BOOKS.
MRS. CROSSE'S "RED-LETTER DAYS."* ELDERLY people who have lived much in society have been prone of late years to record their recollections for the benefit of the public. There is a passion for gossip ; it grows by what it feeds on, and the food provided has been ample. Every peculiarity in distinguished men and women, of form or feature, of dress and manners, is described with infinite minuteness ; nothing is too small for the chronicler, nothing too private; secret drawers are rifled, private letters are used without scruple, and the reverence due to the foibles of the dead is too often disregarded. We gain little worth having from this kind of literary gossip, and nothing that can compensate for the evil that it produces. Curiosity may be an excellent quality, but it depends upon how it is directed ; and, for the most part, works of the kind we are describing gratify a false taste. There are, however, exceptions to every rule, and Mrs. Crosse's book, while belonging to the lightest of light literature, has merits that to some extent distinguish it from most of the " Recollections and " Reminiscences " that have recently been published. Her style is never careless, and generally very good ; she has evidently enjoyed to the utmost the friendships she has formed, and her judgments appear to be at once honest and kindly. There is, on the other hand, the common defect of repetition, and some chapters are in large measure mere bookmaking. But Mrs. Crosse has much to tell that is gleaned from what she saw and heard, and her personal reminiscences form the cream of these volumes.
The gossip of the book is considerably varied, for the writer has known many men of science as well as of letters, and there are few pages in which the eye is not arrested by some lively anecdote or observation. Mrs. Crosse, who has agree- able recollections of Dr. Whewell, records with pleasure his love of good novels, and how he told her that such was his liking for Miss Austen, that he read her tales through once every year. With a novelist of a very inferior class, but at one time far more popular, she seems to have been intimate ; but the only anecdote worth 'relating of Samuel Warren is that he would never allow any of George Eliot's novels to enter his house. "No good thing," he said, "can oome from so impure a source." Mrs. Crosse adds that she does not think his opinion was due to literary jealousy. " He judged Miss Evans as a member of society rather than as the writer." Of the author of Cranford, Mrs. Crosse has bright memories. To her, Mrs. Gaskell appeared one of the most delightful of women. " There was a genuine warmth and geniality in her manner—nay, more, a fascination about her—that made you regret the time when you had never known her. There are people a single meeting with whom adds largely to our capital account of belief in human nature." Of poets and their friends, the writer has more to say than of novelists. She knew the "joy-dispensing" John Kenyon, and Lawlor, and the Brownings, and Crabb Robinson, who was "as ugly as Socrates," and " being a great talker himself, valued the gift of silence in others." The reader is therefore brought into good literary company, which, although familiar, is suffi- ciently entertaining. Of Landor at Bath, Mrs. Crosse relates her impressions at some length. Unlike his friend Southey, he did not care much for books, and "thought those hours ill-spent that were not passed out of doors." On one occasion, the author beard him say : " The time I most regret is the time I have spent in reading ; if I had read less, I should be more original ; learning in books is learning at second-hand,"—which is one of the extravagant and one-sided statements in which Landor delighted. His remark that authors should never be seen by authors, reminds us of Dr. Johnson's saying that the further authors kept from each other the better. He observed on one occasion that he was the first man at Oxford to leave off hair-powder and a pigtail, but Southey, who was at Balliol at the same period, bad also discarded them. This was in * Rad Lotter Pays nj My Ws. By Mrs. .A.udrew Orosse. 2 vola. London t Bentley tind Son, 1793, and long before the poets became acquainted. Lander, as our readers know, was one of the unhappy men who mar- ried at random, with the usual result of such a blunder. It seems that during the honeymoon, when he was reading aloud some of his own verses, the lady told him to stop because she wished to see Punch and Judy performing in the street below,—a rather trying interruption for a poet. Mrs. Crosse never heard him utter a word of blame ; there was never any quarrel, but he said merely that life was rendered impos- sible to him in Italy. He returned to his family in 1858, and " showed the irascibility of his temper by kicking his dinner and the man-cook out of the window." The writer adds that probably they were both bad, the dinner exceptionally so, for Landor's tastes were simple and easily satisfied. On one occasion she heard him say that "a rib of Shakespeare would have made a Milton ; " and, speaking of French criticisms of English poets, he remarked that " Vol- taire stuck to Milton and Shakespeare, as a woodpecker does to an old forest-tree, only for the purpose of picking out what was rotten," Like Mr. Ruskin, Landor thought very highly of Aurora Leigh, although that poem sins greatly against his classical severity of style. Mrs. Crosse met Mrs. Browning at Kenyon's, and was disappointed with her. " In conver- sation," she writes, " Mrs. Browning was reserved, with a certain proud aloofness of manner; at the same time, there was a listening reticence in her attitude that did not help
the playful tossing to and fro of talk." Her appearance, too, was not what the author bad pictured to herself. "To my finding, she had a distinctly hard-featured, non- sympathetic aspect ; the brow was a noble soul-ease, and the eyes were dark and penetrating ; but the mouth was hard and immobile for any play of expression, while the lower jaw showed something of the strength of obstinacy." Of Browning she observes that the impression made upon her, "in his quality as layman, not as poet, was that of a thorough-paced English gentleman, not aristocratic in appearance, or even scholarly in manner, and still less a doctrinaire in argument."
As the wife of a distinguished man of science, and known, too, for her scientific attainments, Mrs. Crosse had a wider circle of acquaintance than most women. She was charmed—as, in- deed, who was not P—with Faraday, and relates how the awe felt in youthful days for so great a man was tempered on the first introduction by learning that he was a great reader of novels. " Sixteen quarterings of pure Norman ancestry," she writes, " could not have made Michael Faraday, the black- smith's son, a finer gentleman than he was by nature. Faraday has been known to put embarrassed Royalty at ease with a grace that courtiers might envy." The author has an eye and a smile for the weaknesses of human nature, even when exalted by science :-
" Sir Richard Owen and Professor Huxley would not be asked to meet one another ; and, alas ! though they had been the closest of friends, Sedgwiek and Murchison no longer hunted Silurta in couples. Even astronomers can be the reverse of nice with each other, though the objects of their affections are so far removed. Arago's abuse of his fellow-worker was the most comprehensive in the language; he said of Leverrier that he was the greatest scoundrel within the orbit of Neptune.'" Of "Dumas le savant" a good story is told. Nothing annoyed the great chemist so much as being mistaken for the novelist. On one occasion, a lion-hunting English lady, after praising him in the most effusive language, and observing that she knew every line of his writings, from Monte Cristo to the Mousquetaires, added, "`I hope you will allow me to send you a card for my next soiree." Madam, I am in no way con- nected with the writer you allude to,' said the savant, with a cold disdain that no asinine, snub-proof coat-of-mail could resist. Oh, I thought you were the great Mr. Dumas,' ex- claimed the bewildered lady."
Mrs. Crosse quotes an estimate of Coleridge, written by the mother of a friend, in which she says :—" I think he is a most absent-minded, opinionated man, talking everybody down, and
going on about subjects that the rest of the company care nothing for." It may be hoped that Sir Roderick Murchi- son's scientific talk was kept, which Coleridge's was not, for sympathetic listeners, since the author relates that " Sir
Roderick would walk from dawn to sundown, talking all the time of the Pake)zoie rocks, never varying the subject as much as by a mention of strata above the old Red Sand stone." Babbles talk was of a different character. " No man was more ready for conversation in nredias res,—greetings and weather-talk were tsilsen as said ; your observation might be pointless,—his repartee came smart and sharp, with a ready click." Babbage's great grievance was his unfortunate calcu- lating machine. Upon Count Strzeleeki observing that the Chinese were greatly interested in it, and wished to know if it could be put in the pocket : " Tell them," replied Babbage, "that it is in every respect an out-of-pocket machine." Mrs. Crosse, when on a visit to his house, heard him say that not only had he crippled his private fortune by his devotion to this machine, but that for the sake of it he had given up all the pleasures and comforts of domestic life. Already he had spent on it £20,000, when his mother advised him to pursue his great object even if it should oblige him to live on bread and cheese, His conversation, the author says, made her aware " how deeply the disappointment about his work had bitten into the very core of his spirit."
Mrs. Crosse, in her fear of becoming too verbose and garrulous, recalls Sydney Smith's saying that the Seythians ate their grandparents when they became troublesome and told long stories. There are gossip-loving readers who will devour Mrs. Crease's book ; but she need be under no fear of any savage feeling towards its author. Anecdotes are plentiful; the spirit of the volumes is good ; there is vivacity and sound sense in these pages ; and what better pabulum has Mudie to serve out for an idle hourF If the book reaches a second edition, it is to be hoped that the author will supply an index.
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