WITH THE WITS.
The ten years of the Thirties are a period concerning whose literary
history the ordinary reader knows next to nothing. Yet a good deal
that has survived for fifty years, and promises to live longer, was
accomplished in that period. Dickens, for example, began his career
in the year 1837 with his ‘Sketches by “Boz”’ and the ‘Pickwick
Papers;’ Lord Lytton, then Mr. Lytton Bulwer, had already before that
year published five novels, including ‘Paul Clifford’ and ‘The Last
Days of Pompeii.’ Tennyson had already issued the ‘Poems, by Two
Brothers,’ and ‘Poems chiefly Lyrical.’ Disraeli had written ‘The
Young Duke,’ ‘Vivian Grey,’ and ‘Venetia.’ Browning had published
‘Paracelsus’ and ‘Strafford;’ Marryat began in 1834; Carlyle published
the ‘Sartor Resartus’ in 1832. But one must not estimate a period by
its beginners. All these writers belong to the following thirty years
of the century. If we look for those who were flourishing--that is,
those who were producing their best work--it will be found that this
decade was singularly poor. The principal name is that of Hood. There
were also Hartley Coleridge, Douglas Jerrold, Procter, Sir Archibald
Alison, Theodore Hook, G. P. R. James, Charles Knight, Sir Henry
Taylor, Milman, Ebenezer Elliott, Harriet Martineau, James Montgomery,
Talfourd, Henry Brougham, Lady Blessington, Harrison Ainsworth, and
some others of lesser note. This is not a very imposing array. On the
other hand, nearly all the great writers whom we associate with the
first thirty years of the century were living, though their best work
was done. After sixty, I take it, the hand of the master may still
work with the old cunning, but his designs will be no longer new or
bold. Wordsworth was sixty in 1830, and, though he lived for twenty
years longer, and published the ‘Yarrow Revisited,’ and, I think, some
of his ‘Sonnets,’ he hardly added to his fame. Southey was four years
younger. He published his ‘Doctor’ and ‘Essays’ in this decade, but
his best work was done already. Scott died in 1832; Coleridge died in
1834; Byron was already dead; James Hogg died in 1835; Felicia Hemans
in the same year; Tom Moore was a gay young fellow of fifty in 1830,
the year in which his life of Lord Byron appeared. He did very little
afterwards. Campbell was two years older than Moore, and he, too,
had exhausted himself. Rogers, older than any of them, had entirely
concluded his poetic career. It is wonderful to think that he began
to write in 1783 and died in 1855. Beckford, whose ‘Vathek’ appeared
in 1786, was living until 1844. Among others who were still living
in 1837 were James and Horace Smith, Wilson Croker, Miss Edgeworth,
Mrs. Trollope, Lucy Aikin, Miss Opie (who lived to be eighty-five),
Jane Porter (prematurely cut off at seventy-four), and Harriet Lee
(whose immortal work, the ‘Errors of Innocence,’ appeared in 1786, when
she was already thirty) lived on till 1852, when she was ninety-six.
Bowles, that excellent man, was not yet seventy, and meant to live for
twenty years longer. De Quincey was fifty-two in 1837, Christopher
North was in full vigour, Thomas Love Peacock, who published his first
novel in 1810, was destined to produce a last, equally good, in 1860;
Landor, born in 1775, was not to die until 1864; Leigh Hunt, who in
1837 was fifty-three years of age, belongs to the time of Byron. John
Keble, whose ‘Christian Year’ was published in 1827, was forty-four in
1837; ‘L. E. L.’ died in 1838. In America, Washington Irving, Emerson,
Channing, Bryant, Whittier, and Longfellow, make a good group. In
France, Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Béranger, Alfred de
Musset, Scribe, and Dumas were all writing, a group much stronger than
our English team.
[Illustration: CHARLES KNIGHT
(From a Photograph by Hughes & Mullins, Regina House, Ryde, Isle of
Wight)]
[Illustration: Wm Wordsworth
-WILLIAM WORDSWORTH-]
[Illustration: ROBERT SOUTHEY]
[Illustration: THOMAS MOORE]
[Illustration: Wm. L. Bowles
-REV. WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES-]
[Illustration: ‘VATHEK’ BECKFORD
(From a Medallion)]
It is difficult to understand, at first, that between the time of
Scott, Wordsworth, Byron, and Keats, and that of Dickens, Thackeray,
Marryat, Lever, Tennyson, Browning, and Carlyle, there existed this
generation of wits, most of them almost forgotten. Those, however,
who consider the men and women of the Thirties have to deal, for the
most part, with a literature that is third-rate. This kind becomes
dreadfully flat and stale when it has been out for fifty years; the
dullest, flattest, dreariest reading that can be found on the shelves
in the sprightly novel of Society, written in the Thirties.
[Illustration: WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
(From a Photograph by H. Watkins)]
[Illustration: Béranger
-PIERRE-JEAN de BÉRANGER-]
[Illustration: RALPH WALDO EMERSON]
[Illustration: LORD BYRON]
[Illustration: James Hogg
-JAMES HOGG-]
A blight had fallen upon novels and their writers. The enormous success
that Scott had achieved tempted hundreds to follow in his path, if
that were possible. It was not possible; but this they could not know,
because nothing seems so easy to write as a novel, and no man, of
those destined to fail, can understand in what respects his own work
falls short of Scott’s. That is the chief reason why he fails. Scott’s
success, however, produced another effect. It greatly enlarged the
number of novel readers, and caused them to buy up eagerly anything
new, in the hope of finding another Scott. Thus, about the year 1826
there were produced as many as 250 three- and four-volume novels a
year--that is to say, about as many as were published in 1886, when
the area of readers has been multiplied by ten. We are also told that
nearly all these novels could command a sale of 750 to 1,000 each,
while anything above the average would have a sale of 1,500 to 2,000.
The usual price given for these novels was, we are also told, from
200_l._ to 300_l._ In that case the publishers must have had a happy
and a prosperous time, netting splendid hauls. But I think that we must
take these figures with considerable deductions. There were, as yet,
no circulating libraries of any importance; their place was supplied
by book-clubs, to which the publishers chiefly looked for the purchase
of their books. But one cannot believe that the book-clubs would take
copies of all the rubbish that came out. Some of these novels I have
read; some of them actually stand on my shelves; and I declare that
anything more dreary and unprofitable it is difficult to imagine. At
last there was a revolt: the public would stand this kind of stuff
no longer. Down dropped the circulation of the novels. Instead of
2,000 copies subscribed, the dismayed publisher now read 50, and the
whole host of novelists vanished like a swarm of midges. At the same
time poetry went down too. The drop in poetry was even more terrible
than that of novels. Suddenly, and without any warning, the people
of Great Britain left off reading poetry. To be sure, they had been
flooded with a prodigious quantity of trash. One anonymous ‘popular
poet,’ whose name will never now be recovered, received 100_l._ for his
last poem from a publisher who thought, no doubt, that the ‘boom’
was going to last. Of this popular poet’s work he sold exactly fifty
copies. Another, a ‘humorous’ bard, who also received a large sum for
his immortal poem, showed in the unhappy publisher’s books no more
than eighteen copies sold. This was too ridiculous, and from that day
to this the trade side of poetry has remained under a cloud. That of
novelist has, fortunately for some, been redeemed from contempt by the
enormous success of Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, and by the solid,
though substantial, success of the lesser lights. Poets have now to
pay for the publication of their own works, but novelists--some of
them--command a price; those, namely, who do not have to pay for the
production of their works.
[Illustration: SIR WALTER SCOTT]
The popular taste, thus cloyed with novels and poetry, turned to books
on popular science, on statistics, on health, and on travel. Barry
Cornwall’s ‘Life of Kean,’ Campbell’s ‘Life of Siddons,’ the Lives
of Sale, Sir Thomas Picton, and Lord Exmouth, for example, were all
well received. So Ross’s ‘Arctic Seas,’ Lamartine’s ‘Pilgrimage,’
Macfarlane’s ‘Travels in the East,’ Holman’s ‘Round the World,’ and
Quin’s ‘Voyage down the Danube,’ all commanded a sale of 1,000 copies
each at least. Works of religion, of course, always succeed, if they
are written with due regard to the religious leaning of the moment. It
shows how religious fashions change when we find that the copyright
of the works of Robert Hall realised 4,000_l._ and that of Charles
Simeon’s books 5,000_l._; while of the Rev. Alexander Fletcher’s ‘Book
of Family Devotions,’ published at 24_s._, 2,000 copies were sold on
the day of publication. I dare say the same thing would happen again
to-day if another Mr. Fletcher were to hit upon another happy thought
in the way of a religious book.
[Illustration: REGINA’S MAIDS OF HONOUR.]
I think that one of the causes of the decay of trade as regards
poetry and fiction may have been the badness of the annuals. You
will find in any old-fashioned library copies of the ‘Keepsake,’
the ‘Forget-me-Not,’ the ‘Book of Beauty,’ ‘Flowers of Loveliness,’
Finden’s ‘Tableaux,’ ‘The Book of Gems,’ and others of that now extinct
tribe. They were beautifully printed on the finest paper; they
were illustrated with the most lovely steel engravings, the like of
which could not now be had at any price; they were bound in brown and
crimson watered silk, most fascinating to look upon; and they were
published at a guinea. As for their contents, they were, to begin
with, written almost entirely by ladies and gentlemen with handles to
their names, each number containing in addition two or three papers by
commoners--mere literary commoners--just to give a flavouring of style.
In the early Thirties it was fashionable for lords and ladies to dash
off these trifles. Byron was a gentleman; Shelley was a gentleman;
nobody else, to be sure, among the poets and wits was a gentleman--yet
if Byron and Shelley condescended to bid for fame and bays, why not
Lord Reculver, Lady Juliet de Dagenham, or the Hon. Lara Clonsilla? I
have before me the ‘Keepsake’ for the year 1831. Among the authors are
Lord Morpeth, Lord Nugent, Lord Porchester, Lord John Russell, the Hon.
George Agar Ellis, the Hon. Henry Liddell, the Hon. Charles Phipps, the
Hon. Robert Craddock, and the Hon. Grantley Berkeley. Among the ladies
are the Countess of Blessington, ‘L. E. L.,’ and Agnes Strickland.
Theodore Hook supplies the professional part. The illustrations are
engraved from pictures and drawings by Eastlake, Corbould, Westall,
Turner, Smirke, Flaxman, and other great artists. The result, from the
literary point of view, is a collection much lower in point of interest
and ability than the worst number of the worst shilling magazine of the
present day. I venture to extract certain immortal lines contributed
by Lord John Russell, who is not generally known as a poet. They are
‘written at Kinneil, the residence of the late Mr. Dugald Stewart.’
[Illustration: A FASHIONABLE BEAUTY OF 1837
(By A. E. Chalon, R.A.)]
To distant worlds a guide amid the night,
To nearer orbs the source of life and light;
Each star resplendent on its radiant throne
Gilds other systems and supports its own.
Thus we see Stewart, in his fame reclined,
Enlighten all the universe of mind;
To some for wonder, some for joy appear,
Admired when distant and beloved when near.
’Twas he gave rules to Fancy, grace to Thought,
Taught Virtue’s laws, and practised what he taught.
Dear me! Something similar to the last line one remembers written by an
earlier bard. In the same way Terence has been accused of imitating the
old Eton Latin Grammar.
[Illustration: Harriet Martineau
-HARRIET MARTINEAU-]
Somewhere about the year 1837 the world began to kick at the
‘Keepsakes,’ and they gradually got extinguished. Then the lords and
the countesses put away their verses and dropped into prose, and, to
the infinite loss of mankind, wrote no more until editors of great
monthlies, anxious to show a list of illustrious names, began to ask
them again.
As for the general literature of the day, there must have been a steady
demand for new works of all kinds, for it was estimated that in 1836
there were no fewer than four thousand persons living by literary work.
Most of them, of course, must have been simple publishers’ hacks.
But seven hundred of them in London were journalists. At the present
day there are said to be in London alone fourteen thousand men and
women who live by writing. And of this number I should think that
thirteen thousand are in some way or other connected with journalism.
Publishers’ hacks still exist--that is to say, the unhappy men who,
without genius or natural aptitude, or the art of writing pleasantly,
are eternally engaged in compiling, stealing, arranging, and putting
together books which may be palmed off upon an uncritical public for
prize books and presents. But they are far fewer in proportion than
they were, and perhaps the next generation may live to see them extinct.
[Illustration: LORD TENNYSON AS A YOUNG MAN
(From the Picture by Sir T. Lawrence)]
What did they write, this regiment of 3,300 _littérateurs_? Novelists,
as we have learned, had fallen upon evil times; poetry was what
it still continues to be, a drug in the market; but there was the
whole range of the sciences, there were morals, theology, education,
travels, biography, history, the literature of Art in all its branches,
archæology, ancient and modern literature, criticism, and a hundred
other things. Yet, making allowance for everything, I cannot but think
that the 3,300 must have had on the whole an idle and unprofitable
time. However, some books of the year may be recorded. First of all, in
the ‘Annual Register’ for 1837 there appears a poem by Alfred Tennyson.
I have copied a portion of it:--
Oh! that ’twere possible,
After long grief and pain,
To find the arms of my true love
Round me once again!
When I was wont to meet her
In the silent woody places
Of the land that gave me birth,
We stood tranced in long embraces,
Mixt with kisses sweeter, sweeter
Than anything on earth.
A shadow flits before me--
Not thee but like to thee.
Ah God! that it were possible
For one short hour to see
The souls we loved that they might tell us
What, and where they be.
It leads me forth at evening,
It lightly winds and steals,
In a cold white robe before me,
When all my spirit reels
At the shouts, the leagues of lights,
And the roaring of the wheels.
* * * * *
Then the broad light glares and beats,
And the sunk eye flits and fleets,
And will not let me be.
I loathe the squares and streets
And the faces that one meets,
Hearts with no love for me.
Always I long to creep
To some still cavern deep,
And to weep and weep and weep
My whole soul out to thee.
[Illustration: W. H. Ainsworth
-WILLIAM HARRISON AINSWORTH-]
Books, indeed, there were in plenty. Lady Blessington produced her
‘Victims of Society’ and ‘Sunday at the Zoo;’ Mr. Lytton Bulwer
his ‘Duchesse de la Vallière,’ ‘Ernest Maltravers,’ and ‘Athens,
its Rise and Fall;’ Miss Mitford her ‘Country Stories;’ Cottle his
‘Recollections of Coleridge;’ Harrison Ainsworth, ‘Crichton;’ Disraeli,
‘Venetia;’ Talfourd, ‘The Life and Letters of Charles Lamb;’ Babbage,
a ‘Bridgwater Treatise;’ Hook, ‘Jack Brag;’ Haynes Bayley, his ‘Weeds
of Witchery’--a thing as much forgotten as the weeds in last year’s
garden; James, his ‘Attila’ and ‘Louis XIV.;’ Miss Martineau, her book
on ‘American Society.’ I find, not in the book, which I have not read,
but in a review of it, two stories, which I copy. One is of an American
traveller who had been to Rome, and said of it, ‘Rome is a very fine
city, sir, but its public buildings are out of repair.’ The other is
the following: ‘Few men,’ said the preacher in his sermon, ‘when they
build a house, remember that there must some day be a coffin taken
downstairs.’ ‘Ministers,’ said a lady who had been present, ‘have got
into the strangest way of choosing subjects. True, wide staircases are
a great convenience, but Christian ministers might find better subjects
for their discourses than narrow staircases.’
[Illustration: THE FRASERIANS.]
In addition to the above, Hartley Coleridge wrote the ‘Lives of
Northern Worthies;’ the complete poetical works of Southey appeared--he
himself died at the beginning of 1842; Dion Boucicault produced his
first play, being then fifteen years of age; Carlyle brought out his
‘French Revolution;’ Lockhart his ‘Life of Scott;’ Martin Tupper the
first series of the ‘Proverbial Philosophy;’ Hallam his ‘Literature of
Europe;’ there were the usual travels in Arabia, Armenia, Italy, and
Ireland; with, no doubt, the annual avalanche of sermons, pamphlets,
and the rest. Above all, however, it must be remembered that to this
time belong the ‘Sketches by “Boz”’ (1836) and the ‘Pickwick Papers’
(1837–38). Of the latter, the _Athenæum_ not unwisely remarked that
they were made up of ‘three pounds of Smollett, three ounces of Sterne,
a handful of Hook, a dash of a grammatical Pierce Egan; the incidents
at pleasure, served with an original _sauce piquante_.... We earnestly
hope and trust that nothing we have said will tend to refine Boz.’ One
could hardly expect a critic to be ready at once to acknowledge that
here was a genius, original, totally unlike any of his predecessors,
who knew the great art of drawing from life, and depicting nothing but
what he knew. As for Thackeray, he was still in the chrysalis stage,
though his likeness appears with those of the contributors to _Fraser’s
Magazine_ in the portrait group of Fraserians published in 1839. His
first independently published book, I think, was the ‘Paris Sketch
Book,’ which was not issued until the year 1840.
[Illustration: MATTHEW ARNOLD]
Here, it will be acknowledged, is not a record to be quite ashamed of,
with Carlyle, Talfourd, Hallam, and Dickens to adorn and illustrate
the year. After all, it is a great thing for any year to add one
enduring book to English Literature, and it is a great deal to show
so many works which are still read and remembered. Lytton’s ‘Ernest
Maltravers,’ though not his best novel, is still read by some;
Talfourd’s ‘Charles Lamb’ remains; Disraeli’s ‘Venetia;’ Lockhart’s
‘Life of Scott’ is the best biography of the novelist and poet;
Carlyle’s ‘French Revolution’ shows no sign of being forgotten.
[Illustration: J G Lockhart
-JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART-]
Between the first and the fiftieth years of Victoria’s reign there
arose and flourished and died a new generation of great men. Dickens,
Thackeray, Lytton, in his later and better style; George Eliot, Charles
Reade, George Meredith, Nathaniel Hawthorne, stand in the very front
rank of novelists; in the second line are Charles Kingsley, Mrs.
Gaskell, Lever, Trollope, and a few living men and women. Tennyson,
Browning, Swinburne, Matthew Arnold, are the new poets. Carlyle,
Freeman, Froude, Stubbs, Green, Lecky, Buckle, have founded a new
school of history; Maurice has broadened the old theology; Darwin,
Huxley, Tyndall, Lockyer, and many others have advanced the boundaries
of science; philology has become one of the exact sciences; a great
school of political economy has arisen, flourished, and decayed. As
to the changes that have come upon the literature of the country, the
new points of view, the new creeds, these belong to another chapter.
[Illustration: CHARLES DARWIN]
There has befallen literature of late years a grievous, even an
irreparable blow. It has lost the _salon_. There are no longer _grandes
dames de par le monde_, who attract to their drawing-rooms the leaders
and the lesser lights of literature; there are no longer, so far as I
know, any places at all, even any clubs, which are recognised centres
of literature; there are no longer any houses where one will be sure to
find great talkers, and to hear them talking all night long. There are
no longer any great talkers--that is to say, many men there are who
talk well, but there are no Sydney Smiths or Macaulays, and in houses
where the Sydney Smith of the day would go for his talk, he would not
be encouraged to talk much after midnight. In the same way, there are
clubs, like the Athenæum and the Savile, where men of letters are among
the members, but they do not constitute the members, and they do not
give altogether its tone to the club.
Fifty years ago there were two houses which, each in its own way, were
recognised centres of literature. Every man of letters went to Gore
House, which was open to all; and every man of letters who could get
there went to Holland House.
[Illustration: Saml Rogers
-SAMUEL ROGERS-]
The former establishment was presided over by the Countess of
Blessington, at this time a widow, still young and still attractive,
though beginning to be burdened with the care of an establishment too
expensive for her means. She was the author of a good many novels,
now almost forgotten--it is odd how well one knows the name of Lady
Blessington, and how little is generally known about her history,
literary or personal--and she edited every year one of the ‘Keepsakes’
or ‘Forget-me-Nots.’ From certain indications, the bearing of which her
biographer, Mr. Madden, did not seem to understand, I gather that her
novels did not prove to the publishers the literary success which they
expected, and I also infer--from the fact that she was always changing
them--that a dinner at Gore House and the society of all the wits
after dinner were not always attractions strong enough to loosen
their purse-strings. This lady, whose maiden name was Power, was of
an Irish family, her father being engaged, when he was not shooting
rebels, in unsuccessful trade. Her life was adventurous and also
scandalous. She was married at sixteen to a Captain Farmer, from whom
she speedily separated, and came over to London, where she lived for
some years--her biographer does not explain how she got money--a grass
widow. When Lord Blessington lost his wife, and Mrs. Farmer lost her
husband--the gallant Captain got drunk, and fell out of a window--they
were married, and went abroad travelling in great state, as an English
milor of those days knew how to travel, with a train of half-a-dozen
carriages, his own cook and valet, the Countess’s women, a whole
_batterie de cuisine_, a quantity of furniture, couriers, and footmen,
and his own great carriage. With them went the Count d’Orsay, then
about two-and-twenty, and young Charles Mathews, then about twenty, a
_protégé_ of Lord Blessington, who was a friend and patron of the drama.
[Illustration: HOLLAND HOUSE]
After Lord Blessington died it was arranged that Count d’Orsay should
marry his daughter. But the Count separated from his wife a week or two
after the wedding, and returned to the widow, whom he never afterwards
left, always taking a lodging near her house, and forming part of her
household. The Countess d’Orsay, one need not explain, did not visit
her stepmother at Gore House.
[Illustration: Thomas Moore
-SAMUEL ROGERS-]
Here, however, you would meet Tom Moore, the two Bulwers, Campbell,
Talfourd, James and Horace Smith, Landseer, Theodore Hook, Disraeli
the elder and the younger, Rogers, Washington Irving, N. P. Willis,
Marryat, Macready, Charles Dickens, Albert Smith, Forster, Walter
Savage Landor, and, in short, nearly every one who had made a
reputation, or was likely to make it. Hither came also Prince Louis
Napoleon, in whose fortunate star Count d’Orsay always firmly believed.
The conversation was lively, and the evenings were prolonged. As for
ladies, there were few ladies who went to Gore House. Doubtless they
had their reasons. The outer circle, so to speak, consisted of such men
as Lord Abinger, Lord Durham, Lord Strangford, Lord Porchester, Lord
Nugent, writers and poetasters who contributed their illustrious names
and their beautiful productions to Lady Blessington’s ‘Keepsakes.’
Thackeray was one of the ‘intimates’ at Gore House, and when the
crash came in 1849, and the place was sold up by the creditors, it is
on record that the author of ‘Vanity Fair’ was the only person who
showed emotion. ‘Mr. Thackeray also came,’ wrote the Countess’s valet
to his mistress, who had taken refuge in Paris, ‘and he went away with
tears in his eyes; he is perhaps the only person I have seen really
affected at your departure.’ In 1837 he was twenty-six years of age,
but he had still to wait for twelve years before he was to take his
real place in literature, and even then and until the day of his death
there were many who could not understand his greatness.
As regards Lady Blessington, her morals may have been deplorable, but
there must have been something singularly attractive about her manners
and conversation. It is not by a stupid or an unattractive woman that
such success as hers was attained. Her novels, so far as I have been
able to read them, show no remarkable ability, and her portrait shows
amiability rather than cleverness; yet she must have been both clever
and amiable to get so many clever men around her and to fix them, to
make them come again, come often, and regard her drawing-room and her
society as altogether charming, and to write such verses upon her as
the following:--
Mild Wilberforce, by all beloved,
Once owned this hallowed spot,
Whose zealous eloquence improved
The fettered Negro’s lot,
Yet here still slavery attacks
Whom Blessington invites;
The chains from which he freed the blacks
She rivets on the whites.
The following lines are in another strain, more artificial, with a
false ring, and curiously unlike any style of the present day. They are
by N. P. Willis, who, in his ‘Pencillings,’ describes an evening at
Gore House:--
I gaze upon a face as fair
As ever made a lip of Heaven
Falter amid its music--prayer:
The first-lit star of summer even
Springs scarce so softly on the eye,
Nor grows with watching half so bright,
Nor ’mid its sisters of the sky
So seems of Heaven the dearest light.
Men murmur where that shape is seen;
My youth’s angelic dream was of that face and mien.
Gore House was a place for men; there was more than a touch of Bohemia
in its atmosphere. The fair _châtelaine_ distinctly did not belong to
any noble house, though she was fond of talking of her ancestors; the
constant presence of Count d’Orsay, and the absence of Lady Harriet,
his wife; the coldness of ladies as regards the place; the whispers
and the open talk; these things did not, perhaps, make the house less
delightful, but they placed it outside society.
[Illustration: H. Brougham
-LORD BROUGHAM AND VAUX-]
Holland House, on the other hand, occupied a different position. The
circle was wide and the hospitable doors were open to all who could
procure an introduction; but it was presided over by a lady the
opposite to Lady Blessington in every respect. She ruled as well as
reigned; those who went to Holland House were made to feel her power.
The Princess Marie Liechtenstein, in her book on Holland House, has
given a long list of those who were to be found there between the years
1796 and 1840. Among them were Sydney Smith, Macaulay, Byron, ‘Monk’
Lewis, Lord Jeffrey, Lords Eldon, Thurlow, Brougham, and Lyndhurst,
Sir Humphry Davy, Count Rumford, Lords Aberdeen, Moira, and Macartney,
Grattan, Curran, Sir Samuel Romilly, Washington Irving, Tom Moore,
Calonne, Lally Tollendal, Talleyrand, the Duke of Clarence, the Duc
d’Orléans, Metternich, Canova, the two Erskines, Madame de Staël, Lord
John Russell, and Lord Houghton. There was no such agreeable house in
Europe as Holland House. ‘There was no professional _claqueur_; no
mutual puffing; no exchanged support. There, a man was not unanimously
applauded because he was known to be clever, nor was a woman accepted
as clever because she was known to receive clever people.’
The conditions of life and society are so much changed that there
can never again be another Holland House. For the first thing which
strikes one who considers the history of this place, as well as Gore
House, is that, though the poets, wits, dramatists, and novelists go
to these houses, their wives do not. In these days a man who respects
himself will not go to a house where his wife is not asked. Then,
again, London is so much greater in extent, and people are so much
scattered, that it would be difficult now to get together a circle
consisting of literary people who lived near enough to frequent the
house. And another thing: people no longer keep such late hours. They
do not sit up talking all night. That is, perhaps, because there are
no wits to talk with; but I do not know: I think that towards midnight
the _malice_ of Count d’Orsay in drawing out the absurd points in the
guests, the rollicking fun of Tom Moore, or his sentimental songs, the
repartee of James Smith, and the polished talk of Lytton Bulwer, all
collar, cuff, diamond pin, and wavy hair, would have begun to pall upon
me, and when nobody was taking any notice of so obscure an individual,
I should have stolen down the stairs, and so out into the open air
beneath the stars. For the wits were very witty, but they must have
been very fatiguing. ‘Quite enough of that, Macaulay’ Lady Holland
would say, tapping her fan upon the table. ‘Now tell us about something
else.’
[Illustration: Very truly yours
Washington Irving
-WASHINGTON IRVING-]