narration, a running fire of witty parentheses, half French and half
English; and with champaign in all the pauses, the hours flew on very
dashingly. Lady Blessington left us toward midnight, and then the
conversation took a rather political turn, and something was said of
O'Connell. D'Israeli's lips were playing upon the edge of a champaign
glass, which he had just drained, and off he shot again with a
description of an interview he had had with the agitator the day
before, ending in a story of an Irish dragoon who was killed in the
peninsula. His name was Sarsfield. His arm was shot off, and he was
bleeding to death. When told that 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 with blood, looked
at it a moment, turned it out slowly upon the ground, muttering to
himself, "If that had been shed for old Ireland!" and expired. You can
have no idea how thrillingly this little story was told. Fonblanc,
however, who is a cold political satirist, could see nothing in a
man's "decanting his claret," that was in the least sublime, and so
Vivian Grey got into a passion, and for a while was silent.
Bulwer asked me if there was any distinguished literary American in
town. I said, Mr. Slidell one of our best writers, was here.
"Because," said he, "I received, a week or more ago, a letter of
introduction by some one from Washington Irving. It lay on the table,
when a lady came in to call on my wife, who seized upon it as an
autograph, and immediately left town, leaving me with neither name nor
address."
There was a general laugh and a cry of "Pelham! Pelham!" as he
finished his story. Nobody chose to believe it.
"I think the name _was_ Slidell," said Bulwer.
"Slidell!" said D'Israeli, "I owe him two-pence, by Jove!" and he went
on in his dashing way to narrate that he had sat next Mr. Slidell at a
bull-fight in Seville, that he wanted to buy a fan to keep off the
flies, and having nothing but doubloons in his pocket, Mr. S. had lent
him a small Spanish coin to that value, which he owed him to this day.
There was another general laugh, and it was agreed that on the whole
the Americans were "_done_."
Apropos to this, D'Israeli gave us a description in a gorgeous,
burlesque, galloping style, of a Spanish bull-fight; and when we were
nearly dead with laughing at it, some one made a move, and we went up
to Lady Blessington in the drawing-room. Lord Durham requested her
ladyship to introduce him, particularly, to D'Israeli (the effect of
his eloquence). I sat down in the corner with Sir Martin Shee, the
president of the Royal Academy, and had a long talk about Allston and
Harding and Cole, whose pictures he knew; and "somewhere in the small
hours," we took our leave, and Procter left me at my door in Cavendish
street weary, but in a better humor with the world than usual.
FOOTNOTE:
[11] I have been told that he stood once for a London borough. A
coarse fellow came up at the hustings, and said to him, "I should like
to know on what ground you stand here, sir?" "On my head, sir!"
answered D'Israeli. The populace had not read Vivian Grey, however,
and he lost his election.
LETTER LXXII.
THE ITALIAN OPERA--MADEMOISELLE GRISI--A GLANCE AT LORD
BROUGHAM--MRS. NORTON AND LORD SEFTON--RAND, THE AMERICAN
PORTRAIT PAINTER--AN EVENING PARTY AT BULWER'S--PALMY STATE OF
LITERATURE IN MODERN DAYS--FASHIONABLE NEGLECT OF FEMALES--
PERSONAGES PRESENT--SHIEL THE ORATOR, THE PRINCE OF MOSCOWA,
MRS. LEICESTER STANHOPE, THE CELEBRATED BEAUTY, ETC., ETC.
Went to the opera to hear Julia Grisi. I stood out the first act in
the pit, and saw instances of rudeness in "Fop's-alley," which I had
never seen approached in three years on the continent. The high price
of tickets, one would think, and the necessity of appearing in full
dress, would keep the opera clear of low-bred people; but the conduct
to which I refer seemed to excite no surprise and passed off without
notice, though, in America, there would have been ample matter for at
least, four duels.
Grisi is young, very pretty, and an admirable actress--three great
advantages to a singer. Her voice is under absolute command, and she
manages it beautifully, but it wants the infusion of Malibran. You
merely feel that Grisi is an accomplished artist, while Malibran melts
all your criticism into love and admiration. I am easily moved by
music, but I came away without much enthusiasm for the present passion
of London.
The opera-house is very different from those on the continent. The
stage only is lighted abroad, the single lustre from the ceiling just
throwing that _clair obscure_ over the boxes, so favorable to Italian
complexions and morals. Here, the dress circles are lighted with
bright chandeliers, and the whole house sits in such a blaze of light
as leaves no approach even, to a lady, unseen. The consequence is that
people here dress much more, and the opera, if less interesting to the
_habitue_, is a gayer thing to the many.
I went up to Lady Blessington's box for a moment, and found
Strangways, the traveller, and several other distinguished men with
her. Her ladyship pointed out to me Lord Brougham, flirting
desperately with a pretty woman on the opposite side of the house, his
mouth going with the convulsive twitch which so disfigures him, and
his most unsightly of pug-noses in the strongest relief against the
red lining behind. There never was a plainer man. The Honorable Mrs.
Norton, Sheridan's daughter, and poetess, sat nearer to us, looking
like a queen, certainly one of the most beautiful women I ever looked
upon; and the gastronomic and humpbacked Lord Sefton, said to be the
best judge of cookery in the world, sat in the "dandy's omnibus," a
large box on a level with the stage, leaning forward with his chin on
his knuckles, and waiting with evident impatience for the appearance
of Fanny Elssler in the _ballet_. Beauty and all, the English
opera-house surpasses anything I have seen in the way of a spectacle.
An evening party at Bulwer's. Not yet perfectly initiated in London
hours, I arrived, not far from eleven, and found Mrs. Bulwer alone in
her illuminated rooms, whiling away an expectant hour in playing with
a King Charles spaniel, that seemed by his fondness and delight to
appreciate the excessive loveliness of his mistress. As far off as
America, I may express, even in print, an admiration which is no
heresy in London.
The author of Pelham is a younger son and depends on his writings for
a livelihood, and truly, measuring works of fancy by what they will
bring, (not an unfair standard perhaps), a glance around his luxurious
and elegant rooms is worth reams of puff in the quarterlies. He lives
in the heart of the fashionable quarter of London, where rents are
ruinously extravagant, entertains a great deal, and is expensive in
all his habits, and for this pay Messrs. Clifford, Pelham, and
Aram--(it would seem), most excellent good bankers. As I looked at the
beautiful woman seated on the costly ottoman before me, waiting to
receive the rank and fashion of London, I thought that old
close-fisted literature never had better reason for his partial
largess. I half forgave the miser for starving a wilderness of poets.
One of the first persons who came was Lord Byron's sister, a thin,
plain, middle-aged woman, of a very serious countenance, and with very
cordial and pleasing manners. The rooms soon filled, and two professed
singers went industriously to work in their vocation at the piano;
but, except one pale man, with staring hair, whom I took to be a poet,
nobody pretended to listen.
Every second woman has some strong claim to beauty in England, and the
proportion of those who just miss it, by a hair's breadth as it
were--who seem really to have been meant for beauties by nature, but
by a slip in the moulding or pencilling are imperfect copies of the
design--is really extraordinary. One after another entered, as I stood
near the door with my old friend Dr. Bowring for a nomenclator, and
the word "lovely" or "charming," had not passed my lips before some
change in the attitude, or unguarded animation had exposed the flaw,
and the hasty homage (for homage it is, and an idolatrous one, that we
pay to the beauty of woman), was coldly and unsparingly retracted.
From a goddess upon earth to a slighted and unattractive trap for
matrimony is a long step, but taken on so slight a defect sometimes,
as, were they marble, a sculptor would etch away with his nail.
I was surprised (and I have been struck with the same thing at several
parties I have attended in London), at the neglect with which the
female part of the assemblage is treated. No young man ever seems to
dream of speaking to a lady, except to ask her to dance. There they
sit with their mamas, their hands hung over each other before them in
the received attitude; and if there happens to be no dancing (as at
Bulwer's), looking at a print, or eating an ice, is for them the most
enlivening circumstance of the evening. As well as I recollect, it is
better managed in America, and certainly society is quite another
thing in France and Italy. 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 the remark to her. "I detest England for that very reason,"
she said frankly. "It is the fashion in London for the young men to
prefer everything to the society of women. They have their clubs,
their horses, their rowing matches, their hunting and betting, and
everything else is a _bore_! How different are the same men at Naples!
They can never get enough of one there! We are surrounded and run
after,
"'Our poodle dog is quite adored,
Our sayings are extremely quoted,'
"and really, one feels that one _is_ a belle." She mentioned several
of the beaux of last winter who had returned to England. "Here I have
been in London a month, and these very men that were dying for me, at
my side every 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 of at the club, it is 'knowing' to let us
alone."
There were only three men in the party, which was a very crowded one,
who could come under the head of _beaux_. Of the remaining part, there
was much that was distinguished, both for rank and talent. Sheil, the
Irish orator, a small, dark, deceitful, but talented-looking man, with
a very disagreeable squeaking voice, stood in a corner, very earnestly
engaged in conversation with the aristocratic old Earl of Clarendon.
The contrast between the styles of the two men, the courtly and mild
elegance of one, and the uneasy and half-bred, but shrewd earnestness
of the other, was quite a study. Fonblanc of the Examiner, with his
pale and dislocated-looking face, stood in the door-way between the
two rooms, making the amiable with a ghastly smile to Lady Stepney.
The 'bilious Lord Durham,' as the papers call him, with his Brutus
head, and grave, severe countenance, high-bred in his appearance,
despite the worst possible coat and trowsers, stood at the pedestal of
a beautiful statue, talking politics with Bowring; and near them,
leaned over a chair the Prince Moscowa, the son of Marshal Ney, a
plain, but determined-looking young man, with his coat buttoned up to
his throat, unconscious of everything but the presence of the
Honorable Mrs. Leicester Stanhope, a very lovely woman, who was
enlightening him in the prettiest English French, upon some point of
national differences. Her husband, famous as Lord Byron's companion in
Greece, and a great liberal in England, was introduced to me soon
after by Bulwer; and we discussed the Bank and the President, with a
little assistance from Bowring, who joined us with a paean for the old
general and his measures, till it was far into the morning.
LETTER LXXIII.
BREAKFAST WITH BARRY CORNWALL--LUXURY OF THE FOLLOWERS OF THE
MODERN MUSE--BEAUTY OF THE DRAMATIC SKETCHES GAINS PROCTOR A
WIFE--HAZLITT'S EXTRAORDINARY TASTE FOR THE PICTURESQUE IN
WOMEN--COLERIDGE'S OPINION OF CORNWALL.
Breakfasted with Mr. Procter (known better as Barry Cornwall). I gave
a partial description of this most delightful of poets in a former
letter. In the dazzling circle of rank and talent with which he was
surrounded at Lady Blessington's, however, it was difficult to see so
shrinkingly modest a man to advantage, and with the exception of the
keen gray eye, living with thought and feeling, I should hardly have
recognised him, at home, for the same person.
Mr. Procter is a barrister; and his "whereabout" is more like that of
a lord chancellor than a poet proper. With the address he had given me
at parting, I drove to a large house in Bedford square; and, not
accustomed to find the children of the Muses waited on by servants in
livery, I made up my mind as I walked up the broad staircase, that I
was blundering upon some Mr. Procter of the exchange, whose respect
for his poetical namesake, I hoped would smooth my apology for the
intrusion. Buried in a deep morocco chair, in a large library,
notwithstanding, I found the poet himself--choice old pictures,
filling every nook between the book-shelves, tables covered with
novels and annuals, rolls of prints, busts and drawings in all
corners; and, more important for the nonce, a breakfast table at the
poet's elbow, spicily set forth, not with flowers or ambrosia, the
canonical food of rhymers, but with cold ham and ducks, hot rolls and
butter, coffee-pot and tea-urn--as sensible a breakfast, in short, as
the most unpoetical of men could desire.
Procter is indebted to his poetry for a very charming wife, the
daughter of Basil Montague, well known as a collector of choice
literature, and the friend and patron of literary men. The exquisite
beauty of the Dramatic Sketches interested this lovely woman in his
favor before she knew him, and, far from worldly-wise as an attachment
so grounded would seem, I never saw two people with a more habitual
air of happiness. I thought of his touching song,
"How many summers, love,
Hast thou been mine?"
and looked at them with an inexpressible feeling of envy. A beautiful
girl, of eight or nine years, the "golden-tressed Adelaide," delicate,
gentle and pensive, as if she was born on the lip of Castaly, and knew
she was a poet's child, completed the picture of happiness.
The conversation ran upon various authors, whom Procter had known
intimately--Hazlitt, Charles Lamb, Keats, Shelley, and others, and of
all he gave me interesting particulars, which I could not well repeat
in a public letter. The account of Hazlitt's death-bed, which appeared
in one of the magazines, he said was wholly untrue. This extraordinary
writer was the most reckless of men in money matters, but he had a
host of admiring friends who knew his character, and were always ready
to assist him. He was a great admirer of the picturesque in women. He
was one evening at the theatre with Procter, and pointed out to him an
Amazonian female, strangely dressed in black velvet and lace, but with
no beauty that would please an ordinary eye. "Look at her!" said
Hazlitt, "isn't she fine!--isn't she magnificent? Did you ever see
anything more Titianesque?"[12]
After breakfast, Procter took me into a small closet adjoining his
library, in which he usually writes. There was just room enough in it
for a desk and two chairs, and around were piled in true poetical
confusion, his favorite books, miniature likenesses of authors,
manuscripts, and all the interesting lumber of a true poet's corner.
From a drawer, very much thrust out of the way, he drew a volume of
his own, into which he proceeded to write my name--a collection of
songs, published since I have been in Europe, which I had never seen.
I seized upon a worn copy of the Dramatic Sketches, which I found
crossed and interlined in every direction. "Don't look at them," said
Procter, "they are wretched things, which should never have been
printed, or at least with a world of correction. You see how I have
mended them; and, some day, perhaps, I will publish a corrected
edition, since I can not get them back." He took the book from my
hand, and opened to "The Broken Heart," certainly the most
highly-finished and exquisite piece of pathos in the language, and
read it to me with his alterations. It was to "gild refined gold, and
paint the lily." I would recommend to the lovers of Barry Cornwall, to
keep their original copy, beautifully as he has polished his lines
anew.
On a blank leaf of the same copy of the Dramatic Sketches, I found
some indistinct writing in pencil, "Oh! don't read that," said
Procter, "the book was given me some years ago, by a friend at whose
house Coleridge had been staying, for the sake of the criticisms that
great man did me the honor to write at the end." I insisted on reading
them, however, and his wife calling him out presently, I succeeded in
copying them in his absence. He seemed a little annoyed, but on my
promising to make no use of them in England, he allowed me to retain
them. They are as follows:
"Barry Cornwall is a poet, _me saltem judice_, and in that
sense of the word, in which I apply it to Charles Lamb and W.
Wordsworth. There are poems of great merit, the authors of
which, I should not yet feel impelled so to designate.
"The faults of these poems are no less things of hope than the
beauties. Both are just what they ought to be: i. e. _now_.
"If B. C. be faithful to his genius, it in due time will warn
him that as poetry is the identity of all other knowledge, so
a poet can not be a great poet, but as being likewise and
inclusively an historian and a naturalist in the light as well
as the life of philosophy. All other men's worlds are his
chaos.
"Hints--Not to permit delicacy and exquisiteness to seduce
into effeminacy.
"Not to permit beauties by repetition to become mannerism.
"To be jealous of fragmentary composition as epicurism of
genius--apple-pie made all of quinces.
"Item. That dramatic poetry must be poetry hid in thought and
passion, not thought or passion hid in the dregs of poetry.
"Lastly, to be economic and withholding in similes, figures,
etc. They will all find their place sooner or later, each in
the luminary of a sphere of its own. There can be no galaxy in
poetry, because it is language, _ergo_, successive, _ergo_
every the smallest star must be seen singly.
"There are not five metrists in the kingdom whose works are
known by me, to whom I could have held myself allowed to speak
so plainly; but B. C. is a man of genius, and it depends on
himself (_competence protecting him from gnawing and
distracting cares_), to become a rightful poet--i. e. a great
man.
"Oh, for such a man; worldly prudence is transfigured into the
high spiritual duty. How generous is self-interest in him,
whose true self is all that is good and hopeful in all ages as
far as the language of Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton, is the
mother tongue.
"A map of the road to Paradise, drawn in Purgatory on the
confines of Hell, by S. T. C. July 30, 1819."
I took my leave of this true poet after half a day passed in his
company, with the impression that he makes upon every one--of a man
whose sincerity and kind-heartedness were the most prominent traits in
his character. Simple in his language and feelings, a fond father, an
affectionate husband, businessman of the closest habits of
industry--one reads his strange imaginations, and passionate,
high-wrought, and even sublimated poetry, and is in doubt at which
most to wonder--the man as he is, or the poet as we know him in his
books.
FOOTNOTE:
[12] The following story has been told me by another gentleman.
Hazlitt was married to an amiable woman, and divorced after a few
years, at his own request. He left London, and returned with another
wife. The first thing he did, was to send to his first wife to borrow
five pounds! She had not so much in the world, but she sent to a
friend (the gentleman who told me the story), borrowed it, and sent it
to him! It seems to me there is a whole drama in this single fact.
LETTER LXXIV.
AN EVENING AT LADY BLESSINGTON'S--ANECDOTES OF MOORE, THE
POET--TAYLOR, THE PLATONIST--POLITICS--ELECTION OF
SPEAKER--PRICES OF BOOKS.
I am obliged to "gazette" Lady Blessington rather more than I should
wish, and more than may seem delicate to those, who do not know the
central position she occupies in the circle of talent in London. Her
soirees and dinner-parties, however, are literally the single and only
assemblages of men of genius, without reference to party--the only
attempt at a republic of letters in the world of this great, envious,
and gifted metropolis. The pictures of literary life, in which my
countrymen would be most interested, therefore, are found within a
very small compass, presuming them to prefer the brighter side of an
eminent character, and presuming them (_is_ it a presumption?), not to
possess that appetite for degrading the author to the man, by an
anatomy of his secret personal failings, which is lamentably common in
England. Having premised thus much, I go on with my letter.
I drove to Lady Blessington's an evening or two since, with the usual
certainty of finding her at home, as there was no opera, and the equal
certainty of finding a circle of agreeable and eminent men about her.
She met me with the information that Moore was in town, and an
invitation to dine with her whenever she should be able to prevail
upon "the little Bacchus" to give her a day. D'Israeli, the younger,
was there, and Dr. Beattie, the king's physician (and author,
unacknowledged, of "The Heliotrope"), and one or two fashionable young
noblemen.
Moore was naturally the first topic. He had appeared at the opera the
night before, after a year's ruralizing at "Sloperton cottage," as
fresh and young and witty as he ever was known in his youth--(for
Moore must be sixty at least). Lady B. said the only difference she
could see in his appearance, was the loss of his curls, which once
justified singularly his title of Bacchus, flowing about his head in
thin, glossy, elastic tendrils, unlike any other hair she had ever
seen, and comparable to nothing but the rings of the vine. He is now
quite bald, and the change is very striking. D'Israeli regretted that
he should have been met, exactly on his return to London, with the
savage but clever article in Fraser's Magazine on his plagiarisms.
"Give yourself no trouble about that," said Lady B., "for you may be
sure he will never see it. Moore guards against the sight and
knowledge of criticism as people take precautions against the plague.
He reads few periodicals, and but one newspaper. If a letter comes to
him from a suspicious quarter, he burns it unopened. If a friend
mentions a criticism to him at the club, he never forgives him; and,
so well is this understood among his friends, that he might live in
London a year, and all the magazines might dissect him, and he would
probably never hear of it. In the country he lives on the estate of
Lord Lansdowne, his patron and best friend, with half a dozen other
noblemen within a dinner-drive, and he passes his life in this
exclusive circle, like a bee in amber, perfectly preserved from
everything that could blow rudely upon him. He takes the world _en
philosophe_, and is determined to descend to his grave perfectly
ignorant, if such things as critics exist." Somebody said this was
weak, and D'Israeli thought it was wise, and made a splendid defence
of his opinion, as usual, and I agreed with D'Israeli. Moore deserves
a medal, as the happiest author of his day, to possess the power.
A remark was made, in rather a satirical tone, upon Moore's
worldliness and passion for rank. "He was sure," it was said, "to have
four or five invitations to dine on the same day, and he tormented
himself with the idea that he had not accepted perhaps 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 later
invitation of a Duchess; and 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.
Beauty was one of his passions, but rank and fashion were all the
rest." This rather left-handed portrait was confessed by all to be
just, Lady B. herself making no comment upon it. She gave, as an
offset, however, some particulars of Moore's difficulties from his
West Indian appointment, which left a balance to his credit.