Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century Part 8

There were only three men at the party, according to Willis, who could come under the head of _beaux_, but there were many distinguished persons. There was Byron's sister, Mrs. Leigh, a thin, plain, middle-aged woman, of a serious countenance, but with very cordial, pleasing manners. Sheil, the famous Irish orator, small, dark, deceitful, and talented-looking, with a squeaky voice, was to be seen in earnest conversation with the courtly old Lord Clarendon.

Fonblanque, with his pale, dislocated-looking face, was making the amiable, with a ghastly smile, to Lady Stepney, author of _The Road to Ruin_ and other fashionable novels. The bilious Lord Durham, with his Brutus head and severe countenance, high-bred in appearance in spite of the worst possible coat and trousers, was talking politics with Bowring. Prince Moscowa, son of Marshal Ney, a plain, determined-looking young man, was unconscious of everything but the presence of the lovely Mrs. Leicester Stanhope. Her husband, afterwards Sir Leicester, who had been Byron's companion in Greece, was introduced to Willis, and the two soon became on intimate terms.

In the course of the season Willis made the acquaintance of Miss Mitford, who invited him to spend a week with her at her cottage near Reading. In a letter to her friend, Miss Jephson, Miss Mitford says: 'I also like very much Mr. Willis, an American author, who is now understood to be here to publish his account of England. He is a very elegant young man, more like one of the best of our peers' sons than a rough republican.' The admiration was apparently mutual, for Willis, in a letter to the author of _Our Village_, says: 'You are distinguished in the world as the "gentlewoman" among auth.o.r.esses, as you are for your rank merely in literature. I have often thought you very enviable for the universality of that opinion about you. You share it with Sir Philip Sidney, who was in his day the _gentleman_ among authors. I look with great interest for your new tragedy. I think your mind is essentially dramatic; and in that, in our time, you are alone. I know no one else who could have written _Rienzi_, and I felt _Charles I._ to my fingers' ends, as one feels no other modern play.'

Willis was less happy in his relations with Harriet Martineau, to whom he was introduced just before her departure for America. 'While I was preparing for my travels,' she writes, in her own account of the interview, 'an acquaintance brought a buxom gentleman, whom he introduced under the name of Willis. There was something rather engaging in the round face, brisk air, and _enjouement_ of the young man; but his conscious dandyism and unparalleled self-complacency spoiled the satisfaction, though they increased the inclination to laugh.... He whipped his bright little boot with his bright little cane, while he ran over the names of all his distinguished fellow-countrymen, and declared that he would send me letters to them all.' Miss Martineau further relates that the few letters she presented met with a very indifferent reception. Her indignation increased when she found that in his private correspondence Willis had given the impression that she was one of his most intimate friends. In his own account of the interview he merely says: 'I was taken by the clever translator of Faust to see the celebrated Miss Martineau. She has perhaps at this moment the most general and enviable reputation in England, and is the only one of the literary clique whose name is mentioned without some envious qualification.'

A budget of literary news sent to the _Mirror_ includes such items as that 'D'Israeli is driving about in an open carriage with Lady S., looking more melancholy than usual. The absent baronet, whose place he fills, is about to bring an action against him, which will finish his career, unless he can coin the damages in his brain. Mrs.

Hemans is dying of consumption in Ireland. I have been pa.s.sing a week at a country-house, where Miss Jane Porter [author of _Scottish Chiefs_] and Miss Pardoe [author of _Beauties of the Bosphorus_]

were staying. Miss Porter is one of her own heroines grown old, a still n.o.ble wreck of beauty.... Dined last week with Joanna Baillie at Hampstead--the most charming old lady I ever saw.

To-day I dine with Longman, to meet Tom Moore, who is living _incog._ near this Nestor of publishers, and pegging hard at his _History of Ireland_.... Lady Blessington's new book makes a great noise. Living as she does twelve hours out of the twenty-four in the midst of the most brilliant and intellectually exhausting circle in London, I only wonder how she found time to write it. Yet it was written in six weeks! Her novels sell for a hundred pounds more than any other author's, except Bulwer's. Bulwer gets 1400; Lady Blessington, 400; Mrs. Norton, 250; Lady Charlotte Bury, 200; Grattan, 300; and most other authors below this. Captain Marryat's gross trash sells immensely about Wapping and Portsmouth, and brings him in 500 or 600 the book--but that can scarce be called literature. D'Israeli cannot sell a book _at all_, I hear. Is not that odd? I would give more for one of his books than for forty of the common saleable things about town.'

One more description of a literary dinner at Lady Blessington's may be quoted before Willis's account of this, his first and most memorable London season, is brought to an end. Among the company on this occasion were Moore, D'Israeli, and Dr. Beattie, the King's physician, who was himself a poet. Moore had been ruralising for a year at Slopperton Cottage, and, before his arrival, D'Israeli expressed his regret that he should have been met on his return to town with a savage article in _Fraser_ on his supposed plagiarisms. Lady Blessington declared that he would never see it, since he guarded himself against the sight and knowledge of criticism as other people guarded against the plague. Some one remarked on Moore's pa.s.sion for rank. 'He was sure to have five or six invitations to dine on the same day,' it was said, 'and he tormented himself with the idea that he had perhaps not accepted the most exclusive. He would get off from an engagement with a countess to dine with a marchioness, and from a marchioness to accept the invitation of a d.u.c.h.ess. As he cared little for the society of men, and would sing and be delightful only for the applause of women, it mattered little whether one circle was more talented than another.' At length Mr. Moore was announced, and the poet, 'sliding his little feet up to Lady Blessington, made his compliments with an ease and gaiety, combined with a kind of worshipping deference, that were worthy of a prime minister at the Court of Love.... His eyes still sparkle like a champagne bubble, though the invader has drawn his pencillings about the corners; and there is a kind of wintry red that seems enamelled on his cheek, the eloquent record of the claret his wit has brightened. His mouth is the most characteristic feature of all. The lips are delicately cut, and as changeable as an aspen; but there is a set-up look about the lower lip--a determination of the muscle to a particular expression, and you fancy that you can see wit astride upon it. It is arch, confident, and half diffident, as if he were disguising his pleasure at applause, while another bright gleam of fancy was breaking upon him. The slightly tossed nose confirms the fun of his expression, and altogether it is a face that sparkles, beams, and radiates.'

The conversation at dinner that night was the most brilliant that the American had yet heard in London. Sir Walter Scott was the first subject of discussion, Lady Blessington having just received from Sir William Gell the ma.n.u.script of a volume on the last days of Sir Walter Scott, a melancholy chronicle of ruined health and weakened intellect, which was afterwards suppressed. Moore then described a visit he had paid to Abbotsford, when his host was in his prime. 'Scott,' he said, 'was the most manly and natural character in the world. His hospitality was free and open as the day; he lived freely himself, and expected his guests to do the same.... He never ate or drank to excess, but he had no system; his const.i.tution was Herculean, and he denied himself nothing. I went once from a dinner-party at Sir Thomas Lawrence's to meet Scott at another house. We had hardly entered the room when we were set down to a hot supper of roast chicken, salmon, punch, etc., and Sir Walter ate immensely of everything. What a contrast between this and the last time I saw him in London! He had come to embark for Italy, quite broken down both in mind and body. He gave Mrs. Moore a book, and I asked him if he would make it more valuable by writing in it. He thought I meant that he should write some verses, and said, "I never write poetry now." I asked him to write only his name and hers, and he attempted it, but it was quite illegible.'

O'Connell next became the topic of conversation, and Moore declared that he would be irresistible if it were not for two blots on his character, viz. the contributions in Ireland for his support, and his refusal to give satisfaction to the man he was willing to attack.

'They may say what they will of duelling,' he continued, 'but it is the great preserver of the decencies of society. The old school which made a man responsible for his words was the better.' Moore related how O'Connell had accepted Peel's challenge, and then delayed a meeting on the ground of his wife's illness, till the law interfered.

Another Irish patriot refused a meeting on account of the illness of his daughter, whereupon a Dublin wit composed the following epigram upon the two:--

'Some men with a horror of slaughter, Improve on the Scripture command.

And honour their--wife and their daughter-- That their days may be long in the land.'

Alluding to Grattan's dying advice to his son, 'Always be ready with the pistol,' Moore asked, 'Is it not wonderful that, with all the agitation in Ireland, we have had no such men since his time? The whole country in convulsion--people's lives, fortune, religion at stake, and not a gleam of talent from one's year's end to another. It is natural for sparks to be struck out in a time of violence like this--but Ireland, for all that is worth living for, _is dead_!

You can scarcely reckon Sheil of the calibre of the spirits of old, and O'Connell, with all his faults, stands alone in his glory.'

In the drawing-room, after dinner, some allusion to the later Platonists caused D'Israeli to flare up. His wild black eyes glistened, and his nervous lips poured out eloquence, while a whole ottomanful of n.o.ble exquisites listened in amazement. He gave an account of Thomas Taylor, one of the last of the Platonists, who had worshipped Jupiter in a back-parlour in London a few years before. In his old age he was turned out of his lodgings, for attempting, as he said, to worship his G.o.ds according to the dictates of his conscience, his landlady having objected to his sacrificing a bull to Jupiter in her parlour. The company laughed at this story as a good invention, but Dizzy a.s.sured them it was literally true, and gave his father as his authority. Meanwhile Moore 'went glittering on' with criticisms upon Grisi and the Opera, and the subject of music being thus introduced, he was led, with great difficulty, to the piano. Willis describes his singing as 'a kind of admirable recitative, in which every shade of thought is syllabled and dwelt upon, and the sentiment of the song goes through your blood, warming you to the very eyelids, and starting your tears if you have a soul or sense in you. I have heard of women fainting at a song of Moore's; and if the burden of it answered by chance to a secret in the bosom of the listener, I should think that the heart would break with it. After two or three songs of Lady Blessington's choice, he rambled over the keys a while, and then sang 'When first I met thee' with a pathos that beggars description.

When the last word had faltered out, he rose and took Lady Blessington's hand, said Good-night, and was gone before a word was uttered. For a full minute after he closed the door no one spoke. I could have wished for myself to drop silently asleep where I sat, with the tears in my eyes and the softness upon my heart.'

PART II

Having received invitations to stay with Lord Dalhousie and the Duke of Gordon, Willis went north at the beginning of September, 1834. The nominal attraction of Scotland he found, rather to his dismay, was the shooting. The guest, he observes, on arriving at a country-house, is asked whether he prefers a flint or a percussion lock, and a double-barrelled Manton is put into his hands; while after breakfast the ladies leave the table, wishing him good sport. 'I would rather have gone to the library,' says the Penciller. 'An aversion to walking, except upon smooth flag-stones, a poetical tenderness on the subject of putting birds "out of their misery," and hands much more at home with the goose-quill than the gun, were some of my private objections to the order of the day.' At Dalhousie, the son of the house, Lord Ramsay, and his American visitor were mutually astonished at each other's appearance when they met in the park, prepared for a morning's sport.

'From the elegant Oxonian I had seen at breakfast,' writes Willis, 'he (Lord Ramsay) was transformed into a figure something rougher than his Highland dependant, in a woollen shooting-jacket, pockets of any number and capacity, trousers of the coa.r.s.est plaid, hobnailed shoes and leather gaiters, and a habit of handling his gun that would have been respected on the Mississippi. My own appearance in high-heeled French boots and other corresponding gear, for a tramp over stubble and marsh, amused him equally; but my wardrobe was exclusively metropolitan, and there was no alternative.' It was hard and exciting work, the novice discovered, to trudge through peas, beans, turnips, and corn, soaked with showers, and muddied to the knees till his Parisian boots were reduced to the consistency of brown paper. He came home, much to his own relief, without having brought the blood of his host's son and heir on his head, and he made a mental note never to go to Scotland again without hobnailed boots and a shooting-jacket.

On leaving Dalhousie Willis spent a few days in Edinburgh, where he breakfasted with Professor Wilson, _alias_ Christopher North. The Professor, he says, talked away famously, quite oblivious of the fact that the tea was made, and the breakfast-dishes were smoking on the table. He spoke much of Blackwood, who then lay dying, and described him as a man of the most refined literary taste, whose opinion of a book he would trust before that of any one he knew. Wilson inquired if his guest had made the acquaintance of Lockhart. 'I have not,' replied Willis. 'He is almost the only literary man in London I have not met; and I must say, as the editor of the _Quarterly Review_, and the most unfair and unprincipled critic of the day, I have no wish to know him. I never heard him well spoken of. I have probably met a hundred of his acquaintances, but I have not yet seen one who pretended to be his friend.' Wilson defended the absent one, who, he said, was the mildest and most una.s.suming of men, and dissected a book for pleasure, without thinking of the feelings of the author.

The breakfast had been cooling for an hour when the Professor leant back, with his chair still towards the fire, and 'seizing the teapot as if it were a sledge-hammer, he poured from one cup to the other without interrupting the stream, overrunning both cup and saucer, and partly flooding the tea-tray. He then set the cream towards me with a carelessness that nearly overset it, and in trying to reach an egg from the centre of the table, broke two. He took no notice of his own awkwardness, but drank his cup of tea at a single draught, ate his egg in the same expeditious manner, and went on talking of the "Noctes,"

and Lockhart, and Blackwood, as if eating his breakfast were rather a troublesome parenthesis in his conversation.' Wilson offered to give his guest letters to Wordsworth and Southey, if he intended to return by the Lakes. 'I lived a long time in their neighbourhood,' he said, 'and know Wordsworth perhaps as well as any one. Many a day I have walked over the hills with him, and listened to his repet.i.tion of his own poetry, which, of course, filled my mind completely at the time, and perhaps started the poetical vein in me, though I cannot agree with the critics that my poetry is an imitation of Wordsworth's.'

'Did Wordsworth repeat any other poetry than his own?'

'Never in a single instance, to my knowledge. He is remarkable for the manner in which he is wrapped up in his own poetical life. Everything ministers to it. Everything is done with reference to it. He is all and only a poet.'

'What is Southey's manner of life?'

'Walter Scott said of him that he lived too much with women. He is secluded in the country, and surrounded by a circle of admiring friends, who glorify every literary project he undertakes, and persuade him, in spite of his natural modesty, that he can do nothing wrong. He has great genius, and is a most estimable man.'

On the same day that he breakfasted with Wilson, this fortunate tourist dined with Jeffrey, with whom Lord Brougham was staying.

Unluckily, Brougham was absent, at a public dinner given to Lord Grey, who also happened to be in Edinburgh at the time. Willis was charmed with Jeffrey, with his frank smile, hearty manner, and graceful style of putting a guest at his ease. But he cared less for the political conversation at table. 'It had been my lot,' he says, 'to be thrown princ.i.p.ally among Tories (_Conservatives_ is the new name) since my arrival in England, and it was difficult to rid myself at once of the impressions of a fortnight pa.s.sed in the castle of a Tory earl. My sympathies on the great and glorious occasion [the Whig dinner to Lord Grey] were slower than those of the rest of the company, and much of their enthusiasm seemed to me overstrained. Altogether, I entered less into the spirit of the hour than I could have wished. Politics are seldom witty or amusing; and though I was charmed with the good sense and occasional eloquence of Lord Jeffrey, I was glad to get upstairs to _cha.s.se-cafe_ and the ladies.'

Willis aggravated a temporary lameness by dancing at the ball that followed the Whig banquet, and was compelled to abandon a charming land-route north that he had mapped out, and allow himself to be taken 'this side up' on a steamer to Aberdeen. Here he took coach for Fochabers, and thence posted to Gordon Castle. At the castle he found himself in the midst of a most distinguished company; the page who showed him to his room running over the names of Lord Aberdeen and Lord Claude Hamilton, the d.u.c.h.ess of Richmond and her daughter, Lady Sophia Lennox, Lord and Lady Stormont, Lord and Lady Mandeville, Lord and Lady Morton, Lord Aboyne, Lady Keith, and twenty other lesser lights. The duke himself came to fetch his guest before dinner, and presented him to the d.u.c.h.ess and the rest of the party. In a letter to Lady Blessington Willis says: 'I am delighted with the duke and d.u.c.h.ess. He is a delightful, hearty old fellow, full of fun and conversation, and she is an uncommonly fine woman, and, without beauty, has something agreeable in her countenance. _Pour moi-meme_, I get on better everywhere than in your presence. I only fear I talk too much; but all the world is particularly civil to me, and among a score of people, no one of whom I had ever seen yesterday, I find myself quite at home to-day.'

The ten days at Gordon Castle Willis afterwards set apart in his memory as 'a bright ellipse in the usual procession of joys and sorrows.' He certainly made the most of this unique opportunity of observing the manners and customs of the great. The routine of life at the castle was what each guest chose to make it. 'Between breakfast and lunch,' he writes, 'the ladies were usually invisible, and the gentlemen rode, or shot, or played billiards. At two o'clock a dish or two of hot game and a profusion of cold meats were set on small tables, and everybody came in for a kind of lounging half meal, which occupied perhaps an hour. Thence all adjourned to the drawing-room, under the windows of which were drawn up carriages of all descriptions, with grooms, outriders, footmen, and saddle-horses for gentlemen and ladies. Parties were then made up for driving or riding, and from a pony-chaise to a phaeton and four, there was no cla.s.s of vehicle that was not at your disposal. In ten minutes the carriages were all filled, and away they flew, some to the banks of the Spey or the seaside, some to the drives in the park, and all with the delightful consciousness that speed where you would, the horizon scarce limited the possessions of your host, and you were everywhere at home. The ornamental gates flying open at your approach; the herds of red deer trooping away from the sound of your wheels; the stately pheasants feeding tamely in the immense preserves; the stalking gamekeepers lifting their hats in the dark recesses of the forest--there was something in this perpetual reminder of your privileges which, as a novelty, was far from disagreeable. I could not, at the time, bring myself to feel, what perhaps would be more poetical and republican, that a ride in the wild and unfenced forest of my own country would have been more to my taste.'

Willis came to the conclusion that a North American Indian, in his more dignified phase, closely resembled an English n.o.bleman in manner, since it was impossible to astonish either. All violent sensations, he observes, are avoided in high life. 'In conversation nothing is so "odd" (a word that in English means everything disagreeable) as emphasis, or a startling epithet, or gesture, and in common intercourse nothing is so vulgar as any approach to "a scene." For all extraordinary admiration, the word "capital" suffices; for all ordinary praise, the word "nice"; for all condemnation in morals, manners, or religion, the word "odd.".... What is called an overpowering person is immediately shunned, for he talks too much, and excites too much attention. In any other country he would be considered amusing. He is regarded here as a monopoliser of the general interest, and his laurels, talk he never so well, overshadow the rest of the company.'

On leaving Gordon Castle, Willis crossed Scotland by the Caledonian Ca.n.a.l, and from Fort William jolted in a Highland cart through Glencoe to Tarbet on Lomond. Thence the regulation visits were paid to Loch Katrine, the Trossachs and Callander. Another stay at Dalhousie Castle gave the tourist an opportunity of seeing Abbotsford, where he heard much talk of Sir Walter Scott. Lord Dalhousie had many anecdotes to tell of Scott's school-days, and Willis recalled some reminiscences of the Wizard that he had heard from Moore in London. 'Scott was the soul of honesty,' Moore had said. 'When I was on a visit to him, we were coming up from Kelso at sunset, and as there was to be a fine moon, I quoted to him his own rule for seeing "fair Melrose aright," and proposed to stay an hour and enjoy it. "Bah," said Scott. "I never saw it by moonlight." We went, however, and Scott, who seemed to be on the most familiar terms with the cicerone, pointed to an empty niche, and said to him: "I think I have a Virgin and Child that will just do for your niche. I'll send it to you." "How happy you have made that man,"

I said. "Oh," said Scott, "it was always in the way, and Madam Scott is constantly grudging it house-room. We're well rid of it." Any other man would have allowed himself at least the credit of a kind action.'

After a stay at a Lancashire country-house, Willis arrived at Liverpool, where he got his first sight of the newly-opened railway to Manchester. In the letters and journals of the period, it is rather unusual to come upon any allusion to the great revolution in land-travelling. We often read of our grandfathers' astonishment at the steam-packets that crossed the Atlantic in a fortnight, but they seem to have slid into the habit of travelling by rail almost as a matter of course, much as their descendants have taken to touring in motor-cars. Willis the observant, however, has left on record his sensations during his first journey by rail.

'Down we dived into the long tunnel,' he relates, 'emerging from the darkness at a pace that made my hair sensibly tighten, and hold on with apprehension. Thirty miles in the hour is pleasant going when one is a little accustomed to it, it gives one such a pleasant contempt for time and distance. The whizzing past of the return trains, going in the opposite direction with the same degree of velocity--making you recoil in one second, and a mile off the next--was the only thing which, after a few minutes, I did not take to very kindly.'

Willis adds to our obligations by reporting the cries of the newsboys at the Elephant and Castle, where all the coaches to and from the South stopped for twenty minutes. On the occasion that our traveller pa.s.sed through, the boys were crying 'Noospipper, sir! Buy the morning pippers, sir! _Times, Herald, Chrinnicle,_ and _Munning Post_, sir--contains Lud Brum's entire innihalation of Lud Nummanby--Ledy Flor 'Estings' murder by Lud Melbun and the Maids of Honour--debate on the Croolty-Hannimals Bill, and a fatil catstrophy in conskens of loosfer matches! Sixpence, only sixpence!'

In November Willis returned to London, and took lodgings in Vigo Street. During the next ten months he seems to have done a good deal of work for the magazines, and to have been made much of in society as a literary celebrity. His stories and articles, which appeared in the _New Monthly Magazine_ under the pseudonym of Philip Slingsby, were eagerly read by the public of that day. He was presented at court, admitted to the Athenac.u.m and Travellers' Clubs, and patronised by Lady Charlotte Bury and Lady Stepney, ladies who were in the habit of writing bad novels, and giving excellent dinners. Madden, Lady Blessington's biographer, who saw a good deal of Willis at this time, says that he was an extremely agreeable young man, somewhat over-dressed, and a little too _demonstratif_, but abounding in good spirits. 'He was observant and communicative, lively and clever in conversation, having the peculiar art of making himself agreeable to ladies, old and young, _degage_ in his manner, and on exceedingly good terms with himself.'

Not only had Willis the _entree_ into fashionable Bohemia, but he was well received in many families of unquestionable respectability.

Elderly and middle-aged ladies were especially attracted by his flattering attentions and deferential manners, and at this time two of his most devoted friends were Mrs. Shaw of the Manor House, Lee, a daughter of Lord Erskine, and Mrs. Skinner of Shirley Park, the wife of an Indian nabob. Their houses were always open to him, and he says in a letter to his mother: 'I have two homes in England where I am loved like a child. I had a letter from Mrs. Shaw, who thought I looked low-spirited at the opera the other night. "Young men have but two causes of unhappiness," she writes, "love and money. If it is _money_, Mr. Shaw wishes me to say you shall have as much as you want; if it is _love_, tell us the lady, and perhaps we can help you." I spend my Sundays alternately at their splendid country-house, and at Mrs. Skinner's, and they can never get enough of me. I am often asked if I carry a love-philter with me.'

At Shirley Park, Willis struck up a friendship with Jane Porter, and made the acquaintance of Lady Morgan, Praed, John Leech, and Martin Tupper. Mrs. Skinner professed to be extremely anxious to find him a suitable wife, and in a confidential letter to her, he writes: 'You say if you had a daughter you would give her to me. If you _had_ one, I should certainly take you at your word, provided this _expose_ of my poverty did not change your fancy. I should like to marry in England, and I feel every day that my best years and best affections are running to waste. I am proud to _be_ an American, but as a literary man, I would rather _live_ in England. So if you know of any affectionate and _good_ girl who would be content to live a quiet life, and could love your humble servant, you have full power to dispose of me, _provided_ she has five hundred a year, or as much more as she likes. I know enough of the world to cut my throat, rather than bring a delicate woman down to a dependence on my brains for support.'

In March of this year, 1835, Willis produced his _Melanie, and other Poems_, which was 'edited' by Barry Cornwall. He received the honour of a parody in the _Bon Gaultier Ballads_, ent.i.tled 'The Fight with the Snapping Turtle, or the American St. George.' In this ballad Willis and Bryant are represented as setting out to kill the Snapping Turtle, spurred on by the offer of a hundred dollars reward.

The turtle swallows Willis, but is thereupon taken ill, and having returned him to earth again, dies in great agony. When he claims the reward, he is informed that:--

'Since you dragged the tarnal crittur From the bottom of the ponds, Here's the hundred dollars due you _All in Pennsylvanian bonds._'

At the end of the poem is a drawing of a pair of stocks, labelled 'The only good American securities,' Willis seems to have been too busy to Boswellise this season, but we get a glimpse of him in his letters to Miss Mitford, and one or two of the notes in his diary are worth quoting. On April 22 he writes to the author of _Our Village_ in his usual flattering style: 'I am anxious to see your play and your next book, and I quite agree with you that the drama is your _pied_, though I think laurels, and spreading ones, are sown for you in every department of writing. n.o.body ever wrote better prose, and what could not the author of _Rienzi_ do in verse. For myself, I am far from considering myself regularly embarked in literature, and if I can live without it, or ply any other vocation, shall vote it a thankless trade, and save my "entusymussy" for my wife and children--when I get them. I am at present steeped to the lips in London society, going to everything, from Devonshire House to a publisher's dinner in Paternoster Row, and it is not a bad _olla podrida_ of life and manners. I dote on "England and true English,"

and was never so happy, or so at a loss to find a minute for care or forethought.'

In his diary for June 30, Willis notes: 'Breakfasted with Samuel Rogers. Talked of Mrs. Butler's book, and Rogers gave us suppressed pa.s.sages. Talked critics, and said that as long as you cast a shadow, you were sure that you possessed substance. Coleridge said of Southey, "I never think of him but as mending a pen." Southey said of Coleridge, "Whenever anything presents itself to him in the form of a duty, that moment he finds himself incapable of looking at it."' On July 9 we have the entry: 'Dined with Dr. Beattie, and met Thomas Campbell.... He spoke of Scott's slavishness to men of rank, but said it did not interfere with his genius. Said it sunk a man's heart to think that he and Byron were dead, and there was n.o.body left to praise or approve.... He told a story of dining with Burns and a Bozzy friend, who, when Campbell proposed the health of _Mr_. Burns, said, "Sir, you will always be known as _Mr_. Campbell, but posterity will talk of _Burns_." He was playful and amusing, and drank gin and water.'

While staying with the Skinners in August, Willis met his fate in the person of Miss Mary Stace, daughter of a General Stace. After a week's acquaintance he proposed to her, and was accepted. She was, we are told, a beauty of the purest Saxon type, with a bright complexion, blue eyes, light-brown hair, and delicate, regular features. Her disposition was clinging and affectionate, and she had enjoyed the religious bringing up that her lover thought of supreme importance to a woman. General Stace agreed to allow his daughter 300 a year, which with the 400 that Willis made by his pen, was considered a sufficient income for the young couple to start housekeeping upon.

Willis, who had promised to pay Miss Mitford a visit in the autumn, writes to her on September 22, to explain that all his plans were altered. 'Just before starting with Miss Jane Porter on a tour that was to include Reading,' he says, 'I went to a picnic, fell in love with a blue-eyed girl, and (after running the gauntlet successfully through France, Italy, Greece, Germany, Asia Minor, and Turkey) I renewed my youth, and became "a suitor for love." I am to be married (_sequitur_) on Thursday week.... The lady who is to take me, as the Irish say, "in a present," is some six years younger than myself, gentle, religious, relying, and unambitious. She has never been whirled through the gay society of London, so is not giddy or vain.

She has never swum in a gondola, or written a sonnet, so has a proper respect for those who have. She is called pretty, but is more than that in _my_ eyes; sings as if her heart were hid in her lips, and _loves_ me.... We are bound to Paris for a month (because I think amus.e.m.e.nt better than reflection when a woman makes a doubtful bargain), and by November we return to London for the winter, and in the spring sail for America to see my mother. I have promised to live mainly on this side of the water, and shall return in the course of a year to try what contentment may be sown and reaped in a green lane in Kent.'

While the happy pair were on their honeymoon, Lady Blessington had undertaken to see the _Pencillings by the Way_ through the press.

For the first edition Willis received 250, but he made, from first to last, about a thousand pounds by the book. Its appearance in volume form had been antic.i.p.ated by Lockhart's scathing review in the _Quarterly_ for September 1835. The critic, annoyed at Willis's strictures on himself in the interview with Professor Wilson, attacked the _Pencillings_, as they had appeared in the _New York Mirror_, with all proper names printed in full, and many personal details that were left out in the English edition. Lockhart always knew how to stab a man in the tenderest place, and he stabbed Willis in his gentility. After pointing out that while visiting in London and the provinces as a young American sonneteer of the most ultra-sentimental delicacy, the Penciller was all the time the regular paid correspondent of a New York Journal, he observes that the letters derive their powers of entertainment chiefly from the light that they reflect upon the manners and customs of the author's own countrymen, since, from his sketches of English interiors, the reader may learn what American breakfast, dinners, and table-talk are _not_; or at all events what they were not in those circles of American society with which the writer happened to be familiar.

'Many of _this person's_ discoveries,' continues Lockhart, warming to his work, 'will be received with ridicule in his own country, where the doors of the best houses were probably not opened to him as liberally as those of the English n.o.bility. In short, we are apt to consider him as a just representative--not of the American mind and manners generally--but only of the young men of fair education among the busy, middling orders of mercantile cities. In his letters from Gordon Castle there are bits of solid, full-grown impudence and impertinence; while over not a few of the paragraphs is a varnish of conceited vulgarity which is too ludicrous to be seriously offensive.... We can well believe that Mr. Willis depicted the sort of society that most interests his countrymen, "born to be slaves and struggling to be lords," their servile adulation of rank and talent; their stupid admiration of processions and levees, are leading features of all the American books of travel.... We much doubt if all the pretty things we have quoted will so far propitiate Lady Blessington as to make her again admit to her table the animal who has printed what ensues. [Here follows the report of Moore's conversation on the subject of O'Connell.] As far as we are acquainted with English or American literature, this is the first example of a man creeping into your home, and forthwith, before your claret is dry on his lips, printing _table-talk on delicate subjects, and capable of compromising individuals_.'

The _Quarterly_ having thus given the lead, the rest of the Tory magazines gaily followed suit. Maginn flourished his shillelagh, and belaboured his victim with a brutality that has hardly ever been equalled, even by the pioneer journals of the Wild West. 'This is a goose of a book,' he begins, 'or if anybody wishes the idiom changed, the book of a goose. There is not an idea in it beyond what might germinate in the brain of a washerwoman.' He then proceeds to call the author by such elegant names as 'lickspittle,' 'beggarly skittler,'

jacka.s.s, ninny, haberdasher, 'fifty-fifth rate scribbler of gripe-visited sonnets,' and 'namby-pamby writer in twaddling alb.u.ms kept by the mustachioed widows or bony matrons of Portland Place.'