Willis saw more “life” in London than was quite good for him, and went into companies which were less select than the Gore House coterie, although, to say truth, Lady Blessington herself was looked upon by “the best people” as a trifle off color. Her house was frequented by men who were entirely irreproachable, but the English ladies were shy of visiting there. This was due mainly to her rather unusual relations with the Count d’Orsay. In obedience to the wishes of the Earl of Blessington, his daughter by a former marriage had been compelled to wed the count under penalty of forfeiting her inheritance. The poor girl reluctantly espoused the brilliant stranger provided for her by her father’s eccentric caprice; but the match was unhappy, and was almost immediately followed by a separation; notwithstanding which, D’Orsay continued to live in the closest intimacy with his wife’s stepmother after the earl’s death, and in time under the same roof with her. This last arrangement, which was, to say the least, odd, and caused much scandal in British society, had not, however, gone into effect when Willis first came to London. Lady Blessington had not as yet moved to Gore House, but was living in Seamore Place, while D’Orsay had lodgings in Curzon Street. Nor did the latter’s formal separation from his wife take place till 1838. Another intimate friend of Willis in London was that very unconventional, not to say rapid, woman, Lady Dudley Stuart, the daughter of Lucien Bonaparte, “a lady of remarkably small person, with the fairest foot ever seen,” under whose bonnet “burn the most lambent and spiritual eyes that night and sleep ever hid from the world.” She had about her a semi-foreign society, not without its fascinations, of artists, actors, opera-singers, refugee nobles, and adventurers of more or less shady antecedents. In his “Sketches of Travel” Willis described a very free and easy supper party, following a private concert given by Lady Antrobus, at which he and Lady Dudley Stuart assisted, together with Grisi, Lablache, Rubini, and other members of the Italian opera troupe then in London. Of course neither Lady Antrobus nor Lady Stuart was mentioned by name in this account.
But Willis’s acquaintance was by no means confined to the Blessington set, or to the Bohemian circle that surrounded Lady Dudley Stuart, but included many families of unquestioned position. The Ramsays, for instance, were solid people, above any suspicion of queerness, and the earl’s niece, Lady Moncrieff, whom Willis visited in London, was decidedly “evangelical.” There were two households in particular which were like homes to him during the last year and more of his stay in England. These were Shirley Park, near Croydon in Surrey, the residence of the Skinner family, and the Manor House of the Shaws at Lee, in Kent, only a ten miles’ drive across country from Shirley Park. The Hon. Mrs. Fanny Shaw was a daughter to Lord Erskine and a sworn friend of Willis. Mrs. Mary Skinner was wife to an Indian nabob, a leader of fashion, and a woman of intellectual tastes, who patronized letters and entertained literary people, a kind of Mrs. Leo Hunter, in short. Willis was introduced to her at Lady Simpkins’s by Sir John Franklin, in February, 1835, and met her again at a dinner given by Longman, the publisher, at Hampstead, where were present, among others, Moore, Joanna Baillie, Jane Porter, and Miss Pardoe. The last was a very pretty woman, author of “Beauties of the Bosphorus,” and other books more remarkable for their sumptuous illustrations than for their literary quality. She was a poetess, too, after her fashion, and once addressed a tribute in verse “To the Author of Melanie,” which was printed in the “Mirror” of October 17, 1835. Both Mrs. Shaw and Mrs. Skinner treated their young guest with the most delicate and considerate kindness. They made him offers of pecuniary help, of which, fortunately, he had no need to avail himself, as his letters to the “Mirror” and his “New Monthly” stories (which added fifteen or twenty guineas a month to his “poor two hundred a year”) brought him in returns which were ample for his occasions. The Skinners had a town house in Portland Place, and their carriage in London was always at Willis’s service. Both of these ladies regarded him as a son or a younger brother. Bruce Skinner, a son of Willis’s hostess, named one of his children after him. At Shirley Park and at the Shaws’ he met a number of very charming people, and his time there was spent in drives, lawn-parties, etc. In the library at Shirley Park two nieces of Walter Scott, the Misses Swinton, copied for him “Melanie” and “Love in the Library,” which he was preparing for the press. An extract from a very confidential letter from Willis to Mrs. Skinner may be worth transcribing, to show the terms of frank and cordial familiarity on which he lived with these excellent people. After a brief history of his life and a statement of his financial situation, the letter concludes as follows:—
“There is a passage in your note which pleased me. You say if you had a daughter you would give her to me. If you had one I certainly would take you at your word, provided this exposé of my poverty did not change your fancy. I should like to marry in England, and I feel every day (more and more) that my best years and best affections are running to waste. I am proud to be an American, but as a literary man, I would rather live in England. So if you know any affectionate and good girl who would be content to live rather a quiet life, and could love your humble servant, you have full power of attorney to dispose of me, provided she has five hundred a year, or as much more as she likes. I know enough of the world to cut my throat sooner than bring a delicate woman down to a dependence on my brains for support, though in a case of exigency I could always retreat to America, and live comfortably by my labors. Meantime I am the only sufferer by my poverty, and am not poor, for no man is so who lives upon his income. Comprends-tu? My dear friend, I have told you what I have told no other person in the world. Most men and women would think it incredible that an attaché to a legation could keep up appearances on two hundred a year, or pity him if he could; and I never thought anybody worth the confidence—save only yourself. I would tell Miss Porter just the same, or Mr. Swinton, but who else? No one! so gardez cela!
“I enjoyed the ball at the Ravenshaws’ exceedingly, and am so much obliged to you for introducing me to Praed, whom I like.”
“I have one or two homes in England,” wrote Willis to his mother, July 22, 1835, “where I am loved like a child. I had a letter the other day from Honorable Mrs. Shaw, who fancied I looked low-spirited at the opera. ‘Young men have but two causes of unhappiness,’ she says, ‘love and money. If it is money, Mr. Shaw wishes me to say, you shall have as much as you want; if it is love, tell us the lady, and perhaps we can help you.’ Where could be kinder friends? I spend my Sundays alternately at their splendid country house and Mrs. Skinner’s, and they never can get enough of me. I have a room always kept for me at both places, and there is universal rejoicing when I come and mourning when I go. I am often asked whether I carry a love philter with me; yet with all the uncommon honors and favors shown me in England, I assure you I never asked or made interest directly or indirectly for any acquaintance or any favor since I landed at Dover. What has come has come of its own accord.”
Miss Porter and Miss Pardoe were both domesticated at Shirley Park, and he met there at different times, as fellow guests, Lady Franklin, Lady Sidney Morgan, author of once popular French and Italian travels, and the brilliant young orator, poet, and wit, Winthrop Mackworth Praed. Of the latter Willis wrote in the “Home Journal” many years later: “We were followers together in the train of the admired belle (a visitor under the same hospitable roof) whom I afterward brought home with me to Glenmary.” Willis attributed to his religious poetry the honor of his first acquaintance with Joanna Baillie, Jane Porter, and the Byrons. For the authoress of “The Scottish Chiefs,” especially, he formed an enduring attachment, and she regarded him with an almost motherly affection. A lifelong correspondence was kept up between them, and at the death of Admiral Robert Ker Porter at St. Petersburg in 1842, among the MSS. found in his sea-chests were ninety letters from Willis to his sister. The letters from Miss Porter, among Willis’s private papers, show that she was an equally indefatigable, through a not very legible correspondent. Willis encountered Ada Byron at an evening party in London, and thought her “earnest and sweet.” Lady Byron, who was a Unitarian, was much interested by the spirited sketch of Dr. Channing in a series of papers on American literature which Willis had contributed to the “Athenæum,” and she expressed her favorable opinion of them in a letter to Miss Baillie, as also her pleasure that her daughter had made the author’s acquaintance. Miss Baillie gave this note to Willis for his autograph book. Byron’s sister, Augusta Leigh, he also met in London society. She gave him an autograph letter of Byron, and on the appearance of “Melanie and Other Poems,” in March 1835, he sent her a copy, and received an acknowledgment in which she said that the book contained “some of the most touching and exquisite lines I ever read.” The venerable Joanna Baillie wrote him, on the same occasion, a letter filled with the most graceful compliments.
Among other London acquaintances of Willis’s at this time were John Leech, the artist, and Martin Farquhar Tupper, the proverbial philosopher, who afterwards visited him in America. A few extracts from a manuscript diary irregularly kept by Willis from June, 1835, to March, 1836, will serve to show the nature of his daily engagements and occupations:—
“June 30. Breakfasted with Samuel Rogers. Met Dr. Delancey, of Philadelphia, and Corbin, ditto. Talked of Mrs. Butler’s book, and Rogers gave us suppressed passages. Talked of critics, and said that ‘as long as you cast a shadow, you were sure you possessed substance.’ Coleridge said of Southey: ‘I never think of him but as mending a pen.’ Southey said of Coleridge: ‘Whenever anything presents itself to him in the shape of a duty, that moment he finds himself incapable of looking at it.’
“Went to the opera with Hon. Mrs. Shaw and heard Grisi in ‘I Puritani,’ and saw Taglioni: both divine. Visited Lady Blessington’s box and Lady Vincent.