Nov. 18th.
I forgot to mention to you that I have met O’Connell again here. I heard him speak at the meetings of the Catholic Association, the present Irish Parliament, which I visited to-day for the second time. I was received, as a well-disposed foreigner, with applause, and O’Connell immediately made room for me between himself and Lord C——. The room is not very large, and as dirty as the English House of Commons. Here too every man keeps his hat on, except while he is speaking: here too are good and bad orators; but certainly occasionally less dignified manners than there. The heat was suffocating, and I had to sit out five hours; but the debate was so interesting that I scarcely remarked the annoyances. O’Connell was undoubtedly the best speaker. Although idolized by the greater number, he was severely attacked by several, and defended himself with equal address and moderation: on the other hand, he assailed the Government without reserve; and in my opinion in too strong expressions. It was easy to perceive that much intrigue and several firmly united parties, whose minds were made up beforehand, were to be found here, as in other bodies of the like kind, and consequently that the discussion was often only a sort of sham-fight. The leaders at least had however studied their parts well. The three most prominent speakers are O’Connell, Shiel, and Lawless. Mr. Fin and Mr. Ford also spoke well, and with great dignity of manner. Shiel is a man of the world, and has even more ease in society than O’Connell: but as a speaker he appeared to me too affected, too artificial; and all he said, too much got up; his manner was theatrical, and there was no real feeling in the ‘delivery’ of his speech, as the English expressively call it. I am not surprised that, in spite of his undoubted talents, he is so much less popular than O’Connell. Both are very vain, but the vanity of O’Connell is more frank, more confiding, and sooner satisfied; that of Shiel, irritable, sore, and gloomy. The one is therefore, with reference to his own party, steeped in honey; the other in gall; and the latter, though contending for the same cause, is evidently jealous of his colleague, whom he vainly thinks to surpass. Mr. L——s is the Don Quixote of the Association. His fine head and white hair, his wild but noble dignity, and his magnificent voice, excite an expectation of something extraordinary when he rises: but the speech, which commences in an earnest tone, soon falls into the most incredible extravagancies, and sometimes into total absurdity, in which friend and foe are assailed with equal fury. He is therefore little heeded; laughed at when he rages like King Lear, unmindful of his audience, and of all that is passing around him. The dominant party, however, use him to make a noise when they want him. To-day he outdid himself to such a degree in the flight he took, that he suddenly erected the standard of Deism in the midst of the Catholic, arch-Catholic Association. Perhaps, indeed, this was only done to give occasion to O’Connell to call him indignantly to order, and to bring in a pious tirade; for on the orator’s rostrum as on the tub, on the throne as in the puppet-show booth, clap-traps are necessary.
I rested myself this evening in the accustomed place. ‘Tableaux’ were again the order of the day. I had to appear successively as Brutus, an Asiatic Jew, Francis the First, and Saladin. Miss J—— was a captivating little fellow as a student of Alcala; and her eldest sister, as a fair slave, a welcome companion to Saladin. As the beautiful Rebecca she also assorted not ill with the Oriental Jew. All these metamorphoses were accomplished by the mother with the help only of four candles, two looking-glasses, a few shawls and coloured handkerchiefs, a burnt cork, a pot of rouge, and different heads of hair. Yet Talma could not have dressed Brutus better, nor altered the physiognomy more completely, than with these slight materials Lady C—— had the skill to do.
To conclude, we drew caricatures, and at my request each sister attempted a portrait of the other. Both succeeded very well, and are now placed in my gallery.
Nov. 19th.
To-day I found myself compelled to do something which was very disagreeable to me, and which I had long deferred; I was obliged to resort to my ‘grand expedient,’ in order to conquer my aversion. You will laugh when I tell you what this is; but I find it a powerful aid in great things as well as in small. The truth is, there are few men who are not sometimes capricious, and yet oftener vacillating. Finding that I am not better than others in this respect, I invented a remedy of my own, a sort of artificial resolution respecting things which are difficult of performance,—a means of securing that firmness in myself which I might otherwise want, and which man is generally obliged to sustain by some external prop.[150] My device then is this:—I give my word of honour most solemnly to myself, to do, or to leave undone, this or that. I am of course extremely cautious and discreet in the use of this expedient, and exercise great deliberation before I resolve upon it; but when once it is done, even if I afterwards think I have been precipitate or mistaken, I hold it to be perfectly irrevocable, whatever inconveniences I foresee likely to result. And I feel great satisfaction and tranquillity in being subject to such an immutable law. If I were capable of breaking it after such mature consideration, I should lose all respect for myself;—and what man of sense would not prefer death to such an alternative? for death is only a necessity of nature, and consequently not an evil;—it appears to us so only in connexion with our present existence; that is to say, the instinct of self-preservation recoils from death; but reason, which is eternal, sees it in its true form, as a mere transition from one state to another. But a conviction of one’s own unconquerable weakness is a feeling which must embitter the whole of life. It is therefore better, if it comes to the struggle, to give up existence for the present with a feeling of inward triumph, than to crawl on with a chronic disease of the soul. I am not made dependent by my promise; on the contrary, it is just that which maintains my independence. So long as my persuasion is not firm and complete, the mysterious formula is not pronounced; but when once that has taken place, no alteration in my own views—nothing short of physical impossibility—must, for the welfare of my soul, alter my will. But whilst I thus form to myself a firm support in the most extreme cases, do you not see that I also possess a formidable weapon of attack, if I were compelled to use it, however small and inconsiderable the means may appear to many? I, on the contrary, find something very satisfactory in the thought, that man has the power of framing such props and such weapons out of the most trivial materials, indeed out of nothing, merely by the force of his will, which hereby truly deserves the name of omnipotent. I cannot answer for it that this reasoning will not appear to you, dear Julia, distorted and blameworthy: indeed it is not made for a woman; while on the other hand a completely powerful mind would perhaps as little stand in need of it. Every man must however manage himself according to his own nature; and as no one has yet found the art of making a reed grow like an oak, or a cabbage like a pine-apple, so must men, as the common but wise proverb has it, cut their coat according to their cloth.[151] Happy is he who does not trust himself beyond his strength! But without being so tragical about the matter, this grand expedient is of admirable use in trifles. For example, to fulfil tedious, irksome duties of society with the resignation of a calm victim,—to conquer indolence so as to get vigorously through some long deferred work,—to impose upon oneself some wholesome restraint, and thus heighten one’s enjoyment afterwards,—and many, many more such cases, which this occasionally sublime, but generally childish life presents.
After dinner, to drive away blue devils, I took a long ride into the country towards the mountains. After riding about twelve miles I came to a bare region of interminable bog extending in all directions. You would have thought yourself a hundred miles from any capital. The character of the country was not wild, not so desert as a plain of sand, but awfully void, lonely, and monotonous. One single wretched cabin was visible, but in ruins, and uninhabited; and a white footpath winded along toilfully through the brown heather, like a huge worm. The whole ground was lightly powdered with snow, and the wind blew icy cold over the bare heights. Nevertheless the melancholy of the scene had such a strange attraction for me, that necessity alone made me turn my horse’s head homewards. Nearer to Dublin I found an isolated mountain, on which was a strange caprice;—a house built in imitation of a rock; and in fact so like one, that it deceived me till I saw the entrance. I reached my inn by moonlight, with a face burning with the keen air. I had invited Father L’Estrange to dine with me, ‘car j’aime les prêtres, comme Voltaire la Bible, malgré tout ce que j’en dis.’
I found too a letter from you; but I must complain that you do not write to me sufficiently in detail. Do consider that every trifle from home is precious. Whether my favourite horse is well; whether my sweet little friend the parroquet sometimes calls on my name; whether your domestic tyrant Fancy is more or less naughty; whether the parrots are ‘in good spirits,’ the new plantations thriving, the visitors to the baths gay;—all these particulars have an extraordinary interest at a distance of some hundreds of miles. But I see clearly that if I have a mind to know all these things I must take you by surprise, if it be but for one day. You know that I hate all scenes and solemnities, all tumultuous meetings, and all leave-takings; ‘un beau matin’ therefore you will find me comfortably established in your breakfast-room, where I shall receive you with a smile, as if my long journey had been but a dream; ‘et toute la vie, hélas! est elle autre chose?’ Seriously, we ought to learn to take all these things much more coolly and easily than we fancy possible.—An English dandy may serve you as an admirable model. His best friend and comrade was going to India; and in his emotion at taking leave of him, was going to grasp both his hands, and to shake them perhaps for the last time: the ‘Incroyable,’ half warding him off, held out the tip of his little finger to him, while he lisped smiling, “Strange and horridly fatiguing English custom, for two men to move each other’s arms up and down like the handle of a pump!”
Your portrait did not give me so much pleasure as it ought. The features are much too hard, and must be ‘softened’ before it can pass as a representative of the original,—whose image, however, is too vividly pressed on my heart to want any refreshing.
Your ever faithful L——.