Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 54.djvu/246

. Hall-Stevenson was a precocious undergraduate, delighting in Rabelaisian literature and coarse jesting. Such tastes dominated his life. On leaving the university about 1738, without a degree, he made the grand tour, and on his return he married a lady of property, Anne, daughter of Ambrose Stevenson of the Manor House, Durham, by his wife Ann, daughter of Anthony Wharton of Gillingwood, near Richmond, Yorkshire. He assumed his wife's surname in addition to his own. In 1745 his uncle, Trotter, an avowed Jacobite, fled the country, and Trotter's residence, Skelton Castle, passed to his sister, Hall-Stevenson's mother. Hall-Stevenson inherited it on her death. It dated from the fifteenth century, and was in a half-ruinous condition while Hall-Stevenson occupied it.

Hall-Stevenson's sole aim in life was, he repeatedly declared, to amuse himself. He had no liking for field sports, and divided his energies at Skelton between literature and hospitality. He collected a library, largely consisting of facetiæ, and wrote with fatal fluency verse in imitation chiefly of La Fontaine, whose ‘Contes’ attracted him by their obscenity. At the same time he gathered round him a crew of kindred spirits, drawn chiefly from the squirearchy and clergy of Yorkshire, whom he formed into ‘a club of demoniacks.’ The members met under his roof at Skelton several times a year, and indulged by night in heavy drinking and obscene jesting. The chief of these were a clergyman, Robert Lascelles (a connection of the Earl of Harewood), who was nicknamed Pantagruel or Panty, Colonel Hall, Colonel Lee, one Zachary Moore, an architect named Pringle, and a schoolmaster, Andrew Irvine of Kirkleatham. Their orgies seem to have been pale reflections of those practised by Dashwood and his friends at Medmenham. An annual trip to London, where he usually lodged in the neighbourhood of Berkeley Square, brought Hall-Stevenson the acquaintance of a few men of literary or political consequence, including Wilkes and Horace Walpole. Three familiar letters from him to Wilkes, dated in 1762, are among the Wilkes manuscripts in the British Museum (Addit. MS. 30867, ff. 181, 188, 199). Occasionally he seems to have visited the continent. He claimed friendship with Rousseau, but he may have made Rousseau's acquaintance in England. Each summer or autumn he usually spent a few days at York or Scarborough.

Hall-Stevenson gained some notoriety by his small pamphlets of licentious but tedious and unimpressive verse, which he issued in quarto form with ample margins at frequent intervals. In 1760 he published a ‘Lyric Epistle’ to his friend Sterne, on his triumphal reception in London after the publication of ‘Tristram Shandy’ (two lyric epistles, ‘To my Cousin Shandy on his coming to Town,’ and ‘To the Grown Gentlewomen the Misses of ****’). Gray justly described the verses as ‘absolute nonsense’ (Letters, iii. 37). There followed ‘Fables for Grown Gentlemen’ (1761 and 1770), and in 1762 Hall-Stevenson's best-known publication, ‘Crazy Tales’ (other edits. 1764 and 1780). An engraving of Skelton Castle forms the frontispiece. Hall-Stevenson and his friends had nicknamed it Crazy Castle, and in ‘Crazy Tales’ he described the merry meetings of his friends there. Into the mouth of each of the members he put a more or less obscene tale, and he appended a few adaptations of Horace's ‘Odes’ to current events.

Horace Walpole affected to detect in Hall-Stevenson's compositions ‘a vast deal of original humour and wit.’ But Smollett and the writers in the ‘Critical Review’ showed truer insight in treating his efforts with caustic contempt. By way of retaliation Hall-Stevenson poured floods of vulgar abuse on the head of Smollett and his Scottish associates in such lucubrations as ‘A Nosegay and a Simile for the Reviewers,’ 1760, and ‘Two Lyrical Epistles, or Margery the Cook Maid, to the Critical Reviewers,’ 1760.

Hall-Stevenson's acquaintance with Wilkes turned his attention to politics. In much the same vein as he addressed himself to the reviewers, he denounced Bute and all professional politicians, whether whig or tory. The titles of his political effusions ran: ‘A Pastoral Cordial; or an Anodyne Sermon, preached before their Graces Newcastle and Devonshire,’ 1763; ‘A Pastoral Puke; a second Sermon preached before the people called Whigs; by an Independent,’ 1764; ‘Makarony Fables, with the new Fable of the Bees,’ 1767; ‘Lyric Consolations, with the Speech of Alderman Wilkes delivered in a Dream,’ 1768; and ‘An Essay upon the King's Friends,’ addressed to Dr. Johnson, 1776.

Hall-Stevenson's relations with Sterne give his career its only genuine interest. Sterne introduces him into both ‘Tristram Shandy’ and the ‘Sentimental Journey’ under the name of Eugenius. He represented him as a prudent counsellor, and gratefully acknowledged the readiness with which Hall-Stevenson often put his purse at a friend's service. Hall-Stevenson returned the compliment by flattering references to Sterne as ‘Cousin Shandy,’ and often signed himself ‘Anthony Shandy.’ Sterne was a