My Friends and Acquaintance
William Hazlitt XIII
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XIII.
OUR JOURNEY HOME FROM THE FIGHT.—HAZLITT’S
TALK BY THE WAY.—THE PHILOSOPHY OF TASTE AND SMELL.—SCHOOL DAYS.—THE “NOUVELLE HELOISE.”—HAZLITT’S
DESCRIPTION OF THE BATTLE.
Our journey home from the fight offered one of those instances
which few of Hazlitt’s friends can even have
conceived possible, and fewer still have enjoyed—that of seeing him for eight-and-forty
hours together as happy as a boy or a bird; as free from all seeming consciousness of the
ills which his “flesh,” above that of all other living
men, was “heir to,” as if some kind genius had charmed his memory and
imagination to sleep. Yet that no such process had taken place was clear, from the
delightful manner in which both those faculties were called into play, in the Table Talk in
which the pleasant hours were passed.
Having settled to proceed together on our journey home, we started
immediately after the business of the day was concluded, with the intention of sleeping at
a neigh-![]()
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bouring town, if we could get comfortable accommodation there,
and if not, of proceeding onwards towards London, and taking the chance of anything that
might present itself on the way.
We soon found that the latter was the only course; and having reconnoitred,
and made our way out of the town, which resembled nothing but a place just entered
pell-mell by a besieging army, the whole of its length being one mass of vehicles jammed
together in a motionless state, and all the pathways and interstices filled up by
pedestrians, every individual of the whole living mass presenting in their faces, more or
less, evidence of the excitement of the hour,—we got upon the London road, and, soon giving
the go-by to the subject, which we had now (for the present) had
enough of, relapsed into that natural and self-suggestive talk which is the only thing
deserving the name of “conversation,” and in which Hazlitt excelled all men I have ever known, provided he had (as in my case)
a good listener, and one who could give the cue when it was wanting, without ever desiring
to keep the ![]()
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ball in his own hands for a moment longer than was
necessary to preserve it from falling to the ground.
It was a beautiful sunshiny afternoon, I remember, with a mild sharpness in
the air, which Hazlitt seemed every now and then to
drink in and snuff up with a boyish delight, while he gazed and remarked on the pleasant
scenery we were passing through, as if the feeling and sight of “the country”
had restored to him those times and associations which it seemed to be the sole business of
his ordinary every-day life (not to forget, but) to brood over with a melancholy and mortal
regret. Here, however, they seemed to come back like “angel” rather than demon
visits, and to bring with them nothing but a grave and quiet satisfaction.
Some remark of his on the curious manner in which smells bring back to us the scenes with which they have been associated in years
long past, called for a remark from me which I was surprised to find was entirely new to
him, but the truth of which he immediately admitted, namely, that certain tastes produce
this effect in a still more remarkable ![]()
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manner. I said that to that
day (and it is the same at this) I could never taste green mustard and cress without its
calling up to my mind, as if by magic, the whole scene of my first school-days, when I used
to grow it in my little bit of garden in the inner playground; that every individual object
there present used to start up before me with all the distinctness of actual vision, and to
an extent of detail which no effort of memory could accomplish without this assistance; and
that nothing but the visible objects of the scene presented
themselves on these occasions.*
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* I have now, while I am writing, tried the experiment in question,
as a matter of intellectual inquiry not unworthy the reader’s attention. And as I
sit in my little metropolitan study, thirty years after the objects in question have
quitted my sight (and twenty years after they have ceased to
exist!)—with nothing visible to my bodily eyes but smoke-enveloped lines of
blank brickwork, cowering, as it were, beneath a dense canopy of dun-yellow vapour, and
relieved only by gigantic chimneys, alternately breathing and vomiting forth volumes of
black noisome smoke—on the dim face of this seeming picture, which is all that presents
itself to my view as I look from my window, I see, as I taste the pungent charm, a
vivid and beautiful reality projected—a sort of fata morgana, conjured up from the mysterious sea
of memory, in which “nothing is but what is not,” and
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Hazlitt illustrated the fact by several instances in
his own case, connected with smells; and he said that the observation had
yet which shuts out for the time all else that
is, or was, or is to be. I see the pleasant dwelling-house by the road-side, with
its white rough-cast walls looking at intervals through the various trees that
embower and embosom it, even to its crimson chimney-tops; the little gateway,
leading from the public road (with its overarching bar of iron and its sonorous
bell), where I used to see the frequent equipage stop that might have brought my own parents to visit me; the little alley of
laurel, laurestinus, and seringa, through which they would have to pass before
reaching the house, stepping (one step down) into the comfortable low-roofed
parlour, with its wainscoted walls and window-seats, into which visitors were
ushered. I see the climbing rose-trees and honeysuckles on which those windows
looked, and the distant play-ground beyond, and the long play-field beyond that, at
the commencement of which were our little strips of gardens; and the long bare
white-walled schoolroom, projecting from the pretty house like an ugly excrescence;
and the little wicket at the further end of it, leading to the kitchen-garden; and
the old yew-tree, on the right hand, close within the wicket, with its ruby and
glutinous berries; and the high blank paling, which ran all along the opposite side
of the play-ground, to the top of which thrice only in the year we might climb and
look over without breach of orders, namely, the days of the Easter Hunt, and of
Fairlop and Harlow Bush Fairs: for the road led to those still famous scenes of
plebeian pleasure. My memory falters. I taste once more of the plant |
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been first suggested to him by Mr.
Fearn, in whose metaphysical work, he said, the fact was first brought to
bear on our mental operations. And he instanced, I remember, Mr.
Fearn’s remark, that certain associations of ideas brought back to
him, as if it were actually existing, the smell of a baker’s shop
at Bassora, as one of the finest examples on record of the far-reaching powers of
the human senses when duly connected with the imagination. He spoke, too, I remember, in
the very highest terms of Mr. Fearn’s powers of metaphysical
investigation, de-
“that takes the reason
prisoner”—and lo! the whole vicinity expands before my sight like a panorama!
The pretty low-lying church; the stately grove of elms running through the very
centre of the village; “the shop;” the back-winding lane, leading to
the forest, where the great pear-tree overhung the wall of “the
Doctor’s” garden, and offered a portion of its yearly burthen as fair
game to those who dared risk the attainment of it; the “Naked Beauties”
on the hill (a noble old mansion so called). In a word, the whole scene is present
to me, “in its habit as it lived;” but with it (which is curious) there
returns not a single feeling connected with the places or the period in question.
The association is evidently a physical one purely. Altogether the subject is well
worth that attentive examination and experiment which it has never yet received.
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scribing them as second to none that had ever been employed on the
subject.
In talk like this, ranging from the dizzy heights of
“Fate, free-will, and reason absolute,” |
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down to the level of those merely “personal themes,” in discussing which
Hazlitt was equally happy and at home, we passed
pleasantly over the first five or six miles of our homeward journey, by which time a return
chaise overtook us, and the dusk coming on, we got into it, and, in an hour more, were
snugly housed for the night at one of those most “comfortable” of all public
domiciles, a third-rate country inn; and here, in a little wainscoted parlour on the ground
floor, we were soon warmly and cosily ensconced by a blazing fire, with the tea-things on
the table, the curtains let down, an early supper ordered of roast fowl and apple-pudding
(of all things in the world—but we had had no dinner), a “neat-handed Phyllis” to wait on us (which was always a
great point of comfort with Hazlitt), and an interminable evening
before us, destined to engender a volume of Table Talk, at least as pleasant and
instructive (on ![]()
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one side, I mean) as any of those that have followed
it in a more tangible form; for, as I have hinted before,
Hazlitt’s familiar talk, when he was in the proper cue for
talking, had all the merits of his published writings, some which those never included, and
not one of their faults—the greatest of which merits (let me add), and the source of all
the others that are peculiar to this kind of talk was, that not a
phrase of it would bear to be set forth in the trim array of printers’ types.
Not that I remember a single one of those phrases, even had they been ever
so fitted for a place in these Recollections,—which I must again take the liberty of
repeating, profess to offer the results, not the details, of my intercourse with the subject of them.
One little circumstance, however, I will mention, because I think it is
peculiarly characteristic of that wise and happy balance between all
his various faculties and mental endowments, which so greatly contributed to give that
almost oracular character to Hazlitt’s
decisions on moral and intellectual questions, which, when unbiassed by personal feelings
and prejudices, they possessed beyond ![]()
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those of any man that I ever
knew. Almost all the evidences of mental weakness that we observe in distinguished men, and
often much of their mental strength also, arise from some one class of faculties prevailing
and predominating over all the rest. The understanding, the imagination, the sensibilities,
the passions—one or other of these hold almost undivided sway in the great majority even of
highly gifted and highly cultivated minds; and they not merely give the tone and colour,
but modify the form and substance, of all their conceptions and operations. But with
Hazlitt all these qualities were so equally blended and balanced,
that they enabled him to see and appreciate, with a most “learned spirit of human
dealing,” the relative value and virtue even of the opposite qualities and
attributes that presented themselves to his notice and observation.
But I am making a magnificent preface to a tale that many of my readers
may deem not worth the telling. What I was going to relate was, that, during a momentary
interregnum in our talk, I had taken from my pocket and laid on the table a volume of![]()
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—what does the reader imagine, of all books in the world, to make
one’s travelling companion to a prize-fight? The “Nouvelle Héloise!”
Gentle reader! let me repeat, as before, it is a long while ago, and in
the one case equally as in the other, the passion has become a thing of memory merely. I do
not go a hundred miles to see a prize-fight now; and, if I did, the “Nouvelle Héloise” would not be the
book I should take with me.
I put the book aside,—not thinking of looking into it; for I had removed
it from my pocket only because it incommoded me. But Hazlitt asked—“What’s that?” I handed the book to
him, with a smile; and I shall not forget the burst of half-comic, half-pathetic
earnestness with which he read the title—the “Nouvelle Héloise!” And then his countenance fell
as he turned over the pages silently, and the tears came into his eyes as he looked, for
the first time, perhaps, for twenty years, on words, thoughts, and sentiments on which his
soul had dwelt and banquetted in its early days, with a passionate ecstasy only equalled by
that in ![]()
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which they had been conceived and written; for the
“Nouvelle Héloise” was the idol of
Hazlitt’s youthful imagination, and he himself resembled its
writer more curiously and remarkably than, perhaps, any one distinguished man ever
resembled another.
But what I was chiefly about to remark was, the delight Hazlitt expressed at meeting with the work under such circumstances, and at the sort of feeling which he must have for it who could make it his companion to such a scene
as we had just left. “Why, then,” he said, “you actually had
the ‘Nouvelle Héloise’ in
your pocket all the while you were watching those fellows this morning, mauling and
hacking at each other, like devils incarnate! Well, I confess, that’s a cut above
me. I can ‘applaud the deed;’ but to have done it is beyond me. In putting
the book into my pocket, I should have had some silly scruples—some indelicate feelings
of delicacy, come across me, and I should have left it at home. It’s the highest
thing I remember—a piece of real intellectual refinement, by G—d! and I congratulate
you upon it.”
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That this was to consider the matter too curiously, the reader will
perhaps think, as I thought then, or the incident would not have made so strong an
impression on me. I am not so sure I think so now. If not, however, it is, perhaps, that
our thoughts grow ripe as our feelings fade away.
The above incident led, I remember, to some beautiful remarks of Hazlitt on the “Nouvelle Héloise,” and on the intellectual and
personal character of Rousseau; but I shall not even
attempt to detail them, for the same reason which has excluded almost all similar details
from these Recollections—namely, that it is morally impossible to relate them without
blending them (whether consciously or not) with the feelings and opinions of the relator,
in a way that must divest them of all specific character, and also of that authenticity
which constitutes the only real value of such details, or keeps them from degenerating into
a deception and an impertinence.
I shall conclude my, perhaps, too lengthened notice of this excursion, by
adding that, after a hearty supper, an early bed ![]()
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(which was a novelty
to both of us), and a gossiping breakfast the next morning, we mounted the first coach that
passed for London, arrived there in the evening, and Hazlitt (at my suggestion) wrote in the next New Monthly a capital description of “The Fight,” signed “Phantastes.” I mention this, as the paper does not appear among his
collected Essays; the title and subject being deemed unsuitable to the “ears
polite” of Mr. Colburn’s book customers,
and only to be tolerated in the ephemeral pages of a periodical miscellany.
Henry Colburn (1785-1855)
English publisher who began business about 1806; he co-founded the
New
Monthly Magazine in 1814 and was publisher of the
Literary
Gazette from 1817.
John Fearn (1768-1837)
Scottish philosopher who published
A Rationale of the Laws of Cerebral
Vision (1830).
William Hazlitt (1778-1830)
English essayist and literary critic; author of
Characters of
Shakespeare's Plays (1817),
Lectures on the English Poets
(1818), and
The Spirit of the Age (1825).
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
Swiss-born man of letters; author of, among others,
Julie ou la
Nouvelle Heloïse (1761),
Émile (1762) and
Les Confessions (1782).
New Monthly Magazine. (1814-1884). Founded in reaction to the radically-inclined
Monthly Magazine,
the
New Monthly was managed under the proprietorship of Henry
Colburn from 1814 to 1845. It was edited by Thomas Campbell and Cyrus Redding from
1821-1830.
