Shadows of our own making, 1820
Shadows of our own making, 1820
Plus: dreadful mistakes with salads
A few months ago I went on a literary wander around central London, taking in the former homes, both now museums, of Samuel Johnson and Charles Dickens (both figures who have appeared on several occasions here). Opposite Dickens’s home in Doughty Street was a rather discreet plaque to another man of letters: ‘Sydney Smith 1771–1845 Author and Wit Lived Here’.
Smith was in fact another giant of the literary scene, co-founder of the Edinburgh Review, his career neatly bridging the era between Johnson and Dickens (and he corresponded with the latter) – but one who is little known today. His Wikipedia page says he was “an English wit, writer, and Anglican cleric” but that he is “remembered for his rhyming recipe for salad dressing”. That seems a bit of a comedown.
Don’t get me wrong: the salad recipe is fun (“To make this condiment your poet begs / The pounded yellow of two hard-boil’d eggs…”) – you can read it here.1 And clearly he was something of a salad enthusiast. In the course of the research I’ve somewhat randomly been conducting into his life and work, I found a letter he wrote to Lady Morpeth in November 1823, recounting a visit to the Earl of Harewood where Sydney felt obliged to offer his advice:
… they have bad potatoes I mean not mealy which is a dreadful Oversight – and the Salads were poor and insignificant till I gave them a Lesson, which (considering it was the first Visit) was a strong measure but it is difficult for a person like myself who has turn’d his attention to Salads to witness without instruction and remonstrance the dreadful mistakes and follies which are every day committed with Salads…
And advice, in fact, is partly our theme this week – I do love finding self-help tips from the past (like this productivity advice). The other thing that Smith seems mainly known for now is a letter he wrote to the same Lady Morpeth a few years earlier. This has done the rounds on many websites (mostly in incorrect form), here, but I do have to share it, because it’s great – and I will try to set it in context for perhaps the first time, as it’s part of a story of friendship. He is responding to Lady Morpeth’s struggle with “blue demons” (which we can think of as being like Dr Johnson’s black dog, another past theme here):2
Nobody has suffered more from low Spirits than I have done so I feel for you —
1st Live as well and drink as much wine as you dare
2d go into the Shower bath – with a small quantity of water at a temperature low enough to give you a slight sensation of cold. – 75 or 80 [degrees Fahrenheit].
3d. amusing books.
4th. short views of human life not farther than dinner or Tea
5th be as busy as you can
6th see as much as you can of those friends who respect, & like you
7th. and of those acquaintances who amuse you
8th. make no secret about Low Spirits to your friends but talk of them fully – they are always worse for dignified Concealment
9. attend to the effects Tea and Coffee produce upon you
10. Compare your Lot with that of other people.
11. don’t expect too much from human life, a sorry business at the best
12 avoid poetry – dramatic representations (except Comedy) Music – serious novels melancholy sentimental people – and every thing likely to excite feeling or emotion – not ending in active benevolence
13 do good. & endeavor to please every body of every degree
14. be as much as you can in the open air without fatigue
15. make the room where you commonly sit gay & pleasant
16 Struggle by little and little against idleness
17. dont be too severe upon yourself. or underrate yourself – but do yourself Justice
18. keep good blazing fires
19-. be firm and constant in the exercise of rational religion
20. believe me dear Lady Georgiana very truly Yrs
Sydney Smith
Let’s zoom out a bit. Smith grew up in Essex, the child of tyrannical and financially haphazard merchant Robert and his Huguenot-descended wife Maria. The Dictionary of National Biography says of Robert, “after dinner every day he forced his children to sit, often for hours, in motionless silence”. Sydney was a smart, energetic child, and despite these constraints he went on to success at Winchester College and New College, Oxford. He became a priest, but ended up co-founding the Edinburgh Review3 with three friends in 1802 and became a key writer for it, soon known for his lively wit. (Here’s a classic Smith quip: when his doctor advised him to “take a walk upon an empty stomach”, Smith replied, “Upon whose?” – he is also the penman behind the advice I’ve, erm, lived some of my career by: “I never read a book before reviewing it.”)
By all accounts Smith was fantastic company (widely known as ‘Dear Sydney’), but not always happy in himself – he dearly loved his wife Catherine (they married in Edinburgh in 1800), who helped him through his bouts of melancholy. In 1803 they moved to that London house opposite where Dickens would live 30-odd years later, and Smith spent six years immersed in London literary life with great success writing, preaching and lecturing – until church bureaucracy forced him to head to the hills as rector (and newbie farmer) of Foston, a tiny community in rural North Yorkshire (he referred to the “healthy grave” of the countryside). He was here until 1829, then moved to Somerset, eventually dying back in London in 1845.
Meanwhile, who was this Lady Morpeth he was keen to help? She was born Georgiana Dorothy Cavendish, eldest child of the 5th Duke of Devonshire and the famed Duchess (also Georgiana) who has often been compared to her relative Diana, Princess of Wales. Our Georgiana (1783–1858) – known as ‘Little G’ in the family – married George Howard, Viscount Morpeth (later Earl of Carlisle), in 1801. It was a happy marriage, and they had 12 children – though perhaps that burden contributed to the anxiety she clearly suffered from. Sadly I can’t find any letters from Georgiana to Sydney Smith (they might be in the archives at Castle Howard, just four miles from Sydney’s Yorkshire home) so her voice is missing here but we can read between the lines somewhat.
In September 1819, Sydney wrote to her that “everybody is haunted with spectres and apparitions of sorrow, and the imaginary griefs of life are greater than the real”, and in another letter offered her some early advice:
The remedies against Nervousness are resolution, Camphor, Cold Bathing, Exercise in the open air – abstinence from Tea and Coffee – and from all distant Views of human life except when religious duties call upon you to take them…
And five days after the famous 20-point missive, he wrote:
I am truly glad you are better. I hope to see you in Town about the beginning of April. You compare me to Camphor—I hope I shall be Camphor in Spirits which is the common method in which Camphor is taken.—don’t you think the Pun pretty good?
Smith clearly spent much time reflecting on the troubles of both mind and body. His daughter’s memoir quotes him referring back (rather inaccurately) to his renowned letter to Little G:
Never give way to melancholy; resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach. I once gave a lady two-and-twenty receipts against melancholy: one was a bright fire; another, to remember all the pleasant things said to and of her; another, to keep a box of sugarplums on the chimney-piece, and a kettle simmering on the hob.
And on another occasion, he observed:
Never give way to melancholy: nothing encroaches more; I fight against it vigorously. One great remedy is, to take short views of life. Are you happy now? Are you likely to remain so till this evening? or next week? or next month? or next year? Then why destroy present happiness by a distant misery, which may never come at all, or you may never live to see it? for every substantial grief has twenty shadows, and most them shadows of your own making.4
In 1829, his commonplace book records more bodily concerns under the heading ‘Weight’:
Finding myself threatened with great corpulency, I began a plan of reduction from June 1828 to Feb 1829, my weight varied from 15.4 to 14.2 … left off wine, reduced liquid I took to 24 oz or 4 cups of tea, drinking nothing at dinner, at breakfast I ate only a few slices of bread and butter, weighing as I find about an ounce, luncheon left off altogether, at dinner omitted fish soup and endeavoured to confine myself to 8 or 9 oz of meat – I used I believe to drink at breakfast 24 oz of tea, at luncheon 8 oz, at dinner 32 oz – after 16 – total 80 oz – saving 56 oz… I began this diet on 1st February 1829 weighing 15.4 and by the year I had lost more than 3 lb … I added to this friction and light binding the belly with which such little food I could bear. It is supposed that health may be preserved with 1 lb of food a day or 24 oz of drink.
Sydney and Georgiana remained lifelong friends. In 1840, he was writing to her still, if somewhat further afflicted:
I am pretty well, except gout, asthma, and pains in all the bones, and all the flesh, of my body. What a very singular disease gout is! It seems as if the stomach fell down into the feet. The smallest deviation from right diet is immediately punished by limping and lameness, and the innocent ankle and blameless instep are tortured for the vices of the nobler organs. The stomach having found this easy way of getting rid of inconveniences, becomes cruelly despotic, and punishes for the least offences. A plum, a glass of champagne, excess in joy, excess in grief,—any crime, however small, is sufficient for redness, swelling, spasms, and large shoes.
And when he died, Georgiana (now Lady Carlisle) wrote an affectionate poem in his honour, which ended: “Sydney, by wits and sages praised, / Shall still be loved and mourned by me.”
Another piece of advice Sydney gave to the world at large was about writing: “In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigour it will give your style.” I’ll stop here before anyone asks me to do that… BUT paid subscribers can read on to enjoy a selection of his entertaining if not very politically correct document ‘Advice to Parishioners’ (top tip: “Never sit in wet clothes”)…