Our sayings are extremely quoted,'
"and really, one feels that one is a belle." She mentioned several of the beaux of last winter who had returned to England. "Here I have been in London a month, and these very men that were dying for me, at my side every day on the Strada Nuova, and all but fighting to dance three times with me of an evening, have only left their cards! Not because they care less about me, but because it is 'not the fashion'—it would be talked of at the club, it is 'knowing' to let us alone."
There were only three men in the party, which was a very crowded one, who could come under the head of beaux. Of the remaining part, there was much that was distinguished, both for rank and talent. Sheil, the Irish orator, a small, dark, deceitful, but talented-looking man, with a very disagreeable squeaking voice, stood in a corner, very earnestly engaged in conversation with the aristocratic old Earl of Clarendon. The contrast between the styles of the two men, the courtly and mild elegance of one, and the uneasy and half-bred, but shrewd earnestness of the other, was quite a study. Fonblanc of the Examiner, with his pale and dislocated-looking face, stood in the door-way between the two rooms, making the amiable with a ghastly smile to Lady Stepney. The 'bilious Lord Durham,' as the papers call him, with his Brutus head, and grave, severe countenance, high-bred in his appearance, despite the worst possible coat and trowsers, stood at the pedestal of a beautiful statue, talking politics with Bowring; and near them, leaned over a chair the Prince Moscowa, the son of Marshal Ney, a plain, but determined-looking young man, with his coat buttoned up to his throat, unconscious of everything but the presence of the Honorable Mrs. Leicester Stanhope, a very lovely woman, who was enlightening him in the prettiest English French, upon some point of national differences. Her husband, famous as Lord Byron's companion in Greece, and a great liberal in England, was introduced to me soon after by Bulwer; and we discussed the Bank and the President, with a little assistance from Bowring, who joined us with a paean for the old general and his measures, till it was far into the morning.
LETTER LXXIII.
BREAKFAST WITH BARRY CORNWALL—LUXURY OF THE FOLLOWERS OF THE MODERN MUSE—BEAUTY OF THE DRAMATIC SKETCHES GAINS PROCTOR A WIFE—HAZLITT'S EXTRAORDINARY TASTE FOR THE PICTURESQUE IN WOMEN—COLERIDGE'S OPINION OF CORNWALL.
Breakfasted with Mr. Procter (known better as Barry Cornwall). I gave a partial description of this most delightful of poets in a former letter. In the dazzling circle of rank and talent with which he was surrounded at Lady Blessington's, however, it was difficult to see so shrinkingly modest a man to advantage, and with the exception of the keen gray eye, living with thought and feeling, I should hardly have recognised him, at home, for the same person.
Mr. Procter is a barrister; and his "whereabout" is more like that of a lord chancellor than a poet proper. With the address he had given me at parting, I drove to a large house in Bedford square; and, not accustomed to find the children of the Muses waited on by servants in livery, I made up my mind as I walked up the broad staircase, that I was blundering upon some Mr. Procter of the exchange, whose respect for his poetical namesake, I hoped would smooth my apology for the intrusion. Buried in a deep morocco chair, in a large library, notwithstanding, I found the poet himself—choice old pictures, filling every nook between the book-shelves, tables covered with novels and annuals, rolls of prints, busts and drawings in all corners; and, more important for the nonce, a breakfast table at the poet's elbow, spicily set forth, not with flowers or ambrosia, the canonical food of rhymers, but with cold ham and ducks, hot rolls and butter, coffee-pot and tea-urn—as sensible a breakfast, in short, as the most unpoetical of men could desire.
Procter is indebted to his poetry for a very charming wife, the daughter of Basil Montague, well known as a collector of choice literature, and the friend and patron of literary men. The exquisite beauty of the Dramatic Sketches interested this lovely woman in his favor before she knew him, and, far from worldly-wise as an attachment so grounded would seem, I never saw two people with a more habitual air of happiness. I thought of his touching song,
"How many summers, love,
Hast thou been mine?"