LORD  BYRON  and  his  TIMES
Byron
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Reminiscences of a Literary Life
CHAP. XXIV
INTRODUCTION & INDEXES
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INTRODUCTION
PREFACE
CONTENTS
CHAP. I
SHELLEY
CHAP. II
JOHN KEATS
THOMAS CAMPBELL
CHAP. III
GEORGE DOUGLAS
CHAP. IV
WILLIAM STEWART ROSE
CHAP. V
SAMUEL ROGERS
SAMUEL COLERIDGE
CHAP. VI
HARTLEY COLERIDGE
CHAP. VII
THOMAS MOORE
WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES
CHAP. VIII
THOMAS DE QUINCEY
JAMES MATHIAS
CHAP. IX
MISS MARTINEAU
WILLIAM GODWIN
CHAP. X
LEIGH HUNT
THOMAS HOOD
HORACE SMITH
CHAP. XI
SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH
MRS. JAMESON
JANE AND ANNA PORTER
CHAP. XII
TOM GENT
CHAP. XIII
VISCOUNT DILLON
SIR LUMLEY SKEFFINGTON
JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE
CHAP. XIV
LORD DUDLEY
LORD DOVER
CHAP. XV
SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE
WILLIAM BROCKEDON
CHAP. XVI
SIR ROBERT PEEL
SPENCER PERCEVAL
CHAP. XVII
MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE
MR. DAVIS
CHAP. XVIII
ELIJAH BARWELL IMPEY
CHAP. XIX
ALEXANDER I.
GEORGE CANNING
NAPOLEON
QUEEN HORTENSE
ROSSINI
CHAP. XX
COUNT PECCHIO
MAZZINI
COUNT NIEMCEWITZ
CHAP. XXI
CARDINAL RUFFO
CHAP. XXII
PRINCESS CAROLINE
BARONNE DE FEUCHÈRES
CHAP. XXIII
SIR SIDNEY SMITH
‣ CHAP. XXIV
SIR GEORGE MURRAY
CHAP. XXV
VISCOUNT HARDINGE
CHAP. XXVI
REV. C. TOWNSEND
CHAP. XXVII
BEAU BRUMMELL
CHAP. XXVIII
AN ENGLISH MERCHANT
THE BRUNELS
APPENDIX
INDEX
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232 SIR GEORGE MURRAY [CHAP. XXIV
CHAPTER XXIV
SIR GEORGE MURRAY

When the Duc de Montpensier, the son of King Louis Philippe, came over to England in 1845, he was Master-General of the Ordnance in France. As Sir George Murray then held the like appointment in England, he was invited, or bidden, in the style royal, to the first dinner given to H.R.H. at Windsor Castle. The two Masters-General—the one advanced in years, and a tried old soldier, the other an inexperienced young man, who owed his high military rank to the accident of his being a King’s son—had a good deal of conversation after the repast. The Duke expressed, in anxious terms, the desire to be shown over Woolwich Arsenal as soon as possible. Sir George, as a matter of course, allowed him to name his day and hour. Sir George was too busy to go himself, but he sent an aide-de-camp and his own son-in-law, Captain Boyd, to attend His Highness, who took with him some half-dozen French officers.

No reception could have been more respectful, and at the same time more cordial, than that which these foreigners met with. They were shown over every part of the Arsenal, into all the workshops, model rooms, and into the laboratory; they were allowed ample time to examine everything they chose, whether of old or of recent invention; and the inspection being over, they were entertained at a splendid luncheon in the mess-room of our Artillery, who know how to do that sort of thing in the very best style, and who have plenty of plate and all other
CHAP. XXIV]DUC DE MONTPENSIER233
necessary means and appliances. About a week after the return of the Duke to Paris, Sir George Murray’s aide-de-camp received a letter from one of the aides-de-camp of H.R.H. I was with
Sir George, in the Ordnance Office, when this letter was brought to him. After glancing his eye over it, he smiled and said: “Here is rather a nice specimen of French impudence! Read this!” The letter contained a request, on the part of the Duke, that Sir George would have some drawings made of some new gun-carriage and other newly-invented machinery, and that these drawings might be forwarded as soon as convenient. “His Royal Highness,” said the aide-de-camp, “though he very attentively inspected all that came under his eye at Woolwich, does not quite distinctly remember the construction and application of some of these objects, and would be greatly assisted by some correct drawings.” “It is really cool,” said I. “What answer will you give, Sir George?” “A polite but a positive No!” said he.

I am not aware how Englishmen visiting French arsenals were treated at that period, or how they may be treated now; but I can speak to the reception I, in my humble capacity, met with at Toulon at the beginning of the year 1829, while as yet Charles X. was King; I went to the Arsenal with a letter to the Commandant from a respectable merchant and banker of Marseilles. This officer received me with very scant courtesy. He abruptly asked me whether I were “militaire.” As I had just returned from travelling in the East, I still wore a moustache and had a sunburnt face. I assured him that I was not in the Army; and he had the rudeness to betray, by his looks, the suspicion that I was telling an untruth and that he did not believe me. After a very little talk, he called up two gens d’armes, and told them to conduct me over the Arsenal. With one of these fellows on either flank, I was hurried and trotted
234SIR GEORGE MURRAY [CHAP. XXIV
through the Arsenal. I must have looked something like a criminal condemned to the galleys. I was not allowed time to examine anything; I was hurried on from place to place, and many places I was not allowed to enter at all. I threw away a five-franc piece in a vain endeavour to soften these two police-soldiers, “Allons, Monsieur! Marchons!” And away they hurried me. Beyond the roguish countenance of a fellow who was “aux bagnes,” for having stolen the jewels of
Mademoiselle Mars, the famous actress—the beds or boards on which the galériens are chained and fastened down side by side at night, their legs being secured in a sort of long iron stocks—I really remember next to nothing of what I so hastily saw in the Arsenal and dockyards of Toulon. I hope that they now manage these matters better in France, and that less jealousy and more liberality are shown to us English, who are so liberal towards the French; but from some few things which have recently come to my knowledge, “j’en doute.”

One morning that I called at the Ordnance Office, Sir George was going to attend the Committee, at that time, if I remember well, sitting in consultation on some of the Park or other West End improvements. He was ill, very ill; already yielding to the maladies which were so soon to bring him to the grave.

He was out of humour with most of the decisions the Committee had previously come to, and with nearly everything that had been done under their auspices; and as a man of taste and sound judgment, he might well have been so. “I wish I were not going,” said he; “I would much rather stay here and talk over the Marlborough despatches with you!” He was then editing those despatches, and I was occasionally giving him a little assistance. He said: “It seems to me that this Committee does hardly anything that is right. If twenty or thirty architectural plans and designs be brought before them,
CHAP. XXIV]COMMITTEE OF TASTE235
it is the toss-up of a halfpenny that they do not choose the very worst and the most expensive. Was there ever anything worse than the Nelson Column, with the queer statue a-top of it, that looks like a man with a tail! Two sailors were coming out of the Strand into Trafalgar Square. ‘D—— me, Jack,’ said one to the other, ‘if they haven’t top-masted the
Admiral! There’s a pretty go! I wonder what next!’ I think,” continued Sir George, “that I shall cry off. I am sick of voting in minorities, and of seeing things adopted of which I cannot approve. It is the old English story: there are on the Committee men of indisputable taste and ability, men quite incapable of being swayed by partialities, or prejudices, or self-interested motives; but these men are not regular in their attendance, or strenuous in their exertion; while, on the other hand, a set of inferior individuals, inferior not only in taste but also in other qualities, are constant in their attendance at the Board, and by coalescing and clubbing together, they generally manage to carry everything their own way. Yet all things are done in the name of the Committee, as one; and I and your friend, Mr. Hallam, and old Sam Hughes—not to mention others—are members of that Committee, and are often held to be, in part, responsible for the solecisms and blunders that are committed. The Duke laughed at me for accepting the nomination. If I had taken the Duke’s advice, I should never have been on the Committee of Taste. The Duke’s plain common sense always leads, and always did lead him right. One of his maxims has been, never to undertake work with your arms tied; another, never to seek reputation, or the power of doing good or preventing evil, as a member of a Committee or any such body! For, though you will get neither credit nor praise for what it does well, you will not escape blame for what it does ill.”

236 SIR GEORGE MURRAY [CHAP. XXIV

When Moore was on the advance to Salamanca, a party of our light cavalry, one fine afternoon, suddenly surprised and took, with all he had upon him or with him, a French Cabinet courier who was coming from Paris and seeking the Emperor Napoleon, whose whereabouts was at the moment rather uncertain. Besides despatches, the courier was the bearer of a magnum of the choicest burgundy, no doubt a present from the thoughtful Cambaceres, who always held that, whether in war or diplomacy, there was nothing like good cheer. Having read or deciphered, as far as they were able, all the despatches and letters, Sir John, turning to George Murray, said laughingly: “Now after this day’s work let us wet our whistles, and try what’s in the bottle!” Murray, nothing loath, drew the cork, and clean glasses were forthcoming, and were filled in a trice. “Burgundy, by Jove!” cried Murray. “And of the very first quality!” said Sir John, taking his first sip of the glass. “Murray, it must be ‘Vin de Nuits!’” Here a timid, cautious aide-de-camp, turning pale as he spoke, and almost taking the glass out of his General’s hand, said: “Stop, Sir John! For Heaven’s sake have a care! The wine may be poisoned, and the courier and the bottle may have been purposely thrown in your way to take you off!” “A most improbable conjecture,” said Sir John, emptying his glass at a draught, and passing the bottle to Murray, who confessed that his mouth was watering. “But who knows,” said the cautious aide-de-camp, “but that some mortal enemy at Paris may have drugged the wine, to take off Napoleon himself? He has many enemies in France who would be quite equal to such a deed!” “Pooh!” said Murray, who had finished his first glass while the officer was talking. “If there is poison here, I wish we had a hogshead of it! It is pure, unalloyed, unmistakable burgundy, of the very best vintage. Take a glass, man, and thank your stars for throwing such a
CHAP. XXIV]SIR JOHN MOORE237
prize in our way, in this hungry, sour-wine, barbarous country!” Seeing no ill-effects either in the General or the Quartermaster, the aide-de-camp filled his own glass, but he sipped it rather cautiously, and was not at all anxious to replenish it. As he was not familiar with the peculiar odour and flavour of burgundy, he fancied there was something queer, if not deleterious, in the wine. “And so,” said Murray, “the General and I had pretty well all the magnum to ourselves, and very merry we got over it.”

Sir George Murray told me this little anecdote, with many others, in the Ordnance Office, Pall Mall, in the summer of 1844, when he was Master-General of the Ordnance, and not many months before his death, deeply lamented by me.

“When that magnum fell in our way,” said the veteran, the accomplished and free-hearted soldier, “we had been for weeks on rather short commons, drinking nothing but common Spanish wines, which all savoured strongly of the goat-skins in which they had been carried into the market or the camp; so that I must confess I was quite greedy after the burgundy, and enjoyed it amazingly, as did also poor Moore.” And Sir George spoke as if he had still on his lips and palate the flavour of that delicious wine—lost to Napoleon, and drunk by his foes.

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