Which means that the cock and the hen, the gentleman and the lady, came hither across the great salt water. The effect on the gypsy was startling; she fairly turned pale. Hustling the ladies away to one side to see a beautiful view, she got me alone and hurriedly exclaimed, “Rya—master! be you one of our people?” with much more. We became very good friends, and this little incident had in time for me great results, and many strange experiences of gypsy life.
There live in Brighton two ladies, Miss Horace Smith and her sister Rosa, who were and are well known in the cultured world. They are daughters of Horace Smith, who, with his brother James, wrote the “Rejected Addresses.” Their reminiscences of distinguished men are extremely varied and interesting. The elder sister possesses an album to which Thackeray contributed many verses and pen-sketches.
Their weekly receptions were very pleasant; at them might be seen most of the literary or social celebrities who came to Brighton. A visit there was like living a chapter in a book of memoirs and reminiscences. I have had, if it be only a quiet, and not very eventful or remarkable, at least a somewhat varied life, and the Laings and Smiths, with their surroundings, form two of its most interesting varieties. I believe they never missed an opportunity to do us or any one a kindly act, to aid us to make congenial friends, or the like. How many good people there really are in the world!
Of these ladies the author of “Gossip of the Century” writes:—
“Horace Smith’s two daughters are still living, and in Brighton. Their very pleasant house is frequented by the best and most interesting kind of society, affording what may be called a salon, that rare relic of ancient literary taste and cementer of literary intimacies—a salon which the cultivated consider it a privilege to frequent, and where these ladies receive with a grace and geniality which their friends know how to appreciate. It is much to be regretted that gatherings of this description seem to be becoming rarer every year, for as death disturbs them society seems to lack the spirit or the good taste, or the ability, to replace them.”
Brighton is a very pleasant place, because it combines the advantages of a seaside resort with those of a clean and cheerful city. Walking along the front, you have a brave outlook to the blue sea on one hand, and elegant shop-windows and fine hotels on the other. A little back in the town on a hill is the fine old fifteenth-century church of St. Nicholas, in which there is perhaps the most curious carved Norman font in England; but all this is known to so few visitors, that I feel as if I were telling a great secret in letting it out. Smith’s book-store on the Western Road, and Bohn’s near the station, are kept by very well-informed and very courteous men. I have been much indebted to the former
in many ways, and found by his aid many a greatly needed and rare work.
When I first went to Brighton there was one evening a brilliant aurora borealis. As I looked at it, I heard an Englishman say, to my great amazement, it was the first time he had ever seen one in his life! I once saw one in America of such extraordinary brilliancy and duration, that it prolonged the daylight for half an hour or more, till I became amazed, and then found it was a Northern Light. It lasted till sunrise in all its splendour. I have taken down from Algonkin Indians several beautiful legends relating to them. In one, the Milky Way is the girdle of a stupendous deity, and the Northern Lights the splendid gleams emitted by his ball when playing. In another, the narrator describes him as clad in an ineffable glory of light, and in colours unknown on earth!
And this reminds me further that I have just read in the newspapers of the death of Edwin Booth, who was born during the famous star shower of 1833, which phenomenon I witnessed from beginning to end, and remember as if it were only yesterday. Now, I was actually dreaming that I was in a room in which cigars were flying about in every direction, when my father came and woke me and my brother Henry, to come and see an exceeding great marvel. There were for a long time many thousands of stars at once in the sky, all shooting, as it were, or converging towards a centre. They were not half so long as the meteors which we see; one or two had a crook or bend in the middle, e.g.
