Memoirs of Mrs Lætitia Boothby. Written by herself. Edited [or rather, written] by Clark Russell

Preface

. T^HESE memoirs were begun and ended in the last two months of the year 1775, when my Lady Cheriton's absence from home gave me leisure to prosecute my task. I undertook it with eagerness ; for I was never to know how much of my past my lady might come to discover. ,In this apprehension I determin'd to set down a plain and sincere narrative of my conduct whilst I was at Dr. Aston's (embellished for her diver sion with notices of the distinguish'd characters I met at Wimpole Street), conceiving that the best remedy against the prejudice any discovery would raise in her, would lie in an account of VI Preface. my birth, my father's character and misfortunes, and the necessity I was under of making my fortune by my own arts. But unless discovery of my past (which God avert!) occasion an immature betrayal of these memoirs, I design that posterity alone shall have the reading of them ; for I have no desire the history of my life should be known, until the grave has put it beyond the power of the un candid to injure me.

CONTENTS. Chapter I. PAGE Of Mr. Boothby; his birth, parentage, education, and marriage ........ i Chapter II. Of my early life a7id hardships ; with an account of a street-broil, and its consequences . . . .19 Chapter III. Concerning Miss Boothby's introduction to Miss Aston, with a description of Dr. Aston's house in Wimpole Street 45 Chapter IV. cy my installation ; with a conversation, in which will be found some hints concerning the tastes of our age . 61 Chapter V. Concerning various conversations; including the introduction of a celebrated character 86 Chapter VI. Containing matter rather surprising than pleasing . . 109 Chapter VII. Ln which will be found matter that even a beau might meditate with advantage . . . . . .132 Contents. VIII Chapter VIII. PAGE In which the reader will encounter some distinguish'd characters . . ■ • • • • • r49 Chapter IX.

Mr. Bracebridge and Miss Boothby in the Park . . 178 Chapter X. Miss Boothby visits her papa in the Hay market . .204 Chapter XI. Miss Boothby keeps another appointment . . .231 Chapter XII. Mr. Boothby makes his daughter a visit . . -251 Chapter XIII. Containing tlie humours of a masquerade . . .261 Chapter XIV. Miss Boothby consoles Miss Aston . . . . .284 Chapter XV. Miss Boothby leaves Wimpole Street . . . .298 Chapter XVI. Miss Boothby returns to her papa . . . ,I0

Chapter I

Of Mr. Boothby ; his birth, parentage, education, and marriage. I HAVE always had an aversion to those soft and sentimental tales of love, with which, from time to time, writers of both sexes have entertained the town ; for I could never find it in me to sympathise with love that is fed with pap, and bristles with milk-teeth through so great a number of pages as some of these writings con tain. For my part, I believe we should be diverted with a great many less such stories were the writers who compose them to freely avow the B truth, and set down an uncoloured version of what befel them or their heroes. We should be moved indeed with less fine speeches, but we should be instructed with more veracity ; and what tender emotions our sensibilities might have to forego, would be balanced by the sharpening of our judgments and by the enlargement of our under standings.

How often are Pancharilla's eyelashes made to sparkle with the crystal drops of despair, when we are sensible that Strep/ion's unkindness could never have excited her to tears ! How often is Flavia s fleecy care made to listen to her tender complaints, when sure her swain's behaviour has been too moderate to provoke a sigh ! Nor have I patience with those writers who seem to want the heart to speak out plainly all that experience has writ on their memory, but must needs fall to devices beneath the dignity of truth ; dissembling where candour should appear, and em bellishing where the plainest outlines would prove most profitable. The life of every man and woman is a history that demands, and surely deserves, as undecorated an account as the history of a nation. If this be blinked there never can be any profit to arise from the setting down of what a man has thought and done.

Methinks truth should ever be painted as a naked beautiful female, with such grace in her air and such dignity in her eyes as will breed a sense of modesty in all who behold her. Yet there are who treat her as a wench of whom but only a little of her person may be seen ; who, feigning a modesty that is not in nature, set her up in hoop and sacque, and yet leave exposed more to shock a real decency than were she left with no clothing on but her beauty. To show my contempt for this kind of history, I shall write as freely as if I was a penitent making confession to a priest ; and though some actions of mine, which I shall have to recount, may appear odious, yet the ingenious reader will set against my past sins this expiation of confession, by which, if she be judicious, she shall not fail to profit.

My grandfather on the male side was a parson, who held a small living in Northamptonshire, of which the revenues, proving insufficient for his wants, set him upon searching for a wife, possessed of such a fortune as should prove their support. Having been sometimes admitted on occasions when poor relations or mean company were present, to the table of the squire of the parish, he made the acquaintance of Mrs. Margery Dowler, a decent, grave woman, of no principle, but of good reputation, who, from the vigilance and ability she had manifested as waiting-maid to the squire's third wife, had been raised by her to the dignity of housekeeper. Parson Boothby having with much pains learnt that she had saved, out of her various plunder, a sufficient fortune to keep them in comfort for some years, writ a private letter in which he confessed his love (which he swore was only for her person and mind), and humbly concluded by entreating her to become his wife.

The many uncommon qualifications she must have concentered in herself to enable her to lay by so great a sum of money, while preserving her reputation for honesty, and in situations of which the rewards were small and subjected to the caprices of her employers, rendered the parson fearful lest she should think herself meat for his betters, and reject his offer with contempt ; but finding her agreeable to his request, and not above becoming the wife of a clergyman, he married her in 1 71 5 ; the witnesses to their union being the butler and a natural son of the squire. Mr. Boothby, the only offspring of this union, was born on the seventh day of June, in the year 1 719, that being the day on which the great Mr. Addison died ; a circumstance which Mr. Boothby would always reflect on with complacence, and mention as a singular instance of the compensa tions made by nature ; though how nature could compensate mankind for the loss of so great a moralist by introducing Mr. Boothby among them, is not readily conjectured.

Nor are my sensibilities as a daughter willing to accept the view once expressed by the satyrick Will Gentleman, who protested that the only motive he could witness in this working of nature, was her resolution to prove to mankind that as, like a great poet, she was capable of the highest flights in the sublime, so was she also capable of the meanest strokes in the ridiculous. I have heard of no prognosticks having heralded my father's appearance on the stage of this world ; though I make no doubt but that soon after his birth, an ingenious mind might have witnessed many prognosticks to herald his future career. My grandfather being resolved to spend his wife's money, that should he die before her, he Airs. Lœtitia Boothby. 6 might leave her no other charm than her face and person (which were not of the daintiest) with which to tempt another suitor, found that his wife's fortune, even when conjoined to his own revenue, was not sufficient for his habits, which he had bred to luxury by taking no concern in the future ; and so suffered his son to go at large, only paying the parish clerk with glasses of strong waters, to impart the alphabet and the forms of figures, and then letting him take as much reading as he might think good.

But the boy had a mind fervid with imagination and active with a love of mischief which carried him to a wider extent of knowledge than was thought on at the embarkation ; as the falcon in chasing his quarry, oft rises to a great height in the pur suit, whence he may enter, if he will, on a boundless survey of the prospects, plantations, groves, hills, and sinking dales below. He discovered at first, as he has often confessed, a wonderful ex citement in robbing orchards, in casting stones at windows, in breaking down fences for the pent-up cattle to escape, in choking up fountains, and in killing ducks with sticks. But hearing from certain playfellows that there were books to be had in which exploits of greater variety and of more daring character were to be read, he made shift to possess them, and was thus insensibly led into a course of reading which, commencing at a foul source, gradually conducted him to a clearer stream, thence to the wide river, and presently to the ocean of knowledge.

The severity of his father's selfishness, Mr. Boothby now entering upon manhood, his parts being good, his imagination brisk, and his opinions intelligent, set him upon resolving to seek his own fortune. He imparted his intention to his father, who, so far from dissuading him from attempting the perilous deeps and shallows of the world, did not even seek to ascertain what scheme of life he had formed ; but giving him twenty guineas, bade him know he must expect no more, and so gave him his blessing. With this narrow fortune, Mr. Boothby started for London, which he reached on the first day of April, in the year 1 739. Of his life at this period I know little, for the accounts are vague and the memorials confused. I believe that he took to the stage, and that he acted the character of Bardolph in the " First Part Alemoirs of Mrs. Lœtitia Boothby. 8 of King Henry IV.," at the theatre in Portugal Street, whither Mr. Giffard had at that time removed with his company of comedians from the theatre in Goodman's Fields.

But he did not occupy the stage long; for like the late Sir J*hn H*ll, of whom the ingenious Kit Smart wrote, he was damned in every part he undertook, and was forced to retire, though not with any discredit, since history gives many examples of the greatest and most improved geniuses having trod the stage and abandoned it without incurring any insolence of contempt or accusation of general incompetence. The great success of Mr. Garrick at Good man's Fields, in the year 1741, seems to have occasioned once more the letting loose of his desires towards the stage ; but now he came for ward, not as an actor, but as the author of a comedy in five acts, intituled, " A Wife A-la- Mode ; or, The Devil with Two Horns," a per formance of very great merit, the dialogue being natural, the sentiments just, and the conceits copious, unaffected, and never violent.

It was repeated to him, indeed, that Mr. Wilkes, the famous patriot, had praised this piece as a work of great promise ; and that he had quoted as an example of its excellence the retort by Dampier on Cœlia's airy joke upon his moodiness : "Aladam, we wits are like razors that have to be ground in order to be kept sharp ; and if we are often silent in company, it is because we perceive the value of œconomy too plainly to part with more than we are compelled to lose when we bring our brains to the grindstone of our wants." Mr. Rich having looked into this play, acted it at Covent Garden : but the sprightly performance of Mrs. Woffington as Cœlia could not save the piece against the ill-temper of Mr. Ryan ; who, having quarrelled with Mr. Rich before he came on, was so disconcerted that he lost his spirits, and as the odious tumult of the cat-calls rose, sunk into many meannesses, and procured the piece to be hissed off before the middle of the fourth act.

Mr. Boothby, however, was more fortunate with the booksellers, from whom he received fifty guineas for his play ; yet not before he had struggled hard for the customary hundred, which the rapacious Mr. Osborne, with many imprecations, vowed he would not give, as the piece had been damned. Memoirs of Airs. Lœtitia Boothby. 10 During this time Mr. Boothby had often been in great want, heavily weighed down by the pressing care of supporting the day that was passing over him, and languishing under great dejection of spirits. Being keen of observation, and quick to present in an agreeable form the various experiences which he drew from the life he was then pursuing, he was enabled to earn a precarious subsistence by writing for the journals; and he has ofttimes pointed out to me, with a kind of triumph, as manifesting the superiority of his will over his spirit, certain tart lampoons and pleasant poems in the London Magazine, and notably in the Craftsman and the Champion, writ when his hand hath been enfeebled by want, and when hunger hath raised such an outcry as had almost drowned the voice of his imagination.

Yet did not his industry suffice for his support. He wrote to his father, humbly petitioning him to. send a few guineas ; but no reply was vouch safed. His spirit taking fire at this neglect, he swore never again to apply to so inhuman a person ; then casting his eyes about him, he too plainly perceived that a life of vice and stratagem was the only avenue the jade Fortune had left open. Into this avenue he steadfastly walked, and fared as others have fared who have followed the same road. As shall be plainly seen hereafter, I can con ceive no demands made upon my duty or my love as a child, that I should seek to subdue the harsh outline of Mr. Boothby's memory, which is all that he bequeathed to me. My resolution to write the truth shall never suffer obstruction either from sentiment or shame ; and as I have never permitted any passion, whether of love or hate, despair or hope, tenderness or contempt, to divert me from my resolution, so I shall take care that these pages are neither darkened nor brightened by any disclosures that will tend to represent me as either better or worse than nature hath made me.

Yet justice demands I should bear witness to Mr. Boothby's character, and affirm that but for the unnatural treatment of his father, who refused to extend him his hand when he was sinking, not knowing but that Vice was offering her dark support on the other side, Mr. Boothby might have become an honest, virtuous man, and an ornament to society ; to the best of which he was Alemoirs of Airs. Lœtitia Boothby. 12 entitled even when he was most soddened by the fumes from the chalice of Vice ; not less by the elegance of his manners, the charms of his con versation, and the dignity of his carriage, than by the ably-simulated sweetness of his sentiments, and by the finely-impersonated honesty of his motives. Those who are acquainted with the life of Mr. Savage, son to the Earl Rivers by my Lady Macclesfield, who afterwards was married to Colonel Brett, might properly judge from that gentleman's career of the many uncommon hard ships Mr. Boothby was obliged to endure.

Good parts were never highly esteemed in Britain. A great man in this country is an egg which only death can hatch, or a seed that is to be buried before it will yield. Those who would know what poor rewards attend upon learning, may read Dr. Johnson's gravely satyrick poem called " The Young Author," or his elegant " Vanity of Human Wishes," and if they should doubt the word of one whom poverty had severely instructed, let them turn to Mr. Cibber's " Lives of the Poets," where they will find that the greatest parts and the most prodigious industry have often failed to Mr. Boothby ' s birth, parentage, etc. 13 earn a man a dinner, or to procure a nobler burial than a pauper's shell. One night in the year 1747, Mr. Boothby attended the play at the Little Theatre in the Haymarket, on the occasion of the appearance there of an actress whose merits he had heard loudly discussed by certain critics and beaux at a tavern he frequented near to Bow Street.

This actress was Mrs. Pritchard, of whose fame the world is now justly full, no performer to my taste ever having excelled her, whether in the sprightly and genteel parts of comedy, or in the higher reaches of pathetick tragedy. But though Mr. Boothby could not but be sensibly diverted by the fine airs, the lively graces, and the pert, sly humours of the excellent actress, the greater part of his attention was taken up by contemplating when she was present and meditating when she was withdrawn, the charms of a young female who acted a humble character, but with such skill as raised it to the level of the principal personages of the play. If I had not seen her miniature, done by Mr. Spenser, the famous miniature-painter, I should have been silent as to her beauty ; but however I Mrs. Lœtitia Boothby. 14 might have distrusted Mr. Boothby's transports (for even as a husband he would continue to speak of his wife with the admiration of a lover ; whence it will be seen it is not always that possession cloys, though indeed it is as well to take for a rule what is rather confirmed than shaken by exceptions), I am constrained to accept the decision of my judgment.

Paint upon your imagination a young and elegant female, moulded in a form of matchless symmetry. Her eyes, which were large, black and piercing, were surmounted by eyebrows full and regular, and arched with that perception of beauty with which Nature sometimes asserts her supe riority over all other artists. Her face was em bellished by a sweet profile, her nose being small, with the faint and dainty curve upwards which speaks to a love of mischief and mirth. Her hair, which was of a dark red, making the contrast of her black eyes singular and striking, grew in great profusion, and when loosened reached below her middle. Her neck, which was long and delicate, was white as the purest alabaster or ivory, and seemed to grow out of a yielding bed of soft and fragrant lilies. Her teeth were small, pure and regular, and shone with a most ravishing effect when she smiled, from between the ripe and rosy portals of her lips.

Mr. Boothby had no sooner beheld her than he felt the soft transports of love flutter in his breast, and fill his soul with a delicious amazement. When the play was over he hastened to the door whence the players leave the theatre, in the hope of seeing her. There were several chairs in waiting, into one of which he, ere long, observed her step ; though it was rather the rational and sagacious instinct of his love than the grosser faculty of sight, that enabled him to detect the nymph under the gray disguise of the habiliments she had donned in the room of the airy costume of the stage. He followed the chair up the Haymarket, on through Leicester Fields, and so to St. Giles', where it presently stopped before a mean dwelling in Broad Street. Having noted the place of her residence, Mr. Boothby returned to his lodgings ; and next day repairing to an ale-house near the Strand, he fell to making oblique inquiries among certain of the players concerning her ; which being answered, gave him to know her name was Lavinia Airs.

Lœtitia Boothby. 16 Modeley ; that she was an orphan ; that she was gaining thirty-five shillings a week from the theatre ; and that she had been but three months before the town, having come from Ireland, with a letter to the manager from Mr. William Mynitt, an excellent actor in tragedy. This being ascertained, he took Mr. Benson apart, who was then acting at the Haymarket, and calling for a dram, made him acquainted with his passion, and begged him to present him to the nymph for whom he burned. This Mr. Benson cheerfully consented to do, and bade him attend the theatre that night, and after the second act to step round, when he undertook to make the lover known to his charmer. As it is not my intention to write Mr. Boothby's history, but my own, I need enter no further into the particulars of that meeting and of the events that grew out of it, than to say, that as Miss Modeley had at first sight inspired Mr. Boothby with a passion for her, so on his being presented to her, she found him the reverse of disagreeable; and as the protestations of a pretty fellow for Mr. Boothby when young was strikingly handsome, of a sanguine complexion, which dissipation could not cloud, a straight nose, white teeth, and well turned limbs — fed her vanity with a lofty opinion of her merits, she, after a few meetings, proved herself not disinclined to become his wife.

Being unwilling that their marriage should be known (she being desirous as an actress to be regarded as single, which is an ambition most actresses have, as they are of opinion that the admiration of the laced hats for their persons may bring down that applause which their merits could not provoke), they concerted to procure their union at the hands of one of the Fleet parsons, a body of disreputable men who, in those days, drove a flourishing trade by consenting to marry persons without the formality of those inquiries which our Church imposes ; by which many crea tures were legally united who would not have been suffered to enter into matrimony by the sterner theologues ; as witness the case of Mary Summer, (of whom I have myself heard tell,) who having been deceived by her swain, she was unwilling her friends should know her shame, and so gave out she was married ; to carry out which beyond the dispute of proof, she caused a young female companion c Mrs. Lœtitia Boothby. 18 to attire herself as a man, and taking her arm, presented herself before one Mr. Wyatt, who saw through the trick ; but consenting to be blinded by a guinea for each eye, read the service, and delivered the certificate.

Mr. and Mrs. Boothby were married at the Salutation Tavern, near Great Andrew Church, on the 30th of September, in the year 1749; and on the first day of July, in the year 1750, was born Lætitia-Lavinia Boothby, the writer of these Memoirs, at Little Queen Street, where Mr. and Mrs. Boothby then lodged.

Chapter II

Of my early life and hardships; with an account of a street-broil, and its consequences. A S these Memoirs do not properly begin until the year 1 77 r, when I was in my twenty-first year, I know not whether I shall be affording the reader much diversion by entering into a particular account of my life to that period; therefore, having a story to tell of which it is not right the reader should be baulked by long prefaces and digressions, I will here briefly set down one or two par ticulars, and then proceed to my relation. It hath ever been the lot of the most beautiful women to perish early, and such was my mother's fate, she dying when I was three years old. Though I was far from being so advanced as to do without her, yet I could not but congratulate myself afterwards, when I reflected that I had received her care through Airs.

Lœtitia Boothby. 20 that tender time of infancy which most demands a mother's solicitude; for I was well on my feet, and had got all my teeth, before she died, and had gone through most of the sicknesses that usually befall infants. I was too young to recollect whether my father's grief was great; but I make no doubt he lamented her decease with such demonstra tions of woe as might have sprung from deeper feelings than he could be sensible of. For my part, I should say he mourned rather the mistress than the wife; for though they had lived together four years, yet her beauty had made that time seem but as four months, and doubtless another four years might have passed ere he would have found himself growing weary of the same fare. This speaks eloquently to my mother's powers of pleasing; for no man was ever more sensible of the cloying effects of repetition than Mr. Boothby, who would often say "that a dish of ortolans served every day, would make a man heartily sick of ortolans in a week."

I was very staid as a little girl, and as I began, so I grew. I had a knack of disguising my feelings even at that season of youth when the passions have no constraint put upon them ; and could weep or laugh internally, without any sensible change discovering itself in my features. My mother's controul over Mr. Boothby had been beneficial while she lived; for the charms of her company took him away from the society of the alehouses and taverns; and though she was an actress, yet her virtue was incorruptible, whilst her sprightly airs and romping spirits lent such a modest fascination to her society, as Mr. Boothby could not contemplate without visibly improving his own manners and morals. He owed largely his support to her gains at the theatre; so that when she died he found his loss to be in more accounts than one.

The unexpected stroke of her death, which was occasioned by an inflammation of the lungs, put him upon the necessity of seeking his own living; and though no doubt, at the first setting off, the struggle between Hunger and Virtue was great, yet Hunger at last prevailed, and drove him once again to that vicious society from which his marriage had rescued him. We went into meaner lodgings in the same street, Alemoirs of Mrs. Lœtitia Boothby. 22 and I would often have gone without a dinner but for the charity of the landlord, who having a little girl of my own years, was rendered sympathetick of my distress. Yet I took care never to complain; the calm gravity of my countenance never exposed the resentment against Mr. Boothby that sometimes lay burning at my heart. The few guineas Mr. Boothby was from time to time possessed of were more often the fruits of gaming than of literature.

His habit was to spend the evening at a gaming-house, where he would stake what money he had. If fortune was propitious, he would return to his lodgings, order a bottle from a neighbouring tavern, which he would empty and then to bed. But if luck was adverse, he would entice some young spark, new to the town, from the gaming-house to a tavern near to St. Paul's, where, pretending to congratulate him on his luck or to commiserate his loss, he would bawl for a pack of cards, and backed by some dissolute fellows who would share the plunder thus acquired, would fleece the victim of his last groat. But it was not always he would meet with a green hand ; and being cleared out, without the means of retrieving his luck, he would return half-crazy with passion, and discharge at me such a volley of oaths as would send me affrighted from the room.

Then presently his rage would all on a sudden subside ; he would come to me in my little garret and shower upon me as many caresses as he had before stunned me with imprecations. " Why wilt thou anger me with that stubborn face, wench ?" he would cry. " Hast no heart for thy father's misfortunes ? Thou hast no look of thy mother in thy eyes ; and yet methinks I can not but love thee as my Lavinia's child. Come, buss me, and tell me thou dost not hate me." At this I would approach and put my lips to his cheeks ; but would not cast my arms about his neck, for I knew not but that he would burst out again with his fierce reproaches ; and at such a moment my pride would not have me caught in a posture of tenderness. Sometimes he would bring friends home, when they had lingered so long at the gaming-house that on sallying forth they found the taverns closed.