In my earlier days I was intimately acquainted with the Earl of Elgin,
whose name is co-immortal with the marbles of ancient Greece. It shows
what an amiable man he was to have taken so much notice as he did of a
young man so insignificant as myself, and to have introduced me on equal
terms to his wife and family.
How fortunate is London to contain the Elgin Marbles and the Raphael
Cartoons, which, exclusive of the Venus of Milo, and the Last Supper of
Leonardo da Vinci, are of greater worth than all the other sculptures and
paintings in Europe.
I knew Lord Elgin in London and Paris; it was when his great diplomatic
career was ended. He was a patient sufferer from facial neuralgia, and
was under the treatment of Hahnneman. He was unable to speak, for the
motion of his lips left a new paroxysm of pain. So he wrote what he would
have said, and on one occasion he placed the words on paper that violent
as his suffering was it was due no longer to the disease, but to the
medicine that was administered. A remedy in homœopathic hands is thought
to occupy the disease, and by slightly exaggerating it to effect its cure.
Lord Elgin would have liked to see me one of Hahnneman’s party; he
introduced me to the physician. I saw some of the practice, but always
left in exactly the same state of mind as I went.
I sometimes joined the family party at dinner in Paris, so I knew Lady
Elgin and her two daughters who were then single. I think the eldest was
called Lady Charlotte, the youngest was Lady Augusta, who became the wife
of Dean Stanley.
The manner and ways of this family were of the simplest; there was not
the slightest show of rank in anything they did or said.
Afterwards, in London, the earl brought his son, Mr. Frederick Bruce,
to see me, and this visit afforded me a pleasant recollection; for Mr.
Bruce, Sir Frederick afterwards, became a distinguished public servant,
and, when ambassador in China, took a keen interest in Charles Gordon,
and assisted him in every manner in his power. He was tall of stature,
and a much finer looking man than his eminent eldest brother.
Lady Matilda Bruce, afterwards Maxwell, through her marriage, was the
eldest daughter of Lord Elgin by his first wife, and was the heiress
of her mother’s large fortune. I did not meet her, but she showed me
kindness through a common friend, and when I visited Canada she gave me
a cordial introduction to her brother who was Governor-General of that
colony at the time.
There was a drama published by me in 1839, called the “Piromides,” which
many members of this noble family took a pleasure in reading. It was my
first serious work, and was inscribed to the Earl of Elgin, the late
ambassador at the court of the Sultan.