LETTER LXXII.
THE ITALIAN OPERA—MADEMOISELLE GRISI—A GLANCE AT LORD BROUGHAM—MRS. NORTON AND LORD SEFTON—RAND, THE AMERICAN PORTRAIT PAINTER—AN EVENING PARTY AT BULWER'S—PALMY STATE OF LITERATURE IN MODERN DAYS—FASHIONABLE NEGLECT OF FEMALES—PERSONAGES PRESENT—SHIEL THE ORATOR, THE PRINCE OF MOSCOWA, MRS. LEICESTER STANHOPE, THE CELEBRATED BEAUTY, ETC., ETC.
Went to the opera to hear Julia Grisi. I stood out the first act in the pit, and saw instances of rudeness in "Fop's-alley," which I had never seen approached in three years on the continent. The high price of tickets, one would think, and the necessity of appearing in full dress, would keep the opera clear of low-bred people; but the conduct to which I refer seemed to excite no surprise and passed off without notice, though, in America, there would have been ample matter for at least, four duels.
Grisi is young, very pretty, and an admirable actress—three great advantages to a singer. Her voice is under absolute command, and she manages it beautifully, but it wants the infusion of Malibran. You merely feel that Grisi is an accomplished artist, while Malibran melts all your criticism into love and admiration. I am easily moved by music, but I came away without much enthusiasm for the present passion of London.
The opera-house is very different from those on the continent. The stage only is lighted abroad, the single lustre from the ceiling just throwing that clair obscure over the boxes, so favorable to Italian complexions and morals. Here, the dress circles are lighted with bright chandeliers, and the whole house sits in such a blaze of light as leaves no approach even, to a lady, unseen. The consequence is that people here dress much more, and the opera, if less interesting to the habitué, is a gayer thing to the many.
I went up to Lady Blessington's box for a moment, and found Strangways, the traveller, and several other distinguished men with her. Her ladyship pointed out to me Lord Brougham, flirting desperately with a pretty woman on the opposite side of the house, his mouth going with the convulsive twitch which so disfigures him, and his most unsightly of pug-noses in the strongest relief against the red lining behind. There never was a plainer man. The Honorable Mrs. Norton, Sheridan's daughter, and poetess, sat nearer to us, looking like a queen, certainly one of the most beautiful women I ever looked upon; and the gastronomic and humpbacked Lord Sefton, said to be the best judge of cookery in the world, sat in the "dandy's omnibus," a large box on a level with the stage, leaning forward with his chin on his knuckles, and waiting with evident impatience for the appearance of Fanny Elssler in the ballet. Beauty and all, the English opera-house surpasses anything I have seen in the way of a spectacle.
An evening party at Bulwer's. Not yet perfectly initiated in London hours, I arrived, not far from eleven, and found Mrs. Bulwer alone in her illuminated rooms, whiling away an expectant hour in playing with a King Charles spaniel, that seemed by his fondness and delight to appreciate the excessive loveliness of his mistress. As far off as America, I may express, even in print, an admiration which is no heresy in London.
The author of Pelham is a younger son and depends on his writings for a livelihood, and truly, measuring works of fancy by what they will bring, (not an unfair standard perhaps), a glance around his luxurious and elegant rooms is worth reams of puff in the quarterlies. He lives in the heart of the fashionable quarter of London, where rents are ruinously extravagant, entertains a great deal, and is expensive in all his habits, and for this pay Messrs. Clifford, Pelham, and Aram—(it would seem), most excellent good bankers. As I looked at the beautiful woman seated on the costly ottoman before me, waiting to receive the rank and fashion of London, I thought that old close-fisted literature never had better reason for his partial largess. I half forgave the miser for starving a wilderness of poets.
One of the first persons who came was Lord Byron's sister, a thin, plain, middle-aged woman, of a very serious countenance, and with very cordial and pleasing manners. The rooms soon filled, and two professed singers went industriously to work in their vocation at the piano; but, except one pale man, with staring hair, whom I took to be a poet, nobody pretended to listen.
Every second woman has some strong claim to beauty in England, and the proportion of those who just miss it, by a hair's breadth as it were—who seem really to have been meant for beauties by nature, but by a slip in the moulding or pencilling are imperfect copies of the design—is really extraordinary. One after another entered, as I stood near the door with my old friend Dr. Bowring for a nomenclator, and the word "lovely" or "charming," had not passed my lips before some change in the attitude, or unguarded animation had exposed the flaw, and the hasty homage (for homage it is, and an idolatrous one, that we pay to the beauty of woman), was coldly and unsparingly retracted. From a goddess upon earth to a slighted and unattractive trap for matrimony is a long step, but taken on so slight a defect sometimes, as, were they marble, a sculptor would etch away with his nail.
I was surprised (and I have been struck with the same thing at several parties I have attended in London), at the neglect with which the female part of the assemblage is treated. No young man ever seems to dream of speaking to a lady, except to ask her to dance. There they sit with their mamas, their hands hung over each other before them in the received attitude; and if there happens to be no dancing (as at Bulwer's), looking at a print, or eating an ice, is for them the most enlivening circumstance of the evening. As well as I recollect, it is better managed in America, and certainly society is quite another thing in France and Italy. Late in the evening a charming girl, who is the reigning belle of Naples, came in with her mother from the opera, and I made the remark to her. "I detest England for that very reason," she said frankly. "It is the fashion in London for the young men to prefer everything to the society of women. They have their clubs, their horses, their rowing matches, their hunting and betting, and everything else is a bore! How different are the same men at Naples! They can never get enough of one there! We are surrounded and run after,
"'Our poodle dog is quite adored,
Our sayings are extremely quoted,'
"and really, one feels that one is a belle." She mentioned several of the beaux of last winter who had returned to England. "Here I have been in London a month, and these very men that were dying for me, at my side every day on the Strada Nuova, and all but fighting to dance three times with me of an evening, have only left their cards! Not because they care less about me, but because it is 'not the fashion'—it would be talked of at the club, it is 'knowing' to let us alone."
There were only three men in the party, which was a very crowded one, who could come under the head of beaux. Of the remaining part, there was much that was distinguished, both for rank and talent. Sheil, the Irish orator, a small, dark, deceitful, but talented-looking man, with a very disagreeable squeaking voice, stood in a corner, very earnestly engaged in conversation with the aristocratic old Earl of Clarendon. The contrast between the styles of the two men, the courtly and mild elegance of one, and the uneasy and half-bred, but shrewd earnestness of the other, was quite a study. Fonblanc of the Examiner, with his pale and dislocated-looking face, stood in the door-way between the two rooms, making the amiable with a ghastly smile to Lady Stepney. The 'bilious Lord Durham,' as the papers call him, with his Brutus head, and grave, severe countenance, high-bred in his appearance, despite the worst possible coat and trowsers, stood at the pedestal of a beautiful statue, talking politics with Bowring; and near them, leaned over a chair the Prince Moscowa, the son of Marshal Ney, a plain, but determined-looking young man, with his coat buttoned up to his throat, unconscious of everything but the presence of the Honorable Mrs. Leicester Stanhope, a very lovely woman, who was enlightening him in the prettiest English French, upon some point of national differences. Her husband, famous as Lord Byron's companion in Greece, and a great liberal in England, was introduced to me soon after by Bulwer; and we discussed the Bank and the President, with a little assistance from Bowring, who joined us with a paean for the old general and his measures, till it was far into the morning.