The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 by George A. Aitken (best e reader for android txt) 📕

so many women, that he'll certainly succeed if he is introduced; for nothing so much prevails with the vain part of that sex, as the glory of deceiving them who have deceived others.

Desunt multa .


St. James's Coffee-house, May 11.

Letters from Berlin, bearing date May 11, N.S., inform us, that the birthday of her Prussian Majesty has been celebrated there with all possible magnificence; and the king made her on that occasion a present of jewels to the value of thirty thousand crowns. The Marquis de Quesne, who has distinguished himself by his great zeal for the Protestant interest, was, at the time of the despatch of these letters, at that Court, soliciting the king to take care, that an article in behalf of the refugees, admitting their return to France, should be inserted in the treaty of peace. They write from Hanover of the 14th, that his electoral highness had received an express from Count Merci, representing how necessary it was to the common cause, that he would please to hasten to the Rhine; for that nothing but his presence could quicken the measures towards bringing the imperial army into the field. There are very many speculations upon the intended interview of the King of Denmark and King Augustus. The latter has made such preparations for the reception of the other, that it is said his Danish Majesty will be entertained in Saxony with much more elegance than he met with in Italy itself.

Letters from the Hague of the 18th instant, N.S., say, that his Grace the Duke of Marlborough landed the night before at the Brill, after having been kept out at sea by adverse winds two days longer than is usual in that passage. His Excellency the Lord Townshend, her Majesty's ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to the States-General, was driven into the Veere in Zealand on Thursday last, from whence he came to the Hague within few hours after the arrival of his grace. The duke, soon after his coming to the Hague, had a visit from the Pensioner of Holland. All things relating to the peace were in suspense till this interview; nor is it yet known what resolutions will be taken on that subject; for the troops of the Allies have fresh orders despatched to them to move from their respective quarters, and march with all expedition to the frontiers, where the enemy are making their utmost efforts for the defence of their country. These advices further inform us, that the Marquis de Torcy had received an answer from the Court of France to his letters which he had sent thither by an express on the Friday before.

Mr. Bickerstaff has received letters from Mr. Coltstaff, Mr. Whipstaff, and Mrs. Rebecca Wagstaff; all which relate chiefly to their being left out in the genealogy of the family lately published;[203] but my cousin being a clerk in the Heralds' Office who writ that draught, and being at present under the displeasure of the chapter, it is feared, if that matter should be touched upon at this time, the young gentleman would lose his place for treason against the Kings at Arms.[204]


[Footnote 194: Sir Richard Blackmore. See No. 3.]

[Footnote 195: Sir John Holt (see Examiner , vol. iv. No. 14) was born in 1642, made Recorder of London and knighted in 1686, and appointed Chief Justice of the King's Bench in 1689, a position which he filled very ably and impartially for twenty-one years. He died March 5, 1710.]

[Footnote 196: Britain.]

[Footnote 197: According to a MS. note in the copy of the Tatler referred to in a note to No. 4, these justices were "Sir H. C---- and Mr. C----r." Who the latter was I do not know; the former appears to be meant for Sir Henry Colt, of whom Luttrell gives some particulars. In April 1694, a Bill was found against Sir Henry Colt and Mr. Lake, son to the late Bishop of Chichester, for fighting a duel in St. James's Park; the trial was to be on May 31. Sir Henry Colt, a Justice of the Peace, had a duel with Beau Feilding on the 11th January, 1696, and Colt was run through the body. A reward of £200 was offered for Feilding's arrest, and he was captured in March; but in the following month he was set at liberty upon Colt promising not to prosecute. In July 1698, Colt unsuccessfully contested Westminster, and in December the Committee of Privileges decided that his petition against the return of Mr. Chancellor Montague and Mr. Secretary Vernon was vexatious, frivolous and scandalous; and Colt was put out of the commission of the peace for Westminster and Middlesex. In 1701, he became M.P. for Westminster, for one Parliament only. In August 1702, he was again displaced from being a Justice for Westminster. In July 1708, he was defeated at Westminster, and the petition which he lodged against Mr. Medlicot's election was dismissed, after Huggins, the head bailiff, had been examined.]

[Footnote 198: By John Banks, 1685.]

[Footnote 199: Robert Wilks died in 1732, age 62. See No. 182, and the
Spectator , Nos. 268, 370: "When I am commending Wilks for representing the tenderness of a husband and a father in 'Macbeth', the contrition of a reformed prodigal in 'Harry the Fourth', the winning emptiness of a young man of good-nature and wealth in 'The Trip to the Jubilee', the officiousness of an artful servant in 'The Fox', when thus I celebrate Wilks, I talk to all the world who are engaged in any of those circumstances."]

[Footnote 200: Ben Jonson's "Alchemist" was published in 1610.]

[Footnote 201: Duncan Campbell, who is best known through Defoe's "History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell, a gentleman, who, though deaf and dumb, writes down any strange name at first sight, with their future contingencies of fortune," 1720. Several other books about Campbell appeared, and some said that he only pretended to be deaf and dumb. Campbell had a very large number of clients ( Spectator , No. 560). He died in 1730.]

[Footnote 202: The name of this quack was Kirleus. He pretended to extraordinary endowments, on the score of his having been introduced into the world by means of the Cesarean operation. In the Examiner , vol. i. No. 49, original edition in folio, there is among the advertisements subjoined, July 5, 1711, notice given that some of his nostrums, which had been tested for fifty years, were to be had of "Mary Kirleus, widow of John Kirleus, son of Dr. Tho. Kirleus, a sworn physician in ordinary to K. Charles II." Nichols says that there were two male and two female quacks of the name of Kirleus; Thomas the father, and his son John, Susannah the widow of Thomas, and Mary the relict of John; but it does not appear that any of them all were rich. The women, after the decease of their husbands, engaged in a paper war, which was carried on about this time in polemical advertisements. Dr. Kirleus and Dr. Case (see No. 20) are said to have been sent for to prescribe to Partridge in his last illness. Garth ("Dispensary," canto iii.) wrote:

"Whole troops of quacks shall join us on the place,
From great Kirleus down to Doctor Case."

"In Grays-Inn-lane in Plow-yard, the third door, lives Dr. Thomas Kirleus, a Collegiate Physician and sworn Physician in Ordinary to King Charles the Second until his death; who with a drink and pill (hindring no business) undertakes to cure any ulcers," &c. &c. "Take heed whom you trust in physick, for it's become a common cheat to profess it. He gives his opinion to all that writes or comes for nothing" ( Athenian Mercury , February 13, 1694). See also Tatler , Nos. 41, 226, 240.]

[Footnote 203: See No. 11.]

[Footnote 204: "Castabella's complaint is come to hand" (folio). See No. 16.]


No. 15. [STEELE.

From Thursday, May 12 , to Saturday, May 14 , 1709.

* * * * *


From my own Apartment, May 12.

I have taken a resolution hereafter, on any want of intelligence, to carry my familiar abroad with me, who has promised to give me very proper and just notices of persons and things, to make up the history of the passing day. He is wonderfully skilful in the knowledge of men and manners, which has made me more than ordinary curious to know how he came to that perfection, and I communicated to him that doubt. "Mr. Pacolet," said I, "I am mightily surprised to see you so good a judge of our nature and circumstances, since you are a mere spirit, and have no knowledge of the bodily part of us." He answered, smiling, "You are mistaken, I have been one of you, and lived a month amongst you, which gives me an exact sense of your condition. You are to know, that all who enter into human life, have a certain date or stamen given to their being, which they only who die of age may be said to have arrived at; but it is ordered sometimes by fate, that such as die infants, are after death to attend mankind to the end of that stamen of being in themselves, which was broke off by sickness or any other disaster. These are proper guardians to men, as being sensible of the infirmity of their state. You are philosopher enough to know, that the difference of men's understanding proceeds only from the various dispositions of their organs; so that he who dies at a month old, is in the next life as knowing (though more innocent) as they who live to fifty; and after death, they have as perfect a memory and judgment of all that passed in their lifetime, as I have of all the revolutions in that uneasy, turbulent condition of yours; and, you'd say, I had enough of it in a month, were I to tell you all my misfortunes." "A life of a month, can't have, one would think, much variety; but pray," said I, "let us have your story."

Then he proceeds in the following manner:

"It was one of the most wealthy families in Great Britain into which I was born, and it was a very great happiness to me that it so happened, otherwise I had still, in all probability, been living: but I shall recount to you all the occurrences of my short and miserable existence, just as, by examining into the traces made in my brain, they appeared to me at that time. The first thing that ever struck my senses, was a noise over my head of one shrieking; after which, methought I took a full jump, and found myself in the hands of a sorceress, who seemed as if she had been long waking and employed in some incantation: I was thoroughly frightened, and cried out, but she immediately seemed to go on in some magical operation, and anointed me from head to foot. What they meant I could not imagine; for there gathered a great crowd about me, crying, 'An heir, an heir'; upon which I grew a little still, and believed this was a ceremony to be used only to great persons, and such as made them, what they called, Heirs. I lay very quiet; but the witch, for no manner of reason or provocation in the world, takes me and binds