Chapter 30

Mr. Bentley has sent me three several applications for a second series. At present Mr. May forbids all composition, but I suppose the thing will be done. I shall introduce some chapters on French poetry and literature. At this moment I am in full chase of Casimer Delavigne's _ballads_. He thought so little of them that he published very few in his Poésies,--one in a note,--and several of the very finest not at all. They are scattered about here and there. ---- has reproduced two (which I had) in his Memories; but I want all that can be found, especially one of which the refrain is, "Chez l'Ambassadere de France." I was such a fool, when I read it six or seven years ago, as not to take a copy. Do you think Mr. Hector Bossange could help me to that, or to any others not printed in the Memories? ...Of course I shall devote one chapter to _our_ Emperor. Ah, how much better is such a government as his than one which every four years causes a sort of moral earthquake; or one like ours, where whole sessions are passed in squabbling! The loss of his place has saved Disraeli's life, for everybody said he could not have survived three months' badgering in the House. A very intimate friend of his (Mr. Henry Drummond, the very odd, very clever member for Surrey) says that he had certainly broken a bloodvessel. One piece of news I have heard to-day from Miss Goldsmid, that the Jews are certain now to gain their point and be admitted to the House of Commons; for my part, I hold that every one has a claim to his civil rights, were he Mahometan or Hindoo, and I rejoice that poor old Sir Isaac, the real author of the movement, will probably live to see it accomplished. The thought of succeeding at last in the pursuit to which he has devoted half his life has quite revived him.

And now Heaven bless you, my very dear friend. None of the poems on Wellington are to be compared to that dirge on Webster. I rejoice that my article should have pleased his family. The only bit of my new book that I have written is a paper on Taylor and Stoddard. Say everything for me to the Ticknors and Nortons and your own people, the W----s.

Ever most faithfully and affectionately yours, M.R.M.

Swallowfield, February 1, 1853.

Ah, my dear friend! ask Dr. Holmes what these severe bruises and lacerations of the nerves of the principal joints are, and he will tell you that they are much more slow and difficult of cure, as well as more painful, than half a dozen broken bones. It is now above six weeks since that accident, and although the shoulder is going on favorably, there is still a total loss of muscular power in the lower limbs. I am just lifted out of bed and wheeled to the fireside, and then at night wheeled back and lifted into bed,--without the power of standing for a moment, or of putting one foot before the other, or of turning in bed. Mr. May says that warm weather will probably do much for me, but that till then I must be a prisoner to my room, for that if rheumatism supervenes upon my present inability, there will be no chance of getting rid of it. So "patience and shuffle the cards," as a good man, much in my state, the contented Marquess, says in Don Quixote.... I assure you I am not out of spirits; indeed, people are so kind to me that it would be the basest of all ingratitude if I were not cheerful as well as thankful. I think that in a letter which you must have received by this time, I told you how it came about, and thanked you for the comely book which shows how cosily America lodges my brethren of the quill. Dr. Holmes ought to have been there, and Dr. Parsons, but their time will come and must. Nothing gratifies me more than to find how many strangers, writing to me of my Recollections, mention Dr. Holmes, classing him sometimes with Thomas Davis, sometimes with Praed. If I write another series of Recollections, as, when Mr. May will let me, I suppose I must, I shall certainly include Dr. Parsons....

Has anybody told you the terrible story of that boy, Lord Ockham, Lord Byron's grandson? I had it from Mr. Noel, Lady Byron's cousin-german and intimate friend. While his poor mother was dying her death of martyrdom from an inward cancer,--Mrs. Sartoris (Adelaide Kemble), who went to sing to her, saw her through the door, which was left open, crouching on a floor covered with mattresses, on her hands and knees, the only posture she could bear,--whilst she with the patience of an angel was enduring her long agony, her husband, engrossed by her, left this lad of seventeen to his sister and the governess. It was a dull life, and he ran away. Mr. Noel (my friend's brother, from whom he had the story) knew most of the youth, who had been for a long time staying at his house, and they begged him to undertake the search. Lord Ockham had sent a carpet-bag containing his gentleman's clothes to his father, Lord Lovelace, in London; he was therefore disguised, and from certain things he had said Mr. Noel suspected that he intended to go to America. Accordingly he went first to Bristol, then to Liverpool, leaving his description, a sort of written portrait of him, with the police at both places. At Liverpool he was found before long, and when Mr. Noel, summoned by the electric telegraph, reached that town, he found him dressed as a sailor-boy at a low public-house, surrounded by seamen of both nations, and enjoying, as much as possible, their sailor yarns. He had given his money, £36, to the landlord to keep; had desired him to inquire for a ship where he might be received as cabin-boy; and had entered into a shrewd bargain for his board, stipulating that he should have over and above his ordinary rations a pint of beer with his Sunday dinner. The landlord did not cheat him, but he postponed all engagements under the expectation--seeing that he was clearly a gentleman's son--that money would be offered for his recovery. The worst is that he (Lord Ockham) showed no regret for the sorrow and disgrace that he had brought upon his family at such a time. He has two tastes not often seen combined,--the love of money and of low company. One wonders how he will turn out. He is now in Paris, after which he is to re-enter in Green's ship (he had served in one before) for a twelvemonth, and to leave the service or remain in it as he may decide then. This is perfectly true; Mr. Noel had it from his brother the very day before he wrote it to me. He says that Lady Lovelace's funeral was too ostentatious. Escutcheons and silver coronals everywhere. Lord Lovelace's taste that, and not Lady Byron's, which is perfectly simple. You know that she was buried in the same vault with her father, whose coffin and the box containing his heart were in perfect preservation. Scott's only grandson, too, is just dead of sheer debauchery. Strange! As if one generation paid in vice and folly for the genius of the past. By the way, are you not charmed at the Emperor's marriage? To restore to princes honest love and healthy preference, instead of the conventional intermarriages which have brought epilepsy and idiotism and madness into half the royal families of Christendom! And then the beauty of that speech, with its fine appeals to the best sympathies of our common nature! I am proud of him. What a sad, sad catastrophe was that of young Pierce! I won't call his father general, and I hope he will leave it off. With us it is a real offence to give any man a higher rank than belongs to him,--to say captain, for instance, to a lieutenant,--and that is one of our usages which it would be well to copy. But we have follies enough, God knows; that duchess address, with all its tuft-hunting signatures, is a thing to make Englishwomen ashamed. Well, they caught it deservedly in an address from American women, written probably by some very clever American man. No, I have not seen Longfellow's lines on the Duke. One gets sick of the very name. Henry is exceedingly fond of his little sister. I remember that when he first saw the snow fall in large flakes, he would have it that it was a shower of white feathers. Love to all my dear friends, the W----s, Mrs. Sparks, Dr. Holmes, Mr. Hawthorne. Ever, dearest friend, most affectionately yours,

M.R.M.

(1st March, 1853.)

The numbers for the election of President of France in favor of Louis Napoleon were for against 7119791 1119

Look through the back of this against the candle, or the fire, or any light.

My Very Dear Friend: Having a note to send to Mrs. Sparks, who has sent me, or rather whose husband has sent me, two answers to Lord Mahon, which, coming through a country bookseller, have, I suspect, been some months on the way, I cannot help sending it enclosed to you, that I may have a chat with you _en passant_,--the last, I hope, before your arrival. If you have not seen the above curious instance of figures forming into a word, and that word into a prophecy, I think it will amuse you, and I want besides to tell you some of the _on-dits_ about the Empress. A Mr. Huddlestone, the head of one of our great Catholic houses, is in despair at the marriage. He had been desperately in love with her for two years in Spain,--had followed her to Paris,--was called back to England by his father's illness, and was on the point of crossing the Channel, after that father's death, to lay himself and £30,000 or £40,000 a year at her feet, when the Emperor stepped in and carried off the prize. To comfort himself he has got a portrait of her on horseback, which a friend of mine saw the other day at his house. Mrs. Browning writes me from Florence: "I wonder if the Empress pleases you as well as the Emperor. For my part, I approve altogether, and none the less that he has offended Austria by the mode of announcement. Every cut of the whip on the face of Austria is an especial compliment to me, or so I feel it. Let him heed the democracy, and do his duty to the world, and use to the utmost his great opportunities. Mr. Cobden and the peace societies are pleasing me infinitely just now in making head against the immorality--that's the word--of the English press. The tone taken up towards France is immoral in the highest degree, and the invasion cry would be idiotic if it were not something worse. The Empress, I heard the other day from high authority, is charming and good at heart. She was brought up at a respectable school at Clifton, and is very English, which does not prevent her from shooting with pistols, leaping gates, driving four in hand, and upsetting the carriage if the frolic requires it,--as brave as a lion and as true as a dog. Her complexion is like marble, white, pale, and pure,--the hair light, rather sandy, they say, and she powders it with gold dust for effect; but there is less physical and more intellectual beauty than is generally attributed to her. She is a woman of very decided opinions. I like all that, don't you? and I like her letter to the press, as everybody must." Besides this, I have to-day a letter from a friend in Paris, who says that "everybody feels her charm," and that "the Emperor, when presenting her at the balcony on the wedding-day, looked radiant with happiness." My Parisian friend says that young Alexandre Dumas is amongst the people arrested for libel,--a thorough _mauvais sujet_. Lamartine is quite ruined, and forced to sell his estates. He was always, I believe, expensive, like all those French _littérateurs_. You don't happen to have in Boston--have you?--a copy of "Les Mémoires de Lally Tollendal"? I think they are different publications in defence of his father, published, some in London during the Emigration, some in Paris after the Restoration. What I want is an account of the retreat from Pondicherie. I'll tell you why some day here. Mrs. Browning is most curious about your rappings,--of which I suppose you believe as much as I do of the Cock Lane Ghost, whose doings, by the way, they much resemble.

I liked Mrs. Tyler's letter; at least I liked it much better than the one to which it was an answer, although I hold it one of our best female privileges to have no act or part in such matters.

Now you will be sorry to have a very bad account of me. Three weeks ago frost and snow set in here, and ever since I have been unable to rise or stand, or put one foot before another, and the pain is much worse than at first. I suppose rheumatism has supervened upon the injured nerve. God bless you. Love to all.

Ever faithfully yours, M.R.M.

Swallowfield, March 17, 1853

My Dear Friend: I cannot enough thank you for your most kind and charming letter. Your letters, and the thoughts of you, and the hope that you will coax your partners into the hazardous experiment of letting you come to England, help to console me under this long confinement; for here I am at near Easter still a close prisoner from the consequences of the accident that took place before Christmas. I have only once left my room, and that only to the opposite chamber to have this cleaned, and I got such a chill that it brought back all the pain and increased all the weakness. But when fine weather--warm, genial, sunny weather--comes, I will get down in some way or other, and trust myself to that which never hurts any one, the honest open air. Spring, and even the approach of spring, has upon me something the effect that England has upon you. It sets me dreaming,--I see leafy hedges in my dreams, and flowery banks, and then I long to make the vision a reality. I remember that Fanchon's father, Flush, who was a famous sporting dog, used, at the approach of the covering season, to quest in his sleep, doubtless by the same instinct that works in me. So, as soon as the sun tells the same story with the primroses I shall make a descent after some fashion, and no doubt, aided by Sam's stalwart arm, successfully. In the mean while I have one great pleasure in store, be the weather what it may; for next Saturday or the Saturday after I shall see dear Mr. Bennoch. We have not met since November, although he has written to me again and again. He will take this letter, and I trouble you with a note to kind Mrs. Sparks, who is about to send me, or rather who has sent me, some American cracknels, which have not yet arrived. To-day, too, I had a charming letter from Lasswade,--not _the_ letter, the pamphlet one, but one full of kindness from father and daughter, written by Miss Margaret to ask after me with a reality of interest which one feels at once. It gave me pleasure in another way too; Mr. De Quincey is of my faith and delight in the Emperor! Is not that delightful? Also he holds in great abomination that blackest of iniquities ----, my heresy as to which nearly cost me an idolator t'other day, a lady from Essex, who came here to take a house in my neighborhood to be near me. She was so shocked that, if we had not met afterwards, when I regained my ground a little by certain congenialities she certainly would have abjured me forever. Well! no offence to Mrs. ----. I had rather in a literary question agree with Thomas De Quincey than with her and Queen Victoria, who, always fond of strong not to say coarse excitements, is amongst ----'s warm admirers. I knew you would like the Emperor's marriage. I heard last week from a stiff English lady, who had been visiting one of the Empress's ladies of honor, that one day at St. Cloud she shot thirteen brace of partridges; "but," added the narrator, "she is so sweet and charming a creature that any man might fall in love with her notwithstanding." To be sure Mr. Thackeray liked you. How could he help it? Did not he also like Dr. Holmes? I hope so. How glad I should be to see him in England, and how glad I shall be to see Mr. Hawthorne! He will find all the best judges of English writing admiring him to his heart's content, warmly and discriminatingly; and a consulship in a bustling town will give him the cheerful reality, the healthy air of every-day life, which is his only want. Will you tell all these dear friends, especially Mr. and Mrs. W----, how deeply I feel their affectionate sympathy, and thank Mr. Whittier and Professor Longfellow over and over again for their kind condolence? Tell Mr. Whittier how much I shall prize his book. He has an earnest admirer in Buckingham Palace, Marianne Skerrett, known as the Queen's Miss Skerrett, the lady chiefly about her, and the only one to whom she talks of books. Miss Skerrett is herself a very clever woman, and holds Mr. Whittier to be not only the greatest, but the _one_ poet of America; which last assertion the poet himself would, I suspect, be the very first to deny. Your promise of Dr. Parsons's poem is very delightful to me. I hold firm to my admiration of those stanzas on Webster. Nothing written on the Duke came within miles of it, and I have no doubt that the poem on Dante's bust is equally fine.... Mr. Justice Talfourd has just printed a new tragedy. He sent it to me from Oxford, not from Reading, where he had passed four days and never gave a copy to any mortal, and told me, in a very affectionate letter which accompanied it, that "it was at present a very private sin, he having only given eight or ten copies in all." I suppose that it will be published, for I observe that the "not published" is written, not printed, and that Moxon's name is on the title-page. It is called "The Castilian,"--is on the story of a revolt headed by Don John de Padilla in the early part of Charles the Fifth's reign, and is more like Ion than either of his other tragedies. I have just been reading a most interesting little book in manuscript, called "The Heart of Montrose." It is a versification in three ballads of a very striking letter in Napier's "Life and Times of Montrose," by the young lady who calls herself Mary Maynard. It is really a little book that ought to make a noise, not too long, full of grace and of interest, and she has adhered to the true story with excellent taste, that story being a very remarkable union of the romantic and the domestic. I am afraid that my other young poet, ----, is dying of consumption; those fine spirits often fall in that way. I have just corrected my book for a cheaper edition. Mr. Bentley is very urgent for a second series, and I suppose I must try. I shall get you to write for me to Mr. Hector Bossange when you come, for come you must. My eyes begin to feel the effects of this long confinement to one smoky and dusty room.

So far had I written, dearest friend, when this day (March 26) brought me your most kind and welcome letter enclosed in another from dear Mr. Bennoch. Am I to return Dr. Parsons's? or shall I keep it till you come to fetch it? Tell the writer how very much I prize his kindness, none the less that he likes (as I do) my tragedies, that is, one of them, the best of my poor doings. The lines on the Duchess are capital, and quite what she deserves; but I think those the worst who, in so true a spirit of what Carlyle would call flunkeyism, consent to sign any nonsense that their names may figure side by side with that of a duchess, and they themselves find (for once) an admittance to the gilded saloons of Stafford House. For my part, I well-nigh lost an admirer the other day by taking a common-sense view of the question. A lady (whose name I never heard till a week ago) came here to take a house to be near me. (N.B. There was none to be had.) Well, she was so provoked to find that I had stopped short of the one hundredth page of ----, and never intended to read another, that I do think, if we had not discovered some sympathies to counterbalance that grand difference--As I live, I have told you that story before! Ah! I am sixty-six, and I get older every day! So does little Henry, who is at home just now, and longing to put the clock forward that he may go to America. He is a boy of great promise, full of sound sense, and as good as good can be. I suppose that he never in his life told an untruth, or broke a promise, or disobeyed a command. He is very fond of his little sister; and not at all jealous either--to the great praise of that four-footed lady be it said--is Fanchon, who watches over the cradle, and is as fond of the baby in her way as Henry in his.

So far from paying me copyright money, all that I ever received from Mr. B---- was two copies of his edition of "Our Village," one of which I gave away, and of the other some chance visitor has taken one of the volumes. I really do think I shall ask him for a copy or two. How can I ever thank you enough for your infinite kindness in sending me books! Thank you again and again. Dear Mr. Bennoch has been making an admirable speech, in moving to present the thanks of the city to Mr. Layard. How one likes to feel proud of one's friends! God bless you!

Ever most faithfully yours, M.R.M.

Kind Mrs. Sparks's biscuits arrived quite safe. How droll some of the cookery is in "The Wide, Wide World"! It would try English stomachs by its over-richness. I wonder you are not all dead, if such be your _cuisine_.

Swallowfield, May 3, 1853.

How shall I thank you enough, dear and kind friend, for the copy of ---- that arrived here yesterday! Very like; only it wanted what that great painter, the sun, will never arrive at giving, the actual look of life which is the one great charm of the human countenance. Strange that the very source of light should fail in giving that light of the face, the smile. However, all that can be given by that branch of art has been given. I never before saw so good a photographic portrait, and for one that gives more I must wait until John Lucas, or some American John Lucas, shall coax you into sitting. I sent you, ten days ago, a batch of notes, and a most unworthy letter of thanks for one of your parcels of gift-books; and I write the rather now to tell you I am better than then, and hope to be in a still better plight before July or August, when a most welcome letter from Mr. Tuckerman has bidden us to expect you to officiate as Master of the Ceremonies to Mr. Hawthorne, who, welcome for himself, will be trebly welcome for such an introducer.