Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845

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Various. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845

HOMER, DANTE, AND MICHAEL ANGELO

SETTLED AT LAST; OR, RED RIVER RECOLLECTIONS

Chap. I

Chapter II

Chapter III

BORODINO. — AN ODE

A RAMBLE IN MONTENEGRO

ÆSTHETICS OF DRESS

THE THREE GUARDSMEN

MARSTON; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN

JANUS;

TO A BLIND GIRL

THE FORCED SALE

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

VANITIES IN VERSE

COLERIDGE AND OPIUM-EATING.23

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I had left New Orleans with the full intention of proceeding without stop or delay to my home upon the Red River; but notwithstanding this determination, my wife and myself were unable to resist Richards' pressing invitation to pause for a day or two at his house. Upon our yielding to his solicitations, he proceeded to recruit other guests among our travelling companions, and soon got together a pleasant party. My father-in-law, Monsieur Menou, went on to my plantation, but Julie remained with us, as did also her aunt, Madame Duras, an agreeable old lady with a slight expression of perfidy in her light blue, French-looking eyes, possessed withal of infinite delicacy and finesse— a fervent admirer of the old court school of Louis the Fifteenth, in the chronique scandaleuse of which she was as well versed as if she had been herself a contemporary of that pleasure-loving monarch. Besides these ladies, there was a young Frenchman named Vergennes, the third son of some Gascon viscount, and a distant cousin of the Menous, who had come to America till the scandal occasioned by certain republican scribblings of his in one of the newspapers of the day should have blown over, and till he could revisit his country without risk of obtaining a lodging gratis in the Conciergerie. He had brought with him a head crammed with schemes for the political regeneration of the whole world, and a trunkful of French fashions, neither of which, as I reckoned, were likely to take much with us. He made me laugh inwardly twenty times a-day by his Utopian theories and fancies. Truth to tell, in matters of politics or of sound common sense, these Frenchmen are for the most part mere children, and reach their dying day without ever becoming men. Take them by their weak points, their unlimited vanity or their love of what they call glory, and you may ride them like a horse to water. Vergennes, however, when one could get him off his hobby, was a pleasant gentlemanly fellow enough.

It was impossible to spare Richards more than three days, and at six o'clock on the morning of the fourth, we went on board the steamer Alexandria. I had prevailed on my friend and his wife, and the whole party, to come and pass a week or two at my house, which was now quite ready for the reception of guests. The three days we had remained with Richards had been one continued fête, and considering the good living, and the heat of the weather — the thermometer ranging from 95° to 100° — there were few things more agreeable or better to be done, than to take a steam up the Red River. The fresh breezes on the water might save some of us a touch of fever. On board we went therefore, all in high glee and good-humour with each other.

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"'Nonsense!' said I — 'safety of our fellow-citizens! Our fellow-citizens are in safety. We don't mean to race, Mister Lambton,' says I; 'we are only trying for a minute which ship can go the fastest.'

"'Mr Doughby!' cried Emily, half beside herself — throwing her arms round me, and trying to drag me towards the engine — 'Mr Doughby, if you have the smallest affection — regard I would say — for me, exert your influence, stop this horrid racing!'

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