Tracks of a Rolling Stone Part 21

Pickwick and his friend the Honourable Samuel Slumkey, that by the time I reached the market-place, I had forgotten every syllable of the speech which I had carefully learnt by heart. Nor was it the band alone that upset me; going up the hill the carriage was all but capsized by the frightened horses and the breaking of the pole. The gallant boiler-makers, however, at once removed the horses, and dragged the carriage with cheers of defiance into the crowd awaiting us.

My agent had settled that I was to speak from a window of the hotel. The only available one was an upper window, the lower sash of which could not be persuaded to keep up without being held. The consequence was, just as I was getting over the embarra.s.sment of extemporary oration, down came the sash and guillotined me. This put the crowd in the best of humours; they roared with laughter, and after that we got on capitally together.

A still more inopportune accident happened to me later in the day, when speaking at Shrivenham. A large yard enclosed by buildings was chosen for the meeting. The difficulty was to elevate the speaker above the heads of the a.s.sembly. In one corner of the yard was a water-b.u.t.t. An ingenious elector got a board, placed it on the top of the b.u.t.t-which was full of water-and persuaded me to make this my rostrum. Here, again, in the midst of my harangue-perhaps I stamped to emphasize my horror of small loaves and other Tory abominations-the board gave way; and I narrowly escaped a ducking by leaping into the arms of a 'supporter.'

The end of it all was that my agent at the last moment threw up the sponge. The farmers formed a serried phalanx against Free Trade; it was useless to incur the expense of a poll. Then came the bill. It was a heavy one; for in addition to my London agent-a professional electioneering functionary-were the local agents at towns like Malmesbury, Wootton Ba.s.sett, Shrivenham, &c., &c. My eldest brother, who was a soberer-minded politician than I, although very liberal to me in other ways, declined to support my political opinions. I myself was quite unable to pay the costs. Knowing this, Lord Radnor called me into his study as I was leaving Coleshill, and expressed himself warmly with respect to my labours; regretting the victory of the other side, he declared that, as the question of Protection would be disposed of, one of the two seats would be safe upon a future contest.

'And who,' asked the old gentleman, with a benevolent grin on his face, 'who is going to pay your expenses?'

'Goodness knows, sir,' said I; 'I hope they won't come down upon me. I haven't a thousand pounds in the world, unless I tap my fortune.'

'Well,' said his Lordship, with a chuckle, 'I haven't paid my subscription to Brooks's yet, so I'll hand it over to you,' and he gave me a cheque for 500.

The balance was obtained through Mr. Ellice from the patronage Secretary to the Treasury. At the next election, as Lord Radnor predicted, Lord Ashley, Lord Shaftesbury's eldest son, won one of the two seats for the Liberals with the greatest ease.

As Coleshill was an open house to me from that time as long as Lord Radnor lived, I cannot take leave of the dear old man without an affectionate word at parting. Creevey has an ill-natured fling at him, as he has at everybody else, but a kinder-hearted and more perfect gentleman would be difficult to meet with. His personality was a marked one. He was a little man, with very plain features, a punch-like nose, an extensive mouth, and hardly a hair on his head. But in spite of these peculiarities, his face was pleasant to look at, for it was invariably animated by a sweet smile, a touch of humour, and a decided air of dignity. Born in 1779, he dressed after the orthodox Whig fashion of his youth, in buff and blue, his long-tailed coat reaching almost to his heels. His manner was a model of courtesy and simplicity. He used antiquated expressions: called London 'Lunnun,' Rome 'Room,' a balcony a 'balcony'; he always spoke of the clergyman as the 'pearson,' and called his daughter Lady Mary, 'Meary.' Instead of saying 'this day week' he would say this day sen'nit' (for sen'night).

The independence of his character was very noticeable. As an instance: A party of twenty people, say, would be invited for a given day. Abundance of carriages would be sent to meet the trains, so that all the guests would arrive in ample time for dinner. It generally happened that some of them, not knowing the habits of the house, or some d.u.c.h.ess or great lady who might a.s.sume that clocks were made for her and not she for clocks, would not appear in the drawing-room till a quarter of an hour after the dinner gong had sounded. If anyone did so, he or she would find that everybody else had got through soup and fish. If no one but Lady Mary had been down when dinner was announced, his Lordship would have offered his arm to his daughter, and have taken his seat at the table alone. After the first night, no one was ever late. In the morning he read prayers to the household before breakfast with the same precise punctuality.

Lady Mary Bouverie, his unmarried daughter, was the very best of hostesses. The house under her management was the perfection of comfort.

She married an old and dear friend of mine, Sir James Wilde, afterwards the Judge, Lord Penzance. I was his 'best man.'

My 'Ride over the Rocky Mountains' was now published; and, as the field was a new one, the writer was rewarded, for a few weeks, with invitations to dinner, and the usual tickets for 'drums' and dances. To my astonishment, or rather to my alarm, I received a letter from the Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society (Charles Fox, or perhaps Sir George Simpson had, I think, proposed me-I never knew), to say that I had been elected a member. Nothing was further from my ambition. The very thought shrivelled me with a sense of ignorance and insignificance. I pictured to myself an a.s.sembly of old fogies crammed with all the 'ologies. I broke into a cold perspiration when I fancied myself called upon to deliver a lecture on the comparative sea-bottomy of the Oceanic globe, or give my theory of the simultaneous sighting by 'little Billee'

of 'Madagascar, and North, and South Amerikee.' Honestly, I had not the courage to accept; and, young Jackanapes as I was, left the Secretary's letter unanswered.

But a still greater honour-perhaps the greatest compliment I ever had paid me-was to come. I had lodgings at this time in an old house, long since pulled down, in York Street. One day, when I was practising the fiddle, who should walk into my den but Rogers the poet! He had never seen me in his life. He was in his ninetieth year, and he had climbed the stairs to the first floor to ask me to one of his breakfast parties.

To say nothing of Rogers' fame, his wealth, his position in society, those who know what his cynicism and his worldliness were, will understand what such an effort, physical and moral, must have cost him.

He always looked like a death's head, but his ghastly pallor, after that Alpine ascent, made me feel as if he had come-to stay.

These breakfasts were entertainments of no ordinary distinction. The host himself was of greater interest than the most eminent of his guests.

All but he, were more or less one's contemporaries: Rogers, if not quite as dead as he looked, was ancient history. He was old enough to have been the father of Byron, of Sh.e.l.ley, of Keats, and of Moore. He was several years older than Scott, or Wordsworth, or Coleridge, and only four years younger than Pitt. He had known all these men, and could, and did, talk as no other could talk, of all of them. Amongst those whom I met at these breakfasts were Cornewall Lewis, Delane, the Grotes, Macaulay, Mrs. Norton, Monckton Milnes, William Harcourt (the only one younger than myself), but just beginning to be known, and others of scarcely less note.

During the breakfast itself, Rogers, though seated at table in an armchair, took no part either in the repast or in the conversation; he seemed to sleep until the meal was over. His servant would then place a cup of coffee before him, and, like a Laputian flapper, touch him gently on the shoulder. He would at once begin to talk, while others listened.

The first time I witnessed this curious resurrection, I whispered something to my neighbour, at which he laughed. The old man's eye was too sharp for us.

'You are laughing at me,' said he; 'I dare say you young gentlemen think me an old fellow; but there are younger than I who are older. You should see Tommy Moore. I asked him to breakfast, but he's too weak-weak here, sir,' and he tapped his forehead. 'I'm not that.' (This was the year that Moore died.) He certainly was not; but his whole discourse was of the past. It was as though he would not condescend to discuss events or men of the day. What were either to the days and men that he had known-French revolutions, battles of Trafalgar and Waterloo, a Nelson and a Buonaparte, a Pitt, a Burke, a Fox, a Johnson, a Gibbon, a Sheridan, and all the men of letters and all the poets of a century gone by? Even Macaulay had for once to hold his tongue; and could only smile impatiently at what perhaps he thought an old man's astonishing garrulity. But if a young and pretty woman talked to him, it was not his great age that he vaunted, nor yet the 'pleasures of memory'-one envied the adroitness of his flattery, and the gracefulness of his repartee.

My friend George Cayley had a couple of dingy little rooms between Parliament Street and the river. Much of my time was spent there with him. One night after dinner, quite late, we were building castles amidst tobacco clouds, when, following a 'May I come in?' Tennyson made his appearance. This was the first time I had ever met him. We gave him the only armchair in the room; and pulling out his dudeen and placing afoot on each side of the hob of the old-fashioned little grate, he made himself comfortable before he said another word. He then began to talk of pipes and tobacco. And never, I should say, did this important topic afford so much ingenious conversation before. We discussed the relative merits of all the tobaccos in the world-of moist tobacco and dry tobacco, of old tobacco and new tobacco, of clay pipes and wooden pipes and meerschaum pipes. What was the best way to colour them, the advantages of colouring them, the beauty of the 'culotte,' the coolness it gave to the smoke, &c. We listened to the venerable sage-he was then forty-three and we only five or six and twenty-as we should have listened to a Homer or an Aristotle, and he thoroughly enjoyed our appreciation of his jokes.

Some of them would have startled such of his admirers who knew him only by his poems; for his stories were anything but poetical-rather humorous one might say, on the whole. Here's one of them: he had called last week on the d.u.c.h.ess of Sutherland at Stafford House. Her two daughters were with her, the d.u.c.h.ess of Argyll and the beautiful Lady Constance Grosvenor, afterwards d.u.c.h.ess of Westminster. They happened to be in the garden. After strolling about for a while, the Mama d.u.c.h.ess begged him to recite some of his poetry. He chose 'Come into the garden, Maud'-always a favourite of the poet's, and, as may be supposed, many were the fervid exclamations of 'How beautiful!' When they came into the house, a princely groom of the chambers caught his eye and his ear, and, pointing to his own throat, courteously whispered: 'Your dress is not quite as you would wish it, sir.'

'I had come out without a necktie; and there I was, spouting my lines to the three Graces, as _decollete_ as a strutting turkey c.o.c.k.'

The only other allusion to poetry or literature that night was a story I told him of a Mr. Thomas Wrightson, a Yorkshire banker, and a fanatical Swedenborgian. Tommy Wrightson, who was one of the most amiable and benevolent of men, spent his life in making a ma.n.u.script transcript of Swedenborg's works. His writing was a marvel of calligraphic art; he himself, a curiosity. Swedenborg was for him an avatar; but if he had doubted of Tennyson's ultimate apotheosis, I think he would have elected to seek him in 'the other place.' Anyhow, Mr. Wrightson avowed to me that he repeated 'Locksley Hall' every morning of his life before breakfast. This I told Tennyson. His answer was a grunt; and in a voice from his boots, 'Ugh! enough to make a dog sick!' I did my utmost to console him with the a.s.surance that, to the best of my belief, Mr.

Wrightson had once fallen through a skylight.

As ill.u.s.trating the characters of the admired and his admirer, it may be related that the latter, wishing for the poet's sign-manual, wrote and asked him for it. He addressed Tennyson, whom he had never seen, as 'My dear Alfred.' The reply, which he showed to me, was addressed 'My dear Tom.'

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

MY stepfather, Mr. Ellice, having been in two Ministries-Lord Grey's in 1830, and Lord Melbourne's in 1834-had necessarily a large parliamentary acquaintance; and as I could always dine at his house in Arlington Street when I pleased, I had constant opportunities of meeting most of the prominent Whig politicians, and many other eminent men of the day. One of the dinner parties remains fresh in my memory-not because of the distinguished men who happened to be there, but because of the statesman whose name has since become so familiar to the world.

Some important question was before the House in which Mr. Ellice was interested, and upon which he intended to speak. This made him late for dinner, but he had sent word that his son was to take his place, and the guests were not to wait. When he came Lord John Russell greeted him with-

'Well, Ellice, who's up?'

'A younger son of Salisbury's,' was the reply; 'Robert Cecil, making his maiden speech. If I hadn't been in a hurry I should have stopped to listen to him. Unless I am very much mistaken, he'll make his mark, and we shall hear more of him.'

There were others dining there that night whom it is interesting to recall. The Grotes were there. Mrs. Grote, scarcely less remarkable than her husband; Lord Mahon, another historian (who married a niece of Mr. Ellice's), Lord Brougham, and two curious old men both remarkable, if for nothing else, for their great age. One was George Byng, father of the first Lord Strafford, and 'father' of the House of Commons; the other Sir Robert Adair, who was Amba.s.sador at Constantinople when Byron was there. Old Mr. Byng looked as aged as he was, and reminded one of Mr.

Smallweed doubled up in his porter's chair. Quite different was his compeer. We were standing in the recess of the drawing-room window after dinner when Sir Robert said to me:

'Very shaky, isn't he! Ah! he was my f.a.g at Eton, and I've got the best of it still.'

Brougham having been twice in the same Government with Mr. Ellice, and being devoted to young Mrs. Edward Ellice, his charming daughter-in-law, was a constant visitor at 18 Arlington Street. Mrs. Ellice often told me of his peculiarities, which must evidently have been known to others.

Walter Bagehot, speaking of him, says:

'Singular stories of eccentricity and excitement, even of something more than either of these, darken these latter years.'

What Mrs. Ellice told me was, that she had to keep a sharp watch on Lord Brougham if he sat near her writing-table while he talked to her; for if there was any pretty little knick-knack within his reach he would, if her head were turned, slip it into his pocket. The truth is perhaps better than the dark hint, for certainly we all laughed at it as nothing but eccentricity.

But the man who interested me most (for though when in the Navy I had heard a hundred legends of his exploits, I had never seen him before) was Lord Dundonald. Mr. Ellice presented me to him, and the old hero asked why I had left the Navy.

'The finest service in the world; and likely, begad, to have something to do before long.'

This was only a year before the Crimean war. With his strong rough features and tousled mane, he looked like a grey lion. One expected to see him pick his teeth with a pocket boarding-pike.

The thought of the old sailor always brings before me the often mooted question raised by the sentimentalists and humanitarians concerning the horrors of war. Not long after this time, the papers-the sentimentalist papers-were furious with Lord Dundonald for suggesting the adoption by the Navy of a torpedo which he himself, I think, had invented. The bare idea of such wholesale slaughter was revolting to a Christian world. He probably did not see much difference between sinking a ship with a torpedo, and firing a sh.e.l.l into her magazine; and likely enough had as much respect for the opinions of the woman-man as he had for the man-woman.

There is always a large number of people in the world who suffer from emotional sensitiveness and susceptibility to nervous shocks of all kinds. It is curious to observe the different and apparently unallied forms in which these characteristics manifest themselves. With some, they exhibit extreme repugnance to the infliction of physical pain for whatever end; with others there seems to be a morbid dread of violated pudicity. Strangely enough the two phases are frequently a.s.sociated in the same individual. Both tendencies are eminently feminine; the affinity lies in a hysterical nature. Thus, excessive pietism is a frequent concomitant of excessive s.e.xual pa.s.sion; this, though notably the case with women, is common enough with men of unduly neurotic temperaments.

Only the other day some letters appeared in the 'Times' about the flogging of boys in the Navy. And, as a sentimental argument against it, we were told by the Humanitarian Leaguers that it is 'obscene.' This is just what might be expected, and bears out the foregoing remarks. But such saintly simplicity reminds us of the kind of squeamishness of which our old acquaintance Mephisto observes:

Man darf das nicht vor keuschen Ohren nennen, Was keusche Herzen nicht entbehren konnen.

(Chaste ears find nothing but the devil in What nicest fancies love to revel in.)

The same astute critic might have added:

And eyes demure that look away when seen, Lose ne'er a chance to peep behind the screen.

It is all of a piece. We have heard of the parlour-maid who fainted because the dining-table had 'ceder legs,' but never before that a 'switching' was 'obscene.' We do not envy the unwholesomeness of a mind so watchful for obscenity.

Be that as it may, so far as humanity is concerned, this hypersensitive effeminacy has but a noxious influence; and all the more for the twofold reason that it is sometimes sincere, though more often mere cant and hypocrisy. At the best, it is a perversion of the truth; for emotion combined with ignorance, as it is in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, is a serious obstacle in the path of rational judgment.

Is sentimentalism on the increase? It seems to be so, if we are to judge by a certain portion of the Press, and by speeches in Parliament. But then, this may only mean that the propensity finds easier means of expression than it did in the days of dearer paper and fewer newspapers, and also that speakers find sentimental humanity an inexhaustible fund for political capital. The excess of emotional attributes in man over his reasoning powers must, one would think, have been at least as great in times past as it is now. Yet it is doubtful whether it showed itself then so conspicuously as it does at present. Compare the Elizabethan age with our own. What would be said now of the piratical deeds of such men as Frobisher, Raleigh, Gilbert, and Richard Greville? Suppose Lord Roberts had sent word to President Kruger that if four English soldiers, imprisoned at Pretoria, were molested, he would execute 2,000 Boers and send him their heads? The clap-trap cry of 'Barbaric Methods' would have gone forth to some purpose; it would have carried every const.i.tuency in the country. Yet this is what Drake did when four English sailors were captured by the Spaniards, and imprisoned by the Spanish Viceroy in Mexico.