English Lands Letters and Kings 17

English Lands Letters and Kings 17

peccadilloes. In those stormy times which belonged to the passage of the

Reform Bill of 1832, he showed nerve and pluck, and if he split the air

pretty often with his oaths, he never offended by a wearying

dilettanteism, or by foppery. In the year 1837 he died; and then and there

began--within the memory of a good many of us old stagers--that reign of

his young niece Victoria, daughter of his brother, the Duke of Kent (who

had died seventeen years before)--which reign still continues, and is

still resplendent with the virtues of the Sovereign and the well-being of

her people.

 

Under these several royal hands, the traditional helpfulness to men of

letters had declared itself in pensions and civil appointments; Southey

had come to his laureateship, and his additional pension; we found the

venerable Wordsworth making a London pilgrimage for a “kissing of hands,”

and the honor of a royal stipend; Walter Scott had received his baronetcy

at the hands of George IV., and that dilettante sovereign would have taken

Byron (whom we shall presently encounter) patronizingly by the hand,

except the fiery poet--scenting slights everywhere--had flamed up in that

spirit of proud defiance, which afterward declared itself with a fury of

denunciation in the _Irish Avatar_ (1821).

 

 

_Hazlitt and Hallam._

 

Another noticeable author of this period, whose cynicism kept him very

much by himself, was William Hazlitt;[53] he was the son of a clergyman

and very precocious--hearing Coleridge preach in his father’s pulpit at

Wem in Shropshire, and feeling his ambition stirred by the notice of that

poet, who was attracted by the shrewd speech and great forehead of the

boy. Young Hazlitt drifts away from such early influences to Paris and to

painting--he thinking to master that art. But in this he does nothing

satisfying; he next appears in London, to carve a way to fame with his

pen. He is an acute observer; he is proud; he is awkward; he is shy.

Charles Lamb and sister greatly befriend him and take to him; and he, with

his hate of conventionalisms, loves those Lamb chambers and the whist

parties, where he can go, in whatever slouch costume he may choose; poor

Mary Lamb, too, perceiving that he has a husband-ish hankering after a

certain female friend of hers--blows hot and cold upon it, in her quaint

little notelets, with a delighted and an undisguised sense of being a

party to their little game. It ended in a marriage at last; not without

its domestic infelicities; but these would be too long, and too dreary for

the telling. Mr. Hazlitt wrote upon a vast variety of topics--upon art,

and the drama, upon economic questions, upon politics--as wide in his

range as Leigh Hunt; and though he was far more trenchant, more shrewd,

more disputatious, more thoughtful, he did lack Hunt’s easy pliancy and

grace of touch. Though a wide reader and acute observer, Hazlitt does not

contend or criticise by conventional rules; his law of measurement is not

by old syntactic, grammatic, or dialectic practices; there’s no imposing

display of critical implements (by which some operators dazzle us), but he

cuts--quick and sharp--to the point at issue. We never forget his

strenuous, high-colored personality, and the seething of his

prejudices--whether his talk is of Napoleon (in which he is not reverent

of average British opinion), or of Sir Joshua Reynolds, or of Burke’s

brilliant oratorical apostrophes. But with fullest recognition of his

acuteness, and independence, there remains a disposition (bred by his

obstinacies and shortcomings) to take his conclusions _cum grano salis_.

He never quite disabuses our mind of the belief that he is a paid

advocate; he never conquers by calm; and, upon the whole, impresses one as

a man who found little worth the living for in this world, and counted

upon very little in any other.

 

The historian, Henry Hallam,[54] on the other hand, who was another

notable literary character of this epoch, was full of all serenities of

character--even under the weight of such private griefs as were appalling.

He was studious, honest, staid--with a great respect for decorum; he would

have gravitated socially--as he did--rather to Holland House than to the

chambers where Lamb presided over the punch-bowl. In describing the man

one describes his histories; slow, calm, steady even to prosiness, yet

full; not entertaining in a gossipy sense; not brilliant; scarce ever

eloquent. If he is in doubt upon a point he tells you so; if there has

been limitation to his research, there is no concealment of it; I think,

upon the whole, the honestest of all English historians. In his search for

truth, neither party, nor tradition, nor religious scruples make him

waver. None can make their historic journey through the Middle Ages

without taking into account the authorities he has brought to notice, and

the path that he has scored.

 

And yet there is no atmosphere along that path as he traces it. People and

towns and towers and monarchs pile along it, clearly defined, but in dead

shapes. He had not the art--perhaps he would have disdained the art--to

touch all these with picturesque color, and to make that page of the

world’s history glow and palpitate with life.

 

Among those great griefs which weighed upon the historian, and to which

allusion has been made, I name that one only with which you are perhaps

familiar--I mean the sudden death of his son Arthur, a youth of rare

accomplishments--counted by many of more brilliant promise than any young

Englishman of his time--yet snatched from life, upon a day of summer’s

travel, as by a thunderbolt. He lies buried in Clevedon Church, which

overhangs the waters of Bristol Channel; and his monument is Tennyson’s

wonderful memorial poem.

 

I will not quote from it; but cite only the lines “out of which” (says Dr.

John Brown), “as out of the well of the living waters of Love, flows

forth all _In Memoriam_.”

 

“Break--break--break

At the foot of thy crags, O sea:

But the tender grace of a day that is dead

Will never come back to me.

And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill;

But O, for the touch of a vanished hand

And the sound of a voice that is still.”

 

I have purposely set before you two strongly contrasted types of English

literary life in that day--in William Hazlitt and Henry Hallam--the first

representing very nearly what we would call the Bohemian element--ready

to-day for an article in the _Edinburgh Review_, and to-morrow for a gibe

in the _Examiner_, or a piece of diablerie in the _London Magazine_;

Hallam, on the other hand, representing the sober and orderly traditions,

colored by the life and work of such men as Hume, Roscoe, and Gibbon.

 

 

_Queen of a Salon._

 

Another group of literary people, of a very varied sort, we should have

found in the salons of my Lady Blessington,[55] who used to hold court on

the Thames--now by Piccadilly, and again at Gore House--in the early part

of this century. She was herself a writer; nor is her personal history

without its significance, as an outgrowth of times when George IV. was

setting the pace for those ambitious of social distinction.

 

She was the quick-witted daughter of an Irish country gentleman of the

Lucius O’Trigger sort--nicknamed Beau Power. He loved a whip and fast

horses--also dogs, powder, and blare. He wore white-topped boots, with

showy frills and ruffles; he drank hard, swore harder--wasted his fortune,

abused his wife, but was “very fine” to the end. He was as cruel as he was

fine; shot a peasant once, in cold blood, and dragged him home after his

saddle beast. He worried his daughter, Marguerite (Lady Blessington), into

marrying, at fifteen, a man whom she detested. It gave relief, however,

from paternal protection, until the husband proved worse than the father,

and separation ensued--made good (after some years of tumultuous, uneasy

life) by the violent and providential death of the recreant husband.

Shortly after, she married Lord Blessington, a rich Irish nobleman, very

much blasé, seven years her senior, but kind and always generous with her.

Then came travel in a princely way over the Continent, with long stays in

pleasant places, and such lavish spendings as put palaces at their

disposal--of all which a readable and gossipy record is given in her

_Idler in Italy_ and _Idler in France_--books well known, in their day, in

America. Of course she encountered in these ramblings Landor, Shelley,

Byron, and all notable Englishmen, and when she returned to London it was

to establish that brilliant little court already spoken of. She was

admirably fitted for sovereign of such a court; she was witty, ready,

well-instructed; was beautiful, too, and knew every art of the

toilet.[56]

 

More than this, she was mistress of all the pretty and delicate arts of

conciliation; had amazing aptitude for accommodating herself to different

visitors--flattering men without letting them know they were

flattered--softening difficulties, bringing enemies together, magnetizing

the most obstinate and uncivil into acquiescence with her rules of

procedure. Withal she had in large development those Irish traits of

generosity and cheer, with a natural, winning way, which she studied to

make more and more taking. One of those women who, with wit, prettiness,

and grace, count it the largest, as it is (to them) the most agreeable

duty of life, to be forever making social conquests, and forever reaping

the applause of drawing-rooms. And if we add to the smiles and the witty

banter and the persuasive tones of our lady, the silken hangings, the

velvet carpets, the mirrors multiplying inviting alcoves, with paintings

by Cattermole or Stothard, and marbles, maybe by Chantrey or Westmacott,

and music in its set time by the best of London masters, and cooking in

its season as fine as the music,--and we shall be at no loss to measure

the attractions of Gore House, and to judge of the literary and social

aspects which blazed there on the foggy banks of the Thames. No wonder

that old Samuel Rogers, prince of epicures, should love to carry his

pinched face and his shrunk shanks into such sunny latitudes. Moore, too,

taking his mincing steps into those regions, would find banquets to remind

him of the Bowers of Bendemeer. Possibly, too, the Rev. Sydney Smith,

without the fear of Lady Holland in his heart or eyes, may have pocketed

his dignity as Canon of St. Paul’s and gone thither to taste the delights

of the table or of the talk. Even Hallam, or Southey (on his rare visits

to town), may have gone there. Lady Blessington was always keenly awake

for such arrivals. Even Brougham used to take sometimes his clumsy

presence to her brilliant home; and so, on occasion, did that younger

politician, and accomplished gentleman, Sir Robert Peel. Procter--better

known as Barry Cornwall--the song-writer, was sure to know his way to

those doors and to be welcomed; and Leigh Hunt was always eager to play

off his fine speeches amid such surroundings of wine and music.

 

The Comte d’Orsay, artist and man of letters, who married (1827) a

daughter of Lord Blessington (step-daughter of the Countess), was a

standing ornament of the house; and rivalling him in their cravats and

other millinery were two young men who had long careers before them. These

were Benjamin Disraeli and Edward Lytton Bulwer.