SOME EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY LETTERS With the exception of Sydney Smith (1771-1845) all the writers of this group have been represented by other work in a previous section. Sydney Smith became a Fellow at Oxford, took orders, was appointed to a curacy on Salisbury Plain, went to Edinburgh, and there stumbled upon his vocation as reviewer. After five years in Edinburgh, he moved to London where he spent the remainder of his life. Smith cared little for books as books and had not a grain of sentiment in his composition. He was one of the wittiest of Englishmen, and his letters are full of the most untiring and the most sparkling pleasantry. Of the more distinguished authors whose letters are here given, it is sufficient to say that not one scrap that gives us more knowledge of their personality is uninteresting to us, and therefore those who treasure the heritage of English literature will always turn to the correspondence of these men to find a side which is not only alluring but is so often charmingly revealing. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH TO PROFESSOR REED [PRESENTATION TO THE QUEEN] RYDAL MOUNT, AMBLESIDE, July 1, 1845. My dear Mr. Reed, I have, as usual, been long in your debt, which I am pretty sure you will excuse as heretofore. It gave me much pleasure to have a glimpse of your brother under circumstances which no doubt he will have described to you. He spoke of his health as improved, and I hope it will continue to do so. I understood from him that it was probable that he should call at Rydal before his return to his own country. I need I need not say to you I shall be glad, truly glad, to see him both for his own sake, and as so nearly connected with you. My absence from home lately was not of more than three weeks. I took the journey to London solely to pay my respects to the Queen upon my appointment to the Laureateship upon the decease of my friend Mr. Southey. The weather was very cold, and I caught an inflammation in one of my eyes, which rendered my stay in the south very uncomfortable. I nevertheless did, in respect to the object of my journey, all that was required. The reception given me by the Queen at her ball was most gracious. Mrs. Everett, the wife of your minister, among many others, was a witness to it, without knowing who I was. It moved her to the shedding of tears. This effect was in part produced, I suppose, by American habits of feeling, as pertaining to a republican government. To see a grey-haired man of seventy-five years of age, kneeling down in a large assembly to kiss the hand of a young woman, is a sight for which institutions essentially democratic do not prepare a spectator of either sex, and must naturally place the opinions upon which a republic is founded, and the sentiments which support it, in strong contrast with a government based and upheld as ours is. I am not, therefore, surprised that Mrs. Everett was moved, as she herself described to persons of my acquaintance, among others to Mr. Rogers the poet. By the by, of this gentleman, now I believe in his eighty-third year, I saw more than of any other person except my host, while I was in London. He is singularly fresh and strong for his years, and his mental faculties (with the exception of his memory a little) not at all impaired. It is remark able that he and the Rev. W. Bowles were both distinguished as poets when I was a school-boy, and they have survived almost all their eminent contemporaries, several of whom came into notice long after them. Since they became known, Burns, Cowper, Mason, the author of Caractacus and friend of Gray, have died. Thomas Warton, Laureate, then Byron, Shelley, Keats, and a good deal later Scott, Coleridge, Crabbe, Southey, Lamb, the Ettrick Shepherd, Cary the translator of Dante, Crowe, the author of Lewesdon Hill, and others of more or less distinction, have disappeared. And now of English poets, advanced in life, I cannot recall any but James Montgomery, Thomas Moore, and myself, who are living, except the octogenarian with whom I began. is far from us, being gone to Oporto with her husband on account of her enfeebled frame and most unfortunately, soon after her arrival, she was seized with a violent attack of rheumatic fever caused by exposure to the evening air. We have also been obliged lately to part with. four grandsons, very fine boys, who are gone with their father to Italy to visit their mother, kept there by severe illness, which sent her abroad two years ago. Under these circumstances we old people keep our spirits as well as we can, trusting the end to God's goodness. Now, for the enclosed poem, which I wrote the other day, and which I send to you, hoping it may give you some pleasure, as a scanty repayment for all that we owe you. Our dear friend, Miss Fenwick, is especially desirous that her warmest thanks should be returned to you for all the trouble you have taken about her bonds. But, to return to the verses: if you approve, pray forward them with my compliments and thanks for his letter to In his letter he states that with others he is strenuously exerting himself in endeavours to abolish slavery, and, as one of the means of disposing the public mind to that measure, he is about to publish selections from various authors in behalf of humanity. He begs an original composition from me. I have nothing bearing directly upon slavery, but if you think this little piece would serve his cause indirectly, pray be so kind as to forward it to him. He speaks of himself as deeply indebted to my writings. I saw Tennyson, when I was in London, several times. He is decidedly the first of our living poets, and I hope will live to give the world still better things. You will be pleased to hear that he expressed in the strongest terms his gratitude to my writings. To this I was far from indifferent, though persuaded that he is not much in sympathy with what I should myself most value in my attempts, viz., the spirituality with which I have endeavoured to invest the material universe, and the moral relations under which I have wished to exhibit its most ordinary appearances. I ought not to conclude this first portion of my letter without telling you that I have now under my roof a cousin, who some time ago was introduced, improperly, I think, she being then a child, to the notice of the public, as one of the English poetesses, in an article of the Quarterly so entitled. Her name is Emmeline Fisher, and her mother is my first cousin. What advances she may have made in latter years I do not know, but her productions from the age of eight to twelve were not less than astonishing. She only arrived yesterday, and we promise ourselves much pleasure in seeing more of her. Our dear My dearest Child, friend Miss Fenwick is also under our roof; so is Katherine Southey, her late father's youngest daughter, so that we reckon ourselves rich; though our only daughter I have not left room to subscribe myself more than Affectionately yours, WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. SYDNEY SMITH To MRS. HOLLAND ROUEN, Oct. 6, 1835. fell ill in London, and detained us a day or two. At Canterbury, the wheel would not turn round; we slept there, and lost our passage the next day at Dover: this was Wednesday, - a day of mist, fog, a day of mist, fog, and despair. It blew a hurricane all that night, and we were kept awake by thinking of the different fish by which we should be devoured on the following day. I thought I should fall to the lot of some female porpoise, who, mistaking me for a porpoise, but finding me only a parson, would make a dinner of me. We were all up and at the quay by five in the morning. The captain hesitated very much whether he would. embark, and your mother solicited me in pencil notes not to do so; however, we embarked, the French Ambassador, ourselves, twenty Calais shopkeepers, and a variety of all nations. The passage was tremendous: Hibbert had crossed four times, and the courier twenty; I had crossed three times more, and we none of us ever remember such a passage. I lay along the deck, wrapped in a cloak, shut my eyes, and, as to danger, reflected that it was much more apparent than real; and that, as I had so little life to lose, it was of little consequence whether I was drowned, or died, like a resident clergyman, from indigestion. Your mother was taken out more dead than alive. We were delighted with the hotel of Dessein, at Calais; eggs, butter, bread, coffee everything better than in England - the hotel itself magnificent. We all recovered, and stayed there the day; and proceeded to sleep at Montreuil, forty miles, where we were still more improved by a good dinner. The next day, twenty miles farther, to Abbeville; from thence, sixty miles the next day to this place, where we found a superb hotel, superb hotel, and are quite delighted with Rouen; the churches far exceed anything in England in richness of architectural ornament. The old buildings of Rouen are most interesting. All that I refuse to see is, where particular things were done to particular persons; the square where Joan of Arc was burnt, the house where Corneille was born. The events I admit to be important; but, from long experience, I have found that the square where Joan of Arc was burnt, and the room where Corneille was born, have such a wonderful resem blance to other rooms and squares, that I have ceased to interest myself about them. To-morrow we start for Mantes, and the next day we shall be at Paris. Travelling is extremely slow-five mile: an hour. I find the people now as I did before, most delightful; compared to them we are perfect barbarians. Happy the man whose daughter was half as well-bred as the chambermaid at Dessein's, or whose sons were as polished as the waiter! Whatever else you do, insist, when Holland brings you to France, on coming to Rouen; there is nothing in France more worth seeing. Come to Havre, and by steam to Rouen. God bless you, dear child! Give my love to Froggy and Doggy. Your affectionate father, SYDNEY SMITH. WALTER SCOTT TO HENRY BREVOORT ABBOTSFORD, 23d April, 1813. My dear Sir, I beg you to accept my best thanks for the uncommon degree of entertainment which I have received from the most excellently jocose history of New York. I am sensible, that as a stranger to American parties and politics, I must lose much of the concealed satire of the piece, but I must own that looking at the simple and obvious. meaning only, I have never read anything so closely resembling the style of Dean Swift, as the annals of Diedrich Knickerbocker. I have been employed these few evenings in reading them aloud to Mrs. S. and two ladies who are our guests, and our sides have been absolutely sore with laughing. I think, too, there are passages which indicate that the author possesses powers of a different kind, and has some touches which remind me much of Sterne. I beg you will have the kindness to let me know when Mr. Irvine takes pen in hand again, for assuredly I shall expect a very great treat which I may chance never to hear of but through your kindness. Believe me, Dear Sir, Your obliged humble servant, To MRS. HUGHES [THE WAVERLEY NOVELS] WATERLOO HOTEL, Tuesday, My dear Mrs. Hughes, I have been so completely harassed by business and engagements since I came to this wilderness of houses, that I must have seemed very ungrateful in leaving your kind remembrances unacknowledged. You mistake when you give me any credit for being concerned with these far-famed novels, but I am not the less amused with the hasty dexterity of the good folks of Cumnor and its vicinity getting all their traditionary lore into such order as to meet the taste of the public. I could have wished the author had chosen a more heroical death for his fair victim. It is some time since I received and acknowledged your young student's very spirited verses. I am truly glad that Oxford breeds such nightingales, and that you have an interest in them. I sent my letter to my friend Longman, and, as it did not reach you, can only repeat my kindest and best thanks. I would be most happy to know your son, and hope you will contrive to afford me that pleasure. With best compliments to Dr. Hughes, and sincere regret that I have so often found Amen Corner untenanted, I am, with sincerity, Dear Mrs. Hughes, Your much obliged humble servant, WALTER SCOTT. TO THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN EDIN., Feb. 25, 1823. My dear Sir, I was duly favoured with your letter, which proves one point against the unknown Author of Waverley; namely that he is certainly a Scotsman, since no other nation pretends to the advantage of second sight. Be he who or where he may, he must certainly feel the very high honour which has selected him, nominis umbra, to a situation so worthy of envy. As his personal appearance in the fraternity is not like to be a speedy event, one may presume he may be desirous of offering some token of his gratitude in the shape of a reprint, or such-like kickshaw, and for this purpose you had better send me the statutes of your learned body, which I will engage to send him in safety. It will follow as a characteristic circumstance, that the table of the Roxburghe, like that of King Arthur, will have a vacant chair, like that of Banquo at Macbeth's banquet. But if this author, who "hath fernseed and walketh invisible,' should not appear to claim it before I come to London (should I ever be there again), with permission of the Club, I, who have something of adventure in me, although a knight like Sir Andrew Aguecheek,“ dubb'd with unhacked rapier, and on carpet consideration," would, rather than lose the chance of a dinner with the Roxburghe Club, take upon me the adventure of the siege perilous, and reap some amends for perils and scandals into which the invisible champion has drawn me, by being his locum tenens on so distinguished an occasion. It will not be uninteresting to you to know, that a fraternity is about to be established here something on the plan of the Roxburghe Club; but, having Scottish antiquities chiefly in view, it is to be called the Bannatyne Club, from the celebrated antiquary, George Bannatyne, who compiled by far the greatest record of old Scottish poetry. The first meeting is to be held on Thursday, when the health of the Roxburghe Club will be drunk. I am always, my dear sir, your most faithful humble servant, WALTER SCOTT. TO DR. AND MRS. HUGHES [THE FINANCIAL DISASTER] EDINBURGH, 6 February, 1826. My dear Mrs. Hughes and my worthy Doctor, I write immediately to give you the information which your kindness thinks of importance. I shall certainly lose a very large sum by the failure of my book sellers, whom all men considered as worth £150,000 & who I fear will not cut up, as they say, for one fourth of the money. But looking at the thing at the worst point of view, I cannot see that I am entitled to claim the commiseration of any one, since I have made an arrangement for settling these affairs to the satisfaction of every party concerned so far as yet appears, which leaves an income with me ample for all the comforts and many of the elegancies of life, and does not in the slightest degree innovate on any of my comforts. So what title have I to complain? I am far richer in point of income than Generals and Admirals who have led fleets and armies to battle. My family are all provided for in present or in prospect, my estate remains in my family, my house and books in my own possession. I shall give up my house in Edinb. and retire to Abbotsford; where my wife and Anne will make their chief residence; during the time our courts sit, when I must attend, I will live at my club. If Anne wishes to see a little of the world in the gay season, they can have lodgings for two or three weeks; this plan we had indeed form'd before it became imperative. At Abbotsford we will cut off all hospitality, which latterly consumed all my time, which was worse than the expense; this I intended to do at any rate; we part with an extra servant or two, manage our household economically, and in five years, were the public to stand my friend, I should receive much more than I have lost. But if I only pay all demands I shall be satisfied. I shall be anxious to dispose of Mr. Charles so soon as his second year of Oxford is ended. I think of trying to get him into some diplomatic line, for which his habits and manners seem to suit him well. I might certainly have borrowed large sums. But to what good purpose? I must have owed that money, and a sense of obligation besides. Now, as I stand, the Banks are extremely sensible that I have been the means of great advantages to their establishments, and have afforded me all the facilities I can desire to make my payments; and as they gained by my prosperity, they are handsomely disposed to be indulgent to my adversity, and what can an honest man wish for more? Many people will think that because I see company easily my pleasures depend on society. But this is not the case; I am by nature a very lonely animal, and enjoy myself much at getting rid from a variety of things connected with public business, etc., which I did because they were fixed on me, but I am particularly happy to be rid of. And now let the matter be at rest for ever. It is a bad business, but might have been much The affair with Godwin began thus. We were talking of reviews, and bewailing their ill effects. I detailed my plan for a review, to occupy regularly the fourth side of an evening paper, etc., etc., adding that it had been a favourite scheme with me for two years past. Godwin very coolly observed that it was a plan which "no man who had a spark of honest pride" could join with. "No man, not the slave of the grossest egotism could unite in," etc.. Cool and civil! I ask whether he and most others did not already do what I proposed in prefaces. "Aye! in prefaces; that is quite a different thing." I then adverted to the extreme rudeness of the speech with regard to myself, and added that it was not only a very rough, but likewise a very mistaken opinion, for I was nearly if not quite sure that it had received the approbation both of you and of Wordsworth. "Yes, sir! just so! of Mr. Southeyjust what I said," and so on mõrě Godwin |