Chapter 21

Let us turn to him, however, as a member of society. His circle of acquaintance was enlarged, not only by his visits to Holland House, but by his lectures on moral philosophy at the Royal Institution. Sir Robert Peel, not the most impressionable of men, but one whose cold shake of the hand is said--as Sydney Smith said of Sir James Mackintosh--'to have come under the genus _Mortmain_' was a very young man at the time when Albemarle Street was crowded with carriages from one end of the street to the other, in consequence of Sydney Smith's lectures; yet he declared that he had never forgotten the effect given to the speech of Logan, the Indian chief, by Sydney's voice and manner.

His lectures produced a sum sufficient for Sydney to furnish a house in Orchard Street. Doughty Street--raised to celebrity as having been the residence, not only of Sydney Smith, but of Charles Dickens--was too far for the _habitué_ of Holland House and the orator of Albemarle Street long to sojourn there. In Orchard Street, Sydney enjoyed that domestic comfort which he called 'the grammar of life;' delightful suppers, to about twenty or thirty persons, who came and went as they pleased. A great part of the same amusing and gifted set used to meet once a week also at Sir James Mackintosh's, at a supper, which, though not exactly Cowper's 'radish and an egg,' was simple, but plentiful--yet most eagerly sought after. 'There are a few living,' writes Sydney Smith's daughter, 'who can look back to them, and I have always found them do so with a sigh of regret.'

One night, a country cousin of Sydney Smith's was present at a supper. 'Now, Sydney,' whispered the simple girl, 'I know all these are very remarkable people; do tell me who they are.'--'Oh, yes; there's Hannibal,' pointing to a grave, dry, stern man, Mr. Whishaw; 'he lost his leg in the Carthagenian war: there's Socrates,' pointing to Luttrell: 'that,' he added, turning to Horner, 'is Solon.'

Another evening, Mackintosh brought a raw Scotch cousin--an ensign in a Highland regiment--with him. The young man's head could carry no idea of glory except in regimentals. Suddenly, nudging Sir James, he whispered, 'Is that the great Sir Sydney Smith?'--'Yes, yes,' answered Sir James; and instantly telling Sydney who he was supposed to be, the grave evening preacher at the Foundling immediately assumed the character ascribed to him, and acted the hero of Acre to perfection, fighting his battles over again--even charging the Turks--whilst the young Scot was so enchanted by the great Sir Sydney's condescension, that he wanted to fetch the pipers of his regiment, and pipe to the great Sir Sydney, who had never enjoyed the agonizing strains of the bagpipe. Upon this the party broke up, and Sir James carried the Highlander off, lest he should find out his mistake, and cut his throat from shame and vexation. One may readily conceive Sydney Smith's enjoying this joke, for his spirits were those of a boy: his gaiety was irresistible; his ringing laugh, infectious; but it is difficult for those who knew Mackintosh in his later years--the quiet, almost pensive invalid to realize in that remembrance any trace of the Mackintosh of Doughty Street and Orchard Street days.

One day Sydney Smith came home with two hackney coaches full of pictures, which he had picked up at an auction. His daughter thus tells the story: 'Another day he came home with two hackney-coach loads of pictures, which he had met with at an auction, having found it impossible to resist so many yards of brown-looking figures and faded landscapes going for "absolutely nothing, unheard of sacrifices." "Kate" hardly knew whether to laugh or cry when she saw these horribly dingy-looking objects enter her pretty little drawing-room, and looked at him as if she thought him half mad; and half mad he was, but with delight at his purchase. He kept walking up and down the room, waving his arms, putting them in fresh lights, declaring they were exquisite specimens of art, and if not by the very best masters, merited to be so. He invited his friends, and displayed his pictures; discovered fresh beauties for each new comer; and for three or four days, under the magic influence of his wit and imagination, these gloomy old pictures were a perpetual source of amusement and fun.'

At last, finding that he was considered no authority for the fine arts, off went the pictures to another auction, but all re-christened by himself, with unheard-of names. 'One, I remember,' says Lady Holland, 'was a beautiful landscape, by Nicholas de Falda, a pupil of Valdezzio, the only painting by that eminent artist. The pictures sold, I believe, for rather less than he gave for them under their original names, which were probably as real as their assumed ones.'

Sydney Smith had long been styled by his friends the 'Bishop of Mickleham,' in allusion to his visits to, and influence in, the house of his friend, Richard Sharp, who had a cottage at that place. A piece of real preferment was now his. This was the living of Foston-le-Clay, in Yorkshire, given him by Lord Erskine, then Chancellor. Lady Holland never rested till she had prevailed on Erskine to give Sydney Smith a living. Smith, as Rogers relates, went to thank his lordship. 'Oh,' said Erskine, 'don't thank me, Mr. Smith; I gave you the living because Lady Holland insisted on my doing so; and if she had desired me to give it to the devil, _he_ must have had it.'

Notwithstanding the prediction of the saints, Sydney Smith proved an excellent parish priest. Even his most admiring friends did not expect this result. The general impression was, that he was infinitely better fitted for the bar than for the church. 'Ah! Mr. Smith,' Lord Stowell used to say to him, 'you would be in a far better situation, and a far richer man, had you belonged to us.'

One _jeu d'esprit_ more, and Smith hastened to take possession of his living, and to enter upon duties of which no one better knew the mighty importance than he did.

Among the Mackintosh set was Richard Sharp, to whom we have already referred, termed, from his great knowledge and ready memory, 'Conversation Sharp.' Many people may think that this did not imply an agreeable man, and they were, perhaps, right. Sharp was a plain, ungainly man. One evening, a literary lady, now living, being at Sir James Mackintosh's, in company with Sharp, Sismondi, and the late Lord Denman, then a man of middle age. Sir James was not only particularly partial to Denman, but admired him personally. 'Do you not think Denman handsome?' he inquired of the lady after the guests were gone. 'No? Then you must think Mr. Sharp handsome,' he rejoined; meaning that a taste so perverted as not to admire Denman must be smitten with Sharp. Sharp is said to have studied all the morning before he went out to dinner, to get up his wit and anecdote, as an actor does his part. Sydney Smith having one day received an invitation from him to dine at Fishmongers' Hall, sent the following reply:--

'Much do I love The monsters of the deep to eat; To see the rosy salmon lying, By smelts encircled, born for frying; And from the china boat to pour On flaky cod the flavoured shower. Thee above all, I much regard, Flatter than Longman's flattest bard, Much-honour'd turbot! sore I grieve Thee and thy dainty friends to leave. Far from ye all, in snuggest corner, I go to dine with little Horner; He who with philosophic eye Sat brooding o'er his Christmas pie; Then firm resolved, with either thumb, Tore forth the crust-enveloped plum; And mad with youthful dreams of deathless fame, Proclaimed the deathless glories of his name.'

One word before we enter on the subject of Sydney Smith's ministry. In this biography of a great Wit, we touch but lightly upon the graver features of his character, yet they cannot wholly be passed over. Stanch in his devotion to the Church of England, he was liberal to others. The world in the present day is afraid of liberality. Let it not be forgotten that it has been the fanatic and the intolerant, not the mild and practical, among us who have gone from the Protestant to the Romish faith. Sydney Smith, in common with other great men, had no predilection for dealing damnation round the land. How noble, how true, are Mackintosh's reflections on religious sects! 'It is impossible, I think, to look into the interior of any religious sect, without thinking better of it. I ought, indeed, to confine myself to those of Christian Europe, but with that limitation it seems to me the remark is true; whether I look at the Jansenists of Port Royal, or the Quakers in Clarkson, or the Methodists in these journals. All these sects, which appear dangerous or ridiculous at a distance, assume a much more amicable character on nearer inspection. They all inculcate pure virtue, and practise mutual kindness; and they exert great force of reason in rescuing their doctrines from the absurd or pernicious consequences which naturally flow from them. Much of this arises from the general nature of religious principle--much also from the genius of the Gospel.'

Nothing could present a greater contrast with the comforts of Orchard Street than the place on which Sydney Smith's 'lines' had now 'fallen.' Owing to the non-residence of the clergy, one-third of the parsonage houses in England had fallen into decay, but that of Foston-le-Clay was pre-eminently wretched. A hovel represented what was still called the parsonage-house: it stood on a glebe of three hundred acres of the stiffest clay in Yorkshire: a brick-floored kitchen, with a room above it, both in a ruinous condition was the residence which, for a hundred and fifty years, had never been inhabited by an incumbent. It will not be a matter of surprise that for some time, until 1808, Sydney Smith, with the permission of the Archbishop of York, continued to reside in London, after having appointed a curate at Foston-le-Clay.

The first visit to his living was by no means promising. Picture to yourself, my reader, Sydney Smith in a carriage, in his superfine black coat, driving into the remote village, and parleying with the old parish clerk, who after some conversation, observed, emphatically, shaking his stick on the ground, 'Master Smith, it stroikes me that people as comes froe London is such _fools_.--'I see _you_ are no fool,' was the prompt answer; and the parson and the clerk parted mutually satisfied.

The profits, arising from the sale of two volumes of sermons, carried Sydney Smith, his family, and his furniture, to Foston-le-Clay in the summer of 1809, and he took up his abode in a pleasant house about two miles from York, at Heslington.

Let us now, for a time, forget the wit, the editor of the 'Edinburgh Review,' the diner out, the evening preacher at the Foundling, and glance at the peaceful and useful life of a country clergyman. His spirits, his wit, all his social qualities, never deserted Sydney Smith, even in the retreat to which he was destined. Let us see him driving in his second-hand carriage, his horse, 'Peter the Cruel,' with Mrs. Smith by his side, summer and winter, from Heslington to Foston-le-Clay. Mrs. Smith, at first, trembled at the inexperience of her charioteer; but 'she soon,' said Sydney, 'raised my wages, and considered me an excellent Jehu.' 'Mr. Brown,' said Sydney to one of the tradesmen of York, through the streets of which he found it difficult to drive, 'your streets are the narrowest, in Europe,'--'Narrow, sir? there's plenty of room for two carriages to pass each other, and an inch and a half to spare!'

Let us see him in his busy peaceful life, digging an hour or two every day in his garden to avoid sudden death, by preventing corpulency; then galloping through a book, and when his family laughed at him for so soon dismissing a quarto, saying, 'Cross-examine me, then,' and going well through the ordeal. Hear him, after finishing his morning's writing, saying to his wife, 'There, Kate, it's done: do look over it; put the dots to the i's, and cross the t's:' and off he went to his walk, surrounded by his children, who were his companions and confidants. See him in the lane, talking to an old woman whom he had taken into his gig as she was returning from market, and picking up all sorts of knowledge from her; or administering medicine to the poor, or to his horses and animals, sometimes committing mistakes next to fatal. One day he declared he found all his pigs intoxicated, grunting 'God save the King' about the sty. He nearly poisoned his red cow by an over-dose of castor-oil; and Peter the Cruel, so called because the groom once said he had a cruel face, took two boxes of opium pills (boxes and all) in his mash, without ill consequences.

See him, too, rushing out after dinner--for he had a horror of long sittings after that meal--to look at his 'scratcher.'

He used to say, Lady Holland (his daughter) relates, 'I am all for cheap luxuries, even for animals; now all animals have a passion for scratching their backbones; they break down your gates and palings to effect this. Look! there is my universal scratcher, a sharp-edged pole, resting on a high and a low post, adapted to every height, from a horse to a lamb. Even the Edinburgh Reviewer can take his turn: you have no idea how popular it is; I have not had a gate broken since I put it up; I have it in all my fields.'

Then his experiments were numerous. Mutton fat was to be burned instead of candles; and working-people were brought in and fed with broth, or with rice, or with porridge, to see which was the most satisfying diet. Economy was made amusing, benevolence almost absurd, but the humorous man, the kind man, shone forth in all things. He was one of the first, if not the first, who introduced allotment-gardens for the poor: he was one who could truly say at the last, when he had lived sixty-six years, 'I have done but very little harm in the world, and I have brought up my family.'

We have taken a glimpse--and a glimpse merely--of the 'wise Wit' in London, among congenial society, where every intellectual power was daily called forth in combative force. See him now in the provincial circles of the remote county of York. 'Did you ever,' he once asked, 'dine out in the country? What misery do human beings inflict on each other under the name of pleasure!' Then he describes driving in a broiling sun through a dusty road, to eat a haunch of venison at the house of a neighbouring parson. Assembled in a small house, 'redolent of frying,' talked of roads, weather, and turnips; began, that done, to be hungry. A stripling, caught up for the occasion, calls the master of the house out of the room, and announces that the cook has mistaken the soup for dirty water, and has thrown it away. No help for it--agreed; they must do without it; perhaps as well they should. Dinner announced; they enter the dining-room: heavens! what a gale! the venison is high!

Various other adverse incidents occur, and the party return home, grateful to the post-boys for not being drunk, and thankful to Providence for not being thrown into a wet ditch.

In addition to these troubles and risks, there was an enemy at hand to apprehend--prejudice. The Squire of Heslington--'the last of the Squires'--regarded Mr. Smith as a Jacobin; and his lady, 'who looked as if she had walked straight out of the Ark, or had been the wife of Enoch,' used to turn aside as he passed. When, however, the squire found 'the peace of the village undisturbed, harvests as usual, his dogs uninjured, he first bowed, then called, and ended by a pitch of confidence;' actually discovered that Sydney Smith had made a joke; nearly went into convulsions of laughter, and finished by inviting the 'dangerous fellow,' as he had once thought him, to see his dogs.

In 1813 Sydney Smith removed, as he thought it his duty to do, to Foston-le-Clay, and, 'not knowing a turnip from a carrot,' began to farm three hundred acres, and not having any money, to build a parsonage-house.

It was a model parsonage, he thought, the plan being formed by himself and 'Kate.' Being advised by his neighbours to purchase oxen, he bought (and christened) four oxen, 'Tug and Lug,' 'Crawl and Haul.' But Tug and Lug took to fainting, Haul and Crawl to lie down in the mud, so he was compelled to sell them, and to purchase a team of horses.

The house plunged him into debt for twenty years; and a man-servant being too expensive, the 'wise Wit' caught up a country girl, made like a mile-stone, and christened her 'Bunch,' and Bunch became the best butler in the county.

He next set up a carriage, which he christened the 'Immortal,' for it grew, from being only an ancient green chariot, supposed to have been the earliest invention of the kind, to be known by all the neighbours; the village dogs barked at it, the village boys cheered it, and 'we had no false shame.'

One could linger over the annals of Sydney Smith's useful, happy life at Foston-le-Clay, visited there indeed by Mackintosh, and each day achieving a higher and higher reputation in literature. We see him as a magistrate, 'no friend to game,' as a country squire in Suffolk solemnly said of a neighbour, but a friend to man; with a pitying heart, that forbade him to commit young delinquents to gaol, though he would lecture them severely, and call out, in bad cases, 'John, bring me out my _private gallows_,' which brought the poor boys on their knees. We behold him making visits, and even tours, in the 'Immortal,' and receiving Lord and Lady Carlisle in their coach and four, which had stuck in the middle of a ploughed field, there being scarcely any road, only a lane up to the house. Behold him receiving his poor friend, Francis Homer, who came to take his last leave of him, and died at Pisa, in 1817, after earning honours, paid, as Sir James Mackintosh remarked, to intrinsic claims alone--'a man of obscure birth, who never filled an office.' See Sydney Smith, in 1816, from the failure of the harvest (he who was in London 'a walking patty'), sitting down with his family to repast without bread, thin, unleavened cakes being the substitute. See his cheerfulness, his submission to many privations: picture him to ourselves trying to ride, but falling off incessantly; but obliged to leave off riding 'for the good of his family, and the peace of his parish' (he had christened his horse, 'Calamity'). See him suddenly prostrate from that steed in the midst of the streets of York, 'to the great joy of Dissenters,' he declares: another time flung as if he had been a shuttlecock, into a neighbouring parish, very glad that it was not a neighbouring planet, for somehow or other his horse and he had a 'trick of parting company.' 'I used,' he wrote, 'to think a fall from a horse dangerous, but much experience has convinced me to the contrary. I have had six falls in two years, and just behaved like the Three per Cents., when they fell--I got up again, and am not a bit the worse for it, any more than the stock in question.'

This country life was varied by many visits. In 1820 he went to visit Lord Grey, then to Edinburgh, to Jeffrey travelling by the coach, a gentleman, with whom he had been talking, said, 'There is a very clever fellow lives near here, Sydney Smith, I believe; a devilish odd fellow.'--'He may be an odd fellow,' cried Sydney, taking off his hat, 'but here he is, odd as he is, at your service.'

Sydney Smith found great changes in Edinburgh--changes, however, in many respects for the better. The society of Edinburgh was then in its greatest perfection. 'Its brilliancy, Lord Cockburn remarks, 'was owing to a variety of peculiar circumstances, which only operated during this period. The principal of these were the survivance of several of the eminent men of the preceding age, and of curious old habits, which the modern flood had not yet obliterated; the rise of a powerful community of young men of ability; the exclusion of the British from the Continent, which made this place, both for education and for residence, a favourite resort of strangers; the war, which maintained a constant excitement of military preparation and of military idleness: the blaze of that popular literature which made this the second city in the empire for learning and science; and the extent and the ease with which literature and society embellished each other, without rivalry, and without pedantry.

Among the 'best young' as his lordship styles them, were Lord Webb Seymour and Francis Horner; whilst those of the 'interesting old' most noted were Elizabeth Hamilton and Mrs. Grant of Laggan, who had 'unfolded herself,' to borrow Lord Cockburn's words, in the 'Letters from the Mountains,' 'an interesting treasury of good solitary thoughts.' Of these two ladies, Lord Cockburn says, 'They were excellent women, and not _too_ blue. Their sense covered the colour.' It was to Mrs. Hamilton that Jeffrey said, 'That there was no objection to the blue stocking, provided the petticoat came low enough to cover it.' Neither of these ladies possessed personal attractions. Mrs. Hamilton had the plain face proper to literary women; Mrs. Grant was a tall dark woman, with much dignity of manner: in spite of her life of misfortune, she had a great flow of spirits. Beautifully, indeed, does Lord Cockburn render justice to her character: 'She was always under the influence of an affectionate and delightful enthusiasm, which, unquenched by time and sorrow, survived the wreck of many domestic attachments, and shed a glow over the close of a very protracted life.'

Both she and Mrs. Hamilton succeeded in drawing to their _conversazioni_, in small rooms of unpretending style, men of the highest order, as well as attractive women of intelligence. Society in Edinburgh took the form of Parisian _soirées_, and although much divided into parties, was sufficiently general to be varied. It is amusing to find that Mrs. Grant was at one time one of the supposed 'Authors of "Waverley,"' until the disclosure of the mystery silenced reports. It was the popularity of 'Marmion,' that made Scott, as he himself confesses, nearly lose his footing. Mrs. Grant's observation on him, after meeting the Great Unknown at some brilliant party, has been allowed, even by the sarcastic Lockhart, to be 'witty enough.' 'Mr. Scott always seems to me to be like a glass, through which the rays of admiration pass without sensibly affecting it; but the bit of paper[13] that lies beside it will presently be in a blaze--and no wonder.'

[13: Alluding to Lady Scott.]

Scott endeavoured to secure Mrs. Grant a pension; merited as he observes, by her as an authoress, 'but much more,' in his opinion, 'by the firmness and elasticity of mind with which she had borne a great succession of domestic calamities.' 'Unhappily,' he adds, 'there was only about £100 open on the Pension List, and this the minister assigned in equal portions to Mrs. G---- and a distressed lady, grand-daughter of a forfeited Scottish nobleman. Mrs. G---- , proud as a Highlandwoman, vain as a poetess, and absurd as a blue-stocking, has taken this partition in _malam partem_, and written to Lord Melville about her merits, and that her friends do not consider her claims as being fairly canvassed, with something like a demand that her petition be submitted to the king. This is not the way to make her _plack_ a _bawbee_, and Lord M---- , a little _miffed_ in turn, sends the whole correspondence to me to know whether Mrs. G---- will accept the £50 or not