LETTER LXVIII.
FIRST VIEW OF LONDON—THE KING'S BIRTHDAY—PROCESSION OF MAIL COACHES—REGENT STREET—LADY BLESSINGTON—THE ORIGINAL PELHAM—BULWER, THE NOVELIST—JOHN GALT—D'ISRAELI, THE AUTHOR OF VIVIAN GREY—RECOLLECTIONS OF BYRON—INFLUENCE OF AMERICAN OPINIONS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE.
London.—From the top of Shooter's Hill we got our first view of London—an indistinct, architectural mass, extending all round to the horizon, and half enveloped in a dim and lurid smoke. "That is St. Paul's!—there is Westminster Abbey!—there is the tower of London!" What directions were these to follow for the first time with the eye!
From Blackheath (seven or eight miles from the centre of London), the beautiful hedges disappeared, and it was one continued mass of buildings. The houses were amazingly small, a kind of thing that would do for an object in an imitation perspective park, but the soul of neatness pervaded them. Trelises were nailed between the little windows, roses quite overshadowed the low doors, a painted fence enclosed the hand's breadth of grass-plot, and very, oh, very sweet faces bent over lapfuls of work beneath the snowy and looped-up curtains. It was all home-like and amiable. There was an affectionateness in the mere outside of every one of them.
After crossing Waterloo Bridge, it was busy work for the eyes. The brilliant shops, the dense crowds of people, the absorbed air of every passenger, the lovely women, the cries, the flying vehicles of every description, passing with the most dangerous speed—accustomed as I am to large cities, it quite made me dizzy. We got into a "jarvey" at the coach-office, and in half an hour I was in comfortable quarters, with windows looking down St. James street, and the most agreeable leaf of my life to turn over. "Great emotions interfere little with the mechanical operations of life," however, and I dressed and dined, though it was my first hour in London.
I was sitting in the little parlor alone over a fried sole and a mutton cutlet, when the waiter came in, and pleading the crowded state of the hotel, asked my permission to spread the other side of the table for a clergyman. I have a kindly preference for the cloth, and made not the slightest objection. Enter a fat man, with top-boots and a hunting-whip, rosy as Bacchus, and excessively out of breath with mounting one flight of stairs. Beefsteak and potatoes, a pot of porter, and a bottle of sherry followed close on his heels. With a single apology for the intrusion, the reverend gentleman fell to, and we ate and drank for a while in true English silence.
"From Oxford, sir, I presume," he said at last, pushing back his plate, with an air of satisfaction.
"No, I had never the pleasure of seeing Oxford."
"R—e—ally! may I take a glass of wine with you, sir?"
We got on swimmingly. He would not believe I had never been in England till the day before, but his cordiality was no colder for that. We exchanged port and sherry, and a most amicable understanding found its way down with the wine. Our table was near the window, and a great crowd began to collect at the corner of St. James' street. It was the king's birth-day, and the people were thronging to see the nobility come in state from the royal levee. The show was less splendid than the same thing in Rome or Vienna, but it excited far more of my admiration. Gaudiness and tinsel were exchanged for plain richness and perfect fitness in the carriages and harness, while the horses were incomparably finer. My friend pointed out to me the different liveries as they turned the corner into Piccadilly, the duke of Wellington's among others. I looked hard to see His Grace; but the two pale and beautiful faces on the back seat, carried nothing like the military nose on the handles of the umbrellas.
The annual procession of mail-coaches followed, and it was hardly less brilliant. The drivers and guard in their bright red and gold uniforms, the admirable horses driven so beautifully, the neat harness, the exactness with which the room of each horse was calculated, and the small space in which he worked, and the compactness and contrivance of the coaches, formed altogether one of the most interesting spectacles I have ever seen. My friend, the clergyman, with whom I had walked out to see them pass, criticised the different teams con amore, but in language which I did not always understand. I asked him once for an explanation; but he looked rather grave, and said something about "gammon," evidently quite sure that my ignorance of London was a mere quiz.
We walked down Piccadilly, and turned into, beyond all comparison, the most handsome street I ever saw. The Toledo of Naples, the Corso of Rome, the Kohl-market of Vienna, the Rue de la Paix and Boulevards of Paris, have each impressed me strongly with their magnificence, but they are really nothing to Regent-street. I had merely time to get a glance at it before dark; but for breadth and convenience, for the elegance and variety of the buildings, though all of the same scale and material, and for the brilliancy and expensiveness of the shops, it seemed to me quite absurd to compare it with anything between New York and Constantinople—Broadway and the Hippodrome included.
It is the custom for the king's tradesmen to illuminate their shops on His Majesty's birth-night, and the principal streets on our return were in a blaze of light. The crowd was immense. None but the lower order seemed abroad, and I cannot describe to you the effect on my feelings on hearing my language spoken by every man, woman, and child, about me. It seemed a completely foreign country in every other respect, different from what I had imagined, different from my own and all that I had seen; and, coming to it last, it seemed to me the farthest off and strangest country of all—and yet the little sweep who went laughing through the crowd, spoke a language that I had heard attempted in vain by thousands of educated people, and that I had grown to consider next to unattainable by others, and almost useless to myself. Still, it did not make me feel at home. Everything else about me was too new. It was like some mysterious change in my own ears—a sudden power of comprehension, such as a man might feel who was cured suddenly of deafness. You can scarcely enter into my feelings till you have had the changes of French, Italian, German, Greek, Turkish, Illyrian, and the mixtures and dialects of each, rung upon your hearing almost exclusively, as I have for years. I wandered about as if I were exercising some supernatural faculty in a dream.
A friend in Italy had kindly given me a letter to Lady Blessington, and with a strong curiosity to see this celebrated lady, I called on the second day after my arrival in London. It was "deep i' the afternoon," but I had not yet learned the full meaning of "town hours." "Her ladyship had not come down to breakfast." I gave the letter and my address to the powdered footman, and had scarce reached home when a note arrived inviting me to call the same evening at ten.
In a long library lined alternately with splendidly bound books and mirrors, and with a deep window of the breadth of the room, opening upon Hyde Park, I found Lady Blessington alone. The picture to my eye as the door opened was a very lovely one. A woman of remarkable beauty half buried in a fauteuil of yellow satin, reading by a magnificent lamp, suspended from the centre of the arched ceiling; sofas, couches, ottomans, and busts, arranged in rather a crowded sumptuousness through the room; enamel tables, covered with expensive and elegant trifles in every corner, and a delicate white hand relieved on the back of a book, to which the eye was attracted by the blaze of its diamond rings. As the servant mentioned my name, she rose and gave me her hand very cordially, and a gentleman entering immediately after, she presented me to her son-in-law, Count D'Orsay, the well-known Pelham of London, and certainly the most splendid specimen of a man, and a well-dressed one that I had ever seen. Tea was brought in immediately, and conversation went swimmingly on.
Her ladyship's inquiries were principally about America, of which, from long absence, I knew very little. She was extremely curious to know the degrees of reputation the present popular authors of England enjoy among us, particularly Bulwer, Galt, and D'Israeli (the author of Vivian Grey.) "If you will come to-morrow night," she said, "you will see Bulwer. I am delighted that he is popular in America. He is envied and abused by all the literary men of London, for nothing, I believe, except that he gets five hundred pounds for his books and they fifty, and knowing this, he chooses to assume a pride (some people call it puppyism), which is only the armor of a sensitive mind, afraid of a wound. He is to his friends, the most frank and gay creature in the world, and open to boyishness with those who he thinks understand and value him. He has a brother Henry, who is as clever as himself in a different vein, and is just now publishing a book on the present state of France. Bulwer's wife, you know, is one of the most beautiful women in London, and his house is the resort of both fashion and talent. He is just now hard at work on a new book, the subject of which is the last days of Pompeii. The hero is a Roman dandy, who wastes himself in luxury, till this great catastrophe rouses him and develops a character of the noblest capabilities. Is Galt much liked?"
I answered to the best of my knowledge that he was not. His life of Byron was a stab at the dead body of the noble poet, which, for one, I never could forgive, and his books were clever, but vulgar. He was evidently not a gentleman in his mind. This was the opinion I had formed in America, and I had never heard another.
"I am sorry for it," said Lady B., "for he is the dearest and best old man in the world. I know him well. He is just on the verge of the grave, but comes to see me now and then, and if you had known how shockingly Byron treated him, you would only wonder at his sparing his memory so much."
"Nil mortuis nisi bonum," I thought would have been a better course. If he had reason to dislike him, he had better not have written since he was dead.
"Perhaps—perhaps. But Galt has been all his life miserably poor, and lived by his books. That must be his apology. Do you know the D'Israeli's in America?"
I assured her ladyship that the "Curiosities of Literature," by the father, and "Vivian Grey and Contarini Fleming," by the son, were universally known.
"I am pleased at that, too, for I like them both. D'Israeli the elder, came here with his son the other night. It would have delighted you to see the old man's pride in him. He is very fond of him, and as he was going away, he patted him on the head, and said to me, "take care of him, Lady Blessington, for my sake. He is a clever lad, but he wants ballast. I am glad he has the honor to know you, for you will check him sometimes when I am away!" D'Israeli, the elder, lives in the country, about twenty miles from town, and seldom comes up to London. He is a very plain old man in his manners, as plain as his son is the reverse. D'Israeli, the younger, is quite his own character of Vivian Grey crowded with talent, but very soignè of his curls, and a bit of a coxcomb. There is no reserve about him, however, and he is the only joyous dandy I ever saw."
I asked if the account I had seen in some American paper of a literary celebration at Canandaigua, and the engraving of her ladyship's name with some others upon a rock, was not a quiz.
"Oh, by no means. I was equally flattered and amused by the whole affair. I have a great idea of taking a trip to America to see it. Then the letter, commencing 'Most charming Countess—for charming you must be since you have written the conversations of Lord Byron'—oh, it was quite delightful. I have shown it to everybody. By the way, I receive a great many letters from America, from people I never heard of, written in the most extraordinary style of compliment, apparently in perfectly good faith. I hardly know what to make of them."
I accounted for it by the perfect seclusion in which great numbers of cultivated people live in our country, who having neither intrigue, nor fashion, nor twenty other things to occupy their minds as in England, depend entirely upon books, and consider an author who has given them pleasure as a friend. America, I said, has probably more literary enthusiasts than any country in the world; and there are thousands of romantic minds in the interior of New England, who know perfectly every writer this side the water, and hold them all in affectionate veneration, scarcely conceivable by a sophisticated European. If it were not for such readers, literature would be the most thankless of vocations. I, for one, would never write another line.
"And do you think these are the people who write to me? If I could think so, I should be exceedingly happy. People in England are refined down to such heartlessness—criticism, private and public, is so interested and so cold, that it is really delightful to know there is a more generous tribunal. Indeed, I think all our authors now are beginning to write for America. We think already a great deal of your praise or censure."
I asked if her ladyship had known many Americans.
"Not in London, but a great many abroad. I was with Lord Blessington in his yacht at Naples, when the American fleet was lying there, eight or ten years ago, and we were constantly on board your ships. I knew Commodore Creighton and Captain Deacon extremely well, and liked them particularly. They were with us, either on board the yacht or the frigate every evening, and I remember very well the band playing always, "God save the King," as we went up the side. Count d'Orsay here, who spoke very little English at that time, had a great passion for Yankee Doodle, and it was always played at his request."
The Count, who still speaks the language with a very slight accent, but with a choice of words that shows him to be a man of uncommon tact and elegance of mind, inquired after several of the officers, whom I have not the pleasure of knowing. He seemed to remember his visits to the frigate with great pleasure. The conversation, after running upon a variety of topics, which I could not with propriety put into a letter for the public eye, turned very naturally upon Byron. I had frequently seen the Countess Guiccioli on the Continent, and I asked Lady Blessington if she knew her.
"No. We were at Pisa when they were living together, but, though Lord Blessington had the greatest curiosity to see her, Byron would never permit it. 'She has a red head of her own,' said he, 'and don't like to show it.' Byron treated the poor creature dreadfully ill. She feared more than she loved him."
She had told me the same thing herself in Italy.
It would be impossible, of course, to make a full and fair record of a conversation of some hours. I have only noted one or two topics which I thought most likely to interest an American reader. During all this long visit, however, my eyes were very busy in finishing for memory, a portrait of the celebrated and beautiful woman before me.
The portrait of Lady Blessington in the Book of Beauty is not unlike her, but it is still an unfavorable likeness. A picture by Sir Thomas Lawrence hung opposite me, taken, perhaps, at the age of eighteen, which is more like her, and as captivating a representation of a just matured woman, full of loveliness and love, the kind of creature with whose divine sweetness the gazer's heart aches, as ever was drawn in the painter's most inspired hour. The original is now (she confessed it very frankly) forty. She looks something on the sunny side of thirty. Her person is full, but preserves all the fineness of an admirable shape; her foot is not crowded in a satin slipper, for which a Cinderella might long be looked for in vain, and her complexion (an unusually fair skin, with very dark hair and eyebrows), is of even a girlish delicacy and freshness. Her dress of blue satin (if I am describing her like a milliner, it is because I have here and there a reader of the Mirror in my eye who will be amused by it), was cut low and folded across her bosom, in a way to show to advantage the round and sculpture-like curve and whiteness of a pair of exquisite shoulders, while her hair dressed close to her head, and parted simply on her forehead with a rich ferroniere of turquoise, enveloped in clear outline a head with which it would be difficult to find a fault. Her features are regular, and her mouth, the most expressive of them, has a ripe fulness and freedom of play, peculiar to the Irish physiognomy, and expressive of the most unsuspicious good humor. Add to all this a voice merry and sad by turns, but always musical, and manners of the most unpretending elegance, yet even more remarkable for their winning kindness, and you have the most prominent traits of one of the most lovely and fascinating women I have ever seen. Remembering her talents and her rank, and the unenvying admiration she receives from the world of fashion and genius, it would be difficult to reconcile her lot to the "doctrine of compensation."
There is one remark I may as well make here, with regard to the personal descriptions and anecdotes with which my letters from England will of course be filled. It is quite a different thing from publishing such letters in London. America is much farther off from England than England from America. You in New York read the periodicals of this country, and know everything that is done or written here, as if you lived within the sound of Bow-bell. The English, however, just know of our existence, and if they get a general idea twice a year of our progress in politics, they are comparatively well informed. Our periodical literature is never even heard of. Of course there can be no offence to the individuals themselves in anything which a visitor could write, calculated to convey an idea of the person or manners of distinguished people to the American public. I mention it lest, at first thought, I might seem to have abused the hospitality or frankness of those on whom letters of introduction have given me claims for civility.