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3 Ep.3
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| ? (o 2.
BEATEN PATHS;
AND THOSE WHO TROD THEM.
BEATEN PATHS;
AND THOSE WHO TROI) THEM.
BY
THOMAS COLLEY GRATTAN,
AUTHOR OF ‘HIGHWAYS AND BY WAYs,’ ‘TRAITs of TRAVEL,'
* CIVILIZED AMERICA, Etc.
“Hoo ! Hoo ! I am almost giddy with roving about. I could have ranged
farther yet, but am not well able to dive into profundities. I leave those
things to stronger wits.”—Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy.”
IN TWO VOLUMEs. A.
WOL. II. * ..
SECOND EDITION.
LONDON :
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.
1862.
LThe rught of translation is reserved to the Author.
PRINTED BY
John 1: Dw ARD TAYLon, LITTLE QUEEN STREET,
LINCOLN's INN FIELDs.
;3.
:
44% (64.24.6%)
7 4.
*/-é/- 2 0
22.4 as
CONTENTS
OF THE SECOND WOLUME.
—O-—
CHAPTER I. PAGE
THE ENGLISH ABROAD . . . . . . . . . . l
CHAPTER II.
THOMAS MOORE . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
CHAPTER III.
THOMAS CAMPIBELL . . . . . . . . . . . 91
CHAPTER IV.
A THREE DAYs’ TOUR WITH COLERIDGE AND WORDS-
WORTH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
CHAPTER W.
DINERS-OUT.--SCROPE DAVIES . . . . . . . 146
iv CONTENTS.
CHAPTER WI.
EMINENT ACTORS.—TALMA, JOHN KEMBLE, EDMUND
KEAN
CHAPTER VII.
DIPLOMACY, AND SOME OF ITS AGENTS
CHAPTER VIII.
AMERICAN DIPLOMATISTS.—CHRISTOPHER II UGHES.
—WILLIAM PITT PREBLE. – AUGUSTE DAVEZAC.—
VIRGII, MAXCY, HUGH LEGARſ, JAMES M. BAYATRID
CHAPTER IX.
ITALIAN SKETCHES.—YOUNG ITALY. — MAZZINI .
CHAPTER X.
LOUIS NAPOLEON BONAPARTE . . . . . . .
FAGE
171
222
24.1
303
356
B E A TEN PATH S.
CHAPTER I.
THE ENGINISH ABROAD.
FEW phrases are better formed to provoke a
searching inquiry into cause and effect than the
hackneyed one “at home and abroad.” The
scattered remarks of tourists and essayists on the
state of English society on the Continent have
been profusely illogical and contradictory; and,
even when correct and to the point, the want of
condensation makes them of little worth. But
were some ingenious compiler to select the most
salient passages bearing on the subject, a volume
might be produced that would deeply wound the
pride that Englishmen so proudly call national.
And as the English abroad derive many of their
peculiarities from their previous condition at home,
WOL. II. B
2 BEATION PATHS.
it is well cautiously to consider what manner of
persons they are in that normal state.
Such a country as England forms a field of
vast dimensions for the exercise of speculative
philosophy. The benefit and abuses of power,
the useful or baneful effects of wealth, the influ-
ence of rank, the results of industry, civilization
in fact on a great scale of experiment, had never
yet so many elements combined for a fair testing
of its merits and its faults; and, be it added, for
the establishment of a social system which, like
the political constitution of the country, though
not written down into a formal code, ought to
present a whole of practical wisdom and virtue.
The original English character, whether crea-
ting or arising out of the institutions with which
it is identified, and the fluctuations it has un-
dergone for centuries, is foreign to my present
subject. I take it as I find it in its actual living
aspect; and I see that, with many advantages
superior to those of other countries, the errors in
the plan of social polity are more inimical than
those elsewhere to the enjoyment which is the
main ingredient of happiness.
An attempt to explain the web of prejudices
tangled round the English character would be as
fruitless as an effort to unravel the fibrous roots
of the oak, its noble and appropriate emblem.
THE ENGLISH ABROAD. 3
Like them, they form part of its very existence;
are fed by the same sap ; and are perhaps as
necessary to the growth and greatness of the
branching structure above them. The main
strength of a nation often consists in its preju-
dices. But that which gives strength does not
always produce happiness. The wholesome train-
ing for muscular exertion is far from agreeable.
So, the culture of a disdainful pride, though
giving to Britons power in a contest with her
foes, greatly militates against the comfort of their
intercourse with each other.
Were this national pride confined to the aristo-
cratical orders, its ill effect would be less flagrant.
The high-pressure engine of refinement is always
furnished with a safety-valve against the danger
of explosion. Good manners modify the mischief
of corruption. But when the errors of the great
are adopted by the vulgar, every part of the body
politic feels it more or less; and as retail dealers
adulterate wine until what was at first only
flavoured becomes at last deleterious, so do the
hucksters of gentility degrade the lofty bearing
of high life. Reversing the process of defeca-
tion, the more it is filtered the more impure it
becomes. What was dignity at court is arrogance
in the city. The Lafitte which was dashed with
Hermitage at Bordeaux is poisoned with brandy
B 2
4 BFATEN PATH S.
at the London docks. The puissant woof of oli-
garchical hauteur is unravelled into a coarse
thread. And the proud class which formerly gave
its tome to the national mind, now sees itself
confounded in the general dislike provoked by
each vulgar gradation.
The deterioration of character consequent on
this abuse of an original noble quality is immense.
It is not merely that the ungraceful caricaturists
of high rank become ludicrous and are despised.
The evil does not evaporate in antic parodies;
it sinks into the public heart. No man but the
nobleman is proud of “his order” in England.
And it is therefore the nobility and their family
connections among the gentry, who form with
them an almost exclusive circle, that can uphold
a free and unrestrained position.
It is in the highest classes that one sees an
easy and self-confident bearing. They can ven-
ture to indulge in an unconstrained suavity,
because they fear no rivalry. Their place is so
marked, by distinctive title, or by the technical
“courtesy” which stands proxy for it, that they
are safe from all injurious misconception. But
all below the highest order, and above the lowest,
are in a continued struggle for a superiority of
conventional stations.
One of the most serious drawbacks to national
THE ENGLISH A BROAD. 5
improvement is the proneness of eminent indi-
viduals to flatter the mass. Some of the greatest
writers of English have done the greatest mischief
by inflated panegyrics. Bacon boasted that “of
all nations the English are not to be considered
subject, base, or taxable,” while the people quietly
bore the yoke of an absolute monarchy, and arbi-
trary exactions — forced subsidies, benevolences,
and wholesale confiscations. And be it remarked
that about the same time Grotius observed in
his “Annals’ that “the Englishman obeys like a
slave, and governs like a tyrant.”
Milton might be better excused than the illus-
trious panegyrist just quoted, when he spoke of
the English as “men ever foremost and famous in
the achievements of liberty,” for his mind was
ripe with the fullness of political freedom, which
flavoured his historical memory, and merged the
past in the time in which he lived.
Addison again in pompous doggrel exclaims,
“'Tis liberty that crowns Britannia's isle,
And makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains smile.”
While Burke, to wind up these encomiastic
tirades by his fulgent bombast, proclaimed, in
the very heyday of boroughmongering corrup-
tion and public servility, that “in England we
have not yet been disembowelled of our natural
entrails. We feel within us, and we cherish and
(3 BEATEN PATHS.
cultivate, those inbred sentiments which are the
faithful guardians of our duty, because all other
feelings are false and spurious, tending to corrupt
our minds, to vitiate our primary morals, and to
render us unfit for national liberty.”
It was thus that the greatest writers, of all
shades of political opinion, poured doses of flat-
tery down the throats of the intoxicated people,
or held up this false character of perfection before
them, on the principle which made the Vicar of
Wakefield place his wife's flattering epitaph over
the mantelpiece in her lifetime. No wonder if
the head of England, like the head of almost
every other nation, and from like causes, has been
turned; and that, in spite of statistical and
moral proofs of enervating crime and social sub-
serviency, her sons believe they are the best as
well as the freest people in the world.
It is unquestionably from the class which is
the least strict in morals, and least independent
in spirit, that the majority of the hundred thou-
sand English who yearly seek the Continent are
subtracted. The good, plain, honest-minded mil-
lions composing the mass of the rural popula-
tion, or the sober citizens, who frequent the tem-
ple for love of the Deity and humbly practise
what the preacher recommends, furnish scanty
contingents to the emigration; or they absent
THE ENGLISH A BROAD. 7
themselves from home for a period too short to
entitle them to be classed among “the English
abroad.” Neither do the members of the higher
orders, with few exceptions, domiciliate themselves
in foreign countries long enough to give them a
place among those Continental colonists. No.
It is from that incongruous mass of individuals
who either float on the surface of society, or are
wrenched from their moorings in it by some acts
of imprudence, or accidents of misfortune, that
the towns of France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy,
and Germany, are thronged, animated, enriched,
and with regret it must be admitted, at times dis-
graced. For that promiscuous crowd frequently
falls into a pharisaical licentiousness, marvellous
to the natives whom it unceasingly reprobates as
publicans and sinners.
There is probably no subject of vital interest to
the community on which the generality of English-
men are so strongly agreed as the imperfection of
the system of English education in the universities,
public schools, and private seminaries. For half a
century the press has teemed with treatises on the
subject, which has also repeatedly attracted the
attention of Parliament and learned societies, and
has indeed been a matter of national complaint
since the days of Milton. The educational plan
of the public schools has been in some degree
8 BEATEN PATHS.
improved. But it still continues narrow and
illiberal, even in reference to the times when they
were instituted; inadequate and absurd as re-
spects the present. Independent of the deficiency
in many points of moral instruction, setting aside
the evils of fagging and flogging, it can scarcely
be denied that the deficiency of instruction in
the living languages of Europe is altogether in-
excusable. And to this glaring defect may be
attributed much of the inconvenience, and not a
few of the errors, into which Englishmen fall or
are betrayed during their Continental travels.
To classify by their motives for emigration the
English who inhabit the Continent—taking into
view the many gradations from the men of for-
tune to the mere adventurers—would be quite
impossible. But it may be safely asserted that
not one in a hundred of those who quit England
for the first time possesses a just notion of the
people among whom they are about to pitch their
tents for a season, or it may be to settle them-
selves for life. There is matter neither for won-
der nor reproach in this.
This ignorance is to be sure more or less com-
mon to all countries; and there are few indeed
so excusable as ours for even an exaggerated con-
sciousness of its own power and influence. With-
out labouring through statistics, or accumulating
THE ENGLISH ABROAD. 9
proofs to establish a truism, the fact of English
greatness is now universally admitted; and I
may safely add, that the glorious advantages it
confers are accompanied with drawbacks that in
certain cases cause a deterioration in the national
character. This was more particularly the case in
former days than it is in ours. The world has
of late opened its arms to English intercourse.
And a generation that visits a foreign people
whom it has never known as foes, is naturally
susceptible to the kindlier influence of feeling,
from being ignorant of the fierce jealousies and
bitter envies of their fathers before them.
It was not merely that Englishmen, until with-
in the last half-century, were nurtured in the
belief of their own enormous superiority, but
they were also taught a most unfair and under-
valuing estimate of others. It was the narrow
and false policy of governments and public writ-
ers, taking advantage of the insular position of
England, to cherish a general state of ignorance
among the people in regard to those of the Con-
timent, but more particularly as to our “natural
enemies” and “lively neighbours,” as the French
were long, with odious prejudice or contemptuous
courtesy, called.
I might heap quotations—“pile up the agony,”
in Yankee phrase—to prove how British authors
| 0 BEATEN PATH S.
laboured to foster the error. But the following
portrait (from Johnson’s ‘London '), coarse and
outrageous as it is, may suffice to show the model
on which untravelled Englishmen were wont to
build their notions of Frenchmen and French
character.
“All that at home no more can beg or steal,
Or like a gibbet better than a wheel;
Hissed from the stage, or hooted from the court,
Their air, their dress, their politics import.
Obsequious, artful, voluble, and gay,
On Britain's fond credulity they prey ;
No gainful trade their industry can 'scape,
They sing, they dance, clean shoes, or catgut scrape,”
All sciences a fasting Monsieur knows,
And bid him go to hell, to hell he goes.”
It was thus that a false picture of the Con-
tinental, and more emphatically of the French,
character was held up to the English mind,
through centuries of rivalry and war; and it is
only by slow degrees that the true colours have
been gradually appearing. The English going
abroad with erroneous opinions actually made
the newly-seen people what they were determined
to find them, as prophecies so often bring
about their own fulfilment. For the French,
acute, prompt, and clear-sighted, discovered at a
glance how they were looked on by the new-
* This is a slight but I hope a decent deviation from the
text.
THE ENGITISH ABROAD. | 1
comers; and from a spirit of counteracting reci-
procity, they treated as fools those who believed
them to be rogues; and they turned to their own
profit the ignorance which condemned them be-
fore trial.
It is a great mistake to judge the character of
a nation by its treatment of foreigners. It is as
often a consequence as a cause. And it should
be borne in mind, when one thing follows another
(like the effect we have just traced from what
provoked it), that every sequence is not a conse-
quence. Darkness follows light in the succession
of the laws of nature. But one light may suc-
ceed to another without any violation of natural
results. So, when foreigners act towards English-
men in ways that appear unworthy, the latter
should reflect that their own conduct may have
given the provocation; and that when even a
different course from the usual one occurs, they
ought not to suppose it a variation from the
national character, assumed for some sinister
purpose. But Englishmen newly launched on
the sea of travel rarely pause to take an observa-
tion. They are too much filled with considera-
tions of self to allow of time for any other; and
they pursue their course, thinking nothing more
required for a prosperous voyage than gold for
their ballast and self-importance by way of sails.
12 BEATEN PATHS.
The English population abroad fluctuates con-
siderably. But it is marvellous to mark the
strong family likeness which pervades the mass,
and to see how similar the construction of society
and the habit of temporary or permanent settlers
in one given place are to those in any other.
The English character is so thoroughly imita-
tive, that it rarely shows the contrasts which
constitute originality. We see masses of English
men and women apparently the same in habits
of thought and action. Each class apes the one
next above it in dress, manners, and opinions.
The very costume is the same in all the ranks.
The lady hands over her old gowns to the lady's
maid, who in her turn disposes of them to an
inferior servant; and so they go down as long as
the rags hold together, till the beggar in the
streets wears raiments of the same cut and pat-
tern of that of the duchess.
Not so on the Continent. Both in great mat-
ters and in small, independence is much more
prevalent. Every rank has its respective style of
dress, and would consider itself disgraced by
adopting another's. The servility of tone in-
spired by deference to colossal fortunes or privi-
leged station, has little comparative nourishment.
The mind is not cramped in early youth by the
exclusive drudgery of classical study, unmitigated
THE ENGLISPH ABROAD. 13
by that of general literature and the arts. Virtual
equality is the prevalent principle. Each man
follows his own bent. There is a constantly
occurring variety of character and manners.
Every one, in fact, seems more or less an original.
But in England it is the high patricians who
give the tone to all below them. Rank after
rank becomes to a certain degree infected with
their morgue. The middle classes are tainted with
it throughout. And that portion of them who
are admitted to the banquets of the great, are
like the prolific tribe of insects called Aphides,
which receives its colour from the quality of the
plant it feeds on.
The conclusion to be drawn from these re-
marks is, that although in reference to each other
the English people are very much alike, they
appear to other people, whom they so little re-
semble, a nation of originals; while foreigners
have so many distinctive personal peculiarities
that when individually contrasted each appears
sui generis, a separate sample of its kind.
English families living abroad are, in a great
majority of instances, possessed of a certain
income, derivable from some sure source at
home, sufficient for their support, independent
of any professional or chance pursuit connected
with the foreign country they inhabit. And this
14 BEATEN PATHS.
accounts for their general air of indifference and
independence in reference to the people among
whom they fix themselves.
It is next to be observed that not one in
a hundred families starts from home with the
intention of remaining for life and death in any
one given place abroad, or with any perfectly de-
fined place of settlement. Pleasure, economy,
and the education of children being the great
objects of almost all, their voyage is one of dis-
covery ; and this choice of a residence is almost
always the result of chance, the probability of a
change being always in their mind. From these
causes scarcely any of the emigrants have any
strong hold on any one locality, from ties of
affection or dependence. They hire their houses,
either furnished by the month or unfurnished for
short terms—“three, six, or nine years,” being
the almost invariable wording of the leases; and
few tenants contemplate, when they sign their
agreements, a longer sojourn than the shortest of
those periods.
The consequence of all this is to make those
temporary tenants looked on by themselves and
others as mere birds of passage; to give them
loose habits of domestic arrangement and un-
certain feelings towards those they associate
with, whether it be the natives or their own
THE ENGLISH ABROAD. 15
compatriots. None of the links that form a
social chain exist in a community so constructed.
Independent of each other as to pecuniary re-
sources, unconnected in interests, divided in
opinions, and without any common plan of do-
mestic polity, they are bound together by ties of
gossamer. Coming from a country the wealthi-
est in the world in all the external advantages of
life—that is to say, in comforts, elegancies, and
conveniences—they look little below the surface
of things around them; and they see such mani-
fest inferiority in these outward and visible signs
as to satisfy them that they are of a race far
superior in all the better attributes of civilization.
They rarely examine the qualities of heart and
mind which raise the people of the Continent to
so high a level of enjoyment, the absence of fac-
titious wants, the philosophy of home manage-
ment, the richness of family affection, that bless-
ing that passeth show.
From this mistaken view and the contempt it
generates comes indifference towards others and
too often carelessness of themselves. They ac-
knowledge no immediate standard of moral con-
duct, no tribunal of public opinion, no neighbourly
“board of control.” Every one forms a line—
and few a straight one—for himself. Every one
constitutes himself a judge—and rarely a just
16 BEATEN PATHS.
one—of his neighbour. An undisciplined extra-
vagance pervades the whole. All the little passions
are let loose, without any of the counteracting
checks of a community which is restrained to a
certain circle, and which knows that to bear and
forbear is not only an impulse of generosity but
a duty of self-preservation. The English abroad
acknowledge no such salutary principle. To
swear eternal friendship on a week’s acquaint-
anceship, and to cast off a constant associate on
an hour's notice, are everyday events. The fa-
miliarity which they practise towards each other
has not the delightful tone of a long-cherished
intercourse. It is but the necessity of their false
position. Here to-day and gone to-morrow, they
have not time to let companionship ripen into
confidence. They must force an intimacy into
unnatural growth, and either mistaking or mis-
naming its nature call it friendship. Such friend-
ship is a flower which sheds no fragrance in its
blooming, and which is torn up and flung to the
winds without a sigh.
When the English settlers choose their loca-
lity, the great objects of their solicitude are to
select the persons whom they are to know, and
to avoid those whom they should not know.
Wedded to the system which unhappily prevails
at home, appearance is the test which regulates
THE ENGLISH ABROAD. 17
their choice. Little inquiry into the real respect-
ability, the essential “whereabout” of those around
them is entered on. But many questions are put
as to the fortune, the connections, the way of life
(that is to say, the dinners and soirées) of the
various families. Letters of introduction to some
members of this society generally put them in
the way of gaining information. But ten to one
fhe information is false or prejudiced, influenced
by pique, jealousy, or some other element of the
uncharitableness which taints the whole. The
bewildered inquirer is thus often led into serious
scrapes, rushing into intimacies which it soon be-
comes advisable to break up, and avoiding ac-
quaintanceships which it becomes too late to
cultivate when they are found to be desirable.
These evils are inevitable in the larger cities
where there are materials for selection ; for the
English society is sure to be split into cliques
and cofferies and sets, avoiding and despising, or
affecting to despise, each other.
In the smaller towns, where the settlers can
make no choice at first but must visit all, they
are sure to discover before an interchange of
cards takes place, or at any rate at the very first
soirée they assist at, that quarrels, calumnies,
and fierce estrangements disfigure the whole
round of social life. Quickly disgusted with this
WOIL. II. C
18 BEATEN PATHS.
state of things, in which they are sure by-and-by
to become participators in their own despite, they
seek out a less objectionable circle. Picking up
some chance visitors among the native residents
(invariably called “foreigners” by the English
abroad) they make fawning advances to those,
the best portion of whom stand aloof from, while
the disreputable laugh at—and live on them. It
is really mortifying to observe the estimate formed
of the English character by “foreigners,” who
attribute to the nation at large defects which are
but conventional results of the false position of
individuals.
It may be safely said, without disparagement
or libel, that an immense majority of the English
abroad have never been in habits of extensive
or familiar intercourse with the nobility at home.
The exclusive system of the latter class puts a
bar between it and that which furnishes these
Continental contingents. And when they find
themselves all at once in the fatal facility for
titled foreign acquaintanceships, is it surprising
that they play fantastic tricks, while they travestie
High Life? When such persons get into daily
intercourse with a crowd of noblesse it is by no
means strange that they should misunderstand
the latter and forget themselves. They cannot
argue by comparison. They know nothing of the
THE ENGLISH ABROAD. 19
philosophy which teaches that wealth and poverty
should not be estimated by positive proofs alone;
that what men want is as much to be taken into
account as what they possess; and that the noble-
man of small income on the Continent may be
in reality a richer man than the affluent English
Lord. Seeing nothing of the great wealth or the
patronizing arrogance which was associated with
their notions of nobility, they consider it as shorn
of half its beams. Ignorant or unbelieving of
Dryden's definition,
“The nobleman is he whose noble mind
Is filled with inborn worth,”
they view as a defect the unconstrained suavity
which is the most pleasing attribute of high rank.
With the vulgar-minded, but with them alone,
“familiarity breeds contempt.” And those im-
bued with that worst of all vulgarity which attends
the want of self-respect, believe a haughty bearing
to be the legitimate type of birth and title. They
are thus led into a labyrinth of errors. Worship-
ping the symbol rather than the faith, they take
the absence of the one as evidence of the want of
the other. The good breeding of the foreign
noble is considered want of dignity (that favourite
word of the underbred); and the unembarrassed
simplicity which they hold so cheap is thought less
indicative of fashionable polish than their own
C 2
20 BEATEN PATHS.
painful uneasiness to be at their ease. But not-
withstanding this, they defer to and worry with
their intimacy the very persons they so under-
value. And why? Simply from pride in having
a stupid marquis or antiquated duchess on their
visiting list; and in being able to write to their
friends and to say to themselves—ay, even to
themselves, for that is audience enough for vain-
gloriousness when no larger is at hand—that they
associate with nobility.
And when a travelling group of English aristo-
cracy passes through, or a straggling family stops
for a winter in some small capital or rests for the
summer in a watering-place, what empressement
is lavished by those who strive to wriggle into
high society How the servile herd, meaner than
the servum pecus of Horace, flock round each new
arrival, and load the table with visiting cards and
invitations ! How they strain every nerve in
bending sycophancy! Piety, modesty, learning,
and all the respectable qualities of our nature
might lie neglected for ever, by those whose at-
tentions are given in a direct ratio with the reci-
pients' place in the list of precedence, or their
rank in the Red Book.
The system of society adopted by the English
abroad is naturally much affected by those who
stand officially and by prescription at its head.
THE ENGLISH ABROAD. 2]
And the best check to its less reputable ten-
dencies is undoubtedly to be found in the tact
and discretion of the diplomatic and consular
corps. It must be admitted that its members,
to whom I have devoted a chapter elsewhere,
have great claims on indulgence, if individuals
among them do at times show a little unbecoming
pride. Their forbearance is tried with sore temp-
tations. They are very much spoiled by other
people; and they have so much power in small
matters of social intercourse, so much to commu-
nicate or withhold in the way of news, they are
so often appealed to as arbiters or deferred to as
dictators, that they may be excused if they oc-
casionally become the patrons of a set or the pets
of a cofferie.
The influential body of mercantile men may
be designated the phalanx which redeems the
errors and sustains the honour of national repu-
tation, on the long-extended line of Continental
coast from Cronstadt to Cadiz. Though they bear
a small numerical proportion to the whole mass
of emigrants, they combine a vast amount of its
intelligence and worth. It is lucky for England
that the enterprise and industry of the community
have induced so many representatives of her ster-
ling qualities to push their operations into foreign
countries; and to neutralize, by proofs of national
22 BEATEN PATHS.
integrity, the impression forced on the Continental
mind by the spurious gentility of their idle or
dissipated countrymen. The high standing of the
English trading houses of Antwerp, Bordeaux,
Hamburg, Oporto, Leghorn, and other towns is
notorious. But their commercial credit is not
greater than their social value. They often rank
with the foremost of the native firms in influence.
They accumulate large fortunes with unblemished
character. A dishonest failure is rarely heard of
among them. They form an admirable race of
citizens in their adopted countries; and they
hand down from father to son the consciousness
of their English, Scotch, or Irish origin, even
when losing the accent or peculiar manners of
the stock they spring from.
The professional tribes of England are not
slack in sending out supplies to swell the crowd
of make-shift adventurers. Among those neces-
sarily confounded under that head many exem-
plary persons are to be met with. But although
these exceptions are more than are actually re-
quired to prove the rule, they are by no means
so numerous as to leave it doubtful that they are
the exceptions.
Law, Physic, and Divinity being overstocked
at home, a plentiful surplus of long-tried practi-
tioners is drawn off to the Continent, consisting
TIHE ENGLISII ABROAD. 23
not only of those who, from various occult causes
find it convenient to “change their skies” as Ho-
race says, but also of junior members of sundry
degrees of merit, and not unfrequently of looser
pretenders to professional distinction unhonoured
with any degree at all. This last observation
applies more directly to the English medical men
who swarm in the capitals, and of whom two or
three are sure to be gathered together in every
town where a few hundreds of their compatriots
have a local habitation. But I have also heard of
impostors in the guise of clergymen, holding forth
from the pulpit, and dealing out damnation to
their fellow-men with the confidence of official
competency, being all the while unauthorized to
preach even the healing consolations of the
Gospel. &
I know not on what principle law is granted
the precedence in the copartnership which unites
the three professions, according to the common
phrase. But in compliance with precedent (the
great incubus upon our jurisprudence, be it ob-
served in passing), I give the long robe its
admitted priority. To make honourable mention
of all the English lawyers who for forty years
past have practised conveyancing (in its multi-
farious shapes) on the Continent and on their
countrymen, would be a difficult task. In many
24 BEATEN PATIIS.
if not in most instances, the prowling practition-
ers who make foreign countries the scene of their
skill, earn a scanty livelihood at the expense of
unfortunate persons who have been forced from
home by the malpractices of themselves and their
like. This class of animal, which scents out the
embarrassed emigrant as the crow scents carrion,
form but a small item in the total of the English
abroad. The mischief they do is chiefly confined
to their fellow-countrymen. Acting as go-be-
tweens with the spendthrift and the money-lend-
ing agents, in the expedients by which profligacy
drives a trade, and to which honest poverty is
often driven for subsistence, these harpies play a
subordinate part in the drama of national dis-
grace. But the technicalities of the stage may
well be applied to them in carrying out the
metaphor. They are the prompters, scene-
shifters, call-boys, and property-men of the
ci-devant and soi-disanſ men of property, who
sustain the chief characters in the strolling
company of the English abroad. But the hu-
mane and philosophical, though only partial, mea-
sure for the abolition of imprisonment for debt,
which has of late years been passed by the Bri-
tish Parliament, has removed a reproach from
English law, and checked an impure source of
revenue derived by its lowest practitioners.
THE ENGLISH ABROAD. 25
In dealing with physic, which comes next in
order on the professional muster-roll, or rather
with physicians, there is more delicate ground
to touch on and more of it to go over than
during an incursion into the preserves of the
law. The game now in view is far more plenti-
ful. I believe I am rather under than over the
mark in stating the English medical men in
Paris alone at between fifty and sixty. There
must be some hundreds of them scattered over
the Continent. Now, to any one of common
sense, it is immaterial whether those gentlemen
practise under the authority of a diploma or
a license; whether they have a university or
a collegiate degree; whether they be mere bache-
lors of physic or regular M.D.s. Intuitive talent
will raise the humblest in title, or the least emi-
ment in routine, far beyond the quackeries of the
schools. A clever apothecary is preferable to a
stupid doctor. And there are many who from
wielding the pestle, and with just classical learn-
ing enough to read the ‘Pharmacopoeia, have
left far behind in the professional race those who
have Homer and Horace by heart, who could
analyse the tepa Trukpó, and kill Secundum artem.
Admitting this, one may conscientiously de-
nounce the floating mass of false pretension
which, under the denomination of “the faculty,”
26 BEATEN PATH S.
is mixed up with the English abroad. In every
coterie a doctor or doctors will be found. No
family can dispense with the advantage of their
skill, or, as the case may be, be exempt from the
evil of their ignorance. It is almost impossible
to distinguish between the empiric and the man
of science. The self-dubbed physician has the
field as open to him as the regular graduate,
and, like the Burgundians of old, he can proceed
to the slaughter under the badge of St. Andrew—
the patron of the one and the special privilege of
the other. Checks are at times attempted by
foreign governments to the influx of ignorant
practitioners, but in vain. The English abroad
resist to the death. They will, follow their own
system, and fee their own executioners. They are
in this case to be pitied certainly. The foreign
physician lets them die; the English doctor kills
them. It is but a choice of evils; and, like the
Romans of old, they prefer falling at once by the
hands of their own freedmen, to lingering under
the tardy butchery of the stranger.
But the case is too grave for a joke. There is
nothing so sad as serious comedy. And from
the professional buffooneries played by those
travelling quacks such heart-rending conse.
quences arise, so many widows, orphans, and
bereaved parents are the victims of their igno-
THE ENGLISH ABROAD. 27
rance and cupidity, that while placing them in
the literary pillory one cannot laugh at their
grotesque appearance ; mor, affixing the brand
with the gravity of Tristan, assume the levity
of Petit Jean.
Fatal as is the practice of those doctors, in so
many instances, against their patients, their wars
against each other are far worse. Petty feelings
should have small results. Envy ought to ex-
plode in mere ill-nature, and not take the bolder
flight of persecution. But the latter is the ordi-
nary concomitant of the jealousies among the
medical corps abroad. As soon as a new rival
of any merit enters the sacred circle of established
practice, he is beset on all hands by the intrigues
of his brothers in Physic, who often become his
brothers in Law. No stone (morally speaking)
is left unturned by that portion who are only
(physically) fit to break them on the roads, for
the purpose of ruining the interloper who dares
to trespass on their “beat.” That he is duly
licensed to slay is no excuse for him. He is
looked on as a poacher, even though he has taken
out his certificate. And no abuse of power under
the ancient game-laws could exceed the worrying
efforts which are at times put forth to harass the
obnoxious new comer. All the tracasseries of
local restrictions are invoked ; every possible
28 BEATEN PATHS.
technical obstruction brought into play. And
it often happens that a really able man is driven
from the field by the dunces to whom their un-
lucky patients are thus turned over, bound hand
and foot. In most of the Continental capitals,
however, one English medical man of talents and
experience is pretty sure to abide, with discrimi-
nation enough to know that the practice of Lon-
don or Liverpool may not suit the climate of
Lisbon or Naples.
The Episcopalian division of that “supernatu-
ral society of God, angels, and holy men,” called
according to Hooker's definition “the Church,”
is in its natural parts, that is to say the Church-
men, largely represented on the Continent of
Europe.
Whether the spirit of holiness accompanies
them in their traverse of the British Channel,
I do not undertake to decide. But that it de-
parts from a great many of them as soon as they
touch the foreign strand, is a fact at once incon-
testable and grievous.
I deprecate the slightest intention of irreve-
rence in speaking of the Established Church.
Respect for its integrity cannot be shaken by the
misconduct of some of its disciples. And even
if the whole body of the English clergy abroad
were infected with the dissipation which turns so
THE ENGINISH ABROAD. 29
tnany of them from the right path, “the Church”
would rest secure. Notwithstanding its self-
confident torpidity, the practical good sense of
Parliament in weeding out its corruptions will
give new life to all that is wholesome in its
doctrines and practice. And nothing in that
practice more requires reform than the privilege
which allows swarms of beneficed clergymen to
forsake their home duties, for the indulgence of
an absenteeism that leads to so many scandals.
To record those various instances of immora-
lity, and what is in a worldly sense even worse,
an indecent contempt of exposure, would be an
invidious task, and would perhaps after all only
encourage the morbid longing for notoriety which
urges clerical as well as lay offenders to violate
decorum. But it is certain that the quarrels
among British clergymen on the continent of
|Burope, since the Peace of 1815 opened it to
all comers, would furnish matter for an Appen-
dix to Cobbett’s ‘History of the Reformation’
—acute, searching, and unfair as it was—that
would give cordial pleasure to the enemies of
l'Hérésie Anglicane. One real good might result
from such a compilation. By thus embodying
in a general view many isolated instances of
scandal a spirit of shame might be aroused
among the congregations, who submit to or at
30 BEATEN PATHS.
times become parties in the misconduct of their
pastors.
This last-mentioned evil is after all the main
one. It is the mixing up of lay disputants with
the feuds of the divines that casts so deep a slur
on English character. Those persons who have
not travelled much out of England, who form
their notions of clergymen from their own amiable
and modest vicars and curates, and of clerical
conduct from what is practised in the rural
parishes at home, can form no idea of the con-
trast presented by so many of the wanderers in
other lands. But those instances of disgrace are
far more than overbalanced by abounding ex-
amples of respectability. The misfortune how-
ever in cases of this nature is that it is the
exceptions which are always the most prominent.
The man who forgets his cloth is always he who
is en évidence before the world. He brawls in
the streets and bullies in the vestry; turns the
pulpit into a forum of dispute, and by sermons
and pamphlets drags others into his quarrel.
Instead of a minister of peace he becomes a
demon of discord. His track has been too often
traced in the bloody encounters of those whom he
set by the ears. While the ministers who quietly
perform their duties, devoting their leisure hours
to the family or friendly circle, are unheard of
THE ENGLISH ABROAD. 3]
beyond the towns they adorn by their virtues,
and overborne by the notoriety of some petty
place infested by such misdoings as are here
faintly sketched.
The gangs of sporting characters, the “play
men,” the levanters from the racecourse, or the
legs from the clubs, who leave England in peri-
odical flights to settle for a season, or cross the
Channel on some particular scheme of plunder,
do not do half so much mischief to the national
character as the sanctified hypocrites heretofore
alluded to. The chevalier d’industrie is gene-
rally a man who pays his tradesmen's bills,
rarely gets drunk, eschews local squabbles, and
—sticks to his business; which is to prey on the
unwary, or in default of other victims on his
own kind, like fishes of the same tribe who de-
vour each other. A good appearance in the
world is important to this class of men; and it
is rarely that one hears of their absconding with
their bills in arrear, or that during their séjour
they are mixed up in the broils of others. They
herd together. They are not generally admitted
into the upper circles, and the lower ones afford
no field for their manoeuvres. They can scarcely
be said to form a feature of English character.
Come from what country they may, “play men”
very nearly resemble each other in habits of life,
32 BEATEN PATIXS.
I therefore exclude those industriels from my col-
lcction as Plato (but for a different reason) ex-
cluded merchants from his Republic; and leaving
the question of classes for some less wholesale
inquiry, I resume my desultory remarks on
English Continental society.
The difficulty of expressing oneself clearly, in
the language which the very children of the new
people we mix with talk so fluently, puts all for
reigners in some degree out of temper, and it
may be out of conceit with themselves, on the
threshold of the country they are about to pene-
trate. When a man is no longer at his case
he is thrown off his guard. Awkwardness and
mauvaise ſonſe are the parents of many mis-
chiefs. He who is laughed at when he speaks
does not give his audience fair play when he
thinks. An Englishman landing in France in
this dissatisfied mood—and he particularly from
predisposing causes already pointed out—is sure
to take his revenge, by striving to despise the
natives to whom he appears ridiculous. Unable
clearly to explain his wants, he finds out or fan-
cies deficiencies in them. And thus his ignorance
produces action and reaction, discomfort to him-
self and injustice towards others.
It is under the influence of prejudice like this
that the tourist hurries on, and, one evil gene-
TIHE ENGLISH ABROAD. 33
rating another, the further and faster he goes
the greater is his incapacity for fairly judging,
and the less his chance of being fairly judged.
It is quite wonderful how few Englishmen appear
ridiculous at home in comparison with the num-
bers who are so abroad. In the latter case
scarcely one in a score seems to be in his right
place. To use a common but expressive phrase,
almost every one seems to have a screw loose.
And so in reality it is. The want of rational
and regular occupation, the efforts to turn into
new channels for employment, the incongruous
pursuits, and the frequent failures attending
them, set the whole machinery of the English
nam out of order. Instead of one screw, it may
be fairly said that all the screws, wheels, and
springs of the national character are in a state of
dislocation. So that scarcely any individual so
placed can be taken as a fair sample of what
his fellows or himself would be at home. And
thus foreigners, who would form an estimate of
the English people from that portion of it which
they habitually see, are, if I may be pardoned a
poor pun, as much abroad as they are.
And no wonder that foreigners should be so
deceived and mystified, for there is really no
more puzzling masquerade than the spectacle of
thousands of human beings, who in their own
VOI. II. D
34 BEATEN PATH S.
country (whatever their sins of vulgar emulation)
have been almost all fitly employed, undergoing
all at once an unsuitable and unseemly change.
When we consider how many of the faults of
England are carried abroad by those persons, it
is strange to observe how few of its virtues they
take with them. And when these latter do, in
isolated instances, appear, it is in a travestie like
the assumption of historical characters by the
motley crowd in a fancy ball. Thus is seen the
industrious energy of English habits degraded
into ignoble speculations, and manifold mean
shifts and expedients for making money. Men,
whose previous career had formed them for ex-
ertion, attempt its continuance in this new field.
But miscalculation, of one kind or another, al-
most always carries failure in its train. Others,
accustomed to the regular expenditure of a fixed
income, finding that they are richer abroad than
at home, are lured into stock exchange transac-
tions, seduced into private play or horse-racing,
and become ruined from the sheer evil of having
more money than they require for their accus-
tomed wants.
But the absorbing mischief is that position of
idle “gentility,” in which every Briton of the
smallest pecuniary independence finds himself
when settled on the Continent. No matter what
THE ENGLISH ABROAD. 35
he has previously been—whether in trade, whole-
sale or retail, a manufacturer, a farmer, an em-
ployé–he is now a gentleman, by courtesy at
least, and he has every facility for assuming the
nominal attributes of this much abused designa-
tion. Every Englishman who does not abso-
lutely carry on some traffic for the earning of
his daily bread, is on the Continent an esquire
by title and a gentleman by implication. Drop-
ping into these dignities by the mere accident of
their “location,” as a squatter in the far west
of America becomes a proprietor of the soil by
the simple act of pitching his tent on it, it may
be supposed how awkward these lords of the
(chance) creation find themselves. It is much
easier to assume a virtue than to adopt a tone.
The expenditure of a few score pounds may gain
for the donor the reputation of generous hospi-
tality. A judicious bully may pass himself off
for brave. But to play a first-rate part without
previous rehearsal; to act the gentleman, in
short, is the most difficult effort of talent, either
on the shifting stage of society, or on what is
technically called “the boards.” The number-
less failures of the Continental company are
therefore nothing wonderful. And lamentable
exhibitions are seen, of the ridiculous so lofty as
almost to reach the sublime; of meanness so low
D 2
36 T}EATEN PATH S.
as to leave no lower depth ; in efforts to force a
footing into those glittering scenes where all is
puff and paste—like the soufflées of the Salle-à-
manger or the jewels of the ball-room. But form-
ing a contrast to those vulgar aspirants are to
be found, if searched for, large numbers of re-
tiring persons, who with advantages of gentle
blood, education, and true respectability, are sa-
tisfied with the enjoyment of some small con-
genial circle, or who in default of that keep aloof
from society altogether.
To live within one's income is almost consi-
dered a cardinal virtue by the natives of the
Continent. Domestic economy may perhaps be
carried too far in France, Italy, and Germany, to
square with English notions of fashionable en-
joyment. But for real happiness that system is
assuredly the best which makes show subservient
to comfort, and which regulates the outlay of
money by the gratification of personal tastes
rather than by the exigencies of public opinion.
The difference of feeling in this respect is exem-
plified by the fact that “foreigners” never sub-
mit to a standard of general appearances, while
among the English abroad few attempt to resist
it. If, for instance, the happincss of “foreigners”
depends on keeping a carriage, or a box at the
theatre, or a good table, or expensive dress, they
THE ENGI, ISH A BROAD. 37
indulge in that one particular enjoyment to the
exclusion of others, if they have not means suffi-
cient to accomplish all. With the English, on
the contrary, it is all or none. If they sport an
equipage, they will feel called upon to give din-
ners, balls, and routs. A opera-box entails a
whole suite of expenditure. Everything must be
done in what is called Æeeping. And this, be it
observed, not for one's comfort or liking, but for
mere appearance sake, and to escape the stric-
tures of the Mrs. Grundys of the victim's parti-
cular world.
The consequence is continued embarrassment
and great disrepute. Many accessory errors add
to these evils. The comparative cheapness of
wine and other luxuries encourages a profuse
outlay, which more than meets the difference
of housekeeping in England. Three dinners
abroad for one at home, with a superabundance
of champagne and claret, instead of port and
sherry in moderation, soon leaves the balance
at the wrong side of the book, and the Amphy-
trion becomes too often a defaulter and a fugitive.
The horses, carriages, and furniture come to the
hammer; the reputation is broken up with the
establishment; and all that remains is the empty
fame of an undiscriminating hospitality, lavished
on thankless partakers, and furnished at the
38 BEATEN PATHS.
expense of confiding creditors and the heavy cost
of personal character.
But many of the regular and bill-paying Eng-
lish abroad are at times conspicuous for bad taste,
which is in its effects almost as injurious as bad
conduct. A general arrogance of manner to-
wards the natives of inferior degree goes far to
engender unpopularity. Tradesmen and servants
are treated with ungenerous disdain. The con-
sequence is that the English are often ill-supplied
and ill-attended. Their overbearing airs towards
the lower classes are however not less offensive
than a too frequent forwardness of demeanour in
the higher circles. At the various Continental
courts it is a common complaint that English
people, with little chance of being received at
their own, thrust themselves before the most
honourable of the natives. If foreigners dislike
the English, it is not entirely for the mischief
they have received at their hands. To have been
beaten by them in war is not half so galling as
to be slighted by them in peace. It is lament-
able to the real cosmopolite to see how few of
the privileges of citizenship the English in ge-
neral have acquired abroad after so many years
of association.
And now, in looking back on what I have
written, with a conscientious certainty that there
THE ENGLISH ABROAD. 39
is no exaggeration in it, I fear it may lead to a
conclusion hostile to the English system of emi-
gration to the Continent. Such is far from my feel-
ing. I think, on the contrary, that all the better
purposes of civilization are eminently advanced
by the free intercourse so long existing with
the various countries of Europe. Nothing else
could so conduce to the expansion of the national
mind, dammed up as it had been by so many
previous years of war and isolation. But so great
a good must be bought at a high price ; and
that is paid at the expense of a whole generation.
The large masses of English who have taken the
lead in exploring the ways of Continental life are
like the early settlers in a new-found district,
who hew their paths to information through un-
known depths, misled by false lights, and meet-
ing many mishaps by carrying their own habits
of thought and action into uncongenial regions.
The parallel is not meant to go further. The
comparison applies only to persons, not to places.
Otherwise the figure should be reversed; for the
general tone of social life on the Continent of
Europe compared with that of the New World,
is like a cultivated field contrasted with a half-
cleared swamp.
It is true there are enjoyments to be found in
England utterly unknown elsewhere. But taking
40 BEATEN PATHS.
the whole social plan into view, every unpreju-
diced Englishman will admit its insufficiency for
persons of moderate income and of middle sta-
tion. It is on the Continent that one learns the
the art of making small means square with ele-
gant desires. The opportunity for learning this
lesson, and the certainty that its practice will be
gradually introduced into the British Isles, are
enough to counterbalance many of the evils
pointed out in this chapter. But it is the chil-
dren of the absentees who reap the advantages
of their expatriation. Few of the grown-up per-
sons who quit the long-indulged habits of English
life for a residence abroad are satisfied with or
improved by the change. The perverseness of old
prejudices prevents their profiting by it. But
the children, who are born on or brought over
early to, a foreign soil, acquire by an instinct of
adaptation what no experience can teach. The ac-
complishments, ease, and independence of foreign
manners are insensibly grafted on the stem of
English feelings. It is astonishing how the young
so situated seem intuitively to blend the better
parts of their own national character with those
of the foreign people with whom they are asso-
ciated, but not confounded, from the cradle up.
And when those persons, on their education
being finished, return home, their example ine-
THE ENGLISH A BROAD. 41
vitably tends to soften the character of their na-
tion. A better understanding on the great ques-
tions of international intercourse, on the true
principles of foreign policy, on social analogies
or anomalies, is the consequence. Intermar-
riages with foreigners lead to more liberal views
of national distinctions. A thousand kindly
sources of feeling are opened up; and the wells
of public opinion are no longer poisoned by pre-
judice. All these and many concomitant bless-
ings may be looked forward to with growing
certainty. But perhaps they are to be only fully
developed at a more distant day from a state
of things, whose evils form an inevitable neces-
sity.
42
CHAPTER II.
THOMAS MOORE.
DURING my several years' residence in France,
and subsequently in Belgium, Holland, and Ger-
many, with the occasional visits to England
alluded to in a former chapter, I formed associa-
tions with many eminent men, shining lights in
our literature; besides others of less note, but
possessing qualities of great value for social in-
timacy and private regard. Ladies of literary
pursuits and admitted talents were largely in-
terspersed with celebrities of the other sex;
and the memory of many hours of convivial
and intellectual enjoyment, tempts me to pay
a passing tribute to the genius, the taste, and the
varied accomplishments of those who adorned
the scenes I mixed in. But I restrain, for the
present, at least, the natural prompting of my
mind. I will confine myself to a few of the
THOMAS MOORE. 43
more prominent among the men I knew so well;
selecting from the memoranda included in a
manuscript book, to which I am not willing to
prefix the title “common-place;” and, adjusting
them into consecutive order, I will begin with
one of the most distinguished, and, probably, all
things considered, the most agreeable of those
men, passing notices of Some others coming inci-
dentally into the sketch.
My acquaintance with Moore began by a chance
meeting, as I was walking one day, with the Rev.
Lionel Berguer, in the spring of 1821, in the
Champs Élysées at Paris. I had very much
wished for such an opportunity of an introduction
to him ; for I always disliked the formality of
letters, for that especial purpose, to eminent men,
and had never sought for any for this object. Of
Moore's talents I had an enthusiastic opinion.
Of his person I had scarcely formed any particu-
lar motion beyond his being, like Portocarero the
Spanish commander (according to De Thou),
“of a soul altogether disproportioned to his body,”
or as Homer expresses it, in Pope's version,
“Of Tydeus’ kind,
Whose little body held a mighty mind.”
My first impression on seeing Moore was wonder
at his very short stature. He fell quite below
even my imagined standard. But his extremely
44 BEATEN PATH S.
affable and pleasant manner soon made me indif-
ferent to his personal appearance. Among other
agreeable things he said he had nearly quarrelled
with Washington Irving for not making us ac-
quainted a few days before, when I stopped for a
minute in a crowd on the Boulevards to speak to
the latter, while he and Moore were walking
together, on which occasion I had totally over-
looked the Poet. He begged I would call on him
at his cottage in the Allée des Veuves, close by
our place of meeting ; and I parted from him,
with a most favourable notion of his address and
IY18.]]]]6. I’S.
This was greatly strengthened on my after-
acquaintance. There was something very pecu-
liar in Moore’s “outward man.” His whole tone
and air, both in look, speech, and accent, was of
the best kind of Irish good-breeding. There was
a social warmth in all, mingled with a dash of
ambitious vanity, as if he was anxious to please
and conscious of pleasing. But this was without
anything forced—no effort and no presumption.
Yet there was a certain self-satisfied mixture with
his cordiality, hard to describe, and which it was
impossible to be angry with. Knowing the man's
merit one made allowance for his consciousness
of what every one knew.
Moore and I soon became good friends in the
THOMAS MOOR.E. 45
common acceptation of the term; but I had at
that time done nothing to make me an object of
interest sufficient to gain a passport to his friend.
ship. Had I been a lord, or a lord’s cousin, or a
successful author, there is little doubt but I might
have then figured on his list; but his weak point
was certainly an assumed fastidiousness of taste
in the selection of his friends—if indeed it is not
a blasphemy to imagine true friendship to be
dependent on the mere rank or talent of its ob-
ject. I discovered early, and was greatly sur-
prised at Moore's sensitiveness on two points;
namely, his own littleness of stature, and the
opinions of persons of bon fon. I remember his
telling me one day, as we went out in a carriage
together to Versailles to a dinner-party, that
while he was at the university, and about seventeen
or eighteen years of age, he was greatly tempted to
hang himself, in actual despair. On pressing him
for the cause of such extravagant regret, for a
personal defect which a strong mind should rise
above, he said it was fear of his small stature
being a bar to all chance of success with the fair
sex. Our conversation turned on personal defects
generally. He described vividly the horrid sen-
sation he one day felt, in hearing the 8/umping on
the floor of Lord Byron's club foot, as he lost his
temper in a sparring-match with Mendoza at his
46 BEATEN PATHS.
own house, and furiously pursued the retreating
bruiser across the room ; recalling to my mind the
stony tramp of the Commendatore as he came to sup
with Don Juan. Moore was subject to frequent
bitter annoyances on the score of his size. A cer-
tain Irish physician, whom he patronized, and who
obtained a small notoriety by a quarrel with Ugo
Foscolo, once coarsely told Moore that Theodore
Hook said “he looked as if begotten between a
toad and a Cupid.” This gave a severe and pain-
ful notion of Moore's rosy, smiling face and his
thick body. His head bore no proportion to his
limbs. Sitting down, his shortness of stature was
not apparent. At dinner in Paris one day, at our
mutual friend Villamil’s, a wealthy and hospitable
Spaniard, a rough, blunt Captain in the Navy, who
was asked expressly to meet Moore, came in after
all the company were seated; and with anxious
eyes glancing round the table and seeing no one
so disproportionately small as he expected, he
said to our host, “Well, here's a pretty business
—You promised to have little Tommy Moore
here—this isn’t fair l’” When Moore, in some
confusion, got off his chair to be introduced in
form, the plain-spoken tar made the matter worse
by some bungling excuse which I forget, but
which quite upset the Poet for the rest of the
* “A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest.”—Pope.
THOMAS MOORE. 47
evening. He was on another occasion greatly
annoyed by young Edward Hutchinson, a boy
of ten years old, asking him in a large circle in
the drawing-room “if he were really little Tommy
Moore that wrote the Melodies?”
At the occasion on which I saw Moore most
painfully tormented by the application of one of
those inelegant diminutives to his name, was at
the public dinner given to him at Paris, previous
to his return to live in England in the year 1821.
The Rev. Archibald Douglas, Richard Power, of
Kilfane, Major Bryan, and some others of Moore's
friends, among whom none were more active than
myself, got up this most congenial compliment,
which took place in the great dining-room of the
“Salon des Étrangers,” in the Rue de la Grange
Batelier. It was well attended. Upwards of
sixty highly respectable persons met together.
Very many were refused tickets under pretence
of the number being complete. Nothing could
* A near connection of mine dined once in company with
Moore many years before I became acquainted with him,
and while, though far advanced in manhood, he preserved his
youthfulappearance. On the ladies retiring, Moore rose to open
the door for them, when a French gentleman, one of the
guests, (who, not speaking English, had been rather bored by
what he considered the boyish garrulity of the Poet during
dinner,) exclaimed in great glee, “Ah le petit bonhomme
s'en va.”—“The little boy is taking himself off!”
48 BEATEN PATH S.
exceed the good cheer or good effect of the
whole thing. I was one of the stewards, and in
that capacity had written an invitation to Lord
Trimleston to act as President. The Marquess
of Sligo was first asked, but he declined attending
altogether, because his notorious friend, Colonel
S (afterwards more notorious for his duel with
Loraine White), was excluded by common con-
sent. Lord Trimleston agreed, in a very friendly
written answer, which contained a not una-
musing bull.” He said “he should be proud
to preside at any meeting to do honour to our
illustrious countryman, whose talents placed him
immeasurably above the reach of his contempo-
raries, but whose conviviality brought every one
on a level with him.” The worthy peer meant
a very handsome compliment, but Moore and
we of the committee very irreverently laughed
at his way of paying it. . At dinner it was,
however, no laughing matter. The noble chair-
man, who had the Poet seated at his right hand,
persisted on all occasions in calling him “his
friend Tom,” and made the most ſauches allu-
sions, in his toast-proposing speeches, to Moore's
* His Lordship was remarkable for that species of blunder.
He was, in fact, more a Frenchman than an Irishman, being
not only born, but educated, in Paris. One day, at a public
dinner in Ireland, he lamented “having been born out of his
native country.”
THOMAS MOORE. 49
minor poetry, his “verses to the Betties, and
Mollies, and Jennies,”—all memory of which,
Moore wished sunk in the very bottom of Lethe
on this grand occasion. But he smothered his
annoyance as best he could; made several excel-
lent off-hand speeches, and sang many songs,
turning round from the table for the purpose of
accompanying himself on a piano which stood
behind his chair. The evening went off very
well. Many ready speeches were made—some
of them being, no doubt, ready-made speeches—
and various songs sung. I exhibited in both
ways, though extremely hoarse from a severe
cold, but Moore insisted that nobody should sing
my song but myself.” Sir Godfrey Webster, one
of the stewards, was distinguished among the
speakers; also Douglas, who had been long cele-
brated in Ireland as a preacher of charity ser-
mons; and Patrick Lattin, an Irishman of good
fortune and great talent, who knocked down
several glasses and decanters in the energy of
his action.
A certain Sir John Byerly, covered with stars
(nobody seemed to know where they fell from)
made speeches and spouted verses, at first to the
* Moore mentions this dinner and my song in his Diary,
vol. iv. p. 17. It was printed in an account of the enter-
tainment, but I preserved no copy of it.
WOL. II. E
50 BEATEN PATHS.
amusement, but afterwards to the annoyance of
the company, by whom he was left the last at the
table, and the only one who showed the slightest
symptom of excess.
It was at this dinner that I was introduced by
Moore to Captain Medwin, of whom more here-
after. Kenney the dramatist, who lived at this
time at Versailles, came over to the feast to do
honour to his friend Moore, making light of a
double-Napoleon in such a cause. But Horace
Smith, who also resided there, refused my invita-
tion, on the score of the high price of the tickets,
which greatly hurt Moore; and which gave me
the first insight into the foible of my friend
Horace's character, but it was very far over-
balanced by his charming social qualities and his
genuine kindness of heart.
Kenney was extremely hospitable. Smith also
but in a modified degree. They each gave din-
ners occasionally; the first not half so often as
he wished. Kenney felt pleasure in entertaining
his friends, so did Smith. And while the one
did it chiefly by the aid of good cheer and con-
viviality, the other contributed a large quota of
puns and pleasantry. Smith's efforts never failed.
He was very ready in conversation, and always in
good spirits. Kenney was sometimes hypochon-
driacal, but his parties were entirely without pre-
THOMAS MOORE). 5.1
tension. Hospitality was always there; ostenta-
tion never.
I remember particularly one day that Moore,
Washington Irving, and myself went out to some
distance from Paris on a long invitation, to a dif.
ferent style of repast, to meet Kenney, Horace
Smith, Poole the dramatic writer, Howard Payne
once known as the “American Roscius,” but at
the period I now refer to an adapter of pieces
from the French for the London theatres, and
withal a very unassuming and amiable man.
Poole was somewhat of a contrast to him, but
not without a sly, dry humour that was more
amusing than kindly. There were several other
persons present. We arrived at the hour fixed,
and were welcomed by our host and hostess.
Never yet did the chancemedley distribution of
matrimony throw together a couple more dis-
similar in appearance and manner; but I believe
they were not only tied but attached to each other.
He was small, nervous-looking, and narrow-
shouldered. She stout-built, talkative, and using
action enough to form a dozen orators according
to Cicero's recipe. The host was a mere nobody
when she was present; yet she did not by any
means bully him. As she expanded he shrank
into himself; but there was neither tyranny
on one hand, nor submission or the other. Only
E 2
52 BEAT EN PATH S.
that in speaking of the pair you would naturally
say wife and man—Mrs. and Mr. M.–and rather
call her his sirloin than his rib.
The quart d'heure de Rabelais was on this
occasion spun out most intolerably. It seemed
as if some dreadful accident had occurred in the
kitchen and that dinner was put off sine die. The
confusion of the family and the hunger of the
guests combined to make the scene very painful.
Mr. M became distressingly fidgety, paced
up and down the room, rang the bell, and made
excuses. The lady bustled about and made
exits and entrances innumerable. Several servants
and children were running hurry-scurry through
the house. Everybody was worn out. Appetite
which so sharpens wit lost its own edge. Not a
joke was started nor a pun flushed. There was
plenty of steel and flint, but nothing to bring
them into collision. Of the dozen guests there
was certainly not one so completely flambé, or
as Shakspeare expresses the French idea, so
thoroughly flabberyasted, as Moore.
At length after a mortal hour and half of ex-
pectation dinner was announced, and downstairs
we went in solemn procession, more suited to a
funeral than a feast. The weather was extremely
hot. The dining-room small, a profusion of
viands was steaming on the table. But 'tis a
THOMAS MOORE. 53
jeu de régle on such occasions—the soup was cold
and the wine warm. Yet that was the case only
with those bottles of win ordinaire which gar-
nished the table, our provident hostess having had
placed a couple of dozen at least of high-priced
growths and promiscuous kinds in a capacious
tub filled with water. Unluckily however the
various paper labels pasted on the different flasks
were all washed off, and they floated on the surface
like fishes, leaving the contents of the flasks to be
guessed at. The invitations to drink wine and
the hobnobbing & l'anglaise, not abolished in
those days, commenced quickly. “What do you
prefer? White or red? Sauterne or Chablis P
Madeira or sherry P. Bordeaux or Burgundy ?”
were questions naturally put and innocently an-
swered, no one imagining the difficulty of giving
a practical reply. A clumsy servant plunging his
hand into the tub to extract a bottle of Madeira,
several of which had, contrary to all the rules of
taste, been put into the water with the Champagne
and other boissons, seized on a bottle of Burton
ale, uncorked it and filled a bumper into the glass
of the Poet. It was dead and unfrothing. So
Moore without remarking the colour drank it off
Imagine his astonishment and disgust when his
palate recovered the shock. He was upset totally.
He could not even attempt to rally. Smith could
54 BEATEN PATH S.
not muster a pun. Irving, as usual with him at
a dinner-party, fell asleep in his chair. Nobody
had strength to shake off the wet blanket that
covered the company; the stories which every one
had come prepared with, no one had the heart to
tell; and we were all sinking into silent stupidity
when our hostess roused us into wonderment by
suddenly calling on Moore “to give us a song”!
This was really electrical. The best-devised
effort to overcome our torpidity could not so
effectually have succeeded. A loud burst of
laughter escaped from the whole party. Our host-
ess had tact enough to profit by the opportunity.
She rose, and with a couple of ladies her guests
beat a retreat. Irving in a fit of desperation
roused up from his map and began to tell “a real
snake story " as the Yankees say, or some other
kind of story, no matter what. It quite answered
the purpose meant. We became all at once
gay and garrulous. Heaven knows what turn
the conversation took. When the coffee was an-
nounced we were in high glee ; and the road to
Paris echoed with many a hearty laugh from the
carriage in which Moore, Irving, myself, and one
more (Villamil I believe) went back late in the
might, for the fun of which the day had held no
promise.
But we of Paris never again availed ourselves
THOMAS MOORE. 55
of our country friend's hospitality. Moore and
myself went once more to Versailles to dine at
Smith's (I see by Moore's Diary that it was on
June 3rd, 1822), and we found the greatest pos-
sible contrast to the sketch I have just given.
A small party, a plain dinner, well dressed and
punctually served, lively discourse, and easy if not
elegant manners. Berguer was one of the com-
pany, and the conversation turning on French
politeness, he mentioned as an exception a fellow
once having insulted him in the street, “and
on my remonstrating with him,” said Berguer
in his drawling way, “he actually spit upon me!”
“Oh, then he was not a Frenchman, he was
a Spitzberger,” replied Horace. This was a
fair specimen of his readiness, though many of
his jokes were far better, and sometimes as far-
fetched.
At a dinner-table Moore almost invariably took
the lead in conversation and almost always kept
it, at least when men only were his competitors.
Washington Irving told me an amusing anecdote
of Lady Holland's manner of extinguishing Moore
sometimes. I once myself saw him completely
crushed by Hookham Frere, who was certainly a
very agreeable talker and a wittier man than
Moore in mere talk; but greatly deficient in the
convivial abandon, the rambling egotism, and
65 BEATEN PATH S.
tact of story-telling which so peculiarly distin-
guished Moore. I remember on the day I allude
to, Frere was very fluent on the subject of Lord
Erskine, dead not long before. He recited several
of his vers de société and circonstance not pub-
lished. The conversation turning some way or
other upon Potatoes, Moore mentioned an adver-
tisement he had that morning seen of a new spe-
cies, which bore the tuber on the stalk above-
ground and was called by the importer and ad-
vertiser “the ethereal potato.”
“A symbol of O’Connell's eloquence,” said
Frere, and every one voted it a fair hit. But
though it was not very brilliant I don’t think
Moore ever said anything in my hearing quite so
ready. He was not gifted with a great power of
repartee, was no punster, knew nothing in short
of the sharpshooting of wit. But when he had
the coast clear, and he generally took the field
with the first spoonful of soup, and was allowed
to run on, he was amazingly fluent in story-tell-
ing and light anecdote, particularly of Irish ma-
nufacture. When with a party which left him
quite at ease with himself he was the most agree-
able table-companion I ever met with, and his
peculiar style of song-singing was delightful. I
met him frequently in company both in Paris
and London. But it must not be supposed that
THOMAS MOORE. 57
his tone was always and in every place the
same.*
It was during one of our visits together to
Versailles that a circumstance occurred, which
though very slight in itself and possibly liable to
a different construction than that which I put on
it, gave me a peep into Moore's character which
I would willingly have been spared. He, Ken-
ney, and myself were walking one evening, the
former in that easy-indifferent mood which sat so
pleasantly on him, when Kenney mentioned that
a young relative of his wishing to enter some dis-
tinguished family as governess and hearing there
was a vacancy, in that of the Marquess of Sligo,
he begged of Moore to interest himself for her,
* The way in which Moore spoke of any party he was at
might be fairly taken as an indication of the share he bore in
the frais de conversation. Two entries in his Journal of two
dinners on successive days are specimens of this.
1825, June 13.−“ Dined at Rees', Paternoster Row, with
Corry. Tom Campbell of the party, the day not very agree-
able.”
June 14.—“Dined at Lord Dacre's. Company: Lord and
Lady Tavistock, Joanna Baillie and Grattan. Rather agree-
able.”
I am obliged to Moore's book for reminding me of this most
pleasant party, made particularly so to me by my meeting for
the first time the amiable and unassuming Joanna Baillie, as
charming in manner as she was celebrated for talent. Moore
himself was exceedingly agreeable, but he had not the talk
entirely to himself. Old Lord Lynedoch was also one of the
eight convives, a really fine specimen of a veteran soldier.
58 REATEN PATHIS .
taking it for granted that he was in the constant
habit of meeting Lord and Lady Sligo in society
in Paris. Moore, who had listened to Kenney's
preamble as though he had not been listening
at all, replied in a tone and air that did not raise
him in my opinion, “Really I don’t know if I
am acquainted with Lord Sligo.”
“Really that is too bad l’ thought I. It would
be absurd of any one to pretend ignorance of the
fact of his acquaintanceship or non-acquaintance-
ship with a person of Lord Sligo's rank and one
of the leaders of the society in which the indivi-
dual daily mixed. But in a notorious “tuft-
hunter ’’ like Moore it was insufferable. Yet I
was willing to believe in the possibility of Moore
forgetting his acquaintanceship with a lord, won-
derful as it seemed, when one day talking of the
talent of persons of rank, I asked him if he knew
Lady Waterford, of whose charming poetry I
gave him a specimen or two from memory. He
made me precisely the same answer he had done
to Kenney in reference to Lord and Lady Sligo;
and I was quite satisfied that what in one case
might have been distraction was in two simply
self-forgetfulness.
I remember about this period suggesting to
Moore the establishment of private theatricals in
Paris. “Good God!” replied he, “what would
THOMAS MOORE. 59
Lady say to such a thing? No, no, that
would be indeed mauvais ſon.” I could not help
saying that I was surprised that he, with his
position in literature and taste, and the memory
of the Kilkenny theatricals still alive, should not
give instead of take the tone on such a point in
whatever circle he moved in. I don’t think he
relished the remark. But I am quite sure he was
seriously offended with me on a later and much
more important occasion.
The death of Lord Byron in 1823 was quickly
followed by an account of the transaction between
Moore, John Murray the eminent publisher, and
the executors of the deceased poet, relative to
the manuscript memoirs of which he had made a
present to Moore some years before, under the
condition of their not being published during his
lifetime. Moore had not been long possessed of
this valuable gift when he converted it into cash,
by selling it to Mr. Murray (with the above-men-
tioned condition) for the sum of two thousand
pounds.
Murray no doubt considered this a good spe-
culation, but he might have thought differently
had he been aware of the chances of a spurious
or garbled edition of the work meeting the light
before the period agreed on for its legitimate ap-
pearance. It was afterwards avowed that the
60 BEATEN PATH S.
original manuscript had been for a long time in
the possession of Lady Burghersh and also of
Lady Adelaide Forbes. I myself was told by
Sir Godfrey Webster that Moore had lent it to
Lady Webster, and on his claiming it back, the
day following, Lady Webster had (like Lady
Burghersh according to Byron") industriously
copied a good portion of it. It also came to my
knowledge through Mr. Villamil before spoken of,
that a Mr. Dumoulin, an Irish officer on half-pay,
was employed by Moore to copy the entire work,
during the residence of the latter in Villamil's
cottage on La Butte Coas/in close to Sèvres (in
which residence I was his successor) where Du-
moulin was a constant visitor, being then in ill
health and dying soon after. What became of
his copy of Lord Byron's manuscript I had no
opportunity of learning. Nor can I say whether
any of the extracts were preserved ; but that
some transcript of the work may be at this mo-
ment in existence is by no means impossible, al-
though it is certain that Lord Byron's original
autograph memoirs were burnt.
There always appeared to the public some-
thing obscure and unsatisfactory about this burn-
ing affair. I thought at the time that some
phoenix was sure to rise from the ashes. I knew
* Vide ‘Conversations of Lord Byron ;' by Medwin.
THO1VIAS MOORE. (; I
that Moore could not repay Longman and Co. the
two thousand pounds they advanced, to enable him
to refund that sum to Murray (on the latter relin-
quishing his hold on the manuscript) but by the
production of some work equivalent to that amount.
I was therefore not surprised at being very soon
after told by Mr. Rees, one of the firm of Long-
man and Co., that Moore had engaged to furnish
them a life of Lord Byron, composed chiefly from
the unexceptionable parts of the burned materials.
With this business I had no concern direct or
indirect. Scarcely however had the world re-
covered from its regret and almost disbelief (for
we always in the first instance involuntarily
doubt what we regret) at the fatal news of Lord
Byron's death, than I received a letter from Cap-
tain Medwin, from Vevay where he then resided,
asking my advice relative to his intended publi-
cation of Lord Byron’s “Conversations,” telling
me that he had made considerable progress in
the preparation of the work, and that he had
shown what he had completed to Sir Egerton
Brydges and Sir John St. Aubyn, who had both
strongly advised him to proceed. He said he
expected to make a couple of hundred pounds
by the volume, and altogether he reckoned on
my assisting him in bringing it out.
In my reply I certainly encouraged him to its
62 BEATEN PATHS.
execution. No one could be other than anxious
to see a report of Byron's familiar table-talk, ex-
cept those who had something to fear from its
publication. Medwin’s work made rapid pro-
gress, and in a short time I received his packet
of manuscript in London, in September, 1825. I
was merely passing through town and stopping
for a day or two at an hotel in Jermyn Street.
Colburn, my publisher, to whom I had mentioned
the affair on behalf of Medwin, answered my
summons “haste post haste.” I delivered him
the packet without opening it, giving him four-
and-twenty hours to make up his mind as to the
purchase and the price; and the next morning as
the carriage in which I was about to start for the
country drove to the door, Colburn hurried into
my room, the manuscript in his hand, and his
mind made up—a most difficult operation for a
mind like his—as to the price. I cut short his
preliminary humming and hawing, and brought
the tantalizing bibliopole to the point. In a word
he offered me five hundred pounds for Medwin’s,
manuscript. I of course accepted the offer, took
his bills for the amount—he had them ready
drawn out—transmitted them by post to the
author, and left town immediately.
The first (and last) number of a work intended
to be periodical, called ‘The Attic Miscellany,’
THOMAS MOORE. 63
set on foot by Henry Bulwer, Charles Sheridan,
and myself, was then on the point of coming out.
I proposed to Colburn and he consented that a
few extracts from Medwin’s manuscript should
be inserted in the new magazine, forming part
of an article on Lord Byron and his suppressed
memoirs, a most attractive subject at the time.
I put Colburn in communication with Mr. Forbes,
the editor of ‘The Attic Miscellany’ and entrusted
with the care of its publication, leaving to that
gentleman, on his being furnished with the proof.
sheets, the choice of the passages from Medwin,
and undertaking myself to write the article which
was to introduce them. This I did in the evening
of my first day's visit at the hospitable mansion
of a friend in Northamptonshire, the first stage
of my tour and after a hard day's partridge-shoot-
ing. I mention this to account for the imper-
fection of the hurried article. But there was
nothing hasty in the opinion it expressed relative
to the Byron memoirs, and I insert it here merely
to illustrate the nature of Moore's feelings on a
subject so remarkable in his literary life.
LORD BYRON AND HIS MEMOIRS.
“The death-knell of Lord Byron still rings in
“ the public ear. Its vibrations have been re-
‘peated in the wide-extended circles of society
64 BEATEN PATH S.
“since the hour when Missolonghi was startled
“by its tone. It has been echoed by every ve-
“hicle of news and organ of opinion. The whole
“world has spoken deeply in lamentation of his
“death, and loudly in reprobation of his life.
“The great majority of mankind in condemning
“his mortal career has paid its homage to his
“genius, by proving it all-powerful in awakening
“sympathies which may be thought to own no
“alliance but with conduct which we approve.
“The interest and sorrow excited by his untimely
“fate was universal. Men of all persuasions and
“all parties felt that the mountain heights of ge-
“nius were riven, and that a wide blank was left
“gaping by the fall of one of their proudest ele-
“vations. Looking back as far as our memory
“can go, and round us as widely as our obser-
“vation extends, we know not on whom more
“fitly than on Lord Byron to fix the epithet,
“which is applied as if in mockery to several of
“his contemporaries—‘a spirit of the age.’
“Lord Byron's death once ascertained, the
“whole interest of society seemed centred in his
“memoirs. Curiosity swallowed up grief. And
“ people becoming weary of the comments of other
“writers on him who was no more, turned with
“ anxiety to know what he had written of himself.
THOMAS MOORE. 65
“Whether or not the public had a right to those
“memoirs is a question which it is perhaps not
“yet quite useless to discuss. It is at any rate
“our opinion that they had the right; and that
“the depositary of the manuscript was no more
“ than a trustee for the public. Lord Byron be-
“queathed his memoirs to the world. The pro-
“fits of their sale were alone meant for Mr. Moore.
“Lord Byron's family had no pretension what-
“ever to the monopoly. And though the delicate
“consideration of the gentleman just named
“prompted his offer of having the manuscript
“ perused—and purified if such be the proper
“word—by the nearest surviving relative of Lord
“Byron, we maintain that he was right in protest-
“ing against its unconditional destruction.
“The history of the burning is fresh in the
“public recollection. We think that Mr. Moore's
“conduct is not clearly appreciated. Some blame
“seems to be cast on his share in the transaction.
“But it is our opinion that not a shadow of re-
“proach rests on Mr. Moore. One imperative
“ duty remains for his performance, to give to
“the world the genuine work of Lord Byron if it
“be still in his power to do so. The opinion is
“wide-spread, if not well-founded, that one copy
“at least of the original is in existence. That
“opinion is afloat, and nothing can sink it. If
WOL. II. F
66 BEATEN PATH S.
“the Life which Mr. Moore is supposed to be
“preparing comes out as his own production, it
“will be difficult to convince the public that it is
“not a compilation from the copy we allude to,
“ or from a memory powerfully tenacious of the
“ original. If it be not avowed as such, spurious
“Lives will probably appear, professing to be the
“identical copy, of whose existence no one will
“consent to doubt. Nothing short of Mr. Moore's
“ positive assertion to the contrary will persuade
“people that he could for years have run the risk
“ of leaving so interesting a manuscript uncopied,
“or that he would have entrusted it, without pos-
“sessing a duplicate, into the hands of any one.
“We are confident that Mr. Moore will con-
“sider well the part he has to perform, and up-
“hold his character for integrity and frankness,
“in accordance with his disinterested and upright
“feelings throughout.”
It appears to me even at this distance of time
that there was nothing in all this to give a shock
to Moore's sentitiveness. Yet he was much hurt
by it. And as I made no secret of its being
mine, he took an early opportunity of telling
me he thought it likely to do him mischief. I
assured him that my intention was quite the con-
trary, and that I thought the effect of the article
THOMAS MOORE. 67
would be so too. We then had some conversa-
tion about Medwin and his book, which was just
published and making a prodigious sensation;
and though Moore and myself met frequently af-
terwards, though letters passed between us and
he invited me to go and see him at his cottage
at Sloperton, there was no real cordiality in our
after-acquaintanceship.
Every one who remembers the time in ques-
tion must recollect the uproar caused in the
fashionable and literary world by the appearance
of ‘Byron's Conversations,’ by Medwin, which
must not be confounded with Lady Blessington's
publication under a similar title. No writer was
ever more terribly mauled by reviewers than was
Captain Medwin. His veracity was denied. His
morality attacked. He was, figuratively, torn to
pieces. But the world was wrong in pouring out
this torrent of vituperation. The whole affair re-
solved itself into a question of Truth and one of
Taste. As regards the first, I have no doubt but
that Lord Byron talked as nearly as possible toº
the effect reported. It was to my own knowledge,
as well as that of Washington Irving and others
of Medwin’s acquaintance in Paris in the year
1821, that he had then in his possession manu-
script notes of his noctes with Byron and Shelley
in Italy, and as Byron was then quite as young
F 2
68 BEATEN PATHS.
a man and as good a life as Medwin, the latter
could not have speculated on his death, as afford-
ing an opportunity to put forth a spurious report
of his familiar chat. To all who knew Lord
Byron personally (I was not of the number) those
freely-communicated notes appeared strikingly
like his general style of gossip—trenchant, not
over-delicate, and at times not quite “founded
on fact.” But I really believe that Medwin
thought he was doing honour to Byron's memory
in giving those fugitive conversations to the world.
He held him in high estimation as well for good
fellowship as for talent, and he was aware that
any misrepresentation was liable to immediate
contradiction.
With respect to the bad taste of publishing
private communications reflecting on the honour
or virtue of others, there can be but one opinion.
But after all there is something to be said in ex-
tenuation. The world (and Medwin knew it)
expected with panting impatience every relic of
Byron's genius, written or spoken. The intimate
associates of men of great celebrity must make
up their minds to be dragged forward some time
or other, as foils perhaps, and sometimes even as
butts, to the chief personage of the scene. The
luminary and its satellites are sure to be subject
to the moral measurement of all the star-gazers.
THOMAS MOORE. 69
Most of those minor lights are no doubt better
satisfied to be spoken of slightingly in such con-
junctions than not noticed at all; and Medwin
might have supposed that in repeating the great
poet's small satire on some of his quondam friends
he was rather flattering their vanity than offend-
ing their pride.
On the other hand, Medwin himself had no
sort of sympathy for a set of persons he did not
know. Not himself of the patrician ranks and
almost all his life in India, he returned to Eng-
land without knowing anything of its notabilities;
and a chance residence in Italy to be near his
friend and relative Shelley, brought him acciden-
tally into companionship with Lord Byron, at a
time when the latter had given up most of his
former connections with the persons mentioned
so disparagingly in the ‘Conversations.’ Med-
win, the recipient of those streams of stricture,
naturally took their tint or their faint; and in
sending his book into the world he never thought
of the susceptibilities he was about to wound.
Such as the book was, I have no doubt it was
the genuine record of Lord Byron's chit-chat in
“hours of idleness,” moments of spleen, or moods
of malice. He might have mystified Medwin on
some minor points, and the latter may have made
some errors in dates; but there can be, I think,
70 BEATEN PATHS.
small doubt that the slapdash mass of censure,
sarcasm, philosophy, and fiction contained in those
remarkable pages were really the poet's, and not
the reporter's. And this fact being borne in
mind, how strongly is the unfavourable opinion
involuntarily presented of Lord Byron's character
corroborated by the contemporary accounts of his
familiar associates |
Various means, some not very worthy, were
taken to throw discredit on Medwin. He was
not happy in the method he took to vindicate
himself. He wrote to me from Switzerland, when
his name was in a dozen different ways put into
the hue and cry of literary reprobation, to tell
me he had sent one “cartel ” to a Mr. Dallas
(who was a clergyman) and another to Mr. Hob-
house, the avowed or supposed authors of some
published reflections on his reputation. My
opinion was that had he, instead of writing
transalpine summonses as little likely to bring
forth their objects as were Owen Glendower's
calls to the “vasty deep,” put a pair of post-
horses to his carriage and come to London, with
a brace of pistols in his portmanteau, opinion
might (in those days of duelling) have taken a
different turn. A man who had dash enough to
publish such a book as his, should have been
daring enough to follow up the consequences.
THOMAS MOORE. 7I
I remember making these remarks to Moore one
day. “I agree with you,” said he, “but I am
told that Medwin is not a man of that trempe.”
He perhaps thought it useless to offer pistol-
proof of his veracity. Perhaps he was right;
for the loss of a life one side or another goes but
a small way towards deciding an argument.
My opinion, expressed in the already-quoted
article of ‘The Attic Miscellany,’ was ere long
confirmed by the appearance of Moore's ‘Life of
Lord Byron.” The burned memoirs left their
essence behind them, and the journal was no
doubt purifted. The book was truly delightful.
The fresh and vigorous style of Byron was ad-
mirably relieved by the parts written by his bio-
grapher. I was charmed with the work; and
after reading it I actually wrote a page of a letter
to Moore expressing what I felt. But on reflec-
tion I threw it into the fire or tore it up—for I
forget whether it was in summer or winter.
Many severe strictures were passed on Moore
for the manner in which he displayed the charac-
ter of his deceased benefactor in this biography;
and many insinuations were sent abroad of the
living poet's design to do dishonour to the me-
mory of the dead one, in this pretended monu-
ment to his fame. There was much injustice in
this on the part of the critics. The world at any
72 BEATEN PATHS.
rate should have taken Moore's part ; for how-
ever the character of Byron might have been
better concealed by some partial suppressions,
the ample revelations made in his journal gave in-
finite amusement to general readers, and he was
not, in fact, exhibited in any false light.
Why, it may be asked, should Moore have ex-
punged any of the salient outburstings of Lord
Byron's egotism merely because they told against
their author P. He was most positively no friend
of the noble poet in the fine and generous sense
of the term. He had no sympathy with the im-
pulses which were to the other inspirations.
Their minds were cast in totally different moulds.
The haughty and somewhat vulgar turn of Byron's
temper was a complete contrast to Moore's re-
fined obsequiousness. Byron half-contemned,
half-hated society. Moore lived but in it and for
it. The independent patrician railed at, reviled,
and ridiculed the pretensions of aristocracy while
imbued with them to the very core. The sub-
servient plebeian fawned on nobility even when
he knew that it held him cheap. There was no
point of sentiment, in fact, common to the peer
and the grocer's son. Literary tastes or a joint
poetic temperament are not sufficient causes for
friendship. They are more likely to prove bars
to it, from their tendency to generate jealousy
and envy.
THOMAS MOORE. 73
Moore no doubt felt grateful to Byron at the
time he accepted the gift of his memoirs in trust
for his little boy, and probably even after the
donation was turned into cash. But independent
of that particular concern, I am pretty sure he
had no strong attachment to Lord Byron. I well
remember his speaking to me on the subject of
‘The Liberal’ in a way by no means friendly,
and, while showing me a letter from Byron (con-
taining the then unpublished lines on George IV.'s
visit to Ireland), strongly reprobating his connec-
tion with Shelley and Leigh Hunt, as derogatory
to him. But Shelley was quite on a social equa-
lity with Byron, and Hunt was a gentleman by
birth, a scholar, a man of talent, and an honest-
hearted man. The latter I never saw but once,
and that by an accidental meeting at Colburn's,
when I talked with him for half an hour, and
was much pleased by his unaffected manners,
which gave an impression of frank single-minded-
ness. Medwin’s book formed the chief subject
of our conversation. I expressed my opinion of
the author in reference to that affair just as I
have here stated it. Hunt did not say a word
in dissent nor in disparagement of Medwin, then
far away. I was pleased with this at the time;
but, little imagining that Hunt's visit to Colburn
was relative to his own forthcoming work, ‘Lord
74 BEATEN PATH S.
Byron and his Contemporaries,’ it was not till I
had read it that I could appreciate his discreet
and amiable forbearance in conversation, relative
to the rival biographer towards whom he had cer-
tainly no friendly nor favourable leaning.
A detailed opinion of Leigh Hunt's book
would be out of place and out of season here.
It had great faults and great merits, while many
excuses might be made for it. The main point
of public interest in the like works is their truth-
fulness. The minute motives of their authors
are of small general value. It is very desirable
to know the leading characteristics of celebrated
men. But if nothing at all unfavourable is to
be tolerated, biography becomes a mere one-sided
mirror, and cannot show the prismatic colouring
of the mind, whose shifts and changes must be
seen to let the individual be really understood.
It is quite probable that a friend may honestly
state the errors, or an enemy nobly pay tribute
to the merits, of a deceased individual. Every
one has, no doubt, his particular bias, and his
book will be sure to show it. But if facts are
truly stated, they generally speak for themselves,
though they may be to a certain point warped to
support a theory or serve a purpose. The whole
tenor of a great man's actions cannot be placed
in a false light; and it is after all on circumstan-
tial evidence that posterity will judge him.
THOMAS MOORE. 75
In my desultory and not very intimate inter-
course with Moore, few circumstances occurred
between us sufficiently striking to give much pi-
quancy to the sketch I have here attempted. My
impressions were formed on data too superficial
to let me know the secrets of his mind; for the
cream of character is not to be skimmed from
the surface of manners or conduct. He was de-
cidedly possessed of many domestic virtues. He
showed great courage and independence in his
choice of a wife. He married for happiness, and
beyond all doubt he found it. Whatever might
have been his temporary fancies for others of the
sex, for his wife he had a deep and steady affec-
tion. I remember his once saying to me, after
passing an evening at my house in Paris, “It is
well for us both that we have ballast at home to
keep our life-bark steady. You seem to be as
lucky as myself in that respect—and it is indeed
good luck for imaginative men to have wives like
ours.”*
When I first saw Moore he was very inti-
* I think it was in reference to this very evening, at a time
that Mrs. Grattan did not go into society for some weeks,
that Moore made the following memorandum in his diary:—
“November 15, 1822.--Went at nine o'clock to Grattan's
to sing to his wife (according to promise), and found some
men assembled, which was contrary to compact. Among
others a Captain Medwin, a friend of Lord Byron's, who
76 BEATEN PATHS.
mate with Washington Irving, who just then was
a literary lion in Paris, and much sought after.
Moore paid him great attention, and, indepen-
dent of the liking which Irving was well cal-
culated to inspire, there was a secret motive for
it. Moore greatly desired to get invited to the
anniversary dinner regularly held at Paris by the
resident citizens of the United States, in ho-
nour of the declaration of independence on July
4th. Lafayette was almost the only European
guest at this fête, and Moore, recollecting his
own grievous offences against American pride by
his satirical verse and prose, nearly twenty years
before, was anxious of an opportunity of making
the amende at one of the national celebrations.
In this however he was disappointed. Irving
never procured him the longed-for invitation, and
Moore one day complained to me that he had not
passed a great part of last year at Pisa, and has written a vo-
lume of poems.”
This passage is only worth extracting as showing something
like trickery with regard to Medwin, spoken of so slightingly,
as if seen for the first time on this occasion, when he and one
or two more dropped in by chance in the Paris fashion. He
had been introduced to me by Moore himself only a few days
before, at the dinner before mentioned, and strongly recom-
mended by him to my attentions in virtue of Lord Byron's
warm letter of introduction. Could it be that Moore com-
posed this entry for his diary, or modified it, some years
afterwards, when Medwin’s ‘Conversations' had thrown him
so much out of favour with Moore's particular world?
THOMAS MOORE. 77
done so, in general terms which did not conceal
his vexation. But the fact was that Irving had
not then the influence with his countrymen which
Moore ascribed to him; for while viewing his
literary success with pride, they took umbrage at
his English penchants, and looked on his writings
as too much deficient in vigour to give a fair idea
of Transatlantic character. How long Moore's
regard for Irving stood the test of this disappoint-
ment I know not; but the latter always spoke to
me in warm and cordial terms of his admiration
of Moore's talents and convivial qualities.
I had one day occasion to call at Smith the
English printer's, in the Rue Montmorency, re-
lative to a forthcoming number of the ‘Paris
Monthly Review,’ a work which I with some
others had recently started. Smith told me that
Moore was at the very time above-stairs in one
of his garrets, in the act of destroying some hun-
dreds of copies of a volume of poetry (the origi-
mal impression of ‘Rhymes on the Road') which
he had had printed in that office some time pre-
viously; but which, for reasons that are now
neither here nor there, he had resolved to sup-
press. I sent up word that I was below, and on
Moore's invitation I mounted to the attic reposi-
tory of the condemned work. I found him with
his coat off, his shirt-sleeves tucked up, and co-
78 BEATEN PATH S,
vered with dust, slashing and tearing at a furious
rate some reams of “ small octavo.” After some
laughing and sundry jokes on authorship and re-
viewing, I consented to assist in the havoc; and
in less than an hour we had totally destroyed
every possibility of a single copy seeing the light.
An au/o de fe of the disjecſa membra of lacerated
heresy (poetical and political) was next decided
on, and Moore having resolved to entrust this
final execution to the superintendence of Douglas,
before mentioned, he locked the garret door, and
we went away in my cabriolet which was wait-
ing. The same day before dinner I sent him a
hundred lines—doggrel of the most Orthodox
stamp—relative to this transaction. Campbell,
who saw this nonsense some time afterwards,
thought it worth a place in the ‘New Monthly
Magazine' (of which he was editor), and it figured
there under the title of “An Attic Story”—but
very much, I should think, to the bewilderment
of readers who had no clue to the affair in which
the squib originated.*
* Moore mentions this little incident in his Diary, showing
what little events and small jokes found a place in it. “No-
vember 16, 1822.-Went to Smith's and set about tearing the
sheets of the ‘Rhymes,’ with the assistance of two journey-
men and Grattan, whom I found there. Grattan, very much
amused with the operation, said while we were about it, “How
useful Doll Tearsheet would be here !’” (vol. iv. p. 20).
THOMAS MOOR.E. 79
The ‘Rhymes on the Road 'gave but a very
faint notion of the original volume. Whether
Moore preserved a copy for his private satisfac-
tion or for posthumous publication I know not.
But there was enough in what was destroyed to
repay the readers of the frivolous verses which
appeared under the above title ; and it is possible
that like the burned Byronian memoirs those sup-
pressed satires, or the eacerpta thereof, may be
one day brought forward for the amusement of
the public.
The trifling circumstance just related made the
more impression on me from its being in the ca-
briolet which brought us that day from the heart
of the Marais to the Boulevard de la Madeleine
(where I was residing) that Moore opened out his
then existing friendly feeling towards me in a
way more marked than usual, with offers of assist-
ance in forwarding my literary intentions, for my
projects in authorship had then taken scarcely
any more positive form. I had done nothing
beyond the publication of a poetical romance
which I was taking great pains to suppress, and
the writing of some prose tales of which Moore
had never heard, and the manuscript of which
had been rejected by several booksellers with the
greatest possible discouragement, and which lay
in an old portmanteau under the chance of being
80 BEATEN PATH S.
torn up for the ignoble domestic purpose of fire-
lighting, until they were rather accidentally given
to the world sometime after under the title of
‘Highways and Byways.”
I therefore had scarcely any expectation of
coming forward in any way in which Moore's
services might be available, my writing being
then confined to essays and occasional verses pub-
lished anonymously in periodical works. I ne-
vertheless bole in mind Moore's volunteer pro-
mises, and it was several years afterwards that I
took an opportunity of drawing a draft on the
fund.
I had in the interval done enough in literature
to be astonished at my own success and to
make me independent of any individual influence.
Moore had on frequent occasions expressed him-
self in a flattering and friendly way of my pro-
ductions, and I had always been on good and
pleasant terms with him in our chance-meetings
during my visits to England, which were from
private causes more rare than in the early period
of our acquaintance. I had heard in more than
one quarter that he had from time to time men-
tioned me to mutual friends in a good-natured
way. I was therefore not sorry to take or to
make an opportunity of writing to him.
On arriving one night at Heidelberg, where I
THOMAS MOORE. Sl
resided in the latter part of 1831, after a long
and fatiguing journey from London, I found a
copy of Moore's ‘Life of Lord Edward Fitz-
gerald which had been borrowed during my ab-
sence. In pursuance of a very bad and much
too general habit, I took the book to bed with
me, to help me to a good night's rest, after every-
body else in the house had been a long time
asleep. But I was mistaken. Such was the
interest of the subject and the excitement it
caused me, that I never closed an eye till I read
through the whole work, and the broad daylight
in which I finished it bore testimony, in the ex-
posure of my reddened lids, to the powerful ef-
fect produced on me by that most deeply painful
piece of biography.
Moore was certainly fortunate in the subjects
which he chose or which were offered to him, for
the exercise of his talents as a biographer. She-
ridan” and Byron were great names in litera-
* While looking over this long-since written manuscript
with a view towards preparing it for the press, I see in a Lon-
don paper (January, 1861) that Mrs. Norton, being somewhat
dissatisfied with all the existing biographies of her grand-
father, has announced the intention of writing a life of Ri-
chard Brinsley Sheridan, from her own particular point of
view of his character and career. I wondered that her uncle
Charles Sheridan, whom I knew well, and who had good lite-
rary talents which he never exercised sufficiently, left Moore
to deal with the subject instead of undertaking it himself.
VOL. II. G
82 BEATEN PATH S.
ture and politics; and Lord Edward Fitzgerald
was the true model for a hero of romance. I
do not think he was very successful with the first,
and he certainly did not make as much of the
last subject as he might have done. Few could
have combined so thoroughly materials for the
purposes of picturesque and powerful composi-
tion. But there was something so intensely mourn-
ful in the story, so unaffectedly beautiful in the
character of the man, that, taken for what it is,
without considering what it might have been, I
think the ‘Life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald' is
one of the most attractive books in the language.
It is not an inspiring work. The reader is never
roused. Even indignation for the wrongs of Ire-
land and the tyranny of those days is weighed
down under the pressure of affliction. The hero
dying his cruel dungeon-death from wounds re-
But I suppose bookselling speculation had much to do in the
choice of the author to whom the materials were confided; and
perhaps a son is not sufficiently independent in judgment
and feeling to discuss impartially the acts and works of his
parent. Mrs. Norton is a degree further removed from that
cause of disqualification, and a generation further from the
doubtful and complieated political transactions in which Ri-
chard Brinsley Sheridan so conspicuously figured. His me-
rits as a dramatist and his private adventures will no doubt
be gracefully and delicately treated by the tact of his beau-
tiful and gifted descendant. And let us hope that she will
find in this congenial task some consolation for domestic sor-
row, in the loss of much nearer and far dearer relatives.
THOMAS MOOR.E. 83
ceived in a gallant struggle is heart-rending. But
it seems inconceivable that a man so tender and
so gentle could have thus sacrified himself in the
public cause. He had no ambition, in the
common sense of the word; no thirst for glory;
nothing personal in fact, to urge him on ; none
of that stuff which seems the necessary nourish-
ment of heroism. As nature made him good,
success would have made him great. But failing
as he did, he only adds another to the list of
anomalous characters, so prominent in history
and so puzzling to philosophy.
Full of the feelings I have above expressed,
I completed what I had attempted a couple of
years previously on reading the “Memoirs of
Lord Byron ;’ and I wrote a letter to Moore,
telling him what I thought of his new work,
and at the same time I mentioned my own his-
torical novel just then published (‘The Heiress
of Bruges'), and I begged of him to use his
interest with the ‘Edinburgh Review to get it
noticed, for I knew that in the multiplicity of
works of fiction just then pouring from the press,
those things were sure to go by “favour or af-
fection’—and no literary man had ever less di-
rect means of bespeaking the influence of the
periodical press than myself. I soon afterwards
received the following answer to my letter.
G 2
84. BEATEN PATHS.
“Sloperton, February 17, 1832.
“My dear Grattan,—I am really so ashamed
of myself for not having sooner answered your
letter, that I know not what to say that can re-
move the impression you must all the time have
been under at my apparent coldness and neglect,
The truth is, soon after I received your letter I
was seized with a sort of influenza, which inca-
pacitated me for some time for all sorts of busi-
ness, and the arrears of correspondence that du-
ring my illness accumulated on me, would melt
your heart (even though it were stoned against
me) to see. You must well know what a plague
letter-writing is to the poor author who wants
to be addressing “my pensive public,’ and both
my table and myself groaned so with letters on
my recovery that you—as well as many others
of my best friends—were most shamefully post-
poned. Even now it is but a cheerless task to
write when I have nothing to say, except that I
wish you most cordially all the success you de-
serve, without being able to quicken or further
that success in any way whatever. I have no
interest with the Reviews (since Jeffrey left the
‘Edinburgh'), and only consider it a piece of
luck when they don't attack myself—which they
however all do (except perhaps the “Edinburgh’)
in their turn. The ‘Times’ I used to have some
THOMAS MOORE. 85
influence over, but that too seems gone by, and
they did as much harm to my “Life of Byron’ as
they well could, by raising the Saint cry against
it—the most fatal of all in England.
“I dined twice with poor Sir Walter before
his departure, and he spoke with warm interest
both of you and your writings. It will give me
great pleasure to hear that this has safely reached
you, and that whatever wonder, anger, or annoy-
ance my silence may have caused has wholly
subsided.
“Yours, my dear Grattan, most truly,
“THOMAS MooRE.”
I had two or three other previously written
letters from Moore, as friendly, pleasant, and
characteristic as this one, but they were, with
many others from celebracted men and dear
friends, totally lost when my house was pillaged
by the Dutch troops in their attack on Brussels
in September, 1830.
In these desultory sketches I have not at-
tempted to give an elaborate character of Moore,
but merely thrown out hints towards the compi-
lation of a character. That he had many very
good points is certain. His courageously select-
ing a wife from the corps de balleſ of an Irish
provincial theatre was a bold and independent
86 BEATEN PATHS.
act for a man so much under aristocratic influ-
ence as he was. Some facts to his disadvantage
have been related to me, in no spirit of asperity,
but “more in sorrow than in anger.” They
produced no ill effect on me, from my sympathy
with the professionally literary man, whose want
of prudence and over-confidence in others may
have led him into some “questionable shape” of
pecuniary dilemma.
There was a circumstance which told much in
Moore's disfavour, related to me, and generally
spoken of in a rather wide circle, relating to a
most delightful friend of ours, whose early and
sudden death he was reported to have heard of
with an air and an observation of cold and heart-
less indifference. But I never judge men en-
tirely from their words—not always even from
their actions. There is, I well know, a spring
in the human heart too deep to be discovered by
such feeble indications. And I hope for the ho-
nour of Moore's better nature that the cold re-
mark alluded to was but the faint and distant
echo of a profound pang of grief.
One day just previous to my sailing from
London for New York, in the month of July,
1839, I met Moore walking in Whitehail, look-
ing well, cheerful, and rubicund. My eldest son
was with me. I introduced him to the poet, and
we exchanged a few passing words.
THOMAS MOORE. 87
“What shall I say to the Yankees for you?”
said I, as we shook hands at parting.
“Give my love to them all,” replied he, a
laugh accompanying the emphasis; and that was
the last I ever directly saw or heard of him.
During my seven years' absence in America
Moore paid the debt of nature, preceded or
closely followed by several of our mutual ac-
quaintances, some of whom have been mentioned
in these pages. Others survived, to talk over old
scenes and feed on old recollections. Among
these were Charles Phillips and Crofton Croker,
well-known Irishmen, with strong feelings, pre-
judices, and predilections. The appearance of
Moore's Diary in several volumes, edited by
Lord John Russell, made some sensation in the
literary world, and drew forth many commenta-
ries, particularly from those interested in or in
any way compromised by it. It decidedly made
an unfavourable impression as to Moore's habits
of thought and general pursuits. They appeared
to the many admirers of his poetical talents too
frivolous and unworthy; and some harsh criti-
cisms followed quick on their publication in suc-
cessive volumes. The life of Moore was consi-
dered as to be still unwritten, and more than one
person entertained the project of undertaking it.
Crofton Croker contemplated the publication of
88 BEATEN PATH S.
some of Moore's correspondence which had come
into his possession, and knowing that I had some
memoranda of my acquaintance with Moore, he
wrote me the following note.
“3, Gloucester Road, Old Brompton,
“July 5, 1853.
“Dear Grattan,—Moore’s life, and a sad one
it is, must now come out. Alas for his memory !
He was an actor all through his existence, the
mask has fallen from his hand in death, and Lord
John Russell has picked it up. . . . Perhaps you
can tell me (see vol. iii. p. 11) who Sir John Wy-
cherly was—a real person or an imaginary one
I suspect a hoax.
“If you can trust me with your manuscript
about Moore (of course in confidence), it would
be an obligation, and I should further feel obliged
by your correcting any statement with reference
to yourself in the journal of the poet. I suspect
the promised new edition will be a rare hash,
and Longmans (see their advertisement headed
‘ caution ) are not going to work the right way
to redeem it.
“Ever yours,
“T. CROFTON CROKER.”
To this I replied that my sketches, written
many years ago, were somewhere in a manuscript
THOMAS MOORE. S9
volume which I did not know how to find, and
that any little mistakes in the Diary were not
worth correcting; that I was glad Moore's life
was to be written, and that I hoped it would be
by some Irishman, etc. I now forget what was
the subject of Messrs. Longmans' advertisement,
and I never heard more about the matter accu-
mulated by Croker, who died soon afterwards.
Charles Phillips, the biographer of Curran, was
greatly aggrieved by the manner in which he was
spoken of in Moore's Letters and Diary. It was
I think his wounded feelings on personal grounds
that aroused his indignation against the author,
on points of national concern and with reference
to other individuals. He enbodied his opinions
in about sixty pages, in pamphlet form, under
the title of “A Protest against Certain Passages
in Mr. Moore's Autobiography, a copy of which
he lent to me, as he had done to many others,
although he had reluctantly given up his inten-
tion of publishing it. How many he printed,
or to what extent it was suppressed, I cannot
say. He allowed me to make some extracts from
the copy he lent me, and I returned it to him
unseen by any eyes but my own. There were
many passages in it of great severity. Not
having read Moore's Diary nearly through, I
cannot form a judgment on these strictures; but
90 BEATEN PATHS.
in my hurried glance at it I saw nothing in re-
gard to Phillips himself but a slight joke at the
expense of his /reat speech on the trial of Guthrie
v. Sterne, which he reprinted in evſenso in an
appendix to the suppressed pamphlet. Phillips,
without exactly suggesting it, left me clearly to
infer that he would not be sorry if the pamphlet
was given to the public in the United States. I
had no sufficient interest in the matter one way
or another, to induce me to follow up the hint ;
and I can only suppose that the Öroc/ure lies
safe in some literary limbo, possibly to be pro-
duced with other “curiosities '' for the amuse-
ment of some future generation.
Poor Charles Phillips also has “shuffled off
the mortal coil;” and he left a blank, not only
in the Insolvent Court where he presided as a
judge (soon filled up), but in the promenades of
Pall Mall, Piccadilly, and the Park, where he
was a constant lounger in leisure hours and on
holidays, with an inexhaustible fund of anecdote
and chit-chat.
And as for the chief subject of these recollec-
tions, Thomas Moore, it will be long before the
world can expect to see a being alike to him
in characteristics of his peculiar kind. He flou-
rished at a period well suited for the cultivation
and enjoyment of qualities so remarkable. He
THOMAS MOORE. 91
was however a mixture of incongruities. ' Highly
gifted yet meanly endowed; he had too much
genius for so little independence of spirit. He
rose above the depressing influences of low birth
to sink under the caresses of the high-born. He
was nothing without a patron and a pension;
and he wanted the courage to use a wafer, or re-
fuse an invitation that was sealed with a coronet.
But he possessed the domestic affections and so-
cial instincts largely. He was the most agree-
able table-companion I ever met; and he would
have been a fine character had his self-reliance
equalled his self-esteem.
CHAPTER III.
THOMAS CAMP BELL,
I was introduced to Campbell through the me-
dium of a letter, pressed on my acceptance by an
old and intimate friend of his, a Scotch lady,
whose acquaintance I had formed in the south
of France. I paid my visit and delivered my
letter to the author of ‘The Pleasures of Hope’
in his lodgings in one of the streets off Caven-
dish Square, Margaret Street to the best of my
recollection, which may be pardoned some inde-
cision after a lapse of nearly forty years.
Nothing could be much less prepossessing than
the appearance and manners of the bard to one
who, like me, had formed his ideal standard of
the man on a scale of poetic combinations. Not
having at that time much experience of the
lions of literature, I certainly had expected some-
thing of a higher order than this celebrated spe-
cimen at first appeared to be. Campbell had the
THOMAS CAMPIBELI, . 93
bearing and accent that one might attribute to a
second or third rate Scotch schoolmaster. His
rusty black coat, dark-coloured wig, short sta-
ture, careless attire, crabbed pronunciation, and
cramped manners, formed a complete contrast to
anything graceful or poetical. And when I have
looked at the engraved portraits of him from Sir
Thomas Lawrence's fanciful picture, in Vandyke
dress, Spanish cloak, and the like appendages, I
wondered if the original could ever have borne
any resemblance to it.
His reception of me was gratifying enough.
He knew me by name, as the author of a me-
diocre poem and a few papers which had ap-
peared in the ‘New Monthly Magazine’ of which
he was then editor; and, besides some compli-
mentary remarks on those latter, he had to offer
me a brief apology for having too hastily allowed
to be returned, as unsuited for insertion, a couple
of short tales which I had forwarded to him from
Paris, where I at the time resided.
At this interview, and in some subsequent
evening meetings at his house and elsewhere,
Campbell showed me a good deal of civility,
somewhat more than commonplace, and border-
ing on what a sanguine-minded person might be
excused for believing to denote an interest in my
literary plans, on which I freely consulted him.
94. BEATEN PATH S.
There is nothing more unfair to persons of
mark than the attempts of those who know them
but slightly to portray their characters or descant
on their manners. Few men are to be seen
through at a single or even a double glance, par-
ticularly those who are observed and waylaid, so
to say, by the professional sketchers, who lie in
wait for and suddenly pounce upon them. The
“eminent individuals” soon acquire a knack of
keeping on their guard, of almost sleeping with
their eyes open. They learn to assume a con-
ventional air, adopt certain set phrases, some-
times lay themselves out for effect, and too often
display but a “counterfeit resemblance ’’ of their
real nature. The lion-hunters teach the lions
how to baffle them, and the latter shake the mane
or lash the tail, or growl or grin, according to a
regular stereotyped plan for deceiving the tribe
they are beset by.
They also become suspicious, judge unjustly of
many who seek their society from motives far dif.
ferent to those ascribed to them. To know truly,
and on terms of reciprocal honesty, a celebrated
man, you must meet him accidentally in some fa-
miliar circle, or have a point of mutual interest,
causing frequent intercourse, without the suspicion
of pumping attaching to the one, or the necessity
of reserve or affectation disfiguring the other.
THOMAS CAMPRELL. 95
These are but general observations. They
have no particular reference to my acquaintance
with Thomas Campbell. But so convinced am
I of their correctness that I should have hesitated
to write about him at all, had my knowledge of
him been confined to the partial opportunities
above adverted to.
We became by degrees somewhat intimate, as
I saw him often during my visits to London. My
associations with Washington Irving at Paris
having led to my writing a few prose tales, of
which the two rejected by Campbell for the ‘New
Monthly Magazine’ were by the bye a portion, I
consulted the latter on the subject of their pub-
lication in the book form. He warmly promised
to be their literary sponsor, requested me to send
him the manuscript to read over and revise, and
assured me he would have the projected book
brought out “from under his own wing.” This
was high encouragement. I returned to France,
and completed and arranged my materials with
great spirit, and sent my manuscript to London,
to a gentleman to whom I at the same time
forwarded a letter of introduction to Campbell,
to enable him to see and consult with this power-
ful ally, as to the proceedings required for the
appearance of the work.
I anxiously awaited the reply, on which hung,
96 BEATEN PATH S.
as I felt, the fate of my attempt. I was some-
what apprehensive of Campbell's critical judg-
ment condemning it altogether. I had the least
confident possible opinion of my own production.
But I never for a moment doubted his warm and
friendly disposition in the matter. My surprise
and disappointment were therefore very great,
when the gentleman who acted for me wrote to
say that Mr. Campbell had not granted him an
interview, but had sent him a message to the ef-
fect that “Mr. Grattan had quite misunderstood
him; that he wished well to the manuscript work,
but had no intention of interfering in any way
towards its publication.”
Whatever was the bitterness of my disappoint-
ment, it only served to incite my exertions and
confirm my self-reliance. This first check was
followed by several others which I have elsewhere
mentioned. But I at length, after several trials
not necessary to be here detailed, succeeded in
having the first series of ‘Highways and Byways’
brought before the public. And I certainly had
every reason to be satisfied with the prompt and
flattering review which appeared in Campbell's
periodical, and which was written, as I afterwards
learned, by the late Sir Thomas Talfourd, in the
most generous spirit of criticism.
On my next meeting with Campbell at some
THOMAS CAMPIBELL. 97
dinner-party in London, he spoke in cordial eu-
logy of my book, which had then passed through
three or four editions, and he said that “the only
regret he had about it was that it might put
Washington Irving out of fashion.” This did
not make any very strong impression on my va-
nity, for I knew that the last-mentioned author
was at that time much dissatisfied with a passage
which had appeared in the ‘New Monthly Maga-
zine, in reference to one of his works. But Camp-
bell proved evidently that he considered me worth
cultivating, by giving me an invitation to dinner,
which was soon followed by a proposal concern-
ing one of the most important transactions of his
public life, the establishment of the London Uni-
versity.
The proposal was that I should accompany him
to the first preparatory meeting of the friends
of the projected institution, at which Mr. Henry
Brougham was to preside, and that I would take
upon myself the task (which a gentleman from
the City was however ready to perform) of pro-
posing a vote of thanks to Campbell on that oc-
casion, in honour of his being the originator of the
plan (which he most undoubtedly was), and in
reference to the series of letters which he had
addressed to Mr. Brougham on the subject, in
the pages of the ‘New Monthly Magazine.’
WOL. II. H
98 BEATEN PATH S.
This request of Campbell's somewhat startled
me. I, in the first place, thought it odd that a
man should be the author of any public measure
for his own glorification. In the next, it ap-
peared extraordinary that one of Campbell's high
literary standing, so much connected as I Sup-
posed him to be with various leading characters
of the day, should select a person so very little
known as I was, even as a writer, to take a posi-
tion so prominent, in what (as I told him) would
be the first public meeting I ever attended in
England, and being quite unskilled in the tactics
of speech-making. He nevertheless persisted in
his wish ; and I, without giving either absolute
consent or direct refusal, accompanied him in a
carriage from his house in Upper Seymour Street,
to the Crown and Anchor Tavern, in the Strand,
the great room of which was the scene of the
meeting.
A large number of persons was already assem-
bled, and Campbell was well received by many of
those supporters of the intended institution, the
establishment of which he had triumphantly as-
sured me, as we drove along, “would inevitably
produce a revolution in the country.” He lived
long enough to see the fallacious nature of this
expectation; and those who have survived him
are still more able to judge of its extravagance.
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 99
But even several of those who were present at
this first public demonstration in favour of the
undertaking, must have been struck as I was,
with the symptoms of the shallowness on which
its foundation was laid, and have augured ill of
its success, from so insincere and inauspicious a
commencement.
Willing to forward Campbell's personal wishes
on this occasion, I looked among the groups
scattered through the room, for some acquaint-
ance of station and influence, to whom I could
transfer the honour he had intended for me.
Comparatively a stranger in London, I had a very
limited circle to choose from ; but I soon espied
Mr. Spring Rice, the present Lord Monteagle,
then a Member of Parliament, and a candidate
for Ministerial office, which he soon afterwards
attained. I begged of him to be the mover of
the much-desired vote of thanks. But he cau-
tiously declined, saying, “he should first like
to know how Brougham felt about it.” And
Brougham entering the room very soon after, I
perceived Mr. Rice speaking to him, and re-
ceiving for answer to his communication or ques-
tion (whatever it might have been) a significative
and decidedly negative shake of the head. I was
soon made aware by Mr. Rice that this was in
absolute disapproval of the vote, and he recom-
H 2
| 00 BEATEN PATHS.
º
O
• * * * * e
mended me to have nothing to do with it. I de-
cided to follow this hint as far as my personal
action was concerned. But I still felt anxious
that Campbell should not be disappointed; and
observing Mr. John Wood, member for some
Lancashire borough, and subsequently Chairman
of the Board of Excise, and whom I slightly
knew, I asked him if he would undertake to per-
form the proposed act of kindness, and indeed of
justice, to Thomas Campbell. But this gentle-
man also refused, giving as a sufficient reason
that he was not personally acquainted with the
poet, nor in any way directly interested in the
object of the meeting.
Just then I observed Campbell bustling about,
flushed and fidgety. He came up to me and
asked me what was my decision on the question ?
I frankly told him, that “from some observation
I thought the thing required a person of influ-
ence connected with the proposed University;
that two Members of Parliament had thrown cold
water on the affair; and that I hoped Mr.
Brougham was not opposed to it.”
“Ah! that's just it,” said Campbell. “He
is, he is. He wants to rob me of my due, and
to take the honour to himself. But I’ll have it
done. The man from the City is coming, and he
will do it in the right way.”
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 101
At this moment a few taps on the table, and
the call of “Chairl chair! Order order l’ pro-
claimed the meeting to be opened. I approached
the long table stretching down the room, and I
saw Mr. Brougham sitting at the head of it, ad-
dressing a few persons round him, in the most
rapid and colloquial way, while a great bustle
prevailed in the other parts of the room, as every
one closed-in on the scene where the proceedings
had naturally but so unexpectedly commenced.
The first words I distinguished were a mut-
tered and almost indistinct mention of “our
friend, Mr. Campbell, and the other liberal and
spirited originators of this important movement;”
and this opening tribute being paid, whatever its
purport and dubious as was its extent, the Chair-
man went on, raising his voice and entering into
some remarks on the proposed institution, which
that meeting was to be the means of consoli-
dating, and other general observations adapted to
the occasion.
The proceedings of this preliminary meeting
were thus, after a few sentences from a gentleman
who seemed to act as secretary (in reference to a
resolution for another and general assemblage of
those interested), coming fast to a close, when a
short gentleman (“the Man from the City”) stepped
forward, close to the upper end of the table, and
|02 BEATEN PATH S.
addressing himself directly to the Chairman, ob-
served that “he thought it but right and fair,
before this meeting separated, to fulfil an act of
justice to an eminent and distinguished indivi-
dual, by passing a vote of thanks to ”—
“Now really this is altogether irregular,” cried
Brougham, briskly, and rising from his seat; “I
must positively put a stop to this "-
“But, Mr. Chairman,” resumed the Man from
the City, “I have a right to move a vote of
thanks, which I am sure will be supported by’—
“Good God | Thanks | For what P or to
whom P. We all deserve thanks, nobody in par-
ticular.”
“I little thought,” said the Citizen, warming,
and raising his voice—“I little thought that
Henry Brougham would be the man to put me
down in proposing an act of justice, and "-
“Now, now, really this is too bad. Put you
down Good God | There is no question of
putting down or setting up. This is not the
time. Surely in my opening observations I did
ample justice to the claims of Mr. Campbell.”
“I really must take leave to say,” exclaimed
a short and stoutish gentleman with prominent
features, close to Brougham's elbow, “that this
is all premature and quite out of place. Let us
at least wait till our laurels are grown before we
would place them on our brows”—
THOMAS CAMIPBELL. 103
And the speaker (who some one near me said
was Sir John Hobhouse) would have no doubt
gone on poetically and cleverly to the point, had
he not been interrupted by the voice of Campbell
himself, from about the middle of the room, pro-
testing against any vote meant to do him honour,
as quite repugnant to his feelings and wishes!
“There now, hear, hear! I thought so,” said
Brougham.
“But, Mr. Chairman, let me still say ”—cried
loudly the would-be mover of the vote—
“Good God! Don't you see that Mr. Camp-
bell doesn't wish anything of the kind?” inter-
rupted Brougham; while the shrill tones of Camp-
bell's voice joined in the confusion of sounds.
“Louder | Louder I Get upon the table !”
shouted many of the amused listeners. And, to
my dismay, I saw little Campbell scramble up
on the table, from the very middle of which, in
his loudest accents, my eyes fixed full upon him,
and my astonished ears taking in every word he
uttered, he “solemnly protested he had no wish
whatever for anything to be said or any vote
passed in his honour, and that when he entered
the room he had not the remotest notion of
anything of the kind being intended or thought
of l’’
This I heard, and now testify to. Whether these
104. BEATEN PATH S.
pages are ever to appear in print I know not; but
if the occasion offers I shall not hesitate to pub-
lish them. This scene taught me a lesson which
I have never forgotten, and it may perhaps put
others on their guard against having implicit
faith in the assertions and declarations of popular
speakers, oftentimes hurried on by over-excite-
ment, taken by surprise, and forgetting themselves
in the tumult of a public meeting. On this oc-
casion, Brougham most adroitly threw Campbell
over; and Campbell, with flagrant want of can-
dour, abandoned his own cause. He shrank from
the opposition of his then powerful competitor,
who beyond doubt gained the triumph of their
common exertions for himself; and he sneaked
out of the contest under the cover of a positive
untruth, hastily uttered perhaps, and possibly re-
pented of. It may be well supposed that I never
adverted to the transaction in our after inter-
course, but heartily did I congratulate myself in
having escaped being mixed up in it. I could
not, however, help denouncing it a few days af.
terwards to one of the gentlemen present, whom
I sat beside at a dinner party, on his asking me
what I thought of his friend Brougham and my
friend Campbell? It would not be becoming or
convenable in me to pronounce a direct opinion
them or now on either. What I really thought I
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 105
need hardly say. I never sought an opportunity
of knowing much more of Campbell after this
affair. I met him occasionally in society. But
I never felt towards him with cordiality or confi-
dence. His general habits were not congenial to
mine. But I remember particularly meeting him
at dinner one day at Colburn's, the publisher,
when a party was assembled in compliment to
Frederick Augustus Schlegel, who astonished me
by his wonderful displays of egotism and of
memory; the first brought out by everything,
the latter by a discussion on certain passages in
Shakspeare. He literally seemed to recollect
every passage in the plays of the immortal dra-
matist. But more than that, he was able, on
reference to some of them, to decide with amaz-
ing correctness that certain quotations, made on
the occasion off-hand, were not to be found in
the places to which they were mistakingly as-
cribed.
The last time I saw Campbell was a few weeks
before I left England for America in 1839, when
he called one evening at my house in Wilton
Street, sat for an hour, drank deeply of brandy
and water of marvellous strength, in preference
to wine, (while coolly assuring me he “had quite
given up Sperrits,”) and amused my daughter,
then a child, by telling her always to remember
106 BEATEN PATHS.
she had seen and known “little Campbell the
Poet.”
Very little, indeed, thought I; and so I must
still think of him as Campbell—though very great
in some things as the Poet.
CHAPTER IV.
A THREE DAYs’ TOUR WITH COLERIDGE AND
WORDSWORTH.
ON the 25th of June, 1828, being then resident
in Brussels, I received a note from my neighbour
Major Pryce Gordon, asking me to spend the
evening at his house, to meet the two poets whose
names stand above, and whom he had picked up
as they were passing through, on a tour to the
Meuse and the Rhine. I was punctual to the
hour fixed; but I found the poets before me in
the drawing-room, and also a young lady, Mr.
Wordsworth's daughter.
One involuntarily imagines a notion, though
rarely a likeness, of persons of any note. I had
seen an engraved portrait of Coleridge but it
was not a bit resembling the original, a case
wonderfully common until the sun was pressed
into artistic service, and photography told the
truth without flattery or compromise.
108 BIEATEN PATHS.
I had never seen any likeness of Wordsworth
except in my mind's eye, and it was not happier
regarding him than the limner or engraver had
been with respect to his brother bard. I had
fancied Coleridge to be bloated, dark, and dog-
matical in aspect, for so the portrait represented
him—probably under the idea of giving a heroic
air to the writer of heroic verse—and overwhelm-
inſ, in conversation. I had heard much of his
eloquence and had read in one of Mr. Leigh
Hunt's books of his “prodigious forehead.”
Altogether I had pictured him a giant in look
and a tyrant in talk. But Coleridge was neither.
He was about five feet five inches in height, of a
full and lazy appearance but not actually stout.
He was dressed in black, and wore short breeches,
buttoned and tied at the knees, and black silk
stockings. And in this costume (the same that
he describes himself to have worn in his earliest
voyages and travels in the year 1798) he worked
along, in public coaches or barges, giving the idea
* Leigh Hunt says in his “Memoirs” that Bowyer, the
tyrant head-master of Christ's Hospital school, called Cole-
ridge “a sensible fool,” and pronounced his name Côléridge
like a dactyl. Coleridge, who paid a handsome tribute to his
old master's learning and style of teaching, in the Biographia
Literaria, chap. i., said, when he heard of his death, “it was
lucky the cherubim who took him to Heaven were nothing
but faces and wings or he would have flogged them on the
Way.
COLTRIDGE AND WORDSWORTH. I 09
of his original profession, an itinerant preacher.
His face was extremely handsome, its expression
placid and benevolent. His mouth was particu-
larly pleasing, and his grey eyes, neither large
nor prominent, were full of intelligent softness.
His hair, of which he had plenty, was entirely
white. His forehead and cheeks were unfurrowed,
and the latter showed a healthy bloom. Alto-
gether I never saw any man look less of a lion.
Wordsworth was, if possible, more unlike what
he must appear in the fancy of those who have
read his poetry and have never seen the author.
He was a perfect antithesis to Coleridge—tall,
wiry, harsh in features, coarse in figure, inele-
gant in looks. He was roughly dressed in a
long brown surfoul, striped duck trousers, fustian
gaiters, and thick shoes. He more resembled a
mountain farmer than a “lake poet.” His whole
air was unrefined and unprepossessing.
This was incontestably the first impression
made on others as well as on me. But, on after
observation and a little reflection, I could not
help considering that much that seemed unfa-
vourable in Wordsworth might be really placed
to his advantage. There was a total absence of
affectation, or egotism ; not the least effort at
display, or assumption of superiority over any of
those who were quite prepared to concede it to
| 10 BEATEN PATHS.
him. He seemed satisfied to let his friend and
fellow-traveller take the lead, with a want of pre-
tension rarely found in men of literary reputation
far inferior to his ; while there was something
unobtrusively amiable in his bearing towards his
daughter.
There were several gentlemen of the party.
Coleridge talked much and indiscriminately with
those next him or about him. He did not ap-
pear to talk for effect, but purely for talking's
sake. He seemed to breathe in words. Words-
worth was at times fluent but always common-
place; full of remark but not of observation. He
spoke of scenery as far as its aspect was con-
cerned ; but he did not enter into its associations
with moral beauty. He certainly did not talk
well. But in fact he had no encouragement. He
had few listeners; and what seemed rather repul-
sive in him was perhaps chiefly from its grating
contrast to the wonderful attraction of Coleridge.
His was a mild enthusiastic flow of language;
a broad, deep stream, carrying gently along all
that it met with on its course, not a whirlpool
that drags into its vortex, and engulfs what it
seizes on. Almost everything he talked about
became the subject of a lecture of great eloquence
and precision. For instance his remarks on gram-
mar and its philosophy. His illustrations from
COLERIDGE AND WORDSWORTH. | 1 ||
chemistry and colours came here into play quite
naturally, and led him on, but by no means ab-
ruptly into a complete, and it must be added a
rather complex, essay on the nature of colour,
prismatic effects and the theory of light. He
was no doubt familiarly aquainted with Goethe's
doctrine or theory of colours, and probably with
an Italian translation of Aristotle's treatise, which
neither I nor any of his listeners had more than
passingly heard of. For in alluding to Newton's
theory, which Goethe had written in refutation
of, (comparing light to a closed fan, saying that a
mixture of all colours made white, etc.) he called
it “an incubus on natural philosophy;” and he
branched off from his main subject, to trace the
analogy between natural grammar and colour,
the whole of which he made very interesting if
not very lucid, and as to its originality I am not
competent to judge.” It was difficult to believe
that all this was uttered extempore, or indeed with-
out much elaborate arrangement. The thoughts
* The following which I noted down at the time is a spe-
cimen of the theory. “The first part of grammar, identity,
is analogous to red. The second part, position, to blue. The
third, the thesis, to yellow. The fourth, the antithesis, to
green. The fifth, the synthesis, to another green totally. Black
with its lustre as in ebony gave the best notion of solidity;
and without it, as in the mouth of a cavern, of vagueness. It
is at once the Zenith and nadir of colour. Red and black al-
ways combine together in painting; and black is always used
in giving notions of firmness.”
| 12 BEATEN PATHS.
and words appeared stereotyped ; and in the fan-
ciful system, as in all his discourse, there was a
strong flavour of Kantean transcendentalism and
mysticism.
But on all the various topics touched on by
Coleridge he said something to be remembered.
A true Boswell would have found ample matter
for record. I recollect a few of his remarks. He
said of Rubens's picture of The Boar Hunt, in
the Prince of Orange's collection, “It is a perfect
dithyrambic—every piece of it forms a separate
epithet of beauty.”
“I like an occasional desert view in travel-
ling,” said he, “such scenes are the punctuations
of a tour.”
Talking of the German language, on which
subject he was quite at home, he bore testimony
to its copiousness and power, by remarking that
“in reading the German translation of the Georgics
if he did not pronounce the words he could be-
lieve that he was reading the original.” Of Schiller
he said that “he had reached the acme of his
genius in the “Wallenstein.’ His previous works
were too wild, his latter too formal. He was a
man of deep feeling for moral beauty, and should
have written half-a-dozen grand historical plays.”
He observed that Frederick Schlegel, (whom by
the way he pronounced to be a consummate cox-
COſ, ERIDGE AND WORDSWORTH. II 3
comb) had told him that his translation of “Wal-
lenstein '' was better than the original. “If so,”
said Coleridge, “it is because I struck out a word
from almost every line. Wherever I could re-
trench a syllable I did so, and I cleared away the
greatest possible quantity of stuffing.” And I
may here add my own opinion that in such a
process lies one of the grand secrets of good writ-
ing. But an author can scarcely sufficiently prac-
tise it on his own productions. It is like cutting
through one's flesh and blood.
In almost everything that fell from Coleridge
that evening there was a dash of deep philosophy
—even in the outpourings of his egotism—touches
not to be given without the whole of what they
illustrated. In a word, the impression made on
me by his voluptuous and indolent strain of talk,
flowing in a quiet tone of cadenced eloquence,
was that he was by far the most pleasing talker,
but by no means the most powerful, I had ever
heard. He led you on beside him by the persua-
sive elegance of diction, but never drove you for-
ward by the impetuous energy of argument. “He
had,” as Bishop Burnet said of William Penn,
“a tedious, luscious way that was not apt to
overcome a man's reason though it might tire his
patience.” But Coleridge's talk was not absolutely
tiresome, only somewhat drowsy. I thought it
WOIL. II, I
114 BEATEN PATHIS.
would be pleasant to fall asleep to the gushing
melody of his discourse, which was rich in in-
formation and suavity of thought. But there
was something too dreamy, too vapoury to rouse
one to the close examination of what he said.
Logic there no doubt was, but it was enveloped
in clouds. You were therefore delighted to take
everything for granted, for everything seemed to
convince—because it took a shape and colour so
seductive.
It was soon arranged that I should join the
tourists in the course of their sojourn on the
banks of the Meuse, towards which quarter I had
been for some days projecting a ramble. Upon
thinking the matter over during the night, I
resolved on overtaking them the next day. I
accordingly came up with them at the village of
Waterloo (with whose memorable neighbourhood
I was familiar) and I proceeded with them to
Namur, they having left Brussels in the morn-
ing diligence, and I following some hours later in
a cabriolet, which I sent back to Brussels that I
might be more completely one of the party.
At both Waterloo and Quatrebras, while
Wordsworth keenly inspected the field of battle,
insatiably curious after tombstones, and spots
where officers had fallen (the Duke of Bruns-
wick, Picton, Ponsonby, etc.), Coleridge spoke
COLFRIDGE AND WORDSWORTH. 115
to me of the total deficiency of memorable places
to excite any interest in him unless they pos-
sessed some natural beauty. He called this a
defect. I thought it was, and a strange one in
such a man, as associations of moral interest
seem so fruitfully to spring in a poetic mind on
the sites of memorable deeds. Coleridge took
evident delight in rural scenes. He was in ec-
stasies at a group of haymakers in a field as we
passed. He said the little girls standing with
their rakes, the handles resting on the ground,
“looked like little saints.” Half-a-dozen dust-
covered children going by the roadside, with a
garland of roses raised above their heads, threw
him into raptures. He murmured that “it was
a perfect vision.” It would be easy for a critic or
a satirist to ridicule all this, to call it “twaddle,”
or by some such dishonouring epithet. Every
little incident of the kind, or even glimpses of
commonplace scenery, produced the same sort
of effect. But there was no affectation nor cock-
meyism in it. It was evidently prompted by a
deep sympathy with nature. It flowed quite na-
turally—and very pleasingly subsided.
At Namur we walked out by the light of a
splendid full moon. We poked our way through
the narrow streets to the bridge of the Sambre,
then to that of the Meuse; Wordsworth, who
I 2
T 16 BEATEN PATHS.
took charge of his daughter, pioneering us along,
bustling through, asking the way from every one
we met; while Coleridge walked after leaning on
my arm, and in a total abstraction of thought
and feeling, indifferent as to whether we went
right or left, but finding somewhat to admire in
every glance of moonshine or effect of shade, and
a rich fund to draw from in his own mind. He
talked away on many subjects; and at last, the
broad river, the lofty ridges of hills, and masses
of wood, burst suddenly on us in the full light,
as we emerged from a gloomy passage that
opened on the quay. -
Coleridge advanced towards the river, with
quiet expressions of enjoyment at the beauty
around him. Wordsworth stepped quickly on,
and said aloud, yet more to himself than to us—
“Ay, there it is—there's the bridge | Let's
see how many arches there are—one, two, three,”
and so on, till he counted them all, with the ac-
curacy and hardness of a stone-cutter.
The shadow of the bridge falling on the water
gave to every open arch its clear reflection in the
stream, which made each of course perfectly
round, looking like a row of so many huge, limpid
moons, or, as I happened to observe, in allusion
to their vapoury appearance, “ so many ghosts
of moons.” This hit Coleridge's fancy.
COLERIDGE AND WORDSWORTH. 117
“Very good I’’ said he, moving forward, that’s
a good observation—that's poetry. Let me see,
let me see?”
He then paused till I rejoined him, when he
took me by the arm, and in his low recitative
way he rehearsed two or three times, and finally
recited, some lines which he said I had recalled
to his mind, and which formed part of some-
thing never published. He repeated the lines at
my request, and as well as I could catch the
broken sentences I wrote them down immediately
afterwards with my pencil as follows,
— and oft I saw him stray,
The bells of fox-glove on his hand—and ever
And anon he to his ear would hold a blade
Of that stiff grass that 'mid the heath-flower grows,
Which made a subtle kind of melody,
Most like the apparition of a breeze,
Singing with its thin voice in shadowy worlds.
While this recitation went on, Wordsworth
had pushed forward with his daughter close to
the parapet of the bridge; but we all stopped
simultaneously to listen to a delicious chorus of
female voices which approached from the other
side of the river. A char-à-banc covered with
brown linen awning soon appeared, slowly cross-
ing the bridge. It contained several well-dressed
young women, bourgeoises of the town, returning
| 18 BEATEN EPATH S.
no doubt from a country visit or pic-nic. They
sang as long as they were in our hearing a Ger-
man air, in parts, and very prettily. It harmo-
nized exquisitely with the scene and the hour.
The aid of a bass or barytome might have made
it better music, but not for the occasion. And
probably if the youths who were most likely
walking at some distance after, had been in the
carriage with their demoiselles, other harmonies
might have interrupted those of the “sweet
sounds” which so delighted us.
We followed them in silence for some time,
Wordsworth as usual in advance. When Cole-
ridge lost the tones of the chorus he began again
to chaunt his strain of poetry and philosophy;
and, to my feeling, it was fitly accompanied by
the dying cadences, which reached my ear for
some time after they had failed to enter his.
It was during this walk that he strongly urged
me to study German, of which I had only the
slightest smattering. He told me he had com-
piled a grammar, never published, containing, he
said, in ten pages, all that was of the least use
to a learner of intelligence. This led to his fa-
vourite topic, grammar. Every conversation on
that subject was a general treatise on its philo-
sophy, its construction, and its value. I often
afterwards longed for the little treatise he alluded
COLERIDGE AND WORDSWORTH. | 19
to, which would have been of great value when I
set really to work to follow Coleridge's advice,
on the banks of the Neckar, and under the woods
of Slierbach, with a still more gentle and accom-
plished guide, into the difficulties of that terrible
German language.
When we got again into the heart of the old
town, it being eleven o’clock, Wordsworth broke
suddenly upon us, with a downright matter-of-
fact request, in his very matter-of-fact way, to
join him in inquiries about a conveyance for
Dinant the next morning. While Coleridge, the
music still echoing in his soul, escorted Miss
Wordsworth to the hotel (I praying for her safe
arrival under such guidance) his brother poet and
myself went very prosaically on our business.
He was indefatigable in making inquiries from
one bureau to another, as to time, distance, and
above all, as to price. At last he agreed to my
original proposal to give up all thoughts of a
public conveyance, and to hire a calèche to our-
selves. This being decided on, I gave orders to
the innkeeper, and we retired to our beds, ex-
cellent like all those in France and Belgium, from
the custom of having the woollen mattrasses taken
to pieces, beaten, and re-made, once a year or so,
a small point of civilization which, marvellous to
say, has not even yet penetrated more than skin-
deep into the mind of England.
120 BEATEN PATH S.
It was during those inquiries at the diligence
offices, and in giving some instructions for the
purchase of snuff to the commissionnaire of the
hotel, that I remarked Wordsworth's very imper-
fect knowledge of French, and it was then that
he accounted for it by telling me that five-and-
twenty years previously he understood and spoke
it well, but that his abhorrence of the Revolu-
tionary excesses made him resolve if possible to
forget the language altogether, and that for a
long time he had not read nor spoken a word of
it. It may be supposed how much and how un-
pleasantly surprised I was at this confession of
narrow-mindedness. Coleridge did not under-
stand French at all.
The next morning saw us up very early. The
carriage was ready by seven o’clock, when we
sat down to breakfast, Coleridge (as usual at
that meal, or with his evening tea while travel-
ling) despatching three eggs to his share, dressed
according to his own recipe—two minutes in
boiling water, then taken out and put into a hot
napkin for two minutes more, then returned to
the water, but not to boil again, for another
minute—and then to be eaten. I unfortunately
cannot state whether Coleridge was a big or a
little-endian ; but it was no small amusement to
see the importance he attached to this arrange-
COLERIDGE AND WORDSWORTH. 121
ment of cookery, by which, as he maintained, the
egg acquired an entirely superior flavour, the
white part being done more thoroughly—and I
forget exactly what advantage accruing to the
yelk.
We drove to Dinant along the banks of the
river, which presents a succession of very lovely
views. These called forth many remarks, but
nothing worth recording, if I may be allowed to
except the fact that my fixing on the ruins of
Poilvache” Castle, as the scene of part of my
novel of ‘The Heiress of Bruges,’ which I was
then employed on, arose from a joking conver-
sation between us, as to our separate appropria-
tion of various scenes on the river for literary
purposes.
On passing near the iron mines in the neigh-
bourhood of the village of Rouillon, where we
stopped to bait the horses, we strolled up a road
that skirted a deep ravine and stream, Words-
worth as usual in the van, while his accomplished
daughter sat down close to the river taking a
very pretty sketch. Coleridge leant on my arm
* This name I converted into Welbasch, which I thought
sufficiently like the original in sound to satisfy an inquiring
tourist as to the site of my heroine's adventures, and suffi-
ciently different from the original word to save me from any
charge of ignorance in the fictitious history of the building
introduced in my story.
122 BEATEN PATH S.
as we walked; and some observations of mine
relative to the geology of the neighbourhood,
called forth a long discourse on “the great philo-
Sophical work” in which he said he had been
twenty years engaged, and which he was then
concluding and about to publish in conjunction
with Mr. Greene, the lecturer on natural philo-
sophy. He talked of Nature and God, which he
said “so far from being the same were direct
contrasts;” and of Religion, of which he said
many things; among the rest that “revealed
religion was a pleomasm—there could be none
other.” +
Then he talked of Christianity, of which he
'spoke with reverence and profound belief. In
all he uttered on these high subjects there was a
quiet air of conviction, without dogmatism, and
of philosophy founded on benevolence.
* I might, had I chosen to argue with Coleridge instead of
listening to him, have quoted Boyle's definition of the word
Nature, and perhaps puzzled him a little as to his own mean-
ing. If taken to mean natura naturams it is the same as the
Creator. But Coleridge no doubt used it in the sense of the
wniverse, and meant to say there was a contrast between the
Maker and his works—“and looked through nature up to
nature's God.”
t Here again was a fine opening for discussion had I wished
it. Coleridge's dictum seemed to be founded on Dryden's
principle that “Deism or natural worship is only the faint
remnant or dying flame of revealed religion in the posterity
of Noah.”
COLERIDGE AND WORDSWORTH, 123
When we reached Dinant, Coleridge and Miss
Wordsworth remained at the hotel, while Words-
worth and I, in a broiling sun, proceeded to as-
cend the steep rocks above the town, for the sake
of a view. We took off our coats, threw them
across our arms, and trudged along. Words-
worth had quite the figure and air of a sturdy
mountaineer in a search of a stray sheep or
goat. We had a scorching ramble of more than
two hours, in which Wordsworth eaſoanded ama-
zingly, and gave me a much more favourable
opinion of himself and his powers than I had
heretofore conceived, but not all at once. There
were no bursts of information but a gradual
development of it. He looked round, as we
ascended, from time to time, at the prospect up
and down and beyond the river; and he talked
of painting, sketching, and many other subjects
suggested by the scene. But he did not, after
all, talk like a painter or a philosopher, and not
one bit like a poet. There was an inflexible
matter-of-fact manner and spirit in all he said,
which came out in a rather hoarse and harsh
burr that made it disagreeable as well as unim-
pressive. I could hardly believe in the man's
identity, or be convinced that I walked beside
the author so remarkable for his imaginative and
vapoury abstractions.
124 E]EATEN PATHS.
Near the summit of our path we came to a
very picturesque shrine, with a cross and the
sculptured figure of a Madonna inside. We sat
down on the steps of this rural temple, and
remained for some time enjoying the beautiful
prospect of the Meuse, winding away through a
landscape that united many charms. Words-
worth half promised that he would write some-
thing on the subject of that shrine and the view
from it. I know not if he ever did so, or whether
the incipient inspiration evaporated altogether.
But the scene and the incident are strongly fixed
on my memory as part of the “punctuation” of
this most pleasant little excursion.
After walking for some time on the table-land
at top of these almost perpendicular rocks, with-
out any subject being started of any particular
interest,-for such a situation rather invited the
mind to dreamy commonplace,—we at length
got on a topic of a fixed and definable kind, one
that my companion had evidently studied and felt,
and on this he soon proved himself able to talk
ably. It was Lord Byron and his poetry that
thus excited him, and it was quite by chance that
it was Kicked up, as I might say, on our path.
He began, after a somewhat prolix explana-
tion of his private feelings, and held forth for
full half an hour in a strain of real sound sense
COLERIDGE AND WORDSWORTH. 125
and good criticism. He was however, in my opi-
nion, very undervaluing in his estimate of Byron
as a poet, though very just in that of Byron as
a man. But there was nothing on either point
ungenerous or unfair. He clearly felt what he
said, and all that he did say gave me a high
idea of his probity and good feeling. It was ex-
ceedingly perspicuous, and might have been
printed word for word.
It would be now idle to set down this peri-
patetic lecture even if I remembered it. The
chief heads were his notions of the great errors
of Lord Byron as a writer; first as regarded mo-
rals, as supposing that crime constituted heroism,
violence, power, etc. Secondly, regarding know-
ledge of the human heart, in making personages
of over-wrought and overwhelming passion sus-
ceptible of tenderness, constancy, etc. Thirdly,
in regard to style, of which he cited many ex-
amples. All this was widely open to reply, and
much of it very unconvincing, though a great
deal was just and striking. But he allowed
Byron to have possessed great ability in the ex-
pression of strong and lively sentiment, and com-
mand of language, and admitted that he must
have been “a very remarkable person,” to have
produced such an effect on the public as he
unquestionably did. He summed up his judg-
126 BEATEN PATHS.
ment by saying that “Lord Byron has been greatly
overrated, will soon and has already begun to
sink in public opinion far below his real merit,
and will then take his rank among the poets in
his proper place”—which he intimated as not a
very distinguished one. He “very much doubted
Lord Byron's having been a man of much ori-
ginality of mind”—and this led him to mention
Byron's having stolen so much from him. That
again brought on the subject of Byron's invete-
rate personalities against him, which he accounted
for as follows.
A Mrs. Bryant, the widow of a printer at
Bristol, had written a volume of poems which
she sent to Wordsworth for perusal in manu-
script, with a request that he would accept the
dedication. Wordsworth wrote back, advising
her not to dedicate to him, as he was not suf-
ficiently popular; and rather discouraging her
hope of supporting her family, as she expected,
by her writings. He told her that “the parts
really good were rather above the standard of
modern taste and general conception, and her
faults such as every one could discover. And as
to those poets who were most popular and made
most by their writings, one wrote without depth
or great feeling, and the other degraded his talents
to immoral and vicious purposes.”
COLERIDGE AND WORDSWORTH. 127
Wordsworth admitted to me that these allu-
sions pointed to Scott and Byron, but no one
was named, and he never meant the letter to go
further. But Mrs. Bryant showed it about, and
Byron saw it or heard of it. Thence his virulence
against Wordsworth, as the latter was told by
Rogers; who one day asking Lord Byron (as he
told Wordsworth), “Why he had abused one
from whom he had so largely borrowed P” re-
ceived, as the only reply, the question, “Why
did he write that letter?”
Wordsworth also mentioned Southey's hatred
to Byron. In acknowledging this, he attributed
it wholly to Byron's gross mention of Mrs.
Southey and her early station in life (a dress-
maker or milliner), in some of his notes to ‘Don
Juan.”
“Southey is as brave a man as ever lived,”
said Wordsworth, “but he is a Christian, and a
determined enemy to duelling, otherwise he would
certainly have called Lord Byron out.” He added
that Southey never forgave him, nor even his me-
mory—no strong tribute to his Christianity
Passing to Moore, in connection with the con-
temporary poets, Wordsworth spoke in strong
terms of reprobation of his attacks on the king
(George IV.) in his “Fudge Family, etc., parti-
cularly his having raked up the old story of his
128 BEATEN PATHS.
early conduct on the turf, and his being expelled
from some club. Wordsworth dwelt strongly on
the wantonness of reviving the story at the King's
advanced age, and after his having wholly with-
drawn from the sporting world.* All that he
said on this subject and on the personalities of
Byron, had an air of frankness and sincerity.
There was clearly no humbuſ, in what he said,
and no actual asperity.
Of his own poetry I did not give him any
temptation to speak over-much. He showed no
anxiety to obtrude the subject on me; but he re-
marked that “he did not like writing—he pre-
ferred short pieces, as sonnets, etc., to continuing
his long work, ‘The Excursion'—he had no in-
tention of more of it being published during his
lifetime, having already given to the world matter
sufficient to make in all three close-printed octavo
volumes, which he thought quite enough’’—and
as I heartily joined in that opinion, I did not
press the subject.
On some occasion during our, not his, excur-
sion, but not during the walk I speak of, the
novels of Walter Scott became the subject of
conversation. I made the common, but I thought
* Within a year after this conversation the King was as
keen after racing as ever he had been, and he bought some of
the first horses in England, whose performances at Ascot, etc.,
he closely watched.
COLERIT) GE AND WORDSWORTH. 129
unanswerable, remark that their great popularity
with various nations, even in translation, when
the attractions of Scotch idiom and national co-
louring were almost wholly lost, was incontestable
proof of their great merit. To this Wordsworth
replied that “it proved, if anything, the direct con-
trary—because ‘The Sorrows of Werter,’ ‘Ossian's
Poems, and several other such worthless works,
were universally translated and read.” Coleridge
nodded his head at this, but whether assentingly
or in sleep I cannot positively say, but I fear it
was the former. I did not think it worth reply-
ing to ; and I fancied it savoured of jealousy as
well as want of critical acumen, and of candour,
a less pardonable deficiency.
Wordsworth amused me much, however, by
recounting a still less questionable instance of
unfairness in another person of my own family
name, whom he had met in company in London
a few days before. Some one mistaking this gen-
tleman to be the author of ‘Highways and By-
ways,’ was complimenting him more handsomely
that it beseems me to repeat; and (in Words-
worth's phrase) “he pocketed the praise, like a
man who was too poor in fame or in spirit to dis-
claim what was not his due.”
The point of most interest, in as far as he was
personally concerned, which I touched on with
WOL. II. K
130 BEATEN PATH S.
Coleridge, was that of opium-eating. I, along
with almost every one who had heard anything
of him, had set him down as a regular glutton in
that respect. I talked to him of his indulgence
in this enjoyment as a matter of course. On
this he displayed infinitely more vivacity and
energy than I had yet thought him susceptible
of. He quite took the thing to heart. And, with
an earnest anxiety to be rightly understood, and
an evident hope that I would in some measure
forward his views to that effect, he laboured to
assure me that the most false notions existed on
the subject. He admitted that he had at times
taken opium, as the only means of relieving dread-
ful visitations of nightmare, which had frequently
so afflicted him as to make him leap from his
bed in agonies of undefinable terror. He might
have quoted Milton (leaving out one word)—
—“Sleep hath forsook and given me o'er
To (death's) benumbing opium as my only cure.”
In speaking thus he seemed suddenly to re-
collect, and then recited, some lines which he
said were never published, powerfully expressive
of his sufferings, more so than his ‘Pains of
Sleep.’ He shuddered and panted as he re-
peated them in a deep murmur, and gave me a
vivid notion of the horrors to which he must
have been habituated. But he solemnly pro-
COLERIDGE AND WORDSWORTH. 131
tested against ever having taken opium in any-
thing like excess, or for the purpose of mere ex-
citement.
“It would have been a deep and wanton crime
in me,” said he, raising his hands and eyes to-
wards heaven, by no means a common move-
ment with him, for he used but little gesticula-
tion even when speaking with strong emphasis.
He spoke with absolute abhorrence of the
‘Confessions of an English Opium-eater,’ called
it “a wicked book, a monstrous exaggeration,”
and dwelt with great reprobation on the author
for “laying open his nakedness to the world.”
He considered him to have behaved grossly in
bringing him (Coleridge) into the book, as an
authority for the excesses he avowed; and de-
clared that “when he suspected Mr. de Quincy
of taking opium, he had on several occasions
spent hours in endeavouring to dissuade him
from it, and that gentleman invariably assured
him in the most solemn manner that he did not
take it at all, while by his after confessions it ap-
peared that he was drinking laudanum as other
men drink wine.”
I think it was on the day previous to this con-
versation, as we were driving along, that Coleridge
was holding forth, in his oracular but not dogma-
tical tone and style on the decay of literature and
K 2
132 BEATEN PATH S.
the degradation of taste. It must be remarked
that he avowedly never read any of the light
literature of the day, being wholly engaged for
years previously on his “great work.” He how-
ever heard the names of successful novels and po-
pular authors, and confounded them altogether in
his brain, which was certainly no respecter of per-
sons. He had heard of me as one of the herd,
what he no doubt considered the “ small deer ‘’ of
literature ; but of what I had written he had not
the slightest notion. As he was talking away, a
quarter to us and three parts to himself, both
Wordsworth and I caught the words, “Yes, this
may be truly called the penultimate stage of Eng-
lish literature—there may be one station lower.
We have Waverley novels and their school, High-
way and Byway tales and their imitators.-We
have '-but a coarse laugh of full two-horse
power bursting from Wordsworth, and an irre-
sistible faint echo from me (while our charming
female fellow-traveller blushed deeply) put a stop
to his remarks. I turned off the interruption
much to his satisfaction by joining in his stric-
tures, and leaning on the arm of his criticism, as
it were, to crush with weightier pressure the vic-
tims of whom I myself made one. Wordsworth
was highly amused.
In the evening, as we walked about the court-
COLERIDGE AND WO R.D SWORTH. 133
yard of the Hôtel de Flandre at Namur, Coleridge
took me by the arm and said, “I’ll tell you a
story.” He then proceeded.
“When my “Lyrical Ballads’ first came out it
was anonymously, and they made a good deal of
noise. A few days after they were published I
dined at Mrs. Barbauld's and sat beside Pinkerton
the geographer. We talked a good deal together,
and I found him very amusing and full of general
information. When we retired to the drawing-
room he led me to a recess, having taken up a
copy of the ‘Lyrical Ballads' which lay on the
table.
“Pray, Sir,” said he, “have you read this
thing?”
“I have looked into it.”
“Do you know the author P’’ asked he.
“Do you know the author?” echoed I, resolved
not to be caught.
“No,” said Pinkerton, “but I never read such
utter trash as his book, particularly an extrava-
gant farrago of absurdity called ‘The Ancient
Mariner.” Don't you think it insufferable P”
Coleridge : Intolerable !
Pinkerton : Detestable !
Coleridge : Abominable !
Pinkerton : Odious !
Coleridge : Loathsome !
134 BEATEN PATHS.
Pinkerton ; Sir, you delight me. It is really
delightful to meet a man of sound taste in these
days of our declining literature. If I have a
passion on earth, it is an abhorrence of these
‘Lyrical Ballads,’ of which every one is talking,
but most especially of this wretched ‘Ancient
Mariner.’
Coleridge. Hush, not a word more | Here
comes our hostess. I know she is acquainted with
the author, and she might be hurt.
Pinkerton (pulling Coleridge by the button,
taking a huge pinch of snuff, and speaking in a
whisper): I’ll tell you what, Sir, we mustn't let
this matter drop. Let's fix a day for dining to-
gether at the Turk's Head. We’ll have a private
room, a beef steak, a bottle of old port, pens, ink,
and a quire of foolscap. We’ll lay our heads to-
gether and review this thing—and if we don’t give
it such a slashing, such a tearing, such a-
“If we don’t l” said Coleridge.
“Is it a bargain?”
“Most certainly.”
“DOne l’’
“Done l’’
While Coleridge thus told his story, dramati-
zing it, it may be said, and with great humour and
/usto, I was more amused than with the anecdote
itself, by the anticipation of the pleasure I should
COLERIDGE AND WORDSWORTH. 135
have, by quoting for him the case in point, which
had happened to myself that morning. But he
disappointed me, by putting his hand on my
shoulder, and saying in the kindest tone of frank
good-nature, “So you see, my dear Mr. Grattan,
that I have been myself served as I, with less rea-
son than Pinkerton, have served you. Words-
worth has told me of my misconduct. I have never
read your works that I spoke so lightly of ; but I
shall make it a point of conscience to read every
one of your tales, and I am sure the task will
turn out a sincere pleasure.”
I passed the subject over by asking him how
|Pinkerton looked when they next met.
“I never saw him afterwards,” said he. “He
no doubt thought that I should hate him for the
unintended affront—but that was because he was
a Scotchman. But I have no dread of your hating
25
7/26.
“Why not?” asked I.
“Because you are an Irishman.”
This compliment to my country came out so
graciously that I took it personally. But the only
subjects seriously national on which we touched
were the question of Catholic Emancipation and
Potatoes.
Of the first he spoke, for the purpose of con-
vincing me that he was not intolerantly opposed
I 36 BEA'I'EN PATH S.
to the measure. But his reasoning on it was ex-
tremely confused. In his discourse there was a
jumble of religion, politics, and metaphysics which
I had not time to sift. He did not grapple with
the subject, or take it by any strong or any weak
point. I found it difficult to follow him, which
is now happily of no consequence, even had the
issue of the great question depended on his opinion
one way or the other.
Relative to potatoes, Coleridge told me the fol-
lowing anecdote, which I hope has not since then
slipped into print.
A Lincolnshire lady of his acquaintance, wish-
ing to secure for her only son (a boy-baronet) a
most correct pronunciation, engaged a first-rate
London governess at a high salary, to prepare him
for his male teachers when a little more advanced.
One day at dinner the child asked for a potato,
with very distinct emphasis on each syllable.
“That’s not it, my dear,” said the governess,
“try again.”
“Give me, please, a po-ta-to.”
“Once more, my dear, that's not right.”
“Indeed it is, though,” said the boy blubber-
ing, “I spelled it for Mamma to-day in a book—
p, o, po s—t, a, a 3–pota;-t, o, to ;-potato.”
“My dear, as far as the letters go you are right,
but in the pronunciation you are wrong. You
COLERIDGE AND WORDSWORTH. 137
should say petato, pe—the lips compressed as I
do mine—pe / There is no po, my dear, in the
English language but pochay!”
“I make you a present of that,” said Cole-
ridge, “ and it is not only original but true.”
When he talked of Leigh Hunt’s mention of
him in his ‘Lord Byron and his Cotemporaries,”
he seemed considerably annoyed at that amiable,
but probably too imaginative author, having
dressed up so a minute a character of him, his
disposition and habits. He protested that he had
never seen Mr. Hunt but once, when he brought
him a letter of introduction from some one. Hunt
met him walking near his residence at Highgate,
and he did not even enter the house. He was par-
ticularly amused, he said, at his remarking in one
of Hunt's sketches of these Cotemporaries that
poor Charles Lamb's head was like Aristotle's.
I don’t remember the passage in Leigh Hunt's
book here referred to, but I had a notion that
political feeling had probably something to do
with Coleridge's rather disparaging mention of
him.
I did not accompany Coleridge and Words-
worth to the Rhine, as they proposed I should.
I had satisfied myself in our short tour of the
Meuse. I thought I had in a few days seen as
much as was required to give me a tolerably just,
138 BEATEN PATHS.
though but a superficial, notion of them. I was
for that space of time a careful observer of their
manners and (as far as I could pretend to catch
it) of their characters. They were extremely
obliging to me; and I was surprised to find my-
self on such easy and familiar terms in so short a
time with men so much older,” and so different
from myself in habits and opinions. I thought
it was perhaps better to separate while impres-
sions seemed so satisfactory on all sides. I ac-
cordingly took my leave of them, having received
from both cordial invitations to go and see them
on my next visit to England, one at Highgate, the
other in Westmoreland. I really felt enough to-
wards each to make me wish for such an occasion,
which I regret not having found ; and the last I
saw of them was on the deck of the passage-boat
between Namur and Liége, both the poets ad-
miring, while Miss Wordsworth sketched, one of
the loveliest scenes on the river.
I may here insert, as “original verses,” at the
far-back time these sketches treat of, the lines
written by the poets in the album of the lady at
whose house I met them in Brussels. Both
pieces seemed to have been kept “ready cut and
* Wordsworth told me he was fifty-eight, and that Coleridge
was three years younger. They neither of them looked older
than their respective ages.
COLERIDGE AND WORDSWORTH. 139
dried” for such an occasion, and they might pos-
sibly have previously done similar service in the
same way, for they were contributed at the very
first asking and in the room with a dozen people.
WoRDsworth.
I.
She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Deside the springs of Dove,
A maid whom there were none to praise,
And very few to love.
II.
A violet by a mossy stone
Half-hidden from the eye,
Fair as a star when only one
Is shining in the sky.
III.
She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be ;
But she is in her grave—and oh
The difference to me !
CoLERIDGE.
Dew-drops are the gems of morning,
But the tears of mournful eve ;
Where no hope is, life's a warning
That only serves to make us grieve,
As we creep feebly down life's slope.
Yet, courteous dame, accept this truth-
Hope leaves not us, but we leave hope,
And quench the inward light of youth.
Possibly these contributions, produced “under
140 BEATEN PATH S.
pressure,” may have since appeared revised and
corrected. I give them as I found them, and
prefer being “nothing” to being “critical” in re-
gard to them.
About two years afterwards, having passed the
winter at the Hague, I saw in the post-office there
a letter addressed to Mr. William Wordsworth,
Heidelberg, among others, detained for want of
payment of the postage exacted for letters to a fo-
reign country—a shameful defect, be it remarked
en passant, in the intercourse of civilized life.
How many hundred thousands of persons have
suffered anxiety, sorrow, loss, by the inadvertent
omission, ignorance of rules, or possible incapa-
city on the part of their correspondents to pre-
pay the sheet that may contain news, never to
be received, deeply involving the feelings or the
interests of those addressed ' What a wretched
administrative arrangement it is, that prepay-
ment should not be always and everywhere
optional How ungenerous and inhuman it is,
that great establishments, and the legislatures
that control them, are so indifferent to the public
for whose service they exist I suppose they do
not entertain these minute questions for fear of
being sneered at, as too “sentimental” or “sym-
pathetic” for the common herd.
I, in the case in question, was prompted to do
COLERIDGE AND WORDSWORTH. 141
as I would be done by, and I paid the few cen-
times, the neglect of which might have been of
serious consequence to somebody or other, and I
wrote on the back of the letter that it was for-
warded by me. It turned out that it was for a
son of Mr. Wordsworth, then a student at the
university of Heidelberg. He took an oppor-
tunity of mentioning my small civility to his
father, who, in his turn, spoke good-naturedly of
it to some one (I believe it was Mr. Lockhart)
who afterwards repeated it to me, and this, as
well as an unperformed promise of mine to visit
Wordsworth at the Lakes, induced me to write
to him, accompanying my letter by a copy of
‘The Heiress of Bruges,’ as a present to his
daughter. The following was his answer. I, from
idleness or want of sufficient motive, never fol-
lowed up the correspondence, nor had I any op-
portunity for improving my short acquaintance
with either of the distinguished men of whom I
have here given this imperfect sketch.
LETTER FROM MR. WoRDsworth.
“Bryanston Street, Portman Square,
“January 5, 1831.
“My dear Sir,
“Your very obliging letter is now lying before
me, both as an agreeable memorial of your regard,
142 BEATEN PATHS.
and in some degree as a reproach for my delay
in not sooner thanking you for it. The fact is
that I waited for a sight of the present that it
announces, that my letter might have some value
from the report which any work of yours would
I am sure enable me to make of the pleasure I
and mine had derived from it. Month passed
on after month and the book never reached me.
I inquired for it but without success. Then
came the unhappy revolution of Brussels, which
I was sure would drive you—whither I could
not guess. I came to London about ten days
ago, and have been since tossed about at Hamp-
stead, Fulham, etc., but your book, I am happy
to say, is on its way to Rydal, and will in a few
days I trust contribute to the amusement of my
sister and such of my family as are at home. My
wife and my daughter, whom you mention with
an interest flattering to my pride and affection,
not to say vanity, came with me to town and are
now in Sussex, where I join them to-morrow.
“I am sorry to say that I have been so hurried
during my short stay here that I could not pos-
sibly have read your work. I foresaw this and
sent it down the moment it came into my hands
with other books for my leisurely perusal. Be
assured that I think with much pleasure of the
few days we passed together and of the interesting
COLERIDGE AND WORDS WORTH. 143
conversations we had, of the droll adventures of
the diligence”—and of the image of that castle
on the Meuse where your scene is laid and which
I would gladly have visited. You described it
with animation, and surely I saw it among the
shadows of evening—or is this imagination ? I
wish you had touched (I never shall, I fear) on the
rude chapel and cross which we sate under look-
ing down upon Dinant.
“I have now to thank you for what I and all
my family regard as a great favour, and indeed
a kindness for which we are truly grateful, though
in a small matter, I mean your releasing the
letter addressed to my son from its durance
at the Hague. I consider myself in your debt
for the postage and shall be happy to repay
you.
“I hope neither yourself nor Mrs. Grattan nor
any of your family suffered injury during the
commotion at Brussels either in person or pro-
perty. To be driven away from a place of resi-
dence by popular revolution must always be
melancholy and mostly perilous. You are no
doubt aware of the alarming state in which Great
Britain and Ireland are. What is to be the end
* This refers to a small incident in which two of our fellow-
passengers were the actors, on the way between Waterloo and
Namur, and I may find place for it somewhere.
144 BEATEN PATHS.
of it no one can foresee—all are full of fears that
take the trouble of thinking.
“Believe me very faithfully yours,
“WM. WoRDsworth.”
The only points inviting remark in this plain
and friendly letter are firstly the writer's calling
the Belgian revolution an “unhappy” one, proving
his non-concurrence with the principle of nation-
ality and independence involved in its success,
which did entail on me very serious loss in “pro-
perty” though I escaped in “person.”
And secondly, the moral to be drawn from the
pleasant expressions relative to the paid postage
affair, that (a very small) virtue is sometimes its
own reward, however doubtful may be the recom-
pense of the great ones.
The only thing I ever heard directly of Cole-
ridge after our short intercourse together was
through the medium of a gentleman who ob-
tained a letter of introduction from me, and who
saw him at Highgate. The following is an ex-
tract of a communication from this gentleman —
“I have seen Coleridge, and he received me
very kindly. I have not yet been down to his
soirées, but I have engaged myself to go next
week. He told me that he had been reading
‘Highways and Byways,’ and had been very
COLERIDGE AND WORDSWORTH. 145
much gratified. He mentioned the circumstance
of his ma/-à-propos allusion to them; and, in re-
ference to the passengers in the Belgian dili-
gence, was proceeding to pass rather a severe
censure on one of your companions who turns
out to be an old college friend of mine—but he
stopped short on learning our acquaintance, and
laughed at his second mistake, en bon enfant.
I like Coleridge very much. He has nothing of
a philosopher about him but the mildness and
urbanity.”
The latter observation had reference only to
Coleridge's manner. Had the writer had an
opportunity of studying his mind, he might have
suspected something not dreamt of in his phi-
losophy.
VOIL. II. L
| 46
CHAPTER. W.
T)INERS-OUT.
SCROPE DAVIES.
THERE is a numerous class of very clever men,
who from want of a peculiar quality of mind—
be it energy, industry, or something less defi-
nable—never produce anything original, yet ob-
tain a reputation for talent almost if not quite
equal to originality. They are nevertheless but
inferior men. They are what Bacon calls “the
haberdashers of small wares.” Unable to fabri-
cate the raw material of intellect, and not having
even the capacity to produce the thoughts of
others in masses of well-concealed plagiarism,
they become mere hucksterers of wit, the retail
dealers in a commodity for which there are few
wholesale houses. These persons live on memory,
while an original mind feeds itself on thought.
The latter may receive and relish, but cannot
retain the minutiae of another mind. It becomes
imbued with the flood of genius which study has
SCROPE DAVIES. 147
let in upon it, but it is not cut into these petty
drains for irrigation which characterize a smaller
intellect. An actually retentive memory indicates
to a certain degree a vacancy of mind. The
brain that embodies original ideas has no room
for a lengthened recollection of the words of
others. They are swept away in the rush of
conceptions which they themselves assist in de-
veloping. The matériel is destroyed. The essence
alone remains. It is thus that in the best writers
and speakers we find a constant recurrence of old
thoughts blending with new ones, but we have
not that overlarding with quotations, that pal-
pable repetition of phrase and sentiment which
form the staple of ordinary authorship, common-
place oratory, or everyday table-talk.”
There is something very imposing in the con-
versation of the “clever men’’ I am treating of.
To take a prominent place among them the
individual must have learning, knowledge of life,
* Sheridan once said he “was sorry he had read so much,
for had he not, he had never borrowed so largely.”
Fox replied that he “knew no other use in reading but to
borrow.”
Steal was the word they meant; but the anecdote is a good
illustration of Sheridan's finesse and the simplicity of Fox;
while they both admitted, in their different characteristic
ways, the unavoidableness as well as the admissibility of pla-
giarism.
I, 2
14.8 IBEATEN TATH S.
quickness, self-command, and tact. So fitted
for his career, it is sure to be a brilliant one.
The great majority of mankind is delighted with
the sallies of a raconteur, the repeater of other
men's jokes, the scatterer of a largesse that costs
him no trouble in the coinage, and of which every
one may pick up something, to be dealt out again
as genuine on some ready occasion. Originality
excites envy ; mimicry gives but amusement.
Besides, the ordinary run of society relishes
much the imitation of remarkable men, even
when it cannot appreciate a display of original
talent. The pretended counterpart is sometimes
a caricature, but it almost always, if done with
skill, contains only the palpable points and sharp
edges which every one can see and feel. What-
ever may be incomplete or superfluous is left out.
A word, a look, a gesture is ingeniously inserted;
and the practised story-teller makes the copy
better for general effect than the archetype.
The learning of the “ diners-out,” as these
persons are emphatically called, simply because
they seldom dine at home, is to be sure put
forth in “shreds and patches.” It does not
produce the fine and fertilizing effect which
learning ought to cause. It has not strengthened
nor refined the intellect, but has merely and at
best sharpened the wit. It is frittered away in
SCROPE DAVIES. 149
scraps, to deck the fag-end of an anecdote, or
thrown bit by bit as a make-weight to some
empty argument; and Homer or Horace is lugged
in eternally, often out of place and oftener out
of season. These men have Shakspeare at their
fingers' ends. They dabble in his beauties with-
out feeling them, and they have many other poets
by rote but scarcely a line of poetry by heart.
The fact is they drive a trade. Their professions
are only for display. They are pedlars who open
out their pack to catch a customer. They know
little of the properties of the wares they deal in.
The philosophy of commerce is a dead letter
to them. They are like the London apprentices .
of old, crying for ever, “Come buy, come buy l’’
and repeating the list of their goods with a satia-
ting monotony. The aplomb of these charlatans
is marvellous. Having their conversation all
ready-made they are never at fault. No retort
can put them out of countenance, no rebuff
ruffle their temper. If they make a good hit
with a borrowed thought, they complacently take
the merit to themselves. If they fail, they are
not abashed, for they have no sympathy with the
reputation of the dead or living wit whose sally .
they repeat. They have no mercy on the listeners.
They retail a bon mot or a story over and over
again. But they are to a certain extent sure of
150 BEATIFN PATH S.
applause, from a set of mediocrities who sit open-
mouthed while they talk, laugh at their stalest
anecdotes, and publish them about town as
miracles. They are the penny-trumpets who
sound their puff of triumph.
All this is by no means said in disparagement
of individuals who contribute to the amusement
of society by their conversational talents. I would
only mark the distinction between the amateur
and the artist. But among the latter class I
have often met persons of such superior qualities
that it was surprising they could be satisfied so
to squander them, or that they were so deficient
in that somethinſ, which prompts to original pro-
duction, and leads to a certain though it may be
a qualified success.
SCROPE DAVIES was an admirable specimen of
the best of his class, for though he had all the
essential peculiarities of the genus diners-out,
there was much to mark him of a very superior
species. I had heard a good deal of him before
I met him, as the associate of Byron, Moore, and
others of note. It was in the year 1827 that I
first saw him. He was then notoriously past
his prime, not in years but in power, for he had
led a hard life, and had muddled away the best
part of those talens de société to which alone he
owed his reputation. His celebrity was as a
SCROBE DAVIES. | 5 |
talker. But having been long out of that circle
in English life where he was known and appreci-
ated, he was, at the period I speak of, an exotic
transplanted to a foreign soil, and lost to the
world of his early associations. He had for five
or six years been fixed in the little town of Ostend,
where as the Magnus Apollo of a confined set he
had probably acquired, or was at any rate en-
couraged in, a rather dictatorial manner.
Davies came up occasionally to Brussels to
enjoy a week's dining-out. He was always
welcome and well received. It was there I met
him, being invited to dine, at a late hour, for
that purpose at the house of an English gentle-
man my near neighbour. I regretted much
having a previous engagement to an earlier party,
but as it was a mere family dinner at a place
where I was very intimate, I got away early, and
joined the other circle, while the gentlemen were,
in the old English fashion, deep in the discussion
of their wine and the topics of the day.
I was introduced to Scrope Davies by the
master of the house and placed in a seat reserved
for me by his side. He attempted to stand up
to receive me with due honour, but sinking on his
chair he grasped my hand, vigorously squeezed
it, and addressed me in a cordial greeting gar-
nished with two or three quotations; and clearing
| 52 BEATEN PATH S.
off the bumper which stood before him he “filled
his glass again,” and dropped into a half-muttered
half-maudlin rhapsody which I could scarcely
comprehend.
He had in fact already followed his custom
of an afternoon; but recovering himself after a
while he did his best, talked fluently, quoted
freely, and showed that he had read much and
remembered much of what he had read. But
though there was a good deal to amuse in the
body of his discourse, there was no method in its
details. He was too abrupt in his transitions
for that easy flow which is the great charm of
table-talk. He brought Byron, Porson, and others
into play, not as parts of a whole, in natural
sequence, but rather “showing them up " in
unconnected succession, as the conservator of a
picture-gallery hurries from one specimen to the
next, without any chain of analogy to unite
school with school or specimen with specimen,
to save you from the monotony of contrasts,
which Montesquieu pronounces to be as tedious
as a monotony of resemblances.
Disappointed as I was, there was still much to
relish in the company of Scrope Davies. There
were few men of any great renown in England
whom he had not met, or heard so much of as to
give him the tone of an acquaintance; and when
SCROPE DAVIES. 153
he gave a repartee of Fox or a saying of Pitt, a
tirade of Burke or a sarcasm of Sheridan, it was
done with such a familiar air that one never
thought of asking him, Did you hear it? Were
you in the house? or at the Cocoa Tree ? Or
wherever the scene was said to have been. You
took it for granted that so good a sketcher
sketched from life. His University anecdotes
were embellished perhaps, but they bore the
stamp of reality. Every one knew he was a
Fellow of Trinity, and that he had been on inti-
mate terms with the leading men. He was a
positive echo to their expressions, and you might
suppose in listening to him that you had the men
mentally within ear-shot. But Davies was no
mimic of voices or manner. He was so far
original that in repeating the sayings of others
he was not doing them at the same time. There
was nothing dramatic about him. His features
were inexpressive, and his habits of life threw
over them an unvarying flush. His close cut
and grizzled hair showed a forehead of no extent
or mark. Phrenology could find little certain
there to work upon; for even his wonderful
memory was not denoted by that prominence of
eye which, as remarkable in some of Dr. Gall's
schoolfellows, led to the discovery of that science.
There was nothing sonorous in Davies's voice.
154 BEATEN PATH S.
He spoke in a rather short and snappish way,
with however a gentlemanly accent. Neither
was there anything pedantic in his bearing,
which was perfectly well-bred. So that although
he wanted the qualifications requisite for the
higher order of story-telling—those which take
the deep, wide range of pathos and humour,
which embody character, work on sentiment, and
play with nature as a juggler with his cups and
balls—yet he had a perfect facility for that light
and easy style of table-talk, which is so agreeable
in society when it is not pushed too far.
But the worst of this particular talent is the
too great self-confidence which it is likely to pro-
duce. The constant habit of talking for effect,
the conviction that he is expected to hold forth,
generates in the professional wit an impatient
sense of his importance, that makes him insen-
sible if he cannot get the lead and despotic when
he has it. Few men of general acquirements and
any modesty like to enter the lists, for either the
first or the last word with persons of this stamp.
The only thing at all likely to hold them in check
is the presence of one of their own sort, or of
some one of decidedly superior rank, to whom
they are ever ready to yield precedence. Scien-
tific or literary men of original bent, who may
have gained reputation by their works, would
SCROPE DAVIES. 155
scarcely condescend to a rivalry, even if they did
not feel their small chance in it, with the talker
by trade in a mixed company. The former class
generally require to be “drawn out” as the
phrase goes, to have something exciting and en-
couraging. They like to give and take. If they
enjoy their own wit so do they the wit of others,
for there is no jealousy between flint and steel.
Their fun comes in flashes, and, in the intervals
between them, the gaiety of those around them
gives conversation the irregular and varied tone
which is its great charm. But the diner-out by
profession, who studies talk as a science, works
himself up for it, lives by it in short, has no tole-
ration, much less sympathy, for the natural con-
verse of the social circle. Such a man, however
learned, knows nothing of the republic of letters
in its practical effects on society. He barely, on
necessity, submits to an oligarchy—provided he
form one of it.
Those who knew Scrope Davies in his better
days, when youth and the brilliant illusions of
hope brought forth his talents in conjunction
with the magnates of genius to be found collec-
tively in London life, he must have been a far
more agreeable companion than when I met him,
middle-aged, bruised if not yet broken by dissi-
pation, his expectations deceived, and the scene
| 56 BEAT EN PATH S.
of his display peopled by the English settlers in
a small Continental capital or a Flemish fishing
town. In this sketch of Davies I am therefore
not prejudging any estimate made in better cir-
cumstances.
Independent of the first impression, there were
Some after-observations not quite favourable to
him which struck me. He seemed entirely de-
ficient in information on broad and general ques-
tions of politics and morals. He betrayed a
sycophantic tendency towards place and title.
His habits of life were repugnant to mine, and
he assumed a depreciating tone in reference to
many contemporary authors whose works he had
never read. But he and I met frequently, al-
ways with pleasure on my part, for I greatly
admired his conversational talents, and I steered
clear of all chance of mixing in scenes which I
could not enjoy. He sometimes dined with me
when he came to Brussels, and the hospitality of
our mutual acquaintances brought us often toge-
ther.
The occasion on which I recollect having
found Davies most particularly amusing was one
morning at breakfast with Kit Hughes, the
American minister, himself a capital specimen
of Yankee vivacity. The conversation turned
on life in London, and Scrope was certainly at
SCROPE I) AVIES. 157
home in the racy and graphic sketches of “the
Fancy”—Gibbons, Scroggins, Cribb, etcetera,
with which he made Hughes and myself laugh
immoderately.
I never heard but from himself of Davies
having produced anything, “in prose or rhyme,”
beyond the routine compositions of his college
course; but the very first evening I met him he
told me he had completed a life of Lord Byron—
all but the last chapter, and that Murray the
publisher had offered him I forget what exces-
sive price for it. Between nine and ten years
later (that is to say the day before yesterday,
Friday, 19th August 1836) he repeated the same
information to me, word for word. The world
may therefore look forward to another biography
of the great poet by one of his intimate asso-
ciates, if indeed Davies has not succeeded in
persuading himself, by dint of repetition, that
what is but an intention exists as a fact. And
from his well-known way of life and his extreme
indolence this is I think the probability. He
may have in his possession some scattered memo-
randa of his intercourse with Byron and some of
his letters; but had he effected any regular me-
moir it is not likely that he would have resisted
the temptation of Murray's offers, besides the
pleasure of publishing a book which would give
| 58 BEATEN BATH S.
him a lasting place in literature, side by side with
one of its most remarkable ornaments.
He told me that when Moore was gathering
materials for his life of Byron he applied to him
(Davies) among many others to assist him with
whatever he possessed, but that he refused, by a
letter which contained a sort of parable of a great
proprietor who wished to enlarge his domain
calling upon a small farmer to give up his gar-
den, etc. etc. Davies was fond of repeating his
own epistolary effusions to men of note, and, con-
cluding from this that his letters were written
chiefly for effect, I have no doubt they must have
been amusing and clever.
One thing very remarkable in Davies is that
while he retains perfectly his recollection of all
the old stories, stale jokes, and trite quotations
which formed the stock-in-trade of his conversa-
tion so many years ago, he positively has not added
the most trifling acquisition to it during the
whole time that has since elapsed. It would
seem that his brain was full and that memory
could hold no more. The University, Parliament,
the Turf, the “Fancy,” are still the themes of
his discourse, but all in illustration of their pe-
culiarities a quarter of a century back. He has
not an anecdote less than twenty years old. To
the rising generation he will (if his memory last)
SCROl2F, DAVIES. 159
be as valuable a companion as he must soon be-
come to his old acquaintances (if theirs does not
fail) somewhat of a bore. Dining with him two
days ago at our mutual friend's (Curry, the En-
glish vice-consul at Ostend), he poured forth the
very same flood of quotations from Latin and
English authors, (he is unacquainted with modern
languages and knows even French very imper-
fectly,) and the same details of the veteran leaders
in ton and literature in the early part of the
century, that I had heard from him on every
occasion of my meeting him during his casual
visits to Brussels, or mine to this town. If he
could but remember the persons to whom he has
so often displayed his garrulity, with the same
fidelity that marks his recollection of events long
gone by, he might still be a great acquisition to
society. But it looks as if he had found out his
failing, for instead of remaining stationary as of
old in this scene of his seven years' residence, he
now frequently shifts his quarters, and fluctuates
between Paris and London, but not exactly in
accordance with Brummel's definition of his abode
in Calais, which meant remaining there at all
times, ea necessitate rei.
Davies is greatly improved in his habits of life.
One may now meet him at dinner without seeing
him consume indiscriminately the contents of
l 60 BEATEN PATH S.
every bottle of wine within his reach. In the
evening he is really capable of “discourse of rea-
son,” while in my morning walks on the Digue
—that finest of sea-side promenades — I con-
stantly meet him as early as seven or eight o'clock,
and have then some pleasant snatches of chat
with him. He is nevertheless greatly broken, and
looking ten years older than his age, which can-
not I should think exceed fifty. But from his
cheerful temper, good constitution, the absence of
care, and the reformation in his way of life, he has
a fair prospect of reaching a good round old age,
and of being for many years to come sought
after as a most accomplished diner-out.
August, 1837.
Another year has rolled over since the preced-
ing sketch was written. I have come once more
with my family to pass the bathing season at
Ostend, and I have again fallen in with Scrope
Davies, on his accustomed visit to his old haunt,
He tells me he has just left Tom Moore in Paris,
where he met him with “the younger but some-
what taller Tommy,” whom I remember a child
in the cottage of the Allée des Veuves, but who
has been by this time placed at a Military cottage
in Caen. Davies tells me that Moore is still
plump and rosy and unbroken, but that “Tommy
Secundus looks by no means poetical.”
SCROPE DAVIES. 16]
The first thing Davies asked me was whether
I had read the ‘Physiologie du Goñt.’ I an-
swered no ; but on his strong recommendation I
meant to read it—and I in return asked him if
he had seen ‘Charles Lamb's Letters,” (a copy of
which had been lent to me a couple of days pre-
viously by Tom Hood, who is here at present), and
which I had been running through with great de-
light. Davies smiled a supercilious negative, and
merely asked “was that the man who wrote some-
thing in a magazine P” which I thought a most
unbecoming slight to the memory of “Elia,” the
exquisite essayist, the most genuine of critics, the
friend of Coleridge, Southey, and Wordsworth.
Had Charles Lamb rejoiced in the title of “ Ho-
nourable" before his name or “Baronet ’’ after it,
Scrope Davies would have been the ready retailer
of his quaintness, the echo of his quiddities.
This little incident grated on my growing
liking for Davies. But I have acquired the knack
of taking men as they are ; and a long habit of
human appraisement has taught me to value them
for what they are worth.
Ostend, October 13, 1837.
Nothing of its kind appears stranger to me
than my increasing intimacy with Scrope Davies,
after so many years of cold acquaintanceship. I
find him greatly improved; he may possibly have
VOL. II. M
l62 B E A TEN PATH S.
the same opinion of me; or perhaps the mere
force of habit is doing its work on both of us.
On my way to England about six weeks ago I
met him by accident on the quay at Calais. He
revived a subject which he had mentioned to me
in this town some weeks before, and which I be-
fore alluded to, and he wished me much to make
Dunkerque my way back, that I might see him
in his bachelor's residence there and talk it over
quietly. I could not manage that, but I entered
cordially into the project he has so much at heart,
for putting into form the scattered materials
(which turn out to be just what I anticipated)
for the book he is so desirous of completing.
While in London last month I spoke to Murray
on the subject, and I informed Davies, by letter,
of his readiness to negotiate about it, as soon as
a sufficient specimen of the work was forwarded
to him for examination. This letter brought the
following reply —
“Dunkerque, October 4, 1837.
“Dear Grattan,—I feel much obliged to you
for the trouble you have taken respecting me and
mine. It is my intention to see you at Ostend
early next week, and on the conclusions I may
come to from a conversation personal (one in per-
son is worth a thousand in letters) will depend
the ubi’ of my residence this winter. My papers
SCROPE DAVIES. 163
are in a sort of chaos without form and void, and
I have need of some master spirit to breathe life
and order into the rude and undigested mass of
aliment. One thing is certain, I can never put
a finishing hand to any work I take in hand, un-
less I have free access to a library for reference,
such a library too as is only found in cities. My
own little collection of books I have gone over
and over again—they are all good, but we may
be satiated even with what is good. They are
all ‘pièces de résistance, like a round of beef,
which to a man who lives alone as I do is with-
out end (as indeed most rounds are except those
of the Fancy); but I cannot live now as I did at
Eton, without change of food. Then again in a
city I fear lest I should be disturbed by the charm
of society—in fact I wish to unite two things in-
compatible in themselves, the resources of society
and the security of solitude. Although I am not,
if I chance to be without company one of those
‘who are (to use an expression of a charming
writer of the days of Charles I.) like a becalmed
ship and never move but by the wind of other
men's breath, and have no oars of their own to
steer withal’(which by the bye is a very exact
portrait of vanity). Although I say I am not
one of them, yet I cannot say I am one of those
few persons on whom solitude can be well fitted
M 2
164 BEATEN PATH S.
and sit right, and of whom the same author thus
speaks. ‘They must have enough knowledge of
the world to see the vanity of it, and enough vir-
tue to despise all vanity; if the mind be possessed
with any lust or passions, a man had better be
in a fair than in a wood alone. They may, like
petty thieves, cheat us and pick our pockets in
the midst of company; but like robbers they are
sure to strip and bind or murder us when they
catch us alone. This is but to retreat from men
and to fall into the hands of devils.’
“Can you tell me the author whom I have
quoted P
“On my interview with you depends my winter
sojourn. Till then adieu !
“Trom the inscription at the beginning of Mur-
ray's present I am led to infer that the copy of
Byron's works sent me is the one which Murray
gave to you. Is it so? The mistake can be
easily rectified.
“How is it that you have energy enough, in the
very thick (a favourite word of Sheridan's) of
society, to make solitude your general rule, and
now and then only
“‘To thy bent mind some relaxation give,
And steal one day out of thy life to live,’
while I, like a blockhead, invert that system, and
SCROPE DAVIES. I 65
embrace as the general rule what ought to be the
exception.
“Commend me to Mrs. Grattan. I shall bring
some of my papers with me. God bless you.
“Yours ever,
“ScRoPE DAVIES.”
This is a very characteristic specimen of the
writer's style in conversation as well as correspond-
ence. He many a time forgot his former quota-
tions from and references to favourite authors, as
in this instance regarding those from Cowley's
essays. The present he alluded to from Mr.
Murray was a copy of his edition of Byron's
works complete in one volume—one of which he
gave to me with my name written on it, and
another for Scrope Davies, in which I suppose
my name was also inscribed instead of his by
mistake.
True to his promise, Davies arrived here three
days ago; and after due consultation and a par-
tial inspection on my part of his fragments, he
set out again for Dunkerque this morning, to set
to in earnest at the composition of some conse-
cutive chapters of his work, which he is to for-
ward or bring with him to Brussels as soon as I
am settled in my winter quarters there. The
only observation I have to make further is that
i
166 BEATEN PATH S.
when he told me, years ago, that he had completed
his intended volume all but the last chapter, it was
really the first he should have said, for there is
nothing like such a division or distribution of
matter to be seen in his manuscript pages, which
are very few in number and totally unconnected.
But something may come out of the chaos by
and by.
The intention so positively expressed in the
preceding letter, and reiterated seriously in the
interview which followed it, was never carried
into effect. From caprice, or indolence, or some
other cause unknown to me, Davies changed his
mind and his plan for spending the winter of 1837
in Brussels; and I had no further opportunity of
meeting him before my leaving Europe for the
United States, in the month of July 1839; and
it is there that I add this memorandum to my
recollections of him.
Boulogne-sur-Mer, August 15th, 1849.
Can it be close on twelve years since I last
saw Scrope Davies at Ostend? And is it really
him whom I once more fell in with yesterday, in
the, Rue de l’Ecu in this town, on his way to a
::::3% d'hôte dinner at three o'clock; and again,
#in another part of the same street an hour later,
SCROPE DAVIES. 167
on his return from his early repast, having, as he
assured me, taken after it “half a glass of brandy
and water ’’—looking so old and bent, but so
spruce, so neatly-dressed, so gentlemanlike in air,
so lively and fresh in conversation, and in all re-
spects so much improved in appearance and
manner to what he was when I first met him in
Brussels two-and-twenty years ago?
Yes, there is no doubt of it. Davies still lives,
still flourishes according to his fashion, has still
his wits (if not his wit) about him, and is thus
likely to fulfil my prognostication dated so long
back, and even now borne out as far as mere
time is concerned. But he tells me that he is
really and truly no longer a diner-out; that he is
by no means as well in health as I might imagine
from his looks, and that he has lately taken to
walking in his sleep, having on one occasion
awoke, finding himself on the banks of a river—
but I could not help remarking there was no fear
of his going into the water unless it was mixed
half-and-half with wine.
As he goes to Paris to his present lodgings,
Rue Miromenil No. 2, this very day, I have no
means of putting to the test his old qualities as a
convivial companion, or talking over my wander-
ings in the New World and various parts of the
old, since my return from America in 1846.
168 BEATEN PATH S.
I was greatly struck by this new specimen of
the work of Time on another of my old acquaint-
ances. How strangely and how capriciously does
this Tyrant deal with different persons ! How
many does he utterly alter in features, carriage,
voice—-in all the outward characteristics of hu-
manity. How entirely does he spare some, how
slightly change others' Davies comes under the
last of these categories. Years have left their
traces upon him no doubt. But they have been
acting in a sort of double sense. If they have in
one way made him look older, they have given
him a younger look in another. And, if I could
strike the balance, I think I should say that he
is scarcely changed at all as to the actual evidences
of age. So much has been removed that was
unpleasing in his early appearance, so softened
and refined his lineaments, that he is to-day a
far more agreeable object to look at than he was
a quarter of a century back; and if I may judge
by analogy, his social bearing must afford an
equal improvement to the evidences of his phy-
sical aspect.
We had half an hour's rambling talk about
former acquaintances, and associates, dead and
living or hovering between the world and the
grave;—Lord and Lady Holland at Kensington,
Lady Blessington at Paris, Brooke Richmond in
SCRO PE DAVIES. T 69
this very town, Kit Hughes at Baltimore, Tom
Moore at Sloperton, and others. Davies himself
is evidently proud of his reformed and economical
habits. He laid a creditably boastful emphasis
on that “half glass of brandy’ as his after-dinner
potation; and in the same breath assured me that
he lived on eighty pounds a year. I praised his
philosophy, and we parted—without any allusion
to his Life of Byron—I promising to call on him
when I next went to Paris; and he quoting a
portion of one of our far-back conversations
(which I had entirely forgotten) on the subject of
Charles Lamb, whom he said he would never for-
give for having in one of his criticisms (which I
had made him read) talked of Ophelia's “scraps"
of songs, instead of “snatches,” the true Shak-
sperian word.
November 17th, 1855.
On opening the half-bound volume in which
these manuscript Sketches, with many other de-
sultory things, are entered, I alight on the fore-
going pages about poor Scrope Davies. He too
is no longer of this world. He finished his career
in those Paris lodgings (where I never called as
I had meant to do) about three years back, ob-
scurely, but not quite deserted, or with any ig-
nominious circumstances of discomfort. An old
17() BEATEN PATH S.
friend of his and acquaintance of mine, Mr. Hop-
kins Northey, who happened to be near him at
the last hour, gave me an account of his death a
short time afterwards in London. That gentleman,
himself now no more, was one of the circle of as-
sociates who gave such cordial welcome to Davies
in his casual visits to Brussels so long ago, and
he was one of the last survivors of that agreeable
and convivial set. How many have disappeared
from the earth's surface since then Elliott, Dallas,
Sir William Hutchinson, Sir John Whiteford,
Berkeley, Taylor, Seymour, Brigstock, Bryan,
Kit Hughes, Charles White, and several others,
with too many of their charming partners, all
forming a society of English that Brussels has
not since seen equalled; kept together and ce-
mented by the genial hospitality of the then
Ambassador Sir Charles Bagot and his fascinating
lady, both, like most of the others, gone to their
long rest; as well as the frequent guest of their
réunions the Prince of Orange of those days, the
heir to a sovereignty snatched from him by his
father's fault, and the inheritor of a dismembered
monarchy, for whose uncongenial associations he
never had any sympathy.
How altered is the social aspect of Brussels
since these pleasant times; of which the subject
of these notes, poor Scrope Davies, was one of the
most remarkable notabilités /
| 7 |
CHAPTER WI.
EMINENT ACTORS.
TALMA, JOHN KEMBLE, EDMUND KEAN.
AMONG the numerous acquaintances formed du-
ring a long and active life were several actors of
great merit, and some of high celebrity. But
considering the strong partiality I have ever had
for things theatrical, my intimacies with members
of the dramatic profession have been very few.
I had never the advantage of a regular perma-
nent residence in London, living almost entirely
on the Continent or out of Europe; and I con-
sequently only met occasionally in society actors,
artists, and authors, as I met other individuals,
without belonging to circles, cliques, or coteries,
devoted to the closer cultivation of an inter-
course with the contemporary talent I so much
admired.
TALMA I knew early in Bordeaux, at the com-
mencement of my own literary career, and I be-
came more intimate with him in Paris, where I
17.2 BEATEN PAT II S.
at times had the pleasure of receiving him at
my house or visiting at his ; and now and then
seeing him in his dressing-room at the Théâtre
Français. I was introduced by him to Made-
moiselle Duchesnois; and also to Mademoiselle
Mars, in her elegantly furnished boudoir, the
first night of the representation of Casimir's
comedy L'Ecoſe de Vieillards, in which she acted
so exquisitely, and in which Talma made his first
appearance in Paris in a part of decided comedy.
I well remember the agitation he could not re-
press as he came on the stage, his hands ner-
vously shaking, and his whole bearing more like
that of a mere novice than what might have
been expected from a veteran of his established
fame. His performance of the part of the frank,
yet suspicious and bewildered, husband was in-
imitable; but he repeated it several times before
he could feel quite confident of his own success
in his new line of “business.”
Talma, who was born in London, spoke Eng-
lish perfectly and was thoroughly versed in our
literature, particularly in all that appertained to
the drama. He repeatedly told me that it was
long a great object of his ambition to play some
of Shakspeare's characters on the London stage;
but that he always recoiled from and finally re-
nounced the intention, under the apprehension
TALMA, JOHN KEMBLE, EDMUND KEAN. 173
that his foreign accent, very slight as it was,
would not be tolerated by a British audience. Had
he conquered his over-sensitive modesty, I am
certain that our stage would have witnessed the
representation of Shakspeare's noblest creations,
in a style of excellence unrivalled to this day.
Those who remember how Talma's prodigiously
powerful acting redeemed the feeble translation
of Hamlet by Ducis, can understand what might
have been expected from his impersonation of
such parts as Othello, Macbeth, and Lear in the
full integrity of Shakspeare's glorious text. It was
left for a later day and almost a new generation
to witness the clever and ingenious, but some-
what imperfect, efforts to accomplish what this
great actor shrank from attempting, and it was
probably well for even the splendid reputation of
Edmund Kean, that such a formidable rival as
Talma had not contested his claim to supremacy.
The first part I saw Talma play was Manlius;
the last, Sylla. I was familiar with every role in
his répertoire. To witness his performance was
always a source of infinite enjoyment. To mark
his incessant labour to reform the conventional
monotony of French heroic verse, which his vene-
ration for Shakspeare's genius, and his thorough
knowledge of our language admirably fitted him
for effecting, was deeplygratifying to all true lovers
174 BEATEN PATH S.
of dramatic poetry. It is not enough to say of
him that he was unrivalled in France from those
days to the present. He was during life, and is
still in tradition, quite unapproachable. Rachel
alone added a new link to the chain of tragic
celebrity, broken by the deaths of Mademoiselle
George and her great rival Mademoiselle Duches-
nois, and to this hour but incomplete.
My chance meeting and brief intercourse with
John KEMBLE has been already mentioned. His
long reign, at the head of a fine school of art,
was then over, the electric flashes of Edmund
Kean's genius having swept through it, like
lightning withering, without actually prostrating,
a stately grove. Several actors of much power
gave dignity and force to the lingering existence
of Kemble's school. His brother Charles, Young,
Wandenhoff, and Cooper were the most conspi-
cuous. All of those I had known, from oc-
casional meetings either in England or America,
and to this brief list, so passingly mentioned,
I must in justice add Edwin Forrest, whose bold
and original style, however faulty it may at times
appear, removes him from the rank of mere imi-
tators of any model.
Of the living actors who still actively adorn the
English stage I shall not here speak. I have had
some slight personal relations with a few, which I
EDMUND KEAN. 175
hope the connection between authorship and actor-
ship may draw closer, and perhaps extend. But for
the present I shall confine myself, in anything to
be called a personal sketch, to my acquaintance
with him, among the names I have cited, as at once
the best known to myself, and the most suscep-
tible of affording interest to general readers;
EDM UNID KIEAN.
During a course of about twenty years, I had
some opportunities of knowing this highly-gifted
individual, with respect to whom the laws which
regulate mortality seemed in some measure re-
versed—Nature having made him a great actor,
and art having transformed him into a remark-
able man. In Kean's professional displays there
was no evidence of study; in his personal con-
duct all appeared to result from it alone. The
laborious efforts which usually form the artist
were unknown and unnecessary to him; or rather
he resorted to them only in order to warp his
character from its original bent. Impulse was
the spring of his greatness on the stage—strain-
ing for effect the cause of the littleness of his
social career.
In tracing ever so brief and faint a record of
such a being as Kean, it is impossible to be
entirely insensible to some dramatic and moral
176 BEATEN PATHS.
“visitings.” But I shall let them pass. I am
neither his critic nor his biographer. I claim no
fitness for either office; and I can only hope,
before his memory fades from the public mind,
to give a few sketches which may keep it some-
what longer alive. Anecdotes of distinguished
authors are interesting, as illustrations of works
which never die. But reminiscences of great
actors are due to the public, from whom their
perishable talents are withdrawn for ever; and
doubly due to the individual, who leaves behind
but doubtful records of his fame. I shall depict
Kean in the various aspect of merit and fault
which I observed during our snatches of acquaint-
anceship. If I did not think that the former pre-
dominated, my pen should leave both untouched.
I cannot recall exactly the year in which I hap-
pened to be stationed in the barracks of Water-
ford, in the south of Ireland, at that time the
head-quarters of the regiment in which I was a
subaltern. The dates and data of those days have
almost all slipped, sand-like, from one end of
Time's glass; and it is hard to separate and
arrange them as they lie confounded in the other.
I How difficult is it even to remember distinctly
what were the pains and what the pleasures of
youth ! The very mixture of both, and the con-
fusion in which they blended together, were per-
EDM UNID KIEAN. 177
haps the causes of their acuteness at the time, as
of their vagueness now. But there is a certain
pursuit—one of the minor enjoyments of life—
which for me long preserved its attraction intact,
I mean the exercise of fencing. It was my at-
tachment to it that led to my personal knowledge
of Kean.
In the days I speak of, and long after, I never
lost an opportunity of encountering amateurs and
professors of “the noble science of defence.” I
frequently took up the foils with a little lieutenant
of artillery who was in garrison at Waterford;
and few days passed without our measuring blades
together.
I was one evening walking with this brother
idler on the public promenade called “the Mall;”
and, passing by the theatre, which had been
within a day or two occupied by a strolling com-
pany, we looked at the play-bill, and found that
the performance for that evening consisted of
‘Hamlet,’— the principal character not left out
by particular desire, and some farce, the name
and nature of which I forget. We voted the first
four acts of the tragedy “a bore;” but agreed to
go in for half an hour, at the commencement of
the celebrated fencing-scene between Hamlet and
Laertes, just to see what sort of affair the strol-
lers would make of it.
VOL. II. N
178 BEATEN PATHS.
In due time, the door-keeper, to whom we ex-
pressed our intention, and who was alive to the
importance of two box-ticket-takers, came to seek
us in a neighbouring billiard-room. He an-
nounced the opening of the fifth act of the play;
and we arrived in time to take possession of a very
empty stage-box, and hear Osrick's invitation to
Hamlet lisped out, with the usual vulgar caricature
of court foppery too often exhibited by theatre-
royal comedians, as well as by our Waterford
candle-snuffer. When the fencing-bout was actu-
ally commencing, and we were reasonably amused
by the clumsiness of this same Osrick, who han-
dled the foils as a farmer would a hop-pole, we
turned our attention to the chief actors in the
scene, who soon stood in position, and prepared
for the assault.
The young man who played Laertes was ex-
tremely handsome and very tall; and a pair of
high-heeled boots added so much to his natural
stature, that the little, pale, thin man who repre-
sented Hamlet appeared a mere pigmy beside him.
Laertes commenced, after slurring “for better for
worse’’ through the usual salute, to push carte
and tierce, which might, as far as the scientific
use of the small sword was concerned, have been
as correctly termed cart and horse.
My companion, who had by no means a poor
EDMUND KIEAN. 179
opinion of his own skill, and who was rather
unmerciful towards the awkwardness of others,
laughed outright, and in a manner sufficient to
disconcert even an adroit performer. He pro-
posed to me to leave the place, calling out thea-
trically, “Hold enough l’—and I might have
agreed, had I not thought I perceived in the
Hamlet a quiet gracefulness of manner, while he
parried the cut-and-thrust attacks of his adver-
sary, as well as a quick glance of haughty resent-
ment at the uncivil laugh by which they were
noticed. When he began to return the lunges,
secundum artem, we were quite taken by surprise,
to see the carriage and action of a practised swords-
man; and as he went through the whole per-
formance, we were satisfied that we had, in the
phrase of Osrick aforesaid, made
“A hit—a very palpable hit.”
We immediately inquired of the woman who
filled the nearly sinecure place of money-taker, as
to the gentleman whose “excellence for his wea-
pon ’’ had so pleasantly surprised us. She told
us that his name was Kean, that he was an actor
of first-rate talent, chief tragic hero (for they were
all honourable men) of the company; and also
the principal singer, stage-manager, and getter-
up of pantomimes, and one of the best Harlequins
in Wales or the west of England. Coming closer
N 2
T80 IBEATEN PATH S.
to the point, she let us know that Mr. Kean gave
lessons in fencing, and also in boxing—that he
was married to a Waterford lady, supporting him-
self, his wife, and child, and carefully filling all
the parts herein detailed, for a salary of a guinea
and a half a week.
Such, at the period I mention, was the situa-
tion of the great tragedian who was soon to pro-
duce a sensation in London, unparalleled since
Garrick electrified the town on the boards of
Goodman's Fields. Kean was at this time at-
tached to the Swansea Company, which regularly
crossed the Channel to perform in Waterford for
two or three months each year. It was under
the management of old Cherry, author of ‘The
Soldier's Daughter,’ who, on the night I first saw
Kean, played Polonius to his Hamlet; while one
of the minor parts (Rosencrantz or Guildenstern)
was filled by James Sheridan Knowles, the since
celebrated dramatist, who had even then pub-
lished a little volume of poems which contained
some pretty things, and one rather long piece
called ‘The Smuggler,’ which was extremely
spirited. But had Shakspeare himself published
in our days, in the character of a poor player, and
by subscription, I doubt if his best play would
have produced him salt to his porridge.
My companion and myself sought out Kean
ED MUND KIEAN. 181
without loss of time; and we soon arranged with
him hours for fencing-matches at our respective
barrack-rooms. But though we managed that
he should not quite lose his labour, his visits
were not made in the capacity of master, for we
were either of us quite a match for him.
Nothing could exceed Kean's good conduct
and unpresuming manners during some weeks
that I knew him in this way. Several of the
officers of the garrison met him with us on these
occasions, and a strong interest was excited for
him. He owed to this cause, I believe, rather
than to any just appreciation of his professional
merit, a good benefit, and some private kind-
nesses. But when I look back to that period, in
which his talent was as certainly matured as in two
or three years later, I cannot bring myself to be-
lieve that he played so well then as when he filled
me with such delight on the boards of old Drury.
A man of his vigorous genius required excite-
ment to bring it into full play. His bold con-
ceptions and original style must have wanted,
even to himself, some stronger test than his own
judgment, displayed as they were in the confined
sphere of little country theatres. And all that
was afterwards received with such enthusiasm
must then have been considered at the best as
doubtful and obscure. Kean was decidedly con-
182 BEATEN PATHS.
sidered far superior to his immediate associates,
or to strolling players generally, in the common
acceptation of the term. But he might have
gone on, perhaps till his death, as the hero of
such companies as old Cherry's, had not one
chance critic, Dr. Drury of Harrow, possessed
discrimination enough to feel his merit, and in-
fluence sufficient to bring it into notice.
The last thing I recollect of Kean in Water-
ford was the performance for his benefit. The
play was Hannah More's tragedy of ‘Percy,” in
which he, of course, played the hero. Elwina
was played by Mrs. Kean, who was applauded
to her heart's content. Kean was so popular,
both as an actor and from the excellent character
he bore, that the audience thought less of the
actress's demerits than of the husband's feelings.
And besides this, the débutante had many per-
sonal friends in her native city, and among the
gentry of the neighbourhood, for she had been
governess to the children of a lady of large for-
tune, who used all her influence at this benefit.
After the tragedy, Kean gave a specimen of
tight-rope dancing, and another of sparring with
a professional pugilist. He then played the lead-
ing part in a musical interlude; and finished
with Chimpanzee, the monkey, in the melodra-
matic pantomime of “La Perouse;’ and in this
EDMUNID KEAN. 183
character he showed agility scarcely since sur-
passed by Mazurier or Gouffe, and touches of
deep tragedy in the monkey's death-scene, which
made the audience shed tears.
A few years afterwards I happened to be in
London; and Kean was then in the very height
of his reputation, for he was firmly established,
having triumphed over the envious, or conscien-
tious, opposition of the Kemble school, and stood
his ground against the more perilous risk of pub-
lic caprice. I had heard of his great success in
the capital, and had followed the accounts of his
various performances with much interest. I was
eurious also to form a judgment of the man's
real character, in this intoxicating state of tri-
umph and celebrity. I therefore determined to
call on him, and repaired one morning to his
house, in Clarges Street, Piccadilly. I had no
sooner sent up my card than the servant came
quickly to the parlour, requesting that I would
walk up to the drawing-room; and before I
could reach the stairs, Kean himself had sprung
half-way down them, to greet me with the most
cordial welcome.* Had he received the visit of
* He was in his dressing-gown, having been just under the
hands of the friseur, one side of his head showing several
regular layers of curls, the other a profusion of his rich
brown hair in tangled masses.
184 BEATEN PATHS.
a powerful patron or generous benefactor, he
could not, or at least need not, have shown more
gratitude than he evinced at the recollection of
my slight services, in passing some tickets for
his Chimpanzee benefit, so long before.
I consider this trait in Kean's conduct a fair
test of his character. It was thoroughly disin-
terested; and was not a mere burst of good feel-
ing, nor a display of ostentation—for these would
have been sufficiently satisfied with a momentary
expression. But his whole behaviour, during a
couple of months that I remained in London at
that time, was a continuance of friendly atten-
tions. I dined with him frequently, and met at
his house much good company. Persons of very
high respectability, and many of them of rank,
were among his constant guests. His dinners
were excellent, but his style of home living did
not appear extravagant; and the evening parties
were extremely pleasant, with a great deal of good
music.
Kean himself sang very agreeably, though
without Science. But he was an excellent mimic,
not only in burlesque imitation of such vocalists
as Incledon, Braham, Michael Kelly, and others,
but of a good style of singing, apart from indi-
vidual peculiarities. I do not recollect to have
met with any man professionally /i/erary on these
EDM UND KEAN. 185.
occasions. Miss Plumtree, the translator of some
of Kotzebue's plays, and of a Tour in Ireland of
which Kean was the main subject, was of all
these parties, and seemed almost domiciliated in
the family. Nothing could be more friendly or
hospitable than the conduct of the worthy hostess,
whom I had never formerly seen but in her so-
litary exhibition at Waterford. She was, in her
own house, and surrounded by everything that
might dazzle the mind's eye, and dizzy the brain
of almost any one, a fair specimen of natural cha-
racter. He head was evidently turned by her
husband's fame, and the combined consequences
were bodied forth with exquisite naïveté. But
there was withal a shrewdness, an offhandedness,
and tact quite Irish; and, what was still more
so, a warm-hearted and overflowing recognizance
of ever so trivial a kindness, or tribute of admi-
ration offered to “Edmund” before he became a
“great man.”
During this period of frequent intercourse I
often went to the theatre with Kean, and was
introduced by him to the Green-room, and to
several of the principal actors. But I do not
remember to have ever seen more than one or
two of them at his house; and I was once at
this period in his company at a tavern, by acci-
dent, though I knew he was in the constant
186 BEATEN PATH S.
habit of repairing to some one or other to pass
the might, after a most pleasant party at home
had broken up, or he had retired from an over-
flowing theatre, panting with the still felt excite-
ment of his splendid acting. On the occasion to
which I allude, I had invited him to dine with me
at the Sablonière Hotel, in Leicester Square. I
promised him a snug dinner and a quiet party;
and I accordingly had but two others to meet
him ; one an old Etonian of Kean's own stand-
ing, afterwards a clergyman, whose poetical ta-
lents were beginning to be well-known; the other,
a gentleman, a friend of the latter, who had con-
siderable powers of imitation, and, among other
specimens, was fond of giving some of Kean
himself.
He was very punctual to the hour, six o'clock
if I rightly remember. His carriage drove up
to the door, and he stepped out of it, in full
dress, a silk-lined coat, white breeches, buckles
in his shoes, &c. He apologized for coming in
so flashy a style to a simple bachelor's dinner,
saying, that he must leave me as early as nine
to attend a party where he was particularly ex-
pected. When that hour arrived, we none of us
thought of breaking up. The dinner had gone
off well; and some excellent wine marvellously
aided in keeping up the sociability of the even-
ED MUND KEAN. 187
ing. The valuable horses were kept waiting
somewhat unmercifully, and messenger after
messenger came in search of my unpunctual
guest, only to be treated with the same neglect
as their predecessors. At length, as the clock
struck midnight, Kean said it was impossible
for him “to break his engagement;” and he
proposed that my friends and myself should
accompany him. We were all four very much
under the influence of each other's example ;
and no objection was made by the invited to
a proposition which was not very clearly com-
prehended.
We all squeezed as well as we could into
Kean's chariot, which waited at the door, and
away we went, not knowing or caring in what
direction. After a short time, and a furious
drive, the carriage stopped at the head of a very
narrow passage. We got out without any order
of precedence, and followed our leader, with con-
siderable assistance from the walls of the pas-
Sage, against which we
“Went knickety knock,
Like pebbles in Carisbrook Well.”
We arrived at an open door, evidently that of
a tavern or hotel from the bustling welcome
awarded to Roscius and to us, who followed
him, by the self-announcing landlord, and half
18S BEATEN TAT II S.
a score of waiters, women, and attendant gazers.
He staggered rapidly upstairs, we three after
him; and he, to the apparent horror of several
of the waiters and others, dashcd at once at the
large folding-doors of the first-floor apartment,
and we all entered into a room where there were
assembled full sixty persons at a long supper-
table. A shout of applause hailed Kean ; but
when we popped in after him, a loud murmur of
disapprobation was raised. An explanation en-
sued; which terminated in our being obliged to
withdraw, along with Kean and four or five of
the party, into an adjoining room, where we were
made to comprehend the outrageous violation
committed by this Grand Master of the Asso-
ciation against the rigid law, of which he was
the founder, that no stranger could be admitted
into the society without a formal introduction, and
a regular accordance to its sacred regulations.
In short, we each entered our name in an
expansive register, got a printed card in return,
paid two or three pounds for fees, took a mock
oath, blindfolded, on an old book of ballads, and
were then announced as members, in due form,
of the motorious association, or club, or fraternity,
called collectively “The Wolves.”
Among the threescore persons composing this
assembly I did not recognize a face, with but
EDMUND KIEAN. 189
one exception, and that in the person of a come-
dian named Oxberry, at whose performance of
Justice Greedy, in ‘A New Way to Pay Old
Debts,' I had heartily laughed a few mights
before. I had no notion of what sort of com-
pany I was in ; and no clear conception of any-
thing but lights, looking-glasses, bottles, and
decanters. I remember that Kean, from the
head of the table which had been reserved
for him, stammered a speech in return for his
health being drunk; and that I, and my two
brother-novices who sat beside me, laughed in
such immoderate ill-breeding at the whole ad-
venture, that we soon became ashamed of our-
selves, and by a simultaneous movement left the
I’OOI)].
When I heard next morning some particulars
about “The Wolves,” and that the place of their
orgies was a tavern off the Strand, called the
Coal-Hole, I was thoroughly out of conceit with
my friend Kean's convivial pursuits. I, how-
ever, gave him full credit for his unwillingness
to tell the sort of place he was about to intro-
duce me to ; and, as if by tacit consent, we
neither of us ever mentioned it to the other
afterwards.
It was at this period that I was initiated by
Kean into another species of society, to know
190 BEATEN PATHS.
something of which I had a great curiosity. I
remembered the advice given in one of Lord
Bacon's Essays, to “see and observe in great
cities, triumphs, masks, feasts, weddings, fune-
rals, capital executions, and such shows,” and I
thought that a boxing-match, or prize-fight, came
fairly into the et caferas. I therefore expressed
a wish to Kean to be present at one of these
exhibitions; and an opportunity soon offered.
He was in high reputation with “the fancy,”
as one of its most liberal patrons, and a dis-
tinguished amateur. I frequently saw at his
house some of its chief professors, Mendoza,
Richmond the Black, and others, with whom
he used to have sparring bouts in his dining-
parlour. He had early intimation of all the
fights to come, and was, I believe, an attendant
at most of them. The battle which he took me
to see was fought close to a village about ten
miles from town on the western road. We rode
there together, I being mounted on one of Kean's
handsome and spirited horses. Great honours
were paid to him on the field, of which I, as
his friend, partook. We were admitted within
the ring, close to the combatants, before the
fight began ; and a number of introductions took
place between Kean, myself, and the titled and
untitled patricians and plebeians who composed
EDMUND KIEAN. 19]
the motley throng. To say nothing of the former,
I was presented in form to Mister Jackson, to
Cribb, Oliver, Scroggins, and others.
I do not mean to describe the battle. Suffice
it to say, it greatly excited me, and I by no
means felt the disgust I had anticipated. I was
neither assaulted nor insulted; nor was my
pocket picked ; nor did I encounter any of the
mishaps commonly incidental to so blackguard a
combination. I returned to town well satisfied
with this Midsummer day's entertainment, but
have never, from that day to this, repeated the
experiment.
On my next visit to London the year following,
I found Kean just as I left him when I quitted
England for France after the circumstances above
stated. He was going on in the same apparent
round of home respectability and, no doubt, of
tavern dissipation. I dined several times at his
house. I there met, as usual, extremely good
company. But Miss Plumtree, Miss Spence, a
novelist, Miss Benger, a woman of higher talents,
and Captain Glascock, author of ‘The Naval
Sketch Book,” were the only persons then or
since connected with literature whom I recollect
to have seen at these parties. Kean's associates
were not certainly hommes de lettres. I never
dreamt at the time of being classed among the
192 BEATEN PATH S.
tribe. His wife liked to have people of ton, and
when she could, of title, at her house. He seemed
to endure, rather than take pride in them ; and
always behaved with great decorum and good
manners. But when the company took leave,
and he was free, his hours of enjoyment began;
and I fancy he often slept from home.
Among the dinner company, Alderman and
Mrs. Cox always had a place. She was so little
remarkable in any way that I can scarcely re-
member her appearance. She had nothing at-
tractive about her, certainly, either as to person
Ol' Iſla,Ill] CTS.
It was now that I began to perceive in Kean
(what had not, perhaps, become established du-
ring my former visit to London) an evident affec-
tation of singularity, an overstrained boldness of
demeanour, a rage for being conspicuous, not
merely as an actor, but as a man. He was still
much sought after by the aristocracy, who were
proud of showing such a “lion ” in their social
menageries. He made it a boast that he refused
their invitations, and despised their patronage;
and that he knew they meant him no honour by
those distinctions, which were only so many ne-
gative tributes offered to their own importance.
There was, no doubt, much truth in this.
The theory was good. The vice consisted in
EDMUND KIEAN. 193
Kean's method of acting on it. There is a wide
line between the servility to rank which degrades
too many men of talent, and the fierce contempt
of it assumed by some few others. It requires but
small intellect to see through the general motives
of aristocratical patronage; but much tact and
knowledge of life are essential to hold it at its
just value, and turn it to real account. Kean,
from the circumstances of his whole career until
this period, had no opportunity of acquiring such
knowledge; and nature had not given him that
prompt sentiment des convenances which some
French writer considers the great test of genius.
Kean thought that as he would not fawn upon
title, he must necessarily shun every one who
was “a lord” merely because he was one. His
impatient vanity made him see but himself alone
in the large companies, where he was, no doubt,
an attractive object; and he took alarm at being
exhibited as a show. He did not appreciate the
advantages which a man less self-enamoured
finds in the mansions of the great, those shrines
of the glorious works of art, those arenas where
the collision of learning, taste, and talent brings
forth a galaxy of brilliant things not to be met
with elsewhere. If this atmosphere occasionally
intoxicates those who are not born in it, it is a tri-
bute paid by Nature to civilization; but he who
WOL. II. O
194 BEATEN PATHS.
sacrifices his independence to exist in it on suffer-
ance would be more respectable, though less re-
fined, had he lived obscure and died in his native
sphere, be that ever so lowly.
Kean grew angry at the haughty condescension
lavished on him by his noble entertainers. A
man of more sense, or one better bred, would
have admitted and smiled at it. If a portion of
the English nobility fancy themselves formed of
a different clay, or breathed into by a purer es-
sence, than the class just below it in the social
scale, it is chiefly from the adoration offered to it
by that very class. Who can blame the aristo-
cracy, which, seeing the servility, contemns the
sycophants P To one who has lived much abroad,
and knows society in an aspect of rational and
graduated equality, the “exclusive ’’ arrogance at
home is more melancholy than irritating, and its
occasional “fantastic tricks” may be indeed wept
at, both by angels and men.
Kean had not the discrimination to distinguish,
perhaps not the good luck to meet with, any of
the delightful exceptions to the general rule.
The only “lord” he could tolerate was Lord
Byron, a fatal fancy on his part, if, as I have
reason to think, the example of the poet influenced
most banefully the conduct of the actor. That
Byron himself was discontented with his greatness
ED MUND KEAN. 195
is very certain,_a humiliating caprice of Nature.
Unsatisfied with celebrity almost unbounded, he
panted for distinction of a far less noble kind.
Sated with admiration, he longed to excite wonder.
Fame was not enough for him; his ambition was
too big for the sphere assigned him by fate. In
forcing it beyond that, the recoil was a death-
stroke to both his reputation and his happiness.
Who will refuse to see an analogy in character
between Byron and his avowed archetype, Bona-
parte? It must be sympathy which leads to
imitation. And what Byron was to Bonaparte,
Kean most assuredly was to Byron. My readers
must not be startled by the rapprochement, nor
think that the greatest conqueror of the age is de-
graded by forming one in the trinity of fame with
the greatest poet and the greatest actor of Eng-
land. And, after all, which was most a stage-player
of the three? Was not the political world the great
theatre of Napoleon's deeds—the social world of
Byron's doings? Did not both act a part from
first to last P and was not Kean more an actor in
the broad gaze of London life than on the narrow
boards of Drury Lane? The generic signs of
genius were common to them all; and they were
undoubtedly of the same species of mind. Had
their relative positions been reversed, their indi-
vidual career had most probably been the same,
O 2
196 BEATEN PATHS.
or nearly so. Reckless, restless, adventurous,
intemperate; brain-fevered by success, desperate
in reverse; seeking to outdo their own destiny
for good; and rushing upon dangers and diffi-
culties, which they delighted first to make, and
then to plunge within.
Napoleon in Egypt, Byron in Greece, Kean in
Canada, each at the head of his wild and half-
savage tribe, present analogies which the shades
of the sceptred soldier and the laureled lord
must not take fright at. They were each, on
their several stages, acting the self-same part—
straining for the world’s applause, not labouring
for their own delight; and though there was more
greatness in the one instance, and more glory in
the other, the inspiration was, perhaps, precisely
similar in all. The grand distinction in favour of
Napoleon was, all through, not that he was an
emperor, but that he was an original. Byron
was an extravagant copy; Kean an absurd one.
But if we take the closing scenes of the three,_
St. Helena, Missolonghi, Richmond; and it re-
quires no overstretch of fancy to trace the parallel,
—Kean had the great advantage, in the assuag-
ing farewell of an only child, and the embraces of
a relenting wife.
Even though Kean, in the early summer of his
celebrity, rejected with violent (and also, be it
EDMUNID KEAN. 197
allowed, with vulgar) scorn the proffered society
of the great, he might wisely, at this epoch, have
retired into the simple range of the middle classes,
with the respectable reserve of Kemble, or Young.
He might, like them, have been an honour to
his profession, the founder of his family's fortune;
and to-day perhaps alive, and well, and happy.
But he had been inoculated with the rage of moto-
riety; that he was resolved to obtain, even at the
price of ruin—and to seek, even in the depths of
disrepute. -
What were the particulars of his conduct at
this time I had no opportunities of learning, and
no desire to learn. I was sorry to see him so
evidently drop off from his more respectable con-
nections. The “evil days” on which he fell I
was soon out of the way of knowing the details
of: but I heard much of his extravagance,—his
feats of horsemanship and boatmanship—wonder-
ful journeys and rowing-matches—freaks of un-
seemly presumption with regard to authors—
affairs of gallantry—Thames prize wherries—a
tame lion—and a secretary. By the aid of many
a foolish accessory, poor Kean was gaining his
object and wasting his means; filling the penny
trumpet of an ignoble fame; squandering the fine
revenue arising from his professional receipts; and
losing one by one his grieved supporters, who
198 BEATEN PATH S.
clung to him long, in spite of the frantic obsti-
macy with which he tore himself away. And
all this I maintain to have been foreign from the
ruling tendencies of his mind. Early impressions
may perhaps have deceived me; but I can never
forget the modest, unassuming demeanour, and the
respectable and industrious conduct of Kean,
when I first knew him, before false taste and a bad
example taught him an unreal estimate of renown.
And now the public began to grow discon-
tented with the notoriously libertine life which
Kean led. He had never, I believe, yet disap-
pointed a London audience, but on one occasion.
The circumstances of this one he often related
to me. He had gone to dine somewhere about
ten miles from town with some old friends of early
days, players, of course, fully intending to be at
the theatre in time for the evening's performance.
But temptation and the bottle were too strong
for him. He out-stayed his time, got drunk, and
lost all recollection of Shakspeare, Shylock, Drury
Lane, and the duties they entailed on him. His
friends, frightened at the indiscretion they had
caused, dispatched Kean's servant, with his empty
chariot, and a well-framed story that the horses
had been frightened, near the village where Kean
had dined, at a flock of geese by the road-side;
EDMUND KEAN. 199
that the carriage was upset, and the unfortunate
tragedian's shoulder dislocated. This story was
repeated from the stage by the manager; and the
rising indignation of the audience (who had suf-
fered the entertainments to be commenced by the
farce) was instantly calmed down into commisera-
tion and regret. ‘.
The following morning Kean was shocked and
bewildered at discovering the truth of his situa-
tion. But how must his embarrassment have been
increased on learning that several gentlemen had
already arrived from town to make inquiries for
him P. He jumped out of bed; and, to his infinite
affright, he saw, amongst the carriages, those of
Sir Francis Burdett, Mr. Whitbread, and others
of his leading friends, whose regard for him
brought them to see into his situation in person.
Luckily for him, his old associates the actors
had, with great presence of mind, carried on the
deception of the preceding night. The village
apothecary lent himself to it and with a grave
countenance confirmed the report; and Kean
himself was obliged to become a party, noſens
volens, in the hoax. His chamber was accord-
ingly darkened, his face whitened, his arm ban-
daged. A few of the most distinguished inquirers
were admitted to his bed-side. No one discovered
the cheat; and, to crown it completely, he ap-
200 BEATEN PATHS.
peared, in an incredibly short time, on the boards
of old Drury again, the public being carefully
informed that his respect and gratitude towards
them urged him to risk the exertion, notwith-
standing his imperfect convalescence, and to go
through the arduous parts of Richard, Macbeth,
and Othello, on three successive nights, with his
arm in a sling ! .
This circumstance occurred before I renewed
my acquaintance with Kean in London ; but he
could not so successfully conceal the open irregu-
larities of his life. His professional reputation
remained long at its great elevation ; but his
moral fame was fast sinking. He by degrees es-
tranged those who had been his firmest upholders;
he dropped little by little, out of the best society;
and I believe it was only at his own house, where
several persons of great respectability continued
to visit, that he saw any company but the dissi-
pated dregs of “Life in London.”
I had resolved on going again to the south of
France, and had taken my berth and arranged
for my passage in a merchant-ship, lying in the
river and bound for Bordeaux. The very day
previous to that fixed for the sailing of the vessel
from Gravesend, I was dining with one or two
old military friends at a coffee-house in the
Strand, when, to my great surprise, my brother
EDMUNID KEAN. 201
walked in, just arrived from Ireland, and not
knowing that I was in London. He had never
seen Kean perform ; he had an ardent desire to
see him. Othello was luckily to be played that
night; so, leaving the dinner-table early, we re-
paired to Drury Lane. My relative was greatly
delighted and astonished at Kean's acting, and
I was determined to gratify him by an intro-
duction. I accordingly took him round to the
private entrance, and we mounted the stairs to
Kean's dressing-room. -
We found him, as was usual after the perform-
ance of any of his principal parts, stretched on a
sofa, retching violently, and throwing up blood.
His face was half-washed—one side deadly pale,
the other deep copper colour. He was a very ap-
palling object certainly, even to those who were
accustomed so to see him ; my brother was quite
shocked and alarmed, from the apparent danger
of the tragedian. But he gladly hailed my ap-
pearance, believing I had left town for France;
and when I presented my companion, of whom
he had heard me speak, he gave him a kind and
cordial greeting. It was several years from that
night before I again saw Kean.
One fine summer's day, at Boulogne-sur-Mer,
where I was then living with my family, I was
202 BEATEN PATHS.
surprised to see Kean enter my house. Having
for a very long period made no attempt to revive
my personal intercourse with him, I was truly
glad to see him. He was on his way to England,
from a tour through Switzerland and a visit to
Paris, accompanied by his wife. He had heard
of my being in the place, found out my residence,
and came to pay me a visit. The steam-packet
for Dover, which was to sail in a couple of hours,
had already received his carriage and baggage
among its freight; and he and Mrs. Kean, much
fatigued from the effects of their journey, having
travelled all the preceding night, were impatiently
waiting the signal for departure.
While he hastily gave me this sketch of his
situation, an old actor, Penley, well known in
France and Flanders, and who was at that time,
with his company, proving their familiarity with
Shakspeare, by taking considerable liberties with
him at Boulogne, rang at my door, having traced
Kean to the house. He made a most moving
appeal to all the great tragedian's better feelings;
depicted the poverty of his troupe, and the anxiety
of the natives and visitors to see Kean perform;
and dwelt on such topics as were likely to touch
his humanity or excite his amour-propre. He
also tried another inducement, which, with some
men, would have been of itself conclusive ; he
EDMUND KIEAN. 203
offered Kean half the receipts of the house for
his night's performance.
Kean at length consented. The intended de-
parture was postponed for a day. Carriage and
baggage were allowed to proceed under his ser-
vant's care, and placards were quickly posted all
over the town, announcing Mr. Kean's appear-
ance that evening in the part of Shylock.
The theatre was crowded, although the prices
were doubled. The play was got up very re-
spectably, considering all things. Kean's acting
was admirable. The size of the theatre allowed
every play of his features, every glance of his
unrivalled eye, to be seen and felt. I never was
more delighted with him. I always thought Shy-
lock his best part, great as he was in so many
others, and his performace of it as near as could
be to perfection. He knew that of old; and I
believe he was not sorry to prove to me that he
retained all his pristine vigour. He certainly
played the Jew that night with “desperate fide-
lity;” and the effect he produced on the Bou-
lonnais was immense.
Old Penley and his troupe were in ecstasies
with the result of the representation; and parti-
cularly so when Kean, the following morning, re-
fused to take a shilling of the proffered share,
which he left to be divided among the company.
204 BEATEN PATHS.
This was a generous thing, undoubtedly; but a
trifling instance of his character, in comparison
with the subscription of the whole profits of his
benefit for the starving Irish in 1822.
Kean told me on this occasion of the pending
trial between himself and Alderman Cox. He
spoke of the affair as one which gave him no
uneasiness; said he had no fears for the result;
and he seemed quite unconscious of the ruinous
risk that awaited him. I was rather impressed
with the idea that he did not dislike the ap-
proaching contest, which was to display him to
the world as a man of gallantry.
A few weeks more brought the whole esclandre
to light, and never was there a more revolting
display. The only consideration which at all pal-
liated Kean's offence, was the redeeming senti-
ment scattered through the “love-letters”—if
the profanation may be admitted—of attachment
and regard to his wife. He deserved severe re-
probation, no doubt; yet the burst of over-acted
cant which drove him from the London stage on
this occasion, produced, as might be expected, a
powerful reaction in his favour. But public jus-
tice came too late. Kean sank under his punish-
ment before its rigour was reversed; and I am
convinced he never recovered from the tumult of
suffering which then assailed him.
EDMUND KEAN. 205
I called on him in London, on my arrival there,
soon after the clamour was hushed, and when he
was on the point of his self-exile to America. I
never saw a man so changed; he had all the air
of desperation about him. He looked bloated
with rage and brandy; his nose was red, his
cheeks blotched, his eyes blood-shot; I really
pitied him. He had lodgings in Regent Street;
but I believe very few of his former friends, of
any respectability, now noticed him. The day I
saw him he sat down to the piano, notwithstand-
ing the agitated state of his mind, and sang for
me ‘Lord Ullin's daughter,’ with a depth, and
power, and sweetness that quite electrified me.
I had not heard him sing for many years; his
improvement was almost incredible; his accom-
paniment was also far superior to his former style
of playing. I could not repress a deep sentiment
of sorrow at the wreck he presented of genius,
fame, and wealth. At this period I believe he
had not one hundred pounds left of the many
thousands he had received. His mind seemed
shattered; he was an outcast on the world. He
left England a few days afterwards, and I never
dreamt of seeing him again.
There was, no doubt, a latent feeling of self-
ishness mixed with my regret, and for the fol-
lowing reason. I had written, some years before
206 BEATEN PATH S.
(long previous to my having attempted the prose
writings which afterwards met with such unhoped-
for success), a tragedy, the most prominent cha-
racter of which was meant for Kean.” Other
pursuits, however, turned my attention from it
(and, fortunately for myself, from poetry alto-
gether), and the manuscript lay by me for seve-
ral years, almost forgotten, until I met with Kean
at Boulogne, as before stated.
My attention to it was revived by this ren-
contre, and his asking me if I had never thought
of writing for the stage? I told him of my early
attempt, and promised to have it copied and for-
warded to him to London; he, in his turn, as-
suring me of every exertion on his part to have
it brought forward with all possible advantage.
The ruin which followed his trial with Alderman
Cox frustrated the whole project, and I gave up
every hope of ever seeing the play represented.
Within two years of this time, Kean, to the
surprise of every one, returned from America,
having reaped a full harvest of dollars, much of
* This admission of having written for a particular actor
may appear, in the common view of the case, very servile;
but my opinion on that subject differs from the generally
received one. I have somewhat developed it in an article on
the “Living French Poets,’ in the ‘New Monthly Maga-
zine;’ and I shall content myself with quoting from that
Essay, that “the disgrace does not lie in writing up to genius,
but in writing down to grimace.”
EDM UND KIEAN. 207
which he had prudence enough to transmit to
London before him. The furious outcry against
him had subsided. The public longed for him
once more; and he came back (to use his own
expressive phrase) “as the representative of
Shakspeare's heroes.”
When I heard of the brilliant success which
attended his reappearance, I immediately sent
over the manuscript of “Ben Nazir, the Saracen.’
I soon followed the manuscript, and found it
literally in Kean's hands. He had read it with
avidity; and, placing to any account that may
be chosen the enthusiastic terms in which he
spoke of it to me, one fact proves the value
which he really set on it. He chose it out of five
or six, which were put before him by Mr. Price,
the manager (one of them being Mr. Knowles's
“Alfred’), as that in which he would make his
regenerated appearance, in a new character before
a London audience.
His whole situation, appearance, and conduct
at this critical period of his career were very
remarkable and characteristic. He presented a
mixture of subdued fierceness, unsatisfied triumph,
and suppressed dissipation. He had, in a great
measure, recovered his place before the public;
but he had lost all the respectability of private
life. He lived in the Hummums Hotel, Covent
208 BEATEN PATHS.
Garden : his wife occupied lodgings in West-
minster, and was, as well as his son, quite at
variance with him. His health had been greatly
shattered during his American campaign, chiefly,
I believe, from his mental sufferings. He told
me he had been mad, at Quebec for several
days, and related an incident which proved it,
namely, his having mounted a fiery horse, dressed
in the full costume of the Huron tribe of Indians,
of which he had been elected a chief; and, after
joining them in their village or camp, haranguing
them, parading them, and no doubt amusing
them much, being carried back by some pursu-
ing friends, to the place from whence he came,
and treated for a considerable time as a lunatic.
The recital of such adventures seemed to gra-
tify him much. He evidently gloried in the
singularity of this conduct, unconscious of its
buffoonery.
When I first called on him at the Hummums,
one day early in 1827, he was sitting up in his
bed, a buffalo-skin wrapped round him, a huge
hairy cap decked with many-coloured feathers
on his head, a scalping-knife in his belt, and a
tomahawk in his hand. He was making up his
face for a very savage look. A tumbler glass of
white-wine negus stood at the bed-side; two
shabby-looking heroes were close by, with simi-
EDMUND KEAN. 209
lar potations in their reach ; and a portrait-
painter was placed before an easel at the
window, taking the likeness of the renowned
Alanienonideſ, the name in which the chieftain
(most sincerely) rejoiced.”
I was announced by a black boy in livery. I
saw Kean's eye kindle, somewhat, perhaps, with
pleasure at my visit; but more so, I thought,
from the good opportunity of exhibiting himself
in his savage costume. He gave a ferocious roll
of his eyes, and a flourish of his tomahawk; then
threw off his cap and mantle, and cordially shook
me by the hand, producing from under his pillow
the part of “Ben Nazir,’ written out from the
prompter's book.
The painter quickly retired; the satellite visi-
tors soon followed, having first emptied their
tumblers, and paid some extravagant compli-
ments to their patron. Left alone with Kean,
he entered fully into his situation. There was a
mortified elation in his bearing which it is hard
to describe. He explained the hoax under which
he had been led to leave America so abruptly,
and showed me the letter on which he had acted.
* Kean made use of visiting-cards at this time, with his
own proper name engraved at one side, and this adopted
one, with a miniature likeness of himself, “in character,” on
the other.
WOL. II. P
2 I () [3 EATEN PATH S.
This purported to be from Mr. Price, the ma-
nager of Drury Lane, and proposed to Kean to
return forthwith, to take possession of the ma-
nagement of the theatre, which was only held by
him (Price) in trust for “its true inheritor’—
Kean.
This preposterous humbug was greedily swal-
lowed by Kean, who arrived in London in the
full belief that he was about to enter on the
functions and the fancied profits of manager.
The mortification of finding himself duped would
have been dreadful, had it not been for an en-
gagement for twelve nights at a hundred guineas
each, followed up by a reception from the public
which amply atoned for former suffering and
present disappointment.
When I first entered the room, Kean told me
he had the gout in his foot; but when the pain-
ter and the others had retired, he acknowledged
that he was confined to his bed by a very bad
sore leg, for which he was daily attended by
surgeon Carpue, who prescribed the strictest
regimen, and abstinence from all strong liquors,
which Kean was endeavouring to obey as well as
he could. By nursing himself in this manner for
two days together, he was enabled to play three
times a week; but still, in the exertion of acting,
suffering considerable fatigue and pain.
EDM UN L) H. H. A. N. 2] I
My visit that day was interrupted by the arri-
val of two other persons, gloomily dressed and
closely veiled, who were introduced by the black
boy with suitable mystery, but whose sex was less
doubtful than their character. Kean took care to
inform me (in a stagewhisper, which they must have
heard in the adjoining sitting room) that they were
sisters—lovely creatures—the daughters of a cler-
gyman of high respectability; that they had both
fallen desperately in love with him, and came up
to London together, with the most unlimited offers
for his acceptance. I had no wish to pursue the
subject further, but left him with the sentimental
pair. I paid him several visits afterwards, alone,
and to meet Mr. Price, and talk over the prelimi-
nary arrangements for our common affair.
Kean felt deeply the importance of this pro-
jected appearance in ‘Ben Nazir.’ He knew
that a crisis had arrived in his professional fate;
the whole tide of public feeling was with him.
He had regained his place at the head of the acted
drama. To confirm him there, beyond competi-
tion or cavil, there was only wanting one vigorous
display of power in a new part, and that part was
now ready written to his hand. Nothing, in short,
could exceed the ardour with which he undertook
the study of Ben Nazir.’ He carried it away
with him on the provincial tour on which he set
P 2
2 12 BEAT'ſ N PATH S.
out after playing his dozen nights in London to
enthusiastic audiences; and his being prepared
to appear in the play, in the second week of the
next May, was one of the stipulations in his re-
newed engagement for twenty nights, to begin at
that period.
It may be supposed that I followed with some
anxiety the accounts of Kean's progress on his
provincial expedition. I had every reason to be-
lieve that he was working hard to perfect himself
in his new part; that he lived abstemiously; and
was gradually recovering his health and spirits.
The newspapers contained a copy of the address
spoken by him on his benefit night, in Dublin,
in the character and costume of an Indian chief;
but the private accounts transmitted to me by
some friends, who inquired about him, neutralized
the apprehension excited by that absurd display,
and convinced me he had no actual relapse of his
Canadian complaint.
In due time Kean arrived in London, enthusi-
astic, and, as he said, perfect in his part; and his
leg, which a thousand sinister reports and pro-
phecies should long since have deprived him of,
so far recovered as to enable him to “strut his
hour,” either on the stage or in the streets, with
perfect ease. I repaired to London. My first
visit, on my arrival, was to Mr. James Wallack,
F, DMUND KIEA N. 213
the stage-manager. Everything I heard from
him was most encouraging. I next saw Mr.
Price, who confirmed all I had heard from his
second in command. Mr. Wallack was indefa-
tigable in every way.
Kean's confidence in the part and in himself
was sufficient to deceive a less sanguine tempe-
rament than mine. He repeatedly said that he
hoped to reap as much fame from it as from Ma-
turin’s ‘Bertram,’ and that he reckoned upon
playing it a hundred nights. His portrait in the
part was to be immediately engraved. A new
wherry, which Kean was then getting built for
his annual prize race on the Thames, was to be
called the “Ben Nazir.’ The dress in which he
was to appear was to be the most splendid pos-
sible; and a notion may be formed on that head,
from the fact that he was to pay fifty guineas
for it, over and above the allowance from the
Theatre. I might cite many other proofs of his
enthusiasm.
In the meantime the rehearsals were going on
admirably. Every one was already perfect in
their parts, with one exception, but this one was
unfortunately out of control, and consequently
beyond discovery. Kean attended but two re-
hearsals, and both of these with the written part
in his hand. On one occcasion he read his part
214 BEATEN PATH S.
with great energy and effect. It was everything
I could wish ; no one had a shadow of doubt as
to the impression it would produce on an audi-
ence. Congratulations were poured on me on all
sides, with premature profusion.
Kean now claimed the privilege of absenting
himself from the subsequent rehearsals, alleging
his unwillingness to lose time from the close study
he wished to give to the minutest details of his
part. It was thought better to let him have every-
thing his own way, in a matter into which he had
so evidently put his heart and soul, and which
was of infinitely more importance to him than to
any one else. I was quite satisfied, for I saw him
almost daily, and witnessed the unceasing industry
with which he laboured at the part. He used
regularly to order his carriage after breakfast, and
set off for Kensington Gardens, where he studied
a couple of hours. Frequently he sailed in his
boat on the river, and there spouted away to the
free benefit of the watermen and the Naiades. I
often called on him at night, knowing that my
presence would keep away others; and about ten
or eleven o’clock he invariably went to bed, “and
went to bed sober.”
At his suggestion I made several slight altera-
tions in the play, and one material one ; the ob-
ject of the latter being to gratify Kean's desire
EDM UN D FC E.A.N. 215
of speaking the last word, and ending the play by
his death. He wanted the whole impression
made on the audience to be his work. This was
in the spirit of some former conduct of his, years
before, which made him so many enemies, and
did him such mischief with the public.
I also conceded many minor points to the judi-
cious suggestions of Mr. Wallack, who deserved
every consideration on my part. I had been led
to expect great annoyance from the performers,
from the report of authors, who were probably
more tenacious of their rights than I was. But
I really met nothing of the kind; I was willing
to take advice from the experience of the actors,
and what they did offer was with modesty and good
sense, particularly Mr. Cooper, who was assiduous
to the whole business of the scene.
The night of representation was at last fixed.
Up to the preceding week Kean persisted in
assurances that he was quite prepared ; still, how-
ever, declining to appear even at the last rehearsal,
under the pretext that it would only confuse and
annoy him, and perhaps destroy the effect which
he wished to reserve for the public performance
of the part. All this, rather obscurely put for-
ward, began to give us some uneasiness; at length
it was absolutely necessary either to announce
* Ben Nazir' from the stage, or to substitute some
2 || 6 BEATEN PATH S.
other play, and put it off for a few nights longer.
It was nine o'clock that evening before I finally
put the question to Kean. He consented to the
postponement, at the same time persisting in his
readiness to perform on the night first fixed, and
an announcement was made of the postponement
of “Ben Nazir.’
The night at length arrived. Everything was
ready, I saw Kean in the morning; he expressed
himself with the utmost confidence ; strutted
about his drawing-room in his lodgings, Duke
Street, Adelphi, decked out in his magnificent
dress; and declaimed with great vigour some of
his favourite passages—the booſ in / is hand.
Notwithstanding all this I had serious doubts of
the night's result. I was certain he would be
âmperfect; but I reckoned fully on his giving the
principal passages with ample effect; and I cal-
culated on subsequent representations repairing
any defects which might appear on the first.
In this mood I took leave of Kean, resolved
not to interfere with him further; and I prepared
to go to the theatre, in a state of some anxiety
certainly, but one more pleasurable than the con-
trary. Mr. Wallack had secured me a private
box behind the dress circle, to which I repaired
about half an hour before the play began. The
house was crowded in all parts; and I may here
EDMUND REAN. 217
observe that not one friend of my own was there
by my solicitation. The manager had not offered
me, nor did I ask, a single free admission.
I certainly felt considerable satisfaction as I sat,
quite unseen, and contemplated the crowded
house. The chief of my literary longings had
ever been for dramatic success; and although I
had always looked on my present play as a very
indifferent drama, a mere experiment in fact, and
rested its whole chance on the performance of the
chief part, I was greatly strengthened in my hopes
of it by the various concurrent reasons before de-
tailed. A fair share of applause was given to
some of the early passages; and the audience
seemed well prepared for Kean's appearance, with
which the third scene was to open.
He did at length appear. The intention of the
author, and the keeping of the character, required
him to rush rapidly on the stage, giving utterance
to a burst of joyous soliloquy. What was my
astonishment to see him, as the scene opened,
standing in the centre of the stage, his arms
crossed, and his whole attitude one of thoughtful
solemnity His dress was splendid; and thun-
ders of applause greeted him from all parts of the
house. To display the one and give time for the
other, were the objects for which he stood fixed
for several minutes, and sacrificed the sense of
2 || 8 Bl: A TEN PATHS.
the situation. He spoke ; but what a speech
The one I wrote consisted of eight or nine lines;
his was of two or three sentences, but not six
consecutive words of the text. His look, his
manner, his tone, were to me quite appalling; to
any other observer they must have been incom-
prehensible. He stood fixed, drawled out his
incoherent words, and gave the notion of a man
who had been half-hanged and then dragged
through a horse-pond. My heart, I confess it,
sank deep in my breast. I was utterly shocked.
And as the business of the play was on, and as he
stood by, with moveless muscle and glazed eye,
throughout the scene which should have been one
of violent, perhaps too violent, exertion, a cold
shower of perspiration poured from my forehead,
and I endured a revulsion of feeling which I can-
not describe, and which I would not for worlds
one eye had witnessed.
I had all along felt that this scene would be
the touchstone of the play. Kean went through
it like a man in the last stage of exhaustion and
decay. The act closed—a dead silence followed
the fall of the curtain; and I felt, though I could
not hear, the voiceless verdict of “ damnation.”
I soon recovered myself, and sat out the buff-
chery to the end. It is needless to describe it
here. In a short preface to the printed play,
ED MUNI) KEAN. 2 19
which was published a few days afterwards, I
stated a few of the facts attending the represen-
tation. The account which appeared in the next
number of the ‘New Monthly Magazine,’ was a
very faithful one. It was from the pen of the
chief writer of the admirable dramatic articles in
the work, then a rising barrister, afterwards raised
to the bench, the accomplished, estimable, and
liberal-hearted Sir Thomas Talfourd.
When the curtain fell, Mr. Wallack, the stage-
manager, came forward and made an apology for
Kean's imperfection in his part, and an appeal in
behalf of the play. Neither excited much sympa-
thy; the audience was quite disgusted. I now, for
the first time during the might, went behind the
scenes. On crossing the stage towards the green-
room I met Kean supported by his servant and
another person, going in the direction of his
dressing-room. When he saw me he hung down
his head, and waved his hand, and uttered some
expressions of deep sorrow, and even remorse.
“I have ruined a fine play and myself; I cannot
look you in the face—” were the first words that
I caught. I said something in return as cheering
and consolatory as I could. I may say that all
sense of my own disappointment was forgotten
in the compassion I felt for him. Mrs. West,
Miss Smithson, and Miss Kelly were among the
220 BEATEN PAT II S.
group present at this meeting. Nothing could
exceed their good-nature towards me. The whole
company seemed to consider the calamity as a do-
mestic one. Every one was indignant with Kean ;
Wallack particularly so. He told me that previous
to the commencement of the play he had sent three
summonses to him to come down from his dress-
ing-room ; and at last, on going to seek him him-
self, he found him weeping, and in total despair.
Why then persist in attempting the character?
Why ensure the ruin of the play, and risk my re-
putation as a writer? Why not withdraw, and
acknowledge the loss of memory which he had
at length become aware of? This was Wallack's
reasoning. He had, it seems, urged Kean to apo-
logize in person to the audience; but that he
declined, saying that if he attempted it he should
have burst into tears. Wallack subsequently pro-
posed to him, through a friend, to publish a letter
in the papers on the subject. That he refused
also, preferring to let the fault lie wholly on the
author's shoulders. In fact poor Kean had lost
all his former energy. He never could have been
deficient in generous feelings: but he was worn
down, and he had not the courage to confess it.
That is the whole truth.
It was then I resolved to publish my preface
to the play, in which, as every one who read it
thought, I dealt too lightly with the culprit. I
EDM UN D REAN. 22 |
should certainly be sorry to lean more heavily on
him now. In the meantime I bore my disap-
pointment as well as I could ; returned my
thanks to the other actors for their exertions; re-
nounced dramatic writing as I then believed for
ever; and paid a short visit of leave-taking to
Kean, who seemed, as he well might be, over-
whelmed with sorrow, whether for my sake or his
own I do not attempt to decide. The total loss
of the power of study (as it is technically called),
thus so fatally betrayed, prevented his attempt-
ing any new part since that day, which formed a
crisis in his professional career. I never again
saw him; and I trust that I may be excused for
having entered so far into detail on what is so
very personal to myself, in this remarkable epi-
sode in the life of (with Talma's exception) the
greatest actor of my times.
I had the satisfaction, some years after poor
Kean's death, to see my play of “Ben Nazir 're-
presented in the United States, with sufficient
success to afford some consolation for former dis-
appointment. The chief character was, on those
occasions, sustained by Mr. Butler, a tragedian of
much merit, and the part of Charles Martel ably
played by Mr. Creswick, the present manager
of the Surrey Theatre. I do not quite despair
of my Saracem being again brought forward with
some chance of redemption from its early fate.
2
2
2
CHAPTER VII.
DIPLOMACY, AND SOME OF ITS AGENTS.
THE transacting of public business between dif-
ferent states, by the agency of individuals as go-
betweens, must be older than civilization itself.
Writing could not sufficiently accomplish these
international objects, even when men learned to
write. An intermediary personal communication
was required; and with the very first agent so
sent from one place to another, the profession of
diplomacy had its origin. The precise time at
which the word itself came into use seems diffi-
cult to be ascertained. Ambassadors are recog-
nized in remote antiquity. They were obliged to
announce their credentials, at Athens and Lace-
daemon, from the tribune of the Public Orators,
and the Roman Senate also required a set speech
from those foreign emissaries; a custom, happily
for the sake of their modern successors, not now
existing, for it is well that the blunderings and
DITPLO MACY. 223
short-comings of some of them are confined to
chit-chat interviews with a Secretary of State,
instead of being confined to the criticism of a
legislative chamber, or the public at large.
No relics have come down from remote ages
of the dispatches of these early envoys extraordi-
nary, nor authentic accounts of their particular
privileges. Cardinal Richelieu seems to be ge-
nerally considered the founder of the present sys-
tem of diplomacy, properly so called. But, long
previously, Machiavelli’s ‘Legazioni’ afforded
better specimens of political correspondence;
while the records of the mission of Dr. Dale (sent
by Queen Elizabeth to the Prince of Parma in
the Low Countries, in the year 1588) boastingly
declare that “the postulates of himself and his
colleagues do trouble King Phillip's commission-
ers very much, and do bring them to despair,”
as no doubt some recent protocols went very
near to do with ministers and treaty-makers at
the conferences and congresses of modern times.
But wherever the existing school had its founda-
tion, the improvements in public morals gradually
changed its bad practices; and the base intrigues,
plots, and crimes, which made diplomacy a by-
word of reproach, disappeared under the influences
of constitutional freedom. During the last cen-
tury it assumed a more legitimate and useful cha-
224, BEATEN PATH S.
racter, being gradually purified from its grossness
as well as its levity. Still it is liable to great
abuse, and the latitude necessarily allowed to its
professors requires a counteracting force of talent
and good sense to keep the balance straight.
Yet, with every wish to do it justice, and give
it fair play, I can find no better signification for
the word which typifies the pursuit (and, by the
way, Johnson does not give the word at all) than
double-dealing. Derived, like diploma its original,
from 8ttàéo, I double or fold, it is expressive,
in any sense, of concealment, if not of duplicity.
Such was the old received opinion of it as an art,
not mincingly hinted at, but boldly avowed.
According to Sir Henry Wotton's definition, an
ambassador is “an honest man sent abroad to
lie for the good of his country.” However this
sarcasm might have been adapted to the days
in which it was uttered, and particularly to the
class of official spies called Intelligencers, of
which Sir Henry was one, it is I think too severe
at present, both as respects governments who
instruct their agents, and agents who stick to the
letter of their instructions. Among the multi-
form labours cntailed on diplomatists in the com-
plicated management of their respective missions,
the golden rule of conduct is perhaps never to
tell a lie, but to abstain religiously from telling
THE SOUTH : BORDEAUX. 225
passage, taking such a view of things as a bird's
eye might take, and with no motive or passions
of a political kind to ruffle the plumage of the
wings I flew on.
I remember seeing (as I strolled through Bor-
deaux one day) written on a wall in chalk,
“LOUIS UNE FOIS MORT CHARLES
5 5 ſº Af
x PARAITRA” (disparaitra).
I thought it a good jeu de moſs, without then
paying much attention to the prophecy it an-
nounced, and repeated it to some of my Bourbonite
friends. They were scandalized and furious, made
a great hubbub, consulted the police, and were
committing I don't know what ridiculous and
extravagant demonstrations on the subject, which
were really the first cause of my turning my
thoughts into the consideration of French politics.
And I cannot say to what extent my views might
have been affected or my mind engaged in the
pursuit of what subsequently occupied it so much,
had not sudden and most unlooked-for intelligence
of a family nature imperatively called for my pre-
sence in Ireland.
My preparations were soon made, my leave-
taking of my French and American and other
friends quickly over, and my place secured in a
small schooner of a hundred and twenty tons
WOL. I. Q
226 BEATEN PATHS.
bound for Dublin, with a cargo of wines and
brandies, and sufficiently narrow space for six
passengers, five others besides me, all Irishmen,
who stowed themselves into their narrow berths
and made the best of the confined accommoda-
tions (so to call them)—and we dropped down
the Garonne with the tide, passed Pauilhac and
the lighthouse at the mouth of the river, and got
out to sea with a fair wind.
I carried with me from France on this first oc-
casion none but agreeable recollections, with the
wish they gave birth to of being able some day to
return and resume the thread of an intercourse
which this sudden breaking off had snapped
asunder. My curiosity was awakened. I felt as
though I had read a few chapters in a new book,
and I longed to get deeper into it. What I had
seen of the French people I liked, and one na-
turally expects first impressions when they are
favourable to improve with experience. Many a
sad disappointment follows this expectation both
as to individuals and nations. But even now,
after many a hard lesson, I encourage the feeling
still. It is my nature, as a celebrated living
Author is fond of saying of himself in public,
touching matters which it requires a keen know-
ledge of oneself to be able to verify, and which con-
science may force one to renounce—in private.
THE SOUTH . BORDEAUX. 227
For the first five days and nights we cut stea-
dily through the water. We met no check above
or below it; no adverse winds, no sunken rocks.
The Bay of Biscay was most amiable, the breeze
fresh and favourable. All the sails of our little
craft were spread out to catch its loudest breath
or its faintest whisper. We were anxious to get
on faster in proportion with every increase of
speed. No success seemed enough for us. We
wanted to beat old Time, whose pinions were
flapping above, behind, around us; like a lucky
gambler who presses on, doubles his stake again
and again, resolves to break the bank—and is at
last taken aback and loses all that he had won.
So it was with us. The sudden springing up of
a fierce gale, after we had scudded through the
chops of the Channel, swept past Scilly, fairly
entered the Irish Sea, and foolishly thought our-
selves at home, stopped us short, forced us to
tack, and tack, and tack, once or twice in great
danger of being swamped altogether, from the
schooner refusing to obey the helm, and at last
we were obliged to turn stern to windward
and drive back with the hurricane, some two
hundred miles on the very course we had so
flourishingly accomplished. All the work was to
do over again. And with the annoyance of the
loss of time, the discomfort of bad living, and a
Q 2
228 BEATEN PATHS.
wet ship, came the unpleasant conviction that we
were under the care of a “captain,” so dubbed
by courtesy, who knew nothing whatever of ma-
vigation and who was by trade a butcher, and
by ill fortune a bankrupt, and merely placed
in the nominal command of this frail vessel, to
get him out of the way of his creditors in Yar-
mouth. This poor man, Geldert by name, though
nominally in command of the schooner was really
under the guidance and control, as far as its
management was concerned, of his mate, a rough
and ignorant fellow, and he in his turn had often
to consult and submit to the conflicting opinions
of the six or seven seamen composing the crew,
not one of the whole party ever having before
been in the Irish Channel, and all incapable of
taking an observation or consulting a chart. This
state of things might find something approaching
an analogy in boards and courts on shore, and it
may serve as a warning to unthinking travellers
to inquire as to the nautical qualities of “cap-
tains" as well as ships, before they entrust their
lives and portmanteaus on board the miserable
little vessels employed in what is called the
coasting trade. Four of my fellow-passengers,
including a Colonel in the Spanish service re-
turning on leave of absence to see his friends in
Ireland, swore, “but rather late,” like the crow
THE SOUTH . BORDEAUX. 229
in the fable, that they would not be again taken
in by the devices of consignees, brokers, or ship-
ping agents. But fortunately for myself and the
others of us there was one sneering, cynical,
tippling, and constantly half-screwed old fellow
who made up our half-dozen, who was a skipper
of forty years’ experience in that very sea where
we were now blown about au /ré du vent, and
who at length was induced, when we broke out
into actual mutiny against captain and mate, to
take the command of the vessel, and to steer us
safely and anchor us in the familiar old Bay of
Dublin, after perils and escapes which I will spare
my readers the account of The fate of the poor
captain and his “chief officer” is however worth
recording. On a voyage back from England to
France some short time after, they had a des-
perate quarrel. The captain by a most unfortu-
nate stretch of authority, assisted by the sailors,
put the mate in irons, tied his arms firmly with
a cord, and took upon himself the task of steer-
ing the poor schooner, which he did most effec-
tually during a stiff gale into a reef of rocks near
Ushant on the French coast, where she soon went
to pieces, and every one on board (with the ex-
ception of one sailor who escaped to tell the
story) perished; including the wife and daughter
of the ill-fated captain, the latter of whom he was
230 BEATEN PATH S.
taking to France to give her the benefit of a
foreign education. Several salutary morals might
be found in this sad little episode ; but I will
spare my readers, and leave the pointing of them
to themselves.
I wish to consider the following nine or ten
months of my life as a blank. I cannot tear the
leaves out of memory's volume, but I have long
striven to efface the contents. With what success
or what failure is now of small importance even
to myself—of no consequence whatever to any
other. Almost every ill that mind or body is heir
to was crowded into that brief but heavy portion
of time. Disappointment of every kind—loss in
various shapes, of hopes, health, and happiness,
and (what I never cared much for in proportion
to them) of money and money's worth. That
short visit to Ireland taught me some bitter
lessons—but I doubt if I profited much by them.
They were given in a language foreign to my
own character and very hard to learn. But they
produced one good effect. They convinced me
that self-reliance is the only true, unfailing fund,
on which he who has to make his way through
life ought to draw. That dependence on others
is the very worst wall to place one's back against.
It is sure some time or other to crumble to pieces
THE SOUTH . BORDEAUX. 23]
—and the sooner the better, before he who leans
on it loses the faculty of his own proper power,
and grows slothful and servile in his reliance on
anything else. Many a young man since that
dark period in my particular annals has no doubt
gone through the same kind of trials, and found
himself sentenced to the same fate. If the eye of
such a one should by chance rest on this page, I
hope it may prove a stimulus to his energy and
possibly a solace for his wrongs. En avant /
Courage / my young friend, whoever you are.
The world is wide and full of goodness, truth,
and honour: not to overflowing, or there would
be no room for the evil passions under which we
have suffered. Do not from past deceptions
imagine that all is deceit. Go on manfully, tak-
ing chance for what is to come. Give your con-
fidence still to your fellow-beings. Trust, even
at the risk of repeated mistakes. Be deluded,
cheated, imposed on again and again, rather than
creep on in doubt and fear and trembling. Life
is worth nothing on such terms. Let faith, hope,
and charity be your guiding principles—but above
all have faith, for that includes both the others.
I took my departure from Ireland—for a long,
long absence—leaving behind me at least one
object to love, some that I ought to hate, but I
only strove to forget them; a disputed legacy,
232 BEATEN PATH S.
and a chancery suit that lasted five-and-thirty
years from beginning to end.
Bear up against it as we may, with all the
help of reason, resignation, resentment, pride, it
is a hard and a cruel necessity, to leave, it may
be for ever, the country of your birth, the scene
of your early attachments, your dearest hopes,
and to be thrown on the wide world companion-
less and forlorn.
233
CHAPTER X.
BORDEAUX REVISITED.—A SETTLEMENT. — LITE-
RARY ATTEMPTS.—THE FREN CH REGICIDES.
A FEW weeks passed in London and the neigh-
bourhood, to give me time to recover from the
effects of a dangerous fever, one of those bodily
ills alluded to in the last chapter, were required
also for preparations for my next intended move
on life's journey. Despairing of every chance at
home, renouncing all hope of what could have
made home a certainty, disgusted and almost
desperate, I had resolved on going to South
America, to join one of the expeditions which
had some time previously left Ireland, under the
command of adventurous speculators unfitted for
such heroic emprises, which with their imperfect
guidance met nothing but disaster and defeat.
A short correspondence with one of the agents
concerned decided me to repair to Bordeaux,
there to embark in a ship bound to Venezuela,
and I was glad that I thus had an opportunity of
234 BEATEN PATIH.S.
again seeing my kind and hospitable friend, and
there taking my final adieu of Europe.
I embarked at Gravesend on board another
vessel of smaller size and light burthen, better
commanded and equipped than the unlucky one
I had escaped from the year before ; and I left
the Thames little hoping and little caring ever to
sail into it again. When we put out to sea, as
I stood forward close to the bowsprit and looking
down upon the waves through which we were
cutting our way, I verily believe that had any one
pushed me overboard I should not have once
struck out to save myself from sinking. Never
in all the various exigencies of a chequered ca-
reer have I felt such utter hopelessness as then.
I thought I had nothing to live for. All seemed
lost. I was to myself like nothing, and valueless
for the whole world. But from that desolate
state of mind I was soon aroused by a new
excitement. Ten days of boisterous and critical
weather, across the Bay of Biscay and into the
Garonne, brought me again to well-remembered
scenes—and to myself. Within three months
of that time I was settled down, a married man,
within about ten leagues of Bordeaux, in a
beautiful country, far from any English settlers or
visitors, and deeply engaged in my first literary
undertaking. South American independence
LITERARY ATTEMPTS. 235
and its gallant upholders faded gradually from
my mind, which turned with ardour into its fresh
pursuit. I occasionally sailed or rowed down
the river, to visit my Bordeaux friends, to gather
books of reference for my intended new work,
and on my return home, to deliver myself up
really and in earnest for the first time, to the in-
expressible delight of industrious study, with an
object in view. All my previous desultory
reading, all the little scraps of prose and verse
thrown off on frivolous occasions, were but pre-
parations for what I was now bent on accom-
plishing, and which I laboured at without
cessation, for it was truly a labour of love, with
a consciousness of energy that redeemed in my
own mind the manifold imperfections of my per-
formance. Very great was the pleasure of this
new epoch in an existence which had heretofore
been but a waste of time, but which now held
out a promise of something, but what I dared not
trust myself to hope.
I believe all first efforts in authorship take the
form of verse. Such was my case at any rate.
And very much charmed I was when my eldest-
born bantling made its appearance in the shape
of an octavo volume, printed in rather mean-
looking type but on good paper, at one of the
chief presses of Bordeaux. I had taken up my
236 BEATEN PATH S.
quarters there to see the sheets through the
press, having had no previous experience in the
art of correcting it, and more unfortunately still
no critical friend at hand, at all capable of re-
vising the manuscript and making the six-cantoed
romance less unworthy than it was. I took with
me to London a ready-printed supply of my
volume in “sheets,” and I found most efficient
publishers in the house of Longman and Co.
Then leaving the book to its fate, which was not
brilliant, I returned to my home near Bordeaux
to fall to work on a tragedy, and lay the founda-
tion of some efforts in prose, which in the end
were more to the purpose and more profitable.
It was during the time of these early literary
occupations that a chance meeting with a then
obscure individual, but one of a notorious class,
furnished materials for some personal sketches
that I will introduce here, although all of them
except the first were the fruits of long subsequent
observation.
RECOLLECTIONS OF THE FREN CH REGICII) ES.
Among the manifold crimes standing out like
landmarks on the flood of history, there is one
case of legislative murder branded by universal
reprobation. -
Other iniquities of the kind have had their
THE FRENCH REGICIDES. 237
apologists. Opinions have varied; and reasons,
good or bad, have been assigned in excuse
or justification. Private vengeance, religious
bigotry, or patriot fury have dealt deadly blows
against the pretenders to divine right; and pal-
liating sympathizers have lauded each separate
sacrifice. But the act now in question is alone
undefended, a monument of wanton and gratui-
tous cruelty.
King-killing is not in itself perhaps more
heinous than ordinary manslaughter. Kings are
after all but men, amenable to punishment like
other offenders; and if they really merit death
by violent means, so should they die.
But their case is at all times exceptional.
Wrong-doing is in them most frequently a ne-
cessity of their position, which is at best a pe-
rilous if not a false one. Enormous allowance
should be made for them. Great toleration for
their errors. Intense compassion for their fail-
ures. They should be judged leniently, and when
punished at all it is perhaps well that they should
suffer only the minimum amount awarded to their
offences.
There are always extenuating circumstances in
the misdoings of tyrants. They are encouraged
and urged on by the vile creatures who, stigma-
tized as mere instruments, are too often the real
238 BEATEN PATH S.
criminals; at any rate accessories before and after
and during the fact; screened by their compara-
tively menial rank from the greater odium that
falls on the crowned culprit whom they instigate,
while seeming only to obey him.
There are no minor punishments for monarchs,
because they cannot commit small crimes. They
are never petty-larceny rogues. If they rob at
all it is by wholesale, and when they take to
killing they kill outright. Therefore the penalties
applied to them are heavy and extreme. Death
and deposition are the only two recognized by
the political code, and, all things considered,
perhaps the first should be abolished and the
latter alone retained. For it is far better that a
dozen culpable sovereigns should escape than that
one should undergo the ordinary infliction of the
block or the guillotine. If not actually hedged
in by “a divinity,” they are at least fenced round
with reverence that should be almost as inviolate.
The kingly office is one held on sufferance. A
factitious institution, whose very existence hangs
on a slight thread of veneration, which it is well
to leave uncut. Reduce it to the ordinary level
of vulgar realities and it becomes a mockery—
deprive Majesty of its externals, and it is indeed
but a jest, according to the witty and wise co-
nundrum. And to make it such—to strip it of
THE FREN CH REGICIDES. 239
all dignity, to vilify, degrade, and drag it in the
dirt, were the objects of the men of whom I am
now about to treat. It was the kingly office,
rather than the hapless person who filled it at the
time of the great French Revolution, that was
the mark of hatred to those who hoped to guide
and manage that huge monster which so soon
crushed its creators.
Taken separately, one by one, there was not
probably a single individual among the French
regicides, who personally hated the man, while
they all abhorred the monarch. They required
a tangible type, on which to wreak their vengeance
against the principle it personified. Were the
the throne itself a living thing, the being who
filled it would have escaped unscathed. Had
the ruin of an abstraction been a palpable and
visible fact, the human sacrifice would have been
spared.
Yet the members of the National Convention
who voted the death of Louis XVI. and sent
him to the scaffold must nevertheless figure, to
the end of time, among the great criminals of the
world. Many shades were blended in the dark
colour of their aggregate character.
Political zealots, frantic patriots, the calculating,
the enthusiastic, the brave, the base, the timid
were all to be found in that associate band. A
240 BEATEN PATH S.
terrible monument of the weakness as well as
the wickedness of human nature, they combined
the qualities which excite at once disgust and
commiseration. For men so lost as some of
them were to the finer feelings of humanity we
can have no pity. As they were merciless to-
wards their victim, so is posterity towards them.
But for the wretched beings who, with hearts
naturally good and views originally honest, were
hurried into the vortex, and in losing all self-
control were in a measure absolved from entire
responsibility, some faint exculpation may be
pleaded.
There is a wonderful fascination in the annals
of THE TERROR, as the hideous epoch which
these men illustrated is graphically named. The
actors move about in evidence; and we gaze at
while we loathe them, as we do at the mysteries
of a chamber of horrors—like birds attracted by
the inevitable reptile that watches for and absorbs
them.
The number who voted for the death of the
king was three hundred and thirty-six. Two
hundred and eighty-three had previously voted
for an appeal to the people. But on the question
of a respite, after the sentence, three hundred
and eighty was the majority, against three hundred
and ten, of the regicides purs et simpſes.
241
CHAPTER VIII.
AMERICAN DIPLOMATISTS.
CHRISTOPHER, HUGHES.
AMONG the minor notabilities of the United States,
no one was better known, better liked, or better
laughed at, than Kit Hughes. He was, I believe,
in early life, a military man. If so, he quitted a
profession to which he was well suited, for one
which was altogether foreign to his capabilities.
Hughes was of a lively, egotistical turn, the
greatest bavard in the world, good-tempered, full
of fun, without fortune—just the fellow, in fact,
to be the life of a mess-table or a camp, to crack
jokes, tell stories, and let every one know all that
he knew himself. How a man of so indiscreet a
temper could have been admitted into the Diplo-
matic Service, I cannot imagine. That he was
kept in it for upwards of thirty years, was solely
owing to the good feeling he excited in all parties,
and to the fact of there being a very insignificant
VOIL. II. R
242 BEATEN PATHS.
post in which he could safely remain without
doing any mischief, because he had just nothing
at all to do. He began his career as Secretary
to the American Commissioners who negotiated
the treaty of Ghent in 1814. At that place
he made the acquaintance of several Europeans,
English and others. Having married the daughter
of a General Smith, of very respectable family in
Baltimore, much against the consent of his wife's
connections, for Hughes was the son of an Irish-
man of rather low station, he obtained neverthe-
less, through their interest, the appointment of
Chargé d'Affaires to the Court of Stockholm. He
there remained for several years, writing home
lengthy and rigmarole despatches, full of gossip
and chit-chat, until General Jackson was elected
President, when his clamorous demands for a
removal were good-naturedly assented to, and he
was sent to the Netherlands, and there I found
him, when, towards the winter of 1828, I took
up my residence in Brussels.
Our first meeting was at the house of Lord
Waldegrave, at a dinner party, of which Hughes
was by far the liveliest portion; and I attribute a
great deal of his proffered intimacy to the fact of
our acquaintanceship having commenced at the
table of an Earl. Poor Hughes's principal weak-
ness was one very common to his countrymen in
CHRISTOPHER, HUGHES. 243
Europe. He was the beau idéal of a tuft-hunter.
No one had so long a list of royal and noble
friends. Princes of the blood, peers of all grades,
and lords spiritual and temporal, were among
his correspondents and cronies. The worship of
title was really a mania with him, and he believed
in nobility, as a fanatic believes in some abstract
dogma of faith. Nothing could be more laughable
than the mixture of this prostration before rank,
and the prodigious display of vanity which ac-
companied all its avowals. Kit Hughes, according
to his own account, was in all places the observed
of all observers, the diplomate par eacellence, the
very arbiter of all disputed points of honour or
of fact. He would give you anecdotes of the
Duke of Gloucester holding with him the most
intimate conversations, téte-à-téte, on the most
delicate subjects of family concern; of the Duke
of Wellington taking him familiarly by the arm,
and walking down St. James's Street, when he
gave a bishop but a nod of disdain, and scorned
to return the salute of many a titled passer-by;
of King Charles-Jean (Bernadotte) giving him
closet audiences when no other foreigner could
get beyond the antechamber; to say nothing of
the high regard and affectionate tone displayed
towards him by the King of the Netherlands, the
Prince of Orange, and half the nobility of Belgium.
R. 2
244 BEATEN PATH S.
This absurd and farcical excess was only laughable,
and did not prevent his being greatly liked by a
large circle in Brussels and the Hague. He was
full of amusing anecdotes of public men, though
he generally contrived to make them appear merely
subordinate actors in the small adventures of
which he made himself the hero. As a mere
hanger-on of society—a diner-out in the amplest
sense, for he accepted all invitations, but never
entertained at home—he was amusing and useful
too. But his infatuated adoration of the privileged
class rendered him, of course, one of the worst
possible representatives of republican rights, and
the sagacity of the United States Government was
quite alive to the fact. So, as soon as a question
arose which required the effective services of a
diplomatic agent, poor Hughes was superseded,
and sent back to his sinecure place at Stockholm.
The activity of his friends at home secured him
this retreat, and they considered him most lucky
in being able to avail himself of a return to his
old post. But he was highly indignant, at what
he considered an outrage against his personal
importance, and a grievous injury to the best
interests of his country. This retrograde move
in his diplomatic career was caused by the King
of the Netherlands having accepted the office of
arbiter, in the question of the North-Eastern
CHRISTOPHER, HUGHES. 245
Boundary between England and the United States.
To counteract the influence which might be ex-
ercised over the King by Sir Charles Bagot, the
British Ambassador at Brussels and the Hague,
who had formerly been Minister at Washington,
it was considered necessary by the American
Government to despatch a Special Agent, with
the rank of Minister, and one cognizant of the
local details of the question. The person chosen
was Mr. William Pitt Preble, a lawyer of Port-
land, in the State of Maine, and for some time
previously a Judge of that district; a gentleman
of a certain influence in that remote quarter,
but one who had never had any experience in
diplomacy, but little knowledge of life, and small
information as to the ways of the wicked world
of European civilization. He had never, I believe,
been much beyond the precincts of his own State
of Maine, and spoke no language but such English
as is familiar to the inhabitants “down East,” as
his native portion of Yankeeland is called through-
out the Union.
Hughes loudly, but vainly, remonstrated against
this nomination as soon as it was notified to him.
His letters to the United States exhausted every
figure of expostulation, while his complaints to
the enormous circle of his friends in Europe were
loud and bitter. His favourite compound epithet
246 BEATEN PATH S.
for lawyer Preble was “a vulgar nullity;” and he
demonstrated, in a thousand eloquent tirades, that
he himself was alone the man to manage King
William, and obtain a decision on the boundary
question, in accordance with truth, justice—and
the unlimited satisfaction of the United States.
As the fatal time of his removal approached—
I think it was in the spring of 1830—Hughes
could only reconcile himself to his fate by the
comforting calculation of the regret that would
be felt by those who were about to lose him, and
by anticipating the contrast (so prodigiously in
his favour) which his successor would present.
To give greater effect to this, he made all his ar-
rangements for accompanying Mr. Preble to the
Hague, where the King and Royal family were,
that fatal year, residing. His intention was to
present the “vulgar nullity” at Court, when,
without the necessity of his saying, “Look at
that picture, and at this,” their Majesties of the
Netherlands, courtiers and all, might compare
him, side by side, to the usurper of his place, and
call out in chorus, “Hyperion to a satyrſ’
The day so painfully looked for at length ar-
rived. One fine morning, I forget in what month,
the readers of ‘The News from Home,' the Eng-
lish paper published in Brussels, were astounded
by the following announcement:—
CHRISTOPHER: HUGHES. 247
“His Excellency the Honourable William Pitt
Preble, Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary
from the United States of America to this Court,
with his family, his secretary, and suite, arrived
last night by the diligence from Ghent, and put
up at ‘The Ram, in the Chicken Market.”
By the diligence Put up !! at the Ram in
the Chicken Market !!!—or (if the speakers spoke
French), “Au Belier, Marché aux Poulets | | |’’—
were the exclamations uttered at all the fashionable
breakfast-tables of the Parc or the Boulevard on
that morning, as the daily sheet of haut ton in-
telligence was glanced at and wondered at.
“What beings | Quelles créatures / The
Ram Au Belier /’’ were echoed over and over
again, in every possible intonation of astonish-
ment and disgust, by the whole circle of “the
best society.” But if such was the general feel-
ing, what must have been that of Mr. Hughes,
the actual representative of the great, intelligent,
high-minded, and independent civilization, refine-
ment and elegance of (what he constantly assured
everybody was) the most refined and most ele-
gant people in the world? That question, put
by dozens of his friends, sarcastically or senti-
mentally, as the case might be, it is not in my
power to answer. But a chance meeting with
him in the Park, just after I had had a hearty
248 BEATEN PATHS.
laugh at the awful paragraph, enabled me to
make a shrewd guess at the way in which it
affected him. I was crossing one of the alleys
when I met Hughes plump. “Well,” exclaimed
I, “they are arrived at last !”
“They are indeed!” replied he, “How did you
know it P”
“Why, I saw it in ‘The News from Home.”
“What Is it announced in the papers?”
asked Hughes, in a demi-diplomatic tone of sur-
prise. But I knew my man too well not to see
that he too had seen the paragraph, and to have
a suspicion, almost amounting to certainty, that
he was not altogether ignorant of its authorship.
Werbum sat. said I to myself; and I left “the
charge" (as the Americans say) to pursue his
path, to pay his visit of welcome and congratula-
tion to the vulgar nullity, his “family and suite.”
Hughes's account of this visit was highly amus-
ing. He made his way through the obstructions of
the chicken and the cabbage markets, to the third
or fourth-rate auberge where the illustrious stran-
gers had “put up.” There he found Mr. Preble
surrounded by his wife and sundry children, and
flanked on either side by an old nurse and the
Secretary of Legation. Hughes's sketch of this
group was capital. The Minister he described as
prim, formal, and most ludiciously consequential
CHRISTOPHER, H U GHES. 249
while “the major,” (as he called M. Davezac, a
French West Indian sent as Secretary of Legation
and' Interpreter to the Minister,) had the air of
a sly, hypocritical, methodist preacher, a perfect
Tartuffe. Preble, determined to show off his new
dignity at starting, received Hughes with double-
starched solemnity. The latter met this with an
air of patronizing nonchalance; but he was foiled
in every attempt to overcome the obstinate gravity
of men or things. He proffered his services to
procure lodgings at one of the first-rate hotels,
the Bellevue, Flandre, or l’Europe. Mr. Preble
coldly thanked him, but declared himself “quite
comfortable where he was.” He offered to be
the escort of the party to see the sights of the
place. Mr. Preble declared he had visited the
various markets and public buildings long before
breakfast. For pictures, statues, or the interior
of palaces he had no taste. He thought such
luxurious proofs of monarchical corruption un-
worthy of republican observation.
“Well, Sir,” said Hughes, rather sharply as he
himself confessed, “whenever you make up your
mind to set out for the Hague, I beg to say I
shall hold myself disengaged to accompany you
and present you to the king; and I have taken
the trouble (with a strong emphasis) to order two
carriages and post-horses to be held in readiness
for you, your family, your secretary and suite.”
250 BEATEN PATH S.
“You hadn’t ought to, Sir,” replied Preble,
with a dogged air and tone that set Hughes
nearly frantic, “I have taken places for all in the
diligence. We start to-day at noon; and I can
see no necessity for your accompanying us. I
have written to the king to tell him I am coming,
and I therefore need no introduction.”
“The diligence, Mr. Preble Written to the
king ! No introduction | Really, Sir, I must—in
the most friendly spirit—with the feeling of what
is due to the dignity and respectability of our
great republic—beg leave to expostulate with you.
Sir, you are not acquainted with the customs of
Europe—and cannot be expected to know what
is expected from persons of your rank, age, or
even of time in the diplomatic corps,”—which
last word he took care to pronounce corpse, not
to puzzle the down-easter.
“You are mistaken, Mr. Hughes,” was Preble's
finishing reply. “I know my station and my
duty, to my country and myself. The first men
in Maine, and indeed throughout the Union—you,
Sir, may have forgotten the usages of our beloved
country, or perhaps learned to despise them—
they, Sir, think it no disgrace to travel in public
vehicles, nor do I. What George Washington
did and Andrew Jackson does, I guess any Ame-
rican minister may safely do—ay, Mr. Hughes,
CHRISTOPHER, HUGH ES. 251
or any charge either. The Major, I am sure, agrees
with me?”
“I perfectly agree wit de minister,” said Dave-
Zac, in reply to Hughes's imploring look—the
first time he had spoken during the interview;
Mrs. Preble, the nurse, or the children not having
opened their mouths at all.
“Good morning, gentlemen | Good morning,
madam l’ muttered Hughes, making a hasty bow
and rushing from the room in utter disgust and
despair. He left the house abruptly, bounced
into the open air, told the story (word for word
as I have told it) to the first fifteen persons he
met—one of whom I was—so I betray no secret
in retailing it; and there are plenty of living
witnesses to confirm it, should Hughes's me-
mory have proved treacherous before it failed
altogether.
I quite forget, and I am sorry that I do, what
was the result of the affair, or how the points of
etiquette, at such extraordinary issue, were ar-
ranged. Both the diplomatists quitted Brussels;
and I lost sight of Hughes for several years. To
keep himself green in the memory of his “few
particular” friends, he had about a thousand
copies of a lithographic likeness of himself struck
off, and distributed to as many of the more select
and intimate of the lodgers in his capacious heart.
252 BEATEN PATHS.
The portrait did not give an accurate idea of the
man. But the ample cloak in which the person
was enfolded gave it a very martial air; and a
vignette representation of the Capitol at Washing-
ton immediately under the portrait (apropos to the
bottes which the drapery concealed) spoke plainly
what were poor Hughes's notions of his own
merits, as far as a fitting locality for the display
of his talents was concerned. He soon went back
to Stockholm, his arrival at his “residence ’’ there
forming a flowing paragraph in ‘The News from
Home,’ and presenting a dignified, post mortem
kind of reproach to the shabby announcement
which startled the fashionable world a few weeks
before, and which my readers may refer to (if
they have forgotten it) a few pages back.
The stirring events of the French and Belgian
Revolutions of 1830 soon came round. Years
rolled on. I was driven a good deal about some
portions of the world while Kit Hughes was stuck
fast in his Swedish retreat ; and it was not till
after my nomination to the consulship at Boston,
and not many days previous to my sailing from
London, that I met him accidentally in the Strand
close to Northumberland House. This chance
meeting and what followed was highly charac-
teristic of his weak and his strong points. He was
accompanied by a long, lanky, dark-skinned man,
CHRISTOPHER H U GHES. 253
dressed out spick and span new, in the most ap-
proved fashion of American backwoodsmen style,
(but not exactly the London costume for a July
morning,) viz., blue dress-coat with broad brass
buttons, black satin waistcoat, black trousers,
and a flaming red and yellow silk cravat. After
the greetings between Hughes and myself were
over, and his having informed me that he had
returned two days before from a visit to the
United States, and was flying through London on
his way to Stockholm, having merely time to call
on the Dukes of Sussex and Wellington and half
a hundred other of the few particular friends then
in town, he introduced me to his companion,
Mr. Alexander. I was in a great hurry going
down to the Foreign Office on business. Hughes
said he would walk that way with me, and offered
me an arm, while his friend, at the other side, did
as much. Before we turned the corner at Charing
Cross, Hughes gave me a squeeze and whispered
in my ear ! “Do you know that you are leaning
on a Lord?”
“The devil I am When did you get your
title?” said I, laughing.
“Tut, tut !” exclaimed he, still in an under
tone, “Don’t laugh—the man on the other side
side of you is Lord Stirling.”
“What l” said I, “he who was tried for for-
gery last week at Edinburgh?” and I instinctively
254 BEATEN PATHS.
loosened my arm from that of its distinguished,
but as I thought somewhat doubtful, supporter.
“God bless you ! not at all,” murmured
Hughes, “quite a different person. That was an
impostor. This is the rightful heir to the title,
which he has now come to England to claim. He
is the fourth in descent in a direct line from the
real lord, who settled in America, and he has
been born and bred in Kentucky.”
“I thought as much from his looks,” said I,
“ and probably his father before him P”
“Oh yes,” replied Hughes, “ and further back
than that. But he is a true Lord for all that’—
“Otherwise he had small chance of being a
friend of yours, n'est-ce pas ?”
“Nonsense I see you have not forgot your
old fondness for fun, Grattan.”
“Nor you your old faiblesse for fine folks,
Hughes.” And there we shook hands and
parted.
The next morning I called on him in his lodg-
ings, with my son, an old favourite of his, and a
Brussels schoolfellow of his son's, who was, he
told me, then a Lieutenant of Engineers stationed
in the swamps of Florida. I found him in the
act of putting in their envelopes full twenty
warm-worded letters of introduction for me for
various individuals in the United States, gover-
CHRISTOPHER, HUGHTES. 255
nors, senators, and other functionaries, all “ho-
nourable" men, and most of them as he assured
me “nature's noblemen”—for want of better.
After he had shaken hands with us and told
me what he was about, he said in a rather mys-
terious tone, “There's a prince in the next room
—I’ll introduce you to him presently.”
“Aha!” said I, “your Kentucky lord is a
prince then by the mother's side, I suppose?
Indian blood, eh?”
“No such thing—not at all ”—replied he
“a real prince, and no mistake—whose title no
Radical like you will gainsay,” and while he
spoke the door opened, and a fine-looking young
man came in, so like the pictures of Napoleon
the Great that the promised introduction was not
required to tell me the name of the stranger.
“Mr. Grattan, a distinguished literary gentle-
man, Her Majesty's newly appointed Consul to
Boston; Mr. Bonaparte, son of the King of
Westphalia, nephew of the Emperor, a gentleman
worthy of his name and connections,” was the
form of Hughes's introduction. I had half an
hour's very pleasant chat with this offspring of
Jerome and Miss Patterson, and found him a
fine, rattling, off-hand republican, “enormously
rich '' as Hughes took good care to tell me, in a
stage whisper which made its object laugh hear-
256 BEATEN PATHS.
tily, for he knew that Hughes, in talking to his
friends or at them, followed the old couplet of
advice to flatterers—
Lay it on thick,
And some will stick.
Hughes's kind and much too laudatory letters
procured me several pleasant acquaintanceships
at Baltimore and elsewhere. But a sad piece of
news, learned soon after I landed in America,
gave us deep regret. His son, a lad of fine
talents and great promise, but even at school and
subsequently at the Military College at West-
Point rather eccentric in his ways and opinions,
shot himself in his tent in Florida, it would ap-
pear from mere ennui at the odious service he
was engaged in during the ignoble Indian war
then at its climax. A few months afterwards the
ship in which his only sister was on her way
to join her father in Europe took fire; and she
and the other passengers, with the crew, were al-
most miraculously rescued by a vessel bound for
New York, in which she was brought back, hav-
ing lost everything she possessed. The former
dreadful intelligence must have been a serious
shock to poor Hughes, for he loved his boy pas-
sionately. He had been a widower some years
before this calamity befell him. And as I was
told that his daughter's terror at the idea of
CHRISTOPHER: HUGHES. 257
trusting herself at sea again left no likelihood of
her crossing the Atlantic, her father's only chance
for domestic consolation in his declining years
was in his being recalled from his diplomatic
banishment, an event which the then unsettled
aspect of political parties in the United States
made very probable.
“Grattan Halloa Driver! pull up your
horses | Let me out !” vociferated loudly, by a
man who half thrust himself through the window
of a hackney coach, startled me, and made me
stare as I walked down Washington Street, in
Boston, on a morning in the spring of 1842.
I was greatly surprised and not a little pleased
to recognize my old friend Kit Hughes in this
new arrival from the Old World, he having an
hour or two previously landed from the Liverpool
steamer, and being on his rapid flight to Wash-
ington on business (as he assured me) of the
first importance. I called on him at his hotel,
accompanied by my worthy countryman Sir John
Caldwell, and we were received by Hughes in
his bed-room amidst a fearful confusion of port-
manteaus and portfolios. He soon informed us
that he had crossed the Atlantic, on the strength
of an overstrained eulogium recently pronounced
on him in Congress by old John Quincy Adams,
who in a caustic attack on some other diplo-
WOL. II. S
258 BEATEN PATH S.
matic agent, contrasted his conduct with that of
Kit Hughes, whom he stated to have obtained an
important paper in Stockholm many years before,
when Adams was Secretary of State, entirely by
his agreeable manners and social merits, before
the United States minister at London had sent
it home, although relating to affairs of his own
mission. “The truth was,” said Hughes, “that
Lord Bloomfield, the English minister at Stock-
holm, lent me a copy of the paper in question one
morning when I called on him, merely because it
related to an American question, neither of us
supposing it had not been previously sent to the
United States from London, and I just forwarded
it as an excuse for writing a despatch, having no
business of my own to communicate. But as
‘the old man eloquent’ (the old sobriquet applied
to John Quincy Adams by his admiring coun-
trymen) has brought the matter forward so hand-
somely, I am come over to ask for the mission
back again at Brussels, and I am sure of getting
it too.”
A few weeks afterwards, being at Washington,
I went to a soirée at the President's, and there
among hundreds of citizens I found Hughes,
flashily dressed, in high spirits, and in his own
estimation assuredly one of the first objects of
the first importance. He was pushing his suit
CHRISTOPHER, HUGHES. 259
by all the appliances of importunity and perse-
verance, but in vain. He was ordered to go to
Holland, a country he detested, while Brussels
was once more reserved for some other “nullity,”
with whose claims poor Hughes's pretensions
could not successfully compete. His patron and
panegyrist Adams had no influence with the Pre-
sident; and Hughes not being considered of any
party was entirely unsupported, and he very soon
slipped away again to Europe, unobserved and
unmentioned. He was thus fixed in the obscurity
of the Hague for the residue of his political life, till
worn out and past all usefulness he submitted to
the common fate, and returned home soon after to
take possession, on the death of his brother-in-
law, of a very comfortable house, and to enjoy, as I
was truly glad to hear, a sufficient income for all
his wants as a retired and of course pensionless
diplomatist, with the luxury of recollection to
console him for the loss of European associations.
I shook hands with him one day in Baltimore in
the spring of 1846, and not very long after my
own return to Europe in that year, I heard that
poor Hughes had died somewhat unexpectedly,
and I have no doubt extensively and sincerely
regretted.
S 2
260 BEATEN PATH S.
WILLIAM PITT PREBLE—AUGUSTE DAVEZAC,
The events of the Belgian Revolution drove
me and my family from Brussels to Antwerp,
and thence to the Hague, where we passed the
winter of the year 1830–1831. I was soon made
acquainted with Mr. Preble, and I paid him an
early visit. While we were in conversation, a
gentleman came in, whom Mr. Preble, rising
with infinite gravity, introduced to me by name
and title thus: “Major Augustus Davezac, for-
merly aide to General Jackson, and now my se-
cretary.”
“I am very glad, Mr. Grattan, to make your
acquaintance,” said the Major, with a strong
French accent, and offering me his hand; “but
Mr. Preble, (turning to the minister) you will
excuse my saying dat although I had de honour
of being de aide of General Jackson on de en-
sanguyned plain of New Orlines, I am not now
your secretary, but de secretary of de United
States Legation at dis Court.”
“Sir, I stand corrected, and I ask your par-
don,” solemnly enunciated the minister.
“Not at all, Sir, not at all; but it is well to start
with a just appreciation of tings,” said the Major.
This curious commencement was followed up
by a series of most amusing interchanges of coni-
PREBLE AND DAVEZAC. 26]
pliment and sarcasm between the diplomatists.
In the whole corps there did not exist a couple
presenting a stronger contrast. Coming from
the two extreme points of the Union, they were
living illustrations of the difference between North
and South. Preble was a perfect specimen of the
down-east Yankee, long-visaged, keen-eyed, with
a nasal twang, a drawling manner, and a slouch-
ing gait, Solemnly puritanical, yet cunning and
shrewd withal; looking to the main chance; al-
though rich at home, bent on saving money
abroad; hating England, yet proud of his En-
glish origin; and knowing little of the southern
portions of the Union, except that the people
weres laveholders and of the French stock, for one
of which reasons he despised and for the other
detested them.
Davezac was a thorough Louisianian in feeling
and prejudice. He laughed at Yankeeism in all
its forms; and at none of them with greater con-
tempt than at that presented in the person of the
head of the mission of which he knew himself to
be the brains. He was a native of St. Domingo,
transplanted early to New Orleans, where he had
been long located, having first practised as a
doctor, and afterwards as a lawyer; but making
no great figure in either profession, and being
wholly without fortune, he procured his intro-
262 BEATEN PATHS.
duction into the corps diplomatique by the
interest of his brother-in-law Edward Living-
stone, then Secretary of State under President
Jackson. Mr. Preble's total ignorance of French
made it necessary to have some one well ac-
quainted with that language to assist him in
negotiating the settlement of the boundary ques-
tion by the royal arbiter. Davezac was just the
man for the occasion. Nature had made him a
diplomatist. Agreeable, wily, sarcastic without
spite, and fluent without indiscretion, he was
popular in society, a good raconteur, and with a
memory happily tenacious of much that he had
read, but most unluckily so of somewhat that he
had seen. That somewhat was the battle of
New Orleans, in which celebrated fight he had,
as well as his brother-in-law Livingstone, acted
as aide-de-camp to Jackson. Whether he ever
actually came into action there or elsewhere I
never could ascertain. He looked less like a
military man than anything that ever wore a
uniform. Hughes did not perhaps libel him in
saying he looked like a methodist preacher,
though he had I think more the air of a lay
Jesuit. He was at the period of my first ac-
quaintance with him upwards of fifty, wearing a
close black wig, the hair smooth down over his
forehead, his clothes clumsily cut, and his little
PREBLE AND DAVEZAC. 263
twinkling black eyes deep set in his tawny-co-
loured face, with a certain play about the mouth
when he spoke, which indicated a taste for refined
raillery that relieved the platitude of his general
expression. He was quite dark enough in com-
plexion to be suspected of a mixture of black
blood. But he felt all the disgust and horror
common to southern men for those so tainted
in ever so remote a degree. He was largely
democratic in his political views. Sometimes
troublesomely Greek-and-Romanish in his ha-
rangues. A man of reading rather than of
learning. Excellent in society; a bad whist-
player, but good at small-talk, and therefore a
favourite with the men, who won his money, and
the women, who laughed at his wit. But it was
in the social converse of the tea-table and the
long chat of a quiet winter's evening that he was
a real acquisition. And he was just then inva-
luable to me, as an assistant in the expounding
of some old French poets whose works I was very
busy with, and by whose quaint phraseology I
was often puzzled.
There was but little general society during
that winter at the Hague. The successes of the
Belgians had thrown a great damp over the
public mind; and from the king downward
there was a gloominess and discontent, most un-
264 BEATEN PATHS.
favourable to social intercourse on a large scale.
Three or four of the foreign diplomatists, par-
ticularly Baron Selby, the Danish, and Count
Truchses, the Prussian minister, opened their
houses one evening in the week, and then I had
frequent opportunities of meeting Mr. Preble,
Davezac being of course one of the ci-devant
jeunes hommes who regularly formed part of the
circle.
In these réunions poor Mr. Preble was sadly
out of place and very much puzzled in the per-
formance of his part. His solemn and gauche
demeanour was ill adapted to harmonize with the
well-bred vivacity of the other members of the
corps diplomatique. The young English and
French attachés avoided him altogether, and the
more advanced and serious individuals, who un-
derstood enough of English to make them liable
to his conversation, found him a dreadful bore.
Of the evident disposition to fight shy of him he
was nevertheless quite insensible, attributing the
short answers and abrupt transitions which met his
attempts at conversation, to a press of important
business, that left his brother diplomatists no time
for the consideration of the only one question, that
of the Boundary, on which he had a word to say.
“How amazingly preoccupied they are l’’ he
used frequently to exclaim as he came up to me
PREBI,E AND DAVEZAC. 265
in the crowd; Davezac having invariably slipped
away early from the side of his chef, and I, from
sheer compassion, keeping near him. The Major
enjoyed himself very much the while, excusing
himself to the minister, on the plea of the neces-
sity of pressing the question on the separate atten-
tion of the various diplomates, whose ignorance of
English gave them impunity from Preble's talk;
while in fact he was assiduously complimenting
either Madame Rossi (the celebrated singer Son-
tag), whose husband was Sardinian chargé d'af.
faires, or the really noble-looking Roma Selby, or
some other of the various handsome and attrac-
tive women, with whom he was a great favourite.
Preble was unmerciful in his drafts on the
Major's complaisance. He wanted his services as
interpreter at every turn. He had a cruel thirst
for information. Amongst other things he was
most curious to know the comparative prices of
the markets between Holland and his native state.
He was a very early riser; while Davezac loved
his bed like a genuine Southerner. But many a
morning was he obliged to get up at the call of
“ the minister,” to accompany him to the meat and
vegetable markets, and others, to learn prices,
cheapen cabbages, and inquire about beef, mut-
ton, pigs and poultry. Davezac knew no more
Dutch than Preble knew French, and the market
266 BEATEN PATH S.
women were patriotically uncognizant of all but
their own language—not seeing why an envoy
extraordinary should monopolize all the ignorance
of the place on that score. Davezac, neverthe-
less, muttering some impracticable patois to the
market fraus, got answers in downright Dutch,
which he immediately did into English, cramming
the minister with such information as he could
draw from the fertility of his lively imagination.
Nothing could be more mesquin than Preble's
style of living. He occupied a small furnished
house, saw no company, and must have saved a
good deal from his salary. He kept one man,
servant, a Belgian whom I recommended to him,
a shrewd fellow, who spoke English, and who soon
caught the weak points of his master's character
and humoured them completely. The ostentation
of the Republican envoy was prodigious. His
house contained two small sitting-rooms with
folding doors, on the ground floor. Whenever a
visitor called and was ushered into the front par-
lour, (Preble being generally occupied in the back
one, which was the dining-room,) Guillaume, the
servant, invariably went round by the passage,
and informing his master of the visitor's name,
he came forward, throwing wide the folding-doors
with a most theatrical air, announcing “Son
Excellence!” in a high tone of voice, stepping on
PREBLE AND DAWEZAC. 267
one side, and making way for the pompous dig-
nitary, who stalked in with a mock-heroic air
which it was difficult to refrain from laughing at
on the spot. When the visit was over, it may be
believed that ridicule knew but little forbearance.
Davezac occupied still humbler quarters. He
lodged in a couple of rooms over a blacksmith's
shop, where the hammers kept up a constant din
from morning till night. On paying him my first
visit there I could not avoid expressing my sur-
prise at his choice of a domicile.
“Ah, my dear friend,” said he, “it is de very
place for a man of literary pursuits—de noise
keeps away all de troublesome, idle young fel-
lows.”
“Yes, but it must surely altogether prevent
you from study of all kinds.”
“Not at all—not at all!—ah, my dear fellow,
a man who heard de tunder of de British cannon
on de ensanguyned plain of New Orlines, tinks
but little of such tap tap as dis.”
Preble's battle-field was “the Boundary;” and
as I had to fight as often on that ground as the
other, I was most unmercifully pummelled on
both sides by major and minister—by the monoto-
nous reminiscences of the first and the prosy de-
clamations of the latter. Preble's self-conceit
was quite absurd on some points. I remember on
26S BEATEN PATH S.
one evening, at my own house, his breaking sud-
denly off from some new tirade about “the dis-
puted territory,” to observe that the Americans
spoke much better English than the English, and
to ask me if I could have discovered, by any
peculiarity in his own appearance or manner, that
he was not an Englishman.
“Why I think I should,” replied I, “by your
accent.”
“My accent l’ ejaculated he, with a wondering
Stare.
“Why, perhaps I should not exactly say your
accent—but by certain little national turns of pro-
nunciation, as such peculiarities you know are
common to persons of all countries, English, Irish,
Scotch, Welsh, American.”
“But pray in what particular instances, may
I ask you?” pursued he, not at all softened by
my generalizing efforts to heal the wound I had
made.
“Why, since you press me,” replied I, “I
think I may venture to remark that in your pro-
nunciation of the very word “territory,’ which we
have been using so frequently this evening, I can
trace one of those instances in which you some-
times—but very rarely—wander a shade from
the pronunciation of English in England.”
“Territóry !” exclaimed he, more than ever
PREBI,E AND DAVEZAC. 269
astonished, and evidently more and more hurt in
proportion to my extreme caution not to hurt
him—“Well, and don't I call it territóry P”
“Certainly you do—and that is what sounds
rather a deviation from what we think in England
the true method.”
“Why, don't you say territóry?”
“No, I say térritory?”
“Well, and don’t I say territóry?”
“You do indeed—and if you can find no dif-
ference between laying the accent on the first or
on the third syllable, it is in vain for me to point
it out.” --
“Well, this is just a new instance,” said he,
“of what I have so often heard of English prejudice.
It must really, my dear Mr. Grattan, be very in-
veterate since you have it so strongly. Territóry !
Well, I guess I have pronounced that word often
enough to have it pretty slick by this time !
Territóry | Don't I call it territóry?”
“Call it whatever you please, my dear Sir ; I am
entirely satisfied.” -
“But is there any other word from which
you would know me not to be an Englishman?”
“None—none whatever.”
“Well, now, I guess you're right there, for if
there's one thing in the world that I am more
remarkable for than another it is my pronuncia-
tion.”
270 BEATEN PATHS.
“It certainly is one of them,” thought I; and
I never again, though he often pressed me, would
touch on such delicate ground.
Davezac had no sensitiveness nor any conceit
on this subject of accent, though he was quite
conscious of his own peculiarity in that Way.
His weak point was his age ; his tender one, his
passion for the beau seaſe. To pass for a middle-
aged aimable roué, and to be supposed to be
always in love, were the main objects of his am-
bition. He was not profound in theological ques-
tions, nor particularly pious. His account of his
early progress in infidelity, beginning in his ten-
derest years, and involuntarily fostered by the
strict impressions of truth forced on him by his
father, was highly amusing. “De first books,”
said he, “which I began to read wit great plea-
sure were fables for young children—such as
Jack de Giant Killer—de little Red Riding Hood,
etc. “What very beautiful story, my dear fader,’
said I, ‘and what nice people.’ ‘My dear boy,’
said he, “you must not believe dese stories—dey
are not true.’ ‘Ah, indeed, very well,” said I,
‘what a pity!' So I den read Robinson Crusoe,
in French—and says I, ‘My dear fader, what very
fine man Robinson was—how much I should like
to go and make a voyage to his island, and see
le pauvre Vendred; " ‘My dear boy,” said he,
PREBLE AND DAWEZAC. 27]
“you must not believe about Robinson and Wen-
dredi—'tis not true.’ ‘Ah, indeed, very well,’
said I, ‘what a pity!' So I next read about the
headen mytology, and says I, ‘My dear fader,
what very fine gods and goddesses dese are
What nice woman Venus ! What fine great God
of War Mars!’ ‘My dear boy,” said my fader,
“you must not believe about dese gods—'tis not
true.’ ‘Bah l’ said I to myself, ‘dis is all very
bad—noting is true—everyting is a lie—I be-
lieve noting.’ So den my fader put de Bible
in my hands, and so I read a great deal, and said
to my fader—“Ah, my fader, what pity dat
noting is true ! What nice people was Moses and
Solomon, and de oders I am very sorry 'tis all
a lie.’ ‘My dear boy,” said my fader, quite
alarmed, ‘you must not say dat—de Bible is all
true—you must believe it all, every word.’ ‘No,
no, my dear fader,’ said I, ‘I believe noting
no more—you told me every ting was lie—and
I cannot never more believe anyting ; no, no,
noting is true, except dat every ting is lie’—and
so I believe noting; and I have to tank my
dear fader's memory for telling me de troot so
young, and saving me de trouble of tinking for
myself—no, no, my dear Grattan, I believe
noting at all.”
In running over in my mind the many small
272 BEATEN PATHS.
transactions of our narrow circle at the Hague
during the winter of that memorable year, 1830,
I think one anecdote may be recorded with a
chance of raising a smile.
Among the members of that set was a gentle-
man holding a confidential appointment in the
Household of the Princess of Orange, afterwards
Queen of Holland. He was a well-educated,
well-informed, and very intelligent man, speaking
several languages with remarkable fluency and
correctness, even for a Russian, for his country-
men are notorious as being the best linguists in
Europe. He was married to an Englishwoman,
who, being a very amiable, handsome, and agree-
able person, was the means of many people over-
looking some faults in her husband which had
otherwise made him, beyond doubt, more un-
popular than he was. This gentleman had all
the consequential superciliousness natural to the
mere creature of a Russian Princess. His ob-
sequiousness to his mistress was quite equalled
by his presumption towards all those whom he
considered below the rank which commanded his
homage. Democracy was, in his vocabulary, a
synonym for vileness; and he looked on a Re-
publican as a totally inferior order of being to the
servile dependant on Royalty. The names of
Washington and Franklin were unodorous in the
PREBLE AND DAVEZAC. 273
nostrils of his self-conceit. What, then, could he
think of such comparative nobodys as Preble and
Davezac P
At a party at our house one evening, the
American diplomates were present with some
others of the corps, and the usual members of
those snug réunions. Everything was very sociable
and pleasant, when Davezac, who had devoted
himself for some time to a flirtation with the
before-mentioned functionary's wife, asked me,
somewhat abruptly, to introduce him to her hus-
band, who had just risen from a whist-table close
beside. In the hurry of the moment I did so,
and when I had gone as far as “Mr. X—,
Major Davezac,” the latter, in the fashion of his
country, stretched out his hand, which the former,
taken by surprise, could not decline, and their
fingers and thumbs actually interclasped for a
moment. No more | For the Russian briskly
withdrew, and before poor Davezac could even
begin the flowery compliment in the praise of
Madame sa femme, which I actually saw flut-
tering on his lip and twinkling in his eye, the serf-
secretary turned away, as if from the glance of
a rattlesnake. In a few minutes he took me
into an adjoining room, and, with an emotion
scarcely to be repressed, he said in French, which
we habitually spoke together, “Grattan, you have
WOL. II. T
274, BEATEN PATH S.
done me a great wrong—you have sunk me in my
own esteem—I feel myself contaminated, defiled
by the touch of that democrat. I must go and
wash my hands. It is as if pitch was sticking
to my fingers. Mon cher ami, you should not
have taken me à l'improvisłe comme ca.”
He actually went off to perform the threatened
ablution, when Davezac, who had watched him,
came smilingly up to me.
“Well, my dear Grattan, is dere anyting in
Nature so foolish as a jealous man? What has
he been saying to you? Will he call me out?
Poor leetle devil | He has really no cause, as
yet. God knows what may happen, for she is
charming altogeder—but did you ever see such
a fool? He would not even speak to me.”
“Well, perhaps he is—but perhaps not. He
has heard of your reputation; and every one saw
what was going on in the corner.”
“No, no upon my honour, Grattan, noting
at all. She does not care a bit about me,” was
Davezac's reply; but with a tone and a look that
meant, “there is, indeed, a great all in it. She
doats on me.”
“Well, now, for fear of mistakes,” said I, “I
must tell you honestly what is the matter. Mr.
X has no cause of quarrel or dislike towards
gou, but he is very angry indeed with himself
PREBLE AND DAVEZAC. 275
for having been incautiously led to shake hands
with a Republican.”
“Indeed! Is dat really it?” exclaimed Davezac,
evidently much discomfited at the check given to
his incipient views of gallantry and their associa-
tions. “Shaking hands with a Republican | De
poor creature de servile tool of despotism—de
abject instrument of a tyrant or a tyrant's sister
Ah, cher Grattan, how can such a being compare
himself to de free, high-minded, and independent
citizens of my great country ! Ah, my friend, if
de army of Jackson had been composed of such
creatures as dat, we should not have licked John
Bull on de ensanguyned plain of New Orlines,
where I 5 3
Upon which words I made, as usual, a rapid
retreat, and hurried into the bustle of the next
I'OOIſl.
Having given Mr. X a niche in my sketch-
book, I must mention a couple more instances of
his intense and virulent prejudice.
Young Albert Snoockaert, son of a functionary
about the palace, and himself a chamberlain, a
volunteer in one of the regiments which had
hurried to the Belgian frontier, was back at the
Hague for a short leave of absence, and among
other traits of his border campaign, he mentioned
one evening a Belgian soldier in a Dutch regi-
T 2
276 BEATEN PATHIS,
ment having deserted and crossed the lines, taking
an officer's horse with him, which he sent back
in a few days with a letter to the Colonel, stating
his regret at having been obliged, from necessity,
to have had the appearance of committing a theft,
when he was only performing an act of patriotism
from a sense of duty.
Every one present was loud in praise of this
instance of honourable feeling, except X 5
who fiercely muttered, as his only comment,
“ Un scélérat scrupuleua /*
But this was nothing at all to the circumstance
which caused, most unconsciously on my part, an
everlasting breach between him and me.
One evening during a visit at his house, some
half-dozen persons being present, the conversation,
as usual, turned on the exciting revolutionary
topics of the time; and we were talking over the
remarkable fact of a whole regiment of French
troops, at the late contest in Paris (in 1830),
having gone over to the people, from the circum-
stance of one of the soldiers in it having shot his
father among the mob. X expressed himself
with bitter contempt against a regiment being so
influenced by such a pitiful consideration. And
turning abruptly to me, who unfortunately hap-
pened to be next to him, he asked me, “Don’t
you think it the duty of a loyal soldier to kill
PREBLE AND DAWEZAC, 277
his father if he is a rebel? Wouldn’t you kill
yours?”
“Upon my word,” said I, “I have not given
the subject any serious consideration—but I don't
think I would.”
Here the conversation ended, and, accustomed
to X 's fury of opinion, I thought no more
of it. Within a day or two afterwards, I passed
him in the Worhout, and knowing him to be
shortsighted, I did not think it extraordinary his
not appearing to notice me. In a day or two
more, we found that there was an evening party
of the usual friendly coterie at his house. We
were not asked, and we thought it odd. Next
morning, I met him plump in the Wyvesberg, and
he cut me dead. The same day I mentioned all
this to our excellent friend Mrs. Holworthy, the
very lovely wife of the truly all-worthy chaplain
to the British Embassy, and an intimate of Mme.
X , and I asked her if she could explain this
evident falling off on the part of the Secretary.
“Oh,” said she, “my dear Mr. Grattan, since
you ask me, I must tell you the truth. It makes
poor Mme. X quite miserable, but you know
what an obstinate man he is, and it appears that
he is quite shocked at your terrible principles,
about Revolution or something, which you avowed
one evening at his house.”
278 BEATEN PATH S.
“What!” exclaimed I, “I avow terrible prin-
ciples? What on earth do you mean?”
“Oh,” said my kind, embarrassed, and blush-
ing friend, “ Oh, you must surely remember, when
you said you wouldn’t shoot your father.”
“Shoot my father Are you really as serious
as you look? Do you mean to tell me that that
is the cause of X 's cutting me?”
“Indeed it is—no other.”
Upon which I burst into a fit of laughter,
whereat she shook her most handsome head, and
said, gravely, “Ah, well, you may laugh, but he
will never forgive you, depend on it.”
Upon which I laughed again, as I do now
heartily upon thinking of it after the lapse of
thirty and more years; though from that day to
this all intercourse or acquaintanceship has ceased
between me and the offended majesty of X--.
I never again spoke to him, and we had only
a form-hurried, embarrassed, and rather painful
leavetaking with his amiable wife, at a chance
meeting just previous to our quitting Holland.
Mais, revenons à nos moutons, Preble and
Davezac, who during all the early part of the
winter were deep-plunged in discussions, on the
question which gave ample occupation also to Sir
Charles Bagot and Sir Howard Douglas, the first
of whom had been formerly minister at Wash-
PREBLE AND DAWEZAC. 279
ington, the latter Lieutenant-Governor of New
Brunswick, and now specially sent to the Hague
to assist Sir Charles in the negotiation. Old
Baron Werstolk van Soelen, the Dutch Minister
for Foreign Affairs, was bothered considerably on
all hands, in his efforts to help the King to unravel
the intricacies of the question left to his arbitra-
tion. The distracted state of home politics seemed
to give small time to the Royal umpire for the
consideration of any foreign subject whatever. No
one expected that he could have really entered
into the one now in question, when to the general
surprise it was announced to the English and
American Ministers, by Baron Werstolk, that the
King would be ready to deliver his award on the
day originally fixed, the 10th of January, 1831,
and they were summoned to attend at the Palace
accordingly.
That was really a memorable day in a certain
sense, for it showed me a specimen of a Yankee
in a passion, so vehement, and withal so ludicrous,
which in my long after-experience of the Universal
Yankee Nation itself, I never saw approached in
the most remote degree of resemblance. I was
a good deal interested in the result of the arbi-
tration, and waited at Sir Charles Bagot's house
till his return from the palace, with the award in
his pocket.
280 BEATEN PATH S.
“Well, Sir Charles,” said I, as he came into
his study, “are you satisfied ?”
“Yes—I am,” answered he, throwing a folded-
up manuscript on the table. “There it is. He
has taken three-fifths of the territory from us—
but thank God this diabolical question is at last
honourably settled.”
So much for the Representative of England.
But how describe Him of America I met him
close on the bank of the little canal opposite my
house, stalking up and down in a perfect frenzy,
flinging his cloak about from side to side, like
nothing so much as a melodramatic hero in the
part of some furious brigand, muttering first, and
then, as I joined him, vociferating desperate but
incoherent reproaches against King William of
Holland, accusing him of being the paid, hired,
bribed creature of England, of having made an
award, infamous, unjust, treacherous, and dis-
honest—and altogether pouring out such a tor-
rent of invective, in language so unseemly, that
I was almost obliged to use violence before I
could get him into my house. And I believe I
should not have succeeded at all, had I not ob-
served to him that two-thirds of the persons in the
street understood English—that Englishmen were
at that time on a very ticklish footing in Holland
—and that if he (being sure to be taken for one)
PREBLE AND DAWEZ AC. 281
went on in that frantic style of abuse of “the
good old king,” both he and I would be certainly
flung through the ice into the mud of the canal.
I cannot attempt to further describe the antics
of my friend the special minister. I found it
impossible to calm him ; and I was delighted
when he went away, vowing vengeance in every
possible shape, to seek refuge in the sympathy
of the Major. Davezac took the affair as coolly
as possible. His Southern blood remained un-
bubblingly tepid, and it was to his cunning and
well-considered advice that the boundary question
was indebted for that fresh point of embarrass-
ment, that new bone of contention, that addi-
tional stumbling-block which was in a few days
presented to the King, a copy being delivered to
Sir Charles Bagot, in the shape of Mr. Preble's
protest against the award of “the Royal Arbiter,”
in words so respectful as to make me smile at the
hypocrisy and humbug, which come so natural
to the most unfledged occupant of a diplomatic
nest.
The subsequent proceedings were worthy of
this insincerity; and I have already described
them in ‘Civilized America,’ as before stated.
Having performed his grand diplomatic trick,
Mr. Preble requested leave to return home. And
during the interval between this period and his
282 BEATEN PATHS.
leaving the Hague he lived in the most obscure
manner, entertaining nobody, invited nowhere,
unthought of or uncared for by the circle to
which he belonged by right, but in which he
always seemed to move by sufferance.
Mr. Preble left Holland in the early part of
1831. I followed his example on the 1st of May
in the same year, but while he turned towards
Maine I proceeded to Germany. The course of
events brought me to America in the summer of
1839; and though Boston is a short distance from
Portland, I was long a resident of the former
town without having any special inducement to
visit the latter. The first in rank of my two
old diplomatic acquaintances here sketched, was
therefore the last in my thoughts when I reached
the United States. But I was really delighted
when I found by the papers that Davezac arrived
at New York from Europe a short time after I
landed there myself. Letters soon passed be-
tween us, and he made himself informed of my
movements. He was on the look-out for me;
and being at Philadelphia in the month of March
1840, he saw in some newspaper that I had
arrived at New York with my family on our way
to Washington. On one of the days during that
short visit, I was preparing to start from the
Globe Hotel to attend a public dinner, on the
PREBLE AND DAWEZAC. 283
occasion of Queen Victoria's marriage, and had
just left my wife and daughter seated at their
repast, when I was met on the stairs by a waiter
who announced a gentleman from Philadelphia,
who had just arrived for the special purpose of
paying me a visit. In a moment more old Da-
vezac was on the landing-place and I firm locked
in his embrace—for we met à la Française, whis-
ker to whisker; and in a moment or two more
we were in the room with my wife and daughter,
salutations, welcomings, and inquiries after health
and happiness reciprocated with much cordiality.
An apology hastily written to the president of
the public dinner, a couple of additional covers,
an extra dish or two, and a bottle of the best
Madeira in Monsieur Blancard's cellar, were next
in the order of arrangements; and I don't know
how many hours passed over, so pleasantly that
I must ever remember that meeting as one of
the brightest among my social Recollections of
America.
I could scarcely avoid staring rudely at my old
friend during our repast. I never had seen such
a change in the appearance of an individual.
Time had apparently walked backwards in refer-
ence to him. The natural results of increasing
years had no existence in his case. Instead of
indications of age he had apparently shaken off
284 BEATEN PATH S.
a fifth-part of the burden of years which he bore
so pleasantly when I knew him in Holland nine
or ten years before. He was then about fifty-
five, and looked it all. He was now sixty-
four, and looked decidedly under fifty Instead
of the formal methodistical-looking black wig of
former days he had now a good head of his own
natural hair, with a very few grey stragglers
silvering the dark brown. Whatever wrinkles
he had were filled up, without his face having
grown fat or pursy. He was, in short, a perfect
mystery of physiological improvement.
Davezac had been recalled from the Hague,
at which place and at Naples he had been sta-
tioned as chargé d'affaires since I had last seen
him. He was now an active partisan in the po-
litical contest going on for the election of Pre-
sident. He was of course a decided democrat,
an out-and-out Van Burenist, and as such he
attended many public meetings, speaking with
great fluency, and as I was told with great effect.
On one occasion about this period, at a loco-foco
caucus at Tammany Hall, he rose to refute the
assertion of some Whig newspaper that he was
not an American. “If I was not born on de
soil of dis great country,” said he, “I am never-
theless an American citizen in heart and spirit,
for I was baptized in blood and slaughter on de
PREBLE AND DAWEZAC. 285
ensanguyned plains of New Orlines, where I had
de honour to act as aide to de immortal hero
General Jackson.” Loud applause followed this
climax, and I knew so well all that was likely to
follow it that I did not read any more of the
printed speech, which Davezac sent after me, as
well as several copies of his magazine articles on
‘Marius,’ ‘Edward Livingstone,’ and ‘de Hero
of New Orlines.’
I met him very often for several subsequent
years, at Washington, New York, Boston, and
at his sister Mrs. Livingstone's handsome place
on the Hudson River; and kept up a tolerably
constant correspondence with him at times on
several subjects of public interest. The failure
of the democratic party in the Presidential elec-
tion of 1840 deprived him of all chance of offi-
cial employment; but he was soon afterwards
chosen a member of the Legislature of the State
of New York, and made himself conspicuous for
a session or two by several speeches in his own
peculiarly amusing style.
The busy round of electioneering life brought
him once more into play during the contest be-
tween Henry Clay and James K. Polk for the
Presidency of 1844; and he as usual worked
with indefatigable labour of lungs, having, as he
told me, made one hundred and ten speeches of
286 BEATEN PATHIS.
invariable great length at as many public meet-
ings throughout the Union—besides having made
a pilgrimage to the nearly expiring old hero of
New Orleans, Andrew Jackson, whom he threw
into a state (as he confessed to me) of infinite
astonishment, by plumping down on his knees
before him to ask his blessing ! . This Jackson
did really (as he assured me) give him in all
due form of paternal benediction, accompanying
it by a more substantial and valuable proof of
interest, in the shape of a written request to Mr.
Polk that in case of his success in the coming
election Davezac and his services should be re-
membered. And so they were. His expectations
took rather a lofty flight. But he was fain to
content himself with a return to his old post of
chargé d'affaires at the Hague ; and he dropped
into his former quarters over the blacksmith's
shop on the bank of the little canal, no doubt to
the satisfaction of many of his former acquaint-
8,1] CéS.
I left the United States with my family in
August, 1846, on leave of absence, intending to
pass six months in Europe, with some expecta-
tions of effecting an exchange of my Boston
Consulship for one nearer home. In a month
afterwards we were all at Aix-la-Chapelle; and
on the day of our arrival, as I walked up the
PREBLE AND DAVEZAC. 287
dining-room with my party, to take our seats at
the table d’hote, I observed an odd-looking figure
standing up in its place, at a parallel table to the
one assigned to us by the kellner, nodding,
winking, and kissing hands in sign of cordial
recognition to some one nearer us as I thought.
But great was my surprise at being accosted, by
a well-remembered voice, with,
“My God, Grattan, don't you know me?
Am I so changed P”
And changed indeed he was—for it was no
other than old Davezac, really old in looks as
well as years, that stood up to offer me his
congratulatory compliments and regards. How
fearfully disfigured he was it would be hard to
describe. He had a large green patch over one
eye—close to the other an enormous tumour. A
thick pair of dark moustaches nearly concealed
his mouth, which was awfully swollen. A black
curly wig came low down on his forehead. He
wore a brown coat with large gilt buttons; a
yellow waistcoat, flashy scarf, and black panta-
loons. “What can he have done P” thought I,
“to render this masquerade costume advisable?
And who can be that terrific-looking old woman
by his side P’’
My mingled curiosity and anxiety were soon
relieved, by an explanation from the venerable
288 EATEN PATHS.
chargé, who informed me that he had come from
his residence at the Hague to quaff and bathe in
the waters of Aix, and thus get rid of the results
of a desperate fit of gout, which had attacked his
head and face in the unmerciful manner I re-
marked.
“And the old lady ?”
“Oh, she does not belong to me, my dear
friend—merely a table d'hôte acquaintance.”
I breathed freer.
“D’ailleurs, she is enormously rich—of a good
French family—and a most agreeable and charm-
5 5
ing
“Don’t—don't do it, Davezac l’ cried I, in
some alarm.
“Never fear, my friend,” replied he ; “all is
right—dat is wrong—for hélas ! all is not right.
Never mind My wife's still living.”
“Ah !” exclaimed I, with a long-drawn breath,
a grasp of the hand, and a sincere expression of
delight that there was a bar—sinister though it
might be—against the possibility of his tempt-
ing such a fate as he sat side by side with. He
resumed his place, and paid most devoted atten-
tion to his neighbour during dinner-time. But
we saw a good deal of him as long as he remained
at Aix. And when he had succeeded in reducing
his inflammatory symptoms, thrown off his green
TREBLE AND DAVEZAC. 289
patch, shaved away his moustaches, and changed
his wig for one that came less low on his forehead,
he returned to the Hague very much improved
in looks, though evidently broken in constitution.
I next met him in London, where he came for a
few days’ visit the following spring—but he was
sadly cast down and bent. He showed scarcely
a shadow of his former agreeability. Old age
was doing its work, and doing it fast. And he
had scarcely returned to the United States in a
short time after, when a paragraph in the New
York Herald’ told me that he had died in his
lodgings in that city; leaving nothing behind to
record his really extensive acquirements and amus-
ing qualities, but the few magazine articles before
referred to, and some such imperfect sketch as
the one I have here thrown off so hurriedly.
With Mr. Preble I had the good fortune to
enact a more serious and important part during
my residence in America, and several years pre-
vious to this termination of all earthly intercourse
with his former Secretary of Legation.
The mission of Lord Ashburton to the United
States in the year 1842, for the special purpose
of negotiating a settlement of the Boundary ques-
tion, which Preble's protest before mentioned
had thrown into abeyance, brought him once
more prominently forward in that principal sub-
VOL. II. U
290 BEATEN PATHS.
ject of his public life. He was chosen one of
the Seven Commissioners, sent jointly from the
States of Massachusetts and Maine to Washington
City, to confer with the Federal Government,
and in fact direct and control the diplomatic pro-
ceedings to be entered on between the Secretary
of State, Mr. Daniel Webster, and the British
plenipotentiary.
Judge Preble, in anticipation of this forth-
coming negotiation, had paid me several visits at
Boston, where he knew I had for nearly three
years made this complicated and intricate ques-
tion my chief study, it being strictly within my
jurisdiction, and the subject of constant corre-
spondence with the Foreign Office in London, as
well as with Lord Ashburton himself, during the
early weeks of his arrival at Washington. Preble,
remembering our Inany conversations on the sub-
ject at the Hague in 1830 and 1831, when I
entered into it merely as an amateur, was ex-
ceedingly anxious to engage me more deeply in
it now, when I was by official duty intimately
involved in its discussion, and fully impressed
with the importance of its amicable settlement;
for assuredly the danger of a war between Eng-
land and the United States was imminent, and
indeed unavoidable had that consummation been
longer delayed. It was therefore that Judge
PREBI,E AND DAWEZAC. 291
Preble and his six brother Commissioners re-
quested me to accompany them to Washington,
to assist in negotiating the treaty, relying much
on my conviction of its importance, and giving
me credit for a sincere desire to preserve the
peace between the two countries.
TheCommissioners and myself arrived in Wash-
ington on the 26th of May in that year, 1842, and
both on the journey and during my stay in the
capital I received undoubted marks of great cor-
diality from those gentlemen in connection with
their duties. Lord Ashburton received me well,
but at first with evident jealousy lest I might be
inclined to interfere unduly with his proceedings.
But this soon wore off; and his subsequent
proofs of entire confidence, and his generous
admissions of the services I rendered him, were
complete and most satisfactory. While my inter-
course with the Commissioners, and with Judge
Preble in particular, primus inter pares, was un-
broken during the whole of the negotiation.*
A few years after this affair was finally and
most fortunately settled, England having made a
* In ‘Civilized America’ I have already given an ample
account, which may be almost called the secret history of
that memorable transaction, and it has been admitted to
be a valuable eaſposé of the American Diplomatic system, and
the sharp practice of the public men of the then United States.
|U 2
292 BEATEN PATHS.
compromise, which no doubt sacrificed her right
to a portion of disputed territory, but which saved
her from a serious war, I was again thrown into
semi-official relations with Judge Preble on the
question of the projected railroad between the
province of Maine and Lower Canada, in which
he took a great interest, and in which I was en-
abled to do him some indirect but not unim-
portant service with the British Government. He
called on me two or three times in Boston, and
we had a correspondence previous to my leaving
the United States in 1846, from which period I
had no communication with him. He returned
to his practice at the Bar, having long since been
removed from the Bench, and he has always en-
joyed the reputation of being a keen and most
obstinate advocate, but, from the leading quality
of his mind, a one-sided and prejudiced judge.
Having lost his first wife he married again, and
in a few years afterwards died, leaving another
blank in the list of my diplomatic acquaintances.
VIRGIL MAXCY, HUGH LEGARá, JAMES
M. BAY ARD.
Of these three diplomatists, who were succes-
sively ministers from the United States to the
Court of Brussels, my notices must be short, for
more reasons than one. They were accredited
MAXCY, LEGARE, AND BAYARD. 293
to Belgium after the establishment of her inde-
pendence; and in the comparative unimportance
of their missions they had few opportunities of
being prominent in political life, while they all
afforded admirable specimens of the class which
produces (though I by no means would imply
eaclusively) the real gentlemen of America—the
inhabitants of the Southern, now to be distin-
guished as the “Confederate” States.
The quiet course of Mr. Maxcy's diplomatic
career was closed soon after I made his acquaint-
ance; and though I frequently met him in London
and in America, I found no salient peculiarities of
character and manner tempting a special portrai-
ture; but even if I had, his lamentable and deeply
regretted death would have stopped my pen. He
was one of the victims killed by the bursting of
a gun of large calibre on board a United States
vessel on the Potomac, close to Washington, du-
ring an experimental trip and nautical fée, given
to Mr. Tyler, the President, and his Cabinet, he
being fortunate enough to escape the effects of
the catastrophe which destroyed one or more of
his ministers, and other official followers, inclu-
ding Mr. Maxcy. To this amiable and honourable
gentleman I was indebted for many acts of kind
attention. For none more than an introduction
to his son-in-law, Mr. James Markoe, holding
294 BEATEN PATHS.
a conspicuous post in the bureau of Foreign Af-
fairs at Washington, and from whom and his ac-
complished wife I, for several years and during re-
peated visits to the Federal capital, received most
courteous and hospitable welcome. Mr. Markoe
has since then cast his lot with his fellow-coun-
trymen of the Southern States; and his long
official experience is, I believe, now valuably de-
voted to the service of the Confederate Govern-
ment.
On my first visit to Washington in 1840, I
had the great pleasure of being introduced by
my old friend Sir John Caldwell to the family of
Mr. BAYARD, at that time a senator from the
State of Delaware to the Federal Congress. I
was fortunate enough ten years later to meet
him and his lady at Brussels, where he then
filled the post of Minister Plenipotentiary. I
shared his hospitality both in the New World
and the Old ; and I hope it is neither mal-à-propos
nor contrary to les convenances to mix a cordial
hope, with these diplomatic sketches, for the well-
being of a family so conspicuously attractive, for
the manly independence of one member in poli-
tical life, and the surpassing beauty and graceful-
ness of another—I might without flattery say
others—true ornaments to the social circles at
either side of the Atlantic. -
MAXCY, LEGARá, AND BAYARD. 295
HUGH LEGARá, pronounced in America Legree,
a name familiar to readers of Mrs. Beecher
Stowe's rather too imaginative romance, was a
man of higher note, from the offices he filled at
home, than either of the two preceding diplo-
matists, between whose tenure of office at Brus-
sels his intervened. I was far more intimate
with him than with them, from the circumstances
of a longer acquaintanceship and greater simila-
rity of personal pursuits. Literature was at that
period my profession and his recreation. While
I was making books of fiction he was compiling
articles of fact. And his scholarship, taste, and
research would have been to me sources of still
greater value than they were, had not a tone of
pedantry and an air of pretension deteriorated the
writings and disfigured the man. Legaré was
an accomplished scholar, a man of great reading,
and of considerable industry. He was of most
agreeable manners, his excessive vanity and ama-
zing self-opinion being so controlled, though not
concealed, by good breeding and knowledge of
the world, as to give piquancy to his sarcastic
egotism and national exaggeration.
In personal appearance he did not possess the
advantages of Maxcy or Bayard, both of whom,
the latter in particular, were strikingly handsome.
Legaré was of very short and clumsy stature,
296 BEATEN PATHS.
his head and bust large, and his features broad
and rather coarse. A biographical sketch of
him published in 1846, from the pen of a friend,
and prefixed to an edition of his writings, says
that “at four years of age it became necessary
to inoculate him for the small-pox. The arti-
ficial disease took a more than usual virulence,
fixing itself upon his elbows and knees in large
imposthumes. When these wasting tumours were
at last dissipated they left his fine trunk greatly
enfeebled, though otherwise unimpaired; but with
limbs which though stout never afterwards grew
to their proper length or shapeliness.”
These outward disfigurements did not how-
ever at all militate against his self-confidence.
Most amusing proofs of this are furnished in his
‘Diary,’ written during his residence at Brus-
sels, and published with his other works; and
displaying such examples of reckless sarcasm,
that a few extracts will serve better to portray
his character and his style, than could be effected
by any pen but his own.
1833. 18th June.—“Dine at Court to-day;
ambassador's day. In the evening go to Lady
Charlotte Fitzgerald's. See Lady Flora for the
first time since her illness. She offers me her
hand, which I press fondly.”—vol. i. p. 42.
22nd June.—“Get down at the gate of the
MAXCY, LEGAR£, AND BAYARD. 297
Park, near the Hôtel Bellevue. Am reminded
by my footman that I am to dine at the Prince's
at half-past four. Get up again into my car-
riage.”— p. 45.
24th June.—“Nothing remarkable. Stretched
off on a sofa to-day in the salle à manger, while
my valet de chambre reads to me ‘Erminier's
Philosophy of Law.’—p. 19.
5th June.—“Mr. T. B. tells me he has heard
much of me, and that the English here like me
better than my predecessor Hughes, who was a
great favourite, although they say I am a very
different person.”—p. 34.
“The last words he spoke at Mr. Seymour's
was, I am told, relative to me—‘ I am in love
with that man.’”—p. 32.
“As I enter the saloon at the Prince's in the
evening, Seton says he wants to console me
about the T s [in the Diary the name is
given in full length], with whom he dined at
Sir Robert's, and whom they vote the vulgarest
canaille that can be. They say they were less
amused with the old lioness than with one of her
whelps, Mr. Anastatius (?) T , who spoke his
mind very freely,” etc.—p. 46.
24th June.—“Sir Robert calls and gives me
M. Nothomb's book. Mentions that the T S
dined with him. Says in all his life he never
298 BEATEN PATHS.
saw anything so vulgar as the boy, whose voice
drowned all other sounds at table.”—p. 46.
16th June ; Sunday.—“Fall in with Miss
C and Miss D ; join them and have a
long flirting talk with the latter. She is very
pretty. I am almost in love. Shake her hand
and press it most fondly.”—p. 41.
8th Sept. ; Sunday.—“At six dine at the Pa-
lace. Dinner made remarkable by the presence
of a radical notabilité, Dr. B , a very vulgar
cuistre, lecturing incessantly about first principles
and proclaiming himself, in every word and look
and gesture, Sir Oracle. What a world it would
be if governed by these self-conceited and pre-
sumptuous popinjays He talked incessantly at
table. After dinner, when the Queen and her
ladies are seated, he goes up to her Majesty and
harangues her, in the most extraordinary manner
ever witnessed since the execution of Marie An-
toinette; thrusting himself between her Majesty
and the lady next her, bobbing up and down his
head and spectacles, like a duck in a puddle; ges-
ticulating, etc. We looked on in amaze. At
last Sir George Hamilton put Count d'Aerschot,
the Grand Marshal, up to going to her Majesty's
deliverance by engaging her in conversation.
The manoeuvre succeeds, for after a few minutes
of indecision, the radical leaves the round table
MAXCY, LEGARE, AND BAYARD. 299
and comes to us; but after speaking awhile (in a
most absurd strain of egotism), finding no sym-
pathy in our circle, and no obstacle to renewing
his attack on the Queen, he is at her again, but
d'Aerschot is on the alert, and takes him off by
some means or other.”—p. 86.
9th September.--‘‘Mr. Seymour's in the even-
ing; a small party given to another literary radi-
cal, Lady Morgan. I have always had from her
writings, or the parts of them I had happened to
read, a great aversion to her, and would not be
made acquainted with her when I might four-
teen years ago. Her Ladyship begins by high
compliments to America, etc. I took the first
opportunity to decamp. She had the good sense
to say that Mother T–s book was a very
wicked one, and the absurdity to propose that
she should herself go and make a better.”—p. 86.
6th August.—“Received a note in answer to
mine from my adored Lady Flora—thanks and
acceptance, but dry to ravish.”
(N.B. & ravir he would no doubt mean, but
that French phrase has no application as he uses
it. In translation it is altogether absurd.)
The ‘Diary’ abounds in matter still more
personal and amusing; and a portion of it de-
tails the mortifying disappointment of the author,
at the failure to accomplish the ratification of a
300 EEATEN PATHS.
commercial treaty between Belgium and the
United States, too hastily agreed to by Baron
de Behr, the Belgian minister at Washington.
On Legaré's return to the United States under
the presidency of Mr. Tyler he was appointed
Attorney-General; and Secretary of State ad in-
terim, when Webster retired from that office, as
detailed in my sketch of his career and character,
in ‘Civilized America.’
Legaré had not sufficient opportunity to fulfil
or falsify the high opinion entertained of his
ability by some of his private friends and a por-
tion of the democratic party, to which he he-
longed. I saw him frequently between 1839
and 1842 in the United States, at Washington,
Nahant, New York, and Boston. My acquaint-
anceship with him at Brussels, after the period
at which he finished his Diary, led to a frequent
intercourse. He was most hospitable, gave ex-
cellent bachelor's dinners, and was really the
centre of a pleasant circle. The last day I saw
him was the 16th of June, 1843, at Boston, to
which place he had accompanied President Tyler
for the purpose of attending the inauguration of
the Bunker’s Hill monument. I had the honour
of waiting on the President on that day, with
the other foreign consuls. My colleagues paid
me the compliment of wishing me to be their
MAXCY, LEGARá, AND BAYARD. 301
spokesman on the occasion, and I made a short
address to the President, to which he gave an
impromptu and very apt and appropriate reply.
Legaré, who was standing by his side, came up
to me, and smiling, said a few good-natured and
approving words. That night he was seized with
an attack of visceral derangement. He could not
take any part in the great ceremonial of the fol-
lowing day, the anniversary of the battle of Bun-
ker's Hill. At five o'clock on the morning of
the 20th of June he died.
The partiality of friendship may be pardoned
for exaggerating his merits. But to justify me
in the prominence I have given to this really clever
and accomplished American, I may be allowed to
cite a phrase or two from the preface to his pub-
lished work.
“As an author and a politician he rivalled the
splendour of Burke and his flashing reach of
thought; as a scholar, he entirely equalled Gibbon
in labour and in learning; and would have placed
himself in parallel with Mansfield as a lawyer.
He was by far the most remarkable man our
country has seen, in all accomplishments of public
life. He declaimed to the winds or the waves;
or pitched his tone to the murmur of the forest;
or spoke in vaults, or lying stretched on the
earth; or let loose the full force of his voice in
302 BEATEN PATHS.
lonely places. By the unvaried practice of much
more than Demosthenian methods, he overcame
every defect, he carried every natural advantage
to the highest excellence. His articulation be-
came golden, his voice became clear in its mi-
nutest inflections, while in its more vehement
bursts it grew capable of filling the air with its
absolute thunder.”
Several other American diplomatists, succes-
sively Ministers to England, have been more or
less known to me, in their own country or in
this. The infatuated section of the States, still
calling itself united, seems driven in its present
extremity to choose a representative of dollars,
not of talents—of a family name instead of na-
tional fame. The Confederate States, more sa-
gacious in this and all other public acts since
their secession, are now represented in England
by two gentlemen of great ability, whose firm,
discreet, and temperate bearing is working its due
effect on the public mind. And to them, the Ho-
nourable WILLIAM LowNDES YANCY and Colonel
DUDLEY MANN, is, I hope, reserved the credit
of concluding a treaty with this country on the
strict principles of political Freedom and Free
Trade, as soon as the march of events justifies
the Government in the recognition of the twelve
Southern States, as an independent Sovereignty.
303
CHAPTER IX.
ITALIAN SKETCHES.
CIRCUMSTANCEs connected with “urgent private
business,” in Crimean phrase, forced me to break
up a pleasant establishment in France, to remove
to Belgium, and subsequently to Holland and
Germany. A later movement transplanted me
and my family to England, thence in an official
capacity to the United States of America, and
back again to various countries of Europe.
My intimate connection with several of those
countries, and a prolonged residence in most of
them, with pleasure trips into Switzerland and
Ireland, have furnished me with ample materials
for recollection and record. But as they embrace
the disruption of the kingdom of the Netherlands,
with anecdotes of monarchs, ministers, and other
political characters who played prominent parts
in those transactions, and also sketches of literary
celebrities, including Sir Walter Scott and many
304 BEATEN PATH S.
others, there is not space enough in the two vo-
lumes which I am now completing, unless by the
exclusion of other subjects more immediately de-
manding attention. I therefore lay aside all that
relates to my Belgian and Dutch experience, and
the revolutionary passages in which I was some-
what concerned, inklings of which have been
given in the preceding chapters. I also pass over
whatever relates to Germany; and I have already
(in a separate work) treated of AMERICA in its
aspect of civilization, which the portion most
arrogantly assuming that quality as exclusively
its own seems desperately resolved to repudiate.
Therefore, by a long stretch of mental, political,
and physical geography, I transfer myself and my
readers to the country and subject of most im-
mediate European interest—Italy.
ITALY, a year ago, bursting from her long en-
thralment, like her own great volcano after ages
of repose, emitted volumes of flame and light.
Mischief unavoidably followed the eruption; but
it was the safeguard against more perilous con-
vulsions. And, as the lava cools, and Vesuvius
is clothed with new strata of vegetation, so the
ebbing flood of revolution leaves the state embel-
lished and enriched.
Distant observers felt a sense of awe in the
spectacle which the framers of its incidents had
ITALIAN SKETCHES. 305
not leisure for. On the edge of a crater, or in
the thick of battle, one is lost in excitement, and
insensible to fear as an essential element of the
sublime. Thus the actors in the great drama of
Italian regeneration are less able to judge of it
than those who, removed from the scene, can take
in its vast proportions. t
And is it not sublimity in action P. Nothing
vague or vapoury, but all solid, real, and as I
fervently hope, enduring. Let us look at the
Peninsula as we may—scientifically, artistically, or
historically—its present political condition ab-
sorbs all other considerations; and whatever we
may have to say about it, we must begin with
that. We pass over the far-back times of classi-
cal renown—the dark doings of the Middle Ages
—the brilliant deeds of the Renaissance—-the
outrages of modern tyranny—the prostration of
national vitality—the desecration of the arts—all
are forgotten, pardoned, or redeemed, by the hero-
ism of twenty millions of people shouting poeans
to the Freedom they have won.
On the morning of November the 7th, 1860,
Victor Emmanuel made his entry into Naples,
with that other personification of true chivalry,
Garibaldi, by his side ; and the unity of Italy,
conquered by the courage of those two men, be-
came a triumphant fact.
WOL. II. X
306 BEATEN PATHS.
It is a high privilege to all true lovers of liberty
to have lived to witness this result of so many
struggles, reverses, and victories. It was inevit-
able. The Genius of History had written it. The
voice of Destiny had proclaimed it. The will of
Heaven has accomplished it. Sure to come, the
time and the men only were wanting. Instru-
ments in the hands of Providence, but guiding
spirits to the subaltern agents in their enter-
prise, these two warriors—the Liberator and the
King—stand out among the foremost of all the
world. .
So mighty an event could be effected only by
the force of arms. War, the undying instinct of
man's nature, the one absolute necessity for work-
ing out the fate of nations, obtained, with start-
ling rapidity, what the efforts of wisdom or the
wiles of diplomacy could never have procured.
This momentous transaction ought to humble the
pious pride of those fanatics, who will not see in
frail humanity the imperfection of which turbu-
lence and violence form integral parts; an orga-
nization meant no doubt to proclaim its mortality,
and its contrast to the purity of beings in a higher
sphere. *
If the peace-preaching politicians would be
satisfied with that, if they would see in these
mysterious dispensations a higher power guiding
ITALIAN SRIETCHES. 307
the movements of mankind, they would pour forth
thanksgivings that civilization is fulfilling its be-
hests, while truth and reason are resuming their
reign.
But those apostles of an ideal perfectibility still
vainly attempt to separate humanity from its
strongest natural impulses; as the ancient Greeks,
carrying out their principle of the ideal in art,
would soften down in their statuary man's animal
characteristics, and endeavour to merge the human
in the divine. Those theorists have inevitably
failed in their attempts, whether ethical or artistic,
everywhere and in all ages. They spoil the man,
and they violate the design of God, who never
meant his creatures to be more than what he made
them—a perfect work, but by no means perfect
beings.
Dazzled by the miraculous deeds so lately done
before its eyes, Europe stands gazing, without
being yet able to comprehend the whole action of
the scene, and can only wait and wonder for what
is to come next; while enthusiasts in the cause of
Italy may turn to the emphatic prophecy of Sis-
mondi, some thirty or forty years since.
“The Italians, everywhere victorious over their
own tyrants, have been everywhere forced back
under the yoke with redoubled cruelty, by the
hands of foreign despots. Italy is crushed, but
X 2
308 BEATEN PATHS.
her heart still beats with the love of liberty, vir-
tue, and glory. She is chained down and covered
with blood, but she still knows her strength, and
believes in her future destiny. She feels that she
is doomed to take the lead again. Europe will
know no repose till the nation which in the dark
ages lighted the torch of civilization and liberty,
shall be herself able to enjoy the enlightenment
which she created.”
The partial fulfilment of that prophecy has
come to pass. The great work is nearly done;
and marvellous it is that much of it was done
by unwilling hands, and projected by heads un-
conscious of the mission they were engaged in.
When Louis Napoleon made war against Austria,
and Victor Emmanuel fought side by side with
his powerful ally, they had set bounds to their
undertaking. One of them longed for the for-
mation of a Lombardo-Sardinian kingdom. The
other talked of freeing Italy from the Alps to the
Adriatic. But when the former object was at-
tained and the latter boast relinquished, the bro-
ther monarchs thought their scheme of political
speculation was complete. They did not know
the depth of their game, nor the amount of the
stake they played for. Central Italy meant for
a Bonaparte, and Naples for a Murat, were des-
timed to a far nobler fate. The smothered instinct
ITALIAN SE, ETCHES. 309
of nationality was reviving. Tuscany, Modena,
and the associate states, followed the yearnings
of the popular will. They became joined to Pied-
mont, by a spontaneous fusion of forces. The
two Sicilies only waited open-armed for their
deliverer. He came, he saw, he conquered; a
Caesar, guiltless of treason against liberty, single-
minded, frugal, true-hearted ; a dictator but not
a despot; a sovereign in all but the title; an
uncrowned monarch whose throne was in the
hearts of his fellow-patriots, whose triumph was
grand, whose reign brief, and whose abdication
in favour of the king he enthroned was all in all
magnanimous. Such was GARIBALDI. Such he
is. Such he will be till the latest page of history
shall perish. Whatever his future lot, whatever
of new success or of failure may chequer his
career, nothing can rob him of the glory he has
gained, and invested beyond risk in the treasury
of Fame.
It is not merely that this eminent man, follow-
ing a generous impulse, won an easy victory over
a feeble stripling the inheritor of an unholy power,
and, like the archangel brandishing a fiery sword,
drove the anointed sinner from his Paradise. Ga-
ribaldi’s greatness began before the paltry king in
question was born ; when, a poor adventurer, he
flung himself into the midst of South American
310 IBEATEN PATHS.
tumult, and fought his way at sea or on land—
always in the cause of freedom—the bravest of
the brave. When the day of his own country's
new struggle dawned, he recrossed the ocean,
and was one of the first in the field. When
Rome in 1848 became the theatre of armed re-
volt, Garibaldi was foremost in the patriot ranks;
and ever in the hottest of the fire, in the most
exposed positions of the crumbling ramparts, he
was the heart and soul of that splendid resistance
to the French besiegers, which ended in a defeat
that was far more glorious than some victories.”
Retreating from surrendered Rome with a
staunch band of followers, he escaped the enemy;
and in that fearful retreat he lost his faithful and
devoted wife, the companion of so many of his
adventures in the New World, his second self,
* Very soon after the fall of Rome, the destruction of the
Republic, and the return of the Pope, I was invited to a
déjeúner at Mr. Cobden's, in Westbourne Terrace, to meet
the Prince of Canino, at whose palace I had been a frequent
visitor in the preceding spring, and who had just arrived in
England. The conversation was almost exclusively confined
to Italian affairs. Nothing could be more interesting or im-
pressive than the accounts given by the Prince, who had been
a member of the Provisional Government during the revolt.
Many striking traits were included of Mazzini, Saffi, and Ar-
mellini, the brother triumvirs ; but everything was eclipsed
by the graphic accounts of Garibaldi's heroism. On the last
day of the defence he came from time to time from the ram-
ITALIAN SEQETCHES. 3| |
his truest hope on earth. What man might not
have sunk under such accumulated misery, with
no stain on his manhood, no slur on his fame?
But Garibaldi rose high above fate itself; and to
my view it was the next ten years of his life that
really tested the mettle of his mind. For those
ten monotonous and unexciting years he worked
hard for his livelihood. He earned his daily
bread. He did not retire, like other baffled pa-
triots, to some unseen retreat, to hatch conspira-
cies, issue proclamations, and excite to hopeless
revolts. It may be that all these means were
justifiable and even judicious, and useful in the
end to the cause of Italian freedom, by keeping
alive the fire which warmed and fed it. But
such were not Garibaldi's tactics—such was not
his vocation. Essentially a soldier, he was formed
parts to the council-room, his dress torn to tatters by the
bullets against which his person seemed to bear some charm ;
almost frantic with grief and lamenting “the impossibility of
getting himself killed.” He would not to the very last con-
sent to a surrender. But when all the members of the Go-
vernment were unanimous as to its inevitable necessity, he
called in accents of energetic despair on all those who chose
to share his fate. And leaving the doomed city to be once
more desecrated by foreign force—but not this time by un-
civilized Gauls—he left it by one gate while the French co-
lumns poured in at the others, and commenced his memorable
retreat, followed I believe by about two thousand of his gal-
lant companions in arms.
312. BEATEN PATH S.
for the battle-field. During the ten years' lull he
followed his old calling, as captain of a vessel
trading between America and Europe. But when
the trumpet sounded the new alarm, he at once
sprang from the deck to the shore, offered his
services to his king; and seeing in the success
of allied France and Piedmont the surest hope
for his life’s idol, Italian unity, he threw himself
upon the hated Austrians at the head of his
Bersaglieri, and with a small force of these irre-
gular heroes did prodigies of valour in the war of
Lombardy.
With the peace of Villafranca, came another
phase in Garibaldi's transit over life. Relieved
of his military command, he entered the Sar-
dinian parliament as member for his native
town of Nice. The annexation of Savoy and his
own birth-place to France was vehemently op-
posed by Garibaldi, and he has never forgiven
the men whose diplomatic subserviency effected
the sacrifice, Italy was dismembered, and he
felt himself despoiled ; robbed of his inheritance,
his birthright, as all true patriots consider their
native country. He was again thrown on the
world and the resources of his genius. He was
not long idle. His daring invasion of Sicily, his
irresistible progress from Marsala, where he landed
with a thousand followers, to Calabria and so on
ITALIAN SRIETCHES. 3.13
to Naples, as the idol of millions of worshippers,
needs not to be told. On the 9th of November,
1860, he laid down every visible insignia of
power. But his real dominion over the minds
and the hearts of the people he has liberated, and
his influence, be it hoped, over the king, must
last for ever, a paternal authority during life and
after death a sanctified example.
Garibaldi, within three days of his joint entry
with Victor Emmanuel into Naples, returned to
his island home in the Mediterranean—not a ba-
nished exile, not a plotting pretender—merely a
soldier reposing on his shield, his sword by his
side, ready for his country's call. What great
designs he may have then contemplated, what
hopes he nourished, what visions he was wrapt
in, it is not easy to divine. He oracularly pro-
nounced for war in March 1861. He warned
his old comrades to be prepared. He invoked
the gathering of a million of volunteers. These
were bold and impassioned words. But thank
Heaven they were only words ! During the time
that has since intervened the conjoint persuasions
of other European powers failed to convince the
dogged stolidity of Austria that a prompt and
honourable transaction joining Venetia to the rest
of Italy for a fair and liberal compensation, was
the best solution of a great difficulty.
314 BEATEN PATHS.
This consummation must be still the desire
of all right-thinking men not hurried away by
ambition for some great emprise, as Garibaldi
himself may be. Too much must not be expected
from him. His impetuous spirit may not brook
the cold forms of diplomatic caution. His baffled
ardour may writhe under delay. The groans of
the enslaved may come in imagined murmurs
from the Adriatic to the Mediterranean ; and calls
for relief from the walls of Venice be fancifully
echoed from the rocks of Caprera. The hero in
his solitude must not be judged like common
men. Allowance should be made for his strength
as well as for their weakness. His stern in-
tegrity cannot be expected to bend like their
elastic pliancy.
Garibaldi has been frequently compared to
several of the celebrities of old and modern
times, to Timoleon, Cincinnatus, Washington.
And in his voluntary retreat in Caprera who can
fail to trace a likeness, without attempting to
force a parallel, between him and Napoleon in
his reclusion in Elba P-Both looking towards
the shores of their native land, with deep designs
and lofty aspirations, planning a quick return,
to resume the race of war and win the prize of
conquest.
But there is no real resemblance in the cases
ITALIAN SEQETCHES. 3.15
nor in the men, beyond the facts of geographical
position, personal qualities, and political ante-
cedents. Garibaldi, like Bonaparte, was an ab-
solute ruler. They both attained their eminence
by their individual energy. Their sway over the
minds of others was almost unlimited. Their
courage indomitable. But no comparison can be
carried out between the mighty Emperor and
the adventurous chief—the enslaver and maker
of many kings, and the conqueror and creator of
one only—the master of a hundred millions of
souls, and the liberator of ten millions. Com-
parisons are absurd at times as well as odious;
and false analogies are as deceptive as they are
common. I shall not therefore risk a probable
failure by following up this theme, but will leave
to others to calculate the degrees of merit be-
tween the fallen monarch, who brooded in one
island on the recovery of his throne, the resump-
tion of his power, and the renewed subjection of
his country; and the retired dictator, whose
noble thoughts have no personal aim, beyond
the glory of giving freedom to the last fragment
of the people which is doomed for awhile to pro-
longed bondage.
Besides the enfranchisement of Venetia nothing
is wanting to the total unity of Italy but the
absorption of the small remaining territory of the
316 BEATEN PATIIS.
Popedom, following the fate of Umbria and the
Marches. The inevitable hour is coming for the
close of the pontiff’s temporal power, beyond an
insignificant extent round his residence, wher-
ever that may be fixed. That it should not be
much longer at Rome seems evident. To reign
over a portion of that single city and the narrow
rayon assigned to it, would be too lowering to the
pride of a sovereign who so lately governed three
millions of souls. Louis Napoleon has upheld
the Pope for eleven years in a temporary and
fluttering state of pomp and pretension, like an
eagle holding in his talons the prey he had lifted
from earth, only to let it drop down to a surer
destruction. It would be cruel to degrade the
object whom it is only necessary to humiliate.
And to leave the despoiled Head of the Church
at the feet of his former subjects would be not
only personally dishonouring to him, but dispa-
raging to the sect of our common religion which
he personifies, and which it is not the policy of
any Christian power to debase, however desirable
it may be to reform it.
The main object of European policy is to
separate the temporal from the spiritual power
of the Pope, without any violent shock to the
feelings of the Roman Catholic world. It will be
only repeating an oft-tried experiment by a dif.
ITAT,IAN SKETCHES. 317
ferent and less harsh proceeding; and the most
pious adherent of the Church need have no fears
for the result.
The Papacy in its really religious sense runs
no risk. Its “doom " has been frequently and
falsely sounded from the days when Charles V.
in 1527 had Clement at his feet, to those when
Napoleon I. in 1800 held Pius VII, in his grasp ;
and later, when Garibaldi in 1848 caused the
expulsion or ignoble flight of Pio Nono, down to
the present time, when Victor Emmanuel hovers
on his frontiers like a bird of prey waiting for
its victim. But it is certain that the religious
supremacy of the Pontiff will survive and flourish,
protected by the very destroyers of the political
despotism, from a policy stronger than the “des-
tiny ” proclaimed by some old Father of the
Church, as sure to uphold it “until eternity has
opened its jaws for the last man.”
Pio Nono once fairly removed from Rome to
some safe and honourable place of refuge, and
the way clear for the inauguration of the King of
all Italy, the sanguine hope of Garibaldi may be
at length fulfilled, and the establishment of one
great nation be proclaimed in the Eternal City,
from the porch of the Vatican.
And would Garibaldi's occupation be gone
from that hour? By no means. His sword would
3.18 BEATEN PATHS.
find ample employment in other fields. Oppressed
nationalities would still abound. Garibaldi is a
true patriot—but he is something more, a true
philanthropist, with a mission of world-wide im-
port to fulfil. He began it long ago in another
hemisphere. He has continued it up to this very
time. And even should Italy be now peaceably
left to consolidate its new existence, still Hungary
and Poland are awaiting the aid and invoking
the coming of the Liberator.
And in Italy itself how much is there still to
be done. What a laborious task of social rege-
neration. A people so long at variance with its
own best interests, at war with itself, enthralled
beneath the yoke of perpetually-shifting masters,
and with each fresh usurpation growing callous
to shame, has much to learn and to unlearn before
it can establish a substantial scheme of polity,
and take its place as one of the great European
Powers. Many dangers and difficulties may be
in store for the united millions of this grand
confederacy. Scattered and divided, it may be
as hard to fuse them into nationality as it would
be with the lost tribes of the Jews could they
but reappear to claim a revived cohesion. But
let fair play be given and time sufficient, and
leaders will no doubt be found to meet every
exigency; and this new-born people will not
ITALIAN SEETCHES. 319
perish in the very birth-day of their renovated
life. Cavour played successfully his great part,
and at his lamented death Ricasoli and his
associate statesmen took possession of the stage.
They have ample scope for exertion in the vast
arena. Materials for the finest effects abound.
The elasticity of young ambition pervading the
popular mind, pride in the dignified position of
the country throughout the late provincial re-
volutions, self-reliance, the most sustaining of
human motives—all these are noble elements for
the construction of a great constitutional mon-
archy. And all the jealous efforts of small rival
States joining together, like brawling rivulets
forming one broad river, will be so many sources
of strength when acting in combination.
The march of events has been so rapid and
romantic that an electrical vibration has thrilled
through Italy. The brilliant doings of the almost
fabulous year 1860, the talents displayed, mili-
tary, forensic, and governmental, have shown the
people to themselves in the mirror of their own
exploits. They now know themselves for what
they really are. And what will not be the in-
spiration for the students, the artists, the pro-
fessional tyros entering the lists of fame? Youths
who so lately were but isolated items of paltry
populations, will now spring up, comparative
320 BEATEN PATHS.
giants. The man of Florence, Modena, or Milan
will swell to large proportions of mental power,
in conscious dignity, a real ITALIAN citizen.
The boys now approaching manhood, imbibing
the heroic ideas of the period, will develop in
their maturity a loftier order of sentiment than
prevailed under a less ardent and elevating sys-
tem. And even should the dazzling prospect be
obscured by adverse elements, and the political
edifice rising up with magical speed be curtailed
of some of its magnificent proportions, yet this
great movement against oppression must give
a stimulus to moral and intellectual progress
everywhere, teaching how tyranny may be over-
thrown by courage unalloyed with crime.
The chief imminent danger in the way of
Italian progress is that of an overweening
confidence in its future destiny. There is a
tempting phrase which may be possibly taken
as a text, in Sismondi's before-cited prophecy.
“Italy feels that she is doomed to take the lead
again.”
Now nothing is more fallacious than the hope
that dictated these words. Italy should not lay
that flattering unction to her soul. The almost
evident meaning it is calculated to convey is that
modern Italy is destined to resume the place in
the world's governance formerly held by ancient
TTALIAN SKETCHES. 321
Rome. That is not only an anachronism, but an
impossibility. European civilization has long
since settled that question. Rome did her great
work, and left nothing to be done with the bar-
barism which she taught to overthrow her. The
inevitable laws of social progress completed the
refinement which follows the first removal from
Savage life. Those fast improving populations,
of such rude origin, soon became the rivals of
their conquerors. As the barbarians advanced, the
civilizers receded, until a gradual equality was
the result, which, for age after age, left it hard to
assign to the nations their relative degrees of
superiority in arts, commerce, literature, or poli-
tical science. France, Spain, Germany, Britain,
each and all followed the example of Rome, and
imitated her as she had imitated Greece; and,
in a few centuries after their subjugation, they
took their places, side by side with the descend-
ants of the mighty race, to whom it may be
truly said they owed their political existence.
But Italy, over-run by foreign foes, Franks,
Lombards, Germans, torn by internal factions
and rival dynasties, by Princes, Emperors, Kings,
grand Dukes, and Popes, reviving the arts and
literature, and mixing much taste and elegance
with horrid traits of moral guilt, from the over-
throw of the Western Empire down to the pre-
VOI, II. Y
322 BEATEN PATH S.
sent time, could never have been truly said to
“take the lead '' over the rest of the civilized
world. Therefore Sismondi's allusion must have
pointed to the lead so long maintained by uni-
versal Rome—or it meant nothing.
But, at any rate, an assumption of superiority
over her modern neighbours, however elevating
may be the consciousness of her claims to re-
spect and admiration, would be unworthy of what
she has done and what she is able still to do.
The good wishes and the moral aid of every
nation whose sympathy is worth having she is
sure of in her arduous career. Her population
will be large enough to protect her against
foreign aggression, and the instinct of self-pre-
servation will superinduce, it is devoutly to be
hoped, domestic tranquillity and a vigorous in-
dustry, in fresh fields of commercial, manufac-
turing, and agricultural pursuits. The nature
of the Italian mind, so keen, so sensitive, will
henceforth secure her distinction in the fine arts,
whatever may be the emulation among other
people. To run a race of amicable rivalry with
them, to surpass them if she can, should be her
constant aim. But to start with the fixed idea
that she is “doomed to take the lead,” would
but excite jealousy, envy, and possibly hatred,
in those who now watch for the consolidation of
ITALIAN SKETCHES. 323
her independence, in a spirit of most generous
anxiety.
The name of Napoleon the Great has been
already introduced in connection with this now
engrossing subject. How indeed write or think
of Italy without a frequent recurrence to him,
one of its grandest illustrations, the field of his
first immortal exploits, and the subject of his
never-ceasing speculations and reveries. No one
made Italy so much a study. It was doubtless
chiefly in a military point of view that he re-
garded the country; but that was the peculiar
bent of his mind; and still nobler considerations
were subservient to it. He was however to the
last deeply imbued with an interest in the scenes
of his former glory, amounting nearly to a passion.
Many readers will remember a remarkable
passage bearing on the present subject, in the
work which gave so vivid and so painful a picture
of Napoleon's banished life at St. Helena.” But,
as I am not aware of any English translation of
it being published, an extract may be new to
others, and, independent of its interest in relation
to Napoleon himself, is I think particularly appro-
priate at this actual juncture.
* Journal de la Vie privée et des Conversations de l'Em-
pereur Napoléon à Saint-Hélène, par le Comte de las Cases.
London, 1824.
Y 2
324. BEATEN PATH S.
Count Las Cases, in his journal, vol. iii., page
166, says:
“Longwood, Sept. 20, 1816.
“The reading of the chapter on the battle of Ar-
“cola, on which my son and myself had been occu-
“pied, awoke the recollections of the Emperor, and
“fixed his mind on what he called le beau théâtre
“ d’Italie. He ordered us to follow him to the drawing-
“room, and he there dictated to us during several
“ hours. He had spread out his immense map of
“Italy, which nearly covered the floor, and placing
“ himself on it, on his hands and knees, a compass
“ and a red pencil in hand, he compared and mea-
“sured the distances with a long piece of tape, of
“ which one or the other of us held one end.
“‘This is the way,” said he to me, laughing at the
“ posture I saw him in, “to measure out a country, to
“understand it rightly, and trace the plan of a cam-
“paign.” What he dictated would make the basis of
“a capital sketch of Italian political geography. The
“following is the substance of it.”
I omit several pages of a clear and condensed
statement of the boundaries, extents, and geogra-
phical formation of “the boot,” its divisions into
east, west, north, and south, its communications
with France, Switzerland, and Austria, its confi-
guration on all points from the Alps to Sicily, the
harbours, bays, and rivers ; in short, an admirable
summary of almost all that is necessary to be
known, in a general way, of the Peninsula and
ITALIAN SKETCHES. 325
its dependent islands. But after enumerating all
these details, the portion of Napoleon's remarks,
of more immediate interest just now, is that
wherein he considers the question of a united
Italy, such as he already saw in the future, but
the realization of which he was not destined to
witness.
“‘The harbours or roadsteads,’ continued the Em-
“ peror, ‘of Ventimiglia, Vado, Genoa, Spezia, Porto-
“Ferajo, the Gulf of Naples, Tarento, Ancona, and
“ Venice, those of Sicily, Istria, Dalmatia, Ragusa
“ and the mouths of the Cataro, all belong to Italy.
“‘If all these places were united into one grand
“State, it would constitute a maritime Powers of the
“first order. Genoa, Pisa, and Venice were the most
“important ports of Europe in the middle ages.
“‘Italy, washed on three sides by the sea, has only
“about two hundred leagues of land frontiers, one-
“ third less than the frontiers of France ; and she is
“guarded in front by the most powerful barriers
“against foreign aggression. Destined, by her geo-
“graphical position and the extent of her coasts, to
“ be the mistress of the Mediterranean, she would
“ have nothing to fear from invasion but from the
“Alps, the most easily defended frontier in Europe.
“Twenty fortresses, large and small, would suffice to
“command all the passes of those mountains.
“All this great population,” professing the same
* Then estimated by Napoleon at seventeen or eighteen
millions, but now amounting to a fourth more.
326 BEATEN PATHS.
“religion, enjoying equally the advantage of a tempe-
“rate climate, having the same language and literature,
“would feel the same influences, and become amalga-
“mated as has been the case with the United Kingdoms
“ of Great Britain and Ireland, the provinces of Spain
“ and France, and which may become so one day with
“the small states of Germany. The different por-
“tions of Italy have had and still have more in com-
“mom with each other than all those have had.
“‘If ever this great event is realized, where fix the
“capital 2 From its peculiar configuration Italy has
“no central city. Would it then be Rome, Milan,
“Bologna, or Florence? Genoa or Venice could have
“ no pretensions to it, being too much at the extremi-
“ ties of the nation.
“‘First. Rome, from its recollections and position
“ and from what it already is, might again claim to
“be the capital of this fine country. Distant one hun-
“dred and thirty leagues from all points of the Alpine
“frontier—whence Italy might be attacked from
“France or Germany, a hundred leagues from the
“southern limits of the Kingdom of Naples and the
“ coast of Sicily, something less from Sardinia; the
“ unhealthiness of the air, the sterility of the envi-
“rons, and the want of a good neighbouring seaport
“are the main defects of Rome as a capital.’”
The pretensions of MILAN are then considered and
dismissed, that place “being too near the frontier in
“case of invasion by land, and too far from the other
“extremities exposed to it by sea.”
FLORENCE is also pronounced unsuitable in the case
now under consideration, the formation of a united
ITALIAN SKETCHES. 327
Italy; and BologNA is next mentioned as far prefer-
able, “because in case of the frontiers being forced
“by invaders, she would have still for defence the line
“ of the Po, and would be in prompt communication
“by her canals with Leghorn, Civita Vecchia, the
“ ports of the Romagma, Ancona, and Venice.”
These latter remarks prove how the military
view was predominant in the mind of the great
Captain; but in the eyes of the Statesman, the
Historian, and the Philosopher, the palm will,
beyond all question, be given to ROME. And
the proclamation of the National Sovereignty will
be expected “from the Vatican,”—making good
the words of Garibaldi, his country confirming his
claim to be not only a patriot but a prophet.
In the foregoing pages, I have hastily expressed
my impressions of Italy in its recent and actual
state, and ventured to anticipate what it may
attaim to under the auspicious circumstances now
in operation. I am aware that this rapid résumé
of events must be pretty similar to much that has
already been written in various public papers.
But I could not resist paying my mite of tribute
to the hero of the day and his companions, and
also of placing on record, in a form less fugitive,
the immediate facts of their astonishing career.
I now retrace my way on the well-worn track
of memory for a dozen years or more, to the
328 BEATEN PATH S.
period of my personal knowledge of the country
and the people. All was then comparatively tame
and unexciting—little of political interest, much
of the old routine, few adventures, and an ap-
parent stagnation, which was soon, however,
changed into the stirring but deceptive outburst
of abortive revolution.
I entered Italy from Switzerland by the
Simplon and Domo d’Ossola in September,
1847, passed on by the usual route to Milan, by
Lake Maggiore to Genoa, Leghorn, Pisa, Lucca,
Florence, Perugia, Rome, and Naples; and thence
retraced my steps to Rome, and, after eight
months in all, left Italy again, by Civita Vecchia
and the Mediterranean, touching once more at
Leghorn and Genoa, and landing at Marseilles
in May, 1848.
This was but a small space of time, and quite
insufficient for any purpose beyond the most su-
perficial acquaintanceship with the places visited
or the people seen. Personal causes of anxiety,
from serious illness and other domestic trouble
in the party I travelled with, were unfavourable
to the enjoyment of the advantages which lay on
my route. But I did not, like Smelfungus,
“find all barren ;” and I saw and learned enough
to give ample food for thought, and an apprecia-
tion of the rich stores of art in all its branches,
I'TALIAN SKETCHES. 329
with glimpses into the national character, since
then so richly exemplified.
But assuredly, at the beginning of my visit,
the people formed the very last subject of inquiry
or observation to travellers in general. A few of
those searching and analytical minds, which exist
in all times and everywhere, were no doubt to be
found amongst the ordinary crowd. But external
objects were so attractive and numerous, that the
inner life of the inhabitants excited little or no
remark. The principal towns contained several
English settlements, established for purposes of
education or the enjoyment of a cheap and idle
existence; and numerous passing tourists formed
a throng of transient accidental elements. Both
these classes contained materials for charm-
ing circles of society, enlivened by occasional
Italians of real or doubtful rank, of agreeable
manners, and character good, bad, or indifferent,
as the case might be. But there was neither
time nor necessity for any rigid scrutiny. The
object of both parties was attained. The forestieri
wanted annusement and information. The natives
(called, of course, by the English “foreigners”)
wanted to be received and in their turn enter-
tained, to make money in various ways—and now
and then a marriage. Their policy was to be
obliging and useful to the wandering tribes in
330 BEATEN PATH S.
whose tents they found hospitality, and the very
last thing they cared to display was any real pe-
culiarity of the national character. That was to
be found only in the remote rural districts, or
the small towns niched in obscure valleys or
perched on mountain-sides, where rarely a tourist
trespassed, except for purposes of art—treasure-
seeking, or scientific explorations. Such recondite
pursuits were altogether out of my line.
My chief sources of delight were in the magni-
ficent scenery of the country, the shores of the
Mediterranean, the Alpine and Apennine ranges,
the lakes, the forests, those unpeopled regions
where wood, water, rocks, and mountains are the
elements of beauty, or where ruined monuments
of art are so much material homage to the infinite
sublimity of nature.
Next to these were the glorious productions of
genius, in collections, groups, and single figures;–
sculpture in its cold dignity, and painting in its
divine warmth ; form, in exact proportions, the
scrupulous imitation of life; colour, the magical
presentment of life itself.
And here I cannot help avowing my instinc-
tive preference for painting in comparison with
sculpture. The two words I have just used, in
reference to the two arts—form and colour—are
the concentrated expressions of their separate in-
ITALIAN SKETCHES. 331
trinsic qualities. And it is in the peculiar sym-
pathy of individuals for one or the other of those
qualities that is to be found the source of each
particular taste. The great value of carved or
chiselled form being an exact copying of nature
in its outlines, the sense of touch seems emphati.
cally that required for its thorough appreciation.
A blind man can almost completely understand
its merit. But the highest distinction of painting
being expression—I am now speaking in relation
to the human figure—colour, and colour only, in
its varieties of light and shade, can produce a
really life-like effect, and sight alone can compre-
hend it. Marble may give the accurate contour
of feature and figure ; the shape of the eye, the
curve of the mouth, the roundness of bust, the
litheness of limb. But the liquid tone of those
orbs of light, the ruby tints of those dewy lips,
the soft carnation of that bosom, where are all
those P. On the canvas, in the genius which
guides the painter's brush, in the magic mixture
of colour, and its reflection in the brain of the
enchanted beholder.
I could not dare to speak disparagingly of the
noble art of sculpture, which I honour and reve-
rence; but I am the still more ardent votary of
painting, which I love. The finest chefs-d'oeuvre
of sculpture always leave a want in my mind.
332 BEATEN PATH S.
That want is the absence of colour, and the re-
medy for it is the application of what is wanting.
Many an oracle of taste would pronounce this
suggestion to be heretical, bizarre, or barbarous;
and would shudder at the notion of a painted
statue. Such would nevertheless, in my opinion,
be the very perfection of art, in its twofold com-
bination. I have always smiled at the extrava-
gance of the sculptor Donatello, when he gave
the finishing stroke of his chisel to the celebrated
Zuccone, and apostrophizing the bloodless, sight-
less effigy, exclaimed, in frantic egotism, “Parla /*
If Pygmalion, enamoured of his inspired work,
warmed it into life, as let us by all means be-
lieve, by the force of his great passion, he must
in the same superhuman effort have sent the
blood rushing through the flesh-converted stone,
in veins and arteries filling the heart's reservoirs,
while the flush of colour pervaded the palpita-
ting frame, and the miracle stood revealed, a
breathing tribute to immortal love.
Well, art or nature may never see a new Pyg-
malion, any more than a second Prometheus.
And another Michael Angelo may not exist, com-
bining the powers of both sculpture and painting
in himself, in a degree sufficient to execute an
imitation of the Greek artists’ mythological feat.
But why could not two adepts in the sister arts
ITALIAN SRETCHES. 333
join together their talents and their tastes, and
embodying the dualistic system of the two philo-
sophers of old, into an image of its respective
attributes, produce the painted statue of a female,
combining all the united charms of form and
colour, and try its effect,-not on cold, presump-
tuous pedantry, not to submit it to the fiat of
some clique of self-dubbed connoisseurs, but
leaving it to the unbiassed judgment of public
opinion? -
This is by no means a wild, or even a novel
idea. How many admirers of high art have seen
and approved the timid innovation of Gibson's
so-called coloured statues, on the draperies or
coronals of which small ornamental strips of
binding have been tinted, to relieve the monotony
of the dull chill marble; though the great artist
has not ventured to make his Aurora “rosy-
fingered l’ And what thousands of spectators
have looked delighted at Danneker's Ariadne, in
Frankfort, the sunshine falling on it through the
medium of a pink curtain, and giving a charming
but incomplete hue to the polished surface, which
thus seems almost the semblance of real flesh.
Why not follow up these much admired expe-
riments, whose greatest value is their suggestive
encouragement to a more perfect exhibition ?
And let it be remembered that the master-
334 BEATEN PATHS.
mind of English poetry, Shakspeare, availed him-
self of the notion in one of his dramatic works.
He, to be sure, borrowed the scene of Hermione's
appearance as a fictitious effigy from Robert
Greene’s ‘Pleasante Historie of Dorastus and
Fawnia,’ as he took the title of his play from the
anonymous book, ‘A Winter Night's Pastime.”
But he, at all events, endorsed the original draft
with his own solvent name, and is thus respon-
sible for the admitted fact of a simulated pose
plastique, a supposed painted statue, ever so
far back, without any regard to dates, geogra-
phical distances, or “the Unities,” in any way.
Hermione, in the last scene of the ‘Winter's
Tale, the great original of the modern fableau
vivant, standing motionless for the mystification
of her husband,-or his redemption, let me rather
say,+has not recourse to the trick of whitening
her face (common to the masqueraders of society
in the present day), or closing her lids, to feign
the appearance of ordinary stone. On the con-
trary, she displays the natural bloom on her
cheeks, the redness of lips, and the lustre of open
eyes; proving that, in those remote and less fas-
tidious times, nature was habitually imitated in
all these respects, or Leontes could not for an in-
stant have been imposed on by Paulina's well-
devised stratagem.
ITALIAN SKETCHES. 335
Leontes. Would you not deem it breathed,
And that the veins did verily bear blood?
Poliacenes. Masterly done.
The very life seems warm upon her lip.
Leontes. The fixture of her eye has motion in't,
As we are mocked with art.
I will kiss her.
Paulina. Good my lord, forbear.
The ruddiness upon her cheek is wet ;
You'll mar it if you kiss it; and stain your own with
oily painting.
And so, from consideration for the imagined
artist, whom he for awhile supposed to have la-
boured so hurriedly for his gratification, Leontes
did abstain from kissing the moisture off the
imagined statue, to be immediately rewarded by
the embraces of his living wife, “warm,” as he
found her to be, for so he joyously describes her
to his surrounding friends. But the only fact
I care about in this dénotſment, before or behind
the curtain, is that a coloured statue is thus
proved, on high authority, to have been a legi-
timate and not unusual work of art in Sicily,–
sometime or other. -
But I seriously think there is no good reason
for the disgust with which some lovers of statuary,
in its “round, unvarnished ” purity, whether in
marble, ivory or wood, consider this imagined
desecration of it, by the addition of colour.
Suppose a vein of flesh-coloured marble was
336 BFATFN PATH S.
discovered, would there be any objection to its
being fashioned into images of real life, any
more than their being cast in discoloured bronze?
Busts in black marble are by no means uncom-
mon. The famous black Diama of Ephesus,
Ceres, and other goddesses, were indeed viola-
tions of all fitness and good taste. But art can-
not be considered as perverted by a negro bust,
in its most natural semblance of hue as well as
shape; and fragments of figures partially painted
have come down to us from antiquity.
And it must not be retorted that the very
thing now pleaded for is to be already found, in
wax-work or porcelain, or approached in terra-
cotta, or gypsum. The two latter substances are
well adapted for the imitation of drapery, for
the funny little men and women in Dresden
china, or other mere parodies. Wax-work is quite
insufficient, from the sickly look of the material
however ingeniously painted, and from the medi-
ocre talent devoted to it for ordinary exhibitions
or anatomical uses. Zumbo of Syracuse, we are
told, was a great modeller in wax in the seven-
teenth century; but I don't know if his speci-
mens still exist, nor has he left any successor of
celebrity. However, that particular art may be
susceptible of great improvement, fragile and
evanescent as the substance used must be. The
ITALIAN SEQETCHES. 337
brown-skinned samples of Indian groups in the
Crystal Palace, coarse in material and colouring,
are really striking and somewhat life-resembling,
and they may be followed by others of a better
style of execution. But it is in firm, finely polished
marble that the truest semblance of flesh can be
produced; and if colour were judiciously applied,
to perfect the illusion, it should be adapted with
great delicacy and by some tasteful hand. It is
not perhaps the “oily painting,” against which
Paulina warned the impetuous king, that should
be used. Rather, probably, some cunning pre-
paration of water-colours, laid lightly on in dainty
tinting, than the pigments ordinarily mixed up
for portraits on canvas or panel, impasted in a
rose-coloured concrete.
I have no doubt the application, to answer its
purpose fully, would require frequent experiment
and much skill, not exactly that devoted to chiar-
oscuro and the laying on of thickly prepared
coats of paint, nor to encaustic colouring burnt
in and polished; but such as would be adapted
to a totally new branch of the same art, of a
peculiar though far less difficult kind.
But, leaving this brief episode of speculative
criticism to the artistic consciences of sculptors
and painters, and the question it involves to
judges far more competent than I can pretend to
WOL. II. Z
338 BEATEN PATH S.
be, I hasten to relieve my readers from the ap-
prehensions which those random remarks may
excite.
There is no real cause for fear that I may fol-
low the lead of the ummerciful di/effanff, who
fancy they “are nothing if not critical,” and in
being so, are something infinitely less. No. I
will let the exquisite statues and pictures of Italy
rest on their pedestals and in their frames and
frescoed exposure,” safe from intrusive notices on
* It is impossible to allude ever so slightly to the early
frescoes of Italy, the awakening symptoms of matured per-
fection, scattered in remote places, the small towns and soli-
tary convents of the Apennine recesses, without paying a
tribute to the services rendered to art by the Arundel Society
of London. Happy it is that there are amateurs, of a taste
profound as well as pure, to seek out and save those curious
specimens from perishing. England has many such, and
among them the members of the Arundel Society take a pro-
minent place. To furnish reduced but accurate copies of the
existing works of the Italian masters of the fourteenth, fif-
teenth, and sixteenth centuries, is the well-known object of
this society, two of whose most active members, Mr. Layard
and Mr. Danby Seymour, have lately given much informa-
tion to the public on this subject. Several of the chromo-
lithograph publications of the society afford specimens of
pictures by Perugino, the great master of the Umbrian school,
fillippino Lippi, Sauzio the father of Raphael, Pinturicchio,
his friend, Luini, Leonardo da Vinci, Ottaviano Nello, and
others, beginning with Giotto and ending with Raphael
himself. -
Whatever may be the relative opinions of amateurs on the
merits or deficiencies of pre-Raphaelite art—as distinguished
ITALIAN SKETCHES. 339
my part, which could add nothing to their cele-
brity, and would but feebly shadow forth my
admiration. Cathedrals and churches, duomi and
campanili, palaces and villas, towers, in and out
of the perpendicular, have been tortured and dis-
torted for ages, by fanatical worshippers or fan-
tastic pedants. Travellers and tourists—there is
a wide distinction between them—have done and
overdone the thing, in prose and verse. De-
scription has been exhausted, curiosity tired, and
patience worn out. I will give my readers a re-
spite. And whatever may be the sins of com-
mission in this desultory work, there shall be at
least the virtue of one omission. I will not dis-
turb by a whisper the Venus, the Apollo, the
Niobe, or the Laocoon ; I will let the Faunus
from the modern crudities and caricatures that go by that
name—all lovers of pure feeling and fine colouring must ap-
prove the efforts of persons of talent and liberality, among
whom the accomplished Mrs. Higford Burr is conspicuous,
to preserve some specimens of those frescoes, placed in such
danger of destruction, by the troubled state of Italy and its
long-growing apathy and indifference. Could these irremov-
able treasures have been transferred from the walls of the
churches and convents where they were unfortunately painted,
and converted into cash, their ignorant owners would have
taken good care of them, and English artists have been able
to study original works, the want of which is however in a
great degree compensated by the chromotint copies of the
Arundel Society,
Z 2
340 BEATEN PATH S.
dance, and the Gladiator die, without breaking in
on their joys or pains, by a smile or a tear.
The necessity for confining myself within the
prescribed limits of this volume causes me to
suppress, or at least to postpone to a later occa-
sion, some remarks on the more important cities,
the shrines where those immortal idols of art are,
figuratively speaking, bowed down to and wor-
shipped.
Genoa, Florence, Rome, and Naples were suc-
cessively the sources of abounding admiration
and genuine enjoyment. I passed through them
too hurriedly, but not with unworthy haste. After
three months' sojourn in Florence, my first real
resting-place, I wended my way to Rome, snow
on the ground and frost in the air. The winter
of 1847-48 was very wet in Italy. Rome had
its share of rain, and Naples still more than that.
I there saw the burly hypocrite who then filled
the throne, take the solemn oath to the Constitu-
tion to be so soon so sacrilegiously violated; and
I had scarcely got back to Rome, and resumed
my place in its gay and animated crowd, when
the whole world was startled, and almost stupi-
fied, by the political shock of the French revolu-
tion of February, 1848.
It was then that I really saw Italy in its incipi-
ITALIAN SRIETCHES. 34I
ent regeneration. The first stir of intellect seemed
like the arousing of sleepy nature. The human
mind awoke suddenly to the flash of light sent
electrical from France ; and the prostrate nation
sprang at once to its feet, with its front upraised
to heaven. I witnessed that awakening. I saw
the first throbbing of the national heart, and like
all observers, I wondered what would be the re-
sult—or rather, when would the great inevitable
result occur. '.
Rome, the capital, immortal in the past, and
the main source of existing aspirations, was the
focus to which all political projects converged.
The excitement of those who took an interest in
public affairs was excessive; and the accessory
movements of society gained a fresh impulse.
Private entertainments abounded. Everybody
seemed in the full enjoyment of their faculties,
and everything connected with financial specula-
tion or diplomatic intrigue showed vigorous signs
of life.
But all this vitality led to much confusion in
the minds of those who, having no fixed pursuits,
were thrown on the great flood of action and
tossed from wave to wave. I myself was sensibly
affected by the active idleness which I revelled
in. Seeing everything, mixing in all things, seiz-
ing with avidity each passing subject, and hurried
342 BEATEN PATHS.
back to remote ages by every new object and at
every step, my mind could not settle down into
any regular or useful train of thought. Writing,
except the most casual and flimsy correspond-
ence, was out of the question—and I gave myself
up to pursuits, if not exactly frivolous, certainly
very unfruitful in solid results.
But it would be ungrateful to forget, and un-
gracious not to allude to in these passing notes,
the several agreeable meetings in our social circle,
devoted to speculative discourse, on phrenology,
Fourierism, and other subjects, some practical
and some perhaps impracticable. Two indivi-
duals of great ability and varied information, Doc-
tor Castle and Professor Orioli, gave great value
to those informal discussions, which might well
have taken the more ambitious form of lectures.
Another gentleman, who has since figured favour-
ably in parliamentary and official life, was an
ardent promoter of these “diversions,” not so
recondite but quite as amusing as those of Purley.
The active-minded and untiring Mrs. Trollope
was one of the persons known to fame who took
and gave interest in and to our gatherings. And
among others of public note, but no longer living,
were two veterans, Sir Frederick Adam, formerly
governor-general of the Ionian Islands, and Gene-
ral Godwin, some years later celebrated for his
ITALIAN SKETCHES. 343
vigorous conduct of the last Burmese war, in the
first of which he was no undistinguished actor. I
am glad my recollections give me this opportunity
to devote a leaf of my manuscript—I wish it were
a leaf of laurel—to his memory. For although
his services were of small account comparatively
with the grand events in India which immortal-
ized Havelock, Outram, Lords Gough and Clyde,
and so many more, General Godwin was made
prominent, not only by his zeal and energy, but
by the strictures which assailed him when he first
started on the expedition he conducted so admi-
rably and brought to so successful a close. All
military readers will remember the mistaken
accounts, which erroneously represented General
Godwin as a superannuated invalid, and gave the
public an impression that he must have been a
decrepit valetudinarian. He was, in fact, among
the most active of the fine fellows forming the
army, and to whom he gave so brilliant an ex-
ample on all occasions of difficulty and danger.
But that brave old soldier died after his work was
done, from over-exertion, and before he could re-
ceive his well-won rewards of title and honours;
and his epitaph is written in the memorials of the
service he adorned. -
While the travelling English, as usual, found
amusement and sometimes sought instruction, the
344 BEATEN PATHS.
public agitation led to fears of disturbance, in the
reactionary minds of the cardinals and the govern-
ment. And it was even for awhile decided that
the festivities of the Carnival should be for that
year suspended. Had such an impolitic intention
been persisted in, it would have increased the
danger it was meant to obviate, and the people,
if defrauded of the privilege of their national
saturnalia, might in the growing excitement have
become ungovernable. It was this reflection pro-
bably which caused a change to pass over the
spirits of his Holiness and the Sacred College. The
Carnival was held with all the accustomed ex-
travagance, to the great delight of myself and
my friends, and all strangers who had only wit-
nessed the feeble imitation of it in Paris or other
cities. The masquerading was superb in its
grotesque vivacity. Sugared hail-showers of con-
ſetti were flung from balconies and carriages in
violent profusion. The races on the Corso were
exhibited with great spirit, and were, from their
novelty and for the nonce, more exciting than
the performances of many a commonplace course
in England. Then the Miserere in the Sistine
Chapel, and the illuminated dome of St. Peter's,
seen from the Pincian hill; the interior perform-
ances of the great cathedral; and finally, the
father of all the Roman Catholic world, with up-
ITALIAN SRIETCHES. 345
lifted hands scattering his benedictions from the
balcony of the most magnificent of churches, were
sights that leave their impress for ever on the
memory, and some of them an indelible influence
on the mind.
Private considerations forced me to hurry my
departure, at a period when the critical nature
of public affairs gave every inducement for a
further stay. Carlo Alberto was then in the
full tide of his first success against the Tedescan
tyranny. Volunteers were hurrying from Rome
and other parts to join his army, and share its
triumph or its ruin. The Pope was day by day
profusely giving blessings to groups of these
handsome and youthful patriots, but who may say
what backslidings were even then nascent in his
secret soul? For the royal recreant of Naples
had already been vainly striving to check the
movement he had been forced to countenance.
He even ventured to countermand the order to
“march,” issued to that most true-hearted of
patriots, my old friend General William Pepe ;
but who, like the Iron Duke on a far different
occasion, declared it was and should be “no mis-
take,” moved on with his troops, and threw him-
self into Venice, to immortalize his already dis-
tinguished name, in association with that of the
highly-gifted and pure-minded MANIN, by a noble
but vain resistance to the Austrian besiegers.
346 BEATEN PATHS.
I much regretted the impossibility of seeing
Venice under the troubled circumstances of the
time. My party could not encounter the risks
and rough work of travelling in the portion of
the country which was then the seat of war. And
I finally left Rome before the convulsions which
frightened Pio Nono to his ignoble flight, abdi-
cating his sovereignty to his rightful successors,
the people, who so heroically vindicated their
title to the vacated throne.
I was far away from Rome during its memora-
ble siege. But I followed its progress through
every stage, and read with “’bated breath,” but
unabated interest, every successive report. The
accounts of that great event are of easy reference,
but they are not within the province of my re-
miniscences. The part taken by republican France,
in crushing the first-born offspring of its own ex-
ample, affords matter for deep thought, and could
not be fitly considered in such flying pages as
those to which I am now furnishing the feathers.
The only possible justification for the fratricidal
tragedy—the upholding of the temporal power of
the Papacy—proves the baneful mature of that
false system, which it has taken a dozen long
years more of misrule to crumble to pieces.
But the siege of Rome, in 1848, and that of
Venice in the same year, were the main inspira-
ITALIAN SKETCHES. 347
tions of the patriot struggles which in these our
days are crowned with such great success. They
kept alive, like the lamps always burning in some
holy shrine, the faith of the votaries who watched
the sacred flame. The siege of Rome was in it-
self the embryo germ of the unity of Italy, now
in developed existence ; and among the undying
names linked with its records, that of MAZZINI
assuredly deserves the first place. He was the
leading spirit of the time, the master-mind; reso-
lute, inflexible, unspoiled by temporary success,
and not crushed by failure; making the best of
good fortune and defying adverse fate. His bril-
liant state papers, for such all his decrees and
proclamations were, while he sat as the chief of
the Triumvirate, were models of eloquence and
political logic. They might not bring conviction
to opposing minds, but they must have impressed
his worst enemies with admiration, and were like
inspired words to those who sympathized with his
republican doctrines.
It should not be forgotten that long before the
great struggle which made Mazzini so prominent,
he founded, as far back as the year 1832, the
association of La Giovine Italia, the motto of
which was “Unità, Independenza.” This was the
real origin in action of Italian unity; which was
meant to imply, Italy, self-created; or unification,
348 BEATEN PATH S.
which signified that Italy was to be made one
by some other agency besides her own internal
action.
Words signify little in such a case. The
object was the same, and casuists may be al-
lowed to differ as to the means to effect it. Mac-
chiavelli, Dante, and many of the profound
thinkers of the middle ages, cherished the idea
of Italian unity. It was checked during the rapid
growth of civilization by the formation of many
centres of power, under various petty sovereigns
of small states. The municipal spirit was nar-
row and local. Rivalries, jealousies, and hatreds
sprang up ; and it was only when the irresistible
course of events elsewhere awoke the national
mind, and a combination of weak and wicked
rulers concentrated its energies for their over-
throw, that it was possible to attain what always
seemed its pervading instinct.
Public opinion was of course divided as to the
means of obtaining the great end in view. The
Moderati would have been satisfied with con-
stitutional government, as a boon from the reign-
ing princes. But Mazzini, seeing it vain to hope
for a bond ſide liberalism from such a source,
threw his whole energies into the struggle for
republican institutions, and for them he long
laboured, in defiance of opprobrium and detrac-
ITALIAN SKETCHES. 34.9
tion, with desperate fidelity, and has ever been
the type and incarnation of that impracticable
faith. -
He and his disciples waged a great war, and
lost it on that very ground. The republic of
Rome, unmercifully extinguished by that of
France, proved that the creed they preached had
no power to bind men and governments together
for a common cause. It was clear that that par-
ticular form was not suited to the genius and
the traditions of European life. The high refine-
ment of modern days repels the equality and
fraternity so loudly proclaimed. It is felt that
liberty, rational, modified, and tempered by con-
trolling influences, may be enjoyed, with all the
elegancies and charms of a high civilization,
under monarchical and aristocratical institutions,
and the pretensions of democratic well-being are
left to the stormy chances of transatlantic ex-
periments, and the narrow practice of the Swiss
Cantons.
But Mazzini, the great apostle of republican
faith, was not the less eminent because that
faith was felt to be an untenable heresy, within
the sphere of his action. He waged a war
against Heaven, allegorically speaking. The gods
opposed him, and he fell to a fathomless depth ;
but he did not die under his defeat. The moun-
350 BEATEN PATHS.
tains which he had hurled against his too power-
ful enemies did not crush him in their recoil.
Still, year after year, and almost day after day,
his power was acknowledged; and, though un-
seen, he was deeply and generally felt. His
spirit seemed to move mysteriously from place to
place, like an impalpable phantom, frightening
if it could not visibly harm the world of despot-
ism. From time to time his manifestoes were
issued, his movements whispered, his expeditions
sent out, and the ruin and death of his disciples
announced, without any finger being able to
point to his whereabouts, or any hand to arrest
his course. The career of Mazzini for the last
dozen years has been a marvel and a mystery.
He has been the most constant and the most im-
penetrable labourer in the dark whose influence
was ever felt in the open light of public affairs.
It is quite in vain to attempt a denial of his
talent, his perseverance, and his other elements
of power. His influence may be considered ma-
lignant, a sort of moral malaria pervading society
and carrying off many victims. But it is not
fair to view him entirely in that light. He has
done great mischief, no doubt, to the very cause
his whole energies have been devoted to. His
doctrines are repugnant to the prevalent feelings
of mankind; and he has sometimes urged them
ITALIAN SKETCHES. 351
with a too violent pertinacity. But he has known
when to yield, and how to be silent, at the pro-
per season, rather than by a forced or inappro-
priate interference endanger the one great object
of all Italian patriots, whatever their individual
party-views; and it is sure that a dread of Maz-
zini's principles has been one great auxiliary
means of strengthening the cause of constitu-
tional monarchy, in the person of Victor Em-
manuel. The very day that he entered Naples
as King of Italy, and that Garibaldi magnani-
mously yielded up his dictatorial sway, the one
taking possession of his throne, the other retiring
to his rock, Mazzini disappeared from the same
scene, and vanished into his usual obscurity;
with what objects, what hopes, or what designs,
time will certainly, and perhaps speedily, show ;
if indeed they are not sufficiently developed in
his recent pamphlet, ‘The Italian Question,’ pub-
lished in London. The following letter by Mr.
Horace Greeley, an American, gives a sketch of
Mazzini's appearance and character, the truth of
which will be, I think, acknowledged by those
who have seen him in private life, and con-
sidered him and his career without political pre-
judice. -
352 BEATEN PATHS.
MAZZINI.
YOUNG ITALY
EY HORACE GREELEY.
“I met Joseph Mazzini, the oracle of “Young
Italy,’ at the house of a mutual friend in London, in
May, 1857. I am sure he confided in and spoke
frankly to me: but in what I shall say of him and
his ideas, no reference will be made to that conversa-
tion. Personally, he dwells in my memory as rather
shorter than Louis Kossuth, of a clear olive com-
plexion, with an earnest, restless, melancholy coun-
tenance, and that general air of mingled sadness and
resolution so often marking the faces of exiles. One
of his colleagues in the Roman triumvirate, Aurelio
Saffi, was with him, but only hovers in my recollec-
tion as a pale reflection of the master-spirit from
whose voice and eyes he drew all his inspiration. Of
the other Italians who were in his company, even the
names have escaped me. The evening passed; the
company separated; and I shall probably never in
this life look on that sad strong face again.
“Practically, I am not a Mazzinian. I believe the
instinct which rallies free Italy around the throne of
Victor Emmanuel is wiser than the impulse which
would hurl her, pell-mell, upon half a million of Aus-
trian bayonets, under the leadership of Mazzini, who
is right as to the end, wrong as to the means. I
doubt whether Italy, even if unassailed from without,
could to-day constitute herself a genuine republic. I
believe the only safe road to that consummation runs
through the halfway house of a constitutional mon-
archy based on the sovereignty of the people. So,
ITALIAN SKETCHES. 353
loving Mazzini and Garibaldi, I yet hail the triumphs
of Victor Emmanuel, and trust in the present guid-
ance of Cavour.
“But, though Mazzini is in advance of the time,
he nevertheless contributes to makc the time better
than it would be without him. If Victor Emmanuel
and Cavour are more immediately necessary to Italy,
he is necessary to make and keep them what they are.
Give the democratic element free scope in Italy, break
down all effective opposition to it, and I should fear
a reproduction of the anarchy and the sanguinary
horrors of French Jacobine terrorism ; stifle this ele-
ment entirely, and the dark days of Austrian domina-
tion and Sardinian reaction would soon return. Italy
is not yet a nation, though she truly and ardently
aspires to be; her millions are not yet free-men,
though they intensely hate that form of despotism
whereby they have so deeply suffered, wherefrom they
have so recently and but partially been rescued.
“This, then, is to be said for Mazzini and his adhe-
rents: in an age of compromise, they have never com-
promised, but ever held fast their integrity, and
striven directly toward the goal of their hopes; of a
race proverbially subtle and dissembling, they have
never walked in craftiness, but avowed and justified
their faith in the eyes of all men; in a country so be.
sotted with priestcraft, they have waged open war on
priestly bigotry and priestly domination, and stood
firmly for the rights of conscience, the freedom of
faith. In advance of their time, they yet help to pre-
pare Italy for the coming of that time, and for profit-
ing by it when it shall have come. Mazzini will pro-
WOI. II. 2 A
354 BEATEN PATH S.
bably never be President of Italy, united and free;
but she will be united and free far sooner than if he
had never existed, or never dared and suffered.
“His enemies revile Mazzini as infidel; but this is
a calumny. He profoundly trusts in God, and hence
distrusts and repels the sacerdotal mummeries where-
in God’s name is taken in vain ; and as he profoundly
loves both God and mam, so he detests and fights
whatever tends to hide the former from the latter.”
Several newspapers and private communica-
tions positively state that Mazzini is still as busy
as ever, intriguing and plotting for the further-
ance of his republican views. It is probable.
Granted that it is true.
The same organs of excellent information
openly assert that Louis Napoleon is treacher-
ously using all his secret means of mischief to
thwart the object of Italian unity, and for the ad-
vancement of his imperial schemes. It is not
unlikely. Admitted that it is a fact.
But even if it be so, and that these two mys-
terious agents are labouring in their congenial
avocations; even if these extremes of political
systems are really striving to touch, and for the
same end, they cannot do so until the mass of
constitutional monarchy which now separates them
is dissolved, any more than it is possible to work
out the simple problem that two and two make
four, until the two and two are joined together.
ITALIAN SKETCHES. 355
As for myself, I do not believe in Mazzini or
Napoleon as powers capable of marring the grand
design now near completion. But I do believe
that, under the guidance of Victor Emmanuel
and his ministers, with Garibaldi and the asso-
ciated military chiefs, Italian unity is an indestruc-
tible fact of European polity, in spite of brigand
violence or priestly fraud.
356
CHAPTER X.
LOUIS NAPOLEON BON APARTE.
IT is no easy undertaking for any one, in his own
proper person, to discuss the character and qua-
lify the conduct of the most powerful of living
monarchs. An author who writes anonymously,
may attempt the task without constraint, speak-
ing his unbiassed sentiments, and telling what
he believes to be the truth. He is under cover
from reproach, and need not care for what is
thought of opinions delivered incognito. If he
be a satirist, he has nothing to fear. He fences
in a mask, with the button on his foil, and he
may make many hits without actually hurting
the breast he aims at. If a eulogist, his inde-
pendence may be doubted by the world, but his
zeal may be rewarded by the idol to whom he
can reveal himself. But he who makes a public
speech, or puts his name to the first page of a
book or a pamphlet, treating on such questions,
should possess nerve, discretion, and conscience.
I.OUIS NAPOLEON BON APARTE. 357
I cannot pass over in silence the little I have
seen or known of the remarkable individual whose
name embellishes this chapter. A work like this
must be “half made up " of written portraits, as
it has no engraved ones; and for the one I now
venture to produce—the most important of all—
I have had little more than a glance, just enough
for a photograph, if the sun had taken the like-
ness instead of myself. Mine must be a mere
sketch ; I cannot even tint it; but I proceed to
give it, quantum valeaf.
I have seen Louis Napoleon several times in
several aspects. In London drawing-rooms, where
he was looked on as nobody. In the Chamber of
1)eputies in Paris, lost in a crowd of colleagues
and not thought much of. In the streets, as a
simple député, braving the threats and the temper
of the mob; as President of the Republic, at the
head of his troops, on the Boulevard; or in the
camp of Boulogne, as Emperor, riding down the -
line of many thousand men, Prince Leopold of
Saxe-Coburg by his side. In the gorgeous sa-
loons of the Tuileries, surrounded by the pomp
of the Imperial Court; in the Champs Élysées,
almost immediately after he was shot at by Pia-
nelli. In all these various phases of life he pre-
sented the same grave, cold, impassible appear-
ance, with no sign of animation or perceptible
358 BEATEN PATH S.
feeling. But what pent-up thoughts of ambition,
pride, self-confidence, and courage, must have
been working in his brain He was and is a
living mystery, a mortal enigma. No prophet
has yet read the handwriting he may be said to
symbolize. The sphinx's riddle was not harder
to be solved. It is not in my power to throw
much light on this Imperial puzzle, from a view
of his personal bearing, or the shifting changes
of his physiognomy. Had I only seen him on
the occasions mentioned, in common with thou-
sands of observers, I should not have presumed
to place him in these volumes, taking advantage
of his name as a decoy, without having anything
beyond mere description or passing gossip to say
of him. But it so happened that one opportu-
nity was given me of marking him more closely,
conversing with him freely, listening to him at-
tentively, and making a real study of him,_not
for time enough to enable me to know him, but
quite sufficient to make on me a profound im-
pression, proved to my own mind, by several
subsequent events, to be as true as it has been
indelible.
Returning from Italy in the month of April,
1848, I arrived in Paris during the full triumph
of its revolution, and found a republic established
where I had left a monarchy; the Tuileries, where
LOUIS NAPOLEON BON APARTE. 359
I had seen Louis Philippe in all his glittering
state, turned into a hospital for wounded patriots,
their mattresses hanging out to air from the win-
dows; the members of the Provisional Govern-
ment in uncertain possession of their new autho-
rity; public agitation, street alarms, everything,
in fact, in a half-recognized, half-doubtful con-
fusion. I passed quickly through, saw merely
the troubled surface of things, attended some of
the sittings of the Assembly, visited, in company
with a diplomatic companion, a few of the poli-
tical clubs, and hurried to England on private
business.
In the following October I returned, and found
matters in a far more settled state. The tre-
mendous insurrection of June had decided the
fate of the Communists, and moderate republi-
canism was for the time the admitted form of
government. A constitution had been framed
and proclaimed, the dictatorship of Cavaignac
was undisputed; the election for deputies to the
Chamber went on without tumult, and that for
the choice of a President of the Republic was
prepared for by the whole country with great
solemnity. Between the two candidates put
forward there could be no hesitation which to
choose, if rational, reasonable, well-founded judg-
ment had been the umpire. General Cavaignac
360 BEATEN PATHS.
had made his reputation as a soldier. He had
shown himself to possess bravery, good sense,
and patriotism, and to be eminently generous
and unselfish. These were his merits. His sole
defect was that his father had been a conven-
tionalist and regicide; and the blood of Louis
XVI. was visited on the son of him who aided
by his vote in shedding it. The Reign of Terror
was still alive in the fears of the French people.
Those who had even incidentally shared in its
atrocities had unwittingly transmitted the inheri-
tance of the odium to their children.
Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was known only
as a pretender, who had put forward untenable
claims to the throne of France, who had failed
in two attempts upon it, and in one of them,
while aiming at the sublime, had made the sad
mistake of slipping into the ridiculous. He had
not a single known quality to redeem his obscure
antecedents. But as Cavaignac had the mis-
fortune to be his father's son, so Louis Napoleon
had the good luck to be the nephew of his uncle.
That and that alone was his received and ad-
mitted title to success.
The election for President was really, then,
not at all decided by the respective merits of the
candidates. It was reduced to a question of fear
on the one hand, and of fame on the other. The
T.OUIS NAPOLEON BON A PARTE. 361
votes were given, not for two men, but for two
symbols. It was the red cap of Jacobinism
against Napoleon's cocked-hat. The latter car-
ried the day. The imperial principle prevailed;
the republican was thrown aside. Cavaignac re-
tired into private life. Louis Bonaparte planted
his foot on an elevation, which he in his heart
decided was the first step of the throne.
On the 10th of December, in splendid weather,
and amid great but well-organized excitement,
the voting began. On the 20th the National
Assembly officially issued the proclamation of
the election of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, Pre-
sident of the Republic by a large majority.
Everybody seemed taken by surprise at this re-
sult. But all was decorous and quiet in Paris.
On the 24th the President reviewed the troops
of the line and the National Guard in great
numbers. -
On the 5th of January, 1849, I dined with
Lord Normanby, the British Ambassador, with a
large party. And afterwards his Excellency took
me by appointment to the Elysée Bourbon, for
the purpose of a private presentation to the Presi-
dent, in preference to going through the cere-
mony with a number of others at a morning
levée, where it would be of course a hurried and
merely formal affair. I felt this to be very con-
362 BEATEN PATH S.
siderate on the part of Lord Normanby, from
whom I had always received much kind atten-
tion. *
We were accompanied by one other of the party
at dinner, a diplomatist of considerable note, who
had been formerly a friend, was then an acquaint-
ance, and is not I think even now my enemy.
In going to this interview I did not pre-
pare myself for any great impression. I in fact
thought the individual who was to give us the
honour of an audience, eminent as was his posi-
tion, a very ordinary person. I had seen him
as such, heard him always spoken of as such,
by every one, with one exception, and that was
Count D'Orsay, who had valued him, when he
was but an unavowed prince and an outlawed
pretender, with a high opinion of his great qua-
lities of mind, and a confidence in his future
career, which appeared too fanciful and flighty
to indoctrinate others. I had been in Paris all
through the recent election, had mixed in well-
informed circles, at the receptions and soirées of
several of the ministers, Odilon Barrot, Léon
Faucher, De Tocqueville;” besides Lamartine's ;
* I cannot even passingly mention the name of De Tocque-
ville, very slight as was my acquaintance with him, without a
few words of praise, such as may without the charge of flat-
tery be applied to eminent men who are no more. There
LOUIS NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 363
had exchanged visits, and frequent conversations
with my old friend de Béranger, and others in
various ranks of life; and certainly, in the general
opinion, the successful President was not held in
much esteem. The caricatures of the day, under
the auspices of or at least tolerated by the Go-
vernment, had shown him in a very mean light—
a sort of nobody, without a chance; and I re-
member one in particular, which depicted him
riding towards Paris on a donkey, his head and
almost his whole body being concealed under an
immense chapeau & cornes, the identical cocked-
was a winning gracefulness and total absence of pretension in
him, that made an impression far more serious than the tone
of assumed importance in his colleague, Léon Faucher. De
Tocqueville was rather in a false position, as minister under a
form of government he did not approve—for he was not in
heart a Republican—and serving a Bonaparte while his sym-
pathies were with the Bourbons. Neither was his mind of
that robust and vigorous stamp to stifle the voice of his poli-
tical conscience, if it really reproached him with playing a part.
His fame rests on his great philosophical work on American
democracy. His thoughtful mind and amiable disposition are
fully developed in it, and in his ‘Correspondence,’ published
by his friend M. de Beaumont, with the highly interesting
Notes of his Conversation, added from the pen of Mr. Senior
to the English version of that work. De Tocqueville was
fortunate in his translators; the first having most truly pre-
sented his peculiarly close, lucid, and firm style in its English
dress; and the ‘latter, who is I believe a young lady well
known in literary circles, being equally happy, in her graceful
rendering of the more flowing and unlaboured tone of his
familiar letters.
364 BEATEN PATH S.
hat of Wapoléon le grand, the symbol before al-
luded to, which was the real recipient of the
millions of votes that elected the inheritor of its
I'CI) OWI).
The election itself created no very powerful
sensation. France in the abstract was glad to
have escaped—not from General Cavaignac, but
from the red cap of “the Terror,” the emblem so
gratuitously and unfairly considered as his. The
success of the new Bonaparte was hailed with
joy, as a guarantee against communism, socialism,
and their dreaded accessories. But scarcely any
one seemed to care for him one way or another.
And I was on all hands assured he was but a
very ordinary sort of warming-pan, so to say, for
whoever might be permanently chosen to power;
and that he could be easily put aside and thrown
over, by any of the rival parties, in a week.
With these undervaluing estimates in my
mind, and fresh from associations of republican
elections and “accidental” presidents themselves
in the United States, I really felt, as I entered the
unpretending vestibule and salons of the Élysée,
somewhat as if I had been going to shake hands
for the first time with John Tyler or James K.
Polk, in the White House at Washington.
We arrived rather early. The President was
without company. Two or three officers of his
LOUIS NAPOLEON BON APARTE. 365
household, like himself “in citizen's dress,” as
they would say in America, were with him. We
were received with little formality, quite in the
style of private life. The introduction was the
simplest possible ; and almost immediately the
President entered into conversation in the most
familiar and unstudied manner. Count Molé,
Odilon Barrot, and one or two others of the
ministers soon came in. Lord Normanby and
my diplomatic companion joined them, and I
stood alone with the President, replying to a few
of his questions as to my intended stay in Paris,
and some general observations on the then state
of things.
It is impossible for me to recollect now how
it was that the conversation became more ani-
mated ; that it warmed, as I may say. More than
twelve years have elapsed. I took no notes—
though I did take note—of what passed, for I
*had no intention of recording it, even for private
information or amusement. Had I then con-
templated the preparation of such a book as
this, I certainly would have taken down many of
the words of that evening, uttered by one whose
high position made him even then a portion of
the public property, and who must now expect
to have his lightest sentences remembered and
quoted. But still, on the occasion I speak of, he
366 BEATEN PATHS.
was entitled to the reserve due to a person in
private life; and no expression which might pos-
sibly have fallen from him, derogatory to his sta-
tion or damaging to his character, should be suf-
fered to pass beyond the walls of his residence,
No advantage should be taken of his condescen-
sion to the disservice of his reputation, nor should
he be actually converted into “capital,” either
political or personal.
The first of his observations that struck me
sufficiently to remain in my memory to this day,
was his anxious wish to maintain order, and calm
down the popular effervescence, to the study of
what was really for the national advantage. There
was considerable earnestness in his manner; and
he spoke with a degree of openness, relative to
some things then publicly going forward, that
struck me as a great contrast to his reputed re-
serve, and also to his physiognomy and personal
bearing. -
I scarcely know how it happened, or on which
side the subject was started, but the conversa-
tion turned rather suddenly on the danger the
President was supposed to run, by his careless
exposure to the possibilities of assassination, by
riding out almost unattended, driving about, and
frequently walking in the most crowded places,
without the slightest escort or any precaution
LOUIS NAPOLEON BON APARTE. 367
whatever, more than the most obscure individual
might take, which really meant taking none at all.
“On this hint he spake ’’—and it would be
difficult for me to convey the deep and powerful
effect he produced, by what he said and the way
he said it. His tone was calm and emphatic. It did
not harmonize with the notion of the extenpo-
raneous utterance of newly-started thoughts; but
rather that of deliberate conviction on a well-
considered theme. He did not throw the subject
off with flippant carelessness, with haughty bra-
vado, or assumed scorn. He disposed of it as a
lecturer might do delivering a moral essay to his
listeners, taking a philosophic view of the ques-
tion, and treating it at its real value.
He said, in the first place, that “he deserved
no credit for his apparent bravery in running
those supposed risks, for he apprehended mone.
He had done nothing to provoke assassination.
He had committed no public offence to justify
or excuse it. He had been freely chosen by
several departments to a seat in the Chamber of
Deputies, without solicitation or canvass on his
part. He had come forward as a candidate for
the Presidency of the Republic, as he had a per-
fect right to do. He had been chosen by a large
majority, without the possibility of any undue in-
fluence on his part, for that of the government was
368 BEATEN PATHS.
motoriously, and as a matter of course, employed
against him. He had had no opportunity of mis-
directing the power the nation had conferred on
him, nor of creating even individual much less
party hatred. In short, he had no reason to
dread assassination nor to take any precautions
against it; for though innocence of all political
crime was no guarantee against the violence of a
fanatic or a madman, it still lessened to the lowest
degree the chances against any attempt by such
persons.”
“But even if the intention to assassinate me
existed,” continued he, “how could I guard
against the attempt? A pistol-shot might reach
me even if surrounded by guards, or a dagger
here in my own house.”
The fact that I myself was standing within a
foot of him at the time struck me as a forcible
illustration of his reasoning; and I think he saw
the smile that I could not repress, and under-
stood the thought that provoked it, for he said
good-humouredly that he “did not suspect me.”
He alluded to the many abortive attempts to
destroy those whom he did not call his prede-
cessors (though he might have done so boldly),
Napoleon and Louis Philippe ; of the Infernal
Machine, and the not less diabolical instrument
of Fieschi. He seemed pleased to dwell on the
LOUIS NAPOI, EON BON APARTE. 369
subject, and enlarged on it, with the confidence
of a man who speaks of dangers he is never
likely to be exposed to. He did not say in ex-
press terms that “he walked under a star,” that
“he had a mission to fulfil,” that “he was pro-
tected by his destiny,” or any such like words as
I have heard attributed to him. He did not make
any laboured profession of faith in fatalism. But
assuredly the impression he made on me was
that he felt himself safe from the murderer's
hand, that his doom was not to be so effected,
that he had a duty to carry out--perhaps, he said,
a part to play—that was his best safeguard, and
that he felt certain of fulfilling it, or words which
bore that meaning, followed by much more that
I do not pretend minutely to recollect. But the
whole effect of this conversation was, that I felt
myself in the presence of no ordinary man; that
all the vulgar notions—my own previous ones
among them—of his mediocrity were erroneous;
that he had a vigorous brain, a powerful will,
and a brave heart; that he believed himself to be
the inheritor of all his uncle's rights, and wrongs;
that he was bent on his purposes to their ut-
most extent; and that he would never yield up
the position he then held but with his life.
These opinions, so formed, I mentioned, nearly
word for word as I now write them, to the circle
VOI. II. 2 B
370 BEATEN PATH S.
which I joined on leaving the Élysée Bourbon.
I very often repeated them to various friends. I
was quite prepared for and not one bit surprised
by the whole series of events and acts which
rapidly succeeded that epoch, to make up the con-
secutive phases in the career of Louis Napoleon.
Having had this glimpse into the nature of this
remarkable personage, I may perhaps be par-
doned if I presume, on certainly very insufficient
data, to form some motion of his leading impulses,
and the feelings by which they may be worked;
as many, including the late Count Cavour, an
illustrious precedent, have done before me. The
speculation is irresistible, even if, like most others,
it should end in failure.
Louis Napoleon has pronounced himself to be
a parvenu. But he knows himself to be the son
of a king, the nephew of an emperor and great
conqueror of kings and emperors, and that he
was born in the regal palace where he now reigns
an absolute monarch. The affected avowal of
upstartism had no real meaning. It was made
to answer a purpose and produce an effect; but
it could not have proceeded from a consciousness
of inferiority. Louis Napoleon knew then, and
he knows still better now, that he is the equal
of the greatest sovereigns, and that he is able and
entitled to meet them foot to foot, and at least
'I.O.UIS NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 371
to hold his own with them. It may, according
to the popular adage, take three generations to
make a gentleman; but one is enough to make
a king.
But he is, moreover, aware that he owes his
present greatness to the traditional enthusiasm
for that of his uncle. He is therefore most pro-
bably imbued with the belief that he is bound
to make him his model in as far as he can. He
is satisfied, as every one must be, that the great
Napoleon's leading ambition was the glory of
France incorporated with his own. He may
therefore be impressed with the conviction that
that also should be his first object. He no doubt
cherishes the injunctions of the letter addressed
by Napoleon to his nephew and intended heir
(the brother of Napoleon III.) and dictated by
the very delirium of inflated pride: “Never forget
that in whatever position you are placed by my
policy and in the interest of my empire, that
your first duty is towards me, your second to-
wards France. All your other duties, even to-
wards the people I may confide to you, come
only afterwards.”
Napoleon the First erected an empire on the
ruins of a republic, which had its foundation on
the remnant of a monarchy. If Napoleon the
Third felt that a like exploit was to be his first
2 B 2
37.2 BEATEN PATH S.
mission, he fulfilled it. The limits of the first
empire were preposterous; they collapsed from
their immensity. But there were certain boun-
daries which were considered and called “ma-
tural.” To have secured them was an object
dearer than life to Napoleon the First. To re-
cover them is no doubt the leading passion of
Napoleon the Third. He has not his Uncle's im-
petuosity, out he has shown in some cases equal
firmness. He works more slowly, but perhaps
more surely. He has already obtained “the
slopes of the Alps.” He unquestionably longs
for, aims at, and will if possible recover “the
banks of the Rhine.” The former boundary car-
ried Savoy as an incident; the latter includes
Belgium as a corollary,
Napoleon the First waged war with Austria
and Russia. He encountered and defeated them
on their own ground. Napoleon the Third has
done the same, aided by England in the one
case, by Piedmont in both, but he was decidedly
the most prominent actor in each. The uncle
overran Lombardy, and when on the high road
to Vienna in the campaign of 1797 he stopped
suddenly short, and made the apparently humane
and magnanimous peace of Campo Formio. The
nephew played precisely the same game against
the same adversary in 1859, halted in the career
LOUIS NAPOLEON BON A.P.A.R.T.E. 373
of victory, and patched up the treaty of Villa-
franca. The true cause of the first of those
transactions was the failure of the Directory to
reinforce General Bonaparte with the promised
Army of the Sambre and Meuse. The fear of
Prussian hostility and the “Quadrilateral” was
the cause of the latter. It was caution, but by no
means benevolence that prevailed in both cases,
and produced the same results; and be it re-
membered that, in each, Venice was mercilessly
abandoned to the cruel yoke of Austria. Napo-
leon bided his time, and subsequently looked as
conqueror into the very gates of Vienna. Does
Louis Napoleon fore-covet a like triumph one
day? Peace was always on the lips of each while
the sword was in their hands; from la paia &
l'épée iſ n'y a qu'un pas. -
The episode of Egypt was enacted soon after
the peace of Campo Formio. It was short and
decisive. Syria was the scene of Bonaparte's
first failure in 1799. It came again into play
this present year, 1861; and though it does not
present a parallel case, there is a certain family
likeness worthy of notice. The French were
again in Syria. English valour, in the person of
Sir Sydney Smith, forced one Bonaparte to with-
draw from those eastern shores for ever. The
resolute attitude of England again this very year
374 BEATEN PATHS.
sounded the note of departure for the army of
another Bonaparte, from territory where France
must not plant a permanent footing. The Suez
canal question of last century has been succeeded
by a formidable scheme for another in the present.
But political any more than historical parallels
should not be pushed too far. Let Napoleon
III. take warning in this case, as he has in others,
by the failure of Napoleon I.
The next great move of the latter after his re-
turn from Egypt was his overthrow of the Direc-
tory and the Council of Five Hundred, and his
assumption of absolute power. It was then he
became a mark for the hands of murderers, and
that mechanical appliances were brought into
their service for his destruction. Louis Bona-
parte overthrew his republic, seized on the su-
preme authority, and in his turn became the
object of political vengeance. The infernal ma-
chine of St. Rejant had its counterpart in the
diabolical grenades of Orsini. The escapes in
each case were miraculous. But the impressions
made by each on the two Bonapartes must have
been widely different. In the first instance, the
First Consul was in his carriage with only one com-
panion, General Lannes. He might well think
lightly of the innocuous explosion. In the second,
the Emperor had beside him his young and lovely
LOUIS NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 375
wife, as well as attendant officers. It is said that
the terrific atrocity by which it was attempted
to destroy, not only him but her who was most
dear to him, made a deep and serious change in
the frame of his mind, on the very subject of at-
tempted assassination which has been the text of
this chapter, and that he has felt far differently
from what he did before his life and hers were
put into that joint and fearful peril, and as he
felt when he escaped from the bungling aim of
Pianelli. Nothing is more probable. The sound
of a pistol shot is nothing so very startling.
When the bullet has passed carelessly by, it
seems as if it
“Whistled as it went, for want of thought.”
If it has any effect, it is rather exciting than
depressing. A man may hear it again, and again,
and think less of it each time. The ear gets
accustomed,
“More Irish and less nice,”
if an Irishman may make the quotation. But the
bursting of those devilish bombs—no matter
what their shape or how the explosion is pro-
duced, has something so treacherous, so cowardly,
so mean in it, as to leave a horrid feeling on the
mind of him who has escaped, with a dear-loved
woman by his side, whose danger causes a shock
a thousandfold worse than his own. No matter
376 BEATEN PATH S.
what may have been the misdoings of a man so
placed, we cannot avoid sympathizing with and
feeling for him.
The chief aim of Napoleon the First's ambi-
tion, after humiliating the great continental
Powers, was the defeat of England. Prussia was
included in the first category. Her turn has not
come round in the present generation. But the
ominous convivialities and bland professions at
Compiègne, the other day, ought to carry their
warning with them, England escaped altogether
the threatened dangers of the last. Let her be
well-prepared now, as she was then, to meet
whatever may betide.
Hatred of England, on mere grounds of national
rivalry, was Napoleon's notorious passion. It
broke out in every word and act throughout his
whole career. How does Louis Napoleon view
her? What are his real sentiments, his private
thoughts, his secret desires? Qui mescit dissi-
mulare nescit reſnare, was the favourite maxim
of a former sovereign, who knew England well
but did not love her, as he plotted and planned,
in his gloomy closet at the Escurial, the pro-
digious armament destined for her invasion. The
Emperor, “our near neighbour and good ally,”
has as yet manifested no hostility to the country
where he found shelter and a home, and from
I, Olu IS NAPOLEON BON A PARTE. 377
which he led the celebrated expedition which was
meant to overthrow Louis Philippe, and put him-
self in his place. But he is supposed to have avowed
himself to be the destined avenger of his uncle's
downfall and death. He may consider himself to
be the incarnate Nemesis which is to bring de-
struction on the race his immortal namesake
suffered under. He may hope to visit the sins of
the fathers on the children—or the grandchildren.
He can afford to wait, if delay is sure to bring
the threatened dénoîment.
I speak of on diſs, of public conjecture, and
private speculation. But I confess myself to be
not one of those who view the present Emperor's
character and projects in that light. He may,
to a certain degree, resolve to emulate and imitate
the renowned relative whose dynasty has been
revived from political death in his person. In
many leading points his policy must be the same,
as far as his position is identical. But there are
some so widely different, that there is no reason-
ing & priori for his following the same course, or
acting on the same principles, in all cases. He
may well be supposed to pause and reflect on
those differences, and ask himself, “How would
my uncle have acted if he were placed as I am?”
As a good translator of a great author studies to
choose such words as the original would have
378 BEATEN PATH S.
been likely to have used, had he written in the
language into which his thoughts are transferred,
so may Napoleon III. strive to frame his policy
according to what his uncle would have done
were he living and reigning to-day, under the
existing circumstances of our time. It is true
that he shared in the contemporary ignorance of
his country with regard to English character, re-
sources, and power. He believed that France
could subdue her. He prepared an armament,
and really intended to invade her. He lamented,
in his latter years, that he had not made his great
attempt on Ireland instead of Egypt. He even
went so far as to say that England was merely
an island, naturally intended as an appanage of
France. Was he not sufficiently disabused of
those exaggerated errors? And would he not
have found his best policy now to be that which
actuates his nephew, an alliance, if not quite a
solidarity, with England P
Be that as it may, I may repeat that historical
or personal parallels ought not to be pushed too
far. For even admitting that the Napoleon of
to-day fashions his general policy on that of the
Napoleon of yesterday, it is not to be imagined
that one so acute, clear-seeing, and deep-thinking
is recklessly resolved to carry his imitation in-
Samely to all lengths—to undertake, for instance,
LOUIS NAPOLEON BON APARTE. 379
a crusade against Russia, or a descent on England.
Louis Napoleon is not a man to attempt the im-
possible. His uncle was such a one, and what
was the consequence? His fate is written; and
is his successor the only one who cannot read it?
The great difference between the two Napo-
leons is, that the first was a soldier by vocation
as well as education. The third is not one in
either sense. He chose to put himself nominally
at the head of his army for a special service. He
adopted a trade, but was not trained to a profes-
sion. He became a master without having served
an apprenticeship. He made a short campaign
and fought a couple of battles. But that was not
enough to make a warrior; and, fortunately for
the world which is so much under his influence,
not enough to give him that infatuated love of
war which was his uncle's most marked and most
fatal passion.
The design of the present Emperor of the
French may be to hold out indications of a wish,
if not exactly a plan, to invade England, for the
purpose of concealing other views. The old
flotilla of Boulogne of former days was, after all,
but a blind to hide the design which ended in
the campaign of Alexandria, the Pyramids, and
Aboukir. The enormous preparations at Cher-
bourg to-day, the construction of “La Gloire,”
380 BEATEN PATH S.
and other iron-sided ships fit only for the Chan-
nel service, may have no purport of actual hos-
tility against our shores. The vast expense of
our naval and land defences may have been forced
on us by our neighbour, to cripple our finances,
as he has so seriously crippled his own, and dis-
able us from subsidizing other Powers, as we did
of old, when the predestined force of France is
let loose against them. Who knows? These
are but conjectures, of as much worth perhaps as
others. Where are the proofs P. Where the ac-
complished facts, of whose “inexorable logic” we
hear so much of late P
Every one nowadays forms his own theory about
eminent men; I have mine about Louis Napo-
leon. I consider him to be, in his own despite,
whether he likes it or not, indissolubly allied to
England, by policy, interest, and necessity,+al-
most by fate itself. Separated from, opposed to,
and at war with her, I consider him lost. Joined
with her, he can accomplish everything his loftiest
ambition should desire.
In the West or the East, in Europe, Asia, or
America,” France and England combined are
* While these pages are passing through the press (De-
cember 1861), and in the midst of the fierce conflict raging in
the disrupted states, the Federal Government, still absurdly
calling them “United,” is, I have good reason to believe,
LOUIS NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 38]
able to regulate the world. Whenever they make
common cause together they are sure to triumph;
witness the Crimea and China. When opposed
in policy, what is the consequence to France? Look
at Italy. Did Napoleon imagine or desire its unity?
Assuredly not. He wished to see it free, from the
Alps to the Adriatic—free from Austrian influ-
ence, to sink under his own. Baffled in his in-
tention of placing one cousin in Tuscany, another
in Naples—two vassal kings in the style of his
great prototype—see how he now submits to the
glorious policy of England, which raises by moral
aid alone a new Italian empire, out of a chaos of
misrule, in defiance of Austrian hate, French
essaying the forlorn hope of creating an estrangement be-
tween France and England, and offering to the Emperor the
wild chances of a conquest in Canada, as the price of that
suicidal policy. A bigoted priest, a used-up politician, and a
superannuated soldier, are supposed to be the emissaries sent,
in this desperate emergency, from Washington to Paris. The
deliberate outrage on the British flag in the seizure of Messrs.
Mason and Slidell, from the “Trent,” Royal Mail Steam-
ship, following on many minor affronts, was chosen as the
touchstone for English forbearance. Could England be forced
into a war, and France seduced into an alliance, the infatuated
Federals hope for some favourable result, to redeem the
dishonour of their arms and their financial embarrassments.
Unless I grossly mistake the Imperial policy (and it is possi-
ble that I may) the trio of Yankee intriguers will recross the
Atlantic re infectá, or leave their bones in Europe, as a monu-
ment of their futile mission.
3S2 BEATEN PATH S.
jealousy, and German envy. Napoleon III.
spoke but the truth when he proclaimed her free-
dom from mountain to sea. He fixed no date
for the consummation of his fiat ; but Rome and
Venetia will surely follow the career of the parts
already disenthralled, to make one national whole.
Curbed by the entanglements of religious bigotry,
or dynastic factions at home, Napoleon III. may
falter in his Italian policy. He may possibly
meet the fate of a mechanic caught in his own
machinery, or an alchemist blown up by his ful-
minant compounds. But he cannot make the
sun of liberty stand still, nor stop the tide of civi-
lization.
And in connection with this all-absorbing
question, another remarkable analogous trait in
the conduct of the two Napoleons is involved, in
the intricate point which now agitates the political
and religious world, and keeps Italian unity in
check—the question of the temporal power of the
Pope. The clergy of the Romish church, in
every degree of the hierarchy, have always been
a thorn in the side of French sovereigns, and
many of the latter have powerfully repelled the
interdicts and anathemas of Popes, Cardinals, and
Bishops. The style in which the first Napoleon
treated the contemporary Pius of his reign is
fresh in the minds of all readers. The way in
Louis NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 383
which Napoleon III. is managing Pio Nono is
patent to the whole world this moment. The
trenchant settlement of the former difficulties has
been a warning, rather than an example, for the
arrangement of those of to-day. Festina lente is
the appropriate motto of the present dispute.
But the various parties concerned have reached
le commencement de la fin. Leaving the tangled
knot to be untied by the Roman Catholic con-
claves, in which Protestant states can scarcely be
entitled to intrude, though England (as well as
Russia) did formerly do so, and effectually, in the
interest of Pius VII., it is far more important to us
to see, and to believe, that the example of English
character and conduct possesses an irresistible
influence over Louis Napoleon. The best result
of it is the certainty that he must, step by step,
fall into constitutional paths, and become, in due
and not distant course, the liberator of his people
from the yoke they put into his hands to place on
their own necks. He is already launched on the
current that will carry him and them to free in-
stitutions, free trade, commercial intercourse,
representative government, and limited monarchy.
It is not possible that such a people as the French,
after seventy years of struggle, can remain long
enslaved. A thousand of despotism ended in a
wild burst of liberty, so terrible in its shock
3S4. BEATEN PATH S.
that its very memory frightened the sons of those
who achieved it. But, on the other hand, eigh-
teen years of constitutional freedom under Louis
Philippe taught those sons the value of what
they possessed, and which they only yielded up
for awhile, to save themselves from the chance of
imagined republican horrors, but which they will
surely reclaim from him to whom they entrusted
it for safe keeping, and who is this very moment
preparing to give back the pledge.
There is one feature in Louis Napoleon's career
which has a different expression in my eyes from
that ascribed to it by observers in general. I
allude to his two attempts to invade France, and
seize by force what he considered his inheritance.
There was, do doubt, something rash and roman-
tic in the affairs of Strasbourg and Boulogne.
They seemed but feeble parodies on the heroic
return from Elba. They failed; and that was
enough to stamp them as absurd, wrong, cri-
minal, no matter what. Success, we all know, con-
stitutes right, wisdom, virtue, no matter how.
Those who laughed at the tame eagle of Boulogne
could applaud the coup d'état at Paris. I con-
fess myself to be affected differently. I can cer-
tainly smile at the first, but even now I still
shudder at the latter. But Louis Napoleon, in
laying his schemes, and choosing his ground,
LOUIS NAPOLEON BON APARTE. 385
knew the people he had to deal with. They are
the most theatrical, but not the most dramatic
in the world. The mise en scène of a piece is to
them as important as the plot. Had the eagle
been lucky enough to make its perch on the
column, the coup de théâtre would have been as
much a grand succès as the coup d'état. But it
was those former failures that paved the way to
that subsequent success. By putting forward
his claim, and making two dashing efforts to sus-
tain it, the pretender kept himself and it alive in
the public mind. He saved himself from the crush-
ing fate of absence and obscurity; and, in his
very nothingness, he upheld his resolve to be-
come, one day, something, much more than the
world believed possible. Pluck and luck are the
main elements of military and political success.
The bravest man may fail in an attempt. The
most fortunate may want courage to profit by his
chance. If men are generally the creatures of
circumstances, they are sometimes the creators
of the circumstances that control them. Placed
in the world by a great regulating power, man is
the mainspring of the intricate works he keeps
in motion. No one was ever a more manifest
illustration of the fact than Louis Napoleon
Bonaparte. On his present height, he should
not be judged by the rules which apply to a
VOL. II. 2 C.
386 BEATEN PATHS.
lower level; neither should he be moved by the
dwarfed motives of inferior men. It is by prov-
ing himself really above them that he may ac-
quire his right to the title of greatness. That
does not mean alone elevation and strength, but
also largeness, expansion; and no man is great,
whatever be his power, unless his views are
broad and generous.
Whatever may be now working in the depths
of the Emperor Napoleon's inscrutable mind,
whether the random speculations I have ventured
to express turn out to be well or ill founded,
England should be on her guard, ready for what-
ever may come, and prepared for all comers.
No safe reliance can be placed on mere profes-
sions of faith, or probabilities of character, in him
who swore to a constitution only to overthrow
it; who makes war for an idea, or peace from
a caprice; who proclaims enfranchisement while
he plots annexations. But let the worst come
to the worst; and if, blinded by the destiny he
is said to invoke, he should dare to make war
against England without provocation or just
cause, what may be expected as the consequence?
What has England to fear for the issue? She
can look back with pride, and forward with con-
fidence. When she lost her transatlantic world,
she turned it by her wisdom into a source of un-
LOUIS NAPOLEON BON A.P.A.R.T.E. 3S7
told wealth. Pouring into it from year to year
the flood of her overabundant population, and
with it arts, letters, science, and commerce, she
‘has made it pay back her loss a thousandfold.
In Europe, India, and China, plunging into war
after war, not always with a scrupulous sense of
right, but always with prodigious vigour, like a
hunter bounding on his prey, and always coming
out victorious. What has England to fear in a
just and sacred cause, with her courage, wealth,
and prestige? Even if the overpowering numbers
of her menacing ally should assail her, would
she have no auxiliary resources? Would Europe
look on unmoved at her defeat P. The instinct of
personal safety would surely tell the nations that
England’s fall and France's triumph would entail
their own inevitable ruin, one by one. They
would league together in the common cause. A
new alliance, holier than the last that impiously
assumed the name, would assail and overwhelm
offending France, and shatter its would-be demi-
god to pieces. But even if that great confederacy
of thrones and peoples were defeated, still Eng-
land, holding in her hand, like hounds in leash,
Socialism, Communism, and Republicanism, would
surely let all loose on the brute despotism she
fought against, trusting to Providence for the
result. That would be, no doubt, anarchy. But
38S BEATEN PATH S.
what of that, in such a case of supreme necessity ?
God made a world out of chaos; and he has
power to form a new political creation if he sees
good. If not, let mankind follow its destiny,
which no man can foresee, but which HE will
regulate, as it ought to be and as it musf.
'I' H | EN I} .
Jo HN EDWARD TA Y Lo R, PRINTER,
LITTL I. QUEEN ST R I, ET, LIN COLN's I N N i I º 1, 1)s.
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