book I

ever read twice was the _Journal of Edward Woolman_, a Quaker preacher and tinker, whose character is one of the finest I ever met. 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 the modern prose-writers put together." I mentioned 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 the

country. "What did you give for it?" asked Lamb. "About seven-and-six." "Permit me to pay you that," said he, and with the utmost earnestness he counted the money out on 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 is only eighteenpence, and I'll give you sixpence towards 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, which he had expected that our friend would procure for him. He inquired whether there was not a morsel left in the bottom of the last pot. Mr. Robinson was not sure. "Send and see," said Lamb, "and if the pot has been cleaned, bring me the lid. 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 in the same manner on the opposite side of the table, and in the course of half an hour they took their leave.' Landor, in commenting on this passage, says it is evident that Willis 'fidgeted the Lambs,' and seems rather unaccountably annoyed at his having alluded to Crabb Robinson simply as 'a barrister.'

In London Willis appears to have fallen upon his feet from the very first. To the end of his life he looked back upon his first two years in England as the happiest and most successful period in his whole career. It was small wonder that he became a little dazzled and intoxicated by the brilliancy of his surroundings, which spoilt him for the homelier conditions of American life. 'What a star is mine,' he wrote to his sister Julia, three days after landing at Dover. 'All the best society of London exclusives is now open to me--_me!_ without a sou in my pocket beyond what my pen brings me, and with not only no influence from friends at home, but with a world of envy and slander at my back.... In a literary way I have already had offers from the _Court Magazine_, the _Metropolitan_, and the _New Monthly_, of the first price for my articles. I sent a short tale, written in one day, to the _Court Magazine_, and they gave me eight guineas for it at once. I lodge in Cavendish Square, the most fashionable part of the town, paying a guinea a week for my lodgings, and am as well off as if I had been the son of the President.'

Willis was constantly at Lady Blessington's house, where he met some of the best masculine society of the day. At one dinner-party among his fellow-guests were D'Israeli, Bulwer, Procter (Barry Cornwall), Lord Durham, and Sir Martin Shee. It was his first sight of Dizzy, whom he found looking out of the window with the last rays of sunlight reflected on the gorgeous gold flowers of an embroidered waistcoat. A white stick with a black cord and tassel, and a quantity of chains about his neck and pocket, rendered him rather a conspicuous object. 'D'Israeli,' says our chronicler, 'has one of the most remarkable faces I ever saw. He is vividly pale, and but for the energy of his

## action and the strength of his lungs, would seem a victim to

consumption. His eye is as black as Erebus, and has the most mocking, lying-in-wait expression conceivable. His mouth is alive with a kind of impatient nervousness, and when he has burst forth with a

## particularly successful cataract of expression, it assumes a curl of

triumphant scorn that would be worthy of Mephistopheles. A thick, heavy mass 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 shines most unctuously with "thy incomparable oil, Macassar."' Willis was always interested in dress, being himself a born dandy, and he was inclined to judge a man by the cut of his coat and the set of his hat. On this occasion he remarks that Bulwer was very badly dressed as usual, while Count D'Orsay was very splendid, but quite indefinable. 'He seemed showily dressed till you looked to particulars, and then it seemed only a simple thing well fitted to a very magnificent person.'

The conversation ran at first on Sir Henry Taylor's new play, _Philip van Artevelde_, which the company thought overrated, and then passed to Beckford, of _Vathek_ fame, who had already retired from the world, and was living at Bath in his usual eccentric fashion. Dizzy was the only person present who had met him, and, declares Willis, '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 which must have been very much astonished at the use to which they were put, and yet no others apparently could so well have conveyed his idea. He talked like a racehorse approaching the winning-post, every muscle in action, and the utmost energy of expression flowing out in every burst. It is a great pity he is not in Parliament.'

At midnight Lady Blessington left the table, when the conversation took a political turn, but D'Israeli soon dashed off again with a story of an Irish dragoon who was killed in the Peninsular. 'His arm was shot off, and he was bleeding to death. When told he could not live, he called for a large silver goblet, out of which he usually drank his claret. He held it to the gushing artery, and filled it to the brim, then poured it slowly out upon the ground, saying, "If that had been shed for old Ireland." You can have no idea how thrillingly this little story was told. Fonblanque, however, who is a cold political satirist, could see nothing in a man's "decanting his claret" that was in the least sublime, so "Vivian Grey" got into a passion, and for a while was silent.'

Willis was now fairly launched in London society, literary and fashionable. He went to the Opera to hear Grisi, then young and pretty, and Lady Blessington pointed out the beautiful Mrs. Norton, looking like a queen, and Lord Brougham flirting desperately with a lovely woman, 'his mouth going with the convulsive twitch that so disfigures him, and his most unsightly of pug-noses in the strongest relief against the red lining of the box.' He breakfasted with 'Barry Cornwall,' whose poetry he greatly admired, and was introduced to the charming Mrs. Procter and the 'yellow-tressed Adelaide,' then only eight or nine years old. Procter gave his visitor a volume of his own poems, and told him anecdotes of the various authors he had known, Hazlitt, Lamb, Keats, and Shelley. Another interesting entertainment was an evening party at Edward Bulwer's house. Willis arrived at eleven, and found his hostess alone, playing with a King Charles' spaniel, while she awaited her guests.

'The author of _Pelham_,' he writes, 'is a younger son, and depends on his writings for a livelihood; and truly, measuring works of fancy by what they will bring, a glance round his luxurious rooms is worth reams of puffs in the Quarterlies. He lives in the heart of fashionable London, entertains a great deal, and is expensive in all his habits, and for this pay Messrs. Clifford, Pelham, and Aram--most excellent bankers. As I looked at the beautiful woman before me, waiting to receive the rank and fashion of London, I thought that close-fisted old literature never had better reason for his partial largess.'

Willis was astonished at the neglect with which the female portion of the assemblage was treated, no young man ever speaking to a young lady except to ask her to dance. 'There they sit with their mammas,' he observes, 'their hands before them in the received attitude; and if there happens to be no dancing, looking at a print, or eating an ice, is for them the most entertaining circumstance of the evening. Late in the evening a charming girl, who is the reigning belle of Naples, came in with her mother from the Opera, and I made this same remark to her. "I detest England for that very reason," she said frankly. "It is the fashion in London for young men to prefer everything to the society of women. They have their clubs, their horses, their rowing matches, their hunting, and everything else is a _bore_! How different are the same men at Naples! They can never get enough of one there."... She mentioned several of the beaux of last winter who had returned to England. "Here have I been in London a month, and these very men who were at my side all day on the Strada Nuova, and all but fighting to dance three times with me of an evening, have only left their cards. Not because they care less about me, but because it is not the fashion--it would be talked about at the clubs; it is _knowing_ to let us alone."'

There were only three men at the party, according to Willis, who could come under the head of _beaux_, but there were many distinguished persons. There was Byron's sister, Mrs. Leigh, a thin, plain, middle-aged woman, of a serious countenance, but with very cordial, pleasing manners. Sheil, the famous Irish orator, small, dark, deceitful, and talented-looking, with a squeaky voice, was to be seen in earnest conversation with the courtly old Lord Clarendon. Fonblanque, with his pale, dislocated-looking face, was making the amiable, with a ghastly smile, to Lady Stepney, author of _The Road to Ruin_ and other fashionable novels. The bilious Lord Durham, with his Brutus head and severe countenance, high-bred in appearance in spite of the worst possible coat and trousers, was talking politics with Bowring. Prince Moscowa, son of Marshal Ney, a plain, determined-looking young man, was unconscious of everything but the presence of the lovely Mrs. Leicester Stanhope. Her husband, afterwards Sir Leicester, who had been Byron's companion in Greece, was introduced to Willis, and the two soon became on intimate terms.

In the course of the season Willis made the acquaintance of Miss Mitford, who invited him to spend a week with her at her cottage near Reading. In a letter to her friend, Miss Jephson, Miss Mitford says: 'I also like very much Mr. Willis, an American author, who is now understood to be here to publish his account of England. He is a very elegant young man, more like one of the best of our peers' sons than a rough republican.' The admiration was apparently mutual, for Willis, in a letter to the author of _Our Village_, says: 'You are distinguished in the world as the "gentlewoman" among authoresses, as you are for your rank merely in literature. I have often thought you very enviable for the universality of that opinion about you. You share it with Sir Philip Sidney, who was in his day the _gentleman_ among authors. I look with great interest for your new tragedy. I think your mind is essentially dramatic; and in that, in our time, you are alone. I know no one else who could have written _Rienzi_, and I felt _Charles I._ to my fingers' ends, as one feels no other modern play.'

Willis was less happy in his relations with Harriet Martineau, to whom he was introduced just before her departure for America. 'While I was preparing for my travels,' she writes, in her own account of the interview, 'an acquaintance brought a buxom gentleman, whom he introduced under the name of Willis. There was something rather engaging in the round face, brisk air, and _enjouement_ of the young man; but his conscious dandyism and unparalleled self-complacency spoiled the satisfaction, though they increased the inclination to laugh.... He whipped his bright little boot with his bright little cane, while he ran over the names of all his distinguished fellow-countrymen, and declared that he would send me letters to them all.' Miss Martineau further relates that the few letters she presented met with a very indifferent reception. Her indignation increased when she found that in his private correspondence Willis had given the impression that she was one of his most intimate friends. In his own account of the interview he merely says: 'I was taken by the clever translator of Faust to see the celebrated Miss Martineau. She has perhaps at this moment the most general and enviable reputation in England, and is the only one of the literary clique whose name is mentioned without some envious qualification.'

A budget of literary news sent to the _Mirror_ includes such items as that 'D'Israeli is driving about in an open carriage with Lady S., looking more melancholy than usual. The absent baronet, whose place he fills, is about to bring 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 passing a week at a country-house, where Miss Jane Porter [author of _Scottish Chiefs_] and Miss Pardoe [author of _Beauties of the Bosphorus_] were staying. Miss Porter is one of her own heroines grown old, a still noble wreck of beauty.... 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, and pegging hard at his _History of Ireland_.... 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 intellectually exhausting circle in London, I only wonder how she found time to write it. Yet it was written in six weeks! Her novels sell for a hundred pounds more than any other author's, except Bulwer's. Bulwer gets £1400; Lady Blessington, £400; Mrs. Norton, £250; Lady Charlotte Bury, £200; Grattan, £300; and most other authors below this. Captain Marryat's gross trash sells immensely about Wapping and Portsmouth, and brings him in £500 or £600 the book--but that can scarce be called literature. D'Israeli cannot sell a book _at all_, I hear. Is not that odd? I would give more for one of his books than for forty of the common saleable things about town.'

One more description of a literary dinner at Lady Blessington's may be quoted before Willis's account of this, his first and most memorable London season, is brought to an end. Among the company on this occasion were Moore, D'Israeli, and Dr. Beattie, the King's physician, who was himself a poet. Moore had been ruralising for a year at Slopperton Cottage, and, before his arrival, D'Israeli expressed his regret that he should have been met on his return to town with a savage article in _Fraser_ on his supposed plagiarisms. Lady Blessington declared that he would never see it, since he guarded himself against the sight and knowledge of criticism as other people guarded against the plague. Some one remarked on Moore's passion for rank. 'He was sure to have five or six invitations to dine on the same day,' it was said, 'and he tormented himself with the idea that he had perhaps not accepted the most exclusive. He would get off from an engagement with a countess to dine with a marchioness, and from a marchioness to accept the invitation of a duchess. As he cared little for the society of men, and would sing and be delightful only for the applause of women, it mattered little whether one circle was more talented than another.' At length Mr. Moore was announced, and the poet, 'sliding his little feet up to Lady Blessington, made his compliments with an ease and gaiety, combined with a kind of worshipping deference, that were worthy of a prime minister at the Court of Love.... His eyes still sparkle like a champagne bubble, though the invader has drawn his pencillings about the corners; and there is a kind of wintry red that seems enamelled on his cheek, the eloquent record of the claret his wit has brightened. His mouth is the most characteristic feature of all. The lips are delicately cut, and as changeable as an aspen; but there is a set-up look about the lower lip--a determination of the muscle to a particular expression, and you fancy that you can see wit astride upon it. It is arch, confident, and half diffident, as if he were disguising his pleasure at applause, while another bright gleam of fancy was breaking upon him. The slightly tossed nose confirms the fun of his expression, and altogether it is a face that sparkles, beams, and radiates.'

The conversation at dinner that night was the most brilliant that the American had yet heard in London. Sir Walter Scott was the first subject of discussion, Lady Blessington having just received from Sir William Gell the manuscript of a volume on the last days of Sir Walter Scott, a melancholy chronicle of ruined health and weakened intellect, which was afterwards suppressed. Moore then described a visit he had paid to Abbotsford, when his host was in his prime. 'Scott,' he said, 'was the most manly and natural character in the world. His hospitality was free and open as the day; he lived freely himself, and expected his guests to do the same.... He never ate or drank to excess, but he had no system; his constitution was Herculean, and he denied himself nothing. I went once from a dinner-party at Sir Thomas Lawrence's to meet Scott at another house. We had hardly entered the room when we were set down to a hot supper of roast chicken, salmon, punch, etc., and Sir Walter ate immensely of everything. What a contrast between this and the last time I saw him in London! He had come to embark for Italy, quite broken down both in mind and body. He gave Mrs. Moore a book, and I asked him if he would make it more valuable by writing in it. He thought I meant that he should write some verses, and said, "I never write poetry now." I asked him to write only his name and hers, and he attempted it, but it was quite illegible.'

O'Connell next became the topic of conversation, and Moore declared that he would be irresistible if it were not for two blots on his character, viz. the contributions in Ireland for his support, and his refusal to give satisfaction to the man he was willing to attack. 'They may say what they will of duelling,' he continued, 'but it is the great preserver of the decencies of society. The old school which made a man responsible for his words was the better.' Moore related how O'Connell had accepted Peel's challenge, and then delayed a meeting on the ground of his wife's illness, till the law interfered. Another Irish patriot refused a meeting on account of the illness of his daughter, whereupon a Dublin wit composed the following epigram upon the two:--

'Some men with a horror of slaughter, Improve on the Scripture command. And honour their--wife and their daughter-- That their days may be long in the land.'

Alluding to Grattan's dying advice to his son, 'Always be ready with the pistol,' Moore asked, 'Is it not wonderful that, with all the agitation in Ireland, we have had no such men since his time? The whole country in convulsion--people's lives, fortune, religion at stake, and not a gleam of talent from one's year's end to another. It is natural for sparks to be struck out in a time of violence like this--but Ireland, for all that is worth living for, _is dead_! You can scarcely reckon Sheil of the calibre of the spirits of old, and O'Connell, with all his faults, stands alone in his glory.'

In the drawing-room, after dinner, some allusion to the later Platonists caused D'Israeli to flare up. His wild black eyes glistened, and his nervous lips poured out eloquence, while a whole ottomanful of noble exquisites listened in amazement. He gave an account of Thomas Taylor, one of the last of the Platonists, who had worshipped Jupiter in a back-parlour in London a few years before. In his old age he was turned out of his lodgings, for attempting, as he said, to worship his gods according to the dictates of his conscience, his landlady having objected to his sacrificing a bull to Jupiter in her parlour. The company laughed at this story as a good invention, but Dizzy assured them it was literally true, and gave his father as his authority. Meanwhile Moore 'went glittering on' with criticisms upon Grisi and the Opera, and the subject of music being thus introduced, he was led, with great difficulty, to the piano. Willis describes his singing as 'a kind of admirable recitative, in which every shade of thought is syllabled and dwelt upon, and the sentiment of the song goes through your blood, warming you to the very eyelids, and starting your tears if you have a soul or sense in you. I have heard of women fainting at a song of Moore's; and if the burden of it answered by chance to a secret in the bosom of the listener, I should think that the heart would break with it. After two or three songs of Lady Blessington's choice, he rambled over the keys a while, and then sang 'When first I met thee' with a pathos that beggars description. When the last word had faltered out, he rose and took Lady Blessington's hand, said Good-night, and was gone before a word was uttered. For a full minute after he closed the door no one spoke. I could have wished for myself to drop silently asleep where I sat, with the tears in my eyes and the softness upon my heart.'

##