 | CHAPTER I.
LONDON. The prose works of N.P. Willis |  |
1. CHAPTER I.
LONDON.
There is an inborn and inbred distrust of “foreigners”
in England—continental foreigners, I should say
—which keeps the current of French and Italian society
as distinct amid the sea of London, as the blue
Rhone in Lake Leman. The word “foreigner,” in
England, conveys exclusively the idea of a dark-complexioned
and whiskered individual, in a frogged coat
and distressed circumstances; and to introduce a
smooth-cheeked, plainly-dressed, quiet-looking person
by that name, would strike any circle of ladies and
gentlemen as a palpable misnomer. The violent and
unhappy contrast between the Parisian's mode of life
in London and in Paris, makes it very certain that few
of those bien nés et convenablement riches will live in
London for pleasure; and then the flood of political
émigrés, for the last half century, has monopolised
hair-dressing, &c., &c., to such a degree, that the
word Frenchman is synonymous in English ears with
barber and dancing-master. If a dark gentleman,
wearing either whisker or mustache, chance of offend
John Bull in the street, the first opprobrious language
he hears—the strongest that occurs to the fellow's
mind—is, “Get out, you — Frenchman!”
All this, malgré the rage for foreign lions in London
society. A well-introduced foreigner gets easily into
this, and while he keeps his cabriolet and confines
himself to frequenting soirées and accepting invitations
to dine, he will never suspect that he is not on an
equal footing with any “milor” in London. If he
wishes to be disenchanted, he has only to change his
lodgings from Long's to Great Russell street; or (bitterer
and readier trial) to propose marriage to the
honorable Augusta or Lady Fanny.
Everybody who knows the society of Paris, knows
something of a handsome and very elegant young
baron of the Faubourg St. Germain, who, with small
fortune, very great taste, and greater credit, contrived
to go on very swimmingly as an adorable roué and
vaurien till he was hard upon twenty-five. At the
first crisis in his affairs, the ladies, who hold all the
politics in their laps, got him appointed consul to
Algiers, or minister to Venezuela, and with this pretty
pretext for selling his horses and dressing-gowns, these
cherished articles brought twice their original value,
saved his loyauté, and set him up in fans and monkeys
at his place of exile. A year of this was enough for
the darling of Paris, and not more than a day before
his desolate loves would have ceased to mourn for
him, he galloped into his hotel with a new fashion of
whiskers, a black female slave, and the most delicious
histories of his adventures during the ages he had
been exiled. Down to the earth and their previous
obscurity dropped the rivals who were just beginning
to usurp his glories. A new stud, an indescribable
vehicle, a suite of rooms à l'Africaine, and a mystery,
preserved at some expense, about his negress, kept all
Paris, including his new creditors, in admiring astonishment
not the last or least fervent, were the fair-haired
and glowing beauties who assemble at the levées of
their ambassador in the Rue St. Honoré, and upon
whom le beau Adolphe had looked as pretty savages,
whose frightful toilets and horrid French accent
might be tolerated one evening in the week—vu le
souper!
Eclipses will arrive as calculated by insignificant
astronomers, however, and debts will become due as
presumed by vulgar tradesmen. Le beau Adolphe
began to see another crisis, and betook himself to his
old advisers, who were desolés to the last degree; but
there was a new government, and the blood of the
Faubourg was at a discount. No embassies were to
be had for nothing. With a deep sigh, and a gentle
tone, to spare his feelings as much as possible, his
friend ventures to suggest to him that it will be necessary
to sacrifice himself.
“Ahi! mais comment!”
“Marry one of these bête Anglaises, who drink
you up with their great blue eyes, and are made of
gold!”
Adolphe buried his face in his gold-fringed oriental
pocket-handkerchief; but when the first agony was
passed, his resolution was taken, and he determined to
go to England. The first beautiful creature he should
see, whose funds were enormous and well-invested,
should bear away from all the love, rank, and poverty
of France, the perfumed hand he looked upon.
A flourishing letter, written in a small, cramped
hand, but with a seal on whose breadth of wax and
blazon all the united heraldry of France was interwoven,
arrived, through the ambassador's despatch
box, to the address of Miladi —, Belgrave square,
announcing, in full, that le beau Adolphe was coming
to London to marry the richest heiress in good society;
and as Paris could not spare him more than a
week, he wished those who had daughters to marry,
answering the description, to be bien prévenus of his
visit and errand. With the letter came a compend of
his genealogy, from the man who spoke French in the
confusion of Babel to le dit Baron Adolphe.
To London came the valet of le beau baron, two
days before his master, bringing his slippers and dressing-gown
to be aired after their sea-voyage across the
channel. To London followed the irresistible youth,
cursing, in the politest French, the necessity which
subtracted a week from a life measured with such
“diamond sparks” as his own in Paris. He sat himself
down in his hotel, sent his man Porphyre with his
card to every noble and rich house, whose barbarian
tenants he had ever seen in the Champs Elysées, and
waited the result. Invitations from fair ladies, who
remembered him as the man the French belles were
mad about, and from literary ladies, who wanted his
whiskers and black eyes to give their soirées the necessary
foreign complexion, flowed in on all sides, and
Monsieur Adolphe selected his most mignon cane and
his happiest design in a stocking, and “rendered himself”
through the rain like a martyr.
No offers of marriage the first evening!
None the second!!
None the third!!!
Le beau Adolphe began to think either that English
papas did not propose their daughters to people as in
France; or, perhaps, that the lady whom he had commissioned
to circulate his wishes had not sufficiently
advertised him. She had, however.
He took advice, and found it would be necessary to
take the first step himself. This was disagreeable,
and he said to himself, “Le jeu ne vaut pas le chandelle;”
but his youth was passing, and his English
fortune was at interest.
He went to Almack's and proposed to the first
authenticated fortune that accepted his hand for a
waltz. The young lady first laughed, and then told
her mother, who told her son, who thought it an insult,
and called out le beau Adolphe, very much to the
astonishment of himself and Porphyre. The thing
was explained, and the baron looked about the next
day for one pas si bête. Found a young lady with
half a million sterling, proposed in a morning call,
and was obliged to ring for assistance, his intended
having gone into convulsions with laughing at him.
The story by this time had got pretty well distributed
through the different strata of London society; and
when le beau Adolphe convinced that he would not
succeed with the noble heiresses of Belgrave square,
condescended, in his extremity, to send his heart by
his valet to a rich little vulgarian, who “never had a
grandfather,” and lived in Harley street, he narrowly
escaped being prosecuted for a nuisance, and, Paris
being now in the possession of the enemy, he buried
his sorrows in Belgium. After a short exile his friends
procured him a vice-consulate in some port in the
north sea, and there probably at this moment he sorrowfully
vegetates.
This is not a story founded upon fact, but literally
true. Many of the circumstances came under my own
observation; and the whole thus affords a laughable
example of the esteem in which what an English fox-hunter
would call a “trashy Frenchman” is held in
England, as well as of the travestie produced by transplanting
the usages of one country to another.
Ridiculous as any intimate mixture of English and
French ideas and persons seems to be in London, the
foreign society of itself in that capital is exceedingly
spiritual and agreeable. The various European embassies
and their attachés, with their distinguished
travellers, from their several countries, accidentally
belonging to each; the French and Italians, married
to English noblemen and gentry, and living in London,
and the English themselves, who have become
cosmopolite by residence in other countries, form a
very large society in which mix, on perfectly equal
terms, the first singers of the opera, and foreign musicians
and artists generally. This last circumstance
gives a peculiar charm to these reunions, though it
imparts a pride and haughty bearing to the prima
donna and her fraternity, which is, at least, sometimes
very inconvenient to themselves. The remark recalls
to my mind a scene I once witnessed in London,
which will illustrate the feeling better than an essay
upon it.
I was at one of those private concerts given at an
enormous expense during the opera season, at which
“assisted” Julia Grisi, Rubini, Lablache, Tamburini,
and Ivanhoff. Grisi came in the carriage of a foreign
lady of rank, who had dined with her, and she walked
into the room looking like an empress. She was
dressed in the plainest white, with her glossy hair put
smooth from her brow, and a single white japonica
dropped over one of her temples. The lady who
brought her chaperoned her during the evening, as if
she had been her daughter, and under the excitement
of her own table and the kindness of her friends, she
sung with a rapture and a freshet of glory (if one may
borrow a word from the Mississippi) which set all
hearts on fire. She surpassed her most applauded
hour on the stage—for it was worth her while. The
audience was composed, almost exclusively, of those
who are not only cultivated judges, but who sometimes
repay delight with a present of diamonds.
Lablache shook the house to its foundations in his
turn; Rubini ran through his miraculous compass
with the ease, truth, and melody, for which his singing
is unsurpassed; Tamburini poured his rich and even
fulness on the ear, and Russian Ivanhoff, the one
southern singing-bird who has come out of the north,
wire-drew his fine and spiritual notes, till they who had
been flushed, and tearful, and silent, when the others
of exclamation and surprise.
The concert was over by twelve, the gold and silver
paper bills of the performance were turned into fans, and
every one was waiting till supper should be announced
—the prima donna still sitting by her friend, but surrounded
by foreign attachés, and in the highest elation
at her own success. The doors of an inner suite of
rooms were thrown open at last, and Grisi's cordon of
admirers prepared to follow her in and wait on her at
supper. At this moment, one of the powdered menials
of the house stepped up and informed her very respectfully
that supper was prepared in a separate room for
the singers!
Medea, in her most tragic hour, never stood so
absolutely the picture of hate as did Grisi for a single
instant, in the centre of that aristocratic crowd. Her
chest swelled and rose, her lips closed over her snowy
teeth, and compressed till the blood left them, and, for
myself, I looked unconsciously to see where she would
strike. I knew, then, that there was more than fancy
—there was nature and capability of the real—in the
imaginary passions she plays so powerfully. A laugh
of extreme amusement at the scene from the highborn
woman who had accompanied her, suddenly
turned her humor, and she stopped in the midst of a
muttering of Italian, in which I could distinguish
only the terminations, and, with a sort of theatrical
quickness of transition, joined heartily in her mirth.
It was immediately proposed by this lady, however,
that herself and their particular circle should join the
insulted prima donna at the lower table, and they succeeded
by this manœuvre in retaining Rubini and the
others, who were leaving the house in a most unequivocal
Italian fury.
I had been fortunate enough to be included in the
invitation, and, with one or two foreign diplomatic
men, I followed Grisi and her amused friend to a
small room on a lower floor, that seemed to be the
housekeeper's parlor. Here supper was set for six
(including the man who had played the piano), and
on the side-table stood every variety of wine and fruit,
and there was nothing in the supper, at least, to make
us regret the table we had left. With a most imperative
gesture and rather an amusing attempt at
English, Grisi ordered the servants out of the room,
and locked the door, and from that moment the conversation
commenced and continued in their own
musical, passionate, and energetic Italian. My long
residence in that country had made me at home in it;
every one present spoke it fluently; and I had an
opportunity I might never have again, of seeing with
what abandonment these children of the sun throw
aside rank and distinction (yet without forgetting it),
and join with those who are their superiors in every
circumstance of life, in the gayeties of a chance hour.
Out of their own country these singers would probably
acknowledge no higher rank than that of the kind
and gifted lady who was their guest; yet, with the
briefest apology at finding the room too cold after the
heat of the concert, they put on their cloaks and hats
as a safeguard to their lungs (more valuable to them
than to others); and as most of the cloaks were the
worse for travel, and the hats opera-hats with two
corners, the grotesque contrast with the diamonds of
one lady, and the radiant beauty of the other, may
easily be imagined.
Singing should be hungry work, by the knife and
fork they played; and between the excavations of
truffle pies, and the bumpers of champagne and burgundy,
the words were few. Lablache appeared to be
an established droll, and every syllable he found time
to utter was received with the most unbounded laughter.
Rubini could not recover from the slight he conceived
put upon him and his profession by the separate table;
and he continually reminded Grisi, who by this time
had quite recovered her good humor, that, the night
before, supping at Devonshire house, the duke of
Wellington had held her gloves on one side, while his
grace, their host attended to her on the other.
“E vero!” said Ivanhoff, with a look of modest admiration
at the prima donna.
“E vero, e bravo!” cried Tamburini, with his sepulchral-talking
tone, much deeper than his singing.
“Si, si, si, bravo!” echoed all the company; and
the haughty and happy actress nodded all round with
a radiant smile, and repeated, in her silver tones,
“Grazie! cari amici! grazie!”
As the servants had been turned out, the removalof
the first course was managed in pic-nic fashion;
and when the fruit and fresh bottles of wine were set
upon the table by the attachés, and younger gentlemen,
the health of the princess who honored them by
her presence was proposed in that language, which, it
seems to me, is more capable than all others of expressing
affectionate and respectful devotion. All uncovered
and stood up, and Grisi, with tears in her eyes,
kissed the hand of her benefactress and friend, and
drank her health in silence.
It is a polite and common accomplishment in Italy
to improvise in verse, and the lady I speak of is well
known among her immediate friends for a singular
facility in this beautiful art. She reflected a moment
or two with the moisture in her eyes, and then commenced,
low and soft, a poem, of which it would be
difficult, nay impossible, to convey, in English, an
idea of its music and beauty. It took us back to Italy,
to its heavenly climate, its glorious arts, its beauty and
its ruins, and concluded with a line of which I remember
the sentiment to have been, “out of Italy every
land is exile!”
The glasses were raised as she ceased, and every
one repeated after her, “Fuori d'Italia tutto e esilio!”
“Ma!” cried out the fat Lablache, holding up his
glass of champagne, and looking through it with one
eye, “siamo ben esiliati qua!” and, with a word of
drollery, the party recovered its gayer tone, and the
humor and wit flowed on brilliantly as before.
The house had long been still, and the last carriage
belonging to the company above stairs had rolled from
the door, when Grisi suddenly remembered a bird that
she had lately bought, of which she proceeded to give
us a description, that probably penetrated to every
corner of the silent mansion. It was a mocking-bird,
that had been kept two years in the opera-house, and
between rehearsal and performance had learned parts
of everything it had overheard. It was the property
of the woman who took care of the wardrobes. Grisi
had accidentally seen it, and immediately purchased
it for two guineas. How much of embellishment there
was in her imitations of her treasure I do not know;
but certainly the whole power of her wondrous voice,
passion, and knowledge of music, seemed drunk up at
once in the wild, various, difficult, and rapid mixture
of the capricious melody she undertook. First came,
without the passage which it usually terminates, the
long, throat-down, gurgling, water-toned trill, in which
Rubini (but for the bird and its mistress, it seemed to
me) would have been inimitable: then, right upon it,
as if it were the beginning of a bar, and in the most
unbreathing continuity, followed a brilliant passage
from the Barber of Seville, run into the passionate
prayer of Anna Bolena in her madness, and followed
by the air of “Suoni la tromba intrepida,” the tremendous
duet in the Puritani, between Tamburini and
Lablache. Up to the sky, and down to the earth
again—away with a note of the wildest gladness, and
back upon a note of the most touching melancholy—
if the bird but half equals the imitation of his mistress,
he were worth the jewel in a sultan's turban.
“Giulia!” “Giulietta!” “Giuliettina!” cried out
one and another, as she ceased, expressing in their
by her incomparable execution.
The stillness of the house in the occasional pauses
of conversation reminded the gay party, at last, that it
was wearing late. The door was unlocked, and the
half-dozen sleepy footmen hanging about the hall were
despatched for the cloaks and carriages; the drowsy
porter was roused from his deep leathern dormeuse,
and opened the door—and broad upon the street lay
the cold gray light of a summer's morning. I declined
an offer to be set down by a friend's cab, and strolled
off to Hyde Park to surprise myself with a sunrise;
balancing the silent rebuke in the fresh and healthy
countenances of early laborers going to their toil,
against the effervescence of a champagne hour, which,
since such come so rarely, may come, for me, with
what untimeliness they please.
| CHAPTER I.
LONDON. The prose works of N.P. Willis | |