Sydney Smith | Page 9

Company, attained official distinction and made money. Returning to England, he settled at Cheam in Surrey, where he died in 1789. In 1800 his daughter Catharine was twenty-two years old. Her brother, a Tory Member of Parliament and a placeman under Pitt, strongly objected to an alliance with a penniless and unknown clergyman of Liberal principles; but Miss Pybus happily knew her own mind, and she was married to Sydney Smith in the parish church of Cheam on the 2nd of July 1800. The bride had a small fortune of her own, and this was just as well, for her husband's total wealth consisted of "six small silver teaspoons," which he flung into her lap, saying, "There, Kate, you lucky girl, I give you all my fortune!"
In the autumn of 1800, Mr. and Mrs. Sydney Smith established themselves at No. 46 George Street, Edinburgh. Mrs. Smith sold her pearl necklace for ￡500, and bought plate and linen with the proceeds. Michael Beach had now quitted Edinburgh for Oxford, but his younger brother William took his place in the Smiths' house, and was joined by the eldest son of Mr. Gordon of Ellon. Lady Holland states that with each of these young gentlemen her father received ￡400 a year; and Mr. Hicks-Beach, grateful for his good influence on Michael, made a considerable addition to the covenanted payment.
In 1802 the Smiths' eldest child was born and was christened Saba. The name was taken out of the Psalms for the Fourteenth Day of the Month, and was bestowed on her in obedience to her father's conviction that, where parents were constrained to give their child so indistinctive a surname as Smith, they ought to counterbalance it with a Christian name more original and vivacious. Saba Smith became the wife of the eminent physician, Sir Henry Holland, and died in 1866. The other children were--a boy, who was born and died in 1803; Douglas, born in 1805, died in 1829; Emily, wife of Nathaniel Hibbert, born in 1807, died in 1874; Wyndham, born in 1813, died in 1871.
[1] For this remarkable variant, see Burke's Peerage, Bowyer- Smijth, Bart.
[2] (1739-1827.)
[3] William Howley (1766-1848).
[4] In 1819 Sydney Smith violated his own canon, thus: "But, after all, I believe we shall all go--
"ad veteris Nicolai tristia regna, Pitt ubi combustum Dundasque videbimus omnes."
[5] He became M.A. in 1796.
[6] (1765-1822.) Lees' Reader in Anatomy 1790, Regius Professor of Medicine 1801.
[7] It is curious that the date and place of Sydney Smith's ordination as Deacon cannot be traced. He would naturally have been ordained at Salisbury by John Douglas, Bishop of Sarum; but there is a gap in that prelate's Register of Ordinations between 1791 and 1796. He may have been ordained on Letters Dimissory in some other diocese. He was raised to the Priesthood in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, on the 22nd of May 1796 by Edward Smallwell, Bishop of Oxford; being described as Fellow of New College, and B.A.
For the foregoing facts I am indebted to the courtesy of Mr. A.R. Malden, Registrar of the Diocese of Salisbury, and Mr. J.A. Davenport, Registrar of the Diocese of Oxford.
[8] Quoted by Mr. Stuart Reid.
[9] (1735-1811).
[10] (1745-1833.)
[11] (1734-1826.)
[12] "At the commencement of the nineteenth century, the Sunday-school had become a part of the regular organization of almost every well-worked parish. It was then a far more serious affair than it is now, for, where there was no week-day school, it supplied secular as well as religious instruction to the children. In fact, the Sunday-school took up a considerable part of the day,"--J.H. OVERTON, The English Church in the Nineteenth Century.
[13] Grandfather of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, M.P.
[14] James Gregory (1753-1821), Professor of Medicine.
[15] Joseph Black (1728-1799), Professor of Chemistry.
[16] (1757-1839.)
[17] (1777-1819). Son of the 10th Duke of Somerset.
[18] Henry Dundas (1742-1811), Lord Advocate, created Viscount Melville in 1802.
CHAPTER II
THE EDINBURGH REVIEW--LONDON--"MORAL PHILOSOPHY"--PREFERMENT
We now approach what was perhaps the most important event in Sydney Smith's life, and this was the foundation of the Edinburgh Review. Writing in 1839, and looking back upon the struggles of his early manhood, he thus described the circumstances in which the Review originated:--
"Among the first persons with whom I became acquainted [in Edinburgh] were Lord Jeffrey, Lord Murray (late Lord Advocate for Scotland), and Lord Brougham; all of them maintaining opinions upon political subjects a little too liberal for the dynasty of Dundas, then exercising supreme power over the northern division of the Island.
"One day we happened to meet in the eighth or ninth story or flat in Buccleugh Place, the elevated residence of the then Mr. Jeffrey. I proposed that we should set up a Review; this was acceded to with acclamation. I was appointed Editor, and remained long enough in Edinburgh to edit the first number of the Edinburgh Review. The motto I proposed