became a member of the famous Speculative Society. Their acquaintance
was renewed years afterwards in London. Who can ever forget the small,
quiet dinners given by Mackintosh when living out of Parliament, and out
of office in Cadogan Place? Simple but genial were those repasts,
forming a strong contrast to the Edinburgh dinners of yore. He had then
long given up both the theory and practice of the Brunonians, and took
nothing but light French and German wines, and these in moderation. His
tall, somewhat high-shouldered, massive form; his calm brow, mild,
thoughtful; his dignity of manner; his gentleness to all; his vast
knowledge; his wonderful appreciation of excellence; his discrimination
of faults--all combined to form one of the finest specimens ever seen,
even in that illustrious period, of a philosopher and historian.
Jeffrey and Cockburn were contrasts to one whom they honoured. Jeffrey,
'the greatest of British critics,' was eight years younger than
Mackintosh, having been born in 1773. He was the son of one of the
depute clerks to the Supreme Court, not an elevated position, though one
of great respectability. When Mackintosh and Sydney Smith first knew him
in Edinburgh, he was enduring, with all the impatience of his sensitive
nature, what he called 'a slow, obscure, philosophical starvation' at
the Scotch bar.
'There are moments,' he wrote, 'when I think I could sell myself to the
ministers or to the devil, in order to get above these necessities.'
Like all men so situated, his depression came in fits. Short, spare,
with regular, yet _not_ aristocratic features;--speaking, brilliant, yet
_not_ pleasing eyes;--a voice consistent with that _mignon_ form;--a
somewhat precise and anxious manner, there was never in Jeffrey that
charm, that _abandon_, which rendered his valued friend, Henry Cockburn,
the most delightful, the most beloved of men, the very idol of his
native city.
The noble head of Cockburn, bald, almost in youth, with its pliant,
refined features, and its fresh tint upon a cheek always clear,
generally high in colour, was a strong contrast to the rigid _petitesse_
of Jeffrey's physiognomy; much more so to the large proportions of
Mackintosh; or to the ponderous, plain, and, later in life, swarthy
countenance of Sydney Smith. Lord Webb Seymour, the brother of the late
Duke of Somerset, gentle, modest, intelligent,--Thomas Thomson, the
antiquary,--and Charles and George Bell, the surgeon and the advocate,--
Murray, afterwards Lord Murray, the generous pleader, who gave up to its
rightful heirs an estate left him by a client,--and Brougham--formed the
staple of that set now long since extinct.
It was partially broken up by Sydney Smith's coming, in 1803, to London.
He there took a house in Doughty Street, being partial to legal society,
which was chiefly to be found in that neighbourhood.
Here Sir Samuel Romilly, Mackintosh, Scarlett (Lord Abinger), the
eccentric and unhappy Mr. Ward, afterwards Lord Dudley, 'Conversation'
Sharp, Rogers, and Luttrell, formed the circle in which Sidney
delighted. He was still very poor, and obliged to sell the rest of his
wife's jewels; but his brother Robert allowed him £100 a year, and lent
him, when he subsequently removed into Yorkshire, £500.
He had now a life of struggling, but those struggles were the lot of his
early friends also; Mackintosh talked of going to India as a lecturer;
Smith recommended Jeffrey to do the same. Happily, both had the courage
and the sense to await for better times at home; yet Smith's opinion of
Mackintosh was, that 'he never saw so theoretical a head which contained
so much practical understanding;' and to Jeffrey he wrote:
'You want nothing to be a great lawyer, and nothing to be a great
speaker, but a deeper voice--slower and more simple utterance--more
humility of face and neck--and a greater contempt for _esprit_ than men
_who have so much_ in general attain to.'
The great event of Sydney Smith's first residence in London was his
introduction at Holland House; in that 'gilded room which furnished,' as
he said, 'the best and most agreeable society in the world,' his
happiest hours were passed. John Allen, whom Smith had introduced to
Lord Holland was the peer's librarian and friend. Mackintosh, who Sydney
Smith thought only wanted a few bad qualities to get on in the world,
Rogers, Luttrell, Sheridan, Byron, were among the 'suns' that shone,
where Addison had suffered and studied.
Between Lord Holland and Sydney Smith the most cordial friendship
existed; and the eccentric and fascinating Lady Holland was his constant
correspondent. Of this able woman, it was said by Talleyrand: '_Elle est
toute assertion; mais quand on demande la preuve c'est là son sécret_'
Of Lord Holland, the keen diplomatist observed: '_Cest la bienveillance
même, mais la bienveillance la plus perturbatrice, qu'on ait jamais
vue._'
Lord Holland did not commit the error ascribed by Rogers, in his
Recollections, to Marlay, Bishop of Waterford, who when poor, with an
income of only £400 a year, used to give the best dinners possible; but,
when made a bishop, enlarged his table, and lost his fame-had no more
good company--there was an end of his enjoyment: he had lords and ladies
to his table--foolish people--foolish men--and foolish women--and there
was an end of him and us. 'Lord Holland selected his lords and ladies,
not for their rank, but for their peculiar merits or acquirements.' Then
even Lady Holland's oddities were amusing. When she wanted to get rid of
a fop, she used to say: 'I beg your pardon, but I wish you would sit a
little farther off; there is something on your handkerchief which I
don't quite like.' Or when a poor man happened to stand, after the
fashion of the lords of creation, with his back close to the
chimney-piece, she would cry out, 'Have the goodness, sir, to stir the
fire.'
Lord Holland never asked any one to dinner, ('not even _me_,' says
Rogers, 'whom he had known so long,') without asking Lady Holland. One
day, shortly before his lordship's death, Rogers was coming out from
Holland House when he met him. 'Well, do you return to dinner?' I
answered. 'No, I have not been invited.' The precaution, in fact, was
necessary, for Lord Holland was so good-natured and hospitable that he
would have had a crowd daily at his table had he been left to himself.
The death of Lord Holland completely broke up the unrivalled dinners,
and the subsequent evenings in the 'gilded chamber.' Lady Holland, to
whom Holland House was left for her life-time, declined to live there.
With Holland House, the mingling of aristocracy with talent; the
blending ranks by force of intellect; the assembling not only of all the
celebrity that Europe could boast, but of all that could enhance private
enjoyment, had ceased. London, the most intelligent of capitals,
possesses not one single great house in which pomp and wealth are made
subsidiary to the true luxury of intellectual conversation.
On the morning of the day when Lord Holland's last illness began, these
lines were written by him, and found after his death on his
dressing-table:--
'Nephew of Fox, and Friend of Grey,
Sufficient for my fame,
If those who know me best shall say
I tarnished neither name.'
Of him his best friend, Sydney Smith, left a short but discriminative
character. 'There was never (amongst other things he says) a better
heart, or one more purified from all the bad passions--more abounding in
charity and compassion--or which seemed to be so created as a refuge to
the helpless and oppressed.'
Meantime Sydney Smith's circumstances were still limited; £50 a year as
evening preacher to the Foundling Hospital was esteemed as a great help
by him. The writer of this memoir remembers an amusing anecdote related
of him at the table of an eminent literary character by a member of Lord
Woodhouselee's family, who had been desirous to obtain for Sydney the
patronage of the godly. To this end she persuaded Robert Grant and
Charles Grant (afterwards Lord Glenelg) to go to the Foundling to hear
him, she hoped to advantage; to her consternation he broke forth into so
familiar a strain, couched in terms so bordering on the jocose,--though
no one had deeper religious convictions than he had,--that the two
saintly brothers listened in disgust. They forgot how South let loose
the powers of his wit and sarcasm; and how the lofty-minded Jeremy
Taylor applied the force of humour to lighten the prolixity of argument.
Sydney Smith became, nevertheless, a most popular preacher; but the man
who prevents people from sleeping once a week in their pews is sure to
be criticised.
Let us turn to him, however, as a member of society. His circle of
acquaintance was enlarged, not only by his visits to Holland House, but
by his lectures on moral philosophy at the Royal Institution. Sir Robert
Peel, not the most impressionable of men, but one whose cold shake of
the hand is said--as Sydney Smith said of Sir James Mackintosh--'to have
come under the genus _Mortmain_' was a very young man at the time when
Albemarle Street was crowded with carriages from one end of the street
to the other, in consequence of Sydney Smith's lectures; yet he declared
that he had never forgotten the effect given to the speech of Logan, the
Indian chief, by Sydney's voice and manner.
His lectures produced a sum sufficient for Sydney to furnish a house in
Orchard Street. Doughty Street--raised to celebrity as having been the
residence, not only of Sydney Smith, but of Charles Dickens--was too far
for the _habitué_ of Holland House and the orator of Albemarle Street
long to sojourn there. In Orchard Street, Sydney enjoyed that domestic
comfort which he called 'the grammar of life;' delightful suppers, to
about twenty or thirty persons, who came and went as they pleased. A
great part of the same amusing and gifted set used to meet once a week
also at Sir James Mackintosh's, at a supper, which, though not exactly
Cowper's 'radish and an egg,' was simple, but plentiful--yet most
eagerly sought after. 'There are a few living,' writes Sydney Smith's
daughter, 'who can look back to them, and I have always found them do so
with a sigh of regret.'
One night, a country cousin of Sydney Smith's was present at a supper.
'Now, Sydney,' whispered the simple girl, 'I know all these are very
remarkable people; do tell me who they are.'--'Oh, yes; there's
Hannibal,' pointing to a grave, dry, stern man, Mr. Whishaw; 'he lost
his leg in the Carthagenian war: there's Socrates,' pointing to
Luttrell: 'that,' he added, turning to Horner, 'is Solon.'
Another evening, Mackintosh brought a raw Scotch cousin--an ensign in a
Highland regiment--with him. The young man's head could carry no idea of
glory except in regimentals. Suddenly, nudging Sir James, he whispered,
'Is that the great Sir Sydney Smith?'--'Yes, yes,' answered Sir James;
and instantly telling Sydney who he was supposed to be, the grave
evening preacher at the Foundling immediately assumed the character
ascribed to him, and acted the hero of Acre to perfection, fighting his
battles over again--even charging the Turks--whilst the young Scot was
so enchanted by the great Sir Sydney's condescension, that he wanted to
fetch the pipers of his regiment, and pipe to the great Sir Sydney, who
had never enjoyed the agonizing strains of the bagpipe. Upon this the
party broke up, and Sir James carried the Highlander off, lest he should
find out his mistake, and cut his throat from shame and vexation. One
may readily conceive Sydney Smith's enjoying this joke, for his spirits
were those of a boy: his gaiety was irresistible; his ringing laugh,
infectious; but it is difficult for those who knew Mackintosh in his
later years--the quiet, almost pensive invalid to realize in that
remembrance any trace of the Mackintosh of Doughty Street and Orchard
Street days.
One day Sydney Smith came home with two hackney coaches full of
pictures, which he had picked up at an auction. His daughter thus tells
the story: 'Another day he came home with two hackney-coach loads of
pictures, which he had met with at an auction, having found it
impossible to resist so many yards of brown-looking figures and faded
landscapes going for "absolutely nothing, unheard of sacrifices." "Kate"
hardly knew whether to laugh or cry when she saw these horribly
dingy-looking objects enter her pretty little drawing-room, and looked
at him as if she thought him half mad; and half mad he was, but with
delight at his purchase. He kept walking up and down the room, waving
his arms, putting them in fresh lights, declaring they were exquisite
specimens of art, and if not by the very best masters, merited to be so.
He invited his friends, and displayed his pictures; discovered fresh
beauties for each new comer; and for three or four days, under the magic
influence of his wit and imagination, these gloomy old pictures were a
perpetual source of amusement and fun.'
At last, finding that he was considered no authority for the fine arts,
off went the pictures to another auction, but all re-christened by
himself, with unheard-of names. 'One, I remember,' says Lady Holland,
'was a beautiful landscape, by Nicholas de Falda, a pupil of Valdezzio,
the only painting by that eminent artist. The pictures sold, I believe,
for rather less than he gave for them under their original names, which
were probably as real as their assumed ones.'
Sydney Smith had long been styled by his friends the 'Bishop of
Mickleham,' in allusion to his visits to, and influence in, the house of
his friend, Richard Sharp, who had a cottage at that place. A piece of
real preferment was now his. This was the living of Foston-le-Clay, in
Yorkshire, given him by Lord Erskine, then Chancellor. Lady Holland
never rested till she had prevailed on Erskine to give Sydney Smith a
living. Smith, as Rogers relates, went to thank his lordship. 'Oh,' said
Erskine, 'don't thank me, Mr. Smith; I gave you the living because Lady
Holland insisted on my doing so; and if she had desired me to give it to
the devil, _he_ must have had it.'
Notwithstanding the prediction of the saints, Sydney Smith proved an
excellent parish priest. Even his most admiring friends did not expect
this result. The general impression was, that he was infinitely better
fitted for the bar than for the church. 'Ah! Mr. Smith,' Lord Stowell
used to say to him, 'you would be in a far better situation, and a far
richer man, had you belonged to us.'
One _jeu d'esprit_ more, and Smith hastened to take possession of his
living, and to enter upon duties of which no one better knew the mighty
importance than he did.
Among the Mackintosh set was Richard Sharp, to whom we have already
referred, termed, from his great knowledge and ready memory,
'Conversation Sharp.' Many people may think that this did not imply an
agreeable man, and they were, perhaps, right. Sharp was a plain,
ungainly man. One evening, a literary lady, now living, being at Sir
James Mackintosh's, in company with Sharp, Sismondi, and the late Lord
Denman, then a man of middle age. Sir James was not only particularly
partial to Denman, but admired him personally. 'Do you not think Denman
handsome?' he inquired of the lady after the guests were gone. 'No? Then
you must think Mr. Sharp handsome,' he rejoined; meaning that a taste so
perverted as not to admire Denman must be smitten with Sharp. Sharp is
said to have studied all the morning before he went out to dinner, to
get up his wit and anecdote, as an actor does his part. Sydney Smith
having one day received an invitation from him to dine at Fishmongers'
Hall, sent the following reply:--
'Much do I love
The monsters of the deep to eat;
To see the rosy salmon lying,
By smelts encircled, born for frying;
And from the china boat to pour
On flaky cod the flavoured shower.
Thee above all, I much regard,
Flatter than Longman's flattest bard,
Much-honour'd turbot! sore I grieve
Thee and thy dainty friends to leave.
Far from ye all, in snuggest corner,
I go to dine with little Horner;
He who with philosophic eye
Sat brooding o'er his Christmas pie;
Then firm resolved, with either thumb,
Tore forth the crust-enveloped plum;
And mad with youthful dreams of deathless fame,
Proclaimed the deathless glories of his name.'
One word before we enter on the subject of Sydney Smith's ministry. In
this biography of a great Wit, we touch but lightly upon the graver
features of his character, yet they cannot wholly be passed over. Stanch
in his devotion to the Church of England, he was liberal to others. The
world in the present day is afraid of liberality. Let it not be
forgotten that it has been the fanatic and the intolerant, not the mild
and practical, among us who have gone from the Protestant to the Romish
faith. Sydney Smith, in common with other great men, had no predilection
for dealing damnation round the land. How noble, how true, are
Mackintosh's reflections on religious sects! 'It is impossible, I think,
to look into the interior of any religious sect, without thinking better
of it. I ought, indeed, to confine myself to those of Christian Europe,
but with that limitation it seems to me the remark is true; whether I
look at the Jansenists of Port Royal, or the Quakers in Clarkson, or the
Methodists in these journals. All these sects, which appear dangerous or
ridiculous at a distance, assume a much more amicable character on
nearer inspection. They all inculcate pure virtue, and practise mutual
kindness; and they exert great force of reason in rescuing their
doctrines from the absurd or pernicious consequences which naturally
flow from them. Much of this arises from the general nature of religious
principle--much also from the genius of the Gospel.'
Nothing could present a greater contrast with the comforts of Orchard
Street than the place on which Sydney Smith's 'lines' had now 'fallen.'
Owing to the non-residence of the clergy, one-third of the parsonage
houses in England had fallen into decay, but that of Foston-le-Clay was
pre-eminently wretched. A hovel represented what was still called the
parsonage-house: it stood on a glebe of three hundred acres of the
stiffest clay in Yorkshire: a brick-floored kitchen, with a room above
it, both in a ruinous condition was the residence which, for a hundred
and fifty years, had never been inhabited by an incumbent. It will not
be a matter of surprise that for some time, until 1808, Sydney Smith,
with the permission of the Archbishop of York, continued to reside in
London, after having appointed a curate at Foston-le-Clay.
The first visit to his living was by no means promising. Picture to
yourself, my reader, Sydney Smith in a carriage, in his superfine black
coat, driving into the remote village, and parleying with the old parish
clerk, who after some conversation, observed, emphatically, shaking his
stick on the ground, 'Master Smith, it stroikes me that people as comes
froe London is such _fools_.--'I see _you_ are no fool,' was the prompt
answer; and the parson and the clerk parted mutually satisfied.
The profits, arising from the sale of two volumes of sermons, carried
Sydney Smith, his family, and his furniture, to Foston-le-Clay in the
summer of 1809, and he took up his abode in a pleasant house about two
miles from York, at Heslington.
[Illustration: SYDNEY SMITH'S WITTY ANSWER TO THE OLD PARISH CLERK.]
Let us now, for a time, forget the wit, the editor of the 'Edinburgh
Review,' the diner out, the evening preacher at the Foundling, and
glance at the peaceful and useful life of a country clergyman. His
spirits, his wit, all his social qualities, never deserted Sydney Smith,
even in the retreat to which he was destined. Let us see him driving in
his second-hand carriage, his horse, 'Peter the Cruel,' with Mrs. Smith
by his side, summer and winter, from Heslington to Foston-le-Clay. Mrs.
Smith, at first, trembled at the inexperience of her charioteer; but
'she soon,' said Sydney, 'raised my wages, and considered me an
excellent Jehu.' 'Mr. Brown,' said Sydney to one of the tradesmen of
York, through the streets of which he found it difficult to drive, 'your
streets are the narrowest, in Europe,'--'Narrow, sir? there's plenty of
room for two carriages to pass each other, and an inch and a half to
spare!'
Let us see him in his busy peaceful life, digging an hour or two every
day in his garden to avoid sudden death, by preventing corpulency; then
galloping through a book, and when his family laughed at him for so soon
dismissing a quarto, saying, 'Cross-examine me, then,' and going well
through the ordeal. Hear him, after finishing his morning's writing,
saying to his wife, 'There, Kate, it's done: do look over it; put the
dots to the i's, and cross the t's:' and off he went to his walk,
surrounded by his children, who were his companions and confidants. See
him in the lane, talking to an old woman whom he had taken into his gig
as she was returning from market, and picking up all sorts of knowledge
from her; or administering medicine to the poor, or to his horses and
animals, sometimes committing mistakes next to fatal. One day he
declared he found all his pigs intoxicated, grunting 'God save the King'
about the sty. He nearly poisoned his red cow by an over-dose of
castor-oil; and Peter the Cruel, so called because the groom once said
he had a cruel face, took two boxes of opium pills (boxes and all) in
his mash, without ill consequences.
See him, too, rushing out after dinner--for he had a horror of long
sittings after that meal--to look at his 'scratcher.'
He used to say, Lady Holland (his daughter) relates, 'I am all for cheap
luxuries, even for animals; now all animals have a passion for
scratching their backbones; they break down your gates and palings to
effect this. Look! there is my universal scratcher, a sharp-edged pole,
resting on a high and a low post, adapted to every height, from a horse
to a lamb. Even the Edinburgh Reviewer can take his turn: you have no
idea how popular it is; I have not had a gate broken since I put it up;
I have it in all my fields.'
Then his experiments were numerous. Mutton fat was to be burned instead
of candles; and working-people were brought in and fed with broth, or
with rice, or with porridge, to see which was the most satisfying diet.
Economy was made amusing, benevolence almost absurd, but the humorous
man, the kind man, shone forth in all things. He was one of the first,
if not the first, who introduced allotment-gardens for the poor: he was
one who could truly say at the last, when he had lived sixty-six years,
'I have done but very little harm in the world, and I have brought up my
family.'
We have taken a glimpse--and a glimpse merely--of the 'wise Wit' in
London, among congenial society, where every intellectual power was
daily called forth in combative force. See him now in the provincial
circles of the remote county of York. 'Did you ever,' he once asked,
'dine out in the country? What misery do human beings inflict on each
other under the name of pleasure!' Then he describes driving in a
broiling sun through a dusty road, to eat a haunch of venison at the
house of a neighbouring parson. Assembled in a small house, 'redolent of
frying,' talked of roads, weather, and turnips; began, that done, to be
hungry. A stripling, caught up for the occasion, calls the master of the
house out of the room, and announces that the cook has mistaken the soup
for dirty water, and has thrown it away. No help for it--agreed; they
must do without it; perhaps as well they should. Dinner announced; they
enter the dining-room: heavens! what a gale! the venison is high!
Various other adverse incidents occur, and the party return home,
grateful to the post-boys for not being drunk, and thankful to
Providence for not being thrown into a wet ditch.