, vol. viii. p. 431) and Leigh Hunt
(
Dramatic Essays
, ed. 1894, p. 82) agree that she failed,
perhaps, as the latter suggests, because she was so "perpetually
employed" in "broad and romping characters."
In private life Mrs. Jordan was chiefly known as the mistress of the
Duke of Clarence, to whom she bore ten children. She died at St. Cloud,
July 3, 1816.
The play acted at Covent Garden, March 10, 1814, was Sheridan's
Trip
to Scarborough
, which is a close adaptation of Vanbrugh's
Relapse
. The performance is thus described in the
Courier
,
March 11, 1814:
"Mrs. Jordan, the only Miss Hoyden on the stage, supported that
character with unabated spirit. In every scene, from her soliloquy on
being locked up, which was delivered with extraordinary
naïveté, both with reference to her tones, her emphasis, and
her action, until the consummation of the piece, the house was shaken
by loud and quick-succeeding peals of laughter. The style in which she
expressed Hoyden's rustic arithmetic, 'Now, Nursey, if
he gives me six hundred pounds a-year to buy pins, what
will he give me to buy petticoats?' was uncommonly fine. The frock
waving in her hand, the backward bound of two or three steps, the
gravity of countenance, induced by a mental glance at the magnitude of
the sum, all spoke expectation, delight, and astonishment."
Macbeth
, act v. sc. 5.
Richard III
, act i. sc. 2, line 259.
Ibid.
, line 253.
List of Journal Entries
Contents
Tuesday, March 15th [1814]
Dined yesterday with Rogers, Mackintosh, and Sharpe. Sheridan could not
come.
told several very amusing anecdotes of Henderson, the
actor
. Stayed till late, and came home, having drunk so much
tea
, that I did not get to sleep till six this morning. R.
I
am to be in
this Quarterly
—cut up, I presume, as they "hate us
youth."
N'importe
. As Sharpe was passing by the doors of some
debating society (the Westminster Forum), in his way to dinner, he saw
rubricked on the wall
Scott's
name and
mine
—"Which the
best poet?" being the question of the evening; and I suppose all the
Templars and
would-bes
took our rhymes in vain in the course of
the controversy. Which had the greater show of hands, I neither know nor
care; but I feel the coupling of the names as a compliment—though I
think Scott deserves better company.
Wedderburn Webster called—Lord Erskine, Lord Holland, etc., etc. Wrote
to ——
The Corsair
report. She says she don't wonder, since
"Conrad is so
like
." It is odd that one, who knows me so
thoroughly, should tell me this to my face. However, if she don't know,
nobody can.
Mackintosh is, it seems, the writer of the defensive letter in the
Morning Chronicle
. If so, it is very kind, and more than I did
for myself.
Told
to secure for me Bandello's Italian Novels
at the sale
to-morrow. To me they will be
nuts
. Redde a satire on myself,
called "Anti-Byron," and told Murray to publish it if he liked. The
object of the author is to prove me an atheist and a systematic
conspirator against law and government. Some of the verse is good; the
prose I don't quite understand. He asserts that my "deleterious works"
have had "an effect upon civil society, which requires," etc., etc.,
etc., and his own poetry. It is a lengthy poem, and a long preface, with
an harmonious title-page. Like the fly in the fable, I seem to have got
upon a wheel which makes much dust; but, unlike the said fly, I do not
take it all for my own raising.
A
from
Bella
, which I answered. I shall be in love
with her again if I don't take care.
I shall begin a more regular system of reading soon.
John Henderson, the Bath Roscius (1747-1785), without any
great personal advantages, was, according to Mrs. Siddons, "a fine actor
... the soul of intelligence." Rogers (
Table-Talk
, ed. 1887, p.
110) says,
"Henderson was a truly great actor: his Hamlet and his Falstaff were
equally good. He was a very fine reader too: in his comic readings,
superior, of course, to Mrs. Siddons: his John Gilpin was marvellous."
In Sharp's
Letters and Essays
(ed. 1834, pp. 16-18) will be found
an interesting letter to Henderson, written a few days before his death,
giving an account of John Kemble's first appearance on the London
boards, in the character of "Hamlet."
"There has not," says Sharp, "been such a first appearance since
yours; yet Nature, though she has been bountiful to him in figure and
feature, has denied him a voice.... You have been so long without a
'brother near the throne,' that it will perhaps be serviceable to you
to be obliged to bestir yourself in Hamlet, Macbeth, Lord Townley, and
Maskwell; but in Lear, Richard, Falstaff, and Benedict, you have
nothing to fear, not-withstanding the known fickleness of the public
and its love of novelty."
Henry IV
, Part I. act ii. sc. 2.
Matteo Bandello (1480-1562), a native of Piedmont, became
in 1550 Bishop of Agen. His 214 tales, in the manner of Boccaccio, were
published at Milan (1554-73). In the Catalogue of Byron's books, "sold
by auction by Mr. Evans, at his house, No. 26, Pall Mall, on Friday,
April 5, 1816, and following day," appears "Bandello,
Novelle
, 8
vol., wanting vol. 9,
Livorn
, 1791."
Miss Milbanke, afterwards Lady Byron.
List of Journal Entries
Contents
Thursday, March 17th [1814]
I have been sparring with Jackson for exercise this morning; and mean to
continue and renew my acquaintance with the muffles. My chest, and arms,
and wind are in very good plight, and I am not in flesh. I used to be a
hard hitter, and my arms are very long for my height (5 feet 8 1/2
inches). At any rate, exercise is good, and this the severest of all;
fencing and the broad-sword never fatigued me half so much.
the
Quarrels of Authors
(another sort of
sparring
)—a new work, by that most entertaining and researching
writer, Israeli. They seem to be an irritable set, and I wish myself
well out of it. "I'll
march through Coventry with them, that's
flat."
What the devil had I to do with scribbling? It is too late to
inquire, and all regret is useless. But, an it were to do again,—I
should write again, I suppose. Such is human nature, at least my share
of it;—though I shall think better of myself, if I have sense to stop
now. If I have a wife, and that wife has a son—by any body—I will
bring up mine heir in the most anti-poetical way—make him a lawyer, or
a pirate, or—any thing. But, if he writes too, I shall be sure he is
none of mine, and cut him off with a Bank token. Must write a
letter—three o'clock.
Disraeli's
Curiosities of Literature
, 2 vols.
(1807);
Calamities of Authors
, 2 vols. (1812); and
Quarrels of
Authors
, 3 vols. (1814), appear in the Sale Catalogue.
Henry IV
., Part I. act iv. sc. 2.
List of Journal Entries
Contents
Sunday, March 20th [1814]
I
to go to Lady Hardwicke's
, but won't. I always begin the
day with a bias towards going to parties; but, as the evening advances,
my stimulus fails, and I hardly ever go out—and, when I do, always
regret it. This might have been a pleasant one;—at least, the hostess
is a very superior woman.
Lansdowne's
to-morrow—Lady
Heathcote's
Wednesday. Um!—I must spur myself into going to some of
them, or it will look like rudeness, and it is better to do as other
people do—confound them!
Machiavel
, parts of Chardin, and Sismondi, and Bandello—by
starts. Redde the
Edinburgh
, 44, just come out.
the beginning
of the article on Edgeworth's
Patronage
, I have gotten a high
compliment, I perceive
. Whether this is creditable to me, I know
not; but it does honour to the editor, because he once abused me. Many a
man will retract praise; none but a high-spirited mind will revoke its
censure, or
can
praise the man it has once attacked. I have
often, since my return to England, heard Jeffrey most highly commended
by those who know him for things independent of his talents. I admire
him for
this
—not because he has
praised me
(I have been
so praised elsewhere and abused, alternately, that mere habit has
rendered me as indifferent to both as a man at twenty-six can be to any
thing), but because he is, perhaps, the
only man
who, under the
relations in which he and I stand, or stood, with regard to each other,
would have had the liberality to act thus; none but a great soul dared
hazard it. The height on which he stands has not made him giddy;—a
little scribbler would have gone on cavilling to the end of the chapter.
As to the justice of his panegyric, that is matter of taste. There are
plenty to question it, and glad, too, of the opportunity.
Lord Erskine called to-day. He means to carry down his reflections on
the war—or rather wars—to the present day. I trust that he will. Must
send to Mr. Murray to get the binding of my copy of his pamphlet
finished, as Lord E. has promised me to correct it, and add some
marginal notes to it. Any thing in his handwriting will be a treasure,
which will gather compound interest from years.
has high
expectations of Mackintosh's promised History. Undoubtedly it must be a
classic, when finished
.
Sparred with Jackson again yesterday morning, and shall to-morrow. I
feel all the better for it, in spirits, though my arms and shoulders are
very stiff from it.
. to attend the pugilistic dinner:—Marquess
Huntley
is in the chair.
Lord Erskine thinks that ministers must be in peril of going out. So
much the better for him. To me it is the same who are in or out;—we
want something more than a change of ministers, and some day we will
have it.
I remember, in riding from Chrisso to Castri (Delphos), along the sides
of Parnassus, I saw six eagles in the air. It is uncommon to see so many
together; and it was the number—not the species, which is common
enough—that excited my attention.
The last bird I ever fired at was an
eaglet
, on the shore of the
Gulf of Lepanto, near Vostitza. It was only wounded, and I tried to save
it, the eye was so bright; but it pined, and died in a few days; and I
never did since, and never will, attempt the death of another bird. I
wonder what put these two things into my head just now? I have been
reading Sismondi, and there is nothing there that could induce the
recollection.
I am mightily taken with Braccio di Montone, Giovanni Galeazzo, and
Eccelino. But the last is
not
Bracciaferro (of the same name),
Count of Ravenna, whose history I want to trace. There is a fine
engraving in Lavater, from a picture by Fuseli, of
that
Ezzelin,
over the body of Meduna, punished by him for a
hitch
in her
constancy during his absence in the Crusades.
was right—but I want
to know the story
.
Philip Yorke, third Earl of Hardwicke, married, in 1782,
Elizabeth, daughter of the fifth Earl of Balcarres.
Louisa Emma, daughter of the second Earl of Ilchester, was
married, in 1808, to the Marquis of Lansdowne, at that time Lord Henry
Petty.
Katherine Sophia, daughter of John Manners, of Grantham
Grange, co. Lincoln, was married, in 1793, to Sir Gilbert Heathcote.
Machiavelli's
Opere
, 13 vols.,
in russia,
Milan
(1804); Sismondi's
De la Littérature du Midi
, 4 vols.,
in russia
, Paris (1813); and Chardin's
Voyages en Perse
,
10 vols. and Atlas (1811), appear in the Catalogue of Sale.
"It is no slight consolation to us, while suffering under alternate
reproaches for ill-timed severity, and injudicious praise, to reflect
that no very mischievous effects have as yet resulted to the
literature of the country, from this imputed misbehaviour on our part.
Powerful genius, we are persuaded, will not be repressed even by
unjust castigation; nor will the most excessive praise that can be
lavished by sincere admiration ever abate the efforts that are fitted
to attain to excellence. Our alleged severity upon a youthful
production has not prevented the noble author from becoming the first
poet of his time."
Edinburgh Review
, vol. xxii. p. 416.
Mackintosh wrote
- a History of England for
Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia (1830);
- a History of the
Revolution in England (1834).
Afterwards fifth, and last, Duke of Gordon. He died in May,
1836.
"Fuseli's picture of Ezzelin Bracciaferro musing over Meduna, slain by
him for disloyalty during his absence in the Holy Land, was exhibited
at the Royal Academy in 1780. Mr. Knowles, in his Life of the
painter, relates the following anecdote: 'Fuseli frequently invented
the subject of his pictures without the aid of the poet or historian,
as in his composition of Ezzelin, Belisaire, and some others: these he
denominated "philosophical ideas intuitive, or sentiment personified."
On one occasion he was much amused by the following inquiry of Lord
Byron: "I have been looking in vain, Mr. Fuseli, for some months, in
the poets and historians of Italy, for the subject of your picture of
Ezzelin: pray where is it to be found?" "Only in my brain, my Lord,"
was the answer: "for I invented it"' (vol. i. p. 403)" (Moore).
List of Journal Entries
Contents
Tuesday, March 22nd [1814]
Last night,
party
at Lansdowne House.
,
party
at
Lady Charlotte Greville's
—deplorable waste of time, and something
of temper. Nothing imparted— nothing acquired—talking without
ideas:—if any thing like
thought
in my mind, it was not on the
subjects on which we were gabbling. Heigho!—and in this way half London
pass what is called life. To-morrow there is Lady Heathcote's—shall I
go? yes—to punish myself for not having a pursuit.
Let me see—what did I see? The
person who much struck me was Lady
S—d's [Stafford's] eldest daughter, Lady C. L.
[Charlotte Leveson].
They say she is
not
pretty. I don't know—every thing is pretty
that pleases; but there is an air of
soul
about her—and her
colour changes—and there is that shyness of the antelope (which I
delight in) in her manner so much, that I observed her more than I did
any other woman in the rooms, and only looked at any thing else when I
thought she might perceive and feel embarrassed by my scrutiny. After
all, there may be something of association in this. She is a friend of
Augusta's, and whatever she loves I can't help liking.
Her mother, the Marchioness, talked to me a little; and I was twenty
times on the point of asking her to introduce me to
sa fille
, but
I stopped short. This comes of that affray with the Carlisles.
Earl
told me laughingly of a paragraph in the last
Moniteur
,
which has stated, among other symptoms of rebellion, some particulars of
the
sensation
occasioned in all our government gazettes by the
"tear" lines,—
only
amplifying, in its re-statement, an epigram
(by the by, no epigram except in the
Greek
acceptation of the
word) into a
roman
. I wonder the
Couriers
, etc., etc.,
have not translated that part of the
Moniteur