There is a good share of pleasant patter in the following abridged from
the _Metropolitan_.
"Every one says that I am an odd person; I presume I am, and so is every
one else taken singly. I can prove that by Cocker. One and one make
two--two is even, one is odd, I am but one. There's logic for you. I am
also a rambler by temperament. I ramble my person at my own free will,
and my mind rambles quite indifferent as to its intimate connexion with
the former. I look at the stars, and my thoughts are of women--I look at
the earth, and my thoughts run upon heaven--I frequent the opera, and
moralize upon the world and its vanities--I sit in my pew at church, and
my thoughts ramble every where in spite of my endeavours and those of
the parson to boot--I live in town all the year, because it's the
fashion to be here in the season, and because I prefer London most when
I can walk about where there is nobody to interrupt me. In the season, I
am allowed to walk into every body's house, very often get an invite to
fill up an odd corner, and as there generally is an odd corner at every
party, and I do not stand at a short notice, I eat more good dinners
than most people. I am not a fool, and yet not too clever, so that
poised in that happy medium, I hear all, see all, know a great deal of
what is going on, and hold my tongue. When people inhabit their town
houses, I spend the whole day going from one to the other. I consider a
house the only safe part of the metropolis. Were I to frequent the
street during the season, I am so apt to fall into a brown study, that
I'm certain to be jostled until I am black and blue--I have found myself
calculating an arithmetical problem at a crossing, and have not been
aware of my danger until a pair of greys sixteen hands high in full trot
have snorted in my face--I am an idler by profession, live at a club,
sleep at chambers, and have just sufficient means to pay my way and
indulge my disposition. But I've not stated why I particularly like town
when it is empty. It is because I feel relieved of all the fashionable
et ceteras. By the time the season is over I am tired of dinners, of
wine, of the opera, the eternal announcement of visiters at parties and
balls, the music, the exotics, the suppers, the rattling of carriages,
and the rattling of tongues. I rejoice at last to find London _en
deshabille_--I can then do as I please without any fear of losing my
character as a fashionable man. I consider that I can in London extract
more amusement in a given quantity of ground than at any other place. A
street will occupy me for a whole day: with an indifferent coat, and
nothing but silver in my waistcoat pocket, I stop at every shop-window
and examine every thing. Should it so happen that the prices are affixed
to every article displayed, I make it a rule to read every one of them.
I know therefore when Urling's lace is remarkably cheap, the value of
most articles of millinery, the relative demands for boots, shoes, and
hats, and prices of 'reach-me-downs' at a ready-made warehouse. At a
pawn-broker's shop-window I have passed two or three hours very
agreeably in ascertaining the sums at which every variety of second-hand
goods are 'remarkably cheap,' from a large folio Bible as divinity,
flutes and flageolets as music, pictures and china as taste, gold and
silver articles as luxury, wedding rings as happiness, and duelling
pistols as death. I could not of course indulge in these peripatetic
fancies during the season without losing caste, but there is a season
for all things."
* * * * *
"Talking of pictures, by the way, what a marvellous falling off is there
in Wilkie!--a misfortune arising, as I take it, from a struggle after
novelty of style. There is a portrait of the King by him in Somerset
House Exhibition, like nothing on earth but a White Lion on its hinder
legs, and there was one a year or two since of George the Fourth in a
Highland dress--a powerful representation of Lady Charlotte Bury,
dressed for Norval. Look at that gem of art, his Blind Fiddler, now in
the National Gallery, or at his Waterloo Gazette, or at the Rent Day,
and compare any one of them with the senseless stuff he now produces,
and grieve. His John Knox--ill placed for effect, as relates to its
height from the ground, I admit; but look at that--flat as a
teaboard--neither depth nor brilliancy. Knox himself strongly resembling
in attitude the dragon weathercock on Bow steeple painted black. Has
Wilkie become thus demented in compliment to Turner, the Prince of
Orange (colour) of artists? Never did man suffer so severely under a
yellow fever, and yet live so long. I dare say it is extremely bad taste
to object to his efforts; but I am foolish enough to think that one of
the chief ends of art is to imitate nature as closely as possible. Look,
for instance, at Copley Fielding's splendid drawing in the Water Colour
Exhibition, of vessels in a gale off Calshot; and certainly I have never
yet seen any thing either animal or vegetable at all like the men,
women, trees, grass, mountains, which appear in Mr. Turner's works.
"This is of course an individual opinion, but I think it may be
expressed without any fear of incurring a charge of ill-nature, when one
thing is recollected. Copley Fielding cannot be a bad artist; Prout
cannot be a bad artist; Nash cannot be a bad artist; De Vint, Stanfield,
Reinagle, Calcott, none of these can be called bad artists; yet not one
of these gentlemen, eminent as they are, produce any thing like Turner's
drawings. Now if they are all wrong, Mr. Turner is quite right; but it
is utterly impossible _he_ should be so, if they are.
"Everybody knows the story of the sign-painter in the country, who could
paint nothing but a red lion; and accordingly he advised every
inn-keeper and alehouse-keeper in the neighbouring village, who applied
to him, to have the sign of the Red Lion. This did very well for a
considerable time, and the painter practised so successfully that not a
hamlet or town, for ten miles round, that had not its red lion; until at
length a new-comer, who, like Daniel of old, thought there were quite as
many lions round him as were wanted, suggested to the artist that he
should like to have a swan for the sign of his small concern. In vain
the painter protested, Boniface was resolute. 'Well,' said the rural
Apelles, 'if you will have a swan you must, but you may rely upon it
when it is finished, it will be so like a red lion, you would not know
the difference.' So Turner, if he were to paint a blackbird, it would be
so like a canary when it was finished, you would not know one from the
other.
"Among other sights, I was induced to go and visit the 'Fleas,' last
Saturday. Never was there such an imposition; instead of being
harnessed, they were tied by the hind legs, and the combatants, poor
wretches! were pinched by the tails in tweezers, and of course moved
their legs in their agony. Well, thought I, as I went out, I have been
in Spain, and Portugal, and Italy, and have passed many a restless
night, but hang me if ever I was so flea bitten in my life as I have
been to day; and I thought of my shilling and the old proverb.
"There is a picture of Lord Mulgrave in the Somerset House exhibition,
very like, painted by Briggs. The best portrait there, is Pickersgill's
Lord Hill; as a likeness, it is identity; and I admire it the more, from
the total absence of what the painters call accessories. It is simple,
and though honourably decorated, is unadorned by what is considered
'groscape' drapery; and yet Mr. Pickersgill was at one time an
unqualified admirer of cloaks; every hawbuck of a fellow who sat to him,
was wrapped up in a cloak: this he has conquered, and we rejoice at it.
The portrait of Lady Coote is a good picture; it is a pity that her
ladyship had not sat a few years earlier; but that is no affair of the
painter. A picture of Lady Londonderry, in the costume of Queen
Elizabeth, by a Frenchman is amazingly like. There is a story about this
dress which only proves the advantages of making experiments before any
grand display. The petticoat of the Virgin Queen, as personated by her
ladyship, was so thickly covered with diamonds, that the substratum of
material could scarcely be seen; and nothing could be more splendid than
the effect; but the diamonds glittered all round the dress, behind and
before, and at the side; and so long as her ladyship paraded the
magnificent suite of her apartments, all was well, and all shone
brilliantly; but lo and behold, when her ladyship threw herself
gracefully on her mimic throne, she found that she might as well be
sitting in her _robe de chambre_ on a pebbly pavement, or a heap of
flints just prepared for Macadamization. Stones, though precious, are
still stones, and the jump the Marchioness gave when she first felt the
full effect of her jewels, is described as something prodigious. So
handsome a person, however, might easily dispense with such ornaments. A
queen of hearts may always look down upon a mere queen of diamonds.
"And what are we to say of other representations? What a sensation (at
any other period how much greater would it have been!) Mr. Sheridan
Knowles' Hunchback has made: why Mr. Sheridan Knowles made his hero a
Hunchback I cannot imagine. The play is an admirable play; and what is
as strange a part of the affair as any, is the acting of the author. To
say it is finished, or fine, would be to talk nonsense; but it is plain,
straightforward, common-scene acting, which very much surprised us, more
especially from an author, still more from an Irish author; and more
still from an author, who in private life is a perfect enthusiast, and a
fine phrenzied-eye orator. Fanny Kemble never appeared to greater
advantage in public--in private, her charming conduct with regard to her
brother, the young soldier, speaks volumes for her. They say she is
going to marry a son of Keppell Craven's, Lord Craven's uncle. They met
first, I believe, at the acting of Lord Leveson Gower's play of Hernani,
at Bridgewater House, when Mr. Craven reaped much histrionic fame as an
amateur. Of one thing we are quite sure, Miss Kemble will act well
wherever she may be placed in the world.
"One of the best conundrums I have heard for a long time, is attributed
to that excellent and agreeable fellow, Yates, who is amongst those who
do credit to the stage. Whether it is his own, or not, is a question to
rest upon his veracity. It is this--'When does an alderman look like a
ghost?' Answer. 'When he's a _gobbling_.' This is surely a _jeu
d'esprit_. By the way, Rogers begins to whistle now; not in fear, or
harmony, or for amusement, but I am afraid from the effects produced by
advanced age. I regret this--he is an excellent person, and a
gentlemanly poet; and I never shall forget the patience with which he
bore a most unintentional misquotation, made from his works, and in his
presence, by a man of the name of Barton, who wanted to compliment him,
by recollecting his verses. The story that he quoted was Rogers' pretty
song of
"Dear is my little native vale,
The ring-dove builds and warbles there,
Close by my cot she tells her tale,
To every passing villager."
"Mr. Barton--who he was I never found out--having eulogized this little
effusion with a superhuman ecstacy, repeated it right to a line--but not
to a word. He gave it us thus--
"Dear is my little native vale,
The ring-dove builds and warbles there,
Close by my cot she _shows_ her _tail_
To every passing villager."
"Not a muscle moved in Mr. Rogers' pale and placid countenance, you
would hardly have thought he lived; but turning to Luttrell, whose mouth
twisted and whose eye rolled at the fun of the mistake, he simply
whispered, 'Non _tali_ auxilio, &c.' Barton survived it, and is still
alive and merry.
"I perceive that there have been changes at the Admiralty. Dyer, Darch,
and Riley superannuated. Hay takes Darch's place as reading clerk. This
is right. Hay is a gentleman, and a man of business. Met Sir
Francis--which Sir Francis, you would say, for there are two who
frequent the Admiralty, the obtuse and the clever. I mean the clever.
'Well, Frank, how goes on the Vernon, and how did she go off the other
day? No want of water, I presume.' 'No; thank _heaven_ for that! Why,
she went off beautifully, but the lubberly mateys contrived to get her
foul of the hulk, and Lord Vernon came out of the conflict minus a leg
and an arm.'--'Who had you there?' 'Upon my honour I hardly know. I was
so busy paying my devoirs to Lady Graham; she looked for all the world
like a mermaid, as she stood by the bows and christened the vessel. Her
hair hung down as straight as the lower rigging when first put over the
mast heads.'--'I wish I had such a beautiful mermaid for a wife,'
replied H----, who had joined and listened to our conversation. 'What a
pretty creature is that Miss E----; she looked as fresh as if she had
just come out of a shower bath.' 'Well, so she had.'"
* * * * *
"I went to the Opera on Tuesday to hear Mariani. She is
splendid--confounded plain, but that's no consequence. That Grisi
screams rather too much, although she acts well, and has a pretty
person, if it was washed. I believe Brugnoli's toes are made of _cast
iron_. _Toe_ K--g, could make no impression upon them. You know how K--g
obtained that name. He is a little puffy fellow, who goes about town,
making acquaintance with every body--is endured at watering places for
his poodle qualities of 'fetch and carry:' he is very anxious to become
acquainted with noblemen, and his plan is to sidle up and tread very
lightly upon an aristocratical toe--then an immediate apology, and the
apology is followed also with the wind and weather, and the leading
topic of the day, a knowledge of his lordship's friends or relations,
and a good morning. The next day when they meet, a polite bow from Mr.
K--g, and if an opportunity offers he enters into conversation, and thus
establishes his acquaintance.
"Such is his EXTREME method of introducing himself, which deserves
credit for its ingenuity and exclusiveness. I once knew a man who had
only one story, and that was about a gun. His difficulty was to
introduce this story, and he at last succeeded, like K--g, by the use of
his foot. When sitting after dinner he would stamp under the table and
create a hollow sound. Then, God bless me! what's that--a gun? By the
by, talking about guns--and then came his story."
* * * * *