We separated, in a blessed state of contentment with one another, at about eleven; and (lest I should starve before morning) I went with Mr. D——— to take supper at his house in Park Lane. Mr. D——— is a pale young gentleman, of American aspect, being a West-Indian by birth. He is one of the principal writers of editorials for the Times. We were accompanied in the carriage by another gentleman, Mr. M———, who is connected with the management of the same paper. He wrote the letters from Scutari, which drew so much attention to the state of the hospitals. Mr. D——— is the husband of the former Miss ———, the actress, and when we reached his house, we found that she had just come home from the theatre, and was taking off her stage-dress. Anon she came down to the drawing-room,—a seemingly good, simple, and intelligent lady, not at all pretty, and, I should think, older than her husband. She was very kind to me, and told me that she had read one of my books—The House of the Seven Gables—thirteen years ago; which I thought remarkable, because I did not write it till eight or nine years afterwards.
The principal talk during supper (which consisted of Welsh-rabbit and biscuits, with champagne and sodawater) was about the Times, and the two contributors expressed vast admiration of Mr. ———, who has the chief editorial management of the paper. It is odd to find how little we outsiders know of men who really exercise a vast influence on affairs, for this Mr. ——— is certainly of far more importance in the world than a minister of state. He writes nothing himself; but the character of the Times seems to depend upon his intuitive, unerring judgment; and if ever he is absent from his post, even for a day or two, they say that the paper immediately shows it. In reply to my questions, they appeared to acknowledge that he was a man of expediency, but of a very high expediency, and that he gave the public the very best principles which it was capable of receiving. Perhaps it may be so: the Times's articles are certainly not written in so high a moral vein as might be wished; but what they lack in height they gain in breadth. Every sensible man in England finds his own best common-sense there; and, in effect, I think its influence is wholesome.
Apropos of public speaking, Dr. ——— said that Sir Lytton Bulwer asked him (I think the anecdote was personal to himself) whether he felt his heart beat when he was going to speak. "Yes." "Does your voice frighten you?" "Yes." "Do all your ideas forsake you?" "Yes." "Do you wish the floor to open and swallow you?" "Yes." "Why, then, you'll make an orator!" Dr. ——— told of Canning, too, how once, before rising to speak in the House of Commons, he bade his friend feel his pulse, which was throbbing terrifically. "I know I shall make one of my best speeches," said Canning, "because I'm in such an awful funk!" President Pierce, who has a great deal of oratorical power, is subject to a similar horror and reluctance.
REFORM-CLUB DINNER.
April 5th.—On Thursday, at eight o'clock, I went to the Reform Club, to dine with Dr. ———. The waiter admitted me into a great basement hall, with a tessellated or mosaic or somehow figured floor of stone, and lighted from a dome of lofty height. In a few minutes Dr. ——— appeared, and showed me about the edifice, which is very noble and of a substantial magnificence that was most satisfactory to behold,—no wood-work imitating better materials, but pillars and balustrades of marble, and everything what it purports to be. The reading-room is very large, and luxuriously comfortable, and contains an admirable library: there are rooms and conveniences for every possible purpose; and whatever material for enjoyment a bachelor may need, or ought to have, he can surely find it here, and on such reasonable terms that a small income will do as much for him as a far greater one on any other system.
In a colonnade, on the first floor, surrounding the great basement hall, there are portraits of distinguished reformers, and black niches for others yet to come. Joseph Hume, I believe, is destined to fill one of these blanks; but I remarked that the larger part of the portraits, already hung up, are of men of high rank,—the Duke of Sussex, for instance; Lord Durham, Lord Grey; and, indeed, I remember no commoner. In one room, I saw on the wall the fac-simile, so common in the United States, of our Declaration of Independence.
Descending again to the basement hall, an elderly gentleman came in, and was warmly welcomed by Dr. ———. He was a very short man, but with breadth enough, and a back excessively bent,—bowed almost to deformity; very gray hair, and a face and expression of remarkable briskness and intelligence. His profile came out pretty boldly, and his eyes had the prominence that indicates, I believe, volubility of speech, nor did he fail to talk from the instant of his appearance; and in the tone of his voice, and in his glance, and in the whole man, there was something racy,—a flavor of the humorist. His step was that of an aged man, and he put his stick down very decidedly at every footfall; though as he afterwards told me that he was only fifty-two, he need not yet have been infirm. But perhaps he has had the gout; his feet, however, are by no means swollen, but unusually small. Dr. ——— introduced him as Mr. Douglas Jerrold, and we went into the coffee-room to dine.
The coffee-room occupies one whole side of the edifice, and is provided with a great many tables, calculated for three or four persons to dine at; and we sat down at one of these, and Dr. ——— ordered some mulligatawny soup, and a bottle of white French wine. The waiters in the coffee-room are very numerous, and most of them dressed in the livery of the Club, comprising plush breeches and white-silk stockings; for these English Reformers do not seem to include Republican simplicity of manners in their system. Neither, perhaps, is it anywise essential.
After the soup, we had turbot, and by and by a bottle of Chateau Margaux, very delectable; and then some lambs' feet, delicately done, and some cutlets of I know not what peculiar type; and finally a ptarmigan, which is of the same race of birds as the grouse, but feeds high up towards the summits of the Scotch mountains. Then some cheese, and a bottle of Chambertin. It was a very pleasant dinner, and my companions were both very agreeable men; both taking a shrewd, satirical, yet not ill-natured, view of life and people, and as for Mr. Douglas Jerrold, he often reminded me of E—— C———, in the richer veins of the latter, both by his face and expression, and by a tincture of something at once wise and humorously absurd in what he said. But I think he has a kinder, more genial, wholesomer nature than E——, and under a very thin crust of outward acerbity I grew sensible of a very warm heart, and even of much simplicity of character in this man, born in London, and accustomed always to London life.
I wish I had any faculty whatever of remembering what people say; but, though I appreciate anything good at the moment, it never stays in my memory; nor do I think, in fact, that anything definite, rounded, pointed, separable, and transferable from the general lump of conversation was said by anybody. I recollect that they laughed at Mr. ———, and at his shedding a tear into a Scottish river, on occasion of some literary festival. . . . They spoke approvingly of Bulwer, as valuing his literary position, and holding himself one of the brotherhood of authors; and not so approvingly of Charles Dickens, who, born a plebeian, aspires to aristocratic society. But I said that it was easy to condescend, and that Bulwer knew he could not put off his rank, and that he would have all the advantages of it in spite of his authorship. We talked about the position of men of letters in England, and they said that the aristocracy hated and despised and feared them; and I asked why it was that literary men, having really so much power in their hands, were content to live unrecognized in the State.