Part 16 (1/2)
”W.S.L.”
The last in this series of letters which has reached my hands is altogether undated, but appears by the post-mark to have been written from Bath, 19th July, 1838.
”MY DEAR SIR,--There is one sentence in your letter which shocked me not a little. You say 'The Whigs have not offered you a Deputy Lieutenantcy; so cheap a distinction could not have hurt them. But then you are too proud to ask,' &c. Do you really suppose that I would have accepted it even if it had been offered? No, by G.o.d! I would not accept any distinction even if it were offered by honest men. I will have nothing but what I can take. It is, however, both an injustice and an affront to confer this dignity on low people, who do not possess a fourth of my property, and whose family is as ign.o.ble as Lord Melbourne's own, and not to have offered the same to me. In the eleventh page of the _Letters_ I published after the quelling of Bonaparte are these words: 'I was the first to abjure the party of the Whigs, and shall be the last to abjure the principles. When the leaders had broken all their promises to the nation, had shown their utter incapacity to manage its affairs, and their inclination to crouch before the enemy, I permitted my heart after some struggles to subside and repose in the cool of this reflection--Let them escape.
It is only the French nation that ever dragged such feebleness to the scaffold,' Again, page 35--'Honest men, I confess, have generally in the present times an aversion to the Whig faction, not because it is suitable either to honesty or understanding to prefer the narrow principles of the opposite party, but because in every country lax morals wish to be and are identified with public feeling, and because in our own a few of the very best have been found in an a.s.sociation with the very worst.' Whenever the Tories have deviated from their tenets, they have enlarged their views and exceeded their promises.
The Whigs have always taken an inverse course. Whenever they have come into power, they have previously been obliged to slight those matters, and to temporise with those duties, which they had not the courage either to follow or to renounce.
”And now, my dear sir, to pleasanter matters. I have nothing in the press, and never shall have. I gave Forster all my works, written or to be written. Neither I nor my family shall have anything to do with booksellers. They say a new edition of my _Imaginary Conversations_ is called for. I have sent Forster a dozen or two of fresh ones, but I hope he will not hazard them before my death, and will get a hundred pounds or near it for the whole.
”If ever I attended a public dinner, I should like to have been present at that which the people gave to you. Never let them be quiet until the Church has gone to the devil, its lawful owner, and till something a little like Christianity takes its place. If parsons are to be Lords, it is but right and reasonable that the Queen should be Pope. Indeed, I have no objection to this, but I have to the other.
What a singularity it is that those who profess a belief in Christ do not obey Him, while those who profess it in Mahomet or Moses or Boodh are obedient to their precepts, if not in certain points of morality, in all things else. Carlyle is a vigorous thinker, but a vile writer, worse than Bulwer. I breakfasted in company with him at Milman's.
Macaulay was there, a clever clown, and Moore too, whom I had not seen till then. Between those two Scotchmen he appeared like a glow-worm between two thistles. There were several other folks, literary and half literary, Lord Northampton, &c., &c. I forgot Rogers. Milman has written the two best volumes of poetry we have seen lately; but when Miss Garrow publishes hers I am certain there will be a total eclipse of them. My friend Hare's brother, who married a sister of the impudent c.o.xcomb, Edward Stanley, has bought a house at Torquay, and Hare tells me that unless he goes to Sicily be shall be there in winter. If so, we may meet; but Bath is my dear delight in all seasons. I have been sitting for my picture, and have given it to Mrs.
Paynter. It is admirably executed by Fisher.
”Yours ever,
”W.S.L.”
These letters are all written upon the old-fas.h.i.+oned square sheet of letter paper, some gilt-edged, entirely written over, even to the turned-down ends, and heavily sealed.
Mr. Forster says no word about the Deputy-Lieutenantcy, and Landor's anger and disgust in connection with it. He must necessarily have known all about it, but probably in the exuberance of his material did not think it worth mentioning. But it evidently left almost as painful an impression on Landor's mind as the famous refusal of the Duke of Beaufort to appoint him a justice of the peace.
During the later portion of my life at Florence, and subsequently at Rome, Mr. G.P. Marsh and his very charming wife were among our most valued friends for many years. Marsh was an exception to the prevailing American rule, which for the most part changes their diplomatists with the change of President. He had been United States minister at Constantinople and at Turin before he came to Florence with the Italian monarchy. At Rome he was ”the Dean” of the diplomatic body, and on many occasions various representative duties fell upon him as such which were especially unwelcome to him. The determination of the Great Powers to send amba.s.sadors to the Court of the Quirinal instead of ministers plenipotentiary, as previously, came as a great boon to Mr. Marsh. For as the United States send no amba.s.sadors, his position as longest in office of all the diplomatic body no longer placed him at the head of it.
Mr. Marsh was a man of very large and varied culture. A thorough cla.s.sical scholar and excellent modern linguist, philology was perhaps his most favourite pursuit. He wrote various books, his best I think a very large octavo volume, ent.i.tled not very happily _Man in Nature_.
The subject of it is the modifications and alterations which this planet has undergone at the hands of man. His subject leads him to consider much at large the denudation of mountains, which has caused and is causing such calamitous mischief in Italy and the south of France. He shows very convincingly and interestingly that the destruction of forests causes not only floods in winter and spring, but drought in summer and autumn. And the efforts which have recently been made in Italy to take some steps towards the reclothing of the mountain sides, have in great measure been due to his work, which has been largely circulated in an Italian translation.
The following letter which I select from many received from him, is not without interest. It is dated 30th November, 1867.
”DEAR SIR,--I return you Layard's article, which displays his usual marked ability, and has given me much pleasure as well as instruction.
I should much like to know what are his grounds for believing that 'a satisfactory settlement of this Roman question would have been speedily brought about with the concurrence of the Italian Government and the Liberal party in Rome, and with the tacit consent of the Emperor of the French, had it not been for the untoward enterprise of Garibaldi,' p. 283. I certainly have not the slightest ground for believing any such thing; nor do I understand _to whom_ the settlement referred to would have been 'satisfactory.' Does Mr. Layard suppose that any conceivable arrangement would be satisfactory both to the Papacy and to Italian Liberals out of Rome? The _Government_ of Italy, which changes as often as the moon, might have accepted something which would have satisfied Louis Napoleon, Antonelli, and the three hundred _n.o.bili_ of Rome, who waited at dinner, napkin on arm, on the Antiboini, to whom they gave an entertainment,--but the people?
”I send you one of Ferretti's pamphlets, which please keep. And I enclose in the package two of Tuckerman's books. If you could turn over the leaves of these and say to me in a note that they impress you favourably, and that you are not displeased with his magazine article, I will make him a happy man by sending him the note.
”Very truly yours,
”GEO.P. MARSH.”
I did more than ”turn over the leaves” of the book sent, and did very truly say that they had interested me much. It is rather suggestive to reflect how utterly unintelligible to the present generation must be the term ”Antiboini” in the above letter, without a word of explanation. The highly unpopular and objectionable ”Papal Legion” had been in great part recruited from Antibes, and were hence nicknamed ”Antiboini,” and not, as readers of the present day might fairly imagine, from having been the opponents of any ”boini.”
The personal qualities of Mr. Marsh had obtained for him a great, and I may indeed say, exceptional degree of consideration and regard from his colleagues of the diplomatic body, and from the Italian ministers and political world generally. And I remember one notable instance of the manifestation of this, which I cannot refrain from citing. Mr.
Marsh had written home to his Government some rather trenchantly unfavourable remarks on some portion of the then recent measures of the Italian Ministry. And by some awkward accident or mistake these had found their way into the columns of an American newspaper.
The circ.u.mstances might have given rise to very disagreeable and mischievous complications and results. But the matter was suffered to pa.s.s without any official observation solely from the high personal consideration in which Mr. Marsh was held, not only at the Consulta (the Roman Foreign Office), but at the Quirinal, and in many a Roman salon.