EGLINGTON TOURNAMENT.
That Irish channel has, as the English say, “a nasty way with it.” I embarked at noon on the 26th, in a magnificent steamer, the Royal Sovereign, which had been engaged by Lord Eglington (as per advertisement) to set down at Ardrossan all passengers bound to the tournament. This was a seventeen hours’ job, including a very cold, blowy, and rough night; and of the two hundred passengers on board, one half were so blest as to have berths or settees—the others were unblest, indeed.
I found on board several Americans; and by the time I had looked at the shape of the Liverpool harbor and seen one or two vessels run in before a slapping breeze, the premonitory symptom (which had already sent many to their berths) sent me to mine. The boat was pitching backward and forward with a sort of handsaw action that was not endurable. By foregoing my dinner and preserving a horizontal position I escaped all sickness, and landed at Ardrossan at six the next morning with a thirty-six hours’ fast upon me, which I trusted my incipient gout would remember as a per contra to the feast in the promised “banquet.”
Ardrossan, built chiefly, I believe, by Lord Eglington’s family, and about eight miles from the castle, is a small but very clean and thrifty looking hamlet on that part of the western coast of Scotland which lies opposite the Isle of Arran. Ailsa rock, famous in song, slumbers like a cloud on the south-western horizon. The long breakers of the channel lay their lines of foam almost upon the street, and the harbor is formed by a pier jutting out from a little promontory on the northern extremity of the town. The one thoroughfare of Ardrossan is kept clean by the broom of every wind that sweeps the Irish sea. A cleaner or bleaker spot I never saw.
A Gael, who did not comprehend a syllable of such English as a Yankee delivers, shouldered my portmanteau without direction or request, and travelled away to the inn, where he deposited it and held out his hand in silence. There was certainly quite enough said between us; and remembering the boisterous accompaniment with which the claims of porters are usually pushed upon one’s notice, I could well wish that Gaelic tide-waiters were more common.
“Any room, landlord?” was the first question. “Not a cupboard, sir,” was the answer.—“Can you give me some breakfast?” asked fifty others in a breath.—“Breakfast will be put upon all the tables presently, gentlemen,” said the dismayed Boniface, glancing at the crowds who were pouring in, and, Scotchmanlike, making no promises to individuals.—“Landlord!” vociferated a gentleman from the other side of the hall—“what the devil does this mean? Here’s the room I engaged a fortnight ago occupied by a dozen people shaving and dressing!”—“I canna help it, sir! Ye’re welcome to to turn ’em a’ out—if ye can!” said the poor man, lifting up his hands in despair, and retreating to the kitchen. The hint was a good one, and taking up my own portmanteau, I opened a door in one of the passages. It led into a small apartment, which, in more roomy times might have been a pantry, but was now occupied by three beds and a great variety of baggage. There was a twopenny glass on the mantel-piece, and a drop or two of water in a pitcher, and where there were sheets I could make shift for a towel. I found presently, by the way, that I had had a narrow escape of surprising some one in bed, for the sheet which did duty as a napkin was still warm with pressure of the newly-fled occupant.
Three or four smart-looking damsels in caps looked in while I was engaged in my toilet, and this, with one or two slight observations made in the apartment, convinced me that I had intruded on the dormitory of the ladies’ maids belonging to the various parties in the house. A hurried “God bless us!” as they retreated, however, was all either of reproach or remonstrance that I was troubled with; and I emerged with a smooth chin in time for breakfast, very much to the envy and surprise of my less-enterprising companions.
There was a great scramble for the tea and toast; but uniting forces with a distinguished literary man whose acquaintance I had been fortunate enough to make on board the the steamer, we managed to get places at one of the tables, and achieved our breakfasts in tolerable comfort. We were still eight miles from Eglington, however, and a lodging was the next matter of moment. My friend thought he was provided for nearer the castle, and I went into the street, which I found crowded with distressed looking people, flying from door to door, with ladies on their arms and wheelbarrows of baggage at their heels, the townspeople standing at the doors and corners staring at the novel spectacle in open-mouthed wonder. Quite in a dilemma whether or not to go on to Irvine (which, being within two miles of the castle, was probably much more over-run than Ardrossan) I was standing at the corner of the street, when a Liverpool gentleman, whose kindness I must record as well as my pleasure in his society for the two or three days we were together, came up and offered me a part of a lodging he had that moment taken. The bed was what we call in America a bunk, or a kind of berth sunk into the wall, and there were two in the same garret, but the sheets were clean; and there was a large Bible on the table—the latter a warrant for civility, neatness, and honesty, which, after many years of travel, I have never found deceptive. I closed immediately with my friend; and whether it was from a smack of authorship or no, I must say I took to my garret very kindly.
It was but nine o’clock, and the day was on my hands. Just beneath the window ran a railroad, built to bring coal to the seaside, and extending to within a mile of the castle; and with some thirty or forty others, I embarked in a horse-car for Eglinton to see the preparations for the following day’s tournament. We were landed near the park gate, after an hour’s drive through a flat country blackened with coal pits; and it was with no little relief to the eye that I entered upon a smooth and gravelled avenue, leading by a mile of shaded windings to the castle. The day was heavenly; the sun-flecks lay bright as “patines of gold” on the close-shaven grass beneath the trees; and I thought that nature had consented for once to remove her eternal mist veil from Scotland, and let pleasure and sunshine have a holiday together. The sky looked hard and deep; and I had no more apprehension of rain for the morrow than I should have had under a July sun in Asia.
Crossing a bright little river (the Lugton I think it is called) whose sloping banks, as far as I could see up and down, were shaven to the rich smoothness of “velvet of three-pile,” I came in sight of the castle towers. Another bridge over a winding of the same river lay to the left, a Gothic structure of the most rich and airy mould, and from either end of this extended the enclosed passage for the procession to the lists. The castle stood high upon a mound beyond. Its round towers were half concealed by some of the finest trees I ever saw—and though less antique and of a less frowning and rude aspect than I had expected, it was a very perfect specimen of modern castellated architecture. On ascending to the lawn in front of the castle, I found that it was built less upon a mound than upon the brow of a broad plateau of table-land, turned sharply by the Lugton, close under the castle walls—a natural site of singular beauty. Two Saracenic-looking tents of the gayest colors were pitched upon the bright green lawn at a short distance, and off to the left, by several glimpses through the trees, I traced along the banks of the river the winding enclosures for the procession.
The large hall was crowded with servants; but presuming that a knight who was to do his devoir so conspicuously on the morrow would not be stirring at so early an hour, I took merely a glance of the armor upon the walls in passing, and deferring the honor of paying my respects, crossed the lawn and passed over the Lugton by a rustic foot-bridge in search of the lists. A crosspath (leading by a small temple enclosed with wire netting, once an aviary, perhaps, but now hung around in glorious profusion with game, vension, a boar’s head, and other comestibles,) brought me in two or three minutes to a hill-side overlooking the chivalric arena. It was a beautiful sight of itself without plume or armor. In the centre of a verdant plain, shut in by hills of an easy slope, wooded richly, appeared an oblong enclosure glittering at either end with a cluster of tents, striped with the gayest colors of the rainbow. Between them, on the farther side, stood three galleries, of which the centre was covered with a Gothic roof highly ornamented, the four front pillars draped with blue damask, and supporting a canopy over the throne intended for the Queen of Beauty. A strongly-built barrier extended through the lists; and heaps of lances, gay flags, and the heraldic ornaments, still to be added to the tents, lay around on the bright grass in a picture of no little richness. I was glad afterward that I had seen thus much with the advantage of an unclouded sun.
In returning, I passed in the rear of the castle, and looked into the temporary pavilions erected for the banquet and ball. They were covered exteriorly with rough board and sails, and communicated by an enclosed gallery with one of the larger apartments of the castle. The workmen were still nailing up the drapery, and arranging lamps and flowers; but with all this disadvantage, the effect of the two immense halls, lined as they were with crimson and white in broad alternate stripes, resembling in shape and fashion two gigantic tents, was exceedingly imposing. Had the magnificent design of Lord Eglinton been successfully carried out it would have been a scene, with the splendor of the costumes, the lights, music, and revelry unsurpassed probably by anything short of enchantment.
Principal Day.—I was awakened at an early hour the morning after arriving at Ardrossan by a band of music in the street. My first feeling was delight at seeing a bit of blue sky of the size of my garret skylight, and a dazzling sunshine on the floor. “Skirling” above all other instruments of the band, the Highland bagpipe made the air reel with “A’ the blue bonnets are over the border,” and, hoisting the window above my head, I strained over the house-leads to look at the performer. A band of a dozen men in kilt and bonnet were marching up and down, led by a piper, something in the face like the heathen representations of Boreas; and on a line of roughly-constructed rail-cars were piled, two or three deep, a crowd resembling at first sight, a crushed bed of tulips. Bonnets of every cut and color, from the courtier’s green velvet to the shepherd’s homely gray, struggled at the top; and over the sides hung red legs and yellow legs, cross barred stockings and buff boots, bare feet and pilgrim’s sandals. The masqueraders scolded and laughed, the boys halloed, the quiet people of Ardrossan stared in grave astonishment, and, with the assistance of some brawny shoulders, applied to the sides of the overladen vehicles, the one unhappy horse got his whimsical load under way for the tournament.
Train followed train, packed with the same motley array; and at ten o’clock, after a clean and comfortable Scotch breakfast in our host’s little parlor, we sallied forth to try our luck in the scramble for places. After a considerable fight we were seated, each with a man in his lap, when we were ordered down by the conductor, who informed us that the Chief of the Campbells had taken the car for his party, and that, with his band in the succeeding one, he was to go in state (upon a railroad!) to Eglinton. Up swore half-a-dozen Glasgow people, usurpers like ourselves, that they would give way for no Campbell in the world; and finding a stout hand laid on my leg to prevent my yielding to the order to quit, I gave in to what might be called as pretty a bit of rebellious republicanism as you would find on the Mississippi. The conductor stormed, but the Scotch bodies sat firm; and as Scot met Scot in the fight, I was content to sit in silence and take advantage of the victory. I learned afterwards that the Campbell Chieftain was a Glasgow manufacturer; and though he undoubtedly had a right to gather his clan, and take piper and eagle’s plume, there might, possibly, be some jealous disapprobation at the bottom of his townsmen’s rudeness.
Campbell and his party presently appeared, and a dozen or twenty very fine-looking men they were. One of the ladies, as well as I could see through the black lace veil thrown over her cap and plumes, was a remarkably handsome woman, and I was very glad when the matter was compromised, and the Campbells distributed among our company. We jogged on at a slow pace toward the tournament, passing thousands of pedestrians, the men all shod, and the women all barefoot, with their shoes in their hands, and nearly every one, in accordance with Lord Eglinton’s printed request, showing some touch of fancy in his dress. A plaid over the shoulder, or a Glengary bonnet, or, perhaps, a goose-feather stuck jauntily in the cap, was enough to show the feeling of the wearer, and quite enough to give the crowd, all in all, a most festal and joyous aspect.
The secluded bit of road between the rail-track and the castle lodge, probably never before disturbed by more than two vehicles at a time, was thronged with a press of wheels, as closely jammed as Fleet street at noon. Countrymen’s carts piled with women and children like loads of market baskets in Kent; post-chaises with exhausted horses and occupants straining their eyes forward for a sight of the castle; carriages of the neighboring gentry with “bodkins” and over-packed dickeys, all in costume; stout farmers on horseback, with plaid and bonnet; gingerbread and ale carts, pony carts, and coal carts; wheelbarrows with baggage, and porters with carpet bags and hat boxes, were mixed up in merry confusion with the most motley throng of pedestrians it has ever been my fortune to join. The vari-colored tide poured in at the open gate of the castle; and if I had seen no other procession, the long-extended mass of caps, bonnets, and plumes, winding through that shaded and beautiful avenue, would have repaid me for no small proportion of my subsequent discomfort. I remarked, by the way, that I did not see a hat in the entire mile between the porter’s lodge and the castle.
The stables, which lay on the left of the approach (a large square structure with turret and clock, very like four Methodist churches, dos-à-dos,) presented another busy and picturesque scene—horses half-caparisoned, men-at-arms in buff and steel, and the gay liveries of the nineteenth century paled by the revived glories of the servitude of more knightly times. And this part of the scene, too, had its crowd of laughing and wondering spectators.
On reaching the Gothic bridge over the Lugton, we came upon a cordon of police who encircled the castle, turning the crowd off by the bridge in the direction of the lists. Sorry to leave my merry and motley fellow-pedestrians, I presented my card of invitation and passed on alone to the castle. The sun was at this time shining with occasional cloudings-over; and the sward and road, after the two or three fine days we had had, were in the best condition for every purpose of the tournament.
Two or three noble trees with their foliage nearly to the ground stood between me and the front of the castle, as I ascended the slope above the river; and the lifting of a stage-curtain could scarce be more sudden, or the scene of a drama, more effectively composed, than the picture disclosed by the last step upon the terrace. Any just description of it, indeed, must read like a passage from the “prompter’s book.” I stood for a moment, exactly where you would have placed an audience. On my left rose a noble castle with four round towers, the entrance thronged with men-at-arms, and comers and goers in every variety of costume. On the greensward in front of the castle lounged three or four gentlemen archers in suits of green silk and velvet. A cluster of grooms under an immense tree on the right were fitting two or three superb horses with their armor and caparisons, while one beautiful blood palfrey, whose fine limbs and delicately veined head and neck were alone visible under his embroidered saddle and gorgeous trappings of silk, was held by two “tigers” at a short distance. Still farther on the right, stood a cluster of gayly decorated tents; and in and out of the looped-up curtain of the farthest passed constantly the slight forms of lady archers in caps with snowy plumes, kirtles of green velvet, and petticoats of white satin, quivers at their backs and bows in their hands—one tall and stately girl (an Ayrshire lady of very uncommon beauty, whose name I took some pains to inquire,) conspicuous by her grace and dignity above all.
The back-ground was equally well composed—the farther side of the lawn making a sharp descent to the small river which bends around the castle, the opposite shore thronged with thousands of spectators watching the scene I have described; and in the distance behind them, the winding avenue, railed in for the procession, hidden and disclosed by turns among the noble trees of the park, and alive throughout its whole extent with the multitudes crowding to the lists. There was a chivalric splendor in the whole scene, which I thought at the time would repay one for a long pilgrimage to see it—even should the clouds, which by this time were coming up very threateningly from the horizon, put a stop to the tournament altogether.
On entering the castle hall, a lofty room hung round with arms, trophies of the chase, ancient shields, and armor of every description, I found myself in a crowd of a very merry and rather a motley character—knights half armed, esquires in buff, palmers, halberdiers, archers, and servants in modern livery, here and there a lady, and here and there a spectator like myself, and in a corner by one of the Gothic windows—what think you?—a minstrel?—a gray-haired harper?—a jester? Guess again—a reporter for the Times! With a “walking dictionary” at his elbow, in the person of the fat butler of the castle, he was inquiring out the various characters in the crowd, and the rapidity of his stenographic jottings-down (with their lucid apparition in print two days after in London) would in the times represented by the costumes about him, have burnt him at the stake for a wizard with the consent of every knight in Christendom.
I was received by the knight-marshal of the lists, who did the honors of hospitality for Lord Eglington during his preparation for the “passage of arms;” and finding an old friend under the gray beard and scallop shell of a venerable palmer, whose sandal and bare toes I chanced to stumble over, we passed in together to the large dining room of the castle. “Lunch” was on the long table, and some two hundred of the earl’s out-lodging guests were busy at knife and fork, while here and there were visible some of those anachronisms which, to me, made the zest of the tournament—pilgrims eating Périgord pies, esquires dressing after the manner of the thirteenth century diving most scientifically into the richer veins of pâtés de foie-gras, dames in ruff and farthingale discussing blue blanc-mange, and a knight with an over-night headache calling out for a cup of tea!
On returning to the hall of the castle, which was the principal place of assemblage, I saw with no little regret that ladies were coming from their carriages under umbrellas. The fair archers tripped in doors from their crowded tent, the knight of the dragon, who had been out to look after his charger, was being wiped dry by a friendly pocket-handkerchief, and all countenances had fallen with the barometer. It was time for the procession to start, however, and the knights appeared, one by one, armed cap-à-pie, all save the helmet, till at last the hall was crowded with steel-clad and chivalric forms; and they waited only for the advent of the Queen of Beauty. After admiring not a little the manly bearing and powerful “thewes and sinews” displayed by the array of modern English nobility in the trying costumes and harness of olden time, I stepped out upon the lawn with some curiosity to see how so much heavy metal was to be got into a demipique saddle. After one or two ineffectual attempts, foiled partly by the restlessness of his horse, the first knight called ingloriously for a chair. Another scrambled over with great difficulty; and I fancy, though Lord Waterford and Lord Eglinton, and one other whom I noticed, mounted very gallantly and gracefully, the getting to saddle was possibly the most difficult feat of the day. The ancient achievement of leaping on the steed’s back from the ground in complete armor would certainly have broken the spine of any horse present, and was probably never done but in story. Once in the saddle, however, English horsemanship told well; and one of the finest sights of the day I thought was the breaking away of a powerful horse from the grooms, before his rider had gathered up his reins, and a career at furious speed through the open park, during which the steel encumbered horseman rode as safely as a fox-hunter, and subdued the affrighted animal, and brought him back in a style worthy of a wreath from the Queen of Beauty.
Driven in by the rain, I was standing at the upper side of the hall, when a movement in the crowd and an unusual “making-way” announced the coming of the “cynosure of all eyes.” She entered from the interior of the castle with her train held up by two beautiful pages of ten or twelve years of age, and attended by two fair and very young maids of honor. Her jacket of ermine, her drapery of violet and blue velvet, the collars of superb jewels which embraced her throat and bosom, and her sparkling crown, were on her (what they seldom are, but should be only) mere accessaries to her own predominating and radiant beauty. Lady Seymour’s features are as nearly faultless as is consistent with expression; her figure and face are rounded to the complete fulness of the mould for a Juno; her walk is queenly, and peculiarly unstudied and graceful, yet (I could not but think then and since) she was not well chosen for the Queen of a Tournament. The character of her beauty, uncommon and perfect as it is, is that of delicacy and loveliness—the lily rather than the rose—the modest pearl, not the imperial diamond. The eyes to flash over a crowd at a tournament, to be admired from a distance, to beam down upon a knight kneeling for a public award of honor, should be full of command, dark, lustrous, and fiery. Hers are of the sweetest and most tranquil blue that ever reflected the serene heaven of a happy hearth—eyes to love, not wonder at, to adore and rely upon, not admire and tremble for. At the distance at which most of the spectators of the tournament saw Lady Seymour, Fanny Kemble’s stormy orbs would have shown much finer, and the forced and imperative action of a stage-taught head and figure would have been more applauded than the quiet, nameless, and indescribable grace lost to all but those immediately round her. I had seen the Queen of Beauty in a small society, dressed in simple white, without an ornament, when she was far more becomingly dressed and more beautiful than here, and I have never seen, since, the engravings and prints of Lady Seymour which fill every window in the London shops, without feeling that it was a profanation of a style of loveliness that would be—
——“prodigal enough
If it unveiled its beauty to the moon.”
The day wore on, and the knight-marshal of the lists, (Sir Charles Lamb, the stepfather of Lord Eglinton, by far the most knightly looking person at the tournament,) appeared in his rich surcoat and embossed armor, and with a despairing look at the increasing torrents of rain, gave the order to get to horse. At the first blast of the trumpet, the thick-leaved trees around the castle gave out each a dozen or two of gay-colored horsemen who had stood almost unseen under the low hanging branches—mounted musicians in silk and gay trappings, mounted men-at-arms in demi-suits of armor, deputy marshals and halberdiers; and around the western tower, where their caparisons had been arranged and their horse armor carefully looked to, rode the glittering and noble company of knights, Lord Eglinton in his armor of inlaid gold, and Lord Alford, with his athletic frame and very handsome features, conspicuous above all. The rain, meantime, spared neither the rich tabard of the pursuivant, nor the embroidered saddle cloths of the queen’s impatient palfrey: and after a half-dozen of dripping detachments had formed and led on, as the head of the procession, the lady archers—who were to go on foot—were called by the marshal with a smile and a glance upward which might have been construed into a tacit advice to stay in doors. Gracefully and majestically, however, with quiver at her back, and bow in hand, the tall and fair archer of whose uncommon beauty I have already spoken, stepped from the castle door; and, regardless of the rain which fell in drops as large as pearls on her unprotected forehead and snowy shoulders, she took her place in the procession with her silken-booted troop picking their way very gingerly over the pools behind her. Slight as the circumstance may seem, there was in the manner of the lady, and her calm disregard of self in the cause she had undertaken, which would leave me in no doubt where to look for a heroine were the days of Wallace, (whose compatriot she is) to come over again. The knight-marshal put spurs to his horse, and re-ordered the little troop to the castle; and regretting that I had not the honor of the lady’s acquaintance for my authority, I performed my only chivalric achievement for the day, the sending a halberdier whom I had chanced to remember as the servant of an old friend, on a crusade into the castle for a lady’s maid and a pair of dry stockings! Whether they were found, and the fair archer wore them, or where she and her silk-shod company have the tournament consumption, rheumatism, or cough, at this hour, I am sorry I cannot say.
The judge of peace, Lord Saltoun, with his wand, and retainers on foot bearing heavy battle axes, was one of the best figures in the procession; though, as he was slightly gray, and his ruby velvet cap and saturated ruff were poor substitutes for a warm cravat and hat-brim, I could not but associate his fine horsemanship with a sore throat, and his retainers and their battle axes with relays of nurses and hot flannels. The flower of the tournament, in the representing and keeping up of the assumed character, however, was its king, Lord Londonderry. He, too, is a man, I should think, on the shady side of fifty, but of just the high preservation and embonpoint necessary for a royal presence. His robe of red velvet and ermine swept the ground as he sat in his saddle; and he managed to keep its immense folds free of his horse’s legs, and yet to preserve its flow in his prancing motion, with a grace and ease, I must say, which seemed truly imperial.—His palfrey was like a fiery Arabian, all action, nerve, and fire; and every step was a rearing prance, which, but for the tranquil self-possession and easy control of the king, would have given the spectators some fears for his royal safety. Lord Londonderry’s whole performance of his part was without a fault, and chiefly admirable, I thought, from his sustaining it with that unconsciousness and entire freedom from mauvaise honte which the English seldom can command in new or conspicuous situations.
The Queen of Beauty was called, and her horse led to the door; but the water ran from the blue saddle cloth and housings like rain from a roof, and the storm seemed to have increased with the sound of her name. She came to the door, and gave a deprecating look upward which would have mollified any thing but a Scotch sky, and, by command of the knight-marshal, retired again to wait for a less chivalric but drier conveyance. Her example was followed by the other ladies, and their horses were led riderless in the procession.
The knights were but half called when I accepted a friend’s kind offer of a seat in his carriage to the lists. The entire park, as we drove along, was one vast expanse of umbrellas; and it looked from the carriage window, like an army of animated and gigantic mushrooms, shouldering each other in a march. I had no idea till then of the immense crowd the occasion had called together. The circuitous route railed in for the procession was lined with spectators six or seven deep, on either side, throughout its whole extent of a mile; the most distant recesses of the park were crowded with men, horses, and vehicles, all pressing onward; and as we approached the lists, we found the multitude full a quarter of a mile deep, standing on all the eminences which looked down upon the enclosure, as closely serried almost as the pit of the opera, and all eyes bent in one direction, anxiously watching the guarded entrance. I heard the number of persons present variously estimated during the day, the estimates ranging from fifty to seventy-five thousand, but I should think the latter was nearer the mark.
We presented our tickets at the private door, in the rear of the principal gallery, and found ourselves introduced to a very dry place among the supports and rafters of the privileged structure. The look-out was excellent in front, and here I proposed to remain, declining the wet honor of a place above stairs. The gentleman-usher, however, was very urgent for our promotion; but as we found him afterward chatting very familiarly with a party who occupied the seats we had selected, we were compelled to relinquish the flattering unction that he was actuated by an intuitive sense of our deservings. On ascending to the covered gallery, I saw, to my surprise, that some of the best seats in front were left vacant, and here and there, along the different tiers of benches, ladies were crowding excessively close together, while before or behind them there seemed plenty of unoccupied room. A second look showed me small streams of water coming through the roof, and I found that a dry seat was totally unattainable. The gallery held about a thousand persons (the number Lord Eglinton had invited to the banquet and ball,) and the greater part of these were ladies, most of them in fancy dresses, and the remainder in very slight demi-toilette—everybody having dressed apparently with a full reliance on the morning’s promise of fair weather. Less fortunate than the multitude outside the Earl’s guests seemed not to have numbered umbrellas among the necessities of a tournament; and the demand for this despised invention was sufficient (if merit was ever rewarded) to elevate it for ever after to a rank among chivalric appointments. Substitutes and imitations of it were made of swords and cashmeres; and the lenders of veritable umbrellas received smiles which should induce them, one would think, to carry half-a-dozen to all future tournaments in Scotland. It was pitiable to see the wreck going on among the perishable elegancies of Victorine and Herbault—chip hats of the most faultless tournure collapsing with the wet; starched ruffs quite flat; dresses passing helplessly from “Lesbia’s” style to “Nora Creina’s;” shawls, tied by anxious mammas over chapeau and coiffure, crushing pitilessly the delicate fabric of months of invention; and, more lamentable still, the fair brows and shoulders of many a lovely woman proving with rainbow clearness that the colors of the silk or velvet composing her head-dress were by no means ‘fast.’ The Irvine archers, by the way, who as the Queen’s body guard, were compelled to expose themselves to the rain on the grand staircase, resembled a troop of New Zealanders with their faces tattooed of a delicate green; though, as their Lincoln bonnets were all made of the same faithless velvet, they were fortunately streaked so nearly alike as to preserve their uniform.
After a brief consultation between the rheumatisms in my different limbs, it was decided (since it was vain to hope for shelter for the entire person) that my cloth cap would be the best recipient for the inevitable wet; and selecting the best of the vacated places, I seated myself so as to receive one of the small streams as nearly as possible on my organ of firmness. Here I was undisturbed, except once that I was asked, (my seat supposed to be a dry one) to give place for a lady newly arrived, who, receiving my appropriated rivulet in her neck, immediately restored it to me with many acknowledgments, and passed on. In point of position, my seat, which was very near the pavilion of the Queen of Beauty, was one of the best at the tournament; and diverting my aqueduct, by a little management, over my left shoulder, I contrived to be more comfortable, probably, than most of my shivering and melancholy neighbors.
A great agitation in the crowd, and a dampish sound of coming trumpets announced the approach of the procession. As it came in sight, and wound along the curved passage to the lists, its long and serpentine line of helmets and glittering armor, gonfalons, spear-points, and plumes, just surging above the moving sea of umbrellas, had the effect of some gorgeous and bright-scaled dragon swimming in troubled waters. The leaders of the long cavalcade pranced into the arena at last, and a tremendous shout from the multitude announced their admiration of the spectacle. On they came toward the canopy of the Queen of Beauty, men-at-arms, trumpeters, heralds, and halberdiers, and soon after them the king of the tournament, with his long scarlet robe flying to the tempest, and his rearing palfrey straining every nerve to show his pride and beauty. The first shout from the principal gallery was given in approbation of this display of horsemanship, as Lord Londonderry rode past; and considering the damp enthusiasm which prompted it, it should have been considered rather flattering. Lord Eglinton came on presently, distinguished above all others no less by the magnificence of his appointments than by the ease and dignity with which he rode, and his knightly bearing and stature. His golden armor sat on him as if he had been used to wear it; and he managed his beautiful charger, and bowed in reply to the reiterated shouts of the multitude and his friends, with a grace and chivalric courtesy which drew murmurs of applause from the spectators long after the cheering had subsided.
The jester rode into the lists upon a gray steed, shaking his bells over his head, and dressed in an odd costume of blue and yellow, with a broad flapped hat, asses’ ears, &c. His character was not at first understood by the crowd, but he soon began to excite merriment by his jokes, and no little admiration by his capital riding. He was a professional person, I think it was said, from Astley’s, but as he spoke with a most excellent Scotch “burr,” he easily passed for an indigenous “fool.” He rode from side to side of the lists during the whole of the tournament, borrowing umbrellas, quizzing the knights, &c.
One of the most striking features of the procession was the turn-out of the knight of the Gael, Lord Glenlyon, with seventy of his clansmen at his back in plaid and philibeg, and a finer exhibition of calves (without a joke) could scarce be desired. They followed their chieftain on foot, and when the procession separated, took up their places in a line along the palisade serving as a guard to the lists.
After the procession had twice made the circuit of the enclosure, doing obeisance to the Queen of Beauty, the jester had possession of the field while the knights retired to don their helmets, (hitherto carried by their esquires,) and to await the challenge to combat. All eyes were now bent upon the gorgeous clusters of tents at either extremity of the oblong area; and in a very few minutes the herald’s trumpet sounded, and the Knight of the Swan rode forth, having sent his defiance to the Knight of the Golden Lion. At another blast of the trumpet they set their lances in rest, selected opposite sides of the long fence or barrier running lengthwise through the lists, and rode furiously past each other, the fence of course preventing any contact except that of their lances. This part of the tournament (the essential part, one would think) was, from the necessity of the case, the least satisfactory of all. The knights, though they rode admirably, were so oppressed by the weight of their armor, and so embarrassed in their motions by the ill-adjusted joints, that they were like men of wood, unable apparently even to raise the lance from the thigh on which it rested. I presume no one of them either saw where he should strike his opponent, or had any power of directing the weapon. As they rode close to the fence, however, and a ten-foot pole sawed nearly off in two or three places was laid crosswise on the legs of each, it would be odd if they did not come in contact; and the least shock of course splintered the lance—in other words, finished what was begun by the carpenter’s saw. The great difficulty was to ride at all under such a tremendous weight, and manage a horse of spirit, totally unused both to the weight and the clatter of his own and his rider’s armor. I am sure that Lord Eglinton’s horse, for one, would have bothered Ivanhoe himself to “bring to the scratch;” and Lord Waterford’s was the only one that, for all the fright he showed, might have been selected (as they all should have been) for the virtue of having peddled tin-ware. These two knights, by the way, ran the best career, Lord Eglinton, malgré his bolter, coming off the victor.
The rain, meantime, had increased to a deluge, the Queen of Beauty sat shivering under an umbrella, the jester’s long ears were water-logged, and lay flat on his shoulders, and everybody in my neighborhood had expressed a wish for a dry seat and a glass of sherry. The word “banquet” occurred frequently right and left; hopes for “mulled wine or something hot before dinner” stole from the lips of a mamma on the seat behind; and there seemed to be but one chance for the salvation of health predominant in the minds of all—and that was drinking rather more freely than usual at the approaching banquet. Judge what must have been the astonishment, vexation, dread, and despair, of the one thousand wet, shivering, and hungry candidates for the feast, when Lord Eglinton rode up to the gallery unhelmeted, and delivered himself as follows:—
“Ladies and gentlemen, I had hoped to have given you all a good dinner; but to my extreme mortification and regret, I am just informed that the rain has penetrated the banqueting pavilions, and that, in consequence, I shall only be able to entertain so many of my friends as can meet around my ordinary table.”
About as uncomfortable a piece of intelligence to some nine hundred and sixty of his audience, as they could have received, short of a sentence for their immediate execution.
To comprehend fully the disastrous extent of the disappointment in the principal gallery, it must be taken into consideration that the domicils, fixed or temporary, of the rejected sufferers, were from five to twenty miles distant—a long ride at best, if begun on the point of famishing, and in very thin and well-saturated fancy dresses. Grievance the first, however, was nothing to grievance the second; viz. that from the tremendous run upon post-horses, and horses of all descriptions, during the three or four previous days, the getting to the tournament was the utmost that many parties could achieve. The nearest baiting-place was several miles off; and in compassion to the poor beasts, and with the weather promising fair on their arrival, most persons had consented to take their chance for the quarter of a mile from the lists to the castle, and had dismissed their carriages with orders to return at the close of the banquet and ball—daylight the next morning! The castle, every body knew, was crammed, from “donjon-keep to turret-top,” with the relatives and friends of the noble earl, and his private table could accommodate no more than these. To get home was the inevitable alternative.
The rain poured in a deluge. The entire park was trodden into a slough, or standing in pools of water—carts, carriages, and horsemen, with fifty thousand flying pedestrians, crowding every road and avenue. How to get home with a carriage! How the deuce to get home without one!
A gentleman who had been sent out on the errand of Noah’s dove by a lady whose carriage and horses were ordered at four the following morning, came back with the mud up to his knees, and reported that there was not a wheelbarrow to be had for love or money. After threading the crowd in every direction, he had offered a large sum, in vain, for a one-horse cart!
Night was coming on, meantime, very fast; but absorbed by the distresses of the shivering groups around me, I had scarce remembered that my own invitation was but to the banquet and ball—and my dinner, consequently, nine miles off, at Ardrossan. Thanking Heaven, that, at least, I had no ladies to share my evening’s pilgrimage, I followed the Queen of Beauty down the muddy and slippery staircase, and, when her majesty had stepped into her carriage, I stepped over ankles in mud and water, and began my wade toward the castle.
Six hours of rain, and the trampling of such an immense multitude of men and horses, had converted the soft and moist sod and soil of the park into a deep and most adhesive quagmire. Glancing through the labyrinth of vehicles on every side, and seeing men and horses with their feet completely sunk below the surface, I saw that there was no possibility of shying the matter, and that wade was the word. I thought at first, that I had a claim for a little sympathy on the score of being rather slenderly shod (the impalpable sole of a pattern leather boot being all that separated me from the subsoil of the estate of Eglinton;) but overtaking, presently, a party of four ladies who had lost several shoes in the mire, and were positively wading on in silk stockings, I took patience to myself from my advantage in the comparison, and thanked fate for the thinnest sole with leather to keep it on. The ladies I speak of were under the charge of a most despairing-looking gentleman, but had neither cloak nor umbrella, and had evidently made no calculations for a walk. We differed in our choice of the two sides of a slough, presently, and they were lost in the crowd; but I could not help smiling, with all my pity of their woes, to think what a turning up of prunella shoes there will be, should Lord Eglinton ever plough the chivalric field of the Tournament.
As I reached the castle, I got upon the Macadamised road, which had the advantage of a bottom somewhere, though it was covered with a liquid mud, of which every passing foot gave you a spatter to the hips. My exterior was by this time equally divided between water and dirt, and I trudged on in comfortable fellowship with farmers, coal-miners, and Scotch lasses—envying very much the last, for they carried their shoes in their hands, and held their petticoats, to say the least, clear of the mud. Many a good joke they seemed to have among them, but as they spoke in Gaelic, it was lost on my Sassenach ears.
I had looked forward with a faint hope to a gingerbread and ale-cart, which I remembered having seen in the morning established near the terminus of the railroad, trusting to refresh my strength and patience with a glass of anything that goes under the generic name of “summat;” but though the cart was there, the gingerbread shelf was occupied by a row of Scotch lasses, crouching together under cover from the rain, and the pedlar assured me that “there wasna a drap o’ speerit to be got within ten mile o’ the castle.” One glance at the railroad, where a car with a single horse was beset by some thousands of shoving and fighting applicants, convinced me that I had a walk of eight miles to finish my “purgation by” tournament; and as it was getting too dark to trust to any picking of the way, I took the middle of the rail-track, and set forward.
“Oh, but a weary wight was he
When he reached the foot of the dogwood tree.”
Eight miles in a heavy rain, with boots of the consistence of brown paper, and a road of alternate deep mud and broken stone, should entitle one to the green turban. I will make the pilgrimage of a Hadjii from the “farthest inn” with half the endurance.
I found my Liverpool friends over a mutton chop in the snug parlor of our host, and with a strong brew of hot toddy, and many a laugh at the day’s adventures by land and water, we got comfortably to bed “somewhere in the small hours.” And so ended (for me) the great day of the tournament.
After witnessing the disasters of the first day, the demolition of costumes, and the perils by water, of masqueraders and spectators, it was natural to fancy that the tournament was over. So did not seem to think several thousands of newly-arrived persons, pouring from steamer after steamer upon the pier of Ardrossan, and in every variety of costume, from the shepherd’s maud to the courtier’s satin, crowding to the rail-cars from Eglinton. It appeared from the chance remarks of one or two who came to our lodgings to deposite their carpet bags, that it had rained very little in the places from which the steamers had come, and that they had calculated on the second as the great day of the joust. No dissuasion had the least effect upon them, and away they went, bedecked and merry, the sufferers of the day before looking out upon them, from comfortable hotel and lodging, with prophetic pity.
At noon the sky brightened; and as the cars were running by this time with diminished loads, I parted from my agreeable friends, and bade adieu to my garret at Ardrossan. I was bound to Ireland, and my road lay by Eglinton to Irvine and Ayr. Fellow-passengers with me were twenty or thirty men in Glengary bonnets, plaids, &c.; and I came in for my share of the jeers and jokes showered on them by the passengers in the return-cars, as men bound on a fruitless errand. As we neared the castle, the crowds of people with disconsolate faces waiting for conveyances, or standing by the reopened ginger-bread carts in listless idleness, convinced my companions, at last, that there was nothing to be seen, for that day at least, at Eglinton. I left them sitting on the cars, undecided whether to go on or return without losing their places; and seeing a coach marked “Irvine” standing in the road, I jumped in without question or ceremony. It belonged to a private party of gentlemen, who were to visit the castle and tilting-ground on their way to Irvine; and as they very kindly insisted on my remaining after I had apologised for the intrusion, I found myself “booked” for a glimpse of the second day’s attractions.
The avenue to the castle was as crowded as on the day before; but it was curious to remark how the general aspect of the multitude was changed by the substitution of disappointment for expectation. The lagging gait and surly silence, instead of the elastic step and merry joke, seemed to have darkened the scene more than the withdrawal of the sun, and I was glad to wrap myself in my cloak, and remember that I was on the wing. The banner flying at the castle tower was the only sign of motion I could see in its immediate vicinity; the sail-cloth coverings of the pavilion were dark with wet; the fine sward was everywhere disfigured with traces of mud, and the whole scene was dismal and uncomfortable. We kept on to the lists, and found them, as one of my companions expressed it, more like a cattle-pen after a fair than a scene of pleasure—trodden, wet, miry, and deserted. The crowd, content to view them from a distance, were assembled around the large booths on the ascent of the rising ground toward the castle, where a band was playing some merry reels, and the gingerbread and ale venders plied a busy vocation. A look was enough; and we shaped our course for Irvine, sympathizing deeply with the disappointment of the high-spirited and generous Lord of the Tourney. I heard at Irvine, and farther on, that the tilting would be renewed, and the banquet and ball given on the succeeding days; but after the wreck of dresses and peril of health I had witnessed, I was persuaded that the best that could be done would be but a slender patching up of the original glories as well as a halting rally of the original spirits of the tournament. So I kept on my way.
TALKS OVER TRAVEL.
LONDON.
There is an inborn and inbred distrust of “foreigners” in England—continental foreigners, I should say—which keeps the current of French and Italian society as distinct amid the sea of London, as the blue Rhone in Lake Leman. The word “foreigner,” in England, conveys exclusively the idea of a dark-complexioned and whiskered individual, in a frogged coat and distressed circumstances; and to introduce a smooth-cheeked, plainly-dressed, quiet-looking person by that name, would strike any circle of ladies and gentlemen as a palpable misnomer. The violent and unhappy contrast between the Parisian’s mode of life in London and in Paris, makes it very certain that few of those bien n’es et convenablement riches will live in London for pleasure; and then the flood of political émigrés, for the last half-century, has monopolised hair-dressing, &c., &c., to such a degree, that the word Frenchman is synonymous in English ears with barber and dancing-master. If a dark gentleman, wearing either whisker or mustache, chance to offend John Bull in the street, the first opprobrious language he hears—the strongest that occurs to the fellow’s mind—is “Get out, you —— Frenchman!”
All this, malgré the rage for foreign lions in London society. A well-introduced foreigner gets easily into this, and while he keeps his cabriolet and confines himself to frequenting soirées and accepting invitations to dine, he will never suspect that he is not on an equal footing with any “milor” in London. If he wishes to be disenchanted, he has only to change his lodgings from Long’s to Great Russell street, or (bitterer and readier trial) to propose marriage to the honorable Augusta or Lady Fanny.
Everybody who knows the society of Paris knows something of a handsome and very elegant young baron of the Faubourg St. Germain, who, with small fortune, very great taste, and greater credit, contrived to go on very swimmingly as an adorable roue and vaurien till he was hard upon twenty-five. At the first crisis in his affairs, the ladies, who hold all the politics in their laps, got him appointed consul to Algiers, or minister to Venezuela, and with this pretty pretext for selling his horses and dressing-gowns, these cherished articles brought twice their original value and saved his loyauté, and set him up in fans and monkeys at his place of exile. A year of this was enough for the darling of Paris, and not more than a day before his desolate loves would have ceased to mourn for him, he galloped into his hotel with a new fashion of whiskers, a black female slave, and the most delicious histories of his adventures during the ages he had been exiled. Down to the earth and their previous obscurity dropped the rivals who were just beginning to usurp his glories. A new stud, an indescribable vehicle, a suite of rooms à l’Africaine, and a mystery, preserved at some expense, about his negress, kept all Paris, including his new creditors, in admiring astonishment for a year. Among the crowd of his worshippers, not the last or least fervent, were the fair-haired and glowing beauties who assemble at the levees of their ambassador in the Rue St. Honore, and upon whom le beau Adolphe had looked as pretty savages, whose frightful toilets and horrid French accent might be tolerated one evening in the week—vu le souper!
Eclipses will arrive as calculated by insignificant astronomers, however, and debts will become due as presumed by vulgar tradesmen. Le beau Adolphe began to see another crisis, and betook himself to his old advisers, who were désolés to the last degree; but there was a new government, and the blood of the Faubourg was at a discount. No embassies were to be had for nothing. With a deep sigh, and a gentle tone, to spare his feelings as much as possible, his friend ventures to suggest to him that it will be necessary to sacrifice himself.
“Ahi! mais comment!”
“Marry one of these bêtes Anglaises, who drink you up with their great blue eyes, and are made of gold!”
Adolph buried his face in his gold-fringed oriental pocket-handkerchief; but when the first agony was passed, his resolution was taken, and he determined to go to England. The first beautiful creature he should see, whose funds were enormous and well-invested, should bear away from all the love, rank, and poverty of France, the perfumed hand he looked upon.
A flourishing letter, written in a small, cramped hand, but with a seal on whose breadth of wax and blazon all the united heraldry of France was interwoven, arrived, through the ambassador’s despatch box, to the address of Miladi ——, Belgrave square, announcing, in full, that le beau Adolphe was coming to London to marry the richest heiress in good society—and as Paris could not spare him more than a week, he wished those who had daughters to marry, answering the description, to be bien prévenus of his visit and errand. With the letter came a compend of his genealogy, from the man who spoke French in the confusion of Babel to le dit Baron Adolphe.
To London came the valet of le beau baron, two days before his master, bringing his slippers and dressing gown to be aired after their sea voyage across the channel. To London followed the irresistible youth, cursing, in the politest French, the necessity which subtracted a week from a life measured with such “diamond sparks” as his own in Paris. He sat himself down in his hotel, sent his man Porphyre with his card to every noble and rich house, whose barbarian tenants he had ever seen in the Champs Elysees, and waited the result. Invitations from fair ladies, who remembered him as the man the French belles were mad about, and from literary ladies, who wanted his whiskers and black eyes to give their soirées the necessary foreign complexion, flowed in on all sides, and Monsieur Adolphe selected his most mignon cane and his happiest design in a stocking, and “rendered himself” through the rain like a martyr.
No offers of marriage the first evening!
None the second!!
None the third!!!
Le beau Adolphe began to think either that English papas did not propose their daughters to people as in France; or, perhaps, that the lady whom he had commissioned to circulate his wishes had not sufficiently advertised him. She had, however.
He took advice, and found it would be necessary to take the first step himself. This was disagreeable, and he said to himself, “Le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle”; but his youth was passing, and his English fortune was at interest.
He went to Almack’s, and proposed to the first authenticated fortune that accepted his hand for a waltz. The young lady first laughed, and then told her mother, who told her son, who thought it an insult, and called out le beau Adolphe, very much to the astonishment of himself and Porphyre. The thing was explained, and the baron looked about the next day for one pas si bête. Found a young lady with half a million sterling, proposed in a morning call, and was obliged to ring for assistance, his intended having gone into convulsions with laughing at him. The story by this time had got pretty well distributed through the different strata of London society;—and when le beau Adolphe, convinced that he would not succeed with the noble heiresses of Belgrave square, condescended, in his extremity, to send his heart by his valet to a rich little vulgarian, who “never had a grandfather,” and lived in Harley street, he narrowly escaped being prosecuted for a nuisance, and, Paris being now in possession of the enemy, he buried his sorrows in Belgium. After a short exile his friends procured him a vice-consulate in some port in the North Sea, and there probably at this moment he sorrowfully vegetates.
This is not a story founded upon fact, but literally true.—Many of the circumstances came under my own observation; and the whole thus affords a laughable example of the esteem in which what an English fox-hunter would call a “trashy Frenchman” is held in England, as well as of the travestie produced by transplanting the usages of one country to another.
Ridiculous as any intimate mixture of English and French ideas and persons seems to be in London, the foreign society of itself in that capital is exceedingly spiritual and agreeable. The various European embassies and their attachés, with their distinguished travellers, from their several countries, accidentally belonging to each; the French and Italians, married to English noblemen and gentry, and living in London, and the English themselves, who have become cosmopolite by residence in other countries, form a very large society in which mix, on perfectly equal terms, the first singers of the opera, and foreign musicians and artists generally. This last circumstance gives a peculiar charm to these reunions, though it imparts a pride and haughty bearing to the prima donna and her fraternity, which is, at least, sometimes very inconvenient to themselves. The remark recalls to my mind a scene I once witnessed in London, which will illustrate the feeling better than an essay upon it.
I was at one of those private concerts given at an enormous expense during the opera season, at which “assisted” Julia Grisi, Rubini, Lablache, Tamburini, and Ivanhoff. Grisi came in the carriage of a foreign lady of rank, who had dined with her, and she walked into the room looking like an empress. She was dressed in the plainest white, with her glossy haircut smooth from her brow, and a single white japonica dropped over one of her temples. The lady who brought her chaperoned her during the evening, as if she had been her daughter, and under the excitement of her own table and the kindness of her friends, she sung with a rapture and a freshet of glory (if one may borrow a word from the Mississippi) which set all hearts on fire. She surpassed her most applauded hour on the stage—for it was worth her while. The audience was composed, almost exclusively, of those who are not only cultivated judges, but who sometimes repay delight with a present of diamonds.
Lablache shook the house to its foundations in his turn; Rubini ran through his miraculous compass with the ease, truth, and melody, for which his singing is unsurpassed; Tamburini poured his rich and even fullness on the ear, and Russian Ivanhoff, the one southern singing-bird who has come out of the north, wire-drew his fine and spiritual notes, till they who had been flushed, and tearful, and silent, when the others had sang, drowned his voice in the poorer applause of exclamation and surprise.
The concert was over by twelve, the gold and silver paper bills of the performance were turned into fans, and every one was waiting till supper should be announced—the prima donna still sitting by her friend, but surrounded by foreign attachés, and in the highest elation at her own success. The doors of an inner suite of rooms were thrown open at last, and Grisi’s cordon of admirers prepared to follow her in and wait on her at supper. At this moment, one of the powdered menials of the house stepped up and informed her very respectfully that supper was prepared in a separate room for the singers!
Medea, in her most tragic hour, never stood so absolutely the picture of hate as did Grisi for a single instant, in the centre of that aristocratic crowd. Her chest swelled and rose, her lips closed over her snowy teeth, and compressed till the blood left them, and, for myself, I looked unconsciously to see where she would strike. I knew, then, that there was more than fancy—there was nature and capability of the real—in the imaginary passions she plays so powerfully. A laugh of extreme amusement at the scene from the high-born woman who had accompanied her, suddenly turned her humor, and she stopped in the midst of a muttering of Italian, in which I could distinguish only the terminations, and, with a sort of theatrical quickness of transition, joined heartily in her mirth. It was immediately proposed by this lady, however, that herself and their particular circle should join the insulted prima donna at the lower table, and they succeeded by this manœuvre in retaining Rubini and the others, who were leaving the house in a most unequivocal Italian fury.
I had been fortunate enough to be included in the invitation, and with one or two foreign diplomatic men, I followed Grisi and her amused friend to a small room on a lower floor, that seemed to be the housekeeper’s parlor. Here supper was set for six (including the man who had played the piano,) and on the side-table stood every variety of wine and fruit, and there was nothing in the supper, at least, to make us regret the table we had left. With a most imperative gesture and rather an amusing attempt at English, Grisi ordered the servants out of the room, and locked the door, and from that moment the conversation commenced and continued in their own musical, passionate, and energetic Italian. My long residence in that country had made me at home in it; every one present spoke it fluently; and I had an opportunity I might never have again, of seeing with what abandonment these children of the sun throw aside rank and distinction (yet without forgetting it,) and join with those who are their superiors in every circumstance of life in the gayeties of a chance hour.
Out of their own country these singers would probably acknowledge no higher rank than that of the kind and gifted lady who was their guest; yet, with the briefest apology at finding the room too cold after the heat of the concert, they put on their cloaks and hats as a safeguard to their lungs (more valuable to them than to others;) and as most of the cloaks were the worse for travel, and the hats were opera-hats with two corners, the grotesque contrast with the diamonds of one lady, and the radiant beauty of the other, may easily be imagined.
Singing should be hungry work, by the knife and fork they played; and between the excavations of truffle pies, and the bumpers of champagne and burgundy, the words were few. Lablache appeared to be an established droll, and every syllable he found time to utter was received with the most unbounded laughter. Kubini could not recover from the slight he conceived put upon him and his profession by the separate table; and he continually reminded Grisi, who by this time had quite recovered her good humor, that, the night before, supping at Devonshire house, the Duke of Wellington had held her gloves on one side, while His Grace, their host attended to her on the other.
“E vero!” said Ivanhoff, with a look of modest admiration at the prima donna.
“E vero, e bravo!” cried Tamburini, with his sepulchral-talking tone, much deeper than his singing.
“Si, si, si, bravo!” echoed all the company; and the haughty and happy actress nodded all round with a radiant smile, and repeated, in her silver tones, “Grazie! cari amici! grazie!”
As the servants had been turned out, the removal of the first course was managed in pic-nic fashion; and when the fruit and fresh bottles of wine were set upon the table by the attachés, and younger gentlemen, the health of the Princess who honored them by her presence was proposed in that language, which, it seems to me, is more capable than all others of expressing affectionate and respectful devotion. All uncovered and stood up, and Grisi, with tears in her eyes, kissed the hand of her benefactress and friend, and drank her health in silence.
It is a polite and common accomplishment in Italy to improvise in verse, and the lady I speak of is well known among her immediate friends for a singular facility in this beautiful art. She reflected a moment or two with the moisture in her eyes, and then commenced, low and soft, a poem, of which it would be difficult, nay impossible, to convey, in English, an idea of its music and beauty. It took us back to Italy, to its heavenly climate, its glorious arts, its beauty and its ruins, and concluded with a line of which I remember the sentiment to have been, “out of Italy every land is exile!”
The glasses were raised as she ceased, and every one repeated after her, “Fuori d’Italia tutto e esilio!”
“Ma!” cried out the fat Lablache, holding up his glass of champagne, and looking through it with one eye, “siamo ben esiliati qua!” and with a word of drollery, the party recovered its gayer tone, and the humor and wit flowed on brilliantly as before.
The house had long been still, and the last carriage belonging to the company above stairs had rolled from the door, when Grisi suddenly remembered a bird that she had lately bought, of which she proceeded to give us a description that probably penetrated to every corner of the silent mansion. It was a mocking bird, that had been kept two years in the opera house, and between rehearsal and performance had learned parts of everything it had overheard. It was the property of the woman who took care of the wardrobes. Grisi had accidentally seen it, and immediately purchased it for two guineas. How much of embellishment there was in her imitations of her treasure I do not know; but certainly the whole power of her wondrous voice, passion, and knowledge of music, seemed drunk up at once in the wild, various, difficult, and rapid mixture of the capricious melody she undertook. First came, without the passage which it usually terminates, the long throat-down, gurgling, water-toned trill, in which Rubini (but for the bird and its mistress, it seemed to me,) would have been inimitable: then, right upon it, as if it were the beginning of a bar, and in the most unbreathing continuity, followed a brilliant passage from the Barber of Seville run into the passionate prayer of Anna Bolena in her madness, and followed by the air of “Suoni la tromba intrepida,” the tremendous duet in the Puritani, between Tamburini and Lablache. Up to the sky and down to the earth again—away with a note of the wildest gladness, and back upon a note of the most touching melancholy—if the bird but half equals the imitation of his mistress, he were worth the jewel in a sultan’s turban.
“Giulia!” “Giulietta!” “Giuliettina!” cried out one and another as she ceased, expressing in their Italian diminutives, the love and delight she had inspired by her incomparable execution.
The stillness of the house in the occasional pauses of conversation reminded the gay party, at last, that it was wearing late. The door was unlocked, and the half-dozen sleepy footmen hanging about the hall were dispatched for the cloaks and carriages; the drowsy porter was roused from his deep leathern dormeuse, and opened the door—and broad upon the street lay the cold gray light of a summer’s morning. I declined an offer to be set down by a friend’s cab, and strolled off to Hyde Park to surprise myself with a sunrise; balancing the silent rebuke in the fresh and healthy countenances of early laborers going to their toil, against the effervescence of a champagne hour which, since such come so rarely, may come, for me, with what untimeliness they please.