121. LETTER CXXI.
AN EVENING AT LADY BLESSINGTON'S—ANECDOTES OF
MOORE, THE POET—TAYLOR, THE PLATONIST—POLITICS—ELECTION
OF SPEAKER—PRICES OF BOOKS.
I am obliged to “gazette” Lady Blessington rather
more than I should wish, and more than may seem
delicate to those who do not know the central position
she occupies in the circle of talent in London. Her
soirees and dinner-parties, however, are literally the
single and only assemblages of men of genius, without
reference to party—the only attempt at a republic of
letters in the world of this great, envious, and gifted
metropolis. The pictures of literary life, in which
my countrymen would be most interested, therefore,
are found within a very small compass, presuming
them to prefer the brighter side of an eminent character,
and presuming them (is it a presumption?) not
to possess that appetite for degrading the author to the
man by an anatomy of his secret personal failings,
which is lamentably common in England. Having
premised thus much, I go on with my letter.
I drove to Lady Blessington's an evening or two
since, with the usual certainty of finding her at home,
as there was no opera, and the equal certainty of finding
a circle of agreeable and eminent men about her.
She met me with the information that Moore was in
town, and an invitation to dine with her whenever she
should be able to prevail upon “the little Bacchus”
to give her a day. D'Israeli, the younger, was there,
and Dr. Beattie, the king's physician (and author,
unacknowledged, of “The Heliotrope”), and one or
two fashionable young noblemen.
Moore was naturally the first topic. He had appeared
at the opera the night before, after a year's ruralizing
at “Slopperton cottage,” as fresh and young and
witty as he ever was known in his youth—(for Moore
must be sixty at least). Lady B. said the only difference
she could see in his appearance was the loss
of his curls, which once justified singularly his title of
Bacchus, flowing about his head in thin glossy,
elastick tendrils, unlike any other hair she had ever
seen, and comparable to nothing but the rings of the
vine. He is now quite bald, and the change is very
striking. D'Israeli regretted that he should have been
met, exactly on his return to London, with the savage
but clever article in Fraser's Magazine on his plagiarisms.
“Give yourself no trouble about that,”
said Lady B. “for you may be sure he will never see
it. Moore guards against the sight and knowledge
of criticism as people take precautions against the
plague. He reads few periodicals, and but one newspaper.
If a letter comes to him from a suspicious
quarter, he burns it unopened. If a friend mentions
a criticism to him at the club, he never forgives him;
and, so well is this understood among his friends, that
he might live in London a year, and all the magazines
might dissect him, and he would probably never hear
of it. In the country he lives on the estate of Lord
Lansdown, his patron and best friend, with half a
dozen other noblemen within a dinner-drive; and he
passes his life in this exclusive circle, like a bee in
amber, perfectly preserved from everything that could
blow rudely upon him. He takes the world en philosophe,
and is determined to descend to his grave perfectly
ignorant if such things as critics exist.” Somebody
said this was weak, and D'Israeli thought it was
wise, and made a splendid defence of his opinion, as
usual, and I agreed with D'Israeli. Moore deserves a
medal, as the happiest author of his day, to possess
the power.
A remark was made in rather a satirical tone upon
Moore's worldliness and passion for rank. “He was
sure,” it was said, “to have four or five invitations to
dine on the same day, and he tormented himself with
the idea that he had not accepted perhaps the most exclusive.
He would get off from an engagement with
a countess to dine with a marchioness, and from a
marchioness to accept the later invitation of a dutchess;
and as he cared little for the society of men, and
would sing and be delightful only for the applause of
women, it mattered little whether one circle was
more talented than another. Beauty was one of his
passions, but rank and fashion were all the rest.”
This rather left-handed portrait was confessed by all
to be just. Lady B. herself making no comment
upon it. She gave, as an offset, however, some particulars
of Moore's difficulties from his West Indian
appointment, which left a balance to his credit.
“Moore went to Jamaica with a profitable appointment.
The climate disagreed with him, and he returned
home, leaving the business in the hands of a
confidential clerk, who embezzled eight thousand
pounds in the course of a few months and absconded.
Moore's politics had made him obnoxious to the government,
and he was called to account with unusual
severity; while Theodore Hook, who had been recalled
at this very time from some foreign appointment
for a deficit of twenty thousand pounds in his
accounts, was never molested, being of the ruling
party. Moore's misfortune awakened a great sympathy
among his friends. Lord Lansdowne was the
first to offer his aid. He wrote to Moore, that for
many years he had been in the habit of laying aside
from his income eight thousand pounds, for the encouragement
of the arts and literature, and that he
should feel that it was well disposed of for that year
if Moore would accept it, to free him from his difficulties.
It was offered in the most delicate and noble
manner, but Moore declined it. The members of
“White's” (mostly noblemen) called a meeting, and
(not knowing the amount of the deficit) subscribed in
one morning twenty-five thousand pounds, and wrote
to the poet that they would cover the sum, whatever
it might be. This was declined. Longman and
Murray then offered to pay it, and wait for their remuneration
from his works. He declined even this,
and went to Passy with his family, where he economized
and worked hard till it was cancelled.”
This was certainly a story most creditable to the
poet, and it was told with an eloquent enthusiasim
that did the heart of the beautiful narrator infinite
credit. I have given only the skeleton of it. Lady
Blessington went on to mention another circumstance,
very honorable to Moore, of which I had never before
heard. “At one time two different counties of Ireland
sent committees to him, to offer him a seat in
parliament; and as he depended on his writings for a
subsistence, offering him at the same time twelve
hundred pounds a year while he continued to represent
them. Moore was deeply touched with it, and
said no circumstance of his life had ever gratified him
so much. He admitted that the honor they proposed
him had been his most cherished ambition, but the
necessity of receiving a pecuniary support at the same
time was an insuperable obstacle. He could never
enter parliament with his hands tied, and his opinions
and speech fettered, as they would be irresistibly in
such circumstances.” This does not sound like
“jump-up-and-kiss-me Tom Moore,” as the Irish
ladies call him; but her ladyship vouched for the truth
of it. It was worthy of an old Roman.
By what transition I know not, the conversation
turned on Platonism, and D'Israeli (who seemed to
have remembered the shelf on which Vivian Grey was
to find “the latter Platonists” in his father's library)
“flared up,” as a dandy would say, immediately. His
wild black eyes glistened, and his nervous lips quivered
and poured out eloquence; and a German professor,
who had entered late, and the Russian chargé
d'affaires, who had entered later, and a whole ottomanfull
of noble exquisites, listened with wonder. He
gave us an account of Taylor, almost the last of the
celebrated Platonists, who worshipped Jupiter in a
back parlor in London a few years ago with undoubted
sincerity. He had an altar and a brazen figure of the
Thunderer, and performed his devotions as regularly
as the most pious sacerdos of the ancients. In his old
age he was turned out of the lodgings he had occupied
for a great number of years, and went to a friend
in much distress to complain of the injustice. He
had “only attempted to worship his gods according to
the dictates of his conscience.” “Did you pay your
bills?” asked the friend. “Certainly.” “Then what
is the reason?” “His landlady had taken offence at
his sacrificing a bull to Jupiter in his back parlor!”
The story sounded very Vivian-Grey-ish, and everybody
laughed at it as a very good invention; but
D'Israeli quoted his father as his authority, and it
may appear in the Curiosities of Literature—where,
however; it will never be so well told as by the extraordinary
creature from whom we had heard it.
February 22d, 1835.—The excitement in London
about the choice of a speaker is something startling.
It took place yesterday, and the party are thunderstruck
at the non-election of Sir Manners Sutton. This is a
terrible blow upon them, for it was a defeat at the outset;
and if they failed in a question where they had
the immense personal popularity of the late speaker
to assist them, what will they do on general questions?
The house of commons was surrounded all day with
an excited mob. Lady — told me last night that she
drove down toward evening, to ascertain the result
(Sir C. M. Sutton is her brother-in-law), and the
crowd surrounded her carriage, recognising her as
the sister of the tory speaker, and threatened to tear
the coronet from the pannels. “We'll soon put an
end to your coronets,” said a rapscallion in the mob.
The tories were so confident of success that Sir
Robert Peel gave out cards a week ago for a soirée to
meet Speaker Sutton, on the night of the election.
There is a general report in town that the whigs will
impeach the duke of Wellington! This looks like
a revolution, does it not? It is very certain that the
duke and Sir Robert Peel have advised the king to
dissolve parliament again, if there is any difficulty in
getting on with the government. The duke was dining
with Lord Aberdeen the other day, when some one at
table ventured to wonder at his accepting a subordinate
office in the cabinet he had himself formed. “If
I could serve his majesty better,” said the patrician
soldier, “I would ride as king's messenger to-morrow!”
He certainly is a remarkable old fellow.
Perhaps, however, literary news would interest you
more. Bulwer is publishing in a volume his papers
from the New Monthly. I met him an hour age in
Regent-street, looking, what is called in London,
“uncommon seedy!” He is either the worst or the
best dressed man in London, according to the time of
day or night you see him. D'Israeli, the author of
Vivian Grey, drives about in an open carriage, with
Lady S—, looking more melancholy than usual.
The absent baronet, whose place he fills, is about
bringing an action against him, which will finish his
career, unless he can coin the damages in his brain.
Mrs. Hemans is dying of consumption in Ireland. I
have been passing a week at a country house, where
Miss Jane Porter, Miss Pardoe, and Count Krazinsky
(author of the Court of Sigismund), are domiliciated
for the present. Miss Porter is one of her own
heroines, grown old—a still handsome and noble
wreck of beauty. Miss Pardoe is nineteen, fairhaired
sentimental, and has the smallest feet and is the best
waltzer I ever saw, but she is not otherwise pretty.
The Polish count is writing the life of his grandmother,
whom I should think he strongly resembled in
person. He is an excellent fellow, for all that. I
dined last week with Joanna Baillie, at Hampstead—
the most charming old lady I ever saw. To-day I
dine with Longman to meet Tom Moore, who is living
incog. near this Nestor of publishers at Hampstead.
Moore is fagging hard on his history of Ireland. I
shall give you the particulars of all these things in my
letters hereafter.
Poor Elia—my old favorite—is dead. I consider
it one of the most fortunate things that ever happened
to me to have seen him. I think I sent you in
one of my letters an account of my breakfasting in
company with Charles Lamb and his sister (“Bridget
Elia,”) in the Temple. The exquisite papers on his
life and letters in the Atheneum, are by Barry Cornwall.
Lady Blessington's new book makes a great
noise. Living as she does twelve hours out of the
twenty-four in the midst of the most brilliant and
mind-exhausting circle in London, I only wonder how
she found the time. Yet it was written in six weeks.
Her novels sell for a hundred pounds more than any
other author's except Bulwer. Do you know the real
prices of books? Bulwer gets fifteen hundred pounds
—Lady B. four hundred, Honorable Mrs. Norton two
hundred and fifty, Lady Charlotte Bury two hundred,
Grattan three hundred and most others below this.
Captain Marryat's gross trash sells immensely about
Wapping and Portsmouth, and brings him five or six
hundred the book—but that can scarce be called literature.
D'Israeli can not sell a book at all, I hear?
Is not that odd? I would give more for one of his
novels than for forty of the common saleable things
about town.
The authoress of the powerful book called Two
Old Men's Tales, is an old unitarian lady, a Mrs.
Marsh. She declares she will never write another
book. The other was a glorious one, though!
