University of Virginia Library

117. LETTER CXVII.

I have just returned from Ascot races. Ascot
Heath, on which the course is laid out, is a high platform
of land, beautifully situated on a hill above
Windsor Castle, about twenty-five miles from London.
I went down with a party of gentlemen in the
morning and returned at evening, doing the distance
with relays of horses in something less than three
hours. This, one would think, is very fair speed, but
we were passed continually by the “bloods” of the
road, in comparison with whom we seemed getting on
rather at a snail's pace.

The scenery on the way was truly English—one
series of finished landscapes, of every variety of
combination. Lawns, fancy-cottages, manor-houses,
groves, roses and flower-gardens, make up England.
It surfeits the eye at last. You could not drop a poet
out of the clouds upon any part of it I have seen,
where, within five minutes' walk, he would not find
himself in Paradise.

We flew past Virginia Water and through the sunflecked
shades of Windsor Park, with the speed of the
wind. On reaching the Heath, we dashed out of the
road, and cutting through fern and brier, our experienced
whip put his wheels on the rim of the course,
as near the stands as some thousands of carriages

arrived before us would permit, and then, cautioning
us to take the bearings of our position, least we
should lose him after the race, he took off his horses,
and left us to choose our own places.

A thousand red and yellow flags were flying from as
many snowy tents in the midst of the green heath;
ballad-signers and bands of music were amusing their
little audiences in every direction; splendid markees
covering gambling-tables, surrounded the winning-post;
groups of country people were busy in every
bush, eating and singing, and the great stands were
piled with row upon row of human heads waiting
anxiously for the exhilarating contest.

Soon after we arrived, the king and royal family
drove up the course with twenty carriages, and scores
of postillions and outriders in red and gold, flying over
the turf as majesty flies in no other country; and,
immediately after, the bell rang to clear the course
for the race. Such horses! The earth seemed to
fling them off as they touched it. The lean jockeys,
in their party-colored caps and jackets, rode the fine-limbed,
slender creatures up and down together, and
then returning to the starting-post, off they shot like
so many arrows from the bow.

Whiz! you could tell neither color nor shape as
they passed across the eye. Their swiftness was incredible.
A horse of Lord Chesterfield's was rather
the favorite; and for the sake of his great-grandfather,
I had backed him with my small wager.
“Glaucus is losing,” said some one on the top of a
carriage above me, but round they swept again, and I
could just see that one glorious creature was doubling
the leaps of every other horse, and in a moment
Glaucus and Lord Chesterfield had won.

The course between the races is a promenade of
some thousands of the best-dressed people in England,
I thought I had never seen so many handsome
men and women, but particularly men. The nobility
of this country, unlike every other, is by far the manliest
and finest looking class of its population. The
contadini of Rome, the lazzaroni of Naples, the paysans
of France, are incomparably more handsome
than their superiors in rank, but it is strikingly different
here. A set of more elegant and well-proportioned
men than those pointed out to me by my
friends as the noblemen on the course, I never saw,
except only in Greece. The Albanians are seraphs
to look at.

Excitement is hungry, and after the first race our
party produced their baskets and bottles, and spreading
out the cold pie and champaign upon the grass,
between the wheels of the carriages, we drank Lord
Chesterfield's health and ate for our own, in an al
fresco style worthy of Italy. Two veritable Bohemians,
brown, black-eyed gipsies, the models of those
I had seen in their wicker tents in Asia, profited by
the liberality of the hour, and came in for an upper
crust to a pigeon pie, that, to tell the truth, they
seemed to appreciate.

Race followed race, but I am not a contributor to
the Sporting Magazine, and could not give you their
merits in comprehensible terms if I were.

In one of the intervals, I walked under the king's
stand, and saw her majesty, the queen, and the young
Princess Victoria, very distinctly. They were listening
to a ballad-singer, and leaning over the front of
the box with an amused attention, quite as sincere,
apparently, as any beggar's in the ring. The queen
is the plainest woman in her dominions, beyond a
doubt. The princess is much better-looking than the
pictures of her in the shops, and, for the heir to such
a crown as that of England, quite unnecessarily pretty
and interesting. She will be sold, poor thing—bartered
away by those great dealers in royal hearts,
whose grand calculations will not be much consolation
to her if she happens to have a taste of her own.

[The following sketch was written a short time previous
to the death of Charles Lamb.]

Invited to breakfast with a gentleman in the temple to
meet Charles Lamb and his sister—“Elia and Bridget
Elia.” I never in my life had an invitation more to
my taste. The essays of Elia are certainly the most
charming things in the world, and it has been for the
last ten years my highest compliment to the literary
taste of a friend to present him with a copy. Who
has not smiled over the humorous description of Mrs.
Battle? Who that has read Elia would not give
more to see him than all the other authors of his time
put together?

Our host was rather a character. I had brought a
letter of introduction to him from Walter Savage
Landor, the author of Imaginary Conversations, living
at Florence, with a request that he would put me in a
way of seeing one or two men about whom I had a
curiosity, Lamb more particularly. I could not have
been recommended to a better person. Mr. R. is a
gentleman who everybody says, should have been an
author, but who never wrote a book. He is a profound
German scholar, has travelled much, is the intimate
friend of Southey, Coleridge, and Lamb, has
breakfasted with Goëthe, travelled with Wordsworth
through France and Italy, and spends part of every
summer with him, and knows everything and everybody
that is distinguished—in short, is, in his bachelor's
chambers in the temple, the friendly nucleus of
a great part of the talent of England.

I arrived a half hour before Lamb, and had time to
learn some of his peculiarities. He lives a little out
of London, and is very much of an invalid. Some
family circumstances have tended to depress him very
much of late years, and unless excited by convivial
intercourse, he scarce shows a trace of what he was.
He was very much pleased with the American reprint
of his Elia, though it contains several things which are
not his—written so in his style, however, that it is
scarce a wonder the editor should mistake them. If
I remember right, they were “Valentine's Day,” the
“Nuns of Caverswell,” and “Twelfth Night.” He
is excessively given to mystifying his friends, and is
never so delighted as when he has persuaded some
one into the belief of one of his grave inventions. His
amusing biographical sketch of Liston was in this vein,
and there was no doubt in anybody's mind that it was
authentic, and written in perfectly good faith. Liston
was highly enraged with it, and Lamb was delighted
in proportion.

There was a rap at the door at last, and enter a
gentleman in black small-clothes and gaiters, short
and very slight in his person, his head set on his
shoulders with a thoughtful, forward bent, his hair just
sprinkled with gray, a beautiful deepset eye, aquiline
nose, and a very indescribable mouth. Whether
it expressed most humor or feeling, good nature
or a kind of whimsical peevishness, or twenty other
things which passed over it by turns, I can not in the
least be certain.

His sister, whose literary reputation is associated
very closely with her brother's, and who, as the
original of “Bridget Elia,” is a kind of object for
literary affection, came in after him. She is a small,
bent figure, evidently a victim to illness, and hears
with difficulty. Her face has been, I should think, a
fine and handsome one, and her bright gray eye is still
full of intelligence and fire. They both seemed quite
at home in our friend's chambers, and as there was to
be no one else, we immediately drew round the breakfast
table. I had set a large arm chair for Miss Lamb.
“Don't take it, Mary,” said Lamb, pulling it away
from her very gravely, “it appears as if you were going
to have a tooth drawn.”

The conversation was very local. Our host and his

guest had not met for some weeks, and they had a
great deal to say of their mutual friends. Perhaps in
this way, however, I saw more of the author, for his
manner of speaking of them and the quaint humor
with which he complained of one, and spoke well of
another, was so in the vein of his inimitable writings,
that I could have fancied myself listening to an audible
composition of a new Elia. Nothing could be more
delightful than the kindness and affection between the
brother and the sister, though Lamb was continually
taking advantage of her deafness to mystify her with
the most singular gravity upon every topic that was
started. “Poor Mary!” said he, “she hears all of an
epigram but the point.” “What are you saying of
me, Charles?” she asked. “Mr. Willis,” said he,
raising his voice, “admires your Confessions of a
Drunkard very much, and I was saying that it was no
merit of yours, that you understood the subject.” We
had been speaking of this admirable essay (which is
his own) half an hour before.

The conversation turned upon literature after awhile,
and our host, the templar, could not express himself
strongly enough in admiration of Webster's speeches,
which he said were exciting the greatest attention
among the politicians and lawyers of England. Lamb
said, “I don't know much of American authors.
Mary, there, devours Cooper's novels with a ravenous
appetite, with which I have no sympathy. The only
American book I ever read twice, was the `Journal
of Edward Woolman,' a quaker preacher and tailor,
whose character is one of the finest I ever met with.
He tells a story or two about negro slaves, that brought
the tears into my eyes. I can read no prose now,
though Hazlitt sometimes, to be sure—but then Hazlitt
is worth all modern prose writers put together.”

Mr. R. spoke of buying a book of Lamb's a few
days before, and I mentioned my having bought a copy
of Elia the last day I was in America, to send as a
parting gift to one of the most lovely and talented
women in our country.

“What did you give for it?” said Lamb.

“About seven and sixpence.”

“Permit me to pay you that,” said he, and with the
utmost earnestness he counted out the money upon
the table.

“I never yet wrote anything that would sell,” he
continued. “I am the publisher's ruin. My last
poem won't sell a copy. Have you seen it, Mr.
Willis?”

I had not.

“It's only eighteen pence, and I'll give you sixpence
toward it;” and he described to me where I
should find it sticking up in a shop-window in the
Strand.

Lamb ate nothing, and complained in a querulous
tone of the veal pie. There was a kind of potted fish
(of which I forget the name at this moment) which he
had expected our friend would procure for him. He
inquired whether there was not a morsel left perhaps in
the bottom of the last pot. Mr. R. was not sure.

“Send and see,” said Lamb, “and if the pot has
been cleaned, bring me the cover. I think the sight
of it would do me good.”

The cover was brought, upon which there was a
picture of the fish. Lamb kissed it with a reproachful
look at his friend, and then left the table and began to
wander round the room with a broken, uncertain step,
as if he almost forgot to put one leg before the other.
His sister rose after awhile, and commenced walking
up and down very much in the same manner on the
opposite side of the table, and in the course of half an
hour they took their leave.

To any one who loves the writings of Charles Lamb
with but half my own enthusiasm, even these little
particulars of an hour passed in his company, will
have an interest. To him who does not, they will
seem dull and idle. Wreck as he certainly is, and
must be, however, of what he was, I would rather have
seen him for that single hour, than the hundred and
one sights of London put together.