Chapter VI · 1817-1821.

TO MRS. LEADBEATER.

London, Jan. 7, 1817.

I had obtained a frank for my kind friend the evening before I received her letter; being always a little impatient under her prolonged silence, and particularly so at present, when I am impressed in no ordinary degree with a sense of the ‘changes and chances of this mortal life.’

I am just returned from Lord Clifden’s, where we have passed some days. The quiet, sensible conversation and tranquil life of his small party, have been of use to me; while total change of scene and of topics accelerates in some degree the effects of time. I do not disdain any means, nor neglect any efforts, which can aid me in returning to my usual habits—to my usual feelings it is impossible I can ever entirely return. We may lose the sensation of pain, where a limb has been amputated; but I know by experience that the sense of privation must frequently recur. And were affection to be much fainter than it ever has been in my heart, the very spirit of calculation on one’s pleasures must ever recal the lovely, lively image of one who would have embellished the home of advancing years, and sparkled like the evening star on one’s approaching night. I say not this in the language of complaint. I know, and I best know, that I have been favoured by Heaven far above my deserts, and that I have blessings far above the usual lot of mortality. I say it from the habit of opening my heart with some of its weaknesses (who will dare to say they open all?) to a dear and candid friend.

TO THE HONOURABLE MISS AGAR.

London, Jan. 12, 1817.

I have been long musing in my bed this morning, and ended by finding that no subjects of consolation, but those drawn from the invisible world, could have any effect in my present loss. It is true, I have many and most valuable treasures in the husband, children, and friends I have left; for though the latter are few, I do not complain of this, as it is a matter of choice, engaged as my heart is by those few. But you know I possessed all these treasures, when I had her also; and such is the avarice of the human heart, it cannot patiently resign anything which has once engaged its affections, though it may previously have been happy without it. I often wish I loved things more, and persons less. I see women who set their minds on worldly advantages, on being sought for in crowded circles, on casino, on dress, on baubles, extremely happy to an advanced age in these childish pursuits. Of these they cannot be dispossessed, and may be so occupied very harmlessly—better employed, perhaps, than I am in my readings and my reveries. I own I ought not to have expected the situation of my last two years to have lasted; for I found myself so happy, I should have been rejoiced to rest there for ever, without any change but of seasons, of music, and of books. And when I gained my extra health, as I mentioned to you from Cheltenham, I was too well satisfied for this life, and had momentary presentiments that it could not long endure. While I bore a child every year, this great stumbling-block lay in the way of my comfort. Though delighted to have them when they arrived, my ‘absolute contentment’ was disturbed by looking to an annual day of torment and terror; but when I considered this as over, I had all the pleasures of an escape added to the rest. Here is too much of myself, but I like to open my heart, and I avoid the subject in conversation. You can throw down my letter; but you would be saddened by listening to me; and I wish to increase, not to diminish, your enjoyments.

Jan. 13, 1817, Bath.—Saw Mrs. C., after an interval of two years. When I left her then, she was in full possession of all her faculties at eighty-five; conversed, read, worked, attended church most regularly, received her friends with ease and grace, and sometimes amused herself with cards. Now, she is quite helpless, never leaves one seat except to go to rest, and suffers a partial failure of sight and memory. Still her features are lovely, and her manners mild. The innocence of her mind is peculiarly evinced by her malady; for although perfectly thrown open, and her thoughts presented without veil or selection, no sign ever appears of any feeling for which poor humanity need blush. Neither resentment, envy, nor avarice has the smallest place in her breast. A slight desire of elevation in rank, and pleasure in the remembrance of her beauty, are her only weaknesses. To me she is an object peculiarly touching; for she always loved me much; and, if I might dare to use the expression, she shows a greater degree of respectful and admiring affection at this moment than she ever expressed before.

TO RICHARD TRENCH, ESQ.

Bath, Feb., 1817.

C—— is gone to the ball, and I have remained to chat with you undisturbed. ’Tis a melancholy way of chatting, whatever may be said of the pleasure we find in having all the talk to ourselves. I went last night to a melancholy concert, to which I brought no spirits, and where, of course, I found none. A little wonderful girl of ten or twelve, first pleased, then astonished, and then fatigued me, on the pianoforte. I was curious to hear her begin, and longed to hear her end. I went chiefly to please the flock, who wanted a shepherdess, in which capacity I attended. They persuaded, and applanied all difficulties, came for me, and brought me home.

To-day I dined, or rather fed, at Mrs. C——’s, for I went at five and came home at seven. She shows distressing symptoms of change, decay of memory, and alteration of countenance. She has been so long the same, so happy, and so made for the sphere she filled, that I, who have not much power of calling up the future, felt as if she was one of the unchangeable parts of nature, and it is with pain I awake to the truth. The poor dear woman, when she heard Miss Acheson admire the curl in my children’s hair, said very gravely, ‘They did not take that from their grandmother, my dear ma’am, for my hair never had the least curl in it,’ literally thinking they were her own grandchildren. No one undeceived her, nor even looked surprised. I have always observed that any trait of real affection or heart strikes people with a sort of awe—perhaps because it is so uncommon—as, on the other hand, evident selfishness diminishes respect, and sets people at their ease. This gives the key to a degree of influence possessed by some minds, not to be accounted for on any other principle.

Lady B. and Miss C. stayed at Lady ——’s ball till five in the morning on Tuesday, and were playing loo in the evening, fresh and gay, at least dressed and noisy, as if nothing had disturbed their rest the night before.

I continue to like Mrs. ——. She seems a real mother, which is no small praise. At the same time we should not like each other as intimates. The matronly character, the habit of commanding one’s children, unfits us mothers for other than family society in any intimate way. It gives us insensibly a certain dictatorial manner, which, however veiled by politeness or gentleness, takes away from that pliable ease that may be possessed by other women.

TO MRS. LEADBEATER.

Roehampton, Feb. 21, 1817.

You ask whether I know the Duke of Wellington. I do not, but was acquainted with him in my early youth, or rather I often received him as a guest, but was then so diffident and reserved, I do not believe I ever addressed five words to him. He was extremely good humoured, and the object of much attention from the female part of what was called ‘a very gay society,’ though it did not appear such to me. You ask me if I ever lived at Dangan? I passed there a portion of three successive years. It was a fine specimen of feudal magnificence, in space, strength, and grandeur. There were fine gardens, a fine library, a beautiful chapel, all that wealth collects or luxury devises; and Colonel St. George and I, during our residence there, did not derogate from the feudal mode of living; but I was almost a child, and perfectly passive on this and all other subjects.

TO RICHARD TRENCH, ESQ.

Roehampton, March 3, 1817.

I arrived here yesterday about five, and am settled in my old room, previously sweetened with white violets by Miss Agar’s kind hands. I was not much frightened at night, considering there was a closet locked, of which I had not the key, and I knew not what or who might bounce out of it. True, I barricaded it with much furniture, particularly of the brittle kind, that the difficulties of opening and the smash of crockery might wake me, and I got up at daybreak to remove my fortifications, lest anybody should guess the depth of my cowardice.

I have no news but that the Princess Elizabeth weighs fifteen stone, so I am not come up to the royal standard yet; and that growing down is not confined to me, for that she is becoming, as it is said, ‘a mushroom’ from having been a fine young woman; and the Regent has lost several inches.

TO CHARLES MANNERS ST. GEORGE, ESQ., FRANKFORT.

London, March 23, 1817.

This week has been barren of letters from you, but your last was more than ‘the perfume and the suppliance of a minute.’ It is still fresh and green, and has made me smile as often as I read it over; for one of your letters is always a permanent part of my amusement till relieved by a successor.

Many are the inquiries that have been made for you, and amongst thousands of others, they have been made by Marsh,[58] who rests on his oars, and speaks no more in the House; but, en revanche, talks long and well at dinner, takes the lead, gives good jokes pretty often, and bad ones when the good are not forthcoming, having now established such a character that men take them in the lump, one with another. He plays into the hands of Smith, one of the writers of Rejected Addresses, but the least efficient; who sings his comic songs after dinner, and returns Marsh’s ball at other times. S—— also acknowledged your civilities to him and his companions. He was near not surviving this acknowledgment, for very soon after, between talking, drinking, and eating all at once, with equal assiduity, he was almost choked, and forced to leave the room. Dott followed him professionally, saw him black in the face, administered somewhat, and brought him back ‘triomphant, adoré,’ to eat a second dinner.

TO MRS. LEADBEATER.

London, March 27, 1817.

Your expressions of sympathy and consolation are most soothing. I do not become less sensible of my loss, but I am more accustomed to it. Sometimes a quick perception of former pleasure in that delightful gift of heaven will return. I then remember how I felt in looking at her opening beauty, hearing her gay, gentle voice, and watching her dawn of little joys and virtues; and I recollect the hope that accompanied all this, and wonder that I am not more afflicted; for I know that but a small share of my present comparative composure springs from pious resignation. Mad. de Sévigné says truly, ‘On est si faible, qu’on se console;’ and we attribute to our strength what we owe to our weakness, to our willingness to be occupied by the weeds, when the flowers are gone. There may be those whose consolations spring solely from religion. I speak but of myself and the majority.

I wish I had some prose subject attractive enough to tempt me to write. Most people are more vain of their dance than their walk, their song than their speech, their verse than their prose. I prefer my own prose to my rhymes; because the want of that precision, command of language, and harmony, gained by a classical education and the study of the poetry of Greece and Rome, is more apparent in verse than prose.

Shall I petition you not to call yourself old when you write to me? I cannot bear my friends should resign themselves too soon. Lady Williams Wynne, with whom I passed some days at her sister’s, is sixty-eight, eats green apples, kneels down through our long church service, walks out in October without hat or cloak in a muslin gown, and takes long walks alone many miles through roads, and villages, and fields, wears artificial flowers and three flounces, never speaks of time with reference to his effects on herself; yet never appears to make herself the least young, and is a model of propriety, and of the English matron. The flowers and flounces I know you despise at any season, but I only throw them in to swell the heap.

Now I must have you make this sort of running fight against time, and not talk of yourself as old. Mind and heart like yours are never so. Excuse this ebullition of affectionate regard.

SONNET WRITTEN AT NIGHT AFTER RETURNING FROM A DANCE AT MRS. BATHURST’S.

March, 1817.

TO THE LADY FANNY PROBY.

London, April, 1817.

You are indeed qualified to ‘minister to a mind diseased,’ both from the tenderness of your feelings, and the quickness of your faculties. Many with kind hearts fail in the office of comforter, from want of that intuitive perception and delicacy you eminently possess. I am inclined to believe that ‘telle bonté qu’on a, on n’a que celle de son esprit;’ and we may think this without supposing any partiality shown to the more highly gifted, when we qualify it with the knowledge that ‘where much is given,’ there ‘much will be required.’

I took my boys to see Macbeth last night, but found that though they read Shakespeare, they did not readily catch the language of the scene. They understood Kean well, his tones are so natural; but the raised voice and declamatory style in which most others pronounce tragedy, renders it, I see, nearly unintelligible to children. I was astonished by Kean’s talents in all that followed the murder, highly as I before thought of them. I suppose remorse never was more finely expressed; and I quitted the house with more admiration of him, and even of Shakespeare, than ever I had felt before.

The sight of the poor in London is even more melancholy than that of the dark, foggy, and snowy sky. I speak not of those who ask, but of the silent and drooping figures in the prime and middle of life, seated, shivering and dying, on the steps of houses, without stockings, without linen, in ragged clothing above that of the lower class, with famine sunken in every line of their faces. ‘This is,’ indeed, ‘a sorry sight’ in this once happy country.

May 2, 1817, London.—I return next Monday to the country, my spirits, I think, not amended by my visit to town. All earthly sufferings return in paroxysms; mine are nearly as frequent, yet I have done all that my friends desired, have seen a variety of things and persons, mingled in crowds, &c. &c. Employment more solid would be better for a mind like mine; but having this depends not on one’s self, when one is married, and a mother.

TO CHARLES MANNERS ST. GEORGE, ESQ., FRANKFORT.

June 24, 1817.

I received your dear letter this morning, and it has thrown a bright sunshine on my day; though to others, who had not such a pleasant volume from an affectionate and amusing son, the day was as black, wet, and dirty, as ever disgraced the month of June. As to May, she may have been very lovely when she was young; but she is now grown old, and a more chilly, forbidding, decayed beauty I have never met with.

We are now in town for a few days. My recent misfortune will recur so strongly when I am tranquil, that I am forced to seek variety in whatever shapes, fair or foul, it can be met with. Even as I am now, it will require an effort to unroot myself from the tenacious soil of London, that great mantrap, which catches and retains all descriptions of people, however dissimilar in their tastes, pursuits, and inclinations. I once passed in the eyes of a literal sober-minded circle for being the most dissipated woman possible, because I declared it was pleasant to date a letter from London.

I wish Moore had published The Fire Worshippers alone. It has more merit than the other poems, which are uncommonly gaudy and sugary, and glitter, and dazzle, and cloy, and surfeit us at last. But I sincerely believe he has written Lalla Rookh for the sake of his wife and children. It is evident that his inclinations, perhaps his talents, are not suitable for a work of any considerable length. He is a sweet bird, fitted for short excursions; vigorous while on the wing, but not formed for long flights; and he should not have promised us an epic, and then put us off with four tales, tacked together by a coarse thread.

TO MRS. LEADBEATER.

Bursledon Lodge, June 30, 1817.

I hope your dear daughter will soon entirely recover her health, and look back on her illness, as I can do on all mine, with a deep sense of its advantages—as a touchstone of the affections of those we love—a bond of union twined by protecting cares on one hand, and gratitude on the other—a remembrancer of the precarious tenure of earthly blessings—a new source of sympathy with those that suffer—and a dark shade which throws into gayer and purer lights the common, and therefore often unobserved, blessings of existence.

You particularly delighted me with your description of Lismore, because some of the days of my infancy were passed there. Perhaps no picture is painted on my memory more vividly than that of Lismore Castle—the church—the bridge—the valley—and the unnumbered beauties of that exquisite spot. How often have I gazed with delight from the windows of the Castle; and being ignorant I was short-sighted, of which my eyes gave no outward indication, I imagined no greater enjoyment—when a person put a short-sighted glass as a plaything into my hand, while yet a child. The improvement of the picture was so great that I exclaimed, ‘Oh, this is the way I shall see in heaven.’

I have no news. Poverty goes on increasing, and like the spider in an empty house, spreads her thin grey pall over the kingdom, widening swiftly, though imperceptibly. Our population, though of necessity hungry and idle, are surprisingly quiet. The loans and gratuities proposed by Government, are but drops in a sandy desert; and as Government must take two drops for every one they give (to pay for the machinery of taxation and finance), I, like Mrs. Primrose, ‘never find out we grow richer for all their contrivances.’ In short, we are all becoming poorer, and though philosophers tell us that to sink all together is to keep the same place, they have not quite persuaded us this is practically true. The Bishop of London made this consolatory remark to a poor curate, who replied, ‘Yes, my Lord, we may sink all together, and your Lordship may sink a story, and be still in a good place; but I am on the ground floor, and if I go any lower, I shall be underground.’ If our time of decline as a nation is marked, I hope that it may not be sudden, but so gradual as to cause as little individual misery as possible. Adieu, my dear friend; may every storm blow over your innocent and happy dwelling, unfelt.

July, 1817.—We are now reading Miss Edgeworth’s Ormond and Harrington. The Edinburgh Reviewers have done her much mischief; first, by persuading her to stick fast to the bogs, after she has exhausted all that was comic, pathetic, or striking in the peculiar distinctions between England and Ireland; next, by objecting to her morality being so apparent. Now she never writes half so well as when she evidently endeavours to illustrate a moral or prudential axiom; and in this case, as ships sail best with ballast, she always walks more firmly and gracefully, instead of being impeded in her course.

Sept. 7, 1817.—When one has not seen an affected person for some years, it is amusing to observe how much their manner has changed. One’s natural manner lasts for life; an assumed one can never be kept in exact repair, and must vary in process of time. Lady C., from being once decisive and lively, now speaks in the toneless whisper of some of the English grandees, with deliberate utterance and unvarying languor.

TO CHARLES MANNERS ST. GEORGE, ESQ., FRANKFORT.

Bursledon Lodge, Sept. 20, 1817.

I am anxious to know whether C——’s statement of promotion coming is a forerunner of reality, or a phantom raised to gratify his inclination for writing a letter with ‘private’ at the top, and a recommendation of prudence at the bottom. This, I know, is in itself tempting to some, and, I have heard, is peculiarly so to him.

When you next incline to make me a present, send a few bottles of Eau de Cologne. I bought some lately on the faith of the seller, and had recourse to it on one of our extraordinary hot nights at the Brunswick Hotel, when I thought the pillows seemed unsweet. I dashed it about magnificently, but it proved to be whisky, so for that night at least, you see, I slept in my native sweets.

I admire the critique on Wat Tyler less than you do, because the writer speaks with a contempt of Southey’s abilities quite disingenuous. No man of literary acquirements can really despise Southey as a poet—except, perhaps, one like Lord Byron in the first effervescence of youthful pride, fastidious ideas of perfection, and astonishment at his own splendid, and, in this our day, unrivalled powers. Read Don Roderick, and then judge whether Southey is not a poet, and of a very high order.

I am in high admiration of this long line of shore. Last night the sun set opposite to the sea, illuminating its smooth surface, and gilding the boats which skim along it with all the splendid colouring of Paul Veronese, and in an hour after the moon rose behind the waves in quiet and contrasted beauty.

Nov. 5, 1817.—November in nothing but name. The cannon firing, I hope for the Princess Charlotte’s becoming a happy mother.

Nov. 6.—The melancholy fate of our lovely Princess strikes with a heaviness of heart like a domestic calamity. So sweet, so spotless, so full of endearing qualities, so firm and ardent in her affections, so nobly bold in asserting them when it seemed her duty, so raised above the faults and follies of her age, sex, and station. It is tragic that she should have expired without a single friend or relative save him who must have been overwhelmed with the unfathomable depth of his affliction. That the heiress of the British Empire should not in her first confinement have had a single female but a mercenary, to watch over her the first night after a dangerous and afflicting labour—that the barbarity of changing her household in her youth so frequently as not to permit her forming an attachment for some valuable married woman, should have deprived her of the cares of a friend—the coldness of the Queen prevented her from wishing for those of an experienced grandmother,—and the faults, perhaps, of both parents cut her off from the assistance of a mother, is indeed a melancholy thought. I did not think anything but the loss of a dear friend could have given me so much pain.

TO CHARLES MANNERS ST. GEORGE, ESQ., FRANKFORT.

Bursledon Lodge, Nov. 25, 1817.

After a fortnight of that stillness and depression into which our lovely Princess’s untimely fate had thrown the whole country, some of those whose interest in her was founded on everything but personal knowledge, begin to recover their usual tone of spirits—that tone which, while it does not prevent us from regretting a loss, follows our being in some degree accustomed to the privation. Nothing but having been an actor in the scene, could convey an idea of the state of the kingdom. It seemed as if every family had lost an individual from its own circle, who was more or less dear. All was sorrow, lamentation, regret, varied only in kind and degree. The charge of want of religion and loyalty in the lower classes is totally disproved by the manner in which the day of her funeral was kept throughout the whole country. There was an universal pause from labour as on a Sabbath day—or rather as it ought to be on a Sabbath day—and a general laying aside of every thought of business and pleasure. It was a day of prayer and humiliation. The churches and all places of religious worship were overflowing. All sectarian barriers were broken down by the strong feelings of compassion for the living, reverence and regret for the dead. Indeed, when I say pleasure was laid aside, I express myself improperly, for it seemed never to have been thought of in any shape from the time of this deep disappointment to a generous, a devoted, and an enlightened nation. Had a fast day been appointed by public authority, this affecting expression of general sorrow would not have been so clear a proof of the impression made by one whose name is enshrined in our hearts, and who will be remembered for ever as a model of all that is touching and noble, spirited and affectionate, dignified and condescending. The Sunday after her death, all our servants, down to the very kitchen-maid, appeared at prayers in deep mourning. She has been wept in every cottage, and her loss has scarcely yet been thought of as a political calamity, it has come so near every heart as a private sorrow.

TO THE SAME.

Bursledon Lodge, Dec. 18, 1817.

Accept a little kaleidoscope, the emblem of a poetic imagination; varying, shifting, reflecting, combining, refining, illuminating; and from the simplest elements producing endless beauty and variety; educing order from confusion, and diversity from repetition. May your imagination thus multiply your pleasures.

All is sombre in the general state of England; the poor dying of hunger; and the death of our Princess and her infant, though no longer the subject of conversation to the exclusion of every other, has left a cloud that will not pass away. It seems like blotting spring from the year. Godwin’s new work, Mandeville, is in unison with the season and the times. It is ‘darkness visible,’ a tremendous picture of envy, hatred, and revenge. There is a strong instance of the impressive power of genius in Mandeville’s description of his disfigured countenance. One cannot forget a word of it; one knows his face better than that of half one’s commonplace acquaintance.

TO THE HONOURABLE MISS AGAR.

Bursledon Lodge, Dec., 1817.

I refresh myself in writing to you with ideas of kindness and affection, after looking over Godwin’s Mandeville, which, beginning in massacre, goes on through varied shades of hatred and revenge, and ends by a ghastly wound, the sole and suitable catastrophe of this dismal farrago, occasionally relieved by gleams of powerful and original genius. Perhaps when I read, instead of skimming, I may like it better. It is too late now to dignify hatred. It succeeded for a moment, when the public taste was vitiated by those works of second-rate German authors, which not only corrupted our literature, but led us to form a false judgment of our admirable northern neighbours; for we naturally supposed that the best of their writings made their way here; while of these we saw very few. Besides, Lord Byron’s haters have put all others out of fashion. They alone can be angry, revengeful, or misanthropic with grace. The mob of haters, if we except Marmion, appear a set of vulgar ruffians, since we knew the Corsair, Manfred, &c.

As to Chalmers, he is very eloquent and very good; but many others on the same subject more readily touch my heart, and please my taste. Besides, I do not so much want books to confirm my faith, as to incite me to act up to it. I should be very fortunate if my practice was as firm as my belief.

Lady —— did not come here for nothing. She has persuaded Lady —— that her country-house—just purchased, after three years’ trial, chiefly to please her, and expensively furnished entirely to please her—is in an air injurious to her health. Really with malicious people distance is one’s only safeguard. There is no muzzling them. This is provoking to an affectionate man. When I see how good sort of women tease their husbands, I am not surprised that so many wise men ‘abstain from that employment.’

TO MRS. TUITE.

London, Feb., 1818.

We have taken a house in Gloucester Place. It has in my eyes but one fault, being too well furnished, filled too much with that knick-knackery I should banish were it mine, and dislike guarding for another. Then I unfortunately saw the lady who possesses it, or rather is possessed by it; and she gave me so many directions about covering it, dusting some chairs under the covers, and scarcely sitting upon others, and watching over the extremities of the unrobed ladies who held the lights, and not suffering the housemaid to touch their projections, and not using leather to the gilding, nor aught save the breezes from the feather-brush, that I was really quite sick of internal decoration, which, like many other species of wealth, is often a plague to the possessor.

I saw your friend, Lady H., to-day. She is just going to bring her daughter into the world. This second birth is sometimes as painful as the first; and when circumstances are not favourable to the wishes of the mother, it is quite a protracted labour.

TO RICHARD TRENCH, ESQ.

Roehampton, March 24, 1818.

Jekyll and Rogers came yesterday, but what has been to me a much more acceptable arrival, so did your letter, a golden branch laden with its quadruple fruits. I never was less entertained with the par nobile fratrum. ‘’Tis the brain of the victim that tempers the dart’ of wit as well as of love; and I am beginning to think the constant endeavour to make something of nothing may be tiresome. I am convinced they would have been better apart; and Rogers stifled a pun of Jekyll’s yesterday in a cruel manner. I guessed at it, but did not laugh out, as it was in Latin; and no one but Rogers and me attended to it; the former quickly threw out a squib in an opposite direction. Next morning, Jekyll introduced the subject of the ducks again, in order to pave the way for his pun about dux. Again it perished. I thought this was hard. I am very low, which I regret, as the kind friends in the house expected I should have been gay and communicative with the wits; and seeing this makes me lower still.

TO THE SAME.

Bath, May 18, 1818.

I got into a sort of scrape by introducing myself last night by Lady C. Burke to Mrs. C——, who had, I thought, mentioned to you a wish for my acquaintance. I supposed I was doing a very civil thing to her, as she had made the first step, in making the second; but she gave me that vacant ill-bred stare which the lady whose protégée she was reserved for her female friends, and seemed to think I was doing myself too great an honour. Perhaps she was out of humour at the moment; for a few minutes before a gentleman approached her with winning civility, saying, ‘Don’t you dance?’ ‘Sometimes,’ she replied, with that encouraging smile which forms the direct contrast to the stare bestowed on me. ‘Much too hot for it to-night,’ says he, turning on his heel. This was so like a caricature put into action, that it amused me.

——’s fair one is two-and-thirty, and has been hacked about London and Dublin for many years, and sent here to be young and naïve. What might be liking, if she had known him long enough, or if she had been young enough not to know the meaning of the various things she has done and said, or if she was a great parti, and thought she must make some advances, lest he should not imagine he would be accepted, changes its character when one knows it is so convenient for spinsters of that age to be established.

I like Lady A., though I do not well know why; for mere good looks make no impression on a woman; and I know nothing more of her than that her easy graces and her laisser aller, and the mystery of her face, expressive at once of pain and pleasure, make up a prettier outside, in my opinion, than that of any other person I meet at Bath.

TO CHARLES MANNERS ST. GEORGE, ESQ.

London, May 25, 1818.

I send you the last canto of Childe Harold. La fin couronne les œuvres, and magnificently too. What in descriptive poetry is finer than his Italian sunset, or the sketch of the Coliseum—except, indeed, his own more exquisitely touched and highly finished picture of it in the last act of Manfred? What shows more intimate acquaintance with the human heart than his stanza on the scorpion-sting of past, and apparently forgotten, griefs? What is more sublime and pathetic than his address to Time, melting so beautifully and unexpectedly into forgiveness? Then his description of the dying Gladiator, that wonderfully tragic and Shakespearian statue, which seems to blend the subdued sensibility of our later days with the stoical patience of ancient heroism; while all fitly closes with a description of the Apollo, that statue which seems like his own poetry personified. In short, you will be charmed, as all here have been.

The Princess of Hesse Homburg will redeem the character of good behaviour in the conjugal bonds, lost or mislaid by her family. She is delighted with her hero, as she calls him. In his way from the scene of the marriage ceremony to the Regent’s Cottage, where, to his great annoyance, they were destined to pass the first quarter of the honeymoon, he was sick, from being unused to a close carriage, and forced to leave her for the dicky, and put Baron O’Naghten in his place. He said he was not so much ennuyé at the Cottage as he expected, having passed all his time in his dressing-gown and slippers, smoking in the conservatory.

June 10, 1818.—I have seen enough to hope no nearer friend of mine will ever engage in a contested election. It shows our fellow-men in a contemptible light; and yet freedom of election is one of the best features in the best Constitution possessed by any of the old States of the world—for I presume not to compare with our daughter. She is ‘fresh as a nursing mother, the current in whose veins is nectar,’ diffusing hope and plenty, cheerfulness and vigour. To expect that England should resemble America in these points, is as absurd as to expect the daughter should be intellectual and refined, polished and accomplished as her mother. Let each endeavour to improve as her years will permit.

Those who bought their mourning for the Queen may lock it up. It is the only dress we have a certainty of wanting, unless prevented by its being worn for ourselves.

TO A FRIEND.

Bursledon Lodge, July 21, 1818.

You have not been surprised at my late silence; you are aware of the slowness and apathy, mental and bodily, which sometimes creep over me. They are now so great that even writing to you is an effort at the moment; and I do it rather in the hope of hastening a letter from you, and giving you some satisfaction, than from my usual pleasure in pouring out my heart before you. I am glad you have left town for many reasons—first, your wishing it; next, the heat; thirdly, your health of body; and lastly, your health of mind; to which the conversation of your foreign friend was by no means favourable. To those of dull feelings, the picture of an impassioned mind like hers is an interest, an amusement, a spectacle, a sensation. But to those of vivid feelings—like you and me—it is painful. It is a strong gale blowing upon our minds, and not only disturbing their present smoothness, but disclosing wrecks long concealed below—at least, I found it so, even in the descriptions you gave me. I have just read Mˡˡᵉ de Lespinasse’s Letters in French, which remind me of your friend in almost every line. I hope she may never read them. They have done me no good. They are traced with a pen of fire; and you will own she knew how to love;—finely written, without the slightest attempt at fine writing.

I hope you found Mrs. —— quite well. I have an affectionate regard for her far beyond that inspired by her being most agreeable and valuable, from your friendship for her and her lover-like return. The metal is gold; but your love for her adds to it in my eyes a fine and interesting impression.

TO MRS. LEADBEATER.

Bursledon Lodge, July 23, 1818.

Mˡˡᵉ de Lespinasse’s Letters to Guibert, the great military genius whom Buonaparte acknowledges for his master in the art of war, are my present study. They are a literary curiosity, being exquisitely written, without any view to publicity; but oh! what total darkness as to religion and morality. She does not defy, despise, or renounce these: she never seems to have heard of them. Educated in a convent, and transplanted to the society of les esprits forts in Paris, appertaining to no family, being the fruit of her mother’s breach of the marriage vow, without father, brother, husband, I pity more, far more, than I blame her. You will read, but I know you will not let them be seen by the young, however guarded. They are so impassioned, and so full of the highest intellect, they must be dangerous.

As to Mad. d’Epinay, she is a clever, amusing Frenchwoman, with so little idea of candour and truth, that she cannot even assume them, so as to deceive us in telling her own story. Poor Rousseau! I never pitied him more, or blamed him less, than since I have read this work, where there is such an evident design to blacken his character.

TO RICHARD TRENCH, ESQ.

Bursledon Lodge, Aug. 21, 1818.

Sweet Mrs. —— was very low yesterday. I think there is a Platonic affection between her and ——, which I am not at all surprised at. I see it exists at least on her side, and I think on both. You know I can conceive this to exist with perfect innocency, where there is no love, properly so called, for any other person. I mean that a woman, who has nothing more than bienveillance for her husband, may with perfect purity have a very strong wish for the conversation of a more sensible man; and where religion is, and youth is not, I do not think it very dangerous; in fact, I should not think it dangerous at all, but for the extraordinary lessons of experience.

We read Molière in the evening, and being obliged to dwell on the Avare in translating, it increases my admiration. It is the most finished, perfect, witty, humorous, pleasant, moral picture of avarice, in every point of view, admissible in comedy. F—— feels the wit and finesse of it in a manner very surprising at his age.

TO MRS. LEADBEATER.

Bursledon Lodge, Sept. 15, 1818.

I sympathize in your affliction; but I revere your calmness and resignation, and, as far as is permitted to be proud of the qualities of our friends, I am proud of it. I feel myself raised by contemplating the union of the warmest family affection, of inexpressible tenderness in all the relations of life, with a sublime firmness which unites Christian hope and stoical fortitude. Oh, do not say you are vain of my friendship. Believe me, the exultation ought all to be on my side, and I often thank Heaven for the kindness which prompted you to seek me at Ballitore, and has followed me with partial affection from that hour, veiling my many faults, and placing the less exceptionable features in the fairest points of view.

The manner in which you and yours support your present sorrow, reminds me forcibly of what was said to me by another mourner not very long since. She and her husband had attended her brother to the island of Madeira in his last illness, and shared with his young wife in the anxious task of nursing him. One of them was always by his side night and day, and frequently all. He lingered many weeks in a decline; he was her favourite brother; he was her husband’s bosom friend, previous to the connexion by marriage.

I dreaded meeting his sister on her return; and looked with a kind of sensitive apprehension to the day she immediately offered to pass with me. But she entered with a seraphic smile, was composed and sweet as usual, and in the evening when we were alone, she owned that she must always look back to the period of his loss as one of the most soothing recollections of her life;—‘he was so completely resigned, and so perfectly prepared.’ She is an admirable woman. At eight-and-twenty she has a consummate judgment, is perfectly pure from vanity or selfishness, has looked through the decorations and trappings of grandeur (she is daughter of Lord A——) with that quiet perception which has enabled her to rate them at their real value, is serene like the first mornings of spring, pious, affectionate, and somewhat between the violet and the lily of the valley, in an exterior feminine and pleasing in the highest degree.

Her husband, a clergyman, was obliged to perform the last duties to his friend before and after the termination of existence. He filled all the duties of his office for the inhabitants of Madeira, where there was no resident clergyman. They wrote him a most grateful farewell, accompanied with a present of two hundred pounds, which he accepted, and gave to assist in building a church in the island. These are pleasing passages in the lives of our friends.

Sept. 10, 1818, Bognor.—This is still a wild, and, in my opinion, unpleasant watering-place. I should rather say cheerless than wild, for it is tame as to scenery; all the buildings are irregular—not that rural irregularity which is consistent with beauty, but that of negligence and indifference to appearance. I am engaged to visit Mr. Hayley to-morrow at half-past twelve.

Sept. 11.—Mr. Hayley received me with the most cordial politeness, showed me beautiful miniatures and pictures of all kinds; fine portraits of Gibbon, Cowper, Charlotte Smith, Romney, and an enamelled miniature from his own Serena. He was politely pleased with my songs, and made me give him seven, at two intervals of my visit. He showed a strong desire to amuse, and succeeded—and would have equally succeeded with less exertion.

Sept. 12.—When Peter asked concerning John, ‘Lord, and what shall this man do?’ our Saviour answered, ‘What is that to thee? follow thou me.’ When bewildered in speculations as to the future lot of others, this answer has sounded from the depths of my heart, as addressed to me. It strikes at the root of the pride which erects itself into a judge of the acts and intentions of Supreme Wisdom, not only towards ourselves, but others. We are not satisfied with the assurance that to us who have received the revelation of our hopes and duties, happiness, eternal in its duration, and inexpressible in its intensity, is offered to all who sincerely seek it; but we almost reproach God for not making the gift general, unconditional. We seem to accuse the Supreme Being of partiality towards ourselves; we ask, What hath this man done? and the pride of human nature advances like a boundless ocean, in successive waves foaming and thundering against that rock, the existence of evil, but ever leaving that rock in all its strength for future ages and generations to beat against in vain.

Who utter the deepest complaints against the evils of life? They who are most distinguished by its blessings. Youth and genius are amongst the most clamorous of the complainants. I hope and believe that misery is not so miserable as it appears. I have suffered, and I know the alleviations which attend each species of suffering I have endured; alleviations I could not have imagined in the case of another.

Oct. 11, London.—Just returned from St. James’s Chapel. I hope no foreign clinquant or frippery magnificence will ever alter the simple and noble worship of that chapel, a monument, among many others, of our good old King’s admirable taste—nothing done for show, and the whole distinction arising from the highest excellence in that art of which the use has been sanctified by revelation to the use of religion. ‘Oh Lord, whither shall I go then from thy presence?’ was exquisitely sung. The aërial purity of Knyvett’s voice, differing in the quality of its tone from any mortal music or sound the earth owns, was delightfully suited to a being who speaks of taking the wings of the morning and dwelling in the uttermost parts of the sea. While I deprecate adding to this simple worship, I am equally averse to taking aught away. I should be sorry to find the scientific and affecting music of Handel, Purcell, and Croft, resigned for the unison singing of our Dissenters, pathetic on its first hearing, but soon cloying and insipid for want of variety; and I should deplore changing our majestic, expressive, pathetic liturgy, for the extempore prayers of any individual, however highly gifted. Yet even the last of these changes is within the limits of possibility, and the former is more than probable.

TO CHARLES MANNERS ST. GEORGE, ESQ.

Bursledon Lodge, Nov., 1818.

I should be ‘dull as the fat weed that rots itself in ease on Lethe’s wharf,’ had I not been delighted with your last. In fact, your letters give me so much pleasure, they give me some pain; for I always regret I have not an audience to whom I could read them, stealing a modest eye round the applauding circle.

I have been much indisposed, but am to-day pretty well, saving a cough, which proceeds from the malaria of Bursledon church, which is damp by nature, and was yesterday close from people, and people of a class who are unconscious of hair-brushes, honey-water, and Eau de Cologne. You know the sort of air, composed of the living and the dead, in a close country church with a large burying-place. I am always a little the worse for it.

You have given me carte blanche as to your charities; but I never recollect we are two distinct personages, except when I am to spend your money; and on this subject I feel myself so miserably chiche (excuse a vulgar gallicism from the vocabulary of nurses and abigails), that I am ashamed to see how little I give for you in proportion to what I ought. Be so good, therefore, as to specify a sum for the purpose, which I will then feel it my duty to bestow.

The Queen’s death has been so long expected as to make no impression on the little circle around me. I feel for those who must regret her; but no woman who reigned so long has ever taken so little root in the hearts of her people. Her own supposed heartlessness chilled all the warmer feelings.

We have a miraculous young poet in our neighbourhood—son to Sir George Dallas. He has excited the wonder and admiration of Dr. Parr, Scott, Southey, Rogers, and about ten others, who all declare, in reply to a circular letter of Sir George’s, that no one at his age—now past eighteen—ever wrote Greek, Latin, and English verse so well. I think his ear is admirable, his verses always musical, and showing a wide range of thought. There are who do not think, maugre all this, that he will ever be a great poet. None of his verses ever stick—to the heart or the memory. His manners are simple, pleasing, and well-bred. He is not vain; but I suspect that praise is become to him less a pleasure received than a want supplied.

TO RICHARD TRENCH, ESQ.

Bursledon Lodge, Nov., 1818.

I have had a conversation with our new friend, which, considering his relative situation, gives me serious concern. I find that he is an unbeliever; that he has filled his memory with every trite, pert, and often confuted argument against the character of the Bible, beginning with the Creation, and ending with the most solemn and sublime of our doctrines. This is a melancholy case, and in my mind destroys that species of confidence which you give or withhold, not from reasoning, but from feeling. He started from Genesis with a remark how absurd it was—(Moses, wise in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, what people are they who assume a superiority over thee!)—well, how absurd it was to say that the light was created first, and then the sun and moon. Would not common modesty make any one suppose that one did not perfectly understand the passage, rather than accuse a narrative of absurdity, which has been read with reverence by the wisest of the uninspired, and written, perhaps, by the wisest of the inspired? Happily, I found a complete reply to this in King’s Morsels of Criticism.... These very circumstances are among those which prove the truth of the Bible—this simplicity of narrative, which, going straight to the point, stops not to clear up those trifling difficulties, which a willing mind will not cavil at, and a diligent mind will endeavour to comprehend. I have given him the book, and hope to find answers for all his petty objections. It is safe to look for them in good writers, and unsafe and unseemly, perhaps, in a woman to enter the lists of controversy herself.

Nov. 31, 1818.—Perhaps I may not live to want this book;[59] if not, I request my dear F—— will use it during the year 1819. It will remind him of one who loved him well.

I am now in good health and spirits, and therefore what I say to him here cannot be attributed to gloom. I beg of him to remember that I have never found any pleasure wholly unmixed with some little disquiet, except that of trying to do good, to increase the happiness, or lessen the misery of others; nor any pain so severe as the recollection of having in any instance done wrong.

TO THE HONOURABLE MISS AGAR.

Bursledon Lodge, Dec. 1, 1818.

It grieves me that any waters should be thought necessary for Mr. Ellis; and I am particularly sorry that he intends making his visit to Harrogate a time for study. Do explain to him the danger of this. Many persons cannot with impunity even write a letter. I wish he would do as our Continental friends, who are often wiser in their generation, especially in what relates to care of themselves. They lay aside not only their wisdom, but their dignity, at those places, and take the goods the gods provide, though these may come in the shape of people who, like the witches of Macbeth, ‘are not inhabitants of earth’ (that is, of the beau monde), ‘though they are on it.’ My fears for Mr. Ellis are that he will lead a sedentary, refined, grand, and melancholy old life, instead of the desultory, rambling, thought-dispelling existence which gives to these waters half their value.

I wish I could show you a bouncing, talking, conceited, squat, broad, rather plain, much adorned and little clothed Mrs. ——, who is so like Punch in Petticoats, from the loud shrillness and continuance of her talk, the showiness of her dress, and the vehemence of her gestures. She whirls like a tee-totum, and rattles like the machine placed to scare birds from a cherry-tree. But I am like Mˡˡᵉ de Fontanges (vide Sévigné), who said, on being offered liqueurs, ‘Madame, ce petit garçon oublie que je suis dévote’—only I am myself forgetting my resolutions, which is worse.

1818.—The following little sketch was never, so far as I know, even written out. I find it complete, but in the rough, with the erasures and interlineations of a first draft. It was intended to be one of a series, as is plain from a few lines written on the same sheet of paper, in which the writer says, ‘When we abound with writers who describe every object on every side, why should not one painter, taking up a lighter pencil and using a fainter colour, indicate rather than detail, and thus invite attention to real life by slight sketches, rather than by the fulness and perfection of a finished Dutch picture?’

HOLLAND HOUSE.

By the Ghost of La Bruyère.

Aurelio has no desire more powerful than that of rivalling, perhaps excelling, Holland House. Alas! poor Aurelio! In our time at least Holland House will never know a competitor. It has all that London requires—an honourable name, entwined and illustrated with recollections of Charles Fox—delightful amenity, fine understanding, and a most benevolent and upright heart in the noble host—in our hostess, who always keeps her state, talents, caprice, some beauty, and infinite imperiousness, forming a spirited contrast with one or two points in her position—in short, the zest of many contrarieties, as piquant as the infinite variety of her cook, a man, ‘take him for all in all, we ne’er shall look upon his like again.’ To have him in our mind’s eye alone, would be the torment of Tantalus; therefore, when he departs, we can only hope to forget him; for alas! the cook, like the actor, lives but in the present; unless, indeed, he succeed in giving his name to some dish which may carry it down to the remotest posterity with that of Robert, Maintenon, Véry. While such a cook covers the table, and the flower of our wits and poets surround it, while more good things are eaten and said there than in any other circle of the same magnitude in the civilized world, Holland House must ever remain unrivalled.

Jan. 1, 1819.—I opened the Anti-Jacobin lately, and was shocked at Canning’s lines on Mad. de Staël. At the same time, I was pleased to see how twenty years have increased our refinement, and added to the rank and prerogative of woman. All parties blame Croker for his coarse and savage critique on Lady Morgan, under cover of reviewing her France; yet it is milk and water, both in mildness and purity, when compared with the lines on Mad. de Staël, which then lay on every young lady’s table; though now every man would reprobate, and every woman wish to disown having seen it. I see Canning always laughed at many subjects which were unfit subjects for a jest.

TO MRS. LEADBEATER.

Feb. 22, 1819.

I can well appreciate the kindness which leads you to communicate your sorrows to me; and I think myself highly honoured by the power of infusing any portion of that balm you so well deserve to receive from the hands of friendship. I am very much impressed in reading the annals of those whom you regard, by seeing how much the stroke of final separation is lightened both to the sufferer and survivors (who are often indeed the severest sufferers), by the blameless lives, close ties of family affection, and temperate habits, which are more frequently found among those of your persuasion than any other. I do not mean to draw any inference tending to flattery: you can understand an opinion in all its bearings; and to you explanation is unnecessary.

The stings of death arising from those errors and those crimes, from which the sobriety and staid simplicity of the Friends happily keep them at a distance; the indifference of relatives, who in their career of ambition have hardly time, if their aspiring pursuits left them inclination, to watch the couch of departing life; the complicated ailments produced by the madness of luxurious tables and studied refinements of indolence and ease,—from such your Society seem in general happily exempt, and fall, like the nipped blossom or the ripened fruit, by an end, ‘without sin, without shame, and as free from pain as may be.’ Such was the end prayed for by the good Bishop Wilson, and may such be ours.

I read Buxton On Prisons last Christmas. It interested me greatly; and I was happy to see another ray of light thrown on those abodes of wretchedness. The force and closeness of his reasoning are admirable. His introduction is a masterpiece: never, perhaps, was so much explained, and so many errors unanswerably confuted, in a few words. He gives a new idea of the duty of society towards prisoners. To me he was peculiarly gratifying; because I had always entertained the opinions he maintains, and had suffered myself to be persuaded that in me they arose from the weakness of my heart.

Our Queen was estimable in essentials; but she was not beloved even by her family, if we except her good, kind husband. We cannot be surprised if she was little regretted by her people. Her age and sufferings had prepared the good, and the unfeeling do not see that any affectation of sorrow is called for.

TO CHARLES MANNERS ST. GEORGE, ESQ.

London, March 10, 1819.

I wish to send you Rogers’ new poem. It is rather too largely entitled Human Life: it is the beau ideal of the life of an English country gentleman, from his cradle to his tomb, and is exquisitely touched; but to relish it one must love the country, and love one’s children, and be alive to all the minutiæ of domestic life; for though our country gentleman is a soldier and a senator, yet his retirement forms by far the longest, as well as the most beautiful, part of the poem. It is not much relished in my little London—is called flat, prosaic, and dull; but the public have bought it with avidity.

TO SAMUEL ROGERS, ESQ.

London, March 18, 1819.

I should feel ungrateful if I deferred thanking you for the pleasure your last poem has given me. You deserve the peculiar gratitude of every fond mother, for you have divined, embodied, and immortalized the tenderest and the purest feelings of her existence. In looking back, the only days I earnestly desire to recall, are those which glided away while I was ‘girt with growing infancy,’ and read in the eyes and the smiles of my children, who were affectionate and beautiful, a promise of happiness, such as this world can never fulfil.

You have given us the beau ideal of the life of an English gentleman, and conquered the very difficult task of rendering highly poetical that of which the original, divested of the beautiful colouring you have thrown upon it, is daily before our eyes. Without availing yourself of distance of time, or of place, of excitement, or of an appeal to any but our best feelings, you, like our own Apelles, have given to portraits of simple, unsophisticated, virtuous English nature, the dignity of historic painting, and the graces of fiction.

They who can read your thirty-eighth page without tears, I should suppose are few.[60] To me it was peculiarly affecting from the circumstances of my past life; but I must not allow myself to select gems from the casket, and now with much difficulty I shall restrain myself from saying more.

It is so pleasant both to feel and to express admiration, that I know you will forgive me for having thus obtruded mine.

March 24, 1819, London.—The Automaton chess-player faces the spectators, seated at what appears to be a table, upon which his chess-board is placed. He wears a rich Turkish habit, sleeves and vest of gold stuff, a dark green mantle like a lady’s triangular shawl, trimmed with fur, a white turban and heron’s feather. His right hand is extended gracefully on the table, his attitude is dignified, his aspect grave, and his countenance of that class we of the present day often designate as a Kemble face. One is surprised on first viewing him, at feeling a strong impression of sadness, and somewhat of awe, from his complete immobility, as connected with so close an imitation of life. After a few minutes, one of the spectators, who has engaged him many nights before, ventures to attack this representation of destiny, and concedes to him the right of opening the game.

A slight noise is heard of winding up, and the fateful figure raises its left hand—‘that hand whose motion is not life,’ for Lord Byron’s expressions must cross us everywhere we go. This inauspicious hand, which bears some resemblance to the talon of a bird of prey, although covered with a white glove, now lifts its pawn, and drops it in another place with a slight, but hard and bony noise. The humble-looking opponent plays his best, but his schemes are thwarted, and his pieces inexorably taken, the Automaton always putting them aside before he places his own, differing in this alone from the living player, in whom these movements are usually simultaneous. The game goes on, the spectators take part with their fellow-mortal—whisper—advise. He is puzzled with their hints, and somewhat appalled by engaging an unknown and mysterious power. The very buzz and delay of winding up increases his embarrassment. Once when he was slower than usual, the handsome right hand tapped on the table as if to reprove his tardiness; and the poor player seemed fearful of having made his opponent wait too long. At last the talon-like hand, after pouncing like a bird of prey upon several of his adversary’s best pieces with an alarming air of unwavering volition, checks his king and castle. The Automaton, secure of a speedy victory, nods his head with an air of conscious superiority, like the statue in Don Juan. A few moves finish the game, which has lasted about half an hour, and a fresh adversary advances to a fresh defeat.

This invincible champion is engaged for above a hundred nights. He has never yet been conquered in England. This is the triumph of mechanism; no one has yet discovered, or made any plausible guess how the impulse of the real player is communicated to the figure. Many persons seem to think it owes its power of playing chess better than all its opponents to its original formation; and that its capability of motion and skill in the game are inseparably united. Some only admire how neatly he takes up his pieces. After he has played, he and his table—for they are one and indivisible—are rolled away, and succeeded by an Automaton Trumpeter, who is complete from top to toe, and represents a large portion of mankind, for he holds up his head, is a fine military figure, dresses well, se présente bien, beats time correctly, and plays two marches in good tune. Many come in, aye, and go out too, of the world, in this their vocation, who do little more.

There is no visible communication between the Automaton chess-player and any human being. The lower part of the table, which is shaped like a chest on the side where it meets the eye of the spectators, is not large enough to admit a man, nor could any one so placed view the chess-board. He and it are rolled about without mystery or hesitation. His possessor walks or stands near him, with apparent carelessness, and lays down the pieces he has taken from his adversary in the course of the game, but has no other communication. He plays by day, and the room in an evening is fully lighted. There is some little trick, however, in the Automaton’s appearing invincible, as he allows but an hour in the evening, and half that time in the morning, for any game; and it is easy to conceive that a skilful player, who might not be capable of always winning, might in every instance have the power of protracting a game so as not to lose it within an hour.

TO MRS. LEADBEATER.

Salthill, May 17, 1819.

I seize a quiet hour at Salthill, where we came yesterday for the purpose of breathing a little fresh air, and sitting under the shade of the lime-trees, to converse with you in peace, to ask of the health and welfare of your friends and family, and to complain a little of my own—I mean of my health, which has never been passable for four-and-twenty hours together since I left the country. You, I am sure, wonder why I came to town, and why I stay there; but you must know London operates as a magnet when one is absent from it, and is full of the glue Mad. de Sévigné speaks of as abounding in the society of les dévots du Faubourg—I forget which,—when one is in it. Be dissipated or domestic, sick or well, good or bad, wise or foolish, London, once tasted, will be required again and again. This is a mystery, and I leave it to wiser heads to explain. It is a good hint to country gentlemen not to be too anxious to give their wives a sip of this enchanted Cup.

TO CHARLES MANNERS ST. GEORGE, ESQ.

London, July 2, 1819.

Mazeppa, like some portraits of the Regent by Cosway, is rather a description of the Horse and his Rider than vice versâ. The horse is certainly the hero. Where he and Mazeppa are united, all the pictures of this new Centaur are hold, impressive, and energetic. We are breathless with suspense and terror during Mazeppa’s perilous course, which recals, and perhaps excels in force and beauty, that of Leonora’s unknown horseman. It seems as if the author had tried his strength, in awaking so deep an interest without displaying any other feeling of the mind than the mere instinct of self-preservation, as in ancient Greek tragedies our sympathy is excited by an excess of physical suffering alone. Mazeppa’s indifference to the fate of his mistress is something worse than I could have expected even from the proverbial ingratitude of man.

TO MRS. LEADBEATER.

Cheltenham, Aug. 8, 1819.

My recollections of Anna Seward are as favourable as gratitude for the most sedulous desire on her part to receive with marked kindness the visitor introduced by her Llangollen friends can make them. You shall have them copied verbatim from my journal when I return.[61] Her genius seemed of an order calculated to take much higher flights than she ever accomplished. The growth of her wing was impeded by ‘too much cherishing.’ She lived in the relaxing atmosphere of a country town, where she was indubitably superior to all the women and most of the men in mental gifts and attainments, and though not absolutely beautiful, her personal attractions were considerable—two circumstances adverse to the expansion of talent. ‘Trop d’encouragement lasse le génie,’ says Mad. de Staël, an accurate observer of external life and internal feelings; and the more personal advantages a woman possesses, the farther she is removed by man from that tone of equality which would tend to her improvement. While young he too often looks at her as his prize or his prey, his friend, his enemy, or his victim, to render her even-handed justice. And when old, he considers it as something inherently ridiculous that she should wither away, according to the universal law of nature, and deems her change ‘from fair to foul’ (as Lord Byron uncivilly calls it, when speaking of his mistress) a fit subject for all his powers of ridicule. A country town also is a nursery of much vanity in those who are superior to their companions. Each remarkable person is usually unrivalled in his own department; and the dissipation is more constant, more from morning till night, and more dozy and stupefying than in a capital. Her Letters, I own, I had not patience to read through. Her account of living characters seemed to me prolix and dull, though I had no right to complain, being dismissed with the laconic phrase of ‘amiable, lovely, and accomplished.’ It would have required much higher sauce to bribe me to go through the book.

TO THE HONOURABLE MISS AGAR.

Cheltenham, Aug. 8, 1819.

If I were in danger, I could not be removed in a better time, provided it is suitable to my eternal interests; for I should leave all the people I most love prosperous and happy, and all, except your dear self, in good health. I have a sufficiency for all my boys, and the most complete union and affection in my family; and I should escape the steep part of the down hill, for as yet many circumstances have combined to hide from me that I was going down. My husband being much younger than the husbands of my cotemporaries, my children being young, the cheerfulness of my temper when well, and my freedom from the common cares of advancing years, have all combined to keep me in a comfortable atmosphere of youthfulness, which could not have lasted many years longer. Besides, from the multifarious accidents of life, a few added years might give me the pain of losing some of the dear objects of my affection. So, to return, provided it were suitable to my eternal interests, I could not go in a better time; yet, I assure you, I would much prefer staying with those I love.

Oct., 1819.—A letter full of the most awful details relative to the Duke of Richmond’s death. They shall not darken this paper. On so awful an infliction, from which no care can insure us, and which may at any moment occur to us or ours, it is best not to fix our eyes too steadily. One circumstance only it may not be wholly unprofitable to keep in mind. The bite was inflicted by an irritated animal—a fox, which had been confined, escaped to the woods, was retaken, and became enraged at being again subject to confinement. I remember the Duke of Richmond in Ireland, when, as Col. Lennox, he was an object of universal admiration to the young of both sexes. His duel with the Duke of York seemed to have something in it chivalrous, displaying a recklessness of all selfish considerations. We knew little of the particulars, but this mystery increased our respect. He was supposed to excel in all manly exercises, and that was a higher praise in those days than it is in these more intellectual times. He was said to be the finest formed man in England, and his playing at cricket was praised as an exquisite display of grace, strength, and skill. When Lord Buckingham was Secretary in Lord Westmoreland’s Administration, he gave parties in the Phœnix Park, where the élite of the young men played cricket, while Lady Westmoreland and a few young women, either of the highest station or selected from the beauties of that time (and in those days beauty was itself a dignity), sat in a tent as spectators. The writer is ashamed to say, that such is her propensity to ennui under the smallest constraint or continuity of enforced pleasure, she has suffered greatly under the delights of these parties, and was too well prepared to answer the question, ‘Est-ce que je m’amuse?’ Yet by those who never were invited how much were they desired; how much were the initiated envied by those who were hopeless of admission. Cricket was succeeded by a dinner; cards and dancing filled up the interval till the appearance of a supper, twin brother to the dinner; and then by the light of the waning moon or rising dawn, we parted to drive through the beautiful scenery of the Park.

Nov. 10.—Yesterday evening I tried to read Boccaccio, in order to find a tale to amuse my children. The language may be very fine and very pure, but the stories in general are so cumbrously told, so loaded with unnecessary circumstance, so coarsely indecent, and so brutally cruel, that I cannot but wonder at the reputation of this work. Impurity without wit, and dénouements of assault and battery, are to be found in almost every page of the tales that mean to be gay. Yet a few of them are charming, and I love to see the mine where Shakespeare found so much valuable ore.

Nov. 19.—An amendment in health disposes us to look on all around us with a favourable eye. I am not surprised that the gradual recovery of spirits incident to humanity, when it begins to ‘wear down’ a great sorrow, has sometimes induced men hastily to marry, without much apparent temptation, when the first affliction for a beloved wife was fading into calm regret. This action has been a theme for obloquy to all professors of sentiment, somewhat more than it deserves. It is rather a symptom of that easiness of being pleased which attends recovery of mind or body, than one of fickleness. Last winter I found this house disagreeable, dark, confined, small. I was going down the hill, as to health. This year, in the gloomy month of November, I think it comfortable, compact, convenient; I am ascending in the scale, and see a better prospect around me.

TO CHARLES MANNERS ST. GEORGE, ESQ.

London, Dec., 1819.

I fear Lord Carysfort will not long be one of this world. When I saw him yesterday his Bible was before him. He seemed like a traveller consulting the map of his approaching journey. There is no end to the feelings and reflections awakened by the sight of a friend in a precarious state of health, reading his Bible. I love the emphatic cottage expression, his Bible, her Bible—that claim of property in this Book, which is peculiar, I believe, to the English language in common life.

We are all reading Lord John Russell’s Life of the Lord Russell—an interesting work, written in a tone of temper, candour, and moderation worthy of the subject. Burnet’s History, and Lady Russell’s Letters, have furnished the gems, but they are well set, and the book is honourable to its author. Miss Bury, Lord Orford’s niece, has edited a few of Lady Russell’s letters, omitted in the first collection of hers, published half a century before our time. These letters have all a certain degree of interest from the lustre of her name, and of his to whom they were addressed; for most of them are to her husband, and they are preceded by a pleasing and well written Life of Lady Russell, by the editor. The whole is scarcely worth offering to the public as a volume, though the memoir and a few of the letters might have graced a miscellaneous collection.

Dec. 24, 1819.—Dear Mrs. C—— closed her long and virtuous life on the 15th, with a calmness and resignation often granted to the evening of such a day. She suffered no pain or uneasiness, and was favoured with a renovation of those mental faculties which so long lay dormant. She was an only child, and educated with the most unbounded indulgence; married very young to one whom she immediately accompanied to the bosom of his family, in another kingdom. Transplanted, when little more than a child and eminently beautiful, to a distance from all her friends and advisers, her conduct was irreproachable as a young wife, a young mother, and a young widow. In her second marriage to one who in years might have been her father, she showed the same discretion and affectionate propriety of conduct that distinguished the earlier part of her life. Her character was of that tranquil, unassuming order which dazzles not at first, but shines more brightly the longer it is examined. She was esteemed, respected, and beloved. Her beauty was not the majestic, nor the brilliant; it neither awed nor dazzled; but it was feminine loveliness of the most attractive, winning description. Her delicate and finely formed features, of delightful expression, were set off by a thousand graces of voice, language, manners, and deportment. She was anxious to be loved, and pleased at being admired. She was religious, kind-hearted, hospitable, social, gentle, prudent; and neither severity nor envy ever approached her heart. In my connexion with her I never remember aught but kindness, partial kindness, approving, applauding, nay, even admiring, from the first hour in which she adopted me to the last of our intercourse.

TO THE LADY FANNY PROBY.

Bursledon Lodge, Dec., 1819.

Your good wishes have been fulfilled as to the health and spirits of your friend. I have had but one day of painful headache since my return to the little green nest, which is now almost entirely overgrown by the luxuriance of this summer’s extraordinary spirit of vegetation. We are beginning to cut our way out, as they do in the forests of America; but, as far as good will goes, with more difficulty; for though we both acknowledge in theory the necessity of admitting the breeze and the sunbeam, yet each patronizes every particular tree, shrub, or plant, which the other proposes to remove. I hope you can give me a favourable account of Lady —— and her latest treasure, and that you now enjoy the pleasure of seeing her free from the anxiety and apprehension that, even in her serene well-regulated mind, must occur on the eve of an event of so mixed a nature. It is really the ‘web of mingled yarn,’ where fear and hope, pain and pleasure, are more closely and abruptly mingled and entwined than in any other incident of common recurrence.

Have you read the new Tales of my Landlord? The catastrophe of the Bride of Lammermoor is unnatural, and so shocking, that its truth should rather have been a reason for consigning it to oblivion, than for embodying it in a work of imagination. In Montrose we meet an oglio of all the strange and horrid events contained in Walter Scott’s notes to a former work, yet it has to me, as far as I have gone, a sort of wild interest.

I have just received verses as wonderful, with reference to the age of the writer, as any can be; an Ode to the Duke of Wellington, and other poems, Greek, Latin, and English, written between the age of eleven and fourteen, by the youngest son of Sir George Dallas. They are, I believe, allowed to be the best ever written by a boy so young; yet they do not inspire with the idea that young Dallas will be a great poet. They are more to be admired for finished neatness and exact knowledge of the technical part of poetry than for strong impressions of nature and of life. Their merits are more the effects of a fine ear, and a memory filled by what has been said by other poets, than of deep feeling and close observation of realities.

Dec. 13, 1819.—I saw Lord —— yesterday. He is said to have been much afflicted by the loss of his valuable wife. Oh how I envied one who, after such an affliction, in looks, in voice, in calmness, in propriety of manner, is exactly as before, in less than three months. I know that time wears down the appearance of every sorrow in us all, but happy are they in whom this effect is so soon produced. This is not, as some might think, a criticism in masquerade, or an assumption of superior sensibility. No, it is a real expression of a simple feeling. If we examine the cause of our criticizing a too rapid forgetfulness of the departed, we may find it proceeds from selfishness; we do not like to be reminded how soon we may be forgotten ourselves.

Dec. 31.—It is not wholly our refinement, as we are apt to think, which has banished social and sprightly amusements from our drawing-rooms. Commerce, contracts, loans, and war prices have poured an influx of wealth into hands not hitherto in contact with the Corinthian pillars of society. Many persons were suddenly raised, as well by wealth as by alliances, places, and Court favours, to mingle with those, of whom some boast a long line of distinguished ancestors, others all the advantages of the best education, and not a few unite both. The patricians were not delighted with the intimacy with such persons which playing at cards for a low stake, private acting, domestic dancing without the formality of previous preparation, or small plays, naturally produced; nor in general could the merely wealthy shine, where ease, sprightliness, and accomplishment were required. Accordingly they invited their noble friends to splendid dinners in apartments of Eastern magnificence; and from the moment these invitations were accepted, our English nobility declined from those habits of simple enjoyment by which they were formerly distinguished. They were disinclined to be much inferior in recherche and expense to these new acquaintances, and invited them to entertainments more luxurious and more formal than they had themselves habitually given—more luxurious from contagion, more formal, in part to preserve their own dignity—thus adding insensibly to the far-sought delicacies of the table, and the ornament of their houses; till at last all society, saving Almack’s, which is a ‘bright particular star,’ and that dignified delightful scene of dozing, the Ancient Music, has taken one uniform colour. The duke, the commoner, the contractor, all entertain, as it is called, in gay apartments, full of pomp and gold;

TO A SON (aged 14).

Bursledon Lodge, Feb., 1820.

Our good King’s death made an impression of melancholy on my mind, though I had only seen him in the usual way at the Queen’s Drawing-rooms. But I can never forget the paternal benevolence of his manner—banishing awe, without diminishing reverence. When presented to him, I partook of the usual feeling experienced by all who have lived to womanhood in a country where they never could see a king, and I was intimidated at the idea of being under the eye of a monarch; but the kindliness of his manner soon removed all my little feminine bashfulness; and from that day, whenever I went to the Drawing-room, I used to watch for his approach with pleasure.

His character, I think, will take a high place in history. He was sometimes, I believe, mistaken in the line of his duty; but he always pursued the road his conscience pointed out; and if we weigh his conduct with his temptations, and consider his justice, temperance, piety, purity, domestic affections, humility, and patience, I know not whether we could safely say, his dominions contained a better man.

TO CHARLES MANNERS ST. GEORGE, ESQ.

Bursledon Lodge, Feb., 1820.

Our fears are now gradually subsiding. They were artfully excited by both extremes—by the Radicals, and by the friends of arbitrary power. Both have gained their point. Strong and unpopular laws have passed; and discontent has increased. I pity the Moderates, the constitutional Whigs, the temperate zone, in short. Between the frottement of opposite tendencies to anarchy and despotism, they have a chance of being un peu froissé. As I rank my best friends and myself in this class, I look on it with double interest.

I do not like to talk or write of our good King’s death. Some noble mind will, I hope, do justice to his admirable qualities. They were so equally tempered, and his line of conduct so undeviating, that it requires meditation to see the full beauty of a character which was not set off by contrast, nor affected us with any surprise. It is too much the custom to blame him individually for the wars we have endured—for war is but another name for suffering, to the victors as well as the vanquished. If he erred on this point, he erred with a great proportion of his people, and some of the strongest minds in his dominions.

Lord A. has left us after a short visit. He was more alive to general subjects than he has been for some time, not being so much smothered in petticoats as he was lately. There passed a moment when his society was all composed of us ‘fair defects,’ and certainly his mind requires stronger food than the pap we can offer him. I never knew a man live entirely with women who did not suffer from it more or less.

TO MRS. LEADBEATER.

Bursledon Lodge, Feb., 1820.

I do not believe Hayley is a man of bad character; he is loved and admired by some of the most respectable. I paid him a visit last autumn; a friend of his brought me to his little villa, near Bognor, by appointment. He lives in the prettiest nutshell possible, a miniature paradise; no luxe about it, except that of extreme neatness; and fine pictures; Romney, painted by the artist himself, Cowper, Charlotte Smith, Gibbon, and others of celebrity, graced his walls; and he pleased himself and me by showing me beautiful portraits of his wife, his mother, and other relations. We then walked round his small garden, strolled on his velvet lawn, and returned to drink coffee, which he always does at two, the coffee being accompanied with various other matters for his guests. Afterwards we returned to his drawing-room and pianoforte, where he showed me several songs, chiefly sacred, of which the words were either by Cowper or himself, and he seemed pleased that I could play and sing them at sight; for I still retain my voice, and, though I have no time to practise, it does not seem inclined to leave me, which I wonder at. I think he said he was seventy-five. He did lately marry a young wife, but that ‘crime,’ according to Sheridan, ‘carries the punishment along with it;’ they soon quarrelled, and parted, for the bard who sang so sweetly the ‘Triumphs of Temper,’ is said to be somewhat irritable and irascible; the lady was so too, and expected he would have done nothing for the rest of his life but sing her praises. His look and manner denote impatience, curbed by good breeding; and his nieces seem much afraid of him; so, I perceived, did his visitors and old friends. I think his manner and the expression of his face create awe rather than put one at one’s ease. At least such was the impression upon me.

TO A FRIEND.

Bursledon Lodge, Feb. 10, 1820.

I cannot defer a moment in writing to you on an event so interesting as our dear ——’s marriage. I have been informed that, as to the externals of life, her choice is not that which her parents would naturally have made. In this there is one bright side, that it is her unbiassed choice—unbiassed not only by the wishes of others, but by any of those mixed motives, calculations of ambition or interest, which so often lead to disappointment, and sometimes induce the young to part with their liberty, where they do not love so much as they ought, either for their own happiness or that of their husbands. Those women who choose for themselves undoubtedly become the best wives, and I am sure, from the warmth and tenderness of ——’s disposition, that her affection as a daughter will receive a strong accession from her grateful sense of your kindness and that of Mr. —— in yielding to her on this important point. Of that she will feel the merit still more, if she herself becomes a mother.

I am anxious to hear from you, for I know by experience, that for one’s children one hopes to attain opposite advantages, both from the right hand and from the left; and that any event respecting them which does not almost unite irreconcileable blessings, displeases one at first; but a little time passes away, imagination ceases to operate, every feature in the prospect bears its due proportion, and one is somewhat surprised on recollecting one’s first uneasiness and displeasure.

TO THE HONOURABLE MISS AGAR.

Bursledon Lodge, Feb. 17, 1820.

I hope the circumstances of ——’s intended marriage are more favourable than Mrs. —— represents them. In one’s first vexation one sees only the dark side, and one overlooks every little sunny spot. I wrote, as you advised, but I thought it kindest to write immediately, because your dear self, and many others, have found comfort from being presented at the first moment of intense feeling with a different view of things from their own. Besides, she might have felt embarrassment in announcing a circumstance of some mortification (some one says, women always feel as if a misfortune were a disgrace), and I thought a peace-making letter might spare her this slight pain, and be of some little use. As to —— and her lover having behaved so ill, though I am now a mother, not a daughter, I still think, and even more than I did then, that we owe great indulgence in these cases to the young, when the feeling is love, the purpose marriage, and the parties unmarried. This is an opinion every one acts upon, though few have the sincerity to own it. Therefore parents would save themselves much trouble by being mild and gentle at first.

March 15, 1820.—I see that last Sunday deprived me of an old and tried friend, E—— C——. His love for Colonel St. George, his friendly and almost fatherly regard for the young girl who, as St. George’s wife, was at once brought from retirement and quiet to the turmoil of a most dissipated capital, the vivid affection in which he seemed enwrapt for a short period on the commencement of my widowhood, which he allowed me to repress without painful explanations, the original foundation of friendship which all this left behind, and his late efficient kindness to my dear Charles, will often revive in my recollection. There was an individuality about him which is rare, and is becoming more so every day. His manly frankness, his good nature, doubly valuable because one saw it sprang from a vigorous root, his spirit of enjoyment, simplicity, classical taste, and quick intelligence, made him a most pleasant companion. He was self-poised; his manner was alike to all, the same in all society, because he valued not more than they deserved those adventitious circumstances which are dependent on the breath of a circle. Though his life was devoted to his profession, and perhaps shortened by his attention to its duties, he was without ambition, sought neither honours nor emoluments, and he closed it retired in the bosom of his family, towards whom a long absence had not impaired his affection.

TO RICHARD TRENCH, ESQ.

London, March 22, 1820.

The Ancient Music was delightful to-day—the singing middling. I, who have heard Mrs. Billington’s ‘They have triumphed gloriously,’ like a brilliant and magnificent rainbow, can only be astonished by the clearness and sweetness of Mrs. Salmon’s or Miss Stephens’ exertions. I was delighted with Jomelli’s Berenice, from Lucio Vero. The recitative is sublimely pathetic, and the moans of the accompaniment make it absolutely a fine duet. I allow that in the song the voice accompanies the instrument; but this is no more a defect, when it suits the situation, than Satan being Milton’s hero. I met Rogers and Henry Sanford; both of whom were amusing. The poet was unfeignedly glad to see me, gave me a seat, and sat by me. I went late, and but for his exertions in bringing me to a place I had not seen, should not have found one for some time, as it was quite full. He recommended to me Grétry On Music. I tried to make him say a word in honour of H——; dumb as the dead! his countenance even did not show that he heard me.

Do not order anything unpleasant, or say anything in the way of reproof to the tenants, while you are in Ireland. Let your arrows fly like the Parthians’.

TO MRS. —— (a god-daughter).

London, March 29, 1820.

You are aware I am acquainted with Mr. and Mrs. —— having given but a reluctant consent to your marriage. This occurs so often in the course of events, without any cause to blame either side, that there is no indelicacy in my mentioning it. All I wish to graft on it is this—You have carried your point; if I may so express myself, you have gained the victory; they are in the novel and irksome situation of having given up their wishes, and given them up to one whom they have been accustomed to expect should yield to them. Let me, then, entreat you not to take the smallest offence at anything that may occur on their part, particularly during this moment of unavoidable irritation; and on your side, recollect that every concession, every small quiet attention, every degree of filial humility, is honourable and becoming to an affectionate daughter and a young wife. Mr. —— will have sufficient complaisance for you cheerfully to concur in this pleasing task. When I think of your dear father’s advanced age, how I grieve there should be a shadow of coldness between him and the beloved of his heart. You may put an end to it when you please. Believe a mother on this head. Our children would be omnipotent in their influence over us, if they knew the effect of the most trifling proof of their affection.