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

What can I say more? as the Indians end their letters. Did not Lady Holland tell me of some good novels? I remember:—Henry Masterton, three volumes, an amusing story and a happy termination. Smuggle it in, next time that you go to Liverpool, from some circulating library; and deposit it in a lock-up place out of the reach of them that are clothed in drab; and read it together at the curling hour.

My article on Mirabeau will be out in the forthcoming number. I am not a good judge of my own compositions, I fear; but I think that it will be popular. A Yankee has written to me to say that an edition of my works is about to be published in America with my life prefixed, and that he shall be obliged to me to tell him when I was born, whom I married, and so forth. I guess I must answer him slick right away.

For, as the judicious poet observes,

Though a New England man lolls back in his chair, With a pipe in his mouth, and his legs in the air, Yet surely an Old England man such as I To a kinsman by blood should be civil and spry.

How I run on in quotation! But, when I begin to cite the verses of our great writers, I never can stop. Stop I must, however.

Yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah and Margaret Macaulay.

London: July 18, 1832.

My dear Sisters,—I have heard from Napier. He speaks rapturously of my article on Dumont, [Dumont’s “Life of Mirabeau.” See the Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay.] but sends me no money. Allah blacken his face! as the Persians say. He has not yet paid me for Burleigh.

We are worked to death in the House of Commons, and we are henceforth to sit on Saturdays. This, indeed, is the only way to get through our business. On Saturday next we shall, I hope, rise before seven, as I am engaged to dine on that day with pretty, witty Mrs.—. I fell in with her at Lady Grey’s great crush, and found her very agreeable. Her husband is nothing in society. Ropers has some very good stories about their domestic happiness,—stories confirming a theory of mine which, as I remember, made you very angry. When they first married, Mrs.—

treated her husband with great respect. But, when his novel came out and failed completely, she changed her conduct, and has, ever since that unfortunate publication, henpecked the poor author unmercifully.

And the case, says Ropers, is the harder, because it is suspected that she wrote part of the book herself. It is like the scene in Milton where Eve, after tempting Adam, abuses him for yielding to temptation.

But do you not remember how I told you that much of the love of women depended on the eminence of men? And do you not remember how, on behalf of your sex, you resented the imputation?

As to the present state of affairs, abroad and at home, I cannot sum it up better than in these beautiful lines of the poet: Peel is preaching, and Croker is lying.

The cholera’s raging, the people are dying.

When the House is the coolest, as I am alive, The thermometer stands at a hundred and five.

We debate in a heat that seems likely to burn us, Much like the three children who sang in the furnace.

The disorders at Paris have not ceased to plague us; Don Pedro, I hope, is ere this on the Tagus; In Ireland no tithe can be raised by a parson; Mr. Smithers is just hanged for murder and arson; Dr. Thorpe has retired from the Lock, and ‘tis said That poor little Wilks will succeed in his stead.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah and Margaret Macaulay.

London: July 21 1832.

My dear Sisters,—I am glad to find that there is no chance of Nancy’s turning Quaker. She would, indeed, make a queer kind of female Friend.

What the Yankees will say about me I neither know nor care. I told them the dates of my birth, and of my coming into Parliament. I told them also that I was educated at Cambridge. As to my early bon-mots, my crying for holidays, my walks to school through showers of cats and dogs, I have left all those for the “Life of the late Right Honourable Thomas Babington Macaulay, with large extracts from his correspondence, in two volumes, by the Very Rev. J. Macaulay, Dean of Durham, and Rector of Bishopsgate, with a superb portrait from the picture by Pickersgill in the possession of the Marquis of Lansdowne.”

As you like my verses, I will some day or other write you a whole rhyming letter. I wonder whether any man ever wrote doggrel so easily.

I run it off just as fast as my pen can move, and that is faster by about three words in a minute than any other pen that I know. This comes of a schoolboy habit of writing verses all day long. Shall I tell you the news in rhyme? I think I will send you a regular singsong gazette.

We gained a victory last night as great as e’er was known.

We beat the Opposition upon the Russian loan.

They hoped for a majority, and also for our places.

We won the day by seventy-nine. You should have seen their faces.

Old Croker, when the shout went down our rank, looked blue with rage.

You’d have said he had the cholera in the spasmodic stage.

Dawson was red with ire as if his face was smeared with berries; But of all human visages the worst was that of Herries.

Though not his friend, my tender heart I own could not but feel A little for the misery of poor Sir Robert Peel.

But hang the dirty Tories! and let them starve and pine!

Huzza for the majority of glorious seventy-nine!

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah and Margaret Macaulay.

House of Commons Smoking-Room

July 23, 1832.

My dear Sisters,—I am writing here, at eleven at night, in this filthiest of all filthy atmospheres, and in the vilest of all vile company; with the smell of tobacco in my nostrils, and the ugly, hypocritical face of Lieutenant— before my eyes. There he sits writing opposite to me. To whom, for a ducat? To some secretary of an Hibernian Bible Society; or to some old woman who gives cheap tracts, instead of blankets, to the starving peasantry of Connemara; or to some good Protestant Lord who bullies his Popish tenants. Reject not my letter, though it is redolent of cigars and genuine pigtail; for this is the room—

The room,—but I think I’ll describe it in rhyme, That smells of tobacco and chloride of lime.

The smell of tobacco was always the same; But the chloride was brought since the cholera came.

But I must return to prose, and tell you all that has fallen out since I wrote last. I have been dining with the Listers at Knightsbridge.

They are in a very nice house, next, or almost next, to that which the Wilberforces had. We had quite a family party. There were George Villiers, and Hyde Villiers, and Edward Villiers. Charles was not there. George and Hyde rank very high in my opinion. I liked their behaviour to their sister much. She seems to be the pet of the whole family; and it is natural that she should be so. Their manners are softened by her presence; and any roughness and sharpness which they have in intercourse with men vanishes at once. They seem to love the very ground that she treads on; and she is undoubtedly a charming woman, pretty, clever, lively, and polite.

I was asked yesterday evening to go to Sir John Burke’s, to meet another heroine who was very curious to see me. Whom do you think?

Lady Morgan. I thought, however, that, if I went, I might not improbably figure in her next novel; and, as I am not ambitious of such an honour, I kept away. If I could fall in with her at a great party, where I could see unseen and hear unheard, I should very much like to make observations on her; but I certainly will not, if I can help it, meet her face to face, lion to lioness.

That confounded chattering —, has just got into an argument about the Church with an Irish papist who has seated himself at my elbow; and they keep such a din that I cannot tell what I am writing. There they go. The Lord Lieutenant—the Bishop of Derry-Magee—O’Connell—

your Bible meetings—your Agitation meetings—the propagation of the Gospel—Maynooth College—the Seed of the Woman shall bruise the Serpent’s head. My dear Lieutenant, you will not only bruise, but break, my head with your clatter. Mercy! mercy! However, here I am at the end of my letter, and I shall leave the two demoniacs to tear each other to pieces.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah and Margaret Macaulay.

Library of the H. of C.

July 30, 1832, 11 o’clock at night.

My dear Sisters,—Here I am. Daniel Whittle Harvey is speaking; the House is thin; the subject is dull; and I have stolen away to write to you. Lushington is scribbling at my side. No sound is heard but the scratching of our pens, and the ticking of the clock. We are in a far better atmosphere than in the smoking-room, whence I wrote to you last week; and the company is more decent, inasmuch as that naval officer, whom Nancy blames me for describing in just terms, is not present.

By the bye, you know doubtless the lines which are in the mouth of every member of Parliament, depicting the comparative merits of the two rooms. They are, I think, very happy.

If thou goest into the Smoking-room

Three plagues will thee befall,—

The chloride of lime, the tobacco smoke, And the Captain who’s worst of all,

The canting Sea-captain,

The prating Sea-captain,

The Captain who’s worst of all.

If thou goest into the Library

Three good things will thee befall,—

Very good books, and very good air,

And M*c**l*y, who’s best of all,

The virtuous M*c**l*y,

The prudent M*c**l*y,

M*c**l*y who’s best of all.

Oh, how I am worked! I never see Fanny from Sunday to Sunday. All my civilities wait for that blessed day; and I have so many scores of visits to pay that I can scarcely find time for any of that Sunday reading in which, like Nancy, I am in the habit of indulging.

Yesterday, as soon as I was fixed in my best and had breakfasted, I paid a round of calls to all my friends who had the cholera. Then I walked to all the clubs of which I am a member, to see the newspapers.

The first of these two works you will admit to be a work of mercy; the second, in a political man, one of necessity. Then, like a good brother, I walked under a burning sun to Kensington to ask Fanny how she did, and stayed there two hours. Then I went to Knightsbridge to call on Mrs. Listen and chatted with her till it was time to go and dine at the Athenaeum. Then I dined, and after dinner, like a good young man, I sate and read Bishop Heber’s journal till bedtime. There is a Sunday for you! I think that I excel in the diary lire. I will keep a journal like the Bishop, that my memory may “Smell sweet, and blossom in the dust.”

Next Sunday I am to go to Lord Lansdowne’s at Richmond, so that I hope to have something to tell you. But on second thoughts I will