When Thackeray Lived in London.

Evening Post, Volume LXXV, Issue 122, 23 May 1908, Page 10

When Thackeray Lived in London.

The real old lady, who has smilingly learnt the difficult lesson of growing old gracefully, is so rare nowadays that her many admirers deem hor precious, and fails fully to appreciate her modern substitute, the frisky grandmamma, who skates at Prince's with her "transformation" surmounted by all the- "flowers that bloom in the spring."

An hour in the twilight in a spacious pleasant drawing-room, looking out with wide windows, whero the crocuses are sleeping — gold specks in tho young green — with a gracious, low-voiced companion in sort silks othereali&ed with, costly laces, lingers in the memory, perfumed with the country lavender in a sachet upon a little table beside her. , "Rosemary, - that's for a remembrance!" For more than eighty years sho has lived — for most of them in that London where her happy youth was passed. Daughter of a man of science so popular _in society that great folk* and celebrities thronged his charming house, one of her baby recollections is of herself upon the lap of" a. kind stranger who let her play with the enchanting little jewelled parrots pendant from her ears. It was Malibran, near., i ing that day of doom when her loss en-J riched literature with that passionate cry from the heart of Alfred de Musset which made- them both immortal. ,Uer picture of the Malib'ran petting the greyeyed child shows a touch of very womanly sweetness in the "Belle Muse adorce'' of all the world. Carefully educated, but allowed to read no novels but Scott's, the child was a very slendor girl of fifteen, with a pretty figure, when "Mr. Thackeray" began to loom on her horizon as its "great unknown." He was intimate, with her favourite uncle, who, when Wellington and Blucher visited Eton after .Waterloo, had bgen the whito,headed youngest of the widely-pheering boys. The . big Blucher was so amused at his little short figure— possibly also at the tall hat incongruously surmounting the chubby cheeks — that ho caught him up in his arms, to the dire detriment of his Etonian dignity. Macauley and Mackworth Praed were among this uncle's contemporaries, and but that they are signed with other initials in the bound volume of the Etonian for 1821, the following lines might well have come from the latter, whose gaudy pseudonym was "Peregrine Courtnay," when' "a member ,of that wonderful association called "The King of Clubs" :

Pretty Cordelia thinks she's ill ; I She eeeka her med'eino at quadrille. With hope, nnd fear, and envy sick, She gnzes on each dubious trick, Aa if eternity wero laid Upon the diamond or the spade. Even in 1821 the poor girl of the period was held up to contumely by these stem young critics : • When England's favourite good Queen' BeW Was Queen alike o'er war and drese, Then ladies gay played chess— and ballads, And learnt to dress their hair— and Balade. - $weete— and sweet looks— were studied tfiqn, Andjboth were pleaeiug to the men;' For (bookery was allied to taste, And grids were taught to blush, and baste. Dishes werei bright — and so were eyes , And lords made love — and ladies pics. ' This last has a very Praedian ring, but | domesticity had gone out long before 1821/ for n> was in 1798 ttia.t Mrs. Rennet was quite horrified that Mr. Collins should imagine that either of '.his "fair cousins" had shaken hands with the saucepan. At length Miss Alice was duly invited to catch a glimpse of the wonderful being said to "quiz" everybody — j for that .obsolete word was still correct. [ She had never read a line, he had written, but she was full of shy curiosity as she 'came into the ( room and f ound a tall j gentleman, in a blue coat, standI'ing before the fire, with a sketch-book in his hand. "Kneel down at once, I and look through the key-hole," ' was t her uncle's unexpected command. * And | a glance assures mo to-day that she obeyed gracefully,' despite her bewilderI ment. Then Thackeray drew her in silence, , whilst hor uncle offeied suggestions, but the intended illustration was cancelled afterwards owing to some changes of plot. Was it to have been naughty Becky? It was too soon for Lady Castlewood in thatr pou-itipn which roused "the ire of Mr. Andrew Lang. Tho model cannot tell ; and of the subsequent dinner she only remembers J her disappointment that "Mr.' Thackeray sajd nothing funny, and was rather ! sad." He did not inspire her with jtho love he returned with such interest to Miss Henrietto Corkeran and other young friends,, and she was rather disgusted to find, wJien she- "came out," that all her partners were full of "Mrs. Perkins's Ball," and everybody was nicknamed after the- merry tribes twirling in the polka in its heyday,, with "Tozer and that wicked, whistling' little Jones." One can hear them quoting the immortal Mulligan to this elegant young person — charming, albeit a trifle sedate.

At those dances she sometimes talked with Adelaide Anne Proctor, with her sweet voice, her high plain muslin gown, and hei' crown of plaits. 'She was a' quiet onlooker, suspected of being the heroine of a sad love-story, in sharp contrast 'to tho exubarant mother, with peony cheeKb and buncnes of fluttering ringlets, who watched .over hei so tenderly. Very near the ' end of his long life my friend was tak/>n to see that great celebrity Mr. Rogers, but her sole re collection of that cadaverous poet ' is that "he looked as if he had been dug iip." Nor can she accurately date the day when she heard Mendelssohn accompany, as only he , could, the beautiful voice of the beautiful Adelaide Sartoris. . Possibly it was at one of the parties ' ' where figured the ' sVnie-tjme "Wild Irish Girl" as a still vivacious personage, hobbling about with a disfiguring green shade over one eye, not removed until she obtained the pension for which she was clamouring, when my lady Morgan's eyes twinkled as brightly as ever.

She recalls hearing the following of Mr. Alfred Bunn, the eminent dreamer of ''marble halls," with "vassals and serfs at- his side." Poor Bunn, whose portliness gave the caricaturists a chance too good to nsglect, had the misfortune, to annoy Macready when 'that irascible genius was playing "Richard TIL" to a rather thin house, and Macready dashed off the stage, and knocked tho manager down. '4-he so- s called "Currant-Bun" indulged In rueful, though groundless, feai.s of internal injury, and was- excusably much aggrieved.

Neither Macready nor ■ Kean greatly impressed my friend, or even Rachel, except when in "Les Horaces" she listened silently with such a wonderful play of emotion upon the face as only Charlotte Bronte can describe for us. Her supreme stage memory was of Ristori — "like a figure from an Etruscan vase" — with the children clinging round her in "Medea." The inflections of that golden voice in the tender exclamation, "le dolco Maiic," moved a whole audience to tears. To dome of us it recalls that heartrending moment in "La Gioconda," when the I)use has no hands to clasp her littlo daughter,. It is a far cry irom Ri&tori to Serjeant Talfourd, at whose houses private performances of "Ton"' were often given, at which the undo of Blucher tamo assisted, though his lucky niece did not. At the amazing patience 1 of' these audiences jvjj muj£ still yrondeju.

the heroines of Miss 'Edgew.orth put on "The Fair Penitent," sculls, improprieties, mourning, 1 and lall, in the Theatre Royal back drawing-room ; but it' was probably "Ion," pr dear old Mary Mitford's "Rienzi," that dealt the first blow to the inexplicable taste for tragedy to which "Manfred" gay». the coup de grace.

Many of my dear old friend's happiest hours were spen^' in the house of Lough, the sculptor ' o"f that "Silence" mentioned by Mrs. Browning in "Lady Geraldine's Courtship*— "so asleep she is forgetting to say 'Hush!'" Married, to a sister of the clever wife of Sir James Paget, Lough gathered a genial society about him in the studio, where my friend herself posed for the bust of "Sculpture," cherishing 'as his gift a sketch of the figure r of the Archangel Michael, shown at' tlfei' great Exhibition of 1851. ' ". • There she once dined when Hans Andersen was present'; 1 and numerous guests .were convoked to m-;es- the Danish magician, who sti*uck her as "very 'like" a stork." Among those present I was the loud-voiced Mr. Jordan, editor! of the Literary Gazette,' who covered j ,a bashful young person with confusion by calling down the long table, "Mr. Andersen ! Mr. Andersen ! here, is Miss Eleanor — waiting to ' take ' wine with you!'" What Dickerts calls the "ustual pantomimic ~ T ceremony of nodding* and sipping" was' not, however, gone through with, "fqr'l really believe, my dear; Mr. Andersen '^elt as awkward as -she did." - Dickens she never met, though, the. awful realism of his perJormance of Bill Sikes,at almost his last ■lecture made -an intense and , painful impression upon her. > "And ■ the -most ..beautiful rroman you ever saw? ;The handsomest man?" I questioned , when 'g|i?ass and crocuses" were veiled' in soft darkness. "The Empress. Eugenic and Prince Albert together at the opening-,, of the Crystal P-alace — assort of fairy iking and queen, with Napoleon trotting behind as if his boots -were tight." What a long chapter of history has been written since Miss Alice journeyed along the unspoilt banks of a. radiant Rhine, all vivia ruins land picturesque sails! ■ "The Legends," in a hand still as slender and pretty. How many of those stars has sho seen, "gui filent, filent et disparaissent"? — Rowland' Grey, in tho West--minster Gazette. . . 1