“I have stolen away from a room full of people, that I
might spend an hour in writing to you instead of wasting it at the card-table.
Sunday I went by appointment to Lord William
Gordon, who wanted to take me to see a young lady. Who should
this prove to be but Miss Booth; the
very actress whom we saw at Liverpool play so sweetly in Kotzebue’s comedy of the Birth-day. There was I taken to
hear her recite Mary the Maid of the
Inn! and if I had not interfered in aid of her own better sense.
Lord W. and her mother and sisters would have made her
act as well as recite it. As I know you defy the monster, I may venture to say
that she is a sweet little girl, though a little spoilt by circumstances which
would injure anybody; but what think you of this old lord asking permission for
me to repeat my visit, and urging me to ‘take her under my
protection,’ and show her what to recite, and instruct her how to
recite it? And all this upon a Sunday! So I shall give her a book, and tell her
what parts she should choose to appear in. And if she goes again to Edinburgh,
be civil to her if she touches at the Lakes; she supports a mother and brother,
and two or three sisters. When I returned to Queen Anne Street from the visit,
I found Davy sitting with the Doctor, and
awaiting my return. I could not dine with him to-morrow,
| 44 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 39. |
“I dined on Sunday at Holland House, with some eighteen or twenty persons. Sharp was there, who introduced me with all due form to Rogers and to Sir James Mackintosh, who seems to be in a bad state of health. In the evening Lord Byron came in.* He had asked Rogers if I was ‘magnanimous,’ and requested him to make for him all sorts of amends honourable for having tried his wit upon me at the expense of his discretion; and in full confidence of the success of the apology, had been provided with a letter of introduction to me in case he had gone to the Lakes, as he intended to have done. As for me, you know how I regard things of this kind; so we met with all becoming courtesy on both sides, and I saw a man whom in voice, manner, and countenance I liked very much more than either his character or his writings had given me reason to expect. Rogers wanted me to dine with him on Tuesday (this day): only Lord Byron and Sharp were to have been of the party, but I had a pending engagement here, and was sorry for it.
“Holland House is a most interesting building.
* The following is Lord Byron’s account of this meeting:—“Yesterday, at Holland House, I was introduced to Southey, the best looking bard I have seen for some time. To have that poet’s head and shoulders I would almost have written his Sapphics. He is certainly a prepossessing-looking person to look at, and a man of talent and all that, and—there is his eulogy.”—Life of Byron, vol ii. p. 244. |
| Ætat. 39. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 45 |
“We had a very pleasant dinner at Madame de Stael’s. Davy and his wife, a Frenchman whose name I never heard, and the Portuguese ambassador, the Conde de Palmella, a gentlemanly and accomplished man. I wish you had seen the animation with which she exclaimed against Davy and Mackintosh for their notions about peace.
“Once more farewell!
