A writer in the Quarterly Review has called Sir James the “most accomplished and the most ill-used man of the Whig party.” He was all that. Not one of them could come near him in accomplishment, or in political knowledge, or in political wisdom. The Recordership of Bombay was but poor promotion; and afterwards, though with all the patronage of the State in their hands for years, he never obtained from the Whigs any higher, or indeed any other, employment. It is difficult to conceive how he could have been worse used. They might easily have made some proper provision for him on their advent to power in 1830, and they could have done so almost any day between this period and that of his decease. Was it that Mackintosh was but half a Whig, or, if a whole Whig, then the most measured, most moderate of them all? Many years before the Reform Bill agitation, Mackintosh had come to the conviction, and had openly proclaimed it, that the parliamentary franchise might be too much extended—that a mob could never govern a mob.
I first met Sir James at Mr. Henry Brougham’s, in the spring, or rather the
early summer, of 1829. I saw him rather frequently between that time and the beginning of
1833, when I went down to Scotland, and I would now gratefully bear testimony to his
engaging simplicity of manners, his goodness of heart, his exceeding great kindness to
young men of
| 110 | SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH | [CHAP. XI |
In all his latter years Sir James was in straitened circumstances, and frequently in pecuniary difficulties; beset by creditors in a way that to any man of feeling, or to any man who had a respect for virtue and genius, it was quite painful to witness or to hear of. He might have obtained a great deal more money from the booksellers; but though he was so fluent and quick in talk, I believe he was rather slow with the pen; and then his attention was distracted and so much of his time occupied by politics, by society, of which he was always fond, by the London University, and by other concerns and concernments, that he could have had but a limited leisure for literature.
He was always exceedingly gentle, patient, and polite with his duns; and
had, though in a rather different manner, some successes in this way that Sheridan himself might have envied; but he did not like to
see them come to his private house in Portland Place, and he used to make appointments with
them at a Life Insurance Office, of which he was an actuary, and from which he received an
inconsiderable annual stipend. It was not always when they called that he had the money to
satisfy them; and I was told that in these cases he would slip out at a back door, as they
were about to charge in at the front. I will not answer for this, but I well remember a
mot of Lord
Alvanley’s: “Every gentleman in money difficulties ought to
live in St. James’s
| CHAP. XI] | MRS. JAMESON AND CRAIK | 111 |
I liked Mrs. Jameson, and have
always considered her one of the best of our living authoresses. She generally writes upon
subjects she well understands, and her various books about art and artists are likely to
last. But Mrs. Jameson, though very fond of admiration, had never much
personal beauty. At a soirée, she went and sat near my friend
George Lillie Craik, who was turning over a
portfolio of drawings and engravings. Except in one particular, I should not rank
Craik among my absent-minded friends. He was distrait only in omnibuses, and in finding his way. He
could seldom get from his cottage at Old Brompton to ours at Friern Barnet without
committing some blunder or other. Generally, at our dinner hour, he would find himself at
Tottenham, or Edmonton, or Enfield, or Ponder’s End, or some other place five or six
miles off, and with no cross-country conveyance. He had to change buses at the Angel at
Islington; he usually got into the wrong one, fell a-thinking or talking, and took no
notice of the road he was travelling. But in all other matters, Craik,
for a Lowland Scotsman, was a smart, brisk, ready-witted fellow. He must have seen
Mrs. Jameson scores of times, and must have known her freckled
complexion, and the ardent colour of her hair. They came upon a portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots. Mrs. Jameson
waxed eloquent on the beauty of the poor Queen. “I believe,” said
Craik, in his. quiet way, “it is now
| 112 | MRS. JAMESON | [CHAP. XI |
When this authoress wrote her dismal book about Italy, entitled, “Diary of an Ennuyée,” she was a spinster, living as governess with an English family at Rome, and she was quite desperately in love with Beau Cradock, Lord Howden; who, at that time, was as handsome as the Antinous, and as graceful as the Belvedere Apollo. Poor Cradock, who was never much of a coxcomb, admired her for her vivacity, talent, and eloquence; but he could hardly go farther, and so the demoiselle was sadder than Corinne.
Jameson, who became her husband years after this hopeless amour, had been a schoolfellow with poor dear Hartley Coleridge, who always spoke of him as a good fellow, and as a man of real original genius, who might have done a good deal in literature if he had tried. The common rule, that a very clever husband and a very clever wife seldom agree or live happily together, found no exception in this case. He obtained some Government appointment out in Canada; she remained at home, to write books, and to take care of her old father, a miniature painter by profession, whose sight had failed him. And nobly did she discharge her filial duty, and hard did she work that her father might know no want and miss no comfort. For this, even if her books should be forgotten, let her name be honoured, and let her be enshrined with Southey and other heroes in domestic life.
I think it was about the year 1840 that I was told she had gone out to
Canada, to be reconciled to her
| CHAP. XI] | THE MISSES PORTER | 113 |
I liked these two sisters exceedingly, although they were authoresses. I made the acquaintance of their brother, Sir Robert Ker Porter, the traveller, artist, diplomatist, and author, in 1829, at a house in Bolton Row, and was much pleased with him and some lively accounts he gave of society in Russia. The sisters I did not meet until 1830 or 1831, when they were staying with my friend William Mackinnon, M.P., at Hyde Park Place, just opposite Cumberland Gate. They were quiet, perfectly unaffected, rather retiring, very ladylike elderly ladies, neat and plain in their attire, and taking no pains to conceal the snow which Time was throwing on their hair. Jane, the elder sister, had still a good figure, was tall, and must have been rather handsome; Anna Maria was shorter and fairer. I should think she could never have had any pretension to personal beauty, but the expression of her countenance was gentleness and sweetness itself.
There was nothing blue, nothing of the précieuse, or professional authoress, about either of them, and I have seen them sensitively shrink at any allusion to their works, and almost run out of the room from an explosion of compliment and praise. One night, at rather a numerous party at my brother Highlander’s, I saw their sensitiveness put to a severe test by old Sotheby the poet and translator, commonly called “Old Botherby.”
Mackinnon had introduced him to the sisters.
Addressing Anna Maria, who looked the elder of the
two, he said in his peculiarly unctuous manner:
| 114 | JANE AND ANNA PORTER | [CHAP. XI |
Miss Jane reddened, and could say nothing; but when Sotheby went off at a tangent to explode to some other literary lion or lioness, she whispered, “How absurd! How can that old gentleman expect one to be flattered by such outrageous compliments, or expect that one can bear such things said to one’s face?”
Old Botherby was soon back to our corner of the drawing-room. I fancy he had been collecting information, for he told Anna Maria that she had written “The Hungarian Brothers,” and that that romance was, in its way, as admirable, as unrivalled, as perfect, as “The Scottish Chiefs.” The poor little authoress winced, and when old Sotheby was again gone, she said she had rather never go into society at all than be frequently exposed to such assaults.
The last years of Miss Porter were saddened by domestic losses. Shortly before I met her she had lost her aged mother, and within a twelvemonth of that time poor Anna Maria died. In 1842 Miss Porter accompanied her brother to St. Petersburg, and he was suddenly carried off by apoplexy as they were on the point of returning to England.
Jane survived until 1850, when she ended her days at
Bristol, at the good old age of seventy-four. I did not see her after 1833, but I was told,
and can well believe it, that she was patient, amiable, and even cheerful to the last, and
that her intellect was in no way affected by age. It was a remarkable and
| CHAP. XI] | THE MISSES PORTER | 115 |
Though not so old as was Botherby, when he paid his compliments, I should not like again to peruse the whole of either “The Scottish Chiefs” or “The Hungarian Brothers”; but I still remember the exquisite delight with which I read these works and other romances by the same writers, in the days of my boyhood, and I still think them pleasant and even improving reading for young people.
In this generation, young men, and young women too, appear to be getting rather too fond of realities, and much too indifferent to romance and sentiment. Too much romance is bad. Granted; but so is too much stern reality or worldly calculation. The hearts and intellects of young people will not be much elevated or improved by constant delineations of the weaknesses, absurdities, follies, and crimes of everyday life. We ought, at least now and then, to give them more generous, more glowing, more ideal pictures; and set up the heroes and heroines of our tales on the pedestal of romance, in a purer atmosphere. The danger now is, not that our sons and daughters will become too romantic, but that they will become too worldly, material, and selfish, and too apt to take mere Cockney or provincial slang for wit and humour. With only a few modifications, and one or two additional acquirements, another Jane and another Anna Maria Porter would not be misplaced in England, in the year 1856.
Jane, as we have seen, ended her days at Bristol;
Anna Maria died in the neighbourhood of that
city, at Montpelier, the residence of Mrs. Colonel
Booth. Mother and daughters had resided at Thames Ditton;
| 116 | JANE AND ANNA PORTER | [CHAP. XI |
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