Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century

If it be true that the most important ingredient in the composition of the self-biographer is a spirit of childlike vanity, with a blend of unconscious egoism, few men have ever...

Even while Haydon was in the first flush of his success, there were signs that he had achieved no lasting triumph. Sir George Beaumont proposed that the British Gallery should b...

On October 16, 1884, the Houses of Parliament were burned down. 'Good God!' writes Haydon, 'I am just returned from the terrific burning of the Houses of Parliament. Mary and I...

'What,' asks Lady Morgan in her fragment of autobiography, 'what has a woman to do with dates? Cold, false, erroneous dates! Her poetical idiosyncrasy, calculated by epochs, wou...

The marriage, unpromising as it appeared at the outset, proved an exceptionally happy one. Sir Charles was a straightforward, worthy, if somewhat dull gentleman, with no ambitio...

Any fool, said a wise man, can write an interesting book if he will only take the trouble to set down exactly what he has seen and heard. Unfortunately, it is only a very specia...

Having received invitations to stay with Lord Dalhousie and the Duke of Gordon, Willis went north at the beginning of September, 1834. The nominal attraction of Scotland he foun...

There are few true stories that are distinguished by a well-marked moral. If we study human chronicles we generally find the ungodly flourishing permanently like a green bay-tre...

During the next ten or twelve years, we get but a few scanty glimpses of the white Queen of the Desert. After Dr. Meryon's departure, Lady Hester removed to a house in the villa...

During the early and middle decades of the nineteenth century there was no more original and picturesque figure among the minor celebrities of Germany--one might almost say of E...

The summer months were spent in visits to Windsor and other parks near London, and in a tour through Yorkshire. In October his Highness was back in town, and engaged in a new ma...

The names of William and Mary Howitt are inextricably associated with the England of the early nineteenth century, with the re-discovery of the beauty and interest of their nati...

In September, 1836, the Howitts took possession of their Surrey home, West End Cottage, an old-fashioned dwelling, with a large garden, an orchard, a meadow by the river Mole, a...