At this point in Owen’s career it will be convenient to pause for a moment and describe very briefly what manner of man it was that was rapidly becoming a leading figure in London society. We remember him from an earlier date than we care to mention, but, as we have no turn for portrait-painting, we gladly accept Sir W. Flower’s lifelike sketch:
‘Owen was tall and ungainly in figure, with massive head, lofty forehead, curiously round, prominent, and expressive eyes, high cheek-bones, large mouth, and projecting chin, long, lank, dark hair, and, during the greater part of his life, smooth-shaven face and very florid complexion.’
His manners were distinguished for ceremonious courtesy, coupled with the formal exactness of a punctilious Frenchman. His bows were not easily forgotten. His enemies said, and his friends could not deny, that they varied with the rank of the person to whom he was presented. In fact Owen might have said, with Sir Pertinax Macsycophant, ‘I naver in my life could stond straight i’ th’ presence of a great mon; but awways boowed, and boowed, and boowed, as it were by instinct.’
Next to what he called ‘my dear comparative anatomy,’ Owen loved music, and was at one time no mean performer, both vocally and instrumentally. Music was his constant recreation in an evening, and he has even been known to take his violoncello out with him to parties. He was a frequent attendant at concerts and operas, and when Weber’s _Oberon_ was first performed in London he went to hear it thirty nights in succession. The stage also had attractions for him, and he and his wife had many friends in the dramatic profession. Macready in _Henry the Fifth_, Charles Kean in _Louis XI._ and _Richard III._, and many minor stars, gave him great pleasure; and it was on the stage of Drury Lane Theatre, while joining the actors in singing the National Anthem on the occasion of the Queen’s first state visit, that he met Charles Dickens, who afterwards became his intimate friend. ‘London,’ he once said, ‘is the place for interchange of thought’; and it was a relief to him to lay his habitual pursuits aside for a few hours, and exchange ideas with men whose lives lay in lines wholly different from his own. He found dining-out a relaxation—the hours were earlier in those days—and gradually, as his social gifts were discovered, he was much in request. No man could tell a story better, and his general conversation was brilliant and original. He had the happy art of dilating on his own pursuits without being either a pedant or a bore. Consequently he was a member of many societies who, ‘greatly daring, dined,’ as, for instance, the Abernethy Club, the Literary Society, and The Club, founded by Dr Johnson, an exclusive society limited to forty members, in which he occupied the place once filled by Oliver Goldsmith. He also promoted the Royal Literary Fund and the Actors Benevolent Fund—where his after-dinner eloquence was much appreciated. He was a good chess-player, and was often matched, successfully, with some of the first players of the day, as Landseer, Staunton, and the Duke of Brunswick. His acquaintance with literature was wider than might have been expected from his absorbing occupations in other directions, and his retentive memory enabled him to quote pages of Milton, Shakespeare, and other standard writers. He was also an ardent novel-reader. Mrs Owen kept him well supplied with the novels of the day; and he sat up half the night over _Eugene Aram_, the serial stories of Dickens, _Vanity Fair_, _Shirley_, and _The Mill on the Floss_, which we are glad to find he preferred to all the rest of George Eliot’s stories. Apart from his social proclivities, he managed to get acquainted with most of the celebrated people of the day. They either came to see him and the museum he directed, or they asked him to call on them. Among those whom he met in this way we may mention Mrs Fry, Miss Edgeworth, Turner, Samuel Warren, Emerson, Guizot, the younger Dumas, Fanny Kemble, Tennyson, Macaulay, and Carlyle, who described him as ‘the man with the glittering eyes,’ and decided that he was ‘neither a fool nor a humbug.’ In his own especial line of science he was intimate with Lord Enniskillen, Sir Philip Egerton, Prince Lucien Bonaparte, Sedgwick, Murchison, Lyell; and subsequently took a keen interest in the researches of Livingstone, whom he helped with the first record of his African work. ‘Poor Livingstone!’ he says; ‘he does not know what it is to write a book.’ When Owen could find time for a holiday, which was but seldom, he enjoyed fishing and grouse-shooting; but his delight in Nature was so keen that probably sport was what he least valued in these excursions.