CHAPTER XIII.

LATER PRIVATE LIFE.

1770-1789.

ARDINGTON, not Warrington, was Howard's

CAR

home. We can watch his private habits in that favourite retirement. His memory, wherever he went, constantly carried a number of matters connected with his household and estate; and he exercised his judgment upon them at a distance, undisturbed by the main scheme of his life. Cutting timber, sorting tiles, preparing lime, underpinning barns, trimming hedges, nailing up matting-all manner of minor things he used to think of when far away. Notices of them occur in his letters, and they indicate how much he looked after affairs at home.

Though Henrietta was gone, he persevered in doing what he knew she liked. When abroad, he continued to devise liberal things for poor neighbours and tenants, such as she would have approved; and, considering how much his heart and time were engaged in greater enterprises, "it was surprising with what minuteness he would send home his directions about his private donations. His schools were continued to the last." The memory of the departed had for him special charms, and threw a halo round

1 Aiken, p. 37.

associated objects. He said to his nephew, as he offered the Cardington residence rent free, "You will find the house and grounds just as they were in your Aunt's time, and I have no doubt you will keep them so." It has been indicated already that he would have nothing touched which bore the impress of her gracious hand.

Some thought that the widower might one day seek an occupant for the vacant chair beside his solitary hearth. I have repeated a story current in the Aiken circle. There is another to this effect,that once in Holland he sat near an elderly gentleman, who had with him a young lady somewhat resembling Henrietta. So struck was Howard with the likeness, that he set his servant to ascertain who she was. It turned out that she was the elder gentleman's wife. Another anecdote is given. He derived so much pleasure from the works of an unnamed authoress, that he made an expedition to the neighbourhood where she lived, that he might seek an interview, if private inquiries confirmed his favourable impression. On reaching his hotel he fell into conversation with some one he had travelled with, from whom he ascertained that the lady had another and a favoured admirer. "His chagrin," it is added, "however, was somewhat lessened by sympathy, when he discovered that his companion, having travelled upon the same errand, was as much disappointed as himself." 2 I mention these stories for what they are worth. Reticence with regard to his own plans, provoked curiosity. Incidents which

1 Aiken, p. 234.

2 Field, p. 351.

really occurred were magnified, and mere imagination at times stood in the place of facts. Had he known all that was said about him, he would have been greatly diverted.

But whatever questionable things might be rumoured, this is certain, that he steadily continued dispensing such charities as he had commenced in earlier days. A pleasant instance of thoughtful kindness has been related. A journeyman wheelwright succeeded his master in business, and married a respectable woman in the parish. Howard was absent. at the time, but on his return told the new couple it was not too late to make them a present. Forthwith he ordered his bailiff to look out the best cow in the farmyard, and drive it to the wheelwright's cottage. "On second thoughts," he added, "the poor fellow has nothing to keep her on this winter; we will keep the cow for him till she has calved."

It is worth while to add, that Howard never returned from distant journeys without bringing presents for his tenantry and servants; and on visiting the North of England he would buy for them articles of cutlery and other hardware.

Cardington was no place for sumptuous hospitality. His habits were abstemious; for he lived upon vegetables, and "never tasted animal food, not so much as an oyster." Yet "his meals were always served up, whether he had company or was alone, in a style suited to his rank in life; and those who saw him the most frequently, and under circumstances of strict reserve, declare that they never were in a house where domestic arrangements exhibited more regularity and comfort."

A stray anecdote may fitly fall in here. One day an elderly gentleman on horseback, attended by his servant, stopped at an inn in Cardington, and began to catechise the landlord about the merits of this muchtalked-of man. "Characters," he said, "often appear very well at a distance, which would not bear close inspection"; and he had therefore come to Howard's home to ascertain his real character. He went into the garden, saw the dwelling, questioned the household, examined the tenantry, noticed everything he could on the premises, and narrowly examined the interior of the cottages which were built for the tenantry. The stranger departed, satisfied that Howard at home was the same as Howard .abroad. This careful inquisitor turned out to be the eccentric Lord Monboddo.

Howard's sister died in 1777, and left him a house in Great Ormond Street, where he resided when afterwards in London. In the first half of the last century. it was a street of fine buildings, that side of it next the fields, being "beyond question one of the most charming situations about town." It runs out of Queen Square, and the immediate neighbourhood is little altered from what it was a hundred years ago; but it is amusing to read of its side "next the fields," seeing that now it requires a walk of some miles to get into a region such as was then contiguous. The old houses, of which a large majority remain, are tenements of a rather ordinary description; and in one of the most moderate the philanthropist lived, in a style such as is hardly conceivable when we remember who were his neighbours. They included several celebrities. Dr. Hickes, and Dr. Mead, and Dr. Stukely,

and the Duke of Powis. There, too, resided the grim Lord Chancellor Thurlow, Cowper's friend; and from his house, one night in 1784, the great seal of England was stolen by burglars, who got in at the window. Probably it was when the Chancellor and the philanthropist were neighbours, that his Lordship, in a debate upon the Bill for releasing insolvent debtors, remarked, "He had lately had the honour of a conversation upon the subject with a gentleman who was, of all others, the best qualified to treat of it; he meant Mr. Howard, whose humanity, great as it was, was at least equalled by his wisdom, for a more judicious, or a more sensible reasoner upon the topic he never conversed with." During Howard's residence in Ormond Street, a woman of rather forbidding appearance made repeated ineffectual attempts to gain an interview; at last she succeeded. He thought from her looks that one of the other sex had come with a mischievous intent. He therefore rang the bell, and told his servant not to leave the room. The stranger turned out to be a woman rather crazed, but an infatuated hero-worshipper, who poured out a flood of compliments, and then took her leave, declaring that, as she had seen the object of her admiration, she should go home and die in peace.

During his occasional residence at the West End he regularly attended Divine worship in Little Wild Street. We can follow him in his Sunday haunts through Bloomsbury Square, which had scarcely ceased to be one of the wonders of the metropolis,to a turning out of Drury Lane, where few vestiges even then remained of the pride and fashion which