Chapter 35

　　IN February of this year, 1852, Lord Palmerston, aided by anincongruous force of Peelites and Protectionists, turned LordJohn Russell out of office on his Militia Bill. Lord Derby,with Disraeli as Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader ofthe House of Commons, came into power on a cry forProtection.

　　Not long after my return to England, I was packed off tocanvas the borough of Cricklade. It was then a veryextensive borough, including a large agricultural district,as well as Swindon, the headquarters of the Great WesternRailway. For many years it had returned two Conservativemembers, Messrs. Nield and Goddard. It was looked upon as animpregnable Tory stronghold, and the fight was little betterthan a forlorn hope.

　　My headquarters were at Coleshill, Lord Radnor's. The oldlord had, in his Parliamentary days, been a Radical; hence,my advanced opinions found great favour in his eyes. Myprogramme was - Free Trade, Vote by Ballot, andDisestablishment. Two of these have become common-places(one perhaps effete), and the third is nearer toaccomplishment than it was then.

　　My first acquaintance with a constituency, amongst whom Iworked enthusiastically for six weeks, was comic enough. Myinstructions were to go to Swindon; there an agent, whom Ihad never seen, would join me. A meeting of my supportershad been arranged by him, and I was to make my maiden speechin the market-place.

　　My address, it should be stated - ultra-Radical, of course -was mainly concocted for me by Mr. Cayley, an almost rabidTory, and then member for the North Riding of Yorkshire, butan old Parliamentary hand; and, in consequence of myattachment to his son, at that time and until his death, likea father to me.

　　When the train stopped at Swindon, there was a crowd ofpassengers, but not a face that I knew; and it was not tillall but one or two had left, that a business-looking man cameup and asked if I were the candidate for Cricklade. He toldme that a carriage was in attendance to take us up to thetown; and that a procession, headed by a band, was ready toaccompany us thither. The procession was formed mainly ofthe Great Western boiler-makers and artisans. Theirenthusiasm seemed slightly disproportioned to the occasion;and the vigour of the brass, and especially of the big drum,so filled my head with visions of Mr. Pickwick and his friendthe Honourable Samuel Slumkey, that by the time I reached themarket-place, I had forgotten every syllable of the speechwhich I had carefully learnt by heart. Nor was it the bandalone that upset me; going up the hill the carriage was allbut capsized by the frightened horses and the breaking of thepole. The gallant boiler-makers, however, at once removedthe horses, and dragged the carriage with cheers of defianceinto the crowd awaiting us.

　　My agent had settled that I was to speak from a window of thehotel. The only available one was an upper window, the lowersash of which could not be persuaded to keep up without beingheld. The consequence was, just as I was getting over theembarrassment of extemporary oration, down came the sash andguillotined me. This put the crowd in the best of humours;they roared with laughter, and after that we got on capitallytogether.

　　A still more inopportune accident happened to me later in theday, when speaking at Shrivenham. A large yard enclosed bybuildings was chosen for the meeting. The difficulty was toelevate the speaker above the heads of the assembly. In onecorner of the yard was a water-butt. An ingenious electorgot a board, placed it on the top of the butt - which wasfull of water - and persuaded me to make this my rostrum.

　　Here, again, in the midst of my harangue - perhaps I stampedto emphasize my horror of small loaves and other Toryabominations - the board gave way; and I narrowly escaped aducking by leaping into the arms of a 'supporter.'

　　The end of it all was that my agent at the last moment threwup the sponge. The farmers formed a serried phalanx againstFree Trade; it was useless to incur the expense of a poll.

　　Then came the bill. It was a heavy one; for in addition tomy London agent - a professional electioneering functionary -were the local agents at towns like Malmesbury, WoottonBassett, Shrivenham, &c., &c. My eldest brother, who was asoberer-minded politician than I, although very liberal to mein other ways, declined to support my political opinions. Imyself was quite unable to pay the costs. Knowing this, LordRadnor called me into his study as I was leaving Coleshill,and expressed himself warmly with respect to my labours;regretting the victory of the other side, he declared that,as the question of Protection would be disposed of, one ofthe two seats would be safe upon a future contest.

　　'And who,' asked the old gentleman, with a benevolent grin onhis face, 'who is going to pay your expenses?'

　　'Goodness knows, sir,' said I; 'I hope they won't come downupon me. I haven't a thousand pounds in the world, unless Itap my fortune.'

　　'Well,' said his Lordship, with a chuckle, 'I haven't paid mysubscription to Brooks's yet, so I'll hand it over to you,'

　　and he gave me a cheque for 500 pounds.

　　The balance was obtained through Mr. Ellice from thepatronage Secretary to the Treasury. At the next election,as Lord Radnor predicted, Lord Ashley, Lord Shaftesbury'seldest son, won one of the two seats for the Liberals withthe greatest ease.

　　As Coleshill was an open house to me from that time as longas Lord Radnor lived, I cannot take leave of the dear old manwithout an affectionate word at parting. Creevey has an ill-natured fling at him, as he has at everybody else, but akinder-hearted and more perfect gentleman would be difficultto meet with. His personality was a marked one. He was alittle man, with very plain features, a punch-like nose, anextensive mouth, and hardly a hair on his head. But in spiteof these peculiarities, his face was pleasant to look at, forit was invariably animated by a sweet smile, a touch ofhumour, and a decided air of dignity. Born in 1779, hedressed after the orthodox Whig fashion of his youth, in buffand blue, his long-tailed coat reaching almost to his heels.

　　His manner was a model of courtesy and simplicity. He usedantiquated expressions: called London 'Lunnun,' Rome 'Room,'

　　a balcony a 'balcony'; he always spoke of the clergyman asthe 'pearson,' and called his daughter Lady Mary, 'Meary.'

　　Instead of saying 'this day week' he would say this daysen'nit' (for sen'night).

　　The independence of his character was very noticeable. As aninstance: A party of twenty people, say, would be invitedfor a given day. Abundance of carriages would be sent tomeet the trains, so that all the guests would arrive in ampletime for dinner. It generally happened that some of them,not knowing the habits of the house, or some duchess or greatlady who might assume that clocks were made for her and notshe for clocks, would not appear in the drawing-room till aquarter of an hour after the dinner gong had sounded. Ifanyone did so, he or she would find that everybody else hadgot through soup and fish. If no one but Lady Mary had beendown when dinner was announced, his Lordship would haveoffered his arm to his daughter, and have taken his seat atthe table alone. After the first night, no one was everlate. In the morning he read prayers to the household beforebreakfast with the same precise punctuality.

　　Lady Mary Bouverie, his unmarried daughter, was the very bestof hostesses. The house under her management was theperfection of comfort. She married an old and dear friend ofmine, Sir James Wilde, afterwards the Judge, Lord Penzance.

　　I was his 'best man.'

　　My 'Ride over the Rocky Mountains' was now published; and, asthe field was a new one, the writer was rewarded, for a fewweeks, with invitations to dinner, and the usual tickets for'drums' and dances. To my astonishment, or rather to myalarm, I received a letter from the Secretary of the RoyalGeographical Society (Charles Fox, or perhaps Sir GeorgeSimpson had, I think, proposed me - I never knew), to saythat I had been elected a member. Nothing was further frommy ambition. The very thought shrivelled me with a sense ofignorance and insignificance. I pictured to myself anassembly of old fogies crammed with all the 'ologies. Ibroke into a cold perspiration when I fancied myself calledupon to deliver a lecture on the comparative sea-bottomy ofthe Oceanic globe, or give my theory of the simultaneoussighting by 'little Billee' of ' Madagascar, and North, andSouth Amerikee.' Honestly, I had not the courage to accept;and, young Jackanapes as I was, left the Secretary's letterunanswered.

　　But a still greater honour - perhaps the greatest complimentI ever had paid me - was to come. I had lodgings at thistime in an old house, long since pulled down, in York Street.

　　One day, when I was practising the fiddle, who should walkinto my den but Rogers the poet! He had never seen me in hislife. He was in his ninetieth year, and he had climbed thestairs to the first floor to ask me to one of his breakfastparties. To say nothing of Rogers' fame, his wealth, hisposition in society, those who know what his cynicism and hisworldliness were, will understand what such an effort,physical and moral, must have cost him. He always lookedlike a death's head, but his ghastly pallor, after thatAlpine ascent, made me feel as if he had come - to stay.

　　These breakfasts were entertainments of no ordinarydistinction. The host himself was of greater interest thanthe most eminent of his guests. All but he, were more orless one's contemporaries: Rogers, if not quite as dead ashe looked, was ancient history. He was old enough to havebeen the father of Byron, of Shelley, of Keats, and of Moore.

　　He was several years older than Scott, or Wordsworth, orColeridge, and only four years younger than Pitt. He hadknown all these men, and could, and did, talk as no othercould talk, of all of them. Amongst those whom I met atthese breakfasts were Cornewall Lewis, Delane, the Grotes,Macaulay, Mrs. Norton, Monckton Milnes, William Harcourt (theonly one younger than myself), but just beginning to beknown, and others of scarcely less note.

　　During the breakfast itself, Rogers, though seated at tablein an armchair, took no part either in the repast or in theconversation; he seemed to sleep until the meal was over.

　　His servant would then place a cup of coffee before him, and,like a Laputian flapper, touch him gently on the shoulder.

　　He would at once begin to talk, while others listened. Thefirst time I witnessed this curious resurrection, I whisperedsomething to my neighbour, at which he laughed. The oldman's eye was too sharp for us.

　　'You are laughing at me,' said he; 'I dare say you younggentlemen think me an old fellow; but there are younger thanI who are older. You should see Tommy Moore. I asked him tobreakfast, but he's too weak - weak here, sir,' and he tappedhis forehead. 'I'm not that.' (This was the year that Mooredied.) He certainly was not; but his whole discourse was ofthe past. It was as though he would not condescend todiscuss events or men of the day. What were either to thedays and men that he had known - French revolutions, battlesof Trafalgar and Waterloo, a Nelson and a Buonaparte, a Pitt,a Burke, a Fox, a Johnson, a Gibbon, a Sheridan, and all themen of letters and all the poets of a century gone by? EvenMacaulay had for once to hold his tongue; and could onlysmile impatiently at what perhaps he thought an old man'sastonishing garrulity. But if a young and pretty womantalked to him, it was not his great age that he vaunted, noryet the 'pleasures of memory' - one envied the adroitness ofhis flattery, and the gracefulness of his repartee.

　　My friend George Cayley had a couple of dingy little roomsbetween Parliament Street and the river. Much of my time wasspent there with him. One night after dinner, quite late, wewere building castles amidst tobacco clouds, when, followinga 'May I come in?' Tennyson made his appearance. This wasthe first time I had ever met him. We gave him the onlyarmchair in the room; and pulling out his dudeen and placingafoot on each side of the hob of the old-fashioned littlegrate, he made himself comfortable before he said anotherword. He then began to talk of pipes and tobacco. Andnever, I should say, did this important topic afford so muchingenious conversation before. We discussed the relativemerits of all the tobaccos in the world - of moist tobaccoand dry tobacco, of old tobacco and new tobacco, of claypipes and wooden pipes and meerschaum pipes. What was thebest way to colour them, the advantages of colouring them,the beauty of the 'culotte,' the coolness it gave to thesmoke, &c. We listened to the venerable sage - he was thenforty-three and we only five or six and twenty - as we shouldhave listened to a Homer or an Aristotle, and he thoroughlyenjoyed our appreciation of his jokes.

　　Some of them would have startled such of his admirers whoknew him only by his poems; for his stories were anything butpoetical - rather humorous one might say, on the whole.

　　Here's one of them: he had called last week on the Duchessof Sutherland at Stafford House. Her two daughters were withher, the Duchess of Argyll and the beautiful Lady ConstanceGrosvenor, afterwards Duchess of Westminster. They happenedto be in the garden. After strolling about for a while, theMama Duchess begged him to recite some of his poetry. Hechose 'Come into the garden, Maud' - always a favourite ofthe poet's, and, as may be supposed, many were the fervidexclamations of 'How beautiful!' When they came into thehouse, a princely groom of the chambers caught his eye andhis ear, and, pointing to his own throat, courteouslywhispered: 'Your dress is not quite as you would wish it,sir.'

　　'I had come out without a necktie; and there I was, spoutingmy lines to the three Graces, as DECOLLETE as a struttingturkey cock.'

　　The only other allusion to poetry or literature that nightwas a story I told him of a Mr. Thomas Wrightson, a Yorkshirebanker, and a fanatical Swedenborgian. Tommy Wrightson, whowas one of the most amiable and benevolent of men, spent hislife in making a manuscript transcript of Swedenborg's works.

　　His writing was a marvel of calligraphic art; he himself, acuriosity. Swedenborg was for him an avatar; but if he haddoubted of Tennyson's ultimate apotheosis, I think he wouldhave elected to seek him in 'the other place.' Anyhow, Mr.

　　Wrightson avowed to me that he repeated 'Locksley Hall' everymorning of his life before breakfast. This I told Tennyson.

　　His answer was a grunt; and in a voice from his boots, 'Ugh!

　　enough to make a dog sick!' I did my utmost to console himwith the assurance that, to the best of my belief, Mr.

　　Wrightson had once fallen through a skylight.

　　As illustrating the characters of the admired and hisadmirer, it may be related that the latter, wishing for thepoet's sign-manual, wrote and asked him for it. He addressedTennyson, whom he had never seen, as 'My dear Alfred.' Thereply, which he showed to me, was addressed 'My dear Tom.'