Haydoniana

Under date of June 23, 1815, Haydon writes: "While looking at the cartoons and frescoes, to-day, the Duke of Wellington came in and toppled away, looking very little at anything. Rogers was there; and it was curious to see old Rogers totter up to the Duke, who turned around and said, 'How d'ye do?' giving Rogers a squeeze which made him writhe. C. Greville then came up, and the Duke at once began to laugh and talk with him only. There is nothing so awkward to a man in the middle class as 'making up' to a man of high rank, who, the moment he has noticed him, turns round and leaves him to follow or make the best of his way. Rogers had this encounter to-day. Rogers was a man of genius, the friend of Byron, yet the Duke did not familiarize with him; but the instant Greville came up one of his own class, joking, chatting, and laughing began, without any further notice of Rogers."

There are numerous anecdotes in these letters and in the "Table-Talk" of the Duke of Wellington. "What a singular look," writes Haydon, "the Duke of Wellington always had, with his greyhound eye, his eagle nose, and singular mouth like a helpless infant learning to whistle." This spiteful description was noted down, however, after Wellington had turned a cold shoulder upon some of Haydon's pet schemes. When the Duke of Wellington sat to Haydon for a picture representing him on the field of Waterloo, with his favorite horse Copenhagen, twenty years after the battle, the painter was "highly delighted with his subject. He declares that the Duke told a story better than any man he ever heard, not excepting Sir Walter Scott."

THE FIRST NAPOLEON. We quote one anecdote of Napoleon, a scene in which the great soldier appears as if on canvas, or more so. Haydon puts the story in the mouth of Rigo, a French artist who was in Napoleon's Egyptian expedition, but the words are evidently Haydon's own:

[...] the night before the battle of Aboukir, Rigo lay on the ground in the same tent with Bonaparte. About midnight Bonaparte told Berthier and the rest to go to sleep in their cloaks till daybreak. Rigo said he was never near Bonaparte but he was attracted by his physiognomy; there was something in his face so acute, so thoughtful, so terrible, that it always impressed him; and that this night, when the rest were buried in sleep, he could not help watching him. In a little time he observed Napoleon take the compasses and a chart of Aboukir and the Mediterranean, and measure, and then take a ruler and draw lines. He then arose, went to the door of his tent, and looked toward the horizon; then returned and looked at his watch. After a moment he took a knife and cut the table in all ways, like a boy. He then rested with his head on his hand, looked at his watch for some time, went again to the door of his tent, and again returned to his seat. There was something peculiarly awful in the circumstances, the dead silence of the night, the solitary lamp, lighting up Napoleon's features, the Generals sleeping, the feeling that the Turks were encamped near, and that before long a dreadful battle would be fought. Rigo saw he could not have slept. Presently Napoleon looked around to see that all slept. Rigo shut his eyes. In a short time Napoleon called them all up, ordered his horse, and asked how long to daybreak. They told him an hour. The army was then got under arms. Napoleon rode round, spoke to the Colonels and soldiers, told them in his energetic manner that a mile from them lay a Turkish army, which he expected by 10 o'clock that morning should exist no longer. Before 10 they were annihilated."

TALLEYRAND. The portrait of Talleyrand is anything but flattering; no date, but apparently about 1833: "I met that patriarch of dissimulation and artifice, Talleyrand, but once, and only once, and I never shall forget him. He looked like a toothless boa of intrigue, with nothing left but his poison. To see his impenetrable face at a game of whist, watching everybody without a trace of movement in his own figure or face, save the slightest perceptible twitch in the lip, was a sight never to be forgotten. It was the incarnation of meaning without assumption."

LORD BROUGHAM. Here are some stories as to Lord Brougham: "Lord Lyttleton told me that nobody was so fond of childish jokes as Lord Brougham. One night at a full-dress dinner at Lord Grey's, Lord Brougham sat on one side, the Duke of Sussex on the other, and Lord Lyttleton next. In the middle of dinner Lord Brougham put his head behind Lord Grey and made all sorts of horrid grimaces at Lord Lyttleton; they were very old friends. Until Lord Lyttleton, to escape bursting out laughing, said, 'My Lord Chancellor, may I have the honor of taking wine with you?' They drank wine, but as Lord Brougham was drinking his, he turned up the whites of his eyes with such an absurdly methodistical twitch as to send Lord Lyttleton into fits of suppressed laughter."

"After Brougham's acceptance of the Chancellorship he took Lord Grey's house in Berkeley square, and when he gave it up in 1834 Bromley, Lord Grey's agent, told me that never was a house left in such a filthy condition. The bed-rooms were simply unendurable, and hidden in the handsome satin curtains in the drawing-room he found a kitchen candlestick and black lead for the grates. The furniture was nearly all ruined by ill usage and neglect; and, although Lord Grey gave Brougham two months in excess of his term to move out, it was next to impossible to get him out, and when he went, instead of paying up the arbitrated sum, for he had insisted on arbitration as to damages, he sent a check short of £15. The check was returned, and in three days the full amount was sent. Brougham was certainly wanting in delicate feeling in all the common transactions of life."

SHERIDAN. Sheridan, also, is made the victim of several pointed anecdotes and characterizations. "I heard Sir George Beaumont say that, at Lady Manners', in the country, Tom Sheridan was, one night, going to bed. His father came in and began to lecture him, but, being drunk, Tom undressed, put out the candle, and got to bed. The next day he was telling this, and some one said, 'What became of your father?' 'Oh,' said Tom, 'I'll be — if I know. I heard him tumbling about for an hour afterward.'"

BYRON. Col— was at Byron's house in Piccadilly, Lady Byron in the room, and luncheon was brought in — veal cutlets, etc. She began eating. Byron turned round in disgust — he had an aversion to see women eat — and said, "Gormandizing beast!" and, taking up the tray, threw the luncheon into the hall. Lady Byron cried and left the room. Byron himself told Miss Baillie, who repeated the story to Haydon, that the very morning he and Miss Milbanke were married, and were driving home through the grounds, and all the tenants and peasantry were cheering, Byron said to her, "What could have induced you to marry me?" "Good heavens," said Lady Byron, "because I loved you." "No," said he, "you have a spice of Mother Eve. You married me — your friends wished you not do so. You refused me twice, and I will be revenged." Byron told John Scott that after his separation from Lady Byron he went to a rout, and was regularly cut by all the women of fashion. As he leaned against the mantle-piece and they were sweeping by, a little red-haired, bright-eyed coquette came flirting up to him, and, with a look that was exquisitely insolent, said, "You had better have married me — I would have managed you better." Mrs. Leicester Stanhope sai[...]