Chapter VII: Front Matter (7)

Before the fashion of maxim-making went out, the fashion of portrait-making came in: every body wrote every body’s portrait. Two of the best portraits extant are those of Cardinal de Retz, by his old enemy and late friend, the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, and that of Madame de Sévigné, by Madame de la Fayette. “_La grande princesse_,” Mademoiselle de Montpensier, in her coarse, vulgar, but natural way, has given a number of cotemporary portraits, through her amusing memoirs. All her sketches of Charles II., in his youthful days, when he was paying his addresses to her, are admirable; though very unlike the frank, generous, and devoted cavalier who figures as the royal hero in one of Sir W. Scott’s novels. His utter ignorance of his own affairs—his passion for dogs and horses, and his spending all his time in learning to dance the _triolet_[60]—which, with his declining a dish of ortolans, and throwing himself on a piece of beef and a shoulder of mutton,[61] finally decided her to refuse him—are admirable touches both of character and manner, and make up a more faithful portrait of the worthless, profligate, and “mutton-eating king,” than any on record. The reason is, that it was drawn from the life, without any reference to party or posterity.

In the reign of the Regent Orleans, a work, called _Galerie des Peintres_, collected all the “portraits” of the time, without any mercy to the originals, and consequently had a considerable vogue. One of the prettiest and best-natured works of this description I know, is still, I believe, in MS. It is by the celebrated Madame Albrizzi, of Venice, whose acquaintance I had the pleasure of making at Padua, and who speaks in pictures, and may well write them—a charming and rare art! The Albrizzi Gallery is enriched with the most eminent characters of the last half century. Her friend, and once devoted admirer, Denon, has found a conspicuous place in it, _bien encadré_. He, in return, has engraved a picture of Madame Albrizzi, extremely like, and worthy of its fair model. He sent me a copy, a few weeks before his death, with one of his own.

Lady C. L—— was accused of painting the portrait of Lord Byron in Glenarvon, though not _en beau_. One day, at a dinner party at Copet, Madame de Staël, addressing Lord Byron across the table, asked, in her _sans façon_ way, “Is it true, my lord, that you are the original of Glenarvon?” “It may be so,” he replied, “but I never sat for it.”

Every body, who writes novels, now labours under the imputation of putting forth their friends and enemies “in their books.” No “kindred or propinquity” excludes the suspicion. No one is thus accused more than I am; and no one is more innocent of the charge. Except in the instances of a few public characters, which are fair game, all my sketches have been of the species or genus, and never of the individual. Still I think I could draw a character from the life, if I should set about it. _Voyons_—“My dear friend Mrs. —— is one of those who—” But no; I’ll keep my dear friend as sportsmen keep bag foxes; to let her loose on a future and more favourable occasion for shewing sport.

HUMAN ANIMALITY.

“His intellect is not replenished—he is only an animal, only
sensible in the duller parts.”

SHAKSPEARE.

The chances of my visiting list brought to my boudoir this morning two such pretty creatures, male and female, so brilliant and so bird-like, that I thought they had escaped from a group of tropical specimens that stood in a corner of the room, and which they very much resembled. There was the bill, and the beak, and the bright plumage, and elegant form; and not one sound of melody in their discordant voices—not one idea in their vacant heads: and so they chirped, and chattered, without ceasing, with all the emulative noise and volubility of bores and birds. They had neither of them met before; and, mutually excited and mutually pleased, they so ruffled and fluttered their feathers at each other, that I really longed to catch both, to shut them up together in the same cage, and add them to my collection of curiosities, natural, and unnatural.

These two creatures can never have any conduct, for they are evidently and organically deficient in their judgment; those bird-shaped heads, with their disproportioned beaks, and falling-in of the lower part of the facial structure, always produce self willed folly—the obstinacy which arises from the inability to receive an impression. One of my pretty visitors has recently and strongly evinced this species of imperturbability. Persons who resemble brute animals, are generally deficient in intellect. Men who have the low shallow forehead of the bull-dog will prefer Mendoza to Coke upon Littleton; and send them as you may to the bar or to the pulpit, they will live and die prize-fighters—if not in the ring at Hockley, at least in the circle of their friends and acquaintance, to whom their pugnacity will be a perpetual annoyance.

Men who resemble monkeys (and I know several who do), who have small close meeting eyes, are generally rogues, or at least extremely cunning; but it is the cunning which is without wisdom—precisely the species of intelligence ascribed to the amusing animal they resemble. Men, who resemble horses, may succeed by force of volition in particular careers, where will is more requisite, than development of intellect; but the horse-faced gentleman could never truly answer in the affirmative to poor Maturin’s habitual question, on a first introduction—“_Are you intellectual?_”

I believe it is an allowed fact in physics, that the extreme facial development, which goes to the physiognomy of our horse-faced friends, is always at the expense of the brain; for the horse is a most stupid animal, thorough-breed him as you may. Confide in your dog, your cat, your mule, your ass, (a most misrepresented animal, by the by,) but beware of your horse! Train, break, educate, and harness him, he is never to be trusted. If I had the task allotted me of selecting those to whom the destiny of a nation was to be committed, I should never choose men who bore an obvious resemblance to any of the race of brute animals: they must be morally defective somehow or other. The head of a bird is not only a moral defect, but a positive animal deformity. A horse’s head is not a deformity, but it is evidently a very inferior organization. Before the representatives of the people are chosen by the people, who themselves have been likened, by a great statesman and philosopher, to pigs, and called a swinish multitude, I would have them examined by the suffrages of a committee of eminent physiologists, anatomists, physicians, and surgeons.

Well, all this may be nonsense; but it is _my sense_: _tale, quale_, I give it as I have it. “A homely thing, Sir, but a thing of my own,” as Touchstone says; and so, there it is!

MY REVIEWERS.

“Tout ce qui s’attache à la peau des malheureux gens de
lettres.”

FIGARO.

There is nothing so droll as the way in which reviews are sometimes got up—the manner in which “the charge is prepared,” and sentence of death pronounced, by the awful “we’s,” against poor authors, like myself, who have had their little success, not only without the “metaphysical aid” of reviewers, but in absolute defiance of their fulminations.

The review of “Salvator Rosa” was perpetrated after this fashion. The great well-known of a great review, in distributing work to the little unknowns who write under him, transmitted a copy of mine to be cut up by a certain cockney liberal, the Lycurgus of Bow-bells, and the Solon of the Poultry. The book, thus marked for cutting by the top-sawyer, fell into the hands of one who mentioned it to the author. _Pardi!_ it was “cut and come again!”—all scored, underlined, and marginally-noted with square and rule canons of criticism—as a guide to the London journeyman, who knew as much of “Salvator” and the arts, as he did of the interior of Devonshire-house or the Vatican. But no matter: “_puis donc qu’il suffisoit en ce tems-là d’avoir la figure d’homme pour se mêler de critiquer_”—he applied himself to the job, and a long, inflated, bitter article was done, as per order, full of mis-statements and misrepresentations; when “one sad doubt arose,” of a much less conclusive tendency than that of Parnell’s “Hermit,” but on a point of more immediate personal interest. The reviewer, _à commandement_, was not only a journeyman sawyer of the great Edinburgh pit, but he was also on Mr. Colburn’s list of “my authors;” and as the authoress of “Salvator” was the queen-bee of that gentleman’s authorical hive, there was no knowing how the matter might be taken, or how far it might offend Mr. Colburn to attack his queen-bee, and stop the sale of a work upon which he had expended a considerable price. To set his mind at ease, then, the _exécuteur des hautes œuvres_ of the literary justiciary of Edinburgh took his review to New Burlington-street, for inspection: but, just as he was in the act of shewing his MS., the subject of its vituperations was announced; who, having _les petites entrées_ of the publisher’s study, followed the servant sufficiently closely, to catch a glimpse of the long leg and _ci-devant_ white stocking of the reviewer, in his escape by another door.

“Who have I frightened away?” asked “the lively little lady,” as the Quarterly calls her, when it does not call her an “odious worm!”

“Only the reviewer of ‘Salvator Rosa’ in the forthcoming Edinburgh,” replied the bibliopolist.

“And what does he say?”

“Why, it is, on the whole, rather bitter—it is indeed!”

“May I look at it? for there it lies, I know upon instinct.”

“I think you had better not. Besides, it is a point of honour—indeed it is out of the question.”

“Oh! honour among thieves! Will you let him publish it? for I take it for granted he is one of your Johnny Raws.”

“Why, indeed—that is, I do not think it can do any harm. The attack on ‘France’ sold two editions, you know.”

“Oh! if it is to serve _your_ sale, _laissez faire_!”

“The book has already done its business; but if your ladyship object—”

“I! Oh dear, no; let the man earn his money. By the by, who is he?”

“Who is he? Oh, I cannot—that is—upon my honour, I cannot tell you. Clever man, though—a popular author—he is indeed!”

“You won’t tell me his name?”

“I cannot, indeed—it is quite out of the question, Lady M——.”

“Well, I’ll tell you!”

_Le fermier de mon talent_ opened his eyes! “Indeed, Lady M——, you cannot even guess who it is. Besides, you really—that is, I should not tell you, if you did.”

“It is Mr. ——!” and I announced the name of my Zoilus.

“Dear me!—well, now, really, you are so odd; but you are mistaken—you are, indeed!”

I was not mistaken; nor do I know any just cause or impediment why I should not denounce my critical executioner, who has shewn me so little mercy, so little justice! There is something so revolting in hired misrepresentation—something so mutually degrading, in a task thus given, and thus performed—it belongs so peculiarly to the _canaille_ of literature, who stab for pay, like bolder (and honester) assassins, that the soul sickens when talent, and supposed liberality, desert the standard of independent opinion, to enlist in the _bande noire_ of organized vituperators, or enrol in the troop of well paid puffers and party panegyrists! It is, therefore, perhaps, for the interests of literature and morality that an exposure of such literary _girouettism_ should be made; and yet I cannot seriously denounce even a public enemy. Though I may have “stirred up with a long pole”[62] the deathless vengeance of the Literary Gazette, or have _rompu la paille_ with the higher powers of the Quarterly, in return for the seven deadly sins, for which they have excommunicated me in their Index Expurgatorius, still I have always rather fenced with my foes in fun, than sparred with them in spite—I have never been the first to announce, nor denounce, the names of the calumniators who have endeavoured to blacken and to slander mine; and even now, leaving my Bow-bell Reviewer to public detection, as I have done others of my critical assailants, whom I have trotted out for public amusement (nor failed in the intention,) I thus give my wrongs to the wind, and his name, in a whisper, to the safe ears of our mutual publisher. For his article on Salvator, I leave it untouched and unanswered, to mark an epoch of _décadence_ in that great periodical, which, in the better energy of its pristine vigour, was wont to consecrate its severity by the general justice of its attacks, and the brilliant talent with which they were executed.

And now, instead of gratifying my revenge, I will do what is so much more gracious, and so much more consonant to my sex, character, and country—I will gratify my vanity, by recording the opinion of one on the subject of Salvator Rosa, in every way qualified to judge of all in which the arts are concerned; of one who has, in his own exquisite works, left proofs of a finer tact in literature, than all the critical acumen from Aristotle to the Aristarchus of Modern Athens included—I mean the author of Egypt, the _Directeur du Musée Français_, the Baron Denon. I have the less scruple in recording the opinions of this illustrious writer and artist, on the subject of my Life of Salvator, because it is the very reverse of indiscriminate approbation.

Salvator Rosa, considered as the rival of Poussin, (“the god” of Denon’s idolatry,) was not viewed with any favourable prepossession by the proud compatriot of “the Poet of Painters:” for Denon, though long standing at the head of the cognoscenti of Europe, and revered as their Coryphæus, had the heroic weakness of nationality, the foible of the patriotic; and the comparative merits of the two great cotemporaries of THE PINCIO were too often brought in contrast by the _Romanticists_ of the day, not to embitter a little the feelings of the elegant classicist, whose love of the arts, as they existed in the antique world, was confirmed among the ruins of Rome, and in the gallery of the capitol, where, both as a minister and an exile, the deepest of his impressions were taken, and the happiest of his days passed.

_Au reste_—to account for the rather odd appellations of “_Drôle de corps_,” and “_Vol au vent_,” used in these letters, they were mutually given and accepted in the gaiety and intimacy of a friendship, by which I was so much and so long distinguished—the mutual _sobriquets_ passed into our correspondence, which continued till within a few weeks of his death. It is from that correspondence, that I now, for the benefit of the arts, and the gratification of their lovers, as much as in my own defence against an unjust, misrepresenting, and hired criticism, select and transcribe two letters[63] on the subject of my publication of the “Life and Times of Salvator Rosa.”

“_To Lady Morgan, Dublin._

“MON CHER DRÔLE DE CORPS,

“Je viens d’apprendre que la traduction de Salvator Rosa
paroissoit depuis quelques jours. Le premier qui m’en a parlé,
est Monsieur de Ségur,[64] qui m’a dit, qu’il l’avoit dévoré;
que non seulement c’étoit un ouvrage charmant, mais qu’il
étoit d’un mérit très-distingué. D’autres m’en ont parlé avec
enthousiasme. Ces rapports m’ont fait sentir combien je vous
aime; car j’étois tenté de remercier ces messieurs du plaisir
qu’ils avoient eu. J’ai vite envoyé chercher l’ouvrage; et je
vais tâcher de lire avec reflexion, avant de vous en parler.

“J’espère que vous allez de suite vous mettre à écrire le roman
de Drôle de corps et de Vol au vent. N’attendez pas pour le
dénouement, que vous mourriez de douleur de la perte que vous
viendrez à faire de moi. Je crois qu’il vaut mieux que je vous
enlève, que le chevalier furieux cherche nos traces, pour nous
poignarder, et se tuer après, et que nous nous perdions tous
trois dans le désert de Zara. En attendant, je vous envoye mon
portrait, qu’il faut tâcher de dérober à la jalouse fureur du
Chevalier, qui aura, sans doute, anéanti une autre épreuve, que
je vous avois envoyé, et dont vous ne me parlez pas. Dites-lui,
cependant quelques tendresses; car malgré les horreurs qu’il
doit faire dans le roman, je me sens pour lui un sentiment que
je ne saurois définir.

“Notre pauvre Mad. —— est véritablement malade depuis six
mois, et cependant n’est pas changée. Elle veut vous écrire:
mais si je voulois l’attendre, peut-être ma lettre ne vous
arriveroit-elle jamais.

“Monsieur E. vous remettra une notice que je viens de faire,
dont il n’y a que cinquante épreuves, pour lui donner de
la préciosité. Un petit portrait improvisé par le meilleur
lithographe, auquel j’ai ajouté celui du dit lithographe nommé
Mauresse, et ma portière,—celle qui vous introduisoit, à qui
j’avois défendu de dormir, pendant que vous étiez ici, et qui
se repose après votre départ.

“Vous ne savez peut-être pas, cher Drôle de corps, que votre
Vol au vent a eu l’honneur d’être admis comme membre de votre
académie de Dublin. Je joins ici une lettre de remercîmens à
l’académie, que je vous prie de remettre à Mr. le Président;
je vous prie aussi de renouveler à Monsieur Davis (qui a bien
voulu me donner la première nouvelle de mon admission) toutes
mes actions de grâce. Je lui ai déjà écrit; mais il est fort
possible qu’il n’ait pas reçu ma lettre, attendu que tout ce
que j’écris en Angleterre et en Irlande est régulièrement
retenu;—sans doute, pour le faire imprimer, lorsqu’il y en aura
assez pour former un volume.

“Je vous dirai que votre portrait m’a fait grand plaisir,
quoique le nez soit trop gros. Mais il est gravé avec finesse
et délicatesse; et l’aspect général m’est agréable.

“Je suis bien de votre avis relativement à nos compatriotes.
Cependant il y en a peut-être encore jusqu’à quatre qu’il faut
distinguer de la tourbe regnante.

“Adieu, cher Drôle de corps; je vous aime bien, et suis bien
aise de vous aimer.

“Votre Vol au vent,

“DENON.”

“_Le 19 Mars, 1824._”

“Voici un petit portrait de Salvator Rosa, qu’autrefois j’ai
gravé à la hâte; je vous en envoyerai un autre, sur une boîte,
par la première occasion.”

“_To Lady Morgan, Dublin._

“CHER DRÔLE DE CORPS,

“Je lis avec un plaisir extrême votre Salvator Rosa.
L’introduction est une superbe chose. Ensuite il faut que
vous me permettrez de vous observer, que vous prenez trop
parti dans la guerre des artistes. S. Rosa avoit bec et ongles
pour se défendre, et il en usoit même la plus part du temps
offensivement; c’étoit un habile homme, mais fort mauvais
coucheur. On pouvoit l’admirer, se plaire avec lui; mais il
devoit être très-difficile de l’aimer. Vous le peignez comme
libéral, et vous le laissez voir plus que glorieux, farouche,
fastueux, hautain, despote s’il avoit pu: furieux pendant
toute sa vie d’être regardé comme un peintre de genre, tandis
qu’il n’auroit été que cela, si dans les dernières années de
sa vie, il ne se fut avisé de faire quatre ou cinq tableaux
d’histoire. Après cela, mon cher Drôle de corps, vous l’avez
trop loué comme graveur. Dans ces planches il a écrit ses
compositions, la fougue de ses pensées; mais sa pointe est
lâche et vagabonde: et dans ce genre, il à été ni dessinateur
ni coloriste. Enfin je vais peut-être vous faire sauter en
l’air, quand je vous dirai que la moindre graveur de Rembrandt
est préférable à la plus belle de Salvator Rosa. Du reste,
cher Drôle de corps, vous avez atteint le but principal de
votre ouvrage, qui est de faire connoître le siècle, que vous
avez peint jusqu’à l’illusion, tellement qu’en le lisant je me
croyois de la société de tous ces gens-là.

“Quand vous ferez une seconde édition, souvenez-vous, chère
amie, de mieux traiter le portrait du Poussin, qui étoit
aussi modeste qu’il étoit grand. A la vérité, il ne savoit ni
chanter, ni jouer de farces dans la rue, mais comme peintre
d’histoire, votre enragé petit maître n’est qu’un nain près
de ce Colosse. Quand on vent louer ses amis, il faut bien
se garder de certains rapprochements, et de réveiller des
comparaisons qu’ils ne peuvent soutenir. Songez que le Poussin
fut le créateur du paysage historique, et le maître de son
gendre le Gouaspe; et que les seuls tableaux du Déluge, et
Diogène brisant la tasse, surpassent tout ce que le Salvator
Rosa a fait en paysage, pour la pensée, pour la poësie, et
même pour la couleur. Quant à la composition, à la gravité,
et à la philosophie de l’histoire, le Poussin est peut-être
le premier de tous les peintres. Il faut donc vous dire, mon
cher Drôle de corps, que dans la promenade des deux sociétés
qui se rencontrent, j’étois dans celle de Poussin; et que vous
m’offensez en tournant en ridicule mon patron, et ma juste
admiration pour lui.

“_Fidatevi di me_, qui vous parle de sang froid comme ami,
charmé que vous ayez fait un ouvrage qui vous fera à tout
jamais beaucoup d’honneur, et que j’ai lu avec cet intérêt, qui
rende le succès de l’amitié si doux à partager.

“Mille tendres amitiés bien sincères.”

“_Le 14 Avril._”

EXCLAMATIONS.

Cold-blooded nations deal but little in exclamations; they belong to the petulance of strong impulses, and to ardent temperaments, national and individual. The Laplanders neither invoke, exclaim, nor imprecate; the French and Italians are continually doing all three. Quakers, whose education teaches them to “set a pulse and preach their blood to reason,” scarcely ever resort to exclamations, to express their feelings. The English are not exclaimers; their forms for this purpose are few and foolish; and when they go beyond the _niaiserie_ of “dear me!” “bless me!” “my stars!” they fall into downright imprecation. The Irish, the petulant Irish, are great exclaimers. Like the Italians, they borrow their exclamations from their creed; and when under strong excitement, pronounce in piety, that which, to the Calvinistical severity of English protestant ears, would sound very like profanation!

The Italians borrow their exclamations alike from their religion and the antique faith of their great progenitors; and Per Bacco! Cospetto! “Jehovah, Jove, or Lord,” come with equal and frequent facility to their lips. They invoke, exclaim, and apostrophise, upon all occasions, trivial or important. A fishwoman in the piazza of the Pantheon, will resort to every vow and invocation of the ancient or modern faith of Rome, to dispose of her stale fish on the evening of a fast day; and will express her surprise or indignation at an undervaluing chapman, who rejects her eels, or resists her turbot, by a volley of “_Madonna Mia’s!_” “_Sacro Sacramento’s_,” and “_Madre di Dio’s!_” The French have a number of charming exclamations and apostrophes; they have also many that are quaint and simple, and extremely effective in low comedy. Molière abounds in them; and the humour and the à propos of his _ouf!_ and _ouais!_ is quite indefinable. Denon and I got into the habit of ouf-ing and ouais-ing at each other, until, with me, it became a _tic_, putting my native Irish “ahs!” and “ochs!” in abeyance; and it is as much as I can do to resist my interjectory oufs! and ouais! even on paper, and in the regular way of professed authorship!

IRISH JUDGES.

It is extremely difficult to get the Irish to be grave upon grave subjects. With a few exceptions in favour of absolute dulness and mediocrity, all our judges are _drôles de corps_, and the highest the drollest of any. What was Joe Miller to Judge Norbury, who kept the bar in a roar for nearly half a century, and rarely passed sentence of death without making some of his auditors die laughing?

“Here is a fellow, my lord,” (said an attorney, the other day, to one of our legal chiefs,) “accused of stealing turnips; under what act can he be attacked?”

“I really don’t know,” said the judge, without taking his eyes from the paper on which he was writing.

“You don’t know, my lord?”

“No, not immediately, Mr. ——.”

“What does your lordship think of the _timber_ act?”

“Probably—that is, if the turnips were _sticky_!”

AT THE HEAD OF HIS PROFESSION.

Doctor ——, now so celebrated and so wealthy, served a hard probation to success. I knew him in his obscurity, and thought him then a better and an abler man, than I think him now. I saw him struggling, through all the hopeless drudgery of his profession, up to his present eminence: haunting hospitals, and bowing to Nurse Tenders. For years, he read, wrote, and lectured, and did every thing but get on—still he laughed, and talked, and was agreeable: at last he looked solemn, wore black silk stockings and creaking shoes, walked on tip-toe, and turned methodist: his success was rapid and complete; and he is now what is called—_at the head of his profession!_—“_Le savoir faire vaut bien le savoir!_”

THE CHARITABLE BAZAARS OF DUBLIN.

It has been said by a classic authority, that force without judgment is overthrown by its own impetus; and the proposition is equally true of virtue. To do good to mankind is less facile than moralists suppose. It requires something more than a mere animal impulse; and there is much ground for doubting whether the world (at least the British world) does not suffer more from the impertinent interference of mistaken benevolence, than from the direct attacks of selfishness and malice on its order and happiness. Charity, more especially, (though, in a well ordered state, a duty whose exercise is limited within a narrow and comprehensible sphere,) becomes, under a government replete with abuses and fertile in factitious misery, a science requiring as much patient research, and as large a grasp of intellect, as any other department of politics. To be charitable on an extensive scale, is to legislate for the poor; and man, in his domestic capacity, (whatever may be thought of him as a citizen or a subject) is an animal made to think and to act for himself.

In the British empire, where every class of society is more or less dislocated, where the rewards of industry are subject to frequent revolutions, and where life is sustained by the most painful efforts, errors in the direction or energy of the charitable are doubly fatal. They are not only a waste of the scanty and insufficient resources of the multitudinous poor, a destruction of so much of the materials of happiness, but they are a direct and positive evil, deranging the economy of the lower orders, harassing them by needless and galling dictation, and destroying in their bosoms the principle of independence, without which there can be no virtue.

An high estimate of pecuniary charity in the scale of virtues is the result of incivilization, and a testimony of the barbarity of the governments where it prevails. Where the people are well governed and prosperous, the field for the exercise of this virtue is necessarily limited; but wherever great and terrible inequalities in human condition subsist, charity is a necessary supplement to the defective institutions, out of which they arise. In the christian world, where pecuniary liberality is dignified as a theological virtue, charity stands in the place of many more serviceable and important duties; and much of that energy which should be given to the improvement of the political and statistic condition of the country, is wasted in a vain attempt to bolster up bad systems, and to avert by eleemosynary efforts the miseries and vices accumulated by misrule. The high and influential classes are especially prone to fall into this error. Too moral and too religious to be satisfied with the wretchedness by which they are surrounded, yet too selfish, perverse, or indolent to attempt a thorough removal of its causes, they satisfy their consciences by attempting to relieve in detail the sufferings, which their privileges and pretensions produce in the gross; and when they have bestowed a small per centage of their overgrown fortunes upon the wretches whom their monopoly of power has impoverished and wronged, they flatter themselves that they have done all which human sympathy or divine injunction requires at their hands.

This description of charity has been well described by a popular writer, as “other-worldly-mindedness;” and no where is it more sensitive and alive than among the aristocracy of Ireland,—a country where mendicity is national, and where religious Quixotism is carried to the fever point of exaltation and excess. Unfortunately this fiery and rampant zeal is utterly deficient in knowledge; and there is more waste of money in the city of Dublin, more direct provocation of misery by ill-contrived attempts to relieve distress, more misdirected energy, than would, if properly applied, remove, ten times over, all the pauperism of a wholesomely constituted society of the same bulk.

In a country so teeming with an unemployed population as Ireland, it certainly is not an easy matter to give a proper direction to public feeling, and to avoid falling into dangerous errors; and though it is necessary to signalize the more flagrant and mischievous abuses, and to ridicule an all pervading folly, by which society suffers so deeply, yet it must be confessed that the individuals who come under the lash are not without some excuse. If their presumption and self-conceit are absurd and baneful, their intentions at least are often the purest and the best.

The sphere of charity, its productive power of good, being closely confined to the relief of those fortuitous evils to which the lower classes must ever be exposed, even in the best regulated societies, the moment it is applied to large categories of persons, as a remedy for permanent abuses, it becomes an unmanageable and equivocal agent of happiness, interfering with independent labour, disturbing its market, and rendering occupation precarious, and its reward fluctuating. The means which a nation possesses of employing its population are definite; and charity, in giving them a new direction, does not increase the sum: on the contrary, in as far as the process is forced and unnatural, it tends to diminish that sum by waste and mismanagement. Most of the charitable efforts which daily succeed each other for the employing the poor of Ireland, are but the pouring money out of one pocket, to place it in another; and if certain individuals are put to work in a new direction by the process, an equal number are inevitably thrown out of employment in some unobserved department.

This evil attaches with particular severity and mischievous effect to those associations of good and pious ladies, who either work themselves for the benefit of the poor, or find employment for them in charitable asylums, where they are enabled to under-sell and drive out of the market all competitors who are thrown upon their own resources. The money which is collected by the sale of needle and fancy work thus performed, is a direct robbery of the sempstresses, who, in garrets and in cellars, strive to exist by unwearied labour. The cheap repositories that vend articles of taste, fabricated in Magdalen asylums and receptacles for the destitute, not only severely injure the shopkeeper, who pays rent and taxes for the service of the public, but, through him, strikes despair into the bosom of a large class of helpless females, who avail themselves of accomplishments, acquired in happier circumstances, to support themselves in independence, by the only means which the perverse exclusion of women from their natural employments has left open to them. It is no justification of such establishments, that they sell only inutilities, calculated to catch a certain portion of loose cash, which otherwise would be lost to benevolence. The manufacture of inutilities, no less than that of articles of prime necessity, is the property of the working poor,—a property with which the public cannot tamper, without producing a certain evil, that is never compensated by the uncertain and delusive good expected from the process.

Among the many idle, delusive, and extravagant amusements, invented by that model of Grand Caliphs, Louis the XIVth, not the least remarkable were the shops opened in the saloons of Versailles, and kept by the king’s mistresses, or the princesses of the blood, attended by cavaliers, who, though officiating as shop-boys, were chosen according to their rank and office. In these magazines, toys, trinkets, and jewels of immense value, were distributed at counters, attended by the greatest beauties and most distinguished personages at the court; and if the cupidity of the courtiers found its account in this prodigality, coquetry lost nothing by the assumption of a character which added the _naïveté_ of the _bonne bourgeoisie_ to the graces of dignity and refinement. Madame de Maintenon dwells with emphasis on the fascinations of these illustrious shopkeepers, and the elegance which presided over their counters.

The bazaars, called charitable, which, for some successive seasons have been opened in Dublin, have in their details been modelled somewhat after the manner of these _comptoirs_ of Versailles. The market is generally held in some very public place; either at the Rotunda, (a room consecrated to all public purposes,) or in an hotel or tavern. The stalls are raised on either side; the shops are kept by ladies of the highest rank in the Irish world of fashion and charity. The work disposed of is their own; their customers are the public at large, who are admitted on paying a shilling. The profits of the sale, of course, go to charity, sometimes at home—too often foreign,—the conversion of Jews, or the gathering of the stray sheep of Otaheite or Hindostan. The articles produced to extort the benevolence of the customer, address themselves rather to his charity than to his taste. They are multifarious; and if variety could compensate for want of ingenuity and of skill, there would be nothing to wish for in the bazaars of the charitable ladies of Dublin:—worsted stockings, to fit Irish giants,—bead purses, threaded by fairy fingers,—frizettes for the head, woven of horse-hair,—and slippers of hemp for the feet, as fatiguing as the tread-mill,—hearth-rugs as rugged “as a Russian bear,”—and pillows of lavender, not much smoother,—old jelly and stale cakes, which have figured at more than one tea and tract _soirée_,—and ornaments in every form, that can be produced by paste and paper, and daubed by paint,—from a pagoda to a pincushion,—of just that description which a woman of taste consigns to her housekeeper’s room, and the housekeeper, in turn, bestows on the still room, as fit for nothing but to preserve dust, and afford lurking places for spiders.

Meantime, if criticism looks on with her “eye malign askance,” in its lounge up the long line opened between the repositories of trash, there are many whose susceptibility supplies the place at once of taste and of charity, and the bazaar is the great resort of all the _désœuvrés_ of one sex, and of all the saints of the other. Among the most distinguished of the first, are the military elegants of the garrison; among the latter, are some of the highest and prettiest of the aristocracy. Placed behind piles of pincushions, each having a moral in minikins stuck on its silken surface, or behind an outwork of paper screens, consecrated by the Lord’s prayer and the commandments, stands the fair trader, with a look, “sober, steadfast, and demure,” and an air of gentle solicitation, like that of the venders of royal effigies at the gate of the Tuileries, who cry, from morning till night, “_Voyez, Messieurs, voyez la famille royale de France, et la Princesse Caroline, tous pour deux sous._”[65]

I was one day much amused by observing a little scene of this sort. The finest eyes I ever saw, were doing the honours of a charitable counter, to the very best of their ability. “_A bonnes enseignes, bon vin._” A young and gallant hussar, whose attention had wandered from stall to stall, with undefined charity, was at last attracted by the “_voyez, messieurs_,” of the eyes alluded to. The _petit commerce_ once begun, it was difficult to say which party threw most enterprize and speculation into the transaction. Fly-traps were shut and opened, with suitable comments on flies and traps; tablets were displayed, whose inscriptions were only to be breathed upon, to become, like good impressions, ineffacable; Adam and Eve, with the tempter in the tree, worked on a footstool in tent stitch, were not without allusion and edification; and the history of “Theresa Tidy” was recommended as a _souvenir_ for absent sisters, with an air which proved that saints, as well as hussars, can be good disciplinarians. The choice was at length made. It fell upon a bunch of violets, reared by the fair hands of the vender for charitable purposes. The young hussar drew it from its vase, “all dripping with dew,” breathed its essence, looked full in the eyes of the _belle jardinière_, paid his sigh and his sovereign, and—was elbowed on by a new chapman, whose aid-de-camp’s uniform gave him superior claims on the attention of the charitable bazaarist.

As I left the door of Morrison’s tavern, where the scene passed, the young hussar stood waiting for his cab. A naked, shivering little girl, with a bunch of wallflowers (stuffed with grass “to make a show,”) in her dirty hands, came “between the wind and his nobility;” and with the usual supplicatory drawl of Irish mendicity, solicited his attention, according to its most approved formulary: “The Lord powr (pour) a blessing on your beautiful honour, Sir, and buy them iligant wallflowers for an half-penny from a fatherless orphant, that hasn’t broke her fast this day, God help her.” His “beautiful honour” heard her not, or valued not the liquid blessing of Heaven at the price the supplicant put upon it. He held his violets to his nose. His thoughts were behind the counter of the bazaar, and his foot on the step of his cab. After a moment’s hesitation, he returned to the bazaar, and the half-penny worth of wallflowers fell to my lot.

While ignorant benevolence, and mistaken charity, fancy they are serving the great cause of humanity, by promoting institutions which are, in fact, directly opposed to their laudable intentions, low cunning and self-love take advantage of the circumstance, by joining in a work which produces a temporary intimacy and equality between the little and the great. Many, who have no other means of getting on in society, find, in the charitable repositories, bazaars, and poor-shops, a means of introduction to its autocrats, (for even poor Dublin has its _bel air_) of acquaintance with the Countess of this, and the Marchioness of the other, the long desired object of all their struggles, hopes, and desires. Among a people essentially vain and ambitious, this sort of connexion draws in a vast number of subscribers, contributors, and labourers, to all schemes of mistaken benevolence, or quackish meddling; and the peculiar notions of the catholics, on the necessity of a constant practice of charity, complete the sums requisite for their mischievous success.

On the privations and sufferings inflicted on the respectable and laborious poor, by such interference with the branch of industry upon which they almost exclusively rely, it would be easy to say some eloquent things; for it is difficult to enter deeply and warmly into any subject, and not to treat of it effectually. There is no muse like being in earnest. But here is a little document, worth all that practised authorship could give on the subject, however deeply felt, or well studied. It is a letter from some poor sufferer, written in all the simplicity and integrity of conscious injury. I give it, with the too flattering letter in which it was inclosed, and which, (having received it this morning, March 29th, 1829,) directed my thoughts to the composition of this brief article. Having allied myself, from my earliest youth, to the oppressed party of my country, I have never enjoyed there but one distinction. The suffering and the unfortunate of all creeds have honoured me, by claims on my sympathy, which, alas! is frequently all I have to bestow; and I have, for many years back, been in the habit of receiving applications from the wretched, (a painful preeminence) which have included the details of almost every species of misery which flesh is heir to, from the despair of the condemned convict, who has written to me from his cell, to the indignant repinings of neglected genius, and the eloquent recital of “all the wrongs, which patient merit from the unworthy takes.”

But to the letter, and the simple statement of the distressed female, suffering from the ladies’ charitable bazaar, which I give exactly as I received it:—

“_To Lady Morgan, Kildare-street, Dublin._

“Without presuming the Irish heart of your ladyship to be at
all concerned in the pernicious custom!—the enclosed alludes
to, it is very humbly submitted to your kind consideration—as
one looked up to—as well in national pride—as the kindness of
your disposition towards every individual of your country—and
as it appears the _press_ (the best medium of rectifying
publick evils) will not receive it—your general opinion—of
the mischief it records—may go far in serving—a class of poor
individuals (_your countrywomen_) labouring under the hardship
it details—and layd before your ladyship—by _one_ of the
oppressed sufferers—who has the honour to be,

“Your Ladyship’s

“Most obedient humble Servant,

“A DISTRESSED FEMALE.”

“_Dublin, March 28th, 1829._”

“_To the Ladies of the late Bazaar, and those generally of
Dublin._

“LADIES:

“However painful in laying before you in this public manner
evils brought on a numerous class of persons—through
inadvertency and want of consideration (as hunger will break
through stone walls) it is necessary, in addition to many
hints you have already had laid before you, to now enter into
a more particular detail of the misfortune visited on many,
by your establishing bazaars and other shops, to be met with
in many parts of Dublin, for the sale of _ladies’ works_; nor
are you to suppose in doing so, it is intended to convey any
idea of your not laudably working for yourselves or families,
or contributing to such charities as you may desire to be
interested in; but in doing so, permit me to say, you should
put your hands in _your pockets_, and by no means interfere
with the bread of others, as you manifestedly have done. You
will please to recollect that besides the more common and
industrious classes of society, there are many respectable,
well educated females, reduced, from _misfortune_, and not
_fault_, to the necessity of earning their bread by the work of
their hands; inferior in taste, ingenuity, and acquirements,
to none of their countrywomen! now thrown on the world for
want of a usual emporium for the sale of their labour; wrought
probably in filial piety for the humane and dutiful purposes of
assisting an aged father or mother perishing in silent misery.
For your bazaars, and from the glut of work they accumulate,
prevent even shopkeepers from taking any off their hands,
from the impossibility of disposing of it, as well as others
purchasing those articles of taste and ingenuity, these unhappy
people were wont to earn subsistence by. And really, ladies,
where females are concerned, I would put it to your kind
consideration, if it is consonant to the generous feelings of
our soil, to thus open the floodgates of vice, as a probable
mode of preventing starvation, encreasing female crime, and
multiplying mendicity, in the current of misery and want.

“Our unfortunate country labours under the severe oppression
of considerable absenteeism; but how despairingly must it
indeed be felt, if those our _residents_, blessed with rank and
fortune, lend their aid to increase distress in any part of the
community, for the benefit of a good name; let the object be
what it may, nothing can be called charity, that uncharitably
takes bread from the mouths of many.

“And although excuses may be made for ladies of high
consideration not being sufficiently acquainted, either with
the nature of the trading world, or desperate state of the
poor, none can, for _those_ (some now holding titles) who
have been indebted in a great measure for their present good
fortune, to the benefit of fair trade, and support of the
poor; swallowing Læthean drafts and standing behind a bazaar
table, inflicting in the articles they sell, misery and want on
several poor creatures, their countrywomen.

“Your last bazaar, it is understood, not only netted a
considerable sum of money by what it sold, but has left a great
quantity of ladies’ work yet to be disposed of; and which,
notwithstanding the _piety_ and _charity_ of the worthy females
concerned, is now at _their desire_, to be got rid of by a
LOTTERY; as well in the teeth of the acts of the legislature,
as truly encouraging a species of gambling; as destructive
a vice as ever (in its avaricious propensities) seized on
the human heart; and this being under the description of
_little-go’s_, becomes subject to magisterial interference. All
this shews the quantity of work you ladies have set up against
the poor and industrious fair trader, whose hands _is his_ or
_her support_, and which, evidently, you are not borne out in
any interference with for any object whatsoever; or to lay the
foundation of your _charities_, at the expense of the poor.

“And it is presumed, from the non-attendance of our gracious
vice-queen at your bazaar, that though a stranger to our
country, she has had that consideration in the benevolence of
her heart, which, either through inadvertency or the fashion
of the day, appears to have escaped yours. And believe the
want of emporium for sale of female works, has occasioned much
trouble to her grace, by many of those starving creatures who
have had no other hope of trying to get their productions off
their hands, has led them to seek that commiseration from
the stranger, which they have failed to receive at home. So
contrary is all this to the natural goodness of heart, so
wound up in our national female character, that it is indeed
with pain it is adverted to, and is only attributed to the
immediate desire of doing good; having in the impulse of the
moment, banished that more general, reflecting, and feeling
consideration. Your hearts, when thus strongly appealed to,
will, I am convinced, receive in the charity and benevolence,
so characteristic in the fair daughters of Erin.

“Whose obedient servant I am,

“PENELOPE,

“Out of work.”

“_Dublin, 23d March._

“_Editor_,” _&c. &c. &c._

END OF VOL. I.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Having mentioned how this trifling Work came to be written, a word may be said on how it came to be published. While the fourth volume of the “O’Briens” was going through the press, Mr. Colburn was sufficiently pleased with the subscription (as it is called in the trade) to the first edition, to desire a new work from the author. I was just setting off for Ireland, the horses literally putting to—when Mr. Colburn arrived with his flattering proposition. I could not enter into any future engagement; and Mr. C., taking up a scrubby MS. volume, which the servant was about to thrust into the pocket of the carriage, asked “What was that?” I said it was “one of many volumes of odds and ends, _de omnibus rebus_;” and I read him the last entry I had made the night before, on my return from the Opera. “This is the very thing,” said the European publisher; and if the public is of the same opinion, I shall have nothing to regret in thus coming, though somewhat in _déshabillé_, before its tribunal.

[2] “With a skip and a jump.”

[3] “We love so much to talk of ourselves.”

[4] Whoever has read the History of the Campaign in Russia, by General Count Ségur, must feel the force of this observation.

[5] “That he was but the half of a great man.”

[6] “At night they sung an ode in praise of the king at Madame de Maintenon’s. It was by the Abbé Genest, the music by La Lande; and the king found it so excellent, that when it was finished he caused it to be repeated.”

[7] “I have always before my eyes the expression on the countenances of the men, as they looked on the Emperor with a torch in his hand, himself casting a light on the reiterated blows with which he opened the rocks.”

[8] Raconteur—a narrator.

[9] “Come, Mademoiselle, talk to us a little about religion; and afterwards speak on something else.”

[10] “A maker of phrases.”

[11] “Beneath his reputation.” This occurred in his interview with M. Necker, at Geneva.

[12] “Gentlemen, there was once upon a time a fermier-général—I have forgotten the rest.”

[13] “There, there—go away—what does it signify if I am amused?”

[14] “Worthy of the best poets of France.”

[15] “You are a good gentleman, but our business here is to bury the dead.”

[16] “It has struck three.”

[17] Un fâcheux.

[18] Dres means, literally, “news.”

[19] P. L——n, Esq. of M——, in the county of Kildare.

[20] The Kirwans are the only aboriginal family who were admitted into the Thirteen Tribes of Galway.—“As proud as a Kirwan,” is a Galway proverb.

[21] A person of remarkable appearance.

[22] The Duke of Wellington was then Secretary of State for Ireland.

[23] To Mr. Kirwan is attributed the story of electrifying his knocker; an excellent hint to persons whose notoriety exposes them to self-interested intruders, who have no claim upon their time and attention.

[24] “L’amour,” said the Abbé Chaulieu, “s’étoit retiré jusque dans les rides de son front.”

[25] “I read your letter before him, and in spectacles; but they become me pretty well. I have always had a grave look. If he is in love with that merit which is here called _distingué_, your wish may perhaps be accomplished. Every day I am consoled for my lost attractions by this fine phrase.”

[26] “And I am myself so excellent at forgetfulness, that I forget my own works as much as those of other persons.”

[27] “You swear, Friar? It is only for ornament. These are the colours of Ciceronian rhetoric.”

[28] Maurice Quill, the Sir John Falstaff of the Irish troops, during the Peninsular war, who assigned as a reason for entering into the 71st regiment (I believe) his desire to be near his brother, who was in the 72d. His personal circumspection was said to be merely assumed, as a medium for his humour.

[29] One evening, while thus engaged, to the utter abstraction from all surrounding circumstances, we had arrived at “Hark, I hear the toll of the bell,” when a sudden crash of all dissonant sounds produced as sudden a suspension of our own somewhat heteroclite harmonies. Tambourines, triangles, pokers, tongs, and shovels, were all pressed into the service. The ladies of the party, thus armed for discord, had encircled us; and they added a general chorus of inextinguishable laughter, _ad libitum_, to the instrumental accompaniment they volunteered to Lord C.’s vocal performances. At the head of the band was Lady Castlereagh herself.

[30] Les Veillées du Château.

[31] I do not mean to say that in the progress of things it may not become perfectly justifiable to wear a white waistcoat in the morning; or that certain developments of mind, or combinations of circumstance, may not render it imperative to do so. I go but with my age; and I appeal to Lord A——y, or to my old friend Lord A——n, whether, _de nos jours_, a man who pays a morning visit in a virgin-white Marseilles waistcoat, is admissible within the pale of civilized society.

[32] Dr. Macartney, professor of anatomy in Trinity College, Dublin, one more celebrated abroad than known at home—the common fate of super-eminent talent every where. Dr. Macartney’s classes are attended by students from all parts of Europe and America.

[33] Her late Majesty Queen Caroline.

[34] Having received the proof sheet of the above little entry, (made in mere _gaieté de cœur_ into my ledger,) at a moment when I am surrounded by an absolute congress of the United States, presented to me by my illustrious friend, General La Fayette, I take the opportunity to say, that they deny all knowledge of the journal in question, further than such a publication had lived and died within a few weeks, and was edited by a person bearing an _Irish name_, a writer for Blackwood’s Magazine.

[35] First Dissertation to the Encyclopedia.

[36] “Her father was dead; and as soon as she heard the news, she shut herself up in her chamber for six weeks, remaining constantly upon a bed covered with white linen, and resting on pillows. She wore her stomacher, her cloak, and hood, which were lined with minever, and the said cloak had a long train; and at the borders, and before the hood, for the breadth of a palm, the minever was curled outwards. The chamber was hung with black cloth in the place of tapestry, and before this chamber was another great chamber, or hall, likewise hung with black. While Madame was alone, she did not remain on the bed, or confined to one room.”