University of Virginia Library

119. LETTER CXIX.

Went to the opera to hear Julia Grisi. I stood out
the first act in the pit, and saw instances of rudeness
the “Fop's-alley,” which I had never seen approached
in three years on the continent. The high price of
tickets, one would think, and the necessity of appearing
in full dress, would keep the opera clear of lowored
people; but the conduct to which I refer seemed
to excite no surprise and passed off without notice,
though, in America, there would have been ample
matter for at least four duels.

Grisi is young, very pretty, and an admirable actress
—three great advantages to a singer. Her voice is
under absolute command, and she manages it beautifully,
but it wants the infusion of soul—the gushing,
uncontrollable, passionate feeling of Malibran. You
merely feel that Grisi is an accomplished artist, while
Malibran melts all your criticism into love and admiration.
I am easily moved by music, but I came
away without much enthusiasm for the present passion
of London.

The opera-house is very different from those on the
continent. The stage only is lighted abroad, the
single lustre from the ceiling just throwing that clair
obscure over the boxes so favorable to Italian complexions
and morals. Here, the dress circles are
lighted with bright chandeliers, and the whole house
sits in such a blaze of light as leaves no approach
even, to a lady, unseen. The consequence is that
people here dress much more, and the opera, if less
interesting to the habitué, is a gayer thing to the many.

I went up to Lady Blessington's box for a moment,
and found Strangways, the traveller, and several other
distinguished men with her. Her ladyship pointed
out to me Lord Brougham, flirting desperately with a
pretty woman on the opposite side of the house, his
mouth going with the convulsive twitch which so disfigures
him, and his most unsightly of pug-noses in
the strongest relief against the red lining behind.
There never was a plainer man. The Honorable
Mrs. Norton, Sheridan's daughter and poetess, sat
nearer to us, looking like a queen, certainly one of the
most beautiful women I ever looked upon; and the
gastronomic and humpbacked Lord Sefton, said to be
the best judge of cookery in the world, sat in the
“dandy's omnibus,” a large box on a level with the
stage, leaning forward with his chin on his knuckles,
and waiting with evident impatience for the appearance
of Fanny Elssler in the ballet. Beauty and all, the
English opera-house surpasses anything I have seen
in the way of a spectacle.

An evening party at Bulwer's. Not yet perfectly
initiated in London hours, I arrived not far from
eleven and found Mrs. Bulwer alone in her illuminated
rooms, whiling away an expectant hour in playing
with a King Charles spaniel, that seemed by his fondness
and delight to appreciate the excessive loveliness
of his mistress. As far off as America, I may express
even in print an admiration which is no heresy in
London.

The author of Pelham is a younger son and depends
on his writings for a livelihood, and truly,
measuring works of fancy by what they will bring,
(not an unfair standard perhaps), a glance around his
luxurious and elegant rooms is worth reams of puff
in the quarterlies. He lives in the heart of the fashionable
quarter of London, where rents are ruinously
extravagant, entertains a great deal, and is expensive
in all his habits, and for this pay Messrs. Clifford,
Pelham, and Aram—(it would seem) most excellent
good bankers. As I looked at the beautiful woman
seated on the costly ottoman before me, waiting to
receive the rank and fashion of London, I thought
that old close-fisted literature never had better reason
for his partial largess. I half forgave the miser for
starving a wilderness of poets.

One of the first persons who came was Lord Byron's
sister, a thin, plain, middle-aged woman, of a
very serious countenance, and with very cordial and
pleasing manners. The rooms soon filled, and two
professed singers went industriously to work in their
vocation at the piano; but, except one pale man, with
staring hair, whom I took to be a poet, nobody pretended
to listen.

Every second woman has some strong claim to
beauty in England, and the proportion of those who
just miss it, by a hair's breadth as it were—who seem
really to have been meant for beauties by nature, but
by a slip in the moulding or pencilling are imperfect
copies of the design—is really extraordinary. One
after another entered, as I stood near the door with
my old friend Dr. Bowring for a nomenclator, and the
word “lovely” or “charming,” had not passed my
lips before some change in the attitude, or unguarded
animation had exposed the flaw, and the hasty homage
(for homage it is, and an idolatrous one, that we
pay to the beauty of woman) was coldly and unsparingly
retracted. From a goddess upon earth to a
slighted and unattractive trap for matrimony is a long
step, but taken on so slight a defect sometimes as,
were they marble, a sculptor would etch away with
his nail.

I was surprised (and I have been struck with the
same thing at several parties I have attended in London),
at the neglect with which the female part of the
assemblage is treated. No young man ever seems to
dream of speaking to a lady, except to ask her to
dance. There they sit with their mammas, their
hands hung over each other before them in the received
attitude; and if there happens to be no
dancing (as at Bulwer's), looking at a print, or eating
an ice, is for them the most enlivening circumstance
of the evening. As well as I recollect, it is better
managed in America, and certainly society is quite
another thing in France and Italy. Late in the
evening a charming girl, who is the reigning belle of
Naples, came in with her mother from the opera, and
I made the remark to her. “I detest England for
that very reason,” she said frankly. “It is the fash

ion in London for the young men to prefer everything
to the society of women. They have their clubs,
their horses, their rowing matches, their hunting and
betting, and everything else is a bore! How different
are the same men at Naples! They can never get
enough of one there! We are surrounded and run
after,
and really one feels that one is a belle.” She mentioned
several of the beaux of last winter who had returned
to England. “Here I have been in London a
month, and these very men that were dying for me, at
my side every day on the Strada Nuova, and all but
fighting to dance three times with me of an evening,
have only left their cards! Not because they care
less about me, but because it is `not the fashion'—it
would be talked of at the club, it is `knowing' to let us
alone.”

There were only three men in the party, which was
a very crowded one, who could come under the head
of beaux. Of the remaining part, there was much
that was distinguished, both for rank and talent.
Sheil, the Irish orator, a small, dark, deceitful, but
talented-looking man, with a very disagreeable squeaking
voice, stood in a corner, very earnestly engaged
in conversation with the aristocratic old earl of Clarendon.
The contrast between the styles of the two
men, the courtly and mild elegance of one, and the
uneasy and half-bred, but shrewd earnestness of the
other, was quite a study. Fonblanc of the Examiner,
with his pale and dislocated-looking face, stood in the
door-way between the two rooms, making the amiable
with a ghastly smile to Lady Stepney. The `bilious
Lord Durham,' as the papers call him, with his Brutus
head, and grave, severe countenance, high-bred in
his appearance, despite the worst possible coat and
trousers, stood at the pedestal of a beautiful statue,
talking politics with Bowring; and near them, leaned
over a chair the Prince Moscowa, the son of Marshal
Ney, a plain, but determined-looking young man,
with his coat buttoned up to his throat, unconscious
of everything but the presence of the Honorable Mrs.
Leicester Stanhope, a very lovely woman, who was
enlightening him in the prettiest English French,
upon some point of national differences. Her husband,
famous as Lord Byron's companion in Greece,
and a great liberal in England, was introduced to me
soon after by Bulwer; and we discussed the bank
and the president, with a little assistance from Bowring,
who joined us with a pæan for the old general
and his measures, till it was far into the morning.