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and the rosy squires grew pale and sickened, some of them even unto death, it cannot but be admitted that there was a semblance of retribution, which might well produce serious reflections. And so much can be said without casting the least reproach on the particular sufferers.

The account which has been relied on is not quite free from a sense of the comical appearance of these famished scarecrows. That is a feeling which has now passed away. But as late as some sixty years ago the cachet of respectability bestowed by "a good coat to the back" rendered the absence of this garment a ground for ridicule. Vagabonds and paupers, and even the humbler artisans, were held to be fair game for a little-not necessarily unkind-merriment. Southey could not write the Life of John Bunyan without occasionally pausing to smile at his self-imposed task of glorifying a tinker. But, thanks to Carlyle and others, such notions have disappeared. Till within

a short time back, it may be said, then, that the catastrophe at Salt Hill lived in the memory of persons who had heard of it as a local tradition, and was attributed to fever caught from intercourse with a party of infected paupers. There was no further mystery than that naturally shrouding an accident which was not very fully reported. Think of how differently it would have been treated now-pictures of the inn, pictures of the garden; portraits of the victims, portraits of the leading indigent; the landlord interviewed, the doctors interviewed; and the results of "our reporter's" inquiries at the different country houses, all fully recorded.

A year or two ago, however, Mr. Bentley, himself a resident of Slough, published the journal of a Mrs. Papendiek, a member of a family who were employed about the court of George III. She has much to relate of interesting people with whom she was intimate, including the Herschels and Zoffanys, who, like herself, resided at Upton. In this work appears a wholly different account of the tragedy at the "Castle." According to her, nineteen died out of a larger number attacked immediately after dining, and only one gentleman, who was prevented dining, escaped altogether.

The fatality was so generally attributed to the cooking that the landlord, Partridge, was ruined, and, indeed, did not long survive. She then proceeds to relate that, many years after, the whole secret came out. The widow, Mrs. Partridge, set up a school at Hammersmith, and with the assistance of her daughters did very well. In the course of time, however, lying on her death-bed, Mrs. Partridge disclosed that she knew the mystery of the fatal repast. A cook had come down from London, and proposed sitting up the night before

the dinner, as, he said, the long stewing was the great point in making the turtle soup. He fell to sleep, the fire went out, and in the morning he heated up the soup without removing it from the pan. From the acids used in the cooking verdigris was formed. This impregnated one or two other dishes, and the result was that those who partook of the soup and other tainted delicacies were all poisoned.

Now from these details it will be well first to separate those which present no difficulty and rest on the authority of a lady in every way trustworthy, and then consider the remaining ones.

It may be received at once that Partridge lost his customers. Even if the accident was not generally attributed to the dinner it is not improbable that people avoided frequenting the scene of a disaster. Innkeepers have a great objection to a death occurring in their houses, and even make a charge for the injury it causes. And there is no reason for doubting that Mrs. Partridge settled at Hammersmith, and that she finally made the confession attributed to her. Further, it may be held a fact-why should it not be so ?—that the cook went to sleep and allowed verdigris to form in the stewing-pan, and was entirely under the impression that he had caused the catastrophe. Mrs. Papendiek tells her anecdote in good faith, and it may be accepted in the same spirit. The circumstance that Mrs. Partridge kept the secret of the verdigris accounts for its not being mentioned in the Gentleman's Magazine, but it does not in any way prove that the verdigris did cause the illnesses. With respect to the number who died, it is not gathered that Mrs. Papendiek had further authority than rumour, and in her additional statement that the attacks were immediate, and that in some cases death ensued at the hotel itself, before removal could take place, there is the difficulty that when the Magazine was published in May only five were dead up to that time, and that we know Mr. Walpole Eyre did not die till April 13.

There is a curious point. Mrs. Papendiek remarks that one gentleman entirely escaped, because he was prevented dining. This seems to have been a Mr. Pote, whose immunity from any harm was remarked at the time. But what is related of him in the contemporary record? Why, that he was not present at the inspection of the paupers, but walked about in the garden. It does not seem necessary, therefore, to come to a new conclusion in consequence of the fresh information supplied by Mrs. Papendiek. The exact number of gentlemen who were taken ill, and out of them how many died, cannot be considered certain; but little doubt need exist that Mrs. Papendiek's figures are far too high.

If Mrs. Partridge told her husband the cook's story he may have believed that the blame lay in his kitchen. If she did not tell him he may still have had to grieve over the loss of customers, and the expenses of the place may have been finally too much for him. We have seen, however, that in 1808 the "Castle had entirely recovered its popularity. But the verdigris story, though there is no reason for doubting the perfect veracity of Mrs. Papendiek, Mrs. Partridge, and the cook, cannot be received as explaining the origin of the illnesses ;-in the first place, because the effects of that acetate produced under the circumstances described could not have been of the gravity and on the scale of what was witnessed; and in the second, because the slow sickening and delayed development do not accord with the symptoms which would result from verdigris; and, thirdly, because the solution of the mystery offered at the time is sufficient, natural, and highly probable, fitting in better than any other hypothesis with all the known features of the

case.

If space should be hereafter accorded some curious particulars may be related concerning the old Eton procession to the "Montem" at Salt Hill; the dinner there, and other proceedings especially connected with the "Windmill" Inn, whose dramatic end by fire may then be noted.

J. W. SHERER.

CHIVALRY AND MATRIMONY.

WIT

ITH all its fine expressions of ardent devotion to the fair sex, and the multitude of its exquisite pretensions, Chivalry was the degradation of the highest and tenderest human instincts, the veritable curse of the course of true love. Such a statement presents itself to the romantic believer as a terrible counterblast; but it is true nevertheless. The records of the Treasury and the Law Courts of those days, in furnishing the experience of popular life deeply marked by the worst shades of modern shortcomings, provide the fullest proof.

Chivalry did not make marriages, at least in the sense of those born of love's young dream; it entirely ignored all sexual affections, and sold its victims with ruthless indifference to all mutuality. There were not two parties to its bargains; there was only one, who was always the third of the group, and the one interested not in satisfying the yearnings of the impassioned, but in a pecuniary sense of their value. He was the vendor, and might be either king or baron. But whichever he was, he was the incarnation of unscrupulous power. The matrimonial transactions of chivalry were mercenary. To them there were no "contracting parties" in the shape of whispering lovers, ardent swains and coy maidens. On the other hand, there were but sullen indifference or hating compliance. Chivalry canted about its faith in women and the purity of its own motives, because it could not sing of love-it may be said that it so canted because it knew it must cant. It knew that its marriages had not been made in heaven, and of ethereal sentiment. They were coarsely bargained for, either in the King's Exchequer, or in the open market-place. Chivalry knew itself as a social falsity and the parent of lust. As a consequence, the "lower orders" have had to give us the nomenclature of our love affairs. Chaucer, the very mirror of the era of chivalry, has typified lust with his master's hand, but he has no picture of the gratified tenderness of longing youth. In his surroundings it was not suffered to exist. These surroundings had no terms to enumerate the ardent swains and coy

maidens of rusticity. But if the aristocracy can produce no one instance of the coy maiden, and the rustic sweetheart remains to mock the dubious fiancée, it has a wealth of the arts of diplomacy, and an inexhaustible list of the terms of intrigue. Chivalry gave expression to the word maitresse, which may have, and had, the funniest of meanings.

In those brave days of old the matchmakers were rapacious fathers, the most unscruplous dealers were amorous widows, actual or expectant, who with the keenness of their art and impulses were in the habit of carefully supplying themselves with gold to meet the emergency. The cash offerings that widows made to secure marital rights are astonishing in their value. A charming instance of antevidual diplomacy is afforded by the manoeuvres of Nicholaa de Emingfrid, a despondent Huntingdonshire wife. In 1199, when the manor houses of England were filled with crippled and consumptive Crusaders, and not a single baron in the land had five hundred pounds in coin, Nicholaa was the wife of William Rufus, and evidently expecting him to die. Weary of a life that had become passionless, and grown wanton in her weariness, she approached the mercenary Lackland with a gift, and with the subtle measures prompted by a yearning love. She offered the king £100-say £2,000 of present money, and a meaningful earnest of her anxiety-that she may not be constrained to marry! Poor devoted Nicholaa! how crushed she was with the burden of her misery. But with further caution and a knowledge of the mutability of her woman's nature, she added the saving clause, that if of her own accord she should hereafter wish to marry, she will only do so after having taken the king's counsel. The manœuvre of this wily dame was delightfully successful. had not elapsed before one Vitor de Wade gives to the king 70 marks "for having seizin of Nicholaa," who was the wife, and had become the widow of William Rufus, with her goods and chattels ; and with an astuteness that one recognises as hers alone, he promises to pay one-half the money on the very moment when he marries her, and the remainder at the second feast of St. Michael after the king's coronation. Such a bargain was doubly diplomatic; it alike satisfied eagerness and caution. John's love of money for the purpose of spending would expedite the marriage to the utmost. So we see how aptly chivalry could teach the art of plotting and bargaining, when once it had destroyed the pleasantries of original love,

The year

The matrimonial bargainings were simply brutal. In the reign of John the appeal, "Come live with me and be my love," was a mockery, for the condition "And I will ever faithful prove" was an

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