In the neighbourhood of Rome, on the top of Mount Soracte, I met an English gentleman, followed by a high-bred, unmistakable English dog, the sort of dear creature I had not seen for some years. I was little more than a youth at that time (1821), and even now that I am getting into the vecchi anni I am not ashamed to confess that at the time of this meeting I was amusing myself by pitching stones down the steep end of the Horatian mountain, to see how far they would roll, and how many they would carry along with them; and that my acquaintance with an illustrious man was preceded by my making friends with his dog. The gentleman, a great many years my senior, addressed me, and we got into talk about the Campagna of Rome, a good part of which lay outspread beneath us, about the malaria, and other topical subjects. I was greatly struck by the originality and spirit of some of his remarks, and could easily make out that he was a high-bred and highly educated man. Such a description of person was not, and, thank God! is not yet, very rare among Englishmen in easy or even uneasy circumstances.
We parted on the ridge of Soracte, without my knowing or much caring who or
what he was. But, not many days after, I renewed my acquaintance with the beautiful dog and
his master in the Colosseum, when the talking unit of the duo very kindly recognized me,
and fell into talk—clever, original,
| 138 | LORD DUDLEY | [CHAP. XIV |
We again met repeatedly; he was exceedingly kind, and what was more, exceedingly amusing; and if not instructive, suggestive. But I was shy of his rank; and had, at that time, rather a mistaken notion of the morgue of our English aristocracy.
Long after this, in the late autumn or winter of 1829, when I used to
follow the harriers across Brighton Downs, I several times saw, and now and then rode side
by side with, a very peculiar, odd-mannered gentleman who bent forward as he galloped, and
was generally talking to his horse, quite audibly, as well as patting his neck. It struck
me that somewhere in this wide world I had seen him before, but I could not remember where.
Feeling a little excited by my uncertainty and doubt, I spoke to William Stewart Rose, who guessed from my description of the gentleman that
it must be Lord Lake. But, one morning, as I was reading
some Italian book, and Rose was spouting Greek, ore
rotundo, in his library, Dan
Hinves came in and said: “Lord, sir! here’s Lord Dudley and Ward!” “Show his
lordship in!” said Rose, and in came my acquaintance of
Mount Soracte and of the Downs. Nine or ten years make a great difference in any man,
whether he be young or old; but most, if the elder be not past the “mezzo cammin,” in a youth. His lordship could
not have recognized me, but I must say that I was excusable in not recognizing him, for he
was sadly and fearfully altered and changed, far more than the mere progress of time would
account for. He had been ill, excited and perplexed by the duties of office as Foreign
Secretary; and for some time he had betrayed symptoms of the unhappy malady
| CHAP. XIV] | DAN HINVES | 139 |
But when Rose had presented me, and had said a few kind words about me, I recalled to his lordship the Soracte meeting, and spoke of a few other things which brought me back to his recollection, and upon this he cordially greeted me. We fell, à la Rose, into desultory and very cheerful talk, in which, with a few intervals of abstraction, Lord Dudley took his fair part. We talked so long that Dan Hinves came in to announce our early dinner. “Rose,” said his lordship, “will you let me stay and partake of your polenta or minestra? I am amused where I am, and don’t know how much I may be bored where I may go, if I leave you.” My host was delighted at the proposition. Here this man of high rank, of eminent wit, of social qualities, and of enormous wealth, made a confession which struck me and which has haunted my mind ever since, greatly to the disparagement of our stiff, formal, London society, that he hardly knew a man to whom he could invite himself to dinner, and that he knew only two or three houses where he could drop in to tea, or even ask for a cup of tea, without being invited. This was said at the end of 1829. Have we mended these matters since then? In the evening, Mr. Hallam dropped in, and the conversation, as befitting a grave historian, became more serious.
But here I was sorry to see that Lord Dudley became more abstracted and at times quite flighty. As I was putting on my cloak and wrapper to walk home with him, Hinves whispered in my ear: “Take care, zur, for he is queer in the head.”
Rose, who had known him intimately for very many
years, had a great affection and quite as much admiration for the man; and, like Mr. Hallam and other friends of his lordship, he hoped and
seemed to believe that Lord Ward’s infirmity would
stop
| 140 | LORD DUDLEY | [CHAP. XIV |
| CHAP. XIV] | FITS OF ABSTRACTION | 141 |
One night at Brighton, when his lordship was no longer in office, he gave a
dinner-party, and was collected and exceedingly pleasant till the dessert, when a servant
brought in a note, and delivered it to the Count de C., a Frenchman,
who was of the party. Without thinking of, or perhaps without knowing, the English formula,
“Will you permit me?” the Count opened the letter and began to read
it. Upon this the host rose, snatched the paper from his hand, and put it in the fire. His
guests, mostly English, were “struck of a heap,” consternated, and the
more so as the Count was a fire-eating, duelling fellow, and was now in a towering passion.
Ward’s friends intervened, but in order to
restore peace they were obliged to make the painful confession that his lordship was liable
to temporary aberrations of the intellect. Not long after this incident, as Rose and I were going slowly up the London Road, towards
Preston, his lordship overtook us, flanked Rose, and fell into
pleasant talk. Rose was not riding Velluti, as it was evening, not
morning, and we were going to dine at old General
Calcraft’s; but had he been on his donkey, it would have been all the
same to Dudley and Ward. We had a very, very short way to go, but
before we achieved the distance, a carriage drawn by four posters, and having within it a
lady and gentleman, rapidly met and passed us. “So!” said Lord
Ward, thinking to himself, “here comes Lady Holland and her atheist!” “Is it indeed Lady
| 142 | LORD DUDLEY | [CHAP. XIV |
He had not much more affection for old Sam Rogers than for her ladyship or Mr. Allen; he disliked him as a retainer and component part of Holland House, and for various other not very amiable peculiarities.
The banker-poet knew this, and hence this spiteful and untrue distich:
“They say Ward has no heart, but I
deny it; He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it.” |
Although Hallam was an habitué of Holland House, his lordship had both esteem and affection
| CHAP. XIV] | GABRIELE ROSSETTI | 143 |
Next to Rose, this accomplished nobleman was, I think, about the best of our Italian scholars; he was deep in Dante, and spoke the bella lingua almost to perfection.
I remember how indignant he was at an insane attempt made by that Neapolitan improvvisatore and fugitive carbonaro, G. Rossetti, to turn the sublime language, imagery, and allusions of the “Divina Commedia” into the shibboleth, slang, or gergo, of secret, conspiring, political societies of the Middle Ages.
Lord Dudley and Ward had written one or two clever articles for the Quarterly Review. They were admirable, and attracted the more notice as being known to come from him; but John Murray, the proprietor, and old Gifford, the editor of the Review, had great difficulty in getting anything more out of him.
“My lord,” said King John, “if you had only been born a poor man, and were now forced to write for your living, like Southey, what a first-rate reviewer you would have made!”
“Thank you, Murray,” said his lordship, “but I think, on the whole, I would rather have the coal-pits and the peerage, than be that!”
Fastidious he was, in many things; but I fancy that what this extraordinary man most abhorred was affectation, whether in woman or in man, and that his passion for the first Lady Lyndhurst in good part arose out of her total want of that rather common quality. Old Sam Rogers, who returned, with interest, his lordship’s antipathy and dislike, used to say that Ward himself was a “concrete of affectation.”
Not so; it was not affectation, but a most acute
| 144 | LORD DUDLEY | [CHAP. XIV |
In the winter of 1832-33, a few months before his premature and lamented
death, his lordship was staying at Brighton in very bad, and visibly very bad, health. His
house was flanked on either side by a rich, pompous, party-giving citizen and citizeness.
Those new Brighton houses were neither so comfortable nor so substantial as they looked
outside; the partition walls between them were thin and porous to sound. One night, when he
was very ill, his right-hand neighbour gave a grand soirée with a
concert. There was no escaping the noise, and poor Lord
Dover suffered from it. On calling upon him next morning, he said in his
quiet manner: “I have had a bad night of it! I really believe that our next-door
neighbour would give a ball and dance at his house, even if he knew I were in the very
act of dying.” A few nights after this, when his lordship was still worse,
and when that neighbour knew it, the man on his left did give a ball, a crowded and very
noisy one, for it was full season at Brighton, and a Cavalry Regiment was in barracks, and
all the officers who attended the ball waltzed and mazurkaed with their spurs on. I say
that this christianly neighbour knew his lordship’s condition: he had been politely
warned, though not by Lady Dover, or by any of the
family. His answer was that “cards” had been issued, and that invitations could
not be recalled. But who has lived in London, or in any “fashionable” or
“respectable” quarter of it, without being made painfully sensible of the utter
indifference of next-door neighbours? of the total disregard of No. 4 to the misery, agony,
or death that may be passing at
| CHAP. XIV] | NATIONAL FAULTS | 145 |
| ≪ PREV | NEXT ≫ |
