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The suppression of feeling, or rather the cultivation of no feeling, was still the mark of a gentleman; his maxim; honoured alike at Medmenham and Marly, to enjoy to enjoy, be the cost to others what it might.
A kite hung over our heads as we passed Medmenham yesterday; magpies were quite common in the hedgerows; I saw several sparrow-hawks, and I think a merlin; and now just as we were passing the pretty bridge which had taken the place of Basildon railway-bridge, a couple of ravens croaked above our boat, as they sailed off to the higher ground of the downs.
While the scoundrels of Medmenham were ready to betray their old associate, and, with no touch of the honor proverbially attributed to thieves, to drive him into disgrace, to exile, and if possible to death, the loyal friendship of the poet was given to Wilkes without reserve. Churchill was not a man of irreproachable character, of unimpeachable morality, or of unswerving austerity.
What this lacked of luxury and mystery was made up almost to the Medmenham point in the eyes of the city by the gleam of girandoles, and the glow, rather felt than seen, of Titian-copies in Florence frames.
Johnson was the very human apostle of a divine righteousness. One of the most beautiful places on one of the most beautiful rivers in the world is Medmenham on the Thames, hard by Marlow. In the awakening of spring, in the tranquillity of summer, or the rich decline of August, the changing charm of the spot appeals with the special insistence that association lends to nature.
All this brought its dangers with it, like other movements of emancipation. For the Fay ce que voudras of the revellers of Medmenham Abbey, was substituted the new motto, Pense ce que voudras. There was an intoxication in this newly proclaimed evangel which took hold of some susceptible natures and betrayed itself in prose and rhyme, occasionally of the Bedlam sort.
Wilkes and Alderman Beckford. I am not sure you have not been at Medmenham Abbey. You have lived with players, poets, and all sorts of wild people. I have been warned against you, sir, and I find you " "Not so black as I have been painted," I interrupted his lordship, with a smile.
The evening sun shone bright on the remains of the old buildings at Medmenham; close beside which arose an irregular pile of building which Dick told us was a very pleasant house; and there were plenty of houses visible on the wide meadows opposite, under the hill; for, as it seems that the beauty of Hurley had compelled people to build and live there a good deal.
I well remember Datchett, where the water-rats crept out of the reeds in the shallows to watch our repast; and better still do I recall Medmenham Abbey, which defied all my efforts till I found that it was pronounced Meddenam with the accent on the first syllable.
With the Earl of March, Sir Francis Dashwood, and others, he was associated with Wilkes in the infamous brotherhood of Medmenham, and later, when they made public the secrets of the club against Wilkes, popular feeling rose high against Sandwich, and he was characterised as Jemmy Twitcher, from a play then running; the theatre rose to the words "That Jemmy Twitcher should peach me I own surprised me."
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