In January, 1810, Sydney writes to Mrs. Lefanu from Stanmore Priory to

the effect that she is the best-lodged, best-fed, dullest author in

his Majesty's dominions, and that the sound of a commoner's name is

refreshment to her ears. She is surrounded by ex-lord-lieutenants,

unpopular princesses (including her of Wales) deposed potentates

(including him of Sweden), half the nobility of England, and many of

the best wits and writers. She had sat to Sir Thomas Lawrence for her

portrait, and sold her Indian novel, _The Missionary,_ for a

famous price. Lord Castlereagh, while staying at Stanmore, heard

portions of the work read aloud, and admired it so much that he

offered to take the author to London, and give her a rendezvous with

her publisher in his own study. Stockdale, the publisher, was so much

impressed by his surroundings that he bid £400 for the book, and the

agreement was signed and sealed under Lord Castlereagh's eye. _The

Missionary_ was not so successful as _The Wild Irish Girl,_

and added nothing to the author's reputation.

It was not until the end of 1810 that Miss Owenson decided to become a

permanent member of the Abercorn household. About this time, or a

little later, she wrote a short description of her temperament and

feelings, from which a sentence or two may be quoted. 'Inconsiderate

and indiscreet, never saved by prudence, but often rescued by pride;

often on the verge of error, but never passing the line. Committing

myself in every way _except in my own esteem_--without any

command over my feelings, my words, or writings--yet full of

self-possession as to action and conduct.' After describing her

sufferings from nervous susceptibility and mental depression, she

continues: 'But the hand that writes this has lost nothing of the

contour of health or the symmetry of youth. I am in possession of all

the fame I ever hoped or ambitioned. I wear not the appearance of

twenty years; I am now, as I generally am, sad and miserable.'

In 1811 Dr. Morgan, a good-looking widower of about eight-and-twenty,

accepted the post of private physician to Lord Abercorn. He was a

Cambridge man, an intimate friend of Dr. Jenner's, and possessed a

small fortune of his own. When he first arrived at Baron's Court, Miss

Owenson was absent, and he heard so much of her praises that he

conceived a violent prejudice against her. On her return she set to

work systematically to fascinate him, and succeeded even better than

she had hoped or desired. In Lady Abercorn he had a warm partisan, but

it may be suspected that the ambitious Miss Owenson found it hard to

renounce all hopes of a more brilliant match. The Abercorns having

vowed that Dr. Morgan should be made Sir Charles, and that they would

push his fortunes, Sydney yielded to their importunities so far as to

write to her father, and ask his consent to her engagement.

'I dare say you will be amazingly astonished,' she observes, 'but not

half so much as I am, for Lord and Lady Abercorn have hurried on the

business in such a manner that I really don't know what I am about.

They called me in last night, and, more like parents than friends,

begged me to be guided by them--that it was their wish not to lose

sight of me ... and that if I accepted Morgan, the man upon earth they

most esteemed and approved, they would be friends to both for

life--that we should reside with them one year after our marriage, so

that we might lay up our income to begin the world. He is also to

continue their physician. He has now £500 a year, independent of his

practice. I don't myself see the thing quite in the light they do; but

they think him a man of such great abilities, such great worth and

honour, that I am the most fortunate person in the world.'

To her old friend, Mrs. Lefanu, she writes in much the same strain.

'The licence and ring have been in the house these ten days, and all

the settlements made; yet I have been battling off from day to day,

and have only ten minutes back procured a little breathing time. The

struggle is almost too great for me. On one side engaged, beyond

retrieval, to a man who has frequently declared to my friends that if

I break off he will not survive it! On the other, the dreadful

certainty of being parted for ever from a country and friends I love,

and a family I adore.'

The 'breathing time' was to consist of a fortnight's visit to her

sister, Lady Clarke, in Dublin, in order to be near her father, who

was in failing health. The fortnight, however, proved an exceedingly

elastic period. Mr. Owenson was not dangerously ill, the winter season

was just beginning, and Miss Owenson was more popular than ever. Her

unfortunate lover, as jealous as he was enamoured, being detained by

his duties at Baron's Court, could only write long letters of

complaint, reproach, and appeal to his hard-hearted lady. Sydney was

thoroughly enjoying herself, and was determined to make the most of

her last days of liberty. She admitted afterwards that she had behaved

very badly at this time, and deserved to have lost the best husband

woman ever had.

'I picture to myself,' writes poor Dr. Morgan, 'the thoughtless and

heartless Glorvina trifling with her friend, jesting at his

sufferings, and flirting with every man she meets.' He sends her some

commissions, but declares that there is only one about which he is

really anxious, 'and that is to love me _exclusively_; to prefer

me to every other good; to think of me, speak of me, write to me, and

look forward to our union as to the completion of every wish, as I do

by you. Do this, and though you grow as ugly as Sycorax, you will

never lose in me the fondest, most doating, affectionate of husbands.

Glorvina, I was born for tenderness; my business in life is _to

love_.... I read part of _The Way to Keep Him_ this morning,

and I see now you take the widow for your model; but it won't do, for

though I love you in _every_ mood, it is only when you are true

to nature, passionate and tender, that I adore you. You are never less

interesting to me than when you _brillez_ in a large party.'

The fortnight's leave of absence had been granted in September, and by

the end of November Dr. Morgan is thoroughly displeased with his

truant _fiancée_, and asks why she could not have told him when

she went away, that she intended to stay till Christmas. 'I know, he

writes, 'this is but a specimen of the roundabout policy of all your

countrywomen. How strange it is that you, who are in general

_great_ beyond every woman I know, philosophical and magnanimous,

should _in detail_ be so often ill-judging, wrong, and (shall I

say) little?' In December Sydney writes to say that she will return

directly after Christmas, and declares that the terrible struggle of

feeling, which she had tried to forget in every species of mental

dissipation, is now over; friends, relatives, country, all are

resigned, and she is his for ever! A little later she shows signs of

wavering again; she cannot make up her mind to part from her invalid

father just yet; but this time Dr. Morgan puts his foot down, and

issues his ultimatum in a stern and manly letter. He will be trifled

with no longer. Sydney must either keep her promise and return at

Christmas, or they had better part, never to meet again. 'The love I

require,' he writes, 'is no ordinary affection. The woman who marries

me must be _identified_ with me. I must have a large bank of

tenderness to draw upon. I must have frequent profession and frequent

demonstration of it. Woman's love is all in all to me; it stands in

place of honours and riches, and what is yet more, in place of

tranquillity of mind.'

This letter, backed by one from Lady Abercorn, brought Sydney to her

senses. In the first days of the new year (1812) she arrived at

Baron's Court, a little shamefaced, and more than a little doubtful of

her reception. The marquis was stiff, and the marchioness stately, but

Sir Charles, who had just been knighted by the Lord Lieutenant, was

too pleased to get his lady-love back, to harbour any resentment

against her. A few days after her return, as she was sitting over the

fire in a morning wrapper, Lady Abercorn came in and said:

'Glorvina, come upstairs directly and be married; there must be no

more trifling.'

The bride was led into her ladyship's dressing-room, where the

bridegroom was awaiting her in company with the chaplain, and the

ceremony took place. The marriage was kept a secret from the other

guests at the time, but a few nights later Lord Abercorn filled his

glass after dinner, and drank to the health of 'Sir Charles and Lady

Morgan.'

PART II

The marriage, unpromising as it appeared at the outset, proved an

exceptionally happy one. Sir Charles was a straightforward, worthy, if

somewhat dull gentleman, with no ambition, a nervous distaste for

society, and a natural indolence of temperament. To his wife he gave

the unstinted sympathy and admiration that her restless vanity craved,

while she invariably maintained that he was the wisest, brightest, and

handsomest of his sex. She seems to have given him no occasion for

jealousy after marriage, though to the last she preserved her passion

for society, and her ambition for social recognition and success. The

first year of married life, which she described as a period of storm,

interspersed with brilliant sunshine, was spent with the Abercorns at

Baron's Court.

'Though living in a palace,' wrote Sydney to Mrs. Lefanu, early in

1812, 'we have all the comfort and independence of a home.... As to

me, I am _every inch a wife_, and so ends that brilliant thing

that was Glorvina. _N.B._--I intend to write a book to explode

the vulgar idea of matrimony being the tomb of love. Matrimony is the

real thing, and all before but leather and prunella.' In a letter to

Lady Stanley she paints Sir Charles in the romantic colours

appropriate to a novelist's husband. 'In _love_ he is Sheridan's

Falkland, and in his view of things there is a _mélange_ of

cynicism and sentiment that will never suffer him to be as happy as

the inferior million that move about him. Marriage has taken nothing

from the _romance_ of his passion for me; and by bringing a sense

of _property_ with it, has rendered him more exigent and nervous

about me than before.'

The luxury of Baron's Court was probably more than counterbalanced by

the inevitable drawbacks of married life in a patron's household,

where the husband, at least, was at that patron's beck and call.

Before the end of the year, the Morgans were contemplating a modest

establishment of their own, and Sydney had set to work upon a novel,

the price of which was to furnish the new house. Mr. Owenson had died

shortly after his daughter's marriage, and Lady Morgan persuaded her

husband to settle in Dublin, in order that she might be near her

sister and her many friends. A house was presently taken in Kildare

Street, and Sir Charles, who had obtained the post of physician to the

Marshalsea, set himself to establish a practice. Lady Morgan prided

herself upon her housewifely talents, and in a letter dated May, 1813,

she describes how she has made their old house clean and comfortable,

all that their means would permit, 'except for one little bit of a

room, four inches by three, which is fitted up in the _Gothic_,

and I have collected into it the best part of a very good cabinet of

natural history of Sir Charles's, eight or nine hundred volumes of

choice books in French, English, Italian, and German, some little

curiosities, and a few scraps of old china, so that, with muslin

draperies, etc., I have made no contemptible set-out.... With respect

to authorship, I fear it is over; I have been making chair-covers

instead of systems, and cheapening pots and pans instead of selling

sentiment and philosophy.'

In the midst of all her domestic labours, however, Lady Morgan

contrived to finish a novel, _O'Donnel_, which Colburn published

in 1814, and for which she received £550. The book was ill-reviewed,

but it was an even greater popular success than _The Wild Irish

Girl_. The heroine, like most of Lady Morgan's heroines, is

evidently meant for an idealised portrait of herself, and the great

ladies by whom she is surrounded are sketched from Lady Abercorn and

certain of the guests at Baron's Court. The Liberal, or as they would

now be called, Radical principles inculcated in the book gave bitter

offence to the author's old-fashioned friends, and increased the

rancour of her Tory reviewers. But _O'Donnel_ found numerous

admirers, among them no less a person than Sir Walter Scott, who notes

in his diary for March 14, 1826: 'I have amused myself occasionally

very pleasantly during the last few days by reading over Lady Morgan's

novel of _O'Donnel_, which has some striking and beautiful

passages of situation and description, and in the comic part is very

rich and entertaining. I do not remember being so pleased with it at

first. There is a want of story, always fatal to a book on the first

reading--and it is well if it gets the chance of a second.'

The following year, 1815, France being once again open to English

travellers, the Morgans paid a visit to Paris, Lady Morgan having

undertaken to write a book about what was then a strange people and a

strange country. The pair went a good deal into society, and made many

friends, among them Lafayette, Cuvier, the Comte de Ségur, Madame de

Genlis, and Madame Jerome Bonaparte. Sydney, whose Celtic manners were

probably more congenial to the French than Anglo-Saxon reserve, seems

to have received a great deal of attention, and her not over-strong

head was slightly turned in consequence.

'The French admire you more than any Englishwoman who has appeared

here since the Battle of Waterloo,' wrote Madame Jerome Bonaparte to

Lady Morgan, after the latter had returned to Ireland. 'France is the

country you should reside in, because you are so much admired, and

here no Englishwoman has received the same attentions since you. I am

dying to see your last publication. Public expectation is as high as

possible. How happy you must be at filling the world with your name as

you do! Madame de Staël and Madame de Genlis are forgotten; and if the

love of fame be of any weight with you, your excursion to Paris was

attended with brilliant success.'

Madame de Genlis, in her _Memoirs_, gives a more soberly-worded

account of the impression produced by Lady Morgan on Parisian society.

The author of _France_ is described as 'not beautiful, but with

something lively and agreeable in her whole person. She is very

clever, and seems to have a good heart; it is a pity that for the sake

of popularity she should have the mania of meddling in politics....

Her vivacity and rather springing carriage seemed very strange in

Parisian circles. She soon learned that good taste of itself condemned

that kind of demeanour; in fact, gesticulation and noisy manners have

never been popular in France.' The spoilt little lady was by no means

satisfied with this portrait, and Sir Charles, who was away from home

at the time the _Memoirs_ appeared, writes to console her. 'You

must not mind that lying old witch Madame de Genlis' attack upon you,'

says the admiring husband. 'I thought she would not let you off

easily; you were not only a better and younger (and _I_ may say

_prettier_) author than herself, but also a more popular one.'

Over the price to be paid for _France_, to which Sir Charles

contributed some rather heavy chapters on medical science, political

economy, and jurisprudence, there was the usual battle between the

keen little woman and her publisher. Colburn, having done well with

_O'Donnel_, felt justified in offering £750 for the new work, but

Lady Morgan demanded £1000, and got it. The sum must have been a

substantial compensation for the wounds that her vanity received at

the hands of the reviewers. _France_, which made its appearance

in 1817, in two volumes quarto, was eagerly read and loudly abused.

Croker, in the _Quarterly Review_, attacked the book, or rather

the author, in an article which has become almost historic for its

virulence. Poor Lady Morgan was accused of bad taste, bombast and

nonsense, blunders, ignorance of the French language and manners,

general ignorance, Jacobinism, falsehood, licentiousness, and impiety!

The first four or five charges might have been proved with little

difficulty, if it were worth while to break a butterfly on a wheel,

but it was necessary to distort the meaning and even the text of the

original in order to give any colour to the graver accusations.

Croker had discovered, much to his delight, that the translator of the

work (which was also published in Paris) had subjoined a note to some

of Lady Morgan's scraps of French, in which he confessed that though

the words were printed to look like French, he could not understand

them. The critic observes, _à propos_ of this fact, 'It is, we

believe, peculiar to Lady Morgan's works, that her English readers

require an English translation of her English, and her French readers

a French translation of her French.' This was a fair hit, as also was

the ridicule thrown upon such sentences as 'Cider is not held in any

estimation by the _véritables Amphitryons_ of rural _savoir

faire_.' Croker professes to be shocked at Lady Morgan's mention of

_Les Liaisons Dangereuses_, having hitherto cherished the hope

that 'no British female had ever seen this detestable book'; while his

outburst of virtuous indignation at her mention of the 'superior

effusions' of Parny, which some Frenchman had recommended to her, is

really superb. 'Parny,' he exclaims, 'is the most beastly, the most

detestably wicked and blasphemous of all the writers who have ever

disgraced literature. _Les Guerres des Dieux_ is the most

dreadful tissue of obscenity and depravity that the devil ever

inspired to the depraved heart of man, and we tremble with horror at

the guilt of having read unwittingly even so much of the work as

enables us to pronounce this character of it.'

Croker concludes with the hope that he has given such an idea of this

book as might prevent, in some degree, the circulation of trash which,

under the name of a '_Lady_ author,' might otherwise have found

its way into the hands of young persons of both sexes, for whose

perusal it was, on the score both of morals and politics, utterly

unfit. Such a notice naturally defeated its own object, and

_France_ went triumphantly through several editions. The review

attracted almost as much attention as the book, and many protests were

raised against it. 'What cruel work you make with Lady Morgan,' wrote

Byron to Murray. 'You should recollect that she is a woman; though, to

be sure, they are now and then very provoking, still as authoresses

they can do no great harm; and I think it a pity so much good

invective should have been laid out upon her, when there is such a

fine field of us Jacobin gentlemen for you to work upon.' The Regent

himself, according to Lady Charleville's report, had said of Croker:

'D----d blackguard to abuse a woman; couldn't he let her _France_

alone, if it be all lies, and read her novels, and thank her, by

Jasus, for being a good Irishwoman?'

Lady Morgan, as presently appeared, was not only quite able to defend

herself, but to give as good as she got. Peel, in a letter to Croker,

says: 'Lady Morgan vows vengeance against you as the supposed author

of the article in the _Quarterly_, in which her atheism, profanity,

indecency, and ignorance are exposed. You are to be the

hero of some novel of which she is about to be delivered. I hope she

has not heard of your predilection for angling, and that she will not

describe you as she describes one of her heroes, as "seated in his

_piscatory_ corner, intent on the destruction of the finny

tribe."' 'Lady Morgan,' it seems, replies Croker, 'is resolved to make

me read one of her novels. I hope I shall feel interested enough to

learn the language. I wrote the first part of the article in question,

but was called away to Ireland when it was in the press; and I am

sorry to say that some blunders crept in accidentally, and one or two

were premeditatedly added, which, however, I do not think Lady Morgan

knows enough of either English, French, or Latin to find out. If she

goes on, we shall have sport.'

Early in 1818 Colburn wrote to suggest that the Morgans should proceed

to Italy with a view to collaborating in a book on that country, and

offered them the handsome sum of £2000 for the copyright. By this time

Sir Charles had lost most of his practice, owing to his publication of

a scientific work, _The Outlines of the Physiology of Life_,

which was considered objectionably heterodox by the Dublin public.

There was no obstacle, therefore, to his leaving home for a lengthened

period, and joining his wife in her literary labours. In May, the pair

journeyed to London _en route_ for the South, Lady Morgan taking

with her the nearly finished manuscript of a new novel, _Florence

Macarthy_. With his first reading of this book Colburn was so

charmed, that he presented the author with a fine parure of amethysts

as a tribute of admiration.

According to the testimony of impartial witnesses, Lady Morgan made as

decided a social success in Italy as she had done a couple of years

earlier in France. Moore, who met the couple in Florence, notes in his

diary for October 1819: 'Went to see Sir Charles and Lady Morgan; her

success everywhere astonishing. Camac was last night at the Countess

of Albany's (the Pretender's wife and Alfieri's), and saw Lady Morgan

there in the seat of honour, quite the queen of the room.' In Rome the

same appreciation awaited her. 'The Duchess of Devonshire,' writes her

ladyship, 'is unceasing in her attentions. Cardinal Fesche

(Bonaparte's uncle) is quite my beau.... Madame Mère (Napoleon's

mother) sent to say she would be glad to see me; we were received

quite in an imperial style. I never saw so fine an old lady--still

quite handsome. The pictures of her sons hung round the room, all in

royal robes, and her daughters and grandchildren, and at the head of

them all, _old Mr. Bonaparte_. She is full of sense, feeling, and

spirit, and not the least what I expected--vulgar.'

_Florence Macarthy_ was published during its author's absence

abroad. The heroine, Lady Clancare, a novelist and politician, a

beauty and a wit, is obviously intended for Lady Morgan herself, while

Lady Abercorn figures again under the title of Lady Dunore. But the

most striking of all the character-portraits is Counsellor Con

Crawley, who was sketched from Lady Morgan's old enemy, John Wilson

Croker. According to Moore, Croker winced more under this caricature

than under any of the direct attacks which were made upon him. Con

Crawley, we are told, was of a bilious, saturnine constitution, even

his talent being but the result of disease. These physical

disadvantages, combined with an education 'whose object was

pretension, and whose principle was arrogance, made him at once a

thing fearful and pitiable, at war with its species and itself, ready

to crush in manhood as to sting in the cradle, and leading his

overweening ambition to pursue its object by ways dark and

hidden--safe from the penalty of crime, and exposed only to the

obloquy which he laughed to scorn. If ever there was a man formed

alike by nature and education to betray the land which gave him birth,

and to act openly as the pander of political corruption, or secretly

as the agent of defamation; who would stoop to seek his fortune by

effecting the fall of a frail woman, or would strive to advance it by

stabbing the character of an honest one; who could crush aspiring

merit behind the ambuscade of anonymous security, while he came

forward openly in defence of the vileness which rank sanctified and

influence protected--that man was Conway Crawley.'

The truth of the portraiture of the whole Crawley family--exaggerated

as it may seem in modern eyes--was at once recognised by Lady Morgan's

countrymen. Sir Jonah Barrington, an undisputed authority on Irish

manners and character, writes: 'The Crawleys are superlative, and

suffice to bring before my vision, in their full colouring, and almost

without a variation, persons and incidents whom and which I have many

a time encountered.' Again, Owen Maddyn, who was by no means

prejudiced in Lady Morgan's favour, admits that her attack on Croker

had much effect in its day, and was written on the model of the Irish

school of invective furnished by Flood and Grattan. As a novelist, he

held that she pointed the way to Lever, and adds: 'The rattling

vivacity of the Irish character, its ebullient spirit, and its

wrathful eloquence of sentiment and language, she well portrayed; one

can smell the potheen and turf smoke even in her pictures of a

boudoir.' In this sentence are summed up the leading characteristics,

not only of _Florence Macarthy_, but of all Lady Morgan's

national romances.

_Italy_ was published simultaneously in London and Paris in June,

1821, and produced an even greater sensation than the work on France,

though Croker declared that it fell dead from the press, and devoted

the greater part of his 'review' in the _Quarterly_ to an

analysis of Colburn's methods of advertisement. Criticism of a penal

kind, he explained, was not called for, because, 'in the first place,

we are convinced that this woman is wholly _incorrigible_;

secondly, we hope that her indelicacy, vanity, and malignity are

inimitable, and that, therefore, her example is very little dangerous;

and thirdly, though every page teems with errors of all kinds, from

the most disgusting to the most ludicrous, they are smothered in such

Boeotian dulness that they can do no harm.' In curious contrast to

this professional criticism is a passage in one of Byron's letters to

Moore. 'Lady Morgan,' writes the poet, 'in a _really excellent_

book, I assure you, on Italy, calls Venice an ocean Rome; I have the

very same expression in _Foscari_, and yet you know that the play

was written months ago, and sent to England; the _Italy_ I

received only on the 16th.... When you write to Lady Morgan, will you

thank her for her handsome speeches in her book about _my_ books?

Her work is fearless and excellent on the subject of Italy--pray tell

her so--and I know the country. I wish she had fallen in with

_me_; I could have told her a thing or two that would have

confirmed her positions.'

Almost simultaneously with the appearance of _Italy_, Colburn

printed in his _New Monthly Magazine_ a long, vehement, and

rather incoherent attack by Lady Morgan upon her critics. The editor,

Thomas Campbell, explained in an indignant letter to the _Times_,

that the article had been inserted by the proprietor without being

first submitted to the editorial eye, and that he was in no way

responsible for its contents. Colburn also wrote to the _Times_

to refute the _Quarterly_ reviewer's statements regarding the

sales of _Italy_, and publicly to declare his entire satisfaction

at the result of the undertaking, and his willingness to receive from

the author another work of equal interest on the same terms. In short,

never was a book worse reviewed or better advertised.

The next venture of the indefatigable Lady Morgan, who felt herself

capable of dealing with any subject, no matter how little she might

know of it, was a _Life of Salvator Rosa_. This, which was her

own favourite among all her books, is a rather imaginative work, which

hardly comes up to modern biographical standards. The author seems to

have been influenced in her choice of a subject rather by the

patriotic character of Salvator Rosa than by his artistic attainments.

Lady Morgan was once asked by a fellow-writer where she got her facts,

to which she replied, 'We all imagine our facts, you know--and then

happily forget them; it is to be hoped our readers do the same.'

Nevertheless, she seems to have taken a good deal of trouble to 'get

up' the material for her biography; it was in her treatment of it that

she sometimes allowed her ardent Celtic imagination to run away with

her. About this time Colburn proposed that Sir Charles and Lady Morgan

should contribute to his magazine, _The New Monthly_, and offered

them half as much again as his other writers, who were paid at the

rate of sixteen guineas a sheet. For this periodical Lady Morgan wrote

a long essay on _Absenteeism_ and other articles, some of which

were afterwards republished.

In the spring of 1824 the Morgans came to London for the season, and

went much into the literary society that was dear to both their

hearts. Lady Caroline Lamb took a violent fancy to Lady Morgan, to

whom she confided her Byronic love-troubles, while Lady Cork, who

still maintained a salon, did not neglect her old _protégée_. The

rough notes kept by Lady Morgan of her social adventures are not

usually of much interest or importance, as she had little faculty or

inclination for Boswellising, but the following entry is worth

quoting:--

'Lady Cork said to me this morning when I called Miss ---- a nice

person, "Don't say nice, child, 'tis a bad word." Once I said to Dr.

Johnson, "Sir, that is a very nice person." "A _nice_ person," he

replied; "what does that mean? Elegant is now the fashionable term,

but it will go out, and I see this stupid _nice_ is to succeed to

it. What does nice mean? Look in my Dictionary; you will see it means

correct, precise."'

At Lydia White's famous _soirées_ Lady Morgan met Sydney Smith,

Washington Irving, Hallam, Miss Jane Porter, Anacreon Moore, and many

other literary celebrities. Her own rooms were thronged with a band of

young Italian revolutionaries, whose country had grown too hot to hold

them, and who talked of erecting a statue to the liberty-loving

Irishwoman when Italy should be free. Dublin naturally seemed rather

dull after all the excitement and delights of a London season, but

Lady Morgan, though she loved to grumble at her native city, had not

yet thought of turning absentee herself. Her popularity with her

countrymen (those of her own way of thinking) had suffered no

diminution, and her national celebrity was proved by the following

verse from a ballad which was sung in the Dublin streets:--

'Och, Dublin's city, there's no doubtin',

Bates every city on the say;

'Tis there you'll hear O'Connell spoutin',

And Lady Morgan making tay;

For 'tis the capital of the finest nation,

Wid charmin' peasantry on a fruitful sod,

Fightin' like divils for conciliation,

An' hatin' each other for the love of God.'

Our heroine was hard at work at this time upon the last of her Irish

novels, _The O'Briens and the O'Flaherties_, which was published

early in 1827, and for the copyright of which Colburn paid her £1350.

It was the most popular of all her works, especially with her own

country-folk, and is distinguished by her favourite blend of politics,

melodrama, local colour, and rough satire on the ruling classes. The

reviews as usual accused her of blasphemy and indecency, and so severe

was the criticism in the _Literary Gazette_, then edited by

Jerdan, that Colburn was stirred up to found a new literary weekly of

his own, and, in conjunction with James Silk Buckingham, started the

_Athenaeum_. Jerdan had asserted in the course of his review that 'In

all our reading we never met with a description which tended so

thoroughly to lower the female character.... Mrs. Behn and Mrs.

Centlivre might be more unguarded; but the gauze veil cannot hide the

deformities, and Lady Morgan's taste has not been of efficient power

to filter into cleanliness the original pollution of her infected

fountain.' Lady Morgan observes in her diary that she has a right to

be judged by her peers, and threatens to summon a jury of matrons to

say if they can detect one line in her pages that would tend to make

any honest man her foe.

There were other disadvantages attendant upon celebrity than those

caused by inimical reviewers. No foreigner of distinction thought a

visit to Dublin complete without an introduction to our author, who

figures in several contemporary memoirs, not always in a flattering

light. That curious personage, Prince Pückler Muskau, was travelling

through England and Ireland in 1828, and has left a little vignette of

Lady Morgan in the published record of his journey. 'I was very

eager,' he explains, 'to make the acquaintance of a lady whom I rate

so highly as an authoress. I found her, however, very different from

what I had pictured to myself. She is a little, frivolous, lively

woman, apparently between thirty and forty, neither pretty nor ugly,

but by no means inclined to resign all claims to the former, and with

really fine expressive eyes. She has no idea of _mauvaise honte_

or embarrassment; her manners are not the most refined, and affect the

_aisance_ and levity of the fashionable world, which, however, do

not sit calmly or naturally upon her. She has the English weakness of

talking incessantly of fashionable acquaintances, and trying to pose

for very _recherché_, to a degree quite unworthy of a woman of

such distinguished talents; she is not at all aware how she thus

underrates herself.' The _Quarterly Review_ seized upon this

passage with malicious delight. The prince, as the reviewer points

out, had dropped one lump of sugar into his bowl of gall; he had

guessed Lady Morgan's age at between thirty and forty.' Miss Owenson,'

comments the writer, who was probably Croker, 'was an established

authoress six-and-twenty years ago; and if any lady, player's daughter

or not, knew what _she_ knew when she published her first work at

eight or nine years of age (which Miss Owenson must have been at that

time according to the prince's calculation), she was undoubtedly such

a juvenile prodigy as would be quite worthy to make a _case_ for

the _Gentleman's Magazine_.'

Another observer, who was present at some of the Castle festivities,

and who had long pictured Lady Morgan in imagination as a sylphlike

and romantic person, has left on record his amazement when the

celebrated lady stood before him. 'She certainly formed a strange

figure in the midst of that dazzling scene of beauty and splendour.

Every female present wore feathers and trains; but Lady Morgan scorned

both appendages. Hardly more than four feet high, with a spine not

quite straight, slightly uneven shoulders and eyes, Lady Morgan glided

about in a close-cropped wig, bound with a fillet of gold, her large

face all animation, and with a witty word for everybody. I afterwards

saw her at the theatre, where she was cheered enthusiastically. Her

dress was different from the former occasion, but not less original. A

red Celtic cloak, fastened by a rich gold fibula, or Irish Tara

brooch, imparted to her little ladyship a gorgeous and withal a

picturesque appearance, which antecedent associations considerably

strengthened.'

In 1829 _The Book of the Boudoir_ was published, with a preface

in which Lady Morgan gives the following naïve account of its genesis:

'I was just setting off to Ireland--the horses literally

putting-to--when Mr. Colburn arrived with his flattering proposition

[for a new book]. Taking up a scrubby manuscript volume which the

servant was about to thrust into the pocket of the carriage, he asked

what was that. I said it was one of my volumes of odds and ends, and

read him my last entry. "This is the very thing," he said, and carried

it off with him.' The book was correctly described as a volume of odds

and ends, and was hardly worth preserving in a permanent shape, though

it contains one or two interesting autobiographical scraps, such as

the account of _My First Rout_, from which a quotation has

already been given. A writer in _Blackwood_ reviewed the work in

a vein of ironical admiration, professing to be much impressed by the

author's knowledge of metaphysics as exemplified in such a sentence

as: 'The idea of cause is a consequence of our consciousness of the

force we exert in subjecting externals to the changes dictated by our

volition.' Unable to keep up the laudatory strain, even in joke, the

reviewer (his style points to Christopher North) calls a literary

friend to his assistance, who takes the opposite view, and declares

that the book is 'a tawdry tissue of tedious trumpery; a tessellated

texture of threadbare thievery; a trifling transcript of trite twaddle

and trapessing tittle-tattle.... Like everything that falls from her

pen, it is pert, shallow, and conceited, a farrago of ignorance,

indecency, and blasphemy, a tag-rag and bob-tail style of

writing--like a harlequin's jacket.'

Lady Morgan bobbed up as irrepressibly as ever from under this torrent

of (so-called) criticism, made a tour in France and Belgium for the

purpose of writing more 'trapessing tittle-tattle,' and on her return

to London, such were the profits on blasphemy and indecency, bought

her first carriage. This equipage was a source of much amusement to

her friends in Dublin, 'Neither she nor Sir Charles,' we are told,

'knew the difference between a good carriage and a bad one--a carriage

was a carriage to them. It was never known where this vehicle was

bought, except that Lady Morgan declared it came from the first

carriage-builder in London. In shape it was like a grasshopper, as

well as in colour. Very high and very springy, with enormous wheels,

it was difficult to get into, and dangerous to get out of. Sir

Charles, who never in his life before had mounted a coach-box, was

persuaded by his wife to drive his own carriage. He was extremely

short-sighted, and wore large green spectacles out of doors. His

costume was a coat much trimmed with fur, and heavily braided. James

Grant, the tall Irish footman, in the brightest of red plush, sat

beside him, his office being to jump down whenever anybody was knocked

down, or run over, for Sir Charles drove as it pleased God. The horse

was mercifully a very quiet animal, and much too small for the

carriage, or the mischief would have been worse. Lady Morgan, in the

large bonnet of the period, and a cloak lined with fur hanging over

the back of the carriage, gave, as she conceived, the crowning grace

to a neat and elegant turn-out. The only drawback to her satisfaction

was the alarm caused by Sir Charles's driving; and she was incessantly

springing up to adjure him to take care, to which he would reply with

warmth, after the manner of husbands.'

In 1880 Lady Morgan published her _France_ (1829-30). This book

was not a commission, but she had told Colburn that she was writing

it, and as he made her no definite offer, she opened negotiations with

the firm of Saunders and Otley. Colburn, who looked upon her as his

special property, was furious at her desertion, and informed her that

if she did not at once break off with Saunders and Otley, it would be

no less detrimental to her literary than to her pecuniary interest.

Undismayed by this threat, Lady Morgan accepted the offer of a

thousand pounds made her by the rival firm. Colburn, who was a power

in the literary market, kept his word. He advertised in his own

periodicals 'LADY MORGAN AT HALF-PRICE,' and stated publicly that in

consequence of the losses he had sustained by her former works, he had

declined her new book, and that copies of all her publications might

be had at half-price. In consequence of these and other machinations,

the new _France_, which was at least as good a book as the old

one, fell flat, and the unfortunate publishers were only able to make

one payment of £500. They tried to get their contract cancelled in

court, and Colburn, who was called as a witness, admitted that he had

done his best to injure Lady Morgan's literary reputation. Eventually,

the matter was compromised, Saunders and Otley being allowed to

publish Lady Morgan's next book, _Dramatic Scenes and Sketches_,

as some compensation for their loss; but of this, too, they failed to

make a success.

The reviews of _France_ were few and slighting, the wickedest and

most amusing being by Theodore Hook. He quotes with glee the author's

complacent record that she was compared to Molière by the Parisians,

and that she had seen in a 'poetry-book' the following lines:--

'Slendal (_sic_), Morgan, Schlegel-ne vous effrayez pas--

Muses! ce sont des noms fameux dans nos climats.'

'Her ladyship,' continues Theodore, 'went to dine with one of those

spectacle and sealing-wax barons, Rothschild, at Paris; where never

was such a dinner, "no catsup and walnut pickle, but a mayonese fried

in ice, like Ninon's description of Seveigne's (_sic_) heart,"

and to all this fine show she was led out by Rothschild himself. After

the soup she took an opportunity of praising the cook, of whom she had

heard much. "Eh bien," says Rothschild, laughing, as well he might,

"he on his side has also relished your works, and here is a proof of

it." "I really blush," says Miladi, "like Sterne's accusing spirit, as

I give in the fact--but--he pointed to a column of the most ingenious

confectionery architecture, on which my name was inscribed in spun

sugar." There was a thing--Lady Morgan in spun sugar! And what does

the reader think her ladyship did? She shall tell in her own dear

words. "All I could do under my triumphant emotion I did. I begged to

be introduced to the celebrated and flattering artist." It is a

fact--to the cook; and another fact, which only shows that the Hebrew

baron is a Jew _d'esprit_, is that after coffee, the cook

actually came up, and was presented to her. "He," says her ladyship,

"was a well-bred gentleman, perfectly free from pedantry, and when we

had mutually complimented each other on our respective works, he bowed

himself out."'

In spite of her egoism and her many absurdities, it seems clear from

contemporary evidence that in London, where she usually appeared

during the season, Lady Morgan had a following. The names of most of

the literary celebrities of the day appear amid the disjointed

jottings of her diary. We hear of 'that egregious coxcomb D'Israeli,

outraging the privilege a young man has of being absurd'; and Sydney

Smith 'so natural, so _bon enfant_, so little of a wit _titré_';

and Mrs. Bulwer-Lytton, handsome, insolent, and unamiable; and

Allan Cunningham, 'immense fun'; and Thomas Hood, 'a grave-looking

personage, the picture of ill-health'; and her old critical enemy,

Lord Jeffrey, with whom Lady Morgan started a violent flirtation.

'When he comes to Ireland,' she writes, 'we are to go to Donnybrook

Fair together; in short, having cut me down with his tomahawk as

a reviewer, he smothers me with roses as a man. I always say of

my enemies before we meet, "Let me at them."'

The other literary women were naturally the chief object of interest

to her. Lady Morgan seems to have been fairly free from professional

jealousy, though she hated her countrywoman, Lady Blessington, with a

deadly hatred. Mrs. Gore, then one of the most fashionable novelists,

she finds 'a pleasant little _rondelette_ of a woman, something

of my own style. We talked and laughed together, as good-natured women

do, and agreed upon many points.' The learned Mrs. Somerville is

described as 'a simple, little, middle-aged woman. Had she not been

presented to me by name and reputation, I should have said she was one

of the respectable twaddling matrons one meets at every ball, dressed

in a snug mulberry velvet gown, and a little cap with a red flower. I

asked her how she could descend from the stars to mix among us. She

said she was obliged to go out with a daughter. From the glimpse of

her last night, I should say there was no imagination, no deep moral

philosophy, though a great deal of scientific lore, and a great deal

of _bonhomie_.' For 'poor dear Jane Porter,' the author of

_Scottish Chiefs_, Lady Morgan felt the natural contempt of a

'showy woman' for one who looks like a 'shabby canoness.' 'Miss

Porter,' she records, 'told me she was taken for me the other night,

and talked to _as such_ by a party of Americans. She is tall,

lank, lean, and lackadaisical, dressed in the deepest black, with a

battered black gauze hat, and the air of a regular Melpomene. I am the

reverse of all this, and _sans vanité_, the best-dressed woman

wherever I go. Last night I wore a blue satin, trimmed fully with

magnificent point-lace, and stomacher _à la Sévigné_, light blue

velvet hat and feathers, with an aigrette of sapphires and diamonds.'

As Lady Morgan at this time was nearer sixty than fifty, rouged

liberally, and made all her own dresses, her appearance in the costume

above described must at least have been remarkable.

Lady Morgan's last novel, a Belgian story called _The Princess, or

the Béguine_, was published by Bentley in 1834, and for the first

edition she received, £350, a sad falling-off from the prices received

in former days. As her popularity waned, she grew discontented with

life in Dublin, 'the wretched capital of wretched Ireland,' as she

calls it, and in a moment of mental depression she entered the

characteristic query,'_Cui bono?_' in her diary. To the same

faithful volume she confided complaints even of her beloved Morgan,

but the fact that she could find nothing worse to reproach him with

than a disinclination for fresh air and exercise, speaks volumes for

his marital virtue. A more serious trouble came from failing eyesight,

which in 1837 threatened to develop into total blindness. It was in

this year, when things seemed at their darkest, that a pension of £300

a year was conferred on her by Lord Melbourne, 'in recognition of her

merits, literary and patriotic.' It was probably this unexpected

accession of income that decided the Morgans to leave Dublin, and

spend the remainder of their days in London. They found a pleasant

little house in William Street, Knightsbridge, a new residential

quarter which was just growing up under the fostering care of Mr.

Cubitt. Lady Morgan went 'into raptures over the pretty new quarter,'

and wrote some articles on Pimlico in the _Athenæum_. She also

got up a successful agitation for an entrance into Hyde Park at what

is now known as Albert Gate. For deserting Ireland, after receiving a

pension for patriotism, and writing against the evils of Absenteeism,

Lady Morgan was subjected to a good deal of sarcasm by her countrymen.

But, as she pointed out, her property in Ireland was personal, not

real, the tenant-farm of a drawing-room balcony, on which annual crops

of mignonette were raised for home consumption, being the only

territorial possession that she had ever enjoyed.

Lady Morgan's eyesight must have temporarily improved with her change

of dwelling, for in 1839 the first part of her last work of any

importance, _Woman and her Master_, was published by Colburn, to

whom she had at last become reconciled. This book, which was never

finished, was designed to prove, among other things, that in spite of

the subordination in which women have been kept, and in spite of all

the artificial difficulties that have been put in their way, not only

have they never been conquered in spirit, but that they have always

been the depositaries of the vital and leading ideas of the time. The

book is more soberly written than most of Lady Morgan's works, but it

would probably be regarded by the modern reader as dull and

superficial. It was generally believed that Sir Charles had assisted

in its composition, and few men have ever wielded a heavier pen. The

pair only issued one more joint work, _The Book Without a Name_,

which appeared in 1842, and consisted chiefly of articles and sketches

that had already been published in the magazines.

The Morgans now found their chief occupation and amusement in the

society which they attracted to their cheerful little house. One or

two sketches of the pair, as they appeared in their later days, have

been left by contemporaries. Chorley, an intimate friend, observes

that, like all the sceptics he ever approached, they were absurdly

prejudiced, and proof against all new impressions. 'Neither of them,

though both were literary and musical, could endure German literature

and music, had got beyond the stale sarcasms of the _Anti-Jacobin_,

or could admit that there is glory for such men as Weber, Beethoven,

and Mendelssohn, as well as for Cimarosa and Paisiello....

Her familiar conversation was a series of brilliant, egotistic,

shrewd, and genial sallies, and she could be either caressing

or impudent. In the matter of self-approbation she had no

Statute of Limitation, but boasted of having taught Taglioni to dance

an Irish jig, and declared that she had created the Irish novel,

though in the next breath she would say that she was a child when Miss

Edgeworth was a grown woman.' Her blunders were proverbial, as when

she asked in all simplicity, 'Who was Jeremy Taylor?' and on being

presented to Mrs. Sarah Austin, complimented her on having written

_Pride and Prejudice_.

Another friend, Abraham Hayward, used to say that Lady Morgan had been

transplanted to London too late, and that she was never free of the

corporation of fine ladies, though she saw a good deal of them. 'She

erroneously fancied that she was expected to entertain the company, be

it what it might, and she was fond of telling stories in which she

figured as the companion of the great, instead of confining herself to

scenes of low Irish life, which she described inimitably. Lady Cork

was accustomed to say, "I like Lady Morgan very much as an Irish

blackguard, but I can't endure her as an English fine lady."'

In 1843 Sir Charles died rather suddenly from heart disease. His wife

mourned him sincerely, but not for long in solitude. She found the

anaesthetic for her grief in society, and after a few months of

widowhood writes: 'Everybody makes a point of having me out, and I am

beginning to be familiarised with my great loss. London is the best

place in the world for the happy and the unhappy; there is a floating

capital of sympathy for every human good or evil. I am a nobody, and

yet what kindness I am daily receiving.' Again, in 1845, after her

sister's death, she notes in her diary: 'The world is my gin or opium;

I take it for a few hours _per diem_--excitement, intoxication,

absence. I return to my desolate home, and wake to all the horrors of

sobriety.... Yet I am accounted the agreeable rattle of the great

ladies' coterie, and I talk _pas mal_ to many clever men all

day.... That Park near me, of which my beloved Morgan used to say, "It

is ours more than the Queen's, we use it daily and enjoy it

nightly"--that Park that I worked so hard to get an entrance into, I

never walk in it; it seems to me covered with crape.'

Among the friends of Lady Morgan's old age were the Carter Halls,

Hepworth Dixon, Miss Jewsbury, Hayward, and Douglas Jerrold. Lord

Campbell, old Rogers, and Cardinal Wiseman frequented her

_soirées_, though with the last-named she had waged a pamphlet

war over the authenticity of St. Peter's chair at Rome. Rogers was

reported to be engaged to one of Lady Morgan's attractive nieces, the

Miss Clarkes, who often stayed with her. It was in allusion to this

rumour that he said, 'Whenever my name is coupled with that of a young

lady in this manner, I make it a point of honour to say I have been

refused.' To the last, we are told, Lady Morgan preserved the natural

vivacity and aptness of repartee that had made her the delight of

Dublin society half a century before. 'I know I am vain,' she said

once to Mrs. Hall, 'but I have a right to be. It is not put on and off

like my rouge; it is always with me.... I wrote books when your

mothers worked samplers, and demanded freedom for Ireland when Dan

O'Connell scrambled for gulls' eggs in the crags of Derrynane.... Look

at the number of books I have written. Did ever woman move in a

brighter sphere than I do? I have three invitations to dinner to-day,

one from a duchess, one from a countess, and the third from a

diplomatist, a very witty man, who keeps the best society in London.'

Lady Morgan was fond of boasting that she had supported herself since

she was fourteen (for which read seventeen or eighteen), and insisted

on the advantage of giving every girl a profession by which she could

earn her living, if the need arose. Speaking to Mrs. Hall on the

subject of some girls who had been suddenly bereft of fortune, she

exclaimed: 'They do everything that is fashionable imperfectly; their

drawing, singing, dancing, and languages amount to nothing. They were

educated to marry, and had they had time, they might have gone off

with, and hereafter _from_, husbands. I desire to give every

girl, no matter her rank, a trade or profession. Cultivate what is

necessary to the position she is born to; cultivate all things in

moderation, but one thing to perfection, no matter what it is, for

which she has a talent: give her a staff to lay hold of; let her feel,

"This will carry me through life without dependence."'

With the assistance of Miss Jewsbury Lady Morgan, in the last years of

her life, prepared a volume of reminiscences, which she called _The

Odd Volume_. This, which was published in 1859, only deals with a

short period of her career, and is of little literary interest. The

_Athenæum_, in the course of a laudatory review, observed that

'Lady Morgan had lived through the love, admiration, and malignity of

three generations of men, and was, in short, a literary Ninon, who

seemed as brisk and captivating in the year 1859 as when George was

Prince, and the author of "Kate Kearney" divided the laureateship of

society and song with Tom Moore.'

Lady Morgan, though now an octogenarian, was by no means pleased at

these remarks. She still prided herself on her fascinations, was never

tired and never bored, and looked upon any one who died under a

hundred years of age as a suicide. 'You have more strength and spirit,

as well as more genius, than any of us,' wrote Abraham Hayward to her.

'We must go back to the brilliant women of the eighteenth century to

find anything like a parallel to you and your _soirées_.' But

bronchitis was an enemy with which even her high spirit was powerless

to cope. She had an attack in 1858, but threw it off, and on Christmas

Day gave a dinner, at which she told Irish stories with all her old

vivacity, and sang 'The Night before Larry was Stretched.' On St.

Patrick's Day, 1859, she gave a musical matinée, but caught cold the

following week, and after a short illness, died on April 16th.

Thus ended the career of one of the most flattered and best abused

women of the century. Held up as the Irish Madame de Staël by her

admirers, and run down as a monster of impudence and iniquity by her

enemies, it is no wonder that her character, by no means innately

refined, became hardened, if not coarsened, by so unenviable a

notoriety. Still, to her credit be it remembered that she never lost a

friend, and that she converted more than one impersonal enmity (as in

the case of Jeffrey and Lockhart) into a personal friendship. In spite

of her passion for the society of the great, she wrote and worked

throughout her whole career for the cause of liberty, and she was ever

on the side of the oppressed. An incorrigible flirt before marriage,

she developed into an irreproachable matron, while her natural

frivolity and feather-headedness never tempted her to neglect her

work, nor interfered with her faculty for making most advantageous

business arrangements. 'With all her frank vanity,' we are told, 'she

had shrewd good sense, and she valued herself much more on her

industry than on her genius, because the one, she said, she owed to

her organisation, but the other was a virtue of her own rearing.' It

would be impossible to conclude a sketch of Lady Morgan more

appropriately than by the following lines of Leigh Hunt, which she

herself was fond of quoting, and in which her personal idiosyncrasies

are pleasantly touched off:--

'And dear Lady Morgan, see, see, when she comes,

With her pulses all beating for freedom like drums,

So Irish, so modish, so mixtish, so wild;

So committing herself as she talks--like a child.

So trim, yet so easy--polite, yet high-hearted,

That truth and she, try all she can, won't be parted;

She'll put you your fashions, your latest new air,

And then talk so frankly, she'll make you all stare.'

NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS

PART I

[Illustration: Nathaniel Parker Willis]

Any fool, said a wise man, can write an interesting book if he will

only take the trouble to set down exactly what he has seen and heard.

Unfortunately, it is only a very special kind of fool who is capable

of recording exactly what he sees and hears--a rare bird who

flourishes perhaps once in a century, and is remembered long after

wiser men are forgotten. It is not contended that the subject of this

memoir was a fool in the crude sense of the word, though he was

responsible for a good deal of folly; but he was inspired by that

impertinent curiosity, that happy lack of dignity, and that passion

for the trivial and the intimate, which, when joined to a natural

talent for observation and a picturesque narrative style, enable the

possessor to illuminate a circle and a period in a fashion never

achieved by the most learned lucubrations of the profoundest scholars.

Thanks to his Boswellising powers, 'Namby-Pamby Willis,' as he was

called by his numerous enemies, has left an admirably vivid picture of

the literary society of London in the 'thirties,' a picture that

steadily increases in value as the period at which it was painted

recedes into the past.

Willis came of a family that had contrived, not unsuccessfully, to

combine religion with journalism. His immediate forebears seem to have

been persons of marked individuality, and his pedigree was, for the

New World, of quite respectable antiquity. The founder of the family,

George Willis, was born early in the seventeenth century, and

emigrated to New England about 1730, where he worked at his trade of

brickmaking and building. Our hero's great-grandfather was a patriotic

sailmaker, who assisted at a certain historic entertainment, when tar,

feathers, and hot tea were administered gratis to his Majesty's

tax-collector at Boston. His wife, Abigail, was a lady of character

and maxims, who saved some tea for her private use when three hundred

cases were emptied into Boston Harbour, and exhorted her family never

to eat brown bread when they could get white, and never to go in at

the back door when they might go in at the front. The son of this

worthy couple conducted a Whig newspaper in Boston during the

Rebellion, and became one of the pioneer journalists of the West. His

son, Nathaniel's sire, was invited, in 1803, to start a newspaper at

Portland, Maine, where the future Penciller was born in 1806, one year

before his fellow-townsman Longfellow.

A few years later, Mr. Willis returned to Boston, where, in 1816, he

started the _Boston Recorder_, the first newspaper, he was

accustomed to say, that had ever been run on religious lines. He seems

to have been a respectable, but narrow-minded man, who loved long

devotions and many services, and looked upon dancing, card-playing and

stage-plays as works of the Evil One. His redeeming points were a

sense of humour and a keen appreciation of female beauty, which last

characteristic he certainly bequeathed to his son. It was his custom

to sit round the fire with his nine children on winter evenings, and

tell them stories about the old Dutch tiles, representing New

Testament scenes, with which the chimney-corner was lined. The success

of these informal Scripture lessons led him to establish a religious

paper for young people called _The Youth's Companion_, in which

some of our hero's early verses appeared. His wife, Hannah Parker, is

described as a charming woman, lively, impulsive, and emotional. Her

son, Nathaniel, whose devotion to her never wavered, used to say, 'My

veins are teeming with the quicksilver spirit my mother gave me.'

Willis the younger was sent to school at Boston, where he had Emerson

for a schoolfellow, and afterwards to the university of Yale, where he

wrote much poetry, and was well received in the society of the place

on account of his good looks, easy manners, and precocious literary

reputation. On leaving Yale, he was delivered of a volume of juvenile

poems, and then settled down in Boston to four years' journalistic

work. Samuel Goodrich, better known in England under his pseudonym of

'Peter Parley,' engaged him to edit some annuals and gift-books, an

employment which the young man found particularly congenial. In his

_Recollections_ Peter Parley draws a comparison between his two

contributors, Hawthorne and Willis, and records that everything Willis

wrote attracted immediate attention, while the early productions of

Hawthorne passed almost unnoticed.

In 1829 Willis started on his own account with the _American Monthly

Magazine_, which had an existence of little more than two years. He

announced that he could not afford to pay for contributions, as he

expected only a small circulation, and he wrote most of the copy

himself. Every month there were discursive, gossiping editorial

articles in that 'personal' vein which has been worked with so much

industry in our own day. He took his readers into his confidence,

prattled about his japonica and his pastilles, and described his

favourite bird, a scarlet trulian, and his dogs, Ugolino and L. E. L.,

who slept in the waste-paper basket. He professed to write with a

bottle of Rudesheimer and a plate of olives at his elbow, and it was

hinted that he ate fruit in summer with an amber-handled fork to keep

his palm cool!

These youthful affectations had a peculiarly exasperating effect upon

men of a different type; and Willis became the butt of the more

old-fashioned critics, who vied with each other in inventing

opprobrious epithets to shower upon the head of this young puppy of

journalism. However, Nathaniel was not a person who could easily

be suppressed, and he soon became one of the most popular

magazine-writers of his time, his prose being described by an admirer

as 'delicate and brief like a white jacket--transparent like a lump of

sugar in champagne--soft-tempered like the sea-breeze at night.'

Unfortunately, the magazines paid but little, even for prose of the

above description, and Willis presently found himself in financial

difficulties; while, with all his acknowledged fascinations, he was

unlucky in his first love-affair. He became engaged to a beautiful

girl called Mary Benham, but her guardian broke off the match, and the

lady, who seems to have had an inclination for literary men,

afterwards married Motley, the historian of the Dutch Republic.

In 1831 the _American Monthly Magazine_ ceased to appear, and

Willis, leaving Boston and his creditors without regret, obtained the

post of assistant-editor on the _New York Mirror_, a weekly paper

devoted to literature, light fiction, and the fine arts. It was the

property of Morris, author of the once world-famous song, 'Woodman,

spare that Tree,' and the editor-in-chief was Theodore Fay, a novelist

of some distinction. Soon after his appointment it was decided that

Willis should be sent to Europe as foreign correspondent of his paper.

A sum of about a hundred pounds was scraped together for his expenses,

and it was arranged that he should write weekly letters at the rate of

two guineas a letter. In the autumn of 1831 he sailed in a

merchant-vessel for Havre, whence he journeyed to Paris in November.

Here he spent the first five or six months of his tour, and here began

the series of 'Pencillings by the Way,' a portion of which gained him

rather an unwelcome notoriety in English society by reason of the

'personalities' it contained. When published in book form the

Pencillings were considerably toned down, and the proper names were

represented by initials, so that people who read them then for the

first time wondered what all the excitement had been about. As the

chapters which relate to England are of most interest to English

readers, Willis's continental adventures need only be briefly noticed.

The extracts here quoted are taken from the original letters as they

appeared in the _New York Mirror_, which differ in many respects

from the version that was published in London after the attack by the

_Quarterly Review_.

In Paris Willis found himself in his element, and was made much of by

the Anglo-French community, which was then under the special patronage

of Lafayette. One of the most interesting of his new acquaintances was

the Countess Guiccioli, upon whose appearance and manners he comments

with characteristic frankness.

'I met the Guiccioli yesterday in the Tuileries,' he writes shortly

after his arrival. 'She looks much younger than I anticipated, and is

a handsome blonde, apparently about thirty. I am told by a gentleman

who knows her that she has become a great flirt, and is quite spoiled

by admiration. The celebrity of Lord Byron's attachment would

certainly make her a very desirable acquaintance were she much less

pretty than she really is, and I am told her drawing-room is thronged

with lovers of all nations contending for a preference which, having

once been given, should be buried, I think, for ever.' A little later

he has himself been introduced to the Guiccioli, and he describes an

interview which he has had with her, when the conversation turned upon

her friendship with Shelley.

'She gave me one of his letters to herself as an autograph,' he

narrates. 'She says he was at times a little crazy--_fou_, as she

expressed it--but there never was a nobler or a better man. Lord

Byron, she says, loved him as a brother.... There were several

miniatures of Byron hanging up in the room; I asked her if any of them

were perfect in the resemblance. "No," she said, "that is the most

like him," taking down a miniature by an Italian artist, "_mais il

était beaucoup plus beau--beaucoup--beaucoup_." She reiterated the

word with a very touching tenderness, and continued to look at the

portrait for some time.... She went on talking of the painters who had

drawn Byron, and said the American, West's, was the best likeness. I

did not tell her that West's portrait of herself was excessively

flattered. I am sure no one would know her, from the engraving at

least. Her cheek-bones are high, her forehead is badly shaped, and

altogether the frame of her features is decidedly ugly. She dresses in

the worst taste too, and yet for all this, and poetry and celebrity

aside, the countess is both a lovely and a fascinating woman, and one

whom a man of sentiment would admire at this age very sincerely, but

not for beauty.'

The cholera frightened Willis away from Paris in April, but before he

left, the United States minister, Mr. Rives, appointed him honorary

attaché to his own embassy, a great social advantage to the young man,

who was thereby enabled to obtain the _entrée_ into court circles

in every country that he visited. At the same time the appointment

somewhat misled his numerous new acquaintances on the subject of his

social position, while the 'spurious' attachéship afterwards became a

weapon in the hands of his enemies. However, for the time being, the

young correspondent thoroughly enjoyed his novel experiences, and

contrived to communicate his enjoyment to his readers. His letters

were eagerly read by his countrymen, and are said to have been copied

into no less than five hundred newspapers. He eschewed useful

information, gave impressions rather than statistics, and was fairly

successful in avoiding the style of the guide-book. The summer and

autumn of 1832 were spent in northern Italy, Florence being the

traveller's headquarters. He had letters of introduction to half the

Italian nobility, and was made welcome in the court circles of

Tuscany. In the autumn he was flirting at the Baths of Lucca, and at

this time he had formed a project of travelling to London by way of

Switzerland. 'In London,' he writes to his sister, 'I mean to make

arrangements with the magazines, and then live abroad altogether. It

costs so little here, and one lives so luxuriously too, and there is

so much to fill one's mind and eye, that I think of returning to naked

America with ever-increasing repugnance. I love my country, but the

_ornamental_ is my vocation, and of this she has none.' This

programme was changed, and Willis spent the winter between Rome,

Florence, and Venice. Wherever he went he made friends, but his

progress was in itself a feat of diplomacy, and few people dreamt that

the dashing young attaché depended for his living upon his

contributions to a newspaper, payment for which did not always arrive

with desirable punctuality. 'I have dined,' he writes to his mother,

'with a prince one day, and alone in a cook-shop the next.' He

explains that he can live on about sixty pounds a year at Florence,

paying four or five shillings a week for his rooms, breakfasting for

fourpence, and dining quite magnificently for a shilling.

In June 1833, Willis was invited by the officers of an American

frigate to accompany them on a six months' cruise in the

Mediterranean. This was far too good an offer to be refused, since it

would have been impossible to get a peep at the East under more ideal

conditions of travel. Willis's letters from Greece and Turkey are

among the best and happiest that he wrote, for the weather was

perfect, the company was pleasant (there were ladies on board), and

the reception they met with wherever they weighed anchor was most

hospitable; while the Oriental mode of life appealed to our hero's

highly-coloured, romantic taste. In the island of Ægina he was

introduced to Byron's Maid of Athens, once the beautiful Teresa Makri,

now plain Mrs. Black, with an ugly little boy, and a Scotch terrier

that snapped at the traveller's heels. He describes the

_ci-devant_ Maid of Athens as a handsome woman, with a clear dark

skin, and a nose and forehead that formed the straight line of the

Greek model.

'Her eyes are large,' he continues, 'and of a soft, liquid hazel, and

this is her chief beauty. There is that looking out of the soul

through them which Byron always described as constituting the

loveliness that most moved him.... We met her as simple Mrs. Black,

whose husband's terrier had worried us at the door, and we left her

feeling that the poetry she called forth from the heart of Byron was

her due by every law of loveliness.'

By this time the fame of the _Pencillings_ had reached London;

and at Smyrna Willis found a letter awaiting him from the _Morning

Herald_, which contained an offer of the post of foreign

correspondent at a salary of £200 a year. But as his letters would

have to be mainly political, and as he might be expected to act as

war-correspondent, which was scarcely in his line, he decided to

refuse the offer. On leaving the frigate he loitered through Italy,

Switzerland, and France to England, arriving at Dover on June 1, 1834.

While at Florence he had made the acquaintance of Walter Savage

Landor, who had given him some valuable letters of introduction to

people in England, among them one to Lady Blessington. Landor also put

into Willis's hands a package of books, whose temporary disappearance

through some mismanagement roused the formidable wrath of the old

poet. In his _Letter to an Author_, printed at the end of

_Pericles and Aspasia_, Landor describes the transaction (which

related to an American edition of the _Imaginary Conversations_),

and continues:--

'I regret the appearance of his book (the _Pencillings by the

Way_) more than the disappearance of mine.... My letter of

presentation to Lady Blessington threw open (I am afraid) too many

folding-doors, some of which have been left rather uncomfortably ajar.

No doubt his celebrity as a poet, and his dignity as a diplomatist,

would have procured him all those distinctions in society which he

allowed so humble a person as myself the instrumentality of

conferring. Greatly as I have been flattered by the visits of American

gentlemen, I hope that for the future no penciller of similar

composition will deviate in my favour to the right hand of the road

from Florence to Fiesole.'

The end of this storm in a teacup was that the books, which had safely

arrived in New York, returned as safely to London, where they were

handed over to their rightful owner, but not in time, as Willis

complained, to keep him from going down to posterity astride the finis

to _Pericles and Aspasia_. Long afterwards he expressed his hope

that Landor's biographers would either let him slip off at Lethe's

wharf, or else do him justice in a note. Before this unfortunate

incident, Landor and Willis had corresponded on cordial terms. The old

poet wrote to say how much he envied his correspondent the evenings he

passed in the society of 'the most accomplished and graceful of all

our fashionable world, my excellent friend, Lady Blessington,' while

the American could not sufficiently express his gratitude for the

introduction to that lady, 'my lodestar and most valued friend,' as he

called her, 'for whose acquaintance I am so much indebted to you, that

you will find it difficult in your lifetime to diminish my

obligations.'

Willis seems to have arrived in England prepared to like everything

English, and he began by falling in love with the Ship Hotel at Dover,

'with its bells that _would_ ring, doors that _would_ shut,

blazing coal fires [on June 1], and its landlady who spoke English,

and was civil--a greater contrast to the Continent could hardly he

imagined.' The next morning he was in raptures over the coach that

took him to London, with its light harness, four beautiful bays, and

dashing coachman, who discussed the Opera, and hummed airs from the

_Puritani_. He saw a hundred charming spots on the road that he

coveted with quite a heartache, and even the little houses and gardens

in the suburbs pleased his taste--there was such an _affectionateness_

in the outside of every one of them. Regent Street he declares to be

the finest street he has ever seen, and he exclaims, 'The Toledo of

Naples, the Corso of Rome, the Rue de la Paix, and the Boulevards

of Paris are really nothing to Regent Street.'

Willis called on Lady Blessington in the afternoon of the day after

his arrival, but was informed that her ladyship was not yet down to

breakfast. An hour later, however, he received a note from her

inviting him to call the same evening at ten o'clock. She was then

living at Seamore House, while D'Orsay had lodgings in Curzon Street.

Willis tells us that he found a very beautiful woman exquisitely

dressed, who looked on the sunny side of thirty, though she frankly

owned to forty, and was, in fact, forty-five. Lady Blessington

received the young American very cordially, introduced him to the

magnificent D'Orsay, and plunged at once into literary talk. She was

curious to know the degree of popularity enjoyed by English authors in

America, more especially by Bulwer and D'Israeli, both of whom she

promised that he should meet at her house.

'D'Israeli the elder,' she said, 'came here with his son the other

night. It would have delighted you to see the old man's pride in him.

As he was going away, he patted him on the head, and said, "Take care

of him, Lady Blessington, for my sake. He is a clever lad, but wants

ballast. I am glad he has the honour to know you, for you will check

him sometimes when I am away...." D'Israeli the younger is quite his

own character of Vivian Grey, crowded with talent, but very

_soigné_ of his curls, and a bit of a coxcomb. There is no

reverse about him, however, and he is the only _joyous_ dandy I

ever saw.' Then the conversation turned upon Byron, and Willis asked

if Lady Blessington had known La Guiccioli. 'No; we were at Pisa when

they were together,' she replied. 'But though Lord Blessington had the

greatest curiosity to see her, Lord Byron would never permit it. "She

has a red head of her own," said he, "and don't like to show it."

Byron treated the poor creature dreadfully ill. She feared more than

she loved him.'

On concluding this account of his visit, Willis observes that there

can be no objection to his publishing such personal descriptions and

anecdotes in an American periodical, since 'the English just know of

our existence, and if they get an idea twice a year of our progress in

politics, they are comparatively well informed. Our periodical

literature is never even heard of. I mention this fact lest, at first

thought, I might seem to have abused the hospitality or the frankness

of those on whom letters of introduction have given me claims for

civility.' Alas, poor Willis! He little thought that one of the most

distinguished and most venomous of British critics would make a long

arm across the Atlantic, and hold up his prattlings to ridicule and

condemnation.

The following evening our Penciller met a distinguished company at

Seamore House, the two Bulwers, Edward and Henry; James Smith of

'Rejected Addresses' fame; Fonblanque, the editor of the

_Examiner_; and the young Duc de Richelieu. Of Fonblanque, Willis

observes: 'I never saw a worse face, sallow, seamed, and hollow, his

teeth irregular, his skin livid, his straight black hair uncombed. A

hollow, croaking voice, and a small, fiery black eye, with a smile

like a skeleton's, certainly did not improve his physiognomy.'

Fonblanque, as might have been anticipated, did not at all appreciate

this description of his personal defects, when it afterwards appeared

in print. Edward Bulwer was quite unlike what Willis had expected. 'He

is short,' he writes, 'very much bent, slightly knock-kneed, and as

ill-dressed a man for a gentleman as you will find in London.... He

has a retreating forehead, large aquiline nose, immense red whiskers,

and a mouth contradictory of all talent. A more good-natured,

habitually smiling, nerveless expression could hardly be imagined.'

Bulwer seems to have made up for his appearance by his high spirits,

lover-like voice, and delightful conversation, some of which our

Boswell has reported.

'Smith asked Bulwer if he kept an amanuensis. "No," he said, "I

scribble it all out myself, and send it to the press in a most

ungentlemanlike hand, half print, half hieroglyphics, with all its

imperfections on its head, and correct in the proof--very much to the

dissatisfaction of the publisher, who sends me in a bill of £16, 6s.

4d. for extra corrections. Then I am free to confess I don't know

grammar. Lady Blessington, do you know grammar? There never was such a

thing heard of before Lindley Murray. I wonder what they did for

grammar before his day! Oh, the delicious blunders one sees when they

are irretrievable! And the best of it is the critics never get hold of

them. Thank Heaven for second editions, that one may scratch out one's

blots, and go down clean and gentlemanlike to posterity." Smith asked

him if he had ever reviewed one of his own books. "No, but I could!

And then how I should like to recriminate, and defend myself

indignantly! I think I could be preciously severe. Depend upon it,

nobody knows a book's faults so well as its author. I have a great

idea of criticising my books for my posthumous memoirs. Shall I,

Smith? Shall I, Lady Blessington?"'

Willis fell into conversation with the good-natured, though gouty

James Smith, who talked to him of America, and declared that there

never was so delightful a fellow as Washington Irving. 'I was once,'

he said, 'taken down with him into the country by a merchant to

dinner. Our friend stopped his carriage at the gate of his park, and

asked if we would walk through the grounds to the house. Irving

refused, and held me down by the coat-tails, so that we drove on to

the house together, leaving our host to follow on foot. "I make it a

principle," said Irving, "never to walk with a man through his own

grounds. I have no idea of praising a thing whether I like it or not.

You and I will do them to-morrow by ourselves."' 'The Rejected

Addresses,' continues Willis, 'got on his crutches about three o'clock

in the morning, and I made my exit with the rest, thanking Heaven

that, though in a strange country, my mother-tongue was the language

of its men of genius.'

One of the most interesting passages in the _Pencillings_ is that

in which Willis describes a breakfast at Crabb Robinson's chambers in

the Temple, where he met Charles and Mary Lamb, a privilege which he

seems thoroughly to have appreciated. 'I never in my life,' he

declares, 'had an invitation more to my taste. The _Essays of

Elia_ are certainly the most charming things in the world, and it

has been, for the last ten years, my highest compliment to the

literary taste of a friend to present him with a copy.... I arrived

half an hour before Lamb, and had time to learn something of his

peculiarities. Some family circumstances have tended to depress him of

late years, and unless excited by convivial intercourse, he never

shows a trace of what he once was. He is excessively given to

mystifying his friends, and is never so delighted as when he has

persuaded some one into a belief in one of his grave inventions....

There was a rap at the door at last, and enter a gentleman in black

small clothes and gaiters, short and very slight in his person, his

hair just sprinkled with grey, a beautiful, deep-set, grey eye,

aquiline nose, and a very indescribable mouth. His sister, whose

literary reputation is very closely associated with her brother's,

came in after him. She is a small, bent figure, evidently a victim to

ill-health, and hears with difficulty. Her face has been, I should

think, a fine, handsome one, and her bright grey eye is still full of

intelligence and fire....

'I had set a large arm-chair for Miss Lamb. "Don't take it, Mary,"

said Lamb, pulling it away from her very gravely. "It looks as if you

were going to have a tooth drawn." The conversation was very local,

but perhaps in this way I saw more of the author, for his manner of

speaking of their mutual friends, and the quaint humour with which he

complained of one, and spoke well of another, was so completely in the

vein of his inimitable writings, that I could have fancied myself

listening to an audible composition of new Elia. Nothing could be more

delightful than the kindness and affection between the brother and

sister, though Lamb was continually taking advantage of her deafness

to mystify her on every topic that was started. "Poor Mary," he said,

"she hears all of an epigram but the point." "What are you saying of

me, Charles?" she asked. "Mr. Willis," said he, raising his voice,

"admires your _Confessions of a Drunkard_ very much, and I was

saying that it was no merit of yours that you understood the subject."

'The conversation presently turned upon literary topics, and Lamb

observed: "I don't know much of your American authors. Mary, there,

devours Cooper's novels with a ravenous appetite with which I have no

sympathy. The only American book I ever read twice was the _Journal

of Edward Woolman_, a Quaker preacher and tinker, whose character

is one of the finest I ever met. He tells a story or two about negro

slaves that brought the tears into my eyes. I can read no prose now,

though Hazlitt sometimes, to be sure--but then Hazlitt is worth all

the modern prose-writers put together." I mentioned having bought a

copy of _Elia_ the last day I was in America, to send as a

parting gift to one of the most lovely and talented women in the

country. "What did you give for it?" asked Lamb. "About

seven-and-six." "Permit me to pay you that," said he, and with the

utmost earnestness he counted the money out on the table. "I never yet

wrote anything that would sell," he continued. "I am the publisher's

ruin. My last poem won't sell a copy. Have you seen it, Mr. Willis?" I

had not. "It is only eighteenpence, and I'll give you sixpence towards

it," and he described to me where I should find it sticking up in a

shop-window in the Strand.

'Lamb ate nothing, and complained in a querulous tone of the veal pie.

There was a kind of potted fish, which he had expected that our friend

would procure for him. He inquired whether there was not a morsel left

in the bottom of the last pot. Mr. Robinson was not sure. "Send and

see," said Lamb, "and if the pot has been cleaned, bring me the lid. I

think the sight of it would do me good." The cover was brought, upon

which there was a picture of the fish. Lamb kissed it with a

reproachful look at his friend, and then left the table and began to

wander round the room with a broken, uncertain step, as if he almost

forgot to put one leg before the other. His sister rose after a while,

and commenced walking up and down in the same manner on the opposite

side of the table, and in the course of half an hour they took their

leave.' Landor, in commenting on this passage, says it is evident that

Willis 'fidgeted the Lambs,' and seems rather unaccountably annoyed at

his having alluded to Crabb Robinson simply as 'a barrister.'

In London Willis appears to have fallen upon his feet from the very

first. To the end of his life he looked back upon his first two years

in England as the happiest and most successful period in his whole

career. It was small wonder that he became a little dazzled and

intoxicated by the brilliancy of his surroundings, which spoilt him

for the homelier conditions of American life. 'What a star is mine,'

he wrote to his sister Julia, three days after landing at Dover. 'All

the best society of London exclusives is now open to me--_me!_

without a sou in my pocket beyond what my pen brings me, and with not

only no influence from friends at home, but with a world of envy and

slander at my back.... In a literary way I have already had offers

from the _Court Magazine_, the _Metropolitan_, and the _New

Monthly_, of the first price for my articles. I sent a short

tale, written in one day, to the _Court Magazine_, and they gave

me eight guineas for it at once. I lodge in Cavendish Square, the most

fashionable part of the town, paying a guinea a week for my lodgings,

and am as well off as if I had been the son of the President.'

Willis was constantly at Lady Blessington's house, where he met some

of the best masculine society of the day. At one dinner-party among

his fellow-guests were D'Israeli, Bulwer, Procter (Barry Cornwall),

Lord Durham, and Sir Martin Shee. It was his first sight of Dizzy,

whom he found looking out of the window with the last rays of sunlight

reflected on the gorgeous gold flowers of an embroidered waistcoat. A

white stick with a black cord and tassel, and a quantity of chains

about his neck and pocket, rendered him rather a conspicuous object.

'D'Israeli,' says our chronicler, 'has one of the most remarkable

faces I ever saw. He is vividly pale, and but for the energy of his

action and the strength of his lungs, would seem a victim to

consumption. His eye is as black as Erebus, and has the most mocking,

lying-in-wait expression conceivable. His mouth is alive with a kind

of impatient nervousness, and when he has burst forth with a

particularly successful cataract of expression, it assumes a curl of

triumphant scorn that would be worthy of Mephistopheles. A thick,

heavy mass of jet-black ringlets falls over his left cheek almost to

his collarless stock, while on the right temple it is parted and put

away with the smooth carefulness of a girl's, and shines most

unctuously with "thy incomparable oil, Macassar."' Willis was always

interested in dress, being himself a born dandy, and he was inclined

to judge a man by the cut of his coat and the set of his hat. On this

occasion he remarks that Bulwer was very badly dressed as usual, while

Count D'Orsay was very splendid, but quite indefinable. 'He seemed

showily dressed till you looked to particulars, and then it seemed

only a simple thing well fitted to a very magnificent person.'

The conversation ran at first on Sir Henry Taylor's new play,

_Philip van Artevelde_, which the company thought overrated, and

then passed to Beckford, of _Vathek_ fame, who had already

retired from the world, and was living at Bath in his usual eccentric

fashion. Dizzy was the only person present who had met him, and,

declares Willis, 'I might as well attempt to gather up the foam of the

sea as to convey an idea of the extraordinary language in which he

clothed his description. There were at least five words in every

sentence which must have been very much astonished at the use to which

they were put, and yet no others apparently could so well have

conveyed his idea. He talked like a racehorse approaching the

winning-post, every muscle in action, and the utmost energy of

expression flowing out in every burst. It is a great pity he is not in

Parliament.'

At midnight Lady Blessington left the table, when the conversation

took a political turn, but D'Israeli soon dashed off again with a

story of an Irish dragoon who was killed in the Peninsular. 'His arm

was shot off, and he was bleeding to death. When told he could not

live, he called for a large silver goblet, out of which he usually

drank his claret. He held it to the gushing artery, and filled it to

the brim, then poured it slowly out upon the ground, saying, "If that

had been shed for old Ireland." You can have no idea how thrillingly

this little story was told. Fonblanque, however, who is a cold

political satirist, could see nothing in a man's "decanting his

claret" that was in the least sublime, so "Vivian Grey" got into a

passion, and for a while was silent.'

Willis was now fairly launched in London society, literary and

fashionable. He went to the Opera to hear Grisi, then young and

pretty, and Lady Blessington pointed out the beautiful Mrs. Norton,

looking like a queen, and Lord Brougham flirting desperately with a

lovely woman, 'his mouth going with the convulsive twitch that so

disfigures him, and his most unsightly of pug-noses in the strongest

relief against the red lining of the box.' He breakfasted with 'Barry

Cornwall,' whose poetry he greatly admired, and was introduced to the

charming Mrs. Procter and the 'yellow-tressed Adelaide,' then only

eight or nine years old. Procter gave his visitor a volume of his own

poems, and told him anecdotes of the various authors he had known,

Hazlitt, Lamb, Keats, and Shelley. Another interesting entertainment

was an evening party at Edward Bulwer's house. Willis arrived at

eleven, and found his hostess alone, playing with a King Charles'

spaniel, while she awaited her guests.

'The author of _Pelham_,' he writes, 'is a younger son, and

depends on his writings for a livelihood; and truly, measuring works

of fancy by what they will bring, a glance round his luxurious rooms

is worth reams of puffs in the Quarterlies. He lives in the heart of

fashionable London, entertains a great deal, and is expensive in all

his habits, and for this pay Messrs. Clifford, Pelham, and Aram--most

excellent bankers. As I looked at the beautiful woman before me,

waiting to receive the rank and fashion of London, I thought that

close-fisted old literature never had better reason for his partial

largess.'

Willis was astonished at the neglect with which the female portion of

the assemblage was treated, no young man ever speaking to a young lady

except to ask her to dance. 'There they sit with their mammas,' he

observes, 'their hands before them in the received attitude; and if

there happens to be no dancing, looking at a print, or eating an ice,

is for them the most entertaining circumstance of the evening. Late in

the evening a charming girl, who is the reigning belle of Naples, came

in with her mother from the Opera, and I made this same remark to her.

"I detest England for that very reason," she said frankly. "It is the

fashion in London for young men to prefer everything to the society of

women. They have their clubs, their horses, their rowing matches,

their hunting, and everything else is a _bore_! How different are

the same men at Naples! They can never get enough of one there."...

She mentioned several of the beaux of last winter who had returned to

England. "Here have I been in London a month, and these very men who

were at my side all day on the Strada Nuova, and all but fighting to

dance three times with me of an evening, have only left their cards.

Not because they care less about me, but because it is not the

fashion--it would be talked about at the clubs; it is _knowing_

to let us alone."'

There were only three men at the party, according to Willis, who could

come under the head of _beaux_, but there were many distinguished

persons. There was Byron's sister, Mrs. Leigh, a thin, plain,

middle-aged woman, of a serious countenance, but with very cordial,

pleasing manners. Sheil, the famous Irish orator, small, dark,

deceitful, and talented-looking, with a squeaky voice, was to be seen

in earnest conversation with the courtly old Lord Clarendon.

Fonblanque, with his pale, dislocated-looking face, was making the

amiable, with a ghastly smile, to Lady Stepney, author of _The Road

to Ruin_ and other fashionable novels. The bilious Lord Durham,

with his Brutus head and severe countenance, high-bred in appearance

in spite of the worst possible coat and trousers, was talking politics

with Bowring. Prince Moscowa, son of Marshal Ney, a plain,

determined-looking young man, was unconscious of everything but the

presence of the lovely Mrs. Leicester Stanhope. Her husband,

afterwards Sir Leicester, who had been Byron's companion in Greece,

was introduced to Willis, and the two soon became on intimate terms.

In the course of the season Willis made the acquaintance of Miss

Mitford, who invited him to spend a week with her at her cottage near

Reading. In a letter to her friend, Miss Jephson, Miss Mitford says:

'I also like very much Mr. Willis, an American author, who is now

understood to be here to publish his account of England. He is a very

elegant young man, more like one of the best of our peers' sons than a

rough republican.' The admiration was apparently mutual, for Willis,

in a letter to the author of _Our Village_, says: 'You are

distinguished in the world as the "gentlewoman" among authoresses, as

you are for your rank merely in literature. I have often thought you

very enviable for the universality of that opinion about you. You

share it with Sir Philip Sidney, who was in his day the

_gentleman_ among authors. I look with great interest for your

new tragedy. I think your mind is essentially dramatic; and in that,

in our time, you are alone. I know no one else who could have written

_Rienzi_, and I felt _Charles I._ to my fingers' ends, as one

feels no other modern play.'

Willis was less happy in his relations with Harriet Martineau, to whom

he was introduced just before her departure for America. 'While I was

preparing for my travels,' she writes, in her own account of the

interview, 'an acquaintance brought a buxom gentleman, whom he

introduced under the name of Willis. There was something rather

engaging in the round face, brisk air, and _enjouement_ of

the young man; but his conscious dandyism and unparalleled

self-complacency spoiled the satisfaction, though they increased the

inclination to laugh.... He whipped his bright little boot with his

bright little cane, while he ran over the names of all his

distinguished fellow-countrymen, and declared that he would send me

letters to them all.' Miss Martineau further relates that the few

letters she presented met with a very indifferent reception. Her

indignation increased when she found that in his private

correspondence Willis had given the impression that she was one of his

most intimate friends. In his own account of the interview he merely

says: 'I was taken by the clever translator of Faust to see the

celebrated Miss Martineau. She has perhaps at this moment the most

general and enviable reputation in England, and is the only one of the

literary clique whose name is mentioned without some envious

qualification.'

A budget of literary news sent to the _Mirror_ includes such

items as that 'D'Israeli is driving about in an open carriage with

Lady S., looking more melancholy than usual. The absent baronet, whose

place he fills, is about to bring an action against him, which will

finish his career, unless he can coin the damages in his brain. Mrs.

Hemans is dying of consumption in Ireland. I have been passing a week

at a country-house, where Miss Jane Porter [author of _Scottish

Chiefs_] and Miss Pardoe [author of _Beauties of the Bosphorus_]

were staying. Miss Porter is one of her own heroines grown old,

a still noble wreck of beauty.... Dined last week with Joanna

Baillie at Hampstead--the most charming old lady I ever saw.

To-day I dine with Longman, to meet Tom Moore, who is living

_incog._ near this Nestor of publishers, and pegging hard at his

_History of Ireland_.... Lady Blessington's new book makes a

great noise. Living as she does twelve hours out of the twenty-four in

the midst of the most brilliant and intellectually exhausting circle

in London, I only wonder how she found time to write it. Yet it was

written in six weeks! Her novels sell for a hundred pounds more than

any other author's, except Bulwer's. Bulwer gets £1400; Lady

Blessington, £400; Mrs. Norton, £250; Lady Charlotte Bury, £200;

Grattan, £300; and most other authors below this. Captain Marryat's

gross trash sells immensely about Wapping and Portsmouth, and brings

him in £500 or £600 the book--but that can scarce be called

literature. D'Israeli cannot sell a book _at all_, I hear. Is not

that odd? I would give more for one of his books than for forty of the

common saleable things about town.'

One more description of a literary dinner at Lady Blessington's may be

quoted before Willis's account of this, his first and most memorable

London season, is brought to an end. Among the company on this

occasion were Moore, D'Israeli, and Dr. Beattie, the King's physician,

who was himself a poet. Moore had been ruralising for a year at

Slopperton Cottage, and, before his arrival, D'Israeli expressed his

regret that he should have been met on his return to town with a

savage article in _Fraser_ on his supposed plagiarisms. Lady

Blessington declared that he would never see it, since he guarded

himself against the sight and knowledge of criticism as other people

guarded against the plague. Some one remarked on Moore's passion for

rank. 'He was sure to have five or six invitations to dine on the same

day,' it was said, 'and he tormented himself with the idea that he had

perhaps not accepted the most exclusive. He would get off from an

engagement with a countess to dine with a marchioness, and from a

marchioness to accept the invitation of a duchess. As he cared little

for the society of men, and would sing and be delightful only for the

applause of women, it mattered little whether one circle was more

talented than another.' At length Mr. Moore was announced, and the

poet, 'sliding his little feet up to Lady Blessington, made his

compliments with an ease and gaiety, combined with a kind of

worshipping deference, that were worthy of a prime minister at the

Court of Love.... His eyes still sparkle like a champagne bubble,

though the invader has drawn his pencillings about the corners; and

there is a kind of wintry red that seems enamelled on his cheek, the

eloquent record of the claret his wit has brightened. His mouth is the

most characteristic feature of all. The lips are delicately cut, and

as changeable as an aspen; but there is a set-up look about the lower

lip--a determination of the muscle to a particular expression, and you

fancy that you can see wit astride upon it. It is arch, confident, and

half diffident, as if he were disguising his pleasure at applause,

while another bright gleam of fancy was breaking upon him. The

slightly tossed nose confirms the fun of his expression, and

altogether it is a face that sparkles, beams, and radiates.'

The conversation at dinner that night was the most brilliant that the

American had yet heard in London. Sir Walter Scott was the first

subject of discussion, Lady Blessington having just received from Sir

William Gell the manuscript of a volume on the last days of Sir Walter

Scott, a melancholy chronicle of ruined health and weakened intellect,

which was afterwards suppressed. Moore then described a visit he had

paid to Abbotsford, when his host was in his prime. 'Scott,' he said,

'was the most manly and natural character in the world. His

hospitality was free and open as the day; he lived freely himself, and

expected his guests to do the same.... He never ate or drank to

excess, but he had no system; his constitution was Herculean, and he

denied himself nothing. I went once from a dinner-party at Sir Thomas

Lawrence's to meet Scott at another house. We had hardly entered the

room when we were set down to a hot supper of roast chicken, salmon,

punch, etc., and Sir Walter ate immensely of everything. What a

contrast between this and the last time I saw him in London! He had

come to embark for Italy, quite broken down both in mind and body. He

gave Mrs. Moore a book, and I asked him if he would make it more

valuable by writing in it. He thought I meant that he should write

some verses, and said, "I never write poetry now." I asked him to

write only his name and hers, and he attempted it, but it was quite

illegible.'

O'Connell next became the topic of conversation, and Moore declared

that he would be irresistible if it were not for two blots on his

character, viz. the contributions in Ireland for his support, and his

refusal to give satisfaction to the man he was willing to attack.

'They may say what they will of duelling,' he continued, 'but it is

the great preserver of the decencies of society. The old school which

made a man responsible for his words was the better.' Moore related

how O'Connell had accepted Peel's challenge, and then delayed a

meeting on the ground of his wife's illness, till the law interfered.

Another Irish patriot refused a meeting on account of the illness of

his daughter, whereupon a Dublin wit composed the following epigram

upon the two:--

'Some men with a horror of slaughter,

Improve on the Scripture command.

And honour their--wife and their daughter--

That their days may be long in the land.'

Alluding to Grattan's dying advice to his son, 'Always be ready with

the pistol,' Moore asked, 'Is it not wonderful that, with all the

agitation in Ireland, we have had no such men since his time? The

whole country in convulsion--people's lives, fortune, religion at

stake, and not a gleam of talent from one's year's end to another. It

is natural for sparks to be struck out in a time of violence like

this--but Ireland, for all that is worth living for, _is dead_!

You can scarcely reckon Sheil of the calibre of the spirits of old,

and O'Connell, with all his faults, stands alone in his glory.'