FOREIGN VISITORS.
Reading edition
“Point de rose sans épine.”
Oh!—par exemple,—here comes a pretty commentary on the above text—a paragraph from some of the ribald journals which it would be pollution to name. It has just been sent me enclosed in an anonymous letter; for I have always some “good-natured friend,” (as Sir Peter Teazle says) who furnishes me with abuse of myself, from those news-papers which I should deem it an act of the highest immorality to let into my house. I never, by the bye, could understand the logic of those, who, professing to detest calumny, and to abhor slander, still think it no delinquency to read and to purchase the journals which exist but by their propagation. To add to the revenue of such a speculation, is to become a participator in its criminality; for if every one who disdains to be himself guilty of falsehood, would refrain from buying it, ready-made to his hand, such disgraces to the free press of the empire would be abolished more effectually than by all the restrictive laws and prosecutions for libels in the world.
Here is the paragraph alluded to:—
“LADY MORGAN AND THE AMERICANS.
“The following anecdote, in every way good, is quoted by the Yankee from the Boston Literary Gazette:—
“It was about two o’clock, P. M. when I stopped at the door of Sir Charles Morgan, Kildare Street, Dublin. I inquired for Lady M., to whom I had a letter of introduction. I was shown by the servant into a library, and while waiting for her ladyship, had an opportunity to survey the apartment. The upper regions displayed rich rows of books, in all the modern languages, and among them several of Lady Morgan’s works, in French, Italian, and German. The lower parts of the room exhibited a piano, a harp, and a Spanish guitar, with a profusion of songs scattered up and down. There were two writing-tables, a small cabinet of minerals in a glass case, and a collection of beautiful shells, also in a glass case. Several small pictures occupied the spaces on the wall, and cameos, intaglios, medals, and other curiosities, adorned the mantel-piece. There was an air of negligence about the room, but it seemed to declare that the inhabitant of it had made every department of nature and art tributary to her pleasure.”
“But ’tis my design To note the chamber—I will write all down— Such, and such, pictures—there the window!” &c. Cymbeline.
Oh! that the inventory had stopped there!—For the furniture, pass! (though I deny the glass case—I have a total antipathy to glass cases); but the coming to personals, as in the following catalogue raisonnée of beauties wanting, of charms “absent without leave”—this is really “too bad.” But the Yankee goes on, and so here I am, (not in kit-kat) as sketched “at 2 o’clock, P. M.” by my American visitor—who, after “noting the chamber,” thus writes down—its mistress, unconscious as was Imogen of her midnight visitor, and as little suspecting to what sort of a limner she was sitting for her portrait, when she received this “Yankee from Boston:”
“At length Lady Morgan entered. She was short, with a broad face, blue, inexpressive eyes, and seemed, if such a thing may be named, about forty years of age. Her personal appearance is far from handsome—it is not even striking. There was an evident affectation of Parisian taste in her dress and manner.”
I appeal!—I appeal from this Caravaggio of Boston to the Titian of his age and country—I appeal to you, Sir Thomas Lawrence!—would you have painted a short, squat, broad-faced, inexpressive, affected, Frenchified, Greenland-seal-like lady of any age? Would any money have tempted you to profane your immortal pencil, consecrated by nature to the Graces, by devoting its magic to such a model as this described by the Yankee artist of the “Boston Literary?” And yet you did paint the picture of this Lapland Venus—this impersonation of a Dublin Bay cod-fish—this pendant to Hogarth’s Poissarde at the gates of Calais, who bears so striking a resemblance to the maiden ray she exhibits for sale. What is more, you painted it of your own free will and choice—gratuitously, and that too when rival Duchesses were contending for the honour of reaching posterity, through your agency, with the beauties of Vandyke and the belles of Lely, all ready and willing to remunerate, with princely munificence, the talent, “whose price is beyond rubies.”
Well, I appeal from the portrait drawn by the Yankee to yours; “et je m’en trouverai bien.” Gladly do I “sweeten my imagination” by the recollection of those times of youth, and gaiety, and splendour, in which, associated under the same roof, I sat for, and you sketched that picture, thus by contrast recalled to my recollection! I remember a minister of state cracking jokes on one side of the table on which you were drawing, a royal princess[33] suggesting hints, on the other, the Roscius of the age stalking up and down the room with the strides of Macbeth, and the look of Coriolanus, and half the beauties of future galleries and collections, fluttering round the exclusive patent-giver of eternal loveliness. Alas! no one could have said that I was “forty” then; and “this is the cruellest cut of all!”—Woman, the most enduring of created beings, will bear any thing but that. Had it been thirty-nine, or fifty!—thirty-nine is still under the mark, and fifty so far beyond it, so hopeless, such a “lasciar speranze voi che intrate;”—but forty!—
“Take any form but that, And my firm nerves will never tremble”—
the critical age—the Rubicon—I cannot, will not dwell on it. But oh! America!—land of my devotion and my idolatry—is it from you the blow has come? Let Quarterlys and Blackwoods libel—but the “Boston Literary!”—“Et tu Brute!”
My visitor from Boston “2 o’clock, P. M.” proceeds to give an account of my conversation, as accurately and minutely as he did the details of my house, person, and age. Having made the general remark, that “it was full of spirit and frankness,” he goes on to betray to the public the confidential communications I made to him on the occasion of this his first and last visit. These amounted simply to my abusing America and Washington Irving without measure, and it appears without motive, except to please my Boston visitor, who agreed with me in both instances. This was being ‘frank and spirited’ with a vengeance!
Now, I here openly, frankly, and spiritedly publish my protocol to the city of Boston, requiring of the Bostonians, that they give me up this morning visitor, “at 2 o’clock, P. M.”—this Iachimo of literary salons—this positive denunciator of the certain age of ladies who wish their age to remain uncertain—this portrait painter en large, who calls little ‘short’ and round, ‘broad,’ and who
“Ne’er can any lustre see In eyes that do not smile on me”—
—himself—this violator of confidences made on the occasion of a first visit!—this Zoilus of the toilette and Yankee ‘courier des dames;’ I require the Bostonians, by their gallantry and their liberalism, their love of liberty and of the ladies, that they first catch me this backwoodsman, and then leave me to dress him!—But ’tis a threat thrown away—I do not, I will not believe that an American could thus violate all principle of courtesy, gallantry, hospitality, and truth. I have received persons from all parts of the United States within the last eight years. I find on my visiting list the names of two gentlemen from Boston, who have frequented my house within the last two years, neither of whom could have committed such an act. I have not been wanting in the rites of hospitality to any one who has borne the name of an American. I honour the great cause of liberty, in the persons of those to whose fathers the world stands indebted for the greatest rally that ever was made round her standard; and “I guess” that if there is one recreant American (American by the accident of birth) capable of such conduct as my Bostonian visitor “at 2 o’clock, P. M.” has exhibited, the “whole order of gentlemen in America” would disown this Arnold of private society, as they did the political traitor, who dishonoured the region of freedom, by claiming it as his country.[34]