Part 29 (2/2)
LONDON--VISIT TO A RACE-COURSE--GIPSIES--THE PRINCESS VICTORIA--SPLENDID APPEARANCE OF THE ENGLISH n.o.bILITY--A BREAKFAST WITH ELIA AND BRIDGET ELIA--MYSTIFICATION--CHARLES LAMB'S OPINION OF AMERICAN AUTHORS.
I have just returned from _Ascot races_. Ascot Heath, on which the course is laid out, is a high platform of land, beautifully situated on a hill above Windsor Castle, about twenty-five miles from London. I went down with a party of gentlemen in the morning and returned at evening, doing the distance, with relays of horses in something less than three hours. This, one would think, is very fair speed, but we were pa.s.sed continually by the ”bloods” of the road, in comparison with whom we seemed getting on rather at a snail's pace.
The scenery on the way was truly English--one series of finished landscapes, of every variety of combination. Lawns, fancy-cottages, manor-houses, groves, roses and flower-gardens make up England. It surfeits the eye at last. You could not drop a poet out of the clouds upon any part of it I have seen, where, within five minutes' walk, he would not find himself in Paradise.
We flew past Virginia Water and through the sun-flecked shades of Windsor Park, with the speed of the wind. On reaching the Heath, we dashed out of the road, and cutting through fern and brier, our experienced whip put his wheels on the rim of the course, as near the stands as some thousands of carriages arrived before us would permit, and then, cautioning us to take the bearings of our position, lest we should lose him after the race, he took off his horses, and left us to choose our own places.
A thousand red and yellow flags were flying from as many snowy tents in the midst of the green heath; ballad-singers and bands of music were amusing their little audiences in every direction; splendid markees covering gambling-tables, surrounded the winning-post; groups of country people were busy in every bush, eating and singing, and the great stands were piled with row upon row of human heads waiting anxiously for the exhilarating contest.
Soon after we arrived, the King and royal family drove up the course with twenty carriages, and scores of postillions and outriders in red and gold, flying over the turf as majesty flies in no other country; and, immediately after, the bell rang to clear the course for the race. _Such_ horses! The earth seemed to fling them off as they touched it. The lean jockeys, in their party-colored caps and jackets, rode the fine-limbed, slender creatures up and down together, and then returning to the starting-post, off they shot like so many arrows from the bow.
_Whiz!_ you could tell neither color nor shape as they pa.s.sed across the eye. Their swiftness was incredible. A horse of Lord Chesterfield's was rather the favorite; and for the sake of his great-grandfather, I had backed him with my small wager, ”Glaucus is losing,” said some one on the top of a carriage above me, but round they swept again, and I could just see that one glorious creature was doubling the leaps of every other horse, and in a moment Glaucus and Lord Chesterfield had won.
The course between the races is a promenade of some thousands of the best-dressed people in England. I thought I had never seen so many handsome men and women, but particularly _men_. The n.o.bility of this country, unlike every other, is by far the manliest and finest looking cla.s.s of its population. The _contadini_ of Rome, the _lazzaroni_ of Naples, the _paysans_ of France, are incomparably more handsome than their superiors in rank, but it is strikingly different here. A set of more elegant and well-proportioned men than those pointed out to me by my friends as the n.o.blemen on the course, I never saw, except only in Greece. The Albanians are seraphs to look at.
Excitement is hungry, and, after the first race, our party produced their baskets and bottles, and spreading out the cold pie and champaign upon the gra.s.s, between the wheels of the carriages, we drank Lord Chesterfield's health and ate for our own, in an _al fresco_ style worthy of Italy. Two veritable Bohemians, brown, black-eyed gipsies, the models of those I had seen in their wicker tents in Asia, profited by the liberality of the hour, and came in for an upper crust to a pigeon pie, that, to tell the truth, they seemed to appreciate.
Race followed race, but I am not a contributor to the Sporting Magazine, and could not give you their merits in comprehensible terms if I were.
In one of the intervals, I walked under the King's stand, and saw Her Majesty, the Queen, and the young Princess Victoria, very distinctly.
They were listening to a ballad-singer, and leaning over the front of the box with an amused attention, quite as sincere, apparently, as any beggar's in the ring. The Queen is the plainest woman in her dominions, beyond a doubt. The Princess is much better-looking than the pictures of her in the shops, and, for the heir to such a crown as that of England, quite unnecessarily pretty and interesting. She will be sold, poor thing--bartered away by those great dealers in royal hearts, whose grand calculations will not be much consolation to her, if she happens to have a taste of her own.
[The following sketch was written a short time previous to the death of Charles Lamb.]
Invited to breakfast with a gentleman in the temple to meet Charles Lamb and his sister--”Elia and Bridget Elia.” I never in my life had an invitation more to my taste. The essays of Elia are certainly the most charming things in the world, and it has been for the last ten years, my highest compliment to the literary taste of a friend to present him with a copy. Who has not smiled over the humorous description of Mrs. Battle?
Who that has read Elia would not give more to see him than all the other authors of his time put together?
Our host was rather a character. I had brought a letter of introduction to him from Walter Savage Landor, the author of Imaginary Conversations, living at Florence, with a request that he would put me in the way of seeing one or two men about whom I had a curiosity, Lamb more particularly. I could not have been recommended to a better person. Mr. R. is a gentleman who, everybody says, _should have been_ an author, but who never wrote a book. He is a profound German scholar, has travelled much, is the intimate friend of Southey, Coleridge, and Lamb, has breakfasted with Goethe, travelled with Wordsworth through France and Italy, and spends part of every summer with him, and knows everything and everybody that is distinguished--in short, is, in his bachelor's chambers in the temple, the friendly nucleus of a great part of the talent of England.
I arrived a half hour before Lamb, and had time to learn some of his peculiarities. He lives a little out of London, and is very much of an invalid. Some family circ.u.mstances have tended to depress him very much of late years, and unless excited by convivial intercourse, he scarce shows a trace of what he was.
He was very much pleased with the American reprint of his Elia, though it contains several things which are not his--written so in his style, however, that it is scarce a wonder the editor should mistake them. If I remember right, they were ”Valentine's Day,” the ”Nuns of Caverswell,” and ”Twelfth Night.” He is excessively given to mystifying his friends, and is never so delighted as when he has persuaded some one into the belief of one of his grave inventions. His amusing biographical sketch of Liston was in this vein, and there was no doubt in anybody's mind that it was authentic, and written in perfectly good faith. Liston was highly enraged with it, and Lamb was delighted in proportion.
There was a rap at the door at last, and enter a gentleman in black small-clothes and gaiters, short and very slight in his person, his head set on his shoulders with a thoughtful, forward bent, his hair just sprinkled with gray, a beautiful, deep-set eye, aquiline nose, and a very indescribable mouth.
Whether it expressed most humor or feeling, good nature or a kind of whimsical peevishness, or twenty other things which pa.s.sed over it by turns, I can not in the least be certain.
His sister, whose literary reputation is a.s.sociated very closely with her brother's, and who, as the original of ”Bridget Elia,” is a kind of object for literary affection, came in after him. She is a small, bent figure, evidently a victim to illness, and hears with difficulty. Her face has been, I should think, a fine and handsome one, and her bright gray eye is still full of intelligence and fire. They both seemed quite at home in our friend's chambers, and as there was to be no one else, we immediately drew round the breakfast table. I had set a large arm chair for Miss Lamb. ”Don't take it, Mary,” said Lamb, pulling it away from her very gravely, ”it appears as if you were going to have a tooth drawn.”
The conversation was very local. Our host and his guest had not met for some weeks, and they had a great deal to say of their mutual friends. Perhaps in this way, however, I saw more of the author, for his manner of speaking of them and the quaint humor with which he complained of one, and spoke well of another was so in the vein of his inimitable writings, that I could have fancied myself listening to an audible composition of a new Elia. Nothing could be more delightful than the kindness and affection between the brother and the sister, though Lamb was continually taking advantage of her deafness to mystify her with the most singular gravity upon every topic that was started. ”Poor Mary!” said he, ”she hears all of an epigram but the point.” ”What are you saying of me, Charles?” she asked. ”Mr. Willis,” said he, raising his voice, ”admires _your Confessions of a Drunkard_ very much, and I was saying that it was no merit of yours, that you understood the subject.” We had been speaking of this admirable essay (which is his own), half an hour before.
The conversation turned upon literature after a while, and our host, the templar, could not express himself strongly enough in admiration of Webster's speeches, which he said were exciting the greatest attention among the politicians and lawyers of England. Lamb said, ”I don't know much of American authors. Mary, there, devours Cooper's novels with a ravenous appet.i.te, with which I have no sympathy. The only American book I ever read twice, was the 'Journal of Edward Woolman,' a quaker preacher and tailor, whose character is one of the finest I ever met with. He tells a story or two about negro slaves that brought the tears into my eyes. I can read no prose now, though Hazlitt sometimes, to be sure--but then Hazlitt is worth all modern prose writers put together.”
Mr. R. spoke of buying a book of Lamb's, a few days before, and I mentioned my having bought a copy of Elia the last day I was in America, to send as a parting gift to one of the most lovely and talented women in our country.
”What did you give for it?” said Lamb.
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