Page:Samuel Carter Hall.pdf/4

"I forget how it came about, but my husband was introduced to a certain little Miss Spence, who, on the strength of having written something about the Highlands, was most decidedly blue, when blue was by no means so general a color as it is at present. She had a lodging of two rooms in Great Quebec Street, and 'patronized' young littérateurs, inviting them to her 'humble abode,' where tea was made in the bed room, and where it was whispered the butter was kept cool in the wash-hand-basin! There were 'lots' of such-like small scandals about poor Miss Spence's 'humble abode'; still people liked to go; and my husband was invited, with a sort of apology to poor me, who, never having published anything at that time, was considered ineligible; it was 'a rule,' and Miss Spence, in her 'humble abode,' lived by rule.

"Of course I had an account of the party when Mr. Hall came home. I coveted to know who was there, and what everybody wore and said. I was told that Lady Caroline Lamb was there, enveloped in the folds of an ermine cloak, which she called a 'cat-skin,' and that she talked a great deal about a periodical she wished to get up, to be called 'Tabby's Magazine'; and with her was an exceedingly haughty, brilliant, and beautiful girl, Rosina Wheeler,—since well known as Lady Bulwer Lytton,—and who sat rather impatiently at the feet of her eccentric 'Gamaliel.' Miss Emma Roberts was one of the favored ladies, and Miss Spence (who, like all 'Leo-hunters,' delighted in novelty) had just caught the author of 'The Mummy,' Jane Webb, who was as gentle and unpretending then as she was in after-years, when, laying aside romance for reality, she became a great helper of her husband, Mr. Loudon, in his laborious and valuable works. When I heard Miss Benger was there, in her historic turban, I thought how fortunate that I had remained at home! I had always a terror of tall, commanding women, who blink down upon you, and have the unmistakable air about them of 'Be-

hold me! have I not pronounced sentence upon Queen Elizabeth, and set my mark on the Queen of Scots?' Still, I quite appreciated the delight of meeting under the same roof so many celebrities, and was cross-questioning my husband, when he said, 'But there was one lady there whom I promised you should call on to-morrow.'

"Imagine my mingled delight and dismay!—delight at the bare idea of seeing her, who must be wellnigh suffocated with the perfume of her own 'Golden Violet,' the idol of my imagination,—dismay! for what should I say to her? what would she say to me?

"And now I must look back,—back to the 'long ago.'

"And yet I can hardly realize the sweep of years that have gone over so many who have since become near and dear to us. At that first visit, I saw Laetitia Landon in her grandmamma's modest lodging in Sloane Street,—a bright-eyed, sparkling, restless little girl, in a pink gingham frock,—grafting clever things on commonplace nothings, frolicking from subject to subject with the playfulness of a spoiled child,—her dark hair put back from her low, but sphere-like forehead, only a little above the most beautiful eyebrows that a painter could imagine, and falling in curls around her slender throat. We were nearly of the same age, but I had been almost a year married, and if I had not supported myself on my dignity as a married woman, should have been more than nervous, on my first introduction to a 'living poet,' though the poet was so different from what I had imagined. Her movements were as rapid as those of a squirrel. I wondered how any one so quick could be so graceful. She had been making a cap for grandmamma, and would insist upon the old lady's putting it on, that I might see 'how pretty it was.' To this grandmamma (Mrs. Bishop) objected,—she 'could n't' and she 'would n't' try it on,—'how could Laetitia be so silly?'—and then Laetitia put the great beflowered, beribboned thing on her own dainty little head, with a grave