"The sudden change from the light of day to the darkness of the cave, prevented him from seeing us. Zephyrine made me a sign to keep silence. After remaining for a moment as if dazzled, his eyes got accustomed to the darkness. He bounded towards us with the spring of a tiger.

"'Zephyrine, why don't you answer when I call? Come!'

"He seized her arm, and began dragging her towards the door at the back of the grotto.

"'Where are you taking me?' cried the poor girl.

"'Come with me—come along!'

"'Never!' cried she, struggling.

"'What! You won't go with me?'

"'No; why should I? I detest you. You carried me off by force. I won't follow you. Ernest, Ernest, here!'

"'Ernest!' muttered the captain. 'Ha! 'Tis you, then, who betrayed us?'

"'M. Louet!' cried Zephyrine, 'if you are a man, help me!'

"I saw the blade of a poniard glitter. I had no weapon, but I seized my bass by the handle, and, raising it in the air, let it fall with such violence on the captain's skull, that the back of the instrument was smashed in and the bandit's head disappeared in the interior of the bass. Either the violence of the blow, or the novelty of finding his head in a bass, so astonished the captain that he let go his hold of Zephyrine, at the same time uttering a roar like that of a mad bull.

"'Zephyrine! Zephyrine!' cried a voice outside.

"'Ernest!' answered the young girl, darting out of the grotto.

"I followed her, terrified at my own exploit. She was already clasped in the arms of her lover.

"'In there,' cried the young officer to a party of soldiers who just then came up. 'He is in there. Bring him out, dead or alive.'

"They rushed in, but the broken bass was all they found. The captain had escaped by the other door.

"On our way to the house we saw ten or twelve dead bodies. One was lying on the steps leading to the door.

"'Take away this carrion,' said Ernest.

"Two soldiers turned the body over. It was the last of the Beaumanoirs.

"We remained but a few minutes at the house, and then Zephyrine and myself got into a carriage and set off, escorted by M. Ernest and a dozen men. I did not forget to carry off my hundred crowns, my fowling-piece, and game-bag. As to my poor bass, the captain's head had completely spoiled it.

"After an hour's drive, we came in sight of a large city with an enormous dome the middle of it. It was Rome.

"'And did you see the Pope, M. Louet?'

"'At that time he was at Fontainbleau, but I saw him afterwards, and his successor too; for M. Ernest got me an appointment as bass-player at the Teatro de la Valle, and I remained there till the year 1830. When I at last returned to Marseilles, they did not know me again, and for some time refused to give me back my place in the orchestra, under pretence that I was not myself.'

"'And Mademoiselle Zephyrine?'

"'I heard that she married M. Ernest, whose other name I never knew, and that he became a general, and she a very great lady."

"'And Captain Tonino? Did you hear nothing more of him?'

"'Three years afterwards he came to the theatre in disguise; was recognised, arrested, and hung.'

"'And thus it was, sir,' concluded M. Louet, 'that a thrush led me into Italy, and caused me to pass twenty years at Rome.'"

And so ends the thrush-hunt. One word at parting, to qualify any too sweeping commendation we may have bestowed on M. Dumas in the early part of this paper. While we fully exonerate his writings from the charge of grossness, and recognise the absence of those immoral and pernicious tendencies which disfigure the works of many gifted French writers of the day, we would yet gladly see him abstain from the somewhat too Decameronian incidents and narratives with which he occasionally varies his pages. That he is quite independent of such meretricious aids, is rendered evident by his entire avoidance of them in some of his books, which are not on that account a whit the less piquant. With this single reservation, we should hail with pleasure the appearance on our side the Channel of a few such sprightly and amusing writers as Alexander Dumas.

HIGH LIFE IN THE LAST CENTURY. ⁵

The volumes of which we are about to give fragments and anecdotes, contain a portion of the letters addressed to a man of witty memory, whose existence was passed almost exclusively among men and women of rank; his life, in the most expressive sense of the word, West End; and even in that West End, his chief haunt St James's Street. Parliament and the Clubs divided his day, and often his night. The brilliant roués, the steady gamesters, the borough venders, and the lordly ex-members of ex-cabinets, were the only population of whose living and breathing he suffered himself to have any cognizance. In reverse of Gray's learned mouse, eating its way through the folios of an ancient library—and to whom

"A river or a sea was but a dish of tea,
And a kingdom bread and butter,"

to George Selwyn, the world and all that it inhabits, were concentrated in Charles Fox, William Pitt, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and the circle of men of pleasantry, loose lives, and vivacious temperaments, who, with whatever diminishing lustre, revolved round them.

Of the City of London, Selwyn probably had heard; for though fixed to one spot, he was a man fond of collecting curious knowledge; but nothing short of proof positive can ever convince us that he had passed Temple Bar. He, of course, knew that there were such things on the globe as merchants and traders, because their concerns were occasionally talked of in "the House," where, however, he heard as little as possible about them; for in the debates of the time he took no part but that of a listener, and even then he abridged the difficulty, by generally sleeping through the sitting. He was supposed to be the only rival of Lord North in the happy faculty of falling into a sound slumber at the moment when any of those dreary persons, who chiefly speak on such subjects, was on his legs. St James's, and the talk of St James's, were his business, his pleasures, the exciters of his wit, and the rewarders of his toil. He had applied the art of French cookery to the rude material of the world, and refined and reduced all things into a sauce piquante—all its realities were concentrated in essences; and, disdaining the grosser tastes of mankind, he lived upon the aroma of high life—an epicure even among epicures; yet not an indolent enjoyer of the luxuries of his condition, but a keen, restless, and eager student of pleasurable sensations—an Apicius, polished by the manners, and furnished with the arts of the most self-enjoying condition of mankind, that of an English gentleman of fortune in the 18th century.

We certainly are not the champions of this style of life. We think that man has other matters to consider than pâtés and consommés, the flavour of his Burgundy and pines, or even the bons-mots of his friends. We are afraid that we must, after all, regard the whole Selwyn class as little better than the brutes in their stables, or on their hearth-rugs; with the advantage to the brutes of following their natural appetites, having no twinges of either conscience or the gout, and not being from time to time stripped by their friends, or plundered by the Jews. The closing hours of the horse or the dog are also, perhaps, more complacent in general, and their deaths are less a matter of rejoicing to those who are to succeed to their mangers and cushions. Of higher and more startling contemplations, this is not the place to speak. If such men shall yet have the power of looking down from some remoter planet on their idle, empty, and self-indulgent course in our own, perhaps they would rejoice to have exchanged with the lot of him whose bread was earned by the sweat of his brow, yet who had fulfilled the duties of his station; and whose hand had been withheld by necessity from that banquet, where all the nobler purposes of life were forgotten, and where the senses absorbed the higher nature. Still, we admit that these are topics on which no man ought to judge the individual with severity. We have spoken only of the class. The individual may have had virtues of which the world can know nothing; he may have been liberal, affectionate, and zealous, when his feelings were once awakened; his purse may have dried many a tear, and soothed many a pulse of secret suffering. It is, at all events, more kindly to speak of poor human nature with fellow feeling for those exposed to the strong temptations of fortune, than to establish an arrogant comparison between the notorious errors of others, and the secret failures of our own.

But we have something to settle with Mr Jesse. He is alive, and therefore may be instructed; he is making books with great rapidity, and therefore may be advantageously warned of the perils of book-making. The title of his volumes has altogether deceived us. We shall not charge him with intending this; but it has unquestionably had the effect. "George Selwyn and his contemporaries." We opened the volumes, expecting to find our witty clubbist in every page; George in his full expansion, "in his armour as he lived;" George, every inch a wit, glittering before us in his full court suit, in his letters, his anecdotes, his whims, his odd views of mankind, his caustic sneerings at the glittering world round him; an epistolary HB., turning every thing into the pleasant food of his pen and pungency. But we cannot discover any letters from him, excepting a few very trifling ones of his youth. We have letters from all sorts of persons, great lords and little, statesmen and travellers, placemen and place-hunters; and amusing enough many of them are. Walpole furnishes some sketches, and nothing can be better. In fact the volumes exhibit, not George Selwyn, the only one whose letters we should have cared to see, but those who wrote to him. And the disappointment is not the less, that in those letters constant allusions are made to his "sparkling, delightful, sportive, characteristic, &c. &c., epistles." Great ladies constantly urge him to write to them. Maids, wives, and widows, pour out a stream of perpetual laudation. Men of rank, men of letters, men at home, and men abroad, unite in one common supplication for "London news" réchaufféed, spiced, and served up, by the perfect cuisinerie of George's art of story-telling; like the horse-leech's two daughters, the cry is, "Give, give." And this is what we wanted to see. Selwyn, the whole Selwyn, and nothing but Selwyn.

It is true that there is a preface which talks in this wise:—

It seems to have been one of the peculiarities of George Selwyn, to preserve not only every letter addressed to him by his correspondents during the course of his long life, but also the most trifling notes and memoranda. To this peculiarity, the reader is indebted for whatever amusement he may derive from the perusal of these volumes. The greater portion of their contents consists of letters addressed to Selwyn, by persons who, in their day, moved in the first circles of wit, genius, and fashion."

We have thus let Mr Jesse speak for himself. If the public are satisfied, so let it be. But people seldom read prefaces. The title is the thing, and that title is, "George Selwyn and his contemporaries." If it had been "Letters of the contemporaries of George Selwyn," we should have understood the matter.

Still we are not at all disposed to quarrel with the volumes. They contain a great deal of pleasant matter; and the letters are evidently, in general, the work of a higher order of persons than the world has often an opportunity of seeing in their deshabille. The Persian proverb, which accounted for the fragrance of a pebble by its having lain beside the rose, has been in some degree realized in these pages. They are evidently of the Selwyn school; and if he is not here witty himself, he is, like the "fat knight," the cause of wit in others. We are enjoying a part of the feast which his science had cooked, and then distributed to his friends to figure as the chefs-d'oeuvre of their own tables. At all events, though often on trifling subjects, and often not worth preserving, they vindicate on the whole the claim of English letter-writing to European superiority. Taking Walpole as the head, and nothing can be happier than his mixture of keen remark, intelligent knowledge of his time, high-bred ease of language, and exquisite point and polish of anecdote; his followers, even in these few volumes, show that there were many men, even in the midst of all the practical business and nervous agitation of public life, not unworthy of their master. We have no doubt that there have been hundreds of persons, and thousands of letters, which might equally contribute to this most interesting, and sometimes most brilliant, portion of our literature. The French lay claim to superiority in this as in every thing else; but we must acknowledge that it is with some toil we have ever read the boasted letters of De Sévigné—often pointed, and always elegant, they are too often frivolous, and almost always local. We are sick of the adorable Grignan, and her "belle chevelure." The letters of Du Deffand, Espinasse, Roland, and even of De Staël, though always exhibiting ability, are too hard or too hot, too fierce or too fond, for our tastes; they are also so evidently intended for any human being except the one to whom they were addressed, or rather for all human beings—they were so palpably "private effusions" for the public ear—sentiments stereotyped, and sympathies for the circulating library—that they possessed as little the interest as the character of correspondence.

Voltaire's letters are always spirited. That extraordinary man could do nothing on which his talent was not marked; but his letters are epigrammes—all is sacrificed to point, and all is written for the salons of Paris. What Talleyrand's might be, we can imagine from the singular subtlety and universal knowledge of that most dexterous player of the most difficult game which was ever on the diplomatic cards. But as his definition of the excellence of a letter was—"to say any thing, but mean nothing," we must give up the hope of his contribution. Grimm's volumes are, after all, the only collection which belongs to the style of letters to which we allude. They are amusing and anecdotical, and, in our conception, by much the most intelligent French correspondence that has fallen into our hands. But they are too evidently the work of a man writing as a task, gathering the Parisian news as a part of his profession, and in fact sending a daily newspaper to his German patron.

Of the German epistolary literature we have seen nothing which approaches to the excellence of the English school. The conception is generally vague, vapourish, and metaphysical. And this predominates absurdly through all its classes. The poet prides himself on being as much a dreamer in his prose as in his poetry; the scholar is proud of being perplexed and pedantic; the statesman is naturally immersed in that problematic style, which belongs to the secrecy of despotic governments, and to the stiffness of circles where all is etiquette. But Walpole and his tribe have fashion wholly to themselves, and possess force without heaviness, and elegance without effeminacy.

We are strongly tempted to ask, whether there may not be letters of the gay, the refined, and the sparkling George Canning. He was constantly writing; knew every thing and every body; was engaged in all the high transactions of his time; saw human nature in all possible shades; and was a man whose talent, though capable of very noble efforts "on compulsion," yet naturally loved a more level rank of times and things. It is perfectly true to human experience, that there are minds, which, like caged nightingales and canary-birds, though their wings were formed with the faculty of cleaving the clouds, yet pass a perfectly contented existence within their wires, and sing as cheerfully in return for their water and seeds, as if they had the range of the horizon. Canning's whole song for thirty years was in one cage or another, and he sang with equal cheerfulness in them all. The moral of all this is, that we wish Mr Jesse, or any one else, to apply himself, without delay, to the depositaries of George Canning's familiar correspondence, and give his pleasant, piquant, and graceful letters (for we are sure that they are all these) to the world.

Lord Dudley's letters have disappointed every body: but it is to be observed, that we have only a small portion of them; that they were written to a college tutor, a not very exciting species of correspondent at any time, and who in this instance having nothing to give back, and plodding his way through the well-meant monotony of college news, allowed poor Lord Dudley not much more chance of brilliancy, than a smart drummer might have of producing a reveillé on an unbraced drum. We must live in hope.

Lord Holland, we think, might, as the sailors say, "loom out large." The life of that ancient Whig having been chiefly employed in telling other men's stories over his own table—and much better employed, too, than in talking his original follies in public—a tolerable selection from his journals might furnish some variety; for when Whigs are cased up no longer in the stiff braces and battered armour of their clique, they may occasionally be amusing men. But Walpole still reigns: his whims, his flirtings, his frivolities will disappear with his old china and trifling antiquities; but his best letters will always be the best of their kind among men.

George Selwyn was a man of fashionable life for the greater part of the last century, or perhaps we may more justly say, he was a man of fashionable life for the seventy-two years of his existence; for, from his cradle, he lived among that higher order of mankind who were entitled to do nothing, to enjoy themselves, and alternately laugh at, and look down upon the rest of the world. His family were opulent, and naturally associated with rank; for his father had been aide-de-camp to the Duke of Marlborough—a great distinction even in that brilliant age; and his mother was the daughter of a general officer, and woman of the bedchamber to Queen Caroline. She is recorded as a woman of talents, and peculiarly of wit; qualities which seem frequently connected with long life, perhaps as bearing some relation to that good-humour which undoubtedly tends to lengthen the days of both man and woman. If the theory be true, that the intellect of the offspring depends upon the mother, the remarkable wit of George Selwyn may be adduced in evidence of the position.

George, born in 1719, was sent, like the sons of all the court gentlemen of his age and of our own, to Eton. After having there acquired classics, aristocracy, and cricket, all consummated at Oxford, he proceeded to go through the last performance of fashionable education, and give himself the final polish for St James's; he proceeded to make the tour of Europe. What induced him to recommence his boyhood, by returning to Oxford at the ripe age of twenty-five, is among the secrets of his career, as also is the occasion of his being expelled from the university; if that occasion is not to be found in some of the burlesques of religion which he had learned amongst the fashionable infidels of the Continent, similar to those enacted by Wilkes in his infamous monkery. But every thing in his career equally exhibits the times. At an age when he was fit for nothing else, he was considered fit to receive the salary of a sinecure; and, at twenty-one, he was appointed to a brace of offices at the mint. His share of the duty consisted of his enjoying the weekly dinners of the establishment, and signing the receipts for his quarter's pay.

Within a few years more, he came into parliament; and in his thirty-second year, by the death of his father and elder brother, he succeeded to the family estates, consisting of three handsome possessions, one of which had the additional value of returning a member of parliament. Nor was this all; for his influence in Gloucestershire enabled him to secure, during many years, his own seat for Gloucester, thus rendering his borough disposable; and thus, master of a hereditary fortune, an easy sinecurist, the possessor of two votes, and the influencer of the third—a man of family, a man of connexion, and a man of the court—George Selwyn began a path strewed with down and rose leaves.

In addition to these advantages, George Selwyn evidently possessed a very remarkable subtlety and pleasantry of understanding; that combination which alone produced true wit, or which, perhaps, would be the best definition of wit itself; for subtlety alone may excite uneasy sensations in the hearer, and pleasantry alone may often be vulgar. But the acuteness which detects the absurd of things, and the pleasantry which throws a good-humoured coloring over the acuteness, form all that delights us in wit.

If we are to judge by the opinion of his contemporaries, and this is the true criterion after all, Selwyn's wit must have been of the very first order in a witty age. Walpole is full of him. Walpole himself, a wit, and infinitely jealous of every rival in every thing on which he fastened his fame, from a picture gallery down to a snuff-box, or from a history down to an epigram, bows down to him with almost Persian idolatry. His letters are alive with George Selwyn. The bons-mots which Selwyn carelessly dropped in his morning wall through St James's Street, are carefully picked up by Walpole, and planted in his correspondence, like exotics in a greenhouse. The careless brilliancies of conversation, which the one threw loose about the club-rooms of the Court End, are collected by the other and reset by this dexterous jeweller, for the sparklings and ornaments of his stock in trade with posterity.

Yet it may reconcile those less gifted by nature and fortune to their mediocrity; to know that those singular advantages by no means constitute happiness, usefulness, moral dignity, or even public respect. Selwyn, as the French Abbé said, "had nothing to do, and he did it." His possession of fortune enabled him to be a lounger through life, and he lounged accordingly. The conversations of the clubs supplied him with the daily toys of his mind, and he never sought more substantial employment. Though nearly fifty years in parliament, he was known only as a silent voter; and, after a life of seventy-two years, he died, leaving three and twenty thousand pounds of his savings to a girl who was not his daughter; and the chief part of his estates to the Duke of Queensberry, an old man already plethoric with wealth, of which he had never known the use, and already dying.

His passion for attending executions was notorious and unaccountable, except on the ground of that love of excitement which leads others to drinking or the gaming-table. Those sights, from which human nature shrinks, appear to have been sought for by Selwyn with an eagerness resembling enjoyment. This strange propensity was frequently laughed at by his friends. Alluding to the practice of criminals dropping a handkerchief as a signal for the executioner, says Walpole, "George never thinks, but à la tête tranchée. He came to town the other day to have a tooth drawn, and told the man that he would drop his handkerchief for the signal."

Another characteristic anecdote is told on this subject. When the first Lord Holland, a man of habitual pleasantry, was confined to his bed, he heard that Selwyn, who had been an old friend, had called to enquire for his health. "The next time Mr Selwyn calls," said he, "show him up; if I am alive, I shall be delighted to see him; and, if I am dead, he will be delighted to see me."

Walpole says, after telling a story of one Arthur Moore, "I told this the other day to George Selwyn, whose passion is to see corpses and executions. He replied, 'that Arthur Moore had his coffin chained to that of his mistress.'

"Said I, 'How do you know?'

"'Why, I—I saw them the other day in a vault in St Giles's.'

"George was walking this week in Westminster Abbey, with Lord Abergavenny, and met the man who shows the tombs. 'Oh, your servant, Mr Selwyn; I expected to have seen you here the other day, when the old Duke of Richmond's body was taken up.'" Walpole then mentions Selwyn's going to see Cornberry, with Lord Abergavenny and a pretty Mrs Frere, who were in some degree attached to each other.

"Do you know what you missed in the other room?" said Selwyn to the lady. "Lord Holland's picture."

"Well, what is Lord Holland to me?"

"Why, do you know," said he, "my Lord Holland's body lies in the same vault, in Kensington church, with my Lord Abergavenny's mother."

Walpole, speaking of the share which he had in capturing a house-breaker, says, "I dispatched a courier to White's in search of George Selwyn. It happened that the drawer who received my message had very lately been robbed himself, and had the wound fresh in his memory. He stalked up into the club-room, and with a hollow trembling voice, said, 'Mr Selwyn, Mr Walpole's compliments to you, and he has got a house-breaker for you.'"

But some of his practical pleasantries were very amusing. Lady Townshend, a woman of wit, but, in some points of character, a good deal scandalized, was supposed to have taken refuge from her recollections in Popery. "On Sunday last," says Walpole, "as George was strolling home to dinner, he saw my Lady Townshend's coach stop at Caraccioli's chapel. He watched; saw her go in; her footman laughed; he followed. She went up to the altar; a woman brought her a cushion; she knelt, crossed her self, and prayed. He stole up, and knelt by her. Conceive her face, if you can, when she turned and found him close to her. In his demure voice, he said, 'Pray, ma'am, how long has your ladyship left the pale of our church?' She looked furies, and made no answer. Next day he went to see her, and she turned it off upon curiosity. But is any thing more natural? No; she certainly means to go armed with every viaticum: the Church of England in on hand, Methodism in the other, and the Host in her mouth."

Every one knows that bons-mots are apt to lose a great deal by transmission. It has been said that the time is one-half of the merit, and the manner the other; thus leaving nothing for the wit. But the fact is, that the wit so often depends upon both, as to leave the best bon-mot comparatively flat in the recital. With this palliative we may proceed. Walpole, remarking to Selwyn one day, at a time of considerable popular discontent, that the measures of government were as feeble and confused as in the reign of the first Georges, and saying, "There is nothing new under the sun." "No," replied Selwyn, "nor under the grandson."

Selwyn one day observing Wilkes, who was constantly verging on libel, listening attentively to the king's speech, said to him, "May Heaven preserve the ears you lend!" an allusion to the lines of the Dunciad—

"Yet, oh, my sons, a father's words attend;
So may the fates preserve the ears you lend."

The next is better. A man named Charles Fox having been executed, the celebrated Charles asked Selwyn whether he had been present at the execution as usual. "No," was the keen reply, "I make a point of never attending rehearsals."

Fox and General Fitzpatrick at one time lodged in the house of Mackay, an oilman in Piccadilly, a singular residence for two men of the first fashion. Somebody, probably in allusion to their debts, observed that such lodgers would be the ruin of Mackay. "No," said Selwyn, "it will make his fortune. He may boast of having the first pickles in London."

Nonchalant manners were the tone of the time; and to cut one's country acquaintance (a habit learned among the French noblesse) was high breeding. An old haunter of the pump-room in Bath, who had frequently conversed with Selwyn in his visits there, meeting him one day in St James's Street, attempted to approach him with his usual familiarity. Selwyn passed him as if he had never seen him before. His old acquaintance followed him, and said, "Sir, you knew me very well in Bath." "Well, sir," replied Selwyn, "in Bath I may possibly know you again," and walked on.

When High Life Below Stairs was announced, Selwyn expressed a wish to be present at its first night. "I shall go," said he, "because I am tired of low life above stairs."

One of the waiters at Arthur's had committed a felony, and was sent to jail. "I am shocked at the committal," said Selwyn; "what a horrid idea the fellow will give of us to the people in Newgate."

Bruce's Abyssinian stories were for a long time the laugh of London. Somebody at a dinner once asked him, whether he had seen any relics of musical instruments among the Abyssinians, or any thing in the style of the ancient sculptures of the Thebaid. "I think I saw one lyre there," was the answer. "Ay," says Selwyn to his neighbour, "and that one left the country along with him."

Selwyn did not always spare his friends. When Fox's pecuniary affairs were in a state of ruin, and a subscription was proposed; one of the subscribers said that their chief difficulty was to know "how Fox would take it." Selwyn, who knew that necessity has nothing to do with delicacies of this order, replied, "Take it, why, quarterly to be sure!"

5. 5 George Selwyn and his Contemporaries, with Memoirs and Notes. By T.H. Jesse. 4 vols.

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Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844

HIGH LIFE IN THE LAST CENTURY. 5

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HIGH LIFE IN THE LAST CENTURY. ⁵