"From Oxford, sir, I presume," he said at last, pushing back his plate, with an air of satisfaction.
"No, I had never the pleasure of seeing Oxford."
"R-e-ally! may I take a glass of wine with you, sir?"
We got on swimmingly. He would not believe I had never been in England till the day before, but his cordiality was no colder for that. We exchanged port and sherry, and a most amicable understanding found its way down with the wine. Our table was near the window, and a great crowd began to collect at the corner of St. James'-street. It was the king's birth-day, and the people were thronging to see the nobility come in state from the royal levee. The show was less splendid than the same thing in Rome or Vienna, but it excited far more of my admiration. Gaudiness and tinsel were exchanged for plain richness and perfect fitness in the carriages and harness, while the horses were incomparably finer. My friend pointed out to me the different liveries as they turned the corner into Piccadilly, the duke of Wellington's among others. I looked hard to see his grace; but the two pale and beautiful faces on the back seat, carried nothing like the military nose on the handles of the umbrellas.
The annual procession of mail coaches followed, and it was hardly less brilliant. The drivers and guard in their bright red and gold uniforms, the admirable horses driven so beautifully, the neat harness, the exactness with which the room of each horse was calculated, and the small space in which he worked, and the compactness and contrivance of the coaches, formed altogether one of the most interesting spectacles I have ever seen. My friend, the clergyman, with whom I had walked out to see them pass, criticised the different teams con amore, but in language which I did not always understand. I asked him once for an explanation; but he looked rather grave, and said something about "gammon," evidently quite sure that my ignorance of London was a mere quiz.
We walked down Piccadilly, and turned into, beyond all comparison, the most handsome street I ever saw. The Toledo of Naples, the Corso of Rome, the Kohlmarket of Vienna, the Rue de la Paix and Boulevards of Paris, have each impressed me strongly with their magnificence, but they are really nothing to Regent-street. I had merely time to get a glance at it before dark; but for breadth and convenience, for the elegance and variety of the buildings, though all of the same scale and material, and for the brilliancy and expensiveness of the shops, it seemed to me quite absurd to compare it with any thing between New York and Constantinople—Broadway and the Hippodrome included.
It is the custom for the king's tradesmen to illuminate their shops on his majesty's birth-night, and the principal streets on our return were in a blaze of light. The crowd was immense. None but the lower order seemed abroad, and I cannot describe to you the effect on my feelings on hearing my own language spoken by every man, woman and child about me. It seemed a completely foreign country in every other respect, different from what I had imagined, different from my own and all that I had seen, and coming to it last, it seemed to me the farthest off and strangest country of all—and yet the little sweep, who went laughing through the crowd, spoke a language that I had heard attempted in vain by thousands of educated people, and that I had grown to consider next to unattainable by others, and almost useless to myself. Still, it did not make me feel at home. Every thing else about me was too new. It was like some mysterious change in my own ears—a sudden power of comprehension, such as a man might feel who was cured suddenly of deafness. You can scarcely enter into my feelings till you have had the changes of French, Italian, German, Greek, Turkish, Illyrian, and the mixtures and dialects of each, rung upon your hearing almost exclusively, as I have for years. I wandered about as if I were exercising some supernatural faculty in a dream.
A friend in Italy had kindly given me a letter to lady Blessington, and with a strong curiosity to see this celebrated lady, I called on her the second day after my arrival in London. It was "deep i' the afternoon," but I had not yet learned the full meaning of "town hours."—"Her ladyship had not come down to breakfast." I gave the letter and my address to the powdered footman, and had scarce reached home when a note arrived inviting me to call the same evening at ten.
In a long library lined alternately with splendidly-bound books and mirrors, and with a deep window of the breadth of the room, opening upon Hyde Park, I found lady Blessington alone. The picture to my eye, as the door opened, was a very lovely one. A woman of remarkable beauty half buried in a fauteuil of yellow satin, reading by a magnificent lamp, suspended from the centre of the arched ceiling; sofas, couches, ottomans and busts arranged in rather a crowded sumptuousness through the room; enamel tables, covered with expensive and elegant trifles in every corner, and a delicate white hand relieved on the back of a book, to which the eye was attracted by the blaze of its diamond rings. As the servant mentioned my name, she rose and gave me her hand very cordially, and a gentleman entering immediately after, she presented me to her son-in-law, Count D'Orsay, the well-known Pelham of London, and certainly the most splendid specimen of a man and a well-dressed one that I had ever seen. Tea was brought in immediately, and conversation went swimmingly on.
Her ladyship's inquiries were principally about America, of which, from long absence, I knew very little.—She was extremely curious to know the degrees of reputation the present popular authors of England enjoy among us, particularly Bulwer, Galt, and D'Israeli, (the author of Vivian Grey.) "If you will come to-morrow night," she said, "you will see Bulwer. I am delighted that he is popular in America. He is envied and abused by all the literary men of London, for nothing, I believe, except that he gets five hundred pounds for his books and they fifty, and knowing this, he chooses to assume a pride, (some people call it puppyism,) which is only the armor of a sensitive mind, afraid of a wound. He is to his friends the most frank and gay creature in the world, and open to boyishness with those who he thinks understand and value him. He has a brother, Henry, who is as clever as himself in a different vein, and is just now publishing a book on the present state of France. Bulwer's wife, you know, is one of the most beautiful women in London, and his house is the resort of both fashion and talent. He is just now hard at work on a new book, the subject of which is the last days of Pompeii. The hero is a Roman dandy, who wastes himself in luxury, till this great catastrophe rouses him and developes a character of the noblest capabilities.—Is Galt much liked?"