SKETCHES CHIEFLY PERSONAL.
1846.
Home Politics—Malthus Philosophy—Mark Lemon—An Incident of Character—Hood's Tylney Hall—Duke of Wellington—Lord Grey—A Recollection of his Reporting Days—Returns to Dombey—Two English Travellers—Party among the Hills—Lord Vernon—A Wonderful Carriage—Reading of First Dombey—A Sketch from Life—Trip to Great St. Bernard—Ascent of the Mountain—The Convent—Scene at the Mountain Top—Bodies found in the Snow—The Holy Fathers—A Holy Brother and Pickwick.
Some sketches from the life in his pleasantest vein now claim to be taken from the same series of letters; and I will prefix one or two less important notices, for the most part personal also, that have characteristic mention of his opinions in them.
Home-politics he criticized in what he wrote on the 24th of August, much in the spirit of his last excellent remark on the Protestant and Catholic cantons; having no sympathy with the course taken by the whigs in regard to Ireland after they had defeated Peel on his coercion bill, and resumed the government. "I am perfectly appalled by the hesitation and cowardice of the whigs. To bring in that arms bill, bear the brunt of the attack upon it, take out the obnoxious clauses, still retain the bill, and finally withdraw it, seems to me the meanest and most halting way of going to work that ever was taken. I cannot believe in them. Lord John must be helpless among them. They seem somehow or other never to know what cards they hold in their hands, and to play them out blindfold. The contrast with Peel (as he was last) is, I agree with you, certainly not favourable. I don't believe now they ever would have carried the repeal of the corn law, if they could." Referring in the same letter[124] to the reluctance of public men of all parties to give the needful help to schemes of emigration, he ascribed it to a secret belief "in the gentle politico-economical principle that a surplus population must and ought to starve;" in which for himself he never could see anything but disaster for all who trusted to it. "I am convinced that its philosophers would sink any government, any cause, any doctrine, even the most righteous. There is a sense and humanity in the mass, in the long run, that will not bear them; and they will wreck their friends always, as they wrecked them in the working of the Poor-law-bill. Not all the figures that Babbage's calculating machine could turn up in twenty generations, would stand in the long run against the general heart."
Of other topics in his letters, one or two have the additional attractiveness derivable from touches of personal interest when these may with propriety be printed. Hardly within the class might have fallen a mention of Mark Lemon, of whom our recent play, and his dramatic adaptation of the Chimes, had given him pleasant experiences, if I felt less strongly not only that its publication would have been gladly sanctioned by the subject of it, but that it will not now displease another to whom also it refers, herself the member of a family in various ways distinguished on the stage, and to whom, since her husband's death, well-merited sympathy and respect have been paid. "After turning Mrs. Lemon's portrait over, in my mind, I am convinced that there is not a grain of bad taste in the matter, and that there is a manly composure and courage in the proceeding deserving of the utmost respect. If Lemon were one of your braggart honest men, he would set a taint of bad taste upon that action as upon everything else he might say or do; but being what he is, I admire him for it greatly, and hold it to be a proof of an exalted nature and a true heart. Your idea of him, is mine. I am sure he is an excellent fellow. We talk about not liking such and such a man because he doesn't look one in the face,—but how much we should esteem a man who looks the world in the face, composedly, and neither shirks it nor bullies it. Between ourselves, I say with shame and self-reproach that I am quite sure if Kate had been a Columbine her portrait would not be hanging, 'in character,' in Devonshire-terrace."
He speaks thus of a novel by Hood. "I have been reading poor Hood's Tylney Hall; the most extraordinary jumble of impossible extravagance, and especial cleverness, I ever saw. The man drawn to the life from the pirate-bookseller, is wonderfully good; and his recommendation to a reduced gentleman from the university, to rise from nothing as he, the pirate, did, and go round to the churches and see whether there's an opening, and begin by being a beadle, is one of the finest things I ever read, in its way." The same letter has a gentle little trait of the great duke, touching in its simplicity, and worth preserving. "I had a letter from Tagart the day before yesterday, with a curious little anecdote of the Duke of Wellington in it. They have had a small cottage at Walmer; and one day—the other day only—the old man met their little daughter Lucy, a child about Mamey's age, near the garden; and having kissed her, and asked her what was her name, and who and what her parents were, tied a small silver medal round her neck with a bit of pink ribbon, and asked the child to keep it in remembrance of him. There is something good, and aged, and odd in it. Is there not?"
Another of his personal references was to Lord Grey, to whose style of speaking and general character of mind he had always a strongly-expressed dislike, drawn not impartially or quite justly from the days of reaction that followed the reform debates, when the whig leader's least attractive traits were presented to the young reporter. "He is a very intelligent agreeable fellow, the said Watson by the bye" (he is speaking of the member of the Lausanne circle with whom he established friendliest after-intercourse); "he sat for Northamptonshire in the reform bill time, and is high sheriff of his county and all the rest of it; but has not the least nonsense about him, and is a thorough good liberal. He has a charming wife, who draws well, and is making a sketch of Rosemont for us that shall be yours in Paris." (It is already, by permission of its present possessor, the reader's, and all the world's who may take interest in the little doll's house of Lausanne which lodged so illustrious a tenant.) "He was giving me some good recollections of Lord Grey the other evening when we were playing at battledore (old Lord Grey I mean), and of the constitutional impossibility he and Lord Lansdowne and the rest laboured under, of ever personally attaching a single young man, in all the excitement of that exciting time, to the leaders of the party. It was quite a delight to me, as I listened, to recall my own dislike of his style of speaking, his fishy coldness, his uncongenial and unsympathetic politeness, and his insufferable though most gentlemanly artificiality. The shape of his head (I see it now) was misery to me, and weighed down my youth. . . ."
It was now the opening of the second week in August; and before he finally addressed himself to the second number of Dombey, he had again turned a lingering look in the direction of his Christmas book. "It would be such a great relief to me to get that small story out of the way." Wisely, however, again he refrained, and went on with Dombey; at which he had been working for a little time when he described to me (24th of August) a visit from two English travellers, of one of whom with the slightest possible touch he gives a speaking likeness.[125]