On the fly-leaf of a copy of his lordship’s wild poem “Eccelino da Romano,” I have written:
“I have preserved this wild book out of regard for the memory of its author. Poor Lord Dillon! His eccentricities bordered on insanity, but he was kind to me, in my youth, and in a foreign land, where, as yet, I had all my friends to make.”
I first knew him at Florence, when that fair city, rather full of English, was ringing with stories of his eccentricities, and with the fame of his daughter’s beauty. He was frank, fearless, very capricious; but, as I believed, a generous, warm-hearted man. The worst of his eccentricities was a total disbelief in Christianity, or in any revealed religion—a sort of jumbling mad-reasoning materialism. And with him materialism was a very different and a much more withering and repulsive thing than it was with poor Shelley.
There was an epigram in circulation in the English part of society in Florence; I know not who wrote it, nor am I quite sure that I retain the lines correctly, but they were something like these:
“Dillon, go home! Consult thy
daughter’s looks, Peruse them well, and burn thy atheist books. Read in those angel eyes and heavenly face That there’s a God—then supplicate His grace.” |
Florence was almost raving about the beautiful Miss Dillon. Travelling much abroad, out of the way of English newspapers,
and never being much
| CHAP. XIII] | LADY STANLEY | 127 |
But, being violently a philo-Turk, the young diplomatist was no friend to me or to my books about Turkey. Perhaps here I ought to have used the past tense, as before he had been a month at Constantinople he agreed that all I had said about that pandemonium was strictly true, and as he has now been living more than three years in the Levant, he must have greatly modified his philo-Turkism. I should always have towards him a warm corner of the heart on account of his maternal grandfather and the heavenly face of his mother, whom I have never seen since her Florentine days; or, if I have seen her, I have done so without recognizing her. How often does this happen! One passes in the streets, or in some crowded place of resort, a person in whom one was so deeply interested some thirty or forty years ago; one may stand side by side with such a person, in a state of the most perfect indifference, not knowing her or him—as the case may be—and not having the least consciousness of the presence of such a person. Then, in England, if one had, what could one say or do? After such a deluge of years, at least two or three reintroductions would be requisite.
Her ladyship’s mother appeared
to be a quiet, amiable, domestic woman; but I was told that she had, mixed with good common
sense, a fair share of wit. One of the many subjects with which Lord Dillon, who would not take the Scriptural version, delighted
| 128 | VISCOUNT DILLON | [CHAP. XIII |
I knew, by sight, this rhyming, playgoing, comedy-writing, philandering baronet, in the years 1813 and 1814. I used to see him at the theatres, in the Park, or lounging in Bond Street. I was a boy at the time, and much addicted to rhyming and playgoing myself. He was first pointed out to my notice as a literary and dramatic celebrity, and as a London lion, by a lady who wrote occasional verses, and who had once written a tragedy, which, in the parlance of John Wilson the poet, had been “particularly d——d.” His fame was now on the decline, for Scott, Moore, Byron, and others were in the field; but a few years before, and from about 1790 to 1809, the Baronet had been considered a star of the first magnitude.
Dear me! How easy it was for a man to get into reputation as an author in those days, especially if he had a bit of a handle to his name, an entrée in Society, a fashionable friend or two, and money to carry on the war for a while! My authoress still called him “the celebrated Skeffington.” He had begun by acting in private theatricals, and by inditing
“Songs and sonnets and rustical madrigals. Made out of nothing and whistled on reeds.” |
But these things had been declared to be charming, musical, exquisite; and
the bard had worn laurels
| CHAP. XIII] | SKEFFINGTON’S PLAYS | 129 |
He left us to go behind the scenes and into the Green Room, where he had
an appointment of importance; and we went into Lady
Holland’s private box, graciously lent to me by her ladyship for that
evening. I expressed my astonishment at the apparition I had seen in the lobby.
“Oh!” said H., “old Skeff is much as he was fifteen years ago, except
that he stoops a little more, and wears a wig
| 130 | SIR LUMLEY SKEFFINGTON | [CHAP. XIII |
Next to the actors and actresses, he was making himself the most conspicuous person in the house. Before long he was up in our box, and making downright love to Miss ——, who had great difficulty in preventing herself from laughing in his face, as he was so outré, and she could not help thinking of the horse-hair wig. He then rattled on, like one who has lived la vie des coulisses, about this actress and that, and this Green-Room quarrel and that other, and how Mrs. —— became too soon jealous of Miss ——, and thwarted her in her parts, and how Sir T. stood by Mrs. ——, and how Lord —— took the part of Miss ——, and got the parties reconciled in the presence of the stage-manager and half a dozen of the proprietors. He seemed to know all the traditions of the Green Room, and all its tattle and bickerings for the last half-century. This was not unamusing, but it did not bear thinking of afterwards.
To be so old, and yet so trivial! To have lived so long in the world, and
to have one’s head stuffed full of nothing but this, and “tags” of
play-speeches and rhymes! To be so bent, shrunk, and withered, and yet never to think of
death! Was there no honest rector, no zealous curate, no thoughtful friend, to tell him
that he had an immortal soul, however little he might think of it, and to say to him,
“Go to your prayers, old man!” Yet the Baronet lived a
| CHAP. XIII] | SATIRIZED BY BYRON | 131 |
I met him one morning at old Andrews’ library in Bond Street; another day I met him walking towards one of the theatres with Liston the comedian, and the last time I saw him was about the time of Her Majesty’s marriage with Prince Albert. At this period he was bent almost double, but the horsehair wig was on his head and the rouge on his cheeks, and he was as frivolous as ever. The exoterics had been accustomed to call him a dandy. A great mistake! for his style and manners were reprobated by Brummell, Mildmay, and all the set, who pronounced old Skeff to be a quizzical guy. For the last forty years of his life he was quite unfashionable, and pretty well confined to the society of actors and actresses, and of a few young men of fashion, like my friend H., who had a mania for the stage and for private theatricals.
Old Skeff, who would dangle about fifty women at a
time, was not the man to marry, and in him the baronetcy became extinct. He was thought of
sufficient consequence to be satirized by Byron in
“English and Scotch
Reviewers,” by Tommy Moore in his
“Twopenny Post-bag,” and
by the Smiths in their “Rejected Addresses.” Though often in debt, he
had never known the pangs or the actual pressure of poverty, and the last twenty years of
his life he is said to have had a free income of from £600 to £800 a year. I have seen it
stated that he was the author of that rich piece of burlesque, “Bombastes
| 132 | SIR LUMLEY SKEFFINGTON | [CHAP. XIII |
I think I have hinted that my acquaintance, fat old Andrews the bookseller, circulating library keeper, and opera-box letter, of Bond Street, was a bon vivant. He was a dreadful gourmand.
On the day when he was dying, and would not believe it, he ordered some fresh cod for his dinner. A servant took the dish to his bedside; he eyed it, missed the savoury bits, exclaimed in an excited manner “Where’s the sounds?” dropped his head on the pillow, and so died.
I have known in my time a good many very absent-minded men, but never one
that came near to this wit, poet, and diplomat manqué. I knew him at Malta in 1827, and
received much kindness from him. He would dine at the same table and have long talks with
you to-day, and would not know you if you met him in the streets to-morrow. If he called
you by your right name in the morning, he would be pretty sure to call you by a wrong one
in the afternoon or evening. Worse still, he would invite you to dinner, forget all about
it, and have dined, or be dining, when you got to his house at La
Pietà. If anything were told to him that was on no account to be repeated, he was
almost sure to tell it to the first friend or acquaintance he met. His scholarship, his
wit, his poetry, and perhaps most of all his school fellowship with George Canning, got him into diplomacy; the profession for
which, of all others, he was
| CHAP. XIII] | SIR JOHN MOORE | 133 |
He ought to have been a country parson with a good fat living, or the Dean of a Cathedral, though I fear that even in such a post he must have committed himself through his propensity to let his head go a-wool-gathering. The history of his embassy to Madrid, and his conduct there in 1808-09, which completely deceived Sir John Moore, and led to the disastrous retreat to Corunna, cannot be forgotten nor recalled without pain, nor without regret that he should have been diplomatically employed in such a country. In Spain, he was disqualified not only by his absent-mindedness, but by a blind uncalculating enthusiasm for the Spaniards—a malady which his friend Southey shared with him. He was very fond of Spanish literature, particularly its poetry. He had gained great reputation as a youth by a spirited translation of the “Cid”; he took the Spaniards to be as heroical as in the days of the Campeador, and he appears to have taken every Spanish Don or General for a real Cid.
He kept dreaming on, on the banks of the Manzanares, while the English
army, abandoned by his Spanish heroes, was getting into terrible difficulties; and he did
not awake until Moore was killed, and his army
re-embarked for Portugal. It was Frere who, by his
mistaken representations and earnest entreaties, induced our Government to order
Sir John’s advance upon Madrid. This was a responsibility
from which the diplomatist could never be cleared. It was a mistake, a blunder; but
Frere would remain less inexcusable if, after our retreat, he had
not, to cover himself, accused Moore, as brave a soldier as ever drew
sword, of something very like cowardice, as well as of indecision and want of military
ability. This last was a black spot on Frere’s scutcheon, but I
believe the only one that was ever there. When the Duke
took command of our forces in the Penin-
| 134 | JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE | [CHAP. XIII |
Government sent the Duke’s own brother, the Marquis Wellesley; and Frere retired on a comfortable ambassadorial pension, and the honours of a “Right Honourable.” He was never employed again, either diplomatically or otherwise, and never wished to be so. He fell back upon his books, and upon his rhymes, pleasant fancies, jests, and drolleries; and there he had few rivals. Not long after the peace he married the Dowager Countess of Errol, who had a comfortable jointure. Her ladyship soon began to suffer from asthma. After trying many places, she fancied that what suited her best was the island of Malta; and there they fixed themselves, remained many years without once quitting it, and there they both died and lie interred. Numerous were their deeds of charity; and great, and to some extent lasting, was the good done at Malta by Lady Errol and her poet. Her ladyship, in conjunction at first with the Marchioness of Hastings and her daughters, and then with Lady Emily Ponsonby, got together money enough to form a place of retreat for many aged and infirm Maltese, and to establish an industrial school, where children of both sexes were educated and brought up to be useful and gain their own honest livelihood. Lady Errol was the greatest benefactress of these institutions, for she gave to them not only her money but a great deal of her time and attention.
That pest of revolting mendicity and street begging, which had so troubled
all strangers, had begun almost to disappear, when those who founded the almshouses and the
school were recalled to England or removed by death, and when our reforming Whig ministry
persisted in sending out reforming governors and systematizing commissioners, who chilled,
| CHAP. XIII] | HIS LIFE IN MALTA | 135 |
In 1847-48, I thought I saw more beggars in Valetta than I had ever seen there before. One of the most active of Lady Errol’s helpers was poor Lady Flora Hastings, second daughter to the Marquis, who died in his government and was buried in Malta in the year 1826. There were some Maltese not destitute of gratitude, for in 1827 I found, nearly every morning, the grave strewed with fresh flowers.
The Marquis was succeeded by General Sir Frederic Ponsonby, one of the most distinguished of our Waterloo heroes, who remained until 1830, when Ministers, who wanted his place for a Whig, recalled him. With these two Governors the poet and his lady were in the closest intimacy and confidence; and they, as well as the whole island, had a happy time while this régime lasted, and while as yet our reformers had not turned the heads and alienated the affections of the Maltese people by giving them liberty of the Press, the right of choosing their magistrates and judges, and by making other concessions which never should have been made to such a people, placed in such circumstances.
Rose thought that now Frere must be driven home to England—an event which he heartily desired—and that with his strong Toryism he would never be able to stand these new Governors, these Commissioners, and all that Whig and Radical inundation which set in as soon as Earl Grey got to the helm and had command of the sluice-gates.
But Lady Errol fancied she could not
live elsewhere, and the poet took to thinking of something else; not, as I fancy, that he
had ever bestowed very much thought upon politics since quitting diplomacy and his country.
Year after year I continued to receive by letter, or to hear, some account or other of his
eccentricity, absent-mindedness, and
| 136 | JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE | [CHAP. XIII |
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