Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, vol 1 by George Otto Trevelyan (reading the story of the TXT) 📕

“He reads his works to us in the manuscript, and, when we find fault, as I very often do with his being too severe upon people, he takes it with the greatest kindness, and often alters what we do not like. I hardly ever, indeed, met with a sweeter temper than his. He is rather hasty, and when he has not time for an instant’s thought, he will sometimes return a quick answer, for which he will be sorry the moment he has said it. But in a conversation of any length, though it may be on subjects that touch him very nearly, and though the person with whom he converses may be very provoking and extremely out of temper, I never saw him lose his. He never uses this superiority, as some do, for the purpose of irritating another still more by coolness; but speaks in a kind, good-natured manner, as if he wished to bring the other back to temper without appearing to notice that he had lost it.

“He at one time took a very punning turn, and we laid a wager in books, my Mysteries of Udolpho against his German Theatre, that he could not make two hundred puns in one evening. He did it, however, in two hours, and, although they were of course most of them miserably bad, yet it was a proof of great quickness.

“Saturday, February 26, 1831—At dinner we talked of the Grants.

Tom said he had found Mr. Robert Grant walking about in the lobbies of the House of Commons, and saying that he wanted somebody to defend his place in the Government, which he heard was going to be attacked. ‘What did you say to him?’ we asked.

‘Oh, I said nothing; but, if they’ll give me the place, I’ll defend it. When I am Judge Advocate, I promise you that I will not go about asking anyone to defend me.’

“After dinner we played at capping verses, and after that at a game in which one of the party thinks of something for the others to guess at. Tom gave the slug that killed Perceval, the lemon that Wilkes squeezed for Doctor Johnson, the pork-chop which Thurtell ate after he had murdered Weare, and Sir Charles Macarthy’s jaw which was sent by the Ashantees as a present to George the Fourth.

“Some one mentioned an acquaintance who had gone to the West Indies, hoping to make money, but had only ruined the complexions of his daughters. Tom said:

Mr. Walker was sent to Berbice

By the greatest of statesmen and earls.

He went to bring back yellow boys,

But he only brought back yellow girls.

“I never saw anything like the fun and humour that kindles in his eye when a repartee or verse is working in his brain.

“March 3, 1831.—Yesterday morning Hannah and I walked part of the way to his chambers with Tom, and, as we separated, I remember wishing him good luck and success that night. He went through it most triumphantly, and called down upon himself admiration enough to satisfy even his sister. I like so much the manner in which he receives compliments. He does not pretend to be indifferent, but smiles in his kind and animated way, with ‘I am sure it is very kind of you to say so,’ or something of that nature. His voice from cold and over-excitement got quite into a scream towards the last part. A person told him that he had not heard such speaking since Fox. ‘You have not heard such screaming since Fox,’ he said.

“March 24, 1831.—By Tom’s account, there never was such a scene of agitation as the House of Commons presented at the passing of the second reading of the Reform Bill the day before yesterday, or rather yesterday, for they did not divide till three or four in the morning. When dear Tom came the next day he was still very much excited, which I found to my cost, for when I went out to walk with him he walked so very fast that I could scarcely keep up with him at all. With sparkling eyes he described the whole scene of the preceding evening in the most graphic manner.

“‘I suppose the Ministers are all in high spirits,’ said Mamma.

‘In spirits, Ma’am? I’m sure I don’t know. In bed, I’ll answer for it.’ Mamma asked him for franks, that she might send his speech to a lady [This lady was Mrs. Hannah More.] who, though of high Tory principles, is very fond of Tom, and has left him in her will her valuable library. ‘Oh, no,’ he said, ‘don’t send it.

If you do, she’ll cut me off with a prayer-book.’

“Tom is very much improved in his appearance during the last two or three years. His figure is not so bad for a man of thirty as for a man of twenty-two. He dresses better, and his manners, from seeing a great deal of society, are very much improved. When silent and occupied in thought, walking up and down the room as he always does, his hands clenched and muscles working with the intense exertion of his mind, strangers would think his countenance stern; but I remember a writing-master of ours, when Tom had come into the room and left it again, saying, ‘Ladies, your brother looks like a lump of good-humour!’

“March 30, 1831—Tom has just left me, after a very interesting conversation. He spoke of his extreme idleness. He said: ‘I never knew such an idle man as I am. When I go in to Empson or Ellis their tables are always covered with books and papers. I cannot stick at anything for above a day or two. I mustered industry enough to teach myself Italian. I wish to speak Spanish. I know I could master the difficulties in a week, and read any book in the language at the end of a month, but I have not the courage to attempt it. If there had not been really something in me, idleness would have ruined me.’

“I said that I was surprised at the great accuracy of his information, considering how desultory his reading had been. ‘My accuracy as to facts,’ he said, ‘I owe to a cause which many men would not confess. It is due to my love of castle-building. The past is in my mind soon constructed into a romance.’ He then went on to describe the way in which from his childhood his imagination had been filled by the study of history. ‘With a person of my turn,’ he said, ‘the minute touches are of as great interest, and perhaps greater, than the most important events.

Spending so much time as I do in solitude, my mind would have rusted by gazing vacantly at the shop windows. As it is, I am no sooner in the streets than I am in Greece, in Rome, in the midst of the French Revolution. Precision in dates, the day or hour in which a man was born or died, becomes absolutely necessary. A slight fact, a sentence, a word, are of importance in my romance.

Pepys’s Diary formed almost inexhaustible food for my fancy. I seem to know every inch of Whitehall. I go in at Hans Holbein’s gate, and come out through the matted gallery. The conversations which I compose between great people of the time are long, and sufficiently animated; in the style, if not with the merits, of Sir Walter Scott’s. The old parts of London, which you are sometimes surprised at my knowing so well, those old gates and houses down by the river, have all played their part in my stories.’ He spoke, too, of the manner in which he used to wander about Paris, weaving tales of the Revolution, and he thought that he owed his command of language greatly to this habit.

“I am very sorry that the want both of ability and memory should prevent my preserving with greater truth a conversation which interested me very much.

“May 21, 1831.—Tom was from London at the time my mother’s death occurred, and things fell out in such a manner that the first information he received of it was from the newspapers. He came home directly. He was in an agony of distress, and gave way at first to violent bursts of feeling. During the whole of the week he was with us all day, and was the greatest comfort to us imaginable. He talked a great deal of our sorrow, and led the conversation by degrees to other subjects, bearing the whole burden of it himself and interesting us without jarring with the predominant feeling of the time. I never saw him appear to greater advantage—never loved him more dearly.

“September 1831.—Of late we have walked a good deal. I remember pacing up and down Brunswick Square and Lansdowne Place for two hours one day, deep in the mazes of the most subtle metaphysics;-

-up and down Cork Street, engaged over Dryden’s poetry and the great men of that time;—making jokes all the way along Bond Street, and talking politics everywhere.

“Walking in the streets with Tom and Hannah, and talking about the hard work the heads of his party had got now, I said: “‘How idle they must think you, when they meet you here in the busy part of the day!’ ‘Yes, here I am,’ said he, ‘walking with two unidea’d girls. [Boswell relates in his tenth chapter how Johnson scolded Langton for leaving “his social friends, to go and sit with a set of wretched unidea’d girls.”] However, if one of the Ministry says to me, “Why walk you here all the day idle?”

I shall say, “Because no man has hired me.”’

“We talked of eloquence, which he has often compared to fresco-painting: the result of long study and meditation, but at the moment of execution thrown off with the greatest rapidity; what has apparently been the work of a few hours being destined to last for ages.

“Mr. Tierney said he was sure Sir Philip Francis had written Junius, for he was the proudest man he ever knew, and no one ever heard of anything he had done to be proud of.

“November 14, 1831, half-past-ten.—On Friday last Lord Grey sent for Tom. His note was received too late to be acted on that day.

On Saturday came another, asking him to East Sheen on that day, or Sunday. Yesterday, accordingly, he went, and stayed the night, promising to be here as early as possible to-day. So much depends upon the result of this visit! That he will be offered a place I have not the least doubt. He will refuse a Lordship of the Treasury, a Lordship of the Admiralty, or the Mastership of the Ordnance. He will accept the Secretaryship of the Board of Control, but will not thank them for it; and would not accept that, but that he thinks it will be a place of importance during the approaching discussions on the East Indian monopoly.

“If he gets a sufficient salary, Hannah and I shall most likely live with him. Can I possibly look forward to anything happier? I cannot imagine a course of life that would suit him better than thus to enjoy the pleasures of domestic life without its restraints; with sufficient business, but not, I hope, too much.

“At one o’clock he came. I went out to meet him. ‘I have nothing to tell you. Nothing. Lord Grey sent for me to speak about a matter of importance, which must be strictly private.’

“November 27.—I am just returned from a long walk, during which the conversation turned entirely on one subject. After a little previous talk about a certain great personage, [The personage was Lord Brougham, who at