Part 21

There, my dear friend--and this is from one radical to another!--the root of all this is, that I did once hint to him that I thought myself a better poet than he; more antique and to-the-heartish, giving my verses an Italian twang, and so forth. As to his allusion to my thinking myself fit to be prime minister, I merely threw out an idea that way, once when we were re-modelling. No. V. of our Liberal Magazine shortly. Let tyrants tremble!--Yours ever.

BYRONIANA.[53]

By favour of a friend just arrived from the Mediterranean we have received exclusively some most interesting papers relative to Lord Byron; they consist of anecdotes, which have never been known, and some original letters, which have never been out of the hands of the individual by whom we are favoured. Some of his Lordship's more recent conversations are detailed, which will be found highly amusing and characteristic. We submit a few extracts, which we trust will prove acceptable to our readers.

"Lord Byron," says our correspondent, "had several peculiarities; he reduced himself from corpulency to the contrary extreme, by eating raisins, and occasionally sipping brandy. He used frequently to observe that brandy was a very ardent spirit, and remarked that to persons anxious to conceal the strength of their potations, hollands was better adapted, inasmuch as being of a similar colour with the water, the quantity mixed with that liquid was less easily detectable by the eye.

"Lord Byron was perhaps more sensible of approaching changes in the weather than any other man living. One day, on a voyage to Athens to eat beef-steaks, a dark cloud appeared to windward of the vessel; his Lordship regarded it steadily for some time, until at length, feeling a few drops of rain fall, he called to Fletcher to bring his cloak, so certain he was of an approaching shower. Byron always slept with his eyes closed, and if by any accident he lay on his back, snored remarkably loud; he was very particular in his toothpicks, and generally used those of a peculiar kind of wood, in preference to quills.

"In writing letters of an ordinary cast, his style was plain, clear, and perspicuous; a specimen follows, it is addressed to a friend:--

Tuesday.

'DEAR ----,

Will you dine with me to-morrow?--

Yours truly,

NOEL BYRON.'

The next is to a person who had been recommended to his notice, and whom he felt it necessary to invite. We suppress the name of the party, lest Mr. Hobhouse should get an injunction.

'Lord Byron's compliments to Mr. ----, requests the pleasure of his company at dinner on Wednesday next.'

"These sort of notes he would secure indiscriminately with wafers or wax, as the case might be.

"One day conversing with him upon the state of Greece, and the great struggle in which we were all engaged, he observed to me, 'that a very small proportion of the population of London had been in the Archipelago.' When I assented, he said--with a sigh which went to my heart, and in a tone which I shall never forget--'It would be very strange if they had.'

"He had a strong antipathy to pork when underdone or stale, and nothing could induce him to partake of fish which had been caught more than ten days--indeed, he had a singular dislike even to the smell of it; some of his observations upon this subject will be given in a new quarto work about to be published by a very eminent bookseller.

"He spoke of Harrow with strong feelings of affection, and of the lovely neighbours of Dr. Bowen--(who they were he carefully concealed from us)--they were tenants of the same house with the late Duke of Dorset, who was Byron's fag. To a lady of the name of Enoch, who lived in a cottage at Roxeth, he had addressed some of his early productions, but had destroyed them. He used to ask me why Mr. Procter called himself Cornwall? 'he might as well call himself Cumberland,' said Byron, with his accustomed acumen.

"It has been remarked that Byron spoke of his own child with affection. Strange and unnatural as this may appear, it is literally the fact. It seems, however, to have excited so much surprise, that it is absolutely necessary to be particular in impressing the truth upon the British nation, who are so deeply interested in everything which relates to the immortal poet departed.

"The poem which he wrote upon the close of his thirty-sixth year has been published and republished so often, that we do not think it worth printing here. But the observation made by its great author to our correspondent is curious and striking:--

"'I have written these verses on closing my thirty-sixth year,' said Byron. 'I was always superstitious--thirty-six is an ominous number--four times nine are thirty-six; three times twelve are thirty-six; the figures thirty-six are three and six--six and three make nine, so do five and four'--he paused and said--'Mrs. Williams, the old lady who told my fortune, is right. The chances are, I shall not live six and thirty years more.' The fact has proved that he was not ungifted with the power of divination.

"Byron died, as I have just said, in his thirty-sixth year. What makes this coincidence the more curious is, that if he had lived till January, 1844, he would have completed his fifty-sixth, a circumstance which, curious as it is, we believe has not been noticed by any of his biographers.

"I once proposed to him to take a companion on a tour he was about to make; he answered me snappishly--'No; Hobhouse once went with me on a tour--I had enough of him. No more travelling companions for me.'

"He used frequently to compare himself to Buonaparte--so did we, to please him. Buonaparte had a head, so had Byron, so has Mr. Hayne of Burderop Park, Wilts, so has a pin; he was tickled with the comparison, and we lived with him, and swallowed toads at discretion.

"Moore, the author of the 'Fudge Family,' was a great favourite of Byron's; he had not discovered that it was Moore who persuaded Hunt--the man who made Rimini--that he was a mighty clever fellow, and that if he set up a periodical work, he (Moore) would contribute to it: Moore constantly abused Hunt to Byron at the same time--called him a stupid Cockney, and swore that Byron was ruining himself by associating with him. This was kind and liberal, and justifies what Douglas Kinnaird and everybody else indeed say of Moore just now--Byron would not have liked Moore the better for this--poor Hunt had a wife and children, and was in needy circumstances, and Byron did them great service--and what harm could Hunt do Byron, or anybody else?

"The Greeks think Byron will come to life again after a while, and one poet in the Chronicle, probably Moore, talks of having seen his _manes_ in George-street, Westminster, and of the possibility of his yet wandering about Greece, in a white dressing-gown, singing 'Liberty Hall;' but I, who know Byron well, and all his expectations, doubt the fact. I was surprised to find, considering how right and fashionable it is to praise my departed friend, that his wife declined seeing his body, and all his family declined attending his funeral.

"He told me one night that ---- told ---- that if ---- would only ---- him ----. She would ---- without any compunction; for her ----, who though an excellent man, was no ----, and that she never ----, and this she told ---- and ---- as well as Lady ---- herself. Byron told me this in confidence, and I may be blamed for repeating it; but ---- can corroborate it if he happens not to be gone to ----."

LORD WENABLES.[54]

To those who are in the habit of recurring with a feeling of devotion to the golden gone-by times of our forefathers, and who "track back" upon antiquity to hunt out subjects for admiration, it must be in some degree consolatory to discover, that even in these degenerate days there still exist amongst us men capable of recording the noble deeds of the "mighty living;" and that one of the most important occurrences of modern date has found an historian worthy of the subject which it has been made his duty to transmit to posterity.

To such of our readers as are generally conversant with the history, political or statistical, of the City of London, it may perhaps be needless to observe, that it affords, by virtue of its charter and constitution, power and authority, might and majesty, for one year at a time, to one illustrious individual (made, indeed, illustrious by his office), and that this illustrious individual is pre-eminently distinguished above all others of God's creatures (within his special jurisdiction) by the title of Lord Mayor. Having been a Liveryman, he proceeds to Sheriff and Alderman, and in time, being an Alderman, he becomes Mayor, and being Mayor of London, becomes a Lord!--that he is not a Peer, arises only from the difficulty of finding any to compare with him.

Thus, then, it being conceded that there is, and always will be, a Lord Mayor of London, so long as London stands--for the constitution of Cornhill and the majesty of the Mansion House remain unshaken by the storms of treason or the efforts of rebellion, and shine in all their native excellence with equal purity and brightness, whether under the gentle sway of an amiable Mary, the gloomy troubles of a martyred Charles, the plain dominion of a protecting Oliver, or the glorious sway of a liberating William--it being then, we say, conceded that the Lord Mayor, officially, never dies, we seek to show the imperative necessity which presses upon every Lord Mayor while in office, personally so to distinguish himself from the long line of his predecessors and those who are to follow him, by some striking deed, either bodily or mental, political or financial, literary or scientific, so that when he shall have returned from the pinnacle of earthly splendour at the corner of Walbrook into the softer retirement of his patrimonial shop in Pudding-lane or Fish-street-hill, children yet unborn may learn to lisp the name of their great ancestor mingled with their prayers, never forgetting to singularise him especially from all the other Figginses, Wigginses, Bumpuses, and Snodgrasses of their respective houses, by prefixing in their minds to the patronymic, the deed, or work, or act, or book, as it may be, by which that particular branch of their family has so flourished into virid immortality.

By observing this system, an association is formed in the mind of men and deeds highly refreshing, at once useful and agreeable. Who ever hears of Walworth without thinking of Wat Tyler?--who ever reads of Whittington without having a Cat in his eye?--who speaks of Wood without thinking of Whittington?--who of Waithman without recollecting Knightsbridge foot-path? Thus it is that these illustrious men are distinguished, not only from all other Lord Mayors, but from all other Whittingtons, Walworths, Woods, and Waithmans, in the world.

With such examples before him, was it unnatural, or not to be expected, that the late Lord Mayor, Venables, should be contented to sink back into the shades of Queenhithe from the Civic throne without leaving something behind him which might entitle him to fill a niche in the Temple of Fame? We think not; and we have no hesitation in saying that his Lordship's well-directed ambition, blending as it has done the eminently-useful with the strikingly-agreeable, has produced results which will hand him down to future ages with as much grace, certainty, and propriety as his Lordship ever exhibited in his late great life-time in handing down an Alderman's lady to dinner.

When we say, "late life-time," we mean official life--Venables the man, is alive and merry--but, alas! Venables the mayor, is dead.

It now becomes our duty to explain what it is that has so decidedly stamped the greatness of Lord Wenables--so he was called by the majority of his subjects--and in doing so, we have to divide (although not in equal parts) the fame and glory of the enterprise between his Lordship and his Lordship's Chaplain, who, upon this special occasion, and at his Lordship's special desire, was the historian of his Lordship's exploits.

It seems, that in the course of last summer, the Lord Wenables having over-eaten himself, brought upon himself a fever and rash, and during his confinement to the house the disorder took an ambitious turn, and his Lordship's organ of locomotiveness having been considerably enlarged and inflamed by his Lordship's having accidentally bumped his noble head against the corner of the bedstead, his Lordship was seized with a desire to glorify and immortalise himself by foreign travel the moment he got better of his green-fat fever--and having sent for his Chaplain to consult upon some sort of expedition which might answer his purpose, his Lordship and the Divine deliberated accordingly.

At one time he suggested going down the shaft of Brunel's tunnel at Rotherhithe, but the work was not far enough advanced to render it even commonly hazardous--that was abandoned. Going up in a balloon was suggested, but there was no utility blended with the risk. The dreadful dangers of Chelsea reach had already been encountered, and a colony established by his Lordship on the east end of Stephenson's Island, beyond Teddington--something even more daring must be tried; and, as it happened that a first cousin of my Lady Wenables had been reading to his Lordship, who was not able to read himself (from illness, not from want of learning), "Travels undertaken in order to discover the Source of the Nile," his Lordship at once resolved to signalise himself by undertaking a journey to discover, if possible, the "Source of the Thames." His Lordship was greatly excited to the undertaking upon being told that Mungo Park had been carried into Africa by a similar desire--and he observed with wonderful readiness, that if it were possible to remove a whole Park into Africa, there could be no insurmountable obstacle to transporting Lady Wenables to the source of the Thames.

When Lord Wenables was first put upon the project, he was rather of opinion that the source of the Thames was at its mouth--"a part which," as his Lordship observed, "is in man the source of all pleasure;" and he suggested going by land to Gravesend, to look out for the desired object. But the Chaplain informed his Lordship that rivers began at the other end--upon which his Lordship, not having gone so far into the study of geography as to ascertain the exact course of the river beyond Stephenson's Island, hinted his intention of going with Lady Wenables by land as far as Dunstable, and then proceeding in the search.

The Chaplain, it seems, although not quite sure enough of his experience to give Lord Wenables a downright negative to his suggestion, deemed it necessary forthwith to consult a map of Europe, in which the relative courses of the River Thames and the Dunstable turnpike-road are laid down in different degrees of latitude, and having ascertained that Dunstable was an inland town, proceeded to examine his charts until he discovered Oxford to be a more likely point to start from with any reasonable hopes of success; this he mentioned to Lord Wenables, and when his Lordship arose convalescent from his calipash fever, he mentioned his design to the Court of Aldermen on Midsummer Day, and the last week of July was ultimately and unanimously fixed upon for the expedition.

"Instructions," says the author of the history of the expedition, "were, accordingly, agreed to be given to the Town Clerk, to secure such accommodation at an inn in Oxford, Reading, and Windsor, as might be adequate for the civic party; and to make every other necessary arrangement."

And here, before we go any further, it may be necessary to state, that the work of which we are about to speak has actually been written by command of Lord Wenables, by his ci-devant Lordship's ci-devant Chaplain, and published by Messieurs Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, embellished with two beautiful engravings; all we should add is, that the author is perfectly serious in his details, and that our extracts are made from his work, correctly verbatim et literatim.

Scarce had the Lord Wenables and his Council decided upon going to Oxford, when the Corporation of that City sent them a letter inviting them to dinner on the 26th. This unexpected and welcome letter puzzled the Lord and his Council, inasmuch as they had fixed only to stay one day at Oxford--that day the 26th, and on that day to entertain (as no doubt they would) the heads of houses at dinner.

That the Lord Wenables and his Aldermen could have arranged the matter satisfactorily to all parties by eating two dinners in one day is evident, but not at the same time, and upon this dilemma the reverend author makes this communication:--

"From this difficulty," says he, "they were happily released by the question, 'Could not your Lordship go a day sooner to Oxford?' It was immediately seen that this slight alteration of the plan first intended would obviate every difficulty: it would allow them the opportunity of showing their respect to the Mayor and Magistrates of Oxford by dining with them on the Tuesday; and would also give them the honour of having the University and City to dinner on the Wednesday."

The quickness of perception in the Lord Wenables and his Aldermen, which gave them the advantage of "immediately seeing" that by going to Oxford on the 25th, they could dine there on the 26th, and by staying till the 28th they might also dine there on the 27th, if they liked, is well worthy of praise; and the liberality of inviting the University and City to dine at the Star Inn, cannot fail to impress upon the reader the magnificence of Lord Wenables' mind. Suffice it to say, the Mayor of Oxford accepted the Mayor of London's invitation, and that the Mayor of London adopted the Mayor of Oxford's proposition.

The reverend author then says:--

"Every preliminary arrangement being completed, and ample accommodation having been secured at the Star Inn, Oxford, for his Lordship and suite, to the number of about thirty persons, the civic party began to lay their plans for the journey!

"It had been previously understood that while his Lordship and friends should return together, in the City state barge, they should yet go to Oxford in such a way, and at such a time, as best comported with their own convenience. Mr. Alderman Atkins, accompanied by two of his daughters, Miss Atkins and Miss Sarah Jane, left his seat, Halstead Place, in Kent, on Monday, the 24th of July, and set out from London for Oxford in the cool of the following morning. On the same day, Mr. Alderman and Mrs. Lucas, with their daughters, Miss Charlotte and Miss Catharine, left their house, at Lee, in Kent, and went by land as far as Boulter's Lock, near Maidenhead, where they embarked on board the Navigation shallop, and proceeded by water to Reading; thus selecting some of the finest views on the river."

Lord Wenables himself was, however, not so rash; for having satisfied himself of the actual existence of Oxford by receiving a letter from one of the natives, he resolved to proceed thither by land. See we then from his reverend chaplain's history the mode of his Lordship's setting forth:--

"On the morning of the 25th, the Lord Mayor, accompanied by the Lady Mayoress, and attended by the Chaplain, left the Mansion House, soon after eight o'clock.

"The private state-carriage, drawn by four beautiful bays, had driven to the door at half-past seven. The coachman's countenance was reserved and thoughtful, indicating full consciousness of the test by which his equestrian skill would this day be tried, in having the undivided charge of four high-spirited and stately horses--a circumstance somewhat unusual; for, in the Lord Mayor's carriage, a postillion usually guides the first pair of horses. These fine animals were in admirable condition for the journey. Having been allowed a previous day of unbroken rest, they were quite impatient of delay, and chafed and champed exceedingly on the bits, by which their impetuosity was restrained.

"The murmur of expectation, which had lasted for more than half an hour, amongst the crowd who had gathered around the carriage, was at length hushed by the opening of the hall-door. The Lord Mayor had been filling up this interval with instructions to the _femme de menage_! and other household officers, who were to be left in residence, to attend, with their wonted fidelity and diligence, to their respective departments of service during his absence, and now appeared at the door. His Lordship was accompanied by the Lady Mayoress, and followed by the Chaplain.

"As soon as the female attendant of the Lady Mayoress had taken her seat, dressed with becoming neatness, at the side of the well-looking coachman, the carriage drove away; not, however, with that violent and extreme rapidity which rather astounds than gratifies the beholders; but at that steady and majestic pace, which is always an indication of REAL GREATNESS!

"Passing along Cheapside and Fleet Street--those arteries, as Dr. Johnson somewhere styles them, through which pours the full tide of London population--and then along the Strand and Piccadilly, the carriage took the Henley-road to Oxford.

"The weather was delightful; the sun, as though it had been refreshed by the copious and seasonable showers that had fallen very recently, seemed to rise more bright and clear than usual, and streamed in full glory all around. The dust of almost a whole summer had been laid by the rain; the roads were, of consequence, in excellent order, and the whole face of creation gleamed with joy!"

In fact, creation was so delighted with the appearance of Lord Wenables, that "Nature wore an universal grin."

The reverend gentleman then describes the blowing up of a powder-mill as they reached Hounslow, which at first startled Lord Wenables, who imagined fondly that he had accidentally set fire to the great river whose source he was seeking; but Lady Wenables concurred with the reverend writer in assuring his Lordship that he might make himself perfectly easy upon that particular point.

"At Cranford-bridge," says the reverend author, "which is about thirteen miles from Hyde Park Corner, the Lord Mayor staid only long enough to change horses. For, his Lordship intending to travel post from Cranford-bridge to Oxford, his own fine horses were, after a proper interval of rest, to return to town under the coachman's care.

"These noble animals, however, seemed scarcely to need the rest which their master's kindness now allotted them. For though they had drawn a somewhat heavy carriage a distance of nearly seventeen miles, they yet appeared as full of life as ever; arching their stately necks, and dashing in all directions the white foam from their mouths, as if they were displeased that they were to go no farther!

"Just as the carriage was about to drive away, Mr. Alderman Magnay, accompanied by his lady and daughter, arrived in a post-chaise! After an interchange of salutations, the Lady Mayoress--observing that they must be somewhat crowded in the chaise--invited Miss Magnay to take the fourth seat, which had as yet been vacant in the carriage. As the day was beginning to be warm, this courteous offer of her Ladyship was readily accepted."