Current Literature [pp. 381-392]

CURRENT LITERA4 TURE.
RECENT ART AND SOCIETY, as described in
the Autobiography and Memoirs of Henry
Fothergill Chorley; compiled from the
Edition of Henry G. Hewlett, by C. H.
Jones.
The chief difference between this volume
and that of Mr. Hewlett, recently published
in England under the title, Autobiograp hy,
Memioir, and Letters of Henry Fothergill
Chorley, is, that the purely personal details
and experiences to which a large portion of
Mr. Hewlett's two-volume edition is assigned, have been for the most part omitted.
The material has also been re-arranged in
such a way as to group together those portions between which there seems to be a natural connection in point of time and subject.
Mr. Jones has done his task well, for although
the greater part of the work is made up of
extracts from Chorley's own journal and correspondence, and although the editor has not
seen fit, as he says, to distinguish his own
share of the narrative portion of the volume
from that of Mr. Hewlett, yet all the connecting matter is well and clearly written.
Henry F. Chorley was a man who deserved to be remembered for his own sake; as
one who, without any advantages of fortune
and in spite of many drawbacks, created and
maintained for himself an honorable position
of independence, and even authority; who,
notwithstanding certain infirmities of disposition, exhibited from the outset and retained
to the close of his career, a sincerity of conviction, a rectitude of conduct, and a tenderness of heart, that ennobled his calling in the
estimation of the world, and endeared his
character to those who enjoyed his private
friendship. As a writer, he attained no great
success, but as a critic of men and their
works, literary and artistic, he has had few
equals. But the principal value of the work
consists in the critical remarks, extracted
from his journal, upon the "lions " of his day
and generation. The circle of his intimates
included some of the most distinguished
contemporary men and women in England
and on the Continent, and one or two of our
American notabilities as well; he was a constant habitue of the brilliant society which
gathered about Lady Blessington, Lady
Morgan, and other leaders of the London
social world; and his journals record reminiscences of nearly every musical, literary,
or social celebrity of his time who was known
in or who visited England, together with
many who did not. These reminiscences
were not intended by Chorley for publication, and consequently they have that peculiar truthfulness and piquancy pertaining to
impressions and experiences put on record at
that moment when they are freshest and
most vivid.
One of Chorley's closest friends was the
celebrated Lady Blessington. Of her he
writes:
* Such faults as she had belonged to her position,
to her past history, and to the disloyalty of many who
paid court to her by paying court to her faults, and
who then carried into the outer world depreciating
reports of the wit, the banter, the sarcasm, and the
epigram, which but for their urgings and incitements
would have been always kindly, however mirthful.
"She must have had originally the most sunny of
sunny natures. As it was, I have never seen anything
like her vivacity and sweet cheerfulness during the
early years when I knew her. She had a singular
power of entertaining herself by her own stories; the
keenness of an Irishwoman in relishing fun and repartee, strange turns of language, and bright touches
of character. A fairer, kinder, more universal recipient of everything that came within the possibilities of
her mind, I have never known. I think the only
genuine author whose merits she was averse to admit was Hood; and yet she knew Rabelais, and delighted in' Elia.' It was her real disposition to dwell
on beauties rather than faults. Critical she could be,
and as judiciously critical as any woman I have ever
known, but she never seemed to be so willingly.
When a poem was read to her, or a book given to
her, she could always touch on the best passage, the
bright point; and rarely missed the purpose of the
work, if purpose it had... Her taste in everything
was toward the gay, the superb, the luxurious; but
on the whole, excellently good. Her eye was as quick
as lightning; her resources were many and original.
It will not be forgotten how, twenty years ago, she
astounded the opera - goors by appearing in her box
with a plain transparent cap, which the world in its
ignorance called a Quaker's cap; and the best of all
likenesses of her, in date later than the lovely Lawrence portrait, is that drawing by Chalon, in which
this' tire' is represented with some additional loops
of ribbon. So, too, her houses in Seamore Place and
at Kensington Gore were full of fancies which have
since passed into fashions, and which seemed all to
belong to and agree with herself. Had she been the
selfish, Sybaritic woman whom many who hated her,
without knowing her, delighted to represent her, she
might have indulged these joyous and costly humors
with impunity; but she was affectionately, inconsiderately liberal-liberal to those of her own flesh and
blood who had misrepresented and maligned her, and
who grasped at whatever bounty she yielded them,
with scarcely a show of cordiality in return, and who
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