FIFTY YEARS AGO.
My father, whose manners were at once highbred and lively, had some great acquaintances; but I recollect none of them personally, except an old lady of quality, who (if memory does not strangely deceive me, and give me a personal share in what I only heard talked of; for old autobiographers of childhood must own themselves liable to such confusions) astounded me one day by letting her false teeth slip out, and clapping them in again.
I had no idea of the existence of such phenomena, and could almost as soon have expected her to take off her head and readjust it. She lived in Red Lion-square, a quarter in different estimation from what it is now. It was at her house, I believe, that my father one evening met Wilkes. He did not know him by sight, and happening to fall into conversation with him, while the latter sat looking down, he said something in Wilkes's disparagement, on which the jovial demagogue looked up in his face, and burst out a laughing.
I do not exactly know how people dressed at that time; but I believe that sacks, and negligées, and toupees were going out, and the pigtail and the simpler modern style of dress coming in. I recollect hearing my mother describe the misery of having her hair dressed two or three stories high, and of lying in it all night ready for some visit or spectacle next day. I think I also recollect seeing Wilkes himself in an old-fashioned flap-waistcoated suit of scarlet and gold; and I am sure I have seen Murphy, the dramatist, a good deal later, in a suit of a like fashion, though soberer, and a large cocked-hat. The cocked-hat in general survived till nearly the present century. It was superseded by the round one during the French Revolution. I remember our steward at school, a very solemn personage, making his appearance in one, to our astonishment, and not a little to the diminution of his dignity. Some years later, I saw Mr. Pitt in a blue coat, buckskin breeches and boots, and a round hat, with powder and pigtail. He was thin and gaunt, with his hat off his forehead, and his nose in the air. Much about the same time I saw his friend, the first Lord Liverpool, a respectable looking old gentleman, in a brown wig. Later still, I saw Mr. Fox, fat and jovial, though he was then declining. He, who had been a "beau" in his youth, then looked something quaker-like as to dress, with plain colored clothes, a broad round hat, white waistcoat, and, if I am not mistaken, white stockings. He was standing in Parliament-street, just where the street commences as you leave Whitehall; and was making two young gentlemen laugh heartily at something which he seemed to be relating.
My father once took me—but I can not say at what period of my juvenility—into both houses of Parliament. In the Commons, I saw Mr. Pitt sawing the air, and occasionally turning to appeal to those about him, while he spoke in a loud, important, and hollow voice. When the persons he appealed to, said "Hear! hear!" I thought they said "Dear! dear!" in objection; and I wondered that he did not seem in the least degree disconcerted. The house of Lords, I must say (without meaning disrespect to an assembly which must always have contained some of the most accomplished men in the country), surprised me with the personally insignificant look of its members. I had, to be sure, conceived exaggerated notions of the magnates of all countries; and perhaps might have expected to behold a set of conscript fathers; but in no respect, real or ideal, did they appear to me in their corporate aspect, like any thing which is understood by the word "noble." The Commons seemed to me to have the advantage; though they surprised me with lounging on the benches, and retaining their hats. I was not then informed enough to know the difference between apparent and substantial importance; much less aware of the positive exaltation, which that very simplicity, and that absence of pretension, gave to the most potent assembly in Europe.—Leigh Hunt's Autobiography.
[From Household Words.]
A PARIS NEWSPAPER.
Within the precincts of that resort for foreigners and provincials in Paris, the Palais Royal, is situate the Rue du 24 Fevrier. This revolutionary name, given after the last outbreak, is still pronounced with difficulty by those who, of old, were wont to call it the Rue de Valois. People are becoming accustomed to call the royally named street by its revolutionary title, although it is probable that no one will ever succeed in calling the Palais Royal Palais National; the force of habit being in this instance too great to efface old recollections. Few foreigners have ever penetrated into the Rue de 24 Fevrier, though it forms one of the external galleries of the Palais Royal, and one may see there the smoky kitchens, dirty cooks, the night-side in fact, of the splendid restaurants, whose gilt fronts attract attention inside. Rubicund apples, splendid game, truffles, and ortolans, deck the one side; smoke, dirty plates, rags, and smutty saucepans may be seen on the other.