"13. Piccadilly Terrace, June 12. 1815.
"I have nothing to offer in behalf of my late silence, except the
most inveterate and ineffable laziness; but I am too supine to
invent a lie, or I _certainly_ should, being ashamed of the truth.
K * *, I hope, has appeased your magnanimous indignation at his
blunders. I wished and wish you were in the Committee, with all my
heart.[82] It seems so hopeless a business, that the company of a
friend would be quite consoling,--but more of this when we meet.
In the mean time, you are entreated to prevail upon Mrs. Esterre to
engage herself. I believe she has been written to, but your
influence, in person or proxy, would probably go further than our
proposals. What they are, I know not; all _my_ new function
consists in listening to the despair of Cavendish Bradshaw, the
hopes of Kinnaird, the wishes of Lord Essex, the complaints of
Whitbread, and the calculations of Peter Moore,--all of which, and
whom, seem totally at variance. C. Bradshaw wants to light the
theatre with _gas_, which may, perhaps (if the vulgar be believed),
poison half the audience, and all the _dramatis personæ_. Essex has
endeavoured to persuade K * * not to get drunk, the consequence of
which is, that he has never been sober since. Kinnaird, with equal
success, would have convinced Raymond, that he, the said Raymond,
had too much salary. Whitbread wants us to assess the pit another
sixpence,--a d----d insidious proposition,--which will end in an
O.P. combustion. To crown all, R * *, the auctioneer, has the
impudence to be displeased, because he has no dividend. The villain
is a proprietor of shares, and a long lunged orator in the
meetings. I hear he has prophesied our incapacity,--'a foregone
conclusion,' whereof I hope to give him signal proofs before we
are done.
"Will you give us an opera? No, I'll be sworn; but I wish you
would.
"To go on with the poetical world, Walter Scott has gone back to
Scotland. Murray, the bookseller, has been cruelly cudgelled of
misbegotten knaves, 'in Kendal green,' at Newington Butts, in his
way home from a purlieu dinner,--and robbed--would you believe
it?--of three or four bonds of forty pound a piece, and a seal-ring
of his grandfather's, worth a million! This is his version,--but
others opine that D'Israeli, with whom he dined, knocked him down
with his last publication, 'The Quarrels of Authors,' in a dispute
about copyright. Be that as it may, the newspapers have teemed with
his 'injuria formæ,' and he has been embrocated, and invisible to
all but the apothecary ever since.
"Lady B. is better than three months advanced in her progress
towards maternity, and, we hope, likely to go well through with it.
We have been very little out this season, as I wish to keep her
quiet in her present situation. Her father and mother have changed
their names to Noel, in compliance with Lord Wentworth's will, and
in complaisance to the property bequeathed by him.
"I hear that you have been gloriously received by the Irish,--and
so you ought. But don't let them kill you with claret and kindness
at the national dinner in your honour, which, I hear and hope, is
in contemplation. If you will tell me the day, I'll get drunk
myself on this side of the water, and waft you an applauding hiccup
over the Channel.
"Of politics, we have nothing but the yell for war; and C * * h is
preparing his head for the pike, on which we shall see it carried
before he has done. The loan has made every body sulky. I hear
often from Paris, but in direct contradiction to the home
statements of our hirelings. Of domestic doings, there has been
nothing since Lady D * *. Not a divorce stirring,--but a good many
in embryo, in the shape of marriages.
"I enclose you an epistle received this morning from I know not
whom; but I think it will amuse you. The writer must be a rare
fellow.[83]
"P.S. A gentleman named D'Alton (not your Dalton) has sent me a
National Poem called 'Dermid.' The same cause which prevented my
writing to you operated against my wish to write to him an epistle
of thanks. If you see him, will you make all kinds of fine speeches
for me, and tell him that I am the laziest and most ungrateful of
mortals?
"A word more;--don't let Sir John Stevenson (as an evidence on
trials for copy-right, &c.) talk about the price of your next poem,
or they will come upon you for the _property tax_ for it. I am
serious, and have just heard a long story of the rascally tax-men
making Scott pay for his. So, take care. Three hundred is a devil
of a deduction out of three thousand."
[Footnote 81: This and the following letter were addressed to me in
Ireland, whither I had gone about the middle of the preceding month.]
[Footnote 82: He had lately become one of the members of the
Sub-Committee, (consisting, besides himself, of the persons mentioned in
this letter,) who had taken upon themselves the management of Drury Lane
Theatre; and it had been his wish, on the first construction of the
Committee, that I should be one of his colleagues. To some mistake in
the mode of conveying this proposal to me, he alludes in the preceding
sentence.]
[Footnote 83: The following is the enclosure here referred to:--
"Darlington, June 3. 1815.
"My Lord,
"I have lately purchased a set of your works, and am quite vexed
that you have not cancelled the Ode to Buonaparte. It certainly was
prematurely written, without thought or reflection. Providence has
now brought him to reign over millions again, while the same
Providence keeps as it were in a garrison another potentate, who,
in the language of Mr. Burke, 'he hurled from his throne.' See if
you cannot make amends for your folly, and consider that, in almost
every respect, human nature is the same, in every clime and in
every period, and don't act the part of a _foolish boy_.--Let not
Englishmen talk of the stretch of tyrants, while the torrents of
blood shed in the East Indies cry aloud to Heaven for retaliation.
Learn, good sir, not to cast the first stone. I remain your
Lordship's servant,
"J. R * *."
]
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