Excitement is hungry, and, after the first race, our party produced their baskets and bottles, and spreading out the cold pie and champaign upon the grass, between the wheels of the carriages, we drank Lord Chesterfield's health and ate for our own, in an al fresco style worthy of Italy. Two veritable Bohemians, brown, black-eyed gipsies, the models of those I had seen in their wicker tents in Asia, profited by the liberality of the hour, and came in for an upper crust to a pigeon pie, that, to tell the truth, they seemed to appreciate.
Race followed race, but I am not a contributor to the Sporting Magazine, and could not give you their merits in comprehensible terms if I were.
In one of the intervals, I walked under the King's stand, and saw Her Majesty, the Queen, and the young Princess Victoria, very distinctly. They were listening to a ballad-singer, and leaning over the front of the box with an amused attention, quite as sincere, apparently, as any beggar's in the ring. The Queen is the plainest woman in her dominions, beyond a doubt. The Princess is much better-looking than the pictures of her in the shops, and, for the heir to such a crown as that of England, quite unnecessarily pretty and interesting. She will be sold, poor thing—bartered away by those great dealers in royal hearts, whose grand calculations will not be much consolation to her, if she happens to have a taste of her own.
[The following sketch was written a short time previous to the death of Charles Lamb.]
Invited to breakfast with a gentleman in the temple to meet Charles Lamb and his sister—"Elia and Bridget Elia." I never in my life had an invitation more to my taste. The essays of Elia are certainly the most charming things in the world, and it has been for the last ten years, my highest compliment to the literary taste of a friend to present him with a copy. Who has not smiled over the humorous description of Mrs. Battle? Who that has read Elia would not give more to see him than all the other authors of his time put together?
Our host was rather a character. I had brought a letter of introduction to him from Walter Savage Landor, the author of Imaginary Conversations, living at Florence, with a request that he would put me in the way of seeing one or two men about whom I had a curiosity, Lamb more particularly. I could not have been recommended to a better person. Mr. R. is a gentleman who, everybody says, should have been an author, but who never wrote a book. He is a profound German scholar, has travelled much, is the intimate friend of Southey, Coleridge, and Lamb, has breakfasted with Goëthe, travelled with Wordsworth through France and Italy, and spends part of every summer with him, and knows everything and everybody that is distinguished—in short, is, in his bachelor's chambers in the temple, the friendly nucleus of a great part of the talent of England.
I arrived a half hour before Lamb, and had time to learn some of his peculiarities. He lives a little out of London, and is very much of an invalid. Some family circumstances have tended to depress him very much of late years, and unless excited by convivial intercourse, he scarce shows a trace of what he was. He was very much pleased with the American reprint of his Elia, though it contains several things which are not his—written so in his style, however, that it is scarce a wonder the editor should mistake them. If I remember right, they were "Valentine's Day," the "Nuns of Caverswell," and "Twelfth Night." He is excessively given to mystifying his friends, and is never so delighted as when he has persuaded some one into the belief of one of his grave inventions. His amusing biographical sketch of Liston was in this vein, and there was no doubt in anybody's mind that it was authentic, and written in perfectly good faith. Liston was highly enraged with it, and Lamb was delighted in proportion.
There was a rap at the door at last, and enter a gentleman in black small-clothes and gaiters, short and very slight in his person, his head set on his shoulders with a thoughtful, forward bent, his hair just sprinkled with gray, a beautiful, deep-set eye, aquiline nose, and a very indescribable mouth. Whether it expressed most humor or feeling, good nature or a kind of whimsical peevishness, or twenty other things which passed over it by turns, I can not in the least be certain.
His sister, whose literary reputation is associated very closely with her brother's, and who, as the original of "Bridget Elia," is a kind of object for literary affection, came in after him. She is a small, bent figure, evidently a victim to illness, and hears with difficulty. Her face has been, I should think, a fine and handsome one, and her bright gray eye is still full of intelligence and fire. They both seemed quite at home in our friend's chambers, and as there was to be no one else, we immediately drew round the breakfast table. I had set a large arm chair for Miss Lamb. "Don't take it, Mary," said Lamb, pulling it away from her very gravely, "it appears as if you were going to have a tooth drawn."