MISS MARTINEAU'S NOVEL.[The admirable novel of "Deerbrook" sufficiently answered all who had ever doubted Miss Martineau's capacity for that order of composition; in spite of Sydney Smith's determination that no village "poticary," as he called it, might, could, would, or ever should, be a hero of romance, and the incessant ridicule with which he assailed the choice of such a one. If, he contended, he takes his mistress's hand with the utmost fervor of a lover, he will, by the mere force of habit, end by feeling her pulse; if, under strong emotion, she faints away, he will have no salts but Epsom about him, wherewith to restore her suspended vitality; he will put cream of tartar in her tea, and (a) flower of brimstone in her bosom. There was no end to the fun he made of "the medicinal lover," as he called him. Nevertheless, the public accepted the Deerbrook M. D., and all the paraphernalia of gallipots, pill-boxes, vials, salves, ointments, with which the facetious divine always represented him as surrounded; and vindicated, by its approval, the authoress's choice of a hero.I do not know whether Mr. Gibson is not, to me, decidedly the hero of Mrs. Gaskell's "Wives and Daughters." I like him infinitely better than all the younger men of the story; and I think the preponderating interest with which one closes George Eliot's wonderful "Middlemarch" is decidedly in behalf of Lydgate, thecountry surgeon and hospital doctor. To be sure, we have come a long way since the Liberalism of Sydney Smith and 1837.I was indebted to my kind friend, Lord Lansdowne, for the memorable pleasure of being present at the first meeting between Queen Victoria and her Houses of Parliament. The occasion, which is always one of interest when a new sovereign performs the solemnity, was rendered peculiarly so by the age and sex of the sovereign. Every person who, by right or favor, could be present, was there; and no one of that great assembly will ever forget the impression made upon them. Lady Lansdowne, who was Mistress of the Robes, was herself an important member of the group round the throne, and I went with her niece, Lady Valletort, under Lord Lansdowne's escort, to places most admirably situated for hearing and seeing the whole ceremony. The queen was not handsome, but very pretty, and the singularity of her great position lent a sentimental and poetical charm to her youthful face and figure.The serene, serious sweetness of her candid brow and clear soft eyes gave dignity to the girlish countenance, while the want of height only added to the effect of extreme youth of the round but slender person, and gracefully moulded hands and arms. The queen's voice was exquisite; nor have I ever heard any spoken words more musical in their gentle distinctness, than the "My Lords and Gentlemen" which broke the breathless silence of the illustrious assembly, whose gaze was riveted upon that fair flower of royalty. The enunciation was as perfect as the intonation was melodious, and I think it is impossible to hear a more excellent utterance than that of the queen's English, by the English queen.]
MISS MARTINEAU'S NOVEL.[The admirable novel of "Deerbrook" sufficiently answered all who had ever doubted Miss Martineau's capacity for that order of composition; in spite of Sydney Smith's determination that no village "poticary," as he called it, might, could, would, or ever should, be a hero of romance, and the incessant ridicule with which he assailed the choice of such a one. If, he contended, he takes his mistress's hand with the utmost fervor of a lover, he will, by the mere force of habit, end by feeling her pulse; if, under strong emotion, she faints away, he will have no salts but Epsom about him, wherewith to restore her suspended vitality; he will put cream of tartar in her tea, and (a) flower of brimstone in her bosom. There was no end to the fun he made of "the medicinal lover," as he called him. Nevertheless, the public accepted the Deerbrook M. D., and all the paraphernalia of gallipots, pill-boxes, vials, salves, ointments, with which the facetious divine always represented him as surrounded; and vindicated, by its approval, the authoress's choice of a hero.
I do not know whether Mr. Gibson is not, to me, decidedly the hero of Mrs. Gaskell's "Wives and Daughters." I like him infinitely better than all the younger men of the story; and I think the preponderating interest with which one closes George Eliot's wonderful "Middlemarch" is decidedly in behalf of Lydgate, thecountry surgeon and hospital doctor. To be sure, we have come a long way since the Liberalism of Sydney Smith and 1837.
I was indebted to my kind friend, Lord Lansdowne, for the memorable pleasure of being present at the first meeting between Queen Victoria and her Houses of Parliament. The occasion, which is always one of interest when a new sovereign performs the solemnity, was rendered peculiarly so by the age and sex of the sovereign. Every person who, by right or favor, could be present, was there; and no one of that great assembly will ever forget the impression made upon them. Lady Lansdowne, who was Mistress of the Robes, was herself an important member of the group round the throne, and I went with her niece, Lady Valletort, under Lord Lansdowne's escort, to places most admirably situated for hearing and seeing the whole ceremony. The queen was not handsome, but very pretty, and the singularity of her great position lent a sentimental and poetical charm to her youthful face and figure.
The serene, serious sweetness of her candid brow and clear soft eyes gave dignity to the girlish countenance, while the want of height only added to the effect of extreme youth of the round but slender person, and gracefully moulded hands and arms. The queen's voice was exquisite; nor have I ever heard any spoken words more musical in their gentle distinctness, than the "My Lords and Gentlemen" which broke the breathless silence of the illustrious assembly, whose gaze was riveted upon that fair flower of royalty. The enunciation was as perfect as the intonation was melodious, and I think it is impossible to hear a more excellent utterance than that of the queen's English, by the English queen.]
Wednesday, July 26th, 1837.Bannisters!(Think of that, Master Brook!!)
Dearest H——,
These overflowing spirits of mine all come of a gallop of fifteen miles I have been taking with dear Emily, over breezy commons and through ferny pine-woods, and then coming home and devouring luncheon as fast as it could be swallowed; and so you get the result of all this physical excitement in these very animal spirits; and if my letter is "all sound and fury, signifying nothing," under the circumstances how can I help it?
That rather ill-conducted person, Ninon de l'Enclos, I believe, said her soup got into her head; and though "comparisons are odious," and I should be loth to suggest any between that wonderful no-better-than-she-should-be and myself, beyond all doubtmy luncheon has got into my head, though I drank nothing but water with it; but I rather think violent exercise in the cold air, followed immediately by eating, will produce a certain amount of intoxication, just as easily as stimulating drink would. I suppose it is only a question of accelerated circulation, with a slight tendency of blood to the head.
DR. SOUTH.However that may be, I wish you would speak to Emily (you needn't bawl, though you are in Ireland), and tell her to hold her tongue and not disturb me. She is profanely laughing at a sermon of Dr. South's, and interrupting me in this serious letter to you with absurd questions about such nonsense as Life, Death, and Immortality. I can't get on for her a bit, so add her to the cold ride and the hot lunch in the list of causes of this crazy epistle—I mean, the causes of its craziness.
Do you know old South? I don't believe you do even this much of him:—
"Old South, a witty Churchman reckoned,Was preaching once to Charles the Second:When lo! the King began to nod,Deaf to the zealous man of God;Who, leaning o'er his pulpit, criedTo Lauderdale by Charles's side:—'My Lord, why, 'tis a shameful thing!You snore so loud, you'll wake the King!'"
"Old South, a witty Churchman reckoned,Was preaching once to Charles the Second:When lo! the King began to nod,Deaf to the zealous man of God;Who, leaning o'er his pulpit, criedTo Lauderdale by Charles's side:—'My Lord, why, 'tis a shameful thing!You snore so loud, you'll wake the King!'"
I quote by memory, through my luncheon, and I dare say all wrong; but it doesn't matter, for I don't believe you know it a bit better than I remember it. I and my baby came here on Monday, and shall stay until to-morrow week; after that I go to Liverpool, to meet and be met; and after that I know nothing, of course.... If, however, by that time you are likely to be near London, we will come up thither forthwith, and you must come and stay in Park Place with us. We shall be alone keeping house there; for my mother is in the country, and my father and Adelaide are going to Carlsbad, where we think to join them by-and-by; in the mean time, we hope to enjoy ourselves much sight-seeing all over London, which we shall then have entirely to ourselves; and you had better come and help us.
Good-bye, dearest H——.
Yours ever,
F. A. B.
[This letter was written from Bannisters, the charming country home of my dear friend, Miss Fitz Hugh. For years it had been a resort of rest for Mrs. Siddons, who was always made welcome as one of her ownsisters, by Mrs. Fitz Hugh; and for years it was a resort of rest for me, to whom my friend was as devoted as her mother had been to my aunt.]
[This letter was written from Bannisters, the charming country home of my dear friend, Miss Fitz Hugh. For years it had been a resort of rest for Mrs. Siddons, who was always made welcome as one of her ownsisters, by Mrs. Fitz Hugh; and for years it was a resort of rest for me, to whom my friend was as devoted as her mother had been to my aunt.]
Liverpool, Saturday, August 17th, 1837.
My Dearest Harriet,
I have but one instant in which to write. I hope this will meet you at Emily's, in Orchard Street [No. 18 Orchard Street, Portman Square, Mr. Fitz Hugh's town house]; it is to entreat you to remain there until I come to town, which must be in less than a week....
I left Bannisters—most unnecessarily, as it has proved—a fortnight ago, which time I have been spending in heart-eating suspense, waiting in vain, and bolstering up my patience, which kept sinking every day more and more, like an empty sack put to stand upright. I have, since I arrived here, received a letter which has caused me considerable distress, inasmuch as I find I must leave England without again seeing my father and Adelaide, who are gone to Carlsbad in the full expectation of our joining them there....
The political body upon whose movements ours are just now depending has not dispersed, but is merely adjourned to the 17th October. This allows its absent member but a few days in Europe, as we must sail on the 8th September; and those few days are gradually becoming fewer in consequence of this long prevalence of contrary winds, which is keeping the vessel just at the entrance of the Channel, within one good day's sail of me.
All this is a trial, and my heart has sunk, as hour after hour I have watched that watery horizon, and seen the masts appear and disappear, and yet no tidings of the ship I look for.
I have ridden, bathed, tried to write, tried to read, marked my Shakespeare for you, and laid my hand—but, God knows, not with all my heart—to whatsoever I found to do: still I have been ashamed and displeased at the little command I have achieved over my impatience, and the little use I have made of my time. It has been my great good fortune to meet with old friends, and to make new ones, during this period of my probation; and never was kindly intercourse more needed and more appreciated. But, after all, is it not always thus? and are not unexpected pleasures and enjoyments furnished us quite as often as the trials which render them doubly welcome?
'Tis now the 14th of August, and yet no tidings of that ship. There is no ground whatever for anxiety, for it is the prevalence of calm, and light contrary winds, which alone delay its arrival.
Dearest Harriet, I shall soon see you again, and will not thatbe a blessing to both of us? Farewell, my dear friend. How long it is since we have been even thus near each other! how long since we have hoped so soon to hear each other's voice!
Ever your affectionate,
F. A. B.
STAY AT CROSBY.[This letter was written from Crosby, a little strip of sandy beach, three miles from Liverpool, to which I betook myself with my child, rather than remain in the noisy, smoky town, while waiting for the arrival of the vessel from America which I was expecting.I dare say Crosby is by this time a flourishing, fashionable bathing-place. It was then a mere row of very humble seaside lodging-houses, where persons constrained as I was to remain in the close vicinity of Liverpool, were able to obtain fresh air, salt water, and an uninterrupted sea view.A Liverpool lady told me that, having once spent some weeks at this place one summer, her son, a lad of about twelve years old, used to ride along the sands to Liverpool every day for his lessons, and that she could see him through the telescope all the way to the first houses on the outskirt of the town. Just about midway, however, there was a spot of treacherous quicksand, and I confess I wondered at my friend's courage in watching her boy pass that point: he knew it well, and was little likely to take his pony too near it; but I confess I would rather have trusted to his caution to avoid the place, than watched him pass it through a telescope.From Liverpool, the long-expected ship having arrived, we went to London, and spent as much time with our friends there and elsewhere as our very limited leisure would then allow; and by the 10th of September, we were again on the edge of English ground, about to sail for the United States.]
STAY AT CROSBY.[This letter was written from Crosby, a little strip of sandy beach, three miles from Liverpool, to which I betook myself with my child, rather than remain in the noisy, smoky town, while waiting for the arrival of the vessel from America which I was expecting.
I dare say Crosby is by this time a flourishing, fashionable bathing-place. It was then a mere row of very humble seaside lodging-houses, where persons constrained as I was to remain in the close vicinity of Liverpool, were able to obtain fresh air, salt water, and an uninterrupted sea view.
A Liverpool lady told me that, having once spent some weeks at this place one summer, her son, a lad of about twelve years old, used to ride along the sands to Liverpool every day for his lessons, and that she could see him through the telescope all the way to the first houses on the outskirt of the town. Just about midway, however, there was a spot of treacherous quicksand, and I confess I wondered at my friend's courage in watching her boy pass that point: he knew it well, and was little likely to take his pony too near it; but I confess I would rather have trusted to his caution to avoid the place, than watched him pass it through a telescope.
From Liverpool, the long-expected ship having arrived, we went to London, and spent as much time with our friends there and elsewhere as our very limited leisure would then allow; and by the 10th of September, we were again on the edge of English ground, about to sail for the United States.]
Liverpool, Friday, September 8th, 1837.
My Dear Lady Dacre,
My time in England is growing painfully short, for the watch says half-past eleven, and at two o'clock I shall be on board the ship. My promise, as well as my desire, urge me to write you a few parting words. And yet what can they be, that may give you the slightest pleasure?
My parting with my poor mother was calmer than I had ventured to anticipate, and I thank Heaven that I was not obliged to leave England without seeing her once more. I have heard from my sister, who had just received the news of my suddendeparture from England when she wrote. She was bitterly disappointed; but yet I think this unexpected parting without seeing each other again is perhaps well. Our last leave-taking, when she started with my father for Carlsbad, was quite cheerful, because we looked soon to meet again. We have been spared those exceedingly painful moments of clinging to what we are condemned to lose, and in the midst of novelty and variety she will miss me far less than had I left her lonely, in the home where we have been together for the past year.
Dear Lady Dacre, pray, if it is in your power to show her kindness at any time, do so; but I am sure that you would, and that such a request on my part is unnecessary.
The days that we spent in London after leaving you formed a sad contrast to the happy time we enjoyed at the Hoo. We were plunged in bustle and confusion; up to our eyes in trunks, packing-cases, carpet-bags, and valises; and I don't believe Marius in the middle of his Carthaginian ruins was more thoroughlyuncomfortablethan I, in my desolate, box-encumbered rooms.
You know that we were disappointed of our visit to Bowood, but we spent a few days delightfully at Bannisters, and I am happy to say thatweare leaving England with the desire and determination to return as soon as possible.
I found on my arrival here a most pressing and cordial invitation from Sydney Smith (I cannot call him Mr.) to Combe Flory, which, like many other pleasant things, must be foregone. Pray, if you are with him when or after you receive this, thank him again for his kindness and courtesy to us. I did not quite like him, you know, when first I met him at Rogers's; but that was Lady Holland's fault; even now, his being a clergyman hurts my mind a little sometimes, and I fancy I should like him more entirely if he were not so. I have a superstitious veneration for the cloth, which his free-and-easy wearing of it occasionally disturbs a little; but I feel deeply honored by his notice, and most grateful for the good-will which he expresses towards me, and should have been too glad to have heard him laugh once more at his own jokes, which I acknowledge he does with a better grace than any man alive,—though the last time I had that pleasure it was at my own expense: I gave him an admirable chance, and I think he used his advantage most unmercifully.
And now, dear Lady Dacre, what message will you give your kind and good husband from me? May I, with "one foot on land and one on sea," send him word that I love him almost as well as I do you? This shall rest with you, however. Praythank him with all my heart, as I do you, for your manifold kindnesses to me. God bless and preserve you both, and those you love! Remember me most kindly to Mrs. Sullivan. I cannot tell you how my heart issqueezed, as the French say, at going away. Luckily, I am too busy to cry to-day, and to-morrow I shall be too sea-sick, and so, farewell!
Believe me, my dear Lady Dacre,Yours affectionately,
F. A. B.
SIDNEY SMITH.[The occasion of my becoming acquainted with my admirable and very kind friend, the Rev. Sydney Smith, was a dinner at Mr. Rogers's, to which I had been asked to meet Lord and Lady Holland, by special desire, as I was afterwards informed, of the latter, who, during dinner, drank out of her neighbor's (Sydney Smith's) glass, and otherwise behaved herself with the fantastic, despotic impropriety in which she frequently indulged, and which might have been tolerated in a spoilt beauty of eighteen, but was hardly becoming in a woman of her age and "personal appearance." When first I came out on the stage, my father and mother, who occasionally went to Holland House, received an invitation to dine there, which included me; after some discussion, which I did not then understand, it was deemed expedient to decline the invitation for me, and I neither knew the grounds of my parents' decision, nor of how brilliant and delightful a society it had then closed the door to me. On my return to England after my marriage, Lady Holland's curiosity revived with regard to me, and she desired Rogers to ask me to meet her at dinner, which I did; and the impression she made upon me was so disagreeable that, for a time, it involved every member of that dinner-party in a halo of undistinguishing dislike in my mind.My sister had joined us in the evening, and sat for a few moments by Lady Holland, who dropped her handkerchief. Adelaide, who was as unpleasantly impressed as myself by that lady, for a moment made no attempt to pick it up; but, reflecting upon her age and size, which made it difficult for her to stoop for it herself, my sister picked it up and presented it to her, when Lady Holland, taking it from her, merely said, "Ah! I thought you'd do it." Adelaide said she felt an almost irresistible inclination to twitch it from her hand, throw it on the ground again, and say, "Did you? then now do it yourself!"Altogether the evening was unsuccessful, if its purpose had been an acquaintance between Lady Holland and myself; and I remember agrotesque climax to my dissatisfaction in the destruction of a lovely nosegay of exquisite flowers which my sister had brought with her, and which, towards the middle of the evening, mysteriously disappeared, and was looked for and inquired for in vain, until poor Lord Holland, who was then dependent upon the assistance of two servants to move from his seat, being raised from the sofa on which he had been deposited when he was brought up from the dining-room, the flowers, which Adelaide had left there, were discovered, pressed as flat as if for preservation in a book of botanical specimens. The kindly, good-natured gentleman departed, luckily, without knowing the mischief he had done, or seeing my sister's face of ludicrous dismay at the condition of her flowers; which Sydney Smith, however, observed, and in a minute exclaimed, "Ah! I see! Oh dear, oh dear, what a pity! Hot-bed! hot-bed!"It has always been a matter of amazement to me that Lady Holland should have been allowed to ride rough-shod over society, as she did for so long, with such complete impunity. To be sure, in society, well-bred persons are always at the mercy of ill-bred ones, who have an immense advantage over everybody who shrinks from turning a social gathering into closed lists for the exchange of impertinences; and people gave way to Lady Holland's domineering rudeness for the sake of their hosts and fellow-guests, and spared her out of consideration for them. Another reason for the toleration shown Lady Holland was the universal esteem and affectionate respect felt for her husband, whose friends accepted her and her peculiarities for his sake, and could certainly have given no stronger proof of their regard for him.The most powerful inducement to patience, however, to the London society upon which Lady Holland habitually trampled, was the immense attraction of her house and of the people who frequented it. Holland House was, for a series of years, the most brilliant, charming, and altogether delightful social resort. Beautiful, comfortable, elegant, picturesque,—an ideal house, full of exquisite objects and interesting associations, where persons the most distinguished for birth, position, mental accomplishments, and intellectual gifts, met in a social atmosphere of the highest cultivation and the greatest refinement,—the most perfect civilization could produce nothing more perfect in the way of enjoyment than the intercourse of that delightful mansion. As Lady Tankerville pathetically exclaimed on Lady Holland's death, "Ah! poore, deare Lady 'Olland! what shall we do? It was such a pleasant 'ouse!"—admission to which was, to most of its frequenters, well worth some toleration of its mistress's brusqueries.LADY HOLLAND.If, as a friend of mine once assured me (a well-born, well-bred man of the best English society), it was quite well worth while to "eat a little dirt" to get theentréeof Stafford House, I incline to think the spoonfuls of dirt Lady Holland occasionally administered to her friends were accepted by them as the equivalent for the delights of her "pleasant 'ouse"; and that I did not think so, and had no desire to go there upon those terms, was, I imagine, the only thing that excited Lady Holland's curiosity about me, or her desire to have me for her guest. She complained to Charles Greville that I would not let her become acquainted with me, and twice after our first unavailing meeting at Rogers's, made him ask me to meet her again: each time, however, with no happier result.The first time, after making herself generally obnoxious at dinner, she at length provoked Rogers, who, the conversation having fallen upon the subject of beautiful hair, and Lady Holland saying, "Why, Rogers, only a few years ago, I had such a head of hair that I could hide myself in it, and I've lost it all," merely answered, "What a pity!"—but with such a tone that an exultant giggle ran round the table at her expense.After dinner, when the unfortunate female members of the party had to encounter Lady Holland unprotected, she singled out one of the ladies of the Baring family, to whom, however, she evidently meant to be particularly gracious; not, I think, without some intention of also pleasing me by her patronizing laudation of American people and American things; winding up with, "You know, my dear, we are Americans." The young Baring lady, who may or may not have been as familiar as I was with the Bingham and Baring alliances of early times in Philadelphia, merely raised her eyebrows, and said, "Indeed!" while I kept my lips close and breathed no syllable of Longfellow's house near Boston, which had been not only Washington's temporary abode, but the residence, in colonial days, of the Vassalls, to whom Lady Holland belonged, and where Longfellow showed me one day an iron plate at the back of one of the fire-places, with the rebus, the punning arms (Armoiries parlantes) of the Vassall family: a vase with a sun above it,Vas Sol.Je suis méchante, machére, as Madame de Sévigné wrote to her daughter;et cela m'a fait plaisir, to suppress the nice little anecdote which might have helped Lady Holland on so pleasantly just at that juncture.But, holding one's tongue because one chooses, and being compelledto hold one's tongue by somebody else, is quite a different thing; and I am not sure that the main reason of my dislike to Lady Holland is not that I held my tongue to "spite her" during the whole course of the last dinner-party to which Rogers invited me to meet her. The party consisted of fewer men than women, and Lady —— and myself agreed to take each other down to dinner, which we did. Just, however, as we were seating ourselves, Lady Holland called out from the opposite side of the table, "No, no, ladies, I can't allow that; I must have Mrs. Butler by me, if you please." Thus challenged, I could not, without making a scene with Lady Holland, and beginning the poet's banquet with a shock to everybody present, refuse her very dictatorial behest; and therefore I left my friendly neighbor, Lady ——, and went round to the place assigned me by the imperious autocratess of the dinner-table: between herself and Dr. Allen ("the gentle infidel," "Lady Holland's atheist," as he was familiarly called by her familiars).But though one man may take the mare to the water, no given number of men can make her drink; so, having accepted my place, I determined my complaisance should end there, and, in spite of all Lady Holland's conversational efforts, and her final exclamation, "Allen! do get Mrs. Butler to talk! Wereally mustmake her talk!" I held my peace, and kept the peace, which I could have done upon no other conditions; but the unnatural and unwholesome effort disagreed with me so dreadfully, that I have a return of dyspepsia whenever I think of it, which I think justifies me in my dislike of Lady Holland.... I do not feel inclined to attribute to any motive but a kindly one, the attention Lady Holland showed my father during a severe indisposition of his, not long after this; though, upon her driving to his door one day with some peculiarly delicate jelly she had had made for him, Frederick Byng (Poodle, as he was always called by his intimates, on account of his absurd resemblance to a dog of that species), seeing the remorseful gratitude on my face as I received her message of inquiry after my father, exclaimed, "Now, she's done it! now, she's won it! now, she's got you, and you'll go to Holland House!" "No, I won't," said I, "but I'll go down to the carriage, and thank her!" which I immediately did, without stopping to put a bonnet on my head. Lady Holland was held, by those who knew her, to be a warm and constant friend, and had always been cordially kind to my father and my brother John.LADY MORLEY.After Lord Holland's death she left Holland House, and took up her abode in South Street near the Park. One morning, when I was callingon Lady Charlotte Lindsay, Lady Morley came in, and being reproached by Lady Charlotte for not having come to a party at her house on the previous evening, in which reproach I joined, having been also a loser by her absence from that same party, "Couldn't," said the lively lady, "for I was spending the evening with the pleasantest, most amiable, gentlest-mannered, sweetest-tempered, and most charming woman in all London—Lady Holland!" A conversation then ensued, in which certainly little quarter was shown to the ill qualities of the former mistress of Holland House. Among several curious instances of her unaccountably unamiable conduct to some of even Lord Holland's dearest friends, who, for his sake, opened their houses to her, allowed her to come thither, bespeaking her own rooms—her own company, who she would meet and who she would bring, and in every way consulting her pleasure and convenience, as was invariably the case on the occasion of her visits to Panshanger and Woburn,—Lady Morley said that Landseer had told her, that he was walking one day by the side of Lady Holland's wheel-chair, in the grounds of Holland House, and, stopping at a particularly pretty spot, had said, "Oh, Lady Holland! this is the part of your place of which the Duchess of Bedford has such a charming view from her house on the hill above." "Is it?" said Lady Holland; and immediately gave orders that the paling-fence round that part of her grounds should be raised so as to cut off the Duchess's view into them.Upon my venturing to express my surprise that anybody should go to the house of a person of whom they told such anecdotes, Lady Morley replied, "She is the only woman in the world of whom one does tell such things and yet goes to see her. She is the most miserable woman in England; she is entirely alone now, and she cannot bear to be alone, and, for his sake who was the dearest and most excellent and amiable creature that ever breathed, one goes on going to her, as I shall till she or I die." But what a description of the last days of the mistress of Holland House!Sidney Smith, with whom I had become well acquainted when I wrote the letter to Lady Dacre in which I mention him, used to amuse himself, and occasionally some of my other friends, by teasing me on the subject of what he called my hallucination with regard to my having married in America. He never allowed any allusion to the circumstance without the most comical expressions of regret for this, as he called it, curious form of monomania. On the occasion to which I refer in this letter, he and Mrs. Smith had met some friends at dinner at our house, and I was taking leave of them, previous tomy departure for Liverpool, when he exclaimed, "Now do, my dear child, be persuaded to give up this extraordinary delusion; let it, I beg, be recorded of us both, that this pleasing and intelligent young lady labored under the singular and distressingly insane idea that she had contracted a marriage with an American; from which painful hallucination she was eventually delivered by the friendly exhortations of a learned and pious divine, the Rev. Sydney Smith." Everybody round us was in fits of laughter, as he affectionately held my hand, and thus paternally admonished me. I held up my left hand with its wedding-ring, and began, "Oh, but the baby!" when the ludicrous look with which my reverend tormentor received this overwhelming testimony of mine, threw the whole company into convulsions, and nothing was heard throughout the room but sighs and sobs of exhaustion, and faint ejaculations and cries for mercy, while everybody was wiping tears of laughter from their eyes. As for me, I covered up my face, and very nearly went into hysterics.The special and reportable sallies of Sydney Smith have been, of course, often repeated, but the fanciful fun and inexhaustible humorous drollery of his conversation among his intimates can never be adequately rendered or reproduced. He bubbled over with mirth, of which his own enjoyment formed an irresistible element, he shook, and his eyes glistened at his own ludicrous ideas, as they dawned upon his brain; and it would be impossible to convey the faintest idea of the genial humor of his habitual talk by merely repeating separate witticisms and repartees.On that same evening, at my father's house, the comparative cheapness of living abroad and in England having been discussed, Sydney Smith declared that, for his part, he had never found foreign quarters so much more reasonable than home ones, or foreign hotels less exorbitant in their charges. "I know I never could live under fifty pounds a week," said he. "Oh, but how did you live?" was the next question. "Why, as a canon should live," proudly retorted he; "and they charged me as enemy's ordnance."A question having arisen one evening at Miss Berry's as to the welcome Lady Sale would receive in London society after her husband's heroic conduct, and her heroic participation in it, during the Afghan war, Miss Berry, who, for some reason or other, did not admire Lady Sale as much as everybody else did, said she should not ask her to come to her house. "Oh, yes! pooh! pooh! you will," exclaimed Sydney Smith; "you'll have her, he'll have her, they'll have her, we'll have her. She'll be Sale by auction!" Later on thatsame evening, it being asked what Lord Dalhousie would get for his successful exploit in carrying of the gates of some Indian town, "Why," cried Lady Morley, "he will be created Duke Samson Afghanistes." It was pleasant living among people who talked such nonsense as that.A party having been made to go and see the Boa Constrictor soon after its first arrival at the Zoölogical Gardens, Sydney Smith, who was to have been there, failed to come; and, questioned at dinner why he had not done so, said, "Because I was detained by the Bore Contradictor—Hallam"—whose propensity to controvert people's propositions was a subject of irritation to some of his friends, less retentive of memory and accurate in statement than himself.Sydney Smith, not unnaturally, preferred conversation to music; and at a musical party one evening, as he was stealing on tip-toe from the concert-room to one more remote from the performance, I held up my finger at him, when he whispered, "My dear, it's all right. You keep with the dilettanti; I go with the talkettanti." Afterwards, upon my expostulating with him, and telling him that by such habits he was running a risk of being called to order on some future eternal day with "Angel Sydney Smith, hush!" if he did not learn to endure music better, he replied, "Oh, no, no! I'm cultivating a judicious second expressly for those occasions."Of his lamentations for the "flashes of silence" which, he said, at one time made Macaulay's intercourse possible, one has heard; but when he was so ill that all his friends were full of anxiety about him, M——, having called to see him, and affectionately asking what sort of night he had passed, Sydney Smith replied, "Oh, horrid, horrid, my dear fellow! I dreamt I was chained to a rock and being talked to death by Harriet Martineau and Macaulay."ROGERS.Rogers's keen-edged wit seemed to cut his lips as he uttered it; Sydney Smith's was without sting or edge or venomous point of malice, and his genial humor was really the overflowing of a kindly heart.Rogers's helpful benevolence and noble generosity to poor artists, poor authors, and all distressed whom he could serve or succor, was unbounded; he certainly had the kindest heart and the unkindest tongue of any one I ever knew. His benefits remind me of a comical story my dear friend Harness once told me, of a poor woman at whose lamentations over her various hardships one of his curates was remonstrating, "Oh, come, come now, my good woman, you must allow that Providence has been, upon the whole, very good to you." "So He'ave, sir; so He 'ave, mostly. I don't deny it; but I sometimes think He 'ave taken it out in corns." I think Rogers took out his benevolence, in some directions, in the corns he inflicted, or, at any rate, trod upon, in others.Mr. Rogers's inveterate tongue-gall was like an irresistible impulse, and he certainly bestowed it occasionally, without the least provocation, upon persons whom he professed to like. He was habitually kind to me, and declared he was fond of me. One evening (just after the publication of my stupid drama, "The Star of Seville"), he met me with a malignant grin, and the exclamation, "Ah, I've just been reading your play. So nice! young poetry!"—with a diabolicaldigof emphasis on the "young." "Now, Mr. Rogers," said I, "what did I do to deserve that you should say that to me?" I do not know whether this appeal disarmed him, but his only answer was to take me affectionately by the chin, much as if he had been my father. When I told my sister of this, she, who was a thousand times quicker-witted than I, said, "Why didn't you tell him that young poetry was better than old?"Walking one day in the Green Park, I met Mr. Rogers and Wordsworth, who took me between them, and I continued my walk in great glory and exultation of spirit, listening to Rogers, and hearing Wordsworth,—the gentle rill of the one speech broken into and interrupted by sudden loud splashes of the other; when Rogers, who had vainly been trying to tell some anecdote, pathetically exclaimed, "He won't let me tell my story!" I immediately stopped, and so did Wordsworth, and during this halt Rogers finished his recital. Presently afterwards, Wordsworth having left us, Rogers told me that he (Mr. Wordsworth), in a visit he had been lately paying at Althorpe, was found daily in the magnificent library, but never without a volume of his own poetry in his hand. Years after this, when I used to go and sit with Mr. Rogers, I never asked him what I should read to him without his putting into my hands his own poems, which always lay by him on his table.SYDNEY SMITH.A comical instance of the rivalry of wits (surely as keen as that of beauties) occurred one day when Mr. Rogers had been calling on me and speaking of that universal social favorite, Lady Morley, had said, "There is but one voice against her in all England, and that is her own." (A musical voice was the only charm wanting to Lady Morley's delightful conversation.) I was enchanted with this pretty and appropriate epigram, so unlike in its tone to Mr. Rogers's usualfriendlycomments; and, very soon after he left me, Sydney Smithcoming in, I told him how clever and how pleasant a remark the "departed" poet (Sydney Smith often spoke of Rogers as dead, on account of his cadaverous complexion) had made on Lady Morley's voice. "He never said it," exclaimed my second illustrious visitor. "But he did, Mr. Smith, to me, in this room, not half an hour ago." "He nevermadeit; it isn't his, it isn't a bit like him." To all which I could only repeat that, nevertheless, hehadsaid it, and that, whether he made it or not, it was extremely well made. Presently Sydney Smith went away. I was living in upper Grosvenor Street, close to Park Lane; and he in Green Street, in the near neighborhood. But I believe he must have run from my house to his own, so short was the interval of time, before I received the following note: "Dans toute l'Angleterre il n'y a qu'une voix contre moi, et c'est la mienne." Then followed the signature of a French lady of the eighteenth century, and these words: "What a dear, innocent, confiding, credulous creature you are! and how youdolove Rogers!"Sydney Smith."When I was leaving England, I received two most kind and affectionate letters from him, bidding me farewell, and exhorting me, in a most comical and yet pathetic manner, to be courageous and of good cheer in returning to America. One of these epistles ended thus: "Don't forget me, whatever you do; talk of me sometimes, call me Butler's Hudibras, and believe me always."Affectionately yours,"Sydney Smith."]
SIDNEY SMITH.[The occasion of my becoming acquainted with my admirable and very kind friend, the Rev. Sydney Smith, was a dinner at Mr. Rogers's, to which I had been asked to meet Lord and Lady Holland, by special desire, as I was afterwards informed, of the latter, who, during dinner, drank out of her neighbor's (Sydney Smith's) glass, and otherwise behaved herself with the fantastic, despotic impropriety in which she frequently indulged, and which might have been tolerated in a spoilt beauty of eighteen, but was hardly becoming in a woman of her age and "personal appearance." When first I came out on the stage, my father and mother, who occasionally went to Holland House, received an invitation to dine there, which included me; after some discussion, which I did not then understand, it was deemed expedient to decline the invitation for me, and I neither knew the grounds of my parents' decision, nor of how brilliant and delightful a society it had then closed the door to me. On my return to England after my marriage, Lady Holland's curiosity revived with regard to me, and she desired Rogers to ask me to meet her at dinner, which I did; and the impression she made upon me was so disagreeable that, for a time, it involved every member of that dinner-party in a halo of undistinguishing dislike in my mind.
My sister had joined us in the evening, and sat for a few moments by Lady Holland, who dropped her handkerchief. Adelaide, who was as unpleasantly impressed as myself by that lady, for a moment made no attempt to pick it up; but, reflecting upon her age and size, which made it difficult for her to stoop for it herself, my sister picked it up and presented it to her, when Lady Holland, taking it from her, merely said, "Ah! I thought you'd do it." Adelaide said she felt an almost irresistible inclination to twitch it from her hand, throw it on the ground again, and say, "Did you? then now do it yourself!"
Altogether the evening was unsuccessful, if its purpose had been an acquaintance between Lady Holland and myself; and I remember agrotesque climax to my dissatisfaction in the destruction of a lovely nosegay of exquisite flowers which my sister had brought with her, and which, towards the middle of the evening, mysteriously disappeared, and was looked for and inquired for in vain, until poor Lord Holland, who was then dependent upon the assistance of two servants to move from his seat, being raised from the sofa on which he had been deposited when he was brought up from the dining-room, the flowers, which Adelaide had left there, were discovered, pressed as flat as if for preservation in a book of botanical specimens. The kindly, good-natured gentleman departed, luckily, without knowing the mischief he had done, or seeing my sister's face of ludicrous dismay at the condition of her flowers; which Sydney Smith, however, observed, and in a minute exclaimed, "Ah! I see! Oh dear, oh dear, what a pity! Hot-bed! hot-bed!"
It has always been a matter of amazement to me that Lady Holland should have been allowed to ride rough-shod over society, as she did for so long, with such complete impunity. To be sure, in society, well-bred persons are always at the mercy of ill-bred ones, who have an immense advantage over everybody who shrinks from turning a social gathering into closed lists for the exchange of impertinences; and people gave way to Lady Holland's domineering rudeness for the sake of their hosts and fellow-guests, and spared her out of consideration for them. Another reason for the toleration shown Lady Holland was the universal esteem and affectionate respect felt for her husband, whose friends accepted her and her peculiarities for his sake, and could certainly have given no stronger proof of their regard for him.
The most powerful inducement to patience, however, to the London society upon which Lady Holland habitually trampled, was the immense attraction of her house and of the people who frequented it. Holland House was, for a series of years, the most brilliant, charming, and altogether delightful social resort. Beautiful, comfortable, elegant, picturesque,—an ideal house, full of exquisite objects and interesting associations, where persons the most distinguished for birth, position, mental accomplishments, and intellectual gifts, met in a social atmosphere of the highest cultivation and the greatest refinement,—the most perfect civilization could produce nothing more perfect in the way of enjoyment than the intercourse of that delightful mansion. As Lady Tankerville pathetically exclaimed on Lady Holland's death, "Ah! poore, deare Lady 'Olland! what shall we do? It was such a pleasant 'ouse!"—admission to which was, to most of its frequenters, well worth some toleration of its mistress's brusqueries.
LADY HOLLAND.If, as a friend of mine once assured me (a well-born, well-bred man of the best English society), it was quite well worth while to "eat a little dirt" to get theentréeof Stafford House, I incline to think the spoonfuls of dirt Lady Holland occasionally administered to her friends were accepted by them as the equivalent for the delights of her "pleasant 'ouse"; and that I did not think so, and had no desire to go there upon those terms, was, I imagine, the only thing that excited Lady Holland's curiosity about me, or her desire to have me for her guest. She complained to Charles Greville that I would not let her become acquainted with me, and twice after our first unavailing meeting at Rogers's, made him ask me to meet her again: each time, however, with no happier result.
The first time, after making herself generally obnoxious at dinner, she at length provoked Rogers, who, the conversation having fallen upon the subject of beautiful hair, and Lady Holland saying, "Why, Rogers, only a few years ago, I had such a head of hair that I could hide myself in it, and I've lost it all," merely answered, "What a pity!"—but with such a tone that an exultant giggle ran round the table at her expense.
After dinner, when the unfortunate female members of the party had to encounter Lady Holland unprotected, she singled out one of the ladies of the Baring family, to whom, however, she evidently meant to be particularly gracious; not, I think, without some intention of also pleasing me by her patronizing laudation of American people and American things; winding up with, "You know, my dear, we are Americans." The young Baring lady, who may or may not have been as familiar as I was with the Bingham and Baring alliances of early times in Philadelphia, merely raised her eyebrows, and said, "Indeed!" while I kept my lips close and breathed no syllable of Longfellow's house near Boston, which had been not only Washington's temporary abode, but the residence, in colonial days, of the Vassalls, to whom Lady Holland belonged, and where Longfellow showed me one day an iron plate at the back of one of the fire-places, with the rebus, the punning arms (Armoiries parlantes) of the Vassall family: a vase with a sun above it,Vas Sol.
Je suis méchante, machére, as Madame de Sévigné wrote to her daughter;et cela m'a fait plaisir, to suppress the nice little anecdote which might have helped Lady Holland on so pleasantly just at that juncture.
But, holding one's tongue because one chooses, and being compelledto hold one's tongue by somebody else, is quite a different thing; and I am not sure that the main reason of my dislike to Lady Holland is not that I held my tongue to "spite her" during the whole course of the last dinner-party to which Rogers invited me to meet her. The party consisted of fewer men than women, and Lady —— and myself agreed to take each other down to dinner, which we did. Just, however, as we were seating ourselves, Lady Holland called out from the opposite side of the table, "No, no, ladies, I can't allow that; I must have Mrs. Butler by me, if you please." Thus challenged, I could not, without making a scene with Lady Holland, and beginning the poet's banquet with a shock to everybody present, refuse her very dictatorial behest; and therefore I left my friendly neighbor, Lady ——, and went round to the place assigned me by the imperious autocratess of the dinner-table: between herself and Dr. Allen ("the gentle infidel," "Lady Holland's atheist," as he was familiarly called by her familiars).
But though one man may take the mare to the water, no given number of men can make her drink; so, having accepted my place, I determined my complaisance should end there, and, in spite of all Lady Holland's conversational efforts, and her final exclamation, "Allen! do get Mrs. Butler to talk! Wereally mustmake her talk!" I held my peace, and kept the peace, which I could have done upon no other conditions; but the unnatural and unwholesome effort disagreed with me so dreadfully, that I have a return of dyspepsia whenever I think of it, which I think justifies me in my dislike of Lady Holland.... I do not feel inclined to attribute to any motive but a kindly one, the attention Lady Holland showed my father during a severe indisposition of his, not long after this; though, upon her driving to his door one day with some peculiarly delicate jelly she had had made for him, Frederick Byng (Poodle, as he was always called by his intimates, on account of his absurd resemblance to a dog of that species), seeing the remorseful gratitude on my face as I received her message of inquiry after my father, exclaimed, "Now, she's done it! now, she's won it! now, she's got you, and you'll go to Holland House!" "No, I won't," said I, "but I'll go down to the carriage, and thank her!" which I immediately did, without stopping to put a bonnet on my head. Lady Holland was held, by those who knew her, to be a warm and constant friend, and had always been cordially kind to my father and my brother John.
LADY MORLEY.After Lord Holland's death she left Holland House, and took up her abode in South Street near the Park. One morning, when I was callingon Lady Charlotte Lindsay, Lady Morley came in, and being reproached by Lady Charlotte for not having come to a party at her house on the previous evening, in which reproach I joined, having been also a loser by her absence from that same party, "Couldn't," said the lively lady, "for I was spending the evening with the pleasantest, most amiable, gentlest-mannered, sweetest-tempered, and most charming woman in all London—Lady Holland!" A conversation then ensued, in which certainly little quarter was shown to the ill qualities of the former mistress of Holland House. Among several curious instances of her unaccountably unamiable conduct to some of even Lord Holland's dearest friends, who, for his sake, opened their houses to her, allowed her to come thither, bespeaking her own rooms—her own company, who she would meet and who she would bring, and in every way consulting her pleasure and convenience, as was invariably the case on the occasion of her visits to Panshanger and Woburn,—Lady Morley said that Landseer had told her, that he was walking one day by the side of Lady Holland's wheel-chair, in the grounds of Holland House, and, stopping at a particularly pretty spot, had said, "Oh, Lady Holland! this is the part of your place of which the Duchess of Bedford has such a charming view from her house on the hill above." "Is it?" said Lady Holland; and immediately gave orders that the paling-fence round that part of her grounds should be raised so as to cut off the Duchess's view into them.
Upon my venturing to express my surprise that anybody should go to the house of a person of whom they told such anecdotes, Lady Morley replied, "She is the only woman in the world of whom one does tell such things and yet goes to see her. She is the most miserable woman in England; she is entirely alone now, and she cannot bear to be alone, and, for his sake who was the dearest and most excellent and amiable creature that ever breathed, one goes on going to her, as I shall till she or I die." But what a description of the last days of the mistress of Holland House!
Sidney Smith, with whom I had become well acquainted when I wrote the letter to Lady Dacre in which I mention him, used to amuse himself, and occasionally some of my other friends, by teasing me on the subject of what he called my hallucination with regard to my having married in America. He never allowed any allusion to the circumstance without the most comical expressions of regret for this, as he called it, curious form of monomania. On the occasion to which I refer in this letter, he and Mrs. Smith had met some friends at dinner at our house, and I was taking leave of them, previous tomy departure for Liverpool, when he exclaimed, "Now do, my dear child, be persuaded to give up this extraordinary delusion; let it, I beg, be recorded of us both, that this pleasing and intelligent young lady labored under the singular and distressingly insane idea that she had contracted a marriage with an American; from which painful hallucination she was eventually delivered by the friendly exhortations of a learned and pious divine, the Rev. Sydney Smith." Everybody round us was in fits of laughter, as he affectionately held my hand, and thus paternally admonished me. I held up my left hand with its wedding-ring, and began, "Oh, but the baby!" when the ludicrous look with which my reverend tormentor received this overwhelming testimony of mine, threw the whole company into convulsions, and nothing was heard throughout the room but sighs and sobs of exhaustion, and faint ejaculations and cries for mercy, while everybody was wiping tears of laughter from their eyes. As for me, I covered up my face, and very nearly went into hysterics.
The special and reportable sallies of Sydney Smith have been, of course, often repeated, but the fanciful fun and inexhaustible humorous drollery of his conversation among his intimates can never be adequately rendered or reproduced. He bubbled over with mirth, of which his own enjoyment formed an irresistible element, he shook, and his eyes glistened at his own ludicrous ideas, as they dawned upon his brain; and it would be impossible to convey the faintest idea of the genial humor of his habitual talk by merely repeating separate witticisms and repartees.
On that same evening, at my father's house, the comparative cheapness of living abroad and in England having been discussed, Sydney Smith declared that, for his part, he had never found foreign quarters so much more reasonable than home ones, or foreign hotels less exorbitant in their charges. "I know I never could live under fifty pounds a week," said he. "Oh, but how did you live?" was the next question. "Why, as a canon should live," proudly retorted he; "and they charged me as enemy's ordnance."
A question having arisen one evening at Miss Berry's as to the welcome Lady Sale would receive in London society after her husband's heroic conduct, and her heroic participation in it, during the Afghan war, Miss Berry, who, for some reason or other, did not admire Lady Sale as much as everybody else did, said she should not ask her to come to her house. "Oh, yes! pooh! pooh! you will," exclaimed Sydney Smith; "you'll have her, he'll have her, they'll have her, we'll have her. She'll be Sale by auction!" Later on thatsame evening, it being asked what Lord Dalhousie would get for his successful exploit in carrying of the gates of some Indian town, "Why," cried Lady Morley, "he will be created Duke Samson Afghanistes." It was pleasant living among people who talked such nonsense as that.
A party having been made to go and see the Boa Constrictor soon after its first arrival at the Zoölogical Gardens, Sydney Smith, who was to have been there, failed to come; and, questioned at dinner why he had not done so, said, "Because I was detained by the Bore Contradictor—Hallam"—whose propensity to controvert people's propositions was a subject of irritation to some of his friends, less retentive of memory and accurate in statement than himself.
Sydney Smith, not unnaturally, preferred conversation to music; and at a musical party one evening, as he was stealing on tip-toe from the concert-room to one more remote from the performance, I held up my finger at him, when he whispered, "My dear, it's all right. You keep with the dilettanti; I go with the talkettanti." Afterwards, upon my expostulating with him, and telling him that by such habits he was running a risk of being called to order on some future eternal day with "Angel Sydney Smith, hush!" if he did not learn to endure music better, he replied, "Oh, no, no! I'm cultivating a judicious second expressly for those occasions."
Of his lamentations for the "flashes of silence" which, he said, at one time made Macaulay's intercourse possible, one has heard; but when he was so ill that all his friends were full of anxiety about him, M——, having called to see him, and affectionately asking what sort of night he had passed, Sydney Smith replied, "Oh, horrid, horrid, my dear fellow! I dreamt I was chained to a rock and being talked to death by Harriet Martineau and Macaulay."
ROGERS.Rogers's keen-edged wit seemed to cut his lips as he uttered it; Sydney Smith's was without sting or edge or venomous point of malice, and his genial humor was really the overflowing of a kindly heart.
Rogers's helpful benevolence and noble generosity to poor artists, poor authors, and all distressed whom he could serve or succor, was unbounded; he certainly had the kindest heart and the unkindest tongue of any one I ever knew. His benefits remind me of a comical story my dear friend Harness once told me, of a poor woman at whose lamentations over her various hardships one of his curates was remonstrating, "Oh, come, come now, my good woman, you must allow that Providence has been, upon the whole, very good to you." "So He'ave, sir; so He 'ave, mostly. I don't deny it; but I sometimes think He 'ave taken it out in corns." I think Rogers took out his benevolence, in some directions, in the corns he inflicted, or, at any rate, trod upon, in others.
Mr. Rogers's inveterate tongue-gall was like an irresistible impulse, and he certainly bestowed it occasionally, without the least provocation, upon persons whom he professed to like. He was habitually kind to me, and declared he was fond of me. One evening (just after the publication of my stupid drama, "The Star of Seville"), he met me with a malignant grin, and the exclamation, "Ah, I've just been reading your play. So nice! young poetry!"—with a diabolicaldigof emphasis on the "young." "Now, Mr. Rogers," said I, "what did I do to deserve that you should say that to me?" I do not know whether this appeal disarmed him, but his only answer was to take me affectionately by the chin, much as if he had been my father. When I told my sister of this, she, who was a thousand times quicker-witted than I, said, "Why didn't you tell him that young poetry was better than old?"
Walking one day in the Green Park, I met Mr. Rogers and Wordsworth, who took me between them, and I continued my walk in great glory and exultation of spirit, listening to Rogers, and hearing Wordsworth,—the gentle rill of the one speech broken into and interrupted by sudden loud splashes of the other; when Rogers, who had vainly been trying to tell some anecdote, pathetically exclaimed, "He won't let me tell my story!" I immediately stopped, and so did Wordsworth, and during this halt Rogers finished his recital. Presently afterwards, Wordsworth having left us, Rogers told me that he (Mr. Wordsworth), in a visit he had been lately paying at Althorpe, was found daily in the magnificent library, but never without a volume of his own poetry in his hand. Years after this, when I used to go and sit with Mr. Rogers, I never asked him what I should read to him without his putting into my hands his own poems, which always lay by him on his table.
SYDNEY SMITH.A comical instance of the rivalry of wits (surely as keen as that of beauties) occurred one day when Mr. Rogers had been calling on me and speaking of that universal social favorite, Lady Morley, had said, "There is but one voice against her in all England, and that is her own." (A musical voice was the only charm wanting to Lady Morley's delightful conversation.) I was enchanted with this pretty and appropriate epigram, so unlike in its tone to Mr. Rogers's usualfriendlycomments; and, very soon after he left me, Sydney Smithcoming in, I told him how clever and how pleasant a remark the "departed" poet (Sydney Smith often spoke of Rogers as dead, on account of his cadaverous complexion) had made on Lady Morley's voice. "He never said it," exclaimed my second illustrious visitor. "But he did, Mr. Smith, to me, in this room, not half an hour ago." "He nevermadeit; it isn't his, it isn't a bit like him." To all which I could only repeat that, nevertheless, hehadsaid it, and that, whether he made it or not, it was extremely well made. Presently Sydney Smith went away. I was living in upper Grosvenor Street, close to Park Lane; and he in Green Street, in the near neighborhood. But I believe he must have run from my house to his own, so short was the interval of time, before I received the following note: "Dans toute l'Angleterre il n'y a qu'une voix contre moi, et c'est la mienne." Then followed the signature of a French lady of the eighteenth century, and these words: "What a dear, innocent, confiding, credulous creature you are! and how youdolove Rogers!
"Sydney Smith."
When I was leaving England, I received two most kind and affectionate letters from him, bidding me farewell, and exhorting me, in a most comical and yet pathetic manner, to be courageous and of good cheer in returning to America. One of these epistles ended thus: "Don't forget me, whatever you do; talk of me sometimes, call me Butler's Hudibras, and believe me always.
"Affectionately yours,
"Sydney Smith."]
Liverpool, Monday, September 11th, 1837.
Here we are again, dearest Harriet, returned from our ship, after a wretched day and night spent on board of her most unnecessarily. When we reached the quay yesterday morning, we saw the vessel lying under close-reefed sails; the favorable wind had died away, and the captain, whom we found standing on the wharf, said that, it being Sunday morning, he did not know how he should get a steamboat to tow us out. All this seemed to me very much like not sailing, and I begged not to go on board; at all events, I proposed, if we did not sail, that we should return to shore, and received a promise that we certainly should do so; so we went off in a small boat to the ship. She is crowded to excess, and the greater proportion of passengers are emigrant women and children.... I busied myself in stowing away everything in our state-room, and removing the upper berth so as to secure a little more breathingspace. I even was guilty of the illicit proceeding—committed the outrage, in fact—of endeavoring to break one of my bull's-eyes, preferring being drenched to dry suffocation in foul air; but my utmost violence, even assisted with an iron rod, was ineffectual, and I had to give up breaking that window as a bad job. I found Margery's state-room one chaos of confusion, she at the same time protesting that everything was as tidily disposed of as possible; so I had to stand by and show her where to put every individual article, and having cleared the small space of the heap of superfluous things with which it was crammed, and removed the upper berth, I left it to her option whether she or baby should occupy the floor at night.
At about half-past ten the captain came on board to say that we should not sail then, but if the wind grew fair, wemight perhapssail in the afternoon. He then took himself off the vessel, the wind was fast veering to dead ahead, ... and, with an aching heart and head, I remained in my berth all day long. In the night a perfect gale arose, the ship dragged her anchor for two miles, and we had thus much consolation that, had we put to sea, we should have encountered a violent storm, and, in all probability been driven back into the Mersey. This morning the wind was still contrary, and so we at length exerted ourselves to return to shore. Had we done so yesterday in good time—or, rather, not gone on board at all, you and I might have spent two more days together, and the baby and myself been spared considerable misery. But lamenting cures nothing; ... but I wish we never had left the quay yesterday morning, for everything showed against the probability of our sailing, and so here we are back in our old quarters at the Star and Garter, and you are gone.
We have taken places at the theater for this evening, to see Macready in "Macbeth." The Captain says we are to sail to-morrow morning, but I shall do my utmost this time to avoid going on board except in his company; and then, I think, we shall perhaps have some chance of not spending another day in vain in our sea-prison.
Ever your affectionate,
F. A. B.
[The foregoing letter gives some idea of the difference between crossing from England to the United States in those days, and in these; when a telegram bears the defiance to fate of this message: "We sail in theRussiaon the 3d; have dinner for us at the Adelphi on the 11th."]
[The foregoing letter gives some idea of the difference between crossing from England to the United States in those days, and in these; when a telegram bears the defiance to fate of this message: "We sail in theRussiaon the 3d; have dinner for us at the Adelphi on the 11th."]
Philadelphia, Sunday, October 29th, 1837.
My Dearest Harriet,
We landed in New York, ten days ago,i.e., on Friday, the 20th October; and had we come on immediately hither, your letter would have been just in time to greet me on my arrival here; but our passage was of thirty-seven days, stormy as well as tedious, and I was so ill that I did not leave my bed six times during the crossing; the consequence was, that on landing I looked more like a ghost than a living creature, and was so reduced in strength as hardly to be able to stand, so we remained in New York a few days, till I was able to travel.... Our fellow-passengers, the women, I mean, were rather vulgar, commonplace people, with whom I should not have had much sympathy, had I been well. As it was, I saw but little of them, and may consider that one of the counterbalancing advantages of having suffered so much.
AN ENERGETIC MAN.One of them was in circumstances which interested me a good deal, though there was little in herself to do so. Her husband was a Staffordshire potter, and had gone to the United States to establish a pottery there; to begin the building up of a large concern, and lay the foundation for probable future wealth and prosperity. He had been gone two years, and she was now going out to join him with their four children. In his summons to her after this long separation, he told her that all had prospered with him, that he had bought a large tract of land, found excellent soil, water, and means of every description for his manufacturing purposes, obtained a patent, and established his business, and was every way likely to thrive and be successful.
What hope, what energy, what enterprise, what industry, in but two years of one human existence! What a world of doubt, of distressful anxiety and misgiving in the heart of the woman, left to patient expectation, to prayerful, tearful hopes and fears! What trust in man and faith in God during those two years! And now, with her children, she was coming to rejoin her helpmate, and begin life all over again, with him and them, in a strange country, in the midst of strangers, with everything strange about her. I lay thinking with much sympathy of this poor woman and her feelings, during my miserable confinement to my berth through that dismal voyage. She was an uneducated person, of the lower middle class, and not in herself interesting: though I do not know why I say that, when I was deeply interested about her, and I do not know that any creature endowed with a heart and soul can fail to be an object of interest in some way or other; and human existence, with all its marvelous developments,going on round one, must always furnish matter for admiration, pity, or sympathy. Moreover, this woman was carrying out with her the wives of several of her husband's workmen, who had accompanied him out on his experimental voyage; and, being settled in his employment, had got their master's wife to bring their partners out to them. Think what a meeting for all these poor people, dear Harriet, in this little hive of English industry and energy in the far west, the fertile wildernesses of Indiana! How often I thought of the fears and misgivings of these poor women in the steerage, when our progress was delayed by tempestuous, contrary winds, when the heavy seas leaped over our laboring vessel's sides, and when, during a violent thunderstorm, our masts were tipped with lambent fire, which played round them like a halo of destruction.
All this while I have forgotten to tell you why I have not written sooner; and I suppose my accusation is yet bitter in your heart while you are reading this. I told you on my first page I was obliged to stay in New York to recruit my strength; the first time I went out, after walking about a quarter of a mile, I was obliged to sit down and rest, for half an hour, in a public garden, before I could crawl back again to the hotel.
On Monday, when I was a little better, we came on here. I am every day now expecting to be fetched to Harrisburg.... A woman should be her husband's friend, his best and dearest friend, as he should be hers: but friendship is a relation of equality, in which the same perfect respect for each other's liberty is exercised on both sides; and that sort of marriage, if it exists at all anywhere, is, I suspect, very uncommon everywhere. Moreover, I am not sure that marriage ever is, can be, or ought to be, such an equality; for even "When two men ride on one horse," you know, etc. In the relation of friendship there is perfect freedom, and an undoubted claim on each side to be neither dependent on, nor controlled by, each other's will. In the relation of marriage this is impossible; and therefore certainly marriage is not friendship.... A woman should, I think, love her husband better than anything on earth except her own soul; which, I think, a man should respect above everything on earth but his own soul: and there, my dear, is a very pretty puzzle for you, which a good many people have failed to solve. It is, indeed, a pretty difficult problem; and perhaps you have chosen, if not the wiser and better, at any rate the easier and safer part.
God bless you, dear friend.
Ever affectionately yours,
F. A. B.
Harrisburg, Friday, November 14th, 1837.
THE DAILY SAVING OF THE WORLD.Thank you, dearest Harriet, for your epitome of the history of the New Testament. I have read the same things, in greater detail, more than once.... I have repeatedly gone over accounts of the history and authenticity of the Gospel narratives; but I have done so as a duty, and in order to be able to give to others some reason for the faith that is in me,—not really because I desired the knowledge for its own sake; and therefore my memory had gradually lost its hold of what I had taken into my mind, chiefly for the satisfaction of others, to enable me to make sufficient answers upon a subject whose best evidence of truth seems to me to reside in itself, and to be altogether out of the region of logic.... Christ received the last and perfect revelation of moral truth, brought it into the world, preached it by his practice, and bore witness to it by his death; and since he came, every holy life and death, in those portions of the globe where his name is known, has been moulded upon his teaching and example; and those individuals least inclined to acknowledge it have unconsciously imbibed the influence of the inspiration which he breathed into the soul of humanity. He has saved, and is daily and hourly saving, the world: and so far from imagining the possibility of any end to the work he has begun, or any superseding of his revelation by any other, it appears to me that civilized societies and nations calling themselves Christian have hardly yet begun to comprehend, believe, or adopt his teaching; under the influence of which I look for the regeneration of the race through the coming ages: it will extend above and beyond all discoveries of science and developments of knowledge, and more and more approve itself the only moral and spiritual theory that will at once carry forward and keep pace with the progress of humanity....
If, by telling you that my mind dwelt more upon religious subjects now than formerly, I have led you to suppose that I ever investigate or ponder creeds, theologies, dogmas, or systems of faith, I have given you a false impression. But I live alone—much alone bodily, more alone mentally; I have no intimates, no society, no intellectual intercourse whatever; and I give myself up, as I never did in my life before, to mere musing, reverie, and speculation—I cannot dignify the process by the title of thought or contemplation.
My mind is much less active than it was: I read less, write less, study little, plan no work, and accomplish none. It is curious how, immediately upon my return to England, my mind seemed to flow back into its former channels; how my thoughts wereroused and awakened; and how my imagination revived, and with what ease and rapidity I wrote, almostcurrente calamo, the only thing worth anything that I ever have written, my "English Tragedy." Here, all things tend to check any utterance of my thoughts, spoken or written; and while in England I could not find time enough to write, I here have no desire to do so, and lament my inability to force myself to mental exertion as a mere occupation and fill-time:I dare not say kill-time, "for that would be a sin."... I ride and walk, and pass my days alone; and lacking converse with others, have become much addicted to desultory thinking (almost as bad a thing as desultory reading), which is indeed no thinking at all. Real thinking is what Cleopatra calls "sweating labor," to which the hewing of wood and drawing of water is a joke; but this I carefully avoid, knowing my own incapacity for it; so I dawdle about my mind, and, naturally, arrive at few conclusions; and among those few, no doubt, many false ones....
We are established here during the rest of the Session of the Convention, which is a gain to me, as here I get companionship. There is a recess of a couple of hours, too, in the middle of the day, which the members avail themselves of for their very early dinner, but which we employ, and I enjoy immensely, in riding about the neighboring country. It is not thought expedient that I should ride alone about this strange region, on a strange horse, so I am escorted, at which I rejoice for all sakes, as everybody's health here would be the better for more exercise than they take.
This place, which is the seat of Government of the State of Pennsylvania, is beautifully situated in a valley locked round by purple highlands, through which runs the Susquehanna; in some parts broad, bright, rapid, shallow, brawling, and broken by picturesque reefs of rock; in others, deep and placid, bearing on its bosom beautiful wood-crowned islands, whose autumnal foliage, through which the mellow sunshine is now pouring, gives them the appearance of fairyland planted with golden woods.
The beautiful river is bountifully provided, too, with a most admirable species of trout, weighing from two to four pounds, silvery white without, and pale pink within (just the complexion of a fresh mushroom), and very excellent to eat, as well as lovely to behold.
Many of the members of the Convention have been kind enough to come and see me, and I have attended one of their debates. They are for the most part uncultivated men, unlettered and ungrammared; and those among them who are the best educated, or rather the least ignorant, carry their smallloremuch asa school-boy carries his, stiffly, awkwardly, and ostentatiously: an Eton sixth-form lad would beat any one of them in classical scholarship. But though in point of intellectual acquirement, I do not find much here to excite my sympathy, there is abundant matter of interest, as well as much that is curious and amusing to me in their intercourse. The shrewdness, the sound sense, the original observations, and the experience of life of some of these men are striking and remarkable. Though not one of them can speak grammatically, they all speak fluently, boldly, readily, easily, without effort or hesitation. There is, of course, among them, the usual proportion of well, and less well, witted individuals; and perhaps the contrast is the more apparent because the education has here covered no natural deficiencies and developed no natural gifts; so that there is not the usual superficial, civilized level produced by a common intellectual training. The questions they discuss are often in themselves interesting, though I cannot say that they often treat them in the most interesting manner....
Ever your affectionate,
F. A. B.