Lord Murray—John Hunter—Mrs. Stirling—Mrs. Catherine Crowe—Alexander Christie—Professor Pillans—William Smith—R. Mackay Smith—Henry Bowie—Robert Cox—Dr. and Mrs. Hodgson—Samuel Timmins—George Dawson—Mr. and Mrs. Follett Osler—Arthur Ryland—Francis Clark—Mathew Davenport Hill—Rowland Hill—John Adamson—Henry Barry Peacock—Beddoes Peacock—Robert Ferguson—Westland Marston—Robert Charles Leslie—Clarkson Stanfield—Sydney Dobell—Henry Chorley—Mrs. Newton Crosland—Miss Mulock—John Rolt—John Varley—William Etty—Leslie—William Havell.
During the twenty-one years that I (C. C. C.) lectured in London and
the provinces scarcely any place surpassed Edinburgh in the warmth and cordiality with which I
was not only received in the lecture-room, but welcomed into private homes by kindly hospitable
men and women. The two men just named; Lord Murray; John Hunter of Craig Cook (the “friend of Leigh Hunt’s verse,” to whom was inscribed his lovely
verse-story of “Godiva”);
John Hunter’s talented sister, Mrs.
Stirling (authoress of two gracefully moral novels, “Fanny Hervey” and “Sedgely Court”); Mrs.
Catherine Crowe (one of the earliest and perhaps most forcible of the
sensational school of romancists); Alexander Christie
(whose fine painting of “Othello’s Despair” was
presented, while
| GEORGE DAWSON—FRANCIS CLARK. | 99 |
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In Borneo’s isle, where lives the strange ape, The ourang-outang almost human in shape. |
At Newcastle I met with the scholarly John
Adamson, author of “Lusitania Illustrata;” and on my way thither I encountered a being of whom I
cannot do other now than linger a few moments to speak. My most amiable and earliest northern
friend, Henry Barry Peacock, of Manchester, hearing that
I was engaged at Newcastle-on-Tyne, recommended me to pause on my journey thither at
Darlington, where he would introduce me to his cousin, Beddoes
Peacock, the medical professor of the district. This was one of the most
interesting events of my social intercourse in life. In the first instance, I was introduced to
a pale, bland, most cheerful-looking, and somewhat young man, lying out upon a sofa, from which
he did not rise to greet me. His manner and tone of reception were so graceful, and so
remarkable was the expression of an un-commonplace pair of eyes, that I felt suddenly released
from the natural suspension of an immediate familiarity. He first of all explained the cause of
his not rising to receive me. It was, that he could only move the upper part of his frame. His
coachman and “total-help” lifted him from sofa to
| DR. PEACOCK | 101 |
| 102 | RECOLLECTIONS OF WRITERS |
|
Full many a year, to ease the baleful stound
Of blows by Fortune given, in mood unkind,
No greater balm or solace could I find
Than wand’ring o’er the sweet oblivious ground
Where Poets dwell. The gardens perfumed round
Of modern Bards first kept me long in thrall:
On Shakespeare’s breezy
heights at length I found
Freshness eterne—trees, flowers that never pall,
Nor farther wish’d to search. A friendly voice
Whisper’d, “Still onward! much remains unsung;
Old England’s youthful days shall thee rejoice,
When her strong-hearted Muse first found a tongue:
’Mongst Chaucer’s
groves that pathless seem and dark
Wealth is in store for thee.”—God bless you, Clarke!
4th June, 1846. Beddoes Peacock.
|
When I was at Carlisle nothing could exceed the frank hospitality of Robert Ferguson, then Mayor of that ancient city and fine border town; and he subsequently gratified me by a presentation copy of each of his valuable and interesting books—“The Shadow of the Pyramid,” “The Pipe of Repose,” “Swiss Men and Swiss Mountains,” and “The Northmen of Cumberland and Westmoreland.”
If it were only for the sterling sound-headed and sound-hearted people with whom my lecture career brought me into delightful connexion, I should always look back upon that portion of my life with a sense of gratification and gratitude.
| JOHN ROLT. | 103 |
We were never able to indulge much in what is called “Society,” or
to go to many parties; but at the few to which we were able to accept invitations, we met more
than one person whom it was pleasure and privilege to have seen. Westland Marston, Robert Charles Leslie,
Clarkson Stanfield, Sydney Dobell, Henry Chorley, Mrs. Newton Crosland (with whom our acquaintance then formed
has since ripened into highly-valued letter friendship), and Miss
Mulock, we found ourselves in company with; while at John Rolt’s dinners we encountered some of the first men in his
profession. It had been our joy to watch the rapid rise of this most interesting and most
intellectual man, from his youthful commencement as a barrister, through his promotion as
Queen’s Counsel, his honours as Solicitor-General Attorney-General, Judge, Sir
John Rolt; and always to know him the same kindly, cordial, warm-hearted friend,
and simple-mannered, true gentleman, from first to last. Whether, as the young rising
barrister, with his modest suburban home,—where we have many times supped with him, and
been from thence accompanied by him on our way home in the small hours after midnight, lured
into lengthened sittings by his enchanting conversation and taste for literary
subjects,—or whether seated at the head of his brilliant dinner circle at his town-house
in Harley Street,—or when he was master of Ozleworth Park, possessed of all the wealth
and dignity that his own sole individual exertions had won for
him,—Rolt was an impersonation of all that is noble and
admirable in English manhood. With a singularly handsome face, eyes that were at once
penetrating and sweet, and a mouth that for chiselled beauty of shape was worthy of belonging
to one of the sculptured heads of Grecian
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The mention of two great artist names reminds us of the exceptional pleasure we
have had from what intercourse we have enjoyed with celebrated artists. While one of us was
still in her childhood, John Varley was known to her
father and mother; and one or two of his choicest water-colour pictures are still in careful
preservation with us. There is one little piece—a view of Cader Idris—on a small
square of drawing-paper, that might easily be covered by the spread palms of two hands, which
is so exquisite in subdued colouring and effect of light on a mountain-side, that William Etty used to say of it that it made him wish he had
been a water-colour painter instead of a painter in oils. Once, when John
Varley came to see his friend Vincent
Novello, he told of a circumstance that had happened which excited the strongest
sympathy and bitterest wrath in the hearers. It appeared that a new maid-servant had taken for
kindling her fires a whole drawer-full of his water-colour sketches, fancying they were
waste-paper! He was very eccentric; and at one time had a whim for astrology, believing himself
to be an adept in casting nativities. He inquired the date of birth, &c, of Vincent Novello’s eldest child; and after making several
abstruse calculations of “born under this star,” and when that planet was “in
conjunction with t’other,” &c., he assured Mrs.
| WILLIAM HAVELL—WILLIAM ETTY. | 105 |
Another charming water-colour artist known to the Novellos was William Havell; one of whose woody landscapes is still in treasured existence, as well as a sketch he took of M. C. C. in Dame Quickly’s costume. Holland, too, the landscape painter, was pleasantly known to me (C. C. C.); and on one occasion, when I met him at the house of a mutual friend, he showed me an exquisite collection of remarkable sunsets that he had sketched from time to time as studies for future use and introduction into pictures.
At one time we knew William Etty well. It
was soon after his return from Italy, where he went to study; and we recollect a certain
afternoon, when we called upon him in his studio at his chambers in one of the streets leading
off from the Strand down to the Thames, and found him at his easel, whereon stood the picture
he was then engaged upon, “The Bevy of Fair Women,” from
Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” We remember the rich reflection of
colour from the garland of orange lilies round the waist of one fair creature thrown upon the
white creamy skin, of the figure next to her, and Etty’s pleasure
when we rapturized over the effect produced. He was a worshipper of colour effects, and we
recollect the enthusiasm with which he noticed the harmony of blended tints produced by a
certain goldy-brown silk dress and a canary-coloured crape kerchief worn by one of his
visitors, as she stood talking to him. It was on that same afternoon that he made us laugh by
telling us of an order he had to paint a picture for some society, or board, or
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Of Leslie we entertain the liveliest recollection on an evening when we met him at a party and he fell into conversation about Shakespeare’s women as suited for painting, and asked us to give him a Shakespearian subject for his next picture. We suggested the meeting between Viola and Olivia, with Maria standing by; seeing in imagination the charming way in which Leslie would have given the just-withdrawn veil from Olivia’s half-disdainful, half-melting, wholly beautiful face, Viola’s womanly loveliness in her page’s attire, and Maria’s mischievous roguery of look as she watches them both.
Clarkson Stanfield lives vividly in our memory, as we last saw him, when we were in England in 1862, in his pretty garden-surrounded house at Hampstead. He showed us a portfolio of gorgeous sketches made during a tour in Italy, two of which remain especially impressed upon our mind. One was a bit taken on Mount Vesuvius about daybreak, with volumes of volcanic smoke rolling from the near crater, touched by the beams of the rising sun; the other was a view of Esa, a picturesque sea-side village perched on the summit of a little rocky hill, bosomed among the olive-clad crags and cliffs of the Cornice road between Nice and Turbia.
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