February 3d:—Evening.
Lord D—— possesses a fine collection of pictures, among which are Titian’s celebrated Venus; the death of Regulus, by Salvator Rosa; a large picture of Rubens, which has frequently been engraved; and a very fine Guido. In the two latter indeed, a not very agreeable subject, a lifeless head, is the principal object; in the one that of Cyrus, in the other that of John the Baptist. But Guido’s Herodias is another of those figures instinct with the genius of poetical, divine beauty, uniting the most lovely womanliness with the deepest tragic expression, which leave so indelible an impression, and are so seldom found in reality. There is a lady of your acquaintance who corresponds with this ideal, Countess A—— of B——. She was, when I knew her,[43] the most beautiful and richly dressed woman I ever beheld. Perfect symmetry, absolute harmony, reigned in her person and in her mind; so that the most heterogeneous things equally became her. Majestic as a queen, when she was ‘en representation;’ distinguished by the most easy and graceful manners, the most exquisite knowledge of the world, when doing the honours of her own house; and by the most ‘naïve,’ touching kindness and sweetness in the circle of her family;—but under every aspect rendered more interesting and impressive by a trace of thoughtful melancholy never wholly effaced, allied to that perfect feminine tenderness which gives to woman the highest and most resistless charm in the eyes of men;—her resemblance to this picture of Guido’s was striking. Two very pretty attendants of Herodias are in admirable contrast with the main figure. They are perfect ladies-in-waiting, who have no soul for anything beyond their court and their service; and their beauty receives from its very unmeaningness a certain rather animal character, which we can contemplate with an agreeable carelessness—a sort of repose to the mind after the profound and thrilling impression made by the main figure. The one is watching the glance of her mistress with an unmeaning smile; the other looks at the head of the Martyr in the charger with the same indifference as if it were ‘a pudding.’
I must describe to you, once for all, the ‘vie de château’ in England; of course only the common canvas, on which the Special is in every case embroidered by each man according to his fancy. The groundwork is in all the same, nor did I find it at all altered from what I formerly saw here. It forms, without any question, the most agreeable side of English life; for there is great freedom, and a banishment of most of the wearisome ceremonies which, with us, tire both host and guest. Notwithstanding this, one finds not less luxury than in the town; this is rendered less burthensome by the custom I mentioned of receiving guests only during a short period of the year, and on invitation.
The ostentation which, doubtless, lies at the root of such customs, we may well forgive, for the better reception it procures us.
Strangers have generally only one room allotted to them, usually a spacious apartment on the first floor. Englishmen seldom go into this room except to sleep, and to dress twice a-day, which, even without company and in the most strictly domestic circle, is always ‘de riguer;’ for all meals are commonly taken in company, and any one who wants to write does it in the library. There, also, those who wish to converse give each other ‘rendezvous,’ to avoid either the whole society, or particular parties, in the formation of which people are quite at liberty. Here you have an opportunity of gossiping for hours with the young ladies, who are always very literarily inclined. Many a marriage is thus concocted or destroyed, between the ‘corpus juris’ on the one side and Bouffler’s Works on the other, while fashionable novels, as a sort of intermediate link, lie on the tables in the middle.
Ten or eleven is the hour for breakfast, at which you may appear in ‘negligée.’ It is always of the same kind as that I described to you in the inn, only of course more elegant and complete. The ladies do the honours of the table very agreeably. If you come down later, when the breakfast is removed, a servant brings you what you want. In many houses he is on the watch till one o’clock, or even later, to see that stragglers do not starve. That half-a-dozen newspapers must lie on the table for every one to read who likes, is, of course, understood. The men now either go out hunting or shooting, or on business; the host does the same, without troubling himself in the least degree about his guests (the truest kindness and good breeding;) and about half an hour before dinner the company meet again in the drawing-room in elegant toilette.
The course and order of dinner I have already described to you.
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England is the true land of contrasts—‘du haut et du bas’ at every step. Thus, even in elegant houses in the country, coachmen and grooms wait at dinner, and are not always free from the odour of the stable. At the second breakfast, the ‘luncheon,’ which is served a few hours after the first, and is generally eaten only by the women (who like to make ‘la petite bouche’ at dinner,) there are no napkins, and altogether less neatness and elegance than at the other meals.
This as parenthesis:—I now return to the ‘order of the day.’ When the men have drunk as much as they wish, they go in search of tea, coffee, and the ladies, and remain for some hours with them, though without mixing much. To-day, for instance, I observed the company was distributed in the following manner. Our suffering host lay on the sofa, dosing a little; five ladies and gentlemen were very attentively reading in various sorts of books (of this number I was one, having some views of parks before me;) another had been playing for a quarter of an hour with a long-suffering dog; two old Members of Parliament were disputing vehemently about the ‘Corn Bill;’ and the rest of the company were in a dimly-lighted room adjoining, where a pretty girl was playing on the piano-forte, and another, with a most perforating voice, singing ballads.