“What point?” said Curran.
“I knew it would take,” pursued Lewins, smirking: “I told Monsieur’s aide-de-camp that you felt quite hurt and unhappy on account of Monsieur’s having taken no notice of your letters or yourself, though you had paid him four visits at long intervals, and that—”
“What do you say?” shouted Curran.
Upon Lewins repeating his words with infinite glee, my disappointed friend burst out into a regular frenzy, slapped his face repeatedly, and ran about, exclaiming, “I’m disgraced! I’m humbled in the eyes of that man! I’m miserable!”
I apprehend he experienced but little more civility from any of the restored gentry of the French emigrants, to several of whom he had brought letters, and I am sure had he received any notable invitation from them, I must have heard of it. I fancy that a glass of eau sucré was the very extent of the practical hospitality he experienced from Messieurs les émigrés, who, if I might judge by their jaws and cravats of the quantity and quality of their food, and of their credit with washerwomen, were by no means in so flourishing a state as when they lived on our benevolence.
There is much of the life of this celebrated man[[67]] omitted by those who have attempted to write it. Even his son (a barrister, whom I have never seen) could have known but little of him, as he was not born at the time his father’s glories were at their zenith. Before he became the biographer of his celebrated parent, Mr. Curran would have done well to inquire who had been that parent’s decided friends, and who his invidious enemies; who supported him when his fame was tottering, and who assailed him when he was incapable of resistance: if he had used this laudable discretion before he commenced his character, he would probably have learned how to eulogise, and how to censure, with more justice and discrimination.
[67]. Curran died, I believe, at Brompton, and was buried in Paddington church-yard; but I am ignorant whether or not a stone marks the spot.
No gentlemen of our day knew Mr. Curran more intimately than myself, although our natural propensities were in many points quite uncongenial. His vanity too frequently misled his judgment, and he thought himself surrounded by a crowd of friends, when he was encompassed by a set of vulgar flatterers: he looked quite carelessly at the distinctions of society, and in consequence ours was not generally of the same class, and our intercourse more frequently at my house than at his. But he could adapt himself to all ranks, and was equally at home at Merrion Square or at the Priory.