A Letter Book Part 13

Hobart's bulk, that he said he was sure she must be hollow. The tables were again spread in five rooms, and at past two in the morning we went to supper. To excuse _we_, I must plead that both the late and present chancellor, and the solemn Lord Lyttleton, my predecessors by some years, stayed as late as I did--and in good sooth the watchman went four as my chairman knocked at my door.

Such is the result of good resolutions! I determined during my illness to have my colt's tooth drawn, and lo! I have cut four new in a week.

Well! at least I am as grave as a judge, looked as rosy as Lord Lyttleton, and much soberer than my Lord Chancellor. To shew some marks of grace, I shall give up the opera, (indeed it is very bad) and go and retake my doctor's degrees among the dowagers at Lady Blandford's; and intending to have no more diversions than I have news to tell your ladyship, I think you shall not hear from me again till we meet, as I shall think it, in heaven.

23. (_Thackeray imitating_). TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY

ARLINGTON STREET, Friday night.

I have come away, child, for a day or two from my devotions to our Lady of Strawberry. Have I not been on my knees to her these three weeks, and aren't the poor old joints full of rheumatism? A fit took me that I would pay London a visit, that I would go to Vauxhall and Ranelagh.

_Quoi!_ May I not have my rattle as well as other elderly babies?

Suppose, after being so long virtuous, I take a fancy to cakes and ale, shall your reverence say nay to me? George Selwyn and Tony Storer and your humble servant took boat at Westminster t'other night. Was it Tuesday?--no, Tuesday I was with their Graces of Norfolk, who are just from Tunbridge--it was Wednesday. How should I know?

Wasn't I dead drunk with a whole pint of lemonade I took at White's?

The Norfolk folk had been entertaining me on Tuesday with the account of a young savage Iroquois, Choctaw, or Virginian, who has lately been making a little noise in our quarter of the globe. He is an offshoot of that disreputable family of Esmond-Castlewood, of whom all the men are gamblers and spendthrifts, and all the women--well, I shan't say the word, lest Lady Ailesbury should be looking over your shoulder. Both the late lords, my father told me, were in his pay, and the last one, a beau of Queen Anne's reign, from a viscount advanced to be an earl through the merits and intercession of his notorious old sister Bernstein, late Tusher, _nee_ Esmond--a great beauty, too, of her day, a favourite of the old Pretender. She sold his secrets to my papa, who paid her for them; and being nowise particular in her love for the Stuarts, came over to the august Hanoverian house at present reigning over us. "Will Horace Walpole's tongue never stop scandal?" says your wife over your shoulder.

I kiss your ladyship's hand. I am dumb. The Bernstein is a model of virtue. She had no good reasons for marrying her father's chaplain. Many of the n.o.bility omit the marriage altogether. She _wasn't_ ashamed of being Mrs. Tusher, and didn't take a German _Baroncino_ for a second husband, whom n.o.body out of Hanover ever saw. The Yarmouth bears no malice. Esther and Vashti are very good friends, and have been cheating each other at Tunbridge at cards all the summer.

"And what has all this to do with the Iroquois?" says your ladyship. The Iroquois has been at Tunbridge, too--not cheating, perhaps, but winning vastly. They say he has bled Lord March of thousands--Lord March, by whom so much blood hath been shed, that he has quarrelled with everybody, fought with everybody, rode over everybody, been fallen in love with by everybody's wife except Mr. Conway's, and _not_ excepting her present Majesty, the Countess of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Queen of Walmoden and Yarmouth, whom heaven preserve to us.

You know an offensive little creature _de par le monde_, one Jack Morris, who skips in and out of all the houses of London. When we were at Vauxhall, Mr. Jack gave us a nod under the shoulder of a pretty young fellow enough, on whose arm he was leaning, and who appeared hugely delighted with the enchantments of the garden. Lord, how he stared at the fireworks! G.o.ds, how he huzzayed at the singing of a horrible painted wench who shrieked the ears off my head! A twopenny string of gla.s.s beads and a strip of tawdry cloth are treasures in Iroquois-land, and our savage valued them accordingly.

A buzz went about the place that this was the fortunate youth. He won three hundred at White's last night very genteelly from Rockingham and my precious nephew, and here he was bellowing and huzzaying over the music so as to do you good to hear. I do not love a puppet-show, but I love to treat children to one, Miss Conway! I present your ladyship my compliments, and hope we shall go and see the dolls together.

When the singing-woman came down from her throne, Jack Morris must introduce my Virginian to her. I saw him blush up to the eyes, and make her, upon my word, a very fine bow, such as I had no idea was practised in wigwams. "There is a certain _jenny squaw_ about her, and that's why the savage likes her," George said--a joke certainly not as brilliant as a firework. After which it seemed to me that the savage and the savagess retired together.

Having had a great deal too much to eat and drink three hours before, my partners must have chicken and rack-punch at Vauxhall, where George fell asleep straightway, and for my sins I must tell Tony Storer what I knew about this Virginian's amiable family, especially some of the Bernstein's antecedents and the history of another elderly beauty of the family, a certain Lady Maria, who was _au mieux_ with the late Prince of Wales. What did I say? I protest not half of what I knew, and of course not a tenth part of what I was going to tell, for who should start out upon us but my savage, this time quite red in the face; and in his _war paint_. The wretch had been drinking fire-water in the next box!

He c.o.c.ked his hat, clapped his hand to his sword, asked which of the gentlemen was it that was maligning his family? so that I was obliged to entreat him not to make such a noise, lest he should wake my friend Mr.

George Selwyn. And I added, "I a.s.sure you, sir, I had no idea that you were near me, and I most sincerely apologize for giving you pain."

The Huron took his hand off his tomahawk at this pacific rejoinder, made a bow not ungraciously, said he could not, of course, ask more than an apology from a gentleman of my age (_Merci, Monsieur!_) and, hearing the name of Mr. Selwyn, made another bow to George, and said he had a letter to him from Lord March, which he had had the ill-fortune to mislay.

George has put him up for the club, it appears, in conjunction with March, and no doubt these three lambs will fleece each other. Meanwhile, my pacified savage sat down with us, and _buried the hatchet_ in another bowl of punch, for which these gentlemen must call. Heaven help us! 'Tis eleven o'clock, and here comes Bedson with my gruel!

H. W.

FOOTNOTES:

[112] There is an amicable dispute among Thackerayans whether this or the imitation-_Spectator_ paper in _Esmond_ is the more wonderful of their joint kind. To facilitate this comparison the letter part (for there is one) of that paper will be given here under Thackeray's own name.

TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT (1721-1771)

Smollett's reputation has been of course always mainly, indeed almost wholly, that of a novelist, though his miscellaneous work is of no small merit. But that he wrote his best novel _in_ letters and that perhaps it is one of the best so written, has been mentioned. His _Travels_ are also of the letter-kind--especially of the ill-tempered-letter-kind. Of his actual correspondence we have not much. But the following has always seemed to the present writer an admirable and agreeably characteristic example. Smollett's outwardly surly but inwardly kindly temper, and his command of phrase ("great Cham of literature" has, as we say now, "stuck") both appear in it: and the matter is interesting. We have, so far as I remember, no record of any interview between Johnson and Smollett, though they must have met. They were both Tories, and Johnson wrote in the _Critical Review_ which Smollett edited. But Johnson's gibes at Scotland are not likely to have conciliated Smollett: and there was just that combination of likeness and difference between the two men which (especially as the one was as typically English as the other was Scotch) generates incompatibility. How victoriously Wilkes got over Johnson's personal dislike to him all readers of Boswell know: and it is one of the most amusing pa.s.sages in the book. On this occasion, too, he did what was asked of him. "Frank" had not been _pressed_, but had joined for some reason of his own. However, he accepted his discharge and returned to his master, staying till that master's death.

24. TO JOHN WILKES, ESQ.

CHELSEA, 16th March, 1759.

Dear Sir

I am again your pet.i.tioner, in behalf of that great CHAM of literature, Samuel Johnson. His black servant, whose name is Francis Barber, has been pressed on board the Stag frigate, Captain Angel, and our lexicographer is in great distress. He says the boy is a sickly lad, of a delicate frame, and particularly subject to a malady in his throat, which renders him very unfit for His Majesty's service. You know what matter of animosity the said Johnson has against you: and I dare say you desire no other opportunity of resenting it, than that of laying him under an obligation. He was humble enough to desire my a.s.sistance on this occasion, though he and I were never cater-cousins; and I gave him to understand that I would make application to my friend Mr. Wilkes, who, perhaps, by his interest with Dr. Hay and Mr. Elliot, might be able to procure the discharge of his lacquey. It would be superfluous to say more on this subject, which I leave to your own consideration; but I cannot let slip this opportunity of declaring that I am, with the most inviolable esteem and attachment, dear Sir, your affectionate, obliged, humble servant,

T. SMOLLETT.

WILLIAM COWPER (1731-1800)

It was necessary to say a good deal about Cowper's letters in the Introduction, but it would hardly do to stint him of some further comment. It will be a most unfortunate evidence of degradation in English literary taste if he ever loses the position there a.s.signed to him, and practically acknowledged by all the best judges for the last century.

For there is certainly no other epistoler who has displayed such consummate (if also such unconscious) art in making the most out of the least. Of course people who must have noise, and bustle, and "importance" of matter, and so forth, may be dissatisfied. But their dissatisfaction convicts not Cowper but themselves: and the conviction is not for want of Art, but for want of appreciation of Art. Now this last is one of the most terrible faults to be found in any human creature.

Not everybody can be an artist: but everybody who is not deficient to this or that extent in sense--to use that word in its widest and best interpretation, for understanding and feeling both--can enjoy an artist's work. Nor is there any more important function of the often misused word "education" than "bringing out" this sense when it is dormant, and training and developing it when it is brought out. And few things are more useful for exercise in this way than the under-current of artistry in Cowper's "chit-chat."

His letters are so familiar that it is vain to aim at any great originality in selecting them. The following strikes me as an excellent example. What more trite than references to increased expense of postage (rather notably topical just now though!) and remarks on a greenhouse? And what less trite--except to tritical tastes and intellects--than this letter?

25. TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON

Sept. 18. 1784.

My dear Friend,

Following your good example, I lay before me a sheet of my largest paper. It was this moment fair and unblemished but I have begun to blot it, and having begun, am not likely to cease till I have spoiled it. I have sent you many a sheet that in my judgment of it has been very unworthy of your acceptance, but my conscience was in some measure satisfied by reflecting, that if it were good for nothing, at the same time it cost you nothing, except the trouble of reading it. But the case is altered now. You must pay a solid price for frothy matter, and though I do not absolutely pick your pocket, yet you lose your money, and, as the saying is, are never the wiser; a saying literally fulfilled to the reader of my epistles.

My greenhouse is never so pleasant as when we are just upon the point of being turned out of it. The gentleness of the autumnal suns, and the calmness of this latter season, make it a much more agreeable retreat than we ever find it in summer; when, the winds being generally brisk, we cannot cool it by admitting a sufficient quant.i.ty of air, without being at the same time incommoded by it. But now I sit with all the windows and the door wide open, and am regaled with the scent of every flower in a garden as full of flowers as I have known how to make it. We keep no bees, but if I lived in a hive I should hardly hear more of their music. All the bees in the neighbourhood resort to a bed of mignonette, opposite to the window, and pay me for the honey they get out of it by a hum, which, though rather monotonous, is as agreeable to my ear as the whistling of my linnets. All the sounds that nature utters are delightful,--at least in this country. I should not perhaps find the roaring of lions in Africa, or of bears in Russia, very pleasing; but I know no beast in England whose voice I do not account musical, save and except always the braying of an a.s.s. The notes of all our birds and fowls please me, without one exception. I should not indeed think of keeping a goose in a cage, that I might hang him up in the parlour for the sake of his melody, but a goose upon a common, or in a farmyard, is no bad performer; and as to insects, if the black beetle, and beetles indeed of all hues, will keep out of my way, I have no objection to any of the rest; on the contrary, in whatever key they sing, from the gnat's fine treble to the ba.s.s of the humble bee, I admire them all. Seriously however it strikes me as a very observable instance of providential kindness to man, that such an exact accord has been contrived between his ear, and the sounds with which, at least in a rural situation, it is almost every moment visited. All the world is sensible of the uncomfortable effect that certain sounds have upon the nerves, and consequently upon the spirits:--and if a sinful world had been filled with such as would have curdled the blood, and have made the sense of hearing a perpetual inconvenience, I do not know that we should have had a right to complain. But now the fields, the woods, the gardens have each their concert, and the ear of man is for ever regaled by creatures who seem only to please themselves. Even the ears that are deaf to the Gospel, are continually entertained, though without knowing it, by sounds for which they are solely indebted to its author. There is somewhere in infinite s.p.a.ce a world that does not roll within the precincts of mercy, and as it is reasonable, and even scriptural, to suppose that there is music in Heaven, in those dismal regions perhaps the reverse of it is found; tones so dismal, as to make woe itself more insupportable, and to ac.u.minate[113] even despair. But my paper admonishes me in good time to draw the reins, and to check the descent of my fancy into deeps, with which she is but too familiar.

Our best love attends you both, with yours,

_Sum ut semper, tui studiossimus_,

W. C.

FOOTNOTES:

[113] "Ac.u.minate" = "sharpen," is a perfectly good word in itself, but perhaps does not so perfectly suit "despair," which crushes rather than pierces.

SYDNEY SMITH (1771-1845)

It has been said of Sydney Smith that he was not only a humourist, but a "good-humourist," and this is undoubtedly true. Politics, indeed, according to their usual custom, sometimes rather acidulated his good humour; but anybody possessed of the noun, with the least allowance of the adjective, should be propitiated by the way in which the almost Radical reformer of _Peter Plymley's Letters_ in 1807 became the almost Tory and wholly conservative maintainer of ecclesiastical rights in those to Archdeacon Singleton thirty years later.