Shadwell

“ After leaving Cambridge, he took up his abode in London, and, if Shadwell is to be trusted, was in very needy circumstances; lived in a lodging that had a window "no bigger than a pocket looking-glass, and dined at a threepenny ordinary, enough to starve a vacation tailor." He was, according to the account of a contemporary, very simply clad; and one of his sources of income was to write prefaces for Herringman, the bookseller. ”

“ He thinks, too, yet upbraids himself for so thinking, that Miss Massereene must see that Philip Shadwell, heir to Herst and twenty thousand pounds a year, is a better catch than Teddy Luttrell, with only his great love for her, and a paltry six hundred pounds a year.
Is it not selfish of him to seek to keep her from what is so evidently to her advantage? Perhaps he ought to throw up his engagement, and, passing out of her life, leave her to reap the "good the gods provide." ”

“ There his wit recommended him to the King, won for him the hatred of small minds, and elicited the praise of noble spirits, who were witty themselves, and loved the manifestation of wit in others. "I have heard," says honest, brilliant, and much-abused Shadwell, "I have heard Sedley speak more wit at a supper than all my adversaries, putting their heads together, could write in a year." This testimony was rendered by a man whose own reputation as a wit has the stamp and the warrant of Rochester. ”

“ But I tell you also that, once having sworn allegiance to the King’s service, we will not turn traitors and betray his side to the enemy. His officers will fight on until a chance comes to withdraw honourably—we are not turncoats like Andrew Shadwell.”
“You are a good lad and a loyal soldier,” said Stephen, holding out his hand to clasp his cousin’s heartily. “A brave heart is a brave heart on whichever side it stands.”
“Had you ever had to do with Andrew Shadwell before?” inquired Clotilde, for she noticed his tone of extreme bitterness when he spoke of their Tory neighbour. ”

“ He was corpulent and unwieldy in person, addicted to sensual indulgence, a boon companion, and a clever conversationalist. Lord Rochester said that "if Shadwell had burnt all he wrote, and printed all he spoke, he would have had more wit and humour than any other poet." His plays denote much observation of life, quickness in perceiving foibles, and skill in depicting them, the characters are well sustained, and they will even now amuse in the perusal. ”

“ In Shadwell's Sullen Lovers (1669) is a Lady Vaine who calls herself a "Virtuosa" and is learned in medicaments. She boasts of her serviceableness with her "Flos Unguentorum, Paracelsian, and Green-salve," and praises the Album Grecum as a salve of her own concoction.
Of much more interest is Shadwell's Bury-Fair (1689) . The chief characters are Lady Fantast, Mrs. Fantast, and Lady Fantast's stepdaughter, Gertrude Oldwit, and their attendant cavaliers. ”

“ The Triumphant Widow; or, the Medley of Humours, a Comedy, acted by his royal highness's servants, Lond. 1677, 4to. which pleased Mr. Shadwell so well, that he transcribed a part of it into his Bury Fair, one of the most taking plays of that poet.
Shadwell says of his grace, that he was the greatest master of wit, the most exact observer of mankind, and the most accurate judge of humour, that ever he knew.
Footnotes:
Dugdale's Baron. vol. 2. Dugdale vol. 2. p. 421. Dugdale, ubi supra. Rushworth's collection, vol. 1. p. 929. Clarendon, p. 283. Life of the D. of Newcastle, p. 56. ”

“ His first wife died on 25 May 1814, and on 4 Jan. 1816 he married, secondly, Frances, third and youngest daughter of Captain Locke, by whom he had six sons and five daughters. Shadwell's second wife died on 27 Oct. 1854, aged 66.
Shadwell, who was the last ‘vice-chancellor of England,’ was a learned and able judge, with a handsome presence and courteous manners. Of his complete subjection to Bethell, the leader of his court, many stories are told (see Nash, Life of Richard, Lord Westbury, 1888, i. 69, 84–5, 95) . ”

“ In the old days, Shadwell embraced the Oriental quarter, and times, in the 'seventies, long before I was thought of, seem to have been really frolicsome, or so I gather from James Greenwood. The chief inhabitants [Pg 240] of to-day are those little girls just mentioned. Walk here at any time of the day or night, and you will find in every doorway and at those corners which are illuminated, clusters of little girls, all of the same age, all of the same height, their glances knowing so much more than their little fresh lips imply. They seem all to be born at that age, and they never grow up. ”

“ It is worth recording that this rather high-toned chaplain Smirk, son of Smirk the Tailor, came under the censure and the scissors of the scrupulous Master of the Revels. This delicate official could tolerate the Smirks of Etherege, but when Shadwell exhibited one with something like sincerity dragging after his faults, the whole town, ay, and the court too, cried out shame! The wisdom of our ancestors does not appear to match with the assurance which affects to give warranty of it. ”

“ Nelly was now at Epsom, then and long after the fashionable resort of the richer citizens of London. "The foolish world is never to be mended," is the remark of "a gentleman of wit and sense" in Shadwell's comedy of The Virtuoso. "Your glass coach," he says, "will to Hyde Park for air; the suburb fools trudge to Lamb's Conduit or Tottenham; your sprucer sort of citizens gallop to Epsom; your mechanic gross fellows, shewing much conjugal affection, strut before their wifes, each with a child in his arms, to Islington or Hogsden." ”

“ This state of things is pictured in Shadwell’s comedy. Sir William Rant, Wildfire, and Tope, are noted scowrers, well known in the town, whose fame has excited emulation in men of less distinction in their way, Whachum, “a city wit and scowrer, imitator of sir William,” and “two scoundrells,” his companions, Bluster and Dingboy. Great enmity arises between the two parties of rival scowrers. The more serious characters in the play are Mr. Rant, sir William Rant’s father, and sir Richard Maggot, “a foolish Jacobite alderman” (it must be remembered that we are now in the reign of king William) . ”

“ Much, however, depends on an author's habit of composition. Some writers put on paper every thought as it originates; others, without any mechanical aid, select and combine in their own minds, and there compose the independent whole; so that the act of writing is the mere transcription of what has already been carefully elaborated.
"Epsom Wells," a comedy, was printed in London in 1676, and dedicated to the Duke of Newcastle. This play won the praise of St. Evremont, and Shadwell tells us he was more fond of it than of any he ever wrote. ”

“ It is hardly within the scope of this work to follow the varying fashions of the reign, so one more extract must suffice. It is from 'The Humours of the Army,' by Charles Shadwell (a son, or nephew, of the Poet Laureate, 1713) : 'But there are some fashionable Creatures at the other End of the Town, that give great Hopes of their being very odd and Whimsical; for their Head dresses are no bigger than the Skull-caps they us'd to wear; their Petticoats are up to their knees; their Stays up to their chins; and their Fans up to their Nostrils ”

“ Nell was now an orange-girl, holding her basket of fruit covered with vine-leaves in the pit of the King's Theatre, and taking her stand with her fellow fruit-women in the front-row of the pit, with her back to the stage. [5] The cry of the fruit-women, which Shadwell has preserved, "Oranges! will you have any oranges?" [6] must have come clear and invitingly from the lips of Nell Gwyn. She was ten years of age at the restoration of King Charles II., in 1660. ”

“ This knight o'the burning pestle makes us sport.
This seems to have been written by the offended Sir Car Scrope.
[48] Derrick is inclined to think, that Sidney, brother of the Earl of Leicester, and of the famous Algernon Sidney, is here meant. But the character better suits Sir Charles Sedley or Sidley, for he spelled the name both ways. In explanation of the line, there is, in the 4to edition of Sheffield's Works, this short note, "Remarkable for making pleasant and proper similies upon all occasions." In a satire in the State Poems, Vol. II.
To a soul so mean e'en Shadwell is a stranger ”

“ The rise and development of sanitation, of house and main drainage and sewage disposal, the purification of water and provision of a constant service in the house, the removal of refuse, the segregation of infectious illness, sanitary inspection—all these, apart from the demolition of the worst housing and the provision of better, have raised the general healthiness of the dwellings of the people. ”

“ That many persons are better without any alcohol, and that man more would be better if they took less than they do is undeniable; but it is equally undeniable that many derive benefit from a moderate amount of it. ”

“ Sir James Paget, than whom no man was more completely master of his appetites or better qualified to judge, drank port wine himself because he found that it did him good. He represents the attitude of the medical profession as a whole and of temperate men in general. ”

“ There appears to be less prostitution, both visible and actual, in Italy than in other countries. Under the English system the streets can be, and sometimes are, kept orderly in provincial towns by an energetic police; but in London the mass of prostitution is so great that the police seem totally unable to cope with it. Important thoroughfares and centres are frequented by large numbers of prostitutes in broad daylight, and choked by them at night. The law with regard to loitering is a dead letter, for these women do nothing but loiter. ”

“ The perpetually renewed struggle between the advocates and opponents of prohibition is a constant cause of social and political strife; and the alternate shutting up and opening of public houses in many places makes continuity of administration impossible, prevents the executive from getting the traffic properly in hand, upsets the habits of the people, demoralizes the trade and stands in the way of steady improvement. ”

“ Bad housing is intimately connected with poverty; it is, indeed, largely a question of poverty now that the difference between good and bad housing is understood and the effects of the latter are recognized. The poorest people live under the worst housing conditions because they are the cheapest ”

“ A art from the gaps in the information, which speak for themselves, allowance must be made for other defects. In no case is the nominal consumption per head a valid index to the relative temperateness of different peoples unless other conditions are fairly equal. ”

“ In every part of this great metropolis whoever shall pass along the streets will find wretchedness stretched upon the pavement, insensible and motionless, and only removed by the charity of passengers from the danger of being crushed by carriages or trampled by horses or strangled with filth in the common sewers. ”

“ All the new schemes and legislative proposals leave untouched the greatest difficulty of all, which lies not in the dwelling but in the tenant. It is comparatively easy to afford better opportunities to those who are willing to take advantage of them, but how to raise those who are not? ”

“ Thus the law is evaded on the one hand by the corruption of those who administer it, and on the other by the appearance of a class of criminal idlers more degraded than any other—both greater evils than the traffic which the law is intended, but fails, to control. ”

“ Soft cancer affecting important organs of the body often proves fatal in a few months, while, on the other hand, cases of hard or epithelial cancer may sometimes last for several years; but no precise limit can be assigned for any form of the disease. In some rare instances growths exhibiting all the signs of cancer may exist for a great length of time without making any progress, and may even dwindle and disappear altogether. ”

“ The concentrated form of alcohol, thus evolved, for a long time carried with it the prestige of a divine essence from the middle ages when chemistry was a mysterious art allied to all sorts of superstitions. ”

“ The necessity imposed on poor parents of putting several children into a cheap and therefore small dwelling accounts for a large proportion of overcrowding, which automatically diminishes with a falling birth-rate. ”

“ Congress, under the constitution, controls interstate commerce, and the Supreme Court has decided that without its consent no state can prevent a railway or other carrying agency from bringing liquor to any point within its borders from outside. Thus no state can keep out liquor or prevent its consumption, but any state legislature may make what internal regulations it pleases and may prohibit the manufacture and sale altogether within its own borders. ”

“ The position is entirely different in other countries where no such control has ever been exercised. It is possible to impose a new system where previously there was none, but not to replace suddenly an old and settled one for something entirely different. ”

“ An expectation of renewal, in the absence of misconduct, has grown up by usage and been confirmed by the law, which recognizes the distinction between granting a new licence and renewing an old one, by the treasury which levies death duties on the assumption that a licence is an enduring property, by local authorities which assess upon the same assumption, and by the High Courts of Justice, whose decisions have repeatedly turned on this point. ”