—— Park, April 9th.
I came here yesterday, and am with a large party at the house of a very ‘fashionable’ lady. The house is as tastefully and richly adorned as possible, but too stately and too portentous in its beauty to be truly agreeable, at least to me. Besides, there is a certain L—— here, a patent witling, whose every word the extremely good-natured company holds itself bound to admire: people affect great liking for him, from fear of his evil tongue. Such intellectual bullies are my mortal abhorrence; especially when, like this, to a repulsive exterior they unite all the gall and acrimony of satire, without any of its grace. They appear in human society like venomous insects, whom, from some pitiable weakness, we assist in feeding on the blood of others, so that they do not suck our own.
The still life about me speaks more to my heart than the human beings; especially the sweet flowers which are placed in pretty vases and receptacles of all sorts in all the apartments. Among the pictures, I admired a Joseph leading the little Jesus, by Morillo. In the beautiful child lies the germ of the future greatness and god-like nature of the Redeemer: as yet it slumbers dimly, but is wonderfully expressed in the prophetic beaming of the eye. Joseph appears a plain simple man, in the full vigour of middle age, betraying dignity of character though not of station:—the landscape is wild and original, and cherubs’ heads peep sweetly forth out of the dark clouds. The picture, the owner told me, cost him two thousand and five hundred pounds.
I was much pleased with a conservatory for palms, built almost entirely of glass,—so transparent that it looks like a house of ice.
The country life here is in some respects too social for my taste. If, for instance, you wish to read, you go into the library, where you are seldom alone:—if you have letters to write, you sit at a great common writing table just as much in public; they are then put into a box with holes, and taken by a servant to the Post. To do all this in your own room is not usual, and therefore surprises and annoys people. Many a foreigner would like to breakfast in his own room; but this he cannot well do, unless he pleads illness. With all the freedom and absence of useless ceremonies and tedious complimenting, there is yet, for a person accustomed to our habits, a considerable degree of constraint, which the continual necessity of speaking in a foreign tongue renders more oppressive.
London, April 12th.
I took my leave of —— Park this morning just as an April storm was clearing off, breathed the spring air with delight, and looked with ecstacy at the brilliant green and the bursting buds,—a sight of which I am never weary. Spring indemnifies our northern climes for all the discomfort of their winter; for this awakening of young Nature is accompanied with far less coquetry on her part in the South.
I was invited again to dinner at the Duchess of St. A——’s country-house, where a very agreeable surprise awaited me. I arrived late, and was placed between my hostess, and a tall very simple, but benevolent looking man of middle age, who spoke broad Scotch,—a dialect anything but agreeable; and would probably have struck me for nothing else, had I not soon discovered that I was sitting next to—the Great Unknown. It was not long ere many a sally of dry, poignant wit fell from his lips, and many an anecdote, told in the most unpretending manner, which, without seeming brilliant, was yet striking. His eye, too, glanced, whenever he was animated, with such a clear, good-natured lustre, and that with such an expression of true-hearted kindness and natural feeling, that it was impossible not to conceive a sort of love for him. Towards the end of dinner he and Sir Francis Burdett told ghost-stories, half-terrible, half-humorous, admirably, one against the other. This at last encouraged me to tell your famous key story, which I embelished a little in the ‘dénouement.’ It had great success; and it would be droll enough if you were to find it in the next romance of the prolific Scotchman.
He afterwards recited a curious old inscription which he had recently discovered in the churchyard of Melrose Abbey. It was as follows:
“The earth goes on the earth, glittering in gold,
The earth goes to the earth sooner than it would;
The earth builds on the earth castles and towers,
The earth says to the earth—All this is ours.”