never forget. She had left us to our own devices, and we were all in
the garden. I was sitting in a swing, and my sister, Dessauer, and
Chorley were lying on the lawn at my feet, when presently, striding
towards us, appeared the extravagant figure of Mrs. Grote, who, as
soon as she was within speaking-trumpet distance, hailed us with a
stentorian challenge about some detail of dinner--I think it was
whether the majority voted for bacon and peas or bacon and beans.
Having duly settled this momentous question, as Mrs. Grote turned
and marched away, Dessauer--who had been sitting straight up,
listening with his head first on one side and then on the other,
like an eagerly intelligent terrier, taking no part in the culinary
controversy (indeed, his entire ignorance of English necessarily
disqualified him for even comprehending it), but staring intently,
with open eyes and mouth, at Mrs. Grote--suddenly began, with his
hands and lips, to imitate the rolling of a drum, and then broke out
aloud with, "_Malbrook s'en vat' en guerre_," etc.; whereupon the
terrible lady faced right about, like a soldier, and, planting her
stick in the ground, surveyed Dessauer with an awful countenance.
The wretched little man grew red and then purple, and then black in
the face with fear and shame; and exclaiming in his agony, "_Ah,
bonte divine! elle m'a compris!_" rolled over and over on the lawn
as if he had a fit. Mrs. Grote majestically waved her hand, and with
magnanimous disdain of her small adversary turned and departed, and
we remained horror-stricken at the effect of this involuntary
tribute of Dessauer's to her martial air and deportment.
When she returned, however, it was to enter into a most interesting
and animated discussion upon the subject of Glueck's music; and
suddenly, some piece from the "Iphigenia" being mentioned, she
shouted for her man-servant, to whom on his appearance she gave
orders to bring her a chair and footstool, and "the big fiddle" (the
violoncello) out of the hall; and taking it forthwith between her
knees, proceeded to play, with excellent taste and expression, some
of Glueck's noble music upon the sonorous instrument, with which St.
Cecilia is the only female I ever saw on terms of such familiar
intimacy.
The second time Mrs. Grote invited me to the Beeches, it was to meet
Mdlle. Ellsler. A conversation I had with my admirable and excellent
friend Sydney Smith determined me to decline joining the party. He
wound up his kind and friendly advice to me upon the subject by
saying, "No, no, my child; that's all very well for Grota" (the name
he always gave Mrs. Grote, whose good qualities and abilities he
esteemed very highly, whatever he may have thought of her
eccentricities); "but don't mix yourself up with that sort of
thing." And I had reason to rejoice that I followed his good advice.
Mrs. Grote told me, in the course of a conversation we once had on
the subject of Mdlle. Ellsler, that when the latter went to America,
she, Mrs. Grote, had undertaken most generously the entire care and
charge of her child, a lovely little girl of about six years old.
"All I said to her," said this strange, kind-hearted woman, "was
'Well, Fanny, send the brat to me; I don't ask you whose child it
is, and I don't care, so long as it isn't that fool d'Orsay's'"
(Mrs. Grote had small esteem for _the_ dandy of his day), "'and I'll
take the best care of it I can.'" And she did take the kindest care
of it during the whole period of Mdlle. Ellsler's absence from
Europe.
The next time I visited the Beeches was after an interval of some
years, when I went thither with my kind and constant friend Mr.
Rogers. My circumstances had altered very painfully, and I was again
laboring for my own support.
I went down to Burnham with the old poet, and was sorry to find
that, though he had consented to pay Mrs. Grote this visit, he was
not in particularly harmonious tune for her society, which was
always rather a trial to his fastidious nerves and refined taste.
The drive of between three and four miles in a fly (very different
from his own luxurious carriage), through intricate lanes and rural
winding avenues, did not tend to soften his acerbities, and I
perceived at once, on alighting from the carriage, that the aspect
of the place did not find favor in his eyes.
Mrs. Grote had just put up an addition to her house, a sort of
single wing, which added a good-sized drawing-room to the modest
mansion I had before visited. Whatever accession of comfort the
house received within from this addition to its size, its beauty,
externally, was not improved by it, and Mr. Rogers stood before the
offending edifice, surveying it with a sardonic sneer that I should
think even brick and mortar must have found it hard to bear. He had
hardly uttered his three first disparaging bitter sentences, of
utter scorn and abhorrence of the architectural abortion, which,
indeed it was, when Mrs. Grote herself made her appearance in her
usual country costume, box-coat, hat on her head, and stick in her
hand. Mr. Rogers turned to her with a verjuice smile, and said, "I
was just remarking that in whatever part of the world I had seen
this building I should have guessed to whose taste I might attribute
its erection." To which, without an instant's hesitation, she
replied, "Ah, _'tis_ a beastly thing, to be sure. The confounded
workmen played the devil with the place while I was away." Then,
without any more words, she led the way to the interior of her
habitation, and I could not but wonder whether her blunt
straightforwardness did not disconcert and rebuke Mr. Rogers for his
treacherous sneer.
During this visit, much interesting conversation passed with
reference to the letters of Sydney Smith, who was just dead; and the
propriety of publishing all his correspondence, which, of course,
contained strictures and remarks upon people with whom he had been
living in habits of friendly social intimacy. I remember one morning
a particularly lively discussion on the subject, between Mrs. Grote
and Mr. Rogers. The former had a great many letters from Sydney
Smith, and urged the impossibility of publishing them, with all
their comments on members of the London world. Rogers, on the
contrary, apparently delighted at the idea of the mischief such
revelations would make, urged Mrs. Grote to give them ungarbled to
the press. "Oh, but now," said the latter, "here, for instance, Mr.
Rogers, such a letter as this, about ----; do see how he cuts up the
poor fellow. It really never would do to publish it." Rogers took
the letter from her, and read it with a stony grin of diabolical
delight on his countenance and occasional chuckling exclamations of
"Publish it! publish it! Put an R, dash, or an R and four stars for
the name. He'll never know it, though everybody else will." While
Mr. Rogers was thus delecting himself, in anticipation, with R----'s
execution, Mrs. Grote, by whose side I was sitting on a low stool,
quietly unfolded another letter of Sydney Smith's, and silently held
it before my eyes, and the very first words in it were a most
ludicrous allusion to Rogers's cadaverous appearance. As I raised my
eyes from this most absurd description of him, and saw him still
absorbed in his evil delight, the whole struck me as so like a scene
in a farce that I could not refrain from bursting out laughing.
In talking of Sydney Smith Mr. Rogers gave us many amusing details
of various visits he paid him at his place in Somersetshire, Combe
Flory, where, on one occasion, Jeffrey was also one of the party. It
was to do honor to these illustrious guests that Sydney Smith had a
pair of horns fastened on his donkey, who was turned into the
paddock so adorned, in order, as he said, to give the place a more
noble and park-like appearance; and it was on this same donkey that
Jeffrey mounted when Sydney Smith exclaimed with such glee--
"As short, but not as stout, as Bacchus,
As witty as Horatius Flacchus,
As great a radical as Gracchus,
There he goes riding on my _jackuss_."
Rogers told us too, with great satisfaction, an anecdote of Sydney
Smith's son, known in London society by the amiable nickname of the
Assassin.... This gentleman, being rather addicted to horse-racing
and the undesirable society of riders, trainers, jockeys, and
semi-turf black-legs, meeting a friend of his father's on his
arrival at Combe Flory, the visitor said, "So you have got Rogers
here, I find." "Oh, yes," replied Sydney Smith's dissimilar son,
with a rueful countenance, "but it isn't _the_ Rogers, you know."
_The_ Rogers, according to him, being a famous horse-trainer and
rider of that name.
I have called him his father's dissimilar son, but feel inclined to
withdraw that epithet, when I recollect his endeavor to find an
appropriate subject of conversation for the Archbishop of York, by
whom, on one occasion, he found himself seated at dinner: "Pray, my
lord, how long do you think it took Nebuchadnezzar to get into
condition again after his turn out at grass?"
The third time I went to Burnham Beeches, it was to meet a very
clever Piedmontese gentleman, with whom Mr. Grote had become
intimate, Mr. Senior, known and valued for his ability as a
political economist, his clear and acute intelligence, his general
information and agreeable powers of conversation. His universal
acquaintance with all political and statistical details, and the
whole contemporaneous history of European events, and the readiness
and fulness of his information on all matters of interest connected
with public affairs used to make Mrs. Grote call him her "man of
facts." The other member of our small party was Charles Greville,
whose acquaintance Mrs. Grote had made through his intimacy with my
sister and myself. This gentleman was one of the most agreeable
members of our intimate society. His mother was the sister of the
late Duke of Portland, and during the short administration of his
uncle, Charles Greville, then quite a young man, had a sinecure
office in the island of Jamaica bestowed upon him, and was made
Clerk of the Privy Council; which appointment, by giving him an
assured position and handsome income for life, effectually put a
stop to his real advancement at the very outset, by rendering all
effort of ambition on his part unnecessary, and inducing him,
instead of distinguishing himself by an honorable public career, to
adopt the life and pursuits of a mere man of pleasure, ... and to
waste his talents in the petty intrigues of society, and the
excitements of the turf. He was an influential member of the London
great world of his day; his clear good sense, excellent judgment,
knowledge of the world, and science of expediency, combined with his
good temper and ready friendliness, made him a sort of universal
referee in the society to which he belonged. Men consulted him about
their difficulties with men; and women, about their squabbles with
women; and men and women, about their troubles with the opposite
sex. He was called into the confidence of all manner of people, and
trusted with the adjustment of all sorts of affairs. He knew the
secrets of everybody, which everybody seemed willing that he should
know; and he was one of the principal lawgivers of the turf. The
publication of Charles Greville's Memoirs, which shocked the whole
of London society, surprised, as much as it grieved, his friends,
the character they revealed being painfully at variance with their
impression of him, and not a little, in some respects, at variance
with that of a gentleman.... Our small party at the Beeches was
broken up on the occasion of this, my third visit, by our hostess's
indisposition. She was seized with a violent attack of neuralgia in
the head, to which she was subject, and by which she was compelled
to take to her bed, and remain there in darkness and almost
intolerable suffering for hours, and sometimes days together. I have
known her prostrated by a paroxysm of this sort when she had invited
a large party to dinner, and obliged to leave her husband to do the
honors to their guests, while she betook herself to solitary
confinement in a darkened room.
On the present occasion the gentlemen guests took their departure
for London, and I should have done the same, but that Mrs. Grote
entreated me to remain, for the chance of her being soon rid of her
torment. Towards the middle of the day she begged me to come to her
room, when, feeling, I presume, some temporary relief, she presently
began talking vehemently to me about a French opera of "The
Tempest," by Halevy, I believe, which had just been produced in
Paris, with Madame Rossi Sontag as Miranda, and Lablache as Caliban.
Mrs. Grote was violent in her abuse of the composition, deploring,
as I joined her in doing, that Mendelssohn should not have taken
"The Tempest" for the subject of an opera, and so prevented less
worthy composers from laying hands upon it.
Towards this time Mrs. Grote became absorbed by a passionate
enthusiasm for Mademoiselle Jenny Lind, of whom she was an
idolatrous worshipper, and who frequently spent her days of leisure
at the Beeches. Mrs. Grote engrossed Mademoiselle Jenny Lind in so
curious a manner that, socially, the accomplished singer could
hardly be approached but through her. She was kind enough to ask me
twice to meet her, when Mendelssohn and herself were together at
Burnham--an offer of a rare pleasure, of which I was unable to avail
myself. I remember, about this time, a comical conversation I had
with her, in which, after surveying and defining her social position
and its various advantages, she exclaimed, "But I want some lords,
Fanny. Can't you help me to some lords?" I told her, laughingly,
that I thought the lady who held watch and ward over Mademoiselle
Jenny Lind might have as many lords at her feet as she pleased....
Besides her literary and artistic tastes, she took a keen interest
in politics, and among other causes for the slight esteem in which
she not unnaturally held my intellectual capacity was my ignorance
of, and indifference to, anything connected with party politics,
especially as discussed in coteries and by coterie queens.
Great questions of European policy, and the important movements of
foreign governments, or our own, in matters tending to affect the
general welfare and progress of humanity, had a profound interest
for me; but I talked so little on such subjects, as became the
profundity of my ignorance, that Mrs. Grote supposed them altogether
above my sympathy, and probably above my comprehension.
I remember very well, one evening at her own house, I was working at
some embroidery (I never saw her with that feminine implement, a
needle, in her fingers, and have a notion she despised those who
employed it, and the results they achieved), and I was listening
with perfect satisfaction to an able and animated discussion between
Mr. Grote, Charles Greville, Mr. Senior, and a very intelligent
Piedmontese then staying at the Beeches, on the aspect of European
politics, and more especially of Italian affairs, when Mrs. Grote,
evidently thinking the subject too much for me, drew her chair up to
mine, and began a condescending conversation about matters which she
probably judged more on a level with my comprehension; for she
seemed both relieved and surprised when I stopped her kind effort to
entertain me at once, thanking her, and assuring her that I was
enjoying extremely what I was listening to.
Some time after this, however, I must say I took a mischievous
opportunity of purposely confirming her poor opinion of my brains;
for on her return from Paris, where she had been during Louis
Napoleon's _coup d'etat_, she offered to show me Mr. Senior's
journal, kept there at the same time, and recording all the
remarkable and striking incidents of that exciting period of French
affairs. This was a temptation, but it was a greater one to
me--being, as Madame de Sevigne says of herself, _mechante ma
fille_--to make fun of Mrs. Grote; and so, comforting myself with
thinking that this probably highly interesting and instructive
record, kept by Mr. Senior, would be sure to be published, and was
then in manuscript (a thing which I abhor), I quietly declined the
offer, looking as like Audrey when she asks "What is poetical?" as I
could: to which Mrs. Grote, with an indescribable look, accent, and
gesture of good-humored contempt, replied, "Ah, well, it might not
interest you; I dare say it wouldn't. It _is_ political, to be sure;
it is political."
This is the second very clever woman, to whom I know my intelligence
had been vaunted, to whom I turned out completely "Paradise Lost,"
as my mother's comical old acquaintance, Lady Dashwood King, used to
say to Adelaide of me: "Ah, yes, I know your sister is vastly
clever, exceedingly intelligent, and all that kind of thing, but she
is 'Paradise Lost' to me, my dear." I sometimes regretted having
hidden my small light under a bushel as entirely as I did, in the
little intercourse I had with the first Lady Ashburton, Lady Harriet
Montague, with whom some of my friends desired that I should become
acquainted, and who asked me to her house in London, and to the
Grange, having been assured that there was something in me, and
trying to find it out, without ever succeeding.
Mrs. Grote had generally a very contemptuous regard for the capacity
of her female friends. She was extremely fond of my sister, but
certainly had not the remotest appreciation of her great cleverness;
and on one occasion betrayed the most whimsical surprise when
Adelaide mentioned having received a letter from the great German
scholar Waelcker. "Who? what? you? Waelcker, write to you!"
exclaimed Grota, in amazement more apparent than courteous, it
evidently being beyond the wildest stretch of her imagination that
one of the most learned men in Europe, and profoundest scholars of
Germany, could be a correspondent of my sister's, and a devoted
admirer of her brilliant intelligence.
Mrs. Grote's appearance was extremely singular; "striking" is, I
think, the most appropriate word for it. She was very tall,
square-built, and high-shouldered; her hands and arms, feet and legs
(the latter she was by no means averse to displaying) were
uncommonly handsome and well made. Her face was rather that of a
clever man than a woman, and I used to think there was some
resemblance between herself and our piratical friend Trelawney.
Her familiar style of language among her intimates was something
that could only be believed by those who heard it; it was technical
to a degree that was amazing. I remember, at a dinner-party at her
own table, her speaking of Audubon's work on ornithology, and saying
that some of the incidents of his personal adventures, in the
pursuit of his favorite science, had pleased her particularly;
instancing, among other anecdotes, an occasion on which, as she
said, "he was almost starving in the woods, you know, and found some
kind of wild creature, which he immediately disembowelled and
devoured." This, at dinner, at her own table, before a large party,
was rather forcible. But little usual as her modes of expression
were, she never seemed to be in the slightest degree aware of the
startling effect they produced; she uttered them with the most
straightforward unconsciousness and unconcern. Her taste in dress
was, as might have been expected, slightly eccentric, but, for a
person with so great a perception of harmony of sound, her passion
for discordant colors was singular. The first time I ever saw her
she was dressed in a bright brimstone-colored silk gown, made so
short as to show her feet and ankles, having on her head a white
satin hat, with a forest of white feathers; and I remember her
standing, with her feet wide apart and her arms akimbo, in this
costume before me, and challenging me upon some political question,
by which, and her appearance, I was much astonished and a little
frightened. One evening she came to my sister's house dressed
entirely in black, but with scarlet shoes on, with which I suppose
she was particularly pleased, for she lay on a sofa with her feet
higher than her head, American fashion, the better to display or
contemplate them. I remember, at a party, being seated by Sydney
Smith, when Mrs. Grote entered with a rose-colored turban on her
head, at which he suddenly exclaimed, "Now I know the meaning of the
word grotesque!" The mischievous wit professed his cordial liking
for both her and her husband, saying, "I like them, I like them; I
like him, he is so ladylike; and I like her, she's such a perfect
gentleman;" in which, however, he had been forestalled by a person
who certainly _n'y entendait pas malice_, Mrs. Chorley, the meekest
and gentlest of human beings, who one evening, at a party at her
son's house, said to him, pointing out Mrs. Grote, who was dressed
in white, "Henry, my dear, who is the gentleman in the white muslin
gown?"]
You ask me, dear H----, about Lady Francis's visit. She did not come, as
she had proposed doing, on the Friday, for she caught the influenza, and
was extremely unwell for a few days; she was here on Monday, coughing
incessantly and looking ill. In the course of our conversation, she
exclaimed, "Education! bless me, I think of nothing else but the
education of the poor. Don't you find people have got to think and talk
about nothing else? I protest, I don't." This made me laugh, and you
will understand why; but she didn't, and pressed me very much to tell
her what there was absurd in the matter to me: but I declined answering
her, at least then and there, as I could not enter into a full
discussion of the subject, down to the roots of it, just at that moment.
But, as you will well comprehend, the circumstances that render this
feverish zeal for education comical, in some of its fine-lady advocates,
are peculiarly strong in her case, though she is in earnest enough, and
thoroughly well-intentioned in whatever she does. Unwittingly, they are
serving the poor, as they certainly do not contemplate doing; for by
educating them, even as they are likely to do so, they will gradually
prepare them, intelligently and therefore irresistibly, to demand such
changes in their political and social conditions as they may now
impotently desire, and will assuredly hereafter obtain; but not, I
think, with the entirely cordial acquiescence of their Tory educators.
We went to the opera the Saturday after you left us, but both the opera
and the ballet were indifferent performances.... Do you not know that to
misunderstand and be misunderstood is one of the inevitable conditions,
and, I think, one of the especial purposes, of our existence? The
principal use of the affection of human beings for each other is to
supply the want of perfect comprehension, which is impossible. All the
faith and love which we possess are barely sufficient to bridge over
the abyss of individualism which separates one human being from another;
and they would not or could not exist, if we really understood each
other. God bless you, dear.
Yours ever,
FANNY.
CLARGES STREET, March 28th, 1841.
DEAREST H----,
My Sunday's avocations being over, or rather----
Here a loud, double knock, and Emily's entrance cut short my sentence;
and now that she is gone, it is close upon time to dress for dinner. She
bids me tell you that I am going to-morrow to sit to the sun for my
picture for you. I cannot easily conceive how you should desire a
daguerreotype of me; you certainly have never seen one, or you would not
do so; as it is, I think you will receive a severe shock from the real
representation of the face you love so well and know so little....
Emily and I went with the children to the Zoological Gardens the other
day, where a fine, intelligent-looking lioness appeared exceedingly
struck with them, crouched, and made a spring at little Fan, which made
Anne scream, and Emily, and Amelia Twiss, who was with us, catch hold of
the child. The keeper assured us it was only play; but I was well
pleased, nevertheless, that there was a grating between that very large
cat and the little white mouse of a plaything she contemplated.
I have no news to give you, dear H----. A list of our dinner and evening
engagements would be interminable, and not very profitable stuff for
correspondence.
I breakfasted with Mr. Rogers the other morning, and met Lord Normanby,
to whom I preferred a request that he would procure for Henry an
unattached company, by which he would obtain a captain's rank and
half-pay, and escape being sent to Canada, or, indeed, out of England at
all--which, in my father's present condition of health, is very
desirable....
We hear of my sister's great success in Italy, in "Norma," from sources
which can leave us no doubt of it....