Chapter XXI: Letter XVII (2)

P. S. _Evening in the coffee-room._—They say the best beginning in love is a decided aversion, and badly as I began at Liverpool, I shall always have a tender recollection of it for the unequalled luxury of its _baths_. A long and beautiful Grecian building crests the head of George’s pier, built by the corporation of Liverpool, and devoted exclusively to salt-water baths. I walked down in the twilight to enjoy this refreshing luxury, and it being Sunday evening, I was shown into the ladies’ end of the building. The room where I waited till the bath was prepared was a lofty and finely proportioned apartment, elegantly furnished, and lined with superbly bound books and pictures, the tables covered with engravings, and the whole looking like a central apartment in a nobleman’s residence. A boy showed me presently into a small drawing-room, to which was attached a bath closet, the two rooms lined, boudoir fashion, with chintz, a clock over the bath, a nice carpet and stove, in short, every luxury possible to such an establishment. I asked the boy if the gentlemen’s baths were as elegant as these. “Oh yes,” he said: “there are two splendid pictures of Niagara Falls and Catskill.” “Who painted them?” “Mr. Wall.” “And whose are they?” “They belong to our father, sir!” I made up my mind that “our father” was a man of taste and a credit to Liverpool.

* * * * *

I have just returned from the dinner given to Macready at the Freemason’s tavern. The hall, so celebrated for public “feeds,” is a beautiful room of a very showy style of architecture, with three galleries, and a raised floor at the end, usually occupied by the cross-table. It accommodated on this occasion four hundred persons.

From the peculiar object of the meeting to do honor to an actor for his intellectual qualities, and for his efforts to spiritualize and elevate the stage, there probably never was collected together in one room so much talent and accomplishment. Artists, authors, critics, publishers and amateurs of the stage—a large body in London—made up the company. My attention was called by one of my neighbors to the singularly superior character of the _heads_ about us, and I had already observed the striking difference, both in head and physiognomy, between this and a common assemblage of men. Most of the persons connected with the press, it was said, were present; and perhaps it would have been a worthy service to the world had some shorn Samson, among the authors, pulled the temple upon the heads of the Philistines.

The cry of “make way!” introduced the duke of Sussex, the chairman of the meeting—a stout, mild-looking, dignified old man, wearing a close black scull-cap and the star and riband. He was followed by Lord Conyngham, who, as grand chamberlain, had done much to promote the interest of the drama; by Lord Nugent (whom I had last seen sailing a _scampavia_ in the bay of Corfu,) by Sir Lytton Bulwer, Mr. Sheil, Sir Martin Shee, Young, the actor, Mr. Milnes, the poet, and other distinguished men. I should have said, by the way, Mr. Macready followed next his Royal Highness.

The cheering and huzzas, as this procession walked up the room, were completely deafening. Macready looked deadly pale and rather overcome; and amid the waving of handkerchiefs and the stunning uproar of four hundred “gentlemen and scholars,” the Duke placed the tragedian at his right hand, and took his seat before the turbot.

The dinner was an uncommonly bad one; but of this I had been forewarned, and so had taken a provisory chop at the club. I had leisure, therefore, to look about me, and truly there was work enough for the eyes. M——’s head interested me more than any one’s else, for it was the personification of his lofty, liberal, and poetic genius. His hair, which was long and profuse, curled in tendrils over the loftiest forehead; but about the lower part of the face lay all the characteristics which go to make up a voluptuous yet generous, an enthusiastic and fiery, yet self-possessed and well-directed character. He was excessively handsome; yet it was the beauty of Massaniello, or Salvator Rosa, with more of intellect than both together. All in all, I never saw a finer face for an artist; and judging from his looks and from his works (he is perhaps twenty-four,) I would stake my sagacity on a bold prophecy of his greatness.

On the same side were the L——s, very quiet-looking men, and S—— the portrait-painter, a merry looking grenadier, and L—— B—— the poet, with a face _like_ a poet. Near me was Lover, the painter, poet, novelist, song and music writer, dramatist, and good fellow—seven characters of which his friends scarce know in which he is most excellent—and he has a round Irish face, with a bright twinkle in his eye, and a plump little body which carries off all his gifts as if they were no load at all.—And on my left was S——, the glorious painter of Venice, of the battle of Trafalgar, the unequalled painter of the sea in all its belongings; and you would take him for a gallant lieutenant of the navy, and with the fire of a score of battles asleep in his eye, and the roughening of a hundred tempests in his cheek. A franker and more manly face would not cross your eye in a year’s travel.

Mr. J—— was just beyond, a tall, sagacious looking good humored person of forty-five. He was a man of very kind manners, and was treated with great marks of liking and respect by all about him. But directly opposite to me sat so exact a picture of Paul Pry as he is represented on the stage, particularly of my friend Finn in that character, that it was difficult not to smile in looking at him. To my surprise, I heard some one point him out, soon after, as the well-known original in that character—the gentleman, whose peculiarities of person, as well as manners, were copied in the farce of Mr. Poole. “That’s my name—what’s yours?” said he the moment after he had seated himself, thrusting his card close to the nose of the gentleman next him. I took it of course for a piece of fun between two very old friends, but to my astonishment the gentleman next him was as much astonished as I.

The few servants scattered up and down were deaf to everything but calls for champagne (furnished only at an extra charge when called for—a very mean system for a public dinner by the way,) and the wines on the table seemed selected to drive one to champagne or the doctor. Each person had four plates, and when used, they were to be put under the bench, or on the top of your head, or to be sat upon, or what you would except to be taken away, and the soup and fish, and the roast and boiled and all, having been put on together, was all removed at one fell swoop—the entire operation of dinner having lasted just _twenty-five minutes_. Keep this fact till we are recorded by some new English traveller as the most expeditious eaters in Christendom.

Here end my croakings, however, for the speeches commenced directly, and admirable they were. To the undoing of much prejudice got by hearsay, I listened to Bulwer. He is, beyond all comparison, the most graceful and effective speaker I ever heard in England. All the world tells you that he makes signal failures in oratory—yet he rose, when his health was drank, and, in self-possessed, graceful, unhesitating language, playful, yet dignified, warm, yet not extravagant, he replied to the compliments of His Royal Highness, and brought forward his plan (as you have seen it reported in the newspapers) for the erection of a new theatre for the legitimate drama and Macready. I remember once hearing that Bulwer had a belief in his future eminence as an orator—and I would warrant his warmest anticipations in that career of ambition. He is a better speaker than Sheil, who followed him, and Sheil is renowned as an orator. Really there is nothing like one’s own eyes and ears in this world of envy and misrepresentation.

D—— sat near Sheil, at the cross-table, very silent, as is his custom and that of most keen observers. The courtly Sir Martin Shea was near B——, looking like some fine old picture of a wit of Charles the second’s time, and he and Y—— the actor made two very opposite and gentlemanlike speeches. I believe I have told you nearly all that struck me except what was reported in the gazettes, and that you have no need to read over again. I got away at eleven, and reached the opera in time to hear the last act of the Puritani, and see the Elsslers dance in the ballet, and with a look in at a ball, I concluded one of those exhausting, exciting, overdone London days, which are pleasanter to remember than to enjoy, and pleasanter to read about than either.

* * * * *

One of the most elegant and agreeable persons I ever saw was Miss Jane Porter, and I think her conversation more delightful to remember than any person’s I ever knew. A distinguished artist told me that he remembered her when she was his beau-ideal of female beauty; but in those days she was more “fancy-rapt,” and gave in less to the current and spirit of society. Age has made her, if it may be so expressed, less selfish in her use of thought, and she pours it forth like Pactolus—that gold which is sand from others. She is still what I should call a handsome woman, or, if that be not allowed, she is the wreck of more than a common allotment of beauty, and looks it. Her person is remarkably erect, her eyes and eyelids (in this latter resembling Scott) very heavily moulded, and her smile is beautiful. It strikes me that it always is so—where it ever was. The smile seems to be the work of the soul.

I have passed months under the same roof with Miss Porter, and nothing gave me more pleasure than to find the company in that hospitable house dwindled to a “fit audience though few,” and gathered around the figure in deep mourning which occupied the warmest corner of the sofa. In any vein, and _apropos_ to the gravest and the gayest subject, her well-stored mind and memory flowed forth in the same rich current of mingled story and reflection, and I never saw an impatient listener beside her. I recollect, one evening, a lady’s singing “Auld Robin Gray,” and some one remarking, (rather unsentimentally) at the close, “By-the-by, what is Lady ——, (the authoress of the ballad) doing with so many carpenters. Berkely square is quite deafened with their hammering.” “_Apropos_ of carpenters and Lady ——,” said Miss Porter—“this same charming ballad writer owes something to the craft. She was better-born than provided with the gifts of fortune, and in her younger days was once on a visit to a noble house, when to her dismay, a large and fashionable company arrived, who brought with them a mania for private theatricals. Her wardrobe was very slender, barely sufficient for the ordinary events of a week-day, and her purse contained one solitary shilling. To leave the house was out of the question, to feign illness as much so, and to decline taking a part was impossible, for her talent and sprightliness were the hope of the theatre. A part was cast for her, and, in despair, she excused herself from the gay party bound to the country town to make purchases of silk and satin, and shut herself up, a prey to mortified low spirits. The character required a smart village dress, and it certainly did not seem that it could come out of a shilling. She sat at her window, biting her lips, and turning over in her mind whether she could borrow of some one, when her attention was attracted to a carpenter, who was employed in the construction of a stage in the large hall, and who, in the court below, was turning off from his plane broad and long shavings of a peculiarly striped wood. It struck her that it was like riband. The next moment she was below, and begged of the man to give her half a dozen lengths as smooth as he could shave them. He performed his task well, and depositing them in her apartment, she set off alone on horseback to the village, and with her single shilling succeeded in purchasing a chip hat of the coarsest fabric. She carried it home, exultingly, trimmed it with her pine shavings, and on the evening of the performance appeared with a white dress, and hat and belt ribands which were the envy of the audience. The success of her invention gave her spirits and assurance, and she played to admiration. The sequel will justify my first remark. She made a conquest on that night of one of her titled auditors, whom she afterward married.—You will allow that Lady —— may afford to be tolerant of carpenters.”

An eminent clergyman one evening became the subject of conversation, and a wonder was expressed that he had never married. “That wonder,” said Miss Porter, “was once expressed to the reverend gentleman himself, in my hearing, and he told a story in answer which I will tell you—and perhaps, slight as it may seem, it is the history of other hearts as sensitive and delicate as his own. Soon after his ordination, he preached once every Sabbath, for a clergyman in a village not twenty miles from London. Among his auditors, from Sunday to Sunday, he observed a young lady, who always occupied a certain seat, and whose close attention began insensibly to grow to him an object of thought and pleasure. She left the church as soon as service was over, and it so chanced that he went on for a year without knowing her name; but his sermon was never written without many a thought how she would approve it, nor preached with satisfaction unless he read approbation in her face. Gradually he came to think on her at other times than when writing sermons, and to wish to see her on other days than Sundays; but the weeks slipped on, and though he fancied she grew paler and thinner, he never brought himself to the resolution either to ask her name, or to seek to speak with her. By these silent steps, however, love had worked into his heart, and he had made up his mind to seek her acquaintance and marry her, if possible, when one day he was sent for to minister at a funeral. The face of the corpse was the same that had looked up to him Sunday after Sunday, till he had learned to make it a part of his religion and his life. He was unable to perform the service, and another clergyman present officiated; and after she was buried, her father took him aside, and begged his pardon for giving him pain—but he could not resist the impulse to tell him that his daughter had mentioned his name with her last breath, and he was afraid that a concealed affection for him had hurried her to the grave. Since that, said the clergyman in question, my heart has been dead within me, and I look forward only. I shall speak to her in heaven.”

* * * * *

London is wonderfully embellished within the last three years—not so much by new buildings, public or private, but by the almost insane rivalry that exists among the tradesmen to outshow each other in the expensive magnificence of their shops. When I was in England before, there were two or three of these palaces of columns and plate-glass—a couple of shawl shops, and a glass warehouse or two, but now the west end and the city have each their scores of establishments, of which you would think the plate-glass alone would ruin any body but Aladdin. After an absence of a month from town lately, I gave myself the always delightful treat of an after-dinner ramble among the illuminated palaces of Regent street and its neighborhood, and to my surprise found four new wonders of this description—a shawl house in the upper Regent’s Circus, a silk mercer’s in Oxford street, a whip maker’s in Regent street, and a fancy stationer’s in the Quadrant—either of which establishments fifty years ago would have been the talk of all Europe. The first-mentioned warehouse lines one of the quarters of the Regent Circus, and turns the corner of Oxford street with what seems but one window—a series of glass plates, only divided by brass rods, reaching from the ground to the roof—window panes twelve feet high, and four or five feet broad! The opportunity which this immense transparency of front gives for the display of goods is proportionately improved; and in the mixture of colors and fabrics to attract attention there is evidently no small degree of art—so harmonious are the colors and yet so gorgeous the show. I see that several more _renovations_ are taking place in different parts of both “city” and “town;” and London promises, somewhere in the next decimals, to complete its emergence from the chrysalis with a glory to which eastern tales will be very gingerbread matters indeed.

If I may judge by my own experience and by what I can see in the streets, all this night-splendor out of doors empties the playhouses—for I would rather walk Regent street of an evening than see ninety-nine plays in a hundred; and so think apparently multitudes of people, who stroll up and down the clean and broad London sidewalks, gazing in at the gorgeous succession of shop-windows, and by the day-bright glare of the illumination extending nods and smiles—the street, indeed, becoming gradually a fashionable evening promenade, as cheap as it is amusing and delightful. There are large classes of society, who find the evenings long in their dingy and inconvenient homes, and who must go _somewhere_; and while the streets were dark, and poorly paved and lighted, the play-house was the only resort where they could beguile their cares with splendor and amusement, and in those days theatricals flourished, as in these days of improved thoroughfares and gay shops they evidently languish. I will lend the hint to the next essayist on the “Decline of the Drama.”

The increased attractiveness of London, from thus disclosing the secrets of its wondrous wealth, compensates in a degree for what increases as rapidly on me—the distastefulness of the suburbs, from the forbidding and repulsive exclusiveness of high garden walls, impermeable shrubberies, and every sort of contrivance for confining the traveller to the road, and nothing but the road. What should we say in America to travelling miles between two brick walls, with no prospect but the branches of overhanging trees from the invisible park lands on either side, and the _alley_ of cloudy sky overhead?—How tantalizing to pass daily by a noble estate with a fine specimen of architecture in its centre, and see no more of it than a rustic lodge and some miles of the tops of trees over a paling! All this to me is oppressive—I feel abridged of breathing room and eyesight—deprived of my liberty—robbed of my horizon. Much as I admire high preservation and cultivation, I would almost compromise for a “snake fence” in this part of England.

On a visit to a friend a week or two since in the neighborhood of London, I chanced, during a long walk, to get a glimpse over the wall of a nicely-gravelled and secluded path, which commanded what the proprietor’s fence enviously shut from the road—a noble view of London and the Thames. Accustomed to see people traversing my own lawn and fields in America without question, as suits their purpose, and tired of the bricks, hedges, and placards of blacking and pills, I jumped the fence, and with feelings of great relief and expansion aired my eyes and my imagination in the beautiful grounds of my friend’s opulent neighbor. The Thames, with its innumerable steamers, men-of-war, yachts, wherries, and ships—a vein of commercial and maritime life lying between the soft green meadows of Kent and Essex—formed a delicious picture of contrast and meaning beauty, which I gazed on with great delight for—some ten minutes. In about that time I was perceived by Mr. B——’s gardener, who, with a very pokerish stick in his hand, came running toward me, evidently by his pace, prepared for a vigorous pursuit of the audacious intruder. He came up to where I stood, quite out of breath, and demanded, with a tight grasp of his stick, what business I had there. I was not very well prepared with an answer, and short of beating the man for his impudence, (which in several ways might have been a losing job,) I did not see my way very clearly out of Mr. B.’s grounds. My first intention, to call on the proprietor and apologise for my intrusion while I complained of the man’s insolence, was defeated by the information, evidently correct, that Mr. B—— was not resident at the place, and so I was walked out of the lodge gate with a vagabond’s warning—never to let him “catch me there again.” So much for my liberal translation of a park fence.

This spirit of exclusion makes itself even more disagreeably felt where a gentleman’s paling chances to include any natural curiosity. One of the wildest, as well as most exquisitely beautiful spots on earth is the Dargle, in the county Wicklow, in Ireland. It is interesting, besides, as belonging to the estate of the orator and patriot Grattan. To get to it, we were let through a gate by an old man, who received a douceur: we crossed a newly reaped field, and came to another gate; another person opened this, and we paid another shilling. We walked on toward the glen, and in the middle of the path, without any object apparently but the toll, there was another locked gate, and another porter to pay; and when we made our exit from the opposite extremity of the grounds, after seeing the Dargle, there was a fourth gate and a fourth porter. The first field and fee belonged, if I remember rightly, to a Captain Somebody, but the other three gates belong to the present Mr. Grattan, who is very welcome to my three shillings, either as a tribute to his father’s memory, or to the beauty of Tinnehinch and the Dargle. But on whichever ground he pockets it, the _mode_ of assessment is, to say the least, ungracious. Without subjecting myself to the charge of a mercenary feeling, I think I may say that the enthusiasm for natural scenery is very much clipped and belittled by seeing it at a shilling the perch—paying the money and taking the look. I should think no sum lost which was expended in bringing me to so romantic a glen as the Dargle; but it should be levied somewhere else than within sound of its wild waterfall—somewhere else than between the waterfall and the fine mansion of Tinnehinch.

* * * * *

The fish most “out of water” in the world is certainly a Frenchman in England without acquaintances. The illness of a friend has lately occasioned me one or two hasty visits to Brighton; and being abandoned on the first evening to the solitary mercies of the coffee-room of the hotel, I amused myself not a little with watching the _ennui_ of one of these unfortunate foreigners who was evidently there simply to qualify himself to say that he had been at Brighton in the season. I arrived late, and was dining by myself at one of the small tables, when I became aware that some one at the other end of the room was watching me very steadily. The place was as silent as coffee-rooms usually are after the dinner hour, the rustling of newspapers the only sound that disturbed the digestion of eight or ten persons present, when the unmistakeable call of “Vaitare!” informed me that if I looked up I should encounter the eyes of a Frenchman. The waiter entered at the call, and after a considerable parley with my opposite neighbor, came over to me and said in rather an apologetic tone, “Beg pardon, sir, but the _shevaleer_ wishes to know if your name is _Coopair_.” Not very much inclined, fatigued as I was, for a conversation in French, which I saw would be the result of a polite answer to his question, I merely shook my head, and took up the newspaper. The Frenchman drew a long sigh, poured out his last glass of claret, and crossing his thumbs on the edge of the table, fell into a profound study of the grain of the mahogany.

What with dawdling over coffee and tea and reading half a dozen newspapers, I whiled away the time till ten o’clock, pitying occasionally the unhappy chevalier who exhibited every symptom of a person bored to the last extremity. One person after another called for a bedroom candle, and exit finally the Frenchman himself, making me, however, a most courteous bow as he passed out. There were two gentlemen left in the room, one a tall and thin old man of seventy, the other a short and portly man of fifty or thereabouts, both quite bald. They rose together and came to the fire near which I was sitting.

“That last man that went out calls himself a chevalier,” said the thin gentleman.

“Yes,” said his stout friend—“he took me for a Mr. Cooper he had travelled with.”

“The deuce he did,” said the other—“why he took me for a Mr. Cooper, too, and we are not very much alike.”

“I beg pardon, gentlemen,” said I—“he took me for this Mr. Cooper too.”

The Frenchman’s _ruse_ was discovered. It was instead of a snuff-box—a way he had of making acquaintance. We had a good laugh at our triple resemblance (three men more unlike it would be difficult to find,) and bidding the two Messrs. Cooper good-night, I followed the ingenious chevalier up stairs.

The next morning I came down rather late to breakfast, and found my friend chipping his egg-shells to pieces at the table next to the one I had occupied the night before. He rose immediately with a look of radiant relief in his countenance, made a most elaborate apology for having taken me for Mr. Cooper (whom I was so like, _cependant_, that we should be mistaken for each other by our nearest friends,) and in a few minutes, Mr. Cooper himself, if he had entered by chance, would have returned the compliment, and taken me for the chevalier’s most intimate friend and fellow-traveller.

I remained two or three days at Brighton, and never discovered in that time that the chevalier’s _ruse_ succeeded with any other person. I was his only successful resemblance to “Monsieur Coopair.” He always waited breakfast for me in the coffee room, and when I called for my bill on the last morning, he dropped his knife and asked if I was going to London—and at what hour—and if I would be so obliging as to take a place for him in the same coach.

It was a remarkably fine day; and with my friend by my side outside of “the Age,” we sped on toward London, the sun getting dimmer and dimmer, and the fog thicker and more chilly at every mile farther from the sea. It was a trying atmosphere for the best of spirits—let alone the ever depressed bosom of a stranger in England. The coach stopped at the Elephant and Castle, and I ordered down my baggage, and informed my friend, for the first time, that I was bound to a country-house six miles from town. I scarce knew how I had escaped telling him of it before, but his “_impossible! mon ami!_” was said in a tone and accompanied with a look of the most complete surprise and despair. I was evidently his only hope in London.

I went up to town a day or two after; and in making my way to Paternoster Row, I saw my friend on the opposite side of the Strand, with his hands thrust up to the wrists in the pockets of his “Taglioni,” and his hat jammed down over his eyes, looking into the shop-windows without much distinction between the trunkmaker’s and the printseller’s—evidently miserable beyond being amused by anything. I was too much in a hurry to cross over and resume my office as escape-valve to his _ennui_, and I soon outwalked his slow pace, and lost sight of him. Whatever title he had to “chevalier” (and he was decidedly too deficient in address to belong to the order “_d’industrie_”) he had no letter of recommendation in his personal appearance, and as little the air of even a Frenchman of “quality” as any man I ever saw in the station of a gentleman. He is, in short, the person who would first occur to me if I were to see a paragraph in the Times headed “suicide by a foreigner.”

_Revenons un peu._ Brighton at this season (November) enjoys a climate, which, as a change from the heavy air in the neighborhood of London, is extremely exhilarating and agreeable. Though the first day of my arrival was rainy, a walk up the west cliff gave me a feeling of elasticity and lightness of spirits, of which I was beginning to forget the very existence, in the eternal fogs of the six months I had passed inland. I do not wonder at the passion of the English for Brighton. It is, in addition to the excellence of the air, both a magnificent city and the most advantageous ground for the discomfiture of the common enemy, “winter and rough weather.” The miles of broad gravel walk just out of reach of the surf of the sea, so hard and so smoothly rolled that they are dry in five minutes after the rain has ceased to fall, are, alone, no small item in the comfort of a town of professed idlers and invalids. I was never tired of sauntering along this smooth promenade so close to the sea. The beautiful children, who throng the walks in almost all weathers, (and what children on earth are half as beautiful as English children?) were to me a constant source of pleasure and amusement. Tire of this, and by crossing the street you meet a transfer of the gay throngs of Regent street and Hyde Park, with splendid shops and all the features of a metropolis, while midway between the sea and this crowded sidewalk pours a tide of handsome equipages, parties on horseback, and vehicles of every description, all subservient to exercise and pleasure.

My first visit to Brighton was made in a _very cold day in summer_, and I saw it through most unfavorable spectacles. But I should think that along the cliffs, where there are no trees or verdure to be seen, there is very little apparent difference between summer and winter; and coming here with the additional clothing of a severer season, the temperature of the elastic and saline air is not even chilly. The most delicate children play upon the beach in days when there is no sunshine; and invalids, wheeled out in these convenient bath chairs, sit for hours by the seaside, watching the coming and retreating of the waves, apparently without any sensation of cold—and this in December. In America (in the same latitudes with Leghorn and Venice) an invalid sitting out of doors at this season would freeze to death in half an hour. Yet it was as cold in August, in England, as it has been in November, and it is this temperate evenness of the weather throughout the year which makes English climate, on the whole, perhaps the healthiest in the world.

In the few days I was at Brighton, I became very fond of the perpetual loud beat of the sea upon the shore. Whether, like the “music of the spheres,” it becomes at last “too constant to be heard,” I did not ask—but I never lost the consciousness of it except when engaged in conversation, and I found it company to my thoughts when I dined or walked alone, and a most agreeable lullaby at night. This majestic monotone is audible all over Brighton, in-doors and out, and nothing overpowers it but the wind in a storm; it is even then only by fits, and the alternation of the hissing and moaning of the blast with the broken and heavy plash of the waters is so like the sound of a tempest at sea (the whistling in the rigging, and the burst of the waves) that those who have been at Brighton in rough weather, have realized all of a storm at sea but the motion and the sea-sickness—rather a large, but not an undesirable diminution of experience.

Calling on a friend at Brighton, I was introduced casually to a Mr. Smith. The name, of course, did not awaken any immediate curiosity, but a second look at the gentleman did—for I thought I had never seen a more intellectual or finer head. A fifteen minutes’ conversation, which touched upon nothing that could give me a clue to his profession, still satisfied me that so distinguished an address, and so keen an eye, could belong to no nameless person, and I was scarcely surprised when I read upon his card at parting—HORACE SMITH. I need not say it was a very great pleasure to meet him. I was delighted, too, that the author of books we love as much as “Zillah,” and “Brambletye House,” looks unlike other men. It gratifies somehow a personal feeling—as if those who had won so much admiration from us should, for our pride’s sake, wear the undeniable stamp of superiority—as if we had acquired a property in him by loving him. How natural it is, when we have talked and thought a great deal about an author, to call him “ours.” “What Smith? Why _our_ Smith—Horace Smith”—is as common a dialogue between persons who never saw him as it is among his personal friends.

These two remarkable brothers, James and Horace Smith, are both gifted with exteriors such as are not often possessed with genius—yet only James is so fortunate as to have stumbled upon a good painter. Lonsdale’s portrait of James Smith, engraved by Cousens, is both the author and the man—as fine a picture of him, with his mind seen through his features, as was ever done. But there is an engraved picture extant of the author of Zillah, that, though it is no likeness of the _author_, is a detestable caricature of the _man_. Really this is a point about which distinguished men, in justice to themselves, should take some little care. Sir Thomas Lawrence’s portraits, and Sir Joshua Reynolds’s, are a sort of biography of the eminent men they painted. The most enduring history, it has been said, is written in coins. Certainly the most effective biography is expressed in portraits. Long after the book and your impressions of the character of which it treats have become dim in your memory, your impression of the features and mien of a hero or a poet, as received from a picture, remains indelible. How often does the face belie the biography—making us think better or worse of the man, after forming an opinion from a _portrait in words_, that was either partial or malicious! I am persuaded the world would think better of Shelley, if there were a correct and adequate portrait of his face, as it has been described to me by one or two who knew him. How much of the Byronic idolatry is born and fed from the idealized pictures of him treasured in every portfolio! Sir Thomas Lawrence, Chalon, and Parris, have composed between them a biography of Lady Blessington, that have made her quite independent of the “memoirs” of the next century. And who, I may safely ask, even in America, has seen the nice, cheerful, sensible, and motherly face which prefaces the new edition of “The Manners of the American Domestics,” (I beg pardon for giving the title from my Kentucky copy) without liking Mrs. Trollope a great deal better and at once dismissing all idea of “the bazar” as a libel on that most lady-like countenance?

* * * * *

I think Lady S—— had more talent and distinction crowded into her pretty rooms last night, than I ever before saw in such small compass. It is a bijou of a house, full of gems of statuary and painting, but all its capacity for company lies in a small drawing-room, a smaller reception room, and a very small, but very exquisite boudoir—yet to tell you who were there would read like Colburn’s list of authors, added to a paragraph of noble diners-out from the Morning Post.

The largest lion of the evening certainly was the new Persian ambassador, a man six feet in his slippers; a height which, with his peaked calpack, of a foot and a half, super-added, keeps him very much among the chandeliers. The principal article of his dress does not diminish the effect of his eminence—a long white shawl worn like a cloak, and completely enveloping him from beard to toe. From the twisted shawl around his waist glitters a dagger’s hilt, lumped with diamonds—and diamonds, in most dazzling profusion, almost cover his breast. I never saw so many together except in a cabinet of regalia. Close behind this steeple of shawl and gem, keeps, like a short shadow when the sun is high, his excellency’s shadow, a dwarfishly small man, dressed also in cashmere and calpack, and of a most ill-favored and bow-stringish countenance and mien. The master and man seem chosen for contrast, the countenance of the ambassador expressing nothing but extreme good nature. The ambassador talks, too, and the secretary is dumb.

T—— H—— stood bolt upright against a mirror door, looking like two T—— H——s trying to see which was taller. The one with his face to me looked like the incarnation of the John Bull newspaper, for which expression he was indebted to a very hearty face, and a very round subject for a buttoned up coat; while the H—— with his back to me looked like an author, for which he was indebted to an exclusive view of his cranium. I dare say Mr. H—— would agree with me that he was seen, on the whole, at a most enviable advantage. It is so seldom we look, _beyond the man_, at the author.

I have rarely seen a greater contrast in person and expression than between H—— and B——, who stood near him. Both were talking to ladies—one bald, burly, upright, and with a face of immovable gravity, the other slight, with a profusion of curling hair, restless in his movements, and of a countenance which lights up with a sudden inward illumination. H——’s partner in the conversation looked into his face with a ready-prepared smile for what he was going to say, B——’s listened with an interest complete, but without effort. H—— was suffering from what I think is the common curse of a reputation for wit—the expectation of the listener had outrun the performance.

H—— B——, whose diplomatic promotion goes on much faster than can be pleasing to “_Lady Cheveley_,” has just received his appointment to Paris—the object of his first wishes. He stood near his brother, talking to a beautiful and celebrated woman, and I thought, spite of her ladyship’s unflattering description, I had seldom seen a more intellectual face, or a more gentlemanly and elegant exterior.

Late in the evening came in his Royal Highness the duke of C——, and I wondered, as I had done many times before, when in company with one of these royal brothers, at the uncomfortable etiquette so laboriously observed toward them. Wherever he moved in the crowded rooms, everybody rose and stood silent, and by giving way much more than for any one else, left a perpetual circular space around him, in which, of course, his conversation had the effect of a lecture to a listening audience. A more embarrassed manner and a more hesitating mode of speech than the duke’s, I can not conceive. He is evidently _gene_ to the last degree with this burdensome deference; and one would think that in the society of highly-cultivated and aristocratic persons, such as were present, he would be delighted to put his highness into his pocket when the footman leaves him at the door, and hear no more of it till he goes again to his carriage. There was great curiosity to know whether the Duke would think it etiquetical to speak to the Persian, as in consequence of the difference between the Shah and the British Envoy the tall minister is not received at the court of St. James. Lady S—— introduced them, however, and then the Duke again must have felt his rank nothing less than a nuisance. It is awkward enough at any time, to converse with a foreigner who has not forty English words in his vocabulary, but what with the Duke’s hesitating and difficult utterance, the silence and attention of the listening guests, and the Persian’s deference and complete inability to comprehend a syllable, the scene was quite painful.

There was some of the most exquisite amateur singing I ever heard after the company thinned off a little, and the fashionable song of the day was sung by a most beautiful woman in a way to move half the company to tears. It is called “Ruth,” and is a kind of recitative of the passage in Scripture, “_Where thou goest I will go_,” &c.

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I have driven in the park several days, admiring the queen on horseback, and observing the changes in the fashions of driving, equipages, &c., &c. Her Majesty seems to me to ride very securely and fearlessly, though it is no wonder that in a country where every body rides, there should be bolder and better horsewomen. Miss Quentin, one of the maids of honor, said to be the best female equestrian in England, “takes the courage out” of the Queen’s horse every morning before the ride—so she is secured against one class of accidents. I met the royal party yesterday in full gallop near the centre of Rotten Row, and the two grooms who ride ahead had brief time to do their work of making the crowd of carriages give way. On came the Queen upon a dun-colored, highly-groomed horse, with her prime minister on one side of her, and Lord Byron upon the other, her _cortège_ of maids of honor and ladies and lords in waiting checking their more spirited horses, and preserving always a slight distance between themselves and Her Majesty. Victoria’s round and plump figure looks extremely well in her dark-green riding-dress, but I thought the man’s hat unbecoming. Her profile is not sufficiently good for that trying style, and the cloth riding-cap is so much prettier, that I wonder she does not remember that “nice customs courtesy to great _queens_,” and wear what suits her. She rode with her mouth open, and looked exhilarated with the exercise. Lord Melbourne, it struck me, was the only person in her party whose face had not the constrained look of consciousness of observation.

I observe that the “crack men” ride without martingales, and that the best turn-outs are driven without a check-rein. The outstretched neck which is the consequence, has a sort of Arab or blood look, probably the object of the change; but the drooping head when the horse is walking or standing seems to me ugly and out of taste. All the new carriages are built near the ground. The low park-phæton, light as a child’s plaything and drawn by a pair of ponies, is the fashionable equipage. I saw the prettiest thing conceivable of this kind yesterday in the park—a lady driving a pair of small cream-colored horses of great beauty, with her two children in the phæton, and two grooms behind mounted on cream-colored saddle-horses, all four of the animals of the finest shape and action. The new street cabs (precisely the old-fashioned sedan-chair suspended between four wheels, a foot from the ground) are imitated by private carriages, and driven with two horses—ugly enough. The cab-phæton is in great fashion, with either one or two horses. The race of ponies is greatly improved since I was in England. They are as well-shaped as the large horse, with very fine coats and great spirit. The children of the nobility go scampering through the park upon them, looking like horsemen and horsewomen seen through a reversed opera-glass. They are scarce larger than a Newfoundland dog, but they patter along with great speed. There is one fine lad of about eight years, whose parents seem to have very little care for his neck, and who, upon a fleet, milk-white, long tailed pony, is seen daily riding at a rate of twelve miles an hour through the most crowded streets, with a servant on a tall horse plying whip and spur to keep up with him. The whole system has the droll effect of a mixture of Lilliput and Brobdignag.

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We met the King of Oude a few days since at a party, and were honored by an invitation to dine with his Majesty at his house in the Regent’s park. Yesterday was the appointed day; and with the pleasant anticipation of an oriental feast we drove up at seven, and were received by his turbaned _ayahs_, who took shawl and hat with a reverential salaam, and introduced us to the large drawing-room overlooking the park. The King was not yet down; but in the corner sat three parsees or fire worshippers, guests like ourselves, who in their long white linen robes, bronze faces, and high caps, looked like anything but “diners-out” in London. To our surprise they addressed us in excellent English, and we were told afterward that they were all learned men—facts not put down to the credit of the Ghebirs in Lalla Rookh.

We were called out upon the balcony to look at a balloon that was hovering over the park, and on stepping back into the drawing-room, we found the company all assembled, and our royal host alone wanting. There were sixteen English ladies present, and five white gentlemen beside myself. The Orient, however, was well represented. In a corner, leaning silently against a table, stood Prince Hussein Mirza, the King’s cousin, and a more romantic and captivating specimen of Hindoo beauty could scarcely be imagined. He was slender, tall, and of the clearest olive complexion, his night-black hair falling over his shoulders in profusion, and his large antelope eyes fixed with calm and lustrous surprise upon the half denuded forms sitting in a circle before him. We heard afterward that he has conceived a most uncontrollable and unhappy passion for a high-born English girl whom he met in society, and that it is with difficulty that he is persuaded to come out of his room. His dress was of shawls most gracefully draped about him, and a cap of gold cloth was thrown carelessly on the side of his head. Altogether he was like a picture of the imagination.

A middle-aged stout man, ashy black, with Grecian features, and a most determined and dignified expression of mouth, sat between Lady —— and Miss Porter, and this was the _Wakeel_ or ambassador of the prince of Sutara, by name Afzul Ali. He is in England on business for his master, and if he does not succeed it will be no fault of his under lip. His secretary, Keeram Ali, stood behind him—the Wakeel dressed in shawls of bright scarlet, with a white cashmere turban, and the scribe in darker stuffs of the same fashion. Then there was the King’s physician, a short, wiry, merry looking, quick-eyed Hindoo, with a sort of quizzical angle in the pose of his turban: the high-priest, also a most merry-looking Oriental, and Ali Acbar, a Persian _attaché_. I think these were all the Asiatics.

The King entered in a few minutes, and made the circuit of the room, shaking hands most cordially with all his guests. He is a very royal-looking person indeed. Perhaps you might call him too corpulent, if his fine height (a little over six feet,) and very fine proportions, did not give his large size a character of majesty. His chest is full and round, and his walk erect and full of dignity. He has the Italian olive complexion, with straight hair, and my own remark at first seeing him was that of many others, “How like a bronze cast of Napoleon!” The subsequent study of his features remove this impression, however, for he is a most “merry monarch,” and is seldom seen without a smile. His dress was a mixture of oriental and English fashions—a pair of baggy blue pantaloons, bound around the waist with a rich shawl, a splendid scarlet waistcoat buttoned close over his spacious chest, and a robe of a very fine snuff-colored cloth something like a loose dressing gown without a collar. A cap of silver cloth, and a brilliant blue-satin cravat completed his costume, unless in his _covering_ should be reckoned an enormous turquoise ring, which almost entirely concealed one of his fingers.

_Ekbal-ood-Dowdah_, Nawaub of Oude (his name and title) is at present appealing to the English against his uncle, who usurps his throne by the aid and countenance of the East India company. The Mohammedan law, as I understand, empowers a king to choose his successor from his children without reference to primogeniture, and the usurper, though an elder brother, having been imbecile from his youth, Ekbal’s father was selected by the then king of Oude to succeed him. The question having been referred to Lord Wellesley, however, then governor of India, he decided that the English law of primogeniture should prevail, or in other words—as the king’s friends say—preferred to have for the king of a subject province an imbecile who would give him no trouble. So slipped from the Nawaub’s hands a pretty kingdom of six millions of faithful Mohammedans! I believe this is the “short” of the story. I wonder (we are reproached so very often by the English for our treatment of the Indians) whether a counter-chapter of “expedient wrong” might not be made out from the history of the Indians under British government in the East.

Dinner was announced with a Hindostanee salaam, and the King gave his arm to Lady ——. The rest of us “stood not upon the order of our going,” and I found myself seated at table between my wife and a Polish Countess, some half-dozen removes from the Nawaub’s right hand. His Highness commenced helping those about him most plentifully from a large pillau, talking all the while most merrily in broken English, or resorting to Hindostanee and his interpreter whenever his tongue got into trouble. With the exception of one or two English joints, all the dishes were prepared with rice or saffron, and (wine being forbidden by the Mohammedan law,) iced water was served round from Indian coolers freely. For one, I would have compounded for a bottle of wine by taking the sin of the entire party on my soul, for, what with the exhaustion of a long London day, and the cloying quality of the Nawaub’s rich dishes, I began to be sorry I had not brought a flask in my pocket. His Majesty’s spirits seemed to require no aid from wine. He talked constantly, and shrewdly, and well. He impresses every one with a high estimate of his talents, though a more complete and undisguised child of nature I never saw. Good sense, with good humor, frankness, and simplicity, seem to be his leading qualities.

We were obliged to take our leave early after dinner, having other engagements for the evening, but while coffee was serving, the Hindostanee cook, a funny little old man, came in to receive the compliments of the company upon his dinner, and to play and dance for His Majesty’s amusement. He had at his back a long Indian drum, which he called his “tum tum,” and playing himself an accompaniment upon this, he sang two or three comic songs in his own language to a sort of wild yet merry air, very much to the delight of all the orientals. Singer, dancer, musician, and cook, the king certainly has a jewel of a servant in him.