Pencillings by the Way Part 32

The story sounded very Vivian-Greyish, and everybody laughed at it as a very good invention; but D'Israeli quoted his father as his authority, and it may appear in the Curiosities of Literature--where, however, it will never be so well told, as by the extraordinary creature from whom we had heard it.

_February 22d, 1835._--The excitement in London about the choice of a Speaker is something startling. It took place yesterday, and the party are thunderstruck at the non-election of Sir Manners Sutton. This is a terrible blow upon them, for it was a defeat at the outset; and if they failed in a question where they had the immense personal popularity of the late Speaker to a.s.sist them, what will they do on general questions? The House of Commons was surrounded all day with an excited mob. Lady ---- told me last night that she drove down toward evening, to ascertain the result (Sir C. M. Sutton is her brother-in-law), and the crowd surrounded her carriage, recognizing her as the sister of the tory Speaker, and threatened to tear the coronet from the panels. "We'll soon put an end to your coronets,"

said a rapscallion in the mob. The tories were so confident of success that Sir Robert Peel gave out cards a week ago, for a soiree to meet Speaker Sutton, on the night of the election. There is a general report in town that the whigs will impeach the Duke of Wellington!

This looks like a revolution, does it not? It is very certain that the Duke and Sir Robert Peel have advised the King to dissolve parliament again, if there is any difficulty in getting on with the government.

The Duke was dining with Lord Aberdeen the other day, when some one at table ventured to wonder, at his accepting a subordinate office in the cabinet he had himself formed. "If I could serve his majesty better,"

said the patrician soldier, "I would ride as king's messenger to-morrow!" He certainly is a remarkable old fellow.

Perhaps, however, literary news would interest you more. Bulwer is publishing in a volume, his papers from the New Monthly. I met him an hour ago in Regent-street, looking what is called in London, "_uncommon seedy_!" He is either the worst or the best dressed man in London, according to the time of day or night you see him. D'Israeli, the author of Vivian Grey, drives about in an open carriage, with Lady S----, looking more melancholy than usual. The absent baronet, whose place he fills, is about bringing 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, Miss Pardoe, and Count Krazinsky (author of the Court of Sigismund), are domiciliated for the present. Miss Porter is one of her own heroines, grown old--a still handsome and n.o.ble wreck of beauty. Miss Pardoe is nineteen, fair-haired, sentimental, and has the smallest feet and is the best waltzer I ever saw, but she is not otherwise pretty. The Polish Count is writing the life of his grandmother, whom I should think he strongly resembled in person. He is an excellent fellow, for all that.

I 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 at Hampstead. Moore is f.a.gging hard on his history of Ireland. I shall give you the particulars of all these things in my letters hereafter.

Poor Elia--my old favorite--is dead. I consider it one of the most fortunate things that ever happened to me, to have seen him. I think I sent you in one of my letters an account of my breakfasting in company with Charles Lamb and his sister ("Bridget Elia") at the Temple. The exquisite papers on his life and letters in the Athenaeum, are by Barry Cornwall.

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 mind-exhausting circle in London, I only wonder how she found the time. Yet it was written in six weeks. Her novels sell for a hundred pounds more than any other author's except Bulwer. Do you know the _real_ prices of books? Bulwer gets _fifteen_ hundred pounds--Lady B. _four_ hundred, Honorable Mrs. Norton _two_ hundred and fifty, Lady Charlotte Bury _two_ hundred, Grattan _three_ hundred and most others below this. D'Israeli can not sell a book _at all_, I hear. Is not that odd? I would give more for one of his novels, than for forty of the common _saleable_ things about town.

The auth.o.r.ess of the powerful book called Two Old Men's Tales, is an old unitarian lady, a Mrs. Marsh. She declares she will never write another book. The other was a glorious one, though!

LETTER LXXV.

LONDON--THE POET MOORE--LAST DAYS OF SIR WALTER SCOTT--MOORE'S OPINION OF O'CONNELL--ANACREON AT THE PIANO--DEATH OF BYRON--A SUPPRESSED ANECDOTE.

I called on Moore with a letter of introduction, and met him at the door of his lodgings. I knew him instantly from the pictures I had seen of him, but was surprised at the diminutiveness of his person. He is much below the middle size, and with his white hat and long chocolate frock-coat, was far from prepossessing in his appearance.

With this material disadvantage, however, his address is gentleman-like to a very marked degree, and, I should think no one could see Moore without conceiving a strong liking for him. As I was to meet him at dinner, I did not detain him. In the moment's conversation that pa.s.sed, he inquired very particularly after Washington Irving, expressing for him the warmest friendship, and asked what Cooper was doing.

I was at Lady Blessington's at eight. Moore had not arrived, but the other persons of the party--a Russian count, who spoke all the languages of Europe as well as his own; a Roman banker, whose dynasty is more powerful than the pope's; a clever English n.o.bleman, and the "observed of all observers," Count D'Orsay, stood in the window upon the park, killing, as they might, the melancholy twilight half hour preceding dinner.

"Mr. Moore!" cried the footman at the bottom of the staircase, "Mr.

Moore!" cried the footman at the top. And with his gla.s.s at his eye, stumbling over an ottoman between his near-sightedness and the darkness of the room, enter the poet. Half a glance tells you that he is at home on a carpet. Sliding his little feet up to Lady Blessington (of whom he was a lover when she was sixteen, and to whom some of the sweetest of his songs were written), he made his compliments, with a gayety and an ease combined with a kind of worshipping deference, that was worthy of a prime-minister at the court of love. With the gentlemen, all of whom he knew, he had the frank merry manner of a confident favorite, and he was greeted like one. He went from one to the other, straining back his head to look up at them (for, singularly enough, every gentleman in the room was six feet high and upward), and to every one he said something which, from any one else, would have seemed peculiarly felicitous, but which fell from his lips, as if his breath was not more spontaneous.

Dinner was announced, the Russian handed down "milady," and I found myself seated opposite Moore, with a blaze of light on his Bacchus head, and the mirrors, with which the superb octagonal room is pannelled, reflecting every motion. To see him only at table, you would think him not a small man. His princ.i.p.al length is in his body, and his head and shoulders are those of a much larger person.

Consequently he _sits tall_, and with the peculiar erectness of head and neck, his diminutiveness disappears.

The soup vanished in the busy silence that beseems it, and as the courses commenced their procession, Lady Blessington led the conversation with the brilliancy and ease, for which she is remarkable over all the women of her time. She had received from Sir William Gell, at Naples, the ma.n.u.script of a volume upon the last days of Sir Walter Scott. It was a melancholy chronicle of imbecility, and the book was suppressed, but there were two or three circ.u.mstances narrated in its pages which were interesting. Soon after his arrival at Naples, Sir Walter went with his physician and one or two friends to the great museum. It happened that on the same day a large collection of students and Italian literati were a.s.sembled, in one of the rooms, to discuss some newly-discovered ma.n.u.scripts. It was soon known that the "Wizard of the North" was there, and a deputation was sent immediately, to request him to honor them by presiding at their session. At this time Scott was a wreck, with a memory that retained nothing for a moment, and limbs almost as helpless as an infant's. He was dragging about among the relics of Pompeii, taking no interest in anything he saw, when their request was made known to him through his physician. "No, no," said he, "I know nothing of their lingo. Tell them I am not well enough to come." He loitered on, and in about half an hour after, he turned to Dr. H. and said, "who was that you said wanted to see me?" The doctor explained. "I'll go," said he, "they shall see me if they wish it;" and, against the advice of his friends, who feared it would be too much for his strength, he mounted the staircase, and made his appearance at the door. A burst of enthusiastic cheers welcomed him on the threshold, and forming in two lines, many of them on their knees, they seized his hands as he pa.s.sed, kissed them, thanked him in their pa.s.sionate language for the delight with which he had filled the world, and placed him in the chair with the most fervent expressions of grat.i.tude for his condescension. The discussion went on, but not understanding a syllable of the language, Scott was soon wearied, and his friends observed it, pleaded the state of his health as an apology, and he rose to take his leave. These enthusiastic children of the south crowded once more around him, and with exclamations of affection and even tears, kissed his hands once more, a.s.sisting his tottering steps, and sent after him a confused murmur of blessings as the door closed on his retiring form. It is described by the writer as the most affecting scene he had ever witnessed.

Some other remarks were made upon Scott, but the _parole_ was soon yielded to Moore, who gave us an account of a visit he made to Abbotsford when its ill.u.s.trious owner was in his pride and prime.

"Scott," he said, "was the most manly and natural character in the world. You felt when with him, that he was the soul of truth and heartiness. His hospitality was as simple and open as the day, and he lived freely himself, and expected his guests to do so. I remember him giving us whiskey at dinner, and Lady Scott met my look of surprise with the a.s.surance that Sir Walter seldom dined without it. 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 with Sir Thomas Lawrence to meet Scott at Lockhart's. We had hardly entered the room when we were set down to a hot supper of roast chickens, salmon, punch, etc., 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 down to embark for Italy--broken quite down 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, 'Oh I never write poetry now.' I asked him to write only his own name and hers, and he attempted it, but it was quite illegible."

Some one remarked that Scott's life of Napoleon was a failure.

"I think little of it," said Moore; "but after all, it was an embarra.s.sing task, and Scott did what a wise man would do--made as much of his subject as was politic and necessary, and no more."

"It will not live," said some one else; "as much because it is a bad book, as because it is the life of an individual."

"But _what_ an individual!" Moore replied. "Voltaire's life of Charles the Twelfth was the life of an individual, yet that will live and be read as long as there is a book in the world, and what was he to Napoleon?"

O'Connell was mentioned.

"He is a powerful creature," said Moore, "but his eloquence has done great harm both to England and Ireland. There is nothing so powerful as oratory. The faculty of '_thinking on his legs_,' is a tremendous engine in the hands of any man. There is an undue admiration for this faculty, and a sway permitted to it, which was always more dangerous to a country than anything else. Lord Althorp is a wonderful instance of what a man may do _without_ talking. There is a general confidence in him--a universal belief in his honesty, which serves him instead.

Peel is a fine speaker, but, admirable as he had been as an oppositionist, he failed, when he came to lead the house. O'Connell would be irresistible were it not for the two blots on his character--the contributions in Ireland for his support, and his refusal to give satisfaction to the man he is still coward enough to attack. They may say what they will of duelling, it is the great preserver of the decencies of society. The old school, which made a man responsible for his words, was the better. I must confess I think so. Then, in O'Connell's case, he had not made his vow against duelling when Peel challenged him. He accepted the challenge, and Peel went to Dover on his way to France, where they were to meet; and O'Connell pleaded his wife's illness, and delayed till the law interfered. Some other Irish patriot, about the same time, refused a challenge on account of the illness of his daughter, and one of the Dublin wits made a good epigram on the two:--

"'Some men, with a horror of slaughter, Improve on the scripture command, And 'honor their'----wife and daughter-- That their days may be long in the land.'

"The great period of Ireland's glory was between '82 and '98, and it was a time when a man almost lived with a pistol in his hand.

Grattan's dying advice to his son, was, 'Be always ready with the pistol!' He, himself never hesitated a moment. At one time, there was a kind of conspiracy to fight him out of the world. On some famous question, Corrie was employed purposely to bully him, and made a personal attack of the grossest virulence. Grattan was so ill, at the time, as to be supported into the house between two friends. He rose to reply; and first, without alluding to Corrie at all, clearly and entirely overturned every argument he had advanced, that bore upon the question. He then paused a moment, and stretching out his arm, as if he would reach across the house, said, 'For the a.s.sertions the gentleman has been pleased to make with regard to myself, my answer _here_, is _they are false_! elsewhere, it would be--_a blow!_ They met, and Grattan shot him through the arm. Corrie proposed another shot, but Grattan said, 'No! let the curs fight it out!' and they were friends ever after. I like the old story of the Irishman, who was challenged by some desperate blackguard. 'Fight _him_!' said he, 'I would sooner go to my grave without a fight! Talking of Grattan, is it not wonderful that, with all the agitation in Ireland, we have had no such men since his time? Look at the Irish newspapers. The whole country in convulsions--people's lives, fortunes, and religion, at stake, and not a gleam of talent from one year's end to the other. 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 Shiel of the calibre of her spirits of old, and O'Connell, with all his faults, stands 'alone in his glory.'"

The conversation I have thus run together is a mere skeleton, of course. Nothing but a short-hand report could retain the delicacy and elegance of Moore's language, and memory itself cannot embody again the kind of frost-work of imagery, which was formed and melted on his lips. His voice is soft or firm as the subject requires, but perhaps the word _gentlemanly_ describes it better than any other. It is upon a natural key, but, if I may so phrase it, it is _fused_ with a high-bred affectation, expressing deference and courtesy, at the same time, that its pauses are constructed peculiarly to catch the ear. It would be difficult not to attend to him while he is talking, though the subject were but the shape of a wine-gla.s.s.

Moore's head is distinctly before me while I write, but I shall find it difficult to describe. His hair, which curled once all over it in long tendrils, unlike anybody else's in the world, and which probably suggested his _sobriquet_ of "Bacchus," is diminished now to a few curls sprinkled with gray, and scattered in a single ring above his ears. His forehead is wrinkled, with the exception of a most prominent development of the organ of gayety, which, singularly enough, shines with the l.u.s.tre and smooth polish of a pearl, and is surrounded by a semicircle of lines drawn close about it, like entrenchments against Time. His eyes still sparkle like a champaign bubble, though the invader has drawn his pencillings about the corners; and there is a kind of wintry red, of the tinge of an October leaf, 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, slight and 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 almost see wit astride upon it. It is written legibly with the imprint of habitual success. It is arch, confident, and half diffident, as if he were disguising his pleasure at applause, while another bright gleam of fancy was breaking on him. The slightly-tossed nose confirms the fun of the expression, and altogether it is a face that sparkles, beams, radiates,--everything but _feels_. Fascinating beyond all men as he is, Moore looks like a worldling.

This description may be supposed to have occupied the hour after Lady Blessington retired from the table; for, with her, vanished Moore's excitement, and everybody else seemed to feel, that light had gone out of the room. Her excessive beauty is less an inspiration than the wondrous talent with which she draws from every person around her his peculiar excellence. Talking better than anybody else, and narrating, particularly, with a graphic power that I never saw excelled, this distinguished woman seems striving only to make others unfold themselves; and never had diffidence a more apprehensive and encouraging listener. But this is a subject with which I should never be done.

We went up to coffee, and Moore brightened again over his _cha.s.se-cafe_, and went glittering on with criticisms on Grisi, the delicious songstress now ravishing the world, whom he placed above all but Pasta; and whom he thought, with the exception that her legs were too short, an incomparable creature. This introduced music very naturally, and with a great deal of difficulty he was taken to the piano. My letter is getting long, and I have no time to describe his singing. It is well known, however, that its effect is only equalled by the beauty of his own words; and, for one, I could have taken him into my heart with my delight. He makes no attempt at music. It is 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 soul or sense in you. I have heard of women's 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, from its comparative effect upon so old a stager as myself, that the heart would break with it.

We all sat around the piano, and after two or three songs of Lady Blessington's choice, he rambled over the keys awhile, and 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 had 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.

"Here's a health to thee, Tom Moore!"

I was in company the other evening where Westmacott, the sculptor, was telling a story of himself and Leigh Hunt. They were together one day at Fiesole, when a b.u.t.terfly, of an uncommon sable color, alighted on Westmacott's forehead, and remained there several minutes. Hunt immediately cried out, "The spirit of some dear friend is departed,"

and as they entered the gate of Florence on their return, some one met them and informed them of the death of Byron, the news of which had at that moment arrived.

I have just time before the packet sails to send you an anecdote, that is _bought out_ of the London papers. A n.o.bleman, living near Belgrave square, received a visit a day or two ago from a police officer, who stated to him, that he had a man-servant in his house, who had escaped from Botany Bay. His Lordship was somewhat surprised, but called up the male part of his household, at the officer's request, and pa.s.sed them in review. The culprit was not among them. The officer then requested to see the _female_ part of the establishment; and, to the inexpressible astonishment of the whole household, he laid his hand upon the shoulder of the _lady's confidential maid_, and informed her she was his prisoner. A change of dress was immediately sent for, and miladi's dressing-maid was re-metamorphosed into an effeminate-looking fellow, and marched off to a new trial. It is a most extraordinary thing, that he had lived unsuspected in the family for nine months, performing all the functions of a confidential Abigail, and very much in favor with his unsuspecting mistress, who is rather a serious person, and would as soon have thought of turning out to be a man herself. It is said, that the husband once made a remark upon the huskiness of the maid's voice, but no other comment was ever made, reflecting in the least upon her qualities as a member of the _beau s.e.xe_. The story is quite authentic, but hushed up out of regard to the lady.