Part 32 (1/2)
The story sounded very Vivian-Greyish, and everybody laughed at it as a very good invention; but D'Israeli quoted his father as his authority, and it may appear in the Curiosities of Literature--where, however, it will never be so well told, as by the extraordinary creature from whom we had heard it.
_February 22d, 1835._--The excitement in London about the choice of a Speaker is something startling. It took place yesterday, and the party are thunderstruck at the non-election of Sir Manners Sutton. This is a terrible blow upon them, for it was a defeat at the outset; and if they failed in a question where they had the immense personal popularity of the late Speaker to a.s.sist them, what will they do on general questions? The House of Commons was surrounded all day with an excited mob. Lady ---- told me last night that she drove down toward evening, to ascertain the result (Sir C. M. Sutton is her brother-in-law), and the crowd surrounded her carriage, recognizing her as the sister of the tory Speaker, and threatened to tear the coronet from the panels. ”We'll soon put an end to your coronets,”
said a rapscallion in the mob. The tories were so confident of success that Sir Robert Peel gave out cards a week ago, for a soiree to meet Speaker Sutton, on the night of the election. There is a general report in town that the whigs will impeach the Duke of Wellington!
This looks like a revolution, does it not? It is very certain that the Duke and Sir Robert Peel have advised the King to dissolve parliament again, if there is any difficulty in getting on with the government.
The Duke was dining with Lord Aberdeen the other day, when some one at table ventured to wonder, at his accepting a subordinate office in the cabinet he had himself formed. ”If I could serve his majesty better,”
said the patrician soldier, ”I would ride as king's messenger to-morrow!” He certainly is a remarkable old fellow.
Perhaps, however, literary news would interest you more. Bulwer is publis.h.i.+ng in a volume, his papers from the New Monthly. I met him an hour ago in Regent-street, looking what is called in London, ”_uncommon seedy_!” He is either the worst or the best dressed man in London, according to the time of day or night you see him. D'Israeli, the author of Vivian Grey, drives about in an open carriage, with Lady S----, looking more melancholy than usual. The absent baronet, whose place he fills, is about bringing an action against him, which will finish his career, unless he can coin the damages in his brain. Mrs.
Hemans is dying of consumption in Ireland. I have been pa.s.sing a week at a country house, where Miss Jane Porter, Miss Pardoe, and Count Krazinsky (author of the Court of Sigismund), are domiciliated for the present. Miss Porter is one of her own heroines, grown old--a still handsome and n.o.ble wreck of beauty. Miss Pardoe is nineteen, fair-haired, sentimental, and has the smallest feet and is the best waltzer I ever saw, but she is not otherwise pretty. The Polish Count is writing the life of his grandmother, whom I should think he strongly resembled in person. He is an excellent fellow, for all that.
I dined last week with Joanna Baillie, at Hampstead--the most charming old lady I ever saw. To-day I dine with Longman to meet Tom Moore, who is living _incog._ near this Nestor of publishers at Hampstead. Moore is f.a.gging hard on his history of Ireland. I shall give you the particulars of all these things in my letters hereafter.
Poor Elia--my old favorite--is dead. I consider it one of the most fortunate things that ever happened to me, to have seen him. I think I sent you in one of my letters an account of my breakfasting in company with Charles Lamb and his sister (”Bridget Elia”) at the Temple. The exquisite papers on his life and letters in the Athenaeum, are by Barry Cornwall.
Lady Blessington's new book makes a great noise. Living as she does, twelve hours out of the twenty-four, in the midst of the most brilliant and mind-exhausting circle in London, I only wonder how she found the time. Yet it was written in six weeks. Her novels sell for a hundred pounds more than any other author's except Bulwer. Do you know the _real_ prices of books? Bulwer gets _fifteen_ hundred pounds--Lady B. _four_ hundred, Honorable Mrs. Norton _two_ hundred and fifty, Lady Charlotte Bury _two_ hundred, Grattan _three_ hundred and most others below this. D'Israeli can not sell a book _at all_, I hear. Is not that odd? I would give more for one of his novels, than for forty of the common _saleable_ things about town.
The auth.o.r.ess of the powerful book called Two Old Men's Tales, is an old unitarian lady, a Mrs. Marsh. She declares she will never write another book. The other was a glorious one, though!
LETTER LXXV.
LONDON--THE POET MOORE--LAST DAYS OF SIR WALTER SCOTT--MOORE'S OPINION OF O'CONNELL--ANACREON AT THE PIANO--DEATH OF BYRON--A SUPPRESSED ANECDOTE.
I called on Moore with a letter of introduction, and met him at the door of his lodgings. I knew him instantly from the pictures I had seen of him, but was surprised at the diminutiveness of his person. He is much below the middle size, and with his white hat and long chocolate frock-coat, was far from prepossessing in his appearance.
With this material disadvantage, however, his address is gentleman-like to a very marked degree, and, I should think no one could see Moore without conceiving a strong liking for him. As I was to meet him at dinner, I did not detain him. In the moment's conversation that pa.s.sed, he inquired very particularly after Was.h.i.+ngton Irving, expressing for him the warmest friends.h.i.+p, and asked what Cooper was doing.
I was at Lady Blessington's at eight. Moore had not arrived, but the other persons of the party--a Russian count, who spoke all the languages of Europe as well as his own; a Roman banker, whose dynasty is more powerful than the pope's; a clever English n.o.bleman, and the ”observed of all observers,” Count D'Orsay, stood in the window upon the park, killing, as they might, the melancholy twilight half hour preceding dinner.
”Mr. Moore!” cried the footman at the bottom of the staircase, ”Mr.
Moore!” cried the footman at the top. And with his gla.s.s at his eye, stumbling over an ottoman between his near-sightedness and the darkness of the room, enter the poet. Half a glance tells you that he is at home on a carpet. Sliding his little feet up to Lady Blessington (of whom he was a lover when she was sixteen, and to whom some of the sweetest of his songs were written), he made his compliments, with a gayety and an ease combined with a kind of wors.h.i.+pping deference, that was worthy of a prime-minister at the court of love. With the gentlemen, all of whom he knew, he had the frank merry manner of a confident favorite, and he was greeted like one. He went from one to the other, straining back his head to look up at them (for, singularly enough, every gentleman in the room was six feet high and upward), and to every one he said something which, from any one else, would have seemed peculiarly felicitous, but which fell from his lips, as if his breath was not more spontaneous.
Dinner was announced, the Russian handed down ”milady,” and I found myself seated opposite Moore, with a blaze of light on his Bacchus head, and the mirrors, with which the superb octagonal room is pannelled, reflecting every motion. To see him only at table, you would think him not a small man. His princ.i.p.al length is in his body, and his head and shoulders are those of a much larger person.
Consequently he _sits tall_, and with the peculiar erectness of head and neck, his diminutiveness disappears.
The soup vanished in the busy silence that beseems it, and as the courses commenced their procession, Lady Blessington led the conversation with the brilliancy and ease, for which she is remarkable over all the women of her time. She had received from Sir William Gell, at Naples, the ma.n.u.script of a volume upon the last days of Sir Walter Scott. It was a melancholy chronicle of imbecility, and the book was suppressed, but there were two or three circ.u.mstances narrated in its pages which were interesting. Soon after his arrival at Naples, Sir Walter went with his physician and one or two friends to the great museum. It happened that on the same day a large collection of students and Italian literati were a.s.sembled, in one of the rooms, to discuss some newly-discovered ma.n.u.scripts. It was soon known that the ”Wizard of the North” was there, and a deputation was sent immediately, to request him to honor them by presiding at their session. At this time Scott was a wreck, with a memory that retained nothing for a moment, and limbs almost as helpless as an infant's. He was dragging about among the relics of Pompeii, taking no interest in anything he saw, when their request was made known to him through his physician. ”No, no,” said he, ”I know nothing of their lingo. Tell them I am not well enough to come.” He loitered on, and in about half an hour after, he turned to Dr. H. and said, ”who was that you said wanted to see me?” The doctor explained. ”I'll go,” said he, ”they shall see me if they wish it;” and, against the advice of his friends, who feared it would be too much for his strength, he mounted the staircase, and made his appearance at the door. A burst of enthusiastic cheers welcomed him on the threshold, and forming in two lines, many of them on their knees, they seized his hands as he pa.s.sed, kissed them, thanked him in their pa.s.sionate language for the delight with which he had filled the world, and placed him in the chair with the most fervent expressions of grat.i.tude for his condescension. The discussion went on, but not understanding a syllable of the language, Scott was soon wearied, and his friends observed it, pleaded the state of his health as an apology, and he rose to take his leave. These enthusiastic children of the south crowded once more around him, and with exclamations of affection and even tears, kissed his hands once more, a.s.sisting his tottering steps, and sent after him a confused murmur of blessings as the door closed on his retiring form. It is described by the writer as the most affecting scene he had ever witnessed.