previous next

[68]

Lady Milbank, Lady Byron's mother, is a good-natured old lady,— a little fashionable, however, I fear,—and her husband, a plain, respectable Englishman, who loves politics, and hates the French above everything. The afterpiece was ‘Charles the Bold,’ a genuine melodrama, full of drums and trumpets, and thunder and music, and a specimen of the state of the English stage, which I had never felt fully till now. However, the pleasant conversation in the box prevented me from being much annoyed by the piece, and I was really sorry when it was over; and I shook hands with Lord Byron for the last time with unexpected regret.

I think I have received more kindness from Lord Byron than from any person in England on whom I had not the regular claim of a letter of introduction. Besides the letters he has sent me for Fauriel and Ali Pacha, he accompanied the last with a present of a splendid pistol, which is to insure me a kind reception with the perverse Turk, and a copy of his own poems, and one of Dr. Holland's ‘Travels in Greece,’ which was given to him by the author,—with whom he has authorized me to use his name, to procure further facilities for my journey, if I should meet him on the Continent.

June 29.—To-day, after some trouble, though none arising unnecessarily in the public offices, I have obtained my passport, and gone through the melancholy duty of calling on the friends who have been kind to me,—bade farewell to the loungers at Murray's literary Exchange, and called on Lord Byron, who told me that he yet hoped to meet me in America. He said he never envied any men more than Lewis and Clarke, when he read the account of their expedition.


Mr. Ticknor left London on the 30th of June with the same delightful party of friends with whom he had crossed the ocean, and, crossing by Harwich, landed at Helvoetsluys. There, he says, ‘We took the only two machines in the village,—a coach, which seemed to be without springs, and a wagon, which did not even pretend to have any,—to transport us to Rotterdam. Our road, the whole distance, went over a dyke, and some portions of it were on the coast, where the broad ocean leans against the land.’ From Rotterdam, they went to the Hague, Leyden, Haarlem, Amsterdam, and Utrecht, where he parted from Mr.Perkins and Mrs. Perkins, and Mr. and Miss Haven; and with Mr. Everett and young Perkins,1 went on his way to

1 To be placed at school in Gottingen.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)
hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Samuel G. Perkins (3)
Elisha Ticknor (1)
Lindley Murray (1)
Milbank (1)
Leyden (1)
M. G. Lewis (1)
Holland (1)
N. A. Haven (1)
Fauriel (1)
Alexander Hill Everett (1)
Clarke (1)
Byron (1)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
June 30th (1)
June 29th (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: