The Sun.
London, England, 1864-11-08 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

The Future Earl of Berkeley.

My Life and _Recollections. By the Hon. Grantley
Fitzhardinge Berkeley. Two Vole. Hurst and

Blackett.

Adopting the :expression applied to Mr. Leigh
Hunt by Lord Macaulay, we would say at once
in regard to the author of these delightful Recol-
lections—We have a kindness for the Hon. Grant-
ley Berkeley. Pitiless, nay, let us frankly confess it,
really lamentable sometimes, though the audacity
of the personalities squandered by him through
these two large volumes, we have a kindness for the
writer of them nevtrtheless. They are what old Lady
Kew might have agreed with Mrs. Skewton in
calling naughty—but, for all that, they are also, as
we have said, delightful. Mr Berkeley, it may be as
well to mention, sets oat here in this retrospective
survey of his career as hie own rememb cancer, with
the reminder to his reader that he, the Author of
the Book, is, in years, just exactly as old as the
century. His Recollections extend, therefore, over
an interval of from fifty to sixty years in its dura-
tion. During which very momentous span of time the
world has passed through more astounding changes
end even it might be said complete transformations
no less socially and in some sense morally also, than
politically and scientifically, than can be found to
have been anywhere else recorded within the like
compass of a half century in the whole wide range
of the annals of modern civilisation. In asserting
which, we are indulging in no exaggeration of
phrase whatever. Between the world as it was,
when our author first recalls it to his remembrance
—just a little more than one half century ago—and
the world as it is now, under his more than ever
keen and animated observation, the difference dis-
cernible even at a superficial glance, is nothing less
than one ebsolutely astounding of its kind. And, in
testimony of its being so, it is only necessary to re-
gard the contrast between the Now and the Then
from two points of view—one point of view bringing
that truly astonishing contrast socially, the other
scientifically, under the merest momentary conside-
ration. For example—it is within this first half of
the nineteenth century (the identical epoch
of which Mr. Berkeley's book treats auto•
biographically) it is within these fifty or sixty
years last past that we have learnt (as matters of
mere everyday occurrence) to accustom °arse] yes to
the marvels—of traversing the ocean in defiance of
wind and tide—of whirling from city to city, all over
Europe, at the rate of nearly a mile a minute, at
the tail of a fiery dragon, quite as wonderful in its
way as those about which our grandfathers, when
they were little boys, used to read in the dear old
Fairy Tales still happily familiar to the nursery—
of flashing our messages, to and fro, with
inconceivable rapidity, under the sea,
over the land, at the thrill of an
acid, on the wings of the lightning—of having
our portraits taken (true to a hair) within the space
of a few seconds, by the pencil of a sunbeam—nay,
even for that matter, of subjecting the very atmo-
sphere of the fixed stars, and of those remoter
regions in space marked by the dim nebu:se, to the
wonder-working test of spectrum analysis under
the lens of the microscope l Socially, hardly less than
scientifically, moreover, the change that has here
taken place within the personal recollection of our
author is, in very deed and truth, something quite
marvellous. Insomuch, that it would hardly be any
extravagance whatever to assert that many a man
who passed muster as a Gentleman when the Hon.
Grantley Berkeley was a little child, would, if he
could, to-day but be recalled to life, just precisely
as he was Then, assume his right place Now in the
social system as a most unquestionable Blackguard.
A Prince of the Blood, it need only here be said, by
way of illustration, could actually in those far
looser, coarser, more degenerate times, attain the
reputation, could even, as the world remembers
now with scorn, secure to himself the distinctive
designation of the First Gentleman in Europe—
although drinking like a tapster, boxing like a
rough, and swearing like a costermonger. It is
something surely worthy of note, in regard to the
Hon. Grantley Berkeley, that passing, as he did, as
a boy, as an observant and adventurous stripling
—through the very thick and tumult of that swill-
ing, gambling, bruising, blaspheming raff of
Corinthian; his nature remained untainted. 'That
it has done so, this only too outspoken
and ingenuous work of his, affords signal and to our
mind conclusive attestation. It is impossible to
glance through its revelations, no matter whether
cursorily or scrutinisingly, without recognising, in
the man who penned it, one whose temperament
hes many large and instantly appreciable claims
upon our sympathy. Granted that he shows him-
self to us here as, in his idocyncrasy, a mass
of contradictions. Yet, throughout them
all, he wins our sympathy, not partially
but cordially and almost unreservedly. Re writes,
as perhaps no man before him ever did
write—about his mother. lie discourses about his
brothers as unhesitatingly as though be were holding
a brief against them in a criminal prosecution.
He relates to us most amusingly old Lady Cler-
mont's peccadilloes in the " lacing" (pretty stiffly
too) of her tea with brandy—and does this with
all the gusto and a great deal more than the ave-
rage vivacity of a genuine tea-table scandal-monger.
He puts an end at last for once and for all to every
one of our long cherished hopes as to L. E. L. not
having fallen—and he does this by blurting out with
frightful distinctness her own acknowledgment to
him of her having been seduced, while she was yet
a mere slip of a school girl, and seduced, too, by
no other than Dr. Maginn. Of that same learned,
dirty, gifted creature, our author talks elsewhere
most unhesitatingly—revealing the redoubtable
Doctor in a light as odious as perhaps any man-
of-letters was ever revealed in, namely, as
offering to huckster his praise as a critic
for so much money told out to him in cur-
rent coin of the realm—money ,that Dr.
Maginn is hero related as having asked for at the
hands of the Author of "Berkeley Castle"—an
Author whose hand he had already learnt full well
could wield not only a gray goosequill, but, still
more effectively upon occasion, a tolerably sinewy
and elastic horsewhip. Yet—it is the writer of these
astoundingly candid recollections, it is the relater
of all these chequered incidents in a life
the trail of which he has himself pretty
plainly traced back through scenes as varied as the
coulisses and the hunting-field, the haunts of the
demimonde and the regions peopled by the creme
de la crime, the Ring and the Drawing-room, the
margin of the trout-stream and the sofas of the
boudoir, the Barrack and the House of Com-
mons, the Palace and the Shanty, the soli.,
tudes of the Prairie and the crush at Almacks
—it is the author of these most interesting
Recollections, of all those most startling Revelae
lions about people dead and gone, and about others
even who are still living—it is of him that we
would here speak as of one with whom, in many
respects, we do most heartily sympathise, as one
whom it is impossible to help admiring, in defiance
of all his foibles and inconsistencies. Naturally,
he is a man endowed with a most tenderly affec-
tionate disposition. His devotion to his House
and Home—to the ancient race of the Berke•
leys—to the yet vivid souvenirs of his childhood,
to his mother (in spite of all he writes about her),
to his brothers (one and all of them at first), to his
brother Moreton_especially—is a devotion, of its
kind, in its way, eminently beautiful. His very
fopperies one recognises as merely superficial. Un-
derlying them all there is at the very core and heart
of his nature an inerradicable manliness. A dandy
in appearance, he is not the least atom a dandy i❑
reality—that is, in his personal bearing and deport-
ment, in his conver-ation, in his habits and prefer-
ences. He is so far from being effeminate in his likings
and in his surroundings, that with all his air of
fribble and flaneur during the height of the season,
he is, in season and out of season, a Mighty Hunter
in his varied way—at home alike in the stubble
afoot or in the saddle, casting a fly over the rimpled
surface of the trout-stream, stalking the deer on
the heathered hill-side, flying a rasper in the track
of the fox-hounds, or bringing down with his
steady hand, his keen eye, and his
unerring aim, the wild buffalo of the Far
West. As a Sportsman he can hold his t'own
to this day as among the first and. foremokt. As

fa eh ioneble man of letters he Las in his time enjoyed I
and still in one department of literature continues
to enjoy, a recognisable—not the highest, but still a
distinct and recognisable—reputation. And jostled
as he was, particularly in his younger days, among
a bewildering concourse of high-born and
lowborn men of the world, patricians and par.
venus, peers and prize-fighters, he has passed
(as in truth this very Book of his, containing within
it his autobiographic recollections, serves to de•
monstrate) he has passed through it all, so far scath.
less, so far untainted by the influence of
many evil surroundings, that his nature is still, to
this hour, marked signally, pre-eminently
among all his characteristics by its ingenuous.
ness. As a Book of Fashionable, Sporting, Lite.
rary, and Political, Recollections, the work is sin-
gularly delightful and entertaining . It is as full
as anecdote as a plum pudding is full of all sorts of
good things in the way of fruit and spice and appe.
tizing condiments. There is hardly a single dull
page in the whole of those two big volumes. The
Hon. Ch-antley and his contemporaries pass before
us, in one pleasant chapter after another, as in a
moving panorama, their manners, and customs, and
costumes, for that matter, changing marvellously,
as the time here described is brought down in the
flow of the narrative, nearer and nearer to our
own epoch. We set out:with our autobiographer
from that stand-point of his recollections, from
which he first of all gazes " up" the vista
of his career from a certain day in 1806,
where:he remembers to have:stood, when a little boy
of six, by the side of his old nurse, by a meadow-
gate down in Gloucestershire. From that first
stand-point he starts upon the record of his social
pilgrimage—introducing us, by the way, as he
advances from 1806 to this present year of grace,
1864, to all sorts and conditions of men and women
with whom he has been brought, during his Life's
Pilgrimage, more or less intimately into
communication. These Berkeleys, we never
knew so much about—(though, for that matter,
we did happen to know a good deal about them
previously)—until now—and this, thanks to these
vivid recollections of them, to these nothing less than
audacious revelations. And—thanks also to the very
Book under notice—one of those Berkeleys we
have thereby come to like better than ever in spite
of all his faults and foibles—meaning no other than
Grantley Berkeley himself, the candid Ego of this
Retrospect. We know now more than ever about
him—by reason of this Book—it has told us nearly
all his antecedents so far as they yet survive in:his
own remembrance. And hence he has enabled
as to appreciate him, as we never by possibility
could have appreciated him previously, without
some such frank and unhesitating self-revelation.
As an autobiographer, he has a rare gilt in telling a
good anecdote trippingly off the tongue, without
any of the tediousness of circumlocution. Ex gr.
this whimsical commemoration by him of a maiden
speech :—" The late Mr L. Charlton," he says,
" tried to make a maiden speech, and rising i❑
his place with a very bald head, known too
as he was to everybody as one of the oldest
stagers in all the ways of the world, he began
with great affectation of inexperience, and with an
exceedingly mild voice—' Mr Speaker, I am but a
young member.' On hearing this assertion from
so well known and crafty man, possessing so vener-
able a pate, the entire House roared with laughter.
Twice he stopped, and three times he commenced
with these words; but it was useless; the House
would not listen, and he never to try know-
ledge essayed to speak again, or if he did, the
sight of his bald head set the:audience in a roar.'
Sometimes he indulges as with an old familiar
comicality—as, for example, when he says—" The
next amusing thing I remember was at a dinner at
the Thatched House in St. James's-street, given to
his Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester, I
think; but it was certainly to the Royal Duke
who had one of the regiments of the Guards. At
the banquet, among the young officers who had
lately joined, was Dick Armit ; when, on his being
presented to hie Royal Highness, the Duke re.
marked, when he heard his name, ' Oh, I know—
son of Armit and Co. ;' alluding to the well-known
firm. 'No, sir,' replied Dick ; 'of Armit only;
As a more highly elaborated illustration of our
author's skill as a narrator, we are tempted to give,
in spite of its length, the subjoined very charming
sketch of—