Non Sequitur and Therefore
Lord Avonmore was subject to perpetual fits of absence of mind, and was frequently insensible to the conversation that was going on. He was wrapped in one of his wonted reveries, and not hearing one syllable of what was passing (it was at a large professional dinner given by Mr. Burke), Curran, who was sitting next to his Lordship, having been called on for a toast, gave, “All our absent friends,” patting at the same time Lord Avonmore on the shoulder and telling him he had just drunk his health. Taking the intimation as a serious one, Avonmore rose, and apologizing for his inattention, returned thanks to the company for the honour they had done him by drinking his health.
There was a curious character, Serjeant Kelly, at the Irish bar. He was, in his day, a man of celebrity. Curran used to give some odd sketches of him. His most whimsical peculiarity was his inveterate habit of drawing conclusions directly at variance with his premises. He had acquired the name of Serjeant Therefore. Curran said that he was a perfect human personification of a non sequitur. For instance, meeting Curran one Sunday, near St. Patrick’s, he said to him, “The Archbishop gave us an excellent discourse this morning. It was well written and well delivered: therefore I shall make a point of being at the Four Courts to-morrow at ten.” At another time, observing to a person whom he met in the street, “What a delightful morning this is for walking!” he finished his remark on the weather by saying, “therefore, I will go home as soon as I can, and stir out no more the whole day.”
His speeches in Court were interminable, and his therefore kept him going on, though every one thought that he had done. The whole Court was in a titter when the Serjeant came out with them, whilst he himself was quite unconscious of the cause of it.
“This is so clear a point, gentlemen,” he would tell the jury, “that I am convinced you felt it to be so the very moment I stated it. I should pay your understanding but a poor compliment to dwell on it for a minute; therefore, I shall now proceed to explain it to you as minutely as possible.” Into such absurdities did the Serjeant’s favourite “therefore” betray him.
Footnotes
1 Vathek was dramatised by the Hon. Mrs. Norton some thirty years since, and was offered to Mr. Bunn for Drury Lane Theatre, but declined; the “exquisite beauties of Mrs. Norton’s metrical compositions being overloaded by a pressure of dialogue and a redundancy of scenic effects, the fidelity and rapid succession of which it would have puzzled any scene painter or mechanist to follow.”—Bunn’s Stage, vol ii., p. 139.
2 Mr. Farquhar died July 6, 1826, in York Place, Marylebone, aged 76 years; he was buried in St. John’s Wood Chapel, where is a handsome monument to his memory, with a medallion head of the deceased by P. Row, sculptor.
3 Three other of Mr. Beckford’s town houses were:—1. On the Terrace, Piccadilly, part of the site of the newly-built mansion of Baron Rothschild; 2. No. 1, Devonshire Place, New Road; and it is said, though we do not vouch how correctly, 3. No. 27, Charles Street, Mayfair, a very small house, looking over the garden of Chesterfield House.
4 In conformity with an old English custom, Mr. Beckford invariably travelled with his bed among his luggage.
5 Saturday Review.
6 Abridged from Sir Bernard Burke’s Family Romance, vol. i.
7 Abridged from Sir Bernard Burke’s very interesting Vicissitudes of Families. Second Series. 1860.
8 This very amusing précis is slightly abridged from the Athenæum journal.
9 For the details of the measure, see “Irregular Marriages,” Knowledge for the Time, 1864, pp. 120-123.
10 Pinks’s History of Clerkenwell, 1865, p. 115.
11 Pinks’s History of Clerkenwell, p. 501.
12 We know an instance of an old Baronet advertising twenty years for a wife; at last he succeeded in marrying an out-and-out Xantippe.
13 Condensed from The Book of Days, vol. ii. pp. 285-288.
14 Family Romance. By J. Bernard Burke. Vol. ii.
15 Pinks’s History of Clerkenwell, 1865, p. 110.
16 Abridged from Notes and Queries, 3rd Series, No. 25.
17 Notes and Queries, 3rd Series, No. 34.
18 See a pamphlet of 1794; Notes and Queries, 3rd Series, Nos. 20 and 21.
19 Honest Jack Fuller, who is buried in a pyramidal mausoleum in Brightling churchyard, in Sussex, gave as his reason for being thus disposed of, his unwillingness to be eaten by his relations after this fashion: “The worms would eat me, the ducks would eat the worms, and my relations would eat the ducks.”
20 We hope to see these interesting accounts of real “curiosities of literature” reprinted in a separate volume.
21 S. P. Dom. James I., vol. lxxvii., quoted in Pinks’s History of Clerkenwell, Appendix.
22 See The End of All Things, by the author of Our Heavenly Home, 1866.
23 “New Materials for Lives of English Engravers,” by Peter Cunningham. Builder, 1863.
24 Sketches of Imposture, Deception and Credulity. Second Edition. 1840.
25 Sketches of Imposture, Deception, and Credulity. Second Edition. 1840.
26 Dr. Richard Reece was the son of a clergyman, and was articled to a country surgeon. In 1800 he settled in practice in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, and published The Medical and Chirurgical Pharmacopœia; and having received a degree of M.D. from a Scotch university, he exercised the three professions of physician, apothecary, and chemist. He likewise published several volumes upon various medical subjects; and established himself in the western wing of the Egyptian Hall Piccadilly. He assailed quackery with much boldness; hence his mistake as to Joanna Southcote was made the most of. He had also considerable practice, by which he gained money. He published A Plain Narrative of the Circumstances attending the last Illness and Death of Joanna Southcote.
27 One of Joanna’s London residences was at No. 17, Weston Place, opposite the Small Pox Hospital.
28 Selected and abridged from an excellent paper on Huntington’s Works and Life, attributed to Southey; Quarterly Review, No. 48.
29 Huntington resided in the house built by the Swiss doctor De Valangin, who had been a pupil of Boerhaave, and practised in Soho Square. He removed thence to Cripplegate, and about 1772 he purchased ground at Pentonville, and there built himself a villa, which he named, from the discoverer of chemistry, Hermes Hill, then almost the only house on or near the spot, except White Conduit House. One of his medicines, The Balsam of Life, he presented to the Apothecaries’ Company. He had, by his first wife, a daughter, who, dying at nine years of age, was buried in the garden at Hermes Hill, in a very costly tomb.
30 See portrait of Boruwlaski, page 259.
31 Joseph is in error here; Bébé was two years his junior, but precocity of development made him appear to be thirty, though really only about seventeen.
32 Sir Lucas Pepys was physician in ordinary to the King, and seven years President of the College of Physicians. He had a seat at Mickleham, in Surrey. One day, at Dorking, he inquired at a druggist’s what all his varieties of drugs were for. “To prepare prescriptions,” was the reply. “Why,” said Sir Lucas, “I never used but three or four articles in all my practice.”
33 From The Times Review of his Life, 1865.
34 The popular work of Mr. James Grant.
35 Fuseli had one day sharply criticised the work of a brother R.A., whom he sought to alleviate by remarking that the conceited scene-painter, Mr. Capon, to whom Sheridan had given the nickname of “Pompous Billy,” had piled up his lumps of rock as regularly on the side scene, as a baker would his quartern-loaves upon the shelves behind his counter to cool.
36 See an able paper in Fraser’s Magazine, No. 133.
37 These characteristics have been selected and abridged from Mr. J. T. Smith’s Nollekens and his Times, one of the best books of anecdote ever published.
38 Note to Rejected Addresses. Edition 1861.
39 See Liston, page 391.
40 Talfourd’s Letters of Charles Lamb.
41 This paper appeared in the “London Magazine,” January, 1825, not 1824, as stated at page 121.
42 Massey’s History of England.
43 Opie.
44 Peter here meant himself, which is in part true.
45 Selected and abridged from Pinks’s History of Clerkenwell, 1865.
46 From the Times’ review of Captain Dunbar’s Letters, 1865.
47 For an account of Lord Lovat’s execution, see Century of Anecdote, vol. i., p. 124.