Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 2

[66]

March 1, 1839.

Since my last date, I have dined with Lord Brougham. We had Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Stuart De Rothesay,¹ Lord Denman, and Charles Phillips —of Irish eloquence. I should not forget Lady Brougham,—a large-featured, rather coarse-looking woman,—who of course presided at her own table. In the drawing-room, before we went down to dinner, appeared the daughter, the wretched representative of this great man. She is now seventeen, tall, and with features resembling her father's, even to the nose; but ill-health has set its mark upon her. She entered the room with short and careful steps, so as not to add to the palpitation of the heart with which she is afflicted, and in her motion very much reminded me of the appearance of a person who is carrying a vessel full of water which he is anxious not to spill. Her lips and cheeks are blue, which is caused by her strange disease, under the influence of which one of the bloods becomes stagnant in the system. It was one of the most melancholy sights I have for a long time beheld, and threw a gloom upon all present. I think I have never seen a woman in such apparent ill-health; and yet her father carries her to assemblies and parties, that she may see the world, thinking this may have a good effect upon her health; and one of the newspapers, chroniclers of fashion, has this day announced, as one of the youthful debutantes of the season in the world of fashion, ‘the Hon. Miss Brougham.’ To all who have seen her, such an annunciation seems like hanging a garland over one who is dying. On entering the room, she sank on a divan in the centre, and her father came to her and kissed her. He loves her well, and watches her tenderly. When dinner was announced, he stood before his child, as if to intimate that she would not be handed down, and we passed on. She was not at table. In the dining-room are four beautiful marble busts of Pitt, Fox, Newton, and Lord Brougham's mother; also a beautiful piece of sculpture,—Mercury charming Argus to sleep. Lord Lyndhurst² has just returned from the Continent, where he has been for many months, so that this was my first meeting with him. Lord Brougham presented me in the quiet way in which this always takes place in English society,—‘Mr. Sumner; one of our profession,’—without saying of what country I was. We had been at table an hour or more before he was aware that I was an American. I alluded to America and Boston, and also to Lord Lyndhurst's relations there, with regard to whom Lord Brougham had inquired, when Lyndhurst said: ‘When were you in Boston?’ ‘It is my native place,’ I replied. ‘Then we are fellow-townsmen,’ said he, with a most emphatic knock on the table, and something like an oath. He left Boston, he told me, when a year old. I was afterwards