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CHAPTER XVI.

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AUGUSTUS CONWAY; THE MEMORY OF A FRIEND VINDICATED.

What art thou, life, that we should court thy stay? A breath, one single gasp must puff away! A short-lived flower that with the day must fade! A fleeting vapour, and an empty shade. A stream that silently, but swiftly glides To meet Eternity’s immeasured tides! A being, lost alike by pain or joy.—Broome.

From poetry to realities, I was ever and anon called by those afflictions which mark the passing years of all human life. The dear old nurse of my infancy, whose prayers for my prosperity had never ceased to ascend to Heaven, was taken away a few months after her worthy husband. Papa and Mammy now, both were gone, and a sad void was created in my heart. Rich as we may be in the affections of those who remain with us, there is always a deep grief in the irretrievable parting from any one of that number whose love never knew change, who in weal or woe entertained the same anxious feeling for our happiness, and seemed to be utterly governed by a sentiment like predestination, which it was impossible to alter. The loss of my own Mammy, who made an idol of me in my boyhood and watched my after years with a yearning solicitude,

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rejoicing in every good that befel me, and excusing, whilst deploring, any errors I committed, was a severe trial to me; and it was soon followed by another still more distressing to bear. My eldest brother, to whom our family looked up with hope and confidence as a head for the re-establishment of its scattered members when he should return from India, as his letters had promised, almost immediately, was also taken from us at the moment when our expectations were the highest and brightest. He had served with honour and distinction (see Vol. I., p. 16, and Appendix D.), and was indeed publicly noticed by Sir W. Kier and Mountstuart Elphinstone and others in authority, as one of the most intelligent as well as most gallant soldiers in the service; and his position in Bombay was in the front rank for separate and important commands. He was a dashing horseman, and the ambition which kept him in the East, only too long for his health, was the prospect of succeeding to the Colonelcy of a cavalry regiment, of which several were then about to be formed at this Presidency. A campaign far up on the Gulf of Cutch, where a country, intersected by rapid rivers and defended by nearly unassailable mountain fortresses, seen almost within cannon-shot and yet requiring immense fatigue to approach across deep ravines and rugged precipices, wore out his constitution, and instead of the noble fellow on his Arab steed hunting the wild ass of Iran (the first ever chased on Indian ground*), sent him back to Bombay, a shattered invalid, whom the toils and anxieties of war had so fatally overthrown. He loved his Sepoys as his children, and they almost adored him. He was unfortunately detained some time before he could procure a vessel to bear him homeward;

* He penetrated the mountain land of Cutch so far to the north as to be the first English officer who met the wild ass among the sporting animals of Indian pursuit.

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and he was landed and died at the Cape of Good Hope, esteemed and lamented by all who knew him. Thus ended his career where his first military ardour was elicited; for the reader may remember that on his outward voyage in 1795 he set the spirited example of a cadet volunteering to serve on the attack of the Dutch forces which defended that valuable colony.

My endeavour to make these Memoirs light and enter-

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taining—the reading of the times—does not bring out a true picture of the more imaginative, and serious, and feeling part of my character—nor even a fair measure of my capacities. Those who have been baffled in their aspirations and thwarted in their designs and undertakings by the call for unceasing labour and the distractions of life, can alone conceive what it is to have planned much, idealized much, begun much, and never completed: then to have sorrowed over the reflection of what they might have done under other circumstances—to have mistaken dreaming for action—and to have compared short forthcomings with vast desires, till the sense ached with vain and useless regret.

The marked division of mankind into two great orders, chiefly distinguished from each other by the characteristics of ideality and reality, or in other words, of spirituality and utilitarianism, has become far more obviously pronounced as civilisation has advanced and the conditions of the simpler states of nature been forgotten. The demarcation has made itself more and more distinct, as it is perfectly clear it must have done; but still we must not imagine that it can be mapped and separated by an abrupt line, and that there is not a wide middle space where the two divisions mingle and blend together in every possible shade and gradation. This is the world of the nineteenth

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century—the world in which we live, breathe, and have our being.

In jocose moments my worthy friend, Sir Peter Laurie, has facetiously illustrated the two pursuits, and certainly to

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the advantage of the pursuivant of the real as contrasted with the imaginative—

William and Jonathan came to town together, William had learning, and Jonathan had leather; Said William to Jonathan, “What d’ye mean to do?” Said Jonathan to William, “I can sole a shoe.”

And of course, as the song proves, there is nothing like leather; but perhaps an allegorical illustration by the learned Rabbi Yehodah ben Israel, in one of his dissertations to his disciples, may be accepted by my readers as more poetical:—

“‘Unto thee be peace,’ replied the youth, ‘and may thy resting-place in Heaven be with the Patriarchs. My name is Chalom Taub (Good Dream). I return from visiting the sleep of a very poor man; I have caused the riches thou seest to pass before him in his slumbers, and have told him that he shall be the owner of wealth such as this: much do

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I now regret that Mirth should have led me to his couch, for when he awakes, his poverty will be felt the more. And now, Father, I pray thee tell him who honours thy age, thy name?’

“‘Hear me, my son,’ exclaimed Mazol Taub, ‘and thou wilt acknowledge, and the whole of men’s doings on earth bear witness to the truth of what I say. It pleased me to attend to the earnest solicitations of one who with prayers supplicates my presence. I watch over him, and perhaps for twenty years bring him every kind of good that can fall to the lot of man. I find that he does not make that proper use of my gifts that my liberality and his own feelings should prompt him to do, and I withdraw my protection: he then forgets all the benefits received from my hands, and only bewails his misfortune. But thou hast been passing over the slumbers of a poor man; at a future time, if I think him deserving of my presence, I may appear to him: the life of misery and wretchedness he has passed is then forgotten, and he remembers with gratitude that thou, Chalom Taub, visited him a long time ago, and said that one day riches such as followed thee should call him master. Thus, I, who was actually present, am thought of no more, whilst thou, who wast but imaginary, art remembered,

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and thy name is blessed with thankfulness, for having fulfilled thy ideal promise.’”

From the apologue of the learned Rabbi I am now led to turn to the fate of a man I greatly esteemed, and whose life presented one of those sad romances which show the real in sadder colours than the ideal can paint. Many readers will remember a performer on the London stage, Mr. Conway, who appeared in the highest walks of tragedy, and in several leading parts made a very favourable impression upon the public. He was a tall, handsome, and manly person—too tall for the boards of a small theatre like the Haymarket, to which he went from the larger house—and owing to some cause unknown, he provoked the bitterest criticism of the “Examiner” newspaper, which preyed upon his sensitive mind and injured him in the opinion of the audiences. He was compared to Gog, and his height turned into ridicule; till at last, in a passion of disgust and despair, occasioned by private circumstances even more than by the constant satire of his remorseless critics, he rushed into what he deemed the menial office of prompter at the Haymarket, and courted the apparent degradation as the means for earning his daily bread. It was a sore conflict, for Conway was a perfect gentleman, and his history a calamitous one. He was the natural son of Lord William Conway by the daughter of a respectable farmer, who, to avoid the shame of her situation, had been sent to the West Indies, where her son was born. He was well educated, or had done much in that way for himself, and obtained an honourable position in society; but, alas, a change came over his prospects, which the following letters will explain. I have only to premise that I felt a warm regard for Mr. Conway, that ho was often a welcome guest at my house, and that, when made

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acquainted with the particulars of his life, I could not but take the deepest interest in his future fortunes. After a confidential interview, I received the annexed from him:—

This painful statement was embodied in a letter which I addressed to the Marquis of Hertford, and of which I insert a copy:—

Meanwhile poor Conway was compelled by adverse circumstances to quit London, and the negotiation was left entirely on my hands, and I did not allow it to stand still. The first steps were so favourable and promising that I became sanguine of success; though we received a shock by seeing a butler in the family gazetted to a good government appointment, which would have rendered my friend independent and happy. I had several notes from Hertford House, and was to have seen the Marquis, but his health did not admit of the interview, and even when my hope was firmest, the death of his Lordship crushed it all. Still pursued by Hazlitt and his other adversaries in the press, Conway could not bear up against this blow. He obtained an engagement and fled to America. From Liverpool he wrote me his last letter:—

“My passage is now secured in the ‘Columbia’ packet, Captain Rogers; my luggage on board, and I summoned to follow it early to-morrow morning. As this, then, may be the last time of my addressing you, accept the assurance of my unfeigned respect and devoted regard. Accept also my warm acknowledgment of the zeal and promptitude with

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which you have on many occasions stood forward to vindicate my professional and improve my personal pretensions.”

Sorry was I that I could do no more for one so unfortunate and so truly worthy of a happier fate. But the melancholy tale has yet to be concluded. After some short time passed in America, Mr. Conway took a passage from New York to Charleston, but, in a paroxysm of temporary insanity, the effect of mental suffering, he threw himself from the deck of the vessel into the sea, and there found a refuge from all his sufferings on this weary earth. His body was recovered, and in his pocket-book was found a bill of exchange, endorsed to his mother. It was asserted of him, that he was so vain of his person and talents that he could not endure justifiable criticism; but this was not true. He was extremely sensitive, suffering under injury, and desponding; and the press persecuted him with gibes upon his tallness, disparagement of his talents, and satire upon his conceit, till he writhed under the torment: and a noble human creature was destroyed.

I have little more to add. Struck by his Apollo-like presence and dramatic powers, in her old age the celebrated Mrs. Piozzi transferred the last remnant of her regard for Dr. Johnson to Mr. Conway, the rest being previously sacrificed in resentment to his dictatorial interference with her Thrale widowhood, and on the altar of her second marriage. That she was enamoured of my friend would be too much to say at her period of life; but there was a warmth in her conduct and expressions towards him which would have warranted such a phrase, had she been a few years younger—but she had been a widow, a re-married lady, and an author so long ago as nearly forty years. Her first publication was the “Anecdotes of Johnson,” 1786; and the last (not hers, but posthumous, and the MSS. said to have been found among his effects on shipboard after his, Mr. Conway’s death),

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“Love Letters, addressed to W. Augustus Conway,” written when she was eighty—(J. Russell Smith, 1843.) After all, these effusions seem to be but the language of romantic enthusiasm, in which a Della-Cruscan Octogenarian would be likely to indulge, and without a spark of the physical passion ascribed to the rhodomontade. Her unbounded admiration of Mr. Conway, as a splendid specimen of the genus homo in body and soul, and the deep and constant interest which she took in his welfare, sweetened his bitter cup, and might well be imputed to pure and generous feelings.