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CHAPTER XIV.

HOLLAND HOUSE.

The Third Lord Holland-Holland House, the rendezvous of Literature, Art, and Science-Lady Holland.

WE have already had occasion to mention, the name of Stephen Fox, second Lord Holland. As, however, we do not wish to speak of persons because they lived in Holland House, but rather of Holland House because celebrities resided there, we shall not have occasion to refer to Stephen again. This good-natured, whimsical, apoplectic second lord was succeeded by his son Henry Richard, who was only thirteen months old at the time of his father's death. Of Richard's political life little need be said. Like his uncle Charles, he was a staunch believer in Bonaparte, and like him, too, his sympathies were always on the side which he believed just or generous. The multitude of his pro

tests against those measures of the House of Lords which he thought unjust or ungenerous, have caused Leigh Hunt to nickname him the "Protestant Peer." He dabbled in literature, and published some translations of Spanish comedies, in an age when a knowledge of Spanish was certainly a most unusual acquirement in a peer of the realm. He had, in fact, spent some considerable time in Spain and in Italy. In the latter country he met the future Lady Holland, then the wife of Sir Godfrey Webster. Lady Webster was divorced, and married to Lord Holland in 1797. From henceforth, Holland House, restored and refitted, became the centre of the higher London intellectual society. To have the entrée into that salon was more than a sufficient passport into any other. An invitation to Holland House was something to which the young author might look forward, as a modern Frenchman does to one of the Forty Chairs in the Académie Française. Never in England has a more brilliant literary circle been gathered together, and Sidney Smith, in one of his letters, declares" that five hundred travelled people assert that there is no such agreeable house in Europe as Holland House." The dinner

parties there were of world-wide celebrity. Let us attempt to reproduce a faint image of one of them. It is a Saturday in the middle of August, 1832; the hour is seven-the Holland House dinner hour. It is thought a generally inconvenient one, and Talleyrand declared that it was adopted by Lady Holland, "pour gêner tout le monde." The dining-room is a "fine long room, the wainscot of which is rich with gilded coronets, roses, and portcullises." On the right hand side, as the dinner party enters from the Crimson Drawing Room, the twilight still steals in from the large bay window, which commands a pleasing view of the garden. Opposite this window stands an oldfashioned sideboard, its shelves laden with glittering old family plate, salvers, tankards, and vases. A closet, filled with gay oriental china, and a huge looking-glass, form the most conspicuous breaks in the crimson damask-covered walls, which, indeed, are besides, largely hidden beneath portraits. Among these is a Sir Joshua, another of old Stephen Fox, by Lely, and one of Stephen's wife, by Kneller. A handsome chandelier, with many brightly-burning candles, hangs from the starry ceiling. The guests

are seated. There is the Mistress of the house, imperious, fidgety, but a woman of " considerable talents and great literary acquirements," a woman who led the conversation, or who at least thought she did so. "The centurion did not keep his soldiers in better order than she keeps her guests." It is to one, "Go, and he goeth"; and to another, "Do this," and it is done. "Ring the bell, Mr. Macaulay." "Now, we have had enough of this-give us something else." "Lay down that screen, Lord Russell; you will spoil it."

"When young she must have been a most beautiful woman. She still looks, however, as if she had been handsome, and shows in one respect great taste and sense. She does not rouge at all; and her costume is not youthful, so that she looks as well in the morning as in the evening. Her Ladyship, for an esprit fort, is the greatest coward. She is frightened out of her wits by thunder; has all the shutters closed, the curtains drawn, and orders candles in daylight, to keep out the lightning, or rather the appearance of the lightning. When choleraphobia was rampant, she was in a terrible taking about the cholera; refused to eat any ice, because somebody said that ice was

bad for the cholera. She is frightened out of her wits by hearing a dog howl.”

Many, indeed, are the retorts which her Ladyship provokes, among occasional, as well as among her more intimate friends. "Holland House," a friend of Granville Penn's remarked to him, "is really a most pleasant place; and in Lord Holland's company you might imagine youself inside the house of Socrates." The reply is said to have closed the door of Holland House to Mr. Penn for ever. "It certainly always seemed so to me, for I often seemed to hear Xanthippe talking rather loud in the adjoining room." Foscolo was even more decided in his aversion to the wife of his friend, remarking that though he could go anywhere, even to the infernal regions, with his Lordship, he should be sorry to go to heaven with Lady Holland.

Ugo

At the end of the table, occupying the place of the Master of the house, who is dining alone to-day on account of the gout, sits Allen. John Allen, a Scotchman, a physician, a writer on constitutional history, an Edinburgh reviewer, a man of a high character, warm, kind, and affectionate, and above all, Lady

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