Mr. Patmore opens a notice of Charles Lamb with these words:—“My first introduction to Charles Lamb took place accidentally at the lodgings of William Hazlitt, in Down Street, Piccadilly, in 1824.”

Mr. Hazlitt’s first London abode was, as we know, 19, York Street, Westminster. He remained there from 1812 to about 1819. In the autumn of 1820 he removed to 9, Southampton Buildings; and now, in 1824, we find him migrated to the more fashionable locality of Piccadilly. His changes of residence after the abandonment of York Street were tolerably frequent, though not more so than Lamb’s.

Wherever he was, there was sure to be no cessation of work. He was a most unpretermitting and indefatigable toiler. Mr. Patmore seems to have imagined that a couple of hours a day during a couple of days in each week was the extent of his subservience to pen-and-ink drudgery; but this writer is too fond of generalizing from particulars, and has in consequence over-

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WORK FOR 1824.

drawn and overcoloured what might have been a very life-like picture.

There was a second edition of ‘Table Talk’ in 1824; and Taylor and Hessey made terms with him for his ‘Sketches of the Picture Galleries,’ which formed a small volume of themselves, with the addition of a criticism on Hogarth’s ‘Marriage-a-la-Mode.’ He gave an ‘Essay on the Fine Arts’ to the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica’ this year; and in the July number of the ‘Edinburgh Review’ he had a paper on Shelley’s ‘Posthumous Poems,’ which served to rekindle the indignation of Mr. Leigh Hunt. I have dwelt upon this subject in what appeared on the whole a more convenient place.

My grandfather had met accidentally in a stagecoach, in the course of his numerous excursions, a widow lady of the name of Bridgewater. She had gone out, as a girl, to a relation in Grenada, and was not many weeks in that place before she attracted the notice of Lieutenant-Colonel Bridgewater. They were married; but very shortly afterwards the colonel died, and his widow returned to Scotland, her native country.

“One of my earliest recollections,” a gentleman writes to me, “when I was just at the age when one feels the full force of female loveliness, was a day passed in Miss Isabella ——s charming presence, at my uncle’s in Scotland, when she was about nineteen, and on her way to some relation in the island of Grenada. I believe she was of a very good family. . . . . It is so long ago that I do not remember her maiden name;

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but she was connected somehow with an aunt of mine ——”

This is the most obscure period in my grandfather’s whole history. All I know is that Mrs. Bridgewater became Mrs. Hazlitt; that they were married in the first half of 1824; and that, his new wife being a person of some property,* Mr. Hazlitt proposed to go with her on a tour through France and Italy, thus accomplishing what he had projected so far back as 1822, or even perhaps before Mr. Perry’s† death in the previous year.

At the end of August, 1824, Mr. Hazlitt and his wife‡

* Mr. H. told Mr. Collier that she was worth £300 a year. † Proprietor of the Morning Chronicle. Mr. H., as appears by my grandmother’s diary, told her in 1822 that the journey had been planned, and he was afraid that he should lose the “job to Italy” through the delay in the proceedings at Edinburgh. ‡ My father joined them afterwards; he was at this time at school at the Rev. William Evans’s, Park Wood, Tavistock. I have before me a letter from his mother to him, dated the 25th Sept., 1824. He was intrusted to the charge of Mr. John Hunt, with whom he went over to the Continent, but at what precise time he became one of the party, or where, I have no information. He was with them at Venice, however, and has not yet forgotten the silk curtains which hung in the rooms at Daniell’s Hotel. I have also a letter before me, which his grandmother addressed to him in July, while at Park Wood; it is the only specimen of her hand and composition I know; and I shall, for one or two reasons, subjoin it entire:— “Alphington, July 21, 1824. “My birthday, aged 78. “My dear William* “We were all very glad to hear from you that you were well and happy; and also that your Father and Mrs. Hazlitt† * My father. † My grandfather and his second wife.

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STARTING FOR THE CONTINENT.

left London by the coach, and proceeded to Brighton, and from Brighton they took the boat to Dieppe. He

were comfortable together. I wish your cousin Will* had a Father and Mother to take care of him, for she has left him at lodgings to take care of himself, and what they are about I cannot guess, for they have not written a line for some time to him or me, nor has Mary† written to Harriet‡ or Will, from Plymouth, where her visit must be nearly ended. Your Aunt met Mrs. Upham in Exeter, and she took her arm and inquired how I was. He made a bow, but spoke not, He remains very fond of the Child,§ which is very fortunate, and indeed every one must who has a feeling heart, for he is a most beautifull and engaging Child. “We are all expecting you in a fortnight, and think it better to keep at one good school than changing. You will hear from your mama before you return, I suppose; I don’t think she will write to us from where she is. We expect to be travelling to Crediton this day seven weeks, where we shall be glad to see you at C.mass. You see I cannot write straight, and I am tired, so you will excuse my writing more. Tour Aunt and Miss E.‖ join me in kind love to you, your Father, and Mrs. Hazlitt. “Tell Father to write to me by you, and now and then besides, and before he goes abroad; I don’t like his going; so many die there; such stagnant waters surrounding the towns, and all over the country. We are reading Mrs. Piozzi’s travels in Italy. “I remain, “My dear Child, “Your affecttionate Grandmother, “Grace Hazlitt.” * The only son of John Hazlitt. † Mary, second daughter of the same. † Harriet Hazlitt, eldest daughter of John Hazlitt. § Mrs. Upham’s (Harriett Hazlitt’s) son James, by her first husband, Captain Stewart. ‖ Miss Emmett, sister of Robert Emmett.

DIEPPE—ROUEN.

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had a good passage in the steam-packet: it was on the 1st of September that he crossed. He shall speak for himself:—

“The distance from Dieppe to Rouen is thirty-six

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ROUEN NOTES.

miles, and we only paid eight francs, that is, six shillings and eightpence a-piece, with two francs more to the guide and postilion, which is not fourpence a mile, including all expenses. . . . . We arrived [at Rouen*] rather late, but were well received and accommodated at the Hôtel Vatel. My bad French by no means, however, conciliates the regard or increases the civility of the people on the road. . . . .

“At Rouen the walls of our apartment were bare, being mere lath-and-plaster, a huge cobweb hung in the window, the curtains were shabby and dirty, and the floor without carpeting or matting; but our table was well furnished, and in the English taste. . . . . We had a dinner at the Hôtel Vatel, a roast fowl, greens, and bacon, as plain, as sweet, and wholesome as we could get at an English farm-house. We had also pigeons, partridges, and other game, in excellent preservation, and kept quite clear of French receipts and odious ragouts A Mr. James Williams acted as our English interpreter while we stayed, and procured us places in the Paris Diligence, though it was said to be quite full. We have also heard that the packet we

* I have adopted the plan of introducing Mr. Hazlitt’s own narrative of his journey as far as I can. It is well known that he printed the account from time to time in the Morning Chronicle, and that it was afterwards published in a volume under the title of ‘Notes of a Journey through France and Italy.’ By W. Hazlitt, 1826, 8vo. I confine my extracts to what is purely personal and autobiographical; but not a line is omitted which has the slightest bearing on the subject which I have in view. All the remainder of the book is more or less an excursion.

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came over in blew up two days after, and that the passengers escaped in fishing-boats. . . . .

“Within half a mile of Louviers (which is seven leagues from Rouen) a Diligence passed me on the road at the full speed of a French Diligence, rolling and rumbling on its way over a paved road, with five clumsy-looking horses, and loaded to the top like a Plymouth van. I was to stop at Louviers, at the Hôtel de Mouton, and to proceed to Paris by the coach the next day, for I was told that there was no convenience onwards that day, and I own that this apparition of a Diligence in full sail, and in broad day (when I had understood that there were none but night coaches), surprised me. I was going to set it down in ‘my tables’ that there is no faith to be placed in what they say at French inns. I quickened my pace in hopes of overtaking it, while it

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EVREUX.

changed horses. The main street of Louviers appeared to me very long and uneven.

“At Evreux, I found I had gone quite out of my road, and that there was no conveyance to Paris till the same hour the next night I bespoke a bed, and was shown into the common room, where I took coffee, and had what the Scotch call a brandered fowl for supper. The room was papered with marine landscapes, so that you seemed sitting in the open air, with boats and trees and the sea-shore all around you, and Telemachus and Calypso, figures landing or embarking on

MISSING THE WAY.

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halcyon seas. . . . . I tired everybody out by inquiring my best mode of getting on to Paris next day: and being slow to believe that my only way was to go back to Louviers, like a fool as I had come, a young Frenchman took compassion on my embarrassment, and offered to be my interpreter, ‘as he spoke both languages.’ He said, ‘I must feel great pain in not being able to express myself.’ I said, ‘None, but in giving others the trouble to understand me.’ He shook his head, I spoke much too fast for him; he apologised for not being able to follow me, from want of habit, though he said, ‘he belonged to a society of twelve at Paris, where they spoke English every evening generally.’ I said, ‘we were well-matched,’ and when this was explained to him, he repeated the word matched with a ludicrous air of distress, at finding there was an English phrase which was not familiarised to him ‘in the society of twelve, where they spoke the English language generally every evening.’

“I returned to Louviers the next morning under the safe conduct of my former guide, where I arrived half-an-hour before the necessary time, found myself regularly booked for Paris, with five francs paid on account; and after a very comfortable breakfast. . . . . I took my place in the fourth place of the Diligence. Here I met with everything to annoy an Englishman. There

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AT PARIS—THE LOUVRE

was a Frenchman in the coach who had a dog and a little boy with him, the last having a doll in his hands, which he insisted on playing with; or cried and screamed furiously if it was taken from him. . . . . In the coach, coming along, a Frenchman was curious to learn of a Scotch gentleman, who spoke very respectable French, whether Lord Byron was much regretted in England?

“On presenting myself, I inquired if a Monsieur

TWENTY YEARS AGO.

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Livernois (who had formerly ushered me into this region of enchantment) were still there; but he was gone or dead. My hesitation and foreign accent, with certain other appeals, procured me admittance. I passed on without further question. I cast a glance forward, and found that the Poussins were there. At the sight of the first which I distinctly recollected (a fine green landscape with stately ruins) the tears came into my eyes, and I passed an hour or two in that state of luxurious enjoyment which is the highest privilege of the mind of man. . . . . One picture of his [Poussin’s] in particular drew my attention, which I had not seen before. It is an addition to the Louvre, and makes up for many a flaw in it. It is the Adam and Eve in Paradise, and it is all that Mr. Martin’s picture of that subject is not. . . . . A landscape with a rainbow by Rubens (a rich and dazzling piece of colouring) that used to occupy a recess half way down the Louvre, was removed to the opposite side. The singular picture (the Defeat of Goliath, by Daniel Volterra) painted on both sides on slate, still retained its station in the middle of the room. It had hung there for twenty years unmolested. The Rembrandts keep their old places, and are as fine as ever. . . . . The Vandykes are more light and airy than ever. . . . . The Cardinal Bentivoglio (which I remember procuring especial permission to copy, and left untouched, because, after Titian’s portraits, there was a want of interest in Vandyke’s which I could not get over) is not there.*

* It is at Florence.—Note by W. H.

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TWO MRS. HAZLITTS IN PARIS.

But in the Dutch division I found Weenix’s game, the battle-piece of Wouvermans’, and Ruysdael’s sparkling woods and waterfalls without number. On these (I recollect as if it were yesterday) I used, after a hard day’s work, and having tasked my faculties to the utmost, to cast a mingled glance of surprise and pleasure, as the light gleamed upon them through the high casement, and to take leave of them with a non equidem invideo, miror magis. . . . .

“Look at the portrait of a man in black, by Titian (No. 1210). . . . . It was there to meet me, after an interval of years, as if I had parted from it the instant before. Its keen, steadfast glance staggered me like a blow. It was the same—how was I altered! I pressed towards it, as it were, to throw off a load of doubt from the mind, or as having burst through the obstacles of time and distance that had held me in torturing suspense. . . . .”

[It was a pure coincidence, that when Mr. Hazlitt arrived at Paris, he found by accident that his first wife was staying there, and had been doing so since July. Her “fondness for money,” with which he twitted her in 1822, was still as strong as ever, and he had to supply her with some. They met once or twice at public buildings, not at all by appointment, but casually, and exchanged civilities. How unique all this was!

She still kept up her correspondence and affectionate intercourse with the Rev. Mr. Hazlitt’s family at

THE FRENCH THEATRES.

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Crediton. In a letter to Peggy, of July 21, 1824, she says:—“I am very near the Louvre, and have been there once. But I mean to visit it often if I can, though it is at present shut up, in order to hang up some pictures of living artists. I was very sorry to find that the Transfiguration, Tancred and Clorinda, and most of those that William copied, were gone. It was quite a disappointment to me. . . . .”

“The conducteur of the diligence from Rouen confirmed me agreeably in my theory of the philosophical character of the French physiognomy. With large grey eyes, and drooping eye-lids, prominent distended nostrils, a fine Fénélon expression of countenance, and a mouth open and eloquent, with furrowed lines twisted

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ANECDOTES OF THE LOUVRE, ETC.

round it like whipcord, he stood on the steps of the coach, and harangued to the gentlemen within on the bêtise of some voyageur Anglais with the air of a professor, and in a deep sonorous voice, worthy of an oration of Bossuet. . . . .

“I cannot help adding here, that a French gentleman (un Rentier), who lodges in the hotel opposite to me, passes his time in reading all the morning—dines, plays with his children after dinner, and takes a hand at backgammon with an old gouvernante in the evening. . . . . This looks like domestic comfort, and internal resources. How many disciples of Ro[u]sseau’s Emilius are there in France at the present day? I knew one twenty years ago. . . . .

“I remember some years ago, a young French artist in the Louvre, who was making a chalk-drawing of a small Virgin and Child, by Leonardo da Vinci; and he took eleven weeks to complete it, sitting with his legs astride over a railing, looking up and talking to those about him—consulting their opinion as to his unwearied imperceptible progress—going to the fire to warm his hands, and returning to perfectionate himself! . . . . Another student had undertaken to copy the Titian’s Mistress, and the method he took to do it was to parcel out his canvas into squares like an engraver, after which he began very deliberately, not with the face or hair, but with the first square in the right-hand corner of the picture, containing a piece of an old table. . . . .

“A French dwarf, exhibited in London some years ago, and who had the misfortune to be born a mere

THE TUILERIES GARDEN.

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trunk, grew enraged at the mention of another dwarf as a rival in bodily imperfection, and after insisting that the other had both hands and feet, exclaimed, emphatically, ‘Mais moi, je suis unique.’ My old acquaintance (Dr. Stoddart) used formerly to recount this trait of French character very triumphantly; but then it was in war-time. . . . .

“I saw three very clever comic actors at the Theatre des Varietés, on the Boulevards, all quite different from each other, but quite French. One was Le Peintre, who acted a master-printer; and he was a master-printer—so bare, so dingy, and so wan, that he might be supposed to have lived on printer’s ink, and on a crust of dry bread, cut with an oniony knife. . . . . Another was Odry (I believe), who, with his blue coat, gold-laced hat, and corpulent belly, resembled a jolly, swaggering, good-humoured parish officer, or the boatswain of an English man-of-war. . . . . Monsieur Potier played an old lover, and, till he was dressed, looked like an old French cookshop-keeper. The old beau transpired through his finery afterwards I could not help taking notice, that during his breakfast, and while he is sipping his coffee, he never once ceases talking to his valet. . . . .

“My favourite walk in Paris is to the Garden of the Tuileries. Paris differs from London in this respect, that it has no suburbs. The moment you are beyond the barriers, you are in the country to all intents and purposes. . . . . The superfluous population is pared off, like the pie-crust by the circumference of the dish;

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THE BOIS DE BOULOGNE.

even on the crust side—not a hundred yards from the barrier of Neuilly—you see an old shepherd tending his flock, with his dog, and his crook, and sheepskin cloak, just as if it were a hundred miles off, or a hundred years ago. It was so twenty years ago. I went again to see if it was the same yesterday. The old man was gone; but there was his flock by the road-side, and a dog and a boy, grinning with white healthy teeth, like one of Murillo’s beggar-boys. It was a bright frosty morn. . . . .

“I would go a pilgrimage to see the St. Peter Martyr, or the Jacob’s Dream, by Rembrandt, or Raphael’s cartoons, or some of Claude’s landscapes;

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but I would not go far out of my way to see the Apollo, or the Venus, or the Laocoon. [He is comparing painting with sculpture.] . . . .

“The French Opera is a splendid, but a comparatively empty theatre. It is nearly as large (I should think) as the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket, and is in a semicircular form. The pit (the evening I was there) was about half full of men in their black, dingy, sticky-looking dresses; and there were a few plainly-dressed women in the boxes. . . . . It was not so in Rousseau’s time, for these very Loges were filled with the most beautiful women of the court, who came to see his ‘Devin du Village’, and whom he heard murmuring around him in the softest accents—‘Tous ces sons-la vont au cœur!’ . . . . .

“I found but little at the Royal Academy of Music to carry off this general dulness of effect, either through the excellence or novelty of the performance. A Mademoiselle Noel (who seems to be a favourite) made her débût in ‘Dido.’ . . . . Æneas and Iarbas were represented by Messrs. Mourritt and Derivis. . . . .

“I had leisure during this otiose performance to look around me, and as ‘it is my vice to spy into abuses,’ the first thing that struck me was the prompter. Any Frenchman, who has that sum at his disposal, should give ten thousand francs a year for this situation. It must be a source of ecstasy to him. For not an instant was he quiet—tossing his hands in the air, darting them to the other side of the score which he held before him in front of the stage, snapping his fingers,

122

VISIT TO THE SALLE LOUVOIS.

nodding his head, beating time with his feet. . . . . Not far from this restless automaton . . . . . sat an old gentleman, in front of the pit, with his back to me, a white-powdered head, the curls sticking out behind, and a coat of the finest black. This was all I saw of him for some time: he did not once turn his head or shift his position, any more than a wig and coat stuck upon a barber’s block—till I suddenly missed him, and soon after saw him seated on the opposite side of the house, his face as yellow and hard as a piece of mahogany, but without expressing either pleasure or pain. Neither the fiddlers’ elbows nor the dancers’ legs moved him one jot. His fiddling fancies and his dancing days were flown, and had left this shadow, this profile, this mummy of a French gentleman of the old régime, behind.

“I was told I ought to see ‘Nina, or La Folle par Amour,’ at the Salle Louvois, or Italian Theatre. If I went for that purpose, it would be rather with a wish than from any hope of seeing it better done. I went, however It was to see the ‘Gazza Ladra.’ The house was full, the evening sultry, a hurry and bustle in the lobbies, an eagerness in the looks of the assem-

‘La Gazza Ladra.’

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bled crowd. The audience seemed to be in earnest, and to have imbibed an interest from the place Signora Mombelli played the humble, but interesting heroine, charmingly, with truth, simplicity, and feeling. Her voice is neither rich nor sweet, but it is clear as a bell. Signor Pellegrini played the Intriguing Magistrate with a solemnity and farcical drollery that I would not swear is much inferior to Liston. But I swear that Brunet (whom I saw the other night, and had seen before without knowing it) is not equal to Liston. . . . . A girl in the gallery (an Italian by her complexion, and from her interest in the part) was crying bitterly at the story of the ‘Maid and the Magpie,’ while three Frenchmen, in the Troisième Loge, were laughing at her the whole of the time. I said to one of them, ‘It was not a thing to laugh at, but to admire.’ He turned away, as if the remark did not come within his notions of sentiment.”

[My grandfather, while at Paris, continued to transmit periodically an account of his doings to the Morning Chronicle. He was already in treaty for the appearance of the series of papers in a collective shape. The first Mrs. Hazlitt, writing from Paris on the 25th September, 1824, to her son (my father) at school, says:—“He did not agree with Taylor and Hessey about the book at last, so that he will sell it to the best bidder on his return. Meanwhile it is coming out in numbers in the Morning Chronicle.” He, however, opened a negotiation with Mr. John Hunt, and in a letter of the

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STILL ALWAYS AT WORK.

4th November, 1824, Mr. Henry Leigh Hunt, Mr. John Hunt’s son, writes as follows:—

He was also busy for the ‘New Monthly,’ upon a serial entitled ‘The Spirit of the Age;’ and Lamb, in a letter to Sir John Stoddart at Malta, says:—“Hazlitt is resident at Paris, whence he pours his lampoons in safety at his friends in England; he has his boy with him. . . . .”

He still saw Mrs. Hazlitt the First occasionally, and on her leaving for England, she found that she was short of money. “If you wish to write to your father,” she says to her son, under date of September 25, 1824, “his address is, ‘A Monsieur, Monsieur Hazlitt, Hôtel des Etrangers, Rue Vivienne, Paris.’ Your father talked of sending some money by me, but found himself rather short. He could only spare me two napoleons of what he owed.”*

Mr. and Mrs. Hazlitt also received a visit at their rooms at the Hôtel des Etrangers from the gentleman, whom I have already have had occasion to mention, as

* My grandmother returned, and went down to stop with old Mrs. Hazlitt, at Alphington, where she was after this a frequent visitor. Miss Lamb, in a letter to Lady Stoddart, written at the end of 1824, says: “I have not heard from Mrs. Hazlitt a long time; I believe she is still with Hazlitt’s mother in Devonshire.”

AN EVENING WITH MR. HAZLITT AT PARIS.

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having been acquainted with Mrs. Hazlitt before she was married to Colonel Bridgewater.

This gentleman writes to me: “Having heard that she was in Paris, and married to your grandfather, I found her out, when I was passing a few weeks [there], being very desirous of renewing my acquaintance with my former flame of one day, and to see Mr. H., many of whose works I had read with much delight. She told me she never saw him take a fancy, such a fancy, for any one as he did for me. I suppose this was because he found me a capital listener; and perhaps talking through my tube, with which I could hear very well in those days, gave a new sort of fillip to his thoughts. Once when I dined with them, he drank three or four basins of tea, and dissertated most charmingly from six o’clock till two in the morning, and was my cicerone in the Louvre one day from ten till four. His conversation on that day I thought better than any book I had ever read on the Art Pictorial. . . . .” “He was more striking and eloquent even,” my informant assures me, referring to the day in the Louvre, “than his printed pages. In the Louvre it was not a sederunt, but a peripatetic dissertation, and most admirable it was. . . . .”]