You should see Tommy Moore. I asked him to
breakfast, but he's too weak - weak here, sir,' and he tapped
his forehead. 'I'm not that.' (This was the year that Moore
died.) He certainly was not; but his whole discourse was of
the past. It was as though he would not condescend to
discuss events or men of the day. What were either to the
days and men that he had known - French revolutions, battles
of Trafalgar and Waterloo, a Nelson and a Buonaparte, a Pitt,
a Burke, a Fox, a Johnson, a Gibbon, a Sheridan, and all the
men of letters and all the poets of a century gone by? Even
Macaulay had for once to hold his tongue; and could only
smile impatiently at what perhaps he thought an old man's
astonishing garrulity. But if a young and pretty woman
talked to him, it was not his great age that he vaunted, nor
yet the 'pleasures of memory' - one envied the adroitness of
his flattery, and the gracefulness of his repartee.
My friend George Cayley had a couple of dingy little rooms
between Parliament Street and the river. Much of my time was
spent there with him. One night after dinner, quite late, we
were building castles amidst tobacco clouds, when, following
a 'May I come in?' Tennyson made his appearance. This was
the first time I had ever met him. We gave him the only
armchair in the room; and pulling out his dudeen and placing
afoot on each side of the hob of the old-fashioned little
grate, he made himself comfortable before he said another
word. He then began to talk of pipes and tobacco. And
never, I should say, did this important topic afford so much
ingenious conversation before. We discussed the relative
merits of all the tobaccos in the world - of moist tobacco
and dry tobacco, of old tobacco and new tobacco, of clay
pipes and wooden pipes and meerschaum pipes. What was the
best way to colour them, the advantages of colouring them,
the beauty of the 'culotte,' the coolness it gave to the
smoke, &c. We listened to the venerable sage - he was then
forty-three and we only five or six and twenty - as we should
have listened to a Homer or an Aristotle, and he thoroughly
enjoyed our appreciation of his jokes.
Some of them would have startled such of his admirers who
knew him only by his poems; for his stories were anything but
poetical - rather humorous one might say, on the whole.
Here's one of them: he had called last week on the Duchess
of Sutherland at Stafford House. Her two daughters were with
her, the Duchess of Argyll and the beautiful Lady Constance
Grosvenor, afterwards Duchess of Westminster. They happened
to be in the garden. After strolling about for a while, the
Mama Duchess begged him to recite some of his poetry. He
chose 'Come into the garden, Maud' - always a favourite of
the poet's, and, as may be supposed, many were the fervid
exclamations of 'How beautiful!' When they came into the
house, a princely groom of the chambers caught his eye and
his ear, and, pointing to his own throat, courteously
whispered: 'Your dress is not quite as you would wish it,
sir.'
'I had come out without a necktie; and there I was, spouting
my lines to the three Graces, as DECOLLETE as a strutting
turkey cock.'
The only other allusion to poetry or literature that night
was a story I told him of a Mr. Thomas Wrightson, a Yorkshire
banker, and a fanatical Swedenborgian. Tommy Wrightson, who
was one of the most amiable and benevolent of men, spent his
life in making a manuscript transcript of Swedenborg's works.
His writing was a marvel of calligraphic art; he himself, a
curiosity. Swedenborg was for him an avatar; but if he had
doubted of Tennyson's ultimate apotheosis, I think he would
have elected to seek him in 'the other place.' Anyhow, Mr.
Wrightson avowed to me that he repeated 'Locksley Hall' every
morning of his life before breakfast. This I told Tennyson.
His answer was a grunt; and in a voice from his boots, 'Ugh!
enough to make a dog sick!' I did my utmost to console him
with the assurance that, to the best of my belief, Mr.
Wrightson had once fallen through a skylight.
As illustrating the characters of the admired and his
admirer, it may be related that the latter, wishing for the
poet's sign-manual, wrote and asked him for it. He addressed
Tennyson, whom he had never seen, as 'My dear Alfred.' The
reply, which he showed to me, was addressed 'My dear Tom.'
CHAPTER XXXVI
MY stepfather, Mr. Ellice, having been in two Ministries -
Lord Grey's in 1830, and Lord Melbourne's in 1834 - had
necessarily a large parliamentary acquaintance; and as I
could always dine at his house in Arlington Street when I
pleased, I had constant opportunities of meeting most of the
prominent Whig politicians, and many other eminent men of the
day. One of the dinner parties remains fresh in my memory -
not because of the distinguished men who happened to be
there, but because of the statesman whose name has since
become so familiar to the world.
Some important question was before the House in which Mr.
Ellice was interested, and upon which he intended to speak.
This made him late for dinner, but he had sent word that his
son was to take his place, and the guests were not to wait.
When he came Lord John Russell greeted him with -
'Well, Ellice, who's up?'
'A younger son of Salisbury's,' was the reply; 'Robert Cecil,
making his maiden speech.
