Cockney gentleman late in the train of Lord Byron,[50] but now
discarded--we are not sufficiently acquainted with the style of
the writer to vouch for its genuineness, but we give it as we have
received it:--
My dear ----, --I am astonished at what you write me. So then,
notwithstanding all the strong articles in our last Liberal
Magazine, neither Government nor people has made a stir; England
is still a monarchy, England is still a monarchy, and not even
a single change in the ministry has been effected! Jeffrey,
(Byron's new friend,) who is always sanguine, thinks the next
Number must do it, but I begin to despair; and the worry-one's
soul-out, as it were, effect of the disappointment on my health
is very visible. I pine, and grow thinner and paler every day. My
appearance, by the way, is very interesting and Tasso-like, and
I think an engraving of me would sell well in England, where a
"how-does-he-look" sort of inquiry must be in everybody's mouth
just now. But let that pass for the present, I have matter of
still greater moment for you.
The only subject of conversation now in England, and indeed
in all those parts of Europe where tyrants are not as _yet_
allowed to send in fellows with bayonets to stop people's mouths
whenever they mention my name, must be the coolness between me
and Byron, and it is proper the rights of it should be known,
which is better than folks going about with a he-said-this--and
then-he-said-t'other sort of report of it. The fact is, that
Byron is the aggressor, for he began first, as the children
say, and all about a piece of patrician pride, very unbecoming
among us radicals. Some time ago, seeing him in conversation
with the Earl of----, at the end of the Strada di----, I hopped
down the street, and, just to shew the intimacy which subsisted
between us, slapped him on the back with a "Ha! Byron, my boy!"
He darted at me one of his look-you-through sort of glances, and
turned from me without speaking; and it was not till after a
decided cut of eight or ten days that, wanting something done,
he sent for me. I went; he began by a tread-you to-dirtish, as
it were taking of me to task, said something about the "coarse
familiarity of your radicals;" and then told me that I might stop
and dine with him that day, which I did. You will gather from
this that these lords are not to be depended upon, they are but
a half and half sort of radicals--the cloven foot of nobility is
perpetually peeping out, they won't give altogether into that
hail-fellow-well-metishness, which we expect from them. Again: at
dinner that day, happening to say to him, "I and you, Byron, who
are called the Satanic School:" he cut me short unceremoniously,
and said, "Who the h--ll ever called _you_ Satanic?--Cockney, if
you please and reminded me of the fable of the apples swimming.
Now, putting radicalism out of the question, this was very
ungenteel from one great poet to another--then he is jealous of
me. We have had a disagreement about which of us should have
the most room to write in the Liberal Magazine. He wanted all;
which (though I never contradict him, or he'd have cut me long
ago.) I almost remonstrated against, so he allowed me a corner
here and there, as it were. Thus he flatly attributes our slow
sale to my poetry--then to my prose--and in short, he was lately
so insulting that I had "ever such a mind" (as we used to say
at school) to tell him the fault was all his own; for between
ourselves he has grown as stupid and as vulgar as the best of
us. But worst of all, I find he has been making a mere tool of
me, and he quizzes me to my very face. Some weeks ago I told
him I had thoughts of writing his life, to which he replied
with a smile, "Do;" but when I added that he ought in return to
write mine, he exclaimed with a sneer "Pooh!" and went away in a
turn-on-the-heel sort of fashion. But this is of a piece with
his refusing to call me Tasso and Ariosto in exchange for my
calling him Dante in our next poems.
Doubtless you have heard of the verses I addressed to him; I
suppose there is an I-wish-I-could-get-'em sort of anxiety about
them in England, so I send you a copy:--
"LINES TO MY FRIEND BYRON.
"Dear Byron, while you're out walking, I'll just say
Something about ourselves in my off-hand way,
Easy and Chaucer-like; in that free rhyme
They used to warble in the olden time,
And which you so chucklingly listen to when I
Pour out a strain of it, as 'twere, chirpingly;
Full of all sorts of lovely, graceful things,
Smacking of fancy, pretty imaginings,
Which I trick out with a Titian-like sort of air,
And a touch of Michael Angelo here and there;
For though the graceful's wherein I excel,
I dash off the sublime, too, pretty well.
"Now, let me see--I have it--I'll suppose,
(Though you're there in the garden plucking a rose,)
That, after travelling many and many a day,
You are wandering in some country far away,
When, being tired, you stretch beneath a tree,
And take from your pocket my Rimini,
And read it through and through, and think of me;
And then you take some other work of mine,
And con it daintily, tasting it line by line,
Pausing 'tween whiles, as one does drinking port,
And smack your lips, saying, 'This is your right sort.'
And when it has grown too dark for you to see,
You close the book and wish for your dear Leigh:
Then comes a little bird, fluttering near,
And perches, fairy like, on the tip of your ear;
Then up you jump and would hunch it away;
But, spite of all, the little bird will stay,
And then----(But what I'm writing all this while
Is a fancy in my wild Ariosto style)--
And thus this little bird turns into me,
And you rush forward to me in ecstasy,
And grasp my hand, as it were, clutchingly,
And call me your 'dear Leigh;' while I, e'en bolder,
Cry, 'Ah, my dear Byron!' clapping you on the shoulder,
E'en just as I might be supposed to do,
If this were not a Poet's dream, but true."
Now, I expected this would have procured me a sonnet at least in
return, but he did not even deign ever once to notice it, spite
of all my attempts to draw him out about it. You, who know what
an excessively sensitive creature I am, will easily conceive the
heart-in-one's-mouthishness of my sensations, when I found out
his real opinion of me. It happened one day that he left me alone
in his study. He had no sooner turned his back than I began to
fumble among his books and papers. What I most earnestly sought
was the copy I gave him of my "Story of Rimini," thinking to
find it full of notes in his own hand-writing. It was not even
half cut open! A proof he had not half read it. Against "my dear
Byron," in the dedication (for you know I dedicated it to him) I
found written "Familiar Cockney," and in the last leaf cut--that
is as far as I presume he had read,--was written the following
critique:--
"O! Crimini, Crimini!
What a mimini, pimini,
Story of Rimini!"
This you will say was sufficiently cut-one-to-the-heartish, but
this was little compared with what follows. Among other things,
I found the MS. of the Twelfth Canto of Don Juan, which will
shortly appear. By the way, it is rather unfair in him, to say
no less of it, to throw "Cockney" in my teeth at every turn,
considering that I have now quite given up talking of Highgate
and Primrose Hill, ever since I have seen the Apennines--and to
a friend, too! But it is my friend Byron's way; he calls and
uncalls all his friends round, once in every four or five years,
or so. But to my extract from his next canto:--
"Filthy scum!
These Hunts, Hones, Despards, Thistlewoods, and Ings!
These worms with which we politicians angle,
We leave at last on Ketch's line to dangle.
Poor drivelling dupes! and can they think that we
By birth ennobled, and no little proud
Of our nobility, would stoop to be
Companion'd with the base, plebeian crowd;
Or that the crack-brain'd Bysshe, or Cockney Leigh,
Or Gentle Johnny[51] e'er had been allow'd
To sicken us with their familiarity,
Forgetful of their distance and disparity,
But that we turn'd them to our dirty uses?
My tool I've lately placed upon the shelf,
So patronize my Cockney now who chooses;
I've ta'en to do my dirty work myself.
I find, too, that in fashion my abuse is,
And brings--not that I value it--the pelf;
But, let me hint, there's need of cash to victual ye
E'en in this cheapest of all countries--Italy.
I've turn'd him off! He's gone! I've made the ninny stir
His stumps! For on my stomach his pathetic,
His Cockney rurals, drivellings, phrases sinister,
And affectations act as an emetic.
Besides, he thinks he's fit to be prime minister!
The whimpering, simpering, Horsemonger ascetic![52]
And there, he's grown so horribly familiar,
And paws and 'dears' one so--I vow 'twould kill you."
There, my dear friend--and this is from one radical to
another!--the root of all this is, that I did once hint to him
that I thought myself a better poet than he; more antique and
to-the-heartish, giving my verses an Italian twang, and so
forth. As to his allusion to my thinking myself fit to be prime
minister, I merely threw out an idea that way, once when we were
re-modelling. No. V. of our Liberal Magazine shortly. Let tyrants
tremble!--Yours ever.
BYRONIANA.[53]
By favour of a friend just arrived from the Mediterranean we have
received exclusively some most interesting papers relative to Lord
Byron; they consist of anecdotes, which have never been known, and
some original letters, which have never been out of the hands of
the individual by whom we are favoured. Some of his Lordship's more
recent conversations are detailed, which will be found highly amusing
and characteristic. We submit a few extracts, which we trust will
prove acceptable to our readers.
"Lord Byron," says our correspondent, "had several peculiarities; he
reduced himself from corpulency to the contrary extreme, by eating
raisins, and occasionally sipping brandy. He used frequently to
observe that brandy was a very ardent spirit, and remarked that to
persons anxious to conceal the strength of their potations, hollands
was better adapted, inasmuch as being of a similar colour with the
water, the quantity mixed with that liquid was less easily detectable
by the eye.
"Lord Byron was perhaps more sensible of approaching changes in the
weather than any other man living. One day, on a voyage to Athens to
eat beef-steaks, a dark cloud appeared to windward of the vessel;
his Lordship regarded it steadily for some time, until at length,
feeling a few drops of rain fall, he called to Fletcher to bring his
cloak, so certain he was of an approaching shower. Byron always slept
with his eyes closed, and if by any accident he lay on his back,
snored remarkably loud; he was very particular in his toothpicks, and
generally used those of a peculiar kind of wood, in preference to
quills.
"In writing letters of an ordinary cast, his style was plain, clear,
and perspicuous; a specimen follows, it is addressed to a friend:--
Tuesday.
'DEAR ----,
Will you dine with me to-morrow?--
Yours truly,
NOEL BYRON.'
The next is to a person who had been recommended to his notice, and
whom he felt it necessary to invite. We suppress the name of the
party, lest Mr. Hobhouse should get an injunction.
'Lord Byron's compliments to Mr. ----, requests the pleasure of
his company at dinner on Wednesday next.'
"These sort of notes he would secure indiscriminately with wafers or
wax, as the case might be.
"One day conversing with him upon the state of Greece, and the great
struggle in which we were all engaged, he observed to me, 'that a
very small proportion of the population of London had been in the
Archipelago.' When I assented, he said--with a sigh which went to my
heart, and in a tone which I shall never forget--'It would be very
strange if they had.'
"He had a strong antipathy to pork when underdone or stale, and
nothing could induce him to partake of fish which had been caught
more than ten days--indeed, he had a singular dislike even to the
smell of it; some of his observations upon this subject will be
given in a new quarto work about to be published by a very eminent
bookseller.
"He spoke of Harrow with strong feelings of affection, and of the
lovely neighbours of Dr. Bowen--(who they were he carefully concealed
from us)--they were tenants of the same house with the late Duke of
Dorset, who was Byron's fag. To a lady of the name of Enoch, who
lived in a cottage at Roxeth, he had addressed some of his early
productions, but had destroyed them. He used to ask me why Mr.
Procter called himself Cornwall? 'he might as well call himself
Cumberland,' said Byron, with his accustomed acumen.
"It has been remarked that Byron spoke of his own child with
affection. Strange and unnatural as this may appear, it is literally
the fact. It seems, however, to have excited so much surprise, that
it is absolutely necessary to be particular in impressing the truth
upon the British nation, who are so deeply interested in everything
which relates to the immortal poet departed.
"The poem which he wrote upon the close of his thirty-sixth year has
been published and republished so often, that we do not think it
worth printing here. But the observation made by its great author to
our correspondent is curious and striking:--
"'I have written these verses on closing my thirty-sixth year,'
said Byron. 'I was always superstitious--thirty-six is an ominous
number--four times nine are thirty-six; three times twelve are
thirty-six; the figures thirty-six are three and six--six and three
make nine, so do five and four'--he paused and said--'Mrs. Williams,
the old lady who told my fortune, is right. The chances are, I shall
not live six and thirty years more.' The fact has proved that he was
not ungifted with the power of divination.
"Byron died, as I have just said, in his thirty-sixth year. What
makes this coincidence the more curious is, that if he had lived
till January, 1844, he would have completed his fifty-sixth, a
circumstance which, curious as it is, we believe has not been noticed
by any of his biographers.
"I once proposed to him to take a companion on a tour he was about to
make; he answered me snappishly--'No; Hobhouse once went with me on a
tour--I had enough of him. No more travelling companions for me.'
"He used frequently to compare himself to Buonaparte--so did we, to
please him. Buonaparte had a head, so had Byron, so has Mr. Hayne
of Burderop Park, Wilts, so has a pin; he was tickled with the
comparison, and we lived with him, and swallowed toads at discretion.
"Moore, the author of the 'Fudge Family,' was a great favourite
of Byron's; he had not discovered that it was Moore who persuaded
Hunt--the man who made Rimini--that he was a mighty clever fellow,
and that if he set up a periodical work, he (Moore) would contribute
to it: Moore constantly abused Hunt to Byron at the same time--called
him a stupid Cockney, and swore that Byron was ruining himself by
associating with him. This was kind and liberal, and justifies
what Douglas Kinnaird and everybody else indeed say of Moore just
now--Byron would not have liked Moore the better for this--poor Hunt
had a wife and children, and was in needy circumstances, and Byron
did them great service--and what harm could Hunt do Byron, or anybody
else?
"The Greeks think Byron will come to life again after a while, and
one poet in the Chronicle, probably Moore, talks of having seen his
_manes_ in George-street, Westminster, and of the possibility of
his yet wandering about Greece, in a white dressing-gown, singing
'Liberty Hall;' but I, who know Byron well, and all his expectations,
doubt the fact. I was surprised to find, considering how right
and fashionable it is to praise my departed friend, that his wife
declined seeing his body, and all his family declined attending his
funeral.
"He told me one night that ---- told ---- that if ---- would only
---- him ----. She would ---- without any compunction; for her ----,
who though an excellent man, was no ----, and that she never ----,
and this she told ---- and ---- as well as Lady ---- herself. Byron
told me this in confidence, and I may be blamed for repeating it; but
---- can corroborate it if he happens not to be gone to ----."
LORD WENABLES.[54]
To those who are in the habit of recurring with a feeling of devotion
to the golden gone-by times of our forefathers, and who "track back"
upon antiquity to hunt out subjects for admiration, it must be in
some degree consolatory to discover, that even in these degenerate
days there still exist amongst us men capable of recording the noble
deeds of the "mighty living;" and that one of the most important
occurrences of modern date has found an historian worthy of the
subject which it has been made his duty to transmit to posterity.
To such of our readers as are generally conversant with the history,
political or statistical, of the City of London, it may perhaps be
needless to observe, that it affords, by virtue of its charter and
constitution, power and authority, might and majesty, for one year at
a time, to one illustrious individual (made, indeed, illustrious by
his office), and that this illustrious individual is pre-eminently
distinguished above all others of God's creatures (within his special
jurisdiction) by the title of Lord Mayor. Having been a Liveryman, he
proceeds to Sheriff and Alderman, and in time, being an Alderman, he
becomes Mayor, and being Mayor of London, becomes a Lord!--that he is
not a Peer, arises only from the difficulty of finding any to compare
with him.
Thus, then, it being conceded that there is, and always will be, a
Lord Mayor of London, so long as London stands--for the constitution
of Cornhill and the majesty of the Mansion House remain unshaken by
the storms of treason or the efforts of rebellion, and shine in all
their native excellence with equal purity and brightness, whether
under the gentle sway of an amiable Mary, the gloomy troubles of
a martyred Charles, the plain dominion of a protecting Oliver, or
the glorious sway of a liberating William--it being then, we say,
conceded that the Lord Mayor, officially, never dies, we seek to
show the imperative necessity which presses upon every Lord Mayor
while in office, personally so to distinguish himself from the long
line of his predecessors and those who are to follow him, by some
striking deed, either bodily or mental, political or financial,
literary or scientific, so that when he shall have returned from
the pinnacle of earthly splendour at the corner of Walbrook into
the softer retirement of his patrimonial shop in Pudding-lane or
Fish-street-hill, children yet unborn may learn to lisp the name of
their great ancestor mingled with their prayers, never forgetting to
singularise him especially from all the other Figginses, Wigginses,
Bumpuses, and Snodgrasses of their respective houses, by prefixing in
their minds to the patronymic, the deed, or work, or act, or book,
as it may be, by which that particular branch of their family has so
flourished into virid immortality.
By observing this system, an association is formed in the mind of
men and deeds highly refreshing, at once useful and agreeable.
Who ever hears of Walworth without thinking of Wat Tyler?--who
ever reads of Whittington without having a Cat in his eye?--who
speaks of Wood without thinking of Whittington?--who of Waithman
without recollecting Knightsbridge foot-path? Thus it is that these
illustrious men are distinguished, not only from all other Lord
Mayors, but from all other Whittingtons, Walworths, Woods, and
Waithmans, in the world.
With such examples before him, was it unnatural, or not to be
expected, that the late Lord Mayor, Venables, should be contented to
sink back into the shades of Queenhithe from the Civic throne without
leaving something behind him which might entitle him to fill a niche
in the Temple of Fame? We think not; and we have no hesitation in
saying that his Lordship's well-directed ambition, blending as it has
done the eminently-useful with the strikingly-agreeable, has produced
results which will hand him down to future ages with as much grace,
certainty, and propriety as his Lordship ever exhibited in his late
great life-time in handing down an Alderman's lady to dinner.
When we say, "late life-time," we mean official life--Venables the
man, is alive and merry--but, alas! Venables the mayor, is dead.
It now becomes our duty to explain what it is that has so decidedly
stamped the greatness of Lord Wenables--so he was called by the
majority of his subjects--and in doing so, we have to divide
(although not in equal parts) the fame and glory of the enterprise
between his Lordship and his Lordship's Chaplain, who, upon this
special occasion, and at his Lordship's special desire, was the
historian of his Lordship's exploits.
It seems, that in the course of last summer, the Lord Wenables having
over-eaten himself, brought upon himself a fever and rash, and during
his confinement to the house the disorder took an ambitious turn,
and his Lordship's organ of locomotiveness having been considerably
enlarged and inflamed by his Lordship's having accidentally bumped
his noble head against the corner of the bedstead, his Lordship was
seized with a desire to glorify and immortalise himself by foreign
travel the moment he got better of his green-fat fever--and having
sent for his Chaplain to consult upon some sort of expedition which
might answer his purpose, his Lordship and the Divine deliberated
accordingly.
At one time he suggested going down the shaft of Brunel's tunnel at
Rotherhithe, but the work was not far enough advanced to render it
even commonly hazardous--that was abandoned. Going up in a balloon
was suggested, but there was no utility blended with the risk. The
dreadful dangers of Chelsea reach had already been encountered, and
a colony established by his Lordship on the east end of Stephenson's
Island, beyond Teddington--something even more daring must be tried;
and, as it happened that a first cousin of my Lady Wenables had been
reading to his Lordship, who was not able to read himself (from
illness, not from want of learning), "Travels undertaken in order to
discover the Source of the Nile," his Lordship at once resolved to
signalise himself by undertaking a journey to discover, if possible,
the "Source of the Thames." His Lordship was greatly excited to the
undertaking upon being told that Mungo Park had been carried into
Africa by a similar desire--and he observed with wonderful readiness,
that if it were possible to remove a whole Park into Africa, there
could be no insurmountable obstacle to transporting Lady Wenables to
the source of the Thames.
When Lord Wenables was first put upon the project, he was rather
of opinion that the source of the Thames was at its mouth--"a part
which," as his Lordship observed, "is in man the source of all
pleasure;" and he suggested going by land to Gravesend, to look out
for the desired object. But the Chaplain informed his Lordship that
rivers began at the other end--upon which his Lordship, not having
gone so far into the study of geography as to ascertain the exact
course of the river beyond Stephenson's Island, hinted his intention
of going with Lady Wenables by land as far as Dunstable, and then
proceeding in the search.
The Chaplain, it seems, although not quite sure enough of his
experience to give Lord Wenables a downright negative to his
suggestion, deemed it necessary forthwith to consult a map of Europe,
in which the relative courses of the River Thames and the Dunstable
turnpike-road are laid down in different degrees of latitude, and
having ascertained that Dunstable was an inland town, proceeded to
examine his charts until he discovered Oxford to be a more likely
point to start from with any reasonable hopes of success; this he
mentioned to Lord Wenables, and when his Lordship arose convalescent
from his calipash fever, he mentioned his design to the Court of
Aldermen on Midsummer Day, and the last week of July was ultimately
and unanimously fixed upon for the expedition.