Memoirs of Eighty Years

by Thomas Gordon Hake

XXVII.

While my eighty-fourth year has commenced I look back over more than sixty years to the time when studies had ceased to be obligatory. I then took a survey of my stock of knowledge: it was small, but it embraced the rudiments of all that was necessary to progress. A classical education gave me access to the ancients, but I wanted French, which was the key to modern science. This determined me to pass some time on the Continent, and to get acquainted with other literatures than our own, as well as with other manners and customs.

I returned to London by stage; it was in the cold of the spring season. Two things only left a permanent impression on my mind of that journey. One is that I travelled with Mr. Orby Hunter, and that we were the only two inside passengers on the route. He was a neighbour of my mother; she, after a long visit to her beloved and hated Exeter had grown sick of it and of every one there, and had gone back to town, taking up her residence with my sister and brother in a small house, No. 49, Grosvenor Place.

Mr. Orby Hunter, a great politician of the day, was a gentleman of high caste, which made all he said the more impressive. He was greatly disturbed at the course events were taking. It was the eve of a general election, and a reform bill was hanging in the balance of parties.

From Mr. Orby Hunter I learnt much of the state of feeling in the country, the resolute fight against Peel, Wellington, and the Tories, conducted by Grey and John Russell.

I did not remain long in town, but soon made my way to Italy, remaining the best part of a year at Florence, visiting Paris, Geneva, Milan, and other cities on my way there and back. I shall not give an account of my journey, but only my experiences of it, such as having learned what coffee was for the first time in my life, and what fricandeau de veau lardé meant, at Calais. As to the latter, I have not tasted the equal of it since. In those days there was not a railroad on the Continent, and one travelled by diligence, vetturino, or post.

My sensations were new as I trod on the pavement of Paris for the first time. I felt myself somewhat great, and I entered a glover’s shop and bought an elegant pair of gloves to add to my delusion.

I stayed at Meurice’s hotel in the Rue Rivoli. There I got acquainted with Colonel de Courcy, to whom I had a letter of introduction in my portmanteau for Florence, not knowing it then, but there are persons who can make friends with each other without the assistance of a third party. Colonel de Courcy was one of the few extremely charming men that one meets with in the course of a long life, by which I mean gay, amusing, good-natured, gentlemanlike, free from reserve; men who after a few minutes you seem to have known always and would wish to go on knowing to the end.

The late Earl of Albemarle was such a man; I refer to him later in these pages.

Colonel de Courcy was the brother of Lord Kinsale, whose patent of nobility was over seven hundred years old, the most ancient in the Dublin College of Arms. George IV., on hearing about it, greatly desired to see the treasured document, but so precious was it that the heralds would only entrust it to certain commissioners, who were not allowed to part with it for an hour.