1851

THACKERAY'S "FOUR GEORGES"

Lindsay knocking the little bloused Frenchmen down right and left; but we luckily escaped without arrest.

On the day after, I left Paris for England. On the way our train broke down, and I was delayed for the night in a very impecunious state at Havre. I was engaged to dine at Mrs. Mills's, at Camelford House, and to go to the Duke of Wellington's ball that night, which I missed; but-though this was the last of the great Duke's balls my misfortunes did not end here, for I was awoke in the morning by two big gendarmes standing over my bed and telling me to get up and accompany them to the police magistrate. My guilty conscience told me I was arrested for our row in Paris, and I was dreadfully frightened as I was ushered in before the commissary. It soon appeared that there was some mistake, and that I was supposed to be a runaway schoolboy; and though my dignity was greatly hurt, I was much delighted at my release.

In May of this year (1851) Thackeray began in Willis's Rooms his delightful lectures on the Four Georges; and we have all since read the account of his nerves on that occasion. He took society, which always likes to be thought to have literary tastes, by storm, diverting them. for a time from the interest in and disgust at Mrs. Bloomer and her followers, who vainly endeavored to propagate the cult of that hideous costume.

A great hippodrome was in full swing in South Kensington. I was present with a party of people when Mr. and Mrs. Graham made their disastrous ascent in a balloon, which hardly rose above the roofs of the buildings, and was finally dashed on Colonel North's house in Arlington Street, now the property of Lord Granby.

In consequence of the influx of foreigners into London to see the Exhibition, the opera season was prolonged over August. In those days, and until the sixties, the

Italian Opera House (which at the Queen's accession was called "Her Majesty's ") was in its glory. The pit, which occupied the floor of the house, gave access to the boxes, and was appropriately called the "Fops' Alley." Rubini, Mario and Grisi, Lablache, and later on Cruvelli, Sontag, Alboni, and Jenny Lind, delighted audiences as fashionable as those which now again fill the grand tier of Covent Garden; and the ballet, with Cerito, Taglioni, Lucille Grahn, and Rosati, adorned an art which, alas! has now degenerated into a taste for vulgar breakdowns and tarara-boom-de-ays.

I had been given what was known as an "ivory" for Lord Dudley's double box on the grand tier, and when the fashionable world left London, I, who was kept there at my office, used to sit in state alone in my glory.

Stewart Hobhouse was a great friend of mine in these early days; he was in the Home Office, and we were continually about together. Fire escapes were then being started in the streets, and one morning three or four of us had gone, after a ball, to Covent Garden. On our return we found an escape at St. James's church, and climbed up the ladder, and by stretching out our hands and feet, came down the shoot comfortably. Hobhouse neglected this precaution, and came down with a cruel shock, his trousers forced up his legs, and his coat turned inside out over his head.

Hobhouse constantly dined with a celebrated wit of our youth, Sergeant Murphy (for sergeants-at-law existed in those days), and told me many of his witty stories; but I regret to say that, witty as they were, there were not many that could be recorded here. Mrs. Norton was talking about the youthfulness of Lord Palmerston, when he said, "Yes, but even he cannot postpone old age sine die." At the time when at the beginning of the Indian Mutiny horrible and ghastly

1851 LORD BROUGHTON'S TEMPER

stories, which afterwards turned out to be untrue, were very common, one was told of a lady whose nose was said to have been slit open by the mutineers. "She was always called," some one remarked, "one of the beauties of the Ganges." "She'll be one of the Hooghly' ones now," said the Sergeant.

Lord Broughton, who was an uncle of Stewart's, bore a strong resemblance to one of the doorkeepers at the Opera. A nouveau riche told him to call his carriage, which he did, and then turned saying, "I have called yours, perhaps you will now call mine; I am Lord Broughton." He had a peppery temper, and one day Thackeray had at his dinner a special bottle of Madeira. There was one glass left, and Thackeray, patting Lord Broughton on the back, said, "There, my dear old boy, you drink that." "I am not your dear boy, I am not old, and d-n your wine," said Lord Broughton.

Albert Smith was a wit of another kind-clever but vulgar; and Dickens never forgave him for imitating his style of writing. It was then the fashion for young men to go in balloons with old Green the aëronaut; and Albert Smith ascended one day before an admiring crowd of onlookers, and waving his hand to a young lady, an acquaintance of his, as he was starting, he said: "If I come down again I will bring you back a sky-terrier." He died young, leaving a widow, who was Keeley's daughter; Montagu Williams married her sister. One day the latter was engaged on a broiling summer afternoon in a law case, which he could not leave; he turned to a young barrister and said: "I had promised to take my wife and her sister to the Crystal Palace; you know them. I wish you would go down, explain my absence, and I will join you later."

The young lawyer did as he was told. Mrs. Albert Smith grumbled at the dreadful heat.

66

Well," said the young man, mistaking her for her sister, "we ought not to complain, when we think how dreadfully hot it must be where your poor husband is !"

As I lived in Mayfair, I often attended the services at John Street chapel to hear Mr. Brookfield, whose ornate language I never much appreciated. Preaching a sermon on the Christmas message to the shepherds at Bethlehem, he described their flock as the "woolly sleepers"; but he must have possessed great merits, for he was a close friend of Thackeray's, in my opinion the greatest novelist of any that I have ever read. I have been young, and now am old; but I can think of no books which have given, and still give, me such pleasure. as Esmond, The Virginians, Vanity Fair, and The Newcomes. No one photographed like him the world I have known and seen, or gave such pictures of noble generosity, of kind acts and petty foibles, of lofty hopes and profound belief, which have lasted since the world began. How often I have put down his books because the sunlight on the pages made my eyes water, and comforted myself by thinking that, as the great author said, "A man is never so manly as when he is unmanned!" I frequently met him, but never really knew him till I learned to know and love him in his writings.

We were one night discussing the mode of work adopted by various authors, when Mrs. Paul related how Holman Hunt had told her that a party, of which he was one, tried to persuade Thackeray to join them in a dinner-party at the Star and Garter. He pleaded the work he must do, and refused. On their return they called at his house, and found he had written exactly a line and a half!

CHAPTER III

1851-1854

Palmerston's Dismissal and Revenge - Resignation of Lord John Russell-Lord Derby's Administration-Return of Macaulay— Robert Lowe enters Parliament - Jullien's Concerts - Lord Clarendon-Stevenson Blackwood-The Duke of Wellington's Lying-in-State and Funeral-Disraeli's Plagiarism-Defeat of his Budget Proposals-Lord Aberdeen's Coalition Government -A Visit to Netherby and Gretna Green-Wilson the Fisherman and his Familiarities-War Clouds in the East-Sir Charles Napier-Lord Anglesey and his Nonconformist Friend - Departure of the Scots Fusilier Guards-News of the Alma-Balaclava -Lord Ellesmere's Verses-Elected to Brooks's-Sir David Dundas-Cholera in London-The two George Moores-Inkerman as Described by a Combatant.

THE close of 1851 was an exciting time in politics; for a quarrel had sprung up between Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston, which led to the latter's summary dismissal from the Foreign Office, the seals of which were handed over to Lord Granville.

The Cabinet refused to recognize the Prince President, while Lord Palmerston had privately instructed our ambassador, Lord Normanby, to do so.

This took place in the month of December, and in 1852, at the beginning of February, Parliament met, and the incident was the subject of discussion and debate, in which it was thought that Lord John Russell had the best of it; indeed, so shrewd a judge of mankind as Mr. Disraeli said to Lord Dalling: "There was a Palmerston."