The Sun.
London, England, 1855-09-03 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

The Old Court Suburb ; or, Memorials of Kensing-
ton, Royal, Critical, and Anecdotal. By Leigh
Hunt. 2 vols. Hurst and Blackett.
It has grieved us profoundly to observe our author
lamenting at page 257 of the second volume of
these pleasant memorials of Kensington, that " con-
stant illness" has prevented him from availing him-
self of a gracious permission to see the interior of
the homely old palace which was the birth-place of
the reigning Sovereign. We cannot willingly think
of Leigh Hunt otherwise than as of some happy
votary of Hygeia, who in a lucky hour of his youth,
" when George the Third was King," contrived to
quaff„ on the sly, a draught of the veritable e,ixir
vital from the chalice of the sylvan goddess. We
are fain to regard him as one exempt from the
common ills o mortality. His genius has ever
breathed about it so much freshness, hilarity,
vivacity, and perennial juvenescence that we are
not prepared to regard it as gifted with less vita-
lity than that which imparted a bloom at seventy to
the charming cheek of Diana of Poictiers. He is
still young—this blithe, frank, buoyant, cheerful
Leigh Hunt of the old days—he is still young, at
least to ourselves. We cannot think of him as he
is represented to be in the frontispiece to the third
volume of his Autobiography. We remember him
not as one with grey locks rolling down to his
shoulders—the seer of good-hu mour, the sage of m er-
ri ment. We recall his ideal visage to mind, as he
must have looked dozens of long years ago, say in
those blooming gardens of Italy where he was
called to, in the fresh morning air by the voice of
Byron, as—Leontius ! He is still to our thinking
in his early manhood, still the teller of the thrice-
told tale of the lovers of Rimini, still the all but in-
spired celebrant of the weird "magician of the bow"
Pagaiini, still what he was at the outset of his
career, the chief of that once despised, because,
long mistaken, school of poetry of which John
Keats became at once the glory and the vindica-
tion, and with this too the uncompromising, ener-
getic, enthusiastic editor of the liberal Examiner,
Leigh Hunt is still to us all this, and much more—
we think of him doubtless nowadays through the
delightful memory of some sixty or eighty goodly
volumes, directly or indirectly of his own compo-
sition—but we think of him at the same time, too,
as he wasin the earlier days of his first publication.
Wherefore, let us repeat it, it has grieved us sin-
cerely to find him now complaining of conStant
illness," to find him giving any indication, indeed,
of fatigue under the pressure of those years Which
have failed to deprive his intellectual bearing of
that suppleness and elasticity which are commonly_etus
the prerogatives of physical adolescence. L
I hope, therefore, that Leigh Hunt has already re-
pented him of his unwonted weakness, and flung
away, as WU cue 111110 P 950640 the 'PS= as,

played in these his latest volumes, the unaccus-
tomed crutch of the valetudinarian.
Altogether these same volumes relating to " The
Old Court Suburb " are as agreeable, in their way,
as any we have for a long while enjoyed the privi-
lege of having submitted to our examination. As
our author himself somewhat humorously con-
fesses it might be objected by a critical or hyper-
critical observer of the locality herein celebrated,
that it—Kensington—"has a Palace which is no
palace, Gardens which are no gardens, and a River
called the Serpentine, which is neither serpentine
nor a river." And yet out of this sane region of
misnomers and incongruities what a world of de-
lightful gossip has not Leigh Hunt called forth by
the mere force of varied and facile ob- arvation.
After a little etymological chit-chatabout the or'gin
of the name of this same " Old Court Suburb "
Kensington, we'are introduced during the course of
a charming stroll about its precincts to the chief
among its many diversified celebrities. Passinz
along the ancient and then the modern Gore, we are
told anumber ofstrange anecdotes about the Duchess
of Kingston and the Marquis of Wellesley, about
Mrs. Inchbald and Count d'Orsay, about Wilkes
and Wilberforce. When we get into the New Town,
we pause before Kensington House, and while our
author takes us confidentially by the button-hole,
hear from his lips all kinds of good things that no-
body else would dream of telling at all, or if they
attempted to do so, could not, by possibility, tell
in any manner half so pleasantly, in reference at
one moment to the Duchess of Portsmouth, and at
another to Dr. Johnson or his eccentric friend
Dominie Elphinstone. By the time we have saun-
tered into the High-street, we find ourselves
jostled by the motliest throng well imaginable,
including in it old epic-acuanha Blackmore, Bishop
Hough and Archbishop Herring, the Duchess of
Mazarin and M. de Perigord Talleyrand. Yet the
church and churchyard introduce us to still
stranger company, and more curiously contrasted
—to the Colmans and the Calcotts, to the Bianchis
and the Charnleys, to Jortin and Spofforbh, to
the lovely revival of the old, old custom of grow-
ing flowers on graves, and to a declaration which
we exult over as coming from the mouth of Leigh
Hunt, and as chiming in so accordantly with a
long-cherished belief of our own, that sooner or
later, " to the practice of urn-burial the nations
must surely return !" Hard by the churchyard
the Old Charity School reminds us of Sir John
Vanburgh, dramatist and architect • while, over
against the New Vestry Hall, a dwelling now,
aptly enough, the premises of an ironmonger, as it
had formerly been tenanted by a glorious old de-
mocratic Gridiron, calls to our recollection no
other than the said Gridiron, William Cobbett, po-
litician and agriculturist. Afterwards we get into
Holland House and its circumjacent grouns, and
after penetrating Holland House, we find ourselves
inducted into the Palace and the Gardens, which
although, as previously observed, neither palace
nor gardens, st:ctly speaking, constitute, as
such, the chief boast and attraction of the Old
Court Suburb of Kensington. It would have been
impossible for Leigh Hunt to discourse for any
length of time upon a theme so provocative of
pleasantry as Kensington and its associations,
without his givine, the rein, while so doing, to
what might be best termed in Shandeyian phrase-
ology his innate hobbihorsical jocoseness. We
should have regretted it, had it been possible ;
but, as we have said, it was fortunately otherwise.
And so we find him at the very commencement of
his labour of love talking of those high houses at
Prince's Gate, long known among the wags of the
neighbourhood as the Rock of Gibraltar (because,
forsooth, they were never likely to be taken)—we
find Leigh Hunt, we say, observing in regard to
those same high,narrow dwellings, that " they re-
semble a set of tall thin gentlemen, squeezing
together to look at something over the way !"
Again, we have him immediately afterwards re-
marking, in reference to the gradual disappearance
of the once famous nursery gardens of Messrs.
London and Wise, that "it is only now giving up
its last green ghost before the rise of new build-
ings." With what a gusto, a little later on, he
quotes from the lips of Mr. Wilberforce, quoting
in his turn from his favourite poet—" Nature is
but a name for an effect whose cause is God"—as
he glances over the green sward and under the
broad branches in the still ample garden at the
back of Gore House. We have occasionally, as
usual, to forgive our author a casual freak of lan-
guage, as in the instance where he talks about
" aristocratical enchantingness ;" forgiving him all
the more cordially for the piquancy of manner by
which those interjectional freaks of diction are
accompanied. It is strange, too, that a writer
should err in any such particular, who himself
observes so sagaciously and admiringly of Cobbett,
that " nothing could surpass the pure, vigorous,
idiomatical style of his general writing, or the
graphical descriptions he could give both of men
and things, whether in artificial life or in
matters connected with his agricultural ex-
perience."
No less wisely, no less truly, when
he comes to speak of the late Lord Holland, and
in speaking of him reverts, as by a natural associa-
tion, to the infamous treatment of the Emperor
Napoleon the Great, at St. Helena, does Leigh
Hunt remark that "harsh men certainly had the
keeping of the hero ;" adding—" But bis keepers
were not only harsh ; they were mean and shabby ;
refused him a title in his adversity, which they
were prepared to acknowledge had he consented to
their terms—{Leigh Hunt might have added,
" which they had already acknowledged, when he
consented, a year before, to their terms," viz. :
prior to his withdrawal to the capital of Elba]—
when they doubted the issue of the contest ; and
they suffered him to be worried by a set of men in-
capable of understanding him, except as jailors.
It was the revenge of long-defeated dullness upon
fallen genius, and is a blot in the history of Eng-
land's greatness." Ah, well ! if that damning
blot cannot be so easily removed—at any rate the
hero himself has long since been fittingly avenged.
Was it not on the last anniversary of the day of
Waterloo, on the 18th of June, 1855, that, by a
strange coincidence, Garter King at Arms was en-
gaged in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, in fixing
over his Imperial Majesty's stall the insignia of
the Emperor Napoleon 111., as Knight of the Most
Noble Order of the Garter ? Speaking, as we are
at this moment, of the Conqueror of Europe, as the
object of the magnanimous sympathies of the late
Lord Holland, we must, en, passant, express our
unfeigned amazement at the surprise intimated by
our author—once editor of the ultra-liberal Exami-
ner—as to " How he (Lord Holland) reconciled
his liberal principles in general with that un-
bounded admiration for Bonaparte which has
lately transpired in his posthumous Recollections
of Foreign Courts,' it is difficult to say." Difficult
to say, forsooth ! this blending of liberal principles
with unbounded admiration for Bonaparte ! Why
it was explicable iu the instance of a true liberal
like Lord Holland upon precisely the same prin-
ciples as those which explain to the student of his-
tory a similar blending of enlightened policy and
unbounded admiration in Charles Fox, and in
William Hazlitt, in every unprejudiced man of
liberality on this side of the Channel during those
days of the first Napoleon, and in France in the
hearts in like manner of such lovers of freedom as
Carnot and Benjamin Constant. Has Leigh Hunt
no knowledge, or has he lost all remembrance of
that memorable incident which occurred in 1815 in
Paris, when the republican Carnot burst into tears
at the necessity which compelled the Emperor to
write his second and final abdication ? Is he in no
way familiar, this uncomprehending ex-editor of
the Examiner, is Leigh Hunt in no way familiar
with that dictum pronounced upon Napoleon
Bonaparte during his lifetime, not by a Tory or a
French sycophant, but by a great Liberal English
statesman like Charles James Fox—" I believe
him to be one of the best, as I am certain he is the
greatest of men." Yet with these memorable in-
dications of unbounded "admiration for Bona-
parte" by illustrious champions of " liberal prin-
ciples," both amongst ourselves and upon the con-
tinent, Leigh Hunt is filled with incredulous or
rather bewildered amazement at the evidence of
similar principles and of a kindred admiration in the
late Lord Holland's recently published remini-
scences. The truth is, our author indicates the fact
more than once in the course of his present
volumes; he himself, with all his liberalityand large-
heartedness on other subjects, is as bigoted as any
old-world Tory amongst us in his fierce and i
m.
laciable anti-Bonapartism. But for this we should
never find him outraging our common sense
ha
tirade against the reigning Napoleon, sfaer his
and Conn-
ingratitude to the late Count D 0 einous
tess of Blessington. Ingratitudeaurra.Yn, the score
Prince
that Louis Napoleon did nt fonds 1
of France,
President, out of the nationaloool.
incurred by the
millinery,
debts to the amount of 07
said Count and Countess for jewellery,
of frivolous extrava-
gambling, and all other kinds
plea, or by what claim,
gances. And upon
forsooth ? Why, actually because when the Prince
was a refugee in England the Count and Countess
him, likemany another lion, to one or
admittedin Goreof
House
Kbeyn thesi ngmt oonr e!
two of the soirees given
i
accomplished Mrs. Leo Huntrrsdignation, onee,
Listening at first to our author's
might reasonably suppose that if the Prince were
not actually the father of the Count and Countess
he must at least at some time or other in his
chequered career have been saved by their
interposition from some appalling calamity.
Yet when the matter comes to be candidly exa-
mined, it turns out that these claims upon Louis
Napoleon's gratitude are somewhat analogous to
those which caused Mr. Kenwicrs to exclaim, on
hearing of the marriage of his uncle Lillyvick with
Miga Pottnliora of tlit) Moto Royal, Drury-lane,

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bitterly, regretfully, reproachfully, "The bread
and butters he has had in my house, the hoysiters
he has ate !" The simple fact of the matter, as
between the late lamented Count d'Orsay and the
reigning Emperor of the French, is that the latter
proved himself as generous in regard to his old
friend as his warmest admirers might have predi-
cated, nominating him the Chief of the Institution
of the Beaux Arts, a post for the due filling of
which that gifted gentleman was eminently well
qualified. It seems to have been convenient, how-
ever, for our author to depreciate the value or im-
portance of this same appointment, and to charge
with ingratitude and heartlessness one of the most
magnanimous and friendship-cherishing princes in
Christendom. So hardened for the nonce
is the otherwise kindly heart of Leigh
Hunt by the petrifying influence of his
implacable anti-Bonapartism ! Turning from this
to a more genial subject, however, it is amusing to
find the answer unexpectedly given by our author
to the question with which simple-minded, arith-
metic-loving Jedediah Buxton is made to bewilder
himself in one of the quaintest papers in Charles
Knight's delightful volumes, 'yclep'd " Once upon
a Time "—namely, as to who vas Hickes, after
whom was called Hickes's Hall, mentioned upon
the milestones in the direction of Barnet and High-
gate •
7 The standard on Cornhill was puzzling
enough, he thought ; as also was St. Giles's Pound,
and the like mythical points of metropolitan ad-
measurement—but Hickes's Hall, " there was the
rub !" Who was Hiekes ? What was his Hall ?
Where did it stand ? When did he build it I And
why i Jedediah Buxton might have learnt from
Leigh Hunt, had he lived late enough, that Hickes'a
Hall stood formerly in Clerkenwell, on the site of
the present Sessions-house ; that its founder was
Sir Baptist Hickes, a wealthy silk-mercer of
Cheapside ; that he was one of the money-
made baronets of James the First ; and that
this same baronet ultimately expanded into
a peer, under the name, style, and title of Lord
Hickes [think of that, wondering ghost of Jedediah
Buxton !] and Viscount Campden of Campden, in
Gloucestershire. As a charming gossip de omnibus
rebus relating to Kensington, commend us, and for
our part let us heartily commend others, to these
delightful volumes about "The Old Court Suburb."
Read aright they will prove in a manner tantamount
to a personal confabutation, tete ft tete, with Leigh
Hunt among the green hedges and straggling villas,
the trim gardens and suburban lanes of beautiful
old Kensington. A privileged chat, we take it,
worth toiling for to obtain ; yet a luxury of that
kind which any one may here enjoy without the
need of stirring from the slippered ease of the elbow
chair. The " Old Court Suburb" indeed comes
forth, moreover, in a manner the most welcome,
because the most happily timed—as it must prove
the acceptablest companion imaginable in these
seasons of holiday sauntering by the seaside or
through the inland meadows—the very book to be
turned over in a leisure hour anywhere in pleasant
scenery : on the pebbled shore, in a window nook of
a flowery balcony, or on the fresh grass under some
spreading sycamore.

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