady Sophia Thomas,
sister of the late Earl of Albemarle, and aunt of the present.’ Foreign
ambassadors then dwelt in Lisle Street. Even dukes had their houses
in the same district; and baronets lived and died in Red Lion Square
and in Cornhill. Among those baronets an eccentric individual turned
up now and then. In the obituary is the name of Sir Robert Price, of
whom it is added that ‘he left his fortune to seven old bachelors in
indigent circumstances.’ The death of one individual is very curtly
recorded; all the virtues under heaven would have been assigned to her,
had she not belonged to a vanquished party. In that case she would have
been a high and mighty princess; as it was, we only read, ‘Lately,
Lady Annabella Stuart, a relation of the late royal family, aged
ninety-one years, at St.-Omer.’ A few of us are better acquainted with
the poet, John Cunningham, whose decease is thus quaintly chronicled:
‘At Newcastle, the ingenious Mr. John Cunningham. A man little known,
but that will be always much admired for his plaintive, tender, and
natural pastoral poetry.’ Some of the departed personages seem to have
held strange appointments. Thus we find Alexander, Earl of Galloway,
described as ‘one of the lords of police;’ and Willes, Bishop of Bath
and Wells, who died in Hill Street when Mrs. Montague and her blue
stockings were in their greatest brilliancy, is described as ‘joint
Decypherer (with his son, Edward Willes, Esq.) to the king.’ We
believe that the duty of decypherer consisted in reading letters that
were opened, on suspicion, in their passage through the post-office.
Occasionally a little page of family history is opened to us in a few
words, as, for instance, in the account of Sir Robert Ladbroke, a rich
City knight, whose name is attached to streets, roads, groves, and
terraces in Notting Hill.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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