Combe's connection with Ackermann began when he was about sixty years of age, and it is remarkable that his greatest successes should have been won when he was nearing seventy. That he was able to produce so much popular work at his advanced age, was probably partly due to the fact that, unlike most of his contemporaries, he was a confirmed water-drinker, and that his life within the Rules was free from anxiety and responsibility. The Rules were jokingly said to extend as far as the East Indies, and it is certain that they extended as far as Ackermann's hospitable table in the Strand. Combe stoutly refused to allow his friends to make any arrangement with his creditors, and no formal contract regulated his dealings with his publisher. "Send me a twenty-pounder," or "Send me a thirty-pounder," he wrote when funds were low, and his employer knew his value too well to neglect his demands. Besides contributing numerous articles to Ackermann's monthly, _The Repository of Arts, Literature, Fashions, and Manufactures_ (1809-28), Combe wrote the descriptive letterpress for several of the large illustrated books published by the same firm, _The History of the Thames_, _The History of Westminster Abbey_, and the third volume of the splendid _Microcosm of London_, illustrated by Rowlandson and Augustus Pugin (1762-1832),[1] the former being responsible for the figures, the latter for the architecture. The first and second volumes were written by W. H. Pyne, author of _Wine and Walnuts_, who is perhaps better known by his pseudonym of "Ephraim Hardcastle." Combe is seen to most advantage, however, in _The English Dance of Death_, which was published in 1815, with illustrations by Rowlandson, and followed the succeeding year by _The Dance of Life_.
Footnote 1: Father of the more celebrated Augustus Welby and Edward Welby Pugin.
[Illustration: By Gamblers link'd in Folly's Noose, Play ill or well, he's sure to loose.]
"The Infamous Combe," as Walpole unkindly dubbed him, was the author of over a hundred books; but as he only put his name to one, there is considerable doubt about the identity of his literary offspring. Though nominally confined in a debtors' prison, Combe, on the death of his first wife in 1814, married a sister of Mrs. Cosway's, but this union was no happier than the first, and the couple were soon separated. In his old age he appears to have amused himself with a platonic love-affair with a young girl,[2] and in the composition of his autobiography. If this was a truthful record of his career, it must have been a more exciting document than all his other books put together; but, unfortunately, in a fit of resentment at the marriage of his adopted son, he burned the manuscript leaf by leaf.