The Press. — London, England, 1854-02-11 00:00:00

FERRUARY 11, 1854. fittraturt. [The continuation of our Review of Ruskin's " Stones of Venice" is deferred till next week.] HOLLAND HOUSE. Memoirs of the Whig Party during My Ti,,... By Henry Richard Lord Holland. Edited by his Son, Henry Edward Lord Holland. London : Longmans. HOLLAND -HOUSE literature, with its attractive title and insipid contents, is like a stale bottle of bitter . beer corked and labelled as " Moett's champagne." We expect to be exhi larated, but a short trial nauseates and repels. Its bitterness is without brilliancy ; muddy and acidulous, even its tartness is soporific. The best works of " Holland-house " were vicarious in their merits; its dinners were excellent, its memorials are wretched. Con founding slanders with scandals, taking ru mours for facts, Lord Holland is scarcely worth roasting before a slow fire of criticism; but an examination of the vaunted " Holland house " is not without use, and may do the service of exposing literary imposition. Tho first point for illustration is the method by which " Holland-house " gathered its lite rary frequenters. In the last century literary men stood in a peculiar relation to the wealthy and influential families that sway the Legisla ture. In much that related to every-day life it was an age of the coffee-house and the wine tavern. Society was more open than it is now to agreeable adventurers with lively manners, good address, and quiet assurance. Persons of the best condition ate their steaks and drank their claret in the numerous coffee houses that abounded near Covent-garden and the Temple. Men about town who could either write or talk well had more chances in their favour than at present. There was more intimacy between the haughty peer and his political clients than there is now between the chiefs of party and their various literary sub ordinates. Now literature aspires to the con ventional regularity of a profession ; in those times it was a lottery, with a few grand prizes and a wheel full of blanks. Smollett has left us in his novels a lively picture of the nature of a " great man's ante chamber" iu those days. A crowd of adventu rers, more picturesque than polite, awaited the rising of the grandee. The French Revo lution came, and a gradual social change came on. There was a reaction against adventu rers : brilliant scamps, living on their wits, whose lives were sometimes more gay than their comedies, or not unfrequently sadder than their rejected tragedies, became unpopular. " Respectability " now became the cry, and " a wholesome prejudice" set in against poets scrambling up Parnassus with bailiffs at their heels, and political oracles against whom their tailors cried " anathema." In truth, as the traditions of our predecessors inform us, the coffee-houses then (1789-1815) became noisy, disputatious, and painfully polemical. Minis ters were scolded at one table, and Opposition extolled at another ; the guests poured out invectives more fiery than their wine. The old genial humour of the pleasant-lounging coffee-house companions was at end. Debating societies, regular or irregular, were the order of the time, and Boniface gave himself the airs of "Mr. Speaker." In such times (circa 1815) "Holland house," and for about ten years subsequently, enjoyed its palmiest time. It had no competitors to rival its hospitality, and there were peculiar circumstances which gave an exaggerated impor tance to its reunions. As yet the club system had not been established, and the great mansions of that day were less brilliant than at previous or subsequent periods. The royal palace was shrouded in darkness and sorrow; the Prince of Wales had grown old, wore wigs, and pre ferred Lord Eldon and port to Sheridan and burgundy. The glories of Devonshire -house had been dimmed. Its fascinating mistress was mouldering in the grave ; her not less beautiful sister had also vanished from the scene. Lady Melbourne, too, was grown old, and on the horizon of fashion no brilliant orbs appeared in place of those last lights of THE PRESS. the gay world. Hertford-Lase was neither popular nor brilliant; the wife of Lord Castle reagh, leader of the Commons, was beautiful in person, interesting in manners, but too de licate in health for the labours of hospitality. The . Chancellor's house of that day was very different in its attractions from that brilliant mansion near Hanover-square where, in sa loons thronged with fashion, the gorgeous beauty of Sarah Lady Lyndhurst shone as resplendently as the talents of her famous husband in the Senate. As yet the JERSEY planet was only looming near the horizon. The Whigs in those days had not the social resources of other times. Lord Grey was cold, and not covetous of personal popularity. The Duke of Richmond and the Duke of Portland then voted with Ministers, and, as Devonshire house had ceased to be political, " Holland house" in such times became socially im portant. What injured it in one respect served it in another. Destitute of the charm of female society, it was more social, less . reserved, certainly more amusing, than patrician mansions of the period. As its doors were necessarily closed against ladies, so they opened with more facility to the amusing crowd of male notabilities who underwent a season of lionising in its menagerie. The tavern life of the previous century was to some extent brilliantly revived. Everybody was at home, and every one had some special interest in the place. To some it was a chapel of ease to Bellamy's kitchen, and, though its beefsteaks might have been less juicy, its jokes were as savoury as any echoed in the corridors of St. Stephen's by the Sergeant Murphys of the day. There the hungry sages of the north devoured and drank, and quoted each other, and praised themselves, and smiled at her ladyship's wit, and shut their ears and opened their mouths when "his lordship" commenced to Boswellise over the bottle. The host was king of his company. Stammering and in effective in the House of Peers, he enjoyed the attention paid to him by bibulous philoso phers who came from the Scotch side of the border, and from parliamentary politicians who had a historical regard for anything human baptised as " Fox." Did the conver sation flag, " as my uncle once said " operated like magic on the listeners, and Edinburgh reviewers gaped with reverent awe and paused on their busy forks. Or perchance it might be, "when my grandfather was dining with the King"—or a fling at the character of Pitt — or a calumny upon Marie Antoinette—or an un-English burst of enthusiasm about Napo leon—or some personality about the wretched habits of the dying Sheridan—or some paltry sneers at the Duke of Wellington—or a dis paragement of the glorious Nelson—or a hate ful backbiting of the accomplished Windham — it was small talk spiced with sarcastic inuen does and peppered with scandalous stories. But then we are told that we ought to have admired the exhibition ; the bitter things were said with so much suavity; there was such benevolence on the countenance while the tongue was stabbing the characters of the absent or the dead. It was detraction trying to delight ; it was backbiting with bonhommie. Its admirers only lament, when such table talk is printed, that the reader cannot have the advantage of the joyous chuckle with which Marie Antoinette was traduced, or the pleasant face with which Windham was maligned. We are assured. by Whig scribes that, though " Holland-house " memoirs are nothing but dull detraction, the conversation there was excellent and abounded in brilliancy. But your popular patriots from the other side of the border found everything delightful when they found themselves in company with real live English lords, with a plenteous table, sparkling wines, and the outward show of good society. Frothy platitudes escaped censure while champagne foamed ; and mediocrity was a pp r oved along with the madeira. Invitations were given liberally and accepted thankfully, and "Holland-house" for a time had a most exaggerated fame. But all this was doomed to have an end, and long before the host and hostess had resigned their hospitable toils. Two great blows were given to its convivial celebrity, and they came from opposite quarters. Mr. Croke! s best and most creditable work, the formation of the 135 Athanteum Mb, was completely successful ; and the social distinctiveness of meeting the notabilities of professional life in familiar in tercourse with the magnates of society was once and for ever taken away from " Holland house." The extension of the club system completed the effort, and an ordinary house dinner at the " Garrick," fifteen years ago, with the Duke of Beaufort, and Lord Saye and Sele, and Sir Henry Webb, and Theodore Hook, and James Smith, and " Ingoldsby," and many other celebrities in the circles of fashion and wit, often excelled in convivial pleasure the reunions at " Holland house." It was discovered that, after all, " Holland-house " depended chiefly on extrinsic distinctions which new phases of society had rendered common. But the second blow was more special and particular, and, oddly enough, it came from a countrywoman of Mr. Croker. Margaret Countess of Blessington was a woman of rare gifts, and still rarer personal attractions. Of her character and her career, and the strange story associated with her name, we need not speak. With singular fas cinations of address, setting off the lustre of a beauty that was at once voluptuous and refined, her figure was imposing, without losing its feminine grace, and her address frank and in sinuating, while the humour of her country flowed on her pleasant vivacious tongue, and the fire of its Celtic passion lighted up her luxuriant dark eyes. A sojourner for years in southern climes, her nature had gradually ac quired the artistic spirit and genial enthusiasm so common amongst Italian and Provençal women. She was certainly one of the most brilliant persons that ever figured in those circles where social pleasures are pursued as great ends of existence. Her literary merits were the very least of her attractions. Such was the woman, gifted with beauty and genial humour, who converted " Gore house" into a successful rival of the over praised " Holland-house," with its pretensions to a monopoly of intellectual society. May is not more charming than October—than the gay, fresh-ringing conversation at Gore-house was beyond that mixture of parliamentary small talk and Literary-Club opinionativeness which the frequenters of Holland-house pretended to regard as the quintessence of social brilliancy. The society at " Gore-house " had also another inexpressible merit over the meetings at its Kensington competitor. The rustling of the petticoat was often heard in its parties, and womanhood was there represented, not, as in the mansions of the Foxes, by dowager deputies. Pleasant it was, and most brilliant, to see some choice specimens of the sex mingling with warriors of world-wide renown, with orators, also, who " Bound the bar and senate in their spells," and with numbers of accomplished persona noted in literature and art. Who on a sum mer evening would leave the sight of that then charming garden at Kensington-gore, with the perfumed air echoing the wit of a brace of gallant ex-Chancellors ; that enliven ing scene, where, amidst flowering shrubberies, and amidst a group of happy listeners, the conqueror of Waterloo was playing carte and tierce with some nimble-witted assailant whose ladylike logic, with its at rong reserve of cheery, heart-inspiring laughter, carried the victory from the otherwise invincible Wellesley ? Who would change a scene like that for " Holland-house," with its nasty stories and its bitter inuendoes, and its popularity-hunting pa tronage of authors and artists of established fame? Another superiority also in Gore•house was the friendly offices which it rendered to struggling artists and authors. Its generosity was not of that description which waits to honour triumphant talent. Between these two " houses " an amusing parallel might to written, indicating the points of contrast and similarity between them, both associated with " scandal" and with pleasurable reunions. We need not pur sue it ; but we may say that, whatever the faults of the Gore-house circles, it did not as sail and traduce the living and the dead, like its less amiable though more " historical " rival. Whatever were the faults of Lady Bles sington, we believe that she never would have stooped to taking by the hand any one whose . 0 I ~~ .1 F'