2"d S. VI. 152., Nov. 27. '68.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



427 



yet, however, exhausted the inconsistencies and 

 improbabilities of this part of Savage's story. 

 Johnson's account of Savage's " nurse," the " poor 

 woman " who " always treated him as her own son," 

 is derived entirely from the Life of 1727. In the 

 latter publication she plays indeed an important 

 part. According to this account Savage's mother 

 gave her 



" Orders to breed him up ns her own, and in a manner j 

 suitable to her condition, wilhal laying a strict injunction ; 

 upon her never to let him come to the knowledge of his 

 real parents. The nurse was faithful to the trust reposed 

 in her, at the same time not neglecting to do her duty to 

 the infant in a homely manner, agreeable to the disposi- 

 tion of a well-meaning ordinary person, and her scanty 

 allowance." 



We are here also told, as in Johnson, that the 

 nurse's name " was the only one for many years 

 he knew he had any claim to," and we learn that 

 Savage "by the death of his nurse discovered some 

 letters of his grandmother's, and by those means 

 the whole contrivance that had been carried on 

 to conceal his birth." The story appears at first 

 sight so plausible that Johnson amplifies it thus: — 



" It was natural for him to take care of those effects 

 which by her death were, aa he imagined, become his 

 own. He, therefore, went to her house, opened her boxes, 

 and examined her papers, among which he found," &c. 



Who can doubt that the original version of this 

 story in the Life was from Savage ? The LAfe, 

 as we have seen, was published to serve Savage's 

 most urgent purpose : it quoted Savage's " sup- 

 pressed " preface, and contained, for the first time, 

 facts which were afterwards adopted by Savage, 

 and which were by their nature such as he only 

 could have known. The story of the nurse ex- 

 plains in a striking manner the discovery of his 

 noble birth ; and agrees with Savage's pretended 

 possession of the " convincing original letters " 

 and "papers" of which he boasted in his letter to 

 The Plain Dealer. Nevertheless there were some 

 circumstances that might suggest doubts to a 

 friend less partial than Johnson. Miss Carter 

 was a grave and learned lady ; and Savage was 

 very anxious to gain her good opinion. What if 

 she should ask how Lady Mason could write -to a 

 poor woman " letters " showing " the whole con- 

 trivance that had been carried on to conceal his 

 birth ?" The objection is so obvious that it is not 

 surprising that Savage, in his private letter to Miss 

 Carter sending her a copy of the Life, endeavours 

 to forestall it by at last contradicting the stoi-y of 

 the " mean nurse," whom he declares to be "quite 

 a fictitious character." 



Yet the story of the nurse, with all its romantic 

 details, and all its consequences in the narrative, 

 had at Icast^jeen allowed by Savage to be put 

 forth in edition after edition; the LJfe of 1727 

 remained till the day of Savage's death the sole 

 authority for his story; and.no hint of its in- 



correctness in this particular was ever breathed 

 by Savage to Johnson. 



The correction indeed only brings Savage into 

 greater inconsistency. In the Life we have the 

 " mean nurse " taking charge of him as her own 

 son, with Lady Mason and Sirs. Loyd benignantly 

 watching over his destiny. There was perhaps 

 something odd in the supposition that the rich 

 Mrs. Loyd or his wealthy grandmother could di- 

 rect his mean nurse to place him at a grammar- 

 school to study the classics, without awakening a 

 suspicion in the minds of the schoolmaster or of 

 his humble scholar. But this was a trifle. Strike 

 out the mean nurse, and the whole story becomes 

 bewildering. Did Dorothy Ousley or Dorothy 

 Loyd — the trusty agent of Lord Rivers, " who 

 could never get any satisfactory account of his lost 

 child," — suddenly become both kind and cruel ; 

 taking care of her godchild " as tenderly as the 

 apple of her eye," and sufiering no " mean nurse " 

 to come between him and herself; yet, at the 

 same time, joining in the conspiracy to prevent 

 his ever knowing his father, who only desired to 

 ascertain his existence to leave him a legacy of 

 six thousand pounds ? And even if this were so, 

 could his mother expect that the fine house and 

 "the chariot" of his godmother would have been 

 wholly forgotten when she " solicited " him — as 

 Savage says, though by what agency does not ap- 

 pear — to be bound apprentice to a shoemaker ? 



The most startling consequence of the suppres- 

 sion of the " mean nurse " is, that Savage now 

 declares that it was his godmother Mrs. Lord's 

 papers that he discovered. The comparison of 

 her tenderness to her godson to the " apple of her 

 eye," Savage tells Mr?. Carter, was "in a letter of 

 hers, a copy of which I found many years after 

 her decease among her papei's." So that, after all, 

 it was not the papers of any "mean nurse" that 

 he had been permitted to ransack, according to 

 the story in the Life, and in Johnson, but the 

 papers of a wealthy lady who had left him only a 

 simple legacy of three hundred pounds. This 

 lady, being his godmother, was necessarily no 

 other than Mrs. Dorothy Ousley, become Mrs. Loyd 

 by marriage, or by magic. Her new husband was 

 of course dead, or he would not have allowed a 

 boy, on the hr'ink of becoming a shoemaker's 

 apprentice, to have command over her papers 

 "many years after her decease." But where was 

 Newdigate, her brother, her half dozen nieces and 

 nephews at Leyton, her dozen of uncles and aunts 

 at Glooston ? It is sad indeed to think that papers 

 concerning affixirs so delicate — papers of a lady 

 so precise as. to keep copies of family letters — 

 should be " many years after her decease " in no 

 safer custody. But if this did not take place 

 " many years after her decease," and if Savage, as 

 would seem less unlikely, discovered them upon 

 her death, the plot of the story of his birth must 



