Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14.djvu/677

1664.] Villino Trollope introduced us to "Owen Meredith," the poet from melody,—one far older in experience than in years, looking like his poetry, just so polished and graceful, just so sweetly in tune, just so Gallic in taste, and—shall we say it?—just so blasé! We doubt whether Robert Lytton, the diplomate, will ever realize the best aspirations of "Owen Meredith," the poet. Good came out of Nazareth, but it is not in our faith to believe that foreign courts can bear the rare fruit of ideal truth and beauty.—Then there was Blumenthal, the composer, who talked Buckle in admirable English, and played his own Reveries most daintily,—Reveries that are all languor, sighs, and tears, whose fitting home is the boudoirs of French marquises. Blumenthal is a Thalberg in small.—We have pleasant recollections of certain clever Oxonians, "Double-Firsts," potential in the classics and mathematics. A "Double-First" is the incarnation of Oxford, a masterpiece of Art. All that he knows he knows profoundly, nor does it require an Artesian bore to bring that knowledge bubbling to the surface. His mastery over his intellect is as great as that of Liszt over the piano-forte,—it is a slave to do his bidding. He is the result of a thousand years of culture. A "Double-First" never gives way to enthusiasms; his heart never gets into his head. Impulse is snubbed as though it were a poor relation; and argument is carried on by clear, acute reason, independent of feeling. Woe unto the American who loses his temper while duelling mentally with a "Double-First"! Oxford phlegm will triumph. Of course a "Double-First" is conservative; he disbelieves in republics and universal suffrage, attends the Established Church, and won't publicly deny the Thirty-Nine Articles, whatever maybe his very private opinion of them. He writes brilliant articles for the "Saturday Review," (familiarly known among Liberals as the "Saturday Reviler,") and ends by being a learned and successful barrister, or a Gladstone, or both. Genius will rarely subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles. With all his conservatism and want of what the French call effusion, a "Double-First" can be a delightful companion and charming man,—even to a democratic American.

We well remember with what admiring curiosity the Italians regarded Mrs. Stowe one evening that she passed at Villino Trollope. "È la Signora Stowe?"—"Davvero?"—"L'autrice di 'Uncle Tom'?"—"Possibile?"—were their oft-repeated exclamations; for "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is the one American book in which Italians are deeply read. To most of them, Byron and "Uncle Tom" comprehend the whole of English literature. However poorly informed an Italian may be as regards America in other respects, he has a very definite idea of slavery, thanks to Mrs. Stowe. To read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" aloud in Italian to an Italian audience is productive of queer sensations. This office an American woman took upon herself for the enlightenment of some contadine of Fiesole with whom she was staying. She appealed to a thoroughly impartial jury. The verdict would have been balm of Gilead to long-suffering Abolitionists. So admirable an idea of justice had these acute peasant-women, so exalted was their opinion of America, which they believed to be a model republic where all men were born free and equal, that it was long before the reader could impress upon her audience the fact of the existence of slavery there. When this fact did take root in their simple minds, their righteous indignation knew no bounds, and, unlike the orator of the Bird o' Freedom, they thanked God that they were not Americans.

ThenBut our recollections are too numerous for the patience of those who do not know Villino Trollope; and we shut up in our thoughts many "pictures beautiful that hang on Memory's walls," turning their faces so that we, at least, may see and enjoy them.

But ere turning away, we pause before one face, now no longer of the living, that of Mrs. Frances Trollope. Knowing