OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

BACONS AND BARONETS.

There died in November last a gentleman who, though not remarkable himself, was the head and representative of so famous a family and order that his death is an event deserving of some notice. This was Sir Henry Hickman Bacon, premier baronet of England. This gentleman was not the descendant of the great Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam, but head of the family whence that eminent man, a cadet of the house, sprung.

The origin[M] of this family is lost in the obscurity of centuries. Sir Nicholas, an eminent lawyer of England in the reign of Queen Mary, succeeded, when Elizabeth ascended the throne, to the lord-keepership of the great seal. He married twice, and had a numerous issue, and the baronet lately deceased is the direct representative of the lord-keeper's eldest son by his first marriage, who was the first person created—by James I., on May 22, 1611—a baronet.

And it is not a little remarkable that whilst of the baronetcies since created an immense percentage have become extinct, and only some half dozen of those created in 1611 remain, the first ever created has survived, and bids fair to do so for some time to come. The baronetcy of Hobart (earl of Buckinghamshire)—whose ancestral seat of Blickling, in Norfolk, passed some time since, with its magnificent collection of books, by marriage, into the Scotch family of Ker, and now belongs to the marquis of Lothian—and that of Shirley (held by Earl Ferrers), seem to be the only baronetcies now extant whose patents bear date the same day as that of Bacon.

The others left of the same year are Mordaunt, of which we heard so much in a trial in 1870; Gerard, an ancient Lancashire Catholic house; Monson (Lord Monson); Musgrave of Edenhall ("the luck of Edenhall" is the subject of one of Longfellow's poems); Gresley, Twysden, Temple and Houghton. The last became well known a few years ago in this country as the largest holder of Confederate bonds.

Francis Bacon, familiarly known as Lord Bacon, though in fact he never enjoyed that honor, his titles being Baron Verulam and Viscount St. Alban's, was second son of his father's second marriage, his mother being one of three sisters, the most eminent blue-stockings of the period, daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke, of Gidea Hall, Essex.

Another of Sir Anthony Cooke's daughters was Lady Burleigh, who had been governess to Edward VI., second wife of the famous lord-treasurer, and direct ancestress of the present talented marquis of Salisbury, vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford, whose sister, Lady Mildred Beresford-Hope, wife of the well-known son of the author of Anastasius, bears the same name (Mildred) as her ancestress. Indeed, names are thus frequently transmitted for centuries in English families, and often thus serve as links in genealogical research. The Cooke family has long been extinct, and their stately seat was pulled down by a London alderman in the eighteenth century.

Another sister, Lady Hobby—whose husband resided at Bisham Abbey, a fine old place, maintained in admirable repair, near Windsor—was a terrible disciplinarian, and there is an ugly story of her having whipped a wretched son of hers into his grave, from exasperation at his inability to make his "pothooks," when she was teaching him writing, without blots. Curiously enough, when, some years ago, improvements were being made at the Abbey, a number of copy-books of the style of writing common at the period in which Lady Hobby lived were discovered behind wainscoting, and all were blotted.

The manor of Gorhambury, the great Bacon's seat, was purchased by his father, whose other seat was Redgrave in Suffolk. Gorhambury is near the town of St. Alban's, renowned for its abbey, now in course of splendid rehabilitation.

Not far from St. Alban's once stood the celebrated Roman city of Verulam, called by Tacitus Verulamium, which Bacon, deeply imbued with Latin learning, appropriately selected for his first title. The plough has now for many centuries made furrows over it, and the only vestiges remaining are a few detached masses of the wall. Verulam was bounded on the south-west by the Roman Watling Street. Gorhambury was built by Sir Nicholas, and in the archbishop of Canterbury's library at Lambeth may be seen an interesting account of the expenses. It need scarcely be added that Queen Elizabeth paid her lord-keeper a visit there. Sir Nicholas Bacon left Gorhambury to Mr. Anthony Bacon, the eldest son of his second marriage, and he, dying unmarried, left the estate to his brother Francis.

Gorhambury now belongs to the earl of Verulam, whose family name is Grimston. It was left by the great Bacon to his friend, Sir Thomas Meautys, and thence, by a course of intricate successions, came to the present proprietor.

Bacon, like so many other famous men, had no children. He died in Lord Arundel's house at Highgate in 1626.

Sir Robert Bacon, fifth baronet, sold Redgrave, the family seat in Suffolk, to Lord Chief-Justice Holt toward the end of the seventeenth century. Holt, who died in London 5th of March, 1710, was buried there, and a grand monument to his memory may be seen in the church. It was erected by his brother and heir, for, like Bacon, he was childless.

Redgrave Hall, eighty-seven miles from London by the coach-road, is a large square mansion. The male line of the Holt family has long been extinct, but the present owner of the estate is descended from the great lord chief-justice's niece, who married Mr. Wilson, a younger son of an ancient Westmoreland family.

But to pass to the origin of the order of baronets. After one of the almost chronic Irish insurrections against British rule, James I. conceived in 1609 the idea of offering to English and Scotch settlers, known to be possessed of capital, a large portion of the forfeited estates in Ulster. The supposed necessity of a military force for the protection of the colonists suggested to Sir Antony Shirley a project of raising money for the king. He proposed the creation of a new honor, between those of knight and baron, and that it be conferred by patent at a fixed price for the support of the army in Ulster—that it should descend to heirs male, and be confined to two hundred gentlemen of three descents in actual possession of lands worth one thousand pounds a year—a sum equal to five thousand now.[N]

James I. approved of the scheme, as he would have done of any which seemed feasible for raising the wind, and the patents were offered at the price of ten hundred and ninety-five pounds, the estimated amount of the charge of thirty soldiers during three years. The purchasers did not prove so numerous as had been expected. In the first six years ninety-three patents were sold at £101,835. "It is unnecessary to add," says Doctor Lingard, "that the money never found its way to Ireland" in the shape of forces paid for by this process.

There have been three or four creations of baronetesses in their own right, but nearly two centuries have elapsed since such a creation. James II. made a curious remainder clause in a patent, by creating a Dutchman a baronet with remainder to his mother. It has been a mooted question whether baronets are not entitled to a coronet, and a certain Sir Charles Lamb, who died a few years ago, was so determined to uphold their privileges on this score that he had this ensign worked into the ornamentation of his entrance gates at Beaufort, near Battle Abbey, Sussex; but he met with small encouragement in such notions from his brother-baronets. An old English gentleman was wont to declare that more of disagreeable eccentricity is to be found amongst members of the baronetage than amongst those of any other order of men. He chanced to be thrown early in life amongst several eccentric beings of the class, and took his ideas accordingly; but it is a fact that a very large number of stories about eccentric baronets are in circulation. A marked man of the kind was early in the last century an individual who, in consequence of his height, was called Long Sir Thomas Robinson. It was in allusion to him that the lines were penned:

This was the man to whom a Russian nobleman displayed the greatest anxiety to be introduced, under the impression that he was the real identical and unadulterated Robinson Crusoe.

Sir Thomas was a bore of the first magnitude, and an inveterate hanger-on about cabinet-ministers and other prominent persons. He was constantly worrying Lord Burlington and Lord Burlington's servants by his Paul-pry-like presence. On calling at Burlington House, and being told that his lordship had gone out, he would desire to be let in to look at the clock or to play with a monkey which was kept in the hall, and so at length get into his lordship's room. The servants, exasperated, preconcerted a scheme to be rid of the nuisance. So, one day, as soon as the porter opened the gate and found Sir Thomas outside, he said, "His lordship is gone out, the clock has stopped, the monkey is dead."[O]

MISS NEILSON.

The story of La Giulietta was told, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, by Luigi da Porto, a gentleman of Vicenza who had served in the army, and to whom it was narrated by one of his archers to beguile a solitary night-march. After passing through various translations the story was taken by Shakespeare as the groundwork of his wonderful tragedy, Romeo and Juliet, one of his earliest plays, and one of the most varied in passion and sentiment. Schlegel says of it: "It shines with the colors of the dawn of morning, but a dawn whose purple clouds already announce the thunder of a sultry day."

The stormy acting of the elder Kean in Richard III.—that epitome of ambition and bloodshed—was said to produce the effect of reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning: in Romeo and Juliet the first two acts are illumined only by the soft moonlight of love, and we are not startled by the lightning of tragedy until it gleams upon the bloody blade of Tybalt in the beginning of the third act: then Love and Death join hands, and move for a time with equal step across the stage. Finally come the poisoning and self-slaughters, and in the representation the curtain falls upon a corse-strewn graveyard, where Death reigns alone. Sad contrast to the lighted ball-room where the lovers first looked into each other's eyes—to the fair garden that lay at midnight "all Danaë to the stars"—to the moon-silvered balcony from which Juliet leaned in her loveliness as she exchanged with Romeo her earliest vows!

Beneath Italian skies girls spring with sudden leap to womanhood, and the seed of the tender passion hardly drops into the heart before it buds and blooms, a perfect flower. Though the actual lapse of time represented in the play occupies only a few days, Juliet in that brief period must assume several distinct characters. We see her first the coy, heart-whole maiden, the cherished heiress of a patrician house: soon the blind bow-boy launches his shaft, and, quick as thought, she is passionately, impulsively, enduringly in love; then we see her but a few hours a bride, with black sorrow creeping already to darken her happiness; her kinsman is slain, Romeo banished, and the coy maiden is changed at once to the devoted wife, capable of any sacrifice that will enable her to rejoin her husband, then follow the fearful drinking of the philter, the miscarriage of the Friar's scheme, and the death of the lovers, who seek in the grave that union denied them on earth. What varied qualities and acts are clustered here!—simplicity, love, hope, fear, courage, despair, suicide. In the whole range of Shakespeare's female characters there is none so difficult to portray—none requiring such a combination of beauty and talent; and we need not marvel that the part of Juliet is rarely attempted, and still more rarely with success.

That Miss Neilson was successful during her recent short engagement at the Walnut Street Theatre may be inferred, not alone from the great audiences that thronged the theatre night after night—for people will often throng to see a very unworthy performance—but from the intellectual character of those audiences, and the manifest pleasure they derived from seeing the fair English actress.

In every criticism it should be borne in mind that she played under great disadvantage. She was unfortunately, with some few exceptions, very badly supported. It seems ungracious, therefore, to search for any flaw in the performance of such an admirable actress, who has left behind her so many charming memories; yet it must be admitted that her acting is not always as faultless as her face. In her Juliet there are striking inequalities perceptible: sometimes she seems to have just grasped perfection, then again she makes one wonder that she does no better. In portraying love-scenes she is unsurpassed: she is graceful and beautiful, has studied her parts thoroughly, has a sweet, penetrating voice, and seems herself to feel the sentiments she would convey to others. Her enunciation is remarkably distinct, and she has the power of mingling more or less pathos with the tones to express sorrow in greater or less degree: in one scene, where she thinks that Romeo has been murdered, her cheeks are wet with actual tears. At the close of the ball, when she learns that the fascinating young pilgrim is a Montague, the hereditary enemy of her house, she gives her first touch of pathos to the words—

But it is a pathos entirely different from that which later tinges her sad good-night to her mother and nurse when she has determined to counterfeit death:

Miss Neilson also possesses, in an eminent degree, the power to portray that sly humor without malice known as archness. In the earlier phases of Juliet's career, and throughout the whole impersonation of Rosalind in As You Like It, this accomplishment stands the actress in good stead: she undoubtedly owes to it much of her power to charm. It strikes one when she first comes on the stage as Juliet and gently checks the garrulous old Nurse, taking up the thread of the discourse—

again, in her witty word-fencing with the mock palmer at the ball—

so too in the garden-scene, when she half rebukes herself, and all encourages her lover—

And she shows it wonderfully in her coaxing, half-pettish behavior to the provoking old woman—talkative and reticent by fits and starts, now whining and now laughing—who has been to seek out Romeo, and brought back news of him. In As You Like It, Rosalind's bright humor ripples and laughs like a silver brook through the glades of Ardennes, and trickles gently even into the epilogue: in this lively comedy—so much lighter and easier than the heavy tragedy we are discussing too—love and despair never come to overlay and destroy the arch humor. If there be any defect in the performance of the banished princess, it must still remain, like Orlando's verses, tacked to some tree in the forest, but, unlike those verses, still unseen.

To return to the tragedy—for in the discussion of two plays in which the same faculties are exhibited by the same actress it is most convenient to pass at times from one play to the other—who that has seen Miss Neilson tread the stately minuet de la cour at the ball given in the palace of the Capulets will deny her the possession of marvelous grace? The long floating robe and abundant train, the high-heeled, pointed shoe of the period, instead of embarrassing her, seem but to give additional opportunity for displaying elegance of pose and gesture. In the garden-scene, when nightingales are whist, bright moonlight falls upon the balcony, and lights up the face of Juliet who leans there, certainly the fairest flower in that scenic paradise. As yet the course of love runs smooth for her: she does not dream of the dreadful gulf down which she is about to plunge, and her happy tones fall musically upon the air, "smoothing the raven down of darkness till it smiles." This happiness continues till her speedy and clandestine marriage. Soon after the Nurse comes home, and by her incoherent mutterings leads Juliet to suppose that Romeo is slain: then we have the first display of grief, but it is a grief so sudden and so violent that the blow stuns and almost silences the young wife. She is roused from this by learning at last that it is Tybalt who is dead, and that Romeo is exiled; which last causes her far greater grief than the loss of her cousin. Her sorrow, however, is at once displaced by rage when the Nurse speaks against her husband—

The sorrow and anger here are well enacted, being neither overdone nor forced. It is here at least shown that Miss Neilson can, when she pleases, express great passions with that suppressed vehemence which carries the cultivated spectator away far more than violence of voice and gesture. Such suppression, with a view to producing greater effect by leaving much to the excited imagination of the beholder, is not practiced only by the tactful histrionic artist—it pervades all art. To take a single brief example: the greatest sculptors, knowing that the chisel could produce form, not color, have shrunk from indicating the pupil of the eye in their statues, and left the eyeball smooth, because the imagination was more pleased with entire absence of the organ than with its imperfect representation. So with ultra-clamorous passion and wild melodramatic action on the stage: both are better omitted than expressed. These remarks are made here in connection with Miss Neilson's first fair displays of passionate sorrow and sorrowful passion: presently they may be applied again, less favorably, to her Juliet. In her Rosalind, however—to refer to As You Like It once more—she gives another fine example of the power of suppressed, suggestive action accompanying the expression of hot wrath. When the tyrant duke informs her that she is banished from his court, she kneels before him in supplication and begs to know the reason of his harsh decree. But the instant he intimates that her father is a traitor, and she another as his daughter, she springs to her feet, and in an attitude of intense defiance, but without a motion of her folded arms, flings back her scornful retort:

Here again is a display of power without distortion or over-acting, such as must give the actress fair title to celebrity.

Let us return now to Juliet and her approaching doom. There is a sad scene in her chamber at early daybreak, for banished Romeo must leave her and haste to Mantua, lest sunrise betray him still lingering in Verona. Juliet at first lovingly detains him, then fearfully urges him to fly; then as he descends from the balcony would fain recall him, and sinks in a swoon when she finds he is really gone. The parents come in and announce their determination that she must marry Paris forthwith: finding her unwilling to comply, they leave her with fierce threats in case she continue disobedient, and even the time-serving, timid old Nurse, though aware of her marriage with Romeo, urges her to comply with their wishes. Thus left entirely to herself, Juliet determines to die rather than prove false to her husband. She hastens to the Friar who married them, and he gives her the philter, which she accepts joyfully and carries home in her bosom. Up to this point her acting is good, because it is natural. Love, grief, stern determination are here successively and skillfully developed by Miss Neilson. But in the next act, just before she drinks the philter alone in her chamber, she oversteps the modesty of nature. In her attempt to express extreme terror at the fearful visions that her excited imagination conjures up, she loses herself in a wild whirlwind of vociferation, accompanied by frantic looks and gestures. All the loud artillery of old melodrama seems at once to be unlimbered and brought into action, with so much noise and smoke that one can neither hear the signals of the bugle nor see the manœuvring of the guns. Of course, even to this part a superior actress like Miss Neilson can impart a certain dignity and interest which would be lacking in an inferior performer. She strikes a certain horror to the spectator by the very hideousness of her terror displayed. It is natural that a young girl about to be laid out alive in a tomb should be tormented with fearful imaginings; but then that young girl cherishes an all-pervading love for a living husband, whom she hopes to rejoin by means of her entombment: she expects that the gates of the mausoleum will open to admit her to life, not death, and she is urged by fear of a hateful second marriage; therefore it is unlikely—no matter what gloomy, blood-stained phantoms she may see—that she should shriek out her fears with such appalling clamor as would arouse any well-organized household, and thus defeat her prospects of success. As Miss Neilson has shown in former instances, a less violent announcement of her feelings would be far more forcible and far more natural. Besides, the actress has not yet reached the time when she wishes to depict her greatest misery: that climax is reached when she wakes in the vault and finds not only Tybalt "festering in his shroud," but her Romeo, her husband, a bloody corpse at her feet. If ever the ungovernable shriek of dying despair be allowable on the stage, it must be at such a time, when Juliet falls upon the still warm body. Even the effect of such a wild performance at the very climax and end of a tragedy may be questioned; but there can be little doubt that the great violence exerted before in describing her horrible suspicions merely, deprives the actress of power to throw increased stress into her performance as the play moves to its close, and she is confronted with a far more horrible reality.

As though she feels that her power of melodramatic declamation has been weakened, Miss Neilson in the graveyard seems to rely more on melodramatic action. And it is very melodramatic. She rises from Romeo's body, where she has flung herself, where it would be natural she should remain to kill herself, and standing at some distance from the corpse, stabs herself openly with a stage dagger, then falling, drags herself slowly, accompanied by soft music, back to the body, and there at last expires. How much more effective would this part become if more were left to the beholder's imagination! Great artists generally avoid open stabbing on the stage, as it almost invariably produces the impression of trickery. We may see the gleaming blade and the arm descending to strike the blow, but it is best not to see the weapon pretending to enter the victim's body; and this can always be avoided by proper management. When Ristori as Medea murdered her children at the base of Saturn's statue, the other actors grouped around and screened the act from the view of the audience: when the crowd opened again, the bodies were discovered lying on the steps of the pedestal. The death of Juliet, instead of bringing tears to all eyes, as Miss Neilson undoubtedly could make it do, is thus rendered ineffective by over-acting; and when she drags herself six or eight feet along the stage, prostrate and stabbed,

On the last evening of her engagement Miss Neilson appeared in the Lady of Lyons, and after the performance recited the following epilogue, suggested by Lord Lytton's recent death:

GENERAL LEE CONVULSED.

An old lady who knew General R. E. Lee almost from childhood declared that when he was a young man he enjoyed fun and indulged in harmless frolics as much as anybody. Later in life, and after his sons became stout lads, it is said that he was fond of sleeping with them, in order that he might in the morning engage in a regular old-fashioned romp and pillow-fight with the boys. During the war, though habitually grave, as befitted a commanding officer, he relished an occasional joke very highly. When some of his staff mistook a jug of buttermilk that had been sent him for "good old apple-jack," and made wry faces in gulping it down, he did not attempt to conceal his merriment. So, too, when inquiring into the nature of "this new game, 'chuck-a-buck,' I think they call it," which had been introduced into his army, there was a sly twinkle in his eye that showed how shrewdly he guessed its real purport as a gambling game. So, again, it is reported that he appreciated fully the "sell" which a wag on his staff palmed off upon a reporter, who promptly inserted it in the papers. The reporter wanted to know General Lee's hour for dining.

"Six o'clock—exactly at six," was the reply.

"I infer, then, that it is rather a formal meal?"

"Decidedly formal—in fact, I may say it is a rigidly military dinner."

"Military! how military?"

"Well, you see General Lee sits at the head of the table, and Colonel Chilton at the foot, and everything is done in red-tape style."

"Red tape at table! I don't understand you. Please explain."

"Certainly. General Lee never carves and never helps—all that is left to Colonel Chilton—but General Lee asks the guests what they will have: they tell him, then he issues his orders, and Colonel Chilton executes them. That's all."

"Go on, go on!" opening his notebook: "give me an example—tell me exactly how it is done."

"Suppose, then, that we have beef—we generally have beef. Grace is said by the chaplain, then General Lee raps on the table with the handle of his knife and says, 'Attention!' Everybody is silent. Every eye is turned toward General Lee. He looks at one of us—me, for example—and I rise and make a military salute. 'Captain C——, what will you be helped to?' says General Lee. I say 'Beef,' make another salute, and sit down. General Lee, fixing his eye on Colonel Chilton, says, 'Beef, for Captain C——.' My plate is passed, helped, and then Colonel Chilton, handing it to the servant, says,

And this absurd story went the round of the Southern papers.

After the war, General Lee rarely smiled, and one may say never laughed outright. Yet he was neither sad nor unsociable. But there was that about him which made it wellnigh impossible to believe that he could ever have given completely away to feelings of mirth and indulged in a real fit of cachinnation. Such, however, was the fact, and it occurred at a time when, of all others, one would have least expected it—in the retreat to Appomattox—and General Henry A. Wise was the occasion of it.

On the second or third day of the retreat, General Wise, who had long desired an interview with General Lee, discovered him at a distance, and immediately hastened toward him. While he was yet a great way off, General Lee, who happened at the time to be alone, turned and began to stare in a way that was most unusual with him. As Wise drew nearer the stare became intense and mixed with wonderment. A few steps more, and still General Lee gazed and gazed wonderingly, as if he had never seen Wise in his life. Amazed and puzzled at General Lee's unmistakable ignorance of his identity, Wise advanced quite close to him and said rather stiffly, "Good-morning, General Lee." It was very early and very cool, too—a sharp spring morning.

As he said this, General Lee's intense gaze relaxed, a smile appeared in its place, the smile deepened, broadened, and, spreading from feature to feature, ended at last in a fit of the most immoderate and uncontrollable laughter.

Astounded beyond words, and indignant beyond measure at such a reception, it was some time before General Wise could demand an explanation. During all this time General Lee laughed as a mature man rarely ever laughs.

The explanation, given through tears of laughter not yet dried, was simple enough. General Lee had mistaken the general for a Comanche Indian. He had lost his hat or cap, a dirty blanket was thrown over his shoulders to protect him from the keen morning air, and his face, washed in a mud-puddle and hastily wiped, retained a ring of red mud around the borders, which made the resemblance to an Indian as exact as well could be—all the more so in consequence of Wise's strong features.

Barely sufficient at the time (so incensed was Wise), the explanation eventually proved ample, for General Wise now laughs at this incident as heartily as any one, and often relates it himself, while it may well be doubted whether ever again in life General Lee found either the occasion or the disposition to relax his wonted gravity.

FUNERALS vs. PARTIES.

A Southern correspondent sends the following incident from real life, which illustrates the well-known negro fondness for so-called lugubrious festivals:

A lady friend of mine was much beset a few days ago by her cook for permission to attend the funeral of some relative. The res angustæ forbade her leaving just at that time, but, to compensate her for the deprivation, her mistress said, "Rose, I really feel very sorry for you, but you shall lose nothing by staying at home. I promise that you shall go to the first party that is given by any of your friends, and stay all night long."

Rose, tossing her head, replied, "Law! Miss Susan, how kin you talk like dat? You know I don't set no vally on parties. Forty parties couldn't pay me for de sight of one corp!" She saw the "corp."

FOOTNOTES: