DANDIES AND MEN OF LETTERS LEON H. VINCENT CT PROM THE INCOME OF THE FISKE ENDOWMENT FUND THE BEQUEST OF Lribrarian of the University 1868-1883 1905 3184 A a •^*' RRKiARl?*^ 11- Cornell University Library CT782 .V77 1914 Dandies and men of letters / by Leon H olin 3 1924 029 872 268 The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029872268 TfA^DIES AKD ^JMSJV OF LSTTS"^ WILLIAM BSCKFORD 'The "Abbot ofFonthill " was a superb specimen.' riiuiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiHiiiiiiiiiiiMiiimiiiiiiHiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinuiiiiiiiiiiii ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ^^ ^^ •^^ •^^ -3-AJVDIES AJ^D JMSJV OF LSTTSI^S DAJSTBIES AJYB MEJV OF LETTERS THE CELEBRATED MR. BRUMMELL I ;HACKERAY dearly loved a dandy. We should know that for a fact even if we had not his daughter's word for it. The great novelist has portrayed every va- riety of the species 'beau' some- where or other in his books. Men of fashion amused and fascinated him. They formed a depart- ment of natural history of which he never tired. He liked to describe their dress and their habits, to laugh at their pretty affectations and their mon- strous vanities, to put them in characteristic situ- ations and invent characteristic speeches for them. Every reader knows what a wealth of detail he lavished on his study of Major Pendennis, on his portrait of Harry Foker, on his sketches of the Honorable Percy Popjoy and Captain Sumph. Mrs. Ritchie's testimony on the point is none the less pleasant to have. It may be found in that most readable of books. Chapters from Some Me- moirs, and is apropos of a glimpse she herself had, when a little girl, of a famous dandy of the late Forties. She came into the breakfast-room one Sunday morning and found there a magnificent creature seated at the table beside her father, so magnificent, indeed, that ' he seemed to fill the bow- • window with radiance as if he were Apollo.' She had an impression of shining studs and curls and boots. ' It was a sight for little girls to remember 'all their lives.' The visitor was Count D'Orsay, Lord Blessing- ton's son-in-lavy. He was but one, though quite the most extraordinary one, of a number of glori- ous beings who used to frequent the Thackeray home in Young Street, Kensington. *I think,' says Mrs. Ritchie, 'that my father had a certain weak- 'ness for dandies, those knights of the broad-cloth ' and the shining fronts.' At the time of which she writes it was still possible to meet with fine examples of the breed, ' magnificent performers of 'life's commonplaces,' to quote yet another of her happy sayings, men who knew how to dress and were not afraid of being seen in brilliant and sumptuous attire. Thackeray knew D'Orsay, who was one of the last of the dandies ; and he might have had the 2 \\ \\ \\ 'v^ It / ; ! I / / LiiiiiiiiiuiiuniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiuiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiuiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiuiiiHiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniili PM BEAU BRUMMSLL Simplicity and unobtrusive elegance were his ideals. To attract notice by conspicuousness in dress was in his opinion the most mortifying experience a gentle- man could have. Byron told Leigh Hunt that there was nothing remarkable in Brummell's dress except a certain exquisite propriety. t^~ «iiiuiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiHiiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiHiiiniiniiiiiiiiiiiiuiiiiiHniiiiiiiiiiiiiiuuiiiiiiuiiiiiiu ZLZ. _Lz: izx. IXaI 331 IXX. 'lU privilege of seeing Beau Brummell, perhaps did see him that Easter vacation of 1830, v^hen he ran off to Paris for a lark instead of going into Huntingdonshire vv^ith his friend Slingsby, as he told his tutor he should do. He confessed the peccadillo in the Roundabout Papers years after- ward. When he reached Calais on his vv^ay home the youth stopped at Dessein's, a luxury he could ill afford, the twenty pounds he took over with him being pretty well used up. Inasmuch as Brummell did not leave Calais for Caen until September, 1 8 30, it rested wholly with Thackeray as to whether or not he should set eyes on the famous exile ; the great dandy was one of the sights of the town. In that number of the Roundabout Papers mentioned above, Thackeray invents an imaginary conversa- tion with Sterne, Brummell, and Master Eustace of St. Peter's for interlocutors ; and he gives the impression that with all his weakness for dandies Brummell was not one of his favorites. One would like to know whether Thackeray ever read The Life of George Brummell, Esq., by Captain Jesse, published in 1844, the very year that Barry Lyndon was running in * Eraser's.' The book is supposed by many amateurs to be a rarity ; it was reprinted in 1886, with the addition of a 3 ,JM%^B%UMMELL few notes and many colored plates after Dighton. It is not a skilful literary performance. The au- thor stood in real need of a trustworthy friend with a blue pencil and the editorial instinct. Be- tween them they might have made an excellent biographical sketch. Having no such friend, the author put his materials together as best he could, and quite artlessly, too. Much that appears in the text would look better in an appendix. Much that is rightly placed should have been condensed. There is no room in a life of Brummell for a four- teen-page chapter on Lady Hester Stanhope, for a half-chapter on Charles Sturt, M.P. for Bridfort, for twenty pages on Erskine. Even the account of- the Duchess of York, important as it is to the story, might have been condensed. As for the long poetical extracts, they are a terrifying apparition. The fashionable world under the last two Georges used to amuse itself by writ- ing album verse and shamelessly exposing it after- ward. A few of the pieces were witty and ingenious, but the greater part remind one of the melodies in a certain vast collection of native American song dear to lovers of the unconsciously humorous. Cap- tain Jesse could not see one of these effusions with- out hankering to transfer it to his pages. His ovra prose is more amusing than other peo- 4 ,Jk[%^BT(UMMELL pie's album verse. He is delightful when he moral- ises. It is pleasant to read his lament over the decay of good manners. One grieves with him while con- templating the ribald modern youth (of 1844) who in private talk makes no scruple about refer- ring to his father as the * old boy' or the 'old cock,' Captain Jesse does not approve : ' The use of such * coarse language, in speaking of a parent, cannot * fail in time to breed contempt.' He has some grave and helpful remarks, too, on the evil influence of democracy, with illustrations drawn, as is quite proper, from the United States of America. How did he come by that wonderful tale of an evening party in New York or Wash- ington, where the guests were so voracious that they must be kept from the refreshment-room by a couple of strong-limbed servants armed with shil- lalahs ? Had he by any chance been reading Mrs. Trollope? It sounds like one of her stories. Captain Jesse had the materials for a first-rate biography. Not being a practised man of letters he failed to make his hero vivid. To him must we go, nevertheless, for nearly all the facts, anecdotes, bits of contemporaneous gossip, and the like, relating to Beau Brummell. Yet his seven hundred pages all told are not worth the sixteen remarkable pages devoted to Brummell in the 'Journal of Thomas 5 JM%^RI(UMMELL Raikes — not worth them, that is to say, if we want a living portrait of the man. The good Captain made a journey to Caen in February, 1832, for the express purpose of meeting Brummell. He first saw the Beau (now prema- turely old but still neat, graceful, and self-possessed) at an evening party, and was struck by the way he paid his respects to the hostess. The profound bow was plainly meant for a particular tribute to her. In noticing the presence of others, ' I could almost ' fancy that his bow to each was graduated accord- * ing to the degree of intimacy that existed between ' them, that to his friends being at an angle of forty- *five degrees, while a common acquaintance was 'acknowledged by one of five.' Where it was a mere question of recognizing the fact that a cer- tain person dwelt on the same planet with himself ' a slight relaxation of the features ' was made to suffice. The observer, uninstructed in * the mysteries of ' mufti,' having spent the last six years in India, was naturally interested in Brummell's dress. The Beau appeared in a blue coat with velvet collar, black trousers and boots. His white neckcloth was per- fect, as indeed it should have been, coming as it did from the most adroit hand in Europe. For ornaments he wore a plain gold ring, a massive 6 '0%SAr relations besides a father, who may be taken for granted ; the story of his genealogical affiliations is interesting, but too complicated for unravelment in a brief paper like this. The boy was nominated to be one of the Emperor's pages when he should have grown up. The Empire fell, the Bourbons returned, and he became instead a soldier in the Royal Bodyguard. If we may trust the Dictionary of National Bio- graphy (and if we may not, what are we to trust in a world filled with imperfect books of refer- ence ?), D'Orsay made his first entrance into Eng- lish society at an entertainment given at Almack's by his brother-in-law, the Due de Guiche (after- ward the Due de Gramont), ambassador to the Court of St. James ; it was one of many brilliant affairs that followed the coronation of George the Fourth. Among the agreeable houses he fre- quented was No. I o, St. James's Square, then oc- cupied by the Earl of Blessington (in the Irish peerage) and his lively and attractive Countess. Young D'Orsay's first meeting with the lady, whose fortunes and misfortunes he was to share, deserves to be celebrated in terms more rhetori- cal than a biographical dictionary could afford to use. I therefore quote from J. Fitzgerald MoUoy, who, in his book entitled The Most Gorgeous Lady 48 C0C7JVT ciALFT(ED "D'OliSAT Bkssington, describes the event thus : * With the * courtly manner of the old regime, with an ardent * admiration for women's beauty, an appreciation ' for talent, endowed with a sunny youth regard- * ing whose undefinable future it was interesting *to speculate, he [D'Orsay] stood before Lady ' Blessington, a dazzling personality in a crowd 'where all were brilliant. For a moment, as it * were, the circles of their lives touched to part for * the present,' the young man being obliged, as the rest of the paragraph shows, to go back to his regiment. This is brave writing. J. Fitzgerald Molloy knows the trick. But after a burst of elo' quence he never fails to elucidate. As D'Orsay's story from first to last is inter- woven with that of Lady Blessington, it will not be superfluous to sketch the early history of that remarkable woman. She was Irish, a Tipperary girl, one of the six children of Edmund Power, a 'squireen' whose lordly manners, white cravats, ruffles, and fob seals gained him the name of * Shiver-the-frills.' He was a tempestuous and tyrannical sort of person, one of the sort we thoroughly enjoy on the stage and should find an unmitigated nuisance in real life. At the age of fifteen, Margaret Power was literally driven by her father into marrying a cer- 49 COUMT 'O^AY tain Captain Farmer/ from whose brutalities she escaped at the earliest possible moment to return to a home where she was not welcome. Farmer went to India. Some two years afterward the terrifying news that he would return and claim her led the un- happy young wife, in the phrase beloved of cautious writers, to place herself * under the protection ' of one Captain Jenkins, who belonged to an old Hampshire family and who was both rich and amiable. Five or six years later she changed protectors, and was installed by the Earl of Blessington in a house in Manchester Square, London. In October, 1 8 1 7, Farmer, while rioting with some friends of his, enforced lodgers in the King's Bench Prison, fell from an open window, was carried to a hospital, and died there the next day. In Feb- ruary of the following year the Earl ' promoted ' Margaret Farmer to be his second wife and the Countess of Blessington. She was now twenty- nine years of age ; her husband was thirty-six. This, in bald outline, is the story of the squir- een's daughter up to the time when she became a ■ Farmer's brother says that ' it was in every sense a love-match. . . . See his letter in Madden' s The Literary Life and Correspondence of the Countess of Blessington, vol. i, pp. 457-59. 5° COt/JVT oALFT^D T>'01(SAT Countess ; and people still think that they must go to novels to learn about ' life.' Statements of fact so cold and chronological need a touch of color by way of relief. Let us borrow from Molloy's glowing pages a pen-pic- ture of the Earl of Blessington (then Viscount Montjoy) as he might have appeared when first he dawned on London society. 'Loaded with * wealth and honour, the world was a sunny place * in his sight ; young and handsome, he accepted * the favours it offered him and enjoyed its pleas- ' ures to the full. No brighter youth danced in * satin breeches at Almack's ; none gayer gave de- 'licious suppers in the lamp-lit bowers of Vaux- 'hall gardens. Tall, vigorous, bright-eyed and * winsome, generous to extravagance and sweet- * natured, he was caressed by all who like him- * self loved gaiety and seized the sunshine of the * hour.' What would one not give for the talent to write like that, and the courage to use one's talent ! Viscount Montjoy had been educated at Eton and at Christ Church, Oxford, and was a very agreeable fellow. No better proof is wanted than that Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, whose college mate he was, liked him. He is a * great comfort ' to me,' Sharpe writes to his mother, albeit his SI COUXT sALF^D T>'(n(SAT voice is 'fully as discordant as mine. My Lord ♦ speaks as if he was playing on a comb.' After a brief visit in Ireland the Earl of Bless- ington took a house for his new Countess in St. James's Square and flung w^ide his doors. They w^ere an open-handed and hospitable pair, and showy in their mode of life. All manner of inter- esting people came to them, from princes and peers to painters, actors, journalists, and starveling authors. If we may believe Lady Blessington's biographer she was a capital hand at taming a Royal Duke; so at least we interpret his state- ment that' Royal Dukes were as humble subjects ' before her whom nature had made regal.' Interesting though their life was it grew mono- tonous in time. A thirst for travel came upon them, and in August, 1828, the Blessingtons left England for an extended tour of Italy. The Count- ess had with her the youngest of her sisters, Mary Anne Power. D'Orsay, to whom the Earl had takena wonderful liking, joined them at Avignon. The retinue of servants was for number what might be expected. The coming of the party was a joy to innkeepers, their departure a grief. The Earl flung his money about in kingly fashion, and his young friend D'Orsay did as a youth would who had been brought up to believe that 'every- 52 COUKT Qy4LFT(ED T>'OT(SAT 'body had any conceivable number of five-pound * notes.' They travelled in a leisurely way after the man- ner of the time, and as is aWays the privilege of the well-to-do. At Genoa they saw much of Byron. D'Orsay made a portrait of the poet; Lady Blessington jotted down notes of his con- versation ; the Earl helped him financially by tak- ing his yacht off" his hands, at somewhat more than it was worth. They visited Florence, Siena, and Rome, and finally settled themselves in Naples for a long stay ; it proved to be nearly three years in duration. Blessington made one trip to Eng- land in the meantime and brought back with him a young architect, Charles Mathews, in whom he had become interested. Among their close friends vvere Sir William Drummond, Sir William Gell, and Keppel Craven. All the visiting English were made welcome at their palazzo. We hear of them at Florence, at Genoa again, and at Pisa, where they spent six months, made Landor's ac- quaintance, and entertained Wilkie, Lister, and Francis Hare. D'Orsay was now regarded in the light of pro- spective son-in-law, and had for some time been so regarded. Lord Blessington's heir and only legiti- mate son had died in April, 1823; he was but nine 53 COUKT ciALFT(ED D'OT^SAT years of age. Within two months from that time the Earl had decided to make one of his daughters his heiress and marry her to Count D'Orsay. Neither of the girls (they were both in Ireland with their governess) was consulted in the matter, nor by the customs of the day had any reason to expect that she would be ; young ladies in that era of firm discipline took the husbands who were assigned them with a docility unknown to our lax age. Blessington now decided that the proposed mar- riage ought to take place; and take place it ac- cordingly did, at Naples, in December, 1827. The bride. Lady Harriet Gardiner, the Earl's only legi- timate daughter, was in her sixteenth year when she became the Countess D'Orsay. The following spring the Blessingtons and the D'Orsays left Italy for Paris, where they lived in the same florid style that had distinguished them at Naples. In May, 1829, Lord Blessington went over to England to vote on the Catholic Emanci- pation Bill. He was not in good health when he undertook the journey, and shortly after his return died of an apoplectic stroke. He was but forty-six years of age. Karl Elze's description of him as a * somewhat insignificant but good-natured old gen- * tleman ' is therefore not in all respects accurate. 54 Almost from the moment of her husband's death the gossips — the worst of whom were of the male sex and wrote for the press — began to make free with Lady Blessington's name. In November, 1830, she returned to London, bringing her sister and the Count and Countess D'Orsay in her train. After a brief stay in St. James's Square she took a house in Seamore Place, at the west end of Curzon Street, and opened her salon. In 1 8 3 6 she removed to the mansion known as Gore House, in Kensington, where she re- mained until 1 849, the year of her financial ruin and her death. Her social supremacy in that part of the world of London that came under her in- fluence continued almost exactly eighteen years. If it pleases one to speak of Gore House, in the language of our French essayist quoted above, as a * veritable h6tel de Rambouillet,' there is no great harm in so doing. But one must not make the mistake of supposing the resemblance more than superficial. Count D'Orsay's reign as King of the Dandies was synchronous with the life of Lady Blessing- ton's salon. He was in constant attendance at Gore House. The Count and his wife had separated by mutual consent, in the autumn of 1 83 1 ; the young lady (she was but nineteen) returned to Paris 55 COUXT qALF1(ED D'OT^SAT where she embarked on a career of her own, and a romantic one, though it forms no part of this story. D'Orsay took a separate house after his wife's departure, but for all that the relations be- tween Lady Blessington and himself were thought to be equivocal. The fame of Gore House was * distinctly Bohemian.' Many women preferred not to go there, though their husbands and brothers had no such scruples. II It is amusing to find Lord Beaconsfield called to account as late as the year 1878, for his old- time alliance with Gore House. Disraeli, it seems, had described his friend D'Orsay (the Count Alci- biades de Mirabel of Henrietta Temple) as 'the * most accomplished and the most engaging char- * acter that has figured in this century,' together with a number of other eulogistic epithets of the sort that a man of many phrases thinks it no harm to bestow on a friend. To be sure all this was *in the olden time, long ago,' some forty-one years since to be exact. But that made no differ- ence to the brilliant pamphleteer who wrote The Political Adventures of Lord Beaconsfield. From his tone one would think that he thought grave poli- tical consequences might still flow from Disraeli's 56 COUJVT ^LFT(ED rD'OT^SAT old susceptibility to the charms of Count Alcibi- ades de Mirabel. This lively writer probably thought nothing of the kind, but it pleased him, in the role of political critic, to find something sinister in Disraeli's for- mer alliance with Gore House and with those who frequented it. He accuses the Prime Minister of * fixing his gaze ' (when he might have been con- templating nobler objects) * on the D'Orsays, and ' the Tom Duncombes, and the Louis Napoleons, ' . . . the spendthrifts and adventurers and con- 'spirators' whom he met at Lady Blessington's. What amazing things men will give vent to when they write ah politics ! The adventurers and the spendthrifts were un- doubtedly to be found there, but so too were many men of quite another sort — poets, novelists, mu- sicians, kctors, politicians and journalists, lawyers and professional wits, not a few of whom stood in the first rank in their day, and are aff^ectionately and admiringly remembered in ours. Their pres- ence at Gore House gave the place that air of dis- tinction it certainly had. Lady Blessington was herself a maker of books. Before her husband's death she had printed two little volumes of sketches; after her return to Eng- land she became a professional author, partly to 57 COUXT ctALF^D Tf'OT^SAr supplement an income that was inadequate to her present mode of life, but partly, we may be sure, from a genuine love of letters. As a writer she probably merits the group of adjectives once ap- plied to her, * hard-working, copious, careless, and • uninspired.' She made money by her work. Not a few of her books were in a high degree success- ful ; they were timely, they had a certain facile charm, and what is more to the point they were the literary productions of a countess. A naive reading-public still believed in the peculiar virtues of a literature that flowed from the pen of a person of quality, and would buy the books of a countess when it would buy nothing else. This is an evil under the sun which happily no longer exists, but for many years it was a thorn in the flesh of trained though untitled authors. Goldsmith complained of it with as much bitterness as his nature per- mitted. Her two best known books are j4 Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron with the Countess of Blessington (published serially in the 'New • Monthly Magazine,' 183 2-3 3 ), and The Idler in Italy (1839). The first is a genuine contribution to Byronic literature, a * source ' from which bio- graphical writers must to some extent draw. The Italian book may be read for its many sketches of 58 COUJrr zALFT^D T>'cmsAr remarkable people, and for the light it throws on modes of travel in 1822. A copy of the first edition of The Idler in Italy (not mine, alas!) lies before me as I write; it is inscribed 'To Lord • Brougham from Marguerite Blessington,' with the date. Her ladyship wrote a rather striking hand. She also edited for a number of years the ' Book * of Beauty' and 'The Keepsake,' illustrated an- nuals which were not quite so absurd as we are taught to believe. And finally Lady Blessington wrote a shelfful of novels, no one of which is read at the present day. But what of that ? They served their purpose in bringing money and a short-lived fame to their author. Most of the books that we now read can do no more, and the greater number of them cannot even do that. We can see why Gore House, though aiming to be a centre of the fashionable world, was markedly 'literary.' Lady Blessington was gen- uinely interested in letters, and D'Orsay quite as much so as his friend. The story that D'Orsay would at any time leave a duke to talk to an author may not be true, but he must have shown certain preferences respecting men of letters else the story had not come into existence. ' Everybody goes to Lady Blessington's,' wrote 59 COUKT qALF1(ED T>'0%SAY Haydon in 1835; he was not far wrong. Landor always made Gore House his home when he was in London. The two Hlac trees in the garde'n under the terrace where he had his favorite seat are celebrated in his verse. Landor introduced Milnes to his hostess. Forster and Dickens were frequent guests ; so too were Disraeli, Thackeray, and Theodore Hook. There it was that Bulwer and Lockhart made up their quarrel. In its draw- ing-room might have been seen guests as unlike as Trelawny and Crabb Robinson, as Prince Louis Napoleon and Barry Cornwall, as Doctor Lardner and Samuel Rogers. There Macready heard Liszt play in a magnificent fashion and came away with his soul in a tumult. The catalogue of names, which includes Landseer, Liston, Chorley, Lover, and Willis (I choose the men at random), is almost endless. Among them was no more shining figure than D'Orsay's, Every one admits that he was a talented fellow, and every one who knew him thought he could become anything he liked. Disraeli apos- trophizes him thus : * The inimitable D'Orsay, . . . 'who with the universal genius of an Alcibiades 'combined a brilliant wit and a heart of quick 'affection, and who, placed in a public position, ' would have displayed a courage, a judgment, and 60 *a commanding intelligence which would have ' ranked him with the leaders of mankind.' This is rather florid, but it only differs in degree from what more sober writers have said of the famous dandy. Landor believed that D'Orsay could write, and urged him to 'put his pen in motion.' He could handle crayon and brush at all events, and made lively sketches of his contemporaries. The Duke of Wellington sat to him for a portrait and is said to have said, when it was finished, that at last he had been painted like a gentleman. Carlyle had it in mind to send the sketch of himself by D'Orsay, to Emerson. He describes how the great dandy came to see him, rolling down to Cheyne Row in his sun-chariot, * to the bedazzlement of all * beholders,' and how the dandy and the man of letters got on remarkably well together. Carlyle admits that D'Orsay was worth talking to, once and away ; * a man of decided natural gifts ; every ' utterance of his containing in it a wild caricature 'likeness of some object or other; a dashing man, ' who might, some twenty years sooner born, have ' become one of Bonaparte's Marshals, and is, alas, ' — Count D'Orsay.' Coming from Carlyle these are fair words in- deed. They suggest too that, dandy though he was, 6i COUJVT ^LFT(ED T>'OT(SAT the Count was a man's man, not a mere drawing- room idler of the better sort. What he said that so amused Carlyle would be worth knowing. Be- yond a little handful of clever and pointed sayings no record of his talk exists, nor was it to be ex- pected that there should. Captain Gronow gives two examples of D'Or- say's wit. Lord Allen, who was rather the worse for the wine he had taken at dinner, chose to irritate the Frenchman by saying some extremely ill-natured things. * Suddenly John Bush entered 'the club and shook hands with the Count, who 'exclaimed, "Voila la difference entre une bonne ^bouche et une mauvaise haleine." ' The other was apropos of a certain nobleman who, having lost the use of his legs, was wont to wheel himself about in a Bath chair. Some one asked the Count the name of the English peer. D'Orsay replied, * Pfere la Chaise.' It was a very little thing, but it was neat. One anecdote of D'Orsay and Gronow is, I think, not recorded by the latter. The French- man, who was six feet in height, and broad- shouldered, used to address the little English offi- cer as * Nogrow '; and when on one occasion the Captain besought his friend, jocularly, no doubt, to give him a certain gorgeous waistcoat he was 62 wearing, D'Orsay replied, ' Wiz plesure, Nogrow, * but what will you do wiz him ? . . . Ah ! he shall *make you one dressing-gown.' D'Orsay's remark when told that Sir Henry Bulwer had been sent on a diplomatic mission to Constantinople was one of his best. The version given here is Henry F. Chorley's. • ^elle bUise^ exclaimed the Count, *to send him there among 'those Turks, with their beards and their shawls * — those big handsome fellows — a little grey * man like that ! They might as well have sent 'one whitebait down the Dardanelles to give the 'Turks an idea of English fish.' The Bulwer anecdote is one of two that Chor- ley gives in his Autobiography^ in the vain hope of bringing up ' the magnificent presence, and joyous, 'prosperous voice and charming temper' of the man who uttered them. He grants that much is lost in the retelling, that 'something of the aroma ' dies on the lips of the speaker.' None the less does he maintain that D ' Orsay 's wit was * more airy ' than the brightest London wit of his time, not even excepting that of Fonblanque and Sydney Smith. ' It was an artist's wit,' he says, ' capable of touch- ' ing off a character by one trait told in a few odd 'words.' Penetrating as his gaze was, D'Orsay could not 63 COUJrr ^LF1(ED T>'OT(SAr see far into the character of Louis Napoleon, on whose connection with Gore House an interest- ing chapter might be written. * C'est un brave •garfon,' he would say, * mais pas d' esprit' ; and he would smile when the Prince spoke, as he often did, about returning to France. D'Orsay was not more at fault in the matter than was the rest of the world, including a number of Louis Napoleon's own kin, one of whom besought him not to make a fool of himself by talking as he did. It was thought that after his triumph, when Lady Blessington and Count D'Orsay had taken refuge from their difBculties in Paris, Napoleon was not sufficiently mindful of old friends who had done much for him ; it is a point not to be settled ofF-hand. The President and the Count- ess had one verbal encounter worth repeating. They met on some formal occasion and Louis inquired, *Vous pensez rester a Paris tres long- * temps. Milady ? ' Lady Blessington instantly re- plied, ' Et vous, Monseigneur ? ' ^ Lord Lamington, who tells this anecdote in his pleasant little book. In the Days of the Dandies ^ also gives us a picture of D'Orsay, in glorious apparel, riding down to Richmond. 'A striking ' figure he was in his blue coat with gilt buttons, 64 COUXT ^iALFI^ED T>'OT(SAr * thrown well back to show the wide expanse of 'snowy shirt-front and buff waistcoat ; his tight ' leathers and polished boots ; his well-curled * whiskers and handsome countenance ; a wide * brimmed glossy hat, spotless white gloves. He * was the very beau-ideal of a leader of fashion. . . . ' I was greatly interested in noting the admiration ' with which he was regarded.' Kensington and Brompton were fully awake to the glory of the spectacle ; the populace stared at the great dandy * as at a superior being.' In Haydon's Autobiography is a capital account of D'Orsay touching up one of the artist's pic- tures. He made the painter's heart ache when he took up the brush and proceeded to give a practi- cal illustration of his critical ideas. But Haydon's heart ached, not for his picture, but for the dandy's primrose-tinted gloves. After one of his visits Haydon wrote, ' He bounded into his cab, •and drove off like a young Apollo with a fiery * Pegasus. I looked after him. I like to see such ' specimens.' Good as are the sketches by Lamington and Haydon, there is a better. It comes from the pen of Mrs. Carlyle and was written in one of her note-books, of which unfortunately 'only frag- 'ments' remain. The clever lady destroyed most of 65 COUKT oALFT^ED T>'OT(SAY them herself, and a deal of good literature disap- peared when she did that. By a happy coincidence she was re-reading her husband's ' Philosophy of Clothes ' when D'Orsay walked in. She had not seen him in four or five years. ' Last time he was as gay in his colours as ' a humming-bird — blue satin cravat, blue velvet * waistcoat, cream-coloured coat, lined with vel- * vet of the same hue, trousers also of a bright * colour, I forget what ; white French gloves, two * glorious breastpins attached by a chain, and 'length enough of gold watch-guard to have * hanged himself in.' She mentally contrasted the radiant dandy of a recent past with the more sedately garbed D'Or- say who now sat in her little reception-room. ' To-day, in compliment to his five more years, he * was all in black and brown — a black satin cra- * vat, a brown velvet waistcoat, a brown coat, some ' shades darker than the waistcoat, lined with vel- ' vet of its own shade, and almost black trousers, ' one breast-pin, a large pear-shaped pearl set into * a little cup of diamonds, and only one fold of gold * chain round his neck, tucked together right on ' the centre of his spacious breast with one magni- 'ficent turquoise.' Mrs. Carlyle was fain to admit that D'Orsay 66 C0C7JVT 'OT(SAr little more, he aimed to dress his speech as be- comingly as his person. Ill D'Orsay passed half his life in paying quixotic devotion to a woman nine years his senior, and after all, the impression one gets of him in the jour- nals and reminiscences of his contemporaries is, as I have said, of a man's man. Lord Lamington especially admired him for his 'great quality of * self-command ; this enabled him to bear his own 'burden of life without inflicting the history of 'his sorrows on others.' Lamington sometimes passed an afternoon with D'Orsay in the gardens of Gore House. The Count at no time made the slightest reference to his financial plight. He was now terribly straitened for money, his eflforts to obtain a diplomatic post turned out fruitless, and he could not hope to live by art, by the exercise of what a fellow-countryman pityingly described as his 'joli talent d'amatcur.' He was almost a prisoner, not daring to leave home through the week for fear of arrest. From midnight on Satur- day to midnight on Sunday, however, he was a free man, and might have been seen at Crockford's * always gay and smiling, as if he had no anxieties ' or fears.* 69 COUJ^T oALFT^ED 'D'OT^SAT Dickens's word should carry some weight and Dickens thought the Count an uncommonly lik- able fellow. The novelist's fourth son was chris- tened Alfred Tennyson, but the Alfred was for D'Orsay, who, as the Laureate remarked, was on that occasion 'co-godfather with me,' — *god- ' father ' and • devil-father ' was Browning's sarcastic comment, in a letter not intended for publication. Writing to Lady Blessington from Milan, in November, 1 844, Dickens says, ' Pray say to Count 'D'Orsay everything that is cordial and loving 'from me. The travelling purse he gave me has 'been of immense service. It has been constantly • opened. All Italy seems to yearn to put its hand 'in it.' At another time Dickens writes Lady Blessington that 'it would be worth going to ' China — it would be worth going to America ' (he named the most awful place and the most frightful journey he could think of), 'to come 'home again for the pleasure of such a meeting ' with you and Count D'Orsay ' ; the reference was to a certain 'happy Monday' he had spent with them the week before. Happy Mondays, or other days for that mat- ter, were soon to be no longer possible at Gore House. About the last of March, 1 849, a sheriff's officer contrived by a clever trick to get within 70 COUKT 'OT(SAT doors. He was not a 'Howell and James young * man ' as the operatic melody has it, but I read in Molloy that he represented the interests of the celebrated firm. D'Orsay left town at once, ac- companied by his valet armed with a single port- manteau. Lady Blessington wrote John Forster that ' Count D'Orsay was called to Paris so sud- * denly that he had not time to take leave of any * of his friends.' By the middle of April she her- self and her two nieces had arrived in France. 'The Times' of Monday May 7, 1 849, tells the story, though not as it would be told to-day. On page sixteen at the head of the fourth column are two advertisements, in the first of which Mr. Phillips of 73, New Bond Street offers for sale by auction ' the improved lease of the capital mansion * known as Gore House ' (a full description of the property follows); in the second 'Mr. Phillips begs 'to announce that he is honoured with instruc- * tions from the Right Hon. the Countess of Bless- 'ington (retiring to the continent) to submit to 'sale by auction, this day May 7, and 12 subse- 'quent days, at i precisely each day, the splendid ' Furniture, costly jewels, and recherche Property * contained in the above mansion,' and so forth, and so forth, to the extent of some eighteen or twenty lines. 71 COUJVT ^LFT(ED TfOT^SAT During the three days prior to the sale * twenty 'thousand persons' are said to have visited the house ; the estimate seems large. Molloy attempts a description of the scene. The reader w^ill do w^ell to supplement it vv^ith the fifty-ninth chapter of Dombey and Son, where the breaking up of a great house is described with a vividness not easily to be matched. Thackeray wrote Mrs. Brookfield that he had 'just come away from a dismal sight; Gore House 'full of snobs looking at the furniture.' There were present a number of 'odious bombazine • women ' whom he particularly hated. Also brutes who kept their hats on in the kind old drawing- room ; 'I longed to knock some of them off, and 'say, "Sir, be civil in a lady's room.*" A French valet who had been left in charge, and with whom Thackeray talked a little, saw tears in the great nov- elist's eyes. Thackeray confessed to Mrs. Brook- field that his heart so melted toward the poor man that he had to give him a pound ; the heart in question was always melting, and the purse was invariably affected. The sale of the pictures, plate, and jewels did not a little towards cancelling Lady Blessington's debts. Her portrait by Lawrence and that of Well- ington by D'Orsay were bought by the Marquis 72 COC/JVT ^LFT(ED 'D'OT^AT of Hertford and may be viewed by the curious, the one in the Wallace Collection, the other in the National Portrait Gallery. Everything was scattered and the house was put for a time to inglorious uses, being turned into a restaurant dur- ing the Great Exhibition of 185 1. Later it was entirely swept away. Now the Albert Memorial Hall occupies a part of the site. Lady Blessington did not long survive the breaking-up of Gore House. She died on June 4, 1 849, just after having installed herself in her new home, an apartment in the Rue du Cerq, and not quite two months from the date of her leaving England. She was buried at Chambourcy, in a mausoleum built after Count D'Orsay's design. There are two mortuary inscriptions on the wall above her sarcophagus, one by Barry Cornwall, and one (in Latin) by Walter Savage Landor. D'Orsay is buried in a tomb by the side of his friend. He outlived her by a little more than three years. He had opened a studio and set reso- lutely to work, producing among other things a statue of Jer6me Bonaparte, and busts of Lamar- tinc, fimile de Girardin, and Louis Napoleon. But his health soon failed and the appointment to the directorship of Fine Arts came a little too late to be of any great encouragement. At the time of 73 COUXT aALFT^ED rD'OT^SAT his death much was said of him in the papers, and not a little has been written since, both in praise and blame. The most cruel sarcasms were, as a matter of course, uttered by his countrymen ; the English have always rather liked Count D'Orsay. There is no place for a Brummell or a D'Orsay in the society of the present time, but sixty and a hundred years ago there was a place. These men can hardly be blamed for being that which their age approved and their genius made them. D'Orsay was a more amiable man than Brummell, but he was not, in the ' quality ' they both professed, any- thing like so great a figure. The excellent 'heart' for which he is so often commended stood in the way of his becoming the 'sublime dandy.' A man who will deliberately select the plainest girls in the ball-room to dance with, because he wants to add to their pleasure, is too unselfish to play a great part in the tragi-comedy of social life. Brum- mell would not have known whether a girl was plain or pretty ; he would have known only him- self. This is not only the artistic but the perfectly correct attitude, looking at it as we must from a technical point of view. The * sublime dandy ' cannot afford to indulge himself in sentiment. As the 'star' of a great dramatic company he must 74 coujrr ciALFT(ED T>'(n(SAr have the centre of the stage ; he is bound to be an egoist by the laws of art. If he dances with a plain girl it must be for his own sake, not for hers. Herein lies a clue to the secret of Thack- eray's contempt for Brummell; Thackeray, who knew as well as Shakespeare that the world 's a stage, could not help mixing up the idea of the actor and the man. D'Orsay, when reverses came upon him, made a better fight than Brummell. To praise him for his courage in this means that we are forgetting the dandy while we admire the man. The Eng- lishman played his part consistently through to the end, never confounding his public and private functions. When he lost his place in the brilliant metropolitan company he became, as one might say, a strolling player, and was seen on the pro- vincial stage at Calais and at Caen. What looks like a shameless mendicancy on Brummell's part was not that at all, if we can but bring ourselves to regard his attitude and conduct with some sense of humor. We do not call it shameless mendicancy when a * decayed actor ' intimates to friends that in view of past services to art he ought to have a bene- fit. Neither do the friends so misname the request. On the contrary they consult with other friends and the benefit is arranged as promptly as may be. 75 COUJrr ALFRED 'D'CrKSAT Brummell's right to a benefit is indisputable ; but if it be suggested that he exercised his right oftener than was becoming, why then, there is a good deal to be said. Our French essayist, Bou- lenger, in praising his compatriot at the expense of * cette froide marionette ' who was called Brum- mell, exaggerates the value of the merely human qualities in the making of a dandy. They are less to the purpose than he thinks. On the other hand, a superb self-possession and a glacial indifference are the very core of the art as Brummell prac- tised it. The Frenchman was the better fellow of the two, but the Englishman was the greater genius. We may not care for the type that these men represented ; but that is our own affair, it being in general permitted us to study what we most affect. The age in which they lived — the Regency and the earliest Victorian period — was tolerant of them. Perhaps we can afford to be a little amused by what was intensely amusing to its own gener- ation. And if we must have a higher motive there is always the plea for these studies that the doings and sayings of the dandies are a part of the history of manners, and that a knowledge of their ways is more or less essential to one who would form a correct and vivid picture of the times. EPISODES IN THE LIFE OF A NOBLE POET (LORD BYRON) I ; LIKED the Dandies/ wrote By- ron in his memorandum-book ; ' they were always very civil to ' me, though in general they dis- * liked literary people ' ; they not only pestered Monk Lewis (who was fair game), but even made a victim of Ma- dame de Stael. The poet attributed what favor he found in their sight to his having had ' a tinge of ' dandyism ' in his youth, and retaining enough of it at twenty-five 'to conciliate the great ones.' Besides having gone through the prescribed course for the making of a man of the world he was quite free from pedantry, not overbearing, and in consequence * we ran quietly together.' Byron took real pride in his relation to the sin- gular race of men of whom he is speaking. They made him, as he notes, a member of Watier's, * a * superb club at that time,' and, he might have added, with no taint of Grub Street about it, since 77 there were among their number but two men of letters besides himself, Spencer and Moore, both of whom were also men of the world. He men- tions his other clubs in this connection; he be- longed to thirteen, including ' The Cocoa Tree,' 'The Alfred,' 'The Pugilistic,' and 'The Owls,' otherwise known as * Fly-by-night ' ; also, ' though ' last not /east,' to the Italian ' Carbonari.' There is a modern touch in one of his letters which the brave men who have to do with the management of clubs will hardly be able to read without emotion. Byron reports that the cook (of 'The Alfred') has run away leaving the members liable, 'which makes our committee very plain- ' tive,' as well it might. Worse yet, the head serv- ing-man has the gout, and the new cook is none of the best. On the latter point, however, the writer speaks from report, 'for what is cookery * to a leguminous-eating ascetic ? ' Byron's connection with the dandies began after his return from the East, probably towards the close of 1 8 1 1 . At their masquerade he wore the habit of a Caloyer or Eastern monk — 'a dress ' particularly well calculated to set off the beauty ' of his fine countenance,' says Moore. He was doubtless present at the fete given by the four chiefs of the dandies at the Argyle Rooms, in July, 78 TT~ \ V \ V TT" T7" T"7~ iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiihiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiihiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiThI By tourtesy of John Murray. Emery Walker. Ltd., Pko BTRON Byron was almost too literary to be a complete dandy. He liked reading and writing, harmless pursuits to which the dandies were but little given. Yet other ways he had of enjoying himself, ways unknown and inconceivable to them. For while the dandies were social or nothing, he was both social and solitary. 1 8 1 3, when the Prince cut two of his hosts, Brum- mell and Mildmay, and was surprised at their not taking it in good part. But it is quite clear that while his relations with the fraternity were pleas- ant and he felt at home with them, Byron did not regard himself as one of their number. A possible explanation is that Byron was almost too literary to be a complete dandy. He liked reading and writing, harmless pursuits to which the dandies were but little given. Yet other ways he had of enjoying himself, ways unknown and inconceivable to them. For while the dandies were social or nothing, he was both social and solitary. He could endure being alone, they clung together as if life depended on their not losing sight of one another ; and in a sense it did. A dandy who detached himself from the group was a per- son to be watched by his friends; he might be meditating suicide. With all his taste for solitude Byron under- stood the dandies perfectly. He had numerous points of contact with them. Many of their pleas- ures and their vices were also his. In the remarkable picture of London life which Moore's Byron gives us, no feature is quite so amazing as the touchiness of these men (and of most men) with regard to what they called their 79 LOKD BTR01{^ honor. They had that virtue and also the means of defending it. Everybody knew how to shoot and had every reason to think that sooner or later the knowledge would come into play. Authors were as bellicose as the rest of mankind. Moore and Jeffrey actually ' met/ but did each other no harm. The friendship between Byron and Moore (a friendship highly creditable to them both, and of much importance to literature since a fine piece of biographical writing was the outcome) began with a request on Moore's part for 'satisfaction' ; he was aggrieved by something he found in Eng- lish Bards and Scotch Reviewers. And there was yet another demand awaiting Byron on his return to England ; a Colonel Greville found, or thought he found, in the satire, lines that reflected on his character. Not every demand for satisfaction resulted in a duel. A gentleman might be perfectly willing to fight, but no less ready to make peace. The compounding of these difficulties was an art in itself. Interested friends undertook to bring the antagonists together, and the amount of diplomacy used to that end would have settled aflfairs of state. The business would be laughable were it not that so many tragedies resulted when affairs of honor came up. 80 There is an entry in Byron's Journal, too long and too frank for quotation, which gives some idea of the condition of polite society in the London of 1 8 1 2 ; for to that period of his life the para- graphs seem to refer, though they were written somewhat later. He was called in as mediator or second at least twenty times, always in violent quarrels, which he contrived to settle ' without • compromising the honour of the parties, or lead- ' ing them to mortal consequences.' He had to deal with • hot and haughty spirits, — Irishmen, game- •sters, guardsmen, captains and cornets of horse, •and the like,' He not only carried challenges from gentle- men to noblemen, from captains to captains, and from lawyers to counsellors, but he once had the extraordinary experience of being messenger from a clergyman to an officer of the Life Guards. We know on the authority of Barry Lyndon that 'there 'has been hardly a mischief done in this world •but a woman has been at the bottom of it,' and this particular quarrel was no exception. A woman was at the bottom of it, and bitterly disap- pointed she felt because the rivals allowed them- selves to come to an understanding. 'Though * my clergyman was sure to lose either his life 'or his living,' says Byron, 'he was as warlike 8i *as the Bishop of Beauvais, and would hardly be 'pacified,' The incident throws a queer side-light on the manners of the time. Duelling clergymen were probably not to be met with in every parish, but that there should have been one is a fact worthy of remark. Many other side-lights, on English life in gen- eral and on the great world of London in partic- ular, are to be had from the handsome pair of quarto volumes first published in 1830, by John Murray of Albemarle Street, under the title of Letters and Journals of Lord Byron with Notices of his Life. There are fifteen hundred pages in the work (lacking just seven), and were there any less it would be a great pity. Moore's Byron, as they who read real books very well know, is one of the best biographies in the English language. Even its faults, if faults they be, endear it. Saintsbury, one of Moore's admirers, thinks it, for example, a prodigious mistake on the author's part * to drop the pen of the biographer 'now and then, and thump the cushion of the 'preacher, an exercise which suited the genial 'Thomas uncommonly ill.' That is by no means so certain. The 'genial Thomas' was a good man though a gay one, and believed as he wrote. Why 82 LC/KD BTROl^ should he not thump the cushions if he wanted to ? In his day it was permitted a biographer to be di- dactic, and the book is an expression of the times as well as of the author's genius. It was a clever piece of work to have been done at the time the author did it, with echoes of the angry controversy over Byron's private life still ringing in the air. Moore was not the man will- ingly to wound any one, but writing as he did when half the persons referred to in his pages were living, he was forced to be wonderfully discreet. His caution about printing names gives a piquancy to the narrative. The reader wonders who is meant by Lord A , and Lady B ; he would be glad to know the identity of the beauty whose name is concealed under a row of four stars, the girl (or woman) with the long lashes and the half- shut eyes, out of which she pretended not to see. He may if he likes turn to Prothero's six volumes and solve the mystery and other mysteries at once ; but if he is wise the reader will let Moore tell Byron's story in his own way. One does not need to know everything at once. The little blanks and long omissions, the asterisks and dashes, have the pleasant effect of stimulating one's interest. No part of the biography is better reading than that which concerns Byron's London life from 83 July, 1811, up to the date of his marriage. The figure we see, as we turn the pages, is an amiable one rather than otherwise, perfectly human at all events, not the monstrous poseur of popular legend and the manuals of English literature. He went everywhere, met everybody, and was amused and interested in everything. We hear of him at one of Coleridge's lectures, but not on the occasion when the speaker ' attacked the " Pleas- * ures of Hope," and all other pleasures whatso- * ever.' We see him with Moore at one of his old haunts, Steven's chop-house, gravely watching his companion's earnest assault on a beef-steak, and presently coming out with, * Moore, don't you * find eating beef-steak makes you ferocious ? ' He spends a day in prison with Leigh Hunt, who was serving a two years' sentence for calling the Prince Regent a 'fat Adonis of fifty ' (a harmless remark that many a beau would have taken for a compli- ment), and making the period of incarceration rather pleasant by the aid of books, pictures, a piano, and a trellised garden to take his walks in. Whoever cares for a time to lay the spectre of a misanthropic and piratical Byron, of which we have had rather too much for our comfort, may do so by an attentive perusal of just these pages. At the time when he was becoming famous, with 84 as yet no prospect of becoming notorious, Byron was an exceedingly attractive and entertaining personage. He complains of having nothing to do ; in real- ity his spare hours seem to be pretty well taken up. The ordinary social engagements of a good- looking young peer must have been fairly numerous at all times, and in the height of the season oppres- sive from their mere number. Byron pronounced these gatherings in drawing-rooms futile, just as other men have been known to do ; but the per- fectly natural remark has been, in his case, credited to the legendary Byron of dark thoughts and soli- tary ways, and made far more of than it deserves. As he wouldn't eat and couldn't dance, he was forced to amuse himself after a fashion of his own, though not peculiarly his own. One day he is sparring with his old friend Jackson, the profes- sional pugilist, and is so pleased and benefited by the exercise that he decides to ' renew his acquaint- *ance with the muffles.' ('Memo, to attend the * pugilistic dinner — Marquis Huntley is in the 'chair.') Another day he is to be found with Scrope Davies at the • Cocoa Tree' for one of those long talks and deep potations such as young dan- dies liked, and in which neither their fathers nor mothers saw any great harm. Byron wanted to 85 fetch Davies away in his carriage at midnight, but that worthy refused to budge, and was left * tipsy •and pious on his knees.' On yet another day the poet is deep in a new book *by that most entertaining and researching * writer, Israeli,' a book about authors, whom he discovers to be * an irritable set.' He feels for the moment (and only for the moment) ashamed of an alliance with the thin-skinned gentry, and quotes FalstafFs * I '11 not march through Coven- ' try with them, that 's flat.' As we know, he did march all his life, and often with nerves as ill covered as the poorest of his literary brethren. He had at this time a marked tenderness for young authors who commended themselves to his notice, and took some trouble to make J. H. Rey- nolds's first contact with the world of reviewers as easy as possible ; no budding poet could hope to be pelted with rose-leaves. He pronounces the lad ' clever,' and while there are faults in his verse, ' I * hate discouraging a young one.' This is friendly, though it is permitted to smile at the venerable air that Byron assumes ; the ' young one ' was in years about twenty and the old one twenty-six. Byron shows himself (in the letters as edited by Moore) not wholly impatient under the attacks made on him by the Tory press apropos of his 86 LOT(p BTRO^ lines * To a Lady Weeping.' Certain bitter verses aimed at him he thinks suitable to his case inas- much as they * halt exceedingly.' What brutali- ties were held legitimate in journalism may be inferred from a letter of Byron's to Murray: •I see all the papers in a sad commotion with ' those eight lines ; and the Morning Post, in par- * ticular, has found out that I am a sort of Richard *III, — deformed in mind and hdy. The last piece ' of information is not very new to a man who passed 'five years at a public school.' It was during this squabble with the * newspa- *per esquires' that Byron had the terrible charge laid at his door of taking large sums of money for his writings. The crime is one of which poets as a class may be pronounced guiltless, though they would gladly sin that way. It was an odd turning of the tables on the satirist of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers who five years since had accused Walter Scott of the same thing, to the Northern bard's surprise and not in the least to his discom- fiture; why should he not take money for his verses, Scott asked good-humoredly. In brief there is a great deal to admire in the Byron of this period ; nor is it necessary to search out the points, they obtrude themselves. His atti- tude toward many of his contemporaries does him 87 credit. A chapter might be written on his relations to Rogers, Sheridan, Lord Holland, Erskine, Ma- dame de Stael (whom the plain British citizen called * Mrs. Stale') and many others besides these. Byron adored Sheridan's wit. His admiration for that most versatile genius found voice in a brief and perfect eulogy that will be quoted as long as the language lasts. His letters to Lord Holland show real heart as well as becoming gratitude. Moore he positively loves, as well he might. The author of * The Last Rose of Summer ' was a lov- able man. Byron's estimate of his own poetical gift com- pared with that of Moore, and especially with that of Rogers, is at this epoch of his career modest. We know that he became in one day the talk of London, through the publication of the first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Nevertheless he has in his letters the air of being astonished at what had befallen him, rather than puffed up. He does not call the public an ass for buying his books (that last grand pose of the literary poseur), and he is as far as possible from assuming that the pub- lic's attitude is no more than a just tribute to tran- scendent powers. A young man who in the face of vociferous ad- ulation did not sometimes ask himself whether he 88 LOKD BTROISI^ might not be a genius, would be less than human. There were facts in Byron's case not to be denied, the enormous sale of the volumes, for example, and the praise of men whose word counted. But in the letters of this feverish period as a whole, — and to judge them other than as a whole would be unfair, — there is, amid the banter, the jesting, the play of mere high spirits, with an occasional burst of spleen, a deeper tone of modest sincerity very pleasant to him who has an ear for it. II In spite of the royal welcome given Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Byron worried somewhat over the possible fate of its successor. He wrote Mur- ray, his publisher, that he was * tremulous about ' The Giaour.' He had his reasons for being so. The Giaour was a poem in fragments, like Rogers's Columbus, and a study of the public mind led By- ron to think that a 'general horror' prevailed of poems in fragments. Murray was bent on publish- ing the piece, however, as the author reminds him ; * But as I consented, whatever be its fate, I * won't quarrel with you, even though I detect it 'in my pastry; but I shall not open a pie without ' apprehension for some weeks.' Byron gives here a variant on the long-standing 89 joke of the eighteenth and early nineteenth cen- turies, which assumed that poets and pastry-cooks were, as a matter of course, -more or less inti- mately allied. Times have changed. To-day no self-respecting cook would use poetry to bake pies on, even if the booksellers could supply it. But cooks of the Georgian era were not so particular. Instead of finding its way to the bake-shops, as Byron pretended to fear that it might. The Giaour went into the homes of a multitude of readers, mostly in the world of fashion and wealth ; for the poet was a lord, and Murray did not aim to print books that could be sold for a song. While the reception was generally cordial there were quarters where the poem was looked upon with a suspicious eye and pronounced dangerous. That was a funny age which tolerated high play, deep drink- ing, rotten boroughs and gross political nepotism, and thought The Giaour dangerous to morals. Whoever is interested in Byron's relations to his publisher will supplement Moore's narrative at this point with a few chapters of Smiles's Memoir and Correspondence of the late "John Murray (in two volumes, London, 1 8 9 1 ) . The eminent bibliopole had a real gift for the management of geniuses and others. There was something truly pastoral in the way he guided his flock. He kept Byron on 90 LOr^D BTROl^ a silken tether as long as that wayward and ob- streperous author lived. It may well be doubted whether any other publisher could have done as much. Among the many good paragraphs in Smiles's book is one describing Byron at Murray's shop. Though quite unpretentious it is a vivid bit of writing. The picture it calls up may be con- sidered little short of idyllic. Surely the vision of a publisher reading a poet's verse to the poet, and applauding as he reads, is calculated to make un- successful rhymesters stare in amazement ; unless, indeed, in a sudden accession of scepticism they were to shake their heads and cry, * Never in this * world can such things have been.' An event of the sort did take place at a shop in Fleet Street, opposite St. Dunstan's Church, in the year 1 8 1 1 . Byron used to drop in there while the sheets of Childe Harold were going through the press. Being fresh from the fencing-rooms of Angelo and Jackson the poet * used to amuse * himself by renewing his practice of " Carte et 'Tierce," with his walking-cane directed against * the book-shelves, while Murray was reading pas- * sages from the poem, with occasional ejacula- * tions of admiration ; on which Byron would say, * " You think that a good idea, do you, Mur- 91 ' ray ? " Then he would fence and lunge with his ' walking-stick at some special book which he * had picked out on the shelves before him. As ' Murray afterward said, " I was often very glad to ♦ get rid of him." ' Moore lays great stress on the pains Byron took in making changes, and corrections in the text of a poem. He was fastidious in his way, though often more fussy than fastidious. A man may cor- rect and correct, and be a careless author still ; or at any rate produce the effect of being one. His punctuation gave Byron no end of trouble. Friends told him that he was ' a sad hand ' at that sort of thing, and he seems to have believed them. To Murray he writes, * Do you know anybody who • can stop — I meant point — commas, and so 'forth?' Doctor Johnson had his opinion of the author who would call in outside help when troubled about * commas and so forth ' ; but the Doctor was apt to be severe. Byron's difficulties were not confined to getting his text the way he wanted it; the printers took pleasure in making emendations on their own ac- count, as printers sometimes will, and to Byron's great wrath. His bursts of anger at these crafts- men were frequent, are delightful to read about, and seem to have been unavailing. 92 L(n(D BTROI^ When objurgation failed to make any impres- sion he would try irony, as if that weapon could be expected to penetrate the hide of a really dense compositor. Moore giggles over one of Byron's marginal notes on a proof-sheet. Says the poet, with tragic despair, ' Do not omit words — it is * quite enough to alter or mis-spell them.' In an epistolary diatribe addressed to Murray he cries, ' I do believe the devil never created or perverted ' such a fiend as the fool of a printer. . . . There ' is one mistake he made, which, if it had stood, * I would most certainly have broken his neck.' The hot poet required a great deal of soothing, and his publisher was the man to soothe him. For his own sake, to lessen the wear and tear of dealings with men of letters, it is to be hoped that Murray had a sense of humor. If he had he must have enjoyed seeing the nobility rage, and barons imagine such a vain thing as getting a poem born into the world without one typographical error. While not forgetting that Byron was ' an ex- * ample of the literary temperament at its boiling- ' point,' we must note that he was also stimulated to write by plain vulgar success, as a man of but a tenth his powers might have been stimulated. In one respect at least he resembled Jane High- more the novelist, in Henry James's story entitled 93 * The Next Time ' ; he could not help selling. Whatever he wrote his consumers rose to, just as hers did, and, * making but a big cheerful bite of * it, wagged their great collective tail artlessly for ' more.' It should be capital fun to feed a dog or a public that is so easily pleased and so honestly grateful. Byron found it enjoyable. He wrote and wrote, and did not think more highly of himself than he ought to think for having produced in ten days a poetic romance in nineteen or twenty thousand lines at the rate of two thousand lines a day. The romance in question was TAe Corsair, pub- lished in February, 1814, and declared by the enthusiastic Murray to <^^ — * what Mr. Southey's ' is ca/Ied — a Carmen Triumphale!' No publisher is compelled to ' keep a poet ' ; but he who permits himself that luxury and finds it a source of wealth, may be forgiven the most extravagant demonstra- tions of joy. Murray's raptures were quite excus- able in the light of his having sold ten thousand copies of The Corsair on the day of publication. He wrote Byron that never in his recollection had any work, 'since the "Letter of Burke to the ' Duke of Bedford " excited such a ferment.' Before the ' ferment ' over The Corsair had en- tirely subsided, Lara was begun, and in less than 94 LOT(D BTROr^ five weeks from the day the first lines were com- posed it was in the hands of the printer. Byron with his Lara, and Rogers with his Jacqueline, made 'a joint invasion of the public' in August, 1 8 14. The poems were brought out in a single volume. Both were anonymous and readers drew their own conclusions as to merit and authorship. The two poetic romances of the next year were The Siege of Corinth and Parisina. Murray's let- ter acknowledging the receipt of the manuscript deserves to be quoted. * My Lord,' it begins, * I tore open the packet ' you sent me, and have found in it a Pearl. It is 'very interesting, pathetic, beautiful — do you * know, I would almost say moral. I am really * writing to you before the billows of the passions * you excited have subsided.' And so on, for seven- teen lines more. Happy poet ! who could excite billows of passion in a bookseller. For the copyright of these poems Murray sent the author two notes amounting to a thousand guineas. They were promptly returned, with an admonition about putting temptation in the way of those who might be tempted. Up to this time Byron had taken no money for his verse ; what he earned he had regally bestowed on needy friends. He was compelled now to think of another 9S L01(p BTRCn^ course, for he was married and in debt. He had, indeed, married an heiress, but his having done so was what increased the activity of his creditors. In the end he accepted the guineas, but not without a deal of hesitation on his part, and of urging on Murray's. Besides these long works he wrote a number of little pieces, one of which may be mentioned, not for its own sake but for the occasion on which it was produced. When the new Drury Lane Theatre was about to open, the Committee be- spoke the help of England's poetic genius to cele- brate the event. It was to take the form of an ' Address,' and would be spoken from the stage. The Committee advertised for contributions on August 14, and required them at the hands of would-be contestants by September i o. Bards who could not depend on having a fit of inspiration within the specified period of twenty-seven days were, therefore, in a hopeless case. One hundred and twelve were inspired, if we may trust the state- ment made in the preface to Rejected Addresses, but not to the Committee's satisfaction. Lord Holland then asked Byron to write something, and he did so. The best outcome of this appeal to the poets of England was not Lord Byron's ' Address,' but 96 the delightful parodies by Horace and James Smith. There are few wittier pieces in the lan- guage, as every one knows who has read 'The * Baby's Debut' (Wordsworth), or ' The Theatre ' (Crabbe). There is a world of fun in the others, such as 'Architectural Atoms,' a parody of Busby's translation of Lucretius. Very amusing too are the skits in prose, the * Hampshire Farm- ' er's Address ' (Cobbett), * Johnson's Ghost ' and 'The Theatrical Alarm Bell' (Editor of the 'Morning Post'). The parody of Lord Byron is entitled * Cui 'Bono,' and may be read to advantage in one of the later editions of Rejected Addresses, which contain notes by the authors and pictures by Cruikshank. Byron is represented seated in his study, all gloom and glower, spurning at a globe with the toe of his slipper. The poet's connection with Drury Lane did not end with his writing the 'Address.' He was at one time a member of the Committee of Man- agement, and had to do with the choice of pieces for presentation. The fertility of dramatic authors was as great then as it is to-day. Drury Lane Thea- tre had five hundred plays on its shelves, and with all this seeming wealth at their disposal the Com- mittee were scouring the United Kingdom in 91 L01(D BTROISI^ search of something that could be acted. Very laughable is Byron's account of the extraordinary people who came to him with their extraordinary dramatic compositions. He had particular joy over one tragedy in which a principal character is chained by the leg to a pillar through two or three acts. Byron felt sure that with a play constructed on this ingenious plan there was some hope of preserving the unities. He enjoyed nagging Moore by reminding him that the author was a country- man of his. ' I tell it you for the honour of Ire- land.' In addition to other activities of the year 1 8 14, Byron had been falling in love, or persuading him- self that he had. Some fatal impulse at all events was urging him towards matrimony. He aspired to the hand of the young woman who, in his whole circle of acquaintance, was the least fitted to make him content, or to be made so by an alli- ance with him. She was the only daughter of Sir Ralph Milbanke of ' Seaham ' near Stockton-on- Tees ; her mother, Judith Noel, was a daughter of Viscount Went worth. Byron had proposed to her once and been rejected. They kept up a corre- spondence. He proposed a second time and was accepted. Miss Milbanke is said to have been a spoiled 98 LOT(p BTROI^ child, who not only had her own way, but was very set in whatever way she had. She was both pretty and intelligent. Byron speaks of her extraordinary innocence. It is to be hoped that her parents were as innocent as she. Otherwise an explanation is needed of how two people came to permit their only daughter, * a paragon of virtue,' to marry a young nobleman who, if we may believe the re- ports, was notorious for being a loose liver. There was no more conspicuous man in London than the author of Childe Harold; what was not known of his character and habits might easily have been learned. Women have sometimes married men in order to reform them. Perhaps Byron married Anne Isabella Milbanke partly in order to be reformed by her. He was nervous at the time of the wedding, and that is no crime. To have been otherwise might argue a lack of sensibility, though it was permitted him to feign a serenity of spirit he was not conscious of. The wedding ceremonial is for many men a strain on the nerves. To meet the strain they fortify themselves in various ways. Some drink strong drinks, others laugh and joke, or even pray. Carlyle read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Whatever means Byron may have taken 99 LOTiD BYROl^ to hearten himself up was of no avail ; he betrayed his nervousness by making wrong responses. To read a sinister import into his having ad- dressed the bride as 'Miss Milbanke' after the ceremony, is to magnify trifles. His own wedding was not the first at which he had shown himself awkward. When he was called on to give away the bride, at the marriage of Miss Hanson to the Earl of Portsmouth, he joined the left hands of the pair ; which shows that he lacked either self- possession, or practice, or both. He was cheerful enough in the first months of wedded life if one may judge by the tone of his letters. To be sure his father-in-law's monologues bored him (at such times as the two happened to be together), and he hated afternoon tea; but these were petty miseries. Just before his migration with his wife to London, Byron pictured himself com- ically to Moore as he would appear by this time to-morrow, * stuck in a chariot with my chin on *a band-box.' And there was a jesting allusion to another carriage ' for the abigail, and all the trump- 'ery which our wives drag along with them.' He had already formed a plan for an excursion to Italy with a side-trip to Greece, in which Moore should join him, and then * think of all the poesy where- * withal we should overflow. ... If I take my wife, lOO LOT(D BYROrSi^ 'you can take yours; and if I leave mine, you may ' do the same. " Mind you stand by me, in either 'case, Brother Bruin." ' The Byrons settled in London at 1 3 Piccadilly Terrace. Their only child, Augusta Ada, was born on December 10, 1815. A month later Byron wrote Moore, who had inquired after the infant's welfare, that 'she was, and is, very flour- * ishing and fat, and reckoned very large for her ' days — squalls and sucks incessantly. Are you ' answered ? ' Ten days after this letter was written Lady Byron departed with her child on a visit to her mother in Leicestershire. The poet never saw either of them again. If the news that she had left him was a surprise to his friends, it was a greater surprise to himself. Strained as the relations be- tween them had become, he had no idea that everything was to end so quickly, and in the way it did. Lady Byron gave no hint of her purpose when she left London. Society became aware of the falling-out of hus- band and wife, and took sides in the dispute; presently the general public asserted its right to meddle with the affair. Unpleasant incidents oc- curred, and of a sort to persuade Lord Byron that his popularity was waning. lOI LOTR^ BTROrtJ^ Too much has been made, however, of the pub- lic demonstrations against him. They were neither so many, nor so marked, nor yet so significant as biographers with an eye for the picturesque would lead us to think. One ugly incident that is often told never took place at all ; Hobhouse should be an authority, and he many years since denied that Byron was insulted in the street, or was hissed as he went to the House of Lords. An actress with whom his name was associated is said to have been hooted off the stage. This may easily have happened. The mistaken biographical attitude consists in treating the episode as if it were exceptional, as if an audience had never hooted any- body before, and did so now to show that its fine moral sense was outraged. The antics of the Brit- ish theatrical public were often extraordinary. For a proof of the statement read Byron's own account of the behavior of the pit on a first night perform- ance of a tragedy, in April, 1 8 1 5. When in the fifth act the player who impersonated the King fell upon his knees to pray, ' the audience got upon their legs ' — the damnable pit — and roared, and groaned, 'and hissed, and whistled.' They quieted a little only to break out afresh. The curtain fell on the last act and Kean came forward to make an an- nouncement, but he could not be heard the din was 102 so great. The actress who spoke the epilogue was frightened to the extent of well-nigh losing her voice. All this because the pit disliked the tragedy, and for nothing else. Yet the author was a woman of irreproachable character and the players were popular favorites. An audience that would behave like a pack of roaring college students, in April, 1 8 1 5, would behave no otherwise (given an occa- sion) in February or March, 18 16. If outraged moral sense had something to do with the demon- stration against Mrs. Mardyn, it is certain that mere mob playfulness had quite as much, perhaps a good deal more, to do with it. When Byron told the world why he left Eng- land, and used the famous simile of 'the stag at *bay, who betakes himself to the waters,' he gave a new turn and a powerful impetus to the Byronic legend. We can see the myth in the making. By a mere figure of speech, though a vigorous one and sincere enough in the anger that informs it, he threw a romantic light on his story which has dazzled and blinded all his Continental devotees, possibly a few of his own countrymen as well. It is the high privilege of poets to be figurative, but one is not bound to take their rhetoric for the literal truth. 103 III To say that he was driven out of England is rather absurd. No German or Frenchman can write on Byron without saying it, and that, too, irrespective of the facts ; the poet must be repre- sented as a victim of popular fury, as an unwilling exile from his native land. The legendary Byron is too dear to the heart of a Continental critic ever to be surrendered. A glance at Byron's letters and journals from 1 8 1 1 on for two or three years will show that he was eager to leave England almost from the mo- ment of his return. There is nothing very wonder- ful in this. He was young, only twenty-three, a miracle of vitality and restlessness, and being, moreover, a thorough Englishman, he was de- voured by the notorious English lust of travel and adventure. His heart was always over the seas. Night and day he was thinking of what he had seen and experienced in the Levant. From month to month he was detained in his own country by this thing or that — business, literature, friends, amusements, yet meditating flight all the time. In December, 1 8 1 2, he thought it *by no means improbable' that he would go abroad in the spring. When April came he knew 104 he was going, and must have Hobhouse's new quarto ' to take abroad with him.' (Fancy travel- ling in the society of a quarto ! Byron never cared how much impedimenta he had about him.) In June he ordered letters sent to Portsmouth, pre- sumably that he might get them when he went there to take ship. His plan fell through and other plans were made, to fall through in their turn. At the last of August he was still in England, interested, busy with a new poem, his popularity unabated, and himself of precisely the same mind that he had been for months ; he was eager to go away some- where, 'but where to go' now that rumors of the Plague were in the air, though he feared the epi- demic far less than he did the miseries of quaran- tine. He had an idea of running over to Holland, to see how a canal looked after the Bosphorus, making a little preliminary trip to fill in time before embarking on the great pilgrimage, as a hungry man might eat one olive in the hope of staying his stomach until dinner-time. His every thought flies eastward, and if the Plague abates and his affairs take on a proper shape, to the East will he hie himself. Read in his journal the comical account of a visit to the menagerie at Exeter 'Change, the hippopotamus 105 'like Lord L 1 in the face,' the bear with ' the very voice and manner of my valet,' and the elephant who behaved so well and was so intelli- gent that Byron wished he had him for a butler. And there was one beast that almost gave him a fit of homesickness. The sight of the camel ' made me pine for Asia Minor.' * Oh, quando te • aspiciam ? ' he cries. Truly is he enamoured of the East whom the sight of a camel in a stu^ London menagerie can move to quote — or rather to mis- quote — Horace. It was nothing more mysterious than restless- ness that possessed Byron. Like the Belgian omni- bus-driver of An Inland Voyage he longed to be somewhere else and see the round world before he died. What he had already seen only whetted his appetite for more of the same sort. He did not think it likely, when once he had left Eng- land, that he would return. A not too romantic scheme he cherished was to sell Newstead and take up his abode at Naxos in the Grecian Archi- pelago, adopt the Eastern costume and study Ori- ental literatures ; and he was forever contrasting the expense of life in England with the cheapness and barbaric simplicity there. Had he elected to put his project through it might have been to his advan- tage ; he would have been warmer if not happier. 1 06 LOT^p BTROISl^ Byron was not only depressed to some extent in an England of gray and down-pouring skies, but he was physically uncomfortable. To Hodg- son he wrote, * Your climate kills me,' though he really had no right to shirk his responsibilities in that way, the climate being as much his as it was Hodgson's. * Rain and mist are worse than a si- • rocco ' is one of his complaints. He grins in his misery and makes an honest attempt to bear it ; as when, after a night of bad dreams he awoke in bodily pain but got himself ' wound up for the ' day,' and having accomplished so much, ' I will * go out of doors and see what the fog will do for *me.' Unfortunately it was not in his power to be- come lyric over a fog. He longed for that which is so rare in England that the newspapers respect- fully publish accounts of where it has been seen and how long it was visible. ' Give me a sun, I * care not how hot,' cries Byron, * and a sherbet, I • care not how cool.' In a word Byron knew cold when he felt it, which is more than a number of his hardy coun- trymen know. They freeze and make no sign. He could be sympathetic with the few who were like himself. That was an amusing outburst in his journal about Lady Holland's screen which she 107 would keep between the whole room-full of diners and the fire. He himself was ' absolutely petrified ' and could not even shiver.' As for the rest they 'looked as if they were just un-packed, like salmon ' from an ice-basket, and set down to table for that 'day only.' When Lady Holland left the room Byron ' dismissed ' the screen, studying the faces of the men as he did so ; ' every cheek thawed and * every nose reddened with the anticipated glow.' By his own confession he could bear cold no bet- ter than an antelope. He was disposed to anath- ematise the climate of England, forgetting how much the climate had done to make heroes and martyrs. But a man who feels as he felt is bound to change his skies as soon as possible. The wonder is, not that Byron went when he did, but that he did not go long before. And it is impossible to read the story of his life without wishing that he had. That Byron, after his wife left him and he had become temporarily unpopular, found it expedi- ent as well as agreeable to go to the Continent, may be admitted without question, but that he was forced to go is more than doubtful. Thomas Raikes was not likely to be wrong in his view of the matter. Himself one of the dandies he knew the society well, and he knew something of the io8 L01(D BTRCm^ man. It annoyed Raikes to have Byron's romantic admirers on the Continent canonize him *as a * martyr to calumny and oppression ; while those * who remember certain dinners at Watier's in the * olden time, certain long potations with John * Kemble, Brummell, and other virtuosi, have no * faith in the affected misanthropy, and only recol- * lect an agreeable companion, — the bon convive ' qui bait sec' Raikes believed that Byron might have re- mained with perfect security in England if his restless spirit would have permitted it ; * he might ' have reaped every honour from his talents in the 'senate, or his poetical pursuits in the closet; and 'notwithstanding the faults which he complains * were so unjustly visited upon him, he might have * been what he pleased in society, the idol or the 'tyrant of the grand monde. The time has long * gone by (and daily examples prove it) when vice * or misconduct could serve to exclude a man of ' rank and fashion from the highest and most dis- ' tinguished circles in London.' One may conclude, then, from what the diarist and ex-dandy says, that had Byron stubbornly re- mained right where he was when his troubles came to a head, he might have lived them down as other men had done before him. What would have been 109 L01(p BYROl^^ the effect of such a policy on his poetic life is a question, but it seems quite clear that as a man Byron could not have made a bad state of (strictly private) affairs the worse by remaining. He went because his heart was not in England and never had been, a rather unfortunate case, over which the Continental biographers exult as if it were im- mensely to the poet's credit and they themselves had had a hand in bringing it about. It is none the less a fact that Byron was ill at ease in his own country. There was no moment during the past five years when he was not straining at whatever ties bound him there. One must not forget, in passing, the allusion to this celebrated affair in Nightmare Abbey. The light and mocking tone in which Peacock treats it was to be expected from one who stood, in point of time, so near the event, and for whom a noble- man's domestic broils were not of paramount im- portance. Mr. Cypress, of the novel, is Byron as Peacock chose to picture him in the year 1816. This gentleman has announced to his friends at Nightmare Abbey his intention of going abroad. When Scythrop points out the good an English- man of rank and genius may do by remaining in his own country and giving his help in the struggle against a nation's domestic enemies, Mr. Cypress no replies, * Sir, I have quarrelled with my wife ; and * a man who has quarrelled with his wife is absolved * from all duty to his country. I have written an ode ' to tell the people as much, and they may take it * as they list.' In one of the other speeches that Peacock puts into his mouth, Mr. Cypress pleads as a reason for going that * the mind is restless.' Thomas Raikes, as we have seen, used about the same words when a dozen years later he penned his description of the Byron he remembered, — the Byron of the London clubs, the boon companion of the dandies. It was a man whom a restless spirit kept in perpetual turmoil. Byron sailed from Dover for Ostend on April 25, 1 8 16. He took with him Fletcher his valet, young Robert Rushton, a Swiss servant by the name of Berger, and as a travelling companion John Polidori, M.D., a rather silly and emotional youth who made his patron a deal of trouble first and last. That the poet in setting out on his travels should have taken four people with him, two in addition to the pair of servants he generally had, is represented by Karl Elze as a manifesto ; it was a part of Byron's defiance of the society that had outlawed him. Only a German professor could have read so deep a meaning into so unimportant III L(yi^ BTROJ{^ a detail. What matter it made to society whether his lordship took four servants or one, or in what way society was * defied ' by his taking four rather than one, are points that await clearing up. Suppose, however, that when Byron went abroad he had added Mrs. Mule to his splendid retinue; might not the act have been interpreted as one of defiance ? He left her behind, and of her later his- tory the books have nothing to say. His friends were not as few as in his anger he made himself believe; but had there been only one person in England to mourn his departure, that one would certainly have been Mrs. Mule. She was his fire-lighter, as he calls her. He found her at Number 4, Bennet Street, when he took lodgings there. A forlorn creature and appall- ing to look upon, she was faithful and she could make her master laugh. With her 'gaunt and * witch-like appearance ' it is no wonder if she be- came, in Moore's phrase, • the perpetual scare-crow •of his visitors.' When Byron moved into Lord Althorpe's chambers in ' The Albany ' his friends took it for granted that he would * get rid of this 'phantom,' The poet had other ideas and brought the ancient dame along with him. During his honeymoon Byron wrote to John Murray to keep an eye on his apartment and see 112 LOKD BTROI^ that everything was safe. Murray replied that he had done so, and that the whole establish- ment carried * an appearance of security, which * is confirmed by the unceasing vigilance of your 'faithful and frigid Duenna.* Murray was not a bad hand at an alliteration. ' Faithful and frigid ' were epithets that described Mrs. Mule to per- fection. When Lord and Lady Byron set up an estab- lishment in Piccadilly, with the customary force of servants, the formidable old woman disappeared, and visitors concluded rashly that they had seen the last of her. But Moore must be allowed to finish the story in his own charming way : — * One of those friends, however, who had most * fondly indulged in this persuasion, happening to * call one day when all the male part of the estab- * lishment were abroad, saw to his dismay, the door * opened by the same grim personage, improved * considerably in point of habiliments since he last 'saw her, and keeping pace with the increased ' scale of her master's household, as a new peruke, 'and other symptoms of promotion, testified. 'When asked "how he came to carry this old 'woman about with him from place to place," ' Lord Byron's only answer was, " the poor old ' devil was so kind to me." ' "3 The little incident is a pleasant one with which to take leave of the poet. His perversities and worse make the study of his life rather trying at times. But when we are out of patience with him, as well as out of patience with ourselves for being so, we have always Mrs. Mule to fall back on. The image of the ancient dame in her new pe- ruke, confronting the astonished Thomas Moore, who fondly hoped he had seen the last of her, must invariably provoke a smile. A GIVER OF BREAKFASTS (SAMUEL ROGERS) >HE author of A Wanderer in London — a book which has the great merit of being both witty and instructive — says that any one who is run over at the corner of Berkeley Street and Piccadilly ' will have the satisfaction of knowing 'that he shares his fate with the author of The * Pleasures of Memory. Being only a little past 'eighty at the time, Rogers survived the shock * many years.' The astonishing old gentleman survived other shocks as well, and generally amazed the London world by a display of 'perpetual youth and untired * energy/ In 1 844 his bank was robbed of two hundred thousand dollars worth of notes, besides specie and securities. One of the partners in the banking business took to his bed in consequence, and the report spread that he would 'not get over ' it.' Rogers went to three dinner-parties that same 115 SAMUEL T(OGERS week, and made witty remarks on the subject of his losses. Self-control to this extent is, of course, most gratifying to the spectators, and looks as diffi- cult as walking a tight-rope or performing on a trapeze. One stares and exclaims, and asks his neighbor how the fellow contrives to stay up there. The Ancient of St. James's Place was not to be put down by trifles, such as being run over or robbed. He wore a grim and sardonic air, as of one who intended to see all his coevals off the stage of this life, and marvelled a little at their impudence in delaying to make an exit. In R. M. Milnes's correspondence may be found a thumb- nail sketch of the indomitable old man as he appeared at the age of eighty-six. Writing from Woburn in December, 1 849, Milnes says, ' Rogers ' has been here — very cross and very much petted. * He stumps about most wonderfully, and has lately * had the gratification of the deaths of several old * people younger than himself.' A few months later Milnes wrote the same friend that Rogers had broken the socket of his thigh and that it was doubtful whether a short crippled life was worth his having ; • He is quite easy in his mind because 'Luttrell is dying too.' The implication is that both these clever ones would go off about the same time, and that very 116 SAMUSL %pGSRS The statement that Rogers's poems had a vogue because their author was ' in society ' may still be met with. One comes nearer the truth by turning the statement the other way round. The man was welcomed in the beginning by ' society ' because of the poems, and was cherished because of his many social gifts. iiuniiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiMiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiuiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiniiii AX :s. Sd SAMUEL T(gGERS presently. It was a mistake, though a natural one. Luttrell was, indeed, dying, but not Rogers, who took the liberty of surviving his old friend by four years. When the end really came, on December i8, 1855, people were rather astonished. Having lasted so long he ought to have lasted a little longer, they thought. He was not so old, only ninety-two years and four months. Landor did almost as well, with the handicap of a violent temper and many law-suits. But it was freely admitted that Rogers had lived to a very respectable age, and that when he died one of the social landmarks of London disappeared. The public felt lost without him. He had come to be regarded as an institution, and therefore permanent. His removal was like the removal of a public building. People had taken for granted that anything so solidly put together could not be carried off; they were stupefied to find it gone. That sense of the permanent and the unalter- able which Rogers's career gave to onlookers was strengthened by the fact of his, having lived so long in one spot. He took up residence in St. James's Place in 1803, and there he remained until his death, a period of fifty-two years. This house was the scene of the famous breakfasts, and of many a 117 SAMUEL "KOGERS notable dinner and lively supper as well. It is still standing ; the number is 22. This aristocratic local- ity, St. James's Place, has been described as a • De- * brettian backwater,' as the spot to which one might go for a rest-cure. It was not particularly quiet when the writer of these lines last gazed upon it : on the contrary, rather unquiet, owing to the pres- ence of two automobiles that were churning and chugging their merriest. Rogers, who loved dim lights and a minimum of noise, or none at all, was lucky in having lived before motor-cars were in- vented. Many descriptions have been written of the house and its treasures. To Byron it seemed the perfect type of the owner's mind and taste. * There ' is not a gem, a coin, a book thrown aside on his * chimney-piece, his sofa, his table, that does not * bespeak an almost fastidious elegance in the pos- * sessor. But this very delicacy must be the misery ' of his existence.' From Clayden's The Early Life of Samuel Rogers may be learned in two pages all that a reader needs to know in order to fill out the mental picture of this interesting man's interest- ing abode. It was not a palace, but for a bachelor there was * ample room, and verge enough.* Rogers's habit was to take notes of such arrange- ments as pleased him in the houses he visited ; the 118 SAMUEL "KQGERS ideas he gave his architect and builder to be re- produced were therefore not mere vain imagin- ings. He designed the furniture himself, with the assistance of Hope's v^^ork on the subject, says Clayden ; but that must have been later, for Hope's Household Furniture and Decorations was not pub- lished until 1807. Flaxman executed the mantel- piece in the drawing-room, and was responsible for the general appearance of walls and ceiling. The cabinet for 'antiquities* was designed by Stothard and ornamented with paintings with his own hand. It must not be supposed that great names were invoked for every feature of the work. The wood-carver who had the making of a pre- sumably elaborate sideboard sent one of his jour- neymen to do a part of the ornamentation. Rogers received the man himself, with drawing in hand. Twenty-five years afterward Chantrey, the now famous sculptor, was dining with Rogers and asked him whether he remembered that incident. Rogers did remember it distinctly. 'Well,' said Chant- rey, * I was that journeyman.' The sideboard was then in the dining-room where the two men sat. Where is it now, we wonder; its associations ought to give it a value apart from the artistic worth. The books, prints, vases, knick-knacks, draw- ings, and paintings were what one might expect 119 SAMUEL I^OGERS to find in the dwelling of a man blessed with Rogers's taste supplemented with the indispensable aid of Rogers's abundant means. His art collec- tions brought a couple of hundred thousand dol- lars after his death, though it does not follow that it cost him that to get them together. Not every- thing was sold ; the National Gallery profited by his bequests to the extent of three pictures, — a Titian, a Guido, and a Giorgione; and his famous Milton item, the original agreement with the pub- lisher in which the poet accepted five pounds for the copyright of Paradise Lost, went to the Brit- ish Museum. Rogers's biographer notes that in getting to- gether his collection the poet kept in mind two points, the beauty and worth of an object in itself, and its beauty and worth in relation to other ob- jects. The principle on which he worked was patent to his friends, and his inflexible adhesion to it led Mrs. Norton to say of him that his god was Harmony. How complete was his success only an expert could tell us. He certainly gave his con- temporaries the impression of having succeeded perfectly. They gazed on his treasures in their admirable setting, and were content. The pen-portraits of the man himself are quite as numerous as the descriptions of his home. They 1 20 SAMUEL T(OGERS are not, however, as uniformly flattering. Arthur Milman notes among the guests who used to fre- quent Ashburnham House, his father's London residence, Macaulay, Hallam, Sydney Smith, and •old Mr. Rogers, with his quiet, pale face.' So extremely pale was that ancient's face that critical observers did not hesitate to pronounce it cadaver- ous. The comparisons they made and the jests they invented would have been cruel had the ob- ject of them been some timid and inoffensive soul. Rogers was not timid, and the adjective inoffensive is the last that one would think of using in connection with a personality as caustic as his. Rogers must have known how he looked, — men who are ill-favored have many opportunities of learning the world's opinion, — and he must have known what the wits said of him. Milman gives one sample, half concealing it, as it were, in the small print of a footnote. There was on exhibition in London, a panorama of Jerusalem with the Dead Sea in the distance. Lockhart met Sydney Smith there. * Quite perfect,' said the lively clergyman; 'it only wants one thing — ' Rogers to be seen bathing in the Dead Sea.' The story of Rogers at the catacombs of Paris exists in two versions. That given in Gossip of the 121 SAMUEL 'J(OGERS Century has the air of being dressed up by a re- porter. We may be sure that no guide would run the risk of losing his place for the joy he might have in a bit of clever impertinence, and he to whom the remark is said to have been addressed was an English gentleman with whom only his closest friends dared to take a liberty. Clayden's version of the incident is that when the visiting party filed out of the catacombs the poet was the last to emerge, and Lord Dudley, shaking him by the hand, said, ' Good-bye, Rogers.* The variations on the theme are many, and it is our right to be entertained (if we are enter- tained) by reading that Alvanley inquired of Rog- ers why he did not set up a hearse, since he could well afford it, that a cabman refused to take him as a fare, supposing him to be a ghost, and that when he complained of the difficulty of finding a bed at a crowded watering-place. Ward asked him if there was no room in the church-yard. These were the pleasantries of his intimates, and no sharper than the jests he himself was in the habit of making. * Mr. Rogers had no pretensions to • good looks,' wrote one who knew him ; * he was 'very pale and very bald. For all that he looked • what he was ; a benevolent man and a thorough • gentleman.' I2t2 SAMUEL ^GERS He liked to say a cutting thing and many audi- tors liked to hear him. There were exceptions, however. Washington Irving wrote Moore that he had dined with Rogers, who on that occasion 'served up his friends as he served up his fish, * with a squeeze of lemon over each. It was very * piquant, but it rather set my teeth on edge.' In a letter of Elizabeth Barrett's, dated Decem- ber, 1 844, may be read the following paragraph : * A common friend said the other day to Mr. Ken- 'yon, "Rogers hates me, I know. He is always * saying bitter speeches in relation to me, and yes- * terday he said so and so. Bui," he continued, " if * I were in distress, there is one man in the world *to whom I would go without doubt and without ' hesitation, at once, and as to a brother, and t^af ' man is Rogers." ' The * common friend ' may have been (and probably was) Henry F. Chorley, whom Rogers disliked and took great pains to show that he dis- liked. Chorley speaks at some length in his ^uto- biography of the sour attitude which the poet main- tained towards him, and for which he could not account ; and while he does not say that he would have gone to Rogers for himself had he been in trouble, he declares that he would not have hesi- tated to present to him the cause of • poor painter, 123 SAMUEL T(QGERS •poor poet, poor musician, or poor governess.' He knew personally of many acts of munificence done by the man of bitter speech, and done in the most unostentatious way. Rogers often met Chorley at dinner-parties and regularly snubbed him. The manner of it was about like this. Looking around the table until his eye fell on the musical critic he would say, in a -tone penetrating enough to be heard by all, * Who is that young man with red hair ? ' Being told now for the third or fourth or possibly the tenth time who the young man was, Rogers would say, * Never heard of him before.' After which remark he would devote himself to his dinner, 'like one, who having disposed of a nuisance, 'might unfold his napkin and eat his soup in 'peace.' Chorley always regarded himself as the person to whom Rogers made his ' most gratuitously ill- 'natured speech '; and since he was so entirely un- ruffled by the memory of it, and so obliging as to present himself for our amusement in the light of a victim, we can but thank him and rejoice that the incident took place. It occurred at a concert-hall. Chorley was seated beside the Dowager Lady Essex, when he saw Rogers creeping down the aisle. Aware that 124 SAMUEL liOGERS the old gentleman was particularly fond of the lady by his side, Chorley said to her, * Now I shall * give up my place to Mr. Rogers.' He bade her good-night and stooped to find his hat, while Lady Essex called out, ' Come, Mr. Rogers, here is * a seat for you by me.' The old poet fixed his * dead eyes ' on Chorley, who was doing all he could to make room for him, and said, ' Thank * you, but I don't like your company.' Not the least astonishing feature of this anec- dote is the information it conveys that there was once a time when a man of letters dared to be uncivil to a journalist. Chorley had good reason to show a resentment towards the banker-poet which he somehow fails to show ; but Edward FitzGerald's detestation of the man whom he calls • that old Toad Rogers ' (a man whom he had never met and with whom he had no relations of any sort) is rather ludicrous. Having seen Byron's satire on Rogers quoted some- where, FitzGerald went to the trouble of reprint- ing it, because he had long wished for the verses himself 'and thought others might wish for * them also.' He sent a copy to his friend Pollock, and almost exulted in the idea that all the banker- poet's little malignities and sentimentalities were dead; 'while Byron's Scourge hangs over his 125 SAMUEL T(OGERS ' Memory.' A rather magniloquent sentence, that last, and not at all in its author's wonted style. The explanation of FitzGerald's contempt is partly to be found in Rogers's attitude towards Scott. ' Littlegrange ' adored the author of the * Waverley ' novels, along with most right-minded men, women, and boys ; and it was after reading what Rogers said to Charles Sumner, about Man- zoni's Sposi being * worth any ten of Scott's,' that FitzGerald was moved to apply to our Giver of Breakfasts the epithet of * that Toad.' The excuse that Rogers made to Henry Taylor for his bitterness and sarcasm, had probably been made many times before. * " They tell me I say * ill-natured things," he observed in his slow, quiet, • deliberate way ; " I have a very weak voice ; and * if I did not say ill-natured things, no one would • hear what I say." ' Rogers gave dinner-parties as well as breakfasts. They were small, perfect in their appointments, and the company always of the best. A feature often remarked was the manner of lighting the dining-room. Rogers would have no candles on the table. The light was thrown on the walls and the pictures, elsewhere it was kept as subdued as might be. According to Henry Taylor ' this did • not suit Sydney Smith, who said that a dinner at 126 SAMUEL T(OGERS * St. James's Place was " a flood of light on all * above, and below nothing but darkness and gnash- *ing of teeth." ' For some good reason the fame of the break- fasts well-nigh eclipsed that of Rogers's other en- tertainments. The dinner-parties were what a fas- tidious host, who was neither poor nor niggardly, might be expected to give ; but the breakfasts were believed to be distinctive and the honor of an in- vitation was frankly coveted. Macaulay, to whom so many doors were opened at the beginning of his parliamentary life, thought it no small matter to be noticed by Rogers. He wrote his sister that he had met Rogers at the • Athensum ' and been asked to name his day for a breakfast, and prom- ised as agreeable a party as could be found. 'Very 'kind of the old man, is it not ? and, if you knew ' how Rogers is thought of, you would think it as ' great a compliment as could be paid to a Duke.' Moore was the only other guest on that first occasion and they * were all on the most friendly * and familiar terms possible.' But Rogers said they must have their talk out. Another breakfast was given Macaulay two days later (June 26, 1831), and the chief guest pronounced the party ' a re- 'markable one.' Lord John Russell, Campbell, Luttrell, and Moore were present and * very lively.' 127 SAMUEL T(OGERS Then it was that Campbell quoted the line, * Ye * diners-out from whom we guard our spoons,' and credited it to Moore who denied the authorship; whereupon Macaulay acknowledged it as his, and recited the * Political Georgics ' from which it was taken ; the guests were * vociferous ' in their praise. Somewhere in the nine hundred pages of Clay- den's Rogers and his Contemporaries will be found a reference to the principal breakfasts at St. James's Place in which men of note figured. The student of London social life will do well to turn to the books from which these accounts are taken, in search of details for which the biographer had no room. Merely to rehearse names and dates is to produce an effect of sameness. A little Boswelliz- ing is a help when one cannot have a great deal. One of the pleasant affairs was that recorded by Moore (July 29, 1834) when Lord Lansdowne, Wishaw,and the Duke of Sutherland were guests. Rogers forgot that he had asked Sutherland to come until Lord Lansdowne, who arrived before his brother peer, reminded him that he was ex- pected. 'Asking Dukes and forgetting them,' Moore observed to Rogers, 'is now-a-days the ' poet's privilege.' In November, 1835, Crabb Robinson break- fasted with Rogers tete-a-tete and remained from 128 SAMUEL T^OGERS ten until one. They talked of poetry and the host * spoke very highly of Wordsworth, but with 'qualifications which would not satisfy Words- * worth's admirers.' In February, 1836, Moore was invited to St. James's Place to breakfast with Henry Taylor and young Villiers. The conversa- tion touched on * various topics ' and among them Southey, ' who is a great friend of Taylor's.' In August, 1837, Robinson, Empson, and Words- worth were the guests, and the author of Tie Ex- cursion set forth * emphatically ' what he expected from posterity in the way of fame, and his de- mand was more than reasonable. Sydney Smith's name often occurs in the annals of Rogers's social life. The two wits girded at each other incessantly and were capital friends. The clergyman joked the banker 'as nobody else * dared.' Clayden gives the amusing anecdote of Smith's going with Rogers and Moore to see Dry- den's house. It was a wet day. ' Rogers, always en- * thusiastic about Dryden, got out of the carriage, 'but Moore and Smith refused. " Oh, you see why 'Rogers don't mind getting out," exclaimed Syd- 'ney to Moore, "he has got goloshes on; lend * us each a golosh, Rogers, and we will each stand 'on one leg and admire as long as you please."' Macaulay believed that Smith's vivacity wearied 129 SAMUEL 1(0GERS Rogers, It is well known that Macaulay's vivacity wearied Smith. At one of the breakfast parties Smith was heard to say to his host, • I wish I * could write poetry like you, Rogers. I would ' write an Inferno, and I would put Macaulay ' among the disputants, and gag him.' As the old names appear less and less in the breakfast records, new names appear more and more. With Dickens, Thackeray, and Ruskin we seem to be getting down to modern times. That is a very pretty letter of Thackeray's that Clayden quotes, written from Young Street, Kensington, in June, 1843. The novelist pretends to fear that he is forgotten. * The moment I had finished my 'work yesterday and had returned to this real * world, I thought to myself, " Does Mr. Rogers 'remember that he invited me (that is, that I ' asked him to ask me and he asked me) to break- 'fast with him on the 30th?" The transaction * took place at Mr. Sartoris's : in the presence •of witnesses: — and to-morrow is the day.' . . . ' And I give you warning, my dear sir, that this ' visit is hanging over you, and that unless you fly ' from London you can't help hearing my knock ' at your door at i o to-morrow morning.' For both their sakes it is to be hoped that the knock was given and answered. 130 SAMUEL "KOGERS A man who attaches any importance to his morning meal cannot avoid a slight feeling of irritation because of the difficulty of finding out what Rogers gave his guests to eat. It is not at all probable that they breakfasted, like the Reverend Doctor Gaster, * on a mug of buttered ale and an * anchovy toast ' ; and they were happily in no dan- ger of having to face that dreary American bill of fare which begins with grape-fruit or oranges and then sinks to an insipid * cereal.' They may have had poured out to them a certain beverage * called * coffee,' for the making and selling of which ' one * James Farr . . . was in the year 1657 presented * by the Inquest of St. Dunstan's in the West,' the liquor being looked on in the light of a * great ' Prejudice and Nuisance to the neighborhood,' as indeed it must have been if it resembled what the innumerable lineal descendants of James Farr in the England of to-day offer the oppressed tour- ist. That the tea they drank was of the best, we may be sure, and the manner of its serving fault- less. But what did they have besides tea ? There may be two hundred references in the biographies and memoirs of the nineteenth century to break- fast-parties at Rogers's, and not a word among them all that has a gastronomic bearing. The guests remembered only the conversation, a fact 131 SAMUEL I^OGERS greatly to their credit. In default of exact knowl- edge on that other (and grosser) point, we are fain to content ourselves with the belief that Rogers set before his guests not merely a good breakfast but a breakfast * to invite a man to.' The statement that Rogers's poems had a vogue because their author was * in society ' may still be met with. One comes nearer the truth by turning the statement the other way round. The man was welcomed in the beginning by 'society' because of the poems, and was cherished because of his many social gifts. TAe Pleasures of Memory , the work which gave him a name, appeared in 1792, when Rogers was an active young man of business and went to and fro almost daily between his home in Stoke Newington and the family bank in Free- man's Court. The first four editions numbered two hundred and fifty copies each ; but the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth were a thousand copies each. By the year 18 16 more than twenty-two thousand copies had been disposed of, a large sale, we are told, for the times. The most gratifying feature about it for Rogers must have been in the steady growth of popular interest. When, for ex- ample, the twelfth edition was called for (1801) it was found necessary to print fifteen hundred copies, and the fourteenth (1803) was raised to 132 SAMUEL T^OGERS two thousand. * Society ' had very little to do with all this, whereas the real merit of the poem and its manner of hitting the taste of the day had much. While in a way it is true enough that Rogers was society's poet, he had never aimed at the dis- tinction (such as it was) any more than society had aimed to confer the honor on him. Long be- fore he became a figure in West End drawing- rooms his verse was widely read, its careful art recognized, and the existence of certain durable qualities believed in. In English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809) Byron called on * melodious Rogers ' to rise and strike his ' hallowed lyre,* and by so doing ' Re- ' store Apollo to his vacant throne. Assert thy coun- * try's honour and thine own.' What comically stilted language poets used to employ when they became serious. It is worth our while to note that the lines are a testimonial to the general popular- ity of Rogers's verse, not merely a personal tribute from the young savage and satirist who wrote them. •Melodious Rogers' had already risen thrice and publicly struck the lyre, once in 1786 with his An Ode to Superstition, with some other Poems, again in 1792 with The Pleasures of Memory, and ^23 SAMUEL "KgGERS yet again in 1798 with ^n Epistle to a Friend. The books in question were short, the intervals between them long. Bring what charge against him the world might, Rogers was safe from that of poetical garrulousness. A more painstaking writer than he never lived. He confessed once to having spent ten days on a note to one of his couplets. What a wealth of time he must have spent on the couplet itself. But the world (meaning so much of it as reads poetry) thoroughly enjoyed this artificial verse. It remained loyal to Rogers while admitting the seductive charms of Scott and Byron. The author oiLara was flattered by having his romance bound up in the same covers with "Jacqueline. Jest as he might about ' Larry ' and ' Jacquy,' there was no question in Byron's mind as to whether ' Larry ' was honored or not by the company in which he found himself. It is important to keep clearly in view that the attitude Byron maintained toward Rogers as a poet (personal and prejudiced though that attitude was) coincided with the world's. The older bard had his private peak in Parnassus, a remote, cold, yet lofty eminence which it was assumed he would always occupy ; the splendid inaccessibility of the place made any thought of his ever being supplanted seem an idle thought 134 SAMUEL 'I(OGERS indeed. Once when Rogers and Tennyson were walking and talking together the younger poet spoke of * what is called Immortality,' and how few writers could be sure of it ; and then the vet- eran man of letters squeezed his companion's arm and said, * I am sure of it.' Just how much he meant by that we shall never know. The old worldling may have qualified the seemingly childlike remark with a number of sub- tile shadings. His manner of uttering a simple thing often made it the reverse of simple. If he really believed that his verse was built of durable stuff he should have been congratulated upon his belief. It has not yet been proved that he was mistaken. Rogers remained the author of T&e Pleasures of Memory until such time as the world found it more convenient to distinguish him as the au- thor of ' Rogers's Italy ' ; for the two words in- variably marched side by side, and thus do they march to the present day, especially in the cata- logues of the dealers in rare books. The work was first published without illustrations, had but a slow sale, was withdrawn from the trade and the re- mainder burned. Then the author set about the making of that sumptuous edition which became, at the time of its appearance, the talk of the town, 135 SAMUEL ^KOGERS and which is still the heart's desire of innumer- able collectors. There were ten thousand copies printed, — a fortunate circumstance for the ama- teurs, many of whom may hope to be supplied. The undertaking cost Rogers thirty-five thou- sand dollars, and he seems to have got his money back. He may even have made a few hundred dol- lars, which was not his object in publishing the book. The vignettes, fifty-six in number, were the principal expense. Twenty-five of them were made from drawings by Turner, twenty from drawings by Stothard. Luttrell said that Rogers's lia/y would have been dished had it not been for the plates, a mot that the world liked to repeat, usually in the rhymed version attributed to Lady Blessington. Yet a modern critic of repute holds that the Ifa/y is the only one of Rogers's poems which can still be read ; in this way, however, and his distinction is a curious one ; we can read it, he says, * almost as if it were prose, but with no dis- * taste at its being in verse.' He was a wonderfully interesting man, this Giver of Breakfasts, and the great world in which he figured did itself no little honor by its entire appreciation of his remarkable powers. Social in- tercourse became more than ever a fine art under his touch. He was both shrewd and cautious. He 136 SAMUEL "KQGERS aimed at nothing that he could not do, and he did perfectly whatever he undertook. There was no house in London, among the many to which men and women resorted for conversation, which had so long, so varied, and so rich a history as the house in St. James's Place. One may say this, keep- ing in mind the fact that Rogers and his home were identical ; it is not a question of a great his- toric mansion, tenanted by the scion of an old and influential family. The force which drew the world to this particular spot was the winning per- sonality of the bald, wrinkled, little old man who dwelt there. That he was most attractive both in manner and speech cannot be doubted. His little sarcasms gave piquancy to his talk, and the listeners en- joyed them. Not every one was so sensitive for his fellow-man as Washington Irving. Some in- justice has been done Rogers by repeating his caustic sayings without the context, or by taking for a deliberate and final judgment what was meant to be taken in a wholly difi^erent way. When some one remarked that Byron's verse was full of fire, and Rogers replied, 'Yes, hell fire ! ' it was quite enough to laugh at the host's wit, it was not worth while to record the harmless jest as an illustration of his habitual acerbity. Not that 137 SAMUEL "KOGERS this particular saying was so recorded, but very many quite as harmless have been. Having a reputation for bitterness Rogers was expected to live up to it, which he sometimes failed to do. The occasions when he did not serve up his absent friends with a squeeze of lemon over each were quite as numerous as those on which he did. Locker-Lampson, then very young, was taken by his father to breakfast with Rogers. He remembered the poet as ' calm and kind : neither ' then nor afterwards did I detect any of that quiet 'venom for which his particular friends were 'pleased to give him so much credit.' The boy's recollection may have been at fault, but not the man's; 'neither then nor afterwards,' he says. And that is a neat touch, his putting on Rogers's intimates a part of the responsibility for the bad name Rogers bore. Scott, describing a breakfast at St, James's Place, says that * Sam made us merry ' with his criticisms of Stewart Rose's Ariosto, and proposed that the Italian should be printed on the opposite page * for the sake of assisting the indolent reader to ' understand the English. . . . Well, well. Rose 'carries a dirk too.* Perhaps Rogers's friends drove him to carry a dirk. A REGENCY SATIRIST (THOMAS MOORE) ICERTAIN Professor of Litera- ture remarks that • it would be * interesting, though perhaps a * little impertinent, to put to any 'given number of well-informed * persons under the age of forty •or fifty the sudden query, who was Thomas Brown * the Younger ? ' The question is not impertinent when put to booksellers, whose business it is to know about au- thors and their works. If put often enough it may result in bringing to light a copy of Thomas Brown's Intercepted Letters, or the Twopenny Post- Bag, 'With Explanatory Notes by an American 'Gentleman,' one of an edition printed at Balti- more in 1813. Besides the notes there is an *Ad- ' vertisement ' or preface in which the American publisher attributes the lively little work to ' the 'pens of the Authors of Horace in London and * Rejected Addresses, two brothers, who have been * pleasantly and appropriately named the Castor and 'Pollux, of humorous poetry, and whose elegant ^39 THOMAS zJMOORE 'but unlabored effusions have for some time past •amused the ^^.y fashionables of London.' That 'The Twopenny Post-Bag, as it is commonly called, was ever laid to the credit of James and Horace Smith will come as a surprise to most of us. The Baltimore publisher may have been told so by his * literary friend, recently from England,' who made the notes for this very edition. Doubt- less many readers, both in the metropolis and the provinces, thought that none but the authors of Rejected Addresses could have produced so spark- ling a book as The Twopenny Post-Bag, Byron knew who wrote the little volume of satires. 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