R---- left London to-day for Harwich, and will be with you in a
fortnight. I know how glad you will be to have a living witness of the
sayings and doings of your L----; one whom you can question about so
many things which, even with the best intentions cannot always find
place in letters.
I have now settled myself into a town life again. Yesterday I dined
with Prince E----, where the---- secretary of legation kept us in an
incessant laugh. He is a kind of agreeable buffoon, and although of very
mean extraction, a superlative ultra; ('tel le maitre, tel le valet.') I
have often admired the talent of the French, and envied it too, for
making the most amusing stories out of the most common-place
incidents;--such as lose all their salt coming from any mouth but
theirs.
Nobody possesses this talent in a higher degree than Monsieur R----. He
affords another proof that it is entirely the result of a language so
admirably adapted to produce it, and of an education which springs from
the same source; for Monsieur R---- is a German--I think a Swabian; but
was brought to France when only two years old, and educated as a
Frenchman. Language makes the man, more than blood;--though 'tis true,
blood has first made the language.
'Au reste,' one must acknowledge that however brilliant such agreeable
chatter may be at the moment, it goes out like a fusee, and leaves
nothing on the memory; so that the pedantic German feels a sort of
uneasiness after listening to it, and regrets having spent his time so
unprofitably. Had it been possible to that element of Germanism which
formed our language, to give it that lightness, roundness, agreeable
equivocalness, and at the same time precision and
definiteness,--qualities which are called into full play in society by
French audacity,--the conversation of the German would certainly have
been the more satisfactory of the two, for he would never have neglected
to connect the useful with the agreeable. As it is, we Germans have
nothing left in society, but that sort of talent which the French call
'l'esprit des escaliers;'--that, namely, which suggests to a man as he
is going down stairs, the clever things he might have said in the
'salon.'
Of this Frenchman's fireworks and crackers I retain nothing but the
following anecdote. A diplomatic writer, who passed as authority in the
time of Louis the Fourteenth, concluded a treatise on the great
privileges pertaining to foreign envoys, with the following
words;--'mais dès qu'un ambassadeur est mort, il rentre dans la vie
privée.'
_January 22nd._
The poor Duke of York is at length dead, after a long illness, and lay
in state yesterday with great magnificence. I saw him in October, and
found him, even then, the shadow of the robust stately man whom I had
formerly so often seen at Lady L----'s, and at his own house, where six
bottles of claret after dinner scarcely made a perceptible change in his
countenance. I remember that in one such evening,--it was indeed already
after midnight,--he took some of his guests, among whom were the
Austrian Ambassador, Count Meerveldt, Count Beroldingen, and myself,
into his beautiful armoury. We tried to swing several Turkish sabres,
but none of us had a very firm grasp; whence it happened that the Duke
and Count Meerveldt both scratched themselves with a sort of straight
Indian sword, so as to draw blood. Count Meerveldt then wished to try if
it cut as well as a real Damascus, and undertook to cut through one of
the wax candles which stood on the table. The experiment answered so
ill, that both the candles, candlesticks and all, fell to the ground and
were extinguished. While we were groping about in the dark, and trying
to find the door, the Duke's aide-de-camp, Colonel C----, stammered out
in great agitation, "By God, Sir, I remember the sword is poisoned!" You
may conceive the agreeable feelings of the wounded at this intelligence.
Happily on further examination it appeared that claret and not poison
was at the bottom of the Colonel's exclamation.
The Duke seems to be much regretted, and the whole country wears deep
mourning for him, with crape on the hat, and black gloves, 'ce qui fait
le désespoir' of all shopkeepers. People put their servants into black
liveries, and write on paper with a broad black edge. Meantime the
Christmas pantomimes go on as merrily as ever. It has a strange effect
to see Harlequin and Columbine skipping about on the stage in all
conceivable frivolities and antics, while the coal-black audience,
dressed as for a funeral procession, clap and shout with delight.
I this minute received your letter from B----. Really so merry, I might
almost say so pungent a one, you have not written of a long time. The
B---- originals seem to have quite electrified you, and though I rejoice
at it, I can't help being a little jealous. But you will soon come back
to _your_ original. I say with Cæsar, I fear not the fat, but the lean;
and so long as you tell me that you preserve your charming 'embonpoint,'
I am easy. I had a great mind, however, to plague you a little in
return; but I know you don't bear jesting 'par distance' well, so I
abstain. To vent my humour in some way, I send you a bit out of my
journal,--a 'pendant' to your African Travels; for the poor meagre
journal is still alive, though it has received no nutriment by the month
together, and the little it has had, has not the least 'haut gout.'
Don't expect, therefore, anything facetious or satirical, but something
quite serious. It is laid upon you as a punishment.