At the age of seventy-seven Procter was invited to print his
recollections of Charles Lamb, and his volume was welcomed in both
hemispheres as a pleasant addition to "Eliana." During the last eighteen
years of Lamb's life Procter knew him most intimately, and his
chronicles of visits to the little gamboge-colored house in Enfield are
charming pencillings of memory. When Lamb and his sister, tired of
housekeeping, went into lodging and boarding with T---- W----, their
sometime next-door neighbor,--who, Lamb said, had one joke and forty
pounds a year, upon which he retired in a green old age,--Procter still
kept up his friendly visits to his old associate. And after the brother
and sister moved to their last earthly retreat in Edmonton, where
Charles died in 1834, Procter still paid them regular visits of love and
kindness. And after Charles's death, when Mary went to live at a house
in St. John's Wood, her unfailing friend kept up his cheering calls
there till she set out "for that unknown and silent shore," on the 20th
of May, in 1847.
Procter's conversation was full of endless delight to his friends. His
"asides" were sometimes full of exquisite touches. I remember one
evening when Carlyle was present and rattling on against American
institutions, half comic and half serious, Procter, who sat near me,
kept up a constant underbreath of commentary, taking exactly the other
side. Carlyle was full of horse-play over the character of George
Washington, whom he never vouchsafed to call anything but George. He
said our first President was a good surveyor, and knew how to measure
timber, and that was about all. Procter kept whispering to me all the
while Carlyle was discoursing, and going over Washington's fine traits
to the disparagement of everything Carlyle was laying down as gospel. I
was listening to both these distinguished men at the same time, and it
was one of the most curious experiences in conversation I ever happened
to enjoy.
I was once present when a loud-voiced person of quality, ignorant and
supercilious, was inveighing against the want of taste commonly
exhibited by artists when they chose their wives, saying they almost
always selected inferior women. Procter, sitting next to me, put his
hand on my shoulder, and, with a look expressive of ludicrous pity and
contempt for the idiotic speaker, whispered, "And yet Vandyck married
the daughter of Earl Gower, poor fellow!" The mock solemnity of
Procter's manner was irresistible. It had a wink in it that really
embodied the genius of fun and sarcasm.
Talking of the ocean with him one day, he revealed this curious fact:
although he is the author of one of the most stirring and popular
sea-songs in the language,--
"The sea, the sea, the open sea!"--
he said he had rarely been upon the tossing element, having a great fear
of being made ill by it. I think he told me he had never dared to cross
the Channel even, and so had never seen Paris. He said, like many
others, he delighted to gaze upon the waters from a safe place on land,
but had a horror of living on it even for a few hours. I recalled to his
recollection his own lines,--
"I'm on the sea! I'm on the sea!
I am where I would ever be,"--
and he shook his head, and laughingly declared I must have misquoted his
words, or that Dibdin had written the piece and put "Barry Cornwall's"
signature to it. We had, I remember, a great deal of fun over the
poetical lies, as he called them, which bards in all ages had
perpetrated in their verse, and he told me some stories of English
poets, over which we made merry as we sat together in pleasant Cavendish
Square that summer evening.
His world-renowned song of "The Sea" he afterward gave me in his own
handwriting, and it is still among my autographic treasures.
It was Procter who first in my hearing, twenty-five years ago, put such
an estimate on the poetry of Robert Browning that I could not delay any
longer to make acquaintance with his writings. I remember to have been
startled at hearing the man who in his day had known so many poets
declare that Browning was the peer of any one who had written in this
century, and that, on the whole, his genius had not been excelled in his
(Procter's) time. "Mind what I say," insisted Procter; "Browning will
make an enduring name, and add another supremely great poet to England."
Procter could sometimes be prompted into describing that brilliant set
of men and women who were in the habit of congregating at Lady
Blessington's, and I well recollect his description of young N.P. Willis
as he first appeared in her _salon_. "The young traveller came among
us," said Procter, "enthusiastic, handsome, and good-natured, and took
his place beside D'Orsay, Bulwer, Disraeli, and the other dandies as
naturally as if he had been for years a London man about town. He was
full of fresh talk concerning his own country, and we all admired his
cleverness in compassing so aptly all the little newnesses of the
situation. He was ready on all occasions, a little too ready, some of
the _habitués_ of the _salon_ thought, and they could not understand his
cool and quiet-at-home manners. He became a favorite at first trial, and
laid himself out determined to please and be pleased. His ever kind and
thoughtful attention to others won him troops of friends, and I never
can forget his unwearied goodness to a sick child of mine, with whom,
night after night, he would sit by the bedside and watch, thus relieving
the worn-out family in a way that was very tender and self-sacrificing."
Of Lady Blessington's tact, kindness, and remarkable beauty Procter
always spoke with ardor, and abated nothing from the popular idea of
that fascinating person. He thought she had done more in her time to
institute good feeling and social intercourse among men of letters than
any other lady in England, and he gave her eminent credit for bringing
forward the rising talent of the metropolis without waiting to be
prompted by a public verdict. As the poet described her to me as she
moved through her exquisite apartments, surrounded by all the luxuries
that naturally connect themselves with one of her commanding position in
literature and art, her radiant and exceptional beauty of person, her
frank and cordial manners, the wit, wisdom, and grace of her speech, I
thought of the fair Giovanna of Naples as painted in "Bianca
Visconti":--
"Gods! what a light enveloped her!
.... Her beauty
Was of that order that the universe
Seemed governed by her motion.....
The pomp, the music, the bright sun in heaven,
Seemed glorious by her leave."
One of the most agreeable men in London literary society during
Procter's time was the companionable and ever kind-hearted John Kenyon.
He was a man compacted of all the best qualities of an incomparable
good-nature. His friends used to call him "the apostle of cheerfulness."
He could not endure a long face under his roof, and declined to see the
dark side of anything. He wrote verses almost like a poet, but no one
surpassed him in genuine admiration for whatever was excellent in
others. No happiness was so great to him as the conferring of happiness
on others, and I am glad to write myself his eternal debtor for much of
my enjoyment in England, for he introduced me to many lifelong
friendships, and he inaugurated for me much of that felicity which
springs from intercourse with men and women whose books are the solace
of our lifelong existence.
Kenyon was Mrs. Browning's cousin, and in 1856 she dedicates "Aurora
Leigh" to him in these affectionate terms:--
"The words 'cousin' and 'friend' are constantly recurring in this
poem, the last pages of which have been finished under the
hospitality of your roof, my own dearest cousin and friend;--cousin
and friend, in a sense of less equality and greater
disinterestedness than Romney's.... I venture to leave in your hands
this book, the most mature of my works, and the one into which my
highest convictions upon Life and Art have entered; that as, through
my various efforts in literature and steps in life, you have
believed in me, borne with me, and been generous to me, far beyond
the common uses of mere relationship or sympathy of mind, so you may
kindly accept, in sight of the public, this poor sign of esteem,
gratitude, and affection from your unforgetting
"E.B.B."
How often have I seen Kenyon and Procter chirping together over an old
quarto that had floated down from an early century, or rejoicing
together over a well-worn letter in a family portfolio of treasures!
They were a pair of veteran brothers, and there was never a flaw in
their long and loving intercourse. In a letter which Procter wrote to me
in March, 1857, he thus refers to his old friend, then lately dead:
"Everybody seems to be dying hereabouts,--one of my colleagues, one of
my relations, one of my servants, three of them in one week, the last
one in my own house. And now I seem fit for little else myself. My dear
old friend Kenyon is dead. There never was a man, take him for all in
all, with more amiable, attractive qualities. A kind friend, a good
master, a generous and judicious dispenser of his wealth, honorable,
sweet-tempered, and serene, and genial as a summer's day. It is true
that he has left me a solid mark of his friendship. I did not expect
anything; but if to like a man sincerely deserved such a mark of his
regard, I deserved it. I doubt if he has left one person who really
liked him more than I did. Yes, one--I think one--a woman.... I get old
and weak and stupid. That pleasant journey to Niagara, that dip into
your Indian summer, all such thoughts are over. I shall never see Italy;
I shall never see Paris. My future is before me,--a very limited
landscape, with scarcely one old friend left in it. I see a smallish
room, with a bow-window looking south, a bookcase full of books, three
or four drawings, and a library chair and table (once the property of my
old friend Kenyon--I am writing on the table now), and you have the
greater part of the vision before you. Is this the end of all things? I
believe it is pretty much like most scenes in the fifth act, when the
green (or black) curtain is about to drop and tell you that the play of
_Hamlet_ or of John Smith is over. But wait a little. There will be
another piece, in which John Smith the younger will figure, and quite
eclipse his old, stupid, wrinkled, useless, time-slaughtered parent. The
king is dead,--long live the king!"
Kenyon was very fond of Americans, Professor Ticknor and Mr. George S.
Hillard being especially dear to him. I remember hearing him say one day
that the "best prepared" young foreigner he had ever met, who had come
to see Europe, was Mr. Hillard. One day at his dinner-table, in the
presence of Mrs. Jameson, Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle, Walter Savage Landor,
Mr. and Mrs. Robert Browning, and the Procters, I heard him declare that
one of the best talkers on any subject that might be started at the
social board was the author of "Six Months in Italy." It was at a
breakfast in Kenyon's house that I first met Walter Savage Landor, whose
writings are full of verbal legacies to posterity. As I entered the room
with Procter, Landor was in the midst of an eloquent harangue on the
high art of portraiture. Procter had been lately sitting to a
daguerreotypist for a picture, and Mrs. Jameson, who was very fond of
the poet, had arranged the camera for that occasion. Landor was holding
the picture in his hand, declaring that it had never been surpassed as a
specimen of that particular art. The grand-looking author of "Pericles
and Aspasia" was standing in the middle of the room when we entered, and
his voice sounded like an explosion of first-class artillery. Seeing
Procter enter, he immediately began to address him compliments in
high-sounding Latin. Poor modest Procter pretended to stop his ears that
he might not listen to Landor's eulogistic phrases. Kenyon came to the
rescue by declaring the breakfast had been waiting half an hour. When we
arrived at the table Landor asked Procter to join him on an expedition
into Spain which he was then contemplating. "No," said Procter, "for I
cannot even 'walk Spanish' and having never crossed the Channel, I do
not intend to begin now."
"Never crossed the Channel!" roared Landor,--"never saw Napoleon
Bonaparte!" He then began to tell us how the young Corsican looked when
he first saw him, saying that he had the olive complexion and roundness
of face of a Greek girl; that the consul's voice was deep and melodious,
but untruthful in tone. While we were eating breakfast he went on to
describe his Italian travels in early youth, telling us that he once saw
Shelley and Byron meet in the doorway of a hotel in Pisa. Landor had
lived in Italy many years, for he detested the climate of his native
country, and used to say "one could only live comfortably in England who
was rich enough to have a solar system of his own."
The Prince of Carpi said of Erasmus he was so thin-skinned that a fly
would draw blood from him. The author of the "Imaginary Conversations"
had the same infirmity. A very little thing would disturb him for hours,
and his friends were never sure of his equanimity. I was present once
when a blundering friend trod unwittingly on his favorite prejudice, and
Landor went off instanter like a blaspheming torpedo. There were three
things in the world which received no quarter at his hands, and when in
the slightest degree he scented _hypocrisy_, _pharisaism_, or _tyranny_,
straightway he became furious, and laid about him like a mad giant.
Procter told me that when Landor got into a passion, his rage was
sometimes uncontrollable. The fiery spirit knew his weakness, but his
anger quite overmastered him in spite of himself. "Keep your temper,
Landor," somebody said to him one day when he was raging. "That is just
what I don't wish to keep," he cried; "I wish to be rid of such an
infamous, ungovernable thing. I don't wish to keep my temper." Whoever
wishes to get a good look at Landor will not seek for it alone in John
Forster's interesting life of the old man, admirable as it is, but will
turn to Dickens's "Bleak House" for side glances at the great author. In
that vivid story Dickens has made his friend Landor sit for the portrait
of Lawrence Boythorn. The very laugh that made the whole house vibrate,
the roundness and fulness of voice, the fury of superlatives, are all
given in Dickens's best manner, and no one who has ever seen Landor for
half an hour could possibly mistake Boythorn for anybody else. Talking
the matter over once with Dickens, he said, "Landor always took that
presentation of himself in hearty good-humor, and seemed rather proud of
the picture." This is Dickens's portrait: "He was not only a very
handsome old gentleman, upright and stalwart, with a massive gray head,
a fine composure of face when silent, a figure that might have become
corpulent but for his being so continually in earnest that he gave it no
rest, and a chin that might have subsided into a double chin but for the
vehement emphasis in which it was constantly required to assist; but he
was such a true gentleman in his manner, so chivalrously polite, his
face was lighted by a smile of so much sweetness and tenderness, and it
seemed so plain that he had nothing to hide, that really I could not
help looking at him with equal pleasure, whether he smilingly conversed
with Ada and me, or was led by Mr. Jarndyce into some great volley of
superlatives, or threw up his head like a bloodhound, and gave out that
tremendous Ha! ha! ha!"
Landor's energetic gravity, when he was proposing some colossal
impossibility, the observant novelist would naturally seize on, for
Dickens was always on the lookout for exaggerations in human language
and conduct. It was at Procter's table I heard Dickens describe a scene
which transpired after the publication of the "Old Curiosity Shop." It
seems that the first idea of Little Nell occurred to Dickens when he was
on a birthday visit to Landor, then living in Bath. The old man was
residing in lodgings in St. James Square, in that city, and ever after
connected Little Nell with that particular spot. No character in prose
fiction was a greater favorite with Landor, and one day, years after the
story was published, he burst out with a tremendous emphasis, and
declared the one mistake of his life was that he had not purchased the
house in Bath, and then and there burned it to the ground, so that no
meaner association should ever desecrate the birthplace of Little Nell!
It was Procter's old schoolmaster (Dr. Drury, headmaster of Harrow) who
was the means of introducing Edmund Kean, the great actor, on the London
stage. Procter delighted to recall the many theatrical triumphs of the
eccentric tragedian, and the memoir which he printed of Kean will always
be read with interest. I heard the poet one evening describe the player
most graphically as he appeared in Sir Giles Overreach in 1816 at Drury
Lane, when he produced such an effect on Lord Byron, who sat that night
in a stage-box with Tom Moore. His lordship was so overcome by Kean's
magnificent acting that he fell forward in a convulsive fit, and it was
some time before he regained his wonted composure. Douglas Jerrold said
that Kean's appearance in Shakespeare's Jew was like a chapter out of
Genesis, and all who have seen the incomparable actor speak of his
tiger-like power and infinite grace as unrivalled.
At Procter's house the best of England's celebrated men and women
assembled, and it was a kind of enchantment to converse with the ladies
one met there. It was indeed a privilege to be received by the hostess
herself, for Mrs. Procter was not only sure to be the most brilliant
person among her guests, but she practised habitually that exquisite
courtesy toward all which renders even a stranger, unwonted to London
drawing-rooms, free from awkwardness and that constraint which are
almost inseparable from a first appearance.
Among the persons T have seen at that house of urbanity in London I
distinctly recall old Mrs. Montague, the mother of Mrs. Procter. She had
met Robert Burns in Edinburgh when he first came up to that city to
bring out his volume of poems. "I have seen many a handsome man in my
time," said the old lady one day to us at dinner, "but never such a pair
of eyes as young Robbie Burns kept flashing from under his beautiful
brow." Mrs. Montague was much interested in Charles Sumner, and
predicted for him all the eminence of his after-position. With a certain
other American visitor she had no patience, and spoke of him to me as a
"note of interrogation, too curious to be comfortable."
I distinctly recall Adelaide Procter as I first saw her on one of my
early visits to her father's house. She was a shy, bright girl, and the
poet drew my attention to her as she sat reading in a corner of the
library. Looking at the young maiden, intent on her book, I remembered
that exquisite sonnet in her father's volume, bearing date November,
1825, addressed to the infant just a month after her birth:--
Child of my heart! My sweet, beloved First-born!
Thou dove who tidings bring'st of calmer hours!
Thou rainbow who dost shine when all the showers
Are past or passing! Rose which hath no thorn,
No spot, no blemish,--pure and unforlorn,
Untouched, untainted! O my Flower of flowers!
More welcome than to bees are summer bowers,
To stranded seamen life-assuring morn!
Welcome, a thousand welcomes! Care, who clings
Round all, seems loosening now its serpent fold:
New hope springs upward; and the bright world seems
Cast back into a youth of endless springs!
Sweet mother, is it so? or grow I old,
Bewildered in divine Elysian dreams!
I whispered in the poet's ear my admiration of the sonnet and the
beautiful subject of it as we sat looking at her absorbed in the volume
on her knees. Procter, in response, murmured some words expressive of
his joy at having such a gift from God to gladden his affectionate
heart, and he told me afterward what a comfort Adelaide had always been
to his household. He described to me a visit Wordsworth made to his
house one day, and how gentle the old man's aspect was when he looked at
the children. "He took the hand of my dear Adelaide in his," said
Procter, "and spoke some words to her, the recollection of which helped,
perhaps, with other things, to incline her to poetry." When a little
child "the golden-tressed Adelaide," as the poet calls her in one of
his songs, must often have heard her father read aloud his own poems as
they came fresh from the fount of song, and the impression no doubt
wrought upon her young imagination a spell she could not resist. On a
sensitive mind like hers such a piece as the "Petition to Time" could
not fail of producing its full effect, and no girl of her temperament
would be unmoved by the music of words like these:--
"Touch us gently, Time!
Let us glide adown thy stream
Gently, as we sometimes glide
Through a quiet dream.
Humble voyagers are we,
Husband, wife, and children three.
(One is lost, an angel, fled
To the azure overhead.)
"Touch us gently, Time!
We've not proud nor soaring wings:
_Our_ ambition, _our_ content,
Lie in simple things.
Humble voyagers are we,
O'er Life's dim unsounded sea,
Seeking only some calm clime:
Touch us _gently_, gentle Time!"
Adelaide Procter's name will always be sweet in the annals of English
poetry. Her place was assured from the time when she made her modest
advent, in 1853, in the columns of Dickens's "Household Words," and
everything she wrote from that period onward until she died gave
evidence of striking and peculiar talent. I have heard Dickens describe
how she first began to proffer contributions to his columns over a
feigned name, that of Miss Mary Berwick; how he came to think that his
unknown correspondent must be a governess; how, as time went on, he
learned to value his new contributor for her self-reliance and
punctuality,--qualities upon which Dickens always placed a high value;
how at last, going to dine one day with his old friends the Procters, he
launched enthusiastically out in praise of Mary Berwick (the writer
herself, Adelaide Procter, sitting at the table); and how the delighted
mother, being in the secret, revealed, with tears of joy, the real name
of the young aspirant. Although Dickens has told the whole story most
feelingly in an introduction to Miss Procter's "Legends and Lyrics,"
issued after her death, to hear it from his own lips and sympathetic
heart, as I have done, was, as may be imagined, something better even
than reading his pathetic words on the printed page.
One of the most interesting ladies in London literary society in the
period of which I am writing was Mrs. Jameson, the dear and honored
friend of Procter and his family. During many years of her later life
she stood in the relation of consoler to her sex in England. Women in
mental anguish needing consolation and counsel fled to her as to a
convent for protection and guidance. Her published writings established
such a claim upon her sympathy in the hearts of her readers that much of
her time for twenty years before she died was spent in helping others,
by correspondence and personal contact, to submit to the sorrows God had
cast upon them. She believed, with Milton, that it is miserable enough
to be blind, but still more miserable not to be able to bear blindness.
Her own earlier life had been darkened by griefs, and she knew from a
deep experience what it was to enter the cloud and stand waiting and
hoping in the shadows. In her instructive and delightful society I spent
many an hour twenty years ago in the houses of Procter and Rogers and
Kenyon. Procter, knowing my admiration of the Kemble family, frequently
led the conversation up to that regal line which included so many men
and women of genius. Mrs. Jameson was never weary of being questioned
as to the legitimate supremacy of Mrs. Siddons and her nieces, Fanny and
Adelaide Kemble. While Rogers talked of Garrick, and Procter of Kean,
she had no enthusiasms that were not bounded in by those fine spirits
whom she had watched and worshipped from her earliest years.
Now and then in the garden of life we get that special bite out of the
sunny side of a peach. One of my own memorable experiences in that way
came in this wise. I had heard, long before I went abroad, so much of
the singing of the youngest child of the "Olympian dynasty," Adelaide
Kemble, so much of a brief career crowded with triumphs on the lyric
stage, that I longed, if it might be possible, to listen to the "true
daughter of her race." The rest of her family for years had been, as it
were, "nourished on Shakespeare," and achieved greatness in that high
walk of genius; but now came one who could interpret Mozart, Bellini,
and Mercadante, one who could equal what Pasta and Malibran and Persiani
and Grisi had taught the world to understand and worship. "Ah!" said a
friend, "if you could only hear _her_ sing 'Casta Diva'!" "Yes," said
another, "and 'Auld Robin Gray'!" No wonder, I thought, at the universal
enthusiasm for a vocal and lyrical artist who can alternate with equal
power from "Casta Diva" to "Auld Robin Gray." I _must_ hear her! She had
left the stage, after a brief glory upon it, but as Madame Sartoris she
sometimes sang at home to her guests.
"We are invited to hear some music, this evening," said Procter to me
one day, "and you must go with us." I went, and our hostess was the once
magnificent _prima donna!_ At intervals throughout the evening, with a
voice
"That crowds and hurries and precipitates
With thick fast warble its delicious notes,"
she poured out her full soul in melody. We all know her now as the
author of that exquisite "Week in a French Country-House," and her
fascinating book somehow always mingles itself in my memory with the
enchanted evening when I heard her sing. As she sat at the piano in all
her majestic beauty, I imagined her a sort of later St. Cecilia, and
could have wished for another Raphael to paint her worthily. Henry
Chorley, who was present on that memorable evening, seemed to be in a
kind of nervous rapture at hearing again the supreme and willing singer.
Procter moved away into a dim corner of the room, and held his tremulous
hand over his eyes. The old poet's sensitive spirit seemed at times to
be going out on the breath of the glorious artist who was thrilling us
all with her power. Mrs. Jameson bent forward to watch every motion of
her idol, looking applause at every noble passage. Another lady, whom I
did not know, was tremulous with excitement, and I could well imagine
what might have taken place when the "impassioned chantress" sang and
enacted Semiramide as I have heard it described. Every one present was
inspired by her fine mien, as well as by her transcendent voice. Mozart,
Rossini, Bellini, Cherubini,--how she flung herself that night, with all
her gifts, into their highest compositions! As she rose and was walking
away from the piano, after singing an air from the "Medea" with a pathos
that no musically uneducated pen like mine can or ought to attempt a
description of, some one intercepted her and whispered a request. Again
she turned, and walked toward the instrument like a queen among her
admiring court. A flash of lightning, followed by a peal of thunder that
jarred the house, stopped her for a moment on her way to the piano. A
sudden summer tempest was gathering, and crash after crash made it
impossible for her to begin. As she stood waiting for the "elemental
fury" to subside, her attitude was quite worthy of the niece of Mrs.
Siddons. When the thunder had grown less frequent, she threw back her
beautiful classic head and touched the keys. The air she had been called
upon to sing was so wild and weird, a dead silence fell upon the room,
and an influence as of terror pervaded the whole assembly. It was a song
by Dessauer, which he had composed for her voice, the words by Tennyson.
No one who was present that evening can forget how she broke the silence
with
"We were two daughters of one race,"
or how she uttered the words,
"The wind is roaring in turret and tree."
It was like a scene in a great tragedy, and then I fully understood the
worship she had won as belonging only to those consummate artists who
have arisen to dignify and ennoble the lyric stage. As we left the house
Procter said, "You are in great luck to-night. I never heard her sing
more divinely."
The Poet frequently spoke to me of the old days when he was contributing
to the "London Magazine," which fifty years ago was deservedly so
popular in Great Britain. All the "best talent" (to use a modern
advertisement phrase) wrote for it. Carlyle sent his papers on Schiller
to be printed in it; De Quincey's "Confessions of an English
Opium-Eater" appeared in its pages; and the essays of "Elia" came out
first in that potent periodical; Landor, Keats, and John Bowring
contributed to it; and to have printed a prose or poetical article in
the "London" entitled a man to be asked to dine out anywhere in society
in those days. In 1821 the proprietors began to give dinners in Waterloo
Place once a month to their contributors, who, after the cloth was
removed, were expected to talk over the prospects of the magazine, and
lay out the contents for next month. Procter described to me the
authors of his generation as they sat round the old "mahogany-tree" of
that period. "Very social and expansive hours they passed in that
pleasant room half a century ago. Thither came stalwart Allan
Cunningham, with his Scotch face shining with good-nature; Charles Lamb,
'a Diogenes with the heart of a St. John'; Hamilton Reynolds, whose good
temper and vivacity were like condiments at a feast; John Clare, the
peasant-poet, simple as a daisy; Tom Hood, young, silent, and grave, but
who nevertheless now and then shot out a pun that damaged the shaking
sides of the whole company; De Quincey, self-involved and courteous,
rolling out his periods with a pomp and splendor suited, perhaps, to a
high Roman festival; and with these sons of fame gathered certain
nameless folk whose contributions to the great 'London' are now under
the protection of that tremendous power which men call _Oblivion_."
It was a vivid pleasure to hear Procter describe Edward Irving, the
eccentric preacher, who made such a deep impression on the spirit of his
time. He is now dislimned into space, but he was, according to all his
thoughtful contemporaries, a "son of thunder," a "giant force of
activity." Procter fully indorsed all that Carlyle has so nobly written
of the eloquent man who, dying at forty-two, has stamped his strong
personal vitality on the age in which he lived.
Procter, in his younger days, was evidently much impressed by that
clever rascal who, under the name of "Janus Weathercock," scintillated
at intervals in the old "London Magazine." Wainwright--for that was his
real name--was so brilliant, he made friends for a time among many of
the first-class contributors to that once famous periodical; but the Ten
Commandments ruined all his prospects for life. A murderer, a forger, a
thief,--in short, a sinner in general,--he came to grief rather early
in his wicked career, and suffered penalties of the law accordingly, but
never to the full extent of his remarkable deserts. I have heard Procter
describe his personal appearance as he came sparkling into the room,
clad in undress military costume. His smart conversation deceived those
about him into the belief that he had been an officer in the dragoons,
that he had spent a large fortune, and now condescended to take a part
in periodical literature with the culture of a gentleman and the grace
of an amateur. How this vapid charlatan in a braided surtout and
prismatic necktie could so long veil his real character from, and retain
the regard of, such men as Procter and Talfourd and Coleridge is
amazing. Lamb calls him the "kind and light-hearted Janus," and thought
he liked him. The contributors often spoke of his guileless nature at
the festal monthly board of the magazine, and no one dreamed that this
gay and mock-smiling London cavalier was about to begin a career so foul
and monstrous that the annals of crime for centuries have no blacker
pages inscribed on them. To secure the means of luxurious living without
labor, and to pamper his dandy tastes, this lounging, lazy _littérateur_
resolved to become a murderer on a large scale, and accompany his cruel
poisonings with forgeries whenever they were most convenient. His custom
for years was to effect policies of insurance on the lives of his
relations, and then at the proper time administer strychnine to his
victims. The heart sickens at the recital of his brutal crimes. On the
life of a beautiful young girl named Abercrombie this fiendish wretch
effected an insurance at various offices for £18,000 before he sent her
to her account with the rest of his poisoned too-confiding relatives. So
many heavily insured ladies dying in violent convulsions drew attention
to the gentleman who always called to collect the money. But why this
consummate criminal was not brought to justice and hung, my Lord Abinger
never satisfactorily divulged. At last this polished Sybarite, who
boasted that he always drank the richest Montepulciano, who could not
sit long in a room that was not garlanded with flowers, who said he felt
lonely in an apartment without a fine cast of the Venus de' Medici in
it,--this self-indulgent voluptuary at last committed several forgeries
on the Bank of England, and the Old Bailey sessions of July, 1837,
sentenced him to transportation for life. While he was lying in Newgate
prior to his departure, with other convicts, to New South Wales, where
he died, Dickens went with a former acquaintance of the prisoner to see
him. They found him still possessed with a morbid self-esteem and a poor
and empty vanity. All other feelings and interests were overwhelmed by
an excessive idolatry of self, and he claimed (I now quote his own words
to Dickens) a soul whose nutriment is love, and its offspring art,
music, divine song, and still holier philosophy. To the last this
super-refined creature seemed undisturbed by remorse. What place can we
fancy for such a reptile, and what do we learn from such a career?
Talfourd has so wisely summed up the whole case for us that I leave the
dark tragedy with the recital of this solemn sentence from a paper on
the culprit in the "Final Memorials of Charles Lamb": "Wainwright's
vanity, nurtured by selfishness and unchecked by religion, became a
disease, amounting perhaps to monomania, and yielding one lesson to
repay the world for his existence, viz. that there is no state of the
soul so dangerous as that in which the vices of the sensualist are
envenomed by the grovelling intellect of the scorner."
One of the men best worth meeting in London, under any circumstances,
was Leigh Hunt, but it was a special boon to find him and Procter
together. I remember a day in the summer of 1859 when Procter had a
party of friends at dinner to meet Hawthorne, who was then on a brief
visit to London. Among the guests were the Countess of ----, Kinglake,
the author of "Eothen," Charles Sumner, then on his way to Paris, and
Leigh Hunt, the mercurial qualities of whose blood were even then
perceptible in his manner.
Adelaide Procter did not reach home in season to begin the dinner with
us, but she came later in the evening, and sat for some time in earnest
talk with Hawthorne. It was a "goodly companie," long to be remembered.
Hunt and Procter were in a mood for gossip over the ruddy port. As the
twilight deepened around the table, which was exquisitely decorated with
flowers, the author of "Rimini" recalled to Procter's recollection other
memorable tables where they used to meet in vanished days with Lamb,
Coleridge, and others of their set long since passed away. As they
talked on in rather low tones, I saw the two old poets take hands more
than once at the mention of dead and beloved names. I recollect they had
a good deal of fine talk over the great singers whose voices had
delighted them in bygone days; speaking with rapture of Pasta, whose
tones in opera they thought incomparably the grandest musical utterances
they had ever heard. Procter's tribute in verse to this
"Queen and wonder of the enchanted world of sound"
is one of his best lyrics, and never was singer more divinely
complimented by poet. At the dinner I am describing he declared that she
walked on the stage like an empress, "and when she sang," said he, "I
held my breath." Leigh Hunt, in one of his letters to Procter in 1831,
says: "As to Pasta, I love her, for she makes the ground firm under my
feet, and the sky blue over my head."
I cannot remember all the good things I heard that day, but some of
them live in my recollection still. Hunt quoted Hartley Coleridge, who
said, "No boy ever imagined himself a poet while he was reading
Shakespeare or Milton." And speaking of Landor's oaths, he said, "They
are so rich, they are really nutritious." Talking of criticism, he said
he did not believe in spiteful imps, but in kindly elves who would "nod
to him and do him courtesies." He laughed at Bishop Berkeley's attempt
to destroy the world in one octavo volume. His doctrine to mankind
always was, "Enlarge your tastes, that you may enlarge your hearts." He
believed in reversing original propensities by education,--as
Spallanzani brought up eagles on bread and milk, and fed doves on raw
meat. "Don't let us demand too much of human nature," was a line in his
creed; and he believed in Hood's advice, that gentleness in a case of
wrong direction is always better than vituperation.
"Mid light, and by degrees, should be the plan
To cure the dark and erring mind;
But who would rush at a benighted man
And give him two black eyes for being blind?"
I recollect there was much converse that day on the love of reading in
old age, and Leigh Hunt observed that Sir Robert Walpole, seeing Mr. Fox
busy in the library at Houghton, said to him: "And you can read! Ah, how
I envy you! I totally neglected the _habit_ of reading when I was young,
and now in my old age I cannot read a single page." Hunt himself was a
man who could be "penetrated by a book." It was inspiring to hear him
dilate over "Plutarch's Morals," and quote passages from that delightful
essay on "The Tranquillity of the Soul." He had such reverence for the
wisdom folded up on his library shelves, he declared that the very
perusal of the _backs of his books_ was "a discipline of humanity."
Whenever and wherever I met this charming person, I learned a lesson of
gentleness and patience; for, steeped to the lips in poverty as he was,
he was ever the most cheerful, the most genial companion and friend. He
never left his good-nature outside the family circle, as a Mussulman
leaves his slippers outside a mosque, but he always brought a smiling
face into the house with him. T---- A----, whose fine floating wit has
never yet quite condensed itself into a star, said one day of a Boston
man that he was "east-wind made flesh." Leigh Hunt was exactly the
opposite of this; he was compact of all the spicy breezes that blow. In
his bare cottage at Hammersmith the temperament of his fine spirit
heaped up such riches of fancy that kings, if wise ones, might envy his
magic power.
"Onward in faith, and leave the rest to Heaven,"
was a line he often quoted. There was about him such a modest fortitude
in want and poverty, such an inborn mental superiority to low and
uncomfortable circumstances, that he rose without effort into a region
encompassed with felicities, untroubled by a care or sorrow. He always
reminded me of that favorite child of the genii who carried an amulet in
his bosom by which all the gold and jewels of the Sultan's halls were no
sooner beheld than they became his own. If he sat down companionless to
a solitary chop, his imagination transformed it straightway into a fine
shoulder of mutton. When he looked out of his dingy old windows on the
four bleak elms in front of his dwelling, he saw, or thought he saw, a
vast forest, and he could hear in the note of one poor sparrow even the
silvery voices of a hundred nightingales. Such a man might often be cold
and hungry, but he had the wit never to be aware of it.
Hunt's love for Procter was deep and tender, and in one of his notes to
me he says, referring to the meeting my memory has been trying to
describe, "I have reasons for liking our dear friend Procter's wine
beyond what you saw when we dined together at his table the other day."
Procter prefixed a memoir of the life and writings of Ben Jonson to the
great dramatist's works printed by Moxon in 1838. I happen to be the
lucky owner of a copy of this edition that once belonged to Leigh Hunt,
who has enriched it and perfumed the pages, as it were, by his
annotations. The memoir abounds in felicities of expression, and is the
best brief chronicle yet made of rare Ben and his poetry. Leigh Hunt has
filled the margins with his own neat handwriting, and as I turn over the
leaves, thus companioned, I seem to meet those two loving brothers in
modern song, and have again the benefit of their sweet society,--a
society redolent of
"The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,
And all the sweet serenity of books."
I shall not soon forget the first morning I walked with Procter and
Kenyon to the famous house No 22 St. James Place, overlooking the Green
Park, to a breakfast with Samuel Rogers. Mixed up with this matutinal
rite was much that belongs to the modern literary and political history
of England. Fox, Burke, Talleyrand, Grattan, Walter Scott, and many
other great ones have sat there and held converse on divers matters with
the banker-poet. For more than half a century the wits and the wise men
honored that unpretending mansion with their presence. On my way thither
for the first time my companions related anecdote after anecdote of the
"ancient bard," as they called our host, telling me also how all his
life long the poet of Memory had been giving substantial aid to poor
authors; how he had befriended Sheridan, and how good he had been to
Campbell in his sorest needs. Intellectual or artistic excellence was a
sure passport to his _salon_, and his door never turned on reluctant
hinges to admit the unfriended man of letters who needed his aid and
counsel.
We arrived in quite an expectant mood, to find our host already seated
at the head of his table, and his good man Edmund standing behind his
chair. As we entered the room, and I saw Rogers sitting there so
venerable and strange, I was reminded of that line of Wordsworth's,
"The oldest man he seemed that ever wore gray hair."
But old as he was, he seemed full of _verve_, vivacity, and decision.
Knowing his homage for Ben Franklin, I had brought to him as a gift from
America an old volume issued by the patriot printer in 1741. He was
delighted with my little present, and began at once to say how much he
thought of Franklin's prose. He considered the style admirable, and
declared that it might be studied now for improvement in the art of
composition. One of the guests that morning was the Rev. Alexander Dyce,
the scholarly editor of Beaumont and Fletcher, and he very soon drew
Rogers out on the subject of Warren Hastings's trial. It seemed ghostly
enough to hear that famous event depicted by one who sat in the great
hall of William Rufus; who day after day had looked on and listened to
the eloquence of Fox and Sheridan; who had heard Edmund Burke raise his
voice till the old arches of Irish oak resounded, and impeach Warren
Hastings, "in the name of both sexes, in the name of every age, in the
name of every rank, as the common enemy and oppressor of all." It
thrilled me to hear Rogers say, "As I walked up Parliament Street with
Mrs. Siddons, after hearing Sheridan's great speech, we both agreed that
never before could human lips have uttered more eloquent words." That
morning Rogers described to us the appearance of Grattan as he first
saw and heard him when he made his first speech in Parliament. "Some of
us were inclined to laugh," said he, "at the orator's Irish brogue when
he began his speech that day, but after he had been on his legs five
minutes nobody dared to laugh any more." Then followed personal
anecdotes of Madame De Stael, the Duke of Wellington, Walter Scott, Tom
Moore, and Sydney Smith, all exquisitely told. Both our host and his
friend Procter had known or entertained most of the celebrities of their
day. Procter soon led the conversation up to matters connected with the
stage, and thinking of John Kemble and Edmund Kean, I ventured to ask
Rogers who of all the great actors he had seen bore away the palm. "I
have looked upon a magnificent procession of them," he said, "in my
time, and I never saw any one superior to _David Garrick_." He then
repeated Hannah More's couplet on receiving as a gift from Mrs. Garrick
the shoe-buckles which once belonged to the great actor:--
"Thy buckles, O Garrick, another may use,
but none shall be found who can tread in thy shoes"
We applauded his memory and his manner of reciting the lines, which
seemed to please him. "How much can sometimes be put into an epigram!"
he said to Procter, and asked him if he remembered the lines about Earl
Grey and the Kaffir war. Procter did not recall them, and Rogers set off
again:--
"A dispute has arisen of late at the Cape,
As touching the devil, his color and shape;
While some folks contend that the devil is white,
The others aver that he's black as midnight;
But now't is decided quite right in this way,
And all are convinced that the devil is _Grey_."
We asked him if he remembered the theatrical excitement in London when
Garrick and his troublesome contemporary, Barry, were playing King Lear
at rival houses, and dividing the final opinion of the critics. "Yes,"
said he, "perfectly. I saw both those wonderful actors, and fully agreed
at the time with the admirable epigram that ran like wildfire into every
nook and corner of society." "Did the epigram still live in his memory?"
we asked. The old man seemed looking across the misty valley of time for
a few moments, and then gave it without a pause:--
"The town have chosen different ways
To praise their different Lears;
To Barry they give loud applause,
To Garrick only tears.
"A king! ay, every inch a king,
Such Barry doth appear;
But Garrick's quite another thing,--
He's every inch _King Lear!_"
Among other things which Rogers told us that morning, I remember he had
much to say of Byron's _forgetfulness_ as to all manner of things. As an
evidence of his inaccuracy, Rogers related how the noble bard had once
quoted to him some lines on Venice as Southey's, "which he wanted me to
admire," said Rogers; "and as I wrote them myself, I had no hesitation
in doing so. The lines are in my poem on Italy, and begin,
"'There is a glorious city in the sea.'"
Samuel Lawrence had recently painted in oils a portrait of Rogers, and
we asked to see it; so Edmund was sent up stairs to get it, and bring it
to the table. Rogers himself wished to compare it with his own face, and
had a looking-glass held before him. We sat by in silence as he regarded
the picture attentively, and waited for his criticism. Soon he burst out
with, "Is my nose so d----y sharp as that?" We all exclaimed, "No! no!
the artist is at fault there, sir." "I thought so," he cried; "he has
painted the face of a dead man, d--n him!" Some one said, "The portrait
is too hard." "I won't be painted as a hard man," rejoined Rogers. "I am
not a hard man, am I, Procter?" asked the old poet. Procter deprecated
with energy such an idea as that. Looking at the portrait again, Rogers
said, with great feeling, "Children would run away from that face, and
they never ran away from me!" Notwithstanding all he had to say against
the portrait, I thought it a wonderful likeness, and a painting of great
value. Moxon, the publisher, who was present, asked for a certain
portfolio of engraved heads which had been made from time to time of
Rogers, and this was brought and opened for our examination of its
contents. Rogers insisted upon looking over the portraits, and he amused
us by his cutting comments on each one as it came out of the portfolio.
"This," said he, holding one up, "is the head of a cunning fellow, and
this the face of a debauched clergyman, and this the visage of a
shameless drunkard!" After a comic discussion of the pictures of
himself, which went on for half an hour, he said, "It is time to change
the topic, and set aside the little man for a very great one. Bring me
my collection of Washington portraits." These were brought in, and he
had much to say of American matters. He remembered being told, when a
boy, by his father one day, that "a fight had recently occurred at a
place called Bunker Hill, in America." He then inquired about Webster
and the monument. He had met Webster in England, and greatly admired
him. Now and then his memory was at fault, and he spoke occasionally of
events as still existing which had happened half a century before. I
remember what a shock it gave me when he asked me if Alexander Hamilton
had printed any new pamphlets lately, and begged me to send him anything
that distinguished man might publish after I got home to America.
I recollect how delighted I was when Rogers sent me an invitation the
second time to breakfast with him. On that occasion the poet spoke of
being in Paris on a pleasure-tour with Daniel Webster, and he grew
eloquent over the great American orator's genius. He also referred with
enthusiasm to Bryant's poetry, and quoted with deep feeling the first
three verses of "The Future Life." When he pronounced the lines:--
"My name on earth was ever in thy prayer,
And must thou never utter it in heaven?"
his voice trembled, and he faltered out, "I cannot go on: there is
something in that poem which breaks me down, and I must never try again
to recite verses so full of tenderness and undying love."
For Longfellow's poems, then just published in England, he expressed the
warmest admiration, and thought the author of "Voices of the Night" one
of the most perfect artists in English verse who had ever lived.
Rogers's reminiscences of Holland House that morning were a series of
delightful pictures painted by an artist who left out none of the
salient features, but gave to everything he touched a graphic reality.
In his narrations the eloquent men, the fine ladies, he had seen there
assembled again around their noble host and hostess, and one listened in
the pleasant breakfast-room in St. James Place to the wit and wisdom of
that brilliant company which met fifty years ago in the great _salon_ of
that princely mansion, which will always be famous in the literary and
political history of England.
Rogers talked that morning with inimitable finish and grace of
expression. A light seemed to play over his faded features when he
recalled some happy past experience, and his eye would sometimes fill as
he glanced back among his kindred, all now dead save one, his sister,
who also lived to a great age. His head was very fine, and I never
could quite understand the satirical sayings about his personal
appearance which have crept into the literary gossip of his time. He was
by no means the vivacious spectre some of his contemporaries have
represented him, and I never thought of connecting him with that
terrible line in "The Mirror of Magistrates,"--
"His withered fist still striking at Death's door."
His dome of brain was one of the amplest and most perfectly shaped I
ever saw, and his countenance was very far from unpleasant. His
faculties to enjoy had not perished with age. He certainly looked like a
well-seasoned author, but not dropping to pieces yet. His turn of
thought was characteristic, and in the main just, for he loved the best,
and was naturally impatient of what was low and mean in conduct and
intellect. He had always lived in an atmosphere of art, and his
reminiscences of painters and sculptors were never wearisome or dull. He
had a store of pleasant anecdotes of Chantrey, whom he had employed as a
wood-carver long before he became a modeller in clay; and he had also
much to tell us of Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose lectures he had attended,
and whose studio-talk had been familiar to him while he was a young man
and studying art himself as an amateur. It was impossible almost to make
Rogers seem a real being as we used to surround his table during those
mornings and sometimes deep into the afternoons. We were listening to
one who had talked with Boswell about Dr. Johnson; who had sat hours
with Mrs. Piozzi; who read the "Vicar of Wakefield" the day it was
published; who had heard Haydn, the composer, playing at a concert,
"dressed out with a sword"; who had listened to Talleyrand's best
sayings from his own lips; who had seen John Wesley lying dead in his
coffin, "an old man, with the countenance of a little child"; who had
been with Beckford at Fonthill; who had seen Porson slink back into the
dining-room after the company had left it and drain what was left in the
wineglasses; who had crossed the Apennines with Byron; who had seen Beau
Nash in the height of his career dancing minuets at Bath; who had known
Lady Hamilton in her days of beauty, and seen her often with Lord
Nelson; who was in Fox's room when that great man lay dying; and who
could describe Pitt from personal observation, speaking always as if his
mouth was "full of worsted." It was unreal as a dream to sit there in
St. James Place and hear that old man talk by the hour of what one had
been reading about all one's life. One thing, I must confess, somewhat
shocked me,--I was not prepared for the feeble manner in which some of
Rogers's best stories were received by the gentlemen who had gathered at
his table on those Tuesday mornings. But when Procter told me in
explanation afterward that they had all "heard the same anecdotes every
week, perhaps, for half a century from the same lips," I no longer
wondered at the seeming apathy I had witnessed. It was a great treat to
me, however, the talk I heard at Rogers's hospitable table, and my three
visits there cannot be erased from the pleasantest tablets of memory.
There is only one regret connected with them, but that loss still haunts
me. On one of those memorable mornings I was obliged to leave earlier
than the rest of the company on account of an engagement out of London,
and Lady Beecher (formerly Miss O'Neil), the great actress of other
days, came in and read an hour to the old poet and his guests. Procter
told me afterward that among other things she read, at Rogers's request,
the 14th chapter of Isaiah, and that her voice and manner seemed like
inspiration.
Seeing and talking with Rogers was, indeed, like living in the past:
and one may imagine how weird it seemed to a raw Yankee youth, thus
facing the man who might have shaken hands with Dr. Johnson. I ventured
to ask him one day if he had ever seen the doctor. "No," said he; "but I
went down to Bolt Court in 1782 with the intention of making Dr.
Johnson's acquaintance. I raised the knocker tremblingly, and hearing
the shuffling footsteps as of an old man in the entry, my heart failed
me, and I put down the knocker softly again, and crept back into Fleet
Street without seeing the vision I was not bold enough to encounter." I
thought it was something to have heard the footsteps of old Sam Johnson
stirring about in that ancient entry, and for my own part I was glad to
look upon the man whose ears had been so strangely privileged.
Rogers drew about him all the musical as well as the literary talent of
London. Grisi and Jenny Lind often came of a morning to sing their best
_arias_ to him when he became too old to attend the opera; and both
Adelaide and Fanny Kemble brought to him frequently the rich tributes of
their genius in art.
It was my good fortune, through the friendship of Procter, to make the
acquaintance, at Rogers's table, of Leslie, the artist,--a warm friend
of the old poet,--and to be taken round by him and shown all the
principal private galleries in London. He first drew my attention to the
pictures by Constable, and pointed out their quiet beauty to my
uneducated eye, thus instructing me to hate all those intemperate
landscapes and lurid compositions which abound in the shambles of modern
art. In the company of Leslie I saw my first Titians and Vandycks, and
felt, as Northcote says, on my good behavior in the presence of
portraits so lifelike and inspiring. It was Leslie who inoculated me
with a love of Gainsborough, before whose perfect pictures a spectator
involuntarily raises his hat and stands uncovered. (And just here let
me advise every art lover who goes to England to visit the little
Dulwich Gallery, only a few miles from London, and there to spend an
hour or two among the exquisite Gainsboroughs. No small collection in
Europe is better worth a visit, and the place itself in summer-time is
enchanting with greenery.)
As Rogers's dining-room abounded in only first-rate works of art, Leslie
used to take round the guests and make us admire the Raphaels and
Correggios. Inserted in the walls on each side of the mantel-piece, like
tiles, were several of Turner's original oil and water-color drawings,
which that supreme artist had designed to illustrate Rogers's "Poems"
and "Italy." Long before Ruskin made those sketches world-famous in his
"Modern Painters," I have heard Leslie point out their beauties with as
fine an enthusiasm. He used to say that they purified the whole
atmosphere round St. James Place!
Procter had a genuine regard for Count d'Orsay, and he pointed him out
to me one day sitting in the window of his club, near Gore House,
looking out on Piccadilly. The count seemed a little past his prime, but
was still the handsomest man in London. Procter described him as a
brilliant person, of special ability, and by no means a mere dandy.
I first saw Procter's friend, John Forster, the biographer of Goldsmith
and Dickens, in his pleasant rooms, No. 58 Lincoln's Inn Fields. He was
then in his prime, and looked brimful of energy. His age might have been
forty, or a trifle onward from that mile-stone, and his whole manner
announced a determination to assert that nobody need prompt _him_. His
voice rang loud and clear, up stairs and down, everywhere throughout his
premises. When he walked over the uncarpeted floor, you _heard_ him
walk, and he meant you should. When _he_ spoke, nobody required an
ear-trumpet; the deaf never lost a syllable of his manly utterances.
Procter and he were in the same Commission, and were on excellent terms,
the younger officer always regarding the elder with a kind of leonine
deference.
It was to John Forster these charming lines were addressed by Barry
Cornwall, when the poet sent his old friend a present of Shakespeare's
Works. A more exquisite compliment was never conveyed in verse so modest
and so perfect in simple grace:--
"I do not know a man who better reads
Or weighs the great thoughts of the book I send,--
Better than he whom I have called my friend
For twenty years and upwards. He who feeds
Upon Shakesperian pastures never needs
The humbler food which springs from plains below;
Yet may he love the little flowers that blow,
And him excuse who for their beauty pleads.
"Take then my Shakespeare to some sylvan nook;
And pray thee, in the name of Days of old,
Good-will and friendship, never bought or sold,
Give me assurance thou wilt always look
With kindness still on Spirits of humbler mould;
Kept firm by resting on that wondrous book,
Wherein the Dream of Life is all unrolled."
Forster's library was filled with treasures, and he brought to the
dinner-table, the day I was first with him, such rare and costly
manuscripts and annotated volumes to show us, that one's appetite for
"made dishes" was quite taken away. The excellent lady whom he afterward
married was one of the guests, and among the gentlemen present I
remember the brilliant author of "The Bachelor of the Albany," a book
that was then the Novel sensation in London. Forster flew from one topic
to another with admirable skill, and entertained us with anecdotes of
Wellington and Rogers, gilding the time with capital imitations of his
celebrated contemporaries in literature and on the stage. A touch about
Edmund Kean made us all start from our chairs and demand a mimetic
repetition. Forster must have been an excellent private actor, for he
had power and skill quite exceptional in that way. His force carried him
along wherever he chose to go, and when he played "Kitely," his ability
must have been strikingly apparent. After his marriage, and when he
removed from Lincoln's Inn to his fine residence at "Palace-Gate House,"
he gave frequent readings, evincing remarkable natural and acquired
talents. For Dickens he had a love amounting to jealousy. He never quite
relished anybody else whom the great novelist had a fondness for, and I
have heard droll stories touching this weakness. For Professor Felton he
had unbounded regard, which had grown up by correspondence and through
report from Dickens. He had never met Felton, and when the professor
arrived in London, Dickens, with his love of fun, arranged a bit of
cajolery, which was never quite forgotten, though wholly forgiven.
Knowing how highly Forster esteemed Felton, through his writings and his
letters, Dickens resolved to take Felton at once to Forster's house and
introduce him as _Professor Stowe_, the _port_ of both these gentlemen
being pretty nearly equal. The Stowes were then in England on their
triumphant tour, and this made the attempt at deception an easy one. So,
Felton being in the secret, he and Dickens proceed to Forster's house
and are shown in. Down comes Forster into the library, and is presented
forthwith to "_Professor Stowe_." "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is at once
referred to, and the talk goes on in that direction for some time. At
last both Dickens and Felton fell into such a paroxysm of laughter at
Forster's dogged determination to be complimentary to the world-renowned
novel, that they could no longer hold out; and Forster, becoming almost
insane with wonder at the hilarious conduct of his two visitors,
Dickens revealed their wickedness, and a right jolty day the happy trio
made of it.
Talfourd informs us that Forster had become to Charles Lamb as one of
his oldest companions, and that Mary also cherished a strong regard for
him. It is surely a proof of his admirable qualities that the love of so
many of England's best and greatest was secured to him by so lasting a
tenure. To have the friendship of Landor, Dickens, and Procter through
long years; to have Carlyle for a constant votary, and to be mourned by
him with an abiding sorrow,--these are no slight tributes to purity of
purpose.
Forster had that genuine sympathy with men of letters which entitled him
to be their biographer, and all his works in that department have a
special charm, habitually gained only by a subtle and earnest intellect.
It is a singular coincidence that the writers of two of the most
brilliant records of travel of their time should have been law students
in Barry Cornwall's office. Kinglake, the author of "Eothen," and
Warburton, the author of "The Crescent and the Cross," were at one
period both engaged as pupils in their profession under the guidance of
Mr. Procter. He frequently spoke with pride of his two law students, and
when Warburton perished at sea, his grief for his brilliant friend was
deep and abiding. Kinglake's later literary fame was always a pleasure
to the historian's old master, and no one in England loved better to
point out the fine passages in the "History of the Invasion of the
Crimea" than the old poet in Weymouth Street.
"Blackwood" and the "Quarterly Review" railed at Procter and his author
friends for a long period; but how true is the saying of Macaulay, "that
the place of books in the public estimation is fixed, not by what is
written _about_ them, but by what is written in them!" No man was more
decried in his day than Procter's friend, William Hazlitt. The poet had
for the critic a genuine admiration; and I have heard him dilate with a
kind of rapture over the critic's fine sayings, quoting abundant
passages from the essays. Procter would never hear any disparagement of
his friend's ability and keenness. I recall his earnest but restrained
indignation one day, when some person compared Hazlitt with a diffusive
modern writer of notes on the theatre, and I remember with what
contempt, in his sweet forgivable way, the old man spoke of much that
passes nowadays for criticism. He said Hazlitt was exactly the opposite
of Lord Chesterfield, who advised his son, if he could not get at a
thing in a straight line, to try the serpentine one. There were no
crooked pathways in Hazlitt's intellect. His style is brilliant, but
never cloyed with ornamentation. Hazlitt's paper on Gifford was thought
by Procter to be as pungent a bit of writing as had appeared in his day,
and he quoted this paragraph as a sample of its biting justice: "Mr.
Gifford is admirably qualified for the situation he has held for many
years as editor of the 'Quarterly' by a happy combination of defects,
natural and acquired." In one of his letters to me Procter writes, "I
despair of the age that has forgotten to read Hazlitt."
Procter was a delightful prose writer, as well as a charming poet.
Having met in old magazines and annuals several of his essays and
stories, and admiring their style and spirit, I induced him, after much
persuasion, to collect and publish in America his prose works. The
result was a couple of volumes, which were brought out in Boston in
1853. In them there are perhaps no "thoughts that wander through
eternity," but they abound in fancies which the reader will recognize as
agile
"Daughters of the earth and sun."
In them there is nothing loud or painful, and whoever really loves "a
good book," and knows it to be such on trial, will find Barry Cornwall's
"Essays and Tales in Prose" most delectable reading. "Imparadised," as
Milton hath the word, on a summer hillside, or tented by the cool salt
wave, no better afternoon literature can be selected. One will never
meet with distorted metaphor or tawdry rhetoric in Barry's thoughtful
pages, but will find a calm philosophy and a beautiful faith, very
precious and profitable in these days of doubt and insecurity of
intellect. There is a respite and a sympathy in this fine spirit, and so
I commend him heartily in times so full of turmoil and suspicion as
these. One of the stories in the first volume of these prose writings,
called "The Man-Hunter," is quite equal in power to any of the graphic
pieces of a similar character ever written by De Quincey or Dickens, but
the tone in these books is commonly more tender and inclining to
melancholy. What, for instance, could be more heart-moving than these
passages of his on the death of little children?
"I scarcely know how it is, but the deaths of children seem to me
always less premature than those of elder persons. Not that they are
in fact so; but it is because they themselves have little or no
relation to time or maturity. Life seems a race which they have yet
to run entirely. They have made no progress toward the goal. They
are born--nothing further. But it seems hard, when a man has toiled
high up the steep hill of knowledge, that he should be cast like
Sisyphus, downward in a moment; that he who has worn the day and
wasted the night in gathering the gold of science should be, with
all his wealth of learning, all his accumulations, made bankrupt at
once. What becomes of all the riches of the soul, the piles and
pyramids of precious thoughts which men heap together? Where are
Shakespeare's imagination, Bacon's learning, Galileo's dream? Where
is the sweet fancy of Sidney, the airy spirit of Fletcher, and
Milton's thought severe? Methinks such things should not die and
dissipate, when a hair can live for centuries, and a brick of Egypt
will last three thousand years! I am content to believe that the
mind of man survives (somewhere or other) his clay.
"I was once present at the death of a little child. I will not pain
the reader by portraying its agonies; but when its breath was gone,
its _life_, (nothing more than a cloud of smoke!) and it lay like a
waxen image before me, I turned my eyes to its moaning mother, and
sighed out my few words of comfort. But I am a beggar in grief. I
can feel and sigh and look kindly, I think; but I have nothing to
give. My tongue deserts me. I know the inutility of too soon
comforting. I know that _I_ should weep were I the loser, and I let
the tears have their way. Sometimes a word or two I can muster: a
'Sigh no more!' and 'Dear lady, do not grieve!' but further I am
mute and useless."
I have many letters and kind little notes which Procter used to write me
during the years I knew him best. His tricksy fancies peeped out in his
correspondence, and several of his old friends in England thought no
literary man of his time had a better epistolary style. His neat elegant
chirography on the back of a letter was always a delightful foretaste of
something good inside, and I never received one of his welcome missives
that did not contain, no matter how brief it happened to be, welcome
passages of wit or affectionate interest.