One summer when I was at Bateman’s, near Newport, with G. H. Boker, Robert Leroy, and our wives, Leroy reported one day that he had seen Wykoff, Hiram Fuller, a certain very dashing prima donna, and two other notorieties sitting side by side in a row on the steps of the Ocean House. I remarked that if there had only been with them the devil and Lola Montez, the party would have been complete. Leroy was famous for his quaint mots, in which he had a counterpart in “Tom Appleton,” of Boston, whom I also knew very well. The Appletoniana and Leroyalties which were current in the Sixties would make a lively book.
I remember that one evening at a dinner at Trübner’s in
this year there were present M. Van der Weyer, G. H. Lewes, and M. Delepierre. I have rarely heard so much good talk in the same time. Thoughts so gay and flashes so refined, such a mingling of choice literature, brilliant anecdote, and happy jests, are seldom heard as I heard them. Tempi passati!
Apropos of George H. Boker and Leroy, I may here remark that they were both strikingly tall and distingué men, but that when they dressed themselves for bass-fishing, and “put on mean attire,” they seemed to be common fisher-folk. One day, while fishing on the rocks, there came up the elegant prima donna referred to, who, seeing that they had very fine lobsters, ordered them to be taken to the hotel for her. “Can’t do it, ma’am,” answered Leroy brusquely; “we want them for bait.” The lady swept away indignantly. To her succeeded Ralph Waldo Emerson, who did not know them personally, and who began to put to Mr. Boker questions as to his earnings and his manner of life, to all of which Mr. Boker replied with great naïveté. Mr. B., however, had on his pole a silver reel, which had cost £30 ($150), and at last Mr. Emerson’s eye rested on that, and word no more spoke he, but, with a smile and bowing very politely, went his road. Ultimam dixit salutem.
One evening I was sitting in the smoking-room of the Langham Hotel, when an American said to me, “I hear that Charles Leland, who wrote ‘Breitmann,’ is staying here.” “Yes, that is true,” I replied. “Could you point him out to me?” asked the stranger. “I will do so with pleasure—in fact, if you will tell me your name, I think I can manage to introduce you.” The American was very grateful for this, and asked when it would be. “Now is the time,” I said, “for I am he.” On another occasion another stranger told me, that having heard that Mr. Leland was in the smoking-room, he had come in to see him, and asked me to point him out. I pointed to myself, at which he was much astonished, and then, apologetically and half ashamed, said, “Who do
you really suppose, of all the men here present, I had settled on as being you?” I could not conjecture, when he pointed to a great broom-bearded, broad-shouldered, jovial, intemperate, German-looking man, and said, “There! I thought that must be the author of ‘Hans Brietmann.’” Which suggested to me the idea, “Does the public, then, generally believe that poets look like their heroes?” One can indeed imagine Longfellow as Poor Henry of the “Golden Legend,” but few would expect to find the counterpart of Biglow in a Lowell. And yet this belief or instinct is in every case a great compliment, for it testifies that there is that in the poem which is inspired by Nature and originality, and that it is not all mere art-work or artificial. And it is true that by some strange law, name, body, and soul generally do preserve some kind of unity in the realm of literature. There has never been, as yet, a really great Gubbins or Podgers in poetry, or Boggs in romance; and if literature has its Hogg, let it be remembered that the wild boar in all Northern sagas and chronicles, like the Eber in Germany, or the Wolf, was a name of pride and honour, as seen in Eberstein. The Whistler of St. Leonard’s is one of the most eccentric and original of Scott’s characters, and the Whistler of St. Luke’s, or the patron saint of painting, is in no respect deficient in these noble qualifications. The Seven Whistlers who fly unseen by night, ever piping a wild nocturne, are the most uncanny of birds, while there is, to my mind, something absolutely grotesquely awful (as in many of “Dreadful Jemmy’s” pictures) in the narration that in ancient days the immense army of the Mexican Indians marched forth to battle all whistling in unison—probably a symphony in blood-colour. Fancy half a million of Whistlers on the war-path, about to do battle to the death with as many Ruskins—I mean red-skins! Nomen est omen.
One of the most charming persons whom I ever met in my life was the Hon. Mrs. Caroline Norton, and one of the most delightful dinners at which my wife and I were ever
present was at her house. As I had been familiar with her poems from my boyhood, I was astonished to find her still so beautiful and young—if my memory does not deceive me, I thought her far younger looking than myself. I owe her this compliment, for I can recall her speaking with great admiration of Mrs. Leland to Lord Houghton and “Bulwer.”
Mrs. Norton had not only a graceful, fascinating expression of figure and motion, but narrated everything so well as to cast a peculiar life and interest into the most trifling anecdote. I remember one of the latter.
“Lord Houghton,” she said, “calls you, Mr. Leland, the poet of jargons.” (He indeed introduced me to all his guests once by this term.) “Jargon is a confusion of language, and I have a maid who lives in a jargon of ideas—as to values. The other day she broke to utter ruin an antique vase”—(I do not accurately recall what the object was)—“which cost four hundred pounds, and when I said that it was such a grief to me to lose it, she replied, while weeping, ‘Oh, do not mind it, my lady; I’ll buy you just such another,’ as if it were worth tenpence.”