Before I went to Italy I could not write; after I had crossed the Simplon I could: the wonders I saw wholly revolutionized my soul. There was height above height of snow that disregarded the sun; or, if it yielded to its insinuations, it was only to drip into bayonets of ice. There were cataracts that had so far to fall, that the eyes reached the bottom of the gulph first, and seemed only overtaken by the waters with which they started.
I had nothing more to do with Bolingbroke or with Goldsmith, in style; I had seen Nature play the great idea and express herself. I learned that she was the true stylist, and that she was not inimitable.
I lingered at Florence and made acquaintance with many there—native, English, and foreign. Among these were Trelawny and Landor, whose names still continue remarkable. Of the last I saw little; he was preparing to drive himself to England in his gig. He had greatly offended the Government of Tuscany by the freedom of his speech, and he became intolerable. This resulted in his being served with an order to quit the country. When matters came to so serious a pass, he was taken by surprise. He called on the Grand Duke to remonstrate; he told that amiable prince that it was an honour to the country to have such a man as himself residing in it; on which subject the GrandDuke agreed with him, and the edict of expulsion was withdrawn.
He, too, was one of the artificial stylists.
People went little abroad in those days for want of travelling accommodation, and the English generally in Florence, were not of a kind to make a favourable impression; many of them were ill-disciplined in principle, and had become dregs who reached the bottom, though there were many who were quite as respectable at home as a thousand miles off, and were absent on business only, economy, or pleasure. Colonel Burdett, a friendly and agreeable man, heir to the prince of Radicals, Sir Francis, was a traveller on his way to Rome, and invited me to accompany him; but I desired to be stationary for a time, that I might acquire the lingua Toscana, which I was learning under the Abbé Caselli.
Landor was not a nice man; he was violent in his conversation: he thought it worth saying that his ancestors were statesmen when Lord Mulgrave’s were working in a ditch, forgetting that his descendants in the course of things might be working in a ditch while Lord Mulgrave’s were statesmen.
Then there was Dr. Bankhead, who was the newsman of the fashionable past in all instances where slander mostly fitted in. There was a divorced, re-married countess who, as the wife of a rich parson, was a leader, but whose story he ripped open for the delight of all comers, at the same time the nearer he might venture to England himself the worse he would have fared.
The relief in acquiring such companions is that one never expects to meet them again.
I am probably the only one living who was acquainted with Trelawny in his younger days. It was during my first residence in Florence in the years 1831-32. He was of a strong, noble build, of quiet, gentlemanly demeanour, and of a manner of conversation free from all display. He was much courted by the English residents. His adventures, his marriage with the maid whose father’s life, the Greek chief Ulysses, he had defended and saved, his connection with Byron, his cremation and burial of Shelley, were in every mouth, and he is undoubtedly one of the celebrities of our time. His likeness was taken by Kirkup, an English artist who lived and died at Florence, and who was the discoverer of Dante’s portrait, now universally known.
I knew Kirkup well. He was a pleasant companion in those early days, over sixty years ago; he afterwards became entangled in the superstitions of spiritualism, all through lack of that physiological training which should be given to all, and but few enjoy. These shocking errors of the mind, to which not even the cattle are liable, appear to gratify their slaves for a time; but they have no ultimate value, only encouraging the clear-sighted to look down on their fellow-creatures.
It is only due to the memory of Trelawny as a hero to record here that the English women, married or single, old or young, were crazed as Juliets abouthim, at the same time that they were gushing over with stories of his cruelty to his lovely wife, whose hair, trailing on the floor of Ulysses’ cave, he was said to have stripped off to the roots in a moment of anger.
There was a good anatomical school at Florence, of which I did not fail to profit.
On this my first visit to Florence I got to know many new things—the meaning of the fine arts, the beauties of Michael Angelo, Cellini, and Bruneleschi; the mysteries of Dante, Boccacio, Petrarch, Alfieri, Ariosto, Tasso; so I returned richer than I went. But of all the persons I remember, Madame Catalani is foremost in my memory; she is never to be forgotten. And till I returned to the city again, I lived within sight of the Palazzo Vicchio, the Duomo, and the Campanile.
Lord and Lady Holland occupied the British Ministry at Florence. Among other English families resident there were Lord Burghersh; Lord Mulgrave, a great musician; Sir Henry Floyd, Lady Peel’s brother; Dr. Bankhead; Kirkup, the artist; the Perrys, the Losacks, and several others with and without handles to their names; Mr. Hare among them, still guessing at Truth. Among natives was the incomparable Catalani. The English, or most of them there, were awaiting events, making pleasant homes, until future prospects came closer and within reach.
At Sir Henry and Lady Floyd’s I met with Colonel Burdett, the brother of our best lady, theBaroness Burdett-Coutts, whose estimable acquaintance I made more than half a century later.
The Marquis Spinelli was very fond of the English and a great favourite with them, acting as a medium between our countrymen and his own.
What an experience and toning a young man gets from a residence of this sort, in a favourite foreign city, at an age when his sap is rising, and has yet to burst out and congeal into full leafage!
I am not going to describe Florence; my love of it will come out better when I visit it again.
All was new to me then! Imagine only what it is for such sweet little cities as Piacenza, Parma, and Modena to be new; imagine Milan to be seen for the first time, after architectureless Brighton!
I remained at Florence, a voluntary seeker after knowledge, a great part of 1831 and 1832. I then went into Switzerland by way of Milan, Como, Lugano, Bellinzona, Zug, Zurich, Schaffhausen; made acquaintance with Strasburg, Stutgard, and several other German cities, not omitting the Rhenish and other German towns, ultimately reaching Brussels and home.
Before long I was at Brighton again on a visit to the widow Wallinger, my faithful and generous aunt.
I once was spoken to by a king; I had great anticipations. When I saw him, I found, to my astonishment, that he was only a man. I had to go on a knee and show my affection for him, which I did not feel, by kissing his hand, which was large and flabby. This gentleman was named William; there had only been three of that name before him.
The next day I saw a queen; her name was Adelaide. This lady bowed to me, smiled at me.
This introduction did not lead to any intimacy, as may be supposed, but it entitled me to the acquaintance of our ambassadors abroad, and to theentréeat foreign courts.
On the evening of the Drawing-Room, my friend Mr. Nussey took me to dine with Sir William Martens, at St. James’s Palace. He belonged to the Court, and on the subject of royalty was emotional.
The conversation turned on the ladies at the Drawing-Room. I spoke of a daughter of Lord Stewart de Rothsay as the one great object of admiration. He went into raptures over the name, and congratulated me on having seen the most beautiful woman of the day.
This lady married the Marquis of Waterford, and is the mother of our naval hero, Lord Charles Beresford.
An old friend of mine, Madame Gandillot, whomI knew at the late Lady Ripon’s, was brought up by Sir Herbert, the Privy Purse, and Lady Taylor. I heard from her many amusing anecdotes of the king and queen, one of which I may relate. Sir Andrew Buchanan had just returned to England, and was at Brighton, where the Court was staying. It was suggested by Queen Adelaide to dress Sir Andrew as a Turk, and to inform the king that the Turkish ambassador, whom he expected, but did not then know, desired an audience of him. This, by the assistance of the Taylors, was fully carried out, and Sir Andrew, fully disguised, was introduced by Sir Herbert; the queen, Lady Taylor, and my friend being the only persons present.
The king received the supposed ambassador graciously, but looked puzzled; he received his message in due form, but still had a puzzled look, as if, as was surmised, the face of the envoy was not new to him. So the interview passed off, to the great amusement of the queen, followed by no remark from the king either then or after.
Again at Brighton. I may here say, the delight of myself and brother to this day is the recollection of Mrs. Wallinger, our aunt, long gone, and of the eccentricity of her mental powers, increasing as time went on.
I have spoken of her often in an earlier page,but her sayings were really droll enough to be put on record. I often make the new generation laugh by repeating them.
When she had done anything that gave her a triumph, she would say to one of us, “Did I not, my dear, show my great good sense? Am I not always right?” Of course we assented with a smile of mental reservation.
As she grew old and less capable, and ceased to feed her friends, she dropped into a more melancholy mood, and, looking upwards with her fine large eyes, and a sigh, would say, “What a world it is, isn’t it, my dear? Here we are, my dear, all alone, one with another.”
She did everything in her power for her relations with kindness of heart and ample means, but it only made her feel that she was everybody’s victim, so all her good deeds made her sorrowful.
She reached to a very advanced age, when her decay of memory showed itself in a curious manner; she would forget, in part, the very subject she was dwelling upon. Thus, when the sad story of Sir Thomas Troubridge was made public, that he lost both arms and legs in the Crimea; that the lady he was engaged to marry before the war did not shrink from her pledge on his return, she was greatly impressed by the circumstance, and would say, “If it had been me, my dear, I could not have married him. I know it would have been very dishonourable of me, but I should have said, ‘Sir, I can’t!’ Only think, my dear, how dreadful it would havebeen, he in so helpless a condition, not able even to wash his own hands!”
Some in this mental state will in speaking forget even their last word, when it has served as a clue to the one that comes next. Thus, such a person repeating Lord Lytton’s earlier names, Sir EdwardLytton Bulwer Lytton, would never stop, because after Lytton he is necessitated to say Bulwer, after Bulwer, Lytton, after Lytton, Bulwer again, and so on for ever.
When the memory begins to fade, the ghost of a word sought still haunts the mind, and by dwelling on it for some time, the substance will return to the shadow, and the word again lives. The memory must be far gone to encounter total obliteration—threads to every subject long remain; but the difficulty, then the impossibility of finding and taking up the thread at last follows. The lady of whom I have spoken, the kindly aunt, was brought up at Exeter. I once asked her if she remembered Northern-hay. Her reply was, she had never heard the name. I spoke of other places, beginning with St. Bartholomew’s. We lived there, she said, after we left Bowhill House, and we used to walk up Fore Street to St. Sidwell’s, and then across Northern-hay Hill.
I have mentioned how in her better days this generous, kind-hearted lady felt herself the victim of her family, spontaneous as was her interest in all that concerned them. My mother, while we were at Brighton, had a fall on the stairs, which produceda severe dislocation of the hip-joint. I hastened to Mrs. Wallinger’s house to acquaint her with the distressful news. She evidently took in all at a glance, with the weeks of kindness she would be compelled to bestow on the sufferer, and her first remark, accompanied with a sigh and upturned, pathetic eyes, was, “Is it not very hard on me, my dear? To think of my family!”
I must not omit a very frequent saying of this lady. Her house was a model of cleanliness, and to that virtue she would allude with pride. “Cleanliness is next to godliness,” she would say; “for what else is there, my dear?”
I cannot resist noting another favourite exclamation of hers, always uttered when any event, serious and unexpected, transpired. On such occasions, she would look piously upwards, and say, “Does it not show how true everything is, my dear?” just as if the whole of the holy Scriptures had suddenly flashed across her mind.
In my earlier days I was intimately acquainted with the Earl of Elgin, whose name is co-immortal with the marbles of ancient Greece. It shows what an amiable man he was to have taken so much notice as he did of a young man so insignificant as myself, and to have introduced me on equal terms to his wife and family.
How fortunate is London to contain the Elgin Marbles and the Raphael Cartoons, which, exclusive of the Venus of Milo, and the Last Supper of Leonardo da Vinci, are of greater worth than all the other sculptures and paintings in Europe.
I knew Lord Elgin in London and Paris; it was when his great diplomatic career was ended. He was a patient sufferer from facial neuralgia, and was under the treatment of Hahnneman. He was unable to speak, for the motion of his lips left a new paroxysm of pain. So he wrote what he would have said, and on one occasion he placed the words on paper that violent as his suffering was it was due no longer to the disease, but to the medicine that was administered. A remedy in homœopathic hands is thought to occupy the disease, and by slightly exaggerating it to effect its cure.
Lord Elgin would have liked to see me one of Hahnneman’s party; he introduced me to the physician. I saw some of the practice, but always left in exactly the same state of mind as I went.
I sometimes joined the family party at dinner in Paris, so I knew Lady Elgin and her two daughters who were then single. I think the eldest was called Lady Charlotte, the youngest was Lady Augusta, who became the wife of Dean Stanley.
The manner and ways of this family were of the simplest; there was not the slightest show of rank in anything they did or said.
Afterwards, in London, the earl brought his son, Mr. Frederick Bruce, to see me, and this visitafforded me a pleasant recollection; for Mr. Bruce, Sir Frederick afterwards, became a distinguished public servant, and, when ambassador in China, took a keen interest in Charles Gordon, and assisted him in every manner in his power. He was tall of stature, and a much finer looking man than his eminent eldest brother.
Lady Matilda Bruce, afterwards Maxwell, through her marriage, was the eldest daughter of Lord Elgin by his first wife, and was the heiress of her mother’s large fortune. I did not meet her, but she showed me kindness through a common friend, and when I visited Canada she gave me a cordial introduction to her brother who was Governor-General of that colony at the time.
There was a drama published by me in 1839, called the “Piromides,” which many members of this noble family took a pleasure in reading. It was my first serious work, and was inscribed to the Earl of Elgin, the late ambassador at the court of the Sultan.
As our latter end comes about, we reason on and take stock of our friendships, chiefly those of our youth. Our statistics, accumulating with time, enable us to grasp the subject in its fulness.
People are apt to call their acquaintances their friends because it sounds more important, but this isa mistake; if I am known to have been on intimate terms with a man for twenty or thirty years and I speak of him as an old acquaintance, I have at least the satisfaction of telling the truth.
A community of interests may last a lifetime, and it may be as strong as that of the banks, which would argue efficiency. Such is the friendship of circumstance, but should the conditions change it would vanish.
It seems to be a moral law of our species that new friends, however gratefully they accept one’s services, so long as they are needed, have a disposition to drop off when they can no longer profit by them. Such friendships are like a fever which runs its course; a fever sometimes affecting a whole family, and then not leaving a symptom behind.
Nevertheless, a good acquaintance is a very pleasant thing, even though its benefits on both sides may balance and explain each other.
There are some who practice friendship quite naturally, others who are only skilled in it as a game. It would prove amusing to make a good classification of one’s friends, as is done of the animal kingdom, by dividing them into warm-blooded, (hæmatotherma) and cold-blooded friends (hæmatocrya). We are all too fond of forming friendships. I have often observed that nothing is more fatiguing than what is generally called a night’s rest, unless it be the dream and its final result, that we have made friends! Dreams are as laborious and realistic as realities; the nervous powers are putthrough walks and conversings with strangers, as well as acquaintances, some dead long ago. One has introductions, dialogues as with the living; but what is so amusing and ludicrous, many dream that they have made new friends, to find it was in their sleep!
Regarding friendship, how often it is only theoretic; intimacy without intercourse; instead of active only passive sympathy, the philosophical equivalent of cement, such as isinglass or glue! When friends have a common interest, how they stick to each other! There is still another kind of friendship of an agueish type, which one might call intermittent. It has some foundation in a community of nature, but is unable to sustain itself continuously, showing itself in fits. It is the most aggravating of all social alliances, and would be better extinct.
At Brighton I enjoyed the inestimable friendship of Sir David Scott, a leading magistrate there, of very high social rank—in fact, the most important personage of the place at a time when it needed men of influence to direct it towards its present unrivalled position.
As a young man, Sir David Scott succeeded to the baronetcy of Sir James Sibbald, of Sillwood Park, and he bore the addition of K.H.G., an order that was extinguished with the severance of Hanover from our ruling sovereigns, on the accession of Victoria. This order, the use of which has been very much replaced by that of the Bath, was conferredon Sir David by George the Fourth, whose life he probably saved by having a madman arrested at Brighton, who was provided with pistols to shoot the king. Sir David, a true gentleman without being a courtier, and therefore at home in all that related to good breeding, once gave me an amusing account of his interview with the “first gentleman in Europe,” telling with much gusto an anecdote of the king’s studied elegance even in taking a pinch of snuff. “I perceive, Sir David,” he said, “that you take snuff; allow me to offer you a pinch from my box.” This Sir David took, shaking his thumb and finger over the box, as one ordinarily does, not to waste any of the precious powder on withdrawing the hand.
This was the king’s opportunity of showing himself more advanced in gentility than his subject. He said, “Now, Sir David, permit me to try a pinch from your box.” The baronet drew forth his box and presented it to the king, who, having secured his pinch, withdrew his thumb and finger with careful rapidity, evidently lest any particles that had been touched should fall back into the box, and so render the remainder unfit for use.
Sir David gave me an amusing account of how the official who received him at court and introduced him to the king’s presence became the great man that he was. It was Sir William Knighton, who had accompanied the Marquis of Wellesley as his physician to Spain. It was said that Dr. Knighton would never draw his salary, which he evidently didnot wish to be paid in money. So at the conclusion of his service the marquis sent him to the king with important documents, which exactly suited him for the exercise of his effrontery and self-assurance. The gentleman-in-waiting, having an appreciative and loyal mind, said, “You will be very much surprised when you come to see the king.” Dr. Knighton replied, “He will be very much surprised when he comes to see me!”
So it turned out. The king was very much struck with the physician’s manner and aptitude for affairs, and before long made him his “Privy Purse.”
At a time when the now proud town of Brighton was only half built, Sir David purchased the estate of an Oriental Company on the west cliff, facing the sea. A building that was already erected on it before the project failed, he converted into a mansion, which he called Sillwood House: this he occupied himself, with his family. On the ground in front were built two elegant streets, called Sillwood and Oriental Places. Later, on a portion of the ground, he erected for himself a villa with an entrance on the Western Road, and laid out a charming garden and shrubbery there, where he lived for many years, making his home the resort of a fashionable and cultured circle. He was often spoken of as the “King of Brighton,” and he certainly exercised great influence there as a Conservative leader. At the same time, he supported every charity in the place, and materially assisted the Rev. H. M. Wagner,the then all-powerful vicar, in planting the town with churches.
Sir David Scott had a pension given him by the Government for saving the king’s life; this the Liberal Parliament, on coming into power, withdrew—sorry, perhaps, that such a life had been saved.
A very remarkable character who used to visit Brighton was the Countess de Montalembert, mother of the nobleman of that name who made himself known in France. She was the daughter and heiress of Mr. Forbes, whose “Oriental Memoirs” were much esteemed in his time. This lady had friends among all sorts of people. While chuckling over scandalous and not decent letters from Lady Aldeburgh, she would be receiving the visits of such uncontaminated beings as Lady Mary Pelham, and conferring with her on religion. In her invitations to me she would one day say, “I want you this evening to come and meet the religious set:” this would be such men as the Robert Andersons. Another time it would be the worldly set that she was to receive and I was to meet; and this was certainly the most pleasant set of the two.
She had greatnaïveté, and was full of fun, trenching often on those sources of humour which are forbidden to delicate minds. Her literary occupation at the time when I saw most of her (in 1837)was in writing a “Life of King David”—a work that she completed with great self-gratulation, and which, at her death, her executors burned without estimating its worth, the quicker to dispose of her numerous papers.
Her husband was a baron at Louis Philippe’s court, and received the higher title from that temporary king. His wife, being a Protestant, was not admissible at court—a difficulty which she readily overcame by crossing over the way to the Catholic faith; and this she quitted when it was no longer for her interest to remain in it.
She had two sons. She cared only for the elder one. He lived in Paris, and at her death inherited her fortune. She died of a quinsy at her house in Curzon Street, about a year after the time when I saw most of her.
She was sprinkled and crossed, at baptism, by the name of Rose, which name may have suited her well in her bloomy days, for late in life she had a pleasing face, full of lively expression, with a fine portly figure. She was fond of sketching herself seated on a music-stool, which she called a Rose sitting on a Thorn.
In the death of friends whom one sees from first to last, witnessing their gradual rise and fall simultaneously with our own, there is nothing striking; but how different the effect on our minds when we lose sight of them in their prime, and reflect that their sturdy figures, seeming to be still unobnoxious to change, lie prostrate in their graves!We recall them, and see them still in full activity; they appear to have only gone away! So was it with the kindest of men, my best of friends, Sir David Scott, whose name and goodness deserve a better monument. So it was with Mr. Wagner, whose quick limbs and upright pleasant face appear to be moving through the streets of Brighton at this hour! I see him now rapidly turning the corner of Castle Square into the Old Steyne! Then comes back into view the rapid step of Horace Smith, another celebrity of the place, with a pun almost out of his mouth before we were within hearing of each other! They all seem still alive!
Wagner walked through the streets as if they were his own, reviewing the people as he passed as a general would an army, now stopping, speaking, laughing, now pushing on again. He had been tutor in the Duke of Wellington’s family. The wonder is that, with his firmness of purpose and successful handling of men, he did not reach a bishopric up to that of Canterbury itself. He might have led even the House of Lords by the nose. But Brighton was to him an episcopal see. He enjoyed the patronage of nearly all the livings there, with the monopoly of marriages, births, and deaths; building church after church himself out of his own large resources and the pockets of willing or unwilling friends.
There was an abomination of doctors at Brighton in those days, potent firms, chiefly on the Steyne; but the class is soon forgotten, since they leavenothing behind them but their patients and their shops.
Among apothecaries, Newnham was prince. One saw him walking across the Steyne, then red-bricked for foot-passengers only, he wagging his head with a look of triumph, and in gaiter attire; his face nearly six feet above his shoes, with an expression on it of the miracles that may be achieved by salted senna alone, not to mention the openings artificially made in veins with the mere thumb and finger. But Newnham was a friendly, knowing character. I think often of the advice he tendered me as a young physician, “Never dine with a patient. Such has been my rule through life; for if you do, sooner or later you are sure to let out the fool!”
I must not omit the name, in these brief memorials, of my cultured friend, George Hall, a physician and still more than that, a gentleman. As travelling Redcliffe Fellow, he spent ten years in visiting Greek and Italian and Turkish cities, and the chief courts of Europe. He was too refined for a Brighton physician; few of his patients were to his taste. When summoned to those who suited him best, he passed hours with them instead of sharing his time fairly among all. He had some noble blood in him, according to rumour; but it was of a sinister strain. This held possession of him secretly, and influenced his life; but he found consolation in marrying Lady Hood, a peeress of very considerable fortune, and in retiring from the vulgarity of physic.
The pun sacrifices the sense and purport to the playful analogy. In the practice of this Horace Smith expended the conversational portions of his life. I told him, at one of Mrs. Smith’s evening receptions, that a man known to us had injured a limb while travelling in Norway. His reply was, “I suppose a bear came and Gnaw’wayed his arm.” His daughter, Miss Smith then, and I believe so for life, was a quick and clever match for her father in drawing him out. She had an open, good-tempered face, with the eyes well apart, to which her nose, following suit, owed a flatness. Most auditors must have observed that all whom Nature has favoured with a lying-down nose were let fall by their nurse when babies in arms. Thackeray was one of these. One would have thought they would have fallen on their backs; but no, they all fall on their noses.
The only authority for punning that I know of is Aristotle; he recommends it to a pleader. Horace Smith’s puns are yet remembered; the one on elder-flower water was his best.
The evening receptions at Brighton were pleasant pastimes, especially those of Lady Carhampton and the Hon. Mrs. Mostyn, daughter of Mr. Thrale, of Johnsonian memory. This lady, in Sillwood or Oriental Place, near the Horace Smiths, had a suite of receiving-rooms winding all round the mansion, hung with pictures. In one room was a couch enclosed by a silken canopy within a recess, above which was gilded in large letters, “Mon Repos.”
Any one who has enjoyed the help of an acute mind in life must have concluded that the human creature was not designed to be very intellectual. It has great faculties, but these can do little more than provide munificently for its wants. It solves with facility all the problems of luxury and amusement, but can for the most part no further go. Nevertheless, there are a few of an intellectual caste, living apart from the vulgar and ostentatious; these force their thoughts on unwilling recipients, and in what they produce give intimations of a higher race than that of man being still possible, though scarcely to be expected to spring from the few, since the grovellers have so immense a majority.
The clergy of Brighton were adapted more to the wants of the congregations than to those of religion. One likes the clergy. They have a good education up to the age of one or two and twenty, and their profession is gentlemanly. If they renewed their knowledge of science from time to time, they would not interpolate nature with dogma, the effect of which is more damaging than they can conceive. To the eye clarified by impartial thought, it is like a pimple on the face of a pretty girl; but it will run its little course.
While at Brighton I first knew Count Pepoli, the head of an illustrious Bolognese family. He was the author of some pleasant works, and wrote theopera of “I Puritani” for his friend Bellini, the composer who furnished the music. He was banished from his country, and had his estates put under forfeiture by Pius IX., whose utmost science could do no better than proclaim the dogma of an immaculate conception, and announce himself infallible, as occupying upon earth the rotten throne of an Almighty. Yet this gentleman, by the aid of his superstitious adherents, was able to expel the best families from Bologna, for not wishing to retain him in his place of civil chief—put into that place by those supernatural chemists, the cardinals, who, by mumbling cabalistic words over a drink of wine, could turn it into blood, and, by showing the whites of their eyes, could metamorphose a mouthful of dry bread into the flesh of Christ. They mean well, they administer to existing wants; but the drinking and the eating of these would be cannibalism of the worst description, and this they have not the imagination to perceive.
Pepoli reached England a poor man, though the owner of many palaces and lands. He supported himself by becoming, almost at once, Professor of the Italian Language, Literature, and Antiquities at the University of London, in Gower Street; and he retained this post for some twenty years. When the pope was shown the shortest cut out of Rome, Pepoli rushed back to Bologna, and got hold of his magnificent palaces once more, and recovered his lordly position.
Some twenty years after this, when I last visitedItaly, on my way to Rome I stopped at Bologna, and inquired of my landlord, Pellagrini, the way to the Palazzo Pepoli, which I accordingly sought and found. It was a massive, ancient structure, and on inquiring of the janitor if the count was at home, was informed that his kinswoman, the Countess Maria Pepoli, lived there; and I was directed to his residence, which was a large building occupying one side of an openPlace, and which seemed only to need a sentinel to complete its pretensions to being a royal palace.
Unfortunately for me, the count was at his country seat.
This nobleman, while in London, married a Scotch lady. My old friend, Mr. Plattnaur, kept up a constant correspondence with the count, informing him of all that happened to his English friends. Plattnaur was very intimate with Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle. The lady once asked when he would join them at dinner. He replied, “If you please, to-morrow.” “Yes,” she answered, “do come to-morrow: it will be the first day of the chicken.”
I have not spoken of Sir Matthew Tierney, a physician of Irish extraction, a good-looking plausible man, always equal to the occasion, whatever might fall in his way. He had the look of a baronet when once you knew he was one—a title that he won easily, by a stroke of worldly wisdom. When George No. 4 was a Brighton man, reposing under that Chinese umbrella, the Pavilion, he was surrounded by physicians, one of whom, Dr. Bankhead,I was intimately acquainted with in Italy during 1831 and 1832. Bankhead was a powerful-looking Scotchman, with a large red face and hair to match, living abroad for reasons, and practising among the English residents at Florence, by whom he was much liked and courted, and as little respected as many of them were respected by themselves. But all liked his anecdotes of life high and low, more especially so did the men after dinner, when the ladies had left the table.
He told me that he used to meet the king’s physicians every morning before visiting the royal patient, and that he and the others invariably passed away an hour in inventing scandalous stories about the aristocracy, calculated to give amusement and pleasure to their patient. He had been Lord Londonderry’s physician; with him he had lived in town and country, and so had become acquainted with the noblest in the land, and with all their foibles.
Bankhead knew the history of Tierney’s rise to the summit, which had a very humble beginning. The king, always self-indulgent, was of course always ill. At that time his favourite groom, who was suffering under circumstances similar to those of his master, and could get no attention from the medical men of the palace, consulted Tierney. That astute physician saw his chance, and giving the groom as much care as he would have bestowed on royalty itself, effected a cure, which, commending itself to the king, led to Tierney being summoned, and to his advice being followed with marked advantage.
Sir Matthew kept up a handsome house at Brighton, on the Grand Parade, where he resided in the season, living in London during the fashionable months. He was a favourite, and a man of very pleasant manners.
As to manners, they make the man more than doth the tailor, though he be a Stultz or a Poole. Sir Matthew had the manner of a man of mark, which consisted in his looking as if he had an answer ready to any question before it was asked. When he came into the committee-room of the hospital, it was as if he had entered to do all the business of the meeting, and to put everything right, taking it as granted that confusion was in the ascendant.
It was so with Sir David Scott. His quiet, pleasant face was a signal for all to look at him, and to feel that what he had to say would be more refreshing than anything they could utter themselves.
Horace Smith’s face was of that free, smileless expression, which clearly asked, “Do you want to laugh? for, if so, I’ll make you do so without further notice.”
As to Wagner’s face, it was one not easily defined. The expression was pleasing without being quite agreeable. It bore the candid threat of entering on some business transaction, useful in itself, but declining in interest the nearer it approached the amount of subscriptions still necessary to carry out as it deserved his beneficent scheme. Wagner in one thing only was unscrupulous and devoid ofmercy—it was in ordering money out of one pocket into another for the general good, as if parting with it was the chief object in life, and to assist another in doing so was benevolence itself, such as few were capable of feeling towards a fellow-man.
How successful he was in taking every one into partnership with him in such matters!
In those days Brighton was full of charm, more so than now by a long measure. There was no three-shilling railway; you went to and from London with blood horses, driven by those nimble whips, Sir St. Vincent Cotton one-half of the way, and by the Marquis of Worcester the other half, within five hours. A crowd saw your splendid equipage start, whether from Piccadilly or Castle Square. It was called “The Age,” and was a wonder of the age.
Brighton then had a season; November was the choicest month. The weather then was delicious, and the upper stratum of society, by a mild upheaval, was moved bodily from the metropolis to the sea, without even a dress being crumpled or a lace torn.
There were good angels in those days, as there are now; and if one was not privileged, as I was not, to see them under cover in such a conservatory as the mansion of the Duchess of St. Albans, onecould meet them in full bloom out of doors on the esplanade.
That beneficent duchess and her worthy successor, Miss Burdett-Coutts, were constant visitors at Brighton during the autumn.
I had many inducements to be at Brighton. I was acquainted with all the medical profession there; Dr. Price and the skilful Mr. Taylor, Mr. Lawrence, Mr. Furner, were my particular friends, and I knew the principal residents of the place.
I undertook the work of the dispensary, to which I was physician for five years, and I joined the Committee of the Sussex County Hospital, which was the pet establishment of such men as Lords Egremont and Chichester and Munster, of the Duke of Devonshire and Mr. Lawrence Peel, all of whom would spend a pleasant gossiping hour in the committee-room from time to time; none of whom forgot the wants of the institution.
While I was chairman of the committee it fell to me to read out a letter from Mr. Lawrence Peel, announcing his gift of, I think, two thousand pounds, as a mark of gratitude for Lady Jane Peel’s recovery from illness.
When I see a portrait of Lord Hartington, the massive countenance brings the Duke of Devonshire back into my mind. I need no portraiture, but the name to bring the Earl of Munster back to memory. These great men were as much at home with us all as they were with each other, enjoying the chat and the laugh without mannerism orhauteur.
It is through manners that all our intercourse is carried on, and one would suppose that they strictly represented the person. It is not so to any great extent; fashion influences them, and they become modified by imitation, so that they cease to be anything very different from current coin; like it, having the different qualities of silvery, coppery, or golden; the same person expressing himself in all three to different sorts of men—a guinea’s worth to the physician, a shilling’s worth to the beggar.
In my early days the tumid young men, rigged out in newest apparel, would go up and down Bond Street at a snail’s pace, doing no better than advertising their tailors. Like handsomely bound volumes, the contents inane, they were just as contemptible as the “sandwichers” who now take their place, bound in boards. None of these tumefied gentlemen ever walked in a hurry, confessedly because they would not have it supposed that they had anything to do. But they had; they smoked cigars in the open air, holding them in two fingers out of five, the other three spread out like a fan, the hand encased in lavender-tinted gloves guiltless of a crease. They smoked weeds which were lighter in weight than the silver they cost; they smoked them in Bond Street, they smoked them in the park; but as any lady of their acquaintance approached, they ostentatiously flung them into the road before raising the host—that is to say, the hat—a couple of inches nearer heaven.
I remember well the time when no gentleman was supposed to smoke; the habit was fit only for the vulgarian. By degree the young officer, the young squire, and the delicate-mindedparvenuwas seduced into the allurements of tobacco.
The introduction of the cigar into society was a great trial to the womenkind. At first a smoker was no gentleman, and he only became one when no gentleman did otherwise than smoke. The Sybarites at the commencement of their new epoch smoked only out of doors or in a room set apart for the purpose; this was still a reason for the separation of the sexes, but at length some beauties of independent spirit assured the youth of their set that they liked the perfume of a cigar, and from that time the revolution set in.
The puppyism of that day was mere fashion, the exercise of the imitative faculty which the monkey is supposed to still retain. But fashion is not a very durable religion.
The novelists, clever creatures, have shown a fondness for making such inanities as I have depicted very heroic on occasions, and as coming out in quite a new character; but they have not said why. The truth is that the vanity which begets a dressy snob will ferment itself up into the leader of a forlorn hope, and be thankful for the chance of a Victoria Cross instead of the praises of the giggling sex, whose blessedness threatens to keep them single.
Some men are vain to the last; Addison waswhen he invited a nobleman to come and see how a Christian could die; Dr. Donne was before parting with his last breath but one or two—he was laid out by himself. Women, too, are supposed to be not free from vanity, not only up to the last, but a little after, desiring to be called “beautiful corpses;” and to this end they have directed their maids to rouge their cheeks when they are no more.
These are the true lovers of art.
As we are on the topic, one may say the least vain are those who die by their own hand, especially with the aid of a pistol. These instruments do the work of suicide with a very ill grace; the effect is that however much the relatives may have wished for a photograph to be taken after death, even that consolation is forbidden them.
It takes two or three generations for the world to forget it when a great man kills himself.