Part 30 (1/2)
”About seven and sixpence.”
”Permit me to pay you that,” said he, and with the utmost earnestness he counted out the money upon the table.
”I never yet wrote anything that would sell,” he continued. ”I am the publisher's ruin. My last poem won't sell a copy. Have you seen it, Mr. Willis?”
I had not.
”It's only eighteen pence, and I'll give you sixpence toward it;” and he described to me where I should find it sticking up in a shop-window in the Strand.
Lamb ate nothing, and complained in a querulous tone of the veal pie. There was a kind of potted fish (of which I forget the name at this moment), which he had expected our friend would procure for him. He inquired whether there was not a morsel left perhaps in the bottom of the last pot. Mr. R. was not sure.
”Send and see,” said Lamb, ”and if the pot has been cleaned, bring me the cover. I think the sight of it would do me good.”
The cover was brought, upon which there was a picture of the fish. Lamb kissed it with a reproachful look at his friend, and then left the table and began to wander round the room with a broken, uncertain step, as if he almost forgot to put one leg before the other. His sister rose after a while, and commenced walking up and down, very much in the same manner, on the opposite side of the table, and in the course of half an hour they took their leave.
To any one who loves the writings of Charles Lamb with but half my own enthusiasm, even these little particulars of an hour pa.s.sed in his company, will have an interest. To him who does not, they will seem dull and idle. Wreck as he certainly is, and must be, however, of what he was, I would rather have seen him for that single hour, than the hundred and one sights of London put together.
LETTER LXXI.
DINNER AT LADY BLESSINGTON'S--BULWER, D'ISRAELI, PROCTER, FONBLANC, ETC.--ECCENTRICITIES OF BECKFORD, AUTHOR OF VATHEK--D'ISRAELI'S EXTRAORDINARY TALENT AT DESCRIPTION.
Dined at Lady Blessington's, in company with several authors, three or four n.o.blemen, and a clever exquisite or two. The authors were Bulwer, the novelist, and his brother, the statist; Procter (better known as Barry Cornwall), D'Israeli, the author of Vivian Grey; and Fonblanc, of the Examiner. The princ.i.p.al n.o.bleman was Lord Durham, and the princ.i.p.al exquisite (though the word scarce applies to the magnificent scale on which nature has made him, and on which he makes himself), was Count D'Orsay. There were plates for twelve.
I had never seen Procter, and, with my pa.s.sionate love for his poetry, he was the person at table of the most interest to me. He came late, and as twilight was just darkening the drawing-room, I could only see that a small man followed the announcement, with a remarkably timid manner, and a very white forehead.
D'Israeli had arrived before me, and sat in the deep window, looking out upon Hyde Park, with the last rays of daylight reflected from the gorgeous gold flowers of a splendidly embroidered waistcoat. Patent leather pumps, a white stick, with a black cord and ta.s.sel, and a quant.i.ty of chains about his neck and pockets, served to make him, even in the dim light, rather a conspicuous object.
Bulwer was very badly dressed, as usual, and wore a flashy waistcoat of the same description as D'Israeli's. Count D'Orsay was very splendid, but very undefinable. He seemed showily dressed till you looked to particulars, and then it seemed only a simple thing, well fitted to a very magnificent person. Lord Albert Conyngham was a dandy of common materials; and my Lord Durham, though he looked a young man, if he pa.s.sed for a lord at all in America, would pa.s.s for a very ill-dressed one.
For Lady Blessington, she is one of the most handsome, and, quite the best-dressed woman in London; and, without farther description, I trust the readers of the Mirror will have little difficulty in imagining a scene that, taking a wild American into the account, was made up of rather various material.
The blaze of lamps on the dinner table was very favorable to my curiosity, and as Procter and D'Israeli sat directly opposite me, I studied their faces to advantage. Barry Cornwall's forehead and eye are all that would strike you in his features. His brows are heavy; and his eye, deeply sunk, has a quick, restless fire, that would have arrested my attention, I think, had I not known he was a poet. His voice has the huskiness and elevation of a man more accustomed to think than converse, and it was never heard except to give a brief and very condensed opinion, or an ill.u.s.tration, admirably to the point, of the subject under discussion. He evidently felt that he was only an observer in the party.
D'Israeli has one of the most remarkable faces I ever saw. He is lividly pale, and but for the energy of his action and the strength of his lungs, would seem a victim to consumption. His eye is black as Erebus, and has the most mocking and lying-in-wait sort of expression conceivable. His mouth is alive with a kind of working and impatient nervousness, and when he has burst forth, as he does constantly, with a particularly successful cataract of expression, it a.s.sumes a curl of triumphant scorn that would be worthy of a Mephistopheles. His hair is as extraordinary as his taste in waistcoats. A thick heavy ma.s.s of jet black ringlets falls over his left cheek almost to his collarless stock, while on the right temple it is parted and put away with the smooth carefulness of a girl's, and s.h.i.+nes most unctiously,
”With thy incomparable oil, Maca.s.sar!”
The anxieties of the first course, as usual, kept every mouth occupied for a while, and then the dandies led off with a discussion of Count D'Orsay's rifle match (he is the best rifle-shot in England), and various matters as uninteresting to transatlantic readers. The new poem, Philip Van Artevald's, came up after a while, and was very much over-praised (_me judice_). Bulwer said, that as the author was the principle writer for the Quarterly Review, it was a pity it was first praised in that periodical, and praised so unqualifiedly. Procter said nothing about it, and I respected his silence; for, as a poet, he must have felt the poverty of the poem, and was probably unwilling to attack a new aspirant in his laurels.
The next book discussed was Beckford's Italy, or rather the next author, for the _writer_ of Vathek is more original, and more talked of than his books, and just now occupies much of the attention of London. Mr. Beckford has been all his life enormously rich, has luxuriated in every country with the fancy of a poet, and the refined splendor of a Sybarite, was the admiration of Lord Byron, who visited him at Cintra, was the owner of Fonthill, and, _plus fort encore_, his is one of the oldest families in England. What could such a man attempt that would not be considered extraordinary!
D'Israeli was the only one at table who knew him, and the style in which he gave a sketch of his habits and manners, was worthy of himself. I might as well attempt to gather up the foam of the sea, as to convey an idea of the extraordinary language in which he clothed his description. There were, at least, five words in every sentence that must have been very much astonished at the use they were put to, and yet no others apparently, could so well have conveyed his idea. He talked like a race-horse approaching the winning-post, every muscle in action, and the utmost energy of expression flung out in every burst.
It is a great pity he is not in parliament.[11]
The particulars he gave of Beckford, though stripped of his gorgeous digressions and parentheses, may be interesting. He lives now at Bath, where he has built a house on two sides of the street, connected by a covered bridge _a la Ponte de Sospiri_, at Venice. His servants live on one side, and he and his sole companion on the other. This companion is a hideous dwarf, who imagines himself, or is, a Spanish duke; and Mr. Beckford for many years has supported him in a style befitting his rank, treats him with all the deference due to his t.i.tle, and has, in general, no other society (I should not wonder, myself, if it turned out to be a woman); neither of them is often seen, and when in London, Mr. Beckford is only to be approached through his man of business. If you call, he is not at home. If you would leave a card or address him a note, his servant has strict orders not to take in anything of the kind. At Bath, he has built a high tower, which is a great mystery to the inhabitants. Around the interior, to the very top, it is lined with books, approachable with a light spiral staircase; and in the pavement below, the owner has constructed a double crypt for his own body, and that of his dwarf companion, intending, with a desire for human neighborhood which has not appeared in his life, to leave the library to the city, that all who enjoy it shall pa.s.s over the bodies below.