'Her eyes are large,' he continues, 'and of a soft, liquid hazel, and this is her chief beauty. There is that looking out of the soul through them which Byron always described as constituting the loveliness that most moved him.... We met her as simple Mrs. Black, whose husband's terrier had worried us at the door, and we left her feeling that the poetry she called forth from the heart of Byron was her due by every law of loveliness.'
By this time the fame of the Pencillings had reached London; and at Smyrna Willis found a letter awaiting him from the Morning Herald, which contained an offer of the post of foreign correspondent at a salary of £200 a year. But as his letters would have to be mainly political, and as he might be expected to act as war-correspondent, which was scarcely in his line, he decided to refuse the offer. On leaving the frigate he loitered through Italy, Switzerland, and France to England, arriving at Dover on June 1, 1834. While at Florence he had made the acquaintance of Walter Savage Landor, who had given him some valuable letters of introduction to people in England, among them one to Lady Blessington. Landor also put into Willis's hands a package of books, whose temporary disappearance through some mismanagement roused the formidable wrath of the old poet. In his Letter to an Author, printed at the end of Pericles and Aspasia, Landor describes the transaction (which related to an American edition of the Imaginary Conversations), and continues:--
'I regret the appearance of his book (the Pencillings by the Way) more than the disappearance of mine.... My letter of presentation to Lady Blessington threw open (I am afraid) too many folding-doors, some of which have been left rather uncomfortably ajar. No doubt his celebrity as a poet, and his dignity as a diplomatist, would have procured him all those distinctions in society which he allowed so humble a person as myself the instrumentality of conferring. Greatly as I have been flattered by the visits of American gentlemen, I hope that for the future no penciller of similar composition will deviate in my favour to the right hand of the road from Florence to Fiesole.'
The end of this storm in a teacup was that the books, which had safely arrived in New York, returned as safely to London, where they were handed over to their rightful owner, but not in time, as Willis complained, to keep him from going down to posterity astride the finis to Pericles and Aspasia. Long afterwards he expressed his hope that Landor's biographers would either let him slip off at Lethe's wharf, or else do him justice in a note. Before this unfortunate incident, Landor and Willis had corresponded on cordial terms. The old poet wrote to say how much he envied his correspondent the evenings he passed in the society of 'the most accomplished and graceful of all our fashionable world, my excellent friend, Lady Blessington,' while the American could not sufficiently express his gratitude for the introduction to that lady, 'my lodestar and most valued friend,' as he called her, 'for whose acquaintance I am so much indebted to you, that you will find it difficult in your lifetime to diminish my obligations.'
Willis seems to have arrived in England prepared to like everything English, and he began by falling in love with the Ship Hotel at Dover, 'with its bells that would ring, doors that would shut, blazing coal fires [on June 1], and its landlady who spoke English, and was civil--a greater contrast to the Continent could hardly he imagined.' The next morning he was in raptures over the coach that took him to London, with its light harness, four beautiful bays, and dashing coachman, who discussed the Opera, and hummed airs from the Puritani. He saw a hundred charming spots on the road that he coveted with quite a heartache, and even the little houses and gardens in the suburbs pleased his taste--there was such an affectionateness in the outside of every one of them. Regent Street he declares to be the finest street he has ever seen, and he exclaims, 'The Toledo of Naples, the Corso of Rome, the Rue de la Paix, and the Boulevards of Paris are really nothing to Regent Street.'
Willis called on Lady Blessington in the afternoon of the day after his arrival, but was informed that her ladyship was not yet down to breakfast. An hour later, however, he received a note from her inviting him to call the same evening at ten o'clock. She was then living at Seamore House, while D'Orsay had lodgings in Curzon Street. Willis tells us that he found a very beautiful woman exquisitely dressed, who looked on the sunny side of thirty, though she frankly owned to forty, and was, in fact, forty-five. Lady Blessington received the young American very cordially, introduced him to the magnificent D'Orsay, and plunged at once into literary talk. She was curious to know the degree of popularity enjoyed by English authors in America, more especially by Bulwer and D'Israeli, both of whom she promised that he should meet at her house.
'D'Israeli the elder,' she said, 'came here with his son the other night. It would have delighted you to see the old man's pride in him. As he was going away, he patted him on the head, and said, "Take care of him, Lady Blessington, for my sake. He is a clever lad, but wants ballast. I am glad he has the honour to know you, for you will check him sometimes when I am away...." D'Israeli the younger is quite his own character of Vivian Grey, crowded with talent, but very soigné of his curls, and a bit of a coxcomb. There is no reverse about him, however, and he is the only joyous dandy I ever saw.' Then the conversation turned upon Byron, and Willis asked if Lady Blessington had known La Guiccioli. 'No; we were at Pisa when they were together,' she replied. 'But though Lord Blessington had the greatest curiosity to see her, Lord Byron would never permit it. "She has a red head of her own," said he, "and don't like to show it." Byron treated the poor creature dreadfully ill. She feared more than she loved him.'
On concluding this account of his visit, Willis observes that there can be no objection to his publishing such personal descriptions and anecdotes in an American periodical, since 'the English just know of our existence, and if they get an idea twice a year of our progress in politics, they are comparatively well informed. Our periodical literature is never even heard of. I mention this fact lest, at first thought, I might seem to have abused the hospitality or the frankness of those on whom letters of introduction have given me claims for civility.' Alas, poor Willis! He little thought that one of the most distinguished and most venomous of British critics would make a long arm across the Atlantic, and hold up his prattlings to ridicule and condemnation.
The following evening our Penciller met a distinguished company at Seamore House, the two Bulwers, Edward and Henry; James Smith of 'Rejected Addresses' fame; Fonblanque, the editor of the Examiner; and the young Duc de Richelieu. Of Fonblanque, Willis observes: 'I never saw a worse face, sallow, seamed, and hollow, his teeth irregular, his skin livid, his straight black hair uncombed. A hollow, croaking voice, and a small, fiery black eye, with a smile like a skeleton's, certainly did not improve his physiognomy.' Fonblanque, as might have been anticipated, did not at all appreciate this description of his personal defects, when it afterwards appeared in print. Edward Bulwer was quite unlike what Willis had expected. 'He is short,' he writes, 'very much bent, slightly knock-kneed, and as ill-dressed a man for a gentleman as you will find in London.... He has a retreating forehead, large aquiline nose, immense red whiskers, and a mouth contradictory of all talent. A more good-natured, habitually smiling, nerveless expression could hardly be imagined.' Bulwer seems to have made up for his appearance by his high spirits, lover-like voice, and delightful conversation, some of which our Boswell has reported.
'Smith asked Bulwer if he kept an amanuensis. "No," he said, "I scribble it all out myself, and send it to the press in a most ungentlemanlike hand, half print, half hieroglyphics, with all its imperfections on its head, and correct in the proof--very much to the dissatisfaction of the publisher, who sends me in a bill of £16, 6s. 4d. for extra corrections. Then I am free to confess I don't know grammar. Lady Blessington, do you know grammar? There never was such a thing heard of before Lindley Murray. I wonder what they did for grammar before his day! Oh, the delicious blunders one sees when they are irretrievable! And the best of it is the critics never get hold of them. Thank Heaven for second editions, that one may scratch out one's blots, and go down clean and gentlemanlike to posterity." Smith asked him if he had ever reviewed one of his own books. "No, but I could! And then how I should like to recriminate, and defend myself indignantly! I think I could be preciously severe. Depend upon it, nobody knows a book's faults so well as its author. I have a great idea of criticising my books for my posthumous memoirs. Shall I, Smith? Shall I, Lady Blessington?"'