In the year 1870, during the first Viceroyalty of Earl Spencer in Ireland, Lever paid a visit to Dublin,[[43]] where he made friends with my nephew Courtenay Boyle, and was a frequent and welcome visitor at the Castle and Viceregal Lodge. From Ireland he came to London, and I had the pleasure of entertaining him at my little house in South Audley Street, where Lady Spencer gladly agreed to meet him. On the table lay a volume of Bret Harte’s parodies[[44]] of popular novelists, and I, volunteering to read a passage aloud, asked if he could recognise the authorship. It was the narrative of a cavalry officer who, in the heat of an engagement, took a flying, but unwilling, leap over a horseman in a dark cloak, cocked hat and white feathers. As far as I can remember the words-“My horse cleared the obstacle well, I lifted my eyes, and found myself for the first time in the presence of Field-Marshal The Duke of Wellington!”
[43]. I well remember this visit and the many chats we had about his novel, “Lord Kilgobbin,” then on the stocks.
[44]. The parody was “Terence Deuville”-“Putting spurs to my horse I rode at him boldly, and with one bound cleared him, horse and all. A shout of indignation arose from the assembled staff. I wheeled suddenly, with the intention of apologising, but my mare misunderstood me, and again dashing forward, once more vaulted over the head of the officer, this time, unfortunately, uncovering him by a vicious kick of her hoof. ‘Seize him!’ roared the entire army. I was seized. As the soldiers led me away, I asked the name of the gray-haired officer. ‘That?—why that’s the Duke of Wellington!’ I fainted.”
A somewhat similar episode is recorded in another parody, the fighting “Onet y Oneth,” by W. M. Thackeray, written many years before Bret Harte (who, I am sure, was no plagiarist) wrote “Terence Deuville.”
Never shall I forget Lever’s burst of laughter, which seemed to flood the whole room with sunshine. “Upon me soul, I believe it’s meself; it’s uncommonly like me.” That was the last time we ever met. The wife to whom he was deeply attached died shortly afterwards, and Charles Lever did not long survive her.
That was an eventful time for Florence, for Italy, for the whole of Europe. The spirit of revolution was abroad, and France had set a startling example to other nations. In the month of February, 1848, the Carnival was at its height, and the youth, beauty and fashion of Florence were assembled in a splendid ball-room in one of her principal palaces. I was sitting beside my dear friend Félicie de Fauveau, who had been rebuking me for dancing with cette canaille—for so she designated Baron Ward, Prime Minister and ex-groom of the Duke of Parma—and I had excused myself on the ground that it amused me to become acquainted with celebrities—perhaps, in this case, I had better have said notorieties—when we were all startled by the rapid entrance of a stranger. There was a pause, a hush, and then he became the centre of a little crowd that gathered round him, evidently the bearer of some strange intelligence. Félicie and I rose together to inquire the cause. It was soon told—a Revolution in France, and Louis Philippe and his whole family driven from the capital. To my companion, the news was of deep interest, for was she not devoted heart and soul to the cause of Henri Cinq? In that assembly, which contained many nationalities among the company, the intelligence was listened to with varying degrees of excitement, pleasure or indifference, while to the younger portion of the community, who cared little for the destiny of kings and governments, the paramount thought was that the bal masqué at the French Embassy would not take place.
I PLAY THE PART OF CONSPIRATOR
The downfall of the Orleans dynasty naturally led to a renewal of hope among the more devoted and sanguine of the Legitimists, which proved, however, but short-lived. One morning, soon after the ball already alluded to, Félicie de Fauveau called upon me and asked if I could undertake a commission for her. Any messenger she could send, she explained to me—indeed, any Frenchman or Frenchwoman who was the bearer of a letter to the Duchesse de Berri—would be an object of suspicion. “Have you any fellow-countryman whom you could safely trust to carry a communication from me to that Princess?” Most fortunately, a friend of ours, an Englishman, had the day previously expatiated to me on his delight at the prospect of seeing Venice for the first time. I summoned him to our assistance, entrusted Félicie’s packet to his care, enjoined prudence and secrecy, and thus, for the first and last time in my life, played the part of conspirator, though, sooth to say, with no important or successful result.
In Florence, where people did not take life au grand sérieux, there was no end of chaffing and jesting on the subject, which could not be said to be a jest to Paris and the Parisians. All the princes and princesses, all the counts and countesses, sometimes good-humouredly, sometimes spitefully, were addressed as Citoyens and Citoyennes. I heard of an incident at the club, which only just escaped having an unpleasant termination.
A Russian nobleman, who, for some reason or another, was not on good terms with a Frenchman of decided Legitimist tendencies, approached him and, in rather a provocative tone, said, “Bon jour, Citoyen.” The Frenchman looked at him with some disdain, and turning on his heel, exclaimed, “Adieu, esclave,” which retort elected a laugh from the bystanders.