60 |
Rogers and Wellington and Talleyrand—Rogers and Macaulay—Death of Mrs. Siddons—Letters from Wordsworth, Henry Hallam, and Brougham—Campbell and ‘The Metropolitan’—Rogers and Earl Grey—Mrs. Joanna Baillie—Death of Mackintosh and of Walter Scott—Moore on Rogers’s House—Death of Henry Rogers—Letters from Charles Lamb, Wordsworth, Macaulay—Rogers’s Tour—Letters to Wordsworth, Sarah Rogers, and Richard Sharp—Richard Sharp on Ministerial Changes—Rogers and the Gossip at Brooks’s—The King and his Ministers—‘The Queen has done it all’—Lord Brougham’s Eccentricities—Letter from Campbell.
The period in which Rogers was occupied in preparing the illustrated edition of his poems is very barren of
correspondence. He had arrived at the time of life at which men learn with a shock that
they are being spoken of as old men by younger people. He was beginning to feel the
approach of age, though he always urged his friends not to realise that they are old, and
himself acted on the injunction. He had a good deal of ill-health, and so many friends were
gone that he began to say that a walk through the streets of London was like a walk in a
cemetery. In March, 1831, he had one of the conversations with the Duke of Wellington, which is reported in the ‘Recollections,’ and one with Talleyrand, also recorded in the same volume. It was in
October of the same year that, meeting Sir Walter Scott
on the day
ROGERS AND MACAULAY | 61 |
It is just at this period that the life of Samuel Rogers seems to touch our own times. The names we begin to meet with are those of men, some of whom middle-aged men have personally known. It is not clear when Rogers first met Macaulay; but Macaulay, in writing to his sister Hannah on the 28th of May, 1831, says that on the day before, he had lounged into the ante-rooms of ‘old Marshall’s house’ in Hill Street, where he found Samuel Rogers. ‘Rogers and I,’ he says, ‘sate together on a bench in one of the passages, and had a good deal of very pleasant conversation. He was—as, indeed, he has always been to me—extremely kind, and told me that if it were in his power he would contrive to be at Holland House with me, to give me an insight into its ways. He is the great oracle of that circle. He has seen the King’s letter to Lord Grey about the Garter.’ On the 3rd of June, he says Rogers told him to write no more reviews but to publish separate works, ‘adding what, for him, is a very rare thing, a compliment: “You may do anything, Mr. Macaulay.”’ On the 7th he writes to his sisters Hannah and Margaret—
‘Yesterday I dined at Marshall’s, and was almost consoled for not meeting
Rammohun Roy by a very
62 | ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES |
‘I had a good deal of pleasant conversation with Rogers. He was telling me of the curiosity which
attached to the persons of Sir Walter Scott and
Lord Byron. When Sir Walter
Scott dined at a gentleman’s in London some time ago all the
servant-maids in the house asked leave to stand in the passage and see him pass. He
was, as you may conceive, greatly flattered. About Lord Byron,
whom he knew well, he told me some curious anecdotes. When Lord
Byron passed through Florence, Rogers was there.
They had a good deal of conversation, and Rogers accompanied him
to his car-
ROGERS AND MACAULAY | 63 |
Three days later he tells his sister he had met Rogers at the Athenæum, and he had asked him to breakfast and promised to make an interesting party, and, he adds, ‘If you knew how Rogers is thought of you would think it as great a compliment as could be paid to a duke.’ His account of the breakfast is valuable as giving a contemporary description of Rogers’s house. He writes on the 25th of June—
‘I breakfasted with Rogers
yesterday. There was nobody there but Moore. We
were all on the most friendly and familiar terms possible; and
Moore, who is, Rogers tells me,
excessively pleased with my review of
his book, showed me very marked
attention. I was forced to go away early on account of bankrupt business, but
Rogers said that we must have the talk out; so we are to meet
at his house again to breakfast. What a delightful house it is! It looks out on the
Green Park just at the most pleasant point. The furniture has been selected with a
delicacy of taste quite unique. Its value does not depend on fashion, but must be the
same while the fine arts are held in any esteem. In the drawing-room, for example, the
chimney-pieces are carved by
64 | ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES |
There are the usual accounts of breakfasts and dinners with Rogers in Moore’s Diary this summer. At one of these Rogers violently opposed Moore, who had said ‘after all it is in high life one meets the best society.’ Rogers always maintained the contrary. His father had advised him never to go near titled people, but that was based on his own youthful experience of them in his Worcestershire home in the middle of the eighteenth century. Rogers confessed to his nephew, Samuel Sharpe, that he had not followed his father’s advice, but that there was truth and wisdom in it. On the 26th was the breakfast party Rogers had made for Macaulay, and Tom Moore gives his account of it. ‘Macaulay,’ he says, ‘gave us an account of the present state of the Monothelite controversy.’ Macaulay himself tells a story, which Moore also tells, of this same occasion. Writing to his sister, he says—
‘I have breakfasted again with Rogers. The party was a remarkable one, Lord
John Russell, Tom Moore,
MACAULAY: MOORE: CAMPBELL | 65 |
“Ye diners out from whom we guard our spoons.” |
66 | ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES |
In this month of June Rogers had lost one of his oldest friends in Mrs. Siddons. She had not been quite happy since her retirement from the stage. When Rogers was visiting her she often said, ‘This is the time I used to be thinking of going to the theatre; there was the pleasure of dressing, then of acting, but all is over now.’ Rogers was always fond of telling stories about her. He regarded her as a far greater performer than John Kemble, and sympathised with her disappointment at the little attention that had been paid to her at the time of her retirement, and from that time to her death.
There is a letter of about this date which may be given in illustration of an aspect of Rogers’s character which did not come out frequently, but which his closer friends knew to exist. It was to a relation who had disgraced himself, and had an opportunity of recovering his position, and did recover it. I suppress the name as it is of no interest or importance.
‘Dear ——,—Many thanks for a letter which, mournful as it was, gave me sincere pleasure, and over which your poor father and mother, could they read it where they now are, would shed tears of delight; for what signifies wealth or poverty, good report or evil report, but inasmuch as they affect our own minds.
WORDSWORTH’S PORTRAIT | 67 |
‘I need not say, I am sure, how sorry I am for the sad change which has taken place in your circumstances, but much more unhappy I was before it took place; for then how gloomy was the prospect; and how fortunate you must think yourself, how much more so than many, in being roused to reflection before it was too late. Providence has given you an asylum among kind and considerate friends, you have good talents, great attainments, and have still many years before you, and if you resolve to exert yourself, and to assist those who have a natural claim to your exertions, what we now regard as an affliction will perhaps be the happiest event in your life. When I look back on mine, I feel that I am too faulty myself to blame another, and have only on my knees to ask forgiveness.
‘Pray remember me to ——, and believe me,
Wordsworth, as usual, writes to Rogers for advice.
‘Let me, my dear friend, have the benefit of your advice
upon a small matter of taste. You know that while I was in London I gave more
time than a wise man would have done to portrait-painters and sculptors. I am
now called to the same duty again. The Master and a numerous body of the
Fellows of my own college, St. John’s, Cambridge, have begged me to sit
to some eminent artist for my portrait, to be placed among “the
68 | ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES |
‘We stayed three or four days at Cambridge, and then departed for the North; but I was obliged to leave dear Mrs. Wordsworth at Nottingham, suffering under a most violent attack of sciatica. Her daughter was left with her. We fell among good Samaritans, and in less than a fortnight she was able to renew her journey.
‘Her stay here, however, was short. My sister was summoned to Cheltenham by our old
friend Dr. Bell, and as we did not dare
to trust her so far from home on account of her delicate state of health, Mrs.
W. was so kind and noble-minded as to take the long journey in her stead. The
poor doctor thought himself dying, but
WORDSWORTH’S PORTRAIT | 69 |
In spite of the objection to Pickersgill’s portraits, he was eventually selected, and went down to Rydal and painted the picture now in St. John’s College. Wordsworth’s sonnet, ‘Go, Faithful Portrait,’ testifies to his satisfaction with it. In the autumn he is anxious about Rogers’s health, and writes for information.
‘My dear Rogers,—Several weeks since I heard, through Mr. Quillinan, who I believe had it from
Moxon, that you were unwell, and
this unpleasant communication has weighed on my mind, but I did not write,
trusting that either from Mr. Q. or Moxon I should hear
something of the particulars. These expectations have been vain, and now I
venture, not without anxiety, to make enquiries of yourself. Be so good then as
let me hear how you are, and as soon as you can. If you saw Sir Walter Scott, or have met with Mr. and Mrs.
Lockhart since their return to town, you will have learned
70 | ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES |
‘It is some months since I heard from Moxon. I learned in Scotland that the bookselling trade was in a deplorable state, and that nothing was saleable but newspapers on the Revolutionary side. So that I fear, unless our poor friend be turned patriot, he cannot be prospering at present.
‘We, thank God, are all well, and should be very glad to
hear the same of yourself and brother and sister.
WORDSWORTH: HALLAM | 71 |
‘Notwithstanding the flourish above, I have written to my son to stay at home and guard his stamps.’
Rogers had before this fully recovered from his illness. Moore calling to surprise him at breakfast on the 16th of October, found him just returned from the country, entirely restored, and full of good humour and playfulness. There is a double interest in a letter received in the course of the autumn from another of his eminent friends.
‘My dear Rogers,—I have been unfortunate in missing you twice, yet
with the consolation that it proved you were recovered in health, which I had
heard was not as good as we all wish. For myself I am a mere rustic, but not as
yet oblitus meorum, and therefore, I hope, not obliviscendus illis. But in a fortnight more I shall be
once more in the whirl of the world, though I
72 | ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES |
‘I send you another little production of Arthur’s; it is much superior to the other. You have candour to make allowance for the cloudy state of new wine, which will not disguise from a connoisseur’s taste a racy flavour and strong body. You must always keep in mind that he is not quite twenty-one, and with this allowance I am not perhaps quite misled as a father in thinking his performances a little out of the common.
‘Tunbridge, whatever you may fancy, is excellent wintering. We have a very small society of people we like, and play sixpenny whist when it might be dull else, not otherwise. . . .
A brief note, not dated, but belonging to the same autumn, is the first I find among Rogers’s papers from another eminent person.
‘My dear R.,—I have this instant been commanded by Talleyrand to meet Don Pedro on Friday, and I must obey, as your absolute sovereigns when they go incog., like Peter I., are offended if you take them at their word and don’t treat them as sovereigns.
CAMPBELL AND ’THE METROPOLITAN’ | 73 |
‘Therefore I hope you will be able to put off Lord P. and your party to any other day, except Monday.
There are two examples in this autumn of the kind of service Rogers was always performing for his literary friends. Campbell was in London in October negotiating for a share in the magazine he was conducting—‘The Metropolitan.’ ‘I am ten inches taller than when you saw me,’ he tells Mrs. Arkwright. ‘Let the name of my brother poet Rogers be ever sacred,’ he writes; ‘he has bought me a share in the partnership, and with noble generosity has refused even the mortgage of my Scotch property, as security for the debt.’ He offered to insure his life, but Rogers would not hear of it. Five hundred pounds was advanced, and a third share hi the magazine purchased. There was eventually some hitch in the arrangements, and the partnership was given up. After weeks of agitation and many a sleepless night, poor Campbell got back his money and restored it to Rogers, who, however, offered to let him have it for another purpose. He writes—
‘My dear Rogers,—I beg leave to introduce to you Mr. Madden, whose travels and other writings are most probably known to you. He is an extremely sensible and amiable man, and constitutes, I may say, all my conversible society at this place.
74 | ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES |
‘I am very happy to tell you that the five hundred pounds which you so generously lent me is at my bankers’ in James’s Street, and awaits your calling for it. Blessed be God that I have saved both it and myself from being involved as partner in “The Metropolitan.” Respecting the history of this transaction, though I have made it known to my friends confidentially, yet I should not wish that there should be any public talk, for though I blame the publisher Cochrane for swaggering and putting on the airs of a wealthy capitalist all the time he was but a needy, seedy . . . . still, poor devil, he may keep above water if his credit does not sink; and he has a wife and several children, of whom it pains my heart to think. I therefore abide by him and “The Metropolitan” out of sheer compassion. But I have got out of the scrape of being a sharer in the periodical.
‘The pain I suffered before I made this rescue was not slight. Amidst the horror of bad news, public and private, I felt at times misanthropic enough to pronounce my species all rascals. But still I recalled your loan. Ah, there, I thought to myself, there is a fact to show that benevolence has not left the earth. Aye, and days and sleepless nights went over my head in which I knew not whether even that loan was not to be thrown into a gulf of bankruptcy. All, however, is now safe. And my feeling of obligation to you is as thoroughly grateful as if all my chimerical dreams had been realised. I shall now go on with Mrs. Siddons’s life. Have you seen Haynes Bayly’s song on the “Italian Boy,” the music by “Bishop”? Query, what Bishop? There has been more than one composer of that name.
ROGERS AND CAMPBELL | 75 |
‘Adieu, my dear friend. Believe me most affectionately yours,
Moore, in recording this loan of Rogers’s, says Rogers does more of such things than the world has any notion of, and Lord John Russell adds, ‘Not only more than the world has any notion of, but more than any one else could have done. Being himself an author, he was able to guess the difficulties of men of letters, and to assist them not only with his ready purse, but with his powerful influence and his judicious advice.’ There is an example in Moore’s own case—for on the very day he records Campbell’s loan, he says that Rogers had undertaken to negotiate for him with Murray as to what sum to get for his name and co-operation in the new edition of Byron. Rogers thought Moore ought to have a thousand pounds. The negotiation failed, and as Moore had a bill for 500l. falling due, Rogers wrote and offered him the money; but an arrangement with Longmans rendered the advance needless.
The accession to power of his political friends necessarily exerted
considerable influence on Rogers’s life. It
did not bring him back into politics, for he was never wholly out of them nor deeply
immersed in them. Lord Lansdowne’s surprise at
receiving through him Lord Grenville’s opinion
that he should join the Government in 1827 exactly illustrates
Rogers’s political position, when it is viewed in connection
with the fact that Lord Grenville entrusted him with the message.
Rogers was in fact one of the literary Whigs. The time was gloomy.
76 | ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES |
‘My dear Rogers,—I unfortunately allowed the messenger to go back to-day without an answer to your very kind note; but I hope you will not think me the less obliged to you for it.
‘I have no doubt that there are plenty of people at work
to do all possible mischief; and as far as I am myself concerned, I care little
about it. But in a situation of so much embarrassment and danger, it requires a
degree of malignity, not common, to risk all the confusion which, in their
desire to overthrow the government, they are exerting themselves to produce.
You are quite right. If the question of Reform was settled, all our foreign
politics would go right; and the King of
Holland, whose obstinacy is encouraged by the belief
EARL GREY: JOANNA BAILLIE | 77 |
‘If our house had not been full we should have asked you to come to meet the Hollands. They leave us on Saturday, and we go ourselves to town, for good, on Monday; when I hope we shall frequently have the pleasure of seeing you. Holland is suffering from a threatening of gout. Lady Grey desires to be most kindly remembered to you.
Rogers lived so completely between the two worlds of politics and literature—as he did also between two literary and political eras—that a letter from Joanna Baillie, one of the vast number he received from her, may properly follow one of Lord Grey’s.
‘My dear Mr.
Rogers,—You once called me, and not very long ago, an
ungrateful hussey, and I remember it the better because I really thought I
deserved it. But whether I did or not, when I tell you now that I have read
Sir John
Herschell’s book twice, or rather three times over,
have been the better for it both in understanding and heart, and mean to read
parts of it again ere long, you will not repent having bestowed it upon me. And
78 | ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES |
‘I hear of your sister from time to time by our neighbours here, and of
yourself now and then. I hope you continue to brave this variable winter with
impunity. We hear also that your nephew continues to recover, though more
slowly than his friends could wish. Being so young a man gives one confidence
in the progress he
ISAAC D’ISRAELI | 79 |
Another eminent contemporary, who was not much in London, and was little seen in society, makes his appearance in Rogers’s correspondence in the same month. The first volume of ‘The Curiosities of Literature’ appeared just before ‘The Pleasures of Memory,’ and had a similar success. But Isaac D’Israeli preferred studious retirement to social pleasures, and hence his name is rarely met with in the memoirs of the time. His letter is interesting from the reference it makes to his own previous writings, but especially in the indication it gives of a literary purpose which was never carried out. The ‘fugitive thing’ he sends to his ‘old acquaintance’ was a pamphlet entitled ‘Eliot, Hampden, and Pym,’ which was published at the beginning of 1832.
‘My dear Sir,—Accept a fugitive thing on a permanent topic in my “Reply” to Lord Nugent. Should you have patience and forbearance, you will pick up, I think, some amusement in the fifty pages.
‘But what you will find on the back of the last flyleaf
interests me more while I am addressing you. I
80 | ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES |
‘I recollect that you have many of the first editions of Pope. I have some, particularly the “Essay on Man,” in four parts, as they were published. I never could find, as the anecdote runs, the false claim which Pope expressly made to keep the world in doubt whether he were the writer.
‘Should anything occur to you on the subject of Pope, your communication will delight an old acquaintance of yours, who never imagined he should have written so much poetry and such little verse. My intention is to enter at large into the literary period of Pope, to mark out its influence on him, and trace the consequences in his writings. His friends and his enemies are well known to me, and it is an active era in our literature.
‘My visits to the metropolis are rare and short, and should you have occasion to address me it must be at Bradenham House, High Wycombe, where, should [you] ever stray, the sun will shine on us that day. It is four miles from High Wycombe.
‘Believe me, with great regard, dear Sir,
LITERATURE IS UPPERMOST | 81 |
In Moore’s diary this year
he frequently speaks of talking politics with Rogers; but the political talk is not reported. On the 3rd of April,
Moore, Macaulay, Luttrell, Lord
Kerry, and Whishaw were at breakfast
at Rogers’s, and there were ‘some strong politics talked,
condemning Lord Grey’s hesitation to make
peers.’ Sydney Smith writing to Lady Grey enumerates Mackintosh, Whishaw, Robert Smith, Rogers, Luttrell,
Jeffrey, Sharp, Ord,
Macaulay, Fazakerley and
Lord Ebrington, and says there would not be a
dissentient voice among them on any point connected with the honour, character and fame of
Lord Grey. It is literature, however, and not politics that is
uppermost in Rogers’s circle even in the most exciting times.
The death of Sir James Mackintosh on the 22nd of May, and of Sir Walter Scott on the 21st of September, occupied a larger
place in their thoughts than even the passing of the Reform Bill.
Mackintosh was two years younger than Rogers,
Sir Walter Scott was eight years his junior. Meanwhile
Sydney Smith, who was of the same age as Walter
Scott, had been appointed by Lord Grey a Canon
Residentiary of St. Paul’s, and as his new duties called him frequently to London,
had thus become a permanent member instead of an occasional visitor of
Rogers’s circle of familiar friends. In September, 1832,
Rogers was at Bowood, and Moore reports a
conversation in which he enumerated a long list of distinguished men who had been poured
into England by Ireland, and expressed the opinion that Irishmen were beyond most other men
in genius, but behind them in sense. In March, 1833, Moore was at
Rogers’s house and there was again political talk.
‘Even he,’ says Moore (whose views
82 | ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES |
LADY HOLLAND’S TEMPER | 83 |
‘I have been racketing lately [November 1833], having dined
twice with Rogers, and once with Grant. Lady Holland is
in a most extraordinary state. She came to Rogers’s, with
Allen, in so bad a humour that we were all
forced to rally, and make common cause against her. There was not a person at table to
whom she was not rude: and none of us were inclined to submit.
Rogers sneered; Sydney
made merciless sport of her; Tom Moore looked
excessively impertinent; Bobus put her down with
simple straightforward rudeness; and I treated her with what I meant to be the coldest
civility. Allen flew into a rage with us all, and especially with
Sydney, whose guffaws, as the Scotch say, were indeed
tremendous. When she and all the rest were gone, Rogers made
Tom Moore and me sit down with him for half an hour, and we
coshered over the events of the evening. Rogers said that he
thought Allen’s firing up in defence of his patroness the
best thing that he had seen in him. No sooner had Tom and I got
into the street than he broke forth: “That such an old stager as
Rogers should talk such nonsense, and give
Allen credit for attachment to anything but his dinner!
Allen
84 | ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES |
Moore says of a dinner at Rogers’s, in company with Sydney Smith, Macaulay, Byng, and Greville, ‘Talking of words that had become degraded, Macaulay mentioned “elegant” as a word he would not use in writing, and all agreed with him except Sydney and myself. “You’ll stand by elegant, won’t you?” says he to me, and on my answering—“Here’s Moore,” he exclaimed, “as firm as a rock for elegant.” All agreed that “genteel” was no longer fit for use, though the word gentille, from which it sprang, was still so graceful and expressive. In the course of the evening Smith said to me, “You’ll be pleased to hear that there has been a very respectable captain of infantry converted by your book.”’
A letter from Charles Lamb must be reproduced here, though it has already been printed.1 It was written in acknowledgment of an early copy of the illustrated ‘Poems,’ and Canon Ainger dates it in December, 1833.
‘My dear Sir,—Your book, by the unremitting punctuality of your publisher, has reached me thus early. I have not opened it, nor will till to-morrow, when I promise myself a thorough reading of it. “The Pleasures of Memory” was the first school present I made to Mrs. Moxon, it had those nice wood-cuts; and
1 Talfourd’s Final Memorials of Charles Lamb, vol. ii., p. 107; and Canon Ainger’s Letters of Charles Lamb, vol. ii., p. 291. |
LAMB ON EDITIONS OF SHAKESPEARE | 85 |
‘I have ventured at an antagonist copy of verses in “The Athenæum” to him, in
which he is as everything and you as nothing. He is no lawyer who cannot take
two sides. But I am jealous of the combination of the sister arts. Let them
sparkle apart. What injury (short of the theatres) did not Boydell’s
“Shakespeare Gallery” do me with Shakespeare?—to have Opie’s Shakespeare, Northcote’s Shakespeare,
light-headed
Fuseli’s Shakespeare,
heavy-headed Romney’s
Shakespeare, woodenheaded West’s Shakespeare (though he
did the best in “Lear”),
deaf-headed Reynolds’s
Shakespeare, instead of my, and everybody’s
Shakespeare. To be tied down to an authentic face of
Juliet! To have Imogen’s portrait! To confine the
illimitable! I like you and Stothard
(you best), but “out upon this half-faced fellowship.” Sir, when I
have read the book I may trouble you, through Moxon, with some faint criticisms. It is not the flatteringest
compliment in a letter to an author to say you have not read his book yet. But
the devil of a reader
86 | ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES |
‘With many thanks, and most respectful remembrances to your sister,
‘Have you seen Coleridge’s happy exemplification in English of the Ovidian elegiac metre?—
‘In the Hexameter rises the fountain’s silvery current,
In the Pentameter aye falling in melody down.
|
‘My sister is papering up the book—careful soul!’
Wordsworth and Macaulay write on the same topic.
‘My dear Friend,—Yesterday I received your most
valuable present of three copies of your beautiful book, which I assure you will be nowhere
more prized than in this house. My sister was affected even to the shedding of tears by this token
of your remembrance. When a person has been shut up for upwards of twelve
months
WORDSWORTH: MACAULAY | 87 |
‘Of the execution of the plates, as compared with the former vol., and the merit of the designs, we have not yet had time to judge. But I cannot forbear adding that, as several of the poems are among my oldest and dearest acquaintance in the literature of our day, such an elegant edition of them, with their illustrations, must to me be peculiarly acceptable. As Mr. Moxon does not mention your health, I hope it is good, and your sister’s also, who, we are happy to hear, has drawn nearer to you. Pray remember us all most kindly to her, and accept yourself our united thanks and best wishes.
‘We were grieved to notice the death of the veteran Sotheby.1 Not less than fourteen of our relatives, friends, or valued acquaintance, have been removed by death within the last three or four months.’
‘My dear Sir,—Many thanks for your beautiful present. Beautiful as it is, the scrap of your writing in
1 William Sotheby—translator of Wieland’s Oberon, of the Georgics, the Iliad, and the Odyssey, dramatist and poet, of whom Byron said that he imitated everybody and occasionally surpassed his models—had died on the 30th December, 1833, aged 76. |
88 | ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES |
‘The poems, as far as I have yet examined them, are all such as I have long known and admired. I do not perceive anything new. But such a series of illustrations I never saw or expected to see. I used to say that if your “Italy” were dug up in some Pompeii or Herculaneum two thousand years hence, it would give to posterity a higher idea of the state of the arts amongst us than anything else which lay in an equally small compass. But Italy is nothing to the new volume. Everybody says the same. I am charged with several copies for ladies in India. How the publishers of the annuals must hate you. You have certainly spoiled their market for one year at least.
Moore writes on the 3rd of February—
‘Dined early with Rogers. Nobody but himself, his sister, and young Mason, for whom he had got a situation (a writership, I believe) in India, and who is to sail in the same ship as Macaulay. . . . Rogers to-day quoted as a fine specimen of Addison’s humour, the parson threatening the squire that if he did not reform his ways, he should be obliged “to pray for him the following Sunday, in the face of the congregation.”’
Mr. C. Grey writes from Downing Street on the 25th of
April that his father, being very busy, desires him to say that he has spoken to the
King about Mr.
Millingen,
MOORE’S BREAKFASTS AT ROGERS’S | 89 |
On the 20th of July Moore writes—
‘To breakfast at Rogers’s, where we had Lord Lansdowne, Whishaw, and afterwards the Duke of Sutherland, whom Rogers had asked and forgot, till Lord Lansdowne informed him that he was coming. “Asking Dukes and forgetting them,” as I told Rogers, “is now-a-days the poet’s privilege.” Conversation agreeable. The great Correggio just purchased by the Government is pronounced, it seems, by some critics not to be a Correggio; such is the uncertainty of all picture knowledge. Rogers, too, showed me after breakfast a small picture of Ludovico Caracci’s, for which he himself gave twenty-five louis at Milan; while Lord Lansdowne, for apparently the same picture, gave, some years since, more than 500l. in London. Wishing to compare the two, Rogers one morning, having some artists with him to breakfast, wrapped up his Caracci in a napkin, and all went off together to Lansdowne House (the Lansdownes being out of town) for the purpose of comparing the two pictures, when, as he told me, the only difference the artists could see between them was a somewhat greater degree of finish in some parts of his.
‘August 3rd.—Took the boys to breakfast at Rogers’s, where he had Hughes the American. Some discussion about the existence of slavery in
America, and the sort of incubus it is on the breast of that country. Difficulty of
shaking it off; “the highest gentlemen,”
Hughes said,
90 | ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES |
‘August 6th.—Out early for the purpose of seeing Rogers off on his tour. Met him in his carriage in St. James’s Place, quarter-past nine, and got in with him. Had wished me to go as far as the lakes with him, and I should have liked it much could I have spared the time. Left him in the New Road, and went to Moore’s (the sculptor) to breakfast.’
The story of this autumn is told in a series of letters.
‘My dear Wordsworth,—I intend to set out for the North to-morrow, and if my course is prosperous, to be at your door on Monday or Tuesday evening, and if you are at home and disengaged, to drink tea with you. Perhaps, too, if you are inclined, you will accompany me onward to Lowther, where I have led Lady Frederick to expect us.
‘But all this will depend upon circumstances beyond my control. Let me, however, hope for the best, and perhaps you will send me a line to the Post Office at Kendal. Pray, pray say “yes.”
ON THE NORTH ROAD | 91 |
‘Remember me very kindly to one and all, and believe me to be
‘My dear Sarah,—You see I begin at the top of the page like a traveller who has much to tell. I set out at a quarter-past nine, and had just driven from the door when I met Anacreon. Him I conveyed to Portland Place, and set him so far on his way to breakfast with the celebrated H. B., who lives in the region of Fitzroy Square. Leaving Barnet, I met, of course, the Hadley chaise. The Colonel and Isabella were in it, but as they did not observe me, we passed without a parley. The flies soon began to sting, and gave me no quiet for the rest of the day; the sensation was new to me, but I bore it pretty well. The North Road, as it calls itself everywhere in the notices, is a noble road, running with a breadth and a directness such as I was not prepared for, and I was carried along with such a rapidity that before nightfall I had left a hundred miles behind me. At every stage I walked on till I was overtaken, though I seldom was allowed above fifty yards. Still, it was a great refreshment to me, and I arrived in good spirits and with no fatigue at Witham Common, where I slept in a very nice lone house, after a dish of tea. So far well—but I waked many times in the night, though I thought nothing of it, and was in the carriage again before six o’clock.
92 | ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES |
‘I shall now take a new paragraph, as I must in more senses than one turn over a new leaf; for when I tried to walk at the next change, I could not stir a foot. At first I thought nothing of it, and endeavoured to walk it off. But alas, to no purpose. All would not do, so I gave up the point. The evil, when I examined further, was in what Lady Cork would call the third finger of the right foot. I pronounced it to be a corn, and procured some corn plaster. Then a sore, and bought some lint—in the carriage it gave me no pain, only when I walked—but now it burns a little. So I shall treat it as the gout, and have just taken some physic.
‘I am here, alas, at the gates of Paradise and a cripple. What to do I am utterly at a loss, but I have this great consolation that I am no incumbrance to others; the inconvenience is all my own. I shall write to the Dunmores to prepare them for a change of measures in case I cannot surmount the obstacle. Small, indeed, it is in appearance, but, as the Italians say, there is no little enemy.
‘The Hollyhocks are splendid everywhere in the
cottage gardens. On the first day the showers were very frequent and heavy,
but it was pleasant in the intervals. Yesterday no rain; this morning rain,
but clearing off a little. Pray give my love to Patty.
I shall write again soon, but take it for granted that no news is good
news. I arrived here last night at dusk, and as I am comfortably lodged
shall stay till to-morrow at all events. Of the
CAMPBELL IN PARIS | 93 |
A letter from Campbell received during this journey is so characteristic that a portion of it is worth giving. I have omitted a long paragraph which explains and supports a request for a loan, which he afterwards found he did not want.
‘My dear Friend,—This is the anniversary of the
Ascension, and all the church bells in Paris (God damn them!) are pealing away
as if it were for a wager—at the expense of my heretical ears. In the
midst of all the confusion of ideas which this jangling has produced, I have
recollection enough left me to consider that, as my letter is to contain a
request, I had better get over that disagreeable part of it first in order to
have more pleasure in writing the rest. [Having explained about the loan, and
said that he was going to Algiers, and
94 | ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES |
CAMPBELL IN PARIS | 95 |
‘The heat has been intolerable here; I hope your
weather is behaving better. Somehow or other I have not seen so much of Paris
as I ought, though I have been at the opening of the Chambers, and was hugely
delighted. But I am sanguine in the hope that I shall glean a good deal of
instruction in my tour to come, and be able to send you some more interesting
accounts of it. Have the kindness to address to me: Chez
96 | ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES |
‘I beg to be kindly remembered to Miss Rogers.
Rogers meanwhile had been continuing his northern tour, meeting with some of the most interesting people of his time.
‘My dear Sarah,—Your kind letter I found on Saturday last on my way
from the Marshalls at Ulleswater. I
slept there two nights, coming back so far with Wordsworth from Lowther. At Carlisle Jno. W., who stamps there for his father, sat
with me while I breakfasted, and a very amiable and pleasing young man he is. I
came on to Selkirk, having travelled only eighty miles that day—a short
journey for me, and next Sunday saw Abbotsford, Melrose, and Roslin, and slept
at Edinburgh, where I stopt till noon on Monday to get my bandage re-adjusted,
and then came on to Dunmore, where I need not say how I was received. They are
all alone, and I must stay here at least a fortnight. Indeed, they will not
hear of my going then—but I hope by that time I may be off, for, as the
Greys are now at Howick, I must look in
upon them as I go by, if they are then there. But my malady, my dear
Sarah, has so damped all the little pleasure I looked
for, that sometimes I think I had better give all up at once and come back to
my own home directly. My foot is no better, and at every step
ABBOTSFORD AS SCOTT LEFT IT | 97 |
‘P.S. I have said nothing of Dunmore. It is a very nice house in the Gothic style, and the views across the Forth are very pleasing. Sails and steamers are passing continually at a quarter of a mile’s distance, intercepted here and there by the trees in the Park.
‘As for him, he
struck me at first as much altered, and his first question was whether I
thought so. To-day he looks as he used to do, and I forget that so many
years have gone by since last I was here—twenty-two years, as the old
gardener tells me. The inns in Scotland have changed greatly for the
better. The hotels in Edinburgh
98 | ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES |
‘My dear Sarah,—I am delighted to think you all liked Beaumaris so
much. As far as I remember it, it is beautiful, and you cannot be sorry that
you had not to see what R. Sharp
saw—the hats upon the water. He has published a third edition with many additions, and
after a short tour has set down at Torquay for the winter, but this you know
already. I left Dunmore on the 27th, spent two days with the Jeffreys at their house two miles from
Edinburgh, spent a night with the Lord
Advocate in Edinburgh, and on Wednesday came on to
Chillingham—Lord
Tankerville’s—which I left for Howick on Saturday
the 5th. The weather has been very pleasant, everybody but myself complaining
of the heat. Here
AUTUMN VISITS IN 1834 | 99 |
100 | ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES |
‘My dear Sarah,—Your kind letter came just after
Patty had sent me her namesake’s. I write to
thank you, but I have nothing to say—for we go on in one monotonous way
here. Before breakfast I lounge a little, all alone, in a very pretty flower
garden; then come many newspapers, but not much talk, as the family is rather
silent, and there are no visitors but Lord John
Russell and Lady
Russell, who came here on Thursday last for a fortnight. On Saturday
next I think of going for two nights to Lady Mary
Monck; on Monday and on Thursday to the Archbishop of York; and on the Saturday
afterwards to Castle Howard. I have not yet proposed myself to them, but I
must, having left them so abruptly before, when, in the North with Sir George Beaumont, I broke a tooth and
hurried to town, as Patty has done, for repair. Here I am
left much to myself—my foot is certainly much better, though I cannot
stir without binding, which Reece and I
manage together pretty well. For the last three or four days I have had a sore
throat and a little bile, but am getting better with abstinence. There is a
very pretty walk from the house through a deep, woody glen by a brook-side,
that brings you out on the sea beach, and the garden and the shrubberies are
most luxuriant. It is an inland place by the seaside.
AUTUMN VISITS IN 1834 | 101 |
‘Pray direct to me under cover to the Earl of Carlisle, Castle Howard, York.’
The tour lasted another month, and it was the twentieth of November when Rogers got back. He had meanwhile sent to Lord Grey the lines beginning—
Grey, thou hast served, and well, the sacred
cause Scorning all thought of Self, from first to last Among the foremost in that glorious field. |
102 | ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES |
‘My dear Friend,—I returned last night and felt a
pain and a pleasure, for I discovered two letters, which had never been sent
me, and would have been the most
AUTUMN VISITS IN 1834 | 103 |
‘I sent my election-paper to Mrs. Philips, and it will command as many votes as there are vacancies—ten or twelve, I believe. Your criticisms are all right, I should say so, for I had done in every respect as you suggest, in the copy I sent to Howick. The last line but one I felt to be weak, and tried to lift it a little. I sent the lines in October, and it stood thus—
‘That generous fervour and pure eloquence, Thine from thy birth and Nature’s noblest gifts, To guard what they have gained. |
‘I spent a month at Dunmore, three days at Jeffrey’s, slept one night in Edinburgh at John Murray’s, three days at Dalmeny, Lord Rosebery’s, three at Lord Tankerville’s, fourteen at Howick, ten at Castle Howard, one at Galley Knight’s, three at the Archbishop of York’s, one at Sir C. Monck’s, three at Lord Durham’s, three at Trentham, five at Lord Harrowby’s, and here I am. I made a day’s excursion from Castle Howard to see Duncombe Park, or, rather, the Riveaux Abbey there, and was richly rewarded. When at G. Knight’s I renewed my acquaintance with Roche Abbey; but altogether Bolton Abbey and its surroundings are worth them all.
104 | ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES |
‘What a strange hubbub there is just now! The ex-Ministers come in shoals to Brooke’s, and are hand and glove with everybody, all but Brougham, who has gone nowhere, not even to Holland House. “The Times” and “Courier” have run into him cruelly, as you must have seen, and, by dwelling on the sore places, have damaged him sadly. It seems the general opinion that his antics offended the K. highly, and among other things, his taking the seals into Scotland without asking leave. To the dinner and the savans at Edinburgh I did not go. The Hollands learnt first of the change from that article in “The Times,” and thought it a quiz. Spring Rice was told he was out by somebody in the street. Brougham, I hear, goes to Paris on Monday. His last gift was of a Canonry at Norwich to Sedgwick. He filled up twelve livings the last day. Nothing to Malthus. A very pretty living near Hertford fell to Lord Holland in October, and he offered it to M., but he must have given up the college and he declined it.
‘The British Museum have declined to buy Mackintosh’s papers. M., junr., was with me yesterday, and talks of publishing in the spring. He wants Lawrence’s portrait engraved, but I think I like yours by Opie better. A patent place of 600l. per annum fell to Spring Rice in October, and he wished to give it to him, but nobody knew where he was, so it was given to somebody else.
‘Farewell, my dear friend. I fear I am writing illegibly, but I write against time. Le Marchant is going to marry Miss Smith, a grand-daughter of Drummond Smith, of Tring Park, with 18,000l.
A BUDGET OF POLITICAL NEWS | 105 |
‘The household have behaved nobly—Lord Errol, Lord Falkland, Lord Elphinstone, Lord Torrington, &c.
‘My dear Friend,—Not hearing from you I began to be afraid that you had been detained at some friend’s house in the North by indisposition. Your letter, therefore, was particularly welcome to me on many accounts. What a remarkable tour you have had! At all times it must be very delightful to spend some time with such excellent and distinguished persons, but just now it must be exciting in the highest degree, and your Conservative visits must have varied your course of conversation instructively.
‘I thank you for your unexpected aid to Mrs. Philips, whom I had prepared to expect that you would be engaged.1
‘Only one word more as to the verses. Pure eloquence will always be somewhat weak. His was rather lofty and noble both in thought and manner.
‘Your last pages were a budget of news indeed, from town, and contained several striking facts, which I had not learnt from Lord Denman, Gurney, or LdAbing1. From the latter I have three long confidential letters,
1 Sharp had written to ask for his votes for a child at the election for the Orphan Working School. |
106 | ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES |
‘I suppose it never happened before that one Cabinet Minister first hears of his dismissal from a newspaper and another from a man in the street. To me it seems to be quite clear that it has long been settled at Court to get rid of our friends as soon as Lord Spencer died. What a treacherous fellow he must be if this be true!
‘The Tories have the King, the House of Lords, the Clergy, nearly all the officers of Navy and Army, the majority of the landowners, and of the opulent commercial classes. This I firmly believe, but I believe also that these will be far from enough to support them in their struggle against the middle ranks and the Dissenters demanding reform in Church and State. Only think of Ireland too, which will send nearly a hundred Radicals or exasperated Whigs. That shameful Church must go.
‘How lucky our friend Macaulay has been! I am vexed that Robert Mackintosh had not prudence enough to leave his address in town. He lost a commission last year in the same way.
‘I could not help smiling at your account of the reappearances at Brooks’s, where, to say the truth, Ministers could not come without being exposed to indiscretion and some impertinence, but then they had other means of showing that they did not forget their old friends.
‘Next to being purse-proud is being office-proud. The
Comet Brougham is gone to Paris. Why? But
THE MINISTERIAL CRISIS IN 1834 | 107 |
‘My dear Friend,—The long and the short I believe to be this: The K. is by all parties thought to be very honest but very nervous. Now, there are only two men in whom he has much confidence. To them he looks up—in them only does he think there is safety; and having lost one, he resolved on the first occasion to call in the other, though well satisfied with Melbourne. If Lord G[rey] had remained in office, he would never, they say, have had recourse to the Duke.
‘So the Whig ministers may thank themselves for having taken Lord G. too readily at his word. The wish of his heart was to continue another year and to carry the two Church reforms, which he was confident he could have done.
‘The first half of my story I believe, the last half I know to be true.
‘If our friends Lord
H[olland] and Lord
L[ansdowne] had gone out with Lord
G., which they ought to have done, H. would have brought
Lord G. back, and we should now have been in office,
or it would have brought in the Tories at once—a sad event, for they
would then
108 | ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES |
‘“Would you like a little more of the graphic? Six Ministers were assembled at dinner at H[olland] H[ouse], on the Friday night (the night of Lord M.’s return from Brighton), and dispersed, thinking themselves still in office. On that night, at half-past seven o’clock, Lord Palmerston called at the Treasury, and was shown in to Lord M., who had just alighted, and was sitting in his travelling cap, by two candles, in a large room, his room of business. “What news?” said P. “What will surprise you,” said M., and, saying no more, he put into his hand a paper, containing the result of what had passed.
‘What had passed was nothing like what it is said to be. It was very simple. The K. did not tell the Q. till the next day, when she said, “Ah! England will rejoice in it;” to which he answered, “That is as it may be, Madam.” (A favourite phrase with him.) Lord G. at Howick is astounded—he thinks the measure not only unconstitutional, but illegal—for the D., being dictator, might run away with all the money. Lord M. writes from Melbourne very naturally. “I was never so happy, but I suppose I shall soon be d—d tired for want of something to do, as all are who leave office.”
‘And now a word or two about Brougham. His vagaries in Scotland, for I followed in his wake,
would fill a volume. His letter to Lord
Lyndhurst and the answer I have seen. If you had any suspicions
with regard to the moon before, what do you think now? Scarlett has also another competitor in Wetherall, for W. could not be Irish
Chancellor and Scarlett could. I
LORD BROUGHAM AND THE KING | 109 |
‘To return to the K. He has long taken a great dislike to B., and his conduct lately has settled it. His antics and his taking the great seal across the Border without leave, brought on the crisis. He has worn him out, too, with correspondence, having assailed him with reams of paper, writing through Sir H. Taylor. He thinks he has great admissions in the K.’s answers through the same channel, but forgets that the K., also, has his. His, I am told by those who have seen them, are beyond anything. But why, you will say, did the K. write (or rather dictate)? He thought he must answer his Chancellor. All now is over, however, and I believe all are heartily sick of him. He wrote a second letter to Lord L. from Calais, still more urgent, and he has written a third retracting all. He has taken, I hear, his seat in the Institute.
‘I am delighted to think that you are so well off as to society. The weather here is delightful. What then must it be with you! Remember me most kindly to the ladies.
‘B. has taken his new secretary with him to Paris—a dull young man, able only to transcribe; his fellow-traveller in Scotland, Edmonds.
‘Pray write to me, without any thought or scruple
110 | ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES |
‘And now to conclude with what I ought to have begun with—your new volume—which I first saw in Jeffrey’s hand—notice-copy. I cannot say how much I like the nine new articles, though I wish you had given a little more of a Continental tour, particularly in Switzerland; but your additions are invaluable.
‘Hallam is in town, and Sydney [Smith], and Whishaw. When you like you shall meet them at breakfast. H. is but a step, you know.
‘Lord M. communicated the news only to three persons over night—the Foreign Secretary, the Home Secretary and the Chancellor. Next morning it was in the “Times,” and “Chronicle.” Who sent it? The two first say, we did not. The mischievous article was sent by him, I suppose, as a poisonous present to “The Times,” “the Queen has done it all.” These things must destroy all confidence. Allen fights for him against all the world.’
≪ PREV | NEXT ≫ |