bathing-place. It was then a mere row of very humble seaside
lodging-houses, where persons constrained as I was to remain in the
close vicinity of Liverpool, were able to obtain fresh air, salt
water, and an uninterrupted sea view.
A Liverpool lady told me that, having once spent some weeks at this
place one summer, her son, a lad of about twelve years old, used to
ride along the sands to Liverpool every day for his lessons, and
that she could see him through the telescope all the way to the
first houses on the outskirt of the town. Just about midway,
however, there was a spot of treacherous quicksand, and I confess I
wondered at my friend's courage in watching her boy pass that point:
he knew it well, and was little likely to take his pony too near it;
but I confess I would rather have trusted to his caution to avoid
the place, than watched him pass it through a telescope.
From Liverpool, the long-expected ship having arrived, we went to
London, and spent as much time with our friends there and elsewhere
as our very limited leisure would then allow; and by the 10th of
September, we were again on the edge of English ground, about to
sail for the United States.]
LIVERPOOL, Friday, September 8th, 1837.
MY DEAR LADY DACRE,
My time in England is growing painfully short, for the watch says
half-past eleven, and at two o'clock I shall be on board the ship. My
promise, as well as my desire, urge me to write you a few parting words.
And yet what can they be, that may give you the slightest pleasure?
My parting with my poor mother was calmer than I had ventured to
anticipate, and I thank Heaven that I was not obliged to leave England
without seeing her once more. I have heard from my sister, who had just
received the news of my sudden departure from England when she wrote.
She was bitterly disappointed; but yet I think this unexpected parting
without seeing each other again is perhaps well. Our last leave-taking,
when she started with my father for Carlsbad, was quite cheerful,
because we looked soon to meet again. We have been spared those
exceedingly painful moments of clinging to what we are condemned to
lose, and in the midst of novelty and variety she will miss me far less
than had I left her lonely, in the home where we have been together for
the past year.
Dear Lady Dacre, pray, if it is in your power to show her kindness at
any time, do so; but I am sure that you would, and that such a request
on my part is unnecessary.
The days that we spent in London after leaving you formed a sad contrast
to the happy time we enjoyed at the Hoo. We were plunged in bustle and
confusion; up to our eyes in trunks, packing-cases, carpet-bags, and
valises; and I don't believe Marius in the middle of his Carthaginian
ruins was more thoroughly _uncomfortable_ than I, in my desolate,
box-encumbered rooms.
You know that we were disappointed of our visit to Bowood, but we spent
a few days delightfully at Bannisters, and I am happy to say that _we_
are leaving England with the desire and determination to return as soon
as possible.
I found on my arrival here a most pressing and cordial invitation from
Sydney Smith (I cannot call him Mr.) to Combe Flory, which, like many
other pleasant things, must be foregone. Pray, if you are with him when
or after you receive this, thank him again for his kindness and courtesy
to us. I did not quite like him, you know, when first I met him at
Rogers's; but that was Lady Holland's fault; even now, his being a
clergyman hurts my mind a little sometimes, and I fancy I should like
him more entirely if he were not so. I have a superstitious veneration
for the cloth, which his free-and-easy wearing of it occasionally
disturbs a little; but I feel deeply honored by his notice, and most
grateful for the good-will which he expresses towards me, and should
have been too glad to have heard him laugh once more at his own jokes,
which I acknowledge he does with a better grace than any man
alive,--though the last time I had that pleasure it was at my own
expense: I gave him an admirable chance, and I think he used his
advantage most unmercifully.
And now, dear Lady Dacre, what message will you give your kind and good
husband from me? May I, with "one foot on land and one on sea," send him
word that I love him almost as well as I do you? This shall rest with
you, however. Pray thank him with all my heart, as I do you, for your
manifold kindnesses to me. God bless and preserve you both, and those
you love! Remember me most kindly to Mrs. Sullivan. I cannot tell you
how my heart is _squeezed_, as the French say, at going away. Luckily, I
am too busy to cry to-day, and to-morrow I shall be too sea-sick, and
so, farewell!
Believe me, my dear Lady Dacre,
Yours affectionately,
F. A. B.
[The occasion of my becoming acquainted with my admirable and very
kind friend, the Rev. Sydney Smith, was a dinner at Mr. Rogers's, to
which I had been asked to meet Lord and Lady Holland, by special
desire, as I was afterwards informed, of the latter, who, during
dinner, drank out of her neighbor's (Sydney Smith's) glass, and
otherwise behaved herself with the fantastic, despotic impropriety
in which she frequently indulged, and which might have been
tolerated in a spoilt beauty of eighteen, but was hardly becoming in
a woman of her age and "personal appearance." When first I came out
on the stage, my father and mother, who occasionally went to Holland
House, received an invitation to dine there, which included me;
after some discussion, which I did not then understand, it was
deemed expedient to decline the invitation for me, and I neither
knew the grounds of my parents' decision, nor of how brilliant and
delightful a society it had then closed the door to me. On my return
to England after my marriage, Lady Holland's curiosity revived with
regard to me, and she desired Rogers to ask me to meet her at
dinner, which I did; and the impression she made upon me was so
disagreeable that, for a time, it involved every member of that
dinner-party in a halo of undistinguishing dislike in my mind.
My sister had joined us in the evening, and sat for a few moments by
Lady Holland, who dropped her handkerchief. Adelaide, who was as
unpleasantly impressed as myself by that lady, for a moment made no
attempt to pick it up; but, reflecting upon her age and size, which
made it difficult for her to stoop for it herself, my sister picked
it up and presented it to her, when Lady Holland, taking it from
her, merely said, "Ah! I thought you'd do it." Adelaide said she
felt an almost irresistible inclination to twitch it from her hand,
throw it on the ground again, and say, "Did you? then now do it
yourself!"
Altogether the evening was unsuccessful, if its purpose had been an
acquaintance between Lady Holland and myself; and I remember a
grotesque climax to my dissatisfaction in the destruction of a
lovely nosegay of exquisite flowers which my sister had brought with
her, and which, towards the middle of the evening, mysteriously
disappeared, and was looked for and inquired for in vain, until poor
Lord Holland, who was then dependent upon the assistance of two
servants to move from his seat, being raised from the sofa on which
he had been deposited when he was brought up from the dining-room,
the flowers, which Adelaide had left there, were discovered, pressed
as flat as if for preservation in a book of botanical specimens. The
kindly, good-natured gentleman departed, luckily, without knowing
the mischief he had done, or seeing my sister's face of ludicrous
dismay at the condition of her flowers; which Sydney Smith, however,
observed, and in a minute exclaimed, "Ah! I see! Oh dear, oh dear,
what a pity! Hot-bed! hot-bed!"
It has always been a matter of amazement to me that Lady Holland
should have been allowed to ride rough-shod over society, as she did
for so long, with such complete impunity. To be sure, in society,
well-bred persons are always at the mercy of ill-bred ones, who have
an immense advantage over everybody who shrinks from turning a
social gathering into closed lists for the exchange of
impertinences; and people gave way to Lady Holland's domineering
rudeness for the sake of their hosts and fellow-guests, and spared
her out of consideration for them. Another reason for the toleration
shown Lady Holland was the universal esteem and affectionate respect
felt for her husband, whose friends accepted her and her
peculiarities for his sake, and could certainly have given no
stronger proof of their regard for him.
The most powerful inducement to patience, however, to the London
society upon which Lady Holland habitually trampled, was the immense
attraction of her house and of the people who frequented it. Holland
House was, for a series of years, the most brilliant, charming, and
altogether delightful social resort. Beautiful, comfortable,
elegant, picturesque,--an ideal house, full of exquisite objects and
interesting associations, where persons the most distinguished for
birth, position, mental accomplishments, and intellectual gifts, met
in a social atmosphere of the highest cultivation and the greatest
refinement,--the most perfect civilization could produce nothing
more perfect in the way of enjoyment than the intercourse of that
delightful mansion. As Lady Tankerville pathetically exclaimed on
Lady Holland's death, "Ah! poore, deare Lady 'Olland! what shall we
do? It was such a pleasant 'ouse!"--admission to which was, to most
of its frequenters, well worth some toleration of its mistress's
brusqueries.
If, as a friend of mine once assured me (a well-born, well-bred man
of the best English society), it was quite well worth while to "eat
a little dirt" to get the _entree_ of Stafford House, I incline to
think the spoonfuls of dirt Lady Holland occasionally administered
to her friends were accepted by them as the equivalent for the
delights of her "pleasant 'ouse"; and that I did not think so, and
had no desire to go there upon those terms, was, I imagine, the only
thing that excited Lady Holland's curiosity about me, or her desire
to have me for her guest. She complained to Charles Greville that I
would not let her become acquainted with me, and twice after our
first unavailing meeting at Rogers's, made him ask me to meet her
again: each time, however, with no happier result.
The first time, after making herself generally obnoxious at dinner,
she at length provoked Rogers, who, the conversation having fallen
upon the subject of beautiful hair, and Lady Holland saying, "Why,
Rogers, only a few years ago, I had such a head of hair that I could
hide myself in it, and I've lost it all," merely answered, "What a
pity!"--but with such a tone that an exultant giggle ran round the
table at her expense.
After dinner, when the unfortunate female members of the party had
to encounter Lady Holland unprotected, she singled out one of the
ladies of the Baring family, to whom, however, she evidently meant
to be particularly gracious; not, I think, without some intention of
also pleasing me by her patronizing laudation of American people and
American things; winding up with, "You know, my dear, we are
Americans." The young Baring lady, who may or may not have been as
familiar as I was with the Bingham and Baring alliances of early
times in Philadelphia, merely raised her eyebrows, and said,
"Indeed!" while I kept my lips close and breathed no syllable of
Longfellow's house near Boston, which had been not only Washington's
temporary abode, but the residence, in colonial days, of the
Vassalls, to whom Lady Holland belonged, and where Longfellow showed
me one day an iron plate at the back of one of the fire-places, with
the rebus, the punning arms (_Armoiries parlantes_) of the Vassall
family: a vase with a sun above it, _Vas Sol_.
_Je suis mechante, ma chere_, as Madame de Sevigne wrote to her
daughter; _et cela m'a fait plaisir_, to suppress the nice little
anecdote which might have helped Lady Holland on so pleasantly just
at that juncture.
But, holding one's tongue because one chooses, and being compelled
to hold one's tongue by somebody else, is quite a different thing;
and I am not sure that the main reason of my dislike to Lady Holland
is not that I held my tongue to "spite her" during the whole course
of the last dinner-party to which Rogers invited me to meet her. The
party consisted of fewer men than women, and Lady ---- and myself
agreed to take each other down to dinner, which we did. Just,
however, as we were seating ourselves, Lady Holland called out from
the opposite side of the table, "No, no, ladies, I can't allow that;
I must have Mrs. Butler by me, if you please." Thus challenged, I
could not, without making a scene with Lady Holland, and beginning
the poet's banquet with a shock to everybody present, refuse her
very dictatorial behest; and therefore I left my friendly neighbor,
Lady ----, and went round to the place assigned me by the imperious
autocratess of the dinner-table: between herself and Dr. Allen ("the
gentle infidel," "Lady Holland's atheist," as he was familiarly
called by her familiars).
But though one man may take the mare to the water, no given number
of men can make her drink; so, having accepted my place, I
determined my complaisance should end there, and, in spite of all
Lady Holland's conversational efforts, and her final exclamation,
"Allen! do get Mrs. Butler to talk! We _really must_ make her talk!"
I held my peace, and kept the peace, which I could have done upon no
other conditions; but the unnatural and unwholesome effort disagreed
with me so dreadfully, that I have a return of dyspepsia whenever I
think of it, which I think justifies me in my dislike of Lady
Holland.... I do not feel inclined to attribute to any motive but a
kindly one, the attention Lady Holland showed my father during a
severe indisposition of his, not long after this; though, upon her
driving to his door one day with some peculiarly delicate jelly she
had had made for him, Frederick Byng (Poodle, as he was always
called by his intimates, on account of his absurd resemblance to a
dog of that species), seeing the remorseful gratitude on my face as
I received her message of inquiry after my father, exclaimed, "Now,
she's done it! now, she's won it! now, she's got you, and you'll go
to Holland House!" "No, I won't," said I, "but I'll go down to the
carriage, and thank her!" which I immediately did, without stopping
to put a bonnet on my head. Lady Holland was held, by those who knew
her, to be a warm and constant friend, and had always been cordially
kind to my father and my brother John.
After Lord Holland's death she left Holland House, and took up her
abode in South Street near the Park. One morning, when I was calling
on Lady Charlotte Lindsay, Lady Morley came in, and being
reproached by Lady Charlotte for not having come to a party at her
house on the previous evening, in which reproach I joined, having
been also a loser by her absence from that same party, "Couldn't,"
said the lively lady, "for I was spending the evening with the
pleasantest, most amiable, gentlest-mannered, sweetest-tempered, and
most charming woman in all London--Lady Holland!" A conversation
then ensued, in which certainly little quarter was shown to the ill
qualities of the former mistress of Holland House. Among several
curious instances of her unaccountably unamiable conduct to some of
even Lord Holland's dearest friends, who, for his sake, opened their
houses to her, allowed her to come thither, bespeaking her own
rooms--her own company, who she would meet and who she would bring,
and in every way consulting her pleasure and convenience, as was
invariably the case on the occasion of her visits to Panshanger and
Woburn,--Lady Morley said that Landseer had told her, that he was
walking one day by the side of Lady Holland's wheel-chair, in the
grounds of Holland House, and, stopping at a particularly pretty
spot, had said, "Oh, Lady Holland! this is the part of your place of
which the Duchess of Bedford has such a charming view from her house
on the hill above." "Is it?" said Lady Holland; and immediately gave
orders that the paling-fence round that part of her grounds should
be raised so as to cut off the Duchess's view into them.
Upon my venturing to express my surprise that anybody should go to
the house of a person of whom they told such anecdotes, Lady Morley
replied, "She is the only woman in the world of whom one does tell
such things and yet goes to see her. She is the most miserable woman
in England; she is entirely alone now, and she cannot bear to be
alone, and, for his sake who was the dearest and most excellent and
amiable creature that ever breathed, one goes on going to her, as I
shall till she or I die." But what a description of the last days of
the mistress of Holland House!
Sidney Smith, with whom I had become well acquainted when I wrote
the letter to Lady Dacre in which I mention him, used to amuse
himself, and occasionally some of my other friends, by teasing me on
the subject of what he called my hallucination with regard to my
having married in America. He never allowed any allusion to the
circumstance without the most comical expressions of regret for
this, as he called it, curious form of monomania. On the occasion to
which I refer in this letter, he and Mrs. Smith had met some friends
at dinner at our house, and I was taking leave of them, previous to
my departure for Liverpool, when he exclaimed, "Now do, my dear
child, be persuaded to give up this extraordinary delusion; let it,
I beg, be recorded of us both, that this pleasing and intelligent
young lady labored under the singular and distressingly insane idea
that she had contracted a marriage with an American; from which
painful hallucination she was eventually delivered by the friendly
exhortations of a learned and pious divine, the Rev. Sydney Smith."
Everybody round us was in fits of laughter, as he affectionately
held my hand, and thus paternally admonished me. I held up my left
hand with its wedding-ring, and began, "Oh, but the baby!" when the
ludicrous look with which my reverend tormentor received this
overwhelming testimony of mine, threw the whole company into
convulsions, and nothing was heard throughout the room but sighs and
sobs of exhaustion, and faint ejaculations and cries for mercy,
while everybody was wiping tears of laughter from their eyes. As for
me, I covered up my face, and very nearly went into hysterics.
The special and reportable sallies of Sydney Smith have been, of
course, often repeated, but the fanciful fun and inexhaustible
humorous drollery of his conversation among his intimates can never
be adequately rendered or reproduced. He bubbled over with mirth, of
which his own enjoyment formed an irresistible element, he shook,
and his eyes glistened at his own ludicrous ideas, as they dawned
upon his brain; and it would be impossible to convey the faintest
idea of the genial humor of his habitual talk by merely repeating
separate witticisms and repartees.
On that same evening, at my father's house, the comparative
cheapness of living abroad and in England having been discussed,
Sydney Smith declared that, for his part, he had never found foreign
quarters so much more reasonable than home ones, or foreign hotels
less exorbitant in their charges. "I know I never could live under
fifty pounds a week," said he. "Oh, but how did you live?" was the
next question. "Why, as a canon should live," proudly retorted he;
"and they charged me as enemy's ordnance."
A question having arisen one evening at Miss Berry's as to the
welcome Lady Sale would receive in London society after her
husband's heroic conduct, and her heroic participation in it, during
the Afghan war, Miss Berry, who, for some reason or other, did not
admire Lady Sale as much as everybody else did, said she should not
ask her to come to her house. "Oh, yes! pooh! pooh! you will,"
exclaimed Sydney Smith; "you'll have her, he'll have her, they'll
have her, we'll have her. She'll be Sale by auction!" Later on that
same evening, it being asked what Lord Dalhousie would get for his
successful exploit in carrying of the gates of some Indian town,
"Why," cried Lady Morley, "he will be created Duke Samson
Afghanistes." It was pleasant living among people who talked such
nonsense as that.
A party having been made to go and see the Boa Constrictor soon
after its first arrival at the Zooelogical Gardens, Sydney Smith, who
was to have been there, failed to come; and, questioned at dinner
why he had not done so, said, "Because I was detained by the Bore
Contradictor--Hallam"--whose propensity to controvert people's
propositions was a subject of irritation to some of his friends,
less retentive of memory and accurate in statement than himself.
Sydney Smith, not unnaturally, preferred conversation to music; and
at a musical party one evening, as he was stealing on tip-toe from
the concert-room to one more remote from the performance, I held up
my finger at him, when he whispered, "My dear, it's all right. You
keep with the dilettanti; I go with the talkettanti." Afterwards,
upon my expostulating with him, and telling him that by such habits
he was running a risk of being called to order on some future
eternal day with "Angel Sydney Smith, hush!" if he did not learn to
endure music better, he replied, "Oh, no, no! I'm cultivating a
judicious second expressly for those occasions."
Of his lamentations for the "flashes of silence" which, he said, at
one time made Macaulay's intercourse possible, one has heard; but
when he was so ill that all his friends were full of anxiety about
him, M----, having called to see him, and affectionately asking what
sort of night he had passed, Sydney Smith replied, "Oh, horrid,
horrid, my dear fellow! I dreamt I was chained to a rock and being
talked to death by Harriet Martineau and Macaulay."
Rogers's keen-edged wit seemed to cut his lips as he uttered it;
Sydney Smith's was without sting or edge or venomous point of
malice, and his genial humor was really the overflowing of a kindly
heart.
Rogers's helpful benevolence and noble generosity to poor artists,
poor authors, and all distressed whom he could serve or succor, was
unbounded; he certainly had the kindest heart and the unkindest
tongue of any one I ever knew. His benefits remind me of a comical
story my dear friend Harness once told me, of a poor woman at whose
lamentations over her various hardships one of his curates was
remonstrating, "Oh, come, come now, my good woman, you must allow
that Providence has been, upon the whole, very good to you." "So He
'ave, sir; so He 'ave, mostly. I don't deny it; but I sometimes
think He 'ave taken it out in corns." I think Rogers took out his
benevolence, in some directions, in the corns he inflicted, or, at
any rate, trod upon, in others.
Mr. Rogers's inveterate tongue-gall was like an irresistible
impulse, and he certainly bestowed it occasionally, without the
least provocation, upon persons whom he professed to like. He was
habitually kind to me, and declared he was fond of me. One evening
(just after the publication of my stupid drama, "The Star of
Seville"), he met me with a malignant grin, and the exclamation,
"Ah, I've just been reading your play. So nice! young poetry!"--with
a diabolical _dig_ of emphasis on the "_young_." "Now, Mr. Rogers,"
said I, "what did I do to deserve that you should say that to me?" I
do not know whether this appeal disarmed him, but his only answer
was to take me affectionately by the chin, much as if he had been my
father. When I told my sister of this, she, who was a thousand times
quicker-witted than I, said, "Why didn't you tell him that young
poetry was better than old?"