Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay Part 15

I have this instant received your letter of yesterday with the enclosed proof-sheets. Your criticism is to a certain extent just; but you have not considered the whole sentence together. Depressed is in itself better than weighed down; but "the oppressive privileges which had depressed industry" would be a horrible cacophony. I hope that word convinces you. I have often observed that a fine Greek compound is an excellent subst.i.tute for a reason.

I met Rogers at the Athenaeum. He begged me to breakfast with him, and name my day, and promised that he would procure me as agreeable a party as he could find in London. Very kind of the old man, is it not? and, if you knew how Rogers is thought of, you would think it as great a compliment as could be paid to a Duke. Have you seen what the author of the "Young Duke" says about me: how rabid I am, and how certain I am to rat?

Ever yours

T. B. M.

Macaulay's account of the allusion to himself in the "Young Duke"

is perfectly accurate; and yet, when read as a whole, the pa.s.sage in question does not appear to have been ill-naturedly meant. ["I hear that Mr. Babington Macaulay is to be returned. If he speaks half as well as he writes, the House will be in fas.h.i.+on again. I fear that he is one of those who, like the individual whom he has most studied, will give up to a party what was meant for mankind. At any rate, he must get rid of his rabidity. He writes now on all subjects as if he certainly intended to be a renegade, and was determined to make the contrast complete."--The Young Duke, book v chap. vi.] It is much what any young literary man outside the House of Commons might write of another who had only been inside that House for a few weeks; and it was probably forgotten by the author within twenty-four hours after the ink was dry. It is to be hoped that the commentators of the future will not treat it as an authoritative record of Mr. Disraeli's estimate of Lord Macaulay's political character.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: June 25, 1831.

My dear Sister,--There was, as you will see, no debate on Lord John Russell's motion. The Reform Bill is to be brought in, read once, and printed, without discussion. The contest will be on the second reading, and will be protracted, I should think, through the whole of the week after next;--next week it will be, when you read this letter.

I breakfasted with Rogers yesterday. There was n.o.body 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 Flaxman into the most beautiful Grecian forms. The book-case is painted by Stothard, in his very best manner, with groups from Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Boccacio. The pictures are not numerous; but every one is excellent. In the dining-room there are also some beautiful paintings. But the three most remarkable objects in that room are, I think, a cast of Pope taken after death by Roubiliac; a n.o.ble model in terra-cotta by Michael Angelo, from which he afterwards made one of his finest statues, that of Lorenzo de Medici; and, lastly, a mahogany table on which stands an antique vase.

When Chantrey dined with Rogers some time ago he took particular notice of the vase, and the table on which it stands, and asked Rogers who made the table. "A common carpenter," said Rogers. "Do you remember the making of it?" said Chantrey. "Certainly," said Rogers, in some surprise. "I was in the room while it was finished with the chisel, and gave the workman directions about placing it." "Yes," said Chantrey, "I was the carpenter. I remember the room well, and all the circ.u.mstances."

A curious story, I think, and honourable both to the talent which raised Chantrey, and to the magnanimity which kept him from being ashamed of what he had been.

Ever yours affectionately

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: June 29, 1831.

My dear Sister,--We are not yet in the full tide of Parliamentary business. Next week the debates will be warm and long. I should not wonder if we had a discussion of five nights. I shall probably take a part in it.

I have breakfasted again with Rogers. The party was a remarkable one,--Lord John Russell, Tom Moore, Tom Campbell, and Luttrell. We were all very lively. An odd incident took place after breakfast, while we were standing at the window and looking into the Green Park. Somebody was talking about diners-out. "Ay," said Campbell--

"Ye diners-out from whom we guard our spoons."

Tom Moore asked where the line was. "Don't you know?" said Campbell.

"Not I," said Moore. "Surely," said Campbell, "it is your own." "I never saw it in my life," said Moore. "It is in one of your best things in the Times," said Campbell. Moore denied it. Hereupon I put in my claim, and told them that it was mine. Do you remember it? It is in some lines called the Political Georgics, which I sent to the Times about three years ago. They made me repeat the lines, and were vociferous in praise of them. Tom Moore then said, oddly enough:

"There is another poem in the Times that I should like to know the author of;--A Parson's Account of his Journey to the Cambridge Election." I laid claim to that also. "That is curious," said Moore. "I begged Barnes to tell me who wrote it. He said that he had received it from Cambridge, and touched it up himself, and pretended that all the best strokes were his. I believed that he was lying, because I never knew him to make a good joke in his life. And now the murder is out."

They asked me whether I had put anything else in the Times. Nothing, I said, except the Sortes Virgilianae, which Lord John remembered well.

I never mentioned the Cambridge Journey, or the Georgics, to any but my own family; and I was therefore, as you may conceive, not a little flattered to hear in one day Moore praising one of them, and Campbell praising the other.

I find that my article on Byron is very popular; one among a thousand proofs of the bad taste of the public. I am to review Croker's edition of Bozzy. It is wretchedly ill done. The notes are poorly written, and shamefully inaccurate. There is, however, much curious information in it. The whole of the Tour to the Hebrides is incorporated with the Life.

So are most of Mrs. Thrale's anecdotes, and much of Sir John Hawkins's lumbering book. The whole makes five large volumes. There is a most laughable sketch of Bozzy, taken by Sir T. Lawrence when young. I never saw a character so thoroughly hit off. I intend the book for you, when I have finished my criticism on it. You are, next to myself, the best read Boswellite that I know. The lady whom Johnson abused for flattering him [See Boswell's Life of Johnson, April 15, 1778.] was certainly, according to Croker, Hannah More. Another ill-natured sentence about a Bath lady ["He would not allow me to praise a lady then at Bath; observing, 'She does not gain upon me, sir; I think her empty-headed.'"]

whom Johnson called "empty-headed" is also applied to your G.o.dmother.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: July 6, 1835.

My dear Sister,--I have been so busy during the last two or three days that I have found no time to write to you. I have now good news for you.

I spoke yesterday night with a success beyond my utmost expectations. I am half ashamed to tell you the compliments which I have received; but you well know that it is not from vanity, but to give you pleasure, that I tell you what is said about me. Lord Althorp told me twice that it was the best speech he had ever heard; Graham, and Stanley, and Lord John Russell spoke of it in the same way; and O'Connell followed me out of the house to pay me the most enthusiastic compliments. I delivered my speech much more slowly than any that I have before made, and it is in consequence better reported than its predecessors, though not well. I send you several papers. You will see some civil things in the leading articles of some of them. My greatest pleasure, in the midst of all this praise, is to think of the pleasure which my success will give to my father and my sisters. It is happy for me that ambition has in my mind been softened into a kind of domestic feeling, and that affection has at least as much to do as vanity with my wish to distinguish myself. This I owe to my dear mother, and to the interest which she always took in my childish successes. From my earliest years, the gratification of those whom I love has been a.s.sociated with the gratification of my own thirst for fame, until the two have become inseparably joined in my mind.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M Macaulay

London: July 8, 1831.

My dear Sister,--Do you want to hear all the compliments that are paid to me? I shall never end, if I stuff my letters with them; for I meet n.o.body who does not give me joy. Baring tells me that I ought never to speak again. Howick sent a note to me yesterday to say that his father wished very much to be introduced to me, and asked me to dine with them yesterday, as, by great good luck, there was nothing to do in the House of Commons. At seven I went to Downing Street, where Earl Grey's official residence stands. It is a n.o.ble house. There are two splendid drawing-rooms, which overlook St. James's Park. Into these I was shown.

The servant told me that Lord Grey was still at the House of Lords, and that her Ladys.h.i.+p had just gone to dress. Howick had not mentioned the hour in his note. I sate down, and turned over two large portfolios of political caricatures. Earl Grey's own face was in every print. I was very much diverted. I had seen some of them before; but many were new to me, and their merit is extraordinary. They were the caricatures of that remarkably able artist who calls himself H. B. In about half an hour Lady Georgiana Grey, and the Countess, made their appearance. We had some pleasant talk, and they made many apologies. The Earl, they said, was unexpectedly delayed by a question which had arisen in the Lords.

Lady Holland arrived soon after, and gave me a most gracious reception; shook my hand very warmly, and told me, in her imperial decisive manner, that she had talked with all the princ.i.p.al men on our side about my speech, that they all agreed that it was the best that had been made since the death of Fox, and that it was more like Fox's speaking than anybody's else. Then she told me that I was too much worked, that I must go out of town, and absolutely insisted on my going to Holland House to dine, and take a bed, on the next day on which there is no Parliamentary business. At eight we went to dinner. Lord Howick took his father's place, and we feasted very luxuriously. At nine Lord Grey came from the House with Lord Durham, Lord Holland, and the Duke of Richmond. They dined on the remains of our dinner with great expedition, as they had to go to a Cabinet Council at ten. Of course I had scarcely any talk with Lord Grey. He was, however, extremely polite to me, and so were his colleagues. I liked the ways of the family.

I picked up some news from these Cabinet Ministers. There is to be a Coronation on quite a new plan; no banquet in Westminster Hall, no feudal services, no champion, no procession from the Abbey to the Hall, and back again. But there is to be a service in the Abbey. All the Peers are to come in state and in their robes, and the King is to take the oaths, and be crowned and anointed in their presence. The spectacle will be finer than usual to the mult.i.tude out of doors. The few hundreds who could obtain admittance to the Hall will be the only losers.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: July 8, 1831.

My dear Sister,--Since I wrote to you I have been out to dine and sleep at Holland House. We had a very agreeable and splendid party; among others the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Richmond, and the Marchioness of Clanricarde, who, you know, is the daughter of Canning. She is very beautiful, and very like her father, with eyes full of fire, and great expression in all her features. She and I had a great deal of talk. She showed much cleverness and information, but, I thought, a little more of political animosity than is quite becoming in a pretty woman. However, she has been placed in peculiar circ.u.mstances. The daughter of a statesman who was a martyr to the rage of faction may be pardoned for speaking sharply of the enemies of her parent; and she did speak sharply. With knitted brows, and flas.h.i.+ng eyes, and a look of feminine vengeance about her beautiful mouth, she gave me such a character of Peel as he would certainly have had no pleasure in hearing.

In the evening Lord John Russell came; and, soon after, old Talleyrand.

I had seen Talleyrand in very large parties, but had never been near enough to hear a word that he said. I now had the pleasure of listening for an hour and a half to his conversation. He is certainly the greatest curiosity that I ever fell in with. His head is sunk down between two high shoulders. One of his feet is hideously distorted. His face is as pale as that of a corpse, and wrinkled to a frightful degree. His eyes have an odd gla.s.sy stare quite peculiar to them. His hair, thickly powdered and pomatumed, hangs down his shoulders on each side as straight as a pound of tallow candles. His conversation, however, soon makes you forget his ugliness and infirmities. There is a poignancy without effort in all that he says, which reminded me a little of the character which the wits of Johnson's circle give of Beauclerk. For example, we talked about Metternich and Cardinal Mazarin. "J'y trouve beaucoup a redire. Le Cardinal trompait; mais il ne mentait pas. Or, M.

de Metternich ment toujours, et ne trompe jamais." He mentioned M. de St. Aulaire,--now one of the most distinguished public men of France. I said: "M. de Saint-Aulaire est beau-pere de M. le duc de Cazes, n'est-ce pas?" "Non, monsieur," said Talleyrand; "l'on disait, il y a douze ans, que M. de Saint-Aulaire etoit beau-pere de M. de Cazes; l'on dit maintenant que M. de Cazes est gendre de M. de Saint-Aulaire." [This saying remained in Macaulay's mind. He quoted it on the margin of his Aulus Gellius, as an ill.u.s.tration of the pa.s.sage in the nineteenth book in which Julius Caesar is described, absurdly enough as "perpetuus ille dictator, Cneii Pompeii socer".] It was not easy to describe the change in the relative positions of two men more tersely and more sharply; and these remarks were made in the lowest tone, and without the slightest change of muscle, just as if he had been remarking that the day was fine. He added: "M. de Saint-Aulaire a beaucoup d'esprit. Mais il est devot, et, ce qui pis est, devot honteux. Il va se cacher dans quelque hameau pour faire ses Paques." This was a curious remark from a Bishop.

He told several stories about the political men of France; not of any great value in themselves; but his way of telling them was beyond all praise,--concise, pointed, and delicately satirical. When he had departed, I could not help breaking out into admiration of his talent for relating anecdotes. Lady Holland said that he had been considered for nearly forty years as the best teller of a story in Europe, and that there was certainly n.o.body like him in that respect.

When the Prince was gone, we went to bed. In the morning Lord John Russell drove me back to London in his cabriolet, much amused with what I had seen and heard. But I must stop.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

Basinghall Street: July 15 1831.

My dear Sister,--The rage of faction at the present moment exceeds anything that has been known in our day. Indeed I doubt whether, at the time of Mr. Pitt's first becoming Premier, at the time of Sir Robert Walpole's fall, or even during the desperate struggles between the Whigs and Tories at the close of Anne's reign, the fury of party was so fearfully violent. Lord Mahon said to me yesterday that friends.h.i.+ps of long standing were everywhere giving way, and that the schism between the reformers and the anti-reformers was spreading from the House of Commons into every private circle. Lord Mahon himself is an exception.