A very remarkable character who used to visit Brighton was the Countess
de Montalembert, mother of the nobleman of that name who made himself
known in France. She was the daughter and heiress of Mr. Forbes, whose
“Oriental Memoirs” were much esteemed in his time. This lady had friends
among all sorts of people. While chuckling over scandalous and not decent
letters from Lady Aldeburgh, she would be receiving the visits of such
uncontaminated beings as Lady Mary Pelham, and conferring with her on
religion. In her invitations to me she would one day say, “I want you
this evening to come and meet the religious set:” this would be such men
as the Robert Andersons. Another time it would be the worldly set that
she was to receive and I was to meet; and this was certainly the most
pleasant set of the two.
She had great _naïveté_, and was full of fun, trenching often on
those sources of humour which are forbidden to delicate minds. Her
literary occupation at the time when I saw most of her (in 1837) was
in writing a “Life of King David”—a work that she completed with great
self-gratulation, and which, at her death, her executors burned without
estimating its worth, the quicker to dispose of her numerous papers.
Her husband was a baron at Louis Philippe’s court, and received the
higher title from that temporary king. His wife, being a Protestant,
was not admissible at court—a difficulty which she readily overcame by
crossing over the way to the Catholic faith; and this she quitted when it
was no longer for her interest to remain in it.
She had two sons. She cared only for the elder one. He lived in Paris,
and at her death inherited her fortune. She died of a quinsy at her house
in Curzon Street, about a year after the time when I saw most of her.
She was sprinkled and crossed, at baptism, by the name of Rose, which
name may have suited her well in her bloomy days, for late in life she
had a pleasing face, full of lively expression, with a fine portly
figure. She was fond of sketching herself seated on a music-stool, which
she called a Rose sitting on a Thorn.
In the death of friends whom one sees from first to last, witnessing
their gradual rise and fall simultaneously with our own, there is nothing
striking; but how different the effect on our minds when we lose sight
of them in their prime, and reflect that their sturdy figures, seeming
to be still unobnoxious to change, lie prostrate in their graves! We
recall them, and see them still in full activity; they appear to have
only gone away! So was it with the kindest of men, my best of friends,
Sir David Scott, whose name and goodness deserve a better monument. So it
was with Mr. Wagner, whose quick limbs and upright pleasant face appear
to be moving through the streets of Brighton at this hour! I see him now
rapidly turning the corner of Castle Square into the Old Steyne! Then
comes back into view the rapid step of Horace Smith, another celebrity
of the place, with a pun almost out of his mouth before we were within
hearing of each other! They all seem still alive!
Wagner walked through the streets as if they were his own, reviewing
the people as he passed as a general would an army, now stopping,
speaking, laughing, now pushing on again. He had been tutor in the Duke
of Wellington’s family. The wonder is that, with his firmness of purpose
and successful handling of men, he did not reach a bishopric up to that
of Canterbury itself. He might have led even the House of Lords by the
nose. But Brighton was to him an episcopal see. He enjoyed the patronage
of nearly all the livings there, with the monopoly of marriages, births,
and deaths; building church after church himself out of his own large
resources and the pockets of willing or unwilling friends.
There was an abomination of doctors at Brighton in those days, potent
firms, chiefly on the Steyne; but the class is soon forgotten, since they
leave nothing behind them but their patients and their shops.
Among apothecaries, Newnham was prince. One saw him walking across the
Steyne, then red-bricked for foot-passengers only, he wagging his head
with a look of triumph, and in gaiter attire; his face nearly six feet
above his shoes, with an expression on it of the miracles that may be
achieved by salted senna alone, not to mention the openings artificially
made in veins with the mere thumb and finger. But Newnham was a friendly,
knowing character. I think often of the advice he tendered me as a young
physician, “Never dine with a patient. Such has been my rule through
life; for if you do, sooner or later you are sure to let out the fool!”
I must not omit the name, in these brief memorials, of my cultured
friend, George Hall, a physician and still more than that, a gentleman.
As travelling Redcliffe Fellow, he spent ten years in visiting Greek
and Italian and Turkish cities, and the chief courts of Europe. He was
too refined for a Brighton physician; few of his patients were to his
taste. When summoned to those who suited him best, he passed hours with
them instead of sharing his time fairly among all. He had some noble
blood in him, according to rumour; but it was of a sinister strain.
This held possession of him secretly, and influenced his life; but he
found consolation in marrying Lady Hood, a peeress of very considerable
fortune, and in retiring from the vulgarity of physic.
The pun sacrifices the sense and purport to the playful analogy. In the
practice of this Horace Smith expended the conversational portions of
his life. I told him, at one of Mrs. Smith’s evening receptions, that a
man known to us had injured a limb while travelling in Norway. His reply
was, “I suppose a bear came and Gnaw’wayed his arm.” His daughter, Miss
Smith then, and I believe so for life, was a quick and clever match for
her father in drawing him out. She had an open, good-tempered face, with
the eyes well apart, to which her nose, following suit, owed a flatness.
Most auditors must have observed that all whom Nature has favoured with
a lying-down nose were let fall by their nurse when babies in arms.
Thackeray was one of these. One would have thought they would have fallen
on their backs; but no, they all fall on their noses.
The only authority for punning that I know of is Aristotle; he recommends
it to a pleader. Horace Smith’s puns are yet remembered; the one on
elder-flower water was his best.
The evening receptions at Brighton were pleasant pastimes, especially
those of Lady Carhampton and the Hon. Mrs. Mostyn, daughter of Mr.
Thrale, of Johnsonian memory. This lady, in Sillwood or Oriental Place,
near the Horace Smiths, had a suite of receiving-rooms winding all round
the mansion, hung with pictures. In one room was a couch enclosed by a
silken canopy within a recess, above which was gilded in large letters,
“MON REPOS.”