Page images
PDF
EPUB

FEREMY BENTHAM

was no other than Henderson's mistress, and that the younger wis an ignorant country girl merely hired as a servant

“Their surprise was naturally very grat much greater I believe than mine would have been; for I had already detected a want of concordance in what they separately told me at diferent times. which I could not account for. but which I by no means Iked

"We did not return home late the evening. We were received at the door by the captain, who could not contain his laughter, and was in a hurry to amack my father about his extraordinary civility, and, as it now appeared, his luffrous knighterrantry.

"My father felt ashamed at having been so easily taken in by these ignorant impostors; but he consoled himself with the idea that he had not been their caly dupe, since Sir Robert Ainslie, cur British Ambassador (following my father's example. I fear), had formally invited them to a dinner-party. Their awkwardness and want of ease, which they could not modify to this sudden emergency, were sufficiently manifest; but it was attributed to English timidity and bashfulness.

"But the 'nodo' of this comic drama is still to be developed : poor Bentham had made his disclosures most prematurely-our friends were not gone, they had in fact returned with us (some impediment had occurred with regard to the sailing of the vessel which appeared likely to occasion a long delay), and we had to increase the captain's mirth by declaring that they were even at that moment again safely housed in their former lodging. The situation of these people during the remainder of their stay at Constantinople after this little éclarcissement was, of course, a very mortifying one. My father had to endure his share also, in the laughter of Mr Humphries, and that of his other friends who would not lose so fair an opportunity of amusing themselves at his expense. We did not see Mr Bentham till the following day, when he seemed rather confounded by the unlucky denouement of the affair.

"I have said that there were no lodging-houses at Constantinople but I remember that the Hendersons were put in possession of an

empty house, in which a few articles of furniture had been put, just sufficient to serve their immediate necessities.

"I am now come to the renewal of my acquaintance with Mr Bentham in the year 1790. It happened through his application to Mr Reveley to assist him in the architectural development of his plans for a ‘Panopticon.' At first he paid us short visits, merely by furnishing Mr Reveley from time to time with the necessary instructions for making out his plans; but the ingenuity of the latter enabling him to raise objections, and to suggest various improvements in the details, Mr Bentham gradually found it necessary to devote more and more time to the affair, so that at length he frequently passed the entire morning at our house, and not to lose time he brought his papers with him, and occupied himself in writing. It was on this occasion that observing how much time he lost through the confusion resulting from a want of order in the management of his papers, I offered my services in classing and numbering them, which he willingly accepted, and I had thereby the pleasure of supplying him with any part of his writings at a moment's notice. Judging from the manner in which he appreciated my assistance, I am inclined to think that this kind of facilitation had never before been afforded him. I then proposed to him that in order to give still more time for the despatch of his business, he should take his breakfast with us. He readily consented to my proposal, but upon the condition that I would allow him a separate teapot, that he might prepare his tea, he said, in his own way. He chose such a teapot as would contain all the water that was necessary, which was poured in upon the tea at once. He said that he could not endure the usual mode of proceeding which produced the first cup of tea strong and the others gradually decreasing in strength, till the last cup became little better than hot water. Teamaking, like many other things (particularly the dimensions of the cups), is perhaps greatly improved since that time. I was even then so well convinced of the advantage of his method that I have pursued it ever since, more or less modified, according to circumstances.

"During this intercourse, Mr Reveley once received a note from

THE FA

Mr Bentham, written in an angry tone; this was owing to the former having used some incautious and perhaps improper expression in writing to some one concemed in the affair of the Panopticon. It might have been the engraver, though I can scarcely admit the possibility of that surmise. Mr Reveley knew himself to be perfectly innocent of any intentional rudeness or impropriety, he therefore felt himself much but at the severity of Mr Bentham's reproof. I can recollect but these very few words of Mr Bentham's note— ́I suppose you have left your orders too with Mr ...' (naming a lawyer or barrister employed by Mr Bentham, who was residing in Red Lion Square). In fact, Mr Reveley, though a young man of superior talent, was at that time little accustomed to writing; he was also perhaps not sufficiently attentive to the established forms of society. It is therefore by no means improbable that he might have committed some mistake in the use of language. It occurs to me, also, that there might have been previously some slight degree of dormant displeasure in the mind of Mr Bentham against Mr Reveley, excited perhaps by an habitual, though very innocent levity on the part of the latter, who was too apt to make jokes in order to excite a laugh, even on subjects which demanded serious attention. When we were alone, Mr Bentham's Panopticon did not altogether escape, and I can easily imagine that his penetrating glance may have caught a glimpse of this misplaced mirth. But of this, if it was so, he never took the slightest notice. I think that this little misunderstanding took place when the business between them was nearly brought to a conclusion, and it is most pleasing to observe that it did not prevent Mr Bentham from doing justice to Mr Reveley's ability in his printed report or description of the Panopticon.

"I can also recollect that the sum which the latter received as a remuneration for his trouble was £10-Mr Reveley's first professional emolument.

"After this event I never saw Mr Bentham again till my interview with him in April last. His views with regard to the Panopticon were baffled, and he had no longer occasion for architectural assistance.

"My situation was also changed. I was no longer in the enjoyment of that state of ease and quiet in which he found me five years before when he first visited my father's house.

Still under twenty years of age, I was already the mother of two children and was called upon to bear my part in a very severe struggle. Our income was but £140 per annum, and the increase brought in by Mr Reveley's business was for several years very slender and uncertain. With these inadequate resources, from the necessity of maintaining if possible our useful connections, we had to make a genteel appearance; this we effected not without considerable difficulty, and by means of constant exertion. A person in such a situation must make great sacrifices and submit to much self-denial. My mind was concentrated in the continual efforts which my new situation required.

“I lost sight of the inestimable Bentham, at least I lost sight of him personally; but still the sentiment—that strong perception of the superior worth which I had imbibed in my first acquaintance with him-was continually strengthened by my own spontaneous reflections and by the accounts which were given to me from time to time of his steady and heroic devotion to the great cause of truth, humanity, and justice. It was delightful to me to hear his praises from the mouths of all those whom I most looked up to as philanthropists and philosophers."

CHAPTER XII.

THE LAST YEARS. 1832-1836.

A GREAT, happily the last great, sorrow fell on Godwin in the autumn of 1832, in the loss of his only son. He appears to have been a singularly bright, winning, and accomplished man. His nephew, Sir Percy Shelley, remembers him as "a very good fellow, who used to take me to the play." He was much loved by his friends, and was happy in his marriage. A somewhat stormy youth and chequered career of various unfinished beginnings had given place to a steady manhood, in which he was friend and companion to his father, and earned for himself a respectable competence. He was parliamentary reporter to the Morning Chronicle, a fairly successful draughtsman, and had at the time of his death finished a novel, "Transfusion," of considerable power and weird imagination. This was published by his father after his death, prefaced by a touching and gravely self-restrained Memoir. William Godwin, the younger, died of cholera after a short illness, during which his father and mother never left him, and was buried in the churchyard nearest his home, that attached to the Church of St. John Evangelist, Waterloo Road.

The poverty which Gadwin had feared was not his fate. In April 1833, Lord Grey, on the urgent request of many

t

« PreviousContinue »