University of Virginia Library

115. LETTER CXV.

London.—From the top of Shooter's Hill we got
our first view of London—an indistinct, architectural
mass, extending all round to the horizon, and half enveloped
in a dim and lurid smoke. “That is St.
Paul's—there is Westminster Abbey!—there is the
Tower of London!” What directions were these to
follow for the first time with the eye!

From Blackheath (seven or eight miles from the
centre of London), the beautiful hedges disappeared,
and it was one continued mass of buildings. The
houses were amazingly small, a kind of thing that
would do for an object in an imitation perspective park,
but the soul of neatness pervaded them. Trellises
were nailed between the little windows, roses quite
overshadowed the low doors, a painted fence enclosed
the hand's breadth of grass-plot, and very, oh, very
sweet faces bent over lapfuls of work beneath the snowy
and looped-up curtains. It was all home-like and
amiable. There was an affectionateness in the mere
outside of every one of them.

After crossing Waterloo Bridge, it was busy work
for the eyes. The brilliant shops, the dense crowds
of people, the absorbed air of every passenger, the
lovely women, the cries, the flying vehicles of every
description, passing with the most daugerous speed—
accustomed as I am to large cities, it quite made me
dizzy. We got into a “jarvey” at the coach-office,
and in half an hour I was in comfortable quarters,
with windows looking down St. James street, and the
most agreeable leaf of my life to turn over. “Great
emotions interfere little with the mechanical operations

of life,” however, and I dressed and dined, though it
was my first hour in London.

I was sitting in the little parlor alone over a fried
sole and a mutton cutlet, when the waiter came in,
and pleading the crowded state of the hotel, asked my
permission to spread the other side of the table for a
clergyman. I have a kindly preference for the cloth,
and made not the slightest objection. Enter a fat
man, with top-boots and a hunting-whip, rosy as Bacchus,
and excessively out of breath with mounting
one flight of stairs. Beefsteak and potatoes, a pot of
porter, and a bottle of sherry followed close on his
heels. With a single apology for the intrusion, the
reverend gentleman fell to, and we ate and drank for a
while in true English silence.

“From Oxford, sir, I presume,” he said at last,
pushing back his plate, with an air of satisfaction.

“No, I had never the pleasure of seeing Oxford.”

“R—e—ally! may I take a glass of wine with you,
sir?”

We got on swimmingly. He would not believe I
had never been in England till the day before, but his
cordiality was no colder for that. We exchanged port
and sherry, and a most amicable understanding found
its way down with the wine. Our table was near the
window, and a great crowd began to collect at the corner
of St. James' street. It was the king's birth-day,
and the people were thronging to see the nobility come
in state from the royal levee. The show was less
splendid than the same thing in Rome or Vienna, but
it excited far more of my admiration. Gaudiness and
tinsel were exchanged for plain richness and perfect
fitness in the carriages and harness, while the horses
were incomparably finer. My friend pointed out to
me the different liveries as they turned the corner into
Piccadilly, the duke of Wellington's among others.
I looked hard to see his grace; but the two pale and
beautiful faces on the back seat, carried nothing like
the military nose on the handles of the umbrellas.

The annual procession of mail-coaches followed,
and it was hardly less brilliant. The drivers and
guard in their bright red and gold uniforms, the admirable
horses driven so beautifully, the neat harness,
the exactness with which the room of each horse was
calculated, and the small space in which he worked,
and the compactness and contrivance of the coaches,
formed altogether one of the most interesting spectacles
I have ever seen. My friend, the clergyman, with
whom I had walked out to see them pass, criticised
the different teams con amore, but in language which
I did not always understand. I asked him once for
an explanation; but he looked rather grave, and said
something about “gammon,” evidently quite sure that
my ignorance of London was a mere quiz.

We walked down Piccadilly, and turned into, beyond
all comparison, the most handsome street I ever
saw. The Toledo of Naples, the Corso of Rome, the
Kohl-market of Vienna, the Rue de la Paix and Boulevards
of Paris, have each impressed me strongly
with their magnificence, but they are really nothing to
Regent-street. I had merely time to get a glance at
it before dark; but for breadth and convenience, for
the elegance and variety of the buildings, though all
of the same scale and material, and for the brilliancy
and expensiveness of the shops, it seemed to me quite
absurd to compare it with anything between New
York and Constantinople—Broadway and the Hippodrome
included.

It is the custom for the king's tradesmen to illuminate
their shops on his majesty's birth-night, and the
principal streets on our return were in a blaze of light.
The crowd was immense. None but the lower order
seemed abroad, and I can not describe to you the effect
on my feelings on hearing my language spoken by
every man, woman, and child, about me. It seemed a
completely foreign country in every other respect, dif
ferent from what I had imagined, different from my
own and all that I had seen, and coming to it last, it
seemed to me the farthest off and strangest country
of all—and yet the little sweep, who went laughing
through the crowd, spoke a language that I had heard
attempted in vain by thousands of educated people,
and that I had grown to consider next to unattainable
by others, and almost useless to myself. Still, it did
not make me feel at home. Everything else about me
was too new. It was like some mysterious change in
my own ears—a sudden power of comprehension,
such as a man might feel who was cured suddenly of
deafness. You can scarcely enter into my feelings
till you have had the changes of French, Italian, German,
Greek, Turkish, Illyrian, and the mixtures and
dialects of each, rung upon your hearing almost exclusively,
as I have for years. I wandered about as if I
were exercising some supernatural faculty in a dream.

A friend in Italy had kindly given me a letter to
Lady Blessington, and with a strong curiosity to see
this celebrated lady, I called on the second day after
my arrival in London. It was “deep i' the afternoon,”
but I had not yet learned the full meaning of
“town hours.” “Her ladyship had not come down
to breakfast.” I gave the letter and my address to the
powdered footman, and had scarce reached home when
a note arrived inviting me to call the same evening
at ten.

In a long library lined alternately with splendidly
bound books and mirrors, and with a deep window of
the breadth of the room, opening upon Hyde Park, I
found Lady Blessington alone. The picture to my
eye as the door opened was a very lovely one. A woman
of remarkable beauty half buried in a fauteuil of
yellow satin, reading by a magnificent lamp, suspended
from the centre of the arched ceiling; sofas,
couches, ottomans, and busts, arranged in rather a
crowded sumptuousness through the room; enamel
tables, covered with expensive and elegant trifles in
every corner, and a delicate white hand relieved on the
back of a book, to which the eye was attracted by the
blaze of its diamond rings. As the servant mentioned
my name, she rose and gave me her hand very cordially,
and a gentleman entering immediately after,
she presented me to her son-in-law, Count D'Orsay,
the well known Pelham of London, and certainly the
most splendid specimen of a man and a well-dressed
one that I had ever seen. Tea was brought in immediately,
and conversation went swimmingly on.

Her ladyship's inquiries were principally about
America, of which, from long absence I knew very
little. She was extremely curious to know the degrees
of reputation the present popular authors of
England enjoy among us, particularly Bulwer, Galt,
and D'Israeli (the author of Vivian Grey). “If you
will come to-morrow night,” she said, “you will see
Bulwer. I am delighted that he is popular in America.
He is envied and abused by all the literary men
of London, for nothing, I believe, except that he gets
five hundred pounds for his books and they fifty, and
knowing this, he chooses to assume a pride (some
people call it puppyism), which is only the armor of a
sensitive mind, afraid of a wound. He is to his friends
the most frank and gay creature in the world, and
open to boyishness with those who he thinks understand
and value him. He has a brother, Henry, who
is as clever as himself in a different vein, and is just
now publishing a book on the present state of France.
Bulwer's wife, you know, is one of the most beautiful
women in London, and his house is the resort of both
fashion and talent. He is just now hard at work on a
new book, the subject of which is the last days of
Pompeii. The hero is a Roman dandy, who wastes
himself in luxury, till this great catastrophe rouses
him and develops a character of the noblest capabilities.
Is Galt much liked?”

I answered to the best of my knowledge that he
was not. His life of Byron was a stab at the dead
body of the noble poet, which, for one, I never could
forgive, and his books were clever, but vulgar. He
was evidently not a gentleman in his mind. This was
the opinion I had formed in America, and I had never
heard another.

“I am sorry for it,” said Lady B., “for he is the
dearest and best old man in the world. I know him
well. He is just on the verge of the grave, but comes
to see me now and then, and if you had known how
shockingly Byron treated him, you would only wonder
at his sparing his memory so much.”

“Nil mortuis nisi bonum,” I thought would have
been a better course. If he had reason to dislike
him, he had better not have written since he was dead.

“Perhaps—perhaps. But Galt has been all his life
miserably poor, and lived by his books. That must
be his apology. Do you know the D'Israeli's in
America?”

I assured her ladyship that the “Curiosities of Literature,”
by the father, and “Vivian Grey and Contarini
Fleming,” by the son, were universally known.

“I am pleased at that, too, for I like them both.
D'Israeli the elder, came here with his son the other
night. It would have delighted you to see the old
man's pride in him. He is very fond of him, and as
he was going away, he patted him on the head, and
said to me, “take care of him, Lady Blessington, for
my sake. He is a clever lad, but he wants ballast. I
am glad he has the honor to know you, for you will
check him sometimes when I am away!” D'Israeli,
the elder, lives in the country, about twenty miles
from town, and seldom comes up to London. He is
a very plain old man in his manners, as plain as his
son is the reverse. D'Israeli, the younger, is quite
his own character of Vivian Grey, crowded with talent,
but very soigné of his curls, and a bit of a coxcomb.
There is no reverse about him, however, and
he is the only joyous dandy I ever saw.”

I asked if the account I had seen in some American
paper of a literary celebration at Canandaigua, and
the engraving of her ladyship's name with some others
upon a rock, was not a quiz.

“Oh, by no means. I was equally flattered and
amused by the whole affair. I have a great idea of
taking a trip to America to see it. Then the letter,
commencing `Most charming countess—for charming
you must be since you have written the conversations
of Lord Byron'—oh, it was quite delightful. I
have shown it to everybody. By the way, I receive a
great many letters from America, from people I never
heard of, written in the most extraordinary style of
compliment, apparently in perfectly good faith. I
hardly know what to make of them.”

I accounted for it by the perfect seclusion in which
great numbers of cultivated people live in our country,
who, having neither intrigue, nor fashion, nor
twenty other things to occupy their minds as in England,
depend entirely upon books, and consider an
author who has given them pleasure as a friend.
America, I said, has probably more literary enthusiasts
than any country in the world; and there are thousands
of romantic minds in the interior of New England,
who know perfectly every writer this side the
water, and hold them all in affectionate veneration,
scarcely conceivable by a sophisticated European. If
it were not for such readers, literature would be the
most thankless of vocations. I, for one, would never
write another line.

“And do you think these are the people who write
to me? If I could think so, I should be exceedingly
happy. People in England are refined down to such
heartlessness—criticism, private and public, is so interested
and so cold, that it is really delightful to know
there is a more generous tribunal. Indeed I think all
our authors now are beginning to write for America.
We think already a great deal of your praise or
censure.”

I asked if her ladyship had known many Americans.

“Not in London, but a great many abroad. I was
with Lord Blessington in his yacht at Naples, when
the American fleet was lying there, eight or ten years
ago, and we were constantly on board your ships. I
knew Commodore Creighton and Captain Deacon extremely
well, and liked them particularly. They
were with us, either on board the yacht or the frigate
every evening, and I remember very well the bands
playing always `God save the King' as we went up
the side. Count D'Orsay here, who spoke very little
English at that time, had a great passion for Yankee
Doodle, and it was always played at his request.”

The count, who still speaks the language with a
very slight accent, but with a choice of words that
shows him to be a man of uncommon tact and elegance
of mind, inquired after several of the officers,
whom I have not the pleasure of knowing. He seemed
to remember his visits to the frigate with great
pleasure. The conversation, after running upon a variety
of topics, which I could not with propriety put
into a letter for the public eye, turned very naturally
upon Byron. I had frequently seen the Countess
Guiccioli on the continent, and I asked Lady Blessington
if she knew her.

“No. We were at Pisa when they were living together,
but though Lord Blessington had the greatest
curiosity to see her, Byron would never permit it.
`She has a red head of her own,' said he, `and don't
like to show it.' Byron treated the poor creature
dreadfully ill. She feared more than she loved him.”

She had told me the same thing herself in Italy.

It would be impossible, of course, to make a full
and fair record of a conversation of some hours. I
have only noted one or two topics which I thought
most likely to interest an American reader. During
all this long visit, however, my eyes were very busy in
finishing for memory a portrait of the celebrated and
beautiful woman before me.

The portrait of Lady Blessington in the Book of
Beauty is not unlike her, but it is still an unfavorable
likeness. A picture by Sir Thomas Lawrence hung
opposite me, taken, perhaps, at the age of eighteen,
which is more like her, and as captivating a representation
of a just matured woman, full of loveliness and
love, the kind of creature with whose divine sweetness
the gazer's heart aches, as ever was drawn in the
painter's most inspired hour. The original is now
(she confessed it very frankly) forty. She looks
something on the sunny side of thirty. Her person
is full, but preserves all the fineness of an admirable
shape; her foot is not crowded in a satin slipper, for
which a Cinderella might long be looked for in vain,
and her complexion (an unusually fair skin, with very
dark hair and eyebrows), is of even a girlish delicacy
and freshness. Her dress of blue satin (if I am describing
her like a milliner, it is because I have here
and there a reader of the Mirror in my eye who will
be amused by it), was cut low and folded across her
bosom, in a way to show to advantage the round and
sculpture-like curve and whiteness of a pair of exquisite
shoulders, while her hair dressed close to her
head, and parted simply on her forehead with a rich
ferronier of turquoise, enveloped in clear outline a
head with which it would be difficult to find a fault.
Her features are regular, and her mouth, the most expressive
of them, has a ripe fulness and freedom of
play, peculiar to the Irish physiognomy, and expressive
of the most unsuspicious good humor. Add to
all this a voice merry and sad by turns, but always musical,
and manners of the most unpretending elegance,
yet even more remarkable for their winning kindness,

and you have the most prominent traits of one of the
most lovely and fascinating women I have ever seen.
Remembering her talents and her rank, and the unenvying
admiration she receives from the world of
fashion and genius, it would be difficult to reconcile
her lot to the “doctrine of compensation.”

There is one remark I may as well make here, with
regard to the personal descriptions and anecdotes with
which my letters from England will of course be filled.
It is quite a different thing from publishing such
letters in London. America is much farther off from
England than England from America. You in New
York read the periodicals of this country, and know
everything that is done or written here, as if you lived
within the sound of Bow-bell. The English, however,
just know of our existence, and if they get a
general idea twice a year of our progress in politics,
they are comparatively well informed. Our periodical
literature is never even heard of. Of course,
there can be no offence to the individuals themselves
in anything which a visiter could write, calculated to
convey an idea of the person or manners of distinguished
people to the American public. I mention
it lest, at first thought, I might seem to have abused
the hospitality or frankness of those on whom letters
of introduction have given me claims for civility.