Of Luttrell, Lady Blessington held a high opinion: “His conversation, like a limpid stream, flows smoothly and brightly along, revealing the depths beneath its current, now sparkling over the objects it discloses or reflecting those by which it glides. He never talks for talking’s sake; but his mind is so well filled that, like a fountain which when stirred sends up from its bosom sparkling showers, his mind, when excited, sends forth thoughts no less bright than profound, revealing the treasures with which it is so richly stored. The conversation of Mr Luttrell makes me think, while that of many others only amuses me.”
Luttrell, who was a natural son of Lord Carhampton, was born about 1765, dying in 1851.
Charles Greville tells us of these two friends, they were “always bracketed together, intimate friends, seldom apart, and always hating, abusing, and ridiculing each other. Luttrell’s bons mots and repartees were excellent, but he was less caustic, more good-natured, but in some respects less striking in conversation than his companion, who had more knowledge, more imagination, and though in a different way, as much wit.”
An entry in Henry Greville’s “Diary” is amusing, bearing in mind the above about Rogers and Byron:—
“Thursday, October 27 (1836).—Dined with Lady Williams, Lord Lyndhurst, and Rogers. The latter said Lord Byron was very affected, and his conversation rarely agreeable and a constant effort at wit. I said I supposed he knew a great deal and had read. He answered: ‘If you believe Moore he has read everything. I don’t believe he ever read at all!’ Rogers hated Byron, and was absurd enough to be jealous of him.”
Poets do not dwell together in unity.
Rogers even in his young days was known, by reason of his corpse-like appearance, as the Dead Dandy; and later on a wag said to him: “Rogers, you’re rich enough, why don’t you keep your hearse?”
This is a dinner-party that must have been interesting, Lord John Russell, Rogers, Luttrell, Thiers, Mignet, and Poulett Thomson; Lady Blessington says:—
“Monsieur Thiers is a very remarkable person—quick, animated, and observant; nothing escapes him, and his remarks are indicative of a mind of great power. I enjoy listening to his conversation, which is at once full of originality, yet free from the slightest shade of eccentricity.