Peter Parley's Own Story / From the Personal Narrative of the Late Samuel G. Goodrich, ("Peter Parley")

by Samuel G. Goodrich

Of course, I visited the House of Lords, paying two shillings and sixpence for admittance. The general aspect of the assembly was eminently grave and dignified. Lord Eldon was the Chancellor—a large, heavy, iron-looking man—the personification of bigoted Conservatism. He was so opposed to reforms, that he shed tears when the punishment of death was abolished for stealing five shillings in a dwelling-house! When I saw him, his head was covered with the official wig: his face sufficed, however, to satisfy any one that his obstinacy of character was innate.

While I was here, a Committee from the House of Commons was announced; they had brought up a message to the Lords. The Chancellor, taking the seals in his hands, approached the Committee, bowing three times, and they doing the same. Then they separated, each moving backward, and bowing. To persons used to such a ceremony, this might be sublime; to me it was ludicrous: and all the more so, on account of the ponderous starchness of the chief performer in the solemn farce. There was a somewhat animated debate while I was present, in which Lords Liverpool, Lauderdale, Harrowby and Grey participated; yet nothing was said or done that would justify particular notice at this late day.

A great event happened in the musical world while I was in London—the appearance of Catalani at the Italian Opera, after several years of absence. The opera was Le Nozze di Figaro. I had never before seen an opera; and could not, even by the enchantments of music, have my habits of thought and my common sense so completely overturned and bewitched, as to see the whole business of life—intrigue, courtship, marriage, cursing, shaving, preaching, praying, loving, hating—done by singing, instead of talking, and yet feel that it was all right and proper. It requires both a musical ear and early training fully to appreciate and feel the opera.

Madame Catalani was a large handsome woman; a little masculine and past forty. She was not only a very clever actress, but was deemed to have every musical merit—volume, compass, clearness of tone, surpassing powers of execution. Her whole style was dramatic; bending even the music to the sentiments of the character and the song. I could appreciate, uninstructed as I was, her amazing powers; though, to say the truth, I was quite as much astonished as pleased. Pasta and Garcia, both of whom I afterwards heard, gave me infinitely greater pleasure; chiefly because their voices possessed that melody of tone which excites sympathy in every heart; even the most untutored. Madame Catalani gave the opera a sort of epic grandeur—an almost tragic vehemence of expression; Pasta and Garcia rendered it the interpreter of those soft and tender emotions, for the expression of which God seems to have given music to mankind. It was, no doubt, a great thing to hear the greatest cantatrice of the age; but I remember Madame Catalani as a prodigy, rather than as an enchantress. On the occasion I am describing, she sang, by request, "Rule Britannia" between the acts; which drew forth immense applause, in which I heartily joined: not that I liked the words, but that I felt the music.

It was about this time that a great attraction was announced at one of the theatres; nothing less than the King and Queen of the Sandwich Islands, who had graciously condescended to honor the performance with their presence. They had come to visit England, and pay their homage to George the Fourth; hence the Government deemed it necessary to receive them with hospitality, and pay them such attentions as were due to their rank and royal blood. The king's name was Kamehamaha; but he had also the sub-title or surname of Rhio-Rhio: which, being interpreted, meant Dog of Dogs. Canning's wit got the better of his reverence, and so he profanely suggested that, if his majesty was a Dog of Dogs, what must the queen be? However, there was an old man about the court, who had acquired the title of Poodle, and he was selected as a fit person to attend upon their majesties. They had their lodgings at the Adelphi Hotel, and might be seen at all hours of the day, looking at the puppet-shows in the streets with intense delight. Of all the institutions of Great Britain, Punch and Judy evidently made the strongest and most favorable impression upon the royal party.

They were, I believe, received at a private interview by the King at Windsor: everything calculated to gratify them was done. I saw them at the theatre, dressed in a European costume, with the addition of some barbarous finery. The king was an enormous man—six feet three or four inches; the queen was short, but otherwise of ample dimensions. Besides these persons, the party comprised five or six other members of the king's household. They had all large, round, flat faces, of a coarse, though good-humored expression. Their complexion was a ruddy brown, not very unlike the American Indians; their general aspect, however, was very different. They looked with a kind of vacant wonder at the play, evidently not comprehending it; the farce, on the contrary, seemed greatly to delight them. It is sad to relate that this amiable couple never returned to their country; both died in England—victims either to the climate, or to the change in their habits of living.

Among the prominent objects of interest in London at this period was Edward Irving, then preaching at the Caledonian Chapel, Cross Street, Hatton Garden. He was now in the full flush of his fame; and such was the eagerness to hear him, that it was difficult to get admission. People of all ranks—literary men, philosophers, statesmen, noblemen, persons of the highest name and influence, with a full and diversified representation of the fair sex—crowded to his church. I was so fortunate as to get a seat in the pew of a friend, a privilege which I appreciated all the more when I counted twenty coroneted coaches standing at the door, some of those who came in them not being able to obtain even an entrance into the building. The interior was crowded to excess; the aisles were full; and even fine ladies seemed happy to get seats upon the pulpit stairway. Persons of the highest title were scattered here and there, and cabinet ministers were squeezed in with the mass of common humanity.

Mr. Irving's appearance was very remarkable. He was over six feet in height, very broad-shouldered, with long, black hair hanging in heavy, twisted ringlets down upon his shoulders. His complexion was pallid, yet swarthy; the whole expression of his face, owing chiefly to an unfortunate squint, was half-sinister and half-sanctified, creating in the minds of the beholder a painful doubt whether he was a great saint or a great sinner.

There was a strange mixture of saintliness and dandyism in the whole appearance of this man. His prayer was affected—strange, quaint, peculiar in its phraseology, yet solemn and striking. His reading of the psalm was peculiar, and a fancy crossed my mind that I had heard something like it, but certainly not in a church. I was seeking to trace out a resemblance between this strange parson and some star of Drury Lane or Covent Garden. Suddenly I found the clue: Edward Irving in the pulpit was imitating Edmund Kean upon the stage! And he succeeded admirably—his tall and commanding person giving him an immense advantage over the little, insignificant, yet inspired actor. He had the tones of the latter, his gestures, his looks even, as I had often seen him in Richard the Third and Shylock. He had evidently taken lessons of the renowned tragedian, but whether in public or private is not for me to say.

In spite of the evident affectation, the solemn dandyism, the dramatic artifices of the performer—for, after all, I could only consider the preacher as an actor—the sermon was very impressive. The phraseology was rich, flowing, redundant, abounding in illustration, and seemed to me carefully modelled after that of Jeremy Taylor. Some of the pictures presented to the imagination were startling, and once or twice it seemed as if the whole audience was heaving and swelling with intense emotion, like a sea rolling beneath the impulses of a tempest. Considered as a display of oratorical art, it was certainly equal to anything I have ever heard from the pulpit; yet it did not appear to me calculated to have any permanent effect in enforcing Christian truth upon the conscience. The preacher seemed too much a player, and too little an apostle. The after-thought was, that the whole effect was the result of stage trick, and not of sober truth.