Part 37

The next day after our arrival Mrs. Trubner took Mrs. Leland, during a walk, to call on George Eliot, and that evening G. H. Lewes, Hepworth Dixon, and some others came to a reception at the Trubners'. Both of these men were, as ever, very brilliant and amusing in conversation. I met them very often after this, both at their homes and about London. I also became acquainted with George Eliot or Mrs. Lewes, who left on me the marked impression, which she did on all, of being a woman of genius, though I cannot recall anything remarkable which I ever heard from her. I note this because there were most extraordinary reports of her utterances among her admirers. A young American lady once seriously asked me if it were true that at the Sunday afternoon receptions in South Bank one could always see rows of twenty or thirty of the greatest men in England, such as Carlyle, Froude, and Herbert Spencer, all sitting with their note-books silently taking down from her lips the ideas which they subsequently used in their writings! There seemed, indeed, to be afloat in America among certain folk an idea that something enormous, marvellous, and inspired went on at these receptions, and that George Eliot posed as a Pythia or Sibyl, as the great leading mind of England, and lectured while we listened. There is no good portrait, I believe, of her. She had long features and would have been called plain but for her solemn, earnest eyes, which had an expression quite in keeping with her voice, which was one not easily forgotten. I never detected in her any trace of genial humour, though I doubt not that it was latent in her; and I thought her a person who had drawn her ideas far more from books and an acquaintance with certain types of humanity whom she had set herself deliberately to study--albeit with rare perception--than from an easy intuitive familiarity with all sorts and conditions of men. But she worked out _thoroughly_ what she knew by the intuition of genius, though in this she was very far inferior to Scott. Thus she wrote the "Spanish Gypsy," having only seen such gypsies two or three times. One day she told me that in order to write "Daniel Deronda," she had read through two hundred books. I longed to tell her that she had better have learned Yiddish and talked with two hundred Jews, and been taught, as I was by my friend Solomon the Sadducee, the art of distinguishing Fraulein Lowenthal of the Ashkenazim from Senorita Aguado of the Sephardim _by the corners of their eyes_!

I had read more than once Lewes's "Life of Goethe," his "History of Philosophy and Physiology," and even "written him" for the Cyclopaedia. With him I naturally at once became well acquainted. I remember here that Mr. Ripley had once reproved me for declaring that Lewes had really a claim to be an original philosopher or thinker; for Boston intellect always frowned on him after Margaret Fuller condemned him as "frivolous and atheistic." I remember that Tom Powell had told me how he had dined somewhere in London, where there was a man present who had really been a cannibal, owing to dire stress of shipwreck, and how Lewes, who was there, was so fascinated with the man-eater that he could think of nothing else. Lewes told me that once, having gone with a party of archaeologists to visit a ruined church, he found on a twelfth-century tombstone some illegible letters which he persuaded the others to believe formed the name Golias, probably having in mind the poems of Walter de Mapes. When I returned from Russia I delighted him very much by describing how I had told the fortunes by hand of six gypsy girls. He declared that telling fortunes to gypsies was the very height of impudence!

"A hundred jests have passed between us twain, Which, had I space, I'd gladly tell again."

A call which I have had, since I wrote that last line, from John Postle Heseltine, Esq., reminds me that he was one of the first acquaintances I made in London. Mr. E. Edwards, a distinguished etcher and painter, gave me a dinner at Richmond, at which Mr. Heseltine was present. In Edwards' studio I met with Bracquemond and Legros, both of whom etched my portrait on copper. Mr. Heseltine is well known as a very distinguished artist of the same kind, as well as for many other things. Edwards was very kind to me in many ways for years. Legros I found very interesting. There was in Edwards' studio the unique _complete_ collection of the etchings of Meryon, which we examined. Legros remarked of the incredibly long- continued industry manifested in some of the pictures, that lunatics often manifested it to a high degree. Meryon, as is known, was mad. I had etched a very little myself and was free of the fraternity.

Within a few days Mr. Strahan, the publisher, took me to Mr. (now Lord) Tennyson's reception, where I met with many well-known people. Among them were Lady Charlotte Locker and Miss Jean Ingelow. These ladies, with great kindness, finding that I was married, called on Mrs. Iceland, and invited us to dine. I became a constant visitor for years at Miss Ingelow's receptions, where I have met Ruskin, Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall (whom I had seen in 1848), Calverly, Edmund Gosse, Hamilton Aide, Mr. and Mrs Alfred Hunt. I conversed with Tennyson, but little passed between us on that occasion. I got to know him far better "later on."

I here anticipate by several years two interviews which I had with Tennyson in 1875, who had _ad interim_ been deservedly "lauded into Lordliness," and which, to him at least, were amusing enough to be recalled. The first was at a dinner at Lady Franklin's, and her niece Miss Cracroft. And here I may, in passing, say a word as to the extraordinary kindly nature of Lady Franklin. I think it was almost as soon as we became acquainted that she, learning that I suffered at times from gout, sent me a dozen bottles of a kind of bitter water as a cure.

There were at the dinner as guests Mr. Tennyson, Sir Samuel and Lady Baker, Dr. Quain, and myself. There was no lack of varied anecdote, reminiscences of noted people and of travel; but by far the most delightful portion of it all was to watch the gradual unfreezing of Tennyson, and how from a grim winter of taciturnity, under the glowing influence of the sun of wine, as the Tuscan Redi hath it--

"Dell' Indico Oriente Domator glorioso il Dio di Vino . . . Di quel Sol, che in Ciel vedete . . ."--

he passed into a glorious summer of genial feeling. I led unto it thus:--My friend Professor Palmer and I had projected a volume of songs in English Romany or Gypsy, which is by far the sweetest and most euphonious language in Europe. My friend had translated "Home they brought her warrior dead," by Tennyson, into this tongue, and I had the MS. of it in my pocket. Tennyson was very much pleased at the compliment, and asked me to read the poem, which I did. The work was by permission dedicated to him. At last, when dinner was over, Tennyson, who had disposed of an entire bottle of port, rose, and approaching me, took me gaily-gravely by both sides, as if he would lift me up, and drawing himself up to his full height, said, "I like to see a poet a full- sized substantial man," or "tall and strong," or words to that effect. I replied that it was very evident from the general appearance of Shakespeare's bust that he was a very tall man, but that though the thunder of height had hit twice--the Poet Laureate being the second case--that I had been very slightly singed, tall as I was. _Enfin_, some days after, Tennyson in a letter invited me to call and see him should I ever be in the Isle of Wight; which took place by mere chance some time after--in fact, I did not know, when I was first at the hotel in Freshwater, that Tennyson lived at a mile's distance.

I walked over one afternoon and sent in my card. Mr. Hallam Tennyson, then a very handsome young man of winsome manner, came out and said that his father was taking his usual _siesta_, but begged me to remain, kindly adding, "Because I know, Mr. Leland, he would be very sorry to have missed you." After a little time, however, Tennyson himself appeared, and took me up to his den or studio, where I was asked to take a pipe, which I did with great good-will, and blew a cloud, enjoying it greatly, because I felt with my host, as with Bulwer, that we had quickly crossed acquaintanceship into the more familiar realm where one can talk about whatever you please with the certainty of being understood and getting a sympathetic answer. There are lifelong friends with whom one never really gets to this, and there are acquaintances of an hour at _table- d'hotes_, who "come like shadows, so depart," who talk with a touch to our hearts. Bulwer and Tennyson were such to me, and _apre miro zi_, as the gypsies say--on my life-soul!--if I had talked with them, as I did, without knowing who they were, I should have recalled them with quite as much interest as I now do, and see them again in dreams. And here I may add, that the common-place saying that literary men are rarely good talkers, and generally disappointing, is not at all confirmed by my experiences.

After burning our tobacco, in Indian fashion, to better acquaintance (I forgot to say that the poet had two dozen clay pipes ranged in a small wooden rack), we went forth for a seven miles' walk on the Downs. And at last, from the summit of one, I pointed down to a small field below, and said--

But first I must specify that the day before I had gone with a young lady of fourteen summers named Bee or Beatrice Fredericson, both of us bearing baskets, to pick blackberries for tea, and coming to a small field which was completely surrounded by a hedge, we saw therein illimitable blackberries glittering in the setting sunlight, and longed to enter. Finding a gap which had been filled by a dead thorn-bush, I removed the latter, and, going in, we soon picked a quart of the fruit. But on leaving we were met by the farmer, who made a to-do, charging us with trespassing. To which I replied, "Well, what is to pay?" He asked for two shillings, but was pacified with one; and so we departed.

Therefore I said to Tennyson, "I went into that field yesterday to pick your blackberries, and your farmer caught us and made me pay a shilling for trespassing."

And he gravely replied, though evidently delighted--"Served you right! What business had you to come over my hedge into my field to steal my blackberries?"

"_Mea culpa_," I answered, "_mea maxima culpa_."

"Mr. Leland," pursued Tennyson, as gravely as ever, grasping all the absurdity of the thing with evident enjoyment, "you have no idea how tourists trespass here to get at me. They climb over my gate and look in at my windows. It is a fact--one did so only last week. But I declare that you are the very first poet and man of letters who ever came here--to steal blackberries!" Here he paused, and then added forcibly--

"I _do_ believe you are a gypsy, after all."

Then we talked of the old manor-houses in the neighbourhood, and of the famous Mortstone, a supposed Saxon rude monolith near by. I thought it prehistoric, because I had dug out from the pile of earth supporting and coeval with it (and indeed only with a lead-pencil) a flint flake chipped by hand and a bit of cannel coal, which indicate dedication. My host listened with great interest, and then told me a sad tale: how certain workmen employed by him to dig on his land had found a great number of old Roman bronze coins, but, instead of taking them to him, had kept them, though they cared so little for them that they gave a handful to a boy whom they met. "I told them," said Tennyson, "that they had been guilty of malappropriation, and though I was not quite sure whether the coins belonged to me or to the Crown, that they certainly had no right to them. Whereupon their leader said that if I was not satisfied they would not work any longer for me, and so they went away." I had on this occasion a long and interesting discussion with Mr. Tennyson relative to Walt Whitman, and involving the principles or nature of poetry. According to the poet-laureate, poetry, as he understood it, consisted of elevated or refined, or at least superior thought, expressed in melodious form, and in this latter it seemed to him (for it was very modestly expressed) that Whitman was wanting. Wherein he came nearer to the truth than does Symonds, who overrates, as it seems to me, the value, as regards art and poetry, of simply _equalising_ all human intelligences. Though I never met Symonds, there was mutual knowledge between us, and when I published my "Etrusco-Roman Remains in Popular Traditions," which contains the results of six years' intimacy with witches and fortune-tellers, he wrote a letter expressing enthusiastic admiration of it to Mr. T. Fisher Unwin. Now all three of these great men are dead. I shall speak of Whitman anon, for in later years for a long time I met him almost daily.

I can remember that during the conversation Tennyson expressed himself, rather to my amazement, with some slight indignation at a paltry review abusing his latest work; to which I replied--

"If there is anything on earth for which I have envied you, even more than for your great renown as a poet, it has been because I supposed you were completely above all such attacks and were utterly indifferent to them." Which he took amiably, and proceeded to discuss ripe fruit and wasps--or their equivalent. Yet I doubt whether I was quite in the right, since those who live for fame honourably acquired must ever be susceptible to stings, small or great. An editor who receives abusive letters so frequently that he ends by pitching them without reading into the waste-basket, and often treats ribald attacks in print in the same manner--as I have often done--has so many other affairs on his mind that he becomes case-hardened. But I have observed from long experience that there is a Nemesis who watches those who arrogate the right to lay on the rod, and gives it to them with interest in the end.

It was very soon after my arrival in London that I was invited to lunch at Hepworth Dixon's to meet Lord Lytton, or Bulwer, the great writer. His works had been so intensely and sympathetically loved by me so long, that it seemed as if I had been asked to meet some great man of the past. I found him, as I expected, quite congenial and wondrous kind. I remember a droll incident. Standing at the head of the stairs, he courteously made way and asked me to go before. I replied, "When Louis XIV. asked Crillon to do the same, Crillon complied, saying, 'Wherever your Majesty goes, be it before or behind, is always the first place or post of honour,' and I say the same with him," and so went in advance at once. I saw by his expression that he was pleased with the quotation.

We were looking at a portrait of Shakespeare which Dixon had found in Russia. Lord Lytton asked me if I thought it an original or true likeness. I observed that the face was full of many fine seamy lines, which infallibly indicate great nervous genius of the highest order--noting at the same time that Lord Lytton's countenance was very much marked in a like manner. The observation was new to him, and he seemed to be interested in it, as he always was in anything like chiromancy or metoscopy. A few days later I was invited to come and pass nearly a week with Hepworth Dixon at Knebworth, Lord Lytton's country seat. It is a very picturesque _chateau_, profusely adorned with fifteenth-century Gothic grotesques, with a fine antique hall, stained glass windows, and gallery. There is in it a chamber containing a marvellous and massive carved oak bedstead, the posts of which are human figures the size of life, and in it and in the same room Queen Elizabeth is said to have slept when she heard of the destruction of the Spanish Armada. It was the room of honour, and it had been kindly assigned to me. It all seemed like a dream.

There was in the family of the late Lord Lytton his son, who made a most favourable impression on me. I think the first _coup_ was my finding that he knew the works of Andreini, and that it had occurred to him as well as to me that Euphues Lily's book had been modelled on them. There was also his wife, a magnificent and graceful beauty; Lord Lytton's nephew, Mr. Bulwer; and several ladies. The first morning we all fished in the pond, and, to my great amazement, Lord Lytton pulled out _a great one-eyed perch_! I almost expected to see him pull out Paul Clifford or Zanoni next! In the afternoon we were driven out to Cowper Castle to see a fine gallery of pictures, our host acting as cicerone, and as he soon found that I was fairly well educated in art, and had been a special pupil of Thiersch in Munich, and something more than an amateur, we had many interesting conversations. I think I may venture to say that he did _not_ expect to find a whilom student of aesthetics, art-history, and Philosophy in the author of "Hans Breitmann." What was delightful was his exquisite tact in never saying as much; but I could detect it in the sudden interest and involuntary compliment implied in his tone of conversation. In a very short time he began to speak to me on all literary or artistic subjects without preliminary question, taking it for granted that I understood them and chimed in with him. I was with every interview more and more impressed with his _culture_--I mean with what had resulted from his reading--his marvellous tact of kindness in small things to all, and his quick and vigorous comparing and contrasting of images and drawing conclusions. But there was evidently enough a firm bed-rock or hard pan under all this gold. I was amazed one day when a footman, who had committed some _bevue_ or blunder, or apprehended something, actually turned pale and stammered with terror when Lord Lytton gravely addressed a question to him. I never in my life saw a man so much frightened, even before a revolver.

But Lord Lytton was beyond all question really interested when he found me so much at home in Rosicrucian and occult lore, and that I had been with Justinus Kerner in Weinsberg, and was familiar with the forgotten dusky paths of mysticism. He had in his house the famous Earl Stanhope crystal, and wished me to sleep with it under my pillow, but I was so afraid lest the precious relic should be injured, that I resolutely declined the honour, for which I am now sorry, for I sometimes have dreams of a most extraordinary character. This Stanhope crystal is not, however, the great mirror of Dr. Dee, though it has been said to be so. The latter belonged to a gentleman in London, who also offered to lend it to me. It is made of cannel coal. That Lord Lytton made a very remarkable impression on me is proved by the fact that I continued to dream of him at long intervals after his death; and I am quite sure that such feeling is, by its very nature, always to a certain slight degree reciprocal. He had a natural and unaffected _voice_, yet one with a marked character; something like Tennyson's, which was even more striking. Both were far removed from the now fashionable intonation, which is the admiration and despair of American swells. It is only the _fin de siecle_ form of the _demnition_ dialect of the Forties and the _La-ard_ and _Lunnon_ of an earlier age.

Lord Lytton was generally invisible in the morning, sometimes after lunch. In the evening he came out splendidly groomed, fresh as a rose, and at dinner and after was as interesting as any of his books. He had known "everybody" to a surprising extent, and had anecdotes fresh and vivid of every one whom he had met. He loved music, and there was a lady who sang old Spanish ballads with rare taste. I enjoyed myself incredibly.

I may be excused for mentioning here that I sent a copy of the second edition of my "Meister Karl's Sketch-Book" to Lord Lytton. No one but Irving and Trubner had ever praised it. When Lord Lytton published afterwards "Kenelm Chillingly," I found in it _three_ passages in which I recognised beyond dispute others suggested by my own work. I do not in the least mean that there was _any_ borrowing or taking beyond the mere suggestion of thought. Why I think that Lord Lytton had these hints in his mind is that he gave the name of Leland to one of the minor characters in the book.

When I published a full edition of "Breitmann's Poems," he wrote me a long letter criticising and praising the work, and a much longer and closely written one, of seven pages, relating to my "Confucius and Other Poems." I was subsequently invited to receptions at his house in London, where I first met Browning, and had a long conversation with him. I saw him afterwards at Mrs. Proctor's. This was the wife of Barry Cornwall, whom I also saw. He was very old and infirm. I can remember when the "Cornlaw Rhymes" rang wherever English was read.

As I consider it almost a duty to record what I can remember of Bulwer, I may mention that one evening, at his house in London, he showed me and others some beautiful old brass salvers in _repousse_ work, and how I astonished him by describing the process, and declaring that I could produce a _facsimile_ of any one of them in a day or two; to which assertion hundreds to whom I have taught the art, as well as my "Manual of Repousse," and another on "Metal Work," will, I trust, bear witness. And this I mention, not vainly, but because Lord Lytton seemed to be interested and pleased, and because, in after years, I had much to do with reviving the practice of this beautiful art. It was practising this, and a three years' study of oak-wood carving, which led me to write on the Minor Arts. _Mihi aes et triplex robur_.