We are now reading the Voyage of the "Blonde" to the Sandwich Islands, with the remains of the King and the Queen. [Footnote: King Kamehameha II., of the Sandwich Islands, and his Queen, who died of the measles in John Street, Adelphi, in 1824.] Pray get this book, it will delight you. Of the Blonde, you know the present Lord Byron is commander—the name strikes the ear continually—new fame, new associations; reverting, too, to the old Commodore Byron's sort of fame. How curious, how fleeting "this life in other's breath!"
A little box of curiosities from my most amiable American Jewess my mother presented to me this morning at the breakfast table: I was in an ecstasy, but shortlived was my joy, for I was thunderstruck the next instant by my mother's catching my arm and stopping my hand with the vehement exclamation, "Stop, stop, child, you don't know what you are doing."—"No, indeed, ma'am, I don't—what am I doing?" She took the wreath of cotton wool from my passive hand and showed me, wrapped up in it, a humming-bird, luckily unhurt, unsquelched. The humming-bird's nest is more beautiful than the creature itself. Poor Lord Liverpool—no one can wish his existence prolonged.
The painful family of death
More hideous than their queen.
April 8.
I am quite well and in high good-humour and good spirits in consequence of having received the whole of Lovell's half-year's rents in full, with pleasure to the tenants, and without the least fatigue or anxiety to myself.
We are reading the second part of Vivian Grey, which we like better than the first. There is a scene of gamesters and swindlers wonderfully well done. I know who wrote Almack's. Lady de Ros tells me it is by Mrs. Purvis, sister to Lady Blessington; this accounts for both the knowledge of high, and the habits of low, life which appear in the book. "Poor dear Almack's," Lady de Ros says, is not what it was—when people were poor in London, and there were few private balls, Almack's was all in all. Her sailor son is going to publish a Journal of a Tour, including the United States and Niagara.
To C.S. EDGEWORTH.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, April 12, 1827.
Now I have done all my agent business, I will tell you what Mr. Hope, in a letter I had from him this morning, says of Almack's. "It might have been a pretty thing, but I think it but a poor one. Of all slangs, that of fashion is easiest overdone. People do not hold forth about what is with them a matter of course. Willis, or his waiters, might have furnished all the characteristic materials. The author ever and anon makes up for want of wit by stringing together common French milliner phrases, which have no merit but that of being exotics in England. The point consists in his italics. Besides, he only describes the proceedings, not the spirit of the institution of Almack's. It was rather a bold thing in London to put FEASTING out of fashion, and to make a seven-shilling ball the thing to which all aspired to be admitted, and many without the least hope of succeeding. It was the triumph of aristocracy over mere wealth. It put down the Grimes's of former days, with their nectarines and peaches at Christmas, and in so far it improved society."
All this is very true, but I do not think he does justice to the author. I particularly like the dialogue in the third volume, where Lady Anne Norbury debits and credits her hopes of happiness with her two admirers: no waiting-maid could have written that. In the second volume, also, I think there is a scene between Lord and Lady Norbury in their dressing-room, about getting rid of their guests and making room for others, which is nicely touched: the Lord and Lady are politely unfeeling; it is all kept within bounds.