CHAPTER XXII.
MRS. OPIE’S REMOVAL TO LADY’S LANE; LETTERS, VISITORS, AND WRITING; SPRING ASSIZES OF 1838; MEMOIRS OF SIR. W. SCOTT; VISITS TO LONDON AND NORTHREPPS; DEATH OF FRIENDS; ANTI-SLAVERY CONVENTION; WINTER AND SPRING OF 1840-41; VISITS TO TOWN AND LETTERS FROM THENCE IN 1842-43; ILLNESS; CLOSE OF 1843; LETTER OF REMINISCENCES OF THOMAS HOGG.
Mrs. Opie returned from her trip up the Rhine at the close of November, 1835. This was her last journey; from this time her absences from home were never of long duration, but limited to a few weeks in London, and occasional visits to friends in the neighbourhood of Norwich. She did not remain many months in the lodgings in St. Giles’ Street, but transferred herself to Lady’s Lane, where she had commodious apartments, and in which she remained until her final removal to the Castle Meadow House. In this home she settled herself, surrounded by her Lares, the “Portraits,” which hung around her, and appeared to great advantage, when lighted up, at night, by wax-lights in branch lamps. The most beautiful of them, the portrait of herself, is not described by her pen. It was painted soon after her marriage, and was engraved (though very indifferently) for the No. of the “Cabinet,” in which Mrs. Taylor’s memoir of her appeared. This picture is certainly very charming, and is also admirable as a work of art.
Bright colours Mrs. Opie delighted in, and she had a sort of passion for prisms. She had several set in a frame, and mounted like a pole-screen; and this unique piece of furniture stood always in her window, and was a constant source of delight to her. “Oh! the exquisite beauty of the prisms on my ceiling just now, (she writes) it is a pleasure to exist only to look at it. I think that green parrots and macaws, flying about in their native woods, must look like that.” Flowers, too, were her constant companions; she luxuriated in them, and filled her window-sills with stands of them, and covered her tables with bouquets; their most luscious scents seemed not too strong for her nerves. Light, heat, and fragrance, were three indispensables of enjoyment for her.
It has been said, with truth, that her mornings, during the latter years of her life, were spent in an almost constant succession of receiving visitors, and writing letters. Everybody who came to Norwich sought her; old friends, acquaintances, and strangers hastened to pay her their respects, and she loved to welcome all, and to give a cordial greeting to each. The extent of her correspondence was such, that it would have been a burden, had it not been a delight. In a letter written, in 1849, to her friend, Miss Emily Taylor, she said, “if writing were even an effort to me, I should not now be alive, but must have been absolument epuisée; and it might have been inserted in the bills of mortality—‘dead of letter-writing, A. Opie.’ My maid and I were calculating the other day, how many letters I wrote in the year, and it is not less than six in a day, besides notes.”
Her pen was also diligently employed in writing articles for various periodicals of the day. She regretted afterwards that she had not kept a list of the publications to which she had sent contributions, as she was frequently applied to by friends, anxious to identify her verses, &c. The “reminiscences,” to which reference has been occasionally made, published in Tait and in Chambers, were written about this time.
The year 1836 seems to have been unproductive of change. We find her recording visits to Keswick, to Northrepps, to Swanton Morley; and (as always) to Earlham. In the following year, her revered friend, J. J. Gurney, went on a religious visit to the United States, and was absent nearly three years. On his return he printed, for circulation among his friends, an account of this journey, “described in Familiar Letters to Amelia Opie.” This interesting volume is very scarce, as only a limited number of copies was printed, and given by the author to his friends. This year Mrs. Opie mentions the arrival of Bishop Stanley and his family in Norwich, as “a great acquisition;” and their friendship proved indeed a source of much happiness to her.
The farewell letter from her venerable friend Lady Cork, written in the spring of this year, will be read with interest.
London, March 15th.
One thousand, eight hundred, and thirty-seven. Thanks dearest dear friend, for your cordial letter. Yes, thank God! 91 is quite well in health, and if my beloved friends enjoyed the same blessing, would be perfectly content in mind. Nephews and nieces whom you are not acquainted with, are suffering. They are folks whose virtues you must esteem, and some whose wit you would admire. Oh! why do you not come to town earlier in the season? Our dear Lady Frederick is not yet in town, but there are many of your playfellows. Yesterday dined with me, Rogers, Sydney Smith, Granby, and more wits and worthies, such as you would relish. * *
The picture of Hannah More is by Gainsborough; I think it a little like her; when she was young she could not afford to have very fine, long, diamond ear-rings; nor were they the fashion when I saw her flirting with Garrick; however, all the connoisseurs agree that it is an excellent painting. N.B. There is a ring on the wedding-finger, which does not resemble blessed Hannah.
Poets are springing up like mushrooms, but the novels are sad trash. Lord Carnarvon’s new publication much admired.
Yours more than words can express, says,
Old M. Cork.
A short note in her pocket book written by Mrs. Opie about this time, so much illustrates one of her peculiar excellencies, that we venture to give it.
J’ai toujours attaché une importance extrême à ce qu’on appelle vulgairement les petites choses; des attentions delicates, quand elles sont persistantes, prouvent la constante occupation de la pensée. “Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of themselves,” says the proverb; and it is applicable to everything, I think, and particularly to human conduct, and the formation of character. Take care of indulging in little selfishnesses; learn to consider others in trifles; be careful to fulfil the minor social duties; and the mind, so disciplined, will find it easier to fulfil the greater duties, and the character will not exhibit that trying inconsistency which one sees in great, and often in pious, persons.
At the Spring Assizes (1838) Mrs. Opie was, as usual, in the Nisi Prius Court, she writes:—
Much did I enjoy it; one day I was there eleven hours, and all one cause, so that I could not leave it; the next day I was in from nine to seven again. Baron Parke was the judge, and an admirable one he is; and he was very kind to me, having a place saved for me, and I was admitted through the private room. I remembered the days of Judge Gould. Baron Bolland was equally civil, but to his court I could not get before the last day; and grandly beautiful does he still look, though he has had a paralytic stroke.
In July, writing from London, she says:—
I am here in perfect health, and much enjoying myself; yesterday we dined at S. Hoare’s. The other day I went to call on the Miss Berrys, the wits and beauties of former days, at their cottage at Richmond, and they made me stay dinner, tempting me with Lord Brougham. I had really a delightful day!
The autumn and winter, however, brought returns of her malady, and her medical attendants said that she must expect such attacks, in which she acquiesced, saying, “no doubt I must.” A confinement of some weeks to her bed-room, was found so irksome, that she gladly had recourse to an ottoman couch bed, on which she could recline, and receive her visitors, as she said, “in state.”
The “Memoirs of Sir Walter Scott” were published at this time, and with deepest interest did Mrs. Opie peruse these records of one whom she had so much honoured and admired. Among her papers is one containing some remarks upon them, written shortly after, from which we select a few passages.
No pages of fiction, not even his own, ever excited in me more deep interest than did the sixth and seventh volumes of the Memoirs. I knew he was aware while writing his journal, that it would one day meet the eye of the world, and that therefore it must have been written with caution and under some restraint; yet, it had to me the charm of unfettered ingenuousness. There is through the whole of it a mournful reality, which I could not read without intense sympathy. It is a remarkable circumstance that he should have begun it almost at the time when he first had reason to suspect that his commercial engagements might possibly involve him in difficulties.
I own that in spite of the drollery, the bursts of jollity and mirth, the wit, the humour, and all its pleasing variety, the journal is rarely divested to me of the signs of secret suffering. It reminds me of the royal castle at Baden Baden, where all is splendour and gay decorations above, while beneath lie the deep dark dungeons, concealed from the eye of day, telling of the terrors of the secret tribunal.
After that awful year, 1825, marked in the commercial world by the ruin of thousands, the diary becomes more a work of art, through which nature still forces itself. He writes gaily, but feels more and more joylessly. Never after 1826 and ’27, could any one fancy it, in my opinion at least, the journal of a happy man. Certainly he was not warmed by his own brilliancy, nor enlivened by his own pleasantries; and though it was a relief to him to write his journal, and it might be an accurate transcript of his own sad feelings, there was “a lower deep,” a deeper current still, which he did not allow any human eye to penetrate, that was bearing him on its fatal tide, to imbecility and death.
I may be wrong, but I believe Sir Walter Scott’s horrible dread of the trials hanging over him and others, had an instantaneous effect on his mind, and that his judgment was impaired, and his power of self-control gone, while his imagination and invention remained in full vigour.
Judgment is the quality which enables us “to decide on the propriety, or impropriety of an action,” and had not Sir Walter’s judgment been weakened, he never could have sinned so much against propriety, (to use the gentlest word,) as to pen down so many oaths in his diary; but had the irritation of the moment led him so to err, he would have effaced the offensive words, and regretted his want of self-government, if his power of judgment had not been obscured. It his said he never swore with his tongue, but in his Journal he frequently swore with his pen, wounding alike the pious and the refined.
But, as I attribute this fault to an impaired judgment and a weakened power of self command, the consequences of his bitter trials, my conviction of the depth of his religious feelings remains undiminished. He somewhere says, that such was his fear of “becoming an enthusiast,” that he was very careful over “the state of his mind,” (or words to that effect,) whenever, while in a time of affliction, he was in “communion with his God”—a proof that such communion was well known to him; and I humbly trust that “lower deep” to which I have alluded, was illumined and cheered by that blessed influence which devotion is permitted to shed over the broken and supplicating heart. The satisfaction with which he listened to the Scriptures, his strong desire to have them read to him in his last days, and his parting words to his son-in-law, are chiefly valuable as indications of previous religious convictions, surviving, though in a shattered state, the wreck of mind; and are precious as are the broken pieces of carving from off some fine marble column in ruins, because they give evidence of its perfection in former days.
Early in 1839 Mrs. Opie visited her beloved friends at Northrepps, and on her return wrote:—
I had a pleasant journey home; found my page waiting with a fly, a fire in my chamber, and a “Sally-Lunn” cake and tea ready, and the last number of Nickleby, such a treat! besides the Evening Chronicle, full of amusing speeches. I have much enjoyed my visit to you;
A circle may be still complete
Although it be but small!
That summer, one of these friends, Miss Buxton, died; and long and lovingly was she remembered. This event was followed by the death of her cousin, Mrs. Briggs, which occurred in the month of September, of the same year. Mrs. Opie was with her during her last hours, and her distress and grief at this painful loss were very great. She says;—“these are the trials which make lengthened life, or long life, so undesirable; but it is the Lord, let him do that which seemeth him good.”
In the spring of 1840, writing to Miss Gurney, who was at that time in Rome, she says:—
My mind ever since your departure, has been dwelling on Peter and Paul; till I have quite convinced myself that, were I to go to Rome, my first desire would be to see the house where Peter lived, the place where he was crucified with his head downwards, and then the house where Paul lived with the soldier, and the rest of his locale: they both suffered in 66. I love Peter better than I do Paul; and I cannot read without tears those words of our Saviour, where He foretells his having to undergo a violent death. Peter, by his occasional lapses, seems to me to be the David of the disciples. * * * I am reading with delightful interest and edification a new “Memoir of George Fox,” the introduction to it is said to be written by Samuel Tuke.
The month of June, in this year, was the time appointed for the Meeting of the Anti-Slavery Convention in London; the announcement of this proposed Meeting had excited great interest in the friends of Abolition, and more than four hundred delegates assembled on the occasion. Mrs. Opie was present, and among her papers is one giving an account of the proceedings in the first day’s sitting, in which she enters at considerable length into the addresses of the various speakers, and the measures they proposed, and ends by saying:—
Thus concluded the first day’s meeting, and if the benefits resulting from it be in any proportion to the intense interest which (as I believe) it excited in all who were present, then
Millions yet unborn may bless
The meeting of that day.
The introductory remarks prefixed to her account of the second day’s sitting of the Convention are interesting, as they contain her own personal impressions of some of the actors in the scene, in short and graphic sketches, she writes thus:—
I entered the Hall of the Convention at so early an hour this morning, that I was able to obtain the same advantageous situation as on the preceding day.
By arriving so early, I was enabled to see each delegate take his seat, and I observed the entrance of some of the Americans with more interest than I did the preceding day, because I had learnt more of their personal history.
To Henry Grew my attention had been particularly drawn on the first day of the meeting, even before he had addressed the chairman; because the arrangement of his hair, and the expression of his countenance, realized my idea of the Covenanters of old, and his speech did not weaken this impression; therefore I was not surprised when I was assured, by a countryman of his, that he not only resembled in appearance one of those pious men, but that, under similar circumstances, he would probably have acted and died as they did.
But, till this second morning, I did not know, that in Wendell Phillips, the young Secretary with the pale golden hair parted on his open forehead, I beheld “the very young speaker” mentioned in the “Martyr Age” of America, “on whose lips hung, for the space of three minutes, the fate of the Abolitionists in Boston.” The dark eyed, dark bearded, intelligent looking young Secretary opposite to him, was pointed out to me as being one of the fifty young men, students in the Lane Seminary at Cincinnati, in Ohio, who left that College, because the president and professors thought proper to prohibit all free inquiry among the students in their leisure hours, and had more particularly forbidden them to discuss the question of Slavery.
In J. G. Birney, the American gentleman sitting to the left hand of the President’s chair, with the thoughtful brow, the dignified and manly bearing, and with an expression of calm deliberate firmness in his countenance, I now knew that I beheld one of whom his country might indeed be proud. He was once a slave-holder; but, being convinced, at an early age, that the religion of Jesus forbade him to remain so, he emancipated his slaves and had them educated; and when, on the death of his father, he became entitled to half of the paternal inheritance, he chose to take that half in the slaves his father had left; and when they became his, he emancipated them also.
“But who is that,” said a friend to me, “with the dark, thick, curly hair, and a plain brown frock coat, who, though he looks somewhat like a Quaker cannot be one, because he answers to the title of Colonel?” “That is,” replied I, “Colonel Jonathan Miller, from Vermont, who, though he looks like a man of peace, in some measure is, or has been, a man of war, as he fought for the Greeks at Missolonghi, and has in his possession the sword of Lord Byron. That broad, brown beaver hat of his, might be worn by a plain Friend; still, I must say that I have seen him wear it on one side, in a manner rather unusual in our meetings; but I have looked upon that hat with much respect, as well as on himself, since I have been informed that he wears it in order that a runaway slave in his own country may know, if he sees it, that he has a friend, and protector nigh.”
It were tedious to enumerate all those whom I was now able to point out to others, and was interested in observing myself; among these, however, I must name the learned Professors Deane and Adam, and J. C. Fuller, an Englishman by birth, but now an American citizen; a delegate, whose short, but shrewd and pithy speeches often amused the hearers. Nor can I omit to mention, with more especial notice, Captain Charles Stuart, one of the delegates from Jamaica, with his fine picturesque head, covered with clustering curls of iron grey, and his deep toned powerful voice, sounding like a minute gun, when he rose from his distant seat, and said, “No,” or “Chair;” but when he spoke at some length, his voice seemed to be a sort of musical thunder. He is honourably distinguished as being one of the most devoted friends of the oppressed. There was, sitting near this gentleman, one from Ohio, whom I had long known and esteemed; a tall, mild looking man, with finely chiselled features, and an expression which, in that convention at least, seemed often to denote he had less communion with earthly things, than “with things above.” He, and the serious, sensible looking man beside him, a minister, and his colleague, came over to England more than a year ago, to plead in behalf of the Oberlin Institute: a blessing has attended their labours; and humble as their demeanour is, there were no men in that meeting more worthy to be welcomed by their oppressed countrymen, as friends and benefactors, than William Dawes and John Keep.
Mrs. Opie afterwards sat to Haydon, who was then painting his picture of the Convention. In the life of the painter we find the following entries in his diary:—
“(July 31st.) A. Opie sat, and a very pleasant hour and a half we had. (Again, the following day,) A. O. sat, a delightful creature; she told me she heard Fuseli say of Northcote, ‘he looks like a rat who has seen a cat.’”
Mr. Haydon, as he looked at the assemblage of portraits in this picture, pronounced it to be his opinion that “such a number of honest heads were never seen together before.”
The winter and spring were passed by Mrs. Opie much as usual. While suffering from occasional attacks of pain, nevertheless her constant thought and care were exerted in behalf of others. That she sometimes felt these claims too much, is evident from many of her notes. In one of them dated 3rd mo., 1841, she says:—
I am weary of having to give the little time I may have yet to live, to the business of others; it saddens me. (And again.) Two letters, involving me in writing and trouble; but be it so! it is a favour to be made useful to others, and my life here seems passing away in writing letters on others’ business; well, the time may soon come, when I cannot work.
That this was not imaginary pressure, was abundantly evident to those who saw her day by day; and among her papers, after her decease, were found an inconceivable multitude of applications for charity, or acknowledgments of favours received, &c., &c.
During her customary visit to London this year, she wrote home:—
33, Bruton Street, Berkeley Square,
5th mo., 14th, 1841, night.
My dear C. L.,
* * * * * * We had such a charming meeting at Exeter Hall last second day, (Monday,) Lord John Russell in the chair! it was the British and Foreign School Meeting. I never saw or heard Lord John to such advantage, and all the speakers (except Clay, the M.P. for the Tower Hamlets) spoke exceedingly well; indeed Lord John was excessively applauded, and he felt it at his heart, I am sure. Even Burnet, the witty and sarcastic, was courteous on this occasion; and, with tact and courtesy, contrived, while returning thanks to the Duke of Bedford for his annual £100, and eulogizing the late Duke for the same, and the House of Russell generally, to let the audience know that the Duchess of Bedford was present, in one of the galleries; on which she was cheered and applauded, and had to rise and curtsey, and she was cheered again when she went away.
I have dined with Sydney Smith at the Bishop of Durham’s, and breakfasted with him at Miss Rogers’, (breakfasts are the ton now,) and he, Rogers, and Babbage kept up a pleasant running fire. I sat between S. S. and his more charming brother, and wished to hear the latter, but in vain. At my cousin Edward’s, I sat by Lockhart, who is always charming in my eyes, and was then, particularly agreeable. To-day was the Anti-Slavery meeting, to which I looked forward with interest, mixed with dread; and not without reason, for Chartists were there, and some climbed upon the platform, and one was allowed to speak. The last speaker had to be silenced by a policeman; at length, generally called for, rose O’Connell, in his might and majesty, and the magical music of his voice hushed the jarring elements to peace. He is a marvellous person! But how I took myself in; I had a ticket for a side gallery, and I chose the one nearest to that side of the platform where O’Connell usually sits. Alas! when the thunder proclaimed his approach, I saw him come in at the other side. He never sat there before; and he had a lady with him, his own dear daughter. However, when he spoke, he came near the middle of the platform; but, had I been in my usual place, I should have always seen him and heard every word, which I could not do to-day. He certainly must have been ill, though he looks blooming; for he is excessively shrunk: but he looks all the better for it. He spoke admirably, but I thought his voice less powerful than usual. To-night he holds, at the Crown and Anchor, a meeting for Repeal. He said several unguarded things, but still the charm predominated.
I found a friend at the door when I went out, who took me to see the Reform Club House, that splendid erection, which will cost £70,000, and the first person I saw there was O’Connell! To be sure we had a cordial meeting and shaking of hands. He said he had seen me at the meeting, and I had heard him, as well as seen him. By the bye, Lucy, he would have made such a fine drawing! He had wrapt a cloak round his manly form; and his loss of flesh (of which he had far too much) makes his neck look longer; and his cheeks being less round, his face appears less flat; the nose is much handsomer than I thought it was. I reckon on hearing him again on the 17th, at the Aborigines’ Protection Society.
On the 18th I dine at Lord Stanley’s, (of Alderley,) and on the 19th Yearly Meeting begins, and will probably last nine days or ten. I have now been well some days. I threw physic to the dogs last week, and felt my lassitude go with it; and now, I trust, the fatigues of our Holy Week will prove none to me; but that it will be as reviving and welcome as the Holy Week, at Rome and Edinburgh, to those who keep it holy, and are, during its term, devoted to their duties.
Farewell! Please, Miss, to answer this.
Affectionately thine,
A. Opie.
Again, June 26th, she wrote:—
* * * I was at the House of Lords. The Queen’s reading was more perfect than ever, and her quiet, self-possession, her grace and dignity, are beyond praise. She wore a circlet of diamonds only, no crown, and she looked so well! It was pretty to see Prince Albert hand her up and down the Throne, and lead her in and out. There were seventy-six Peeresses. It was a fine sight altogether.
In the spring of 1842 Mrs. Opie was again in London. Her notes give a lively record of the two months she spent there. Yearly Meeting she attended as usual; and on the 10th May she writes:—
I dined to-day in company with Lord Brougham, and sat between him and my cousin Edward; he was in high spirits, and talked incessantly and well, and was very entertaining and interesting: I never saw him pleasanter. We were, indeed, evidently so merry and happy at the bottom of the table, that those at the top sat silent, and endeavouring to catch the words that fell from the eloquent man’s lips. Again. (6th mo., 11th.) Every night this week I shall have dined out, and in parties of a most agreeable description; of my visit to the Duke of Sussex, and our interesting tête à tête, I can’t write. The Duchess shewed me all over the Palace, and the long row of Bibles. The room is fifty feet long, and the Bibles are in all languages.
Shortly after (June 24th) she wrote, referring to the general state of want and suffering then prevalent:—
Appeals to national generosity, for aught but national distress and starving populations, in our three countries, ought, in my opinion, to be now suspended, and speculations, however benevolent, also; we are, I think, accountable to our distressed countrymen for expenditures of the sort. The accounts from Ireland, which I read the other day, brought tears into my eyes.
This summer Mrs. Opie paid her usual visits to the coast, and, after her return home, we find in one of her notes the following entry:—
The weather seems so hot here! I pine almost for the fresh sea breezes. I like the book I borrowed, (Lives of Physicians,) it delights me to read how generous those great physicians were; how patriotic, and full of care for others! I feel proud of the faculty!
This is quite a characteristic touch. She was almost jealous for the credit and good name of the medical profession; and very anxious that its members should be held in high esteem, and their services liberally remunerated.
The winter of this, and the early spring of the following year, found Mrs. Opie occasionally suffering from her disorder; but enjoying the supports and consolations of christian faith and trust.
In one of her notes she says:—
My trials are afflictive to nature; but I have long known and experienced that there is support in entire submission to God’s will, in little as well as in great trials; and, when I can buckle on that armour, I feel as if I could walk erect and securely.
In May she was, as usual, in London; and, writing thence, says:—
Yearly Meeting has engrossed me as much as ever, for I never missed one sitting since I obtained the great privilege of belonging to it; one which I feel more and more every year, is the last thing increasing age will cause me to forego.
In a note, dated July 12th, she says:—
I have struck up a friendship with “Sam Slick,” alias Judge Haliburton; but, alas! one of the American delegates carries away with him a large piece of my heart! It is grievous to make acquaintances with people, learn to love and admire them, and then bid them farewell for ever! Almost all the American delegates, and their wives, came to me on the 10th, to tea and supper. I had Colonel Thompson, and Serjeant Thompson, and an Andalusian traveller to meet them, and willing to be pleased, they were so.
This summer seems to have been a very happy and busy one; the following extract, from a note, gives a peep at one of her mornings:—
(8th mo., 16th.) I have seemed lately to want for many necessary and proper purposes, the most precious of all things—time. Other people’s business, and my own pleasures have prevented my writing before. At ten I must be out shopping; at eleven to the Magdalen; at two I must drive to see my aunt and say farewell! and then I am off to Ketteringham, to a five o’clock dinner, as E. Sidney lectures at seven.
At the close of the year, she suffered again from an attack of her old disorder. One of her latest notes, (12mo., 11th,) says:—
Alas! I am in my room still, forbidden to leave it. Dr. Hull attributes my relapse to my efforts of last week; I had hoped I was out of the wood, but no such thing. Long live Don Jorge! he is my delight both night and morning, and my happiest hours are spent in his society.[[41]]
The following letter of “Reminiscences” was written to her friend at Northrepps at this time:—
Norwich, 12th mo., 16th, 1843.
My dearest A.,
* * * * I will begin, if I do not finish my account of poor Thomas Hogg, in whose christian end I rejoice. I think it was in 1816, ’17 or ’18, that Lady Cork was full of a sort of holy man, a poet, whom she had picked up in a ditch, a poor, half-starved man, whom she and Mrs. B. invited to their houses, and fed and clothed; and Lady C. prevailed on him to come to London, and she made up a bed for him in her stables.
He did come, and his arrival was made known to me. He had written a poem on Hope, in heroic verse, and I was to see it. I think he was a hedger and ditcher, and made verses while he worked. I had, then, the worldly custom of receiving company on a first day morning, after I returned from church; and a full levée I had, consisting of persons on their way to the parks and gardens, whither, on that day, I never went myself. Well, my friends were beginning to come, on first day, when my astonished footman (a better sort of butler) came up to me, and said, “Ma’am, here is Lady C. has sent her footman with a man in a slop, who is, she says, to come up and see you.” Quite right, (said I,) shew him up; and I told my wondering guests who was coming.
The poor man entered; he was a short, thick, middle-aged, ruddy looking man, clad in a very handsome slop of unbleached linen, very handsomely worked round the neck and at the wrists; and I received him very kindly, and seated him by me. Perry, of the Morning Chronicle, was one of my visitors, and some half dozen ladies and one or two gentlemen, who seemed inclined to laugh. Perry and Hogg nodded at each other, and P. said, “I have just been seeing Mr. Hogg at Lady Cork’s; and Mr. H., I find has a kind of divining power—he knows who persons are, by their countenances. On the Countess of Mornington’s (Duke of W.’s mother) asking him what he thought she was, he said she was, he saw, a woman of great courage. ‘I am the mother of a Hero,’ was her reply.” Still I saw Hogg did not like Perry, and he soon interrupted him, saying to me, “I am come to read you a poem of mine, for I hear you are a poet—a poem on Hop.” (I ought to say his dialect was quite new to me.) “Oh! by all means,” I replied, “ah! a poem on hops; you are a Kentish man perhaps.” “No,” he thundered out, “on Hop, Hop.”—and I had then wit enough to understand he meant Hope. “Better and better, (said I,) where is your poem?” “I will go fetch it—it is outside the door;” and he went for it. When he was gone, Perry took his seat, by me, and we were talking of this strange visitant, when he returned, and instantly exclaimed to P. “that’s my place;—what do you mean by taking it? get up!” and really, had P. resisted, it seemed likely that a blow would have followed the words; but Perry obeyed, and while Hogg was reading his manuscript, I went to the chimney-piece and took down a large bottle of lavender water, which, as it was a hot day, I carried round to the company, and then offered it to him also, to smell at. “No, no,” said he, “if I took any it would be in a glass;” evidently taking it for a dram: and I had difficulty in keeping my guests from indecorous mirth; at last the poor man (in whose bright eye I thought I read more than incipient insanity) began to read; but with such difficulty, (for it was not in his own hand-writing,) that I humbly requested to be allowed to read it for him, and he consented; and I did read it, and really was surprised to find how good many of the lines were; and I own, I did improve some of them, when the measure halted, by adding words. He seemed much pleased, poor man, and we got through the whole. Some of the guests who were there at the first, stole away, ’ere I had done; and others coming in, I pointed them to a chair, while they listened, and looked, in utter astonishment! It was a scene indeed! When the MS. was returned, my servant came up to tell Mr. H. that Lady Cork had sent her servant to see him back to her house; “tell the fellow I will not go yet, and I can go alone;” and he re-seated himself. Not long after, came in my cousin T. A. The servant had told him Lady C. had sent a poor crazy man to me, and I could not get rid of him; so he hastened up, to rid me of the guest he supposed to be forced on me, by the Countess; but when I met him smiling, and told him Mr. H. had come to read me a pretty poem, he with difficulty suppressed a laugh, and sat down meekly. But soon after came up another message, “Madam, Lady C. has sent another servant for Mr. H.; and says he must come directly!” “Must! I won’t come; I know my way,” was Hogg’s reply; and the bard of Hope had almost thrown me into Despair—the despair of getting rid of him,—when I bethought me to try to convince him civility obliged him to go to Lady C., as I was sure she wished much to introduce him and his poem to others of her friends; and, at last, I prevailed on him to go, my cousin most politely seeing him downstairs. I saw him no more; and, I think, two days afterwards, the poor man, sick to death of London, and of being made a show of, took French leave, one morning early; and I believe he took with him both Lady C.’s gifts, the blanket and the blouse.
It was a pleasure to me, in after years, to read an account of the poor wanderer’s having found pious friends in the last days of his life, and that he died the death of a Christian.[[42]]
| [41] | The “Bible in Spain” was published this year. |
| [42] | In the 23rd volume of the “Christian Observer,” No. 1, there is a “Brief Memoir of Thomas Hogg,” giving an affecting account of this poor and pious man’s end: he died in great want, but full of christian hope and peace in believing. That he was no common man, is apparent from the few details there recorded. One remark he made may, perhaps, be deemed worthy of record here. The divisions unhappily prevalent in the Church of Christ, being lamented in his hearing, he said, in his native sprightly manner, “No matter, there are two sides to the river.” Some parts of his Poem are given in the article from which we quote. He died at the age of 65, in 1818.—E. |