A very remarkable character who used to visit Brighton was the Countess de Montalembert, mother of the nobleman of that name who made himself known in France. She was the daughter and heiress of Mr. Forbes, whose “Oriental Memoirs” were much esteemed in his time. This lady had friends among all sorts of people. While chuckling over scandalous and not decent letters from Lady Aldeburgh, she would be receiving the visits of such uncontaminated beings as Lady Mary Pelham, and conferring with her on religion. In her invitations to me she would one day say, “I want you this evening to come and meet the religious set:” this would be such men as the Robert Andersons. Another time it would be the worldly set that she was to receive and I was to meet; and this was certainly the most pleasant set of the two.

She had great naÏvetÉ, and was full of fun, trenching often on those sources of humour which are forbidden to delicate minds. Her literary occupation at the time when I saw most of her (in 1837) was in writing a “Life of King David”—a work that she completed with great self-gratulation, and which, at her death, her executors burned without estimating its worth, the quicker to dispose of her numerous papers.

Her husband was a baron at Louis Philippe’s court, and received the higher title from that temporary king. His wife, being a Protestant, was not admissible at court—a difficulty which she readily overcame by crossing over the way to the Catholic faith; and this she quitted when it was no longer for her interest to remain in it.

She had two sons. She cared only for the elder one. He lived in Paris, and at her death inherited her fortune. She died of a quinsy at her house in Curzon Street, about a year after the time when I saw most of her.

She was sprinkled and crossed, at baptism, by the name of Rose, which name may have suited her well in her bloomy days, for late in life she had a pleasing face, full of lively expression, with a fine portly figure. She was fond of sketching herself seated on a music-stool, which she called a Rose sitting on a Thorn.

In the death of friends whom one sees from first to last, witnessing their gradual rise and fall simultaneously with our own, there is nothing striking; but how different the effect on our minds when we lose sight of them in their prime, and reflect that their sturdy figures, seeming to be still unobnoxious to change, lie prostrate in their graves! We recall them, and see them still in full activity; they appear to have only gone away! So was it with the kindest of men, my best of friends, Sir David Scott, whose name and goodness deserve a better monument. So it was with Mr. Wagner, whose quick limbs and upright pleasant face appear to be moving through the streets of Brighton at this hour! I see him now rapidly turning the corner of Castle Square into the Old Steyne! Then comes back into view the rapid step of Horace Smith, another celebrity of the place, with a pun almost out of his mouth before we were within hearing of each other! They all seem still alive!

Wagner walked through the streets as if they were his own, reviewing the people as he passed as a general would an army, now stopping, speaking, laughing, now pushing on again. He had been tutor in the Duke of Wellington’s family. The wonder is that, with his firmness of purpose and successful handling of men, he did not reach a bishopric up to that of Canterbury itself. He might have led even the House of Lords by the nose. But Brighton was to him an episcopal see. He enjoyed the patronage of nearly all the livings there, with the monopoly of marriages, births, and deaths; building church after church himself out of his own large resources and the pockets of willing or unwilling friends.

There was an abomination of doctors at Brighton in those days, potent firms, chiefly on the Steyne; but the class is soon forgotten, since they leave nothing behind them but their patients and their shops.

Among apothecaries, Newnham was prince. One saw him walking across the Steyne, then red-bricked for foot-passengers only, he wagging his head with a look of triumph, and in gaiter attire; his face nearly six feet above his shoes, with an expression on it of the miracles that may be achieved by salted senna alone, not to mention the openings artificially made in veins with the mere thumb and finger. But Newnham was a friendly, knowing character. I think often of the advice he tendered me as a young physician, “Never dine with a patient. Such has been my rule through life; for if you do, sooner or later you are sure to let out the fool!”

I must not omit the name, in these brief memorials, of my cultured friend, George Hall, a physician and still more than that, a gentleman. As travelling Redcliffe Fellow, he spent ten years in visiting Greek and Italian and Turkish cities, and the chief courts of Europe. He was too refined for a Brighton physician; few of his patients were to his taste. When summoned to those who suited him best, he passed hours with them instead of sharing his time fairly among all. He had some noble blood in him, according to rumour; but it was of a sinister strain. This held possession of him secretly, and influenced his life; but he found consolation in marrying Lady Hood, a peeress of very considerable fortune, and in retiring from the vulgarity of physic.

The pun sacrifices the sense and purport to the playful analogy. In the practice of this Horace Smith expended the conversational portions of his life. I told him, at one of Mrs. Smith’s evening receptions, that a man known to us had injured a limb while travelling in Norway. His reply was, “I suppose a bear came and Gnaw’wayed his arm.” His daughter, Miss Smith then, and I believe so for life, was a quick and clever match for her father in drawing him out. She had an open, good-tempered face, with the eyes well apart, to which her nose, following suit, owed a flatness. Most auditors must have observed that all whom Nature has favoured with a lying-down nose were let fall by their nurse when babies in arms. Thackeray was one of these. One would have thought they would have fallen on their backs; but no, they all fall on their noses.

The only authority for punning that I know of is Aristotle; he recommends it to a pleader. Horace Smith’s puns are yet remembered; the one on elder-flower water was his best.

The evening receptions at Brighton were pleasant pastimes, especially those of Lady Carhampton and the Hon. Mrs. Mostyn, daughter of Mr. Thrale, of Johnsonian memory. This lady, in Sillwood or Oriental Place, near the Horace Smiths, had a suite of receiving-rooms winding all round the mansion, hung with pictures. In one room was a couch enclosed by a silken canopy within a recess, above which was gilded in large letters, “Mon Repos.”